Displaying posts published in

October 2019

Media Attempt to School Republicans Is a Disingenuous Fraud Roger Kimball

https://amgreatness.com/2019/10/21/media-attempt-to-school-republicans-is-a-disingenuous-fraud/

What we are witnessing with such gems of hysterical mendacity are the pathetic death throes of a discredited political franchise and its rapidly disintegrating narrative.

If you haven’t had your daily dose of petulant surreality, swivel over to read this astounding editorial at what used to be America’s paper of record. This curious effusion warns that “The G.O.P. will not be able to postpone a reckoning on Donald Trump’s presidency for much longer.”

Oh, dear. Are things as bad as that? Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. And you know that it is really serious because the cri de coeur not only appears in the leaky flagship of the legacy media (I won’t name it if you don’t mind) but also it appears under the solemn byline of “The Editorial Board.”

Silence, please! The important people are about to speak. Pay attention!

The sobbing editorial is called “The Crisis of the Republican Party,” but it might have been better titled “Whistling Past the Graveyard.”

I always wonder exactly who is the intended audience for such high-and-mighty imprecations. They appear to be addressed to “the GOP,” to “conservatives” (those who still have a “conscience,” i.e., those who have mutated into progressives), to “Republicans.” Here is your last chance, such columns seem to shout, we’re warning you. You are tearing the republic apart (you know they’re upset when they start talking about “the Republic”: I think they’re trying to remind you of Rome circa 44 B.C.).

Why Hamas Supports Erdogan’s War by Khaled Abu Toameh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15049/hamas-support-erdogan-syria

If, according to Hamas, Turkey has the right to protect its border, why does Israel not have the same right?

Hamas’s support for Erdogan’s war on the Kurds seems to be in the context of its attempt to persuade the Turkish authorities to allow its members to continue using Turkey as a base for masterminding terrorist attacks against Israel.

As Hamas said in its statement, it is opposed to the “US and Israeli presence in the region.” Hamas seems to be happy that the US abandoned the Kurds and left northern Syria. Hamas does not want the US to play any political or military role in the region….

It now remains to be seen how Erdogan will reward Hamas for supporting his war on the Kurds. Hamas, meanwhile, is holding its breath, hoping that Turkey will embrace the group and facilitate its fight against Israel.

Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated terror group ruling the Gaza Strip since 2007, is the only Palestinian party that has come out in support of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s war on the Kurds in Syria.

A statement issued by Hamas on October 14 said that the terror group “understands Turkey’s right to protect its border, defend itself and remove threats harmful to its national security against the tampering of the Zionist Mossad in the region, as part of [Israel’s] effort to undermine Arab and Islamic national security.”

Hamas also praised Erdogan for his “support for the Palestinian cause and the rights of the Palestinian people” and expressed opposition to “the Zionist and US presence in the region.”

Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman in the Gaza Strip, voiced support for Turkey. “The Israeli media campaign against Turkey is rude and unacceptable. Israel will remain the enemy and Turkey will remain in the hearts of Muslims,” he wrote on Twitter.

Another Hamas leader, Izzar al-Risheq, said that his group is “confident that President Erdogan has no ambitions in Syria and he only wants to preserve the security of his country.” The Muslims, he added, need to “end their conflicts so they would have the time to confront the big challenge imposed by the presence of the Zionist enemy.”

Turkey’s New ‘Bashibazouks’: The Free Syrian Army by Burak Bekdil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15048/turkey-free-syrian-army

“In the outskirts of Aleppo, the FSA [Free Syrian Army] has implemented a Sharia law enforcement police force that is a replica of the Wahhabi police in Saudi Arabia — forcing ordinary citizens to abide by the Sharia code…” — HuffPost, December 31, 2012.

Trained and funded by Turkey since 2016 and with a reputation for violence and looting, the fighters of the Syrian National Army (SNA, formerly the Free Syrian Army) resemble very much the Ottoman bashibazouks.

“Elizabeth Tsurkov, a fellow at the U.S.-based Foreign Policy Research Institute who has interviewed dozens of the fighters and said they appear to be driven by a desire for power and money rather than by any specific ideology… ‘Hatred of Kurds, a sense of Arab chauvinism, complete intolerance for any dissent, and just a desire to make a profit is what’s driving most of the abuses.'” — Associated Press, October 15, 2019.

During Turkey’s most recent, ongoing, military incursion into Syria, launched on October 9, SNA militias captured a major highway that runs across northern Syria. According to Associated Press, “The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said the Turkey-backed fighters shot and killed six civilians along the road, including Hevreen Khalaf, a woman who led a Kurdish political party.”

