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Ruth King

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Dictators and U.N. Standards The International Criminal Court decides to pick on Jordan.

By on December 15th, 2017

The U.S. has never joined the International Criminal Court in the Hague, and the court’s strange attack on Jordan this week explains why. The court said it will refer Jordan to the United Nations Security Council for failing to arrest Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir after years of giving other countries a pass.

Jordan is one of 123 countries that have joined the ICC since it came into force 15 years ago, and the Hashemite Kingdom may now regret it. Parties grant the court jurisdiction over war crimes, genocide or crimes against humanity, and members are obligated to act on its international arrest warrants. Sudan isn’t a party, but the Security Council can ask the court to investigate crimes there. In 2009 the ICC issued an arrest warrant for the Sudanese president for his manifest depredations in the country’s Darfur region.

This was mostly grandstanding, since the U.N. has done nothing to enforce its warrant. Bashir was traveling in the Middle East within months of the warrant, and he has flown across Africa in recent years without ICC intervention. No other country has earned a referral from the ICC over Bashir.

Yet suddenly the court has decided to make an example of Jordan, which in March hosted an Arab League summit that Bashir attended. This is a strange way to treat a country that has absorbed and cared for millions of Syrian refugees and punched above its weight in the fight against Islamic State. Jordan has a law that protects visiting heads of state on its soil, and its National Assembly is already crafting a legal challenge to the ICC’s decision.

All of which points to the ICC’s arbitrary power, which answers to no political authority beyond its own legal whim. It can pursue its cases without regard for larger security or political interests, such as Jordan’s crucial role as a moderating force in the region. Bashir is a bad dude, but he has improved his behavior in recent years and cooperated with the U.S. in fighting terrorism. Presidents Obama and Trump both loosened sanctions on Sudan.

Absent Security Council action, the referral will go nowhere. But it presents an opportunity for the U.S. to do a favor for a Middle East ally by vowing to veto any punishment against Jordan. If the ICC can arbitrarily harass Jordan, the U.S. and Israel will surely become targets.

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Dow 24000 and the Trump Boom Companies are bringing cash and jobs back to the U.S. To keep that trend going, tax reform is vital. By Maria Bartiromo

By on December 15th, 2017

I’m not in the habit of giving stock tips or making market calls. I’ve never claimed to be an investment strategist. But after spending years reporting on business and finance, I was convinced on the night of Nov. 8, 2016, that the conventional market wisdom was way off target.

As the night wore on and equity traders began to grasp that Donald Trump would become president, stock markets around the world started selling off. In the U.S., trading in S&P 500 futures would eventually be halted after a 5% decline. After midnight, Paul Krugman of the New York Times opined: “If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never.”

I didn’t see it that way. For years I’d been hearing anguished people at companies large and small bemoan the growing federal burden of taxes and regulations. Now the U.S. would have a president who intended to reduce this hardship and prioritize economic growth.

When I sat down around 10:30 on election night for a Fox News panel discussion, Dow futures were down about 700 points. Markets like certainty; it was understandable that some investors were selling. Mr. Trump seemed to present more uncertainty than Hillary Clinton, who was essentially promising a continuation of the Obama administration. Mr. Trump’s talk about ripping up the North American Free Trade Agreement, for example, created big unknowns and potentially significant risks.

The election night selloff turned out to be a huge buying opportunity. Companies had been sitting on cash—not investing or hiring. ObamaCare compliance was a nightmare for many business owners. It made them wonder what other big idea from Washington would haunt them in the future. Mrs. Clinton was likely to increase business costs further, while Mr. Trump had vowed to reduce them. Even in the middle of the election-night market panic, the implications for corporate revenue and earnings growth seemed obvious.

The next morning, with the Trump victory confirmed, I told my colleague Martha MacCallum that I would be “buying the stock market with both hands.” Investors began doing the same. U.S. markets have added $6 trillion in value since the election, with investors around the world wanting in on America’s new growth story. The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta is now forecasting the third straight quarter of U.S. gross domestic product growth around 3%.

It’s not just an American growth story. For the first time in a long time the world is experiencing synchronized growth, which is why Goldman Sachs and Barclays among others have recently predicted 4% global growth in 2018. The entire world benefits when its largest economy is healthy, and the vibrancy overseas is reinforcing the U.S. resurgence.

As the end of the Trump administration’s first year approaches, it’s a good time to review the progress of the businessman elected on a promise to restore American prosperity.

