Displaying posts published in

June 2018

Palestinians: The Only Acceptable Peace Plan by Bassam Tawil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12586/palestinians-peace-plan

“If Kushner and Greenblatt wish to learn more about the true ambitions of the Palestinians, they would do well to take in a sermon at a mosque on some Friday or stop into a school in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Perhaps then they would see for themselves that no peace plan in the world can, at the moment, counter the poison that is injected daily into the hearts and minds of the Palestinians and their children.”

The Palestinians want nothing to do with President Trump’s plan: they know it will never satisfy their demands. The Palestinians are not opposed to the peace plan because of a dispute over a border or a settlement or a checkpoint or the status of Jerusalem. They are against Trump’s plan — and any other peace initiative — because the Palestinians have something else in mind.

The two Palestinian parties, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, may disagree on everything — except the elimination of Israel. The only peace plan acceptable to current Palestinian leaders would be one that facilitated their mission of pursuing jihad against Israel to obliterate it.

If Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt wish to learn more about the true ambitions of the Palestinians, they would do well to take in a sermon at a mosque on some Friday or stop into a school in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Perhaps then they would see for themselves that no peace plan in the world can, at the moment, counter the poison that is injected daily into the hearts and minds of the Palestinians and their children.

The Palestinians have never laid eyes on US President Donald Trump’s plan for peace in the Middle East. The Palestinians know nothing about the plan, which still has not been made public.

That fact, however, has not stopped them from categorically rejecting the yet-to-be-announced plan — a stance the Palestinians repeated this week as US Middle East envoys Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt visited Israel and a number of Arab countries to discuss the plan.

The Trump plan has not even been finalized and, as such, has not officially been presented to any of the parties to the Israeli-Arab conflict. Kushner and Greenblatt have been working on the plan for several months; their current tour of the region comes in the context of Jordan and Egypt.

Anti-American Propaganda Disappearing from North Korea By Rick Moran

https://pjmedia.com/trending/anti-american-propaganda-disappearing-from-north-korea/

One unexpected benefit from the recent thaw in relations with North Korea has been the Hermit Kingdom’s removal of most anti-U.S. propaganda from cities and towns.

The vulgar anti-American posters have been replaced with largely positive messages praising the new relationship with South Korea.

New York Post:

In their place are cheery messages touting praising the prospects for Korean reunification and the declaration Kim signed in April with South Korean President Moon Jae-in promising “lasting peace,” according to reports.

Still the most isolated country in the world, very few North Koreans have access to news and information from the outside world. So state propaganda plays a huge role in shaping their views.

Murals, banners and posters displayed throughout the capital, Pyongyang, have for decades depicted the U.S. as a brutal, imperialist aggressor hell-bent on destroying the North Korean regime. South Korea and Japan were also frequently targeted as willing allies of the U.S.

But things started to take an Orwellian turn in the run-up to Kim’s June 12 summit with President Donald Trump, with the old posters vanishing since then.

“All the anti-American posters I usually see around Kim Il-sung Square and at shops, they’ve all just gone,” Rowan Beard, a tour manager at Young Pioneer Tours, told Reuters. “In five years working in North Korea, I’ve never seen them completely disappear before.”

Infamous posters and postcards showing North Korean missiles on their way to Washington are a thing of the past. Also removed are the anti-American trinkets that used to be sold to tourists as souvenirs. In their place are items showing themes of Korean reunification.

The change extends to the country’s government-controlled media. News reports that once depicted the U.S. as hostile, and its involvement in places like Syria as proof of imperialism, are no longer critical. The Financial Times said the main newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, hasn’t featured a direct attack on Trump since March, when he agreed to meet with Kim.

The paper was filled with pictures of the two together at the summit, and is no longer reporting anti-U.S. news. Other international events, like Kim’s visit last week to China, are being reported right away, rather than after a waiting period, and in more neutral language.

“This is fascinating,” Peter Ward, North Korea expert and writer for NKNews, told the BBC. “Generally speaking, neutral or positive coverage is normally reserved for countries that Pyongyang has friendly relations with.” CONTINUE AT SITE

#WalkAway Campaign Urges Fed-Up Democrats to Leave the Party By Debra Heine

https://pjmedia.com/trending/walkaway-campaign-urges-fed-up-democrats-to-leave-the-party/

A new grassroots movement is urging Democrats who are fed up with the ugly direction the party has taken in recent years — especially since President Trump was elected — to “walk away.” The #WalkAway campaign is “dedicated to sharing the stories of people who can no longer accept the current ideology of liberalism and what the Democratic Party has become,” the group’s Facebook page states.

Some left long ago. Many of us have recently been “red-pilled”. Some here have wanted to leave for some time, but have feared the consequences they might suffer from friends or family if they walk away.

This group is here to encourage and support those on the left to walk away from the divisive tenets by allowing people to share their stories, or watch the video testimonies and read the posts of others who have walked away.

Brandon Straka aka “The Unsilent Majority” kicked off the campaign with a video on May 26.

“It is my sincere hope that you will join me in this campaign and that we may start a movement in this country — which not only encourages others to walk away from the divisive left, but also takes back the narrative from the liberal media about what it means to be a conservative in America,” Straka says in the video.

