RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/insight

The United Nations General Assembly (GA) doesn’t take itself seriously. Unlike U.N. Security Council resolutions, GA pronouncements have no enforcement mechanism and often serve only to permit countries to vent — mostly at Israel. But this travesty helps determine the allocation of general U.N. funds — American tax dollars among them, albeit fewer under the Trump administration. So, it is worth parsing the activity of the GA last week.

Thirty-five resolutions were proposed in the GA by the U.N. Special Political and Decolonization Committee. The Committee, which includes Syria, Iraq, Iran, Russia, Bolivia, and Venezuela, has no North American, Western European, or Scandinavian members. Twenty-seven resolutions used general language and named no specific country; eight targeted Israel.

If you thought this would be a good time for the U.N. to recognize the desperate efforts of the people of Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran to throw off repressive and kleptocratic governments — and specifically, to rid themselves of the destructive machinations of the mullahs of Iran — the GA didn’t agree with you.

If you were waiting for the U.N. to condemn horrific violations against the people of Syria by its own government and aided by Russia and Iran, or to stand up for the Rohingya who have been forced out of Myanmar, or to consider the plight of the Muslim Uighurs of China herded into camps, you’re still waiting.

Slave labor in Qatar; Venezuelans reduced to eating garbage; North Koreans with no discernible human rights; Palestinian-Arab children taught that the highest form of life is death — their own and that of as many Jews as possible; civil war in Libya; increasing repression of the press and of dissent in Russia — all ignored. Turkey, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, and Saudi Arabia — ignored.

https://quillette.com/2019/12/05/tensions-in-nato-and-the-looming-end-of-pax-americana/

As NATO leaders gathered in London this week to mark the 70th anniversary of history’s most venerable military alliance, it has been widely forgotten that not so long ago the specter of armed conflict haunted the European continent. When the Washington treaty establishing NATO was signed in April 1949, the Soviet Union occupied the captive nations of Eastern Europe and an invasion of Western Europe by the Red Army was not a remote possibility. On current trends, the Atlantic alliance may well suffer a premature demise as the world moves into another great power rivalry that is also an ideological contest between democracy and autocracy.

A terse review of the historical record is in order here. In the aftermath of World War Two, the United States committed itself to a revolutionary foreign policy. The extraordinary task of maintaining some semblance of international order after two global conflagrations was premised on a controversial but compelling notion of enlightened self-interest. The guiding principle of U.S. statecraft was that the peace of the world was in grave and permanent jeopardy, and thus that it needed to be imposed and kept by force, or at least the credible threat of it. This momentous undertaking required that American power remain second to none, and for it to be deployed in outposts far from the American mainland. It was only through this forward engagement, providing moral and material succor to vulnerable allies and international norms, that would prevent a breakdown in order that would draw the world into yet another violent maelstrom.

America’s reluctant but immense decision to take the lead in upholding a decent international order did not enjoy a long honeymoon. It rapidly came under ferocious challenge by Soviet power pressing to extend its imperium from Berlin to Baghdad, from Helsinki to Havana, and from Seoul to Saigon. The containment doctrine that flowed from the novel understanding of America’s self-interest aimed to thwart Soviet expansion. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, set up in 1949 as a key pillar of containment, upheld the principle of anticipatory self-defense. However, the “self” that was being defended, as was pointed out by isolationists of the day, was not exactly the American homeland, but the sovereignty of American allies and the security (as well as the prevalence) of the American way of life.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/12/18/chinese-woman-gets-10-months-in-prison-for-birth-tourism-scheme/

The New York Post reports, “A judge on Monday sentenced a Chinese woman to 10 months in prison for her role in a business that helped wealthy pregnant Chinese women lie on visa forms and to immigration authorities and travel to Southern California, to give birth to children who would automatically receive US citizenship.”

US District Judge James Selna issued the sentence to Dongyuan Li, who was expected to be released on Monday due to time served, New York Post writes.

Federal prosecutors opposed the sentence and said they believed Li should be sentenced to years in prison to deter others from helping women lie on visa applications and hide pregnancies in these so-called birth tourism schemes.

“I just think it sends the wrong message,” Charles Pell, the federal prosecutor, told the judge.

