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September 2017

Media Whores By Joan Swirsky

All apologies to the hard-working street-walkers and penthouse prostitutes who, unlike the modern-media harlots and rent-boys, have no illusions and offer no excuses about what they do and why.

For well over 75 years, Americans have naively trusted that the people who bring them the news every night—and today, 24/7—are highly informed, deeply sincere, remarkably unbiased public servants.

After all, why would anyone go into a notoriously low-paying profession if he or she was not at heart an idealist?

Motives, of course, vary. Some are attracted to the “profession” because they are news junkies and want to be where the political action is. Others seek the limelight because the narcissist in them likes to be on camera. Then there are those who genuinely believe that their exposés and hard-hitting reporting can make a helpful difference in people’s lives. Finally we have aspirants with money signs in their eyes, hoping that they will be among the few who actually rake in the big bucks.

But for a public who still believe the “news” they read and hear and watch is even remotely related to “the truth,” allow me to burst that bubble.

As ace journalist Ashley Lutz scrupulously documented in a Business Insider report last year, in 1983 there were 50 media companies, but today only six organizations are now responsible for 90 percent of all the “news” we read, watch and listen to! They include:

GE (Comcast, NBC, Universal Pictures, Focus Features, et al).
NewsCorp (Fox, Wall St. Journal, NY Post, et al).
Disney (ABC, ESPN, Pixar, Miramax, Marvel Studios, et al)
Viacom (MTV, Nick Jr., BET, CMT, Paramount Pictures, et al)
Time Warner (CNN, HBO, TIME, Warner Bros., et al)
CBS (Showtime, Smithsonian Channel, NFL.com, Jeopardy, 60 Minutes, et al)

Make no mistake, the CEOs of these multibillion-dollar businesses are all leftist globalists—not a conservative among them—except perhaps for Rupert Murdoch (Fox, Wall St. Journal, NY Post, et al) who recently gave control of his empire to his leftist sons Lachlan and James, hence the distinctly leftward tilt of Fox and the WSJ.

Over the years, these globalist business titans have all made massive investments in the global economy, thanks largely to the leftist con men and women—the Clintons and Obamas; the communists, tin-pot dictators and America-haters of the United Nations; the leftist billionaires who thrive on and denounce capitalism at the same time—who wined and dined and charmed them into believing that America was on the decline and that the open-borders, one-world-government crowd was in imminent ascendance.

But big ideas, like the notion of a diminishing America, are never successful without the full-time help of a media that is run by—ta da—the globalists themselves!

THIS IS HOW IT WORKS

Ms. Wide-Eyed idealist and Mr. Upwardly-Mobile go-getter apply for jobs at their local or national radio or TV stations or newspapers. Or they “know someone” who facilitates an interview that leads to being hired. A good example of the latter is the nice-enough but remarkably untalented Chelsea Clinton, who landed an astronomically high-paying job with NBC that, mercifully for viewers, lasted about a minute.

Once hired, these wannabe journalists are thrilled to be on their way, until it dawns on them that their bosses don’t give a damn about anything they think or believe or want to convey to a hungry public. For most media employees, it soon becomes clear that they are expected—indeed, mandated—to reflect and convey the belief systems of their employers. And unless they do that, they are completely DISPENSABLE!

The Lesson of Charlottesville By Herbert London President, London Center for Policy Research

The events in Charlottesville raised many questions about national cohesion. If a national government is to exist, it requires political loyalty that causes neighbors to treat each other as fellow citizens. Without a legacy of social trust derived from a sense of belonging, political stability is impossible. Those on either side of the barricades in Charlottesville were not united in common sympathies and could not in any meaningful way offer their fealty to government.

In fact, these were warring parties, diverse in every sense of the word. No matter how seemingly secure the conditions in a nation may be, the nation state is still vulnerable to external antagonists and internal struggle. Discriminating against people on the basis of race means, in effect, denying equal rights. Clearly the organizers of the Charlottesville riot had this concept in mind.

Both groups claim they are revolting against tyranny. For the alt Right, it is the tyranny of political correctness and the assertion of free speech; for the alt Left it is yet again hostility directed at the Establishment, the will of the sovereign. In both instances, there is the desire to be liberated from the constraints of nature, albeit the methods are different. The Left deplores the Founders of the nation as those who sought the legitimacy of racial inferiority. The Right deplores the emergence of a new ontogeny that resists the idea of human differences.

