Displaying posts published in

December 2018

The Twilight of Human-Rights Diplomacy The sunny idealism of 2011 couldn’t survive the cold realities of geopolitics. By Walter Russell Mead

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-twilight-of-human-rights-diplomacy-11545090825

Pesident Trump’s abandonment of democracy promotion and human rights is among the most striking of his departures from the post-Cold War American foreign-policy consensus. To the despair and fury of liberal internationalists and neoconservatives alike, Mr. Trump often appears determined to conduct American diplomacy as if human rights abroad were not a concern.

But the human-rights recession in U.S. foreign policy was already under way when the president took office. It isn’t hard to see why: Efforts to base America’s foreign policy on human rights and democracy hadn’t been yielding their desired results for some time.

Think back to 2011, when President Obama knew where the arc of history was headed and planned to steer American policy accordingly. As the Arab Spring toppled Hosni Mubarak, Ben Rhodes told reporters the administration believed “there is not going to be a return to the way things were in Egypt.” The people had spoken, tyranny was broken, and Egyptian democracy was here to stay.

Those were heady times. Recep Tayyip Erdogan was creating an “Islamist democracy” in Turkey. Aung San Suu Kyi was being compared to Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela for her reformist advocacy in Burma.

Rep. Martha McSally appointed by Arizona governor to Senate seat held by John McCain By Alex Pappas

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/rep-martha-mcsally-appointed-to-open-arizona-senate-seat

Republican Rep. Martha McSally, just weeks after losing one of the midterms’ tightest and most contentious Senate races, was appointed by Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey on Tuesday to fill the state’s other U.S. Senate seat.

McSally will serve for at least the next two years in the seat that was held by longtime Arizona Sen. John McCain until his death in August.

“With her experience and long record of service, Martha is uniquely qualified to step up and fight for Arizona’s interests in the U.S. Senate,” Ducey said in a statement.

Ducey had appointed former Sen. Jon Kyl to the seat in September, but Kyl, after serving for several months, announced plans to resign at the end of the year. According to Ducey’s office, Kyl’s resignation will be effective Dec. 31.

Poll: Hamas leader would win Palestinian elections

https://worldisraelnews.com/poll-hamas-leader-would-win-palestinian-elections/?utm_source=browser&utm_medium=push_notification&utm_campaign=PushCrew_notification_1545158090&pushcrew_powered=1

If the Palestinians held elections, the leader of the Hamas terror group would defeat current PA President Mahmoud Abbas, according to a new poll.

By Associated Press and World Israel News Staff

A public opinion poll shows that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas would lose to the leader of the Islamic terror group Hamas if elections were held today.

The Palestinians last held elections 13 years ago, with Abbas extending his original four-year term indefinitely.

The survey, conducted by pollster Khalil Shikaki and released Tuesday, shows that Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh would win with 49 percent to Abbas’ 42 percent.

Shikaki links the results to Hamas’ increasingly confrontational posture with Israel.

Michael Flynn Is Owed an Apology One year after he pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, there is still no evidence that he is a traitor. By Eli Lake

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-12-18/michael-flynn-sentencing-washington-owes-him-an-apology

Remember when Michael Flynn was a traitor? It was early 2017. Democrats were still stinging from their defeat at the hands of Donald Trump. Every day, it seemed, brought news of another contact between Trumpworld and Russia.

Flynn, a retired three-star general, was forced to resign after serving less than a month as Trump’s national security adviser. He was said to have colluded with Russians during the presidential transition. For this he was defamed as a Russian agent and mocked as a bumbling Benedict Arnold. Former officials of Barack Obama’s administration hinted that Flynn had been compromised.

As it turns out, none of this was true. On Tuesday Flynn will receive a sentence for the one count to which he has pleaded guilty, lying to the FBI. Special Counsel Robert Mueller has recommended no jail time. Flynn will have a chance to get on with his life.

Electronic Barriers While the nation squabbles over a border wall, technology could help cut off the supply of jobs to illegal immigrants. Heather Mac Donald

https://www.city-journal.org/e-verify-illegal-immigration

Donald Trump was elected president because a large segment of the American public was fed up with the government’s failure to stop mass illegal immigration. Trump’s campaign promise to build a wall between Mexico and the U.S. drew an ecstatic response from his supporters, long scorned for their belief that the decision regarding who enters the country belongs to Americans, not to foreign nationals living outside the country. But the wall has not been built, and the fight over its funding has sucked political capital from the pursuit of other, and arguably better, means to deter illegal immigrants.

