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November 2016

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

Steve Bannon on Politics as War The Trump adviser talks about the winning campaign and says the political attacks against him and Breitbart News are ‘just nonsense.’ By Kimberley A. Strassel

By on November 20th, 2016

It’s hard to think of Steve Bannon as a low-profile guy. He has garnered about as many headlines over the past week as Donald Trump—no small feat. He is the executive chairman of the hard-right Breitbart News, among the most aggressive voices online, its website an attack machine against Democrats and “establishment” conservatives. President-elect Trump chose Mr. Bannon this week as his chief strategist and senior counselor, a slot usually filed by someone eager to play a presidential surrogate on TV.

Yet Mr. Bannon—who joined the Trump campaign in mid-August to propel its thunderbolt victory—professes no interest in being the story. “It’s not important to be known,” he says in a telephone interview Thursday night, among his first public comments since the election. “It was Lao Tzu who said that with the best leaders, when the work is accomplished, the people will say ‘We have done this ourselves.’ That’s how I’ve led.”

Nor does he profess to care that Democrats and the media are portraying him as a “cloven-hoofed devil,” as he puts it. “I pride myself in doing things that matter. What mattered in the campaign was winning. We did. What matters now is pulling together the single best team we can to implement President-elect Trump’s vision.

He continues: “How can you take anything seriously from a media apparatus—paid the amount of money you people are paid—that systematically missed something that was so obvious, that missed Brexit, that missed the Trump revolution? You’d have thought they’d have learned their lesson on November 8.”

Slight pause. “They clearly haven’t.”

Here are a few things you’ve likely read about Steve Bannon this week: He’s a white supremacist, a bigot and anti-Semite. He’s a self-described Leninist who wants to “destroy the state.” He’s associated with the “alt-right,” a movement that, according to the New York Times, delights in “harassing Jews, Muslims and other vulnerable groups by spewing shocking insults on social media.”

You’ll have seen some of Breitbart’s more offensive headlines, which refer to “renegade” Jews and the “dangerous faggot tour.” You maybe heard that Breitbart is gearing up to be a Pravda-like state organ for the Trump administration.

Mr. Bannon is an aggressive political scrapper, unabashed in his views, but he says those views bear no relation to the media’s description. Over 70 minutes, he describes himself as a “conservative,” a “populist” and an “economic nationalist.” He’s a talker, but unexcitable, speaking in measured tones. A former naval officer, he thinks in military terms and likes to quote philosophers and generals. He’s contemptuous of the media, proud of Breitbart, protective of the “deplorables,” and—at least at the moment—eager to work with everyone from soon-to-be White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus to House Speaker Paul Ryan.

At first Mr. Bannon insists that he has no interest in “wasting time” addressing the accusations against him. Yet he’s soon ticking off the reasons they are “just nonsense.”

Anti-Semitic? “Breitbart is the most pro-Israel site in the United States of America. I have Breitbart Jerusalem, which I have Aaron Klein run with about 10 reporters there. We’ve been leaders in stopping this BDS movement”—meaning boycott, divestment and sanctions—“in the United States; we’re a leader in the reporting of young Jewish students being harassed on American campuses; we’ve been a leader on reporting on the terrible plight of the Jews in Europe.” He adds that given his many Jewish partners and writers, “guys like Joel Pollak, these claims of anti-Semitism just aren’t serious. It’s a joke.”

He blames the attacks on a lazy media, noting for instance that the “renegade Jew” line wasn’t Breitbart’s. Conservative activist David Horowitz (also Jewish) has taken responsibility for writing the headline himself, in a piece about Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol.

The Lenin anecdote came from an article in the Daily Beast by a writer who claimed to have spoken with Mr. Bannon in 2013: “So a guy I’ve never heard of in my life claims he met me at a party, and then claims I said something about Lenin, and this is taken as gospel truth, with nobody checking it.” CONTINUE AT SITE

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HOMELAND SECURITY, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trump’s Nuclear Deterrence Challenge America’s nuclear triad is sorely out of date, left to age by a president who saw it as a relic of the Cold War. By Franklin Miller and Keith B. Payne

By on November 20th, 2016

President-elect Donald Trump will soon be working with his national security team to establish priorities on security and defense policy. Two challenges will demand immediate and unrelenting attention.

