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Ruth King

HISTORY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

June 4: China’s Longest Night by Gordon G. Chang

By on June 4th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14333/tiananmen-square-anniversary

The Chinese state has become a dangerous actor. It has, among other things, been dismembering neighbors, closing off the global commons, systematically violating international rules, supporting rogue regimes, proliferating weapons technologies, attacking democracy. Any attempt to stop such conduct is met with Beijing angrily claiming a violation of its sovereignty.

The Chinese Communist Party has resorted to intimidation and coercion to keep people in line. The world’s most sophisticated surveillance state is adept at oppression, especially as it adopts and perfects mechanisms of control. For instance, within months it plans to amalgamate local “social credit systems” into a national one, to give every Chinese person a constantly updated score based upon factors such as political obedience. Xi Jinping, the Communist Party’s general secretary, is creating what the Economist termed “the world’s first digital totalitarian state.”

The hope that China can liberalize itself starts with the Chinese people. And the conversation about liberalization begins, as a practical matter, in the only place on Chinese soil where Tiananmen is publicly discussed and mourned, where that coercion is least felt. That place is Hong Kong….

There was a semblance of liberty in the months before Tiananmen… But on June 3 and June 4, [Deng Xiaoping] made it clear the Communist Party would stop at nothing.

As June 3 passed into June 4 in Beijing in 1989, enraged citizens defended streets and neighborhoods as soldiers and armored vehicles of the murderous 27th Army, along with the 38th, moved from the western approaches of the Chinese capital to the heart of the city. It was China’s longest night.

By the morning of the 4th, the self-styled army of the Chinese people, the People’s Liberation Army, had viciously cleared Tiananmen Square, where more than a million people had gathered, talked, sung, and celebrated since the middle of April. The papier-mâché Goddess of Democracy, a monument to freedom that dominated the square, was smashed.

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BOOKS, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Books He Loved but Others Shouldn’t Read by Amir Taheri

By on June 4th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14325/ayatollah-khamenei-books

The new book, a sort of biography, was originally written in Arabic under the title “En Ma’a al-sabr fathan” (“Patience Leads to Victory”) but has just come out in Persian translation under a pseudo-poetical title, “The Drop of Blood That Became a Ruby”. The “Supreme Guide,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, recalls his “passion for reading famous Iranian and world novels” and insists on “the deep impact” that reading novels had on him.

Top of Khamenei’s list are 10 of the cloak-and-dagger novels written by Michel Zevaco, the Corsican-French writer who helped popularize what the English call “penny-dreadful” romances in France…. Zevaco’s world is a universe of sex, violence, conspiracy and betrayal. In Zevaco’s best-selling novel “Borgia,” the head of the dreadful Borgia family that dominated Florentine politics in the medieval times, rapes his own sister Lucrece, a seductive blonde. The novel “Nostradamus” is a fictionalized biography of a roaming charlatan who claimed to read the future to gain money, power, sex and fame.

Khamenei says he loved and cherished all those books. Ironically, however, all the novels he devoured with great appetite are on a blacklist of books that “corrupt public morality and violate religious values”, established under President Muhammad Khatami in 1999. Iranians who are today the same age as Khamenei was in his youth cannot read the books he loved.

“Tell me which books you read, and I’ll tell you who you are!” That was how the late Iranian literary critic Mohit Tabatabai used to tease Tehran’s glitterati in the “good old days.” To be sure, the claim wasn’t based on any scientific study but empirical evidence showed that it wasn’t quite off the mark either. Books do offer an insight into the soul of a reader, provided he has a soul.

Thus, those interested in all things Iranian, especially in these exciting times, wouldn’t want to miss a new book on the Islamic Republic’s “Supreme Guide” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, if only because it devotes a chapter to books that he loved as a young man.

The new book, a sort of biography, was originally written in Arabic under the title “En Ma’a al-sabr fathan” (“Patience Leads to Victory”) but has just come out in Persian translation under a pseudo-poetical title, “The Drop of Blood That Became a Ruby”. The “Supreme Guide” recalls his “passion for reading famous Iranian and world novels” and insists on “the deep impact” that reading novels had on him.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Trump’s Case Against Europe The president sees Brussels as too weak, too liberal, and anti-American on trade.By Walter Russell Mead

By on June 4th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-case-against-europe-11559602940

“Why does he hate us?” is the question American foreign-policy types often hear from European friends and colleagues when the subject of Donald Trump comes up—as it often does. With Mr. Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Europe this week, it seems an auspicious time to attempt an answer.

