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June 2019

BREAKING NEWS: HONG KONG’S CHIEF EXECUTIVE SUSPENDS EXTRADITION BILL

Backing down after days of huge street protests, Hong Kong’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, said on Saturday that she would indefinitely suspend a bill that would allow extraditions to mainland China.

It was a remarkable reversal for Mrs. Lam, the leader installed by Beijing in 2017, who had vowed to ensure the bill’s approval and tried to get it passed on an unusually short timetable, even as hundreds of thousands demonstrated against it this week. But she made it clear that the bill was being delayed, not withdrawn outright, as protesters have demanded.

Hong Kong shows that the West has lost its confidence in democracy and self-determination Douglas Murray

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/06/14/hong-kong-shows-west-has-lost-confidence-democracy-self-determination/

Three years ago I happened to be in Hong Kong as the “Umbrella Protests” were sputtering out. The pro-democracy demonstrators were still there, almost two years after they had first set up camp outside the government headquarters. But now, on a drizzly day, they were sitting huddled under the walkways off what had been the main protest site, their umbrellas practical as well as symbolic as their numbers and hopes dwindled.

It was a depressing sight, these few locals hoping for some support that never arrived. But in some ways what struck me more were the conversations I had in the weeks after that visit, as I happened to pass in close succession through the capitals of France, Britain and America.

In Paris I described the situation to friends. They listened with furrowed brows as I told them about the abduction of the Hong Kong booksellers and the tightening of Beijing’s grip on the island. All lamented the situation. But then came the inevitable reply: “Bah. But what are you going to do? It’s China.” I wished the responses in London had been different. But while the brows were equally furrowed, and some palpable embarrassment showed itself on the faces of officials, still the statement would come back. “But it’s China.”

Only in one capital was that rejoinder not commonplace. Only in Washington did people in and out of government respond with questions about what might be done to support the protestors and how the US might be a better friend to people in this tiny but significant former British colony.

I thought of those conversations this week as protests flared up once again in Hong Kong. Protests during which the British flag was waved as a symbol of freedom and defiance. A sight that should have stirred a far greater response from this country than it has remotely done. Granted, Britain’s Brexit monomania means that there seems almost no political bandwidth to deal with any other major issue. But the lack of attention is striking. For it comes from the Right as much as the Left and is as clear a demonstration as anything of this country’s ever-smaller global ambition.

The situation in Hong Kong should at least force us to think. Not just because this country owes some responsibility to the people of Hong Kong, but because our weakness on this relatively small matter betrays a greater weakness on a greater one.

The Good Intentions Paving Company Paul Collits

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2019/06/the-good-intentions-pavin

Regarded by many as the Anglosphere’s greatest essayist, Joseph Epstein is also owed our gratitude for popularising the wonderful notion of the Good Intentions Paving Company.  He does not claim to have created the phrase.  This belongs to the wonderful novelist Saul Bellow, who once wrote a novel (Ravelstein) about one of the most consequential culture warriors of the late twentieth century, Allan Bloom.

Epstein first visited the Good Intentions Paving Company in 2013 in the Wall Street Journal, penning a piece on the then emerging ObamaCare universal health-care scheme, conceived (perhaps) with the great intention of bringing health cover to the Americans then excluded. The disastrous, unintended consequences of many government schemes and popular movements featured in Epstein’s WSJ article, “No Child Left Behind, the Iraq War, affirmative action, and the Russian Revolution”. One thing that all these things had in common – they  all seemed like a good idea at the time, at least to many.  Truly dangerous political ideas are those which are both ambitious and popular.

We could add some of our own ambitious policy disasters in the Australian context – the Ken Henry inspired “cash splash” of the Rudd years, the now notorious NBN, the NDIS, various “Gonskis”, pink batts, and so on. Bob Hawke, normally a cautious policy man and a centrist, made his emphatic claim to eliminate child poverty.  Mercifully, he didn’t enact any (inevitably doomed) policies to attempt to achieve his lofty yet ludicrous ambition.  Malcolm Fraser had his candidates for the Good Intentions Paving Company – the SBS and multiculturalism stand out. Some might even argue (almost heretically) that Sir Robert Menzies had his moments with the Good Intentions Paving Company.  Think of the (admittedly tiny but nonetheless portentous) expansion of higher education and the Vietnam War.

Nazis Killed Her Father. Then She Fell in Love With One. By Katrin Bennhold

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/14/business/reimann

Their billionaire descendants, who control Krispy Kreme, Stumptown and other brands, are grappling with the exposure of an unspeakable secret. Emilie Landecker, circa 1961. Her Jewish father, Alfred, was killed by the Nazis. When her children asked about the family’s roots, she would admonish them to stop talking about “that old stuff.”

