POLITICS Comments turned off

Nikki Haley Breaks From Trump in Interview About a Potential Run for President By Masooma Haq

Posted By on February 13th, 2021

https://www.theepochtimes.com/nikki-haley-breaks-from-trump-in-interview-about-a-potential-run-for-president_3695118.html

Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley in a recent interview broke from Trump, criticizing his actions in relation to the Jan. 6 incident at the Capitol.

Haley, in a lengthy profile interview with Politico focused on her former boss and a possible run for the presidency in 2024, said that she does not believe Trump will run for federal office again in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol breach, telling Politico, “I don’t think he can. He’s fallen so far.”

Haley has all but confirmed a run for presidential office in 2024. In the profile by Politico’s Tim Alberta, she was repeatedly questioned about Trump’s role in what happened on Jan. 6 and if she agreed with what her former boss did after the November election.

Democrats, legacy media, and some Republicans have criticized the former president for not conceding on Nov. 4 after mainstream media outlets called the election for Biden, and instead opposing the numerous irregularities on election night and later filing legal actions against a handful of key states.

Trump’s legal team said these states changed elections laws without the approval of their state’s legislature or had other legal issues that were documented via the testimony of numerous people who signed sworn affidavits saying they had witnessed voter fraud.

All of the legal cases were dismissed by courts on procedural grounds without the evidence being heard and ruled on. In the interview, Haley reluctantly supported Trump’s challenging the election results and all the court filings.

“I understand the president. I understand that genuinely, to his core, he believes he was wronged,” Haley told Politico. “This is not him making it up.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

EU’s Covid-19 Vaccination Debacle: “Epochal Failure” by Soeren Kern

Posted By on February 13th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17052/eu-vaccination-failure

The vaccination rollout has been plagued by bureaucratic sclerosis, poorly-negotiated contracts, penny-pinching and blame shifting — all wrapped in a shroud of secrecy. The result is a needless and embarrassing shortage of vaccines, and yet another a crisis of legitimacy for the EU.

“The European Commission ordered too late, limited its focus to only a few pharmaceutical companies, agreed on a price in a typically bureaucratic EU manner and completely underestimated the fundamental importance of the situation. We now have a situation where grandchildren in Israel are already vaccinated but the grandparents here are still waiting. That’s just completely wrong.” — Markus Söder, Bavarian premier and possible future German chancellor.

“I now fear that the European Union will find itself in the impossible situation of having to prolong some of the existing [Covid-19] restrictions beyond the summer, while both Britain and the United States start to normalize. That is the cost of the vaccine delays: a very high cost in lives, prestige and further economic losses.” — Bruno Maçães, political scientist and former Portuguese Europe Minister.

“The commission decided to aggrandize its competence and it wasn’t up to the job — it didn’t have the right people or the right skills.” — Adrian Wooldridge, political editor, The Economist.

“In the dispute over the delivery delay of the AstraZeneca vaccine, the EU Commission is currently making the best advertisement for Brexit: It is acting slowly, bureaucratically and protectionist. And if something goes wrong, it’s everyone else’s fault.” — Bettina Schulz, commentator, Die Zeit.

The European Union’s much-touted campaign to vaccinate 450 million Europeans against Covid-19 has gotten off to an inauspicious start. The vaccination rollout has been plagued by bureaucratic sclerosis, poorly-negotiated contracts, penny-pinching and blame shifting — all wrapped in a shroud of secrecy. The result is a needless and embarrassing shortage of vaccines, and yet another a crisis of legitimacy for the EU.

As of February 11, the EU had administered vaccines to approximately 4.5% of its adult population, compared to 14% in the United States, 21% in the United Kingdom and 71% in Israel, according to statistics compiled by Our World in Data. The EU’s vaccination fiasco comes as many European countries are struggling to combat an extremely virulent third wave of the coronavirus and healthcare systems across the continent are once again at breaking points.

BOOKS, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

While Europe Slept, 15 Years Later A new preface. Bruce Bawer

Posted By on February 13th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/while-europe-slept-15-years-later-bruce-bawer/

Note: My book While Europe Slept was first published by Doubleday in 2006. Now the Stapis publishing house has put out a Polish edition, translated by Tadeusz Skrzyszowski. Given that the book is fifteen years old, Stapis asked for a new preface. Here it is.

