Should Washington Heed Intelligence Assessments about North Korea? - Peter Huessy

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by Peter Huessy

What is clear, is that the U.S. intelligence community often has a terrible track record where threat assessments are concerned. Alarmingly, it would not be surprising they were wrong again today.

• In spite of the fact that Reagan ultimately won the Cold War -- and the Soviet Union subsequently fell -- his policies and extraordinary global achievements were partially discarded by the failures and laziness of the U.S. intelligence community. Starting in 1993, the US cut back excessively its military defenses. And the US allowed China both militarily and non-militarily to run rampant.
• Almost worse, the intelligence community failed to recognize the rise of Islamic terrorism in Iran and elsewhere, which would culminate in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
• What is clear, is that the U.S. intelligence community often has a terrible track record where threat assessments are concerned. Alarmingly, it would not be surprising they were wrong again today.

Pictured: U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un shake hands at their first summit in Singapore, on June 12, 2018. (Image source: White House/Wikimedia Commons)

United States intelligence chiefs told Congress on January 29 that Pyongyang is unlikely to give up its nuclear weapons in any deal with Washington. This assessment was made a month ahead of U.S. President Donald Trump's February 27-28 second summit -- to be held in Vietnam -- with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, the purpose of which is to make strides in achieving the very denuclearization that FBI Director Christopher Wray, CIA Director Gina Haspel and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats consider improbable.

One would have thought that if these intelligence chiefs disagreed with Trump's efforts to reach a deal with North Korea, they would have presented an alternative. They might have explained what a deal with Pyongyang is liable to do to America's relations with Japan and South Korea. They might have provided a future scenario for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which North Korea signed in 1968, then violated and withdrew from in 2003.

Trump might, however, actually be acting sensibly. During a speech on January 31 at Stanford University, the U.S. special envoy for North Korea, Stephen Biegun, said that when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with Kim in Pyongyang in October 2018, Kim committed for the first time to dismantling and destroying his plutonium and uranium enrichment facilities.

Although the media has been highlighting the disagreement between Trump and the U.S. intelligence community as though it is a huge scandal, such disputes have occurred in the past.

The most notable example was President Gerald Ford's Team B project, launched in May 1976, to challenge the conventional intelligence community assessments of the Soviet threat. George H.W. Bush, who was director of the CIA at the time, had approved the project, which enlisted a group of foreign policy and security professionals who strongly disagreed with the policy of détente. Team B was convinced that the Soviet Union was spending 40% of its GDP on defense, as opposed to the 5% projected by the U.S. intelligence community.

After Team B released its report, the CIA conceded that Soviet defense spending was probably higher than it had thought, but nevertheless pushed for détente, a policy Ford supported, as well as for peaceful coexistence between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.

Ronald Reagan's 1976 Republican Party primary campaign against Ford focused on this very issue, with Reagan taking a much harsher view of the Soviet Union and the battle against communism. As Reagan predicted, détente led not to peaceful coexistence with the Soviet Union, but to Soviet expansion. Still, Reagan lost the Republican primary to Ford, and Ford lost the presidential race to Jimmy Carter.

Upon assuming the presidency in 1980, Reagan reversed most of the policies of the previous decades, and went against the consensus of a majority of the U.S. intelligence community.

Reagan turned out, of course, to be right, while the conventional wisdom of economists and intellectuals, such as John Kenneth Galbraith -- who considered communism to be superior to capitalism because it supposedly made better use of "manpower" -- was revealed to be spectacularly wrong.

Another key fight between the administration in Washington and its intelligence community took place at the outset of Reagan's presidency, when Secretary of State Alexander Haig accused the Soviet Union of "training, funding and equipping" international terrorists. Reagan backed up Haig on this assessment -- much to the chagrin of the intelligence community, which held a different view.

Yet, as former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates -- who headed the CIA under President George H.W. Bush -- revealed in his 1996 book, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider's Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War, Haig and Reagan were not only correct; the extent to which the Soviets supported terrorism was even greater than they had thought.

In spite of the fact that Reagan ultimately won the Cold War – and the Soviet Union subsequently fell – his policies and extraordinary global achievements were partially discarded by the failures and laziness of the U.S. intelligence community. Starting in 1993, the US cut back excessively its military defenses. The US also failed to help Russia secure the Duma's ratification of the 1993 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START II), signed by Yeltsin and Bush but not ratified by the Senate. And the US allowed China both militarily and non-militarily to run rampant.

Almost worse, the intelligence community failed to recognize the rise of Islamic terrorism in Iran and elsewhere, which would culminate in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

These failures are not surprising, given the history of American intelligence assessments. In early 1950, for example, President Harry Truman was told by his intelligence chiefs that there would not be a North Korean invasion of South Korea. They reached this conclusion based on the assumption that North Korea could only invade South Korea with the help of the Soviet Union, and there appeared to be no sign of such assistance.

In June 1950, however, North Korea invaded South Korea, and an unprepared United States lost over 35,000 soldiers in the Korean War.

