Displaying posts published in

December 2019

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German Parliament: Its Resolution to Ban Hezbollah is Just a Legal Charade by Soeren Kern

By on December 23rd, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15324/german-parliament-hezbollah

Germany, however, has refused to ban Hezbollah’s “political wing,” which continues to raise funds in the country. A German foreign ministry official, Niels Annen, has said that such a ban would be counterproductive because “we focus on dialogue.” His comment has been understood to mean that the German government does not want to burn bridges with Hezbollah’s sponsor, the Islamic Republic of Iran.

“We don’t have a military wing and a political one; we don’t have Hezbollah on one hand and the resistance party on the other…. Every element of Hezbollah, from commanders to members as well as our various capabilities, is in the service of the resistance, and we have nothing but the resistance as a priority.” — Hezbollah’s deputy secretary general, Naim Qassem.

Germany’s Social Democratic Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, however, has refused to ban Hezbollah in its entirety. He recently repeated the German government’s distinction between Hezbollah’s legitimate and illegitimate activities in Germany.

“It remains to be seen to what extent the German federal government will…actually ‘exhaust all the resources of the rule of law’ to stop Hezbollah’s money laundering and terrorist financing in Germany.” — Bild, December 19, 2019.

The German parliament has passed a non-binding resolution that calls on the German government to ban the activities of the Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah — Arabic for “The Party of Allah” — in Germany.

The measure — supported by center-right Christian Democrats and the center-left Social Democrats, the two major parties that make up Germany’s ruling coalition, and also by the classical liberal Free Democrats — has been hailed as “important,” “significant,” and a “crucial step.”

The resolution, however, falls short of a complete ban on Hezbollah and appears aimed at providing the German government with political cover that would allow Germany to claim that it has banned the group even if it has not.

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Turkey: Stop ‘Fantastical Fiction,’ Free Osman Kavala! by Burak Bekdil

By on December 23rd, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15301/turkey-osman-kavala

To no one’s surprise, on December 10, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) called for the immediate release of Kavala, saying there was a lack of reasonable suspicion that he had committed an offense,

According to its official statement, the [EU] court found that Kavala’s detention “pursued an ulterior purpose…namely that of reducing [him] to silence,” ruling that the charges he faced and the detention “were likely to have a dissuasive effect on the work of human-rights defenders.”

Although the indictment does not give any evidence of Kavala’s involvement in any violent protest, it claims Kavala’s phone conversations with ordinary people — academics and NGO people — are evidence of “terrorist activity.”

Even if Kavala is released shortly, as the Constitution dictates he should be, he will have spent nearly 800 days in jail for no crime, and, from the moment he is released, will have to carry on with his legal struggles against a state with no tolerance for dissent.

Businessman-turned-philanthropist Osman Kavala has been promoting arts, culture and history since he started to devote his time to civil society in the early 1990s. His understanding of promoting culture was to promote cultural diversity and pluralism. His resumé says, “he dedicated his life to building a civil and just society.” His Anatolian Cultural Foundation seeks to bridge ethnic divides through art, including with neighboring Armenia with which Turkey has no diplomatic relations.

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“Interest Rates, Debt and Demographics” Sydney M. Williams

By on December 23rd, 2019

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/

Sound investment advice (which I have too often ignored) suggests that one should pay attention to outliers – valuations that are out of the ordinary, either too high or too low, like the extraordinary low level of interest rates today. Good investors (which I am not) find them in stocks, commodities, bonds, real estate, etc., and either purchase or sell the attractive or offending instrument. It strikes me that debt, driven by unusually low interest rates (or, at least, low by post-War measurements) has risen as a percentage of GDP to risky levels. When unfunded pension and health liabilities are included, and when one considers demographics, the picture darkens.

Examples of our unusual situation abound. In the U.S., federal debt as a percent of GDP has exceeded 100% for eight years. By the end of World War II federal debt – understandably – reached 118% of GDP. Subsequently, it declined as a percentage for thirty-five years – during a time that included the Cold War, the construction of the interstate highway system, the birth of the Great Society and the landing of a man on the moon. It reached a nadir in 1981 at 31% of GDP. Since, that ratio has risen.

