Everything is going according to plan.  We’re up to our ears in crises, the phony administration is saving the planet, but only in the U. S.  It would be fine if Saudi Arabia and Venezuela could ramp up the supply of oil.  But we’re not going to do it here.  Because we’ve gone “green.”  No need to explain that it’s still the same earth, and nobody produces cleaner energy than the United States.  But they’ve decided we’re dense, and they’re going to pound their point through our thick heads when we buy gas.  If there’s any consolation, it is that the global warming zealots have to buy gas and groceries too.

So the pretender sent a strongly worded letter to those greedy oil outfits.  He must have said “Putin’s price hike” or words to that effect four or five times.  You mean the guys at the apex of the oil industry need the pretender to tell them why prices have necessarily skyrocketed?   It’s no secret.  It’s the price of going green.  “Look in my eyes,” the pretender said before he said he would “end” fossil fuels.  We’ve got to destroy the western way of life to save the planet.  Nonsense.

The Major League Baseball franchises are being pressed to wear rainbow stars on their uniforms.  If not, some gal on ESPN will call players who refuse bigots and haters.  The media insists that support of gay marriage and transgenders is so universally supported that none dare oppose it.  Maybe that’s because there will be network and internet media attacks that will swing into action and call the non-supporter a bigot.  That sounds like a reason somebody might keep their head down.

They sing God Bless America in the seventh inning at major league games.  Talk about a conflict!  All while wearing the rainbow star, everybody but those hateful bigots who refuse it.  None of this makes any sense.  Did you ever consider that we’re being made to endure nonsense because the consequences are too disturbing?  Not for one minute do I accept that a majority is supportive of homosexuality.  The majority just doesn’t want to suffer the consequences of being called a hater and a bigot.  Asking God to bless America when there is apparent embracing of things He condemns roundly in both Testaments is insane.

Do we really all support this concept that someone can change genders on a whim?  Little children are being offered the “choice” as to whether they would prefer to go through life as a boy or girl.  They get to decide.  Little children who still believe in the Easter bunny and Santa Clause are being “educated” to choices they didn’t realize were an option.  Parents who believe in God and nature?  They’re just old fashioned and out of touch with the latest science.  You see, there are puberty blockers that will prevent under- age kids from developing naturally.  We can only guess at the side effects.  There will be comprehensive studies out in about fifteen years.  The Heritage Foundation just released a study showing that tranny children are more likely to kill themselves, sooner or later.  That sounds like a side-effect.

What did they think would happen when they confuse little children about their very identity?  It doesn’t end well.  How many trans are recognizable?  I can think of two, and neither is what you’d call a roll model.  There’s a reason they don’t show us what a wonderful life they’re living.  If they could, they would.  So you get the “drag-queen” shows, where guys in outrageous wigs, make-up and high heels mince around like they’re having fun.

We don’t want to get political, but we have a pretender who thinks we deserve wild gas prices.  We’re getting what we’ve got coming.  The pretender gets pretty miffed if he thinks he’s taking the blame for something.  He’s liable to lash out angrily.  It’s all Trump’s fault after all.  Him and his ultra-maga supporters.  And Putin, don’t forget him, and those greedy oil companies.

The dog and pony show known as the January 6, committee is failing. Everything else they’ve done to rid the playing field of Donald Trump also failed.  With any sanity, the J 6 committee will go the way of the Muller investigation, or the impeachment debacle.

The energy secretary says the prices at the pump make a compelling case for buying an electric car.  Don’t ask where the components come from.  It’s not pretty.  Don’t ask too much about charging the batteries, or what happens when they’ve breathed their last.  But it will only cost you half as much to drive.  If you’re not going to far.  Concerns about the grid are on the news.  How does a blackout effect a car’s charger?  There’s not a word about any of it in the commercials.  But it would have to be a second or third car, not one that you rely on for hassle-free transportation.

I have to credit my son with this.  He says, “They should have gone green when gas was cheap.”  They were preaching it, now we’re living it.  It’s as bogus as it was twenty years ago.  But we’re apparently paying for the companies and corporations suddenly preaching woke doctrine as if it’s universally accepted.  Our retirement accounts are tied up with a basket of companies we know little about.  Maybe you’ve noticed, the markets have not been kind of late.  Everybody’s taking a bath, and why?

Just seeing photos of monkey-pox is enough to give you nightmares.  If you knew what they had to do to get the disease, you wouldn’t sleep at all.  It seems like a return to aids, when the news told us it was an epidemic.  Nothing works like making people worry.  It seems everything we learn is designed to make us worry.  But monkey-pox is not airborne.  We aren’t going to get it.  Or a vaccine either.

Mark

Source: http://www.intercontinentalcog.org/fridayupdates.php

The post Weekly Update by Mark Armstrong – 17 June 2022 first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

President-elect Joe Biden is already backpedaling on a dangerous campaign promise that pleased advocates of open borders, but would create a humanitarian and national security crisis on our border with Mexico.

While he pledged during the election campaign to roll back President Trump’s policies that have reduced illegal immigration on his first day in office on Jan. 20, Biden said Tuesday that it would take about six months to reverse Trump’s actions enforcing immigration laws.

