Photo of Black Lives Matter convoy headed down to Texas to save black lives and rebuild black communities.
/Why the Chinese kick our ass in Mathematics & Physics.
Class Photo:
Class Photo:
Shanghai University versus
University of Colorado
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I have not listened to any news for 5 days.
Nothing has really changed.
N Korea will continue to rub our nose in it. Iran will learn they can as well. (See 1, 1a, 1b and 1c below.)
When Bush 41 decided Sadaam's occupation of Kuwait should not be allowed to stand, the mass media dolts were alarmed and fearful. They spread black crape. Everyone was wringing their hands and most were opposed and thought Bush should negotiate. We did not know whether Sadaam had gas or other WMD. We know N Korea does. Unless we are willing to attack this nation with devastating force (that means nuclear) we lose.
Why? Because, war with N Korea is inevitable since they will never succumb to threats they know we will not enact.The biggest danger we face is will Trump be paralyzed by the mess he inherited?
Trump also seems prepared to let China off the hook with half-measures.
What we are witnessing, and have yet to learn from, is when you constantly kick the ball down the field you eventually run out of turf.
Meanwhile, the national mass media is accusing Trump of breaking up illegal immigrant families because he is giving Congress 6 months to do something meaningful when it comes to DACA and Immigration in general. Obama acted outside the constitution stating Congress did not send him a bill and now attacks Trump for embracing the proper course of action.
(Former President Obama has issued a statement condemning President Trump for a decision to end the DACA policy, Obama’s executive order offering amnesty to illegals brought to the U.S. as children. Trump has delayed implementation for six months, placing the onus on a gridlocked Congress to address the issue. )
Congress is back and will probably fail to do much when it comes to health care, tax reform and stitching a budget together. They always fall short because they do not have the stomach to be bold. and lack the political will.
They will probably keep the government open fearing the consequences.
Meanwhile Trump continues to fund one of the U.N's worst agency. We ought to de-fund the entire organization. Spending tax payer's money is so easy. (See 1d below.)
Hillary is still bitching about her loss and Comey is back in the news again. Like Hillary, he just will not go away. (See 1e below.)
Finally, America is absorbed in fighting statues when, in fact, the possibility of a nuclear war is looming. How stupid can we be? (See 1f and 1g below.)
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Will the world allow Israel to win a war if they are forced to fight again? (See 1h below.)
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Why is health insurance so complicated: Left click here to watch this video.
and
If you hate poverty, you should love Capitalism: Left click here to watch this video.
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Dick
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1)
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1c) Options for Removing Kim Jong Un
The U.S. has never used all of its tools to topple the North Korean regime.
The Editorial Board
North Korea conducted its sixth nuclear test on Sunday, detonating a bomb 10 times more powerful than its last test a year ago. The South Korean government says Pyongyang is also preparing its third test of an intercontinental ballistic missile. The tests underscore how much U.S. intelligence has underestimated the North’s nuclear progress, which will soon make American cities vulnerable to attack.
The standard refrain of foreign-policy experts is that the world has no good options other than war or acquiescence. The policy default, repeated by the Trump Administration, is pleading with China to coerce North Korea into giving up its nuclear program, despite evidence that Chinese leaders don’t want to help and Kim Jong Un may not take their orders.
A military strike has to be a last resort because it might lead to a larger war that could kill tens of thousands in South Korea and Japan, including U.S. troops. But the U.S. does have other options. Washington can put severe pressure on North Korea and the Kim Jong Un regime. To understand how, take the standard tool kit of statecraft, sometimes summed up by the acronym Dimefil: diplomatic, information, military, economic, finance, intelligence and law enforcement.
• Diplomatic. The U.S. can put far more pressure on countries to cut or restrict ties with North Korea. While the regime preaches an ideology of self-reliance, it needs international ties to raise hard currency and source the raw materials and technology it needs.
• Information. Defectors are already sending information into the North about the outside world. The U.S. and its allies can expand that effort and encourage elites to defect or stage an internal coup.
