Just received the OK from Don Kole, to come tour his " Savannah African Art Museum," on Friday, March 1, at 1PM. If you are able to come please e mail me . I hope you will join us. Thanks, Me
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Hanson's book comes highly recommended: https://www.barnesandnoble.
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Sent to me by a friend and fellow memo reader. (See 1 below.)
And:
Bari's father is a friend and fellow memo reader and she is an up and coming op ed writer for The WSJ. (See 1a below.)
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Comey, the FBI and The Hillary e mails. The truth, which we all should have known, is now being revealed. (See 2 below.)
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Important meeting being hosted by Poland regarding The Middle East with major focus on Iran. (See 3 below.)
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I watched the anti-Semitic loose cannon today accuse my friend. (See 4 below.)
I sent him the following e mail: "Was unaware you had been given a position in the Administration and assume your friend John Bolton, was involved. (Actually it was Sec. Pompeo.) I caught the TV snippets of your testimony and your confrontation with the new anti-Semitic face of the Democrat Party.
I loved your rebuke and send you my heartiest wishes. It is evident Pelosi appointed her to this critical committee to appease the radicals in her party.
One day liberal Jews may wake up to what is happening and to which they helped create. Don't know whether you ever saw "The Ship of Fools" movie but it is as relevant today as when it was first released.
Stay well, stand your ground. "Don't tread on me." Me"
For those who read my memos they know, by now, I am both Jewish and an unabashed conservative. I am not a party person nor a Republican.
I am constantly being asked by my conservative friends how is it that Jews are so smart yet continue to embrace the policies of progressive radicals and remain slaves to the Democrat Party. I respond by offering them several reasons.
a) They remain beholden to their Eastern European ancestors who were socialists and came to America because it was the "promised land."
b)They have supplanted their religion with politics and mistakenly believe being liberal is the bible's message.
c) Cynically speaking liberal Jews are stiff necked and wear their political insanity as an emotional stubborn badge of honor.
d) It is understandable because of all the oppression Jews have suffered they choose to be protective of the "underdog." That said, this is more an emotional decision than a rationale one because The Democrat Party, historically speaking, has done more damage to and their policies have been more destructive of the "underdog."
e) Finally, I have no logical answer because it is an entirely emotional matter so you need to ask them. (See 4a below.)
And:
This from a very dear, dispirited friend and fellow memo reader:
For those who read my memos they know, by now, I am both Jewish and an unabashed conservative. I am not a party person nor a Republican.
I am constantly being asked by my conservative friends how is it that Jews are so smart yet continue to embrace the policies of progressive radicals and remain slaves to the Democrat Party. I respond by offering them several reasons.
a) They remain beholden to their Eastern European ancestors who were socialists and came to America because it was the "promised land."
b)They have supplanted their religion with politics and mistakenly believe being liberal is the bible's message.
c) Cynically speaking liberal Jews are stiff necked and wear their political insanity as an emotional stubborn badge of honor.
d) It is understandable because of all the oppression Jews have suffered they choose to be protective of the "underdog." That said, this is more an emotional decision than a rationale one because The Democrat Party, historically speaking, has done more damage to and their policies have been more destructive of the "underdog."
e) Finally, I have no logical answer because it is an entirely emotional matter so you need to ask them. (See 4a below.)
And:
This from a very dear, dispirited friend and fellow memo reader:
It is too late for Universities and Colleges.
The Arabs and Iranians started to penetrate campuses as students in the 1970s.
I observed it with my own eyes and warned about it but I did not have a public platform
Slowly they took over and now together with leftists IDIOTS (who have not read a book in the last 100 years) dictating America's future.
If America is to become a field of extremes, our Country is doomed, and the Russians and Chinese Intelligence Services see what is going on , and through Social Media they are capable of manipulating without shooting one bullet.
Trump is busy with being re-elected and tweets; he is not a Leader and does not know how to read the map.
As you see I am not optimistic, because if BETO is the future of our Country, we are rapidly approaching disaster. M--"
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This from a dear friend and fellow memo reader. More information about Stacey Abrams. (See 5 below.)
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More input about Iran's Missiles. (See 6 below.)
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The Justice Department seriously discussed ridding the nation of Trump. Did Rosenstein offer to participate and then lie to Trump.? (See 7 below.)
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As I suggested in a previous memo Trump would probably seek to recapture the $3 billion extended to California which has now decided not to build the "Green" railwaybecause it wastoo costly etc. (See 8 below.)
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Dick
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More input about Iran's Missiles. (See 6 below.)
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The Justice Department seriously discussed ridding the nation of Trump. Did Rosenstein offer to participate and then lie to Trump.? (See 7 below.)
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As I suggested in a previous memo Trump would probably seek to recapture the $3 billion extended to California which has now decided not to build the "Green" railwaybecause it wastoo costly etc. (See 8 below.)
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Dick
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1) "Here is a piece from the website of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) in support of the Muslim congresswoman and her vicious attack on Israel and the Jewish people. It is interesting to note their disdain of Democrats. And, of course they strongly condemn anyone who supported the pro-Israel anti/BDS legislation. This is the group behind Congresswoman Ortez and Bernie Sanders. The website is worth looking at and this group needs to be exposed for what it is. How many young people have they infected with their misguided political venom? https://www.dsausa.org/
L---"
DSA Stands with Congresswoman Omar
Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is under attack by both Donald Trump and neoliberal Democrats for a tweet highlighting the financial influence of AIPAC. In the wake of the Tree of Life massacre and the increasing influence of genuinely anti-Semitic conspiracy theories in the United States, DSA finds these attacks a cynical attempt to instill fear in Representative Omar and DSA member Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, two women of color in Congress breaking new ground by vocally supporting Palestinian liberation.
