NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Destroying America’s History One Icon at a Time By Fletch Daniels

Posted By on October 15th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/10/destroying_americas_history_one_icon_at_a_time.html

Americans were furious in 2001 when they saw that the Taliban had destroyed Bamiyan Buddha statues in Afghanistan. Less than two decades later, destroying monuments is becoming a national sport in America with little outcry and support from the media.

Columbus Day brought a refreshing reminder that leftists are effectively erasing America’s heritage as an important step in transforming America into a socialist state. 

As I look, “Happy Indigenous Peoples” day is approaching 100K tweets, which is simply advancing the narrative that was already set in motion by leftists across America. 

A teacher posted some of the proud pictures from her propagandized little ones with sayings like “Christopher Columbus didn’t find America,” and “Christopher Columbus is a really mean man.”  How charming. 

A Christopher Columbus statue was torn down in Los Angeles in 2018 and several others were vandalized this year. 

Americans were furious in 2001 when they saw that the Taliban had destroyed Bamiyan Buddha statues in Afghanistan.  The prevailing cultural zeitgeist at the time ran clearly against toppling statues.  Don’t these third-world barbarians know that they are destroying world culture?  It helped elevate the Taliban’s evil in the eyes of the world. 

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Corrupt Senators Took Ukraine Cash By Daniel John Sobieski

Posted By on October 15th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/10/corrupt_senators_took_ukraine_cash.html

While Democrats are pushing the bogus Trump-Ukraine quid pro quo story invented by that great storyteller, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, two groups of Democratic senators have been colluding with Ukrainian interests to advance their own agenda and political careers.

Kudos to Steve Hilton for pointing out the corruption of the first group on the Oct. 13 edition of his Fox show “The Next Revolution” – a group of Democratic senators took cash from a Ukraine lobbyist to push Ukrainian gas interests at the same time the Democrats are pushing the Trump-Ukraine yarn. As Hilton states in a transcript of his show available on Fox Opinion:

Remember Devon Archer, Hunter Biden’s business partner? He had previously been a top fundraiser for John Kerry, who was Secretary of State at the time. And soon after Devon and Hunter joined the Burisma Board, the company channeled $90,000 to a lobbying firm called ML Strategies, which was headed by none other than David Leiter, John Kerry’s former chief of staff.

That’s handy because then-Secretary of State John Kerry himself has visited Ukraine with promises of U.S. aid and assistance. Well, Leiter registered as a Burisma lobbyist in mid-2014. But in the year leading up to that, he gave close to $60,000 to Democrats, including a select group of U.S. senators who would later be instrumental in pushing cash towards Ukraine’s energy sector, directly in line with Burisma’s interests.

He donated to Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., four times and to Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., three times. A month after the last of those donations, both Markey and Shaheen were among four senators who wrote a letter to President Obama that said, “We should leverage the full resources and expertise of the U.S. government to assist Ukraine in improving its energy efficiency, increasing its domestic production and reforming its energy markets.”

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Give President Trump’s Non-interventionist Turkish/Kurdish Plan a Chance By Mark Ellis

Posted By on October 15th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/trending/give-president-trumps-non-interventionist-turkish-kurdish-plan-a-chance/

It is host Chris Wallace’s job to ask the tough questions on Fox News Sunday.

That’s exactly what he did Sunday, grilling Secretary of Defense Mark Esper on President Trump’s decision to authorize a deliberate withdrawal of U.S. military forces as Turkish forces invade Northern Syria to battle hostile Sunni Muslim Kurds along a shared border.

Wallace’s questioning was framed around Trump’s “abandonment” of the Kurds, which has been roundly characterized as a betrayal of an ally in the fight against ISIS

Early reports coming out of the battle zone are troubling: executions by Turkish-backed militias are allegedly being carried out, and many ISIS fighters have apparently escaped imprisonment. It is a terrible situation. But though the president has stated that his administration will act to destroy the Turkish economy with severe sanctions should President Erdogan persist in or expand this incursion, he has also made clear that he’s not going to send American soldiers to fight and die in another potential Middle East quagmire.

