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Ruth King

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President Trump Was Right about Sweden The country is experiencing an immigration crisis, and pretending otherwise just won’t do. By Annika Hernroth-Rothstein

By on February 28th, 2017

In September, I met with Ami Horowitz for an interview about Sweden and immigration, for a documentary he was making on the topic. Horowitz had heard of the work I had done on the issue, such as my reports in the Washington Examiner on the recent mass sexual attacks at music festivals in Sweden that the media and police covered up, as well as my essays on Sweden’s growing problem of jihadi tourism.

Horowitz and I met up in a sleepy Swedish town and spoke for almost half an hour, of which four minutes ended up in the final cut of his documentary, Stockholm Syndrome. The film also includes an interview with two Swedish policemen and the director’s own running commentary. The documentary received some attention at the time it was released, but not much more than the occasional link appearing in my newsfeed. But — as we now know — that has since changed.

President Trump mentioned Sweden in a speech in Florida on February 18. I first learned about it from my father, who called me early the next morning to ask whether I was perhaps involved in an international incident. As soon as I went on Twitter and saw the outrage, I started to connect the dots. After sifting through the many angry tweets, I could conclude that not only had the international media severely misconstrued what Donald Trump had said about Sweden but also that the newly elected president had put his finger on exactly what ails Sweden as well as the entire European continent.

For the past week, I have been under tremendous pressure to rescind my statements and to swear off not only Amy Horowitz but also the entire premise that Sweden has problems relating to its immigration policies. Trump’s statement, however confusing, highlighted the most taboo topic in Swedish society and the well-oiled apparatus that does its utmost to keep it under wraps. And now that the world has its collective eye fixed on our country, the Swedish establishment is fighting hard to convey the party line.

Part of the reason for the outrage is that Sweden has a long-standing, complicated, love-hate relationship with the United States, defined by an equal mix of envy and distain — the U.S. being both that place we are better than and the country we secretly long to be. Sweden’s self-image is that of a country with solid liberal values, institutionalized equality, and social justice. Having an American president question that is a direct affront to the one thing we had going for us: our carefully cultivated sense of moral and intellectual superiority. The solution to this conundrum is to belittle and mock President Trump, making him seem ignorant and racist, poking fun at his statements through a barrage of colorful memes. But what all of these methods fail to address is the underlying issue and the truth at the heart of the president’s words.

As Swedish-Iranian economist Tino Sanandaji observed at NRO last week, we see a remarkable lack of statistics showing a correlation between immigration and crime in Sweden — not because there is no such correlation, but because there are no statistics. There are no statistics because the government has consistently chosen not to release them or bring the issue to light. This secrecy has sparked the rise of a populist right in Sweden, and it has also failed the most vulnerable — the immigrants subjected to extremism and crime in urban neighborhoods where the pundits and politicians never go — sacrificing them on the altar of political correctness.

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The Metaphysics of Trump Paradox: How does a supposedly bad man appoint good people eager to advance a conservative agenda that supposedly more moral Republicans failed to realize? By Victor Davis Hanson

By on February 28th, 2017

We variously read that Trump should be impeached, removed, neutralized — or worse. But until he is, are his appointments, executive orders, and impending legislative agenda equally abhorrent?

General acclamation followed the Trump appointments of retired Generals H. R. McMaster as national-security adviser, James Mattis as defense secretary, and John Kelly to head Homeland Security. The brief celebration of Trump’s selections was almost as loud as the otherwise daily denunciations of Trump himself. Trump’s equally inspired decisions, such as the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court and Jeff Sessions as attorney general, presented the same ironies.

Most of these and other fine appointments came amid a near historic pushback against Trump, mostly over what he has said rather than what he’s done. But again, do the appointments create a dilemma for his existential critics who have gone beyond the traditional media audit of a public official and instead descended into calls for his removal — or worse? Indeed, removal chic is now widespread, as even conservatives ponder impeachment, invoking the 25th Amendment for mental unfitness, while the more radical (here and abroad and both Right and Left) either abstractly or concretely ponder a coup or some other road to his demise.

How do his opponents square such excellent appointments with Trump himself? Even bad people can occasionally do good?