Year One has been nothing short of excellent from an economic standpoint. Corporate earnings have risen and corporate behavior has changed, measured in greater capital investment. Businesspeople tell me that a new approach to regulation is a big factor. During President Obama’s final year in office the Federal Register, which contains new and proposed rules and regulations, ran to 95,894 pages, according to a Competitive Enterprise Institute report. This was the highest level in its history and 19% higher than the previous year’s 80,260 pages. The American Action Forum estimates the last administration burdened the economy with 549 million hours of compliance, averaging nearly five hours of paperwork for every full-time employee. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Secrets the FBI Shouldn’t Keep Sen. Ron Johnson demands answers about the bureau’s political biases. Kimberley Strassel

By on December 15th, 2017

Congress persists in its effort to pry the real story of the 2016 election out of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, an agency notoriously reluctant to share secrets. The trick is telling the difference between legitimate secrets and self-serving ones.

The FBI—and the Department of Justice—would rather blur that distinction. In recent congressional appearances, FBI Director Christopher Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein tossed around the word “classified” like confetti. Neither man answered a single substantive question, citing their obligation to protect the “integrity” of investigations, safeguard “sensitive” information, and show deference to an “independent” and “internal” inspector general reviewing the FBI’s handling of the 2016 election.

True, the FBI has plenty of things it needs to keep secret regarding national security and law enforcement. Let’s even acknowledge the bureau may be rightly concerned about turning some information over to today’s leak-prone Congress. Even so, in the specific case of its 2016 election behavior, the FBI is misusing its secrecy powers to withhold information whose disclosure is in the public interest.

Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson exposed two such instances this week, from his perch as chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Mr. Johnson received a letter Wednesday from Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who graciously and nimbly provided information that the committee had requested last week.

That letter included some notable dates. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team is emphasizing its ejection of FBI agent Peter Strzok immediately upon learning about anti-Trump texts he exchanged with another FBI employee, Lisa Page, before the 2016 election. But when did the FBI learn of the messages? The inspector general’s investigation began in mid-January. The letter explains that the FBI was asked for text messages of certain key employees based on search terms, which turned up “a number of politically-oriented” Strzok-Page texts. The inspector general then demanded all of the duo’s text messages, which the FBI began producing on July 20.

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Preparing Our Students to Respond to the Anti-Israel Propaganda on Campus By Alex Grobman, PhD

By on December 15th, 2017

Did the Jews of the Yishuv Live in Harmony With Their Neighbors Until the Zionist “Invasion”?

The Palestinian Arabs claim that Zionism is the root cause for the failure of the Arabs and Jews to find a solution to their mutual conflict. In a speech to the UN General Assembly on November 13, 1974, Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, declared the enmity against the Jews originated after they began immigrating to Palestine in 1881. “Before the first large wave of immigrants started arriving,” he asserted, “every segment of the population enjoyed the religious tolerance characteristic of our civilization.”

Arafat alleged that Arabs “were engaged in farming and building, spreading culture throughout the land for thousands of years, setting an example in the practice of freedom of worship, acting as faithful guardians of the holy places of all religions.”

He treasured the “beautiful memories and vivid images of the religious brotherhood that was the hallmark of our Holy City before it succumbed to catastrophe. Our people continued to pursue this enlightened policy until the establishment of the state of Israel and their dispersion.”

Arafat’s idyllic description of life before the Zionist “invasion” is significant because his account has become part of the Arab narrative. Having been indoctrinated from childhood to the notion that Jews stole their land and threaten the sanctity of their holy sites, one can understand how young Palestinian Arabs easily become hostile to a perceived alien occupying force that has thrust itself into the midst of the Islamic world.
Is Arafat’s Description Correct?

To what extent is Arafat’s portrayal of life before 1881 accurate? The answer is unequivocal—it is a total fabrication.

Historian Moshe Ma’oz points out that in the Muslim-Ottoman state, Jews lived in an insecure environment. Viewed as inferior citizens due to the Muslim belief in Islam’s religious superiority, Jews were regarded as “state protégés” (dhimmis) who were “inferior before the law of the state and its institutions.” They could not testify in Muslim courts, bear arms, build synagogues higher than mosques, and were forced to pay a special poll tax (jizya) for protection and as a sign of their subservient status.

While paying the jizya, the dhimmi was subjected to a very demeaning process designed to belittle and humiliate the individual, explains historian Bernard Lewis.

Historian Arie Morgenstern notes that in 1834 when Arab farm workers revolted against the regime of Muhammad Ali, Jews were attacked in the major cities. In Safed, they stole Jewish property, destroyed homes and defiled synagogues. Some Jewish women were raped, beaten and murdered.

