FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Obama’s War is Upon Us How the ex-Radical-in-Chief created a security vacuum that Iran rushed to fill. Kenneth R. Timmerman

Posted By on December 13th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272206/obamas-war-upon-us-kenneth-r-timmerman

Donald Trump has a name for everything and everyone, from Crooked Hillary to Little Rocket Man, who for a time became his best friend. Will he call the next region-wide conflagration in the Middle East, when it breaks out, Obama’s War?

If he hasn’t thought of that already, he should start considering it now. Because the catastrophic policies of our former president have emboldened the Islamic state of Iran and enabled it to threaten the United States and our allies militarily in ways never before possible.

When Obama took office in January 2009, he inherited a strong U.S. military and diplomatic posture across the Middle East.

The U.S.-Israel strategic relationship was at its peak, with the Bush White House openly supporting Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s latest attempt to stop Hamas terror in Gaza.

The U.S. enjoyed a close relationship with a secular Turkey, that itself had strong ties to Israel.

Egypt was at peace, Qaddafi had come into the Western camp and abandoned terrorism and its nuclear weapons program, and the insurgency in Iraq had been crushed.

Al Qaeda truly was “on the run,” while Iran was beginning to feel the crunch of international sanctions over its previously covert nuclear weapons program.

Obama succeeded in reversing every one of these strong U.S. positions, treating Islamic Iran as a friend and Israel as an enemy while promoting the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and its terrorist spawn.

And while President Trump has taken great strides to reverse the enormous damage to our strategic posture Obama caused, fighting his way out of the spider’s web of Iran deal restrictions Obama enacted against the United States has taken nearly two years, time the Iranian regime has put to good use.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

How America Helps Hezbollah: Shoshana Bryen

Posted By on December 13th, 2018

https://www.jns.org/opinion/how-america-helps-hezbollah/

It is well understood now that the terror organization Hezbollah built tunnels from Lebanese territory into northern Israel; the intention was infiltration. It turns out, however, that Israel Defense Forces’ intelligence had been tracking them and last week entered southern Lebanon to destroy them. (You can watch the IDF video of a Hezbollah member actually finding the camera in a tunnel before it blows up.) The Israeli operation—“Operation Northern Shield”—will likely not cause a major cross-border war because Iranian is not prepared to lose the assets it put there to the Israel Air Force.

What appears less understood is how the United States—by its financial and training support of the government of Lebanon and the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF)—is providing resources that allow Hezbollah to pursue its deadly machinations on the border.

Not deliberately, of course, and not directly. The Trump administration strongly supported Israel’s decision to strike Hezbollah. Even the Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said in a press briefing, “We do not question Israel’s right to ensure its national security, including by preventing anyone from entering the country.”

Where this become hazy is when both the United States and Russia—and the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council—try to make a distinction between Hezbollah the terror organization and Hezbollah the government of Lebanon. The Russian spokesperson said, “We hope that no actions taken … will be in conflict with U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701,” and Moscow hopes the U.N. Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) would “fulfill its monitoring mission and will not allow any violations.” That last bit was public window-dressing. Every inch of southern Lebanon is a well-known violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701’s 2006 demand that UNIFIL ensure:

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Brexit: Now What? by David Brown

Posted By on December 13th, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13406/brexit-theresa-may

Ardent Brexiteers are increasingly despondent. Many had hoped for a vote of no confidence in Theresa May with a strong Leave-supporting leader installed in her place, prepared to take the United Kingdom out of the untransparent, unaccountable and unable-to-be-voted-out EU.

Instead, Theresa May’s “deal” not to Leave the EU makes the U.K. a vassal state, locked into the EU but without a voice. Leave voters did not vote for a “deal”. They voted to take back the Britain’s sovereignty.

MPs will be torn. The Establishment does not want a no-deal Brexit…. But their constituents — the people who voted them to be their voice in Parliament – do.

Politicians voting to Remain in the U.K. would be doing it in flamboyant disregard of the will of the people — the very people they need to be re-elected.

Theresa May has survived a no confidence vote in the British Parliament. She says she now has a renewed mission; “delivering the Brexit people voted for, bringing the country back together and building a country that works for everyone”.

Whether she has any troops willing to follow her charge is unclear.

P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

MARK STEYN ON THINGS YOU CAN NO LONGER SAY OR SING

Posted By on December 12th, 2018

https://www.steynonline.com/9074/baby-it-cold-in-the-far-east-without-a-sheep

Things you can no longer say:

I was in the big city earlier this week, and so saw for the first time in ages a physical copy of The New York Times. It contained an interview with James Dyson, the brilliant re-inventor of vacuum cleaners and much else. The Times felt obliged to preface Sir James’ words with a health warning for the easily triggered:

In this interview, Mr. Dyson expressed antiquated and at times offensive views on “racial differences” and Japanese culture. He also referred to growth markets in Asia as the “Far East.”

