FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

China and Trump Are Making Japan Nervous Tokyo is committed to the Pacific alliance. Can Washington get its act together? By Walter Russell Mead

Posted By on September 17th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-and-trump-are-making-japan-nervous-11568673770

People often say the center of gravity in American foreign policy has shifted to the Indo-Pacific. But what exactly does that mean for America’s alliances and priorities? Many Americans have been slow to understand the critical importance that Japan now plays in American strategy. Australia, Vietnam, Taiwan, Indonesia, Singapore and the rest all have roles to play, but without the economic, political and military assets Japan brings to the table, America’s Asia policy cannot succeed.

Fortunately for the U.S., Japan is committed. Japanese policy makers by and large understand that China’s rise is a global challenge perhaps on the scale of the Cold War—and that Japan is in the path of the storm. The country cannot defend its security and independence without a strong and effective alliance with the U.S.

The Trump presidency has in some ways fortified the relationship. The greater attention to the Indo-Pacific, the military buildup and the more aggressive approach to China on both trade and geopolitical issues are widely applauded in Japan.

Yet Mr. Trump has also caused sleepless nights in Tokyo. The president’s abandonment of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, his sometimes startling diplomacy with North Korea, his hard bargaining on trade and over Japan’s financial contributions to the U.S. military presence there have neither enhanced Japanese respect for American acumen nor convinced Tokyo that the U.S. is committed to the alliance.

If Mr. Trump is re-elected, policy makers here wonder, what would that mean for Japan? Would a second Trump term see a continuation of aggressive policies to reduce American trade deficits? Will the president withdraw U.S. troops from the country? What endgame does the administration have in mind for the meetings with Kim Jong Un ? And while broadly welcoming America’s newly hawkish approach to China, Japan also has important economic interests there. Will Mr. Trump’s decision-making on trade and China policy take Japanese concerns and priorities into account?

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Ruthie Blum Knesset elections 2.0: An absent electorate?

Posted By on September 17th, 2019

https://www.jns.org/opinion/knesset-elections-2-0-an-absent-electorate/

People have been literally lining up to leave, some have left long ago, and others are zapped of the inspiration to vote for what they believe will wind up in another impasse.

For the second time in five months, Israelis are limping their way to polling stations to elect the next government—or at least to attempt to do so, after the failure of the first round.

As was the case in April—when the only thing on which the diverse public could agree was that it would be necessary to hold one’s nose before casting a ballot—the stench of the campaign this month has caused national nausea. So much so, in fact, that thousands of eligible voters lined up on Monday at Ben-Gurion International Airport to flee the country.

Some of these absconders claim that they would rather lounge on a beach abroad than face a dilemma of bad choices at home. Others say that their vote won’t matter anyway since the polls are predicting a similar coalition impasse to that which led the current “re-do.” It’s an odd attitude, considering that this mass of truants constitute about three Knesset seats.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

The Global Warming Scare — The Perfect Trojan Horse For Tyranny

Posted By on September 17th, 2019

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/09/17/the-global-warming-scare-the-perfect-trojan-horse-for-tyranny/

If anyone doubts the reality of that headline, they either didn’t see the Democrats’ climate townhall, or they need to go back and watch it with an open mind. The alarmists’ objective, which fits perfectly with leftist and progressive politics, is to put themselves in charge of the world.

CNN’s climate townhall, a slog that lasted seven grueling hours, was a prohibition-fest. The candidates suggested banning nuclear energy, fracking, offshore drilling, conventional automobiles, all fossil fuels, even red meat, plastic straws, and babies. It devolved into a contest to see which Democratic presidential aspirant could propose the greatest volume of proscriptions.

And for what? Is our ever-changing climate an existential threat? Hardly. A slightly warmer planet “is not going to be the end of the world,” says Petteri Taalas, secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organization.

“The world is just becoming more challenging,” he told a Finnish magazine earlier this month. “In parts of the globe, living conditions are becoming worse, but people have survived in harsh conditions.”

While he’s neither a denier nor skeptic — he is probably best described as a “lukewarmer” — Taalas says he’s concerned about the fanatic elements that are even attacking the “climate experts” who are promoting the man-made global warming narrative. They, he says, “claim that we should be much more radical.” 

“They are doomsters and extremists; they make threats,” he said.

Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore tweeted that Taalas’ statement is “biggest crack in the alarmist narrative for a long time.”

“The meteorologists are real scientists and probably fed up with Gr

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Hezbollah, Operating Under Constraints, Hopes to Avoid War David Isaac

Posted By on September 17th, 2019

Two weeks ago, a third Lebanon war was narrowly averted. Hezbollah fired several anti-tank missiles at an IDF ambulance and missed. Both Hezbollah and Israel breathed a sigh of relief. The reasons for Israel’s reluctance for an all-out war have been widely discussed (Hezbollah’s missile arsenal, international opprobrium, the election cycle). Less understood are Hezbollah’s reservations. But the terror group, too, operates under constraints. It’s caught between Iran and Lebanon.

