NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

Comey’s Corrupt and Shameful Conduct Revealed By Jonathan F. Keiler

Posted By on August 29th, 2016

James Comey’s rationale for not referring Hillary Clinton’s email crimes to the Justice Department rested almost entirely on a single, quite thin, legal and ethical plank, which was that she did not act intentionally when she sent and received classified emails over her home-brew server. Though his argument for deferring prosecution was mostly specious, it did contain at least a shred of credibility in that as Comey described the situation to the American public and Congress, Hillary had no motive to intentionally put American national security at risk. However, the recent evidentiary revelation (many would say confirmation) that Hillary established the server with the deliberate intent of shielding her illicit influence-peddling for her family “Foundation” while secretary of state shows that the issue of her motivation could not be seen by any “reasonable” prosecutor as exculpatory. Comey’s refusal to recommend prosecution, while knowing these facts at the time, proves he was not reasonable, and also that he is incompetent and culpable for not doing so.

At Comey’s July 5 briefing to the nation, he attempted to justify his actions. His first claim in this regard was that the FBI, having uncovered through laborious effort many work-related emails that Clinton did not turn over to State, “found no evidence that any of the work related emails were deleted in an effort to conceal them.” Then Comey noted that Hillary’s attorneys were deliberately overbroad in determining which emails were work-related and “relied on header information” and “search terms” rather than reading them, and that when they finished, the lawyers “cleaned their devices in such a way as to preclude complete forensic recovery.” Despite this, Comey then said he had “reasonable confidence there was no intentional misconduct in connection with that sorting effort.” Then, before launching into a description of all the ways Hillary and her minions were “extremely careless,” Comey said, “[W]e did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate the laws governing the handling of classified information[.]”

Comey concluded his statement with several more references to intent, and the lack thereof. He famously said:

Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. Prosecutors necessarily weigh a number of factors before bringing charges. There are obvious considerations like the strength of the evidence, especially regarding intent.

Less famously but just as importantly:

[W]e cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts. All the cases prosecuted involved some combination of: clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information; or vast quantities of materials exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct; or indications of disloyalty to the United States; or efforts to obstruct justice. We do not see those things here.

The first of these to statements is a specious rationalization. The second is a bald-faced lie in support of that rationalization.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Peter Smith The Road to Earthly Perdition

Posted By on August 29th, 2016

“One of the principal building blocks of our civilisation is the primacy of reason — to think, to understand and form logical judgments on the basis of experience, evidence and facts. Twist experience, evidence and facts to suit a political narrative and reason fails, sophism prevails. We now have many such sophistries plaguing and undermining our values and culture.”

The ‘stolen generations’ myth is a small clue to puzzle, but a vital piece it is. The Left’s game is to erode the foundations of our civilisation until it crumbles, which explains why false and destructive narratives emerge. The bigger question is why we allow them to attain such purchase?

In the minds of most people the story of ‘the stolen generations’ evokes images of large numbers of part-Aboriginal children being systematically and unjustifiably taken from their families and put in institutions or fostered out. At the same time, in a separate and distinct compartment of their minds, these same people will agree that at some extreme point of parental neglect, or abandonment, children, whatever their ethnicity, have to be removed for their safety and wellbeing.

South Australian Bishop Chris McLeod was a visiting preacher at my Anglican church a short time ago. In his sermon he explained that his mother had been part of ‘the stolen generations’. She had been taken from her family and cared for in an Anglican orphanage and, subsequently, in an Anglican household. He did not elaborate further.

I don’t want to comment on the Bishop’s position. I knew nothing about him until hearing his Sunday sermon and know very little now. I know nothing about the feelings of his mother.

What I want to comment on is the likely reception of the Bishop’s remarks by the congregation. I might be wrong but I doubt anybody besides me would have read Keith Windschuttle’s Fabrication of Aboriginal History (Volume III). To a man and woman they would have slotted the Bishop’s remarks into what they ‘know’ to be a cruel and racist part of Australia’s past; ditto for almost any group of Australians.

All Australians are aware of Kevin Rudd’s apology. Why apologise for something that didn’t happen? The story of ‘the stolen generations’ has become an historical fact or, more correctly, a factoid.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran Accuses Man Involved in Nuclear Deal Negotiations of Spying Iran doesn’t name the accused or the country he was said to be of working with By Aresu Eqbali and Asa Fitch

Posted By on August 29th, 2016

Iran said Sunday that it had arrested a person involved in the negotiations of its nuclear deal with six world powers last year and accused him of spying.

