BOOKS, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Eternal Jihad: Islam Will Never, Ever Stop By Andrew E. Harrod

Posted By on October 23rd, 2018

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/10/eternal_jihad_islam_will_never_ever_stop.html

The “West and Islam have been mortal enemies since the latter’s birth some fourteen centuries ago,” warns Islam scholar Raymond Ibrahim in his recent book Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West. His extensive analysis bears out the apt title of this volume, whose documented history is equally ill remembered and yet vital for modern Westerners.

Ibrahim begins by elucidating the disturbing conceptual core of Islam and its seventh-century Arab prophet, Muhammad. “The appeal of Muhammad’s message lay in its compatibility with the tribal mores of his society,” Ibrahim notes.

For seventh-century Arabs – and later tribal peoples, chiefly Turks and Tatars, who also found natural appeal in Islam – the tribe was what humanity is to modern people: to be part of it was to be treated humanely; to be outside of it was to be treated inhumanely.

Accordingly, Islam “deified tribalism, causing it to outlive its setting and spill into the modern era.” Islamic doctrines like al-wala’ wa al-bara’ (“loyalty and enmity”) created an umma faith community or “‘Super Tribe’ that transcends racial, national, and linguistic barriers.” Not surprisingly, the Arabic umma “is etymologically related to ‘mother’ (umm) – to one’s closest kin.”

Ibrahim “records a variety of Muslims across time and space behaving exactly like the Islamic State and for the same reasons” – namely, Islam’s promotion of warfare against non-Muslims. Islam’s deity “incites his followers to war on the promise of booty, both animate and inanimate – so much so that an entire sura, or chapter of the Koran, ‘al-Anfal,’ is named after and dedicated to the spoils of war.” Jihadists following Islamic canons thus “‘use’ or ‘loan’ their lives as part of a ‘bargain’ or ‘transaction’ – whereby Allah forgives all sins and showers them with celestial delights.”

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Trump Is No ‘Isolationist’ He’s overseeing a risky but ambitious effort to contain global adversaries.By Walter Russell Mead

Posted By on October 23rd, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-is-no-isolationist-1540250070

While the world was transfixed by the drama over the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, the Trump administration last week doggedly pressed ahead with some of the most dramatic shifts in American foreign policy since the end of the Cold War.

President Trump’s foreign policy is anything but isolationist. It is ambitious, interventionist and global. Having determined after almost two years of trying that the three revisionist powers—China, Russia and Iran—cannot, at least for now, be pried apart, the administration is preparing to take them on all at once.

This means, above all, intensifying competition with China. In the two weeks since Vice President Mike Pence’s speech laying out the far-reaching U.S. strategy for containing Beijing, the administration has not let up: The trade war has escalated; Mr. Trump announced U.S. withdrawal from an 1844 postal-services treaty that, in his view, gives Chinese shippers unfair advantages; and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo traveled to Panama to warn that country’s leaders against Chinese debt-trap diplomacy.

Perhaps more surprising to some of its critics is the Trump administration’s increasingly hard line against Russia. In the same week that Mr. Trump announced the U.S. withdrawal from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty, citing Russian noncompliance, an American aircraft carrier visited the Russian Arctic for the first time in almost 30 years. Meanwhile, A. Wess Mitchell, the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, described a new era of U.S.-Russia competition in a blistering speech Thursday at the Atlantic Council.

“From the Baltic to the Adriatic, across the Balkan Peninsula and through the Caucasus, America’s rivals are expanding their political, military and commercial influence. Russia is again a military factor in this region, following the invasions of Georgia and Ukraine. Well beyond the frontier, in the countries of Central Europe, Russia uses manipulative energy tactics, corruption and propaganda to weaken Western nations from within and undermine their bonds with the United States,” Mr. Mitchell said. He went on to hail “Ukraine, Georgia and even Belarus” as a “bulwark against Russian neo-imperialism” and signaled increased U.S. support for their independence and sovereignty.

