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June 2018

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

MY SAY: HISTORIC MEETINGS AND SUMMITS

By on June 13th, 2018

What I call “splash” news- a blackout of virtually everything else- while pundits parse, praise, and pan high level meetings, is on full display with the recent Kim/Trump summit.

A note of caution; I like Donald Trump and wish him well, but I can’t stop thinking about past “historic meetings”and how they ended.

Nixon/Kissinger went to China in 1972 to meet with Mao Tse Tung , a, ruthless tyrant and mass murderer and enslaver of millions. In resolving to restore relations with China, they abandoned Taiwan a most reliable ally. Now there was a success. Remember Tiananmen Square in 1989? After several weeks of demonstrations, Chinese troops entered Tiananmen Square on June 4 and fired on civilians. Estimates of the death toll range from several hundred to thousands.

Then in 1978 there was the “historic” Camp David Accord signed after Anwar Sadat went to Jerusalem to bark orders at the Knesset demanding full return of the Sinai Penisula (92% of all land captured in 1967 and retained in 1973 after Egypt lost both wars against Israel). He further demanded a got concessions from Menachem Begin, including promises of “autonomy” for the Arab residents of the West Bank. We see what the promise of”autonomy” has led to. And for the record, the “normal relations” that were established did not halt the sermons and schoolbooks calling for Israel’s destruction.

And then there was the “historic” Oslo accord of September 1993, with handshakes all around among Clinton, Rabin and mass murderer and arch terrorist Yasser Arafat on the lawn of the White House. The media cooed and swooned and seasoned statesmen predicted peace at last in the Middle East. The Israelis gave up shrines and towns to Arab control and the Arabs swiftly destroyed them and resumed terror against civilians in markets, buses, beaches, weddings and restaurants, leaving mangled strollers and dead babies still in their cribs.

So I curb my enthusiasm….rsk

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

The “Trump Doctrine” for the Middle East by Guy Millière

By on June 13th, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12506/trump-doctrine-middle-east

Trump has shown the strength of the United States and restored its credibility in a region where strength and force determine credibility.

Trump more broadly laid the foundation for a new alliance of the United States with the Sunni Arab world, but he put two conditions on it: a cessation of all Sunni Arab support for Islamic terrorism and an openness to the prospect of a regional peace that included Israel.

Secretary of State Pompeo spoke of the “Palestinians”, not of the Palestinian Authority, as in Iran, possibly to emphasize the distinction between the people and their leadership, and that the leadership in both situations, may no longer be part of the solution. Hamas, for the US, is clearly not part of any solution.

Netanyahu rightly said that Palestinian leaders, whoever they may be, do not want peace with Israel, but “peace without Israel”. What instead could take place would be peace without the Palestinian leaders. What could also take place would be peace without the Iranian mullahs.

After three successive American Presidents had used a six-month waiver to defer moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem for more than two decades, President Donald J. Trump decided not to wait any longer. On December 7, 2017, he declared that the United States recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel; the official embassy transfer took place on May 14th, the day of Israel’s 70th anniversary.

From the moment of Trump’s declaration, leaders of the Muslim world expressed anger and announced major trouble. An Islamic summit conference was convened in Istanbul a week later, and ended with statements about a “crime against Palestine”. Western European leaders followed suit. Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel said that President Trump’s decision was a “serious mistake” and could have huge “consequences”. French President Emmanuel Macron, going further, declared that the decision could provoke a “war”.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Moms to Daughters: Don’t Be Ali Watkins By Julie Kelly

By on June 13th, 2018

https://amgreatness.com/2018/06/13/moms-to-daughters-dont

The case of Ali Watkins offers mothers an opening to have an uncomfortable yet necessary conversation with their daughters:

Don’t sleep your way to the top.

One would think in this #metoo, female empowerment, equal pay, don’t-even-tell-me-my-dress-is-pretty climate of workplace taboos, that conversation would be unnecessary. Twentysomething women and their successors have been programmed to be independent of men—especially white, older men. Our daughters’ internal soundtrack is a nonstop loop of Katy Perry tunes and Hillary Clinton speeches: “I’m With Him” just doesn’t have the same appeal.

