Displaying posts published in

January 2019

Theresa May’s Anti-Christian Regime Britain’s blindfolded investigation of persecution of Christians. Jules Gomes

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272389/theresa-mays-anti-christian-regime-jules-gomes

You don’t need to be a fan of the vintage British political sitcom Yes Minister to understand how government reviews are instruments of inertia, damage control, public relations, virtue signaling, obfuscation and a surrogate for action. As the smooth-tongued civil servant Sir Humphrey Appleby from Yes Minister puts it: “The job of a professionally conducted internal inquiry is to unearth a great mass of no evidence.”

On Boxing Day, Britain’s Conservative in Name Only (CINO) government in cozy chumminess with the Church of England gave the nation a gift. The day was most certainly chosen for its significance: in British tradition postmen, errand boys, servants and the hoi polloi expect to receive a gift box from the high and mighty.

So as his Boxing Day 2018 gift, Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt MP announced a review into the global persecution of Christians, which would be led by Philip Mounstephen, Anglican Bishop of Truro. The heralding of this great news of glad tidings was peppered with the standard British bureaucratic blather.

The Foreign Office said its independent review would consider “tough questions and offer ambitious policy recommendations.” It would provide “an objective view of Britain’s support for the most vulnerable Christians globally,” trumpeted Lord Tariq Ahmad, Britain’s special envoy on freedom of religion.

How Two Gustavos Used California’s Sanctuary State Law to Spread Terror Across 200 Miles No sanctuary for the victims of these two illegal alien killers.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272403/how-two-gustavos-used-californias-sanctuary-state-daniel-greenfield

Less than 200 miles separate Tulare County and Stanislaus County. And a little over a week separates the two reigns of terror in these two California counties by Gustavo Garcia and Gustavo Perez Arriaga.

Both Gustavos were dangerous and violent illegal aliens. On Monday, December 17, Gustavo Garcia went on a murderous rampage that killed at least two people and put seven more in the hospital. On Wednesday, December 26, Gustavo Perez Arriaga murdered a law enforcement officer at a traffic stop.

Cpl. Ronil Singh, murdered by the second Gustavo, and Rocky Paul Jones and Rolando Soto, murdered by the first Gustavo, did not have to die. They died because California’s sanctuary state law took their lives.

Gustavo Garcia had a criminal record dating back to 2002 covering everything from illegal weapons to meth. He had been deported in 2004 and then again in 2014. There had been three immigration holds on the illegal alien criminal. Before he began his murderous spree, Tulare County sheriff’s deputies arrested him. ICE put a hold on him as a dangerous illegal alien. But because of California’s sanctuary state law, local law enforcement had to let him loose. A few days later, the illegal alien’s carnage began.

Garcia shot a farmworker picking fruit in the chest, robbed a mini-mart at gunpoint of $2,000, shot and killed a man, shot at a woman in the parking lot of a Motel 6, wounding her in the arm and torso, opened fire at two gas stations, killing Rocky Jones, fired shots into several homes, including the home of his ex-girlfriend, forcing her and her children to flee, opened fire on the deputies pursuing him, stole a car from three other farmworkers at gunpoint, and got into a high speed chase while deliberately trying to hit other cars.

He exchanged fire with pursuing cops during the chase, and smashed into other cars while going 100 miles, taking his own life and putting four other people in the hospital, including one critically wounded.

And that’s actually an incomplete list of the illegal alien killer’s crimes after the ICE hold wasn’t honored.

“Before SB 54, Gustavo Garcia would have been turned over to ICE officials. That’s how we’ve always done it, day in and day out. After SB 54, we no longer have the power to do that,” Sheriff Mike Boudreaux said.

Next Caravan Rising Organizing in Honduras – while Congress sleeps. Matthew Vadum

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272419/next-caravan-rising-matthew-vadum

Another large caravan of would-be illegal aliens is forming down in Central America with the intention of moving north to demand jobs and government benefits, according to media reports.

