FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Move the Embassy to Jerusalem and Promote Peace Such a move would make clear that the U.S. supports Israel’s claim to the city’s western part. By Daniel B. Shapiro See note please

Posted By on October 25th, 2017

Mr. Shapiro was the Obama administration’s ambassador to Israel…..This column promotes the notion of an embassy move facilitating a two state dissolution of Israel. his peace processing should be viewed cum granu salis…..rsk

President Trump, like his three predecessors, has so far waived the 1995 law requiring the relocation of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. This month he told Mike Huckabee on the Trinity Broadcast Network that he will delay the move further to give his nascent peace initiative “a shot.”

But Mr. Trump has created the perfect opportunity to combine his unveiling of a U.S. peace plan with an announcement that he will be moving the embassy to the Israeli capital.

The administration indicates Mr. Trump will announce his peace proposal later this year. To gain approval from Palestinians and Arab states, it will need to include an explicit endorsement of a Palestinian state. He will need to be clear that such a state must commit to live in peace alongside Israel, accept provisions to ensure Israel’s security, and recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

That is consistent with Israeli policy. According to U.S. officials, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in closed conversations, has reiterated his commitment to his 2009 Bar-Ilan speech that supports “a demilitarized Palestinian state that recognizes the Jewish state.” And foreign diplomats report that U.S. officials have confirmed they understand a two-state solution must be included in any viable U.S. peace plan.

Packaging the unveiling of a U.S. peace plan with an announcement of the embassy move could ensure that the latter reinforces the former. But Mr. Trump must be clear on two points: The embassy will relocate to West Jerusalem, the area of the city under undisputed Israeli sovereignty. He also must explain that East Jerusalem’s status will need to be negotiated, and the U.S. expects the outcome to include a Palestinian capital in the city’s Arab neighborhoods, as part of a unified city.

This approach has two advantages. First, it reorients U.S. policy toward a two-state solution. Second, it punctures myths that both sides use to deceive themselves and delay progress. Palestinians will see that the U.S. strongly supports historic Jewish and Israeli claims to Jerusalem, and Israelis will hear from their ally that to end the conflict they need to acknowledge a Palestinian state with a capital in East Jerusalem.

There are signs of openness on both sides. Arab states, which already acknowledge Israel as a strategic partner, will be able to help persuade the Palestinians that they will gain from the U.S. endorsement of a Palestinian capital in Jerusalem. In advance, it will be necessary for the U.S. to discuss these ideas with Arabs and the Palestinians to help prepare them for the embassy move.

In Israel, there is recognition from surprising quarters that the Jewish state’s own interests require a new approach on Jerusalem. As Ben Caspit reported in al-Monitor, Anat Berko, a Likud member of the Knesset, handpicked by Mr. Netanyahu, has presented a plan that would transfer control of most East Jerusalem Arab neighborhoods from Israel to the Palestinian Authority. That would help ensure a stable Jewish majority in Israeli Jerusalem. Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman has long expressed concern about the demographic balance in Israel. His position logically suggests that Israel has no interest in absorbing the more than 300,000 Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem. As growing numbers of Arab residents accept Israel’s offer to apply for citizenship, the Israeli Interior Ministry seems to be having second thoughts.

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The FBI’s Political Meddling Mueller is the wrong sleuth when his ex-agency is so tangled up with Russia. By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.

Posted By on October 25th, 2017

Let’s give plausible accounts of the known facts, then explain why demands that Robert Mueller recuse himself from the Russia investigation may not be the fanciful partisan grandstanding you imagine.

Here’s a story consistent with what has been reported in the press—how reliably reported is uncertain. Democratic political opponents of Donald Trump financed a British former spook who spread money among contacts in Russia, who in turn over drinks solicited stories from their supposedly “connected” sources in Moscow. If these people were really connected in any meaningful sense, then they made sure the stories they spun were consistent with the interests of the regime, if not actually scripted by the regime.

The resulting Trump dossier then became a factor in Obama administration decisions to launch an FBI counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign, and after the election to trumpet suspicions of Trump collusion with Russia.

