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Ruth King

Jordan’s Prime Minister Steps Down in Wake of Protests Thousands had demonstrated in recent days against a plan to raise taxes in the country, a pivotal U.S. ally in the Middle East By Suha Ma’ayeh and Raja Abdulrahim

https://www.wsj.com/articles/jordans-prime-minister-steps-down-in-wake-of-protests-1528128116

Jordan’s Prime Minister Hani Mulki resigned Monday after thousands protested in recent days against his government’s plan to increase taxes, causing uncertainty in a country that is a vital U.S. ally in the region.

King Abdullah II has accepted the resignation of Mr. Mulki’s government, Jordan’s Royal Court said.

The king thanked the prime minister in a statement for his service and dedication in making difficult and unpopular decisions.

The resignation appears aimed at alleviating tensions after intensifying calls for Mr. Mulki’s dismissal by protesters who said his handling of the economy caused problems. But it remains unclear if the demonstrators will be pacified by the move.

The protests began Wednesday in Amman and other Jordanian cities and towns against a proposed revision to the country’s income tax law that would raise taxes, allow authorities to target more people and scrap exemptions on medical treatment and education.

The tax amendments follow a series of unpopular austerity measures the government adopted earlier this year, including the removal of subsidies on bread that nearly doubled its price. The tax on the sales of a wide range of products and services, including internet subscriptions, was also increased.

John Elsegood The New Boer War

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2018/06/history-repeats-new-boer-war/

When the topic is race, the media concentrates on fripperies, such as Hollywood gripes that black actors aren’t being nominated for enough. Meanwhile, the racist murders of white South Africans by black thugs is deemed too sensitive to note, let alone protest.

The South African election of 1994 was supposed to usher in a new era of tolerance, a rainbow nation, free from the apartheid past. However, after twenty-four years of African National Congress government, South Africa is simply the revenge nation, with Lord Milner’s venality over a century ago being matched by people like Julius Malema, the leader of the so-called Economic Freedom Fighters party.

Just as the concentration camp policy of Lord Kitchener resulted in the deaths of 28,000 Boer women and children in the third phase of the Anglo-Boer War (1899 to 1902), so too has there been the same callous and criminal disregard by the present South African government. While history never exactly repeats, it is noticeable that the Boers (farmers), or Afrikaners, are again bearing the brunt of neglect, and worse.

The critics of the actions of successive white South African governments from 1910 to 1994, and particularly after 1948, have nothing to boast about with their silence and inaction, unless exacting revenge is now considered a political achievement.

In the ANC period of governance, highest estimates cite almost 70,000 whites being murdered while scores more have been raped, robbed and tortured. The murder rate on farms has made farming in South Africa one of the most dangerous occupations in the world. In the first quarter of this year there have been 134 farm attacks, with eighteen murders, at a strike rate of 1.5 attacks per day. The average numbers of attackers is three, with eleven being the highest recorded. Victims are often elderly, an eighty-eight-year-old being the oldest.

As the international liberal website Genocide Watch notes, “on average about 50 people per day are murdered in South Africa of which 20 are white”. So given that there are more blacks killed, why should there be special concern for whites? Because whites constitute only 8 per cent of the population (4.5 million) and 95 per cent of white victims are murdered by blacks. In addition there have been some 5000 members of farming families murdered on the ANC’s watch, many of them by hideous cruelty. Just as “black lives matter”, to coin a current phrase in the US, so too do white lives matter in South Africa. There the minority are in a far worse situation than American blacks.

The Supreme Court’s Masterpiece Evasion Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/270351/supreme-courts-masterpiece-evasion-daniel-greenfield

The Supreme Court’s Masterpiece Cakeshop decision was less of a ruling on the First Amendment than on the left’s growing hostility to the First Amendment. The decision isn’t truly meaningful. And it doesn’t make anyone happy.

Except the owner of the cake shop.

Instead the Supreme Court found a fairly broad consensus, not around the protection of the First Amendment, but the importance of the First Amendment. In many ways this was more of a cultural warning than a legal decision. It cautions leftist activists in government that they ought to respect Freedom of Religion. Even if they undermine it.

