RUTHFULLY YOURS

Ex-FBI chief James Comey played well in Thursday’s hearing to the audience he cares about, the media and bicoastal elites. Donald Trump may well have scored a win among the audience he cares about, Trump’s America.

Much was made of Mr. Comey saying he didn’t trust Mr. Trump not to “lie” about what transpired in their private meetings. Yet despite our president’s dubious relation with veracity, President Trump was shown to be the source of important truths. Mr. Comey had indeed told him he was not under personal investigation in the Russia “collusion” matter. As Sen. Marco Rubio, not a big Trump fan, noted, this fact was remarkable for also being widely known among Senate colleagues and yet was the one fact that never leaked to the media.

Mr. Comey made much of conflicting statements about why he was fired. But it was Mr. Trump who, belying his own White House flackery, stated candidly it was because of the “Russia thing.” Even a non-Trump fan listening to the hearing could readily gather that Mr. Trump had reason to be frustrated that his administration was being paralyzed by insinuations of collusion for which there is zero evidence.

As a rule, when there is no evidence of a particular act, the FBI does not investigate. The FBI is investigating now only because Democrats and Trump opponents so filled the airwaves with unsubstantiated speculation.

Now here’s a secret: Most Democrats understand the hunt will come a cropper. If a Trump associate brushed shoulders with a Russian-looking individual on the way to the men’s room, it has leaked. The U.S. government sucks up and archives vast gobs of communication data.

Yet the earnestly desired evidence of collusion has not materialized, so Democrats have turned instead to charging “obstruction of justice,” with many already baying for impeachment.

Here’s another secret: Such “process” crimes don’t impress voters when there is no underlying crime. If Mr. Trump leaned on his intelligence officials to remove the Russian cloud, this was ill-advised on the part of a president whose specialty is the ill-advised. But his behavior will also increasingly appear in a new light if it turns out Washington’s tail-chasing has been partly driven by Russian fabrications.

The Washington Post and CNN reported late last month that the single most shattering series of events for the Hillary Clinton campaign—the events that began with FBI chief Comey’s intervention in the race—was partly influenced by planted Russian fake intelligence.

Likewise the dossier of repulsive Trump allegations, assembled by a retired British spy supposedly tapping his Russian intelligence sources, also appears to have been a Russian plant and yet may have played a role in justifying the Obama administration’s decision to launch an intelligence investigation of the Trump campaign.

Think about it: To the extent the fruitless hunt for collusion has been promoted by planted Russian intelligence, Russian fiddling is playing a bigger role in shaping our politics today than it did during the campaign.

By the way, we’re not alleging supercompetence on Russia’s part. Planting fake information is routine intelligence work. The World War II battle of Midway was won partly with fake information about water filtration on Midway Island. CONTINUE AT SITE

“Do not listen to what the Communists promise, just watch their actions…Search the truth by talking to victims of Communism,” recently warned Truc Brown, a refugee from Vietnamese Communism. Available for public appearances in the Anticommunism Action Team’s (ACAT) Speakers Bureau, she and other individuals now provide powerful testimony of their personal experiences with Communism’s horrors from around the world.

Brown addressed the April 30 Washington, DC-area conference “Down the Memory Hole of Socialism,” cosponsored by the Alexandria Tea Party and the Botev Academy. She joined other ACAT speakers such as Boyko Antonov and Lilia Slavova from Bulgaria, Anna Urman (Belarus/Lithuania), and Klara Sever. Sever, who is Jewish, hid from Nazi genocide in her occupied Czechoslovakian homeland during World War II thanks to heroic neighbors, but then had to endure Czechoslovakia’s postwar Communist tyranny. Like Brown, Sever warned that Communism “is a very poor copy of utopia, which has nothing to do with real life, but it is a very good tool because utopia is based on promises, and promises, as we well know, are very cheap.”

In a personal essay, Server recalls how she spent “half of my adult life standing in line” for all manner of basic necessities and consumer goods while living in her native Bratislava. Accordingly, she always carried a shopping bag for use whenever she chanced upon scarce commodities in any store, such as when she stopped to buy onions and potatoes while rushing to a theater performance with her husband. “We made it to the theater in the nick of time,” she recalled, the “lady behind the counter, without batting an eye, hanged the bag next to my nice coat.”

