POLITICS Comments turned off

Ocasio-Cortez: ICE Doesn’t ‘Deserve a Dime’ of Funding By Jack Crowe

Posted By on February 8th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-ice-doesnt-deserve-a-dime-of-funding/

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) said Thursday that she would work to deprive the Department of Homeland Security of funding until the agency adopts more permissive immigration-enforcement policies.

“This is one of the most urgent moral issues and crises that we have in America right now,” Ocasio-Cortez said during a rally outside the Capitol building. “This is not a political issue. Children dying in detention centers should not be a partisan concern. It should be a universal concern for every American in the United States.

“We’re here to say that an agency like ICE, which repeatedly and systematically violates human rights, does not deserve a dime,” she added.

Invoking Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen’s claim that the agency does not have a policy of separating migrant children from their parents, Ocasio-Cortez argued that Nielsen is ignorant of the enforcement policies pursued by her subordinates.

“I will not give one dollar to a secretary who does not care about her life and does not care to investigate a child’s death,” she said to applause. “I will not give one dollar to black-box detention facilities that think that some people in this country are deserving of constitutional protections and others are not.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

India Is Falling Behind China in an Asian Arms Race High defense-spending totals mask the weakness of its weapons systems, and the threat is growing. By Sadanand Dhume

Posted By on February 8th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/india-is-falling-behind-china-in-an-asian-arms-race-11549583595

When it comes to military spunk, no Indian politician shows it off like Narendra Modi. The prime minister sometimes dons camouflage to celebrate Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, with troops on the borders with China and Pakistan.

While inaugurating a film museum last month, Mr. Modi greeted the audience with a catch phrase from “Uri: The Surgical Strike,” a recent Bollywood hit about a 2016 military operation in which Indian soldiers entered Pakistani-controlled territory to take out purported terrorist training camps. The prime minister often cites the episode to contrast his muscular leadership with the allegedly feckless opposition.

Unfortunately, Mr. Modi’s spending priorities do not match his rhetoric. Last week’s federal budget—a stopgap exercise before national elections this spring—underscores his habit of choosing butter over guns.

The budget promises income support for poor farmers, increased outlays for a government health-insurance scheme, tax cuts for the middle class, and pensions for workers in informal businesses. Though the $60.9 billion earmarked for defense is the most ever in absolute terms—and an 8% increase over last year—defense outlays have dipped to a modest 2.1% of gross domestic product.

That decline is made worse because much of India’s military budget is consumed by salaries for its bloated 1.4-million-strong army, rather than for buying weapons and investing in new technologies. Inflation and a weakening rupee—India imports about two-thirds of its military hardware—crimp the budget further. CONTINUE AT SITE

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Get China and Russia Out of Venezuela – and the Western Hemisphere by Gordon G. Chang

Posted By on February 8th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13700/venezuela-china-russia

The partnership of Beijing and Moscow is certainly up to no good. As an initial matter, the duo, powers from the other side of the world, are in Venezuela to take on the United States, not help it.

It is doubtful, as Matt Ferchen of the Leiden Asia Center in the Netherlands suggests, that Beijing can help another society transition to democracy. The same, of course, can be said about Vladimir Putin’s Russia. After China and Russia worked to turn Venezuela into “the Syria of the Western Hemisphere,” they are not about to democratize it.

An outreach from Washington “would legitimize the concept that Russia and China have a constructive role to play in Western Hemisphere security… the U.S. has everything to lose from inviting China and Russia to the table, and no realistic prospect of gains.” — Robert Evan Ellis of the U.S. Army War College, to Gatestone.

China and Russia make no global problem better. The only sensible approach, therefore, is to remove them from our hemisphere, and the place to begin to do that is Venezuela.

“What are our national security interests in Venezuela?” Adam Smith, the Washington Democrat who chairs the House Armed Services Committee, asked Erin Burnett on January 29 during her CNN primetime show. “The idea that we’re going to go in and do battle in Venezuela over who should be running that country, I don’t see a single U.S. national security argument for doing that.”

Not a single interest, Chairman Smith? In December, two Russian Tu-160 Blackjacks landed near Caracas. The Mach 2, nuclear-capable bombers can launch cruise missiles with a range of 3,410 miles, putting the U.S. homeland at risk from the airspace over Venezuela. The Blackjack bombers also buzzed America’s West Coast as they left the region last month.

Representative Smith charged President Trump with making Venezuela policy “on whims and fantasies and no reality behind it.”

On the contrary, Trump policy is based on the reality that the U.S. must be involved in the resolution of the Venezuelan crisis and not on the whims or fantasies that bad actors on their own will produce constructive solutions.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Has Turkish President Erdoğan Distanced Himself from the Muslim Brotherhood? by Burak Bekdil

Posted By on February 8th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13704/turkey-erdogan-muslim-brotherhood

The picture sent shockwaves through the Turkish grassroots: A poor Egyptian member of the Muslim Brotherhood, handcuffed by the Turkish police, put aboard a Turkish Airlines plane to fly back to Cairo, to be tortured and eventually executed. Is President Erdoğan not a staunch supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood? Is he not an eternal enemy of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who came to power after toppling the Muslim Brotherhood man, former president Mohamed Morsi, a darling of Erdoğan?

