++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
SIGNS OF THE TIMES:
a
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Spoofing a spoofer:https://video.twimg.com/
And:
This testimony took place several years ago but remains relevant, many even more so:
https://www.youtube.com/ embed/2QOwAJ2ez6U?rel=0
And finally:
This is a 10-minute video of a bicycle ride through Orange County, California. It will turn your stomach. California is beginning to look more like Calcutta. A once beautiful state is becoming a hopeless dump. Try to watch all ten minutes, as it keeps going and going and going. All under Democratic leadership Copy and paste into your browser: https://www.youtube.com/
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++The wife of a very dear friend died while we were at Tybee so I am going to a memorial service early tomorrow (Monday) and came home (Sunday evening) because I did not have any appropriate clothes at the beach and I had time to complete this memo which I began before I left (this past Saturday.)
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If Republicans hold The House, and this investigation is allowed to move forward, it might bring "the house" down on a variety of Democrats. This is why they will do anything to smear Republicans like Rep. Jordan and pull out all stops to fight this swamp mud slide. (See 1 below.)
And:
Fearing free speech. (See 1 a below.)
Finally: Rep. Jordan is a thorn in the Democrat's loin so they now want/need to destroy him with dirt, smears and possibly fake accusations from twenty plus years ago - their favorite weapons of choice.
Nothing coy about COIE!(See 1b below.)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Gowdy finally had enough of Rep. Schiff's duplicitous behaviour and shiftiness and finally gave him the smack down he richly deserves.
Schiff could easily replace "Up Chuck" Schumer because he has all the slimy aspects of his personality. (See 2 below.)
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This is a re-corrected previous link post that I hope now works. I admit to being technologically challenged: https://www.youtube.com/embed/VpFNgfbebY
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
God forbid anyone peers into the U.N's budget. It would probably make the one Congress hides from the governed look like sainthood. (See 3 below.)
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Editor
This letter is in response to the letter from Mr. Pryor regarding Skidaway Island Incorporation. The Skidaway
Island Republican Club is presenting a program entitled Skidaway Island Incorporation Pros and Cons as part of
Island Republican Club is presenting a program entitled Skidaway Island Incorporation Pros and Cons as part of
our True Perspectives Initiative on September 11, 2018
SIRC True Perspectives
Plantation Club
Cocktails/Cash bar : 5:00 PM
Presentation: 5:30 PM
Sustaining Members: Free
Regular Members: $5.00
Non Members: $10.00
All Welcome
Jack Sherrill
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Why Democrats are turning anti-Israel. (See 4 below.) ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Britain doles out money to help pay money to Palestinian terrorists and then turns the other cheek. . (See 5
below.)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Tom Perez loves Cortez and says she is the Democrat's future. (See 6 below.)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Now that Pompeo has been dressed down by N Korea and trump's love fest is beginning to resemble all the
others he has three options:a) He can let N Korea off the hook down the road.
b) He can obliterate N Korea.
c) He can squeeze them harder with more sanctions and demands that China get tough.
There is a fourth of course.
Trump can allow Pompeo to continue to work his charm over a much longer period in the distant hope of
accomplishing the ultimate goal. This seems a remote possibility but if might be the better option if Trump can
take the political heat and slough off more insults.
Everyone criticizes Trump for not being realistic when dealing with thugs. I would agree if his pleasantries
reveal his real thinking. I doubt Trump does not see' Ung and Putin's warts but since he must deal with them
throwing them a little honey is not all that dumb. It may not turn out better than vinegar but as long as he
knows who he is dealing with it is worth a try.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dick++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Why Democrats are turning anti-Israel. (See 4 below.) ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Britain doles out money to help pay money to Palestinian terrorists and then turns the other cheek. . (See 5
below.)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Tom Perez loves Cortez and says she is the Democrat's future. (See 6 below.)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Now that Pompeo has been dressed down by N Korea and trump's love fest is beginning to resemble all the
others he has three options:a) He can let N Korea off the hook down the road.
b) He can obliterate N Korea.
c) He can squeeze them harder with more sanctions and demands that China get tough.
There is a fourth of course.
Trump can allow Pompeo to continue to work his charm over a much longer period in the distant hope of
accomplishing the ultimate goal. This seems a remote possibility but if might be the better option if Trump can
take the political heat and slough off more insults.
