After The U.S. Leaves WHO, Should The U.N. Be Next?

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/07/10/after-the-u-s-leaves-who-should-the-u-n-be-next/

We should never allow ourselves to be sullied by taking part in such incompetence, while paying for its officials’ lavish salaries and privileged bureaucratic perks.

We’d take it a step further, however. It’s become increasingly clear from observing the United Nations itself that it, too, suffers from many of the same ailments as WHO.

It spends billions and dollars but achieves little or nothing at all. It’s a feel-good bureaucracy that lets globalists pretend they’re addressing the world’s problems, but instead empowers dictators and authoritarians to do their worst.

Take but one example: the Human Rights Council. More than half its members are non-democracies, and include human rights violators Libya, Venezuela, Eritrea and others.

But what’s really strange about the U.N., and inexcusable, is its bizarre fixation on condemning Israel for lawful acts, while ignoring the killing, torturing and murder-by-government of many of its less-savory members.

Lest you think it an exaggeration, consider this: Since 2015, according the the U.N. Watch database, there have been 101 condemnatory resolutions against Israel brought to the floor of the General Assembly. All other nations total 35, six of which were against the U.S.

Turkey: How Erdoğan’s Migrant Blackmail Failed by Burak Bekdil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16178/turkey-erdogan-migrant-blackmail

On February 27, Erdoğan’s government was on the threshold of executing its threat to flood Europe with millions of (mostly Syrian) migrants … Hundreds of thousands of migrants began flocking to the border. By the next day, Greece was not only operating 52 Navy ships to guard its islands close to Turkey; it had also mobilized additional troops on land. Its security forces were able to block 10,000 migrants from entering Greece by way of the Turkish land border.

The new blackmail will not work for a number of reasons. First, because many migrants in Turkey have learned from experience that the Turkish-Greek border can no longer easily be crossed. And second, because the Greek security forces are now better equipped and better prepared to confront a new wave of migrants.

Greece has finally done the right thing and deprived Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of his perpetual threats to blackmail the European Union.

On February 27, Erdoğan’s government was on the threshold of executing its threat to flood Europe with millions of (mostly Syrian) migrants and opening its northwestern borders with Greece and Bulgaria. Hundreds of thousands of migrants began flocking to the border. In a few days, by the beginning of March, they would be in EU territory, to be followed by hundreds of thousands of others. Things, however, did not go as planned by Ankara.

By the next day, Greece was not only operating 52 Navy ships to guard its islands close to Turkey; it had also mobilized additional troops on land. Its security forces were able to block 10,000 migrants from entering Greece by way of the Turkish land border. Some migrants were stuck in the no-man’s land between the two countries and eventually had to return to the Turkish side. Greek officials reported only 76 illegal entries, whom they detained and prosecuted. In his social media account, Turkey’s Deputy Foreign Minister Yavuz Selim Kıran compared the alleged treatment of migrants seeking to cross illegally into Greece with conditions at Nazi death camps at Auschwitz. The Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece immediately condemned and denounced the statement.

The Magic of the Democratic Party Constant distraction is the core of dystopian politics. Garrison Bergeron

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/magic-democratic-party-frontpagemagcom/

The most famous technique magicians use to fool you is distraction. They distract you with one hand while doing their trick with the other. The amazing thing is how it keeps working even though we all know about it. The next magic act comes around, and we still look at the hand that the magician wants us to watch while ignoring the hand weaving the deceit.

Nobody understands this better than the Democrat Party. Democrat mayors preside over the most horrific dysfunction and violence in America. Recently President Trump called them out, claiming that the top 20 most violent cities in the USA were run by Democrats. The Democrats were livid. One of their favorite propaganda outlets, the Washington Post, “fact-checked” Trump and declared him wrong, saying: “Trump keeps claiming that the most dangerous cities in America are all run by Democrats. They aren’t.” But the article went on to document (with supporting data) that 17 of the top 20 are indeed actually the most dangerous.

Since many of us cannot witness what’s actually going on in Democrat-run cities, their mayors can distract us with irrelevant issues while hiding the carnage wrought by their own policies. Search for “Chicago gangs,” for example, and you’ll see a huge number of sites dedicated to the subject. High on your list will be a page called “chicagoganghistory.com.” This site alone is breathtaking in its depth; try navigating its menus.

The Supreme Court Upholds Religious Liberty Three milestone cases push back at progressive anti-religion ideology. Joseph Klein

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/supreme-court-upholds-religious-liberty-joseph-klein/

The Supreme Court this term has thwarted the progressive left’s relentless assault on religious liberty in three milestone cases. In all these cases, a majority of the justices decided that religious freedom is such a fundamental constitutional right that it cannot be so easily encroached to serve secular objectives. As the Supreme Court has now made clear, the principle of separation of state and religious institutions does not mean compelling an individual to violate his or her religious beliefs in order to fulfill a secular government policy objective that can be achieved in a manner that is more accommodating of those beliefs. It does not mean forcing religious institutions to compromise their own religious teaching standards. And it does not mean that parents who wish to exercise their religious beliefs by enrolling their children in religious private schools are automatically ineligible for state aid that is made available to parents enrolling their children in secular private schools.

