Bearded Bret Get's It! Pomerantz and Jorisch and Israeli Technology Continues To Shine. Flood Gate. Personal Recap!

Even the newly bearded and now of The New York Times, Bret Stephens, gets it. (See 1 below.)

And

Soros' long reach?  An investigative journalist, who went undercover to infiltrate violent leftist groups such as Antifa, has been found dead shortly after he vowed to expose billionaire globalist, George Soros.33-year-old Bechir Rabani was a hugely popular Swedish independent reporter, well known for his daring exposés.He was found dead at his home on Friday night in "suspicious circumstances" according to Police.He was working on an investigation into radical leftist mainstream journalist Robert Aschberg and his connection to George Soros funded extremist organizations when he was killed.Shortly before he died, Rabani had revealed he was about to lift the lid on mass corruption that linked Soros and Aschberg.
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Technologically speaking, Israel continues to shine as "The Start Up Nation."

In February, my friend, Avi Jorisch's, book will be released and Avi discusses 15 specific extraordinary innovations and Israeli innovators.

I am hoping to get Avi here for a book signing. . (See 2 and 2a below.)
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Israel votes with its feet and leaves UNESCO. (See 3 below.)

And  We follow suit with our bucks.

A friend of mine of long standing and fellow memo reader suggests we cut our funding  to the U.N and use it build Trump's wall.  Not a bad idea and better use of the funds. (See 3a below.)
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The real collusion is between the mass media and Obama and the radical left wing of the Democrat Party.

The captive mass media remains in cahoots. (See 4 and personal recap below.)
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Every administration has a surprising star.  Trump's as well.

I tried to come up with one in GW's and I came up with his wife. In Obama's I came up with several falling stars: Rice, Powers, Lynch, Hillary, Kerry and Holder. (See 5 below.)
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Cyber war far and cutting undersea cables - the new war fare strategy and tactics.  (See 6 below.)
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An Editorial by Howard Galganov

Trump's Christmas Gifts To America & Israel Click Here to read the Entire Article ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

My personal recap:

a) Democrats are goading Trump to fire Mueller, knowing that Trump is a bait taker.

I hope he is smart enough not to take the bait because the Mueller investigation is falling apart over its own bias.

Mueller has spent millions and we have learned the FBI apparently used a fake dossier to get FISA Warrants to investigate Trump operatives and have nothing to show for it by way of collusion .

If there is any collusion it is between high FBI officials, The Clinton Foundation and the DNC who wanted to save America from a Trump Presidency and the deplorable's disgust.

I suspect Mueller's investigation will top Watergate and produce Flood Gate because the Democrats wanted to drown Sanders, then Trump while Obama was flooding America with dissension and elevating Iran.

b) At year end Trump laid out his security program and linked it to our economic recovery and a revitalized America.

Trump, the businessman, understands a recovering GDP provides the economic wherewithal in order for America to rebuild its military and lead from both economic and military strength in order to restore confidence of our allies, who have a common objective, in America.

Obama naively  thought America should lead from weakness, and  a low GDP so nations would not fear us and would join  hands and sing Cumboyah.

c)  Trump is now ready to resolve the knotty issues of illegal immigration and their legal children (DACA) and attack our declining infrastructure.

Democrats are going to continue to throw mud into his wheels believing this is the path to the taking the  reigns of government in 2018.  

This is another reason why they will continue to stress Trump's lack of popularity and he would be wise not to provide them ammunition with unnecessary attacks etc..

Welcome to the New Year!
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Dick
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1)  Tax Bill Hysteria

By Bret Stephens

In case you haven’t heard, nearly all that’s good and pleasant in the world died this week. The tax bill passed.

The bill has variously been described as “a disaster,” “one of the great robberies” of history, and a “massive attack” on the middle class — and that’s just Bernie Sanders. Other critics say it will explode the deficit, enrich the undeserving rich, immiserate the underserved poor, and ring a “death knell” for the sinking middle class. Nancy Pelosi calls it a “Frankenstein,” albeit one that will return to kill its Republican creators.

To which any G.O.P. political strategist would rejoin: Keep it up, folks.

There are things genuinely to dislike in the tax bill. It raises taxes on too many people. It barely cuts the top income-tax rate. It doesn’t eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax. Taxpayers will get kicked into higher brackets (of which there are still too many) sooner, thanks to a new measure of inflation.

