When you view the above think government and all the high paid bureaucrats that are working for us.
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This from a loyal memo reader:
Trump goes on a World Tour, he visits the holiest site in Judaism, the Western Wall and visits the holiest site in Catholicism the Vatican.
He doesn't visit the holiest site in Islam, Mecca, why? Because he's an infidel, he is considered "unclean", let that sink in, when your Liberal Progressive friends start talking about "diversity" and how we all need to "just get together"!
And my quote of the week!
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More input about one of my biggest concerns. Former CIA head Woolsey has issued similar alarms.(See 1 below.)
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Trump will never accomplish what he has committed to do or, at the very least, "drain the swamp" until he rids his administration of every Obama holdover and cleans out the renegades in our 17 various intelligence agencies who are undercutting everything they find not to their liking or are not in accord.
Nor will he be able to accomplish what he hopes in a foreign policy sense, most particularly in The Middle East, as long as he allows the Arabists in our State Department to rule the day, nor will he be accepted by Europe as long as he listens to those in our State Department that are apologists and who are so European Centrists because they speak French and went to America's most elegant universities noted for producing our diplomatic corps.
Diplomats, by definition, spend their time avoiding confrontation, compromising and going along with the goal of keeping peace. There is nothing wrong about seeking peace. Peace is a worthy goal and should be tried first and then when it becomes impossible to attain other methods must be sought. The problem is when diplomats are allowed to go too far in pursuit of bad policy and it ends in an inevitable war, and we have plenty of evidence of failed policies because diplomats prefer compromise, weakness and passivity then we must resort to strength and sharp elbows.
On the domestic front, until Trump comes to the conclusion Democrats only want to impeach him and Republicans are doing everything they can to assist the Democrats, he will continue to fall short of implementing his policies to "Make America Great Again," which I thought was a clever campaign slogan but unrealistic because, until structural changes are accomplished, America's growth rate will probably remain sub-par.
There is no doubt Trump's budget proposal will not be enacted because it is too bold for timid Republicans.
Some of his proposed cuts in welfare benefits are not defend-able but most Republicans are totally incapable of making a case about how demeaning and dehumanizing citizen dependency on government is actually.
Then you have the spurious attacks on son-in-law Kushner and no one ever thought to call for an investigation of Obama's comments to Russia's president when he told him convey to Putin 'wait till I win again and I will have more flexibility..' This was said when Obama was unaware the mike was still on.
Even Sen, McCain finds everything Trump does is wrong. It is time for McCain to either climb aboard or change parties. He seems a better fit with Democrat comedian now Senator Al Franken, who daily calls for Trump being investigated etc.
If Republicans responded to all the crap the Democrats are throwing at Trump, some of which he brought on himself, they would not be spinning their wheels and depleting their chances come 2018.
When it comes to Israel and the PLO,, Krauthammer and I are on the same page. (See 2 and 2a )
There is no doubt Trump's budget proposal will not be enacted because it is too bold for timid Republicans.
Some of his proposed cuts in welfare benefits are not defend-able but most Republicans are totally incapable of making a case about how demeaning and dehumanizing citizen dependency on government is actually.
Then you have the spurious attacks on son-in-law Kushner and no one ever thought to call for an investigation of Obama's comments to Russia's president when he told him convey to Putin 'wait till I win again and I will have more flexibility..' This was said when Obama was unaware the mike was still on.
Even Sen, McCain finds everything Trump does is wrong. It is time for McCain to either climb aboard or change parties. He seems a better fit with Democrat comedian now Senator Al Franken, who daily calls for Trump being investigated etc.
If Republicans responded to all the crap the Democrats are throwing at Trump, some of which he brought on himself, they would not be spinning their wheels and depleting their chances come 2018.
When it comes to Israel and the PLO,, Krauthammer and I are on the same page. (See 2 and 2a )
or
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This from one of my closest friends and fellow memo reader. Something else we could learn from Israelis.(See 3 below.)
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Before this memo I sent one totally devoted to the Commencement Address given by Chris Nelson, the retiring president of St John's College, Annapolis Campus. In it he spoke to the Johnnie's about what a former Dean, Scott Buchanan, had to say: ""We used to say at St. John's that we were preparing people to be misfits, and we meant that in a very broad sense. Perhaps misfits in the universe for the time being."
I mention this because, while away, I read an interesting book entitled: "Reviving Ophelia" written by Mary Pipher, PHD.
