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July 2019

Apocalypse Now: Charles Koch and George Soros Team Up for Foreign Policy Initiative By Stephen Kruiser

https://pjmedia.com/trending/apocalypse-now-charles-koch-and-george-soros-team-up-for-foreign-policy-initiative/

The Boston Globe:

BESIDES BEING BILLIONAIRES and spending much of their fortunes to promote pet causes, the leftist financier George Soros and the right-wing Koch brothers have little in common. They could be seen as polar opposites. Soros is an old-fashioned New Deal liberal. The Koch brothers are fire-breathing right-wingers who dream of cutting taxes and dismantling government. Now they have found something to agree on: the United States must end its “forever war” and adopt an entirely new foreign policy.

In one of the most remarkable partnerships in modern American political history, Soros and Charles Koch, the more active of the two brothers, are joining to finance a new foreign-policy think tank in Washington. It will promote an approach to the world based on diplomacy and restraint rather than threats, sanctions, and bombing.

We should begin with a little clarification here. George Soros is actually a raging progressive and the Koch brothers are very libertarian. A left wing rag like the Globe rarely gets things like this right.

What they’re trying to do is paint Soros as some sort of centrist and the Kochs as fringe loons, when the opposite is true.

Either way, this is a most interesting alliance. These are the two most financially influential entities in American politics in recent years. That they are finding common ground is worth paying attention to.

The Lie of Portland’s Antifa By Douglas Murray

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-lie-of-portlands-anti-fa/

There was a time when “anti-fascist” meant what it said. People who opposed fascism called themselves “anti-fascists.” But then the term slipped. The definition of “fascist” became hazy from over-use and so the term “anti-fascist” also began to move. This might seem to be a theoretical matter. But it is one that ends up encouraging and condoning horrific scenes like those in the center of Portland on Saturday.

For some time, self-described “anti-fascists,” or Antifa, have been finding spurious and imaginary reasons for demonstrating in the city. Though these are less like demonstrations than carnivals of civil disobedience, violence and intimidation. One of the very few journalists to have taken an interest in the repeated shutting down of the city center by these groups has been the young journalist Andy Ngo. Despite the police apparently regularly handing over the city to Antifa to do what they want, there has been relatively little coverage of this whole story in the mainstream press. And despite being repeatedly hounded and intimidated by anti-fa, on Saturday Ngo once again went to cover events in Portland.

This time, Antifa went even further than they have before, with several of their number assaulting Ngo, stealing his equipment, and repeatedly smashing his face with weapons and projectiles. It appears that the Portland police once again stood by and allowed this to happen.

Antifa – Fascists? By Andrew Stuttaford

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/antifa-fascists/

George Orwell, writing in 1944:

[W]hen we apply the term ‘Fascism’ to Germany or Japan or Mussolini’s Italy, we know broadly what we mean. It is in internal politics that this word has lost the last vestige of meaning. For if you examine the press you will find that there is almost no set of people — certainly no political party or organized body of any kind — which has not been denounced as Fascist during the past ten years…

A copious list then follows.

Orwell:

It will be seen that, as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless.

But:

Even the people who recklessly fling the word ‘Fascist’ in every direction attach at any rate an emotional significance to it. By ‘Fascism’ they mean, roughly speaking, something cruel, unscrupulous, arrogant, obscurantist, anti-liberal and anti-working-class. Except for the relatively small number of Fascist sympathizers, almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’. That is about as near to a definition as this much-abused word has come.

And the way that penultimate sentence could apply to the vicious assault on journalist Andy Ngo is all too obvious.

In the course of a fine post earlier today on this Corner, Douglas Murray observed:

There was a time when “anti-fascist” meant what it said. People who opposed fascism called themselves “anti-fascists.” But then the term slipped. The definition of “fascist” became hazy from over-use and so the term “anti-fascist” also began to move.

Orwell would agree.

But then Douglas goes on to write this:

Second, anyone in any doubt over who the fascists and the anti-fascists are today should watch the footage of Ngo being attacked. Might the fascists be the thugs who wear face masks in the middle of the day in an American city and carry out mob assaults on journalists?

Terrorist state coming right around the corner, warns Israeli NGO June 30, 2019

https://worldisraelnews.com/terrorist-state-coming-right-around-the-corner-warns-israeli-ngo/

More than 28,000 illegal Palestinian structures have been built in areas under Israeli jurisdiction in Judea and Samaria in the last decade, threatening Israel’s future, warns NGO Regavim.

A carefully planned and meticulously orchestrated takeover? More than 28,000 illegal Palestinian structures have been built in areas under Israeli jurisdiction in Judea and Samaria in the last decade, threatening Israel’s future, warns NGO Regavim.

After intensive data collection and a mapping project that took several months, Regavim has now released comprehensive – and extremely troubling – data on the Palestinian takeover of land in Area C, the section of Judea and Samaria under full Israeli jurisdiction.

Regavim’s stated mission is to ensure responsible, legal, accountable and environmentally friendly use of Israel’s national lands and the return of the rule of law to all areas and aspects of the land and its preservation.”

The newly drawn map of the situation on the ground reflects both illegal construction and land-grabs facilitated by “agricultural use” that takes advantage of the archaic system of law currently in force in these areas, says the organization. All of these projects – construction and agriculture in the service of the future Palestinian state – are made possible by massive financial support provided by the European Union, individual European governments and European NGOs.