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January 2017

Considering the Real Russia Under Putin’s Authority By Herbert London

In the last debate of the 2012 presidential race Governor Romney discussed the potential threat of Russia. He was widely criticized by President Obama who maintained the Cold War ended in the 1980’s. Since then, of course, we have had a national “reset.” Vladimir Putin’s aggressive action in eastern Ukraine, Syria and his openly provocative statements about the Baltic states and the use of nuclear weapons offer revealing insights into Russian aims. Still there are those who believe Russia can be an ally, at least in areas where U.S.-Russian interests converge, e.g. battling militant Islam.

However, if one considers the history of Russia since the presumptive end of the Cold War, a different conclusion is plausible. Since 1989, Russian policy has been designed to undo the crumbling of the Soviet Empire, what might be described as Global Revenge. Putin’s stance is to reclaim the Near Abroad – those nations once within the Soviet orbit. Using the appearance of “democracy,” religious observance and elections, Russia’s president has moved assiduously to destroy internal adversaries and external opponents. The velvet glove of concern for those lost in the 9/11 attack concealed the iron fist of invasion and intimidation.

Despite its newly adopted nomenclature, the KGB operatives dominate foreign policy. The Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov is expected to be a magician who has veils behind veils in his Orwellian rhetoric. On the one hand, he speaks with compassion about the victims of bombing in Aleppo and then signals Russian planes to engage in indiscriminate bombing in this Syrian city. What you see is only what you think you see. Having played Secretary of State John Kerry like a drum, Lavrov has converted Russia into the strong horse in the Middle East and reduced the United States to irrelevance.

With the crumbling of communism, Russia became distracted by privatization schemes in the 1990’s. What these schemes truly represented was the emergence of a new elite that distributed national wealth to the soon to be oligarchs and the former KGB leaders who slowly entered into “partnerships” with the corporate and banking sectors. Revelations of Putin’s wealth suggest he may be the richest man on the globe. In fact, his daughter, who hasn’t engaged in any legitimate business activity, has an estimated wealth of $16 billion.

Hungary Plans to Crackdown on All Soros-Funded NGOs by Zoltan Simon

Ruling Fidesz party vice president pledges to ‘sweep out’ NGOs
Premier Orban, Trump backer, vowed to build ‘illiberal state’

Hungary plans to crack down on non-governmental organizations linked to billionaire George Soros now that Donald Trump will occupy the White House, according to the deputy head of Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s party.

The European Union member will use “all the tools at its disposal” to “sweep out” NGOs funded by the Hungarian-born financier, which “serve global capitalists and back political correctness over national governments,” Szilard Nemeth, a vice president of the ruling Fidesz party, told reporters on Tuesday. No one answered the phone at the Open Society Institute in Budapest when Bloomberg News called outside business hours.

“I feel that there is an opportunity for this, internationally,” because of Trump’s election, state news service MTI reported Nemeth as saying. Lawmakers will start debating a bill to let authorities audit NGO executives, according to parliament’s legislative agenda.

Orban, the first European leader to publicly back Trump’s campaign, has ignored criticism from the European Commission and U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration for building a self-described “illiberal state” modeled on authoritarian regimes including Russia, China and Turkey. In 2014, Orban personally ordered the state audit agency to probe foundations financed by Norway and said that civil society groups financed from abroad were covers for “paid political activists.”

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
Photographer: Jack Taylor/Getty Images

Orban and his administration have frequently singled out NGOs supported by Soros, a U.S. Democratic Party supporter with a wide network of organizations that promote democracy in formerly communist eastern Europe.

DANIEL GREENFIELD MOMENT: ISRAEL MUST KILL THE TWO STATE SOLUTION

This special edition of The Glazov Gang presents the Daniel Greenfield Moment with Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and the editor of Frontpage’s blog, The Point.

Daniel discussed Israel Must Kill the Two State Solution, explaining that, if it doesn’t, the two-state solution will kill Israel.

Don’t miss it!

The whitewashing of the PLO must end. Caroline Glick

It is not in the least surprising that the PLO-controlled Palestinian Authority did not condemn the terrorist attack on Sunday. It is not surprising because the PLO-controlled PA encouraged the attack.

