Sunday, November 15, 2020

What’s Kraken? - Clarice Feldman

 

​ by Clarice Feldman

To be sure, there is a great deal of evidence of regular old-timey ballot stuffing and standard election fraud, but computer and internet generated mischief has the potential to far exceed that and seems to Trump's lawyers in fact to have done so.

A couple of nights ago on Lou Dobbs’s show, President Trump's (and General Michael Flynn’s) lawyer Sidney Powell suggested there was massive fraud in the  presidential election vote tabulations. She said she was about to “release the Kraken.” Lin Wood, the other most prominent Trump election counsel, suggested much the same explosion of evidence establishing the presidential vote tabulations were manipulated.

There was a  bizarre switch on election eve. As vote counting suddenly and oddly was halted in several key states, the tallies, which had shown that a substantial victory was in the offing for the President, suddenly -- and statistically impossibly -- ran up huge numbers for Biden and away from Trump. This certainly creates an impression that the shift was the result of theft.

Other indications besides the statements of these lawyers (the analyses by statisticians, the hundreds of sworn affidavits by poll watchers) who certainly would  not risk their reputations on baseless charges of such significance, suggest that the counting was seriously flawed and likely tampered with.

By whom and how the evidence of it was obtained remains unclear, but as this is likely to be a continuing issue, I’d like to share what I have been able to find through the work of numerous online commenters and researchers .

While you may not agree that President Trump is a strategic genius who sees things far into the future and prepares for all contingencies, it cannot be doubted that two years ago he anticipated foreign interference with our election process and issued in an Executive Order a means to investigate and punish any person, group or country which engaged in such international election fraud. 

It’s a lengthy order and I’ll try to note some of the most significant portions of it. It tasks the DNI with preparing a report of the investigative results of such interference no later than 45 days after an election, but specifies:

d) Nothing in this order shall prevent the head of any agency or any other appropriate official from tendering to the President, at any time through an appropriate channel, any analysis, information, assessment, or evaluation of foreign interference in a United States election.

(e) If information indicating that foreign interference in a State, tribal, or local election within the United States has occurred is identified, it may be included, as appropriate, in the assessment mandated by section 1(a) of this order or in the report mandated by section 1(b) of this order, or submitted to the President in an independent report. [Emphasis added]

Sec. 2. (a) All property and interests in property that are in the United States, that hereafter come within the United States, or that are or hereafter come within the possession or control of any United States person of the following persons are blocked and may not be transferred, paid, exported, withdrawn, or otherwise dealt in: any foreign person determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State, the Attorney General, and the Secretary of Homeland Security:

(i) to have directly or indirectly engaged in, sponsored, concealed, or otherwise been complicit in foreign interference in a United States election;

(ii) to have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services to or in support of, any activity described in subsection (a) (i) of this section or any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order; or

(iii) to be owned or controlled by, or to have acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, any person whose property or interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order.

Sec. 7. (a) Any transaction that evades or avoids, has the purpose of evading or avoiding, causes a violation of, or attempts to violate any of the prohibitions set forth in this order is prohibited.

(b) Any conspiracy formed to violate any of the prohibitions set forth in this order is prohibited.

(c) the term “United States person” means any United States citizen, permanent resident alien, entity organized under the laws of the United States or any jurisdiction within the United States (including foreign branches), or any person (including a foreign person) in the United States;

(d) the term “election infrastructure” means information and communications technology and systems used by or on behalf of the Federal Government or a State or local government in managing the election process, including voter registration databases, voting machines, voting tabulation equipment, and equipment for the secure transmission of election results;

(e) the term “United States election” means any election for Federal office held on, or after, the date of this order;

(f) the term “foreign interference,” with respect to an election, includes any covert, fraudulent, deceptive, or unlawful actions or attempted actions of a foreign government, or of any person acting as an agent of or on behalf of a foreign government, undertaken with the purpose or effect of influencing, undermining confidence in, or altering the result or reported result of, the election, or undermining public confidence in election processes or institutions

Did this Executive Order set in place a means to investigate computer manipulation overseas to affect our election and did such an investigation reveal that this occurred and significantly affected the election in several key states? If so, the reported results must be amended substantially to discard the false count, or other measures taken to prevent certifying fraudulent results dependent on the manipulated reported final tallies. That is the issue I think Powell and Wood are hinting at.

To be sure, there is a great deal of evidence of regular old-timey ballot stuffing and standard election fraud, but computer and internet generated mischief has the potential to far exceed that and seems to Trump's lawyers in fact to have done so.

Georgia

Georgia has an interesting recent history on the use of equipment purchased by the governor from a company called Dominion. Last year concerns were raised by and suits were brought by activists -- from Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform and the conservative FreedomWorks to Democratic groups such as Stacey Abrams’ organization Fair Fight -- who demanded paper ballots and sought an order for a paper backup for electronic poll books. Judge Amy Totenberg (who has a history of documenting election fraud, having served when younger as a field investigator for the UMWA reformers in collecting evidence of fraud) was greatly concerned about the unreliability of the Knowlink PollPads bought from Dominion Voting Systems for more than $100 million, and ordered a paper pollbooks be kept in every polling place in Georgia. By a 2 to 1 margin the 11th Circuit temporarily halted her order this October. Judge Totenberg declined to order a switch to hand-marked ballots bypassing Dominion’s equipment altogether because she indicated a change so close to the election “cannot but cause voter confusion and some real measure of electoral disruption.

Dominion’s lobbyist, who pitched the $100 million dollar purchase of these machines, was Georgia Governor Brian Kemp’s former chief of staff. Georgia’s secretary of State Brad Raffensberger took campaign cash from the wife of a CEO of Dominion’s partner.

On Parler, Lin Wood posted:

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp & Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger should be investigated by the GA Bureau of Investigation. Maybe they should resign.

We The People deserve honest public officials.

Georgia’s purchase was also questioned by Oregon’s Democratic senator Ron Wyden:

...in a speech at an election security conference in Washington DC, said that the voting machine lobby “literally thinks they are just above the law, they are accountable to nobody, [and] they have been able to hotwire the political system in certain parts of the country like we’ve seen in Georgia”.

Wyden was referring to the fact that Brian Kemp, who is now Georgia’s governor after overseeing his own election while secretary of state, appointed an ES&S lobbyist as his deputy chief of staff. Meanwhile, the state is in the process of purchasing more than $150m in new voting machines.

“My view is that the maintenance of our constitutional rights should not depend on the sketchy ethics of these well-connected corporations that stonewall Congress, lie to public officials and have repeatedly gouged taxpayers.

Dominion reportedly has Venezuelan and Cuban investment and utilizes parts from China. Its software is widely used across the U.S.

Another Trump lawyer tweeted of Dominion:

@RudyGiuliani

Did you know a foreign company,DOMINION,was counting our vote in Michigan, Arizona and Georgia and other states.

But it was a front for SMARTMATIC, who was really doing the computing.

Look up SMARTMATIC and tweet me what you think?

It will all come out.

