RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/09/30/american-b

America’s two parties have given up all pretense of pushing any program for the rest of the current president’s term (which still has over 30% of its length to run).

Forget about another round of growth-driving tax cuts, immigration reform, infrastructure, fixing the health care system, a common trade policy. Anything the American people might like to see.

The only objective on one side: impeachment. On the other: simple survival.

In the UK, the political system is similarly paralyzed. The government is seeking to achieve the people’s will on Brexit on reasonable terms — or even any terms at all. But rogue members of the ruling Conservative Party have voted to ensure it can’t leave the European Union without a deal, which means it has lost its negotiating leverage to achieve such a deal. Prime Minister Boris Johnson wants to appeal to the people through a new election. But party rebels have scotched that path forward as well.

In Israel, neither of two major alliances won enough seats in this month’s election to cobble together a majority, and voices across the political spectrum are calling for a so-called “unity government.” But one side won’t join a coalition that includes Benjamin Netanyahu, who faces indictment on corruption charges. The prime minister’s party won’t form a government without him. A potential kingmaker (who forced the second election in a year) says he won’t sit with the prime minister’s party, either, unless it deep-sixes its Orthodox Jewish coalition partners, which the bloc refuses to do.

In short, the world’s three most important democracies, all rendered ungovernable.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-foreign-influence-is-on-the-rise-11569885340

“Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence,” George Washington warned in his Farewell Address, “the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government.” Those words have rarely seemed more relevant than now, when both the president and the front-runner for the nomination to challenge him are embroiled in a scandal that began with attempts by Ukrainian figures to manipulate Washington politics and policy.

The Ukrainian firestorm is only the start. America and the world are changing in ways that will make the question of foreign influence in U.S. political life more fateful, and more difficult to police, than ever.

This isn’t about Facebook ads and voting machines. It is not even about more blatant forms of foreign meddling, like the alleged Russian leaks of damaging information stolen from the Democratic National Committee. Serious as these problems are, America’s greatest risk isn’t the vulnerability of its voting machines to foreign hackers or the susceptibility of party apparatchiks to phishing scams. It is the erosion of ethical standards in the American political and business establishments that most exposes the U.S. to the kind of foreign interference against which Washington warned.

This isn’t a partisan problem. Some members of the administration, including the tweeter in chief, have behaved in ways that earlier American presidents would have condemned, but they are hardly alone. The Clinton Foundation was perceived by many of its foreign donors to be a way to influence American politics during the years in which Hillary Clinton was a likely future president. And hardly anyone believes it was Hunter Biden’s experience, sagacity and business acumen that commended him as a candidate for board membership to a beleaguered Ukrainian gas company.

https://pjmedia.com/spengler/no-the-president-of-poland-didnt-say-that-jews-cause-anti-semitism/

In late June of 1941, my father’s first cousins Moshe and Dvora fled their house in the tiny town of Kameny Most, about halfway between Slonim and Baranavichy in what is now Belarus. Hitler had launched Operation Barbarossa days before, and their home stood almost on the German-Soviet line that had divided Poland in 1939. Now the Germans had marched into town. The boy and girl, then 15 and 16, reached the woods behind their house before the Germans arrived. Their parents and baby brother fled a minute later, but the Germans already were there. They couldn’t reach the woods and hid in the tall grass. A Polish neighbor pointed them out to the Germans, who shot them on the spot. Moshe and Dvora joined the partisan brigade led by the Bielski brothers, made famous in the film Defiance. Not long afterwards they returned at night, barricaded the neighbor in his house, set it afire and burned him alive. By the grace of God the teenagers survived the war and came to the new State of Israel and started large and flourishing families. I had the merit to arrive at Dvora’s deathbed in 2004 just in time to receive her blessing upon the American branch of her family.

I tell this story to make it clear that my family isn’t soft on Polish anti-Semitism.

