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December 2017

We Are the Bollards by Mark Steyn on Australia

So there will be more empty seats round the Christmas table this year, after an “Australian citizen” mowed down pedestrians at the junction of Flinders Street and Elizabeth Street in Melbourne. The casualties include “a pre-schooler with serious head injuries”. The “Australian citizen” (I presume this designation is being used to emphasize that he’s entirely eligible to serve in Mr Turnbull’s cabinet) did it deliberately, but relax, lighten up, there’s no need to worry because, according to Victoria’s police commissioner, all this terrifying terror is “not terror-related”.

So he’s not a crack operative with the Islamic State’s Australian branch office, he’s just, as The Age’s cheery headline writer puts it, “of Afghan descent and mentally ill”. A second man, arrested while filming the scene and found to have three knives in his bag, is believed to be nothing to do with the first man. Just another Australian citizen taking his knife collection out for a stroll.

You’ll recall there was a previous “vehicle attack” in downtown Melbourne earlier this year, after which the authorities ordered up the bollardization of every pedestrianized precinct in the vicinity. As Andrew Bolt writes:

All the bollards put up after six people were killed in Bourke St Mall in January have not stopped this.

After the Halloween jihadist killed eight people on a bike path in Lower Manhattan, New York’s bollardizers commanded similarly extravagant installation of Diversity Bollards up and down the city. As I wrote:

Last week I was tootling through Williston, Vermont, which has just reconfigured its highway system to run green-painted bike paths down the center of the streets. And the thought occurred to me that, once you’ve bollarded off every sidewalk, what’s to stop jihadists mowing down cyclists? After all, if the eco-crowd are installing them in the middle of the roadway, they’re kind of hard to bollard off.

I was over-thinking the issue. One of the problems with bollarding off pedestrians behind a wall of Diversity Bollards is that they still occasionally have to emerge from behind the bollards to cross the street, and it’s hard to bollard off a pedestrian crossing. In this case, the non-terror-related Australian citizen simply waited until the little green sign indicated it was safe for pedestrians to cross the street and then floored it. In an amusing touch, his car eventually came to a rest against a bollard.

What’s the solution? Maybe automobile manufacturers could replace airbags with Diversity Bollards timed to inflate whenever non-terror-related drivers with mental-health issues accelerate near pedestrian crossings. Or perhaps it would be easier to issue citizens of western nations at birth with an individual ring of bollards to wear about their persons at all time, starting with when they leave the maternity ward.

Alternatively, instead of attempting to ring-fence every potential target – ie, everything and everyone – with Diversity Bollards, we could try installing bollards where they matter – around the civilized world. To reiterate what I reiterated last time:

I don’t want to get used to it – and I reiterate my minimum demand of western politicians that I last made after the London Bridge attacks: How many more corpses need to pile up on our streets before you guys decide to stop importing more of it?

Arab Apartheid Targets Palestinians by Khaled Abu Toameh

Palestinians say that what they are facing in Iraq is “ethnic cleansing.” The new Iraqi law deprives Palestinians living in Iraq of their right to free education, healthcare and to travel documents, and denies them work in state institutions.

No one will pay any attention to the misery of the Palestinians in any Arab country. Major media outlets around the world will barely cover the news of the controversial Iraqi law or the displacement of thousands of Palestinian families in Iraq. Journalists are too busy chasing a handful of Palestinian stone-throwers near Ramallah. A Palestinian girl who punched an Israeli soldier in the face draws more media interest than Arab apartheid against the Palestinians.

Palestinian leaders, meanwhile care nothing about the plight of their own people in Arab countries. They are much too busy inciting Palestinians against Israel and Trump to pay such a paltry issue any mind at all.

Iraq has just joined the long list of Arab countries that shamelessly practice apartheid against Palestinians. The number of Arab countries that apply discriminatory measures against Palestinians while pretending to support the Palestinian cause is breathtaking. Arab hypocrisy is once again on display, but who who is looking?

The international media — and even the Palestinians — are so preoccupied with US President Donald Trump’s announcement on Jerusalem that the plight of Palestinians in Arab countries is dead news. This apathy allows Arab governments to continue with their anti-Palestinian policies because they know that no one in the international community cares — the United Nations is too busy condemning Israel to do much else.

