The Trump way could succeed - Dr. Aviel Sheyin-Stevens

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by Dr. Aviel Sheyin-Stevens

Hat tip: Dr. Carolyn Tal
 

Now that Trump is negotiating, what they fear is not that he will fail like they did. They fear that he will succeed.

When Ayatollah Khomeini was the barbarous supreme tyrant of Iran and Kim Jong-il the brutal supreme despot of North Korea, Barack Obama stated his commitment to alienate America’s friends and embolden America’s enemies. Before Obama’s inauguration as America’s president, he told a crowd of cheering supporters: “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” Obama’s fundamental transformation did not end at America’s shores.

In 2009, Obama launched his radical foreign policy initiatives in Cairo that soon thereafter got aflame with anti-American protests. He offered the Muslim world “a new beginning.” By this, he meant not a Muslim new beginning but an American change of heart. He surrendered Iraq, in whose cause so many young Americans died, to America’s enemy, Iran. In the 2009 Iranian presidential elections protests, he squandered an opportunity to undermine the government established by Ayatollah Khomeini three decades before. Obama resisted pressure to side with opposition to the regime of the mullahs as mass protests continued in Iran over the disputed presidential poll. 

From the beginning of his administration, Obama stated his willingness to talk to Iran “without preconditions.” He ignored US property claims against Iran, and Iran’s funding, providing equipment, weapons, training and giving sanctuary to terrorists. He offered Iran economic inducements and a promise not to seek “regime change.” The preconditions are not whimsical excuses to avoid talk with Iran. They are unanimous resolutions of the UN Security Council, agreed upon after the IAEA reported that Iran was in violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. 

Obama used the cover of multilateralism and moral equivalence consistently to communicate American weakness: “No single nation should pick and choose which nations hold nuclear weapons.” He orchestrated the 2015 agreement of Iran with China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, and United States, plus Germany and the European Union, on Iran’s nuclear program. It ended the international sanctions regime against Iran, and permits Iran to develop advanced centrifuges. 

Iran’s goal is the destruction of America, yet Obama’s solution was to appease Iran by letting Iran increase its destructive might, get nuclear weapons capability and get the ayatollahs $150 billion. To get the Iran deal, the Obama administration undermined its own restrictions on facilitating Iranian banking and commerce, and approached banks around the world to help Iran convert its released embargoed funds into US Dollars. This subversion of the American financial system was probably illegal. 

Much of the support for the Iran deal draws on the same school of thought that believed the 1979 revolution would usher in the onset of liberal democracy in Iran; that the Oslo Accords were the harbingers of a peaceful, prosperous “New Middle East;” and that the Arab Spring would herald an era of individual liberty across the Arab world.

In May 2018, while former secretary of state John Kerry kept meeting with Iranian leaders overseas to sabotage his country’s policies, President Donald Trump announced that America would withdraw from the Iran deal. On the eve of Trump’s decision to withdraw from the agreement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu televised captured Iranian documents that confirmed Iran never had any intention of stopping its nuclear bomb-making program.

When Trump withdrew from the Iran deal, American elites went berserk. They intimated nullification would hasten Iranian proliferation and provoke more Iranian belligerence. Whereas, Iran is stuck with Trump till the end of his presidency. If Iran tries to hijack another American vessel or launches another missile near an American carrier, Trump will not react like Obama did. As the Iranians know, Trump would take military steps to terminate Iran’s ability to replicate such aggression.

American and Israeli leaders often put the burden to prove good intentions on themselves, rather than their opponents. Obama praised Iranian President Hassan Rouhani as a moderate. Likewise, Israeli leaders praised Arafat as a man of courage and Abbas as a moderate. The praises justified making concessions to their counterparts without requiring reciprocal concessions. In 2000, then-prime minister Ehud Barak was desperate to convince Arafat to accept a peace deal with Israel. Barak remained in talks with Arafat after Arafat rejected his offer, collapsed the Camp David summit, and launched the worst terror war ever against Israel.

Trump made the case that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un had to prove his good intentions to him as a precondition for negotiations. After North Korea tested an intercontinental ballistic missile in July 2017, Trump called Kim “Little Rocket Man” and a “madman.” Trump polarized Kim and blamed him for the growing danger to US national security. Kim released three American hostages and blew up his nuclear test site. Kim had to prove his credibility. Not Trump.

During their administrations, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama all begged the Chinese to rein in the North Koreans. China demanded and received various US concessions to curb North Korea, often inadequately. Whereas, Trump intimidated and threatened China. He linked US-China trade deals to Chinese assistance in curtailing North Korean threats and agreeing to the denuclearizing of North Korea. Trump proved his seriousness by firing 58 missiles at Syrian targets in retaliation for Bashar Assad’s use of chemical weapons, while he was entertaining Chinese President Xi Jinping in Florida. Xi cut off North Korean coal exports to China and limited fuel shipments from China to North Korea. Soon after, Kim announced he wanted to meet the South Korean president.

Trump made it easy for the Americans to abandon negotiations and difficult for the North Koreans to do likewise. Trump effected the largest increase in US defense spending in decades. He and Defense Secretary James Mattis threatened to destroy North Korea. Trump stated often that he has no idea whether talks with Kim will lead to an agreement, but it was worth an attempt. He even canceled the summit after Kim insulted National Security Adviser John Bolton. Trump’s cancellation taught Kim the price of failure and showed Kim, that unlike his predecessors, Trump does not fear walking away. For Kim to negotiate with Trump, he must respect Trump’s choices.

The elites criticized Trump’s summitry with Kim and the summit agreement filled with platitudes. The objective was not to reach a serious agreement at this stage. The objective was to sign a piece of paper that had “Agreement” on it.

By Kim signing the piece of paper, Trump has put all the time pressure on Kim alone. The Americans have their deal and Kim signed it at a ceremony with a global audience. The Trump administration has all the time it needs to get Kim to give up all his nukes. Whereas, time is working against Kim. After the summit, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that the economic sanctions on North Korea will remain in place until after North Korea has denuclearized in a verifiable manner. If Kim cares about his survival and his nation’s economy, Kim would reach a deal and implement it as quickly as possible. 

In Cairo, Obama intimated that Israel’s legitimacy is based on the Holocaust, instead of the thousands of years of the Jewish nation’s attachment to the Land of Israel. Against tremendous opposition, Trump made it American policy that the Jewish people is indigenous to the Land of Israel. Trump also relocated America’s embassy to Jerusalem. As Trump stated, ‘Israel has made its capital in the city of Jerusalem, the capital the Jewish people established in ancient times.’

