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Russian Plans for This Week’s European Union Elections by Con Coughlin

Posted By on May 22nd, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14253/russia-eu-elections

Russian President Vladimir Putin is actively cultivating a network of contacts in EU member states with the aim of building a pro-Russian bloc in the next EU parliament, one that will be active in calling for the sanctions to be lifted.

Concerns about Russian influence have also been raised in France, Italy, Greece, the Netherlands and Germany, while questions remain as to whether Moscow tried to interfere in Britain’s 2016 referendum on leaving the EU.

Elsewhere Moscow has worked hard to forge closer relations with Hungary and Bulgaria, two former Soviet satellites that appear to prefer maintaining good links with Russia over their support for the EU.

As part of his effort to broaden his ties with pro-Russian states, Mr Putin is now focusing on the Czech Republic, where the Kremlin is actively engaged with the country’s pro-Russian president, Miloš Zeman, as well as Andrej Babiš, the controversial prime minister…. Certainly, from Moscow’s perspective, adding the Czech Republic to the burgeoning list of EU states and political parties with pro-Russian sympathies can only strengthen its efforts to undermine the EU’s efforts to maintain a united front against Russia.

No one is working harder to achieve a successful outcome from this week’s European Union elections than Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Even though there is little prospect of Russia ever wanting to join the family of EU nations, that has not stopped Mr Putin from intensifying his efforts to expand his influence over those countries that are members of the European trade bloc.

Consequently, at a time when Moscow is desperate to have the sanctions lifted that have been imposed in response to various Russian acts of provocation, such as last year’s Salisbury poisoning, Mr Putin is investing much time and energy to ensure that a strong pro-Russian lobby is elected to the new EU parliament following Thursday’s Europe-wide ballot.

The EU, together with the US, has been at the forefront of the international campaign to hold Moscow to account for its role in the Salisbury attack in March 2018, when a team of Russian GRU intelligence officers have been accused of attempting to murder former Russian Sergei Skripal with Novichok nerve agent. The attack resulted in the strengthening of the sanctions originally imposed against Moscow in the wake of Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, as well as its interference in eastern Ukraine.

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Turkey: Erdogan Describes Armenian Genocide as ‘Reasonable Relocation’

Posted By on May 22nd, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14211/turkey-erdogan-armenian-genocide

“What Erdogan refers to as ‘relocation’ was actually the genocidal deportation of civilian populations –mainly women, children and the elderly — to the very interior of Asia Minor. These populations were not simply relocated to another place, contrary to what the Turkish state claims. They were sent to concentration and extermination camps or remote places in the interior to be slaughtered or to die from exposure, exhaustion, hunger or epidemics — either on the way to, or at the place of, their destinations.” — Vasileios Meichanetsidis, an Athens-based genocide scholar and editor of the 2012 book, The Genocide of the Ottoman Greeks, in an interview with Gatestone Institute.

At a symposium in Ankara on April 24 — the 104th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan repeated his distortion and denial of the 1915 mass murder of Christians at the hands of Ottoman Turks. “The relocation of the Armenian gangs and their supporters who massacred the Muslim people, including women and children, in eastern Anatolia, was the most reasonable action that could be taken in such a period,” Erdogan said. This quote was then posted on the official “Turkish Presidency” Twitter page.

“Erdogan’s statement was factually flawed, deceptive and insulting,” Vicken Babkenian, an independent researcher for the Australian Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, told Gatestone in a recent interview.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

A Typical High School Tells a Larger Story: Schools Are Now Dominated by the Feminist Agenda By David Solway

Posted By on May 21st, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/a-typical-high-school-tells-a-larger-story-schools-are-now-dominated-by-the-feminist-agenda/

Recently, my wife Janice posted a video in her Fiamengo File series about an Ottawa school, Brookfield High, that had launched a ManUp campaign, complete with posters targeting males as prone to evil and females as innocent victims. “Judging from the displays,” she states, “Brookfield High goes out of its way to make girls feel welcome through positive messaging; boys, in contrast, are set apart to be lectured and shamed about male evil.”

The poster reads When you stand back and watch evil, you’re standing by it, “strongly reinforces the grim mood…The clear implication is that this boy…WILL encounter ‘evil’ at his school—not amidst the slutty girls who tempt him…but amidst the other boys who will supposedly do bad things to girls and condone violence.” The only way to be good, she summarizes, is for boys and men “to deny their own needs and to accept that their sex is uniquely responsible for evil. What a warped message for this school—and many others like it.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Don McGahn’s Immunity Why Congress can’t force the former White House counsel to testify.

