CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB Comments turned off

Comey’s Stalinists Jail time is all they should have to look forward to. Jed Babbin

Posted By on May 4th, 2020

https://spectator.org/comeys-stalinists/

Friday’s news brought the welcome report that U.S. Attorney John Durham, investigating possibly illegal misconduct by the FBI and CIA against the Trump campaign, is focusing on the FBI’s illegal acts in prosecuting President Trump’s first national security advisor, Gen. Michael Flynn. According to reports by the Washington Examiner and Fox News, Durham is looking closely at newly revealed documents in the Flynn case.

As I wrote here on September 2, there was a conspiracy between the FBI and CIA to prevent Trump’s election and, when that failed, to interfere in his transition to the presidency. The conspiracy aimed at violating the civil rights of Trump and others, including Flynn and Carter Page. As that column explained, acting under color of law — i.e., as a federal official — to violate someone’s civil rights is illegal under 18 U.S. Code Section 242. A conspiracy to do so is a felony under 18 U.S. Code Section 371 punishable by five years in jail.

What was done to Flynn — apparently by then-FBI director James Comey, then-deputy director Andrew McCabe, then-assistant director Bill Priestap, and middle level managers such as then-FBI agent Peter Strzok — was illegal. People should be punished for what was done to Mike Flynn and the other targets of the conspiracy.

Why target Flynn?

By the beginning of his second term in 2013, Obama had thoroughly politicized the intelligence community. His director of national intelligence, James Clapper, and his CIA director, John Brennan, oversaw the IC to ensure it sang Obama’s song to Congress and the public despite the facts.

Flynn’s conviction should be overturned, his confession withdrawn, and the Justice Department required to bring the case to trial or dismiss it.  

Flynn was appointed director of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2012 and fired in 2014 after not toeing the Obama line. When asked in a Senate hearing if al-Qaeda was on the run — as Obama claimed — Flynn said it wasn’t. He was fired from the DIA job soon after.

When Trump won the election, Obama reportedly took the trouble to warn Trump not to hire Flynn. Why? Was it negative psychology to ensure Trump hired Flynn, or — more likely — was it because Obama didn’t want his politicization of the IC overturned by a maverick like Flynn?

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Justice Department Intervenes against Northam’s Communal Worship Restrictions By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on May 4th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/justice-department-intervenes-against-northams-communal-worship-restrictions/The Virginia restrictions run afoul of the First Amendment.

‘There is no pandemic exception to the Constitution and its Bill of Rights.” That, yet again, was the Justice Department’s message as it intervened on Sunday on the side of a Virginia church, which is suing Governor Ralph Northam’s lockdown against communal worship.

As I related back in April (here and here), Attorney General Bill Barr has admonished states and municipalities that the Justice Department stands ready to take action against social-distancing edicts that unduly restrict fundamental constitutional rights. The DOJ’s Civil Division has been paying particular attention to restrictions on the free exercise of religion — specifically, heavy restrictions or outright bans on communal worship.

A number of governors and mayors, particularly in blue states and cities, have decreed that, in their considered opinion, religious observance is not sufficiently “essential” to be indulged while the authorities are trying to stop the spread of COVID-19, the potentially lethal infectious disease caused by the novel coronavirus. State and municipal executives are relying on their emergency powers to dictate draconian restrictions (i.e., these are not legislative enactments).

We need not speculate whether insufficient weight has been accorded the Constitution in the fashioning of various prohibitions on worship, work, and assembly. As New Jersey governor Phil Murphy smugly put it when questioned by Fox’s Tucker Carlson, the Constitution is “above my pay grade,” so “I wasn’t thinking of the Bill of Rights when we did this.” His Honor was relying on a purportedly higher authority: “scientists.”

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Palestinian Refugee Scam by Jerold Auerbach

Posted By on May 4th, 2020

https://www.algemeiner.com/2020/05/03/the-palestinian-refugee-scam-2/

Can history be undone? The correct answer is: of course not. Surely what happened happened, notwithstanding any subsequent discomfort with the result.

Not so fast.

For example: Who are the rightful inheritors of Palestine? Indeed, where is “Palestine”? These questions, embedded in discussions (and inevitable disagreements) for the past century, have been thrust to the forefront with announcements by President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regarding the planned extension of Israeli sovereignty over settlements in Biblical Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and the Jordan Valley.

