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2016

Why Donald Trump Should Focus on Africa by Ahmed Charai

President-elect Trump has the opportunity to make a historic course correction, and to do so in a manner consistent with his administration’s stated goals. By renegotiating the U.S. African Growth and Opportunity Act, which was first initiated by the Clinton Administration, he can strengthen American exports, create new export-related jobs and foster development-oriented investment on the continent. By reforming U.S. humanitarian aid to Africa, he can cut considerable bureaucratic waste, effectively increasing assistance without upping the cost.

What’s a three-word foreign policy agenda President-elect Donald Trump can pursue that will create American jobs, reduce terrorism, challenge China and set him apart from the failings of his predecessor? Promote African development.

On the one hand, the world’s poorest continent is rife with socioeconomic problems that have paved the way for some lands to become hubs of international terrorism, posing a threat to their own populations as well as to distant countries, including the United States. Of the eighteen ISIS branches deemed fully operational by the National Counterterrorism Center, eight are in Africa. According to the latest edition of the Global Terrorism Index, the world’s deadliest terrorist group by sheer volume of lethality is not ISIS but the Nigerian Boko Haram.

These clear and present threats were built on a continent’s suffering — from example, drought in Somalia and throughout East Africa, and totalitarianism and corruption across the continent — breeding weak, failing and failed states that prove commodious to jihadist operations. Dictators in the mold of Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe continue to terrorize their own populations. And the Democratic Republic of Congo risks deteriorating into civil war should the head of state, Joseph Kabila, continue on his path to authoritarian rule. In a country rich in natural resources, the population remains destitute. These diverse factors help explain why the campaign to roll back terror on the continent is inseparable from African development needs.

On the other hand, some parts of Africa are among the world’s bright spots: According to the World Bank, six of the thirteen countries with the highest compound growth annually are on the continent. Among them, Rwanda provides an example of a country that has overcome one of the continent’s bloodiest conflicts in recent memory to empower women, fight corruption and attract international investment. Similar positive trends are visible in the democracies of Senegal, Cote d’Ivoire and even terror-plagued Nigeria — all of which are part of a larger pro-American bloc, stretching up to Morocco in the north, that stand with the United States in its struggle against terrorism. For Moroccan King Mohammed VI, the struggle against terrorism is inextricable from the challenge of developing the African continent. He has devised a holistic strategy to pursue both goals in tandem. And multinational bodies on the continent such as the African Union, after decades in a Cold War deep-freeze, are newly invigorated, as these like-minded African nations assert a greater leadership role within them.

One U.S. president in particular made a meaningful contribution to mitigating some of these problems: George W. Bush. He is widely viewed on the continent as a hero: His signature Africa initiative, “the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief” (PEPFAR), saved millions of lives, and also drew praise on both sides of the American partisan divide. He launched the single greatest initiative to fight malaria on the continent to date, and, as a private citizen together with his wife Laura, has since been committed to the struggle against cancer in Africa.

Egypt’s Deadliest Church Attack by Raymond Ibrahim

The law that the elders of Islam bequeathed to Egypt’s Muslims, holds that all conquered indigenous inhabitants — in Egypt, the infidel Christians — must not be permitted to build churches, must not complain or ask for equal rights, and must be grateful merely for being allowed to live.

In short, not only has nothing changed for Egypt’s Christians; the deadliest church attack in modern history has now just taken place, not under Mubarak or Morsi, but under President el-Sisi. What does he propose to do about it?

The worst attack on Egypt’s Christian minority in recent years occurred yesterday, Sunday, December 11, 2016. St. Peter Cathedral in Cairo, packed with worshipers celebrating Sunday mass, was bombed; at least 27 churchgoers, mostly women and children, were killed and 65 severely wounded. As many of the wounded are in critical condition, the death toll is expected to rise.

As usual, witnesses say that state security was not present, and that police took an inordinate amount of time to arrive after the explosion. Preliminary investigations point to a bomb placed inside an unattended woman’s purse on one of the rear pews of the women’s section.

The interior of St. Peter Cathedral in Cairo, after the bombing of December 11, 2016. (Image source: AP video screenshot)

Mutilated bodies were strewn along the floor of the cathedral. “I found bodies, many of them women, lying on the pews. It was a horrible scene,” said one witness.

