There is universal agreement that China is increasingly the U.S.’ No. 1 policy concern.
But perhaps never in the history of modern Sinology has there been such difference of opinion about what is happening in China and what – if anything – the U.S. should and could do about it.
One reason is some Old China Hands have changed sides rather abruptly, no longer convinced that there is “a peaceful rising China” — which incidentally is a slogan Beijing itself has dropped.
True, there have been times when there was enormous difference among China scholars, not least during World War II and immediately afterward when in 1949 the Communists took over. There were a lot of “they ain’t Stalinists, just agrarian radicals” around; some with very long greybeards still in business not having yet offered a mea culpa.
The good news is that there wasn’t a nuclear weapons deal with Iran by the June 30 “deadline.” The bad news is that there will probably be one this week, and it’s going to be a very bad one.
The world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism – as even Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has to admit Iran is – is as recalcitrant as the “P5+1” group, led by Vichy John Kerry, is eager to make a deal. The more the Iranians demand, the more the West caves in.
As we go to press, an agreement has already been reached allowing Iran to get its multi-billion dollar signing bonus in the form of relief of the international economic sanctions that forced them to the bargaining table. One of the disagreements – as of Sunday – was on the risible “snap-back” mechanism to reimpose the sanctions if (that should be “when,” not “if,” but suspension of disbelief is a principle tenet of Western diplomacy) Iran violates the agreement. It’s risible because there will be no reimposition of the sanctions. The French, for example, are lining up for oil contracts with Iran. None of the Europeans will allow sanctions to be reimposed, nor will Obama.
More East Jerusalem Palestinians are taking Israeli citizenship, learning Hebrew, and living in Jewish neighborhoods. But does that affect their identity?
Jerusalem — Suha, a young Palestinian lawyer, grew up in East Jerusalem and got her degree in the West Bank, then took a crash course in Hebrew to pass the Israeli bar.
Now she is planning to take a step that was once considered taboo among Palestinians living under Israeli rule in the passionately contested holy city: take an oath of loyalty to Israel in order to become a citizen.
“A lot of people are applying for it. Even people you would never expect: like sheikhs with beards. The lawyers that I work with all have it,” says Suha, who declined to give her full name so as not to risk rejection by Israeli authorities. “I don’t see the occupation going anywhere,” she says. “Eventually I’m going to do it.”
Ever since Israel conquered and immediately annexed East Jerusalem in 1967, the city’s hundreds of thousands of Palestinian residents have lived in limbo. Even as their blue residency cards afforded them Israeli social benefits and freedom of movement, they remained loyal to their countrymen in the West Bank and Gaza and resisted the Israeli system.
Hillary got hawkish on China at a campaign event in New Hampshire. Her words: “….”But we also have to be fully vigilant, China’s military is growing very quickly, they’re establishing military installations that again threaten countries we have treaties with, like the Philippines because they are building on contested property……” They’re also trying to hack into everything that doesn’t move in America. Stealing commercial secrets … from defense contractors, stealing huge amounts of government information, all looking for an advantage.”
I would think that China is a subject that Hillary would avoid at all costs since some of the most egregious Bill Clinton scandals are linked to China. In 1998, the New York Times revealed that the Clinton administration permitted two U.S. aerospace corporations to transfer sensitive missile technology to the Chinese. The CEO of one of the corporations, Loral, had pumped hundreds of thousands of dollars of campaign contributions into the Democratic National Committee. In return, the Clinton administration waived controls on Loral’s export of these technologies to the Chinese aerospace industry. In the campaign of 2008, Bernard L. Schwartz, former chairman of the satellite communications firm Loral Space and Communications was a big bucks supporter of Hillary.
And remember Johnny Chung who delivered $300,000 from a Chinese army Lt. Col. Liu Chaoying, an executive with a state-owned aerospace company to the Democrats’ 1996 campaign? Chung was a frequent guest at the White House and once delivered a $50,000 check to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s chief of staff, Margaret A. Williams who accepted the check and passed it along to the DNC, even though federal law bars government employees from accepting campaign contributions on government property.
No need to worry, the recent Ramadan triple slaughter fest in Tunisia, France and Kuwait has nothing to do with Islam. There is no linkage between Islam and terrorism, and the word Islamic need not be used to describe the terrorists because their murderous and barbaric ideology has nothing to do with Islam. Islam is, after all, a religion of peace that is being hijacked, perverted and distorted by only a small percentage of savage extremists.
Welcome to the false narrative that Western leaders, mainstream media outlets, and academic elites are enforcing on civil society to help shape the public’s perception of Islam so that it is always presented in a positive light. Any form of expression that reflects badly on Islam is in violation of Islamic law, which forbids any criticism of Islam, even what that criticism expresses the truth. Stories that are reported according to this narrative need not have anything to do with factual accuracy or truth. Both the 2009 Fort Hood massacre in Texas and the beheading in Vaughan Foods in Oklahoma last September were reported as workplace violence and not Islamic terrorism.