Everyone criticizes Trump for not being realistic when dealing with thugs. I would agree if his pleasantries
reveal his real thinking. I doubt Trump does not see' Ung and Putin's warts but since he must deal with them
throwing them a little honey is not all that dumb. It may not turn out better than vinegar but as long as he
knows who he is dealing with it is worth a try.
++++++++++++++++++++++++
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
EXCLUSIVE: POLICE REPORT INDICATES WASSERMAN SCHULTZ IT AIDE PLANTED COMPUTER FOR INVESTIGATORS TO FIND
A laptop that Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz has frantically fought to keep prosecutors from examining may have been planted for police to find by her since-indicted staffer, Imran Awan, along with a letter to the U.S. Attorney.
U.S. Capitol Police found the laptop after midnight April 6, 2017, in a tiny room that formerly served as a phone booth in the Rayburn House Office Building, according to a Capitol Police report reviewed by The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group. Alongside the laptop were a Pakistani ID card, copies of Awan’s driver’s license and congressional ID badge, and letters to the U.S. attorney. Police also found notes in a composition notebook marked “attorney-client privilege.”
The laptop had the username “RepDWS,” even though the Florida Democrat and former Democratic National Committee chairman previously said it was Awan’s computer and that she had never even seen it.
Awan was banned Feb. 2, 2017, from the congressional computer network because he is a suspect in a cyber security investigation, but he still had access to House facilities because Wasserman Schultz continued to employ him.
The laptop was found on the second floor of the Rayburn building — a place Awan would have had no reason to go because Wasserman Schultz’s office is in the Longworth building and the other members who employed him had fired him.
Wasserman Schultz used a televised May 18, 2017 congressional hearing on the Capitol Police budget to threaten “consequences” if Chief Matthew Verderosa did not give her the laptop. “If a member loses equipment,” it should be given back, she said.
Verderosa told her the laptop couldn’t be returned because it was tied to a criminal suspect. Wasserman Schultz reiterated that, while Awan was a suspect, the computer should be returned because it is “a member’s … if the member is not under investigation.”
She changed her story two months later, claiming it was Awan’s laptop — bought with taxpayer funds from her office — and she had never seen it. She said she only sought to protect Awan’s rights. “This was not my laptop,” she said August 3. “I have never seen that laptop. I don’t know what’s on the laptop.”
Awan, his wife, Hina Alvi, and two of his Pakistani-born brothers are at the center of a joint FBI-Capitol Police cybersecurity criminal investigation of their IT work for dozens of Democratic House members.
Awan was arrested by the FBI at Dulles International Airport July 25, 2017, while trying to board a flight to his native Pakistan and then indicted on four counts of bank fraud in connection with his wire transfer of nearly $300,000 to Pakistan. The bank fraud charges are tangential to the cybersecurity probe.
The circumstances of the laptop’s appearance described in the police report suggest Wasserman Schultz was trying to keep the police from reviewing a laptop that Awan himself may have wanted them to find. The former phone booth room where police found the items is small, and there was no obvious reason to enter it.
Leaving important items there accidentally would seem extremely unlikely, according to Rep. Louie Gohmert, a Texas Republican, former prosecutor, and member of the House Judiciary Committee.
“Imran Awan is a calculating person who made great efforts to cover his tracks, both electronically and physically,” Gohmert told TheDCNF. “Placing that laptop with his personal documents, which may well incriminate him, those he worked for, or both, in the dead of night in a House office building, was a deliberate act by a cunning suspect, and it needs to be investigated.”
Even though the laptop was allegedly used only by an IT aide who worked for numerous members, Wasserman Schultz has hired an outside counsel, William Pittard, to argue that the laptop not be examined. Pittard argued that the speech and debate clause — which only protects a member’s information directly related to legislative duties — should prevent prosecutors from examining the laptop’s contents, TheDCNF has learned. Pittard did not respond to requests for comment.
Pittard, a partner with Kaiser Dillon, is the former acting general counsel of the House. Hiring an outside counsel to argue the speech and debate clause on behalf of Wasserman Schultz is highly unusual, because the general counsel of the House offers opinions on speech and debate issues for free.
The most recent notable example of a member hiring an outside attorney to argue a more aggressive interpretation is former Louisiana Rep. William Jefferson, who was convicted Aug. 4, 2009 of “using his office to try to enrich himself and relatives through a web of bribes and payoffs involving business ventures in Africa.” Investigators found $100,000 in cash in his freezer.
