BOOKS, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Mao Zedong’s Traveling Circus David Hanna

Posted By on November 19th, 2019

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2019/11/mao-zedongs-travelling-circus/
Brian DeMare is a cultural historian and teacher of modern Chinese history at Tulane University in New Orleans. His first book, Mao’s Cultural Army (2015), found the cultural revolution “to be a profoundly theatrical event”. It was also a profoundly murderous event and DeMare’s second book,  Land Wars, this time on Mao’s agrarian revolution, depicts similar excesses but does not sufficiently condemn them for what they were: a politically self-serving democide of the Party’s potential opposition in the villages of rural China.

Coined by Professor R.J. Rummel, whose research provides voluminous statistics on governmental killing, the word democide involves acts of genocide, politicide and mass murder. By necessity, the self-protective despotism of communist one-party rule entailed all three of them. While DeMare’s narrative does little to emphasise this point explicitly, his recounting of the Maoist bastardry which savaged rural China will do much to support that contention.

DeMare foregrounds Mao’s intuitive conviction that the Chinese peasantry could make or break the revolution, and DeMare’s varied researches and narrative style make Land Wars a highly informative and readable account of how a communist mastermind artificially induced an agrarian revolution. “Historians,” writes DeMare, “must engage Mao’s narrative of revolution in order to understand what truly occurred in rural China as the Communists came to power.”

The central theme of Land Wars is that Mao’s peasant revolution was a fantasy, a fiction which the Party’s “work teams” were commanded to convert into reality. While DeMare effectively “deconstructs and questions Mao’s narrative”, he simultaneously and mysteriously manages to affirm its reification. DeMare provides abundant and horrifying evidence that China’s agrarian revolution is, as he says himself, “nothing to be lionised” and yet despite a painstaking litany of revolutionary deceit, human rights abuses, theft, slaughter and rapine, he finds the overall results unworthy of “wholesale denunciation”.

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Pompeo’s statement on settlements is a diplomatic turning point Caroline Glick

Posted By on November 19th, 2019

http://carolineglick.com/pompeos-statement-on-settlements-is-a-diplomatic-turning-p

Monday will long be remembered as a turning point in Middle East history.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s statement Monday that Israeli settlements are not illegal per se is the most significant shift in U.S. Middle East policy in the past generation. Jerusalem’s status as Israel’s capital has been a matter of U.S. law since 1996. There was little interest in Washington in recent years in pressuring Israel to withdraw from the Golan Heights. But the issue of the legality of Israeli settlements has been the defining issue of much of the international discourse on Israel for a generation.

In the vast majority of cases, the discourse has revolved around the widely held allegation – with no basis in actual law – that Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria are illegal. This allegation has served as the justification for a continuous barrage of condemnations of Israel in international arena and for anti-Israel legal verdicts in international courts including the International Court of Justice at the Hague in 2004 and the European Court of Justice last week. The unsupported allegation that Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria are illegal was also the basis for UN Security Council Resolution 2234 from 2016 and is a basis of the International Criminal Court’s ongoing probes of Israelis.

Pompeo made two revolutionary assertions in his statement. First, he said that “after carefully studying all sides of the legal debate,” like the Reagan administration before it, the Trump administration has concluded, “The establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not per se inconsistent with international law.”

Second, Pompeo noted, the near ubiquitousness of the false assertion that settlements are illegal has not advanced the prospects for peace. To the contrary, it has harmed the chances of getting to peace.

In his words, “calling the establishment of civilian settlements inconsistent with international law has not advanced the cause of peace.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Has The Iranian Empire Overreached? Shoshana Bryen 

Posted By on November 19th, 2019

https://www.dailywire.com/news/bryen-irans-imperial-overreach

Since December 2017, a sort of “rolling rebellion” has been occurring across Iran. It is bigger, deeper and stronger than the Green Revolution of 2009 and taking place in great measure outside Tehran, where the population is more diverse. There have been strikes of truckers, bazaar shopkeepers, teachers, farmers, and students. See #WhiteWednesday on Twitter to watch brave Iranian women go into the streets and take off their head coverings. Sometimes they dance. Sometimes their husbands, fathers, and brothers go with them. Sometimes they are arrested and sometimes they go to jail. Unfortunately, it took the suicide of a young woman facing seven years in prison for attending a soccer match to get the attention of the Western press.

