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October 2017

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Emails Shed Light on Trump Tower Meeting Russian lawyer has said she didn’t have damaging information about Hillary Clinton By Rebecca Ballhaus

By on October 10th, 2017

Newly disclosed emails shed light on the period leading up to a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between a Russian lawyer linked to the Kremlin and top campaign aides to President Donald Trump.

The new information appears to bolster lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya’s position that she wanted the meeting to argue her case for overturning the Magnitsky Act, a U.S. law targeting Russian human-rights abuses. Ms. Veselnitskaya has previously said the meeting wasn’t organized to provide damaging information about Mr. Trump’s Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton.

The meeting became a flashpoint of controversy this summer when Mr. Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., released emails showing that he had been told the purpose of the meeting was for the Russian government to provide allegedly incriminating information about Mrs. Clinton.

Scott Balber, a lawyer for the Azerbaijani-Russian billionaire Aras Agalarov, provided emails Monday from the period leading up to the meeting, which Mr. Agalarov helped arrange for Ms. Veselnitskaya. In an interview, he also offered more information that, along with the emails, supported Ms. Veselnitskaya’s account that the meeting wasn’t about Mrs. Clinton.

Ms. Veselnitskaya has waged a yearslong campaign against the Magnitsky Act. As part of that effort, she routinely reached out to Russian authorities, she said earlier this year. She didn’t respond to a request to comment Monday.

In October 2015, Ms. Veselnitskaya shared information about her anti-Magnitsky campaign with Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika, a top official appointed by the Kremlin, Mr. Balber said. In May 2016, less than two weeks before the June 9 Trump Tower meeting, Ms. Veselnitskaya also provided Mr. Agalarov with a five-page set of talking points that included the same information she had given Mr. Chaika, Mr. Balber said.

Included in the information she shared with the men, Mr. Balber said Monday, was a single reference to Mrs. Clinton. Ms. Veselnitskaya alleged that a U.S. firm, Ziff Brothers Investments, had dodged taxes in Russia and later donated to Democrats, including possibly Mrs. Clinton.

Mr. Chaika’s office released a statement in spring 2016 alleging Ziff Brothers Investments of evading taxes in Russia. The company hasn’t been charged and has previously declined to comment on the allegations.

JULY 2017: As U.S. sanctions against Russia for its interference in the 2016 presidential election move forward, here’s a look at various contacts between President Trump’s associates and Russians. WSJ’s Shelby Holliday explains why each contact is significant. Photo: Getty

According to Donald Trump Jr., the meeting proved disappointing. In July of this year, after reports of the meeting first emerged, he said that Ms. Veselnitskaya “stated that she had information that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic National Committee and supporting Clinton,” but “It quickly became clear that she had no meaningful information.” When Ms. Veselnitskaya then raised the issue of the Magnitsky Act, Donald Trump Jr. said he cut off the meeting.

The meeting is now being probed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating whether associates of Mr. Trump colluded with Moscow as part of his probe into Russia’s alleged interference in the 2016 U.S. election, according to people familiar with the matter. CONTINUE AT SITE

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The False ‘Science’ of Implicit Bias A test purports to reveal hidden prejudice, but there’s little evidence its findings are meaningful.By Heather Mac Donald

By on October 10th, 2017

Few academic ideas have been as eagerly absorbed into public discourse lately as “implicit bias.” Embraced by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and most of the press, implicit bias has spawned a multimillion-dollar consulting industry, along with a movement to remove the concept of individual agency from the law. Yet its scientific basis is crumbling.

Implicit-bias theory burst onto the academic scene in 1998 with the rollout of an instrument called the implicit association test, the brainchild of social psychologists Anthony Greenwald and Mahzarin Banaji. A press release trumpeted the IAT as a breakthrough in prejudice studies: “The pervasiveness of prejudice, affecting 90 to 95 percent of people, was demonstrated today . . . by psychologists who developed a new tool that measures the unconscious roots of prejudice.”

In the race IAT (there also versions for everything from gender to disability to weight), test-takers at a computer are asked to press two keys to sort a series of black and white faces and a set of “good” and “bad” words. For part of the exercise, the test-taker presses one key for white faces and words like “happy,” and the other key for black faces and words like “death.” Then the protocol is reversed, pairing white faces with “bad” words and black faces with “good” words. (The order is randomized, so some test-takers sort black faces with “good” words first.)