Sever’s essay elaborates upon her online biography’s description of being “blacklisted” in the 1950s due to her “enemy of the state” husband. Given that her father was an initial supporter of Communism, she had encountered no difficulty in studying at a university, but there her marriage to a man from a bourgeois background changed everything. Authorities answered her application for further study “with a proviso that I need to go to work as a manual worker for 5 years. I did and was moved into a working class cadre.” “Your position depended on your family background,” she recalled; “if you came from a working class, the doors were opened to you to all positions without qualifications.”

As at the 2013 Survivors of Communism Summit of the Alexandria, Virginia, Tea Party, Sever has often discussed life under totalitarian surveillance. “One could never be too cautious. You trusted only very few friends, that meant your little circle was small and sometimes getting smaller and smaller, depending upon who was disappearing.” People meeting in the street would often first ask about a recent soccer game in order to be able to pretend to any inquisitive police who might appear that the street conservation had nothing to do with sensitive topics like politics.

Drawing upon his extensive writings, Jaroslaw Martyniuk has joined Sever at both conferences in 2013 and 2017 to analyze Communism on the basis of his experience as the son of a family that fled Ukraine in World War II’s aftermath. He often focuses on the Holodomor, the Soviet Union’s genocidal forced famine of the Ukraine in the 1930s, and thereby emphasizes the importance of a citizenry’s right to bear arms that is often disputed in the United States. While World War I and Russia’s subsequent Civil War had littered Ukraine with weapons, Soviet authorities confiscated them in 1925. As a result 25,000 Soviet authorities could later subdue 25 million Ukrainians even as 25,000 died a day at the Holodomor’s height in 1933, a “magic 25/25/25” formula.

The implication is that Muslims too love Jesus — an approach that is bound to attract Christian passers-by (including priests and nuns) if only out of curiosity. But the Jesus of the Qur’an is not the Jesus of the New Testament. For Muslims, he is not the Son of God, not one third of the Trinity, did not die on the cross, was not resurrected after death, and is not God incarnate. He is simply one of a long line of prophets, important — yet inferior to Muhammad.

“We call them stinking kafir [non-Muslims], dirty. But, of course, akhi [brother], if that’s going to run them away from al-Islam, we don’t say that to them in front of their face.” — Abu Usamah, an imam at the Green Lane Mosque in Birmingham.

No one loves the kuffaar. No one loves the kuffaar! [unbelievers] … Whether these kuffaar are from the UK, or from the US … We love the people of Islam and we hate the people of the kufr. We hate the kuffaar. Whoever changes his religion from al-Islam to anything else kill him in the Islamic state. — Abu Usamah al-Thahabi, Channel 4 documentary, 2007.

When long-standing Palestinian Authority (PA) president Mahmoud Abbas met US President Donald Trump on May 7, he came out with what we British call a whopper, a huge lie. Here is what Abbas said with a straight face:

“Mr. President, I affirm to you that we are raising our youth, our children, our grandchildren on a culture of peace. And we are endeavoring to bring about security, freedom and peace for our children to live like the other children in the world, along with the Israeli children, in peace, freedom and security.”

We expect politicians to lie out of all sides of their mouths, to use doublespeak in order to seduce citizens to vote for them. Whether they be government officials or opposition hopefuls, a certain amount of economy with the truth is par for the course. Political analysts and well-informed journalists know this, of course, and work hard to untangle these webs. Facts matter. Sources make a difference. And in democratic countries that value free speech and the freedom of the press, politicians are held to account. Not many falsehoods get off Scot-free, and serial liars are regularly brought to book.

Politicians and their spokespeople know this, however, and do their best to keep their lies within reasonable bounds, even when making promises they have no real desire to fulfil. Abbas’s lies, however, are so gargantuan as to be in a league of their own. There, the exact opposite is true, and thousands of videos, texts, and recorded radio broadcasts show that the PA, the PLO, Fatah and Abbas himself have, over the years done their utmost to teach Palestinian children to hate and prepare themselves for violence against Jews.

