NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Another Labor Day in the era of low labor participation By Silvio Canto, Jr.

Posted By on September 5th, 2016

Buckle your seat belts because President Obama’s approval ratings are actually over 50%. I’d love to ask those people a simple question: Do you follow the news?

How does he do it? I guess a little help from a “blind love” media is probably behind that.

The latest jobs reads a lot like the last jobs report. This is from CNBC:

In addition to the below-expectation number, wage growth actually took a step back, with hourly earnings up just 3 cents and an annualized pace of 2.4 percent. The average work week declined 0.1 percent to 34.3 hours.

That was largely because the biggest jobs gains came in bars and restaurants, which added 34,000 positions.

Social assistance grew by 22,000, professional and business services added 22,000 and Wall Street-related positions grew by 15,000. Health care also contributed 14,000.

Let’s hear it for the bars and restaurants. I hear that they are doing quite well around Wrigley Field or wherever the Cubs go for a series these days.

On a more serious note, high paying jobs, such as in manufacturing or construction were reduced a bit. More bad news: hours worked the lowest since 2011.

POLITICS Comments turned off

FBI’s 302 Report Proves Complicity in Clinton Email Scandal By Jonathan F. Keiler

Posted By on September 5th, 2016

The biggest and most damning takeaway from Hillary Clinton’s July interview with the FBI, at least as it concerns the FBI itself and by extension the rectitude of our government, is, to borrow from Arthur Conan Doyle, the dog that didn’t bark. That is, there is no indication that in the course of the interview, FBI agents once asked the former secretary of state about emails to and from Clinton aides regarding Clinton Foundation business.

Clinton’s lawyers deliberately withheld these emails from the public and forced the FBI to recover them. They clearly demonstrate Clinton’s motive in setting up the server, thereby intentionally endangering the classified material that she and her cohorts knew would inevitably be sent through it. This motive and intent is further demonstrated by Clinton’s obfuscations, lies, and destruction of evidence that followed in the course of over a year.

FBI agents never inquired about any of it during the interview. Since they are presumably well trained and experienced investigators (including a section chief), the only reasonable conclusion that can be drawn is that they were deliberately tasked with not pursuing this obvious line of inquiry, as it would have undermined the narrative that Director James Comey intended to deliver to the nation a few days later – that Hillary should not be prosecuted due to insufficient evidence of intent.

The FBI’s investigatory reports covering Hillary Clinton’s July interview (cynically released just before Labor Day) confirm suppositions of FBI critics that the interview was mostly a farce, and show Hillary mostly restating her standard defenses to complacent and compliant agents who never pushed her or her phalanx of attorneys for more. Indeed, the documents show Hillary accompanied by a gaggle of lawyers that rival O.J.’s (David Kendall, Catherine Turner, Cheryl Mills, Heather Samuelson, and evidently an attorney who shall not be named). Even O.J. did not have a secret lawyer. Getting much of anything done in such an environment would have been a challenge. But then again, the lines of inquiry were almost certainly vetted with Clinton’s lawyers in advance (let’s not forget the “coincidental” meeting on an Arizona tarmac between Bill and Loretta Lynch the week previous), producing a kind of legal kabuki dance designed to get Hillary in and out unscathed.

Although the FBI reports do not contain an actual transcript, a careful reading and a bit of experience clearly demonstrate what happened in that conference room. The FBI agents dutifully presented Hillary with various problematic classified emails and asked her for comment. Hillary’s comments generally took the form of “I don’t recall” or “I trusted State Department professionals.” She claimed ignorance of classification categories and procedures, denying at one point that she even received instruction about them, although she signed a document upon taking office certifying that she had. Not to mention she was the head of an important government agency and ultimately responsible for its security. She blamed her accidental fall in 2012 for some of the memory loss, otherwise just using the standard excuse of the white-collar criminal of ordinary forgetfulness of detail by a busy executive.