At the moment, the demonstrators have forgotten that they are citizens in a body politic that produces a modicum of order as opposed to revolutionaries who live for disorder. Unifying under these circumstances is a mission impossible. What is not impossible, of course, is recognizing the vast majority of Americans who argue for a plague on both sides of the current debate. Americans still aim for logical consistencies, ridding themselves of extremist pretensions.

Most Americans find disagreeable behavior upsetting. Civility, the quality of character meant to smooth relations roiled by disagreements, is a mitigating factor in political exchange. For Thomas Hobbes civility is “a means of peaceable, sociable and comfortable living.” However, civility is not a trait of modern verbal warfare. In fact, warring ideological parties test the limits of toleration even though civil discourse was once organized along the premise of “difference without disagreement.”

Christian doctrine has advocated the virtue of civility. But this too has fallen into a memory hole in which religious matters are inconsistent with civil peace. As a result, civility now means conforming to contemporary liberalisms requirements, e.g. safe spaces and micro aggressions. Real diversity of opinion is a casualty of these demands. Though we may hold political opponents in low regard, the argument goes we should listen and attempt to dissuade them from their erroneous views. But how is this to be done in an increasingly intolerant culture?

Iran’s Big Move By Lawrence J. Haas

The western Asian nation of Iran is on the cusp of expanding its reach all the way to the Mediterranean Sea and Israel’s northern border – a drive that will make its nuclear pursuit, ballistic missile development and terror sponsorship that much more dangerous to the United States and its regional allies.

This budding hegemony is a product of Iran’s growing presence in, or influence over, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. It is being accomplished through Tehran’s own political or military activities, through the growing regional activities of its most important terrorist client, Hezbollah, and through Shiite militias that are pursuing Iranian interests in Syria and Iraq.

Iran’s progress, which is setting off alarm bells not just in Jerusalem but in Riyadh and other Sunni Arab capitals as well, is largely the result of a U.S. decision to focus its regional military efforts on pushing the Islamic State group out of Syria and Iraq without caring about, or focusing sufficiently on, the ability of Iran or its proxy forces to fill the vacuum in both countries.

What the United States is missing is a military and diplomatic strategy to defeat the Islamic State group without leaving Iran well-positioned to pursue its grand designs for the region – which include destroying Israel and replacing hostile Sunni governments with friendlier alternatives.

Iran borders Iraq and Turkey to its west. Iraq borders Syria, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia to its west. Thus, Iran’s growing influence over Iraq, Syria and Lebanon extends its reach all the way to the Mediterranean Sea (which Syria and Lebanon border to their west) and Israel (which Lebanon borders to its south).

The implications of Iran’s geographic expansion are ominous. It will enable the radical regime in Tehran to send arms more easily to, for instance, besieged Syrian strongman Bashar Assad, as well as to Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia, which is based in Lebanon but currently teaming with Iran and Russia to prop up the Assad regime. And it will allow Iran to implant its own clerical army, the Revolutionary Guards, more easily in Syria and elsewhere.

Before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein, Iraq was a fierce rival of, and counter-balance to, the Islamic Republic. Today, however, Iranian-backed militias are gaining ground as they fight alongside Iraqi forces in Anbar province and in the battle to retake the town of Tal Afar from the Islamic State group.

Syria has been an Iranian ally and terror partner since the days of Assad’s father, Hafez, and little has changed. Syrian troops are now working with the Revolutionary Guard, Hezbollah and an assortment of Shiite militias to defeat not only the Islamic State group but also U.S.-backed anti-government rebels – all to keep the country’s brutal dictator in power. What was once a partnership of equals between Iran and Syria, however, has evolved into a patron-client relationship that helps to enhance Iran’s sway.

Meanwhile, in Lebanon, Iran is moving to build its own weapons factories, enabling Tehran to more easily arm Hezbollah for its next war with Israel. One factory in the country’s north reportedly will build Fateh 110 missiles, which have a range of 190 miles and can threaten most of the territory of the Jewish state. Iran’s assistance only amplifies the growing threat from Hezbollah. The terror group, which fought a war with Israel back in 2006, when it had an arsenal of some 15,000 rockets, already has a far more sophisticated stash that numbers an estimated 130,000 to 150,000 missiles.

