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November 2015

Is China Heading to a 1930s-Style Crash? by Gordon G. Chang

There are, after all, indications that growth is, in reality, close to zero. Take the most reliable indicator of Chinese economic activity, the consumption of electricity.

Just about everyone correctly agrees that a new round of structural economic reform could restart growth.

The country’s current general secretary of the Communist Party has, for instance, been closing off the Chinese market to foreigners, recombining already large state enterprises back into formal monopolies, increasing state ownership of state enterprises, and shoveling more state subsidies to favored market participants.

One statistic summarizes the situation: in Q3, there was $460.6 billion of net capital outflow, as documented by Bloomberg. No economy—not even one the size of China’s—can survive outflows of that size. The Chinese economy has never made sense, but confidence held it together. Now, the confidence is gone.

“On conservative growth projections, China’s economy could well be bigger than the sum of all the G7 economies in real terms within the next decade,” writes Peter Drysdale, the editor of the popular East Asia Forum website.

Turkey’s Oppression Machine by Burak Bekdil

The law stated that the homes and workplaces of those non-Muslims who could not afford the tax would be sequestered.

Under the AKP rule, Turkey’s dwindling Jewish community, now at around a mere 17,000, as well as other non-Muslims, have come under systematic intimidation from government politicians and bureaucrats. These non-Muslim minorities are also often the targets of racist attacks.

It was 1942 when, one day, Hayim Alaton, a Jewish yarn importer in Istanbul, received two payment notices from the tax office: He was asked to pay 80,000 liras in total — a fortune at that time. He ran to the tax office to object, but was told to pay the whole amount within 15 days. It was the infamous Wealth Tax, passed on Nov. 11, 1942 and it remained in effect for a year and a half until it was repealed on March 14, 1944.

The Wealth Tax exclusively targeted Turkey’s non-Muslims at a time when 300,000 Orthodox Greeks and 100,000 Jews were living in Istanbul (where total population was one million). The law stated that the homes and workplaces of those non-Muslims who could not afford the tax would be sequestered. Alaton was able to pay no more than 11,000 liras. That was the start of “black years,” as Alaton’s son, 15 years old at that time, would later recall.

Recklessly Gay – A Review of “Carol” By Marilyn Penn

Todd Haynes, the director of “Carol,” is a lover of pulp fiction. Past credits include Mildred Pierce and Far From Heaven, two weepy period films about women in familial straits and “Carol,” adapted from an autobiographical novel by Patricia Highsmith, follows in this tradition. Not having read the novel, I can only comment on the plot and characters as presented in this film version set in the 50’s in New York.

Played by Cate Blanchette, Carol is an elegant wealthy socialite who goes Christmas shopping in her mink coat and full maquillage. At the doll counter she meets Terese, a salesgirl played by Rooney Mara wearing a Santa hat and a blank expression that’s either boredom or inexperience. We soon see that Terese lives in what is meant to be a cold-water flat that has no radiator or phone; she lights the oven for heat and receives her calls from the pay phone in the common hallway. Incongruously, the set designer has made this cold-water flat a generously sized 3 room apartment that is fully furnished. This is the first in a string of details that don’t ring true, either to the characters or the period of the 50’s. Terese is a blank slate – we know nothing about where she’s from, whether she has a family or a backstory – only that she has taken a few pictures and might want to pursue that interest at some time in the future. Though she’s a naïve young salesgirl, she is pursued by a wealthy young man who wants to marry her and take her to Europe – two offers that she instinctively spurns though we’re not sure why.

Nadav Shragai: Isis Among Us

About 50 Israeli Arabs have joined Islamic State in the past few years, but the number who support the radical group’s violent ideology is considerably bigger • Is the Islamic State monster gaining a foothold in Israel, too?

One day, Othman Abdul Kiyan disappeared from his home. His neighbors in the Negev Bedouin town of Hura said he had gone to Turkey for a vacation after successfully finishing his grueling medical training in Jordan.

But in May 2014, when Othman failed to show up for work as a resident at the Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba, everyone was amazed to discover that Othman had given up his dream of medicine and joined Islamic State. The news was hard on his family; a few even went to the hotel room where he had stayed in Turkey. There they found a few of his personal items. Members of the hotel staff told them their son had rented a car and not returned. A few months later, his family received the news that Othman had been killed in the fighting in Syria.