The collection of documents found in Rayburn tied the laptop to Awan and ensured that police would keep the computer. The reporting officer wrote that when he saw Awan’s name, he recalled guarding an interrogation of him a few months earlier. The “attorney client privilege” notation also prevented police from immediately reviewing some of the papers.
Nonetheless, the officer opened the MacBook and found that its login screen did not have Awan’s username, but rather “RepDWS.”
A police report reviewed by TheDCNF said:
The IT guys in the House criminal probe could read these members' emailsOn 4/6/2017 at 0021 hours, with the building closed to the public, AOC informed USCP Rayburn offices of an unattended bag in the phone booth on the 2nd floor. The officer received the open-contents visible bag and prepared a found property report. While reviewing the inventory of the bag contents, the officer found#1 a Pakistani ID card with the name Mohommed Ashraf Awan
#2 a copy – not original – of a drivers license with name Imran Awan
#3 a copy (front and back) of his congressional ID
#4 an Apple laptop with the homescreen initials ‘RepDWS’
#5 composition notebooks with notes handwritten saying ‘attorney client privilege’ and possibly discussing case details below
#6 loose letters addressed to US Attorney of DC discussing the apparent owner of the bag being investigated.Approximately 3-4 months ago officer was requested by SAA as police presence of 4 individuals being interviewed, including the bag owner. It is unknown to the officer whether he is still employed.
The Awans and their associates collected more than $5 million in pay from congressional offices, often drawing chief-of-staff level pay though there is reason to believe many didn't even show up. The House's internal probe found they logged into servers they had no affiliation with, used members' usernames, covered their tracks, and persisted even after being fired.
The money is broken down by year, congressional office and family member paid:
Imran, Abid and Jamal Awan and Hina Alvi, Natalia Sova, Rao Abbas, Hasseb Rana and Muhammad
++++
1a) Internet Liberals Give, and Internet Liberals Take Away
Other people's opinions are distasteful at best and worth a hanging at worst. That's why they belong to other people. Who wants to eat ketchup on eggs, or vote for Bernie Sanders, or make love to a bald-headed 400-lb. gender studies major? Not me, not today, not any day – and I've placed them in this order to show that yes, these things do actually happen; yes, they exist on a scale; and yes, I want absolutely nothing to do with them. To do them yourself means you might get a smirk. You force them on me, and you've started a war.
It's a war we're on the verge of, all day, every day. We insist that we all like being able to speak our minds, but the downside of this is that we hear other people's minds, and we hate them for it. We loathe the little half-baked ideas they share, day after day, about how the world could be better if we'd only just open the border, or give money to bums, or never use plastic, or put women in charge of everything, or enforce the book of Leviticus, or give away all our guns, or put people in jail for blasphemy, or get rid of profit, or capital, or genders, or taxes, or churches – any of these things, it turns out, that would be completely disastrous and yet despite this are preached, day after day, as if they came from the mouth of our Lord and Savior, Martin Luther King, Jr.
No – democracy is terrifying because people are insane, and every moral statement, whether brilliant or stupid, whether passed casually or shouted from the pulpit, is an imposition of some sort: at best a little pain because you feel as if you don't fit in, at worst a fear that your whole world will get wrecked. It's social discomfort and a nightmare combined: the idea that one day you could wake up, and if enough people signed a petition, you might have to throw on a burka and then marry a transgender.
The leftists realize this, and that's why they're terrified of free speech. They believe, sanely, I might add, that our thoughts become things and that the game we play so casually, the little chats at dinner or in the break room, might turn into sanctuary for a Mexican or a banishment at the border – in essence, that what you're speaking isn't words, but lives. When you drop that ballot into a box, you are dropping not a piece of paper, but little sheets of life and death, riches and poverty, harmony and hatred – your will over others', your children over others', your future over others', whatever-you-want über alles.
And so arises this belief, endemic among the left, that the first person to get angry is the better person, that punching and shouting and shaming are more righteous than talking. They think it means you care, and that the punches they throw might break a jaw but in the end save a kid – all true, except everyone is fighting for some kid, and beyond this, everyone believes he's right. Thus, a call to arms is never just a call to your arms. It's calling everyone else to arms, too. It means that everyone with an opinion different from yours is forced no longer to talk about it, but to punch about it, and that whoever has the most punchers is going to win – not the best speakers, not the best thinkers, but the best punchers. Not the best philosophy, but the first: I believe that it was invented by the gorillas. That's too old-fashioned for my taste, but these are our progressives.