The storm over U.S.-Saudi relations has not deterred the administration from intensifying its campaign against Iran. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is still flying to Riyadh to coordinate U.S. and Saudi economic actions to isolate Tehran. The U.S. remains on schedule to reimpose its most powerful sanctions against Iran on Nov. 5.

Traditionally, countries headed toward confrontation with adversaries look to strengthen their alliances. This has not been the Trump administration’s approach. Without mentioning Germany by name, Mr. Mitchell sharply criticized its dealings with Russia and Iran: “We expect those whom America helps to not abet our rivals. Western Europeans cannot continue to deepen energy dependence on the same Russia that America defends it against. Or enrich themselves on the same Iran that is building ballistic missiles which threaten Europe.”

Yet Mr. Mitchell also signaled a deeper U.S. involvement in Europe that Berlin should welcome. He noted that “many of America’s closest allies in Central Europe operate networks of corruption and state-owned enterprises that rig the system in favor of China and Russia.” Joint efforts by the U.S. and the European Union to stabilize democracy in Central and Eastern European countries could help give the old trans-Atlantic alliance a new lease on life. CONTINUE AT SITE

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Hashemite Chutzpah by Gerald A. Honigman

Posted By on October 23rd, 2018

http://q4j-middle-east.com

Herb Keinon and Khaled Abu Toameh reported in the October 21, 2018 Jerusalem Post on King Abdullah II of Jordan’s decision to downgrade its peace treaty with Israel.

More specifically, this decision involves Jordan wanting to…“opt out of annexes from its 1994 peace treaty with Israel that leased two border areas that historically were difficult to delineate…the king’s decision followed a request from government activists not to renew the agreement and to revoke Israeli ownership from Jordanian land.” Israel had been using the areas for agricultural purposes. The report further explained that…

“Abdullah is in a vice. While he needs the peace treaty with Israel for the security of his regime, he has domestic Islamic elements to deal with and at times placate. He is also dealing with Syrian crisis, which has not only inundated his country with refugees, but also put Iran perilously close. The language Abdullah used in announcing the move–Jordanian land, Jordanian interests–is a bone thrown to the Islamists.”

In reality, I doubt that Islamists care much about the “Jordanian” aspect to this issue.

What Islamists do care about is the land being in the hands of folks from their perceived Dar al-Harb (realm of war)–not Dar ul-Islam…especially those of the Arabs’ despised kilab yahud ilk–“Jew dogs.”

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Arms Control for Dummies Trump is right to nix a treaty that Putin has violated for a decade.

Posted By on October 22nd, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/arms-control-for-dummies-1540250764

Donald Trump says the U.S. plans to withdraw from the 1987 INF nuclear arms-control treaty that everyone agrees Russia has been violating for a decade. Yet somehow this is said to be reckless behavior by—Donald Trump? Welcome to the high church of arms control in which treaties are sacrosanct no matter the violation.

The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty bans ground-fired ballistic and cruise missiles with a range between 500 and 5,500 kilometers and is an artifact of the late Cold War. Ronald Reagan and NATO deployed mid-range missiles in Europe in the early 1980s to counter Soviet deployments. After years of tense negotiation, Mikhail Gorbachev finally agreed to the modest INF accord on U.S. terms that traded U.S. missiles for Russia’s. This was hailed as a diplomatic triumph.

Yet when the Warsaw Pact and Soviet Union collapsed over the next few years, nuclear arms control faded in importance. Which is the key point. Arms control didn’t make the world safer; the fall of the Soviet Union did that. Arms control tends to work when it is between countries that get along, while it fails with adversaries that can’t be trusted.

Enter Vladimir Putin, who has been developing a new medium-range cruise missile since the mid-2000s. The U.S. believes Moscow first tested the new missile in 2008, but the Obama Administration hid that intelligence from the Senate when it debated and ratified the New Start treaty with Mr. Putin in 2010.