Obama’s legacy in the Middle East rests on the Iran deal. When Trump terminated the deal, Obama’s Middle East legacy collapsed. Trump renewed America’s alliances with Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Israel, reducing Iranian power in the region. Essentially, Israel now has a free hand to take preemptive action against Iranian arsenal in Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere that could strike Israel. Besides, Trump’s deal could denuclearize North Korea, and curtail the transfer of Chinese and North Korean nuclear technology to Iran. 

Unlike Obama, Trump knows how to make favorable deals. Since Ronald Reagan went to Reykjavik to meet Gorbachev, Trump is the first US president who knew how to negotiate with America’s enemies. Trump is prepared to walk away from negotiations with North Korea. He knows North Korea could cheat, and he would not separate its promises to denuclearize from its ballistic missiles or terrorist behavior. Moreover, Trump would focus on its patron. Without China’s help, there could be no North Korea bomb.

Trump is dealing with a nuclear armed North Korea because Clinton, Bush, Obama, and other US elites, enabled its nuclear armament through incompetent diplomacy. Trump is only trying a new approach because their old approach gave Kim the capability to threaten America with nuclear weapons. Now that Trump is negotiating, what they fear is not that he will fail like they did. They fear that he will succeed, like only he could. Trump will beat these people again. The Trump Way could succeed. 


Dr. Aviel Sheyin-Stevens holds Jur.D. and CPA degrees, is a registered patent attorney based in Florida, USA.

Source: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/22343

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Weaponizing Compassion - Bruce Thornton

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by Bruce Thornton

What the controversy over illegal immigrant families is really about.

The Democrat “resistance” has managed to break its own record for hysterical and hypocritical invective. Literalizing the clichéd punch line of a thousand gags––“Will no one think of the children!!!” ––the Dems are hyperventilating about the illegal alien parents and their children being separated upon detention, as the law requires. Once again, we see how much “conspicuous compassion,” as Alan Bloom called it, has become a weapon of politics, one that damages our security and interests.

In this case, the disconnect between fact and spin is more glaring than usual. No matter that ICE and Homeland Security are working within the constraints of court rulings and the law that Congress passed and can change any time.  No matter that often it’s impossible to certify that the detained adults are the actual parents, or that human traffickers aren’t using this dodge to enter the country with their prey. No matter that the alternative is to turn these poorly vetted illegal aliens loose (as Obama did, as a form of de facto amnesty), merely on their word that they will show up for a hearing. No matter that across the country, Child Protective Services are “ripping children from their parents’ arms,” as are the children of those arrested on suspicion of a crime. Do we set a criminal suspect free on his own recognizance just because he’s accompanied by his kid? 

No matter. Fact, common sense, and law must cede to politics, which these days comprises a deep, pathological hatred of Donald Trump, the Emmanuel Goldstein of the Democrats’ 24/7 “Two Minutes Hate.” “Compassion” is just another weapon of that hate.

Compassion, however, has a long history of being trivialized in Western culture. It followed the idealizing of “sensitivity” that began in the late 18^th century. Novels like Laurence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey and Henry Mackenzie’s The Man of Feeling, whose hero bursts into tears every ten pages, marked the point when showy displays of “feelings” like compassion, often called “luxurious” at the time, became a virtue-signaling status symbol. This is the fad that Jane Austen satirized in her 1811 novel Sense and Sensibility. As many other critics at the time pointed out, compassion was the justifying virtue that masked what often was nothing more than emotional solipsism for those whose concern for others seldom led to action that improved their lot.

By the mid-19^th century even a master of sentimentalism like Charles Dickens could recognize that such public displays of compassion for the poor or native peoples abroad were a self-indulgence. In Bleak House, he created Mrs. Jellyby, the archetype of today’s purveyors of virtue-signaling compassion, who bleed for distant suffering but neglect that in their own backyard. As Mrs. Jellyby strives to settle impoverished Londoners among heathen Africans they will convert to Christianity, her shabby household and neglected children continue to fall into ruin. 

Dickens called this “telescopic philanthropy,” a phenomenon we’re seeing today with the ostentatious compassion for illegal alien children on the part of those who shrug off the daily excesses in their own country, such as those of the Child Protective Services, which often violate the Fourth Amendment. 

Popularized more widely in the 19^th century by the mass circulation of illustrated magazines and serialized novels, conspicuous compassion permeated American culture, as did “telescopic philanthropy.” In Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain satirized the “committee of sappy women” who are petitioning the governor to pardon the murderous Injun Joe: “If he had been Satan himself there would have been plenty of weaklings ready to scribble their names to a pardon petition, and drip a tear on it from their permanent leaky water-works.” 

So too today, with those beating their breasts over sloppily vetted illegal aliens who endanger their children by bringing them across the border or sending them off with “coyotes.” They can’t seem to summon similar compassion for the victims of the criminals allowed into the country and kept here despite serial felonies. And remember the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth over the terrorist murderers held in Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib? And how about the “Palestinians” who use their own children as shields behind which to launch lethal attacks on Israelis? When do we hear the same lamentations over innocent Israeli children and families murdered by homicide-bombers, scud missiles, and knife-wielding terrorists?

Then there is today’s favorite venue for politicized conspicuous compassion––the postcolonial Third World. Our morbid fascination with the misery and suffering there serves both our need to signal our superior virtue, and the leftist melodrama of the Western colonial and imperialist oppression allegedly responsible for that suffering. 

This combination of conspicuous compassion and ostentatious self-loathing is the essence of Third-Worldism, that idealization of the non-Western “other” combined with self-flagellation over the original sins of imperialism and colonialism. French philosopher Pascal Bruckner wrote a brilliant analysis of this cultural neurosis in Tears of the White Man. Bruckner describes how Third-World suffering has become a lucrative commodity for the modern media, who provide the images that we consume in order to enjoy cost-free pathos and smug superiority about our righteous compassion. In this way, we compensate for our “certain essential evil,” as Bruckner calls the West’s original sin, “that must be atoned for.” 

Which is to say, conspicuous compassion is about political power, since this neurosis empowers the foreign policy favored by globalists and leftists alike –– foreign aid and “development” even if they’re not in our national interest and don’t help to protect our security. Domestically, for decades, including during George W. Bush’s bout of “compassionate conservatism,” the progressives have slandered conservatives as heartless and ruthless racists, bigots, and xenophobes who fear the dark-skinned “other” and seek to “roll back the clock” to the time when their “white male hetero-normative privilege” was unchallenged. 

That caricature reinforces as well progressives’ self-image as more enlightened and tolerant, more caring about the suffering victims of conservatism’s crimes. Both caricatures serve political theater by giving us a melodrama in which good and evil, white hats and black hats, are easily recognizable without having to think too much about, say, the long track-record of progressivism’s failures, both at home and abroad, to improve the lives of those they have so much compassion for.