Are his Cabinet secretaries patriotically (as I believe) serving their president, even if prepared at times to nudge him away from what they might feel are occasional unwise detours? Appointees of the caliber of a Mattis, McMaster, or Kelly do not go to work for any president with the likelihood of becoming undercover actors — undercutting his authority, or posing to the press that they are the moral superior to their boss, or leaking information to massage favorable accounts of their superior savvy or morality at the president’s expense. No, they serve the president because they want their country to prosper and think that it can if their commander in chief (whose agendas for the most part they share) is successful.

Or do critics argue that such fine men and women are “selling out” by putting careers before principled resistance to a president who will supposedly usher in unprecedented disasters? So far, even the most vehement Trump censors have not faulted these fine appointees for supposedly being soiled by association with Trump, whom they have otherwise accused, in varying degrees, of partaking of fascism, Stalinism, and Hitlerism.

Again, the point is, How do critics square the circle of damning Trump as singularly unfit while simultaneously praising his inspired appointees, who, if they were to adopt a similar mindset, would never set foot in a Trump White House? How does someone so unqualified still manage to listen to advice or follow his own instincts to appoint so many willing, gifted public servants — at a time, we are told, when nearly the entire diplomatic and security establishment in Washington refuses to work for such a reprobate?

The same disconnect holds true for Trump’s executive orders. Except for the rocky rollout of the temporary ban on immigration — since rectified and reformulated — his executive orders seem inspired and likely to restore the rule of law, curb endless and burdensome new regulations, address revolving-door ethics, enhance the economy, halt federal bloat, promote energy production, and create jobs. Without the Trump victory, the Paul Ryan agenda — radical tax reform and deregulation — that has been comatose for a decade would never have become viable. So, is the position of the conservative rejectionists something like the following: “I detest Trump because even his positive agendas are spoiled by his sponsorship?”

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Remembering “Operation Wedding,” the Event That Kick-Started the Movement to Free Soviet Jewry Dore Feith

By on February 28th, 2017

In June 1970, fourteen Soviet Jews tried to steal an airplane to fly themselves to freedom. A new documentary marks their story—and Natan Sharansky reminisces.

In June 1970, fourteen Soviet Jews who had been refused permission to emigrate tried to steal an airplane to fly themselves to freedom in the West. Led by Edouard Kuznetsov and Mark Dymshits, the group had spent months plotting their move.

The hijackers, claiming to be traveling together to a wedding—hence “Operation Wedding,” the name of their scheme—had bought all the seats on the small aircraft to ensure there would be no one but themselves on board. They intended to subdue the pilots non-lethally and leave them on the side of the runway, having provided sleeping bags to keep them warm until rescued. Dymshits, a former Red Army pilot, would fly the plane.

When they arrived at the small airstrip outside of Leningrad, KGB agents were waiting to arrest them.

The sensational news spread throughout the Soviet Union, reported first by Voice of America and then by Pravda. Some Soviet Jews reacted with dread; others felt proud and emboldened. At the time, Jews in the Soviet Union numbered approximately 2.5 million. Religious practice was restricted, the teaching of Hebrew was banned, and Zionism was branded a subversive ideology. Small groups of Jews were meeting in secret to preserve what remained of their religious and national identity. Although many had begun to apply for exit visas—at risk of losing their jobs or even their friends—most were denied. The Soviet government strictly curtailed emigration in general, and by 1970 had barred Jews altogether from leaving for Israel.

The trials of the would-be hijackers were closed, although activists did what they could to follow the proceedings. Dymshits and Kuznetsov, the ringleaders, were sentenced to death. But the international outcry—protest marches were held in Paris, London, and New York, and other forms of pressure were brought to bear as well—the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev commuted their sentences to fifteen years apiece.

Yesterday,Operation Wedding, a documentary about the hijacking directed by Anat Zalmanson-Kuznetsov (the daughter of Kuznetsov and Sylva Zalmanson, another participant in the plot) received its New York premiere at Columbia University. In anticipation of the screening, which was arranged by my student organization, I recently interviewed Natan Sharansky, who at the time of the hijacking had been a twenty-two-year-old mathematics student in Moscow. I was curious about his recollections of this incident, which would launch his own career as the world’s most famous Soviet Jewish dissident and later “prisoner of Zion.” We spoke in Jerusalem, where since 2009 he has served as chairman of the Jewish Agency.