• Military. Building up missile defenses and conventional forces will diminish the North’s ability to use nuclear blackmail. Deploying tactical nuclear weapons to South Korea would make the threat to retaliate against a nuclear strike more credible.
• Economic. Donald Trump tweeted Sunday that the U.S. is considering sanctions against anyone who does business with North Korea. The regime uses networks of Chinese traders to evade sanctions and also to conduct more legitimate business. Applying sanctions to these networks could curtail the North’s trade.
• Financial. The U.S. can cut off North Korea’s access to financial intermediaries that conduct transactions in U.S. dollars. In June the U.S. applied secondary sanctions to the Bank of Dandong, a Chinese bank. Larger Chinese banks should suffer a similar fate if they continue to facilitate trade with North Korea.
• Intelligence. The Proliferation Security Initiative begun under the George W. Bush Administration tracked and intercepted the North’s weapons exports. The program could be enlarged to block other exports forbidden under United Nations sanctions.
• Legal. A U.N. Commission of Inquiry in 2014 reported evidence of human-rights abuses in the North’s huge network of prison camps. China and Russia have shielded the Kim regime from prosecution at the International Criminal Court for these crimes against humanity. Pressure for accountability will further isolate the North and encourage elites to defect.
The North is especially vulnerable to pressure this year because a severe drought from April to June reduced the early grain harvest by 30%. If the main harvest is also affected, Pyongyang may need to import more food while sanctions restrict its ability to earn foreign currency. Even in a normal year, the North needs to import about 500,000 tons of grain.
While the regime survived a severe famine in the 1990s, today the political consequences of a failed harvest would be severe. More North Korean awareness of the outside world has fostered cynicism about the government, and about half the population is engaged in some form of private enterprise. Traders openly flout the laws because they bribe corrupt officials. The army was once the most desirable career path; now soldiers are underpaid and underfed. North Koreans will not simply accept starvation as they did two decades ago.
Withholding food aid to bring down a government would normally be unethical, but North Korea is an exceptional case. Past aid proved to be a mistake as it perpetuated one of the most evil regimes in history. The U.N. says some 40% of the population is undernourished, even as the Kims continue to spend huge sums on weapons. Ending the North Korean state as quickly as possible is the most humane course.
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Ideally regime change would mean Korean reunification under the Seoul government. But Beijing is likely to resist that outcome, preferring to keep the North as a buffer state under its control. That would still offer North Koreans a better life and end the nuclear threat. We should send the message to coup plotters that as long as they give up their nuclear weapons and missiles they would not be punished.
The Trump Administration rightly refuses to accept North Korea as a nuclear power, but the U.S. and its allies have never used all of their options short of a military strike to stop that from happening. The U.S. could still bring down Kim Jong Un before he becomes a global nuclear menace, but time is running out.
1d) KLEIN: Six Reasons Trump Should Stop Funding the UN's Palestinian 'Refugee' Agency
TEL AVIV — According to reports, the Trump administration has pledged to continue providing its annual contribution of more than $300 million per year to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which ministers to so-called Palestinian refugees.
“America has long been committed to funding UNRWA’s important mission and that will continue,” one official at the U.S. mission to the United Nations told Foreign Policymagazine. The U.S. is UNRWA’s single largest donor.
Below, in no particular order, are six reasons the U.S. should stop funding UNRWA and instead take the approach recommended by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has called for dismantling the UN’s Palestinian “refugee” agency.
1 – The Palestinians and Arab nations have distorted the history of “Palestinian refugees” to manipulate the international community.
The Palestinian narrative is simple: When the Jewish state was founded, Israel largely kicked the Palestinians (who, by the way, did not exist at the time under the name “Palestinians,” but were local Arab inhabitants who lived in a region also inhabited by Jews) out of their homes, thus causing hundreds of thousands to become refugees. The Palestinians refer to Israel’s creation as the “Nakba,” or catastrophe when Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled from their homes.