Morgenstern quotes a report by Rabbi Shmuel Heller of Safed, who assessed the tragedy that ensued:

“For forty days, day after day, from the Sunday following Shavuot, all of the people of our holy city, men, women and children have been like refuse upon the field. Hungry, thirsty, naked, barefoot, wandering to and fro in fear and confusion like lambs led to the slaughter…They [the Arab marauders] removed all the Torah scrolls and thrust them contemptuously to ground, and they ravished the daughters of Israel—woe to the ears that hear it—and the great study house they burned to its foundations…And the entire city was destroyed and laid ruin, they did not leave a single wall whole; they dug and sought treasures, and the city stood ruined and desolate, without a single person.”

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Policy speeches vs. policy Caroline Glick

By on December 15th, 2017

What is President Donald Trump’s Middle East policy?http://carolineglick.com/policy-speeches-vs-policy/

Monday Trump is scheduled to release a new US national security strategy on Monday. This past Tuesday Trump’s National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster gave a speech laying out some of its components in a speech in Washington.

McMaster’s speech was notable because in it he laid out a host of policies that McMaster himself has reportedly opposed since he was appointed to his position in February.

McMaster for instance has been open in his opposition to linking terrorism with Islam. He has also reportedly insisted on limiting US actions in Syria and Iraq to defeating Islamic State. McMaster reportedly fired his deputy for Middle East policy Derek Harvey last summer due to Harvey’s advocacy of combating Iran’s consolidation of control over Syria through its proxies President Bashar Assad and Hezbollah.

In his speech on Tuesday, McMaster embraced the policies he has reportedly opposed. He discussed at length the threat of what he referred to as “radical Islamist ideology.”

That ideology, which the US had previously interpreted “myopically,” constitutes “a grave threat to all civilized people,” he said.

McMaster regretted US myopia noting, “We didn’t pay enough attention to how it’s being advanced through charities, madrassas and other social organizations.”

McMaster fingered Turkey and Qatar, two ostensible US allies, as the main sponsors and sources of funding for Islamist ideology that targets Western interests.

He noted that in the past Saudi Arabia had served as a major sponsor of radical Islam. But Riyadh has been replaced by Qatar and by Turkey, he said.

Trump’s electoral victory raised hopes of his supporters and some of his advisers that the US would designate the Muslim Brotherhood has a terrorist organization. The Brotherhood has spawned multiple jihadist terrorist groups including al-Qaida and Hamas. President Recep Erdogan’s AK Party is a Turkish version of the Muslim Brotherhood.

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NIDRA POLLER: ISRAEL AND PALESTINE-THE BROKEN RECORD

By on December 15th, 2017

The account that follows has taken on greater significance since December 7th when President Donald Trump announced that he will fulfill the 1995 recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel, and take steps to move the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. International law is being thrown at President Trump and the State of Israel like murderous rocks in the hands of shababs. The peace process is a chorus line of porcelain dolls, too beautiful to touch, endangered by the heavy-handed president and the stubborn Jewish state. A pure white curtain is drawn over Middle East realities and the wailing of the professional mourners breaks the hearts of the world’s media. This brutal unilateral decision is tearing apart the pristine calm of the Middle East. And the 2-state solution in divine perfection floats down from the heavens, escorted by Palestinian angels. Everyone, or at least all the good souls in this wide world, knows the shape and the lines of this perfect state. It was almost ready to land. And now it’s all spoiled.

This is the assumption that underlies the weeping, wailing, and scolding. The righteous indignation. The peace process has been betrayed. The holier than thou international community had set forth the rules and the stepping stone and the destination. How dare this upstart president barge into the head of the line, pluck the gem of Jerusalem, and hand it to Israel?

Take the time to read this detailed account of a Colloquium held in Paris on November 27th. Palestinians and their supporters, speaking to an audience they assumed to be 100% sympathetic, made no secret of their intentions and ultimate objectives: to turn the Oslo process upside down. First, the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state. Then, the negotiations. These were not marginal extremists. Elias Sanbar is the Palestinian ambassador to UNESCO. Hala Abu-Hasira is “first counselor” of the Palestinian mission to France. Invited to take part in a debate on a French TV station yesterday, she smugly declared that Jerusalem, according to international law, is a corpus separatum. That was in 1947!

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Next Year in Jerusalem? It is time to cut off financial support to Abbas By Kevin D. Williamson

By on December 14th, 2017

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas says he will no longer accept a role for the United States in the ongoing Arab–Israeli peace negotiations, which have produced little in the way of negotiation and nothing in the way of meaningful peace.