At no time is there any indication that the agents pressed her, nor did they seek at any time an admission from her of anything other than ignorance, inadvertence, or negligent conduct. This Hillary supplied in droves, with the connivance of both her attorneys and the agents, as apparently all concerned knew at the time that Directory Comey had already decided that Hillary’s violations of statutory provisions covering negligent conduct were not actionable.

The closest the agents came to seeking an admission of any kind was a single follow-up question on p. 9, part 2 of the Form 302. That occurred after Hillary explained rather incredibly that “she did not pay attention to the ‘level’ of classified information and took all classified information seriously.” An agent asked “whether Clinton believed information should be classified if its unauthorized release would cause damage to national security[,]” and “she responded, ‘yes that is the understanding.'”

POLITICS Comments turned off

Clinton’s Excuses Fall Outside the Realm of Plausible Deniability By Frank Salvato

Posted By on September 5th, 2016

The credibility of our government has been marginalized, and increasingly so for decades. The agenda-driven politicization of departments and agencies – government entities that are supposed to serve the people – has facilitated an all-encompassing bureaucracy loyal to elitist politicians over the American people. This corrupt, special interest-serving politicization has exploded in the almost eight-years of the Obama Administration.

In an unbelievable explanation covered by the Washington Examiner, Hillary Clinton testified under sworn deposition to FBI agents that she believed the classified “C” markings on emails recovered from her private emails were there as a way to alphabetically order paragraphs. This information comes from an 11-page summary of the deposition, alongside 58 pages of notes from the FBI investigation into her illegal use of a private email server and email accounts.

“When asked what the parenthetical ‘C’ meant before a paragraph…Clinton stated she did not know and could only speculate it was referencing paragraphs marked in alphabetical order,” the FBI cited from notes created taken during its interview with her.

The interviewing agent’s notes stated that Clinton swore she had a “limited understanding” of the document classification process; of how and why certain documents are deemed classified. They also revealed that Clinton “couldn’t recall” ever being trained on how to handle sensitive material.

The new information also evidenced that Clinton testified to FBI investigators approximately three dozen times that she “couldn’t recall” specific details or events related to her use and establishment of her private email and server.

Clinton’s excuse for several of her lapses in memory was that the events in question occurred directly her head injury, which left the Democrat nominee with a blood clot on the brain and a concussion.

So, let’s take a brief recounting of Hillary Clinton’s political career to see if it is even possible for her to be so naïve about the document classification process and for her not to have any functional knowledge of how to handle classified and sensitive information.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Invisible (Female) Palestinians by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on September 5th, 2016

Instead of referring to the female candidates by name and publishing their pictures, the electoral lists are using the terms “the wife of” or “sister.”

“It is disgraceful for any Islamic, national or independent list to scrap the names of the women. If they are not willing to recognize the woman’s name, how will they accept the role of the women woman’s name, how will they accept the role of the women after they are elected? … I’m against the participation of women in this manner. Let men participate in the election alone.” — Nahed Abu Taima, Media Development Center at Bir Zeit University.

Dr. Walid Al-Qatati, a writer and analyst specializing in Islamic affairs, said that the move reminded him of wedding invitations that are sent out without naming the brides.

When Palestinian women carry out attacks against Israelis, Palestinian society glorifies them as heroes. Then the names and photos of these women are plastered across billboards. Yet it appears that when the women wish to work for life rather than for death, their identities are not fit for public consumption.

In a move that has outraged Palestinian women and various Palestinian factions, a number of Palestinian lists contesting the upcoming local elections, scheduled to take place on October 8, have decided to omit the names and photos of female candidates.

Instead of referring to the female candidates by name and publishing their pictures, the electoral lists are using the terms “the wife of” or “sister.”

Critics have denounced the move as a “sign of retardation, extremism and bigotry.” Other Palestinians have gone so far as comparing the removal of the female candidates’ names and photos from the lists to the cruel pre-Islamic practice of infanticide (wa’d).

