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The Eagle and the Dragon: Destined for Rivalry:By:Srdja Trifkovic

https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/the-eagle-and-the-dragon-destined-for-rivalry/

A new round in the U.S.-China trade dispute has started in earnest. Last Sunday (May 5) President Donald Trump tweeted that he would raise the current 10 percent tariff on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports to 25 percent. The President doubled down on his trade war threats with China early today (May 10), just hours after last Sunday’s decision went into effect. In addition he warned that he’d continue raising tariffs on Chinese imports if there was no agreement: the Chinese “should not renegotiate deals with the U.S. at the last minute.”

Only last week, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin sounded optimistic about the latest round of bilateral negotiations, with Mnuchin telling Fox Business that the deal was “close to done.” The Chinese then suddenly revised some of the key provisions of the 150-page draft agreement. Specifically they tried to soften the language on the theft of intellectual property, financial services, forced technology transfers, and currency manipulation. Lighthizer and Mnuchin were taken aback at the extent of the changes in the draft and on Monday told reporters that Chinese backtracking had prompted Trump’s tariff order.

The current talks in Washington between China’s trade delegation and U.S. officials nevertheless will continue. Trump’s team has a strong hand, while the Chinese may have overplayed theirs. The U.S. economy grew by an annualized 3.2 percent in the first quarter of 2019, easily beating market expectations and following a 2.2 percent expansion in the previous three-month period. By contrast, on a quarter-on-quarter basis, the Chinese economy grew 1.4 percent in the first quarter, compared to a 1.5 percent expansion in the previous period. It was the weakest quarterly growth rate since the first quarter of 2016. New U.S. tariffs could further slow China’s growth rate and jeopardize President Xi Jinping ambitious “Made in China 2025” program of economic, technical and scientific development. Right now China needs an agreement far more badly than the U.S.

A Don Corleone Offer to China on Trade :Charles Lipson

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/05/10/a_don_corleone_o

You don’t have to like tariffs to like President Trump’s strategy of imposing harsh ones on China. Those he imposed overnight are punishing, not only to China but to American consumers. The longer they last, the more they will cost. Yet serious trade sanctions are the only hope of getting Beijing to roll back its abusive economic practices and open its markets to U.S. exporters and investors.

China won’t act unless it feels real pain in its export sector, which is a powerful economic driver. And pain is what Trump means to inflict unless China provides much greater market access.Half measures and paper promises won’t do. The U.S. wants a big deal, and it wants teeth in it to prevent cheating. To get it, Trump is willing to threaten a trade war. We don’t know if it will work.

We do know that Trump’s threats are credible. He began saying how much he loved tariffs long before he ran for office. The irony is that his protectionist stance could pave the way for freer trade, first with China and then with the European Union.

UK Disabled Students’ Group Endorses BDS By Marilyn Penn

http://politicalmavens.com/
There are many adjectives that have been used to amplify anti-semitism — racist, bigoted, ignorant, evil – but never has a situation so perfectly demanded the word “ironic.” The UK Disabled Students Campaign which affiliates with the UK National Union of Students issued the following resolution at their annual conference: “We are proudly antiracist, anti-colonial, anti-Zionist and thus support the Palestinian struggle for their liberation.” Ironically, Israel is at the forefront of technological development to assist disabled and severely handicapped people throughout the world. Had the students bothered to google prosthetic devices or medical technology developed by Israel, they might have thought twice before espousing something that if successful, would end up shooting themselves in the proverbial foot with their knee-jerk intersectionalism.

The keyboard that allowed paralyzed UK physicist/cosmologist Stephen Hawking to type with nothing more than the movement of his eyes was developed by Israelis and fine-tuned at the Technion Institute in Israel. The computerized exoskeleton that allows paralyzed people to stand upright and walk – the only one that successfully achieved this miracle – was developed by Israelis. The mini-camera that can be swallowed for assistance with diagnosing disabling gastro-intestinal diseases, prosthetic limbs, devices for seeing, hearing, speaking and healing after strokes , all are part of Israel’s innovative contributions to the fields of medicine and physical therapy.

