Displaying the most recent of 89871 posts written by

Ruth King

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Palestinians: Where Have They Gone? by Shoshana Bryen

By on December 26th, 2017

American funding for UNRWA is problematic itself because the organization is inextricably intertwined with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. This may be the right time to review the number of Palestinian “refugees” in the world and the world’s obligation to them.

Ten years ago, in a forum on Capitol Hill, then-Rep. Mark Kirk called for an international audit of UNRWA. Kirk admitted he was unsuccessful, despite such accounting anomalies as a $13 million entry for “un-earmarked expenses” in an audit conducted by UNRWA’s own board.

Palestinians are the only “refugee” group that hands the status down through generations, which is why they are governed by UNRWA; all other refugees are under the care of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, which has a mandate to settle refugees so they can become citizens of new countries.

Palestinian refugees are a slippery population — but when 285,535 of them go missing from a small country such as Lebanon, it should raise eyebrows.

UNRWA in Lebanon reports on its website that 449,957 refugees live under its protection in 12 camps, but a survey by Lebanon’s Central Administration of Statistics, together with the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, could only find 174,535. The Lebanese government said the others “left.” Okay, maybe they did — Lebanon constrained them viciously, so it would make some sense. What does NOT make sense, then, is the UN giving UNRWA a budget based on nearly half a million people when, in fact, there are far fewer than a quarter of a million. Who is paying and who is getting the money?

We are and they are.

The UNRWA website shows a budget of $2.41 billion combined for FY 2016 and 2017. The U.S. provides more than $300 million to UNRWA annually, about one-quarter of the total. In August 2017, UNRWA claimed a deficit of $126 million. A former State Department official said the budget shortfalls are chronic but that “the funds seemed eventually arrive” after pressing others for more money — some of that additional money is from the U.S.

American funding for UNRWA is problematic itself because the organization is inextricably intertwined with Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon; see here, here and here. And specifically for Lebanon, the connection goes as far back as 2007. But stay with the “floating” population problem for a moment.

The huge discrepancy in Lebanon suggests that UNRWA may have trouble counting refugees in the West Bank, Jordan, Gaza, and Syria as well. (We’ll give them a pass on Syria for now.) The problem is not new, but that Palestinian agencies were running the census may help the United States overcome its own long-term obstinacy when it comes to counting and paying.

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Czech President Miloš Zeman: Warrior for Truth by Josef Zbořil

By on December 26th, 2017

“If you want the unspoken truth, Islamic migration is not possible to integrate, and it is not capable of being assimilated into European culture. ” — Miloš Zeman, President of the Czech Republic.

“This country is ours. And this country is not and can not be for all.” — Miloš Zeman.

“In my opinion, much of the guilt lies on the current leadership of the European Union, which is totally incompetent, bureaucratic, causing the alienation of European citizens from European institutions… We do not need censorship, we do not need an ideological police, we do not need a new press and information office if we are to continue living in a free and democratic society…” — Miloš Zaman, 2016.

Czech President Miloš Zeman, it was recently said, is “a world leader guided by principles, a man not only knows right from wrong, but has never been afraid to voice it. ” Known for his longstanding support for the US, Israel and the Jews, he was the only European president publicly to support then-candidate Donald Trump before the US presidential election.

The historical relationship of Czechoslovakia, later the Czech Republic, towards Israel is most likely based on when the Czechs were overrun by Hitler in 1938, and learned the hard way that “appeasement never works”. Zeman defends the Czech presidents’ motto: “Truth prevails”.

A Euro-federalist and leftist, Zeman became known to the public in August 1989, three months before the Velvet Revolution, thanks to an article, “Prognostics and Perestroika.” In it, he criticized the totalitarian Czechoslovak régime at that time:

“The stolen future was not shared by a society which was not planning for itself but for which plans were being made…. Current events have already proven that long-term [economic] lagging has not contributed to the prestige of socialism. Also not contributing to it is a persistent unwillingness to admit its own responsibility for this lagging… There is nothing antisocialist about criticizing the incompetence of an uncontrollable power. On the contrary, there is nothing socialist about tolerance or even support for that incompetence.”