1. Such appalling events

Emilie Landecker was 19 when she went to work for Benckiser, a German company that made industrial cleaning products and also took pride in cleansing its staff of non-Aryan elements.

It was 1941. Ms. Landecker was half Jewish and terrified of deportation. Her new boss, Albert Reimann Jr., was an early disciple of Adolf Hitler and described himself as an “unconditional follower” of Nazi race theory.

Somehow, inexplicably, they fell in love.

The story of Ms. Landecker, whose Jewish father was murdered by the Nazis, and Mr. Reimann, whose fervent Nazism and abuse of forced laborers did not stop his family from attaining colossal wealth after the war, is a tale of death and devotion and human contradictions. It is also a tale of modern-day corporate atonement.

Decades after World War II, Benckiser evolved into one of the largest consumer goods conglomerates on the planet. Known today as JAB Holding Company and still controlled by the Reimann family, it is worth more than $20 billion and owns Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, Peet’s Coffee, Einstein Bros. Bagels, Stumptown Coffee Roasters, Pret A Manger, Keurig and other breakfast brands.

The relationship between Mr. Reimann and Ms. Landecker was for many years a secret. He was married, but had no children with his wife. He and Ms. Landecker had three, and he adopted them in the 1960s; today, two of them own a combined stake in JAB of about 45 percent. For decades, they say, they did not know about their father’s Nazism and the abuses that took place at the company they inherited: The female forced laborers who had to stand at attention outside their barracks naked. A prisoner of war who was kicked out of a bomb shelter and died.

Norman Borlaugh: The man who helped feed the world By Tim Harford

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47643456?utm_source=pocket-newtab

In the early 1900s, newlyweds Cathy and Cappy Jones left Connecticut in the US to start a new life as farmers in north-west Mexico’s Yaqui Valley, a little-known dry and dusty place, a few hundred kilometres south of the Arizona border.

When Cappy died in 1931, Cathy decided to stay on. By then she had a new neighbour: the Yaqui Valley Experiment Station, a grand agricultural research centre with impressive stone pillars, and cleverly designed irrigation canals.

For a while, the centre raised cattle, sheep and pigs, and grew oranges, figs and grapefruit.

But by 1945, the fields were overgrown, the fences fallen and the windows shattered. The station was infested with rats.

So when Cathy heard strange rumours about a young American man setting up camp in this dilapidated place – despite the lack of electricity, sanitation, or running water – she drove over to investigate.

There she found the Rockefeller Foundation’s Norman E Borlaug, who was trying to breed wheat which could resist stem rust, a disease that ruined many crops.

The 2020 Battle Begins By Matthew Continetti

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/06/2020-presidential-campaign-begins/And Donald Trump holds the high ground

The 2020 campaign begins in earnest next week in Florida, when Donald Trump officially launches his reelection bid. On June 26, 20 Democratic candidates and five moderators hold the first of two nights of debates. Where do things stand?

According to the polls, President Trump starts at a disadvantage. He has 44 percent approval in the RealClearPolitics average, with a net disapproval of nine points. The most recent Quinnipiac poll has the major Democrats defeating Trump. The margins range from Joe Biden’s 13-point victory to Pete Buttigieg and Cory Booker’s five points. Another recent Quinnipiac poll has Biden leading Trump by four points in Texas. Private surveys of the Lone Star State also show a tight race. Trump polls very badly among suburban women, and the growth in suburban Texas has been extraordinary. Which spells trouble.

If the election were held today, a generic Democrat would defeat Donald Trump. What makes the predictions game difficult is that Election Day isn’t for 16 months, and generic Democrats do not exist. Political conditions are bound to change, for better or worse, and voters once again will make a binary choice between the incumbent and a specific progressive alternative. That alternative might not be as flawed as Hillary Clinton. But he or she will have flaws.

Do the Democrats have more than a fighting chance? Absolutely. They’ve won the popular vote in all but one presidential election since 1992. And yet they would be foolish beyond belief to assume Trump is destined for a single term. President Trump can’t beat a generic Democrat. Lucky for him he won’t be facing one.

Trump holds the high ground of incumbency. Only once in the last century, in 1980, has the public ousted a party from the White House after just four years. Moreover, Trump is extremely unlikely to face a primary challenger, and at the moment, the chances of an independent third-party candidacy are slim. At the outset of the contest, the economy is humming, the country is not in a major war, and there is no disruptive social unrest. This is a winning record.