Worst of all is probably the provision for full expensing, which allows companies immediately to deduct the cost of capital investments from their tax bill. This is supposed to be the most stimulative part of the bill, especially for smaller companies looking to grow. But it’s also an invitation to invest — and over-invest — based on tax incentives rather than the straight business case. Bankruptcies will follow

O.K., no doubt your objections are different (and probably stronger) than mine. But here are two things to know: Slashing corporate rates — the bill’s central achievement — is good economics. And wailing against the bill as an American Armageddon is dumb politics, at least for Democrats.

On the first point, consider the following case against the outgoing system:

“Our current corporate tax system is outdated, unfair and inefficient. It provides tax breaks for moving jobs and profits overseas and hits companies that choose to stay in America with one of the highest tax rates in the world. It is unnecessarily complicated and forces America’s small businesses to spend countless hours and dollars filing their taxes. It’s not right and it needs to change.”

That was Barack Obama in 2012, with a proposal to cut rates to 28 percent. Other prominent Democrats who have previously called for cutting corporate taxes include Tim Geithner, Ms. Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer.

Maybe the current bill cuts the rate too far — or, as I think, doesn’t cut it far enough. Maybe the argument that companies will use additional revenues to hire more workers is too optimistic, if only because the United States is already close to full employment. Maybe they’ll reward their shareholders instead — which, however, probably means you, assuming you have an I.R.A.

And maybe there’s something to be said for Google parking several billion dollars in profits in a Bermuda shell company, just to take advantage of the islands’ zero rate. It’s delightfully devious coming from the well-heeled apostles of “Don’t Be Evil.”

But the suggestion by senior Democrats that it is now a moral abomination to enact the very type of tax reform they themselves favored until quite recently smacks of partisan dishonesty, if not ideological hysteria. Many developed countries, including Germany, Sweden and Britain, have all slashed their corporate rates in recent years. Lo, the sky did not fall.

Now to the bad politics. Democrats think it’s politically smart to oppose the bill because some 58 percent of Americans were against it, according to a recent poll.

A Times analysis of the poll also found that half of the people who will get a tax cut under the bill don’t think they’re going to get one, likely out of distrust for the president.

But nothing is so splendid in life or politics as a good surprise, and Democrats have positioned themselves to be on the wrong side of it. In 2018, according to the Tax Policy Center, 91 percent of middle-income filers will get a tax cut, averaging close to $1,100. That’s real money, or at least enough to give Donald Trump and congressional Republicans a good opening for a “we told you so” moment.

The cuts also coincide with some of the most robust economic growth in over a decade. Ostensibly expert economic opinion now tells us the tax bill will do little or nothing for growth. But some of the same experts also told us Trump’s election would cause a worldwide recession and send stock markets tumbling. If there’s one thing every conservative lives for, it’s liberal whoopsie moments like these.

Time will tell, and stuff happens — think: war on the Korean peninsula, or perhaps a Bitcoin meltdown. For now, the G.O.P.’s legislative triumph is only being sweetened by the wildly overblown reaction to it. Why liberals would want to give the administration a holiday gift like this is beyond me, but, anyway, Merry Christmas.

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2)

ISRAEL’S HIGH TECH DEVELOPMENT CONTINUES TO SHINE

By Sherwin Pomerantz

Israel, known world-wide as the startup nation, has earned the title and continues to punch above its weight achieving much more than one would expect from a country of 8.743 million people living in the challenging Middle East.

Proof of that statement was seen earlier this week when San Francisco-based CB Insights, published their AI 100 list  of the best emerging companies using artificial intelligence as their base technology.  While 75% of the companies on the list are based in the U.S., 7 Israeli companies were honored as well, an amazing statistic for a small country.  Even among the U.S. based companies were two whose founders and chief technology officers are Israeli and who also have offices in Israel. 

The other big winner among non-U.S. companies was China (also with 7 companies on the list), while Britain with 4, and Canada, Japan, Portugal and Singapore, with one each brought up the rear.

This year’s list was culled from over 1,000 applicants and includes companies using artificial intelligence in industries as diverse as drug discovery, cybersecurity, robotics and legal tech. Inclusion in this list is a prestigious honor and has proven to contribute to a company’s growth as well.  Last year’s AI 100 saw 55 of the companies raise additional funding totaling $2 billion while 5 were acquired by larger firms.

But this is not the only field in which Israel excels.  Israel is also a rising star in space and satellite technology.  Several key developments in recent years highlight Israel’s growing contributions in the field, including the successful launch of the Venus satellite on August 2nd.

