Re: Pompeo, the coronavirus, and the "risks" of sovereignty - Caroline Glick

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by Caroline Glick

Hat tip: Jenny Grigg

There appear to be two reasons that Pompeo came to Israel this week

On Sunday, Saudi journalist Abdelhameed Al-Ghoban gave an interview to the BBC in Arabic. His remarks, which were translated by MEMRI, were devoid of nuance.

“Today, the public is informed. There is a deluge [of opinions] against the Palestinian cause. It is no longer just public support for normalization and building ties with Israel. [Our] public has turned against the Palestinians in general. Unfortunately, the Palestinians have lost. The Palestinians have not contributed anything. We can say that they are emotional people whose behavior is governed by their feelings.”

Al-Ghoban added, “It is in our strategic interest, and in keeping with our future economic interests, to maintain real relations with Israel. Israel is an advanced country and we can benefit from it.”

Al-Ghoban’s remarks are not a lone voice in the wilderness. During the Ramadan Muslim holy month, Saudi television networks broadcast two series that portray Jews and Israelis in a positive light.

Palestinian leaders are beside themselves at what they view as pan-Arab abandonment. In remarks to Israel Hayom this week, a senior Palestinian official bitterly referred to the mild criticisms of U.S. President Donald Trump’s peace plan and of Israel’s plan to apply its sovereignty to its communities in Judea and Samaria and to the Jordan Valley as no more than “lip service.”

Israeli leftist groups are hanging their hopes for torpedoing Israel’s sovereignty plans on the European Union. France’s plan, supported by Luxemburg, Belgium and Ireland to impose EU sanctions on Israel in the event it implements its sovereignty plan was widely reported this week.

But like the Palestinians, Israeli leftists are likely to be disappointed. EU rules require all decisions to be made by consensus. And there is no consensus on sanctioning Israel.

Even worse for the leftists is the fact that Israel’s plan to apply its parts of Judea and Samaria is not a unilateral move. Israel will carry it out in the framework of the U.S. peace plan. If the EU retaliates against Israel for implementing the first stage of the Trump peace plan, it will antagonize the White House which will rightly view the move as anti-American. This state of affairs will increase the number of EU member states that will oppose anti-Israel sanctions – or any other anti-Israel response to the sovereignty plan.

Given this state of affairs, Israeli leftist groups will have to learn to live with disappointment. Europe will not be able to force the government to embrace their radical policies.

There is another reason that Israel needn’t be too concerned that applying its laws to parts of Judea and Samaria will damage it diplomatically or economically. To understand what it is, it is worth considering what was likely a key reason, if not the key reason that U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Israel this week, in the middle of the coronavirus global pandemic.

Commentators in Israel and the U.S. were surprised by Pompeo’s visit. Like most world leaders, Pompeo has been grounded since late February. Why was he breaking the coronavirus lockdown to fly to Israel of all places for a few hours? What was so important that he couldn’t discuss it on a secure videoconference?

Most media outlets claimed that the sovereignty plan is what brought him to Jerusalem. But that made little sense even before Pompeo arrived and said that he wasn’t here for that. Both in Pompeo’s interview to Israel Hayom on Tuesday, and in Ambassador David Friedman’s interview with Israel Hayom last week, they made clear that the Trump administration continues to support Israel’s plan. Friedman even made clear that he views the issue with great urgency.

Another popular explanation was that Pompeo flew to Israel to discuss Iran. This too, makes no sense. Israel and the U.S. are completely coordinated in their Iran policies.

There appear to be two reasons that Pompeo came to Israel this week of all times. The first, and more discussed one, may be the less significant one. That reason is China. On both sides of the partisan divide, U.S. leaders have long been concerned about Israel’s technological ties with China and with its willingness to grant infrastructure construction contracts to Chinese firms. In an interview with the Washington Free Beacon, published on the eve of Pompeo’s arrival in Israel, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David Schenker said, “We don’t want them to get into a problematic relationship with China.”

Schenker focused his remarks on U.S. concerns with Israeli-Chinese contracts for major infrastructure projects, like a water desalination plant and the Haifa port.

“China sees a lot of value in a relationship with Israel, the high-tech, the innovations” Schenker said.

He continued, “Israel also needs all sorts of infrastructure and it looks to China. China is a low-cost bidder and Chinese companies do all this work. But there are things that have to be taken into account. We also have interests and we want to be able to work with Israel.”

Pompeo emphasized U.S. concern with Israel-China ties both in his discussions with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and in his remarks to the Israeli media. There is no doubt that the U.S.’s heightened pressure on Israel to lower the flame on its ties with China is a reasonable. China after all, disseminated the coronavirus plague worldwide and hid the dangers from the world for two months while it purchased the global supply of ventilators and personal protective equipment.

Yet at the same time, even these heightened concerns don’t explain Pompeo’s sudden decision to fly to Israel. There have been no notable new developments in Israel’s ties with China in recent months. And Israel announced last year that it would not be participating in Huawei’s 5G network. Certainly, the messages Pompeo communicated to Netanyahu could just have easily and effectively been delivered in a videoconference.

This brings us to the coronavirus itself.

Last Tuesday, the Israel Institute for Biological Research in Nes Ziona completed a “groundbreaking scientific development” towards a potential treatment for the coronavirus based on an antibody that neutralizes SARS-CoV2, the virus that causes the disease. It was the second breakthrough last week by institute scientists, who days earlier announce they had isolated a key coronavirus antibody.

In its announcement of the developments, the Defense Ministry said that the institute is now pursuing a patent for its development, after which it will begin discussions with international manufacturers.

Defense Minister Naftali Bennet, who visited the institute last Thursday with President Reuven Rivlin to receive a briefing on the discovery said at the end of the tour, “I instructed the defense establishment and the institute to move ahead at the highest speed to develop a mass cure. We will not spare money or resources. We will do everything in our power to shorten the time it takes to have a commercial medicine.”