Pipher accomplishes her goal through case histories and suggests ways her patients can build and maintain a strong sense of self. She stresses our culture has changed, not always in positive ways, and that adolescent girls from the ''90's forward face challenges unlike those in preceding decades and centuries and as long as we raise them with no recognition of this fact they will not be the "misfits" Buchanan referred to but true "misfits."
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Dick
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1)Dr. Peter Pry Warns About EMP Threats to American Electrical Grid
by Alex Nitzberg
The electromagnetic pulse (EMP) created by a nuclear weapon exploding high over the United States would destroy the nation’s electrical grid and electrical systems across the country, according to Dr. Peter Vincent Pry, Executive Director of the EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security.
Dr. Pry explained this nightmare scenario during an interview on “The Alex Nitzberg Show:”
“The higher up you go, the bigger the field gets, and at an altitude of 300 kilometers with a single nuclear weapon you can cover the entire continental United States…most of Canada and a good chunk of Mexico with an EMP field. And this field is so powerful, in effect what it is, it’s a super energetic radio wave. It’s a radio wave that’s got so much energy in it that it will damage and destroy electronic systems—all electronic systems, including the electric grid, the personal computer on your desk, SCADA systems—that is Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition systems which are little computers that run everything: The water supply, gas pipelines, gas coming out of electric engines, industrial processes and all kinds of things…”
If the EMP is sufficiently powerful, Dr. Pry noted that airplanes would crash because their electrical systems would be affected.
Because the weapon would be detonated high above the earth, people would not hear the blast and they may not even see anything if the sky is cloudy. As Dr. Pry explained, “The only thing that would result would be this EMP, but it is enough to basically destroy our electronic civilization…”
Naturally occurring geomagnetic storms ejected from the sun could also wreak havoc on electrical systems worldwide. While the EMP produced by these storms would not impact smaller systems (like vehicles and planes) a sufficiently powerful geomagnetic superstorm would harm electrical grids globally.
“Electric grids everywhere on earth would collapse and put billions of lives at risk,” according to Dr. Pry.
He explained that a solar storm in 1859 known as the “Carrington Event” destroyed the transatlantic cable. “Telegraph cables burst into flame all over the world and there were forest fires in various places…” He also said that “Fires broke out in telegraph stations.”
NASA predicts that over 10 years there is a 12% chance of a geomagnetic super-storm. According to Dr. Pry, this “…virtually guarantees that within our lifetimes, or that of our children or grandchildren, we will experience a natural EMP that will put electronic civilizations everywhere on the planet at risk.”
He says the ramifications of an EMP event would be “…the greatest environmental catastrophe ever experienced by man.”
Nuclear reactors are “…likely to go Fukushima,” according to Dr. Pry, “not just from the power grid going down, but from the regulatory control systems being damaged and causing accidents in the nuclear reactors.”
He explained that even if the systems regulating nuclear reactors remained operational, the lack of electricity would eventually cause problems when reserve power sources deplete:
“And the steam explosions will carry dangerous levels of radioactivity thousands of kilometers downwind from the nuclear reactors,” Dr. Pry said, noting that “it’s like having 100 dirty bombs going off and spreading radioactivity all over the country.”
Dr. Pry also stated that without electricity, “…the water purification plants will back up and overflow. We know this happens, even during normal blackouts. And so you have in lakes and rivers hospital wastes and industrial wastes and human wastes back-flowing into already polluted lakes and rivers.”
In addition to the dangers of a nuclear EMP and a naturally occurring EMP from a geomagnetic storm, Dr. Pry also explained that radio frequency weapons (RFWs) pose another threat.
RFWs are “non-nuclear EMP weapons.” He stated that “They don’t have the same radius of effect as a nuclear EMP weapon, only a few hundred yards in most cases. But our electric grid is so fragile that it wouldn’t take much damage to bring the whole thing down for a protracted period of time.”
He explained that while America contains 2,000 EHV transformer substations, “If you knew which ones to attack you could attack as few as nine of them according to a study by the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. If you took them out…that would put the country into a protracted blackout…”
Asked why he thinks the media are not more interested in alerting the public about the threat of nuclear EMP weapons, Dr. Pry said that the conservative media generally do show interest. “But the mainstream liberal media doesn’t talk about the nuclear EMP threat very much,” Dr. Pry explained, “or when they do they try to belittle it.”
