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August 2016

The Foreign Policy Establishment’s War on Trump By G. Murphy Donovan

You probably never heard of Max Boot, not that you missed much.

Like Ash Carter, Mister Boot is one of those defense intellectuals who makes a living from all things vicarious; consulting, “scholarship,” partisan journalism, political appointments, and think tank sinecures. The shorthand for the Boot stereotype in Washington is “Beltway bandit.”

Boot was born in Moscow and has served as one of Senator John McCain’s foreign policy advisors. You could do worse than think of Boot as a Russophobic wing nut. He also is a rabid advocate of regime change, global intervention, Russia-baiting, small wars for Islam, and other crackpot schemes such as “no-fly” zones in the Levant. Sound familiar? As a so-called “conservative” supporter of the Clintons, Max is now an official inductee into the no-fault school of foreign policy.

At the moment, Boot has a chair at the Council on Foreign Relations table. The CFR, when not thumping the globalist drum, is that venerable “non-profit,” icon that publishes the journal Foreign Affairs. By charter, the Council claims to be independent and “non-partisan.”

Most Beltway bandits cultivate a low political profile in Washington lest they offend one party or the other that might dispense contract or study monies. Boot has thrown the CFR “non-partisan” shibboleth under the bus and now squanders his personal gravitas and CFR reputation for the dump Trump movement. So much for “independence and non-partisanship” at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Voters may have chosen Trump, but guys like Max Boot and the CFR know better than to trust democracy, or the nation, to the wisdom of crowds.

Flying under a CFR banner, Boot has taken to the airways, notably Public Radio and print Media to trash Donald Trump in 2016.

Conservative and Neo-Con critiques of Trump are a hollow mix of adolescent speculations, ad vericundiam and ad hominem rants. Unlike Mrs. Clinton, Trump doesn’t have any military or foreign policy failures in his resume. Trump is damned for what he says while Hillary gets a pass from conservatives for the policy disasters she has wrought.

A Soldier’s Soldier: In Memoriam Two Columns on General John Vessey Jr.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/a-soldiers-soldier
A Soldier’s Soldier by Colonel Kenneth Allard (U.S. Army, Ret.)

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/soldier-down-general-vessey-rest-in-peace?f=commentary
Soldier Down . . . General Vessey, Rest in Peace. by Ambassador Henry F. Cooper

Not quite seventeen, this “soldier’s soldier” volunteered to become a Minnesota National Guardsman and received an Anzio battlefield commission in World War II and the Army’s second highest medal for valor, the Distinguished Service Cross, in Viet Nam. He led the U.S. and U.N. Forces in Korea and opposed withdrawing U.S. Forces which cost him the Army Chief of Staff post under President Jimmie Carter-an implicit rebuke cast aside when President Ronald Reagan appointed him as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and after his retirement and return to Minnesota into other important posts. President George H.W. Bush awarded Gen. Vessey the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. A life of service with unquestionable integrity.

Maine “Refugees” Who Died Fighting For ISIS Tom McLaughlin

Two Muslim immigrants who lived in Maine were killed fighting for ISIS and each left a wife and children here on welfare. The second, Adnan Fazeli, was revealed last week by the Portland Press Herald, but how many people realize there was at least one other? And, are there any more? If so, that information would be kept under wraps as long as possible.

The first was Abdirahmaan Muhumed, aka Abdifatah Ahmed, about whom I wrote in January, 2015. He was born in Somalia, raised in Minnesota, lived in Lewiston, and became a US citizen in South Portland, Maine. His Maine wife divorced him because he wanted multiple wives. He was killed in Syria in 2014 and it’s worth mentioning that he also worked at the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport. Think about that next time you board a plane.

Last week’s Press Herald headline on Fazeli read: “Documents: Freeport man died fighting for Islamic State in Lebanon.” Was he a “Freeport man”? By whose definition? He was an Iranian who professed, at one time at least, a desire to become American. To be a “Freeport man” one must be an American. Nowhere in the article does it say Fazeli was a citizen. It said he became radicalized in Maine by watching ISIS videos and converting to Wahhabism, which the PPH called an “austere” version of Islam. That’s like calling the KKK an austere version of Christianity. Wahhabism is radical Islam. It’s jihadism calling for the destruction of the west. Maine State Police Detective George Loder said: “Fazeli’s change in behavior alienated him from many of his Shia and moderate Sunni friends in the area. However, there were a few local Sunnis who supported his [radical Islamist] fervor and treated him with a great deal of respect.”

