FOREIGN POLICY, IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Toward a Stronger U.S.–Mexico Relationship By Reihan Salam

Posted By on November 29th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/us-mexico-relationship-partnership-immigration-amnesty/

One of my pet causes is promoting a stronger, more constructive partnership with Mexico, and the Central American migrant caravans offer a perfect illustration of why it’s so important. Mexican president-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador is an avowed leftist, and it is natural that U.S. conservatives would be wary of him. But his desire to improve life for ordinary Mexicans is very much aligned with the U.S. interest in reducing unauthorized immigration, as is his stated commitment to creating opportunities for Central American migrants in Mexico. That is why I strongly believe the Trump administration ought to work closely with the incoming López Obrador government. By discouraging non-meritorious asylum claims, which have surged in recent years, the “Remain in Mexico” plan that is currently being discussed by U.S. and Mexican officials would greatly alleviate the current migration crisis.

The problem, however, is that while Remain in Mexico would clearly redound to the benefit of the U.S., it is essential that Mexicans feel as though they’re benefiting as well. And that is why I’d love to see President Trump offer something tangible to López Obrador that could cement a long-term deal.

What is it that that López Obrador’s government might want from the U.S.? For now, let’s leave aside practical considerations, such as, ahem, finding a proposal that Democrats in the House would be willing to pass and President Trump would be willing to sign. Because, well, we’re in the ideas business, people — and because political realities can change unexpectedly, so it never hurts to think big.

Elsewhere, I’ve argued that we ought to allow U.S. retirees to make use of their Medicare benefits in Mexico. Doing so could both reduce the cost to U.S. taxpayers of caring for older Americans who’d benefit from a lower cost of living, including lower-cost medical and custodial care, and generate low- and mid-skill employment in Mexico by fueling the growth of a labor-intensive eldercare sector. (Unbeknownst to me, Walter Russell Mead, the distinguished historian and Wall Street Journal foreign-affairs columnist, made this case in testimony before the United States Senate Subcommittee on Economic Policy last year.) This could prove a huge boon to Mexico and, as such, it would be a powerful inducement to cooperate with U.S. immigration-enforcement efforts.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Democrats Stand With Foreign Rioters They challenge the use of teargas by border patrol agents under attack. Michael Cutler

Posted By on November 29th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272073/democrats-stand-foreign-rioters-michael-cutler

The news footage of the thousands of members of the “migrant” caravan showed young men throwing rocks at U.S. Border Patrol agents and attempting to charge the U.S./Mexican border. The Border Patrol agents were clearly under attack and had only two courses of action to take. The beleaguered agents could step aside or even retreat and permit their positions to be overrun by hundreds or even thousands of illegal aliens among whom are likely criminals, gang members and even those affiliated with terrorism, who would then disperse into the United States where the abject lack of resources would enable them to meld into communities across the country, particularly those jurisdictions that have been proclaimed “Sanctuary Cities.” Alternatively, they could stand their ground and defend the border to prevent the illegal and un-inspected entry of these invaders. In order to protect themselves, however, these agents would need to deploy either lethal or less-than-lethal force.

We all know that the Border Patrol opted to deploy teargas, a less-than-lethal force, that succeeded in repelling the attempted breach of our border, although it was reported that approximately 50 aliens did manage to enter the United States, but were quickly apprehended and taken into custody by the Border Patrol.

It would certainly appear that the agents demonstrated discipline, restraint and professionalism in managing to bring a very dangerous situation under control without the loss of life. Incredibly, rather than commending these valiant federal agents, Democrats and members of the mainstream media have attacked the agents. They complained that these “asylum seeking migrants” should have been quickly processed and permitted to enter the United States. They complained bitterly that the use of teargas was wrong and had the potential to injure women and children who were in the front of the surging mob.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Trump Didn’t Create Europe’s Resentment He just refuses to tolerate its arrogant elites. Bruce Thornton

Posted By on November 29th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272071/trump-didnt-create-europes-resentment-bruce-thornton

Speaking in Paris at the centenary of the Armistice, French president Emmanuel Macron made some silly comments about nationalism. Recycling tired clichés about nationalism’s guilt for both World Wars, he called nationalism the “betrayal of patriotism” and warned about the “old demons coming back to wreak chaos and death.”

