POLITICS Comments turned off

New E-mail: Hillary Clinton ‘Often Confused’ as Secretary of State

Posted By on November 17th, 2015

A newly revealed e-mail sent by top Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin in January 2013 shows that the then-outgoing secretary of state was “often confused” and had to have her schedule explained to her by staff.

Released to conservative watchdog Judicial Watch as part of a Freedom of Information Act request, the January 26, 2013 e-mail shows Abedin instructing Monica Hanley, another State Department aide, to remind Clinton of important calls scheduled with world leaders.

“She knows singh [sic] is at 8?” Abedin asks Hanley, referring to a scheduled 8 AM phone call with Indian’s then-prime minister, Manmohan Singh.

“She was in bed for a nap by the time I heard she had an 8am call,” Hanley replied. “Will go over with her.”

“Very imp[ortant] to do that,” Abedin replied. “She’s often confused.”

POLITICS Comments turned off

Steve King on Europe’s Migrant Crisis, ‘Kicking Doors Down’ on Immigrants, and Why the Time Was Right to Endorse Ted Cruz By NR Interview

Posted By on November 17th, 2015

Iowa congressman Steve King, who has relished his potential to play kingmaker in this Republican presidential race, announced Monday morning that he’s endorsing Ted Cruz, providing a boost to the Texas senator’s organization ahead of Iowa’s first-in-the-nation nominating contest February 1.

In an interview shortly after his announcement, King spoke with me about the timing of his decision, the events surrounding it, and how he thinks President Cruz would deal with the illegal immigrants already living in the U.S. — Tim Alberta

Tim Alberta: Your admiration for Senator Cruz has long been apparent, and it always seemed likely that if you endorsed a candidate, it would be him. When did the decision become clear to you?

Steve King: I’ve said to people it had to be a conviction. So, the pieces began to fall into place. I started to see some of the positions that were emerging from other candidates, and I’m watching it, asking, “Who is completely consistent?” And it was Cruz all along. But I still had not come to a conviction on this, until there were two things that came together almost simultaneously: I’m watching the epic migration going on in Europe [King traveled to Europe and the Middle East last week, visiting refugee camps and discussing the migration crisis with government officials.], and then when I came home, I’m driving and hearing about the attacks in Paris. And a day or two earlier, Marco Rubio’s team was attacking Ted Cruz and alleging taht he’s for amnesty. This world is pretty topsy-turvy if Marco Rubio is equating his immigration position to Ted Cruz’s. All of that came together with a clarity. So, Friday, I knew.

BOOKS Comments turned off

Book Review | Winning the War of Words: Essays on Zionism and Israel by Matti Friedman

Posted By on November 17th, 2015

One problem for anyone trying to offer a defence of Israel in the face of the determined intellectual assault on the country in recent years is that while the assault is simple and easily understood – conducted in an adolescent emoji language of epithets and images – the defence is harder to explain. To defame the country one merely needs to say ‘colonialism’ or ‘apartheid’, and add a photo of a soldier manhandling a child. To defend Israel requires an understanding of at least 100 years of history in both Europe and the Middle East, of how we reached this moment, and of what Israel’s choices really are right now. Anyone trying to explain Israel’s case needs to be worldly enough to make sense to people outside the bubble of those who are reflexively sympathetic to Israel anyway, and it helps not to be ideologically rigid or so angry you can’t speak calmly.

Not many people can do this well. The confrontational and clumsy government currently in power in Israel, for example, doesn’t have much luck. One of the most skilful Israeli advocates right now is Einat Wilf, the scholar, Cambridge and Harvard graduate and former Knesset member who has become something of an unofficial roving ambassador for Israel in recent years. (Originally a Labour Party lawmaker, she joined a group of MKs who left the party along with former Prime Minister Ehud Barak for a brief stint in Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government, after which she left politics in 2013.)

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

America’s Brave Soldiers: Lions Led by Donkeys By David French

Posted By on November 17th, 2015

In 14 years of continual combat, has there ever been a greater disconnect between our warrior class and the civilians who purport to lead them? American politicians still don’t understand our enemy, still don’t understand the capabilities and limitations of the American military, and — worst of all — they still seem unwilling to learn. They come from an intellectual aristocracy that believes itself educated simply because it’s credentialed — and they tend to listen only to those who share similar credentials. They’ve built a bubble of impenetrable ignorance, and they govern accordingly.