Whether Trump is able, through a combination of toughness and street-smarts, to succeed where others have failed with North Korea remains to be seen. What is clear, however, is that the U.S. intelligence community often has a terrible track record where threat assessments are concerned. Alarmingly, it would not be surprising they were wrong again today.

Dr. Peter Huessy is President of GeoStrategic Analysis, a defense consulting firm he founded in 1981, as well as Director of Strategic Deterrent Studies at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. He was also for 20 years, the senior defense consultant at the National Defense University Foundation.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13713/north-korea-intelligence-assessments

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Phony 'Justice' through Phony Climate Policy - Marc Sheppard

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by Marc Sheppard

The "Green New Deal" conceptually is old hat. The convergence of climate "science" and social "justice" is nothing new.

Would you be surprised to learn that of the five goals pronounced in the so-called “Green New Deal,” three of them focus on some form of social or economic “justice?” Or that the two that don’t instead use language right out of the UN’s globalist playbook? Well, they do, and, if you’ve been paying attention, you shouldn’t be all that surprised.

Indeed, the convergence of climate “science” and social “justice” is nothing new. Some argue that it dates back to 1972, when an unlikely blend of legitimate environmental activists, dyed-in-the-wool Marxists, and assorted anti-establishment 60’s leftovers met in Stockholm, Sweden to discuss the planet’s ills. And from that marriage of global environmental and social-justice concerns was born the IPCC’s parent organization – the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and its socialist-environmentalist manifesto – the Stockholm Declaration.

Others point to the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro (a.k.a. the Earth Summit). There, the event’s Secretary-general, Maurice Strong, told the opening session that industrialized countries had “developed and benefited from the unsustainable patterns of production and consumption which have produced our present dilemma.” Yes, this was the gathering which spawned the infamous Agenda 21 [PDF], a global contract that pledged governments around the world to a UN plan to change the way people "live, eat, learn and communicate" all in the name of "saving the earth” from mankind’s mistakes, particularly global warming. (See IPCC: International Pack of Climate Crooks for details).

But these were non-binding international agreements typically not worth the paper they were then written on, not proposed legislation for a sovereign nation which would immediately impact the lives and wellbeing of hundreds of millions of citizens. 

And yet, the draft released last Thursday by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass, of their “Green New Deal” Bill was, in fact, as long on “social justice” as it was short on common sense. 

News conference introducing the GND (CNN screengrab)

Its rough framework first claims not one, but two crises -- a climate crisis purportedly caused by manmade greenhouse gas emissions and an economic crisis of wage stagnation and growing inequality. And, while it fails to establish either, according to its preamble, the Green New Deal can address both.

Five Steps to Solving Both Crises

The five goals described in H. Res 109, Paragraph 1, Subparagraphs (A) through (E) are, with my emphasis:

• To achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions through a fair and just transition for all communities and workers
• To create millions of good, high-wage jobs and ensure prosperity and economic security for all people of the United States
• To invest in the infrastructure and industry of the United States to sustainably meet the challenges of the 21st century
• To secure for all people of the United States for generations to come:
  • clean air and water;
  • climate and community resiliency;
  • healthy food;
  • Access to nature;
  • A sustainable environment
• To promote justice and equity by stopping current, preventing future, and repairing historic oppression of ‘‘frontline and vulnerable communities.”

Conspicuously missing from the resolution was the promise of “economic security for all who are unable or unwilling to work,” found in its accompanying “overview.” Perhaps it’s destined to be subtly “airdropped” in later.

And if expressions the likes of “sustainably meet the challenges of the 21^st century” and “sustainable environment” sound familiar, they should. The expressed goal of Agenda 21 was “achieving global sustainable development in the 21^st Century.” The term is lib-speak for tackling “poverty, inequality, climate, environmental degradation, prosperity, and peace and justice” as a single issue with essentially a lone antagonist. Surely, many of these individual goals are genuine and quite laudable; still, many have no place in a piece of U.S. Climate Legislation. So once again, we’re faced with a fraudulent attempt to address the left’s laundry list of woes in the name of meting out imaginary “climate justice.”

The Fake Victims List Grows

And just who are the “frontline and vulnerable communities” mentioned several times throughout the text? It’s simply another term championed by “climate justice” organizations. These groups no longer deny their treatment of climate change as a political, ethical, and ultimately a reparations (wealth-redistribution) issue, rather than one that is environmental or physical in nature. As enumerated in the GND, these communities include:

• indigenous peoples
• communities of color
• migrant communities
• deindustrialized communities
• depopulated rural communities
• the poor
• low-income workers
• women
• the elderly
• the unhoused
• people with disabilities
• and youth

That’s quite a list. In fact, if they can agree upon exactly which group the sanctuaried illegal immigrants belong in and then throw in the LGBTQ community, they’ll have included the entire Leftie Fake-Victims List. 

And according to Paragraph 3, these “victims,” along with labor unions and other progressive darlings will be guaranteed a place at the table for all decisions made in the development and execution of this GND.

What’s more, surely the addition of the latest outraged victims class (women) puts the fake victims well into the majority. In fact, only Well-Off Non-Migratory Properly-Housed And Gainfully-Employed Straight Middle-Aged White Males (WONMPHAGESMAWM’s) are excluded.

