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February 2017

MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

KEEP QUIET- A REVIEW BY MARILYN PENN

By on February 23rd, 2017

When we watch a documentary film, we assume that we are seeing a true story and that there will be sufficient information for us to contemplate its veracity. In this film about a former leader of Hungary’s far-right, anti-semitic, holocaust- denying Jobbik party, there are huge blocks of missing information that would have helped to put the main character in better context. Csanad Szegedi is the protagonist whose life is upended by the discovery that his grandmother is a Jewish woman who was deported to Auschwitz and bears the tattoo which she has concealed until now. Not wanting to relive the horrors that she had already experienced, she married a non-Jew and raised her daughter without any reference to Judaism. Similarly the half-Jewish daughter followed in her mother’s footsteps and never mentioned it to her son, Csanad.

When he is kicked out of his political party because even a drop of Jewish blood can contaminate a barrel of water, Csanad seeks out Rabbi Oberlander, an ultra-orthodox rabbi who undertakes the task of bringing this anti-semite back to his religion – including circumcision, putting on tefilin, davening with the congregation and speaking out about his past transgressions in an effort to atone. Here are some of the myriad questions that occurred to me:

Why didn’t Csanad remain a secular Jew? Where is the family of this seemingly middle-aged man – wife, children, brother – and how does this orthodox conversion sit with them? We meet his mother and grandmother – is he single, divorced, gay? How many Jews are there in Hungary, where do they live and what is their demographic? Is the English-speaking rabbi an American sent to Hungary by Chabad? What is the current Hungarian attitude towards Israel? Are they one of the pro-Palestinian European countries who boycott Israeli products as well as their artists, scholars and athletes? The filmmakers follow Csanad to Auschwitz because the grandmother was imprisoned there. Bobby, another woman survivor who speaks Hungarian but seems to be American tells the chilling story of children forced to climb into the toilets and use their caps to clean out the contents, then put those caps on their heads. Just ponder this plan – no comment would be sufficient to characterize its cruelty.

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IMMIGRATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trump’s Immigration Guidance: The Rule of Law Returns BY Andrew C. McCarthy

By on February 23rd, 2017

On Tuesday, John Kelly, President Trump’s secretary of Homeland Security, published a six-page, single-spaced memorandum detailing new guidance on immigration enforcement. Thereupon, I spent about 1,500 words summarizing the guidance in a column at National Review. Brevity being the soul of wit, both the memo and my description of it could have been reduced to a single, easy-to-remember sentence:

Henceforth, the United States shall be governed by the laws of the United States.

That it was necessary for Secretary Kelly to say more than this — and, sadly, that such alarm has greeted a memo that merely announces the return of the rule of law in immigration enforcement — owes to the Obama administration abuses of three legal doctrines: prosecutorial discretion, preemption, and separation of powers (specifically, the executive usurpation of legislative power).

To the extent President Obama declined to enforce immigration law (notwithstanding his constitutional obligation to execute the laws faithfully), he did so under the guise of prosecutorial discretion. In the pre-Obama days, prosecutorial discretion was an unremarkable, uncontroversial resource-allocation doctrine. It simply meant that since resources are finite, and since it would be neither possible nor desirable to prosecute every crime, we target law-enforcement resources to get the most crime-fighting bang for the taxpayer buck. That means prioritizing enforcement action against (a) the worst offenders and (b) the unlawful causes of the activity.

This is easily illustrated by federal drug enforcement. There are comparatively few federal narcotics agents, compared, say, to police in a major city. But while both feds and cops have authority to arrest traffickers and consumers of illegal drugs, only federal jurisdiction is interstate and international. Consequently, the best use of finite federal enforcement resources is to limit them to prosecutions of significant felony importation and distribution offenses, leaving it to the states and municipalities to handle street pushers and misdemeanor violations involving the use of drugs.

Significantly, the fact that federal enforcement policy, which is made by the executive branch, does not target lesser felons or users does not mean this policy effectively repeals federal drug laws, which are written by Congress.