This book, which appeared first in English, has already been translated into several other languages, but it is a special pleasure to see it published in Polish. My father’s parents were both Polish, although they came from municipalities that, in their time, were located in the Austrian Empire and that are now part of Ukraine, not far from the Polish border. My grandfather was a native of the Galician town of Brody; my grandmother was raised in the Galician city of Krystynopol (now Chervonohrad).  He emigrated to America before World War I; she left her childhood home – which was blasted half to bits during exchanges of gunfire between the Central Powers and the Russians – during the war, traveling all alone at the age of fifteen and waiting for several months in Rotterdam until it was determined that the shipping route was safe from German mines.

My grandparents met and married in New York City and spent the rest of their lives there, raising a daughter and a son, my father, to whom they gave the name Tadeusz Kazimierz, after Tadeusz Kosciuszko and Kazimierz Pulaski, the two great Polish heroes of the American revolution. My grandfather died in 1958, two years after my birth, but my grandmother lived to be ninety, and was an important part of my childhood and early adulthood. On the wall over her bed there hung for decades a huge photograph of my father as a baby, swaddled in an American flag; on her bedroom dresser stood a framed photograph of Richard M. Nixon, whom she respected for his hatred of the Communism to which the Polish people had been subjected since the end of World War II. While she was a proud American citizen, ever thankful to the United States for taking her in and for giving her freedom, she retained throughout her life a strong attachment to Poland and a strong concern for the fate of her fellow Poles.

Growing up, I was deeply cognizant of these matters. First my grandmother had been driven from her home and family by a brutal war between the Kaiser and the Tsar; later, long after she had departed, the people she left behind had been cruelly subjugated by the Nazis and the Soviets. Largely because of my awareness of my grandmother’s background, I was, even as a small child, profoundly aware of the evils of despotism in all its forms. As a teenager I read everything I could find about Nazi Germany and the USSR. When, in 1998, I relocated to the continent of my grandparents’ birth and encountered a large Islamic subculture in Amsterdam, I immediately recognized the smell of tyranny. That encounter is the starting point for this book.  

When I wrote this book, I used such terms as “radical Islam” and “Muslim extremist.” Indeed, the book’s original English subtitle was How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West from Within. I have asked my Polish publishers to remove the word “radical” from the subtitle of this edition. I no longer use such terms in connection with Islam, for I have recognized that Islam itself is radical and extreme; people who call themselves “moderate” or “liberal” Muslims are people who have exchanged key elements of their faith for Western Enlightenment values.

BOOKS Comments turned off

Deep State, Dark Intentions The NSA concentrates on collecting information on ordinary citizens because they are the low hanging fruit, while the real enemies of the U.S. are much harder to catch.  By Lucja Cannon

Posted By on February 13th, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/02/12/deep-state-dark-intentions/

A review of “Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State,”
by Barton Gellman (Penguin, 448 pages, $30)

Barton Gellman’s Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State raises important questions about American society and politics. It deals with power over personal information and its implications for control, secrecy, individual rights, and politics on a global scale.

The author starts with Edward Snowden and his revelations of the existence of a global surveillance leviathan, feeding off the main arteries of global communications networks. Gellman was one of three journalists who first received the secret National Security Agency files from Snowden and wrote a series of articles about them for the Washington Post, for which he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. He describes his encounters with Snowden, the information he provided, and his efforts to verify the files and expand on them.

Dark Mirror expands into a search for a deeper understanding of the surveillance state through the author’s interviews with top Bush and Obama Administration intelligence officials, participation in industry conferences, and research. This is parallel with Gellman’s effort to keep his contacts secret to avoid legal jeopardy, connected with his cooperation with Snowden and publicizing classified information.

The picture that emerges from this book will be unfamiliar to most Americans. Surveillance was pervasive until the Church Committee reforms led to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, which restricted spying on U.S. citizens and residents, requiring individual warrants. Outside of the United States, President Reagan’s Executive Order 12333 created a legal framework for foreign surveillance.

FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Is Israel an ally? Biden’s administration is unclear on that one By Andrea Widburg

Posted By on February 13th, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/02/is_israel_an_ally_bidens_administration_is_unclear_on_that_one.html

Israel has been America’s staunch ally going back to the Cold War. Additionally, as a friendly nation that has been genocidally besieged by the anti-American, anti-Semitic bullies in its neighborhood, America felt the good guy’s responsibility to help Israel protect herself. Beginning in 1979 with the Iranian Revolution, Israel and America also shared a common enemy: radical Islam. But none of that matters to Joe Biden, who’s long been hostile to Israel and is following Obama’s delusional effort to make nice with Iran.

Biden has never liked Israel. Moreover, he shares Obama’s dislike for Netanyahu, something demonstrated by his refusing to talk to Netanyahu since entering office.

