FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

President Trump vs. the Foreign Policy Swamp by David Goldman

Posted By on April 20th, 2018

President Trump’s decision to postpone new economic sanctions against Russia on Monday brought some clarity to the foreign policy fight in Washington. The issue isn’t whether UN Ambassador Nikki Haley gets confused, as she waspishly denied, but the fact that the president is fighting the swamp single-handed. Here’s the Financial Times’ snarky Edward Luce in a blast email this morning:

The explanation is simple. Everyone in the Trump administration is really hawkish on Russia. Except the president. On most days the train simply keeps running without him. People such as Haley talk to Jim Mattis, the defence secretary, John Bolton, the national security advisor, Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, and so on, and agree on what ought to be done.

Under the headline “Trump, a reluctant hawk, has battled his top aides on Russia and lost,” The Washington Post reported April 15 that the White House national security bamboozled the president about last month’s expulsion of Russian diplomats. Trump was told that he had to expel 60 Russians to match what the Europeans were doing.

The next day, when the expulsions were announced publicly, Trump erupted, officials said. To his shock and dismay, France and Germany were each expelling only four Russian officials — far fewer than the 60 his administration had decided on…Trump insisted that his aides had misled him about the magnitude of the expulsions. “There were curse words,” the official said, “a lot of curse words.”

The incident reflects a tension at the core of the Trump administration’s increasingly hard-nosed stance on Russia: The president instinctually opposes many of the punitive measures pushed by his Cabinet that have crippled his ability to forge a close relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Turkey Targeting Greece – Again by Uzay Bulut

Posted By on April 20th, 2018

With the illegal seizures and occupation of northern Cyprus in 1974 and the Syrian city of Afrin this March — with virtually no global reaction — Turkey apparently feels unchallenged and eager to continue; this time, it seems, with the oil-and-gas rich islands of Greece.

“To take an interest in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Crimea, Karabakh, Bosnia and other brotherly regions is both the duty and the right of Turkey. Turkey is not just Turkey. The day we give up on these things will be the day we give up on our freedom and future.” — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, 2016.

Turkish needs are in reality supplied by its association with the US. Turkish officials usually get whatever they want from the West, but they seem to have chosen to align themselves with Iran and Russia, possibly in attempt to blackmail the West for more.

Turkey has been harassing Greece consistently. Most recently, this week, on April 17, two Turkish fighter aircraft harassed the helicopter carrying Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and the Greek Armed Forces Chief Admiral Evangelos Apostolakis as they were flying from the islet of Ro to Rhodes.

With the illegal seizures and occupation of northern Cyprus in 1974 and the Syrian city of Afrin this March — with virtually no global response — Turkey apparently feels unchallenged and eager to continue; this time, it seems, with the oil-and-gas rich islands of Greece.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

A Culture of Murderous Hate at Fresno State When a university normalizes calls for the death of Republicans. Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on April 20th, 2018

2017 was a bad year at Fresno State. 2018 looks to be even worse.

In the winter of last year, Lars Maischak had tweeted, “To save American democracy, Trump must hang. The sooner and the higher, the better. #TheResistance.”

The next day he inquired, “Has anyone started soliciting money and design drafts for a monument honoring the Trump assassin, yet?”

Toward the end of the week, he proposed the mass murder of Republicans, “Justice = The execution of two Republicans for each deported immigrant.”

Maischak was a history adjunct at Fresno State whose topics had included, “Marx and Hegel for Historians.”

President Castro eventually clarified that calls to murder the President of the United States and millions of Republicans, “do not reflect the position of the University.”

Castro failed to clearly condemn Maischak’s murderous tweets. Instead Maischak took a voluntary leave “conducting research off campus”. His university faculty page appears to be active.

Had an adjunct called for the murder of Obama, the reaction would have been very different.

Now, Randa Jarrar, a tenured Muslim professor in Fresno State’s Department of English, responded to Barbara Bush’s death by calling the deceased 92-year-old woman a “racist”.