That Democrats who condemned Trump’s Travel Ban in prior years would lead this charge is the height of hypocrisy, demonstrates that they share Trump’s fear of a left wing, grassroots movement questioning the right of the few to rule the many, and illuminates their willingness to pit working people against each other in their quest to maintain their power. Further, it is complicit with the Republican strategy of dividing the Democratic voting bloc and deflecting attention from their anti-BDS bill, which would violate Americans’ civil rights.
We call on DSA members to contact their Congressional delegation and urge they publicly support Rep. Omar and unite against the anti-BDS bill
1a) Ilhan Omar and the Myth of Jewish Hypnosis
A conspiracy theory with ancient roots and a bloody history.
By Bari Weiss
Ms. Weiss is a writer and editor in the Opinion section.
In 2012, during one of Israel’s periodic wars with Hamas in Gaza, Ilhan Omar, at the time a 32-year-old nutrition coordinator with the Minnesota Department of Education, tweeted the following: “Israel has hypnotized the world, may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel. #Gaza #Palestine #Israel”
The sentence has dogged Ms. Omar, a refugee from Somalia who last year became one of the first Muslim women elected to Congress and was just seated on the influential House Foreign Affairs Committee. On Thursday, CNN’s Poppy Harlow pressed her again: “I wonder just what your message is this morning as the first on our Game Changer series to Jewish-Americans who find that deeply offensive.”
“That’s a really regrettable way of expressing that,” Ms. Omar said of the anchor’s question. “I don’t know how my comments would be offensive to Jewish Americans. My comments precisely are addressing what was happening during the Gaza War and I’m clearly speaking about the way the Israeli regime was conducting itself in that war.”
Perhaps Ms. Omar is sincerely befuddled and not simply deflecting. Because sentiments like these, once beyond the pale of our public discourse, are being heard with greater frequency and volume these days, allow me to explain why this Jewish American, and almost every Jewish American I know, found her words so offensive.
The conspiracy theory of the Jew as the hypnotic conspirator, the duplicitous manipulator, the sinister puppeteer is one with ancient roots and a bloody history. In the New Testament, it is a small band of Jews who get Rome — then the greatest power in the world — to do their bidding by killing Christ. Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, speaks to the Jews about Jesus in the book of John: “Take him yourselves and judge him according to your own law.” But the Jews punt the decision back to Pilate: “We are not permitted to put anyone to death.” And so Pilate does the deed on their behalf. In the book of Matthew, the implications of this manipulation are spelled out: “His blood is on us and our children,” the Jews say — a line that has been so historically destructive that even Mel Gibson cut it from his “Passion of the Christ.”
In the two millenniums that followed, even after 1965, when the Catholic Church formally disavowed the belief that the Jews killed Jesus, this was the template for the anti-Semitic conspiracy: the ability of this tiny minority to use its wiles and its proximity to power to con others into accomplishing their evil ends. It has led to countless expulsions, murders, massacres and pogroms throughout Europe and elsewhere.
The Jewish power to hypnotize the world, as Ms. Omar put it, is the plot of Jud Süss — the most successful Nazi film ever made. In the film, produced by Joseph Goebbels himself, Josef Süss Oppenheimer, an 18th-century religious Jew, emerges from the ghetto, makes himself over as an assimilated man, and rises to become the treasurer to the Duke of Württemberg. Silly duke: Allowing a single Jew into his city leads to death and destruction.
After seeing the final cut of the film, in August 1940, Goebbels wrote in his diary: “An anti-Semitic film of the kind we could only wish for. I am happy about it.” And no wonder: It premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where it received the Golden Lion Award. By some estimates, more than 20 million people saw it.
Since then, the myth of the wily Jewish manipulator of those in power continues to persist in various forms. During the Iraq War, it became common to blame Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Doug Feith — Bush administration figures who happened to be Jewish — for a military campaign that had been ordered by George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. In the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump blamed “globalists” with names like Lloyd Blankfein and George Soros for America’s economic woes.
But the biggest “Jew” today in the demonology of modern anti-Semitism is the Jewish state, Israel. While there are perfectly legitimate criticisms that one can make of Israel or the actions of its government — and I have never been shy about making them — those criticisms cross the line into anti-Semitism when they ascribe evil, almost supernatural powers to Israel in a manner that replicates classic anti-Semitic slanders.
During the weeklong November 2012 war, which began when Hamas fired roughly 100 rockets at civilian targets, Israel “hypnotized” nobody. It was subject to the usual barrage of intense criticism in the news media and at the United Nations, and from the leaders of other nations, not to mention protesters across the world. That Israel continues to retain support in the United States among mainstream Democrats and Republicans is because — contrary to Ms. Omar’s tweet — the Jewish state is not engaged in “evil doings,” but defending itself against the enemies pressing on all of its borders, including Hamas, which has genocide of the Jews, and a belief in Jewish manipulative power, at the heart of its ideology. The original Hamas charter from 1988, only recently revised, claimed that the Jews orchestrated the French and Russian revolutions and both world wars.
Those who call themselves anti-Zionists usually insist they are not anti-Semites. But I struggle to see what else to call an ideology that seeks to eradicate only one state in the world — the one that happens to be the Jewish one — while empathetically insisting on the rights of self-determination for every other minority. Israeli Jews, descended in equal parts from people displaced from Europe and the Islamic world, are barely 6.5 million of the world’s 7.7 billion people. What is it about them, exactly, that puts them beyond the pale?
