FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Rupert Hammond-Chambers :America’s Dangerous Drift on Taiwan Trump seems to understand that U.S. neglect of Taiwan has emboldened China.

Posted By on December 5th, 2016

President-elect Trump’s phone conversation Friday with Taiwan’s democratically elected leader is the kind of engagement that any new U.S. president should undertake as he prepares to take office. In talking with President Tsai Ing-wen, Mr. Trump demonstrated why his presidency has the potential to return badly needed credibility to a host of global challenges where the Obama Doctrine has left vacuums, rising tensions and conflict.

America’s relationship with Taiwan is a good example of the drift in U.S. interests. The Obama administration likes to declare that we are experiencing the “best relationship ever.” But this assessment is predicated on an expectation that neither the U.S. nor Taiwan has ambitions for their relationship. Both have been far too preoccupied with their ties with China—a focus that has emboldened Beijing and fostered instability in the Taiwan Strait.

As a result, a dangerous vacuum has opened up in the U.S. relationship with Taiwan. The administration has all but halted arms sales to Taiwan even though such sales are guaranteed under U.S. law and have long been a mainstay of U.S. security relations with the island. So, too, the trade relationship has faltered. Our trade ties are better suited to those between the U.S. and Malta than with our ninth-largest trading partner. Trade ties drift aimlessly in the absence of broader goals such as investment and tax agreements or a bilateral free-trade accord.

Meanwhile, the Chinese have been pressing their objective: the unification and occupation of Taiwan through peaceful or military means. Beijing pursues economic integration and its smothering embrace, while its military modernization focuses on invading and occupying Taiwan. It points nearly 2,000 cruise and ballistic missiles at Taiwan’s people.

The U.S. has failed to meet this challenge, and it is into this vacuum that Ms. Tsai was elected in January. China’s response to her election has been to pressure Taiwan’s remaining allies, cut off direct communications with Taipei, and damage commerce by restricting mainland Chinese tourism to the island. It has also undermined Taiwan’s efforts to broaden its engagement with the global health community and to integrate better into the world’s global aerospace and transportation organizations. CONTINUE AT SITE

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

A Trump SWAT Team for Regulation A Reagan idea to block and repeal Obama’s rules binge.

Posted By on December 5th, 2016

You can tell the regulation beat has reached critical political mass when even the folks at Politico are pushing it on the home page. “Obama’s agencies push flurry of ‘midnight’ actions,” the political website reported recently, adding that Republicans are preparing to block or repeal as many as of these and previous rules as possible.

This effort is going to be a political brawl—not least due to resistance from the bureaucracies in the executive branch and perhaps even some political appointees who go native quickly. If Donald Trump wants the deregulation effort to succeed—and it’s essential to promoting faster growth—he and Chief of Staff Reince Priebus could take a lesson from the Reagan era and appoint a political SWAT team to direct it from the White House.

The temptation will be to leave it to Congress or the office of regulatory affairs at the White House budget office. But the director of that office might not be confirmed for months, even as appointees in the departments find excuses not to move against Obama rules. Those appointees may want to keep their new political power or they might fear the media backlash, which will often be fierce.

The Reagan White House met this challenge by setting up a special task force to run regulatory policy for the first months of 1981. It was led by then-Vice President George H.W. Bush, with a big assist from his general counsel Boyden Gray. Key staff included such policy legends as Jim Miller, who later ran the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and White House budget office; Frank Blake, who would go on to run Home Depot; Jim Tozzi, who would become the ranking career official in the White House regulatory shop; Tim Muris, who ran the FTC under George W. Bush; and Jeffrey Eisenach, now with the American Enterprise Institute.

It’s not too much to say this task force ran much of the government for six months as the new appointees found their sea legs. In one famous February 1981 incident, the general counsels of agencies were called to the White House to review executive order 12291 on regulation. The counsels began to cross out huge chunks until they got to the end and discovered that Ronald Reagan had already signed it. The task force was so successful that Democrats John Dingell and Al Gore hauled some of them up to Capitol Hill for a public scolding.