Here’s Lord Malloch-Brown, head of Smartmatic, addressing the Atlantic Council about the wonders of technological aids to voting. Dominion denies any connection to Smartmatic:

Dominion has no company ownership relationships with any member of the Pelosi family, the Feinstein family, or the Clinton Global Initiative, Smartmatic, Scytl, or any ties to Venezuela.  Dominion works with all political parties; our customer base and our government outreach practices reflect this nonpartisan approach. 

Georgia is not the only state in which the reliability of Dominion was questioned by representatives across the political spectrum.

In Maryland, Congressman Jeremy Raskin threw down a red flag on the company.

“Raskin’s bill could affect at least two of the largest election companies. Dominion Voting Systems, which is the second-largest voting machine vendor in the US, is based in both the US and Canada. Scytl, which provides election night reporting and other online election management tools, is based in Spain.”

Well, Scytl used to be based in Spain, with offices in Frankfurt and Barcelona, but it went bankrupt and this October was purchased by an Irish company, Paragon. 

Scytl and Bytes

Linn Wood Wood tweeted:

@LLinWood

Biden & his criminal cronies are not going to sleep well tonight. Well, Biden might because he probably forgot the name Scytl.

His co-conspirators know name well. They also know the name Paragon, company which purchased Scytl in 10/20.

Every will be revealed.

#FightBack

Scytl provides electronic voting systems which have a bad record of vulnerability to electronic  manipulation. Before declaring bankruptcy, it botched elections in 2018 in New South Wales, in Ecuador in 2014, in 2011 in Norway, and in 2015 in Switzerland before bankruptcy and a sale to Paragon last month.  

Does Trump Have the Goods His Lawyers Hint At?

Representative Louie Gohmert stated in a video on Friday that the U.S. Army had possibly seized Sctyl’s servers in Frankfurt. He said that he had information that Scytl had possession of  “extremely compelling information" proving the votes had been manipulated after the data was sent from the voting machines to be tallied. 

It’s hard to imagine Germany allowing U.S. troops to seize property in Frankfurt. (Of course, a covert operation is not unheard of.)

In any event Scytl has categorically denied the Gohmert report. Most particularly they deny having offices in Frankfurt, or that the U.S. Army seized anything from Barcelona, Frankfurt, or anywhere else.

Would seizing the Scytl computers be the only way to establish vote tally manipulation? 

I don’t think so. For one thing, Dominion stores its data on Amazon cloud, and federal law enforcement could get access to it. The Utah Data Center  which, among other things, stores data relating to cybersecurity, can and does process, “all forms of communication, including the complete documents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Internet searches.”

It could have picked up odd happenings between the overseas offices of the big electronic election services. All the ways the data could be accessed is, frankly, a topic beyond my ken.

In the meantime, personnel shuffles indicate the President was unhappy with the performance of some of the officeholders. He ordered DHS head Chad Wolf to fire his cyber chief, Chris Krebs, something Wolf has refused to do.  The President has the unilateral right to dismiss Krebs without Wolf’s assistance.

At the Department of Defense, General Michael Flynn’s aide Ezra Cohen-Watnick has been made acting undersecretary of intelligence. Previously he was the U.S. strategic policy coordinator for all intelligence programs, “including, among other things, covert action, human intelligence, electronic surveillance.”

Are Trump’s lawyers onto something big or not? We’ll have to see. In April of last year, Democratic congressman Raskin, while challenging private voting systems companies, said, “To say that they don’t have any evidence of any wrongdoing is not to say that nothing untoward happened,” Raskin said. “It’s simply to say that we don’t have the evidence of it.”

I wonder if he’d say that today?

 

Clarice Feldman  

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/11/whats_kraken.html 

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The Dominion software story keeps getting worse - Andrea Widburg

 

​ by Andrea Widburg

A Dominion vice president has admitted that the software can be manipulated, and people are alleging his sympathies lie with Antifa.

Dominion software’s reputation for reliability may have taken another hit with the claim that Eric Coomer, a vice president and dominion, and the person in charge of the software’s security, is an Antifa supporter and Trump hater. This information is disturbing when added to the way in which the software churned out impossible pro-Biden results in the wee hours of November 4 in Democrat-run states following a Trump wave.

Wikipedia has deleted most of Dominion’s history. I visited the page a few days ago and read about its origins in Venezuela. If you go to the Wikipedia page today, that history is gone and, in its place are accusations against QAnon. At the “view history” page, you can see dozens of recent changes since the election. The primary editor – Molly White – is a recent college grad and bisexual leftist.

These changes, along with endless “fact checks” from leftist media outlets keep burying ever more deeply the history behind Dominion. However, that history is worth dredging up because it goes a long way to explaining where we are now.

As a predicate, remember that the system is so vulnerable to hacking that, in January 2020, Texas’s Secretary of State refused to certify it:

The examiner reports identified multiple hardware and software issues that preclude the Office of the Texas Secretary of State from determining that the Democracy Suite 5.5-A system satisfies each of the voting-system requirements set forth in the Texas Election Code. Specifically, the examiner reports raise concerns about whether the Democracy Suite 5.5-A system is suitable for its intended purpose; operates efficiently and accurately; and is safe from fraudulent or unauthorized manipulation. Therefore, the Democracy Suite 5.5-A system and corresponding hardware devices do not meet the standards for certification prescribed by Section 122.001 of the Texas Election Code.

Texas is right to be suspicious. In testimony before the Democrat-run House this past January, Dominion was one of the three voting system companies (the other two were ES&S and Hart InterCivic) that “acknowledged they relied on Chinese-made gear”:

Dominion Voting Systems CEO John Poulos and Hart InterCivic President Julie Mathis said their companies use Chinese-made LCD screen components, chip capacitors and resistors, arguing that in some cases there's no option for manufacturing those parts in the United States.

(Incidentally, in a January interview about that same congressional testimony, Eddie Perez, of the OSET Intitution, said that the voting systems (including Dominion) are systemic security problems. Last week, though, he told AP, "he was not aware of any systemic issue related to problems with Dominion software that would affect the tabulation of results."  Hmmm.)

Dominion also has ties to the Clinton Foundation through its DELIAN project, and to Nancy Pelosi, whose aide is Dominion’s D.C. lobbyist. Dominion has also been tied to numerous cases of election fraud.

During a recent appearance on Lou Dobbs Tonight, super lawyer Sidney Powell, one of the smartest people in America, had a great deal to say about Dominion’s origins and reliability. Pay special attention to the video Dobbs plays before introducing Powell, because that will be your introduction to Dominion Vice President Eric Coomer:

 

 

In the same hearing, Sharon Meroni stated that, when Coomer was asked who could make these changes to the software, Coomer allegedly replied that “vendors, election officials, and others who need to be granted access,” could do so. Coomer, who was present when she repeated his words, did not object.

There’s also an allegation that Coomer, a UC Berkeley grad, is more than just the Veep of a company that has an easily hackable software system and strong Democrat ties. Joe Oltman, a tech company CEO, contends that he located Eric Coomer’s Facebook account before the latter shut it down, and that it was a far left feast:

According to Oltmann, Coomer’s now-deleted Facebook posts include his sharing songs tilted “Dead Cops,” “Dead Prez,” and “ACAB.” One post of particular interest is a long “statement” from Antifa he shared in June in response to President Trump declaring Antifa a terrorist organization.