Posted By on May 21st, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/don-mcgahns-immunity-11558479763

Democrats are fuming that Don McGahn skipped a Congressional hearing on Tuesday, and they plan to hold the former White House counsel in contempt. But Mr. McGahn has every constitutional right not to appear, and this isn’t a close legal call.

“Our subpoenas are not optional,” declared House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler, speaking to the TV cameras in front of an empty witness table with Mr. McGahn’s name card. The symbolism is more apt than Mr. Nadler recognizes. Congress’s authority to force one of President Trump’s intimate advisers to appear before Congress is also empty.

This isn’t a novel legal doctrine. For nearly 50 years, multiple administrations have held that Congress cannot compel the appearance of a close adviser to the President. That judgment has been backed by numerous legal memos from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, starting in 1971 when future Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist ran the shop. The view was reinforced and invoked by Presidents Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush and Obama.

BOOKS Comments turned off

Zionism an important component of Wouk’s legacy By Moshe Phillips

Posted By on May 21st, 2019

http://www.sdjewishworld.com/2019/05/21/zionism-an-important-component-of-wouks-legacy/

PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania — Herman Wouk, the famed novelist who first became a household name for his 1951 Pulitzer Prize winning The Caine Mutiny died last week nearly 70 years after achieving fame. Besides his long career as a writer he was also a lifelong Zionist.

This fact of Wouk’s love affair with the State of Israel has been completely absent from the many articles celebrating his literary career and marking his passing, less than two weeks before what would have been his 104th birthday.

In this small space we will attempt to rectify that.

Again and again — from his 1959 first non-fiction work This is My God: The Jewish Way of Life through his pair of books about modern Israel The Hope (1993) and The Glory (1994) until his second nonfiction book, published in 2000, The Will to Live On: This is Our Heritage — Wouk focused much of his literary abilities on Israel.

Perhaps no line in any of his books demonstrates his love of Israel more than this one from This is My God: “The first time I saw the lights of the (Israeli) airport in the dusk from the descending plane, I experienced a sense of awe that I do not expect to know again in this life.” Wouk, an Orthodox Jew, synthesized his love of Torah with his love of the reborn Jewish state.

And his view of Zionism is also clearly laid out in This is My God: “Zionism is a single long action of lifesaving, of snatching great masses of people out of the path of sure extinction.”

Forty years later in The Will to Live On Wouk, as he inter-wove Jewish history and shared stories of his personal interaction with David Ben-Gurion, Yitzhak Rabin, and other leading Israeli generals and politicians, showed that his love of Israel was clearly undiminished. “The resurgence of Jewry in the Holy Land is nothing but phenomenal,” he wrote.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Democrats Bear Hug Socialism While Biden Tries to Win As a ‘Centrist’ John Merline

Posted By on May 21st, 2019

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/05/21/democrats-bear-hug-socialism-while-biden-tries-to-win-as-a-centrist/

Joe Biden is trying to capture his party’s nomination by running as a centrist, and early polls seem to suggest that it’s working. But,
in his run for the presidency, he will face one formidable opponent — his own party.

A new Gallup Poll finds that a shockingly high 70% of Democrats say that socialism is “a good thing.” When Gallup asked about socialism just one year ago, 57% said they have a positive view of socialism. And last year’s poll was the first to find majority support for socialism among Democrats, according to Gallup’s Frank Newport.

Half of Democrats now say that government should be “primarily responsible” for the overall economy. Seventy percent say it should be primarily responsible for health care. Nearly two–thirds want higher education to be primarily the responsibility of the government.

In all of these views, Democrats are far outside the mainstream.

Support for socialism collapses outside the Democratic party bubble. Among independents, 45% think it’s a good idea, and for Republicans, it’s 13%. The only age group that embraces socialism is young people (58% of those in the 18-34 age bracket) who are too uneducated or naïve to know what socialism actually means.

When it comes to the government being responsible for the overall economy, health care, and higher education, Democrats are similarly in far left field. Just 35% of independents think government should be primarily responsible for the economy, 47% for health care, and 40% for higher education.

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Information slowly emerging about pipe-wielding mob of Somali ‘youths’ who attacked people waiting for light rail train in Minneapolis last Friday By Thomas Lifson

Posted By on May 21st, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/05/information_slowly_emerging_about_pipewielding_mob_of_somali_youths_who_attacked_people_waiting_for_light_rail_train_in_minneapolis_last_friday.html

My hometown of Minneapolis has been totally transformed by the arrival of tens of thousands of refugees from Somalis, one of whom now represents the city and a few suburbs in Congress. Nobody there was asked if such a makeover was desired by the residents; State Department officials decided that the generous welfare benefits available in Minnesota were reason enough to send people whose native land is tropical to the coldest major city in the United States.