The formation of this new army of migrants drives home the point that a border wall at the lengthy, porous U.S.-Mexico boundary is urgently needed. The failure to move forward with wall construction sends a message to the world that America is a weak country that lacks the moral fiber and political will to defend its national sovereignty. Not building the wall also provides would-be border jumpers extra incentives to enter the United States unlawfully.

The new caravan is estimated at 15,000 people and is reportedly planning to leave Honduras on Jan. 15.

“They say they are even bigger and stronger than the last caravan,” Irma Garrido, a member of Reactiva Tijuana Foundation has been quoted saying.

Thousands of Central American migrants from previous caravans in the fall are still present in various cities along the border. Many are waiting for U.S. authorities to process their requests for asylum. The migrants have worn out their welcome in Tijuana, Mexico, where overcrowded shelters are taxing local resources.

According to the Los Angeles Times:

Coordinators who helped direct the migrants on the 2,000-mile trek with bullhorns, arranging for buses and giving advice along the way, have mostly vanished. Many of the migrants say they feel abandoned and unsure where to turn next. Some are ready to return home.

Garrido said this new, larger caravan will probably be joined by more people in El Salvador and in Guatemala, but she said they don’t plan on coming straight to the Tijuana-San Diego border, where resources are already stretched nearly to a breaking point.

Last week, the U.S. and Mexico agreed to formulate a strategy to reduce Central American migration. It includes a $25-billion expenditure by Mexico in its southern states over the coming five years. The U.S. has vowed to ante up $4.8 billion for aid programs in Mexico and $5.8 billion for programs benefiting the Northern Triangle of Central America, consisting of Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala.

And yet American lawmakers have still not approved the $5 billion needed to begin construction of a wall on the international border with Mexico. President Trump has said he is considering shutting down the nation’s southern border if wall funding is not approved.

Trump May Be the True Liberal Today’s progressives have embraced illiberalism, from speech codes to identity politics. By F.H. Buckley

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-may-be-the-true-liberal-11546298494

President Trump’s support for criminal-justice reform surprised many on the left who pigeonholed him as an illiberal populist. Had they paid closer attention to Mr. Trump’s message, however, they’d have recognized that much of it is squarely within the American liberal tradition. With more self-awareness they’d have seen that their own abandonment of liberalism explains much of Mr. Trump’s support.

The First Step Act, which Mr. Trump signed last month, reduces the three-strikes penalty for drug felonies and retroactively limits the sentencing disparities for crack cocaine that disproportionately burdened African-Americans. That will reduce prison terms for about 2,000 current federal inmates.

Contrary to the depiction of Mr. Trump as racist, the act is wholly consistent with the way he campaigned in 2016. He invited minorities to vote for him because Democrats had left them behind: “What have you got to lose?” His pride in lower minority unemployment is obviously heartfelt.

In his economic policies too, Mr. Trump was anything but a flint-eyed conservative. He made it clear he wasn’t about to gut the welfare system. He wanted trade deals that would generally benefit Americans, and a border wall to preserve American jobs. In all this, he’s occupied the sweet spot in American politics, combining social conservatism with middle-of-the-road economic policies.

The media hasn’t paid much attention. Instead, it’s fixated on Steve Bannon and right-wing populism. Mr. Bannon makes common cause with European rightists and the brutish Yellow Vest protesters who destroyed a portion of François Rude’s “La Marseillaise” at Paris’s Arc de Triomphe. The Bannonites seem to have forgotten Edmund Burke’s lesson that while the English and Americans do revolutions well, the same can’t be said of the French.

U.S. conservatives aren’t like the European right, and there’s a reason. Constitutional liberties are the center of American nationhood and identity.

Caroline Glick joins New Right party of Shaked, Bennett by David Isaac

https://worldisraelnews.com/caroline-glick-joins-new-right-party-of-shaked-bennett/?utm_source=browser&utm_medium=push_notification&utm_campaign=PushCrew_notification_1546416630&pushcrew_powered=1

Caroline Glick, a longtime Jerusalem Post columnist, will be joining the New Right Party formed by Education Minister Naftali Bennett and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked.