Venus, a micro-satellite weighing 586 pounds (265 kilograms), was jointly designed by the Israel Space Agency (ISA) with the help of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and its French counterpart, Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) for the purpose of monitoring climate change.  The cutting-edge satellite observes 110 sites on five continents every two days, and closely monitors the impact of human activity on vegetation, water and carbon levels.

“The satellite is uniquely suited for monitoring agricultural crops in accordance with the concept of ‘precision agriculture,’ offering high-spatial resolution of 16 feet (five meters) and a 48-hour revisit time,” said Prof. Arnon Karnieli, lead researcher on the satellite project, who heads the laboratory at BGU’s Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research (in a release issued by BGU on October 19th).

“Israel is one of the few countries that has the entire chain of satellite capabilities, which means launch, design, construction and operation,” according to Avi Blasberger, director general of the Israel Space Agency at Israel’s Ministry of Science.  “It’s an entirely self-sustained program.  Israel is one of the few countries in the world that can be proud of this.”

Preceding the launch of Venus, Israel launched its first nanosatellite, BGUSAT, in mid-February as part of a BGU academic initiative that enables researchers to study climate change as well as agricultural and other scientific phenomena.  Slightly larger than a milk cartoon, the nanosatellite is outfitted with a visual and short wavelength infrared camera and hovers at 300 miles above the Earth’s surface – allowing researchers to study a broad array of environmental conditions, including atmospheric gases like carbon dioxide.

The list of such achievements is virtually endless and demonstrates potential for companies abroad to develop industrial cooperation partnerships that benefit both partners to the project.  There are even a number of funding agencies, both in Israel and world-wide that provide significant financial support to such cooperative ventures.

Company futurists who are seeking the next technological breakthrough in their fields, would do well to look at Israel as a source for such developments.

2a)Thou Shalt Innovate

How Israeli Ingenuity Repairs the World

Avi Jorisch

Thou Shalt Innovate profiles wondrous Israeli innovations that are collectively changing the lives of billions of people around the world and explores why Israeli innovators of all faiths feel compelled to make the world better. This is the story of how Israelis are helping to feed the hungry, cure the sick, protect the defenseless, and make the desert bloom. Israel is playing a disproportionate role in helping solve some of the world’s biggest challenges by tapping into the nation’s soul: the spirit of tikkun olam – the Jewish concept of repairing the world.

There is no single narrative that fully describes the State of Israel. But there is also no denying that Israel has extraordinary innovators who are bound together by their desire to save lives and find higher purpose. Thou Shalt Innovate introduces the reader to Israelis who exude light in the face of the darkness, people who have chosen hope and healing over death and destruction. In a world that has more than its share of darkness, these stories are rays of light.

Key Points

·      Features fifteen astonishing Israeli inventions that are changing the world, plus Israel's top 50 innovations since the founding of the State.

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3) Israel to Quit UNESCO

BY PESACH BENSON 

Israel will formally announce its intent to leave UNESCO as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu instructed Ambassador Carmel Shama-Hacohen to present a formal letter of withdrawal. According to UNESCO rules, Israel’s departure from the cultural organization would take effect at the end of 2018.

In the past year, UNESCO angered Israel with resolutions denying Jewish ties to Jerusalem and Hebron:

Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said the decision was based on the organization’s “attempts to disconnect Jewish history from the land of Israel.”

However, the withdrawal will contain a provision noting that Israel will walk back the decision should UNESCO conduct reforms and change its attitude towards Israel before the end of next year, a senior Israeli official told Channel 10 news Friday.

3a)

Nikki Haley: Reduction in US funds to UN 'big step in the right direction' ByREBECCA Montag The United States is currently paying 22% of the United Nations' annual budget.