An Iranian judiciary spokesman, Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejehi, said the accused was detained and released on bail after a few days, but didn’t identify him by name.

The spokesman also didn’t say when the arrest occurred, which country the person was accused of spying for or what sensitive information he may have disclosed.

“If this charge…is proved or not is another matter, because there is a difference between pursuing someone on a warrant and the charge being proved,” Mr. Ejehi said, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency.

While details were scarce, the arrest is an unexpected turn of events in the wake of a nuclear deal that was hailed by its proponents as a springboard for friendlier relations between Iran and the world.

Under the deal last July, Iran agreed to scale back its disputed nuclear program in exchange for relief from international sanctions that crippled its economy. The deal formally took effect in January.

Reports by hard-line Iranian news outlets said last week that Abdolrasoul Dori-Esfahani, a financial expert who played a role in the nuclear talks, had been detained on suspicion of espionage. Tehran’s top prosecutor also said this month that an Iranian dual-national had been arrested and accused of having contacts with British intelligence. CONTINUE AT SITE

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Coming Out of the Basement During the author’s girlhood, ‘the Jews were as long ago as the Egyptians and as exotic as Indians.’ Then, at 19, she learned she was one. By Joshua Rubenstein

Posted By on August 29th, 2016

The 20th century’s darkest moments have inspired more than a few illuminating memoirs, and Agata Tuszyńska’s “Family History of Fear” belongs in their number. It is one of a cluster of remembrances that, drawing on family history, look back on genocide and war and record their aftereffects. Such narratives can be personal and yet also encompass the fate of whole nations trying to reconstitute themselves after so much ordeal.

Ms. Tuszyńska, a poet and writer from Warsaw, begins by giving us the origins of her own story before broadening her gaze to include earlier generations. She was born in 1957 to a Jewish mother and Polish father. Her mother, with her dark eyes and dark hair, was “happy to have brought a little blue-eyed blond into the world”: She had not wanted to weigh her daughter down “with a burden heavier than I could bear,” Ms. Tuszyńska writes. “She didn’t want her child to have to grow up with a feeling of injustice and fear.”

Ms. Tuszyńska’s mother, Halina, had every reason to want her daughter to avoid the burden of history. As a child, Halina had survived the war when her own mother—Agata’s grandmother—had walked with Halina through a courthouse on the edge of the Warsaw ghetto that opened onto the “Aryan” side of the city. She discreetly removed her armband—the telltale sign that they were Jews—and began an odyssey of survival, seeking hidden shelters and staying clear of the German occupiers. “Mother wanted to erase the past. To be as far as possible from the basements where she had to hide.”
ENLARGE
Photo: wsj
Family History of Fear

By Agata Tuszynska
Knopf, 381 pages, $27.95

For much of Ms. Tuszyńska’s own girlhood, she tells us, she felt that “the Jews were as long ago as the Egyptians and as exotic as Indians.” Then, when she was 19, she learned that her mother was Jewish—and that she herself was a Jew. Ms. Tuszyńska was determined to “reverse the course of forgetting” and explore the shrouded history of her family.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Look Who’s Getting That Bank Settlement Cash Tens of millions of dollars disguised as ‘consumer relief’ are going to liberal political groups By Andy Koenig

Posted By on August 29th, 2016

Imagine if the president of the United States forced America’s biggest banks to funnel hundreds of millions—and potentially billions—of dollars to the corporations and lobbyists who supported his agenda, all while calling it “Main Street Relief.” The public outcry would rightly be deafening. Yet the Obama administration has used a similar strategy to enrich its political allies, advance leftist pet projects, and protect its legacy—and hardly anyone has noticed.

The administration’s multiyear campaign against the banking industry has quietly steered money to organizations and politicians who are working to ensure liberal policy and political victories at every level of government. The conduit for this funding is the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group, a coalition of federal and state regulators and prosecutors created in 2012 to “identify, investigate, and prosecute instances of wrongdoing” in the residential mortgage-backed securities market. In conjunction with the Justice Department, the RMBS Working Group has reached multibillion-dollar settlements with essentially every major bank in America.

The most recent came in April when the Justice Department announced a $5.1 billion settlement with Goldman Sachs. In February Morgan Stanley agreed to a $3.2 billion settlement. Previous targets were Citigroup ($7 billion), J.P. Morgan Chase ($13 billion), and Bank of America, which in 2014 reached the largest civil settlement in American history at $16.65 billion. Smaller deals with other banks have also been announced.

