RUTHFULLY YOURS

The way to nip the European neo-fascist movement in the bud is for Europe to become once again an alliance of self-governing nation-states.
The Jewish world has reacted with horror to the results of the European elections as displaying an upsurge of parties promoting Jew-hatred. Certainly, the results give plenty of cause for such concern. But in significant respects, such a response is wildly off-beam.

Some parties which surged, such as Greece’s Golden Dawn, Hungary’s Jobbik and Germany’s National Democratic Party (NPD), are undoubtedly fascist or bigoted. And France’s National Front, which avoids the open Jew-hatred of its founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen, nevertheless retains troubling undertones.

But others lumped in with these truly noxious parties by anti-Semitism-watchers are not racist or fascist at all. Britain’s UKIP wants Britain to leave the EU, restore its democratic self-government and preserve its national identity. In Italy, the former comedian Beppe Grillo’s Five Stars movement campaigns against political corruption.

In Denmark, the Danish People’s Party is against Islamization and non-Western immigration and wants to maintain the Danish monarchy and uphold the Danish constitution. In Finland, the Finns Party welcomes work-based immigration and requires immigrants to accept Finnish cultural norms.

All these parties are being smeared by association with truly racist and fascist groups as giving cause for concern. Two important errors are being made here. The first is to confuse the populist defense of national identity with fascism and bigotry. The second is to assume that only the EU stands between us and the fascist hordes.

It reminds us that we can turn the tide of evil and that freedom can triumph.

‘Never forget.” That seems a strange phrase to invoke on the 70th anniversary of the Allied landings on Normandy on June 6, 1944 — a phrase most of us associate with another, far more horrific episode from that war, the Holocaust.

But on this 70th anniversary, it seems peculiarly appropriate — and not just because the number of those still living who participated in the landings is shrinking to the vanishing point. Never forget the sacrifice that was demanded of ordinary people, who performed with a heroism and courage that has ennobled the day ever since.

Never forget why they were there, especially the more than 2,500 Americans who died, most on Omaha Beach.

They were there because during the Thirties the Western democracies had abdicated their moral and cultural obligation to defend freedom and fight tyranny. They decided that the way to deter aggressors such as Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini and the leaders of imperial Japan was to appease rather than oppose them — or to harass them with economic sanctions, or to retreat, as the United States did, into a hopeful neutralism until it was almost too late.

So there’s a sick and savage irony in the fact that Vladimir Putin will be there today in Normandy in celebration alongside Barack Obama and European leaders, who seem resigned to follow the same disastrous course that took 73,000 Americans dying and fighting in Normandy, alongside soldiers from eleven other countries, to help set right.

During a week in which many of the comrades of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl have expressed outrage at what they say was his betrayal of his country in Afghanistan, it’s refreshing to return to the beaches of Normandy for a celebration of the authentic heroes who stormed ashore here 70 years ago this week.

Northern France was under the boot of Nazi occupation, and was defended by an intimidating array of fortifications and gun emplacements all along its coast. But on June 6, 1944, 160,000 Allied troops landed along a 50-mile stretch of beaches whose names have gone down in history — Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno, Sword — in what General Dwight D. Eisenhower called a crusade in which “we will accept nothing less than full victory.” More than 5,000 ships and 13,000 aircraft supported the D-Day invasion, and at the cost of 9,000 killed or wounded soldiers, the Allies gained a toehold in Europe that became the staging area for the ultimate defeat of Nazi Germany.

The passage of years has taken its toll on the veterans. Take Pointe du Hoc, a series of 100-foot cliffs that were scaled by U.S. Army Rangers at great peril on June 6. “In 1984, when President Reagan gave his famous speech at Pointe du Hoc, there were 15 busloads of 82nd Airborne troops who had parachuted into France there,” recalls Keith Nightingale, a retired colonel with the 82nd Airborne who has visited Normandy 30 times since his first visit in 1977. “This year, the unit will only be represented by two men.”

But while the ranks of the original veterans are thinning, their places at the lavish commemorations that are held here every five years are being taken by younger generations. Schoolchildren in Normandy are required to learn about “the Liberation,” and many know more about the battle’s disposition of various units than some of the returning veterans. More than 200,000 people are crowding into the Normandy region this week, and more than 12,000 of them — including world leaders from many countries — will attend the main memorial services.