United States Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley praised the reduction in US contributions to the UN, calling it a "big step in the right direction." The United States contribution will be reduced by $285 million from that of the last two years, according to a statement from the United States Mission to the United Nations released on Sunday. “The inefficiency and overspending of the United Nations are well known. We will no longer let the generosity of the American people be taken advantage of or remain unchecked," Haley said.  "This historic reduction in spending – in addition to many other moves toward a more efficient and accountable UN – is a big step in the right direction. While we are pleased with the results of this year’s budget negotiations, you can be sure we’ll continue to look at ways to increase the UN’s efficiency‎ while protecting our interests," she added. The budget announcement comes days after US President Donald Trump threatened to cut aidto UN member states voting to condemn his decision to move the United States embassy to Jerusalem and recognize  the disputed holy city as the capital of Israel.  The vote on December 21 did not favor the United States; the measure condemning the decision passed by a vote of 128 to 9, with 35 abstaining and 21 countries not participating in the vote. The United States is the largest contributor to the United Nations, paying 22% of the organization's annual budget. Although tensions between the US and the UN have risen following Trump's Jerusalem announcement on December 6, the Trump administration was already discussing slashes to the budget earlier this year. Nikki Haley voiced concerns during her confirmation hearing in January, asking if the United States is "getting what we pay for" from the UN.  Donald Trump, in his September speech to the United Nations, stated that "the United States bears an unfair cost burden," in the organization. "But to be fair," he added, "If it could actually accomplish all of its stated goals, especially the goal of peace, this investment would easily be well worth it."

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4)

A deafening media silence on the Obama-Hezbollah scandal

By David Harsany

i

Politico published a jaw-dropping, meticulously sourced investigative piece this week detailing how the Obama administration had secretly undermined US law enforcement agency efforts to shut down an international drug-trafficking ring run by the terror group Hezbollah. The effort was part of a wider push by the administration to placate Iran and ensure the signing of the nuclear deal.

S

Now swap out “Trump” for “Obama” and “Russia” for “Iran” and imagine the eruption these revelations would generate. Because, by any conceivable journalistic standard, this scandal should’ve triggered widespread coverage and been plastered on front pages across the country. By any historic standard, the scandal should elicit outrage regarding the corrosion of governing norms from pundits and editorial boards.

Yet, as it turns out, there’s an exceptionally good chance most of your neighbors and colleagues haven’t heard anything about it.

Days after the news broke, in fact, neither NBC News, ABC News nor CBS News — whose shows can boast a collective 20 million viewers — had been able to find the time to relay the story to its sizeable audiences. Other than Fox News, cable news largely ignored the revelations as well.

Most major newspapers, which have been sanctimoniously patting themselves on the back for the past year, couldn’t shoehorn into their pages a story about potential collusion between the former president and a terror-supporting state.

Perhaps if President Trump had tweeted about the story, outlets would’ve squeezed something in.

Even when outlets did decide to cover the story, they typically framed it as a he-said/she-said. “Politico Reporter Says Obama Administration ‘Derailed’ Hezbollah Investigation,” reads the NPR headline. Did Josh Meyer of Politico say something about Obama or did he publish a 14,000-word, diligently sourced, document-heavy investigative piece? If you get your news from NPR, you’d never know.

Fact is, the Drug Enforcement Agency began its classified investigation (called Project Cassandra) into Hezbollah in 2008. It found that the Iranian proxy had laundered nearly a half a billion dollars and was moving cocaine to the United States. According to Politico, the Obama administration not only threw obstructions in front of investigators but failed to prosecute major players in the enterprise.

What makes the media blackout particularly shameful is that the story isn’t a partisan hit job. It was written by a well-regarded journalist at a major outlet. The story has two on-the-record sources — which is more than we can say for the vast majority of so-called scoops about the Russian “collusion” investigation. One of these sources, David Asher, was an illicit finance expert at the Pentagon who was tapped to run the investigation. There’s no plausible reason to ignore him or the story.

Then again, ignoring or diminishing Obama’s shady dealings with Iran isn’t new. Obama administration officials bragged to the New York Times Magazine last year that they’d created an echo chamber, relying on the ignorance, inexperience and partisan dispositions of reporters to convey their lies to the American people.

We saw this when the Obama administration claimed it was releasing 14 Iranian civilians on humanitarian grounds, when in fact it was releasing spies and weapons dealers. Or when Team Obama claimed diplomacy had won US hostages’ release, when it fact it had sent hundreds of millions of euros, Swiss francs and other currencies on wooden pallets in unmarked planes to Iran. The press was uninterested in those stories, too.

Establishment media personalities will often point out that none of us would have any knowledge of these incidents if not for their reporting. This is true. There are intrepid journalists at media institutions who aren’t swayed by partisan considerations.

The preponderance of editors, journalists, pundits and bookers, on the other hand, still coddle Democrats. They may do it on purpose or unconsciously, but it’s destroying their credibility. Because as David Burge once noted, “Journalism is about covering important stories. With a pillow, until they stop moving.”