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran: The Return of Ahmadinejad & Co. by Majid Rafizadeh

Posted By on September 5th, 2016

Iran’s Supreme Leader and the senior cadre of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have been vocally critical of the nuclear deal. They fear further diplomatic and political rapprochement between the US and Iran, now that they have already achieved their objectives of the lifting of the four major rounds of the UN Security Council’s sanctions.

After the nuclear deal was implemented, polls showed that 63% of Iranians expected to see improvements in the economy and living standards within a year. But currently, in a new poll, 74% of Iranians said there had been no economic improvements in the past year.

Iran’s former president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, saying he wants to “redefine revolutionary ideals” set up by the leader of Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, appears to be launching a campaign to run in the upcoming Iranian presidential elections, in February, 2017.

Ahmadinejad was well-known for his incendiary and provocative speeches, which included denying the Holocaust. At the end of his presidential term, from 2005 to 2013, his approval rating was extremely low, and he managed to drive away most constituents across political spectrum, including the topmost hardline leaders. He also became the first Iranian president since 1979 to be summoned by the parliament (Majlis) to answer questions regarding his activities and policies.

After all of this, the common conception among politicians, scholars and policy analysts was that Ahmadinejad would never return to politics. It seemed that his retirement plan focused on founding a university and teaching, but his plan to open a university failed.

Despite his low popularity among people, however, the “principalists” (ultra-conservatives) were still on his side, due to his fierce anti-US, anti-Western and anti-Israel policies and rhetoric, as well as the fact that he remains a major figure in the coalition of several conservative groups, the Alliance of Builders of Islamic Iran.

After Ahmadinejad’s presidency, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, appointed him to the Expediency Council, Iran’s highest political arbitration body, which arbitrates between the Guardian Council (the supervisory body over the parliament and elections) and the Islamic Consultative Assembly (parliament). The Expediency Council is predominantly made up of Iran’s hardline clerics, and functions as an advisory institution to the Supreme Leader.

BOOKS Comments turned off

A History of ‘Evenhanded’ Failure Evelyn Gordon

Posted By on September 5th, 2016

Among those diplomats and journalists who don’t simply blame the Arab-Israeli conflict entirely on Israel, the preferred approach is “evenhandedness.” This approach, epitomized by the “cycle of violence” cliché, holds that both sides want peace and are equally to blame for its absence. Remarkably, this view has persisted despite decades of proving wrong in ways that hurt the very countries which espouse it – as demonstrated yet again by newly released documents from the Nixon Administration.

The documents, which Amir Oren reported this week in Haaretz, include redacted versions of the CIA’s daily presidential briefings on the eve of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The agency’s cluelessness is mind-blowing.

On October 5, 1973, one day before the war began, the CIA acknowledged that “The military exercises underway in Egypt seem to be on a larger scale and are being conducted more realistically than previous ones,” but nevertheless insisted that “they do not appear to be preparations for an offensive against Israel.” The agency even dismissed an obvious danger sign as a reasonable response to fears of Israeli aggression: “Cairo may have put its air defense and air forces on alert as a precaution against an Israeli reaction to the initial phase of the exercise.”

On October 6, just hours before the war began, the CIA’s briefing was similarly disconnected from reality:

Tension along Israel’s borders with Egypt and Syria has been heightened by a Soviet airlift that is in its second day. Neither the Israelis nor the Arabs seem bent on starting hostilities, but in this atmosphere the risk of clashes is greater than usual. … Both the Israelis and the Arabs are becoming increasingly concerned about their adversaries’ military activities, but neither side seems bent on starting hostilities … A military initiative at this time would make little sense for either Cairo or Damascus.

Once again, the agency seemed to view potential Israeli aggression as the main concern: “Syria’s cautious President [Hafez] Assad appears braced for a possible second blow from Israel rather than seeking revenge for his recent loss of 13 MIGs to Israeli fighters … Nevertheless, the Syrians’ fears could lead to a mobilization of their defenses, which in turn could alarm and galvanize the Israelis. Such a cycle of action and reaction would increase the risk of military clashes which neither side originally intended.”