The thwarted hijacking, Sharansky tells me, influenced him more profoundly than any other event apart from the Six-Day War of 1967. He had been unaware of the underground Zionist movement that developed in Riga and Leningrad in the 1960s, so the deeds of Kuznetsov and his co-conspirators were his first indication that some Jews were actually fighting for any opportunity to leave for Israel and willing to take extreme risks in the attempt. His reaction, he says, was typical of countless other Soviet Jews dreaming of emigration and afraid of saying so. In a society where anyone could be a KGB informant, no reasonable person could be expected to take a chance of speaking out.

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How Flower Songs Help Fight The Grief Of War By Matti Friedman

By on February 28th, 2017

Matti Friedman, a Canadian author and journalist, was raised in Toronto and now lives and writes in Jerusalem.

Have you seen the red, shouting for miles around?
Once there was a field of blood here, and now a field of poppies. …
Have you seen the white? Child, it’s a field of weeping
The tears have turned to stones, the stones have cried flowers

That fragment comes from a Hebrew song that became famous in 1971. It’s part of the secular canon of works known here in Israel as “memorial songs,” sung at military funerals and played on the radio on the country’s Remembrance Day.

I learned the song “There Are Flowers” not long after I arrived at a kibbutz in northern Israel from Toronto at age 17. The kibbutz kids discovered I could play guitar, and I was pressed into service to accompany a group of them in a rendition of “There Are Flowers” at a memorial ceremony.

I didn’t think much about it at the time, but later I became a soldier myself, and then a writer, and I’ve spent the past few years writing a book about war and pondering the way we talk about it. People engaged in conflict need to develop a language of grief.

People engaged in conflict need to develop a language of grief.

Religion has traditionally offered one, but in Israel’s early years people weren’t looking for the old mourning rituals that Judaism had to offer. Neither were they particularly interested in warlike language — “warriors,” “glory,” and so forth.

They turned instead to the natural world.

In “There Are Flowers,” the narrator admonishes a child not to pluck the flowers, whose lives are so brief to begin with. In Hebrew, “plucked flowers” is a term sometimes used for fallen soldiers, cut down before their time.

The song was written by the Israeli poet Natan Yonatan. Two years after it became popular, his own son, Lior, died in the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

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Australia Arrests Man Over Islamic State Missile Project Police allege he offered to help develop long-range guided missile, detection system for incoming bombs By Rob Taylor

By on February 28th, 2017

SYDNEY—Australia has arrested a man it says offered to help Islamic State develop a long-range guided missile and a detection system for incoming bombs.

“Police will allege that the man arrested has sought to advise ISIL on how to develop high-tech weapons capability,” Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said Tuesday. He said the man was arrested in the rural town of Young, northwest of the capital Canberra, after an 18-month investigation, and that the operation wasn’t related to any planned attack in Australia.

The man—an Australian-born citizen, according to Andrew Colvin, commissioner of the Australian Federal Police—was identified in local press reports as Haisem Zahab. He appeared in court later Tuesday where he was charged with two foreign-incursion offenses that carry a maximum penalty of life in prison.

He wasn’t available for comment and it is unclear whether he has a lawyer.

Australia has stepped up security in recent years, giving police and intelligence agencies more power against homegrown militants. It has also sent troops and warplanes to combat Islamic State as part of the U.S.-led coalition, as well as supporting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The country’s five-tier terrorism-threat system has been set at “probable,” the third-highest level, since September 2014. That December, a gunman, later identified as Iranian immigrant Man Haron Monisj, took hostages in a Sydney cafe and held them for 16 hours before being killed by police. The cafe’s manager and a female customer also died.