Combined, the banks must divert well over $11 billion into “consumer relief,” which is supposed to benefit homeowners harmed during the Great Recession. Yet it is unknown how much, if any, of the banks’ settlement money will find its way to individual homeowners. Instead, a substantial portion is allocated to private, nonprofit organizations drawn from a federally approved list. Some groups on the list—Catholic Charities, for instance—are relatively nonpolitical. Others—La Raza, the National Urban League, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition and more—are anything but. CONTINUE AT SITE

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Keeping Turkey in the U.S. Orbit Leaders from Kiev to Jerusalem to Tokyo are familiar with Ankara’s discontent with Obama.

Posted By on August 29th, 2016

Turkey is living through a 24/7 state of emergency. The latest alarm came Thursday with an assassination attempt on the leader of the secular opposition. Kemal Kilicdaroglu was traveling the country’s northeast when his convoy came under fire. A member of his security detail was killed in the shootout, but Mr. Kilicdaroglu was unharmed and evacuated by helicopter. The perpetrators escaped, though Mr. Kilicdaroglu’s aides say his bodyguards may have killed one of them.

“Even though we are attacked, we will continue with determination in the path that we believe in,” Mr. Kilicdaroglu said in an interview Friday at the headquarters of the Republican People’s Party, or CHP. The separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, took credit but said government security forces, not Mr. Kilicdaroglu, were the intended target.

In today’s Turkey such incidents capture headlines only to be overshadowed a few hours later by the next thing to go bang. Sure enough, hours after the Kilicdaroglu attempt, a truck bomb on Friday killed 11 Turkish police officers near the Syrian border. The PKK also claimed responsibility for that attack.

Life goes on. Men and women still gather in outdoor bars to sip raki, watch soccer and shoot the breeze. The margin of personal freedom remains wider than in most of the region. Even so, the mood is dark. With July’s failed coup, nearly three million Syrian refugees, a fresh PKK insurgency in the southeast and the menace of Islamic State, the Turks feel they can’t catch a break.

The Turkey emerging out of these manifold crises is more insular, paranoid and illiberal. This means Ankara may no longer be as solidly anchored in the West as it has been since the Cold War. Washington assigns the blame for this turn to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and rightly so in Turkey’s domestic sphere. But the president isn’t alone to blame for Ankara’s troubles abroad.

Mr. Erdogan’s project to concentrate power in the presidency was well under way before the coup attempt on July 15. Most serious observers here believe followers of the Pennsylvania-based cleric Fethullah Gülen organized the ill-fated coup. Few have forgotten that the Gülenists were the authoritarian handmaidens to Mr. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, or AKP, before the two Islamist camps turned on each other in 2013. In the mid-2000s, when Messrs. Erdogan and Gülen were still allies, well-placed Gülenists in the judiciary persecuted and sidelined a common enemy: the old secular establishment.

The failed coup has accelerated Mr. Erdogan’s will to power. But it has also rallied much of the country behind his grievance narrative. Turks, secular and pious, feel betrayed. The West lectures them about the post-coup purges, they complain, without acknowledging the deep trauma of the coup itself: the putschist pilots who buzzed their apartments, the tanks that rolled down their streets.

Meanwhile, pro-government media feed the population a steady diet of ever-nuttier propaganda suggesting U.S. involvement in the coup attempt. Mr. Kilicdaroglu, the opposition leader, says the ruling party’s dominance over media leaves little doubt that it is “guiding the public.” A Western diplomat puts it nicely: “The government shapes public opinion and then claims to be constrained by that same opinion.”

Then again, externalizing responsibility for one’s destiny is nothing new in this part of the world. The relevant question for the American national interest is how to prevent this strategically crucial country from drifting further toward Russia’s orbit and away from the U.S.-led security order—or what remains of it after eight years of President Barack Obama.

Here the Turks ought to be listened to. Not all of Ankara’s lashing out at Washington derives from Mr. Erdogan’s cynicism and ideological hubris. Some of it is in reaction to the same sudden shift in U.S. policy under Mr. Obama that has jolted allies world-wide. Leaders from Kiev to Jerusalem to Tokyo are familiar with Ankara’s discontent.