Germany: Citizenship for Polygamous Migrants? by Soeren Kern

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14191/germany-polygamy-migrants

Critics say that the bill, as it currently stands, would not only create a legal backdoor for polygamous migrants to become German citizens, but would effectively legalize the practice for Muslim immigrants. The changes would, consequently, enshrine into German law two parallel legal systems, one based on German Civil Law and another based on Islamic Sharia law.

In May 2013, RTL, one of Germany’s leading media companies, aired a documentary about how Muslims in Germany use polygamy to commit welfare fraud. Muslim men residing in Germany routinely bring two, three or four women from across the Muslim world to Germany, and then marry them in the presence of a Muslim cleric. Once in Germany, the women request social welfare benefits, including the cost of a separate home for themselves and for their children, on the claim of being a “single parent with children.”

“The acquisition of German citizenship is more than just a formality, but also expresses the recognition of a system of values. Polygamy is a form of marriage that disregards the rights of women and is incompatible with this order of values. Therefore, there is a need for legislative action here.” — Secretary General of the Free Democratic Party, Linda Teuteberg.

“If people who are arriving here are married to several women according to foreign laws, we currently have to recognize these marriages. This is an unacceptable contradiction. We cannot just accept polygamy because another legal system allows this. We do not want to accept harems in Germany.” — Bavarian Justice Minister Winfried Bausback.

The German government has withdrawn proposed legislation that would have banned immigrants in polygamous marriages from obtaining German citizenship. The proposed ban had been included in draft changes to Germany’s naturalization law, but was quietly removed from the final text, apparently in the interests of political correctness and multiculturalism.

Although German law clearly prohibits polygamy for German nationals, some have argued that the law is unclear as to whether the law applies to foreign nationals living in Germany. The interior ministers of Germany’s 16 states had unanimously called on the German government to clarify the issue by enshrining into law a blanket ban on German citizenship for polygamous migrants.

Islamic Jew-Hatred: Dishonest Takiya From Qanta Ahmed and Mohamed Z. Jasser, Honest Mea Culpa From Ayaan Hirsi Ali Andrew Bostom

https://www.andrewbostom.org/2019/05/islamic-jew-hatred-dishonest-takiya-from-qanta-ahmed-and-mohamed-z-jasser-honest-mea-culpa-from-ayaan-hirsi-ali/

The unique, global pandemic of Muslim Jew-hatred will only begin to ebb, if at all, with honest reform of Islam’s vast, ugly corpus of canonical Jew-hatred—from the Koran, and the traditions—as currently still promulgated, in all its virulence, by Islamdom’s most prestigious religious teaching institutions.

Unfortunately, Fox News’ go to so-called “reformist” Muslims, Qanta Ahmed and Mohamed Z. Jasser, completely deny this facts-on-the ground reality, while monotonously spewing apologetics that whitewash its major cause: Islam’s viscerally Jew-hating theology. In the wake of the Philadelphia Islamic Center video imbroglio—whose Islamic teaching roots I analyzed extensively—here are two recent examples of the dishonest misrepresentations Ahmed and

Jasser repeatedly put forth, unchallenged, to Fox News’ enormous viewing audiences:

[Qanta Ahmed, May 6, 2019]: “It is absolutely anathema to Islam…This is completely not what Islam teaches. Islam sees Christians and Jews as legitimate believers who are party to paradise, who have a true message from God, and they are our brethren. We cannot be Muslim unless we believe in the Bible and the Torah.”