Since then there have been four attacks and 12 others have been disrupted, most recently in December—an Islamic State-inspired plot to set off bombs in central Melbourne. More than 50 people have been arrested on terrorism offenses. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Don’t Underestimate North Korea’s Nuclear Arsenal The country’s weapons are likely more advanced and dangerous than many experts think. By R. James Woolsey and Peter Vincent Pry

By on February 28th, 2017

North Korea successfully tested a solid-fueled missile earlier this month, the latest in a series of technological leaps. Instant experts allege Pyongyang is not yet a serious nuclear threat to the U.S. Some reporters say North Korea does not have “miniaturized” nuclear warheads for missile delivery and that its weapons are primitive—even after five nuclear tests. These are dangerous delusions.

Google the history of nuclear testing and weapons development, and North Korea’s tests suddenly seem a lot more serious. This has all been done by the U.S., the Soviet Union, China, Britain, France, Israel, South Africa, India and Pakistan. History suggests North Korea already has nuclear-missile warheads and a sophisticated array of nuclear weapons.

Testing is not necessary to develop nuclear weapons. The first atomic bomb, which used enriched uranium, was never tested: Hiroshima was the test. The second one, which used plutonium, was tested once and worked perfectly at Trinity and on Nagasaki.

France entered the nuclear club in 1960 with a sophisticated high-yield fission weapon that worked perfectly on its first test.

According to the Wisconsin Project and defector Mordechai Vanunu, Israel developed a sophisticated array of nuclear weapons from the 1960s to the ’80s—all without testing. Its arsenal ranges from high-yield thermonuclear missile warheads to low-yield tactical weapons, including neutron warheads.
South Africa also developed nuclear weapons and designed a missile warhead without testing. India and Pakistan designed atomic bombs, thermonuclear warheads and neutron warheads 20 years before testing.

North Korea built its first atomic weapons by 1994, more than a decade before testing. Yet the yield of North Korean nuclear tests isn’t known. Estimating yields from seismic signals is inexact. Press reporting on estimates for North Korea’s January 2016 test range from 4 to 50 kilotons. The estimated yield for North Korea’s fifth nuclear test, in September 2016, is between 20 and 30 kilotons.

Less known: North Korea could conduct decoupled tests to hide their true yield. Decoupling entails detonating a device in a cavity to dampen the signal by as much as 10-fold. A 100 kiloton test could look like 10 kilotons.

And low-yield tests may indicate more-advanced nuclear technology. High-yield testing is usually done for political reasons and to study nuclear-weapon effects. Low-yield testing is scarier because it is usually done to verify design principles for a more advanced generation of nuclear weapons.

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The ‘Shaming’ of Betsy DeVos The education secretary should use what her critics fear most: the bully pulpit. By William McGurn

By on February 28th, 2017

Here’s a suggestion for America’s new secretary of education: Forget about federal education policy.

Not that policy isn’t important. But if Betsy DeVos wants to make her time count, she’d do best to use what her critics fear most: her bully pulpit. Because if Mrs. DeVos does nothing else in her time but lay bare the corruption of a system failing children who need a decent education most—and shame all those standing in the way of reforming it—she will go down as an education secretary of consequence.

“The temptation for an education secretary is to make a few earnest speeches but never really challenge the forces responsible for failure,” says Jeanne Allen, founder and CEO of the Center for Education Reform.

“But the moms and dads whose children are stuck in schools where they aren’t learning need better choices now—and a secretary of education who speaks up for them and takes on the teachers unions and the politicians on their own turf.”

Excellent advice, not least because education is (rightly) a state and local issue and Secretary DeVos has neither the authority nor the wherewithal to transform our public schools from Washington. What she does have is the means to force the moral case out into the open.

New York City would be a good place to start. In Bill de Blasio, the city boasts, if that is the right word, a mayor who fancies himself the nation’s progressive-in-chief, along with a schools chancellor who has all the credentials Mrs. DeVos is accused of lacking, including experience teaching in public schools.

Unfortunately, these credentials haven’t done much to help students. Only 36% of New York City district-school pupils from grades 3 to 8 passed math, and only 38% English. For black students the numbers drop to 20% proficient in math and 27% in English. As a general rule, the longer New York City kids stay in traditional public schools, the worse they do.