But politics based on sentimental emotions and cheap compassion obscures the tragic realities of the choices a nation has to make. Modern Mrs. Jellybys like Samantha Power, Obama’s U.N. ambassador and architect of the “responsibility to protect” doctrine, have nothing practical to say about how to achieve their utopian projects without a massive intervention of lethal force. U.N. resolutions, heart-rending photographs, celebrity global pan-handling, disappearing red lines, and lofty speeches didn’t bring the boon of education to girls in Afghanistan. The U.S. military did by killing and driving away the bad guys. They liberated more girls in Afghanistan than all the feminist books and seminars and protests combined. 

But the role of our government is not to be the world’s social worker going about searching for monsters to destroy. The 800,000 murdered in Rwanda comprised families and children too, but we did nothing to stop the slaughter. Instead, we pretended that the feckless U.N.’s Orwellian “peace-keepers,” who watched the disaster happen in real time, absolved us of our “responsibility to protect.” Rather than indulge such hypocrisy, we should be honest and let the world know that we act in the service of our own citizen’s security and interests. If humanitarian assistance or policies are compatible with those purposes, then we should do what we can.

Moreover, we do not have a moral obligation to be the world’s refuge and take in everybody if doing so harms our security and interests. And since we can’t take in every refugee whether political or economic, any decision to admit people will necessarily be political, which again means that our country’s interests are the paramount criterion. In the end, we are not obligated to correct the misery and suffering of nations who bear the responsibility for their own people’s problems. We can’t let the whole world use us as Mexico does, as a safety valve for lessening their citizens’ discontent caused by their country’s political and economic corruption and dysfunctions; and as a source of foreign currency––$26 billion in just nine months last year–– in the form of remittances sent home by their citizens.

Finally, it is the fundamental right of every sovereign nation to protect its borders and to decide by what criteria they will admit immigrants. Whatever we decide is a political issue to be settled by the people through their representatives in Congress. Calls for amnesty or de facto open borders––which is what the recent outcry over separating illegal aliens from their children is really about––should be adjudicated by political debate on the facts, consequences, and costs, not by emotional appeals, sentimental rhetoric, and conspicuous compassion.

Unfortunately, the hypocritical telescopic philanthropy of the Dems, few of whom live with the wages of our broken immigration system, has been seconded by too many Republicans intimidated by their rhetoric. The Bush clan, which spent Obama’s two terms in silence as The One “fundamentally transformed” America, have squandered much of the good will they once enjoyed by piling on Donald Trump with ridiculous comparisons to the internment of Japanese citizens during the World War II, and with bathetic exaggerations of the conditions in which the children are kept. So too a lot of Republicans who should know better, but with an eye on the November midterms, are scrambling to defuse the bad publicity caused by the dishonest media coverage, rather than championing facts and principles and refuting the Dems’ duplicitous narrative. 

But ceding the argument to the Dems, rather than putting their feet to the fire by forcing them to vote in Congress, is handing them a win. That’s why Trump’s executive order on Wednesday ending the practice instead of forcing Congress to do its job, is disappointing. And even if that’s what polls tell us the people want, laws or policy based on specious emotion and lurid optics, rather than on Constitutional principles and national interest, usually turn out to be disastrous. Our national interests are more important than people’s need to display their conspicuous compassion.


Bruce Thornton is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, a Research Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, and a Professor of Classics and Humanities at the California State University. He is the author of nine books and numerous essays on classical culture and its influence on Western Civilization. His most recent book, Democracy's Dangers and Discontents (Hoover Institution Press), is now available for purchase.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270514/weaponizing-compassion-bruce-thornton

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Rift Grows Between Congress And Pentagon Over Weapons Transfer To Turkey - Ari Lieberman

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by Ari Lieberman

Fate of American pastor and purchase of Russian SAMs among concerns raised by lawmakers.

Turkey received its first two F-35 fighter jets on Thursday. The Muslim nation and NATO partner has ordered 100 of the aircraft. Lockheed Martin conducted a rollout ceremony at Fort Worth, Texas to commemorate the milestone. From there, the two jets will follow-on to Luke Air Force Base in Arizona where they will pair up with Turkish pilots and maintenance personnel for what a Pentagon spokesman described as “flight academics.”

Despite the rollout, it could take more than a year before the planes are sent to Turkey. This is due to the extensive training period Turkish pilots and support personnel will be required to undergo while in the United States.

The F-35 is a fifth generation fighter-bomber equipped with highly advanced avionics and stealth properties. Much of the technology incorporated into the F-35 is top secret. Russia and China have also developed fighter planes incorporating stealth technology stolen from the United States. But despite the theft, experts consider the F-35 to be far superior to the Russian and Chinese models.

The transfer of sensitive technology to Turkey has rankled members of Congress, who are disturbed by the unhinged actions and statements of its president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Senate lawmakers have sought to stop the sale citing Turkey’s unlawful detention of American pastor, Andrew Brunson, on trumped up terrorism charges, and Turkey’s pending acquisition of Russian S-400 anti-aircraft missiles, which are not compatible with NATO platforms. Some lawmakers have questioned whether Turkey can be trusted to safeguard the F-35’s technology and raised the disquieting prospect of Turkey allowing the Russians to have access to the plane.

The Senate is moving to block the sale through language incorporated in the National Defense Authorization Act, a mammoth defense spending bill that also sets guidelines for defense policy. The Senate version of the bill expresses concern over Turkey’s illegal detention of Andrew Brunson and Turkey’s acquisition of the S-400. The bill also calls on Secretary of Defense James Mattis to submit to Congress “a plan to remove the Government of the Republic of Turkey from participation in the F-35 program,” and to list “steps required to prohibit the transfer of any F-35 aircraft currently owned and operated, by the Government of the Republic of Turkey, from the territory of the United States.”

The Senate and House versions of the NDAA have to reconcile before the bill is passed along to President Donald Trump for signing. Despite some differences between the Senate and House versions, there appears to be wide bipartisan support for blocking the transfer of the F-35 to Turkey. This rare bipartisan agreement on Turkey is unsurprising even in today’s charged political climate.

Turkey’s authoritarian and increasingly paranoid leader has given Congress ample reason to be wary. In addition to the S-400 acquisition and the detention of Andrew Brunson, Turkey has repeatedly pursued foreign policies that are inconsistent with NATO’s. It has invaded two of its neighbors, waged war against Kurdish militia fighters allied with NATO, threatened to flood NATO countries with Muslim migrants from Iraq and Syria, circumvented sanctions against Iran, and even supported the emerging Islamic State in its nascent state. 