Prompted by the centennial anniversary of the San Remo accords, a long dormant set of flawed assumptions has surfaced. Those 1920 accords, ratified by the League of Nations and never rescinded, affirmed the promise made three years earlier by British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour that “His Majesty’s Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” The San Remo agreement became, and remained, the international affirmation of Jewish sovereignty over the land west (and originally also east) of the Jordan River. But the United Nations, with its long history of discomfort often shading into overt hostility toward Israel, has yet to recognize this embedded precedent of international law.

Yishai Fleisher, spokesman for the Hebron Jewish community, recently cited, “This momentous occasion, on which the international community recognized and then ratified the inalienable right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel for the first time in modern history.” But one year later, at the Cairo Conference, Great Britain excluded Transjordan from the territory comprising the Jewish national home and bestowed it as a gift to King Abdullah for his newly invented Kingdom of Jordan.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

An End to the Chaos Tom McCaffrey

Posted By on May 4th, 2020

https://canadafreepress.com/article/an-end-to-the-chaos

Tom McCaffrey is the author of Radical by Nature: The Green Assault on Liberty, Property, and
Prosperity.

Finally, someone is in control.

For too long, Americans have been free to come and go as they pleased. They could climb into their cars and drive anywhere they wanted, at any time of day, for any reason they chose, or for no reason at all. And they never had to justify themselves to anyone. It was a deplorable situation.

A fifth of the U.S. workforce has been put out of work by the new edicts

If a store was open for business, a person could just walk right in and shop to his heart’s content. If it was too crowded for his taste, he was free to go elsewhere. Or he could go about his business cheek by jowl with other customers, possibly exposing himself to all manner of illness. Worse, if he had children with him, or children at home, he risked exposing them to whatever horrible disease he might pick up at the store. Deplorable.

He could go to a Walmart, or a dentist, or a barber shop, or a restaurant, or even a church for God’s sake, and it was left entirely up to him to decide whether the risk of contracting an illness was worth whatever benefit he stood to gain. But such decisions are too important to be left to any old Tom, Dick, or Harry. It’s about time someone put a stop to all this. 

Yes, a fifth of the U.S. workforce has been put out of work by the new edicts. Tens of thousands of small businesses have been destroyed, along with their owners’ life savings. Collateral damage. It was unavoidable and well worth the price if it meant that someone would finally be put into control, that someone would finally have the authority to do what’s necessary to keep us SAFE. Because that’s all that matters in the end.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

How to reopen society using medical science and logic By Dr. Scott W. Atlas

Posted By on May 4th, 2020

https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/495833-how-to-open-society-using-medical-science-and-logic?rnd=1588469307

As of the first week of May, more than 66,000 Americans have died from the COVID-19 pandemic. Given that three to four weeks typically elapse before death, thousands more who are already infected will also succumb to the virus. That said, the direct toll from the infection has markedly declined throughout the United States, including the epicenter of New York. The curves have been flattened – the stated goal of the isolation has been accomplished – for both hospitalizations per day and deaths per day.

We now have an even greater urgency, due to the severe and single-minded policies already implemented. Treating COVID-19 “at all costs” is severely restricting other medical care and instilling fear in the public, creating a massive health disaster, separate from a potential world poverty crisis with almost incalculable consequences. Half of neurosurgery patients still refuse to come in for treatment of diseases that if left untreated risk brain hemorrhage, paralysis and death, even when their doctors directly reassure them. That’s just one subset of the latest reports of skipping two-thirds to three-fourths of cancer screenings, most childhood vaccinations and treatment for new strokes and known cancer.  

There are two critical aspects of this urgently needed re-entry plan. First, policymakers must apply logic and critical thinking to the massive amount of evidence we have acquired and combine that with decades of established medical science. Second, we must demonstrate and fully convey the logic underlying the plan to reassure a public that has become almost paralyzed with panic and fear.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

International Outrage Over Denmark’s Fake Bible: Time to Discard It by Petra Heldt

Posted By on May 4th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15973/denmark-bible-translation-outrage

This misleads the reader twice. Once, the Danish Bible Society statement dodges the truthful assessment that the word “Israel” was omitted or replaced in the Hebrew Bible in 9% of its occurrences and in the New Testament nearly completely. By omitting any distinction between the two parts of the Bible the statement claims that it mentions “Israel” scores and scores of times in the translation. Second, the statement inflates the word “Israel” with “Israelites.” Again here, the analysis of the critique has been side-stepped. The accusation has not been against the replacement of “Israel and the Israelites,” but against the replacement of “Israel.”

The word “Israel” has an extended history of three thousand years, the word “Israelites” of less than one thousand years. These two words are of unequal measure and had not been joined together in the critique.

