The Front Page Cover
2016 The truth will set you free
Featuring:
Mahmoud Abbas and other Soviet ghosts
by Caroline B. Glick
~~~
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Pentagon Politics, nObama Style
Barack nObama promised fundamental transformation, and boy has he delivered. The Pentagon has borne much of the brunt, too — nObama's overall social engineering has done a number on military morale. But he's also squeezed our Armed Forces on the budget front. In 2011, nObama and Congress hammered out sequestration, which capped spending increases across the board. nObama insisted then that the military bear a disproportionate part of the burden, and he's still tying any possible defense budget increase to demands for more domestic handouts. Republicans seek to work around this temporarily and cover more basic military readiness needs by using Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) funds, which are exempt from the sequester. But nObama's defense secretary, Ash Carter, is pushing against this and even compiling what amounts to intelligence files on lawmakers so as to effectively apply pressure. Given that national defense is one of the few constitutionally enumerated powers on which the federal government is spending money, nObama's gambit is even more egregious and dangerous.
Yesterday's anniversary of 9/11 illustrates why nObama's policies are so dangerous. nObama attended the 9/11 ceremony at the Pentagon, where he insisted the moment of silence be moved up to accommodate his schedule. Each year, the moment of silence there takes place at 9:37 a.m., the exact moment the plane hit. Not this year.
But arguably the real offense is that he used his speech made much about how "diversity" is "still and always will be one of our greatest strengths." The problem is that nObama isn't referring to the American melting pot. Instead, this was a thinly veiled rebuke of Donald Trump's policy proposals for dealing with immigrants from terrorist-hub nations. nObama couldn't have chosen a more inappropriate time or venue for a high-brow lecture about the "progressive" vision of diversity. But we also don't expect any better from him. ~The Patriot Post
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Big Gov't — The Key Ingredient in Corruption
Robin Smith: For decades, conservatives have warned about the coordinated efforts of most of the American media to frame the news and political figures in a leftist narrative. While many are dismissive of these cries in the wilderness, the reason to heed these warnings and respond is rooted in the blatant corruption on display in our government and its beneficiaries.
Thomas Jefferson prophetically declared, "Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of the body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day." Through misinformation and propaganda, the American people now have a "rigged" system that benefits and serves only those whose treasury permits the hire of Beltway lobbyists and consultants or those within the inner circles of the governing elite with no accountability to its people.
Melodramatic, you say? When did you ever believe you'd live to see the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) politicized despite the safeguards around its appointment processes and governance to prevent partisan influence? Director James Comey's 10-year appointment, like all other directors, is intended to serve as a buffer from the politics of governing. Yet, as the headlines blare regarding the liar-Hillary Clinton email scandal, the true crisis lies in the coordination of the FBI with the Department of Justice to "investigate" but do nothing with the findings that reveal illegal activity.
Not only did liar-Clinton establish an external system of communication that circumvented safeguards to protect our national secrets against forces seeking intelligence to harm our nation, the very top "civil servants" employed to serve without favor or fear of political retribution willingly operated within that same system without alarm or whistleblowing. There are no records of reports to expose this violation of laws.
Where were the informers concerned about our nation? Where were the investigative reporters who could have uncovered this corruption?
The New York Times, among other news outlets, revealed, "Mrs. liar-Clinton said in her [FBI] interview it was 'common knowledge' that she had a private email address because it was 'displayed to anyone with whom she exchanged emails.'" In other words, it was apparently widely known that liar-Clinton circumvented law set in place to protect America's intelligence. And yet no one said a word.
So we have the law enforcement agency charged to find and expose public corruption and crime for the purpose of prosecution stepping past that role and advising the Department of Justice to refrain from any prosecutorial action despite clear proof of violations of law. How does this level of corrupt complicity occur within a system that's created to serve citizens, entrusted with taxpayer money and charged with such a monumental role and jurisdiction of international relations?
When an entity grows so expansive that its accountabilities are no longer to those it serves but to its own existence and internal stakeholders, corruption is the seed that takes root and chokes out the good of that agency. And while an organization does not have its own morality, it takes that of its leaders.