Turkey’s deleterious actions have been met with equally shrill and belligerent rhetoric from its leaders. When Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz announced that he would move to shut down mosques and expel radical foreign-funded clerics, Erdoğan warned that Kurz's actions would bring the world “toward a war between the cross and the crescent.” That language mimics the rhetoric employed by ISIS, al-Qaida and other radical Islamic terrorist groups.

Turkey’s conspiracy prone leaders routinely spew the most outrageous conspiracy theories which are often laced with deeply anti-Semitic overtones. Erdoğan often compares Israel to Nazi Germany, claimed that Israel has committed genocide against the Palestinians, alleged that Israel engineered the coup that saw the overthrow of Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leader, Mohammed Morsi, and accused the international “interest rate lobby,” a euphemism for rich Jews, of fomenting the 2013 Gezi Park riots.

The most recent conspiracy gem emerging from Ankara involves Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim, who claimed that this year’s Eurovision song contest was rigged by “imperialists” who engineered the Israeli win to “sow strife between religions.”

Despite Turkey’s deeply problematic behavior, there are those within Washington who are still advocating for the sale and chief among them is Defense Secretary Mattis. Mattis has been engaging with Congressional leaders in an effort to have them remove language from the NDAA that seeks to block the sale. 

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been more equivocal. He has raised concerns about Turkey’s acquisition of the S-400 and can act to block the sale under legislation recently passed by Congress that calls for sanctions against purchasers of certain Russian military platforms, including the S-400. In a May appearance before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Pompeo acknowledged that some of Turkey’s actions were cause for concern and raised some eyebrows when he stated that he wants Turkey to “rejoin NATO.”

Mattis’ advocacy on behalf of the paranoid Islamists running Turkey is both perplexing and troubling. Turkey’s drift out of NATO’s orbit and into the orbit of America’s strategic enemies should be cause for great concern. The transfer of sensitive U.S. technology to the Erdoğan regime under the current circumstances would represent the epitome of foolhardiness and would end up costing America dearly. Mattis would be wise to defer to Congress on this one. 

Ari Lieberman is an attorney and former prosecutor who has authored numerous articles and publications on matters concerning the Middle East and is considered an authority on geo-political and military developments affecting the region.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270525/rift-grows-between-congress-and-pentagon-over-ari-lieberman

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Soros Steams That Trump's "Revolution In World Affairs" Is Succeeding - Andrew Korybko

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by Andrew Korybko

Hat tip: Dr. Jean-Charles Bensoussan

Soros is lamenting that his desired world order is under threat because of Trump.

Expressing frustration that “everything that could go wrong has gone wrong”, the billionaire financier of countless Color Revolutions all across the world told the Washington Post that he was “living in [his] own bubble” because he failed to foresee Trump’s meteoric rise. Fearful that Trump “is willing to destroy the world”, as he put it, he vowed to “redouble [his] efforts” in pouring millions of dollars into opposing everything that the President stands for all across the world.

While the Hungarian-American might come off as full of doom and gloom in his interview, he actually has a reason to feel that way because Trump has single-handedly presided over the dismantlement of the Liberal-Globalist world order that Soros has worked for decades to build, destroying the old paradigm of Trans-Atlantic relations in a simple spree of tweets and presiding over the return of Christian morals, ethics, and values in American society, ideas that are absolutely anathema to the atheist billionaire.

From Soros’ perspective, Trump is indeed destroying the world, albeit not in the apocalyptic sense like he’s implying but in the ideological one of pioneering a completely new world order than the one that the President inherited.


Former U.S. President Barack Obama congratulates U.S. President Donald Trump after he took the oath of office on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol on January 20, 2017 in Washington, DC

Obama, who can be regarded as Soros’ surrogate in the White House, worked towards building a world where the US bows before the authority of the UN on many (but crucially, not all) key issues such as climate change and sustainable development agendas, heralding in a new multilateralism that would have moved International Relations closer to a so-called “one world government”, albeit one that would still be largely under indirect American influence.

Concurrent with this, the Obama-Soros vision was to have the media attack all of their opponents as “racist, fascist, white supremacists” for daring to think that the future might be different, but then all of a sudden Trump came along and committed to undoing their legacy.

The world that Trump wants to build is one of unrestricted American unilateralism in “Leading from the Front” while unabashedly pioneering a return to unipolarity, righting what he truly believes to have been the many historic wrongs that Obama, Soros, and all the others before him committed in voluntarily handicapping American power through lopsided trade deals and various other unfair commitments.

All told, this global recalibration can rightly be described as a “Revolution in World Affairs” because of the “new thinking” involved in guiding America’s policies from here on out.


Andrew Korybko

Source: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-06-21/soros-sorrowful-trumps-revolution-world-affairs-succeeding

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Europe's earthquake is underway - Giulio Meotti

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by Giulio Meotti

Hat tip: Dr. Jean-Charles Bensoussan

Europe has more sharia courts and veiled women, less unaccompanied women it its cities at night and less cartoons of Muhammad.

September 11, 2001 was supposed to be “the day on which everything changed”. After 17 years of Western military occupation, the Taliban control more territory in Afghanistan than in any time since the invasion of the US troops.

After 17 years of uncontrolled Islamic immigration, Europe has more sharia courts, more refugees, more veiled women, more schools dominated by Muslims, more mosques, more minarets, more genital mutilation, more Muslim Brotherhood, more Muslim mayors, and less churches, less Jews, less unaccompanied women in the cities at night, less cartoons of Muhammad.

Multiculturalism favors Third World cultures over Western culture. Much of the public speech today in Europe is dedicated to the infinite reading of the crimes of the West and of the evil that Israel represents. In the meantime, the contributions of the West to humanity – democracy, scientific revolution, human beings and industrial revolution – are diminished or marginalized. Europe has condemned itself to a permanent state of siege.

A double religious-demographic earthquake is underway. The Muslim populations of the Western countries are growing significantly in recent decades and continue to grow disproportionately due to external immigration and internal fertility rates. The Christian populations in Muslim countries continue to collapse due to the oppression that causes mass emigration. So, both Europe and the Middle East are becoming more Islamic.

One day, perhaps, the European governments will begin to negotiate with the Islamic organizations the terms of a surrender about the place of Islam in public life, proliferation of mosques, freedom of immigration, dismantling of Western lifestyle, halal menus at schools, removal of Christian symbols, withdrawal of troops from the Middle East, end of support for Israel ... it will happen in a manner that the population doesn't even notice. But isn't [that] already happening?

The second scenario is internal chaos. Now there is an attempt to reverse the trend on immigration. In Italy, the new populist government just blocked a ship with 629 migrants. They landed in Spain. The entire Eastern Europe – led by Hungarian Viktor Orban - is based on an anti-immigration consensus, which has been joined by Austria too. A crisis on migrants is underway inside Angela Merkel's government.