The reality is quite different. After Israel was founded in 1948, a military coalition of Arab nations immediately formed to wage war on the new Jewish state. Some local Arabs, who did not yet go by the name of Palestinians, left the area in anticipation of the war, others directly responded to the dictates of Arab states to stay out of the way so that invading armies could conquer Israel, and still others fled once the war started so that they were not caught up in the fighting.
Arab states waged the war after refusing to accept UN Resolution 181, which called for the partition of the British Mandate of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states. The Jews immediately accepted the resolution, but the Arabs forthrightly rejected the plan, launching a war to destroy the Jewish state.
It should be noted that Israel’s Declaration of Independence called on the local Arab population to remain in place:
In the midst of wanton aggression, we yet call upon the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve the ways of peace and play their part in the development of the State, on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its bodies and institutions.
It is true that some Jewish groups, including the Haganah, encouraged local Arabs to flee, however those few documented cases are the exception and not the rule.
The Economist, for example, reported that the Arab residents of Haifa left their homes in large part because of Arab army warnings:
Of the 62,000 Arabs who formerly lived in Haifa not more than 5,000 or 6,000 remained. Various factors influenced their decision to seek safety in flight. There is but little doubt that the most potent of the factors were the announcements made over the air by the Higher Arab Executive, urging the Arabs to quit. … It was clearly intimated that those Arabs who remained in Haifa and accepted Jewish protection would be regarded as renegades.
“Arab officers ordered the complete evacuation of specific villages in certain areas, lest their inhabitants ‘treacherously’ acquiesce in Israeli rule or hamper Arab military deployments,” wrote historian Benny Morris.
2 – The number of Palestinian “refugees” is the subject of debate.
Regardless of the causes, several hundred thousand local Arabs undoubtedly left their homes. The actual numbers are in question, as the Jewish Virtual Library notes:
Many Arabs claim that 800,000 to 1,000,000 Palestinians became refugees in 1947-49. The last census was taken in 1945. It found only 756,000 permanent Arab residents in Israel. On November 30, 1947, the date the UN voted for partition, the total was 809,100. A 1949 Government of Israel census counted 160,000 Arabs living in the country after the war. This meant no more than 650,000 Palestinian Arabs could have become refugees. A report by the UN Mediator on Palestine arrived at an even lower figure — 472,000.
The Library notes that at the same time that Arabs were left stranded, about the same number of Jews were forced to leave their homes in Arab countries:
The number of Jews fleeing Arab countries for Israel in the years following Israel’s independence was roughly equal to the number of Arabs leaving Palestine. Many Jews were allowed to take little more than the shirts on their backs. These refugees had no desire to be repatriated. Little is heard about them because they did not remain refugees for long. Of the 820,000 Jewish refugees, 586,000 were resettled in Israel at great expense and without any offer of compensation from the Arab governments who confiscated their possessions.
There is evidence that scores of Arabs joined the local inhabitants and became “refugees” attended to by UNRWA when the agency began operations in May 1950 to help the Arabs impacted by the 1948 war.
That year, UNWRA’s director admitted, “a large group of indigent people totaling over 100,000 … could not be called refugees, but … have lost their means of livelihood because of the war. … The Agency felt their need … even more acute than that of the refugees.”
UNRWA’s Annual Report of the Director from July 1951-June 1952 acknowledges it was difficult to separate “ordinary nomadic Bedouins and … unemployed or indigent local residents” from genuine refugees, and that “it cannot be doubted that in many cases individuals who could not qualify as being bona fide refugees are in fact on the relief rolls.”
3 – UNRWA scandalously defines a Palestinian “refugee” in a manner that is different from all other refugees, and does so in a way that sustains the “refugee” crisis instead of solving the problem by finding solutions for the so-called Palestinian refugees.
The UNHRC, the international body that ministers to all refugees besides Palestinians, has a fairly sensible definition of what a refugee is: “A refugee is someone who has been forced to flee his or her country because of persecution, war or violence. A refugee has a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group.”
