Courageous Iranian professor deliberately avoids stepping on US/Israel flags Defying Iranian convention, Sadegh Zibakalam, 68, a professor at University of Tehran, enters a university building, painstakingly avoiding stomping on American and Israeli flags. SEE VIDEO
The British foreign secretary will not attend an “emergency meeting” of the EU to discuss Trump victory.
I really wish someone in the U.S. would just stand up and tell liberals and all the snowflakes who are weeping over Trump’s victory to get a life and move on.
That’s what British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson told European leaders as the EU prepares for an “emergency meeting” to discuss the Trump win.
CNN:
British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson told European leaders Friday to stop whining about the US election results following a slew of anxious statements in response to Donald Trump’s shocking victory.
“I would respectfully say to my beloved European friends and colleagues that it’s time that we snapped out of the general doom and gloom about the result of this election, and collective ‘whinge-o-rama’ that seems to be going on in some places,” Johnson said at a press conference in Belgrade, Serbia, using British slang for complaining.
The comments from the colorful British politician — who was widely tipped to become prime minister after successfully spearheading the campaign to leave the European Union — may have surprised some since he had earlier been outspoken about his disdain for the President-elect.
Johnson once said he was “genuinely worried that (Trump) could become president.”
And after Trump claimed areas of London were dangerous due to radicalized Muslims, Johnson said: “The only reason I wouldn’t visit some parts of New York is the real risk of meeting Donald Trump.”
But he appears to have found a silver lining in Trump’s win, saying the election was a “great opportunity for the UK” following Britain’s seismic vote in June to leave the EU.
Johnson’s optimism contrasts with the lukewarm response from many EU politicians to Trump — a candidate who lobbed insults at Europe and European leaders during his campaign, and was heavily criticized in turn.
United States defense policy toward Taiwan must change. Now there is a rare opportunity to make that happen with the election of Donald Trump. But everyone knows he lacks experience in foreign affairs, although he is a man with great instincts. If he can prevail over the established litany, there is a chance that Taiwan can stay independent. But if he follows the “party line” from the State Department and their supporting chorus in parts of the Pentagon, Taiwan is a goner. It is only a question of time.
Taiwan is an island that lives next to a behemoth in the form of China. It is a democracy and, with its new government with a very strong domestic mandate, intent on maintaining its independence and democratic system. For China, democracy is the enemy as they have just demonstrated again in Hong Kong where they blocked two elected officials from taking office. Democracy threatens the Communist party dictatorship, and China is yearning for it. That is what happened before at Tiananmen, where democratic dissent was ruthlessly suppressed. And across China that is happening every day, and China’s government knows it. For them, the big thumb in their eye is Taiwan. They would take any opportunity to knock it off, and China has been building up forces to make it hard for the United States to come to Taiwan’s defense. When China’s forces reach a tipping point, and when they think America might back off, they will strike.
The question is not whether but when. America should be following a defense policy that pushes the “when” back to “whether” and puts a price on the “whether” decision that would make it hard for China’s leaders to act, if they were unsure of the outcome.
Unfortunately, America’s support of Taiwan has played directly into China’s hands and put Taiwan at considerable risk.
Consider for example that Taiwan has been allowed to have only half an air force and half a navy.
What is meant by “half”?
MELBOURNE, Australia—Some of the hundreds of refugees being held in Australia-backed Pacific island camps are to be resettled in the U.S. under a one-time deal between the countries.
The U.S. government has agreed to accept refugees being held in Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said Sunday. Mr. Turnbull didn’t disclose how many were likely to resettled by the U.S. or on what terms, but he stressed the arrangement wouldn’t be repeated or be extended to asylum seekers not already in the camps.
The conservative government has maintained a tough line on asylum seekers who have sought to cross the dangerous waters between Asia and Australia but has moved to empty the offshore immigration detention centers that critics have called Australia’s “Guantanamo Bay.” Negotiations in recent months with various countries to resettle the refugees became more urgent in April when Papua New Guinea’s highest court ordered the closure of Manus, ruling that hundreds of asylum seekers were being held there illegally on Australia’s behalf.
Mr. Turnbull said it had fallen to his government to “stop the boats,” close onshore Australian detention centers and remove children from detention. The deal with the U.S. to handle refugees being held offshore adds to earlier arrangements with Papua New Guinea and Cambodia to accept asylum seekers from the camps.
“Our priority is the resettlement of women, children and families. This will be an orderly process [and] it will not be rushed,” Mr. Turnbull said of the U.S. deal.
The process with the U.S. is due to begin in the coming days and will be administered with the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR. U.S. authorities will conduct their own assessment of refugees and decide which people would be resettled in the U.S., and refugees would need to satisfy standards for admissions, including health and security checks, the Australian government said. CONTINUE AT SITE
“America has just liberated itself from political correctness. The American people expressed their desire to remain a free and democratic people. Now it is time for Europe. We can and will do the same!” — Geert Wilders, Dutch MP, head of the Party for Freedom (PVV), and now on trial in the Netherlands for free speech.