During that interview with CNN, Ms. Omar also tried to defend another of her controversial tweets, this one from last Tuesday, suggesting that Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican, was being blackmailed. Many people read this as an insinuation that he is gay and closeted, and someone was threatening to out him. Her evidence? She had none. But it was in keeping with her predilection for making accusations based on nothing more than prejudiced stereotypes.
Democrats may want to believe that such conspiracy thinking is the domain of the Republican Party. But Ms. Omar’s comments are proof that no party has a monopoly on speciousness.
The particular challenge in the case of Ms. Omar is that she is exactly the kind of politician a vast majority of American Jews, who overwhelmingly vote Democratic and who have long aligned themselves with liberal causes, want to celebrate: Here is a refugee, a mother, a Muslim and a woman of color — the first woman of color to represent Minnesota in Congress. It’s no wonder she has already landed on the cover of Time magazine and in front of Annie Leibovitz’s camera. Who wouldn’t want to cheer her on?
Indeed, some Jews have insisted that we ought to hold back from criticizing people of color who have recently exposed their anti-Semitism (Tamika Mallory, Marc Lamont Hill) because, well, it’s just not a good look to be criticizing leaders of the black community right now.
This is an untenable position, especially in a moment when the F.B.I. is sounding the alarm about the spike in hate crimes against Jews. Ms. Omar now sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, where she’ll represent a growing intellectual climate that sees Jews as bearers both of monstrous moral guilt and of the secret power to conceal it. It may be more difficult to call out those who ought to be our friends and political allies, but alas for the Jews, not all anti-Semites carry tiki torches.
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2)
FBI scrambled to respond to Hillary Clinton lawyer amid Weiner laptop review, newly released emails show
By Gregg Re
FBI emails show agency officials scrambled to respond to Hillary Clinton legal team leading up to 2016 election
The email from Clinton's lawyer David Kendall to FBI General Counsel James Baker came after then-FBI Director James Comey reopened the investigation into whether classified information was mishandled by former of Secretary of State Clinton; chief intelligence correspondent Catherine Herridge reports
Newly released internal FBI emails showed the agency's highest-ranking officials scrambling to answer to Hillary Clinton's lawyer in the days prior to the 2016 presidential election, on the same day then-FBI Director James Comey sent a bombshell letter to Congress announcing a new review of hundreds of thousands of potentially classified emails found on former Rep. Anthony Weiner's laptop.
The trove of documents turned over by the FBI, in response to a lawsuit by the transparency group Judicial Watch, also included discussions by former FBI lawyer Lisa Page concerning a potential quid pro quo between the State Department and the FBI -- in which the FBI would agree to effectively hide the fact that a Clinton email was classified in exchange for more legal attache positions that would benefit the FBI abroad, and allow them to send more agents to countries where the FBI's access is ordinarily restricted.
The quid pro quo would have involved the FBI providing some other public reason for withholding the Clinton email from disclosure amid a Freedom of Information Act request, besides its classification level. There are no indications the proposed arrangement ever took place.
And, in the face of mounting criticism aimed at the FBI, the documents revealed that Comey quoted the 19th century poet Ralph Waldo Emerson by assuring his subordinates, "To be great is to be misunderstood."
The FBI did not respond to Fox News' request for comment on the released emails.
On Oct. 28, 2016, Comey upended the presidential campaign by informing Congress that the FBI would quickly review the Weiner laptop. The Justice Department's internal watchdog later faulted the FBI for failing to review the Weiner laptop through much of the fall of 2016, and suggested it was possible that now-fired FBI Agent Peter Strzok may have slow-walked the laptop analysis until other federal prosecutors pressured the FBI to review its contents.
On the afternoon of Oct. 28, Clinton lawyer David Kendall demanded answers from the FBI -- and the agency jumped into action, the emails showed.
Many of the emails found on the computer were between Clinton and her senior adviser Huma Abedin, Weiner's now-estranged wife. Despite claims by top FBI officials, including Strzok, several of those emails were determined to contain classified information.
"I received the email below from David Kendall and I called him back," then-FBI General Counsel James Baker wrote to the agency's top brass, including Comey, Page and Strzok, in an email. "Before doing so I alerted DOJ via email that I would do that."
Page and Strzok eventually were revealed to be having an extramarital affair, and Strzok was terminated after a slew of text messages surfaced in which he and Page derided Trump and his supporters using their government-issued phones. Republicans, citing some of those text messages, have accused Strzok and Page of orchestrating a coordinated leak strategy aimed at harming the president.
Although a portion of Kendall's email was redacted, Baker continued: "He said that our letter was 'tantalizingly ambiguous' and made statements that were 'inchoate and highly ominous' such that what we had done was worse than transparency because it allows people to make whatever they want out of the letter to the prejudice of Secretary Clinton. ... I told him that I could not respond to his requests at this time but that I would discuss it with others and get back to him.
"I suggest that we have some kind of follow up meeting or phone call with this group either this evening or over the weekend to address this and probably other issues/questions that come up in the next 24 hours," Baker concluded. "Sound reasonable?"
In a partially redacted response, Strzok agreed to spearhead a conference call among the FBI's top officials the next day.
On Nov. 6 -- just two days before Election Day -- Comey sent another letter to Congress stating that agents had concluded their review of "all of the communications" to or from Clinton while she was secretary of state that appeared on the laptop, and that the review did not change his assessment that Clinton should not be prosecuted.