We know of a second, possibly even more consequential way the FBI was effectively a vehicle for Russian meddling in U.S. politics. Authoritative news reports say FBI chief James Comey’s intervention in the Hillary Clinton email matter was prompted by a Russian intelligence document that his colleagues suspected was a Russian plant.

OK, Mr. Mueller was a former close colleague and leader but no longer part of the FBI when these events occurred. This may or may not make him a questionable person to lead a Russia-meddling investigation in which the FBI’s own actions are necessarily a concern.

But now we come to the Rosatom disclosures last week in The Hill, a newspaper that covers Congress.

Here’s another story as plausible as we can make it based on credible reporting. After the Cold War, in its own interest, the U.S. wanted to build bridges to the Russian nuclear establishment. The Putin government, for national or commercial purposes, agreed and sought to expand its nuclear business in the U.S.

The purchase and consolidation of certain assets were facilitated by Canadian entrepreneurs who gave large sums to the Clinton Foundation, and perhaps arranged a Bill Clinton speech in Moscow for $500,000. A key transaction had to be approved by Hillary Clinton’s State Department.

Now we learn that, before and during these transactions, the FBI had uncovered a bribery and kickback scheme involving Russia’s U.S. nuclear business, and also received reports of Russian officials seeking to curry favor through donations to the Clinton Foundation.

This criminal activity was apparently not disclosed to agencies vetting the 2010 transfer of U.S. commercial nuclear assets to Russia. The FBI made no move to break up the scheme until long after the transaction closed. Only five years later, the Justice Department, in 2015, disclosed a plea deal with the Russian perpetrator so quietly that its significance was missed until The Hill reported on the FBI investigation last week.

For anyone who cares to look, the real problem here is that the FBI itself is so thoroughly implicated in the Russia meddling story.

The agency, when Mr. Mueller headed it, soft-pedaled an investigation highly embarrassing to Mrs. Clinton as well as the Obama Russia reset policy. More recently, if just one of two things is true—Russia sponsored the Trump Dossier, or Russian fake intelligence prompted Mr. Comey’s email intervention—then Russian operations, via their impact on the FBI, influenced and continue to influence our politics in a way far more consequential than any Facebook ad, the preoccupation of John McCain, who apparently cannot behold a mountain if there’s a molehill anywhere nearby.

Which means that Mr. Mueller has the means, motive and opportunity to obfuscate and distract from matters embarrassing to the FBI, while pleasing a large part of the political spectrum. He need only confine his focus to the flimsy, disingenuous but popular (with the media) accusation that the shambolic Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin. CONTINUE AT SITE

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TWO COLUMNS BY MELANIE PHILLIPS ON ENGLAND, JEWS, ISRAEL, BALFOUR

Posted By on October 24th, 2017

THE DRUMBEAT OF ALARM GROWS LOUDER FOR BRITISH JEWS

Jeremy Corbyn’s refusal to attend next month’s dinner in London to celebrate the centenary of the Balfour Declaration confirms what many have long suspected.

His antipathy to Israel goes way beyond hostility to Israeli “settlements” or any romantic attachment to the Palestinian cause. He does not support the existence of Israel at all.

How else to explain his refusal to attend a dinner to celebrate the event which kick-started the (agonising) process that eventually resulted in the establishment of the State of Israel?

And if he thus opposes the self-determination of the Jewish people in their own ancestral homeland, how can he be anything other than hostile to Judaism itself? For Judaism comprises three inseparable elements: the people, the religion and the land. Judaism is, simply and indivisibly, the mission of the Jewish people to form a nation of priests within the land of Israel.

Of course, neither Corbyn and his hard-left cabal, nor the so-called soft-left whose views about Israel may be less extreme but are no less problematic, have any insight into their own bigotry because they have virtually no understanding of what Judaism means (and that goes for many Jews on the left too, who equally deploy the spurious mantra that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism as their get-out-of-jail-free card).

But hey, some folk are very happy with Corbyn’s Balfour dinner snub; there are reports that the JC story about it has been tweeted by Hamas.