The first report of Pompeo’s sudden decision to visit Jerusalem this week came last Wednesday, the day after the Institute of Biological Research’s initial announcement, and the day before Bennet and Rivlin visited the institute.

In his remarks at the Prime Minister’s Office with Netanyahu Wednesday morning, Pompeo mentioned U.S.-Israeli cooperation in fighting the pandemic. Turning to Netanyahu he said, “Israeli technologies, Israeli medical expertise, all of the things that you and I and our teams can work on together. I know we’ll deliver good outcomes and decrease risk for people all across the world from this global pandemic.”

The Defense Ministry’s announcement of the Institute of Biological Research’s newest breakthrough noted, “This is an important milestone, which will be followed by a series of complex tests and a process of regulatory approvals.”

That process could take several months. Experts in and out of the defense establishment note that it is too early to know the full implications of the discovery. Obviously, if Israel has developed a cure for the coronavirus, its economic and diplomatic position will be upgraded significantly.

But even if the Institute for Biological Research’s latest discovery doesn’t lead to an immediate cure for the coronavirus, it is clear that the biomedical and technological capabilities that Israel has demonstrated in its treatment and research of the coronavirus have solidified its place among the world leading nations in these critical areas.

Arab states that are driven towards Israel due to their shared interest in preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons and becoming a regional hegemon will cling to Israel ever more tightly now. European governments that seek to punish Israel for asserting its sovereign rights in Judea and Samaria, will have to balance their hostility with their desire to benefit from cooperation with Israel.

It is very possible that the main foreign policy challenge facing Israel today is not how to minimize the risks of diplomatic blowback for applying its laws in Judea and Samaria. It is figuring out how to maximize Israel’s new global position in a manner that will strengthen us diplomatically, economically and strategically into the future.

Originally published in Israel Hayom. 


Caroline Glick

Source: http://carolineglick.com/pompeo-the-coronavirus-and-the-risks-of-sovereignty/

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No Justice, No Freedom - Bruce Thornton

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by Bruce Thornton

When justice is stripped of her blindfold - and her scales are tampered with.

The opening credits of the Perry Mason television drama featured a statue of justice as a blindfolded woman raising aloft a pair of scales. This common visual metaphor captures the two critical dimensions of justice: balancing the punishment with the crime, and the equality of all under the law.

Four years ago the Obama administration and rogue partisans in the FBI and DOJ abused their powers in order to keep Donald Trump from being elected, and then to hamstring and sabotage his administration. Now we are nearing the end of the investigations into those crimes, and the truth long obvious to many will finally be confirmed. But if the verification of these crimes is not followed by indictments and the malefactors put on trial, our political system will be seriously damaged, and we citizens will lose faith in the integrity of our justice system and its role in protecting our political freedom

Like freedom, our view of justice as embodying fairness and balance has not been universal to all peoples. They may have had laws, but those laws were not necessarily just. Our notion of justice arises from the creation of constitutional states that first took form in ancient Greece. Before then, power over others was a personal possession of rulers based on their assumed superiority of wealth or birth, and as such was unaccountable to the masses. These rulers made the laws and enforced them, but they were not always subject to the same laws nor were they enforced fairly. Like governing, applying justice, then, was a function of the ruler’s status and privilege, or his alleged connection to the all-knowing gods. Justice, like political power, resided in men, not in laws equally applied.

The constitutional city-states of ancient Greece invented the transformational ideas that political power should be separated from flawed mortals and enshrined in laws and institutions that men managed and applied, but always remained the possession of the political community that outlived any particular man. By the time of the Athenian democracy, citizen males whether rich or poor, illiterate or educated, brought indictments against malefactors, made prosecution and defense speeches, and sat with several hundred “jurors” to adjudicate innocence or guilt, and determined the punishment. That they did so at times wrongly or corruptly, merely confirms their flawed humanity.

That responsibility and privilege of meting out justice given to all citizens reinforced their political equality and freedom. Our system avoids the excesses of the direct democracy of Athens by having professional judges and prosecutors, but they too are still accountable to the people through their elected representatives, or in some states directly through the ballot box. An important exercise of our freedom is to demand that justice, which can involve incarceration that takes away our freedom, be applied equally to all, and balanced with the offense. Anything else is tyranny.

We just saw an example of tyrannical “justice.” A state district court judge in Texas sentenced a salon owner to a week in jail because she opened her business so she and her employees could feed their families. She did not violate a law, but a proclamation from the governor to keep “non-essential” businesses closed. Such ad hoc proclamations are problematic because they frequently reflect subjective or arbitrary judgments of risk that are not based on reasonable, let alone scientific, evidence. Yet the judge in Texas imposed a draconian punishment for no reason other than the business-owner’s refusal to grovel before his authority and admit she was “selfish.” He violated the foundations of true justice––balancing the punishment to the offense, and applying it equally––which led to the woman losing her freedom until the state’s Supreme Court intervened.

Such distortions of justice characterize the lockdown orders issued mainly by blue-state governors. As insulting to the citizens’ freedom as those have been, more serious is the corruption of the Obama administration, especially his FBI and DOJ, that began in the last days of his second term. The President of the United States became involved in a concerted partisan effort to damage the campaign of his potential successor. After Trump was elected, deep-state operatives continued to undermine his administration for four years, spawning a two-year illicit investigation by a special counsel, and preposterous Articles of Impeachment from the Democrat-controlled House. All were riddled with violations of investigatory laws and protocols ranging from the fraudulent FISA court warrants to the withholding of exculpatory evidence.