Some of those attending take D-Day very seriously. Al Clayton is one of hundreds of “reenactors” who have come over from England to set up camp and play Allied soldier for a week. Clayton is proud of his completely restored American jeep and his uniform that marks him as part of the “Red Ball Express,” the units that supplied the front lines by truck. “I know most of the drivers were black and I’m clearly not, but I still want to honor what they did,” he told me.

At the beautifully landscaped American Military Cemetery at Omaha Beach, a map lays out just how the invasion took place and how strenuously the Germans tried to push the Allies back into the sea. In a gathering around the map on Wednesday were two returning D-Day veterans, patiently giving interviews and having their pictures taken with tourists. Clifford Dill, a 90-year-old peppery former combat infantryman from Greenville, S.C., regales us with stories of how he still drives a large truck around the country and was just stopped for speeding. Asked about his experiences at D-Day, he told me: “I had two thoughts always in my mind. It was ‘kill or be killed,’ and my job was to shoot as many Germans as possible. I did that, which is why I survived.”

It’s been an interesting few days for the electric industry. On Monday, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released its long-anticipated proposed rule aimed at reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the U.S. power sector. The proposed rule, to its credit, firmly acknowledges that maintaining the nation’s existing nuclear-power plants in operation is essential to meet these new GHG requirements. Compared with all other sources, nuclear energy is the nation’s undisputed zero-emission workhorse, providing over 60 percent of America’s clean energy. Now and for the foreseeable future, nuclear energy will remain the only resource capable of producing low-cost, dependable, around-the-clock, zero-emission electricity. Wisely, the EPA recommends that states take action to ensure the continued operation of these existing nuclear plants through their intended license lives.

The stakes are high. Last week, for example, PJM Interconnection, the organization that oversees the mid-Atlantic electric system, announced that four nuclear power plants in Illinois failed to clear in the PJM installed-capacity auction for 2017-18. The capacity market is a complex animal, and so are the words used to describe it. Suffice it to say that the phrase “failed to clear” represents code words for a plant that is not economically viable, as currently valued in the economic and political marketplace.

EPA administrator Gina McCarthy has recognized that the nation’s GHG-reduction goals cannot be achieved without nuclear power. Moreover, the nuclear plants in Illinois are not the older, smaller, and least cost-effective ones; they are large, dual-unit plants and among the most efficient generators in the country. These plants can out-compete all comers, save for one: endless government subsidies in the form of discriminatory tax breaks, such as the Production Tax Credit (PTC), which favor windmills above all other resources, and mandatory purchase requirements in states that have renewable-portfolio standards.

These government subsidies and their resulting unintended distortions of the market have badly tilted the playing field. The great irony of this week’s announcement is that, while the EPA recognizes the critical role of nuclear energy, it also insists on picking technology winners and losers that are, in turn, triggering the premature retirements of those same nuclear plants.

The president rebuts criticisms no one has made to deflect from real controversy.
There he goes again. At a press conference in Brussels Thursday, President Obama was asked if he was surprised by the controversy over his decision to trade Bowe Bergdahl for five high-ranking Taliban leaders.

His response was vintage Obama: “I’m never surprised by controversies that are whipped up in Washington.”

Thus establishing from the start that he considers the controversy to be a kind of partisan farce, he proceeded to rebut criticisms virtually no one has made. This is Obama’s favorite rhetorical trick; he builds and then tears apart a straw man while insisting that the American people are on his side.

“I make absolutely no apologies for making sure that we get back a young man to his parents and that the American people understand that this is somebody’s child and that we don’t condition whether or not we make the effort to try to get them back,” he said. “This is not a political football.”

Scour the Internet until your fingers bleed, and you won’t find a single person who has denied that Bowe Bergdahl is someone’s child.

What a difference a few decades make. On Saturday, in a White House Rose Garden ceremony, with the parents of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl by his side, President Obama announced that their son had been released earlier that day. Today, Mr. Obama is in Normandy to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the invasion that liberated Europe from the Nazi menace. He is there to honor the thousands of American, British and Canadian troops who stormed the beaches that morning, so many years ago, and the approximately 2500 who died that day..

