NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

When William Safire Tagged Robert Mueller “Eric Holder’s Gift to Justice” by: Diana West

Posted By on May 2nd, 2018

“You remember Iraqgate,” the always trenchant William Safire wrote in 1993 ….

Er, well, not exactly ….

Iraqgate, the former-Nixon-Agnew-speechwriter-turned-NYT-columnist continued, was

the White House corruption of Agriculture’s loan guarantee program to slip foreign aid billions through an Italian bank to Saddam Hussein, which he used to finance his secret nuclear buildup. The Bush Justice Department sought to contain the scandal by pretending the Italian bank knew nothing of its Atlanta office’s huge Iraqi dealings — despite suppressed C.I.A. evidence to the contrary.”

That would be the Bush 41 White House & Justice Department under the extremely murky Attorney General William Barr and criminal division chief, later US attorney, later acting deputy attorney general, later FBI director, current Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III.

As Safire pieced things together in a series of columns a quarter century ago, it all started when Prince Bandar (a.k.a. “Bandar Bush”) convinced Bush 41 to make Saddam Hussein into the sheriff of the Middle East. This disastrous strategy would include a backdoor (i.e., illegal) military (nuclear) build-up via the Ag Department via an Italian bank, which, far from bringing Saddam’s Iraq into “the family of nations,” as Bush 41 seemed to hope, created the aggressive state actor whom Bush 41 would go to war against, briefly, in 1992. Stories about the banking/Justice/Ag/CIA/White House/State scandal that had erupted into war broke while the nation was still celebrating that same war’s “100 hour” victory. Somehow, the establishment bigfeet WaPo and NYT just never mustered much enthusiasm for this Bush 41 “-gate” …

Safire’s recap continued:

During the ’92 campaign, Al Gore accurately charged that “the C.I.A. reported to Secretary of State James Baker . . . that Iraq was clandestinely procuring nuclear weapons” while State was urging more loan guarantees to appease the dictator.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Subject: The Golan Heights: History and Biblical significance Victor Sharpe

Posted By on May 2nd, 2018

“We will build sheepfolds here for our cattle and cities for our little ones. But we ourselves will go ready armed before the children of Israel until we have brought them unto their place: and our little ones shall dwell in fenced cities because of the inhabitants of the land. We will not return unto our houses until the children of Israel have inherited every man his inheritance.” (Numbers 32: 16-18)

The story of reconstituted Israel and its people is mirrored in the biblical story of those ancient ancestors. The young men and women of modern Israel have gone again and again from their homes; be they villages, towns or cities, to the borders and established communities there in times of danger and peril, just like those young men did from the biblical tribes of Gad and Reuben.

The Jewish pioneers of today in Judea and Samaria – the biblical heartland known today falsely as the “West Bank” – are no different. But the world has chosen to demonize them as “obstacles to peace” and an impediment to the creation of a fraudulent Arab state to be called Palestine; a state that has never existed in all of recorded history; certainly not as a sovereign independent Arab state.

The pioneers are now pejoratively called “settlers” and their homes and farms derisively called “settlements.” It matters not to the infernal chorus that sings the international siren song of hate and ignorance that these pioneers are returned to their ancestral homesteads and seek to take up their ploughshares to sow, to plant and re-possess their ancient heartland.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel Exposes Iran’s Nuclear Lies, and the Limits of U.S. Intelligence Advocating for a pact in 2015, John Kerry said American agencies had “absolute knowledge” about the regime’s past nuclear efforts. Oops. by Eli Lake

Posted By on May 2nd, 2018

Since Iran and six world powers reached an agreement to pause Iran’s enrichment of uranium and allow weapons inspectors into declared facilities, Israel’s prime minister has argued the deal would give Iran a glide path to a nuclear weapon. On Monday he announced that he had proof.

If the West can verify the new Israeli intelligence that Iran had preserved its design and research work into a nuclear weapon, that’s a big deal — particularly now in light of the May 12 deadline that President Donald Trump has imposed on U.S. negotiations with Europe to come up with fixes to strengthen the nuclear bargain. The trove of data would be a blow not only to Iran’s credibility but also to the reputation of American intelligence gathering.

As negotiations with Iran came to a close in summer 2015, John Kerry, then secretary of state, assured reporters that American intelligence agencies had “absolute knowledge” about Iran’s past efforts to build a nuclear weapon.

