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December 2019

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Sweden: Confronting Reality by Judith Bergman

By on December 14th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15248/sweden-confronting-reality

One problem is that the Swedish state itself contributes indirectly to the spread of extremism. The Swedish Security Service (Säpo) has found that a “relatively large” number of organizations with links to violent extremism have been using Sweden’s state and municipal grant systems, which Säpo says could “contribute to radicalization and thus growth in extremist environments in Sweden.”

According to Säpo, individuals from Islamist groups are using public-funded schools, cultural associations and foundations as platforms to spread extremist ideology within Sweden.

“Of course, the segregation, exclusion and long-standing uncontrolled immigration that is now driving serious crime did not suddenly arise. Responsibility for years of ill-conceived policies — and the inability to address the problems — is shared by many…. [I]t is quite clear that gang criminality, shootings and executions are strongly linked to excessive immigration and to bad integration. How can you even pretend anything else?” — Ulf Kristersson, leader of the Moderate Party, Facebook, November 17, 2019

The question now is how the Moderate Party will transform Kristersson’s apology into “concrete political action” that can stop Swedish reality from deteriorating even further.

Back in February and March 2017 BBC News ran a number of articles about Trump’s much vilified remarks about Sweden, including one with the headline, “Trump’s wrong, it’s ‘quiet and safe’ in Malmo.” One article in particular, “All eyes on Malmo but not because of Trump” painted an idyllic picture of the lives of expats in Malmö. It spoke, among others, about a young American woman working in Malmö, Susanna Lewis, in the following way:

“As a woman, she is also used to being prepared and watchful as she walks alone in other places, yet she does not feel afraid in Malmö city centre or its outer suburbs”.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Just politics by James Bowman On the narcissism of small differences. *****

By on December 14th, 2019

https://newcriterion.com/issues/2019/12/just-politics?mod=article_inline

“We have reached a period of political partisanship where people are so willing to suspend reality in order to pursue an agenda that they view real-life events almost entirely through the prism of their own bias. Like football fans watching the video replay of a penalty—one set of people are able to scream that one thing is “clearly” the case, even as the other shouts that it is “blatantly” the opposite. The same footage, the same evidence, through almost identical sets of eyes, is capable of spinning wildly contrasting views. . . . We have reached the stage where manipulation of the facts by spin doctors or government departments is no longer necessary—people take the raw evidence before them and mould it themselves in real time. But what is every bit as chilling is just how effective it is at drowning out reasoned debate on serious subjects.”

In what now seems a distant epoch of pre-history, President Bill Clinton came before a joint session of Congress in 1996 to deliver the State of the Union Address and announced that “the era of big government is over.” Even in 1996, no one thought that the era of big government was actually over, least of all Bill Clinton. But it must have seemed like the right thing to say at the time, in order to show that one was in tune with the popular mood—in fact, leading it rather than following it—by putting into a pithy sentence what people were beginning to think, or thought they were thinking, before they had quite thought it. This happened, you may remember, just after the newly elected Republican Congress, the first in forty years, was forced to knuckle under to Mr. Clinton after shutting down the government in a vain attempt to limit big government–style spending. Thus the President, as it might have seemed, was being magnanimous in victory—making a gesture in the direction of the ostensibly small-government philosophy of his opponents before adding: “But we cannot go back to the time when our citizens were left to fend for themselves.”

Needless to say, the reference to “the time when our citizens were left to fend for themselves” was as empty of real political content as the claim that the era of big government was over. No one was proposing, as no one would have dared propose, to abolish the social safety net. The President was merely juggling partisan clichés, but in an original enough fashion that the media were inclined to regard it as a political masterstroke, part of his campaign of “triangulation” in which progressive desiderata were introduced cautiously or with an alloy of conservatism (or, failing that, conservative rhetoric) in order to make them more palatable to the centrists in both parties. We disgruntled conservatives used to speak of this as “the triumph of style over substance,” but in retrospect the joke was on us. Bill Clinton saw sooner than we did that, in the post–Cold War 1990s, style was substance—or as much substance as most people wanted to bother themselves about.

Politics, in other words, had become a fashion statement rather than a serious program for governing. The real business of government was already in the process of being turned over to judges and what is now being called “the deep state,” leaving politicians free to posture and virtue-signal without consequence. With the departure of seriousness and responsibility from the political culture, what Freud called “the narcissism of small differences” took over, and the rancorousness and hatred which are now the salient features of our political life have been increasing ever since. Way back in the ’90s I tried coining the name—I’m sure I wasn’t the first to think of it—“post-modern politics” to describe this new, style-centered political culture based on moral preening, but it didn’t catch on. Of course, we had no need for the name once all politics became post-modern politics. It was just politics.