Twitter suspended Oltman’s account, so there’s no way to view his tweets in their original form. Either he was committing slander, which is possible, or Twitter is doing its level best to clean up Coomer’s allegedly compromised history, which is equally possible. You can see the alleged posts here, but please keep in mind that there is, as yet, no proof that they came from the Eric Coomer who works at Dominion.

Oltman has also gone on the record saying that, at an Antifa meeting he infiltrated, “Eric from Dominion,” allegedly said “Don’t worry about the election. Trump’s not gonna win. I made f*cking sure of that.” This person may not be Eric Coomer, but Oltman seems to be pretty sure that it is the same “Eric.”

Image: Eric Coomer. YouTube screengrab.

 

Andrea Widburg  

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/11/the_dominion_software_story_keeps_getting_worse.html 

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The Law Is There’s No Presidential Transition Until Congress Certifies the Election - Daniel Greenfield

 

​ by Daniel Greenfield

The Democrats made the rules, but they don’t want to live by them.

 


Even though the votes are still being counted, Joe Biden declared that he is the President-Elect, a shadow government office invented by Obama and invested with a pseudo-government seal, and he has been holding fake briefings and taking phone calls with foreign leaders.

The United States only has one president at a time. Maintaining a fake shadow presidency undermines the sitting administration to the American people and to foreign governments.

It’s illegal and inappropriate. So the Democrats are doing it anyway.

Incoming presidents, since Truman’s day, receive briefings and, since Kennedy’s day, get funding for their transition teams, but, according to the law, only once it’s clear who won. The last time this happened, the Bush transition was blocked by Democrats until December.

But the media is boosting its Biden cable network coup by threatening the head of the GSA.

A week after the election, the media descended on Emily Murphy, the head of the General Services Administration (GSA), demanding that she release funds to a Biden transition.

Media hit pieces like the New York Times' "How Emily Murphy Stands Between Biden's Team", Bloomberg's "Who Is the GSA's Emily Murphy, Trump Appointee Holding Up Biden Transition", and the Washington Post's "Trump Appointee at GSA Declines to Sign Letter Authorizing Biden Transition", personalized the issue and set off a lynch mob swiftly leading to threats against her.

It’s still early in November. The media conveniently forgot the time its party blocked a presidential transition for over 4 weeks, not just through November, but into December.

David Barram, a top Clinton donor who supported every one of their campaigns since 1992, and tech industry figure, who had been appointed to head the GSA, didn't get this kind of treatment when he turned down transition funding to the Bush-Cheney campaign after the 2000 election.

Not only did Barram block funding until Florida’s vote was certified, but he kept blocking it until the Supreme Court had made its decision, leaving very little time for any transition to happen. The Bush-Cheney campaign pursued its own privately funded transition, as did Al Gore, the way presidential transitions used to work until the Presidential Transition Act changed all that.

Despite all this, Barram was never publicly attacked or threatened the way that Murphy is.

Worse still, the media recently trotted out Barram to argue that the GSA should release transition funding to the Biden-Harris campaign. “First off, all these media outlets who call the election have called it for Joe Biden, I think the winner is pretty clear,” Barram recently insisted.

Media outlets, it ought to go without saying, but no longer does, don’t pick presidents.

But, as with so much else, the same media that amplified claims that Gore votes were thrown out in Florida, that Secretary of State Katherine Harris discriminated against minorities, and that Jeb Bush had rigged the election for his brother, now yells that such claims are not only false, but dangerous, and must be censored at all costs. The media that had allowed every Democrat to hold forth about the Florida election, now won’t even allow Republicans to speak.

Democrat claims of election fraud must be heard, but Republican claims are “disinformation”.

Even while the Washington Post warns Republican claims of election fraud are dangerous, it just ran an article suggesting that Harris rigged the 2000 election to win an ambassadorship.

It’s dangerously irresponsible for Republicans to cast doubt on an election result, but not for Democrats. And it’s also dangerous for Republicans, but not Democrats, to block a transition.

And yet the arguments that Barram made to block GSA funds back then hold up well today.

"With legal action being pursued by both sides, it is not apparent to me who the winner is," Barram had argued.

"Until the results are clear, and as long as both sides are going to court, the results are not clear yet," GSA spokeswoman Beth Newberger had insisted.

The legal standard for authorizing a GSA transition is, in the words of the Democrats, the end of legal action over the results of the election. As long as legal action is being pursued, including a trip to the Supreme Court, the GSA cannot and should not release funds to a transition.

In congressional testimony, Barram took it further and cited an authoritative Democrat source.

"Congress made it perfectly clear that if there is ‘any question’ of who the winner is 'in a close contest' this determination should not be made," Barram pointed out.

He then quoted, Rep. Dante Fascell, the sponsor of the Presidential Transition Act.

Rep. Fascell had stated that, “If the Administrator had any question in his mind, he simply would not make any designation in order to make the services available as provided by the Act. If as an intelligent human being and he has a doubt, he would not act until a decision has been made in the electoral college or in the Congress."

Kennedy had recently won, through Daley’s voter fraud in Chicago, and after spending $360,000 on JFK’s expenses, the Democrats wanted government funding for presidential transitions. They also wanted some assurance of getting government assistance from the administration of an opposing party even though no such issues had come up to date.

Fascell’s boundary went further than Barram’s, with the cutoff being the electoral college and congressional certification. That’s an objective and solid constitutional standard, unlike the end of legal proceedings, let alone cable news network election calls, that are subjectively partisan.

More importantly, these are the rules that Democrats, not Republicans, had made. And Democrats were happy to live by these rules in Bush v. Gore when they helped them.

Now the same rules are suddenly oppressive, dangerous, corrupt, and treasonous.

Much like casting doubt on the election results in 2000, 2004, and 2016, was “patriotic”, but casting doubt on the election results in 2008, 2012, and 2020, is “deeply dangerous”.

Political factions can have different views, but they cannot be allowed to have different laws.

That’s called equality, not “equity”, before the law.

The core crisis of political power is that Democrats only respect the law when it’s in their favor and ignore it, attack it, or dismiss it when it isn’t. A Democrat Senate blocking Bush’s judicial nominees was a noble defense of civil rights, but a Republican Senate blocking Obama’s judicial nominees was an attack on democracy, and then Democrat Senate members trying to block Trump’s judicial nominees was once again noble. The legitimacy of the Senate as an institution, or the filibuster as a tactic, changes every time the Senate changes hands.

Counting every legal vote was noble in Florida in 2000, but is a disgusting lowball tactic in Pennsylvania in 2020. Fighting the election results in the Supreme Court was in the highest traditions of our political system in 2000, but is an outrageous abuse twenty years later.

It was appropriate for the GSA to block presidential transition funding in 2000, but doing so in 2020 may kill people, and the relevant GSA officials should be threatened and harassed.

Living in a nation of laws means having to live with those laws.

Harassing the head of the GSA is political intimidation and only highlights the fundamentally terroristic and abusive nature of the political coup that the Democrats are perpetrating.

Rep. Dante Fascell, the Democrat sponsor of the Presidential Transition Act, was quite clear about the GSA administrator not taking personal initiative in a disputed election. So was Bill Clinton’s GSA boss. As long as a presidential election is being contested, there’s no transition.