In contrast to the brave men who, laden with weapons and backpacks, fought their way up the beaches to the base of the heights on which the Germans were entrenched, Sergeant Bergdahl, from what we know, was not a war hero, despite what Susan Rice said on Sunday. He wandered off his base. Even I, who spent minimal time in the army, know that leaving one’s post is desertion, especially in time of war with the enemy in close proximity. I was also taught in basic training that your life depended on your buddies. You had to trust them. How could a fellow soldier trust one who wandered away because he felt like it? Why did Bowe Bergdahl walk off the base? No one seems to know, though many of his comrades have expressed indignation in unflattering terms, as did the Army, which means that the White House knew as well that this man was no hero. We know he wasn’t captured in battle by the Taliban, again despite what Ms. Rice said on that same Sunday talk show. It is more likely, as one of the women who knew him as a ballet dancer suggested, because he liked to meditate…and felt the need to do so alone, thus he went for a walk. Had allied soldiers felt so inclined in 1944, Hitler’s Third Reich would be almost 80 years into its thousand-year life.

Saving Sergeant Bergdahl may have been the right decision; as the soldiers’ code says we do not abandon our men and women in uniform. But exchanging him for five Taliban thugs who are cut from the same cloth as the terrorists that brought down New York’s Twin Towers, damaged the Pentagon, ploughed up a Pennsylvania field and killed more people in less than an hour than the Germans were able to do during the entire day of June 6, 1944, is an outrage!

In the pre-dawn hours of June 6, 1944, 6,939 ships, manned by 195,000 naval personnel and carrying 156,000 allied troops arrived off the coast of Normandy. “It was,” as Victor Davis Hanson wrote recently, “the largest amphibious invasion of Europe since the Persian King Xerxes invaded Greece in 480 B.C.” By day’s end, casualties, including dead, wounded and missing-in-action would number 6,036. Four men earned Medals of Honor that day, including two who died. One of the four who survived was Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. By the end of the month, another eight Medals of Honor had been won.

Michael B. Mukasey was U.S. attorney general from 2007 to 2009.

The seeds of what blossomed grotesquely in the Rose Garden last weekend — a celebration of the release of five senior Taliban military leaders in exchange for a U.S. sergeant purported to be a deserter — were sown a long time ago: on the second and third days of President Obama’s first term, to be precise.

On his second day in office, the president signed an executive order directing that the Guantanamo Bay detention facility be closed. You can watch the cringe-inducing video of the signing ceremony on YouTube, as the president stumbles through a reading of the order to close the facility “consistent with the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States and the interests of justice,” signs with a flourish, and asks then-White House counsel Greg Craig, whether there is a separate executive order describing what is to be done with the Guantanamo detainees; Craig is heard to reply off camera that “a process” will be set up, whereupon the president repeats solemnly into the camera that “a process” will be set up.

In exchange for the release of U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the U.S. agreed to free five Taliban commanders from the military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. They were among the Taliban’s most influential commanders.
The following day, the president met with congressional leaders to discuss his economic stimulus. When Republican House whip Eric Cantor offered some suggestions, the president reminded him and others of the vanquished who were present that “elections have consequences” and “I won.”

The president apparently hadn’t thought through how he would accomplish the goal and serve the interests he had announced. But he had indeed won.

Fast forward, and characteristically the Obama administration has apologized only for the least of the president’s transgressions in this sorry affair: his failure to consult Congress 30 days in advance of freeing any Guantanamo detainees, as required by the National Defense Authorization Act. At the time the president signed that law he issued an accompanying signing statement taking the position, I believe probably correctly, that the law is unconstitutional as a restriction on his Article II executive powers. However, his own criticism of his predecessor for alleged misuse of executive authority apparently left him diffident about relying on that, so he relied instead on two excuses with neither legal nor factual basis: concern for the rapid deterioration of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s health, which does not explain why no notice was given; and simple neglect due to the rush of events, which contradicts the first.

It is difficult to believe that the president actually understood last weekend the enormity of what he had done. All the details of how Bergdahl left his unit may have to be teased out in the setting of a court martial, but it has long been known that he was a malcontent who had sent his belongings home well before the day in June 2009 when he left his unit in Afghanistan, that he wrote that the army he served in was a “joke” and that he was ashamed to be an American. Was the president perhaps not aware that desertion is an act viewed with such seriousness under the Uniform Code of Military Justice that in wartime it can carry the death penalty?

If a trial proves that he’s a defector, he deserves no freeing.
What is it with Susan Rice and the Sunday-morning talk shows? This time she said Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl had served in Afghanistan “with honor and distinction” — the biggest whopper since she insisted the Benghazi attack was caused by a video.

There is strong eyewitness evidence that Bergdahl deserted his unit and that the search for him endangered his fellow soldiers. Otherwise, there would be no national uproar over his ransom, and some of the widely aired objections to the deal would be as muted as they are flimsy. For example:

1. America doesn’t negotiate with terrorists.

Nonsense. Of course we do. Everyone does, while pretending not to. The Israelis, by necessity the toughest of all anti-terror fighters, in 2011 gave up 1,027 prisoners, some with blood on their hands, for one captured staff sergeant.