In other words, the UNHRC defines a refugee as someone who was forced to flee his or her home and cannot return for fear of persecution.
UNRWA, however, defines a Palestinian “refugee” entirely differently. A Palestinian “refugee” is any person whose “normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948 and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict.” So UNWRA counts as “refugees” any local Arab who lived in Palestine for as little as two years, knowing that scores of Arabs immigrated to the area during those years in search of employment amid talks of creating a future Jewish state.
Scandalously, UNRWA states that “Palestine refugees are persons who fulfill the above definition and descendants of fathers fulfilling the definition.”
This means that even if original Palestinian “refugees” long ago immigrated to another country and became citizens of that country, they and their descendants are still considered “refugees” according to UNWRA. The very definition flies in the face of what a refugee is supposed to be. It is also in direct contrast to the Convention on Refugees, which dictates that a person who “has acquired a new nationality, and enjoys the protection of the country of his new nationality” is exempted from the status of refugee.
UNRWA’s definition of a “refugee” doesn’t mention UNHCR’s “well-founded fear of being persecuted.” Indeed, the Palestinians have no fear of being persecuted by Israel, and would not be considered a “refugee” under ordinary international criteria.
In defining a refugee as it does, UNRWA has ensured that the Palestinian “refugee” problem has only grown throughout the years.
4 – There is no reason to have a separate agency only for Palestinian “refugees.”
Netanyahu has suggested merging UNRWA with the UN’s other refugee agency, UNHRC. The Palestinians and Arab nations strongly oppose that move, knowing that most Palestinian “refugees” do not meet the criteria of “refugees” under the UN’s main definition and would lose their status if they were so absorbed.
5 – The Palestinians use their “refugee” status to threaten Israel’s existence.
The Palestinians continue to demand the so-called right of return, meaning flooding Israel with millions of Palestinian and foreign Arabs considered Palestinian “refugees,” thus threatening the very nature of the Jewish state. If the “refugee” problem is ever solved, the Palestinian Authority’s main trump card against Israel will be taken away.
As I wrote in my book, The Late Great State of Israel:
When UNRWA began operations, it was assumed that the refugee problem would be resolved and that the agency would function only temporarily. It was not anticipated that the Arab states, which were directly shaping the mandate of this new organization, had another idea: the refugees would be kept in camps for as long as it took, and the burden of political responsibility for them was to be placed permanently upon Israel.
As one PLO document on the refugees explains: “In order to keep the refugee issue alive and prevent Israel from evading responsibility for their plight, Arab countries—with the notable exception of Jordan—have usually sought to preserve a Palestinian identity by maintaining the Palestinians’ status as refugees.”
Arlene Kushner, an Israel-based researcher on UNRWA, explains: “In other words, as a matter of deliberate policy, most Arab nations have deliberately declined to absorb the refugees or give them citizenship, and have instead focused on their right to ‘return’ to Israel.”
6 – UNRWA has been caught supporting terrorism.
A February 2017 report by the UN Watch watchdog group documented that UNRWA employees were using social media to support terrorist ideology, incite against Israel and propagate anti-Semitism.
David Horovitz, editor in chief of the Times of Israel, documents some of the history of UNRWA’s alleged terror support and assistance to Hamas:
Supporters of Israel have repeatedly criticized the curriculum taught in UNRWA schools. Israel has charged in the past that UNRWA ambulances were abused by Hamas gunmen. It has charged that UNRWA employed Hamas members on its vast, 30,000-strong payroll (five times the staff of the UNHCR, with its global responsibilities), an allegation that one previous UNRWA commissioner-general seemed to acknowledge.
And most pertinently amid the Israel-Hamas war, it is Israel’s contention that UNRWA’s work indirectly facilitates both Hamas’s rule over Gaza and its war effort. With UNRWA in place to grapple with so many Gazans’ basic needs, Hamas was that much freer to redirect resources to tunnel construction and rocket manufacture, and all other aspects of the pernicious and sophisticated military mechanism Israeli troops are now doing their best to uproot.
Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.
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1e)
Will Progressives erase the history of their racist heroes, or only their racist enemies?
1e)
Will Comey’s Deception Cause Republicans to Rally around Trump?
Proof that James Comey was ready to exonerate Hillary Clinton before his probe had concluded reopens old wounds.
By Jonathan S. Tobin
As Hillary Clinton might say, “At this point, what difference does it make?”
That’s the reaction many Americans might have to the revelation that former FBI director James Comey was preparing to exonerate the Democratic presidential candidate in the e-mail scandal that threatened to destroy her chances of victory before his investigation had concluded. A lot has happened since Comey made his announcement in July 2016 that although Clinton’s conduct was negligent, her actions weren’t criminal — and she wouldn’t be prosecuted. With the focus on President Trump and allegations of collusion between his campaign and the Russians riveting the media since January, the charges against the former secretary of state have largely faded from the news. Except, that is, Comey’s various statements about her last year and how they might have impacted Trump’s decision to ultimately fire the FBI director.
But the uncovering of the memo that Comey had begun to draft prior to the interview of Clinton and many other key witnesses has angered Senate Republicans and, predictably, generated an outraged presidential tweet. But while re-litigating the e-mail scandal may be moot, the notion that Comey wasn’t straight with the public about the Clinton probe will have an impact on the way it thinks about the investigation into Trump’s conduct, particularly his dismissal of the FBI director. If nothing else, after months of congressional Republicans feeling increasingly alienated from the administration, the Comey revelations will drive many in the GOP back toward Trump.
The irony here is that the Comey documents were produced as a result of complaints about him from Democrats, not Republicans.
In the aftermath of his unusual press conference in which he took it upon himself to declare that Clinton would not be prosecuted, Democrats were furious about the criticisms he made of her egregious conduct and lax approach to security questions when it came to classified material. At that time, Democrats felt that Comey’s comments constituted a violation of the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from partisan activity during the course of their professional duties. Though many Republicans felt that Comey’s decision aided and abetted Clinton’s candidacy, Democrats thought his candor was a gift to the GOP. That led to an investigation that produced the memo.
The proof that Comey seems to have already made up his mind long before all the evidence was in is, at the very least, curious. It also calls into question the veracity of some of his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee in which he said his decision to announce the results of the probe last summer was motivated by Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s tarmac conversation with former president Bill Clinton, which seemed to call her objectivity into question. As Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley and fellow Republican Lindsey Graham put it, Comey’s attitude appeared to be “conclusions first, fact-gathering second.”
Comey would intervene in the election again in a way that hurt Clinton in October when he re-opened the investigation because of e-mails supposedly found on the computer used by former congressman Anthony Weiner for illegal sexual communications with a minor. That turned out to be a dead end, and Comey soon told the country to forget about it — but there’s no question that it contributed to Clinton losing an election that most observers thought she had in the bag.
No matter what you think about what Comey said or did, however, there’s no way to rewind the clock back to the summer of 2016 when a prosecution would have ended Clinton’s hopes of being president or to last October when Comey keeping silent about Weiner’s computer might have helped Clinton win some of the crucial states she lost to enable Trump’s Electoral College victory.
Nor does it make Trump’s ham-handed firing of Comey any more defensible, especially since he could never keep his story straight about his reasons for doing so. Comey’s handling of the Clinton e-mail probe may seem even more reprehensible than it did before. But the not unfounded belief that Trump fired him because of his refusal to publicly exonerate the president in the Russian-collusion case — despite saying so privately — is the engine that created the Mueller investigation. It is on the outcome of that probe, and not the rehashing of Clinton’s woes, that the administration’s future depends.
That said, the more the public learns about Comey’s double-dealing and self-serving approach to his job, the less likely most Republicans are to think Mueller’s deep dive into Trumpworld is justified. Many GOP voters may be disgusted with Trump’s conduct, especially after Charlottesville. But the sketchy way Comey exonerated Clinton still grates on them. That doesn’t convince the rest of the country not to despise Trump. But if Republicans stay loyal to him, he’s in little danger of being abandoned by his party, let alone impeached and removed from office.
