Displaying posts published in

2016

Israel Has Its Own Donald Trump, Cornel West Warns at Platform Committee Meeting: Nathan Guttman see note please

“Scholar and activist”????? The man is an oaf but quite comfortable in the Democrat party….rsk
Donald Trump is reviled by Democrats, but they give Trump-like figures such as Israeli’s defense minister a pass, complained scholar and activist Cornel West, before the Democratic Party’s platform committee.

“Trump-like figures in Israeli life” should be treated by Democrats just like Trump, said West, a member of the committee, during a hearing on foreign policy.

The otherwise sleepy hearing was the second in a two-day session that started on June 8. Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders selected West and four others to represent him on the committee, and West’s comments reflected Sanders’s wish that the party raise the profile of Palestinian suffering and rights in its language on the Israeli Palestinian conflict.

“Why can we focus on xenophobes here, and seem to be so reluctant to call out xenophobes in Israel and other places?” asked West, who is known as a critic of Israel. He went on to inquire whether “if there were a Palestinian occupation of Jewish brothers and sisters would we respond the same way?”

He took issue with strongly pro-Israel testimony given by former Florida congressman Robert Wexler, asking him to agree to include of the term occupation in the party’s platform. America’s commitments to its allies, West said, “can never be predicated on occupation.” He then asked members to “agree that life of Palestinian baby is just as valuable as Jewish baby.”

But he did so in much more forceful way than articulated by the Vermont senator, accusing the Democratic Party of being “beholden to AIPAC,” the pro-Israel lobby, “for too long.”

Israel rises in the East : Caroline Glick

The failure of France’s “peace” conference, on the one hand, and the success of Netanyahu’s fourth visit to Moscow on the other hand, were poetic bookends of the week.

There was something poetic about the events that bookended the past week of diplomacy. This week began with French President François Hollande’s “peace” conference and ended with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s state visit to Moscow.

From the perspective of both substance and style, the contrast between the two events couldn’t have been more striking.

France hosted yet another anti-Israel diplomatic pile-on. Hollande had hoped to show that France was stepping into the void left by the US’s abandonment of its position as world leader. But all the confab served to do was show how irrational and self-destructive France – and Western Europe – has become.

Neither Israeli nor Palestinian representatives were present at the conference which aimed to dictate Israel’s final borders. Their absence made the event seem like a throwback to the era of European colonialism. It was as if Hollande wanted to reenact France’s glory days in Syria and Algeria.

In his opening remarks, Hollande recycled the tired claim that the way to defeat jihad is by forcing Israel to give Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem to Islamic terrorists. The document the French Foreign Ministry circulated among participants ahead of the conference recommended setting a timetable for forcing Israel to give the PLO Judea, Samaria and large swaths of Jerusalem, for the benefit of global security.

The French planned their event before the mobs in Ramallah, Hebron, Jerusalem and Gaza publicly celebrated the cold-blooded massacre of Israeli diners at Tel Aviv’s Sarona Market on Wednesday night. But the latest massacre wasn’t necessary to show the absurdity of France’s plan to defeat jihad by empowering jihadists at Israel’s expense.

After all, Israel surrendered Gaza to the Palestinians 11 years ago. Far from ameliorating the problem of jihad – in Europe and throughout the world – the scourge of Islamic war has grown geometrically in the past decade.

MY SAY: HARRY TRUMAN’S POLITICAL INCORRECTNESS

Harry Truman is now rated as a great president by both parties.

In the book Dear Bess: The Letters from Harry to Bess Truman, 1910-1959 reveals how much classified material the President revealed to his beloved wife.

From Berlin, at the Potsdam Conference on July31, 1945:

He opines ……after adding “Kiss my baby. Lots and lots of love,” he ends with “I’ve got to lunch with the Limey king when I get to Plymouth”

When President Harry Truman picked up his “Washington Post” early on December 6, 1950, to read a review of his daughter Margaret Truman’s singing performance, he was livid. Though conceding that Miss Truman was “extremely attractive,” Paul Hume, the “Post’s” music critic, stated bluntly that “Miss Truman cannot sing very well” and “has not improved” over the years. The president wrote the following letter to the 34-year old Hume, whom he compared to the columnist Westbrook Pegler (“a rat,” in Truman’s view).

Harry S. Truman to Music Critic Paul Hume

Mr Hume:

I’ve just read your lousy review of Margaret’s concert. I’ve come to the conclusion that you are an “eight ulcer man on four ulcer pay.” It seems to me that you are a frustrated old man who wishes he could have been successful. When you write such poppy-cock as was in the back section of the paper you work for it shows conclusively that you’re off the beam and at least four of your ulcers are at work.

Some day I hope to meet you. When that happens you’ll need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps a supporter below!