There were plenty of weaknesses on the Colorado side. Which meant that it was one of the best shots for protecting Freedom of Religion. Instead a faint victory for the idea, but not necessarily the substance, was won in a narrow decision.

We haven’t the last of these battles yet. And future cases are likely to avoid the biased behavior and legal complications of the Colorado case.

Politics and Free Speech at Dartmouth Survey finds Republicans most tolerant. Jack Kerwick

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270346/politics-and-free-speech-dartmouth-jack-kerwick

A recently conducted Dartmouth University survey supplies some invaluable insights.

According to The Dartmouth, “undergraduates were asked if learning that another student had political beliefs opposite from their own would affect a range of possible interactions with them.” Reportedly, 42% of respondents said that they would be less likely to befriend a person if that person’s politics were contrary to their own. Seventy percent remarked that they’d be less likely to get romantically involved with someone with differing political views. And 30% admitted to being less likely to trust a person with an opposite political perspective.

Yet the report is quick to note that these numbers in themselves conceal “sizable political differences [.]”

Democrats, it’s reported, are far more likely than Republicans or Independents to allow their politics to affect their relationships.

“While 82 percent of respondents who identified as Democrats say they would be less likely to date someone with opposing political beliefs, only 47 percent of Independents and 42 percent of Republicans said the same.”

When it comes to potential friendships, “55 percent of Democratic respondents said opposite political views would make them less likely to befriend another student, compared to 21 percent of Independents and 12 percent of Republicans.”

Judging from these results, students who are Democrats are the most intolerant of political differences while Republican students are vastly most tolerant than Democrats and even more tolerant than Independents—a situation that is the exact opposite of the picture that the left has been painting for decades.

The survey also found that while “majorities” of respondents claimed that knowledge of the political commitments of their professors would not dissuade them from taking classes with those professors, Democratic students were less likely than Independents and Republicans to enroll in courses taught by those with differing political views.

“Democratic students express less willingness to take classes from a Republican professor (38 percent) than Republican students do to take a class taught by a Democratic professor (23 percent).” Moreover, of the four political orientations offered in the survey—Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, and Socialist—the 25 percent or so of student respondents who expressed a disinclination to enroll in a course whose instructor subscribed to a political perspective at odds with their own, Republican professors were most unpopular.

Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing The joys of taqiyya. June 5, 2018 Bruce Bawer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270348/wolves-sheeps-clothing-bruce-bawer

Muslim politicians in the Western world come in two general varieties: those rare ones who are candid about their desire to transform the West in accordance with the dictates of their faith, and those, far greater in number, who prefer to disguise that ambition. The first category includes people like Abdirizak Waberi, a Swedish MP turned Islamic school principal who has actually admitted he believes in “banning music and dancing, prohibiting boys and girls from socializing, and allowing men to beat their four wives with sticks when they became disobedient,” and Brussels city councilman Redouane Ahrouch, who openly advocates for sharia government and recently called for a separation of the sexes on that city’s public transport.

In the second category are Rotterdam mayor Ahmed Aboutaleb, who while striving to pose as a progressive allows his mask to slip now and then (recently, he told an interviewer that “every Muslim is a bit of a salafist”), and London mayor Sadiq Khan, another faux liberal who has, in fact, ordered police to put less emphasis on monitoring potential terrorists and more emphasis on harassing Islam critics. And let’s not forget Minnesota’s (and the DNC’s) own Keith Ellison, who poses as a standard-issue Democrat but belonged for a decade to the Nation of Islam, speaks at CAIR events, and has ties to several pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic groups.

Also belonging to the latter category is Somali-born Bashe Musse, a Norwegian Labor Party politician who has been a member of the Oslo City Council since 2011. During the last couple of weeks he’s been making headlines because of a Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) report on “dumping.” What’s dumping? Like honor killing and female genital mutilation, it’s a common practice in Europe’s Muslims communities. Instead of sending their kids to regular neighborhood schools, many Muslim parents in Europe send their children off to madrasses – Koran schools – in the countries from which they, the parents, emigrated. The children stay in these schools for years at a time, memorizing the Islamic holy book while their agemates back in Europe learn math, science, and literature.

