RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Humanitarian Hoax is a deliberate and deceitful tactic of presenting a destructive policy as altruistic. The humanitarian huckster presents himself as a compassionate advocate when in fact he is the disguised enemy.

Barack Obama, the humanitarian huckster-in-chief, weakened the United States for eight years presenting his crippling policies as altruistic when in fact they were designed for destruction. His late term passage of FCC 15-24 the Report and Order on Remand, Declaratory Ruling, and Order in the Matter of Protecting and Promoting the Open Internet, named Net Neutrality, was no exception.

Humanitarian hoaxes are deceitfully given positive sounding names that disguise their negative intent and mislead the trusting public. The Affordable Care Act was not affordable, the Southern Poverty Law Center is the enemy of free speech, George Soros’ Open Society Foundation funds anarchy all over the world. The deceptive names are the opposite of what the organizations and policies actually do. So, “Net Neutrality” sounds constructive and fair but it is actually a Leftist attack on Internet freedom designed to restrict freedom of speech – particularly the opposition speech of conservatives and libertarians. This is how it works.

The World Wide Web (WWW) for non-governmental commercial use has been an open unrestricted American business since its launch over twenty years ago. The WWW is the 21st century public square for information sharing in the world. Internet business is divided into two separate sections. There are Internet Service Providers (ISP) like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T and there are Internet Content Providers like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, and Twitter. In 2015 Obama disingenuously decided to “protect” the open Internet and passed regulation FCC 15-24 deceptively tagged “Net Neutrality.” Roger Stone has written an exceptional article on the subject explaining what it all means.

To summarize, the FCC has the authority and discretion to decide to apply rules or not to apply rules – it can choose who to regulate vigorously and who to disregard. The new rules were specifically written under Title II provisions that stipulate Internet Service Providers (ISP) are to be bound by Net Neutrality. So, “Net Neutrality” binds Internet Service Providers to the rules but exempts Internet Content Providers.

The Tech-Left was instrumental in the formulation of “Net Neutrality” and helped write the new rules. Not surprisingly, the consequence is that the Leftist content providers who currently dominate the WWW are “free to restrain content by censoring out all conservative and libertarian views at will, without so much as an explanation to anyone why the objectionable views were banned.” It is complete censorship and very dangerous – it is the Humanitarian Hoax of Net Neutrality.

He said previous presidents “presided over one disappointment after another” when it came to protecting America.“They surrendered our sovereignty to foreign bureaus in far away capitals,” Mr. Trump said.“But last year,” he added, “all that began to change.”

Declaring that “economic security is national security,” President Donald Trump aimed to reframe a national debate over his domestic economic and trade policies by thrusting them into a national-security context.

“Economic vitality, growth and prosperity at home is absolutely necessary for American power and influence abroad,” Mr. Trump said on Monday as he unveiled his new national-security strategy. “Any nation that trades away its prosperity for security will end up losing both.”

Recounting a year of stock-market gains and unemployment-rate decreases, Mr. Trump on Monday alleged that his predecessors prioritized nation building abroad over economic growth at home. He said his new national-security strategy—released on Monday as mandated by Congress—provided a needed contrast, and included plans for cutting taxes, rebuilding roads and bridges and building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The president on Monday also focused on a more-traditional definition of national security, including China and Russia in a list of threats he said included terrorist groups, transnational criminal networks and “rogue regimes,” a phrase the president has used to describe North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The White House’s new national-security strategy calls for strengthening the U.S. military by expanding missile-defense capabilities and adding to the nuclear-weapons arsenal.

From the campaign trail, China was a frequent target of blame from Mr. Trump for the decline in some manufacturing sectors. But in the White House, the president has backed away from some of that criticism as he has sought to tighten his bond with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Mr. Trump also has maintained cordial relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, prompting criticism from within his own party amid revelations of Russian tampering in the 2016 presidential election.
President Donald Trump speaks on national security on Dec. 18 in Washington. Photo: Evan Vucci/Associated Press

In the national-security strategy, Mr. Trump portrayed China and Russia as dangerous rivals that have exploited attempts at engagement from previous administrations. On Monday, he referred to them as “rival powers” seeking to “challenge American influence and wealth.” But in an indication of the fine line that the president is attempting to walk, he quickly pivoted to talk about cooperation.