The news isn’t all bad. When Mr. Trump and senior administration officials talk about China, they attack it for abusing the international system in a ruthless quest for global hegemony. Their reading of Europe is different: that a mix of dysfunctional policies, unrealistic ideas about world politics, and poor institutional arrangements has locked the Continent on a trajectory of decline. As Mr. Trump’s team sees it, they aren’t trying to weaken Europe; they are trying to save Europe from itself.

There are five elements of the Trump critique of the European Union. First, some of the “new nationalists” believe multinational entities like the EU are much weaker and less effective than the governments of nation-states—so much so that the development of the EU has weakened the Western alliance as a whole. In this view, cooperation between nation-states is good and through it countries can achieve things they couldn’t achieve on their own. But trying to overinstitutionalize that cooperation is a mistake. The resulting bureaucratic structures and Byzantine politics and decision-making processes paralyze policy, alienate public opinion, and create a whole significantly less than the sum of its parts.

A second concern—in the Trump view—is that the European Union is too German. As some on the president’s team see it, German preferences mean the Continent is too hawkish when it comes to monetary and fiscal policy, and too dovish when it comes to defense. A fiscal and monetary straitjacket has cramped Europe’s growth, while the refusal of Germany to live up to its NATO commitments weakens the alliance as a whole.

A third concern is that the EU is too liberal—in the American meaning of the term, which is to say too statist on economics and too progressive on social issues. Besides the common American conservative view that statist economic policy undermines European dynamism and growth, Mr. Trump seems to believe European migration policy—especially Chancellor Angela Merkel’s 2015 decision to welcome more than a million mostly Muslim migrants to Germany—is a tragic mistake.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Germany’s Coalition of the Dwindling Realignment is reshaping politics even in staid Berlin.

By on June 4th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/germanys-coalition-of-the-dwindling-11559594595

Germans are said to love political stability, but apparently not too much. After delivering shock results in recent elections for the European Parliament and a state government in Bremen, Germans can now watch traditional parties decline before their eyes.

The crisis is most acute for the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), whose leader Andrea Nahles resigned Sunday. The SPD suffered a drubbing in the European vote last month, placing third with 16% compared to 2014’s close second-place finish of 27%. On the same day the party also lost control in Bremen for the first time since the war.

It’s the latest sign of the center-left identity crisis that’s set in during repeated stints in a left-right governing coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right Christian Democrats (the CDU and Bavarian CSU). Those coalitions prevent the SPD from acting as a true opposition party, leaving that task to others. The winners have been the Greens who increasingly capture urban, more prosperous former SPD voters, and the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) that appeals to parts of the SPD’s former blue-collar base.

Ms. Nahles is taking the fall for these poor showings, although it isn’t clear who could do better. The party is split on issues ranging from migration to labor reform. Many grass-roots members are still uneasy about the decision to form another “GroKo” (German shorthand for a grand coalition) after the party performed poorly in the 2017 national election. Yet those vying to replace her, such as Finance Minister Olaf Scholz, are conspicuously quiet about what they’d do differently on policy or politics.

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HISTORY Comments turned off

The life of gay, Jewish bullfighter Sidney Franklin By Josefin Dolsten

By on June 4th, 2019

https://www.jta.org/2019/06/03/culture/the-life-of-gay-jewish-bullfighter-sidney-franklin

Excerpts….

The bullfighting world of the 1920s and ’30s, Sidney Franklin was defined not only by his Americanness, elegance or tough-guy personality but also by his Jewishness. The first American to reach the status of a matador in Spain, he was nicknamed “El Torero de la Torah,” or “the Torah bullfighter.”

But Franklin had a complicated relationship with his Jewish identity. Born Sidney Frumkin in an Orthodox Jewish family in Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood, the matador-to-be often clashed with his traditional father. The fact that he was gay (although not openly so) made him feel even more alienated from his religion.

At the age of 19, Franklin left Brooklyn for Mexico. It was there that he discovered his love for bullfighting, learning from the prominent torero Rodolfo Gaona. He seemed unfazed by the dangers of the bloody sport.