If President Abbas desires to end diplomatic relations with the United States, the United States should think seriously about obliging him.

When the Trump administration announced plans to comply with longstanding U.S. law and move — someday — the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, the country’s capital, the Arabs went nuts, but not quite as nuts as the Turks would have liked: Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan has criticized what he sees as a weak Arab response to the Trump administration’s non-initiative initiative. Turkey has its own game, and Palestinian upheaval would suit Erdogan just fine.

There were apocalyptic intimations, but in reality the response was more or less what one would expect, and if the Olympic committee ever recognizes rock-throwing as a legitimate sport, the Palestinian people will finally have found their national calling.

This is a familiar and tedious piece of performance art. The Palestinian statelet is in no way viable, and the Palestinian cause is less and less useful to the Islamic powers with each passing year. The Arab–Israeli conflict was for a time another Cold War proxy, with the Palestinian cause serving as a cat’s-paw for the Soviet Union, which meant that it was a source of real money and real power. Those days are long gone, and the Palestinian cause has in no small part devolved from instrument of civilizational conflict to instrument of ordinary grift, a phony jihad used to fortify the alliance between fanatics and financial interests that is the default model of government throughout much of the Muslim Middle East.

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Why Trump Should Consider a Post-Twitter Presidency By now, the president’s record has transcended his social-media idiosyncrasies. By Victor Davis Hanson

By on December 14th, 2017

Almost every supposedly informed prediction about President Donald Trump’s compulsive Twitter addiction has so far proved wrong.

He did not tweet his way out of the Republican nomination. Spontaneous social-media messaging did not lose Trump the general election race with Hillary Clinton. Nor has Trump tweeted his presidency into oblivion.

Instead, Trump’s tweets have not just bypassed the mostly progressive media; they’ve sent it into a tizzy. In near-suicidal fashion, networks such as CNN have melted down in hatred of Trump, goaded on by Trump’s Twitter digs.

Trump has often bragged that having a large following on social media — he has more than 44 million Twitter followers and connects with millions more via Facebook and Instagram — is “like having your own newspaper.”

He has a point.

While the media goes ballistic over Trump’s inflammatory Twitter attacks on “fake news,” the vast majority of Trump’s electronic messaging simply reports on his daily activities and various agendas.

Trump has created a Twitter empire with a reach that far exceeds the combined subscriber base of the New York Times and Washington Post, and he has vastly expanded on Barack Obama’s use of a presidential Twitter feed to connect with voters.

Almost all of the people who have climbed into the Twitter ring with Trump — from Hillary Clinton to the take-a-knee millionaire National Football League players — have come out on the losing end. Trump has proven far better than seasoned journalists and ego-driven celebrities at creating go-for-the-jugular put-downs of 240 characters or less.

Trump’s stream-of-conscious Twitter observations have sometimes proved eerily prescient. He tweeted warnings about the dangers of illegal immigration shortly before the tragic murder of Kate Steinle by an undocumented immigrant with a lengthy criminal record. Soon after Trump retweeted incendiary and controversial videos about radical Islamic violence, earning him condemnation from British prime minister Theresa May, it was announced that two men had been arrested in London for plotting a terrorist attack and assassination — of none other than May herself.

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Trump, Netanyahu, & Bin Salman: Destroyers Of The Neoliberal World Order Tyler Durden’s picture by Tyler Durden

By on December 14th, 2017

The perfect storm. This is what the situation in the Middle East looks like. More and more events in the region seem to be leading towards an epochal change in the delicate balance of power.

The balance of power in the Middle East was quickly altered following the victory over terrorism in Syria by Damascus and her allies. Moscow’s new role guarantees Iran virtually unlimited space to manoeuvre in the region. The new Iranian military bases in Syria match the agreement between Russia and Egypt for the creation of common areas of cooperation against terrorism.

In this complicated context, Donald Trump emerges as a destroyer of US interests in the region. Observing the cooperation between the Kurdish Syrian Democratic forces (SDF) and the Americans in Syria, we can see the genesis of all the problems between Ankara and Washington. Turkey used to employ political Islam (Muslim Brotherhood) as a way of destabilizing the Middle East and North Africa, once one of the central strategies of Obama and the State Department as well. Turkey now gravitates towards the multipolar milieu of Moscow, Beijing and Tehran. The role conferred by these three nations allows Erdogan to manoeuvre skilfully between allied nations as well as fomenters of Islamic extremism like Qatar.

