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December 2018

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Europe’s destiny Daniel Johnson

By on December 6th, 2018

http://standpointmag.co.uk/manchester-square-december-2018-daniel-johnson-europe-destiny

Emerging from the summit that set the EU seal on Theresa May’s deal, Angela Merkel described Brexit as “tragic”. Normally a tragedy implies some kind of necessity or inevitability. Yet there was nothing unavoidable about the predicament in which the United Kingdom now finds itself. The EU leaders insist that it was the British people, manipulated by lying populists, who chose Brexit and must now face up to the “exorbitant” cost of their decision. But in reality the British were left with little choice, after the EU ignored their concerns and set a course that can only make the “democratic deficit” burgeon into bureaucratic bankruptcy.

The European project was always a perpetual motion machine for the insatiable accumulation of powers, whose engineers jealously watch over the acquis communautaire like dragons guarding their hoard. In the absence of British influence, the stage is set for a display of full-scale Euro-triumphalism in the Valhalla of Brussels — followed in due course by Götterdämmerung, as the euro goes up in flames and they are overwhelmed by a flood of migration.

Lest such Wagnerian metaphors seem extravagant, consider the case of Angela Merkel. Not only are the German Chancellor and her husband votaries of the Master, but she has lately begun making repeated references to Schicksal (“Fate” or “Destiny”) in her speeches about Europe. Most recently, in her address to the European Parliament, she implicitly warned against dependence on the United States in defence and security: “The times when we could rely on others without reservation are over.” She went on, in more mystical vein: “That means we Europeans have to take our destiny in our own hands if we want to survive as a community.”

What exactly “destiny” signifies here is still obscure, but Mrs Merkel has reiterated this sentiment so many times that it clearly means a great deal to her. Europe, for those who love its history and culture, really does have a cosmic importance that goes far beyond politics.

In some profound sense, the cityscapes and landscapes of this continent belong to all of us who adhere to the civilisation of the West. A cultural memory is embodied in the stones of Venice, the ruins of Athens, the boulevards of Paris that is not exclusively the property of those who happen to live here and now, but rather connects past and future generations too. It has become more fashionable to denounce the legacy that we may bequeath than to reflect at what cost our forebears fought to preserve our civilisation. When we ponder the plight of posterity, we ignore at our peril the ordeals of our ancestry.

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Israel’s Arrow By John J. Miller

By on December 6th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2018/11/17/israels-missile-defense-system-iron-dome/

Uzi Rubin’s missile-defense system comes of age

Tel Aviv

Nobody knew the day or hour the strike would come — and when a Syrian missile blasted into the sky and headed toward Israel last year, the man who had spent much of his life preparing for that moment slept through the whole thing. “I read about it the next morning,” Uzi Rubin tells me.

Here’s what happened, as best as anyone without an Israeli security clearance can determine: On the night of March 17, 2017, an Israeli jet penetrated Syrian airspace. Although these scouting missions were known to occur, Israeli officials had rarely discussed them — and this was the first one they ever confirmed. Syria responded by launching a Russian-made SA-5 anti-aircraft missile. The Israeli pilot probably took evasive action. Fooled, the SA-5 zipped past the plane. Many surface-to-air missiles will self-destruct when they miss their targets. This one didn’t. It continued to fly southwest.

Radars in Israel detected the rocket, plotted its trajectory, and predicted a point of impact. Although their calculations couldn’t have established exactly where the missile would hit, they implied that it would come down somewhere in the Jordan Valley, within the borders of Israel. At least that’s what General Zvi Haimovitz, head of the Israeli Air Defense Command, said three days later at a press conference. The area in question, between the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea, includes a lot of empty desert, but also concentrations of people, from the sparse settlements of the Bedouin to the city of Jericho.

For more than 16 years, Israel’s Arrow missile-defense system had stood guard, waiting for such a situation. Confronted by the incoming SA-5, an Israeli officer made a snap decision: The threat was real. Israel fired a missile at the missile — a bullet at a bullet, to borrow the common metaphor. In a hypersonic inter­ception, somewhere over the borders of Israel, Syria, and Jordan, the Arrow obliterated the SA-5.

It might not have happened but for Rubin, the man who slept. For years, he had called on Israel to defend itself against missile attacks, overseeing the construction of the system that finally sprang to life last year. Its performance, raved the former general and prime minister Ehud Barak, “demonstrated our awesome capability.” Looking back on the incident, Rubin is more reserved, even deadpan: “I was satisfied with the results.”

The 81-year-old Rubin has every reason to feel more than satisfaction. He has devoted his life to his nation’s security. He might even be called the founding father of Israeli missile defense. Without him, it’s possible that Israel wouldn’t have had the ability to shoot down that SA-5, let alone to protect itself from the graver threats now posed by Iran and perhaps others in the future.