Iran’s emerging reach into the Mediterranean is occurring while it continues to hide the ball on its nuclear program. In recent days, Iranian leaders have reiterated that Tehran won’t give nuclear inspectors access to military sites and warned that, if the United States withdraws from the 2015 global nuclear agreement, it can resume enriching uranium to 20 percent (a short step to weapons-grade levels) within five days.

In addition, Iran continues to ignore global concerns by testing increasingly sophisticated ballistic missiles that can carry nuclear warheads. It’s also expanding its conventional weaponry for potential battles on land or at sea.

The Nub of the North Korea Crisis by Charles Lipson

We have entered the most dangerous moment in world politics since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

The nightmare is only getting worse, thanks to North Korea’s increasingly rapid development of nuclear weapons, the missiles to deliver them, and the regime’s chilling threats to use them against the U.S., Japan, and South Korea.

Last week, despite U.N. sanctions andChina’s public call for restraint, Kim Jong Un tested his nation’s most powerful nuclear device yet. Analysts are still not sure if it was a hydrogen bomb, but Western intelligence believes those are coming soon. The regime is already miniaturizing its weapons and improving its long- and medium-range missiles. It also has thousands of conventional weapons pointed at South Korea, including some that could hit nuclear power plants.

A succession of U.S. presidents, from Bill Clinton to Barack Obama, could not slow these North Korean programs. Neither has President Trump. He has tried an open hand to China, a closed fist to North Korea, and repeated demonstrations of U.S. firepower, all to no effect. It is painfully clear that Kim will not pause his weapons program, much less relinquish it, unless he fears imminent death and destruction. So far, he doesn’t. Neither does his major backer, China.

Making that threat credible without actually launching a major war is the nub of the current crisis, not because Kim himself is likely to change course but because Beijing might. China is Kim’s only lifeline, and it dreads a war on the Korean Peninsula. Short of that, Beijing is deeply concerned about a deteriorating security environment, encircled by adversaries, bristling with U.S. troops and ships, and shaken by the prospect of Japan rearming.

China has only itself to blame for this increasingly toxic environment. Facing no serious external threat, it chose to expand aggressively in the South China Sea and ignore international courts that ruled against it. It chose to make North Korea a lethal threat by providing it vital economic and military aid. Now, facing the unhappy consequences, China must decide whether to stay the course or change dramatically.

The choices are momentous. They will be made knowing that, if nothing changes, North Korea will soon be capable of incinerating American cities and millions of lives. Every U.S. president has said that is unacceptable. What we don’t know is whether they meant it.

Two Resistances The quiet resistance — the one without black masks and clubs — is the more revolutionary force, and it transcends race, class, and gender. By Victor Davis Hanson

After the election of Donald Trump, there arose a self-described “Resistance.” It apparently posed as a decentralized network of progressive activist groups dedicated to derailing the newly elected Trump administration.

Democrats and progressives borrowed their brand name from World War II French partisans. In rather psychodramatic fashion, they envisioned their heroic role over the next four years as that of virtual French insurgents — coming down from the Maquis hills, perhaps to waylay Trump’s White House, as if the president were an SS Obergruppenführer und General der Police running occupied Paris. Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone wrote admiringly about the furious Resistance’s pushback against Trump, with extravagant claims that his agenda was already derailed thanks to a zillion grass-roots and modern-day insurgents.

Hillary Clinton belatedly announced that she too had joined up with the Resistance (“I’m now back to being an activist citizen and part of the Resistance”), apparently in approbation of both its methods and agendas.

Appropriating the name of heroic World War II fighters to characterize a loosely formed alliance of Trump resisters has since proven a mockery of history — and creepy as well.

Resisters of various sorts have made use of repugnant assassination pornography: a Shakespearean troupe ritually stabbing Trump-Caesar every night, a widely viewed Trump decapitation video, loud boasts by Hollywood’s stars such as Robert De Niro and Johnny Depp of their desires either to beat Trump to a bloody pulp or to do a John Wilkes Booth hit on him, street demonstrations where the likes of multimillionaire exhibitionist Madonna dream out loud off blowing up the White House, while various state legislators, professors, and activists talk of presidential assassination. Is there a new division at the Secret Service whose sole task is solemnly informing the media that it is “investigating” the latest celebrity’s threat?