All this crisis is due to mass immigration, the single most explosive issue in Europe's past, present and future. If Europe becomes more “cruel” - as defined in accordance with the new humanitarian standards – it might save itself. Otherwise, Europe will become Eurabia. 


Giulio Meotti an Italian journalist with Il Foglio, writes a twice-weekly column for Arutz Sheva. He is the author of the book "A New Shoah", that researched the personal stories of Israel's terror victims, published by Encounter and of "J'Accuse: the Vatican Against Israel" published by Mantua Books.. His writing has appeared in publications, such as the Wall Street Journal, Frontpage and Commentary.

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/22342

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Spain: Ground Zero for Europe's Anti-Israel Movement - Soeren Kern

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by Soeren Kern

The objective is -- the annihilation of the Jewish homeland, 'from the river to the sea.' But now, BDS tries to push the international community to condemn Israel as a pariah state and ostracize all those that support her: Zionists. Jews.

• The proliferating anti-Israel activism, driven by the rise to power of the political far-left, is establishing Spain as the EU member state most hostile towards the Jewish state.
• A Madrid-based organization, Action and Communication on the Middle East (ACOM), which is fighting the anti-Israel BDS movement in Spain, said that Valencia's motion was anti-Semitic and an incitement to hatred.
• "The BDS movement in Spain acquired its current virulence with the emergence of Podemos, a 'Chavist' far-left party financed by Venezuela and Iran.... As Podemos gained control of the municipal governments in the main Spanish cities, the anti-Israel movement had access to multiple economic, human and organizational resources.... Podemos has driven over 90 such declarations in Spain in jurisdictions covering a population of over eight million people" — Ángel Más, president, ACOM.

Valencia, the third-largest city in Spain, has approved a motion to boycott Israel and slander it by declaring the city an "Israeli apartheid-free zone." The move comes days after Navarra, one of Spain's 17 autonomous communities, announced a similar measure. In all, more than 50 Spanish cities and regions have passed motions condemning Israel. The proliferating anti-Israel activism, driven by the rise to power of the political far-left, is establishing Spain as the EU member state most hostile towards the Jewish state.

The Valencian measure, introduced by the far-left party València en Comú, was approved during a plenary session of the city council on May 31. The motion, which commits the city to refrain from engaging in business contacts or cultural events with Israeli authorities or companies, aims at establishing Valencia as "a global reference for solidarity with the Palestinians."

The city of Valencia, Spain has approved a motion to boycott Israel and slander it by declaring the city an "Israeli apartheid-free zone." (Image source: Ben Bender/Wikimedia Commons)

The motion, which libelously describes Israel as an "apartheid regime," accuses the Jewish state of "colonialism," "racism," "ethnic cleansing," "tyranny," and "genocide."

The measure, which claims to reflect the "dignity, solidarity and justness" of the Valencian people, was introduced by Neus Fábregas Santana, a city councilor whose Twitter feed reveals an obsession with demonizing and delegitimizing Israel.

Santana works closely with a group called BDS País Valencia, the local branch of a worldwide movement trying to delegitimize Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East.

BDS País Valencia is currently promoting a Spanish documentary about the Gaza Strip called "Gas the Arabs," a title that alleges, falsely, that the Jews in Israel are doing to the Arabs today what the Nazis in Germany did to the Jews during the Second World War.

An activist with BDS País Valencia, Mireia Biosca, said the motion in Valencia had three objectives:

"The first is the dismantling of the apartheid wall and the return to the borders of 1967. The second is the end of apartheid both in Palestine and in Israel, and the third is the right of return."

Biosca also said BDS País Valencia would work to prevent the Eurovision song contest from being held in Israel in 2019:

"There is a very clear line: first to ensure that states do not participate in the festival, and obviously a campaign to prevent the festival from being in Jerusalem. For me it is equally boycottable if it is decided that Eurovision will be held in Tel Aviv...."

A Madrid-based organization, Action and Communication on the Middle East (ACOM), which is fighting the anti-Israel BDS movement in Spain, said that Valencia's motion was anti-Semitic and an incitement to hatred. It said it was studying whether to take legal action against the City Council of Valencia for violating the Spanish Constitution and promoting discrimination based on religion, ethnicity or national origin:

"The declaration is full of lies, manipulations and libels, whilst it calls for the city to formally adhere to the BDS movement and declare itself 'free of Israeli apartheid' (a known euphemism in Spain for Judenrein [free of Jews], where any perceived sympathizer of the Jewish State is demanded to publicly denounce the policies of the only democracy in the Middle East in order to be admitted to social, political, economic or civic activities in the municipality) ....
"We informed the local press of the illegality of the BDS campaign, detailing dozens of judicial cases won by ACOM in the Spanish Courts that proved the unconstitutionality of exclusionary measures."

ACOM has filed more than twenty lawsuits against provincial and town councils which have enacted boycotts of Israel.

Much of the BDS activity in Spain is being promoted by Podemos (translated in English as "We Can"), a neo-Communist party founded in March 2014 to protest the economic austerity measures put into place after the European debt crisis. Podemos received more than 20% of the vote in the national election held on December 20, 2015 and is now the third-largest party in Parliament.

Podemos head Pablo Iglesias and his deputy, Íñigo Errejón, served as advisors to the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, and have been accused of receiving more than €7 million ($8 million) from Chávez to fund their political activities in Spain. Podemos has also been accused of receiving funding from the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Iglesias has a long history of anti-Semitism: he has downplayed the Holocaust, describing it as "a bureaucratic and administrative decision"; compared the Gaza Strip to the Warsaw ghetto; and described Spanish police who apprehend illegal immigrants as being the same as SS guards.

Iglesias hosts a television program, "Fort Apache," which is broadcast on HispanTV, a Spanish-language cable television network owned by the Iranian government. He has been accused of using his show to repeat anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and tropes.

In a June 7 interview on RTVE, a leading state-owned television and radio broadcast network, Iglesias, said that Israel was an "illegal" country: "We need to act more firmly against an illegal state like Israel. Israel's actions are illegal. The apartheid policies of Israel are illegal."

València en Comú, the political party which sponsored the BDS motion in Valencia, is a local offshoot of Podemos. The motion was approved with support from Compromís, a coalition of Communist and left-wing nationalist parties, as well as the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE), which recently took over the central government in Madrid.