It can’t be for lack of resources. Figures from the city’s independent budget office list New York as spending $23,516 per pupil this school year, among the most in the U.S. And instead of closing bad schools, Mr. de Blasio has opted for the teachers-union solution: More spending!

The result? More than two years and nearly half a billion dollars after his “Renewal” program for chronically failing schools was announced, there’s little to show for it.

How might Mrs. DeVos respond? How about a trip to the South Bronx, where she could visit, say, MS 301 Paul L. Dunbar, St. Athanasius and the Success Academy Bronx 1 grade and middle schools. These are, respectively, a traditional public middle-school for grades 6-8, a K-8 Catholic school, and a pair of Success charters serving K-7.

Imagine how Mrs. DeVos might change the conversation by speaking publicly about the differences among these schools? Or by meeting with neighborhood kids languishing on the 44,000-long wait list for a seat at a city charter? Or by asking the non-Catholic parents at St. Athanasius, whose children are there because of a scholarship program, to talk about the difference this school is making in their children’s lives? CONTINUE AT SITE

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Anti-Trump Women’s Movement Teams Up With Islamist Terrorist

By on February 28th, 2017

The liberal left has teamed up with extremist and violent Islamists in its next salvo against newly-inaugurated U.S. President Donald Trump.

The liberal left has teamed up with extremist and violent Islamists in its next salvo against newly-inaugurated U.S. President Donald Trump.

On March 8, International Women’s Day, a follow-up event to the January 21 Women’s March on Washington, will be staged.

One of the co-authors of the “militant” manifesto behind the nationwide event is convicted Palestinian terrorist Rasmea Yousef Odeh.

Odeh was convicted in Israel in 1970 for being involved in two fatal bombings. Odeh spent 10 years in jail before she was released in a prisoner exchange in 1980.

She moved to the U.S. by omitting her terror conviction on her immigration papers and served as the associate director of the Arab American Action Network in Chicago and later as an ObamaCare navigator. In 2014, she was convicted in the U.S. for concealing her past and thus illegally obtaining U.S. citizenship.

After claiming she forgot about her conviction and imprisonment in Israel due to post traumatic stress disorder, she was awarded a new trial which is currently pending.

The women’s event manifesto, printed as an open letter in The Guardian, calls for “striking, marching, blocking roads, bridges, and squares, abstaining from domestic, care and sex work” and “boycotting” pro-Trump businesses.

All women are requested to wear red in solidarity for a day of “anti-capitalist feminism.”

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“Sabotage – A Conspiracy of Dunces” Sydney M. Williams

By on February 28th, 2017

Insane,” “Incompetent,” “Liar,” “Unfocused,” “Unhinged,” “Petulant,” “Disgraceful,” “Sexist,” “Misogynist,” “Xenophobic,” even “Hitlerian” according to one CNN reporter. The names Mr. Trump has been called and the charges against him are as relentless as they are incoherent. They culminate in the claim he is impeachable, according to Representative Keith Ellison. The New Republic suggested he is suffering from neurosyphilis, thus mentally unqualified for the office. Some, like the intellect-challenged Sally Kohn, a lawyer and community organizer, have called for a special election following the impeachments of both Trump and Pence. These are not protests. These are attempts to sabotage a duly elected President.

It is fine to disagree with Mr. Trump and the policies he was elected to pursue. It is okay to demonstrate and to protest. Civil disobedience is part of our history and culture. But to claim that the man who wants to shrink the federal government, who wants to emasculate the power of unaccountable federal agencies, who wants to ensure that Congress enacts laws, the Executive executes them and that the judiciary upholds them is somehow putting the nation on the path to authoritarianism is laughable. Over the past several decades, our federal government has become the Sheriff of Nottingham. Trump was seen by the millions who voted for him as Robin Hood, a man who would return power to the people. This is not to dismiss or minimize risks to democracies. They exist. But Mr. Trump wants to make government smaller and more accountable and the people more responsible – the opposite of authoritarian rule.

Nevertheless, we shouldn’t be surprised by the reaction to the President. Over the past two years, Mr. Trump alienated the establishment: Republicans in the primaries, Democrats during the general election, and throughout – the media, academia, public sector union heads, big banks and big business CEOs, federal bureaucrats, the intelligence community and supranational organizations. He upset illegal Mexican immigrants. He angered Muslims who refuse to admit the presence of Islamic extremists in their midst. He is enemy to elitists and to all who prefer the comfort of political correctness to the reality of truth.