Moussa Khalil Abu Kush from the Negev village of Arara also completed medical school in Jordan. Like Othman, he was exposed to jihadist ideology there and wrote Facebook posts supporting Islamic State. He was arrested by the Shin Bet security agency, expressed remorse, and was ordered to pay a fine and perform community service.

Khalil, a resident of east Jerusalem, disappeared from his home, too. His worried relatives told Israeli security forces that their son worked as an orderly at the Eitanim psychiatric hospital and had a membership to the fitness center at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Before he disappeared, Khalil told his family and his bosses that he was taking a few weeks off to make the pilgrimage to Mecca. But he actually bought a one-way ticket to Greece. From there he flew to Istanbul, and with the help of an Islamic State operative he reached the Syrian border and joined the organization. The mystery of his disappearance was solved only when and his comrades were arrested by the Shin Bet when they returned from Syria.

Islam’s Psychotic Obsession :Edward Cline

The cutthroats of ISIS, Al-Queda, the Taliban, Boko Haram and any other Islamic terrorist gang at large in our time also have the same religious incentive – and are afflicted with the same psychotic obsession.

It is also fortuitous happenstance that two accomplished students of the subject of Islam, thousands of miles apart and within days of each other, published columns about what drives Islam’s penchant for homicide, torture, rape, mutilation, conquest, and destruction. They are Daniel Greenfield, writing as Sultan Knish, in his November 11th column, “Why Islam is a Religion of War,” and the mysterious Norwegian writer Fjordman, in his November 17th piece, “Islam: A Permanent World War,” on Gates of Vienna. Their common theme is why Islam makes war on the West. Their themes intersect at certain points, and then go off in different directions.

Greenfield led off with:

Islamic violence is a religious problem. Islam derives meaning from physical supremacy, so war becomes an act of faith. To believe in Islam, is to have faith that it will conquer the entire world. And to be a true Muslim, is to feel called to aid in that global conquest, whether by providing money to the Jihadists or to become a Jihadist.

This means that a jihadist is much like a schoolyard bully, who must triumph over his opponents and strike fear in and compel submission by the other kids. It is an absolute necessity. It is important that others witness this triumph. It is even better if he triumphs in cooperation with other bullies, or with their encouragement. It is proof of his faith. His being the “last man standing” over his vanquished and bloodied foe is taken as proof for him of the metaphysical supremacy and superiority of his faith, and of the efficacy of physical force in the name of Islam. He has faith in that fallacy. It must be true. It’s the only thing he’s sure of.

ANDREW HARROD: ON AMERICAN POLICY AND IRAQ, LIBYA AND SYRIA

This was an interesting Center for Security Policy briefing on American policy and Iraq, Libya, and Syria.

“Fourteen years after 9/11 we are worse strategically than where we were on 9/11,” stated former Congressman Pete Hoekstra at a November 13 Center for Security Policy (CSP) Washington, DC, briefing. A pleasant view from offices overlooking Washington, DC’s National Mall on a sunny day was perhaps the only bright spot during panelist presentations on a volatile Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region before some 20 CSP affiliates.

Hoekstra began this MENA tour d’horizon with Libya, where Americans “as a country snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory” by overthrowing Muammar Ghaddafi’s dictatorship in 2011. By 2003, American confrontation for over 30 years with had convinced a once dangerous adversary to cooperate with the United States and avoid the fate experienced by Ghaddafi’s peer in Iraq, Saddam Hussein. “When we decided to take him out he was doing everything we had asked him to do and had been doing it for eight or nine years,” stated Hoekstra, who met with Ghaddafi three times between 2003 and 2009.

Hoekstra cited several improvements in Ghaddafi’s behavior, such as reparations payments to victims of his regime’s terrorism like those of the 1989 Pan Am 103 bombing. “His nuke program was crated up, shipped to the United States,” and is “now sitting in a warehouse next to the Ark of the Covenant fromIndiana Jones,” Hoekstra commented comically. Ghaddafi also engaged in critical intelligence cooperation with the United States on the basis of having “been fighting radical jihadists for decades.”