Displaying posts published in

2016

Anti-Semitism in the UK Labour Party by Denis MacEoin

At least this time, the Jews know the signs of danger and have somewhere to run to, somewhere they are welcome. But many members of the Labour Party, including Labour Members of Parliament, would prefer them not to have such a haven, wishing instead for the land to be “returned” in virtually its entirety to the Palestinians.

The “Left” repeatedly calls for boycotts of Israel because it is, they claim, “an apartheid state.” Israel is so totally free of apartheid that anyone who has spent ten minutes there knows the accusation to be an outright lie. So why keep on saying something untrue? That is anti-Semitism.

Two of the Labour Party’s senior members were suspended as a result of their anti-Semitic remarks, and there is talk that 50 secret suspensions have been made.

It is worth adding that existing anti-Semitism within the British establishment, not least the pro-Arab Foreign Office, means that little is done even by conservatives to tackle this Jew hatred on the left.

After the truth about the Holocaust came out in the late 1940s and 50s, being an anti-Semite was the biggest dishonour of all. No mainstream politician, whatever his or her personal views about Jews, would ever declare anything that hinted at anti-Semitism. The “far right” had gone (for a time) into oblivion. Israel was admired.

Germany paid reparations (wiedergutmachung, “making good again”) to Holocaust survivors, as did France, an equally anti-Semitic country[1] out of which came the first ideologue of a “master race,” Joseph Arthur, Comte de Gobineau (d.1882), whose books spread the message of Aryan supremacy. Oddly enough, Arthur was not anti-Semitic: Hitler and his acolytes embraced his Aryan supremacism and edited out Arthur’s philo-Semitism.

Anti-Semitism continued, of course, but most people kept it to themselves. The horror of what the Germans had done to the Jews was, for a majority of British people, a token of the rightness of our cause in fighting and defeating Germany. Jews had never been safer than they were then in the UK. That anti-Semitism might return — and viciously — reincarnated inside a mainstream, anti-fascist and supposedly anti-racist political party, was simply inconceivable.

BARACK BOMBS IN BRITAIN: DANIEL HANNAN

Well, the polls are in and – not to put too fine a point on it – President Obama has bombed. Last week, disregarding the convention that heads of government don’t intervene directly in the internal elections of friendly states, the president came to London to tell us to vote to stay in the European Union. He didn’t hint or suggest or imply. He told us bluntly that, if we left the EU, we’d go “to the back of the queue” when it came to signing trade deals with Washington.

How did Britain react? Not for the first time, there was a divergence between what the pundits and politicians thought, and what everyone else thought. The journalists in the handsome Foreign Office salon where Mr. Obama made his remarks instantly concluded that he had won the referendum for the Euro-enthusiasts. David Cameron’s aides began to brief that it was all over bar the applause, that they would storm to victory by 60-40 or more.

The next day’s newspapers unanimously predicted a further swing to the Remain side, which had already been enjoying a bit of a bounce. Then, one after another, the numbers started to come in. Of the four opinion surveys that have been published at the time of writing, two put the Remain side slightly ahead, and two put Leave slightly ahead; but all four show a swing to Leave. Ordinary people, it seems, don’t like being told what to do by foreign politicians – even popular ones.

Oh yes: President Obama is popular in Britain. I realize that saying so will irk some American conservatives. Believe me, I have been through the same thing in reverse. For years, American friends, including many who were in no sense on the Left, would tell me, “Aw, man, I love that guy Blair.” To many Brits – indeed, to foreigners generally – Obama is still the telegenic mixed-race candidate who opposed the Iraq war. Nothing he has said or done since has really registered.

But, although people admire Obama, they hate being hectored. The president’s choice of vocabulary – when is the last time you heard an American say “back of the queue”? – made Brits wonder whether he was reciting lines drawn up in Downing Street. In other words, they suspected that David Cameron was using foreign leaders to bully and threaten his own country.

PETER HUESSEY: DID PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH WIN THE COLD WAR?

For the past 25 years, arms control has been a key driving force behind how many Americans view our relationship with Russia. In that period the two countries have agreed to the START I, Moscow, and New Start nuclear weapons agreements that has successfully reduced the strategic warhead arsenals on both sides by over 90%.

But relations between Moscow and Washington are not good and since the 2010 New Start agreement, the Russians have flatly rejected discussions of further reductions in nuclear weapons. The Russians have also stopped cooperation under the Nunn-Lugar agreement, named after two US Senators that put together a program to safeguard and eliminate nuclear material and warheads in the former Soviet Union subsequent to the end of the Cold War. Other agreements between the two countries have also been put on ice by Russian President Putin’s government.

