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VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: THE SILLIEST GENERATION

Posted By on August 22nd, 2017

Every generation, in its modesty, used to think the prior one was far better. Tom Brokaw coined “The Greatest Generation” to remind Americans of what our fathers endured during the Depression and World War II—with the implicit message that we might not have been able to do what they did.https://amgreatness.com/2017/08/21/the-silliest-generation/

For the Roman poet Horace to be a laudator temporis acti (“a praiser of a past age”) was a natural if sometimes tiring inclination. His famous lines at the end of his Ode 3.6 on moral degeneracy run, “Worse than our grandparents’ generation, our parents’ then produced us, even worse, and soon to bear still more sinful children”—and managed in just a few words to fault four generations for continual moral decline.

Yet what is strange about the present age is that our current generation uniquely believes just the opposite. Apparently, we believe that most cadres before us were not up to our standards. Indeed, we are having to clean up their messes of racism, sexism, homophobia, nativism, xenophobia, and Islamophobia, as well as environmental desecration and global warming.

Even their statues must fall as bothersome reminders of their moral depravity. And the way they come down would do either Hitler (who carted off to Germany the French dining car in Compiègne that had been commemorated as the site of the 1918 armistice) or Stalin (who primitively photo-shopped out each year’s new enemies of the people) proud. Usually our generation kills the dead by the mob or a frightened mayor in the dead of night—rarely by a majority vote of elected representatives, referenda, or the recommendations of local, state, and federal commissions and carried out in daytime.

Apparently, proof our generation’s genius is that no one in the past had a clue how to build an iPhone or do a Google search—or even make a good Starbucks Teavana shaken pineapple black tea infusion. Yet given our own present lack of humility and meager accomplishments, we have combined arrogance with ignorance to become the smuggest generation in memory. What good is the high-tech acceleration in delivering information if there is now precious little learning to be accelerated? Google is an impressive pump, but if there is no real water, what is the point of delivering nothing faster?

Ours is an age that passes easy judgment on prior generations by sandblasting away the mention of those deemed unsuitable in the past, often by our present and sometimes laudable standards of morality—but without much concession to the cruel physical landscapes and poverty of the past or our own shortcomings that will be all too clear to subsequent ages. Which prompts more activist outrage by Antifa—a century-old sullen statue of a beaten secessionist Robert E. Lee or the indifference shown to unchecked bloodletting and murder in the streets of Chicago?

When the street protests target Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, or Planned Parenthood, their progressive outrage at the public honoring of yesterday’s racists might gain more credibility. It is an easy moral judgement to condemn unhinged racists in vile Nazi and creepy Confederate garb, but quite another for progressives to demand that America finally stop honoring the now iconic former progressive attorney general of California who sent tens of thousands of Japanese Americans into camps or to march on Princeton to demand an end of deifying a progressive President Wilson whose animated hatred of blacks set back race relations for years.

But then again, we are an opportunistic generation who looks often at the past but rarely as a mirror of ourselves—and if we did, in a variety of areas, we might find ourselves wanting.

Compare how long it took just to rebuild one segment of the San Francisco Bay Bridge, with the work of those 80 years ago who in Depression-era poverty built the entire bridge near simultaneously with its twin, the massive Golden Gate, in far less time (four years compared to seven)?

Despite our much-ballyhooed high-tech achievements, California’s s high-speed rail project will likely take five times as long to build (if it’s ever finished) as did the transcontinental railroad—each foot the work of pickaxes and shovels—across the country a century and a half ago. Driving in California in 1980 was often far safer (and quicker) than in 2017.

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Lone Soldiers Land in Israel to Serve “First Jewish Army in 2,000 Years” by Tzivia Fox

Posted By on August 22nd, 2017

In a strong show of faith and solidarity with Israel, Nefesh B’Nefesh, an organization founded in 2002 to make immigration to Israel easier, is celebrating bringing approximately 2,000 immigrants to the Holy Land in the summer of 2017. Included in this number are 82 future lone soldiers (Israel Defense Force soldiers without family in Israel).

“Moving to a foreign country in the Middle East is not an easy choice in the best of circumstances,” noted Dr. John A.I. Grossman, Chairman of LIBI USA, the official welfare fund of the IDF, to Breaking Israel News. “Taking all that upon oneself in order to volunteer for Israel’s army is truly extraordinary.”

