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September 2019

Is England Still Part of Europe? By Victor Davis Hanson

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/09/england-europe-never-fully-integrated/

Britain has a last chance to re-embrace the free-market democratic world that it once helped to create.

British prime minister Boris Johnson is desperate to translate the British public’s June 2016 vote to leave the European Union into a concrete Brexit.

But the real issue is far older and more important than whether 52 percent of Britain finally became understandably aggrieved by the increasingly anti-democratic and German-controlled European Union.

England is an island. Historically, politically, and linguistically, it was never permanently or fully integrated into European culture and traditions.

The story of Britain has mostly been about conflict with France, Germany, or Spain. The preeminence of the Royal Navy, in the defiant spirit of its sea lords, ensured that European dictators from Napoleon to Hitler could never set foot on British soil. As British admiral John Jervis reassured his superiors in 1801 amid rumors of an impending Napoleonic invasion, “I do not say, my lords, that the French will not come. I say only they will not come by sea.”

Britain’s sea power, imperialism, parliamentary government, and majority-Protestant religion set it apart from its European neighbors — and not just because of its geographical isolation.

U.S. Attorney Recommends Bringing Charges against Andrew McCabe: Report By Jack Crowe

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/u-s-attorney-recommends-bringing-charges-against-andrew-mccabe-report/

U.S. attorney Jessie Liu has recommended that the Department of Justice bring charges against former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe for lying to investigators, Fox News reported Thursday.

McCabe appealed Liu’s decision to deputy attorney general Jeffrey Rosen, who rejected his plea.

“The Department rejected your appeal of the United States Attorney’s Office’s decision in this matter. Any further inquiries should be directed to the United States Attorney’s Office,” reads an email sent to McCabe’s legal team by the DOJ, which was obtained by Fox News.

The potential charges relate to McCabe’s allegedly misleading FBI investigators about his role in the leaking of classified information related to the Hillary Clinton email investigation.

McCabe, who was recently hired by CNN as a national security analyst, became acting director of the FBI in April 2017 following the firing of James Comey.

Attorney general Jeff Sessions then fired McCabe in March 2018 over the DOJ inspector general’s finding that he “lacked candor” when asked by Comey, and later two investigators, whether he leaked information about the Clinton email probe to a Wall Street Journal reporter.

While speaking with a reporter, McCabe allegedly confirmed the existence of the Clinton investigation, in violation FBI policy, by defending his agents’ prerogative to look into the Clinton Foundation as part of the probe.

Don’t Say We Didn’t Warn You: ‘Hey Guys!’ Is Now Off Limits, According to the Language Police

https://pjmedia.com/trending/dont-say-we-didnt-warn-you-hey-guys-is-now-off-limits-according-to-the-language-police/

Here we go again. As illustrated in the extremely insensitive Morning Briefing written by PJ Media’s Stephen Kruiser yesterday, there are some words we just can’t say anymore. The PC Language Police are issuing directives again in condescending tone. Your speech patterns and colloquialisms like “hey guys” are sexist and offensive. (Got that Kruiser? I’m reporting you if you do it again.)

“Now This News” is behind this particular video. NTN is owned by “Huffington Post” and is considered a fake news outlet by Punditfact, a fact-checking site. NTN published a video claiming that CNN deleted a poll that showed Bernie Sanders beating Hillary Clinton. Fact checkers found that to be false and gave NTN a “pants on fire” rating. NTN also claimed that Bill Clinton didn’t sign NAFTA and called Donald Trump a liar. Fact checkers also found that to be false. “Clinton signed the deal on Dec. 8, 1993. His speech that day is available in print form and on YouTube,” they reported.

Considering NTN’s history with spreading false information, perhaps we should ignore this latest ridiculous claim. But the idea behind the “hey guys” controversy isn’t new. Just a few months ago at the Democrat Socialists got triggered by similar language. Paul Joseph Watson’s video about it shouldn’t be missed.

EXCERPT FROM MARK STEYN ON GENERAL MATTIS

Insofar as Islam got a look in from officialdom, it was a passing reference in the speech of Defense Secretary “Mad Dog” Mattis:

Maniacs disguised in false religious garb thought by hurting us they could scare us that day.