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The Real Dangers to Jews Twitter-fueled partisan insanity is preventing society from keeping Jews safe—at exactly the moment it’s most needed Liel Leibovitz

By on December 14th, 2019

https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/295616/the-real-danger-to-jews

“Jews make up about 2% of the American population, yet were the victims of a whopping 57.8% of all religious bias crimes last year, according to the FBI. Rather than vocally and unequivocally demanding that their Jewish constituents be protected, the politicians representing those targeted—from de Blasio to New York Sen. Chuck Schumer—have been largely silent on this issue, while at the same time loudly and vigorously accusing the right of racism.”

The past 24 hours provided a clear and painful picture of the momentous challenges American Jews face these days.

The day began with news that President Trump had issued an executive order designed, the White House said, to fight anti-Semitism. Reporting on the order, The New York Times stressed that it will “effectively interpret Judaism as a race or nationality, not just a religion,” and that it “could be used to stifle free speech and legitimate opposition to Israel’s policies toward Palestinians in the name of fighting anti-Semitism.” Leftist NGOs echoed the same talking point, and a phalanx of pundits took to Twitter to decry the order as anti-Semitic because, allegedly, it somehow paved the road to defining Jews as something less than fully American. From the Hollywood actress who thundered,“You, stupid crook president do not get to decide this so your white nationalist pals get to stick me in a concentration camp,” to the law professor who blasted the order for deeming Jews to be “some nationality other than Americans,” our bien-pensants were whipping everyone into a wild frenzy, portraying the president as an unhinged anti-Semite and a clear and present danger to the Jews.

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California’s Accounting System Cost Taxpayers $1.1 Billion And Still Can’t Produce A State Checkbook Adam Andrzejewski

By on December 14th, 2019

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2019/12/12/californias-accounting-s

California State Controller Betty Yee admits to paying 49 million bills last year. Yet, she won’t produce a single transaction subject to our public records request for line-by-line state spending.

Out of the 50 states, California is the only one that refuses to produce its state checkbook to our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com. Even though it’s home to Silicon Valley, the state government isn’t letting tech drive transparency when it comes to its own records.

It shouldn’t take subpoenas and litigation to force open the books.

Last year, Yee paid 49 million bills for about $320 billion in payments. If you can make the payment, then you can track the payment. The state controller’s office – whose job it is to stop waste, fraud, corruption, and taxpayer abuse – may be in violation of transparency laws.

In 2013, then-California State Controller John Chang rejected our public records request for the state checkbook telling us: stop asking because the records can’t be located. Today, six-years later – Yee is still parroting the same answer.

So, how is the controller even doing her job without access to the records she helped create? We reached out to Yee for comment, and will update the piece if she responds.

She’s charged with tracking “every dollar spent by the state.” Her duties includepaying the bills and all state accounting, bookkeeping, payroll, and auditing– including financial and compliance audits and attestations.

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Richard Jewell – A Review By Marilyn Penn

By on December 14th, 2019

http://politicalmavens.com/index.php/topic/politics/

Blessed by serendipitous synchronicity, Clint Eastwood’s movie, eponymously titled “Richard Jewell,” concerns the FBI mishandling of the Atlanta Olympic Park bombing and opened two days after the release of the Horowitz Report found 17 omissions or incorrect commissions in the Carter/Page application submitted by the FBI to the FISA Court. It is startling to see the same malfeasance brought to public attention in 1996, including a sexual relationship with an officer of the FBI, as well as other unlawful behavior in the bureau’s interrogations and investigations. Beyond that unusual coincidence, the movie is noteworthy for its restraint, particularly considering that its producer and director was Dirty Harry at the beginning of his career.

Compared with too many over-the top violent films (The Irishman, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood), Richard Jewell deals with a 30-something security officer who lives with his mom (an excellent Kathy Bates), and tries his best to be helpful to others and live according to an out of fashion code of behavior. He is out of shape and out of style and lives a lonely life of social ostracism. After he discovers a fully loaded backpack left under a bench at the Olympic stadium, he succeeds in warning the police and negotiating a significant evacuation before the bombs explode, killing two people and injuring at least a hundred others. He is first hailed as a hero, and then considered a suspect according to the profile of a perpetrator who commits a crime in order to become a savior. Richard is played by Paul Walter Hauser in a tour de force of typecasting as well as acting.