BDS motions have also been approved in: Abrera, Alcoi, Alhaurín de la Torre, Artés, Badalona, Barberà del Vallès, Barcelona, Benlloch, Campillos, Casares (Malaga), Castrillón, Castro del Río, Catarroja, Concentaina, Córdoba, Corvera, El Prat, Gijón, Gran Canaria, La Roda Llangreu, Los Corrales, Madrid, Mairena del Aljarafe, Molins de Rei, Montoro, Muro, Navalafuente, Navarra, Oleiros, Olesa de Montserrat, Onda, Pamplona, Petrer, Ripollet, Rivas-Vaciamadrid, Sabiñánigo, San Fernando, San Roque, Sant Adrià del Besòs, Sant Cebriá de Vallalta, Sant Celoni, Santa Eulària (Ibiza), Sant Boi de Llobregat, Sant Feliu de Llobregat, Sant Pere de Ruidebitlles, Santiago de Compostela, Sant Quirze del Vallès, Seville, Telde, Terrassa, Trebujena, Velvez-Málaga, Viladamat, Viloria del Henar, Xeraco and Zaragoza, among others.

ACOM President Ángel Más explained the dynamics behind the rise of the BDS movement in Spain:

"The BDS is a global phenomenon that is born from the modern anti-Semites' acceptance of the improbability of defeating Israel through military confrontation or terrorist attacks. The objective is the same: the annihilation of the Jewish homeland, 'from the river to the sea.' But now, BDS tries to push the international community to condemn Israel as a pariah state and ostracize all those that support her: Zionists. Jews.
"The delegitimizers, as old-time bigots, mask their thuggery, presenting themselves as victims and hiding their true intentions. They appeal to public feelings against oppression or abuse and the sympathy for underdogs and suffering minorities.
"The BDS movement in Spain acquired its current virulence with the emergence of Podemos, a 'Chavist' far-left party financed by Venezuela and Iran. Podemos won 25% of the votes in Spain's 2015 local elections. Before those elections, BDS was a marginal confederation of small groups focusing on academic and cultural boycotts of Israel. The core group that formed Podemos had been active in the BDS initiatives for years, and hostility against Israel was a top priority in their political agenda.
"As Podemos gained control of the municipal governments in the main Spanish cities, including Madrid, Barcelona, Zaragoza and Cadiz, the anti-Israel movement had access to multiple economic, human and organizational resources. When those far-left groups occupied public institutions, they didn't distinguish between their own sectarian agenda and the government's agenda.
"Local administrations (provincial and municipal) formally joined the BDS movement and declared their territories 'free of Israeli apartheid.' In effect, Judenrein. Stickers were distributed to be exhibited in shops and offices, public companies were instructed not to work with Israeli firms or individuals and Spanish citizens suspected of being associated or sympathetic to the Jewish state were demanded to repudiate it publicly in order not to be excluded from social, political, economic and civic life.
"Podemos has driven over 90 such declarations in Spain in jurisdictions covering a population of over eight million people. Its plan was to create an oil spill of hatred reaching the majority of Spain in 18 months. This was an existential threat, and we had to act....
"No local boycott is too small to go unchallenged. BDS groups carefully manipulate the information reaching political decision makers, spend massive resources on media campaigns and are masters at social media intoxication. In general, pro-Israel groups are lagging behind in the application of analysis and action in those fields."

Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute.
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Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12566/spain-anti-israel

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German Immigration Policy and Jew-Hate - Joseph Puder

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by Joseph Puder

The wrinkle in the German immigration story is Muslim migrant attacks on Jews.

Germany’s immigration policy under Chancellor Angela Merkel is under attack again, this time from within her own government.  There is however another wrinkle to the immigration story, it is the case of Muslim migrant attacks against Jews in Germany.  The recent rape and murder of a Jewish girl named Susanna Maria Feldman, 14, from the city of Mainz, in Western Germany, by a 19-year Muslim migrant, that Merkel enthusiastically admitted into Germany, stirred the country, and raised further questions about the open-door immigration policy of Merkel’s government.

Angela Merkel’s coalition government may be torn apart on the issue of immigration.  Horst Seehofer, leader of the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian conservative party, has pledged to reverse Chancellor Merkel’s open-door policy toward migrants.  Germany has absorbed 1.4 million migrants since 2015, the vast majority of them being Muslims from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan.  Seehofer, the Interior Minister in Merkel’s coalition government is concerned by the rise of the anti-immigrant party Alternative for Germany (AfD) whose success in the polls, and its surprise showing in the 2017 election (capturing 12.6% of the votes) may now threaten the supremacy of his party in Bavaria.  State elections in Bavaria are scheduled for October this year.  For now, Merkel and Seehofer have agreed to wait for a resolution to the immigrant issue at next week’s European Union (EU) summit in Brussels. 

Seehofer has gotten a back wind from his neighboring Austrian government, which tightened its immigration laws, and the more recent victory in Italy of the anti-establishment, anti-immigrant, and anti-European Union coalition of the 5-Star Movement and the Northern League.  This month, Slovenia also elected an anti-immigrant party, the Slovenian Democratic Party, led by former Prime Minister Janez Jansa.  Victor Orban, Hungary’s Prime Minister, and a staunch opponent of Muslim immigrants, stumping for Jansa, declared, “If Europe surrenders to mass population movement and immigration, our own Continent will be lost…The aim is to settle among us people who do not belong to our culture, and who will want to live here according to their own religions and customs.” Seehofer has caused controversy in March this year when he declared that “Islam does not belong to Germany.”  Bavaria’s premier, Markus Söder, siding with Seehofer, said, “Asylum tourism must end, we have to consider our own people, not always focus on the whole of Europe.”

The Muslim migrants’ religious and political culture is steeped in violent anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiments.  It has already been evident in anti-Jewish violence.  In April this year, a 19-year old Israeli-Arab wearing a kippah, to prove the lack of anti-Semitism in Germany, was attacked by Muslim immigrants in Berlin.   A 2017 survey by the Research Office on Anti-Semitism in Berlin documented 947 incidents of anti-Semitic attacks, threats, and anti-Jewish vandalism in Berlin.  It amounts to more than twice the number from the previous year.  In May, 2018, coinciding with President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, waves of anti-Semitic hate protests in Berlin and Munich took place, where Arab and Turkish demonstrators burned Israeli flags, chanted anti-Semitic slogans, and flew the flags of the terrorist organization Hamas.  Synagogues and Jewish centers in Germany are now under police protection.  It is a reminder that Jews are once again persecuted in Germany, albeit, not sanctioned this time by the German government. 

In April this year, a German rap group, Kollegah and Farid Bang, who converted to Islam, received an award for their anti-Semitic lyrics that coincided with the Holocaust Remembrance Day.  German Culture Minister Monika Gruetters said that the lyrics “crossed the line,” and Germany’s Foreign Minister Heiko Maas tweeted, “anti-Semitic provocations do not deserve awards, they are disgusting.” Still, other than words, nothing has been done to punish these anti-Semites.  The German authorities are seemingly more sensitive to Muslim concerns than protecting Jews or for that matter, Christian German girls raped by gangs of Muslim migrants during the 2015/2016 New Year celebrations.

