IF MEDIA DON’T WANT TO BE CALLED PROPAGANDISTS, THEY NEED TO STOP PUBLISHING CHINESE AND RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA!!

The American media’s Trump-Russia hysteria of the last few years gains some real perspective when you consider that they are more than willing to take blood money to distribute publications that whitewash authoritarian crimes.

by Mark Hemingway  at the Federalist:

If you ever spend any time in the Washington D.C. area, there’s a good chance you’ll come across a publication known as China Daily. In appearance, it’s a newspaper. In reality, it is official propaganda from the Chinese government that Communist Party officials deem appropriate for influencing those inside the Beltway. You can find it all over downtown D.C. in newspaper boxes. Large stacks of free copies are also dropped off directly at offices all over the city.

Even better, if you subscribe to the Washington Post, you can get communist propaganda delivered straight to your doorstep for a fee. A few times a year, the Post comes wrapped in a special advertising supplement called China Watch that, again, does its best to approximate a legitimate newspaper. But underneath the masthead in fine print, it reads: “This supplement, prepared by China Daily, People’s Republic of China, did not involve the news or editorial departments of the Washington Post.”

Anyway, you may have recently heard about how two million people out of a population of seven million in Hong Kong recently protested in the streets against the Communist Party’s attempt to further snuff out their little pocket of freedom. Here’s how China Daily is reporting what happened:

Parents in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region took to the streets on Sunday to urge US politicians to not interfere with the SAR’s extradition amendments and its internal affairs.

The protest, organized by several Hong Kong social groups, also condemned foreign entities for misleading young people in the city.

Among these social groups was an alliance of more than 30 local political, business and legal dignitaries who support the proposed amendments to the SAR’s extradition law. They marched outside the US Consulate General in Hong Kong and Macao, calling on the US to stop interfering in Hong Kong affairs.

The whole article is a damnable lie, and yet, as far as I know, the brave truth-tellers at the Washington Post have been taking money to distribute this kind of bilge at least since 2011.

Of course, in recent years we’ve been subject to endless preening from journalists about “fake news” and their renewed commitment as truth tellers. The Washington Posteven adopted the slogan “Democracy Dies In Darkness.” We can argue what this metaphorical “darkness” is supposed to be, but democracy literally dies in oppressive communist regimes.

Further, the Post has spent the better part of a year attacking the Trump administration for its inadequate response to Saudi Arabia after the kingdom apparently killed one of the Post’s writers, Jamal Khashoggi. Regardless of the Post’s Pollyanna-ish denial of Khashoggi’s questionable activism masquerading as journalism, his murder was appalling and the Saudis’ general human rights record is terrible.

It’s not hard to see why the paper would be thundering about injustice here. However, that argument is harder to make when a venerable institution such as the Post is so untroubled by the world’s worst human rights abuser that it distributes their propaganda.

Just to wrap your head around the hypocrisy, note that last November 29, the Post published yet another advertising insert from China Watch:

View image on Twitter

Curtis Houck

Ohhh boy! The same @WashingtonPost that’s lecturing about press freedom after one of their columnists was murdered by the Saudis is STILL running Chinese propaganda inserts. They’ll claim it’s just an “Advertising Supplement,” but they’d stop if they were serious.

Khashoggi was murdered the previous month, and the Post was still in high dudgeon about it. But the timing of it again publishing Chinese propaganda was even more appalling. The day after the Post ran ChiCom propaganda, Time reported on how a “Uighur woman and mother of three told a Congressional committee this week that she was tortured and suffered the loss of a child in a mass internment camp, pressing the U.S. to take punitive action against China’s mass detention of the Muslim minority.”

Time magazine has a video of the woman’s wrenching testimony. The woman sobs as a translator recounts that “I thought that I would rather die than go through this torture.” Do note Time’s use of the genteel descriptor “internment camp” here, given the recent full-throated defense by many in the media of Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez describing illegal immigrant detainment centers on America’s southwest border as “concentration camps.” One of these governments is actually detaining people against their will explicitly because of their religion and ethnicity, and if you’re unclear on which is which, you have a promising career in bartending ahead of you.

Of course, Uighurs are just the tip of the iceberg for a government that executes people on a mass scale, profits from harvesting the organs of political prisoners, sends people to labor camps for tweets it doesn’t like, and lets 1 billion people live in grinding poverty while the politically connected minority that runs the country has become some of the wealthiest people on earth.