With Jews who are Democrats showing decreasing support for Israel, that made the campaign easier for Biden. Democrats, rather than supporting the Abraham Accords, which are causing peace to break out across the Middle East, resented the fact that Trump was able to broker the accords by circumventing the totalitarian and genocidal Palestinians, rather than pandering to them.

As the election drew near, confident that Democrat Jews’ loathing for Trump overrode any residual love for Israel, Biden became more openly hostile to Israel. In August, the Washington Post summed up Biden’s Israel policy as a morally muscular opposition to Trump’s unwavering support for Israel and the peace deals he was making by ignoring the Palestinians, who have proven themselves incapable of self-governance in both Gaza and the West Bank:

“The new UAE-Israel announcement does not just normalize bilateral relations between the two countries, which have existed barely under the table for many years,” wrote Khaled Elgindy, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute. “For Palestinians, it also helps to normalize (if not actually reward) Israel’s occupation.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Post-Trump world of censorship and canceling is chugging along in Canada, too By Robert Stewart

Posted By on February 13th, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/02/posttrump_world_of_censorship_and_canceling_is_alive_and_well_in_canada_too.html

Recently, Jagmeet Singh, a friend of Black Lives Matter agitator Shaun King and leader of Canada’s far-left party, pushed out an online petition over Twitter demanding that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declare Proud Boys Canada a “white supremacist terrorist” organization. The call came immediately after U.S. Proud Boys members were apparently found involved in the Capitol Building mêlée that led to House Democrats impeaching President Trump a second time.  

Although it’s not supposed to be the Twitter followers of Singh’s New Democratic Party who decide who is and isn’t a threat to our national security, Singh’s bit of Two Minutes Hate did exactly what was intended: it pushed last week Canada’s version of Homeland Security to label the group an official “terrorist organization.”  Proud Boys Canada is now apparently in the same category as the Islamic State.  

It’s difficult to see the move as anything but pointless.  It also drips with hypocrisy as well as alarmist, diversionary politics. 

While the Perry Ellis shirt-wearing and fighting-prone Proud Boys certainly aren’t my cup of tea, the group denies being an organizational force behind the Capitol Building siege.  Further, as far as I’ve read about them, the group’s membership is apparently open to all comers (of any race) and always has been.  Moreover, I’ve never heard either its current leader (Enrique Tarrio, non-white) or its founder (Gavin McInnes, married to a non-white woman) state that any racial group is superior or deserves to rule supreme over others — a requirement, it would seem, for a group open to everyone. 

FOREIGN POLICY, HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Biden’s Pentagon ‘review’ falls short to deter communist Chinese By Robert L. Maginnis

Posted By on February 13th, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/02/bidens_pentagon_review_falls_short_to_deter_communist_chinese.html

On Wednesday, President Joe Biden visited the Pentagon to launch a review of how the U.S. military is postured to deter China in the Pacific.  Given the president’s statements concerning China, it is clear he doesn’t understand the existential threat posed by our Chinese enemy.

Mr. Biden totally misses Beijing’s threat because his “review” falls terribly short of the mark.  His worldview is naïve and shortsighted, and he fails to recognize that the Communist Chinese truly intend to conquer the world.  Indeed, Beijing seeks to destroy America — every aspect of our country and, by association, Western civilization.  We need to review and then act upon all aspects of our relations with that totalitarian regime or risk our future: trade, military, technology, cyber, ideological, media, geopolitical, and more.

There is no doubt that Beijing’s ultimate goal is to have the Middle Kingdom sitting atop the entire world.   Yes, Chinese President Xi Jinping and his communist puppets are worse than past dictators and on steroids. 

China’s Xi is a modern-day wannabe emperor, and he has taken steps to prepare China for global dominance through every means available — the Belt & Road Initiative and rapidly growing the world’s largest military, among others, and soon China will be the world’s largest economy. 

Meanwhile, the U.S. response to this threat is too little, too late.  Back at the Pentagon, Mr. Biden with Vice President Kamala Harris at his side called for a posture review to help “chart a strong path forward on China related matters.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Dan Crenshaw has created a handy-dandy list of conservative principles By Andrea Widburg *****

Posted By on February 13th, 2021

This is the kind of thing that conservatives should print up and carry around with them for throw-down challenges against leftists.

I’ve long admired Rep Dan Crenshaw (R. Tex.) for the knack he has to clearly state conservative principles – and his willingness to speak out constantly about those principles. One of Trump’s problems was his inability to articulate principles. His practical instincts were good but he – along with way too many Republican politicians – allowed Democrats to win the war of words. On Friday, Crenshaw again used gift in this area with a Twitter thread that lists 22 core conservative principles that we need to fight for in this lunatic Democrat era.

