One testimony and many narratives - Bill Wilson - www.dailyjot.com
Just to demonstrate how the news media twists and turns information to support their own agenda, Gordon Sondland, US Ambassador to the European Union is just one man, but two narratives emerged from his testimony before the House impeachment hearings. Associated Press posted a big headline and ran with the "impeach Trump" crowd, leading with: "The US ambassador to the European Union told an impeachment hearing Wednesday that he was following the orders of President Donald Trump in seeking a "quid pro quo" from Ukraine." But Breitbart reports that Sondland testified previously that Trump sought no "quid pro quo." Truth twisting in the wind here because of all the agendas.
AP in its sensational story reported: "Gordon Sondland -- whose appearance before Congress is being watched especially closely as he was a Trump ally -- said he believed the president was pressing Ukraine to investigate his potential 2020 rival Joe Biden. "We followed the president's orders," Sondland said in his prepared testimony to an open hearing of the House Intelligence Committee. "In the absence of any credible explanation for the suspension of aid, I later came to believe that the resumption of security aid would not occur until there was a public statement from Ukraine committing to the investigations of the 2016 election and Burisma, as Mr. [President's Counsel Rudi] Giuliani had demanded," he said."
A string of tweets during Sondland's testimony reported: Rep. Adam Schiff to Amb. Sondland: "This is a seminal moment in our investigation, and the evidence you have brought forward is deeply significant and troubling."...State Department Spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus: "Gordon Sondland never told Secretary Pompeo that he believed the President was linking aid to investigations of political opponents. Any suggestion to the contrary is flat out false."...Gov Track tweeted: Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) reviewing that Sondland says he never spoke about the investigations directly with Trump, that the investigations didn't happen and that since Trump met with Zelenskyy during the UN General Assembly that's the same as a White House meeting. Sondland agrees."
Breitbart reported Sondland testified during his closed-door deposition in early September that he called Trump directly on September 9 and asked what he wanted from Ukraine. According to Sondland, Trump told him that he wanted "nothing" from Ukraine and there was "no quid pro quo." Two testimonies, one man, many narratives. Where is the truth? The truth is that the politicians and media have their own agendas. And as Isaiah 59:13-14 says that we know them: "In transgressing and lying against the LORD, and departing away from our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart words of falsehood. And judgment is turned away backward, and justice stands afar off: for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter." You will not find truth in the media, it must therefore be sought from the Holy Spirit.
Pompeo's statement on settlements is a diplomatic turning point - Caroline Glick -
Monday will long be remembered as a turning point in Middle East history.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's statement Monday that Israeli settlements are not illegal per se is the most significant shift in U.S. Middle East policy in the past generation. Jerusalem's status as Israel's capital has been a matter of U.S. law since 1996. There was little interest in Washington in recent years in pressuring Israel to withdraw from the Golan Heights. But the issue of the legality of Israeli settlements has been the defining issue of much of the international discourse on Israel for a generation.
In the vast majority of cases, the discourse has revolved around the widely held allegation - with no basis in actual law - that Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria are illegal. This allegation has served as the justification for a continuous barrage of condemnations of Israel in international arena and for anti-Israel legal verdicts in international courts including the International Court of Justice at the Hague in 2004 and the European Court of Justice last week. The unsupported allegation that Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria are illegal was also the basis for UN Security Council Resolution 2234 from 2016 and is a basis of the International Criminal Court's ongoing probes of Israelis.
Pompeo made two revolutionary assertions in his statement. First, he said that "after carefully studying all sides of the legal debate," like the Reagan administration before it, the Trump administration has concluded, "The establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not per se inconsistent with international law."
Second, Pompeo noted, the near ubiquitousness of the false assertion that settlements are illegal has not advanced the prospects for peace. To the contrary, it has harmed the chances of getting to peace.
In his words, "calling the establishment of civilian settlements inconsistent with international law has not advanced the cause of peace."
And of course, it hasn't. Placing a lie in the center of the discourse on the Palestinian conflict with Israel is no way to promote understanding and coexistence.
In the interest of promoting peace, Pompeo instead told the truth. Not only are Israeli settlements not illegal. Pompeo noted that they are arguably more justified than civilian settlements built in other disputed territories.
In his words, the administration's determination "is based on the unique facts, history, and circumstances presented by the establishment of civilian settlements in the West Bank."