He opined that “any rational person” who lived in America during the period of Obama’s tenure, “knows that the mainstream media are basically an echo chamber for the Obama administration and for the Democratic Party.”
He argued that if the mainstream media had drawn more attention to the dangers of a nuclear EMP blast, the information would have undermined President Obama’s promotion of the Iran deal and his desire for a “world without nuclear weapons.”
Dr. Pry noted that some academics who “belittle the EMP threat” and “say it isn’t real” support action to mitigate the impact of “the natural EMP threat.” President Obama actually issued “an executive order on a national space weather action plan so-called, to protect against EMP, although as a practical matter the plan is a bad plan…” according to Dr. Pry.
Solutions to protect the electrical grid against these ominous threats already exist, but they have not been widely implemented. Dr. Pry believes that the grid should be hardened against these threats, adding that people should take action to prepare themselves for the possibility of a catastrophic, EMP-related blackout.
You can listen to my entire interview with Dr. Peter Vincent Pry on “The Alex Nitzberg Show:”
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2)Senior PLO leader calls for violence:
"Enough, let every one of us look
for a gun and bullets"
Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik
PLO Director of the Commission of Prisoners' Affairs Issa Karake called on Palestinians to prepare themselves for armed conflict against Israel, encouraging them three times in one article: "Look for a gun and bullets."
The article, which he published on the PLO's Commission of Prisoners' Affairs' website as well as in the Palestinian daily Al-Quds, accused Israel of deliberately trying to murder Palestinian prisoners and therefore "there is no need for journalism, media, analyses, and speculations... Break the pens, look for a gun and bullets. Do not look at your watches, the time is up."
Karake wrote this one day before the Palestinian prisoners ended their 40-day hunger strike, and he argued that Israel was not giving in to the hunger strikers demands so that the Palestinian prisoners would starve to death.
"They (i.e., the prisoners) are being murdered [by Israel] in silence, through an official and planned method. They are melting, bleeding, and dissipating. If one prisoner will fall, the entire world will fall. The world will die if a Palestinian prisoner will die...
Do not make us receive bodies from the occupation's prisons. There's nothing left to say, and there is no need for journalism, media, analyses, and speculations. ... The prisoners are currently struggling for their lives. Break the pens, look for a gun and bullets. Do not look at your watches, the time is up..."
[Website of the PLO Commission of Prisoners' Affairs, May 24, 2017
and Al-Quds, May 25, 2017]
Karake repeated the call to prepare for violence twice more in the article using the same words:
"Enough, let every one of us look for a gun and bullets."
Earlier in the hunger strike, Karake "warned" Israel that if anything would happen to one of the prisoners, "all options [would] be open." [Official PA daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, April 18, 2017]
The terms "all options" and "all means" are often used by PA leaders to refer to violence and deadly terror against Israeli civilians.
An explicit terror threat was voiced by Fatah Central Committee member Jamal Muhaisen on official PA radio, who said Israel treats Palestinian prisoners worse than the Nazis treated the Jews:
"There will be a violent response against the Israeli occupation if one of our heroes dies as a Martyr (Shahid) in prison... This is a fascist leadership that enjoys the suffering of the Palestinian people, attempts to imitate the Nazis in their behavior towards the Jews in World War II, and also sometimes surpasses [the Nazis'] behavior towards our people and our prisoners."
[The Voice of Palestine, official PA radio station, April 30, 2017]
Karake has often claimed that all the prisoners without exception are "not terrorists but freedom fighters." When he applauded Fatah's appointment of murderer Karim Younes as member of Fatah's Central Committee, claiming the appointment to be proof of the "fact" that Palestinian prisoners are not terrorists but in fact "freedom fighters":
"The Fatah Revolutionary Council made a decision to appoint prisoner Karim Younes (i.e., terrorist, murdered 1), the most veteran of the prisoners, as a member of the Fatah Movement Central Committee. I think that this is a very great and significant political response, [which says] that our prisoners are not terrorists and are not criminals. They are freedom prisoners and fighters who enjoy an important national, human, and legal status among their leadership and among their Palestinian people."
[Official PA TV, Palestine This Morning, May 28, 2017]
Similarly Fatah's youth movement Shabiba called "to escalate the confrontation with the occupation as a sign of support for the prisoners' battle and their hunger strike. [Official PA daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, April 27, 2017]
Palestinian Media Watch has documented numerous examples of PA leaders promoting violence and glorifying terrorists.