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Wanted: a ‘Positive Deviant’ in the Trump Mould Paul Collits

By on December 13th, 2019

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2019/12/wanted-a-positive-deviant-in-the-trump-mould/

“The ultimate political positive deviant, of course, is Donald Trump.  And, wow, has he been under siege.  Basically, he has thrown a live grenade into the cesspit that is American politics.  He and his ghastly Deplorables.  He has pitched American politics a curve ball.”

Some years back a former colleague explained his theory of “positive deviants”. Simply put, a positive deviant is an employee or representative of an organisation who refuses to go along with the party line and who speaks truth to power within the organisation, and through some form of contact with the organisation’s stakeholders, especially its customers, saves the reputation of the organisation.

Here is how he discovered the theory.  He was at the time living in New Zealand, and as a visitor was having trouble arranging health insurance for his family.  He tried repeatedly to get people at health insurers’ call centres to clarify complex systems, explain options and provide basic assistance.  To no avail.  After a time he figured out a solution.  He began to cut off the call centre folks mid-conversation and, using call centre shortcuts, keep trying different people till he found someone who would offer him practical help – solutions even – sympathetically acknowledge his frustrations and, above all, stop simply spouting the company line.  And really, really annoying him.

He concluded that about one in four employees was actually interested in customer service and not merely in getting rid of difficult complainants – “managing them” – and so making life easy for “company policy”.

Anyone who has suffered from CCHC (call centre hatred complex) – and who hasn’t? – will relate to this story. But my friend went further.  He concluded that these oddball helpful employees who bucked standardised behaviour actually saved companies from the wrath of their customers and helped them to survive.  Absent positive deviants, many an organisation would go bust amid a welter of seething malcontents.

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CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB Comments turned off

IT’S A CIVIL WAR….OBAMA’S FISA ABUSE

By on December 13th, 2019

It’s not a coup. It’s a civil war. Phil D’Agostino,

www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/12/its_not_a_coup_its_a_civil_war.html

Lately, it’s been convenient — and self-serving to some — to call what is going on with the Trump administration a coup.  It’s a “soft coup” or a “silent coup” or a wish-it-were-a-coup.

Let’s take a look at what that means.  According to all definitions I can find, a coup is a sudden, often violent overthrow of a government.  Every time I look up the definition of a coup, I get something like this from Merriam-Webster: “a sudden decisive exercise of force in politics.”  But there is nothing sudden about this.

Have you ever thought, “What would a modern civil war look like?”  Tanks rolling down the streets of Washington, D.C.?  Missiles targeting the Congress?  Armed forces storming the White House or Capitol Building?  None of these would accomplish anything.  So what would a modern-day civil war look like?

At least since the 1960s, a faction of people have been looking for a chance to make our government conform to what they think it should be.  This faction has identified itself in many ways, and its members always embrace Marxist ideals with a top-down government run by a few.  A “law-based” government, on the other hand, would have a constitution to protect the rights of the minority from the “tyranny” of the majority.  That is what the United States of America is: a law-based government founded on the belief that those working in government are employees of the people, and not that the people are subservient to them.  And all decisions are to be based on our agreement to form such a government — that is, as spelled out in our Constitution.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/12/the-obamas-administrations-fisa-abuse-is-a-massive-scandal/

The Obama’s Administration’s FISA Abuse Is a Massive Scandal
David Harsanyi

All of it was to keep open a “low threshold” counterintelligence investigation into the opposition party’s political campaign during an election.

Perhaps if Democrats would momentarily shelve their obsession with Donald Trump, they’d comprehend the staggering abuse of power they’re defending these days.

Because much of Wednesday’s Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing with DOJ inspector general Michael Horowitz was jaw-dropping. Horowitz’s testimony, in fact, sounded little like the media depiction of the IG report only the day before. Most major outlets had stressed that the IG had found no bias in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. But failing to uncover explicit instances of bias and exonerating the FBI aren’t the same thing.

Worse, most of the media had buried the lede. An honest headline would have read something like: “Obama’s FBI cooked up evidence to keep rickety investigation into Trump campaign going.”

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President Trump Was Absolutely Right To Ask Ukraine To Investigate The Bidens Francis Menton

By on December 13th, 2019

https://us7.campaign-archive.com/?e=a9fdc67db9&u=9d011a88d8fe324cae8c084c5&i

As of today, it appears that the House of Representatives is moving toward voting Articles of Impeachment against President Trump as early as next week. On Tuesday, the House Judiciary Committee (under the chairmanship of my very own Congressperson Jerrold Nadler) released draft Articles, in preparation for hearings occurring today, and a committee vote as early as tomorrow.