The truth is these punch-throwers are weak, and to live in a free society, you have to be tough – not just in the fists (which are important to any civilized man), but in the soul. You have to be ready, every morning, for other free men to say terribly free things and to brave this insurmountable tide of idiocy with a face so stoical and easy-going that other people will open up to you and you can start exchanging ideas. You also have to be prepared to realize that you, a person who does not know everything, might be the idiot, and that life itself is a process of conversion. (There is also a time, rare but absolutely essential, to take a stand and tell someone to shut the hell up.)
Is this easy? Absolutely not. It requires both the patience of a saint and the acting skills of a playboy. But the alternative, missed by every short-sighted do-gooder, is harder. We either exchange ideas now, or people act on them, without thinking them through, at the voting booth. We open up our dinner tables to the enemy because we don't want our front doors kicked down by policemen. We pretend to not be offended – we say hit us with the words so we can avoid getting hit with the things. We are too prudent to look righteous. We are too righteous to look bigoted. We abandon the grandstanding and move in for the substance. We are the last of the classical liberals.
Jeremy Egerer is the author of the troublesome essays on Letters to Hannah, and he welcomes followers on Twitter and Facebook.
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1b) The left’s personal destruction machine turns its focus on Jim Jordan
Jim Jordan has been one of the most effective investigators in pursuing the cabal that weaponized the FBI and intelligence agencies to fight the candidacy and then the presidency of Donald Trump. Rather than answer him with facts and documents, the left is out to destroy him, which tells anyone paying attention that he is on to something.
This campaign began to tar him with scandal, no matter how far-fetched. George Rasley explains at Conservative HQ:
NBC News published an article on Tuesday, quoting Mike DiSabato and Dunyasha Yetts, two former Ohio State University wrestlers, claiming that when Jim Jordan worked as assistant wrestling coach at OSU, he ignored sexual abuse carried out by a university physician named Richard Strauss. ..
Jordan, a leading House conservative and candidate for Speaker, has vehemently denied the allegations, saying that he was never told of sexual abuse against athletes during his stint at OSU, which stretched from 1986 to 1994. He said he would have taken action had he known about any abuse by Strauss, who killed himself in 2005. ...
And interestingly enough, looking through the articles about the allegations you can't find any mention of head coach Russ Hellickson's name, who would have been the logical person to whom allegations of abuse should have been reported, if they occurred.
Chuck Ross of the Daily Caller checked out the bona fides of the two accusers and found ample reason to doubt their integrity:
- One accuser, Mike DiSabato, is also being accused of bullying the widow of a Marine over a memorial fund set up in her husband's name.
- DiSabato is also facing a defamation lawsuit.
- The other accuser, Dunyasha Yetts, served prison time for a $1.8-million fraud scheme
Further tainting the charges is the involvement of Perkins Coie, which, as Paul Mirengoff of Powerline points out, is:... the Seattle-based operation that served as the go-between between Hillary Clinton's campaign and Fusion/GPS, as they colluded with Russians to put together the phony dossier for use against Donald Trump.
Given their penchant for committing fraud and thuggery, the two Jordan accusers could use all the fancy legal representation they can get. But Perkins, Coie's representation of the two isn't about Yates and DiSabato, it's about nailing Jim Jordan.
The firm's presence is a sure sign that the left has undertaken a concerted effort to bring Jim Jordan down, and that the sudden emergence of allegations centering on events from at least 25 years ago has nothing to do with what happened (or didn't happen) back then. This is the Jim Jordan equivalent of the Trump dossier.
Yesterday, Rep. Jordan appeared on Special Report with Bret Baier and faced an intense grilling (entire video embedded below). As Richard Baehr points out, he lost a nephew in a car accident the day before, which makes it all the more amazing that he would agree to an extended (12-minute) appearance. Not the action of man with something to hide.
Of course, the effort here is to raise the specter of Joe Paterno ignoring reports of homosexual assaults by his assistant. But Paterno had a motive: protecting his legacy. Jordan, a lowly assistant coach, had no such motives for a cover-up, and in fact, had he known, he could have profited politically by exposing the misconduct if he was already planning his entry into politics.
Here is the Fox News interview. Judge for yourself whether Jordan looks innocent.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
2)Gowdy Smacks Dirty Dem Adam Schiff
Adam Schiff has been one of the top Democrat obstructionists in Congress. Playing politics every chance he gets. Well, Trey Gowdy has finally had enough, and he called out Rep. Schiff on his true intentions.