It’ll be fun to watch such liberal economics luminaries as Paul Krugman explain how that will work. I suppose as long as the richest one percent (likely WONMPHAGESMAWM’s anyway) pay their “fair share” we should be just fine.

Favoring “Frontline and Vulnerable Communities”

Paragraph 2 contains a laundry list of the 14 “projects” which comprise GND’s sophomorically-ambitious Ten-Year Plan. From meeting 100% of the nation’s power demands “through clean, renewable and zero-emission energy sources” (excluding Nuclear) to replacing air travel with high-speed rail, most are too outrageously simple-minded to be taken seriously. Of course, that didn’t stop 67 (and counting) Democrats from jumping aboard and cosponsoring this laughable bill.

But the true nature of the GND is contained in the “Goals and Projects” laid out in the 15 Subparagraphs of Paragraph 4, each a step closer to an ungovernable government-run economy and many with special considerations to the fake victims of fake “climate injustice” defined as ‘‘frontline and vulnerable communities.” 

In fact, each of these “GND Projects” listed in Paragraph 4 specifically state that preference must be extended to these specially entitled victims, even in projects with no links to the environment:

• SubP (C) -- Providing a “high-quality” education, including higher education to all people of the United States with a focus on frontline and vulnerable communities.
• SubP (E) -- Directing investments to spur economic development, deepen and diversify industry and business in local and regional economies, and build wealth and community ownership, while prioritizing high-quality job creation and economic, social, and environmental benefits in frontline and vulnerable communities, and deindustrialized communities, that may otherwise struggle with the transition away from greenhouse gas intensive industries;
• SubP (F) -- Ensuring the use of democratic and participatory processes that are inclusive of and led by frontline and vulnerable communities and workers to plan, implement, and administer the Green New Deal mobilization at the local level;
• SubP (M) -- Obtaining the free, prior, and informed consent of indigenous peoples for all decisions that affect indigenous peoples and their traditional territories, honoring all treaties and agreements with indigenous peoples, and protecting and enforcing the sovereignty and land rights of indigenous peoples;

And where their expanded victim’s list isn’t specifically cited, other politically-motivated preferences often are:

• SubP (G) -- Ensuring that the Green New Deal mobilization creates high-quality union jobs that pay prevailing wages, hires local workers, offers training and advancement opportunities, and guarantees wage and benefit parity for workers affected by the transition

• SubP (I) -- Strengthening and protecting the right of all workers to organize, unionize, and collectively bargain free of coercion, intimidation, and harassment;

So, whether favoring the minority-based majority, a specific minority within that majority, or liberal-favored workers’ groups, you can always count on liberals to call on government to favor someone. However, there’s an old adage, often attributed to Margaret Thatcher, regarding "The trouble with Socialism.”

Eventually, You Run Out of Other People’s Money

In the past, liberals have insisted that the many suffer for the benefit of the few, and, had they not added “women” to their fake victim’s list for its purposes, this bill would have been no exception. However, with the victims’ list now expanded to include all but the few, we’ll likely hear even louder phony claims that “climate justice” (and, by extension, the fiscally-unbalanced programs now implied by it) is demanded by the “majority” of Americans. Indeed, the bill’s “overview” included the preposterous declaration that “92% of Democrats and 64% of Republicans support the Green New Deal,” a claim made before details of the GND were even released.

Needless to say, Ocasio-Cortez’s juvenilely quixotic projections notwithstanding, no “Green Economy” yet-proposed will generate surpluses of any measure, let alone within 10 years, nor enough to subsidize free college, guaranteed high-pay jobs, high-quality healthcare, affordable housing, family and medical leave, paid vacations and retirement security for all Americans. But by defining those who have been treated “unjustly” and carving them out special considerations, fledgling politicians the caliber of Cortez hope to foster the illusion of "justice."

And while it might make for good politics and even better headlines, as policy – its as phony as the crises it claims to solve.


Marc Sheppard is a technology consultant, software engineer, writer, and political and data analyst. He’s been a frequent contributor to American Thinker and welcomes your feedback.

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/02/phony_justice_through_phony_climate_policy.html

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Syrian reports: 2 Iranian officers killed in Quneitra strike - Reuters, Daniel Siryoti and Israel Hayom Staff

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by Reuters, Daniel Siryoti and Israel Hayom Staff

Rebel-allied news agencies say two Iranian Revolutionary Guards officers were killed and six Iranian military personnel were wounded while preparing to fire at Israeli Golan Heights

Smoke billows at the site of the strike in Quneitra in southern 
Syria on Monday Photo: EPA

Two officers from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards were killed by tank fire attributed to Israel near the city Quneitra in southern Syria Monday evening, news outlets identified with Syrian rebel groups reported Tuesday.

The reports claimed that two Iranian military personnel had been killed and another six wounded. The reports said that the Revolutionary Guards had been preparing to fire at the Israeli Golan Heights.

News outlets identified with the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, whom Iran backs, said that none of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards had been wounded in the incident and that it had only resulted in property damage.

