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The Bad Iranian Deal Was Always Going to Get Worse By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on June 13th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/06/iran-nuclear-deal-disaster-from-the-start/

The more we learn about it — as Iranian and Obama-administration deceptions are uncovered — the more we know it was a disaster from the start.

When Donald Trump withdrew from the so-called Iran deal in early May, almost all conventional wisdom in Washington was aghast.

The Left thought nullification would fast-track Iranian proliferation, incite more Iranian terrorism and adventurism, estrange our allies, and alienate a possible new friend.

Many on the conservative side (aside from Never Trumpers who are against anything Trump is for, including their own prior policies) thought it would have been wiser to back out slowly, or at least to have waited first for the duplicitous Iranians to get caught in clear violations, or to coordinate a joint withdrawal with the Europeans.

Few of these critics ever quite understood that the deal was already a stinking corpse, long overdue for burial. Iranian cunning and the strategic thinking about the asymmetrical deal had always aimed at the following trajectory:

Ostensibly postpone a bomb now, at a time when the regime was facing growing unrest and near bankruptcy from sanctions — and thus was in no position anyway to build an arsenal of bombs and missiles.

Keep occasionally cheating to ensure the apparatus for bomb-making was successfully hibernated — and therefore easily restarted at a future date.

Enjoy hundreds of billions of dollars in new commercial income over the next ten to 15 years to quiet domestic unrest, and to bank enough cash to go fully nuclear in the future.

Forge the so-called Shiite Crescent to the Mediterranean, by dominating Bashir al-Assad’s weak Syria, exploring anti-Sunni possibilities in Yemen, and bulking up Hezbollah’s Lebanon, while stocking a huge arsenal of preemptive missiles based near Israel. Hope that Iran’s regional strategic stature would only improve over the next decade.

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Don and the Dictator How should the media react to Trump’s North Korea deal?

Posted By on June 13th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/don-and-the-dictator-1528831761

President Donald Trump seems to have given North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong Un a media coup and not received much in return—at least not yet. The joint statement signed by the U.S. President and North Korea’s leading thug says that the two countries will seek a lasting peace and the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. Mr. Trump says he received further disarmament promises beyond the written ones and the world will eventually find out if Mr. Kim fulfills them. In short, the Trump-Kim deal is precisely the kind of vague and well-meaning gesture in foreign affairs that the political left in the U.S. should love.

Tradition holds that such agreements are met with at least respectful coverage in the American media. For example, early in President Bill Clinton’s term the U.S. reached a similar agreement with North Korea’s communist dictatorship.

Twenty-five years ago today, the New York Times published an editorial called, “To Assure a Nuclear-Free Korea.” Given that Mr. Trump was in Singapore this week trying to persuade North Korea to dismantle its nuclear weapons program, it’s fair to say that the hopes invested by Times folk in the Clinton deal were not exactly realized. But back in 1993, the newspaper’s editorial board expressed admiration for officials in both the American and North Korean governments :

Deft diplomacy by the Clinton Administration has coaxed North Korea back from the brink. The North had threatened to bolt from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and build nuclear arms. It will now allow routine international inspections of its nuclear sites.

Gaining access to its nuclear waste sites will require further negotiation; that could provide more evidence of how much plutonium North Korea might already have produced. But the resumption of routine inspections is a critical first step toward assuring that the Korean Peninsula is truly nuclear-free.

The agreement is a tribute to sensible officials in Pyongyang who chose the path to prosperity over the road to ruin. It’s also a tribute to cool heads in Washington who refused to overreact to North Korea’s bizarre bargaining behavior.

Along with the tip of the cap to the “sensible officials in Pyongyang,” the Times went on to describe U.S. military exercises with our friends in democratic South Korea as “needlessly provocative.” Of course time would reveal that Washington’s cool heads had wildly underreacted. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Promises, Nuclear Promises Trump says he can tell Kim has changed, but the evidence is scant.

Posted By on June 13th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/promises-nuclear-promises-1528836251

Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un both received what they most wanted from their one-day summit in Singapore on Tuesday: Images of the two men shaking hands, talking across the table and getting along famously. Whether this photo-op summitry achieved anything beyond the bonhomie is a lot less clear.

In Mr. Trump’s telling, his willingness to engage in personal diplomacy has persuaded the young Kim to abandon the nuclear-weapons program that he and his forbears have spent decades building. Mr. Trump gave Kim the legitimacy of equal billing on the world stage, but the risk was worth the gamble and has paid off in an historic change of heart.

“Chairman Kim and I just signed a joint statement in which he reaffirmed his ‘unwavering commitment to complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,’” Mr. Trump told the press after the summit. “We also agreed to vigorous negotiations to implement the agreement as soon as possible. And he [Kim] wants to do that. This isn’t the past. This isn’t another administration that never got it started and therefore never got it done.”

In this telling, the two leaders have mapped out a non-nuclear future, Mr. Kim has agreed to a radical change in policy, and all that’s left is for the two sides to work out the details. Peace is at hand.