Apart from the ideological prejudices and historical ignorance on display from a globalist watching the “rules-based international order” tottering even as he speaks, Macron was also aiming his barbs at President Trump, who identifies himself as a proud nationalist. Macron punctuated his point by later calling for the creation of an “EU army” because “We have to protect ourselves with respect to China, Russia and even the United States of America.”

For NeverTrump globalists from both parties, a scolding from a European, even one accompanied by preposterous threats, is the QED of their indictment of Trump’s numerous offenses. But contrary to such naïve admiration, long before Donald Trump, the European ruling elite, especially the French, have looked on the U.S. with resentment, contempt, and envy.

The history of just the last 27 years illustrates how little Trump has to do with European attitudes towards America. By the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Europe and its dreams of ever-closer integration into a larger transnational federation was a few years away. Suddenly there was geopolitical space for a new “superpower” freed from the old Cold War strictures. Though belonging to NATO and a committed ally of the U.S., increasingly by the early 90s the European elite often appeared to comprise a “non-aligned” movement committed to peace and global development. It also was open to transcending the old, Manichean communist-capitalist dichotomy that had long fretted European communists and socialists, not to mention more recent leftist parties like the Greens. Even before the collapse of the Soviets, “third way” alternatives were touted such as “Eurocommunism,” or frauds like “communism with a human face” were proposed and implemented. Of course, the Warsaw Pact peoples living under communism knew every human face had a boot eternally stamping it.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Where Can Asia Bibi Go? Only two places left where she might be safe. Hugh Fitzgerald

Posted By on November 29th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272088/where-can-asia-bibi-go-hugh-fitzgerald

Asia Bibi, the Pakistani Christian woman who spent eight years on death row in a Pakistani jail, having been convicted of “blasphemy” on the testimony of Muslims, has at last been freed by a decision of the Pakistani Supreme Court. But her latest ordeal has only just begun, for she cannot possibly live safely in Pakistan, where massive crowds have been calling for her to be executed and where, during this past year, two high officials of the government who had criticized her prosecution were, as a consequence, murdered by Muslim fanatics.

The United Kingdom has refused to offer Bibi asylum, prompted by fears of violence by Muslims. The UK high commissioner in Islamabad is reported to have warned he could not protect his staff if asylum were granted by the UK. This led the Foreign Office, in turn, to ask the Home Office not to grant Asia Bibi’s request. And there was another fear as well. That was the concern that if Bibi were granted asylum by Her Majesty’s Government, Muslims could well riot in the U.K. itself.

In a demonstration of widespread pusillanimity, no country has yet stepped forward to offer this woman asylum.

So where can Asia Bibi go? There are two places where she just might be safe.

The first is the United States, where she could be offered not just asylum, but a place in the Witness Protection Program. Between 1971 and 2013 (the latest year for which figures are available), that Program has successfully protected 8,500 people (“witnesses”), along with 9,900 family members. The American government is unlikely to be worried about possible Muslim unrest should Asia Bibi be given asylum. While Muslims in the UK make up 5% of the population, in the US they make up only 1%, where, likely as a consequence, they are better behaved. The U.S is also 40 times bigger than the U.K. Should Asia Bibi come here, there’s more room to disappear in, with a government that has a ready network of safe houses, new identities, and, if need be, plastic surgery.

The second place where Asia Bibi should consider requesting asylum is the Vatican. By doing so, Asia Bibi would be putting the islamophilic Pope Francis on the spot. He who has been insisting that “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed to every form of violence” would be confronted with the reality of a Christian woman who, living in a Muslim land, falsely accused by Muslim coworkers of blasphemy against Muhammad, was sentenced to death. After spending eight years of her life in prison waiting for that sentence to be carried out, she was finally acquitted by the Pakistani Supreme Court. Two high-ranking Pakistani officials who had criticized the prosecution of Asia Bibi, the Governor of Punjab Salman Taseer, and the Minority Affairs Minister Shahbaz Bhatti, were both assassinated as a result.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Switzerland: “Creeping EU Accession” by Soeren Kern

Posted By on November 29th, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13359/switzerland-eu-accession

The EU has now increased the pressure by resorting to blackmail: Brussels is making its recognition of Switzerland’s SIX Swiss Exchange, the fourth-largest stock market in Europe, contingent on Swiss acceptance of the framework agreement.