The same day as the Time report, the Post, to its credit, ran its own damning coverage of Uighur human rights abuses. One could point to this as evidence that the Post advertising and editorial sections are operating independently, as they should.

But unlike lots of struggling newspapers, the Post is owned by the richest man in the world, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. It seems unlikely that they are going to fold if they refuse to run communist propaganda. If they’ve been running these advertising sections for years because the sum the Chinese government is paying is, in fact, significant enough to affect their bottom line in ways that would harm the paper, then there are legitimate questions about the Chinese buying influence that should be asked.

Of course, China isn’t the only problem here. State-owned publisher Rossiyskaya Gazetaalso publishes the English-language propaganda excerpt Russia Beyond — formerly known as Russia Beyond the Headlines — which is published as an advertising section in major newspapers all over the world. The New York Times confirmed it was still distributing Russia Beyond last year, and the Washington Post distributed it as late as 2015. A lengthy RealClearInvestigations report last year detailed how Russia Beyond is also repulsive propaganda:

It serves not only Russian national interests, but also the personal power plays of President Vladimir Putin. According to a study by the Institute of Modern Russia, a New York think tank run by Pavel Khodorkovsky, a Russia Beyond insert in the largest German newspaper, Süddeutsche Zeitung, featured an article attacking his father, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a onetime oligarch imprisoned and later pardoned by Putin.

‘In the words of Ulrich Schmid of the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung, the article is reminiscent of the Russian media’s ‘journalistic execution’ of Russia’s number one political prisoner,’ the institute said, referring to the elder Khodorkovsky. ‘In the article, Khodorkovsky is painted in the darkest colors as a Komsomol apparatchik, cynical businessman, and an interpreter of the Bible.’

Go ahead and read the whole thing. The American media’s Trump-Russia hysteria of the last few years gains some real perspective when you consider that they are more than willing to take blood money to distribute publications that whitewash authoritarian crimes. The Mueller investigation indicted 13 Russians involved with The Internet Research Agency, a Russian “troll factory” involved in social media and online misinformation campaigns.

Of course, the efficacy of such internet trolling, even when specifically targeted at influencing an election, is dubious. Nonetheless, if that rises to the level of meriting indictments, shouldn’t printed propaganda that gets implicit credibility from being bundled with major papers be treated as a serious concern?

To the extent that these papers have had to address the issue, the answers have been lackluster at best. When Tucker Carlson asked Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple about the Post publishing paid Russian propaganda when he has been so critical of the Trump administration’s ties to Russia, the response was embarrassing. “That’s a good question. I’ve got a lot to write about. I’m interested in that topic,” he said, before stammering through an unsatisfactory and evasive answer.

Certainly, the media are struggling these days and can be awfully defensive about accusations they are dishonest and grind partisan axes. So here’s a free tip to help them begin to recover their credibility: If you don’t want to be treated like propagandists, stop publishing actual propaganda on behalf of the worst people on earth.

Mark Hemingway is the Book Editor at The Federalist, and was formerly a senior writer at The Weekly Standard. Follow him on Twitter at @heminator

https://thefederalist.com/2019/06/20/if-the-media-dont-want-to-be-called-propagandists-they-need-to-stop-publishing-chinese-and-russian-propaganda/

Is Leftist Piers Morgan Discovering the Power of Seeking Truth, at LAST? Welcome, Good Man!

PIERS MORGAN: The next book America’s self-appointed ‘superhero’ James Comey writes may be his prison diaries, from a cell shared with his fellow Trump-hating FBI villains

By PIERS MORGAN FOR MAILONLINE…. at the Daily Mail:

James Comey’s had a very lucrative year since he was fired by President Trump.

He’s sold several million books, made myriad highly paid speeches, and appeared on all the big talk shows.

In doing so, he’s become household name.

Comey’s now a multi-millionaire celebrity living the American dream.

And he’s achieved this newfound fame by constantly attacking his old boss, acting in the process like a brazen, politically motivated opponent.

There’s just one problem I have with all this: Comey was Director of the FBI, supposedly a top-secret intelligence agency.

+7

 

Former FBI Director James Comey’s now a multi-millionaire celebrity living the American dream – and he’s achieved this newfound fame by constantly attacking his old boss, Trump

His job was to KEEP secrets, not to spill them to anyone with a large check.

And what the hell does Comey have to boast about anyway?

This is the guy who screwed almost everything up while holding one of the most prestigious and important jobs in federal government.