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When Reagan Went to the Wall: A Berlin-Singapore Nexus? By Carl M. Cannon

Posted By on June 13th, 2018

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/06/12/when_reagan_went_to_the_wall_a_berlin-singapore_nexus_137259.html

The unlikely meeting between President Donald J. Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un has ended amid handshakes, expressions of goodwill, and hopes — but no proof — that something good has begun.

Thirty-one years ago today, a momentous speech in another part of the world lit another flame of possibility. The setting was Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, the very symbol of Europe’s Cold War division between the West and the Soviet-controlled “satellite” states.

As is true regarding Trump’s Korean gambit, those in the U.S. foreign policy establishment were skeptical of President Reagan’s intentions on his 1987 trip to Germany. At a delicate point in the long dance between the two superpowers, they didn’t want Reagan antagonizing Soviet leaders with bellicose language. Infighting broke out among White House aides. But the boss wasn’t dissuaded by the experts. “The boys at State are going to kill me for this,” Reagan told deputy White House chief of staff Kenneth Duberstein, “but it’s the right thing to do.”

* * *

When Ronald Reagan arrived in Berlin on June 12, 1987, relations between Washington and Moscow had progressed far past the “evil empire” rhetoric of Reagan’s first term. Although he received little credit for it either in the U.S. or abroad, Reagan had long been fixated on reducing the world’s nuclear arsenals. Kremlin leaders were receptive to this idea, but the sticking point had always been their aversion to allowing inspectors inside the Soviet Union to verify implementation of arms reduction agreements.

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Byron York: On North Korea, a president who tried something different

Posted By on June 13th, 2018

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/byron-york-trump-tried-something-different-north-korea-summit

Reaction to President Trump’s summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un has broken down along the usual Trump-anti-Trump divisions. The truth is, it will take a while before it’s clear whether the summit achieved anything or not.

But give the president credit for trying a new approach to an intractable problem.

Trump had no electoral mandate on North Korea. Despite the oversized role it has played in his presidency, the issue of Kim did not come up much in the 2016 campaign. It was rarely discussed in the GOP primary debates and wasn’t a factor in the Trump-Clinton general election debates.

Even when it did come up, the discussion could be pretty unedifying, as when rival GOP candidate Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., compared candidate Trump to Kim. “You have a lunatic in North Korea trying to get access to nuclear weapons,” Rubio said in February 2016. “We have a lunatic in America trying to get hold of them, too.”

To the extent that he had a position on North Korea, Trump’s was that he would be willing to hold direct negotiations with Kim. While he said he would not travel to North Korea to see Kim, and would not honor him with a White House dinner, Trump made clear he saw benefit in talking to the North Korean leader.

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Gaza: The inconvenient truth the Arabs fear most Victor Sharpe

Posted By on June 13th, 2018

http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/sharpe

Scan the internet, along with the print and broadcast media, and you would be convinced by the sheer volume of fake news about Gaza that Israel occupies it and treats its Arab population with utmost cruelty. It is abase lie and another enormous Arab scam.

Of course, the fact that the so-called Disengagement Plan took place in 2005 is hidden or hardly mentioned at all. During that lamentable decision, Israel unilaterally demolished the 25 Jewish villages and farms – along with the schools and synagogues – that graced the territory, forced the Jewish villagers to abandon their homes and become refugees in Israel, and handed over control of Gaza to the Palestinian Authority.

That suicidal Israeli decision was taken by then Israel Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, in the naïve hope that Israel’s hand of peace would be reciprocated by the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians. It has, however, become an enormous self-inflicted Israeli tragedy as unremitting terror from Hamas occupied Gaza has reached unprecedented levels.

And it is conveniently ignored by the same fake news outlets that a bloody coup against the PA subsequently occurred when the Muslim Brotherhood’s Hamas terror branch brutally expelled the regime of Mahmoud Abbas and his own Fatah terror organization. Hamas is now the occupier of Gaza, employing a despotic reign of terror on both its population and against the Israeli villages and towns that border the Gaza Strip.

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WHAT’S AT STAKE: HERBERT LONDON

Posted By on June 13th, 2018

First, President Trump is committed to a North Korea without nuclear weapons, albeit some backsliding on the matter may be in the discussion, particularly the time-table.

Second, North Korea claims a treaty with South Korea ending the six decades of hostility could be attained. The question is at what cost.

Third, North Korea has demanded a nuclear-free Korean peninsula which probably means the removal of the U.S. nuclear umbrella from South Korea and beyond.

Fourth, there are regional considerations at play including the role the U.S. will have in offering modest protection to nations in the Pacific basin.

Fifth, the North Koreans are demanding the lifting of sanctions before any serious discussion of nukes can take place.

Sixth, economic development in the North is a prerequisite for these negotiations. But the other side of the equations remains murky. What is North Korea prepared to do in order to satisfy their rivals on the other side of the DMZ?

