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November 2016

Israel Says Four ISIS-Affiliated Militants Killed in Airstrike in Syrian Golan Heights Israel said it conducted the strike after its soldiers came under fire from across the border By Rory Jones

TEL AVIV—An Israeli airstrike killed four Islamic State-affiliated militants in the Syrian Golan Heights on Sunday, Israel’s military said, after its soldiers came under fire in one of the first major clashes with the extremist group.

An Israeli unit was conducting an operation beyond a fence that separates the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights and Syria but within the border when it was shot at by Islamic State militants, the army said. The soldiers returned fire before an Israeli warplane struck a machine gun-mounted vehicle that was carrying the militants, said military spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner.

The strike killed at least four militants, according to a visual assessment by the pilot. No Israeli soldiers were injured.

The military said the militants were fighting for the Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade, which the U.S. designated a terrorist organization in June after the group pledged allegiance to Islamic State.

The brigade is made up of roughly 600 fighters and has been operating on Syria’s borders with Jordan and Israeli-controlled Golan for about three years, Israel’s military said.

The group gained notoriety for kidnapping United Nations observers in 2013 but has so far refrained from cross-border attacks so as not to provoke Israel or Jordan.

Sunday’s attack was unlikely to signal a new wave of Islamic State violence on the border, said Nitzan Nuriel, former director of the counterterrorism bureau in Israel’s prime minister’s office.

“I don’t think that at this stage…someone decided to open up a new front against Israel,” he told reporters Sunday.

The Israeli side of the Golan Heights, land captured from Syria during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, has seen periodic clashes since the civil war began nearly six years ago. Most of the incidents have been caused by the Syrian regime misfiring against rebels and Israel returning fire.

Israel has said it won’t allow Lebanese political and militant group Hezbollah fighting alongside President Bashar al-Assad to open a front in the Syrian Golan Heights. It has regularly launched airstrikes against weapons convoys bound for Hezbollah.

Dozens of Arabs Arrested After Wildfires Scorch Israel Authorities say they have proof that at least 17 of the 110 wildfires were started by arsonists By Rory Jones

TEL AVIV—Israeli police have arrested about two dozen Arabs on suspicion of arson after wildfires spread across the country, local authorities said Sunday, drawing sharp criticism from some politicians as tens of thousands fled their homes.

Police said it wasn’t clear what proportion of the fires in recent days were arson-related, and how many had been started due to windy conditions and dry weather after a long hot summer.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday the fires hadn’t been totally extinguished. He warned that anyone proven to have ignited the blazes would be brought to justice.

“Whoever starts a fire, either by malice or negligence, whoever incites to arson—we will act against them with full force,” he said at a special cabinet meeting in the northern city of Haifa where damage was most serious.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said 23 people in custody were found lighting fires or connected to those who had started blazes. Some of them had been caught in the act and chased by police helicopters before being arrested by ground forces, he said.

The alleged arsonists didn’t appear to be coordinated by one group, but “it’s hard to say this is just because of winds,” said Mr. Rosenfeld. “There were several areas where fires started in [a] short space of time. That was significantly suspicious.”

Israel’s Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman also on Sunday said authorities had proof that at least 17 cases of the 110 recorded outbreaks of fires were caused by arsonists. He visited the Jewish settlement of Neve Tzuf in the central West Bank where hundreds evacuated their homes.

The wildfires began late Monday in central Israel and subsequently blazed around Jerusalem, Haifa and Jewish settlements in the Palestinian West Bank, destroying hundreds of homes and causing millions of dollars of damage.

Some 75,000 residents of Haifa were evacuated as whole neighborhoods were hit by the blazes. Israeli health authorities said more than a hundred people had been treated for smoke inhalation and other injuries across the country, but reported no deaths.

Israel’s military deployed thousands of soldiers to join hundreds of firefighters in tackling the fires. Firefighting planes and equipment were flown from the U.S., Russia, Greece, Italy, Turkey and other nations to help. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas also sent crews of firefighters and trucks.

Mr. Netanyahu and his defense minister both issued thanks to the Palestinian Authority for sending trucks to help with the infernos. But Mr. Lieberman also called on the government to expand settlement construction in the West Bank to punish those Palestinian and Israeli Arabs who had allegedly started the fires.

Other Israeli leaders also were quick to label the fires a new form of terrorism against Israel. CONTINUE AT SITE

U.S.-French Operation Targeted Elusive North African Militant, U.S. Says Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who survived previous U.S. attempts, likely was killed officials say By Gordon Lubold and Matthew Dalton

AMBOULI, Djibouti—French aircraft struck and likely killed one of the most wanted senior al Qaeda operatives in southern Libya this month, marking a new level of cooperation between France and the U.S. on targeting militants, U.S. officials said.