The article said Fazeli was a “refugee” brought to Portland by Catholic Charities in 2009. He was born in Iran and raised a Shia Muslim, but “self-identified” as Arab and not “Iranian.” What a suspicious phrase that is. Was he born Persian, which is a different, majority-ethnic group in Iran? Faze also identified as a Sunni Muslim, a branch of Islam which comprises about 9% of Iran’s population, but he was afraid of being arrested so he “fled” to Syria, a puppet state of Iran where a civil war was raging between Sunnis and Shiites. How does that make sense? Syria would be the last place to go for “refuge.” Was he perhaps interested in joining Sunni terrorists like ISIS and al Qaida which were fighting the Shia in Syria?

Then he “fled” Syria, arriving as a “refugee” in Philadelphia in 2009, and “came to the Portland area through Catholic Charities Refugee and Immigration Services,” according to the Press Herald. The article goes on to say: “Catholic Charities in Portland said Fazeli tried to receive social services [welfare] from the organization but was told that because he had come to Maine from another U.S. city after he’d immigrated to the U.S., he was not eligible…”

The 19th Amendment and the 2016 Election Dr. Robin McFee

“Those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it”

George Santayana

One of my favorite quotations – it underscores why we endure many of the unnecessary political follies of contemporary society. We as a society don’t know a lot about our history, and/or don’t see the significance of trying to remedy that.

Here is a good “history” example – what is the significance of August 26th, 1920?

Clearly anyone knowing the answer likely indicates an individual who understands something about the Constitution, how the division of labor between the states and federal government come together concerning amendments, and perhaps a bit about our history as a society.

Sadly most people I have asked about the 19th Amendment, if they have any clue at all about the purpose of an Amendment in terms of the Constitution, think it was the law that overturned Prohibition, granting college students the right to play beer pong on campus.

History is poorly taught in the US, as multiple studies by various groups have revealed in the last 10 years. The Nation’s Report Card (1) 2014 study on 8th grader knowledge of US history, geography and civics revealed 29% of the students possessed below basic knowledge in US History. Only 18% were proficient. Let me repeat that….only 18% of 8th graders in the study were proficient about the history of their own country. This isn’t quantum physics talking about the building blocks of the universe, but US history is the building block of our foundation as good citizens. Geography and Civics did somewhat better, but not by much. The increase from 2010 wasn’t inspiring either. In addition, when history is taught, not surprisingly it is increasingly revisionist, and leaning more towards indoctrination than education.

After reading the study results, I became convinced Watter’s World was real, and that is a scary place. The folks he interviews get to vote. OMGosh maybe the Framers were right to be afraid, very afraid of the masses, especially the uneducated. Moreover, Dickens, not missing a beat warned Scrooge about the danger of ignorance.

Against this backdrop, sometimes I am surprised books about history, and great historic figures continue to make the NY Times bestseller list – examples include Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates, Hamilton, The Bully Pulpit, Killing Lincoln, George Washington’s Secret Six, The Quartet, and others.

However, before we take comfort that book sales translate to a knowledgeable public, prepared to spend judiciously and wisely the most precious resource at our disposal – the vote, walk with me through a quick civics experience.

Stop letting political correctness interfere with the anti-Zika fight Betsy McCaughey

Health officials are bowing to political correctness instead of taking obvious steps to protect New York residents from the Zika virus.

New York has more Zika cases – 579 so far – than any other state. Officials warn pregnant women and their sexual partners not to travel to Zika-infested regions, because the virus causes horrific birth defects. But babies aren’t the only ones in danger. New research suggests adults may also suffer permanent brain damage after being bitten by a mosquito carrying Zika.

That’s reason enough to avoid travel to and from the Dominican Republic, the source of more than half the cases, or Puerto Rico, which is also Zika-infested.

So can New Yorkers feel safe by staying home and avoiding sex with a partner who’s been to a Zika-troubled region? For the moment, yes – but that could change with a single mosquito bite. The danger is that a tiger mosquito – local to the New York area – bites one infected person and then spreads the virus by biting other people.

That hasn’t happened yet, as far as we know. But more people coming to New York infected with Zika increase the risk local tiger mosquitoes will bite them and begin spreading the infection.