Pegler, a gutter snipe, is a gentleman alongside you. I hope you’ll accept that statement as a worse insult than a reflection on your ancestry.

Harry S. Truman

China’s imperialism on the South China Sea: U.S. Navy Admiral James A. Lyons (RET.)

James A. Lyons, a retired U.S. Navy admiral, was commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and senior U.S. military representative to the United Nations. He is a Member of the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi

China’s determined efforts over the past two decades to seize control of almost the entire South China Sea is nothing short of classic aggressive imperialism. What’s remarkable is that it has been done without basically firing a shot, using the Chinese People’s Liberation Army concept of “military soft power.” This tactic is designed to defeat the enemy without fighting. Make no mistake: China views the United States as the enemy. Under President Obama’s strategy to fundamentally transform America, our country doesn’t confront our enemies, it embraces them. China has the perfect enemy.

When the United States withdrew its forces from the Philippines in 1992, this created a vacuum, which presented China with an unprecedented opportunity to expand its influence and territorial objectives. In 1993, China announced its illegal claims to almost the entire South China Sea as part of its territorial waters. The claim is based on China’s questionable Nine-Dash Line maritime claim and includes large sea areas of internationally recognized economic zones belonging to Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia, Philippines, Taiwan and Japan.

There is no question that what China has accomplished over the past two decades – both economically and militarily – has been remarkable. When I took the first U.S. Navy Task Force back to mainland China on Nov. 3, 1986, 37 years after the Communists seized power in 1949, its navy was nothing more than a coastal navy, and not a threat to anyone. However, since then, China – with a double-digit increase in its military budget – has dramatically modernized its military forces and specifically built a navy designed to confront the U.S. Navy. More recently, Chinese President Xi Jinping is in the process of transforming China’s military force’s mission from just a defensive posture and regional power to one that will potentially be capable of challenging the United States globally.

As we have seen, China has instituted an aggressive reclamation program, creating man-made islands out of shallow reefs and inlets to reinforce its South China Sea claims. Since 2014, China has reclaimed more than 3,200 acres. Airfields and other permanent facilities have been built on these islands. The islands, in effect, have become stationary aircraft carriers. China has already deployed significant air, naval and missile forces to its newly reclaimed stationary carriers.

Jihadis without a Cause To counter ‘violent extremism,’ you have to start by being honest about it. By Robin Simcox

For some years now, the Obama administration has worked on developing a “Countering Violent Extremism” (CVE) strategy. Its goals: to be proactive in stopping terrorists from radicalizing and recruiting followers, and to address the factors that allow such actions to occur in the first place. Last week the result of some of these deliberations — a twelve-page strategy fronted by the State Department and USAID — was published.

In its foreword, Secretary of State John Kerry lists some of those countries affected by “violent extremism” (“from Afghanistan to Nigeria”) as well as the identity of violent extremist groups (“Da’esh . . . al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula, al-Shabaab, and Boko Haram”). The focus then, seems clear: countries with a significant Muslim population and Islamist terrorist groups. Yet here is where the strategy takes a turn for the surreal, because from the content of the actual strategy, you would not realize any such thing — the document is just that opaque, obfuscatory, and, ultimately, unhelpful.

Regarding why violent extremism takes root, the reader is treated to a variety of possibilities. They include “individual psychological factors . . . community and sectarian divisions and conflicts.” Other explanations are corruption, insufficiently robust courts, and a lack of tolerance among different ethnicities.

Apparently not even worthy of discussion is Islam or Islamism, words that are not mentioned once. This is no accident. There has been a concerted attempt to scrub any religious aspect from the actions of ISIS and al-Qaeda: That is why phrases like “violent extremism” even exist. (First mainstreamed by the British government, “violent extremism” was dreamed up as a way to avoid saying “Islamic” or “Islamist” extremism in the months after the July 2005 suicide bombings in London. The phrase swiftly traveled across the Atlantic and into the U.S. government’s vocabulary.)

A Moral Disability Dispiriting findings on long-term unemployment By Kevin D. Williamson

When I was a kid, I didn’t have any more appreciation for those “We Had It So Hard” stories you get from your parents and your grandparents than any other callow schoolboy does. But one of them stuck with me.

The elderly, highly regarded gentleman in question had moved to West Texas with his parents in the 1920s where they lived under what were essentially pioneer conditions, hunting rabbits for meat and foraging what other food they could, sometimes even eating green tumbleweeds. If you don’t know what the wind is like in West Texas, it will sound absurd, but, at one point, their house literally was blown away. There was no high school where they were — the place was called Sand — but there was one in a town 15 miles away, so he walked there and went to work at a filling station, a job he kept through high school. He was later accepted as a student at Texas Tech, the campus of which was a little more than 60 miles away. Again, he walked, not knowing where or how he’d live when he got there. The only business he knew was running a filling station, so he and another student started one, and he later used some of the money he made to open a movie theater. What followed was a successful business career and then a career in politics, culminating with his election as Texas governor Preston Smith.