Israel’s consul-general in New York, Dani Dayan, told the new immigrants that they represented a “mortal blows to the delegitimization of Israel”. “They take notice of it in Tehran,” he said. “When Hezbollah threatens Israel, they know that you will defeat it.”

Turning specifically to the group of future IDF soldiers, Dayan added, “You are the commanders of the Jewish people… My young friends, you are about to join the first Jewish army in 2,000 years.”

While enlistment in the IDF is a known and expected rite-of-passage for native-born Israelis, lone soldiers can face tremendous cultural and emotional obstacles. Though each lone soldier on the Nefesh B’Nefesh flight displayed a brave and excited face, LIBI USA recognizes that the road ahead for them can be lonely and challenging.

“These immigrant soldiers rarely have a full command of the Hebrew language and often have no family or friends to turn to during the holidays and time off,” continued Grossman. “Therefore, LIBI USA funds IDF educational and cultural programs as well as special holiday gifts and activities specifically for lone soldiers.”

Natan Sharansky, the chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, shared at the flights welcome ceremony, “There are anti-Semites on the right and anti-Semites on the left. Our best answer is what you’re doing. We continue to build together our home, the State of Israel.”

Hannah Partney, a 22 year-old from Connecticut, said that she was eager to join an IDF combat unit, even though she lacks close family or roots in Israel. “I’ve always been interested in military service,” she said. “I thought about the US military but ultimately didn’t go that way. I’m interested in the discipline and the challenges. I don’t want to live in Israel on a free ticket. I want to do a service. That’s really important to me.”

Joshua Eisdorfer, a 22-year-old from Rockville, Maryland, referred to the Bible, stating, “Israel is my home and birthright, and the homeland of every Jew. In Bamidbar (the Book of Numbers), Moses says, ‘Shall your brothers go to war, and you sit here?’ Israel is the defense of world Jewry, and I want to be in the vanguard.”

“The August 15 flight is particularly noteworthy as a quarter of those on board have volunteered to serve in the IDF,” continued Grossman. “That’s a humbling reality which should send a message to all of us. Each individual who cares about Israel should do their part to support the Holy Land and its dedicated soldiers.”

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“America First: 1940-2016” by Diana West

Posted By on August 22nd, 2017

Presentation as prepared for delivery on July 13, 2016, at the Institute for the Study of Strategy and Politics symposium on “American Strategy: The Way Forward,” available at strategyandpolitics.org

I am speaking today about the life and times of “America First” as a political idea.

Three quarters of a century ago, it was seen by hundreds of thousands of Americans as a means of mustering popular support through a vigorous public debate to resist powerful forces, seen but mostly unseen – for example, British and Communist propaganda and influence operations – seeking to drive, pull and trick the United States into the second world war.

Reading about the 1940 formation of the America First Committee, one is impressed by the wide cross section of notables drawn into this cause of strong defense but anti-intervention;

from the original contingent of students at Yale, including future Yale president Kingman Brewster, future president Gerald Ford and future Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, to New Dealers and anti-New Dealers, to socialist party leader Norman Thomas.

There were many other political figures, from Sen. Burton K. Wheeler, Democrat, to Sen. Gerald P. Nye, Republican, many leading business men, from Hormel meat to Morton salt to railroad and steel tycoons, William J. Grace, head of one of Chicago’s largest investment firms, newspaper publishers Col. Robert J. McCormick (Chicago Tribune), Joseph Patterson (New York Daily News), also William Regnery, whose son Henry would later found Regnery Books.

We see a lot of military brass – the chairman of America First was General Robert E. Wood, sergeant quartermaster in World War I and innovative head of Sears Roebuck, a West Point grad and actually an early New Dealer; at least one movie star, Lillian Gish; heroes such as Eddie Rickenbacker and Charles Lindbergh; Robert Maynard Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago, and novelists, journalists and celebrities of the day, including architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

Outside the group itself, but within the same anti-intervention cause, were such leading Republicans as former President and world class humanitarian Herbert Hoover and “Mr. Republican,” Sen. Robert Taft.

A lot of star power, a lot of people power, too.