This attack on President Trump by partisan members of executive agencies of which he is the head has serially demonstrated the corruption of the two prerequisites of true justice: balance and equality under the law. The hounding of Michael Flynn is perhaps the most egregious deformation of true justice. The pretext for investigating him, that he violated the archaic Logan Act, was facially absurd. As the incoming National Security Advisor, speaking with the Russian ambassador was unexceptional, indeed required of his position. That conversation was recorded, as all such contacts are, and then Flynn and others mentioned in the talk were illegally “unmasked.” Even though FBI agents said Flynn didn’t lie, the FBI still set a “perjury trap” with questions about the conversation that they already knew the contents of, and that was perfectly legal. The FBI slyly discouraged Flynn from having a lawyer present, and presto, an American hero who had served his country in war and peace was now a criminal sentenced to prison after having been bankrupted paying for his defense.
Justice was seriously violated because Flynn, though innocent, was treated much differently than many other people who actually committed crimes. The most egregious of whom is Hillary Clinton, who clearly is guilty of using a private server to transmit classified information, which  constitutes a felony. For that crime, she was questioned unsworn, with her two lawyers present, both of which would have been material witnesses in any prosecution. Clinton’s “bleaching” of the server and destruction of tens of thousands of emails, which constitutes obstruction of justice, were matters of indifference to James Comey’s FBI. So much for equality under the law and punishment balancing the crime.

So Clinton committed crimes and went scot-free, while Flynn did not commit the crime of lying to the FBI (which Obama seems to think is “perjury”), and underwent the ordeal of having his son threatened, his savings wiped out, and his reputation besmirched, as were other victims like Carter Page. The DOJ has asked the court to vacate the case against Flynn, and that happened only because Donald Trump became president and appointed an Attorney General who understands what true justice is.

Numerous other examples from this corrupt scheme likewise illustrate the violation of justice. Flynn did not commit lie to the FBI and suffered like Jean Valjean, while agency functionaries like James Clapper, John Brennan, and Andrew McCabe lied under oath with impunity. FISA warrants marred with 17 violations were based on the transparently bogus Russian kompromat known as the Steele Dossier paid for by the Clinton campaign and the DNC––facts the petitioners did not reveal to the court––all for dubious partisan purposes that required treating some people differently from others. So far, these violations have gone unpunished except for a few miscreants getting “fired,” which means pulling down a cushy federal pension while enjoying an equally cushy gig with MSNBC.

When such offenses committed by “public servants” sworn to uphold the Constitution go unpunished, our whole political order that protects our freedom is compromised. When justice that is supposed to be blind and balanced becomes corrupted by inequality and excesses, the equality of all free citizens before the law is endangered, for then, to paraphrase Orwell, some pigs are more free and equal than others, hollowing out and weakening those critical political goods. After all, that same sort of corruption provided the offenses that justified the American Revolution in the Declaration of Independence, the bulk of which is a catalogue of George III’s unjust violations of the colonists’ rights, “a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.” 

Similarly, the “soft” tyranny of concentrated power created by our technocratic “managerial elite” is the aim of those who would not accept the legal election of Donald Trump, and who continue trying to damage his administration and forestall his reelection. For such ruling class, true justice must give way to “social justice,” a mask for the further concentration of power at the expense of our liberty. This warping of justice is camouflaged by its claims to eradicate inequality, racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and other crimes they have hung on Donald Trump and his supporters. But like all tyranny, it’s really all about power.

Over the last few years we’ve seen Justice stripped of her blindfold, and her scales tampered with. As for their victims, the perpetrators and their media hirelings respond as the Gallic chieftain Brennus did to the Romans when they protested the crooked scales that he was using to weigh out the tribute they owed. Throwing his sword on the scales, he sneered, “Vae victis!”––To hell with the conquered.

If we want to avoid becoming a world where sheer power determines justice, all these investigations must end with indictments, trials, and condign punishment in order to hold the malefactors accountable, and deter future ones. But if they are left unpunished, then we will find ourselves increasingly living in a world where justice is not blind, and all are not equal under the law.


Bruce Thornton is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/05/no-justice-no-freedom-bruce-thornton/

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Flynn Judge Ignores Supreme Court and the Constitution - Daniel John Sobieski

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by Daniel John Sobieski

There is no understudy prosecutor to be employed when one party says he’s innocent and the other admits they have no case. Game over.

Which part of United States v. Michael Flynn does Judge Emmet Sullivan not understand? There is no third party in the case title -- only the names of the accuser and the accused. There is no understudy prosecutor to be employed when one party says he’s innocent and the other admits they have no case. Game over. The defendant is a free man unless you are in Judge Sullivan’s court where the signpost up ahead says “The Twilight Zone.”

On our planet, when there is no prosecutor to prosecute, there is no prosecution. Case is dismissed. Not on Judge Sullivan’s planet. For Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn it must have seen like a ruling from a parallel universe when, in an Alice-In-Wonderland meets Groundhog Day moment, for Judge Sullivan’s appointed former Judge John Gleeson to argue against AG Barr and defendant Flynn, and even invent a new charge of perjury for withdrawing his guilty plea entered under severe coercion and duress.

Judge Gleeson resigned from the bench in 2016 to return to private practice. A judicial activist, he was appointed to serve in the Eastern District of New York by President Bill Clinton in 1994. Presumably, the chance to screw President Trump and his former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn was too much to pass up. As the Daily Caller notes:

Gleeson has already argued against dismissal in Flynn’s case, saying in a Monday editorial for the Washington Post that accepting Barr’s recommendation would damage the justice system.
“Prosecutors deserve a ‘presumption of regularity’ -- the benefit of the doubt that they are acting honestly and following the rules. But when the facts suggest they have abused their power, that presumption fades. If prosecutors attempt to dismiss a well-founded prosecution for impermissible or corrupt reasons, the people would be ill-served if a court blindly approved their dismissal request,” Gleeson wrote. “The independence of the court protects us all when executive-branch decisions smack of impropriety; it also protects the judiciary itself from becoming a party to corruption.”

