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February 2021

Turkish Reforms: From Imperial Repression to Thuggish State by Burak Bekdil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16978/turkish-reforms-repression

The Turks’ political journey toward the West began a century and a half ago, but Turkey now remains as distant from universal democratic values as the Ottoman Empire was at its collapse.

Modern Turkey’s darkest years came between 1976 and 1980, when a campaign of political violence, wrought by a multitude of far-left and far-right urban guerilla groups, killed more than 5,000 people. That era only came to an end when the military took over the country in a completed coup d’état and the violence subsided.

Twenty years later, a militant Islamist, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, pledged radically to reform Turkish democracy and make it an inseparable part of Europe — via full membership in the European Union. Two decades after that pledge Turkey’s democracy remains as remote from Europe’s civil liberties, democratic culture and checks and balances as Abdulhamid’s empire was in 1876.

The Turks’ political journey toward the West began a century and a half ago, but Turkey now remains as distant from universal democratic values as the Ottoman Empire was at its collapse. The parallels between failed Ottoman and Turkish reforms are worth a look.

During that 150-year period, in addition to building railway systems on imperial soil, systems for registering the population and control over the press were established, along with the first local modern law school in 1898. The most far-reaching reforms occurred in education: many professional schools were established for fields including the law, arts, trades, civil engineering, veterinary medicine, customs, farming and linguistics.

It was Sultan Abdulhamid II who was under Western pressure to reform his ailing empire. On December 23, 1876 the Ottoman constitution was solemnly promulgated with the aim of winning the hearts and minds of the Great Powers of Europe, only to be suspended when external pressure abated, and its author sent to exile. At the beginning of the 20th century, another constitutionalist reformer group, the Committee of Union and Progress, threatened the sultan with a coup d’état, ending Abdulhamid’s reign.

The ‘Five Million Palestinian Refugees’ A profitable hoax that keeps on growing. Hugh Fitzgerald

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/five-million-palestinian-refugees-hugh-fitzgerald/

Mitchell Bard has provided a detailed look at the data surrounding the claims of refugee status for five million “Palestinian refugees” here: “The Palestinian refugee hoax,” by Mitchell Bard, Israel Hayom, January 31, 2021:

The negotiation affairs department of the PLO tweeted on May 15, 2020, “Every nakba commemoration day, we mark the catastrophe that befell our people in 1948, when 957,000 Palestinians became refugees.” The truth is that number was concocted, as is the current figure of 5.7 million used by the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). The actual number is more likely less than 30,000.

Palestinians typically claim that 800,000 to 1,000,000 Palestinians became refugees between 1947 and 1949. The last census was taken in 1945. It found only 756,000 permanent Arab residents in Israel. On Nov. 30, 1947, the date the United Nations voted for partition, the total was 809,100. A 1949 Government of Israel census counted 160,000 Arabs living in the country after the war, which meant no more than 650,000 Palestinian Arabs could have become refugees. A report by the UN Mediator on Palestine (as of September 1948) arrived at an even lower figure: 360,000. The CIA estimate was 330,000. In 2011, historian Efraim Karsh analyzed the number of refugees by city and came up with an estimate of 583,000 to 609,000.

When the United Nations created UNRWA to assist the Palestinians, a refugee was defined as “a needy person, who, as a result of the war in Palestine, has lost his home and his means of livelihood.”

Real Socialism The big utopian lie that brings nothing but misery. John Stossel

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/real-socialism-john-stossel/

People hate America’s big disparities in wealth. It’s a reason why, among young people, socialism is as popular as capitalism.

The Democratic Socialists of America want a country based on “freedom, equality and solidarity.” That sure sounds good.

But does socialism bring that?

My new video debunks several myths about socialism.

One reason for socialism’s continued appeal is linguist Noam Chomsky. For generations, his work has taught students that capitalism is “a grotesque catastrophe.”

I assumed the fall of the Soviet Union would put an end to such misinformation. It did — for about a month.

But since then, the lust for socialism has come back strong. Today, Chomsky says that the Soviet Union “was about as remote from socialism as you could imagine.”

‘Safe Spaces’ and Neo-Segregation for Black Students How diversocrats promote a racist view of the country — and hobble black students. Richard L. Cravatts

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/safe-spaces-and-neo-segregation-black-students-richard-l-cravatts/

Just before the fall semester kicked off for the class of 2020, John Ellison, Dean of Students at the University of Chicago, sent the incoming class a traditional letter welcoming them to the campus community and stressing some of the values that the university honors and promotes.