Three years ago Angela Merkel opened Germany’s doors to over a million migrants, most of them fleeing the Syrian civil-war.  They were admitted without being properly vetted.  Some among the majority of single men who arrived in Germany have proven to be terrorists affiliated with the Islamic State who blended with genuine refugees.  Merkel has apparently sought to rehabilitate Germany’s image given its Nazi past.  She undoubtedly meant well.  Her decision however, failed to consider the culture and education of the migrants she admitted.  These migrants were inculcated with hatred toward Jews and Israel, and with little love for Christians and western culture as well.  Yet, little has been done by the German authorities to re-educate the migrants on such values as religious tolerance, or the norms of western democracy, before letting them loose upon German society.

A study last December by the American Jewish Committee found widespread anti-Semitism among Syrian and Iraqi Arab refugees the researchers interviewed.  Merkel, being forced to admit that this about the new arrivals, said “We have a phenomenon, as we have many refugees among whom there are, for example, people of Arab origins who bring another form of anti-Semitism into the country.” Dr. Günther Jikeli, an historian and expert on anti-Semitism who conducted the AJC survey in Berlin concluded that, “This study should send a wake-up call to government and civil society.  Our political leaders must make certain that anti-Semitic attitudes will not be tolerated, and that infractions of the law will be prosecuted.  In addition, the classes that newcomers take to integrate them into German life should include information about Jewish life in Germany and the country’s connections with Israel, as well as values of liberal democracy.”

As a result of the visible rise in anti-Semitic incidents in Germany perpetrated by Muslim migrants, Merkel said that she has appointed a special commissioner to fight against anti-Semitism. Unfortunately, with a multitude of radicalized Muslim immigrants already in Germany, it will be impossible to stamp out the imbedded anti-Semitic attitudes of these migrants, short of expelling them from Germany.  

In the meantime, the EU summit on migration and asylum scheduled for the end of the month will test whether the EU can come together on a unified immigration policy.  It is unlikely however, that Italy for example, would accept migrants currently in Germany as Seehofer wishes to implement.  For Seehofer to act unilaterally in Bavaria, against the explicit opposition from Merkel, could lead to the collapse of the German government, which was sworn in only three months ago.

What Europe is experiencing is another sort of invasion.  In 1683, the Ottoman Turks stood at the gates of Vienna, ready to march on the Vatican and make Europe ‘safe for Islam.’ Today, it is no longer an armed invasion, but nonetheless, the aim of many among the Muslim migrants is to Islamize Europe and Germany.  Given the demographic death-wish of the European natives, it may take only a few decades for Islam to conquer Europe without firing a shot.

Joseph Puder

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270518/german-immigration-policy-and-jew-hate-joseph-puder

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Facing humiliation, Mueller backs away from prosecution of Russian entities - Thomas Lifson

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by Thomas Lifson

Mueller "farms out" his primary mission because it has turned into a farce.

The Mueller special counsel investigation purportedly was instigated to discover possible illicit Russian influence on the 2016 presidential election but now is backing away from the only indictments aimed at Russian entities, leaving only alleged process crimes (such as General Flynn's alleged false statement to the FBI) and alleged crimes that occurred long before the Trump candidacy (such as Paul Manafort's Ukrainian connection).
Devlin Barrett writes in the Washington Post:

In a pair of court filings Friday, the special counsel added four assistant U.S. attorneys to the case against Russian entities and people accused of running an online influence operation targeting American voters.
People familiar with the staffing decision said the new prosecutors are not joining Mueller's team, but rather are being added to the case so that they could someday take responsibility for it when the special counsel ceases operation. The case those prosecutors are joining could drag on for years because the indictment charges a number of Russians who will probably never see the inside of a U.S. courtroom. Russia does not extradite its citizens.

What on Earth could cause a prosecutor to walk away from his central mission to focus instead on incidental and tangential matters? Barrett's use of the words "take responsibility" for the case is the answer. Though not a word of it appears in Barrett's article, the prosecution of the Russian entities has already turned into a farce, as Mueller is caught in a trap of his own making with the hasty indictments of entities he never expected to defend themselves. So slipshod was the work that one of the indicted entities was not even an incorporated entity (i.e., it did not exist) at the time of the alleged offenses. As I wrote more than a month ago:

Special counsel Robert Mueller looks likely to face a huge humiliation in court and a massive public relations disaster. And it couldn't happen to a more deserving guy. Unless a Trump-appointed judge bails him out and grants an exception to federal law, trampling on the rights of the defendants he indicted, Mueller will have to go into court to try a case he doesn't seem to think he can win – or else face the humiliation of dropping the charges he brought against 13 Russian entities (some of which did not exist at the time of the alleged crime) with great fanfare.
Richard Pollock of the Daily Caller News Foundation reports:

Special Counsel Robert Mueller asked a federal judge Tuesday to reject the four-decade-old speedy trial law in the case against 13 Russians and three Russian companies and has asked for an indefinite delay to the Russian collusion trial.

It is the second time Mueller tried to delay the trial. Judge Dabney L. Friedrich, a Trump appointee, rejected the earlier request without comment and ordered the case to go forward.

One of the Russian companies – Concord Management and Consulting – entered the U.S., hired American lawyers, and demanded a speedy trial. The Speedy Trial Act is a 44-year old federal law that dictates that a federal criminal case must begin within 70 days from the date of the indictment.

If the defendant is demanding a speedy trial, there ought to be a very good reason for denying that right. And Mueller's excuse is – let's be blunt – not merely lame, but due to his own misbehavior.

The "complexity" of the case warrants excluding the speedy trial law and delaying the trial, Mueller argued in Tuesday's court filing.

A "district court can, on its own motion or at the request of a party, grant an excludable continuance if 'the ends of justice served by taking such action outweigh the best interest of the public and the defendant in a speedy trial,'" Mueller wrote.

"This case also warrants a continuance and exclusion of time to accommodate the voluminous discovery at issue and to allow sufficient time for the Court to resolve certain outstanding procedural issues unique to discovery in this case," he continued.

I am no lawyer, but the problem with this excuse is obvious to even me: if the case is so complex that extra time is required, then why was the indictment brought in the first place? Why did the special counsel rush the indictment when he now confesses that it was too complex to go to trial?
Andrew McCarthy, who is a brilliant and distinguished attorney and ex-federal prosecutor, agrees with my less well informed opinion that it is too late to make the complexity excuse. He adds an important note about whose rights would be violated:

"Speedy trial rights belong to the defendant, and if the defendant pushes for a trial within the 70 days, the government has little cause to complain," McCarthy said. "If the case was too complex, the government had the option of holding off on seeking an indictment until it was ready to proceed to trial. When a prosecutor files an indictment, it is tantamount to saying, 'We are ready to go.'"