According to The Daily Caller:
California Rep. Adam Schiff has “had a terrible last couple of years,” Republican South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy said in a scathing interview about his Democratic counterpart Thursday night.
“He wanted to be the attorney general under Hillary Clinton, and nobody in the country worked harder to protect her than Adam Schiff. He wanted to run for the Senate in the People’s Republic of California, but he couldn’t win either of those seats. So now, he wants to be the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee,” Gowdy told Fox News’ Jason Chaffetz.
Gowdy was responding to remarks that Schiff made in an interview with CNN on June 28 about House Republicans’ efforts to obtain information about the FBI and Justice Department’s investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government.
“I don’t think anybody on my side of the aisle gives much of a damn what Adam Schiff thinks,” said Gowdy.
Trey Gowdy is a fighter in Congress, and this is just another example of how he will not be pushed around. Especially, by Democrats with improper motivations.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
3)United Nations security allegedly roughed up, tossed out and temporarily banned a reporter from its New York headquarters this week -- the latest incident in what a watchdog has described as a "long history of harassment" against him. Matthew Lee, who runs the online Inner City Press blog, has long been a thorn in the side of many U.N. officials with his combative and relentless style of reporting. “ICP” puts out several lengthy stories a day about U.N. proceedings, with a particular emphasis on corruption, incompetence and lack of accountability at the international body.
We like to kid about the United Nations, but it just goes to show that their left-wing, repressive tendencies are getting harder to hide. They suppressed jounalists so well that they could have worked for the Obama administration! All we know is that the UN is becoming increasingly hostile to western values like free speech, and really needs to rent a building somewhere else. We hope Trump turns the place into condos.
The content is often deeply in the weeds of U.N. activity with no hearing, speech or photo op too small or dry for Lee’s coverage, and he is regularly seen zipping through the building and typing on his laptop in any nook or cranny he can find. He uses Periscope to livestream events and offers running commentaries of the day’s proceedings as he walks home through New York City at night.
And so on Tuesday, Lee hovered outside a late-night, closed-door hearing on the U.N. peacekeeping budget. Other outlets had reported that the budget had been agreed on over the weekend, suggesting a looming stalemate had been broken. But Lee’s reporting suggested things might not be so clear cut.
Partial video of the incident taken on his phone shows Lee chatting with a committee member -- but it then cuts to a few minutes later when a scuffle can be heard. He claims that his shirt was torn, his computer damaged and his arm twisted by a security guard as he was trying to write a story about his conversation.
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4)Why Democrats are turning anti-Israel
By Caroline Glick
Since President Donald Trump entered the White House, hardly a day has gone by without Israel receiving a warning from a Democratic politician or a liberal American Jewish leader that it had better curb its enthusiasm and be reticent in its support for Trump and his policies.
The partisan split is clear. A Pew survey of American support for Israel in January noted a great and growing gap in partisan support for the Jewish state. 79 percent of Republicans support Israel against the Palestinians. Only 27 percent of Democrats do.
The latest warning came this week. Ambassador Dennis Ross, the former U.S. mediator for the peace talks between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), told the Jerusalem Post that Israel needs to watch out.
“Given the strong opposition by Democrats to Trump,” Ross warned, “Israel risks getting caught up in that conflict,” he told the Post.
“There will be a post-Trump U.S. … Israel risks a backlash because the Trump administration has caused such deep alienation among Democrats, so it’s very important that there is outreach by Israel to Democrats.”
Ross also had advice for what Israelis should talk about when they talk to Americans. Israelis, he said, should avoid talking about shared values and visions of the world. Instead, they should focus their discussions with Americans on both sides of the aisle on security issues and regional Middle East topics.
Ross’s warning that Israelis should avoid speaking to Americans about shared values points to the core of Israel’s problem with Democrats — and, increasingly, with the American Jewish community which splits two-to-one in support for Democrats over Republicans.
For the better part of the history of U.S.-Israel relations, the main source of U.S. support for Israel was not shared security interests — although those shared interests are legion, and have ensured that ties between the countries have always been intense and largely cooperative.
The basic affinity between Americans and Israelis that informed their joint interests has always been our shared values. More precisely, Zionism — that is, Jewish nationalism — and American nationalism share basic features that draw them together.