A majority of test-takers—including about 50% of blacks, according to some accounts—are faster at the sorting game when white faces are paired with good words. This difference is said to represent an “implicit bias” in favor of whites that can explain racial disparities in society.

Mr. Greenwald and Ms. Banaji did not pioneer response-time studies; psychologists already used the methodology to measure how closely concepts are associated in memory. And it’s widely accepted in psychology that automatic cognitive processes and associations help people navigate daily life. But Mr. Greenwald and Ms. Banaji, now at the University of Washington and Harvard, respectively, pushed the technique into charged political territory. Not only did they confidently assert that any differences in sorting times for black and white faces flowed from unconscious prejudice, they claimed that the implicit bias allegedly measured by the IAT could predict discriminatory behavior. In the final link of their causal chain, they argued that this unconscious and pervasive predilection to discriminate is a powerful cause of racial disparities.

As they wrote in “Blindspot,” their 2013 best seller: “Given the relatively small proportion of people who are overtly prejudiced and how clearly it is established that automatic race preference predicts discrimination, it is reasonable to conclude not only that implicit bias is a cause of Black disadvantage but also that it plausibly plays a greater role than does explicit bias.”

If these sweeping claims were correct, every personnel decision could be challenged as the product of implicit bias. The pressure to guarantee equality of outcome through quotas would grow stronger. But the politics of the IAT had leapfrogged the science behind it. Core aspects of implicit-bias doctrine are now under methodological challenge.

A person’s IAT score can vary significantly each time he takes the test, undercutting its reliability as a psychological instrument. Test scores have almost no connection to what IAT research ludicrously counts as “discriminatory behavior”—trivial nuances of body language during a mock interview, say, or a hypothetical choice to donate to children in Colombian slums rather than South African ones.

Mr. Greenwald and Ms. Banaji now admit that the IAT does not predict “biased behavior” in the lab. (No one has even begun to test its connection to real-world behavior.) The psychometric problems associated with the race IAT make it “problematic to use to classify persons as likely to engage in discrimination,” they wrote, along with a third co-author, in 2015.

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Trump—and Tocqueville? For all his bluster, the president has championed values that built America, as Tocqueville saw it. Jean M. Yarbrough

By on October 10th, 2017

Visiting the United States in 1831, when Andrew Jackson was president, Alexis de Tocqueville was appalled by the “vulgarity and mediocrity” of American politics. After meeting Jackson, Tocqueville concluded that the low tone of American society started at the top. In Tocqueville’s estimation, Jackson was “a man of violent character and middling capacity.” Worse, he seemed to have no talent for politics: he rode “roughshod over his personal enemies” in a way no president had done and treated members of Congress with disdain. “Nothing in all the course of his career had ever proved that he had the requisite qualities to govern a free people,” Tocqueville wrote in Democracy in America, “so the majority of the enlightened classes of the Union had always been opposed to him.”

Considering his view of Jackson, imagine what Tocqueville’s first impressions of President Trump might be. Real-estate mogul, host of The Apprentice, owner of beauty pageants, and backer of WrestleMania, among other louche enterprises, Trump would seem to confirm Tocqueville’s worst fears about debased standards of American public life and leadership. And yet, Trump campaigned on issues that have a Tocquevillean resonance. Put another way, Tocqueville highlighted certain dangers to democratic liberty and greatness that Trump—who, it is safe to assume, has not read Democracy in America—instinctively seized on to win the presidency.

Start with the most obvious—and contentious—issue: Trump’s campaign pledge to build a wall to stop the flow of illegal immigrants from Mexico into the United States. Though Trump’s rhetoric on the subject was often crude, the idea was eminently sensible. Trump spoke to the long-term interest of American citizens in remaining a unified and self-contained people—what Tocqueville called their “self-interest, well understood.” Today, the American project of assimilation has come under sustained attack. Multiculturalists and globalists in government reject the idea that immigrants should adopt American culture and argue that foreigners should have the right to live in America in disregard of its immigration laws. Trump seized on this shift to call for secure borders and a renewal of America’s national identity. At the same time, he remained open, in principle, to immigrants from all nations.