In May of this year, widespread upheaval convulsed the country and thousands were arrested. This weekend, news of increasing protest in Iran comes from the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) — an organization with a mixed record of acceptance by the U.S. government, but with indisputable reach inside the country. According to NCRI’s Washington office, at least 65 cities have seen violent demonstrations, with people killed and injured by authorities. Videos, presumably from cell phones, show that pictures of the Ayatollah Khameini have been set on fire and demonstrators are chanting “Death to the Dictator” and “Death to Rouhani.” You can follow @AlirezaNader for more.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Denmark: Shootings, Car Torchings, Gang Violence by Judith Bergman

Posted By on November 19th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15037/denmark-shootings-gang-violence

“These numbers underline, first of all, that we are talking about a problem that has to do with ethnicity. The argument that this has nothing to do with foreigners has to be taken off the table.” — Trine Bramsen, legal affairs spokesperson for the Social Democrats, in Berlingske Tidende, August 24, 2017.

“In addition to a common fondness for crime, the culture of immigrant gangs is a cocktail of religion, clan affiliation, honor, shame and brotherhood… The harder and the more brutal [you are], the stronger you are, and then you create awareness of yourself and attract more [people]”. — Naser Khader, member of the Danish Parliament for the Conservative Party and co-founder of the Muslim reform movement, in a blog, “Immigrant gangs are also culture and religion” in Jyllands-Posten, November 2018.

“[T]he price for the failed integration [of immigrants] is [paid] by those with the least resources. It is the schools and neighborhoods of the working classes that are destroyed….” — Niels Jespersen, op-ed in Berlingske Tidende, October 1, 2019.

People with the means to move, such as Lunøe, will take their children and run to safer areas. What will happen to the many that are unable to do so and have no choice but to stay in the crosshairs of the shootings, the knives and the car-torchings?

On September 24, the US embassy in Denmark published a security alert. It warned US citizens in Copenhagen that:

“The Danish National Police urge individuals living in or visiting the areas of Nørrebro, Ishøj, and Hundige to exercise heightened awareness at all times due to a recent increase in gun violence. Copenhagen Police have instituted a stop-and-search zone in a large area covering Nørrebro. The ordinance – which will run through September 30 – allows police officers to stop and search anyone within the area without cause”.

The alert also encouraged US citizens to “keep a low profile”, “do not physically resist any robbery attempt” and “use caution when walking or driving at night”.

Police in Copenhagen eventually decided to extend the stop and search ordinance in parts of Copenhagen until October 14.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran’s Palestinian Proxies: United Against Israel by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on November 19th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15182/hamas-islamic-jihad-united

Hamas is hardly on its way to transforming itself into a non-violent movement that would uphold Israel’s right to exist. Its decision to refrain, this time, from pounding Israel with rockets is in no way a sign of moderation or pragmatism. Instead, the terror group needs a break from the fighting in order to prepare better for its main goal: to take down Israel down, once and for all.

Hamas leaders – like their PIJ counterparts – are motivated for their own well-being; the well-being of the two million Palestinians living in the Gaza Strip is a joke to them. Why else would PIJ endanger their people by forcing Israel to respond to the launching of hundreds of rockets toward Israeli civilian communities?

This is not a good guy/bad guy scenario. Instead, it is a temporary rift between two extremely bad guys, both of whom are wholly committed to destroying Israel, even if that means destroying their own people along the way as well.

Iran’s Palestinian proxies, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), after last week’s round of aggression towards Israel, are said to be at odds with each other. PIJ is reportedly disturbed that Hamas did not join in firing rockets at Israel in retaliation for Israel’s assassination of senior PIJ commander Bahaa Abu al-Ata in the Gaza Strip. PIJ, it seems, feels that Hamas left it out in the cold.

The two terror groups may not enjoy a full meeting of minds – as witnessed by Hamas’s current failure to bombard Israel with rockets, but these differences are unlikely to escalate into a major confrontation between Hamas and PIJ.

