FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

The press howls about trade wars, but fails to look at Chinese tariffs on us By Jack Hellner

Posted By on March 26th, 2018

Boy, I hope President Trump doesn’t charge tariffs on Chinese products to the U.S. That may cause China to retaliate. They may start charging tariffs on U.S. goods. That seems to be the story line we are getting, not everywhere, but in most of the press overall. It’s as if China isn’t already charging tariffs on a wide range of products.

The way the media reports Trump’s trade policy is to suggest that he is stupid and is going to destroy the economy if he imposes mirror tariffs on Chinese goods. Yet at the same time, many suggest that existing polices are great.

It would be helpful if news organizations listed some existing tariffs on U.S products being exported to China.

I looked up cars, car parts, computers and grains, and they all have significant tariffs or taxes already. (Nothing I looked up did not have a tariff or tax.)

Here is what I found.

Manufactured in Toledo, Ohio, the Wrangler is a descendant of the jeeps that were used by American forces in World War II. Equipped with a 3.6-liter engine and a five-speed automatic transmission, the Rubicon edition of the Wrangler has a suggested retail price of $40,530 in the United States.

But in China, the same vehicle would set a buyer back by a hefty $71,000, mostly because of taxes that Beijing charges on every car, minivan and sport utility vehicle that is made in another country and brought to China’s shores.
Chinese rules on taxes for the import of auto parts impose 15% charge (on top of the 10% customs duty) on imported car parts when they are destined to a
model that fulfils the “characteristics of a whole vehicle.”

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Stop Diminishing the Men By Eileen F. Toplansky

Posted By on March 26th, 2018

There is a “gender crisis” in America today, and it has nothing to do with the alleged 63 varieties of genders espoused by leftists. Nor does it have to do with women’s marches. Quite simply it deals with the “expendable male,” where, “in the space of just a few decades[,] American women have managed to demote men from respected providers and protectors to being unnecessary, irrelevant, and expendable ” (Venker & Schlafly, The Flipside of Feminism).

It is apparent by attitudes from well known women – e.g., Pamela Paul, who authored Are Fathers Necessary and wrote, “The bad news for Dad is that despite common perception, there’s nothing objectively essential about his contribution.” Then there is actress Jennifer Aniston, who once stated, “Women are realizing they don’t have to settle with a man just to have a child.”

Naomi Schaefer Riley at the Washington Post writes that “while our culture often celebrates the single life as empowering, this empowerment rarely trickles down to children. We can cheer the mother who dragged her son away from rioting in Baltimore after Freddie Gray was killed, and we can find it sweet that the former star of ’16 & Pregnant’ is taking her young son on ‘dinner dates’ to teach him how to treat women, but there is something sad about the fact that these boys do not have a father to offer these lessons in a more effective way.”

It is commonplace in the college composition classroom to read where single mothers assert that they do not need men since their own single mothers told them never to depend on anyone else. “Don’t need men since they are childish and immature” is a frequent refrain.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israeli Planes Hit Hezbollah Positions Along Syrian Border By Rick Moran

Posted By on March 26th, 2018

Israel’s message to Hezbollah: Don’t get too comfortable

Israel’s undeclared and clandestine war against the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah erupted again today as IAF planes hit several Hezbollah positions along the Syrian-Lebanese border.

Hezbollah denies that Israel attacked them. The IDF had no comment. But several Arab media outlets are reporting the strike occurred and residents of Baalbek, a strategic Lebanese hamlet on the Syrian border, are saying they saw the planes and heard the explosions.

24 News:

Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Shia group, denied the reports that Israel struck its positions and media outlets associated with the group said that no such strikes occurred.

Israel has not yet commented on the report and is unlikely to do so. According to usual protocol it does not disclose information about airstrikes in foreign countries.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has prioritized the northern border as its greatest current threat, referring both to Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iranian proxies on the Syrian border, which carries the danger of a united front against the Jewish state.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trump might scrap Obama-era rule that turned schools into ‘war zones” by Paul Sperry

Posted By on March 26th, 2018

The Trump administration plans this summer to scrap a controversial Obama-era discipline rule forced on schools to close racial gaps in suspensions and arrests but that critics say pressures educators to turn a blind eye to escalating bad behavior.

The federal directive, issued jointly in 2014 by the US departments of Education and Justice, warned public school districts receiving federal funding — including New York City — that they could face investigation and funding cuts if they fail to reduce statistical “disparities” in discipline by race. On average, the administration noted, black students are suspended at three times the rate of their white peers.

