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https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-arab-israeli-peace-cascade-11603494933?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

Middle East failures contributed to Republican defeats in 2008 and Democratic defeats in 2016. If Donald Trump loses in 2020, it will be for different reasons. The U.S.-brokered deals normalizing relations between Israel and Arab states are a highlight of his Presidency, and on Friday the White House announced Sudan would join the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in ending its diplomatic boycott of the Jewish state.

These moves have been utterly confounding to Obama Administration alumni. They were certain that a pro-Israel foreign policy would inflame the Arab world, and that Mideast progress depended on accommodating the regime in Iran. In fact, Israel is the region’s chief source of stability and Iran its main source of terror and mayhem, and the Trump Administration treated them accordingly.

It has paid off. The first peace announcement came in August between Israel and the UAE, which had been working together covertly to beat back Iranian influence in the Persian Gulf. Next came Bahrain, another Sunni Gulf monarchy threatened by Shiite Iran.

The agreement by Sudan, a North African country of more than 40 million, to normalize Israel ties shows that the peace cascade goes beyond the Persian Gulf and could extend across the Arab world. Sudan’s leadership has been moderating, and the Trump Administration recently negotiated a tentative agreement for Sudan to compensate victims of the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/10/beheaded-infidels-vs-fear-islamophobia-raymond-ibrahim/

An 18-year-old Muslim man beheaded a school teacher in France last Friday for showing cartoons of Islam’s prophet Muhammad to his students, in the context of discussing free speech and expression.

Some weeks earlier, another Muslim man killed an American citizen in Pakistan for also committing “blasphemy.”  The murdered man, Tahir Naseem, was actually being tried for blasphemy in a court room—which carries a maximum death penalty—when Faisal Khan, 15, walked in and opened fire on him.  While Khan “broke the law” by essentially jumping the gun, Pakistani law itself is sympathetic to the vigilante’s view that blasphemy is a crime, punishable by death.

In France, there is no blasphemy law and freedom of speech is or was once deemed an essential right of all citizens.  In this sense, then, the government of France, unlike the government of Pakistan, would obviously not hold Samuel Paty, the beheaded teacher, guilty of any blasphemy.

And yet the effective differences between France and Pakistan, within the context of these two crimes, seem to end there: while Pakistan and many other Muslim nations uphold Islam’s blasphemy laws, France and other Western nations pretend that Islam has no blasphemy laws.   After all, to acknowledge that Islam does indeed call for the punishment and death of blasphemers against Muhammad—to say nothing of any number of other “problematic” sharia stipulations, such as death for apostates—is to be “Islamophobic.”

In short, whereas Muslim nations like Pakistan actively affirm and uphold Islam’s blasphemy codes, Western nations like France passively acquiesce to them by pretending they don’t exist and therefore need no addressing.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/10/anti-semitism-todays-europe-joseph-puder/

The legacy of anti-Semitism in Europe is a long and painful one.  It had its culmination in the Holocaust.  Today, while Europe’s democratic governments profess their intentions to combat anti-Semitism, the influx of millions of Muslim migrants from throughout the Middle East has intensified the residual anti-Semitism embedded in the subconscious of many Europeans.  The European-born Muslims, along with the migrant newcomers, were honed on hatred of Jews thanks to the media and mosque indoctrination in their native lands. The Middle East Muslim migrants have additionally brought along with them a deep hatred for Israel.  In Europe today, anti-Semitism has been normalized on the streets if not in governmental bureaus. European governments are now worried that their native Jews might be fleeing the continent as a result of increased levels of anti-Semitism, especially when Covid-19 is plaguing Europe, and Jews have become ready scapegoats. The European Union (EU) governments in particular, are concerned that should Jewish life in Europe end, it will show that Europe has not learned the lessons of the Holocaust.  

An EU poll of European Jews from across Europe published in January 2019, showed that 89% of those surveyed said that anti-Semitism had significantly increased in the last five years.  The EU poll sampled 16,395 Jews in 12 EU countries. Yet, in a separate EU survey under the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency, the conclusion arrived at was that Jews were “subjected to a sustained stream of abuse.”  38% of those surveyed said that they were thinking of emigrating out of Europe because the continent was no longer safe for Jews.  In the last decade, thousands of French and British Jews left for Israel.