In more mainstream fashion, Democrats in Congress have often stalled Trump’s appointees, blocked Obamacare reform, and talked of removing Trump through impeachment or the 25th Amendment or the Emoluments Clause. The Resistance has gone from melodramatic charges of Trump’s collusion with the Russians, to amateur diagnoses of his mental incapacity, to fear-mongering about his supposed wild desire for a Strangelovian nuclear war with North Korea, to castigating him for his apparently callous and uncaring reactions to Hurricane Harvey victims.

The Democratic National Committee leaders in their speeches resort to scatology to reflect their furor at Trump’s victory. The media, led by CNN in its visceral hatred of Trump, has given up past pretenses of disinterested reporting. Indeed, a number of journalists have sought to ratify their prejudices by claiming that Trump is so toxic that old-style protocols of fairness can no longer can apply.

Street brownshirts such as those of Antifa (too rarely and belatedly disowned by a few mainstream Resistance leaders) justify their anti-democratic and anti-constitutional violence on the grounds that Trump is found guilty of being a Nazi — and therefore those alleged to be Nazis have to be resisted by any anti-Nazi means necessary.

In the olden days, demonstrators decked out in black, with masks and clubs, would have been deemed sinister by liberals. Now are they the necessary shock troops whose staged violence brings political dividends? Antifa’s dilemma is that its so-called good people wearing black masks can find almost no bad people in white masks to club, so they smash reporters, the disabled, and onlookers alike for sport — revealing that, at base, they perversely enjoy violence for violence’s sake. As the cowardly Klan taught us in the 1920s and 1960s: Put on a mask with a hundred like others, and even the most craven wimp believes he’s now a psychopathic thug.

For the most part, the Resistance leadership is not the modern version of a group of grass-roots idealistic outsiders living hand-to-mouth between missions in the scrub. Their announced leaders, such as Hillary Clinton, are often the embodiment of the status quo rich, influential, and elite America. The Resistance sees nothing incompatible in attacking Trump while working out of a townhouse in Georgetown, living in a Malibu compound, flying in a private jet, making a quarter-million a year as a university-endowed professor or a Southern Poverty Law Center grandee, or being a life-time Washington fixture or corporate CEO.

Shooting the Messenger in Sweden When a Norwegian cabinet minister told the truth about Sweden, the Swedish elite sprung into action. S Bruce Bawer

On August 8, I wrote here in praise of Sylvi Listhaug, Norway’s Minister of Migration and Integration, who has criticized hijab in her country’s schools, warned that there are “wolves in sheep’s clothing” in Norway’s Muslim community, and complained about so-called asylum seekers who have been taken in by Norway but who vacation in the countries they supposedly fled from. Recently, Listhaug visited Rinkeby, the Stockholm suburb that is internationally notorious for having become one of the worst of that nation’s large and ever-increasing number of no-go zones. Listhaug said that she was there to study the nightmarish stew of gang crime, welfare dependency, self-segregation, and Islam that has come to be known as “Swedish conditions.” This explanation of her trip made total sense, since her most important job is to prevent Norway from coming any closer than it already is to those “conditions.”

Listhaug’s frankness outraged the Swedish political elite, leading to what Anders Lindberg, editor of Sweden’s largest daily, Aftonbladet, called “a small-scale diplomatic crisis” between the two countries. Former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt, rejecting Listhaug’s claim that immigration is a big problem in Sweden, insisted that Swedish society is “well-functioning.” Social Democrat Karin Wanngård, head of Stockholm’s city council, accused Listhaug of “taking advantage of our hospitality to make populist and untrue points in the Norwegian election campaign.” (Norway’s general election is scheduled for September 11.) Kahin Ahmed, a local politician in Rinkeby, advised Listhaug to put her energy into “creating a more inclusive society.”

Sweden’s establishment media went berserk, too. Heidi Avellan, chief political editor of Sydsvenskan and Helsingborgs Dagblad, charged Listhaug with presenting “an incorrect picture of Sweden.” The above-mentioned Lindberg – who has previously described Listhaug’s party, the Progress Party, as “fascistic” and maligned Denmark, owing to its sensible immigrant reforms, as “a nation of racists” – targeted Listhaug with the worst insult he could think of: he called her “Norway’s answer to Donald Trump.” And Swedish author Lars Åberg, while acknowledging that there are areas in Sweden where “police, fire trucks, and ambulances have been met with stone throwing, aggression, and threats,” managed somehow to deny that these are “no-go zones,” a term he dismissively identified with “far-right bloggers.”