When we look at “America First” today, we see the idea as manifested in the highly unusual political instincts of one national figure – a one-man political movement, to be sure – but still, one individual, Donald Trump, who has revived the slogan as a battle cry against the global system and obligations the United States entered into really ever since the America First Committee disbanded after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

For the America First idea then, a steep downward trajectory even to this point of unexpected revival.

This suggests that the notion of putting America first — giving priority to American interests over rest the world’s; even recognizing that America has separate interests from the rest of the world — has become antiquated, and, to many, nothing less than anathema, certainly among political professionals, journalists, and academics.

Then again, there are those many millions of Americans who have already cast a vote for America First, having made Donald Trump the presumptive GOP nominee.

If we stop and think – – – Is it not the most natural thing in the world for a politician to put his country first?

I would say yes, but not so much in our world.

How did such a world come to be?

This latest chapter in the annals of America First probably began as a set up, when a New York Times reporter asked Donald Trump if it was correct to say that what Trump was describing was – “if not isolationist, then at least something of `America First’?…

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Getting Settled: EvelynGordon’s Review of ‘City on a Hilltop’ By Sara Yael Hirschhorn

Posted By on August 22nd, 2017

Sara Yael Hirschhorn’s City on a Hilltop starts with two eminently reasonable premises. First: If you want to understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, you must understand Israeli settlers, since they’re one of the players. Second: If you want to understand the settlers, you must move beyond the popular caricature of them as ultra-nationalist, ultra-religious fanatics, since most are neither.https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/getting-settled/

Hirschhorn’s book is an attempt to do exactly that, which is all the more admirable given her own political views: She characterizes any Jewish presence beyond the 1949 armistice lines—including the large Jewish neighborhoods of east Jerusalem, whose tens of thousands of residents she also labels “settlers” (in a footnote)—as an illegitimate colonialist occupation. Yet despite the obvious sincerity of her effort, her inability to rise above her own biases ends up undermining the final product.

Hirschhorn explores the settlement movement by focusing on one particular subset of it: American immigrants from what she terms “the 1967 generation.” This has the obvious advantage of making her subjects more recognizable to non-Israeli readers.

As she notes, these immigrants grew up in the same towns, attended the same colleges, followed the same career paths, marched for the same liberal causes, and even voted for the same party as their peers who remained in America; even today, when Republicans have replaced Democrats as the more pro-Israel party and are far more supportive of the settlements, only one of her interviewees self-identified as Republican. And while popular perception dictates that most settlers, and especially most American settlers, are Orthodox, most of the settlers in Hirschhorn’s focus group were non-Orthodox.

The only major difference between the two groups is that most of the settlers whom Hirschhorn looked at came from “strongly Jewish” backgrounds that were “highly atypical of Jewish-American households at the time.”

The downside of this narrow focus is that it makes American immigrants seem far more important to the settlement movement than they actually are. For instance, over half the book is devoted to in-depth descriptions of how American Jews co-founded three settlements. That may sound impressive, until you realize there are currently more than 120 settlements, the vast majority of which were founded by Israelis with no American help. Indeed, as the book itself makes clear, even those three settlements would probably never have arisen had the Americans not had Israeli partners, since the Israelis were the ones who knew how to work the government bureaucracy.

The same goes for Hirschhorn’s estimate that Americans make up 15 percent of the total settler population (about 60,000 out of 400,000), which she repeatedly cites as proof of their importance. The accuracy of that estimate is open to question; she admits that no “accurate and objective headcount” exists and that she herself is “neither a professional statistician nor a demographer.” But even if she’s right, that still means there are 340,000 non-American settlers. In other words, the settlement movement would be flourishing even if it didn’t include a single American.

Hirschhorn also hypes the role that Americans have played in vigilante terror, despite correctly acknowledging that most American settlers—and most settlers in general—shun such vigilantism. For instance, she spends seven pages on one American involved in the Jewish Underground (1980–87) without ever explicitly saying that the other 26 suspects were Israelis.

But the book’s far more serious problem is that readers emerge from it with no clear understanding of what drives the settlement movement. This isn’t surprising, since Hirschhorn admits in her conclusion that she herself has no such understanding: “After discussions with dozens of Jewish-American immigrants in the occupied territories, I still struggled to understand how they saw themselves and their role within the Israeli settlement enterprise.”

