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Ruth King

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The Other Russia Scandal One woman wrecking ball. Noah Rothman

By on October 18th, 2017

In her latest reinvention, Hillary Clinton has emerged from the woods transformed into a self-styled Cassandra. She travels from sound stage to sound stage, reminding the public that her 2016 loss was not her fault and the Russians who undid her once-promising political career are coming again. This newest reboot is remarkable if only for its extraordinary immodesty. Few have done so much to undermine the fortunes of their ostensible allies, but Hillary Clinton is not done yet. Her vendetta has now led her to sabotage the so-called “Resistance’s” last, best hope for cutting the legs out from under the Trump administration: Robert Mueller’s probe into the Trump campaign’s links to Russia.

Nearly ten months into his presidency, Donald Trump has not stoppedcampaigning against Hillary Clinton—a fact the Clinton surely appreciates if only for the otherwise undeserved relevance it bestows upon her. When asked about the Mueller probe and the charge that his campaign “colluded” with Moscow generally, Trump is fond of deflecting to the Clinton family’s dealings with Russian entities in both a private and governmental capacity. That distraction tends to inspire yawns and rolls of the eyes, but not today. On Tuesday, The Hillrevealed that FBI and court documents allege that the Clintons, the Clinton Foundation, and the Clinton-led State Department under Barack Obama do not have clean hands when it comes to dealings with Moscow.

The Hill reporters John Solomon and Alison Spann’s inquiry found that the FBI began investigating an effort by the Russian government to infiltrate the American nuclear materials industry as early as 2009. “Russian nuclear industry officials were engaged in bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering designed to grow Vladimir Putin’s atomic energy business inside the United States,” they reported.

These reporters were privy to documents revealing the scope of the FBI’s operation, which was extensive and supported the allegation that Moscow had “compromised” a Uranium trucking firm. All of this took place before the Russian energy firm Rosatom secured its first 17 percent stake in the American nuclear materials extraction company Uranium One in 2009. A year later, Rosatom won a majority stake in that company—a deal that had to be approved at the highest levels of the American government and which alarmed observers who fretted the national security implications of that kind of concession to Moscow.

Meanwhile, between 2009 and 2013, the Clinton Foundation was the recipient of four suspicious tranches of donations totaling $2.35 million from Russian-linked sources including Uranium One’s chairman. Former President Bill Clinton personally received half a million dollars for one speech in Moscow from a Russian government-linked investment bank that was promoting Uranium One stock. While the Uranium One deal was under consideration by the Treasury Department, that bank’s analysts were talking up the value of that firm’s stock.

None of these donations were previously disclosed, despite the Clinton Foundation’s written pledge to disclose all donations it received while Hillary Clinton served as Secretary of State. If The Hill’s reporting is accurate, this is dirty money. Their report alleges that eyewitness and written accounts obtained by the FBI confirm that Russian officials were responsible for this influx of cash to the Clintons.

What’s odd about this account, though, is how sluggish the FBI investigation was.The Hill noted that, despite the evidence they had obtained by 2010, the bureau continued its investigation for another four years. In the interim, the Uranium One deal among others benefiting Moscow was approved and implemented by the Obama administration. Bizarrely, the relevant members of Congress were apparently not briefed about the extent of this probe.

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Prosecutorial Impunity An appeals court winks at false evidence that destroyed a hedge fund.

By on October 18th, 2017

Federal appeals judge Alex Kozinski has noted that abusive behavior by prosecutors is reaching “epidemic proportions.” That epidemic will get worse after Tuesday’s ruling by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals absolving prosecutors for using false information to put David Ganek’s hedge fund out of business.

A three-judge panel, led by prosecutorial soft-touch Reena Raggi, overturned a lower court ruling and found that prosecutors and FBI investigators have immunity from Mr. Ganek’s suit seeking damages. The court ruled that immunity applies even though prosecutors falsely claimed Mr. Ganek had traded shares based on what he was told was inside information.

An FBI informant in fact testified that he had never told Mr. Ganek the information had been illegally obtained, and an FBI agent corroborated that testimony. Yet the FBI and prosecutors included the false claim in an affidavit to obtain a warrant for a highly publicized raid on Mr. Ganek’s firm. Mr. Ganek was never charged, but the negative publicity forced him to roll up his Level Global fund in 2011.