I would be remiss in not pointing out that Japan and Singapore have government debt as a percentage of their GDP that exceeds ours, along with far worse demographic trends, so perhaps we should not be worried. But I am. Federal debt is $22 trillion. State and local debt are $2 trillion. Unfunded pension and health liabilities are estimated at $46 trillion. (Forbes puts the number at over $200 trillion). Mandatory spending, which includes Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, student assistance, veterans care and supplemental nutritional assistance programs, accounted for 72% of the 2017 budget. Such “transfer payments” are immune from budget cuts. In 1962, the comparable number for transfer spending was 28%. The effect on investments, in education, highways, R&D, etc., has been substantial – from 35% of the 1965 budget to 13% today. Complaints about roads, bridges and tunnels are understandable. Given trends, conditions are likely to worsen, not get better.

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Fact Check: Lack of Assimilation Is Economically Harming Latino Immigrants And Society James D. Agresti

By on December 23rd, 2019

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/12/23/fact-check-lack-of-assimilation-is-economically-harming-latino-immigrants-and-society/

Early in 2019, a firestorm of criticism descended upon veteran journalist Tom Brokaw because he said on NBC’s Meet the Press that Hispanics “should work harder at assimilation” and shouldn’t isolate themselves “in their communities.” NBC condemned his comments as “inaccurate and inappropriate,” media outlets ran articles and editorials calling them racist and factually wrong, and Brokaw apologized.

Contrary to the blowback against Brokaw, scholarly sources show that modern Latino immigrants are not assimilating like previous generations of immigrants. Furthermore, this is having negative economic impacts on them and the nation at large. These facts have nothing to do with race and everything to do with factors that can foster or impede economic prosperity.

Rejecting the Melting Pot

While berating Brokaw for his remarks, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists claimed: “To assert that the U.S. is not the melting pot that the country prides itself on being, is disinformation as the U.S. has always had immigrants and a mixture of races, religious beliefs and languages in its history.”

That statement is demonstrably untrue, as the popular culture and academia are now rife with people who reject the idea of the U.S. as a melting pot. Instead, they insist that the U.S. is and should be a “salad bowl” in which people mix but remain culturally distinct. The editors of the academic serial work American Immigration: An Encyclopedia of Political, Social, and Cultural Change explain that this trend is a substantial departure from the past:

As a nation of immigrants and their descendants, the United States has been described over the centuries as a “melting pot” of cultures. Today, most immigration scholars and activists eschew that term, contending that it implies a loss of native culture and an assimilation process that turns peoples of diverse backgrounds into a single, culturally homogenized populace.

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The Era of ‘Good’ Fascism? Victor Davis Hanson

By on December 23rd, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/12/22/the-era-of-good-fascism/

If and when fascism comes to America, it will not arrive with jackboots, stiff arms, and military uniforms. To modern progressives, laws are fluid, to be enforced when they champion the “good,” to be ignored or subverted when they empower the “bad.”

Consider the recent statements and acts of iconic progressive celebrities.

Jane Fonda is chronically furious. This time she directed her wrath at those who disagree about the urgency of ending the entire fossil fuel industry and ruining the current economy. Her idea is to put climate “deniers” on trial for incorrect speech. So much for the First Amendment. “Now, because of the fossil fuel industry, it’s too late for moderation,” Fonda says. “And given the emergency, it’s those who believe in moderation, in pre-Trump business as usual, who are truly delusional. And those who lie and continue to lie about what they’re doing to the environment should be put on trial.”

Green teenage heartthrob Greta Thunberg has a different solution for those who disagree with her orthodox view on “climate change”: “World leaders are still trying to run away from their responsibilities, but we have to make sure they cannot do that. We will make sure that we put them against the wall, and they will have to do their job to protect our futures.”

If Thunberg is truly worried about past government decisions that have threatened the world, she might study Swedish history and ask why her forefathers sold iron ore to the Nazi war machine—without which it could not have waged the war it did—and often threw in Swedish transport in the bargain.

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Pakistan Sentences Fulbright Scholar to Death for “Blasphemy” Daniel Greenfield

By on December 23rd, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2019/12/pakistan-sentences-fulbright-scholar-death-daniel-greenfield/

“The future must not belong to those who slander the Prophet of Islam.”

That’s what that looks like.

A Pakistani anti-terrorism court on Saturday sentenced a liberal scholar and former university lecturer to death on blasphemy charges.

In Pakistan, anti-terrorism courts terrorize.