Hezbollah is a contractor. Its real headquarters isn’t Beirut but Tehran, to which it owes its very existence (Iran pulled together various Lebanese Shiite groups to form Hezbollah in the 1980s). Former U.S. ambassador to Lebanon Jeffrey Feltman calls Hezbollah “the most successful, and the most deadly, export of the 1979 Iranian revolution.”

While Hezbollah may be at its militarily strongest ever, with a missile arsenal estimated at 130,000 and troops battle-tested in Syria, it’s still no match for the Israel Defense Forces. And while Iran must be grating its teeth as it watches Israel knock out its proxy’s assets one after another, it’s not about to throw its most valuable chess piece into a game it can’t win.

Also, Hezbollah has money issues. That’s because its patron has money issues. According to Israeli newspaper Makor Rishon, Iran supplies Hezbollah with 70 percent of its operating budget, including small arms, a stream of military experts, and drone and precision missile technology. But with U.S. sanctions putting the squeeze on Iran, it has cut Hezbollah’s budget in half, forcing the group to slash terrorist salaries and reduce payments to its wounded and families of those killed in action.

Adding to Hezbollah’s money woes is the fact that its sponsor has taken on other “responsibilities.” Besides building a “land bridge” to the Mediterranean, Iran has expanded into Yemen, taking advantage of the opportunity offered by the Houthi insurgency. Iran supplies the rebellion with hundreds of millions of dollars, training, and advanced weaponry. The Iranian Crescent hopes to become a full moon, to paraphrase U.S. Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

In the Land of No Consequence, Bad Behavior Festers What’s the point of having political power if you can’t protect your own people from egregious attacks or punish lawbreakers? Julie Kelly

Posted By on September 17th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/09/16/in-the-land-of-no-consequence-bad-behavior-festers/

Another day, another whopper by the news media and their handlers in the Democratic Party.

Shortly after the New York Times published a “bombshell” article over the weekend that described more graphic, decades-old sexual misconduct allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the paper was forced to post a significant correction to its original story.

“An earlier version of this article, which was adapted from a forthcoming book, did not include one element of the book’s account regarding an assertion by a Yale classmate that friends of Brett Kavanaugh pushed his penis into the hand of a female student at a drunken dorm party,” the editors wrote. “The book reports that the female student declined to be interviewed and friends say that she does not recall the incident. That information has been added to the article.” The book, due for release this week, is authored by two Times reporters.

The correction was prompted not by the Times’ own fact-checking but after Mollie Hemingway, a senior editor at The Federalist and co-author of a book detailing the Kavanaugh debacle, identified the blatant error on Twitter early Sunday morning. (The Times has refused to review Hemingway’s book, which was released in July.)

But by the time “America’s newspaper of record” sheepishly admitted its (intentional) error, the damage had been done. Democratic lawmakers and presidential candidates called for Kavanaugh’s impeachment while celebrities and columnists wailed about the patriarchy, white privilege and, of course, the Bad Orange Man. Willfully ignorant zombies on the Left continue to regurgitate the falsehood.

Rewriting History

The timing of the Times’ latest fraud is notable for its coincidence: Three years ago and one year ago this month, Democrats, with full complicity from the media, unleashed two of the most divisive and fabricated campaigns against Trump World: The Trump-Russia collusion hoax and the Kavanaugh rape charges.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

New Women’s March Board Member Listens to Farrakhan, Defended Hamas, Hezbollah Attacks on Jews Tue Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on September 17th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2019/09/new-womens-march-board-member-listens-farrakhan-daniel-greenfield/

Easy come, easy go.

The Women’s March is replacing three inaugural board members who have been dogged by accusations of anti-Semitism, infighting and financial mismanagement — controversies some say have slowed the organization’s progress and diminished its impact.

Co-Chairs Bob Bland, Tamika Mallory and Linda Sarsour stepped down from the board July 15, though the organization has been slow to announce their departures. The Women’s March website continued to host their photos and titles as co-chairs through this week, when the group announced the board turnover.

A diverse cast of 16 new board members that includes three Jewish women, a transgender woman, a former legislator, two religious leaders and a member of the Oglala tribe of the Lakota nation will inherit an organization recovering from a failed attempt to trademark the Women’s March name and fractured relationships with local activist groups and the Jewish community.

Notice the vagueness. The organization does things. No people actually mentioned by name.

Mallory, Sarsour and Bland left in July, but we’re only being told this in September.

It goes without saying that the Women’s March has replaced anti-Israel and anti-Semitic figures with more of the same.

 Samia Assed, a Palestinian American activist from New Mexico who serves on the board of the Albuquerque Center for Peace and Justice and leads the organization’s New Mexico chapter.