Prosecutors deserve some measure of immunity lest they be sued every time they lose a close case. But immunity should not be impunity, and Judge Raggi’s opinion all but provides it by refusing to let Mr. Ganek’s suit proceed to gather evidence about whether prosecutors knew the information was false.

Her opinion says this doesn’t matter because the search warrant against Mr. Ganek’s firm would have been justified even without the false information. Yet the trial judge looked at the same facts and concluded the opposite. Judge Raggi’s ruling means in practice that there is no mechanism for an innocent person like Mr. Ganek to seek redress if a claim is a lie, and no legal remedy.

This is incentive for prosecutors to think they can get away with lying as long as they have other evidence to dress up a warrant. Never mind that in this case the warrant was used to justify a raid on an innocent party and destroy his business.

The Ganek raid and smear were typical of former federal prosecutor Preet Bharara’s method in his assault on Wall Street. The smearing continued even during the oral argument at the Second Circuit. Sarah Normand, an assistant U.S. Attorney, accused Mr. Ganek of participating in “a scheme with regard to many, many pieces of inside information from many public companies.”

This was long after her office had decided not to charge Mr. Ganek. But instead of remorse or an apology, Ms. Normand doubled down on prosecutorial innuendo.

Mr. Ganek could appeal, but the Supreme Court is unlikely to take a case that hangs on such a factual dispute. The Justice Department could discipline the prosecutors for spreading false information, and it ought to investigate whether it was a lie, but Justice is an insider’s club. The only real check on prosecutorial abuse are judges willing to enforce standards of honesty. Judge Raggi has set a standard that will encourage more dishonesty.

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Why Europe’s New Nationalists Love Israel By David P. Goldman

By on October 18th, 2017

“If ponies rode men and grass ate cows,” goes the text of “The World Turned Upside Down,” the tune piped by the Continental Army band at Cornwallis’ surrender of Yorktown. Europeans might consider adopting it as their anthem to replace the present European Community hymn, the overused Ode to Joy. The resurgent nationalists who made the Alternative fuer Deutschland into Germany’s third-largest party and the Austrian Freedom Party into that country’s second-largest (and a likely member of a new governing coalition) have an extreme-right reputation, but they are now the most pro-Israel parties in Europe. The world has indeed turned upside-down, and we might as well sing about it.

Most remarkable is the success of the Austrian Freedom Party (German initials FPŐ) in last Sunday’s Austrian elections. It came in second with 26% of the vote, ahead of the governing Social Democrats. Its chairman, Heinz-Christian Strache, rubbed shoulders with neo-Nazis during his early political career, and four years ago posted an anti-Semitic cartoon on his Facebook page, “showing a banker with a large hooked nose and Star of David cuff links profiting from Europe’s financial crisis,” as the Times of Israel reported. Since then Strache has undergone a Damascus road conversion from Saul to Paul (or perhaps the other way round). He has visited Israel several times, defended Israeli settlers in Judea and Samaria, and demanded that Austria move its embassy to Jerusalem.

Strache brings to mind the canonical definition of a philo-Semite, that is, an anti-Semite who likes Jews. It is widely alleged that he is looking for respectability after emerging from the extreme right swamp into the mainstream of Austrian politics, and hoping to burnish his credentials through gestures of reconciliation with the Jewish State. It is also widely believed that the FPŐ as well as the AfD support Israel as the enemy of their enemy, that is, the flood of Muslim migrants that provoked the surge in their support among voters.

I do not know Herr Strache and have no knowledge of his true motives. But I have had the opportunity to speak at length with a leader of the Alternative for Germany. Both motives–the desire to shed the stigma of neo-Nazi associations and common cause with Israel against radical Islam–are relevant, but something far more interesting is at work.

There are neo-Nazis and other swamp creatures lurking in the new nationalist right. Earlier this year I stated that, deplorably, I would vote for Angela Merkel rather than the AfD in the German elections, in part because the AfD’s Vice-Chairman Alexander Gauland defended a regional AfD leader who proposed to dismantle Holocaust monuments, in part because Gauland is insultingly anti-American, and in part because Gauland is too friendly with the mystical nationalists around Vladimir Putin. But that is not the whole of the AfD, and it is possible that the AfD will go in quite a different direction.