Bashibazouks (“corrupted heads” in Turkish) first appeared in the Ottoman army at the end of the 18th century and fought in Egypt against Napoleon’s army. These irregular mercenary soldiers, often made up of homeless beggars and thugs, were notorious for their lack of discipline, plundering and brutality. During the Crimean War (1853-1856) the allied generals made futile attempts to discipline them. The bashibazouks’ excesses during the Russian-Ottoman war of 1877-78 finally forced the Istanbul government to abandon using them.

More than two centuries after their Ottoman ancestors had used bashibazouks, the Turks found their Arab reincarnation in Syria.

Argentina Designates Hezbollah a Terror Group by Luis Petri

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15029/argentina-designates-hezbollah

Editor’s note: Argentina made history this year as the first Latin American country to designate Hezbollah as a foreign terrorist organization. This is an important step forward for the region and Argentina is poised to become a leader and role model with their registry (RePET) acting as a roadmap for other Latin American countries seeking to make the same designation of Hezbollah. Less than one month after Argentina, on August 9, 2019, Paraguay designated Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, as well, giving the region and U.S. allies in Latin America more momentum than ever in the fight against terrorism.

This past July… President Macri published Argentina’s first public registry (RePET) of those tied to terrorism. He made a clear commitment to the fight against international terrorism. The public registry is a historical landmark containing over 1,000 entries of individuals and entities tied to terrorism in Argentina, including Hezbollah.

The registry will function under the Ministry of Justice, but the Ministry of Security and our Financial Intelligence Unit or UIF-AR will have the power to designate terror groups by requesting to freeze the assets of known terrorist actors. This whole-of-government approach ensures that the country can use a variety of tools when targeting terrorists.

Previously, the only people in Argentina labeled as terrorists were those considered terrorists by the U.N. Security Council. This [new] registry works to target all terrorist organizations in the international arena, as well as persons or entities under investigation in Argentina.

The following is an edited and translated transcript of a speech given by Argentine Congressman Luis Petri on July 25, 2019 at the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington D.C. during an event hosted by the Center for a Secure Free Society (SFS) in commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the AMIA attack in Argentina. This speech has been slightly modified and reorganized for clarity by the editors, with the approval from Congressman Petri.

There is a before and after when you consider the effects of September 11th in the world. But in Argentina, this “before and after” began a lot earlier. In 1992, the Embassy of Israel was bombed [in Buenos Aires], followed two years later [on July 18, 1994] by one of the worst terrorist attacks in Argentina against the AMIA Jewish community center, and causing 85 casualties and wounded many more.

Schumer Complains About ISIS Terrorists A proven master of hypocrisy. Michael Cutler

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/10/schumer-complains-about-isis-terrorists-michael-cutler/

President Trump’s decision to pull U.S. troops from Syria was borne of his desire to keep his campaign promises of not continuing to spill American blood by having American troops serve as the “police force for the world.”

It should come as no surprise that Senator Chuck Schumer was among the most vociferous opponents of the President’s decision.  Virtually any statement or decision that President Trump might make immediately becomes the subject of a Chuck Schumer tirade.

On October 17, 2019 the Washington Times reported, Chuck Schumer’s bid to rebuke Trump over Syria fails in Senate. That news report began with this excerpt that show how there is no easy or clear path as to how to deal with this international diplomatic and military quagmire that preceded Trump’s election:

Senators fought Thursday over how to try to patch up the mess in Syria, but it quickly became clear that beyond being frustrated with President Trump, there’s little unity on what, exactly, the U.S. should do.

Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, tried to force a symbolic rebuke of Mr. Trump, saying it would send a signal that might make the president reverse his decisions and send U.S. troops back in, but that was blocked by Sen. Rand Paul.

The Kentucky Republican said not only has Congress never authorized going to war in Syria, but sending troops back would mean putting them in between Turkey and the Kurds, both U.S. allies but who are now battling each other.

On October 13, 2019 MSN (MicroSoft News) republished a news report posted by the local NYC radio station, CBS News Radio 880, that announced, Schumer: Trump’s Syria Troop Withdrawal Threatens Security Of NYC.

Here is an excerpt from that report:

Schumer says New Yorkers know the impact of terrorism more than anyone else.

