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September 2018

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David Singer: Trump Squeezes UNRWA, Checkmates PLO and Incentivises Jordan

By on September 14th, 2018

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2018/09/david-singer-trump-squeezes-unrwa.html
President Trump has created a veritable diplomatic tsunami affecting the political fortunes of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), Hamas and Jordan – with his decision to cease all future donations to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) – currently US$360million per annum and comprising about 30 percent of UNRWA’s budget.

The numbers of UNRWA-registered Palestinian Arab refugees in Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza have been increasing in leaps and bounds annually because they include all the descendants of those Palestinian Arabs caught up in the 1948 and 1967 Arab-Israel wars.

Currently:

2,175,000 live in Jordan – 370,000 of whom reside in 10 camps
810,000 live in the West Bank – 200,000 of whom reside in 19 camps
1,300,000 live in Gaza – 580,000 of whom reside in 8 camps

UNRWA only provides services to the camps. UNRWA does not administer or police the camps, as this is the responsibility of the host authorities.

Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza comprise 83 per cent of the territory of former Palestine.

For UNRWA to count as “refugees” people who are now living in Arab-controlled parts of the same country where their forebears once resided – is really an insult to one’s intelligence.

For UNRWA to tolerate a system of apartheid and segregation that allows those “refugees” to be divided into camp dwellers and non-camp dwellers makes a mockery of the humanitarian principles espoused by the United Nations and the United Nations Human Rights Council.

Struggling under an accumulated deficit of US$271 million before Trump’s hammer blow – UNRWA had already shut down or slated for closure many programs and laid off large numbers of employees – mainly Palestinian Arabs.

The further cuts UNRWA will now be forced to make following America’s defunding will be critical to the PLO, Hamas and Jordan – as “refugees” coming under their respective jurisdictions affected by substantial cuts to their well-established entitlements see others not similarly subjected.

UNRWA funding decisions cannot possibly please all these “refugees” – and those receiving UNRWA aid in Lebanon and Syria.

The PLO, Hamas and Jordan will be lobbying furiously for UNRWA funding cuts to not be made to “refugees” living under their governance. Serious political consequences could ensue if they fail.
Jordan – enjoying a long-standing peace treaty with Israel – currently houses 50 percent of the total of UNRWA registered Palestinian Arab “refugees” in the West Bank, Gaza and Jordan.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Satirist Who Mocked the Kremlin—and Russian Character Vladimir Voinovich was exiled by the Soviets and later hailed as his nation’s greatest living writer. By David Satter

By on September 14th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-satirist-who-mocked-the-kremlinand-russian-character-1536962945

‘I have been instructed to inform you,” an official told Vladimir Voinovich in 1980, “that the patience of the Soviet authorities and the people has come to an end.” The official, a district boss, loomed over Voinovich, who wrote that he imagined the next step would be execution on the spot. Instead he was stripped of citizenship and forced into exile near Munich for “defaming the motherland.”

Voinovich, who died July 27 at 85, returned to the Soviet Union in 1990. Eventually he was hailed as Russia’s greatest living writer. But he never lost the qualities that wore out the Soviet regime’s patience. His singular gift was to see things as they are. In his most famous work, “The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin, ” he depicted the Soviet people, personified by a bumbling Red Army private, not as heroic builders of communism, but as innocents buffeted by forces they didn’t understand.

At an army lecture, the first question is: “Why is our army called a ‘people’s army’?” The answer: “Because it serves the people.” Next question: “Who do the armies of the capitalist countries serve?” “A clique of capitalists.”

Chonkin raises his hand and asks if it is true that Stalin had two wives. He is immediately assigned to guard a plane that has crashed near a collective farm where, disillusioned with politics, he spends his time talking to a horse. “If you say the wrong thing to a person you can get yourself in hot water,” he observes, “but no matter what you say to a horse, he’ll accept it.”

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P.C.-CULTURE, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Paul Collits: Sanity Banished, Standards Cast Down

By on September 14th, 2018

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2018/09/sanity-banished-standards-cast/

Western societies no longer exhibit true virtue, having traded the genuine article for the posturing which draws applause on Twitter. They no longer yearn for excellence. They do not seek truth. What we have witnessed is a wholesale collapse in the decency of our institutions.

That great culture warrior and conservative, Douglas Murray, recently observed, following a visit to Australia:

I cannot think of a time when more people have lost their minds — opponents and erstwhile allies alike. I am a minimalist in my expectations for this era. I think our main job is not to be driven mad. Or at least not to behave in ways that will make us feel shame in the future.