It was a strange remark. As the intelligence assessments before the 2003 Iraq War showed, intelligence is never absolute. What’s more, the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, still had its own outstanding questions for Iran. Indeed, that agency could not give Iran a clean bill of health on the possible military dimensions of its nuclear program nearly six months later.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

“The Month That Was – April 2018” Sydney M. Williams

Posted By on May 2nd, 2018

“…suddenly sunshine and perfect blue…” After a cold and wet April, some sunshine appeared in the past week, at least here in the northeast. As well, the month provided signs of optimism – perhaps only visible to those of a cheerful disposition. And, this despite on-going concerns: the Islamization of European nations like Belgium and France; the threat to liberty that comes from an expanding, unaccountable European government in Brussel; the risk of protectionism; the confluence of expanding government debt and rising interest rates; and the threat to democracy from those who persist in using all means possible – including nasty innuendos and circumventing civil liberties – to end, or at least stymie, the Trump Presidency.

Kim Jung-un, in preparation for a June summit with President Trump (and I suspect under orders from Beijing), agreed to suspend nuclear and missile tests and shut down the site of the last half dozen tests under Mount Mantap – a location many scientists suspect is in danger of collapse. Mr. Kim crossed the border into South Korea – the first North Korean leader to do so since 1953 – to meet with President Moon Jae-in. Also, leaders of the world’s largest countries met: India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and China’s President Xi Jinping. After 59 years of rule, the last Castro left office, though it is uncertain that Miguel Diaz-Canel will serve the people any better. Jobless claims fell during the month. Unemployment is at 4.1% and work-force participation is rising. After years of stagnation, there was a modest increase in hourly earnings of 0.3%. Even the stock market, following two months of declines, rose modestly. Following publication of Steven Pinker’s book Enlightenment Now, op-eds appeared by Jonah Goldberg in National Reviewand Daniel Finkelstein of The London Timesnoting what every student of history should know: The world has never been richer, healthier, more democratic or fairer – a consequence of the Enlightenment: western values, self-determination, democracy, rule of law, market-driven economies, humanism, reason and science. Something to keep in mind, when we find ourselves in a funk.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

MY SAY: HOLOCAUST BLAME GAME

Posted By on May 1st, 2018

The ever brilliant and thoughtful writer Edward Rothstein has a column, below on a new exhibit at the United States Holocaust Museum- “Americans and the Holocaust” which rightfully accuses American media and policies.

“What did we know and when did we know it? And what could have been done?These are the questions posed by a new long-term exhibition at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Americans and the Holocaust.” And behind them is a long-simmering indictment. The accusations: that there was a continuous refusal before World War II to accept larger numbers of Jewish refugees; that there was a seeming refusal during the war to accept the scale of the murders; and that there was an outright refusal late in the war to expend any military effort in disrupting the Nazi killing machine.”

What about Great Britain’s outrageous role in enabling Hitler’s killing machine? Britain’s notorious White Paper of 1939 which cut off Jewish immigration to Palestine on the eve of the Holocaust was a death sentence for millions of European Jews trapped in Europe.

After World War 11, British perfidy persisted and the 1939 White Paper remained the basis of British policy. Its cruel provisions kept wretched survivors of the Holocaust trapped and homeless in displaced persons’ camps in hostile European nations or behind barbed wire in detention camps in Cyprus. They fired on half of the “freedom ships” taking survivors to Palestine.

The British Navy was ordered to attack in case of any resistance. They used tear gas, clubs and firearms against refugees who occasionally fought back with sticks and eating cutlery.

When these ships reached the Palestine coast they were apprehended, boarded, and often rammed by the Royal Navy. Passengers were herded and transported to squalid prison camps on Cyprus formerly used to house German prisoners of war!