So, it’s surprising to discover that young liberal women are still getting ahead the old-fashioned way. And not only is this behavior accepted, it is rewarded by the same news media overlords who have fueled the gender wars; boasted about their fealty to women in the workplace; and ridiculed powerful men preying on ambitious young women.

Web of Deceit
Ali Watkins, 26, is aNew York Times reporter mentioned in a federal indictment handed down last week against a former staffer for the congressional committee who is investigating the Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy. James Wolfe, 58, was the head of security for the Senate Intelligence Committee until last December; his main job was to protect classified information.

While Watkins was a college intern at a D.C. news organization, the two started having an affair that lasted more than three years. Wolfe was interviewed by federal officials as part of the FBI’s ongoing investigation into criminal leaks of classified information to the media. When he was asked about his relationship and contact with Watkins and other reporters, he lied. He is now charged with three counts of making a false statement to a government agency.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

The Trump-Kim Summit: What Lies Ahead Why President Trump has plenty of reason for optimism. Joseph Klein

By on June 13th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270441/trump-kim-summit-what-lies-ahead-joseph-klein

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un and President Trump shook hands for the cameras in front of a row of alternating U.S. and North Korean flags, as they began their historic summit meeting in Singapore shortly after 9 am local time on June 12, 2018. President Trump told reporters in brief remarks before the start of an approximately 40-minute one-on-one meeting, with just translators present, that he “felt really great” and that it was “an honor” to meet Kim Jong-un. “We’re going to have a great discussion,” Trump said. “We will have a great relationship.” Kim Jong-un declared, “Well, it was not easy to get here. The past worked as fetters on our limbs, and the old prejudices and practices worked as obstacles on our way forward. But we overcame all of them, and we are here today.”

Following their private meeting, the two leaders walked to a larger room to be joined by their respective advisers, and then attended a working lunch. The historic summit concluded after about five hours with a joint statement in which President Trump “committed to provide security guarantees to the DPRK [the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea], and Chairman Kim Jong Un reaffirmed his firm and unwavering commitment to complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”

The joint statement described the summit as “an epochal event of great significance in overcoming decades of tensions and hostilities between the two countries and for the opening up of a new future.” The two leaders agreed to “follow-on negotiations, led by the U.S. Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, and a relevant high-level DPRK official, at the earliest possible date, to implement the outcomes of the U.S.–DPRK summit.” More summit meetings may be in the offing.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Terrorist Time Bombs in the Making By Eileen F. Toplansky

By on June 13th, 2018

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/06/terrorist_time_bombs_in_the_making.html

One of the most despicable things that the Arab world does to its children is to turn them into human bombs. Propaganda in the form of songs is regularly broadcast on the Palestinian radio, The Voice of Palestine, as well as the Fatah-run TV station Awdah.

The song’s lyrics are as follows:

Our Martyrs are convoys and our bones are mountains
They don’t surrender to the lowly
We aren’t deterred by imprisonment
Palestine is etched on the heart of the fetus
A proud Martyr in his mother’s womb
And the Arab state will remain ours – Arab, Arab Palestine
We [hold] the rifles to our chests and our eyes are raised to you
Our homes are trenches and our souls are the sacrifice for you O Jerusalem, you will not remain stolen.

– “The First Direction of Prayer” by Syrian singer Assala Nasri
Official P.A. radio station The Voice of Palestine, Feb. 3, 2018

Innocent Arab children are being brought into this world for the explicit purpose of becoming killing machines. Are there any words to describe this despicable madness?

Since 1996, the Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) has been highlighting the heinous propaganda tools used in the Muslim world to “seek martyrdom-death.”

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

The Key to Trump’s Success in North Korea By Karin McQuillan

By on June 13th, 2018

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/06/the_key_to_trumps_success_in_north_korea.html

Who would have thought a real estate developer from New York City, famous for plastering his name in big letters on his buildings, would be a champion in foreign policy? Big surprise: It turns out that being confident, tough, and aggressive works well for a president dealing with dangerous pipsqueaks like ISIS and North Korea.