Democrats also made the director of regulatory affairs subject to Senate confirmation for the first time, so they could haze nominees about opposing new rules. It’s no accident that Reagan was the only recent President to restrain the regulatory state. Neither Bush Administration had any comparable success, and George W. Bush set new records for pages in the Federal Register until President Obama took the crown.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Trump’s Taiwan Play The phone call with the island’s president looks like a calculated move. see note please

Posted By on December 5th, 2016

CALCULATED OR NOT THE ONE CHINA POLICY CRAVENLY INSTATED BY KISSINGER/NIXON IS RIDICULOUS. TAIWAN HAS GIVEN UP ANY CLAIM TO THE MAINLAND AND IS A THRIVING DEMOCRACY…..I EARNESTLY HOPE THAT TRUMP WILL GIVE TAIWN THE RECOGNITION IT DESERVES…..RSK

Americans had to get used to Donald Trump breaking all the rules of presidential campaigning, and it looks like the world will have to adjust to a President Trump who will also violate diplomatic convention. One early lesson is not to overreact to every break with State Department protocol as if it’s the start of World War III.

The U.S. media had their 19th nervous breakdown Friday after the Trump transition said the President-elect had taken a congratulatory call from Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen. Mr. Trump also later tweeted that he had spoken to “the President of Taiwan.” Doesn’t he understand this simply isn’t done? No American President or President-elect has talked to a Taiwanese President since 1979, and this violation of tradition is being portrayed as a careless, bone-headed provocation to Beijing.

Well, maybe it was calculated—and perhaps even useful. Trump Asia adviser Peter Navarro has advocated cabinet-level visits to Taiwan and an end to the U.S. bow to Beijing’s “one China” policy, which insists that Taiwan is part of China and shouldn’t be treated as an independent state. Perhaps that goes too far, but it is past time for the U.S. to recalibrate its Taiwan policy.

Ned Price, spokesman at the Obama National Security Council, suggested that Mr. Trump made a mistake, saying the U.S. remains “firmly committed to our ‘one China’ policy based on the three Joint Communiqués and the Taiwan Relations Act.” But the communiqués from the 1970s and ’80s do not say that the U.S. supports Beijing’s view of “one China,” only that the U.S. acknowledges that both China and Taiwan agree on that principle. That is a crucial distinction.

Taiwan and the world have also changed since those communiqués. Taiwan has become a prosperous and democratic polity integrated into the world economy. Most Taiwanese now want to maintain their de facto independence. They resent Beijing’s bullying to force their leaders to move toward reunification. CONTINUE AT SITE

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Is Amona built on “private Palestinian land”? by Moshe Dann

Posted By on December 5th, 2016

An ongoing debate is raging within the government about how to insure the survival of the Jewish community of Amona. Located near the much larger community of Ofra, Amona is fighting a High Court order stating that it must be destroyed because it was built on “private Palestinian land.” In order to implement a just and sustainable solution, it would be wise to examine how Amona — which was established more than two decades ago with government backing on empty land — came to be considered “illegal.”

After the Six Day War in 1967, Israel placed the newly won areas of Judea, Samaria (the so-called West Bank), and eastern Jerusalem under military rule, hoping to trade all or most of them for peace treaties. With a few exceptions, Jews were not permitted to live in Judea and Samaria and its status seemed to be temporary and unclear. Government policy was ambiguous, at best. In order to provide a structure and authority that would allow normal life to continue, the government turned to the IDF which established the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), and the Minhal Ezrachi (Civil Administration).

Based on legal advisors, the IDF commander ruled that the IDF would follow Jordanian law completely and exclusively, except where it conflicted with IDF rules and regulations. This was an administrative decision, not law, and exceptions were made, for example to apply Israeli law concerning VAT. But regarding land ownership, the Minhal followed Jordanian law. This became important several decades later as Jews built new communities and as Arab Palestinians and NGOs Peace Now, Yesh Din and Rabbis for Human Rights, appealed to the High Court claiming that Jews had built their homes and property on “privately owned land.”

Their claims are based on massive land distributions that were carried out by Jordan during the early 1960’s in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). These arbitrary land grants were unconditional and, according to Mandate and Jordanian law, when recorded in the land registry, gave the recipients title and permanent possession. Most of the land was never used and no taxes were paid, which are required by Ottoman law, and therefore should have nullified any claims of ownership.