The delay is a smart move, and Biden should use the first six months of his administration to backpedal further and embrace the reality that throwing open our borders to virtually unrestricted immigration would cause a crisis that would thrust border state governors into the greatest challenge of their careers.

BIDEN NOW SAYS IT WILL TAKE ‘SIX MONTHS’ TO REVERSE TRUMP’S IMMIGRATION POLICIES

But squaring his irresponsible immigration promises with reality won’t be easy for Biden, and will lead to an ugly fight with far-left Democrats.

Already radical “Squad” member Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., has attacked the president-elect for pulling back on his campaign promise.

“This is a classic bait and switch,” Omar tweeted. “It perpetuates Trump’s dehumanization of migrants and breaks a core campaign promise. Democrats lose big when administrations won’t fulfill their promise. I urge the Biden transition team to reconsider this position.”

“Trust me,” Biden said Tuesday. He said he was already working with authorities south of the border to end President Trump’s Migrant Protection Protocols — the “return to Mexico” policy — that was successful in quelling the human trafficking crisis on the border.

Biden now says he wants “guardrails” to prevent “2 million people on our border.”

But it’s already too late. Illegal immigration has risen, buoyed by the expectation of Biden ending Trump’s border enforcement efforts, coupled with some form of amnesty.

“During the presidential campaign, Biden promised to reverse President Trump’s strict immigration and border policies, which together with emergency travel restrictions because of the pandemic helped drive illegal immigration levels to historic lows after a surge last spring,” said John Daniel Davidson, a senior fellow with the Texas Public Policy Foundation. “Numbers are once again increasing as conditions deteriorate in Central America.”

Davidson and 23 other experts from the Heritage Foundation, government, and academia — both in the U.S. and Mexico — as well as four former members of Congress, gathered for a border crisis simulation for three days earlier this month. I designed and led the effort. The results were sobering. The team’s report can be read here.

The simulation projected that a renewed wave of illegal immigrant caravans will be headed for the U.S.-Mexico border by January.

The new border crisis would be worsened by a Biden administration slow to comprehend and react to the situation’s magnitude. This sluggishness would be compounded by three things:

1— Biden’s own history of slow and often wrong decision-making.

2— Biden’s appointees being ideologically sympathetic to increased illegal immigration.

3— A default assumption by Biden and his team that anything the Trump administration did was wrong.

Our simulation forecast that the illegal immigration crisis will intensify as the Biden administration implements its policy changes in the areas of border enforcement, a renewed and expanded Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, vastly expanded access to the U.S. asylum system, and proposed immigration reform legislation.

These shifts in policy and accompanying public announcements will, in and of themselves, serve as magnets to would-be illegal immigrants to the U.S.

Illegal immigrants from Central America pay drug and human trafficking cartels as much as $10,000 for passage into the U.S. These “services” include coaching on the keywords required to trigger credible fear standards to qualify for asylum.

One of the Trump administration’s innovations in this regard was to process asylum claims in Mexico rather than allowing migrants across the border and then assigning them a court date with an immigration judge in the hope that they will show up.

As the number of would-be migrants overwhelms the border, there will be vastly different responses by the governors of the two most-populous states, California and Texas. As a result, California is likely to eventually see far greater numbers of illegal immigrants on its border than is Texas.

California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has a well-established record of welcoming illegal immigrants. In a press release last year in response to Trump’s effort to tighten border controls, Newsom said: “Since our founding, this country has been a place of refuge — a safe haven for people fleeing tyranny, oppression, and violence.”

Newsom then signed a bill to provide taxpayer assistance to “asylum seekers,” a term that might be broadly interpreted by advocates of open borders as covering virtually all illegal immigrants.

In Texas, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has taken a different path. Abbott has shown no hesitation to deploy state assets, including the Texas National Guard, to reinforce the 1,954-mile border with Mexico while closely cooperating with the U.S. Border Patrol.

During our simulation, Gov. Abbott’s approach resulted in lawsuits claiming that Texas was stepping into immigration enforcement — exclusively the domain of the federal government.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR OUR OPINION NEWSLETTER

Imagining what might happen by June 2021, we projected that the U.S. Supreme Court would vote 6-3 in favor of Texas, ruling that “the federal government [was] openly abdicating its duty to secure the United States’ borders and enforce immigration law.”

We further projected that the Supreme Court would find that “Texas’ actions are an exercise of their constitutionally delegated state prerogatives, as reserved to them under Article 1, Section 10,” of the Constitution, with the state “in imminent danger …  [from] a surge of illegal aliens and goods across its borders.”

Under our scenario, once the Supreme Court ruled in Texas’ favor, migrants shifted west to the more welcoming California border.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

One last portent from our border crisis simulation was the appearance of carfentanyl, an opioid 100 times as potent as fentanyl. Carfentanyl, like fentanyl, is made in China and trafficked across our border with Mexico by the drug and human trafficking cartels. Its introduction would lead to a tragic increase in drug overdose deaths, along with injuries to law enforcement officers.