Terror Attacks 183 ,Suicide Bombings 30 ,Dead Bodies 1796 ,Wounded 2194
Islam’s Latest Contributions to Peace “Mohammed is Allah’s apostle. Those who follow him are harsh
to the unbelievers but merciful to one another” Quran 48:29
2015.07.04 (Rafah, Egypt) – A 5-year-old child is pulled into pieces by an Islamist roadside bomb.
2015.07.04 (Baghdad, Iraq) – Jihadis set off bombs near a row of restaurants, killing nine bystanders.
2015.07.03 (Zabamari, Nigeria) – Six female suicide bombers rush into a village crowded with panicked residents and detonate in their midst, killing at least fifty-five.
2015.07.03 (Mussa, Nigeria) – Pro-Sharia militants shoot six hapless villagers to death and then twenty-five others trying to flee.
2015.07.03 (Miringa, Nigeria) – Boko Haram pull eleven people out of their homes and slit their throats.
2015.07.03 (Malari, Nigeria) – A teen female suicide bomber blows up fifteen people at a mosque.
* Sources for individual incidents can be provided upon request.
Jimmy Carter made news recently for criticizing Barack Obama’s foreign policy record. Asked about Obama’s “successes,” Carter said they were “minimal,” adding, “I can’t think of many nations in the world where we have a better relationship now than we did when he took over.” He continued, “We have not improved our relationship with individual countries and I would say that the United States [sic] influence and prestige and respect in the world is [sic] probably lower now than it was six or seven years ago.” Perhaps thinking of his own dismal record, Carter anxiously repeated, “I’m not saying it’s his fault.”
Carter may be secretly relieved that he no longer holds the title as worst foreign policy president ever, but Obama’s failures come from the same bad ideas as Carter’s did: a distrust of American power and influence, a skepticism about America as a force for good in the world, and a preference for diplomatic engagement predicated on a massive failure of imagination in understanding the motives and aims of our adversaries.
How DHS is failing to heed its own warnings.
On June 22, 2015 the ICE Newsroom posted a startling “Top Story” news release under the category, “Document and Benefit Fraud.” The title of the news release was obviously crafted to create the illusion that a major vulnerability to U.S. national security, the threat of a terror attack, was being addressed: “ICE-DMV partnership combating identity, document fraud.”
The news release was accompanied by a poster. If a picture is worth a thousand words, imagine how many words the above poster is worth.
Here is how the news release begins:
If you walk into your local Department of Motor Vehicles office (DMV) on any given day, you’ll most likely find a crowd of people waiting to get a new license or updating their vehicle registration.
What many aren’t aware of is that while they’re waiting in anticipation of their number to be called there may be document and identity fraud taking place just a few feet away.
The Greeks gambled in their referendum that European elites were more committed to their ideological obsession with integrating Europe than with mere economics. Stand up to a bunch of corrupt Greek civil servants and Europe risks going back to the bad old days of nation states and independent economies.
It is likely that their bet will pay off.
After all even a cursory glance at the European Union shows positively Grecian levels of waste, fraud and economic mismanagement. The $1.8 billion IMF payment that Greece defaulted on is a hole in the bucket compared to an annual $6 billion in the European Union’s estimated budget fraud.
A radical left-wing government in Greece is betting that more moderate European Socialists will meet their demands rather than risk opening a chasm that will expose the economic unsustainablity of the existing system. The Greek economy may be a fraud, but it’s a fraud built on a bigger Euro fraud.
And that’s a familiar pattern.
This is the way that public sector unions browbeat their Democratic allies in Chicago, New York and California to extract insane concessions from their unworkable budgets. The budgets are already bankrupting cities and states, so why not tear off free cosmetic surgery or $80k salaries from the mess?
Greece is just treating the European experiment the way that the California Teachers Association treats the state. It’s a giant corrupt piggy bank, so why not raid it? It’s going to go bankrupt, but it will anyway.
“A great pushback is awakening here and abroad, but its timing, nature, and future remain mysterious.”
Given European socialism, and given its therapeutic culture that assumes morality is relative and situational, it is quite stunning — especially to the Greeks — that suddenly debts are to mean not endless negotiations, haggling, blame-gaming, and contextualization, but are reduced to something akin to Calvin Coolidge’s snarky alleged quote, “They hired the money, didn’t they?”
Aside from the threats of Vladimir Putin and the wobbling of the European Union, Europe is being overrun with illegal immigrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Once an impoverished foreign national arrives at any European shore, the European Union, either out of utopian piety or colonial guilt, feels obligated to accept him, without questioning much his legal status or the reasons for his arrival — much less why it should not extend such magnanimity to tens of millions of others who may well follow.