In an email also sent Nov. 6 and unearthed by Judicial Watch, Strzok wrote to the FBI's leadership: "[Redacted], Jon and I completed our review of all of the potential HRC work emails on the [Anthony Weiner] laptop. We found no previously unknown, potentially classified emails on the media.”
Strzok added that a team was coming in to "triple-check" his methodology and conclusions.
However, at least 18 classified emails sent from Abedin's account were found by the FBI on the Weiner laptop. And, despite Strzok's apparent claim, FBI officials later concededthey had not manually screened all of the nearly 700,000 emails on the laptop, but instead used computer technology to prioritize which emails to screen as Election Day rapidly approached.
“It is big news that, just days before the presidential election, Hillary Clinton’s personal lawyer pressured the top lawyer for the FBI on the infamous Weiner laptop emails,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement. “These documents further underscore that the fix was in for Hillary Clinton. When will the Justice Department and FBI finally do an honest investigation of the Clinton email scandal?”
Separately, another email from Page, apparently sent in response to a Judicial Watch lawsuit, discussed an apparent attempt by the State Department to pressure the FBI to downgrade the classification level of a Clinton email.
"Jason Herring will be providing you with three 302s [witness reports] of current and former FBI employees who were interviewed during the course of the Clinton investigation," Page wrote. "These 302s are scheduled to be released to Congress in an unredacted form at the end of the week, and produced (with redactions) pursuant to FOIA at the beginning of next week.
Page continued: "As you will see, they describe a discussion about potential quid pro quo arrangement between then-DAD in IOD [deputy assistant director in International Operations Division] and an Undersecretary at the State Department whereby IOD would get more LEGAT [legal attaché] positions if the FBI could change the basis of the FOIA withhold re a Clinton email from classified to something else."
Fox News has previously reported, citing FBI documents, that a senior State Department official proposed a quid pro quo to convince the FBI to strip the classification on an email from Clinton’s server – and repeatedly tried to “influence” the bureau’s decision when his offer was denied, even taking his plea up the chain of command.
In a statement at the time, the FBI acknowleged that an agency official had been in touch with the State Department about overseas positions, but denied that the conversation was tied to the classification of a Clinton email.
"Prior to the initiation of the FBI’s investigation of former Secretary Clinton’s personal email server, the FBI was asked to review and make classification determinations on FBI emails and information which were being produced by the State Department pursuant to FOIA [a Freedom of Information Act request]. The FBI determined that one such email was classified at the Secret level. A senior State Department official requested the FBI re-review that email to determine whether it was in fact classified or whether it might be protected from release under a different FOIA exemption," the FBI said.
The statement continued: "A now-retired FBI official, who was not part of the subsequent Clinton investigation, told the State Department official that they would look into the matter. Having been previously unsuccessful in attempts to speak with the senior State official, during the same conversation, the FBI official asked the State Department official if they would address a pending, unaddressed FBI request for space for additional FBI employees assigned abroad.
"Following the call, the FBI official consulted with a senior FBI executive responsible for determining the classification of the material and determined the email was in fact appropriately classified at the Secret level," the FBI's statement continued. "The FBI official subsequently told the senior State official that the email was appropriately classified at the Secret level and that the FBI would not change the classification of the email. The classification of the email was not changed, and it remains classified today. Although there was never a quid pro quo, these allegations were nonetheless referred to the appropriate officials for review."
Through it all, the trove of documents suggested that top to bottom, FBI brass were convinced they were acting appropriately.
In response to a press release from Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley that criticized the FBI for failing to provide unclassified information on its Clinton probe in a timely and thorough manner to Congress, Comey quoted Emerson's 1841 essay "Self Reliance."
"Outstanding. ... I should have added that I'm proud of the way we have handled this release [of unclassified information]," Comey wrote to his subordinates, including Strzok, on Sept. 2, 2016. "Thanks for the work on it. Just another reminder that Emerson was right when he said, 'To be great is to be misunderstood.' Have a great and quiet weekend."
Page forwarded the email along to her colleagues, including Strzok, and added a smiley face.
Trump fired Comey in 2017, leading to Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation after Comey leaked a series of memos he recorded while speaking with Trump privately.
Comey acknowledged in closed-door testimony in December that as of July 2016, investigators "didn't know whether we had anything" implicating Trump in improper Russia collusion, and that "in fact, when I was fired as director [in May 2017], I still didn't know whether there was anything to it."
Fox News' Catherine Herridge and Jake Gibson contributed to this report.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++3)Poland Hosts Middle East Summit Spearheaded By United States
A major U.S.-organized Middle East conference is under way in Poland, a NATO member that has tightened cooperation with Washington as a counterweight to Russia's influence in Central and Eastern Europe.
Iran appears to be the main focus of the February 13-14 conference in Warsaw, and Tehran has labeled the gathering as a hostile act and warned of unspecified consequences for Poland.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Polish Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz are the official hosts of the two-day conference, where senior officials from 60 nations are expected to attend.
Among high-ranking attendees are U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Polish Foreign Minister Jacek Czaputowicz are the official hosts of the two-day conference, where senior officials from 60 nations are expected to attend.
Among high-ranking attendees are U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
U.S. sources told RFE/RL that more than 20 other countries from around the world were due to participate at a ministerial level, including Britain, Bulgaria, Italy, Georgia, Romania, Ukraine, South Korea, Brazil, and a number of Arab states such as Morocco and Saudi Arabia.
"We think we will make real progress," Pompeo told reporters in Slovakia, where he visited en route to Poland. "We think there'll be dozens of nations there seriously working towards a better, more stable Middle East, and I'm hoping by the time we leave on Thursday we'll have achieved that."