Prosecutors dropping a case in the face of overwhelming exculpatory evidence does not damage the justice system -- hiding exculpatory evidence pointing to a defendant’s innocence does, as does one administration conspiring to entrap and frame a defendant chosen to work in a subsequent incoming administration.

This may be the first time you’ve heard of the “presumption of regularity” for prosecutors. It’s the first time I have. I’m more familiar with the presumption of innocence for the defendant and the right to a fair trial. Flynn was denied a fair trial by hiding exculpatory evidence as well as evidence of a conspiracy to entrap. Then he had to stand before a pompous and bloviating judge who suggested that this man who served his country honorably for more than three decades just might be guilty of treason if the prosecutors had thought of it -- a capital offense.

Harvard law Professor Adam Dershowitz suggests it is Sullivan and sorcerer’s apprentice Gleeson who are guilty of impropriety. “Judges Are Umpires, Not Ringmasters; Sullivan invites outsiders to weigh in on the Flynn case -- an unconstitutional judicial power grab,” law professor Dershowitz writes in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. Dershowitz notes:

The Constitution limits the jurisdiction of federal judges to actual cases and controversies. They may not offer advisory opinions or intrude on executive or legislative powers, except when the other branches have exercised them in an unconstitutional manner. Federal judges are umpires deciding matters about which litigants disagree. If the litigants come to an agreement, there is no controversy. The case is over…
By inviting the irrelevant opinions of outsiders, Judge Sullivan is unconstitutionally encroaching on executive power. Only the executive has the authority to prosecute or not.

SCOTUS is bound to crack down on this if it gets that far. Sullivan's abuse of amicus curiae (friend of the court) is both contrary to his own precedent, and in violation of a recent SCOTUS ruling. They actually ruled against this a few days ago in a 9-0 decision authored by RBG herself. The judiciary is simply not allowed to come up with new charges, new evidence, or new opinions on the fly. On the website of the National Law Journal, it is detailed how Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, writing the majority opinion, read the riot act to an appellate court that distorted amicus curiae beyond all reasonable meaning:

Violation of the “party presentation” principle -- central to Thursday’s ruling -- is not often the basis for deciding a high court case. The principle refers to the long-standing feature of the court system that the parties involved in litigation, and not judges, are responsible for raising the legal issues a court must resolve.
That principle rarely appears in a Supreme Court decision, and the ruling was all the more remarkable that its author – Ginsburg -- rebuked a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in accusatory terms that said the court’s “transformation” of a case went “well beyond the pale.”
Ginsburg’s opinion was in the case United States v. Sineneng-Smith. Evelyn Sineneng-Smith, who operated an immigration consulting firm in San Jose, California, was convicted of violating a federal law making it a felony to “encourage or induce an alien to come to, enter, or reside in the United States, knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that such coming to, entry, or residence is or will be in violation of law.”…
“Instead of adjudicating the case presented by the parties, the appeals court named three amici and invited them to brief and argue issues framed by the panel, including a question Sineneng-Smith herself never raised earlier: ‘Whether the statute of conviction is overbroad… under the First Amendment,’” Ginsburg wrote…
Although a court is not “hide-bound” by a party’s counsel’s precise arguments, Ginsburg said “the Ninth Circuit’s radical transformation of this case goes well beyond the pale.” The Ninth Circuit’s judgment was vacated and the case remanded “for reconsideration shorn of the overbreadth inquiry interjected by the appellate panel and bearing a fair resemblance to the case shaped by the parties.”

The case against Michael Flynn should also be vacated and dismissed. Cases should be decided on the merits of the cases presented by the two sides, not third parties with only an ideological agenda to contribute. Judge Sullivan had already dismissed some two dozen pro-Flynn briefs. Now he’s invited an anti-Flynn third party not only to submit a new brief but to actually prosecute a new case with new charges. Double jeopardy, anyone?

A case in Judge Sullivan’s past shows just how wrong he is now,’ As Margot Cleveland writes in the Federalist:

…the government had criminally charged Fokker Services with violations of export control laws. The government and defendant entered a deferred prosecution agreement, under which the government would dismiss the charges in exchange for Fokker Services agreeing to several compliance provisions. But when the parties went before a federal district court judge to formalize the arrangement and a waiver of the Speedy Trial Act, the presiding judge refused to accept the waiver -- which in essence doomed the agreement -- because he believed the agreement was too lenient on the business owners.
The government filed a “writ of mandamus” with the D.C. Circuit Court. A writ of mandamus is a procedural machination that allows a party to seek to force a lower court to act as required by law.

The original agreement between the two parties was allowed to stand, unencumbered by third-party busybodies and an activist judge. Something like that might happen and should happen in the Flynn case. What Judge Sullivan has done is unconscionable and unconstitutional:

The Fokker decision was a 2016 decision from the D.C. Circuit Court and, as such, establishes “mandatory precedent,” i.e., precedent that must be followed, by all D.C. district court judges -- including Judge Sullivan. Thus, Judge Sullivan’s directive that Judge Gleeson, as amicus curiae, should “present arguments in opposition to the government’s Motion to Dismiss,” cannot stand: It conflicts with controlling circuit court precedent, and more significantly with the U.S. Constitution.

Justice delayed is justice denied, Judge Sullivan. The Constitution was not written on an Etch-a-Sketch. And there is nothing in it that excuses or justifies your judicial tyranny.


Daniel John Sobieski is a former editorial writer for Investor’s Business Daily and freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Human Events, Reason Magazine, and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/05/flynn_judge_ignores_supreme_court_and_the_constitution.html

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Are even Democrats waking up to their $3-trillion stimulus mistake? - Monica Showalter

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by Monica Showalter

Why would a Democrat, who knew this massive pork program was "dead in the water" in the Senate, still vote "no" on it, undoubtedly enraging House speaker Nancy Pelosi?

