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Trump and the North Korean Tipping Point By Arthur Herman

Posted By on April 24th, 2018

The president’s potential meeting with Kim Jong Un would come at a time when American foreign policy is rapidly changing.

The world has been stunned by North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un’s announcement last week that he was suspending his country’s nuclear tests in preparation for the impending meeting with President Trump. Even critics have had to concede that Trump’s bellicose rhetoric since last summer regarding the North Korean threat may have actually paid off — especially when his “speak loudly and wave a big stick” approach to foreign policy is backed by the real use of force, as demonstrated by the recent air strikes in Syria.

How sincere are Kim’s promises? Trump skeptics like to point out that Kim has announced suspensions of his nuclear program before. But Kim made one other concession last week that has gone largely unnoticed but is even more significant for the future: He withdrew his previous demand that U.S. troops leave the Korean peninsula before any discussion of denuclearization. That means any deal struck on shutting down North Korea’s nuclear program may well be separate from the status of U.S. forces in Korea — and America’s strategic role in the region.

Trump’s success points the way to a major realignment of the balance of power in East Asia. For that reason, it’s time to pause to consider how Trump’s approach to foreign-policy issues such as North Korea, and that of national-security adviser John Bolton, differs from the approach of his predecessors — and represents a revolution in America’s relations with the rest of the world.

The contrast with Trump’s two immediate predecessors, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, could not be sharper. Both Obama and Bush were animated by grand visions of the U.S. leading the world toward a new era of peace and stability, either (in Bush’s case) through an ever-widening process of coalition-building on the multilateral level and state-building on the bilateral level, or (in Obama’s) via “strategic patience” and “leading from behind,” phrases Obama’s foreign-policy team made famous — or rather notorious.

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Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un’s Low-Stakes Summit If the leaders meet, they’re likelier to reframe the standoff than to resolve it. By Walter Russell Mead

Posted By on April 24th, 2018

The news from Korea is dramatic, but not quite historic. In the run-up to his proposed summit with Donald Trump, Kim Jong Un has floated a repackaged version of virtually every concession North Korea has ever proposed, from suspending its nuclear and missile tests to accepting the continuing presence of U.S. troops on the Korean Peninsula following a peace treaty between Seoul and Pyongyang.

Given that Messrs. Trump and Kim are two of the most unpredictable leaders in modern times, the frenzied pace of North Korean diplomacy has raised hopes for a breakthrough in the summit. But Mr. Kim and Mr. Trump are more likely to reframe the longstanding U.S.-North Korea standoff than to end it.

The first thing to understand is that North Korea’s nuclear weapons are not going away. Pyongyang is willing to sit at a table where their removal is discussed, and perhaps even to sign pieces of paper stating that their removal is a goal. But talking is one thing; disarming is something else.

The North Korean leadership follows the news. It knows what happened to Ukraine, to Saddam Hussein and to Moammar Gadhafi without nuclear arms. No piece of paper offers a country the serene peace of mind that it gets from a few atom bombs in the missile silos.

But there’s something else. Nuclear weapons aren’t only the centerpiece of North Korean security policy. They are the centerpiece of its political and economic strategy as well. The Kim dynasty hasn’t chosen the Chinese or Vietnamese path for prosperity based on international integration. Instead they cling to the idea of “juche,” or self-reliance, and have one of the least open, least dynamic economies in the world.

The reason is fear. Compared with China, where many companies have a market value greater than North Korea’s total gross domestic product, North Korea is a minnow swimming next to a whale. And there are other whales in the sea. If North Korea opened up for trade and investment, Chinese, South Korean and Japanese investors and traders would swallow it whole. The Kims would rather be the absolute rulers of a poor country than the former rulers of a middle-income one. North Korea spends an estimated 22% of its GDP on the military; that expenditure makes the country poorer but keeps the regime in control.

Those nukes give the Kims clout and they bring in cash. Kim Jong Un can provoke an international crisis by test- launching a missile; few other leaders of small and poor countries have that ability. China, Japan, South Korea and even the U.S. have been willing to make economic and political concessions to keep Pyongyang sweet. North Korea won’t trade all that away for a treaty. That the U.S. is negotiating with North Korea rather than bombing it surely seems to the Kims like proof that their nuclear strategy has worked.