What he attracted were the millions of Americans who believe in the dignity of work, but find opportunities limited. He appealed to those who see government as master and themselves as servant. He drew in those who believe in a Christian-Judeo culture, but whose moral sense has been belittled by condescending hypocrites of relativism. He bonded with the 63 million voters who felt left behind by a government focused on self-perpetuation, a government that had lost its sense of service.

The Left, looking to subvert Mr. Trump’s Presidency, may consider themselves followers of Nelson Mandela, who famously said about sabotage: “I did not plan it in a spirit of recklessness. I planned it as a result of a calm and sober assessment of the political situation that had risen after many years of tyranny, exploitation and oppression of my people by the whites.”

But that does not describe the United States and it is not what the Left is doing. We are not an oppressive nation. We are a nation that has combined free-market fundamentals with democratic principles. We honor freedom, property rights and the rule of law. Despite deeply-held differences, we all know that the United States stands for those values and lauds that success. It is not the ends that separate us; it is the means to achieve those ends. Many of us disagreed with Mr. Obama from the start, but none of us tried to vitiate his administration. We didn’t write or speak of assassination, military coups or forced resignation. No members of the intelligence community withheld intelligence because they deemed him unfit. No federal employees, in agencies like the EPA, resisted his administration because they didn’t approve his policies.

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Revanchism and Crisis Management By Herbert London

By on February 28th, 2017

Herbert London is President of the London Center for Policy Research http://www.londoncenter.org/

Revanchism, from the French revanche or “revenge”, is the will to reverse territorial losses following war or social movement. The dismantling of the Soviet Union, to cite one example, has led to a Putinesque policy of irredentism, the reclamation of territory once within the Soviet orbit. In a strange way revanchism has become the twenty- first century foreign policy perspective.

Palestinians believe the land captured in the 1967 war against Israel is “occupied” territory, hence territory belonging to the Palestinians. Chinese government officials agree Siberia is a province of China- a territory the Chinese once controlled. Persians believe the Tigris Euphrates valleys are within their empire, notwithstanding the states with a present claim on this territory.

Revanchism accompanies claims around the globe as steadfast statism retreats before disruptive politics. As a term, revanchism originated in the 1870’s in the aftermath of the Franco Prussian War among nationalists who wanted to avenge the French defeat and reclaim the lost territories of Alsace-Loraine. The movement draws its strength from patriotic and retributionist thought. It is inextricably linked to irredentism- the conception that a part of the cultural and ethnic nation remains unredeemed outside the borders of the nation state.

Russian strategy relies on military intimidation and non-military means such as the manipulation of perspectives. To offset those strategies the West requires a united front and the means to counter revanchist efforts through a variety of penalties.

The questions that always remain are what is fair and what is legitimate. Is it legitimate for Mexico to claim rights to the Southwestern states? Is it fair for Russia to say the sale of Alaska was inappropriate? When do the claims of revanchism end? Does history have limits or are the boundaries determined by the relative strength and power of the claimant? Recently the Hague International Court ruled the Philippine claim of the Spratly islands was legitimate. The Chinese government, however, chose to ignore the judgement.

History is replete with examples where false claims were made backed by powerful armies. Japan invaded Manchuria prior to World War II arguing it was once a Japanese province and should be united with Japan again. Absurd on its face, this claim was recognized until Japan was ultimately defeated.

China, based on its ancient history, contends that it is the Middle Kingdom and all nearby Asian states are peripheral and subject to the expanding concentric circle of Chinese influence.

Revanchism affects the law and is also hostage to extra-legal concerns. It is a plea for justice and a false justification for imperial aims. Unfortunately, global stability depends on the recommendations of competing interests. Where law is ignored, force prevails. If, for example, China decides to ignore decisions at the Hague, can one force China’s hand? Is it productive to do so over a few rocky islands in the middle of the China Sea? But if action isn’t taken, does that become a precedent in future controversies?

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