Right Wing Granny

News behind the news. This picture is me (white spot) standing on the bridge connecting European and North American tectonic plates. It is located in the Reykjanes area of Iceland. By-the-way, this is a color picture.

Right Wing Granny

Standing Up For Women Athletes

On Friday, Zero Hedge posted an article about a soccer team in the NorthWest Association, a league in Australia.

The article reports:

Calling itself the “biggest LGBTQIA+ women’s and non-binary football club in the world,” the Flying Bats FC has made international headlines for fielding 5 self-identifying transgender players, with at least nine transgender players in the wider NorthWest Association.

Critics have said the Bat’s domination of the four-week pre-season Beryl Ackroyd Cup, which followed an undefeated season in 2023 that produced scorelines disproportionate to other teams’ results, was a direct result of the inclusion of male-born transgender players.

According to the feminist and pro-woman online news source, Reduxxpresident of St. Patrick’s Football Club Frank Parisi said a March discussion over the Flying Bats FC’s ease of victories had prompted an informal meeting with stakeholders of the Northwest Sydney Football Association to address “concerns around how implausible it has become for any team to win against the Flying Bats as well as physical safety concerns.”

Incensed by the Flying Bats’ domination, other clubs asked the league’s governing body Football NSW to force them into playing in a mixed-sex league.

One club official told the Daily Telegraph, “Our girls are here to play for fun and expect to play in the female competition. They did not sign up for a mixed competition. It was so disheartening for them to see the huge difference in ability—they’re killing it.”

The involvement of transgender athletes in sports is a current hot-button issue, as policymakers grapple with how to balance the effects on women’s players, versus the “rights” of female-identifying players born as biological men

Any soccer team with biological males on it is going to beat a team composed of only biological women. Although there are occasionally women who have the muscle structure to compete with men, they are rare. This is totally unfair competition. It is like adding five professional baseball players to a high school team so that they can have a winning season. Kudos to the women who walked away from the unfair competition.

The Real Purpose Of The Raid At Mar-a-Lago?

If you don’t have your conspiracy hat on, you are probably going to need it for this article.

An animal is most dangerous when it is cornered. On Tuesday, The New York Post posted an article about the illegal spying on President Trump during the presidential campaign of 2016 and afterward. Obviously, that was illegal, but it seems as if Democrats are not required to abide by laws.

The article reports:

The US Intelligence Community asked foreign spy agencies to surveil 26 associates of Donald Trump in the run-up to the 2016 election, which triggered the allegations that the former president’s campaign had been colluding with Russia, according to a report. 

Former CIA Director John Brennan identified and presented the targets to the US’s intelligence-sharing partners in the so-called “Five Eyes” agencies – the intelligence-gathering organizations in the US, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – according to a report published Monday on Michael Shellenberger’s Public Substack

The report by independent journalists Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi and Alex Gutentag has not been confirmed by The Post.

They cite multiple unnamed sources, including ones close to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, led by Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio). 

The article concludes:

Former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith was sentenced to probation in 2021 after admitting that he falsified an e-mail to renew a wiretap against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. 

​​Page had been wiretapped after intelligence sources suspected he might have been targeted by Russian spies. The wiretap, which was approved by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, was renewed several times after it was first granted.

Last March, Special Counsel John Durham concluded that the FBI investigation of Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia was “seriously flawed” and had no basis in evidence, after a four-year review of the probe. 

In response, the FBI said it had “implemented dozens of corrective actions” since the improper Trump probe and that “the missteps identified in the report could have been prevented” had the reforms been in place in 2016. 

In 2022, Taibbi and Shellenberger were involved in the publishing of the Twitter Files expose, which detailed how the social media giant’s previous management team sought to silence controversial voices and suppress news items such as The Post’s reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop.

Do you really believe all necessary corrective actions have been taken? What if there is more to this than meets the eye? What if documents detailing exactly who was involved in this illegal activity exist and the FBI does not know where they are? Would they logically be at Mar-a-Lago or in President Trump’s possession? Is it possible that was what the raid at Mar-a-Lago was really about since other Presidents have never been treated that way?

President Trump is a smart man. I suspect (and I would also suggest that the parties who broke the law spying suspect) that somewhere in a very secret place the documents showing the abuse of our justice system are in President Trump’s possession. I also think that those who engaged in the illegal spying will be brought to justice if President Trump is re-elected. That is why the deep state is working so hard to prevent President Trump from being our next President.

Ignoring The History

On Tuesday, NewsMax reported that Australia has changed its position on recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

The article reports”

Australia has reversed a previous government’s recognition of West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the foreign minister said Tuesday.

The center-left Labor Party government Cabinet agreed to again recognize Tel Aviv as the capital and reaffirmed that Jerusalem’s status must be resolved in peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, Foreign Minister Penny Wong said.

Australia remained committed to a two-party solution to the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, and “we will not support an approach that undermines this prospect,” Wong said.

A two-state solution is a wonderful idea, but there is a problem.

“PA presents the PLO Charter as currently calling for Israel’s destruction,” by Itamar Marcus and Maurice Hirsch, Palestinian Media Watch, March 16, 2021:

As part of a TV series entitled “Lexicon of the Revolution” official PA TV broadcast a filler about the 1964 Charter of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

While presenting the historical overview of the Charter, the PA chose to cite the Charter’s declarations denying Israel’s right to exist and the PLO’s goal of destroying Israel, even claiming that it is supported by the UN. For example:

“The Palestinian Arab people is the one with the legitimate right to its homeland”

“The 16th clause [of the Charter] states that the liberation of Palestine, from an international perspective, is a defensive operation necessitated by self-defense, as determined by the UN Charter.”

[Official PA TV, Aug. 10, 2018; March 6 (twice) 2021]

This second message is stated both by the narrator and reinforced by a slide on the screen.

Text: “Clause 16 states that the liberation of Palestine, from an international perspective, is a defensive operation necessitated by self-defense, as determined by the UN Charter” alongside the old Fatah logo that includes crossed rifles and the map of “Palestine” that includes all of Israel, together with this text: “Al-Asifa – the Palestinian National Liberation Movement”

What was left out of the PA TV broadcast is just as significant as what was included. Most specifically, there is no reference to the fact that the PA obligated itself to cancel all the clauses of the PLO Charter calling for Israel’s destruction, under the terms of the Oslo Accords.

The narrator’s introductory explanation likewise denies Israel’s right to exist – saying Israel exists on Arab “stolen homeland” and therefore “returning it” is an act of “self-defense”:

It’s hard to form a two-state solution with people who want to annihilate you.