This wouldn’t be the first time the U.S. thought that a strike killed Mokhtar Belmokhtar, an elusive insurgent leader known as the “one-eyed terrorist” because of an accident years ago that left him disfigured. Reports of his death following previous operations to target him over the years have proved false.
Algerian militant Mokhtar Belmokhtar is seen in an undated picture from the U.S. Justice Department. ENLARGE
Algerian militant Mokhtar Belmokhtar is seen in an undated picture from the U.S. Justice Department. Photo: US Department of Justice/REUTERS

But based on what they described as the caliber of the intelligence, U.S. officials expressed greater confidence that the latest strike, conducted by French aircraft in southern Libya based in part on intelligence feeds from the U.S. earlier this month, likely was successful. Efforts are under way to determine its outcome, officials said. Officials at the White House and the Pentagon declined to comment on the strike. A spokesman for the French Ministry of Defense declined to comment.

Mr. Belmokhtar has raised tens of millions of dollars for al Qaeda affiliates through smuggling and by taking European hostages and selling illicit goods, and is considered directly responsible for the deaths of at least three Americans, according to U.S. officials.

The U.S. in 2013 launched a multiagency effort to find him that included the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the military’s Joint Special Operations Command and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Mr. Belmokhtar, once the head of the al Qaeda chapter in North Africa and the Sahel region—known as al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM—has been on the U.S. wanted list for at least a decade. He was thought to have been killed at least twice before, including in an airstrike in June and a drone strike last year.

If the strike this month was successful, it would represent a culmination of efforts by the U.S., French and other allies to capture or kill Mr. Belmokhtar. It would also reflect the extent of new military and intelligence cooperation between the two countries, U.S. and French officials said. The U.S. contributed intelligence to add to what French officials already knew about Mr. Belmokhtar’s whereabouts in anticipation of this month’s strike, U.S. officials said.

The killing of Mr. Belmokhtar would be the first confirmation that France has conducted airstrikes in Libya. Paris has for months tried to keep a low profile on its operations in the country, fearing that public military intervention would be seen as taking sides in Libya’s internal conflicts.

Yet the presence of thousands of militants in the country who have sworn allegiance to Islamic State and al Qaeda has prompted France to launch covert operations there for at least the last year, Western officials say. The missions include supporting local forces on counterterrorism missions and directly hunting down extremists, officials say.

After denying the existence of Libyan operations for months, France in July was forced to acknowledge its presence on the ground when three French intelligence agents died in a helicopter crash near the eastern city of Benghazi.

The U.S. and France have long had an intelligence-sharing relationship for counterterrorism purposes, but it became more formalized following last year’s Paris attacks. An agreement, announced by President Barack Obama in November 2015, directs U.S. officials to share operational planning and intelligence with their French counterparts.

The agreement has been expanded quietly, with more information sharing and intelligence cooperation, officials said.

Lisa Monaco, Mr. Obama’s homeland-security adviser, wouldn’t confirm details of the recent strike. But she said France is one of the “most effective allies” in bringing pressure against Islamic State, in Syria, Iraq and in Africa.

“The French have been indispensable partners, bringing resources, expertise and determination to the fight,” she said.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter is set to meet in Washington Monday with his French counterpart, Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, with the military and intelligence relationship continuing apace since the Paris attacks. American senior defense intelligence officials met last week as part of the so-called Lafayette Committee, formed after the agreement made with France last fall. The first of the semiannual meetings was in May.

The strike in southern Libya this month stands in contrast to French airstrike operations following the attacks in and around Paris a year ago, when French officials, under pressure by the French public to respond to the attacks, conducted strikes against Islamic State over Syria, but with little initial coordination with U.S. officials.

The intelligence the U.S. shares with France, though expanded, is still not considered akin to the so-called Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance between the U.S., the U.K., Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

The two countries are still working through longstanding issues when it comes to trust and the ability of both intelligence apparatuses to share information. But U.S. officials want to deepen the relationship as much as possible, U.S. officials said. CONTINUE AT SITE

For Cubans, the Long Wait Is Over With Fidel Castro dead, will the island nation finally begin to live again?By Mary Anastasia O’Grady

On a trip to Cuba in the late 1990s I met a young man who was trying to earn hard currency as a tour guide in Old Havana. It was obvious he wasn’t trained for the job. But I didn’t care. I wanted to hear from locals and, as I discovered, he wanted to be heard.