His non-interventionist withdrawal strategy should be given a chance to succeed.

Trump’s authorization of the pullout call did not come out of a foreign policy vacuum; he campaigned on extricating us from epochal conflict in the unceasingly war-torn region. Nonetheless, he will now be inundated with criticism and admonitions from the left and right, insisting we must rescue the Kurds out of fealty to a discredited globalist foreign policy, the costs of which under sane leadership would have been unthinkable.

BOOKS Comments turned off

Inside the media’s relentless crusade to destroy President Trump By Kimberley Strassel

Posted By on October 15th, 2019

https://nypost.com/2019/10/13/inside-the-medias-relentless-crusade-to-destroy-president-trump/

Since Donald Trump’s election in 2016, the mainstream media has shed its once-noble mission — the pursuit of the truth — and instead adopted a new purpose: to take down the president. In an excerpt from her new book, “Resistance at All Costs: How Trump Haters are Breaking America,” out Tuesday, KIMBERLEY STRASSEL examines how far the press will go in its relentless crusade . . .

Last week The Washington Post revealed the alarming news that House Democrats were considering having their anonymous “whistleblower” testify from a remote location, and in disguise. Just as shocking as the details of this plan was the justification the Post ladled on this Democratic effort to hide impeachment information from the public.

It explained, high up in the story, that the cloak-and-dagger approach was merely Democrats expressing “distrust of their GOP colleagues, whom they see as fully invested in defending a president who has attacked the whistleblower’s credibility and demanded absolute loyalty from Republicans.”

This, from a newspaper with a tagline of “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”

Maybe the better journalistic epitaph is: Democracy dies in bias. How did journalism get here?

I’ve never engaged much in media criticism, because it’s almost too obvious. Yes, the mainstream media is liberal and biased. But at least in the past, that bias was largely a function of insularity. Most reporters weren’t even fully aware they were prejudiced politically; everyone they worked and socialized with held the same left-of-center views.

That’s changed in the age of Trump. The press has embraced its bias, joined the Resistance and declared its allegiance to one side of a partisan war. It now openly declares those who offer any fair defense of this administration as Trump “enablers.” It writes off those who question the FBI or Department of Justice actions in 2016 as “conspiracy” theorists. It acts as willing scribes for Democrats and former Obama officials; peddles evidence-free accusations; sources stories from people with clear political axes to grind; and closes its eyes to clear evidence of government abuse.

This media war is extraordinary, overt and increasingly damaging to the country.

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The Bidens Concede Do CNN and NBC still want to defend the family business model? By James Freeman

Posted By on October 15th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-bidens-concede-11571078740

Not even the Biden family seems willing to stand behind their questionable financial arrangements. A business associate in Shanghai doesn’t seem to have an explanation yet, either. Are the bitter-enders at CNN and NBC News finally ready to stop defending the indefensible?

Last week this column noted that former Vice President Joe Biden once again declined to offer a defense of his family’s business model even in an op-ed ostensibly responding to attacks on this model. Over the weekend, his son Hunter Biden quit another of the overseas engagements for which he seemed eminently unqualified.

The Journal’s Ken Thomas and Thomas Grove noted on Sunday:

Hunter Biden is stepping down from a director’s position at a Chinese private-equity firm and said he wouldn’t serve on any foreign boards if his father, Joe Biden, is elected president, lowering his controversial business profile as it becomes embroiled in the 2020 election and Democrats’ efforts to impeach President Trump.
…The former vice president’s son, 49 years old, served on the board of Ukrainian natural-gas company Burisma Holdings Ltd. while his father oversaw U.S. policy on Ukraine as vice president. Hunter Biden stepped down from the Burisma board in April. The younger Biden remained a director of BHR (Shanghai) Equity Investment Fund Management Co., a Chinese investment firm, where Mr. Trump also alleges inappropriate conduct by the Bidens. Hunter Biden said Sunday he would remove himself from the firm’s board on Oct. 31. CONTINUE AT SITE