The measure was opposed by a coalition of Swiss business groups, which convincingly argued that it was a question of economics and access to international markets for the export-dependent country. “Ultimately, it is about maintaining prosperity in Switzerland and keeping the companies and jobs here,” said Monika Rühl, director of the business group Economiesuisse.

“The SVP rejects a one-sided submission to EU institutions, aimed at establishing an institutional connection of Switzerland to the EU apparatus, with a dynamic EU legal takeover and, ultimately, the subordination of Switzerland to the EU Court of Justice. A dynamic adoption of EU law would be another massive erosion of our direct democracy.” — Swiss People’s Party.

Swiss voters have resoundingly rejected a referendum calling for the Swiss Constitution to take precedence over international treaties and law.

Two-thirds (66.2%) of voters in the November 25 referendum opposed the “self-determination” initiative, put forward by the eurosceptic Swiss People’s Party (Schweizerische Volkspartei, SVP), the largest party in the Swiss parliament.

SVP leaders had argued that the new law was necessary to safeguard national sovereignty from further encroachment by supranational organizations such as the European Union and the United Nations.

The Swiss government countered that the proposal would undermine Switzerland’s economic stability as it would require Bern to amend existing bilateral agreements with the EU, the country’s largest trade partner, to bring them into compliance with the Swiss Constitution.

The proposal’s defeat comes ahead of pending decisions by the Swiss government over whether to sign a wide-ranging EU “framework agreement,” and a controversial UN “migration pact.”

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Those Hoax Papers Tell Us A Lot about Declining Academic Standards By George Leef

Posted By on November 28th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/those-hoax-papers-tell-us-a-lot-about-declining-academic-standards/

Back in 1996, Professor Alan Sokol pulled off a dazzling stunt in getting an academic journal to publish a paper he’d written that was pure baloney. (He argued that gravity was merely a “social construct” but by using trendy academic jargon, the editors fell for it.) His point was that some journals will publish anything so long as it sounds right to leftist ears.

This summer, a trio of academics bettered Sokol by getting a whole batch of nonsense papers accepted. In today’s Martin Center article, historian Phil Magness explains why he thinks this is important — it speaks volumes about the decline of academic standards.

Magness writes:

While identity politics have dominated the fallout discussions, the real lesson of the hoax is what it revealed about the crisis of rigor afflicting academic publishing. The fabricated articles only advanced to publication because decades of lax standards have made academically fashionable nonsense—including other forms of fraudulent work—the norm for celebrated scholarship in several of the humanities and social sciences.

Supposedly reputable academic journals published the silly hoax papers, but they have also published serious ones that are just as nonsensical, such as a paper that was nothing more than a juvenile, expletive-laden tirade against neoliberalism.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Tax Cut Working Better Than Advertised The latest GDP estimate shows higher business investment.

Posted By on November 28th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/tax-cut-working-better-than-advertised-1543446448

Despite concerns over trade disputes and a slowing global economy, the corporate tax rate cut enacted in December of 2017 continues to encourage the business investment that leads to higher productivity and higher wages for American workers. Today the government reported that such investment was higher than it initially reported for the third quarter of the year.

Last month your humble correspondent noted:

The country has lately been so prosperous that we’ve had the luxury of being disappointed in some of the underlying data in Friday’s report of robust 3.5% economic growth for the third quarter. This column was as disappointed as anyone that business investment didn’t show another sharp increase after the stellar numbers posted in previous quarters.

But the overall growth reported by the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis was strong. And former Bush economist Larry Lindsey’s consulting firm Lindsey Group argues in a recent note to clients that it’s bound to look even stronger as the data becomes more refined…

In that note Mr. Lindsay told his clients that it “seems quite reasonable that there will be an upward revision in equipment investment (and possibly other investment as well) in the post-election report for the third quarter.”

This column observed “it is extremely reasonable to assume that America’s new competitive corporate tax system will continue to attract investment to the United States.”

That assumption looks even better today, now that the Commerce Department has reported that non-residential fixed investment rose 2.5% at an annual rate in the three months ending in September, up from 0.8% in the earlier estimate. Within this overall category of business investment, spending on equipment was revised to estimated growth of 3.5%, up sharply from an earlier 0.4% estimate.