Many British Jews are now shuddering at the possibility of a Corbyn-led Labour government. They are heartbroken and aghast at what has happened to the country that for the half-century following the liberation of Belsen they believed offered them not just physical but psychological safety.

Some, like Angela Epstein in this article, are now talking of emigrating should Corbyn come to power.

She describes how her children’s Jewish schools in Manchester were encircled by fences, CCTV cameras and security guards.

“Elsewhere, every Jewish building now has a guard permanently stationed at the door. In 21st-century Britain — the place of our birth and our home.

“Most Jewish people I know have endured cat-calling as they leave synagogues, schools or other Jewish centres. There have been countless Saturday mornings when, as I walk to synagogue, a car screeches past with the occupants shouting something indeterminate from the window. Friends have had eggs thrown at them.

“My son was subjected to a blistering verbal attack when he recently wore his Jewish skullcap on the London Underground.Little wonder that in a YouGov poll earlier this year for the Campaign Against Antisemitism, almost a third of British Jews said they had considered leaving the country, while one in six said they feel unwelcome here.”

This cultural poison has been swelling for years. The Labour party hasn’t created it but is merely its most visible expression – and as a result is legitimising its further increase. Epstein observes:

“As the Labour Party continues to reveal its toxic underbelly, for many British Jews the question of uprooting our families and leaving Britain is a matter of when, not if… If history has taught us Jews anything, it’s knowing when it’s time to pack.”

Actually, it’s hard to know that. The difficulties and risks of remaining have to outweigh the difficulties and risks of uprooting; and people find themselves at very different points along that sliding scale. But for sure, the drumbeat of alarm among many committed British Jews is growing louder by the day.

BRITS STILL TWO-FACED OVER BALFOUR
http://www.melaniephillips.com/hmg-still-two-faced-balfour/

Astonishingly, the British Foreign Office is still continuing to undermine the Balfour Declaration, the centenary of which falls in a couple of weeks’ time.

In a speech at the UN Security Council a few days ago Jonathan Allen, the UK’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN, said the following:

“From the outset, I would like to make clear, as we approach the centenary of the Balfour Declaration next month, that the UK understands and respects the sensitivities many have about the Declaration and the events that have taken place in the region since 1917.

“The UK is proud to have played a role in helping to make a Jewish homeland a reality. And we continue to support the principle of such a homeland and the modern state of Israel.

“Just as we fully support the modern state of Israel as a Jewish homeland, we also fully support the objective of a viable and sovereign Palestinian state. The occupation is a continued impediment to securing the political rights of the non-Jewish communities in Palestine. And let us remember, there are two halves of Balfour, the second half of which has not been fulfilled. There is therefore unfinished business” (my emphasis).

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WHODUNIT? by Linda Goudsmit

Posted By on October 24th, 2017

NEWSFLASH: On the night of October 1, 2017 shots rained down on concertgoers at the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival in Las Vegas Nevada killing 58 people and injuring 546. Who would do such a thing? Why?

Solving a murder mystery requires following the clues. Those familiar with guns and ammunition do not believe that Stephen Paddock, the flabby 64 year old alleged shooter, was alone or even fired the killing shots from his Mandalay Bay suite. The increasingly contradictory and phantasmagorical explanations offered by government authorities to explain the shocking mass-murder are less credible than the Parker Brothers murder mystery board game Clue.

Motive is always a good place to start. If you want to know the motive look at the result. Who benefits from mass murder at an MGM hotel in Las Vegas?

MGM Resorts International is a holding company that operates in two sections – domestic resorts and MGM China. MGM Resorts International is the parent company of the Mandalay Bay hotel and is publicly traded on the NYSE as MGM. So let’s consider the business implications of mass murder. Chaos and instability drive stock prices down. As expected, the price of MGM stock plummeted after the mass-shooting.

Most people buy stocks hoping they will increase in value and generate a profit. George Soros buys futures and bets the stock will go down (shorting a stock) – he actually wants the stock price to drop. Soros is infamously known as the man who broke the Bank of England in 1992 by shorting billions of pounds. He is also a convicted felon for insider trading in France 2002. If it can be proven that Soros is connected to the murders and profited from them he becomes a prime suspect. So what actually happened?