On Monday night, the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency reported that an Israeli drone had fired four missiles near a demolished hospital and an army observation post in Syria's southern Quneitra province near the Israeli border.

An army source was quoted by SANA as saying that the "Israeli enemy" also hit several sites along border villages close to a 1974 demilitarized zone on the Golan Heights frontier, which with Russian support, the Syrian army regained control from rebels last year.

Asked about the reported Quneitra strikes, an IDF spokeswoman declined to comment.

State media earlier said the sites in Quneitra that were hit by Israel came from several tank artillery rounds. Social media reports at the time of the strike said that artillery fire had targeted

Residents familiar with the area said that the sites targeted fall within the strategic area known as the "Triangle of Death" connecting the southern Damascus countryside with Deraa and Quneitra provinces.

They say Shiite Hezbollah group has consolidated its new front in southern Syria and entrenched Iran's influence since the defeat of Sunni rebels who were once backed by the U.S., Jordan and Gulf states.

Israel has mounted attacks in Syria as part of its effort to counter the influence carved out there by Iran, which has supported Assad in the war that erupted in 2011.

In January, IAF jets carried out a strike on an Iranian arms cache in Syria.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel would ramp up its fight against Iranian-aligned forces in Syria following the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria.

Reuters, Daniel Siryoti and Israel Hayom Staff

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/2019/02/12/syrian-state-media-says-israel-fires-missiles-in-southern-province/

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The ADL Can’t Stop Faking Hate Crime Statistics - Daniel Greenfield

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by Daniel Greenfield

Giving the Southern Poverty Law Center a run for its money.

“Right-Wing Extremist Violence is Our Biggest Threat. The Numbers Don't Lie,” Jonathan Greenblatt blared in a JTA editorial.

Numbers don’t lie. But people lie with numbers all the time.

Greenblatt’s ADL has become notorious for undermining its mission by putting out fake hate crime statistics. And these fake statistics were as surreally egregious as they were confusing.

The executive summary of the ADL’s annual report claimed that, “2018 was a particularly active year for right-wing extremist murders: Every single extremist killing — from Pittsburgh to Parkland — had a link to right-wing extremism.” This false claim was quickly picked up and repeated by the media.

Typically, the ADL report contradicts itself when it later claims that, “Almost all of the 2018 extremist-related murders were committed by right-wing extremists.”

Is it “every” or “almost all”?

The trick here is that the ADL report exploits any link, no matter how tenuous or dubious, to make its first claim, while its second claim essentially concedes that the shooters weren’t “right-wing extremists”.

How is it possible for a killer to have links to “right-wing extremism” without being a “right-wing extremist”? Why even try to link people who aren’t “right-wing extremists” to “right-wing extremism”?

The Parkland school shooting, whose 17 victims serve as a huge part of the report’s dubious statistics, illustrate how the ADL manufactures a link to “right-wing extremism”.

Attributing the Parkland school shooting to “right-wing extremism” is a conspiracy theory. The ADL began pushing this conspiracy theory after the shooting based on an interview with a white supremacist group. The ADL’s fake news was picked up by everyone from the Associated Press to Neo-Nazis, but the discredited social justice group got the material from alt-right trolls on 4chan. And even after the claims were disproven, the ADL refused to retract it and has chosen to double down on its fake news.

Cruz did appear to have etched swastikas on his ammo magazines, but he also told the authorities that he heard voices in his head. He had said racist and anti-Semitic things, but all but one of his victims were white. Five of his seventeen victims were Jewish, but Parkland has a sizable Jewish population. It’s possible that Cruz targeted Jewish students and faculty, but there’s no actual evidence of that.

And the ADL’s original assertion of a link to “right-wing extremism” long ago fell apart. But instead of retracting it, the ADL is exploiting the Parkland shooting to push fake hate crime statistics.

The ADL’s reports usually contradict themselves. And this one is no exception. It lists murders by Tierre Guthrie  and Malachi Qaadir Dorns, African-American members of black nationalist Moorish groups. While Moorish groups do use terms like “sovereign citizen”, it’s highly misleading to define them as “right-wing”, especially considering the misleading impression that this description creates.

“Largely absent from this list of killers were extremists motivated by radical interpretations of Islam. Only one of the 50 murderers had any connection to Islamist extremism — and even he had ties to white supremacy,” Greenblatt claimed.

Most Islamic terror plots in the United States were unsuccessful in 2018. And the media quickly pounced with multiple pieces insisting that Islamic terrorism was no longer a claim, while overlooking many of the catastrophic terror plots that were broken up or proved unsuccessful.

We got lucky in 2018. How lucky?

In Cleveland, Abdur Raheem Rafeeq plotted to bomb the 4th of July parade using remote control cars packed with C-4 explosive. “The wicked Catholics, Jews all of them,” Rafeeq had ranted.

While the media and other terror apologists dismiss plots broken up by FBI informants as fake, there was nothing fake about what happened in March at Travis Air Force Base.

