Displaying the most recent of 90914 posts written by

Ruth King

President Obama’s advice to Great Britain on the EU Referendum: Obama threatens Britain on trade if they exit the EU By Anthony Bright-Paul

So President Obama has come right out in assuring us Brits that the special relationship with Great Britain is alive and well, – so well in fact that if we voted out of the EU, we Brits would be at the back of a the queue for a trade deal with the USA. Funny! I did not think we needed a trade deal, when our relationship was so special.

The President is clearly unaware that the EU Energy Directive adds 40% to our energy bills. By a Directive! This Directive has greater force of law than the laws promulgated at Westminster in the Houses of Parliament. Can you imagine Mexico or Venezuela or Brazil issuing a Directive that had more force than a law passed by Congress?

This is a principle reason that our Steel Industry is in such dire straits. In normal circumstances the British Government would step in to help the industry out, but does President Obama realise that under EU rules State Aid is forbidden? Our Prime Minister’s hands are tied. Can you imagine Canada telling the mighty USA what it can or cannot do? It is inconceivable.

While all eyes are on the Middle East, Alexis Tsipras of Greece has to make a terrible decision. He was elected by the Greeks on an anti-austerity ticket and now he is being forced by German Bankers into furthermore draconian austerity. The only alternative is to leave the Eurozone and go back to the Drachma. Undoubtedly this is the only sensible solution, already suggested by Nigel Farage in the Parliament at Strasbourg months ago. He has until next Wednesday to decide. What would be President Obama’s advice to Alexis Tsipras?

The truth is that the dominant power in the EU is Germany. Perhaps the President has forgotten that together we fought two World Wars against the imperial dreams of the would-be master race. Even now Germany is forming a European Army together with the Dutch and Czechs. Does President Obama comprehend that danger?

Meanwhile the US Secretary of State has used his God-like powers to sign off an agreement to limit the rise of Global Temperature to just 2 degrees Celsius. Just how deluded can we get?

Gerald Frost A Chance to Correct an Error of Historic Magnitude

Almost twenty years ago Margaret Thatcher wrote:

That such an unnecessary and irrational project as building a European super-state was ever embarked on will be seen in future years to be perhaps the greatest folly of the modern era. And that Britain, with her traditional strengths and global destiny, should ever have been part of it will appear a political error of historic magnitude. There is, though, still time to choose a different and a better course.
Is Brexit, the issue on which the British public will vote in a referendum on June 23, the doomed dream of those who wish to restore British national sovereignty? Or is it the nation’s political destiny? At the time of writing, two weeks after David Cameron returned from Brussels with a deal to change the terms of British membership of the European Union, online polling suggests roughly equal support for the Leave and Remain campaigns, while telephone surveys—which proved to be a more accurate guide to Britain’s 2015 general election outcome—point to the probability of a vote to remain. All polls indicate that many voters still have not decided.

The level of support enjoyed by the Remain campaign should not be taken as a reflection of enthusiasm for the European project; there is ample polling data to show that most people in Britain neither trust nor like the EU. Nor do many people think much of Cameron’s deal, which falls far short of his earlier promises to bring about fundamental change in Britain’s relations with the EU and to get back powers ceded to Brussels. It is also clear that the modest concessions he achieved are not secure, since they must be confirmed in subsequent treaties which the twenty-seven other EU members must approve and because British law remains subordinate to European law. No, it is clear that the main reason people give for saying they will probably vote to remain is that they believe leaving would represent a step into the unknown.

Remain campaigners do not sing the virtues of the EU, or promise that continued membership will lead to a golden economic future. Given the troubles in the Eurozone and the migrant crisis which has effectively killed the Schengen Agreement, such claims would not merely lack credibility; they would invite derision. Instead, while admitting that the EU has its faults and requires further change, they have launched what Eurosceptics have come to refer to as “Project Fear”, dire predictions that Britain would face a series of disasters on leaving: British families living in Europe would no longer qualify for state health care; collective security would be undermined; international co-operation to fight jihadists would be jeopardised; three million jobs would be lost; migrants in Calais would no longer be restrained from reaching Britain; air fares would rise; UK residents would be expelled from Portugal.