While sending a letter like this was not particularly unique, Ellison did vary his tone and message when he warned students that their experience at Chicago would, and should, involve challenging oneself to confront views different than one’s own—sometimes radically so—and that students should be prepared to have their own notions challenged, disputed, argued against, even denounced. That, Ellison suggested, is one of the key roles of a university.

“You will find that we expect members of our community to be engaged in rigorous debate, discussion and even disagreement,” he wrote, and “[a]t times this may challenge you and even cause discomfort.” When Ellison referred to the “discomfort” allegedly felt by many students when they confront ideas with which they do not agree, he was recognizing the unfortunate trend being witnessed on university campuses where students not only disagree with opposing views, they want to be sheltered from even having to confront them. More than that, when professors, fellow students, and guest speakers articulate ideology or viewpoints contrary to these fragile students’ own, intellectually frail students frequently move to suppress or punish that opposing speech.

Dems’ Next Plot Against Trump If Senate impeachment trial fails. Joseph Klein

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/dems-next-plot-against-trump-if-senate-impeachment-joseph-klein/

With the Senate impeachment trial underway that is virtually certain to end in acquittal, the Democrats are already planning their next move against Donald Trump. They are looking to use an obscure clause in the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution, written in the aftermath of the Civil War and aimed at disqualifying ex-Confederate rebels from public office, to bar Trump from holding any future public office. Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment allows for the disqualification of individuals from holding federal or state office who both previously (1) took an oath to support the U.S. Constitution as a federal or state government legislator or officer, and (2) then “shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”

The Democrats leading the charge on the Fourteenth Amendment gambit include Senators Tim Kaine of Virginia, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, and Dick Durbin of Illinois, along with Representatives Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida and Steve Cohen of Tennessee. They are being advised by leftist academics who believe that Congress has the unilateral power to pass a joint resolution invoking the Fourteenth Amendment’s disqualification provision against Trump. As far as the Trump-haters are concerned, it is perfectly all right to put aside due process and fundamental fairness, so long as Trump is barred from holding public office ever again.

Republicans Need to Stop Accepting Progressives’ ‘Facts’ How the self-proclaimed party of “science” is undermining democracy. Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/republicans-need-stop-accepting-progressives-facts-bruce-thornton/

As the self-proclaimed party of “science,” progressives assert that their interpretations and explanations of people and events comprise “facts” that only the ignorant or evil refuse to believe. But this faith in science more often reflects the nostrums of scientism: contested ideas or beliefs that present themselves with the jargon, formulas, and quantitative data that characterize real scientific research, but that lack the reproducibility and established foundational facts that support authentic scientific research.

As such, these “facts” of scientism reflect ideological and political aims that appropriate the prestige and authority of science to camouflage their partisan prejudices. Unfortunately, too many Republicans in their public discourse and deliberations accept these “facts” as truth, thus empowering technocratic progressives by legitimizing their malign policies.

Climate change, of course, is a prominent example of this phenomenon. But anthropogenic, catastrophic global warming (ACGW)––the actual theory disguised by the banal, self-evident phrase “climate change”––is not a scientific fact, but a theory with some facts that support it, but others that challenge it. Our foundational knowledge of global climate as of now is too incomplete, and so is unable to create a predictive model because we do not yet fully understand or can quantify how all the numerous components that govern global climate over time interrelate. Yet based just on one element, human-created CO2 concentrations, warmists conclude that doomsday for the planet is around the corner.

Despite that uncertainty, too many Republicans accept the “scientific consensus” and “settled science” canards and support carbon taxes or other policies created by Joe Biden’s executive orders, like the ban on fracking. But carbon taxes, even if ACGW is true, will only increase the price of energy, while doing nothing about the true drivers of increased CO2––China and India.

The Strange House Democrat Impeachment Claim of an “Armed” Crowd Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2021/02/strange-house-democrat-impeachment-claim-armed-daniel-greenfield/

The House Democrat impeachment arguments are terrible. But there’s one odd thing that stands out in their word salads of innuendo and conjecture. 

“Against this backdrop, President Trump addressed a crowd that he knew was armed and primed for violence,” the House Democrat impeachment managers wrote in their rebuttal. “When he stood at the podium before thousands of his supporters, President Trump knew that they were armed and that they were angry.”