There is monumental blame to go around, but Britain gets a pass. rsk

MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

Disobedience – A Review By Marilyn Penn

Posted By on May 1st, 2018

You needn’t be an orthodox Jew to feel the insult to religion in this movie. It helps to keep in mind that its writer/director is Sebastian Lelio, the same man who gave us The Fantastic Woman, an Oscar winning film about a transgender woman, but in truth, this movie could have been endorsed by the LGBT movement or the prevailing secular progressive arm of liberal American politics. The plot is simple and revolves around a rebellious drop-out from the orthodox Jewish community in London, the daughter of a renowned rabbi who relocates to NY where she becomes a photographer of society’s fringe inhabitants. Played by Rachel Weisz, we immediately see that she’s a chain smoker – shorthand for cool bad girl – but she returns to London for the sudden death and funeral of her father. Though she presumably lived with her parents until she was a young adult, she shows little familiarity with or tolerance for the rigid customs of this community. This is seen immediately as she reaches out to touch her father’s designated successor, a bearded young rabbi who is not allowed to touch any women but his own wife. We discover early on that Ronit (Rachel) became persona non grata due to a previous lesbian liaison with Esti (Rachel McAdams) who is now the rebbetzin sporting a suitable wig and clothes.

These two do a lot of non-verbal sighing and murmuring as well as smoking and smooching on the streets and alleys where the tight-knit community can easily spot and recognize them. Making that even easier is the fact that they are the only good-looking women in the film as Allesandro Nivola as the young rabbi is the only decent looking man. The rest of the congregants are old fuddy-duddies or disdainful young matrons with unattractive wigs. If you want to see what real ultra-orthodox women look like, go to Saks or Lord & Taylor to see them buying expensive designer clothes while they push their newest baby in a first-rate stroller.

Eventually, we cut to a steamy indoor sex scene replete with nudity and welcome exchange of bodily fluids. This sexual climax will lead to another climax in which the sensitive young rabbi will come to some conclusions that will befuddle anyone at all familiar with the Jewish religion but will be instantly recognizable to anyone following the LGBT agenda or that of various contemporary congregations for whom liberal politics and non-denominational tikkun olam is the heart and soul of Judaism. If Mr. Lelio were making a movie about gays or Blacks, he would have surely paid more attention to authenticity, but since this is a movie about religious Jews who are presumed to be backward and in need of progressive enlightenment he allows himself the luxury of ignorance and bigotry. They both add to the shallow characterizations to make Disobedience one you can miss without hesitation. It’s a veritable shanda.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Ukraine: Is Russia Planning A New Invasion? by Judith Bergman

Posted By on May 1st, 2018

Russia’s aggression into Ukraine came in direct violation of its obligations under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.

“After four years of war, Russia has at least 260,000 troops deployed along the Ukrainian border,” ready to advance. — Oleksandr Turchynov, Chairman of Ukraine’s National Defense and Security Council, April 13, 2018.

The First Deputy Head of the Ukrainian Security Service, Viktor Kononenko, recently reported that Russia might be planning another attempt to destabilize Ukraine in the fall “under the pretext of protecting the Russian-speaking population”.

This April marks the fourth year of the ongoing war in Ukraine between the Ukrainian military and Russian backed separatists in the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics in eastern Ukraine, also known as the Donbas region. Prior to the beginning of the war in eastern Ukraine in April 2014, Russia annexed Crimea.

Russia’s aggression into Ukraine came in direct violation of its obligations under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. Under the memorandum, in exchange for Ukraine giving up its nuclear weapons, Russia reaffirmed its “obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine” and promised that none of its weapons would ever be used against Ukraine except in self-defense or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.

Now, the question of further Russian or Russian-backed military operations in Ukraine has surfaced. In March, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko asserted that Russia has been strengthening its military presence on the border of Ukraine. According to Poroshenko:

“For more than one year, we have been repelling Russia’s military aggression on the front line… In his latest report General Zabrodsky reported in detail on the strengthening of the military presence of the Russian Federation along our border and continued stay of Russia’s regular troops in the occupied territories”.

Poroshenko explained that the Russians have, since 2014, deployed and reorganized their forces in a way that will be able to support a rapid invasion both from the north and from east of Ukraine. “Several mechanized divisions are fully prepared for intervention,” he said.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Obama Amnesia and the EPA By Julie Kelly

Posted By on May 1st, 2018

The Obama Amnesia afflicting our friends on the Left is particularly acute when it comes to the Environmental Protection Agency. It is as if lead-contamination oozed into our water supply; toxic chemicals that were deemed safe for eight years randomly started killing unsuspecting Americans; and algae blooms from agricultural run-off began popping up in the Great Lakes the very moment Donald Trump took the oath of office on January 20, 2017.

Notoriously profligate Democratic lawmakers who are now suffering from Obama Amnesia are suddenly distraught over allegedly inappropriate expenditures at the EPA. The use of tax dollars to boost the salaries of top staffers or to upgrade official vehicles now keeps these newly frugal stewards of public funds awake at night.