There is a reason for this subterfuge. Muslims in general, especially those promoting extreme ideas, are growing more and more conscious of how they appear in the forum of public opinion. Even the terrorist group Hamas has issued a new Charter from which they have removed the explicit anti-Semitic passages of its 1988 version, in order to make it look better in Western eyes. In fact, Hamas has not changed its ways, and is still planning to use violence to eliminate Israel and replace it with an Islamic Palestinian state.

An incredible video has emerged online of Australian conservative commentator Andrew Bolt being attacked by Antifa goons in Melbourne, Australia, and fighting back hard.

The masked thugs attacked Bolt with a “glitter-bomb” (consisting of glitter, dye, and shaving cream) outside a Melbourne cafe on Tuesday, after a woman asked him for a selfie.

The video shows Bolt immediately responding with a haymaker, being pushed into a pole and falling over chairs and tables outside the restaurant. But he recovered quickly and charged his assailants, kicking and punching one of them in the face and groin before they scurried away.

Bolt explained his reason for punching back:

We must intimidate and humiliate the enemies of free speech, and not let them intimidate and humiliate us.

The video was taken by a photographer at the scene “who claims he wasn’t part of the ambush.” But Bolt says he “has trouble believing him”:

How come he was so well placed?

Why did he run away when the attackers did?

Why didn’t he offer help or tell me he had the vision?

He said on Thursday morning that he would pursue a monetary settlement from his attackers, as well as a donation to a charity of his choice, if and when police nab them.

Via the Australian:

“I’m not a brawler,” he said. “I had one bruised knuckle and I don’t care a stuff about it. I had a suit ruined and I want every cent of that paid back. And I want a hefty donation to a charity of my choice.”

Melbourne Antifa, a loose collection of left-wing activists united behind “anti-fascist action”, appeared to claim a role in the incident, posting on Facebook that “some of our family in solidarity were attacked by Andrew Bolt while they were protesting today”.

The group argued Bolt should be imprisoned for his “violent, horrendous language”.

Bolt told Fairfax Media the attack was the latest in a long line of threats to the safety of himself, his family and other conservatives in his home city.

“I am sick of people trying to intimidate me, trying to threaten me,” he said. “I’m sick of the threats on my life and my reputation. I’m sick of being sued and bullied and I’m not going to take it. I’m just not going to take it.

“We should be free to have a debate and to walk down the street without fear of being attacked.

“The right to free speech has to be better protected — everywhere but particularly in Melbourne. It is ridiculous how dangerous it is for conservatives in this town to speak out.

“If you don’t like what I say just prove me wrong. Don’t threaten me, don’t threaten my house, don’t threaten my family, don’t abuse me — just argue with me.

“It must be a question of the principle and not the side.”

“The Great Mosque of Cordoba.” That’s what Unesco—the cultural arm of the United Nations—calls the 24,000-square-foot 10th-century structure visited by 1.5 million tourists a year. It was declared a World Heritage site in 1984, and rightfully so: The building’s interior is a stunning example of Moorish architecture.

Yet this “mosque” is actually the cathedral of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Córdoba. In 1236, King Ferdinand III of Castile captured Córdoba from the Almohad Caliphate. He then had the building consecrated for Christian use. Or reconsecrated, rather, since underneath the mosque lay the demolished remains of a sixth-century church built by Spain’s Visigothic rulers before the Muslim invasion in 711. Today, Mass and confession are celebrated inside. The cathedral has been a Christian house of worship for centuries longer than it was an Islamic one.

The discordance greeting tourists is the result of more than 200 years of antagonism toward the Catholic Church by left-leaning Spanish intellectuals. They have used the cathedral’s unique architecture essentially to de-Christianize it in the name of restoring its historical Islamic roots. This secularist campaign began in the early 19th century but has gained new force in the past 20 years. Recent Islamic immigration to Spain has given the anticlerical leftists new allies—Muslims demanding to worship in their “Great Mosque.”