David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist.

Media Blackout on Obama’s Hezbollah Scandal Revives the Iran-Deal ‘Echo Chamber’

Their refusal to report on his appeasing Iran by spiking of an investigation into drug-running widens the partisan divide.

By Jonathan S. Tobin 

In May 2016, deputy national-security adviser Ben Rhodes took a victory lap in the New York Times to celebrate the Obama administration’s signature foreign-policy win. Rhodes had helped orchestrate the campaign to ensure that Congress would fail to stop President Obama’s Iran nuclear deal from going into effect, and in a remarkably unguarded interview for a New York Times Magazine profile, the failed novelist–turned–foreign-policy spinmaster boasted of how a tame press corps that he dubbed an “echo chamber” had done his bidding.

At the time, some in the Obama camp chastised Rhodes for spilling the beans on how the mainstream media had dutifully bought the president’s disingenuous arguments for a pact that did not end the nuclear threat, expired within a decade (making an Iranian bomb inevitable), and both strengthened and enriched the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, with few tough questions asked. But while Rhodes and the rest of the Obama team have given way to President Trump’s staff, the media echo chamber devoted to defending Obama’s appeasement of Iran that he cultivated is still with us.

The evidence for that was on display this week in the aftermath of Politico’s scoop about the way the Obama administration blocked federal investigations of Hezbollah’s drug-running, money-laundering, and terror operations during the Iran-deal negotiations. Josh Meyer’s three-part series was based on interviews with Drug Enforcement Administration personnel and other well-placed sources within the federal government who worked on Project Cassandra. Meyer built a strong case that showed that efforts to halt the regular traffic of cash, drugs, and terrorists between Beirut, Tehran, and Venezuela was quashed by orders from the top of the Obama administration. Then CIA director John Brennan and Secretary of State John Kerry believed nothing should be allowed to interfere with the nuclear talks, even if meant Iran’s narcoterrorist foot soldiers were allowed to escape justice.

Meyer’s report made sense not just because the DEA sources pointed to the way a promising probe had been prevented from making arrests but also because Brennan was on record as believing that Hezbollah “moderates” must be cultivated, and Kerry had made it plain that he was willing to make any possible concession to get Iran to agree to any kind of deal, no matter how weak it might prove to be.

If true, the undermining of Cassandra is a major scandal, since it shows that the Obama administration was willing to prioritize the interests of Iran and its Hezbollah auxiliaries as well as their Russian allies over its duty to protect American citizens. At the very least, it rates a congressional investigation as well as an internal probe of U.S. intelligence agencies to determine exactly what the Obama foreign-policy team knew and when they knew it with regard to decisions taken to hamstring Cassandra operations.

The Cassandra story ought to resonate with the media, since it comes at the end of a year during which Washington has been transfixed by an investigation into whether the Trump presidential campaign colluded with a foreign power and whether the president obstructed the probe looking into that matter. Though not exactly analogous to those still-unproven allegations, the possibility that President Obama and his minions obstructed the justice system in order to avoid offending Iran and Russia is a scandal that is every bit as bad as, if not worse than, what Trump is accused of doing.

Yet the strangest thing about this story is the way it is being ignored by the same mainstream media that breathlessly report every twist and turn in the Russia-collusion investigation, even when there is nothing to report other than baseless speculation.

In the days since it was first published, the New York Times has treated it as a non-story. The Washington Post’s sole article on it consisted of a blog post, by one of its liberal opinion writers, devoted to quotes from Obama-administration alumni dismissing both Meyer and his sources as neoconservative propaganda without actually refuting any of the story’s main points. The broadcast channels and the liberal news channels have similarly avoided the scandal. Nor is there any sign that any of the legacy mainstream media are seeking to follow up on Meyer’s reporting to break new angles on a story that examines the nexus between policy making and law enforcement. The only coverage the Hezbollah scandal has received has been in conservative-leaning media such as Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post.

Outlets such as CNN take great umbrage when President Trump and others on the right deride their work as “fake news” because of the liberal bias that is endemic throughout the mainstream media. At the same time, liberals dismiss Fox News as worthless propaganda because of its willingness to give platforms to Trump supporters and to report on stories Democrats don’t like.