Destroying Our Foreign Allegiances In Eight Months

President Trump was accused of having a negative impact on our relationships with our allies. After all, he pretty much forced our NATO allies to pay their fair share. However, with President Trump what you saw was pretty much what you got. There weren’t a lot of surprises. Allies were never left uninformed about military actions or treated badly. Our bond with Britain was strengthened during the Trump years. Our bond with France was solid– they respected our President (even if they were not overly fond of his style). Well, President Biden has created some serious problems with our allies.

Yesterday MSN reported that France has recalled its ambassadors to America and to Australia in protest over an agreement that will provide nuclear submarines to Australia.

The article reports:

France recalled its ambassadors to the United States and Australia in response to a pact signed by the two countries along with the United Kingdom that the French referred to as a stab in the back.

“At the request of President Macron, I have decided to immediately recall our ambassadors to the United States and Australia to Paris for consultations,” French Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Jean-Yves Le Drain said in a statement Friday.

The article concludes:

Earlier in the week, Le Drain told a French radio station that the pact, known as AUKUS and widely perceived as a challenge to China’s presence in the region, was a “stab in the back” and that France had been “betrayed.”

Le Drain also compared President Biden to former President Donald Trump.

“This brutal, unilateral and unpredictable decision reminds me a lot of what Mr. Trump used to do,” Le Drian said. “I am angry and bitter. This isn’t done between allies.”

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki denied that the move had created a “regional divide” and said that France was notified of the deal prior to the announcement.  

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News on the French ambassadors being recalled.

I am sure there is someone somewhere in the diplomatic corps who could have properly handled this. Will we have any friends in the world by the end of the Biden administration?

Coming To America If We Don’t Stop It

The Conservative Treehouse is reporting today that Australia is setting a new policy for dealing with the coronavirus.

The article reports:

Apparently the internet has been turned off for people in Australia.  That is the only reasonable explanation for how their political leadership can keep claiming that vaccinated people cannot contract the COVID virus.

This claim is empirically refuted by every other nation who is seeing vaccinated people contracting COVID and “some” being hospitalized regardless of their vaccine status.

On a weirdly positive note, it appears they have abandoned the regional Australian plan of “COVID-ZERO,” which was a plan to lock-down the entire nation, on a state-by-state basis, until they never had a single case of COVID and then re-open society.

The article explains the new policy:

In a press conference yesterday from Victoria, Premier Daniel Andrews proclaimed that vaccinated citizens in the state of Victoria will be allowed out of lockdown in the near future. However, freedom as defined by access to medical treatment, the ability to work, shopping, attending events and engagement in the economy writ large, will not be permitted for any non-vaccinated citizen. Anyone who is not vaccinated will remain in locked-down isolation as enforced by the state.

…The justification for withholding access to life in Victoria is based on a premise that vaccinated people do not contract COVID, therefore the coronavirus is a “virus of the unvaccinated.”  That statement is a completely false position.  As seen in the U.S., and all other nations around the world, the vaccinated population contracts COVID in the same way as the non-vaccinated.  Some studies have even shown the vaccinated population are susceptible to carrying higher loads of the virus than non-vaccinated individuals.

The vaccine provides zero-benefit from avoidance of the virus.  Any claim to the contrary is totally devoid of reality, science or empirical evidence.

In some nations -like Israel- there is more than a 90% vaccinated status, and yet the COVID virus is still infecting, spiking and creating large issues with hospitalization for those at greatest risk. A large percentage of that Israeli population is now triple-vaxxed; and yet the issues continue.   Conversely, in Sweeden and parts of the U.S, the economy and society is largely open, and the variant viruses are running through the vaccinated and non-vaccinated population without a significantly disparate outcome.

This is a degree of government control that should never be tolerated in a society that claims to be free. Unfortunately, we will probably see some sort of policy similar to this in America if the Biden administration gets its way. Notice that there is no allowance for those who have natural antibodies because they have survived the virus. Science be d***ed, the government wants control!

Score One For The Good Guys

NewsMax posted an article today about a global sting operation to catch members of organized crime in action.

The article reports:

The operation by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, Australian and European police ensnared suspects in Australia, Asia, Europe, South America and the Middle East involved in the narcotics trade, the officials said.

Millions of dollars in cash were seized in raids around the world, along with 30 tonnes of drugs including more than eight tonnes of cocaine.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the operation had “struck a heavy blow against organized crime – not just in this country, but … around the world.”

Operation Greenlight/Trojan Shield, conceived by Australian police and the FBI in 2018, was one of the biggest infiltrations and takeovers of a specialized encrypted network.

It began when U.S. officials paid a convicted drug trafficker to give them access to a smartphone that he had customized, on which he was installing ANOM, also styled An0m, a secure encrypted messaging app. The phones were then sold to organized crime networks through underworld distributors.

The FBI helped to infiltrate 12,000 devices into 300 criminal groups in more than 100 countries, Calvin Shivers of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division told reporters in The Hague.

The article concludes with some of the numbers involved:

Australian police said they had arrested 224 people, including members of outlawed motorcycle gangs, and disrupted 21 murder plots.

On Monday alone, they seized 104 firearms, including a military-grade sniper rifle, as well as almost A$45 million ($35 million) in cash, including A$7 million from a safe buried under a garden shed in a suburb of Sydney.

In Europe, there were 49 arrests in the Netherlands, 75 in Sweden and over 60 in Germany, where authorities seized hundreds of kilograms of drugs, more than 20 weapons and over 30 luxury cars and cash.

Finnish police not only detained almost 100 suspects and seized 500 kg of narcotics but also found a warehouse with 3-D printers used to manufacture gun parts.

The operation also revealed that gangs were being tipped off about police actions, which prompted “numerous high-level public corruption cases in several countries,” according to an affidavit from an FBI agent.

Kershaw said the Australian underworld figure, who had absconded, had “essentially set up his own colleagues” by distributing the phones, and was now a marked man.

“The sooner he hands himself in, the better for him and his family.”

Please follow the link above and read the entire article. It is amazing.

Banning Prayer?

Yesterday PJ Media posted an article about a move by lawmakers in Britain and Australia to ban ‘conversion therapy’–the practice of helping homosexuals who want to leave that lifestyle. The laws being considered may criminalize such common practices as preaching, counseling, and even prayer. From a Biblical perspective, homosexual behavior is a sin. A homosexual in the church should be free to seek change if that is his desire. As long as no one is forcing change on the person, I don’t see how helping a person leave that lifestyle can be made illegal. However, Britain (I don’t know about Australia) does not have a First Amendment that protects free speech, so that could get interesting.