That’s not only the law, it’s the rules that Democrats made. Now they have to live by them.

 

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/2020/11/law-theres-no-presidential-transition-until-daniel-greenfield/ 

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Will the Real Winner be China? - Rick Fuentes

 

​ by Rick Fuentes

The stakes are high for America’s future if Trump is robbed of a second term and a crucial trade victory denied.

Cheered on by the media, presumptuous Democrats are already popping the corks and picking out the drapes for the Oval Office, giddy that more than 70 million Republican voters will be handed their red caps and shown the door.

Not so fast.  Upended state election protocols, systemic machine software glitches, Stalinistic vote count irregularities, and ballot deliveries in the dead of night are not always enough to snatch victory from defeat. Fighting against the Tammany Hall playbook may be challenging, but each day brings a stronger indication that a reversal of fortune is forthcoming.

On the other side of the world, a gentleman sporting a thick bootblack pompadour and a disarming smirk nonetheless considers the prospect of an upper hand in the American presidency.  Xi Jinping has wagered this bet by hook into Wall Street, media moguls, show business, and academia, and by crook through the gluttony and hubris emblematic of some of America’s most powerful political families.

The Chinese are the epitome of patience, measuring history in eras and dynasties going back four millennia.  They have fought hundreds of wars, almost all of them internal and tribal, conveying valuable lessons on warfighting and the use of intelligence to defeat rivals of far greater strength and resources by turning those attributes against them.  Their spoken language and artistic ideographs are incomprehensible to most outsiders and vexing even to scholars of the Orient.  Simple words, such as shi, seem repartee spoken with a smile, but describe military and diplomatic schemes crafted to discredit or eliminate an opponent.  So long as we view China through a Western aperture, we will continue to overvalue their assurances while their ill intentions go unnoticed.

China and its sole governing entity, the China Communist Party (CCP), reign over a global empire, although not in the conventional sense of land holdings.  At its height, proud Britons claim that the sun never set on their dominion.  China’s empire is asymmetric, built upon the conscription of world leaders in finance, government, and the media, and the use of rapacious trade practices, intellectual piracy, and espionage.  Much of this predation eludes the five senses.

Historians point out that China began to chip away at American global superiority in the Nixon era, starting with the first overture to open China to the West.  The world was entangled in a Cold War and China’s common border, nuclear capability, and blossoming military posed an existential threat to the Russians.

Nixon viewed the Sino-Soviet border as a northern front in Asia that broke Leonid Brezhnev’s concentration on the United States and Western Europe.  America began courting the Maoists in 1972, creating a pipeline to provide the expertise and hardware needed to boost its military, technology, and economic health.  To this day, China cultivates sympathy and handouts from the West, assuring wealthy nations and world banks that continued financial and technical assistance will lead to the opening of their markets.  It is a gambit well-played.  Linger a step back from any tangible reforms while offering glimmers of hope to your benefactors.  This Nixonian notion of appeasement to China has since dumbed down the foreign policy of Western intelligence agencies, bow-tied GS-15s at the State Department, and every American president.

Gerald Ford stayed the Nixon course and became the second president to visit China in 1975.  When Mao died in 1976, Ford heaped praise upon a man whose Great Leap Forward had snuffed out the lives of tens of millions of Chinese.  In 1979, Jimmy Carter, just a pair of blue jeans away from the peanut farm, signed an accord with the People’s Republic, giving them full diplomatic recognition.  After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Ronald Reagan lifted trade restrictions and increased sales of military equipment.  In response to the crackdown of a pro-democracy student movement in Tiananmen Square in 1989, George H.W. Bush withheld some military aid as a weak alternative to economic sanctions.

In 1996, Bill Clinton drew criticism for his approval to transfer secret nuclear missile and satellite technology to China.  After subpoenaed records disappeared and his Commerce secretary died in a Bosnian plane crash, the scandal faded from the headlines.  He followed up by normalizing trade relations and opened the door for China’s historic integration into the World Trade Organization while overlooking the issues of nuclear proliferation and human rights.

Bush 43 toed the family line but lost the automotive industry to a massive influx of Chinese auto parts brought on by low labor costs and Beijing industry controls.  Other American companies were battered by cheap knockoffs, but Bush refused tariffs on China imports in the belief that China was continuing to liberalize its policies.  Barack Obama, a globalist eager to diminish America’s position on the world stage, bent a knee to the U.S.-Sino relationship and visited China within a year of his election.  When he campaigned for the rise of China, Beijing took advantage of his idealism, slapped down his climate change goals, and began an aggressive military expansion in the South China Sea.

A half century of missing the head fake has finally brought China to box us into the turnbuckle.  In addition to decades of private sector and government technology, weapons and industrial transfers, America flung open its campus gates to Chinese students.  Today, upwards of 370,000 Chinese full-time undergrads and exchange technologists have flooded America’s most prestigious universities and research institutions.  They return home with bits and pieces of advanced military and industrial technology that can be readily assembled to replicate everything from aircraft carriers to socks.

Donald Trump has been a bull in a China shop for Xi Jingping and the CCP, knocking them back on their heels over their human rights record, international law violations, and intellectual property theft.  Throwing the American lot behind Hong Kong, he has ratcheted up import tariffs on Chinese goods, unwound unfair trade agreements, and turned back a policy of globalization that used American largesse to pay for the ills of the world.  Trump is a departure from the rollover presidents that Beijing has come to expect and is viewed as calculating, strategic, and a master tactician. No surprise that American corporatists in the deep pockets of the Jinping regime see the relationship as deteriorating under Trump, who is making long-overdue adjustments to the mercantile scales that will benefit both countries. 

All of this was before the pandemic.

The Wuhan virus has been of great utility to the American left, landing in the middle of a presidential election campaign, unraveling a robust economy, and opening doors to an unprecedented level of political chicanery that has subverted a presidential election outcome.  China’s early reaction was peculiar, cloaking a virological lab release by its proximity to a nearby wet market, immediately ejecting foreign scientists, medical experts, and journalists from the country, covering its tracks through the WHO, facilitating global spread through airline travel while locking down their own people, and hoarding medical supplies and protective equipment.  The devastating impact on democracies and world markets, particularly in the United States, smacks more of calculation and political dead reckoning than chance.

Giving China a leg up has eroded a century of American global dominance.  Using deception cloaked as diplomacy, the CCP has turned five decades of American rapprochement into a superpower status.  The renowned China scholar Michael Pillsbury points out in his prescient book The Hundred-Year Marathon that a 100-year plan to achieve world hegemony was hatched at the advent of the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949.  Xi Jinping is now poised to make that goal a personal legacy, bringing home the prize thirty years ahead of schedule and at little cost to their communist ways, trade practices, and continued oppression of human rights.

The stakes are high for America’s future if Trump is robbed of a second term and a crucial trade victory denied. If Joe Biden is gifted a seat in the Oval Office, it will be by means fouler than anyone, including the Founding Fathers, thought possible. He will play a Manchurian candidate for whom a vintage movie script could not have been more carefully written.