Much of the scare-mongering has been successfully dealt with by Leave campaigners and the Eurosceptic sections of the media. When Downing Street issued a letter signed by thirteen senior ex-military officers suggesting that Britain would be safer remaining in the EU, one of the officers protested that he hadn’t signed it and disagreed with its content, another said he had signed “only under pressure”, while other senior military men made known their opposition to it. Major-General Julian Thompson, a military historian who led the Royal Marines during the Falklands War, argued that membership had damaged Britain’s security and that intelligence—the key to effective anti-terrorist activities—could be more reliably shared with members of the Anglosphere than with members of the EU.

Murray Walters: The Fairness Industrial Complex

It’s good work if you can get it, this business of lecturing others on what they are morally obliged to do (and pay) if the poor/diseased/downtrodden/oppressed masses of whatever dismal variety you prefer are to be lifted from their benighted misery. The trick is not to get caught being inauthentic.
You might recall the story of the white-as-snow Rachel Dolezal, who lied about her ethnicity and culture to assume the mask, moral privileges and kudos of an oppressed African-American activist. She was an ordinary white woman who, by appropriating the culture and physical appearance of an ethnic group with a goldmine of victimhood cachet, made herself feel very special indeed. Think here of private school kids getting tribal tattoos or Prince Harry affecting the odd glottal-stop or a bit of H-withholding, as in to ‘ow much ‘e ‘ungers for a lager with the lads. It’s the classic case of the outsiders wanting membership of a club to which, presenting as themselves, they can never belong.

Now, with an election looming it’s time to get ready for another cast of political thespians trying to be what they are not, sneaking into our lives and pockets via the belly of the Trojan horse of the Fairness Industrial Complex (FIC). For those who don’t know, the FIC is like the Qantas Club for PFS Operatives — Professional Fairness Spruikers. This is a comfy place where cake-eating clipboard carriers, meeting-minuters, shiny-suited private-school union lawyers, progressive politicians, publicly funded activists and lanyard-wearing, conference-attending, frequent-flyer-points-accruing public servants can relax and thrive in comfort, all courtesy of the proceeds of the FIC and the support it wrings out of others, mostly the taxpayers.

The FIC, unlike its cousin the Military Industrial Complex, is proud to peddle its influence and does so openly. Its foot soldiers often live together and work together, as seen at the ABC, where sharing a bed and daily breakfast with someone already on the national broadcaster’s payroll is always a recommendation on any job application. Their strength is in their numbers. For instance: alone, one member might be thought a poseur or a grievance monger; but as part of the many, an activist or a social justice warrior is more than a mere and clamorous pest. Rich, greedy and lazy, the Western world shrugs and indulges the snivels of what amounts social-issue hypochondria. Should anyone raise an eyebrow or dare to disagree with the narrative, cue a mob pile-on, maybe even a lynching. Supporters of, say, traditional marriage are howled down, interrupted ceaselessly in mid-sentence by Tony Jones, branded “homophobes” for daring to disagree, no matter how politely, with such a fashionable cause and meme.

Membership of this house of smarm and sinecure has its privileges, but there are rules. First and foremost is the possession of a compassionate ‘false self.’ Now we all have ‘false selves’ – split-off bits of our character that represent the sort of people we’d most like to be and be seen to be. Con artists knowingly cultivate such personas for the purpose of criminal enterprise, which at least blesses the then the virtue of honest self-knowledge. Fairness spruikers, by contrast, are often blissfully unaware of their impostiture; they think their false selves represent the totality of their personhood.

Lebanon, Christians, Under Islamist Threat by Shadi Khalloul

Islamic jihadist groups are threatening Lebanese Christians and demanding that they submit to Islam. Lebanon’s Christians, descendants of Aramaic Syriacs, were the majority in the country a mere 100 years ago.

Saad Hariri, a Sunni Muslim politician supported by Saudi Arabia, has invited every Lebanese party to his office to sign a document confirming that Lebanon is an Arab state. This is clearly intended to turn Lebanon into yet another officially Arab Muslim state.