So much so that he is universally loathed and distrusted on both sides of the political aisle.

Yet here he is, strutting around like he’s a Marvel superhero sent to save America from the bad guys, whilst conveniently overlooking the increasingly likely fact that he himself is one of the very worst of those bad guys.

The breath-taking irony of Comey’s self-promoting new angelic persona is not lost on former colleagues.

Yesterday, former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein finally went public on his real thoughts about Comey who recently sneered that Rosenstein’s soul had been ‘eaten’ by Trump.

‘The former director seems to be acting as a partisan pundit,’ Rosenstein retorted, in an address to the annual Greater Baltimore Committee Dinner, ‘selling books and earning speaking fees while speculating about the strength of my character and the fate of my immortal soul. I kid you not. That is disappointing.’

As zingers go, this ice-cold back-slicing riposte was right up there with being mauled by a Polar Bear in the Arctic.

Rosenstein also emphasised his own comparative neutrality.

‘People spend a lot of time debating whose side I was on, based on who seemed to benefit most from any individual decision,’ he said. ‘But trying to infer partisan affiliation from law enforcement decisions is what you might call a category error. It uses the wrong frame of reference.’

Exactly.

Rosenstein’s legal assessment of Comey is that he deserved to be fired by Trump because of his inept handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, and especially the public way in which he announced both the results of the investigation and the reopening of it just 10 days before the 2016 election.

 

Rosenstein’s legal assessment of Comey is that he deserved to be fired by Trump because of his inept handling of the Hillary Clinton (pictured above on her Blackberry) email investigation

In a memo used by Trump to justify Comey’s firing, Rosenstein said the director was ‘wrong to usurp the Attorney General’s authority’ by holding the press conference where he announced the initial closure of the investigation, and made comments to the press that were ‘inappropriate, derogatory and unfair’.

In a damning conclusion, he said it was ‘a textbook example of what federal prosecutors and agents are taught not to do.’

But it is Comey’s treatment of Donald Trump that may lead to far more serious consequences for him and some of his former FBI team.

Today it emerged that Attorney General William Barr has appointed a U.S. attorney, John Durham in Conneticut, to examine the origins of the Russia collusion investigation and determine if intelligence collection involving the Trump campaign was ‘lawful and appropriate’.

Today it emerged that Attorney General William Barr (above left) has appointed a U.S. attorney to examine the origins of the Russia collusion investigation.  This is after former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein (above right) also finally went public on his real thoughts about Comey who recently sneered that Rosenstein’s soul had been ‘eaten’ by Trump

This comes a month after Barr told Congress he believed ‘spying did occur’ on the Trump campaign in 2016.

At the centre of this sensational claim lies a surveillance warrant the FBI obtained on former Trump associate Carter Page, and the bureau’s use of an informant while it was investigating former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopolous.

Separately, the Justice Department’s inspector general is also investigating the Russia probe’s origins.

So the heat is being massively turned up on the FBI, and the man who was at its helm at the time: James Comey.

In light of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s expansive report, which exonerated Trump or any of his campaign team of any collusion with Russia, Comey may now face some very difficult questions.

+7

 

Comey’s FBI colleagues like Andrew McCabe (above right) Lisa Page, Bruce Ohr (above left) and Peter Strzok all conspired to compromise the President

As I wrote when Mueller’s report was released, it seems patently clear now that Comey’s FBI colleagues like Andrew McCabe, Lisa Page, Bruce Ohr and Peter Strzok all conspired to compromise the democratically elected president of the United States.

They are all heavily implicated in numerous acts of alleged crimes involving the misuse of a dodgy discredited dossier compiled by dodgy discredited former British spy Christopher Steele which they used as an excuse to get FISA warrants to spy on Trump campaign team members without any mention of Hillary Clinton and the Democrats financing it.

Their treachery, and Trump-hating motivation for it, is all there in their own words.

Strzok texted Lisa Page, his secret lover, before the 2016 election, and after he had just helped get Hillary off the email scandal rap, to say a newly-opened FBI investigation against Trump was an ‘insurance policy’ against him in case he won.

McCabe, who succeeded Comey as FBI Director, confirmed to CBS after his own departure that he not only launched a counter-intelligence operation against President Trump, but also later discussed with FBI colleagues whether it was possible to remove him from office using the 25th Amendment.