“I saw a headless woman being carried away,” said Mariam Shenouda.

“Everyone was in a state of shock. We were scooping up people’s flesh off the floor. There were children. What have they done to deserve this? I wish I had died with them instead of seeing these scenes.”

In death toll and severity, this attack surpasses what was formerly considered the deadliest church attack in Egypt: a New Year’s Day bombing of a church in Alexandria that killed 23 people in 2011.

How President Trump Can Make American Intelligence Great Again Eliminate the director of national intelligence and put the CIA back in charge. By Fred Fleitz

In 2010, when I was on the staff of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, I attended a committee hearing on the North Korean nuclear program. That hearing epitomized the failure of post-9/11 reforms of U.S. intelligence and showed why the Trump administration must take aggressive steps to streamline American intelligence. Only then can it can return to being the great institution that provides the intelligence support our presidents need to protect our nation against national-security threats facing our nation today.

This process should start by sharply scaling back or eliminating the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).

The lead witness at this hearing, seated at the center of a long witness table, was the ODNI North Korea issue manager. Seated next to him on each side were the ODNI issue manager for WMD proliferation and the director of the ODNI National Counterproliferation Center.

Joining them were the National Intelligence Council (NIC) officers for WMD proliferation and East Asia, both part of the ODNI. The CIA sent two witnesses, from its proliferation and North Korea–analysis offices. The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the State Department, and the Department of Energy sent one witness each.

In addition to these 10 witnesses, other senior intelligence officials attended as backbenchers. There also was a gaggle of aides, handlers, and congressional liaison staffers. There were so many that they could not all fit into the hearing room.

The hearing seemed to go on forever, since the lead witness kept inviting all his colleagues to weigh in on every question asked by committee members. Some of the backbenchers spoke too. This became monotonous, since every witness (except for the one from DIA) parroted the same watered-down consensus view. Making this worse, the witnesses’ consensus statements were proven to be completely wrong a few months later.

This mob of intelligence officials spouting the same watered-down pablum exemplified why the reform of U.S. intellig

High Anxiety Continues Over Obama in the UN Until January 20 Why UN-watchers are worried about a last-minute jab at Israel. Edwin Black

Anxiety continues to roil through the pro-Israel world over a possible last-minute political move by the Obama administration that could permanently alter the Israeli-Palestinian geo-political landscape.

Forty-eight hours after the November 8 election, I flew to South Florida for a series of lectures and briefings organized by StandWithUs, NOVA Southeast University and other organizations as part of the State Department’s International Education Week, this to analyze the prospects regarding relations with Israel in the last weeks of the Obama administration. Everywhere, audiences were on the edge of their seats asking whether President Obama would take extraordinary passive or active steps in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to recognize a Palestinian state or impose a peace settlement, including a territorial mandate following the lines of the 1948 truce. Unlike General Assembly resolutions, which are not binding, the UNSC generally creates lasting pillars of international law.

As we approach Noon, January 20, 2017, uncertainty continues to abound among even the most astute of political insiders.

President Barack Obama remains personally silent. Administration assurances in recent days proffer comfort to those hanging on every word to discern a course of action. But embedded ambiguities in each of those assurances only increases the speculation.

For example, in recent days, unnamed administration sources were quoted by the Associated Press suggesting that President Obama “has nearly ruled out any major last-ditch effort to put pressure on Israel over stalled peace negotiations with the Palestinians.” The phrase “nearly ruled out” shines brightly in that report to emphasize that no decision has been made.

A few days ago, America’s ambassador to Israel, Dan Shapiro, told Israel’s Army Radio that America “will always oppose one-sided initiatives,” adding that this position “is a long-term policy. Whenever there were one-sided initiatives, we opposed them in the past and we will always oppose them.” Skeptics note that “opposing” such a UN move is not the same as blocking it with a veto.

Those who know the administration best remain queasy that a sudden and unexpected move may play out in the UN Security Council in coming weeks. Obama has circumvented Congress on the Iran nuclear deal and many other issues where the President has explained he can unilaterally use his “phone and pen.” Among the un-reassured is House Foreign Relations Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif., who emphasizes Obama’s “unpredictability.”

Royce told an interviewer, “If you are heavily signaling that you’re not going to oppose and veto U.N. Security Council resolutions that seek to impose one-sided solutions, the consequence is others will take your measure, and the momentum will build, given the natural attitudes at the U.N.”