The Jerusalem Post reports that Caroline Glick, a longtime columnist for the paper, announced Wednesday she will be joining the New Right party recently formed by Education Minister Naftali Bennett and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked.

Glick, a well-known columnist with a large following, especially in the United States, is known for her right-wing views. She started writing for The Jerusalem Post in 2002 and also writes for Maariv and American website Breitbart. Her columns have appeared in Israeli weekly Makor Rishon.

In her 2014 book The Israeli Solution: A One State Plan for Peace in the Middle East, Glick proposed annexing Judea and Samaria. She also called for a process that gradually grants Palestinians living in those areas Israeli citizenship. She didn’t expect Palestinians to jump at the opportunity and acknowledged that there was a risk to her plan.

“The prospect that, contrary to expectations, the Palestinians will apply en masse for Israeli citizenship, and that as a consequence Israel’s citizenship rolls will expand massively, is an important issue for policy makers to consider,” she wrote.

Glick served as assistant foreign policy adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 1997-1998 and was briefly considered by Netanyahu as a Likud candidate in 2015, The Jerusalem Post reports. But several of her columns critical of his policies caused him to reconsider, the paper says.

In 2000, Glick earned a Master of Arts in Public Policy from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

Glick was born in Texas and grew up in Chicago before immigrating to Israel in 1991.

Warren On The Warpath? By Frank Salvato

Now comes word that Progressive-Fascist Elizabeth “I feel like I am a Native American Indian so I’ll just say that I am” Warren is seriously contemplating a run for President of the United States. I guess she embraces delusions of grandeur whether about ruling the teepee or the free world.

In her announcement, which didn’t take place in front of a crowd but in a YouTube video, the fraudulent wannabe-Cherokee said government “has been bought and paid for by a bunch of billionaires and giant corporations that think they get to dictate the rules that affect everyone…”

Evidently, Warren believes that the elitist and oligarchical powers that comprise the Fascist-Progressive faction that would see our country transform from a Constitutional Republic to Democratic Socialism would be more benevolent than the imperfect system we have today.

Does Capitalism have its flaws? Well, yes, but only when the pure Capitalist system is encroached upon by government regulations that seek to create opportunity for select groups. The flaws of Capitalism reside in an overreaching government, both at the Federal and State levels. When the free market is allowed to function without economic interference it serves the public like no other economic system. Capitalism is the only economic system that created a middle class and opportunity for all.

So, Warren, a woman who falsified her resume to land a six-figure teaching gig at Harvard, and who, as far as anyone can tell, wouldn’t know how to bag groceries at the local supermarket, is attempting to place herself back within the spotlight of relevancy by saying our economic system sucks and Socialism is superior.

I suppose we should ask Venezuelans about that.

If Orwell were alive today . . . On a faculty petition at Williams College.

https://www.newcriterion.com/issues/2019/1/if-orwell-were-alive-today

It’s time for another trip to Williams College. Regular readers will recall some of our earlier trips to that quaint, protected menagerie tucked away in the Berkshires where, for a mere $69,950 per annum, you can—supposing you got the right grades in high school or check the right boxes—while away four years claiming to be oppressed and, if you enjoy pretending that you do not know whether you are male or female, try on a bizarre list of made-up personal pronouns announcing your indeterminacy. Wot larks!

Regular readers will also recall our words of praise for the so-called “Chicago Statement” a few years back. What made that document so unusual in the fetid atmosphere of timorous totalitarian conformity that is the rule at most academic institutions these days was its rousing defense of free speech. Everywhere from Yale to Berkeley, coddled students clamor to be protected from “offensive” ideas—that is, from ideas that challenge their taken-for-granted pieties about the world. It used to be that higher education was about expanding one’s horizons and learning new things. More and more these days, it is about donning the ideological blinders so that no idea not certified to reinforce one’s prejudices slips through to unsettle one’s complacency. Into that humid atmosphere came a major university saying, Balderdash! If you want a “safe space” into which scary ideas will not intrude, the statement said, in effect, you should not come to the University of Chicago. The essence of the statement is captured in these few lines:

In a word, the University’s fundamental commitment is to the principle that debate or deliberation may not be suppressed because the ideas put forth are thought by some or even by most members of the University community to be offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrong-headed.