Both Israel and the U.S. are states based on ideals and ideas rooted in the Bible. Jewish identity and attachment to the land of Israel, like Jewish survival through two thousand years of exile and homelessness, owe entirely to the faithfulness of Jewish people scattered throughout the world to the laws of Moses and to their national identity as the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. This enduring attachment to Jewish law and heritage, and to national identity, is what brought millions of Jews to settle in the land of Israel both before and after the State of Israel was founded 70 years ago.
The Jews who have come to Israel from the four corners of the globe were not entering a foreign land as economic migrants. They were exiles returning home. Israel is not a nation of immigrants so much as a state populated by ingathered Jewish exiles.
Likewise, as Michael Anton wrote this week, contrary to the pro-open borders position, the U.S. is not a nation of immigrants. It is a nation built by settlers.
Anton defines a settler as someone who “builds ex nihilo and must form the initial social compact,” of a society.
Anton’s definition isn’t precise, at least in the case of the early settlers in the British colonies. The social compact they forged, which was later revised in the form of the U.S. Constitution, was not built from nothing. It was founded on the Bible. The Biblical laws and narratives formed the basis of enlightenment concepts like limited government, individual liberty, and freedom of religion, which in turn formed the basis of the American social compact.
Anton argued that an immigrant, in general, is not a free-floating individual who happens to fall where he falls. Rather, an immigrant is someone who “seeks to join a society already built, to join a compact already made.”
In the case of the United States, the compact that centuries of immigrants joined was anchored in the Constitution and the philosophical and religious positions that inform it. The civic religion that emerged in the U.S. was inclusive to those who accepted its basic values and principles.
Given that the social compacts of both Israel and the U.S. were forged by settlers informed by the Bible, it is little wonder that the two nations have always had a natural affinity for one another.
Which brings us back to Ross’s warning.
The problem that Israel now faces with the Democrats is that whereas Israelis have by and large remained faithful to their identity — and consequently, their nationalism, or Zionism — Democrats are increasingly becoming post-nationalist.
The distinction between nationalist and post-nationalist is not a mere policy preference. It is a far more fundamental shift in values.
Consider the situation along Israel’s border with Syria.
For the past two weeks, as the Russian-Syrian-Iranian advance against rebel-held southwestern Syria has proceeded, some 270,000 Syrians have fled their homes in Deraa and Quneitra provinces. While the bulk of the displaced have fled to the Syrian-Jordanian border, several thousand have situated themselves along Syria’s border with Israel.
In Israel, there is all but consensual support for the government’s position, stated by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his weekly cabinet meeting Sunday. Netanyahu said, “Regarding southern Syria, we will continue to defend our borders. We will extend humanitarian assistance to the extent of our abilities. We will not allow entry into our territory.”
That is, Israelis are committed to being good neighbors to the Syrians.
Despite the formal state of war between the two countries, and the fact that almost all of the warring factions share a basic commitment to Israel’s annihilation, Israelis are happy to provide medical assistance to the wounded, and humanitarian assistance to the refugees on the border. But they are not prepared to grant asylum to anyone. This position is shared by all political parties across the right-left divide, except for the post-Zionist (or post-nationalist) party Meretz.
Meretz, which represents some 4 percent of the electorate, opposes the very notion of Jewish nationalism, or Zionism. It believes that Israel should open its doors – as a Jewish state – to refugees and others, including illegal economic migrants from Africa.
Meretz’s leader, Tamar Zandberg, knows that her party has no significant support domestically. And so she has focused a great deal of effort on building strong ties to Democrats and to progressive, anti-nationalist American Jewish groups to increase her party’s power and leverage in Israel.
Zandberg recognizes that her position, while marginal in Israel, is the dominant position in the American left generally and in the Democratic Party specifically. It is also an increasingly popular position in the American Jewish community.
Ambassador Ross was in Israel this week to attend the presentation of the Jewish People Policy Institute’s 2018 annual report. He serves as co-chairman of the institute’s board of directors. The report emphasized the importance of preserving the triangular relationship between Israel, American Jewry, and Washington.
The problem is that over the past twenty years or so, the American left has undergone a profound shift in values, from liberal nationalism to radical post-nationalism. This process, facilitated and accelerated during Barack Obama’s presidency, and expressed most emblematically in Democratic support for open borders, has made post-nationalism the sine qua non of the Democrats since Trump’s electoral triumph in 2016.