So what is the story with the Palestinians in Iraq? Earlier this week, it was revealed that the Iraqi government has approved a new law that effectively abolishes the rights given to Palestinians living there. The new law changes the status of Palestinians from nationals to foreigners.

Under Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi dictator, the Palestinians enjoyed many privileges. Until 2003, there were about 40,000 Palestinians living in Iraq. Since the overthrow of the Saddam regime, the Palestinian population has dwindled to 7,000.

Thousands of Palestinians have fled Iraq after being targeted by various warring militias in that country because of their support for Saddam Hussein. Palestinians say that what they are facing in Iraq is “ethnic cleansing.”

The conditions of the Palestinians in Iraq are about to go from bad to worse. The new law, which was ratified by Iraqi President Fuad Masum, deprives Palestinians living in Iraq of their right to free education, healthcare and to travel documents, and denies them work in state institutions. The new law, which is called No. 76 of 2017, revokes the rights and privileges granted to Palestinians under Saddam Hussein. The law went into effect recently after it was published in the Iraqi Official Gazette No. 4466.

“Instead of protecting the Palestinian refugees from daily violations and improving their living and humanitarian conditions, the Iraqi government is making decisions that will have a catastrophic impact on the lives of these refugees,” said Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor.

Turkey: Still a U.S. Ally? by Lawrence A. Franklin

But what of NATO? Is Turkey a reliable NATO partner? Here the picture is more mixed.

Turkey of late, with the purchase of two batteries of the Russian S-400 air defense system, appears to have taken a big step away from the NATO alliance. The Erdogan regime’s nationwide post-coup purge of civil and military personnel, and its threatening acts against freedom of speech, such as the mass arrest of journalists, are eviscerating the country’s independent civil society institutions. In addition, Turkey’s crackdown on the activities of non-governmental organizations in Turkey is another sign that Turkey is turning away from democratic values shared by NATO Alliance members.

Is Turkey still a reliable ally? After repeated endorsements by the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of policies inimical to U.S. interests, the answer seems to be not really.

Erdogan recently announced he will seek United Nations support to annul President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

In addition, the Turkish Ministry of Justice has issued warrants for the arrest of two American Turkey specialists, in effect placing a bounty of $800,000 on their heads.

Additionally, there is the somewhat comical furor in Turkey over the adoption by Turkish entrepreneurs of the American “Black Friday” sales concept. Several Turkish businesses, which had attempted to increase sales by borrowing the U.S. “Black Friday” market lure, were attacked by devout Muslims who accused store owners of disrespecting Islam’s day of prayer. The perceived insult to Islam’s Friday Prayer obligation is just another example of a widening antipathy towards the U.S.

While the misunderstanding by Turks over “Black Friday,” will likely fade quickly, the diplomatic damage brought on by the early October arrest by Turkey’s police of a Turkish employee at the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul allegedly for espionage is likely to be more long-lasting.

The arrest of the U.S Consulate’s employee precipitated the U.S. Ambassador’s suspension on October 8, of all non-immigrant U.S. visas for Turkish citizens. The incident underscores how bilateral relations have plummeted since Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan first came to power.

Shortly after Erdogan was elected in 2002, Turkey appeared to start turning away from its U.S. alliance when it refused to grant permission for U.S. troops to cross Turkish territory into northern Iraq. Turkey’s parliament, the Grand National Assembly, voted down the request. Erdogan seems now to be focusing on regional affairs rather than on Turkey’s traditional ties to the United States and Europe. Since Erdogan came to power, Turkey has increased its economic and diplomatic ties to Arab states.

The Bigmouth Tradition of American Leadership To everything, there is a season. By Victor Davis Hanson

America has always enjoyed two antithetical traditions in its political and military heroes.

The preferred style is the reticent, sober, and competent executive planner as president or general, from Herbert Hoover to Gerald Ford to Jimmy Carter.

George Marshall remains the epitome of understated and quiet competence.

The alternate and more controversial sorts are the loud, often reckless, and profane pile drivers. Think Andrew Jackson of Teddy Roosevelt. Both types have been appreciated, and at given times and in particular landscapes both profiles have proven uniquely invaluable.