And once again, it ignored clear danger signs, like the evacuation of Soviet dependents from Egypt and Syria. While admitting that this could be due to “fear of an outbreak of hostilities,” it optimistically suggested that instead, “The Soviets might be using the excuse of rising tensions to reduce their presence without annoying the Egyptians.”

BOOKS Comments turned off

Israeli filmmaker uninvited to campus conference over ‘political correctness and BDS’

Posted By on September 5th, 2016

The film was referred to by ‘The New York Times’ as “one of the first close-up view of the motives and personalities in a group that rarely opens up to outsiders.”

Syracuse University has passed over formally inviting Israeli film director Shimon Dotan to their international film conference “The Place of Religion in Film.”
Dotan had previously been informally invited by one of the events organizers, William L. Blizek, according to The Atlantic. The film Dotan was due to show at the March 2017 conference was his feature-length documentary ‘The Settlers’ which chronicles the history of the settlements, the people who live there and the movement as a whole.

The film itself was referred to by The New York Times as “one of the first close-up views of the motives and personalities in a group that rarely opens up to outsiders.”

It was shown at the Sundance Film Festival (and was made with financial support from the Israeli network YES and from the European network ARTE, among others) and opened throughout Israel recently.

However, despite an invitation, and interest on the part of the filmmaker Dotan, he was uninvited to the event due to the “BDS faction on campus.”

The Syracuse University BDS faction made no known statements or threats to Dotan’s possible participation and were perhaps unaware of it all together.

A rejection email Dotan received from Professor Hamner of the Religion Department of Syracuse University stated that the group would make things unpleasant for the Israeli filmmaker and possibly damage the reputation and credibility of the organizers and the event.

The email added that they regretted not having the opportunity to see the film and as such they could not vouch for it.

The film has been highly rated among critics. It mainly focuses on the radical fringe settlers and, according to reviews, is perceived as showing settlers in a negative light.

Dotan said he wants people to understand the reality, in all its complexity. “I don’t think Israel faces a military threat, but I think it does face the threat of disintegration from within… I think there is a threat to democracy and to the moral fabric of the country… I want the film to present a dialogue with the settlers in a way that will enlighten people.”

BOOKS Comments turned off

EFRAIM KARSH :THE OSLO DISASTER

Posted By on September 5th, 2016

Prof. Efraim Karsh, the incoming director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, skewers the Oslo diplomatic process as “the starkest strategic blunder in Israel’s history” and as “one of the worst calamities ever to have afflicted Israelis and Palestinians.”
“Twenty three years after its euphoric launch on the White House lawn,” Karsh writes in this comprehensive study, “the Oslo ‘peace process’ has substantially worsened the position of both parties and made the prospects for peace and reconciliation ever more remote.”
“The process has led to establishment of an ineradicable terror entity on Israel’s doorstep, deepened Israel’s internal cleavages, destabilized its political system, and weakened its international standing.”
“It has been a disaster for West Bank and Gaza Palestinians too. It has brought about subjugation to corrupt and repressive PLO and Hamas regimes. These regimes have reversed the hesitant advent of civil society in these territories, shattered their socioeconomic wellbeing, and made the prospects for peace and reconciliation with Israel ever more remote.”
“This abject failure is a direct result of the Palestinian leadership’s perception of the process as a pathway not to a two-state solution – meaning Israel alongside a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza – but to the subversion of the State of Israel. They view Oslo not as a path to nation-building and state creation, but to the formation of a repressive terror entity that perpetuates conflict with Israel, while keeping its hapless constituents in constant and bewildered awe as Palestinian leaders line their pockets from the proceeds of this misery.”
Karsh details at length how the Oslo process has weakened Israel’s national security in several key respects.
On the strategic and military levels, it allowed the PLO to achieve in one fell swoop its strategic vision of transforming the West Bank and the Gaza Strip into terror hotbeds that would disrupt Israel’s way of life (to use Yasser Arafat’s words).