The “mistake” was that the Erdoğan administration was not expecting Hussein, so the immigration officers treated him as just another illegal entry. He would not have been arrested and extradited if the Turkish authorities had known he was a member of the Ikhwan.

False alarm. Erdoğan apparently has not changed, after all.

The picture sent shockwaves through Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s grassroots: A poor Egyptian member of the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan in Arabic) handcuffed by the Turkish police, put aboard a Turkish Airlines plane to fly back to Cairo, to be tortured and eventually executed. Is President Erdoğan not a staunch supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood? Is he not an eternal enemy of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who came to power after toppling the Ikhwan man, former president Mohamed Morsi, a darling of Erdoğan? Did Erdoğan not freeze diplomatic relations with el-Sisi’s Egypt?

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Is Gantz falling from grace? Most of the promises Gantz made in his speech are already being fulfilled by the current prime minister. By Ruthie Blum

Posted By on February 8th, 2019

https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Right-from-wrong-Is-Gantz-

When the new Great White Hope of the Israeli opposition, Benny Gantz, delivered his first public speech last week, the press couldn’t contain its excitement. During the hours before he took to the podium to address a packed hall of supporters, all Hebrew broadcasters treated the event as momentous enough to warrant an hour-by-hour countdown.

The fervor was palpable. Prior to Gantz’s December 27 announcement of the formation of his party, Israel Resilience, the Left was on the verge of despair. Polls were showing the implosion of the once illustrious Labor Party – whose past prime ministers include David Ben-Gurion, Golda Meir, Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres – and the fizzling out of the elusive “center.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party, on the other hand, was soaring in the surveys. Consensus had it that Likud would emerge victorious in the April 9 elections. To prevent the sure win from being too great – and to force Netanyahu to forge a coalition with others vying for prized portfolios – parties across the spectrum went into high gear, if not high anxiety.

When Gantz threw his hat into the ring, the mood instantly shifted. Here was a guy who might give Netanyahu a run for his money. At 59, the former IDF chief of staff is neither too young nor too old. He is also tall and handsome, with piercing blue eyes that, until four years ago, gloriously contrasted his dark green military uniform.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Anti-Semitism in UK reaches record-high numbers, report says

Posted By on February 8th, 2019

https://worldisraelnews.com/anti-semitism-in-uk-reaches-record-high-numbers-report-says/

The increase in anti-Semitic incidents in the United Kingdom has set a new record for the third year in a row.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The number of anti-Semitic incidents in the United Kingdom has set a new record for the third year in a row, according to a report released this week by the Community Security Trust (CST).

In 2018, 1,652 expressions of hatred of Jews were reported across the country, which represented a 16% jump from the previous year. The number for 2017 showed an increase of 3% over 2016.

The vast majority of incidents – 1,300 – consisted of verbal invective, hate mail, and graffiti.

The “good” news is that physical assaults were down by 17%, with 123 attacks versus 149 in 2017. Property damage was on a similar downward trend, with 78 occurrences as opposed to 93 the previous year.

Nearly three-quarters of the incidents took place in London and Manchester, home to the largest Jewish communities in the U.K. Most of them “involved verbal abuse randomly directed at visibly Jewish people in public,” the CST stated, while almost 25% were found on social media.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

PART4: LLOYD BILLINGSLEY -THE STATE OF AFFAIRS AT U.C.L.A.

Posted By on February 8th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272807/down-kang-jong-un-lloyd-billingsley
Down With Kang Jong-Un! Pushing back against UCLA diversity dictator Jerry Kang.

UCLA’s Vice Chancellor for Equity Diversity and Inclusion is a specialist in “implicit bias” theory but shows a distinct preference for politically correct groups of the Left. Meanwhile, professors of a certain ethnicity and conservative political profile are ostracized for championing free speech. Even their staff and student supporters come under fire.

1.https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272686/diversity-lysenkoism-rules-ucla-lloyd-billingsley

2.https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272720/king-kang-makes-ucla-safe-jew-hatred-lloyd-billingsley

3.https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272745/king-kang-rampage-lloyd-billingsley

As a UCLA student, Keith Fink won a national debating championship defending the proposition that “illegal aliens” are inimical to the United States. Today, as he noted in his recent video, that would be a “microaggression,” that would trigger warnings and of course be “summarily dismissed.” The way UCLA dismissed Fink should serve up a warning to students, parents and policymakers alike.

UCLA teaching assistant Justin Gelzhiser, a PhD candidate, wrote a letter in defense of Fink. After Fink’s departure, longtime communications department manager Jane Bitar told Gelhizer he was the subject of a sexual harassment complaint. As he told the Daily Bruin, they would report the claim to the Title IX office if he didn’t leave his teaching position. The department, Gelhizer said, “wanted to get rid of me because they had just got rid of Fink.”