Throughout the campaign Mr. Trump emphasized the need to destroy Islamic State, also known as ISIS, as a functioning terrorist organization. Since there is no way to negotiate with or reliably deter medieval zealots willing to murder and die for their misbegotten cause, military force is the only answer at this point. The next president also must keep the defense and intelligence communities focused on preventing the remnants of ISIS from obtaining weapons of mass destruction—particularly nuclear weapons.

But Mr. Trump has inherited the even greater threat of an increasingly precarious nuclear balance. All three elements of America’s nuclear triad—land-based and sea-based missiles, and bombers—are now approaching obsolescence. A hostile Russia that miscalculates U.S. will and deterrence capabilities poses a mortal nuclear threat to our existence.
President Vladimir Putin has set out to re-establish Russia’s domination of the lands previously under the Soviet Union, changing European borders by force and occupying neighboring territories militarily. Russia has also made explicit threats to initiate nuclear war against the U.S., our allies and even neutral European states.

Nuclear first-use—a policy that includes the threat of initiating a nuclear war and the option of doing so—is a key part of Mr. Putin’s expansionist political and military strategy. First-use is emphasized in open Russian military statements, at least as far back as the official 2003 Russian military doctrine. Backing up this doctrine, Russia is deploying new intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), submarine-launched ballistic missiles, ballistic-missile submarines and nuclear-tipped cruise missiles launched from the ground, sea and air.

Russia also is developing a new ICBM that will carry “no fewer than fifteen” nuclear warheads each, according to Russian descriptions. Its size and payload suggest the missile is specifically designed for nuclear first strikes. Mr. Putin has overseen “snap,” i.e., sudden, nuclear exercises to demonstrate the ability of his nuclear forces to strike instantly. Moscow has even begun to practice Cold War-style nuclear-survival drills on a massive scale.

Mr. Putin also has allowed his most-senior officials to issue threats of nuclear attack not heard since the days of Nikita Khrushchev. A chilling example came on March 16, 2014, two days before Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula. Dmitry Kiselyov, the Putin-appointed head of the government’s international news agency, boasted on his TV show that “Russia is the only country in the world capable of turning the U.S. into radioactive ash.” Subtle.

Early this month, in response to the planned deployment in 2017 of 330 U.S. marines to Norway, Frants Klintsevitsj, a deputy chairman of Russia’s defense and security committee, said, “This is very dangerous for Norway and Norwegians. . . . We have never before had Norway on the list of targets for our strategic weapons. But if this develops, Norway’s population will suffer.”CONTINUE AT SITE

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trump’s Supreme Court Priority An early nomination is important to deal with Obama’s regulations.

By on November 20th, 2016

Donald Trump spent a busy weekend meeting potential cabinet picks, including such admirable school reformers as Michelle Rhee and Betsy DeVos and longtime economic opportunity crusader Bob Woodson. We hope amid all the other decisions that someone is also moving fast to name a replacement for Antonin Scalia’s seat on the Supreme Court.

Apart from the national-security and Treasury jobs, the next Justice may be the most important to move on quickly. While Mr. Trump won’t be inaugurated until Jan. 20, the new Congress convenes in the first week of January. With the continuity from the current to the new Senate, the GOP-led Judiciary Committee could begin vetting Mr. Trump’s nominee as soon as it gets the name. A vote could take place soon after the President-elect is sworn in and can formally submit the nomination.

While the Supreme Court can function with eight Justices, there’s good reason Mr. Trump should want a ninth Justice soon. Numerous cases challenging the Obama Administration’s dubious rule-makings are moving through the federal courts, which President Obama has moved sharply left over eight years.

The circuit courts of appeal might be inclined to rubber stamp those regulations, which means they would become law in those circuits unless the Supreme Court takes the cases. A 4-4 High Court ruling means the lower-court decision stands. Knowing a new Supreme Court is ready for review could give some lower-court judges pause before they issue rulings likely to be overturned.