Grant/Sherman
Both Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman were military geniuses. Grant was quiet and reflective — at least in his public persona, which gave scant hint that he struggled with alcohol and often displayed poor judgement about those who surrounded him.

Sherman was loud. He was often petty, and certainly ready in a heartbeat to engage in frequent feuds, many of them cul de sacs and counter-productive.

Sherman threatened to imprison or even hang critical journalists and waged a bitter feud with the secretary of war, Edwin Stanton.

Too few, then or now, have appreciated that the uncouth Sherman, in fact, displayed both a prescient genius and an uncanny understanding of human nature. Whereas Grant could brilliantly envision how his armies might beat the enemy along a battle line or capture a key fortress or open a river, Sherman’s insight encompassed whole regions and theaters, in calibrating how both economics and sociology might mesh with military strategy to crush an entire people.

For all of Grant’s purported drinking and naïveté about the scoundrels around him, his outward professional bearing, his understated appearance of steadiness and discretion, enhanced his well-earned reputation for masterful control in times of crises.

The volatile and loquacious nature of Sherman, in contrast, often hid and diminished appreciation of his talents — in some ways greater than Grant’s. To the stranger, Grant would have seemed the less likely to have had too much to drink and smoked too many daily cigars, Sherman the more prone to all sorts of such addictions.

Truman/Eisenhower
Harry Truman talked too much. He swore. He drank. He played poker. He was petty to the point of stooping to spar with a music critic who dismissed his daughter’s solo performances. His profanity was an open secret, as well as his temper. His advisers constantly cautioned him to tone it down.

As a Missourian who had once gone bankrupt and recouped with a political career though the help of the corrupt Prendergast machine, Truman carried a chip on his shoulder throughout his political career on the East Coast.

In some sense, Truman was an accidental president — a workmanlike senator appointed as running mate in the 1944 reelection campaign to the sure fourth-termer FDR — out of justified fears that an ailing Roosevelt would soon die in office and his socialist vice president, Henry Wallace, would soon become wartime president.

“Give Them Hell” Harry’s fiery and often grating personality and infamous feud with General Douglas MacArthur helped to explain why he left office with the then-lowest presidential ratings in modern history. His Internal Revenue Bureau (the precursor of the IRS) was scandal-ridden, and many of his aides were buffoonish.

Educational Rot The roots of America’s epidemic of substandard teachers. Walter Williams

My recent columns have focused on the extremely poor educational outcomes for black students. There’s enough blame for all involved to have their fair share. That includes students who are hostile and alien to the educational process and have derelict, uninterested home environments. After all, if there is not someone in the home to ensure that a youngster does his homework, has wholesome meals, gets eight to 10 hours of sleep and behaves in school, educational dollars won’t produce much.

There’s another educational issue that’s neither flattering nor comfortable to confront. That’s the low academic quality of so many teachers. It’s an issue that must be confronted and dealt with if we’re to improve the quality of education. Most states require prospective teachers to pass a certification test. How about a sample of some of the test questions.

Here’s a question from a recent test given to college students in Michigan planning to become teachers: “Which of the following is largest? a. 1/4, b. 3/5, c. 1/2, d. 9/20.” Another question: “A town planning committee must decide how to use a 115-acre piece of land. The committee sets aside 20 acres of the land for watershed protection and an additional 37.4 acres for recreation. How much of the land is set aside for watershed protection and recreation? a. 43.15 acres, b. 54.6 acres, c. 57.4 acres, d. 60.4 acres” (http://tinyurl.com/y7mtpfhk).

The Arizona teacher certification test asks: “Janet can type 250 words in 5 minutes, what is her typing rate per minute? a. 50wpm, b. 66wpm, c. 55wpm, d. 45wpm.” The California Basic Educational Skills Test asks the test taker to find the verb in the following sentence: “The interior temperatures of even the coolest stars are measured in millions of degrees. a. Coolest, b. Of even, c. Are measured, d. In millions” (http://tinyurl.com/yd85kv3n). A CBEST math question is: “You purchase a car making a down payment of $3,000 and 6 monthly payments of $225. How much have you paid so far for the car? a. $3225, b. $4350, c. $5375, d. $6550, e. $6398.”