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The Axis Was Outmatched from the Start Hitler and his Axis cohorts couldn’t match their enemies’ resources to begin with. That they learned all the wrong lessons from military history while the Allies learned all the right ones doomed them. By Victor Davis Hanson

By on October 17th, 2017

Editor’s Note: The following is the second in a series of excerpts adapted from Victor Davis Hanson’s new book The Second World Wars. It appears here with permission.

Starting wars is far easier than ending them. Since the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC) between Athens and Sparta and their allies, winning — and finishing — a war has been predicated on finding ways to end an enemy’s ability to fight, whether materially or psychologically. The Axis and the Allies had radically different ideas of how the wars of World War II would eventually conclude — with the Allies sharing a far better historical appreciation of the formulas that always put a final end to conflicts.

When World War II broke out in 1939, Germany did not have a serious plan for defeating any of those enemies, present or future, that were positioned well beyond its own borders. Unlike its more distant adversaries, the Third Reich had neither an adequate blue-water navy nor a strategic bombing fleet, anchored by escort fighters and heavy bombers of four engines whose extended ranges and payloads might make vulnerable the homelands of any new enemies on the horizon. Hitler did not seem to grasp that the four most populous countries or territories in the world — China, India, the Soviet Union, and the United States — were either fighting against the Axis or opposed to its agendas. Never before or since had all these peoples (well over 1 billion total) fought at once and on the same side.

Not even Napoleon had declared war in succession on so many great powers without any idea how to destroy their ability to make war, or, worse yet, in delusion that tactical victories would depress stronger enemies into submission. Operation Sea Lion, Germany’s envisioned invasion of Britain, remained a pipe dream — and yet it offered the only plausible way to eliminate Britain from the war that Hitler had started. Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, then head of the Kriegsmarine, repeatedly warned Hitler that an amphibious invasion of Britain in 1940 was quite impossible. After explaining why the German navy was unable to transport hundreds of thousands of troops across the Channel, Raeder flatly concluded, “I could not recommend a landing in England.” After the war, Field Marshal General Wilhelm Keitel agreed that the military was not up to the task and was relieved that Hitler finally conceded as much: “I very much worried. I fully realized that we would have to undertake this invasion with small boats that were not seaworthy. Therefore, at that time I had fully agreed with the decision of the Fuehrer.” The invasion of Russia, codenamed Operation Barbarossa, would prove a rerun of the early successes of blitzkrieg in precisely the one theater where it would be nearly impossible to conduct it effectively — an operation that Raeder in hindsight claimed to have opposed, desperately but vainly advising Hitler that “under no circumstances should we go to war with Russia.”

War’s eternal elements — a balance between powers, deterrence versus appeasement, collective security, preemption and preventive attacks, and peace brought by victory, humiliation, and occupation — still governed the conflict. As was true in most past conflicts, the publics in Axis countries, regardless of the odiousness of Fascist ideology, supported the war when Germany, Italy, and Japan were deemed to be winning. Even the liberal German historian Friedrich Meinecke was caught up in the German euphoria following the sudden collapse of France in 1940: “And to have regained Strasbourg! How could a man’s heart not beat a little faster at this? After all, building up an army of millions in the space of only four years and rendering it capable of such achievements has been an astonishing and arguably the greatest and the most positive accomplishment of the Third Reich.” The classical Greek historian Thucydides, who so often focused on the Athenian public’s wild shifts in reaction to perceived battlefield victories or defeats, could not have captured any better the mercurial exhilaration at the thought of decisive military success.