The non-targeted crimes are still crimes, and the feds reserve the right to prosecute them in appropriate cases (e.g., if they encounter these offenses in the course of carrying out other criminal enforcement missions).

In the area of immigration enforcement, Obama contorted this resource allocation doctrine into a de facto immunity scheme. That is, the Obama Homeland Security Department announced what it labeled enforcement “priorities.” If an illegal alien did not fit into the priorities, it was as if the alien were insulated against prosecution — effectively, it was as if there was nothing illegal about being an alien unlawfully present in the United States; it was as if Obama’s policies were a legal defense against Congress’s duly enacted laws.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

The “Adults” Resume Control View all posts from this blog By:Srdja Trifkovic

By on February 23rd, 2017

At the security conference in Munich over the weekend and at the EU headquarters in Brussels on Monday, VP Mike Pence offered profuse assurances to the European elite class that the Trump administration supports unity and cohesion in the face of various threats allegedly facing the Western alliance. His remarks amounted to an explicit repudiation of Trump’s campaign statements and promises.

“The United States strongly supports NATO and will not waver in our commitment to our transatlantic alliance,” Pence said, in contrast to Trump’s repeated (and reasonable) remarks before the election that NATO was “obsolete.” In a conference dominated by the narrative of the “Russian threat,” hacks and other fake news (Sen. Lindsey Graham warned France and Germany that the Russians were coming after them, vowing to “kick Russia in the ass in Congress”), Pence did not sound a single discordant note. He paid tribute to “our shared values,” our “noble ideals—freedom, democracy, justice and the rule of law.” “As you keep faith with us,” he went on, “under President Trump we will always keep faith with you.”

Defense Secretary James Mattis—who also attended the Munich conference—made similar points in a speech last Saturday—points which until recently would have been considered distinctly un-Trumpian. President Trump has “thrown his full support behind NATO,” Mattis declared, and warned of threats “on multiple fronts as the arc of instability builds on NATO’s periphery and beyond.” Earlier last week Secretary of State Rex Tillerson went to Germany for the Group of 20 foreign ministers’ meeting. According to The Washington Post, as he left the meeting “there was a palpable sense of relief” among the Europeans, which “stemmed in part from a sense that Tillerson is a serious man who came to Bonn willing to hear their viewpoints.” According to the Post, after Tillerson’s meeting with Russian’s FM Lavrov,

Diplomats said they got the sense that there would be no radical shift in the U.S. stance toward Russia . . . One diplomat, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the participants were encouraged when Tillerson said the administration believes that before it can consider any lifting sanctions against Russia, Moscow must meet its commitments to help end the fighting in the Russian-speaking, separatist region of eastern Ukraine.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Democracy v. Republic By Herbert London

By on February 23rd, 2017

Herbert London is President of the London Center for Policy Research}

Published in: https://spectator.org/democracy-v-republic/

Plato argued that democracy by its very nature cannot work. The direct involvement of the people in the affairs of state will lead to a situation where takers outnumber givers thereby rendering the economy precarious. But that isn’t the only issue the demos introduces. Direct participation can lead to the belief a majority rules denying the rights of minorities or there is justification for “the people” to take matters into their own hands.

Since the beginning of democracy in Athens, the greatest danger to democratic institutions has been the demos, the people themselves. Each person in a democracy is an individual. But when individuals become “the people,” trouble may be on the horizon.

The Founders of this new nation, having immersed themselves in the classics, created a system that is a republic, with the will of the people manifest through the election of representatives and in which taking matters into constituent hands is both unnecessary and counterproductive. The problem facing the United States is that the Trump presidency has resulted in the belief on the part of many that this is a democracy demanding direct public intervention in the affairs of the nation. Hence, students justify violence at the University of California as a form of democratic action. Street demonstrations calling for overturning the president’s limited ban on immigration are rationalized as democracy at work. Alas, it is democracy at work, but Americans live in a republic.