Turkey has felt the jolt most acutely in Syria. Mr. Erdogan took Mr. Obama at his word when the American said in 2011 that Bashar Assad “must go.” He also took seriously Mr. Obama’s red line on chemical weapons. Turkey’s much-maligned early policy in Syria included overt support for moderate rebels and a laissez-faire policy that enabled the movement of more hard-line jihadists into the country. Ankara expected that Washington would favor its traditional allies and disfavor others: namely the Iranian mullahs, Mr. Assad and their various Shiite proxies.

Mr. Obama scrambled that friend-enemy pattern. He awkwardly ignored the red line, and the U.S. carried out secret talks that would culminate in a nuclear deal with Tehran and tie America’s hands against Mr. Assad. Then came a second shock to the Turks. America increasingly relied on Syrian-Kurdish factions with close ties to the Turkish PKK as its main ground forces in the country. CONTINUE AT SITE

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Hillary and the Soros Agenda By Rachel Ehrenfeld

Posted By on August 29th, 2016

These days, George Soros’ connections are getting quite a bit more attention than they did in the 1990s. But by the end of Bill Clinton’s reign Soros had already obtained a very influential position with the Clintons, especially with Hillary.

In her excellent profile of Soros in The New Yorker, on January 23, 1995, Connie Bruck relates how Strobe Talbott, Bill Clinton’s friend, who served as Ambassador-at-Large and Special Adviser on the New Independent States to Secretary of State Warren Christopher, saw Soros. According to Talbott, Soros was “a national resource – indeed, a national treasure.” He described the billionaire as a sort of shadow arm of the State Department. “I would say that it [Soros’ foreign policy] is not identical to the foreign policy of the U.S. government, but it’s compatible with it, “he told The New Yorker. “It’s like working with a friendly, allied, independent entity, if not a government. We try to synchronize our approach to the former Communist countries with Germany, France, Great Britain, and with George Soros.”

When Soros opened his own D.C. office to be close to the action, one of his minions explained that it would serve as “his State Department.” Soros conceded, “Of course what I do could be called meddling because I want to promote an open society.” According to Soros, such an” Open society transcends national sovereignty.” He also proposed “modification of the concept of sovereignty” because “sovereignty is basically somewhat anachronistic.”

Soros wrote memos on every foreign policy and monetary issue imaginable, and these memos were read widely at the very highest echelons of the Clinton White House. Soros has also used the services of the Washington lobbying firm Raffaelli, Spees, Springer & Smith, where he was represented by Clinton hack Terry McAuliffe, who in 2005 became the Democratic National Committee Chairman, and in 2008 chaired Hillary’s presidential campaign (McAuliffe has been Governor of Virginia since 2014). Between his payments to McAuliffe and the hundreds of thousands of dollars he gave to various official Democratic PACs, Soros was clearly able to purchase himself quite a bit of clout in the Democratic Party, and gain the adoration/co-dependency of its members that continues to this day.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

WHO DOES SHE THINK SHE IS….MARGARET SANGER? DANIEL FLYNN

Posted By on August 28th, 2016

The Standard Bearer of Bull Connor’s Party Calls Trump Racist

A Hillary Clinton campaign video featuring Confederate flags and goobers in white sheets ominously informs, “If Trump wins, they could be running the country.”

Mike Tyson didn’t bite Evander Holyfield’s ears because the knockout artist felt he was winning.

Such flouting of the Marquess of Queensberry rules of politics (a much rougher sport than boxing) coming in late summer rather than mid fall demonstrates either desperation, deviousness, or both. Though Clinton holds a lead — sometimes slight, sometimes sizable — in recent polls, she suffered through one of the worst weeks of her campaign.

The Associated Press proved that donating money to her “charity” served as the best way to secure a meeting with her as secretary of state. Eighty-five of the 154 people outside of government successful in gaining face time with the secretary did so after donating to the Clinton Foundation.

Rather than answer questions, Clinton attempted to change the subject by going below the belt. “Donald Trump has built his campaign on prejudice and paranoia,” Mrs. Clinton maintained Thursday in a Reno speech. “He’s taking hate groups mainstream and helping a radical fringe take over one of America’s two major political parties.”

The depiction of a Queens Kleagle strikes as far-fetched. The world of mullets, meth, and monster trucks seems as far removed from Trump Tower as one can imagine. But Clinton-Kaine seeks to strangely make it all stick. And hey, he fired Omarosa, didn’t he?

The chutzpah of the negative campaigning appears especially audacious when considering the history of the Democratic Party and, to a lesser extent, its standard bearer.

