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December 2017

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How Obama Appeased Iran by Turning a Blind Eye to Hezbollah’s Crimes A new report shows that in its efforts to reach a nuclear deal with Tehran, the administration went so far as to stop the DEA from cracking down on Hezbollah drug-running. By David French

By on December 19th, 2017

Over the weekend Politico’s Josh Meyer published a blockbuster report that can’t be allowed to disappear into the void of the holiday season. In painstaking detail, it documents claims that the Obama administration crippled Drug Enforcement Administration operations against Hezbollah as part of its effort to reach a nuclear deal with the Iranian regime.

Why would the DEA, of all agencies, target an international terrorist organization? It turns out that Hezbollah had become a major player in international cocaine trafficking and was using proceeds from its drug-running and arms-dealing to finance — among other things — the purchase of explosively formed penetrators (EFP’s), the deadliest IEDs used against American soldiers in Iraq.

Hezbollah had transformed itself into an “international crime syndicate that some investigators believed was collecting $1 billion a year.” The DEA’s “Project Cassandra” was designed to disrupt this syndicate. And just as the operation began reaching into the highest echelons of one of the world’s worst terrorist organizations, the Obama administration started to shut it down:

The Justice Department declined requests by Project Cassandra and other authorities to file criminal charges against major players such as Hezbollah’s high-profile envoy to Iran, a Lebanese bank that allegedly laundered billions in alleged drug profits, and a central player in a U.S.-based cell of the Iranian paramilitary Quds force. And the State Department rejected requests to lure high-value targets to countries where they could be arrested.

Some former Obama administration officials justified these actions on the basis that the DEA may have interfered with more important anti-terror operations conducted by other intelligence organizations. As one former official put it, the administration couldn’t let the CIA, the DEA, or any other agency “rule the roost.” But other sources confirmed that the administration in fact hindered the DEA for the sake of the Iran deal. For example, former Obama Treasury Department official Katherine Bauer testified to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs that “under the Obama administration . . . these [Hezbollah-related] investigations were tamped down for fear of rocking the boat with Iran and jeopardizing the nuclear deal.”

The consequences were deadly. In the most personally painful part of the Politico piece, Meyer details Hezbollah’s role in funding EFPs that “were ripping M1 Abrams tanks in half.” I remember the power of these weapons quite well. A smaller version of an EFP was used to kill men that I knew in Iraq. The mere threat of EFPs at one point shut down all ground supply routes into our base near the Iranian border. It’s a strange feeling indeed to ride down Iraqi roads knowing that there’s a weapon out there that would render all the armor surrounding you virtually irrelevant. EFPs killed hundreds of American soldiers, and they were supplied by the Iranian government and its Hezbollah allies.

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If Trump would let his deeds speak for themselves, he would quiet his enemies far more than he does with Twitter broadsides. By Victor Davis Hanson

By on December 19th, 2017

Is Trump an Island?

No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main . . .
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
— John Donne

The pathological hatred of Donald Trump — from impeachment votes to the emoluments-clause suits to assassination chic to talk of invoking 25th Amendment to sexual-harassment writs — would grind down almost any 71-year-old man. Trump may be ego-driven and have a proverbially thin skin, but even a rhino would finally chafe under the 24/7 media detestation of his person, his family, and his presidency.

Someday soon now, we will look back at the Russian-collusion psychodrama, the strange transference of his transition team’s emails to Robert Mueller, the Clinton role in the Steele-Fusion GPS dossier, the destruction of journalistic integrity, and the slant of the Mueller investigation team and appreciate that we were living through an effort to swing the 2016 election and, failing that, a veritable slow-motion effort to remove an elected presidency.

The ubiquitous Lisa Bloom, we learn, was attempting to arrange payments for, or at least merchandise the testimonies of, supposed Trump harassment victims in the waning days of the 2016 campaign. Both liberal and conservative surveys of the media reveal that at least 90 percent of Trump coverage has been negative. Those who once held positions now held by Trump disown them; what they used to oppose, they now embrace — the only constant being whatever Trump is against, they are for.

Fake news will not stop. The rewards among peers and the media profession for getting a whack to Trump are felt worth the costs of largely betraying the cannons of journalism. A generation ago, a Brian Ross — twice now caught trafficking in untruths — would have been through as a journalist. Today, he is merely suspended as a temporary casualty in the noble war against Trump evil.

Some of Trump’s current isolation is unavoidable, nearly half of the voting public backed a Steppenwolf Trump to do what he is doing: drop the Sunnybrook Farm rules of past failed Republican nominees, brawl with the identity-politics Democrats, and smack the swamp Republicans. The deplorables wanted strong chemotherapy to excise Washington malignancies and had no illusions that such medicine, to work, can always be pleasant.