Over the course of several days we walked around the crumbling city while I peppered him with questions about daily life on the island. I got an earful about the absurdity of revolutionary Cuba, the privation, the frustration, the alienation.

He was angry. But when it came to talking about the hypocrisy of Fidel Castro, who everyone knew lived lavishly while his subjects struggled to get by, my guide was more careful. One evening over dinner he whispered, “Maria, don’t put what I say in your newspaper or Fidel will . . .” and he put his hands around his throat in a gesture of strangulation. He was afraid.

I heard the news around 2 a.m. Saturday that the 90-year-old despot had finally departed. I thought of that young man. And of the many other aspiring 20-somethings I met on my trip who wanted me to know of their longing for freedom.

The Recount Hail Mary The left may get an unexpected lesson in electoral federalism.

Remember when Democrats and the left scored Donald Trump for worrying that the election might be “rigged”? Well, now that he’s won, the same crowd is demanding recounts in three battleground states on grounds that the Russians rigged the results.

On Saturday what’s left of the Clinton campaign said it will join the recount effort demanded by Green Party candidate Jill Stein in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. The conspiracy theory for which they have no evidence is that Russian hackers rigged voting machines to manipulate the results. The Obama Administration has said it detected no such hacking and that the elections were “free and fair from a cybersecurity perspective.”

But reality doesn’t matter in the fake-news world of the far left any more than it does on the far right. The recount may be a progressive gambit to raise money from the gullible, or perhaps to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election. The ultimate Hail Mary would be to raise enough smoke about irregularities that individual electors would deny Mr. Trump the 270 votes he needs in the Electoral College.

Mr. Trump leads in 30 states with 306 electoral votes, and he would have to lose all three contested states to lose the election. He leads by some 71,000 votes in Pennsylvania, a little more than 20,000 in Wisconsin, and by nearly 11,000 in Michigan. If you think U.S. politics is polarized now, try handing the White House to Hillary Clinton now.

The silver lining may be to teach a lesson in electoral federalism. It’s all but impossible for hackers to rig U.S. elections because they are run locally and voting machines aren’t connected to a national internet network, as Hans von Spakovsky and John Fund explained on these pages in September. Progressives, not conservatives, want to nationalize election laws. So go ahead and do the recounts and then accept that Mr. Trump won fair and square.

Obama, on Way Out, Looks to Further Strengthen Iran By P. David Hornik

The House Rules Committee has voted 7-2 to stop the sale or leasing of a few score commercial Boeing planes to Iran. But President Obama has promised to veto the bill, saying it would “undermine the ability of the United States to meet our JCPOA commitments.”

Texas Republican Jeb Hensarling disputed this:

[Hensarling] reminded the committee that the Treasury Department sanctioned Iran Air in 2011 for using its planes to transport military-related equipment on behalf of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The Treasury Department removed the sanctions as part of the Iran nuclear deal, but Hensarling says Iran’s behavior “remains unchanged.” Iran Air has continued to use its aircraft to fly weapons and resupply routes to Syria, he said.

“Also last month, Iran conducted military drills using Boeing planes that have been a part of its air force fleet for many years,” he said. “This is not surprising as Boeing itself has posted that its commercial jetliners ‘make an ideal platform for a variety of military derivative aircraft.’”

Denny Heck (D-WA) claimed that the Treasury Department has “minimize[d] [the] risk” that Iran would use the new Boeings for military purposes, and said that if the U.S. doesn’t sell Iran the planes, “a non-U.S. company like Airbus” (a European consortium) may do so instead.

By Heck’s logic, the U.S. should always sell militarily usable items to America-hating, terror-supporting, expansionist regimes, since someone else will anyway.

Iran, of course, does not lack suitors when it comes to selling it military items. Russia’s RT News blares: “Russia, Iran plan $10 bn arms sale to Tehran.” And that deal would occur “following the successful delivery of Russia’s S-300 air defense missile systems to the country in October.”

Under strong pressure from Israel, Putin refrained for years from selling Iran the S-300s, which will be deployed to protect its nuclear sites. But in July 2015, just after the signing of the JCPOA agreement — which, we were told, would usher in an era of peace — Putin approved the sale.

Now, a Russian official says “all the S-300s that had been shipped to Iran will be put into operation by year’s end.”

As for the new $10 billion sale, the same official says it will include “T-90 tanks, artillery systems, and various aircraft” for Tehran.

Because of UN Security Council restrictions, the sale might have to wait — but only until October 2020, when those restrictions will be lifted.