Well, whoever they are, these “maniacs” can evidently scare grizzled hard men called “Mad Dog” into concluding that, when it comes to mentioning the I-word, discretion is the better part of valor. “False religious garb” means we’re back to the standard Euro-squish line that all this Allahu Akbar I’m-ready-for-my-virgins stuff is a “perversion” of the real Islam, which is a peaceful faith practiced by millions of people for whom self-detonation is an unwelcome distraction from traditional activities such as clitoridectomies, honor killings and throwing sodomites off tall buildings. Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but these “maniacs” are hijacking this “religious garb” in order to peddle a “false” vision of Islam. Foaming-canine-wise, Mad Dog sounds about as mad as, say, Theresa May. I take it that, even in today’s politically correct military, you can’t earn the epithet “Mad Dog” simply by handing out diversity awards to the Transgender Outreach Liaison Officer of the Month, and General Mattis served honorably and impressively in Afghanistan and Iraq. But, when it comes to strategic clarity, that may be the problem.

The Language of Losing by Mark Steyn

https://www.steynonline.com/9730/the-language-of-losing

The eighteenth anniversary of 9/11 was marked by the Administration inviting the Taliban to Camp David, and by the resignation and/or firing of John Bolton as National Security Advisor – which two events may not be unconnected. Because really, when the Taliban are running around Camp David, who needs national security?

For the fifteen years after the launch of SteynOnline in 2002, we re-posted every year on this date material of mine from September 11th 2001 and the days we followed. Two years ago, we ceased that policy, for reasons I discussed on Clubland Q&A:

If this is a war, there’s no agreement on what we’re up against: Terrorism? Islamic terrorism? Islamic extremism? Islam? Whatever it is, a president who, on the campaign trail, mocked his predecessor’s inability to use the words “radical Islam” himself eschewed all mention of the I-word today. September 11th 2001 was supposedly “the day everything changed” – if by “everything changed” you mean “the rate of mass Muslim immigration to the west doubled”. As that absurd statistic suggests, we are not where I thought we would be 16 years on: We run around fighting for worthless bits of barren sod like Helmand province in Afghanistan, while surrendering day by day some of the most valuable real estate on the planet, such as France and Sweden.

That last point may seem obvious. But, if it is, it’s a truth all but entirely unacknowledged by anyone who matters in the western world. I subsequently expanded on it, in a piece we called “The Language of Losing” and which appears to have been succeeded by “The Actions of Losers” – such as inviting the Taliban to Camp David. Hey, why not for the ceremonies in Lower Manhattan? On yet another wretched anniversary I mourn not only the dead of that grim day, but our loss of purpose. All that has changed two years on is that for “sixteenth anniversary” we substitute “eighteenth” – and on and on into the future:

In any war, you have to be able to prioritize: You can’t win everything, so where would you rather win? Raqqa or Rotterdam? Kandahar or Cannes? Yet, whenever some guy goes Allahu Akbar on the streets of a western city, the telly pundits generally fall into one of two groups: The left say it’s no big deal, and the right say this is why we need more boots on the ground in Syria or Afghanistan. Yesterday President Trump said he was committed to ensuring that terrorists “never again have a safe haven to launch attacks against our country”.

Turkey: Religious Backlash? by Uzay Bulut

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14815/turkey-religious-backlash

It is notable, however, that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s efforts to create “devout generations” of Muslims, through the establishment of numerous state-funded Imam Hatip religious schools, may not be having the desired results.

“Since [last summer], seventeen students with headscarves who identify as atheists have come to my office and [told me that] the reason [for their atheism] is the actions of the people who say they represent religion.” — Dr. İhsan Fazlıoğlu, Istanbul Medeniyet University, T24, March 19, 2018.

“The religion that the [Turkish] government is trying to ‘impose’ on society is emotionally unsatisfying: it is loveless.” — Professor Murat Belge, Head of the Department of Comparative Literature, Bilgi University, Istanbul, to Gatestone.