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New ISIS Threat to Spain: ‘War Has Not Been Fought and Gone’ By Bridget Johnson

Posted By on August 22nd, 2017

A pro-ISIS media outlet that had threatened the “disbelievers” of Spain before last week’s attack issued a fresh warning over the weekend that jihad there “has not been fought and gone” and cells remain in Barcelona and beyond.

Fifteen people were killed and at least 130 injured Thursday when terrorists belonging to a local cell plowed a rented van through crowds on Las Ramblas, a long pedestrian mall in Barcelona. Jared Tucker, 43, of Walnut Creek, Calif., who was on his honeymoon, was one of those killed. The deceased and wounded came from 34 different countries.

The suspected driver of the van, Younes Abouyaaqoub, was shot by police today near a gas station 25 miles west of Barcelona. He was reportedly wearing a fake explosive vest. The cell of 12 men was reportedly in the attack-planning stages for six months and had amassed gas cans to use in vehicle attacks.

The new message, addressed “from the Islamic Republic of Spain to the Government of Spain” and issued by the pro-ISIS Wafa Media Foundation, warns that Spain is still considered a target because of “military operations in the Kingdom of Bahrain and in neighboring Iraq and Somalia.”

“Do not you know, O worshipers of the Cross, that the war has not been fought and gone, and that they live today in Barcelona,” the message added in reference to jihadists.

The message references Gibraltar and Andalusia, which was once under Moor rule and bears many landmarks from its Islamic era, to Catalonia. “This is one of our priorities. Today, we create our own community.”

The Wafa’ message was the second in a series, with the first part issued last year. The group ominously noted that they don’t plan on issuing a part three.

“Black days during our attack on your big cities like Madrid, Paris, London, and Brussels,” Wafa’ warned in the first part dated March 28, 2016, adding that they will kill “innocent Spanish” as they’re occupying Muslim lands.

In May 2016, Wafa’ warned in a message to the citizens of Spain and all Spanish-speaking countries that lone jihadists existing in those areas would kill the “disbelievers” as “previously planned.” In August 2016, the media foundation said that jihadists had to step up their game to make attacks in Spain worse than terrorist operations in France. Wafa’ pressed jihadists to kidnap or kill Spanish nationals.

The Wafa’ Media Foundation issued a June message encouraging arson jihad — which was detailed in the January issue of ISIS’ Rumiyah magazine — after the Grenfell Tower fire, which authorities believe was an accidental electrical fire, killed dozens on June 14 in London. The group also issued a justification of the May 22 bombing outside a concert in Manchester, UK, and promoted terrorist Omar Mateen after the June 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Fla.

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In Britain, They’re Still Ignoring the Islamic Roots of ‘Grooming’ Gangs By Bruce Bawer

Posted By on August 22nd, 2017

A few years ago, when the news reached the public that Muslim “sex grooming gangs,” for over two decades, had been systematically engaged in the mass rape of non-Muslim girls in the English city of Rotherham – and that local police and other government authorities had known about these atrocities for a long time but had said and done nothing for fear of being considered bigots – one thing seemed all but certain: this couldn’t just be going on in Rotherham.

It wasn’t. On August 10, the Express published a handy list of British cities that, since the Rotherham case exploded, have also been found to be targeted by similar sex-abuse rings. In 2012, nine men were convicted of having run such a gang in Rochdale, outside Manchester. In 2013, a group of Pakistanis and north Africans went to jail for the same crime in Oxford. In 2014, it was Somalis in Bristol.

Other places that are so far known to have been affected included Aylesbury, Peterborough, and Keighley – a motley grab-bag of municipalities, big and small, scattered across England from north to south. A piece in the Daily Mail the other day mentioned that grooming gangs have been uncovered in at least sixteen British towns and cities so far.

And there’s no reason to think that it ends there. Why Keighley and Aylesbury and not London and Liverpool, Bristol and Bradford? Chances are very strong that there’s still plenty of this sort of abuse going on, and armies of cowardly officials still looking the other way.

