FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Donald Trump’s lonely victory in the Middle East:David Goldman

Posted By on September 16th, 2020

https://asiatimes.com/middle-east/

The US president has trampled over the conventional wisdom of the whole foreign policy establishment
 
Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan, an old adage says. An exception is the peace agreement among Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain, likely to be followed by several other Arab states. Added to this is Kosovo’s decision to move its embassy to Jerusalem in the context of normalized relations with Israel, the first Muslim-majority country to do so.

America’s boisterous president trampled over the conventional wisdom of the whole foreign policy establishment in the United States as well as Europe, and in both the “left” and “right” wings of American policymaking. The Europeans and most of the Democratic Party insisted that a resolution of the Palestinian statehood issue was a precondition for peace, while the Bush-McCain-Romney wing of the Republican party insisted that American influence required massive military deployment in the region.

How wrong they were, and how right Trump was. The neo-conservative, interventionist wing of the Republican Party has been wrong-footed as much as his Democratic opponents.

When Trump announced the withdrawal of the tiny contingent of American troops in Syria in September 2019, a paroxysm of protest went through the Republican foreign policy Establishment. Defense Secretary James Mattis resigned shortly afterwards. Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies called Trump’s decision “a complete debacle.” The Hudson Institute’s Michael  Doran, a former National Security Council official, declared that Washington had no choice but to back Turkey in Syria. Michael Makovsky of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs complained that “Israel now faces more pressure and threats from Iran.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Strzok Interviews Reveal FBI’s Disgrace Adam Mill

Posted By on September 16th, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/09/15/strzok-interviews-reveal-fbis-disgrace/

Can constitutional democracy continue to coexist with a lawless secret police that targets innocent people?

By his smartly dressed appearance, one would never know Peter Strzok wasn’t still a senior FBI agent. He looked to be straight out of central casting as he began his “Meet the Press” interview on Sunday with this book-promoting slander, “I think it is clear, I believed at the time in 2016, and I continue to believe, that Donald Trump is compromised by the Russians. And when I say that, I mean that they hold leverage over him that makes him incapable of placing the national interests, the national security ahead of his own.”

Nothing is more sleazy and corrupt than a current or former FBI agent implicitly claiming to have access to secret evidence of a target’s guilt when the time to produce such evidence has long since passed.

Imagine that you’ve just weathered four years of an FBI investigation during which the press consistently published character-assassinating falsehoods attributed to “people familiar with the investigation.” Your enemies, who personally hate you, launch the investigative team with unlimited manpower and money and staff it with political opponents. Federal agents entrap your allies in process crimes, coerce a plea by threatening a man’s family, repeatedly deceive a court to conduct intrusive surveillance, steal thousands of emails without a warrant, and deliberately prolong the investigation despite knowing from day one that you are innocent. 

When the day finally comes for the persecutors either to put up or shut up, they do neither, publishing a slanted report full of smears without ever giving you the chance to rebut the charges in court. 

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

It’s Official: Trump Unleashed A Middle-Class Boom That Benefited Women, Minorities Most

Posted By on September 16th, 2020

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/09/15/its-official-trump-unleashed-a-middle-class-boom-that-benefited-women-minorities-most/

Not that you’d ever know it from the media blackout, but households have seen the biggest jump in real median income in at least 52 years. The poverty rate is lower than it’s been since at least 1959, the annual Census report on income and poverty shows.

These are incredible achievements that would be leading every newspaper and TV news program if they had happened under a Democratic president. The absence press coverage is even more astounding when you consider that the gains were among lower-income families, women, blacks and Hispanics.

In other words, every constituent group that Democrats claim that they represent.

Here’s the rundown:

Median household income reaches all-time high: In 2019, median household income shot up 6.8%, the biggest annual increase since at least 1967. To understand how impressive this is, consider that the next biggest increase was 5% in 2015, which came after five years of declines. (When Barack Obama left office, median household income was essentially where it was back in 2000.) From 1967 to 2018, the average annual increase was a mere 0.6%.

Lower-income families gained the most. Despite the endless chants about how President Donald Trump’s policies benefited only the rich, the truth is that lower-income families made the biggest gains in his first three years in office.

The bottom fifth of households saw their incomes climb 10% under Trump. Those in the next fifth saw incomes rise more than 9%.

The top 5% of households saw their share of total income drop.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Video: Helping Saudis Slip Away The highly disturbing facts about an eerie evacuation right after 9/11.

Posted By on September 16th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/09/video-helping-saudis-slip-away-frontpagemagcom/

With the 19th anniversary of 9/11 having just passed, Frontpage Mag editors have deemed it vital to run the special Glazov Gang episode in which Clare Lopez discusses Helping Saudis Slip Away, unveiling the highly disturbing facts about an eerie evacuation right after 9/11. 