That distinction is lost on a public uneducated in the difference. Rabble rousers discuss the right to assemble, but assembly doesn’t infer violence. Freedom of expression is a First Amendment right, but even that right is limited by “clear and present danger.” A republic recognizes constraints overlooked by the flock of direct involvement.

Having stretched the idea of democracy into new and unexplored avenues of public participation, the republic itself is imperiled. The Ferguson effect, in which people believe they were wrongfully treated by the police, justifies taking to the streets. The republic, that relied on the seamless transition from one government to the next, is facing a new and relentless challenge that is based on a misconception.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Exploiting the Holocaust for political ends is a dangerous game.Frank Furedi

By on February 22nd, 2017

http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/just-like-hitler-the-diminishing-of-the-holocaust/19468#.WK1qjn-seUk
That the Western world is experiencing a crisis of political imagination is clear from the casual, everyday allusions to the Holocaust. Across the media, talk of Hitler and genocide and the 1930s is widespread. I’ve stopped counting the number of times I’ve heard people use the phrase ‘he’s like Hitler’ to describe someone they disagree with or fear. Today’s world is just like the 1930s, assert commentators and politicians. And of course the go-to metaphor for evil is the Holocaust. Comparing contemporary events with the period of the Holocaust has become the incantation of every third-rate sophist in search of an argument.

More and more public figures are becoming addicted to using the idiom of Nazism to score a political point. Some expect to have a monopoly over this language and will criticise others who adopt the same rhetorical strategy. Consider UK foreign secretary Boris Johnson. Last May, during the Brexit referendum campaign, he condemned the EU for pursuing the same goal as Hitler: establishing a European superstate. Yet last month he rightly criticised Labour MPs for ‘demeaning the Holocaust’ by comparing President Donald Trump to Hitler.

Listening to the recent parliamentary debate over Trump’s state visit to the UK, one could be forgiven for thinking we were back in September 1938, in the aftermath of Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler over the annexation of parts of Czechoslovakia. Veteran Labour MP Dennis Skinner, who has forgotten nothing and learned nothing since entering parliament in 1970, mentioned Hitler and Mussolini in the same breath as Trump before accusing the government of collaborating with the ‘fascist’ Führer in the White House.

Another Labour MP, Mike Gapes, demonstrated his formidable grasp of historiography by portraying Theresa May as a latter-day Chamberlain, before confirming his reputation as a witty parliamentarian by branding her ‘Theresa the appeaser’. And just in case you were still clasping to the belief that we are in 2017, not the 1930s, the Labour MP Nic Dakin provided the killer argument. ‘Holocaust survivors have said this reminds them of the 1930s’, he declared. All that was missing was some eager MP claiming that graffiti of a swastika spotted on a wall somewhere in England reminded him of Kristallnacht.

Some Holocaust-mongers lose all sense of moral perspective when they exploit this catastrophic event for their own political ends. I remember being dumbstruck by the title of an article written by an animal-rights activist: ‘Is it offensive to compare the Holocaust with the meat industry?’ The answer to this rhetorical question, predictably enough, was ‘No’. Why? Because ‘if you go to any meat production house and replace the animals with Jews, that’s exactly what you’ll have: a holocaust’. The casual manner in which Jews can be ‘replaced’ in discussions of the Holocaust shows how far this event has been decontextualised from history, and turned into a transcendental morality play. It seems the fact that Jews were the main target of the Holocaust is purely incidental, so replacing Jews with sheep is considered a legitimate exercise in logic. CONTINUE AT SITE

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POLITICS, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Reagan, Trump and America Paul Johnson And Tycho Johnson

By on February 22nd, 2017

Tycho Johnson: Let’s start by talking about Reagan. What were your first impressions when you met in 1980?

Paul Johnson: He was a very smooth operator. Everything about him was smooth. He had a soft, sympathetic voice, he loved talking, and he talked well. You could tell that he had been a professional actor. He had a lot of the graces and characteristics of one, he spoke well, spoke evenly, never at a loss for a word, and in fact gave a very good performance, you might say.

TJ: Modern Times, your history of the 20th century, profoundly influenced American conservatism, and Reagan himself is believed to have read it.