 

 

Strzok texted Lisa Page, his secret lover, (both pictured above)  before the 2016 election, and after he had just helped get Hillary off the email scandal rap, to say a newly-opened FBI investigation against Trump was an ‘insurance policy’ against him in case he won

What the hell were all these FBI agents, who took an oath to serve the President, doing by plotting against him in such a disgraceful way?

And how much did their boss know about what they were doing?

Well, now we’re going to find out.

As Comey’s behaviour has recently grown more defensive and erratic, there is a mounting belief that he and his FBI agents illegally cut corners and broke the rules in their zealous desire to stop Trump becoming President, and later – under Director McCabe – have him removed when he did.

If that is now proven to be true, then the repercussions for all those involved will be incredibly serious and probably involve some of them going to prison.

Comey needs to be asked, under oath, at what stage did he decide to proceed from a preliminary investigation or inquiry (a ‘PI’) to a full-blown investigation (an ‘FI’)?

This only happens when the FBI has received substantial information that implicates US citizens as agents of a foreign power. But there are very tough rules about how such information is acquired by FBI operatives against a U.S. citizen.

So what information did Comey receive?

How did he and his FBI team receive it?

Who did they task with getting further information, when did they task it, and how did those sources go about their work?

James Comey likes to parade around in some weird kind of moralising halo, but we may be about to discover just how ill fitting that halo is.

For when it comes to soul biting, Comey’s a shameless shark that has munched great chunks out of the integrity and reputation of the FBI.

With every smart-a** tweet, smug talk-show appearance, self-satisfied speech, and mutually back-slapping interview on CNN, Comey causes fresh embarrassment to a bureau that has always prided itself on professionalism and discretion.

Now he might soon see his Icarus style attraction to the bright lights of fame rebound on him in spectacular style.

The net is fast closing on the FBI shark.

And if he doesn’t have some very good answers, James Comey’s next book may be his prison diaries and his next CNN interview conducted from a cell.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7028511/The-book-Comey-writes-prison-diaries-fellow-Trump-hating-FBI-villains.html

WHO’S FINANCING TODAY’S BRIT’S FASCISTIC LEFT BBC STORY TELLING?

WHO RUNS TODAY’S LEFTIST BBC AMERICA CABLE TV?

Finances

The BBC has the second largest budget of any UK-based broadcaster with an operating expenditure of £4.722 billion in 2013/14^[93] compared with £6.471 billion for British Sky Broadcasting in 2013/14^[94] and £1.843 billion for ITV in the calendar year 2013.^[95]

Revenue

See also: Television licence and Television licensing in the United Kingdom

The principal means of funding the BBC is through the television licence, costing £147 per year per household since April 2017. Such a licence is required to legally receive broadcast television across the UK, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. No licence is required to own a television used for other means, or for sound only radio sets (though a separate licence for these was also required for non-TV households until 1971). The cost of a television licence is set by the government and enforced by the criminal law. A discount is available for households with only black-and-white television sets. A 50% discount is also offered to people who are registered blind or severely visually impaired,^[96]and the licence is completely free for any household containing anyone aged 75 or over. As a result of the UK Government’s recent spending review, an agreement has been reached between the government and the corporation in which the current licence fee will remain frozen at the current level until the Royal Charter is renewed at the beginning of 2017.^[97]

The BBC pursues its licence fee collection and enforcement under the trading name “TV Licensing”. The revenue is collected privately by Capita, an outside agency, and is paid into the central government Consolidated Fund, a process defined in the Communications Act 2003. Funds are then allocated by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and the Treasury and approved by Parliament via legislation. Additional revenues are paid by the Department for Work and Pensions to compensate for subsidised licences for eligible over-75-year-olds.

The licence fee is classified as a tax,^[98] and its evasion is a criminal offence. Since 1991, collection and enforcement of the licence fee has been the responsibility of the BBC in its role as TV Licensing Authority.^[99] Thus, the BBC is a major prosecuting authority in England and Wales and an investigating authority in the UK as a whole. The BBC carries out surveillance (mostly using subcontractors) on properties (under the auspices of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000) and may conduct searches of a property using a search warrant.^[100] According to the BBC, “more than 204,000 people in the UK were caught watching TV without a licence during the first six months of 2012.”^[101] Licence fee evasion makes up around one-tenth of all cases prosecuted in magistrates’ courts.^[102]

Income from commercial enterprises and from overseas sales of its catalogue of programmes has substantially increased over recent years,^[103] with BBC Worldwide contributing some £145 million to the BBC’s core public service business.