“I’m happy the witch is dead,” she gloated. “Can’t wait for the rest of her family to fall to their demise.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Bay of Pigs Freedom-Fight: 57 Years Later How JFK’s voluntary betrayal led Cuban heroes to doom. Humberto Fontova

Posted By on April 20th, 2018

The Bay of Pigs freedom-fight transpired 57 years ago this week. Given that Hollywood and the mainstream media have finally gotten around to revealing the hideous truth about a Kennedy’s perfidy and how the media/Democrat complex helped cover it up (i.e. Teddy, Chappaquiddick), who knows, perhaps one day they’ll level with us about what really happened at the Bay of Pigs.

“I really admire toughness and courage, and I will tell you that the people of this brigade [Brigada 2506] really have that…you were let down by our country.” (Donald Trump, addressing Bay of Pigs Veterans at the Bay of Pigs Museum in Miami FL, 11/16, 1999.)

“It’s a great honor and I’m humbled for this endorsement from these freedom fighters—from TRUE freedom fighters… You were fighting for the values of freedom and liberty that unite us all. (Candidate Donald Trump, receiving endorsement of Bay of Pigs Veterans at the Bay of Pigs Museum in Miami FL, 11/16, 2016.)

But let’s not hold our breath about the Hollywood/media complex finally coming clean about the Bay of Pigs as it just did about Chappaquiddick. So until that day arrives, here it is:

No, the invasion was not “doomed” from the beginning because of Castro’s “popular support” in Cuba—as the media/Democrat complex would have you believe.

No, the invasion was not “doomed” because the original CIA/military plans were “faulty”—as the media/Democrat complex would have you believe.

No, the “formerly rich, pampered and effete” Cuban invaders did not “quickly surrender,” as the media/Democrat complex would have you believe.

In fact, it was the voluntary actions of a Kennedy that lead to doom at the Bay of Pigs, same as at Chappaquiddick.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

What Enoch Powell Got Right, and Wrong The legacy of the most famous British speech of the last half-century Dominic Green

Posted By on April 20th, 2018

Fifty years ago this month, the British conservative Enoch Powell gave his “Rivers of Blood” speech about immigration, which has become as legendary as it is infamous. A classics professor who once aspired to become viceroy of the British Raj, Powell was one of postwar Britain’s most intelligent conservatives. Romantic about British traditions and deeply skeptical of the emerging European superstate, he would become a mentor to the young Margaret Thatcher. But instead of forcing immigration onto the agenda and propelling Powell toward Conservative Party leadership, the Rivers of Blood speech pushed the issue to the fringe and Powell’s career into the ditch. Powell’s fall became a rallying cry for racists and immigration a wedge issue for Europe’s populist “new right” parties, thus preventing candid discussion of policy.

In April 1968, Britain’s Labour government enacted the Race Relations Act, making illegal racial or religious discrimination in housing, employment, or public services. In response, Powell attacked the cross-party postwar consensus, not just on race relations but also on broader questions of national identity. Two decades of mass immigration, he warned, had started a “total transformation to which there is no parallel in a thousand years of English history.” British society was “on the verge of a change”—and risking the kind of inter-ethnic violence that had stymied Powell’s ambitions to run India.

“As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding,” Powell said, and “like the Roman, I seem to see the River Tiber foaming with much blood”—a classical allusion to the Sybil’s prophecy of civil war in the Aeneid. Less stylish was his description of immigrants’ children as “wide-grinning piccaninnies.” In response, the pro-European Conservative Party leader Edward Heath removed Powell from his position as Shadow Defence Secretary. In the East End of London, though, dockworkers marched under the slogan “Enoch was right.” Powell’s stance won working-class votes for Heath in the 1970 election. Many white Britons still mutter that “Enoch was right” behind closed doors whenever the subject of immigration comes up—which it does whenever people talk politics today.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Delusions of Justice American Jews should wake up to which side their most dangerous enemies are on. Joel Kotkin *****

Posted By on April 20th, 2018

Since the election of Donald Trump, prominent American Jews, notably in the Reform movement and among the intelligentsia, have lamented the resurgence of right-wing anti-Semitism, seeing it as the greatest threat to their community in the United States. The rise of xenophobic and often marginally anti-Jewish parties in Eastern Europe—even with fewer Jews left there to persecute—has deepened the alarm. Yet by far the greatest threat to Jews, not only here but also abroad, comes not from zombie fascist retreads, but from the Left, which is increasingly making its peace with anti-Semitism.