The article notes:

Arthur Goldberg, founder of the therapy referral service Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing (JONAH) objected to the term. “Conversion therapy is not even a term of art. It’s a misnomer. It’s a pejorative term that talks about emotional trauma and physical trauma,” he told PJ Media. JONAH did not recommend or carry out so-called “conversion therapy.” It gave people “references for therapy for underlying issues which may result in same-sex attraction,” yet a New Jersey judge shut it down on false pretenses.

As ex-gay leader Christopher Doyle explains in his book The War on Psychotherapy, “One of the strategies that far-left advocacy and gay activist organizations use to smear professional psychotherapists assisting clients distressed by sexual and gender identity conflicts is to intentionally conflate professional therapy with religious practice and/or unlicensed, unregulated counseling. They do this by labeling all efforts—therapeutic, religious, or otherwise—to help clients distressed by sexual and gender identity conflicts [as] ‘conversion therapy.’”

The tragic situation in England demonstrates that LGBT activists will not stop at banning “conversion therapy” in the talk therapy setting. Some are explicitly targeting “the pernicious power of prayer.” Christians — and free thinkers who value the ability to dispute the LGBT orthodoxy — need to be on our guard.

It is interesting to me that the group opposing this would include banning prayer. I take that as an acknowledgement that prayer works.

I Guess This Is One Way To Deal With The Problem Of Farting Cows

The environmentalist seem very concerned about the problem of farting cows. Somehow they fail to mention that the cow population has actually decreased since 2014 (article here). However, they are sincerely interested in taking away our steak dinners.

Breitbart posted an article yesterday about the latest plan to deal with farting cows.

The article reports:

Ermias Kebreab, an zoology professor at the University of California–Davis, led a team in producing a bovine meal regimen containing varying levels of Asparagopsis armata, a strain of red seaweed, and fed it to 12 dairy cows over a two-month period. In a mix containing just 1 percent seaweed, the cows’ methane emissions went down by a stunning 60 percent.

“In all the years that I’ve worked in this area, I’ve never seen anything that reduced it that much,” Kebreab said.

A 2012 United Nations report revealed that the earth’s cattle population produces more carbon dioxide than automobiles, planes, and all other forms of transport combined. Moreover, the cow pies they drop and the wind they break produce a third of the world’s methane emissions, which traps 84 times as much heat as carbon dioxide.

In the summer of 2016, EcoWatch published an article confirming that greenhouse gas emissions from livestock actually account for a higher percentage of total global emissions than the world’s 1.2 billion automobiles.

Kebreab’s cow experiment sought to replicate results from researchers at Australia’s James Cook University, who mixed bacteria from cows’ digestive systems with red seaweed and discovered a significant decrease in methane production. Their experiment suggested that tweaking a cow’s diet to include 2 percent seaweed could reduce its methane emissions by as much as 99 percent.

The article concludes:

According to Dobbins, seaweed farming may be a “triple win.” It furnishes a way to grow nutritious food for both cows and people, provides coastal jobs, and improves the marine environment.

“Everything you do in food production has pluses and minuses relative to the environment,” he has claimed. “Seaweed farming, if done correctly, actually comes out more on the plus side.”

While flatulence is an issue, studies have suggested that cow belching is a much bigger problem because of the methane produced in cows’ stomachs.

“Despite misconceptions, most cow methane comes from burps (90%) rather than farts (10%),” Michael Battaglia wrote in October, 2016, in the Conversation.

So now we have to start worrying about burping cows?

It Can Be Embarrassing When The Truth Shows Up

Yesterday The Gateway Pundit posted an article the debunks the latest attempt to accuse President Trump of questionable behavior.

The article reports:

According to a leak to the New York Times, President Trump “pushed” the Australian Prime Minister during a recent phone call to help AG Barr gather information that could potentially discredit Robert Mueller’s Russia probe.

The New York Times went on to say, “[T]he discussion with Prime Minister Scott Morrison of Australia shows the extent to which Mr. Trump sees the attorney general as a critical partner in his goal to show that the Mueller investigation had corrupt and partisan origins, and the extent that Mr. Trump sees the Justice Department inquiry as a potential way to gain leverage over America’s closest allies.”

A letter from Australian Ambassador Joe Hockey written to Attorney General Bill Barr back in May of this year destroys the latest New York Times smear job on President Trump.

The article concludes with an explanation of what this is really about:

FBI informant Joseph Mifsud tried to plant dirt on Papadopoulos by telling him the Russians had Hillary Clinton’s emails. The fake news narrative claims Papadopoulos then bragged to Alexander Downer that he heard the Russians had dirt on Clinton — Downer then shared this information from Papadopoulos with fellow Australian officials.

Attorney General Bill Barr and US Attorney John Durham traveled to Italy to meet with Italian government officials on Friday, and according to a report by the Washington Post, Barr asked the Italians to assist Durham.

So the Obama Administration is allowed to unleash foreign governments to spy on Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, but Trump, as president of the United States isn’t allowed to speak to foreign leaders in order to ferret out corruption.

The Inspector General’s report is due out shortly. This is an effort to blunt the impact of that report. Hopefully enough of that report will be declassified to give Americans a true picture of the corruption that was part of the 2016 election.

Please follow the link to the article to read the letter in question.

Is Anyone Considering The Consequences?

The Democrats are accusing President Trump of an impeachable offense again. Russia, Russia, Russia didn’t work. Racist, racist, racist didn’t work. So the third chapter is Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine. Let’s look at some of the history of the Trump Administration.

Remember early on when conversations between President Trump and leaders from Australia and Mexico were leaked. That might have been the reason for placing conversations in more secure places. We have seen anyone working for President Trump subjected to incredible legal actions, some related to their position and some not. We have seen questionable information used as an excuse to spy on the Trump campaign and administration. We have seen people placed in the administration for the sole purpose of undermining the administration. We have seen people working for the Trump administration being removed from restaurants or harassed when out in public. This has gone far beyond partisan politics. There is no excuse for it.

What are those who oppose President Trump doing to the office of the presidency? How will their actions impact future Presidents? Have the actions of the opponents of President Trump created a new normal for political opposition?

Those who are too impatient to wait for the next election (or who fear the reelection of President Trump) are truly undermining our representative republic. At some point they need to be held accountable for their actions. It is a shame that the Republican party does not have the moral integrity to deal with the abuses of power engaged in by the opponents of President Trump.

 

Sometimes Warnings Are There For A Reason

Common sense is not a flower that grows in everyone’s garden. When someone warns you about something, they may actually know something you do not.