During World War I, German general Max Hoffman reportedly declared that “English soldiers fight like lions, but we know they are lions led by donkeys.” Over time, his criticism stuck, and popular opinion about the war hardened into a consensus that the horrors of the trenches were the product of stupidity and lack of imagination. Callous generals, the criticism held, safely ensconced themselves in the rear while sending young men to die in futile charges, unable to conceive of the tactical and strategic changes necessary to deal with the technological revolutions that defined the war. This criticism was unfair then — generals on all sides suffered high casualty rates and dramatically changed tactics during the course of World War I — but it’s entirely fair now.

Just look at the collection of senior “talent “advising President Obama on ISIS. Stanford- and Oxford-educated National Security Advisor Susan Rice has no military experience, was part of the team that disastrously botched America’s response to the Rwandan genocide, and is notable mainly for a willingness to say anything to advance the electoral prospects of her political bosses.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Some GOP Meltdown The party hasn’t looked this good in ages. By Kevin D. Williamson

Posted By on November 17th, 2015

I left the Republican party a long time ago for a number of reasons, one of which is that I didn’t want to be part of any organization that had Arlen Specter as a member. The man this magazine famously named “America’s worst senator” eventually bailed and hooked up with Team Jackass, but I didn’t see any real reason to come back. Still, for all the angst regarding the presidential primary and the endless largely phony us-and-them theater of base vs. establishment, I cannot remember a time since the Alex P. Keaton years when the Republican party has seemed to me so attractive.

As you may have heard, earlier this month I was a guest of the William F. Buckley Jr. program at Yale, which was the focus of some truly boneheaded protests. That was silly, and I felt a little embarrassed for the Yale kids. But at the dinner afterward, I felt a little envious of my Republican friends, especially those in Nebraska, when Senator Ben Sasse gave his talk. A very smart young man at my table — a young man not given to political crushes — said that he’d never heard a politician give a speech like that, and he was right: Senator Sasse is in possession of a living mind open to original thought, and he has spent part of his first year in the Senate thinking seriously about what the Senate really is, what it does, and what it should do. That sounds like the sort of thing that everybody in Washington ought to be doing, and maybe it is, but there isn’t to my knowledge anybody in elected office doing it with the intelligence and rigor that Senator Sasse applies to his job. My young friend seemed ready to quit his job and go to work for Senator Sasse; I didn’t blame him.

BOOKS Comments turned off

The University Gone Feral On campus, social norms no longer apply. By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on November 17th, 2015

The university, long exempted from social norms and rules, has gone wild in the 21st century — or rather, regressed to pre-puberty.

The University of Missouri campus police now request that students — a group not known for polite vocabulary — call law enforcement if someone disparages them with hurtful names.

On the same campus, a media professor shouts for students in the vicinity to strong-arm a student photographer to stop him from taking pictures in a way that she does not approve. Other staff members try to block and push away a journalist they find bothersome. Since when do thuggish faculty, in Michael Corleone fashion, call in muscle to intimidate students who are exercising their First Amendment rights?

Since when do quite privileged Yale students — in mini–Cultural Revolution style — surround and, teary-eyed, shout obscenities at their professor? Their target was declared to be guilty of some infraction against the people by an ad hoc court of whiny elites, poorly acting the role of the Committee of Public Safety. Apparently his offense was to suggest that students should not become hysterical when they see Halloween costumes they don’t like. Shouting down guest speakers, disrupting events, and mobbing individuals would not be tolerated at Disney World, so why on campus?

The assumed impoverished black student at the University of Missouri who went on a hunger strike to protest “white privilege” was raised in plentitude as the son of a multimillionaire corporate executive. The young woman who yelled obscenities at Yale over Halloween costumes is likewise a child of privilege. Campus outbursts reveal more about the anxieties and neuroses of the adolescent and pampered than about existential issues of hunger, violence, or bias.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Getting real about Islamism means getting like Israel By Jeremy Havardi

Posted By on November 17th, 2015

Jihadis do not mysteriously emerge from a culture free zone, only ‘accidentally’ parroting their religious credentials. They promote a violent, fascistic ideology which draws its energy from a reading of the verses and concepts of Islamic texts:

Francois Hollande described Friday’s massacre in Paris as an ‘act of war’. He was right to do so. But this is not a new war declared upon us by our enemies. For these atrocities are merely the latest in a long line of mass casualty Islamist onslaughts against civilians.