The next step will be to ask that the constitution of Lebanon be changed so that the country be ruled by Sharia law, as with many other Arab and Islamic states, including the Palestinian Authority (PA). The PA constitution declares: “The principles of Islamic Sharia shall be the main source of legislation.”

Recent upheavals in Lebanon are making local Christians communities worry about their existence as heirs and descendants of the first Christians. Christians in the Middle East now are facing a huge genocide — similar to the Christian genocide the followed the Islamic conquest of the Middle East in the 7th century A.D.

Islamic jihadist groups are threatening Lebanese Christians and demanding that they submit to Islam. Lebanon’s Christians, descendants of Aramaic Syriacs, were the majority in the country a mere 100 years ago.

The demand for Christians to convert to Islam was one of the declarations issued by ISIS and other Islamic groups hiding in the mountainous border between Syria and Lebanon.

Saad Hariri, a Saudi-backed Sunni Muslim politician and the son of assassinated Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, recently invited every Lebanese party to his office to sign a document confirming that Lebanon is an Arab state. Arab state equals Islamic laws, as with all members of the Arab League. Why is it so important to Hariri or to the Sunni and Islamic world to include Lebanon as an Arab state and cancel its current name as a Lebanese state only?

Turkey Blackmails Europe on Visa-Free Travel by Soeren Kern

The European Union now finds itself in a classic catch-22 situation. Large numbers of Muslim migrants will flow to Europe regardless of whether or not the EU approves the visa waiver for Turkey.

“If visa requirements are lifted completely, each of these persons could buy a cheap plane ticket to any German airport, utter the word ‘asylum,’ and trigger a years-long judicial process with a good chance of ending in a residency permit.” — German analyst Andrew Hammel.

In their haste to stanch the rush of migrants, European officials effectively allowed Turkey to conflate the two very separate issues of a) uncontrolled migration into Europe and b) an end to visa restrictions for Turkish nationals.

“Why should a peaceful, stable, prosperous country like Germany import from some remote corner of some faraway land a violent ethnic conflict which has nothing whatsoever to do with Germany and which 98% Germans do not understand or care about?” — German analyst Andrew Hammel.

“Democracy, freedom and the rule of law…. For us, these words have absolutely no value any longer.” — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Turkey has threatened to renege on a landmark deal to curb illegal migration to the European Union if the bloc fails to grant visa-free travel to Europe for Turkey’s 78 million citizens by the end of June.

If Ankara follows through on its threat, it would reopen the floodgates and allow potentially millions of migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East to flow from Turkey into the European Union.

Under the terms of the EU-Turkey deal, which entered into effect on March 20, Turkey agreed to take back migrants and refugees who illegally cross the Aegean Sea from Turkey to Greece. In exchange, the European Union agreed to resettle up to 72,000 Syrian refugees living in Turkey, and pledged up to 6 billion euros ($6.8 billion) in aid to Turkey during the next four years.

European officials also promised to restart Turkey’s stalled EU membership talks by the end of July 2016, and to fast-track visa-free access for Turkish nationals to the Schengen (open-bordered) passport-free zone by June 30.

Ted Cruz: Not just another face in the crowd By Lloyd Marcus

When Trump’s unorthodox style of campaigning for president first took the political world by storm, I thought his ability to connect with the public is a real-life version of the movie A Face in the Crowd.

In the 1957 film, Andy Griffith played “Lonesome” Rhodes, a drifter discovered by a producer of a small-market radio program. Rhodes’s confident down-to-earth, everyman style of speaking ultimately won him great fame and influence on national television, beloved by millions.

I’ll be honest with you, folks. When Trump broke the mold with his bold, straight-talk, politically incorrect campaigning, I loved it. The arrogance of the mainstream media has frosted me for years. So Trump getting into the MSM’s face had me cheering him on. I was also hopeful that, as president, Trump would fulfill all the broken promises of the deceitful, traitorous GOP establishment.