This shift was first made clear to me about 15 years ago when, along with my wife Mandy, whose mother is a Holocaust survivor from France, I visited the legendary Nazi-hunters Serge and Beate Klarsfeld. They predicted that the primary threat to Jews in Europe increasingly would come not from the centuries-old French Right, some of whom had supported the Nazis, but from the Left, in alliance with a growing Muslim population. Time has proved their assertion to be, for the most part, on target. In Sweden, for instance, never known for its persecution of Jews, only 5 percent of all anti-Semitic incidents, notes the New York Times, involved the far Right, while Muslims and leftists accounted for the rest. Germany’s recent rash of anti-Semitic incidents has coincided with the mass migration of people from regions where hostility to both Jews and Israel is commonplace. At European universities, where pro-Nazi sentiments were once widely shared, anti-Israel sentiments are increasingly de rigueur. The growing Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, aimed at cutting all ties with Israel, often allies itself with anti-Jewish Islamist groups, some with eliminationist agendas for Palestine’s Jews.

Of course, anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are not identical. One can criticize some Israeli policies—as many American Jews do, for example, on the expansion of settlements—without being an anti-Semite. But, as the liberal French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy argues, targeting the Jewish state while ignoring far more brutal, homophobic, and profoundly misogynist Muslim states represents a double standard characteristic of anti-Semitic prejudice. European progressives increasingly embrace this double standard. Generally speaking, the further left the European politician, the closer his ties to Islamist groups who seek the destruction of Jews in Palestine. Many left-wing parties—the French socialists, for example—depend more and more on Arab and Muslim voters, who come from countries where more than 80 percent of the public holds strongly anti-Jewish views. The Left’s animus toward Jewish causes has spread to Great Britain, where Labour Party head Jeremy Corbyn counts the leaders of openly anti-Semitic groups like Hamas and Hezbollah as allies. If Corbyn becomes Britain’s next prime minister—no longer inconceivable, given his strong showing in the last election—the consequences for Israel, and for Britain’s dwindling Jewish community, could be troubling.

MEDIA Comments turned off

The Hannity Standard Where have all the defenders of civil liberties gone? James Freeman

Posted By on April 20th, 2018

The press corps gave a collective cheer this week when federal Judge Kimba Wood forced the public disclosure that Sean Hannity is a client of Michael Cohen, or at least considered to be a client by Mr. Cohen’s attorneys. When they’re done celebrating, perhaps a few media folk will reflect on how they would feel about such treatment for anyone not named Hannity.

Among journalists, the Fox News television host and radio broadcaster is about as popular as the President. And journalists have raised reasonable questions about what obligations Mr. Hannity has to inform his viewers when discussing documents seized by the government that may possibly include information about him. But journalists as well as non-journalists may also reasonably ask why a criminal investigation of an attorney requires publicizing the names of others, regardless of whether they have any connection to the allegations at hand.

Mr. Cohen has primarily served as an attorney for Donald Trump and is now being investigated by the FBI and federal prosecutors. As for Mr. Hannity, former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy at National Review writes, “Forget about evidence of wrongdoing. There is not even a suggestion that Hannity is involved in any crimes.” There’s no indication he knows anything about the issues being investigated and furthermore, says Mr. McCarthy, “grand-jury proceedings are secret by law . . . In short, the public does not have the right to know the names of people—whether or not suspected of wrongdoing—who pop up in a criminal investigation.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Comey Memos Reveal Trump’s Early Doubts About Flynn Documents provide ex-FBI director’s account of meetings with new president and staff at a time when he faced uncertainty over whether he would be retained By Byron Tau and Michael C. Bender

Posted By on April 20th, 2018

Former FBI Director James Comey revealed in a series of private memos that President Donald Trump and his then-chief of staff had doubts within days of taking office about national security adviser Mike Flynn, who subsequently left the administration after misleading officials about his contacts with Russia and later pleaded guilty to lying to law enforcement.