According to the BBC’s 2013/14 Annual Report, its total income was £5 billion (£5.066 billion),^[104] which can be broken down as follows:

• £3.726 billion in licence fees collected from householders;
• £1.023 billion from the BBC’s commercial businesses;
• £244.6 million from government grants, of which £238.5 million is from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office for the BBC World Service;
• £72.1 million from other income, such as rental collections and royalties from overseas broadcasts of programming.^[104]

The licence fee has, however, attracted criticism. It has been argued that in an age of multi-stream, multi-channel availability, an obligation to pay a licence fee is no longer appropriate. The BBC’s use of private sector company Capita Group to send letters to premises not paying the licence fee has been criticised, especially as there have been cases where such letters have been sent to premises which are up to date with their payments, or do not require a TV licence.^[105]

The BBC uses advertising campaigns to inform customers of the requirement to pay the licence fee. Past campaigns have been criticised by Conservative MP Boris Johnson and former MP Ann Widdecombe for having a threatening nature and language used to scare evaders into paying.^[106][107] Audio clips and television broadcasts are used to inform listeners of the BBC’s comprehensive database.^[108] There are a number of pressure groups campaigning on the issue of the licence fee.^[109]

The majority of the BBC’s commercial output comes from its commercial arm BBC Worldwide who sell programmes abroad and exploit key brands for merchandise. Of their 2012/13 sales, 27% were centred on the five key “superbrands” of Doctor Who, Top Gear, Strictly Come Dancing (known as Dancing with the Stars internationally), the BBC’s archive of natural history programming (collected under the umbrella of BBC Earth) and the (now sold) travel guide brand Lonely Planet.^[110]

Comment:  I have followed the collapse of English freedoms as a hobby very closely since the end of World War II.   I became  a devoted fan of Winston Churchill and his adages before the end of the war.   My favorite governs my memory:

“The most exhilarating moment in life is to be shot at, AND………….to have been missed!”

I spent about ten months of my life during the 1990s  snooping around England and Scotland to absorb the beauty of their  grounds and landscape gardens…..and  discovered the beginning of the disappearance of common worker British citizens being replaced by the Middle East labor,  wealth and ‘culture’, not too dissimilar  to the financial and cultural  collapse of our American midwestern labor towns caused by Democrat President, William Jefferson Clinton’s touch of the pen causing NAFTA!

The most beautiful of all  English languages I have ever heard  spoken over the past 80 years use to be uttered by one and all  members, educators, and learners in and from  the Brit upper classes and their BBC.

Surely, today, the ugliest, most repulsive of any noises made by uttered  language  anywhere in the world  cannot   surpass  the “homespun”   nasal screeches rising from the mouths of the Peoples’ programmed lefty snots!

 

 

Sleazy Democrats Use Honduran Caravan to File Suit Against President Trump’s Efforts to Halt Invasion of Illegals

CARAVANERS SUE

by John Hinderaker  at PowerLine:

A half dozen members of the Honduras caravan have filed suit against President Trump and various other federal officials in a putative class action. You can read the complaint, which is venued in the District of Columbia, here. It is largely a Democratic Party screed against the President, with paragraphs like this:

Trump’s professed and enacted policy towards thousands of caravanners
seeking asylum in the United States is shockingly unconstitutional. President Trump continues to abuse the law, including constitutional rights, to deter Central Americans from exercising their lawful right to seek asylum in the United States, and the fact that innocent children are involved matters none to President Trump.

You may well be surprised that Hondurans currently located in Mexico have rights under the U.S. Constitution. The complaint appears to be premature at best. But the reality is that asylum represents a massive loophole in our immigration laws. Asylum is supposed to be available to people who face persecution in their home countries on grounds of religion, race, etc. It was never intended to apply wholesale to entire populations on the ground that their country is poorly governed.

But the theory of the caravan (and the lawsuit) is that anyone who makes it to American soil has due process rights as an asylum seeker, meaning, as a practical matter, that he or she has plenty of time to disappear into sanctuary regions like California. Think of it as a kind of legal illegal immigration.

As it happens, Canada, too, is faced with an illegal immigration/refugee epidemic. Reutersheadlines: “Exclusive: Canada rushes to deport asylum seekers who walked from U.S.”

Canada is prioritizing the deportation of asylum seekers who walked across the border from the United States illegally, federal agency statistics show, as the Liberal government tries to tackle a politically sensitive issue ahead of an election year.