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Feds Discover Largest Oil, Natural-Gas Reserve in History By Mairead McArdle

By on December 6th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/feds-discover-largest-oil-natural-gas-reserve-in-history/

The federal government has discovered a massive new reserve of oil and natural gas in Texas and New Mexico that it says has the “largest continuous oil and gas resource potential ever assessed.”

“Christmas came a few weeks early this year,” Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke said of the new reserve, which is believed to have enough energy to fuel the U.S. for nearly seven years.

In all, the new reserve is said to contain 281 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, 46.3 billion barrels of oil, and 20 billion barrels of natural-gas liquids, the Interior Department’s U.S. Geological Survey said.

Almost a third of the U.S.’s total crude-oil production comes from the Permian Basin where the reserve was found, making it the biggest shale-oil-producing region in the U.S.

“American strength flows from American energy, and as it turns out, we have a lot of American energy,” said Zinke. “Before this assessment came down, I was bullish on oil and gas production in the United States. Now, I know for a fact that American energy dominance is within our grasp as a nation.”

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A Tax Revolt in France By Michael Brendan Dougherty

By on December 6th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/12/a-tax-revolt-in-france/

The democratic peoples of the West have tired of the politics of the sensible center and are demanding change.

Finally, France has a bona fide working-class riot. Rather than the usual, a riot of bourgeois students on behalf of a notional working class.

They are wearing the yellow vests that all motorists are required to possess in case their car is disabled. The protest began with outrage against the imposition of new fuel taxes that hit those outside the metropolis particularly hard. The government has already delayed the taxes, but people are still in the streets, and their grievances are multiplying.

French truckers and farmers are calling a strike in support of the Yellow Vests. The Macron government is seeking out “leaders” who can speak for this movement, and with whom it can negotiate. This is French politics as we know, love, and fear it; where faith in the efficacy of democratic institutions is low, and faith in demotic anger somewhat higher.

Finally, a Color Revolution comes to a Western government, one that is definitely not supported by or coordinated from the U.S. State Department.

Oh, I know that is quite a thing to say. But what else to call the Yellow Vest protest? Like the Color Revolutions of Eastern Europe, it is now a catch-all brand for a variety of causes being advanced against a centralized state that is felt to be unresponsive. You can get a sense of the panic from a Guardian editorial that begins, “For Europe’s sake, Emmanuel Macron needs help.”

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What was the real point of the Mueller investigation? Since the beginning, it’s been an investigation in search of a crime rather than an investigation of a suspected crime Roger Kimball

By on December 6th, 2018

https://spectator.us/special-counsel-robert-s-mueller-iii/

Will wonders never cease? Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III is recommending that General Mike Flynn serve no jail time. Isn’t that nice of him? Of course, Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III first destroyed Mike Flynn’s career and essentially pauperized him through legal fees (‘the process,’ as they say, ‘is the punishment’).

In making his recommendation, Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III cited Gen. Flynn’s ‘substantial assistance’ in the long-running soap opera that is his campaign against the president of the United States. The centerpiece of that ‘special assistance’ are the 19 interviews with the Office of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III for which Gen. Flynn sat.

But what was the original sin here? Why was Gen. Flynn targeted in the first place?

The real answer is twofold. First, former President Obama and his national security team had a special dislike for Mike Flynn. He put America first. He was not one of them. Second, Gen. Flynn, as Donald Trump’s national security adviser, was a convenient proxy for the President. Damaging Flynn would damage the President. Damaging Flynn would also send a message to other people thinking about joining the President’s team. Flynn was forced from his office just weeks after Donald Trump was inaugurated. The atmosphere in Washington was acrid with shock bordering on panic. The impossible had just happened. Donald Trump had been elected. But would anyone who was anyone actually work for the administration? Destroying so emblematic a figure as Gen. Flynn, a conspicuous patriot, would also send a message to others contemplating joining the administration: Here Be Monsters, though as it turned out the monsters were not in the President’s entourage but rather in the office of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III, the FBI, the Department of Justice, and the media industrial complex.

Those are the real reasons Gen. Flynn was targeted. The supposed answer, however, was that he lied to the FBI about a phone call he had with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak before Trump’s inauguration. Problem: the two FBI agents who interviewed him did not think he was lying. But Flynn pleaded guilty to just that. Why? Again, it’s the process-being-the-punishment issue. The heavy hand of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III had essentially bankrupted Flynn with legal fees and here was the DOJ dangling the possibility of prosecuting him for violating the Logan Act, a never-enforced 18th-century law that criminalizes negotiations between unauthorized persons and a foreign government. As Byron York noted earlier this year, to many observers, ‘it appears the Justice Department used a never-enforced law and a convoluted theory as a pretext to question Flynn — and then, when FBI questioners came away believing Flynn had not lied to them, forged ahead with a false-statements prosecution anyway.’ That’s about the size of it. Which is why, as York concluded, ‘the Flynn matter is at the very heart of the Trump-Russia affair, and there is still a lot to learn about it.’

