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December 2018

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Italy Adopts Hardline Immigration Law by Soeren Kern

By on December 7th, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13392/italy-immigration-law

Under the new law, the Italian government will only grant asylum to legitimate refugees of war or victims of political persecution. Asylum seekers may now lose their protection if they are convicted of crimes including: threat or violence to a public official; physical assault; female genital mutilation; and a variety of theft charges.

“I wonder if those who contest the security decree have even read it. I do not really understand what the problem is: it deports criminals and increases the fight against the mafia, racketeering and drugs.” — Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior Matteo Salvini.

Italy will not sign the United Nations Global Compact for Migration, nor will Italian officials attend a conference in Marrakech, Morocco, on December 10 and 11 to adopt the agreement. The Global Compact not only aims to establish migration as a human right, but also to outlaw criticism of migration through hate crimes legislation.

The Italian Parliament has approved a tough new immigration and security law that will make it easier to deport migrants who commit crimes and strip those convicted of terrorism of their Italian citizenship.

Italy’s lower house of parliament, the Camera dei Deputati, voted 396 to 99 on November 28 to approve the new law, which was sponsored by Interior Minister Matteo Salvini. The law had previously been approved by the Italian Senate on November 7. The measure was promulgated by President Sergio Mattarella on December 3.Also known as the “Security Decree” or the “Salvini Decree,” the new law includes several key provisions:

Eliminates Humanitarian Protection. A primary objective of the new law is to limit the number of migrants granted asylum in Italy. To achieve this aim, Article 1 of the decree abolishes residence permits for so-called humanitarian protection, a form of security available to those not eligible for refugee status.

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Refute Palestinian Lies to Promote Mideast Peace There’s no ‘occupied’ territory, and the Jews have been in Israel for thousands of years. Max Singer

By on December 7th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/refute-palestinian-lies-to-promote-mideast-peace-1544139570

‘Our demand for fairness for Israel is actually a demand for peace,” declared Nikki Haley in July. It’s important for the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations to stress fairness, and above all truth, in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, because Palestinian rejection of peace frequently hides behind falsehoods. Ending the acceptance of these falsehoods is critical to putting Middle East diplomacy on a path toward peace.

The U.S. has already acted to gain recognition of three key truths that had long been diplomatically ignored: Jerusalem is the capital of Israel; very few of the Palestinians that the U.N. Relief and Works Agency supports are actually refugees; and the U.N. has been unacceptably biased against Israel.

Now the U.S. can tip the political balance toward peace and stability by insisting on two other truths. First, despite widespread use of the term in diplomatic documents and debate, there is no such thing as “occupied Palestinian territory” because there has never been a Palestinian territory to occupy. As some Palestinians point out, they have never had a state of their own. This is far more than a game of semantics. If the land was Palestinian, then Israel could have stolen it. If the land isn’t Palestinian, then Israel couldn’t have stolen it. It’s critical that the U.S. actively combat the falsehood that Israel exists on stolen Palestinian land.

The second falsehood is married to the first. The Palestinians not only claim that all the land is theirs, they also deny any Jewish connection to it. During the failed Camp David talks in 2000, Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat stunned President Clinton by asserting the Jews had no connection to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the place where the first and second Jewish temples stood.

Mr. Clinton may have been surprised, but the Palestinian denial of any historic Jewish connection to the land is nothing new, and it continues. Since the Palestinians know that hardly anyone outside the Arab who would agree with them, they rarely say it in English.

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Trump administration touts fossil fuels at U.N. climate summit By Geoff Hill

By on December 7th, 2018

KATOWICE, Poland – President Trump may be pulling the United States out of the global Paris Accord on global warming, but the administration is making a hard sell for its side of the story at the giant UN climate summit now underway in the heart of Poland’s coal-producing region.

With delegates from rich and poor nations struggling to reach a consensus on writing the rule book for reducing emissions and battling climate change, U.S. officials and private-sector representatives are organizing a major side event Monday on the continued role of fossil fuels and nuclear power. The presentation is similar to one a year ago that angered many green groups that have clustered here.