But now that the old 97%-plus Caucasian city has been made into a multicultural exemplar, the local establishment, including the newspapers and broadcasters, is ultra-protective of its prized diversity-endowing Somali community.

That might explain why the news of a horrific attack on people waiting for a light rail train at the University of Minnesota has been so slow to emerge. A mob of “youths” — it now turns out they are juveniles, so their identities are being protected — believed to be of Somali extraction attacked innocent people waiting for a light rail train at the East Bank University of Minnesota station. They were wielding either hammers or pipes.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Mueller Resists Dems’ Request to Testify Publicly about Details Outside His Report By Jack Crowe

Posted By on May 21st, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/robert-mueller-resists-democrats-request-to-testify-publicly/

Special Counsel Robert Mueller is resisting congressional Democrats’ request that he testify publicly about details of his investigation that were not included in his final report, the Washington Post first reported Tuesday.

Mueller and his representatives have reportedly reached an impasse in their negotiations with House Judiciary Committee chairman Jerry Nadler, who would like him to speak publicly about a range of issues, including whether the president could be charged with obstruction of justice absent Department of Justice guidelines that prohibit the indictment of a sitting president.

As they navigate the question of whether the obstructive behavior attributed to Trump in the Mueller report warrants impeachment, a number of top Democrats have repeatedly insisted that lawmakers must hear from Mueller himself before a decision can be made. They have also suggested that they would like to question Mueller about whether he believes Attorney General William Barr’s summary of his report misrepresented its findings.

Barr told the Wall Street Journal that he has no problem with Mueller testifying before Congress, but Democrats have accused the Department of Justice of intentionally delaying negotiations over any such testimony. Trump has said it is Barr’s decision whether Mueller can appear before Congress.

News of the impasse comes hours after former White House counsel Don McGahn failed to appear before the House Judiciary Committee to answer questions about Trump’s alleged efforts to interfere in the Mueller probe.

“Let me be clear: This committee will hear Mr. McGahn’s testimony, even if we have to go to court to secure it,” Nadler said after the hearing.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The New ‘New Socialism’ By Fred Schwarz

Posted By on May 21st, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-new-new-socialism/

When I told a friend who works in academia about NR’s renewed attacks on socialism, he shook his head and said: “You’re tearing down a 30-year-old straw man. All the literature on socialism that matters today is post-1989.” And when I asked what makes this New Socialism new, he replied: “It’s all about the internet and social media and people from different places and backgrounds collaborating to erode and bypass existing power structures.”

Sounds great — but by Leftsplaining in this way, he was only showing how far behind the times he is (and no wonder; due to the tenure system, academia is the slowest to change of any major American institution). Internet socialism is old hat; this year’s New Socialism is an Uncle Sam–as–Santa Claus nostalgia act, seen most prominently in the Democratic presidential candidates’ Loud, Proud, Refusing to Be Cowed, At Least Until the Primaries Are Over program of free college, punitive taxation, and DMV-style health care, along with factory workers advocating seizure of the means of production.

Of course, socialism has always been subject to sudden changes, from Lenin’s New Economic Policy nearly a century ago to glasnost and perestroika and “socialism with Chinese characteristics” to the 1990s “stakeholder society” (and I’m sure Jonah could give us a few dozen more). There are as many varieties of socialism as there are of Doritos, most of them just as crunchy.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

China’s latest trade war card isn’t as strong as Beijing thinks James Griffiths

Posted By on May 21st, 2019

https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/21/politics/china-us-trade-war-rare-earths-intl/index.html

Hong Kong (CNN)Chinese President Xi Jinping’s actions this week have been rich with symbolism.

On Monday, he laid a wreath at a monument dedicated to the Long March, a fabled retreat during the Chinese civil war which helped cement Mao Zedong’s rise to power. Could this be a sign that a similar protracted struggle will be needed in the expanding trade war with the the US?
Perhaps not. But the correct interpretation of another of Xi’s actions was much clearer, spelled out for all by state media.
In Jiangxi province, in southeastern China, Xi visited a company which specializes in rare earth minerals. Such elements are vital to the production of high-tech devices including smartphones, lasers, missile systems, superconductors and a whole host of others.

China accounted for 80% of all rare earth minerals imported by the US between 2014 and 2017, according to the United States Geological Survey, and they were among the few items not hit by US tariffs in Washington’s most recent trade war escalation.
Xi was accompanied in his visit to Jiangxi by Liu He, the vice premier who has led trade negotiations. And while China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has tried to downplay the symbolism of the pair’s visit, analysts and state media were in little doubt what message was being conveyed.
Global Times, a nationalist tabloid, said Xi’s visit had “offered huge support to the critical industry that has been widely viewed as a form of leverage for China in the trade war with the US.”