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL: MICHAEL ORDMAN

Posted By on December 5th, 2016

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Micro robots to clean pipes in the brain. Israel’s Microbot develops miniature robots for cleaning drainage pipes in the body, for example in the urethra or the brain thereby removing the necessity for surgery to replace them. Microbot has just completed its merger into Nasdaq-listed US company Stem Cell.
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-microbot-completes-merger-with-stem-cell-1001163847

US approval for upright proton therapy. Israel’s P-Cure has received US FDA approval for its image-guided proton therapy solution that treats patients in a comfortable upright position. Patients to benefit from this clinical breakthrough will initially be those treated for cancers of the lung, breast, chest, the head and neck, and lower torso. http://www.israel21c.org/making-proton-therapy-available-to-more-cancer-patients/
http://www.prweb.com/releases/2016/09/prweb13668102.htm

Huntington’s treatment gets US approval. (TY Atid-EDI) The SD-809 (deutetrabenazine) treatment by Israel’s Teva for Huntington disease has been approved by the US FDA. http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20161020005246/en/Teva-Announces-FDA-Acceptance-Resubmitted-Drug-Application

Israeli tech for disabled displayed in London. Israeli charity for the disabled, Beit Issie Shapiro, organized an event at Google’s London campus in which Israeli firms explained their technology for empowering the disabled. This included the Sesame phone, robots for autistic kids and smartphone navigation of wheelchairs.
http://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/israeli-innovation-helping-disabled-showcased-at-google-hq/

MDA’s underground blood center breaks ground. (TY Sarah) I reported previously (3 Apr) on the huge $25 million donation to help fund Magen David’s new underground blood services center in Ramla. The groundbreaking event for the state-of-the-art rocket-proof site took place on Nov 17.
https://afmda.org/new-110-million-israel-national-blood-center-breaks-ground/

Yad Sarah and United Hatzalah build closer ties to save lives. Shift managers from Israel’s emergency response organization United Hatzalah visited medical charity Yad Sarah’s Jerusalem headquarters to gain a better understanding of their operation. http://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/headlines-breaking-stories/485739/yad-sarah-and-united-hatzalah-increase-cooperation-to-save-lives.html

Top three medical prizes. Israeli startups took the top honors in the App Competition, during Medica, the world’s leading annual medical trade fair. UpRight won €2,000 for its app and device to optimize posture, Biop Medical came 2nd with its cervical cancer testing device. TytoCare came 3rd with its telemedicine solution.
http://www.thetower.org/4228oc-israeli-startups-take-home-top-3-prizes-for-health-apps-at-leading-intl-medical-trade-fair/

Anglo-Israel cardiovascular conference. Tiberias is hosting the 6th Anglo Israel Cardiovascular Symposium – a two-day international conference of notable cardiologists and heart surgeons from Israel and the UK. One of the symposium founders – Dr. Romeo Vecht – was previously the cardiologist for the King of Jordan.
http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/anglo-israel-cardiovascular-conference-defies-academic-bds/2016/12/01/

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Daughter of top EU official raped and murdered in Germany – AfghanMuslim migrant admits killing

Posted By on December 5th, 2016

Maria Ladenburger, the daughter of a high-ranking EU official, was returning from a party in the university city of Freiburg in Germany when she was assaulted on a cycle path.

She was raped and then drowned before her body was found in the River Dreisam.

The shocking incident happened on October 16 but details have only been released after an arrest on Friday.

The suspect, an Afghan migrant, was caught after police found DNA on a scarf near the path.

The scarf reportedly belonged to Maria.

They also found a strand of hair on a nearby blackberry bush.

Officers then trawled CCTV to see find people with a similar hairstyle, which led them to the suspect.

Following his arrest the suspect, aged 17, pleaded guilty to the attack and will be sentenced next year.

However, prosecutors say he can still change his plea and it’s unknown if he has admitted raping Maria.

The unnamed migrant arrived in Germany last year as an unaccompanied minor and lived with a local family in the city.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

America moves right, Jewish groups move left : Richard Baehr

Posted By on December 5th, 2016

On January 20, the Republican Party will control the White House, both houses of Congress, at least 33 governors’ offices, and over two-thirds of state legislative bodies, including 25 states where the governor is a Republican and the GOP is the majority party in both branches of the state legislature. The Democrats will have similar control in four states. The other states will have mixed party governance. One would need to go back to the 1920s to find a time of similar dominance by the Republican Party. In but eight years, the Democrats have lost a dozen Senate seats, 66 House seats, near 1,000 state legislative seats, 13 governors’ offices, and the presidency.