[Mohamed Z. Jasser, May 7, 2019]: “The ideology—What they wanna do is say well the militant part is what’s the problem. No. The non-violent ‘Islamism’, the ‘supremacism of ‘Islamism’…”

A Looming Crisis in the Mideast by Ahmed Charai

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14193/looming-crisis-mideast

After raining down some 600 rockets that killed four Israelis this past week, the Netanyahu government responded with overwhelming force, deploying jet fighters to carry out multiple air strikes, killing 23 Gaza residents including a pregnant woman, according to Palestinian Authority officials. (The pregnant women and her child, however, are now confirmed as having been killed by a Palestinian rocket that feel short.)

And, so, the cycle of violence makes another cruel revolution. What makes the events of the past week different from earlier rockets-and-retaliation episodes? The reaction of Arab intellectuals and other thought leaders in Muslim world.

Consider the tweet of Dr. Turki Al-Hamad, a well-known Saudi author and thinker. He tweeted: “It’s a repeating loop: rockets [are fired] from Gaza into Israel, Israel bombs [Gaza], someone or other mediates, the fighting stops – and the common Palestinian folks pay the price. This is ‘resistance,’ my friend. Iran and Turkey are in trouble, and the Palestinians are paying the price.”

Note his use of scare quotes around resistance and his willingness to blame Iran and Turkey, two Muslim-majority nations, instead of the Jewish state. This marks a real rhetorical change.

And many influential Arab voices echoed the thoughts of Dr. Al-Hamad.

The Middle East Anti-Peace Movement by Khaled Abu Toameh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14189/anti-peace-jordan

[The Jordanian mayor] went on to say that he believes in the “liberation of Palestine, from the [Mediterranean] Sea to the [Jordan] River” – meaning that he supports the elimination of Israel.

The campaign against the Jordanian mayor is the direct result of anti-Israel incitement in Jordan and most of the Arab and Islamic states. While some of the leaders of these countries may appear to be relatively moderate in their views towards Israel, their people continue to reject any form of normalization with the “Zionist enemy.”

For decades, Arab and Muslim leaders have been radicalizing their people on a daily basis against Israel. They have delegitimized Israel in the eyes of their people to a point where they can no longer be seen talking to or making peace with Israelis.

One is left wondering how any Arab leader would accept any peace plan with Israel when a mayor is being widely condemned and shamed for being caught on camera in the company of Israelis.

In order to achieve peace with Israel, Arab and Muslim leaders need to start preparing their people for peace, and not inciting them against Israel.

Ibrahim al-Karaki, the mayor of the Jordanian city of Al-Karak, 87 miles to south of Amman, with a view to the Dead Sea, is under attack for hosting Israeli (Jewish) tourists during the Jewish Passover holiday. His critics have accused him of promoting normalization with the “Israeli enemy” and are demanding his resignation.

Although Jordan has a peace treaty with Israel, many Jordanians remain opposed to any form of normalization with Israelis. The same applies to Egypt, the second Arab country that has a peace treaty with Israel and where the “anti-normalization” camp remains one of the strongest in the Arab world.

CLAREMONT REVIEW OF BOOKS: HUNGARY & THE FUTURE OF EUROPE

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/05/crb-hungary-and-the-future-of-europe.php

No English-language newspaper reported on it at the time, nor has any cited it since, but the speech Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán made before an annual picnic for his party’s intellectual leaders in the late summer of 2015 is probably the most important by a Western statesman this century. As Orbán spoke in the village of Kötcse, by Lake Balaton, hundreds of thousands of migrants from across the Muslim world, most of them young men, were marching northwestwards out of Asia Minor, across the Balkan countries and into the heart of Europe.

Already, mobs of migrants had broken Hungarian police lines, trampled cropland, occupied town squares, shut down highways, stormed trains, and massed in front of Budapest’s Keleti train station. German chancellor Angela Merkel had invited those fleeing the Syrian civil war to seek refuge in Europe. They had been joined en route, in at least equal number, by migrants from Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. For Hungarians, this was playing with fire. They are taught in school to think of their Magyar ancestors as having ridden off the Asian steppes to put much of Europe to the torch (Attila is a popular boys’ name), and they themselves suffered centuries of subjugation under the Ottomans, who marched north on the same roads the Syrian refugees used in the internet age. But no one was supposed to bring up the past. Merkel and her defenders had raised the subject of human rights, which until then had been sufficient to stifle misgivings. In Kötcse, Orbán informed Merkel and the world that it no longer was.