The Obama Administration first went public with this news in 2014, and the State Department has noted Russian noncompliance every year. Moscow started deploying its new missiles in late 2016. This is in addition to a new ballistic missile Russia has tested that may be INF compliant only because it can travel slightly farther than 5,500 kilometers.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Palestinians ‘Peoplehood’ Based on a Big Lie Eli E. Hertz

Posted By on October 22nd, 2018

http://www.mythsandfacts.org/article_view.asp?articleID=348

There is no age-old Palestinian people. Most so-called Palestinians are relative newcomers to the Land of Israel.

Palestine is ‘not a state’
White House National Security Advisor John Bolton

The Palestinians claim that they are an ancient and indigenous people fails to stand up to historic scrutiny. Most Palestinian Arabs were newcomers to British Mandate Palestine. Until the 1967 Six-Day War made it expedient for Arabs to create a Palestinian peoplehood, local Arabs simply considered themselves part of the ‘great Arab nation’ or ‘southern Syrians.’

Palestinian Arabs cast themselves as a native people in “Palestine” – like the Aborigines in Australia or Native Americans in America. They portray the Jews as European imperialists and colonizers. This is simply untrue. Until the Jews began returning to the Land of Israel in increasing numbers from the late 19th century to the turn of the 20th, the area called Palestine was a God-forsaken backwash that belonged to the Ottoman Empire, based in Turkey.

What caused the collapse of Palestinian society? In addition to serious cleavages dating to Ottoman times that existed in local Arab society, it was the absence of an alternative Arab infrastructure after the British pulled out of Mandate Palestine. Because Palestinian Arab society had been so dependent on British civil administration and social services, Britain’s departure left Arab civil servants jobless. As a result, most social services and civil administration ceased to function in the Arab sector, disrupting the flow of essential commodities such as food and fuel, which added to their hardships and uncertainties.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

China seeks framework for November deal with Trump David Goldman

Posted By on October 22nd, 2018

Ahead of a possible meeting next month between US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, the White House tempered any optimism that a trade truce with Beijing is imminent when top economic advisor Larry Kudlow accused China on Sunday of doing “nothing” to defuse trade tensions.

But some Chinese officials and government advisers recently emphasized that China will show patience in addressing American trade demands, postponing if necessary some of its plans to become self-sufficient in high-tech industry.

China’s “Made in China 2025” plan, which envisions a rapid expansion of domestic high tech industry, figures prominently in the US administration’s complaints about Chinese economic policy. US negotiators accuse China of using state subsidies to gain an unfair advantage against US competitors, quite apart from tariffs, non-trade barriers, theft of intellectual property and pressure on Western joint-venture partners to transfer technology.

China told the United States that it would buy whatever the United States wanted to sell in order to reduce the trade deficit, and is ready to work with Washington on improving intellectual property protection, but the American challenge to China’s economic model is a deal-breaker.

By backing off from the 2025 target, Chinese officials believe, Beijing can placate the US Administration, and give President Trump a coup in public relations while keeping its own industrial program intact. The government is exploring a number of ways to present such a deal.

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Why Israel? Because Iran Shoshana Bryen

Posted By on October 22nd, 2018

American Ambassador David Friedman and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and their wives were hosted by Commander David Coles, and the speeches emphasized the close relations between the United States and Israel — specifically, between the two navies.

Amid the comradery, however, it was noted that the ceremony was the first U.S. port visit to Ashdod in twenty years.

The naval base at Haifa has seen more action. Most recently, in June, the guided-missile destroyer USS Donald Cook visited, following March visits by the amphibious assault ship USS Iwo Jima and the Blue Ridge-class command and control ship USS Mount Whitney.

In that context, however, when the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush docked in Haifa in July 2017, it was the first carrier visit to an Israeli port since the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower in April 2000.