SEC filings in May of 2017 show no MGM stock in the Soros Fund Management. In August of 2017 Soros Fund Management shorts 1.35 million MGM shares worth $42 million dollars. The slaughter at Mandalay Bay will generate hundreds of millions of dollars for Soros. This puts Soros in the office and makes him a person of interest.

Las Vegas and Hollywood are connected by conglomerates that own studio properties and hotel properties. The parent company’s stock is affected by the successes and failures of both. Remember that chaos creates instability which causes stock prices to tumble. That is Soros’ modus operandi – he destabilizes governments for power and profit. Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein has been a despicable sexual predator for decades so why is he being exposed now? Why not five or ten or fifteen years ago? If you want to know the motive look at the result. The exposure of Harvey Weinstein as a serial sexual predator caused stock prices to drop and is collapsing The Weinstein Company at the same time that MGM stock is dropping. This puts Weinstein in the bedroom.

Goldman Sachs is said to be in negotiations to buy Weinstein’s company and what a surprise – Soros Fund Management increased its stake in Goldman Sachs Group (GS.N) by nearly 40% during the first quarter and then dumped them by August. Coincidence? Not likely.

MGM stock prices were falling so on September 5, 2017 MGM Resort International announced a 1 billion share buyback program that artificially inflated the stock price. On September 7, 2017 CEO and Chairman of MGM Resorts International James Murren sold 294,150 shares of his stock for $10,024,632.00. On September 6, 2017 CAO Robert Selwood sold 40,325 shares of his stock for $1,365,404.50. Could these men have prior knowledge of the catastrophe at Mandalay Bay? Insider trading is against the law but if it can be shown that Murren had prior knowledge of the shooting that makes him prime suspect number 2. His selloff places Murren in the library.

MGM has a China connection as well. China is heavily invested in MGM through its hospitality division that develops hotel and resort properties all over the world including the Middle East and China. MGM Resorts International projects in China are developed and operated by Diaoyutai MGM Hospitality a joint venture between MGM and Diaoyutai State Guesthouse of China.

Let’s review. MGM Resorts International is connected to Las Vegas hotels, Hollywood movie studios, Chinese hotels, and its stock is being shorted by currency manipulator George Soros. And then there is Wanda’s 20 million dollar donation to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) to consider. Billionaire Wang Jianlin is chairman and president of Dalian Wanda Group. Interestingly it was Harvey Weinstein who sent a letter to the Beverly Hills City Council on behalf of Wanda’s development of a condo and hotel. Why did Weinstein go to bat for Wanda? What is the Weinstein connection to Chinese billionaire Wang Jianlin and MGM?

The Weinstein Company (TWC) sold its library to Goldman Sachs in 2010 to save itself from bankruptcy. The library was purchased by AMC Networks (AMCX) in 2015 and then AMC Networks offered a $500 million buyback program of their stock on June 6, 2017. The library will revert back to TWC when the debt is paid but what happens if TWC goes out of business? The plot thickens.

China has been quietly buying up studios and influence in Hollywood for the last several years. Beijing based real estate conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group is central to the story. Wanda owns AMC Theaters and Legendary Entertainment. Wanda co-owns Open Road Films and Fathom Events and partners with Sony Entertainment.

Chinese control over content and distribution of movies is extremely problematic because of the unparalleled influence and platform it provides to manipulate public opinion. Media strategist Richard Berman expresses the concern in this way:

“Chinese control of movie production, radio station broadcasts, and other public channels provides the Chinese government with a platform to promote its own ideological message in the place of competing ideologies — often in an unassuming manner.”

Only the corrupt self-serving Hollywood elite who protected Harvey Weinstein for decades could actually say that Chinese influence in American film content will be minimal or benign. Twenty million dollars buys a lot of influence – remember Wanda’s gift to AMPAS. China is one of the usual suspects in this murder mystery because China seeks geopolitical primacy. Predators come in all forms – there are sexual predators like Harvey Weinstein, political predators like China, financial predators like James Murren, and the mother of all predators profiteer George Soros.