Nothing that we learn about Comey or why he really deserved to be fired long before Trump took office will fix what’s wrong with the administration or even do much to deter Mueller if he is determined to collect the scalps of Trump and his senior aides and family members. But as the attempt to sink Trump continues, Trump needs a party that he has done much to alienate to stick with him. So long as both the congressional GOP and rank-and-file conservatives are still focused on the partisan battles over Clinton, they will remain on his side in the scandal wars yet to come. Despite his pose as a Boy Scout, Comey is the embodiment of our hyper-partisan political age and the way it can corrupt even apolitical institutions like the FBI. The more we hear of him, the more likely it is that even Trump critics will be reminded that partisanship is the only thing that matters in Washington.
— Jonathan S. Tobin is opinion editor of JNS.org and a contributor to National Review Online.
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1f)The Double Standard in the Progressive War against the Dead
In some cases, such damnation may be understandable if done calmly and peacefully — and democratically, by a majority vote of elected representatives.
Few probably wish to see a statue in a public park honoring Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest, one of the founding members of the Ku Klux Klan, or Supreme Court Justice Roger B. Taney, who wrote the majority opinion in the racist Dred Scott decision that set the stage for the Civil War four years later.
But cleansing the past is a dangerous business. The wide liberal search for more enemies of the past may soon take progressives down hypocritical pathways they would prefer not to walk.
In the present climate of auditing the past, it is inevitable that Margaret Sanger’s Planned Parenthood will have to be disassociated from its founder. Sanger was an unapologetic racist and eugenicist who pushed abortion to reduce the nonwhite population.
Should we ask that Ruth Bader Ginsburg resign from the Supreme Court? Even with the benefit of 21st-century moral sensitivity, Ginsburg still managed to echo Sanger in a racist reference to abortion (“growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of”).
Why did we ever mint a Susan B. Anthony dollar? The progressive suffragist once said, “I will cut off this right arm of mine before I will ever work or demand the ballot for the Negro and not the woman.”
Liberal icon and Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren pushed for the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II while he was California’s attorney general.
President Woodrow Wilson ensured that the Armed Forces were not integrated. He also segregated civil-service agencies. Why, then, does Princeton University still cling to its Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs? To honor a progressive who did a great deal of harm to African-American causes?
Wilson’s progressive racism, dressed up in pseudoscientific theories, was perhaps more pernicious than that of the old tribal racists of the South, given that it was not regionally centered and was professed to be fact-based and ecumenical, with the power of the presidency behind it.
In the current logic, Klan membership certainly should be a disqualifier of public commemoration. Why are there public buildings and roads still dedicated to the late Democratic senator Robert Byrd, former “exalted cyclops” of his local Klan affiliate, who reportedly never shook his disgusting lifelong habit of using the N-word?
Why is Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, once a Klansman, in the 20th century, still honored as a progressive hero?
So, what are the proper rules of exemption for progressives when waging war against the dead?
Do they tally up the dead’s good and bad behaviors to see if someone makes the 51 percent “good progressive” cutoff that exempts him? Or do some reactionary sins cancel out all the progressive good — at least in the eyes of self-styled moral superiors to those hapless Neanderthals who came before us?
Are the supposedly oppressed exempt from charges of oppression?
Farm-labor icon Cesar Chavez once sent union thugs to the border to physically bar U.S. entry to undocumented Mexican immigrants, whom he derided as “wetbacks” in a fashion that would today surely earn Chavez ostracism by progressives as a xenophobe.
Kendrick Lamar, one of the favorite rappers of former president Barack Obama, had an album cover featuring a presumably dead white judge with both of his eyes X’d out, surrounded by black men celebrating on the White House lawn. Should such a divisive racialist have been honored with a White House invitation?
What is the ultimate purpose of progressives condemning the past?