One good stimulus deserves another. Or so the Democrat logic goes.

Coming on the heels of the $2-trillion March 27 "Coronavirus Relief Aid, Relief and Stimulus" (CARES) Act, which they bitterly signed onto (not containing all the pork they asked for), Democrats vowed a second stimulus with what they really wanted — all of it — and less than two months later, they've rolled it out — the $3-trillion HEROES act.

There's just one problem with this raining-money concoction: twelve Democrats voted against it, making this not just "dead in the water," as Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said, but actually cause for concern for Democrats. After all, if a bill is not going to pass in the Senate, what's the harm in voting for it? Yet twelve Democrats still said "no."

Spearheaded by squad-style leftist Rep. Pramila Jayapal, it was like a two year-old getting into the cookie jar and flinging the contents all over.

Nearly every last Democratic Party pet cause was there — free money for illegal aliens who will have new reasons to hotfoot it across the border, huge pension bailouts for overpaid public servants, whose earnings vastly outstrip those in the private sector, and who got those pensions based on public employee union donations to Democrats, federal funds for something called "cannabis banking," money for mail-in voting, the better to set the stage for nationwide ballot-harvesting — the horror is obvious. It passed in the House, of course, and were it to get through the Senate, the taxpayers who make much less money are going to have to shell out, and the six-hour lunch crowd and the bureaucrats will be free to continue their profligate lifestyle. Fiscal mismanagement will be rewarded, wasteful, and unsustainable greenie projects will roll in the dough.

It's incredibly unpopular, and coming on the heels of the last stimulus just a few weeks ago, it looks to be the height of irresponsibility. Hadn't we just spent an unprecedented $2 trillion for the last stimulus? How soon they forget. Soon as one stimulus is spent, they want another, and this one hasn't even been entirely spent yet.

We still don't know how this previous stimulus is going to get paid back, given the persistent and extended state of lockdowns, a prison term, preventing Americans from earning a living. With 16% of Americans unemployed, how will the tax base even raise it?

It's also very cynical. New York's Governor Cuomo stated that he thought it would go through because political leaders (read: Trump and Congress) wouldn't dare try to run for election without it.



In response to a New York reporter who literally asked "whaddaya gonna do" about 20% coming cuts to state and local government, Cuomo said federal cash would have to come to the states as a result of Congress coming through, offering this reasoning:

The survival instinct of a politician who has to run for reelection this year, in this state, or any state affected by COVID, which is most states, they will not come home and stand for reelection if they don't provide funding for state and local governments, because they would have created a devastating circumstance in their state. If we have to cut schools, police, fire, hospitals, because Washington didn't provide reasonable funding, when they did bail out millionaires, and billionaires, and rich corporations, but they're not going to fund police and fire? I don't think any Washington official is goingto come home and present that case to people they represent. So, I believe we will receive Washignton funding, due to the survival instinct of political officials.

You notice he doesn't mention laying off bureaucrats in his list; he goes for the old police and fire to shake out more federal money. It's a sign he's still viewing the coronavirus crisis as business as usual, given that he's playing the old game of holding visible and well liked public employees who do useful work such as teachers hostage, in order to prevent cutting the backroom fat among the diversity officers and deputy directors for green compliance.

After that, he ranted about "holding them accountable" — for paying the bills for his fiscal mismanagement.

What it explains is the Democratic governors' enthusiasm for lockdown. Lock down the economy, fail to find ways to put people back to work, forget about earning money through the tax base, and just wait for the federal cash. Someone will pay for it; it's political instinct, as Cuomo posits. Each leftist expects some other state to pay, or money to be just printed out on demand.

Not a one of them focuses hard on what needs to be focused on now, which is making government efficient and sustainable, given the pandemic, and getting the tax base back up. Who needs a tax base when all you need to do is Blame Trump?

It's dangerous thinking, which is why it's so significant that twelve Democrats, overriding House speaker Nancy Pelosi, who normally brooks no dissent, nevertheless broke ranks and said no. They knew that this would enrage her, yet they did it anyway.

Some of these characters know which way the political winds are blowing.

Image credit: Pixabay public domain.

Monica Showalter

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/05/are_even_democrats_waking_up_to_their_3_trillion_stimulus_mistake.html

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Why Hamas Loves Human Rights Watch - Bassam Tawil

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by Bassam Tawil

"[The Middle East is populated by authoritarian regimes with appalling human rights records. Yet in recent years Human Rights Watch has written far more condemnations of Israel for violations of international law than any other country in the region." – Robert L. Bernstein, The New York Times, October 19, 2009.

• The HRW report focuses on only three Arab towns in Israel – Jisr al-Zarqa, Qalansawa and Ein Mahel, with a total population of 50,000. It deliberately ignores the other two million or so Arab Israelis. Moreover, the report fails to mention that the housing crisis affects not only Arabs, but also Jews.
• In 2015, the Israeli government decided to implement the Economic Development Plan, a multi-year plan of about $12.3 billion, targeting issues such as planning, employment, transportation and education in the Arab sector. This groundbreaking plan is the largest and most comprehensive ever advanced to close gaps for Israel's Arab society.... Hamas, meanwhile, has done virtually nothing to solve the debilitating housing crisis of the two million Palestinians living under its rule in the Gaza Strip.
• This is the same Hamas that is now using the HRW report to shed crocodile tears over the alleged housing crisis in the Arab sector in Israel.... A terrorist group that has failed its own people on an epic level is pretending that it is worried about where Arabs in Israel will live.
• The HRW report, which ignores Hamas's atrocities against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, is now being used by the terrorist group as "evidence" of why Israel should be destroyed and replaced with an Islamic state.
• "[The Middle East is populated by authoritarian regimes with appalling human rights records. Yet in recent years Human Rights Watch has written far more condemnations of Israel for violations of international law than any other country in the region." – Robert L. Bernstein, The New York Times, October 19, 2009.

Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group dedicated to the destruction of Israel, is so pleased with Human Rights Watch (HRW) that this week it issued a statement praising the organization for its systematic and continuous bashing of Israel. Pictured: Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, speaks at a press conference on January 21, 2014 in Berlin. (Photo by John MacDougall/AFP via Getty Images)

Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group dedicated to the destruction of Israel, is apparently very pleased with Human Rights Watch (HRW), an international organization headquartered in New York. Hamas is so pleased that this week it issued a statement praising HRW for its systematic and continuous bashing of Israel.

It is rather rare for a radical Islamic terrorist group to heap praise on a Western supposed human rights organization, particularly an American one.

Exceptions exist in all areas, however, and HRW, known for its anti-Israel bias and for peddling anti-Israel hate, stands as an especially blazing one.

What motivated Hamas to express its admiration for HRW? Another anti-Israel report, this time claiming that Arab citizens of Israel are facing a "housing shortage."

The HRW report focuses on only three Arab towns in Israel -- Jisr al-Zarqa, Qalansawa and Ein Mahel, with a total population of 50,000. It deliberately ignores the other two million or so Arab Israelis. Moreover, the report fails to mention that the housing crisis affects not only Arabs, but also Jews.

"We are on the brink of a socio-economic abyss," said Raul Srugo, President of the Israel Builders Association.

"As long as the government doesn't begin strategic planning for the next generation in Israel, we'll find ourselves in the biggest crisis since the state was founded. In 2030, there will be 12 million residents in Israel, and in 2050 there will be 17 million people here. Remember, this is a country where it takes 15 years to approve construction of a single [new] neighborhood."

HRW, however, does not seem inclined to allow a few crucial facts to spoil its efforts to delegitimize Israel by accusing it of "discrimination" against Arab Israelis.

The good news is that Israel has been working hard in recent years to solve the housing crisis -- for both Arabs and Jews.

In 2015, the Israeli government decided to implement the Economic Development Plan, a multi-year plan of about $12.3 billion, targeting issues such as planning, employment, transportation and education in the Arab sector. This groundbreaking plan is the largest and most comprehensive ever advanced to close gaps for Israel's Arab society.

Hamas, meanwhile, has done virtually nothing to solve the debilitating housing crisis of the two million Palestinians living under its rule in the Gaza Strip.

Since its violent takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007, the terrorist group Hamas has turned the lives of Palestinians into misery, leaving them with no income, electricity or drinking water. Last year Palestinians in the Gaza Strip finally took to the streets to protest economic hardship and Hamas corruption.

Hamas taxes every kind of commodity, steals humanitarian aid, and builds terror tunnels below schools and international aid institutions. In addition, Hamas has been stealing cement that enters the Gaza Strip in order to build terror tunnels through which they hope to kidnap or kill Israelis, rather than construct new houses for Palestinians.

This is the same Hamas that is now using the HRW report to shed crocodile tears over the alleged housing crisis in the Arab sector in Israel.

A terrorist group that has failed its own people on an epic level is pretending that it is worried about where Arabs in Israel will live.

The Israel Planning Administration (IPA) said in response to the HRW report:

"The Planning Administration has been investing a great deal of effort over a number of years in promoting a broad planning strategy to update master planning in Arab communities... Of the 132 Arab communities, 119 have current master plans that have been approved, are in the approval process, or are in preparation. These plans cover some 96% of the total population of these communities. These plans are complex and intricate, given the unique features of Arab communities, which are related to the structure of land ownership; most of the land in these communities is privately owned, with few landowners in possession of a great deal of land (some 20% in possession of some 80% of the land)."

The truth is that Hamas cares nothing for either the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip or the Arabs living in Israel. Hamas has one single concern: advancing its goal of destroying Israel and murdering Jews.

The HRW report, which ignores Hamas's atrocities against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, is now being used by the terrorist group as "evidence" of why Israel should be destroyed and replaced with an Islamic state.

"Hamas welcomes the report issued by Human Rights Watch about Israel's racist policies," the terrorist group said in a statement on May 12. "On the eve of the 72^nd anniversary of the catastrophe of our people, we affirm that this fascist racist entity [Israel] is doomed to extinction."

Like most Palestinians, Hamas considers Israel's War of Independence in 1948 as a nakba (catastrophe) for all Arabs and Muslims.

Hamas, in its charter, says it is loyal to the words of Prophet Mohammed, who was quoted in the Hadith [the narrative of the sayings and deeds of Mohammad] as saying:

"The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him...." [Book 41:6985; Sahih International translation]

Elsewhere in its charter, Hamas states:

"... the land of Palestine has been an Islamic Waqf throughout the generations and until the Day of Resurrection; no one can renounce it or part of it, or abandon it or part of it. For renouncing any part pf Palestine means renouncing part of the religion; the nationalism of [Hamas] is part of its faith, the movement educates its members to adhere to its principles and to raise the banner of Allah over their homeland as they fight their Jihad (holy war)."

Hamas is celebrating the HRW report because it sees it as part of the efforts of Muslim terrorists to replace Israel with an Islamic state. For Hamas, such reports coming from a non-Muslim organization are proof that even the "infidels" in the West share its goal of destroying Israel. Hamas, in other words, sees organizations such as HRW as useful idiots in its war against Israel and Jews.

In 2009, the late Robert Bernstein, the founder of HRW who served as its chairman for 20 years, wrote in an article published in The New York Times that HRW reports "are helping those who wish to turn Israel into a pariah state." Bernstein added:

"The region is populated by authoritarian regimes with appalling human rights records. Yet in recent years Human Rights Watch has written far more condemnations of Israel for violations of international law than any other country in the region."