Mr. Comey’s previously unreported account of their take on Mr. Flynn was part of seven memos spanning 15 pages that were authored by Mr. Comey over a four-month period in 2017 and shared with Federal Bureau of Investigation leadership.

The memos were reviewed by The Wall Street Journal on Thursday after being handed over to several congressional committees by the Justice Department.

Much of the material in the memos has been previously disclosed. Mr. Comey has previously said he documented several encounters with the president in contemporaneous written memos. He also testified in Congress that he eventually provided several of them to reporters through an intermediary.

Together, the memos provide Mr. Comey’s account of several meetings with the new president and his staff at a time when the FBI director faced uncertainty over whether he would be retained in his job by Mr. Trump.

They also provide a look at how the new president and administration grappled with a series of surprises, such as the leak of transcripts of Mr. Trump’s phone calls with the leaders of Mexico and Australia and salacious claims made in an unverified dossier that Mr. Comey brought to the president’s attention. CONTINUE AT SITE

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

An Honest Comey Interview Questions nobody is asking the former FBI director—but somebody should. Kimberley Strassel

Posted By on April 20th, 2018

James Comey and his memoir are tripping the media light fantastic, though what’s defined that trip so far is its lack of news. Mr. Comey explains the many and varied ways that he does not like President Trump. Mr. Comey explains the many and varied ways that he does like himself. Tell us something we don’t know.

People forget that directors of the Federal Bureau of Investigation—by necessity—are among Washington’s most skilled operators, experts in appearing to answer questions even as they provide pablum. Yet the publicity tour rolls on, which means that upcoming interviewers still have an opportunity to do the country—and our profession—a favor. Here are a few basic questions Mr. Comey should be expected to answer:

• You admit the Christopher Steele dossier was still “unverified” when the FBI used it as the basis of a surveillance warrant against Carter Page. Please explain. Also explain the decision to withhold from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that the dossier was financed by the Hillary Clinton campaign.

• You refer to Mr. Steele as a “credible” source. Does the FBI routinely view as “credible” sources who work for political operatives? Did the FBI do any due diligence on his employer, Fusion GPS? Were you aware it is an opposition-research firm? If not, why not?

• Mr. Steele by his own admission briefed the press on the dossier in the fall of 2016, to harm the Trump campaign, although the FBI ordered him not to. Are these the actions of a “credible” source? The sourcing in these articles—particularly one that ran in Yahoo News—was hard to mistake. Yet the FBI soon after assured the FISA court that its “credible” source had not spoken to the media. Either the FBI failed to follow up on the stories, or it did and Mr. Steele lied to your agents. Which is it? CONTINUE AT SITE

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Raul Castro Gives Up Cuban Presidency By Mairead McArdle

Posted By on April 20th, 2018

For the first time in almost 60 years, Cuba has a head of state from outside the Castro family.

Raul Castro, 86, stepped down Thursday morning as president, handing the reins to his hand-picked successor, the much younger Miguel Diaz-Canel, who has been vice president since 2013.

Castro, 86, inherited the presidency from his brother, who had ruled the country with an iron fist for nearly 50 years, in 2008. Despite relinquishing the presidency, he is set to remain head of the Cuban Communist party and the country’s armed forces, which has led some observers to wonder how much freedom Diaz-Canel, 57, will have to exercise the powers of the office. At the same time, the move has touched off speculation about Cuba’s future as one of the last remaining Communist states, given its widespread poverty and need for structural reforms.

Diaz-Canel was born after the Fidel Castro’s Communist revolution, and has been curiously reluctant to share his opinion about it for someone who’s spent his life rising in the political system Castro created.

“I was born in 1960, after the revolution,” the future president told U.S. lawmakers in 2015. “I’m not the best person to answer your questions on the subject.”

He has a reputation for promoting more access between Cuba and the outside world, but he does not hesitate to censor and quash influences that run counter to the one-party state’s interests. In November, he said that “we continue to be open to relations” with the U.S. But last month, he complained that the Trump administration had “offended Cuba” and “attacked and threatened” the revolution.