But if Mr. Kim doesn’t want to give up his nukes, the U.S. doesn’t want war. Besides the 28,500 troops, there are more than 200,000 American civilians in South Korea on any given day. The first day of hostilities in a new Korean War could see tens of thousands of U.S. civilian casualties with more to come. The total cost of such a war in treasure and in blood is both incalculable and unacceptable. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Cuba’s ‘Transition’ Fake news with bells on. Humberto Fontova

Posted By on April 24th, 2018

Castro’s (unregistered) agents of influence are frantically busy this week thanks to their (unregistered) accomplices in the Fake News Media. All claim an earth-shaking “transition” is underway in Cuba!

Needless to add, according to these (unregistered) foreign agents, President Trump should promptly avail himself of this golden opportunity to embrace those harmless, innocent, free-health-care providers that U.S. policy has unjustly and vicariously “bullied” for so many years.

Could anything be more transparently facetious and idiotic? To quote the late Joan Rivers: “Can we talk?”

In fact, what’s happening as Cuban “President” (dictator) Raul Castro “steps down” in favor of Cuban “President” (eunuch and puppet) Miguel Diaz-Canel is about what happened when Korean “President” Kim Jong-il stepped down in favor of his son Kim Jong-un—except that Korea’s Kim Jong-il actually kicked the bucket before his son fully took over the reins of the mass-murdering, terror-sponsoring, nuke-rattling regime.

In fact, much of the vital day-to-day functions of the Stalinist regime will remain in the hands of Raul Castro’s son Alejandro Castro-Espin, a KGB-trained colonel in Cuba’s secret police and a fanatical Stalinist. Alejandro denounces to the U.S. as “an Empire of Terror!” and shrieks that “Cuba will never return to capitalism!”

As proof of Alejandro’s (secret) eminence and importance within the Stalinist regime, he was the person actually in charge of the “negotiations with” (demands upon) the Obama administration back in 2014. Nothing was more vital for the Castro-Family-Crime-Syndicate than securing and growing that multi-billion-dollar lifeline from the U.S. So naturally fanatical Stalinist and secret policeman Alejandro was put in charge of securing and protecting this flow through the Stalinist regime’s jugular.

And naturally Castro’s (unregistered) agents-of-influence kept this explosively embarrassing item very hush-hush, with the ever loyal and time-honored assistance of their (unregistered) accomplices in the Fake News Media. To hear them tell it, Pajama-Boy Ben Rhodes was harmlessly “negotiating” with other harmless Cuban Pajama-Boy diplomats. But here’s the ugly proof otherwise.

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Emerging Islamist Political Clout Accelerates Europe’s Self-Islamization Jihad by culture. Abigail R. Esman

Posted By on April 24th, 2018

Forget the beheading videos, the ISIS propaganda on social media, even the terrorist attacks themselves. Europe, says counterterrorism expert Afshin Ellian, is Islamizing itself, and in the process, the Western values on which its democracies are built are increasingly put at risk.

Take, for instance, Belgium’s ISLAM Party, which now hopes to participate in the country’s October local elections in 28 regions. (Its name serves as an acronym for “Integrité, Solidarité, Liberté, Authenticité, Moralité.)

Its ultimate aim: transforming Belgium into an Islamic state. Items high on its agenda include separating men and women on public transportation, and the incorporation of sharia law – as long as this does not conflict with current laws –according to the party’s founder, Redouane Ahrouch. His own behavior, however, suggests that his respect for “current laws” and mores has its bounds: He reportedly refuses to shake hands with women, and in 2003, he received a six-month sentence for beating and threatening his wife. Currently, the Islam Party has two elected representatives in office – one in Anderlecht, the other in Molenbeek – both regions that happen to be known as hotbeds of extremism.