An early nomination could also get ahead of the game if Mr. Trump’s choice runs into confirmation trouble. The political left will throw everything it has to defeat the next nominee, and the GOP’s Senate majority will only be 51 or 52 (the race in Louisiana will be decided next month in a runoff). Mr. Trump released a list of 21 potential nominees during the campaign (we’d add appellate judges Jeff Sutton and Brett Kavanaugh to the list), and the White House ought to have them vetted and ready to take off like planes at O’Hare.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

MY SAY: ON THE HIGH DUDGEON OF THE CAST OF “HAMILTON”

By on November 20th, 2016

In 1978 the actress Vanessa Redgrave, an outspoken enemy of Israel and supporter of the PLO, won an Oscar for the movie “Julia”one of Lillian Hellman’s self aggrandizing fictions. Redgrave plays “Julia” -an anti-Nazi activist. There were protesters outside. In accepting her Oscar Redgrave said:

“You should be very proud that in the last few weeks you stood firm and you refused to be intimidated by the threats of a small bunch of Zionist hoodlums whose behavior is an insult to the stature of Jews all over the world and to their great and heroic record against fascism and oppression. I salute that record and I salute all of you for having stood firm and dealt the final blow against that period when Nixon and McCarthy launched a worldwide witchhunt against those who tried to express in their lives and their work the truths that they believed in.”

Paddy Chayefsky, author of the highly acclaimed movie “Network” who presented the writing awards, chastised Redgrave:

“I’m sick and tired of people exploiting the occasion of the Academy Awards for the propagation of their own political propaganda. I would like to suggest to Miss Redgrave that her winning an Academy Award is not a pivotal moment in history, does not require a proclamation and a simple ‘Thank you’ would have sufficed.”

I saw, enjoyed, and admired “Hamilton” very much. The democratically elected Vice-President Pence was in the audience. A simple bow from the cast would have sufficed instead of their preachy preening. rsk

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BOOKS Comments turned off

ANOTHER LOOK AT HERBERT HOOVER BY SONJA WENTLIN AND RAFAEL MEDOFF

By on November 20th, 2016

This illuminating book provides many new insights into Herbert Hoover’s political career. It examines his responses to the horrific pogroms in Poland immediately after World War I and to the Arab slaughter of Jews across Palestine in 1929. Most importantly, the book documents how Revisionist Zionists persuaded prominent Republicans, including former president Hoover, to join them in pressing for U.S. government action to rescue European Jews during the Holocaust. Hoover’s role administering European food relief sensitized him to Jews’ intense suffering after World War I, the result of savage anti-Semitic persecution and severe economic distress.

He enabled the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (AJJDC) to evade Polish government restrictions on Jewish organizations sending aid to Polish Jewry by having his own relief organization funnel AJJDC funds into Poland. Hoover’s Jewish aide Lewis Strauss praised him as “the only U.S. government official to effectively press Poland and its prime minister to act against the pogromists” (14). The authors also show that Hoover’s empathy for Polish Jews was limited by his fear that they were not sufficiently enthusiastic about Polish nationalism. Hoover maintained an isolationist stance during the 1929 Palestine pogroms, the first serious foreign policy crisis of his presidency.

He neither intervened to protect Palestinian Jewry nor pressured the British to do so. The authors note, however, that he at least “remained steadfast in his support for the upbuilding of Jewish Palestine” (58). In 1928, Hoover extolled the work of Zionist settlers in transforming Palestine, which, in his words, had remained “desolate and neglected for centuries” (48). As president, he sent statements of support to the Zionist Organization of America and to the American Palestine Committee, a Christian Zionist organization, when it was established. Notably, days before leaving the White House, Hoover instructed U.S. ambassador to Germany Frederick Sackett “to exert every influence on the Hitler regime” to stop the persecution of German Jewry (64).

Although hundreds of thousands of Americans had already staged massive street demonstrations and rallies to protest Nazi anti-Semitism, President Roosevelt told his ambassador to Germany, William Dodd, appointed in June 1933, that Nazi persecution of Jews was not a matter with which the U.S. government should be officially concerned. After Kristallnacht, ex-president Hoover moved away from his earlier support for immigration restriction and endorsed the Wagner-Rogers bill to admit 20,000 refugee children from Germany into the United States, above the annual quota for Germany. He lobbied members of the House Immigration Committee to support the bill, which President Roosevelt did not endorse.