Tocqueville had been struck by Americans’ love of country; he would not be surprised by the appeal of Trump’s full-throated patriotism, especially when set against his critics’ championing of multiculturalism and globalization. For Tocqueville, national identity was bound up with religion, which, in the United States and in Europe, meant Christianity. Long before the 2016 presidential election, though, Democrats had clearly come to regard Christianity as an obstacle to their goals. At the Democratic National Convention, party leaders removed all mention of God from the party platform, and boos erupted on the convention floor over a voice vote about whether to restore the reference to the deity. Democrats have subordinated the religious beliefs of the Little Sisters of the Poor to feminist concerns about the availability of contraceptives in government-run health-insurance plans; they have compelled conservative Christian businesses to provide services for gay weddings. Ironically, it was Trump—the twice-divorced, lapsed Presbyterian—who took up the cause of beleaguered Christians, reaching out to evangelical and Catholic leaders alike, promising to stand up for them in their battle to preserve religious liberty. Tocqueville would have approved.

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Columbus Day — and its Enemies Charles Lipson

By on October 10th, 2017

You don’t have a buy a party hat or uncork the champagne. It’s a minor holiday. But Columbus Day is still worth celebrating, and those who attack it are worth rebutting.

The focus should not be the navigator himself. He was a courageous, if misguided, explorer, who set sail for China, thinking the globe was much smaller and not knowing a vast landmass would block his journey. When he died 14 years later, he still believed he had landed in Asia, still thought baseball and football teams should be named “the Indians.”

What the holiday really commemorates is a much larger event that forever changed the world: the opening of the Americas, North and South, to a permanent connection with Europe. That has continued unabated for over 500 years and led to momentous achievements, from mass democracy to mass prosperity.

The Vikings may have landed earlier in Newfoundland, but they did not begin a continuous stream of trade and migration. The Chinese may have made it as far as the West Coast, as some speculate, but then they stopped all seafaring. Whatever the archeologists may discover, the voyages produced nothing enduring.

Columbus’ landing did. His discovery, coming soon after the printing press was invented, was quickly publicized and soon followed by explorers from all Europe’s maritime powers. Their quests for gold, silver, and souls began an unbroken stream of contact and cultural exchange, which made our hemisphere and, later, our country a creative offshoot of European civilization. As citizens, we may trace our family’s ancestry to India, Iran, or China, but our civilization is, at bottom, rooted in Europe’s history, religions, peoples, and culture.

It is a living heritage. American courts still rely on common law doctrines forged in medieval England. Our religious heritage came from Jerusalem, by way of Rome, Wittenberg, and Geneva. We read Bibles translated for the court of King James. Lincoln’s speeches grew out of its daily readings. We read Plato in Athens, Georgia. We study the fall of the Roman Empire with a shudder of foreboding about our own future.

It was these cultural connections that America celebrated at its greatest World Fair, in Chicago in 1893. The “Columbian Exposition” celebrated the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ voyage (and Chicago’s own recovery from its devastating fire two decades earlier).

If the 400th anniversary was big, you might expect the 500th anniversary to be even bigger. It wasn’t. There were no big celebrations and, of the plethora of books marking the occasion, many were sharply critical.

America was—and still is—embarrassed by Columbus’ “discovery” of America. That’s why radicals have attacked Columbus statues across the country. Antifa has called for more attacks this year. It’s their way of celebrating the holiday. Still, those noxious attacks are less important than the quiet confusion and awkwardness many Americans feel about celebrating Columbus’ voyage of discovery.

They are right to feel some ambivalence. The rose-tinted histories of an earlier generation glossed over two overwhelming tragedies. The first is that European viruses arrived with the people and their animals. Local populations had no immunities and as many as 90 percent died. It was the horrific, unintended effect of two isolated biosystems meeting.

The second tragedy was deliberate: the enslavement of millions of Africans, transported to dig mines, harvest sugar cane, and farm cotton and tobacco across the Americas. The middle passage from Africa was a deadly one, the work crushing, and the treatment as chattel slaves inhuman.