Thanks to this article, he was not only fired from his job, but in August 1989, was also invited to appear on the television show Economic Notebook, where he said:

“For the past forty years, we have dropped from tenth place in the world to around the fortieth. In some areas, even worse. For example, in the development of science and technology… we are today roughly at the level of Algeria or Peru, and far below Portugal, which is considered the most undeveloped country in Western Europe … I explain this development by [the government’s] having taken economic decisions that were casually accepted; there was no sound competition of alternative ideas, and even ideas that would have extremely cautious consequences were taken without any evaluation of their effectiveness.”

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trump’s Strong Start on Policy A first-year report card By Ramesh Ponnuru

By on December 26th, 2017

Gorsuch confirmed, ISIS defeated, taxes cut: The Trump administration has compiled a solid record of accomplishment in its first year, one that compares well with the records of many of its predecessors.

Two of the biggest accomplishments came late in the year. The prime minister of Iraq declared victory over ISIS on December 9. Republicans reached a deal that seemed to secure passage of a tax bill on December 15. Until then, it appeared possible that 2017 would end without an all-Republican government enacting any major legislation.

Now the Republicans’ policy record looks better, at least as most conservatives see it. The tax bill advances several longstanding conservative objectives. It cuts tax rates for most Americans, slashes the corporate-tax rate for the first time in decades, expands the tax credit for children, limits the reach of the estate tax and the alternative minimum tax, and scales back the tax break for expensive homes. By scaling back the deduction for state and local taxes, it may encourage a more conservative fiscal politics in the states. And it allows drilling to proceed in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The tax bill also partly makes up for the failure of Republican efforts earlier in 2017 to repeal Obamacare. The health-care law imposes fines on people who go without insurance. The tax bill sets the fines at zero. The least popular feature of Obamacare is thus effectively nullified.

Some conservatives would have considered voting for Trump in November 2016 worth it just for Justice Neil Gorsuch. His appointment to the Supreme Court means that Justice Scalia’s seat will remain filled by an originalist for the next few decades. If one of the Democratic appointees or Justice Anthony Kennedy leaves the Court while Republicans hold the Senate, Trump will have the opportunity to create the first conservative majority in modern constitutional history. Trump has also nominated many well-qualified conservative jurists to the appeals courts. (The quality of his district-court nominees appears to be significantly lower.)

The administration has begun to rein in regulation. It has withdrawn and modified several of the Obama administration’s regulations, often in concert with Congress. It has stopped or slowed the progress of many others that were barreling down the tracks. The Environmental Protection Agency, now run by Trump appointee Scott Pruitt, has also taken steps to end the practice of “sue and settle,” in which activist groups get the agency to adopt new policies through lawsuits.

Continue reading →
EDUCATION Comments turned off

Is Academic Rigor Racist? The latest casualty of the Left’s Academic-Industrial-Complex. Jack Kerwick

By on December 26th, 2017

If you’re a parent who is giving consideration to refinancing your home for the sake of sending your child off to a university, you may want to reconsider.

Most parents, doubtless, regard college as nothing more or less than a means to the end of a lucrative profession for their children. Still, even some of these may be of one mind with those parents who expect that, while pursuing their degrees, their children will and should receive a decent education.

Unfortunately, however, the view of Donna Riley, a professor of engineering education at Purdue University, is representative of a growing number of academics from around the country. In “Rigor/Us: Building Boundaries and Disciplining Diversity with Standards of Merit,” an article featured in the most recent edition of the journal Engineering Studies, Riley writes that rigor—“the aspirational quality academics apply to disciplinary standards of quality”—actually “accomplishes dirty deeds” in the fields of “engineering, engineering education, and engineering education research [.]”

To repeat: Academic rigor serves dirty deeds.

These “dirty deeds” are “disciplining, demarcating boundaries, and demonstrating white male heterosexual privilege.”

Riley trades in the Newspeak that we’ve come to expect from contemporary leftist academics. This lends to her prose an aura of Gnosticism, the semblance of esotericism. Ultimately, though, Riley’s thesis is hardly original. In fact, it is but another expression of the dogmatic, Politically Correct status quo of her peers. It goes something like this:

Traditional academic standards, being the legacy of straight white men, are not unlike any other legacy of straight white men insofar as they “privilege” straight white men.

In other words, academic standards like that of rigor are “racist,” “sexist,” “homophobic,” “classist,” and so forth and so on.