Hoover’s most important contribution during his post-presidential career was the backing he gave the Revisionist Zionists in their campaign to persuade the U.S. government to initiate immediate measures to rescue as many European Jews as possible from annihilation and to mobilize the public in that effort. Leading this effort was Hillel Kook (Peter Bergson), head of the Bergson Group, and Eliahu Ben-Horin and Benzion Netanyahu, directing the New Zionist Organization of America. President Roosevelt’s lack of interest in rescuing Jews led the Revisionists to turn to prominent Republicans for assistance. Roosevelt’s indifference was dramatized at the Bermuda Conference in April 1943, ostensibly called to address refugee issues.

The Roosevelt administration made no effort to relax immigration quotas for countries whose Jews were being annihilated. It would not even use troop ships returning empty from Europe to transport Jewish refugees to the United States. Hoover was willing to challenge the Roosevelt administration publicly on the refugee issue. As the nation’s only living ex-president during World War II, his views drew attention. Hoover’s contribution to the rescue campaign included signing an appeal that the Bergson Group placed in newspapers denouncing the Bermuda Conference as a “cruel mockery” and calling for immediate action to rescue as many European Jews as possible from the “Nazi Death-Trap.” He served as honorary chairman of the Bergson Group’s Emergency Conference to Save the Jewish People of Europe. The ex-president delivered one of the conference’s keynote addresses, in which he endorsed the Bergson Group’s drive to find temporary havens for Jewish refugees.

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BOOKS Comments turned off

REVIEWS OF TWO BOOKS ON HERBERT HOOVER BY AMITY SHLAES

By on November 20th, 2016

Amity Shlaes reviews two new books about the former president and argues that the New Deal was simply a more intense, less constitutional version of Hoover’s policies—and both failed to yield recovery.

Imagine a U.S. president who could personally stare down spear-wielding warriors seeking to penetrate an undermanned Western compound in a remote city. A president who could map the mineral resources of Russia and organize the feeding of whole states or even countries following a disaster. A president who could match John Quincy Adams in his familiarity with the streets of London, Alexander Hamilton in mastery of finance, Dwight Eisenhower in administrative experience and Ronald Reagan in keen appreciation of the evils of communism.

The U.S. did once elect such a president—Herbert Hoover. Voters chose him in a landslide in 1928, and when the Crash of 1929 hit, Main Street sighed with relief at its own good fortune. The Great Engineer, as Hoover was known, could be counted on to engineer them out of trouble.
Herbert Hoover in the White House

By Charles Rappleye

Simon & Schuster, 554 pages, $32.50

Yet when the crash came, the Great Engineer failed. Hoover did not reverse the crash or prevent the years of Depression that followed. By the end of his first and only term, public esteem for Hoover had plummeted so far that the incumbent could not take even his home state, California, in the 1932 election. Soon a caricature of the 31st president began to take hold: that of an unimaginative, credentialed elitist who had permitted a catastrophe so great that it would take four terms for a kind and collectivist president, Franklin Roosevelt, to counter him. The caricature has only hardened down the decades. In 1948, Arthur Schlesinger Sr. found voters ranking Hoover 20th out of 33 presidents. In a 2015 poll he appeared near the bottom, 38th out of 44.
Herbert Hoover: A Life

By Glen Jeansonne

New American Library, 455 pages, $28
Over the years a number of writers have sought to lift Hoover’s ranking and status, including George Nash in several volumes of biography; Kendrick Clements in “The Life of Herbert Hoover: Imperfect Visionary”; and Joan Hoff Wilson in “Herbert Hoover: Forgotten Progressive.” Now two further revisionists are having a go. In “Herbert Hoover: A Life,” Glen Jeansonne portrays a president more centrist than extreme, a leader who might have succeeded in a second term. With “Herbert Hoover in the White House,” Charles Rappleye makes the case that though the Great Engineer represented “the embodiment of progress and competence,” his temperament and bad luck caused him to botch the job.