European Union On The Run Italy’s populist coalition government defies the EU, mass migration and George Soros. Lloyd Billingsley

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270356/european-union-run-lloyd-billingsley

Back in March, the League party and anti-establishment Five Star Movement gained victory in what Angelo Codevilla called Italy’s “Trump election.” The governing Democratic Party, descendant of Italy’s Communist Party, managed only 18 percent of the vote, and the biggest loser was the Democrats’ former prime minister Matteo Renzi “the international Left’s Boy Wonder, the Italian Obama.” Nothing like this had happened in a century.

“Italy’s voters choose populists,” CNN proclaimed, “deliver stinging rebuke to Europe.” European Commission boss Jean-Claude Juncker described the election as the “worst-case scenario” for Europe. Since the March populist victory, Italy has been without a government, but that changed on June 1.

As the Telegraph reported, the “anti-immigrant, hard Right” League party and “anti-establishment” Five Star movement have agreed to a compromise, with Guiseppe Conte serving as prime minister. Like the election itself, that had leftist billionaire George Soros reaching for his bullhorn.

Soros conducted considerable election meddling of his own, but said he was “very worried” that Russia was exercising “negative influence” in Europe. “I don’t know if Putin is actually financially supporting him (Matteo Salvini of the League) and his party. This is a question that I think the Italian public has a right to ask, and ask him to tell you whether he’s actually in the pay of Putin.”

New Jersey and Gun Control By Eileen F. Toplansky

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/06/new_jersey_and_gun_control.html

The gun control conundrum will continue ad infinitum. But what is happening in New Jersey should frighten anyone — gun owner or not. NJS102 will most likely be affirmed by the Democrat senate majority in the NJ legislature. The NJ Assembly has already passed the following:

A1217, which would create restraining orders in the state allowing family members and others to ask a judge to have a person’s guns seized and ban them from buying weapons for up to a year.
A2757, which would require all private gun sales in the state to go through a licensed dealer who can perform an additional background check at the point of sale.
A2759, which would create an outright ban in the state on possessing armor-piercing bullets.
A2761, which would ban magazines in the state that hold more than 10 rounds, with some exceptions.

How will this affect gun owners? The proposed legislation states that

No person shall be convicted of an offense… for possessing any firearms, weapons, destructive devices, large capacity ammunition magazines, silencers or explosives, if after giving written notice of his intention to do so, including the proposed date and time of surrender, he voluntarily surrendered [emphasis mine] the weapon, device, instrument or substance in question to the superintendent or to the chief of police in the municipality in which he resides, provided that the required notice is received by the superintendent or chief of police before any charges have been made or complaints filed [.]

Furthermore, a firearm with a fixed magazine capacity holding up to 15 rounds which is incapable of being modified to accommodate 10 or less rounds is to be registered. If not, the firearms owner “must complete a registration statement to be prescribed by the Superintendent of the State Police, and produce for inspection a valid firearms purchaser identification card, permit to carry a handgun, or permit to purchase a handgun.”

Climate Change Has Run Its Course Its descent into social-justice identity politics is the last gasp of a cause that has lost its vitality. By Steven F. Hayward

https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-change-has-run-its-course-1528152876

Mr. Hayward is a senior resident scholar at the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley

“Scientists who are genuinely worried about the potential for catastrophic climate change ought to be the most outraged at how the left politicized the issue and how the international policy community narrowed the range of acceptable responses. Treating climate change as a planet-scale problem that could be solved only by an international regulatory scheme transformed the issue into a political creed for committed believers. Causes that live by politics, die by politics.”

Climate change is over. No, I’m not saying the climate will not change in the future, or that human influence on the climate is negligible. I mean simply that climate change is no longer a pre-eminent policy issue. All that remains is boilerplate rhetoric from the political class, frivolous nuisance lawsuits, and bureaucratic mandates on behalf of special-interest renewable-energy rent seekers.

Judged by deeds rather than words, most national governments are backing away from forced-marched decarbonization. You can date the arc of climate change as a policy priority from 1988, when highly publicized congressional hearings first elevated the issue, to 2018. President Trump’s ostentatious withdrawal from the Paris Agreement merely ratified a trend long becoming evident.