“2016 is, by the looks of it, going to be the year of two great political revolutions. I thought Brexit was big but boy this looks like it is going to be even bigger.” — Nigel Farage, MEP and leader of the UK Independence Party.
“The political class is reviled across much of the West, the polling industry is bankrupt and the press just hasn’t woken up to what’s going on in the world.” — Nigel Farage.
“In a democracy, when the people feel ignored and despised, they will find a way to be heard. This vote is the consequence of a revolt of the middle class against a ruling elite that wants to impose what they should think.” — Laurent Wauquiez, leader of the French opposition party The Republicans.
Donald Trump’s electoral victory has come as a shock to Europe’s political and media establishment, which fears that the political sea change underway in the United States will energize populist parties in Europe.
Anti-establishment politicians, many of whom are polling well in a number of upcoming European elections, are hoping Trump’s rise will inspire European voters to turn out to vote for them in record numbers.
Commenting on Trump’s victory, Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders, wrote: “America has just liberated itself from political correctness. The American people expressed their desire to remain a free and democratic people. Now it is time for Europe. We can and will do the same!”
More than a dozen elections will be held in Europe during the next twelve months, beginning with a re-run of the Austrian presidential election scheduled for December 4. Polls show that Norbert Hofer, of the anti-immigration Austrian Freedom Party, is on track to win that race.
Also on December 4, Italians will vote in a referendum on reforming the constitution. Observers say Trump’s victory will make it more difficult for Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, one the few world leaders publicly to endorse Hillary Clinton, to prevail. They say Renzi’s open support for Clinton will hurt Italy’s relations with the United States. Renzi has said he will resign if he loses the referendum, which calls for curbing the role of the Senate. Most opinion polls show the “no” camp ahead. Renzi says the move will simplify decision-making, but opponents say it will reduce checks and balances.
President Obama is ignoring Iran’s latest violations, and the UN and IAEA reports as well.
In fact, the administration, and State Department spokesman Mark Toner, are defending Iran on this issue, and appear willing to give critical concessions to Iran in the next round of talks in Baghdad this week.
In other words, Iranian leaders would be capable of more freely continuing their nuclear ambition without probing from the IAEA or the international community.
Iran has not yet allowed the IAEA “probes of various high-profile Iranian sites. The International Atomic Energy Agency chief Yukiya Amano is investigating whether Tehran has secretly worked on developing nuclear weapons.
Although the nuclear agreement heavily favors Iran and the main UN Security Council sanctions against Iran have already been lifted, Tehran continues to cheat and violate the terms of this weak nuclear pact.
Turning a blind eye to Iran’s violations will only further empower and embolden Tehran to pursue its nuclear and hegemonic ambitions; ignore UN resolutions and international laws; scuttle US foreign policy objectives, and damage security interests.
One of the terms of the JCPOA accord, which never had any legal legitimacy and which Iran never signed, is that Iran should restrict the amount of specific nuclear materials it possesses during the nuclear deal. According to a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), however, Iran has violated the deal by holding more heavy water, used to produce nuclear weapons, than it is supposed to have.
This is not the first time Iran has violated the terms of the flimsy nuclear agreement with no consequences. In February 2016, Iran exceeded its threshold for heavy water as well. In a previous article, other violations and reports of Iran’s recent cheating and breaches of the nuclear agreement are laid out.
Between 2005 to 2014, Germany welcomed more than 6,000,000 people.
Two essential questions about integration must be put on the table: 1) What do we ask of newcomers? And 2) What do we do to those who do not accept our conditions? In Europe, these two questions of integration were never asked of anyone.
In the new migrant order, the host population is invited to make room for the newcomer and bear the burden not of what is an “integration,” but the acceptance of a coerced coexistence.
“No privileges are granted to the Europeans or to their heritage. All cultures have the same citizenship. There is no recognition of a substantial European culture that it might be useful to preserve.” — Michèle Tribalat, sociologist and demographer.
“We need people that we welcome to love France.” — French Archbishop Pontier, Le Monde, October 2016.
When “good feelings” did not work, however, the authorities have often criminalized and prosecuted anti-immigration critics. The Dutch politician Geert Wilders is currently on trial for trying to defend his country from Moroccan immigrants whose skyrocketing crime wave has been transforming the Netherlands.
Everyone now knows — even German Chancellor Angela Merkel — that she committed a political mistake in opening the doors of her country to more than a million migrants from the the Middle East, Africa and Asia. It was, politically, a triple mistake:
Merkel may have thought that humanitarian motives (the war in Syria and Iraq, the refugee problem) could help Germany openly pursue a migration policy that was initially launched and conducted in the shadows.