Does toppling the statue of a Confederate general — without a referendum or a majority vote of an elected council — improve racial relations? Does renaming a bridge or building reduce unemployment in the inner city?
Do progressives have their own logical set of selective rules and extenuating circumstances that damn or exempt particular historical figures? If so, what are they?
Does selectively warring against the illiberal past make us feel better about doing something symbolic when we cannot do something substantive? Or is it a sign of raw power and ego when activists force authorities to cave to their threats and remove images and names in the dead of night?
Does damning the dead send a flashy signal of our superior virtue?
And will toppling statues and erasing names only cease when modern progressives are forced to blot out the memories of racist progressive heroes?
1g) Mayor of Baltimore removes statues:
Praise needs to be given to the Mayor of Baltimore. For years the Black community has been under assault by 4 Confederate Monuments.
These monuments were relentless in their destruction of the Black family as over 70% of Black children were born out of wedlock.
So terrified by the presence of these monuments, over 60% of Black men in the city could not work a job and found comfort in fathering numerous children with numerous women that they could not feed.
Just knowing that the monuments were there made Black school children have the lowest test scores in the Nation and many turned to drugs to relieve the sting of the monuments’ presence.
Worst of all, the mere presence of the monuments caused death. Not being able to handle the hate and violence that the monuments represented, the Black males in the city took to killing each other by the thousands. Just in the last 2 years they have murdered 500 of their own.
Praise be to God and the Wisdom of the Mayor.....It is a new dawn for Black Baltimoreans!.....The shackles have been removed and all that can be said is...."Free at last, free at last, Lord God Almighty, we're free at last"
1g) Mayor of Baltimore removes statues:
Praise needs to be given to the Mayor of Baltimore. For years the Black community has been under assault by 4 Confederate Monuments.
These monuments were relentless in their destruction of the Black family as over 70% of Black children were born out of wedlock.
So terrified by the presence of these monuments, over 60% of Black men in the city could not work a job and found comfort in fathering numerous children with numerous women that they could not feed.
Just knowing that the monuments were there made Black school children have the lowest test scores in the Nation and many turned to drugs to relieve the sting of the monuments’ presence.
Worst of all, the mere presence of the monuments caused death. Not being able to handle the hate and violence that the monuments represented, the Black males in the city took to killing each other by the thousands. Just in the last 2 years they have murdered 500 of their own.
Praise be to God and the Wisdom of the Mayor.....It is a new dawn for Black Baltimoreans!.....The shackles have been removed and all that can be said is...."Free at last, free at last, Lord God Almighty, we're free at last"
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1h)
1h)
Victory, Not Deterrence, Will Be Israel's Goal if War Breaks Out Again in Gaza
By YAAKOV LAPPIN
1. IMRA asks: It's your assessment that in a “victory round” Israel has technology and/or will to neutralize important targets that are shielded by high profile “human shields” including hospitals?
Yaakov Lappin : It is my belief that Hamas will have no where to hide in Gaza in the event of a future conflict. The IDF closely studies Hamas's attempts to embed itself in Gaza's civilian population centers, and is creating a variety of means to target the military wing , while also taking into account the need to minimize harm to noncombatants as much as this is possible. The core of the Hamas military wing's operations is located underground, in Gaza's labyrinth of tunnels, where Hamas hopes it can operate out of Israel's sight. But it seems to me that this hope is unfounded, and that the IDF today is both aware of and capable of striking Hamas's 'underground city.'
2. IMRA asks: Given Israel's track record to date, how do you see “post Gaza victory” conditions preventing a repeat of the “quiet for quiet” arrangement that facilitates rearming if the IDF doesn't have “boots on the ground”.
Yaakov Lappin: One possibility I sketched out in my paper is leaving Hamas's political wing and police force in place, while taking out the military wing. This could enable an Israeli exit in the event of a new conflict, without having to go back to ruling over the Palestinians of Gaza – which is an option that runs contrary to Israel's interests – or finding someone other than Hamas who will run Gaza – which is an option that does not look particularly viable at this time.