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Sydney Williams: A Review of “Hue 1968” by Mark Bowden

By on October 10th, 2017

Mark Bowden“In this peaceful city [Hue], during Tet, it was traditional to send cups of paper with lit candles floating down the Huong like flickering blossoms, prayersfor health, for success, for the memory of loved ones gone away…for an end to the war and killing…a vast flotilla of hope, many thousands of tiny flames.Not this year”

Hue 1968

Mark Bowden

Vietnam was my generation’s war. I was lucky, though and did not have to go. In February 1968, I was 27, married and a father of two, with four months to go on a six-year enlistment. In June 1962, I had enlisted in the U.S. Army reserve, at a time when most, including me, knew little, if anything, about South East Asia. While the U.S. did then have troops in Vietnam, their presence was small and our basic-training sergeants used Korea as their standard. By the time I was discharged, the United States was drafting 50,000 young men a month. Over the long length of the war, 2,700,000 Americans served in Vietnam, or almost 10% of the eligible population. 58,148 were killed and 75,000 severely disabled. 240 were awarded the Medal of Honor.

The Battle of Hue and its impact on the U.S. public’s perception of the war, is the story Mark Bowden tells. Most soldiers had been trained for the jungle; Hue was fought in the city – door-to-door, building-to-building, block-by-block. Bowden writes: “…Hue deserves to be widely remembered as the single bloodiest battle of the war, one of its defining events, and one of the most intense urban battles in American history.”

With the release of Ken Burns’ eighteen-hour documentary on the Vietnam War, fifty-year-old wounds have been re-opened. Vietnam divided the nation, more violently than today. It was the SDS and Radical “Yippes” (Youth International Party) against the police and “hard-hatters.” The losses at Hue, along with the lies and obduracy of General Westmoreland and others, led many to question government’s messages. Were we being told the truth? The under-educated and minorities comprised more than their share of foot soldiers, while many sons of the wealthy stayed in school or fled to Canada. Bowden’s book is more of a dispassionate look at that period, than is Burns’ documentary. The latter honors the soldiers, but de-emphasizes the war’s original goal – averting the spread of Communism.

It has been forty-two years since the last helicopter left Saigon with the last American aboard. Yet, feelings remain high. Was the war a mistake? On whose shoulders should blame lie? Did those who were killed or wounded, die or suffer in vain? Did the South Vietnamese endure unduly because of the U.S.’s hasty and ignominious retreat? Would the Khmer Rouge have committed genocide in Cambodia had Americans remained in Vietnam? Why were so many returning veterans treated so shabbily? Why did leaders who had privately lost faith in the war, continue to exploit the loyalty, ideals and patriotism of young American soldiers? These questions, and more, continue to haunt. It is probably too soon to answer them. Toward the end of his book, Mr. Bowden writes wisely: “Beware of men with theories that explain everything. Trust those who approach the world with humility and cautious insight.”

I believe Mark Bowden is right. The morality of the war should be debated, but answers are still being weighed. All wars are tragic, but those that are abandoned by politicians bear a special place in our hearts and minds. This book is their memorial. The soldiers who fought in Vietnam – in cities like Hue – were as brave as those who stormed the beaches at Anzio, Normandy and Iwo Jima. Because of his vivid descriptions of battle, this book, at times, is difficult to read, but Mark Bowden has done us a service in bringing the story of Hue, and the soldiers who fought there, to our attention.

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“Political Mislabels” Sydney M. Williams

By on October 10th, 2017

The Left hijacked the label “Liberal.” Yet they favor an empowered government and diminished rights for individuals. Is it liberal to hamper free speech on the nation’s campuses, for fear that alternative speech may offer preferred venues, or lest conservative speech may offend sensitive ears? Are liberals progressive, when they put the wishes of union bosses ahead of workers who would rather not pay dues that fund policies and politicians with which and with whom they disagree? Is it liberal to protect entrenched, unionized businesses against “disruptive” technologies such as Uber, in London and New York City?

Labels can be misleading. Democrats are better than Republicans in framing arguments with grandiloquent words and phrases. They create slogans and acronyms that can be contrary to the policies they represent. Those on the Right are less nuanced – less imaginative. The word “conservative,” for example, conjures images of old white men in club chairs, drinking brandy and soda. Yet, most Republicans live in “Red” states, less affluent than states that house Democrats. They do not look backward to privilege, wealth and biases against race, gender, creed and sexual orientation. Their wants are simple. They cherish the dignity of a good-paying job. They want the opportunity a good education provides. They want to conserve a culture that encourage faithfulness, thrift, hard work, respectfulness, responsibility and accountability. They believe in JFKs assertion: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what can you do for your country.”