Anti-Semitism is a matter of the most profound importance, and Polish anti-Semitism is something I take personally. That is why it is especially irresponsible to accuse Poles of anti-Semitism falsely, as the Jewish Insider website yesterday accused Polish President Andrzej Duda. According to the website, President Duda told a group of Jewish community leaders assembled at the Polish Consulate in New York that hostile remarks by an Israeli cabinet minister about Polish anti-Semitism “were a ‘humiliation’ and were the reason for an increase in antisemitic attacks against Jews in Poland.” It is wrong to cry wolf under any circumstances, and reckless to cry wolf where real wolves might turn up.

President Duda never said it. I know he never said it because I was at the meeting.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/09/29/often-centuries-europe-blowing/

Last week I wrote about political uncertainty as the new normal for the economy and financial markets. It seems that there is a growing body of opinion at the Bank of England that agrees.

In a speech, Michael Saunders, an external member of the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee, said that UK interest rates may need to fall further regardless of what happens over Brexit, such is the likely seemingly never-ending uncertainty created by its political fallout.

This runs contrary to the official line, which is that even in the event of a no deal Brexit, interest rates may have to rise to deal with the inflationary consequences of any shock to output capacity.

Very few people believe this is actually what would happen in practice, and now along comes Mr Saunders to say, indeed; the economy is already slowing precipitously, so we may need to cut whatever happens over Brexit.

I’ve given up trying to figure out where we’ll end up on this journey. Almost any prediction is rendered redundant within a few hours by the unfathomable politics of the UK’s predicament.

Last week’s Supreme Court judgement seems to make the chances of a deal, already quite slim, vanishingly improbable.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14937/iran-europe-diplomacy

The reality of the delusional approach adopted by Mr Macron and other European leaders was, though, brutally exposed the moment Mr Rouhani arrived in New York. Instead of showing any sign of seeking to repair Tehran’s strained relationship with the West and its allies, he instead indulged in an orgy of self-justification in which he sought to portray his country as an innocent victim of Western aggression rather than accepting, as is really the case, that Iran was the primary instigator of the latest escalation in tensions.

“The security of our region shall be provided when American troops pull out.” — Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, UN General Assembly, September 25, 2019.

This will have made for uncomfortable listening for all those European leaders who still believe that the best way to resolve the global crisis with Iran is by trying to save the nuclear deal.

The reality is that, so long as Tehran remains committed to its hostile stance towards the West, there is little prospect of having a constructive relationship with Iran.

The utter futility of European attempts to keep faith with the flawed Iranian nuclear deal has been brutally exposed in the wake of the uncompromising approach adopted by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani during the United Nations General Assembly.

In the build-up to the UN’s annual jamboree of global networkers, there had been much speculation that, against a background of mounting tensions in the Gulf over Tehran’s aggressive conduct, the forum might provide an opportunity to re-establish a dialogue with the ayatollahs.

To this end French President Emmanuel Macron has, in particular, been actively trying to broker a diplomatic rapprochement between Tehran and Washington, to the extent it was even suggested that a bilateral meeting might be possible between US President Donald Trump and Mr Rouhani.

The reality of the delusional approach adopted by Mr Macron and other European leaders was, though, brutally exposed the moment Mr Rouhani arrived in New York. Instead of showing any sign of seeking to repair Tehran’s strained relationship with the West and its allies, he instead indulged in an orgy of self-justification in which he sought to portray his country as an innocent victim of Western aggression rather than accepting, as is really the case, that Iran was the primary instigator of the latest escalation in tensions.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14938/iran-we-did-we-didnt-game

For four decades, the mullahs have successfully practiced their “do-and-deny” tactic thanks to the indulgence, not to say cowardice, of Western leaders and the pathetic anti-Americanism of some Western pseudo-intellectuals.

Western anti-American intellectuals who become apologists for the mullahs are victims of their inability to conceive of a situation in which, while America may be bad, its adversary may be worse.

Then we had America versus the Third Reich. Later, America vs. the Soviet Empire, vs. the Vietcong and Khmer Rouge, vs. the Afghan Taliban, vs. Saddam Hussein. In every case, even if America was not the shining city on the hill, its adversary at the time was much worse.