Why would thousands of alleged refugees from the U.S. be entering Canada? Are they Hollywood celebrities who vowed to leave if Trump was elected? Heh. No:

More than 36,000 people have walked into Canada from the United States to file refugee claims since January 2017, many saying they feared U.S. President Donald Trump’s election promise and policy to crack down on illegal immigration.

So these are illegal immigrants into the U.S. who have now illegally entered Canada and are using the asylum dodge to try to remain. The Canadians aren’t buying it:

Toronto lawyer Lorne Waldman said there were good reasons for accelerating the processing and deportation of people who crossed the border: it deters people with weak claims from making refugee claims in the hopes of living in Canada for years while their case wends through the system.

“The best way of discouraging people from making frivolous claims is by having the claims processed quickly,” Waldman said.

If the Canadians can do it, we can too.

Caravaners Sue

President Trump Welcomes Fargo

Full Replay: Trump Hosts ‘MAGA’ Rally in Fargo, North Dakota

The president is in North Dakota Wednesday evening for a rally in support of Kevin Cramer’s campaign for the Republican Senate nomination. He is scheduled to begin at 7:00 p.m. central time.

Expect President Trump to talk about the Supreme Court news of the day, the retirement of Justice Kennedy and the court’s decision to uphold Trump’s travel ban.

 

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/06/27/watch_live_president_trump_hosts_maga_rally_in_fargo_north_dakota.html

(North Dakota:  My grandfather, Frank Lawrence Ray, that is, my Dad’s dad, was born in Cherryfield, Maine either in 1857 or 1859 before the beginning of the American Civil War.   He was one of six children to reach adulthood, with three older brothers.

The family apparently was wealthy…..rather strict in its Protestantism and practiced primogeniture, that is, the eldest son would become the sole or primary recipient of  the family wealth,  estate,  and station.   Frank was the fourth boy with a rather different future.   When seventeen he left Cherryfield to go West, alone and on horseback…….to North Dakota.  He had purchased Homestead acreage near a village called Hope….about 50 miles west of Fargo.

Somewhere in my disorganized family possessions I have a photo postcard of himself he sent from Chillicothe, Ohio, addressed to his Mother with the greeting:  “Mother, I am fine.  Frank.”   He reached his acreage safely and began farming, remaining single.   About fifteen years later, a young teenager,  Anna Williams, was moving by wagons with her sisters,  parents, and possessions  from Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin which got stuck in mud while attempting to cross the Sheyenne River just East of the town of Hope.   Frank and friends gathered to help them cross the Sheyenne.   The Williams family homesteaded about twenty mile away.   Frank and Anna married a few years later and eventually  had five children, Sam, Frank, Lawrence, Herbert, my father, and Catherine.   (Glenn H. Ray)

 

US, Brits, French Air Strike Assad’s Syria for Poison Gas Assaults

Syria: US, UK and France launch air strikes in response to chemical attack

Witnesses in Damascus report loud bangs moments after Donald Trump says he has ordered strikes in retaliation for the chemical attack on Douma

 

The US, UK and France have launched air strikes against what they allege are Syrian chemical weapons facilities in response to chemical weapons attack in a Damascus suburb a week ago.

The Pentagon said the air strikes, which began at 4am Syrian time, involved planes and ship-launched missiles, more than a hundred weapons in all. Officials named three targets: a scientific research centre in Damascus, a chemical weapons storage facility west of Homs, and another storage site and command post nearby.

“Right now, we have no additional attacks planned” the US defence secretary, James Mattis, said. “This is a one-time shot.”

However, in a televised address from the White House earlier to announce the strikes, Donald Trump said the US and its allies would strike again if there were more chemical weapons attacks by the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

“We are prepared to sustain this response until the Syrian regime stops its use of prohibited chemical agents,” he said. Referring to last Saturday’s chemical weapons attack reported to have killed over 70 people, Trump said. “These are not actions of a man, they are crimes of a monster instead.”

After Trump finished his seven-minute address, Theresa May and Emmanuel Macron made separate announcements of British and French participation, stressing that the strikes were limited to Syrian regime chemical facilities, and had no wider goals.

Syria latest: Trump orders air strikes against Assad regime – live updates

Read more

Explosions were reported in Damascus moments after Trump’s address.

The attack came on the eve of a planned visit by inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to the site of last week’s chemical weapons attacks, the Damascus suburb of Douma. The US, UK and France had announced they had reached their own conclusion that the Syrian regime was responsible, an accusation denied by Damascus and Russia, which claimed on Friday the attack had been staged by British intelligence.