The following are longer excerpts from the articles mentioned above:
Excerpt of an op-ed by Director of PLO Commission of Prisoners' Affairs Issa Karake
"After 39 days in which the prisoners are waging an unlimited hunger strike, and with the month of Ramadan (i.e., Muslim month of fasting) imminent, do not make us receive the bodies [of the prisoners] who are liable to die in the occupation's prisons...
They are being murdered in silence [by Israel], through an official and planned method. They are melting, bleeding, and dissipating. If one prisoner will fall, the entire world will fall. The world will die if a Palestinian prisoner will die. Everything will die, because nothing will remain of the great and sacred ideas - not democracy, nor human rights, speeches, slogans, freedoms, cultures, large and small summit conferences, justice, or law...
Do not make us receive bodies from the occupation's prisons. There's nothing left to say, and there is no need for journalism, media, analyses, and speculations. The prisoners are currently struggling for their lives. Break the pens, look for a gun and bullets. Do not look at your watches, the time is up...
Enough, we have received 10 Martyrs [from the prisons] (Shahids) since 2013, and we held the occupation responsible a thousand times and demanded to put it on trial, to demand an accounting from it, and to convict it over the crimes against humanity that it is committing in the prisons. [But] nothing has happened. The prisoners continue to come out of the prison gates inanimate and strangled. Enough, let every one of us look for a gun and bullets...
Now I curse my helplessness. We would need a permit from the Israeli Civil and Military Administration (sic., Israeli Civil Administration) in order to live and go from place to place. And if we defend our lives, we must pay them compensation and be dragged into their military courts for them to accuse us of whatever they want and declare that they have caught us, 'the terrorists.' Enough, let every one of us look for a gun and bullets...I have memorized well the prisons' anthem in Ashkelon Prison and Nafha Prison. Do not kill the words of [deceased Palestinian poet] Mu'in Bseiso in my mouth and heart, when we repeat together with him:
'Yes, we will not die, yes, we will live
Even if the chains eat our bones
And even if the whips of the tyrants tear us to pieces
And even if they burn our bodies
Yes, we will not die, but rather
We will uproot death from our land.'"
[Website of the PLO Commission of Prisoners' Affairs, May 24, 2017
and Al-Quds, May 25, 2017]
Headline: "Ramallah: Main events of support for the prisoners' battle"
"Director of [PLO] Commission of Prisoners and Released Prisoners' Affairs Issa Karake warned the occupation's [Israeli] Prison Service not to oppress the hunger striking prisoners and treat them violently, and said that all options will be open if something bad happens to one of the prisoners.
He referred to the masses that went out [into the streets] of the homeland and the diaspora, and said: 'Our people wherever it is declares that the cause of freedom is holy to it and it is thirsty to be liberated of the occupation, and also that the occupation government will not achieve peace, security, and stability as long as it commits terror and organized crime against our people and its prisoners.'
He added: 'The Palestinian people declares its intifada against the worst occupation in modern history and supports its prisoners who are waging a battle for dignity through [a] hunger [strike] in the most difficult place of confrontation.' He called on the international community and the UN Security Council to stand by their legal and moral responsibility in light of what is happening to the prisoners in the occupation's prisons, to provide them with international protection, and to put the Israeli war criminals on trial for their ongoing crimes."
[Official PA daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, April 18, 2017]
Headline: "The Nablus branch's Shabiba called to escalate the confrontation with the occupation as a sign of support for our prisoners"
"After a meeting it held at Fatah's Nablus branch headquarters, Fatah's Shabiba [youth] movement at the Nablus branch called in a statement to escalate the confrontation with the occupation as a sign of support for the prisoners' battle and their hunger strike...
Shabiba published a statement in which it called on its members, its supporters, and our young people in the [Fatah] branches and in the branches of the various organizations to escalate the popular resistance (i.e., term that also refers to violence) against and the daily confrontation with the settlers and occupation soldiers as a sign of support for our brave prisoners' hunger strike that is entering its tenth day.
Fatah's Shabiba noted in its statement that escalating the popular resistance in Area C (i.e., regions of the West Bank under full Israeli administration according to the Oslo Accords) and direct confrontation with the occupation forces and the herds of its settlers has great significance now, in light of our brave prisoners' [hunger] strike entering its tenth day, and the escalation of the occupation's racist steps against them."