It is up to all of us to make our voices heard and reclaim the truth. The Democratic Party has taken for granted that it owns racial, sexual, and religious minorities in America. It has encouraged groupthink, hypocrisy, division, stereotyping, resentment, and the acceptance of victimhood mentality. And all the while, they have discouraged minorities from having independent thought, open dialogue, measured and informed opinion, and a motivation to succeed.

“For years now, I have watched as the left has devolved into intolerance, inflexible, illogical, hateful, misguided, ill-informed, un-American, hypocritical, menacing, callous, ignorant, narrow-minded, and at times blatantly fascistic behavior and rhetoric,” Straka says in the video below.

The video has 1,156,248 views on Facebook and over 61,000 views on YouTube. The #WalkAway Facebook page has over 20,000 likes and over 6,000 members.

Straka, a gay man from Nebraska, says that he is one of the liberals who melted down in November of 2016 after Trump was elected. “It’s funny now, but at the time it was completely tragic,” he told conservative podcaster David J. Harris in a recent interview. “I was heartbeat away from being that ‘Leave Britney alone!’ guy … just crying hysterically,” he said. Straka told Harris that a string of emotional videos he made after the election are still up on his Facebook page. He said the reason he was so devastated was because he believed all of the media lies about Trump being a “racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe, sexual predator.” CONTINUE AT SITE

Why Obama Wanted the Russians to Hack the Election How the two deep state intel operations fit together.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270544/why-obama-wanted-russians-hack-election-daniel-greenfield

“Why the hell are we standing down?”

That was the question that the White House’s cybersecurity coordinator was asked after Susan Rice, Obama’s national security adviser, issued a stand down order on Russia.

Testimony at the Senate Intelligence Committee hearings on Russian interference in the election once again raised the central paradox of the Russia conspiracy theory. If Russian interference in the election represented the crisis that we are told it did, why did Obama fail to take any meaningful action?

The White House’s own cybersecurity people wanted an aggressive response before being told to stand down. Obama issued a bloodless warning to Russia while his people deliberately crippled our offense.

Democrats and the media blamed the Russian hacking on Trump. But it was Susan Rice who had told the cybersecurity team to “knock it off” and Obama’s people who hadn’t wanted him to be “boxed in” and forced to respond to Russian actions. Was this just the usual appeasement or was there more to it?

Why didn’t Obama and his team want to stop Russian hacking? Because they needed the Russians.

Neither “Reform” Bill Would Solve Immigration Crisis Why they’re doomed to fail — by design. Michael Cutler

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270516/neither-reform-bill-would-solve-immigration-crisis-michael-cutler

Two well-known and powerful members of the House of Representatives, Speaker Paul Ryan and Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte have proposed legislation to address the DACA aliens and a many other issues that all comprise failures of the immigration system.

The Goodlatte bill is seen as the “tougher” of the two bills.

It would fund the hiring of 10,000 additional employees for Customs and Border Protection including 5,000 additional Border Patrol Agents but no additional ICE agents.

Today, ICE has 6,000 agents, but half of them are enforcing customs or other non-immigration related laws.

Before we go further, consider this hypothetical question:

If President Trump was able to build the wall along the southern border that was 50 feet tall and topped with ultra high-voltage electrified concertina wire, what would a determined alien need to defeat that wall?

Some pundits would say that such an alien would simply need a 55 foot ladder. So to make things interesting, let me add that the device that could defeat President Trump’s wall could fit in the alien’s pocket.

We will consider the solution to the problem a bit further on, but first, on June 18, 2018 the Washington Times Examiner article, Paul Ryan’s immigration bill gains traction ahead of House votes provided an extremely limited comparison of the two competing bills as noted in this excerpt:

Goodlatte has acknowledged his own measure lacked the votes to pass, leaving the Ryan bill as the sole Republican option with any chance of becoming law.

The Ryan legislation includes four immigration reform requirements outlined by President Trump in January. That includes providing a special pathway to citizenship for 1.8 million Dreamers who came here as children, a reduction in chain migration, an end to the visa lottery system, and money for a wall along the southern border.

Why This Immigration Psychodrama Will Also Pass By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2018/06/25/why-this-immigration-psychodrama-will-also-pass/
A month from now there will be a new manufactured news story that Donald Trump is savage, represents an existential danger, or is unhinged. We will hear of another Trump official cornered and driven out from a liberal-owned Beltway or New York City restaurant. An unhinged Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) will rant some more about impeachment.

And then the current hysteria over the border detainments will be filed, and go the way of the “s—hole countries” frenzy or Melania’s jacket melodrama.

We’ve already been through the dizzying odyssey of legal suits in three states over supposedly fraudulent voting machines, the nullification of the Electoral College effort, the meltdown on Inauguration Day, the Emoluments Clause tizzy, the 25th Amendment con, the various Russian collusion hysterias, the leaked phone call to the Australian prime minister, the Michael Wolff Fire and Furyfantasies, the Dudley Do-Right James Comey pre-indictment book tour, and all the surreal assassination chic stories, from Kathy Griffin’s beheading photo to the Shakespearean troupe’s ritual stabbing of Trump.

