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Ruth King

A Meaningful Milestone in Sweden? by Bruce Bawer

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15208/sweden-milestone

Conditions in Sweden have deteriorated so drastically — with everything from child care to elder care being deprived of funds that are instead being used to feed, clothe and house refugees, faux refugees, and other foreign freeloaders — that many Norwegians worry, with good reason, about a massive spillover of social chaos, poverty and crime from a country with which it shares a thousand-mile-long border.

One is reminded, of course, of the indefensible way in which British authorities handled — or refused to handle — decades of child-rape cases in Rotherham, Rochdale and other cities throughout Britain. But in Sweden — whose distinctive history of ideological conformity and self-image as a “moral superpower”… the readiness to deny unpleasant realities is even more widespread and deep-seated than in the U.K. and other Western European countries.

It was the Social Democrats and Moderates that created Sweden’s current crisis and allowed it to endure and worsen and be considered beyond criticism….

The Sweden Democrats’ triumph, then, may well be at once a genuine milestone in the advance of Swedish democracy and individualism and a mere turn in the road to ultimate cultural displacement.

When I moved to Norway twenty years ago, a term I encountered often was “American conditions” (amerikanske tilstander). It was always used disparagingly. It referred to such things as urban sprawl, strip malls, inner-city gangs, school shootings and private health care. After Barack Obama became president, I heard the term far less frequently — in Norway, after all, you cannot get too rough on a country with a black president, especially a president to whom you have given the Nobel Peace Prize.

Today, even though Trump-bashing — in Norway as in the U.S. — is the media’s favorite sport, the term does not seem to have come back into widespread use, which perhaps has something to do with the fact that the U.S., among other things, now has the world’s strongest economy and staggeringly enviable employment figures. Meanwhile, there is another term that has become increasingly common in Norway: “Swedish conditions” (svenske tilstander). It really took off about two years ago, when Sylvi Listhaug, Norway’s then Minister of Immigration and Integration, used it after visiting some of Sweden’s worst Muslim enclaves — a reaction that outraged politicians and journalists on both sides of the border.

Although recently there has been good news from Sweden — which I will get to shortly — let it be said, at the outset, that the term “Swedish conditions,” when used in Norway, has exclusively negative connotations. While “American conditions” covers a wide range of purported sins, however, “Swedish conditions” means basically one thing, or rather one set of intimately related things: admitting masses of unvetted immigrants from a very different culture into your country, encouraging them to settle in monocultural, autocratic enclaves that become no-go zones, allowing them to sit home collecting generous welfare benefits instead of learning the local language and finding jobs, and punishing even their most brutal crimes with a slap on the wrist — all the while continuing to repeat the mantra that their culture has enriched Sweden and to ignore the glaring reality that Sweden is undergoing a long-term conquest as well as what one Norwegian observer has called “an inferno of violence.”

Iran to Have Nuclear Bomb in a Few Months? by Majid Rafizadeh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15214/iran-nuclear-bomb-months

This marks a dangerous phase in Iran’s nuclear defiance. Tehran is now using a kind of prototype centrifuge that enriches uranium almost 50 times faster.

Although Iran is a party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), it refuses to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect its sites. The IAEA is also not allowed to inspect or monitor Iran’s military sites where nuclear activities are most likely being carried out.

That is why, before it is too late, which it is fast becoming, it is incumbent on the US and the international community to take seriously Iran’s nuclear advances and urgently address its rush to obtain nuclear weapons.

The Iranian government is shortening its nuclear breakout time — the amount of time required to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a single nuclear weapon. Tehran has accomplished this through several steps in the last few months.

Iran’s government first increased its enriched uranium stockpile beyond the 300 kilogram limit; it enriched uranium to levels beyond the cap of 3.67 percent, and then activated 20 IR-4 and 20 IR-6 advanced centrifuges. The Iranian leaders even boasted that their government is now exploring new uranium enrichment programs and producing centrifuges.

Most recently, the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Ali Akbar Salehi, declared that Iran has an adequate supply of 20% enriched uranium., “Right now we have enough 20% uranium,” he told the Iranian Students News Agency, ISNA, “but we can produce more as needed”. He added that the country is resuming uranium enrichment at a far higher level at the Fordow nuclear facility — an underground uranium enrichment facility which is reportedly located on one of bases of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC­­) — injecting uranium gas into centrifuges, and operating 60 IR-6 advanced centrifuges.