Yesterday The Gateway Pundit posted an article about bloggers Jolie King and Mark Firkin. They announced in 2017 that they would be going on an international trip to “try to break the stigma around travelling to countries which get a bad rap in the media.” What could possibly go wrong?

Last Thursday, the BBC reported:

Two Australian citizens detained in Iran have been identified as Jolie King and Mark Firkin.

Ms King, who also holds a UK passport, and Mr Firkin were blogging their travels in Asia and the Middle East.

They were reportedly arrested 10 weeks ago near Tehran but news of the arrest, and that of another British-Australian woman, came to light on Wednesday.

Australia said it had repeatedly raised their cases with Tehran, including in a meeting between officials last week.

Foreign Minister Marise Payne said she had lobbied on their behalf in a meeting with her Iranian counterpart.

She described the detentions as “a matter of deep concern” on Thursday, and confirmed that assistance had been offered to the families of the three detainees.

“[We] hope to see Mark and Jolie safely home as soon as possible,” their families said on Thursday.

The situation comes amid growing tensions between the West and Iran.

Several dual nationals have been detained in Iran in recent years, including the British-Iranian woman Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe.

Relations between the UK and Iran have also been strained in recent months by a row over the seizure of oil tankers in the Gulf.

I guess maybe the media discourages people from traveling to certain places for a reason. We need to remember that not every country in the world plays by the same rules.

 

Knowing Where The Bodies Are Buried

Insiders in Washington who are honest have a pretty good idea what went into the framing of candidate Trump (and President Trump) as a Russian agent. Many of them have remained relatively quiet for various reasons–not wanting to leak classified information, not wanting to get ahead of the story, and waiting for more information to come out. Well, it seems as if we may finally getting near some of that information.

John Solomon posted an article at The Hill yesterday listing ten items that should be declassified that will turn what we have heard from the mainstream media on its head.

This is the list:

  1. Christopher Steele’s confidential human source reports at the FBI. These documents, known in bureau parlance as 1023 reports, show exactly what transpired each time Steele and his FBI handlers met in the summer and fall of 2016 to discuss his anti-Trump dossier.
  2. The 53 House Intel interviews. House Intelligence interviewed many key players in the Russia probe and asked the DNI to declassify those interviews nearly a year ago, after sending the transcripts for review last November.
  3. The Stefan Halper documents. It has been widely reported that European-based American academic Stefan Halper and a young assistant, Azra Turk, worked as FBI sources. We know for sure that one or both had contact with targeted Trump aides like Carter Page and George Papadopoulos at the end of the election.
  4. The October 2016 FBI email chain. This is a key document identified by Rep. Nunes and his investigators. My sources say it will show exactly what concerns the FBI knew about and discussed with DOJ about using Steele’s dossier and other evidence to support a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant targeting the Trump campaign in October 2016.
  5. Page/Papadopoulos exculpatory statements. Another of Nunes’s five buckets, these documents purport to show what the two Trump aides were recorded telling undercover assets or captured in intercepts insisting on their innocence. Papadopoulos told me he told an FBI undercover source in September 2016 that the Trump campaign was not trying to obtain hacked Clinton documents from Russia and considered doing so to be treason.
  6. The ‘Gang of Eight’ briefing materials. These were a series of classified briefings and briefing books the FBI and DOJ provided key leaders in Congress in the summer of 2018 that identify shortcomings in the Russia collusion narrative.
  7. The Steele spreadsheet. I wrote recently that the FBI kept a spreadsheet on the accuracy and reliability of every claim in the Steele dossier. According to my sources, it showed as much as 90 percent of the claims could not be corroborated, were debunked or turned out to be open-source internet rumors.
  8. The Steele interview. It has been reported, and confirmed, that the DOJ’s inspector general interviewed the former British intelligence operative for as long as 16 hours about his contacts with the FBI while working with Clinton’s opposition research firm, Fusion GPS.
  9. The redacted sections of the third FISA renewal application. This was the last of four FISA warrants targeting the Trump campaign; it was renewed in June 2017 after special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe had started and signed by then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
  10. Records of allies’ assistance. Multiple sources have said a handful of U.S. allies overseas — possibly Great Britain, Australia and Italy — were asked to assist FBI efforts to check on Trump connections to Russia. Members of Congress have searched recently for some key contact documents with British intelligence.

If what went on here were not so serious, it would be a major get-out-the-popcorn moment. However, the biggest questions is, “How much of this will the major media report when it is released?”

This Doesn’t Help Our Foreign Relations

Those of us who follow “Q” have known for a while know that a large part the charges against President Trump were helped along with the aid of the intelligence apparatus of some of our international allies. There is a group of countries called “Five Eyes” (Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States) that shares intelligence in an effort to keep the world safe. Part of the understanding is that we are not supposed to spy on each other’s citizens. Unfortunately, information in the Mueller Report indicates that principle was violated in the creation of the Russian collusion hoax.

The Conservative Treehouse posted an article yesterday about the involvement of Australia.

The article reports:

In response to media inquiry and FOIA demands, the government of Australia formally admitted today to the role of High Commissioner Alexander Downer and his engagements with George Papadopoulos in 2016.  The timing coincides with the Mueller Report (released today), which states it was information about this engagement from Alexander Downer that opened the FBI counterintelligence investigation in July 2016.

Please follow the link above and read the entire article. It is complicated, but explains how domestic and foreign intelligence agencies were used in an attempt to influence an election and undermine a duly-elected President.

The article includes some comments made by Devin Nunes last year:

REPRESENTATIVE DEVIN NUNES: “That’s correct. So it took us a long time to actually get this, what’s called the “electronic communication”, as we know it now for your viewers, what it is it’s the original intelligence, original reasons that the counterintelligence was started.

Now this is really important to us because the counterintelligence investigation uses the tools of our intelligence services that are not supposed to be used on American citizens. And we’ve long wanted to know: what intelligence did you have that actually led to this investigation? So what we’ve found now, after the investigators have reviewed it, is that in fact there was no intelligence.

So we have a traditional partnership with what’s called the Five Eyes Agreement. Five Eyes Agreement involves our friends in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Canada, and of course, us. So long time processes and procedures in place where we move intelligence across.

We are not supposed to spy on each others’ citizens. And it’s worked well. And it continues to work well. And we know it’s working well because there was no intelligence that passed through the Five Eyes channels to our government.