Energy Department official Wells Griffith III will lead the event, billed as a showcase of “ways to use fossil fuels as cleanly and efficiently as possible,” along with nuclear energy.

An event at last year’s gathering in Germany, led by then White House energy adviser George David Banks, drew a protest from environmental groups. Protesters stood in the audience while singing and waving placards.

Mr. Banks told The Washington Times that many of those advocating an end to fossil fuels “do not understand the political reality facing much of the world.”

COP-24, as this year’s summit is officially known, has attracted more than 30,000 delegates from 196 countries but fewer heads of state than other years.

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The Oman-Israel-Palestinian connection (Realpolitik) Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

By on December 7th, 2018

Oman’s unique geo-strategic location has enticed China’s recent $10BN investment in an industrial park at Oman’s southern port of Duqm on the northern Indian Ocean/Arabian Sea. Moreover, the Port of Rotterdam – the largest port in Europe – has played a key role in the impressive expansion of Oman’s Port of Sohar, located near the Strait of Hormuz and one of the fastest growing ports in the world. Furthermore, Denmark’s Maersk, the largest shipping company in the world, has played a major role in the development of Oman’s largest port, Salalah, which is situated near Yemen on the northern Indian Ocean.

Oman adheres to the moderate Ibadiyyah branch of Islam, and is ruled by the effective, but ailing, 78-year-old Sultan Qaboos, who is diversifying the economy, attracting foreign investment and moderating internal tribal rivalry, which could haunt the country upon his departure. Homeland security-driven attempts are being made to reduce the number of foreign laborers, who account for about 40% of Oman’s 4.8MN population.

Oman is located at the strategically critical Strait of Hurmuz, which is the only sea passage from the Persian Gulf to the open ocean (the Gulf of Oman/Indian Ocean), the route of 20% of the global petroleum.

Oman is sandwiched between Iran’s megalomaniacal Ayatollahs (21 nautical miles apart), Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – which are threatened by the Ayatollahs’ subversion, terrorism and conventional military – and the volcanic Yemen, which is a major platform of Islamic terrorism, extending the Ayatollahs’ reach in their attempt to topple the House of Saud.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Here’s What Happened To That Canadian Academic Defenestrated For Defending Speech Although an unlikely alliance, conservatives must recognize the importance of joining hands with free speech heroes like this liberal Canadian academic.By Casey Chalk

By on December 6th, 2018

http://thefederalist.com/2018/12/06/heres-happened-canadian-run-off-campus-defending-speech/

More than a year ago, a Canadian academic publicly sought to promote open inquiry and freedom of expression in response to concerns Canadian universities were restricting these rights. Some students at this person’s institution protested, charging all manner of evils, and drawing all manner of far-fetched comparisons. The institution sought to administer disciplinary measures for the breach of political correctness.

You might think I’m referring to University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson, the renowned proponent of free speech and author of the best-selling “12 Rules for Life,” but I’m not. There’s another Canadian doing similar, important work reverberating through the country’s academic institutions, and she’s increasingly going viral.

That person is former Wilfrid Laurier graduate student Lindsay Shepherd, who recently offered me an interview.
A Hauntingly Familiar Story

Shepherd’s battle with the liberal academic panopticon began shortly after she joined the master’s program in Cultural Analysis and Social Theory at Wilfrid Laurier University (WLU) in September 2017. On November 1, 2017, during a first-year undergraduate class Shepherd was teaching, she showed two clips from a public Canadian television channel. The first featured Peterson, who has been an outspoken opponent of Canadian laws that mandate the use of transgender pronouns.

A heated discussion among the students followed the videos. Later, a student approached an LGBTQ support group, which then filed a complaint with the university’s Diversity and Equity Office. That office requested a meeting with Shepherd on November 8.

Shepherd secretly recorded the meeting, which turned into an interrogation. During the 40-minute circus, university staff (who acknowledged her “positionality” regarding open inquiry), accused of her having created a “toxic climate for some of the students” by playing the clips and approaching the topic neutrally.