He used the term “Far East”!!! What the hell was he thinking?????? Good thing he has no plans to run for public office or host a cable show. The old British Foreign Office joke about the “Near East” (which is more generally referred to as the Middle East) is that they call it the Near East because it’s always nearer than you think. But start referring to the Far East and the instant vaporization of your entire career is a lot nearer than you think.

“Far East” is, I suppose, literally Eurocentric. But then so is “Midwest”. Perhaps the Times now finds any point of view or perspective “offensive”. Perhaps it is time to ban such “antiquated” concepts as north, south, east and west – and indeed the very compass. The abolition of instruments of navigation would seem a necessary condition for the future we’re sailing to.

~In American schools, they take the “separation of church and state” so seriously they ban candy canes, reindeer and red-and-green color combinations. By contrast, in Scotland the state schools still perform nativity plays before Christmas, and little Alfie Cox found himself cast as a shepherd. So his mum ordered the excited five-year-old a costume from Amazon, and was delighted upon its arrival to find that Jeff Bezos had been generous enough to throw in a free blow-up sheep:

But the mom of two was puzzled when a teacher told Alfie to take the sheep home — until she blew it up and found it had a huge hole in its bottom as well as red lips and eyelashes.

Cox, 46, found the exact same sheep was on sale as a “stag night bonkin’ sheep” and is now devising a way to steal it away from unaware Alfie.

Is Jeff Bezos sending free blow-up sheep to all Amazon’s customers this Christmas? Or only five-year-old Scottish boys?

On the other hand, perhaps Jennifer Sinclair, the principal at Elkhorn Elementary School in Nebraska so worried about “cultural sensitivity” that she bans reindeer, might find it more inclusive simply to mandate the reindeer has to have red lips and “a huge hole in its bottom”.

BOOKS Comments turned off

“Not All Dead White Men”—A Review written by Jaspreet Singh Boparai

Posted By on December 12th, 2018

https://quillette.com/2018/12/11/not-all-dead

A review of Not All Dead White Men: Classics and Misogyny in the Digital Age, by Donna Zuckerberg. Harvard University Press, October 8, 2018 (288 pages).

Donna Zuckerberg holds a PhD in Classics from Princeton University. Her older brother, Mark Zuckerberg, is the co-founder of Facebook. Dr Zuckerberg has arguably become the most influential scholar of Greek and Latin literature in America, thanks to Eidolon, the online journal which she founded in 2015.

Outside university departments of Classics, Eidolon remains obscure. It emphasises Greek and Roman culture in the modern world, frequently in relation to some aspect of popular culture. Articles tend to be written in an informal, ‘accessible’ style; though few obviously appeal to readers who are not aspiring academics or junior scholars. Eidolon accurately reflects the orthodoxy prevailing in contemporary universities: this is what you have to say, and how you should sound, if you want an academic job.

The best-known Eidolon article remains Dr Zuckerberg’s “How to Be A Good Classicist Under A Bad Emperor,” which has been discussed before in Quillette . Dr Zuckerberg insists that the political movement known as the “Alt-Right” poses a credible threat to classical studies (not to mention the rest of America), and thus ought to be strategically resisted by all principled scholars, teachers and students.

In the concluding chapter to her new book Not All Dead White Men: Classics and Misogyny in the Digital Age, Dr Zuckerberg details how she has been nastily attacked by online trolls for her explicitly ‘activist’ approach to classical studies in Eidolon, receiving “hundreds of anti-Semitic tweets and e-mails”, some of which are described in gruesome detail. Her nemesis Daryush Valizadeh, better known as the blogger and “Pick-Up Artist” “Roosh V”,

bragged to his followers that he knew where I and my family lived, but argued that no physical violence was necessary because he had already raped my mind.

It is curious to note just how far Dr Zuckerberg’s work has been shaped by her reactions to avowed personal enemies: Valizadeh turns out to be the most frequently-discussed author in Not All Dead White Men, with twenty-four works cited in the bibliography, and far more entries in the index than any classical writer.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Islam’s Useful Idiots, Cowards and Quislings

Posted By on December 12th, 2018

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2018/12/islams-useful-idiots-cowards-and-quislings/

An Islamist ‘known to police’ rampaged through Bourke Street and left a good man dead. Yesterday in Strasbourg one of his co-religionists did likewise and took many more lives. These outrages are now so common they flicker for a moment in the headlines then vanish and are gone. What do our leaders do? Frisk old ladies at airports and say nary a word against Islam.