Li pleaded guilty in September to conspiracy and visa fraud for running a birth tourism company in Southern California known as “You Win USA.”

Federal authorities said the company helped more than 500 Chinese women travel to the United States to deliver American babies, and that Li used a cluster of apartments in Irvine, California, to receive them.

Authorities said the company coached the women to lie on their visa applications and hide their pregnancies when  moving through customs in U.S. airports.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15305/china-trade-agreement-hole

Moreover, China’s officials, once they have encryption keys and access to the China network of a foreign firm, will be in a good position to penetrate the networks of that firm outside China. Therefore, Beijing will soon steal data stored on foreign networks and put companies, like Nortel Networks, out of business or ruin them to the point where Chinese entities can buy them up at reduced prices. Do we really want the Fortune 500 to be owned by China?

There is, of course, no point in including in the trade deal forced taking and intellectual property protections if they do not cover the cybersecurity rules.

Washington will have to do something fast to protect American businesses in China — and the American economy — because the Phase One deal is clearly inadequate. There is, after all, a big hole in the center of it.

There’s something missing from the “Phase One” trade agreement with China, announced Friday. And it’s something critically important. Yet, Larry Kudlow, President Trump’s director of the National Economic Council, appeared not to know about it afterwards.

“We will see,” said Kudlow in response to Maria Bartiromo on “Sunday Morning Futures,” her Fox News Channel show, as she asked him about Beijing’s new “cybersecurity” rules. “There’s a large IP chapter in this deal and there’s also a large forced technology transfer chapter in this deal. I don’t think we know enough about these new Chinese rules and we’ll have to look at that and by the way if they do violate them of course we will take action.”

Bartiromo was referring to two sets of Chinese rules. On December 1, Beijing implemented the Multi-Level Protection Scheme 2.0, issued pursuant to the 2016 Cybersecurity Law. On January 1, China’s Cryptography Law becomes effective.

These measures prohibit foreign companies from encrypting data so that it cannot be read by the Chinese central government and the Communist Party of China. Businesses will be required to turn over encryption keys. Companies will not be able to employ virtual private networks to keep data secret, and some believe they will no longer be allowed to use private servers.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15304/china-business-security-threat

“What I really want to know about is the intellectual property [IP] part of this…. isn’t it true that they’ve [China] just instituted their own new cyber security rules that are in place that say that no foreign company may encrypt data so it can’t be read by the Chinese central government and the communist party of China? In other words, businesses are required to turn over the encryption keys. Are these new rules that China just put in place basically negating any opportunity for the U.S. to protect its IP?” — Maria Bartiromo, Sunday Morning Futures, Fox News Channel, Real Clear Politics, December 15, 2019.

China’s 2015 National Security Law… says that all citizens, firms and organizations have “the responsibility and obligation to maintain state security.” Its 2017 National Intelligence Law obligates such individuals and entities to “support, provide assistance, and cooperate in national intelligence work…” It is not hard to see how China could apply rules even beyond the Encryption Law to justify violations of a deal with the U.S. under the guise of “national security concerns,” and the “rule of law.”

“[T]heir own track record, as well as the practices of the Chinese government, demonstrate that Huawei and ZTE cannot be trusted.” — US Attorney General William Barr; letter to the Federal Communications Commission, November 13, 2019.

How can the U.S. transact with China in any strategically significant area given the communist regime’s aims, and its power over every Chinese entity? Is the US ultimately trading away its freedom?

As the world awaits the details of the Trump Administration’s reported “phase one” trade deal with China — U.S. officials expect it to be executed in January 2020 — a more fundamental question arises: Should America be doing business with China in strategically significant areas, or even beyond?

In a December 15th interview with Director of the United States National Economic Council, Larry Kudlow, Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo indirectly touched on this question. Bartiromo asked Kudlow if the proposed deal accounted for new Chinese regulations that would seemingly threaten the intellectual property (IP) of American firms transacting with Chinese ones. She was likely alluding to China’s new Encryption Law, set to take effect on January 1, 2020. Some have suggested that the law would enable the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to collect all information that traffics on Chinese networks. To the extent the trade deal does not account for this law, the implication is that its provisions relating to IP protections could be rendered moot. Here is the relevant portion of the exchange:

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/12/brexit-won-now-its-trump-win-2020-bruce-thornton/

In 2016 two political earthquakes struck the establishment consensus that has dominated the West since World War II. On June 23 the Britons voted to take England out of the EU. Nearly five months later political neophyte Donald Trump won a stunning upset over Hillary Clinton and become President. These two votes were portents of a major shift away from technocratic rule by elites, and a restoration of national sovereignty and citizen political autonomy.