Today’s Churchill – and Today’s Chamberlain Like his Hitler-era counterpart, Jacob Rees-Mogg has no grasp of the dire threat facing his nation. Bruce Bawer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273685/todays-churchill-%E2%80%93-and-todays-chamberlain-bruce-bawer

In the South Yorkshire town of Rotherham (pop. ca. 100,000), so-called Islamic “grooming gangs” were responsible for the repeated rape of about 1400 non-Muslim girls, mostly from the working classes, from the late 1980s on. Although local politicians, child-protection officials, police, and journalists were aware of the problem, they kept silent about it for decades, partly out of cowardice, partly out of political expediency, partly out of a misguided fear of inciting “Islamophobia,” and partly out of a classist disregard for the victims and their families. As a result, the perpetrators did not begin to be identified, arrested, and prosecuted until earlier in this decade.

There is nothing unique about Rotherham, of course: it just happens to be the place where the dam burst first. The list of British towns where similar gang activity has been uncovered is continues to grow longer, and the number of perpetrators and victims is increasing apace.

Meanwhile, on July 7, 2005, Muslim suicide bombers killed 52 people and wounded about 700 in London. On May 22, 2013, two Muslims slaughtered a British soldier, Lee Rigby, in Woolwich. On March 22, 2017, on Westminster Bridge, a Muslim behind the wheel of a car mowed down about four dozen pedestrians, four of whom were killed. On May 22, 2017, a Muslim suicide bomber took 22 lives at Manchester Arena. On June 3 of the same year, three Muslims with a van killed eight people on and near London bridge.

In addition, every so often during the past few years, some British newspaper has dared to publish a news story like the one that appeared in the Daily Mail on Saturday: according to a secret government report, more than 48 Islamic madrasas in Britain, all of them run by the Darul Uloom (“House of Knowledge”) network, are staffed by followers of the Deobandi movement, which produced the Taliban. The students, who are preparing to be imams, are thus “being taught that music and dancing comes from the devil and that women do not have the right to refuse sex to their husbands.”

New One-Child Documentary Highlights The Evil Of China’s Communist Party Ben Weingarten

https://thefederalist.com/2019/05/08/new-one-child-documentary-reveals-the-true-evil-of-chinas-communist-party/

The filmmakers show us totalitarianism in its rawest form, in its effort to control the most sacred of all bonds—that of the family.

Students of history right up to present-day Venezuela know that economic central planning inevitably results in poverty and misery. A harrowing new documentary on China’s one-child policy shows that this rule holds true for familial central planning as well—but in the case of parents and their children, the devastation extends far beyond the material to the moral and spiritual realm. “One Child Nation,” a Sundance-winning film coming to select theaters this summer, asks us to stare this man-caused disaster in the face before the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) whitewashes it away.

The film is the work of two Chinese filmmakers, Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang, who were born in the 1980s near the dawn of the policy. “One Child Nation” is a story of life and loss, brainwashing and corruption, and man’s capacity to engage in unimaginable cruelty at the point of a government gun. It is a story in which human traffickers represent some of the only protagonists, saving the lives of babies otherwise left for dead in marketplaces and on roadsides, lest their parents face the wrath of the authorities.

The putative rationale for the policy, according to news accounts featured in the documentary, is the belief among the ruling CCP that China could not sustain rapid population growth, or people would starve to death. With some exceptions for sparsely populated areas, the CCP threatened families having more than one child with expropriation, property destruction and, where necessary, forced sterilization, abortions, and even the outright murder of newborns.