And that’s why we had to see that original communication. So now we’re trying to figure out, as you know, we are investigating the State Department, we think there’s some major irregularities in the State Department, and we’re trying to figure out how this information about Mr. Papadopoulos of all people who was supposedly meeting with some folks in London, how that made it over across into the FBI’s hands.” (Video Interview Link)

And that explains some of the reluctance to declassify the FISA warrant information–this was an international scheme. Some of our allies were working with the deep state to install Hillary Clinton as President. They should be ashamed.

The Court Gets It Right

The Guardian is reporting today that an Australian court ruled James Cook University had unlawfully sacked a professor who had criticised scientific research about the climate change impact on the Great Barrier Reef. Peter Ridd was a professor at James Cook University in Australia before he was fired for his criticism of some of the research on climate change.

The American Thinker posted an article today noting the following:

The greatest “tell” for non-scientists evaluating the likelihood that the anthropogenic global warming theory is a fraud is that instead of critically examining the facts, warmists try to silence skeptics, with some of them even demanding jail for the thought-crime of questioning their unproven theory.  So thorough has been the pressure to keep the fraud going and keep the billions of dollars a year in research funds flowing to universities and other research institutions pushing the party line that skeptics are under threat of firing — and some have been fired.

The Guardian explains:

Judge Salvatore Vasta ruled on Tuesday the 17 findings made by the university, the two speech directions, the five confidentiality directions, the no satire direction, the censure, the final censure and the termination of Ridd’s employment were all unlawful.

…Judge Vasta said the university has not understood the whole concept of intellectual freedom.

“[The] university has ‘played the man and not the ball’,” he said.

 “Intellectual freedom is so important. It allows academics to express their opinions without fear of reprisals. It allows a Charles Darwin to break free of the constraints of creationism. It allows an Albert Einstein to break free of the constraints of Newtonian physics. It allows the human race to question conventional wisdom in the never-ending search for knowledge and truth.”

The Townsville-based university’s provost professor, Chris Cocklin, noted the judgment does not refer to any case law.

“We disagree with the judgment and we maintain we have not taken issue with Dr Ridd’s nor any other employee’s rights to academic freedom,” Cocklin said in a statement.

“Dr Ridd was not sacked because of his scientific views. Dr Ridd was never gagged or silenced about his scientific views, a matter which was admitted during the court hearing.”

The case has been adjourned for a further hearing to award a penalty.

My biggest problem in science classes was jumping to conclusions without examining all the facts. I think the entire concept of man-made global warming rather than natural climate cycles is a result of that sort of thinking.

 

Anatomy Of A Smear

Yesterday John Solomon posted an article at The Hill that details the role the Clinton campaign played in creating a situation where a Special Counsel needed to be appointed. It is a sobering tale of how a group of people can manipulate the government for nefarious purposes.

The article reports:

When at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. That’s what Hillary Clinton’s machine did in 2016, eventually getting the FBI to bite on an uncorroborated narrative that Donald Trump and Russia were trying to hijack the presidential election.

Between July and October 2016, Clinton-connected lawyers, emissaries and apologists made more than a half-dozen overtures to U.S. officials, each tapping a political connection to get suspect evidence into FBI counterintelligence agents’ hands, according to internal documents and testimonies I reviewed and interviews I conducted.

In each situation, the overture was uninvited. And as the election drew closer, the point of contact moved higher up the FBI chain.

It was, as one of my own FBI sources called it, a “classic case of information saturation” designed to inject political opposition research into a counterintelligence machinery that should have suspected a political dirty trick was underway.

Ex-FBI general counsel James Baker, one of the more senior bureau executives to be targeted, gave a memorable answer when congressional investigators asked how attorney Michael Sussmann from the Perkins Coie law firm, which represented the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party, came to personally deliver him dirt on Trump.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It is further proof that the government wittingly or unwittingly put its thumb on the scale during the 2016 election cycle. Thank God their efforts did not work. However, every person who willingly used the power of their government position to undermine President Trump needs to be immediately fired. Most of them have been, but I suspect there are still people in our government who are working against the President and against the American people.

The article describes an escalation of the efforts to get the FBI to respond to the political opposition research of the Clinton campaign:

But the bureau apparently did not initially embrace Steele’s research, and no immediate action was taken, according to congressional investigators who have been briefed.

That’s when the escalation began.

During a trip to Washington later that month, Steele reached out to two political contacts with the credentials to influence the FBI.

Then-senior State Department official Jonathan Winer, who worked for then-Secretary John Kerry, wrote that Steele first approached him in the summer with his Trump research and then met again with him in September. Winer consulted his boss, Assistant Secretary for Eurasia Affairs Victoria Nuland, who said she first learned of Steele’s allegations in late July and urged Winer to send it to the FBI.

(If you need further intrigue, Winer worked from 2008 to 2013 for the lobbying and public relations firm APCO Worldwide, the same firm that was a contractor for both the Clinton Global Initiative and Russia’s main nuclear fuel company that won big decisions from the Obama administration.)

When the State Department office that oversees Russian affairs sends something to the FBI, agents take note.

But Steele was hardly done. He reached out to his longtime Justice Department contact, Bruce Ohr, then a deputy to Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates. Steele had breakfast July 30, 2016, with Ohr and his wife, Nellie, to discuss the Russia-Trump dirt.

(To thicken the plot, you should know that Nellie Ohr was a Russia expert working at the time for the same Fusion GPS firm that hired Steele and was hired by the Clinton campaign through Sussmann’s Perkins Coie.)

Bruce Ohr immediately took Steele’s dirt on July 31, 2016, to then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

When the deputy attorney general’s office contacts the FBI, things happen. And, soon, Ohr was connected to the agents running the new Russia probe.

Around the same time, Australia’s ambassador to London, Alexander Downer, reached out to U.S. officials. Like so many characters in this narrative, Downer had his own connection to the Clintons: He secured a $25 million donation from Australia’s government to the Clinton Foundation in the early 2000s.

Downer claims WikiLeaks’s release of hacked Clinton emails that month caused him to remember a conversation in May, in a London tavern, with a Trump adviser named George Papadopoulos. So he reported it to the FBI.

The Clintons had been involved in government long enough to know how to set the wheels in motion to undermine Candidate Trump and later President Trump. It is a shame they didn’t direct their focus to something more constructive.

What Happens When People Don’t Forgive

A think more than half of the political and violence problems in today’s world could be solved by simple forgiveness and an effort by both sides to get along. I am not naive enough to think that could happen, but I think it is a great idea. As people, some of us seem to spend a lot of time hating people and holding grudges. The current situation in South Africa is an example of what can happen when vengeance is more important than dialog and compromise.

The Gateway Pundit posted an article yesterday about a recent statement by Julius Malema, leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters.