Trump isn’t intimidated by anybody. Not by business rivals, not by critics, not by rogue FBI agents, not by foreign leaders. Certainly not by failed experts who urge meekness, caution, and limited goals.

Our president is devoted to one thing: winning for America. He does listen to our military and work with its members to achieve the possible. He does understand how power works. Korea could thumb its nose at us because it was protected by China. So, first, Trump removed that protection by going after China. The astute Sundance at Conservative Treehouse has been pointing out for months that the trade pressure on China was the prerequisite to movement on Korea. Our expert diplomats and analysts still don’t talk about this big picture. Trump is obviously a strategic thinker, as you have to be in the business world, as in the military.

It’s not all that complicated. Kim came to the table because Trump forced him to. North Korea was made to understand quite thoroughly and clearly that its grandstanding with nukes was over. Being clear was the first step to success. Trump has no toleration for a nuclear Korea, period. When communicated forcefully, through actions, not words, that was the game-changer.

Trump reversed Kim’s motivation 100%. Kim thought the nukes were his one ticket to security. Trump showed him that the nukes are his ticket to oblivion. That is why there is reason for optimism that this is not going to be the useless nuclear diplomacy we have had since Clinton.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Trump, Kim, and the Boys in the Camps By Jay Nordlinger

By on June 13th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/trump-kim-and-the-boys-in-the-camps/

President Trump did an excellent thing at the State of the Union address last January. He honored Ji Seong-ho, an almost superhuman defector from North Korea. Ji escaped the country on crutches. I saw him at the Oslo Freedom Forum a couple of weeks ago. As I wrote, “he projects an air of ebullience. I can’t help thinking he is happy to be alive.”

Trump has said some shocking things in recent hours. For example, he said the following about Kim Jong-un: “He is very talented. Anybody who takes over a situation like he did at 26 years of age and is able to run it, and run it tough. I don’t say he was nice or say anything about it. He ran it, few people at that age — you could take one out of 10,000, could not do it.”

It is unclear how old Kim is. Probably, he was 28 when he inherited the dictatorship. But that is a triviality.

He has certainly “run it tough,” if that’s the way you want to characterize Kim’s rule over North Korea. His father chose him for his dictatorial mettle. This apple did not fall very far from the tree. Kim Jong-il passed over his two older sons to anoint the youngest, Jong-un. (If you would like to read more about this, consult my 2015 book, Children of Monsters.)

Two years ago, I interviewed another North Korean defector, Jung Gwang-il. (All North Korean escapees are considered defectors, because all North Koreans are supposed to belong to the state, body and soul.) Jung was in the gulag, like so many of his countrymen. Let me give a paragraph from the piece I wrote about him. It is a horrible paragraph, and you may wish to skip it, but here it is, in the interest of truth:

In the winter, the prisoners were made to get wood from the mountain. Many were injured or killed, as the trees fell or the logs rolled down the mountain. Other prisoners would not pause to bury the dead. It would have taken too much energy in the frozen ground. They carried the bodies back to a shed next to a latrine. At night, when you went to the latrine, you could hear moaning from the shed — some weren’t dead yet. By the spring, they were all dead, of course. The bodies had formed a great gelatinous mass. And Jung and the others would have to break it apart, with shovels, and bury it.

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The Bad Iranian Deal Was Always Going to Get Worse By Victor Davis Hanson

By on June 13th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/iran-nuclear-deal-disaster-from-the-start/

The more we learn about it — as Iranian and Obama-administration deceptions are uncovered — the more we know it was a disaster from the start.

When Donald Trump withdrew from the so-called Iran deal in early May, almost all conventional wisdom in Washington was aghast.

The Left thought nullification would fast-track Iranian proliferation, incite more Iranian terrorism and adventurism, estrange our allies, and alienate a possible new friend.

Many on the conservative side (aside from Never Trumpers who are against anything Trump is for, including their own prior policies) thought it would have been wiser to back out slowly, or at least to have waited first for the duplicitous Iranians to get caught in clear violations, or to coordinate a joint withdrawal with the Europeans.