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

EDWARD CLINE: A GALLERY OF GAFFES

Posted By on September 5th, 2016

“Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder,
is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility, which they
call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason and the mind becomes
a wreck.” —Thomas Jefferson, to James Smith, December 8, 1822

You ask yourself: Why do the “gullible” make it so easy to mock and ridicule them? But, then, one could spend a career wondering about the cerebral workings of our politicians and other notables. Why is a stone so quiet, and inanimate? Because that’s just the way it behaves, or doesn’t behave. Here is a selection of memorable gaffes (or lies masquerading as innocent gaffes or lapses in synaptic activity).

We start with our reality-challenged, addled Secretary of State, John Kerry, who recently uttered something in Bangladesh that wins some kind of award for upper class twitism. According to CNS new and other sources, he opined:

Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday during an appearance in Bangladesh that the media could “do us all a service” if they didn’t cover terrorism “quite as much.”

What would he prefer the MSM to cover, instead of the continued spate of Islamic terrorism? It isn’t as though it regularly reported the rapes by Muslims in Germany and Sweden, or the numerous honor killings in Muslim countries, or the number of gays thrown off of roofs in ISIS territory. Perhaps the annual pie-eating contest in Indianapolis? The annual Iditarod race in Alaska? How about the horrendous murder rates in “gun-controlled” Chicago? Nix the latter. It would be too much like reporting on Syria.

No country is immune from terrorism,” Kerry said at a press conference in Dhaka, Bangladesh. “It’s easy to terrorize. Government and law enforcement have to be correct 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. But if you decide one day you’re going to be a terrorist and you’re willing to kill yourself, you can go out and kill some people. You can make some noise. Perhaps the media would do us all a service if they didn’t cover it quite as much. People wouldn’t know what’s going on.”

And that’s okay with Kerry. “Ignorance is Strength,” don’t you know? What the people don’t know won’t hurt them, until the next terrorist attack hurts them by the score. This piece of mental gibberish is in line with the German-Swedish policy of suppressing any news that would tend to make native Europeans less enthralled with how consistently and ubiquitously savage their new “refugee” neighbors” are. As the National Review’s Jim Geragehty noted on August 30th,

You can’t write satire about this administration anymore; it’s become too inherently contradictory and absurd.

Not even Saturday Night Live could make up this kind of statement for laughs. It’s too bad Edgar Bergen, the ventriloquist, isn’t around to create a John Kerry dummy.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

China’s Insult and Obama’s Climate Kowtow: Claudia Rosett

Posted By on September 5th, 2016

President Obama took office in 2009 promising that his brand of engagement would yield global respect for the United States. We’ve since had more than seven years of leading from behind, standing “shoulder to shoulder” with the “international community,” snubbing of allies, appeasing of enemies and cutting America down to size. As Obama makes what will likely be his final official visit to China, how’s it going?

Well, China, as host of the current G-20 summit, rolled out the red carpet — or at least the red-carpeted airplane stairs — for the arriving leaders of such countries as Britain, Australia, Germany and Russia.

For President Obama, arriving yesterday on Air Force One, there was no such dignified reception. Instead, there was a shoving match with the press and a confrontation with National Security Adviser Susan Rice, in which a Chinese official shouted “This is our country. This is our airport.” For lack of any portable stairs rolled to the front door of the presidential plane, Obama was left to jog down the aircraft’s own stairs at the back.

Obama downplayed the insult, telling reporters “not to over-crank the significance.”

Maybe that makes sense in the bubble-world of the Ben-Rhodes-foreign-policy narrative, where the tide of war is forever receding, the arc of history bends toward justice, the oceans rise and fall at the command of Obama’s pen and phone, and the echo chamber, on cue, applauds.

But China’s reception was an insult, pure and simple. No one need study the tea leaves to understand that this was a gesture of gross disrespect, seen around the world, putting the American president in his place — especially as compared with the warm reception for Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.