POLITICS, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

James Allan The Anglosphere and Elections

Posted By on January 19th, 2016

For better or worse, other nations enjoy the option of ousting or installing conservative leaders. No such luck in Australia, however, where the result of our sooner-or-later election is pre-ordained. Regardless of the winner’s party, we’ll have a leftist in The Lodge.
Midway through last year the political situation in the developed English-speaking world looked pretty good to those of us right-leaning voters who put a big value on small government, free-speech, Hobbesian strong national defence and national sovereignty. There were conservative governments in Canada, New Zealand, the UK and here in Australia. Canada had Stephen Harper in office, who had been Prime Minister a decade, despite being hated by the public broadcaster, the bien pensants in the universities and all the usual inner-city types gathered at their favourite fair-trade coffee shops.

New Zealand had a long-serving John Key in office. True, when it comes to national defence the Kiwis can and do free-ride on the coat-tails of Australia and the US, spending next to nothing while making meaningless (indeed harmful) gestures about no nuclear US navy ships being allowed to visit. Prime Minister Key isn’t exactly my cup of tea when it comes to his enthusiasm for criminalising parents who spank their children, or his views on the highly proportional German-style voting system there, or indeed on the need to change the Kiwi flag. (Mr. Key favours all three of those, I dislike them all.) Yet by New Zealand standards he is far more right-leaning than the alternative.

In the United Kingdom in the middle of last year you had a Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron who looked decidedly vulnerable. An election loomed and his prospects looked less than sterling. (We all now know that Mr. Cameron went on to lead the Tories to a surprising majority government win.) Mr. Cameron had by midyear taken to trying to reposition himself to the right, as he had discovered he actually needed the votes of regular party members who were bleeding off to the United Kingdom Independence Party. Heck, Mr. Cameron had even promised a referendum on staying in the Europe Union should he win the next election – admittedly not the most likely possibility at the time the promise was made.

Here in Australia, Mr. Abbott was the prime minister. On national sovereignty and foreign affairs he was excellent. On government spending he at least made the right noises, the incompetence of making the case for it and then implementing it notwithstanding. You knew he was a man of the right. You knew he was despised by the ABC, which is almost always a sign of being on the correct side of any argument (not unlike finding yourself on the opposite side of an issue to the Greens). He was a good way down in the polls but the betting market had him still as a strong favourite to win, and he certainly commanded strong support among Liberal Party members.

Of course, in the most important Anglosphere country of them all, the United States, there was a Democrat as President. Mr. Obama was (and is) probably the most left-leaning President in US history, and certainly in recent times. If you doubt me just go and compare the policies of fellow Democrat President Bill Clinton (free trade, welfare reform, surpluses) to those of Obama. The Republicans had by the middle of last year captured both the House of Representatives and the Senate. But it’s fair to say that the Republican leadership in both those Houses of the legislature was hardly putting Mr. Obama on the spot by forcing him to veto bill after bill. But at least they could block any left-leaning legislative agenda the president might otherwise have in mind – forcing him to try achieving his goals by the back door of executive orders (which can be easily undone when a Republican next wins the White House).

POLITICS Comments turned off

Hillary’s Israel-Hating Secret Advisor Comes Out Swinging By Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

Posted By on January 19th, 2016

Max Blumenthal, who was revealed by the Hillary Clinton forced email dump as one of her secret sources and advisers on Israel and Middle East affairs, is one of the great Israel haters in America today.

A writer should avoid hyperbole. But when it comes to Max Blumenthal, son of longtime Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal, it’s hard to avoid superlatives. Max is quite simply one of the most biased, anti-Semitic, terrorist-defending, Israel-has-no-right-to-exist haters out there.

Max, who spends most of his professional life being ignored because of his extreme, hate-filled drivel, recently became the focus of scrutiny when it was revealed that his father, Sid Blumenthal, promoted Max’s anti-Semitic writings to Ms. Clinton when she was Secretary of State of the United States. More explosive are Ms. Clinton’s emails praising Max’s work.

Throughout this entire email scandal, both Max and his father have been silent. One might assume the Hillary campaign sees they have a Jeremiah Wright problem and have done everything to muzzle Max.

Now I’ve discovered that Max might have a problem with America too, seeing as he is prepared to repudiate the First Amendment.

It appears Max can malign the Jewish State and falsely accuse it of the most vile atrocities but the moment someone exposes him, he demands press censorship.

After reading my column that exposed the influence of his writings on Ms. Clinton, Max wrote to The Huffington Post demanding my column be removed. A veiled threat of legal proceedings for libel was included.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Hillary’s Sisterhood With Planned Parenthood The endorsement of the nation’s largest abortion provider didn’t come free.By William McGurn

Posted By on January 19th, 2016

Once upon a time, in the good old days of the first Clinton presidency, Bill Clinton turned his back on his wife. He did so after her crash-and-burn on HillaryCare helped usher in the first Republican House in 40 years. Mr. Clinton got the message and went on to embrace welfare reform, sign a cut in the capital-gains tax, and even declare that “the era of big Government is over.”