As for the overall economy, it is on track to hit the White House target of 3% growth for the year. And Mr. Lindsey sees more of the same on the horizon, telling this column via email, “My guess is high twos for fourth quarter and an average of 3 for 2019.”

Get ready for more speeches featuring America’s 44th President asserting ownership of the growth breakout that never managed to arrive during his eight years in the White House. Today Jack Crowe at National Review writes:

Former President Barack Obama claimed credit Tuesday for the recent boom in U.S. oil production immediately after praising the Paris Climate Accords, which committed the U.S. to dramatically reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.

“I was extraordinarily proud of the Paris accords because — you know, I know we’re in oil country and we need American energy, and by the way, American energy production,” Obama told the audience gathered at Rice University’s Baker Institute on Tuesday night. “You wouldn’t always know it but it went up every year I was president. That whole, suddenly America’s like the biggest oil producer and the biggest gas — that was me, people.”

While U.S. oil production surged by nearly 100 percent over the course of Obama’s two-term presidency, the vast majority of that oil was extracted from state and private lands as the Obama administration took steps to curtail oil production on federal lands.

This column thinks that America’s prosperity revival has room to run, but prudent investors should always be on the lookout for the end of the Trump bump. We’ll know it’s really over when the former President stops pretending it’s his economy. CONTINUE AT SITE

EDUCATION, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Education and Anti-Semitism Too many young Europeans know little about their brutal past.

Posted By on November 28th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/education-and-anti-semitism-1543450010?mod=article_inline

Americans rightly complain that their public schools teach too little history, and two new surveys in Europe show the results of such failures.

A poll by ComRes for CNN finds that awareness of the Holocaust is starting to fade among younger Europeans. While only about 4% of respondents overall reported they had never heard of the Holocaust, the figure is 20% of French aged 18-34. And 30% of all respondents said they know “only a little” about this defining event in recent European history.

Ugly stereotypes about Jews also persist. Some 20% of respondents believe Jews exercise too much influence over global media and politics, and nearly 30% believe Jews exercise too much influence over global finance.

Some 35% of respondents strongly or tend to agree that “Israel uses the Holocaust to justify its actions.” This false equivalence between Nazis and Israel is a trope on the left, where anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism elide. As Britain’s Labour Party has shown under Jeremy Corbyn, these attitudes encourage abuse of Jews and politicians who support Israel.

A separate survey of Jewish community leaders by the Joint Distribution Committee’s International Centre for Community Development shows where such attitudes lead. The proportion of leaders who expect anti-Semitism to increase has grown to 66% this year from 54% a decade ago. The percentage who feel “very safe” as Jews in their city fell to 20% from 36%, while the proportion who feel “rather unsafe” has risen to 13% from 6%.

This survey found that Jews now feel safer in countries of the former Soviet bloc than in Western Europe. One explanation may be immigration, since Western Europe has accepted and then failed to assimilate large numbers of Muslim migrants while Eastern Europe has not. Radical Islamists are responsible for most recent high-profile attacks against Jews in Europe, and CNN found that 15% of Muslims in Europe had never heard of the Holocaust.

Civilizations that fail to teach the lessons of their own brutal history to the young are, well, you know.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Baroness Trumpington Former Bletchley Park cipher clerk who became a much-loved institution in the House of Lords

Posted By on November 28th, 2018

https://digitaledition.telegraph.co.uk/editions/edition_YJ2uq_2018-11-28/data/580436/index.html?share=1&
Thanks to e-pal Fred M……An obituary of a Great Dame of the British realm…..rsk

BARONESS TRUMPINGTON, who has died aged 96, was a former mayor of Cambridge and became the oldest and second longest-serving member of John Major’s administration; she was also by far the most popular.

Built to last, forthright and formidable, Jean Trumpington made up for any lack of intellectual brilliance with a capacity for hard work combined with down-to-earth common sense and an engaging habit of telling jokes against herself.

First recruited into Government ranks in 1983 as a Lords whip, her first job was to act as “keeper of the gate” by placing her imposing form next to the most popular exit to persuade errant Conservative peers to vote. But in fact she became far more effective in this role as a government minister; the prospect of a vintage performance by Jean Trumpington was usually enough to pack the chamber.