This month the spotlight was on Newcastle. A probe called Operation Sanctuary, launched in 2014, has led to the arrest of a mind-boggling 461 suspects, who are believed to have raped at least 278 victims. Among the 111 perpetrators convicted so far are men with names like Mohammed Azram, Jahanghir Zaman, Nashir Uddin, Saiful Islam, and Mohammed Hassan Ali.

The journalist usually credited with exposing the Rotherham rape factory (as well as the official cover-up) is Andrew Norfolk, who wrote about it in the Times in 2011 and 2012. But this past May Julie Bindel, the far-left feminist who has repeatedly taken on the Islamic oppression of women, recalled in the Independent that years before Norfolk came along, she had accumulated a great deal of material on the topic – but until 2007 was unable to get anything into print because “editors feared an accusation of racism.”

(Not to take anything away from Bindel, but one wonders: how many editors did she try? Was there really no publication in the English-speaking world that was willing to run a piece by her about grooming gangs? In any case, why couldn’t she have just posted her findings online?)

Also, as even Bindel admits, the British National Party had been trying to draw public attention to the rape gangs for years – but their charges had been dismissed by “respectable” media and politicians as the ravings of bigots.

The same left-wing British media that refused to expose the grooming epidemic in the first place are at last, grudgingly, reporting on it – but now they’d have you believe that Islam (surprise!) has nothing to do with it. CONTINUE AT SITE

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New York Times Blames the Jews for Donald Trump Ira Stoll –

Posted By on August 22nd, 2017

The New York Times is blaming the Jews for Donald Trump.https://www.algemeiner.com/2017/08/21/new-york-times-blames-the-jews-for-donald-trump/

That’s what I took away from two pieces in the newspaper over the weekend.

The first was a news article from Jerusalem, headlined, “As Trump Offers Neo-Nazis Muted Criticism, Netanyahu Is Largely Silent.”

The article faulted the Israeli prime minister for failing to condemn President Trump in a manner that the Times judged to be sufficiently speedy and specific.

This is strange on two fronts. First, it’s a double standard. When Netanyahu publicly faulted former President Barack Obama for the Iran nuclear deal, the Times complained he was meddling in US politics and making an enemy out of an American president. Now that Netanyahu is doing his best to avoid a public fight with an American president, he gets criticized for that, too.

Second, the Charlottesville marchers weren’t just antisemites, they were also, at least reportedly, racists. It was a Confederate statue that triggered the whole thing, not any Jewish symbol. But the only country whose leader got put on the spot in a full-length Times news article, at least so far as I can tell, was Israel. There was no full-length Times news article I saw about any majority black African or Caribbean countries or majority Asian countries (other than Israel) and their prime ministers’ or presidents’ reactions or non-reactions to Trump’s response to the Charlottesville events. Maybe there were some such Times articles that I missed. But I usually read the paper pretty carefully, and I sure did not spot any.

In the same Saturday issue of the Times came a column by Bret Stephens headlined “President Jabberwock and the Jewish Right,” critical of “right-of-center Jews who voted for Donald Trump in the election.” This is such a small group in proportion to Trump’s overall support that it’s hard to see why it merits an entire column. Not a single one of these “right-of-center Jews who voted for Donald Trump in the election” is actually named in the column, which claims that such Jews are now subject to “moral embarrassment.”

The column says Jews should have known not to vote for Trump because of “the denunciations of ‘globalism’ and ‘international banks’ and the ‘enemy of the American people’ news media.” Yet on July 3, 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt sent a message denouncing “the old fetishes of so-called international bankers.” Plenty of Jews nonetheless voted for FDR without any moral embarrassment. Likewise, Bernie Sanders attacks the press, including CNN and the New York Times, just about as vociferously and directly as Trump does. Plenty of Jews voted for Sanders, too, and Sanders’ attacks on the press haven’t been widely interpreted as antisemitic.

In my own view, the danger of antisemitism right now is less in the Oval Office and more in the Times comment section and editorial moderation. It was just days ago that the Times was assuring us that its decision to award a gold ribbon and “NYT Pick” stamp of approval to a reader comment describing Netanyahu as a “parasitic thug” was an inadvertent mistake. Yet in the comments on the Stephens column, the Times again awards a gold ribbon and “NYT Pick” label to a comment that reads in part, “It also remains to be seen whether American Zionists have learned to stop prioritizing ‘good for Israel’ over ‘good for America.’” That comment, which earned “thumbs up” upvotes from at least 410 Times readers, could have easily fit into the Times news article about the Charlottesville racists and antisemites “in their own words.” (It was also consistent with the Stephens column itself, which explicitly mentioned Israel as part of “the gist of the Jewish conservative’s case for Trump,” but omitted taxes, deregulation, or the Supreme Court.)