The State Department was the first executive department established in 1789 and is led by the secretary of state, who serves as the president's principal foreign-policy advisor. The element of protected communications is indisputably critical. Yet disregard by one individual grew into complicit participation of teams of support staff for liar-Hillary Clinton.
The FBI is the nation's prime law enforcement agency. The bureau declares on its website, "Our priority is to help protect you, your children, your communities, and your businesses from the most dangerous threats facing our nation — from international and domestic terrorists to spies on U.S. soil, from cyber villains to corrupt government officials [emphasis added]."
If the FBI is supposed to protect us from "cyber villains" and "corrupt government officials," the bureau has failed. Arguably, this is due to the politicized leadership of Director James Comey, who answers to the Attorney General Loretta Lynch — the friend of Bill liar-Clinton who likes to talk grandchildren on private planes in the midst of criminal investigations.
And, yes, the Justice Department, created to enforce the laws of the U.S. in order to administer justice, has been weaponized to advance Barack nObama's political agenda. Is Lynch fulfilling her sworn duty to support and defend the Constitution? No. The same oath is taken by the FBI's director. Has Comey fulfilled his pledge or is he complicit in permitting corruption? He too has failed. As secretary of state, liar-Hillary Clinton clearly abdicated her sworn duties on many fronts, just one of which was successfully fleecing the taxpayers to support her family's foundation while exposing key communications to cyberspies.
The corrupt bureaucracy of the U.S. government exists because the malignant size permits unseen and unknown activity. Those in oversight roles are more interested in their self-preservation than ferreting out criminal and unethical transactions.
Founding Father Samuel Adams summed up the sad state of those who tolerate corruption: "If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom ... crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."
It's time our elected leaders prosecute corruption and remove it; steward the people's treasury with care; and do the job they claim to be obliged through oath to do. Otherwise, they are nothing but corrupt tyrants. ~The Patriot Post
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Why liar-Hillary Continues to Lie
by Roger Aronoff
{aim.org} ~ Why does liar-Hillary Clinton continue lying and covering up her various activities, whether it is her pneumonia, or the fact that she regularly sent and received classified information on a private, unsecured server, or that she traded favors, influence and access as secretary of state for large payments to her husband or her family’s foundation?... It is because if she told the truth, she would never be elected president, and would almost certainly end up behind bars. When asked why she decided to keep secret the medical diagnosis she received on Friday, she told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Monday night that “I just didn’t think it was going to be that big a deal. It’s just the kind of thing that if it happens to you and you’re a busy, active person, you keep moving forward.” If liar-Hillary hadn’t been caught by a bystander’s cell-phone camera nearly collapsing as she was being helped into her limousine, we probably still wouldn’t know about her pneumonia. Her lack of transparency on this matter has forced the liberal media to acknowledge liar-Hillary’s health issues, which have fueled much speculation about other possible ailments she may be hiding. With the release of the notes on the FBI investigation into Mrs. liar-Clinton’s handling of classified material, and the Bureau’s interview with her, it becomes more and more apparent that she is trying to run out the campaign clock without admitting to her many lies. When liar-Hillary first explained the use of her private server, she said it was a matter of convenience, so that she could use just one device. But the FBI summary reveals that there were actually 13 mobile devices she used, plus several iPads. At least one, maybe two, of the phones were destroyed by a hammer... http://www.aim.org/aim-column/why-hillary-continues-to-lie/?utm_source=AIM+-+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=email091316&utm_medium=email
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Virginia Dems Blocking the Truth about 100s
of Non-Citizens Engaged in Voter Fraud
by Hans von Spakovsky