That is, it is based on the historic ties of the Jewish people to Judea and Samaria. These ties lay at the heart of Jewish history and religion.
Finally, Pompeo said that the legal status of the settlements is itself irrelevant to prospects for peace. As he put it, "There will never be a judicial resolution to the conflict, and arguments about who is right and who is wrong as a matter of international law will not bring peace. This is a complex political problem that can only be solved by negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians."
Pompeo's statement, and indeed the Trump administration's decision to publish its position now represents a complete rebuke of the European Union. The EU has made its false determination that Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria are illegal the basis for its hostile, discriminatory economic and political policies towards Israel. The European Court of Justice's verdict last week which requires EU member states to place distinct labels on Jewish-made exports from Judea, Samaria, united Jerusalem and the Golan Heights is self-evidently a bid to use a deliberate misinterpretation of international law to implement an anti-Semitic policy.
Israel's own Foreign Ministry should take a lesson from the Trump administration. After a bitter, two year bureaucratic and political fight, in 2017 Israel's embassies worldwide published a paper that explained the legal validity of Israel's settlements in Judea and Samaria. But unlike the Trump administration, the Israeli government has still not stated outright that international law is irrelevant to the cause of peace between Israel and the Palestinians.
Pompeo's statement is first and foremost an extraordinary gesture of support for Israel and the rights of the Jewish people on the part of President Donald Trump and his administration. But from a U.S. perspective, it also represents a key advance in Trump's realist foreign policy.
Since taking office, Trump has worked consistently to align U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and beyond to the world as it is, rather than to the world as "experts" imagine it to be. In the Middle East, this realignment of U.S. policy has provided the nations of the region - including Israel and the Palestinians - with the first chance of reaching genuine peace they have ever had.
The Mexican Murder Meltdown - Todd Strandberg - https://www.raptureready.com/category/nearing-midnight/
Mexico is quickly becoming a nation ruled by violence. Our southern neighbor had record murder rates in 2017 and 2018. Figures for the first nine months of 2019 suggest that this year's homicide toll could surpass that of last year.
In December 2006, then-President Felipe Calder�n launched a "war on drugs," deploying more than 50,000 soldiers and federal police officers. Since that campaign began, over 300,000 people have lost their lives. In 2018 the number of people killed was more than four times that in 2007.
The liberal media have a set agenda of downplaying the bloodshed. Because Trump cited the violence in Mexico as justification for building his wall, the press has had a blockade on all negative news from that nation.
The violence in Mexico occasionally reaches a level that forces the liberal media to report the truth. About two weeks ago, nine Americans were killed during a highway ambush by drug cartel members. The victims were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that have lived peacefully in Mexico for over 100 years.
The situation keeps going from bad to worse because violence has reached the point where it feeds on itself. Impunity in Mexico, where 95% of killings go unpunished, has spurred more people to take up arms - and carry out their own justice.
The Justice system in Mexico is simply rotting away. Joaqu�n Archivaldo Guzm�n Loera, commonly known as "El Chapo," was sent to the U.S. primarily because Mexico had become so corrupt, it could no longer contain the man. El Chapo was able to escape two major prisons in spectacular fashion largely because the guards were paid to look the other way.
In October, one of El Chapo's sons, Ovidio Guzm�n L�pez, was freed on the orders of the Mexican government after Sinaloa cartel gunmen flooded the city of Culiac�n and surrounded security forces to press for their boss's release.
Even the wife of El Chapo has gotten into the act. She will be appearing on VH1's reality TV series "Cartel Crew." The wealth she enjoyed was from drugs that destroyed probably over a million people, and she is being glamorized as a drug kingpin's celebrity.
The end point of the Mexican drug trade is America. You don't hear any talk about our moral responsibility for the carnage we create with our collective hunger for drugs. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics finds that the number of overdose deaths involving cocaine almost doubled in two years - jumping from 5,892 in 2014 to 11,316 in 2016, the most recent year for which data was available.
According to the Drug Enforcement Administration's 2018 National Drug Threat Assessment, the rise in cocaine use can be attributed to increases in availability. The Drug smugglers are always a step ahead of DEA ability to uncover the means of distribution. When we find all the drug tunnels between Mexico and America, the Cartel is now moving drugs to the states by way of cheap submarines. Eventually, the package of cocaine that DEA agents posed with for News shots will be sold on the streets the next day because the feds are on the payroll of the Cartel.