The above nightmarish scenarios are only some of the terrible results that would be caused by destroying the effective policies put in place by the Trump administration to control illegal immigration. The Biden administration will need to carefully consider these negative consequences before embracing immigration policies that will please the far-left but harm the American people.

Chuck DeVore is a vice president with the Texas Public Policy Foundation and served in the California State Assembly from 2004 to 2010.

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/illegal-immigration-joe-biden-chuck-devore

The post Chuck DeVore: National security requires Biden to break campaign pledge on illegal immigration first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Speaking of Hong Kong, he said: “Many years ago, those laboring in mines deep underground, faced the deadly problem of the buildup of fatal but undetectable gases.  To warn them of approaching danger, they would bring with them a small and fragile bird, imprisoned in a cage, which became known as the miners’ canary…Hong Kong is the miners’ canary.  Its vulnerability makes it an unmistakable indicator of the course of China’s historic transition and the impact it will soon have on us all. We must watch carefully.”

Hyde died in 2007.  Yet his words of caution remain relevant for Americans today.  These include President Trump who, according to a CNN report on October 4th, made another questionable promise on Hong Kong in one of his now-famous phone calls to global leaders:  “During a private phone call in June, President Donald Trump promised Chinese President Xi Jinping that the US would remain quiet on pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong while trade talks continued.”  CNN further reported that the State Department told then-U.S. Consul General in Hong Kong, Kurt Tong, “to cancel a planned speech on the protests in Washington because the President had promised Xi no one from the administration would talk about the issue.”

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and NBA star LeBron James should also take heed.   Their concerns for human rights and the rule of law are blinded by what Chairman Hyde called in his 2004 speech “the fool’s gold of pure selfishness” – in this case, the glitter of Chinese gold.  Zuckerberg, seeking a breakthrough for Facebook in China after it was blocked in 2009, bought several copies of China strongman Xi Jinping’s book on governance in 2014, so that “he and (his) colleagues could learn about socialism with Chinese characteristics,” according to a December 9, 2014 article in the South China Morning Post.

And LeBron James more recently got caught in the awkward position of appearing to excuse Beijing’s current crackdown in Hong Kong in some ill-advised online comments.  This happened soon after a high school student protester was shot in the chest by police on China’s National Day, October 1^st, in an eerie echo of the Tiananmen Square massacre, and prior to a leader of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement being hospitalized after an assault on the street by thugs with hammers.  Commenting on LeBron James’s remarks, one disappointed Hong Kong protester told the Associated Press on October 15^th: “Please remember, all NBA players, what you said before:  ‘Black lives matter.’ Hong Kong lives also matter.” Perhaps all three — Trump, Zuckerberg, and James — need to take their quotes more from Chairman Hyde and a little less from Chairman Mao.

The spin doctors in Beijing did not care very much for what Hyde had to say in his speech. UPI reported on December 6, 2004, that a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said that Hyde had “viciously attacked China’s development and progress, and insulted China’s foreign policy from his own Cold World view.”

So, what exactly did Hyde say about Hong Kong back in 2004 that drew such ire from Beijing?   Hyde noted that “in sharp contrast with Taiwan, where political reform and liberalization enjoyed sustained government sponsorship, in Hong Kong, the push has had to come from the people themselves, with the government actively attempting to slow or stop altogether any further advance.  I am certain that the standoff that has arisen is dispiriting to many here, especially as the prospects for further progress remain uncertain…Clearly, the commitment to democracy has already sunk deep roots.”

If the situation looked uncertain back in 2004, it looks downright gloomy in 2019.   Reuters reported on September 30^th that “last month, Beijing moved thousands of troops across the border into this restive city. They came in on trucks, and armored cars, by bus and by ship. “   Three diplomatic envoys told Reuters that “the contingent of Chinese military personnel in Hong Kong had more than doubled in size since the protests began.  They estimate the number of military personnel is now between 10,000 and 12,000, up from 3,000 to 5,000 in the months before the reinforcement.  As a result, the envoys believe, China has now assembled its largest-ever active force of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops and other anti-riot personnel and equipment in Hong Kong.”

Chairman Hyde foresaw this coming, as he remarked that “Hong Kong has become an arena for an unavoidable struggle, one with global implications, where rival forces are locked in a battle to determine which of their visions for China’s political evolution will prevail…If we assume that chaos or repression are unacceptable outcomes to both sides, the question becomes:  Is there a route by which Hong Kong can become increasingly free and democratic without challenging the regime’s ultimate authority and thereby provoking a forcible response?” Chinese leader Xi Jinping seemed to answer Hyde’s question in the negative during a recent trip to Nepal. In the face of the ongoing unrest in Hong Kong, Xi warned that any effort to split China will result in “bodies smashed and bones ground into powder,” according to Hong Kong Free Press.   Hyde concluded at the end of his speech, if the repression of civil liberties in Hong Kong was China’s response, that “enamored of aggressive and intoxicating nationalism, it would soon wreak havoc on the world.”

One result of the current political crisis in Hong Kong has been the exposure of Beijing’s formula of “one country, two systems” as a fraud.  Beijing has been steadily seeking to undermine this pledge made at the time of the 1997 reversion of Hong Kong from British to Chinese rule.