PJ: He did read it, and I remember he read a number of things of mine, and said he liked the way I wrote.

TJ: Did Modern Times have an impact on his presidency?

PJ: I think that would be going a bit too far, but I think it had some impact on him, yes, and he certainly enjoyed it.

TJ: Could you say that it provided the historical framework to give conservatism purpose at the time?

PJ: Yes. I think he liked to see things through the lenses of history. And therefore he needed a historical context in which he could place himself and his work as president of the United States. I think my writings helped him to do that, they helped him to see how his times fitted in to the general perspective of history, and how he emerged from it, and how he could possibly change things as a result of his perception of himself.

TJ: How would you describe the economic and political mood of America before Reagan?

PJ: The Cold War was coming to an end, and America had won it, but he didn’t want to proclaim this too openly, for fear the Russians would react too strongly against it.

TJ: Would you say that the feeling of the nation, before Reagan, was one of uncertainty? That they felt in a precarious situation?

PJ: Yes, they did feel that way, but Reagan was a very reassuring figure. He looked reassuring, he had a reassuring voice, reassuring things to say, and his general aura was one of calmness: “We’re doing well, and we’re going to do even better!” He was also the kind of person who got his inner strength from reassuring other people, to give them the sense that life was improving in general and he wanted people to aim higher than just “good”.

TJ: America today finds itself in a similarly precarious situation, as it was before Reagan. Massive debt, low wage growth, foreign policy concerns such as China, Russia, Islamic terrorism, not to mention the divided public. How would you compare the moods of then and now?

PJ: I think America has had a weak presidency for these last few years, and nobody pays much attention to Obama. So they have to recover from that, and I think they will. People are very critical of Trump, but I think that Trump may well turn out to be an above-average, maybe rather impressive president, once he gets going.

TJ: Reagan was a Hollywood actor who transitioned to politics. Trump is somewhat similar, being a businessman and TV celebrity. How would you compare them background-wise?

PJ: A lot of people didn’t think Reagan would do well, but he was probably one of the best presidents of the 20th century, and I think that is something very much to his personal credit — he created it all himself. So I think in that way they are alike. Both are self-made.

TJ: We had Reagan Democrats, and Trump seems to have attracted similar blue-collar votes. Is there a connection between their particular personalities, backgrounds, and ability to attract that demographic?

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HOMELAND SECURITY, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

A Muslim Brotherhood Security Breach in Congress There’s a national security risk swamp to drain. Daniel Greenfield

By on February 22nd, 2017

Last year, eight members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence issued a demand that their staffers be granted access to top secret classified information.

The signatories to the letter were Andre Carson, Luis Guiterez, Jim Himes, Terri Sewell, Jackie Speier, Mike Quigley, Eric Swalwell and Patrick Murphy. All the signatories were Democrats. Some had a history of attempting to undermine national security.

Two of them have been linked to an emerging security breach.

The office of Andre Carson, the second Muslim in Congress, had employed Imran Awan. As did the offices of Jackie Speier and Debbie Wasserman Schultz; to whom the letter had been addressed.

Imran Awan and his two brothers, Jamal and Abid, are at the center of an investigation that deals with, among other things, allegations of illegal access. They have been barred from the House of Representatives network.

A member of Congress expressed concern that, “they may have stolen data from us.”

All three of the Pakistani brothers had been employed by Democrats. The offices that employed them included HPSCI minority members Speier, Carson and Joaquín Castro. Congressman Castro, who also sits on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, utilized the services of Jamal Moiz Awan. Speier and Carson’s offices utilized Imran Awan.

Abid A. Awan was employed by Lois Frankel and Ted Lieu: members of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. Also on the committee is Castro. As is Robin Kelly whose office employed Jamal Awan. Lieu also sits on the subcommittees on National Security and Information Technology of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Tammy Duckworth’s office had also employed Abid. Before Duckworth successfully played on the sympathy of voters to become Senator Tammy Duckworth, she had been on the Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces of the Armed Services Committee.