The Jewish future in Europe is bleak.  A recent poll by the London-based Henry Jackson Society think tank found that 44% of British Muslims believe in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. The poll also indicated that forty-seven percent of Muslims with a college degree back the “dual loyalty” canard against British Jews. Even more seriously, however, are the growing incidents of physical and verbal attacks on identifiable Jews by Muslims.  In fact, for each of the past three years, the U.K has reported the highest number of anti-Semitic incidents ever recorded.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/the-capital-note-what-to-expect-from-chinas-19th-party-congress/

Welcome to the Capital Note, a newsletter about business, finance and economics. On the menu today: China’s 19th Party Congress, vaccine diplomacy, insider trading from home, and a look at the Microsoft antitrust case.

What to Expect from China’s 19th Party Congress Entering the fifth plenum of the 19th Party Congress next week, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has much to celebrate: Beijing appears to have emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic with less scarring than its international competitors. The International Monetary Fund reports that China will be the only major economy to grow this year, thanks in large part to a surge in exports of personal-protective equipment and other manufactured goods.

Yet Beijing’s short-run successes have deepened structural economic imbalances that will likely handicap its long-run economic goals. For years, the Chinese leadership has attempted to transition from an export-driven manufacturing economy to a domestic-demand-driven service economy. After its last Party Congress, the CCP released a five-year plan emphasizing domestic consumption and entrepreneurship as the pillars of sustainable economic growth.

Those reform efforts have seen limited success: Household consumption remains below 40 percent, far lower than the 60 percent average in the developed world. Meanwhile, the Chinese economy remains overleveraged, with an overall debt-to-GDP ratio as high as those in advanced economies. The recent surge in exports, while a boon to GDP growth, also reveals an economy that has failed to gain sustainable footing.

Chinese president Xi Jinping is now advocating “dual circulation,” described as “a new development pattern that takes domestic circulation as the main body with domestic and international circulation reinforcing each other.” In a July speech, Xi said that trade tensions and slow global growth meant that China would need to modernize “the domestic industrial and supply chains, vigorously promote technological innovation, accelerate research on key core technologies, and create new advantages for future development.”

It sounds a lot like what Chinese policymakers have been saying for the past decade. In 2007, Premier Wen Jiabao acknowledged structural weaknesses in the then-booming Chinese economy, describing it as “unbalanced, unstable, uncoordinated, and unsustainable.” After the 2008 financial crisis, CCP rhetoric focused on harnessing its burgeoning middle class to ween itself off exports.

12 years later, the Chinese economy is yet more unbalanced, unstable, uncoordinated, and unsustainable. The forthcoming five-year plan will call for reforms to boost consumption and entrepreneurship, but if recent history is any indication, it won’t usher in meaningful structural changes.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16663/vatican-china-religious-persecution

Perhaps the most stinging criticism in Pompeo’s article was his having pointed out the marked contrast in the Vatican’s current position on Communist China with the Holy See’s moral witness which helped liberate Central and Eastern Europe from communism in the late 20th century.

The pope, according to Cardinal Zen, is being manipulated by his advisors. Cardinal Charles Maung Bo… is another outspoken opponent of the Vatican’s “opening” to China. Cardinal Bo, who has vilified the Communist Party of China for its “moral culpability for the COVID Virus pandemic,” also has declared that “the CCP is a threat to the whole world”…. U.S. Cardinal Raymond Burke… no doubt added to the Holy See’s indigestion.

Possibly the most abrasively received comment came at the close of Pompeo’s article in First Things where he reminded the Vatican of the Apostle John’s counsel that “the truth will set you free.”

In the 1980s, the uncompromising condemnation by the sainted Pope John Paul II and President Reagan of the USSR’s “Evil Empire” helped tear down Moscow’s “Iron Curtain.” Maybe the victory of the Americans in the Cold War is not to the liking of Pope Francis. Is it really his intention to “undo all of the good work that the great John Paul II did in pursuit of human freedom and dignity?”