Well might we feel broad and deep shame for our era. Conservatives, many of us, have all but given up on the party of Menzies, as it lurches from crisis to crisis, unseats elected leaders at will, sidelines just about everybody to the right of Clive Hamilton, and engages in systemic fixing, branch-stacking, the career-destruction of enemies and lining the pockets of mates.

The once great Labor Party, the party of Curtin and Chifley, has upended its old, honest, defensible, socially conservative policies and embraced holus-bolus the core ideas of the post-1968 generation of post-modernist ratbaggery.

Those once trusted organisations, the banks, have their criminal acts and corporate idiocies paraded before us on a daily basis.

Sporting codes embrace cloying political correctness, especially as it relates to race and sex, and enforce it with sanctions.

Corporations bully employees who dare to challenge the party line of big (social liberal) brother.

Fake news abounds. The very term, newly coined to describe old, old practices, is itself used as a weapon. The media, once able to differentiate news from opinion, no longer does or can. The ABC is no longer the network of James Dibble, having adopted activism and partisan advocacy as its virtuous mission.

Institutions of higher learning stop (certain) people from speaking on their campuses, lest someone be offended. The universities accept money from all comers — save those who simply wish to teach literature, philosophy and history as they have been taught for a millennium. Police forces now charge (monetarily) the innocent while failing to charge (legally) the patently guilty.

Scientists, those supposed exemplars of Enlightenment thinking, have in large measure opted for groupthink and venal grant-troughing even when this means the abandonment of scientific method.

That foundational institution, the source of all others, the family, now cannot even be defined without bastardising its core characteristics. The family is now, to borrow from Paul Keating, two gays and a cocker spaniel. Or whatever we want it to be.

Institutions across the whole of Western society no longer have standards. They no longer exhibit true virtue, having traded that for the posturing which draws applause on Twitter. They no longer yearn for excellence. They do not seek truth. What we have witnessed is, in effect, a wholesale collapse in the decency of our institutions.

Melanie Phillips, in one of her excellent books, describes a world “upside down”. Murray talks of the “shame” of our era. The traditionalist Catholic rag The Remnant – no fan of the current pope, of course – featured a recent, “Vatican going bonkers”.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Far left triumphant in New York primary By Rick Moran

By on September 14th, 2018

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/09/far_left_triumphant_in_new_york_primary.html

The socialist insurgency against establishment Democrats in New York emerged triumphant as no fewer than six far-left candidates defeated establishment Democrats in races for the state Senate.

New York Times:

Years of anger at a group of Democratic state senators who had collaborated with Republicans boiled over on Thursday, as primary voters ousted nearly all of them in favor of challengers who had called them traitors and sham progressives.

The losses were not only a resounding upset for the members of the Independent Democratic Conference, who outspent their challengers several times over, but also a sign that the progressive fervor sweeping national politics had hobbled New York’s once-mighty Democratic machine, at least on a local level.

The most high-profile casualty was Senator Jeffrey D. Klein of the Bronx, the former head of the I.D.C. In that role, he was for years one of Albany’s most powerful players, sharing leadership of the chamber with his counterparts in the Republican conference and participating in the state’s secretive budget negotiations.

But on Thursday, he was defeated by Alessandra Biaggi, a lawyer and former aide to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, after a campaign in which Ms. Biaggi cornered Mr. Klein into spending more than $2 million, an astonishing sum for a state legislative race. (Cynthia Nixon, in her unsuccessful bid against Mr. Cuomo, spent less.)

Two things: First, the victories of socialists rid the Democrats of the last vestige of bipartisanship in the state Senate. This will make Albany an even more unruly place than it already is. Secondly, and most important, the march of socialism in the Democratic Party appears to be unstoppable and will make 2020 an Armageddon of sorts between right and left.

Which vision will the 50% of eligible voters who bother to go to the polls choose? The party of free stuff? Or the party of personal responsibility and the protection of liberty?

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Why Black Voters Are Turning to Trump By Karin McQuillan

By on September 14th, 2018

https://amgreatness.com/2018/09/14/why-black

The growing positive attitude of black voters towards President Trump is the wildcard in the coming midterm elections. It is real and it is expanding. Polls are showing anywhere from 20 percent to 36 percent of blacks approve of President Trump. The Democrats even may have lost 11 percent of black women.

The cracks in the black Democrat bloc voting are one of the most consequential results of Barack Obama’s presidency and the phenomenal effectiveness of President Trump’s pro-business policies. This could be a historic turning point.

Measurable Progress
Trump’s economic policies have improved the lives of black Americans, just as he promised they would during the election. Unlike Obama’s media hype, Trump’s progress is as real and as solid as his buildings. Black unemployment continues to fall. Good manufacturing jobs are coming back. Paychecks are rising, too.

