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Is Turkey Playing a Double Game with NATO? by Debalina Ghoshal

Posted By on July 2nd, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12620/turkey-nato-double-game

Why would Turkey first order a Russian defense system and then turn around and make a cooperation agreement with Europe for the same purpose?

This goes back to America’s apprehension that if Turkey uses the S-400s along with the U.S. F-35s, Russia could gain access to information about the aircraft’s sensitive technology.

If Turkey is playing a double game with NATO, let us hope that the United States does not fall prey to it.

In January, 2018 Turkey reportedly awarded an 18-month contract for a study on the development and production of a long-range air- and missile-defense system to France and Italy, showing — ostensibly — Turkey’s ongoing commitment to NATO. The study, contracted between the EUROSAM consortium and Turkey’s Aselsan and Roketsan companies, was agreed upon in Paris, on the sidelines of a meeting between French President Emmanuel Macron and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The contract for the study came on the heels of a deal between Ankara and Moscow, according to which Turkey would purchase the S-400 missile defense system — one of the most sophisticated on the global market — from Russia. The question is: Why would Turkey first order a Russian defense system and then turn around and make a cooperation agreement with Europe for the same purpose?

The answer is likely that Ankara is trying to pretend that it is still loyal to NATO, at a time when its strategic inclinations seem to indicate otherwise.

As Turkey is a member of NATO, its decision to opt for the S-400, a non-NATO missile-defense system, has been the subject of speculation and controversy. NATO has adopted the European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA), according to which the United States plans to deploy its missile-defense systems in various parts of Europe, to protect its forces and those of other NATO members from Iranian missile attacks. Turkey’s move appears to run counter to the EPAA.

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Why Turkey Will Not Be Another Iran by Amir Taheri

Posted By on July 2nd, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12628/turkey-iran-islamism

Khomeini’s support came from Tehran and a few other big cities, notably Isfahan, while Erdogan’s support base is in rural areas and small and medium cities.

While at least 40,000 people have been executed under Khomeini and his successors, Erdogan refuses to bring back the death penalty in Turkey.

Right now, according to Islamic Chief Justice Ayatollah Amoli Larijani, there are 15000 Iranians under death sentence in prison, waiting to be executed.

Is Turkey going to be another Iran? With President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s latest electoral victory the question is making the rounds in Western political circles. Despite the fact that Sunday’s election gives Erdogan immense new powers, my short answer to the question is a firm: no!

In analyzing the nature of political power in any form the first question to ask concerns the provenance of that power. For where does power comes from determines where it may go.

In Iran in 1979 power was like a box of jewels thrown in the street, ready for anyone to pick up. The Shah had left the country and most members of the Council of Monarchy he had appointed were in the French Riviera, while the army Top Brass had declared “neutrality” which meant the military wouldn’t stop anyone from picking up the box of jewels in the street.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Janus and the Campus The Supreme Court’s ruling could refocus public-university unions away from political crusades. KC Johnson

Posted By on July 2nd, 2018

https://www.city-journal.org/

The Supreme Court’s recent Janus decision ends mandatory fees for public-sector employees who don’t want to belong to a union. Previously, in 22 non-right-to-work states, such employees had to pay these fees for the union’s services on their behalf, which could include collective bargaining, but also a host of political activities to which many employees objected. Most of the debate in the case, appropriately, focused on legal questions, not the ramifications for higher education. Yet hundreds of thousands of professors teach at public universities in the 22 states affected by Janus; the example of one of New York’s largest higher-ed unions, the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), shows how relevant the Court’s ruling might prove to be.

In her Janus dissent, Justice Elena Kagan maintained that “everyone knows the difference between politicking and collective bargaining.” Yet a lawsuit against the PSC brought by my Brooklyn colleague, David Seidemann, demonstrated how difficult it is to draw these lines in the higher-education context. In a 2009 Second Circuit decision, a unanimous three-judge panel noted a lack of clarity about the PSC’s political expenditures in a wide variety of activities common to higher-ed unions—a contract campaign, donations to the parent union, lobbying of the state legislature, and paying salaries of union employees. (That the union listed political expenditures as office supplies, while claiming that a Woody Guthrie concert shouldn’t count as a political expense, did little to enhance its credibility.) The Second Circuit judges held that “courts must examine union activities carefully to ensure that dissenters are not charged for ideological undertakings not related to collective bargaining.” Rather than allow that careful examination of its expenditures to occur, the union settled with Seidemann.

BOOKS, P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Librarians Airbrush Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Name from Award By John Fund

Posted By on July 2nd, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/07/library-association-removes-laura-ingalls-wilder-from-book-award/

Who’s next? Mark Twain, Shakespeare, Hemingway?

Politically correct radicals are now beating up on Laura Ingalls Wilder, the author of the beloved “Little House on the Prairie” children’s books, which inspired a long-running TV series starring Michael Landon that ran from 1974 to 1983.