“We will attempt to build a great partnership with those and other countries, but in a manner that always protects our national interest,” Mr. Trump said. An example of that cooperation, he said, was the U.S. recently sharing intelligence with Russia about a pending terrorist attack in which “thousands could have been killed.”

“That is the way it’s supposed to work,” Mr. Trump said. CONTINUE AT SITE

LIONEL SHRIVER SAYS
I am concerned that we are throwing knee-touching into the same basket as rape, which does a grievous disservice to mere knee-touchers and rape victims both. I am concerned that we are increasingly wont to confuse genuine abuse of power in the workplace with often distant memories of men who have made failed – ‘unwanted’ – passes. In the complicated dance of courtship, someone has to make a move, and the way one conventionally discovers if one’s attraction is returned is to brave some gentle physical contact and perhaps accept rebuff. Were I still a young woman looking for a partner, I would not wish to live in world where a man had to secure a countersigned contract in triplicate before he kissed me.

I am concerned that we are casting women as irremediably scarred by even minor, casual advances, and as incapable of competently and sensitively handling the commonplace instances in which men are drawn to them sexually and the feeling doesn’t happen to be mutual.

I am concerned that sex itself seems increasingly to be seen as dirty, and as a violation, a form of assault, so that we’re repackaging an old prudery in progressive wrapping paper. I am concerned that we are well on our way to demonising, if not criminalising, all male desire.

Turbocharged by social media, #MeToo may have gone too far. Rather than bringing the sexes together with improved mutual understanding, we are in danger of driving the sexes apart. If I were a man right now, I’d lock the door of my study with the intention of satisfying myself with internet porn for the indefinite future. Real women would not seem worth the risk of destroying my career. Is that what we want?

Lionel is an author, most recently of The Standing Chandelier, and winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction.

WENDY KAMINER

#MeToo is the unthinking woman’s anti-harassment crusade. It commands us to ‘believe the women’ unthinkingly, without considering the seriousness or plausibility of their claims. It calls every accuser a survivor, whether she alleges a sexual assault or a single, unsolicited advance. It ignores essential differences between work-related harassment that undermines women professionally and inconsequential social annoyances, threatening to police interpersonal relations outside the workplace. It celebrates conformity and demonises dissent, as you might expect from a movement based on proclamations of ‘me too’.

Thinking people make distinctions – between a hand on your knee and a grope up your skirt, between a sexual attack by a supervisor and a pat on the butt from a guy in a bar – just as they distinguish pickpockets from home invaders. #MeTooism condemns such distinctions as reflections of rape culture. At best, when we differentiate ‘sexual assault and sexual harassment and unwanted groping, [we] are having the wrong conversation’, Democratic senator Kirsten Gillibrand asserts, while preparing to run for president as the self-appointed avenger of all self-identified female victims.

This dangerous nonsense denigrates women – we are not all traumatised by every fool who cops a feel – and questions our claim to equality.

Wendy is a lawyer, author and a former national board member of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Claire Berlinski says…

The #MeToo movement has exposed allegations of very serious sexual crimes and the degree to which women are simply fed up. This is healthy, up to a point. But we are way past that point.

It has now morphed into a mass hysteria. Men have been accused of transgressions no reasonable person would define as a crime. And this crime comes with a swift and terrifying penalty, but has no clear definition and no statute of limitations. This is juridically and morally absurd. Nulla poena sine lege.

This crime, it seems, may be committed through word, deed, or even facial expression. It rests entirely on discerning what a woman feels, or will feel, even decades later. But discerning this is actually quite difficult. ‘It’s payback time for men’ is not a reasonable definition. We must now together reason this out. Nullum crimen sine lege.

The names keep coming. The heads keep rolling. A charge of creepiness is a death sentence. (De minimis non curat lex.) Once the charge is made, employers race to purge the creep lest they too be stained by his dishonour. ‘We are deeply disappointed by the reports that Mister Absolutely Unacceptable in this day and age failed to live up to our company standards’, begins the ritual. And you know damned well Mister Absolutely Unacceptable will never get his job, or his life, back. Audacter caluminiare, semper aliquid haeret.