Or consider DENK, Holland’s pro-Islam party founded in 2015 by Turkish-Dutch politicians Selçuk Ozturk and Tunahan Kuzu. The party platform, which supports boycotts and sanctions against Israel, also discourages assimilation, calling instead for “mutual acceptance” of multiple cultures. Non-Muslims, for instance, would apparently be required to “accept” the Muslim extremist father who beats his daughter for refusing an arranged marriage, or for becoming too “Westernized” for his taste. It’s his culture, after all.

DENK also calls for a “racism police force” to monitor allegedly racist comments and actions. Those found guilty would be placed in a government “racism register,” and banned from government jobs and other employment.

So far, such pro-Islamist views have served the party well. In local Dutch elections last month, DENK (which means “think” in Dutch) gained three seats in Rotterdam, totaling four seats among 45 total and edging out Geert Wilders’ far-right Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV), which fell from three seats to one. In Amsterdam, which also has 45 seats, a full 50 percent of Dutch-Moroccans and about two-thirds of Dutch-Turks gave the party a three-seat win in its first election there, as well. Many of these voters, according to post-election analyses, moved to DENK from the center-left Labor Party (PvdA), clearly feeling more at home with a more overtly pro-Muslim politic.

Similarly, France’s Union of Muslim Democrats (UDMF) has taken a number of voters from the Green Party by promising to defend Muslims. UDMF’s online program statement condemns burqa and headscarf bans. What’s more, in its pretense of supporting what it calls the “sweet dream of Democracy, Union and Human Rights,” the party loudly (though rightly) condemns “anti-Muslim speeches” that “lead the most psychologically fragile people to commit acts of unprecedented violence.” Examples of such “unprecedented violence” follow: a German white supremacist, who killed an Egyptian woman wearing a veil in 2009, and the stabbing of a French Muslim in Vaucluse. “Heavy weapons attacks have exploded in Europe since the beginning of the year against Muslim places of worship,” the statement reads.

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Kanye West – Revolutionary in the Making? Hell hath no fury like Progressives spurned by blacks. Mark Tapson

Posted By on April 24th, 2018

A seismic shift in the cultural and political American landscape this weekend emanated from an unlikely epicenter: superstar rapper Kanye West, who tweeted a controversial endorsement of black conservative commentator Candace Owens. Nothing triggers leftist anger quite like blacks thinking for themselves, and not like they do. So the left erupted with predictable fury toward both West and Owens.

Kanye, whose ubiquitous wife Kim Kardashian was a prominent supporter of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, has drawn leftist fire before. First, he incurred online scorn from the left and right in 2015 for announcing his serious intention to run for President in 2020. Then shortly after the 2016 presidential election, he shared with a California audience that he didn’t vote, but if he had, he “would’ve voted for Trump,” an admission that was unusual to say the least for a celebrity of his stature, black or white. It angered and bewildered fans so much that they actually expressed concern about Kanye’s mental health.

In December of 2016, he met briefly with Trump, who referred to Kanye at the time as his “friend,” to discuss “multicultural issues,” primarily the topic of violence in Chicago where Kanye was raised. This showed some surprising independence of mind and considerable courage on Kanye’s part, considering that black-on-black violence in blighted urban centers controlled by Democrat politicians is a scourge the left is silent about.

Then this past Saturday morning, Kanye dropped a bombshell tweet, declaring, “I love the way Candace Owens thinks.” As of this writing it has been retweeted over 21,000 times and “liked” over 81,000 times. A few minutes later he followed up with another seemingly supportive message, “only free thinkers,” which holds similarly high numbers of retweets and “likes.”

Owens is a millennial black conservative commentator known to her 183,000 subscribers on YouTube as “Red Pill Black.” Her recognition factor was increased last September by an interview with fellow former lefty Dave Rubin on his immensely popular YouTube talk show, The Rubin Report. In that interview she discussed her journey from left to right, her issues with the left’s corrosive identity politics, and her thoughts on activist journalists essentially serving as media “hitmen.” Rubin has continued to be a big supporter of Owens.

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Rep. Marsha Blackburn(R- Tenn) : Facebook’s 20,000 Content Reviewers Bring ‘Bias to Work’ By Nicholas Ballasy

Posted By on April 24th, 2018

WASHINGTON – Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, said Facebook’s 20,000 content reviewers bring their political “bias to work” and have blocked content that’s not related to issues such as terrorism.