Hafiz Kazi in California packed a minivan full of propane tanks and gasoline cans, in a plot similar to previous ISIS attacks in Europe, and smashed through the gate at Travis Air Force Base, but only succeeded in setting himself on fire.

Hafiz is an Islamic term meaning someone who has memorized the entire Koran by heart.
In Philly, Khalil Lawal was shot and killed after trying to run over pedestrians. Like Hafiz, Lawal’s attack only claimed his own life, but unlike Hafiz, he managed to injure one pedestrian and a police detective.

Any of these attacks could have left dozens dead.

But, most significantly, the ADL neglected the Toledo synagogue plot by an Islamic terrorist who had wanted to carry out a synagogue attack modeled on the Pittsburgh Tree of Life mass shooting. The attack, which was intended to kill a Rabbi and congregants, was stopped with a Chanukah arrest.

But the ADL report appears to have little interest in a synagogue terror plot by a Muslim terrorist.

Even when the ADL does list an act of Islamic violence, like the Islamic stabbings in Florida, it tries to spin it as right-wing extremism.

Corey Johnson, a 17-year-old convert to Islam, stabbed two 13-year-old boys, and Elaine Simon, the mother of one of the boys, at a sleepover, because one of them had mocked his Islamic religion.

The Muslim convert who called himself Mustafa had watched Jihadist videos telling him to make war on non-Muslims in Allah’s name and read the Koran “to give him courage to carry out his intentions.”

First, Mustafa stabbed and slit the throat of one of the 13-year-old boys. Simon, whose house this was, heard the noise and went up to see what was happening. He stabbed her a dozen times and she fell down the stairs. Her 13-year-old son tried to protect her, and was stabbed two dozen times.

Mustafa’s statement declares that there is a war between Muslims and non-Muslims. He quoted Zarqawi, the founder of the Islamist group that eventually turned into ISIS.

He also praised the Islamic terrorist who attacked a Jewish supermarket in France.

In 2016, Mustafa had come to the attention of the FBI when he sent a message about a Catholic school, declaring, “We have our sights set on you, and by Allah we will kill every single infidel student at this school."

Before Mustafa’s stabbing spree, the FBI was preparing to finally arrest him for those threats. (It was only 2 years and one life too late, but the Bureau is too busy these days entrapping Republicans in process crimes on behalf of the same Democrats who stripped away its counterterrorism functions.)

“Every single extremist killing — from Pittsburgh to Parkland — had a link to right-wing extremism,” the ADL had falsely claimed.

And it looked at Mustafa’s Jihadist videos, his confession and blamed… right-wing extremism.

“Only one of the 50 murderers had any connection to Islamist extremism — and even he had ties to white supremacy,” Greenblatt wrote in his JTA editorial.

Mustafa/Johnson had indeed been a fan of the KKK in the past. Then he turned to Islam.
What was the relevance of his past views to his motives for the stabbings that he carried out for Islam?

The ADL report describes him as having “multiple extremist affiliations”. That’s also distorting the truth. Mustafa, at the time that he committed his crimes, had only one affiliation. He was a Muslim terrorist.

“The Numbers Don't Lie,” Greenblatt claimed. And then demonstrated how you can lie with numbers.

The ADL’s fake news was quickly picked up by ABC News, The Independent, Business Insider and countless other publications. And these fake statistics inflict serious harm on the ADL’s credibility.

Greenblatt’s political biases have distorted the ADL’s reporting leading to publicity stunts that appeal to the Left while ignoring the threats and violence coming from the Left and from its Islamic allies.

The ADL has become a disgraceful failure as a civil rights group. But when it comes to fake statistics, it’s giving the Southern Poverty Law Center a run for its money.


Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272822/adl-cant-stop-faking-hate-crime-statistics-daniel-greenfield

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Lebanon seeks guarantees from Syria to encourage refugees' return - Reuters and Israel Hayom Staff

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by Reuters and Israel Hayom Staff

Lebanese FM Gebran Bassil cites "campaign of intimidation" to keep refugees from returning, wants Syria to guarantee property rights, exempt refugees from conscription.

Lebanon's foreign minister urged Syria on Monday to offer guarantees on property rights and military service to encourage Syrian refugees to return home.

Tiny Lebanon has been host to more than a million refugees from neighboring Syria since the war there began in 2011 though some have returned as fighting has eased in more and more areas of the country.

"In the process of encouraging returns, the Syrian government can make a big contribution, on top of the reconciliations that are already happening, by giving security guarantees," Lebanese Foreign Minister Gebran Bassil told a news conference in Beirut.

More than half of Syria's prewar 22 million population was displaced by the war, over 5 million of whom left the country as refugees, mostly to adjacent Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan.

Syrian President Bashar Assad government's has recovered most of the country with the help of Russia and Iran, clawing back rebel enclaves in what Damascus calls reconciliation deals.

Bassil, speaking alongside visiting Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, said he hoped the pace of returns would increase and that Damascus could help smooth this with guarantees on "individual property rights and military service."

Aid agencies that work with refugees have cited concerns over the loss of property and conscription into the Syrian army as big reasons discouraging Syrians from returning, along with fear of reprisals.