Predators succeed because of the participation of their enablers who benefit in some way from the actions of the predator. Solving murder mysteries often hinges on identifying those who enabled the crime. So, who is the enabler in our WHODUMIT??

Let’s consider the absurd phantasmagorical accounts of the Las Vegas shooting provided by the authorities and echoed by the mainstream media (that has suddenly gone silent on the subject) as enablers. Let’s also consider the multiple eyewitness accounts contradicting every point of the official version. What could possibly account for such diametrically opposed versions of what happened in Las Vegas that night?

One theory of the crime is that the entire event was a deep state/government psychological operation (PsyOps) designed to create chaos to drive stock prices down. In this scenario the government enabled prime suspects Soros, Murren, and China to profit enormously. Why? All three are enemies of the state and enriching them enriches the coffers of the leftist/globalist agenda that seeks to destroy American democracy and replace it with socialism. The predictable cries for gun control furthers the leftist/globalist cause because an unarmed American public cannot defend itself.

But what about Weinstein? Who wanted to bring down Weinstein? He is, after all the premier spokesman for the culture war against America – his films destructively portraying an increasingly violent and out of control society. The exposure of Weinstein seems personal – perhaps Weinstein was exposed to destroy him and devalue his company for the scavengers waiting to buy it. Time will tell.

Before anyone rejects these possibilities as impossibilities – remember that the enemies of America intend to destroy us from the inside out. Chaos is the goal of the enemy because chaos is necessary for seismic social change. It is the chaos that produces economic instability, cultural instability, political instability, and makes people afraid. When people are fearful enough they will willingly surrender their civil liberties for the promise of safety. Surrender is the tipping point that awards the government excessive control.

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James Comey and Robert Mueller Imperil the Rule of Law The former FBI directors tend to investigate Republicans far more zealously than Democrats. By Peter Berkowitz

Posted By on October 24th, 2017

Mr. Berkowitz is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

News broke last week about possible Russian wrongdoing in the U.S., and it didn’t involve the Trump campaign. The Hill reported that in 2009 the FBI “gathered substantial evidence that Russian nuclear industry officials were engaged in bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering designed to grow Vladimir Putin’s atomic energy business inside the United States.”

The FBI kept that information from Congress and the public, the Hill reported, even as Hillary Clinton’s State Department in 2010 approved a deal that transferred control of more than 20% of America’s uranium supply to a Russian company. The Hill also reported the FBI had documents showing that during this period Russia engineered the transmission of millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation.

The FBI director at the time: Robert Mueller, now special counsel in charge of investigating “Russian interference with the 2016 presidential election and related matters.” The revelations can only heighten anxieties about Mr. Mueller, the FBI and the rule of law.

The special counsel’s open-ended mandate covers not only “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump” but also “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation.”

Because Mr. Mueller has interpreted his mandate expansively, his effort may become the most politically disruptive federal investigation of our young century—more than the FBI’s investigation of Mrs. Clinton’s private email server and mishandling of classified information, more than Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation into the 2003 disclosure of CIA employee Valerie Plame’s identity.

All three investigations have one important characteristic in common: James Comey, Mr. Mueller’s successor as FBI director, played a dubious role in each.

In December 2003, after Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself from the Plame matter, then-Deputy Attorney General Comey named Mr. Fitzgerald—a close friend who was godfather to one of Mr. Comey’s children—as special counsel to head the Justice Department’s “investigation into the alleged unauthorized disclosure” of Ms. Plame’s employment.

Unknown to the public then, and still not widely known, that potential crime had already been solved. By early fall 2003, the CIA had determined that revealing Ms. Plame’s identity caused no injury to national security, while the FBI knew it was not a White House official—as many Democrats and liberal pundits ardently believed—but rather Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage who was columnist Robert Novak’s source for the original Plame story.