[Official PA daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, April 27, 2017]
2a) Trump's change in approach to the Mideast
Updated: May 29, 2017 —
by Charles Krauthammer
"Whom the gods would destroy, they first tempt to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict."
- Irving Kristol
The quixotic American pursuit of Middle East peace is a perennial. It invariably fails, yet every administration feels compelled to give it a try. The Trump administration is no different.
It will fail as well. To be sure, no great harm has, as yet, come from President Trump's enthusiasm for what would be "the ultimate deal." It will, however, distract and detract from remarkable progress being made elsewhere in the Middle East.
That progress began with Trump's trip to Saudi Arabia, the first of his presidency - an unmistakable declaration of a radical reorientation of U.S. policy in the region. Message: The appeasement of Iran is over.
Barack Obama's tilt toward Iran in the great Muslim civil war between Shiite Iran and Sunni Arabs led by Saudi Arabia was his reach for Nixon-to-China glory. It ended ignominiously.
The idea that the nuclear deal would make Iran more moderate has proved spectacularly wrong, as demonstrated by its defiant ballistic missile launches, its indispensable support for the genocidal Assad regime in Syria, its backing of the Houthi insurgency in Yemen, its worldwide support for terrorism, its relentless anti-Americanism, and commitment to the annihilation of Israel.
These aggressions were supposed to abate. They didn't. On the contrary, the cash payments and the lifting of economic sanctions - Tehran's reward for the nuclear deal - have only given its geopolitical thrusts more power and reach.
The reversal has now begun. The first act was Trump's Riyadh address to about 50 Muslim states (the overwhelming majority of them Sunni) signaling a wide Islamic alliance committed to resisting Iran and willing to cast its lot with the American side.
That was objective No.1. The other was to turn the Sunni powers against Sunni terrorism. The Islamic State is Sunni. Al-Qaeda is Sunni. Fifteen of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi. And the spread of Saudi-funded madrassas around the world has for decades inculcated a poisonous Wahhabism that has fueled Islamist terrorism.
Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states publicly declaring war on their bastard terrorist child is significant. As is their pledge not to tolerate any semiofficial support or private donations. And their opening during the summit of an anti-terrorism center in Riyadh.
After eight years of U.S. policy hovering between neglect and betrayal, the Sunni Arabs are relieved to have America back. A salutary side effect is the possibility of a detente with Israel.
That would suggest an outside-in approach to Arab-Israeli peace: a rapprochement between the Sunni state and Israel (the outside) would put pressure on the Palestinians to come to terms (the inside). It's a long-shot strategy but it's better than all the others. Unfortunately, Trump muddied the waters a bit in Israel by at times reverting to the opposite strategy - the inside-out - by saying that an Israeli-Palestinian deal would "begin a process of peace all throughout the Middle East."
That is well-worn nonsense.
Imagine if Israel disappeared tomorrow in an earthquake. Does that end the civil war in Syria? The instability in Iraq? The fighting in Yemen? Does it change anything of consequence amid the intra-Arab chaos? Of course not.
And apart from being delusional, the inside-out strategy is at present impossible. Palestinian leadership is both hopelessly weak and irredeemably rejectionist. Until it is prepared to accept the legitimacy of the Jewish state - which it has never done in the 100 years since the Balfour Declaration committed Britain to a Jewish homeland in Palestine - there will be no peace.
It may come one day. But not now. Which is why making the Israel-Palestinian issue central, rather than peripheral, to the epic Sunni-Shiite war shaking the Middle East today is a serious tactical mistake. It subjects any now-possible reconciliation between Israel and the Arab states to a Palestinian veto.
Ironically, the Iranian threat that grew under Obama offers a unique opportunity for U.S.-Arab and even Israeli-Arab cooperation. Over time, such cooperation could gradually acclimate Arab peoples to a nonbelligerent stance toward Israel. Which might in turn help persuade the Palestinians to make some concessions before their fellow Arabs finally tire of the Palestinians' century of rejectionism.
Perhaps that will require a peace process of sorts. No great harm, as long as we remember that any such Israeli-Palestinian talks are for show - until conditions are one day ripe for peace.
In the meantime, the real action is on the anti-Iranian and anti-terror fronts. Don't let Oslo-like mirages get in the way.
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