A U.S. administration official said late last month that the conference was "not an anti-Iran meeting or a coalition-building exercise," but that Pompeo will discuss what the official called "Iran's destructive policies in the region."
The conference is controversial. The European Union's foreign-policy chief, Federica Mogherini, and multiple Western European foreign ministers are staying away, as is Russia.
Moscow views with concern "U.S. attempts to impose unilateral geopolitical interests through initiatives presented as opinions of the entire international community," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in comments carried by the Interfax news agency.
Addressing a press conference in Tehran, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said that he believed the Warsaw conference was "dead on arrival."
"It is another attempt by the United States to pursue an obsession with Iran that is not well-founded," he also said.
"It is another attempt by the United States to pursue an obsession with Iran that is not well-founded," he also said.
Guillaume Xavier-Bender, a fellow at the German Marshall Fund in Brussels, told RFE/RL that the possible outcome of the event was unclear.
"You can’t have a discussion about peace in the Middle East without Russia, Iran, and everyone involved there," Xavier-Bender said.
"The outcome of this conference is a mystery for everyone at this stage, because it won’t be a deal on how to move forward with Iran. There won’t be a declaration on how the U.S. and its partners in Europe can actually move forward with the Middle East peace process" between Israel and the Palestinians, he added.
"You can’t have a discussion about peace in the Middle East without Russia, Iran, and everyone involved there," Xavier-Bender said.
"The outcome of this conference is a mystery for everyone at this stage, because it won’t be a deal on how to move forward with Iran. There won’t be a declaration on how the U.S. and its partners in Europe can actually move forward with the Middle East peace process" between Israel and the Palestinians, he added.
The gathering also comes as Poland is pushing for the United States to open a permanent U.S. base on its territory. The U.S. Defense Department is expected to reveal its assessment of the proposal next month.
Washington and its EU allies are also at odds over the fate of the 2015 nuclear treaty that saw Iran curtailing its nuclear ambitions in exchange for Western countries lifting crippling economic sanctions.
President Donald Trump's administration has moved to undo the deal and reimpose sanctions. EU nations, however, criticized the move and sought to keep aspects of the deal in place.
In a news conference in Warsaw on February 12, Czaputowicz said transatlantic cooperation was necessary to resolve conflicts in the Middle East.
"The European Union alone does not, in my opinion, carry sufficient political weight to try to really influence the situation in the Middle East," he told reporters.
Washington and its EU allies are also at odds over the fate of the 2015 nuclear treaty that saw Iran curtailing its nuclear ambitions in exchange for Western countries lifting crippling economic sanctions.
President Donald Trump's administration has moved to undo the deal and reimpose sanctions. EU nations, however, criticized the move and sought to keep aspects of the deal in place.
In a news conference in Warsaw on February 12, Czaputowicz said transatlantic cooperation was necessary to resolve conflicts in the Middle East.
"The European Union alone does not, in my opinion, carry sufficient political weight to try to really influence the situation in the Middle East," he told reporters.
In remarks just ahead of the Warsaw conference, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that any negotiations with the United States "will bring nothing but material and spiritual harm."
He also said that Tehran must be careful to limit any dealings with some "untrustworthy" European states, adding that the country "must not retreat a single step from national and revolutionary values."
He also said that Tehran must be careful to limit any dealings with some "untrustworthy" European states, adding that the country "must not retreat a single step from national and revolutionary values."
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4)
Radical Democrat’s Shocking Questions to Ambassador
The radical congresswoman Ilhan Omar, fresh off another anti-Semitic controversy, has decided to accuse a Trump official of “genocide” for his work during the Reagan administration. Fox News reports:
The Trump administration’s new special envoy for Venezuela, Elliott Abrams, clashed Wednesday with freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., during a House hearing on the Caracas crisis after the congresswoman tried to turn focus to Abrams’ history in Latin America while asking him point-blank whether he’d support “genocide” if it served American interests.Abrams fired back, calling the line of questioning “ridiculous” and refusing to respond to the personal “attack.”The questioning was the latest moment in the spotlight for Omar, who earlier this week apologized for tweets considered anti-Semitic — and who previously criticized what she described as a “US backed coup” in Venezuela, though many countries beyond the U.S. have recognized Juan Guaido, the opposition head of the National Assembly, as the interim president over Nicolás Maduro.On Wednesday, Omar began her questioning of Abrams with his connection to the Iran-Contra scandal during the Reagan administration, U.S. support of the right-wing government of José Napoleón Duarte during the Salvadoran Civil War and Washington’s broader involvement in Latin America’s civil conflicts during the 1970s and 1980s.
Omar’s interest are not America’s interest, she would rather conspire with communists and Islamists than promote freedom and democracy in the world.
4a) Democrats have abandoned Israel, Jews should abandon Democratic Party
By Andrew Stein
As a lifelong Democrat, I’ve always been proud of my party’s opposition to anti-Semitism and all other forms of religious and ethnic hatred, and of our support for the Jewish state of Israel – the only true democracy in the Middle East and a staunch U.S. ally.
Unfortunately, three radical Democrats who joined the U.S. House of Representatives in January have rejected this Democratic tradition and have instead embraced the evil of anti-Semitism and demonized Israel by parroting the lies of Israel’s enemies. The three are Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.
I am beyond concerned that the party I belong to is not just devolving, but unrecognizable in the face of these freshman representatives. The three have demonstrated repeatedly their hatred of Israel in an increasingly disturbing pattern of anti-Semitism.