After a spectacular denial of the crime of which the Danish Bible Society has been accused internationally, it finally admits to it. But it does not sound like repentance…. While any translation has to wrestle with the transportation of meaning and culture of a text from one language to another, the extraordinary decision of the Danish Bible Society staff to deprive their readers of some of the key points of the Christian faith is mind-boggling.

Above all, the Danish Bible Society separates Israel from its Land. Apart from other key issues of the faith, it denies the reader the knowledge of the intrinsic connection between the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, and between Israel and its Land. It falls in the trap of which the Apostle Paul warned, “It is not you that support the root, but the root that supports you” (Romans 11: 18). Its version of the Bible robs the Christian faith of its Jewish roots. It presents a new story of the Christian faith. Its maker is the Danish Bible Society.

No one seems to be in the know about this translation of the Bible. Is it possible that the superfluous mistranslation of the Bible was an initiative of the General Secretary of the Danish Bible Society, Birgitte Stoklund Larsen? Did her office raise the money? Where from? Who is profits from this initiative? If not her, who then?

For Christians and Jews, the Bible is serious. Any tampering with its words, above all with the word Israel, is unacceptable and rejected unequivocally. The attempted murder of Israel, from time eternal until our day, is too real to let people play, whimsically, with its land, its people or its name.

The misrepresentation of Holy Scripture by the Danish Bible Society (DBS) has been met with a crescendo of international protest demanding the withdrawal of the falsified Bible.

The March 2020 Danish Bible, for the secular Danish reader’s easy reading, has omitted or replaced the word “Israel” in all but two places of the more than 60 Greek occurrences in the New Testament and in 9% of the Hebrew Bible.

Protests started on April 21 with the Danish author Jan Frost, who, in a video, first revealed the changes and took the Danish Society to task for them.

On April 26, the Bible Society of Israel (BSI) issued a gracious but unambiguous statement asking to “take measures to correct” the translation:

“The local body of believers as well as others in Israel and beyond were very surprised by and disappointed with the approach that the translators took regarding the term Israel and in its implementation in this translation…..We believe that the Danish Bible Society, as our fellow brothers and sisters in the Lord, will seriously consider our feedback, which echoes the voices of many, and will take measures to correct their translation as necessary.” (Emphasis added.)

MY SAY: Comments turned off

MY SAY: THE MUDDLED DEATH STATISTICS

Posted By on May 4th, 2020

Here are some headlines about appalling death counts: How will we ever know exactly how many Americans really died of Covid 19. The only thing I can absolutely guarantee is that many of the deceased will be voting this November 3,2020.   rsk

Funeral Directors Blow the Whistle on Deaths Falsely Attributed to Coronavirus By Megan Fox

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/megan-fox/2020/04/30/nyc-funeral-directors-reveal-shocking-inflation-of-covid-19-deaths-n387013

“Basically, every death certificate that comes across our desk now has COVID on it,” said a funeral director in Williston Park, N.Y., on a recorded phone call with Project Veritas in a newly-released video. James O’Keefe has been asking for people inside the medical system to blow the whistle if they see corruption or inconsistencies in reports about the Chinese WuFlu known as COVID-19.

Physicians Say Hospitals Are Pressuring ER Docs to List COVID-19 on Death Certificates. Here’s Why Jon Miltimore

https://fee.org/articles/physicians-say-hospitals-are-pressuring-er-docs-to-list-covid-19-on-death-certificates-here-s-why/

The economic incentive to add COVID-19 to diagnostic lists and death certificates is clear and does not require any conspiracy. When Drs. Dan Erickson and Dr. Artin Massihi of Accelerated Urgent Care held a press conference last week, their goal was to galvanize policymakers to reopen the economy.The California-based hospital owners may have uncorked a bigger story. During their long discussion with reporters, Dr. Erickson noted he has spoken to numerous physicians who say they are being pressured to add COVID-19 to death certificates and diagnostic lists—even when the novel coronavirus appears to have no relation to the victim’s cause of death.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Germany Allows Mullahs’ Terror Banks Amid Coronavirus by Majid Rafizadeh

Posted By on May 4th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15971/germany-iran-terror-banks

“Germany was again Europe’s largest trading partner with Iran by far, exporting $1.64 billion worth of goods in 2019. While German banks have been largely reluctant to finance Iran trade, there are at least five banks – all owned/operated by Iran and all operating inside Germany – that are more than happy to step in.” – Daniel Roth, “Germany’s Iran Banks,” United Against Nuclear Iran April 7, 2020

One of the sanctioned banks freely doing business in Hamburg, Germany, is Bank Melli. It is the largest bank owned by the Iranian regime, and when it comes to revenues, it ranks first, followed by bank Mellat.