The article quotes Mr. Malema:

We want to send a strong message to USA authorities just like we did with the Australian authorities. Stay out of South Africa’s domestic updates. South Africa is a post colonial country – with deep inequalities that were long designed by apartheid and colonialism. Our land appropriations program seeks to realize the idea of equality and human dignity. Through land expropriation we’re pushing the white people to share their land which was gained through a crime against humanity… Be that at it may, we must put it on record that Donald pathological liar Trump we’re not scared of you and your USA or Western imperialist forces… Donald Trump is not saying anything we haven’t heard from white people. In all the years I’ve been on record and said I’ve still to meet a white person who supports expropriation of land without compensation. So why are you shocked?… As for Donald Trump, I don’t have time for this nonsense. I expected this.

So let’s take a look at this statement. He is stating that white people don’t like their land taken from them without compensation. Guess what–no one likes their land taken from them without compensation. The stealing (that’s what it is) of land without compensation will not solve the problem–it will only cause more hatred and division. Why is this man calling the West imperialistic when he is the one stealing land without compensation? It also should be noted that the policy of taking land without compensation eliminates private property rights. Mr. Malema does not understand the private property rights are the key to prosperity for a country (see article here). If he truly wants to see South Africa prosper, he needs to respect private property rights. Negotiating a settlement between white farmers and black South Africans might be a much better path in the long run than the one he is taking now.

It is obvious that this will not end well. Mr. Malema is only continuing a cycle of wrongdoing which will be followed by more wrongdoing. There is a peaceful solution to this problem if only those intent on stealing land would be willing to consider it.

Exactly How Did The Surveillance Of The Trump Campaign Begin?

Every now and then I post a story that I don’t understand, but I think is important. This is one of those stories. I think we may see its importance in the coming months, but right now it just looks like bureaucracy.

Breitbart is reporting the following today:

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) on Monday referred ten current and former U.S. officials to the House Judiciary and Oversight & Government Reform Committees’ joint task force, as it investigates potential DOJ and FBI wrongdoing related to the Trump-Russia probe.

In question is exactly when the federal investigation into and surveillance of the Trump campaign began and whether or not it was justified when it began.

The article at Breitbart reports:

Papadopoulos was reportedly told by a Maltese professor named Joseph Mifsud that Russia had dirt on Hillary Clinton in the form of emails. Downer requested a meeting with Papadopoulos weeks afterward. Papadopoulos reportedly told Downer in May 2016 that he was told Russia had dirt on Clinton, but did not specify “emails.”

The conversation was reportedly passed on from Downer to Amb. Joe Hockey, who was Australia’s ambassador to the United Kingdom serving in London at that time. Hockey reportedly passed on the conversation to the U.S. Embassy in London after the emails were released on July 22, 2016, who relayed it to the FBI.

Normally, intelligence passed on from a member of the “Five Eyes” alliance — Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the U.K., and the U.S. — to another member comes through an official channel for intelligence sharing.

However, Nunes, upon reviewing the document that formally launched the FBI’s investigation, said there was no intelligence shared through that official channel, meaning that the intelligence was shared through unofficial means.

U.S. officials who were serving at the U.S. Embassy in London listed in Nunes letter include: Elizabeth Dibble, Lewis Lukens, and Thomas Williams.

Dibble served as the deputy chief of mission at the embassy from 2013 through July 2016. Previously, she served as the principal deputy assistant secretary in the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, from 2011 to 2013.

Lukens is the current deputy chief of mission at the embassy, who has served there since August 2016. Williams serves as the minister counselor for political affairs at the embassy, where he has served since at least December 2015. (The italics above are mine).

The article also mentions:

Nunes’s letter also lists Colin Kahl, former national security adviser to former Vice President Joe Biden, another former Biden aide, and former journalist Shailagh Murray – who is married to a Fusion GPS executive Neil King, Jr. – as well as former top Clinton State Department aide and campaign official Jake Sullivan.

This is getting to the bottom of the swamp.

 

When The Stories Just Don’t Add Up

Kimberley Strassel posted an article yesterday about Mr. Downer. Mr Downer is a conservative politician who was Australia’s longest-serving foreign minister (1996-2007) and is also a former Australian ambassador to the U.K. Mr. Downer’s conversation with 28-year-old fourth-tier Trump adviser, George Papadopoulos, is supposedly what triggered the mess we know as the Mueller investigation.

There are, however, some serious problems with that premise.

The article lists a few of those problems:

When Mr. Downer ended his service in the U.K. this April, he sat for an interview with the Australian, a national newspaper, and “spoke for the first time” about the Papadopoulos event. Mr. Downer said he officially reported the Papadopoulos meeting back to Australia “the following day or a day or two after,” as it “seemed quite interesting.” The story nonchalantly notes that “after a period of time, Australia’s ambassador to the US, Joe Hockey, passed the information on to Washington.”

My reporting indicates otherwise. A diplomatic source tells me Mr. Hockey neither transmitted any information to the FBI nor was approached by the U.S. about the tip. Rather, it was Mr. Downer who at some point decided to convey his information—to the U.S. Embassy in London.

However, that is not the way things are normally done. The article notes that The U.S. is part of Five Eyes, an intelligence network that includes the U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The agreement among these countries is that they share intelligence information. Under the Five Eyes agreement, Mr. Downer was obligated to share information with Australia and let them deal with it. Obviously, that is not what he did.

The article explains the significance of that:

So if Australian intelligence did receive the Downer info, it didn’t feel compelled to act on it.

But the Obama State Department did—and its involvement is news. The Downer details landed with the embassy’s then-chargé d’affaires, Elizabeth Dibble, who previously served as a principal deputy assistant secretary in Mrs. Clinton’s State Department.

When did all this happen, and what came next? Did the info go straight to U.S. intelligence? Or did it instead filter to the wider State Department team, who we already know were helping foment Russia-Trump conspiracy theories? Jonathan Winer, a former deputy assistant secretary of state, has publicly admitted to communicating in the summer of 2016 with his friend Christopher Steele, author of the infamous dossier.

The more we learn, the more questionable this story gets. Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It is becoming obvious that the entire Russian investigation had only one purpose–to remove a duly-elected President. That is called sedition.

The Cost Of Not Defending Your Culture

Generally speaking, western countries practice freedom of religion. Unfortunately, that is not part of the culture in many Muslim countries. As more Muslims immigrate to western countries, many of these immigrants tend to bring their lack of respect for other religions with them. A recent event in Australia illustrates the problem.

Breitbart is reporting today that an Australian named Mike, of Greek heritage, was assaulted while riding the train through “Muslim enclaves” in south-west Sydney.