Apologies are no longer enough. That is why I am calling on my fellow Jews to join me in pulling our support from the Democratic Party.
Today President Trump and Republicans have become the true friends of Israel and the Jewish people. By moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to its eternal capital of Jerusalem and supporting Israel’s legitimate security needs against Palestinian terrorism, the president has embraced values that were once embraced by the Democratic Party.
And President Trump, to his credit, called Tuesday for Rep. Omar to resign over her anti-Israel comments. “Anti-Semitism has no place in the United States Congress,” he told reporters. He is absolutely right. But unfortunately, there’s no chance Omar will take his advice and quit Congress.
Today President Trump and Republicans have become the true friends of Israel and the Jewish people.
Democrats have long been the party favored by Jewish voters. Records going back to 1924 shows that Democratic presidential candidates always captured the largest share of the Jewish vote, sometimes by overwhelming margins. And Democratic candidates for the House and Senate have usually drawn the most support from Jews as well.
According to estimates reported by the Jewish Virtual Library, Hillary Clinton won 71 percent of the Jewish vote in her losing race against Donald Trump, Barack Obama won 78 percent and 69 percent of the Jewish vote in his two presidential races, and John Kerry won 76 percent of the Jewish vote in the 2004 presidential race. Presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson each won 90 percent of the Jewish vote.
And Jews have always played a disproportionate role as fundraisers and campaign volunteers supporting the Democratic Party and Democratic candidates.
But now the Democratic Party is no longer in full support of the Jewish state, pushed by the rising radical fringe that is more supportive of Palestinian terrorists who murder innocent Jewish civilians than it is of Jewish people who have created a democracy with legal protections for all in their ancient homeland.
As a Democrat, nothing concerns me more than witnessing a cornerstone of our party platform get vanquished by the loudest, most extreme and often most hostile members of a bifurcated party.
I would say the same thing if the Democratic Party embraced hatred of African-Americans, Muslims, gay Americans or another minority group. Anti-Semitism should be no more acceptable than these other forms of prejudice – not just for Jewish Americans, but for all Americans.
The Democrats may have won back the House in November, but the party leaders are having anything but an easy time consolidating their new members and are struggling to reassert broad support for fundamentally Democratic issues like backing Israel.
Rep. Omar tweeted last May that she wanted to “draw attention to the apartheid Israeli regime.” This abhorrent tweet was not enough to derail her campaign, and now she has continued her dangerous anti-Semitic rhetoric.
In the past week, Omar sent a barrage of tweets that contained longstanding anti-Semitic tropes and embraced vile historical prejudices against Jewish people.
Omar’s false claims of Jews buying off politicians, and her incorrect and uneducated statement about the purpose of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), were rooted in anti-Semitism. Her weak “apology” made under pressure from leading Democrats was short of what was required and has actually made things worse.
Simply put, Ilhan Omar did not really apologize.
After saying she was sorry, Omar wrote: “At the same time, I reaffirm the problematic role of lobbyists in our politics, whether it be AIPAC, the NRA, or the fossil fuel industry.” The congresswoman equivocated and failed to accept full responsibility for her actions.
It’s true that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., released a nicely worded statement calling on Omar to apologize, denouncing anti-Semitism, and claiming support of Israel. But these words from the speaker are no longer enough.
It’s clear that Pelosi is having an extraordinarily difficult time maintaining control of her raucous freshmen Democrats, some of whom are embracing extremist positions once considered on the political fringe.
Rep. Ocasio-Cortez has become known for her aggressive anti-Israel stances in her brief time as a public figure, including her false accusation that Israel committed a "massacre" last summer as it battled Hamas-led terrorist infiltration attempts on its border with Gaza.
Ocasio-Cortez failed to condemn Omar’s anti-Semitic remarks and only offered meager support of Omar’s insincere apology.
Beyond public statements, newly elected Democrats are even taking historically confounding positions on Israel.
Rep. Tlaib is now just the second U.S. lawmaker – after Rep. Omar – in history to support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which seeks to isolate Israel from the world and inflect maximum damage to the economy of the Jewish state.
Tlaib recently said in an interview that she would “absolutely” cut military aid to Israel, stating that “I will be using my position in Congress so that no country, not one, should be able to get aid from the U.S. when they still promote that kind of injustice.”
These public sentiments are the antithesis of what the Democratic Party has supported for many decades and erode the credibility of Democratic platforms going back to Israel winning independence from Britain.
In 1948, President Harry Truman fought against his State Department to recognize Israel on the day it was proclaimed a state.
President John F. Kennedy increased arms sales to Israel, even if when he had to override State Department policies. Even recently, in unprecedented and polarized times, both sides of the aisle have been able to compromise on Israel policy.
What happened to that Democratic Party?
There was once a clear connection between support for Israel and the Democratic Party’s devotion in responding to consistent and widespread discrimination in the forms of anti-Semitism and racism.
Now, disturbingly, that is not the case. The loudest and most leftist voices in the party have hijacked the Democrats’ messaging and muddied the waters on one of the core components of Democratic policy.
As much as it pains me to say this, Democratic abandonment of Israel should be answered by Jewish abandonment of the Democratic Party. This is the best way for us and our friends to take a stand against anti-Semitism, for Israel and for the Jewish people.
Andrew Stein is a former New York City Council president, former Manhattan borough president and former New York state Assembly member.