Now his wife is returning the favor. Today Hillary Clinton is running hard against the agenda that defined her husband’s presidency. And not only his economics.

This campaign she has cast aside her husband’s formula on abortion—“safe, legal and rare”—that she herself ran on in the past. Gone is the moderating nuance of yesteryear: reducing the number of abortions, finding “common ground” with pro-lifers, even, in her first campaign for the Senate in 2000, how she would be OK with a limit on partial-birth or late-term abortions so long as it didn’t threaten the life of the mother.

The new Mrs. Clinton has moved to the absolutist position of the nation’s largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood. Today Mrs. Clinton’s formula is safe, legal, unlimited—and federally subsidized. We saw this new Hillary Clinton at a Planned Parenthood rally in New Hampshire this month, where she said she favored “safe and legal abortion” and denounced the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal funding for abortion.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

After the Carnage, Shale Will Rise Again Vast swaths of shale will be profitable with oil at about $40 a barrel, and the nimble industry is ready. By Mark P. Mills

Posted By on January 19th, 2016

How low can oil prices go? When pundits start competing to predict where the barrel will hit bottom, you know that a rebound is inevitable. It’s the inverse of what happens before a high-price bubble bursts. Only a few years ago forecasters were suggesting that oil might hit $300 a barrel.

The unpleasant reality is that petroleum prices are cyclical. Starting with the 1973-74 Arab oil embargo, they have been through six extremes. Because the peaks and the valleys both wreak financial havoc, producers and politicians imagine a Goldilocks ideal, with prices “just right”—not so high that legislators feel pressure to claw back “windfall profits,” and not so low that suppliers fall like dominoes, destroying jobs and tax revenue.

The latter is what we’re seeing now, with oil falling below $30 a barrel. Survey the damage so far: More than 100,000 jobs are gone, most of them last year. The number of shale rigs in service has collapsed by 60%. Banks are worried about their oil loans. Shale states are readjusting budgets for shortfalls. About $200 billion of oil and gas assets are up for sale world-wide.

American shale oil companies—whose booming production is a principal cause of the global glut—have been hit hard. Last year two dozen defaulted and 15 filed for bankruptcy. Standard & Poor’s puts junk ratings on three-fourths of the oil and gas producers it monitors.

Here’s the big question, the one that makes this cycle different: What happens to shale oil? The jobs and revenues from America’s newest industry literally kept the country out of recession during the years of tepid growth that have characterized the current administration.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Trial of Four West London Terror Suspects Opens Islamic State-inspired attack was to target soldier or police officer By Alexis Flynn

Posted By on January 19th, 2016

—The trial of four men from west London who were allegedly poised to carry out an Islamic State-inspired gun attack in the U.K. capital opened on Monday.

Prosecutors say British Muslims Tarik Hassane, 22, Suhaib Majeed, 21, Nyall Hamlett, 25, and Nathan Cuffy, 26, were planning to murder a police officer or soldier with a silencer-equipped pistol, but the plan was foiled when authorities arrested them in 2014.

The case underscores the growing number of Islamic extremist plots in Europe targeted at police or military personnel.

Potential targets may have included the Shepherd’s Bush police station in West London and the nearby Parachute Regiment barracks, prosecutors alleged, after a forensic examination of Mr. Hassane’s electronic device found he had used Google Street View to case their locations.

“If the plot had been allowed to run its course, it would have resulted in a terrorist murder or murders on the streets of London, according to the warped ideology of the defendants, in the cause, and for the sake, of Allah,” lead prosecutor Brian Altman said

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

A Terror State in Libya Islamic State is advancing with too little Western opposition.

Posted By on January 19th, 2016

Islamic State fighters launched a naval assault in northern Libya last week, dispatching three boats that fired on an oil terminal at Zueitina. Local guards repelled that attack, but it was a reminder of Islamic State’s growing capabilities and reach beyond its heartland in Syria and Iraq. Too bad Western capitals seem unprepared to stop it.

The Zueitina episode was the latest in a string of Islamic State attacks in Libya since the new year. On Jan. 8 an Islamic State truck bomb hit a police academy in Zliten, western Libya, killing 65 people. The same week Islamic State arson attacks ignited two other Libyan oil terminals. Islamic State draws much of its revenue by marketing oil from captured fields in Iraq and Syria.

Following the Zletin truck bombing, the European Union—300 miles across the Mediterranean—offered $108 million in security assistance to Libya. The aid is supposed to take the form of technical and logistical support to the newly formed Libyan unity government, currently based in neighboring Tunisia.

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Normalizing Iran Why are liberals campaigning to make this most illiberal regime acceptable? Bret Stephens

Posted By on January 19th, 2016

In Syria, Bashar Assad is trying to bring his enemies to heel by blocking humanitarian convoys to desperate civilians living in besieged towns. The policy is called “starve or kneel,” and it is openly supported by Hezbollah and tacitly by Iran, which has deployed its elite Quds Force to aid Mr. Assad’s war effort.

So what better time for right-thinking liberals to ask: “Is Iran really so evil?”