Mr. Fitzgerald declined to prosecute Mr. Armitage, but he played hardball with the Bush White House. Over several years, Mr. Fitzgerald inflicted severe damage by feeding the false accusation that the president had lied the nation into the Iraq war. The only criminal charges he prosecuted were generated by his investigation. He won a 2007 conviction of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, for obstruction of justice, false statements and perjury. The conviction was based on small inconsistencies Mr. Fitzgerald discovered in (or created from) more than 20 hours of Mr. Libby’s FBI interrogation and grand-jury testimony. Star prosecution witness Judith Miller wrote in her 2015 memoir that Mr. Fitzgerald had withheld crucial information and manipulated her memory, inducing her to testify falsely against Mr. Libby.

In contrast, then-FBI Director Comey played softball with the 2015-16 Hillary Clinton investigation. Despite the gravity of the matter—military service members can be court-martialed and discharged for sending classified information on nonsecure systems—Mr. Comey mostly avoided issuing subpoenas and cooperated with the Obama Justice Department in obscuring the investigation’s criminal character. He permitted Mrs. Clinton and her team to destroy evidence and granted generous immunity deals to her advisers. He drafted a statement exonerating Mrs. Clinton months before the FBI interviewed her. And his FBI neither recorded the interview nor compelled her to answer questions under oath. CONTINUE AT SITE

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What about Bob? The Tennessee senator’s recent history on taxes and Trump. James Freeman

Posted By on October 24th, 2017

Sen. Bob Corker, a Tennessee Republican who has decided not to seek re-election, has lately been trading insults with President Trump over social media—and via traditional media as well. Mr. Corker seems to be enjoying his new freedom to speak his mind without the normal political restraints, and perhaps this can be written off as the congressional equivalent of senioritis. But even if voters no longer get to issue a report card on the good senator, perhaps a little context is in order.

While our President seems to have a knack for getting into ugly public disputes, a timeline constructed by CNN suggests that in this case Mr. Corker has been the aggressor. His criticisms have not been subtle. The senator has repeatedly attacked the President’s competence, stability and integrity.

Since Mr. Corker has lately been issuing public judgments about Mr. Trump’s integrity, it should also be noted–and here, too the CNN timeline is instructive–that Mr. Corker’s comments about Mr. Trump in 2016 were much more favorable than in 2017.

This is interesting because in 2016 Mr. Corker was under consideration for various jobs in a Trump Administration. It is also interesting because if one has sincere concerns about a candidate’s fitness for office, airing them before the election is obviously more valuable to voters than withholding them until after all the votes have been cast. It is also interesting that someone could listen to Mr. Trump for years, including during the long campaign of 2015-2016, and then decide–after observing him assemble a blue-chip cabinet–that he is somehow unfit to lead.

Now Mr. Corker is telling Mr. Trump to butt out of congressional discussions on how to fit all the party’s tax reform priorities into a package that cuts taxes by only $1.5 trillion over 10 years. This seems like the appropriate moment to note that Mr. Corker is the reason why the party has to hold such a difficult discussion. He would only agree to $1.5 trillion in a negotiation with Sen. Pat Toomey and others who wanted to cut more. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Rule and Law in Catalonia Rajoy tries to stave off mob rule until voters take responsibility.

Posted By on October 24th, 2017

It’s a topsy-turvy world when an elected leader enforcing a democratic constitution gets accused of staging a coup, but then that’s Catalonia this month. Separatists are furious that Spanish Prime Minister Rajoy might suspend autonomous government and force a new election to resolve a separatist crisis in the northeastern region.

Separatists, led by regional President Carles Puigdemont, claim Catalonia voted for independence from Spain in a referendum this month. No such thing happened. A majority of the minority of Catalans who participated in a publicity stunt dressed up as an election said they want to secede. A constitutional court had ruled the exercise illegal before it happened. It was an attempt at mob rule.

Now Mr. Rajoy wants to protect the rights of the non-secessionist majority. The national Senate will vote Friday on Mr. Rajoy’s plan to invoke a constitutional clause suspending autonomous local government until new elections for a regional parliament can be held, perhaps in six months. In the interim, Madrid would take over responsibility for policing, taxation and most public administration.

It’s a draconian step, but Mr. Rajoy has little choice. The regional government abandoned its obligation to uphold Spain’s constitution when it authorized the phony vote. Mr. Puigdemont claims to want negotiations between Barcelona and Madrid, but he won’t say what he wants to negotiate. He has refused even to say whether he is declaring independence.