We Americans have always been in motion. The pilgrims in their ships, the pioneers in their wagons, the Okies bound for California however they could get there, Preston Smith and his much-used shoes. It isn’t always great. But it isn’t all that bad, either, especially when you are young: I am sure that many of you reading this have had the experience of moving into an apartment you’ve never seen because you didn’t have the money to go scouting when relocating for a new job. Sometimes it’s better than expected, sometimes not—but it is always a surprise.

I am not among those who believe that poverty builds character — I can do without that kind of character — but I do sometimes almost feel sorry for those friends of mine who’ve always had it a little too good, who don’t have any funny stories about roadside misadventures caused by having a crappy 22-year-old car, the semester they spent semi-homeless, the people they met working on a farm or doing day labor. I don’t want to have those kinds of adventures now, and I didn’t want to have them at the time, either, but sometime between then and now I became glad that they had happened.

America: History’s Exception We should seek to preserve the ideals that made America successful. By Victor Davis Hanson

The history of nations is mostly characterized by ethnic and racial uniformity, not diversity.

Most national boundaries reflected linguistic, religious, and ethnic homogeneity. Until the late 20th century, diversity was considered a liability, not a strength.

Countries and societies that were ethnically homogeneous, such as ancient Germanic tribes or modern Japan, felt that they were inherently more stable and secure than the alternative, whether late imperial Rome or contemporary America.

Many societies created words to highlight their own racial purity. At times, “Volk” in German and “Raza” in Spanish (and “Razza” in Italian) meant more than just shared language, residence, or culture; those words also included a racial essence. Even today, it would be hard for someone Japanese to be fully accepted as a Mexican citizen, or for a native-born Mexican to migrate and become a Japanese citizen.

Many cultures reflected their suspicion of diversity by using pejorative nouns for the “other.” In Hebrew, the “goyim” were all the other non-Jewish nations and peoples. “Odar” in Armenian denoted the rest of the world that was not ethnically Armenian. For Japanese, the “gaijin” are those who by nationality, ethnicity, and race cannot become fully Japanese. In 18th-century Castilian Spain, “gringo” meant any foreign, non-native speakers of Spanish.

The Balkan states were the powder kegs of 20th-century world wars because different groups wanted to change national boundaries to reflect their separate ethnicities.

The premise of Nazi Germany was to incorporate all the German “Volk” into one vast racially and linguistically harmonious “Reich” — even if it meant destroying the national borders of Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland.

The constitution of Mexico unapologetically predicates national immigration policies on not endangering Mexico’s ethnic makeup.

Countries, ancient and modern, that have tried to unite diverse tribes have usually fared poorly. The Italian Roman Republic lasted about 500 years. In contrast, the multiracial Roman Empire that after the Edict of Caracalla in AD 212 made all its diverse peoples equal citizens endured little more than two (often violent) centuries.

The Israeli Left’s War against the Israeli Flag And the true impulses that lie behind it. Steven Plaut

The Israeli Left has a serious flag problem. Well, a problem with the Israeli flag to be precise. The one with the six-pointed blue star. Not the ISIS flag.

The Left intensely dislikes people who wave Israeli flags, although I think it would be okay with those radical anti-Trump protesters waving Mexican and Iranian flags. At the Israeli Left’s own rallies, like one widely reported recently, one sees oodles of Stalinist red flags, lots of PLO flags, and sometimes one may see Hamas flags, but no Israeli flags.

In a few famous cases, the Left’s contempt for the flag goes well beyond that. A few months ago, the ultra-leftist Israeli “artist” and “activist” Ariel Bronz appeared at an assembly sponsored by the anti-Israel Haaretz newspaper and pranced about the stage with an Israeli flag inserted in his rear end. Haaretz approved and hailed the behavior as the epitome of democracy and patriotism. In an earlier incident one Natali Cohen Vaxberg, also a leftist activist and actress, posted on the web videos of her relieving herself (number two, to be precise) on the Israeli flag. More courageous defense of freedom of speech, squealed Haaretz and its leftist amen choir in delight.

The latest twist in the Left’s jihad against the flag has to do with plans by participants in the upcoming Jerusalem Reunification Day festivities to wave it. This has triggered horrific anger among the enlightened Left. They are particularly irate because celebrants plan to march all over Jerusalem waving flags, including in all parts of the Old City.