Israel’s relations with the American left, then, are a collateral victim of a wider shift in American society. Jewish nationalism, with its inherent affinity to American nationalism, was once the basis of Israel’s relationship with the American people as a whole. But now nationalism is the main cause of the Democrats’ increasingly fraught and antagonistic relationship with the Jewish state, while remaining the foundation of ever increasing levels of Republican affinity and support for Israel.
Perhaps Israel will be able to heed Ross’s advice, at least in terms of the Democrats. Perhaps it will be able to develop a common language with the U.S. based on shared interests. There are certainly a number of steps Israel can take to advance that goal.
But the fact is that the Democrats’ shift in values from nationalist to post-nationalist, rather than any action Israel has taken in its domestic or foreign policy, is what has caused the rupture in Israel’s ties to the American left.
So long as Meretz remains a marginal force in Israeli society on the one hand, and post-nationalist forces continue to rise in the Democratic party on the other, bipartisan support for Israel, like bipartisan support for American nationalism, will remain a thing of the past.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
5)Imagine if the London bombers in 2005
had been Palestinian bombers murdering Israelis?
- On July 7, 2005, 4 suicide bombers murdered 52 people and wounded 700 in 4 simultaneous terror attacks in London/
- If the London attacks had been carried out by Palestinian terrorists in Jerusalem targeting Israelis, the PA would have paid the families of the suicide bombers a combined total of £142,680m
- The Palestinian Authority pays salaries to imprisoned terrorists and families of so-called "Martyrs" out of the PA's general budget
- The UK government in 2018 is contributing 20 million pound to the PA's general budget
By Maurice Hirsch and Nan Jacques Zilberdik
Yesterday was the 13th anniversary of the London bombings on July 7, 2005. On that day, Muslim terrorists detonated three bombs on London's Underground and a fourth on a double-decker bus. In the explosions, 52 people were murdered and over 700 were injured.
Since its creation in 1994, the Palestinian Authority has spent billions of shekels rewarding and incentivizing Palestinian terrorism against Israelis, paying monthly salaries to imprisoned terrorists as well as monthly allowances to the families of the so-called "Martyrs," including suicide bombers.
If the London terrorists had been Palestinians who had carried out equivalent attacks in Jerusalem targeting Israelis, the PA would have already paid the families of the four terrorists a combined total of £142,680 pounds (687,200 shekels).
PA Minister of Education and Higher Education Sabri Saidam announced in November 2017 that the UK government had agreed to pay its annual contribution of 20 million pounds, which is "
allocated to support the [PA] general budget of Palestine." [WAFA, official PA news agency, Nov. 25, 2017]This allocation is only a fraction of the financial support the UK government provides to the PA annually.
In its 2018 budget, the PA allocated 680 million shekels from its general budget, predominantly to pay allowances to the families of thousands of dead Palestinian terrorist "Martyrs," including those who have carried out suicide attacks.
One of the Palestinian families who receives such payments is the family of suicide bomber Wafa Idris who carried out a suicide attack in the heart of Jerusalem in January 2002, murdering one and injuring over 100.
The document approving her "Martyr" status and the PA allocation of the allowance to her family explains that Idris:
"... carried out an act of martyrdom (sic. suicide attack) in occupied Jerusalem (sic. attack was in West Jerusalem) when she blew herself up in a group of Zionists. This led to the death of one of them, to the injury of more than 100 others, and to her death as a Martyr at the site, according to the enemy's media report. The Al-Aqsa Martyr Brigades (Fatah's military wing) claimed responsibility for the attack... She died as a Martyr when she carried out a heroic act against the Zionists in the occupied city of Jerusalem."
[Palestinian Ministry of Welfare and the Institute of Martyrs and the Wounded, February 2002]
Since it is inconceivable that the UK would fund allowances to the families of the London bombers, one would expect that the UK similarly would reject funding such allowances to Palestinian terrorists.
Following Palestinian Media Watch's exposure of the PA's salaries to terrorists, several countries are taking steps to cancel or limit funding to the PA. Earlier this year, US Congress passed the Taylor Force Act, which conditions US funding of the PA unless the PA abolishes its practice of paying salaries and allowances to terrorists. Last week, Israel's Parliament passed a law to deduct the equivalent sum of the PA's terror salaries from tax revenues that Israel collects for the PA. In addition, Australia decided to end its direct funding to the PA and instead redirect it to the United Nations' Humanitarian Fund for the Palestinian Territories. In Germany, the mayor of Frankfurt called for similar steps.