The article reports:

Christians in Sydney, Australia, are being advised to hide their crosses after an Arabic-speaking gang shouting “F*** Jesus!” attacked a couple on a train while transport officers looked on from a “safe space” and did nothing.

That is a disgrace–both the attack and the lack of action on the part of the transport officers.

The article explains:

Mike, who asked for his surname to be withheld for fear he might be targeted, said that four men of Middle Eastern appearance ripped his cross from his neck, stomped on it, and rained kicks and punches on his face, back, and shoulders. Two women attacked his girlfriend when she tried to protect him.

Five uniformed transport officers watched the attack take place but failed to intervene, Mike claimed, leaving the police to meet the train at a later station.

“I was born in Australia of Greek heritage,” Mike told the Telegraph. “I’ve always worn my cross. For [them] to rip it off and step on it has to be a religious crime … It’s not on to feel unsafe in your own country.”

Mike went to Greek community leader and former Sutherland Shire Council deputy mayor Reverend George Capsis, who believes Christians in Sydney face growing persecution at the hands of Muslim gangs, about the attack.

“This is not an isolated incident,” said Rev Capsis, who explained that Mike was the fourth Christian to have come to him about a religiously-motivated attack in just the last six months.

An explanation was given for the behavior of the transport officers:

Sydney Trains defended the transports officers who stood by as the attack took place, telling the Telegraph their main responsibility is tackling fare evasion and that they are trained to observe from a “safe space” if passengers are assaulted.

“Why are ticket inspections deemed more important than passenger safety?” commented Telegraph journalist Miranda Devine.

“Surely, if taxpayers fund dedicated Transport Officers to ride the trains all day, they should be authorised to do more than just observe crimes and call police. Anyone can do that.”

Rev Capsis believes that, “If this keeps up, someone will be hurt.”

Wow. Just wow.

Borrowed From A Friend On Facebook

Australian Gun Law Update

Here’s a thought to warm some of your hearts….
From: Ed Chenel, A police officer in Australia
Hi Yanks, I thought you all would like to see the real
figures from Down Under.

It has now been 12 months since gun owners in Australia were forced by a new law to
surrender 640,381 personal firearms to be destroyed by our own
government, a program costing Australia taxpayers
more than $500 million dollars.

The first year results are now in:
Australia-wide, homicides are up 6.2 percent,
Australia-wide, assaults are up 9.6 percent;
Australia-wide, armed robberies are up 44 percent (yes, 44 percent)!
In the state of Victoria…..
lone, homicides with firearms are now up 300 percent.(Note that
while the law-abiding citizens turned them in, the criminals did not
and criminals still possess their guns!)

While figures over the previous 25 years showed a steady
decrease in armed robbery with firearms, this has changed drastically upward in the past 12 months, since the criminals now are guaranteed that their prey is unarmed. There has also been a dramatic increase in break-ins and assaults of the elderly, while the resident is at home.

Australian politicians are at a loss to explain how public
safety has decreased, after such monumental effort and expense was expended in successfully ridding Australian society of guns….’ You won’t see this on the American evening news or hear your governor or members of the State Assembly disseminating this information.

The Australian experience speaks for itself. Guns in the
hands of honest citizens save lives and property and, yes, gun-control laws affect only the law-abiding citizens.
Take note Americans, before it’s too late!
Will you be one of the sheep to turn yours in?
WHY? You will need it.

Alienating Friends, Ignoring The Threat Of Enemies

The American Thinker posted an article today about President Obama’s remarks in Australia regarding climate change. Unfortunately, the President’s tactless remarks could have a negative economic impact on all Americans.

The Melbourne Herald Sun posted an article today with the headline, “Attention America: your windbag president is pushing Australia China’s way.” So much for improving America’s relationships with its allies.

The article reports:

TRADE and Investment Minister Andrew Robb … has sent Barack Obama a sharp return-fire message: that Australia expects to be treated with respect — not insulted — and that the President’s remarks in Brisbane were wrong, misinformed and unnecessary…

The Robb remarks are both an honest expression of sentiment in much of the Abbott cabinet and a useful message to the Obama White House about the President’s gratuitous intervention in Australian politics against the Abbott government…

Robb told Sky News’s Australian Agenda program yesterday he was “surprised” by Obama’s speech, he believed the President was “not informed” about Australia’s climate change policy, that his “content was wrong”, that Australia’s 2020 targets were “roughly comparable” to those of the US and other nations, that his speech gave “no sense” to government efforts to protect the Great Barrier Reef and that his remarks were “misinformed” and “unnecessary”.

…Mr Robb also intensified pressure within the government to alter its position and join the China regional infrastructure bank, playing down the security factors that led cabinet’s National Security Committee to reject membership at this time.

 

It is becoming very obvious that President Obama’s extreme agenda does not play well with those countries in the world that we have traditionally called our friends. I hope the American voters will make a better choice in 2016.

 

At Least Someone Is Standing Up For The Ukraine

Yesterday the U.K. Telegraph reported that there was a very tense exchange between Vladimir Putin and David Cameron at the G20 summit.

The article reports:

The Russian president is reportedly planning to leave the summit early on Sunday and miss its official lunch in response to repeated criticism from western leaders.

The move comes after Tony Abbott, the Australian Prime Minister, threatened to “shirt front” Mr Putin – a form of physical confrontation. Stephen Harper, the Canadian Prime Minister, told Mr Putin: “I guess I’ll shake your hand, but I’ll only have one thing to say to you – get out of the Ukraine.”

Mr Cameron told Mr Putin that he is at a “crossroads” and could face further sanctions after the pair held “robust” discussions on Ukraine.

During a tense 50 minute meeting Mr Cameron warned that Russia is risking its relations with the West and must end its support for Russian separatists.

Let’s remember how we got here. In March of this year the U.K. Daily Mail reported:

As a U.S. senator, Barack Obama won $48 million in federal funding to help Ukraine destroy thousands of tons of guns and ammunition – weapons which are now unavailable to the Ukrainian army as it faces down Russian President Vladimir Putin during his invasion of Crimea.

In August 2005, just seven months after his swearing-in, Obama traveled to Donetsk in Eastern Ukraine with then-Indiana Republican Senator Dick Lugar, touring a conventional weapons site.

The two met in Kiev with President Victor Yushchenko, making the case that an existing Cooperative Threat Reduction Program covering the destruction of nuclear weapons should be expanded to include artillery, small arms, anti-aircraft weapons, and conventional ammunition of all kinds.