Epidemiologists say that risk is “considerable,” meaning 50-50. So why aren’t city health officials trying to slow the pace of Zika-infected arrivals?

Political correctness. “It won’t serve New Yorkers well if we create the impression that Zika is a Dominican problem or a Puerto Rico problem or a Guyana problem,” says Health Commissioner Mary Bassett.

Oh really? The goal should be to keep it from becoming a New York City problem.

Just to be clear, race and ethnicity have nothing to do with it. It’s geography. American citizens who travel to Zika hot spots as tourists put us in as much danger on their return as immigrants bringing it in. About 5 percent of those entering the United States who get tested for Zika test positive.

Car Bomb Kills 8 Police Officers in Turkish Border Town of Cizre Explosion hit a checkpoint 50 meters from a police station

Kurdish militants attacked a police checkpoint in southeast Turkey with an explosives-laden truck on Friday, killing at least eight police officers and wounding 70 other people, the state-run news agency and Turkish officials said.

The attack struck the checkpoint some 50 meters from a main police station near the town of Cizre, in the mainly-Kurdish Sirnak province that borders Syria, the Anadolu Agency reported.

Turkey’s Health Minister Recep Akdag didn’t confirm the death toll, but said 70 people were injured, four seriously.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack which was the latest in a string of bombings that have targeted police or military vehicles and installations. Authorities have blamed the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, for previous attacks.

Television footage showed black smoke rising from the mangled truck. The three-story police station was gutted from the powerful explosion.

The Health Ministry said it had sent 12 ambulances and two helicopters to the site.

Violence between the PKK and the security forces resumed last year, after a fragile two-year peace process between the government and the militant group collapsed. Hundreds of security force members have been killed since.

Turkey has also seen a rise of deadly attacks that have been blamed on Islamic State militants, including a suicide bombing at a Kurdish wedding in southeast Turkey last week that killed 54 people and an attack on Istanbul’s main airport in June, which killed 44.

Robot Babies Not Effective Birth Control, Australian Study Finds Lifelike ‘Baby Think it Over’ dolls appear to encourage teen pregnancy rather than discouraging it (HUH? NUTS?)

CANBERRA, Australia—A weekend spent mothering a robot baby to mirror the “real experience” of parenting is meant to discourage teenage girls from getting pregnant. But so-called Baby Think it Over dolls don’t cut teen pregnancy rates and in fact increase the risk, Australian research has found.

In a study published in The Lancet medical journal Friday, researchers found teenage girls who used the lifelike computerized dolls as part of a pregnancy-prevention program were more likely to become pregnant compared with girls receiving a less high-tech sex education.

“The program was supposed to put students off and then they would take extra steps not to get pregnant,” said study author Sally Brinkman, of the Telethon Kids Institute in Western Australia. “Unfortunately, and surprisingly for us, the intervention we can say definitely didn’t work and it actually seemed to increase the pregnancy rates. It just didn’t really work in putting the students off.”

The robo-babies, known properly as infant simulators, were developed 20 years ago by former NASA engineer Rick Jurmain, who with his wife founded U.S.-based manufacturer Realityworks. The company didn’t immediately respond to emailed inquiries from The Wall Street Journal.

Costing several hundred dollars, they have become a key part of pregnancy prevention programs in schools, churches and community groups in 89 nations, mimicking six-week-old infant behavior including crying when hungry or needing changing, or gurgling when rocked and burped. CONTINUE AT SITE

CHECK YOUR PRIVILEGE MR. KRISTOF: MARILYN PENN

At a prestigious Eastern college, non-Hispanic students wearing sombreros at a tequila party are chastised by the administration and punished for their insensitivity and “cultural appropriation.” Same story for a non-black person sporting dreadlocks at another campus, and we all know the narrative of Yale’s concern for its minority sensibilities during Halloween of 2015. So it’s with some amused shock that I read Nicholas Kristof’s article in Thursday’s Times titled “Anne Frank Today is a Syrian Girl.” Kristof wrote this piece without a trace of irony, notwithstanding the fact that had Anne been in Syria in 1941, she would have been persecuted by a Syria controlled by the Vichy French who were as intent on persecuting Jews as the compliant Dutch were. In addition to Syria, the vicious Vichy-ites controlled Lebanon, Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia and their denial of rights to Jews and their internment in camps were imposed in all these jurisdictions. Henri Dentz, The Vichy High Commissioner, was planning to open concentration camps when the British and Free French occupied Syria in 1944. Had Anne Frank survived the war, the independent Syrian government would have prohibited her from immigrating to Palestine and continued to persecute her until her family, like other Syrian Jews, fled without their earthly belongings.