The Obama Years: A Legacy Of Scandal And Deception Joe Biden’s bizarre disconnect regarding his scandal-ridden former boss. Ari Lieberman

On December 13, former vice president, Joe Biden, appeared on CBS with the hosts of “This Morning” where he peddled his new book and showered his former boss with praise. During the course of the interview, he was asked about his relationship with Obama and responded with the following; “I’ve served with eight presidents and I’ve gotten to know four of them very well. I’ve never met any president that has more character, more integrity, and more backbone than this guy does.” Then he went completely off the rails when he absurdly added; “And eight years, not a hint — not a hint — of a scandal.”

What was perhaps even more outrageous than the statement itself was the fact that none of This Morning’s hosts challenged the veracity of that statement and allowed it to pass without a scintilla of scrutiny, exposing yet again an extreme bias existing within elements of the establishment media. In fact, the Obama administration was among the most corrupt and scandal-ridden in recent memory. Biden’s comment merits further examination so let’s buckle up and take a stroll down memory lane.

Solyndra Scandal – The Obama administration provided this failing solar company with a $535 million stimulus-funded loan, courtesy of the American taxpayer. Taxpayer money kept pouring in despite the fact that the Office of Management and Budget warned that Solyndra was not a profitable or viable company. But it gets worse. The family foundation of billionaire George Kaiser, an Obama fundraiser, was one of Solyndra’s main investors. Can you say quid pro quo?

Veterans Affairs Scandal – Over 40 veterans needlessly died while waiting to be seen by doctors at a Phoenix VA facility. Another 1,700 veterans were forced to wait for months before being seen by medical personnel. An audit of the VA confirmed that VA officials systematically altered records and appointment schedules in a deliberate and methodical VA scheme to manipulate data to meet fabricated goals.

Operation Chokepoint Scandal – The Obama DOJ utilized the power of big government to pressure banks to cease doing business with industries with which the administration had ideological differences. Gun manufacturers and gun stores were prime targets even though they had not violated any laws. Eventually, the FDIC admitted to misconduct, bowed to pressure and significantly curtailed the discriminatory regulations after affected businesses threatened legal action.

Gibson Guitar Scandal – Armed federal agents executed four search warrants on Gibson Guitar Corp. facilities in Nashville and Memphis, Tenn., seizing guitars, electronic files and other inventory including wood that was purchased in India and Madagascar. The DOJ alleged that Gibson’s had violated an obscure law known as the Lacey Act which made it a crime to violate the environmental laws of another country. Gibson produced an affidavit from government officials in Madagascar stating that Gibson had violated none of that nation’s laws. Gibson also alleged that the DOJ was misinterpreting Indian law. Gibson’s CEO was a major donor to the GOP but his competitors, who purchased the same materials and were not GOP donors, were untouched by Obama’s DOJ. As part of a settlement to drop criminal charges, Gibson was required to pay a $250,000 fine and was required to donate $50,000 to an environmental group. Gibson was eventually able to retrieve its inventory from the clutches of the DOJ.

Looking Ahead to Trump’s Year Two A glance at the biggest challenges — and how to surmount them. Bruce Thornton

President Trump’s first year ended with the biggest tax reform since 1986, the most consequential of a list of achievements that have made a good start at rolling back Barack Obama’s runaway expansion of the Leviathan state. At the same time, the hysterical “resistance” of the Dems and progressives, abetted by Republican NeverTrumpers, continues its bizarre attacks on the president, feeding off his blunt twitter commentary and obsessing over his brash style rather than focusing on his notable actions.

As year two of the improbable Trump presidency begins, this conflict remains central to our political drama. But what does it portend for Trump’s program and the critical midterm elections?