That Politico, a Washington news website whose liberal bias is no secret, is willing to report on a scandal involving a Democratic administration is to its credit. It also should have signaled to other liberal outlets that this was a story whose implications were so serious that it transcended the usual left–right news divide. Yet after lying down for Obama on Iran while he was in office, the liberal media seem still to be unwilling to hold the former president and his team accountable for the unsavory way in which they gave away American interests in order please a foreign power, the same offense they believe Trump committed with Russia.

In doing so, the liberal media are only fueling the conviction of conservatives that nothing they broadcast or publish is to be trusted. Those who lament the bifurcation of the media as well as the tendency of a growing segment of Americans to read, listen to, and watch only those outlets that confirm their pre-existing opinions and biases must look to the mainstream blackout on this story by Obama’s old echo chamber as one more reason why the public has lost faith in the media.

— Jonathan S. Tobin is the editor in chief of JNS.org and a contributor to National Review Online.

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5)

Nikki Haley, the Trump administration's breakout star

by Jeff Jacoby The Boston Globe

http://www.jeffjacoby.com/20676/nikki-haley-the-trump-administration-breakout-star

Nikki Haley, the US Ambassador to the United Nations, vetoed an Egyptian-drafted resolution condemning the Trump administration's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

AMONG THE LOW POINTS of the Obama administration's final weeks was its refusal to veto a blatantly anti-Israel resolution in the UN Security Council.

When Nikki Haley attended her first Security Council session a few weeks later as the new ambassador under President Trump, she promptly reversed course. "I am here to emphasize," she told reporters, "that the United States is determined to stand up to the UN's anti-Israel bias."

Haley lived up to that promise on Tuesday, when she vetoed a resolution demanding that the Trump administration rescind its decision recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital. She followed up her veto with formal remarks calling the resolution "an embarrassment" to the UN and scolding those who "presume to tell America where to put our embassy." On Twitter the next day, Haley laid down a marker ahead of Thursday's vote on the topic in the UN General Assembly.

"When we make a decision . . . abt where to locate OUR embassy, we don't expect those we've helped to target us," she tweeted. "On Thurs there'll be a vote criticizing our choice. The US will be taking names."
Reckless and counterproductive? Hardly. Haley's performance at the UN has been a joy to behold. The former South Carolina governor, who came to the job with no foreign policy experience, has turned out to be a natural — behind the scenes no less than in the spotlight.

This fall, Haley succeeded in winning unanimous Security Council approval for economic sanctions on North Korea in response to its continuing nuclear belligerence. Displaying a knack for political deal-making, she initially proposed a package of sanctions so severe that Russia and China would doubtless have vetoed them had they been put to a vote. Then she set out to negotiate a compromise — dropping demands for a total oil embargo, for example, but digging in on other restrictions. "That made it possible for both China and Russia to join the consensus," reported The Nation, a journal far from friendly to the Trump administration. "Haley got a unanimous 15-0 'yes' vote against North Korea, an outcome that sent a message of unity" to Pyongyang.

Last week she did it again, winning unanimous Security Council approval for a new layer of sanctions on North Korea.

Nearly a year into the job, America's ambassador to the UN comes across as refreshing, unabashed, principled, and savvy. She is one of the most popular officials in a historically unpopular administration. "The breakout star of Trump's Cabinet," CNN calls her.

This would be impressive under any circumstance. It's especially so in the Trump presidency, which has been very rough on the reputations and careers of numerous high-level officials. It's even more remarkable given Haley's own history with Trump. She publicly opposed his presidential bid, urged Republicans not to "follow the siren call of the angriest voices," and endorsed Marco Rubio in the South Carolina primary. After Trump won that primary, he lashed out on Twitter: "The people of South Carolina are embarrassed by Nikki Haley!" (Her unruffled response: "Bless your heart.")

Trump holds grudges, yet he made Haley a key diplomatic face of his administration. Trump hates to share the spotlight, but he has done nothing to impede Haley's celebrity. And while the president has publicly rebuked or undercut other Cabinet members, including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, he hasn't done so to Haley — not even when she has expressed views and taken stands that are quite different from his.

Which she has. Haley has loudly denounced Russia's continuing aggression in Ukraine, vowing that sanctions would never be lifted until Crimea is restored to Ukrainian control. Despite Trump's open embrace of Vladimir Putin, Haley warns bluntly: "We cannot trust Russia. We should never trust Russia."

Haley vigorously castigates dictatorships for their human rights abuses, something that neither Trump nor Tillerson considers a priority. "For me," Haley stresses, "human rights are at the heart of the mission of the United Nations."