In 1987, as a minister at the Department of Health and Social Security, in answer to a question about whether Aids could be transmitted by insects, she replied: “I have replies to questions on bed bugs and monkeys, but I regret that I do not have fleas.”

In 1992, as an agriculture minister, she gave an answer to a question in which she referred to “the Commission’s proposals for reforming the CAP would replace existing support arrangements by a system of compensatory aid, linked directly or indirectly to the cultivated area or the number of animals kept by each farmer,” ending with: “And if you understand that, you’re a better man than I, Gunga Din.”

In October 1993, shortly after her appointment as a spokesman at the Department of National Heritage, she confessed to finding it difficult to master her brief and during one flustering question session she admitted: “I had been worried I might get my knickers in a twist,” she admitted.

The following year, wearing a stout woollen suit that evoked her career in naval intelligence, she struck an incongruous figure as the department’s representative at rock music awards: “I am here to collect autographs for my secretary,” she announced. “Is Elton John here?”

“I seem fated,” she protested unconvincingly. “When I’m trying very hard to be dignified, something always goes hideously wrong.”

BOOKS, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

EXPOSING ITALIAN CRIMES Simon Levis Sullam reveals how Italian citizens were actively complicit in the extermination of Jews – and got away with it. By Janet Levy

Posted By on November 28th, 2018

https://www.jpost.com/

Contrary to the prevalent view that Italians were primarily among the so-called “righteous gentiles” who saved Jews during the Holocaust, Italy played a significant role in the genocide of its Jewish citizens. Italians advanced blood libels, instituted persecutory racial laws, and later actively participated in the arrest and deportation of Jews to Auschwitz. In The Italian Executioners: The Genocide of the Jews in Italy, modern history professor Simon Levis Sullam explodes the myth of the “good Italians” promulgated after the war and exposes, for the first time, the cover-up of Italian responsibility.

As early as 1938, under the centralized authority of the Italian Social Republic (RSI), Italy introduced racial laws for its Jewish citizens that limited their economic activities, demonized them as inferior and enemies of the country, and persecuted them in employment, education and property ownership. The Ministry of Popular Culture set up local centers to study the Jewish problem and crank out antisemitic propaganda for the media. A telling sentiment expressed on Radio Roma was the hope that “the Jews be burnt, one by one, and their ashes scattered in the wind.” All of this ultimately paved the way for Jewish annihilation.
Five years before any roundups began, Levis Sullam reveals, the Italian government conducted a complete census of the Jewish population and established an efficient bureaucracy to surveil and persecute this “disease of humanity.”

False and dehumanizing accusations about Jews, many promulgated by the Roman Catholic Church, were rampant.

Jews were viewed as deserving of segregation and persecution based on race alone. Officers in the Fascist National Republican Guard under Mussolini were well briefed in spiritual and biological racism theories.

From 1943 to 1945, a network of collaborators – police, militia members, customs officials and more – hunted Jews in their homes. They arrested, imprisoned and handed Jews over to the Germans for deportation to death camps. Jewish property and belongings were ransacked and stolen, often with impunity. Audaciously, Jewish victims of theft were charged an administrative fee for this confiscation of their assets, the book recounts.

To illustrate the depth of action undertaken by the complicit Italian population, the author describes the actions and involvement of three prominent community members. He shows how the sentiments of these people of note were representative of the general populace, helped create widespread hatred of Jews in the period leading to World War II and helped facilitate genocide.
Giovanni Preziosi, an RSI legislator, spearheaded the General Inspectorate of Race. He was responsible for identifying “racial status,” studying “racial questions,” disseminating antisemitic propaganda and devising solutions to the Jewish problem with full knowledge of the “final solution” adopted by the Germans. He was a willing and enthusiastic party to the joint Italian-German undertaking to perpetrate genocide. He was responsible for supervising the confiscation of Jewish property and infusing the educational system with antisemitic propaganda.

Giovanni Martelloni, a writer on the “Jewish question” and head of the Office of Jewish Affairs in Florence, joined the Inspectorate of Race in 1944 and carried out arrests and confiscations. An antisemitic writer who defined a “Jewish problem” that had plagued the world for 2,000 years, he was put in charge of coordinating anti-Jewish activities in Florence.