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August 2020

MEDIA, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Clinesmith, the Russia Lie, and the Deep State By Kyle Smith

By on August 19th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/clinesmith-the-russia-lie-and-the-deep-state/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_

A scandal barely exists if the leading news outlets unite to draw a veil over it.

Picture a lawyer you know. Fairly persnickety with details, no? Covers all bases. Doesn’t mess up the easy stuff. Rarely messes up the hard stuff. This is a person who knows the rulebook. Now picture that same person working for the FBI. Doubly careful, in this gig. It’s the big time. Now picture that same person working for the FBI on a major political issue — no, the major political issue. The one the whole world is talking about. Belt and suspenders, right? Make that six belts and four pairs of suspenders. This person is not going to get caught with his pants down, ever. Every t will be crossed, crossed again, then crossed again in the presence of a notary public.

So when you cast your eye over what former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith did to earn himself a criminal record as a felon during the Trump–Russia fiasco, your mind should reel. Clinesmith, like others in the FBI, knew that former Trump adviser Carter Page had done some work for the CIA that involved contacts with Russian intelligence. But Clinesmith wanted permission from the FISA judge to continue to conduct clandestine surveillance of Carter Page. Clinesmith knew Page was spying on the Russians, not spying for the Russians, but he needed to keep this under wraps so the court might think Page was talking to Russians as part of a nefarious collusion effort between Russia and the Trump campaign. So when Clinesmith’s superior at the FBI asked whether Page was a CIA contact in 2017, because he or she needed to be able to swear under oath that Page was not, Clinesmith forwarded an email from the CIA — but altered the email to reverse its meaning. The email said Page had been in touch with the CIA, but Clinesmith added the words “and not a source.” The lie that Page wasn’t briefing the CIA was critical to winning court approval for trying to dig up dirt on the Trump campaign via spying on Page.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Will Clinesmith Plead Guilty? By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on August 19th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/trump-russia-investigation-will-kevin-clinesmith-plead-guilty/

He has a lot to lose.

It is called the allocution. It is the most important part of a guilty plea in federal court. It comes — if it comes — when the judge personally addresses the accused, who has been placed under oath, and asks him to explain in his own words how and why he is guilty of the crime charged.

Is Kevin Clinesmith willing to allocute? Is he willing to admit without reservation that he deceived his FBI colleagues and a federal court? The lack of clear answers to those questions is almost certainly the sticking point — the reason why, to this moment, there is only a false-statement charge against the former Bureau lawyer, not a false-statement guilty plea.

When it comes time to allocute, the court must ensure that the accused acknowledges committing the acts alleged and, just as significantly, doing so with the level of criminal intent prescribed in the relevant penal statute — the mens rea of the crime. If the accused does not admit guilt, and evince that he is doing so voluntarily and in full awareness of the possible consequences, then the judge should not accept the guilty plea.

After all, such a plea involves a waiver of constitutional and statutory rights — to due process, to putting the prosecution to its burden of proving all elements of the charge beyond a reasonable doubt at trial, to appeal. The plea further subjects the accused to potential imprisonment and significant fines; and the allocution itself could subject the accused to further prosecution for perjury if he lies while under oath.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

The Biden Conservatives? (Bret Stephens Strikes Out Again)

By on August 19th, 2020

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/the-biden-conservatives/91228/

The idea that there’s such a thing as a “Biden Conservative” is being advanced by Bret Stephens of the Times. It’s about “upholding your principles at the expense of your politics,” he argues. The piece follows a column in the Wall Street Journal by Rahm Emanuel begging the “Biden Republicans” to stick with the Democrats the way the Reagan Democrats have stuck with the GOP.

Good luck to them both, we say. It may be too soon for newspaper endorsements in a presidential race (the nominations haven’t been fully conferred yet). It’s not too soon, though, to suggest that the formulas sketched by Messrs. Stephens and Emanuel fail to compute for the Sun. It’s just hard to see the attraction of Mr. Biden to someone who favors Republican principles.