In 2015, then-Governor Nikki Haley publicly called for removing the Confederate flag from the grounds of the state capitol in Columbia. Three weeks later, it was gone.

On most issues, of course, Haley supports the president, as all ambassadors do. "I don't go rogue on the President," she has said. But she has figured out how to distance herself from Trump even when defending him. During the furor over banning travelers from several Muslim nations, Haley publicly justified it as a security measure. But she immediately and more memorably added that it would be "un-American" to "ever ban anyone based on their religion."

Haley plainly outshines Tillerson, a hapless if well-meaning secretary of state who has managed to wow neither the president nor the public. Tillerson brought an admirable international business resume to the job, but he lacks the political skills that Haley acquired during her meteoric rise from total unknown — she was the bookkeeper for her mother's clothing business — to governor of South Carolina. Haley has quickly acquired the foreign-policy fluency in which she was totally deficient a year ago. It is quite plausible that Trump will ask her at some point to replace Tillerson at the State Department.

Critics treated Haley's warning that the US would be "taking names" on the UN's Jerusalem resolution as an appalling diplomatic gaffe. It wasn't. The best UN ambassadors have always known that the job entails more than behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing: It calls for the vigorous defense of moral truth as well. Like Adlai Stevenson, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and Jeane Kirkpatrick, Haley has shown that she can be effective in the UN while bluntly decrying the lies and prejudices that sully it. Her first year on the job has been brilliant. Whatever Trump may have gotten wrong, his choice of Nikki Haley was a masterstroke.

(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe).
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6) Russian submarines are prowling around vital undersea cables. It’s making NATO nervous.

By Michael Birnbaum

BRUSSELS — Russian submarines have dramatically stepped up activity around undersea data cables in the North Atlantic, part of a more aggressive naval posture that has driven NATO to revive a Cold War-era command, according to senior military officials.

The apparent Russian focus on the cables, which provide Internet and other communications connections to North America and Europe, could give the Kremlin the power to sever or tap into vital data lines, the officials said. Russian submarine activity has increased to levels unseen since the Cold War, they said, sparking hunts in recent months for the elusive watercraft.

“We are now seeing Russian underwater activity in the vicinity of undersea cables that I don’t believe we have ever seen,” said U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Andrew Lennon, the commander of NATO’s submarine forces. “Russia is clearly taking an interest in NATO and NATO nations’ undersea infrastructure.”

NATO has responded with plans to reestablish a command post, shuttered after the Cold War, to help secure the North Atlantic. NATO allies are also rushing to boost anti-submarine warfare capabilities and to develop advanced submarine-detecting planes.

Britain’s top military commander also warned that Russia could imperil the cables that form the backbone of the modern global economy. The privately owned lines, laid along the some of the same corridors as the first transatlantic telegraph wire in 1858, carry nearly all of the communications on the Internet, facilitating trillions of dollars of daily trade. If severed, they could snarl the Web. If tapped, they could give Russia a valuable picture of the tide of the world’s Internet traffic.

Russia defeats 'Western Coalition' in military exercises

On Sept. 18, President Vladimir Putin watched as the Russian military battled an imaginary Western invasion. (David Filipov, Joyce Lee/The Washington Post)

“It’s a pattern of activity, and it’s a vulnerability,” said British Air Chief Marshal Stuart Peach, in an interview.

“Can you imagine a scenario where those cables are cut or disrupted, which would immediately and potentially catastrophically affect both our economy and other ways of living if they were disrupted?” Peach said in a speech in London this month.

The Russian Defense Ministry did not respond to a request for comment about the cables.

The Russian sea activity comes as the Kremlin has also pressed against NATO in the air and on land. Russian jets routinely clip NATO airspace in the Baltics, and troops drilled near NATO territory in September.

Russia has moved to modernize its once-decrepit Soviet-era fleet of submarines, bringing online or overhauling 13 craft since 2014. That pace, coming after Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula set off a new era of confrontation with the West, has spurred NATO efforts to counter them. Russia has about 60 full-size submarines, while the United States has 66.

Among Russia’s capabilities, Lennon said, are deep-sea research vessels, including an old converted ballistic submarine that carries smaller submarines. 

“They can do oceanographic research, underwater intelligence gathering,” he said. “And what we have observed is an increased activity of that in the vicinity of undersea cables. We know that these auxiliary submarines are designed to work on the ocean floor, and they’re transported by the mother ship, and we believe they may be equipped to manipulate objects on the ocean floor.”

