RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://standpointmag.co.uk/node/6370/fullUtopias of abandoning the past and embracing a very different future have generally been the quickest route to dystopias of destruction, callousness and ignorance — not that that prevented New Labour from parroting the idea.

These two new editions of works first published in 1997 and 1985 respectively underline the duality of deep histories that structure and mould the present age and of the impact of current perceptions, concerns and assumptions in the reading of the past. This duality is scarcely new. Shakespeare’s Henry V (1599) tells us as much about an England under threat from Spain, the world-empire, and defining a new nationalism as about the pursuit of French territory by an early 15th-century ruler. The same is true of 20th-century portrayals of the monarch.

This transience makes any attempt to fix the past problematic. In particular, the element of transience ensures that books that the blurb-writers proclaim as definitive are anything but, and also means that the panoply of authority and reference in the shape of encyclopedias, historical dictionaries, historical atlases, companion guides and so on, is more fragile than it appears. And so with the Oxford Companion. The first edition reflected John Cannon’s particular version of left-of-centre politics, and the new edition, while cautious of partisanship, is not too different. It certainly shows the difficulties of prediction. The UKIP entry ends: “The expectation remained that the party could split the Conservative vote at the 2015 general election.” Ed Miliband is still leader of Labour, indeed “relatively secure in the post”. There is also a fair amount of uncritical praise. For example, the entry on the Olympics in Britain, which in practice is only on the 2012 Olympics, ignores the extent to which the Games did not promote exercise as anticipated. Yet, the piece on the welfare state correctly discerns concern over costs, dependency and affordability.

The book is presented as “the essential authoritative reference book on over 2,000 years of British history”. It is not of course that. In particular, there is too little on the local and the regional, on the places and spaces that are so significant to senses of identity and to the experience of the wider developments discussed. On the plus side, the writing is generally precise and concise, the level of detail good, and there is room for some of the more unusual episodes of national life.

A Modest Proposal to Buttress the Constitution, Restore Confidence in Government and Promote Domestic Tranquility By Rael Jean Isaac

Nothing is more melancholy than to see the level of contempt directed at one of the three key institutions of government established by our Constitution. A Rasmussen poll in December 2015 found only 9% of likely voters thought Congress was doing a good or excellent job-down from 56% in 2001. Strikingly, Republicans and Democrats are in agreement on these miserable approval ratings. Contrast this with the public’s approval level of the President and the Supreme Court: 46% rate Obama’s job performance favorably and 36% think the Supreme Court is doing a good or excellent job (both also according to 2015 Rasmussen polls). To be sure, these approval ratings are nothing to boast about, but even the Supreme Court is four times as well-regarded as Congress.

There is only one surefire step that can buttress the Constitution and restore public confidence in our institutions. Abolish Congress. Admittedly it is counter-intuitive to argue that we strengthen our Constitution by abolishing one of its crucial provisions. But hear me out. It is undisputed that, to quote Dr. Joseph Postell, writing for the Heritage Foundation, “over the past 100 years our government has been transformed from a limited, constitutional, federal republic to a centralized administrative state that for the most part exists outside the structure of the Constitution and wields nearly unlimited power.” This bureaucratic web of agencies and departments is frequently referred to as a “fourth branch” of government. By eliminating Congress we will in fact be returning to the vision of the founders, restoring a three part system of governance.

The Obama administration in recent days has proclaimed a “milestone” in its efforts to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after achieving its long-held goal of reducing the remaining population to fewer than 100 detainees. With the expedited release this month of 14 detainees, the total now stands at 93.

This is nothing to celebrate.

In reducing these numbers, the White House has freed dangerous terrorists and set aside military and intelligence assessments warning about the risks of doing so. The Obama administration has deceived recipient countries about the threats posed by the jihadists they’ve accepted. And President Obama has repeatedly misled the American people about Guantanamo, the detainees held there, and the consequences of releasing them.

On Jan. 6, as part of the Obama administration’s accelerated Guantanamo process, Mahmmoud Omar Mohammed Bin Atef was transferred to Ghana, along with another detainee named Khalid Mohammed Salih al Dhuby. Ghana’s government portrayed the deal as an act of “humanitarian assistance,” likening the Yemeni men to nonthreatening refugees from Rwanda and Syria, noting that they “were detained in Guantanamo but have been cleared of any involvement in terrorist activities, and are being released.”

That description isn’t true for either of the men. Mr. Atef, in particular, is a cause for concern. Long before his transfer, the intelligence analysts at Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO) assessed him as a “high risk” and “likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies.” (The JTF-GTMO threat assessments of 760 Guantanamo detainees, many written in 2008, were posted online in 2011 by WikiLeaks.) It is easy to understand the analysts’ worry about Mr. Atef. He was, they said, “a fighter in Usama bin Laden’s former 55th Arab Brigade and is an admitted member of the Taliban.” He trained at al Farouq, the infamous al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan, “participated in hostilities against US and Coalition forces, and continues to demonstrate his support of UBL and extremism.”

Ruthie Blum is the web editor of The Algemeiner (algemeiner.com).

A few hours before U.S. President Barack Obama delivered his last State of the Union address on Tuesday evening, American sailors were captured and detained at sea by the Iranian navy.

Literally forced to their knees, nine men and one woman were held until the following day, when Tehran decided to release them, after determining that their boats’ GPS had led them astray. Had the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy reached a different conclusion, the U.S. “Marines,” as Iran referred to them, would have met a far more unpleasant fate.

