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January 2019

ISRAEL, POLITICS Comments turned off

Only Two Democrat Senators Will Publicly Oppose The Anti-Israel BDS Movement On Monday and Tuesday, we offered every Democrat senator an opportunity to clarify his or her position on boycott, divestment, sanctions policies. Only two offices responded. Melissa Langsam Braunstein By Melissa Langsam Braunstein

By on January 10th, 2019

http://thefederalist.com/2019/01/10/two-democrat-senators-will-publicly-oppose-anti-israel-bds-movement/

Sen. Marco Rubio threw a rock at a political hornet’s nest on Monday when he tweeted, “The shutdown is not the reason Senate Democrats don’t want to move to Middle East Security Bill. A huge argument broke out at Senate Dem meeting last week over BDS. A significant # of Senate Democrats now support #BDS & Dem leaders want to avoid a floor vote that reveals that.”

Twitter erupted — as it is wont to do — with users arguing whether this reflected insider knowledge or was a convenient lie. Personally, I’m inclined to believe there’s something to what Rubio wrote. Anyone who’s followed American foreign policy in recent years knows that the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement is an explosive and barely contained hot-button issue for Democrats.

Consider that one year ago, Pew Research polled Americans’ attitudes toward Israel and the Palestinians. They reported that “the partisan divide in Middle East sympathies, for Israel or the Palestinians, is now wider than at any point since 1978. Currently, 79% of Republicans say they sympathize more with Israel than the Palestinians, compared with just 27% of Democrats.”

Drilling down, Pew quantified the change within the Democratic Party’s progressive wing that’s been apparent to Middle East watchers for some time: “The share of liberal Democrats who sympathize more with Israel than the Palestinians has declined from 33% to 19% since 2016. Currently, nearly twice as many liberal Democrats say they sympathize more with the Palestinians than with Israel (35% vs. 19%).”

Lest these numbers be dismissed as theoretical concerns, Midwestern voters just elected the nation’s first two pro-BDS members of Congress. Of course, neither Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan nor Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota were particularly forthright about their views during election season. It wasn’t until after winning her Democratic primary that Tlaib “explicitly endors[ed] a one-state solution and oppos[ed] aid [to Israel], a change celebrated by far-left Palestinian activists, who sharply criticized her for seeking out and receiving the J Street endorsement.” Omar didn’t publicly acknowledge that she supported BDS until after November’s election.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Disputes Over Taiwan, Trade, And Space Will Define U.S. Relationship With China In 2019, Sino-U.S. relations will be defined by the trade war, potential reunification with Taiwan, and the escalation of the new space race. By Helen Raleigh

By on January 10th, 2019

http://thefederalist.com/2019/01/10/disputes-taiwan-trade-space-will-define-u-s-relationship-china/

Which country is more dangerous to travel to for Americans: Myanmar or Communist China? If you picked Myanmar, a country that has been in civil war since its independence in 1948, you would be wrong.

The U.S. State Department issued a level II travel advisory to China last week, which means Americans should exercise increased caution when travelling in China. That is the same warning level the State Department issued in a travel advisory for Myanmar. Don’t forget that the last time the State Department issued a travel advisory to China was in 1989, right after Chinese government brutally suppressed student protesters in Tiananmen Square.

What prompted the travel advisory this time? China has arrested 13 Canadian citizens recently, on trumped up charges, in retaliation for Canadian authorities’ December arrest of Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of China’s telecom giant Huawei. The U.S. Justice Department requested Meng’s arrest on allegations that she had violated sanctions against Iran by committing financial fraud. Now, the American government is working on extraditing Meng to the United States.

Since Meng’s arrest has ignited nationalist fever in China, with the Chinese government no doubt in a revenge mood, U.S. authorities are concerned that Chinese authorities may “prohibit U.S. citizens from leaving China by using ‘exit bans’” and “U.S. citizens may be detained without access to U.S. consular services or information about their alleged crime.” Given the enormous economic ties of the two countries, it’s extraordinary for the United States to warn against its citizens travelling to the second largest economy in the world.

China, of course, dismissed such warning as unjustified. But this represents a new low in the Sino-U.S. relationship. How much worse can the Sino-U.S. relationship get before it gets better? It depends on how the two nations address three top thorny issues: trade disputes, technology competition, and Taiwan.

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P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

NYC’s New Nonbinary Birth Certificates Are A Self-Contradictory, Harmful Mistake Transgender activists imply that if something that merely exists in the mind can be put into a legal document that follows you for life, it becomes ‘real.’By Glenn T. Stanton

By on January 10th, 2019

http://thefederalist.com/2019/01/10/nycs-new-nonbinary-birth-certificates-self-contradictory-harmful-mistake/

As of January 1, residents of New York City can change their birth certificates to legally indicate they believe they are not the male or female they were born. They can also legally declare they are neither male nor female, with a simple X.