WATCH: Why is black slave-owning Mauritania on the U.N. “Human Rights Council”?

https://us12.campaign-archive.com/?e=&u=47f17d17778fdf9b4e07c91ad&id=9e716a

The Democratic Party Faces a Choice on Israel by Morton A. Klein and Daniel Mandel see note please

https://www.algemeiner.com/2019/11/15/the-democratic-party-faces-a-choice-on-isra

This time it is not only about Israel: it is about national sovereignty and open borders; it is about the trashing of our culture and history with politically correct drivel about gender, heritage, fake history, fake victims, destruction of statues of national heroes, and promoting false narratives and unequal justice. For the moment Israel is blessed by the President of our nation whom these fake prophets of the Democratic party libel and conspire against…..rsk

A few years ago, it would have been unimaginable: the Democratic Party, the party supported by the overwhelming majority of American Jews and with a long record of pro-Israel figures — Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, Henry Jackson, Frank Church, Daniel Patrick Moynihan and so on — is now fielding presidential candidates calling for cutting aid to Israel.

Those include Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Senator Elizabeth Warren (D–MA) and South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg. All three have called for making US annual military aid to Israel conditional on Israel embracing the so-called “two-state solution” — that is to say, establishing an unreconstructed, unreformed Palestinian Arab terror state on Israel’s doorstep.

Senator Sanders has said that he would “absolutely” consider cuts to American military aid to Israel in order to pressure Israel, which he described as having “an extreme right-wing government with many racist tendencies … $3.8 billion [a year] is a lot of money, and we cannot give it carte blanche to the Israeli government. If you want military aid, you’re going to have to fundamentally change your relationship [to Gaza].”

Senator Warren has said: “Right now, [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu says he is going to take Israel in a direction of increasing settlements. That does not move us toward a two-state solution. It is the official policy of the United States of America to support a two-state solution, and if Israel is moving in the opposite direction then everything is on the table.”

Dispatches From the Administrative State Bill Asher

With the arrogance of the unelected and the power of the unaccountable, these witnesses to nothing revel in their veto over foreign policy.

When a member of the military pulls rank on a ranking member of Congress, when he politicizes his service by admonishing a public servant, when he acts as if the ribbons pinned to his jacket are more legitimate than the pin every congressman wears, when he uses his uniform to command attention—and attempts to commandeer authority—he indicts no one but himself.

When the man in question is Alexander Vindman, his opening statement is a closing argument for the opposition.

When the women in question are Fiona Hill and Marie Yovanovitch, their statements are nothing more than dross in a diplomatic pouch. 

All three statements read like dispatches from the administrative state. 

With the arrogance of the unelected and the power of the unaccountable, these witnesses to nothing—neither present at the creation of presidential policy nor privy to the president’s conversations about policy—revel in their veto over foreign policy. They testify to their Americanness by condemning the chief executive of the American people.

To Vindman, Hill, and Yovanovitch the personal is political. 

DAILY RECAP: Likud Backs Netanyahu; Startup Nation Impresses Time; UNRWA Faces Financial Ruin

https://worldisraelnews.com/watch-daily-israel-news-recap-november-26-2019/?utm_source=browser&utm_medium=push_notification&utm_campaign=vwo_notification_1574768945&vwo_powered=1

A ‘Farm Kid’ Thwarts the Coup Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2019/11/25/a-farm-kid-thwarts-the-coup/

A review of The Plot Against the President: The True Story of How Congressman Devin Nunes Uncovered the Biggest Political Scandal in U.S. History by Lee Smith (Center Street, 360 pages, $28)

“That’s why the establishment, the press, the permanent bureaucracy, the tech oligarchs, the urban aristocrats, the Deep State and all the rest of the ugly beautiful people, will never forgive Devin Nunes,” Lee Smith writes in his dynamite new book. “It belittled them that he didn’t care he wasn’t their sort but was proud to be a farm kid.”

If a full and fair analysis of the Trump-Russian collusion hoax ever is conducted, it will reveal the collateral damage suffered by innocent people ensnared by the wicked, multi-faceted operation launched by Barack Obama’s White House in the spring of 2016.

There are plenty of infuriating passages in The Plot Against the President, a must-read book by journalist Lee Smith. But the description of how the hoax plotters targeted the family of Representative Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) evokes particular outrage.

As chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Nunes released a memo in February 2018 describing how Barack Obama’s Justice Department misled the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to obtain permission to spy on Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Democrats did not want that memo out. In the days and weeks leading up its distribution, Smith describes how the crusade against Nunes “took an even more dangerous turn.”