Under the Basic Law, based upon the Sino-British Joint Declaration of 1984, Hong Kong was to be a special administrative region (SAR) with its own capitalist economic system, its own currency, its own legal and legislative system, and a guarantee of the people of Hong Kong’s rights for fifty years.  Yet Beijing and its surrogates in Hong Kong have sought to erode these guarantees by such means as the 2003 controversy over the since withdrawn national security measures contained in Article 23 of the Basic Law, the use of Hong Kong immigration to restrict entry of human rights critics of the Beijing regime, and the kidnapping of Hong Kong sellers of books banned in mainland China.

According to a New York Times article of April 3, 2018,  “At a national Communist Party congress in October 2017, President Xi Jinping made clear the party’s expansive vision of control. ‘The party exercises overall leadership over all areas of endeavor in every part of the country,’ he told delegates. No corner of society was out of reach. Even books — ‘socialist literature,’ in Xi’s words — must extol ‘our party, our country, our people and our heroes.’”

Then there was the attempt by Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam, which triggered the current unrest, to ram through the Legislative Council a new extradition bill earlier this year (since withdrawn) which would make both the citizens of Hong Kong and visitors subject to the long reach of Chinese security forces.  The people of Hong Kong decided it was time to either stand up or fatalistically submit to creeping authoritarianism.

Another unintended consequence of the current unrest in Hong Kong has been to completely derail Xi Jinping’s proposal to use the “one country, two systems” formula to settle the Taiwan issue.  In remarks made at the beginning of 2019, Xi said that unification was the key to “national rejuvenation,” according to the South China Morning Post. “The political division across the strait cannot be passed from generation to generation,” he added.  Xi proposed the “one country, two systems” formula for Taiwan.  However, the people in Taiwan have been watching very closely the current political struggles of their Hong Kong cousins and, as a result, see “one country, two systems” as the equivalent of the spider inviting the fly into its web.

A further unintended consequence has been placing Hong Kong’s special status in U.S. legislation as a separate customs area with special trading status distinct from China at risk. The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, in a report to Congress last year, noted that Beijing’s “encroachment” on the city’s political system could diminish its standing as a global business hub and affect the export of American technology to the city.  The report recommended an assessment of the export control policy on technology “as it relates to U.S. treatment of Hong Kong and China as separate customs areas.”

Source: https://nationalinterest.org/feature/hong-kong%E2%80%99s-unrest-poses-threat-china%E2%80%99s-legitimacy-90966

The post Hong Kong’s Unrest Poses a Threat to China’s Legitimacy first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Unless your idea of good government and an ideal society is totalitarianism, the Green New Deal (GND) has nothing to recommend it.

As I argued in CCW 313, it would be physically impossible to reach the goals set in Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-NY) and Sen. Ed Markey’s (D-MA) socialist GND—a plan to do nothing less than remake the entire economy, sans fossil fuels, while promising full employment, living wages, free health care, and cheap energy from the Heavens for everyone in just over 10 years—and heck, why not throw in the promise of a chicken in every pot (except for vegetarians and vegans, of course), as well?

Even if the GND’s goals weren’t impossible to obtain within the time allotted, every credible economic analysis I’ve seen shows its costs would be so high that imposing it would be extremely undesirable. Early estimates indicate the GND would cost nearly $50 trillion in its first 10 years.

Settling aside the cost of transforming the transportation system and refurbishing the entire stock of housing and commercial structures in the United States, the American Enterprise Institute’s Ben Zycher has calculated the cost of decarbonizing the electric power system and meeting GND’s social welfare provisions, such as universal health care and free college tuition for everyone, will cost nearly $9 trillion dollars per year, when the political negotiations are all over.

The American Action Forum calculated GND could cost as much as $93 trillion dollars, or approximately $671,010 per household of four, through 2029.

The Heritage Foundation’s analysis of GND makes it look positively cheap by comparison. Heritage calculated only the costs of the energy portion of GND, estimating the taxes and regulations limiting carbon dioxide emissions would result in “a peak employment shortfall of over 1.4 million jobs; a total income loss of more than $40,000 for a family of four; [and] an aggregate gross domestic product loss of over $3.9 trillion, by 2024.”

Perhaps recognizing the foolishness of actually attempting to foist this steaming pile of “legislation” on voters, when Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) brought GND up for a vote in the Senate on March 26, not a single senator voted in favor of the bill. Even its authors and cosponsors voted “present” instead of yes.

This ignominious defeat, however, has not stopped more than 100 Democrat or Independent members of the U.S. House and Senate from cosponsoring or publicly endorsing GND, including Sens. Cory Booker (D-NJ), Kristen Gillibrand (R-NY), Kamala Harris (D-CA), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)—almost every senator currently vying for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

Because, for reasons inexplicable to me, GND remains a talking point on the campaign trail and in Congress, my colleague and friend James Taylor, director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at The Heartland Institute, has written a detailed takedown of the proposal. Although Taylor provides an excellent discussion of GND’s economic costs, the portion of his paper I would like to focus on is the terrible environmental toll GND would impose on wildlife and wildlands in the United States and around the world without increasing governments’ abilities to control the climate.