Continue reading →
ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Guatemala follows U.S. to Jerusalem By Monica Showalter Please see note

By on December 26th, 2017

In 1948 Guatemala’s ambassador to the United States, Jorge Garcia Granados (who was a friend of my father’s) lobbied for recognition of Israel. rsk

Apparently, there was nothing fake or merely symbolic about Guatemala’s support for the U.S. moving its embassy to Jerusalem in its United Nations vote last week. Guatemala is moving its own embassy to Jerusalem, too.

According to the New York Post:

GUATEMALA CITY — Guatemala’s president announced on Christmas Eve that the Central American country will move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, becoming the first nation to follow the lead of U.S. President Donald Trump in ordering the change.

Guatemala was one of nine nations that voted with the United States and Israel on Thursday when the U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly adopted a non-binding resolution denouncing Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

It’s enough to turn heads about the tiny Central American nation and give it our salute.

Because it’s rather courageous to be the first to follow the U.S. in places such as the United Nations. Guatemala’s act suggests it wasn’t just looking for goodies from the U.S. when it cast that vote, it really wanted to acknowledge the reality that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.

Its president, Jimmy Morales, said as much, in his Christmas eve announcement of the event:

“Guatemala is historically pro-Israeli,” he said in Guatemala City. “In 70 years of relations, Israel has been our ally. We have a Christian way of thinking that, as well as the politics of it, has us believing that Israel is our ally and we must ­support it.

“Despite us only being nine in the world (in the UN vote), we have the total certainty and conviction that this is the right path.”

It’s true Guatemala would probably like some development help from Israel but just the fact that they are reaching out for it and not whining about something or other speaks well for them. A willingness to learn from Israel means a nation passes the Israel Test, as the brilliant George Gilder wrote of in his excellent book. Guatemala passes. Another reason too take a second look at Guatemala.
Apparently, there was nothing fake or merely symbolic about Guatemala’s support for the U.S. moving its embassy to Jerusalem in its United Nations vote last week. Guatemala is moving its own embassy to Jerusalem, too.

According to the New York Post:

GUATEMALA CITY — Guatemala’s president announced on Christmas Eve that the Central American country will move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, becoming the first nation to follow the lead of U.S. President Donald Trump in ordering the change.

Guatemala was one of nine nations that voted with the United States and Israel on Thursday when the U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly adopted a non-binding resolution denouncing Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

It’s enough to turn heads about the tiny Central American nation and give it our salute.

Because it’s rather courageous to be the first to follow the U.S. in places such as the United Nations. Guatemala’s act suggests it wasn’t just looking for goodies from the U.S. when it cast that vote, it really wanted to acknowledge the reality that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.

Its president, Jimmy Morales, said as much, in his Christmas eve announcement of the event:

“Guatemala is historically pro-Israeli,” he said in Guatemala City. “In 70 years of relations, Israel has been our ally. We have a Christian way of thinking that, as well as the politics of it, has us believing that Israel is our ally and we must ­support it.

Continue reading →
ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Case against Mahmoud Abbas By Dan Calic

By on December 26th, 2017

There’s been plenty of rancor since President Trump declared Jerusalem to be the capital of Israel. Some are saying his remarks have brought the peace process to a halt.

To such accusations I say, “what peace process?”

I submit that if anyone is guilty of why there is no peace process, it is none other than Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Unless you are spelling it p-i-e-c-e. The record shows that rather than p-e-a-c-e with Israel, he wants to take it apart piece by piece until it doesn’t exist anymore. In order to present the case, I will lay out the evidence to the court of public opinion.

Exhibit 1- Munich Olympics

Who will ever forget the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre where 11 Israeli athletes were held hostage by Arab terrorists and lost their lives. The financier of the operation was Mahmoud Abbas.

Exhibit 2- Holocaust Denial

In 1982, he wrote his PhD thesis entitled: “The Other Side: The Secret Relationship Between Nazism and Zionism.” The topic was denial of the Holocaust. Such views are associated with anti-Semitism. Aside from Israel, 21 countries have made Holocaust denial a crime. The United States does not criminalize it.

In January 2005, he was elected to a four-year term as president of the Palestinian Authority. Here’s a short list of what’s taken place during his never-ending four-year term:

Exhibit 3- Rejects Recognition of Jewish State

While several Israeli prime ministers, including Benjamin Netanyahu have acknowledged acceptance of a ‘Palestinian’ state, Abbas has repeatedly said he will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Demanding recognition of a Palestinian state while rejecting Israel’s right to exist proves he is not serious about peace. Moreover, he has no business talking about a “just solution. Most recently Abbas challenged Israel’s right to be recognized as a state by the international community saying it is “invalid.”