Although the version of the Articles currently in circulation may change somewhat before the voting, all indications are that what we’re now looking at is substantially what they intend to go with. Really?? It looks like most everything they were previously talking about that sounded remotely serious is gone! Bribery? Gone! Extortion? Gone! Quid pro quo? Gone! In place of these things, we now have only the amorphous phrase “abuse of power.” In a federal code containing thousands of crimes, this isn’t even one of them. Isn’t “abuse of power” something that every politician could be accused of, with justification, several times every day?

The “abuse of power” being referred to here consists entirely of dealings with the country of Ukraine occurring during the summer of 2019:

Using the powers of his high office, President Trump solicited the interference of a foreign government, Ukraine, in the 2020 United States Presidential election. He did so through a scheme or course of conduct that included soliciting the Government of Ukraine to publicly announce investigations that would benefit his reelection, harm the election prospects of a political opponent, and influence the 2020 United States Presidential election to his advantage. President Trump also sought to pressure the Government of Ukraine to take these steps by conditioning official United States Government acts of significant value to Ukraine on its public announcement of the investigations. President Trump engaged in this scheme or course of conduct for corrupt purposes in pursuit of personal political benefit.

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BOOKS Comments turned off

Book review: America’s abandonment of Jews during the Holocaust When America entered the war in 1941, ships that took soldiers to Europe returned empty after FDR rejected using them to rescue Jews. By JANET LEVY

By on December 13th, 2019

https://www.jpost.com/
America abandoned European Jews during the Holocaust mainly because of two men: Franklin D. Roosevelt, US president during the Great Depression and World War II, and Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, then America’s foremost Jewish leader. In The Jews Should Keep Quiet: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, and the Holocaust (University of Nebraska Press, 2019), Dr. Rafael Medoff explores the influential actions of these two using new archival materials and interviews.

Medoff, founding director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, examines FDR’s ingrained and long-standing antipathy toward Jews that led to indifference to the fate of Europe’s Jews. The author illustrates how the president manipulated an esteemed rabbinical leader to keep Jewish protests in check and retain Jewish political support. Meanwhile, Rabbi Wise’s high-level political access engendered in him a sense of self-importance and a fear of fomenting antisemitism that led to his willingness to whitewash the president’s true sentiments and policies.

Medoff begins in 1933 when FDR opposed the American Jewish Congress’ boycott of Nazi Germany asserting harm to America’s economy. FDR refused to criticize the Nazis and undermined the boycott, replacing “Made in Germany” with German city names unrecognizable to most Americans. He kept silent even though he knew that books by Jewish writers were burned, Jews were banned from civil service and certain professions and their numbers limited in universities. He rejected the proposed boycott of the 1936 Berlin Olympics as “undue interference in American-German relations.”

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What is that Big U.S. Military for, Anyhow? Shoshana Bryen •

By on December 13th, 2019

https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/473468-what-is-that-big-us-military-for-anyhow

There are, roughly speaking, two ways to use a large, modern military force. The first is to enforce international “rules of the road,” guaranteeing freedom of the seas or punishing gross violations of international law and treaties, or keeping the peace by backing up treaties with capabilities. This includes rescuing Kuwait from invasion and occupation by Saddam’s Iraq. It includes retaliating for Syria’s use of chemical weapons. The second is to try to settle other people’s problems. This could include the Vietnam War, 18 years of war in Afghanistan, or centuries-long animosities engendered by 400 years of Turkish anti-Arab colonialism called the Ottoman Empire.

Very roughly speaking.

The historic wars of Europe engendered no American participation; World Wars I and II did, and in the aftermath, keeping Germany under control as well as preventing the further takeover of central Europe by Russia was the basis for NATO. We have no formal alliance with Taiwan or Israel but we operate under the terms of the Taiwan Relations Act and decades of close security cooperation with Israel.

President Donald Trump appears to believe more in the first construct for the use of force and less in the second.

Despite fears that the U.S. might quit NATO — and pretensions by France and Germany that they could field a European military force to replace it — the fact is that under the Trump administration, U.S. spending on NATO has increased and European spending on NATO also has increased.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg noted that defense spending across European allies and Canada increased in real terms by 4.6 percent in 2019. “This is unprecedented progress and it is making NATO stronger,” he said. Stoltenberg told reporters in Brussels before the G-7 meetings that the organization’s burden-sharing rules also have changed: “We have now agreed to a new formula for sharing those costs. … The U.S. will pay less. Germany will pay more. So now the U.S. and Germany will pay the same, roughly 16 percent of NATO’s budget.”

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