“If you’ve got guts,” Franklin once said, “you can do anything.”

Moving to Spain to pursue his passion, he rose to fame in part because of his bullfighting skills and the circles he frequented.

In 1929, Franklin met Ernest Hemingway. The celebrated author became a close friend and wrote about Franklin in his book “Death of the Afternoon,” which explores the bullfighting tradition.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Why Are America’s Socialists — and Democrats and Journalists — Always So Angry?

By on June 3rd, 2019

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/06/03/why-are-americas-socialists-and-democrats-and-journalists-always-so-angry/

“The Left’s anger and seething resentment of the achievements of Western civilization is puzzling, especially when it’s directed toward America, and American institutions and traditions. To borrow the words of President Reagan in his first Inaugural address, no other nation has “achieved so much.” We have “prospered as no other people on Earth.” “Freedom and the dignity of the individual,” said the 40th president, “have been more available and assured here than in any other place on Earth.”

Bernie Sanders is mad. He fulminates about the abundance of consumer choices, such as “23 underarm spray deodorants” and “18 different pairs of sneakers.” He rails against credit card companies because he thinks their interest rates are too high. He thunders over the prices Americans pay for prescription drugs.

The Democratic senator from Vermont, who is truly a socialist, having campaigned for a Marxist group in the 1980s, is perpetually upset with the way private banks conduct their business, and forever enraged at corporations for making profits. When he speaks, he comes off as that bitter man who shakes his fist at those darned neighborhood kids. There’s a reason Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and others have called Sanders the “crazy uncle in the attic.” He’s mad because everyone won’t do as he says.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is another angry democratic socialist. She rages when her sophomoric Green New Deal is questioned. She was incensed when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced he was going to let the Senate vote on her legislation. She’s annoyed that cauliflower is grown in urban gardens, apparently because it’s a “colonial” vegetable. Columnist Peggy Noonan said Ocasio-Cortez was “sullen, teenage and at a loss” during President Trump’s State of the Union address. Her very manner is that of someone who is mad at the world and is always just seconds away from lashing out.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren carries anger around with her like a purse — it’s always there within easy reach. She’s “mad as hell at the influence of money in Washington, D.C.,” and is equally venomous toward Wall Street. Other things that make her furious: Congress’ reluctance to “refinance student loan interest rates” (whatever they are); “billions of dollars” in private sector profits; billionaires in general; the minimum wage.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Global Warming: Is There Anything It Can’t Do? June 02, 2019/ Francis Menton

By on June 3rd, 2019

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2019-6-2-global-warming-is-there-anything-it-cant-d

The general interest newsmagazines of the world have been in serious decline for years. Time, Newsweek, U.S. New and World Report — what ever happened to them? Although all of them still exist in some form, they are all shadows of their former selves.

But then there is The Economist of London. These people put out what at least looks on the surface to be a serious print edition every week. They devote real resources to gathering news from around the world. If you want to find out what’s going on in, say, Argentina or the Congo or Uganda, this is one of the few places that you can find it. But can you trust anything they say?

I’ve been a long-time subscriber to The Economist, and had long regarded them as relatively sensible, generally less infected by leftist groupthink than most mainstream sources. But then, a few years ago — I can’t pinpoint the exact date — they made what appears to be a corporate-level decision to go all in for global warming alarm. Henceforth, every issue would contain one or several global warming stories, always with the slant of trying to scare the readership about the allegedly terrible crisis at hand.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

European Leaders Are Making a Show of Taking Anti-Semitism Seriously. But Will They Actually Do So?Ben Cohen

By on June 3rd, 2019

https://www.jns.org/opinion/malmo-2020-world-leaders-against-anti-semitism/
Malmö 2020: World leaders against anti-Semitism
The first potential danger of the 2020 conference is that it will allow a city linked to assaults against Jews to clean up its image without cleaning up its act.

In October 2020, Sweden will host an international summit to combat anti-Semitism. When Stefan Löfven, the Swedish prime minister, announced the parley last Friday, he didn’t disclose any further details, but the Swedish press depicted the event as a forum that would be attended by government leaders and heads of state.