Don’t miss it!

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Self-censorship in the US by Judith Bergman

Posted By on September 16th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16337/self-censorship-in-the-us

The US nominally enshrines the most far-reaching freedom of speech, thanks to the First Amendment of the Constitution. Yet the average number of Americans who self-censor is slowly beginning to approximate that of Germany, where… “Nearly two-thirds of citizens are convinced that ‘today one has to be very careful on which topics one expresses oneself’, because there are many unwritten laws about what opinions are acceptable and admissible”.

It is, however, not surprising. American campuses have steered a “leftist” course for decades. The tilt has had familiar consequences: the proliferation on campus of “safe spaces”, trigger warnings, de-platforming of conservative voices and a “cancel culture” aimed at professors and students who do not conform to an on-campus political orthodoxy that has become increasingly totalitarian. Most recently, the dean of University of Massachusetts Lowell’s School of Nursing, Leslie Neal-Boylan, was fired by the school after writing “Black lives matter, but also everyone’s life matters” in an email to students and faculty.

When citizens stop voicing their concerns in public about current events, policies and ideas out of fear that they will lose their livelihoods and social standing, it is — or should be — a huge problem in a democracy.

A democratic society of fearful citizens who dare not speak about what is on their minds — often important issues of their time — is doomed to succumb to the will of those who bully the hardest and shout the loudest.

A recent survey of 2,000 Americans by Cato Institute/YouGov found that 62% of Americans say “the political climate these days prevents them from saying things they believe because others might find them offensive”. This is up from 2017, when 58% agreed with this statement. “Majorities of Democrats (52%), independents (59%) and Republicans (77%) all agree they have political opinions they are afraid to share”.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The New Middle East by Sara Al Nuaimi

Posted By on September 16th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16515/the-new-middle-east

In 2015, the UAE passed a law against religious discrimination by creating ministries of tolerance, happiness and youth to develop an enlightened community — everyone included.

A year later, schools in the UAE started teaching students peace and tolerance.

When the UAE prioritized national belonging over extremist obsessions, the decision immediately led to making peace with Israel.

My one hope as an Emirati is that we become a light for the world. It could make the entire region — the lives of everyone, including the Palestinians — so unimaginably great.

The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have taken a serious step in moving out of the draconian shackles of mindless and mumbling caliphate fantasies that some extremists mention as wiping out the Jewish people in a final conquest for the globe.

The UAE’s groundwork to weed out this hogwash began five years ago. In 2015, the UAE passed a law against religious discrimination by creating ministries of tolerance, happiness and youth to develop an enlightened community — everyone included. A year later, schools in the UAE started teaching students peace and tolerance.

By 2019, we were open and receptive to a memorable year in our national history — it was named the Year of Tolerance. It was then that the construction of the Abrahamic Family House was announced. It will include in one place a synagogue, a church and a mosque. That same year, Pope Francis made an epic visit to the UAE where, in the capital’s sports stadium, the first Papal Mass in Abu Dhabi was held, attended by close to 180,000 people.

When the UAE prioritized national belonging over extremist obsessions, the decision immediately led to making peace with Israel.

FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Donald Trump’s Foreign Policy Successes How Trump’s paradigm-shift ended a long string of failures under both parties. Bruce Thornton

Posted By on September 16th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/09/donald-trumps-foreign-policy-successes-bruce-thornton/

The recent agreements between Israel and two Gulf states mark yet another foreign policy achievement by the Trump administration. Five years ago no one could have anticipated that two more Arab states would normalize relations with Israel, with others to follow, perhaps even Saudi Arabia, “The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques.” The decrepit “peace process” was stalled, and Barack Obama’s appeasing nuclear deal with the mullahs had left the region to the tender mercies of Iran and Russia. America was, as Obama put it, just one nation among others, “mindful of its imperfections.”

Then came Donald Trump, the amateur outsider whom the foreign policy establishment, trapped like a fly in amber by stale, failed paradigms, mocked and dismissed with predictions of existential doom from his foreign policy ignorance and bumbling. Yet Trump, like the “amiable dunce” Ronald Reagan, understood that the establishment’s narratives were endangering our security and interests. He brought some practical wisdom, common sense about human nature, and real-world experience to foreign policy, and recalibrated it with a few simple, Reaganesque principles: We win, they lose; America’s interests are paramount; and we should always be “no better friend, no worse enemy,” a foundational principle of foreign relations that Obama had turned on its head.

Trump’s current successes, on top of the agreement he brokered between bitter historical enemies Serbia and Kosovo, show that his paradigm-shift must be followed by a new foreign policy that can end the long string of failures under both parties. The longest of these is the Israeli-Arab conflict. Resolving this dispute has been the greatest prize for the “rules-based global order” that believes brokered negotiations, treaties, summits, photo-ops, and copious foreign aid, are the only means of ending conflict.