As we move into the final months of the GOP nominating process, art is imitating real life. Trump’s behavior is similar to “Lonesome” Rhodes in the movie. Rhodes was not the person his millions of loyal fans thought him to be. At the end of a broadcast, the same producer who discovered Rhodes turned Rhodes’s microphone back on, unknown to him. Rhodes made shocking, hurtful comments about his audience, heard by and devastating millions.

Recent liberal positions on issues have exposed that Trump is not who he has presented himself to be. It has been reported that in a private meeting with GOP establishment leaders, Trump’s “chief lieutenants” said Trump has been “projecting an image.” They said that “the part that he’s been playing is evolving” to make him more palatable to general election voters.

Trump talking about raising taxes on the rich and saying it is okay for men to use girls’ restrooms confirm the leftward “evolving” his campaign spoke of.

Speaking of taxes, Trump’s tax returns reveal that he donated funds to homosexual activists, including a group whose motto is “championing LGBT issues in K-12 education.”

And the World Was Made Right : Edward Cline

It would be interesting to chronicle the state of the world on the off chance that everything in it would be made right per the demands and expectations of today’s activists, social justice warriors, and champions of Social Progress. This was done in a speech by Louis Farrakhan, head of the Nation of Islam, in a commencement address delivered at the University of Chicago, at which he was presented with an Honorary Doctorate in Racial Harmony.

All climate change deniers and skeptics were executed, as advocated for years the Secret Society of the Global Warming Collect, by professional hangmen and executioners hired from ISIS. The first executions were presided over by Al Gore, former vice-president of the old U.S. European culprits were transported to Raqqah, the capital of the Islamic State Caliphate, and dispatched there with graphic footage broadcast to Europe. The experienced executioners there made short work of the liars and falsifiers and acolytes of false science. North American culprits were transported to Death Valley, California, and ISIS executioners were flown in to perform their service. The guilty had been hunted down and rounded up by the combined forces of the European-Islamic Police, of the Special Multi-Gender Law Enforcement Force, and of the American Federal Bureau of Intolerance (FBI) in coordinated raids and dragnets. Once the deniers were gone, all was made right in the world, and the world breathed easier.
To the resounding cheers and excellently choreographed Maypole dances of environmentalists of every age and color everywhere, the Environmental Protection Agency seized all private property and land in America and imposed rigorous controls on the former owners (now reduced to the status of tenant farmers) governing the use of the new federal possessions. The rules were so all-encompassing and strict that the tenants were unable to produce or grow much of anything, but were blamed for dragging their feet. Trained, armed, and experienced former Bureau of Land Management personnel were empowered to police the land and to punish violators. Thousands of tenant farmers were incarcerated in special FEMA camps, called Spotted Owl Campuses, in Nevada and Illinois and put on short rations. These new felons were also subjected to reeducation courses and new dietary regimes. And all was made right with the world, and a New Earth Day was proclaimed.
President Bernie Sanders presided over the free distribution of just about everything, including college education, food, personal grooming products, and gas rations. His taxing of major and middle income corporations and small businesses at 99% was intended to pay for the program, but when IRS personnel appeared at these venues, in many instances they found nothing but closed doors or vacant premises. The Bureau of Printing and Engraving announced a “temporary” halt in printing all the new money because of shortages of the proper paper and of the necessary chemicals and inks, while the Treasury Department also announced a halt in the mailing of “Freedom Checks” to everyone because of a shortage of paper on which to print the checks. Suppliers of the currency and check paper to the BPE and the Treasury Department were sued. But President Sanders said the setbacks were just a “blip.” He was also quoted as saying, “You can’t make an omelet without breaking heads.” One person was arrested and sentenced by a kangaroo court to twenty years of hard labor for having been overheard to say to a friend in private that President Sanders “not only needed a walker to get to the john but also for his brain.” Still, all was made right in the world and bad-mouthers were taken out of circulation, resulting in a significant drop in aural pollution.
The inauguration of the new federal Multi-Gender Police (the MGP) was feted by former U.S. President Barack Obama during a special ceremony in Seattle. The new law enforcement tool was expected to work closely with the re-tailored FBI. The MGP’s ranks were filled with heterosexuals, homosexuals, lesbians, trans-genders, and people of unclassified orientation. True to Barack Obama’s anti-gun philosophy, the troops were armed with only tasers, electronic batons, modified cattle prods, and katanas. Cleverly designed uniforms, modeled after samurai fighting armor, disguised the gender identity of each policeperson. However, during its first assignment, the MGP retreated from a food riot in Philadelphia, resulting in half the city being burnt down, its spokesperson saying that sending the MGP into combat violated the “safe spaces” of many of its members who weren’t quite ready to impose law and order. It also claimed that many thousands of lives were saved by the MGP’s non-intervention in the looting, destruction, and occasional killing. Still, all was made right in the world, as there was no more police brutality.
English was demoted from being the official lingua franca of the U.S. Callers to various federal agencies, bureaus, and “crony” corporations were asked to “Press 1 for Arabic, Press 2 for Spanish, Press 3 for English.” Advertising and billboards (where they were permitted) had to communicate in Arabic and Spanish first, with tiny English subtitles. And all was made right in the world, and illiteracy was no longer a social stigma.