While still under Islamic interrogation on the floor of an Iranian vessel, the 10 Americans were unable to listen to Obama’s speech to the nation from the podium of Congress.

This is just as well.

The last thing you’d want in such a situation is to hear the commander-in-chief of your armed forces not even mention it when the topic of Iran came up. Indeed, not even refer to it at all.

What rang loud and clear to the rest of the world who actually watched the speech on television — particularly the ayatollahs — was the president’s utter capitulation to the literal and figurative hostage-takers in the Middle East.

The Rashomon effect is contradictory interpretations of the same event by different people. I had to tear myself away from the dazzling and brilliant Israeli TV series “Prisoners of War” now available with subtitles to watch the debate.

I have scoured the news and commentary and agree that the media is lame and the format is ridiculous. I also agree that Jeb, Carson, Kasich and Christie are gone.

However, I think that Marco Rubio was the clear winner. While Cruz, whom I like and Trump whom I loathe were in their spitting match, Rubio was articulate, on point, and right on all the issues. More important, I like his manner and his youth and his smile and his optimism and his staunch patriotism. And…..all the foregoing remind me of Ronald Reagan…..yup…Is he perfect? Does he pass every litmus test? No….but he is way ahead of the others.

President Obama took pains in his State of the Union speech Tuesday to warn Americans not to exaggerate the threat from terrorists. “As we focus on destroying ISIL,” he said, using an alternative acronym for Islamic State (ISIS), “over-the-top claims that this is World War III just play into their hands.”

On Monday ISIS murdered 51 people in suicide attacks in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities. On Tuesday an ISIS suicide bomber in Istanbul killed 10 German and one Peruvian tourists. On Thursday two people were killed and 23 injured by an ISIS suicide bomber near a Starbucks coffee shop in Jakarta.

This bloody spate follows last month’s murder of 14 office workers in San Bernardino by an ISIS husband-and-wife team, November’s Paris massacre by ISIS of 130 people, the killing a day earlier of some 43 people in Beirut, and October’s downing by ISIS of a Russian jetliner over Egypt, in which 224 civilians perished. Last June’s attack at a Tunisian beach resort, in which 38 mainly British tourists were murdered, is already beginning to feel like a distant memory.

It was also an election year and Papa Kim, the present tyrant’s daddy humiliated America.

On January 23, 1968, the USS Pueblo, a Navy intelligence vessel, engaged in a routine surveillance of the North Korean coast was intercepted by North Korean patrol boats. The North Koreans captured lightly armed vessel and demanded surrender of its crew. The Americans attempted to escape, and the North Koreans opened fire, wounding the commander and two others. With capture inevitable, the Americans stalled for time, destroying the classified information aboard while taking further fire. Several more crew members were wounded.

The Pueblo was boarded and taken ashore where the crew was bound and blindfolded and transported to Pyongyang, where they were charged with spying within North Korea’s 12-mile territorial limit and imprisoned.

The United States maintained that the Pueblo had been in international waters and demanded the release of the captive sailors, but President Lyndon Johnson ordered no direct retaliation, but the United States began a military buildup in the area. North Korean authorities, coerced a confession and apology out of Pueblo commander Bucher, in which he stated, “I will never again be a party to any disgraceful act of aggression of this type.” The rest of the crew also signed a confession under threat of torture.

The prisoners were forced to study propaganda materials and beaten for straying from the compound’s strict rules. In August, the North Koreans staged a phony news conference in which the prisoners were to praise their humane treatment, but the Americans thwarted the Koreans by inserting innuendoes and sarcastic language into their statements. Some prisoners also rebelled in photo shoots by casually sticking out their middle finger; a gesture that their captors didn’t understand. Later, the North Koreans beat the Americans for a week.

On December 23, 1968, 11 months after the Pueblo‘s capture, U.S. and North Korean negotiators reached a settlement to resolve the crisis. Under the settlement’s terms, the United States admitted the ship’s intrusion into North Korean territory, apologized for the action, and pledged to cease any future such action.

That day, the surviving 82 crewmen walked one by one across the “Bridge of No Return” at Panmunjon to freedom in South Korea. Commander Bucher, who was a decorated Navy Commander in World War 11 , Korea and Vietnam, but suffered ignominy for his apology, died in January 2004.

If you buy the State Department line that two American Naval vessels strayed into Iranian territorial waters when one boat suffered mechanical problems, and that the rapid return of our sailors is a triumph of diplomacy…well then I have an island in the Persian Gulf I’d like to sell you.

We have seen photos and video of our sailors kneeling on the deck of their vessel, with hands behind their heads — a posture that can only indicate surrender at gunpoint. Keep in mind, they were surrendering to the forces of a nation into which we’re about to pump billions of dollars in cash in exchange for a 10-year hiatus in its nuclear weapons program.

The following are just a few of the questions we need to ask based on the information we already have:

What are the odds that two lightly armed American vessels would attempt an incursion into Iranian, or even disputed, territorial waters, hours before President Obama would deliver a State of the Union salute to his own foreign policy prowess?
What is the likelihood that all GPS devices on board both U.S. vessels were inoperable?
Why do you suppose the Navy sent two boats on this mission?
Why do you think the second craft didn’t tow the “broken” one?
What admirable “diplomatic” purpose was served by forcing our sailors to their knees at gunpoint, and then publicly releasing the video thereof?
Why were our sailors not immediately returned, but held overnight?