Blackburn mentioned Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg called Silicon Valley an “extremely left-leaning place” during his recent Senate hearing under questioning from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

“We don’t ask people their political affiliation when they are hired,” Zuckerberg said at the hearing.

Blackburn said Congress should examine “guardrails” that could be put in place to prevent content that might offend certain people for political reasons from being blocked.

“He has 15-20,000 content reviewers and managers. So one of the things we have to realize is they bring that bias to work and then, as they develop an algorithm, how are they manipulating that algorithm?” Blackburn said during a Family Research Council discussion last Tuesday, “Losing Our Voices: Who Owns Free Speech on the Internet?”

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Countering Political Islam’s Economic Warfare By Rachel Ehrenfeld

Posted By on April 24th, 2018

To survive the fast-spreading cancerous metastases of the Political Islamic movement, liberal democracies must adopt a wide range of immunotherapeutic methods to inoculate their national cultural, political, and economic systems to withstand aggressive assaults on freedom.

Supporters of the Political Islamic movement invade societies, much like cancerous cells invade the human body. Like cancer, they deceive a nation’s ill-informed secular liberal vulnerable democratic system by mimicking a society’s traditional factions. These stealthy strategies allow them to remain hidden for a long time until, as with cancer, they are difficult to eradicate.

Liberal democratic societies, like normal body cells, fail to recognize the distinction between the healthy, politically different factions of society, and the parasitic Political Islamic invaders, who mimic other civil groups, pretending to be equally harmless elements of the national system. Emulating exceptionally parasitic biological cells, Political Islam’s sinister operatives employ a variety of tactics to invade their targets, to undermine social norms, and convert and lure non-Muslims to their cause.

Their disinformation campaigns are often joined by progressive leftist “Human Rights,” “Transparency,” and “Social Justice” organizations enabled by sympathetic media and politicians. These dangerous campaigns typically are carried out by nongovernmental local and international organizations, such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR); Human Rights Watch; the Muslim Council of Britain, Muslims for Progressive Values; the American Muslim Association; Muslim Advocates; the Islamic Circle of North America; and the Muslim Students Association, to mention but a few. They relentlessly undermine the existing system by decrying and often suing anyone who dares to criticize their activities and expose their agenda to replace tolerant, free societies with Political Islam’s intolerant, repressive sharia.

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John Brennan’s Secret Trip to Moscow By Daniel John Sobieski

Posted By on April 24th, 2018

The Russians say he did, and while some might say, well, these are the same Russians who helped put together the Steele dossier filled with “salacious and unverified” material, and may once again be playing with us, there is evidence that Brennan, the man who voted for communist Gus Hall for president, did make the trip in March 2016 for purposes unknown:

“It’s no secret that Brennan was here,” claimed Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Oleg Syromolotov. “But he didn’t visit the Foreign Ministry. I know for sure that he met with the Federal Security Service (the successor agency to the Soviet KGB), and someone else.”

No further remarks clarify what Brennan was allegedly doing in Moscow or what he discussed with the FSB. Syromolotov insists it had nothing to do with Russia’s withdrawal from Syria.

Sputnik News, a Kremlin-controlled propaganda outlet, quotes CIA Director of Public Affairs Dean Boyd as affirming that Brennan did, in fact, discuss Syria during the visit. “Director Brennan,” he allegedly said, “reiterated the US government’s consistent support for a genuine political transition in Syria, and the need for [President Bashar] Assad’s departure in order to facilitate a transition that reflects the will of the Syrian people.”

The website GlobalSecurity.Org goes into somewhat more detail about Brennan’s Moscow trip without clearing up confusion about what the purpose of the trip might have been:

The Russians say he did, and while some might say, well, these are the same Russians who helped put together the Steele dossier filled with “salacious and unverified” material, and may once again be playing with us, there is evidence that Brennan, the man who voted for communist Gus Hall for president, did make the trip in March 2016 for purposes unknown:

“It’s no secret that Brennan was here,” claimed Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Oleg Syromolotov. “But he didn’t visit the Foreign Ministry. I know for sure that he met with the Federal Security Service (the successor agency to the Soviet KGB), and someone else.”