The negative developments since the nuke deal was signed, among others, not only include Russia’s arms sales to Iran, but also the emergence of Russian-Iranian military cooperation in the region. Considering this reality, President Obama’s insistence on the Boeing sale, and on treating Iran as a responsible party in general, can at best be understood as a case of severe strategic irrationality.

And the Boeing sale is not all. The Wall Street Journal reports that Obama is also seeking to bolster the deal before leaving office by helping more American businesses enter the Iranian market and removing additional U.S. sanctions. CONTINUE AT SITE

Roger Franklin: Everyone I Don’t Like is Hitler

Ah, journalism as she is taught! Thanks to The Conversation and Queensland University of Technology’s Professor Brian McNair readers appalled by the partisanship, bias and emotional illogicality of the modern press can gain some insight into how it got that way.
Recently at Quadrant Online, Tony Thomas took a long, hard look at The Conversation, where academics pad the ledgers of their published thoughts with what is, in all too many cases, unmitigated piffle. It is a pity Tony did not wait a few more weeks because, had he done so, his argument would have been rendered iron-tight by the latest contribution to the taxpayer-supported vanity press of Brian McNair, professor of journalism, media and communication at the Queensland University of Technology. McNair’s insight – achieved, one suspects, by squatting over a mirror and seeing nothing but the familiar — casts Donald Trump as Hitler2.0 while imagining the Western world accelerating down the scree slope of a “slide into fascism.”

Know first that, while McNair shapes the young minds of those who aspire to newsroom careers, he is not a journalist by training. Rather, he is a sociologist (’nuff said?) who deconstructs journalism. If you have ever noticed the inane punctuation, asinine logic, misleading headlines and abuse of language that litter the pages of diseased and dying newspapers, the disinclination of those atop the ivory tower to teach basic craft skills might just have something to do with it. In this regard, if no other, McNair’s column is a treasure, well worth a close examination.

Below, his lump-sized dollops of his extrusion in italics, each paragraph followed by commentary of the sort a dyspeptic subeditor might have given a first-year cadet.

As the results of the 2016 election came in, the mainstream media in America and around the world demonstrated their inability to cope with the challenge of a president Trump within the conventional paradigms of journalistic objectivity, balance and fairness. Or, rather, to cope without normalising the most conspicuously overt racism, sexism, and proto-fascism ever seen in a serious candidate for president.

“As the results” … make that singular; there is only one result. There were many “returns” from the various states and territories, but only one result – in this case, Mr Trump.

“conventional paradigms” … use this vile jargon again and you’ll be fetching Chinese food for the back bench all next year. Meanwhile, read Orwell’s Politics and the English Language.

“the most conspicuously overt” … look up “tautology” in the dictionary. “Overt” means “conspicuous”.

“sexism, and proto-fascism ever seen in a serious candidate for president” … allowing that your description of Trump’s views is accurate, which it isn’t, you must never have heard of the Know Nothing Party?

As street protests broke out in Portland, Oregon in the days after the election, for example, BBC World noted the police definition of the events as a “riot”, in response to what it coyly described as “some racist remarks” made by Donald Trump during his campaign.

You need a comma after “Oregon”. You most definitely do not need a comma after “a riot”.

And about that “riot”, which you intimate should not be describe thus, presumably because you agree with the rioters. So what should it have been called — a disturbance? an upswelling of genuine grievance? politics by other means? Incidentally, I’ve found two BBC reports on the fracas, neither of which makes mention of “some racist remarks”. If you have a source for those words, please nominate it.

And since you’re citing the BBC, why have you neglected to mention that the Portland protesters, per the local police department’s description, were “carrying bats and arming themselves with stones. Objects were thrown at the police, who responded with pepper spray and rubber baton rounds”?

“LION” A REVIEW BY MARILYN PENN

The main reason to see “Lion,” the latest release by the Weinstein Boys, is Sunny Pawar, an 8 year old actor whose tiny teeth make him look far younger and more precocious. I dare you not to smile when Saroo (his character) pronounces the English words for salt and pepper and I double-dare you not to weep at his predicament – having jumped onto a train that took him 1,000 miles from home and Mum, the only name he knows for his mother. His native smarts enable him to escape all sorts of entrapment by unsavory predators until he is finally adopted by an honorable Australian couple who adore him and raise him with love and advantages he would never have known in his poverty-stricken village. This segment of the film is poignant and appropriately touching until Saroo becomes a young adult played by Slumdog Millionaire’s Dev Patel.