{theacru.org} ~ Election integrity foes mistakenly tell us voter fraud is a myth. So when legitimate voter fraud is actually discovered, these foes pretend it didn’t happen, fail to take any steps to investigate or prosecute such cases, or, even worse, try to cover it up... Take Virginia, where the State Board of Elections and some local election officials want to hide a blatant case of voter fraud involving noncitizens. When non-citizens register or actually vote, they violate both state and federal statutes because citizenship is a requirement to vote in both state and federal elections. Falsely claiming to be a citizen on a voter registration form is a felony that violates three different federal statutes. Voting by a non-citizen under 18 U.S.C. §611 is a strict liability offense. In other words, it “does not require proof that the offender was aware that citizenship is a prerequisite to voting.” Article II, Section 1 of the Virginia constitution requires a voter to be a citizen, and §24.2-1004 of the Virginia Code makes it a felony to vote when you are “not qualified to vote” in the state. So you would think state and local election officials would treat these crimes with appropriate seriousness. Guess again...Nothing happens to these cases of voter fraud. http://www.theacru.org/virginia-dems-blocking-the-truth-about-100s-of-non-citizens-engaged-in-voter-fraud/
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US bombs ISIS chemical weapons plant
by Barbara Starr
{cnn.com} ~ The US has bombarded an ISIS chemical weapons plant that was housed in a converted Iraqi pharmaceutical factory, a top Air Force commander said Tuesday... Air Force Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Harrigian, the commander of the US Air Force's Central Command, told reporters that 12 aircraft in all were used to hit the facility, which also served as an ISIS headquarters, at 50 different points. The strike follows a United Nations-backed report issued last month that found that both the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and ISIS have used chemical weapons in the five-year-long war that has ripped the country apart... http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/13/politics/isis-chemical-weapons-plant/
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Chaffetz Served FBI With Subpoena For
liar-Clinton Documents On Live TV
by Rick Wells
{rickwells.us} ~ The game playing, cover ups, foot-dragging and hiding of information is getting old and Rep Chaffetz and his committee members have had enough... House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) opened the hearings into the production of documents to Congress related to the liar-Hillary Clinton investigation by the FBI. He asked Acting Assistant Director Herring what documents he believes Congress is not entitled to see. Herring tried to fill up the time by going into an explanation of how the FBI reached their conclusion. Upon hearing the direction the response was being taken Chaffetz stopped him and asked for him to respond to the philosophical question. Herring says “There’s more to it than a simple answer.” He struggled, unable to come up with a response so Chaffetz rephrased it a bit, asking, “What is it that I as a member of Congress or any member on this Congress, either side of the aisle, what is it that you believe we don’t have the right to see?” Herring just looked at Chaffetz and sweated, tapping his fingers together... http://rickwells.us/napolitano-chaffetz-served-fbi-subpoena-clinton/
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Sen Grassley Has Seen What The FBI Is
Hiding, It’s Earth-Shattering
by Rick Wells
{rickwells.us} ~ Three men were invited to testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform committee today. One was Bryan Pagliano, the liar-Clinton loyalist who had already received immunity from the DOJ on the matter... He defied Congress by no-showing and claiming through his attorney to be unwilling to participate in a wholly political motivated exercise. Another liar-Clinton facilitator, who is believed to have been the individual in charge of using Bleachbit to destroy the information on the server and make it unrecoverable took the Fifth Amendment. The third individual, Justin Cooper, did attend and did testify, revealing some very damaging information. He is believed to be the individual to took a hammer to one or more of liar-Hillary Clinton’s cell phones to prevent information from being extracted. He also was involved in setting up the initial liar-Clinton system and her own email domain and accounts... http://rickwells.us/napolitano-sen-grassley-has-seen-what-the-fbi-is-hiding-its-earth-shattering/
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Will liar-Hillary Admit She Has Parkinson’s?...