At the end of the day, both groups share the same strategy and goals, as well as the same “enemy” – Israel. They may disagree, but when it comes to waging jihad (holy war) and eliminating Israel, Hamas and PIJ always manage to find common ground.

PIJ’s disappointment in Hamas has nothing to do with Hamas’s recognizing Israel’s right to exist and laying down its weapons: Hamas has done neither. Rather, PIJ and its supporters are disappointed because Hamas chose to refrain, this time, from firing rockets into Israel when PIJ was busy doing just that last week.

Hamas, of course, remains committed to its ideology. Its charter, to which it also remains committed, states:

“There is no solution to the Palestinian problem expect by jihad. Palestine has been an Islamic Waqf throughout the generations and until the Day of Resurrection; no one can renounce it or part of it, or abandon it or part of it.”

Hamas’s charter also makes it clear that the terrorist group “views the other Islamic movements with respect and appreciation.” The charter goes on to explain that even when Hamas “differs from them in one aspect or another on one concept or another, it agrees with them on other points and understandings.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Purging the Pro-Lifers Democratic AGs bar anti-abortion candidates from any support.

Posted By on November 19th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/purging-the-pro-lifers-11574122435

Anti-abortion Democratic officeholders are about as rare as pandas, but many in their party’s leadership won’t be satisfied until they’re extinct.

On Monday the Democratic Attorneys General Association decreed that it will only give money and strategic help to AG candidates who “publicly commit” to supporting access to abortion. The message: If you’re a pro-life Democrat, or merely one with misgivings about the party’s opposition to any restriction on abortion, don’t run for attorney general. Or for any other office.

Mark this as one more step toward making America’s two main political parties into warring cultural camps with no room for individual conscience. American politics was healthier, and less polarized, when Democratic ranks included pro-lifers and some Republicans favored abortion rights. Compromise and tolerance were easier to come by.

HISTORY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Resistance: Czechoslovakia and America By David Lanza

Posted By on November 19th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/11/resistance_czechoslovakia_and_america.html

As we celebrate the 30th anniversary of the liberation of Eastern Europe, a growing portion of our own political system has become dedicated to totalitarianism. We can better understand our own socialist media culture when we revisit one Eastern Bloc country’s resistance to a notorious Soviet crackdown. In the Prague Spring of 1968, Soviet tanks invaded and reimposed full communist tyranny after Czechoslovakia had temporarily loosened the reins of Soviet control.  The Czechs responded heroically, practicing various forms of resistance and showing complete unity in a way that the United States of today could not match. (The full story of the Czech resistance has been famously recounted in Phil Kaufman’s film The Unbearable Lightness of Being.)

When the Soviet tanks suddenly rumbled through Prague and other Czech cities in August of 1968, the Czechs responded with unified action that would seem impossible in similar circumstances in the U.S. today. The Czech response of 1968 would put modern American institutions to shame.

Almost immediately, Czech radio and television stations began broadcasting unauthorized programs denouncing the invasion and presenting actual news to the Czechoslovakian people. These stations broadcast from undisclosed locations, moving around the country on a nightly basis to avoid detection. In today’s United States, could we count on our mainstream media to oppose a totalitarian crackdown? Would our media overcome their own totalitarian sympathies in order to transmit clandestine broadcasts?

As Czechoslovakian radio struggled to stay on the air, they used familiar voices to convey the news. The broadcasters could not identify themselves, but their voices were known to the listeners from years of service. The recognition of these trusted voices reassured the listeners that the broadcasts were authentic. Today in America, recognizable news anchor voices would have the opposite effect. Americans do not trust the network newscasts.  Instead, many Americans get their news from late night “comedians,” most of whom spend their airtime advocating the very policies that motivated the Soviet tanks in 1968.  Late-night comedians are expert at the kind of character assassination and “two minutes hate” that are used in countries where the law is enforced under the treads of tanks. They would not rally Americans in opposition to a totalitarian crackdown.

P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Lewis and Clark Explorer’s Home County Purges His Statue Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on November 19th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2019/11/lewis-and-clark-explorers-home-county-purges-his-daniel-greenfield/

The War on Statues began with easy Civil War targets and then quickly became what it had always been, a broad spectrum war on America.