The directive also discourages student arrests and holds districts liable for the actions of “school resource officers … or other law enforcement personnel.”

The one-size-fits-all federal policy, which recommends group counseling sessions and other alternatives to traditional discipline, has been foisted on several hundred school districts serving millions of students through investigations and threats of investigation that have continued into the Trump administration. More than 300 school districts remain under federal scrutiny, including NYC schools.

“The scope of it is breathtaking,” said Max Eden, an education policy expert and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

He says surveys show schools serving predominantly minority students have been hit hardest by the resulting breakdown in discipline, with violence and chaos mushrooming out of control in urban districts.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

TIME OUT- NO POSTINGS TODAY BACK TOMORROW MORNING

Posted By on March 25th, 2018

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

JOHN BOLTON IN THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Posted By on March 24th, 2018

THESE WERE ALL POSTED ON RUTHFULLY

The Legal Case for Striking North Korea First Does the necessity of self-defense leave ‘no choice of means, and no moment of deliberation’?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-legal-case-for-striking-north-korea-first-1519862374

Beyond the Iran Nuclear Deal U.S. policy should be to end the Islamic Republic before its 40th anniversary.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/beyond-the-iran-nuclear-deal-1516044178

https://www.wsj.com/articles/beyond-the-iran-nuclear-deal-1516044178

How to Defund the U.N. A few of its agencies do useful work. American taxpayers shouldn’t pay for

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-defund-the-u-n-1514233054

The Hague Aims for U.S. Soldiers A ‘war crimes’ inquiry in Afghanistan shows the danger of the International Criminal Court.By John Bolton

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-hague-tiptoes-toward-u-s-soldiers-1511217136

The Iran Deal Isn’t Worth Saving The idea of ‘decertifying’ the agreement but staying in it is too cute by half. Trump should cut cleanly. John Bolton

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-iran-deal-isnt-worth-saving-1506637940

MEDIA Comments turned off

Facebook’s Public Reckoning The social-media giant faces decisions on privacy and publishing.

Posted By on March 24th, 2018

Mark Zuckerberg famously started Facebook out of a Harvard dorm room in 2004, but his social network now boasts more than two billion users world-wide. Facebook hasn’t matured as fast as it has grown, and its recent troubles show that it will need to exercise more control over content and privacy. Or politicians may do it instead.

Facebook is facing a public reckoning after two newspapers reported that data on 50 million users was improperly shared with a firm working for the Trump campaign. The outrage is overwrought, but perhaps inevitable given that Facebook has promoted itself as a guardian of consumer privacy.

In 2014 the company supported a Senate bill to limit the National Security Agency’s access to electronic data, arguing that it was more trustworthy than the government. Last year Facebook joined other tech companies to oppose Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai’s rescission of Obama-era privacy rules for broadband providers that didn’t apply to them.

The Internet Association argued that companies like Facebook and Google “have more limited visibility into online practices and consumer information” than broadband providers that are “in a position to develop highly detailed and comprehensive profiles of their customers—and to do so in a manner that may be completely invisible.” Facebook’s alleged data breach has exposed this conceit.

Facebook makes most of its $16 billion in annual profit from harvesting data on users. In 2007 the company decided to start selling personalized ads to fuel its growth. To boost user engagement and generate more ad revenue, Facebook encouraged third-party apps such as inane personality quizzes like “Which Disney Princess Are You?”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

UK: Islamization Full Speed Ahead by Judith Bergman

Posted By on March 24th, 2018

This is how Islamization occurs and is made permanent: Other schools will think carefully of the risks before they even attempt to “limit the Islamization process”.

It is virtually impossible for “Islamophobia” to be “underreported” in London. The UK is nothing, if not clinically obsessed with “Islamophobia”. In 2016, London mayor Sadiq Khan’s Office for Policing and Crime announced it was spending £1.7 million taxpayer money policing speech online.

British police have even been taking lessons about Islam and “Islamophobia” from radical Islamist groups such as Mend. One of the most active Mend figures, Azad Ali, has said that he has “love” for Anwar Al-Awlaki, an influential US-born Islamic terrorist, who was killed by a US drone strike in Yemen in 2011.

The UK is accelerating its Islamization at an ever-increasing speed. The desire of the British establishment to submit to Islam appears to be overwhelming.