The First Amendment’s prohibition against the establishment of religion and its protection of freedom of religion are complementary, not antithetical to each other. Our Founding Fathers determined that the sacred is best respected by maximizing individual freedom of conscience, which is the essence of the First Amendment’s protections for freedom of religion and the prohibition against establishment of religion by the state. The separation of religious institutions and state ensures that all religious believers and non-believers receive equal treatment under the law, and that the government will never establish an official state religion. But it was not intended to punish or place unreasonable burdens on people of faith.

Trump and Netanyahu Face their Rendezvous with Destiny The next few weeks boils down to a historic moment of truth. Caroline Glick

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/trump-and-netanyahu-face-their-rendezvous-destiny-caroline-glick/

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu needn’t take heed of the “friendly advice” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson proffered on Wednesday. As UAE Ambassador to the U.S. Yousef Al Otaiba did earlier this month, Johnson published an article in Yediot Ahronot threatening Israel with various disasters if Netanyahu implements his plan to apply Israeli sovereignty in areas of Judea and Samaria in conformance with President Donald Trump’s peace plan.

Johnson’s “friendly” threats should surprise no one. Since 2017, when he began serving as Britain’s foreign minister under then-Prime Minister Theresa May, Johnson, demonstrated amply that he is no great friend of Israel, or of anyone else.

After leading the fight for Brexit as Mayor of London, as foreign minister Johnson was quick to align all of Britain’s foreign policies with the European Union, as if he were its most obedient member. He did so not only at Israel’s expense, but at the expense of Anglo-American ties.

When the Trump administration withdrew the United States from the United Nations Human Rights Council due to the council’s structural anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism, not only did Johnson not follow suit, he sped off to Geneva, appeared before the UNHRC and pledged Britain’s undying allegiance to the body.

When the Trump administration abandoned the nuclear deal with Iran, which enriched the terrorist regime, enabling it to expand its terrorist campaigns on multiple fronts and gave Tehran an open road to a nuclear arsenal within a decade, Johnson didn’t merely oppose the move. He worked with his French and German counterparts to develop a financial exchange to bypass U.S. economic sanctions on Iran.

Convicted Terrorist Susan Rosenberg Raising Funds for “Marxist” Black Lives Matter A reminder of leftist affection for murder and mayhem. Lloyd Billingsley

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/convicted-terrorist-susan-rosenberg-raising-funds-lloyd-billingsley/

“There’s no way you can do any homework on Black Lives Matter and not see that it’s a Marxist political organization,” and the move to substitute a “black” nation anthem was “a communist political move.”  That was sports journalist Jason Whitlock in an interview with Tucker Carlson of Fox News this week, when more obscure information about BLM emerged.

Convicted terrorist Susan Rosenberg (pictured above) is vice chair of Thousand Currents, a California-based charity that handles fundraising for Black Lives Matter. Rosenberg is a veteran of the May 19 Communist Organization that carried out a bombings in the early 1980s to counter President Reagan’s “Morning in America” campaign. Rosenberg landed on the FBI most wanted list and was arrested with stolen explosives in 1984.

The terrorist drew 58 years but served only 16 because in 2001 President Bill Clinton commuted Rosenberg’s sentence. Since 2016, Rosenberg has been involved with Black Lives Matter, now openly recognized as a Marxist organization making communist political moves. One of those moves, supported by prominent Democrats is to defund the police, but BLM Philadelphia boss YahNé Ndgo is taking that to a new level. “One of the things that we are demanding over five years is the complete abolition,” she told Fox News Tuesday. “We don’t want to see any police in our community.”

Black Lives Matter has made a hero of Joanne Chesimard (aka Assata Shakur) who murdered a New Jersey state trooper, escaped prison and fled to Cuba. As Atlanta and Chicago confirm, murder is becoming more common in communities where Black Lives Matter operates, and the abolition of police would make it more so. As it happens, in Communist doctrine and practice, murder is necessary for social progress.

Libya’s Foul Foretaste of the Post-American World Amid the chaos, the EU, NATO and the Arab world are all divided over which warlords to support. By Walter Russell Mead

https://www.wsj.com/articles/libyas-foul-foretaste-of-the-post-american-world-11594228201?mod=opinion_featst_pos2

Does Libya show us the future of world politics?

U.S. engagement there has been minimal since a 2012 terrorist attack killed four Americans, including the ambassador, and traumatized the Obama administration. In America’s absence, over half a dozen powers are struggling to control Libya’s future, carving up its territory, and subsidizing militias and warlords as they compete for control over its oil and gas. No end to the war is in sight.

On one side Turkey and Qatar, with some discreet Italian cheerleading, back the Tripoli-based warlords and affiliated tribal leaders whom the United Nations has anointed the “legitimate” government of Libya, the so-called Government of National Accord, or GNA. On the side of the challenger coalition of tribal leaders and warlords stand France, Russia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt. The latter coalition is led most visibly by Khalifa Haftar, a rogue field marshal who heads what he calls the Libyan National Army.