An orchestrated assault against Nunes’ family, including his wife and three young daughters, posed such a threat that law enforcement agents were assigned to the grade school where Nunes’ wife works. Hackers imitated Nunes’ cell phone numbers; calls were made to up to two dozen relatives, including his 98-year-old grandmother and mother-in-law, so they would answer.

Former MI6 chief calls Jeremy Corbyn a danger to national security

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/11/24/former-mi6-chief-calls-jeremy-corbyn-danger-national-security/

https://wp.tomgrossmedia.com/

The former head of MI6 has called Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn a danger to national security who is unfit to lead the country.

Sir Richard Dearlove has written in the Mail on Sunday that Mr Corbyn would pose a “present danger to our country” if he became prime minister and has access to top-secret files.

Sir Richard, who spent 38 years with Britain’s intelligence service, said Mr Corbyn’s past political activities would make him a security risk if he was in possession of such sensitive information.

“Today, in the home of parliamentary democracy, we are faced with the possibility that a leader of the Labour Party who once preferred East Germany’s political and economic model of government could become prime minister,” Sir Richard wrote.

WHAT WILL BECOME OF JEWS IN BRITAIN IF LABOUR FORMS THE NEXT GOVERNMENT?

BRITISH CHIEF RABBI: “A NEW POISON – SANCTIONED FROM THE TOP – HAS TAKEN ROOT IN THE LABOUR PARTY”

https://wp.tomgrossmedia.com/

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ephraim-mirvis-what-will-become-of-jews-in-britain-if-labour-forms-the-next-government-ghpsdbljk

Elections should be a celebration of democracy. However, just weeks before we go to the polls, the overwhelming majority of British Jews are gripped by anxiety.

During the past few years, on my travels through the UK and further afield, one concern has been expressed to me more than any other. Of course, the threats of the far right and violent jihadism never go away, but the question I am now most frequently asked is: What will become of Jews and Judaism in Britain if the Labour Party forms the next government?

This anxiety is justified. Raising concerns about anti-Jewish racism in the context of a general election ranks among the most painful moments I have experienced since taking office. Convention dictates that the Chief Rabbi stays well away from party politics — and rightly so. However, challenging racism is not a matter of politics, it goes well beyond that. Wherever there is evidence of it, including in any of our political parties, it must be swiftly rooted out. Hateful prejudice is always wrong, whoever the perpetrator, whoever the victim.

The Jewish community has endured the deep discomfort of being at the centre of national political attention for nearly four years. We have been treated by many as an irritant, as opposed to a minority community with genuine concerns. Some politicians have shown courage but too many have sat silent. We have learned the hard way that speaking out means that we will be demonised by faceless social media trolls and accused of being partisan or acting in bad faith by those who still think of this as an orchestrated political smear. Yet, I ask myself: should the victims of racism be silenced by the fear of yet further vilification?

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: THE HATRED THAT FUELS IMPEACHMENT

https://amgreatness.com/2019/11/24/the-hatred-that-fuels-impeachment/

We are in new territory now. Hating a president is equivalent to finding him guilty of supposed high crimes. Impeachment is a casual affair. Hearsay is as valid as direct testimony.

Neither the NeverTrump Right nor the Progressive Left has yet offered a coherent defense of their de facto, three-year-long singular effort to delegitimize and ultimately remove Trump from office before the 2020 election.

We are now in the midst of a systematic effort to impeach a president on the basis of a thought crime. Trump’s purported quid pro quo sin was issuing a temporary hold on military assistance to Ukraine that supposedly transcended legitimate worries about rampant corruption—to include specifically investigating the suspicious behavior of a corrupt Ukrainian oil company and the compromised relationship of former Vice President Joe Biden and his son around it.

The anti-Trump writ is that it is impeachable even to delay to the Ukrainians lethal military assistance while citing the need to investigate the corruption of Ukrainians, including the career of Hunter Biden, whose father, the former vice president and “point man” on Ukraine, is now running for president.

Supposedly irrelevant to this inquiry is the prior policy of denying military aid to Ukraine, intervening in Ukrainian politics to fire a prosecutor by threatening a cutoff of even nonmilitary aid, and ignoring that the vice president’s son served as a lucrative functionary with a corrupt Ukrainian company while his father was adjudicating U.S. aid to Ukraine.

So why this disconnect? The reason is not “Ukraine,” merely the latest iteration in a long series of efforts, but rather existential hatred.

“Conservative” NeverTrump Disdain

The NeverTrumpers’ position, although rarely articulated, seems fairly clear.