But it wasn’t just the powers that be in Sweden who flipped out over Listhaug. So did their Norwegian counterparts. In an interview with NRK, University of Oslo law professor Mads Andenæs compared Listhaug to the Nazis and actually blamed her for a murder that she had nothing to do with. After being accused of libel by other law experts, Andenæs doubled down on Listhaug for “categoriz[ing] an entire group who don’t look like her, with [her] blonde hair.” His NRK interviewer plainly thought his remarks were true (and delightful), and they were admiringly quoted throughout the Norwegian media. If that weren’t enough, Aftenposten gave Wanngård space in its pages to further smear Listhaug as a liar – and to lie herself about Stockholm’s social harmony and “strong economic growth.” Like Andenæs’s insults, Wanngård’s falsehoods were enthusiastically cited all over the place. Oh, and veteran publisher William Nygaard, who over a decade ago put out the memoirs of child-murdering terrorist Mullah Krekar, called Listhaug a dangerous fascist.

It was the Swedish author Katerina Janouch – writing at an independent news website, Nyheter Idag, that Åberg would doubtless defame as “far-right” – who most forcefully responded to the Scandinavian elite’s assaults on Listhaug. Janouch began her powerful August 30 op-ed by making the obvious point that the Swedish government was more worried about Listhaug’s rhetoric, and about the impact it might have on Sweden’s image, than about the ghastly truth about Swedish society. “It is becoming increasingly clear,” Janouch wrote, “that our politicians have no contact with the reality their voters live with, and apparently zero interest in trying to remedy the problems.” Janouch expressed the wish that she could take Winngård and a couple of the other female politicians who were bad-mouthing Listhaug and force them to live in Rinkeby, to shop in grocery stores that have signs only in Arabic, to experience “the judging male glances if they show too much skin,” to know what it’s like to have rocks thrown at them and be called whores by teenage boys.

The Dire Consequence of America’s Retreat U.S. foreign policy in crisis. Bruce Thornton

Reprinted from Hoover.org.

For most of its history the United States has vacillated among different foreign policy philosophies. Today we face a world in which our rivals and enemies have been emboldened by our seeming retreat from being the dominant power a globalized economy needs to ensure order and stability. Our current inability to decide on a course of action, however, is a dangerous inflection point that may lead to increasing global disorder and the decline of America’s power to protect its security and interests.

When America was a new nation, it wanted to avoid the quarrels of the Old World and its “entangling alliances,” as Thomas Jefferson called them, echoing George Washington’s warning against “permanent alliances.” The United States should influence other nations as an “example” of ordered liberty, a sentiment famously expressed by John Quincy Adams in 1821: America should be a nation of “well-wishers to the freedom and independence of all,” but one that “goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.”

Yet even in its youth, the United States found itself embroiled in European wars. The global trade created by the British Empire, and the Napoleonic Wars that followed the French Revolution, necessarily led to conflict with other nations—as when Britain imposed a naval blockade on trade between France and America in 1812, leading to the War of 1812. During the early stages of economic globalization, the U.S. received a lesson in the limits of isolationism.

Since then, the nations of the world and their interests have become even more tightly knit together. These global interconnections have made the question of American foreign policy more complex. Four broad philosophies of interstate relations have developed, and they set the terms of our current debates about America’s role in the world.

“Isolationism” still runs deep in an America created by settlers who put distance between themselves and the old world, and later migrated into the vast western frontier. Unsurprisingly, isolationism regularly recurs in our history, particularly in the aftermath of wars. After World War I, a strong strain of isolationism set the tone of American foreign policy in the following two decades, most obviously in the Senate’s refusal to ratify the 1919 Versailles Treaty. As Theodore Roosevelt said, in words published posthumously, “I do not believe in keeping our men on the other side to patrol the Rhine, or police Russia, or interfere in Central Europe or the Balkan peninsula.” In our day, the long, unfinished wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have aroused in many Americans a similar “pox on both your houses” sentiment towards foreign conflicts in distant lands. Barack Obama campaigned for president in part on promises to end both those wars—and indeed in Iraq he honored his pledge, removing American troops in 2011.