Mr. Rajoy owes it to loyal Catalans to call time on this farce. Though he may need to deploy a heavy police presence to quell violent protests, the focus should be on keeping streets safe, schools open and other public services functioning while preparing quickly for regional elections. The courts will weigh sedition prosecutions against individual Catalan officials in some cases. Two local police officials are under investigation for their failures to stop the illegal vote, charges they deny. Madrid should be judicious but not shy about enforcing the laws.

There is nothing undemocratic about this. A duly elected national leader is trying to afford all citizens the protection of the national constitution against a minority of rabble-rousers. The biggest threat to Spain—and to Europe—would be to set a precedent for allowing fake votes to tear real countries apart.

The virtue of Mr. Rajoy’s approach is that it would put Catalan voters firmly back in control, through a legal election. Those voters say they want to remain within Spain but they keep electing separatist local officials, presumably as a protest and on the assumption Madrid would hold the country together anyway. A new ballot offers Catalans a path out of this crisis by taking political responsibility for the union.

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Professor Claims That Algebra Perpetuates White Privilege By Tom Knighton

Posted By on October 24th, 2017

If anything should be immune to the machinations of social justice warriors, it should be math.

Two plus two will always equal four, after all. Math is the ultimate meritocracy. It doesn’t care who you are or what your background is, math is the same for everyone.

Yet, that’s apparently not what some people think. From Campus Reform:

A math education professor at the University of Illinois argued in a newly published book that algebraic and geometry skills perpetuate “unearned privilege” among whites.

Rochelle Gutierrez, a professor at the University of Illinois, made the claim in a new anthology for math teachers, arguing that teachers must be aware of the “politics that mathematics brings” in society.

“On many levels, mathematics itself operates as Whiteness. Who gets credit for doing and developing mathematics, who is capable in mathematics, and who is seen as part of the mathematical community is generally viewed as White,” Gutierrez argued.

Gutierrez also worries that algebra and geometry perpetuate privilege, fretting that “curricula emphasizing terms like Pythagorean theorem and pi perpetuate a perception that mathematics was largely developed by Greeks and other Europeans.”

Math also helps actively perpetuate white privilege too, since the way our economy places a premium on math skills gives math a form of “unearned privilege” for math professors, who are disproportionately white.

“Are we really that smart just because we do mathematics?” she asks, further wondering why math professors get more research grants than “social studies or English” professors.

Well, I’d say some math professors are smarter than other math professors. That’s a big fat “Yes” right now. Gutierrez is pushing for social justice in math, which is probably one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard from the social justice zealots — and that’s one hell of a high bar to clear. CONTINUE AT SITE

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How the Administrative State Serves Clients and Hurts Citizens: The Case of the Non-Organic, Organic Food By Henry I. Miller and Julie Kelly

Posted By on October 24th, 2017

The late economist and Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman used to say that only in government, when a program or project fails dismally, the instinctive response is to make it bigger. This is especially the case in a modern Administrative State like the one we have in America today where a program alleged to serve the well-being of the public is most often proven to serve, in a big way, the interests of a large client of that administrative state.

We’re seeing Friedman’s observation validated yet again in the congressional response to an exposé of the pervasive dishonesty in the organic agriculture industry.

Following a scathing report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s inspector general that details fraud, mismanagement, and negligence throughout the global organic agriculture/food supply chain, Congress wants to throw yet more money at the problem.

Last month, Reps. John Faso (R-New York) and Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-New Mexico) introduced the “Organic Farmer and Consumer Protection Act.” It would nearly triple the budget of the USDA’s National Organic Program, which oversees the country’s organic standards and commerce. Faso said in a news release that the legislation will “provide for a modernization of organic import documentation, new technology advancements and stricter enforcement of organic products entering the US.”

The organic industry is cheering Faso’s bill; the Organic Trade Association says it “would make significant strides to improve the oversight of global organic trade, create a level playing field for American organic farmers, and establish a better system to ensure the integrity of organic.” Integrity of organic? Rubbish; it would only create a bigger fig-leaf.