Lost in the anti-Trump media frenzy has been, according to the White House, 81 significant rollbacks of the progressive assault on the Constitutional order. The most important was the appointment of originalist Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. That win, along with 12 Appeals Court appointments of similarly minded judges, will shape our government for decades, and survive any future swing back to the Dems. Tax reform will also likely survive, since the left almost never repeals tax cuts to the middle class. Cutting the regulations that metastasized under Obama has saved $8 billion so far, and encouraged the economy’s “animal spirits,” leading to three quarters of more than 3% growth in GDP, 1.7 million new jobs, a stock market up 28%, unemployment at its lowest since December 2000, and economic confidence at a 17-year high.

Throw in opening up more than a million acres to oil exploration and drilling, hastening Obamacare’s demise by eliminating the individual mandate, discarding the economically toxic Paris Climate Accords, reining in the job-killing EPA, getting serious about border enforcement, deporting thousands of illegal aliens, paring back our suicidal open-door immigration policies, and challenging political correctness almost daily, and Trump’s record on the domestic front points to a good start on growing the economy and getting the dead hand of big government out of the country’s business.

On foreign policy, Trump has begun to repair the damage to our international prestige wrought by Obama’s subjection of our country to the one-world, naïve internationalism favored by progressives, who want to diminish America’s global clout and reduce the U.S. to a “partner,” as Obama said in Cairo, “mindful of his own imperfections.” He increased sanctions on Iran and refused to recertify Obama’s disastrous agreement with the nuke-hungry mullahs; bombed a Syrian airfield and destroyed a fifth of Assad’s jet fighters; took the gloves off our military and ended ISIS’s “caliphate”; rolled back Obama’s cringing concessions to Cuba; put Russia on notice by recommitting to the Magnitsky Act and increasing sanctions on regime oligarchs; began work on strengthening military readiness and antimissile defence; gave a rousing defense of Western Civilization in Poland; visited world capitals to project America’s renewed confidence and willingness to defend its security and interests; unleashed U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley to scold and scorn the anti-American pygmy states infesting that “cockpit in the Tower of Babel,” to borrow Churchill’s phrase; and announced that the U.S recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and promised to move our embassy from Tel Aviv to Israel’s capital. Under Trump, America seems to be getting its international mojo back.

Mark McGinness The Crown‘s Gems and Paste

If the download statistics don’t lie, many Quadrant readers will be among those occupying at least part of the Christmas/New Year break with binge streamings of the hit Netflix series professing to recount Queen Elizabeth’s life, times and reign. And it does, too, sort of.

Over Christmastide, the phenomenon that is Netflix’s The Crown will divert many a family – monarchist and republican alike – ten episodes of our Sovereign’s life from 1956 to 1963. In Series One (1947 – 1955), the quality of the script, the brilliance of the actors, the perfection of the period, the exquisiteness of the sets, the acuity of the cameramen, combined to produce a tour de force. The effect was to make us think we were really there as the Princesses were told that their beloved Papa had become George VI; as the dashing Duke of Edinburgh saved his Princess Bride from a rogue elephant in Kenya (untrue); as Queen Mary received her errant, eldest son with such froideur (surely true); as Philip was told his children would be Windsors (undeniable). It all seemed so authentic that we now feel we KNOW what happened behind those Palace walls.

The apparent authenticity of The Crown is so delicious. It is also so insidious. We shall never really know. We have to remember this is in fact a magnificent imperial soap. In his review of the series, The Crown: Truth & Fiction (Zuleika, 50pp), the historian Hugo Vickers, while welcoming its great job in reminding a younger generation that the Queen and Prince Philip were once young themselves, he warns that ‘Fiction should help us understand the truth, not pervert it.’ As Peter Morgan, creator of the series, told The Australian, ‘I’ve done my best to stick to the facts as I have them. I think there’s room to creatively imagine, based on information we have about Her (The Queen).’ Tellingly, he went on to say, when asked if The Queen had seen Series One, ‘I have no idea and I don’t want to know…. I live in hope that she hasn’t seen it, never watches it and doesn’t give it the slightest thought.’

I was interested to learn in The Times obit of Lady Charteris, (the widow of Martin Charteris, Private Secretary to Elizabeth as Princess and Queen), who died, aged 97, in March this year, ‘She was fascinated by Series One of The Crown on Netflix, in which she was portrayed by Jo Herbert, with the actor Harry Hadden-Paton playing her husband. She liked to watch it with the Duchess of Grafton — the mistress of the robes and an old friend.’ To have been there, a fly on the wall as they watched, to see them laugh and scoff; nod and sigh.