Taylor writes, “Even if one accepts the dubious and alarming U.N. estimates regarding the temperature impact of CO2 emissions … if America were to immediately and completely eliminate all of its CO2 emissions, it would only mitigate less than two-tenths of a degree C[elsius] of global temperature increase by the end of the century, an amount that’s too small to be measured accurately.”

On the environmental front, Taylor calculates “replacing all existing conventional power plants with wind and solar power would require consuming an amount of land larger than the size of California, … an unprecedented assault on land conservation and the world’s greatest threat to biodiversity.”

A 2013 Wildlife Society Bulletin documented that although wind turbines produce just 1 percent of U.S. electricity, they already kill at least 1.4 million birds and bats each year, including many endangered and protected species. Taylor writes, “subsequent analyses found the death toll [of the Green New Deal] is likely 10–20 times greater than the 1.4 million estimate. If accurate, those estimates indicate dramatically increasing wind power could result in the slaughter of more than 100 million birds and bats each year.”

And that’s just the birds and bats. Because habitat loss is the biggest cause of species’ decline, placing industrial wind and solar facilities across the nation would result in the displacement and deaths of millions of animals of other species.

In addition, both wind and solar power require substantial amounts of rare earth elements, the mining, and refining of which produces millions of tons of toxic waste each year. Taylor writes, “An organization called Environmental Progress found solar panels create 300 times more toxic waste per unit of energy produced than nuclear power plants.”

Do you care about the environment? How about the health of the U.S. economy and your own bank account? If so, you should work with The Heartland Institute to bury the Green New Deal, and put politicians who support it into forced retirement.

Source: https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/socialist-green-new-deal-threatens-freedom-prosperity-and-the-environment

The post Socialist Green New Deal threatens Freedom, Prosperity, and the Environment first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Germany’s Muslims have called upon the government to protect mosques amid increasing bomb threats and Islamophobia. But according to the Deputy Leader of the AfD in Rhineland-Palatinate Joachim Paul, the rise in crimes could have been fuelled by the refugee crisis that started in mid-2015.

The post Attacks on Germany’s Mosques Were Preceded by Spike in Migrant Crimes – AfD MEP first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

We also cover these stories:

• Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says it’s “case closed” when it comes to the Mueller report.
• Georgia Governor Brian Kemp signs a bill that bans abortions after an unborn child has a heartbeat.
• A Pennsylvania Democratic lawmaker taunts pro-lifers in videos shot outside Planned Parenthood.

The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at letters@dailysignal.com. Enjoy the show!

Kate Trinko: Joining us today is Ana Quintana, a senior policy analyst specializing in Latin America at The Heritage Foundation. And she is here to explain to us what’s going on in Venezuela and what the U.S. should do. Ana, thanks for joining us.

The liberal Left continue to push their radical agenda against American values. The good news is there is a solution. Find out more >>

Ana Quintana: Thanks for having me.

Trinko: For those of us who don’t have the best memories. Walk us through why Juan Guaido, not Nicolas Maduro, is the true leader of Venezuela right now and how we got to this mess.

Quintana: Sure. So in May of 2018, Maduro held presidential elections. And they were incredibly fraudulent. … Practically, the only countries that recognized the result were Russia, China, Cuba, the Palestinian Authority, barely any countries recognized the result. So, back then dozens of countries said they would not recognize Maduro as a legitimate leader.

Fast-forward to Jan. 10, Maduro’s supposed inauguration day, that is when Juan Guaido became president because, according to Article 232 specifically, of Venezuela’s constitution, if there exists a void in the presidency, if there exists a legitimate void in the executive, the next in the line of succession is the head of the National Assembly. And Juan Guaido was an elected member of the National Assembly and he was the president of the National Assembly.

Daniel Davis: We’ve heard about a lot of violence happening right now, erupting in the streets. People are protesting. Guaido said that he was … [in] his last phase of revolution against Maduro and the government responded by running people over in the streets. That was last week. Where do things stand right now?

Quintana: … Last week has been interpreted as a huge failure for Guaido. That’s not the way I’m looking at it, right? So, Guaido … on Tuesday, was trying to lead a military uprising against Maduro and people have tried to classify this as a coup; it’s not. You can’t lead a coup against somebody who’s a usurper who is an illegitimate president. So, Guaido called upon the military to help him essentially pressure Maduro out of power.

That did not work but what ended up happening was, it exposed that 1. Maduro does not have the full control of the military. He spent 14 hours not appearing on TV and he didn’t call upon the military to protect him because it was revealed that his minister of defense was actually conspiring with Guaido against him.

2. He called on the paramilitaries to protect him, which is quite significant. … Typically when you would see these protests, Maduro would call the military to repress protesters. He called in the paramilitaries to repress the protesters. And you would always see kind of widespread death, that did not happen.

Also, Maduro’s chief of intelligence defected. That is huge. Imagine all the secrets this man knows. He is the chief of military and domestic intelligence.

