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Ruth King

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Who Gains from the US Withdrawal from the Nuclear Arms Treaty? by Stephen Blank and Peter Huessy

By on November 19th, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13296/nuclear-inf-treaty-withdrawal

Russia has violated not only the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), but, according to former senior White House nuclear arms official Frank Miller, every major arms-control agreement it has signed with the United States.

The same kind of deception has been characteristic of China.

The truth is that there is no INF arms-control regime to be saved. It is senseless to pine for a treaty that only one power — the United States — observes. Self-abnegation here only enables others to shoot first and make threats that the US cannot answer.

The US renunciation of the 1987 United States-Soviet Union Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) has generated much skepticism in the arms-control community — particularly in much of Europe, and from Japan.

These countries hoped not only to keep Russia and the United States in the 1987 treaty (despite Russia’s major violations of the INF treaty), but persuade China to become a party to the treaty and thus be forced to eliminate the hundreds of INF-range missiles China has deployed in Asia and ranged against US and its allied interests.

Critics have presented the following five main arguments against the US move:

It enables Russia to build as many INF missiles as it likes, while simultaneously allowing Moscow to blame Washington for reneging on the treaty.

It imperils the entire structure of arms control, including the possible 2021 extension of the United States-Russia 2010 New START Treaty.

It would require extensive consultation with Europe or risk undermining allied cohesion and offering Moscow new targets in its campaign of political warfare against the NATO alliance.

It is unnecessary — despite Russian violations — because the US has adequate conventional air-launched and sea-launched cruise missiles to keep Russia at risk and defend Europe, and presumably America’s Pacific allies, against China.

It concedes a strategic advantage to Russia, since no INF-equivalent missile is in production by the United States to match Russian INF missile deployments.

These arguments, however, do not hold up to scrutiny.

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ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Palestinians Arresting Women; Where are the Media? by Bassam Tawil

By on November 19th, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13313/palestinians-arresting-women

Mahmoud Abbas does not want his people and the rest of the world to know that his security forces are arresting women for criticizing a social security law or providing financial aid to Palestinian families in the Gaza Strip.

Unlike Jbara and Marab’eh, Ahed Tamimi was lucky to be arrested by Israel. Had she been arrested by the Palestinian Authority, no one would ever have known.

This attitude is another example of the anti-Israel bias of the international media and community. It is yet another example of how the West gives the Palestinians a pass to violate human rights and crack down on dissent.

Last August, the Palestinian Authority (PA) protested because Israel arrested a Palestinian woman from Hebron on charges of incitement and affiliation with Hamas. The 42-year-old woman, Lama Khater, is also known as a strong critic of the President Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian Authority.

Khater’s scathing attacks on Abbas and his government, however, did not stop the Palestinian Authority from condemning Israel and demanding her immediate release.

This was not the first time that the Palestinian Authority has condemned Israel for arresting a Palestinian woman who voiced criticism of Abbas and his policies. Last year, the Palestinian Authority condemned Israel for arresting Khaleda Jarrar, a senior member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, one of several PLO terrorist groups. Jarrar was arrested by Israel for membership in a terrorist group and incitement.

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IMMIGRATION, POLITICS Comments turned off

Kamala Harris’ Tirade Against ICE Compares perceptions of ICE to fears of the KKK. Joseph Klein

By on November 19th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271988/kamala-harris-tirade-against-ice-joseph-klein

Democrat Senator Kamala Harris of California, a former prosecutor and attorney general no less, tweeted last year: “An undocumented immigrant is not a criminal.” She is wrong. Any alien who enters or attempts to enter the United States at any time or place other than as designated by immigration officers has committed an illegal act that carries criminal as well as civil penalties. It is no wonder that Senator Harris, who is considering a run for president in 2020, thinks that enforcement of U.S. immigration laws to ensure the security of the American people is somehow racist. Senator Harris displayed her utter contempt for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during a congressional hearing last week. She used a confirmation hearing for President Trump’s nominee to head ICE, its current acting director Ronald Vitiello, to place ICE on the same level as the Ku Klux Klan.