Hillary Clinton called Senator Robert Byrd not a racist but her “mentor.” From the beginning of the Carter presidency until the end of the Reagan administration, Hillary’s party looked to the former Ku Klux Klan Exalted Cyclops as its exalted leader in the United States Senate.

Hillary Clinton accepted the Margaret Sanger Award in 2009. “I admire Margaret Sanger enormously,” she told Planned Parenthood, “her courage, her tenacity, her vision.” But this vision included blaming Jews and Italians for causing “the multiplication of the unfit in this country,” judging “the Aboriginal Australian” the “lowest known species of the human family, just a step higher than the chimpanzee in brain development,” and using the n-word in private correspondence. If she sounds like an ideal speaker for a KKK rally in some barn, that’s because Sanger really once spoke at a KKK rally in some barn.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Turkey’s Official “Cocktail Terror” by Burak Bekdil

Posted By on August 28th, 2016

In its latest attack in Turkey, ISIS used a child suicide bomber to attack a wedding ceremony. More than 50 victims were killed, of whom 26 were less than 18 years old.

This is premeditated, officially-tolerated murder. Evidence? Two opposition parties appealed to parliament five times asking for a parliamentary investigation into ISIS and its activities in Turkey. All five requests were rejected by the votes of the ruling AKP Party, Erdogan’s powerful political machine.

The opposition claims SADAT International Defense Consultancy, which was established by soldiers dismissed from the military due to Islamist activities, offers ISIS operatives training in “intelligence, psychological warfare, sabotage, raiding, ambushing and assassination.” Erdogan this month appointed the owner of SADAT, retired Brigadier General Adnan Tanriverdi, as his chief presidential advisor.

Failing to name Islamic terror has cost Turkey hundreds of lives and will likely cost it hundreds more, as the country’s leaders — and many others, especially in the West — are still too demure to call Islamic terror by its name. Without a realistic diagnosis, the chances of a successful treatment are always close to nil, and Turkey’s leaders stubbornly remain on the wrong side of the right diagnosis.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s theory that “there is no Islamic terror,” coupled with his persistent arguments that Islamist radicals hit Europe because of Islamophobia in the Western world, are not only too remote from reality but have now become a curse in his own country.

As early as 2014, cars began to be seen in the streets of Istanbul sporting the black flag of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The same year, Islamists opened a shop selling T-shirts featuring the same flag. ISIS-related magazines went ahead with open hate content even though, in March 2014, ISIS spilled its first blood in Turkey when an ISIS team ambushed a police checkpoint and killed one police officer, one soldier and one civilian.

In its first suicide attack on June 5, 2015, ISIS targeted a pro-Kurdish rally in Diyarbakir, killed four people and injured 279. It targeted, once again, a pro-Kurdish gathering in July 2015 in Suruc, a small town bordering Syria, killed more than 30 people and injured more than 100.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

How to Sustain a False Police Shooting Crisis The facts are a mere inconvenience for progressives stoking racial conflict. By David French

Posted By on August 28th, 2016

It’s hard to recall a political movement built on more verifiable lies and misinformation than Black Lives Matter, which exists to advance that notion that America is in the midst of a race-motivated epidemic of police shootings. From “hands up, don’t shoot” to the extraordinary claim that it’s “open season” on young black men, America is awash in rhetoric and fury that is already proving to be deadly to police and deadly to black communities across the United States.

Even worse, the rhetoric persists in spite of the facts: Individual stories of police misconduct are often far more complex than activists portray, and the accumulated data shows that black men are not, in fact, facing a wave of racist police killings. For a summary of the available evidence, Heather Mac Donald’s video is outstanding:

Yet the narrative has been fixed. The crisis must be sustained, evidence be damned.

Vox has an interesting feature called a “card stack,” a site dedicated to a single issue, allowing you to quickly click through specific links and educate yourself. They created a card stack about police brutality — and it is a textbook example of how the sophisticated progressive looks at racial issues. This is how the Left sustains a false racial crisis:

Step One — Begin with the misleading use of statistics.

After some throat-clearing about how American police use force more than police in many other countries — conveniently ignoring the fact that we also have much higher rates of violent crime than those nations — Vox gets right to the heart of leftist thinking about race: “There are huge racial disparities in how U.S. police use force.” The proof for that statement? Black people are a mere 13 percent of the population but comprise a whopping 31 percent of all people killed by police.