2. The administration did not give Congress 30-days’ notice as required by law.

Of all the jurisdictional disputes between president and Congress, the president stands on the firmest ground as commander-in-chief. And commanders have the power to negotiate prisoner exchanges.

Moreover, from where did this sudden assertion of congressional prerogative spring? After five years of supine acquiescence to President Obama’s multiple usurpations, Congress suddenly becomes exercised over a war power — where its claim is weakest. Congress does nothing in the face of 23 separate violations of the president’s own Affordable Care Act. It does nothing when Obama essentially enacts by executive order the DREAM Act. It does nothing when the Justice Department unilaterally rewrites drug laws. And now it rises indignantly on its hind legs because it didn’t get 30 days’ notice of a prisoner swap?

3. The Taliban release endangers national security.

Indeed it does. The five released detainees are unrepentant, militant, and dangerous. The administration pretense that we and the Qataris will monitor them is a joke. They can start planning against us tonight. And if they decide to leave Qatar tomorrow, who’s going to stop them?

The administration might have tried honesty here and said: Yes, we gave away five important combatants. But that’s what you do to redeem hostages. In such exchanges, the West always gives more than it gets for the simple reason that we value individual human life more than do the barbarians with whom we deal.

No shame here, merely a lamentable reality. So why does the Bergdahl deal so rankle? Because of how he became captive in the first place. That’s the real issue. He appears to have deserted, perhaps even defected.

The distinction is important. If he’s a defector — joined the enemy to fight against his country — then he deserves no freeing. Indeed, he deserves killing, the way we kill other enemies in the field, the way we killed Anwar al-Awlaki, an American who had openly joined al-Qaeda. A U.S. passport does not entitle a traitor to any special protection. (Caveat: If a POW is turned, Stockholm-syndrome-like, after falling captive, these condemnatory considerations don’t apply.)

Assume, however — and we will find out soon enough — that Bergdahl was not a defector. Simply wanted out — a deserter who walked or wandered away from his duty and his comrades for reasons as yet unknown. Do you bargain for a deserter?

Two imperatives should guide the answer. Bergdahl remains a member of the U.S. military and therefore is (a) subject to military justice and (b) subject to the soldiers’ creed that we don’t leave anyone behind.

1. The mega-billion dollar Chinese food conglomerate, Brightfood ($17bn annual sales) acquired 56% of the Israel-based Tnuvah – Israel’s largest food/dairy company – for $1.4bn, aiming to dramatically expand Tnuvah’s global market (Globes Business Daily, May 23, 2014). China’s giant, Shenyang Yuanda ($4bn annual sales) signed a joint venture agreement with the Israel irrigation and fertilizer company, AutoAgronom, including a $2mn investment in expanding AutoAgronom’s marketing posture in China (Globes, May 23). Liu Yandong, Vice Premier of China’s State Council: “[Israel reflects] diligence, wisdom, creativity and perseverance…. China and Israel signed science and technology cooperation agreements in 1993 and 2010…. China and Israel cooperation in science, technology and innovations (STI) has taken deep roots, blossoming and yielding fruitful results…. China is Israel’s largest trading partner in Asia and Israel’s third largest trading partner globally…. Enhancing China-Israel STI cooperation will bring more benefits to the peoples of both countries….” (Jerusalem Post, May 17).

2. Singapore’s holding company, Kusto ($1.4bn annual sales), acquired Israel’s Tambour paint manufacturer for $140mn (Globes May 28).

3. ”South Korea will host during July 14-16, 2014 a South Korea-Israel conference, upgrading bilateral cooperation in the area of industrial technology, including information security and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). Israel is the world’s second technology leader – following the USA – in the area of UAV technologies. Israel is recognized as one of the world’s best developers of cyber threat response systems. In 1999, South Korea and Israel signed a cooperation agreement; in 2001, they established the Korea-Israel Industrial Research & Development Foundation, a $2mn annual venture financing (so far) 132 joint industrial R&D activities. Israel is our great benchmarking model, as it has set an example by developing a creative economy and leading the global market and technology through innovation-based entrepreneurship (South Korea Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, April 18).”