Bassil also said guarantees from Damascus would help end what he called an "ongoing campaign of intimidation" to stop refugees from going home, without elaborating.

Reuters and Israel Hayom Staff

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/2019/02/12/lebanon-seeks-guarantees-from-syria-to-encourage-refugees-return/

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The global threat that is hitting Europe hard - Phil Schneider

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by Phil Schneider

The terrorists tap into the drug smuggling trade in order to fund their terrorist activities in the Middle East.

When we think of the various radical Islamic organizations that threaten the world, we usually think about ISIS or Al Qaeda. But there is one very important force that actually threatens the world in a major way that is often overlooked. The Hizbullah. They do not only stockpile a massive amount of weapons on Israel’s northern border. They are also working to take over the Lebanese government, and spread their criminal activity across the entire Western world. The terrorists tap into the drug smuggling trade in order to fund their terrorist activities in the Middle East.

The Drugs-Terror Connection

In Germany, they are now well aware of the massive cocaine smuggling market that comes largely from the Hizbullah. But it is not just drugs, but weapons too. Ambassador Ron Prosor, who speaks German, explains that there is an enormous amount of money laundering that goes around the entire world. It is all run via global terrorists that are based in Iran and Lebanon. The Hizbullah makes it perfectly clear what they are doing. Germany is aware of this, but chooses to not be strict on the Hizbullah. Due to this decision, the German government has made a move that endangers the entire European continent and the entire world.

Ambassador Prosor claims that without the money stream that the Hizbullah has between Germany and Lebanon, the Hizbullah activity in Europe would gradually dry up. We should take heed and support him in his [effort].

[Editor: This video mentions Project Cassandra, which was intended to address the illicit operations carried out by Hizb'Allah to fund terrorism. The project was suspended by the Obama administration.]

 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  Project Cassandra is an effort led by the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to undercut Hezbollah funding from illicit drug sources.^[1] Launched in 2008, the project was said to be investigating the terrorist organization's funding.^[2] According to the DEA, Hezbollah has become increasingly involved with drug trafficking and organized crime as a method of funding its activities.^[3][4] The investigation was tracking how large sums of money were being laundered from the Americas, through Africa, and to Lebanon into Hezbollah's coffers.
 
An investigative report published by Politico in December 2017, described how, during the Obama administration, national security concerns regarding the Iran nuclear deal took precedence over the DEA project.

 
Phil Schneider

Source: https://israelunwired.com/the-global-threat-that-is-hitting-europe-hard/

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The Brutal Murder of a Jewish Teen - Ari Lieberman

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by Ari Lieberman

A glimpse into the horrific Palestinian practice of “Pay for Slay".

When police and security forces discovered 19-year-old Ori Ansbacher in Jerusalem’s Ein Yael forest on Friday, she was already dead. Police noted that she was murdered in a brutal fashion having been stabbed at least 12 times in the chest and neck. There were other signs of brutality but in deference to police requests and the dignity of the Ansbacher family, I will refrain from noting them here. Needless to say, this was a barbaric crime even by Palestinian standards of barbarity.

Forensic teams scoured the site for evidence and within 24 hours, there was a significant evidentiary breakthrough that led to the doorstep of 29-year-old Hebron resident, Arafat Irfayia. So strong was the physical evidence that police noted that they could secure a conviction even without a confession. Following the crime, Irfayia hid in a mosque in the Arab village of El-Bireh, and subsequently made his way to a home adjacent to the mosque where Israeli security forces nabbed him. His Hebron home has already been mapped for demolition.

On Sunday, Irfayia reenacted the crime for investigators. On day of the murder, Irfayia, who was known to law enforcement, left his Hebron home armed with a knife and made his way to Jerusalem, where he stumbled upon his innocent female victim. It was a crime of opportunity and unfortunately, Ori became a victim of Irfayia’s monstrous hate of Jews and deviant sexual proclivities.

The horrific nature of the crime instantly reverberated throughout Israel and revived calls for capital punishment for acts of terror with aggravating circumstances. Protestors assembled at Tel Aviv’s Rabin Square where they called for the death penalty for Ori’s killer. This sentiment was echoed by Minister of Justice Ayelet Shaked, who stated that prosecutors should seek the death penalty. Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan expressed a similar position noting that certain aggravating circumstances such as abuse of the victim and inability to rehabilitate should be considered when assessing a capital case.

Though Israel has a death penalty statute, it has only been implemented once in the case of Adolf Eichmann, the notorious Nazi who played an integral role in the murder of six million Jews during the Holocaust. Eichmann was captured in Buenos Aires by a Mossad team and spirited out of Argentina to Israel where he was tried and sentenced to death by hanging. He was executed on June 1, 1962 and cremated with his ashes spread over the Mediterranean Sea, outside of Israel’s maritime boundaries.

Those arguing against the death penalty reason that the death penalty does not serve as a deterrent as most of those who carry out these types of crimes expect to die and may even in fact yearn for death on the promise of being received by 72 virgins and lifetime pecuniary benefits for the terrorist’s family members. Moreover, the death of the terrorist serves to elevate him to martyrdom status.