As Khaled Abu Toameh wrote for the Gatestone Institute, in the aftermath of last month’s US-enabled passage of UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which criminalizes Israel, the PA went on the warpath.

Among other things, Muhammad Abu Shtayyeh, who serves as a close adviser to PLO chief and PA leader Mahmoud Abbas called for an intensification of terrorist attacks against Israelis. Shtayyeh said that now is the time to “bolster the popular resistance” against Israel.

As Abu Toameh noted, “‘Popular resistance’ is code for throwing stones and petrol bombs and carrying out stabbing and car-ramming attacks against Israelis.”

Sunday’s terrorist murderer probably was inspired by Islamic State, and its adherents’ recent truck ramming murder sprees in Nice and Berlin, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.

But Sunday’s 28-year-old cold blooded killer hailed from Jerusalem, not Nice.

His brain was washed since he was five years old by the PLO-controlled PA’s steady cycle of jihadist incitement.

From the time he was in preschool, the killer was indoctrinated to aspire to commit the mass murder of Jews he carried out on Sunday.

For 23 years, Israel and the US have empowered the PLO.

During this period, the terrorist group never took any concrete steps to promote peace. At no point in the past generation has a PLO leader ever told the Palestinians or supporters abroad that the time has come to bury the hatchet and accept Israel.

Instead, for 23 years, the PLO has openly supported Israel’s annihilation. Often that support has been stated in code words like “popular resistance” which everyone understands means murder.

To make it easy for Americans and Israelis to continue funding, arming, training and of course, recognizing the PLO as a “moderate” organization despite its continued sponsorship of terrorism, PLO members are always happy to talk about a “two-state solution” with Westerners that wish to be lied to.

But they do not hesitate to threaten anyone who rejects their lies about Jews and Israel. For instance, Abbas reacted to US President-elect Donald Trump’s plan to abide by the US law requiring the State Department to move the US embassy to Jerusalem by threatening him.

Trump’s plan will have “serious implications” for the US, Abbas told a group of visiting Israeli leftists.

PLO Executive Committee chairman Saeb Erekat said that if Trump moves the US embassy to Israel’s capital, the PLO will lobby Arab states to expel the US ambassadors from their capitals.

Jebl Mukaber, the Jerusalem neighborhood where Sunday’s terrorist lived, used to be just an Arab neighborhood in Jerusalem. It wasn’t particularly friendly.

JEWS WITHOUT MEMORY BY RAEL ISAAC

Professor of Jewish History Yosef Yerushalmi observed that “Zakhor!” “Remember” is enjoined in the Bible 169 times.

Tragically, the behavior of most Jewish leaders reveals that they remember nothing of relevance to a Jewish future. They have forgotten that modern Zionism arose in response to an anti-Semitism that showed itself impervious to the so-called European “Enlightenment.” They have forgotten that it soon became apparent that only Palestine, the ancient homeland of the Jews, could provide the motivation for even secular Jews to make the sacrifices necessary to achieve a state. They have forgotten how prescient the early Zionists were, for their worst forebodings were realized: millions died for lack of the state that could have offered them refuge from their murderers. They have forgotten how, in the wake of the UN’s vote for partition, the reborn state of Israel held on against what seemed impossible odds and went on to create a vibrant, free, prosperous, innovative state in a region mired in chaos and despair. They have forgotten that an umbilical cord attaches them to Israel. They have forgotten—if they ever knew–the extent to which their standing in the United States depends on Israel’s existence, and how vulnerable they will be if Jews once again become a people without a land.

In the early 1970s, historian and rabbi Arthur Hertzberg, as President of the American Jewish Congress, anticipated some of this “forgetting.” He believed that Israel would soon achieve peace with its neighbors and at that point the divergence of Israel’s interests from those of diaspora Jews would become obvious and Israel would lose much of its salience for Jews abroad. Hertzberg did not foresee what has in fact happened: that far from reconciling themselves to Israel’s existence, Arabs would spearhead an increasingly successful world-wide movement to delegitimize her. Nor did he foresee that a plethora of Jewish organizations would emerge, not simply indifferent to Israel but actively hostile to her interests (J Street, Jewish Voices for Peace, Ameinu, the New Israel Fund among others). Nor did he foresee that for the most part mainstream Jewish organizations would transfer their enthusiasm to a variety of trendy left-wing causes, from climate change to gay rights to abortion to gun control, with Israel a distant fifth or sixth on the agenda, if that.