So it’s worth thinking about. Before anything else, there’s the planned location: the southern city of Malmö. Over the last 10 years, Malmö has become a potent symbol of Europe’s rising anti-Semitism and especially of its spread beyond the far right to the ranks of the left, as well as extremist elements within the city’s large Muslim community. The most immediate effect of this has been to shrink what was already a small Jewish population of 3,000 in 2009 by around 50 percent a decade later.

Indeed, Löfven’s presence in Malmö to make the announcement was partly caused by an anti-Semitic scandal involving the local branch of his Social Democratic Party’s youth wing. On May 1, the party’s young activists were caught chanting the slogan “Long Live Palestine, Crush Zionism!” at an international workers’ day rally. Given that Malmö was the scene of violent anti-Israel demonstrations when the Israeli tennis team competed in the 2009 Davis Cup tournament in that city, one could perhaps regard these thundering denunciations of the Jewish state as an established local tradition. Here, then, is the first potential danger of the 2020 conference: that it will allow Malmö to clean up its image as a center of anti-Semitism without cleaning up its act.

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HISTORY, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Death of Morton Sobell and the End of the Rosenberg Affair Davide Evanier

By on June 3rd, 2019

https://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/history-ideas/2019/06/the-death-of-morton-sobell

With the recent death of the unrepentant spy, his story, along with that of other American Jews steeped in Communism, can finally be told.

ast December 26, at the age of one-hundred-one, Morton Sobell died. His name may be unfamiliar today, but the names of his associates are not: he was the co-defendant of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg in the 1951 atomic-bomb spy trial. The Rosenbergs were executed in 1953, but Sobell lived on, one of the few remaining survivors of the corps of Americans who spied for the Soviet Union. He kept the faith, steadfastly and with gusto, proclaiming his innocence and that of the Rosenbergs until 2008, when he belatedly confessed in public to their conspiracy to commit espionage.

To the degree that this belated confession shattered the vision of innocence still held by the remaining defenders of the Rosenberg ring—the vision, that is, that an entire generation of Soviet spies, including Alger Hiss, Judith Coplon, Harry Dexter White, Nathan Gregory Silvermasters, William Perl, Lauchlin Currie, and numerous others were pure and simple victims being hounded and persecuted by a paranoid United States government—then Sobell’s death marks the end of the entire sordid story.

But what exactly is his story? When I last saw him in 2016, at the age of ninety-nine, he threatened that if I wrote about him in a negative light, “You’ll take the consequences.” I found this strange, considering that he had already confessed to being a spy. But with his death it is at least possible to sketch that story in full.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel – a global innovation powerhouse. Amb. (RET.) Yoram Ettinger

By on June 3rd, 2019

https://bit.ly/2HOfaFJ

1. Arab integration in Israel. During 2017-2018, 18.3% of Israeli students studied engineering, compared to 17.9% studying social sciences.  25% of Israel’s undergraduates study engineering and computer sciences. During 2012-2018, the number of Israeli students studying tech subjects (electronics, engineering, software, optical, math, computers) grew 30%, compared to a 100% surge in the number of Arab students. In 2018, the number of Arab students in the hightech subjects accounted to 12% of the total, compared to 8% in 2012 (Israel Council for Higher Education).

2. Economist Intelligence Unit, May 15, 2019: Israel’s GDP of $356BN and $40,230 per capita in 2018 is expected to surge to $667BN and $62,070 in 2030, reflecting Israel’s advantage – over developed and developing countries – in the areas of technology and demography.  Israel spends the highest GDP proportion, in the world, on civilian research & development. Its high investment in military research & development has had positive impact on civilian technology. For example, Israel has overcome low rainfall through desalination and water/sewage recycling, evolving into a major exporter of water technologies. More than 50% of Israel’s workforce has gone through tertiary education, and is expected to grow due to a relatively high fertility rate and positive net-immigration. Population growth is faster than any high-income country. Israel’s dynamic hightech sector will continue driving export growth, together with a strong contribution by business services. Exports of natural gas will make an increasing contribution in the 2020s. Israel’s isolation in the region will diminish gradually, as relations with Egypt and Persian Gulf Arab countries are improved. Israel will maintain the free-trade agreements with the US and EU and will expand trade ties with Japan, China and India and mid-size Asian economies. Israeli exports will rise from $111BN in 2018 to $283BN in 2030, as imports rise from $108BN to $233BN.

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