The pulse of the war also reflected another classical dictum: The winning side is the one that most rapidly learns from its mistakes, makes the necessary corrections, and most swiftly responds to new challenges — in the manner that land-power Sparta finally built a far better navy while the maritime Athenians never fielded an army clearly superior to its enemies, or the land-power Rome’s galleys finally became more effective than were the armies of the sea-power Carthage. The Anglo-Americans, for example, more quickly rectified flaws in their strategic-bombing campaign — by employing longer-range fighter escorts, recalibrating targeting, integrating radar into air-defense networks, developing novel tactics, and producing more and better planes and crews — than did Germany in its bombing against Britain. America would add bombers and crews at a rate unimaginable for Germany. The result was that during six months of the Blitz (September 1940 to February 1941), the Luftwaffe, perhaps the best strategic bombing force in the world in late 1939 through mid-1940, dropped only 30,000 tons of bombs on Britain. In contrast, in the half year between June and November 1944, Allied bombers dropped 20 times that tonnage on Germany.

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Status Quo Blues The public is turning away from the institutions that used to unite Americans — the NFL, mainstream news, late-night TV, movies . . . By Victor Davis Hanson

By on October 17th, 2017

The familiar cultural order of the last half-century is crumbling — partly because of larger forces beyond its control, partly from self-inflicted wounds, and partly because of the chaos following the election of the outsider Donald Trump.

NFL, Go to Hell?

In the early 1950s, the National Football League was small, poor, and not America’s pastime. It may soon become that way again — if it is lucky.

Since Colin Kaepernick opened the lid of the NFL’s Pandora’s box, the demons just keep flying out. The result is decreased viewership and attendance and the tarnishing of a multibillion-dollar brand.

To save their NFL investment, some networks now try to avoid airing the pre-game national anthem altogether. The alternative is to show dozens of confused and pampered multimillionaire athletes kneeling in defiance. The cameras only selectively scan the stadium crowd and detour around empty seats. ESPN talking heads glance sideways at one another in hopes that colleagues will cool their accustomed virtue-signaling social-justice rants that are as hypocritical as they are incoherent — rants that cost them viewers and maybe their own jobs.

The NFL in truth was living on borrowed time — a strangely anachronistic gladiatorial spectacle exempt from the nitpicking of a therapeutic society. Not anymore.

The rich white owners are in no need of antitrust exemptions or public subsidies. But they might require a diversity officer to make the franchises look more like America.

The players claim racism while also assuming that they are excused from the traditional liberal antidotes to disproportionate racial representation. Weirdly, the athletes apparently think that a league in which 75 percent of the players are African-American reflects a time-honored commitment to merit. That might be true, but it is a logic that has never done Asian-American students much good when fighting de facto quotas that limit their merit-based representation at marquee universities.

The NFL is becoming as violent as boxing or martial arts, but with thousands, not hundreds, of athletes suffering head trauma. Participation is falling off in its de facto farm and minor leagues in high schools and colleges, on the theory that a smack in the head might end up later as a tremor in the hand.

The old idea that Americans set aside their Sundays for friendly get-togethers, free of weekly political spats and depressing news, has been ruined by the constant editorializing of the players.

Yet they are unable to articulate a consistent gripe other than confusing the First Amendment rights with workplace rules that all Americans abide by. If the League successfully mandates that its paid employees cannot express their gratitude by wearing a small decal on their helmets to honor the dead of 9/11 or slain policemen, then certainly the NFL can also ask its employees to stand for the national anthem.

In sum, there are so many things wrong with the NFL that far from being a national pariah, Colin Kaepernick is likely to be sainted for convincing the nation that we had plenty of reasons beyond his own self-indulgent narcissism not to watch professional football at all.

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From Monty Python to Allah: London’s New Mega Mosque by Judith Bergman

By on October 17th, 2017

“We do not know what they are preaching as [it is] all in Arabic.” — A petitioner against the Hussainiyat Al-Rasool Al-Adham mosque, in the middle of one of London’s two largely Jewish areas.

“[Ayatollah Syed Mohammed Al-Shirazi]… would constantly encourage the establishment of Hussaini centers across the world, especially in non-Islamic countries… so we can propagate the teachings of the Ahlulbayt.” — Leading members of the Hussainiyat Al-Rasool Al-Adham mosque describing its 30-year history and why it was established.

The Ayatollah Sayed Sadiq Hussaini Al-Shirazi, a leading Iranian cleric who resides in the city of Qom, has a list of religious centers and mosques with which he appears to be involved. Among them is the Hussainiyat Al-Rasool Al-Adham in London.