One professor even compared the pronoun debate to discussing whether a student of color should have rights. He also called Peterson a member of the “alt-right” and compared playing a clip featuring Peterson to “neutrally playing a speech by Hitler or Milo Yiannopoulos.” Peterson’s perspective was also rejected as “not valid,” as, apparently, not all perspectives are up for debate.

Shepherd released the recording to Canadian media. Not long afterward, WLU’s president, Deborah MacLatchy, apologized, as did Nathan Rambukkana, a professor and Shepherd’s academic advisor, who was the main antagonist in the meeting. MacLatchy said the meeting did not “reflect the values and practices to which Laurier aspires.”

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Tony Abbott: Australia is prepared to offer asylum to persecuted Pakistani mum

By on December 6th, 2018

Tony Abbott: Australia is prepared to offer asylum to persecuted Pakistani mum

Former prime minister Tony Abbott says the Australian government is prepared to offer a persecuted Pakistani Christian mother asylum.

Asia Bibi spent eight years on death row in Pakistan for blasphemy against Islam.

The mother-of-five was recently acquitted in the country’s supreme court, sparking major protests.

Asia has faced ongoing threats and her family fears attacks.

Several countries have offered her asylum and Mr Abbott says “of course” Australia should too.

“It was very disappointing to me that the British government, who you’d think would be the first Western government to take this matter on, squibbed it because of ridiculous concerns about what local Muslims might think,” he tells Ben Fordham.

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The New Patriarchy: How Trans Radicalism Hurts Women, Children—and Trans People Themselves

By on December 6th, 2018

“I knew by the time I was eight that I didn’t want to be a boy,” says Melissa. “But I didn’t know what I wanted to be.” Born in a provincial English town in the early 1970s and brought up by evangelical Christians, the boy had never heard of a transsexual (a term that was widely used in the decades before “transgender” entered common usage in the 1990s). As for gay men, “they were all going to hell.” As soon as he could, he moved to London and “experimented,” presenting himself as a man at work and a woman in the evenings. In the early 2000s, his gender dysphoria—the distress caused by the feeling that your body is the wrong sex—came to a head. “The thought of being buried as an old man became simply unbearable.”

But even as Melissa came to that bleak realization, a new future for her was opening up. Britain, like many other countries, was planning to grant gender-dysphoric people a route to legal recognition as members of the opposite sex. Under the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) of 2004, after a psychological evaluation and two years presenting themselves in their preferred sex role, they could change the sex on their birth certificates. Melissa, who takes female hormones and has undergone surgery to refashion her genitals into a female form, is now legally a woman. “People take me for what they see,” she says. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

The motive for such laws was largely compassion. Gender dysphoria was viewed as a rare and distressing condition that could be alleviated by accommodating sufferers as legal exceptions to the rules of biology. But a decade and a half later, a more radical notion is sweeping across the Western world, with English-speaking countries in the vanguard. The brainchild of a few sexologists, trans-activists and academics, it has spread via lobby groups and the internet, and on liberal campuses. It is now becoming consolidated in practice and codified into law, with profound consequences—not just for people who wish they had been born the opposite sex, but for everyone.

That notion is the deceptively simple, quasi-mystical idea that everyone is born with a “gender identity”—an innate sense of being a man or woman that usually, but not always, aligns with biological sex. If the two are in conflict, the person is “transgender” and it is their gender identity, not their biological sex, that indicates who they truly are. The theory has been expanded to include people who regard themselves non-binary, “agender,” gender-fluid or a host of other terms, meaning that they belong to neither sex or feel located at some indeterminate (and possibly shifting) point between the two. According to this theory, no one can determine a person’s gender identity except that person, and no one else can challenge it. As with religious belief, it is entirely subjective. A simple declaration—“gender self-identification”—is all it takes to override biology.

One consequence is a huge increase in the number of people who say they do not identify with their natal sex. In Britain, for example, since the GRA came into force, just 5,000 people have used its provisions. Now the government reckons that approximately 1% of the population is transgender—around 650,000 people.