Obama Amnesia was on full display last week during two congressional hearings featuring EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt. When the former Oklahoma attorney general took the helm of the EPA last year, he inherited a bloated, political, secretive, and unaccountable agency whose previous administrators’ misconduct was regularly overlooked by the media.

Nobody Cared About Gina McCarthy
Despite a number of scandals, there were no calls by theNew York Times editorial board for Obama EPA chief Gina McCarthy to resign, even after her agency caused the Gold King Mine spill (pictured above), an environmental catastrophe for which she refused to take responsibility.

When her agency was caught breaking the law for its illicit use of social media, or as Congress threatened to impeach her for perjury, no major newspaper demanded that McCarthy step down. While Obama’s EPA refused to ban allegedly dangerous chemicals such as methylene chloride or chlorpyrifos for years, the media and Democratic lawmakers refrained from accusing his administrators of poisoning children or killing people. After EPA employees were caught downloading porn, including child pornography, and McCarthy ignored or excused other egregious misconduct on her watch, it was crickets from our newfound EPA watchdogs in the elite media.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Tug of War Over the Iran Deal By Angelo Codevilla

Posted By on May 1st, 2018

Last week, French President Emmanuel Macron came to Washington to lobby Donald Trump to break his promise to undo Barack Obama’s “Iran deal.” A few days later, Europe’s biggest figure, Germany’s Angela Merkel, came to town for the same purpose. Trump’s tendency to bend to the latest pressure being no secret, it was also no surprise that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a dramatic speech, citing chapter and verse about Iran’s nuclear program, intended to pull Trump back to his campaign promise: His “No. 1 priority” as president would be to “dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran.”

Netanyahu’s speech—cast as it was in terms of promises made and broken regarding military security, as opposed to the commercial interests that Merkel and Macron had brought to bear—seems to have had its intended effect. Trump said that Netanyahu’s details proved that he, Trump, had been “100 percent right” about “the deal,” and that withdrawing from it would “send the right message” to North Korea and others.

Netanyahu’s critics did not challenge his contention that the details came from very recent acquisitions of Israeli intelligence. There is no way of knowing the truth of that. More important, they could not dispute the accuracy of those details. The U.S. government confirmed that Iran’s nuclear program continues. Their main rejoinder is that Iran’s nuclear weapons program—which contradicts official contentions that it does not exist—is an old story. No less true for being old.

I doubt anybody is surprised that “the deal” did not pause or slow Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, never mind stop it. Neither can anyone be surprised that the program kept the same director and personnel, and merely changed names as well as (some) venues. Not a few of the deal’s supporters state now that, as in 2015, the program’s strength “vindicates the need” for it.

In short, Netanyahu’s speech brought us back to square one. What should have been done then? What is to be done now?

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Sanctuary Cities Protect Crooked Employers and Human Traffickers Exploitation of the vulnerable is anything but “compassionate.” May 1, 2018 Michael Cutler

Posted By on May 1st, 2018

We have all heard the bogus claim that “Sanctuary Cities” and “Sanctuary States” protect the “immigrants” from ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents and that the mayors of sanctuary cities are being compassionate.

There is no compassion to be found in exploitation

In reality, politicians who create and support sanctuary policies are every bit as disgusting and exploitative of illegal aliens as are human traffickers and unscrupulous employers who intentionally hire illegal aliens and benefit by sanctuary policies and, indeed those human traffickers and employers of illegal aliens are being provided with “sanctuary” and are being shielded from detection by ICE.

Mayors and governors of “sanctuary” jurisdictions are actually “partners in crime” with human traffickers and exploitive employers.

Before we go further, however, it is imperative to lay waste to that the false claim that mayors of sanctuary cities protect immigrants from immigration law enforcement agents.

Lies about sanctuary policies being motivated by “compassion” creates a hostile environment and antipathy for ICE agents and Border Patrol agents that impedes them from locating and arresting aliens who violate our immigration laws, but also makes it far more difficult for ICE and Border Patrol agents to engage with the public to develop actionable intelligence.

This hostility also endangers their safety (reportedly physical attacks on immigration law enforcement personnel have more than doubled in the past couple of years).

Let’s be clear, Immigrants need no protection from immigration law enforcement authorities.