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February 2017

MEDIA, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

For the Media, the Only Jihad Is Against Trump By Roger L Simon

By on February 13th, 2017

In their zeal to “Jump on Trump,” is our media — not to mention their 9th Circuit cohorts — doing an immense disservice to the American public by obfuscating, effectively censoring, serious discussion of Islamic immigration and what to do about it?

It’s a global problem, surely, and we have a lot to learn from the mistakes of the Europeans who — according to the latest polls — are expressing serious regrets about their open-border immigration policies.

Several countries are beginning to return their migrants, sometimes offering economic incentives. And you can see why, reading last Friday’s report from the Gatestone Institute:

Several young gang-rapists started laughing in a Belgian court while yelling:

“women should not complain, they should listen to men.”

The seven ‘men’ were seen in a video where they are standing around an unconscious girl who is lying on a bed, then seen pulling down her pants and raping her. Also in the video, they are dancing around the victim and singing songs in Arabic.

The gang of perpetrators, aged 14 (!) to 25, consist of five Iraqi nationals, and two who hold Belgian citizenship. At least two of them are currently in their asylum procedure.

I imagine they’ll be getting some “extreme vetting.” Let’s hope so anyway. But does this “extreme vetting” go far enough? In America’s case, it’s complicated by the fact that Trump’s original seven countries in his travel ban are rather circumscribed and arbitrarily limited, despite having been the seven singled out by Obama. As we have seen on multiple occasions, second-generation jihadists come from all over Western Europe, like two of the above un-magnificent seven, not to mention North Africa and the obvious omissions of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. They come from Russia and the Far East as well. Shouldn’t they all be on the list? Yes, I realize the seven countries were chosen because at least some keep no verifiable records of who’s coming and going. But I’m not sure that matters. These days identities are more easily forged than ever. The Daily Beast reports you can buy an undetectable UK passport from the Neapolitan Camorra.

So can “extreme vetting” finally do the job it’s supposed to do? What is the real extent of its capability?

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Dems Made Their Bed with Leftists, Now They Must Lie in It By Karin McQuillan

By on February 13th, 2017

Something new is happening before our eyes. Radicals are completing a takeover of the Democratic Party. Sure, there’s been a lot of mockery among conservatives about hyperventilating Democrats. Pundits point out the obvious: that Democrats screaming that Trump is illegitimate deliver no positive message for working class voters who want jobs and that mobs in black masks are not appealing. Such analyses fall short.

After 8 years of exploiting and enflaming the grievances of identity politics, the Democratic Party is being eaten by the monster they rode to power.

Radicals don’t need to be a majority – they never are. They dominate through mob violence, media manipulation and threats. They are now dominating Democrat politicians, not allowing them to “normalize.”

The Los Angeles Times: Democrats in Congress began the year less defiant, with a more tentative, case-by-case approach to an untested new president. They were ready to work with Trump, they said, if he met them halfway. Democratic senators confirmed a few of Trump’s Cabinet nominees without much fuss. Then their base erupted.

The Wall Street Journal: Leftist throngs have been gathering outside Mr. Schumer’s residence in Brooklyn, N.Y., demanding that the Senate minority leader “get a spine” and oppose President Trump on everything.

That probably isn’t his natural inclination. Mr. Schumer once said that a “pause” in Syrian immigration “may be necessary,” and after the election he declared himself ready to “work with” Mr. Trump. But now he has yielded to the noisy crowd.

The always insightful John Hinderaker has noticed something is up in, “What Part Of ‘You Lost’ Don’t Liberals Understand?”

The Democrats need to understand that when you lose an election, the other guys get to take office. You don’t stamp your feet and demand that they quit.

(At) a town meeting conducted last night by Congressman Tom McClintock in Roseville, California. Liberal activists … behaved so … threateningly that the Congressman had to be escorted from the hall by armed policemen.

Another disgusting moment in the history of liberalism, but this is what I find mystifying:

“I can no longer just sit back. … These people need to understand, we want them out,” said Vietnam War veteran Lon Varvel, referring to Trump and McClintock.

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IMMIGRATION, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Daryl McCann: When Walls Trump Bridges

By on February 13th, 2017

The Left, as usual, wishes to cast the White House executive order banning residents of seven ardently Islamic countries as being motivated by race and religious prejudice. It’s an entirely predictable stance and, as always, it seeks to obscure the obvious beneath social-justice boilerplate.
It always comes back to Bernard Lewis. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, the mainstream media gave Lewis, who turns 101 years old on May 31, a brief window of opportunity to explain the root causes of Islamic revivalism. In 2003, What Went Wrong? topped the New York Times’ list of best-selling paperbacks and The Crisis of Islam performed the same feat in the hardback category. The PC police, confused and dismayed by the horror of September 11, had permitted – even encouraged – consenting adults to discuss the connection between Islam and radical Islamic terrorism. But it was not for long.