In a recent report, the Henry Jackson society exposed how the UK used taxpayer funds to support Islamist charities working against British society to the tune of more than six million pounds in 2017 alone. According to the report, “As the case studies in this report are illustrative rather than comprehensive, it is likely that this sum represents only the tip of the iceberg”. The report concludes, “Until more comprehensive action is taken, a network of Islamist extremists operating in the UK will continue to use charities and taxpayer money to fund the spread of divisive, illiberal and intolerant views within our communities”.

BOOKS, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

A Review of Halik Kockanski’s The Eagle Unbowed: Poland and Poles in the Second World War.By Michael Brendan Dougherty

Posted By on March 24th, 2018

It’s hard to overstate the way that Polish feelings about the great wars are almost inverted from the common ones in the United Kingdom and the United States. For Western powers, the common perception is that the First World War is at best a fratricidal slaughter, conducted for ambiguous reasons. At worst it was the suicide of Western civilization. For Poland, that war was the resurrection of their nation from the dead. For Western powers the Second World War is a moment of sharp moral clarity, in which the victorious powers defeated a truly wicked regime, and rebuilt Western Europe on surer foundations. For Poland, it is an unrelenting nightmare. Technically, the war was launched because the United Kingdom intended to vindicate her sovereignty. In the end the West threw Poland to Stalin like a bone to chew on, while investing millions to swiftly rebuild West Germany.

Kochanski gives us a brief look at the Poland that was reborn at the Treaty of Versailles. It was bitterly funny to read British Prime Minister Lloyd George enter the scene and express his doubts about the proposed Polish borders because they would subject an unacceptable number of Protestant Germans to the rule of Catholic Poles. What is unacceptable in Belfast is unacceptable in Danzig, so carve-outs must be made. These had a democratic and sectarian logic, but were not geopolitically sustainable.

This reborn Poland had a fighting spirit, and immediately committed itself to a few quick wars to grab territories and cities, including present-day Lviv, that would make it a more economically viable nation. It was also an extremely heterogeneous nation, with many ethnic and minority linguistic groups. It was also an underdeveloped economic backwater compared with Western Europe.

The German and Russian attitudes toward this reborn Poland were often hysterical. Kochanski quotes German general Hans von Steckt’s remarks to German Chancellor Joseph Wirth around the time Germans and Russians signed a treaty in 1922, renouncing their territorial claims against each other:

When we speak of Poland, we come to the kernel of the eastern problem. Poland’s existence is intolerable and incompatible with Germany’s vital interests. It must disappear, and will disappear through its own weakness and through Russia with our aid. . . . The attainment of this objective must be one of the firmest guiding principles of German policy, as it is capable of achievement — but only through Russia or with her help. A return to the frontier of 1914 should be the basis of agreement between Russia and Germany.

MEDIA Comments turned off

When Unfounded Smears Are Treated as Facts By Jonathan S. Tobin

Posted By on March 24th, 2018

Brennan admitted his charge that the Russians were blackmailing Trump was pure speculation. But that didn’t stop him or anyone else from spreading the smear.

The question was a reasonable one, but the answer was not. When the hosts of MSNBC’s Morning Joe program asked why President Trump had congratulated Russian president Vladimir Putin on being reelected, former CIA director John Brennan pulled no punches. In answering the leading question that implied Trump may be afraid of Putin, Brennan said, “The Russians may have something on him personally.” The Russians, he said, “have had long experience of Mr. Trump, and may have things they could expose.”

Coming from just another foe of Trump — which Brennan, an Obama loyalist, certainly is — the assertion could be dismissed as just a partisan cheap shot. But coming as it did from a career intelligence officer who served for four years as the head of the American intelligence establishment, this had to be more than a baseless conjecture.

Except it wasn’t.

By the end of the day, Brennan admitted his wild charge was not based on any actual information or intelligence revealed to him during the course of his duties but just a willingness to assume the worst about Trump. In a written response to questions from the New York Times, he said, “I do not know if the Russians have something on Donald Trump that they could use as blackmail.”

In a world in which journalists treated unfounded assumptions as just that, rather than headline news, Brennan’s charges would have been dismissed. But though the Times knew the accusation was baseless by the time it published its article on the subject, the paper buried the lead. The headline on the story was “Ex-Chief of the C.I.A. Suggests Putin May Have Compromising Information on Trump.” Brennan’s walking back of his charge didn’t appear until the eleventh paragraph of the story.