A new Shia Muslim mega mosque and Islamic center – measuring over 3,500 square meters and with room for 3,000 people — has opened in Golders Green, one of only two largely Jewish areas in London. The Shia Muslim religious center, Hussainiyat Al-Rasool Al-Adham, owns the mosque.

The mosque is situated in the Hippodrome, a prominent building centrally located in North London. The Hippodrome was built in 1913 as a 3,000-seat music hall and for more than 30 years housed the BBC Concert Orchestra. Two episodes of the first series of Monty Python’s Flying Circus were recorded there in 1969. After the BBC left the building in 2005, a Jewish group wanted to convert the building into a place of worship but was rejected, because the planning applications stipulated that the building should be used for entertainment. In March 2007, it was purchased by an evangelical Christian center. After the church center closed, the Hussainiyat Al-Rasool Al-Adham center acquired it.

Because the building is a so-called grade II building, special permission is needed to change the purpose of the building. The Hussainiyat Al-Rasool Al-Adham has applied to the local city council for permission to use the building as a ‘place of worship’. The application is still pending– and worship there is therefore, strictly speaking, illegal — but the mosque is operating nevertheless. It apparently officially opened on September 8, and has been in frequent use since, as is evident from the many photos shared on the Hussainiyat Al-Rasool Al-Adham Facebook page.

A partial screenshot of a post from the Hussainiyat Al-Rasool Al-Adham Facebook page, advertising the opening of the new mega mosque.

“This is a great move for us and we are very pleased and excited to be in Golders Green in such a diverse area. We can’t wait to get to know our neighbours and plan to welcome them at an open day sometime in December… We will be reaching out to the local churches and synagogues so we can build strong ties with the community,” Ahmed Al-Kazemi, the spokesperson for the Hussainiyat Al-Rasool Al-Adham mosque told the Jewish chronicle in September. It appears unlikely that forging ties with neighbors will be a high priority, as one young member of the mosque explained in a recent fundraising video for the new mega mosque:

“Growing up in this country, same as any other Western country, it is very difficult for the youth to stay on the straight path… it is very easy to stray yourself away from the straight path because of the friends you make at school or at work or anywhere, which is not mixed with your own people. So the Hussainiyah [the Shia mosque] was there as a backbone to us… where if they saw any of us doing anything wrong there would always be a person to advise you and put you in the right path…”

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The Old Arab Fear Tactic That Came to Washington by Nonie Darwish

By on October 17th, 2017

The current goal of the Arab media, especially Al Jazeera, is to portray critics of jihad and sharia, as well as apostates, as being just as bad as Islamists, if not worse.

The true threat to the US, the West, and even stable Arab governments, as Egypt is realizing, is political Islam as furthered by groups such the Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS, al-Qaeda and their offshoots.

This real threat has become a terrible burden to every Muslim head of state and is behind all the political chaos, coups and revolutions currently raging throughout the Islamic world.

In a chaotic, propaganda-prone area of the world, Qatar’s Al Jazeera has always reported sympathetically about Islamist groups and promoters of sharia, and against moderate Arab leaders. No moderate leader could survive under such conditions.

It is unfortunate that the tactics of the Arab media — to accuse people of collusion in order to silence any opposition — have now moved into US mainstream media regarding Trump and Russia, which the US media would apparently like to regard as their new “enemies.” This the same media that defends sharia law and inaccurately insists that Muslim terrorists who shout “Allahu Akbar” have “nothing to do with Islam.”

Now that the note supposedly showing “collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russia has been outed by Foreign Policy as mainly an attempted Russian hit-job on William Browder, what is the true threat to the United States?

For months, the lawless FBI has snubbing subpoenas (is complying with subpoenas optional?), and avoiding transparency under Special Counsel Robert Mueller[1] and his equally lawless, crime-“challenged” “investigation.” The true threat to the United states — if not Mueller and the FBI itself — is not the president, his campaign or even the Russians. Moreover, it is not exactly a news-flash that many countries have been spying on one another for ages.

“Collusion with Russia” was just the the newest dirty word in American politics created by anti-Trump political operatives and the media. It seems intended to confuse the public in order to tarnish Trump’s reputation and bring down his administration. It is an extremely old ruse.

