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This should be interesting. Without knowing the speaker's view I maintain we do not allow our children to play in dirt and in dirty sand boxes.
SCWA October Program
Thomas J. Bollyky
Plagues and the Paradox of Progress:
Why the World Is Getting Healthier in Worrisome Ways
Date: Thursday, October 17, 2019
Time: Membership Social at 7:30 p.m. Program at 8:00 p.m.
Location: SKIDAWAY ISLAND PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
50 DIAMOND CAUSEWAY, SKIDAWAY ISLAND.
50 DIAMOND CAUSEWAY, SKIDAWAY ISLAND.
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The prior posted article regarding the Kurds drew this heated response from a dear friend and fellow memo reader and with which I mostly agree.
He stated his views and objections regarding Trump's actions in a far better way than I have: "The article about the Kurds is such bullshit. When is it right to give the green light to massacre an ally? I don't care if it’s Canada doing the massacring, it’s never okay. She acknowledges that Trump's threats against Turkey are empty double-talk. Yet in the name of being a non-interventionist (by the way we deployed 3000 troops to Saudi Arabia this week — more bull shit) she justifies this massacre.
This is an ally who is a lot like Israel: Seeking statehood as a national, ethnic minority amidst a sea of enemies; being embroiled with conflict that is viewed as endless and helpless; relying on the support of the US.
This is not complicated. This is Trump’s sell-out foreign policy. It is immoral, disgusting and dangerous to allies around the world. He is looking at power interests alone as he always does.
There is no sense of what is right. But there never is with a power-hungry fickle leader as this one.
Disgusting! R----"
Meanwhile:
I have to believe Trump is catching hell for his Kurdish decision and had to put this out. to calm the backlash waters.
I have responded to some of Trump's comments by typing them in right below, placing them in ( ) .(See 1 below.)
More food for thought:
Trump's Foreign Policy: Less Military, More Money By Shoshana Bryen
Do We Owe the Kurds a War? By Tom Trinko
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Allowing hatred to drive policy and actions is not only amoral but vastly unwise.
Trump is better than radical Democrats believe and not as good as Trump believes.
It was not unwise to hate Hitler but achieving victory is what drove Eisenhower's strategy.
And:
This from a dear friend and fellow memo reader: "EVERY WHERE YOU TURN THERE ARE THE SEEDS OF CORRUPTION FROM DEMOCRAT/OBAMA ADMINISTRATION THAT SUPPORT THE DEVIOUSNESS THE COUNTRY IS NOW FACING. LIKE HIM OR NOT TRUMP IS NOT A COWARD . READ TO THE END . ALL OF THESE ALLEGATIONS CANNOT BE FALSE AND IF THIS CORRUPTION IS SOLVED THIS COUNTRY WILL BE STRONGER THAN YOU COULD EVER IMMAGINE.IT IS ALSO IMPORTANT TO OPEN THE BLUE HI-LITES AND READ ALSO ESPECIALLY ABOUT BIDEN AND MBNA." (See 2 below.)
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Ordman's Good News Israel edited. (See 3 below.)
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Dick
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By TOVAH LAZAROFF
US President Donald Trump swore allegiance to Israel as he decried endless Middle East wars and defended his decision to withdraw US troops from the Kurdish area of northern Syria when he spoke Saturday night at the annual Values Voters Conference in Washington D.C. (Did not know Washington had many values.)
“We are standing with our close friend and partner, the State of Israel,” Trump said, as he reviewed the steps he has taken on behalf of the Jewish state since taking office, such as relocating the US embassy to Jerusalem and recognizing Israeli sovereignty on the Golan Heights. (Standing like Kaepernick?)
In the same speech Trump defended the recent decision to withdraw US troops from the Kurdish region of Syria along the Turkish border, a move which paved the way for Turkey to attack that area. In the five days since the assault began, more than 100,000 people have fled to escape the violence.
The decision has sent alarm waves across the Middle East, where it is widely considered that Trump abandoned the Kurds after they had staunchly allied themselves with the US in the battle against ISIS.
Trump told the conference that he planned to protect the Kurds with the threat of economic sanctions against Turkey. (Say that to a dead Kurd.)
“I have made clear to Turkey that if they do not meet their commitments, including the protection religious minorities and watching over the ISIS prisoners that we captured, we will impose very swift and severe economic sanctions,” Trump said. (Limp.)
He added that on Friday, he committed $50 million to support Christians and other religious minorities in Syria. “With one clear voice the US condemns the persecution of Christians." (Not everything involving morals can be solved with money. Is Trump too mercurial with respect to foreign policy matters?)
Then he proceeded to speak about the problem of US military involvement in the Middle East, specifically Syria.