For this change, one doesn’t need a note from a physician, psychiatrist, or any official, nor to have undergone any type of clothing, body, or hormonal change. To require any of these means the individual would have to submit to someone else’s expectation of what a male or female is, a serious gender theory no-no.

The entirely subjective declaration of the claimant is all a city clerk needs to amend this most fundamental of all legal documents. You simply say it’s so, and it is. The Associated Press, HuffPo, and other outlets reported that parents can indicate their newborn is neither male nor female, but this is not so. Michael Lanza, a spokesman for the NYC Department of Health, told the The Federalist the law only applies to adults. Youth of any age can claim male, female, or the “nonbinary” X with a parent or guardian’s attestation.

Mayor Bill de Blasio praised the new law, saying New Yorkers should tell their government who they are and “not the other way around.” It’s a cuddly sentiment, to be sure, but untrue. Suppose I told de Blasio and his department of health that I’m a teenage Laotian able-bodied paraplegic and member of his City Council. He would happily tell me what’s what and “not the other way around.” Even if I have a note from my parents.

But this is not the reason this law, and similar ones in other states, is madness. I don’t use that word rhetorically, combatively, morally or judgmentally. It’s wholly descriptive. So that there’s no misunderstanding, let me clarify what I mean in using the word madness: being in state of illusion, dementia, and instability, not only disconnected from, but being contrary to reality, all while pretending to be completely healthy.

Even though I’m a shameless religious conservative, let me step out on a limb and appeal to cold, calculated, orderly reason. Laws allowing citizens to change their birth certificates to either or no sex are completely contrary to reality, and here are some reasons why.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib, and Omar Are Driving Democrats’ Agenda By Jonathan S. Tobin

By on January 10th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-rashida-tlaib-ilhan-omar-radicals-drive-democrat-agenda/

Democratic radicals are more important than Chuck and Nancy imagined.

For one evening at least, the national focus on Democrats was on the people whom party leaders want out front orchestrating the opposition to President Donald Trump. All eyes were on the titular heads of the Democratic party: House speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, who provided the response to Trump’s speech insisting on funding for border-security measures, including the wall.

Pelosi and Schumer’s stiff rejoinders, broadcast on national television, had the air of a hostage video, which set off an orgy of Internet mockery that more than matched the anger of the Left against Trump’s speech. It was an apt reminder of the opposition’s problems in spite of Trump’s unpopularity.

But it’s farcical to think that these two aging congressional warhorses were the face of the Democrats, let alone the “resistance” to Trump. Pelosi and Schumer are the ones in charge in terms of determining what Democrats will do about the shutdown and other congressional priorities. But a trio of newcomers is monopolizing the public’s attention in ways that undermine their leaders’ ability to determine the party’s agenda. Most notably, they are driving the Democrats to the left on a number of key issues.

Since their victories last year, Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.), Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.), and Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) have been acclaimed as the future of the Democratic party. Each brings her own assets and liabilities, but collectively they have become symbols of the incoming House Democratic class that is, as the party boasts, younger, more female, and more diverse. They are also much further to the left than the liberal leadership of the Democratic caucus. But is their prominence a true indicator that their party is moving further away from the political center? Or is the attention they’ve gained merely a function of their talent in getting publicity and of the media’s hunger for new faces.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Snowplow Politics By Douglas Murray

By on January 10th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2019/01/28/snowplow-politics/

Trump, Brexit, and the divides deepening between us

We have now had more than two clear years since the votes for Brexit and Trump. And although most Brexit voters dislike the tendency to link the events, the two are unavoidably intertwined.

A neutral way to interpret both surprise results was to describe them as “disruptions.” But very swiftly a range of carefully pejorative terms (“populist,” “reactive,” etc.) came to be deployed to suggest that these disruptions were not morally neutral. Soon a counter-narrative was adopted that went much further.

It was the identical nature of the pushback in both countries that was immediately striking. Shortly after the Brexit vote, the British public was inundated with media claims of “spikes” in racist incidents, “hate crimes,” and more. Whatever way people had voted, this was genuinely alarming. Had such beasts lain dormant that they had now been unleashed simply because more people ticked the box marked “Leave” than did “Remain”? Two months after the Brexit vote, a 40-year-old Polish man was murdered in Essex. The press and pro–European Union politicians pounced on it. The Guardian claimed that the killing “exposes the reality of post-referendum racism.” Even the conservative Telegraph asserted that the killing raised fears that “migrants are being targeted in post-Brexit hate-crimes.” The head of the EU Commission blamed the murder on “galloping populism.”