by TruthFeedNews
{truthfeed.com} ~ Photos showing a mysterious woman appearing to check liar-Hillary Clinton’s pulse just before she collapsed Sunday have sparked rumors about liar-Clinton’s ‘undercover nurse’... The photos show a woman in a dark blue dress seemingly checking the candidate’s pulse, and asking her to squeeze her fingers before she was rushed away from the Ground Zero 9/11 commemoration. Now Twitter is alight with rumors that someone is keeping tabs on liar-Clinton’s health at all times, and that the candidate may even be suffering neurological damage... http://truthfeed.com/will-hillary-admit-she-has-parkinsons-traveling-doctor-caught-giving-hillary-neurological-tests-for-parkinsons/23271/
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liar-Hillary Responsible for Benghazi
Discussion Gets HEATED on the Kelly File
{conservativevideos.com} ~ In a discussion that went from civil to a yelling match on the Kelly File, Richard Fowler loses his mind and things go from bad to worse... All because the blame for the deaths of four men in Benghazi was rightly put at the feet of former secretary of state liar-Hillary Clinton. Richard Fowler is hell bent on making sure he gets every last word in to defend his precious liar-Hillary. http://conservativevideos.com/hillary-responsible-benghazi-discussion-gets-heated-kelly-file-video/
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More U.S. Ransom Payments to Iran Revealed
by FRED FLEITZ
by FRED FLEITZ
{familysecuritymatters.org} ~ The nObama administration finally admitted that, in addition to the $400 million in foreign currency secretly flown to Iran on January 17, 2016, it also sent Iran two more planeloads of $1.3 billion in cash over the following 19 days... Since these payments coincided with the release of four Americans illegally held by Iran, they have been widely condemned as ransom. The nObama administration disputes this and claims that the payments were to settle a U.S. debt to Iran incurred during the rule of the Shah. However, after initially insisting there was no link between the $400 million payment and the release of the Americans, the administration said on August 18 that it delayed this payment as leverage to ensure that Iran would release the U.S. prisoners. The additional payments were an open secret in Washington ever since an August 22 New York Sun article by Claudia Rosett revealed 13 transfers of $99,999,999.99 from the Treasury Department to the State Department's "Judgment Fund" (a fund used to resolve foreign claims) on January 19, 2016, to pay an undisclosed foreign claim. Rosett wrote that the State Department acknowledged in letters to Congress in March that the United States paid $1.3 billion out of the Judgment Fund to Iran as interest on the $400 million payment but did not explain how this money was paid... http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/more-us-ransom-payments-to-iran-revealed?f=must_reads
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Lest We Forget—Connect the Dots!
by AMBASSADOR HENRY F. COOPER
by AMBASSADOR HENRY F. COOPER
{familysecuritymatters.org} ~ Last weekend's TV shows were full of photographic remembrances of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on America that left nearly 3000 dead, another 6000 casualties and many, many more with heartaches and bitter memories... We are less safe today after 15 years in an undeclared war with an enemy we do not name that has cost trillions, many thousands more lives and casualties, and many, many more heartaches. We need a change. They reflected a number of common themes-the most important of which, in my opinion, is that we are even less safe today than we were on that clear morning 15 years ago, that shocked all Americans and launched a conflict that continues still without promise of resolution after a major expenditure of U.S. lives and treasure... http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/lest-we-forgetconnect-the-dots?f=must_reads
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European Leaders Discuss Plan
for European Army
by Soeren Kern
Eurocorps is an intergovernmental military unit of
approximately 1,000soldiers from Belgium, France,
Germany, Luxembourg and Spain,stationed in Strasbourg.
{gatestoneinstitute.org} ~ European leaders are discussing "far-reaching proposals" to build a pan-European military, according to a French defense ministry document leaked to the German newspaper, the Süddeutsche Zeitung... The efforts are part of plans to relaunch the European Union at celebrations in Rome next March marking the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, which established the European Community. The document confirms rumors that European officials are rushing ahead with defense integration now that Britain — the leading military power in Europe — will be exiting the 28-member European Union... https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/8935/european-army
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Mahmoud Abbas and other Soviet ghosts
by Caroline B. Glick
{jewishworldreview.com} ~ Israeli Channel 1’s report Wednesday that in 1983, current Palestinian Authority Chairman and PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas served as a KGB agent is hardly the story of the year, but it does remind us of certain half-forgotten facts about the Cold War that are becoming ever more relevant today.