In terms of the Israel-Arab conflict, the old approach favored––and worsened––by Barack Obama illustrates the revolutionary nature of Trump’s foreign policy shift. Obama, a product of the elite’s unexamined received foreign policy wisdom, accepted the State Department’s hoary nostrums and doctrines. Seventy years of wars and terrorist violence were thus explained by the Palestinian people’s unfulfilled nationalist aspirations and dreams of independence, unlike the old colonies of the Western nations who gained independence after World War II.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Trump is right: Science doesn’t know — and supposed journalists don’t care By Jack Hellner

Posted By on September 16th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/09/trump_is_right_science_doesnt_know_the_problem_is_that_supposed_journalists_dont_care.html

Here are some facts that most of the media, scientists, entertainers, and other Democrats choose to ignore as they indoctrinate the public, especially the children about ‘science’: 

Environmentalists and politicians have mismanaged forests for decades in California and elsewhere. They won’t clear cut, clear out brush and leaves, allow logging or build in firebreaks. It leaves the area much more vulnerable to heat, lightning, wind, accidental or intentional fires to combust wildly. The fires are clearly not caused by oil use.

The Earth has had many lengthy warming and cooling periods throughout its history, long before humans and oil use could have had any effect.

Floods, storms, and droughts have been extensive throughout the Earth’s history. How else would it be covered by so many deserts and so many deep seas?

The English Channel was formed around 400,000 years ago because of massive floods.

The Sahara Desert used to be lush and green before it became a desert around 9,000 years ago. It has essentially been in a 9,000-year drought.

California has had decades long severe droughts before man or petroleum use could have had any effect. That is why it is covered by so much desert.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Police Heroism in Compton By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on September 16th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-police-heroism-in-compton/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=first

Last Friday, when we marked the 19th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, one thing that did not get enough attention was the sacrifice of the police, firefighters, and other first responders, hundreds of whom were killed that day. First responders is an apt term for them. They are the people who show up. They knowingly charge into the dangers from which most of us flee.

Then on Saturday came the atrocious attempted murder of two Los Angeles County deputy sheriffs in Compton, by an assassin who is still at large. Once again, what is striking is the heroism of the police. It is awesome to see, but it is routine heroism if, like me, you’ve spent lots of time around cops.

One of the deputies who was shot was Claudia Apolinar, a 31-year-old former librarian, the mother of a six-year-old boy and on the job for a year, saved her 24-year-old partner (who has not been publicly identified at this time). Deputy Apolinar had been shot in the jaw area and the upper torso, and was bleeding profusely. Yet, she had the presence of mind, and the courage under circumstances where she could not be sure the attack was over, to lend medical aid — apparently including application of a tourniquet to her fellow deputy.

What do we see on the other side of the equation? A sneak attack on two law-enforcement officers who were simply protecting a community rife with anti-police hostility. More of those precious “peaceful protesters” blocking the entrance to the nearby hospital to make it difficult for ambulances to get through, with some of the “peaceful protesters” chanting, “We hope they die!” And other locals celebrating the deadly ambush of police.

Pure evil.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Same Old, Same Old California Suicide By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on September 16th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/09/california-forest-fires-taxes-homelessness-same-old-fall-problems/#slide-1

Tech titans and Bay Area Bourbons grow rich, the middle class flees, forests burn.

F all is almost here in California. So we know the annual script.

A few ostracized voices will again warn in vain of the need to remove millions of dead trees withered from the 2013–14 drought and subsequent infestations, clean up tinderbox hillsides, and beef up the fire services. They will all be ignored as right-wing nuts or worse.Environmentalists will sneer that the new forestry sees fires as medicinal and natural, and global warming as inevitable because of “climate deniers.”

Late-summer fires will then consume our foothills, mountains, and forests. Long-dead trees from the drought will explode and send their pitch bombs to shower the forest with flames.

Lives, livelihoods, homes, and cabins will be lost — the lamentable collateral damage of our green future. Billions of dollars will go up in smoke. The billowing haze and ash will cloud and pollute the state for weeks if not months. Tens of thousands will be evacuated and their lives disrupted — and those are the lucky.

California’s deer-in-the headlight progressive officials will blame “climate change” for the conflagrations. The accompanying power brownouts, tardy responses, and official blame-gaming will follow as a prelude for still more solar-panel farms and still less forest management.

There could be a long answer to explain why California for years abandoned dead drought- and insect-stricken trees — over some 60 million of these withered, towering time bombs in their coastal and Sierra forests — to rot. But the short of it was that the kindling and tinderboxes were seen as perfect green mulch for flora and fauna.