The good news is that some fifty-three universities, including such distinguished institutions as Columbia, Princeton, Johns Hopkins, Georgetown, Purdue, and Michigan State, have adopted the principles enunciated by the Chicago Statement. The bad news is that the adoption is often nominal and that fifty-three out of some 5,300 is a pretty small number.

Borderline Christmas Where America meets the sea Clark Whelton

https://www.city-journal.org/mexican-border-christmas

At the southwest edge of the Lower 48, on a sunny, breezy beach where America meets the sea, a green and white van sits on a sandy road, facing south. Behind the wheel is a Border Patrol agent with his eyes on Mexico. The frontier fence stands 100 feet away. On the Mexican side, dozens of people are quietly taking selfies or peeking between the steel ribs of the 20-foot tall barrier. On the American side, three people from New York City look back. Two are visitors from Manhattan. The third is the agent himself—he hails from Brooklyn.

“I thought there would be more people on this side of the fence,” I said, noting that the nearby International Friendship Park was empty.

“More are coming,” the agent replied. “They’re on the way now.” I wanted to ask how he knew, but instead I squinted north, following the wide beach as it curved westward toward Coronado Island and San Diego Bay, clearly visible in the distance. There was no one in sight, and no border security, either—at least, none that I could see. It was three days before Christmas and on both sides of the border all was calm, all was California bright. “Just the way we like it,” the agent said.

At the southwestern edge of America, the border fence continues into the Pacific for 100 yards or so. Next stop, Shanghai. My cell phone flashed “Welcome to Mexico!” I glanced up at the huge Plaza de Toros bullring that towers above the border. Tijuana has worked hard to overcome its seedy reputation as a tourist trap selling souvenirs to norteamericanos. The city is now a thriving metropolitan area, with its own international airport, industrial parks, and condo developments. Tijuanistas are not happy about a politicized migrant march using their home town as a staging area.

But the march got lots of attention in the media, which is why my wife and I are here. After all that coverage of the troubles in Tijuana, we wanted to see what’s happening on the American side. That’s why others are coming, too, even though the automobile road to this part of the border is closed. Reaching the steel fence requires GPS assistance and a strenuous slog southward.

From Border Field State Park, it’s a three-mile round trip on foot, but a steady stream of visitors seemed willing to try. In the parking lot I met a man from Warsaw. “Poland has its own border problems,” he said. “I wish to see how America handles things.”

Parked beside him was a family of five from Australia. Mr. Aussie was also curious about the American side, though he confessed to feeling guilty about Australia keeping out Asian immigrants who arrive there uninvited, “in rickety boats.” Even using the word “rickety” unsettled him. “It’s probably the best they could do,” he said.

A van arrived with seven young people from India, who debated about making the walk to the border. “We want to see what’s happening,” said a man who had come to the U.S. to study at the University of Virginia. Now he worked for Amazon. “In India we are careful about borders,” another man said.

Now we do by Ernesto :On politics and religion in Brazil after their recent presidential election.

https://www.newcriterion.com/issues/2019/1/now-we-do

Ernesto Araújo is the Foreign Minister of Brazil.

“I am very worried; he talked too much about God.” So said a prominent Brazilian political commentator on TV after hearing President Jair Bolsonaro’s victory speech on the night of October 28, 2018, when the polls showed his victory by a 55–45 margin over the Marxist candidate, Fernando Haddad.

So now talk of God is supposed to worry people. This is sad. But the people of Brazil don’t care. Bolsonaro’s government, in which I serve as foreign minister, doesn’t care what pundits say or what they worry about: they don’t have a clue about who God is or who the Brazilian people are and want to be. Their worry is that of an elite about to be dispossessed. They are afraid because they can no longer control public discourse. They can no longer dictate the limits of the president’s or anyone else’s speech. The last barrier has been broken: we can now talk about God in public. Who could imagine?