Seventh, Kim Jung-un has demanded security for his nation and himself. However, if genuine reform occurs, the likelihood of regime change increases. Can Kim have it both ways?

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The Humanitarian Hoax of “Convenient” Google Chromebook Education: Killing America With Kindness – hoax 27 by Linda Goudsmit

Posted By on June 13th, 2018

http://goudsmit.pundicity.com/21275/the-humanitarian-hoax-of-convenient-google
http://lindagoudsmit.com

The Humanitarian Hoax is a deliberate and deceitful tactic of presenting a destructive policy as altruistic. The humanitarian huckster presents himself as a compassionate advocate when in fact he is the disguised enemy.

Convenience is prioritized in 21st century life. Electronic devices that communicate with each other are marketed with the flattering descriptor “Smart” devices. Futuristic Smart Homes feature everything Smart from appliances, lighting, heating, air conditioning, TVs, computers, entertainment audio & video systems, security, and camera systems that can communicate with each other and be operated remotely from any location in the world by phone or Internet.

So, how smart is it to have a Smart Home? That depends upon how much you value your privacy and how smart you think it is to allow your metadata to be collected and possibly sold to a third party. Just in case you are wondering whether or not the convenient devices you’ve plugged in are collecting data on you – they are. Kashmir Hill and Surya Mattu reported on an experiment they did in a 2.8.2018 article for Gizmodo titled “The House That Spied on Me.”

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A Philosophy of Expedience The Left’s jurisprudence is whatever sounds good politically. John O. McGinnis

Posted By on June 12th, 2018

https://www.city-journal.org/html/philosophy-expedience-15961.html

Judicial appointments have proved the most successful aspect of the Trump presidency. Neil Gorsuch has begun where Antonin Scalia left off—as a committed originalist and eloquent textualist. Twenty-one appellate justices have been confirmed, a record at this point in a modern President’s term. And, like Gorsuch, these appointees have been schooled in formalist methodologies of judging. Confident of and committed to their judicial philosophy, they will not shift leftward, as have many Republican appointees in the past. These judges are the fruit of institutions like the Federalist Society and of the work of scholars who have carefully formulated the ideas of originalism and textualism. The Left is enraged because the Trump judges will leave their mark for at least a generation. Thus a group, Demand Justice, has been formed to spend millions to assail the Trump appointees and tout progressive judges for the future.

But however much money they spend, judicial progressives face an existential difficulty: the Left has no philosophy of jurisprudence to compete with originalism. Yes, progressives embrace a familiar set of specific legal positions tied to their agenda. They believe that Citizens United—the case that gave corporations the same right to speak at election time as the media—is an abomination. They believe that the Constitution’s enumeration of powers does not prevent the federal government from regulating anything that it wants to regulate. They believe that progressive programs, be they Obamacare or antidiscrimination law, should never yield to claims of religious liberty, and that discrimination is generally fine, so long as it favors minorities—and majorities, too, as long as those are women.

In answering a question about the Supreme Court in a presidential debate with Trump, Hillary Clinton characteristically subordinated law to a grab bag of progressive policy objectives. “I feel that at this point in our country’s history, it is important that we not reverse marriage equality, that we not reverse Roe v. Wade, that we stand up against Citizens United, we stand up for the rights of people in the workplace.” In contrast, Trump provided a general legal standard based on a principle: “Interpret the Constitution the way the Founders wanted it interpreted.” This is a rough but handy description of originalism.

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Palestinians: No Place for Gays by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on June 12th, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12496/palestinians-gays

Mahmoud Ishtiwi was executed in Gaza by three bullets to the chest, because he lived among people who consider homosexuality a sin punishable by death — and who act on it.

What can one learn from the controversy? Basically, that it is safer to be a member of Hamas than to be gay. Palestinian leaders would much rather see young Palestinians trying to kill Israelis than talk about gays in their own society. In the world of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, there is no room for comedy or satire.

On June 8, an estimated 250,000 people attended the Gay Pride Parade in Tel Aviv. Tourists from all around the world came to Israel to watch and participate in the event. The theme of this year’s event is “The Community Makes History” — a reference to the LGBT community in Israel.

Meanwhile, as the Israelis were celebrating tolerance on the streets of Tel Aviv, their Palestinian neighbors were busy doing precisely the opposite: they were demanding that people should be fired for producing a television comedy about gay people in the Gaza Strip.

The controversial program, called “Out of Focus,” has drawn strong condemnations from Palestinians, who are now calling for punishing those responsible for “insulting Arab and Islamic values.”

In Palestinian and Arab society, homosexuality is denounced and stigmatized. Homosexuality is illegal under Hamas rule in the Gaza Strip, and dozens of gay Palestinians have fled to Israel out of fear of persecution and harassment. In the West Bank, the laws of the Palestinian Authority also do not protect the rights of gay Palestinians.

In the past decades, several gay Palestinians have been killed in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip.