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May 2020

Three Flynn Thoughts By Andrew C. McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/random-flynn-thoughts/

There is lots of Flynn chatter today. Three quick points:

1. As I explain in a piece at The Hill today, I understand why the Justice Department relied on a legal argument — viz., lack of materiality — for moving to dismiss the case against Michael Flynn. It spares DOJ the need to get into the facts of the case which, to put it mildly, are unflattering to the FBI and prosecutors. Nevertheless, the best reason to dismiss the Flynn case is that the government would not be able to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt in court. The evidence is equivocal, the witnesses have profound credibility problems — and those witnesses actually thought Flynn was not lying to them.

The issue for the Justice Department is not whether Flynn made misstatements to Vice President Pence and other administration officials; it is whether prosecutors are in a position to carry their burden of proof that Flynn willfully lied to the interviewing agents. On the evidence as we understand it, I do not believe a jury would be confident even that they knew exactly what statements Flynn made, much less whether his statements were intentionally false rather than honest failures of recollection.

Report: Anti-Semitic incidents in US hit record high in 2019 By Michael Kunzelman

https://www.aol.com/article/news/2020/05/12/report-anti-semitic-incidents-in-us-hit-record-high-in-2019/24281005/

SILVER SPRING, Md. (AP) — American Jews were targets of more anti-Semitic incidents in 2019 than any other year over the past four decades, a surge marked by deadly attacks on a California synagogue, a Jewish grocery store in New Jersey and a rabbi’s New York home, the Anti-Defamation League reported Tuesday.

The Jewish civil rights group counted 2,107 anti-Semitic incidents in 2019, finding 61 physical assault cases, 1,127 instances of harassment and 919 acts of vandalism. That’s the highest annual tally since the New York City-based group began tracking anti-Semitic incidents in 1979. It also marked a 12% increase over the 1,879 incidents it counted in 2018.

Jonathan Greenblatt, the group’s CEO, attributes last year’s record high to a “normalization of anti-Semitic tropes,” the “charged politics of the day” and social media. This year, he said, the COVID-19 pandemic is fueling anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

“Anti-Semitism is a virus. It is like a disease, and it persists,” Greenblatt said. “It’s sometimes known as the oldest hatred. It never seems to go away. There truly is no single antidote or cure.”

The ADL’s count of anti-Semitic assaults involved 95 victims. More than half of the assaults occurred in New York City, including 25 in Brooklyn. Eight of those Brooklyn assaults happened during a span of eight days in December, primarily in neighborhoods where many Orthodox Jews live.

Coronavirus: Lockdown for Europeans, Amnesty for Illegal Immigrants by Soeren Kern

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16013/european-lockdown-illegal-immigrants

While Europe is experiencing an economic shock without precedent, and tens of millions of Europeans have lost their livelihoods, migrants in Europe illegally are being showered with free housing and healthcare.

The actual number of illegal immigrants in France is unknown but was estimated to be between 300,000 and 400,000 in 2017, according to the Pew Research Center. Considering the waves of mass migration since then, the number is probably well above a half-million.

Britain has up to 1.2 million illegal immigrants, a quarter of all those that have unlawfully entered Europe, according to the Pew Research Center…. The UK’s leniency appears to have sparked another wave of illegal immigration. Since the coronavirus lockdown began on March 23, nearly 900 people have illegally crossed the English Channel from France, according to Migration Watch UK.

“There is great discontent among the [German] population because everyone who arrives here immediately has many or even higher rights and rights to benefits or medical care than someone who has worked here for their entire life.” — Interior Minister of Saarland, Klaus Bouillon (CDU), interview with Die Welt.

“Muslim countries currently have 300 million males under the age of 15. This is not a forecast, but already a reality. Scientists like Gunnar Heinsohn assume that a maximum of 100 million can obtain a position in the society of their home country. The remaining 200 million will try to emigrate or otherwise fight for their place.” — Anabel Schunke, political commentator, German blog Die Achse des Guten

European governments are using the coronavirus pandemic to grant mass amnesties to hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East. While Europe is experiencing an economic shock without precedent, and tens of millions of Europeans have lost their livelihoods, migrants in Europe illegally are being showered with free housing and healthcare.

In Italy, where public debt is forecast to reach 160% of GDP this year, the left-wing coalition government has announced a plan to grant amnesty to at least 600,000 migrants in the country illegally. They would receive residency permits, initially valid for six months, that could be renewed in perpetuity.

Turkish ‘Justice’: Free Mobsters, Keep Dissidents Locked Up by Burak Bekdil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16004/turkish-justice-mobsters-dissidents

When drafting the bill, Erdoğan and his MPs were surgically precise not to let one single political prisoner walk free.

About 50,000 inmates who were excluded from the bill, as terror convicts and suspects would not be eligible for amnesty.