The most likely scenarios for Obama action in the UNSC are variations of the following three:

First: unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state within specified or approximate borders following the 1948 armistice lines where no Palestinian state ever existed. In virtually all world forums, this would more juridically move the status of Israel’s administrative presence in Judea and Samaria from disputed to occupation.
Second: abstain from vetoing a pending French resolution that would impose settlement lines and/or recognize a Palestinian state within 18 months absent agreement by the parties.
Third: impose a territorial settlement within a two-year deadline if the parties do not craft one themselves.

Any of the three measures would subtract the need for negotiations and bring Israelis and Palestinians closer to an entrenched stalemate.

The suspense has been intensified by developments in recent days.

Barnard College Crybullies Demand Transgender Native American President Daniel Greenfield

Sadly there seems to be no mention of her being in a wheelchair. Isn’t it about time we truly expanded diversity to its outermost limits?

Following the announced resignation of Barnard College’s president, many students at the women’s college are hoping that her successor brings more intersectionality to the job.

“Can we write a letter and get like all of the students to sign it… no more white presidents [please],” student Talia Kay wrote on the page. “It’d be great if [we seniors] ushered in our last year by advocating for the administration to hire a woman of color to fill the position.”

Student Josh Zoeller of Columbia University, which is affiliated with Barnard, then chimed in: “hire a Native American woman.”

Krish, who identifies as “he/they,” then suggested they should ask for “maybe even a TWoC,” meaning a nonwhite transgender man such as actor Laverne Cox.

I for one welcome Barnard’s new transgender lesbian Native American president in a wheelchair. Since there’s probably only one such person in existence, it should be easy to find. Qualifications won’t matter. Only identity does. So somewhere a Native American gas station attendant who wants to be a woman will qualify as Barnard’s new president.

College to Hold Benefit Concert for Muslim Student Criticized by Conservative Prof Daniel Greenfield

Crybullies cry almost as easily as they bully. Take the case of Nada Merghani, a Muslim “refugee” who was investigated by the Secret Service for alleged threats against Trump.

In August, just before Donald Trump was set to take the stage to speak at my university, UNC-Wilmington, a student posted on Facebook, “Y’all are not prepared for what I’m about to do.” The context of the quote made it seem like a threat so the Secret Service paid the student a visit. Readers shouldn’t let the use of the term “Y’all” fool them. This threat wasn’t issued by a redneck wanting to see the Donald dead. In fact, our UNCW rednecks love Donald Trump. The most frightening type of student imaginable made the post: A self-described “queer Muslim social justice warrior” (hereafter: SJW).

That’s Mike Adams writing about Nada. You’ll hear more about him in a moment.

“Expect to see me at the Trump rally on Tuesday. Y’all are not prepared for what I’m about to do,” read Merghani’s Facebook post, referring to the candidate’s Aug. 9 rally where he would make his controversial “Second Amendment people” remark.

“All I can say is pray I make it out of this alive.”

You can see why the Secret Service noticed. So Nada began demanding armed guards.

Because Merghani’s request for a security escort from the university was turned down, she hasn’t felt safe to attend classes, she told The Fix in a phone call Monday.

“Being who I am in the community, threats are just a given. Definitely did not expect conceal carry permits,” she said, referring to the threatening message made to the protesters.

On Aug. 19 Merghani and her ACLU advocate met with Vice Chancellor Patricia Leonard, Chief Diversity Officer Kent Guion, and Chief of Staff Bradley Ballou to speak about Merghani’s safety concerns as a black woman.

It didn’t go well.

Hillel’s Disgrace While Jewish students are terrorized on campus, Hillel takes on another mission. Daniel Greenfield

While Jewish students are terrorized on campus, Hillel CEO Eric Fingerhut took on another mission.

“The Hillel family will watch out for our Muslim brothers and sisters on campus,” the failed Democratic pol declared. And he added, “As we hope they will watch out for us.”

There is as much hope of campus hate groups like the Muslim Students’ Association, which has a long history of terrorizing Jews on campus, doing that as there was for Fingerhut in his 2004 Ohio Senate bid which he lost with one of the worst showings by a Democratic Senate candidate in the state. But after taking Ohio Democrats down with him, Fingerhut moved on to tanking Hillel.