Any Hoover upgrade must start with his career, which rocketed skyward at a velocity warranting a Harvard Business School case study. The classic early adapter, Hoover while still in his teens placed a bet that studies in a little-known start-up college in “Polo Alta,” as one newspaper spelled it, might yield more than attendance at an established university. The knowledge Hoover garnered from his Stanford engineering professors helped to win him a position directing Australian mines. From Australia the youthful “doctor of sick mines” (he grew a beard and ’stache to look older) moved on to China, where he dug a harbor and surveyed and reorganized China’s mineral resources. It was in Tientsin that Hoover and his able wife, Lou, fended off an assault of rebellious warriors—the Boxers of the Boxer Rebellion.

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MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

‘Pearl Harbor-USS Oklahoma: The Final Story’ Review: A Date That Will Live in Infamy On the 75th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attacks, PBS looks at one of the doomed ships By Dorothy Rabinowitz

By on November 20th, 2016

For the 75th anniversary of Pearl Harbor PBS provides a powerhouse of a film about the USS Oklahoma, one of the U.S. ships and their crews caught off guard in Battleship Row as the Japanese launched their surprise attack of Dec. 7, 1941. It was, as the American president memorably told the nation the next day, a date that would live in infamy. He did not predict, though it would turn out to be the case, that no Dec. 7 would, after Pearl Harbor, ever again feel quite like an ordinary day for countless Americans. It had brought the attack that ignited a towering rage in a people still largely disposed to neutrality in 1941, and had made it a nation ready heart and soul to go to war.

The attack on the Oklahoma, which quickly capsized, is told in part by survivors whose eyewitness accounts come with a haunting clarity. Sailors had to decide whether to jump 50 feet into waters ablaze with burning fuel, after the order came to abandon ship. Many who jumped burned to death, or were killed by Japanese strafing them as they struggled in the water. The Oklahoma lost 429 men, among them those left trapped in the ship.

The Japanese had come well armed for success with their strike force of carriers, battleships, destroyers, tankers and 400 planes, not to mention ingeniously devised special torpedoes that could function, devastatingly, in waters as shallow as those surrounding Battleship Row—a possibility the U.S. Navy had not imagined.

The Japanese planners believed, one of the historians interviewed for the film notes, that destroying these ships, each named after an American state and symbolizing American prestige, would deal a blow from which the U.S. would not soon recover. The documentary captures, tellingly, the thinking of the Japanese command, the jubilation of the attackers. In this story of one American ship, of men who had joined the Navy in Depression-era America and landed in a paradise-like Hawaii filled with sun and hyacinths until it all ended in smoke and flames, there is history of a rare kind—raw, immediate, and perfectly reflective of the day it commemorates.

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MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

‘A Place Called Home’ Review: Red Scare Down Under The fourth season of the addictive drama about an upper-class Australian family. Dorothy Rabinowitz

By on November 20th, 2016

http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-place-called-home-review-red-scare-down-under-1479422897

The many devotees of “A Place Called Home,” a series set in the early ’50s about the upper-class Bligh family—Australian royalty of sorts—can look forward to Thanksgiving, which brings the two-episode premiere of Season 4. The brilliantly inventive drama now takes up the politics of the period—Australia is having its own Red Scare, and it figures strongly in the Bligh family’s conflicts, as do most of the world’s hot-button issues.
Family head George Bligh (Brett Climo) is now running for political office. His malignantly vengeful wife, Regina (Jenni Baird), whom he married for reasons of political convenience, is devising vicious plots against the show’s heroine, Sarah (Marta Dusseldorp), the woman George actually loves—among other ways by spreading whispers that Sarah is a Communist. Meanwhile, James (David Berry), George’s son and the family’s most exquisite-looking male, is now free to pursue his gay love interest, though not so free that he feels comfortable being very gay in public, something he refuses to do at the beach party his lover insisted on dragging him to. It’s one of the more interesting developments, a kind characteristic of the writing.

It’s rare that a series increasingly packed, as this one is, with intricate new plot twists and themes, succeeds in sustaining its tension and polish. “A Place Called Home” nonetheless manages to do just that, as its Season Four—possibly the best so far—is about to demonstrate.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Obama Expects Donald Trump to Maintain Policies Toward Latin America U.S. president says he believes president-elect will only ‘modify’ trade policies after reviewing them By Carol E. Lee and Ryan Dube

By on November 20th, 2016

LIMA, Peru—President Barack Obama said Saturday he expects President-elect Donald Trump to maintain his administration’s policies in Latin America, including the re-establishment of U.S. relations with Cuba.