In addition, voters may talk grandly of wanting change, but they recoil when it actually begins. And if once wanting the Obama agenda to fail was considered proof of near treason and racism, working to ensure that the entire Trump presidency is aborted just months after the election has been recalibrated as patriotic progressive activism.

The result is that Trump is now an island in Washington. Fewer Republican officeholders want on his team. In the past, even beleaguered presidents could turn to a network of stalwarts in and out of politics. Not Trump.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

“Conservatives” Funded by Leftists Issue Defense of Mueller Daniel Greenfield

By on December 19th, 2017

The Niskanen Center has a call by “conservatives” in support of Mueller’s opposition research campaign.

We hereby call on House Speaker Ryan and Senate Majority Leader McConnell to make clear, both publicly and privately, that they support the Mueller investigation and regard any interference with that investigation, including dismissal of the special counsel or preemptive pardons of investigation targets, as completely unacceptable. We further urge all Republican members of Congress to issue public statements on these issues as well. It is morally imperative that the Republican Party and the conservative movement stand as bulwarks of the rule of law, not enablers of its erosion and violation. Now is the time for choosing.

That’s supposed to be a Reagan reference. It’s laughable considering the signatories and the Center.

The Niskanen Center’s funders include the Rockefeller Brothers Fund for advancing awareness of global warming. (Pushing Global Warming is one of the Center’s agendas.) And a Facebook co-founder for promoting migration.

The Niskanen Center is a new libertarian think tank that has made reducing barriers to immigration one of its focus areas. In our exploration of immigration policy (which we have identified as a priority cause), we found very few organizations dedicated to making the case for more people, including lower-skill workers, to be able to move to high-income countries. We see this as an opportunity to fund an advocacy organization with an unusual level of alignment with us on this issue.

Also it’s pushing welfare for everyone.

The Niskanen Center has joined a coalition that will, for the first time, comprehensively explore the merits of a Universal Basic Income (UBI).

The coalition, The Economic Security Project (ESP), announced today that it will be committing $10 million over the next two years “to explore how a ‘basic income’ could…ensure economic opportunity for all” in the United States. More than 100 people, including Sam Altman, the president of Y Combinator, a leading Silicon Valley startup incubator, and Andy Stern, the former president of the Service Employees International Union, signed the group’s “statement of belief” saying it aims to “make our economy work again for all Americans.”

Not to mention carbon credit taxation and a whole host of other leftist measures.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The UN Probes Poverty – in the U.S. Yet another Turtle Bay travesty. Bruce Bawer

By on December 19th, 2017

If you read through a few U.S. State Department reports on living conditions in various countries, and then peruse the charter of United Nations, you’ll see that there’s a hell of a lot of horrible things going on around the world that the UN is supposed to be doing something about. Inconceivable levels of poverty, an almost total absence of human-rights protections, armed forces and police departments and courts that operate without any respect whatsoever for due process and the rule of law, primitive sanitary conditions, deadly infectious diseases that have spread widely and that go almost entirely untreated, whole regions in which everyday life is marked by the most extreme kind of tribal or gang or police violence, outright slavery, slave camps, women whose families treat them as little better than slaves, children whose families sell them into prostitution, and so on: such conditions can be found in scores of undeveloped nations.

How does a responsible UN official begin to address all these crises? Where does he start?

Why, in the United States, of course.

Yes, in every unfree or semi-free country on earth, every place where poverty is the norm and human rights unheard of, the great dream is to emigrate to the U.S. Innumerable Cubans have drowned while trying to make their way on rafts across the Florida Straits from the Castros’ island prison to the land of the free. Citizens of Mexico and points south have died of dehydration in the desert while seeking to cross into Arizona or New Mexico. Almost 46 million of America’s current inhabitants originally came from abroad, putting the U.S. at the top of the list of immigrant destinations; the #2 country on the list is Germany, where around 12 million people are foreign-born. So much of the world’s population is desperate to make it to America that the current president won election largely on the basis of his promise to build a wall on our southern border.

Yet if you believe the UN, the U.S. is a cesspit of Third World-style poverty. On December 8, the Alabama news site al.com quoted Philip Alston, UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, as saying that he’s seen sewage conditions in that state that are “very uncommon in the First World….I’d have to say that I haven’t seen this.” Alston’s visit, reported al.com, was “part of a 15-day tour of the U.S. that Alston and his team are conducting to gather information for a report on poverty and human rights abuses in America that they expect to release in spring.” This crew have already visited California; from Alabama, they were planning to move on to Atlanta, Puerto Rico, Washington, D.C., and West Virginia.