At a seminar on Capitol Hill on April 20, 2016, two distinguished experts-Steve Blank of the American Foreign Policy Council and Mark Schneider of the National Institute of Public Policy-spoke about the need to refocus our relationship with Russia away from arms control and more towards managing an increasingly troublesome and dangerous relationship. A key part of that strategy must be the full modernization of our nuclear deterrent, they both emphasized.

Most worrisome said the two experts was Russia’s massive build-up of new nuclear weapons, including three new classes of land based missiles, a new submarine launched ballistic missile, and a new stealthy strategic bomber and accompanying air launched cruise missile including a hypersonic variant. This build-up will be almost completely completed by 2021-2 prior to the United States fielding a single modern element of its own strategic nuclear deterrent which is the oldest ever.

Poisonous Peas in a Pod, by Edward Cline

‘The Washington Examiner on April 24th, in its article, “Obama: Germany’s Merkel is right on refugee welcome,” reported President Barack Obama’s European musings on immigration:

President Obama says German Chancellor Angela Merkel is “on the right side of history” in how she has responded to the influx of thousands of Syrian refugees surging into Europe.

At a press conference Sunday, the president said he is “proud” of Merkel and the German people for their open-door policy of migrants fleeing violence and uncertainty in their home country.

“She is on the right side of history on this,” Obama said as he stood next to Merkel in Hannover, Germany. “And for her to take on some very tough politics in order to express not just a humanitarian concern but also a practical concern, that in this globalized world, it is very difficult for us to simply build walls.”

And now many Europeans are fleeing their home countries for points that do not welcome hordes of destructive and hostile Muslim barbarians who have boasted that Germany and other Western countries are “dead meat.” Doors are opening all over the Continent. However, they are swinging doors that can snap back to strike Merkel harshly on her electoral derriere.

Obama again:

Obama’s praise comes after Merkel faced fallout in a referendum of sorts on her immigration policy. In last month’s state elections, Merkel’s party, the Christian Democrats, took a beating. An anti-immigration party made significant gains.

Obama has promised to admit 100,000 Syrian and Iraqi refugees into the U.S. this year. He faces pushback from Republicans who fear a possible security threat. GOP presidential candidates, like front-runner Donald Trump, have attacked Obama’s pledge to allow refugees into this country.

But it is not just a security threat in back of those concerns. The literal invasion of the U.S. by hordes of Muslims – especially Syrian, Iraqi, and Somalian Muslims – poses a cultural and political threat, as well. The introduction of so many hostile and assimilation-resistant Muslims is part and parcel of the Muslim Brotherhood’s overall plan to subvert the country from within, per the General Memorandum of 1991.

North Korea-Flagged Ships Visiting Iran; Any Problem Here? By Claudia Rosett

In January, North Korea carried out its fourth illicit nuclear test. On March 2, after weeks of diplomatic haggling, the United Nations Security Council approved a new sanctions resolution on North Korea, which U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power described as “establishing the strongest sanctions the Security Council has imposed in more than two decades.”

So how’s that going?

In the big picture, not so well. North Korea has carried on with its forbidden missile tests, including a submarine launch, and has been visibly preparing for a fifth nuclear test.

Nor are things looking all that good if you home in on some of the details, such as merchant ships linked to North Korea. This latest UN sanctions resolution included a list of 31 ships linked to North Korea, targeted for an asset freeze. The Philippines moved swiftly to comply, impounding one of these ships, the Jin Teng, which was in its waters. Then China demanded that four of the designated ships, including the Jin Teng, should be removed from the sanctions list. It appears the U.S. rolled over and agreed. The Philippines had to let the Jin Teng go. As I note in an April 26th article for the Wall Street Journal on “The Failure of Sanctions Against North Korea,” this sent the message that no one need rush to enforce the new North Korea sanctions.

That’s not a huge surprise; as of last October, almost half the UN’s 193 member states had displayed no particular interest in enforcing the previous sanctions on North Korea — failing to file the implementation reports required by the UN. CONTINUE AT SITE

Trump and Supporters Insult Our Intelligence By C. Edmund Wright

I am not #NeverTrump, but I’m getting close… thanks to Donald Trump and his supporters.

The fact is, Trump often makes profoundly stupid and manifestly false statements. These are the kind of statements that always offend the intellect of anyone who thinks analytically and is interested in the actual truth, regardless of who is saying them. If you are not offended by such, then by definition you simply have jettisoned any concern for truth and intelligence. That Trump runs afoul of both concepts is beyond debate.