The president-elect, Donald Trump, won 24-25% of the Jewish vote, according to the national exit polls and a J Street survey. Democrat Hillary Clinton won either 70-71% of the Jewish vote in these same surveys. The margin for the Democratic nominee was the second smallest for any Democratic nominee with Jewish voters since 1988. Only the 2012 Obama vs. Romney race among Jewish voters was closer (69% to 30%).

When the national popular vote total is finally complete (California, supposedly our most technologically advanced state, takes longer than any other state by a matter of weeks to complete its tally), Clinton will have won the popular vote by about 2%, while getting trounced in the Electoral College 306-232 (a 14% margin). Exit polls and final polls before Election Day showed Clinton winning by 4-5%. Given what some analysts are calling “shy Trump voters” who did not want to reveal their support for Trump to pollsters, it is certainly possible that Trump exceeded the percentage of support reflected in the exit poll or J Street survey among Jewish voters. In any case, it is safe to assume that Jewish voters were far more supportive of the Democratic nominee than almost any other group, which occurs in every presidential election.

What is clear since election day is that several major Jewish organizations have chosen to identify with those who seem panicked by the election results, particularly the election of Trump. Charitable organizations rely on contributions, and if two-thirds to three-quarters of Jewish voters went for the Democrat, it is not surprising that many Jewish organizations reflect this partisan split among their members and donors. Nonetheless, there is “a new sheriff coming to town,” and typically, most major Jewish organizations look forward to working with the new president on their issues of concern, rather than going to war with him during his presidential transition.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Literary Repression in a Liberal Culture By David Solway

Posted By on December 4th, 2016

I often find myself reflecting on Julien Benda’s The Treason of the Intellectuals and Paul Johnson’s Intellectuals, volumes which yield a sober conclusion: intellectuals as a class, including the literati, with only a few resonant exceptions, are a deeply corrupt breed. “The cult of success,” writes Benda, has led to the polluting of their vocation, as “politics mingled with their work as artists, as men of learning, as philosophers.”

This is broadly true of the literary community in the West, and certainly in my own country. Canada is a big little country, the extent of its land mass in inverse proportion to the reach of its mindscape. In my own chosen discipline, we have an extraordinary number of people publishing poetry, but almost no poets to speak of.

In our day it is the reign of political correctness and ovarian sentimentality that has helped to produce the debilitating infection we are witnessing. Our poets — test cases for intellectual and literary decay — can be relied upon to espouse the cultural orthodoxies and therapeutic causes that have descended upon us like the mothership from Independence Day. Their willing compliance may be owing to a deficiency of native intelligence, the inability to arrive at convictions independently, a lack of courage, or the temptation to reap the rewards, monetary or status-related, that sinuous complicity assures.

Making sure to keep in good standing with the progressivist consensus, such poets are given to parroting the bromides of the time, showing themselves as socially conscious, profoundly sensitive, right-thinking caryatids of the Temple of Social Justice. Put another way, they are for the most part fellow travelers, trimming their sails to the prevailing zephyrs of the mawkishly virtuous.

And this is one salient reason why their work is so dismally bad.

We note the nebbish attitude they affect in the maunderings of influential Carcanet publisher Michael Schmidt, who in a recent interview mourns the “unexpected and traumatic” Brexit vote as a “Trumpish decision.” Liberating the nation from the dead hand of the Brussels commissariat and enabling it to reclaim its independence of action are, apparently, bad for poetry, erecting a wall “between us and our dear friends.” Schmidt ludicrously refers to himself and his associates as “we Mexicans [who] will get over the wall.” Let’s hope his Spanish is up to scratch. His petulant salvo, I suspect, has more to do with dividends, gratuities, and reputation than with poetry. We are obviously meant to understand poets as dedicated insurgents speaking for the disinherited of the earth, engaged in a heroic struggle for “social justice.” That their melic efforts are chiefly mediocre is surely a form of poetic justice.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

How Trump will and won’t transform the Supreme Court Betsy McCaughey …..see note please

Posted By on December 4th, 2016

I would like to persuade Betsy McCaughey to run for office. Would she not make a great NYC ‘s first woman mayor?????rsk
The battle lines are forming over Donald Trump’s anticipated Supreme Court nominee. A conservative advocacy group is running TV ads urging Trump to appoint a justice in the mold of the late Antonin Scalia. New Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer fires back that Democrats will try to block any nominee who isn’t “mainstream.”