No higher principles are at stake. Neither side stands for anything more noble than its own security and power. The GNA isn’t fighting for freedom, Islam, U.N. legitimacy or any cause greater than its right to make as much money as possible selling hydrocarbons while taxing the human traffickers and arms smugglers operating in the country’s chaos. The rebels want pretty much the same thing.

Ukraine’s ‘Holocaust Disneyland’ A memorial would re-create the aesthetics of Nazi terror at the site of an atrocity. By Vladislav Davidzon

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ukraines-holocaust-disneyland-11594336467?cx_testId=3&cx_testVariant=cx_4&cx_artPos=3#cxrecs_s

The territory of Ukraine was the site of countless horrors committed against the Jewish people under Nazi occupation. Yet the resource-strapped country lacks a major museum and memorial dedicated to the Holocaust. While an international initiative to create one began in 2016, the ambitious project is in disarray, with one critic calling it “Holocaust Disneyland.”

For centuries Ukraine has constituted the historical homeland for much of European Jewry, and more than half of American Jews have roots in the region. An estimated 1.5 million Jews were killed on its territory during the “Holocaust by bullets,” with some 90% of the killings carried out directly by German forces. Babyn Yar—a ravine outside of Kyiv, where some 34,000 Jews were rounded up and shot Sept. 29-30, 1941—has come to symbolize the killing fields across Eastern Europe.

The Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center initiative, launched in 2016, likely will be the last major Holocaust memorial built during the lifetimes of survivors. Costs are projected to surpass $100 million. Most funding has come from four Jewish billionaires, some of whose families perished at Babyn Yar. Yet three of the billionaires are Russian citizens. The leading role played by Russians has been controversial, given that the country has occupied and annexed swaths of Ukrainian territory and waged a war that has cost at least 14,000 Ukrainian lives since 2014.

Supreme Loser: Pelosi’s House The justices make it harder for lawmakers to justify subpoenas for the president. by Kimberley Strassel

https://www.wsj.com/articles/supreme-loser-pelosis-house-11594336504?mod=opinion_lead_pos8

The Supreme Court on Thursday punted in two cases concerning subpoenas for President Trump’s financial records, sending them back to lower courts to resolve a host of legal questions. Yet if the cases had no clear winner, one of the rulings did produce an outright loser: Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s overzealous House.

Since the moment Mrs. Pelosi retook the gavel in January 2019, she’s operated as if her institution is the only branch in town, with limitless power. Within days of the 2018 election, an unnamed House Democrat bragged that the incoming majority was loading a “subpoena cannon,” aimed at more than 80 different areas of Trump investigation. The president’s tax returns, his firing of former FBI Director James Comey, his discussions with foreign leaders, security clearances, the Trump family business, Stormy Daniels, the reassignment of executive branch employees, the Mueller report. Ad nauseam.

No one disputes the House has oversight authority. But courts have always made clear that this power must be firmly tethered to a “legislative purpose.” Prior Congresses at least attempted to hew to the spirit of that phrase. Mrs. Pelosi’s committee chairmen—driven by fury over the Trump presidency—embarked on an extended fishing expedition. In doing so, they exposed how easy it is to abuse the legislative-purpose doctrine.

Supreme Court blocks funding for Soros-backed NGOs over absence of anti-prostitution pledge

https://www.rt.com/usa/493394-soros-ngos-blocked-supreme-court/

The US Supreme Court has denied federal funding to billionaire financier George Soros’ international anti-AIDS organizations, ruling that in order to access the federal cash, the groups must explicitly oppose prostitution.

The court’s five conservative-leaning justices overruled three of their liberal colleagues on Monday, with Justice Brett Kavanaugh delivering the majority verdict. The fourth liberal justice, Elena Kagan, sat out the case.

The Alliance for Open Society International, a US-based subsidiary of Soros’ Open Society Foundations, hoped to distribute federal funds earmarked for the fight against HIV/AIDS to its foreign sister organizations. However, these organizations refused to comply with a 2003 Congressional requirement that they adopt “a policy explicitly opposing prostitution and sex trafficking,” which Congress at the time described as “additional causes of… the HIV/AIDS epidemic.” 

VIDEO:  “Soros & Steyer exposed as backers of ‘paramilitary’ lieft-wing group in undercover Project Veritas”

In 2013, the Supreme Court ruled that this policy requirement violated the First Amendment rights of the Soros-funded groups. However, the court on Monday ruled that the groups’ foreign affiliates are not afforded the same protection under the Constitution.

“In sum, plaintiffs’ foreign affiliates are foreign organizations, and foreign organizations operating abroad possess no rights under the US Constitution,” Kavanaugh concluded.

Open Society Foundations President Patrick Gaspard described the anti-prostitution pledge as part of “the US government’s quest to impose its harmful ideological agenda,” adding that it “compromises the fight against HIV by impeding and stigmatizing efforts to deliver health services.”

Justice Clarence Thomas, concurring with Kavanaugh, was unsympathetic in his ruling. An anti-prostitution pledge is “the reasonable price of admission to a limited government-spending program,” he wrote, adding that the Soros-supported organizations remain “free to accept or reject” it at their choosing.