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5) Stacey Abrams, poster girl for Democrats' version of fiscal responsibility
By Russ Vaughn
Last week I wrote here questioning the Democrat leadership's political wisdom in picking Stacey Abrams, their recently defeated Georgia gubernatorial candidate, to deliver the party's rebuttal speech to Donald Trump's State of the Union address. I pointed out that Abrams is no poster child for responsible behavior, especially when it comes to her finances — she's a tax attorney turned tax evader who has run up huge balances on her credit cards and may be a deadbeat on her college student loans.
Today I discovered, thanks to an article by Jason Hopkins, writing at the Daily Caller, that Ms. Abrams has other financial issues that I failed to discover. He writes:
Third Sector Development, a nonprofit started by Abrams that focuses on registering black voters, was hit with three separate tax liens in the past year for failing to pay state unemployment tax, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reportedTuesday. The three tax liens, filed by Georgia state regulators, total roughly $3,500. This isn't the first time state regulators have targeted Abrams' organization. The Georgia Department of Labor issued four tax liens worth $13,000 against Third Sector Development between 2014 and 2016, also citing unpaid employment contributions.
What is even more interesting was that Abrams had been generously compensated by Third Sector Development, which she founded and headed, as well as another get-out-the-minority-vote non-profit, also an Abrams creation, the Voter Access Institute, to the tune of almost a half-million dollars in a three-year period. That hefty salary was funded out of $12.5 million in donations from sources Abrams refuses to reveal, a quite unusual stance for non-profits to take when their operations are aboveboard.
According to a September 2018 Daily Caller report by Hopkins, Abrams's highly paid efforts to get out the minority were less than a rousing success:
The non-profits accomplished little in reaching their implicit goals, despite the large amount of money involved. The Georgia Democratic Party only received 3 percent more votes in the 2014 gubernatorial election than in 2010. Black voter turnout actually declined by more than two percentage points.
Apparently Ms. Abrams couldn't manage her non-profit agencies any more successfully than her personal life. During her 2018 run for governor, the true extent of her debt was revealed, and was again reported on by Hopkins at Daily Caller in this July 2018 piece:
Abrams owes back taxes amounting to $40,201 for 2015 and $13,851 for 2016. She owes $96,512 in student loan debt and another $77,522 in credit card debt spread over nine different accounts. In total, she is about $228,000 in the red. This number is actually higher if you count her $178,500 in real estate debt and her $4,434 car loan.
With arrogance that only a liberal Democrat can muster, Abrams actually attempted to squeeze lemonade from this bag of rotting lemons, trying to convince voters that having made such a mess of her own personal finances made her better qualified to manage the fiscal affairs of Georgia because so many voters struggle with debt. But as Hopkins pointed out, assuredly not on the scale of Stacey Abrams, whose student loan debt is three times the national average while her credit card debt is five times that average. He also noted that Abrams has managed to accrue all these negative balances in spite of being well compensated for many years, having stepped into a $95,000 job as soon as she graduated from law school.
Stacey Abrams can check all the boxes to qualify for Democrat leadership: she's a dishonest black female graduate of an Ivy League law school, a tax-evading advocate of big government taxing and spending, thoroughly grounded in the concept of personal deficit spending. Abrams is a proven loser in multiple ways who still has the chutzpah to stand before huge audiences and spout silly Democrat talking points with a reasonably straight, if somewhat comical, face — in other words, the perfect Democrat to deliver the SOTU rebuttal.
I was wrong last week. In picking Abrams Democrat leaders knew exactly what they were doing — for once.
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6) White House accelerates secret program to sabotage Iran missiles - report
By TZVI JOFFRE
The White House has pushed forward a secret program to sabotage Iranian missiles and rockets as part of a campaign to undercut Iran's military, according to administration officials in a report by the New York Times.
No one can precisely measure the success of the program, which has never been publicly acknowledged, but the recent failure of Iran's attempted satellite launches raised some suspicion.
The two failures are part of a pattern over the past 11 years. Sixty-seven percent of Iranian orbital launches have failed during this time, suspiciously high compared to the worldwide 5 percent failure rate for similar launches.
Iran insists that it will continue trying, with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani vowing to "continue our path and our military power."
The Trump administration claims that Iran's space program is a cover for its ballistic missile development program. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed that Iran's satellite launchers have technologies "virtually identical and interchangeable with those used in ballistic missiles."
The Times found more than half-dozen current and former government officials who have worked on the American sabotage program over the past dozen years. They spoke on condition of anonymity since they're not authorized to publicly discuss the secret program.
The officials said that the program was created under former president George W. Bush, which attempted to slip faulty parts and materials into Iran's aerospace supply chains. The program continued early in the Obama administration, but eased by 2017 when Mr. Pompeo took over as the director of the CIA.
The head of Iran's missile program, Brig. Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, accused American and allied intelligence agencies of targeting Iran's missile complex with campaigns of "infiltration and sabotage."
"They want to repeat their nuclear sabotage in the missile area," Hajizadeh told Iranian state television in 2016, promising that the program would never stop.
The CIA declined to comment on the sabotage program. Government officials requested that the New York Times withhold some of the details they had gathered, including the identities of specific suppliers to the Iranian program, since the sabotage program is ongoing.
Aerospace experts warned that Iran's missile troubles could also just be the result of normal malfunctions. The recent rise in failures, though, suggests that the effort to sabotage Iran's space launches and missile tests may have been intensified.
Last month, President Trump noted at the Pentagon that if the attempted space launch had succeeded, it would have given Tehran "critical information" it could use "to pursue intercontinental ballistic missile capability, and a capability, actually, of reaching the United States."
Under President Bush, two covert programs against Iran were established: one focused on nuclear materials, the other on missiles.
The CIA and NSA searched for ways to subvert factories, supply chains, and launchers, according to the Times.