Davis: Wow.

Quintana: So now the situation is, kind of fast-forward to today, Maduro is weak. Maduro’s incredibly vulnerable. He’s in a situation right now where he’s looking to his left and to his right and to his inner circle wondering, “Who’s conspiring behind my back? Who’s trying to hedge their bets? Who’s trying to plan for Day Zero when I’m not around?”

And, frankly, I think there is probably a lot more of them than not. So I think Guaido … has a significant advantage right now but I think we should recognize that it’s not inevitable that Maduro falls. Right? He could perpetually stay into power.

I mean, look at what happened in Syria with Assad. Assad, I remember, back when, at the height of the Syrian civil war, people said, “Oh, Assad only has five, six more months.” And look how the Russians guided him through this. And that’s exactly what the Russians are now doing with Maduro.

Trinko: Tell us more. Why is Russia caring about Venezuela and why are they getting involved?

Quintana: Oh, man. I mean, think about this. If you’re the Russians, this is low-hanging fruit. Right? This is an opportunity for you to stick your thumb in the eye of the United States. It’s an opportunity for you to insert yourself in the middle of a conflict and to distract attention away from all the other bad things that you’re doing in Ukraine, in the Middle East, in Syria, and kind of the other bad things that you want to do elsewhere.

And now the Russians have … inserted themselves inside of Venezuela and they’re essentially a power broker. So they can sit down with the United States and they can say, “Hey, you need my help solving this crisis. This is what I want. I want, in exchange for you to leave me alone in Ukraine, for you to let me have Crimea, for you to let me have X, Y, and Z.”

Also, the Venezuelans owe the Russians a lot of money. There is a lot of money, I think it’s probably close to $10 billion, if I’m not mistaken.

And for the Russians it’s to their benefit to have such a powerful ally in charge of such a powerful country like Venezuela. It’s the most oil-rich nation in the entire world. It’s a country that’s able to project a significant amount of power in Latin America. The Russia-Cuba relationship is always going to exist but Cuba doesn’t have the capacity nor the power to project and to spread influence like it once did.

Trinko: Just to follow-up on what you said about how Russia has a history of propping up dictators, are we talking military weapons here? Are we talking strategic advise?

How, when Maduro finds himself in this situation so isolated from some of his own people, as you discussed, some of his top people, can Russia practically help?

Quintana: Everything that you just stated right there. Venezuela has been the largest purchaser and recipient of Russian weapons—from tanks, I think it’s been about 100 tanks, about 5,000 surface-to-air missiles, MANPADS. It’s just been this wide plethora of weapons that the Venezuelans have purchased from the Russians.

… You have dozens, if not hundreds, of Russian military advisers inside of Venezuela. The Russians are providing the Venezuelans with political advise.

… There’s an outsized value of Russia’s contributions to Maduro right now, regardless of how weak he is. Because he’s incredibly weak, he has nobody around him that he can trust, but he does have the Russians.

… Maduro knows that he is protected because right now, he’s internationalized this conflict. He has now made this a conflict between Russia and the United States. And he knows by raising these stakes and not just making it something between he himself, this South American dictator, he is now able to project a lot more power.

Davis: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the president have spoken pretty strongly against what Russia’s doing. And Cuba. But … at the end of the day, what do they do? What can they do? To stop, cut off Russia’s influence? Apart from, like you were saying, conceding stuff in Eastern Europe.

Quintana: Yeah, no, they definitely shouldn’t sit down at a negotiating table with the Russians and concede anything. Nor with the Cubans. I definitely think, 1. They need to sit down and talk with the Cubans and the Russians. But I think, this is a time to make them pay a cost. They cannot get away with what they have been doing inside of Venezuela, with what they’ve continued to do for God knows how many years.

This is an opportunity right now to look at visa and travel restrictions against Russian oligarchs. Right? To hit them financially where it hurts. Because that’s where these guys respond.

These guys don’t respond to diplomatic statements and to condemnation and all these things. They don’t care about that. For them, they actually fundraise and make money off of that, it makes them look good when the United States attacks them, frankly.

And on the Cuba side of things, I think that’s where the administration has been incredibly tough by implementing … this host of … sectoral sanctions and opening Cuba up to the possibility of being sued by American companies. But, frankly, I think it’s very difficult for the United States to do a lot of this when our European partners aren’t being helpful.

Trinko: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo didn’t rule out military action. Do you think there’s any chance that Venezuela could be the next Iraq or Afghanistan?

Quintana: … The regime of Nicolas Maduro, this is not a regime of politicians. This is a regime of thugs. And you don’t speak to them in statesmen-like diplomatic terms. You talk to them like thugs and you scare them like thugs and I think … we should be scaring these guys. We should scare them out of power.

That being said, I think at this juncture, at this point, any sort of military intervention would have the complete opposite adverse effect. It would be the absolute worst thing this administration could do.

… There are some ideas that have been floated around, a tactical precision strike to take out key military installations. That would be stupid because that would draw the United States into this long-term peacekeeping operation. And then on the other side, a ground invasion, the same thing. It would also draw the United States into a long-term peacekeeping operation and then there’s a humanitarian fallout.