You forgive the mafia… You don’t forgive journalists that write the truth. You don’t forgive those that want peace.” — Turan Aydoğan, opposition lawmaker.

Under Erdoğan’s 18 years in power, the free-fall of this professed NATO ally back toward the authoritarian East looks sadly irrevocable.

Aleaddin Çakıcı is a well-known Turkish mafia figure. But his militant far-right past makes him a shadier figure in Turkey’s domestic and international political scenes, not just in the criminal underworld. In the 1970s he was a leading fighter in Turkey’s near civil war between ultra-left and -right fractions. His first arrest came shortly after the military coup d’état in 1980: He was tried on charges of murdering 41 leftists.

According to leaked reports, Çakıcı was used as a hitman in the 1980s and 1990s by Turkish intelligence. His targets were leftists and pro-Kurdish groups. Turkish intelligence also tasked him with carrying out operations in foreign countries, including Greece and Lebanon, targeting the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA).

In 2018 Devlet Bahçeli, a far-right politician and a staunch supporter of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, described Çakıcı as “brave and fearless” and as someone “who was in love with [his] homeland and ideals.” Bahçeli had said that Çakıcı was in prison on multiple sentences for murder, armed attack, money laundering, and leading an illegal armed group. Among other such escapades, he had contracted out the murder of his ex-wife, who in 1995 was shot dead in front of their son.

Çakıcı’s is certainly not the résumé of an ideal, law-abiding, peaceful citizen. But last month, at age 67, he walked free from the prison in which he had been kept. How could this ruthless crime machine walk out of prison, jump into a chauffeur-driven car and be escorted to a holiday resort accompanied by a big convoy and hundreds of “devotees” who gave him a hero’s welcome? How, especially in a country where a simple joke on social media can earn an otherwise honest citizen several months in jail?

STAY TUNED COMING IN AUGUST- UNMASKING OBAMA BY JACK CASHILL

Unmasking Obama: The Fight to Tell the True Story of a Failed Presidency
by Jack Cashill | Aug 18, 2020

Is Obama’s Long History of Playing Dirty Finally Catching Up With Him? Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2020/05/11/is-obamas-long-history-of-playing-dirty-finally-catching-up-with-him/

The unraveling of the Michael Flynn case and ongoing investigation into Obama’s Justice Department should put an end to the preposterous claim that his administration was “scandal-free.”

As it became clear Mitt Romney would be the Republican presidential nominee in 2012, the Obama campaign fired up its Chicago-style machine to attack the incumbent president’s election foe. Team Obama identified several Romney donors to smear publicly; one was a wealthy businessman from Idaho.

A former Democratic Senate staffer, according to a 2012 editorial in the Wall Street Journal, contacted an Idaho courthouse seeking the divorce records of Frank VanderSloot, who had donated $1 million to Romney’s campaign. The operative was traced to a professional opposition research shop based in Washington, D.C.

The name of the outfit? Fusion GPS. “Fusion GPS is run by a former Wall Street Journal reporter, Glenn Simpson, who wouldn’t say who is paying him for this high-minded slumming but said in an email that Mr. VanderSloot was a ‘legitimate’ target because of ‘his record on gay issues,’” the Journal wrote.

As we now know, that would not be the last time Obama loyalists would hire Fusion GPS to oversee its dirt-digging operation. Nor was it the first time Obama sought to unseal divorce records to ruin a political opponent.

Obama’s pathway to winning the Illinois U.S. Senate seat in 2004 was cleared after divorce records of his Democratic primary opponent, who had been in the lead, were made public just weeks before the election. After Obama won the primary, the Chicago Tribune sued to get the divorce settlement of Jack Ryan, Obama’s Republican opponent, unsealed. (Many suspect at the behest of Obama advisor and longtime Tribune columnist David Axelrod.) Embarrassing details sank Ryan’s candidacy and he dropped out of the race. Obama won the seat with 70 percent of the vote.

In Britain and America, judges are buying into transgender lies By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/05/in_britain_and_america_judges_are_buying_into_transgender_lies.html

Judges in England and America are becoming infected with the politically correct theory that transgenderism is real – that is, a person who thinks he is a member of the opposite sex, is a member of the opposite sex. This notion will cause damage to real women who find themselves before judges who have substituted politically-espoused mental illness over biological reality.

Transgenderism is not real. The science of sex is simple: Among mammals, including humans, there are two sexes, male and female. Within each mammalian species, the biological gender differences are strong, both physically and mentally. Only in rare cases are kids born with tangled sex genes.

The “science” of “gender,” as opposed to the biological reality about human sex, is a make-believe 21st-century construct. Examining a recent statement about so-called transgenderism from the American Academy of Pediatrics, America’s preeminent pediatric organization, reveals that, while the AAP has all sorts of theories predicated upon accepting that transgenderism is real, you will find nothing proving that through the scientific method.

So-called transgenderism is just another form of body dysmorphia (people’s feeling that their bodies do not align with their sense of self). It’s a tragic condition and sufferers deserve sympathy. Nevertheless, in a functioning society, sympathy cannot transmute into a legal system that accepts delusions as reality. That’s why what’s happening in English and American courts is so dangerous.

Iran Begins Retreating From Syria Islamic Republic’s plan to use Syria as forward operating base unravels. Ari Lieberman

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/05/iran-begins-retreating-syria-ari-lieberman/

Things are looking bleak for the Islamic republic these days. Iran is currently facing its worst economic crisis since the 1979 revolution. Money wasted on endless proxy wars and crippling sanctions instituted by the Trump administration have taken a heavy toll on Iran’s economy. The value of Iran’s currency, the rial, continues to plummet. On the black market, one dollar fetches 156,000 rials rendering the currency virtually worthless. Iran’s attempt to rename its currency and slash some zeros off that lopsided exchange rate will do nothing to stem the problem of hyperinflation and unemployment in the Islamic Republic.

The Chinese coronavirus has also taken its toll. Government health officials reported 109,000 confirmed cases with 6,685 deaths. That official number is almost certainly a lie and the figure for those infected and succumbing to the disease is far greater. In addition, at least 700 Iranians have died from drinking toxic methanol alcohol in the convoluted belief that this would prevent them from getting infected.

Iran’s crumbling economy and the devastating effects of the coronavirus have adversely impacted Iranian overseas terrorist funding and operations. Nowhere is this positive trend more evident than in Syria, where Iranian Quds Force operatives and allied militiamen have been taking a beating at the hands of Israel.

The combination of repeated Israeli airstrikes and domestic shortcomings has convinced the Iranian regime to begin evacuating its bases in Syria and withdraw from the war-torn country. In the last two weeks alone, the Israeli Air Force has launched seven strikes in Syria targeting Iranian emplacements.

On May 5, Israel launched two strikes, one targeting an Iranian base in the Deir Ezzor region near the town of Mayadin and the other on an Iran-linked arms and munitions depot east of Aleppo, adjacent to Syrian defense research centers. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, at least 15 Iranians and Iran-linked militants were killed in the strike near Mayadin. There were no reports of casualties in the arms depot strike but according to reports, the warehouse stored munitions destined for Hezbollah, the terrorist entity that controls Lebanon.

How the 1619 Project Destroys the True Moral Meaning of America And why the Pulitzer Foundation is a bedrock of corruption and lies. Jason D. Hill

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/05/how-1619-project-destroys-true-moral-meaning-jason-d-hill-0/

Honest patriots of our great republic are upset at the recent bestowal of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary on Nikole Hannah-Jones and her 1619 Project. As most readers might already know, the 1619 project was inaugurated with a special issue in the The New York Times Magazine in August of 2019. Its goal was and remains one of challenging us all to reframe U.S history by marking the year when the first enslaved Africans arrived in Virginia as our nation’s foundational date. The project promulgates the idea that everything that has made America exceptional literally grew out of slavery. It,therefore, establishes 1619 and not 1776 as our nation’s true founding date. The egregious historical inaccuracies of the project and Hannah-Jones’ claims have been well documented. The most egregious among them which the Times has had to minimally correct, included claiming that the American  Revolution was literally fought to preserve the institution of slavery, and that Abraham Lincoln opposed the equality of blacks.

The Project has become part of K-12 school curriculum where children are taught, among other things, that racism and bigotry are an indelible and ineradicable part of America’s cultural DNA, that US capitalism is an evil, exploitative system inextricably tied to imperialism and racial domination and unmitigated poverty. The project leaves out the fact that it is capitalism that single-handedly raised the standard of living for millions of Americans, including blacks, improved the health standards and quality of life for all Americans, and eventually gave rise to a thriving entrepreneurial black-middle class and immigrant class that saw them achieve unprecedented economic parity with their white compatriots that was unrivaled anywhere else in the world.

Uh-Oh. Podesta Says Hillary Knew About Trump Oppo Research That Ended Up in Steele Dossier By Matt Margolis

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2020/05/11/hillary-knew-about-trump-opposition-research-in-2016-according-to-podesta-testimony-n389856

According to recently unsealed testimony, John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s former campaign chairman, told the House Intelligence Committee in December 2017 that both he and Hillary Clinton were aware that her campaign had purchased opposition research on Donald Trump, hoping to uncover ties between him and Russia during the 2016 election.

Podesta’s testimony is “the most direct acknowledgment about what Donald Trump’s opponent knew in real-time about the effort that ultimately became known as the Steele dossier,” notes John Solomon of Just The News. According to Podesta, Hillary likely didn’t know specifically that Fusion GPS or former British spy Christopher Steele were involved in the opposition research effort, but they were both aware of the effort.