Climate Deal Forecast: Frost for the U.S. Economy, Slush Funds for the Planet by Claudia Rosett

One of the best catalogues of human folly is the 19th century book by Charles MacKay, “Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.” MacKay chronicles a host of scams, superstitions and mass frenzies, including the South Sea Bubble, Tulipomania, Alchemy and Witch Mania. To this roster, some future historian may someday add the full tale of the early 21st century Climate Mania, in which a throng of politicians, United Nations bureaucrats, film stars and what not promised that if they were just given enough power over our use of lightbulbs, cars, planes, ships, oil, gas, electricity and energy in general, they would — for the greater good of mankind, mind you — arrange to control to within a few decimal points the temperature of the planet.

For the moment, however, this is not history we are talking about. We are stuck in the acute phase of Climate Mania. This Friday, “Earth Day,” brought the signing ceremony at the UN’s New York headquarters of the Paris Agreement on “Climate Change.” More than 170 nations signed on, including such curators of human progress and enlightenment as North Korea, Sudan, Cuba and Iran. Actor Leonardo Di Caprio spoke from the podium of the General Assembly chamber. Secretary of State John Kerry brought his infant granddaughter, and held her on his lap while he signed the accord. UN leaders planted a tree in the UN “Food Garden.”

International Justice: We Are The NWOrld : Julia Gorin

“My permanent fight to preserve the peace, prevent the war and decrease the sufferings of everyone regardless of religion were an exemplary effort deserving respect rather than persecution.”

–Radovan Karadzic to Balkan Insight, ahead of his March 24, 2016 Guilty verdict

“Through relentless propaganda efforts, “Srebrenica” has become a synonym for “genocide,” as Serbs stand accused of killing some 7,000 Muslim men – military personnel who refused to surrender – who fled the town. The fact that they gave safe passage, food, and water to the women and children left behind – hardly a hallmark of “genocide” – is ignored.”

–Nebojsa Malic, 2005

If one thinks that the 40-year sentence handed down last month to former Bosnian-Serb president Radovan Karadzic has nothing to do with oneself or with our collective future, then one hasn’t been paying attention. Not that anyone thinks about it one way or the other. Certainly not Americans in the throes of a presidential election year, and so who would bother paying attention to the fate of some former president, from some other, unthought-about country, for something that happened 20 years ago? Never mind that the American co-president from that era may be our president again next year.

Fact is, the American election pales in relevance to what just happened, yet again, at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

The Karadzic verdict in March was preceded in February by the death from “unknown causes” of yet another Serb in Hague custody. (Belgrade’s requests that the ailing Zdravko Tolimir — whose trial saw two judges go off the reservation with dissenting opinions that devastate the evidence of “genocide” in Srebrenica — be allowed treatment leave were ignored.) Three months earlier, in October, a defense witness for Ratko Mladic died suddenly at a Hague hotel. That’s without mentioning the other six, starting with Croatian-Serb mayor Slavko Dokmanovic in 1998 and the back-to-back deaths of Milan Babic and Slobodan Milosevic in 2006. If these events all seem somehow marginal, then one has somehow missed that we are all Serbs now. No less for finding ourselves at the mercy of the “migrants” in our midst, whom our governments are intent on risking our hides to make welcome.