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Civic Virtues and the Future of the Centre-Right :Tony Abbott

By on December 6th, 2018

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2018/12/civic-virtues-and-the-future-of-the-centre-right/
Anthony John Abbott is an Australian politician who served as the 28th Prime Minister of Australia from 2013 to 2015 and Leader of the Liberal Party from 2009 to 2015. He served as Leader of the Opposition from 2009 to 2013. Abbott was first elected Member of Parliament for Warringah in 1994.

As our ideas have multiplied, our beliefs have diminished. That’s the big gap in Centre-Right politics which former Canadian PM Stephen Harper knows we must strive to fill. People crave a moral purpose, and if we don’t offer them any inspiration, others will fill that vacuum, but not necessarily to our countries’ good.

This is the age of disruption, in politics as much as in business, and political parties must respond or fail. In France and Italy the long-established big parties, of the Left and of the Right, have largely been swept away. In Germany, the main parties, of the Right too but especially of the Left, are much diminished. In the United States, Donald Trump smashed the Republican establishment to grab the nomination, and then smashed the Democrat establishment to grab the presidency—after the Democrat establishment had itself been rocked by Bernie Sanders. In Britain, the governing Conservatives are convulsed over Brexit; while an out-and-out Marxist has taken over the Labour Party, and quite conceivably could become prime minister. Even here in Australia, more than a quarter of the electorate is refusing to support the two main parties that, in one guise or another, have always held office.

Post-GFC low economic growth and quantitative-easing-induced asset price inflation have meant stagnant wages, less affordable housing—and more cranky voters. The big political fights are now about cultural and identity issues, not just economic ones; and the fights within political parties are becoming just as intense as those between them. On the Left, the supporters of bigger government and the opponents of tradition seem everywhere ascendant. Even on the Right, there seem to be fewer economic liberals; and, at least among the establishment, more social progressives. The decline of traditional media and the rise of social media make it easier than ever to live in echo chambers of the Left or the Right, so that anyone who doesn’t share your view seems not just wrong but alien, even immoral. In this fragmented and polarised discourse, antagonists advance alternative facts, not just competing interpretations. “Things fall apart”, so it seems, and “the centre cannot hold”. Our challenge is to re-create some common ground, as did the generations after Yeats.

Back in the Reagan–Thatcher era, it was easy enough to know what characterised the Centre-Right of politics, at least in the English-speaking world: lower taxes, smaller government and winning the Cold War. In the face of suffocating officialdom and punitive tax rates, it seemed that the conservative side of politics had become free marketeers. Only now, we conservatives can’t decide whether it’s more important that trade is free or that it’s fair. Then, there was near unanimity on the need to oppose communism; and few things unite people like a common enemy. Today, even an increasingly cold peace with China and with Russia has yet to reproduce that glue. Fading memories of “real existing socialism” plus the excesses of big business, the perceived limitations of markets, and declining trust in institutions have sapped enthusiasm for limited government. In these more trying times, what might the Centre-Right collectively stand for?

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EDUCATION, ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Young minds filled with green mush Tony Thomas

By on December 6th, 2018

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2018/12/young-minds-filled-with-toxic-green-mush/
The original Children’s Crusade, if it actually happened, didn’t end well for the pre-pubescent zealots, who are said to have ended up as slaves. Today’s kids would know as much if their brainwashers, also known as ‘teachers’, focused on fact rather than getting them into the streets to demonstrate against nasty weather.
I avoid driving locally from 3.30 to 4pm weekdays. That’s because parents chauffeuring kids home from school create congestion equal to evening peak hour. Kids today are a pampered lot. With their forays into climate-strike activism last week, these same kids have become truly insufferable, posing as climate martyrs and lionised by the Fairfax/ABC media and renewables lobbyists. Kids unwilling to unstack the dishwasher after dinner are now condemning their parents for climate criminality.