There was an extended d

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Jihad Does Not Stop in Spain By Rachel Ehrenfeld

Posted By on August 22nd, 2017

As Spanish law enforcement was searching for the Moroccan terrorist who disappeared after ramming a van into pedestrians at Las Ramblas, the progressive pro-Muslim media lost no time in protesting the police checking of “Moroccan-looking drivers,” and warning against “Islamophobia.” The driver, a radicalized Muslim who was identified because of his looks, was shot dead by policemen in a vineyard west of Barcelona. But the efforts to stop identifying others like him and the Islamic ideology that motivates them are not going to die down anytime soon

After the Islamists attacked pedestrians strolling along Barcelona’s Las Ramblas and the nearby town of Cambrils, and blew up a house in the village of Alcanar, killing 14 and wounding more than 100 others, and after ISIS claimed responsibility for and celebrated the deadly attacks, Catalonia’s regional government’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Raül Romeva, insisted his region is known for its tolerance and “coexistence.”

This was not the message that Abdelbaki Es Satty, the Moroccan Salafist Imam, preached until last June at the mosque in Ripoll, which was attended by eight of the nine ISIS sympathizers who terrorized Catalonia last week. The Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Watch reported that the president of the mosque, Ali Yassine, is a member of the Federation for the Comunidad Islamica Annour De Ripoll, which RAND’s 2007 report identified as “a federation with close ties to the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood.” While the region saw more jihadists arrested last year than any other region in Spain, only one of the attackers had a criminal background and therefore was known to the police. The imam disappeared, and one of the nine attackers vanished. But how many ISIS sympathizers and potential jihadists are among those who frequented the Ripoll mosque, and thousands who flock to more than 100 similar Salafi mosques in Spain are under the radar of the Spanish and international security agencies?

Islamic terrorism is not new to Spain. In March 2004, an al Qaeda group bombed four commuter trains, killing some 200 people and wounded more than 1,400 in rush-hour Madrid. In April 2005, a cell of forty-one al-Qaeda operatives in Spain that assisted the 9/11 attacks on the U.S., was tried in Madrid. In January 2008, fourteen Pakistani Taliban terrorist were stopped just before they blew themselves up in Barcelona’s subway. Many other Salafi jihadists who planned terror attacks or funded terrorism were arrested in Spain over the years.

None of that, however, alerted the Spanish to take seriously the Islamists calls to “reconquer al-Andalus” — a uniting theme for all jihadist groups, even those that often fight each other. Instead, Spain, in which according to a 2016 survey by the Spanish Centre for Sociological Research, 68% of the population is Catholic, has been practicing willful blindness based on “political correctness” towards the radicalization of its Muslim population. Especially when the jihadists used pro-Palestinian anti-Israel propaganda, which in Spain, like other European nations is widely supported,

Spain has a long history of anti-Semitism. Jews were expelled from Spain on July 30, 1492, but anti-Semitism remained rampant although Jews were allowed to return more than four centuries later. The Jewish presence remained low even after the descendants of Sephardic Jews who were expelled from Spain have in 2014 been offered Spanish citizenship. Only 45,000 Jews live there today. Muslims, who were also driven out or forced to convert in 1492, were allowed to live in Spain in the late 18th century and today the two million Muslims account for 4% of Spain’s population, which is rapidly growing with illegals who flood the beautiful Spanish shores.

Spain and Catalonia in have been loudly supporting the Palestinian agenda. Catalonia became one of Europe’s major Salafist jihad hubs, with Hundreds of Saudi-educated and funded imams preaching the radical Salafi/Wahhabi version of Islam together with the Muslim Brotherhood’s version of “Political Islam” (an oxymoron, since Islam is a political movement posturing as a religion). The Muslim’s growing influence in the region was demonstrated in January 2009, when the provincial government of Catalonia canceled a ceremony marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day. A Barcelona newspaper quoted a Catalan official saying, “Marking the Jewish Holocaust while a Palestinian Holocaust is taking place is not right,“ alluding to Israel’s Operation Cast Lead (December 27, 2008 – January 18, 2009) that was launched to stop the constant rockets and mortar attacks from the Gaza Strip on its civilian population. This official, like other European political parrots, repeated the propaganda that is widely spread by Hamas, Iran and the Palestinian Authority, who while calling to take over al Aqsa, also swear to “reconquer al-Andalus” and Rome.