Mr. Emanuel asks us to be clear about 1968, when feuding Democrats upended the progressive movement. “Today, by contrast,” he writes, “even if Democrats disagree on the path forward, we share the same objectives: expanding health coverage, curtailing climate change, and promoting economic equality and social justice.” In other words, anti-Republican tax increases.

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BOOKS Comments turned off

White Supremacy brought to you by an East African, Black, Muslim Woman by Diane Bederman

By on August 19th, 2020

https://dianebederman.com/white-supremacy-brought-to-you-by-an-east-african-bl

Experts have inundated us with lectures and books about white privilege. According to these experts, “White supremacy is arguably the most complex social system of the last several hundred years.” White privilege, rather the evil of white privilege/white supremacy, is being taught in our schools, and not just universities. Are there white people who believe they are better than others because of the colour of their skin? Yes. And we are working hard to undo the damage of those beliefs. Seems we have not learned any lesson from those biases. Today, the path is to attack white people; for being born white and therefore innately superior and privileged.

Who are these “experts” whose books are being promoted to teachers and schools and the rest of society?

One is Layla F Saad and her book, “me and white supremacy,”a resource for white people.

The book came about following her free month-long Instagram challenge during the summer of 2018. She knew her audience. Her book has also been recommended for teachers to read so they can look inside themselves and find that active and passive racism that lurks within, and work diligently to remove it. She describes herself as an East African, Black, Muslim woman, born in Cardiff Wales, living for a time in Great Britain, before moving with her family to Qatar, where she now lives with her husband and children.. She thinks of herself as sitting at “a unique intersection of identities” from where she can help white people “work with the intention of creating a new world where Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour (BIPOC) live with dignity and equality” and remove “oppression and marginalization.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The BDS and The Palestinians’ Alliance with BLM

By on August 19th, 2020

https://acdemocracy.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Screen-Shot-2020-08-18-at-2.05.21-PM.png

Black Lives Matter, Israel & Intersectionality 

Since the founding of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in 2013, the delegitimization (DLG) network against Israel and its activists have embarked on a propaganda campaign that draws parallels between police violence in the US against African Americans and violence against Palestinians by the Israel Police and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). This fictitious parallel is part of a strategic attempt by the delegitimization network to entrench itself and the BDS movement as a focal point of the progressive movement.Intersectionality posits that no form of discrimination is distinct from another. This includes discrimination that emanates from capitalism, white supremacy, government, prison and justice systems, the police force, colonialism, gender hetero-normativity, and other institutionalized norms.

After the killing of George Floyd, DLG activists immediately began drawing comparisons with what they describe as systematic and deadly Israeli brutality against Palestinians. The comparisons were given further impetus in the wake of the May 30th killing of Iyad Halak, an autistic Palestinian from East Jerusalem, by Israeli police in Jerusalem’s Old City. 

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

New research indicates that human immune system cells are storing information about the coronavirus so they can fight it off again. By Katherine J. Wu

By on August 19th, 2020

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/16/health/coronavirus-immunity-antibodies.html?surface=home-discovery-vi-prg&fellback=

Disease-fighting antibodies and special immune cells appear to persist months after coronavirus infections have resolved, new research shows.

“This is exactly what you would hope for,” said Marion Pepper, an immunologist at the University of Washington and an author on another of the new studies, which is currently under review at the journal Nature. “All the pieces are there to have a totally protective immune response.”

Protection against reinfection cannot be fully confirmed until there is proof that most people who encounter the virus a second time are actually able to keep it at bay, Dr. Pepper said. But the findings could help quell recent concerns over the virus’s ability to dupe the immune system into amnesia, leaving people vulnerable to repeat bouts of disease.

Researchers have yet to find unambiguous evidence that coronavirus reinfections are occurring, especially within the few months that the virus has been rippling through the human population. The prospect of immune memory “helps to explain that,” Dr. Pepper said.

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