These two references to an “armed crowd” are strange because no one has been accused of opening fire at the Capitol Riot. Even the worst actors seem to have resorted to using the usual rioter tools, sprays, poles, shields, and assorted objects that were weaponized, but were not weapons.

The tactical group that set out to breach the Capitol was well prepared but used no firearms to achieve its goals. And it planned its attack days before the event and started it while President Trump was speaking.

What are House Democrats talking about? As usual, no one seems to know or care.

Biden’s appeasement of Iran begins Paul Mirengoff

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/02/bidens-appeasement-of-iran-begins.php

Joe Biden is determined to appease Iran, and the appeasement has already commenced. Its public manifestation centers now on Yemen, and the Houthi rebels there.

The Houthis have long received considerable Iranian financial and military support, including in recent years cruise missiles and drones. They have used Iranian weaponry not just against the government of Yemen, but also against Saudi Arabia and the UAE, Iran’s arch enemies and allies of the U.S.

Thus, as John Bolton says, the Houthis are a threat to the oil-producing Gulf monarchies. As is Iran, of course.

Bolton explains:

In effect, Iran is trying to encircle its Arab enemies, chief among them Saudi Arabia, by installing a friendly regime in their backyard. Among the Arabian Peninsula states, Yemen is the poorest and most notably the only one without oil. Armed conflict and political hostility are the rule, not the exception, there.

The Trump administration recognized the threat posed by the Houthis, but didn’t do much about it. According to Bolton, direct U.S. involvement in the Yemen conflict ended with the 2018 suspension of in-flight refueling of Saudi air operations in Yemen. And Trump didn’t designate the Houthis as terrorists until his last day in office.

Team Biden may wish Trump had done more. That way, the new administration could more dramatically signal its willingness to back Iranian interests and sell out Saudi Arabia.

Don’t Tell Anyone, But Biden Still Has $1.3 Trillion In Trump-Approved COVID Funds To Spend

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/02/11/dont-tell-anyone-but-biden-still-has-1-3-trillion-in-trump-approved-covid-funds-to-spend/

Time is a luxury our country does not have.” That was Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer explaining why Democrats are in such a mad rush to pass a massive $1.9 trillion COVID “relief” bill.  

What Schumer, President Joe Biden and other Democrats, and the mainstream media fail to mention is that the government hasn’t spent $1.3 trillion of the previous COVID relief funds yet. If the public knew that, would a majority be in favor of anything like the new Biden plan?

For those with short memories, there have been five COVID relief bills in less than a year, with total spending of $4.1 trillion – all financed by deficit spending. President Donald Trump signed the most recent bill – valued at $900 billion – just six weeks ago. Also, there have been “administrative actions” that add up to $700 billion.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has been keeping close track of the spending with its COVID Money Tracker tool, and finds that there are still $1.1 trillion from those five COVID bills that has yet to be “committed or disbursed.”

About 60% of that is from the last bill Trump signed. But there’s $195 billion left over from the CARES Act passed last March; $125 billion from the Families First Act; and $220 billion still to be spent from the Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act, which passed last April.

Former Capitol Police Chief Blows Hole in Dems Case Against Trump by Reagan Reyes

https://rfangle.com/politics/former-capitol-police-chief-blows-hole-in-dems-case-against-trump/

Former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund wrote an 8-page letter detailing the events that occurred at the Capitol on January 6. In the letter addressed to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Sund’s timeline of events seems to directly refute the Democrats’ claim that the insurrection on Capitol Hill was incited by a speech given by President Donald Trump on the same day. The Democrats’ entire impeachment case against Trump rests solely on the assumption that his speech caused the disturbing events that unfolded inside the Capitol as a joint session of Congress met to certify the electoral votes of the 2020 Presidential Election.

In the letter, Sund, who stepped down as Chief shortly after the insurrection occurred, states that his department “did not fail,” adding that the Capitol Police acted according to the intelligence available prior to the events. There was never any information showing they would be facing a group of “thousands of well-coordinated, well-equipped violent criminals,” intent upon attacking law enforcement officers as they sought to gain access to the Capitol itself.

Sund asserts that he would like to “set the record straight” on the events that took place: “There has been much conflicting information presented by various officials and the media regarding preparations and actions taken at the Capitol that day, and I would like to set the record straight from my perspective.”