The most important of those measures is to prevent unauthorized aliens from getting work, since the jobs magnet is the primary lure for illegal immigration. Commentators and analysts across the political spectrum have acknowledged that preventing illegal employment is key to deterring illegal immigration. The New York Times editorialized in 1982 that “there can be no effective enforcement of the borders” without mandatory verification of a worker’s papers. A technology has existed for decades to do just that. E-Verify, run by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, allows employers to check—instantaneously and for free—whether the work documents presented by a potential employee correspond to an existing Social Security number or whether they are forged. Universal implementation of E-Verify has been blocked, however, by employers who prefer to hire illegal aliens over American workers.

Trump invoked E-Verify during the 2016 campaign but has since stopped publicly promoting it. Yet E-Verify is more popular with the public than the wall; at least two-thirds of poll respondents support mandatory verification of a worker’s lawful status. States that require it (Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Utah) have changed worker behavior. Illegal aliens dropped off the payrolls in Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina, prompting employers to hire legal workers, according to a 2013 study conducted by Bloomberg Government. A 2017 study by Carnegie Mellon University found that Arizona’s E-Verify law induced return migration from Arizona to Mexico and decreased illegal immigration into Arizona from Mexico. A study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas found that the population of less educated young Mexican and Central American immigrants dropped in states with mandatory E-Verify, in part because they moved to states without the mandate and in part because they returned to their home countries. Wages for low-skilled American and legal-immigrant workers in mandatory E-Verify states rose between 7 percent and 9 percent, while wages for illegal Mexican males dropped nearly 8 percent.

US Congresswoman-elect Tlaib to wear ‘Palestinian dress’ at swearing-in

https://worldisraelnews.com/tlaib-to-wear-palestinian-dress-at-congress-swearing-in/

American Congresswoman-elect Rashida Tlaib will wear what she claims is traditional Palestinian garb to her swearing-in ceremony.

By Jack Gold, World Israel News

U.S. Congresswoman-elect Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) announced that she will wear a traditional Palestinian gown when sworn into Congress in January.

Tlaib, of Palestinian-Arab origin, posted a photo of the embroidered gown on Instagram with the caption: ” Sneak peek: This is what I am wearing when I am sworn into Congress. #PalestinianThobe #ForMyYama (mother in Arabic).”

The dress she displayed is common to the entire Middle East, with nothing specifically “Palestinian” about it.

Among the reactions to her post was the comment: “Obviously she doesn’t wish to be an American.” Another said, “Not appropriate, not pro-American.”

Genocide in South Africa: Edward Cline

https://edwardcline.blogspot.com/2018/12/genocide-in-south-africa.html

Andile Mngxitama calling for mass murder

The MSM does not deign to report an ounce of news about the South African government deciding, by constitutional amendment, to steal all white-owned farmland. This is chiefly at the prompting and urging of the Parliament’s communist/racist Julius Malema. He is not only a communist, but a combination Leninist and Stalinist; Lenin imposed communism on Russia; Stalin decided to seize the most productive farmland, which was in the Ukraine, and as a consequence starved millions to death when the collectivization of agriculture failed. Malema is a member of the African National Congress (ANC) and heads the Economic Freedom Fighters (which means it fights against freedom, not for it)

Cyril Ramaphosa is the president of the country and is as much a racist as Malema.

Katy Hopkins and Lauren Southern have excellent, informative videos about the economic situation in South Africa and the atmosphere of fear among white farmers can be found here and here. Stalin’s starvation of millions was deliberate and premeditated. The same thing will happen when the farmers are eradicated; the whole population will starve. It is estimated that one farmer feeds about 3,000 people. Additionally, the country has a water problem; Israel offered its technology to help correct the problem, but Ramaphosa rejected the offer, based on Israel’s relation with the Palestinians. This is spiting one’s nose for ideological and racial reasons, and not really concerned about the population.

The lie about how whites “stole” the land from the blacks is fiction out of whole cloth. Southern presents a history of South Africa that contradicts the common story and belief propagated by the government, that whites systemically robbed blacks of their land. The Dutch began to settle the Cape Town area in the late 17th century. They got along with two black tribes which were eventually wiped out by the Bantu from the north, The Khoikhoi (previously called Hottentots) and the San. A detailed description of the chief and final battle between the Voortrekkers and the Zulus can be found here. As Southern and Hopkins relate, the white settlers entered into land trades and agreements with blacks but never expropriated it. The farms that Ramaphosa and Melama want to take originated with the whites, and were created and maintained by them…for centuries.

The story of blacks once owning hundreds of farms “stolen” by whites is as much a myth of Wakandaone, two and three.

An 8-Year-Old Bride by Majid Rafizadeh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13413/child-brides

After the mullahs’ party imposed Sharia law in Iran and made it the official unquestionable law of the land, the authorities immediately changed the age of legal marriage to 9 for girls and 13 for boys. After 40 years, the Sharia-based law has not changed.