In his address to the Hillel International General Assembly, Fingerhut seemed to think the big campus crisis was for Muslims, not Jews. “We will stand by our brothers of the Muslim faith,” he bloviated.

But Fingerhut was only trying to outdo the ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt who had won approval from no less a Jewish civil rights figure than J.K. Rowling for declaring at what was supposed to be an event to tackle anti-Semitism, “The day they create a registry for Muslims is the day that I register as a Muslim.”

Fighting actual anti-Semitism isn’t cool. Just ask anyone trying to bring attention to Keith Ellison’s long history of anti-Semitism and association with anti-Semitic groups as he crawls on to head the DNC. Defending Muslims against an imaginary threat however is as hip and trendy as a Williamsburg bar.

There up on stage was Eboo Patel, as one of Hillel’s partners, who had bragged of encouraging Hillel to talk to the MSA. Patel had appeared at Islamic Society of North America events, which was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in funding Hamas, and celebrated the election of Ingrid Mattson to head the Islamist group by declaring, “I’m proud to have her elected as my president.” Mattson had denounced Israeli “brutality” and defended Sami Al-Arian, the head of Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

It only got worse from there.

Hillel had silenced pro-Israel columnist Caroline Glick, yet it provided a platform for anti-Israel activist Jill Jacobs and widely promoted her anti-Israel pressure group, T’ruah, featuring it on its social media feed. Jacobs has campaigned against efforts to fight BDS and attacked Jewish charities helping Jews in ’67 Israel.

Jill Jacobs had even signed a letter calling for “constructive engagement” with a Hamas government even after Hamas had broadcast the threat, “My message to the loathed Jews: There is no god but Allah, we will chase you everywhere. We are a nation that drinks blood. We know that there is no better blood than the blood of Jews.”

Who Needs a ‘One-China’ Policy, Anyway? By Michael Walsh

As anyone who’s ever done business with mainland China knows, a fool and his money (or time, or expertise) are soon parted. Contracts aren’t honored, owed monies aren’t paid, a man’s word is not his bond and a contract isn’t worth the pixels it’s printed on. So good for Donald Trump for putting the Red Chinese in their place, and openly flirting with our allies, the Taiwanese, by re-opening the door to a two-China policy:

US president-elect Donald Trump has questioned whether Washington should continue its one-China policy if Beijing does not make concessions on trade and other issues.

“I don’t know why we have to be bound by a one-China policy unless we make a deal with China having to do with other things, including trade,” Trump told Fox News Sunday in response to a question on his taking a phone call from Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, a move which broke with decades of US diplomatic tradition. The one-China policy recognises that Taiwan is part of China, but the US has remained ambiguous on the issue.

Besides trade, Trump said China was not cooperating with the US on its handling of the yuan, on North Korea, and tensions in the South China Sea.

Even a cursory look at Chinese and Taiwanese history since the end of World War II shows how immoral and short-sighted the bullying “one-China” policy has been. It’s all founded in the communists’ inferiority-complex insistence to be recognized as the legitimate government of China, and therefore of the island of Taiwan, when the Republic of China government fled after its defeat by Mao in 1949.

Regarding Trump’s comment on the one-China policy, Renmin University international relations professor Pang Zhongying said the administration may play up the Taiwan issue, which could cause friction with Beijing. “It’s likely that Trump will use Taiwan to demand concessions from Beijing. The situation will be tricky,” he said. CONTINUE AT SITE

Peter Smith: The Voice of Flyover Country

Hillary Clinton won the popular vote and should be president, so goes the Democrats’ lament. True, but those votes came from just two states very much out of step with the rest of the US. In conceiving the Electoral College, America’s Founding Fathers knew what they were doing.
Donald Trump won 306 Electoral College votes to Hillary Clinton’s 232. Trump calls it a landslide. That is perhaps going a little far too far I think. Nonetheless, the US electoral map is a very Republican red apart from particulars areas of the West and East coasts. There hangs a tale.

How many times have we heard it? Clinton won the popular vote. The latest figure is by 2.6 million. You can find these updated figures on Dave Leip’s Atlas of US presidential elections. At the latest count — apparently it isn’t quite all done — Clinton obtained 65.54 million (48%) votes to Donald Trump’s 62.86 million (46%). It seems like an impressive margin of the popular vote went to Clinton. Certainly people like Michael Moore find it impressive. And it is not hard to hear it being repeated ad nauseam by Democrat commentators on US TV.

