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May 2019

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The Sick Man of Europe Is Europe The EU’s election results show the Continent is far from realizing its dreams of becoming a superpower. By Josef Joffe

By on May 28th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-sick-man-of-europe-is-europe-11558989783

Two takeaways from Sunday’s European Union elections: First, the centrists—the moderate right and left—were decimated. For the first time since 1979, Christian Democrats and Social Democrats, the reliably pro-European bloc, no longer hold the majority in the 751-member European Parliament. Second, the far right—the Europe bashers and nationalists—scored big, increasing their take to about 170 seats. In Britain, the Brexit Party trounced both Labour and the Tories. In France, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally outpolled President Emmanuel Macron’s party and its allies.

The numbers mirror the shifting tectonics of European politics, which are pushing against the “ever-closer union” enshrined in the European Community’s founding treaties. It was a noble and not wild-eyed dream. Relentlessly expanding from the original six member states to 28, the EU boasted everything that could go into the making of a superpower. Its gross domestic product is only $2 trillion behind America’s and $5 trillion ahead of China’s. The EU fields as many soldiers as the U.S. does, and its population outstrips America’s by nearly 200 million. Yet in global clout, the EU is a waif in a world dominated by Washington, Beijing and Moscow.

Nor will the fates favor the EU anytime soon. For all its splendor, Europe has not been able to transmute its magnificent riches into strategic muscle, and this for three reasons.

First, as the rise of the nationalist right shows, the EU suffers from deepening ideological divisions. In the east, Poland, Hungary and the rest are jealously defending the sovereignty they had lost first to Hitler, then to Stalin. They cherish subsidies from Brussels but will not yield to what they see as diktats of liberal goodness.

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Iran Must Understand Returning to the Negotiating Table is the Only Way Forward by Con Coughlin

By on May 28th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14297/iran-deal-negotiations

As Mr Trump has made clear at his press conference in Japan, where he is currently on a state visit, his main objective is to agree a new deal with Tehran, one that, unlike Mr Obama’s flawed arrangement, addresses all aspects of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, as well as its malign activities in the Middle East.

“I really believe that Iran would like to make a deal… I think that’s very smart of them, and I think that’s a possibility to happen. It has a chance to be a great country with the same leadership.” — US President Donald J. Trump, press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo, May 27.

Mr Pompeo told me that that Washington was not pushing for regime change in Tehran, but was instead seeking a revised agreement that satisfied all of Washington’s concerns about Iran’s conduct, and not just the narrow issue of uranium enrichment.

To date, the Iranians have responded to the Trump administration’s actions by threatening to intensify their policy of destabilization in the region.

There is one simple way for Iran to defuse the mounting tensions with the US and its allies in the Gulf: return to the negotiating table and agree to a new deal on Tehran’s nuclear programme.

Amid mounting concern that Washington’s recent military build-up in the Gulf region will lead to renewed conflict, many commentators appear to have lost sight of the Trump administration’s key objective when it withdrew from the 2015 deal negotiated, in large part, by former US President Barack Obama.

The aim of US President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the agreement was not, as his Democrat critics have alleged, to provoke a military confrontation with Tehran. On the contrary, as Mr Trump has made clear at his press conference in Japan, where he is currently on a state visit, his main objective is to agree a new deal with Tehran, one that, unlike Mr Obama’s flawed arrangement, addresses all aspects of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, as well as its malign activities in the Middle East.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Climate Change is a Political Loser When voters catch on to being insulted and scorned. Bruce Thornton

By on May 28th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273850/climate-change-political-loser-bruce-thornton

First came Donald Trump’s stunning victory in 2016, after a campaign in which he rejected the “scientific consensus” on catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW), and proved true to his rhetoric by withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accords. Then a few years later, France was rocked by the “yellow vests” movement that started with protests against a tax on fuel that President Emmanuel Macron, in true globalist technocratic fashion, proposed as a way to “nudge” the masses into using less of the carbon-based energy allegedly heating the planet. And now comes Australia, where contrary to the predictions of the globalist elite, the anti-carbon progressive who had proposed job-killing regulations to cut carbon emissions in half by 2030, failed to defeat the conservative incumbent who would rather save jobs than “save the planet.”

Climate change is looking like a losing election issue.

The global technocrats, for whom Climate Change has been one of those “crises” that progressives “never let go to waste,” no doubt are wishing they could “dissolve the people” rather than change the government through democratic elections. Persuading free citizens with arguments based on fact, or with appeals to their interests, is difficult when your “crisis” is nothing more than a politicized hypothesis based on appeals to authority, rigged computer simulations, and apocalyptic predictions laced with insults to the skeptics’ intelligence and morals.

The politicians should have seen the signs of global warming’s declining utility as an electoral scare-tactic. In the U.S., “climate change” for years has ranked low on the list of issues voters are concerned about. Before last year’s midterm elections, in a Gallup Poll “climate change” ranked next to last of 12 issues that voters judged “extremely/very important,” just above investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election. Of course, people will tell a pollster they’re “concerned” and think “something should be done” about climate change, because they’ve been told that’s what the “right” people think. But when it comes to election day, most will vote for a growing economy, wage increases, more jobs, lower taxes, and fewer federal Nurse Ratcheds trying to cram more social or environmental “justice” pills down their throats.

Moreover, we’ve had decades now of hysterical predictions followed by “never mind” when they are belied by facts, along with the vicious demonization and ostracization of scientists who question the dominant narrative of CAGW. The hypocrisy of this very unscientific demand for unquestioned obeisance not to a scientific fact, but to a working hypothesis has now become blatantly obvious. Real science, which is usually reluctant to claim it’s “settled,” works quite the opposite. As philosopher Karl Popper defined it, “The method of science is the method of bold conjectures and ingenious and severe attempts to refute them.”

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