Image: Pixabay

 

Rick Fuentes  

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/11/will_the_real_winner_be_china.html 

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The approaching storm in US-Israel relations - Caroline Glick

​ by Caroline Glick

The question of who would fill what job in a Biden administration is basically irrelevant - his policies are basically set in stone.

(JNS) The day before the U.S. presidential election, the progressive Israel Democracy Institute published the results of a poll of Israeli Jews asked whether they believed President Donald Trump or former Vice President Joe Biden would be better for Israel. Some 70 percent named Trump, 13 percent chose Biden and 17 percent said they didn’t know.

Since Election Day, and since U.S. networks proclaimed Biden the winner, Israel’s media, along with its diplomatic and security establishments and political leadership, busied themselves by scouring the lists of candidates for senior foreign policy positions in the Biden administration and considering the implications of so-and-so’s appointment to national security adviser. The notion behind the name game is that the appointment of one person over another will significantly impact a Biden administration’s Middle East policy either in Israel’s favor or to its detriment.

There is nothing new about the name game. Israel’s political and national security leaders and its media know-it-alls play it every four years, and indeed, often personnel has been policy. For instance, when Trump replaced his first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, with Mike Pompeo, things changed. Tillerson opposed leaving the Iran nuclear deal and opposed moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. Pompeo supported both.

But in the case of the apparently incoming Biden administration, who fills what job is basically irrelevant, and worrying about it should certainly not be a priority. Biden’s policies are basically set in stone.

Biden, his running mate Kamala Harris and his team repeatedly set out his Middle East policies, in detail, over the course of the campaign. And in the days since it became clear that Biden is far more likely than Trump to be inaugurated on Jan. 20, his advisers have restated those policies and, in some cases, have taken initial steps towards implementing them.

If statements and actions by Biden, Harris and their campaign during the course of the election and in its immediate aftermath were not enough to convince Israel’s leadership and our media of the depth of their commitment, the Democrat Party as a whole stands behind them.

In the days since the election, Democrats, particularly in the House of Representatives, have been playing the blame game regarding their significant losses. Whereas everyone was certain that the party would expand its House majority, with the loss of at least 12 seats, the Democrat majority has moved from comfortable to endangered. Moderates now insist that the progressives took the party too far to the left and lost it precious votes in mixed districts. Radicals for their part note that nearly everyone who ran with their policies won their races and demand even greater sway in party decision making and leadership circles.

But the rancor and infighting between moderates and radicals revolves around domestic issues like socialism and defunding the police. It has nothing to do with Israel or the wider Middle East. Policies on those issues are effectively consensual.

They are consensual because as statements and actions by the Biden campaign, by Biden, by Harris and by the Democrat National Committee have made clear, Biden’s policies on Israel, Iran and the wider Middle East are the Obama-Biden administration’s policies. A Biden-Harris administration Middle East policy will pick up precisely where the Obama-Biden administration left off four years ago. Trump’s policies will be unceremoniously annulled, ignored, set aside, or rendered irrelevant.

Biden has committed himself to restore the Palestinians to center stage and to reinstate U.S. funding to the Palestinian Authority. Following the passage of the Taylor Force Act which bars the United States from funding the P.A. so long as it pays salaries to terrorists, Trump ended U.S. financial support for the P.A. because it refused to stop funneling hundreds of millions of dollars to terrorists. Likewise, P.A. funding of terrorists caused Trump to close the PLO’s representative office in Washington, D.C., which Biden has committed to reopening.

Biden also committed himself to reinstating U.S. humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip. Such a move will be a boon for the Hamas terrorist regime, which currently relies on cash payments from Qatar.

The Obama administration’s endpoint insofar as the Palestinians were concerned was the lame-duck passage of U.N. Security Council Resolution 2234 in December 2016. While Obama and his advisers insisted that they had nothing to do with the resolution but simply didn’t feel right vetoing it, as we have learned over the past four years, 2234 was initiated by Obama and his U.N. ambassador Samantha Power. They pushed it obsessively, attaching the highest priority to harming Israel as much as possible before they left office.

Resolution 2234 was geared towards setting up Israeli leaders and civilians to be prosecuted as war criminals in the International Criminal Court by claiming, baselessly, that Israeli communities in unified Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria are illegal. In the words of the resolution, those communities and neighborhoods, which are home to more than 700,000 Israelis, have “no legal validity” and “constitute a flagrant violation under international law.”

President Trump’s recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over Jerusalem and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s determination last November that Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria are not illegal were of a piece with the Trump administration’s attempt to nullify Resolution 2234, at least from a domestic U.S. perspective. A Biden administration will ignore the Pompeo Doctrine and the State Department’s legal opinion substantiating his position just as Obama ignored Trump’s repeated statements of opposition to 2234 in the weeks before its passage.

Driving home their plan to pick up where Obama left off, Biden, Harris and their advisers have all said they will reinstate the Obama administration’s demand that Israel bar Israeli Jews from asserting their property rights to build homes and communities in Judea and Samaria.

As for Jerusalem, while Biden has said that he will not close the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem and reinstate the embassy in Tel Aviv, he has pledged to reopen the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem to serve Palestinians. Until Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem operated independently of the embassy. The U.S. consul in Jerusalem was not accredited by the Israeli president because the United States refused to acknowledge that Jerusalem is located inside Israel.

Although Biden congratulated Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain on signing the Abraham Accords—which Sudan has since joined as well—his advisers have spoken of them derisively. This week, Tommy Vietor, who served as National Security Council spokesman under Obama, spoke derisively of the normalization deals, which just weeks after the accords were signed have already blossomed into a deep and enthusiastic partnership and alliance encompassing private citizens and government ministries in all participating countries.

Vietor said they were not peace deals but a mere vehicle for the UAE to acquire F-35s. Vietor then alleged that the UAE wants to use the deals to help Saudi Arabia win its war against the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen.

Biden, Harris and their advisers have pledged to end U.S. support for Saudi Arabia in the war and to reassess the U.S.-Saudi alliance.

If implemented, these policies will not end the Saudi war against the Houthis. They will end the U.S.-Saudi alliance. For the Saudis, the war against the Houthis is not a war of choice, it is an existential struggle. The Houthis are an Iranian proxy regime. Their control over the strait of Bab el-Mandeb threatens all maritime oil shipments from the Red Sea. Houthi missile strikes already temporarily disabled Saudi Arabia’s main oil terminal and have hit Saudi cities. If the U.S. ends its alliance, the Saudis will continue their war and replace their alliance with the United States with an alliance with China.

Supporting Iran’s Yemeni proxy against the United States’ strategic ally is not, of course, the only way that a Biden administration will help Iran to fight its Arab allies and Israel. Biden, Harris and their campaign advisers have all pledged repeatedly to reinstate the U.S. commitment to the nuclear deal the Obama administration concluded with the Iranian regime in 2015. Various reports have emerged in recent days regarding how precisely Biden intends to achieve that aim. But one thing is clear, having committed himself to restoring the U.S. commitment to the deal, Iran will hold all the cards in any future negotiation on the terms of a U.S.-Iran nuclear rapprochement. And that means that the U.S. will back Iran’s nuclear weapons program more or less from the outset of a Biden-Harris administration.