The accompanying conclusion on the part of Democrats is that Trump’s mandate is problematic. Accordingly, so it goes, Clinton has a right to feel hard done by and to keep on whining about Russian hackers and fake news stories queering the pitch. And, through surrogates, fund Jill Stein’s disingenuous recount efforts in States narrowly won by Trump, ostensibly to verify voting integrity. Meanwhile, she is not contesting New Hampshire won much more narrowly by Clinton; by less than 3000 votes.

I took the popular vote at face value. The trick is to win 270 or more Electoral College votes, not the popular vote, and losing the popular vote and winning an election is not unknown. But, hold on, I thought, this winning margin of the popular vote for a losing candidate is extraordinary.

It is extraordinary. The extraordinary part of it is that if you take out California, which Clinton won by 4.27 million votes, Trump wins the popular national vote by about 1.6 million. In Los Angeles alone Clinton won the popular vote by 1.7 million. If you take out New York, as well as California, Trump wins the popular vote by a margin over three million.

I’m not sure what this all means. But it seems significant enough for commentators to at least remark on the remarkable fact that without California, never mind New York, Trump wins the popular vote very handily. In fact, I have not heard this mentioned during all of the times I have heard the popular-vote narrative being played out – even, so far, on Fox News.

Now I know Californians are Americans and deserve to be counted. But it is a strange business when a little over 4% of the land mass contains sufficient numbers of Democrat supporters to outweigh the significant weight of Republican support living in the other 95% plus of the country. It is a powerful endorsement of the Electoral College system.

Perhaps the Founding Fathers envisaged the need to protect American values from the future growth of populous coastal progressive enclaves. Though, it is hard to imagine that they could ever envisage the culturally destructive mindset of modern progressives. I live now and can’t begin to grasp it.

Let me see. Here is a taste. It starts with an assumption that we can have things we can’t collectively afford if only we tax the rich. That the most successful, free and prosperous nation in the history of mankind is irredeemably wicked. That white supremacism is rampant. That white people disagreeing with that nonsensical delusion are racist. That people who want to control borders are racist. That people who want to deport felons among illegal migrants are racist. That people who support cops defending themselves against black thugs are racist. That people fearful of Islamic supremacism are Islamophobic. That people who value unborn life are misogynistic. That people who oppose gay marriage are homophobic.

Obama blames intel agencies for underestimating ISIS By Rick Moran

Having said that he only found out about many of the numerous scandals in his administration by watching it on TV, it shouldn’t surprise us that the president is blaming his intelligence agencies for not telling him about the capabilities of Islamic State.

If only the press had reported on the rise of the terrorist’s back in 2011.

Washington Times:

Mr. Obama told CNN in an interview that aired late Wednesday, “The ability of ISIL to not just mass inside of Syria, but then to initiate major land offensives that took Mosul [in Iraq], for example, that was not on my intelligence radar screen.”

But some critics are pointing to claims that the administration ignored warning signs from intelligence sources and allies such as Kurdish leaders about the Islamic State’s growing strength after 2011, when Mr. Obama withdrew all U.S. troops from Iraq.

Sherkoh Abbas, chairman of the Kurdistan National Assembly of Syria, said in 2014, “We approached the State Department about ISIS before ISIS was in the headlines, and we were ignored.”

In September 2014, Fox News reported that Mr. Obama had been told about the rise of the terrorist group in his classified daily intelligence briefings throughout the previous year.

In February 2014, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, then director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, briefed the Senate Armed Services Committee on the emerging threat of the Islamic State.

The group “probably will attempt to take territory in Iraq and Syria to exhibit its strength in 2014, as demonstrated recently in Ramadi and Fallujah, and the group’s ability to concurrently maintain multiple safe havens in Syria,” Gen. Flynn testified. “Since the departure of U.S. forces at the end of 2011, [Islamic State] has exploited the permissive security environment to increase its operations and presence in many locations and also has expanded into Syria and Lebanon to inflame tensions throughout the region.”

President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Gen. Flynn to serve as his national security adviser.

Jay Sekulow, general counsel at the American Center of Law and Justice and a frequent Obama critic, called the president’s latest assertions “unbelievable.”