Senator Harris began her exercise in moral equivalence by asking Mr. Vitiello about a joke he had made three years ago referring to the Democratic Party, with its pro-segregationist past, as “neo-Klan.” Mr. Vitiello said in response that his joke had been inappropriate. When Senator Harris asked Mr. Vitiello to explain why he thought so, Mr. Vitiello replied that the KKK was “a domestic terrorist group” which “tried to use fear and force to change the political environment” based on “race and ethnicity.” However, Senator Harris was not just looking for an apology. In a display of crass sophistry, she tried to create a false comparison. She badgered Mr. Vitiello with questions seeking to equate the legitimate fears and anxieties stirred in minority communities by the KKK, an abhorrent hate group that peddles in racism, with illegal aliens’ fears of being apprehended by a government agency fulfilling its obligation to enforce the nation’s immigration laws. In Senator Harris’s mind, clearly identifiable government officers following the law in stopping and detaining people who are not supposed to be in this country in the first place are as much to be legitimately feared as white-robed Klansmen with a history of lynching and shooting African-Americans, burning crosses, and firebombing African-American churches.

As Fox News Channel’s Jeanine Pirro said in her brilliant “Opening Statement” segment last Saturday night, which she addressed to Senator Harris: “What you are doing is planting seeds of fear, resistance and resentment against ICE among people who have no right to come here, who have already broken our laws to get here.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

There Is No ‘Surge’ in White Supremacy By Julie Kelly

By on November 19th, 2018

https://amgreatness.com/2018/11/19/there-is-no-surge

This has been a particularly violent year for Republicans across the country. Candidates were assaulted and Republican campaign offices were vandalized. U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and his wife were chased out of a restaurant; Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and his family were harassed by Democratic activists and reporters up until Election Day. Trump Administration officials were publicly intimidated and humiliated, and a leading Democratic congresswoman called for more aggression against Trump aides.

Republican senators were verbally accosted in elevators and on the streets of Capitol Hill during the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation process; a female Republican senator received death threats and a suspicious package at her home after she voted to confirm his appointment. Of course, this is all on top of the mass murder attempt against several Republican congressmen that nearly killed a top House lawmaker in the summer of 2017.

One would assume that any post-election analysis by a self-styled “conservative” about the menacing atmosphere on the Left would harshly condemn the incoming Democratic House majority for condoning such destructive behavior, and warn Democrats to clean up their act for the sake of the country. That sort of tongue-lashing by a leading outlet on the Right is not just appropriate, but essential.

But David French at National Review has other post-election targets in mind—namely, the imaginary cabal of white supremacists taking over the Republican Party.

Outlandish Claims, Distorted Evidence
French’s November 15 column, “The White-Supremacy Surge,” is more cowbell to amplify the media’s nonstop drumbeat that Donald Trump and his supporters are bigots, anti-Semites, and neo-Nazis. (A despicable Washington Post column over the weekend suggested that massacres and death squads might be in the offing because of Trump.)

Sadly, French’s incendiary analysis wasn’t far from that Post screed. It is a literary junk drawer of anecdotal evidence and conjecture scattered with overworn insults about Trump supporters.

In an attempt to boost his inaccurate claim that white supremacy is surging, French cited a sketchy study while overlooking exculpatory data in the very same report, and he mentioned random racial crimes that are vile but no indicator of a coordinated white supremacist movement. “Trump’s words have emboldened white supremacists,” French outlandishly declared, again without evidence.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The Progressive Synopticon By Victor Davis Hanson

By on November 19th, 2018

https://amgreatness.com/2018/11/18/the-progressive-synoptic

In the post-election aftermath, Republicans are wondering about how they can capture that missing 2-5 percent of the electorate that lost them the House of Representatives.

Could they pry away 40 percent of the institutionalized Democratic Latino vote on delivery of a full-employment economy of rising wages? Can they win over 20 percent of the African-American electorate on the basis of more jobs and less competition from illegal immigrants?

Can Trump tone down his ad hominem invective and tweeting to reassure an additional 10 percent of independent and middle-class suburban women that his national security agenda, free-market prosperity, traditionalism, law-and-order, and national sovereignty policies ensure greater tranquility, safety, and opportunity—even if they are not packaged in the manner of his more mellifluous and vacuous “presidential” predecessor?