Apologists for the Islamic Republic do not do it a service. By endorsing its illusions and shielding it against deserved criticism, they encourage its worst tendencies — tendencies that could cost Iran and the region more than they imagine.

How to take credit for a mischief you have committed but do not wish to own up to?

This is the dilemma Tehran apologists face when discussing the latest shenanigans in the region, including missile and drone attacks on Saudi oil installations.

On the one hand they want to take credit for the attacks and cast the Khomeinist regime as a mighty power capable of giving as good as it takes in a duel against the American “Great Satan.” They try to cast Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei as the little Tom Thumb taking on Donald Trump as the giant of the folk tale.

On the other hand, they try to cast Iran as an innocent victim, highlight the sufferings of babies supposedly left without powdered milk and old women running out of medication.

Wrapping up that theme is the claim that the Islamic Republic has done absolutely nothing that merits sanctions, and that the latest attacks were the work of Yemeni Houthis, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Iraq’s PMF or even the army of djinns commanded by Zaafar al-Jinni from the 1001 Nights.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14933/italy-salvini-immigration

During just the past several weeks, the number of migrant arrivals to Italy has increased incrementally…. Many of the new arrivals are reaching Italy by using new people-smuggling routes that originate in Turkey.

The interior ministers from France, Germany, Italy and Malta met on September 23 in the Maltese capital, Valletta, where they agreed to a tentative proposal for shipwrecked migrants to be “voluntarily redistributed” throughout the European Union…. Similar proposals have failed in the past and there is no reason to believe this one will be different, largely because the concept of European solidarity is a myth. So far only six EU states have agreed to migrant redistribution: France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Malta and Spain.

NGOs such as Open Arms claim to be playing an invaluable humanitarian role in saving the lives of refugees and asylum seekers fleeing war and oppression in their home countries. Statistics show something else entirely.

Salvini has condemned the new government as one “produced by Paris and Berlin, born out of a fear of giving up power, without dignity and without ideals, with the wrong people in the wrong place.”

Italy’s new government, which has pledged to reverse former Interior Minister Matteo Salvini’s hardline approach to migration policy, appears to have triggered a new wave of mass migration from northern Africa.

More than 1,400 migrants reached Italian shores since the new government took office on September 5, according to data compiled by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

During just the past several weeks, the number of migrant arrivals to Italy has increased incrementally: 59 migrants arrived on September 6; 67 arrived on September 9; 121 arrived on September 14; 259 arrived on September 15; 275 arrived on September 18; and 475 arrived between September 19 and September 25, according to the IOM. Overall, the number of migrant arrivals in September 2019 is up by more than 100% over the number of arrivals in September 2018.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14895/confront-muslim-brotherhood

The motto of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) states: “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Qur’an is our constitution. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.” If “jihad is our way” and “the Quran is our constitution,” it would irrational not to postulate that the MB and its related groups in the U.S. endorse violence to change the U.S. constitution and replace it with the Quran.

We cannot say at this stage that Saudi Arabia and Egypt have been brought fully into modernity. We can say, however, that we have two leaders who want to — or are actually are — taking their Muslim majority countries onto this path. This is a nightmare for the MB, whose goal is to return the Muslim world to the time of Islamic Caliphate. Designating the MB as a terrorist group can impede their ability to resist the noble attempts of these leaders.

“The importance of identifying the Muslim brotherhood as a terrorist organization could not be more clear to our national security and counterterrorism strategy…. Designate the Muslim Brotherhood (MP) a foreign terrorist organization beginning in Egypt and then on a country by country basis. Libya, Syria, Kuwait, Jordan, Iraq and Yemen branches of the MB are the most obvious follow-ons…. Stop engaging Muslim Brotherhood legacy groups in government and media and NGO’s and recognize their Islamist terror sympathies, misogyny, anti-Semitism, homophobia, and anti-American ideological underpinnings. We must recognize that they are not the only voice for American Muslims or any community of Muslims.” — Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser, hearing before the Subcommittee on National Security of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, House of Representatives, July 11, 2018.