Five-year-olds are exhorted by adult trainers to dump pre-school and go on strike to combat the global warming that began 150 years ago, following the Little Ice Age. Older kids can skive off for a week with a clear conscience.[1]

Did I say five-year-olds? Well yes, for progressives, indoctrination begins at four.[2] At Brunswick Kindergarten Inc. in The Greens’ bicycle-infested Melbourne heartland, teacher Catherine Sundbye, “with a passion for early learning” runs “Kids Off Nauru lessons” for the four-year-olds, with parents’ approval. The kids come dressed in blue symbolising their sadness , as in #BlueForNauru. Her newsletter chronicles the four-year-olds’ responses to “What would you say to the politicians who won’t let the refugees in?” She clarifies, “It’s not about running a scare campaign” and says most of her tots don’t think the Coalition refugee policy is fair. Ms Sundbye sums up, “That was beautiful to see: how they got it on a deep level. It’s never too early to get them to be part of the conversation.”

A conversation with a four-year-old about national policy? I’ll be waiting with bated breath for sand-box set’s perspective on franking credits.

On the climate strike, parent “Trent” was interviewed with his eight-year-old climate-protesting son by a credulous ABC Radio reporter. Trent pere claimed, risibly, that his eight-year-old had “a pretty incredible understanding of the science.”

The kid strikers virtue-signalling about their “sacrifice” had merely skipped school for a fun day out, having memorised a few hand-me-down slogans and lies about the extent, rate and impacts of global warming.[3] As Year 12 student Marco Bellemo put it on ABC QandA on Monday:

“I see the Liberal Party still wanting to build new coal, when we should clearly be transitioning to renewable energy to help save lives… climate change is killing people, it’s causing so many natural disasters.”

Marco happens to be a student organiser/activist at Northcote High, in the heart of Melbourne’s progressive-voting inner belt.[4] I wish him well in further exploring the issues. For example, the IPCC itself fails to establish links between global warming and natural disasters such as drought.[5] Prima facie, warming lets the air hold more water vapour and hence promotes rain.

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Vienna’s empty streets Douglas Murray

By on December 6th, 2018

http://standpointmag.co.uk/outsiders-diary-december-2018-douglas-murray-vienna

The Sappho Prize is an award given annually by the Free Press Society of Denmark, and as I remarked on receiving it recently, it has sometimes seemed as though I am the only person I know who hasn’t received it. But it is a terrific honour, awarded by a very brave and stalwart group of Danes who got together to uphold the principles of free expression in their country after these came under attack in 2005. One of the upsides about free-speech wars is that you can never particularly predict where your heroes will break out. And for me a whole collection of them showed up in Scandinavia.

Apart from being friends, the list of previous recipients is also a list of some of my favourite people. Mark Steyn received it some years ago and gave a brilliant speech, the only downside of which was that he used up every available joke that a chap can make on receiving a prize named after history’s most famous lesbian. When Flemming Rose and Roger Scruton received the award they made no lesbian jokes, Melanie Phillips even fewer. But since the award was named after Sappho for her voice as a poet, I was proud to quote her own words during my acceptance speech. As it happened, I had picked up a copy of her works between visiting refugee camps during the migration crisis. Since I had inscribed my copy “Molivos, Lesbos, 2016”, and the award was in part a recognition of the book I wrote as a result of those travels, the ceremony in the Danish Parliament really did feel meant. As there was a cash component to the prize, I quoted Sappho’s fragment 120: “Wealth without virtue is / a harmful companion; / but a mixture of both, / the happiest friendship.”

***

This past month also took me back to Vienna — one of my favourite cities, in part because of the mixture of emotions it provokes. The first is obviously the layer of feeling that nowhere is better than this, and that this is as good as any built city can get. Then there are the whiffs of the scene that was once there. A couple of years ago I was going with a friend around an exhibition with some Schiele, Klimt and others. Did she ever wonder, I asked, whether things couldn’t get as good as this again? I remember her almost laughing. Of course they couldn’t. A city which had Mahler, Freud and Zweig around at the same time — just for starters — seemed unlikely to be bettered in any conceivable future.

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