… There’s little to be gained and so much more to be lost and we’ve seen it in Libya. We’ve seen it in so many other countries where we think we can take a dictator out quickly, militarily, and it just devolves into such an even bigger mess.

Davis: And you can’t have a U.N. force in there, right? Because Russia’s on the Security Council. So they would veto everything.

Quintana: … And that’s the other challenge, right? Russia’s on the U.N.—

Davis: Once again, highlighting the uselessness of the Security Council.

Quintana: It highlights the … ridiculousness of much of the U.N. system. That it gives this outsized influence to countries like Russia and China, that just don’t have a serious humanitarian bone in their body. No.

Davis: Recently, … Rep. Ilhan Omar made a comment about Venezuela. She told Democracy Now, quote, “A lot of the policies that we have put in place has kind of helped lead the devastation in Venezuela. And we’ve sort of set the stage for where we’re arriving today.” End quote.

And, quote, “This particular bullying and the use of sanctions to eventually intervene and make regime change really does not help the people of countries like Venezuela, and it certainly does not help and is not in the interest of the United States.”

Thoughts?

Quintana: It’s like there’s these boiler plate quotes that all the progressives use to criticize anything that the United States does when they have no concept of what exactly is happening.

U.S. sanctions have largely been against corrupt Venezuelan government officials for humanitarian reasons. They have been to cut off the financial access for these regime officials to make money and to stop them from drug trafficking.

One of the sanctions was against then-Vice President Tareck El Aissami, who was found to be a drug trafficker along with Los Zetas and they’ve discovered over $500 million of drug trafficking-related assets in the United States.

I don’t understand how seizing $500 million of narcotics-related assets that were trafficked with Los Zetas hurts the Venezuelan people. She has no idea what she’s talking about.

Trinko: Speaking of the Venezuelan people, how are they faring right now? Are there food shortages? Or are they facing violence? What is life like in Venezuela right now?

Davis: And what about that electricity outage? Is that still happening, too?

Quintana: The electricity outages are horrible. … Consider just how much the regime has destroyed the country.

Venezuela is the most oil-rich nation in the entire world. This is a country that literally used to produce about 3.5, 3.6 million barrels of oil per day. … It had enough oil to export and to use for it’s own domestic consumption. It’s now producing about 900,000 barrels of oil per day; it’s gone down fourfold in the last 10 years. And half of that oil is used to service external debt.

So Venezuela is in a position right now where it’s importing refined oil for it’s own internal consumption. Which is just … mind-boggling to consider that this is a country that has the most oil resource.

These electricity shortages are a consequence of just not investing in the energy infrastructure. They just did not care. The regime has stolen so much money, they’ve used the oil industry as a slush fund for party loyalists.

Ffor the average Venezuelan, it’s estimated that 90% of people live in poverty. About 5 million Venezuelans are going to leave the country by the end of this year. Venezuelan migrants and refugees are scattered all throughout Latin America. There’s about 2 million right now in Colombia.

The situation is bad. It is a dire, dire humanitarian catastrophe and the worst part is, it’s a man-made crisis.

Davis: Well, Ana Quintana, as always, we appreciate your expertise. We’ll be watching the situation unfold. Thank you.

Quintana: No, thank you guys.

Source: https://www.dailysignal.com/2019/05/08/us-russia-vie-over-the-future-of-venezuela/

The post US, Russia Vie Over the Future of Venezuela first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The post U.S. intelligence believes North Korea making more nuclear bomb fuel despite talks first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

BAGHDAD –  Now that they’ve helped vanquish the Islamic State from much of Iraq, a battle-hardened militia with close ties to Iran may be training its sights on the remaining U.S.-led coalition troops scattered across the country.

At least that’s the thinking among some in the ranks of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), a roughly 100,000-thousand-member force that has fought both with and against Americans in Iraq.

“America should only be here for embassy, any military presence and we will target them,” Saif Ali, a 37-year-old member of the PMF’s Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba paramilitary — based in the southern Iraq governorate of Basra — told Fox News. “I fought the Americans after 2003, and the British in southern Iraq, and I am happy about that. I don’t hate the American people, only hate the U.S. military, and I have killed many of them.”

Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) fighting ISIS across Iraq.  (Courtesy PMF Media Center)

Ali is one of thousands of PMF members who also took advantage of Iran-supplied weapons and ammunition to take the lives of hundreds of U.S. troops during the insurgency that followed the invasion of Iraq.

Rayan al-Kildani, the 32-year-old leader of the PMF’s Babylon Brigades, an Iraqi Christian militia, noted that he, too, got his start fighting the Americans post-2003 — allegedly after learning how to use weapons from action-oriented TV shows and movies. And although he has relatives in the U.S. and even visited a few years ago, he said that he threatened to attack U.S. intelligence personnel he encountered after the Mosul battle and ultimately wants to see American forces gone.