When the organic designation was established in 1990, then-Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman emphasized its fundamental meaninglessness: “Let me be clear about one thing, the organic label is a marketing tool. It is not a statement about food safety. Nor is ‘organic’ a value judgment about nutrition or quality.” The Faso-Grisham legislation is yet another special interest bonanza designed to further subsidize domestic organic farmers and enrich the bottom line of already hugely-profitable organic businesses.

Republicans in Congress and the Trump administration should oppose the legislation and, beyond that, demand explanations of the multiple violations revealed in the recent USDA inspector general’s report. After a year-long investigation, the Inspector General found serious breaches in the international organic market that may result in “reduced U.S. consumer confidence in the integrity of organic products imported into the United States.” Federal authorities failed to verify whether imports were organic, did not perform mandatory on-site visits of exporting countries and ignored requirements to resolve the different organic standards among exporters. Moreover, imported agricultural products, whether organic or conventional, are sometimes fumigated at U.S. ports of entry to prevent alien pests from entering the United States. USDA investigators found pesticides that are prohibited under organic protocols were being sprayed on organic shipments.

At every point in the supply chain, National Organic Program officials have been negligent, allowing the participants in this booming sector to mislead consumers into believing organic food is healthier, safer and more eco-friendly than non-organic food—none of which would be true even if there were strict adherence to organic standards.

The misrepresentation and chicanery in the supply chain aren’t new, and the feds have long been aware of that. For example, USDA reported in 2012 that 43 percent of the 571 samples of “organic” produce tested were in violation of the government’s organic regulations, and that “the findings suggest that some of the samples in violation were mislabeled conventional products, while others were organic products that hadn’t been adequately protected from prohibited pesticides.”

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Europe’s Imperial Dilemma By Sumantra Maitra

Posted By on October 24th, 2017

Europe has an imperial problem. Put simply, the European Union, formed as a political union to prevent war on the continent, is slowly morphing into a liberal utopian empire, undermining Westphalian nation-states with its open migration policy and fiscal meddling. Inevitably, this has resulted in the rise of pre-Westphalian ethno-nationalist sentiments. The imperial character of the EU has long term ramifications for great maritime powers such as the United States and the United Kingdom, as well as for revanchist land powers like Russia. Put simply, the EU imperium, which started as a prospective solution to the problems of a continent ravaged by centuries of war, is now turning out to be the cause of new and predictable troubles.

As Catalonia stands on the brink of secession from Spain after a controversial referendum, with Spain poised to send in troops to restore “constitutional order,” and terrorism and migration on mass scale result in ethno-nationalist backlashes, their is an increasing and urgent need in for policymakers in the United States and the United Kingdom, to engage in a serious reflection upon and reassessment of the character of EU.

The Forces of Ethno-Nationalism

Historically, Europe was never united, either culturally, linguistically, or tribally. The only way Europe was unified, in temporal phases, was through imperium. But those forced attempts at imperium also resulted in nationalist reaction and inevitable backlash. The Romans fell prey to imperial overstretch, which resulted in differing ethnic tribes waging war against the central authority and, eventually, the dissolution of the Roman empire. From Bonaparte to the Habsburgs, Kaiser to Hitler, all of them tried to dominate continental Europe through sheer strength of arms. Similarly, during the last days of the Cold War, contrary to what liberal historians preached for the last quarter century, it was not liberalism that saw off the Soviet empire, but conservative nationalism in Eastern Europe against Soviet imperium. There’s a reason some countries like Poland are skeptical of a European superstate run from Brussels and similar attempts at social engineering through forced migration and settlements. They hear echoes of the past in this attempt to create a new and benign EU-SSR.

The European Union, however, seemed a necessary idea when it started, after years of conflict ravaging the continent. As Churchill wrote, the aim of British foreign policy for 500 years has been to see that there’s no single dominating hegemony or empire in Europe. After the fall of the British empire, the United States carried on the same balancing principle, which resulted in the United States confronting the Soviet Union. The geopolitical logic behind that was simple. Any single hegemon that controls the entire European landmass is bound to be powerful enough, militarily and economically, to dominate other great powers across the globe.