Subsequent developments, particularly the rise of Islamic State and the brutal Syrian civil war, have reaffirmed, for many, that hasty disengagement will create chaos and require the United State to reengage in order to protect its interests and security. Even President Trump, who opposed the Iraq war and campaigned at times as an isolationist, has been putting more troops into the Middle East, despite opposing such a move during the presidential campaign.

Produce ‘rescue’: Looking to Israeli initiatives to combat world hunger

Advocating the need for food banks throughout the world, Moon believes that this is the key element in reducing the number of hungry and malnourished people.

“The good news is that if you look at the world population who lives with chronic hunger [people who don’t consume enough calories in their daily diets], that has dramatically decreased over the past 20 years. There are still about 800 million people in the world who go to bed hungry,” Lisa Moon told The Jerusalem Post in an exclusive interview on Monday, adding that they mainly reside in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia.

For the past 18 months, Moon has been president and CEO of the Global Food-Banking Network (GFN), an international nonprofit organization working in 32 countries, dedicated to alleviating world hunger by creating, supporting and strengthening food banks around the world that currently serve 57 million people annually.

On her first trip to Israel, Moon is primarily visiting the Leket Israel facilities outside of Ra’anana, meeting with the staff and observing practices that Leket is using in Israel that can be applied throughout the world to combat hunger.

Leket, Israel’s national food bank, has “rescued” some 15,000 tons of produce for the needy which mainly comes from farms throughout Israel.

“So far, the biggest takeaway for me is that Leket’s approach is really unique, because they focus on fresh fruits and vegetables and working with local producers and focusing on nutrition with the people they are serving and people in food banks all over the world,” Moon said.

Moon, an expert on global international policy and food waste, who has been involved with GFN since 2015, explained the shift in world hunger from chronic hunger to “hidden hunger.”

“When people who may have enough to eat on a fairly regular basis but may have to miss meals, and they also don’t have access to nutritious foods, and, regrettably, about one in four people globally has micronutrient deficiencies and is subject to ‘hidden hunger’ – that’s really the hunger that food banks are working to address,” she said.

Moon noted that we are living in a time when there is enough food for everyone, yet the statistics show that one in nine people in the world go to bed hungry.

“It doesn’t matter how much food we produce; if we don’t have a way to distribute it to the people who are in need, we are still going to have a hunger issue,” she said. “So it’s an honor for me to work with food banks, because they really work with distribution.”

Advocating the need for food banks throughout the world, Moon believes that this is the key element in reducing the number of hungry and malnourished people.

“Right now, hunger is not about food production,” she said, “because, right now, we produce enough food for everyone to have enough. It’s a distribution challenge and a logistics problem. And so what is so challenging about that is that a third of all the food that is produced goes to waste.”

Explaining the need to provide impoverished communities with food banks, Moon said the challenge facing these organizations is getting this food directly to those in need efficiently and, of course, cheaply.

“And so we need a mechanism to take that surplus food which is edible,” she said. “We need a way to capture that surplus food and redistribute it to those who can’t access this at the store – maybe the price is too high, maybe they’re too sick. That’s really the role of food banks. And that’s why GFN is so passionate about promoting this model to communities around the world.”

Moon credits Leket Israel for its “unique method of collecting fresh, rescued food from the top of the food chain at the level of agricultural production.”

Hoping to apply Leket’s model on a global level, Moon said: “We must focus on scaling food rescue around the world in order to meet growing demands and enter emerging markets.”

NORTH KOREA’S ULTIMATUM TO AMERICA . CAROLINE GLICK

Washington and Pyongyang exchange threats as the latter continues to evoke the wrath of world powers with its latest nuclear test.

The nuclear confrontation between the US and North Korea entered a critical phase Sunday with North Korea’s conduct of an underground test of a thermonuclear bomb.

If the previous round of this confrontation earlier this summer revolved around Pyongyang’s threat to attack the US territory of Guam, Sunday’s test, together with North Korea’s recent tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the continental US, was a direct threat to US cities.

In other words, the current confrontation isn’t about US superpower status in Asia, and the credibility of US deterrence or the capabilities of US military forces in the Pacific. The confrontation is now about the US’s ability to protect the lives of its citizens.

The distinction tells us a number of important things. All of them are alarming.