Exhibit 4- Right of Return

Abbas demands the “right of return,” for so-called “refugees” from the 1948 and 1967 wars, along with their descendants. Their numbers vary, but suffice to say this would eliminate the Jewish majority in Israel. Thus the only homeland the Jewish people have would cease to exist as such, and become the Middle East’s 23rd Muslim Arab-dominated country while the Jews would have none.

Exhibit 5- No Jews Allowed in Future Palestinian State

There are well over 1 million Arabs who live in Israel with full benefits of citizenship. They vote, own businesses, own property, are doctors, lawyers, professors, etc. They are elected to the Knesset and have even been members of the Supreme Court. They also have complete freedom of worship. There are mosques throughout Israel. Yet Abbas says not one Israeli [Jew], civilian or soldier will be tolerated in any future Palestinian state. Ironically, he’s accused Israel of being an ‘apartheid state.’

Exhibit 6- Fatah Constitution

He is head of the Fatah Party. Their constitution calls for the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state.

Continue reading →
FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

The United Nation Continues To Be A Moral Cesspool Shoshana Bryen

By on December 26th, 2017

The vote in the United Nations General Assembly concerning Jerusalem on Thursday wasn’t really about Jerusalem — or even so much about Israel.https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/2017/12/24/united-nation-continues-moral-cesspool/

It was about the self-presumed moral superiority of countries sitting in the U.N. General Assembly, defying the reality of 3,000 years of Jerusalem as the spiritual capital of the Jewish people and the seat of government of three Jewish Commonwealths, but never the seat of government for any other country or people. It was also about defying the reality that only under Jewish sovereignty is Jerusalem an open, tolerant city for people of all faiths, or no faith. They know that. But they thought it was a free shot at Israel, Jews and the president of the United States.

It is true that the latest U.N. vote will have little practical impact; United Nations General Assembly resolutions don’t come with financial or other penalties. Israel remains in Jerusalem and the Palestinians are no closer to — and, in fact, are much further from — finding themselves a legitimate place in the family of actual countries.

So, on the one hand, votes were just a cheap “up yours” from a lot of countries that expect still to work with Israel in NATO (the Europeans), invest in Israel’s high tech (Europeans, Asians and others), take advantage of Israel’s shared energy, water, agricultural prowess (Africans), and have Israel as an ally in the fight against Iran (Sunni Arab states) as if the vote hadn’t happened.

On the other hand, the United States had drawn a line in the sand. A presumed free kick at President Trump was a “gimme” for a lot of governments that simply detest the president (Europeans), and expect still to receive the benefits of American foreign aid and/or security assistance that keep them in power (Asians, Africans South Americans — let’s face it, just about everyone). And countries who know perfectly well that it is under American rules that international trade and freedom of the seas and skies are protected. Not one outside perhaps North Korea would trade our security blanket for Russian or Chinese rules.

This constitutes moral mud; whether it was free remains to be seen.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Great Rules Rollback Reining in regulation is a major success of Trump’s first year.

By on December 26th, 2017

Amid the debate over tweets and tax reform, perhaps the most significant change brought by the first year of the Trump Presidency has been overlooked: reining in and rolling back the regulatory state at a pace faster than even Ronald Reagan. This is a major reason for the acceleration of animal spirits and faster economic growth in the past year.

A rules rollback is harder than it sounds because the inertial tendency of bureaucracies is to expand, and the modern administrative state has expanded almost inexorably under presidents of both parties. New rules are published in the Federal Register, and Barack Obama presided over six of the seven highest annual page counts ever. In 2016 his regulators left town with a record-breaking binge of 95,894 new pages, according to Wayne Crews, who tracks the administrative state for the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

George W. Bush wasn’t much better. His Administration added 79,435 pages in 2008, its most expansive regulatory year. By contrast in the first year of the Trump Presidency through Sept. 30, 45,678 pages were added to the Federal Register. Many were required to follow-up on legislation and rules from the Obama era, so the Trump trend is even better.
***

Ten days after his inauguration, Mr. Trump issued an executive order directing his departments to scour the books for rules they could rescind or repeal without damaging the law. He also directed that for each single regulation issued, agencies should identify at least two for elimination. In one his best appointments, he named Neomi Rao to run the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs that must clear new rules.