Another major Iranian bank also still conducting business in Hamburg Germany is Bank Sepah. Bank Sepah, also owned by the Iranian regime, has been sanctioned by the US Treasury Department and has links to the regime’s ballistic missile program. According to United Against Nuclear Iran, “Bank Sepah has provided ‘direct and extensive financial services’ to Iran’s key ballistic missiles procurement and development agencies, including Aerospace Industries Organization (AIO) and its subsidiary, Shahid Hemmat Industrial Group (SHIG).”

By trading with the Iranian regime and allowing Iran’s sanctioned banks freely to operate in Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government is empowering the ruling mullahs and their regime. They are not only the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism; they are also racing to develop clandestine nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them.

While the attention of the international community has been directed towards the battle against the coronavirus pandemic, German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government appears to be allowing Iran’s sanctioned banks to operate freely in Germany.

According to a recent report published by United Against Nuclear Iran:

“Siemens, Volkswagen and the big multinationals have pulled back due to U.S. sanctions, but many of Germany’s 3.5 million small-and-medium enterprises (SMEs) are still prepared to do business with Iran. And they still can. From Hamburg in the north to Munich in the south, the ‘Mittelstand’ firms can obtain Letters of Credit, bank guarantees, insurance and all the other trade finance products they need from their Iranian facilitators. “

MEDIA Comments turned off

Do the Media Even Exist? The media exists in name only but not in fact. By Victor Davis Hanson *****

Posted By on May 4th, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/05/03/do-the-media-even-exist/

If we lived in a fair and just world, most of the current media would simply go away and try something else.

The problem is not that reporters are human and therefore sometimes err. The rub is not even that they are poorly educated or rarely write well.

We also expect officials to leak one-sided stories and then the media to print them without edits. These are all things baked into the media cake and the public understands, even if it does not quite accept them.

The crisis instead is that they are now almost always wrong, and predictably wrong because they are lazy and biased—and they deny it to the point of self-delusion. The result is that, for all practical purposes, journalists no longer exist for the general public as sources of news.

More than half the country now assumes that the New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, the networks, and the cable news outlets are culpable not of merely failing to tell the truth but of being incapable of telling the truth. Even if they wished to, or had the skills to report empirically and dispassionately, they simply cannot, given their investments in the progressive agenda, and its investments in them. In other words, they are owned—creatures of that agenda.

Nowhere has the media nadir been clearer than in the case of ol’ Joe Biden from Scranton.

He may have once bragged on tape that he got a Ukrainian prosecutor fired for daring to investigate corruption that involved his own wastrel son, Hunter. He may have had a history of racially charged condescension, ranging from commentary on his future boss Barack Obama (“I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man”) to the purported predictable habits of Indian immigrants (“You cannot go to a 7-11 or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I’m not joking.”). He may have had a bad habit as a candidate of plagiarizing and spreading fairy stories.

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Online ‘Taliban Imam’ Ramadan Izhar Khan, other radicals featured in stay-home holiday affair. Joe Kaufman

Posted By on May 4th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/05/online-taliban-imam-ramadan-joe-kaufman/

Last month, the South Florida Muslim Federation (SFMF) sponsored an online town hall meeting, titled ‘RAMADAN FROM HOME.’ While the event was being conducted online to keep those involved safe from coronavirus, the groups and individuals participating in it – from the sponsor to the speakers to the moderator – represent terror-related organizations and institutions promoting violence and bigotry and should be regarded as threats to our community and country’s security.

Ramadan is a month-long holiday, whereby Muslims gather together in prayer and reflection. It has also been a time for launching jihad attacks. In South Florida, however, this year’s Ramadan is being celebrated by many at home, due to the coronavirus pandemic. With that in mind, the South Florida Muslim Federation, an umbrella organization for terror-linked Islamist groups and radical mosques, created an online event in honor of the holiday, featuring a number of local imams, to be hosted on Zoom, this past April 19th.

The contact for the event was the Executive Director of SFMF, Nezar Hamze. Prior to his involvement with the Federation, Hamze was a Regional Director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an Islamist organization with foundational and financial ties to Hamas. CAIR was established, in June 1994, as an integral part of a terrorist umbrella group led by then-global head of Hamas, Mousa Abu Marzook, who at the time was located in the US and today is a senior member of Hamas, residing in Cairo, Egypt. The Public Relations Director of the Federation, Wilfredo Amr Ruiz, is currently the CAIR-Florida Communications Director.