Hamas and other totalitarian regimes can rest easy knowing that Western human rights organizations such as HRW continue to be obsessed primarily with Israel.

When Hamas resumes its terrorist attacks against Israel, international supposed human rights organizations will again be too busy condemning Israel to notice the Palestinian aggression.

Hamas's war against Israel is waged with rockets and suicide bombings; organizations such as HRW wage war against Israel with propaganda designed to dismantle the state by making it unable to defend itself. Welcome to the unholy alliance between Muslim terrorists and anti-Israel human rights organizations in the West.

Bassam Tawil is a Muslim Arab based in the Middle East.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16020/human-rights-watch-hamas

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Pope Francis’ silence about a forced conversion to Islam - Giulio Meotti

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by Giulio Meotti

The street from Christianity to Islam is one way. Woe to he who tries to go the other way. Even the pope will not come to his aid. Opinion.

Recalling a scene from the famous 11th-century poem “The Song of Roland”, in which Christians in Spain threatened Muslims “to choose between baptism or death,” Pope Francis said: “We must beware of fundamentalist groups; each (religion) has their own. Fundamentalism is a plague and all religions have some fundamentalist first cousin”.

 

And then, in the declaration on “human brotherhood” signed in Abu Dhabi, the Pope and the Imam of Al Azhar Al Tayeeb spoke of religious freedom and women's rights. Beautiful words. They called it “a word of peace”.

Where is the word of Islam and the Imam on the conversion of Silvia Romano, the Italian girl we now know was forcefully converted to Islam after being held for18 months after her kidnapping in Somalia? Where are the imams who are always so good at talking to the newspapers?

The Pope condemned the conversions of Muslims as told in the “Chanson de Roland”. A thousand years ago. Very useful. Where are the high dignitaries of the Islamic world who are willing to nullify Silvia Romano's conversion and free her from the religious yoke imposed on her under captivity?

Where is the Pope?

When we will open our eyes, while we still have them, on the need for some moral equivalency? Today, Christians are killed if they do not convert to Islam and Muslims who convert to Christianity are massacred. Meanwhile, in Europe mosques proliferate and churches in the Islamic world are burned to the ground.

Islamic fundamentalists kidnapped an Italian, Christian and Western girl who went to Africa to help people, they held her for a year and a half under chains, they released her after her conversion to Islam and after she suffered psychological as well as physical brutalization. Then there was the payment of a large ransom through the mediation of Islamic emirates (Qatar and Turkey) which have been working for Europe’s submission for years.

What a great success for the enemies of civilization who also enjoy the crazy applause on the media of important figures in Italy, including the Church to which the girl at least nominally belonged.

Many, most, do not understand or do not want to understand that the clamor about the Silvia Romano’s case is that of a weak and dying civilization. 

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 in addition to books in Italian. He has appeared in publications, such as the Wall Street Journal, Frontpage, Gatestone and Commentary.

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/280307

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Rafi Peretz agrees to Netanyahu's position on all matters relating to Trump peace plan - Hezki Baruch

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by Hezki Baruch

Jewish Home chair has agreed to accept all of PM's positions on implementation of Trump peace plan - even if it includes Palestinian state.

Rafi Peretz and Netanyahu                                                               Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90

 

Jewish Home chairman and outgoing Education Minister Rafi Peretz has agreed to support Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s decision to back the Trump administration’s Middle East peace plan, including any steps the Prime Minister my take in implementing the peace plan.

Peretz, who signed a deal with Netanyahu Thursday bringing the Jewish Home chief into the new unity government as Minister of Jerusalem and Heritage, is required by the deal to back any of the Prime Minister’s positions relating to the Mideast peace plan.

The deal not only maintains Peretz’s status as an observer (though not a voting member) in the security cabinet and as a member in the powerful Ministerial Committee for Legislation, it also will ensures that the Hemed (State Religious Education) system’s funding and that of the Education Ministry’s religious culture wing will be part of the state’s standard, mandatory spending package in future budgets.

In exchange, Peretz agreed that the Jewish Home faction will back Netanyahu not only in his plan to apply Israeli sovereignty over parts of Judea and Samaria, but also to back any other position taken by the prime minister in relation to the Trump administration’s Mideast peace plan – an agreement which could potentially force the Jewish Home to support Palestinian statehood, which is a provision of the peace plan.

It was also agreed upon that “the status quo on religious and state issues will be maintained as has been the case in Israel for decades. The government will work to honor the Sabbath and the Jewish holidays that have maintained our existence as a people. The Jewish Home faction will technically work jointly with the Likud faction.”

On the appointment of rabbinical judges, Netanyahu promised that one-third of the appointments would be from the religious Zionist community.


Hezki Baruch

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/280292

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"Victimhood Culture" UK: Rape Victims Need Not Apply - Judith Bergman

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by Judith Bergman

Where, for example, are the feminists in all this? Where is the "me too" movement?

• "Almost 19,000 children have been sexually groomed in England in the past year, according to official figures that have prompted warnings of an 'epidemic'. Campaigners say the true figure is far higher...." — The Independent, December 2019.
• "The government's repeated failure to acknowledge the role of racism and religious bigotry in grooming gang crime has led to inadequate investigation, protection and prosecution," one survivor, who wanted to remain anonymous, told The Independent in December 2019.
• In the era of "victimhood culture", in which so many groups vie for the top spot of "most victimized", being an actual victim of sexual abuse apparently has little currency among the social justice elites. Where, for example, are the feminists in all this? Where is the "me too" movement?
• As the government is too squeamish publicly to debate the findings of the review, it is bound to be even more terrified of being seen as specifically targeting ethnic rape gangs to stop their crimes -- yet that is what victims such as Ella are asking them to do. Not to mention that basic democratic principles of the public's right to information are being completely disregarded.

