90 Miles From Tyranny

Monday, April 23, 2018

Why President Trump Should Recognize The Armenian Genocide

If President Trump recognizes the Armenian genocide by specifically using the word “genocide” in his April 24 proclamation, he would send a strong signal to the world that America is unequivocally on the side of historical truth and the protection of innocent life. He would be only the second president, after Ronald Reagan, to do so boldly and officially.

Every year on April 24 there are memorial services, marches, and media reminders of the genocide of 1.5 million Armenians at the hands of the Ottoman Empire. The beginning of the massacres is marked on that date in 1915, when hundreds of Armenian community leaders, merchants, and intellectuals were rounded up and killed in Constantinople.

That horrific incident was followed by the sorts of activities you’d expect of a government intent on mass slaughter of an ethnic group: propaganda campaigns intended to vilify Armenians in the eyes of their Turkish neighbors; conscription of all Armenian men ages 20-45 to deprive their families of their protection; gun confiscation programs; the release of violent criminals from prisons in order to form “chetes” or killing squads targeting Armenians; mass deportations and death marches into the Syrian desert with little to no food or water; and much more. I’ve written in detailabout the genocide for The Federalist.

As the granddaughter of genocide survivors, I’ve always been well aware of those atrocities and hardships suffered a century ago. But most Americans are completely unaware, and the ignorance is growing. This is especially the case as our education establishment treats any serious study of history as, well, a thing of the past.
Official U.S. Recognition of This Genocide Has Been Thorny

For the United States, where many Armenian refugees settled, official government recognition of the genocide has never been a simple matter of acknowledging the historical record. Several American presidents in recent history issued commemorative proclamations that mourn the massacres and the tragedy of the killings, but—with the notable exception of Reagan—do not call it a genocide.

Turkey has been a key U.S. ally, and it is deeply offended by any mention of the genocide, which has long been a taboo subject in that nation. This is in stark contrast to Germany’s reckoning with its Nazi past and responsibility for the Holocaust shortly after World War II. But despite the passage of a century, the Turkish government seems to have grown ever more resistant to hearing that its Ottoman forebears had...

The Connection Between Russia and 2 Green Groups Fighting Fracking in US

New Yorkers who are missing out on the natural gas revolution could be victims of Russian spy operations that fund popular environmental groups, current and former U.S. government officials and experts on Russia worry.

Natural gas development of the celebrated Marcellus Shale deposits has spurred jobs and other economic growth in neighboring Pennsylvania. But not in New York, which nearly 10 years ago banned the process of hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, to produce natural gas.

Two environmental advocacy groups that successfully lobbied against fracking in New York each received more than $10 million in grants from a foundation in California that got financial support from a Bermuda company congressional investigators linked to the Russians, public documents show.

The environmental groups Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club Foundation received millions of dollars in grants from the San Francisco-based Sea Change Foundation.

“Follow the money trail, and this [New York] ban on fracking could be viewed as an example of successful Russian espionage,” Ken Stiles, a CIA veteran of 29 years who now teaches at Virginia Tech, told The Daily Signal.

To Stiles and other knowledgeable observers, this looks like an actual case of knowing or unknowing collusion with Russia.

Both Natural Resources Defense Council and Sierra Club Foundation also accepted tens of millions from...

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Waffle House shooter had history of delusions, believed Taylor Swift was stalking him

Travis Reinking, the suspected Waffle House shooter, feared pop star Taylor Swift was stalking him in his Illinois hometown and hacking his phone and Netflix account, according to fits of delusions detailed in police reports.

One of the first documented encounters Illinois authorities had with the alleged 29-year-old gunman was in May 2016, when loved ones worried he would hurt himself over the stalking claims and called police.

Those relatives said he had “been having these delusions” since 2014.

When confronted by cops in a parking lot near Peoria, Tazewell County Sheriff’s Office deputies said Reinking was convinced the singer — who launched her country music career in Nashville, Tenn. — was following him and urging him to meet at a nearby Dairy Queen.

He tried meeting Swift at the fast food joint but she yelled at him from across the street and bolted, according to his version of events. He gave chase “in an attempt to get her to stop harassing him,” the police report read.

“Taylor climbed up the side of a building and Travis followed. However, when he reached the rooftop, Taylor was gone,” according to the report.

He was taken to a local hospital for an evaluation but contended “it was against his will.”

Tazewell County Sheriff Robert Huston released five...

MOSCOW (AP) — A Russian lawyer who discussed sanctions with Donald Trump Jr. in New York during his father’s 2016 campaign for the U.S. presidency said Sunday that special counsel Robert Mueller has not contacted her yet.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Natalia Veselnitskaya also detailed her recent meeting in Berlin with investigators from the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee. Like Mueller, the committee is investigating allegations of Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election.

Veselnitskaya met in June 2016 with then-candidate Donald Trump’s son, his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort, his campaign chairman at the time, Paul Manafort, after Trump Jr. was told the Russian lawyer had potentially incriminating information about Hillary Clinton.

Mueller, a former FBI director, is leading a federal probe of possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. He has filed charges against multiple former Trump campaign aides.

Veselnitskaya alleged in her interview with the AP in downtown Moscow that if Mueller’s team never questions her, it would mean that it “is not working to discover the truth.”

Veselnitskaya is a well-connected Moscow lawyer who has worked with a company called Prevezon Holdings Ltd. The company’s owner is the son of a former Russian government official and a fierce advocate for rolling back U.S. sanctions on Russia.

At the time of her 2016 meeting at Trump Tower, she was defending Prevezon against charges it had engaged in money laundering from a $230 million Russian tax fraud scheme.

Trump Jr. and others in attendance have downplayed the meeting, saying nothing came of it. Trump has denied that he or his campaign coordinated with any Russian attempts to interfere in the election.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has expressed interest in determining whether Veselnitskaya’s appointment with Trump Jr., Kushner and Manafort was part of a Russian government effort to help President Donald Trump’s campaign for the White House. It was described that way in emails to Trump Jr. before it took place.

Several congressional committees are looking into whether Russia interfered in the 2016 election and whether there were collusion by Trump’s campaign. The House Intelligence Committee has finished its investigation and said it found no evidence of collusion or coordination with Russians.

The Senate Intelligence Committee approached Veselnitskaya earlier this year, but she refused to go the United States, saying she feared for her safety. The lawyer and the committee’s investigators instead met in a Berlin hotel on March 26 and talked for three hours.

“That was essentially a monologue. They were not interrupting me,” Veselnitskaya said. “They listened very carefully...Their questions were very sharp, pin-pointed.”

The investigators mainly wanted to know about Trump Tower meeting, she said. Veselnitskaya said she repeated her previous statements about it, insisting that she was not linked to the Russian government and merely wanted to discuss sanctions against Russia.

Veselnitskaya’s said the Berlin interview also focused on information in memos compiled by a former British spy whose work was funded by the Democratic National Committee and Clinton’s campaign. The dossier contains numerous allegations of Russian ties to Trump, his associates and the Trump campaign.

Veselnitskaya dismissed the dossier as “absolute nonsense.” She insisted that Glenn Simpson, whose firm Fusion GPS was...