That is simply fascism, scream the Leftists, especially because the celebrants will walk through the “Moslem Quarter” of the Old City. Flying flags under the noses of these “occupied” Arabs is intolerable oppression, even though these Arabs have Israeli citizenship and are welcome to join the celebrations and wave flags with the others if they wish.

So now a group of about 100 radical leftists has placed an ad in the press this week, paid for by you-know-who, denouncing plans to wave Israeli flags in Jerusalem on Jerusalem Day. The ad says that as peace seekers the signatories demand that the government and police prohibit the waving of flags in the “Muslim Quarter” of the Old City, which – they add – is near the Temple Mount and the day will be close to Ramadan. It should be noted that the signers do not express any opposition to PLO, Hamas, or ISIS flags flying on the PLO-controlled Temple Mount itself, nor in any leftist street rallies anywhere else in the country.

When Leftists Believe the Race of a Judge Matters A brief look at the most egregious examples from the last 40 years. Ann Coulter

Annoyed at federal judge Gonzalo P. Curiel’s persistent rulings against him in the Trump University case (brought by a law firm that has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for speeches by Bill and Hillary), Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said that maybe it’s because the judge is a second-generation Mexican immigrant.

The entire media — and most of the GOP — have spent 10 months telling us that Mexicans in the United States are going to HATE Trump for saying he’ll build a wall. Now they’re outraged that Trump thinks one Mexican hates him for saying he’ll build a wall.

Curiel has distributed scholarships to illegal aliens. He belongs to an organization that sends lawyers to the border to ensure that no illegal aliens’ “human rights” are violated. The name of the organization? The San Diego La Raza Lawyers Association — “La Raza” meaning THE RACE.

Let’s pause to imagine the nomination hearings for a white male who belonged to any organization for white people — much less one with the words “THE RACE” in its title.

The media were going to call Trump a racist whatever he did, and his attack on a Hispanic judge is way better than when they said it was racist for Republicans to talk about Obama’s golfing.

Has anyone ever complained about the ethnicity of white judges or white juries? I’ve done some research and it turns out … THAT’S ALL WE’VE HEARD FOR THE PAST 40 YEARS.

The New York Times alone has published hundreds of articles, editorials, op-eds, movie reviews, sports articles and crossword puzzles darkly invoking “white judges” and “all-white” juries, as if that is ipso facto proof of racist justice.

Two weeks ago — that’s not an error; I didn’t mean to type “decades” and it came out “weeks” — the Times published an op-ed by a federal appeals judge stating: “All-white juries risk undermining the perception of justice in minority communities, even if a mixed-race jury would have reached the same verdict or imposed the same sentence.”

Trump Is Right to be Suspicious of Judge : Matthew Vadum

Donald Trump has every right to question the impartiality of a “pro-Mexican” judge presiding over the Trump University lawsuit and doing so does not make him a racist or a bigot of any kind.

The stampede of weak-kneed Republican office-holders tripping over each other in a frenzied rush to denounce the presumptive GOP nominee for president shows how the Left’s pathological ideas about race continue to dominate the thinking even of so-called conservatives who ought to know better. Yell “racist!” and Republicans run for the hills.

As Pat Buchanan opines, “[t]o many liberals, all white Southern males are citizens under eternal suspicion of being racists. The most depressing thing about this episode is to see Republicans rushing to stomp on Trump, to show the left how well they have mastered their liberal catechism.”

To recap, the real estate magnate has said that U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, an Indiana-born U.S. citizen whose parents emigrated from Mexico, is issuing unfair rulings against him in a high-profile class-action lawsuit. Trump claims the trial judge’s prejudice relates to his promise to crack down on illegal immigration and build a wall along the border with Mexico to keep illegal aliens out.

Curiel ordered that internal documents from Trump University be made public. The ruling caused elation among reporters, including 20 from the Washington Post who are digging for dirt about the candidate, as they began fantasizing about winning the Pulitzer Prize for taking down a Republican presidential candidate.

Trump said it is “just common sense” that Curiel’s connections to Mexico explain his anti-Trump rulings.

“He’s a member of a club or society very strongly pro-Mexican, which is all fine. But I say he’s got bias,” Trump said Sunday. “This judge has treated me very unfairly. He’s treated me in a hostile manner, and there’s something going on.” Trump also said it is “possible” a Muslim judge might also be biased against him because he advocates a temporary ban on the entry of Muslims into the U.S.

Trump is right. Judges can be influenced, sometimes inappropriately, by their life experiences.

Besides, Trump was merely echoing remarks by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a person of Puerto Rican ancestry, who said her ethnicity and upbringing affect her rulings. “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

So if Trump’s comments were racist – and in this writer’s opinion they were not – then so were Sotomayor’s. Sotomayor is met with applause; Trump is met with sputtering vituperation.