Another gambit is being employed by Team Mueller to attempt to justify a delay:

... Mueller informed the court on May 16 his office was prepared to enter two terabytes of Russian social media into the record, thereby flooding the docket with a huge amount of evidence, all of it in Russian. The volume could fill 3,000 CD-ROM discs.

And McCarthy debunks this move:

It's "inappropriate for a prosecutor to manufacture complexity and then contend that things are too complex," McCarthy told TheDCNF. "If a prosecutor is disclosing mountains of foreign language materials without an understanding or explanation of their relevance to the case, that is a delaying tactic and an attempt to chew up the defendant's resources."

The tactic "is apt to make the presiding judge very angry," he added.

My surmise is that Mueller never expected the Russian defendants even to show up because they are immune from any penalties, being resident in Russia, where an American court verdict could be disregarded with no extradition possible. The indictments, in other words, were for show, to persuade the pubic that his multi-multi-million dollar operation was producing results and going after nefarious actors from Russia.
Again, being blunt, it looks to me as though Mueller was showboating, using the justice system for propaganda purposes but without an apparent actual case ready to go forward. I am no expert at all on the canons of legal ethics, but this does sound like an abuse of the federal courts if there was no intent to proceed with a prosecution on a timely basis within the requirements of the law. The defendant, Concord Management and Consulting, which retained a top-tier law firm, Reed Smith, for its defense counsel and is pushing for the timely trial to which it is entitled, may well wish to pursue some sort of ethics complaint if Judge Friedrich does not grant Mueller's plea for a delay and Mueller then moves to dismiss charges. That is obviously up to the company and its law firm[.]
If Judge Friedrich already dismissed an earlier plea for delay without comment, why would he now change his mind?

It is hard to see how this case will end up as anything but a humiliation in court and a gigantic public relations disaster for Mueller and his merry band of Democratic Party donors.

After ignoring this elephant in the bathtub, Barrett draws no conclusion about the embarrassment factor, but rather points in another direction:

The development suggests Mueller is contemplating the end of his work and farming out any potentially outstanding prosecutions to other parts of the Justice Department.

Have you ever heard of anyone "farming out" the central mission of a multi-million-dollar operation in order to focus on tangents? Even though the Trump-hating media will refuse to mention it, this move is a confession that Mueller is cutting his losses and leaving others to take the blame when the case collapses.

Caricature of Robert Mueller by Donkey Hotey via Flickr.


Thomas Lifson

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/06/facing_humiliation_mueller_backs_away_from_prosecution_of_russian_entities.html

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Thirty years, and we're still waiting for global warming predictions to come true - Rick Moran

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by Rick Moran

It's astonishing how wrong the experts have been.

It was June 23, 1988 when NASA's Dr. James Hansen testified before Congress about the coming catastrophic warming of the planet. He gave three different scenarios for the progress of global warming over the next 30 years.

Well, it's 30 years on from that testimony. How did Hansen do?

Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Hansen's testimony described three possible scenarios for the future of carbon dioxide emissions. He called Scenario A "business as usual," as it maintained the accelerating emissions growth typical of the 1970s and '80s. This scenario predicted the earth would warm 1 degree Celsius by 2018. Scenario B set emissions lower, rising at the same rate today as in 1988. Mr. Hansen called this outcome the "most plausible," and predicted it would lead to about 0.7 degree of warming by this year. He added a final projection, Scenario C, which he deemed highly unlikely: constant emissions beginning in 2000. In that forecast, temperatures would rise a few tenths of a degree before flatlining after 2000.
Thirty years of data have been collected since Mr. Hansen outlined his scenarios – enough to determine which was closest to reality. And the winner is Scenario C. Global surface temperature has not increased significantly since 2000, discounting the larger-than-usual El Niño of 2015-16. Assessed by Mr. Hansen's model, surface temperatures are behaving as if we had capped 18 years ago the carbon-dioxide emissions responsible for the enhanced greenhouse effect. But we didn't. And it isn't just Mr. Hansen who got it wrong. Models devised by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have, on average, predicted about twice as much warming as has been observed since global satellite temperature monitoring began 40 years ago.

This is nothing new to those who have tracked the hysteria of global warming advocates over the years. But the Journal article illustrates not only just how wrong they've been, but how they continue to ignore evidence from their own mainstream sources that their predictions are bogus.

As observed temperatures diverged over the years from his predictions, Mr. Hansen doubled down. In a 2007 case on auto emissions, he stated in his deposition that most of Greenland's ice would soon melt, raising sea levels 23 feet over the course of 100 years. Subsequent research published in Nature magazine on the history of Greenland's ice cap demonstrated this to be impossible. Much of Greenland's surface melts every summer, meaning rapid melting might reasonably be expected to occur in a dramatically warming world. But not in the one we live in. The Nature study found only modest ice loss after 6,000 years of much warmer temperatures than human activity could ever sustain.

Note that both the IPCC data and the study in Nature magazine directly contradict Hansen, yet he continues to spout his predictions as if they're going to come true any time now.
Other swings and misses by Hansen on climate:

Several more of Mr. Hansen's predictions can now be judged by history. Have hurricanes gotten stronger, as Mr. Hansen predicted in a 2016 study? No. Satellite data from 1970 onward shows no evidence of this in relation to global surface temperature. Have storms caused increasing amounts of damage in the U.S.? Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show no such increase in damage, measured as a percentage of gross domestic product. How about stronger tornadoes? The opposite may be true, as NOAA data offers some evidence of a decline. The list of what didn't happen is long and tedious.

Skeptical arguments against climate change are dismissed out of hand by scientists like Hansen, because many of them have staked their careers and reputations on the notion of catastrophic climate change. As the evidence continues to show this not to be the case, their arguments devolve into personal attacks on their critics. The ignoramuses who write on "science" for mainstream publications lap up the predictions of doom and gloom, knowing it's what the public wants. 

We may be close to a tipping point on opinions regarding climate change, as the preponderance of evidence that says Hansen's and his colleagues' predictions of catastrophe have been, at best, exaggerated and, at worst, deliberately misleading continues to grow. 

Perhaps that shouldn't surprise us. The debate over global warming is at the confluence of science and politics. And any time politics is involved, you can expect dishonesty and slavery to an ideological agenda having nothing to do with science.

Rick Moran

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/06/thirty_years_and_were_still_waiting_for_global_warming_predictions_to_come_true.html

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