Crenshaw went down in my estimation last month when he attacked Trump over the events at Capitol Hill (an attack at odds with the facts) and when he pushed back against ousting Liz Cheney from her leadership position in the House after she voted in favor of impeaching President Trump. Both of those stands looked remarkably like pandering to the Bush crowd and the Democrats. I strongly disagreed with them then and I still do now.

On Friday, though, Crenshaw published a Twitter thread (which I’m presenting below as a straight text list) that deserves respect. In it, he simply and clearly articulates principles that are the antithesis of the madness the Biden administration and the rest of the Democrat party crew are imposing on our nation:

The Conservative Guide to the Culture Wars (in no particular order):

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

How Equality Lost to ‘Equity’ Civil-rights advocates abandon the old ideal for the new term, which ‘has no meaning’ and promises no progress but makes it easy to impute bigotry, says Shelby Steele. By Tunku Varadarajan

Posted By on February 13th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-equality-lost-to-equity-11613155938?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

EXCERPTS

“Yet Mr. Steele also sees “more and more blacks” pushing back against “the tribalism of race” as it collides with the “reality of freedom.” He views the Black Lives Matter movement as a desperate attempt to salvage tribalism. For all his indignation, Mr. Steele foresees a better future. “Millions of black individuals, living their lives as individuals, will take us beyond tribes and into true American citizenship. Many blacks are thriving already. Their children will do even better.”

Mr. Steele, 75, is a longstanding conservative commentator on race in America and a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. We speak over Zoom a week after President Biden signed an Executive Order on Advancing Racial Equity, intended to address “entrenched disparities in our laws and public policies, and in our public and private institutions.” In his remarks at the signing, Mr. Biden seemed to suggest that his is a project aimed at reshaping American governance. “We need to make the issue of racial equity not just an issue for any one department of government,” the president said. “It has to be the business of the whole of government.”

I can almost hear Mr. Steele growl in his study in Monterey, Calif., as I read these words aloud. “This equity is a term that has no meaning,” he says, “but it’s one that gives blacks power and leverage in American life. We can throw it around at any time, and wherever it lands, it carries this stigma that somebody’s a bigot.” Its message is that there’s “inequality that needs to be addressed, to be paid off. So if you hear me using the word ‘equity,’ I’m shaking you down.”

Equity in this “new sense,” Mr. Steele says, can be understood only as “a strategy.” The president is promising to “fix America morally, and aligning himself with the strategy of black people to gain power by focusing on victimization. He’s saying, ‘America must tackle that problem and create programs that help minorities achieve equity’—whatever that may be.”

The idea of equality has been eclipsed, Mr. Steele says, in part because “it was a little too specific” and bore the baggage of the old civil-rights movement. “We fought for equality 60 years ago,” he says. It was a struggle that brought his black father and white mother together. (They married in 1944. All of her siblings abandoned her, “and never came back.”) “We won the civil-rights legislation in the ’60s,” Mr. Steele says, “and the term ‘equality’ is exhausted now. And it’s lost much of its mystique—because you can measure it.”

MEDIA Comments turned off

The Times Is Changing, Badly Editors and managers at a great newspaper gather around Twitter to find out what they think. Holman Jenkins Jr.

Posted By on February 13th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-times-is-changing-badly-11613170637?mod=opinion_lead_pos8

Untenable was the principle enunciated last week by the New York Times in a kerfuffle over a distinguished reporter who was expelled for uttering the N-word in an innocent discussion of the N-word. Happily for the next victim but not the latest one, the paper has belatedly seen the error of its ways.

Donald G. McNeil Jr. “has done much good reporting over four decades,” said management even as it escorted him out the door. Executive Editor Dean Baquet had previously declined to fire Mr. McNeil over the two-year-old incident, saying it was clear the term hadn’t been uttered in a “hateful or malicious” way.

But that was before a tsunami of intolerance from the forces of tolerance inside the paper. Mr. Baquet announced last week that Mr. McNeil would be leaving after all because “we do not tolerate racist language regardless of intent.” Oops, it was universally pointed out that the Times then would have to fire itself. A Factiva search shows the paper using the word 1,271 times as far back as 1969 and as recently as a week ago, as it must in covering the world. The new standard, “a threat to our journalism,” was “a deadline mistake and I regret it,” Mr. Baquet admitted on Thursday.

What a mess. I don’t know Mr. Baquet. By all accounts, he’s a fine person and a good reporter, but you know what he’s behaving like here—he’s behaving like somebody who knows he can’t trust his own boss to back him in any decision unpopular with the woke mob.