American military officials urged Congress to put more money into "left of launch" programs, meaning programs which rely on sabotaging launchers before they are fired.
With Iran that meant finding the network of supplies and subcontractors Iran uses, which became easier once United Nations sanctions forced Iran to rely on black markets and middlemen. The CIA found these relatively easy to penetrate, according to former officials who spoke to the Times.
Several participants said that the key insight was to sabotage test launches of new missiles, causing Iran to hesitate to embark on mass production.
Under the Obama administration, the program started targeting space launchers as well. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton believed that the development and testing of one class of launcher could advance the other.
Some rocket specialists claimed that the overlap between the two was insignificant. Iran claimed that the space launches had no military value.
When Mr. Pompeo arrived at the CIA, Iranian nuclear activity was no longer the focus. Iran had instead ramped up its missile and space program. Mr. Pompeo shifted focus to the supply chain for rockets and missiles, an area he knew well.
Seeding foreign aerospace programs with faulty parts and materials can take years, and it's almost impossible to know if the faulty technology is ever installed in particular launchers.
There was one occasion when the USA had a chance to check their success, according to the Times. A short-range Iranian-made missile landed in Baghdad's Green Zone, but failed to detonate. One of the American-sabotaged parts was found inside, according to a former senior official.
Iran's size and isolation makes it difficult to monitor the success rate of the sabotage program, but the number of failures suggests that the program is effective.
According to the Times, Iran succeeded in putting a small satellite into orbit in 2009, 2011, 2012, and 2015. These were the only four clear successes out of a dozen attempts, according to Jonathan McDowell, a Harvard Astronomer who specializes in orbital monitoring.
On one occasion, an Iranian rocket exploded on the launchpad, leaving blast scars, burned wreckage, and a blackened rocket transporter which could be seen by satellites overhead. Iranian officials did not comment on the event.
Iran has so far failed to successfully test the newest generation of its satellite launcher, Phoenix, according to the Times. In the test launch on Jan. 15, Iranian officials claimed it suffered a third-stage failure.
Some experts attribute Iran's poor performance to other factors, such as trade embargoes which block access to the best technology.
A similar sabotage program was directed at North Korea, which suffered through a series of missile failures in 2016.
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7)
Disgraced FBI agent McCabe: Serious discussions held at Justice Department about invoking 25th Amendment to remove Trump in wake of Comey firing
By Terrence Dopp Bloomberg News
Former Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe started the obstruction of justice and counterintelligence investigations involving President Donald Trump and his ties to Russia because he wanted to ensure the probe was on “solid ground” in case he was fired.
McCabe said in an interview to air on CBS’s “60 Minutes” Sunday that he took the action after speaking to Trump hours after the president fired his boss, former FBI Director James Comey, in May of 2017.
“I was speaking to the man who had just run for the presidency and won the election for the presidency and who might have done so with the aid of the government of Russia, our most formidable adversary on the world stage,” McCabe said in an excerpt aired on CBS on Thursday. “And that was something that troubled me greatly.”
McCabe was fired last March just 26 hours before he was scheduled to retire without a full pension. Then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired McCabe over allegations he had violated the FBI and Justice Department’s policy related to disclosures to the media. He’s responded that he was the target of a political attack by Trump.
“I was very concerned that I was able to put the Russia case on absolutely solid ground and in an indelible fashion” McCabe said in the interview. “That were I removed quickly or reassigned or fired, that the case could not be closed or vanish in the night without a trace.”
CBS’s Scott Pelley said McCabe discussed DOJ meetings shortly after Comey’s firing in which Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein discussed possibly wearing a wire when talking to Trump about whether the vice president and Cabinet could invoke the Constitution to remove the president from office. The Justice Department in a previous statement claimed that Rosenstein was being sarcastic, but McCabe said he repeated it more than once and the suggestion was taken seriously.
“There were meetings at the Justice Department at which it was discussed whether the vice president and a majority of the Cabinet could be brought together to remove the president of the United States under the 25th Amendment,” Pelley said on the show. “These were the eight days from Comey’s firing to the point that Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel. And the highest levels of American law enforcement were trying to figure out what do with the president.”
McCabe has written a book, called “The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump,” in which he writes about the 2016 election and its aftermath, in addition to his career at the FBI.
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From California
By TTN Staff
California recently announced that they are canceling a massively expensive high-speed rail project and now President Trump wants a refund.
According to The Daily Wire:
From California
By TTN Staff
California recently announced that they are canceling a massively expensive high-speed rail project and now President Trump wants a refund.
According to The Daily Wire:
One of the much-critiqued goals of the since-disappeared FAQ Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sent to major news outlets and posted on her "Green New Deal" information page was the creation of so many high-speed trains across the country that "air travel stops becoming necessary" (don't spend too much time parsing the grammar of that line). Right on cue, newly elected California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced in his State of the State address this week that he was ... canceling most of the high-speed rail project that has already taken over a decade and is now projected to cost taxpayers a staggering $77 billion because, well, it's just not realistic.
So now President Trump wants federal taxpayers' money back.
"California has been forced to cancel the massive bullet train project after having spent and wasted many billions of dollars," Trump tweeted Thursday morning. "They owe the Federal Government three and a half billion dollars. We want that money back now. Whole project is a 'green' disaster!"
Newsom set himself up to be called out by the president. In his State of the State Tuesday, the liberal governor specifically mentioned trying to figure out a way not to pay federal taxpayers back.
Newsom recently pulled troops from the border to spite President Trump, this may be the president's way of getting back at the governor.
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