Many Palestinians maintain a death cult mentality, which is continuously stoked by religious and governmental indoctrination, agitation and propaganda. For example, in 2015 Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, aired a speech on PA television in which he stated “…We bless every drop of blood that has been spilled for Jerusalem, which is clean and pure blood, blood spilled for Allah, Allah willing. Every martyr (Shahid) will reach Paradise, and everyone wounded will be rewarded by Allah…”

Both sides in this debate maintain valid arguments. Nevertheless, in the unlikely event that prosecutors in this case seek the death penalty, the body of the killer should be cremated to deny the enemy the ability to give the terrorist stardom status with grandiose funeral processions and a burial shrine. All traces of the terrorist should be erased.

The tragic death of Ori Ansbacher highlights another disturbing Palestinian practice known as “Pay for Slay.” The Palestinian economy is a beggar economy subsisting on handouts from European Union nations, Norway and Switzerland. Yet this did not prevent the PA from doling out cash to more than 30,000 terrorists and their families to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars per year. It is likely that Arafat Irfayia or his family will now receive a hefty stipend from the PA’s coffers, care of the unsuspecting European taxpayer. 

In response to the Taylor Force Act, passed by Congress in 2017, the Trump administration slashed funding to the PA. The legislation, named after a U.S. soldier who was murdered by a PA Arab, aims to force the PA to cease the repugnant practice of Pay for Slay. In 2018, the administration cut $200 million in economic aid earmarked for the PA. In addition, the administration cut funding to the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA), which the State Department classified as an “irredeemably flawed operation.” That is an understatement at best. UNRWA employees have given aid and comfort to terrorist organizations, distributed anti-Semitic literature at UNRWA-run schools and permitted Hamas to stockpile rockets at its educational facilities. It is an organization that serves to perpetuate conflict rather than end it.

The brutal murder of Ori Ansbacher serves to underscore the reason why peace with the Palestinians is a far-fetched pipedream. While Israel takes action to apprehend its extremists and bring them to justice, the Palestinians provide their killers with pecuniary rewards and name streets, schools and squares after them. A society that revels in death and gore is not a normal society but is rather a death cult, undeserving of any form of statehood.

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/272833/brutal-murder-jewish-teen-ari-lieberman

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Report: Mossad helped smuggle nuclear spy out of Iran - Eli Leon and Israel Hayom Staff

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by Eli Leon and Israel Hayom Staff

The nuclear technician with information about the Islamic republic's nuclear program and described as an "Israeli asset for years," was smuggled into the U.K. last New Year's Eve in a joint operation with MI6, the CIA and Mossad, Sunday Express reports.

A rubber dinghy used by Iranian migrants to cross the English 
Channel from France, December 31, 2018 Screenshot: YouTube 

An Iranian nuclear technician with information about the Islamic republic's nuclear program was smuggled into the United Kingdom on New Year's Eve last year in a joint operation involving MI6, the CIA and Israeli Mossad, the Sunday Express newspaper reported on Sunday.

According to the report, the 47-year-old nuclear technician had been "an Israel asset for years" who also "helped plan" the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan in 2012. Roshan, a director at Iran's Natanz uranium enrichment facility, was killed by a magnetic bomb attached to his car in Tehran. His driver also died. Iran accused the Mossad of carrying out the assassination.

The plan to smuggle the alleged Israeli nuclear spy out of Iran, meanwhile, reportedly involved a "3,000-mile dash across Europe" and a final 22-mile crossing of the English Channel in a dinghy, hidden among other illegal Iranian immigrants.

Initially, the alleged spy was reportedly smuggled out of his homeland and into neighboring Turkey by the Mossad.

Britain, the report said, tried to conceal its involvement in the operation because it opposed the U.S. withdrawal from the nuclear agreement with Iran and remained a party to it.

A British intelligence source told the Sunday Express: "[The nuclear technician's] absence was noted quickly [by the Iranians] and we were informed that a special unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had been dispatched. Once in France, the question of how to get him into Britain remained. We couldn't simply fly him in. Though unusual, it was determined infiltrating him into a group of fellow migrants preparing to cross the channel by boat offered one solution."

The report also said that MI6 agents debriefed the nuclear technician on Iran's nuclear plans before he was flown to the United States.

Eli Leon and Israel Hayom Staff

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/2019/02/11/report-mossad-helped-smuggle-nuclear-spy-out-of-iran/

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Why the Radical Left (and No One Else) Touts Modern Monetary Theory - William Sullivan

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by William Sullivan

Economics of the insane.

You may not have heard about the fringe concept of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), but you can expect that you'll hear a lot more about it in the future as Democrats pretend the theory supports the plausibility of fiscally outrageous policy proposals like the Green New Deal.

The greatest public strength of the theory is that you don't have to understand much about economics to embrace it. Like socialism, it's anything but a new idea, but it's somehow hip for our growing number of underemployed liberal arts majors to subscribe to it and feel intellectually superior for doing so. 

MMT, you see, requires that you eschew any realistic understanding of money, which is easiest to do for those who've yet to, or have failed to, earn substantial amounts of it in a free market. 