The PLO’s close and servile relationship with the KGB was first exposed in a systematic way in 1987, with the publication of Red Horizons: Chronicles of a Communist Spy Chief, the exposé of Soviet and Romanian Cold War operations written by former Romanian intelligence chief Lt.-Gen. Ion Pacepa. Pacepa, who defected to the US in 1978 after serving as the head of the DIE – Romania’s KGB – was the highest ranking intelligence officer from the Soviet bloc to ever defect.
In his book, Pacepa revealed that “the PLO was dreamt up by the KGB.”
Pacepa explained how Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, at the direction of Moscow, convinced Yasser Arafat to employ political warfare, centered on phony protestations that he had abandoned terrorism, to weaken the West’s resolve to defend itself and to cause Israel to doubt its own legitimacy.
Wednesday’s Channel 1 report on Abbas was based on new revelations from the Mitrokhin Archive. Vasili Mitrokhin was a senior archivist in the KGB who surreptitiously copied KGB documents for many years and hid his copies in his home. In 1991 Mitrokhin defected to Britain and took his archive of 25,000 copies of documents with him.
In 2004, the second volume of his edited archive was published. The volume, titled, The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World, focused on the KGB’s efforts to use the Third World as a strategic weapon in its battle against the West. The volume devotes two chapters to the KGB’s campaign against Israel.
Mitrokhin revealed that for the KGB, Israel was a target of subversion second only in importance to the US. The KGB fielded multiple political agents on the Israeli Left and multiple Palestinian agents in the PLO’s terrorist nexus.
According to the Channel 1 report, Abbas began his official service for the KGB in 1983.
In truth his KGB ties were already longstanding by 1983.
In 1982 Abbas received a doctorate from the Patrice Lumumba University – or KGB U – in Moscow. According to KGB defectors, 90 percent of the university’s faculty and staff received their paychecks from the KGB. Its purpose was to train KGB agents from the developing world, including terrorists. Abbas’s fellow alumni included master terrorist Carlos the Jackal and future Iranian dictator Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Abbas received a doctorate for a thesis denying the Holocaust. That is, he used the cover of academia to vilify the Jewish state and deny Jewish history and suffering – a practice that has been his stock in trade in trade ever since.
Rather than devote his energies to murdering Israelis, along the lines of the subversive program Ceausescu presented to Arafat, Abbas’s main focus was the subversion of the European and the Israeli Left.
Until the mid-1970s, Arab terrorists were unable to make inroads in Israel because there were no significant political forces in Israeli society that questioned the justice and morality of the state or saw the PLO as anything other than a terrorist organization bent on the annihilation of Israel and the massacre of its citizens.
The situation changed with the rise of the Likud and the Right to power in 1977. As the Likud supplanted Labor as the largest party in Israel, the far Left became more susceptible to subversion.
Abbas focused his efforts on developing ties to the Israeli far Left. His efforts culminated in the 1993 Oslo peace deal which Abbas negotiated with Israeli leftist activists affiliated with then-foreign minister Shimon Peres through his deputy Yossi Beilin.
The PLO’s success in convincing the Rabin- Peres government that it had abandoned its goal of annihilating Israel came two years after the demise of the Soviet Union. In other words, the KGB’s campaign of anti-Western subversion outlived the Soviet Union.
Indeed it carries on with ever greater force and consequence. Today, the subversive campaigns that first bore fruits in the Vietnam War have brought about a situation where increasingly, Western elites cannot accept the basic morality of their societies.
Consider the case of NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick. Last month Kaepernick caused a public outcry when he refused to stand up for the US national anthem at the beginning of a football game. Kaepernick defended himself by arguing that the US is immoral. “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” he said.
Rather than defend the US against his assault and insist that its symbols required respect, President Barack nObama said only that Kaepernick had a right to his opinion.
Then there is Germany. This week Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU party came in third place in regional elections on Merkel’s home turf behind the far-right, anti-immigration AfD party.
Merkel’s political collapse owes entirely to her refusal to budge on her open border policies.
That policy enabled more than a million, predominantly Muslim, immigrants to stream into Germany last year. An additional 300,000 are expected this year.