Mr. Obama, speaking at a town-hall event with young people in Peru, said Mr. Trump is likely to make changes on U.S. trade policy. But he played down the significance of those changes.

“With respect to Latin America, I don’t anticipate major changes in policy from the new administration,” Mr. Obama said.

But, he added: “there are going to be tensions that arise, probably around trade more than anything else, because the president-elect campaigned on looking at every trade policy and potentially reversing those.”

Yet Mr. Obama said he believes once Mr. Trump’s team reviews those trade policies, he expects those officials will see they are “actually working” and only make “modifications.”

“How you campaign isn’t always how you govern,” Mr. Obama said. “Sometimes, when you campaign, you’re trying to stir up passions. When you’re governing, you’re trying to think of, ‘how do I make this work?’ ”

During his campaign, Mr. Trump repeatedly criticized trade deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the North American Free Trade Agreement.

“I certainly hope the president is right,” said Luis Alberto Moreno, the president of the Inter-American Development Bank, regarding Mr. Obama’s comments on his successor’s policies in the region. “You can go around here or anywhere in Latin America and there are a lot of question marks as to what the new administration will do.”

Mr. Obama also stressed the importance of democracy, in a veiled reference to Mr. Trump. “Democracy can be frustrating,” he said. “The outcomes of elections don’t always turn out the ways you hope. We’re going through that in the U.S.”

He argued that democracy can right wrongs, which also seemed aimed at Mr. Trump.

Democracy also is about more than elections, he said, and involves preserving freedom of religion, freedom of the press and an independent judiciary. CONTINUE AT SITE

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

“Allah, Kill the Despicable Christians” Muslim Persecution of Christians, by Raymond Ibrahim

By on November 20th, 2016

“Allah, kill the despicable Christians. Allah, kill each and every last one of them….” — 16-year-old Muslim son of an Islamic cleric living in Belgium.

“ISIS is not the problem… They shaved my head, they put my head in freezing cold water and then into boiling hot water. They burned their cigarettes on me, they electrocuted me.” — Majed el-Shafie, imprisoned and tortured in Egypt for converting to Christianity.

A Christian girl faces death threats if she does not return to her Muslim abductor who forcibly converted her to Islam. The family of a Christian girl who was kidnapped, raped, forced to convert to Islam, and then forcibly married to a Muslim are now under threat if they refuse to hand back their daughter to her captors.

Islamic hate for Christians was on display throughout the month of August. Shortly after an 80-year-old Catholic priest in France was slaughtered by Muslims who stormed his church during mass, the 16-year-old Muslim son of an Islamic cleric living in Belgium made a video and posted it on social media. In the video, he appears walking along the main street of the Belgian city of Verviers during Ramadan while making prayers to Allah, which include: “Allah, kill the despicable Christians. Allah, kill each and every last one of them….” According to Immigration Minister Theo Francken:

“It’s obvious that his father, the imam, is promoting such ideas not just to fighters to join the battle in Syria, but also to his own children. The young man who appears in the video reflects the father’s views, and I understand and empathize with the great concern that city residents have over this.”

A deportation order was last reported as pending a court appeal.

Similarly, in the August edition of Dabiq, ISIS’s propaganda magazine, the jihadi organization urged Muslims to destroy the “arrogant Christian disbelievers” and urged them to “pray for Allah’s curse to be upon the liars.” ISIS also threatened Christians to “break the cross.” Those who do and convert to Islam will “enter the Gardens of Paradise,” and those who reject Islam and cling to the cross will die in a “futile” war against ISIS.

As if the Christians of Nigeria were not persecuted enough by Muslim groups, Boko Haram’s new leader, known for killing nonconformist Muslims as well, announced that Christians are now its number one and primary target, and that Boko Haram will continue to “bomb churches and kill Christians while ending attacks on mosques and markets used by ordinary Muslims.” Abu Musab al-Barnawi, the new leader, also spoke of “booby-trapping and blowing up every church that we are able to reach, and killing all of those who we find from the citizens of the Cross.”

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