After a stopover in London, the senators returned to Washington and declared that the U.S. should devote funds to speed up the destruction of more than 400,000 small arms, 1,000 anti-aircraft missiles, and more than 15,000 tons of ammunition.

It gets worse. In March of 2014, Newsweek Magazine reminded us:

 A deal was signed on February 5, 1994, by Bill Clinton, Boris Yeltsin, John Major and Leonid Kuchma—the then-leaders of the United States, Russia, United Kingdom and Ukraine—guaranteeing the security of Ukraine in exchange for the return of its ICBMs to Moscow’s control. The last SS-24 missiles moved from Ukrainian territory in June 1996, leaving Kiev defenseless against its nuclear-armed neighbor.

That deal, known as the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, was not a formal treaty but a diplomatic memorandum of understanding. Still, the terms couldn’t be clearer: Russia, the U.S. and U.K. agreed “to respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine…reaffirm their obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine, and that none of their weapons will ever be used against Ukraine.”

 I am not convinced that any of the countries involved have lived up to that agreement. America has done very little to ensure the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine (we gave up Crimea very easily, and it is very rarely spoken of in the news).

However, there is good news in this–as the price of oil falls, the economy of Russia will also spiral downward. If America begins sending natural gas to Europe, Russia will lose part of the bullying tactics they have employed in the region. Also, just to make it even more interesting, as the price of oil falls, Venezuela will also continue its economic spiral downward. The falling price of oil will also impact some of the despots in the Middle East that have had a strangle hold on American diplomacy for generations.

American energy independence is important as a security matter, but it is also very important as a component of American foreign policy. As the price of oil falls, we will begin to see the impact of that decrease in international politics.

Something Americans Should Consider

America currently has a problem with illegal immigration. We can debate who the illegal immigrants are and why they are here, but the fact is that there are a lot of them and they are illegal. So what should we do?

Before I go into the solution, I would like to say that I am strongly in favor of legal immigration–legal immigrants are an asset to America. Legal immigration also allows us to know who is coming into the country and whether or not they are likely to cause problems for us. Our legal immigration system needs to be fixed–it needs to be easier, cheaper, and faster, but that is another article.

World Net Daily posted a story yesterday about Australia, a country that until recently was also having a problem with illegal immigration.

The article reports:

In the past seven months, not one single illegal immigrant arrived on Australian shores. Not one single boat has docked on the Australian coastline.

Compare this to the preceding four year period: Over 50,000 illegal immigrants arrived on Australian shores. More than 800 boats. Upwards of 1,000 people drowned at sea. A budget blowout of more than $10.3 billion.

How did they turn that around? There is some history here. In late 2007, Australia elected a center-left government that dismantled the border security policy. In 2013, the Australians essentially revolted against the policies of that government and elected Prime Minister Tony Abbott who began to solve a number of problems the previous Prime Minister and his crew had caused. One of these problems was immigration. (Prime Minister Tony Abbott also ended the carbon tax in Australia.)

The article reports:

As he couldn’t stop the boats overnight, in those first few months, his government gave the illegal immigrants arriving to Australia two options: “You’ve arrived in Australia illegally. As a result, you will never get to stay here. You will never get to be an Australian. So, you have two options – we will take you to a processing center, and you will wait in detention for your asylum application to be processed. Or we will fly you home for free.”

In addition to this, the Abbott government got the Australian military to enforce its border protection, intercepting boats, turning them around, and even towing them back. And it applied pressure on Indonesia, by demanding it secure its own border.

Soon, the message got out, and the boats have stopped. It’s an ongoing issue that requires vigilance, but it has been achieved. Australia’s policy has been exceptionally effective in saving lives. It’s been done amid incessant howling from the left and the mainstream media.

The bottom line here is simple–in a democracy (actually representative republic in the case of America), the people have a choice. The people get the government they choose. We will see in November of this year and in November of 2016 what Americans choose. Hopefully, we will choose the way of Australia. It really isn’t fair to people who have paid money to wait in line to immigrate to America to allow them to become Americans after letting thousands of illegals in. Those who want to come here legally should be at the head of the line–not the end.

Australia Gets It Right

Investors.com posted an article yesterday about Australia’s move to end its carbon tax.

The article reports:

Australia’s carbon tax has been in effect since 2012, when Labor Party Prime Minister Julia Gillard was in office.

But it’s come apart under Liberal Party Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

Both of the country’s legislative bodies voted last week to repeal, a promise Abbott campaigned on.

Needless to say, environmental groups are very upset about the repeal. The article states that taxing carbon dioxide emissions is pointless and harmful to the economy.

The article reminds us:

A University of New England study found that under a $23 per-ton carbon tax, “Australia’s real GDP may decline by 0.68%, consumer prices may rise by 0.75% and the price of electricity may increase by about 26%.”

These costs might have value if cutting CO2 emissions actually achieved anything. But it wouldn’t.

Let’s get this straight one more time. Carbon dioxide is a naturally occurring trace gas. Humans exhale it, plants breathe it.

It is not toxic, nor is it a pollutant, unless its atmospheric concentrations reach so high — 40,000 parts per million rather than the 400 parts per million now found in our air — that it crowds out the oxygen humans need to breathe.

Yes, CO2 is a greenhouse gas and, according to speculation, higher concentrations will cause a greenhouse effect that will warm the planet. But reality has not cooperated with the computer models that have predicted the heating of the planet.

Why are the environmentalists so willing to collapse the economies of free-world countries for science that is unproven?

Common Sense At Last

Last week the Daily Caller posted a story about changes Australia is making to its global warming budget.

The article reports:

Australia’s conservative coalition is set to cut more than 90 percent of the funding related to global warming from their budget, from $5.75 billion this year to $500 million, over the next four years.

…But Abbott (conservative Liberal Party Prime Minister Tony Abbott) shows no signs of slowing down in his quest to repeal the country’s environmental laws, which have slowed economic growth, including mining taxes, green energy funding and the carbon tax.

“The carbon tax is an act of economic vandalism,” Abbott said in March. “You can’t trust [Labor] anywhere near an economy.”

The carbon tax was imposed by former Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard in the summer of 2012, and quickly became unpopular as businesses and households began to bear the costs of higher power bills and higher inflation.

Could we invite Prime Minister Abbott to come and speak to Congress? Man-made global warming is a hoax. There was global warming in the Middle Ages before factories, coal-burning electric plants, and SUV‘s. Climate is cyclical. In the 1980’s we were supposed to panic over “The Coming Ice Age” as reported by Time Magazine. Carbon taxes are economic vandalism. Thank you, Prime Minister Abbott for speaking the truth.

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