Zahra Billoo, a civil rights attorney and executive director of the San Francisco Bay area chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Ginna Green, who runs the strategy arm of liberal Jewish group Bend the Arc and was among a group of Jewish women to lead the 2019 Women’s March on Washington.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Iran’s Attack on Saudi Arabia Reveals Our Foreign Policy Muddle We’re stuck in fossilized paradigms while our enemies grow stronger. Bruce Thornton

Posted By on September 17th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/09/our-foreign-policy-muddle-bruce-thornton/

Hard upon President Trump’s misguided outreach to the Taliban, rumors are circulating of a meeting with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani at the upcoming UN General Assembly meeting. Trump has also publicly stated he doesn’t want regime-change in Tehran. This “let’s make a deal” mentality, even with foes who have repeatedly declared and carried out their malign intentions against us, bespeaks more than just the president’s volatile personality and experience in Manhattan real estate.

Indeed, after the probably Iranian-engineered missile attacks on Saudi oil refineries that knocked out half its productive capacity, Trump’s gestures of outreach to the mullahs have now become even more dangerous, and made the need for long-overdue significant military action to punish and deter the mullahs more urgent,

Equally urgent is the revision of a foreign-policy paradigm many years in years in the making and mired in received wisdom. It took root after World War II ended the malign ideologies of fascism, Nazism, and Japanese racist militarism. Even though those murderous movements put the lie to the long dream of a global “harmony of interests” institutionalized in transnational treaties and supranational organizations, the West created the UN, NATO, the World Bank, and other global institutions that would help contain the Soviet Union while the global economy increased wealth and distributed it more widely. The collapse of the Soviet Union fed the illusion that the triumph of liberal democracy was assured, and that its last ideological rival was dispatched without another world war.

MEDIA, MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

The mother of all racial hoaxes By Willie Shields

Posted By on September 17th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/09/the_mother_of_all_racial_hoaxes.html

Tawana Brawley?  Jussie Smollet?  Guess again.

Until I previewed the incredible and shocking documentary by producer and director Joel Gilbert (Highway 61 Entertainment), The Trayvon Martin Hoax, I really did not know a serious hoax from a cheap Halloween disguise.

Imagine the temerity of prosecutors who would put an imposter on the witness stand and feed her the desired testimony in advance, knowingly suborning perjury.  Now imagine that the phony witness is a mildly retarded juvenile and her family was in on the subterfuge.  Now add to the mix that this occurred in one of the highest-profile court cases in the nation’s history.  It was a fraud on the Florida court and an attempt to wrongfully convict an innocent man of second-degree murder using unfair tactics, depriving George Zimmerman of due process.  Yes, that George Zimmerman.

From a front-row seat at the National Press Club I watched an incredible story unfold that should sicken any fair-minded concerned citizen.  The empty seats at the venue represented the mainstream Left media that once clamored for the conviction of George Zimmerman.  Now that the truth about Trayvon Martin is laid bare and the unlawful trial tactics employed are exposed for everyone to see, another veil is about to drop.  How will the mainstream media handle a story that exposes…well, the mainstream media?

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Assault on the Supreme Court The revival of smears against Kavanaugh is part of a campaign.

Posted By on September 17th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-assault-on-the-supreme-court-11568674522

Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh will apparently receive continuing education in the politics of personal destruction, and this weekend came another round of rumor-mill accusations over his conduct in college. It’s important to understand that this assault on the Justice is part of the left’s larger campaign against the legitimacy of the current Supreme Court and an independent judiciary.

By now readers have seen Democrats running for President calling for Justice Kavanaugh to be impeached, including Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and Beto O’Rourke. These Democrats know there is zero chance of a Republican Senate voting to remove Mr. Kavanaugh from office.

The attacks on Justice Kavanaugh are an attempt at intimidation to influence his opinions. But if Democrats fail in that, they want to portray conservative opinions of the current Court as illegitimate. Even Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota now says the Judiciary confirmation of Justice Kavanaugh was “a sham.” She knows better but so much for her self-styling as a “moderate.”

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

One Man in China By Jay Nordlinger

Posted By on September 17th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/one-man-in-china/

The Chinese state is committing monstrous crimes against the Uyghur minority. So monstrous are these crimes, it can be hard to take it all in. To focus the mind. The state has rounded up something like 1.5 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities and put them into internment camps, or reeducation camps, or concentration camps, or whatever you choose to call them. Many have been tortured to death.

I wrote a piece about the general issue last year (a piece that, while general, cites individual cases).

Here and now, I would like to call attention to one man. Stalin is reputed to have said, “The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of millions is a statistic.” Sakharov disliked talking about human rights in general. (His widow, Yelena Bonner, told me this.) He needed to talk about individuals and their predicaments.

Consider Tashpolat Teyip. Amnesty International has issued an Urgent Action notice in his behalf. Apparently, his execution is imminent. Teyip is a prominent intellectual and educator — a geographer and a former president of Xinjiang University. In 2017, he was arrested and “disappeared.” The authorities do not disclose his whereabouts today. The charge against him was “separatism” or “splittism,” an old charge in the “People’s Republic.”

To read about this case, go here (Radio Free Asia) and here (the Uyghur Human Rights Project).

Radio Free Asia quoted Teyip’s brother, Nury, who is in exile. “All of the intellectuals and outstanding scholars are being charged with groundless crimes, and just one of them is my brother. I call on the international community to act and save not only my brother, but my people as a whole.”