First, because this is about the lives of Americans, rather than allied populations like Japan and South Korea, the US cannot be diffident in its response to North Korea’s provocation. While attenuated during the Obama administration, the US’s position has always been that US military forces alone are responsible for guaranteeing the collective security of the American people.

Pyongyang is now directly threatening that security with hydrogen bombs. So if the Trump administration punts North Korea’s direct threat to attack US population centers with nuclear weapons to the UN Security Council, it will communicate profound weakness to its allies and adversaries alike.

Obviously, this limits the options that the Trump administration has. But it also clarifies the challenge it faces.

The second implication of North Korea’s test of their plutonium-based bomb is that the US’s security guarantees, which form the basis of its global power and its alliance system are on the verge of becoming completely discredited.

In an interview Sunday with Fox News’s Trish Regan, former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton was asked about the possible repercussions of a US military assault against North Korea for the security of South Korea.

Regan asked, “What are we risking though if we say we’re going to go in with strategic military strength?… Are we going to end up with so many people’s lives gone in South Korea, in Seoul because we make that move?” Bolton responded with brutal honesty.

“Let me ask you this: how do you feel about dead Americans?” In other words, Bolton said that under prevailing conditions, the US faces the painful choice between imperiling its own citizens and imperiling the citizens of an allied nation. And things will only get worse. Bolton warned that if North Korea’s nuclear threat is left unaddressed, US options will only become more problematic and limited in the years to come.

Blacklist The Left’s latest war on free speech. Daniel Greenfield

Blacklists are ugly things. They’re how you terrorize and intimidate people. They’re a weapon of hate. And Color of Change, an extremist group, is using blacklists to smear all conservatives as racists.

Color of Change, the organization founded by Van Jones, a 9/11 Truther and former Communist, has circulated a blacklist to PayPal, Discover, Visa, Master Card and American Express that falsely and libelously groups together a black Harlem church, the David Horowitz Freedom Center, an ex-Muslim organization, Jihad Watch and others as “white supremacists” alongside actual Neo-Nazis.

But Color of Change’s definition of “white supremacist” is Republican.

“We must hold every enabler of #Trump accountable,” Color of Change boss Rashad Robinson had tweeted. “#Enablers of white supremacist & nazi sympathizers are not neutral, they are complicit.”

In another Tweet, he laid out his real agenda for bringing down Trump. “Continuing to ensure there are consequences for #enablers – corporate, political and cultural – is critical to forcing him out. Isolate him!”

The Color of Change blacklists aimed at President Trump’s corporate council members and his grass roots supporters are part of the same partisan plot to use false accusations of white supremacy to intimidate corporations into silencing his supporters and forcing him out of office.

“There are no sidelines,” Color of Change declared before Trump’s inauguration. Any politicians or executives who worked with him were traitors. “For those in power—whether in government or in corporations—who choose to enable Trump’s plot against our country, we must be just as uncompromising.”

The blacklist is Color of Change’s weapon in its “uncompromising” war against democracy.

Color of Change has a long history of targeting corporations with pressure campaigns based around false accusations of racism in order to silence supporters of the Republican Party and punish critics of the Democrat Party.

When Glenn Beck expressed his disapproval of Obama, Color of Change warned his advertisers that if they didn’t pull their ads, they would be “publicly associated with his racism”. A more recent campaign targeting Bill O’Reilly also accused him of racism. Neither Beck nor O’Reilly are racists, but Color of Change uses false accusations of racism to intimidate corporations into silencing its political opponents.

When McCain campaigned for the White House, Color of Change accused him of allowing his supporters to shout, “Kill him” at Obama. When Romney ran against Obama, Rashad Robinson accused him of “appealing to the basest racisim [sic].” Rashad and COC’s smears have remained dishonestly consistent.

Color of Change used the same tactic when going after ALEC, a pro-business group targeted by leftist activists over its opposition to government regulation. Corporate members of ALEC were warned, “either stop funding ALEC, or become widely known as a company dismantling the gains of the civil rights movement. “

Behind Color of Change’s racism smears are rich white leftists. Its money comes from George Soros, Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, the Ford Foundation and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Behind its posturing about “white supremacy” are the usual targets, FOX News, ALEC, the Republican Party and conservative activist groups, which the left has always plotted to destroy in its quest for total power.

Hitting corporations with racism smears is just how the left’s racism-smearing subdivision goes about it.