This is not good for men. But neither is it good for women. Newton’s third law is not just about physics. There will be a reaction. And women as a professional class will find themselves figuratively screwed – not an obvious improvement in the screwing scheme of things.

Claire is a novelist and journalist. Donate towards her new book: Stitch by Stitch. READ MORE AT SITE

Administrations by law must publish strategic manifestoes.https://amgreatness.com/2017/12/18/a-jacksonian-manifesto/

Indeed, the Goldwater–Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of October 4, 1986 required every subsequent government to issue periodic and formal national strategic strategy blueprints.

Most of these documents dating from the Reagan Administration are blah-blah boilerplate announcements of the obvious. They offer platitudinous promises of a sober internationalist United States leading the world in promoting global institutions while using its preeminent strength to partner with allies to counter perceived rising threats, such as rogue nations or terrorism. And so on.

The Trump Administration has just released its first national security strategy.

But to be frank, it is unlike most all prior manifestoes. The contrast with the 2015 Obama doctrine is stunning—the disconnect emblematic in its unabashed preamble that “This National Security Strategy puts America first.”

What’s Different
The Obama Administration doctrine’s emphases on global institutions and liberal values also marked a clear departure from past norms. It tended to redefine existential dangers not so much as hostile military powers, but rather as global natural threats (e.g., global warming, AIDS, and Ebola) and innate human prejudices (demeaning the Other, and biases against minority and LGBT communities). In the 2015 document, the words “jihad” or “jihadism” never appear (it pops up nearly 30 times in the twice-as-long Trump outline), but “violent extremism” showed up often in the widest sense of “root causes” and “home-grown” varieties.

The theme of the Trump document is American restoration. In Reaganesque fashion, the administration sees itself as similarly overturning an era of strategic stagnation, analogous to the self-doubt, self-imposed sense of decline, and thematic malaise of the Carter era. Instead, the “strategic confidence” and “principled realism” of the Trump Administration will purportedly snap America back out its Obama recessional in the same manner that Ronald Reagan did in the 1980s.

If the United States is not strong, then the world order will weaken: “America first is the duty of our government and the foundation for U.S. leadership in the world. A strong America is in the vital interests of not only the American people, but also those around the world who want to partner with the United States in pursuit of shared interests, values, and aspirations.”

Resistance is ancient. A few brave men and women have always stood against tyranny. The movie “Spartacus” depicted a slave rebellion in ancient Rome. The Protestant Reformation was resistance against Catholicism. Henry David Thoreau gave us civil disobedience. We associate resistance with the French and Polish undergrounds during the Second World War. More recently, George Lucas used resistance as the center of his epic film “Star Wars.” Leia Organa founds a small military force, “The Resistance,” to combat the First Order, which had risen from the ashes of the Galactic Empire.

Resistance is a call for freedom and a means to defend liberty. It was resistance against King John that established the Magna Carta in 1215, which limited the powers of the king. American patriots resisted the imposition of taxes, by tossing tea into Boston harbor in 1773. Woodrow Wilson noted that “the history of liberty is the history of resistance.”

But today’s resistance against Donald Trump has none of that legitimacy or idealism. It’s driven by hatred. It grew out of last year’s election, when Mr. Trump, anti-establishment and an outsider to Washington’s Beltway politics, was elected President. It claims spontaneity, but is led by a group called Indivisible (www.indivisible.org), and comprised of organizations like Black Lives Matter, Women’s March Global and the Center for Community Change. It has been funded by Democracy Alliance, which has steered more than $600 million toward selected liberal groups since its inception in 2005, and by MoveOn.org, the PAC set up by billionaire George Soros. It is supported by those in the media who decry Mr. Trump’s “toxic and menacing presidency,” as L.A. Kaufman, in The Guardian, put it. The “resistance” has the endorsement of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Organizing for Action, the PAC set up by Mr. Obama in 2008, has been relaunched with its purpose to derail Mr. Trump’s Presidency. Ms. Clinton incorporated Organizing for Action, a PAC to help fund resistance groups, transferring $800,000 from her campaign funds.