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Victory, Not Deterrence, Will Be Israel's Goal if War Breaks Out Again in Gaza by Yaakov Lappin
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 570, August 26, 2017
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Creating deterrence was Israel's goal in the last three conflicts it fought against Hamas, but that objective has been cast aside. Any future armed clash with Gaza's Islamist rulers will be guided by a new Israeli objective: that of achieving a crystal clear victory over the enemy.
In past models of conflict, Israel responded to Hamas aggression through the use of force in a way that was designed to punish Hamas and convince it to return to a state of calm. Systematically destroying Hamas's military capabilities was not an Israeli objective.
Today, while Israel hopes to avoid war, it is preparing for the possibility of a new conflict. War could erupt again in Gaza for a wide range of reasons.
Should hostilities resume, the Israel Defense Force (IDF) plans to make sure the end stage of that clash will be an unmistakable Israeli victory, and that no one will be able to mistake it for a tie or stalemate.
This change in approach has been brewing over the past three years, ever since the end of Operation Protective Edge in 2014. That operation was launched by Israel to defend itself against large-scale projectile attacks and cross-border tunnel threats from Gaza. At two months' duration, it was one of Israel's most protracted conflicts.
It was also the third large-scale clash fought with Hamas since 2009. At the end of each round of fighting, the military wing of Hamas remained intact, and was able to quickly begin rearming and preparing new capabilities for the next outbreak of hostilitie.
Should Hamas initiate another conflict with Israel, Jerusalem should not be expected to return to the deterrence model. It will not make do with the goal of returning calm to the area, as it did in 2014, 2012, and 2009.
Instead, Israel would likely seek to destroy Hamas's military wing, including its underground labyrinth of tunnels under Gaza City, built to enable operations out of Israel's sight.
Hamas's decision to embed many of its offensive capabilities in Gaza's civilian areas will not immunize it to Israeli strikes. The IDF would, however, make every effort to minimize harm to noncombatants.
After 2014, the IDF's Southern Command began moving away from the “frequent rounds” model, concluding that Israel should not be dragged into major armed conflicts with Hamas every two to three years.
The Southern Command identified three alternatives for Israel and Gaza. Under the first, Israel would continue to experience short, temporary truces – an option deemed unacceptable.
In the second scenario, Israel would conquer Gaza and topple the Hamas regime completely. In such a scenario, Israel would either rule the Strip and its two million Palestinian inhabitants or find someone who would.
It is unlikely that the Palestinian Authority (PA) would take over Gaza after an Israeli “handoff.” Not only would the PA lose domestic legitimacy, but its ability to retain Gaza without IDF assistance would be in serious doubt.
As a result of these calculations, the defense establishment identified a long-term truce, fueled by Israeli deterrence, as the best option. That is the current situation between the combatants: a long-term truce.
During the time the truce has lasted, the idea of facing two bad choices – occupying Gaza or accepting the “frequent rounds” model – has evolved.
One possibility, in the event of a new conflict, is that the IDF takes out Hamas's military wing but leaves in place its political wing and police force, thereby creating a feasible Israeli exit from Gaza that does not depend on Jerusalem's finding new rulers for the Strip.
Today, three years after Operation Protective Edge, Hamas continues to rebuild itself. Its domestic arms industry is producing rockets, mortar shells, and tunnels. Tunnels under Gaza City are designed to enable Hamas battalions to launch hit-and-run attacks on the IDF and to move weapons and logistics out of Israel's sight.
The other kind of tunnel threat, the network of cross-border tunnels, is on borrowed time. Israel is building an underground wall along the 65-kilometer Gazan border, and it progresses with each passing day. Israel has invested billions of shekels in that project, and an anti-tunnel detection system is also operational.
Hamas is not sitting idle during the truce. It is looking for new assault tactics. It seeks to be able to flood southern Israel with short-range projectiles that can carry a warhead as big as a half-ton, which would pose a major threat to any built-up area near the Strip.
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