Today, liberals want to protect people against speech they deem harmful. When I was a child and teased at school, I would come home in tears. My mother would repeat an adage whose roots go back to an 1862 publication of the African Methodist Episcopal Church: “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” Such stoicism is no longer deemed appropriate. Words can be hurtful, Leftists claim, so “safe places” must be available. Limits on speech are, thus, permitted.

Consider “net neutrality.” How could any free-market pundit be against a label that suggests openness and unfettered access? But net neutrality is a directive issued by the Obama Administration that turns the internet into a regulated utility. It was marketed as a defense against big internet service providers (ISPs), cable and telecom companies. Proponents of Net Neutrality claim they have too much power – to speed up or slow down internet access. Liberals want them regulated, like public utilities. What proponents do not say is that ISPs, like Comcast and AT&T, owe their bigness to regulation. Better service and lower prices do not come from the beneficence of government, but from competition. As well, net neutrality says nothing about far bigger internet players, like Amazon, Facebook and Google, who monopolize content. With billions of subscribers, our values today are more influenced by Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg than all the churches, synagogues and mosques in the country.

Think of “sanctuary cities.” They were once havens to shelter the innocent, but have become asylums to protect criminal aliens. Sanctuary cities claim to be humanitarian, yet they destabilize civil society by ignoring the rule of law; for example, federal detention orders from ICE (Immigration and Custom Enforcement). We saw this in 2015 when Mexican-illegal Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, who had been deported five times for seven felony convictions and who found in San Francisco a sanctuary, shot and killed Kate Steinle. Last fall, in Twin Falls, Idaho a city that declared itself as “welcoming”, three young Muslim migrants raped and then urinated in the mouth of a five-year-old girl. Wendy Olson, an Obama-appointed U.S, Attorney, threatened to prosecute any who spoke out about the crime in ways she considered “false” or “inflammatory.” Yet, words could not have exceeded the brutality of what those thugs did. Prosecutors are supposed to enforce laws, not create them. There was nothing “humanitarian” or “welcoming” about either incident. Civil society depends on obeisance to laws. In a democracy, no one, no town, no city, stands above the law.

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Withdraw From The Nuclear Deal Now By Herbert London

By on October 10th, 2017

There is a season for acceptance and a season for rejection. When it comes to compliance with the Obama nuclear weapons deal, it is time to withdraw completely at the congressionally mandated October 15 certification deadline.

There are those in the Congress and the Trump administration who believe it is too dangerous to simply walk away from an agreement. Secretary Mattis, for example, said it was in America’s national security interest to stay in the Iran deal. He, among others, has seized on the statutory provision that every 90 days the president must certify that the accord is in the nation’s security interest. They contend that President Trump should maintain the deal, but not sign the next certification this month, an odd combination of events.

As I see it, this strategic position, is clever by half. The issue isn’t really certification; it is the protection of U.S. interests. An Iran that promotes terrorism worldwide and at least in spirit has violated the accord is hardly a reliable partner.

The ayatollahs are unwilling to consider any change in the agreement, an agreement which will assuredly lead to the development of nuclear weapons in five or ten years depending on your interpretation of the JCPOA understanding. In fact, the Iranian leaders have cleverly convinced many in the U.N. that its missiles are not “designed” to carry nuclear weapons, a claim that cannot be verified based on the ambiguous inspection rules, or lack thereof.

Should the U.S. withdraw from the deal, it would not have the slightest practical effect on present conditions. Surely, there will be a U.N. condemnation. But President Trump’s instincts on this matter have been stated repeatedly. “This is a bad deal, a very bad deal,” he noted. If that is the case, it is time to send Iran a message: the U.S. will not countenance your violations, nor will the Trump administration stand by as you promote terrorism around the globe.

What the Obama administration promoted with Iran is now regarded as a precedent for fledging nuclear nations like North Korea. It has been argued that what is good for one devilish nation should be good for another. North Korea claims it has a right to possess and test nuclear weapons. When challenged on this point, the North Korean ambassador to the United Nations invariably refers to the P5+1 accord with Iran. After all, five of these six nations constitute the Security Council, the legal test for the United Nations.

Should the Trump team withdraw from the Iran deal – as I believe it should – the effect on our ties to Iran would be negligible. In fact, the deterrence that undergirds the U.S. position would be unaffected. North Koreans would learn that a different stance on world affairs is now on order, one not particularly eager to compromise with rogue states.