The prevalence child marriage “still remains far too high. In a set of 25 countries for which detailed analysis was conducted, at least one in three women marry before the age of 18, and one in five women have their first child before the age of 18.” — World Bank.

According to official Iranian statistics, 180,000 child marriages take place there each year. In addition, in 2013 in Iran, a law was passed that allows men to marry their adopted daughters.

Facebook acted as an auction block for a child bride in South Sudan as recently as last month.

Unless the international community steps in and, instead of appealing to the Islamist leaders of Iran, applies pressure to get these laws changed, more children will be at risk.

“At eight years old my parents sat me down for a serious talk,” said Noushin, during the interview. “I can still remember the tremble in my mother’s voice. She told me that in two days I would be part of an Islamic religious blessing. My father insisted that I behave, and not cause a scene. I was confused, but I trusted them, that they were telling me the truth. I trusted them right up to the moment that the wedding ring went onto my finger and I became the bride of a 43 year old man.” Noushin, now 19, is the mother of three.

You might assume that her parents, who so willingly gave their child to this man, were not educated or had never been exposed to modern ways of thinking. In fact, Noushin’s father had been educated in Europe, and then came back to his country to work for the regime.

Noushin said the wedding was “a nightmare I could not wake up from. I understood that I was married, but I did not understand what that meant.” She said was forced to have sexual intercourse before she reached puberty. “Each day was filled with new confusion, and new horrors,” she said, as she tried to become accustomed to the role she was forced to endure.

Yellow Vest Riots Spread: Week Five by Bruce Bawer

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13433/yellow-vest-riots

Across Western Europe, ordinary citizens feel ignored and condescended to by their political, business, academic, and media elites. Against the will of most of these citizens, their leaders are gradually surrendering their nations’ sovereignty to the EU.

Also against these citizens’ will, their nations have been flooded with Muslim immigrants who embody a major cultural challenge, have caused massive social unrest, and represent a devastating economic burden.

Although it is increasingly obvious that taxpayer-funded Islamization is leading Western Europe down the wrong path, the EU, which stands foursquare behind this disastrous development, refuses to reverse course.

Perhaps the question should not be why Western Europeans are rioting but why they did not start rioting a long time ago.

Paris has now seen its fifth weekend of street demonstrations by the so-called gilets jaunes, or “yellow vests,” although reports suggest that things may be finally winding down. Meanwhile, the protests — which in many instances rise to the level of riots, with innumerable examples of looting, vandalism, and arson – have spread. The last couple of weekends have seen disturbances in other major French cities, such as Toulouse, Bordeaux and Lyon, as well as in cities in the Low Countries, including Brussels, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Nijmegen and Maastricht. This weekend, in London, as the tension, confusion, and frustration surrounding Brexit have intensified and the possibility of a second referendum seemed to increase, yellow-vested protesters, most of them apparently supporters of Brexit, blocked major bridges and shut down streets in the city center.

Is Sergey Kislyak Central to the Set-Up of Michael Flynn? By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2018/12/17/is-sergey-kislyak-central

During an unhinged, fact-free meltdown on Fox News, anchor Shepard Smith wrongly accused Lt. General Michael Flynn of calling the Russians after sanctions against that country were announced in December 2016. “So the U.S. places sanctions on Russia, Michael Flynn calls Russia, Michael Flynn lies about calling Russia, and tells others to lie for him about calling Russia,” Smith ranted on Friday.

Aside from noting that the U.S. placed sanctions on Russia, Smith is flat-out wrong. The truth, according to the charging document filed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, is that Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak called Flynn on December 28, 2016, the very same day the sanctions were publicized. So as pundits—and a federal judge—take a closer look at the circumstances surrounding Flynn’s fateful January 2017 interview with the FBI, it’s important to take another step back in time and scrutinize the calls that landed Flynn in legal trouble.

Further, who is Sergey Kislyak? Why does he figure so prominently not just in the Flynn matter but also the recusal of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the framing of Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page, and yet unsubstantiated accusations against Trump’ son-in-law Jared Kushner? His longtime ties to the Obama White House may offer some clues—and raise legitimate questions about whether Kislyak himself was a central player in the set-up of Michael Flynn.

Flynn, the incoming national security advisor, and Kislyak exchanged several calls in late December 2016. At the time, the Obama Administration was retaliating for the Kremlin’s alleged interference in the presidential election with those sanctions; Flynn and Kislyak spoke numerous times between December 28 and December 31. One subject discussed during those calls was how Vladimir Putin might respond to the tepid punishment Obama imposed for the so-called “national emergency” caused by Russia’s “significant malicious cyber-enabled activities.”