It cannot be underscored enough that these policies are not simply Biden’s positions. They are the Democrat Party’s positions. And this is the big change that has happened in the past four years. Israelis remember that when Obama concluded the nuclear deal, it was opposed by a 2:1 majority in the Senate and a similar majority in the House. But the Democrat Party has changed since then. Today, after four years of radicalization, on issues related to the Middle East generally and Israeli specifically, there is no meaningful distinction between the reputedly moderate Anthony Blinken, who served as then secretary of state John Kerry’s deputy, and the clearly anti-Israel Susan Rice, Obama’s former national security adviser. So it matters little if Blinken or Rice (or anyone else) is appointed secretary of state.

Because these are the positions of the party, they are not subject to change. If Biden’s radical, deeply destabilizing plans for the Middle East somehow manage to destabilize the Middle East, Biden won’t be in a position to reconsider any of his policies. They have been grafted on to his party’s DNA. Representative Elliot Engel was slaughtered in his primary race against new “squad” member Jamal Bowan. Standing with the Palestinians is a party position. That’s why Obama’s former ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro told Israeli media that “the establishment of a Palestinian state will return as the strategic goal of the Biden administration.” He didn’t even mention peace in that statement.

Likewise, appeasing Iran and giving it an open road to a nuclear arsenal is a domestic political issue for Democrats.

Talk of Biden’s joviality and personal warmth, and of moderates versus radicals, are soothing distractions for Israelis who are about to face the most hostile U.S. administration in history. But the facts are the facts. And to meet the challenge a Biden administration will pose to Israel’s national and strategic interests, Israel must steel itself for what awaits it, not worry who will occupy which post in a Biden administration.

This article first appeared in Israel Hayom.

 

Caroline Glick is an award-winning columnist and author of The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East.”

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/291243 

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Britain: Two-Stepping Toward Totalitarianism - Andrew Ash

 

​ by Andrew Ash

These malcontents, by pledging allegiance to the Marxist architects of that narrative, not only insult the memory of those who have fought and died for the freedoms we now take for granted; they are also two-stepping towards totalitarianism.

  • It has become an almost daily occurrence to find news stories of parents being 'called out' by their newly politicised children for expressing on social media 'wrong', 'unwoke' views, or of people being fired for something they may or may not have said years ago.

  • This sense of entitlement has come to characterise a group whose younger demographic seem to have no comprehension of the horrors of a war -- or indeed, of many authentic hardships -- in their own relatively comfortable lives.

  • This lack of respect for, or understanding of, history, along with an apparent need to invent, import, or re-animate grievances from the past, then lead these protestors to advocate inflicting what they decide is the appropriate revenge for a grievance on people who have had no part in causing it.

  • Tolerance is to be expected only from others.... One man's freedom, it seems, has become another man's cause for resentment.

  • The protestors' dismissal of British heritage, a bid to 'cancel' history, appears a threat to the nation. We supposedly have nothing to be proud of. Our achievements have presumably been little more than the spoils of an evil, bigoted patriarchal system. These malcontents, by pledging allegiance to the Marxist architects of that narrative, not only insult the memory of those who have fought and died for the freedoms we now take for granted; they are also two-stepping towards totalitarianism.

When the statue of Winston Churchill in London's Parliament Square was vandalised, the police, evidently held hostage to political correctness, stood by and watched as their role was publicly undermined by open disregard for the law. (Photo by Isabel Infantes/AFP via Getty Images)

There was a time when the British were known for their stoicism, their ability to battle through hardship, no matter the odds. The so called 'blitz spirit' of eighty years ago, that saw the nation 'pull together and carry on', regardless of the Nazi bombardment of our cities, characterised a generation that had suffered two world wars yet could not be bowed.

During the Covid pandemic, however, this 'blitz spirit' has been noticeably absent. There has been certainly very little in the way of a nation pulling together; in its place, there has been just a lot of bickering, mud-slinging and name calling-among politicians, activists, and the increasingly fragmented populace.

Predictably, Covid-19 was quickly turned into a divisive political issue by many in the oppositional media. The assertion now -- that anyone against face coverings, vaccines, or testing is assumed to be on the extreme right, while those obeying the safety rules, are on the left -- is as simplistic as it is loopy. One might have imagined that a deadly pandemic would act as a great uniter, finally bringing an end to the squabbling that has characterised UK (and US) politics for the last few years. Instead, we have been baked in identity politicking, making an already turbulent time more turbulent than ever.

Some malcontents have taken their vitriol to new levels of malice, publicly hoping, for instance, that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson would not recover from the coronavirus. No pulling together there. No blitz spirit. No compassion. Just bitterness, feuding and ever-deepening separation.

The fertile, if airy, 'soil' of cyberspace has become the perfect breeding ground for radicals of every stripe to spread their doctrines of division amongst the young, politically ripe millennials during lockdown. Pitching everyone against everyone -- left against right, young against old, black against white, women against men, trans (seemingly) against everyone -- appears to be the aim. All of that successfully seems to be driving a wedge of seething resentment between communities.

It has become an almost daily occurrence to find news stories of parents being 'called out' by their newly politicised children for expressing on social media 'wrong', 'unwoke' views, or of people being fired for something they may or may not have said years ago. Anyone who openly dares to emphasise the 'Great' in 'Great Britain' is simply asking to be labelled a 'racist'. For those naïve enough to believe in basic biology -- that the anatomy of women and men are different – the gulag awaits you. If you dare to utter the unthinkable, that 'all lives matter', prepare to leave town.

Many agitators --- unconcerned by either civility or tolerance -- continue perpetuating the notion, developed by precocious two-year-olds, that if you shout for long enough, your wishes might be served up. This sense of entitlement has come to characterise a group whose younger demographic seem to have no comprehension of the horrors of a war -- or indeed, of many authentic hardships -- in their own relatively comfortable lives. This lack of respect for, or understanding of, history, along with an apparent need to invent, import, or re-animate grievances from the past, then lead them to advocate inflicting what they decide is the appropriate revenge for a grievance on people who have had no part in causing it. Tolerance is to be expected only from others. For many 'progressives', there is no such thing as a two-way street. Agitators now seem to put their energy and focus into prioritising pet causes to which they feel everyone else ought to acquiesce. These might include men who have changed gender competing in female sports; defunding the police so that the most disadvantaged communities will be even further unable to protect themselves; expanding censorship in academia and Big Tech, or paying billions in taxpayer funds to other countries for promises to stop using fossil fuels at some far-off date and with no means of enforcement. Oh, and by the way, there is no debating anything. Just do what you are told.

While the Remainer-disruptors dragged out their opposition to Brexit as long as they could, seeing off two different prime ministers in the process, they may have relished their power. It was only after the Tories' landslide victory in December 2019, that they finally let go of their dream of overturning Brexit – but not before having branded all those in favour of leaving the EU as bigoted xenophobes.