Mattis, who had said on Thursday that the US was still looking at the evidence, insisted on Friday night that he was “absolutely confident” that the regime was responsible for use of poison gas in Douma. He said there was clear evidence of the use of chlorine, but “we are not certain about sarin right now”.

Mattis said that the “Assad regime clearly did not get the message last year” when the US launched a Tomahawk missile strike at a desert airbase following a poison gas attack in April 2017. On that occasion, 57 missiles were fired. Mattis said slightly more than double that total were used in the airstrikes overnight.

“This time, our allies and we have struck harder,” the defence secretary said. “Together we have sent a clear message to Assad and his murderous lieutenants that they should not perpetrate another chemical weapons attack for which they will be held accountable.”

Trump said the Douma attack was “a significant escalation in a pattern of chemical weapons use by that very terrible regime.” He noted that establishing deterrence against use of such weapons represented “a vital national security interest of the US”.

The French president, Emmanuel Macron, confirmed that France was involved in the air strikes, saying the French role would be limited to Syria’s chemical weapons facilities.

“We cannot tolerate the recurring use of chemical weapons, which is an immediate danger for the Syrian people and our collective security,” a statement from the Elysee presidential office said.

In London, Theresa May issued a statement about British participation in the air strikes.

“This evening I have authorised British armed forces to conduct co-ordinated and targeted strikes to degrade the Syrian Regime’s chemical weapons capability and deter their use,” the prime minister said in a written statement from Downing Street.

Like Trump a few minutes earlier, May stressed that the aims of the intervention were limited to stopping chemical weapons use, for humanitarian reasons, and to uphold the international norm outlawing chemical weapon use.

“We have sought to use every possible diplomatic channel to achieve this.But our efforts have been repeatedly thwarted,” May said, pointing to a Russian veto at the UN security council on a proposal to set up a new investigative body for chemical weapons incidents in Syria.

“So there is no practicable alternative to the use of force to degrade and deter the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian Regime. This is not about intervening in a civil war. It is not about regime change.”

Trump addressed some of his remarks to the Syrian regime’s principal external backers, Russia and Iran.

“What kind of nation wants to be associated with the mass murder of men, women and children?” he asked. “Russia must decide if it will continue down this dark path or join civilised nations as a force for peace.”

The decision to launch air strikes in response to last Saturday’s chemical weapons attack in a rebel-held district of Damascus was fraught with risks. There are Russian and Iranian forces in bases across Syrian and substantial Russian air defences in the west of the country. Russian officials had threatened to use those defences.

The US defence secretary, James Mattis, had expressed concerns that air strikes could lead a situation “escalating out of control”. The US chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Joseph Dunford, said that the targets had been chosen very carefully.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/14/syria-air-strikes-us-uk-and-france-launch-attack-on-assad-regime

Trump Moves to Restore America’s Economy….and perhaps even to Save its Integrity and Honor

Our once honorable, freedom-loving, Godfearing, independent,  economically successful, culturally confident America was considered a paradise on Earth.

That was until the university mobs of the  leftist fascisti of  the late 1960s made their first strike to seize control of  the nation’s means of education and  communication, to destroy the Nation’s religious soul, and then turned to the new class equality,  by  selling feminism and its drive to emote over problem-solving, to feel free of male knowledge and enjoy an equality of  sloth, greed, ignorance, comfort by drugs,  animal sexuality , sloth,  abortion, Socialism, feminism,  and their nearly universal  worship of Godlessness……Hello Obama, Clinton, Schiff, Schumer, Sanders, CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC, MSNBC, PBS, scholastic, Sanctuary California, Chicago and Rahm Emanuel, etc., etc., etc….from Oakland, California to New York City, a world including the Neil  Cavutos  and Chris Wallaces of those corporation folks at   Fox News, all profiting wealthfully,  selling Fox international economics rather than what is good for the American citizen economy.

…..and then there is our lonely leader, full blooded American President, Donald J. Trump, who loves his country, believes in its Republic, its God, its Soul,  who is profoundly worried about the leftist stench corrupting America  was beginning to be, led by the leaches blood sucking the nation mentioned above, and has promised to drain the nation’s  SWAMP to welcome once again, America the Beautiful!

Mr. Trump’s great gift to America is NOT that he has been  a successful businessman. It’s because he is an AMERICAN successful businessman who is profoundly concerned about America, worried about its Godlessness, its worldly  business greed fattening Democrats and Republicans alike at the expense of American citizen workers.