That capability could give Russia the ability to sever the cables or tap into them. The insulated fiber-optic cables are fragile, and ships have damaged them accidentally by dragging their anchors along the seabed. That damage happens near the shore, where it is relatively easy to fix, not in the deeper Atlantic, where the cost of mischief could be far greater.

Lennon declined to say whether NATO believes Russia has actually touched the cables. Russian military leaders have acknowledged that the Kremlin is active undersea at levels not seen since the end of the Cold War, when Russia was forced to curtail its submarine program in the face of economic turmoil and disorganization.

“Last year we reached the same level as before the post-Soviet period, in terms of running hours,” said Adm. Vladimir Korolev, the commander of the Russian Navy, earlier this year. “This is more than 3,000 days at sea for the Russian submarine fleet. This is an excellent sign.”

The activity has forced a revival of Western sub-hunting skills that lay largely dormant since the end of the Cold War. Lennon said NATO allies have long practiced submarine-hunting. But until the last few years, there were few practical needs for close tracking, military officials said. 

In recent months, the U.S. Navy has flown sorties in the areas where Russia is known to operate its submarines, according to aircraft trackers that use publicly available transponder data. On Thursday, for example, one of the planes shot off from Naval Air Station Sigonella in Sicily, headed eastward into the Mediterranean. It flew the same mission a day earlier.

The trackers have captured at least 10 missions carried out by U.S. submarine-tracking planes this month, excluding trips when the planes simply appeared to be in transit from one base to another. November was even busier, with at least 17 missions captured by the trackers.

NATO does not comment on specific submarine-tracking flights and declined to release data, citing the classified nature of the missions. But NATO officials say that their submarine-tracking activities have significantly increased in the region.

Submarines are particularly potent war-fighting craft because they can generally only be heard, not seen, underwater. They can serve as a retaliatory strike force in case of nuclear war, threaten military resupply efforts and expand the range of conventional firepower available for use in lower-level conflicts.

The vessels are a good fit for the Kremlin’s strategy of making do with less than its rivals, analysts say: Russia’s foes need vast resources to track a single undersea craft, making the submarines’ cost-to-mischief ratio attractive. Even as Russia remains a vastly weaker military force than NATO, the Kremlin has been able to pack an outsize punch in its confrontation with the West through the seizure of Crimea, support for the Syrian regime and, according to U.S. intelligence, its attempts to influence the U.S. election.

“You go off and you try to add expense for anything that we’re doing, or you put things at risk that are of value to us, and submarines give them the capability to do it,” a senior NATO official said of the Russian approach, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence assessments.

Russian military planners can say, “I can build fewer of them, I can have better quality, and I can put at risk and challenge and make it difficult for NATO,” the official said.

Still, some analysts say the threat to cables may be overblown.

“Arguably, the Russians wouldn’t be doing their jobs if they couldn’t threaten underwater cables. Certainly, NATO allies would not be doing theirs if they were unable to counter that,” said Adam Thomson, a former British ambassador to NATO.

Russian military planners have publicized their repeated use of submarine-launched Kalibr cruise missiles during their incursion into Syria, which began in fall 2015. (In Syria, the missiles have not always hit their targets, according to U.S. intelligence officials, undermining somewhat the Russian claims of potency.) 

NATO’s hunts — which have stretched across the Baltic, Mediterranean and Atlantic — have mobilized submarine-tracking frigates, sonar-equipped P8 Poseidon planes and helicopters, and attack submarines that have combed the seas.

“The Russians are operating all over the Atlantic,” said NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. “They are also operating closer to our shores.”

Russia’s enhanced submarine powers give urgency to NATO’s new efforts to ensure that it can get forces to the battlefront if there is a conflict, Stoltenberg said. In addition to the new Atlantic-focused command, the alliance also plans to create another command dedicated to enabling military forces to travel quickly across Europe.

NATO defense ministers approved the creation of the commands at a November meeting. Further details are expected in February. The plans are still being negotiated, but they currently include the North Atlantic command being embedded inside the U.S. Fleet Forces Command in Norfolk, which would transform into a broader NATO joint force command if there was a conflict, a NATO diplomat said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss plans that have not been finalized.

“Credible deterrence is linked to credible reinforcement capabilities,” Stoltenberg said. “We’re a transatlantic alliance. You need to be able to cross the Atlantic.”

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