The roots of this political watershed in the black community are more complex than job figures and will last beyond Trump’s tenure. I have been listening for hours to ordinary black Americans on the #Walkaway movement’s YouTube channel. This is a movement of former Democrats explaining why they are leaving their party. While each face, voice, and story is unique and fascinating, there are some striking recurring themes.

Ironically, the change seems to have started with President Obama’s election.

President Obama raised the hopes of black Americans to the highest they’ve been since Martin Luther King. The entire country expected he would devote himself to getting blacks better schools, more jobs, higher wages, and safer neighborhoods. Instead, Obama ignored those bread-and-butter needs. His signature initiative was to send Eric Holder to stoke up publicity and fear in the wake of the Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown shootings.

In the short term, hyping fake white racism and police brutality worked to stanch the bleeding in black turnout in the 2012 election. In the long term, however, Obama’s reliance on racial fear and grievance increased black suffering. He broke people’s hearts and blew up many black voters’ loyalty to the Democrats.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

On Election Day, the Swedes Disappoint By Bruce Bawer

By on September 14th, 2018

https://pjmedia.com/trending/on-election-day-the-swedes-disappoint/

For much of this summer, and right up until September 9 — Election Day in Sweden — media around the world predicted that voters in that country would switch, in massive numbers, to the Sweden Democrats, the much-maligned and, until recently, very marginal anti-Islam party. “Swedish politics,” reported Reuters on September 5, “are set to lurch to the right in Sunday’s election.” On September 8, a Daily Mail columnist explained why “the most liberal country in Europe” was “lurching to the Far Right.”

I wanted to believe it, but it sounded too good to be true. In the end, alas, it was. The Sweden Democrats won 18% of the vote. Yes, it marked yet another increase in support for a party that’s grown steadily since the turn of the century (2002: 1.4%; 2006: 2.9%; 2010: 5.7%; 2014: 12.9%). Yes, the long — dominant Social Democrats — who are the main culprits behind Sweden’s disastrously high immigration levels and its systematic prioritization of immigrant welfare over the well-being of native Swedes — had their worst results since 1911. And yes, the Sweden Democrats, long surrounded by a cordon sanitaire, may end up being able to throw some weight around when the new government is formed.

But in the final analysis, it was a disappointment. Time is of the essence. Sweden is on the brink. Its people don’t have decades to wait before changing course. In the view of many, this was their last chance.

Hopes for a Swedish electoral revolution may have been inflated, in large part, because of the encouraging results of last year’s elections in Austria and the March 4 vote in Italy, which put into power a coalition government that pledged to control illegal immigration — and that has since turned away ships packed with migrants. (The other day, when chided by an UN official for this practice, Interior Minister Matteo Salvini suggested that the UN “look for racism elsewhere” and “investigate its member States who ignore basic rights like freedom and equality between men and women.”)

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Will MDs Be Forced to Perform Mastectomies on Children with Gender Dysphoria? By Wesley J. Smith

By on September 14th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/doctors-forced-to-perform-mastectomies-on-children-with-gender-dysphoria/

Good grief. When I read Jane Robbins’ piece in The Federalist reporting that doctors were actually performing mastectomies on girls as young as 13 who identify as boys, I couldn’t believe my eyes. But sure enough. Not only is it happening, but a medical study published in JAMA Pediatrics recommends that children not be precluded from such radical body-altering surgery based simply on their youth:

Chest dysphoria was high among presurgical transmasculine youth, and surgical intervention positively affected both minors and young adults. Given these findings, professional guidelines and clinical practice should consider patients for chest surgery based on individual need rather than chronologic age.

Note also that doctors suppress normal puberty in children diagnosed with gender dysphoria.

This is unethical human experimentation as far as I am concerned because we don’t know the long-term physical, psychological, or emotional consequences of such interventions. And remember, some children with the condition cease to experience trans-identity as they grow older. (I hope I put that correctly.) If that happens, what then?

But Wesley, it’s a study! Sorry. In our ideological times, that doesn’t mean as much as it once did. After all, a peer-reviewed study on gender dysphoria was apologized for by Brown University because it reached an ideologically disfavored conclusion.

(In this regard, Robbins’ deconstruction of the JAMA Pediatrics study is a real eye-opener. Please read the whole thing.)