The 1980s and 1990s were the heyday of the Sixth Fleet in Haifa. American ships did repairs at Israel Shipyards and brought the first Marines for training in Israel. The American government paid to refurbish the shipyards to enable them to handle the fleet’s larger ships. A well-used USO facility opened in Haifa in 1984 and the sailors contributed about $1 million a day to the Israeli tourist economy.

In 2000, however, after the bombing of the USS Cole near Yemen, liberty for American sailors in the Middle East was largely curtailed — in Israel as well as in countries that posed an overt threat to American interests.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

The Caravan to Nowhere The march from Honduras echoes the 1980 Mariel boatlift.

Posted By on October 22nd, 2018

These columns favor generous immigration and asylum for refugees. But when migration becomes a political weapon to foment border chaos, leaders have no choice other than to step in and protect national security. Exhibit A are the 4,000 or so Central Americans moving on foot through Mexico to the U.S.

Waves of humanity marching in lock step don’t materialize spontaneously and neither has this “caravan.” This march is organized and not necessarily for the benefit of the migrants. Mr. Trump has good reason to turn it back.

Not since the 1980 Mariel boatlift from Cuba has there been a similar attempt to overwhelm U.S. immigration law on the pretext of celebrating American freedom. Thousands of Cubans made their way to Florida when Fidel Castro temporarily lifted his Havana Curtain, and American boats of every shape and size sailed into the Caribbean to collect them.

But the sheer magnitude made it impossible to process the newcomers in an orderly fashion. Castro saw to it that criminals and the mentally ill also climbed aboard the boats. No one doubted the Cuban hunger to escape, but the unintended consequences of the mayhem were costly.

A Mariel replay now seems to be coming from Honduras. Though the details are murky, we do know that former Honduran congressman Bartolo Fuentes of the left-wing Libre Party has admitted to organizing this caravan.

Libre is the party of former president Manuel Zelaya, an ally of Venezuela and Cuba who in 2009 tried to override the Honduran constitution to remain in office despite a term limit. The Honduran congress, his own party, the Supreme Court, the national ombudsman and the Catholic Church opposed his power grab. He was removed by the military and never returned to power despite the efforts of the Obama Administration.

But Mr. Zelaya remains active in politics. While center-right President Juan Orlando Hernández has encouraged Hondurans on the journey to return home and even has offered them assistance, Mr. Zelaya is egging them on.

In a press release last week, he accused Mr. Hernández of a “submissive and lackey attitude” toward “the arrogant position of the empire” and criticized Mr. Hernández’s efforts to “deepen failed economic policies” like privatization. The opposition is now calling for street protests with a threat that if Mr. Hernández does not step down, the migration wave will continue.

Mr. Fuentes, who was detained in Guatemala last week and returned to Honduras, has said he did not expect the caravan to grow so large, which raises the question of where the financing for the marchers is coming from. Criminal organizations and governments like Venezuela would benefit from chaos at the U.S. border that embarrasses the Trump Administration before the election. Many nongovernmental organizations on the left also support the migrants’ “right” to the American dream.

The reality is that bowing to this migration blackmail would produce an American political backlash that would damage the cause of legal immigration and a humane refugee policy. Think of Germany’s Angela Merkel and the 2015 flood of Middle Eastern migrants. Mr. Trump is right to seek Mexican cooperation to make clear to the migrants that, whatever their plight, they cannot stampede over America’s southern border.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Voters Don’t Like Trump, Just His Results An opportunity for the President’s party to buck midterm history. By James Freeman

Posted By on October 22nd, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/voters-dont-like-trump-just-his-results-1540241748

There’s a school of thought that the economy is only a political issue when it’s bad and that prosperous times allow people the luxury of prioritizing other issues. That’s not the message in the latest poll from The Wall Street Journal and NBC News.