Merkel’s associates claim that she operates under the conviction that Germany’s Nazi past precludes any attempt to protect German society from Muslim immigrants. For Merkel, Germany is inherently immoral and therefore has no right to defend its identity or culture.
The PLO’s close and servile relationship with the KGB was first exposed in a systematic way in 1987, with the publication of Red Horizons: Chronicles of a Communist Spy Chief, the exposé of Soviet and Romanian Cold War operations written by former Romanian intelligence chief Lt.-Gen. Ion Pacepa. Pacepa, who defected to the US in 1978 after serving as the head of the DIE – Romania’s KGB – was the highest ranking intelligence officer from the Soviet bloc to ever defect.
In his book, Pacepa revealed that “the PLO was dreamt up by the KGB.”
Pacepa explained how Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, at the direction of Moscow, convinced Yasser Arafat to employ political warfare, centered on phony protestations that he had abandoned terrorism, to weaken the West’s resolve to defend itself and to cause Israel to doubt its own legitimacy.
Wednesday’s Channel 1 report on Abbas was based on new revelations from the Mitrokhin Archive. Vasili Mitrokhin was a senior archivist in the KGB who surreptitiously copied KGB documents for many years and hid his copies in his home. In 1991 Mitrokhin defected to Britain and took his archive of 25,000 copies of documents with him.
In 2004, the second volume of his edited archive was published. The volume, titled, The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World, focused on the KGB’s efforts to use the Third World as a strategic weapon in its battle against the West. The volume devotes two chapters to the KGB’s campaign against Israel.
Mitrokhin revealed that for the KGB, Israel was a target of subversion second only in importance to the US. The KGB fielded multiple political agents on the Israeli Left and multiple Palestinian agents in the PLO’s terrorist nexus.
According to the Channel 1 report, Abbas began his official service for the KGB in 1983.
In truth his KGB ties were already longstanding by 1983.
In 1982 Abbas received a doctorate from the Patrice Lumumba University – or KGB U – in Moscow. According to KGB defectors, 90 percent of the university’s faculty and staff received their paychecks from the KGB. Its purpose was to train KGB agents from the developing world, including terrorists. Abbas’s fellow alumni included master terrorist Carlos the Jackal and future Iranian dictator Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Abbas received a doctorate for a thesis denying the Holocaust. That is, he used the cover of academia to vilify the Jewish state and deny Jewish history and suffering – a practice that has been his stock in trade in trade ever since.
Rather than devote his energies to murdering Israelis, along the lines of the subversive program Ceausescu presented to Arafat, Abbas’s main focus was the subversion of the European and the Israeli Left.
Until the mid-1970s, Arab terrorists were unable to make inroads in Israel because there were no significant political forces in Israeli society that questioned the justice and morality of the state or saw the PLO as anything other than a terrorist organization bent on the annihilation of Israel and the massacre of its citizens.
The situation changed with the rise of the Likud and the Right to power in 1977. As the Likud supplanted Labor as the largest party in Israel, the far Left became more susceptible to subversion.
Abbas focused his efforts on developing ties to the Israeli far Left. His efforts culminated in the 1993 Oslo peace deal which Abbas negotiated with Israeli leftist activists affiliated with then-foreign minister Shimon Peres through his deputy Yossi Beilin.
The PLO’s success in convincing the Rabin- Peres government that it had abandoned its goal of annihilating Israel came two years after the demise of the Soviet Union. In other words, the KGB’s campaign of anti-Western subversion outlived the Soviet Union.
Indeed it carries on with ever greater force and consequence. Today, the subversive campaigns that first bore fruits in the Vietnam War have brought about a situation where increasingly, Western elites cannot accept the basic morality of their societies.
Consider the case of NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick. Last month Kaepernick caused a public outcry when he refused to stand up for the US national anthem at the beginning of a football game. Kaepernick defended himself by arguing that the US is immoral. “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” he said.
Rather than defend the US against his assault and insist that its symbols required respect, President Barack nObama said only that Kaepernick had a right to his opinion.
Then there is Germany. This week Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU party came in third place in regional elections on Merkel’s home turf behind the far-right, anti-immigration AfD party.