No Escaping the Culture Wars
Republicans, in deer-in-the-headlights-style, appear shocked that they are increasingly prone to winning the vote on Election Day only to lose it in the ensuing weeks when absentee ballots and what-not filter in with astounding Democratic majorities. Someone is spending a lot of money to get the absentee voting ballot out, correctly marked, and returned. And whatever that “lot” is, it is killing Republican candidates.

Yet there is a larger obstacle to achieving that long-term 51 percent Trump solution along with the shorter-term strategy of matching Democratic absentee ballots with Republican absentee ballots. Conservatives have lost entirely the culture and establishment wars. The result is that they are besieged by a circle of hostile progressive, but quite establishment institutions that are relentless.

Imagine the traditionalist as living in synopticon—a suspect that is the target of 24/7 viewing, indoctrination, and conditioning by progressive auditors. In other words, a 40-45 percent minority of Americans is relentlessly lectured, sermonized, demonized, and neutered by a 360- degree ring of prying institutional overseers.

There is no escape. There is no respite. There is no quarter given.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel and the Sunni Arab States Cannot Resist Iran Alone By Brandon J. Weichert

By on November 19th, 2018

https://amgreatness.com/2018/11/19/israel-and-the-sunni-arab

The small democratic state of Israel finds itself outnumbered—and potentially outgunned—as the Iranian threat, supported by its Hezbollah terrorist allies, amasses to its north.

Recently, though, the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu got itself in an even bigger mess. After allowing for Qatar to transfer $15 million in financial aid and gasoline to the blockaded Gaza Strip, Hamas, the terror organization that controls the rebellious Gaza, along with their allies in the Islamic Jihad group, fired off nearly 500 rockets into southern Israel.

The response from Israel, usually a forceful practitioner of decisive counterterrorism, has been strangely muted.

When it comes to the unruly Gaza Strip, the Israeli government tends to take a low-cost “mowing the grass” approach. Instead of trying to implement regime change (because their options for replacing the ruling Hamas range from bad to worse), the Israeli military prefers to let Hamas grow in strength. Then, once Hamas gets too big for its britches, the IDF marches on Gaza and cuts Hamas down to size. Netanyahu’s response to the recent violence has confused everyone in the region.

Netanyahu is known to Westerners as a counterterrorism hawk. After he failed to respond militarily to the recent rocket attacks, his even more hawkish defense minister, Avigdor Lieberman, resigned in protest. Lieberman was vehemently opposed to Netanyahu’s initial approval for the transfer of $15 million from Qatar into Hamas coffers. At the time, Lieberman likened Netanyahu’s decision to that of protection money one pays to the mafia.

In that, Lieberman proved correct. But is that the whole story?

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Report: Merkel urged Romania’s president not to move embassy to Jerusalem By Thomas Lifson

By on November 19th, 2018

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/11/report_merkel_urged_romanias_president_not_to_move_embassy_to_jerusalem.html

Has Germany changed course on Israel under Angela Merkel toward active, if private, hostility? In an exclusive report that is not being denied by either government, Benjamin Weinthal of the Jerusalem Post writes:

German chancellor Angela Merkel called Romania’s President Klaus Iohannis in April, urging him to stop Bucharest’s declared announcement to move its diplomatic building to Israel’s capital.

A Western source told The Jerusalem Post that Merkel lobbied the Romanian president to put a halt on the relocation of its embassy to Jerusalem. It is believed that Merkel called other European politicians as part of a campaign to block the relocation of European embassies to Jerusalem.

Representatives of Romania, Germany, and Israel all do not deny, but rather refuse to comment on the report, generally a sign that it is true.

With its historical guilt over the Holocaust, and previously-expressed commitments to Israel’s security, this marks a strong, if covert, change of direction, assuming it is true. Merkel, of course, also admitted more than a million Muslim so-called refugees last year, predominantly military-age males, and it is not clear if this new group is adding anti-Israel weight to the German Chancellor’s calculus, through fear of unrest.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

The totalitarian democracy of Stacey Abrams By Abraham H. Miller

By on November 19th, 2018

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/11/the_totalitarian_democracy_of_stacey_abrams.html

“Democracy has failed in Georgia,” said Stacey Abrams in what hardly could be called a concession speech after a ballot recount confirmed that the Republican candidate, Brian Kemp, had defeated her in Georgia’s gubernatorial contest.