Few of these critics ever quite understood that the deal was already a stinking corpse, long overdue for burial. Iranian cunning and the strategic thinking about the asymmetrical deal had always aimed at the following trajectory:

Ostensibly postpone a bomb now, at a time when the regime was facing growing unrest and near bankruptcy from sanctions — and thus was in no position anyway to build an arsenal of bombs and missiles.

Keep occasionally cheating to ensure the apparatus for bomb-making was successfully hibernated — and therefore easily restarted at a future date.

Enjoy hundreds of billions of dollars in new commercial income over the next ten to 15 years to quiet domestic unrest, and to bank enough cash to go fully nuclear in the future.

Forge the so-called Shiite Crescent to the Mediterranean, by dominating Bashir al-Assad’s weak Syria, exploring anti-Sunni possibilities in Yemen, and bulking up Hezbollah’s Lebanon, while stocking a huge arsenal of preemptive missiles based near Israel. Hope that Iran’s regional strategic stature would only improve over the next decade.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

Don and the Dictator How should the media react to Trump’s North Korea deal?

By on June 13th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/don-and-the-dictator-1528831761

President Donald Trump seems to have given North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong Un a media coup and not received much in return—at least not yet. The joint statement signed by the U.S. President and North Korea’s leading thug says that the two countries will seek a lasting peace and the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. Mr. Trump says he received further disarmament promises beyond the written ones and the world will eventually find out if Mr. Kim fulfills them. In short, the Trump-Kim deal is precisely the kind of vague and well-meaning gesture in foreign affairs that the political left in the U.S. should love.

Tradition holds that such agreements are met with at least respectful coverage in the American media. For example, early in President Bill Clinton’s term the U.S. reached a similar agreement with North Korea’s communist dictatorship.

Twenty-five years ago today, the New York Times published an editorial called, “To Assure a Nuclear-Free Korea.” Given that Mr. Trump was in Singapore this week trying to persuade North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons program, it’s fair to say that the hopes invested by Times folk in the Clinton deal were not exactly realized. But back in 1993, the newspaper’s editorial board expressed admiration for officials in both the American and North Korean governments :

Deft diplomacy by the Clinton Administration has coaxed North Korea back from the brink. The North had threatened to bolt from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and build nuclear arms. It will now allow routine international inspections of its nuclear sites.

Gaining access to its nuclear waste sites will require further negotiation; that could provide more evidence of how much plutonium North Korea might already have produced. But the resumption of routine inspections is a critical first step toward assuring that the Korean Peninsula is truly nuclear-free.

The agreement is a tribute to sensible officials in Pyongyang who chose the path to prosperity over the road to ruin. It’s also a tribute to cool heads in Washington who refused to overreact to North Korea’s bizarre bargaining behavior.

Along with the tip of the cap to the “sensible officials in Pyongyang,” the Times went on to describe U.S. military exercises with our friends in democratic South Korea as “needlessly provocative.” Of course time would reveal that Washington’s cool heads had wildly underreacted. CONTINUE AT SITE

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Promises, Nuclear Promises Trump says he can tell Kim has changed, but the evidence is scant.

By on June 13th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/promises-nuclear-promises-1528836251

Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un both received what they most wanted from their one-day summit in Singapore on Tuesday: Images of the two men shaking hands, talking across the table and getting along famously. Whether this photo-op summitry achieved anything beyond the bonhomie is a lot less clear.

In Mr. Trump’s telling, his willingness to engage in personal diplomacy has persuaded the young Kim to abandon the nuclear-weapons program that he and his forbears have spent decades building. Mr. Trump gave Kim the legitimacy of equal billing on the world stage, but the risk was worth the gamble and has paid off in an historic change of heart.

“Chairman Kim and I just signed a joint statement in which he reaffirmed his ‘unwavering commitment to complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,’” Mr. Trump told the press after the summit. “We also agreed to vigorous negotiations to implement the agreement as soon as possible. And he [Kim] wants to do that. This isn’t the past. This isn’t another administration that never got it started and therefore never got it done.”

In this telling, the two leaders have mapped out a non-nuclear future, Mr. Kim has agreed to a radical change in policy, and all that’s left is for the two sides to work out the details. Peace is at hand.

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