The following is a longer excerpt of the article mentioned above:
Headline: "Saidam: Britain has decided to pay its annual contribution of 20 million pounds to support the [PA] general budget"
"[PA] Minister of Education and Higher Education, [Fatah Central Committee Deputy Secretary, and Fatah Revolutionary Council Deputy Secretary] Sabri Saidam announced today (Saturday) [Nov. 25, 2017] that Britain has agreed to pay its annual contribution of 20 million pounds, which is allocated to support the [PA] general budget of Palestine. Part of it will be allocated for the education [sector], as an affirmation of [Britain's] commitment to support this sector and efforts to develop it and improve its accomplishments.
This was said during a phone call that Saidam received from British Minister [of State for the Department for] International Development Alistair Burt. Saidam emphasized that the donors' continued support for the education [sector] proves the confidence in the Palestinian [PA] education system, its efficiency, and its ability to record quality achievements.
He emphasized the importance of continuing this aid, whose goal is to support the education [sector], particularly in the fields that contribute to strengthening the education system."
[WAFA, official PA news agency, Nov. 25, 2017]
Wafa Idris - The first Palestinian female suicide bomber. Belonging to Fatah, she blew herself up on Jaffa Road in central Jerusalem on Jan. 27, 2002, murdering 1 and wounding over 100. As a volunteer for the Palestinian Red Crescent she was able to bypass Israeli security and enter Jerusalem in a Palestinian ambulance.
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6)
Perez: Ocasio-Cortez Is ‘The Future of Our Party’
By Conor Beck
Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez said in an interview on the "Bill Press Show" that Democratic congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is "the future of the party."
Liberal host Bill Press brought up Ocasio-Cortez's defeat of Rep. Joe Crowley (D., N.Y.), the current chair of the House Democratic Caucus, to become the Democratic nominee for New York's 14th Congressional District.
"Twenty-eight years old, never ran for office before, big progressive. Calls herself a democratic socialist, actually, like Bernie Sanders did, she was a Bernie Sanders reporter," Press said.
He also mentioned Maryland's Democratic gubernatorial nominee Ben Jealous, a progressive with a very liberal platform.
"What's this tell you about where the Democratic Party is going today?" Press asked the DNC chair.
Perez said his daughters both texted him about their excitement over Ocasio-Cortez's win.
"Because, she really, she represents the future of our party," Perez said, complimenting the self-described Democratic socialist for running a "spirited campaign."
Ocasio-Cortez is a member of the New York City chapter of Democratic Socialists of America and her progressive platform includes calling for the abolishment of ICE, a federal jobs guarantee, and single-payer health care.
The 14th District is heavily Democratic and Ocasio-Cortez is expected to win the general election with little opposition.
Following her surprise win, she said on "The View" that there is a "huge difference" between socialism and Democratic socialism, but she was unable to clearly articulate that difference.
"Democratic socialism, and really what that boils down to me, is the basic belief that I believe that in a moral and wealthy America and a moral and modern America, no person should be too poor to live in this country," she said.
Now that she’s the “it girl” of the Democrats, who “represents the future of our party,” according to the party chair Tom Perez, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s biographical claims have come under scrutiny, and cannot withstand the sunshine. Most notoriously (for now!) her claim that she commuted 40 minutes from her home in the Bronx to school in Westchester doesn’t pass the smell test. Mark Lungariello, of her actual home town (not the Bronx) Rockland/Westchester Journal News, writes:
U.S. congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s online bio was tweaked days after she faced scrutiny over where she grew up. (snip)
Her bio was called into question by some conservatives after the victory because she lived and went to school in Westchester County, New York, which some critics charged contradicted her Bronx girl campaign narrative.
The bio previously stated, “She ended up attending public school 40 minutes north in Yorktown, and much of her life was defined by the 40-minute commute between school and her family in the Bronx.”
That sentence in the bio has since been changed, though it still doesn’t explicitly state that she moved out of the Bronx to Yorktown when she was 5 years old.
“She ended up attending public school in Yorktown, 40 minutes north of her birthplace,” it now states. “As a result, much of her early life was spent in transit between her tight-knit extended family in the Bronx & her daily student life.”
Face it: she lied. And she still is fudging the truth. “Tight-knit extended family” is a deceptive term meant to imply she lived in the Bronx when in fact she lived in upscale Westchester.
Would you buy a used biography from this woman?
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