A new report by the International Atomic Energy Agency revealed that Iran is in violation of last summer’s nuclear deal. According to the report, the regime in Tehran has again exceeded the deal’s threshold for heavy water, marking the second such violation since the implementation of the agreement in January. The Obama administration, however, has not called Iran’s possession of excess nuclear-related material a “formal violation” of the deal, and has praised Iran for “acknowledging” it exceeded that threshold.
A State Department spokesman twice praised the Iranians on Wednesday for making “no attempt to hide” their excess heavy water, a material used in the production of weapons-grade plutonium. “Iran made no attempt to hide it, and they’re taking immediate steps to address it,” spokesman Mark Toner told reporters.
When asked, Toner would not call the incident a “formal violation” of the nuclear deal.
“They certainly exceeded, again, their allowable amount of heavy water,” Toner said. “Whether that constitutes, again, a formal violation of [the nuclear deal] writ large, I’m not certain about that.”
Iran is expected to export five metric tons of heavy water in coming days, though it is unknown to whom. In this case, the country was roughly one-tenth of a metric ton over the 130 metric ton limit.
An Energy Department official told THE WEEKLY STANDARD they did not “expect the U.S. government to directly purchase any Iranian heavy water in the near future,” but would not rule out future purchases.
Israel In The Trump Era What can the Jewish State expect from a Trump administration? Caroline Glick
What can we expect from President-elect Donald Trump’s administration?
The positions that Trump struck during the presidential campaign were sometimes inconsistent and even contradictory. So it is impossible to forecast precisely what he will do in office. But not everything is shrouded in mystery. Indeed, some important characteristics of his administration are already apparent.
First of all, President Barack Obama’s legacy will die the moment he leaves the White House on January 20. Republicans may not agree on much. But Trump and his party do agree that Obama’s policies must be abandoned and replaced. And they will work together to roll back all of Obama’s actions as president.
On the domestic policy front this means first and foremost that Obamacare will be repealed and replaced with health industry reforms that open the medical insurance market to competition.
With the support of the Republican-controlled Senate, Trump will end Obama’s push to reshape the US Supreme Court in the image of the activist, indeed, authoritarian Israeli Supreme Court. During his four-year term, Trump may appoint as many as four out of nine justices. In so doing he will shape the court for the next generation. Trump made clear during the race that the justices he selects will oppose the Obama-led leftist plan to transform the court into an imperial judiciary that determines social and cultural norms and legislates from the bench.
Trump will also clean out the Internal Revenue Service. Under Obama, the IRS became an instrument of political warfare. Conservative and right-wing pro-Israel groups were systematically discriminated against and targeted for abuse. It is possible to assume that Trump will fire the IRS officials who have been involved in this discriminatory abuse of power.
“Israel is the one exception in the region. Zionism is the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, and it has enabled them to create a First World nation-state, a centre of excellence in the sciences and the arts. Its democratic institutions incorporate a variety of ethnicities, religious faiths and sects. To give just one example of its inclusiveness, the judge who condemned a previous President of Israel to prison for sexual misdemeanour is an Arab. Traditionally, Muslims have been accustomed to see Jews as second-class people, by nature shameful, and it is intolerable for them and their honour that a Jewish liberation movement should succeed in their midst. Ranging from boycotts and sanctions to outright war, attempts to attack Israel are so many triumphs of ignorance and irrationality, incitements to pile up more corpses, and altogether a standing insult to civilisation.”
When Arabs ask me, as they sometimes do, why I take an interest in their society and their culture, I am at a loss to give a definitive answer. Nostalgia has a part in it, because as a small boy I spent some time in Morocco, in Tangier, and the throng of the Petit Socco, the bazaar and the almost painful blue of the sky have stayed with me. I kicked a football about with others my age. Their heads were shaven except for a long tuft in the middle of the scalp, to enable Allah to lift them up to him if he was so inclined. As far as I know, that is no longer done to little boys even in the Caliphate. Also unforgettable was the witch-doctor, the fqih, who used to sit cross-legged at the entrance of the house, showing the soles of her feet dyed orange with henna and muttering her blessings and curses. After a lapse of twenty-five years, I went back, and there was Muhammad Driss, still the gardener just as I remembered him. Recognising me, he wept, and I wept.
I was nineteen and doing my military service when Gamal Abdul Nasser sprang the surprise of nationalising the Suez Canal. I had to explain to my platoon why we had been given the order to prepare to invade Egypt, keeping to myself my thoughts that we shouldn’t be doing this. This was one of the most mismanaged episodes in the history of the British army. The regiment in fact stayed at home, and the time had come for me to go up to Oxford. Pretty well everyone in the university believed that the wrongs of the world were mostly the fault of the British. By now that is received opinion. Nobody turns a hair when a book like Piers Brendon’s The Decline and Fall of the British Empire, published in 2007, portrays that empire as a criminal enterprise set up for murder and looting, taking it for granted that there’s nothing more to be said. Yet if no power keeps the peace, there won’t be any.