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What Mazie Knew: Democrats are Just too Darn Smart David Catron

By on December 6th, 2018

https://spectator.org/democrats-are-just-too-darned-smart/
Their agenda is beyond the ken of mere voters.

At the dawn of the information age, when dumb terminals began appearing on desks and the din of dot matrix printers deafened all and sundry, every enterprise of consequence employed a misanthrope charged with the care and feeding of these machines. Occasionally, this reclusive individual reluctantly submitted to questions about the output of the equipment. His response to such impertinent queries usually consisted of word salads heavily seasoned with jargon and topped off with a surly suggestion that it was just too complicated to explain to mere users. This is eerily similar to the way Democrats relate to the voters.

The latest example can be found in a conversation between Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick and Democrat Senator Mazie Hirono. The latter, you will recall, is the Senator from Hawaii who commanded men in general to “shut up” when many of us had the temerity to question the outrageous smear tactics that she and the other Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee deployed in their disastrous attempt to derail the Senate’s confirmation of now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Lithwick asked the Senator, “What is the thing the Democrats need to be saying about why the courts matter? Hirono responded to this as follows:

I wish I had the answer to that because one of the things that we, Democrats, have a really hard time is connecting to people’s hearts.… But we have a really hard time doing that and one of the reasons it was told to me at one of our retreats was that we Democrats know so much, that is true. And we have kind of have to tell everyone how smart we are and so we have a tendency to be very left brain.… That is not how people make decisions.

Before we get to the stunning hubris of that answer, consider the patronizing premise of the question. Lithwick assumes the electorate’s failure to rise up and demand that the Senate stop carrying out its constitutional function with regard to presidential appointments to the Supreme Court is due to its inability to “understand” why the courts matter. It has obviously never occurred to her that the voters actually have quite a firm grasp on the importance of the judiciary and that this is exactly why they want President Trump and a GOP-controlled Senate to determine which jurists will plant their posteriors on the federal bench.

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Tunnel vision and UNIFIL by Ruthie Blum

By on December 6th, 2018

https://www.jns.org/opinion/tunnel-vision-and-unifil/
UNIFIL has done nothing since the 2006 war but sit back and relax while Hezbollah proceeded to rebuild its massive and increasingly sophisticated arsenal, courtesy of Iran, aimed at wiping Israel off the map.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu phoned U.N. Secretary General António Guterres on Wednesday and demanded that he and the rest of the international community condemn the Iran-backed, Shi’ite terrorist organization Hezbollah for constructing cross-border attack tunnels from Lebanon into Israel.

A day earlier, the Israel Defense Forces had launched “Operation Northern Shield” to locate and destroy a network of tunnels aimed at providing Hezbollah terrorists with a quick and easy way to infiltrate Israel, and potentially kidnap and kill innocent people. The tunnels are part of Hezbollah’s “Conquest of the Galilee” plan, to be implemented at the start of its next war against Israel.

No surprise there.

Like its patrons in Tehran, Hezbollah has been open about its mission to annihilate the “Zionist enemy.” As recently as last week, in fact, Iran’s terrorist proxy released a video of satellite images pointing to coordinates in central Israel, with the accompanying general threat: “Attack and you will regret it.”

A 2015 report in the pro-Hezbollah Lebanese newspaper As-Safir was more specific, as it included quotes from Hezbollah members discussing the group’s cross-border tunnels. That Israeli officials neither verified nor denied the report was to be expected. Security considerations and anti-terrorism strategies are often at the root of silence on the part of Israel’s defense establishment.

Today, however, the IDF says that “Operation Northern Shield” has been in the works for a “number of years.” It also claims to have been aware of Hezbollah’s tunnel-building since 2006, after the end of the Second Lebanon War.

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The Perpetual Presidency By Victor Davis Hanson

By on December 6th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/12/obama-takes-credit-for-trump-economy/

Obama believes that all of Trump’s successes are due to Obama, and all of Trump’s setbacks are his own.

Former president Barack Obama recently continued his series of public broadsides against his successor, President Donald Trump.

Obama’s charges are paradoxical. On one hand, Obama seems to believe that he, rather than Trump, should be credited with the current economic boom and the emergence of the United States as the world’s largest energy producer. But Obama also has charged that Trump’s policies are pernicious and failing.