Most disconcerting, “resistance” is embedded in federal bureaucracies, like the IRS, the State Department and the Department of Justice. It descends from resistance to conservatives – recall the stone-walling of Lois Lerner at the IRS in 2015? Today, the State Department is boycotting the President’s Jerusalem policy, as can be seen with 15-year-old American, Menachem Zivotofsky who was born in Jerusalem and is trying to get his passport to say he was born in Israel. We saw it in James Comey’s testimony, and in the anti-Trump e-mails between Peter Strzok and his paramour, Lisa Page. It was seen in Sally Yates, a holdover from the Obama Administration, refusing to enforce a legal order on immigration, and in the refusal of Leandra English to hand over control of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau after the President had appointed Mick Mulvaney to be interim head. It can be seen in the Senate’s “slow-walking” of hundreds of administrative appointments, and in the endless investigations into alleged Russian-Trump collusion.

We don’t know how Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump administration will play out, but if it’s half as bad the Obama administration’s coddling of terror-supporting Iran, it should be a massive national scandal.

Empowering terrorist groups. Paying ransom that emboldened our enemies to kidnap Americans. Creating an echo chamber that undermined a free press. Releasing spies, terrorists, and criminals who assisted not only our enemy and her terrorist proxies, but Russia as well. In the Iran deal, we have clear-cut case of the United States handing over extensive concessions to a nation that openly aimed to destabilize our interests, attack our allies, and kill our people — for nothing in return. It’s worse than anything we know about “Russian collusion.”

On Sunday night, Politico sent an email previewing an another investigative article alleging that the Obama administration had “derailed an ambitious law enforcement campaign targeting drug trafficking by the Iranian-backed, Bashar al-Assad-allied, Justice Department-designated terrorist organization Hezbollah, even as it was funneling cocaine into the United States.”

This email dramatically underplays the outlet’s reporting. While it looks like the Obama administration neutralized efforts to stop a terrorist group from funding its operations through criminal enterprises in the United States — which should be a major scandal itself — according to Josh Meyer’s source-heavy reporting, it also decided to let a top Hezbollah operative named Ali Fayad, who had not only been indicted in U.S. courts for planning to kill American government employees but whom agents believed reported to Russian President Vladimir Putin as a key supplier of weapons to Syria and Iraq, to skate free.

You can, I’m sure, imagine what the reaction would be if this story had Trump’s administration rather than Obama’s secretly released Putin’s Middle East arms dealer?

“This was a policy decision, it was a systematic decision,” David Asher, an on-the-record source and Defense Department official charged with tracking Hezbollah’s worldwide criminal enterprise, told Politico. “They serially ripped apart this entire effort that was very well supported and resourced, and it was done from the top down.” (Read the whole thing.)

The striking thing about the latest Mueller investigation controversy — a kerfuffle over the special counsel’s acquisition of voluminous files from Trump’s transition organization — is how unnecessary it is.

As the word transition implies, an incoming president’s transition team is not yet in the government the president-elect will soon be running. It is thus in an ambiguous state: a private entity that is being briefed on government operations as it conducts preparations for governing; an entity through which private persons (i.e., non-government officials) are communicating with public officeholders and other private citizens in order to recruit potential administration officials, discuss policy, and understand the responsibilities the new administration will be taking on. There are obvious legal matters to be discussed, and hence the involvement of lawyers and discussions that are potentially privileged. There are strategic deliberations that go into public announcements and the formulation of policy.

It’s complicated.

That is why, if a prosecutor and investigators want to review presidential transition files, they should make the request directly to counsel for the presidential transition. That is the way to sort out any knotty legal issues, with court intervention if necessary, so that they do not become public controversies. But that is not the Mueller way, as we saw with the utterly unnecessary pre-dawn raid on the home of Paul Manafort — busting in with a search warrant and guns drawn, at the very time Manafort was cooperating with congressional committees, and when he was represented by well-respected lawyers through whom Mueller could have requested production of whatever materials he was seeking.

Mueller’s investigation is examining whether Trump campaign officials “colluded” in Russia’s espionage operations to interfere in the election, and whether contacts between Trump associates and Russian operatives amounted to actionable corruption. That being the case, the relevance of at least some transition materials is obvious.