Most everyday people can simply accept that money, or currency, has a specific value tied to it. If it did not, you wouldn't go to work every day in order to exchange your labor for an agreed upon sum of money. The restaurateur down the street would not feed you in exchange for money at an agreed upon price if money didn't have a specific value. Neither of you feels that your efforts are simply charity meant to feed the government leviathan, which determines what your money is worth, do you?

It's really that simple, and this is where MMT fails on its most fundamental proposition. Money has a going market value that we recognize every single day, and it is tied to a marketplace. 

MMT, inversely, posits that this understood value in the global marketplace is not truly value in our economy, but some arbitrary measure that we tell ourselves and others the money is worth. That value can change willy-nilly via monetary policy — namely, tax cuts, spending cuts, or "printing money" for new spending.

Allow one of the leading proponents of the theory, Stonybrook University's economics professor Stephanie Kelton, to explain. On Twitter, she committed to a hypothetical Q&A with her detractors. 

She offers the hypothetical question, "[c]an we afford the #GreenNewDeal?"

"A: Yes," she tweets. "The federal government can afford to buy whatever is for sale in its own currency."

While that's undoubtedly good news for advocates of tearing down, refurbishing, or replacing every single building in America, or eliminating cows and pigs so as to reduce the damage their farts do to the climate, it would still cost trillions of dollars to accomplish. Thankfully, for most people, there's still the pressing question of how to finance it.

Kelton's hypothetical line of questioning considers whether the answer is to "just print the money." She replies, "Is there any other way?"

Here we enter more complex territory, but only slightly. Debt is a serious consideration for any who take on the debt, from individuals to governments. There's nothing new about this, nor is there a dearth of examples of nations that have suffered immensely by committing to fiscal policy enactments without concern for their debt and the potential devaluation of their own currency in doing so.

"They have his soul, who have his bonds," observed Jonathan Swift. This has been truth for thousands of years, and it still is truth today. How could any creditor hold anything of such value, if my bonds that I sold him are essentially worthless, and I can simply print more dollars to pay my debts when I have the need?

This is something fundamental to money and debt, though I've come to increasingly understand that it's not broadly understood. Debt is purchased by someone with money, and that someone purchases that debt only if he believes that value will be derived by the purchase.

To break it down simply, consider this. If I purchase a Treasury bond, I am purchasing the government's debt. I am willfully giving my money, which is of a specific value in my day-to-day life, to the government. This, in effect, is a contract, which should be protected by law. If I purchase that bond, I expect repayment of the debt owed to me, along with the interest promised. Otherwise, why would I give my money to the government for it to spend? 

Kelton responds that it's "not "borrowing" in any meaningful sense of the word. "When people swap $$ for bonds, they're just holding another kind of government money."

But I already held the money. I didn't have to "swap" it for bonds if the bonds and my money were interchangeable. I saw value in the interest the government promised me, which is why I purchased the debt. If my money is indeed just the government's money anyway, and the government can just print more money to compensate in the event that I don't purchase its debt, then why is the government issuing bonds at globally competitive rates in order to incentivize my purchase in the first place? Isn't the idea that the government doesn't need my money belied by the fact that the government is incentivizing me to give my money to the government so that it can be spent by the government?

Here's where it gets fun. MMT proponents suggest that the government doesn't actually have to pay back the debt, and the principal and interest belong to the government anyway.

"The government retires bonds all the time," tweets Kelton. "You just debit (-) the seller's securities account and credit (+) a reserve account. It's all done using a keyboard at the NY Fed."

Abracadabra! The government's debt disappears, and the interest it owes becomes equalized on the U.S. government's balance sheet with a keystroke.

I suspect she means this about bonds the government loans itself, as it does with Social Security. But does that make you feel any better about the Treasury bonds you might hold in your 401(K), or the fixed interest investments you hold, which are financed via purchases of Treasury bonds? Are the Chinese, who hold over $1.18 trillion in American debt, believing they purchased value in doing so, likely to give us more money for our bonds, knowing that America is just playing with funny money, or are they likelier to stop giving us their money when they recognize that America isn't serious about its debts?

MMT is predicated on the notion that debt is a myth. Even more subversive, it's predicated on the notion that the concept of money a myth. Debt and money and balance sheets are just scary stories that moms and dads use to warn their children against spending what they want, when they want, keeping them within the chains of the idea that there's some sort of balance between the value they earn and the value they spend.

But despite these new bedtime stories that academics like Kelton are reading to their adult children in the classroom, value and currency remain distinctly and irrevocably tied, as we more archaic parents still teach our children. A "modern monetary theory" doesn't change that, and no matter how much power you give the government to seize the means of production and redistribute wealth, you will not create an ounce of the wealth that capitalism has given the world. Measures of human well-being, across the globe, have increased exponentially since the advent of the Industrial Revolution, and freer markets and capitalism have everything to do with that.

But that, I suppose, is another story altogether.


William Sullivan blogs at Political Palaver and can be followed on Twitter.

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/02/why_the_radical_left_and_no_one_else_touts_modern_monetary_theory.html

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