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IMMIGRATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Immigration System Must Finally Put Americans First Chain migration exemplifies wrong approach to immigration system. Michael Cutler

By on December 19th, 2017

The failed terror attack on December 11, 2017 has called attention to “chain migration.”

We will consider chain migration momentarily, but first we need to consider the entire immigration system as a chain.

It has been said that a chain is as strong as its weakest link. Today the immigration system is comprised of extremely weak links and all must be addressed because failures of each and every element of the immigration system leave America and Americans vulnerable to the threat of terrorism and crime.

I addressed these concerns in an article awhile back, Immigration and the Terrorist Threat.

America’s immigration laws have nothing to do with race, religion or ethnicity but about national security, public health and public safety as well as the livelihoods of American workers.

Title 8 U.S. Code § 1182 – Inadmissible aliens is a section of law that is contained within the Immigration and Nationality Act and enumerates the grounds for excluding aliens from the United States. The categories includes aliens infected with dangerous communicable diseases, suffer from extreme mental illness and are prone to violence, aliens who are criminals, human rights violators, war criminals, spies or terrorists. Finally that list also includes aliens who would likely become public charges or displace American workers. There is nothing in that list that relates to the race, religion or ethnicity of these aliens.

Every time there is a terror attack the focus turns to the specific visa under which the terror suspect may have entered the United States. This piecemeal approach is ineffective in understanding the true nature of the threats we face.

All categories of visas are problematic. Effective vetting is often not as effective as we would want it to be.

Young people may not have created a track record that could be uncovered during the course of the visa issuance process.

Our officials are forced to rely on watch-lists and databases that may not be complete or where translating names from one language to another further complicates the process as does our reliance of information furnished by foreign governments.

Sanctuary Cities attract aliens who seek to evade detection for a multitude of reasons- none of them in America’s best interests.

On July 13, 2011 the Washington Times published a truly disturbing article, “Visas reviewed to find those who overstayed / Aim is to find any would-be terrorists.”
On September 2, 2014 ABC News reported, “Lost in America: Visa Program Struggles to “Track Missing Foreign Students.”

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

New National Securty Strategy Focuses On Real Threats To American People “Climate change” finally removed from list of national security threats.

By on December 19th, 2017

The Trump administration’s National Security Strategy, released on December 18th, is premised on the belief that America’s economic security is national security. In reordering the skewed priorities of the Obama administration, “climate change” is no longer listed as a national security threat. Instead, the new National Security Strategy document emphasizes the importance of “energy dominance—America’s central position in the global energy system as a leading producer, consumer, and innovator.” The document goes on to state that our nation’s “abundant energy resources—coal, natural gas, petroleum, renewables, and nuclear—stimulates the economy and builds a foundation for future growth.” Climate policies cannot be so extreme that they risk undermining America’s strengths in energy, thus endangering America’s current and future economic security.

“The United States will continue to advance an approach that balances energy security, economic development, and environmental protection,” according to the National Security Strategy document. An anti-fossil fuel agenda not only is injurious to U.S. economic security. It fails to recognize the important role that fossil fuels must play for the foreseeable future, along with alternative forms of energy, in helping the developing world “power their economies and lift their people out of poverty.”

What a refreshing change from the last administration’s obsession with climate change, which former President Barack Obama had made the centerpiece of his national security agenda. “Today, there is no greater threat to our planet than climate change,” Obama declared during one of his weekly video addresses in 2015. At the climate change conference in Paris, which led to the Paris Agreement on Climate Change from which the United States is now withdrawing thanks to President Trump, Obama claimed that climate change is “akin to the problem of terrorism.” In September 2016, Obama signed a Presidential Memorandum on Climate Change and National Security, establishing a policy that the impacts of climate change must be considered in the development of national security-related doctrine, policies, and plans.

In his single-minded preoccupation with climate change, Obama kicked the can down the road when it came to dealing with more pressing national security issues, including the looming existential crisis posed by North Korea’s rapid development of nuclear arms and intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of striking the U.S. mainland. The Obama administration also facilitated the path for Iran to become a full-fledged nuclear power within a decade or so, by agreeing to the disastrous nuclear deal with Iran known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

Former Secretary of State John Kerry made the delusional claim that the Iran deal and the Paris climate change agreement he negotiated were vital to global security, during a speech he delivered on June 5, 2017 at Ploughshares Fund’s annual Chain Reaction event. In both cases, all that his deals managed to do was to undermine U.S. national security.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

The US Embassy Move to Jerusalem vs. The “Peace Process” by Denis MacEoin

By on December 19th, 2017

The Palestinians do not want peace. They want victory, a victory that will lead to the elimination of Israel and the expulsion of the Jews.