“Mosques or churches in your neighborhoods are no longer your only sources of information… Of course, societal pressures and the situation of the country are also [important] elements, but they are only elements that get the questioning started. This situation makes many people ask, ‘Is this what my religion is about?’ or they say, ‘If this is religion, I am out.'” [Emphasis added] — Selin Özkohen, head of the Atheism Association, Euronews, March 19, 2019.

In a radio interview on July 23, Temel Karamollaoğlu — the head of Turkey’s Islamist opposition party, Felicity — accused Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) of driving young people, particularly those from religious families, away from Islam and towards deism, a belief in a non-interventionist creator, or a god of nature.

According to a 2018 survey conducted by Turkey’s leading polling company, KONDA, Karamollaoğlu appears to be correct, at least about the growing number of young Turks who no longer consider themselves “religious” Muslims.

UK: Tony Blair Think-Tank Proposes End to Free Speech by Judith Bergman

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14850/uk-tony-blair-free-speech

Disturbingly, the main concern of Blair’s think-tank appears to be the online verbal “hatred” displayed by citizens in response to terrorist attacks — not the actual physical expression of hatred shown in the mass murders of innocent people by terrorists. Terrorist attacks, it would appear, are now supposedly normal, unavoidable incidents that have become part and parcel of UK life.

Unlike proscribed groups that are banned for criminal actions such as violence or terrorism, the designation of “hate group” would mainly be prosecuting thought-crimes.

Democratic values, however, appear to be the think-tank’s least concern. The proposed law would make the British government the arbiter of accepted speech, especially political speech. Such an extraordinary and radically authoritarian move would render freedom of speech an illusion in the UK.

The Home Office would be able to accuse any group it found politically inconvenient of “spreading intolerance” or “aligning with extremist ideologies” — and designate it a “hate group”.

The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change has released a report, Designating Hate: New Policy Responses to Stop Hate Crime, which recommends radical initiatives to tackle “hate” groups, even if they have not committed any kind of violent activity.

The problem, as the think-tank defines it, is “the dangerous nature of hateful groups, including on the far right like Britain First and Generation Identity. But current laws are unable to stop groups that spread hate and division, but do not advocate violence”. The think-tank defines what it sees as one of the main problems with hate crime the following way:

“A steady growth in hate crime has been driven by surges around major events. Often this begins online. Around the 2017 terror attacks in the UK, hate incidents online increased by almost 1,000 per cent, from 4,000 to over 37,500 daily. In the 48-hour period after an event, hate begins to flow offline”.

JOHN BOLTIN’….MARK STEYN

https://www.steynonline.com/9731/john-boltin

On the eve of the annual 9/11 observances, America’s National Security Advisor John Bolton was either fired (per Trump) or resigned (per Bolton). The dispute is being portrayed as one between a Bush-era neocon and an “America First” Trump. But that is something of an over-simplification. As I wrote upon Bolton’s appointment a year and a half ago:

Bolton is viewed with suspicion as a ‘neocon’, which is not a term of much practical use these days. But then so was his predecessor – H R McMaster. So the substitution might be of no more significance than a neocon whom Trump likes the company of taking the job of a neocon whom Trump finds a bit of a cold fish. There may be a little more to it than that: McMaster was complacent, and conventional to a fault; Bolton is a realist, and harder-headed about the illusions of mankind. Beyond that, McMaster belonged to the group of foreign-policy panjandrums who expected Trump to move towards them; Bolton has moved towards Trump.

And, having moved towards Trump, he came to have ever more reservations about what he found there. Whatever the President now says, at the time Bolton’s appointment was a Trump choice reflecting a desire to regain control of an administration in danger of being neutered by the GOP establishment:

At this stage the Gullible Old Pussies of the Republican Party are pretty much openly advertising that giving them control of the House, the Senate and the White House is the equivalent of giving Yosemite Sam three sticks of dynamite to shove down his pants – with the additional nicety that this time round they’re actively flipping the finger at their president’s bedrock issue. I reiterate the point I first made on the radio a year ago: On January 20th 2017 Trump should have taken all those showboating showbiz no-shows at face value and held a businesslike inauguration at the southern border while laying the first brick. The brick remains unlaid – not because Vicente Fox refuses to ‘pay for Trump’s f**kin’ wall’ but because Paul Ryan does.