That’s the title of a revealing essay in Politico by Stephen Kinzer, a former New York Times reporter now at Brown University. “The demonization of Iran is arguably the most bizarre and self-defeating of all U.S. foreign policies,” Mr. Kinzer begins. “Americans view Iran not simply as a country with interests that sometimes conflict with ours but as a relentless font of evil.”

Mr. Kinzer’s essay was published Sunday, as sanctions were lifted on Tehran and four of America’s hostages came home after lengthy imprisonments. The Obama administration publicly insists that the nuclear deal does not mean the U.S. should take a benign view of Iran, but the more enthusiastic backers of the agreement think otherwise. “Our perception of Iran as a threat to vital American interests is increasingly disconnected from reality,” Mr. Kinzer writes. “Events of the past week may slowly begin to erode the impulse that leads Americans to believe patriotism requires us to hate Iran.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

America’s Nuclear Power Plants Vulnerabilities By David J. Stuckenberg and Hershel C. Campbell

Posted By on January 19th, 2016

A year-long study found that the present legal and regulatory approach to EMP/Space weather threat to America’s nuclear power plants are inadequate and dangerous. This sorry state is anchored in the industry efforts to maintain safety regulations dating back to the 1980s, and a national security mentality relevant at the end of the Cold War.
This has been successful, in part, due to a campaign to brand nuclear power as a clean, safe source of energy. To their credit, the NRC and industry have demonstrated a commitment to safety where design basis events are concerned. However, EMP and GMD are beyond design basis events. Once these occur, there are no guarantees and few strategies with which to cope.

There has only been a handful of nuclear disasters in history, and only one in the U.S. – TMI. It is, therefore, understandable from an economic standpoint that industry is resistant to change. However, this inertia has given rise to a complacent regulatory climate absent adaptive and progressive analysis. More than 30 years have elapsed since this topic was last openly addressed.

Unfortunately, the assumptions borne of the highly controversial 1982 report continue to misinform decision makers even as recent as 2015. Despite these challenges and an NRC and industry galvanized to maintain the status quo, there are signs of progress. Some push for increased standards and regulations has occurred since Fukushima.

However, these efforts have been met with a tepid response from the nuclear industry. To stave off costly infrastructure updates, the industry responded by holding out the FLEX, a plan that is both impractical and dangerous due to an over-reliance on a functioning national infrastructure. Congress recently found, “The current strategy for recovery leaves the United States ill-prepared to respond effectively to an EMP attack that would potentially result in damage to vast numbers of components nearly simultaneously over an unprecedented geographic scale.”

BOOKS Comments turned off

“ISLAMOPHOBIA” IS HOW ISLAMIC LAW COMES TO AMERICA — ON THE GLAZOV GANG

Posted By on January 19th, 2016

http://jamieglazov.com/2016/01/19/islamophobia-is-how-islamic-law-comes-to-america-on-the-glazov-gang-2/

This special edition of The Glazov Gang was guest-hosted by Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center who writes the blog The Point at Frontpagemag.com.

His guest was Nonie Darwish, the author of The Devil We Don’t Know. The discussion focused on: “Islamophobia” is How Islamic Law Comes to America, unveiling how the accusation of “racism” is installing Sharia on our shores.

Don’t miss it!

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Lost worlds of Joseph Roth by Frederick RaphaelL

Posted By on January 18th, 2016

Joseph Roth has emerged as one of the greatest, certainly the most prescient, of the German writers of the entre-deux-guerres. If Thomas Mann achieved wider renown, it was due in good part to his performance as the aloof man of letters. Writing to Stefan Zweig in 1933, Roth was typically irreverent: “I have never cared for Thomas Mann’s way of walking on water. He isn’t Goethe . . . . [He] has somehow usurped ‘objectivity’. Between you and me, he is perfectly capable of coming to an accommodation with Hitler . . . . He is one of those people who will countenance everything, under the pretext of understanding everything”.

By contrast, The Hotel Years – an anthology of Roth’s shorter journalism, collected and translated by Michael Hofmann – includes a gentle pen portrait, from 1937, of Franz Grillparzer. Composed in Parisian destitution, it demonstrates how Roth came to treasure the irretrievable civilities of the old Europe. Of the Austrian playwright’s single meeting with Goethe, he observed, “It was like a Friday going out to see what a Sunday is like and then going home, satisfied and sad that he was Friday”. In Roth’s case, exile and penury bestowed sorry radiance on the lost world of the shtetl in which the impoverished Ost- Juden had no occasion for alien affectations; unashamed thieves, smugglers, tricksters and whores nurtured no illusions, as Western Europe’s haute Juiverie did, of exemption from malice. Whether their obituarist in Weights and Measures (1937) would ever have been happy actually living among them is another matter.

Roth was the first novelist to mention Adolf Hitler’s name in print, as far back as 1923. The view from the street, if not yet the gutter, allowed him to see it all coming. The Radetsky March (1932) – named after “the Marseillaise of reaction” – is now recognized as a classic elegy for Emperor Franz Josef’s vanished supremacy. During its author’s lifetime, however, a lack of fame was always the spur. Without his prodigious facility for writing feuilletons for the liberal press, Roth would have been unable to make a living from his pen.