The 1968 charter of the PLO has never been changed, despite decades of promises that it would be modified. Although secular in character, it advances much the same attitudes as those found in the Hamas charters. In Article 2, for example, it defines “Palestine” in boundaries encompassing the entirety of Israel: “Palestine, with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit”. This means that calls for a Palestinian state based on that definition are also calls for the destruction of Israel.

All attempts at normalization between Palestinians and Israelis or between other Arab states and Israel are routinely dismissed as treachery, a position that endangers the lives of any Palestinian who seeks peace.

Meanwhile, Western leaders, including religious figures such as the Pope, are enchanted with the fantasy that a peace process exists, and forever chant the mantra that nothing must be done to interrupt it. President Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is the first time any world leader has stood up to the threats of anger and violence.

On December 6, US President Donald Trump fulfilled a promise that was made by Congress on November 28, 1995 in its Jerusalem Embassy Act — to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel and to mark this by moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to the ancient city. That move, according to the Act itself, was to “be established in Jerusalem no later than May 31, 1999”. Trump’s declaration that the US will now implement the Act has been a historical démarche. So why has it taken so long to act on this agreement?

For more than two decades, this clear expression of the will of Congress had, in effect, been held in abeyance following an amendment (section 7) that introduced a waiver that allowed presidents to “suspend the limitation set forth in section 3(b) for a period of six months if he determines and reports to Congress in advance that such suspension if necessary to protect the national security interests of the United States”. Since then, every president who followed (including Trump, six months earlier) exercised this waiver.

Over the years, implementation of the Act was caught up in increasingly complicated legal and diplomatic issues that made deferment appear judicious and necessary in the belief that stalling it might help the so-called “peace process” between Israel and the Palestinians: according to Time Magazine:

“though both the Clinton Administration and Israeli government ‘support the move to Jerusalem in principle, they would prefer to see the peace process more stabilized before confronting the explosive issue of Jerusalem’.”

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Is It Really about Jerusalem? by Bassam Tawil

By on December 19th, 2017

It is worth noting that the campaign against US institutions also states that the Palestinians’ real goal is to “liberate Palestine, from the [Mediterranean] sea to the [Jordan] river.” In other words, this means that the true goal of the Palestinians is to destroy Israel.

Why do Mahmoud Abbas’s remarks come as a surprise? He is simply reiterating the official, long-standing policy of the Palestinian Authority. Where has the West been when Palestinian leaders have declared outright, decade after decade, that Israel has no right to exist and Jewish history is nothing more than lies?

Let us get things straight, finally. The Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims cannot stomach the fact that Israel exists, period. Their real problem is not with Trump’s recognition of the reality — that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. Rather, they have a problem with Israel’s very existence.

The protests that have swept the West Bank, Gaza Strip and large parts of the Arab and Islamic world in the aftermath of US President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital show that most Arabs and Muslims still have not come to terms with Israel’s right to exist.

The protests also provide further evidence that many Arabs and Muslims, including, of course, the Palestinians, continue to view the US as an enemy and “big Satan” because of its support for Israel. Trump’s announcement is just another excuse for Arabs and Muslims to vent their long-standing hatred for Israel and the US.

For the Palestinians, Trump’s announcement simply provided the latest opportunity to step up their violent and rhetorical attacks and threats against Israel. As such, there is nothing new about the Palestinian protests that erupted after Trump’s announcement.

Palestinian terrorism against Israel is one of the oldest stories in the book. The many shapes it takes, from rock-throwing to stabbings to shootings to suicide bombings and rockets, began long before Trump’s announcement and will continue long after it. Hardly a day passes without an incident of violence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

However, because most of the violent attacks do not injure or kill Israelis, they are ignored by the media. Clashes between stone-throwing Palestinians and Israeli soldiers are as old as the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and have even become part of the norm. Shootings and car-ramming attacks? Well, they have been taking place almost every week for the past few decades.

It is disingenuous, then, to claim that Trump’s announcement triggered the latest spate of Palestinian violence. At most, the announcement catalyzed the Palestinians to amplify their ongoing terror attacks against Israel. The announcement has also contributed to exposing the Palestinians’ long-standing vicious hatred of the US, regardless of who is sitting in the White House — a Republican or Democratic president.