It used to be called the Silly Season, now it has turned more into the season of foreboding with the inevitable bloody uptick. The threat of terror attacks across the Western world is the gift from fundamentalist Islam, feckless politicians and a Left intent on diversity at any cost. Today’s atrocity is the terror attack in Strasbourg, France, where three people are confirmed shot dead and numerous injured at a Christmas market. The city is in lockdown and the police are hunting the gunman who was, predictably and unsurprisingly, known to them and on a terrorist watch list. Yet nothing was done until he acted.

All too many people have become so blasé (to use a French word) about these events that Islamist atrocities are the expected, if not fully accepted, normal. The media don’t even report many of the more “minor incidents” such as the stabbing of three women at a train station in the French city of Mulhouse only two days ago. The attacker in that case was captured and, fortunately, none of the victims died. The official story, as is so often the situation now, is that the attacker was suffering from a “mental disorder”. Is anyone even surprised by that explanation anymore?

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Christmas Market Gunman Yelled ‘Allahu Akbar’ Before Opening Fire By Jack Crowe

Posted By on December 12th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/christmas-market-gunman-yelled-allahu-akbar-before-opening-fire/

The gunman who killed two and critically wounded seven Tuesday evening at a Christmas market in Strasbourg, France was motivated by Islamic extremism, officials announced Wednesday.

Rémy Heitz, the Paris prosecutor who specializes in terrorism cases, said Wednesday that multiple witnesses heard the man shout “Allahu Akbar” — an Arabic phrase meaning “God is Great” — before opening fire. The attacker, who remains at large, has a criminal record and has served time in prison, according to officials.

“He had been incarcerated multiple times and was known to the prison administration for his radicalization and his proselytizing attitude,” Heitz said of the gunman, a Strasbourg native who has been identified only as Chérif C., 29.

Chérif is one of more than 20,000 individuals identified by French authorities as a potential terror threat, Heitz said. The 29-year-old was flagged with a so-called “S-file,” which stands for La Sûreté de l’État, or security of the state — a designation that doesn’t indicate someone is an imminent threat, but rather that the individual should be monitored.

“The S File can target individuals who aren’t very dangerous, and it is used only to watch their movements and trips around the country,” Mr. Nuñez said. “It isn’t a criterion of dangerousness.”

Police raided Cherif’s home Tuesday morning, just hours before the attack, in an unrelated murder investigation and found a rifle, ammunition, several knives and a grenade. While he had never been convicted on terrorism-related charges, Cerif has an extensive criminal record comprised of 27 convictions for a number of crimes, including several assaults and robberies.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The Socialist, the Jihadi, and the Tooth Fairy by Linda Goudsmit

Posted By on December 12th, 2018

http://goudsmit.pundicity.com/21862/the-socialist-the-jihadi-and-the-tooth-fairy

What do socialists and jihadis have in common? They both still believe in the tooth fairy. This is not funny.

Like most groups, socialists and jihadis are divided into leaders and followers. First, we will discuss the leaders.

Socialist leaders promise social justice and income equality to their followers in this life. Jihadi leaders promise 72 virgins to their suicide bombers in the next life. Leadership promises specifically address the particular desires of their adherents – the leaders aren’t stupid – they are manipulative and extremely successful at luring their believers with false promises.

The leadership disingenuously focuses on the promised benefits to their followers while the actual benefits to themselves are ignored. Any cursory study of history exposes the deceitfulness of the leadership’s promises and shows how reality benefits the ruling elite at the expense of the people. So, why do socialists and jihadis still believe their leaders? Because like children they still believe in the tooth fairy. I will explain.

The people of Cuba, Venezuela, Guatemala, and Honduras believed the promises of social justice and income equality made by their scheming socialist leaders. The people were lied to and are now living the equality of suffering and scarcity that socialism actually provides. Socialism necessarily fails because there is no incentive to be productive and eventually you run out of other people’s money.

The ruling elite in socialist countries suffer no such deprivation and the jihadi leadership worldwide remains alive and well – only their duped sycophants end up dead.

The population invasion at our southern border threatens the economic security and homeland security of the United States. Unregulated unvetted mass immigration will bankrupt our welfare system and simultaneously allow criminals and jihadis to enter the country – both create massive chaos.

The border wall is a defense against illegal entry into the United States. So, why would any politician reject it?

Leftist politicians who support socialism reject the border wall because they want a flood of illegal immigrants in the country to vote Democrat and keep them in power. Leftist politicians reject voter ID and any investigation into voter fraud that could expose illegal voting and/or deny voting rights to their followers – they sacrifice national security for their own job security. Their latest scheme is ballot harvesting.