But that would require taking the building out of the Catholic Church’s hands. In 2013 an organization called the Platform for the Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba gathered more than 350,000 signatures on a petition calling for a public takeover. A year later, the Socialist-led coalition government of Spain’s Andalusia region, which includes Córdoba, accused the diocese of “hiding” the building’s history. In March the city council issued a report arguing that the diocese does not legally own the cathedral. “Religious consecration is not the way to acquire property,” it said. The site’s true owners “are each and every citizen of the world from whatever epoch and regardless of people, nation, culture or race.”

The diocese worries that the leftists may be about to get their way. To shore up support among American Catholics, the bishop of Córdoba, Demetrio Fernández González, spoke Wednesday at a meeting sponsored by the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom. Outright expropriation by the local government “would be impossible,” Bishop Fernández told me before his speech. But, as a European Union report on the mosque controversy pointed out, Andalusian law would permit expropriation if a court determined the diocese had failed properly to maintain and conserve the property. The bishop added that he already has obtained the pope’s support should a legal battle arise over ownership. CONTINUE AT SITE

Mr. Cooper was the U.S. ambassador to the Defense and Space Talks during the Reagan administration and director of the Strategic Defense Initiative during the George H.W. Bush administration.

Conventional wisdom holds that it will be years before North Korea can credibly threaten the United States with a nuclear attack. Kim Jong Un’s scientists are still testing only low-yield nuclear weapons, the thinking goes, and have yet to place them on ballistic missiles capable of reaching America’s West Coast.

While its technological shortcomings have been well documented, North Korea’s desire to provoke a nuclear conflict with the U.S. should not be minimized or ignored. Pyongyang is surely close to getting it right.

For South Korea the danger is more immediate. According to physicist David Albright, the founder and president of the Institute for Science and International Security, the North Koreans have between 13 and 30 nuclear weapons and can build as many as five more every year. If Mr. Kim were to detonate one of these bombs in the atmosphere 40 miles above Seoul, it could inflict catastrophic damage on South Korea’s electric power grid, leading to a prolonged blackout that could have deadly consequences.

The United States has 28,500 soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines in South Korea stationed below the 38th parallel—and more at sea nearby. An electromagnetic pulse attack on South Korea could play havoc with America’s ability to mount an effective response to North Korean aggression. One hopes the troops manning the two already-deployed batteries of the Thaad ballistic-missile defense system are prepared for such a scenario (in a concession to China, the newly elected South Korean government suspended this week the deployment of four additional launchers).

In 2001 Congress established a commission to study the danger of an electromagnetic pulse generated by the detonation of a high-altitude nuclear weapon. It concluded that while there would be no blast effects on the ground, critical electricity-dependent infrastructure could be rendered inoperable. The commission’s chairman, William R. Graham, has noted that several Russian generals told the commissioners in 2004 that the designs for a “super EMP nuclear weapon” had been transferred to North Korea.

Pyongyang, the Russian generals reported, was probably only a few years away from developing super EMP capability. According to Peter Vincent Pry, staff director of the congressional EMP commission, a recent North Korean medium-range missile test that was widely reported to have exploded midflight could in fact have been deliberately detonated at an altitude of 40 miles. CONTINUE AT SITE

LONDON—The U.K. faced fresh political turmoil after exit polls and early results signaled a serious setback for Prime Minister Theresa May in Thursday’s general election, creating new uncertainties as the country prepares to negotiate its departure from the European Union.

The exit polls suggested that the Conservatives failed to secure an overall parliamentary majority in the election. But early results from districts around the country showed significant regional variations in actual votes, indicating that the Conservatives could still retain a majority.

Mrs. May called the election in April to substantially increase her 17-seat majority in Parliament and started off with a huge lead of more than 20 percentage points in the opinion polls. A modest majority would therefore still be a damaging blow to the prime minister, demonstrating her gamble was a mistake.

The pound sank sharply against the dollar after the exit polls came out predicting a result that could leave British politics mired in uncertainty.