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Turkey Mania: “Jerusalem is Muslim” by Burak Bekdil

By on December 19th, 2017

By rejecting Jerusalem’s Judaic history, Erdogan is ironically denying that his holy book, the Quran, recognizes the Land of Israel. The Quran does not say that the Israelites originated in Alaska.

The United States will not retract its decision just because it angered the already angry jihadists in Turkey or elsewhere in the realm of Islam.

“There is only one conclusion we can draw from this comparison: The ‘ummah,’ the Muslim religious community, is tired of the Jerusalem issue…. [F]or many years angry groups have been chanting ‘Down with Israel’ and nothing happens to Israel. The angry slogans and burned flags have been no use for many decades. Most leaders of Muslim-majority countries are wary of the issue, and the Palestinian cause is used in many other countries simply as an outlet to reinforce the ruler.” — Ahmet Hakan, columnist, Hurriyet Daily News.

US President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel has unveiled multiple hypocrisies that sadly capture the minds of Islamist leaders and their willing choruses of jihadists.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey, not surprisingly, champions the global Islamist war on Trump’s move. In a latest show of “solidarity with the Palestinian cause,” Turkey spearheaded efforts at a summit of Islamic nations in Istanbul to declare “eastern Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine under occupation”.

Erdogan’s argument is too weak and unconvincing from the beginning. He has simply chosen to attack Israel although what has newly entered the political equation on Jerusalem was a sovereign U.S. pronouncement. The pragmatist in Erdogan wanted to ignore that simply because the U.S. is too big to bite for him.

Erdogan said of Jerusalem: “Al-Quds [Jerusalem] has been viewed as the prayer place of Muslims and Christians and, partially … as if it is the prayer place of Jews”. Partially? It is elementary history that Jerusalem’s pre-Islamic period of 3300-1000 BCE appeared in the book of Genesis — the time of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob — when Erdogan’s ancestors were probably hunters in the steppe of Central Asia. The years 1000-732 BCE marked the period of the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Simply put, Jerusalem’s Judaic history dates back to thousands of years before the birth of Islam. By rejecting Jerusalem’s Judaic history, in fact, Erdogan is ironically denying that his holy book, the Quran, recognizes the Land of Israel. The Quran does not say that the Israelites originated in Alaska.

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BOOKS, IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

What Led Germany to Accept a Tsunami of Migrants? By Bruce Bawer

By on December 19th, 2017

To my astonishment, I see that it’s been a full six years since I reviewed Tuvia Tenenbom’s I Sleep in Hitler’s Room: An American Jew Visits Germany. The book, an account of the author’s encounters with anti-Semitism and Jew-obsession in a country that claims to have thoroughly repudiated its Nazi past, was, I wrote, “deeply sobering, depressing even,” yet “so chatty and engaging and laugh-out-loud funny that it’s hard to put down.” I praised Tenenbom as “an acute observer of his fellowman, but also a born entertainer, a comedian, who approaches his interview subjects – of whom there are dozens, ranging from leading political and cultural figures to folks he runs into on the street – as a combination inquisitor and tummler.”

And he does it all, I emphasized, “on a human level: he’s not a journalist taking notes but a fellow human being, intense in his curiosity and incapable of hiding his emotions. He challenges his interlocutors, posing questions nobody has ever asked them before, and he’s relentless, always demanding the truth, wanting to know what these people really think and feel, rejecting their canned answers, the things they say because they think that’s what he wants to hear.” And even when he doesn’t exactly like what they say, he often turns out “to like them anyway, able to separate his intellectual revulsion at their ideas from his personal response to them as human beings.” Indeed, although he’s revolted by German attitudes, he admits that “somewhere deep inside me…I love the Germans.”

Pretty much everything above applies as well to Tenenbom’s new book, Hello, Refugees! Like I Sleep in Hitler’s Room, it’s grim yet entertaining, and – most of all – supremely human. This time, as the title suggests, he’s concerned with the migrant issue – specifically, with the consequences of Angela Merkel’s decision to open the floodgates to undocumented foreigners. Journeying from one refugee camp in Germany to another, and to various hotels where migrants are being put up at taxpayer expense, he meets some newcomers who are gentle, civilized, educated, grateful to be in Europe, and absolutely in love with Germany, and others who are angry, violent, and seething with hostility and contempt toward infidels in general and Germany in particular. (In order not to earn the instant hatred of Muslim migrants, he speaks to them in Arabic and pretends to be one of their coreligionists.) CONTINUE AT SITE

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