In July 2018, Britain's then Home Secretary Sajid Javid ordered a review into the characteristics of child sexual grooming gangs. "The scandal of child grooming gangs is one of the most shocking state failures that I can remember," he said. Now the UK government is too squeamish publicly to debate the findings of the review. (Photo by Jack Taylor/Getty Images)

In July 2018, Britain's then Home Secretary Sajid Javid ordered a review into the characteristics of child sexual grooming gangs. "The scandal of child grooming gangs is one of the most shocking state failures that I can remember," he said.

"I will not let cultural or political sensitivities get in the way of understanding the problem and doing something about it. It is a statement of fact... that most of the men in recent high profile gang convictions have had Pakistani heritage... I've instructed my officials to look into this unflinchingly."

The review was long overdue, to say the least. In 2015, Prime Minister David Cameron told the BBC that the rape and sexual abuse of underage girls had been "on an industrial scale": "Young girls... being abused over and over again on an industrial scale, being raped, being passed from one bunch of perpetrators to another bunch of perpetrators". According to The Independent:

"The Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal saw gangs undertake the organised sexual abuse of children from the late 1980s until the 2010s and the failure of local authorities to act. Rotherham Council finally commissioned an independent inquiry led by Professor Alexis Jay, which found in August 2014 that some 1,400 children, most of them white girls, were abused by predominantly British-Pakistani men".

Girls as young as 11 were raped by "large numbers of male perpetrators".
As the charity Parents Against Child Sexual Exploitation (Pace) told the BBC in 2014, the sexual abuse and rape of under-age girls and young women had been taking place for decades in nearly "every town" across the UK. In 2017, to mention one example, 17 older men and one woman were convicted of grooming, raping and sexually abusing under-age girls and young women from 2011-2014 in Newcastle. Those prosecuted, according to The Independent, "were from the Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Indian, Iraqi, Iranian and Turkish communities and mainly British-born..."

The review that Javid ordered was completed late last year and one would therefore expect a public debate about the issue as Javid, even before he ordered the review, insisted that there needed to be an "honest, open debate" about child abuse, "including racial motivation".

Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government, however, has nevertheless refused to publish the review, which it says will "only be used for internal policy-making".

"One of the main purposes of the exemption is to protect the 'safe space' necessary for ministers and officials to consider policy options in private without risk of premature disclosure," officials told The Independent in response to a freedom of information (FOI) request.

"Disclosure would risk pre-empting decisions still to be made by ministers. In addition, the information could be misleading if made public and used out of context.... We recognise that this topic in general and any insight and learning are matters of strong public interest, although it does not necessarily follow that it is in the public interest to disclose any specific information relating to it." [Emphasis added.]

The refusal to make the report public came even as The Independent reported in December 2019 that:

"Almost 19,000 children have been sexually groomed in England in the past year, according to official figures that have prompted warnings of an 'epidemic'. Campaigners say the true figure is far higher and accused the government of failing to tackle child sexual exploitation, despite promises made after high-profile cases in Rotherham and Rochdale. More than 18,700 suspected victims of child sexual exploitation were identified by local authorities in 2018-19, up from 3,300 five years before".

In 2018, police recorded crime showed that in the past five years there had been "a staggering twelve-fold (1,086%) increase in sexual grooming".

It is hardly believable that authorities are seriously proposing that publishing specific information pertaining to a crucial societal issue -- the heinous sexual exploitation of children and the need to protect them from gangs of male sexual predators -- is not in the public interest. This is the kind of semantic acrobatics that are apparently needed to obfuscate the fact that the UK government is terrified of having the "open debate" Sajid Javid insisted was necessary only a few years ago.

Instead, the government has said that it will soon publish a national strategy that will set out a "whole system response to all forms of child sexual abuse" [Emphasis added.]

A parliamentary petition demanding that the government release the review in full currently has more than 120,000 signatures, which means that parliament has to consider the petition for a debate. A debate -- and a different strategy -- is very much needed. Survivors have tried to explain that grooming gangs operate differently than pedophiles in general. Ella Hill, a survivor of the Rotherham grooming gang, wrote in March 2018:

"Grooming gangs are not like paedophile rings; instead, they operate almost exactly like terrorist networks, with all the same strategies...

"As a teenager, I was taken to various houses and flats above takeaways in the north of England, to be beaten, tortured and raped over 100 times. I was called a 'white slag' and 'white c***' as they beat me.
"They made it clear that because I was a non-Muslim, and not a virgin, and because I didn't dress 'modestly', that they believed I deserved to be 'punished'. They said I had to 'obey' or be beaten.
"Fear of being killed, and threats to my parents' lives, made it impossible for me to escape for about a year. The police didn't help me...
"Like terrorists, [groomers] firmly believe that the crimes they carry out are justified by their religious beliefs."

"The government's repeated failure to acknowledge the role of racism and religious bigotry in grooming gang crime has led to inadequate investigation, protection and prosecution," one survivor, who wanted to remain anonymous, told The Independent in December 2019.

In the era of "victimhood culture", in which so many groups vie for the top spot of "most victimized", being an actual victim of sexual abuse apparently has little currency among the social justice elites. Where, for example, are the feminists in all this? Where is the "me too" movement?

As the government is too squeamish publicly to debate the findings of the review, it is bound to be even more terrified of being seen as specifically targeting ethnic rape gangs to stop their crimes -- yet that is what victims such as Ella are asking them to do. Not to mention that basic democratic principles of the public's right to information are being completely disregarded. Ultimately, these kinds of politically correct theatrics can only lead to one thing: Bad policies. A refusal to talk openly and honestly about issues usually does. A generation of exploited children will pay the price, but that, apparently, is not something that bothers the authorities all that much.

Judith Bergman, a columnist, lawyer and political analyst, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15930/victimhood-culture-uk-rape

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