Our gatekeepers soon regained their composure and today America, and the West in general, is paying the price, a case in point being the outcry in response to President Trump’s attempt at gatekeeping: Executive Order (EO) 13769 or “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorists Entry into the United States”.

There are, to be sure, reasons to fault the White House’s EO banning entry of nationals from Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Iran and Yemen for 90 days and refugees for four months. Many – though not all – Iraqi Kurds, Iranian exiles and Syrian Christians are pro-secular democracy and would prove loyal citizens of the United States, or Australia for that matter. Ed Yong, writing for The Atlantic, makes a convincing case that prohibiting Iranian scientists from obtaining residency is detrimental to the interests of the United States. He adds the salient point that Iranian immigrants, who are for the most part Shia, are not generally prone to Islamic radicalism, let alone acts of terrorism.

Others from the nominated seven countries, Sunni Muslim or otherwise, would relish the opportunity to be patriotic Americans. Conversely, émigrés from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan might be more likely – statistically – to engage in acts of domestic terrorism, despite the two countries being omitted from the Trump’s travel-restriction policy. Take, as an instance, the December 2, 2015, San Bernardino massacre. Syed Farook was an American-born citizen of Pakistani descent while his terrorist wife, Tashfeen Malik, was a Pakistani-born lawful resident of the United States. Fifteen of the nineteen September 11 terrorists were Saudi, the rest from the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Lebanon. We might also note that Saudi money, particularly since 1979, has funded the radicalisation/Salafi-style transformation of mosques from Djakarta to, well, San Bernardino.

There is, additionally, the issue of the executive order’s scope and reach being too broad. Even Ken Klukowski, senior legal editor for the pro-Trump Breitbart News, has implicitly acknowledged that EO 13769 contains “legally problematic provisions”, such as the entry ban on those with passports from one of the seven proscribed countries who are also green-card holders and, therefore, lawful permanent residents. Although procedural modifications were soon put in place to circumvent the problem, over the first weekend 109 legitimate travellers were detained and held for questioning. When President Trump emphasised the smallness of the number, given the 325,000 arrivals, the mainstream media mostly ignored his comment or took umbrage. Evan Urquhart, writing for Slate, maintained that injustice is injustice even if only a few are inconvenienced: “When something is unfair and indefensible, the last resort of scoundrels is to downplay the number of people who have been unjustly treated.”

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Trump’s Winning Asia Diplomacy Promising signs from a call with Xi Jinping and golf with Shinzo Abe.

By on February 13th, 2017

President Trump has had a busy few days of Asia diplomacy, including his first post-inauguration phone call with China’s Xi Jinping on Thursday, a White House summit with Japan’s Shinzo Abe on Friday and 27 holes of golf with Mr. Abe on Saturday, followed by a joint press conference on North Korea’s latest missile launch. Unlike some of his earlier encounters with foreign leaders, this round demonstrated sobriety, careful planning and respect for allies.

The news out of the Xi call is that Mr. Trump affirmed the longstanding U.S. “One China policy” concerning Taiwan, which he previously said would be “under negotiation” with Beijing along with trade and other issues. Some of our friends in the media have portrayed this as evidence that the U.S. President is a “paper tiger,” citing Chinese officials who say Mr. Xi refused to speak with Mr. Trump until he softened his stance. But the substance of Mr. Trump’s shift isn’t surprising or dramatic.

Rather than embrace Beijing’s “One China principle,” which insists that Taiwan is part of China, Mr. Trump only endorsed the U.S. policy of acknowledging a Beijing-Taipei disagreement over Taiwan’s status, reserving U.S. judgment on the issue and calling for the peaceful settlement of disputes with the consent of Taiwan’s people. As has been true for decades, this amounts to little more than agreeing to disagree. It certainly doesn’t stop the U.S. from supporting Taiwan with means other than official recognition as an independent state.

Nor does it stop Mr. Trump from building on his December phone call with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen by boosting economic, diplomatic and military ties with the island. On the contrary, by signaling that he won’t risk a destabilizing clash with Beijing over a matter as sensitive as Taiwan’s independence, Mr. Trump will now be able to secure more support for a cautious but still expanded Taiwan agenda from leaders in Taipei, Tokyo and other friendly capitals.