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Mike Pompeo’s Predicament The Syria withdrawal worried allies, divided the GOP, and made his job a lot harder. By Walter Russell Mead

Posted By on October 15th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/mike-pompeos-predicament-11571093624

Foreign leaders have found much to dislike in President Trump’s policy—the aggressive stance on trade, the chaotic policy process, the disregard for convention and past agreements. Yet they’ve seemed willing to work with the administration anyway. However much it pained them, they appeared to believe that Mr. Trump had a strong enough political coalition behind his foreign-policy program that, on the whole, it was better to deal pragmatically with the administration than to try to wait out his presidency.

That changed last week. The sudden decision to break with the Syrian Kurds, the shambolic execution of the decision, and the administration’s evident inability to manage the easily foreseeable political consequences in the Republican Senate crystallized a perception that the White House is in over its head. Unless that changes, foreign powers will increasingly act on the belief that the American executive is both politically weak and intellectually unfocused. The consequences for political stability and economic prosperity around the world are not good.

Mr. Trump’s trade diplomacy is particularly at risk. China is much less likely to make significant compromises if it thinks the president is a lame duck. As the Europeans shift from dealing with Mr. Trump through gritted teeth to waiting for his administration to end, the European Union will likely stiffen its trade stance as well.

The geopolitical consequences of a weakened Trump administration will also be significant. Revisionist powers large and small are more likely to take risks and challenge American power when they believe the U.S. is distracted and divided. Russia’s attack on Georgia came in the summer of 2008 when George W. Bush was an unpopular lame duck and the building financial crisis was beginning to distract Americans from international news.

Russia, far from seeking any kind of special relationship with Mr. Trump, is likely to revel in his weakness. In the western Balkans, in Syria, and in hot spots like Venezuela, Russia must be expected to move more aggressively.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Syrian Kurds Are Not America’s Problem Brandon J. Weichert

Posted By on October 15th, 2019

https://spectator.org/the-syrian-kurds-are-not-americas-problem/

All of Washington has been atwitter with the president’s recent decision to draw down American forces from their ongoing mission in Syria. The reason is the purported American abandonment — betrayal, in the eyes of many — of the Syrian Kurds. But the situation is more complicated than that. There has been much conflation of both the American mission in Syria and the disposition of America’s erstwhile Kurdish friends.

The fact is, despite being the world’s largest stateless ethnic population, sharing a contiguous landmass that cuts across Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran — roughly a 500,000-square-kilometer area — the Kurds are by no means a monolithic entity. What’s more, the United States government has never officially endorsed the concept of a Kurdish state in the Middle East.

Don’t let those facts stop the experts from trotting out many falsehoods and half-truths about the messy situation that is Syria, though. Obviously, the Kurds who have been fighting alongside Americans throughout the entirety of America’s three-decade-long series of Middle East conflicts should be rewarded for their courage. It is utterly confounding, however, that the same “serious” foreign-policy “thinkers” in Washington and media who continually lambaste President Trump for his supposedly destabilizing actions in the Middle East are also in favor of massively destabilizing the region to midwife the birth of an independent, Kurdish state.

The rejiggering of the Middle East map would require more than the paltry American force currently fighting alongside the Kurds of northern Syria. It not only would require the United States to understand the various tribal and regional dynamics between the numerous Kurdish communities throughout the Mideast but would also mean that any potential Kurdish state would have to be cleaved from Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. This could never be achieved peacefully. It would entail some degree of violence and inevitably invoke ethno-religious tribal backlash against the United States at precisely the moment America does not need that headache.

Further, what critics do not understand is that the Kurds have been rewarded for their loyalty to the United States. They also confuse the Marxist elements of northern Syria’s Kurds with the pro-American Peshmerga of northern Iraq.