The terror in Paris was preceded by the 9/11 attacks, the Bali bloodbath of 2002, the Madrid train bombings, the Beslan school killings, 7/7, the massacres of Al Shabaab and many thousands of smaller scale strikes across the world.

France alone has suffered several attacks in the last year, with satirists, atheists, Jews and revellers being targeted with venom. Israel is being attacked every day.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Imagine There’s No …Imagination by Mark Steyn

Posted By on November 17th, 2015

My friend Ezra Levant reports from Paris:

France has developed a tolerance for terrorism. They accept terrorist violence as the new normal. They’re numb to it now.

Here’s proof. In January of this year, Muslim terrorists launched a series of five attacks that killed 17 people across Paris, including 12 at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. That led to a massive solidarity march through Paris, with millions of people — including many foreign leaders — swearing it would never happen again.

But it did happen again, ten times worse…

But there’s no massive march this time, no stream of foreign leaders coming to pay their respects. And even at the actual site of the massacre, the mood was subdued. As you can see in my video reports, there were a few hundred people milling around, but there was no resolve, no conviction, no purpose. Outside Bataclan, a street performer set up to entertain the crowd — and no-one seemed to find it inappropriate.

I hope Ezra’s wrong, but as I wrote four months ago:

So the cowardly and evasive “support” the world showed after January’s bloodbath was a very clear lesson to the survivors in the limits of global solidarity – and how it will go next time: We’ll be sad when you die, too! (Although probably not quite as sad and not in as many numbers, because, like, been there, done that.)

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

A TIME FOR TRUTH: MICHAEL GALAK

Posted By on November 17th, 2015

All cultures are equal, don’t you know?

Contributor and friend of Quadrant Michael Galak writes:

I do not want my children to be Eloi.

I have not been surprised or shocked by another massacre perpetrated by the Muslim terrorists in Paris. Sickened, disgusted and angered, but not surprised. I do not share “the deep shock” professed by Frau Merkel, Mr.Cameron and Messr. Holland. This trio of Western leaders has created the right atmosphere and conditions for the European jihadis to thrive.

Butchery is what jihadis do, it is their nature. They destroy, they maim and they kill. All in the name of the creed our leaders persist against all evidence in hailing as “the Religion of Peace”. In a sanctimonious rage against their own inability to function in the 21st century, these losers adopted the two most effective weapons of mass destruction: Islam and the Kalashnikov. The new barbarians appear suddenly from their underground, like the Morlocks of H.G. Wells’ Time Machine, to kill their Eloi prey — and then they disappear until the next time.

Why should Western leaders feel genuine shock and dismay? They are intelligent people, and they have long known that the real-world translation of the nostrums they sprout amount to “acquiescence”, “prostration” and “appeasement”. They knew as much for years yet dared not deviate from the pablum of their favoured dogma. It is their silence, their craven silence, that has brought on the Paris attacks and so many other similar calamities. Simply put, they found murder and mayhem preferable to facing a thorny truth.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Douglas Murray A Society Ripe for Submission: A Review of “Submission” by Michel Houellebecq

Posted By on November 17th, 2015

His imagining of an Islamic France is no simple provocation. Rather, this deep, gripping and haunting novel is a recent high-point for European fiction. No current writer gets anywhere near Houellebecq’s achievement in finding a fictional way into the darkest and most necessary corners of our time

Submission
by Michel Houellebecq
William Heinemann, 2015, 256 pages, $32.99
____________________________________
Michel Houellebecq is a genius. He is also a nihilist. And not the fashionable type of American nihilist (“nihilism with a happy ending”, as Allan Bloom once called it), but a connoisseur and practitioner of the fullest-blown fin de millénaire French nihilism. For Houellebecq and his main characters life is a solitary and pointless labour, devoid of interest, joy or comfort aside from the occasional—generally paid-for—blow-job.
The fact that the poet of such an existence can have been celebrated by his peers (Houellebecq has been awarded the Prix Goncourt, among other prizes) is perhaps less surprising than the fact that such a writer has proved so popular. For almost two decades his books have been best-sellers in their original French and in translation. When books sell this well—especially when they are also quality, rather than pap, literature—it is because they must speak to something of our times. It may be an extreme version of our present existence, but even the unarguably bracing nature of the nihilism would not be sufficient as an attraction without at least a disgusted flicker of self-recognition from his readers.