Which brings us to Mr. Trump’s strikingly friendly summit with Mr. Abe, a display surely not lost on Chinese leaders who rightly identify the Japanese Prime Minister as a devoted opponent of their ambitions to dominate Asia. “We have a very, very good bond—very, very good chemistry,” Mr. Trump gushed at a joint press conference. “When I greeted him at the car, I shook hands, but I grabbed him and hugged him because that’s the way we feel.” This is a turnaround from Mr. Trump’s campaign-trail criticisms of Japan as a freeloading ally.

“We’re committed to the security of Japan,” Mr. Trump declared. He also echoed his defense secretary, Jim Mattis, in reaffirming that the U.S.-Japan security treaty covers the Japan-administered Senkaku Islands that China has swarmed with civilian and paramilitary ships in recent years. On trade, a potential sore point with Mr. Trump even in the best of circumstances, the two leaders punted to a bilateral working group to be led by U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso.

North Korea helped underscore the stakes of U.S.-Japan cooperation Saturday by shooting a Musudan intermediate-range ballistic missile into the Sea of Japan, its first test on Mr. Trump’s watch. Though not the intercontinental missile launch Pyongyang has promised, this was a reminder that its nuclear program is advancing on many fronts. Mr. Trump, fresh off the golf course and a candlelight dinner with Mr. Abe and their wives, offered a brief statement: “The United States of America stands behind Japan, its great ally, 100%.” Hear, hear.

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Trump’s New Start With Russia May Prove Better Than Obama’s The new president’s reported disdain for his predecessor’s arms deal is an encouraging sign.By John Bolton

By on February 13th, 2017

Media tittle-tattle about President Trump’s telephone calls with foreign counterparts received new fuel last week after details leaked of a conversation with Russia’s Vladimir Putin. The usual anonymous sources alleged that when Mr. Putin raised the 2010 New Start arms-control treaty, Mr. Trump asked his aides what it covered—and then, once briefed, declared it to be one of those bad Obama deals he planned to renegotiate.

If so, Mr. Trump got the treaty right. From America’s perspective, New Start is an execrable deal, a product of Cold War nostrums about reducing nuclear tensions. Arms-control treaties, properly conceived and drafted, should look like George W. Bush’s 2002 Treaty of Moscow: short (three pages), with broad exit ramps and sunset provisions.

Although President Obama had considerable help from then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in this diplomatic failure, Russia was hardly blameless. Moscow subsequently exploited the treaty’s weaknesses to rebuild and modernize its arsenal of nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles, while Mr. Obama stood idly by. Republican senators opposed New Start’s ratification, 26-13 (three of them didn’t vote), as did 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney. Mr. Trump’s remarks are therefore squarely in the party’s mainstream.

Not so, however, are some of Mr. Trump’s comments—or at least the inferences drawn from them—on Mr. Putin’s political and military adventurism in Europe. Many Republicans worry that, rather than strengthening the international economic sanctions imposed on Russia for its belligerent incursions into eastern Ukraine and its 2014 annexation of Crimea, Mr. Trump may reduce or rescind sanctions entirely.

This apparent difference is no small matter. Legislation to codify the existing sanctions is pending in Congress. It has overwhelming—most analysts think veto-proof—bipartisan support. Commentators wonder whether the remarkable Republican solidarity on Mr. Trump’s cabinet nominations might be shattered if Russia policy is the first area in which the new administration faces off with the Republican congressional majorities.

The sanctions on Russia for its interference in Ukraine are already under assault in Europe: Germany, France and others appear close to succumbing to their apparently hard-wired inclination to sacrifice geostrategic imperatives for economic ones. Elections across the Continent this year may produce results even more favorable to Moscow (possibly, in part, because of Russian meddling). By contrast, the Baltic republics and other NATO members in Eastern and Central Europe are alarmed that Russia’s adventurism would increase if its Ukraine aggression were brushed aside and sanctions lifted.

Yet amid the breathless press accounts about Mr. Trump’s purported fancy for Mr. Putin, one thing is clear: The Trump administration’s policy toward, and even its strategic assessment of, Russia is still under construction. Most important, if the substance of Mr. Trump’s comments on New Start was accurately reported, it shows him resisting items on Mr. Putin’s wish list, and not for the first time.

Mr. Trump has, for example, unequivocally opposed Mr. Obama’s Iran nuclear deal. On Feb. 1, National Security Adviser Mike Flynn put Iran “on notice” that the deal was on life support. New U.S. sanctions against Iran underlined the point. The White House is reportedly considering listing Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization, which should have been done decades ago. Such a move would have a significant political and economic effect on Moscow’s military-industrial complex, particularly Rosoboronexport, its international arms-sales agency.