By the time that the man’s 16-year-old killer was convicted of his murder one year later, the story had fallen out of the news. Before the trial it had become clear that the killing was the result of nothing more than a pointless, late-night street row, awful, terrible, and with lessons of its own to impart. But the victim’s race had nothing to do with it. Neither did the British public’s decision to vote Leave.

Still, the narrative continued. The enthusiasm for the “outbreak of racism” line was such that whatever facts or counter-arguments emerged to the contrary, the “spike” in hate crimes was clung to as an article of faith. It vindicated the worst suspicions of Remainers and cowed many Leavers. That the police had been urging people to report “hate crimes” during this period (the police generally find it more restful to investigate online offense-taking than, say, deal with the upsurge in knife crime) was ignored. The narrative of “racist vote leads to upsurge in racism” was too useful to be dispensed with.

Precisely the same claim was pumped into the American system after the election of Donald Trump. A collection of offhand, occasionally off-color quotations were characterized as flagrant “dog whistles.” One joke about Mexicans — unwise though it was for a candidate — was declared to be a racist assault on all Mexicans. And once that link was made, it was the smallest of steps to pronounce the vote for Trump “racist” and some sort of green light for real racists. Politicians and pundits tied a spate of bomb threats made against Jewish community centers in the U.S. and abroad in January 2017 to the inauguration of President Trump.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Pompeo Declares an End to ‘American Shame,’ Rebuking Obama’s Mid-East Policy By Jack Crowe

By on January 10th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/mike-pompeo-declares-end-to-american-shame-rebuking-barack-obamas-mid-east-policy/

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo explicitly rejected President Obama’s vision of America’s relationship with Middle Eastern nations during a speech Thursday in Cairo, the very city where, in 2009, Obama famously declared a new beginning to U.S. relations with the Muslim and Arab world.

“Remember: It was here, here in this very city, another American stood before you,” Pompeo told an invited crowd of foreign diplomats, Egyptian officials, and students. “He told you that radical Islamist terrorism does not stem from ideology. He told you 9/11 led my country to abandon its ideals, particularly in the Middle East. He told you that the United States and the Muslim world needed ‘a new beginning.’ The results of these misjudgments have been dire.”

Pompeo went on to deride the Obama administration for a series of perceived blunders, including the failure to enforce the so-called “red line” against the use of chemical weapons by Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, and the negotiation of the Iran nuclear deal, which he described as “wishful thinking [that] led us to look the other way” as Hezbollah rearmed in Lebanon.

During the address, Pompeo emphasized the importance of asserting American influence through strategic partnerships with nation-state allies in the region, rather than the non-state actors the Obama administration sought to work with in Syria and elsewhere.

“Our eagerness to address only Muslims, not nations, ignored the rich diversity of the Middle East, and frayed old bonds. It undermined the concept of the nation-state, the building block of international stability,” Pompeo said. “And our desire for peace at any cost led us to strike a deal with Iran, our common enemy.”

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Yes, We’ve Nabbed Terrorists on the Southern Border By Deroy Murdock

By on January 10th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/yes-weve-nabbed-terrorists-on-the-southern-border/Here are some examples.

The Trump-hating media have pounded White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders for her “unfortunate misstatement” (as presidential adviser Kellyanne Conway put it) on Fox News Sunday that some 3,700 “known or suspected terrorists” were caught at the U.S.–Mexico border. In fact, these “special-interest aliens” include terrorists, people who have lived or traveled through terrorist hotbeds, and others whose whereabouts trigger closer scrutiny when entering the U.S. This number includes people apprehended on the border, but mainly at airports and other locations.

Trump’s detractors have used this dustup to imply that if there are not 3,700 ISIS killers in Tijuana pole-vaulting into San Ysidro, then terrorists must be as rare there as polar bears. This echoes the words of former U.S. representative Robert Francis O’Rourke (D., Texas). He claimed last year that “precisely zero terrorists, terrorist groups, or terror plots have ever been connected with the U.S.–Mexico border to do harm to people within the United States.”

PolitiFact — not exactly a far-right news organization — rejected O’Rourke’s statement: “We rate this claim False.”

In fact, terrorists have been caught on the southern frontier, including some who were conspiring to rustle their comrades across the border and others intent on committing mayhem against Americans. As PolitiFact explained: “It also looks to us like authorities have foiled every known plan.”