The Association of Library Services for Children, a part of the larger American Library Association, has unanimously voted to strip Wilder’s name from a prestigious book award it has given since 1954. The reason? “Wilder’s legacy, as represented by her body of work, includes expressions of stereotypical attitudes inconsistent with ALSC’s core values of inclusiveness, integrity and respect, and responsiveness.”

To its horror the group notes that Wilder’s novels include “statements by white characters portraying Native Americans as dirty, lazy, and dangerous.”

The example that almost every Wilder critic cites is this passage in book she wrote in 1935:

There the wild animals wandered and fed as though they were in a pasture that stretched much farther than a man could see, and there were no people. Only Indians lived there.

Every other example simply reports on the attitudes of one character or another on Native Americans.

What the critics often don’t note is that Wilder was mortified when, before her death in 1957, a reader pointed out the passage to her. Wilder promptly wrote her publisher:

You are perfectly right about the fault in Little House on the Prairie and have my permission to make the correction as you suggest. It was a stupid blunder of mine. Of course Indians are people and I did not intend to imply they were not.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Small-c communist ousts House Democrats number four in leadership. Matthew Vadum

Posted By on July 2nd, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270618/dsaer-wins-seat-congress-matthew-vadum

A radical leftist upstart’s unexpected primary trouncing of a key member of the House Democratic leadership is sending shockwaves through the Democratic Party establishment.

Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member and first-time candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old of Puerto Rican ancestry, crushed longtime U.S. Rep. Joe Crowley, a 56-year Irish-American Catholic, in the primary election June 26 for the 14th congressional district in New York, covering parts of the boroughs of Queens and The Bronx. Ocasio-Cortez, who previously worked as an organizer for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential bid, garnered 57.5 percent of the vote compared to the 42.5 percent Crowley earned.

Of course, democratic socialism is a profoundly dishonest euphemism calculated to make the horrors of communism more palatable.

As I’ve written before,

Karl Marx thought of socialism as a necessary way station on the road to the supposed utopia of communism. The question of socialism versus communism is a never-ending debate in academic circles, and it is one that is too involved to get into here. Suffice it to say that socialists and communists all want government or the collective to be master. They all subscribe to bad, un-American ideas, are all in the same ideological camp, and all tend to believe that the ends justify the means. In ideological terms, there is no bright line or safe harbor that neatly separates socialism from communism. They overlap and blend into each other.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

ICE + Local Police Cooperation A winning formula. Michael Cutler

Posted By on July 2nd, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270613/ice-local-police-cooperation-michael-cutler
On June 21, 2018 ICE posted a news release, Honduran man pleads guilty to transporting illegal aliens. This successful prosecution was only possible because of the able assistance provided to ICE by a Fairfax County police officer.

Here is an excerpt from this news release:

According to court documents, Danny Josue Zelaya-Ortiz, aka “Jose Castro”, 29, was part of a conspiracy to charge illegal aliens in the United States a fee for transporting them from Texas to other states across the country. In April 2018, Zelaya-Ortiz picked up at least six alien passengers, all of whom had been smuggled into the United States from the Mexico border. Zelaya was driving the passengers towards Maryland and the New York area when his vehicle was stopped in Virginia by Fairfax County Police on April 25, 2018. He was cited for an improper vehicle tag display and driving without an operator’s license. Homeland Security Investigations special agents responded to the scene after it was determined Zelaya-Ortiz and the passengers had no lawful status in the United States. Zelaya-Ortiz admitted he knew the passengers were illegal aliens and that he received payments for his role in the scheme. At the time of the crime, Zelaya-Ortiz had been in the country illegally after having been twice removed by immigration officials.

Before criminals can be successfully prosecuted for their crimes, these law violators obviously must first be identified and evidence of their crimes must be accumulated.

The above-noted case illustrates the importance of routine and effective cooperation between local police and ICE to facilitating federal investigations into immigration law violations. In this instant case Danny Josue Zelaya-Ortiz, aka “Jose Castro,” an illegal alien from Honduras who had been arrested and deported on at least three previous occasions was taken into custody by ICE, along with several illegal aliens he was caught transporting. from the U.S./Mexican border to Maryland and ultimately to New York City.

This illustrates that illegal immigration impacts every state of the United States, from border to border and coast to coast.

POLITICS Comments turned off

It’s Not Socialism, It’s Racism The myth of the media’s new Socialist It Girl. Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on July 2nd, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270614/its-not-socialism-its-racism-daniel-greenfield

After the ’10 census, New York lost two congressional seats. Overpriced, lacking any growth industries except tourism and community organizing, the state just couldn’t keep up with the rest of the country.

New York had been bleeding congressional seats since the rise of the suburbs. After the massacre of ’10, its congressional delegation was the smallest since 1823. And it’ll lose more seats after the next census.

But the ’10 massacre also forced Rep. Joe Crowley out of the 7th Congressional District and into the 14th. The 7th became a gerrymandered a district built like a Frankenstein’s monster out of parts of Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens that had nothing geographically in common except Puerto Rican populations who will keep voting for Rep. Nydia Velázquez, a Democrat, until the city sinks beneath the waves.