Washington should be also push back against Russia’s inserting itself militarily and politically into the Middle East by using the Syria conflict as a wedge. While Ukraine may seem an unrelated issue, it is not. Moscow’s diplomatic efforts to “solve” the Syrian conflict are in substantial part an effort to “help” Europe with the Syrian refugee problem, providing yet another inducement to wobbly Europeans to roll back sanctions. Any perceived American weakness on the sanctions would embolden Russian efforts to further penetrate the Middle East, increasing the dangerous, destabilizing effects of Moscow’s tacit alliance with Iran. CONTINUE AT SITE

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EDUCATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Yale’s Inconsistent Name-Dropping Several campus names are more objectionable than John C. Calhoun—including Elihu Yale. Roger Kimball

By on February 13th, 2017

Yale University announced Saturday that it would change the name of Calhoun College, one of its original 12 residential colleges that opened in the early 1930s. Henceforth, the college will be named in honor of Grace Hopper, an early computer scientist and naval officer.

No sentient observer of the American academic scene could have been surprised by the move to ditch John C. Calhoun, the 19th-century South Carolina statesman after whom the college was originally named. On the contrary, the unspoken response was “What took them so long?”

Since last August, when Yale’s president, Peter Salovey, announced that he was convening a Committee to Establish Principles for Renaming—yes, really—the handwriting had been on the wall for Calhoun, a distinguished Yale alumnus who served as a congressman, senator, secretary of war, secretary of state and vice president.

Like Belshazzar before him, Calhoun had been weighed and found wanting. He may have been a brilliant orator and a fierce opponent of encroaching federal power, but he was also a slave holder. And unlike many of his peers, Calhoun argued that slavery was not merely a necessary evil but a “positive good,” because it provided for slaves better than they could provide for themselves.

You might, like me, think that Calhoun was wrong about that. But if you are Peter Salovey, you have to disparage Calhoun as a “white supremacist” whose legacy—“racism and bigotry,” according to a university statement—was fundamentally “at odds” with the noble aspirations of Yale University (“improving the world today and for future generations . . . through the free exchange of ideas in an ethical, interdependent, and diverse community”).

During a conference-call press briefing Saturday, and throughout the documents related to the Calhoun decision, officials have been careful to stress that the university operates with a “strong presumption against” renaming things. Because they do not seek to “erase history,” the officials insist, renaming things for ideological reasons would be “exceptionally rare.”

When you study the four principles Mr. Salovey’s committee came up with to justify a renaming, you can see why it took so long. The task, it seems clear, was to find a way to wipe away Calhoun College while simultaneously immunizing other institutions at Yale from politicized rebaptism.

Did the principal legacy of the honored person “fundamentally conflict” with the university’s mission? Was that legacy “contested” within the person’s lifetime? Were the reasons that the university honored him at odds with Yale’s mission? Does the named building or program play a substantial role in “forming community at Yale”?

Readers who savor tortuous verbal legerdemain will want to acquaint themselves with the “Letter of the Advisory Group on the Renaming of Calhoun College,” which is available online. It is a masterpiece of the genre.

Is it also convincing? I think the best way to answer that is to fill out the historical picture a bit. Nearly every Yale official who spoke at Saturday’s press briefing had to describe John Calhoun (1782-1850) as a “white supremacist.” Question: Who among whites at the time was not? Take your time.

Calhoun owned slaves. But so did Timothy Dwight, Calhoun’s mentor at Yale, who has a college named in his honor. So did Benjamin Silliman, who also gives his name to a residential college, and whose mother was the largest slave owner in Fairfield County, Conn. So did Ezra Stiles,John Davenport and even Jonathan Edwards, all of whom have colleges named in their honor at Yale.

Writing in these pages last summer, I suggested that Yale table the question of John Calhoun and tackle some figures even more obnoxious to contemporary sensitivities. One example was Elihu Yale, the American-born British merchant who, as an administrator in India, was an active participant in the slave trade.

President Salovey’s letter announcing that Calhoun College would be renamed argues that “unlike . . . Elihu Yale, who made a gift that supported the founding of our university . . . Calhoun has no similarly strong association with our campus.” What can that mean? Calhoun graduated valedictorian from Yale College in 1804. Is that not a “strong association”? (Grace Hopper held two advanced degrees from the university but had no association with the undergraduate Yale College.) CONTINUE AT SITE

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