Gwen Graham, who had also been on the Armed Services Committee and on the Tactical Air and Land Forces subcommittee, had employed Jamal Awan. Jamal was also employed by Cedric Richmond’s office. Richmond sits on the Committee on Homeland Security and on its Terrorism and Cybersecurity subcommittee. He is a ranking member of the latter subcommittee. Also employing Jamal was Mark Takano of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.

Imran had worked for the office of John Sarbanes who sits on the House Energy and Commerce Committee that oversees, among other things, the nuclear industry. Other members of the Committee employing the brothers included Yvette Clarke, who also sits on the Bipartisan Encryption Working Group, Diana DeGette, Dave Loebsack and Tony Cardenas.

But finally there’s Andre Carson.

Carson is the second Muslim in Congress and the first Muslim on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and, more critically, is the ranking member on its Emerging Threats Subcommittee. He is also a member of the Department of Defense Intelligence and Overhead Architecture Subcommittee.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Muslim Congress IT Staffers Case Gets Weirder Daniel Greenfield

By on February 22nd, 2017

I wrote about this strange case in early February.

Imran Awan and his two brothers, Jamal and Abid, are at the center of an investigation that deals with, among other things, allegations of illegal access. They have been barred from the House of Representatives network.

A member of Congress expressed concern that, “they may have stolen data from us.”

All three of the Pakistani brothers had been employed by Democrats. The offices that employed them included HPSCI minority members Speier, Carson and Joaquín Castro. Congressman Castro, who also sits on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, utilized the services of Jamal Moiz Awan. Speier and Carson’s offices utilized Imran Awan.

Why were the Awan brothers, one of whom had a criminal record, even allowed to work in such a sensitive position? How did the personnel suspected in this case pass background checks? And was any classified information compromised as a result of these alleged breaches?

These questions and more must be asked and answered. But they are only the first of many questions.

The Awans were employed by Democrats on very sensitive committees. There is a fuller listing at the link above. But suffice it to say some of these are very sensitive committees.

Now Luke Rosiak at the Daily Caller has an update of the strange developments in this investigation.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Last Night in Sweden Problems? What problems? Bruce Bawer

By on February 22nd, 2017

Well, I knew I shouldn’t have said anything. A few days ago I bragged in this space about having overcome my years-long addiction to the New York Times. Then, in the wake of President Trump’s remark on Saturday in Melbourne, Florida, about “last night in Sweden,” I noticed on Facebook that the Times had run a “news story” by one Sewell Chan headlined “‘Last Night in Sweden’? Trump’s Remark Baffles a Nation.” I couldn’t resist.

As it turned out, of course, Trump hadn’t baffled the entire Swedish nation. What had really happened was that a great many members of the Swedish establishment – politicians, journalists, business and academic elites, and so on – had professed that they were baffled. “Sweden? Terror attack? What has he been smoking?” asked former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt. Chan himself maintained that some news media (those, you understand, that lean right and have less rigorous journalistic standards than than the august Times) had presented “numerous exaggerations and distortions” about Sweden, “including false reports that Shariah law was predominant in parts of the country and that some immigrant-heavy neighborhoods were considered ‘no-go zones’ by the police.” (False reports, min röv.) Chan went on to quote various Swedish officials who roundly denied that Muslim immigrants had had a significant impact on crime and rape statistics.

To be sure, I was puzzled at first by Trump’s reference to Sweden, and rechecked a few news sources to see if I’d missed something. Then I realized he might have been referring to a segment I’d watched the night before on Tucker Carlson Live. One or Carlson’s guests was filmmaker Ari Horowitz, who had made a documentary about all those non-existent Swedish no-go zones and all that imaginary crime. Sure enough, Trump later tweeted that this was exactly what he was talking about: he’d been watching Tucker Carlson, too. (Which, incidentally, was nice to know.)