Words We Didn’t Hear “Word of the Year” awards reflect the prejudices of their judges, not actual usage. Daniel J. Flynn

Merriam-Webster named “feminism” its Word of the Year for 2017—not 1971, as might have been more appropriate. The reference company’s shortlist for consideration included “Antifa,” “White Fragility” (two words?), and “Broflake,” defined as “a man who is readily upset or offended by progressive attitudes that conflict with his more conventional or conservative views.” At the risk of sounding like a broflake, or telegraphing my white fragility: someone at Merriam-Webster really, really wanted the Word of the Year to serve (in terms best understood with the assistance of Merriam-Webster) as a brickbat to ensanguine mossbacked atavists.

Oxford Dictionaries selected a similarly politically charged term, albeit one more obscure than the ubiquitous “feminism.” The company defines “youthquake” as “a significant cultural, political, or social change arising from the actions or influence of young people.” That seems neutral enough, until one understands that it was UK Labour Party gains, fueled by the youth vote, that led to the company’s elevation of a term that, as a befuddled Washington Post pointed out, nobody really uses.

Urban Dictionary, a newer competitor of sorts to the OED, includes in its entries “lexiconnoisseur,” defined as “a person who makes up words, and then tells everyone about said word.” Surely as neologisms go, lexiconnoisseur beats youthquake—and describes its boosters.

Dictionary.com went with “complicit,” which initially appears to be a perfectly cromulent and un-weaponized word. But in explaining its choice, the popular website cited the complicity of various politicians in aiding and abetting Donald Trump’s agenda. “Climate change has been thrust into the spotlight this year with President Trump’s decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement,” Dictionary.com claims. “Additionally, the new EPA chief Scott Pruitt has been complicit in his refusal to acknowledge that humans play a primary role in climate change.”

Back to the Future: From Scooter Libby to Donald Trump By Victor Davis Hanson

Do we remember today the media hysteria between 2003 and 2007 that surrounded the special counsel’s investigation, prosecution, and trial of Scooter Libby?https://amgreatness.com/2017/12/26/back-to-the-future-from-scooter-libby-to-donald-trump/

During the progressive furor over the Iraq War, media-driven charges arose that Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, had deliberately leaked the covert status of Valerie Plame—a supposedly undercover CIA operative.

Soon all hell broke loose. Remember, these were the unhinged years of Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, the Bush-Hitler slurs, snuff Bush novels and films, and “Bush lied; people died” gospels.

Sensing a chance to embarrass or wound the Bush Administration, the political and media opponents of Cheney and Bush advisor Karl Rove first went after Libby. They apparently had hopes that he could be charged with something to leverage confessions and thus indictments of his superiors as co-conspirators in the supposed Libby leak of Plame’s CIA status. The leak purportedly was a way of punishing Plame’s stridently anti-Bush husband, Joseph Wilson, who had made unsubstantiated accusations of conspiratorial wrongdoing against the Bush White House.

Finally, the Bush Administration bowed to the growing media-driven pressures. We may forget now that it was none other than acting Attorney General James Comey on December 30, 2003, who appointed his friend Patrick Fitzgerald (sound familiar?) as special counsel. He had appointed Fitzgerald to conduct an investigation “into the alleged unauthorized disclosure of a CIA employee’s identity.”

If we review news stories from this year alone that did not warrant a special counsel investigation—FBI investigators assigned to Robert Mueller’s legal team exchanging venomous texts about the target of their supposed disinterested inquiry; the Obama Administration secretly shutting down government investigations of the terrorist organization Hezbollah’s global drug-trafficking to enhance its signature Iran deal; or the Clinton-funded phony Steele/Fusion GPS file that was peddled to the FBI and may have been used as an argument to get a FISA order to surveille Trump campaign officials and leak their names during and right after the 2016 election—we can remember just how hysterical those times were. The entire country was set afire over the ambiguous status of a single CIA employee and the loud, unfounded conspiracies theories of Plame’s often buffoonish spouse, Wilson.