US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo’s September 30 – October 1 visit to the Vatican was a diplomatic profile in courage. Despite the Pope’s refusal to meet the U.S. Secretary of State, Pompeo repeated his warning to the Holy See that if it goes ahead with plans to renew the 2018 Sino-Vatican Agreement, it will compromise the Catholic Church’s moral authority. Pompeo also urged the Vatican to live up to its mission of defending human rights in China, where Catholics churches and shrines are being destroyed and priests imprisoned, and also urged the Pope to reconsider renewing the secret agreement with Beijing, which permits the Communist Party of China (CCP) to have a key role in appointing Catholic Bishops in China.

The Vatican has refrained from any condemnatory comment on the CCP’s persecution, incarceration, torture and forced labor of millions of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang Province, and has remained silent about Beijing’s contravening its pact with Hong Kong to honor “one country, two systems” until 2047. China has violated the civil rights of Hong Kong’s citizens.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16662/china-fentanyl-source

For one thing, the Communist Party, through its cells, controls every business of any consequence…. Beijing tightly controls the banking system and knows of money transfers instantaneously…. Furthermore, fentanyl cannot leave the country undetected, as virtually all shipped items are examined before departing Chinese soil.

Chinese gangs are large and far-flung. In China’s near-totalitarian state, it is not possible for them to operate without the Communist Party’s knowledge. And if the Party somehow does not know of a particular gang, it is because it has decided not to.

China’s postal service has to know that it has become, among other things, the world’s busiest drug mule.

The regime has adopted the doctrine of “Unrestricted Warfare,” explained in a 1999 book of the same name by Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui. The thesis of the authors, both Chinese Air Force colonels, is that China should not be bound by any rules or agreements in its attempt to take down the United States…. The regime, consequently, is using criminality as an instrument of state policy…. China’s officials will stop at nothing to increase the power of their regime.

“I’m not alleging any kind of conspiracy, I suppose, but just the plain facts of it: fentanyl and Covid both came from China, China’s our main rival, they’re benefitting from the deaths of many thousands of Americans,” Tucker Carlson noted on his October 16 show.

China’s regime has been pushing fentanyl into the United States for years.

Fatal drug overdoses in the U.S. last year hit a record 70,980, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Of those deaths, 36,500, were from synthetic opioids such as fentanyl. Cocaine and methamphetamine fatalities were also up, largely because these substances were mixed with fentanyl.

It is, as Vanda Felbab-Brown of the Brookings Institution states in a July paper, “the deadliest drug epidemic in U.S. history.”

There is no doubt where this drug comes from. “Since 2013, China has been the principal source of the fentanyl flooding the U.S. illicit drug market—or of the precursor agents from which fentanyl is produced, often in Mexico,” reports Felbab-Brown.

A Drug Enforcement Administration Intelligence Report issued in January comes to the same conclusion as to the source of deadly fentanyl.

https://quillette.com/2020/10/19/the-coming-post-covid-global-order/

The COVID-19 pandemic has devastated economics in the West, but the harshest impacts may yet be felt in the developing world. After decades of improvement in poorer countries, a regression threatens that could usher in, both economically and politically, a neo-feudal future, leaving billions stranded permanently in poverty. If this threat is not addressed, these conditions could threaten not just the world economy, but prospects for democracy worldwide.

In its most recent analysis, the World Bank predicted that the global economy will shrink by 5.2 percent in 2020, with developing countries overall seeing their incomes fall for the first time in 60 years. The United Nations predicts that the pandemic recession could plunge as many as 420 million people into extreme poverty, defined as earning less than $2 a day. The disruption will be particularly notable in the poorest countries. The UN has forecast that Africa could have 30 million more people in poverty. A study by the International Growth Centre spoke of “staggering” implications with 9.1 percent of the population descending into extreme poverty as savings are drained, with two-thirds of this due to lockdown. The loss of remittances has cost developing economies billions more income.

Latin America had seen its poverty rate drop from 45 to 30 percent over the past two decades, but now nearly 45 million, according to the UN, are being plunged into destitution as a result of the novel coronavirus pandemic. In Mexico alone, COVID-19 has caused at least 16 million more people to fall into extreme poverty, according to a study by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).