In 2013, Junaid Hafeez was accused by students at the university where he taught of making blasphemous Facebook posts. Insulting Islam’s Prophet Mohammad carries a mandatory death penalty in Pakistan, which is about 95% Muslim.

His lawyers say he was framed by students from an extremist Islamist party for his liberal and secular views and this month a U.S. religious freedom commission placed Hafeez on its list of global victims.

“He (Junaid Hafeez) shall be hanged by neck till his death subject to its confirmation by the honorable high court,” a court order stated.

Hafeez, who quit his studies at Pakistan’s top medical college to pursue a passion for art and literature, secured a Fulbright scholarship and attended Jackson State University where he majored in American literature, photography and theater.

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Hanukah: The First Battle against Transnationalism and the Deep State By Rabbi Aryeh Spero

By on December 23rd, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/12/hanukah_the_first_battle_against_transnationalism_and_the_deep_state.html

Many think of Hanukah as a fight for religious freedom. While religious freedom was at stake, it was part of a broader battle in behalf of the concept of national identity. The Maccabees, local Judeans who spearheaded the revolt against the overpowering northern Syrian Greeks and who inspired the grassroots, did so for the overarching cause of retaining Judea’s identity and Jewish character, which were under assault by those trying to denude Judea of its distinctiveness.

The story begins in the waning years of the Greek empire, 150 years after the death of Alexander the Great. The eastern branch of the Greek empire was headquartered in Antioch, Syria and under the Seleucid monarch, Antiochus. He expected all countries under his jurisdiction to surrender their national sovereignty and independence and its citizens begin seeing themselves as citizens of the world, the Hellenic world. 

At first, there were the usual military attacks by the Seleucids against Judea. But that changed. Instead of undertaking costly military campaigns to accomplish this, Antiochus, circa 175 BC, reasoned it would be easier and less conspicuous to bring Judea under heel by simply de-Judaizing it, by forbidding Israel’s core and distinctive religious practices and educating its children in the mores of the hedonistic gymnasium. It worked.

In the beginning, many Judeans were lulled into feeling that the multicultural push would not endanger their own culture and distinctiveness and were actually open to the benefits of global Hellenism. Soon, however, the Seleucid’s moved beyond multiculturalism to demonizing the Judean and Jewish way of life as anachronistic and an impediment to Hellenistic fraternity and progress. Religious observance — that part of the religious milieu that was distinctively Jewish — and religious teachers were outlawed. 

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President Trump Is Impeached. Or Is He? A party-line House vote leaves no principled argument against a party-line acquittal. Alan Dershowitz

By on December 23rd, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/president-trump-is-impeached-or-is-he-11577045305?mod=opinion_lead_pos8

Suddenly, impeachment can wait. Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday she’ll delay transmitting the two House-approved articles to the Senate, in an obvious ploy for partisan advantage. For anti-Trump legal scholars Noah Feldman and Laurence Tribe, that has created a Schrödinger’s Cat scenario. They disagree on whether President Trump has been impeached at all.

Mr. Feldman says no: “If the House does not communicate its impeachment to the Senate, it hasn’t actually impeached the president.” Mr. Tribe says an affirmative vote on an article of impeachment is sufficient to impeach—but he also claims it’s proper to leave it at that. By declining to transmit the articles of impeachment, he argued in an op-ed that Mrs. Pelosi evidently found persuasive, the Democrats would get a win-win. Mr. Trump would carry the stigma of impeachment and be denied the opportunity to erase it via acquittal.

Messrs. Feldman and Tribe are both wrong. Mr. Tribe errs in asserting that the House can deny an impeached official a trial. Mr. Feldman errs in denying that the approval of articles of impeachment is sufficient to constitute an impeachment. The Senate need not wait for the articles to be “transmitted.” The Constitution grants the House the “sole power of impeachment,” and the Senate the “sole power to try all impeachments.” Now that the House’s job is done, it is up to the Senate to schedule a trial and make the rules for it.

My view—which I suspect much of the public shares—is that Mr. Trump was impeached by a partisan vote and deserves to be acquitted by a partisan vote. The representatives who impeached him along party lines after devising partisan rules of inquiry have no principled argument against a party-line acquittal.

Mr. Dershowitz is a professor emeritus at Harvard Law School and author of “Guilt by Accusation: The Challenge of Proving Innocence in the Age of #MeToo.”

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