For the next 40 minutes or so, the film loses focus, becoming strident and repetitive as Saroo realizes that he must reclaim his past and find his birth family, with few facts to go on. The action takes on the semblance of “filler,” with little dialogue but lots of weltschmerz as Saroo bemoans his fate to his girlfriend (Rooney Mara) and secretly tries to find his village by calculating the distance the train traveled from there to Calcutta over the course of 3 days. Fortunately, Saroo has Google-Map and colorful pegs to help him solve the mystery, along with the support of Rooney whose empathy derives from the premature loss of her own dear mother. Tolstoy knew that every family has its own share of tsuris – even those living in first-world conditions.

I won’t reveal the ending except to say that as with too many other movies lately, this one is based on a true story so the real people appear in the coda and reveal how skillful the casting director was in making Nicole Kidman play your average Tasmanian housewife who might adopt not one, but two Indian orphans. Though this is all very heartwarming, it’s tediously slow watching Patel’s hair get longer and messier – a sign of his inner distress – and really boring seeing the same clips we’ve seen before revived too many times. This movie desperately needs a ruthless editor to eliminate whole segments – such as the disturbed second adopted child whose story goes nowhere – and cut at least 1/2 hour from Saroo’s staring at the Google-Map and thinking. Best of all would be a grand finale with the real parent and the screen actors doing a Bollywood dance that would have us all leaving the theater joyfully instead of checking our watches and heaving a sigh of relief that this attenuated film finally reached The End.

p.s. you have to stay to the end to find out what the title Lion has to do with any of the above – or just ask someone who has already seen the movie and have a savory Indian dinner instead.

Tom Quirk: It’s all Greek to a Warmist

Climate catastropharians’ effusive confidence in their cause demonstrates yet again that an unexamined belief is not worth holding. Pose a few simple questions, as Socrates might have done, and it won’t be long before someone is calling for the hemlock
Socrates sought truth by asking questions. He might have employed the following line of questioning to explore the subject of global warming.

Socrates Nice to meet you Mr Smith. I hear you are very concerned about dangerous global warming.

Smith Yes, we are facing the alarming prospect of a global-warming catastrophe.

Socrates What gives you such concern?

Mr Smith Emissions of CO2 from burning fossil fuels.

Socrates How were these fossil fuels formed?

Mr Smith Plants grew, died and formed fossil fuels during the Carboniferous Period.

Socrates Was there dangerous global warming prior to the Carboniferous Period?

Mr Smith No. It was a very good time for life on earth.

Socrates So where did the carbon in fossil fuels originate?

Mr Smith Plants absorbed CO2 from the atmosphere prior to the formation of fossil fuels.

Socrates So the CO2 absorbed by plants at that time is now being released from burning fossil fuels.

Mr Smith It must be so.

Socrates You have observed there was no dangerous global warming prior to CO2 being absorbed to form fossil fuels, so how could the same CO2 now being released cause dangerous global warming?

Adios Dirtbag!!!! by Morgan Chalfant ******

The death of Cuba’s former dictator Fidel Castro late Friday was met with both celebration and regret, with a number of American politicians spotlighting the violent oppression of his regime while some world leaders mourned his loss.

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump labeled Castro a “brutal dictator” and described his legacy as one of “firing squads, theft, unimaginable suffering, poverty and the denial of fundamental human rights.” Trump said his administration will work to help the Cuban people move away from oppression.

“While Cuba remains a totalitarian island, it is my hope that today marks a move away from the horrors endured for too long, and toward a future in which the wonderful Cuban people finally live in the freedom they so richly deserve,” Trump said Saturday. “Though the tragedies, deaths and pain caused by Fidel Castro cannot be erased, our administration will do all it can to ensure the Cuban people can finally begin their journey toward prosperity and liberty.”

President Obama, who has cultivated warmer relations with Cuba, offered condolences to Castro’s family and acknowledged the “powerful emotions” that the event will foster in the Cuban people. Obama did not relay any direct criticism of Castro for his leadership.

“We know that this moment fills Cubans—in Cuba and in the United States—with powerful emotions, recalling the countless ways in which Fidel Castro altered the course of individual lives, families, and of the Cuban nation. History will record and judge the enormous impact of this singular figure on the people and world around him,” Obama said.

Cuban President Raul Castro announced the death of his brother late Friday in a televised address. Fidel Castro, who was 90 years old, ruled over Cuba for almost five decades before passing the power to his younger brother in 2008. A polarizing figure, Castro has been widely criticized for cracking down on political and economic freedoms, while some have praised him as a revolutionary.