Janet Napolitano, Obama’s homeland-security secretary, testified on Capitol Hill in July 2012 that terrorists enter America via the southern frontier “from time to time.” So, we have that going for us.

Obama himself identified this problem while he was a Democratic senator from Illinois. As he said on the Senate floor on April 3, 2006, “because we live in an age where terrorists are challenging our borders, we simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, and unchecked.”

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BOOKS Comments turned off

An Expansive Python By Kyle Smith

By on January 10th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/john-cleese-of-monty-python-book-review/

A new book by Monty Python’s John Cleese revisits the wide variety of topics he delved into in the course of his two decades as a Cornell professor. Monty Python’s John Cleese, for many years a Cornell professor, weighs in brilliantly on a wide assortment of topics.

In 1986, John Cleese saw an ad in a Los Angeles magazine that claimed the following: “Buddhism gives you the competitive edge!” The oblivious machismo proved inspiring when he created the character of Otto, the dimwit thug in A Fish Called Wanda, whom Kevin Kline won an Academy Award for playing.

That ad captured Cleese’s attention because he has done a lot of thinking about religion and the sometimes curious gap between the lessons taught by religious leaders and the lessons learned by some followers. Cleese has done a lot of thinking about a lot of things, and he revisits his various fields of study with an engaging curiosity and able wit. Everything from the science of facial recognition to the art of screenwriting turns up in his slender but brilliant new book Professor at Large: The Cornell Years.

Cleese studied science when he entered the University of Cambridge, switched to law while he was there, graduated, did some other things, and in 1999 became a professor-at-large at Cornell University, where he lectured intermittently on a variety of subjects for nearly 20 years. The book collects transcripts of seven of those appearances, four of which are actually conversations between Cleese and someone else.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Health Officials Fear Setbacks in Effort to Contain Ebola Outbreak By Bridget Johnson

By on January 10th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/health-officials-fear-setbacks-in-effort-to-contain-ebola-outbreak/

The World Health Organization warned in its most recent Ebola update this month that containment of the second-largest outbreak of the virus in history could suffer disastrous setbacks if the security situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo continues to deteriorate.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its travel advisory for the region on Wednesday, covering the North Kivu and Ituri provinces that are under a travel warning from the State Department because of militant activity and dangers to civilians.

“The armed conflict and violence in the outbreak area is hampering response activities including early identification of cases, and monitoring of ‘contacts’ (people who may have been exposed to Ebola),” the CDC said. “The North Kivu and Ituri provinces are among the most populated in DRC. These provinces share borders with other countries (Rwanda and Uganda) with frequent cross-border movement for trade activities. The provinces have been experiencing a prolonged humanitarian crisis and deteriorating security situation, which is limiting public health efforts to respond to this outbreak.”

The outbreak began on Aug. 1, days after the conclusion of another Ebola outbreak on the other side of the country in Équateur province.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Venezuela swears in an illegitimate president Maduro’s second term could be a tipping point to transition

By on January 10th, 2019

https://www.ft.com/content/401e52a0-1405-11e9-a581-4ff78404524e?segmentId=b385c2ad-87ed-d8ff-aaec-0f8435cd42d9

When Nicolás Maduro was sworn in by Venezuela’s Supreme Court for a second six-year term as president on Thursday, a notable judge was missing. Christian Zerpa, a one-time Maduro ally, recently fled the country. Interviewed this week in Florida, the former Supreme Court justice called Mr Maduro’s government “disastrous” and, more importantly, “illegitimate”. It was a crucial legal point. By the end of this week, the US, Canada, and most European and Latin American countries will not recognise Mr Maduro’s presidency as legitimate either.

Venezuela is in social, economic and political freefall. Its institutions have been suborned by Mr Maduro and his inner circle. The legal basis of his second presidential term is the elections in May last year, which most of the world, although not Russia, China or Turkey, declared to be fraudulent. As a result, so too is his presidency. To put the situation baldly: if Mr Maduro were removed from power next week, many international powers would not treat it as a coup as they never recognised the presidency in the first place. Mr Maduro’s swearing-in for a second term therefore marks a tipping point for the country. Greater international isolation is a given. Although military intervention has been all but ruled out, South American attitudes are hardening, especially in neighbouring Brazil under its rightwing president Jair Bolsonaro.

An escalation of sanctions on Venezuelan officials deemed guilty of corruption and human rights abuses is likely. Also possible, if more extreme, is a ban by the Trump administration on US companies selling the dilutants and other chemicals that Venezuela needs to blend with its otherwise unmarketable heavy crude. If that happened, and the country could not find substitutes elsewhere, around 300,000 barrels a day, or one-quarter of current production, would be affected.

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