Both elections, however, over the last three-and-a-half years have been met with concentrated and passionate resistance by each country’s ruling elite, including political quislings from supposedly conservative parties. Tory Remainers, including PM Theresa May, used every delaying tactic to undo the June vote, and along the way showed their disdain for the grubby masses who dared to challenge the ruling class. And they also energized the Labour Party and its anti-Semitic, jihadist-hobnobbing leader, socialist Jeremy Corbyn.

In this country, NeverTrumpers Republican fifth-columnists continue to undermine the President and give comfort to a Democrat party now dominated by its most left-wing elements. And they too have exposed their elitist disdain for the “bitter clingers” and “deplorables” who comprise ordinary Americans living outside the Acela Corridor cocoon. In the latest attempt to poison the well of the 2020 election, the House voted to impeach President Trump just a few days after the British election. In both countries, elites refused to honor the results of legal elections, then turned to media, academic, and celebrity calumny of voters, along with judicial and political skullduggery, to undo the outcome and hamstring their political enemies, the Brexiteers and Trump.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/lessons-from-the-tory-landslide-11576540523?mod=opinion_lead_pos9

Last week’s U.K. general election revealed two political dynamics that the rest of the world should study closely.

The first is very old: Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.  Jeremy Corbyn and the tightly knit clique of pro-Hezbollah, pro-Maduro doctrinaire Marxists and viscerally anti-Semitic conspiracy fans clustered around him mistakenly thought the British working class was hungry for revolutionary social change. They have received their just reward.

The second dynamic, which helped propel Boris Johnson to the greatest Tory majority since Margaret Thatcher’s 1987 landslide, will haunt his premiership and determine its outcome. More than a personal triumph for a man whose political career last year appeared over, more than a historic recasting of the British electoral map, more than the ignominious collapse of the Liberal Democrats, more than the triumph of Scottish nationalism, the election result demonstrates the power of the most disruptive force in global politics today.

Mr. Corbyn misdiagnosed that force as a rejection of capitalism. It’s more subtle. Voters around the world want the prosperity and opportunity that global capitalism provides, but many fear and reject the social consequences of the free market. Large-scale immigration, job losses to automation and foreign competition, the unequal distribution of capitalism’s rewards, and the financial instability and risk associated with innovation are all massively disruptive and inspire backlash—a global surge of populism and identity politics. From Hungary and Turkey to India and beyond, voters are embracing politicians who attack classic liberal political and economic values and vow to defend the cultures and communities this avalanche of change seems to threaten.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/12/15/ninety-peers-call-baroness-tonge-issue-unqualified-apology-blaming/

Nearly 90 peers from the main political parties are calling for Baroness Tonge to apologise for claiming that the Tories won the general election due to Israeli attacks on Jeremy Corbyn. 

The letter, from an “unprecedented” number of former cabinet ministers, senior lawyers and leaders of industry and commerce, calls on Lady Tonge to apologise for bringing the House of Lords into disrepute over the remarks.

Lady Tonge, a former Liberal Democrat MP, wrote on social media after the result last week: “The Chief Rabbi must be dancing in the street. The pro-Israel lobby won our General Election by lying about Jeremy Corbyn.”

But in a letter to Monday’s Daily Telegraph, 88 peers from across the House of Lords said: “We the undersigned believe that members of the House of Lords are required to conform to the highest standards of Public Life. 

“The use of language by Baroness Tonge in a published statement that the General Election outcome was a result of ‘the pro-Israeli lobby’ [and] ‘lying about Jeremy Corbyn’ falls well short of that high standard.”They added: “Her language is both shameful and in clear contravention of the United Kingdom’s adoption of IHRA’s definition of Antisemitism.”Baroness Tonge has brought Parliament into disrepute and we demand that she withdraws her remarks and issues a full and unqualified apology without delay.”