Written words are the least emotional medium possible, so let’s remove the feeling of the mob rally or the sycophantic television interview and dispense with a few Trump pronouncements in the cold harsh reality of the written word.

No doubt some of Trump’s supporters will quickly retort that Trump is a billionaire, so there’s no way he could possibly say anything stupid about any topic. Or that it’s impossible that Trump would lie. Yet Trump can, and does, routinely lie. In the words of Victor David Hanson, for Trump “truth is simply a narrative whose veracity is established by the degree of power and persuasion behind it.”

Let me translate: Trump repeats nonsense loudly and often. Moreover, he daily adds insults to anyone who opposes him, which is an odd strategy for someone wanting to “unite the party.” He’s doing everything now to make that impossible for anyone to do anytime soon. His apparent cliching of the nomination simply lends more urgancy to the matter.

But I digress. To the cold hard words, in perfect context, starting this week in Indiana.

“His father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald’s being — you know, shot. I mean, the whole thing is ridiculous. What is this, right prior to his being shot, and nobody even brings it up? They don’t even talk about that. That was reported, and nobody talks about it. I mean, what was he doing — what was he doing with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the death? Before the shooting? It’s horrible.”

What is this, coming from a man who wants to be the most powerful in the world? Does Trump consider the National Enquirer to be the gazette of truth? Was Ted Cruz’s father at Area 51 too? It’s not even clear that Trump has any idea whose death he’s even rambling about. Serious people would be bothered by a candidate who is capable of saying this.

How about the Mike Tyson endorsement: “So Cruz is now saying, ‘Oh, he (Mike Tyson) was a rapist. This guy is a real liar, that’s why we call him Lyin’ Ted Cruz. I mean, the greatest liar that ever lived except he gets caught every time.”

Trump may have no responsibility over embarrassing endorsers. But Tyson was in fact convicted of rape and served hard time for it.

Tony Thomas A Hypocrite of Titanic Proportions

The troubles of this carbon-plagued world weigh heavily on Leonardo DiCaprio, who uses every tool at his disposal to save the planet from global warming — tools that mostly consist of CO2-spewing private jets, jumbo yachts, energy-gobbling private palaces and his own hot air.
Don’t tell my wife but I’ve had a man-crush on Leonardo DiCaprio. At this bit in Titanic, I just couldn’t take my eyes off him:

Kate: Jack, I want you to draw me like one of your French girls. Wearing this…
Leo: All right.
Kate: Wearing only this….

But now my man-crush for Leo is over. If I could live my life again, I’d be kinder to my mother, but I wouldn’t see Titanic.

My about-turn came after reading DiCaprio’s speech to the UN gabfest on April 22 pledging more gabfests. He doesn’t just talk about warming’s armageddon. He wants you and me to catch a bus, while he gets around on his private jets and mega-yachts. And the media reports his frothings in a reverential way, as if he were the Dalai Lama or Gillian Triggs.

At the UN he conflated 19th century slavery in the US with current global warming (under 1degC in the past 100 years) as “the defining crisis of our time… a runaway freight train bringing with it an impending disaster for all living things.” Quoting Abraham Lincoln, he concluded:

“The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the last generation… We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth. That is our charge now – you are the last best hope of Earth. We ask you to protect it. Or we – and all living things we cherish – are history.”

Two years ago, Ban Ki-Moon appointed DiCaprio as the UN’s climate-change Messenger for Peace, saying, “Mr. DiCaprio is a credible voice in the environmental movement. I am pleased he has chosen to add his voice to UN efforts to raise awareness of the urgency and benefits of acting now to combat climate change.”

Six months later, DiCaprio was paparazzi’d lounging between parties at Cannes on his 140-metre superyacht, Rising Sun, borrowed from Dreamworks Studio co-founder David Geffen. It’s the 11th largest yacht in the world, cost $US200m, takes a crew of 45 and runs on 48,000 horsepower-worth of diesels.

‘Mirror Imaging’ and America’s Dangerous Middle East Illusions Tehran and Riyadh don’t operate under Western assumptions: Religion is their political ideology. By Henry A Crumpton and Allison Melia

Intelligence officers are taught to avoid “mirror imaging.” That is, assuming your adversary shares your analytic reference points and thinks the way you do. Americans tend to ascribe to other countries the best of our own values: tolerance, equal opportunity, rule of law, freedoms of speech and religion, and separation of church and state. But many countries do not share these values. Two of them are among our most problematic foreign relationships: Saudi Arabia and Iran.