We do have a fake drug crisis that can put the public's mind at rest. Doctors that overprescribe opioids to Grandma for legitimate pain are being sent up the river. Many politicians are ready to blame the whole Prude family for being the source of the Great Opioid crisis. Meanwhile, a ship with enough fentanyl to kill 30 million people arrives in Philadelphia and gets little coverage when the ship is impounded.
I don't think Mexico's problem is that it needs an elite force of untouchables to clear out the corruption. When the whole nation is in moral bankruptcy, no one will tolerate a group that interferes with the system. The cop that arrested El Chapo's sons was shot 155 times. His fellow officers must have just shrugged and wondered why he didn't just take the bribe like everyone else.
God is in full control of all world events. As we get closer to the tribulation hour, the Lord is slowly granting Satan more freedom to do the evil things taking place in Mexico. At some point, God will say enough is enough, and He will trigger the rapture. There is no way to second guess the greatest Being in the universe. Anyone with an IQ above 70 would know that his patience is likely to run out in short order.
"The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved" (2 Thessalonians 2:9-10).
Hidden Dangers of Impeachment - By Hal Lindsey -
America's founders knew there had to be a constitutional method for removing a president from office. But they were leery of it. They expressed concern that it might become a political weapon. They knew that if politics were to override matters of justice, an impeachment-happy Congress could radically weaken the American republic.
A few days after pronouncing that the House of Representatives was beginning an impeachment inquiry, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said something important. She said that with such an inquiry, "We must be somber, we must be prayerful, and we must pursue the facts."
I agree that impeachment hearings should be entered into somberly and prayerfully. But prayer and a somber pursuit of facts should start well before the decision to begin the official inquiry. Once it starts, damage to the nation is already being done. Impeachment should never be a political tool. It's much bigger than that. An impeachment in the House and conviction in the Senate would override the constitutional selection of a President.
And here's the scary part. So far, the present inquiry has been a completely partisan exercise. To my knowledge, not one Republican in the House or Senate has called for impeachment.
Did President Trump attempt to "bribe" President Zelensky of Ukraine in their phone call last summer? As a matter of policy, calls between US Presidents and other heads of state are not recorded. But the best available transcript of it was declassified by President Trump and made available to Congress and the public on September 9th. Anyone who wants to read it, can read it.
The first to testify in the hearings was Ambassador William Taylor. He did not hear the phone call. He has never met President Trump. He briefly met Rudy Giuliani once twelve years ago. His testimony was filled with opinion - lots of "I think" statements. And he told about things he heard from other people. At one point, he said, "I'm not here to take one side or the other, or to advocate any particular outcomes. Let me just restate that. Second thing is that, my understanding is only coming from people that I talk to."
In court, they call that "hearsay." This is a House hearing and not a court, but basic rules of evidence are still important. If hearsay evidence can be admitted, then almost anyone can testify because we've all "heard things." But fairness demands "best evidence." That means someone who was there, not someone who heard things from other people.
And if opinion can be admitted, then once again we are all qualified to testify because everyone has an opinion.
Then they had the former ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch. She had been appointed by President Obama and was upset that President Trump wanted someone else in the position. She seems to have forgotten that when President Obama came into office, he fired all the US ambassadors around the world who had been appointed by President Bush.
This is important because Presidents conduct foreign policy. The decision about who officially represents the country is a matter of foreign policy. You don't impeach a President for conducting foreign policy, even if you don't agree with it.
During the hearing, President Trump was criticized for using what are called "backchannels" in foreign policy. Should a President be impeached for using a civilian rather than a State Department employee to reach out to a foreign government? Presidents have been doing it for decades, if not centuries. It was through a backchannel connection to the Soviet Union that John Kennedy was able to diffuse the Cuban Missile Crisis and avoid World War III.
State Department employees almost always resent the use of backchannels because they see it as infringing on their turf. But it is an invaluable component in a president's foreign policy toolkit. It should have nothing to do with impeachment.
Using impeachment as a political tool is not just dangerous to this President, but to all the Presidents that will follow - whether Democrat, Republican, or something else. It's part of the ongoing schism in American life - a schism that threatens the very fabric of the Republic. And, as I have explained elsewhere, it is a fulfillment of end-times prophecy when people groups live in rage against one another, especially when they are acting against their own self-interest.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.