Turkey is just an example of the delicate balance upon which the region rests. Moscow has become the sole mediator for all parties, and does not appear to have bad relations with any of them. The Saudis are going to buy the S-400 system from the Russians; Netanyahu is forced to try to influence Moscow in order to retain some kind of leverage over Iran, but to little avail. Mohammad bin Salman (MBS) has gone further, thanks to Trump and the green light of his son-in-law, arresting dozens of Saudi authorities and financiers (very close to Clinton and Obama), undertaking a genocide against Yemenis, arming Wahhabist Islamist terrorists in every corner of the region, and cutting off all relations with Qatar in a quasi-war that is turning out to be manifestly ineffective.

In this uncontrolled chaos, and among the factions loyal to the United States, Netanyahu is seeing Israeli missiles, launched from uncontested Lebanese airspace, being shot down in Syria. MBS cannot even force his pupil Hariri to resign; and even Saleh in Yemen was killed after betraying and abandoning the Houthis. Abu Dhabi and Riyadh are finding themselves coming under fire from Houthi forces, facing the consequences of their senseless military choices closer to home. In Israel, the Netanyahu government is drowning under a sea of corruption scandals, demonstrators on the streets demanding his resignation. Are coloured revolutions returning to bite the master’s hand? In order for Saudi Arabia to avoid a similar scenario, made worse by a dearth in welfare as a result of the drop in oil prices as well as the coffers being emptied by wars, MBS has decided to arrest and rob all of his opponents. Trump does not seem to care about the consequences of these actions, taking care to coordinate events at the highest levels with Xi Jinping in Asia and Putin in the Middle East.

Trump has made a wise choice by renouncing the impossible goal of achieving global hegemony, aiming instead to sort out domestic problems. He is committed to the cause of his electors, and to this end seeks to extract as much money as possible from his allies in order to restart the US economy, aiming for re-election in 2020.

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How Many Muslims in Europe? Pew’s Projections Fall Short by Soeren Kern

By on December 14th, 2017

Pew’s baseline estimate of the number of Muslims currently in Europe — the estimate upon which its future projections are calculated — has been undercounted by at least five million Muslims.

The UCIDE figures — which posit that there are roughly 750,000 more Muslims in Spain today than the estimate proffered by Pew — are widely recognized in Spain as the most accurate assessment of the Muslim population in that country. It remains unclear why Pew failed to mention the UCIDE report in its source appendix.

In Germany, Pew “decided not to count” the one million plus Muslim asylum seekers who arrived in the country in 2015/2016 because “they are not expected to receive refugee status.”

The Pew report entirely ignores the key issue of how Europe will integrate tens of millions of Muslim migrants whose values — including anti-Semitism, polygamy, female genital mutilation and honor violence — cannot be reconciled with those of Europe’s Judeo-Christian and liberal-democratic heritage.

Europe’s Muslim population is set to double — and possibly triple — between now and 2050, according to new projections by the Pew Research Center.

The projections, contained in a report, “Europe’s Growing Muslim Population,” confirm what has long been common knowledge: decades of declining European birthrates, coupled with mass migration from the Muslim world, are fast-tracking the Islamization of Europe.

The demographic calamity facing Europe, however, is even worse than the Pew report lets on. A critical analysis of the data shows that Pew’s calculations of the current Muslim population in key European countries are partial and incomplete — and in some instances inaccurate. As a result, Pew’s baseline estimate of the number of Muslims currently in Europe — the estimate upon which its future projections are calculated — has been undercounted by at least five million Muslims, whose presence in Europe will significantly increase the future size of the continent’s Muslim population.

The Pew report offers three projections based on three different scenarios involving migration during the next three decades. The baseline for all three scenarios is the Muslim population in Europe (defined by Pew as the 28 countries presently in the European Union, plus Norway and Switzerland), estimated at 25.8 million (4.9% of the overall population) as of mid-2016 — up from 19.5 million (3.8%) in 2010.

The first scenario envisions a complete halt to Muslim immigration between now and 2050. This scenario will not occur, of course, but was modeled to determine what the future might look like with migration removed from the equation.

In this scenario, Europe’s Muslim population is projected to increase by about 10 million people, from an estimated 25.8 million Muslims in 2016 to 35.8 million in 2050. In percentage terms, the Muslim population would rise from about 5% of Europe’s overall population today to 7.4% at midcentury — not only because Muslims are growing in absolute numbers, but because the non-Muslim population in Europe is expected to decline by roughly 10%.

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