Over the years, Brazil had become a cesspool of corruption and despair. The fact that people didn’t talk about God and didn’t bring their faith to the public square was certainly part of the problem. Now that a president talks about God and expresses his faith in a deep, heartfelt way, that is supposed to be the problem? To the contrary. I am convinced that President Bolsonaro’s faith is instrumental, not accidental, to his electoral victory and to the wave of change that is washing over Brazil.

Brazil is experiencing a political and spiritual rebirth, and the spiritual aspect of this phenomenon is the determinant one. The political aspect is only a consequence.

For a third of a century, Brazil was subject to a political system composed of three parties acting increasingly in concert. Only now are we realizing the shape and full extent of that domination. First we had the of Brazilian Democratic Movement (pmdb), which took over after the regime established in 1964 (misleadingly called the military regime) gave away power peacefully in 1985. Originally a moderate left-wing opposition to the regime (although with some far-left infiltration), pmdb took the reins of government, wrote a new constitution, and became a broad front for the old oligarchy under a more modern, urban, social-oriented guise. That group mastered the art of political favors and bureaucracy, establishing itself as the foundation of the system. The extent to which the bureaucracy is able to allocate resources in the Brazilian economy—choosing winners and losers—has always been astounding, and during this period it became a full-fledged system of governance that completely stifled the economy.

The 1990s saw the ascendance of the Social-Democratic Party (psdb), an offshoot of pmdb with roots on the left but better groomed, which started to cater to voters eager for economic stability after a decade and a half of mismanagement and hyperinflation. psdb refashioned itself as the free market party, more or less hiding its true colors and its cultural-liberal agenda, and surfed on sound macroeconomic policies to become the dominant force from 1994 to 2002, always retaining its links to the traditional political-bureaucratic cabals represented by pmdb.

The third branch of the system emerged in the early 2000s, in the shape of the Workers’ Party (PT),an Orwellian name, by the way, since real workers are rarely spotted in this party ruled by Marxist intellectuals, former left-wing guerrillas, and members of the trade-union bureaucracy. After the election of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (known universally as Lula) in 2002, PT—which had been preparing for this for years—quickly captured and co-opted the pmdb–psdb power scheme, retaining the old tit-for-tat machinery run by pmdb and the stability policies represented by psdb and establishing a much firmer grip on power than its predecessors. pmdb became the junior party in PT’s coalition, while psdb took the role of tamed opposition, participating in presidential elections every four years in which its role was to lose nobly to PT.

Palestinian Authority Sentences US Citizen to Life in Prison for Selling Land to Jews January 1, 2019 Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/272417/palestinian-authority-sentences-us-citizen-life-daniel-greenfield

The media has made much of the deaths of foreign terror supporters, Rouzan al-Najjar and Jamal Khashoggi. Meanwhile the apartheid state of the “Palestinian Authority” sentenced a US citizen to life in prison for violating its racist laws against selling land to Jews.

And the media won’t report it or cover it.

Palestinian court in Ramallah sentenced a Palestinian-American to life in prison with hard labor on Monday, after finding him guilty of selling a house in the Old City of Jerusalem to a Jewish Israeli organization.

The man was identified as Issam Akel, a resident of east Jerusalem, who was arrested by Palestinian Authority security forces in October.

It remains unclear how he was arrested by PA security forces. As a resident of east Jerusalem, he holds an Israeli ID card that gives him immunity against being arrested or prosecuted in a PA court.

Some reports said that Akel was arrested while he was staying in Ramallah. Other reports, however, claimed that he had been kidnapped from east Jerusalem and taken to Ramallah.

Akel was accused of acting as a broker in the sale of a house jointly owned by the Alami and Halabi families in the Muslim Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem. Palestinians claimed that the house was sold for $500,000 to Ateret Kohanim, a Jewish organization that has been purchasing Arab-owned properties in east Jerusalem for several years.