No further remarks clarify what Brennan was allegedly doing in Moscow or what he discussed with the FSB. Syromolotov insists it had nothing to do with Russia’s withdrawal from Syria.

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Trump Is Right: A ‘Pakistani Mystery Man’ Has Documents Wasserman Schultz Didn’t Want Prosecutors To See Luke Roziak

Posted By on April 24th, 2018

A key, if under-covered, aspect of the “Pakistani mystery man” story is that Imran Awan, the Pakistani-born IT aide of former DNC head Debbie Wasserman Schultz, took a laptop with username RepDWS after he was banned from the House computer network for “unauthorized access to data,” and then left it in a phone booth with a letter to prosecutors.

On Friday, President Donald Trump tweeted: “Just heard the Campaign was sued by the Obstructionist Democrats. This can be good news in that we will now counter for the DNC Server that they refused to give to the FBI, the Debbie Wasserman Schultz Servers and Documents held by the Pakistani mystery man and Clinton Emails.”

Trump appears to have accurately identified a key issue with the “Pakistani mystery man” that comes straight from court documents.

Lawyers for Pakistani-born Imran Awan currently have a copy of the contents of a laptop with the username RepDWS
Wasserman Schultz wanted to block prosecutors from seeing what was on it
Imran’s lawyers have attempted to set up a situation where it is up to Imran whether prosecutors can see the laptop, claiming “attorney client privilege”
Other analysts say the laptop should be fair game for review

Each twist has increased the intrigue:

On Feb. 2, 2017, Imran was banned from the House computer network for making “unauthorized access” to congressional data, according to the House inspector general
This happened not long after Wasserman Schultz was fired from the DNC after a cyber breach, yet she refused to fire Imran or even put him on paid leave, claiming that an IT aide didn’t need to access the internet to do his job
Wasserman Schultz’s refusal to fire him meant he had continued physical access to the congressional office buildings, even though all of his other part-time employers fired him and he knew there was an ongoing criminal investigation
On April 5, 2017, despite not being allowed to connect to the House network, he was in possession of a laptop with the username RepDWS and left it in a phone booth, where it was picked up by police who confiscated it because they recognized that it was left there by a criminal suspect

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Respect Unearned:Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on April 24th, 2018

Washington’s self-righteous establishmentarians talk of professionalism when they act unprofessionally. They refer at length to their intellectual and professional pedigrees when they prove incompetent. And they cite their morality and ethics when they possess neither.

And then, adding insult to injury, when the public expresses abhorrence at their behavior, they accuse critics of unprofessionalism, a lack of patriotism, or reckless demagoguery.

A James Clapper can lie to Congress under oath about intelligence surveillance of U.S. citizens; a John Brennan can lie about CIA monitoring of U.S. Senate computers, or mislead Congress about the absence of any collateral damage in the use of drones. Yet we are supposed to give both further credence based on their emeriti titles or to believe their current Captain Renault-like outrage over President Trump’s lack of presidential decorum? But what in their past has earned them the moral high ground? Claiming that the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt was largely “secular,” or redefining jihad as “a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam”?

Are we supposed to believe that Robert Mueller did not overreach by spinning off an investigation of Trump consigliere and lawyer Michael Cohen?

Why? Because we are also told that a regional federal prosecutor would have to have had good cause to order raids on Cohen? Because a federal judge would have had to have seen such credible evidence before anyone dared enter Cohen’s office and residence? Because another federal justice believes it is in the national interest that we know Michael Cohen knows Sean Hannity?

Once Bitten, Twice Shy
Trust in the Obama-era directorships of the Justice Department, FBI, and, indeed, the federal courts themselves are now horses that have long ago left the proverbial judicial barn. Should the public also believe that no sober and judicious FISA court judge would ever have approved surveillance of American citizens without asking where the evidence came from, who compiled it, who, if any, paid for it, or had a vested interest in seeing it used for a warrant? Should the public believe that its FBI director, and various deputy attorney generals, would never have dared keep from a FISA court information about their own submitted evidence?