These states, one friend and the other foe, promote ideologies that compete with America’s vision of liberal institutions, secular democracy and world order. Yet instead of confronting their illiberal, repressive, and often reprehensible narratives, we attempt to reconcile their views with our own, giving them a free pass based on our own tolerance of religious differences. The problem is that in these states religion does not exist in a vacuum. On the contrary, their religion is their political ideology—and a critical element of their foreign policy.

Despite its status as an important ally, Saudi Arabia poses a major challenge to the U.S. The ruling Saudi royal family depends upon support from the Wahhabi clergy, who represent an ultraconservative doctrine that is the cornerstone of the country’s identity and the source of the monarchy’s legitimacy. The kingdom has long exported the Wahhabi ideology with billions in funding for religious schools, or madrassas, world-wide. While Saudi rulers proscribe religious leaders from actively supporting violent revolution, terrorist groups like al Qaeda and Islamic State frequently cite or distort Wahhabi principles to justify the repression of women, autocratic rule and violence against non-Muslims.

Moreover, as Princeton scholar Cole Bunzel recently detailed in a report published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Saudi religious establishment has been practically mute as ISIS has laid claim to Wahhabi principles. This irresponsible silence, a tacit endorsement of political violence, especially against Shia Muslims, allows terrorist groups such as al Qaeda and ISIS to use the Wahhabi faith as a steppingstone to their violent, apocalyptic political ideology.

Although Saudi Arabia, sometimes with U.S. support, has launched effective counterterrorism operations against al Qaeda and ISIS, these efforts are shortchanged if the Saudi kingdom does not also address the underlying ideology that inspires ISIS attacks around the globe. And Riyadh, as custodian of Islam’s holiest sites, is uniquely positioned to act. Americans’ natural aversion to government involvement in religious matters should not become an excuse for U.S. failure to tackle this ideological challenge. CONTINUE AT SITE

China Rolls Up Welcome Mat Foreigners revisit assumption that openness that started under Deng could only grow By Andrew Browne

SHANGHAI— Henry Luce, the founder of Time magazine, was raised in China as the son of a Presbyterian missionary.

He and his family were among a population of foreigners that swelled to as many as half a million before 1949. Some were teachers, doctors and journalists. Others were merchants, engineers, architects and bankers. Within a few years of the Communist takeover almost all had fled or been kicked out. Mao harbored such loathing for Shanghai, China’s most cosmopolitan city, that he considered emptying it out completely after the revolution.

Deng Xiaoping’s “open door” economic reform policies in 1978 brought many of these groups flocking back. Many thought the openness would only grow.

It may be time to review that judgment: These days, foreigners are starting to feel less welcome. The Chinese legislature passed a law last week that puts all foreign NGOs under police administration with onerous registration and reporting requirements, essentially treating them as a security risk. Many will be forced to leave.

In line with this new mood of suspicion, a public poster campaign is warning young female government workers about “dangerous love” with foreign spies, a label frequently attached to the few foreigners who stayed on after 1949, particularly Americans.

State media regularly inveigh against “hostile foreign forces” trying to topple China’s socialist system.

Restrictions on foreign publications are tightening. Time, with a storied past in China, has joined a growing list of foreign news websites blocked by the Great Firewall. It includes the Economist, Bloomberg, Reuters, The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times —in addition to search engines and social-network sites like Google, Facebook and Twitter.

Christianity is in the firing line again: Authorities in eastern China, where missionaries labored before the revolution, are tearing down crosses atop churches. CONTINUE AT SITE

DONALD TRUMP: ISRAEL SHOULD KEEP BUILDING SETTLEMENTS

EXCLUSIVE: Trump insists Israel should keep building West Bank settlements as he says Netanyahu should ‘keep moving forward’ because Palestinians fired ‘thousands of missiles’ at Jewish state

In interview with DailyMail.com, Donald Trump says Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu should continue building West Bank settlements
Rejects call for a pause in settlements as a precursor to peace talks with Palestinians
‘I don’t think there should be a pause,’ Trump said; ‘Look: Missiles were launched into Israel’
The billionaire GOP front-runner said of Netanyahu: ‘I don’t know him that well, but I think I’d have a very good relationship with him’

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3571403/Trump-insists-Israel-building-West-Bank-settlements-says-Netanyahu-moving-forward-Palestinians-fired-thousands-missiles-Jewish-state.html#ixzz47fti572A