Don’t Blame Trump for Syria Blame our schizophrenic foreign policy. Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/10/dont-blame-trump-syria-bruce-thornton/

President Trump is facing intense criticism for his decision to withdraw fewer than 1000 U.S. troops from northeastern Syria. The dispute largely reflects the bipartisan NeverTrump penchant for politicizing every Trump decision in order to weaken the president. But there are honest people on both sides of the issue who have compelling arguments for their positions. Unfortunately, no rational argument can resolve this disagreement over our presence in Syria, for its causes run much deeper than military tactics and foreign policy strategies: The divided aims underlying our interactions with the world that have left us with a schizophrenic foreign policy.

America has long tried to reconcile our desire to be wary of “foreign entanglements,” with our involvements abroad forced on us by changes in technology like the steamship and the telegraph, and by a growing global trade that enriched our own economy at the cost of increasing “entanglements” in foreign affairs. Our participation in the Great War of 1914-1918 made us a global power, just at the time that the ideology of “moralizing internationalism” had taken hold in the West, famously expressed in Woodrow Wilson’s call “to make the world safe for democracy.” For many, the return to isolationism following the war, evident in the Senate’s refusal to ratify the Versailles Treaty, was a disaster that helped spark the much more devastating Second World War.

During the Cold War, our standoff with a nuclear armed communist superpower legitimized our deep involvement in managing and defending the Free World we now led. Multinational alliances, conventions, institutions, treaties, and covenants were the means for promoting liberal democracy and human rights, and for adjudicating international disputes and global conflicts while limiting armed violence to proxy duels. The successful end of the Cold War created the illusion that our traditional isolationism was no longer viable, given what George H.W. Bush called the “new world order.”

Meet the real Mitt Romney: Pierre Delecto By Monica Showalter

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/10/meet_the_real_mitt_romney_pierre_delecto.html

You can’t make this stuff up. 

Mitt Romney admits he’s operating a secret Twitter account, revealing his real thoughts about President Trump, the deplorables, and everyone else, posting as — are you ready — Pierre Delecto.

Not even Mitt Romney’s worst detractors could make that one up.  “Pepe le Pew” was just a grasp at straws…

Slate magazine of all places had a brilliant piece of detective work pretty well proving this is what was going on.  The Atlantic, which has lately beclowned itself by hagiograph-ing Romney, of course got the scoop confirming its veracity from Pierre Delecto himself.  “C’est moi,” he declared, before making the account private. 

Pierre Delecto, indeed.  It ought to be his real name. 

What was in that now private account?  The awesome Slate report is still up, and its sharp-minded (if lefty) writer cherry-picked all the revealing stuff Romney is not brave enough to say in public but puts out there in what he thinks is at least semi-private.  Cripes, who knew? 

Slate’s curation reveals a man with thin skin, piping up when his name gets left off some list; seething in disdain for the deplorables (“never read the comments section,” he advises some NeverTrump); a wounded ego; lingering bitterness about why voters rejected him in 2012; zero sense of perspective as to why he was defeated; his fondness for George Conway, Kellyanne Conway’s crazy husband who hates Trump rabidly; ego-stoking praise from random tweeters; and oodles of other embarrassing stuff.  Romney’s real self is revealed in Pierre, and he comes off as petulant; petty; hypocritical; arrogant; self-regarding; and anything but the sturdy manly man who can roll with the punches, which is the role he plays in public.  Nope, he’s all Pierre Delecto here, now exposed as the real Mitt Romney, handing us all too much information just as he’s criticized some of his family members for.  Pierre Delecto, indeed…

Bernie’s Big, Bolshie, Biden-Boosting Bash By Kyle Smith

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/bernie-sanders-queens-rally-circus-comes-to-town/

The Sanders circus comes to Queens.

Who says Joe Biden supporters aren’t fired up and ready to fight? Twenty-five thousand eight hundred and seventy-two of them showed up in Queens Saturday to bring a smile to Uncle Joe’s lips. All of them were fighting to split the socialist vote that threatens Biden between the relatively spry lady who could actually win (Elizabeth Warren) and the wild-haired 78-year-old Larry David impersonator who just had a heart attack (Bernie Sanders).

The weekend timing was unfortunate given Bernie’s precarious health and even more precarious standing in the polls. (Nine percent in Iowa, behind Pete Buttigieg? Really? Was he even born when Bernie ran in 2016?) You would think the Bernie Sanders campaign would make sure to hold its biggest rallies on a weekday, given the amount of propping up he needs. Hunched over from the shoulders, he didn’t just grab the lectern on Saturday — he clutched it, relied on it, looking like Mr. Burns leaning over his walker. (It’s a good thing he’s a politician; in what other profession do they invariably put a large stand in front of you to help you keep your balance?) Sanders came on stage to the strains of AC/DC’s “Back in Black,” which was meant to make Sanders sound exciting and indomitable; in fact the song was written as a tribute to a dead guy (Bon Scott). Oopsie?