That slur is a particular slap in the face to the people of this patient nation. For decades, they have done their best to move in step with the creeping, 'progressive' times in which we live. The acceptance of a variety of often controversial societal changes, such as the ever encroaching desires of various sexual lobbies, ushered in under the banner of 'human rights', seems lost on the liberals, so intent are they on pushing their identity politics agenda. If this is how appreciation is shown for the British public's quiet, respectful acceptance of often controversial, 'tipping point' changes within society, then no wonder much of the public may have decided that they have had enough of this new orthodoxy.

Although the coronavirus outbreak, with its restrictions of movement, briefly muted woke activism for a short time, it was not long before the extreme, activist milieu became restless. Until the death of George Floyd, a black American seemingly killed by a white policeman, these individuals had been busy berating figures on the right for not taking Covid-19 seriously enough. Suddenly, none of that mattered anymore. A frenzy of orchestrated Black Lives Matter protests erupted across Britain, despite the incident bearing absolutely no similarity to anything happening on Britain's streets, and despite the relative anonymity of the BLM movement in Britain until that point.

Many in the media, nevertheless, made sure that the message was loud and clear: protesting against perceived racism -- even if on another continent -- was more important than any pandemic.

Thus, after months of being told we would be prosecuted for breaching the Covid rules, we then had to observe on television thousands of protestors, not just flouting the safety rules, but tearing down historical monuments -- all off the back of a grievance that felt largely imported.

Even as the protests turned violent, no one was arrested. Up until this point, the government had made clear that any breach of lockdown rules would be met by the full force of the law -- no caveats, no exceptions. Probably no one was happy about it, but still we complied -- for the greater good.

Then, all of a sudden, chaos was erupting in towns and cities across the UK. There on the news, amidst the violence of civil unrest, not only were the lockdown rules being flouted, but, under the banner of Black Lives Matter, a raft of widespread anti-social behaviour was being tolerated. When the statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square was vandalised, the police, evidently held hostage to political correctness, stood by and watched as their role was publicly undermined by open disregard for the law.

The protestors' dismissal of British heritage, a bid to 'cancel' history, appears a threat to the nation. We supposedly have nothing to be proud of. Our achievements have presumably been little more than the spoils of an evil, bigoted patriarchal system. These malcontents, by pledging allegiance to the Marxist architects of that narrative, not only insult the memory of those who have fought and died for the freedoms we now take for granted; they are also two-stepping towards totalitarianism.

While the rights of sexual and ethnic minorities appear to be immovably written in stone, the freedom to visit our families, the pub, or the library can be withdrawn by the state at a moment's notice. Thousands of protestors marching through cities on the same day: no problem. Crowds flocking to the seaside on a summer day: the risk of arrest. One man's freedom, it seems, has become another man's cause for resentment.

So what will we be left with, as we try to reclaim our post-Covid lives in a not yet post-woke world? An increasing atmosphere of distrust and walking on eggshells. People are increasingly afraid to speak their minds. Even law enforcement is in a state of politically correct paralysis (here, here, here and here) .

While the UK was busy promoting multiculturalism and demoting choices such as Christianity, the nuclear family and a cultural heritage caringly assembled by people frequently written off as white and dead, we seem have failed to notice the societal divisions it has caused. According to reports, for example, about 19,000 of our children have been groomed and gang raped. The coronavirus pandemic, rather than bringing us together, has served to highlight divisions that are transforming the United Kingdom into something regressive, unevolved, and unrecognisable. Sadly, the United Kingdom is anything but united at this time.

 

Andrew Ash  

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16762/britain-totalitarianism 

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Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks - Gatestone Institute

 

​ by Gatestone Institute

Parting from a great spiritual leader

 

(Photo by Ben Stansall/AFP via Getty Images)

 All of us at Gatestone Institute mourn the untimely passing of Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks. He was an intellectual and spiritual giant of our generation and beyond. His reach was global and his message was for all faiths. He believed passionately in the Dignity of Difference and was the moral voice of our time.

Gatestone was immensely privileged to have hosted Rabbi Lord Sacks recently at its Zoom event on September 17th of this year. We did not know then that this would be his final speaking event anywhere. In tribute to his memory we invite you to listen here to his inspiring and meaningful last interview on his recently published book "Morality".

His passing is an immeasurable loss. We will all miss his knowledge, his insight, and his deeply held belief that together we could all strive, in his words "to heal a fractured world".

May his memory be a blessing.

 

Gatestone Institute  

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16760/rabbi-lord-jonathan-sacks 

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Watch: Trump supporters violently attacked during DC protests - Arutz Sheva Staff

 

​ by Arutz Sheva Staff

Trump supporters who gathered in Washington DC over stolen election claims violently assaulted.

 

Washington DC
Washington DC
Reuters

Violence broke out in Washington DC amid rallies in support of Trump and his claim of a stolen election.

In one instance caught on camera, a Trump supporter can be seen being hit on the head from behind and knocked down, after which his head is stepped on.

 

In another instance, a woman walking through a group of BLM activists with an American flag has the flag stripped away from her.

 

Other footage shows a young pro-Trump couple in DC followed by a crowd of who assault them and throw liquid at them.

 

Arutz Sheva Staff  

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/291233 

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Turkey vs. the West: A Tug of War Beyond the Aegean - Burak Bekdil

 

​ by Burak Bekdil

Turkish president Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan will try to keep tensions high enough to present a heroic front to his Islamist/nationalist base but not high enough to trigger EU sanctions.

 

Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan, image via Wikimedia Commons

BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,817, November 15, 2020

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The recent escalation of tensions in the Aegean has the potential to strengthen the political bond between Greece and its Western allies, as well as force the EU to shift from threatening sanctions on Turkey to actually imposing them. Turkish president Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan will try to keep tensions high enough to present a heroic front to his Islamist/nationalist base but not high enough to trigger EU sanctions.

David L. Phillips, director of the Program on Peace-building and Rights at the Institute for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University, recently said:

On the one year anniversary of Turkey’s invasion and occupation of Rojava (Northeast Syria), ErdoÄŸan is seeking to distract Turks from Turkey’s failed democracy and faltering domestic economy by war-mongering in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, and the Eastern Mediterranean. Turkey and its jihadist proxies are also threatening another Armenian Genocide, targeting Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh.

NATO is more than a security alliance. It is a coalition of countries with shared values. Turkey under ErdoÄŸan’s dictatorship is Islamist, anti-American, and hostile to Europe. Turkey’s application to join NATO would be discarded immediately if it applied today.

Phillips was one of the signatories to a statement, “It’s Time to Break with ErdoÄŸan”, published on October 9 by Justice for Kurds Chairman Thomas S. Kaplan and President Bernard-Henri Lévy in a two-page center spread of The New York Times.

A few days after the publication of the Times statement, the tug-of-war in the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas grew even more tense between traditional rivals Turkey and Greece. Athens declared a NAVTEX (Navigational Telex) for firing exercises in the Aegean covering a period including October 29, Turkey’s national day. Ankara responded by declaring its own NAVTEX in the Aegean for October 28 and decided to send its Oruç Reis survey vessel to the disputed continental shelf just 6.5 nautical miles off the Greek island of Kastellorizo.

This escalation has the potential to augment the political bond between Greece and its Western allies as well as force the EU to shift from threatening to sanction Turkey to actually sanctioning Turkey.