Stone defense team exposes the ‘intelligence community’s’ betrayal of their responsibilities By Thomas Lifson

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/06/manafort_defense_team_exposes_the_intelligence_communitys_betrayal_of_their_responsibilities.html

As the Russia Hoax is being unwound, we are learning some deeply disturbing lessons about the level of corruption at the top levels of the agencies charged with protecting us from external threats.  One jaw-dropping example has just been exposed by the legal team defending Roger Stone.

Foundational to the entire narrative that Russia “interfered” with our election and that President Trump “colluded” with this interference is the conclusion issued by the “intelligence community” that the DNC emails were hacked by Russia.  According to this assertion, the exposure of those emails affected the election, and therefore Trump benefited from Russian interference, and colluded by joking that Russia should locate the 30,000 emails Hillary Clinton deleted and BleachBitted, making recovery impossible.

There has already been ample reason to dismiss this collective judgment from the Intelligence Community, primarily focusing on the fact that the download speed of the emails could only have been achieved by loading it on a device attached to the server itself.  It was too fast to have been sent via the internet to a hacker.  But now, the Department of Justice had made an admission in response to a filing by Manafort’s defense team that reveals they did not carry out their basic responsibilities.

Landslide polls spark angst: These geniuses saw Clinton as ‘unstoppable’ Jonathan Easley

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/448447-landslide-polls-spark-angst-these-geniuses-saw-clinton-as-unstoppable#.XQOjNcQ6krs.twitter

Democrats and Republicans alike are skeptical of early polls predicting a landslide victory for Democrat Joe Biden over President Trump on Election Day 2020.

To Trump and Republicans, the polls are fake news and no more reliable than surveys predicting Hillary Clinton would be elected president in 2016.

Some Democrats are equally skeptical, warning their party not to buy into the early data.

“These same geniuses all predicted that Hillary Clinton was unstoppable and inevitable,” said Chris Kofinis, a Democratic pollster.

While Trump argues the polls undersell his support, some Democrats say surveys showing Biden well ahead of the Democratic field are not to be trusted.

Both sides think a close race in 2020 is likely and that surveys showing Biden and other Democrats with huge leads aren’t likely to reflect Election Day’s reality.

DNC, NBC announce first debate lineups The field of 20 candidates has been randomly split into two groups of 10 debaters on back-to-back nights later this month.

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/14/dnc-announces-first-debate-lineups-1365570

By ZACH MONTELLARO and CHRISTOPHER CADELAGO

The Democratic National Committee announced the lineups for the first party-sanctioned presidential debates, after a random drawing Friday in New York.

Democrats’ Hypocrisy on ‘Foreign Interference’ By Andrew C. McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/06/foreign-interference-trump-comments-democrat-hypocrisy/

When a Republican benefits, it’s treason; when Democrats are in charge, the intelligence agencies serve their candidates.

Here’s the main question that arises from Media-Democrat shrieking over President Trump’s twaddle about taking campaign-related information from foreign powers: Is it just silly or actually dangerous?

In our latest episode of Un-reality Government, the president was egged on by — who else? — George Stephanopoulos, a partisan Democrat who is the face of ABC News. When last noticed in an election cycle, the Clinton confidant was setting up Mitt Romney with a question about whether the Constitution permitted the banning of contraceptives. Of course, no one was proposing a ban on contraceptives; the question was strategically planted to seed the Democrats’ War on Women narrative. Common sense, if there were any, would have the administration asking: Why would we give George Stephanopoulos two days of access? If your answer is “Because that worked out so well with Michael Wolff,” pull that résumé together, because there’s surely a White House staff job waiting just for you.

So what did George ask this time? He wanted to know whether, with the lessons of 2016 in mind, the president thought it would be appropriate to let a foreign government “interfere” in our elections by taking from that government information damaging to the opposing candidate.

Naturally, Stephanopoulos did not preface his query with, “You know, the way that Ukrainian parliamentarian who was a source for Hillary’s campaign leaked that oppo about the secret payments to Manafort.” And the president was not swift enough to ask Stephanopoulos for clarification: “You mean, like, an amateur-hour arrangement where I, or my son, take the information directly from Russia? Does it count if I’m smart enough to have my cut-out law firm hire the cut-out grifters from Fusion GPS, and then they do the dirty work of hiring the foreign spy to tap the Russian sources — in their spare time from helping Putin’s cronies beat back the Justice Department?”