One day the president is supposedly going to blow up the world by calling Kim Jong-un “little rocket man,” and the next he is a partner in genocide for not blowing up the world but reaching out to Kim.

One moment Trump will tank the economy and wreck the stock market, the next the undeniable Trump boom is not really his own but Obama’s. Give the media credit: it found a way to explain why 3.8 official unemployment and greater than 3 percent GDP growth is a bad thing (it will heat up the planet, lead to a crash, mask Trump’s crudity and make impossible impeachment, etc.)

The sad state of journalism in the era of Trump Derangement Syndrome By Thomas Lifson

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/06/the_sad_state_of_journalism_in_the_era_of_trump_derangement_syndrome.html

Worst of all: this is from Politico, not the Onion, as Mike@Doranimated tweeted. One or more editors of a publication that aspires to be the insider’s guide to Washington, DC, read an approved for publication a story knocking Trump advisor Stephen Miller for his behavior in third grade.

Let that sink in a minute, and never forget it when you look at anything published by Politico.

How to Re-Elect Trump You’re so deplorable you can’t eat in their restaurants.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-re-elect-trump-1529878046

Hillary Clinton lost the Presidency in 2016 for many reasons but one was surely because she called people who disagreed with her a “basket of deplorables.” Millions of Americans knew who she meant, and nearly 63 million voted for Donald J. Trump.

The political left is now repeating that mistake as its cultural and political vanguard sends a message of condescension, hostility and now ostracism to anyone who voted for Mr. Trump or has worked with or for him for the good of the country. Their relentless contempt might end up re-electing him.

On that score don’t underestimate how the refusal by a restaurant in Lexington, Virginia, to serve White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders will resonate politically. Ms. Sanders had taken a seat at the Red Hen with several others on Friday when owner Stephanie Wilkinson asked her to leave. Ms. Wilkinson told the press, which is turning her into Rosa Parks, that her restaurant “has certain standards that I feel it has to uphold, such as honesty, and compassion, and cooperation.”

Except toward people who don’t share Ms. Wilkinson’s views. Rest assured every Trump supporter in America will be reminded of this episode from here to November. The message: Now you’re so deplorable they won’t serve you in their restaurants.

Meanwhile, hecklers ran Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen out of a Mexican restaurant in Washington, D.C. last week. Protesters are also harassing Ms. Nielsen at home, blaring audio of crying children detained at the border and shouting “no justice, no sleep.”

Senate Obstruction in Profile A respected Trump Justice nominee is held up for more than a year.

Key positions throughout the federal government remain vacant more than 500 days into Donald Trump’s Presidency. The President hasn’t put forward enough nominees, a mistake the media have focused on. Yet Senate Democrats—and the occasional Republican—have held up qualified nominees at a scale unprecedented in recent history.

No one understands this better than Brian Benczkowski, who was nominated more than a year ago to lead the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. Mr. Benczkowski is a highly qualified choice for Assistant Attorney General: He has held five leadership positions at Justice, including chief of staff to former Attorney General Michael Mukasey. Obama and Clinton appointees have praised his selection, yet Senate Democrats have treated Mr. Benczkowski as if he were Vladimir Putin’s personal attorney.

Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats sent a letter to President Trump in May—11 months after receiving the nomination—regarding the nominee’s “Russian connections.” They urged the president to drop Mr. Benczkowski over his “representation of the Putin-allied Alfa Bank and his refusal to recuse himself from Russia-related matters.”

Russian Airstrikes Hit Southwest Syria, Breaking a Cease-Fire Deal About 6,000 civilians have already fled their homes near the front lines across Daraa and Quneitra, according to the U.N. By Raja Abdulrahim and Michael R. Gordon

https://www.wsj.com/articles/russian-airstrikes-hit-southwest-syria-breaking-a-ceasefire-deal-1529853026

The Syrian regime’s main military ally, Russia, carried out airstrikes Sunday in the country’s southwest, defying a cease-fire pact with the U.S. and Jordan, as forces aligned with President Bashar al-Assad pushed to capture one of the last opposition strongholds.

The Russian strikes, which have been accompanied by regime barrel bombs and mortar shells, are the latest signs of the high-stakes military maneuvers unfolding in a volatile corner of southwest Syria. Forces aligned with President Assad have threatened a ground offensive, dropping leaflets that demand the surrender of rebels in the area. At least five civilians have been killed in the bombardment, which also destroyed a hospital and emergency rescue center, according to antigovernment activists.

For weeks, the U.S. has warned the Syrian regime not to violate a cease-fire agreement brokered last year with Russia and Jordan that stretches across the Syrian provinces of Daraa and Quneitra.

But the U.S. appears intent on not getting dragged into a confrontation between the rebels and Mr. Assad’s Russian and Iranian-backed forces. On Saturday night, as Russian airstrikes were beginning, U.S.-allied rebels were told by the Americans not to expect a military intervention on their behalf, according to several rebel commanders.

The State Department expressed concern about the airstrikes and said it had been in touch with the Russian government and “parties on the ground.” CONTINUE AT SITE