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#10 The Humanitarian Hoax of Gun Control: Killing America With Kindness by Linda Goudsmit

By on October 9th, 2017

The Humanitarian Hoax is a deliberate and deceitful tactic of presenting a destructive policy as altruistic. The humanitarian huckster presents himself as a compassionate advocate when in fact he is the disguised enemy.

Those who support gun control and those who oppose gun control are speaking two different languages.

The Second Amendment guaranteeing the people the right to bear arms was passed by Congress September 25, 1789 and ratified December 15, 1791. The American Revolution freed the colonists from British oppression and our Founding Fathers were determined to prevent future tyranny by their newly formed federal government. The federal government would be armed but so would the citizenry – it was a balance of power arrangement.

One hundred fifty years later Mao Tse-Tung speaking in front of the Central Committee of the Communist Party famously declared:

“Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” Mao is telling the Communist Party leaders that armed struggle is necessary to acquire political power. “Whoever wants to seize and retain state power must have a strong army. Yes, we are advocates of the omnipotence of revolutionary war; that is good, not bad, it is Marxist. The guns of the Russian Communist Party created socialism. We shall create a democratic republic. Experience in the class struggle in the era of imperialism teaches us that it is only by the power of the gun that the working class and the labouring masses can defeat the armed bourgeoisie and landlords; in this sense we may say that only with guns can the whole world be transformed. We are advocates of the abolition of war, we do not want war; but war can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun.”

Mao Tse-Tung was a communist revolutionary seeking to overthrow the established rule of the nationalist Republic of China. He advocated arming his supporters (proletariat) against the opposition (the bourgeoisie). Mao was successful and the communist People’s Republic of China took power in 1949.

So, guns have been used to both take power from those who have power (Mao) and also to balance the power of the federal government (Second Amendment). These are the two languages of gun control.

The left-wing radical humanitarian hucksters of gun control also know that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. They are disingenuously selling gun control as the altruistic answer to gun violence but in reality they seek to eliminate the Second Amendment and disarm its supporters. Why?

The Second Amendment right to bear arms gives citizens the right to defend and protect themselves against the tyranny of the armed federal government. The Founding Fathers envisioned an independent America with a strong federal government restrained by a three-part checks and balances structure and insured by the Second Amendment. Leftists today envision a Maoist public completely dependent (Marxism/Socialism/Communism) upon the federal government and completely controlled by the federal government. The Leftist dream requires dissolution of the Second Amendment.

Gun control is being disingenuously marketed as the solution to gun violence. The fiction of the gun control narrative is that gun control will keep Americans safe from the gun violence that has terrorized the country. Here is the problem. Chicago, with its strict gun control laws is a record-setter in homicides. Almost everyone killed in Chicago was shot to death. So how did gun control stop the gun violence in Chicago? It didn’t. Criminals find access to guns.

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HIS SAY: AN AUSTRALIAN SPEAKS HIS MIND….PETER ARNOLD: YOU’RE OFFENDED? OY VEY!

By on October 9th, 2017

If your ancestors, dear reader, were Europeans of any sort, know that they threw us out of their countries, or stood aside while we were persecuted, evicted and murdered. So emulate us and get a life! As individuals we have not spent 3,500 years wallowing in self-pity. We get on with it and so should you.

So you belong to a group of people who are feeling offended by other people’s attitudes towards you? Is that right?

Well, here is some advice from someone whose people have been offended by other peoples’ attitudes, hate speech, assaults, random and mob murders, mass evictions, and organised genocides on a scale not known before or since. The advice – “Get a life! Get on with living!”

My people have been insulted, humiliated, despised and rejected to such an extent that it is the Western tradition and the vituperation directed against us is the longest hatred. This venom goes back more than 3,000 years.

Since we first lived amongst the ancient Egyptians, we were despised by them and then by their conquerors, the ancient Greeks and Romans. We have been evicted from every European country, unless we were first killed or handed over to organised killers.

If your ancestors, dear reader, are European of any sort, they threw us of their countries, or stood aside while we were evicted, persecuted and murdered. If you’re a Muslim, your ancestors, in the days of the great Islamic Empires, relegated us to the inferior status of dhimmi.

Many of you are descended from ancestors who participated in the Crusades, which ‘incidentally’ killed my people while plundering through Europe en route to ‘liberating’ Jerusalem from the Muslims.