The White House has, since April, been considering officially designating the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO). This designation would follow in the footsteps of countries such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates, which have first-hand experience and understanding of the serious threat the MB represents.

The MB’s modus operandi typically works through four stages: Preaching, sharing, use of violence, full control. It would therefore be wise to confront them sooner rather than later, before they manifest their full power.

Some of the organization’s sympathizers and apologists seem sincerely to believe that the MB is a “moderate” group. Sadly, the evidence strongly suggests otherwise. Let us consider some examples.

https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Right-from-Wrong-From-the-mouths-of-mullahs-603058

The ayatollahs in Tehran must have been kvelling this week while watching their puppet, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, receive oodles of undivided attention on the global stage. Not only did Rouhani address the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on Wednesday, he was granted even more valuable propaganda time the previous day during a one-on-one interview with Fox News’s Chris Wallace.

Both platforms enabled the key figure-head of the greatest state sponsor of international terrorism – and among the world’s worst abusers of the human rights of its own people – to make a case for his evil regime by distorting reality beyond recognition. You know, by accusing America and Israel of being the true terror-masters.

When he took to the UNGA podium, Rouhani came out of the gate running.

“At the outset, I would like to… pay homage to all the freedom-seekers of the world who do not bow to oppression and aggression, and tolerate all the hardships of the struggle for rights, as well as to the spirits of all the oppressed martyrs of terrorist strikes and bombardment in Yemen, Syria, Occupied Palestine, Afghanistan and other countries of the world,” he said. “The Middle East is burning in the flames of war, bloodshed, aggression, occupation and religious and sectarian fanaticism and extremism. And under such circumstances, the suppressed people of Palestine are the biggest victim. Discrimination, appropriation of lands, settlement expansions and killings continue to be practiced against the Palestinians.”

However, he added, “The US- and Zionist-imposed plans, such as the ‘Deal of the Century,’ recognizing Baitul Muqaddas [Jerusalem] as the capital of the Zionist regime and the accession of the Syrian Golan to the other occupied territories, are doomed to fail.”

If anyone was wondering why America and Israel would not succeed in what he implied is a pernicious plot, Rouhani explained, “In contrast to the US’s destructive plans, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s regional and international assistance and cooperation on security and counter-terrorism have been much decisive. The clear example of such an approach is our cooperation with Russia and Turkey within the Astana format on the Syrian crisis, and our peace proposal for Yemen.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14819/sweden-crime

From the beginning of 2019 to the end of July, there were 120 bombings in Sweden, according to police statistics.

In Uppsala alone, a picturesque Swedish university town, where 80% of girls do not feel safe in the city center, four rapes or attempted rapes took place in early August within four days.

“Stop the rapes – you are letting the women down…. That women do not have the same opportunity to move freely in the streets and squares without having to worry about being exposed to crime, is a serious restriction on women’s freedom and self-determination”. — Josefin Malmqvist, member of parliament for the Moderate Party; Aftonbladet, August 24, 2019.

“Löfven, you have lost control of Sweden,” the leader of the largest opposition party, the center-right Moderate Party, Ulf Kristersson, recently wrote in an article in the daily newspaper Aftonbladet, in which he criticized Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven for failing to solve some of Sweden’s biggest problems. According to Kristersson:

“Two areas that we [the Moderate Party] highly prioritize are law and order and integration. Because Sweden’s biggest problems are there now.

“Last year, 306 shootings occurred and 45 people were shot dead. According to the police, the number of people killed has doubled since 2014. During the same period, the number of people who have been subjected to sexual abuse has tripled according to BRÅ [the Swedish Crime Prevention Council]…

“Concrete reforms are necessary. We have proposed them – the Social Democrats say no…

At the same time, we have an integration crisis: More than half of all the unemployed are born outside of Sweden. In our exclusion areas, [utanförskapsområden] there are schools where not even half of the students pass all subjects… Many children born in Sweden hardly speak Swedish, and there is extensive repression [in the name of] honor culture. Here too we have called for reforms, but the Social Democrats say no.