I originally wrote this article quite a few years ago. It’s becoming truer every year.

Columbus is an easier target than America itself, though the left considers both colonialist vermin. Americans are less likely to protest over the banishment of Columbus to the politically correct gulag  than over the banishing America itself, which was named after another one of those colonialist explorers, Amerigo Vespucci. First they came for Columbus Day and then for the Fourth of July.

The battles being fought over Columbus Day foreshadow the battles to be fought over the Fourth of July. As Columbus Day joins the list of banned holidays in more cities, one day there may not be a Fourth of July, just a day of Native Resistance to remember the atrocities of the colonists with PBS documentaries comparing George Washington to Hitler.

A nation’s mythology, its paragons and heroes, its founding legends and great deeds, are its soul. To replace them with another culture’s perspective on its history is to kill that soul.

That is the ultimate goal of political correctness, to kill America’s soul

And now it’s time for more soul-killing.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Focus Group Impeachment Farce Bribery . . . the latest baseless charge. Joseph Klein

Posted By on November 19th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/11/focus-group-impeachment-farce-joseph-klein/

The Democrats are engaging in focus group impeachment proceedings. Led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, they are now accusing President Trump of “bribery,” an impeachable offense specifically identified as such in Article III, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution.

“The devastating testimony corroborated evidence of bribery uncovered in the inquiry, and that the president abused his power and violated his oath by threatening to withhold military aid and a White House meeting in exchange for an investigation into his political rival — a clear attempt by the president to give himself an advantage in the 2020 election,” Speaker Pelosi told reporters. The Democrats’ switch from using the more esoteric Latin term “quid pro quo” came after they learned from focus groups organized by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in key battleground states that the charge of bribery resonated more with “ordinary” Americans. Democrat House Intelligence Committee member Jim Himes explained that “it’s probably best not to use Latin words.” Too confusing for folks living in the heartland, the Democrat elitists believe.

Looking to focus groups to validate the Democrats’ “bribery” charge against the president shows how desperate they are in trying to move vast numbers of undecided voters in their direction. They are counting on the public testimony of witnesses and shouting “bribery” over and over again from the rooftops to make their case. But, as the New York Times reported, “after hours of testimony, thousands of news reports and days of streaming headlines, one thing was clear: A lot of Americans weren’t listening.” And for those who are listening, they are deluged with competing narratives. The Democrats are contaminating public discourse by continuously leveling super-charged, unsubstantiated accusations against President Trump that now include bribery. Then they bristle when he fights back.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel: World Leader in Technology, Diversity and Human Development Visiting a miracle nation that embraces life. Christine Douglass-Williams

Posted By on November 19th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/11/israel-world-leader-tech-diversity-human-frontpagemagcom/

Reprinted From World Net Daily.

With the aim of improving accuracy in reporting about Israel, the Israeli government press office hosted Christian Media Summit 2019 from Nov. 3-6. It kicked off at the Friends of Zion Museum, featuring speeches by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Reuven Rivlin.

As a Summit delegate, I represented the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem-Canada. Most striking to me amid the pomp-and-ceremony, impressive lectures and historic sites was Israel’s embrace of life, which was evident in the fabric of its culture.

Israel is like a world unto itself and the epitome of diversity, despite the tainting of the word “diversity” by progressives. Israel’s Aliyah process of the return of Jews from the four corners of the earth, including Africa, China and India, makes its diversity obvious. One can also observe in a single day the catering to both devout Christian evangelicals and gay party seekers, the latter of whom must hide for their own safety in surrounding Islamic lands.

From Old Testament stories to the Crusades to the Ottoman Empire, and ongoing efforts to obliterate it, Israel has seen it all and has bloomed in adversity. But beneath Israel’s overt intrigue is her soul, which shines from her love of life, her appreciation of human worth and nurturing of it, contrary to the grim public image foisted upon her during decades of wrangling with a “peace process” through which her enemies have sought her delegitimization and dissolution. From the day Israel was born on May 14, 1948, she has fought for her life. Her first breath was already frail as she emerged from a Holocaust. Yet nothing has impeded her pursuits of life and liberty.