We were evicted from England in 1290, from Spain and Portugal in 1492, confined to the Pale of Settlement in Czarist Russia and forced into paying Russian “candle” and “box” taxes levied only on us.

We were not welcomed, despite being on the electoral roll, in the British Parliament, until 1885. Our numbers at Harvard, Princeton and Yale universities were limited. We were excluded from the Royal Sydney Golf Club and the Melbourne Club.

More recently, of course, the Final Solution, to which but a gallant and courageous few of your recent forebears objected. Your grandparents were citizens of countries, including Australia, which refused sanctuary to my people trying to flee Nazi terror.

And, after we finally managed to establish a sanctuary on a tiny piece of ancestral Mediterranean land, from which we had repeatedly been ejected over the past 2,500 years, 900,000 of us were thrown out of nearby Islamic countries. Having established that tiny sanctuary, my people have been repeatedly attacked, not only by invading armies, but by international organisations whose constituent nations are so dependent on Islamic oil that they care nothing for criticising or opposing those attacks.

And you are offended! Offended by something said about, or denied to, your people in the last few years or centuries. Sorry, but that does not compare with our multi-millennial entitlement to take genuine offence.

So emulate us and get a life! That is what we have done – and still do. As individuals. We have not spent 3,500 years wallowing in self-pity. We have got on with it.

Above all, we have valued education. Our Nobel Prize and Fields Medal recipients are totally disproportionate to our numbers. Imagine 0.2% of the world’s population winning more than 22% of Nobel prizes in medicine and the sciences! Our little strip of Mediterranean land provides the technology you use every day in you iPhone, your USB sticks and your computers.

Oh, you might still be wondering which group of people I belong to. The group of people still hated by tens of thousands – as expressed in their websites and blogs, and whose existence is threatened daily by Iranian mullahs. A clue… our motto is “To life!” Does that ring a bell? What about Fiddler on the Roof?

So, to my fellow citizens who feel offended, who feel insulted, by the way some bigot refers to them, who feel that “the others” owe you something , to you I say get over it! Get a life! By all means possible, draw attention to your critics’ and tormenters’ stupidity, but don’t let hurt feelings dominate your life. Get on with making the most of what you can, with your own talents.

We Jews have done it for 3,500 years. You can too.

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Trump’s ‘Calm before the Storm’ is a Message to North Korea and Iran by Alan M. Dershowitz

By on October 9th, 2017

U.S. policy toward both Iran and North Korea is closely related, because we must prevent Iran from joining the nuclear club and becoming another, even more dangerous version of North Korea.

President Trump cannot afford to wait and do nothing as Iran and North Korea grow ever stronger, ever more menacing and become greater and greater threats. He must do something — now.

Reporters continue scratching their heads about what PresidentTrum p meant when he spoke of the “calm before the storm” Thursday as he was hosting a dinner for military commanders and their spouses. It seems clear to me that he was sending a powerful message to North Korea and Iran: change your behavior now, or prepare to face new but unspecified painful consequences.

U.S. President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump pose for pictures with senior military leaders and spouses after a briefing in the White House on October 5, 2017. During the photo session, President Trump spoke of the “calm before the storm”. (Photo by Andrew Harrer-Pool/Getty Images)

North Korea and Iran are taking the measure of President Trump to see how far they can push him and how much they can get away with. The North Koreans continue testing nuclear weapons and long-range missiles and threaten to launch a nuclear attack on America and our allies that could kills millions. Iran is likely engaging in activities that could contribute to the design and development of its own nuclear explosive device.

If these worrisome actions by the two rogue nations persist, there will be a storm. And as candidate Trump said during his campaign for the White House, he will not tell our enemies what kind of storm to expect — only that he will not allow current trends that endanger our national security and that of our allies to continue unabated.

The president must make some difficult decisions: whether to continue to rely on economic sanctions that don’t appear to be working against North Korea; and whether to refuse to certify Iranian compliance with the bad nuclear deal and demand that additional constraints be placed on the Islamic Republic’s dangerous and provocative activities.

President Trump faces an Oct. 15 deadline to decide whether to certify Iranian compliance with the nuclear agreement, which is designed to keep it from developing nuclear weapons for the next few years. News reports say he is expected to refuse to make that certification.

U.S. policy toward both Iran and North Korea is closely related, because we must prevent Iran from joining the nuclear club and becoming another, even more dangerous version of North Korea.

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