Take the Anti-Defamation League, the organization originally established to fight anti-Semitism. Jonathan Bronitsky has written an informative report on the ADL from the “inside.” Selected to participate in the ADL’s Glass Leadership Institute, a ten month program for a select group of young professionals to be closely involved in the organization, he was unsettled to discover that “the ADL has dedicated itself more and more to matters of social justice in America (e.g. immigration, women’s reproductive health, economic privilege)…[to] advance political agendas that have nothing to do with defending the Jewish people.” When he merely raised questions, says Bronitsky, “the wrath that I encountered, time and time again, was stunning. Are upper middle class, highly educated American Jews so isolated from non-liberal thoughts that even the slightest contestation of their most firmly held beliefs is enough to trigger landslides of emotional chaos?” Bronitzky found the intellectual dishonesty, the pretense that the organization did not tout the Democratic party agenda, particularly disheartening. “It is difficult to convey just how intellectually insulting, how patronizing it was to be told by winking staff members that their organization is nonpartisan.”

The ADL, like most Jewish organizations, is willfully blind to the growing distancing of the Democratic Party, as it marches left, from Israel and Jews. The favorite among Democrats to head the Democratic National Committee has been Keith Ellison, for many years an acolyte of Louis Farrakhan, of “Judaism is a gutter religion” fame. Interestingly it was not Ellison’s hostility to Israel that bothered ADL head Jonathan Greenblatt (who initially supported him). It was Ellison’s suggestion in a 2010 speech (that belatedly came to light) that Jews dictated American Mideast policy that Greenblatt found “disqualifying”—anti-Semitism focused directly on American Jews struck too close to home.

What Exactly Is Trumpism? First sketches of a list, starting with tradition, populism, and American greatness By Victor Davis Hanson

Donald Trump is hated by liberal Democrats because, among other things, he is likely to reverse the entire Obama project. And, far worse, he probably will seek fundamental ways of obstructing its future resurgence — even perhaps by peeling off traditional Democratic constituencies.

The proverbial mainstream media despise Trump. Culturally, he has become a totem of their fears: coarseness, ostentatiousness, flamboyance, and the equation of big money with taste and success. His new approach to the media may make them irrelevant, and they fear their downfall could be well earned.

The Republican Washington–to–New York establishment is alienated by Trump. It finds his behavior reckless and his ideology unpredictable — especially given his cruel destruction of in-house Republican candidates in the primaries and his past flirtations with liberal ideas and politicians. That he has now brought them more opportunity for conservative political change than any Republican candidate in a century only adds insult to their sense of injury.

Note the common denominator to the all these hostile groups: It is Trump the man, not Trump the avatar of some political movement that they detest. After all, there are no Trump political philosophers. There is no slate of down-ballot Trump ideologues. If Trump were to start a third party, what would be its chief tenets? There is as yet neither a Trump “Contract for America” nor a Trump “First Principles” manifesto.

Nonetheless, from the 2016 campaign and from President-elect Trump’s slated appointments, past interviews, and tweets, we can see a coherent worldview emerging, something different from both orthodox conservativism and liberalism, though certainly Trumpism is far closer to the former than to the latter. Here may be a few outlines of Trumpist thought.

Tradition

Trumpism promotes traditionalism. Trump showcases “Merry Christmas!” because his parents did. He believes in dressing formally and being addressed as Mr. Trump. And he insists that his children be well-behaved and polite.

You might object that Trump is thrice-married, Petronian in his tastes, and ethically sloppy or worse in his own business dealings. No matter: Trump seeks a return to normalcy all the more. His personal excesses apparently spur his impulses for traditional norms.

Perhaps Trump is like many Baby Boomers as they enter their final decades: They look back at their parents and grandparents, and wonder how they put up with their offspring — and see how far this generation has fallen short of their forebears’ ideals, which in turn sparks a desire for a return to normalcy in the wayward. Deists were believers in the abstract who otherwise shunned a living Christianity yet thought that active religion had social value for others. Similarly, Trump is a non-practicing moralist who believes traditional morality can restore structure and guidance to society.