Trouble is, anybody who disputes the Democrats’ left-wing definition of the Constitution as a malleable “living” document is outside their mainstream.

Meanwhile, pro-choice groups are panicked about losing abortion “rights.” For now, it’s much ado about nothing. No matter whom Trump appoints this time, there are already five pro-choice justices on the court, counting Justice Anthony Kennedy. It would take a second Trump appointment to tilt the court the other way.

During the campaign, Trump pledged to appoint justices who would uphold “the Constitution as it was meant to be.” Trump’s victory suggests the public agrees.

Even so, Schumer and fellow Democrats are spoiling for a fight. In part, it’s revenge for the Republicans’ refusal to consider even holding hearings on Obama’s last high-court nominee, Merrick Garland. Will the Democrats’ tough talk lead to anything? Unlikely. Ten Senate Democrats in states Trump won are facing tough re-election races in 2018. Count on some of them to help push Trump’s pick over the 60-vote threshold to defeat Democratic obstruction attempts.

Trump’s first addition to the court will have a major impact on labor-union issues, voting procedures, the death penalty, executive power and religious freedom.

On the separation of church and state, stay tuned for Trinity Lutheran Church v. Pauley. The justices delayed the case while Scalia’s seat was vacant to avoid a likely 4-4 tie.

The case: Missouri awards grants to help schools make their playgrounds safer with soft, rubber paving. But Missouri nixed a grant to a Lutheran-affiliated preschool. The school sued, saying its children deserve the same safety enhancements as children in secular schools.

Trump’s new justice will shift the court to allow religious institutions and the faithful to be treated equally with everyone else. Yes, the Constitution bars favoring a particular religion, but that shouldn’t require government to discriminate against religion.

MOVIES AND TELEVISION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

THE COMEDIAN- A REVIEW BY MARILYN PENN

Posted By on December 4th, 2016

One of the consequences of lowering the bar on scatology and extreme vulgarity on cable tv and the intenet is its seepage into mainstream entertainment. Exhibit A could be “The Comedian,” directed by Taylor Hackford with an all-star cast headed by Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, Danny De Vito, Leslie Mann, Edie Falco, Patty Lupone – with cameos by Cloris Leachman, Charles Grodin, Richard Belzer and Billy Crystal. The plot is a very thin excuse for a series of shticks by an aging Jewish comic named Jackie Burke (ne Yakov Bernstein) played by De Niro, who at one time was a huge tv star (think Jackie Gleason, Kevin Hart or a slew of others) but now has fallen on hard times, made harder by a jail sentence for smashing a heckler with his microphone. For his stand-up comedy, think Andrew Dice Clay – someone who is no longer appealing to a much younger generation but is trying to make a comeback. Jackie is hardly a sympathetic character, he mooches off his brother and antagonizes just about everyone who is part of his life, yet he strikes up an unbelievable relationship with a beautiful, much younger woman he meets at the soup kitchen he’s assigned to as part of his community service sentence. That she turns out to be the daughter of a wealthy nursing home owner and real estate mogul in Florida is just another rung in a series of unlikely – never would happen circumstances that pepper the plot.

All the usual subjects are casualties of Jackie’s lacerating humor – women, gays, oldsters, non-lookers, parents, chilldren, sexuality, marriage – a fraction of it on target and funny – most of it simply prurient without benefit of cleverness. You will be guaranteed to feel as Jackie does after an unpleasant encounter with a comedian who steals his material – that you yourself need a power wash. The relationship between Jackie and Harmony (the soup kitchen lady) is stretched beyond credulity (much worse than unbelievable) as is its eventual consequence. The epilogue which takes place 8 years later is embarrassing to everyone concerned – actors and audience. If you feel the need to get down and dirty, just go to Cable TV. If you feel the need to see otherwise talented people sink to squeamish levels of acceptability on the big screen, here’s your opportunity. You won’t feel good about yourself after………….