Apparently, Obama believes that all of Trump’s successes are due to Obama, and all of Trump’s setbacks are his own.

Obama certainly forgets the old rule: Presidents, fairly or not, get both credit and blame for everything that happens on their watch, from Day One to the last hour of their tenures — even when wars abroad, technological breakthroughs, natural disasters, and market collapses have nothing to do with their governance.

Trump ran on the promise of a “Make America Great Again” economic renaissance. He pledged massive deregulation, fair rather than free trade, and tax reform and reduction.

NOW WATCH: ‘Trump Wants Mexico To Send Migrants Home After Clash At Border’

Watch: 0:42
Trump Wants Mexico To Send Migrants Home After Clash At Border

Trump jawboned against outsourcing and offshoring, and praised rather than lectured private enterprise. He sought to reindustrialize the Midwest and promised to open new federal land to fossil-fuel production, complete proposed pipelines, and lift burdensome restrictions on fracking and horizontal drilling.

In contrast, Obama had argued that the U.S. could never drill itself out of oil shortages. He advocated making the use of coal so expensive that it would disappear as an American energy resource. Renewable energy sources such as wind and solar were Obama’s vision of an America energy future.

As late as last year, Larry Summers, director of the National Economic Council for two years during the Obama administration, ridiculed Trump’s boasts that he could achieve annualized GDP growth of 3 percent as the stuff of “tooth fairies and ludicrous supply-side economics.”

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The Commonwealth Option By Jack Fowler

By on December 6th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-commonwealth-option/

With the Brexit issue coming to a head next week when Parliament formally considers PM Theresa May’s Draft Withdrawal Agreement, a number of leading British conservatives and allies — including former NR director Robert Agostinelli and acclaimed historian Andrew Roberts — penned a letter, a version of which was published by the Telegraph, calling for MPs to vote against the agreement (“put it out of its misery”) and instead support a “Super Canada” option. The complete and original version of the letter follows:

The Prime Minister’s proposed Brexit deal has been discussed in detail, and to describe it would replicate the excellent work of many journalists. However, we feel that it has broad and historical implications for the UK’s future relationship with the World, especially our traditional allies in the Commonwealth (and Anglosphere)

Britain is facing a stark choice between two paths.

One path leads to stasis, where the expressed will of the people is delayed indefinitely, and the nation lacks the tools of statecraft necessary to forge a renewed partnership with Europe outside the political structures of the European Union, as well as to pursue new partnerships with our traditional and cultural allies and the world beyond.

Another path leads to a mutually respectful accord with Europe, respect for the democratic process as expressed on June 23, 2016, as well as the opportunity to help build the foundation of a new globalisation – one more resilient, equitable and responsive than its predecessor.

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Palestinians: No Difference Between Hamas and Fatah by Khaled Abu Toameh

By on December 6th, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13391/palestinians-hamas-fatah-difference

It is supposedly fine for Mahmoud Abbas and his officials to condemn Hamas on a daily basis. It is supposedly not fine, however, for the US administration to condemn Hamas for its terrorist attacks against Israel.

“The proposed [unseen] US resolution is harmful to the Palestinians’ right of resistance.” — Emad Omar, Palestinian political analyst.

This is obviously a short-lived honeymoon that will end the day after the UN General Assembly vote on the anti-Hamas resolution. The morning after the vote, Abbas will wake up to the realization that Hamas was a strange bedfellow indeed.

Has Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas changed his position toward his rivals in Hamas? This is the question that some Palestinians have been asking in the wake of Abbas’s opposition to a US-sponsored draft resolution that asks the United Nations General Assembly to condemn Hamas for repeatedly firing rockets at Israel and instigating violence.

Abbas’s hatred of Hamas is far from secret. For years – and until today – Abbas has used every available platform to launch scathing attacks on Hamas.

He accused Hamas of foiling Arab efforts to end the dispute with his ruling Fatah faction.

He accused Hamas of masterminding a series of explosions targeting the homes of some of his senior Fatah officials in the Gaza Strip.

He accused Hamas of staging a coup in 2007 against his Palestinian Authority (PA) in the Gaza Strip and seeking to establish a separate Palestinian there.

He accused Hamas of standing behind the botched assassination attempt on his prime minister, Rami Hamdallah, in the Gaza Strip earlier this year. He even made a metaphoric remark that, “shoes will be pouring on the heads of Hamas leaders.”

In his last speech at the UN General Assembly, Abbas repeated his charges against Hamas and threatened to impose new punitive measures against the Gaza Strip unless Hamas allows his government to assume full control over the Hamas-ruled coastal enclave.

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