On October 14, German FM Heiko Maas called off his planned trip to Ankara to demonstrate the solidarity and support “that Greece has from us, everyone in the European Union and Germany.” He also reminded his listeners that the NAVTEX crisis with Turkey will be discussed at the forthcoming EU summit, a hint at potential sanctions.

The US State Department called the Turkish move a “calculated provocation.” “Turkey’s announcement unilaterally raises tensions in the region and deliberately complicates the resumption of crucial exploratory talks between our NATO allies Greece and Turkey,” spokesperson Morgan Ortagus said in a statement. “Coercion, threats, intimidation and military activity will not resolve tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean.”

ErdoÄŸan has ideological, diplomatic, and pragmatic reasons to escalate. Ideologically, his dogmatic Islamism is inherently anti-Western. He loves to portray any dispute through the lens of an unsophisticated parochialism that can be summed up in the phrase “We are good Muslims who oppose the infidels.” He will try to keep tensions high enough to show a heroic front to his Islamist/nationalist party fans, but not so high as to spark EU sanctions at a time when Turkey’s economy is sputtering. On the pragmatic level, ErdoÄŸan knows any foreign confrontation will boost his approval rating at home.

Ankara has more options with which to antagonize Greece, including weaponizing the Turkish Straits.

The 1936 Montreux Convention Regarding the Regime of the Turkish Straits established the Bosporus as an international shipping lane, but gave Turkey the right to restrict ships from non-Black Sea nations. About 3 million barrels of crude and 20 million tons of petroleum products cross the Bosporus every year, and these numbers will likely increase in the near future. More than 40,000 vessels passed through these waters in 2019 while transporting almost 650 million tons of cargo. This level of traffic reaffirmed the Turkish Straits as one of the most important maritime trade corridors in the world.

In 2019, Greek-owned ships represented nearly 21% of the global merchant fleet’s capacity and 53% of the EU’s, with 4,936 ships over 1,000 gross tons and a total capacity of 389.7 million deadweight tons. Greek-owned ships account for 32% of total tanker capacity, 23% of dry-goods ships, and 15% of chemicals and petroleum products capacity. In 2018, shipping money into the Greek economy was 16.6 billion euros. These numbers make Greek shipowners the largest group by nationality. It would thus be a serious blow to the Greek economy if Turkey were to restrict Greek shipping traffic through the Turkish Straits.

“Turkey has a right to close its straits to shipping traffic citing security threats in the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas,” said Lt. Col. (r.) Mithat Işık. “Turkey can consider closing the Straits if [tensions with Greece] continue like this.” He cited Article 20 of the Montreux Convention: “In time of war, Turkey being belligerent, the provisions of Articles 10 to 18 shall not be applicable; the passage of warships shall be left entirely to the discretion of the Turkish Government.”

According to retired admiral Cihat Yaycı, “If the EU imposes sanctions on Turkey, Ankara can force all commercial shipping traffic into day time, declare guide boats obligatory, determine shipping routes … Turkey can slow down the passage of Greek and Greek Cypriot ships … it can even close the Straits.”

Is this true? Not really. Turkey can use articles of the Montreux Convention as a pretext to re-regulate shipping traffic through the Turkish Straits only during wartime.

“Like all multinational conventions the principle of bona fide applies to the Montreux Convention. Signatories are expected to act in good faith when they interpret and implement the convention,” said one senior Turkish diplomat. “It won’t bring any good to Turkey if Ankara went for restrictions on shipping traffic just because ‘these days we dislike our Aegean neighbors.’”

That sums it up. It seems Turkey will try to sustain an optimal level of tension over the Aegean: hot enough to keep Turks united behind their leader, but not so hot as to provoke heavy-handed Western retaliation.

View PDF

 

Burak Bekdil is an Ankara-based columnist. He regularly writes for the Gatestone Institute and Defense News and is a fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Source: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/turkey-greece-aegean/ 

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Showdown in the Western Sahara - Khaled Abu Toameh

 

​ by Khaled Abu Toameh

 

International help would be greatly appreciated to prevent this showdown in the Sahara from escalating further.

  • Presently, the Polisario Front appears to be trying to create "facts on the ground" outside of any legal framework, presumably in the hope that the international community will view them as irreversible.

  • International help would be greatly appreciated to prevent this showdown in the Sahara from escalating further.

A member of the United Nations peace mission MINURSO at a UN base in Bir-Lahlou, in the Western Sahara, on March 5, 2016. (Photo by Farouk Batiche/AFP via Getty Images)

While much of the world was looking the other way, distracted by China's coronavirus and its economic aftermath, a separatist militia group backed by Algeria, the Polisario Front, have been militarily exploiting the crisis.

For weeks, the Polisario Front have blocked the only road leading southward from Morocco to Mauritania in the buffer zone of Guerguerat. Currently, around 200 trucks find themselves stranded there, while UN peacekeepers (MINURSO), on whom Morocco relies to enforce the tense 30-year ceasefire, apparently feel overwhelmed.

Ever since Spain withdrew from its former colony in the Western Sahara in 1975, the Polisario Front have been trying to claim the territory, rich with phosphates and fishing rights, as an independent state for themselves. Since that time, however, Morocco has served as the sole sovereign, offering the Western Sahara autonomy but not independence.

Last week, on Thursday night, Morocco finally responded to the Polisario Front's roadblock at Guerguerat by creating a security cordon and promising to "restore free circulation of civilian and commercial traffic" between Morocco and Mauritania -- an act that the Polisario Front called a "provocation."

The Polisario Front had announced the Monday before that any movement of troops by Morocco to the buffer zone area "will be considered as a flagrant aggression to which the Sahrawi [Polisario] side will respond vigorously in self-defence and to defend its national sovereignty. This will also mean the end of the ceasefire and the beginning of a new war across the region."

"The Sahrawi government," they warned, "also holds the United Nations and the Security Council in particular responsible for the safety and security of Sahrawi civilians."

Presently, the Polisario Front appears to be trying to create "facts on the ground" outside of any legal framework, presumably in the hope that the international community will view them as irreversible.

As a result of the Polisario Front's blockade, and in a move likely intended as a blow to Morocco, all traffic has been prevented from transporting goods not only to Mauritania, but to all of sub-Saharan Africa. Morocco, especially since it joined the African Union, has enjoyed warm, strong relations with other countries on the continent.

Until now, Morocco has avoided conflict by relying on UN Security Council and its MINURSO. The Polisario Front nonetheless on Friday claimed that Morocco had broken the ceasefire and "ignited war." Morocco, for its part, insists that there have been no armed clashes and that the ceasefire still stands.

The UN Security also recently strengthened Morocco's stance by not only demanding that the Polisario Front honor the terms of its ceasefire, but the UN also designated Algeria as a stakeholder in the dispute. On Friday, Saudi Arabia as well openly supported Morocco's refusal to have its territory seized by force.

An open conflict at this time would be immensely damaging for all the parties involved as well as for Europe -- particularly France, always deeply immersed in African policy. International help would be greatly appreciated to prevent this showdown in the Sahara from escalating further.

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Khaled Abu Toameh, an award-winning journalist based in Jerusalem, is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at Gatestone Institute.

 Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16763/western-sahara-showdown 

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