And then, too, there are the nation’s  feminazi,  neo-fascist universities, schools, television news folk, its press world, its Chicago, California, New York, Connecticut, Baltimore, and so on America crippled as it is today,   oriented by successful greedy Republicans and Democrats ripping profits, in fact, controlling the United States of America as it was until  THE ARRIVAL OF OUR DONALD J. TRUMP at the White House,  that January 20, 2017.

Wake up Fox, CNN, PBS, corrupt New York Times, Washington Post, Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Sovietized University of California at Berkeley et. alia,  Donald Trump is draining YOUR  swamp, as he promised he would.   IT IS TIME USA PRODUCES ITS OWN STEEL INDUSTRY AGAIN.   LET TRUDEAU- CANADA’S   INTERNATIONALISTS  WORRY ABOUT CANADA…..and Why must America sent $500,000,000 per year  to today’s savage Union of South Africa?

Our America’s news industry directs  its octopus tentacles to suck the blood from the brain of the traditional JudeoChristian American voter.   Plutocrats from the Fox business right are likely to join the evil CNN crowd’s hate of Our Donald on the Steel deal.   Go for it all,  Donald!

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/376276-trump-steel-aluminum-tariffs-coming-next-week

Our Fascist Neighbors up North CBC Canadians Follow their Hillary’s “Victory”, Nov. 8, 2016 to the end!

Warning in Oslo (Last January, 2012)

US embassy: ‘Don’t walk alone in Oslo at night’

 

The United States embassy sent an email to US citizens in Oslo on Tuesday urging them to take extra care when out and about in the Norwegian capital after a spate of violent crimes in recent months.

The embassy made reference to a knife attack on a tram at Solli Plass on January 5th, two stabbing incidents at Oslo Central Station on January 10th, as well as a number of assaults in the city’s parks, particularly Slottsparken (The Palace Park), national broadcaster NRK reports.

Americans are advised by the embassy to observe five basic safety procedures, ”even in a generally safe country like Norway.”

1.    If possible, do not walk alone at night. If you are out late, arrange to walk with others or consider another form of transportation.

2.    Remain in well-lighted areas with heavy traffic.

3.    Be aware of your surroundings at all times; see potential threats before they become actual threats.

4.    Trust your instincts. If something seems wrong, get yourself out of the area.

5.    Keep your cell phone with you and charged to call for help if necessary. The police emergency number is 112, which you can dial from any land line or cell phone.

Norwegian media have reported extensively in recent months on an unprecedented number of attacks, especially rapes, in the city’s street and parks.

Scandinavian leftwing  governments over the last generation have destroyed the peace and quiet of these once safe and sound Scandinavian nations.    Its feminist laws,  immigration laws, tax laws its entitlements and atheism have created a  granny state unable to sustain the nation’s independence and civilized culture.

These granny state agents have condemned Norway to Islamic Shariah  voodooism and violence for its peoples’ future.

 (The above article was printed at this site, January 25, 2012.  I wonder how peaceful life is living in California these days.)

Murderer Sayfullo Saipov illustrates the suicidal absurdity of Obama’s American immigration Law

by Scott Johnson at PowerLine:

TAKE HIS VILLAGE — PLEASE!

“Terrorist murderer Sayfullo Saipov illustrates the suicidal absurdity of American immigration law. He was taken into the United States from Uzbekistan through the monumental stupidity of the so-called “diversity visa lottery.” He brings diversity to the 50 shades of farce in the immigration law.

Mark Krikorian takes a deep dive into the diversity visa lottery here at NRO. Krikorian adds the poignant fact that Saipov’s first name is from the Arabic for “Sword of Allah.” Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It must have been a beautiful sword.

The diversity visa lottery is bad enough. Even worse is the family chain migration fostered by our immigration law. Saipov’s case appears to illustrate the absurdity of chain migration as well. You start with one refugee or other such immigrant on whom we are to lavish our compassion and before too long you have the whole village.

To borrow a trope from JFK, there are some who say that’s not the way it works. Let them come to Minneapolis.

At a cabinet meeting yesterday afternoon President Trump cited Saipov as a case in point. Our diverse man from ISIS may have been able to help as many as 23 family membersimmigrate to the United States as part of the first link in the chain that began with Saipov’s green card.”

It’s way past time to call a timeout while we right the system.

Take his village — please!