Crowley, who is paler than birch trees, had no shot at the new 7th. But he settled down comfortably in the 14th, winning 70% of the vote by just showing up, without the fuss of a primary challenge. While representing a Hispanic district in Queens, he was allegedly living comfortably in Arlington, Virginia.

That was never going to last.

New York City’s working class white population is an endangered species. If you’re not on welfare or earning well in the six figures, you can’t afford to live there. Crowley’s district was 46% Hispanic. It had the second highest share of Latino voters in New York. The machine pol was living on borrowed time.

POLITICS Comments turned off

The Democratic Party Is Killing Itself By Ian Henderson

Posted By on July 2nd, 2018

https://amgreatness.com/2018/07/02/the-democratic-party-is-killing-itsel

What does America’s political climate bode for us in the next 25-50 years? What if I told you the Democratic Party will fracture into multiple parties and the Republican Party will grow stronger? And what if I said changing demographics and the normalization of identity politics would be the reason?

The Democratic Party has redoubled its embrace of identity politics. Whether it be Mexican-American, African-American, Chinese-American, Muslim-American or any of the two-dozen hyphenated American groups out there, these ethno-religious-cultural groups have by and large used the Democratic Party to further their group interests. Why wouldn’t they? Human beings are tribal creatures and more often than not flock to those who act like them, speak like them, pray like them, and, yes, look like them.

As America’s non-Hispanic White population shrinks due to the influx of non-European immigration and low white birth rates, cultural enclaves have begun to form all over the nation. Starting in the late 1960s and accelerating over the past decade, the Democratic Party has abandoned its traditional base of working-class white voters to embrace minority immigrant groups. Although this has boded well for them in places like California, it won’t last.

Growing Republican Support

Working-class white voters feel abandoned by the Democratic Party. The party went from a platform of being center-left economically and socially/culturally conservative to a platform that is far to the left economically and socially/culturally degenerate. Consider how the South went from blue to red in the 1990s, as Southern Evangelicals embraced the Republican Party platform.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Left Is Slipping into Terminal Irrelevance By Roger Kimball

Posted By on July 2nd, 2018

https://amgreatness.com/2018/07/01/the-left-is-slipping-into-terminal
Let’s face it. There are no liberals on the left these days…only aspiring totalitarians.

Well, last week was quite a week. For one side, a week of winning. For the other, a week of wailing.

It will be no secret to regular readers that I am in the former camp. I think it is a good thing that so-called “public-sector unions” can no longer force non-union workers to pay dues. Indeed, like Franklin Delano Roosevelt, I think public-sector unions are an abomination that have no place in a free republic. They all-but-guarantee systematic corruption.

As Daniel DiSalvo notes in Government Unions and the Bankrupting of America, such unions “extract dues from their members and funnel them into politicians’ campaign war chests, then those same politicians agree to generous contracts for public workers—which in turn leads to more union dues, more campaign spending, and so on. It is a cycle that has dominated the politics of some of America’s states with dire consequences.” Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court took an important step in breaking that vicious cycle.

First Amendment Wins
Last week was also a win for religious liberty and free speech. Henceforth, religious pregnancy counseling operations will no longer be required to post advisories informing clients that an abortion is just a quick trip to the local abattoir, a.k.a. Planned Parenthood.

Then there was the decision upholding President Trump’s moratorium on travel to the United States from certain countries known to be hotbeds of terrorism. I am wholeheartedly with the majority on that one, too, partly because I think our government has a duty to be circumspect about whom it allows into the country, and partly because I dislike grandstanding district court judges who presume to usurp the president’s legitimate constitutional powers by issuing injunctions on a “nationwide basis” against properly formed executive orders.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Hilarious satire of Dem apoplexy over Trump’s next Supreme Court pick By Thomas Lifson

Posted By on July 2nd, 2018

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/07/hilarious_satire_of_dem_apoplexy_over_trumps_next_supreme_court_pick.html

Hilarious satire of Dem apoplexy over Trump’s next Supreme Court pick

The obsessive media hatred of President Trump has made them entirely predictable. Everything he does is not just wrong, it is an outage. And everyone he appoints to office is utterly, irredeemably evil, so malign that dining at a restaurant is a threat that must be countered by mobs.

Blogger Don Surber has provided us with a splendid satire of the spittle-flecked media madness that will erupt as soon as President Trump announces his nominee for the Supreme Court seat being vacated by Justice Kennedy. What makes this brilliant satire is that it is a generic editorial that could (and will) be published against anyone the president chooses. Don instructs journalists:

To those still laboring at a craft that last had impact in the 19th century, I draw upon my 27 years of experience to offer this generic editorial on whomever President Trump nominates for the Supreme Court.

You may cut and paste it, and your boss will not notice the difference.

The Senate Must Reject This Monster

President Trump — a vain, deranged, and impulsive man elected by Russia and not a majority of Americans — has nominated the worst judicial candidate since Roger Brooke Taney, the chief justice who authored the Dred Scott decision. [Nominee’s name] may be worse. Not only does [he or she] view African-Americans as chattel, but women as second-class citizens!

Read the whole thing.