So Trump is foul-mouthed but wants a return of decorum; he has been conniving but thinks his own recklessness is not necessarily a model for the nation.

Fred Fleitz:Was Friday’s declassified report claiming Russian hacking of the 2016 election rigged?

Friday night, during her last show on Fox News, Megyn Kelly asked former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Pete Hoekstra whether he accepted the conclusion by 17 intelligence agencies in a recently released declassified report that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election and that this interference came at the direction of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Hoekstra gave an answer Kelly did not anticipate. He noted that the declassified report represents the views of only three intelligence agencies, not seventeen. Hoekstra also questioned why the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) did not co-author or clear the report and why it lacked dissenting views.

The declassified report issued on January 6 is an abridged version of a longer report ordered by President Obama that concluded Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a campaign to undermine the 2016 president election, hurt Hillary’s candidacy and promote Donald Trump through cyber warfare, social media and the state-owned Russia cable channel RT. Although the report’s authors said they have high confidence in most of these conclusions, they were unable to include any evidence for classification reasons.

As someone who worked in the intelligence field for 25 years, I share Congressman Hoekstra’s concerns about Friday’s declassified Russia report and a similar Joint DHS and ODNI Election Security Statement released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and DHS on October 7, 2016.

I also suspect the entire purpose of this report and its timing was to provide President Obama with a supposedly objective intelligence report on Russian interference in the 2016 election that the president could release before he left office to undermine the legitimacy of Trump’s election.

I am concerned both intelligence assessments were rigged for political purposes.

You may remember when Hillary Clinton claimed during the final presidential debate on October 19 that based on the October 7 ODNI/DHS statement, all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies had determined the WikiLeaks disclosures of Democratic emails were an effort by Russia to interfere with the election.

Clinton’s remark was not accurate. Although the October memo said “the U.S. Intelligence Community” was confident that the Russian government was behind the alleged hacking, the October memo was drafted by only two intelligence organizations – ODNI and DHS.

Since it came out only a month before the presidential election and was co-authored by only two intelligence agencies, the October memo looked like a clumsy attempt by the Obama White House to produce a document to boost Clinton’s reelection chances. Its argumentation was very weak since it said the alleged hacking of Democratic emails was “consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts” but did not say there was any evidence of Russian involvement.

Obama Okays Massive Shipment of Uranium to Iran that Could Produce 10 Nukes Can the Iran deal get any worse? Ari Lieberman

“The worst agreement in U.S. diplomatic history,” that was the way Charles Krauthammer characterized the Iran deal back in July 2015. Of course, when Krauthammer made that very accurate assessment, he had no way of knowing that the deal was even worse than originally envisioned.

The Iran deal’s ancillary aspects, which the administration tried to keep secret from Congress, included ransom payments totaling $1.7 billion to Iran and secret side agreements negotiated between the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Islamic Republic. One of the most absurd provisions of that secretive side agreement enables the mullahs to collect their own soil samples at their highly opaque Parchin facility, in lieu of on-site inspections. The Obama administration even conducted lobbying efforts on behalf of the Islamic Republic, in a failed attempt to convince banking institutions to conduct business with the world’s premier state-sponsor of international terrorism.

The notion that the Obama administration would trust the Iranians to collect their own samples to establish compliance demonstrates with utmost clarity just how far divorced from reality Obama has become. The notion that Obama would place national security interests in the hands of a non-U.S. body demonstrates just how utterly reckless he is. The notion that the U.S. would actively lobby on behalf on an entity responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths in Syria, Yemen and Iraq and responsible for supplying anti-U.S. insurgents with sophisticated Explosively Formed Penetrators (EFP) that killed and maimed hundreds of U.S. soldiers, demonstrates how morally depraved the Obama administration has become.

Since the signing of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran has been testing the resolve of the U.S. in enforcing the agreement. Twice since the JCPOA went into effect, Iran exceeded its 130 metric ton limit for heavy water, which is used to cool reactors that produce plutonium. The cumbersome JCPOA mechanism put in place to abrogate the agreement in the event of breach means that all but the most serious Iranian transgressions will likely go unpunished. In the meantime, Iran continues to push the envelope while receiving all the benefits including sanctions relief and lump sum cash payments, including nearly $12 billion received in the past three years.