A good indicator of why climate change as an issue is over can be found early in the text of the Paris Agreement. The “nonbinding” pact declares that climate action must include concern for “gender equality, empowerment of women, and intergenerational equity” as well as “the importance for some of the concept of ‘climate justice.’ ” Another is Sarah Myhre’s address at the most recent meeting of the American Geophysical Union, in which she proclaimed that climate change cannot fully be addressed without also grappling with the misogyny and social injustice that have perpetuated the problem for decades.

The descent of climate change into the abyss of social-justice identity politics represents the last gasp of a cause that has lost its vitality. Climate alarm is like a car alarm—a blaring noise people are tuning out. CONTINUE AT SITE

What Trump’s Lawyers Got Right

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/trump-lawyers-mueller-letter-two-things-right/

“In short, unless there is a smoking gun against the president that is lurking unseen even in the private jousting between Trump’s team and Mueller, the special prosecutor should be wrapping up the obstruction aspect of his probe rather than extending it via a court fight over the president’s testimony.”

We learned more about the back-and-forth between President Trump’s legal team and Special Counsel Robert Mueller this past weekend. The New York Times published a long letter from Trump’s team to Mueller arguing that he should drop his request to interview the president.

The lengthy letter makes many factual and legal assertions, some of which are highly debatable. Yet, assuming that it accurately reflects the nature and scope of Mueller’s investigation, its two bottom-line claims have merit: The special counsel does not have a viable criminal case against the president, nor has he justified the extraordinary measure of seeking the president’s testimony.

The letter suggests that the special counsel’s inquiry into Trump’s conduct is focused on obstruction. Mueller was appointed on May 17, 2017, amid the uproar over two events: Trump’s May 9 firing of Comey, and Comey’s subsequent leak of a memo-to-self (published by the Times on May 16), which claimed that Trump had pressured him to drop any investigation of former national-security adviser Michael Flynn. The letter implies that these two events remain the gravamen of the special counsel’s obstruction probe. If that is so, there is no obstruction case.

Only illegal acts to influence an investigation can predicate a criminal charge of obstruction against a president. Investigation and prosecution are executive functions in our system. FBI investigations are conducted under the president’s power; unlike ordinary citizens, the chief executive has the authority to influence, impede, and even shut down investigations.

Yes, the President May Pardon Himself By Andrew C. McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/can-a-president-pardon-himself-yes-trump-can/But he shouldn’t be talking about it.

As he often does, President Trump hijacked the news cycle with a Monday-morning tweet, this one observing that “numerous legal scholars” agree that “I have the absolute right to PARDON myself.” The president elaborates that he has done nothing wrong, and thus there is nothing to pardon.

So, one might ask, why bring it up?

It’s a good question, and not for the first time are we asking. Late last July, Trump tweeted that “all agree the U.S. President has the complete power to pardon” — only to add that there was no point discussing pardons because the only crimes arising out of the Russia probe were leaks of classified information to hurt the administration, not misconduct by the administration. On that occasion, the president was obviously reacting to a Washington Post report that he had been asking advisers “about his power to pardon aides, family members and even himself.”

In any event, if we must discuss the matter then, yes, the Constitution empowers the president to pardon himself. Like any other power, the pardon power may be abused, and if Congress finds a presidential self-pardon is sufficiently abusive, it may impeach and remove the president. But that would not vitiate the pardon — it would be impossible to prosecute the president on whatever crimes had been pardoned.

I wrote a column for PJ Media last year when the president raised the subject. Here’s the pertinent part:

The pardon question is factually premature in the sense that there is no allegation or indication that [the president] or those close to him have committed a crime. It is not, however, legally premature. There need not be a formal criminal charge before a president issues a pardon. After President Nixon resigned, President Ford pardoned him even though he had not been indicted. President Lincoln mass-pardoned Confederate soldiers and sympathizers, and President Carter mass-pardoned Vietnam draft evaders. Thus, the fact that special counsel Mueller has not, and may never, file criminal charges would not prevent President Trump from issuing pardons.