But one article calling Trump out on his Sweden remark wasn’t enough for the Times. The next day it ran another. “The Swedes were flabbergasted,” claimed Chan and co-reporter Sewell Baker. Again we heard from Bildt, who this time said: “We are used to seeing the president of the U.S. as one of the most well-informed persons in the world, also well aware of the importance of what he says….And then, suddenly, we see him engaging in misinformation and slander against a truly friendly country, obviously relying on sources of a quality that at best could be described as dubious.” The piece went on to cite this incident as yet another example of Trump alienating “American friend[s]” (something that the Times hadn’t been particularly worried about when Obama was sticking his fingers in the eyes of our allies and sucking up to our foes).

At the Times, of course, as I wrote the other day, “fake news” is old news. And “fake news” about Trump has been a staple at that newspaper ever since he rode down that escalator in Trump Tower. But this new bout of “fake news” about Sweden was even more transparently fake than usual. If everything’s fine in Sweden, then why the hell are the Sweden Democrats rising in the polls? Hell, if everything’s fine in Sweden, why do the Sweden Democrats exist at all? Chan and Baker interviewed a couple of leading Swedish politicians and other top members of Sweden’s cultural elite, but they didn’t quote any Sweden Democrats.

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BOOKS, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Doughboys Go to Hell The soldiers of the 79th were forced to fight for over three days and nights on a single meal and two canteens of water. In “With Their Bare Hands: General Pershing, the 79th Division, and the Battle for Montfaucon” Gene Fax masterfully recounts their nightmarish struggle. By Matthew J. Davenport

By on February 22nd, 2017

Lt. Miller Johnson hugged the dirt of a shell crater in no man’s land, driven down by German machine-gun fire. He lifted his head just enough to orient himself in the thick morning fog, “and behold I was looking into the muzzle of a German gun two feet in front of me.” Johnson thought he had been deserted by his platoon, but then he heard a familiar voice: “Keep down, Lieutenant. There she comes,” followed by a blinding explosion. He came to, shaken, and saw that one of his men had taken out the enemy machine-gun nest with a grenade. Before pressing on, as the fog began to lift, Johnson gathered his troops and took a head count: Of the 50 soldiers he had led from the trench just an hour before, only 10 remained.

With Their Bare Hands
Product Details

With Their Bare Hands: General Pershing, the 79th Division, and the battle for Montfaucon
Feb 21, 2017
by Gene Fax

By Gene Fax

Osprey, 495 pages, $32

The human cost of ending rubella; Europe at the crossroads; the doughboys go to hell; when America opened its doors; Stalin in your living room; the heroism of old age; the death of an all-American town; rebooting the Big Bang; and much more.

It was the morning of Sept. 26, 1918, the first day of a massive Allied offensive against the entrenched German army in northeastern France, one that would soon become—and to this day remains—the largest and deadliest battle in which American troops ever fought. Johnson’s platoon was just one of the nearly 200 infantry platoons of the U.S. 79th Division, each facing its own fight to conquer the German-occupied fortified village of Montfaucon. In “With Their Bare Hands: General Pershing, the 79th Division, and the Battle for Montfaucon” Gene Fax masterfully recounts, studies and dissects their nightmarish struggle.

From the time the U.S. had entered the war the year before, Gen. John Pershing, commander in chief of the American Expeditionary Forces, had fought inflexibly for American autonomy against overwhelming Allied pressure to split up his divisions and amalgamate them with veteran French and British units. But in the face of a series of devastating German offensives in the spring of 1918, he acquiesced temporarily, turning some of his few AEF divisions then in France over to Allied command. And after American success in combat at Cantigny, Belleau Wood and Soissons, Pershing won the approval of Gen. Ferdinand Foch, the supreme Allied commander, to launch an all-American offensive at St. Mihiel. But it came with a cost: Foch would only green-light the American offensive if Pershing would in turn furnish AEF divisions for a larger Allied offensive just days later between the Meuse River and the Argonne Forest. It was a decision from which dangled tens of thousands of American lives, forcing Pershing—whose best combat-tested, veteran divisions were committed to St. Mihiel—to send fresh, inexperienced divisions to the Meuse-Argonne front, among them the 79th. CONTINUE AT SITE

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