There are crucial differences between Anne’s plight and that of Syrian civilians today. Nazi Germany was determined to imprison and exterminate all Jews throughout Europe – it was a staggeringly successful war against the Jews. Syrian refugees are what is commonly referred to as collateral damage in a raging internecine clash between different sects of Islam. There are numerous refugee camps already in existence in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq and if Kristof were truly concerned as a humanitarian, his complaint would be against those wealthy Arab countries that refuse to allow their brethren entrance even though they share a language and culture that would make this transition less traumatic. The truth is that not all “Syrian refugees” are Syrian nor are they all fleeing war. Many other people within that pool are seeking to immigrate for economic reasons and no one knows how many intend to further their ideological commitment to jihad against the west. We have witnessed the acceleration of terrorist tragedies throughout Europe, Africa, Asia and our own country and cannot be called paranoid or xenophobic after the mounting toll of murdered victims is splashed across the pages of Kristof’s newspaper every day.

Covering up the $1.3 billion payoff to Iran By Seth Lipsky

Call it judgment day. It looks like the Obama administration may yet face some kind of reckoning — in Congress, at least — over its payoff of a long-simmering claim to the Iranian regime.

That’s because to do so, the administration tapped a little-known account at the Treasury Department called the Judgment Fund. It is a special account used to pay out claims against the US government.

The details of how the administration did this, however, are being treated like a state secret. The State Department spokesman has clammed up tighter than a conch in a mudslide.

The topic erupted at the State Department’s daily briefing on Tuesday and Wednesday. That was after Claudia Rosett reported in the New York Sun that the administration made 13 transfers of $99,999,999.99 each.

Those payments add up to 13 cents shy of $1.3 billion. They were made Jan. 19, two days after President Obama announced he’d cut a deal with the mullahs for $1.7 billion to avoid an adverse judgment at a court in The Hague.

We know, thanks to the Wall Street Journal, that $400 million of that was made in foreign currency, loaded on wooden pallets and delivered in a special cargo plane and functioned as a ransom payment to the mullahs, who had been holding a group of Americans hostage.

The remaining $1.3 billion only started to come into focus when Rosett discovered the 13 transfers totaling $1.3 billion on a Treasury Department website related to the judgment fund.

She sees no other explanation than that the payments, which went from Treasury on behalf of the State Department, were to cover the Iran settlement.

Jordan’s Election Poses a Test for Muslim Brotherhood’s Change Islamists adopt more moderate posture after group’s disastrous experience in power in Egypt By Yaroslav Trofimov see note please

Oh now we have “reform” terrorists seeking to overthrow King Abdullah and his pretty wife. If she has to give up her designer duds and wear a Niqab, she’ll move to Hungary…..and the Mossad just can’t keep protecting the kinglet…..rsk

AMMAN, Jordan—In the campaign for parliamentary elections next month, the political wing of Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood replaced its traditional slogan, “Islam is the Solution,” with a more inclusive “Reform.” And to underscore its more moderate posture, the Islamic Action Front also fielded several Christians and women on its coalition’s slate of candidates.

One of the oldest and most potent political forces in the Middle East, the Muslim Brotherhood has been on the defensive following the 2013 coup against a Brotherhood administration in Egypt that unleashed a regional crackdown on political Islam.

The Sept. 20 elections in Jordan—a monarchy where most major decisions are taken by the royal court—aren’t likely to alter the country’s domestic or foreign policies. But they offer a rare test of strength for political Islam in the region as well as a measure of what lessons, if any, the Brotherhood has learned from its disastrous experience in power in Egypt.

The head of the IAF’s elections committee, Zaki Bani Irsheid, was released from Jordanian prison earlier this year after serving most of his 18-month sentence for criticizing the United Arab Emirates, one of the region’s most strident enemies of the Brotherhood.

“Political Islam is one of the most important components of Arab society and it cannot be eliminated,” he said in an interview. “But the Islamic movement has undergone a deep review of its ideas and discourse, and the experiment of these elections is a manifestation of this change.” CONTINUE AT SITE