The Title IX department did investigate the harassment claim, which turned out to have some existential problems. Fink called it “a fiction” and notes that Bitar also violated the mandatory reporting requirements. For that lapse, she would suffer no consequences.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: A one-woman EMP By Patricia McCarthy

Posted By on February 8th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/02/alexandria_ocasiocortez_a_onewoman_emp.html

The ubiquitous Miss O-C made her big splash yesterday and introduced her Green New Deal, and an amusing prescription it is. If even a fraction of her plans were ever implemented, the U.S. would be transported back to before the Industrial Revolution. No fossil fuels, no airplanes, no cars, no heat, no air conditioning, no meat, no dairy. Every home and building in the country would have to be retrofitted to comply with her ridiculous demands. There would be “charging stations” everywhere; she does not say where the power to those charging stations would come from. She apparently thinks wind (now provides 1.9%) and solar (now provides 0.5%) can fill the bill. She must think the trucking industry that above all others makes our country work can run on wind or solar; it cannot. When asked how to pay for all this, she suggests printing more money! Has this woman ever considered how groceries and all other merchandise in stores get there? Obviously not.

The first time I ever heard the phrase “as dumb as a rock” was years ago. It was a caller to Larry Elder’s radio program; the caller was talking about Sean Penn, whom the caller knew. It is an apt phrase, and never more than to describe Miss O-C. Boston U, from where she received a degree in economics, should immediately be de-certified and shuttered. No public person has ever displayed more ignorance, not just on economics, but on practically every topic relevant to the public realm. The fact that the media have made her a celebrity far beyond her ability to speak coherently will most likely be her undoing. They will at some point realize their catastrophic mistake and take her down. If they don’t, as the face of the Democratic Party, she will take them down.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Mythology Trumping Facts The president was wrong to malign the criminal-justice system in his State of the Union speech. Heather Mac Donald

Posted By on February 7th, 2019

https://www.city-journal.org/trump-racial-bias-criminal-justice-system

President Trump maligned the criminal-justice system in his State of the Union speech last night. Touting a recent federal law that gives federal judges greater discretion in sentencing violent criminals and drug traffickers, Trump claimed that the previous sentencing regime “wrongly and disproportionately harmed the African-American community.”

The claim that the criminal-justice system is racist is the mantra of left-wing activists the country over. Adopting it for the State of the Union was an unfortunate attempt to score bipartisan political points. The effort has already proven unavailing: Trump and his supporters continue to be charged with racism, while the legitimacy of law enforcement has been undermined.

It is crime, not the punishment of crime, that disproportionately harms the black community. And the demand for strict drug enforcement has always originated most forcefully in the black community. In 1959, Harlem’s New York Age newspaper called for “no leniency for the criminals, the recidivists, the junkies, dope pushers, muggers, prostitutes, or pimps. Clean out this scum—and put them away as long as the law will allow.” New York’s Rockefeller drug laws, now reviled by the elites, were passed in the 1970s because of activism in the black community, as Michael Fortner shows in Black Silent Majority.

The infamous federal crack penalties followed a similar trajectory. It was New York congressman Charles Rangel who initiated the federal crack legislation in 1986 by pointing out crack’s effect on urban youth. Other members of the Congressional Black Caucus agreed. New York congressman Alton Waldon called on his colleagues to increase federal crack penalties: “For those of us who are black this self-inflicted pain is the worst oppression we have known since slavery.”

BOOKS, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Spies of No Country: Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel by Matti Friedman

Posted By on February 7th, 2019

Spies of No Country: Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel by Matti Friedman

AVAILABLE ON MARCH 6

Award-winning writer Matti Friedman’s tale of Israel’s first spies has all the tropes of an espionage novel, including duplicity, betrayal, disguise, clandestine meetings, the bluff, and the double bluff–but it’s all true.

The four spies at the center of this story were part of a ragtag unit known as the Arab Section, conceived during World War II by British spies and Jewish militia leaders in Palestine. Intended to gather intelligence and carry out sabotage and assassinations, the unit consisted of Jews who were native to the Arab world and could thus easily assume Arab identities. In 1948, with Israel’s existence in the balance during the War of Independence, our spies went undercover in Beirut, where they spent the next two years operating out of a kiosk, collecting intelligence, and sending messages back to Israel via a radio whose antenna was disguised as a clothesline. While performing their dangerous work these men were often unsure to whom they were reporting, and sometimes even who they’d become. Of the dozen spies in the Arab Section at the war’s outbreak, five were caught and executed. But in the end the Arab Section would emerge, improbably, as the nucleus of the Mossad, Israel’s vaunted intelligence agency.

Spies of No Country is about the slippery identities of these young spies, but it’s also about Israel’s own complicated and fascinating identity. Israel sees itself and presents itself as a Western nation, when in fact more than half the country has Middle Eastern roots and traditions, like the spies of this story. And, according to Friedman, that goes a long way toward explaining the life and politics of the country, and why it often baffles the West. For anyone interested in real-life spies and the paradoxes of the Middle East, Spies of No Country is an intimate story with global significance.