Rayan al-Kildani, leader of the PMF’s Babylon Brigade.  (Fox News/Hollie McKay)

The PMF was created soon after the June 2014 ISIS invasion in response to a fatwa, an edict issued by an Islamic leader, from Shiite cleric Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Hosseini Sistani. He called on all able-bodied males to fight the brutal Sunni insurgency. The PMF was initially an unofficial umbrella organization comprising some 40 militia groups. But, given their strong fighting skills and popularity among locals for their prominent role in combating ISIS, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi folded them into the Baghdad government’s security forces in November 2016.

Today, most PMF fighters draw salaries from the Baghdad government. But Mohand al-Eqqaby, the PMF spokesman, said at least another 50,000 unpaid fighters are on the ground and — for now at least — have no intention of fighting U.S. troops.

But he still wants the Americans gone.

“Our stand is clear,” Eqqaby asserted. “America was not there at the beginning of this ISIS crisis when we needed them most. We are strong now, and as long as we are fighting, Iraq does not need Americans on our land.”

TRUMP, MATTIS TURN MILITARY LOOSE ON ISIS, LEAVING TERROR CALIPHATE IN TATTERS

Mohand al-Eqqaby, leader of the PMF’s media wing.  (Fox News/Hollie McKay)

LIFE AFTER ISIS: CHRISTIANS SAY THEY CAN’T GO HOME WITHOUT INTERNATIONAL PROTECTION

The PMF has also expanded its influence beyond the battlefield and into the political sphere ahead of Iraq’s  parliamentary elections in May. Many militia leaders are expected to win crucial seats and challenge Abadi,  who is considered a reliable U.S. partner bound to keeping Iranian influence at bay.

Anxieties are growing over the PMF’s increasing influence and the notion that many take their orders not from Iraq’s commander in chief, but rather from Iran’s leadership.

Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) fighting ISIS across Iraq.  (Courtesy PMF Media Center )

“Our goal is not to be employers of the Iraqi government, but to fight in Syria and al-Quds (Arabic for Jerusalem), and we will await orders from our religious men,” said Hashim al-Maihi, a 44-year-old former policeman who is now a leader in the “League of the Righteous People” battalion, referred to as Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, in the PMF. He said that he does not draw a Baghdad salary, and that it was his duty to fight American occupation in Iraq and later ISIS.

“My rifle is standing up and I am ready to protect any city,” he said. “In my house, I raise pigeons as a symbol of peace in Iraq, but my dream is not to see Americans in Iraq.”

The PMF’s objective to disperse its military across the Middle East –as scores have defied Baghdad’s orders and gone to fight for Iranian interests alongside Syria’s army and Lebanon’s Hezbollah –is troubling to some U.S. officials.

Mike Pompeo, CIA chief, recently wrote a letter of caution to Iran’s top military man and spymaster, Qassam Soleimani, warning that the U.S will hold him and his country accountable for any “attacks on American interests” inside Iraq that stem from his influence.

Last month, CIA chief Mike Pompeo revealed he had sent a letter to Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassam Soleimani, warning that forces under Iran’s tutelage may attack U.S. troops. Pompeo added that the U.S. would hold him and his country accountable for “any attacks on American interests.”

“Now that ISIS is not much of a threat, the PMF is likely to plan attacks against U.S. personnel in Iraq that would be carried out as soon as Tehran gives the orders,” surmised James Phillips, senior research fellow for Middle Eastern affairs at the Heritage Foundation. “This is a major concern, given that tensions between Iran and the U.S. are likely to grow in the future.”

PMF fighters work alongside Iraqi Forces, prompting concern they may access U.S-issued equipment.  (Courtesy PMF Media Center)

But an American spokesperson for Operation Inherent Resolve — this is the mission name given to the coalition tasked with defeating ISIS in Iraq and Syria — told Fox News officials  “do not anticipate a PMF aggression toward coalition troops.”

“There are certain factions within the PMF that may cause concern, but the PMF as a whole is not considered a threat to coalition forces,” the representative noted.

While concerns have been routinely raised that the PMF is able to access U.S. weapons issued to the Iraqi Army — including several fighters who claimed to have “borrowed” Iraqi Federal Police uniforms to participate in battles that they were prohibited from joining — American military leaders say they continue to work with the Iraq leadership to “maintain accountability of all equipment.”

And there are at least some PMF members who vow never to fight the Americans.

“On the contrary, I stand with them because at that time we were liberated and they removed the tyranny of Saddam Hussein’s regime,” said Abbas Naji, a 23-year-old member also of the PMF’s Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq. He left the Iraqi army to join the PMF after the ISIS onslaught in 2014 – he was disgusted that members of his army “ran away” and allowed ISIS in, and had become partially blind.

“I hope that Americans stay in Iraq and we can learn from them on how make sure Iraq moves forward to be a prosperous nation,” he said. “I want us to join the developed countries.”

Hollie McKay has been a FoxNews.com staff reporter since 2007. She has reported extensively from the Middle East on the rise and fall of terrorist groups such as ISIS in Iraq. Follow her on twitter at @holliesmckay

Source:  http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/12/21/after-isis-defeat-iran-backed-fighters-in-iraq-vow-to-drive-out-us-troops.html

The post After ISIS campaign, Iran-backed fighters in Iraq vow to drive out US troops first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.