I bring this up because of the potential impact such “studies” could have on the issue of “medical conscience.” Many bioethicists, the medical intelligentsia, some Democratic politicians, as well as media pundits, wish to force doctors and other healthcare professionals to perform morally contentious procedures desired by patients–even if it violates their religious or moral beliefs. This is all part of “patient-centered care,” don’t you know.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Dianne Feinstein’s Rank Illiberalism By Charles C. W. Cooke

By on September 14th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/dianne-feinstein-brett-kavanaugh-rank-illiberalism/

Perhaps that trendy phrase about democracy dying in darkness should be Senator Feinstein’s campaign slogan?

What Senator Feinstein is currently doing to Brett Kavanaugh is evil. Yes, it is evil. It is antediluvian. It is dangerous. It is illiberal. It sits well, well outside of the American tradition, harking back to a time in which the accused were simply carted off — or shunned by polite society — ten minutes after someone prominent offered up a vague claim about them. In America, we require that our accusers make themselves known, that their accusations be offered in detail and in public, and that the accused be apprised of everything that has been leveled against them — and we require this not just within formal legal environments, but in general. Within the American tradition, these requirements are considered a prerequisite to fairness — both inside and outside the courtroom. As has become fashionable lately within her party and her state, Senator Feinstein is stamping all over those traditions, and doing so for political advantage.

Worse still, Senator Feinstein is engaged a brazen attempt to have it both ways: She wants the consequences of an accusation without any of the attendant process. Or, put more bluntly, Senator Feinstein wants to be imbued with the power to point her finger at other people and to mark them as tainted, as unacceptable, as excommunicated. That will not stand — today, tomorrow, ever.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

NYT Called Out for Misleading Nikki Haley Story By Mairead McArdle

By on September 14th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/new-york-times-misleading-nikki-haley-story-called-out/

Journalists and lawmakers called out the New York Times Friday after the newspaper published a story that implied Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley had lavish spending habits, citing $52,701 curtains installed in her Manhattan residence.

The State Department bought the expensive decor, “customized and mechanized curtains for the picture windows in Nikki R. Haley’s official residence,” at the same time the department was suffering from “deep budget cuts and had frozen hiring,” the Times story said.

A reader might have stopped there, but down in the fourth paragraph the Times added a crucial tidbit.

“A spokesman for Ms. Haley said plans to buy the curtains were made in 2016, during the Obama administration. Ms. Haley had no say in the purchase, he said.”

A wide array of journalists, lawmakers, and others criticized the story, calling it a political hit job, but not before some, including Democratic representative Ted Lieu, cited it and rebuked Haley.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Manafort’s Guilty Plea By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on September 14th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/paul-manaforts-guilty-plea/

There was nothing to be gained for him or Robert Mueller in a second trial.

Paul Manafort’s guilty plea in the District of Columbia makes perfect sense. We’ve been speculating about its likelihood since Manafort was convicted three weeks ago on eight felony counts of bank and tax fraud in the Eastern District of Virginia. There was nothing to be gained for Manafort or Special Counsel Robert Mueller in a second trial.

Naturally, the media are spun up because the plea agreement, which will cap the 69-year-old Manafort’s prison time at ten years, requires Manafort’s cooperation. Anti-Trumpers have visions of the walls closing in on the president. I would counter with what I said after the Virginia convictions:

At this point, it does not appear that Mueller has a collusion case against Trump associates. His indictments involving Russian hacking and troll farms do not suggest complicity by the Trump campaign. I also find it hard to believe Mueller sees Manafort as the key to making a case on Trump when Mueller has had [Richard] Gates — Manafort’s partner — as a cooperator for six months. You have to figure Gates knows whatever Manafort knows about collusion. Yet, since Gates began cooperating with the special counsel, Mueller has filed the charges against Russians that do not implicate Trump, and has transferred those cases to other Justice Department components.

I elaborated that, when it comes to Manafort, Mueller’s focus is not President Trump. It is Russia, “specifically, Manafort’s longtime connections to Kremlin-connected operatives.” This seems consistent with what Manafort’s camp is telling the press. Politico quotes a source close to Trump’s former campaign chairman: “The cooperation agreement does not involve the Trump campaign. . . .There was no collusion with Russia.”

The guilty plea serves Mueller’s purposes. He already had Manafort looking at a potential 80 years of prison exposure from the first case. He did not need another trial and additional jail time to ratchet up pressure. So prosecutors dropped the money-laundering charges as well as allegations that Manafort made false statements and failed to register as a foreign agent of a Kremlin-connected Ukranian party; but Mueller still got Manafort to admit to the underlying conduct in those charges by having the defendant plead guilty to the special counsel’s favorite device, the amorphous, elastic charge of “conspiracy against the United States.” In addition, Manafort pled guilty to obstructing justice — the witness-tampering allegation based on which he has been detained without bail.

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