Collusion,” or the “appearance of collusion,” has been a common fear tactic used by Arab media for centuries. Fear tactics are the only solution in cultures that refuse to deal with the truth in the open.

The major red line that no citizen of a totalitarian system can ever cross is engaging in behavior that might bring about an accusation of “collusion” — collaboration with enemies or perceived enemies. Arab citizens have learned to avoid any contacts, friendships, communication, shaking hands or even being in the same room with “undesirable” enemies of the state. Try asking any Arab diplomat on how he or she acts and feels in the presence of an Israeli official. For decades, when Israeli officials gave speeches in the United Nations, Arabs left the room.

In much of the Middle East, Christians, if they refrain from praising Islam and Muslims or blame them for their oppression, get the same treatment as Jews.

In Egypt, in the days of anti-Semitic tyranny when the mere appearance of any kind of friendship, or just being in the same room with a Jew, could mean death, Christians always had to keep their distance from the Jews: the price to pay was simply too high.

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A Month of Islam and Multiculturalism in Britain: September 2017 by Soeren Kern

By on October 17th, 2017

A Freedom of Information request revealed that Sammy Woodhouse, a woman sexually abused as a child by a grooming gang, was told by the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (CICA), a government body, that she was not entitled to compensation because she “consented” to the sexual abuse. Woodhouse appealed the decision: “If an adult can privately think that it’s a child’s fault for being abused, beaten, raped, abducted, I think you’re in the wrong job.”

Online jihadist propaganda attracts more clicks in Britain than in any other European country and the main internet companies are failing to curb it, according to Policy Exchange, a think tank. The report, “The New Netwar,” said that the Islamic State is still producing, at a conservative estimate, about 100 items of new content each week, including execution videos and bomb-making instructions, reaching an audience of, at minimum, tens of thousands, including large numbers of users in the UK.

British universities hosted 110 events featuring extremist speakers in the last academic year, 2016/17, with the highest proportion taking place in London institutions. The extremist events listed were overwhelmingly organized by Islamic societies, and groups and speakers included former Guantanamo Bay detainees and Islamists. The findings suggest that despite Prime Minister Theresa May’s claim that “enough is enough,” British universities continue to be a target for extremists promoting their messages.

September 1. Britain is home to up to 35,000 “Islamist fanatics,” more than any other country in Europe, according to European Union’s counter-terrorism coordinator, Gilles de Kerchove.

September 1. Mike Adamson, Chief Executive of the British Red Cross, wrote: “There is a risk that…an organization with the words ‘British’ and ‘Cross’ in its title is confused with a Christian, establishment organization.” He added: “We are nowhere near as diverse as we need to be in our volunteer base, our staffing or our leadership… that is why, as CEO, I am personally leading our inclusion and diversity strategy.”

September 1. Mohiussunnath Chowdhury, 26, was charged with a terror offense after he attacked police outside Buckingham Palace with a sword and “ranted” that the “Queen and her soldiers will all be in hellfire.” The British-born suspect, who is of Bangladeshi heritage, was accused of one charge of preparing terrorist acts, which carries a maximum charge of a life sentence.

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Obama Crony Makes Compelling Case for Ending Peace Process With PLO Daniel Greenfield

By on October 17th, 2017

As the Taylor Force Act, which would cut off aid to the Palestinian Authority (PLO) unless it ceases paying terrorists to kill Israelis, moves forward, the attempts to neuter it move forward as well.

The arguments are familiar. The Taylor Force Act would impede “security cooperation” by a terrorist organization. And it would punish the poor innocent “Palestinians” for terrorism that they support in poll after poll. And so the call is on to neuter the Taylor Force Act into irrelevance.

Martin Sherman has a great piece shredding an article by, among others, Obama crony, Dennis Ross, advancing a variation of that argument at the Washington Institute. Its conclusion has quite a bomb hidden in its tail. One that its authors haven’t quite thought through.