Ballot harvesting is when organized workers or volunteers pick up absentee ballots and drop them off at a polling place or election office. There is absolutely nothing to safeguard the integrity of the ballots or to insure that all votes are delivered. Ballot harvesting is a powerful election-stealing tool that should be eliminated in favor of mailing in sealed signed ballots. If a voter cannot manage the mailing then that voter’s ballot will not count – period.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Check Out The Incompetent PR Response To The Expose On The Women’s March’s Anti-Semitism A Women’s March PR flack tried to spin Tablet Magazine’s expose detailing anti-Semitism and shady financial practices within the organization. She failed. Badly. By Bre Payton

Posted By on December 12th, 2018

http://thefederalist.com/2018/12/12/check-incompetent-pr-response-expose-womens-marchs-anti-semitism/

Tablet Magazine published a massive expose Monday detailing the anti-Semitic origins of the Women’s March and its shady financial practices. Two days later, many of the reporters who shared the Tablet article on Twitter received an e-mail from Inarú Meléndez of Megaphone Strategies, a nonprofit social justice media firm that lists the Women’s March as a client on its website.

According to sources whose accounts were published in the aforementioned article, Women’s March co-chairs Carmen Perez and Tamika Mallory made anti-Semitic remarks at one of the organization’s initial meetings back in 2016. The story also reported that the organization had never picked a Jewish woman to sit on its board and that it excluded anti-Semitism from its unity principles. Tablet also detailed problems with the organization’s financial practices, which have also been reported by The Daily Beast.

In an e-mail sent to The Federalist’s Sean Davis and numerous others, Meléndez claims that “Tablet is in the process or making several corrections to the story,” and offered to share a list of these supposed “fact checks” — but only if Davis would agree to meet a set of demands.

“Before we share the fact-check: Can you confirm that what I am sending you is off the record, and will not be published?” Meléndez writes. “If you are interested in publishing any parts of the fact-checks below that you will contact us first to secure our agreement? You will let us know if you intend to delete your tweet pushing an article that includes sources/allegations, which were not vetted properly and in line with journalistic ethics? Once I receive your reply, I’ll send over the corrections. Please note that we are sending this to a number of reporters who shared this article.”

An identical e-mail was sent to a number of other reporters who also shared the story.

Asking a reporter from a different news outlet to agree to a list of demands before sharing a supposed fact check is bizarre. If Tablet Magazine actually got some facts wrong in its story, Megaphone should take that up with the magazine itself and ask that a correction be issued at the top of the original story. Asking that these fact checks be kept off-the-record also makes no sense. If there truly are factual errors in the story, wouldn’t Megaphone Strategies want this to be made known far and wide? Why the secrecy?

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Green Madness The doctrine of deep ecology declares that we must keep our hands off the divine order of nature—even if it kills us. Jerry Weinberger

Posted By on December 12th, 2018

https://www.city-journal.org/climate-change-madness

During his time in the White House, Barack Obama, along with Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry, and other administration officials, asserted that man-made climate change was the greatest threat to humanity’s future—not just one threat among others, or a pretty big one, but the greatest. As recent Pew research makes clear, far more Americans on the political left think that climate change is a big deal than do those on the right, and since the Left is typically more secular and the Right more religious, we see a spiritual paradox: on the environment, those on the left are the true (if pagan) believers, while those on the right are the dogmatic “atheists” (the whole climate thing is just an exaggerated crisis cooked up by liberal elites and the fake media).

Conservative skepticism notwithstanding, though, climate-change ideologues have more or less shaped public debate on the issue—successfully branding their opposition as “climate deniers.” And by now, nearly 50 years after the first Earth Day, a broad-ranging and increasingly draconian ecological consciousness has become pervasive in American life, extending far beyond climate issues. Go to the supermarket, for example, or look inside your pantry. You’ll find that hundreds of items in bags and cans have certifications of “Non-GMO.” That means that they contain no genetically modified organisms. In recent years, more than 27,000 products have been so certified (by the Non-GMO Project), with the purpose of putting our minds at ease that what we’re about to eat is not genetically modified and will not sicken or kill us or make us sprout a third arm. Non-GMO fanatics and millions of consumers call these forbidden fruits “Frankenfood.” Never mind that nobody has been proved to have been harmed or killed by GMOs. (That can’t be said for organic spinach or bean sprouts.) And never mind that for 25 years, almost all corn, cotton, and soybeans grown in the United States have been genetically modified, with nobody sickened or dead or sporting an extra limb. So why the intransigence of the activists and the gullibility of so many consumers?

The issue here is not the inevitable one of managing risk and rewards in modern life. It’s perfectly reasonable to wonder whether plants genetically modified to withstand the herbicide Roundup, say, might cause more of the poison to be used and thus entail some cost or harm. The giveaway term is the reference to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The real issue, that is, is not primarily technical or scientific; it’s moral and spiritual. With genetic engineering, in this view, we’re trying to play God and invariably upsetting the natural order of things. Put differently, and in the terms of the radical ecologist David Graber, we’re the fallen human parasite going after holy Mother Nature.