Merkel’s political collapse owes entirely to her refusal to budge on her open border policies.
That policy enabled more than a million, predominantly Muslim, immigrants to stream into Germany last year. An additional 300,000 are expected this year.
Merkel’s associates claim that she operates under the conviction that Germany’s Nazi past precludes any attempt to protect German society from Muslim immigrants. For Merkel, Germany is inherently immoral and therefore has no right to defend its identity or culture.
The sense among Western elites that Western culture and history as a whole are morally impaired has dampened their concern about their future. This diminished commitment to securing their societies into the future is most apparent in the West’s fertility rates, which have been below replacement rate for more than a decade. Last year for the first time, deaths in Europe outnumbered births.
The situation is similarly fraught on the other side of the former Iron Curtain. Russian society was economically and culturally broken by the Soviet defeat in the Cold War and by its post- Cold War leadership’s inability to present a life-affirming vision for a new Russia.
In some ways, post-Cold War Russia is the mirror image of the subverted West. While Western leftists insist on adopting the socialist economics of swelled welfare states, which given demographic realities are unsustainable in the long-term, to expiate their guilt for capitalism and colonialism, Russia’s leaders have largely abandoned their people to their fate.
Russia spends a bit more than a third of what OECD countries spend on public health. And the low investment shows.
According to the World Health Organization, a third of all deaths in Russia in 2012 were caused by alcohol. Russian male life expectancy is 64 – lower than it was a hundred years ago.
Drug addiction rates are soaring, as are HIV infection rates.
Like the Europeans, Russians have lost interest in the future, which increasingly will not include a Russia. With fertility rates below replacement levels, the UN estimates that by 2060, Russia’s working age population will have shrunk by 15 percent.
Due to the scarcity of workers, like Europe, Russia is experiencing massive, predominantly Muslim immigration. Russian immigration levels are second only to the US. In response, xenophobia is a large and growing social force in Russia.
According to David Satter, author of the recently released, The Less You Know, the Better You Sleep: Russia’s Road to Terror and Dictatorship under Yeltsin and Putin, Russia’s gloomy prospects, reinforced by the long-term outlook for reduced oil and gas prices, have brought about a situation where President Vladimir Putin and his associates do not think about the long-term future of their country. Their international considerations, specifically, are based on their assessments of immediate potential payoffs.
Since the Russian leadership doesn’t suffer from the civilizational neurosis the Soviets inflicted on the West, like the Soviet leaders before him, Putin’s short-term game empowers him to adopt policies with potentially high short-term payoffs regardless of the long-term dangers they create. Russia’s policies in Syria and toward Iran are case in point.
On the other side of the divide in Europe, the elites devote their remaining days in power to absolving themselves of imperialist and capitalist guilt. To this end, they have adopted the causes of those they falsely believe were most victimized by their predecessors.
The same is true, albeit to a lesser degree, in the US.
This then brings us back to KGB agent Abbas and his target, Israel.
Against great odds, and at a steep price, over the past 10 years Israeli society stopped listening to the voices on the Left parroting Abbas’s lies that Israel was born in sin, as a Western colonialist implant. Given the stakes, most Israelis today also have come to realize that our national self-confidence is a vital component of our long-term survival.
This understanding, along with a clear-eyed assessment of what drives our interlocutors in Moscow, Paris, New York and Brussels, must inform our foreign policy in the coming years.
When faced with foreign governments whose societies lack long-term prospects, Israel needs to put aside its yearning for long-term peace and stability and focus on short-term cooperative ties. It must also recognize that our partners’ interests are subject to change at a moment’s notice.
The revelation of Abbas’s KGB service requires us to recognize that the Soviets’ long game of subversion continues on today. Whether or not Western societies persevere and reject the Soviets’ central contention that they are unworthy of survival is not for Israel to decide. So, too, Israel will not convince the Russians to embrace a future based on freedom and the sanctity of life.
All we can do is wish them the best and play the short-term game with them – while keeping our long-term interests front and center in our minds.
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