Of course, democracy did not fail in Georgia. The voters made their voices heard at the ballot box, and Ms. Abrams did not like what she heard.

The late Israeli historian J. L. Talmon called such behavior “totalitarian democracy” or “messianic democracy,” which found its origins in the French Revolution when the extremists arrogated to themselves the unfettered right to interpret the will of the people. Alexis de Tocqueville wrote about this when he observed that those who made the French Revolution always spoke in the name of the people, without in the least having bothered to consult them.

Talmon’s theme was that in totalitarian democracy there exists a general will, an abstraction that is known to elites who divine what the people really want and assume the right to speak in the name of the people. In totalitarian democracy, the elite are not the people’s representatives but their messiahs.

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HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Islamic Invaders from the South Edward Cline

By on November 19th, 2018

https://edwardcline.blogspot.com/2018/11/islamic-invaders-from-south.html

Iran’s terror proxy Hezbollah is ramping up south of the US border, as witnessed by arrests of its operatives in Bolivia and Peru.

Clarion had an interesting – nay, a startling – description of how Islamic terrorist groups have established footholds in South America to better attack the U.S. And the so-called “caravan” — aka invasion, thousands strong – of illegals is now at the border, with some of them climbing the wall to taunt border guards and U.S. soldiers. The trek from Central America through Mexico is supported by outside parties historically antagonistic to the U.S., but who are these groups?

Clarion reports:

Iran’s terror proxy Hezbollah is ramping up south of the US border, as witnessed by arrests of its operatives in Bolivia and Peru.

Information revealed by the State Department’s top counter terror official Nathan Sales confirmed the increased presence of Iran and Hezbollah in Latin and South America.

But will an attack from Canada? Tim Brown of Freedom Post reports:

Canada is today the happy home of thousands of radical Islamists, ex-ISIS fighters and the Muslim Brotherhood. Their numbers continue to grow, with Islamists infiltrating the Canadian government on several levels.

Many Americans assume that all is peaceful and well with their northern neighbor. But security experts here warn that by welcoming radical Islamists, Canada now presents a danger to the United States.

Canada as an ‘Aircraft Carrier’ for Muslim Terrorists to Attack America.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

A Green Logrolling Classic Offshore wind for 78 cents a kilowatt-hour. On the open market: 3 cents.

By on November 18th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-green-logrolling-classic-1542579487

For a perfect example of green daydreaming gone awry, look to the waters off Virginia Beach, which will soon feature two wind turbines with blades rising as tall as the Washington Monument. It’s impressive engineering, but it makes zero economic sense, according to Virginia’s utilities regulators. They’ve issued a scorching order that . . . approves the project. Yes, the surprise ending is that their factual analysis doesn’t matter under a green fiat from the state Legislature.

Dominion Energy , Virginia’s biggest utility, plans to spend $300 million to build the two turbines 27 miles off the coast. Together they will produce 12 megawatts of power, enough for 3,000 homes. This first pair of turbines is a “demonstration project” to let Dominion gather data and experience. Then, as soon as 2024, it could begin dotting the adjacent waters with hundreds more, enough to generate 2,000 megawatts and light 500,000 homes.

This summer Dominion asked Virginia’s State Corporation Commission, which regulates electric utilities, to deem the plan “prudent.” As reason to act swiftly, it cited pressure to cut carbon emissions. Senate Bill 966, championed by Dominion and signed in March by Gov. Ralph Northam, set a state objective of 5,000 megawatts of solar and wind power by 2028.

The commission’s 20-page order, issued Nov. 2, is a takedown from front to back. “Dominion’s customers will pay the costs of this Project,” it says. The two turbines will generate electricity at 78 cents a kilowatt-hour—compared with 9.4 cents for new onshore wind, 5.6 cents for new solar, and around three cents for energy bought on the open market.

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