The Obama administration’s dealings with the Islamic Republic borders on sycophantic. The AP reported today that the Obama administration, in its twilight weeks, issued its consent to allow the Iranians to receive 116 metric tons of natural uranium from Russia as compensation for its export of tons of reactor coolant. The move requires U.N. Security Council approval but is expected to easily pass.

The UN Is Beyond Reform D.C. isn’t the only swamp our new president needs to drain. Bruce Thornton

President-elect Donald Trump has promised to get tough with the UN, a corrupt, bloated bureaucracy that for seven decades has existed to provide cushy jobs for international deadbeats, and to promote the interests of tyrannical regimes and anti-American pygmy states. Recognizing the UN’s failures and corruption, some commentators are calling for targeted reductions of the estimated $8-10 billion a year we spend on the UN and its 15 affiliated organizations, thus prodding Turtle Bay to reform. But the better argument is to withdraw completely. Changing the shade of lipstick on this multinational pig is not going to keep it from acting like a pig.

Indeed, “reforming” the UN is a mantra politicians periodically repeat in order to avoid doing what’s necessary to make significant changes. Remember the old UN Human Rights Commission? It was completely ineffective because it regularly seated some of the world’s worst human rights violators, including China, Zimbabwe, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Algeria, Syria, Libya, Uganda and Vietnam. At the same time, as stalwart UN critic Ann Bayefsky wrote in 2002, “Commission members seek to avoid directly criticizing states with human rights problems, frequently by focusing on Israel, a state that, according to analysis of summary records, has for over 30 years occupied 15 percent of commission time and has been the subject of a third of country-specific resolutions.” To add insult to the injury, that same year the Commission passed a resolution giving the Palestinian Arabs the de facto “legitimate right” to use terrorism against Israel.

The serial ignoring of Sudan’s responsibility for the human rights disaster unfolding in Darfur, and the election of Sudan to the Commission finally put an end to the UNHRC, which was replaced in 2006 with the “reformed” UN Human Rights Council. After ten years it’s obvious that the change was cosmetic, as the Council has repeated the same sins of its predecessor. It continues to seat members from nations like current members China, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela, all notorious for violating human rights. And it continues its chronic demonization of Israel, which it has condemned five times more than any other country. Nor is this vicious bigotry confined to the Council: last March, the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) condemned only one nation, Israel, for violating women’s rights.

The Anti-Semitic Islamophobia Hoax You can’t fight anti-Semitism without exposing Islamophobia as a lie. Daniel Greenfield

Fighting Islamophobia is trendy. But it also often becomes a means of enabling and expressing hatred toward others. Especially Jews. It doesn’t take much digging into campaigns against Islamophobia to find the anti-Semitism lurking underneath the bright lights and polished logos.

The Ford Foundation, which in its time had played a key role in the anti-Semitic Durban hatefest, hosted a forum titled, “Confronting Islamophobia in America Today.” Participants included Linda Sarsour, who had promoted the anti-Semitic Muslim practice of throwing rocks at Jews and appeared at a rally for a pro-Hezbollah organization, along with Imam Talib Abdur-Rashid, who had defended Ahmadinejad’s call for destroying Israel and described such a proposed atrocity as a sentiment born of “legitimate anger.”

Why was the Ford Foundation privileging the persecution fantasies of Islamist bigots who believe that plotting the genocide of millions of Jews is somehow rooted in “legitimate anger”?

The loudest voices inveighing against Islamophobia often justify Islamic terrorism, explicitly or implicitly, even while they whine that being associated with Islamic terrorism is a form of Islamophobia. Indeed the campaign against Islamophobia has, among its agendas, the legitimization of Islamic terrorism.

If Islamic terrorism, and its underlying supremacist hatred of Jews, can’t be discussed, then it also can’t be condemned. And, in a perverse twist, Islamic terrorists then become the victims of Islamophobia.

The Florida Center for Investigative Reporting has been fundraising aggressively for its “Islamophobia Project”. The FCIR is the work of Trevor Aaronson who had attempted to dismiss anti-Semitic Muslim terror plots against synagogues as an FBI conspiracy.

The FCIR’s Islamophobia Project is run by Trevor and Roqayah Chamseddine.