Sanders’s speech was characteristically Sandernista stuff: Droning, badgering, meandering, enervating, needlessly, endlessly long. Sanders is the kind of guy who could promise every American free Netflix for life and still make it sound like a shut-up-and-take-your-medicine speech. The man is pure Castro oil. As his brillo-pad-on-sandpaper voice flayed the eardrums, the Bernie signs drooped. Even his most ardent fans looked at each other like they were ankle-deep in a bear trap. Whether Sanders was being uselessly vague (“Our legislation. Will hold. The fossil-fuel industry. Accountable.”) or issuing absurdly unrealistic blue-sky promises (“Our program will eliminate homelessness in America!”), he sounded completely irrelevant to 2019. Five years older than the oldest Baby Boomer, already ten years past the average life expectancy of a man born in 1941, he is not the man to lead America through the 2020s. He’s the man at the deli who wants his tuna-on-rye special Retoasted, the right way this time.

NY Times, B’Tselem Misinforms on Palestinians in Jordan Valley By: Gilead Ini

DPS NOTE:

 This piece deserves special circulation for several reasons. 
First because if it wasn’t for CAMERA and the original research done by its Gilead Ini, none of these lies and mistruths would have ever seen the light of day. So, hats off to CAMERA.

Second, you need to read this in order to really understand the depth of the Israel hatred which allows people – and media giants – to blithely disseminate both flat out lies and apparent truths while withholding information which would change your mind about the part they did tell you.

Third, this incessant public flogging of Israel every minute of every day is getting more and more visibly successful. Which is why I am sending you yet another – this one extraordinarily well researched and written – piece about the New York Times’ Israel hatred. The haters are successful because not enough of us know enough to know when what we’re being told isn’t true.  DPS

https://www.camera.org/article/ny-times-btselem-misinforms-on-palestinians-in-jordan-valley/

The New York Times misinformed readers in two recent stories about Palestinians in the Jordan Valley — and although the newspaper promises to correct mistakes big and small, it has yet to correct its errors.

Access to Jordan Valley Land

In the first story, a Sept. 10 piece by Ben Hubbard, the paper erred about Palestinian access to the Jordan Valley, a stretch of land parallel to the Jordan River that runs along the West Bank’s eastern border. Citing the Israeli advocacy group B’Tselem, Hubbard told readers Palestinians are “barred from entering or using about 85 percent” of the Jordan Valley where it passes through the West Bank.

A United Nations map highlights the West Bank’s Jordan Valley area.

The claim that Palestinians are only able to enter 15 percent of the territory, though, is false.

Depending on where exactly one draws the boundaries of the Jordan Valley — there’s no single, official delineation of the territory — between seven and thirteen percent of the region is designated as Area A or Area B — the names given to West Bank territory in which civilian matters are administered by the Palestinian Authority, in line with peace agreements signed by Israel and the Palestinians. 

Walter Russell Mead: Brexit and Britain’s Broken Parliament The prime minister can’t call an election, thanks to a reform enacted in 2011.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/brexit-and-britains-broken-parliament-11571696172

Is Britain broken? That’s the question a bemused world has been asking since the unexpected result of Remainer David Cameron’s Brexit referendum plunged the U.K. into a three-year political crisis.

Two things are striking about this period of national agony and debate. The first is how sensible and peaceful the British people have remained. The Brexit referendum carried by 52% to 48% (a margin of roughly 1.3 million out of more than 33.5 million votes cast) and the consequences are unpredictable and large. Will the United Kingdom even stay united as Scotland and Northern Ireland react to Brexit? Will Britain’s economy flourish as it opens to the world or wither without privileged access to European markets? From the City of London’s financial sector to the Sunderland Nissan factory, hundreds of thousands, even millions of jobs may be at stake.

Faced with all that, the British kept calm and carried on. Across a country of 66 million, Brexit has generated less political violence than a modestly sized Antifa march can gin up on a good afternoon in Portland, Ore. Scotland may be looking for an exit from the U.K. even as the U.K. looks to exit the European Union, but there are no Barcelona-style separatist riots in Edinburgh or anywhere else. This is an extraordinary testimony to the depth of Britain’s democratic culture.