4. France’s Alcatel-Lucent plans to open a Bell Labs research center in Kfar Saba, Israel – in a building housing an existing Alcatel-Lucent cloud-band technology facility – in order to upgrade its cloud-band technology in face of global competition. Bell Labs is Alcatel’s research arm. Alcatel’s CEO, Michel Combes: “Israel was the first country to really innovate the interaction between telecommunications and Internet technologies…. Alcatel may invest in Israeli cyber technologies.” Israel is one of three-four peak sites for Alcatel’s investments. According to the San Francisco-based Compass, Inc., Israel’s commercial hub is the world’s second-best startup area behind Silicon Valley (Bloomberg, May 20).

Facebook, Fascism, and Floods: Kosovo’s Face(book)lift

As we know, Facebook is a place where people make just a little more of themselves than what they really are. Where they’re something other, something greater, something better. Quite often, it’s also the epicenter of ‘Thou Dost Protest Too Much.’

On Facebook, you are what you’d like to be, and would like to be perceived as being. And so, if Kosovo is a country on Facebook, that probably means it’s not a country.

Then again, Facebook recognition could make it official, despite the social network’s protestations of modesty:

Kosovo Gets A Facebook ‘Like’ (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Nov. 20, 2013)

The world’s largest social network, Facebook, has finally listed Kosovo as its own country — more than five years after the breakaway territory proclaimed independence from Serbia and after more than 100 countries…have extended formal recognition.

…Kosovars who wanted to create or promote a Facebook account would now have the option of choosing “Kosovo” as their location. Until now most users simply had the option of “Serbia.”
…
Kosovo’s prime minister, Hashim Thaci, welcomed the move, saying that senior Facebook executives had informed him earlier in the week about the company’s decision…Kosovo’s minister for EU integration, Vlora Citaku, went even further in her enthusiasm, stating on her Twitter account that Facebook now “recognizes Kosovo as a state.” She included the hashtag #digitaldiplomacy with the tweet, underscoring the increasing importance that social-media websites have for smaller, emerging countries like Kosovo.

Facebook confirmed the move to RFE/RL, though was quick to tamp down any suggestion that Facebook had the power to “recognize” Kosovo (or indeed any other country)… “Companies have clearly no role to play in the formal recognition of countries as this is a matter for the international community to decide. We do try to ensure that our service meets the needs of our users….”

The move appeared to validate the activities of groups like DigitalKosovo and others who have tried to raise public awareness of the importance to the economy of being correctly identified by websites like Facebook (as well as other e-commerce sites like hotel-bookers, car-rental agencies, and internet retailers).
…
In addition to helping Kosovo, the move underscores the overwhelming — and sometimes uncomfortable — importance of Facebook with its approximately 1.2 billion monthly active users.

Facebook did not comment on what prompted it in this instance to identify Kosovo as a location, but clearly the move has vast implications — and not just for Kosovo’s relatively small user base. […]

Here’s what may have prompted it: “[A] Group of Facebook users recently launched an online campaign to gather signatures for the letter addressed to Mark Zuckerberg, founder and the owner, asking him to recognize Kosovo.”

“Asking” appears to be a subjective term. I did a search to find this appeal, this ‘letter’ that surely must have been an effective piece of digital diplomacy and political sophistry to have achieved such swift and defined results. Here is what I found:

Kosovo is not Serbia Mark Zuckerberg: We want from Facebook to recognize Kosovo as an independent state

Luard Kullolli

Petition by Luard Kullolli clinton twp, MI

Kosovo is recognized the world over 100 countries and is an independent state, we regret that still qualifies facebook.com Kosovo as Serbian province. As every country in the world and Albanians in Kosovo have the right to be represented at Facebook.com them as citizens of Kosovo.To:
Kosovo is not Serbia Mark Zuckerberg
We want from Facebook to recognize Kosovo as an independent state

Sincerely,
[Your name]

Indeed, the “letter,” and the “asking,” come across more like an order, to the extent they come across at all. This is the sort of thing that Facebook high-ups respond to? Meanwhile, do they have any clue that in a few years they’ll have to change the Kosovo designation again, from Kosovo to Kosova, the usurper pronunciation. (Already by 2010, the ‘Kosovo passport’ accepted by EU countries was marked “Republic of Kosova.”) Then, a few years later when the full Albanian jig is revealed, Facebook will have to change the designation yet again, to Albania, after the temporary ‘country’ merges with the fatherland then adds pieces of Macedonia, Montenegro, more Serbia, Greece and maybe Bulgaria.

Thank You, or Else. From “Europe’s Youngest State.” (So Young, it’s Not Even a State .)