Any “military engagement where we send young men and women to fight and die must have clear objectives, vital national interests and a realistic plan for how the conflict will end. We don’t want to be in 19-year wars where we serve as a policing agent for the whole country,” Trump said. (Total agreement here. Obama handed him a live grenade.)
“In Syria, we were supposed to be there for 30 days and we have been there for 10 years. These wars, they never end. We have to bring our great soldiers back from the never-ending wars,” Trump said.( Agree again but why the 2,000 additional troops to Saudi Arabia?)
“We have spent 8 trillion dollars in the Middle East, thousands of American soldiers have lost their lives and tens of thousands more have been wounded,” he said. Four trillion of that sum was on the War in Iraq, Trump said, adding that the Middle East is less safe and less secure now. (Again, agree. GW meant well but never understood the region's tribal hatreds and Admiral Brimmer was a disaster or was he just trying to implement bad policy and did not foresee the disastrous results?.)
“Iraq was the single worst mistake this country has ever made, going into the Middle East,” Trump said. (Perhaps. Being Jewish I believe the withholding of arms to Israel was high on the list as was Obama's support of The Muslim Brotherhood, his bowing to The Saudi King and his apology in Egypt of America.)
He spoke at length about the pain caused to US families who have lost soldiers in the Middle East, describing the scene at Dover Air Force Base when the bodies are returned home. (Understand and empathize, but emotions cannot dictate policy.)
“The hardest thing I have to do as president is sending letters to the families of our fallen heroes,” Trump said. “We have to bring our heroes, our great soldiers home,” he added. (Understand and I repeat what I said above.)
Trump said that he knows that, with regard to the Turkish-Syrian border, he is “an island of one” with many opposed to his decision. (At least he is honest there.)
“That 30 kilometers - 22 miles - a strip along Turkey. And the Kurds are tending to leave and that's good. Let them have their borders. But I don't think our soldiers should be there for the next 50 years guarding a border between Turkey and Syria when we can't guard our own borders at home. I don't think so,” Trump said. (Well said.)
The US has paid a lot of money to the Kurds over the years, the US president said. “Don’t forget they are fighting for their land, they haven’t helped us fight for our land,” Trump said. Have we asked them. (A stretch and equating morality and money.)
After the speech he tweeted, “The same people that got us into the Middle East Quicksand, 8 Trillion Dollars and many thousands of lives (and millions of lives when you count the other side), are now fighting to keep us there. Don’t listen to people that haven’t got a clue. They have proven to be inept!” (Strong and rational response.)
(I understand Trump's view and what motivates him and am not as harsh as my friend in his personal assessment of Trump. It is the hard decisions and ones that , perhaps, do not give voice to the moral side of an issue that can become the most difficult for any president. Wars seldom adhere to pre-conceived/planned boundaries. There is always spill-over.
I once asked Sam Nunn what he though was Carter's greatest contribution and he said 'his introduction of morality/human rights to our foreign policy.'))
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Believing Adam Schiff’s lies and calling for an “impeachment inquiry” has to be one of the worst blunders of Speaker Pelosi’s career. The whistleblower tale has crumbled and the backup witnesses the Democrats are relying on only confirm the Deep State bureaucrats and Democrats believe that they, not the elected president, have a lock on executive powers. In fact, the ploy boomeranged and the spotlight is now on the Democrats’ White Hope, Joe Biden. Despite the media downplaying Biden’s actions, there is more to come of his and his party’s corruption.
Whistleblower Won’t Testify
The leaker, incorrectly tagged a “whistleblower,” now doesn’t want to testify. Instead he wants to give his testimony “by letter,” presumably from an undisclosed location where no one can test his “testimony.” Ostensibly this is because he fears for his safety. He is anonymous, so any claim of “death threats” seems unlikely, although as we show below, we do have a rather good idea of his identity.
In any event the very notion is preposterous.
It was already ridiculous to think a presidential impeachment, to remove the most powerful elected political representative of The United States, could continue based on an anonymous complaint. However, expecting the same complainant/accuser to remain invisible during the process is so far beyond nonsensical, the light from where nonsense emanates wouldn’t reach this narrative for a year.Yes, feel free to pummel the left-wing nuts based on the absurdity of this request. Only the most raving Moon bat imaginable would think they could impeach a sitting U.S. President via a ‘Dear Sir’ complaint letter to Congress.These are obviously not stable-minded people.Oh, please, please, please hold that impeachment vote now. It is more clear than ever where this nuttery is heading.If you thought it was delicious to watch the media meltdowns on election night 2016, just imagine the meltdowns as the media attempts to sell impeachment via a strongly worded letter of complaint to their resistance constituents….Perhaps he could testify via text messages, or… wait, even better… via tweets. Too damn funny.