For the Serbs were the designated white man, and the designated Christian, to be sacrificed for the greater Muslim good. And, we thought, for the greater Western good, given the appreciation that would surely come our way from the Muslim world for punishing the infidels who dared fight back. Symbiotically, while Yugoslavia was being targeted by jihad, it was also targeted by the New World Order, as a test case, with the Serbian nation marked for extinction as an identity. The death of the “nation-state” as such would follow, as we are now seeing.

There is a reason that America exempts itself from the jurisdiction of an international court (at least until Hillary Clinton becomes president again). The U.S. is concerned about the potential for political prosecutions. That is, show trials. Of American leaders, generals, servicemen, and so on. That’s understandable. But it is more than a little vile to exempt oneself from such an Orwellian institution — while exploiting those very characteristics of it against others, something that not one American politician speaks out against.

But back to Karadzic. A few headlines, for background:

Radovan Karadzic found guilty of genocide, sentenced to 40 years

Radovan Karadzic, nicknamed the “Butcher of Bosnia,” was sentenced to 40 years….over his responsibility for the Srebrenica massacre, in which more than 7,000 [sic] Bosnian Muslim men and boys were executed [sic] by Bosnian Serb forces under his command…Prosecutor Serge Brammertz said in a statement that the verdict and sentence “will stand against continuing attempts at denying the suffering of thousands and the crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia.”

TOM GROSS: PASSOVER GREETINGS BY PUTIN AND OBAMA COMPARED

Jews in Israel and around the world have been celebrating Passover these past two days.

Below I attach Passover greetings from Russian President Vladimir Putin and from U.S. President Barack Obama.

It is, of course, remarkable given the course of anti-Semitism, “the longest hatred” as it is often called, that the presidents of the U.S. and Russia both now give official public Passover greetings.

However, what is being noted by Jews in Israel and elsewhere is that Putin’s message is specifically Jewish, whereas Obama chooses to use Passover to give a more universal message.

There is a perception (whether fair or not) that Putin (whatever else his flaws) has in some ways been more friendly and understanding of Jewish concerns than Obama has.

As was noted in this dispatch last year, Putin has gone out of his way to make sure Russia enjoys good relations with Israel:

“Putin has determinedly kept the channels to Israel open, making a point to personally visit Israel and in June 2012, Israel was the first country he visited after his election. He frequently speaks warmly about the Jewish state, expressing pride that it contains the largest diaspora of former Russian citizens. At the Western Wall, accompanied by Russian Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar, he donned a kippah, which would undoubtedly have made his Bolshevik predecessors turn in their graves. He also seemed quite indifferent to the rage this created among his Arab allies.”

Only last Thursday (April 21), Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was again in Moscow holding consultations with Putin (mainly concerning Syria, Iran and Hizbullah), Israeli President Reuven Rivlin was also in Moscow only a few weeks ago, and Israeli leaders seem to be invited to Moscow more than to Washington these days. (Putin again invited Netanyahu to visit Moscow in June to mark 25 years since the reestablishment of diplomatic relations.)

While Obama has kept his distance from Israel, (he has made only one brief visit there during his two terms in office, he has been, for example, to Saudi Arabia four times and visited countries such as Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, and Myanmar more than once), Israel has been forging ever closer relations with countries in Asia (including some Arab ones), Africa and elsewhere. Just this month, leaders from China and Singapore, among others, have visited Jerusalem. (U.S. Senators and other U.S. officials continue to visit Jerusalem regularly, just not the president.)

I also attach below remarks made by Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on his visit to Israel last Tuesday April 19 (which also include Passover greetings). Singapore has long enjoyed close relations to Israel, especially in the fields of business, water management, biotechnology, and cyber security. Trade between the two nations reached $1.35 billion in 2015, which was greater than trade between Israel and most European countries. (Several senior Singapore government security officials have for many years subscribed to this Middle East email list.)