The consensus among professional economists is that this Friday’s third-quarter GDP report from the Commerce Department will show another strong period of growth in the U.S. economy after a blowout performance in the second quarter. Voters don’t seem to be taking it for granted. WSJ/NBC survey respondents call “the economy and jobs” the most important factor in deciding their votes in this year’s elections for the U.S. Congress. Since June, this issue has overtaken health care as the top concern for participants in the poll.

Could this mean that despite all the recent positive economic data, survey respondents actually think the economy is lousy? Not likely, because voters are giving high marks to the party that is currently in charge of the nation’s economic policy. When it comes to dealing with the economy, survey participants say that Republicans “would do a better job” than Democrats by a 15-point margin. This appears to be the largest Republican advantage recorded by this survey, which has been asking the question since at least 1991.

This doesn’t mean that voters particularly like the nation’s chief economic policy maker. In fact 68% of respondents say they don’t like President Trump. But Mr. Trump appears to be setting a modern record in the share of the electorate saying that they don’t like the President personally, but approve of most of his policies. This category of voters currently stands at 20% of the electorate. For most recent Presidents such readings were generally in the low-to-mid single digits, though Bill Clinton’s share did climb into the teens.

The Journal reports that survey results show overall approval of President Trump is increasing, and so is enthusiasm among those in his party:

Hand in hand with Republicans’ increased election interest is a rise in Mr. Trump’s job-approval rating to 47%, the highest mark of his time in office, with 49% disapproving of his performance. That is an improvement from September, when 44% approved and 52% disapproved of his performance.

If a significant number of Americans are giving the President what might be called their grudging approval, you can’t say he’s not working hard to earn it. This is not a reference to his tweeting but to the results of two of his signature initiatives on economic policy.

This column has written at length about the encouraging spike in business investment following the December enactment of his tax cuts. Recently the Trump administration provided a progress report on the other pillar of his pro-growth agenda—reducing federal regulation. This is affectionately known as swamp-draining to those outside the D.C. metropolitan area.

It seems Team Trump is exceeding its own expectations. At one point the administration was aiming to cut about $10 billion in regulatory costs during the 2018 fiscal year, which ended on September 30. Now the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs reports the elimination of $23 billion in “overall regulatory costs across the government” during the fiscal year just ended. CONTINUE AT SITE

BOOKS, EDUCATION Comments turned off

Compulsory Futility Beyond basic literacy and numeracy, formal schooling is a waste of time for most people, argues a contrarian. Gene Epstein

Posted By on October 22nd, 2018

The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money, by Bryan Caplan (Princeton University Press, 400 pp., $29.95)

In The Case Against Education, a persuasive indictment of his own industry, George Mason University economics professor Bryan Caplan quotes Harvard professor Steven Pinker on his teaching experience at America’s most storied institution of higher learning. “A few weeks into every semester,” says the eminent psychologist and polymath, “I face a lecture hall that is half empty, despite the fact that I am repeatedly voted a Harvard Yearbook Favorite Professor, that the lectures are not video recorded, and that they are the only source of certain material that will be on the exam.”

Pinker adds: “I don’t take it personally; it’s common knowledge that Harvard students stay away from lectures in droves.”

Such apathy is the norm. According to data cited by Caplan, 25 percent to 40 percent of college students don’t show up for class, even when attendance counts toward the grade. What share of the rest would bother to show up if that weren’t the case? As for high school students, for whom cutting class is a serious offense, two-thirds report being bored in class every day, according to a survey Caplan cites.

Caplan’s subtitle promises to explain “why the education system is a waste of time and money.” He exempts the teaching of essentials like reading, writing, and basic math, and professional and vocational programs that develop in-demand job skills. As for the rest of the curriculum, forget it. “Teach curious students about ideas and culture,” he suggests. “Leave the rest in peace and hope they come around.” The core question that Caplan addresses is why employers so richly reward high school and college degrees, when the content of the coursework has so little to do with the jobs employers offer. Yet college graduates earn substantially more than high school graduates, who earn more than high school dropouts.