Continue reading →
FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

How to Defund the U.N. A few of its agencies do useful work. American taxpayers shouldn’t pay for the many that don’t By John Bolton

By on December 26th, 2017

As an assistant secretary of state in the George H.W. Bush administration, I worked vigorously to repeal a hateful United Nations General Assembly resolution equating Zionism with racism. Foreign diplomats frequently told me the effort was unnecessary. My Soviet counterpart, for example, said Resolution 3379 was only a piece of paper gathering dust on a shelf. Why stir up old controversies years after its 1975 adoption?

We ignored the foreign objections and persisted because that abominable resolution cast a stain of illegitimacy and anti-Semitism on the U.N. It paid off. On Dec. 16, 1991, the General Assembly rescinded the offensive language.

Now, a quarter-century later, the U.N. has come close to repeating Resolution 3379’s original sin. Last week the U.N. showed its true colors with a 128-9 vote condemning President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

This seemingly lopsided outcome obscured a significant victory and major opportunity for the president. Thirty-five countries abstained, and 21 didn’t vote at all. Days earlier the Security Council had endorsed similar language, 14-1, defeated only by the U.S. veto. The margin narrowed significantly once Mr. Trump threatened to penalize countries that voted against the U.S. This demonstrated once again that America is heard much more clearly at the U.N. when it puts its money where its mouth is. (In related news, Guatemala announced Sunday it will move its embassy to Jerusalem, a good example for others.)

While imposing financial repercussions on individual governments is entirely legitimate, the White House should also reconsider how Washington funds the U.N. more broadly. Should the U.S. forthrightly withdraw from some U.N. bodies (as we have from UNESCO and as Israel announced its intention to do on Friday)? Should others be partially or totally defunded? What should the government do with surplus money if it does withhold funds?

Continue reading →
ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Let Us Sing of Greater Things ‘Messiah’ is a Christian masterpiece known by everyone. By Rich Lowry

By on December 25th, 2017

It is surely possible to be somewhere in the United States in the Christmas season without ready access to a performance of Handel’s “Messiah,” perhaps in the middle of Denali National Park or the Mojave Desert.

The work is ubiquitous and deserves every bit of its popularity. It is a Christian masterpiece known by everyone, a soaring work of genius that never loses its ability to astonish and inspire, whether at a performance of the New York Philharmonic or at a local church singalong.

After hearing it performed on Christmas Day in 1843, Ralph Waldo Emerson described a common reaction, “I walked in the bright paths of sound, and liked it best when the long continuance of a chorus had made the ear insensible to music, made it as if there was none; then I was quite solitary and at ease in the melodious uproar.”

In his new book, Messiah: The Composition and Afterlife of Handel’s Masterpiece, Jonathan Keates traces the history of the work.

A native German who lived in London, G.F. Handel was extraordinarily prolific, composing roughly 40 operas and 30 oratorios. His towering status isn’t in question. Beethoven, born nearly a hundred years later, deemed him “the master of us all.”

Although the “Messiah” is invariably called “Handel’s Messiah,” it was a collaboration. The librettist Charles Jennens, a devout Christian, provided the composer with a “scriptural collection,” the Biblical quotations that make up the text.

Jennens wrote a friend that he hoped Handel “will lay out his whole genius and skill upon it, that the composition may excel all his former compositions, as the subject excels every other subject. The subject is Messiah.”

He needn’t have worried. Handel completed a draft score in three weeks in the summer of 1741. The legend says that while composing the famous “Hallelujah” chorus, he had a vision of “the great God himself.” There is no doubt that artist and subject matter came together in one of the most inspired episodes in the history of Western creativity.

An oratorio shares some characteristics of opera, but there is no acting. Handel was an innovator, writing English-language oratorios and giving the chorus a bigger role. Typically, leading characters anchored a dramatic plot. The drama in “Messiah” was the Christian story itself, the birth, passion, and resurrection of Christ told in scripture.

The work premiered in Dublin, at a performance so crowded that the ladies were urged to come without hoops in their skirts. A correspondent rendered a verdict that has stood up: “The Sublime, the Grand and the Tender, adapted to the most elevated, majestic and moving Words, conspired to transport and charm the ravished Heart and Ear.”

Continue reading →