The real reason for this backoff, I think, is that once his identity is confirmed, it will be clear this was a stupid setup by amateurs in Congress who wanted to cover their tracks. From certain clues reported, online detectives have winkled out what appears to be his identity.
If they are right, there are a lot of reasons he wouldn’t want to testify. For one he seems to be involved with those behind the discredited Steele Dossier. “Billionaire Clinton donor Victor Pinchuk sent MP Bielkova to meet with him the same day she met with David Kramer and kicked Steele Dossier operation into high gear.” For another, his association with two members of Schiff’s staff -- Abigail Grace and Sean Misko -- suggests they cooked up his story together before sending it off to the Inspector General to refashion the leaker as a “whistleblower.”
Grace, 36, was hired to help Schiff’s committee investigate the Trump White House. [snip] Grace worked at the NSC from 2016 to 2018 in U.S.-China relations and then briefly at the Center for a New American Security think tank, which was founded by two former senior Obama administration officials. [snip]Misko, 37, worked in the Obama administration as a member of the secretary of state’s policy planning staff under deputy chief of staff Jake Sullivan, who became Hillary Clinton's top foreign policy official during her 2016 presidential campaign. In 2015, Misko was the director for the Gulf states at the NSC, remaining there into the Trump administration’s first year.A source familiar with Grace's work at the NSC told the Washington Examiner, “Abby Grace had access to executive privilege information, and she has a duty not to disclose that information. She is not authorized to reveal that information.”The same source said that Misko had not been trusted by Trump appointees. "There were a few times where documents had been signed off for final editing before they go to the national security adviser for signature," the source said. "And he actually went in and made changes after those changes were already finished. So he basically tried to insert, without his boss' approval."There were meetings in which he protested very heavily, and next thing you know, there's an article in the paper about the contents of that meeting." [snip]Misko's name surfaced in the Hillary Clinton email controversy when he worked in the State Department during the Obama administration.
In a Dec. 1, 2009, email released by Judicial Watch, Clinton adviser Huma Abedin sent classified information regarding foreign military contributions to the Afghanistan war effort to her private email account. That email originated with Misko, who wrote to Sullivan that he initially “accidentally” sent it on the “high side” (secure) but was sending the email again. The “whistleblower” -- if the supposition of his identity is true -- is or was with the CIA and is a fellow on the Atlantic Council, “which has a business partnership with Hunter Biden’s holding company” the Ukrainian energy company Burisma. JP also reports that members of the Atlantic Council include a significant number of anti-Trumpers whom we are all familiar with:
What do we know about The Atlantic Council members now?1: Burisma Holdings.2: Sean Misko (Schiff staffer)3: Dmitri Alperovitch. (The CTO and cofounder of Crowdstrike)4: Victor Pinchuk (Ukrainian Oligarch/Hillary Funder)..& more Obama/Hillary people than you can imagine.You know what else is SOOOOO coincidental? That the CTO of Crowdstrike is ALSO in The Atlantic Council.
Who funds the Atlantic Council? Hunter Biden’s Burisma. The American Security Council is also a rats’ nest of familiar persons, notes JP:
“Let's look at members of The Center for a New American Century... CNAS...Members: 1: Abigail Grace (Schiff staffer. Former NSC at WH) 2: Christopher Heinz. (John Kerry son, Partners with Hunter Biden) 3: Sean Misko (Schiff staffer. Former NSC at WH)”
Even the “whistleblower’s” attorney, Andrew Bakaj, has a long anti-Trump history and a connection to the Project on Government Oversight, financed by George Soros’ Open Society foundation.
Back up Witnesses Before Congress
My online friend “The Infamous Iggy” captured the unifying theme of these two witnesses best:
The DNC, Pelosi, Schiff, the media, progs in general and even the bureaucracy and FBI are in some respects a sideshow.The real issue that ought to either-or-both frighten and enrage any honest American is that the "Intelligence Community" truly does now consider itself a law unto itself and has arrogated the power to actually decide who is a suitable president and who will be allowed to occupy the White House.The genesis of Russia and the Ukraine has quite plainly been at its root the IC and especially the CIA.They have, make no mistake, declared war on self-governance, unless we pick someone they approve of which is quite obviously not self-governance.Thankfully the stupid bastards are remarkably incompetent and have been for decades but they still can, and are, causing a great deal of damage.
So absurd have been the multiple efforts by Democrats to geld the chief executive that one federal appellate court judge has termed their efforts violative of the constitutional ban on Bills of Attainder.
Hoping to inject life into a dead horse, Democrats announced two witnesses this week, both of which are disgruntled former Trump officials and neither of whom had firsthand knowledge of the phone call that prompted this nonsense.
Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch
The President pulled her from that post in May. She is the ambassador who didn’t let representatives of the new government of Ukraine have visas to travel to this country to provide evidence of corruption by Biden and others in their country.
I suppose her point, and that of the Democrats, is that the executive powers granted the president are to be negated. The Deep State, once in place, cannot be removed by an upstart president who disagrees with its members.
Fiona Hill
Her testimony is due next week. She likewise objected to the president setting his own foreign policy circumventing the advice of the bloated (300) membership (Obama’s doing, now trimmed back to the original 100 by Trump) of the National Security Council and herself. The President’s former Russian advisor resigned days before the call which so perturbed Adam Schiff, a call he misrepresented (“parodied”) when the White House surprisingly revealed the transcript of it. In her case, it seems that once again that policy differences and turf protection are the issues, not presidential wrongdoing.
Deep State Corruption in Ukraine is Still Only Partially Revealed
It is my belief, based on information, that the Bidens were not the only ones who treated Ukraine as a private piggy bank. Obama sent them a billion dollars and to paraphrase the Bible, he cast bread upon the waters and Biden and others got back Fig Newtons. Hunter Biden alone received $3.1 million in an 18-month period.
@charliekirkHunter Biden’s bank records show that $3.1 million flowed in from the Ukrainians over an 18 month period$142,000 was wired from a Ukrainian oligarch$1.2M came from an LLC connected to a bank with a history of money launderingAll while his dad steered Ukrainian policy
It seems that Joe Biden may have done well, too:
Rudy Giuliani has alleged that a Ukrainian natural-gas company that employed Joe Biden’s son Hunter also paid the former vice president $900,000 in lobbying fees.Appearing on Fox News’ “Hannity” Wednesday, President Trump’s personal lawyer cited as evidence claims made by Andriy Derkach, a member of Ukraine’s parliament. [snip]“Funds in the amount of $900,000 were transferred to the US-based company Rosemont Seneca Partners,” Derkach told reporters, referring to the investment company the younger Biden founded with Chris Heinz, the stepson of former Secretary of State John Kerry.“The payment reference was payment for consultative services,” Derkach said, according to Interfax, a Russian news agency.He went on to claim Burisma -- according to documents -- paid $16.5 million to former Polish President Aleksander Kwasnieski, who was chair of Burisma’s board, Hunter Biden and Devon Archer.
It remains to be seen if Derkach’s claims will be proven, but Biden has a long history of corrupt dealings. Tom Brokaw first raised this issue in 2008.
I think a thorough investigation will show that money sent to Ukraine to help develop its natural gas resources were diverted by pro-Russian Ukrainian officials who sat on it in order to allow Russia to dominate the natural gas market in Europe (and blackmail it) and disbursed a portion to the Bidens to pull this off. I also think the Obama Administration was well aware of this corrupt deal with Hunter Biden.
China
Ukraine was not the only piggybank Hunter tapped into. There was China as well, and there John Kerry’s stepson, Chris Heinz, joined him.
In 2015, the Aviation Industry Corporation of China teamed up with Bohai Harvest RST to buy Henniges Automotive, a producer of high-tech anti-vibration components for automobiles. Bohai Harvest's investment funding, though "managed" by Hunter Biden and Chris Heinz, had come in large part from Chinese government interests. So it's stretching the truth to say a Chinese investment pool "teamed up with" a Chinese company to buy the components-maker. Really, it was the Chinese buying an American company.At a big-bracket investment firm such as Goldman or Morgan, such a transaction would have had to pass muster through teams of compliance and due diligence officials. What sort of compliance review do you think occurred at the so-called private equity firm run by a drug-addicted ne'er-do-well like Biden or like Kerry's stepson?Private equity funds tend to charge one or two percent a year on invested capital plus 20% of profits. Assuming that the fund had a total of $1.5 billion of "assets under management," the lucky fellows were -- and probably still are -- splitting $15 or $30 million a year.
In both cases, not only do we have the unseemly, certainly corrupt practice of officials and their children cleaning up on foreign deals obtained through political connections, but as well there is the stench of these people undermining U.S. interests for self.
But absent Schiff and Pelosi’s dumb and phony “impeachment inquiry” none of this would have received much attention in the press, which as John Nolte describes has hit defcon in desperation.
Incidentally, the presidency is not the only branch whose powers the Democrats want to circumscribe. Democratic Senators Whitehouse, Gilibrand, Hirono, Blumenthal, and Durbin just filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in a Second Amendment case regarding NYC firearm transport restrictions.
The brief contained a thinly veiled threat to restructure the Supreme Court if it decides against the City of New York.
These people keep trying in every way large and small to impose a one-party autocratic rule over us, even going so far as to ignore the separation of powers among three constitutional branches of government.
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