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Russia’s New Ambassador to U.S. Seen as Hard-Liner Appointment of Anatoly Antonov, who served in defense ministry, seen as signal of more confrontational approach By Thomas Grove and James Marson

Posted By on August 22nd, 2017

MOSCOW—Russian President Vladimir Putin appointed a hard-line diplomat known for his gruff style as Moscow’s new ambassador to the U.S., signaling a more confrontational approach to Washington.

Monday’s appointment of Anatoly Antonov, who served for nearly five years in the Defense Ministry, will bring a harsher line at a time when ties between the two countries are at their lowest point since the fall of the Soviet Union.

“His positions are defined by his experience with the Ministry of Defense,” said Andrey Kortunov, the head of the Russian International Affairs Council, which has ties to the Foreign Ministry. “Antonov has always been defending the Russian trenches.”

The diplomat will have to navigate what some analysts say may become a downward spiral in U.S.-Russian relations of sanctions and counter-sanctions. On Monday, the U.S. Embassy in Moscow said it would sharply cut back visa services in Russia after the Kremlin in July forced the U.S. to cuts hundreds of diplomats and staff.

Mr. Antonov will be taking his post in the midst of a growing investigation into ties between members of U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign team and Russian officials, including former Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

Analysts say Mr. Antonov was selected last year, when Moscow believed Hillary Clinton, who Russian leaders believed would take a harder tack toward the country, would win the presidential race. But they say given the increasing tensions between Moscow and Russia, Mr. Antonov will serve the Kremlin’s interests.

Mr. Kortunov said Mr. Antonov’s arrival likely signals the start of a new approach from Moscow toward Washington, one that will likely see a more adversarial stance and lower chances of cooperation.

“We must understand that any cooperation will be situational and be transactional and that otherwise the U.S. will be hostile to Russia,” he said. CONTINUE AT SITE

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(Still) Seeking IRS Accountability Judge Walton orders the IRS to give straight answers for a change.

Posted By on August 22nd, 2017

The Obama Justice Department dismissed the IRS political targeting scandal as no big deal, and the Trump Administration hasn’t been any better. At least the judiciary is still trying to hold someone to account for this government abuse.

In a little noticed decision last week, federal Judge Reggie Walton ordered the IRS to answer a series of questions by Oct. 16. Notably, the tax agency must finally explain the specific reasons for the specific delays in approving each of dozens of conservative nonprofit applications—delays that stifled free speech during a midterm and presidential election. Judge Walton is also requiring the IRS to name the specific individuals that it holds responsible for the targeting.

These are basic questions of political accountability, even if the IRS has stonewalled since 2013. President Obama continued to spin that the targeting was the result of some “boneheaded” IRS line officers in Cincinnati who didn’t understand tax law. Yet Congressional investigations have uncovered clear evidence that the targeting was ordered and directed out of Washington.

Former director of Exempt Organizations Lois Lerner was at the center of that Washington effort, but the IRS allowed her to retire with benefits. She invoked the Fifth Amendment before Congress. One of her principal deputies, Holly Paz, has submitted to a deposition in separate litigation, but the judge has sealed her testimony after she claimed she faced threats. The Acting Commissioner of the IRS at the time, Stephen Miller, stepped down in the wake of the scandal, but as far as anyone outside the IRS knows, no other IRS employee has been held to account. Even if the culprits were “rogue employees,” as the IRS claims, the public deserves to know what happened.

Judge Walton’s ruling means that “the IRS must finally acknowledge its wrongdoing (and the reasons for it) in the context of a judicial proceeding in which the agency may be held legally accountable for its misconduct,” Carly Gammill told Powerlineblog.com. Ms. Gammill is an attorney at the American Center for Law & Justice who represents tea-party groups in the litigation.