In attempting to bring this pernicious PA policy to a halt, members of Congress who are formulating the Taylor Force Act should proceed carefully. There should definitely be no “pay to slay,” but the approach needs to recognize that shades of gray enter into dealing with an issue like this. Being smart counts for more than being right. And the smart approach is one that also recognizes that innocent Palestinians, who have not been able to vote in an election for more than a decade, should not be forced to pay for the mistakes of a government they cannot control.

“Smart”. That’s the theme here. Don’t do the right thing. Do the “smart” thing. It worked really well for Obama. But the siren song of smart is seductive. Especially to those who like to think they are.

But let’s skip to that final sentence.”Palestinians, who have not been able to vote in an election for more than a decade, should not be forced to pay for the mistakes of a government they cannot control.”

That’s a good point. Just not the one that Dennis thinks he’s making.

If they can’t control their government, how is it their government? If they can’t control their government, why are we funding that government on their behalf. And finally… if they can’t control their government, then why is Israel being pressured into a worthless peace process with that government?

If the residents of the West Bank and Gaza aren’t properly represented by the Palestinian Authority when it funds terrorism, are they properly represented by it when negotiating with Israel?

How can you hold one position, but not the other?

Either the PA represents the so-called “Palestinians”. Or it doesn’t.

If it doesn’t represent them when it funds terrorism, it doesn’t represent them when it comes to getting US money or negotiating with Israel. And we must immediately stop sending the PA money and pressuring Israel to negotiate with it.

If it does, then all aid must end until the PA stops funding terrorism.

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Kerry On Edge As Legacy Crumbles His fatally flawed deal with Iran is about to unravel. Joseph Klein

By on October 17th, 2017

Former Secretary of State John Kerry wasted no time condemning President Trump’s decision not to recertify, and to possibly withdraw from, the disastrous nuclear deal with Iran that Kerry negotiated on behalf of his boss Barack Obama. President Trump insisted on significant improvements to the Joint Plan of Comprehensive Action (JCPOA), as the deal is formally known. The JCPOA’s fundamental flaws that President Trump wants fixed include Iran’s ability to block unfettered international inspections, the wiggle room that Iran is exploiting to continue developing and testing ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons, and the sunset clause on nuclear enrichment that would provide Iran a clear path to becoming a nuclear armed state after the current restrictions are lifted. Obama and Kerry had promised that these issues would be dealt with satisfactorily before agreeing to the final terms of the JCPOA. Instead they caved to Iranian pressure in order to get the deal done.

Now that President Trump is trying to clean up the mess Obama and Kerry left him, Kerry has the gall to label President Trump’s decision a “reckless abandonment of facts in favor of ego and ideology” and to accuse the Trump administration of “lying to the American people.” It was the Obama administration that recklessly abandoned the facts in pressing ahead with the deal. The Obama administration lied to the American people, abandoning its own promises to ensure that the deal contained ironclad protections. Moreover, all that President Trump has done so far is to return the JCPOA to Congress for review. Had Obama followed the Constitution and submitted the JCPOA to the Senate as a treaty in the first place, the JCPOA in its present form almost certainly would not have been approved. Congress should now have the opportunity to revisit the JCPOA to determine whether the protections that the Obama administration promised are working as advertised. Congress should also consider whether time limits on Iran’s commitments continue to make sense in light of what we are now experiencing with Iran’s nuclear technology collaborator, North Korea. It bought time to turn into a full-fledged nuclear power under our noses.

Kerry had promised that the Iranian regime would be prohibited from testing ballistic missiles. This turned out to be a lie. After the JCPOA was finalized, with no such prohibition included, Iran continued to test such missiles. The Obama administration’s response was that the missiles had become a separate issue, to be dealt with under a new United Nations Security Council resolution endorsing the JCPOA. The new resolution replaced clear prohibitions imposed on Iran’s ballistic missile program with a weak declaration in an annex that simply “calls upon” Iran not to undertake any activity such as development and test launches related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons for eight years.

Iran has tested several ballistic missiles during the last two years, including two Qadr H missiles with the phrase “Israel must be wiped out” emblazoned on the sides. The commander of Iran’s Army, Major General Ataollah Salehi, had told reporters just a month before the launch of those missiles that Iran was “neither paying any attention to the resolutions against Iran, nor implementing them. This is not a breach of the JCPOA.”

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