The exit polls pointed to Mrs. May’s Conservatives having fallen short of the 326 seats needed to win a majority in Britain’s 650-seat Parliament, suggesting they would win 314 seats while the main opposition Labour Party gained ground to 266 seats. That result would amount to a so-called hung parliament, meaning both major parties would scramble to get enough support from smaller rivals to form a government.

Early results indicated turnout was higher than in 2015, suggesting more young people, a large majority of whom support Labour, turned out to vote.

Steven Fielding, professor of political history at the University of Nottingham, said Mrs. May’s future as prime minister was at risk.

“The capital she had with her own party—that’s been spent, that’s all gone,” he said. “If you call an election to reinforce your authority, to reinforce your negotiation hand and you don’t get that endorsement, clearly people are going to ask questions about you.” CONTINUE AT SITE

At about 10pm British Summer Time on Saturday night, the London Bridge area was the scene of a series of vehicle attacks and stabbings. So my scheduled conversational topic with Judge Jeanine on Fox News was replaced by yet another discussion about terrorism. We’ll link to any video that gets posted. I’ll be back on Fox with Abby, Pete and Clayton tomorrow morning, Sunday, live at 8am Eastern/5am Pacific.

As I write, six members of the public are dead, and three attackers. I’m wary of weighing in as the situation is unfolding, but, though the details are always different, in the end the story is always the same. And, as I said only the other day, the reality of what is happening in Britain and Europe is that this problem was imported and that, until you stop importing it, you’re going to have more of it.

No one likely to end up as Prime Minister or Home Secretary after this Thursday’s election seems minded to say that, never mind act on it. Instead, we have the usual post-terrorist theatre: Congratulations for the speed of the emergency services, and sober anchormen announcing that Theresa May will be chairing a meeting of COBRA – as though a bunch of bureaucrats with a butch-sounding acronym has any clue about how to stop the corpse count from mounting. The cynical strategy of British and Continental leaders is to get their citizens used to this.

For that to work, it’s not helpful for new attacks to follow so swiftly on the last attacks. After Manchester, Mrs May raised the official “Threat Level” from Mildly Perturbed to Somewhat Disturbed or whatever it was, and in order further to reassure the public put soldiers on London’s streets. Soldiers aren’t really much use at stopping homicidal car drivers or random stabbers. To do that, you’d have to ban motor vehicles and sharp knives, which, given the fecklessness and decadence of Europe’s political class, I wouldn’t entirely rule out. Absent that, it’s unfortunate that the London carnage occurred before Katy Perry, Justin Bieber & Co had had a chance to hold their stupid, useless, poor-taste all-you-need-is-sentimentalist-delusional-crap pop concert for the victims of the Manchester carnage. Maybe they’ll cancel it, or maybe they’ll make it a twofer.

Meanwhile, even as the politicians trot out the rote response that these attacks “won’t change us”, everything changes: more armed police, more soldiers, more bollards, more security checks – and smaller lives, fewer liberties, less free speech. London Bridge still stands, but everything else is falling down, in Britain and Europe.

In Australia in recent days there has been some controversy over a Quadrant editor’s response to the obnoxious remarks of someone on the ABC’s Q&A panel that an American has more chance of being killed by a falling refrigerator than by terrorists. This happens not to be true. As far as I can tell, the only source of this bon mot is a US Consumer Product Safety Commission report that found that, between January 2000 and December 2011, toppling television sets, furniture, refrigerators and all other domestic appliances killed a total of 349 Americans – or 29 people per year.

For purposes of comparison, in Britain Islamic terrorists have just killed 28 people in 12 days. [SUNDAY MORNING UPDATE: it’s now 29.] More to the point, your refrigerator is not trying to kill you, and not eternally seeking new ways to do so. You don’t have to worry about your fridge getting hold of an automatic weapon, or a dirty nuke. The Islamic supremacists want to kill as many infidels by whatever means are to hand. Nor are statistics relevant: If you’ve lost your only child because she went to an Ariana Grande concert, that’s 100 per cent of your kids who are dead. When it comes to deceased loved ones, the only statistical pool that counts is your family, not the nation or the planet.