Here’s Why Everyone Is Upset About the Kurds

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Andrew Bostom: Actual Conditions For Jews Circa Late 2018 in The Iraqi Kurdistan Paradise: Past As Prologue

Posted By on October 15th, 2019

https://www.andrewbostom.org/2019/10/actual-conditions-for-jews-circa-late-2018-in-the-iraqi-kurdistan-paradise-past-as-prologue/

Largely autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan is a Sharia-based society, per its own Constitution, (Articles 6 & 7): 

This Constitution confirms and respects the Islamic identity of the majority of the people of Iraqi Kurdistan. It considers the principles of Islamic Sharia as one of the main sources of legislation… It is not allowed to enact a law inconsistent with the provisions of the fundamentals of Islam. (Articles 6 & 7)

Not surprisingly, given historical Sharia mores, the attendant legacy of Islamic attitudes towards non-Muslims, overall, including Jews, and Islam’s own intrinsic theological Jew-hatred, here are the current prevailing conditions for the tiny vestigial  remnant population of mixed “Jews” of Kurdistan, forced to “practice” their faith surreptitiously, as reported less than a year ago (11/30/2018):

“They call us ‘Ben Jews’ or ‘Sons of Jews’ because we are mixed Jews, Kurds, or other ethnicities.” They keep their Jewish identity hidden for fear of persecution. They meet for Shabbat – the holy day – at a different home every week. Religious celebrations like Hanukkah and Passover are often celebrated privately inside the home of someone within the community. The event on Friday was organized by many people from the community, but “they didn’t want to give their name or picture because of the dangerous situation”

Past as prologue, here are the past conditions for Jewish communities under Kurdish dominion not only in Iraqi Kurdistan–where Jewish families existed as chattel–but also Turkish Anatolia during the mid-19th through early 20th centuries which led to their liquidation by massacre, pillage, and flight.

MY SAY: Comments turned off

MY SAY: HAPPY COLUMBUS DAY

Posted By on October 14th, 2019

When I was an immigrant youth this is what we sang on Columbus Day:

IN 1492

In fourteen hundred ninety-two
Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

He had three ships and left from Spain;
He sailed through sunshine, wind and rain.

He sailed by night; he sailed by day;
He used the stars to find his way.

A compass also helped him know
How to find the way to go.

Ninety sailors were on board;
Some men worked while others snored.

Then the workers went to sleep;
And others watched the ocean deep.

Day after day they looked for land;
They dreamed of trees and rocks and sand.

October 12 their dream came true,
You never saw a happier crew!

“Indians! Indians!” Columbus cried;
His heart was filled with joyful pride.

But “India” the land was not;
It was the Bahamas, and it was hot.

The Arakawa natives were very nice;
They gave the sailors food and spice.

Columbus sailed on to find some gold
To bring back home, as he’d been told.

He made the trip again and again,
Trading gold to bring to Spain.

The first American? No, not quite.
But Columbus was brave, and he was bright.

P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Let Us Not Engender the Abuse of Meaning Peter Smith

Posted By on October 14th, 2019

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2019/10/let

In his essay Politics and the English Language George Orwell wrote:

A man may take a drink because he feels himself to be failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.

On Fox News the other day Tucker Carlson interviewed Ralph Abraham, a Republican Louisiana gubernatorial candidate who happens to be a medical doctor experienced in delivering baby girls and boys. Both madly agreed that there are only two genders; thus, all unbeknown, falling into a linguistic quagmire. Taking a lead from Orwell, this is me writing to Carlson:

You interviewed a doctor today running for a state governorship. Both you and the doctor referred to gender not to sex. Language is important in moulding culture. There are two sexes, male and female. Using the term gender — a modern affectation transposed from the field of grammar, where it is used in some languages to describe the masculine or feminine forms of nouns and pronouns — muddies the water.

I have seen outlandish claims about there being tens upon tens of different genders. It is self-evidently ridiculous to claim that there are tens upon tens of different sexes. Language has allowed outlandish claims to be made and you and many other conservatives (or more generally, if you like, people of common sense) have fallen into the trap.

Sex is the right word as a noun to cover the two categories of people, according to their reproductive function. Stick to that and you expose the foolishness before it gets to first base.