My view of the Arab “Spring” remains what it was five years ago. As I said to Megyn Kelly on live TV an hour after Mubarak resigned, this is the dawn of the post-western Middle East – and more broadly the post-American world. The “Facebook Revolution” went, predictably enough, the same way as the Iranian revolution: All the western-educated intellectuals come home and assure the world’s media that there’s nothing to worry about, the theocrats are pussycats. So in Egypt we were told that moderates like Mohamed el Baradei would get together and there was no chance of the Muslim Brotherhood coming to power, just as we were told in 1979 that Mehdi Bazargan et al would be calling the shots and Khomeini and the ayatollah had no real interest in governing. And then the moderates get shoved aside – as they were in Iran by the mullahs, and as they were in Libya by the tribal militias, in Egypt by the Muslim Brotherhood, in Syria by ISIS, in Yemen by the Houthi… And, even in Tunisia, where the “Spring” began, the tourist hotels are empty since the jihad boys gunned down Europeans sunbathing on the beach.
Tony doesn’t make it till the last para but it’s worth the wait. And I might add that the most notable aspect of this reference to Tony Abbott is that Mark Steyn, writing for a worldwide audience, can use Abbott’s name as a metaphor for a particular set of political beliefs and the actions that go with them. There really is no one else.
This is what Arthur Cummings II, the FBI’s executive assistant director in charge of counterterrorism and national security investigations in the United States, has said about trying to get cooperation from Muslim groups in dealing with terrorist threats.
The FBI has outreach programs to try to develop sources in the Muslim community and solicit tips, but Mr. Cummings found little receptivity. He found that while Muslims have brought some cases to the FBI, Muslim leaders in particular are often in denial about the fact that the terrorists who threaten the United States are Muslims.
The article should be read in full. Fascinating detail of the kind that seldom becomes available.
ASIO director-general Duncan Lewis has phoned Coalition politicians to urge them to use the soothing language favoured by Malcolm Turnbull in their public discussion of Islam.
In what is thought to be an unprecedented intervention in politics by a head of the spy agency, Mr Lewis is said to have told the MPs that their more robust comments risked becoming a danger to national security. It is believed the Office of the Prime Minister has been involved in arranging for these phone calls to take place.
I take it that ASIO finds the same lack of cooperation as does the FBI in America but is hoping for a better result. The kid gloves treatment does however seem to lead to the kind of problem that has surfaced at Rotherham where the preference was to let the abuse continue rather than to feed various non-PC attitudes, even if as in this case they were accurate.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who just last week was named TIME magazine’s 2015 Person of the Year for her stance on the refugee crisis, received a seven-minute (or nine-minute, according to some reports) standing ovation Monday for a speech at her ruling Christian Democratic Union congress in which she promised to “tangibly reduce” the number of refugees coming into her country. Still, The Independent reported, she said it was Germany’s humanitarian duty to take in war refugees. “We are going to manage this — if there are obstacles to overcome, then we will have to work to overcome them. We are ready to show what we are made of.” Germany has taken in an estimated one million refugees this year. . . .
Another noteworthy theme that turned up in Merkel’s speech was disdain for multiculturalism, according to The Washington Post. “Multiculturalism leads to parallel societies and therefore remains a ‘life lie,’” the chancellor said. She went on to say that Germany may be reaching its limit in terms of accepting more refugees. “The challenge is immense,” she said. “We want and we will reduce the number of refugees noticeably.” . . .
Despite her vow to reduce the number of refugees coming into the country, Merkel still refused to set a ceiling on the number of migrants allowed to enter Germany, or to deploy more controls on the country’s borders “until necessary.” But she acknowledged the enormity of the challenge that mass immigration presents for Germany and called on other European nations to help share the burden. Her plan to reduce refugee numbers focused on Germany’s support for tougher measures on the European Union’s border, specifically the sea between Greece and Turkey. And she still plans for the German government to give billions in aid to help Turkey cope with its refugee population. She also wants measures to speed up the return of migrants who failed to qualify for asylum.
She must be using Stalin’s technique of executing the first person to stop clapping.
When he dumps you, when he goes back to the New York liberal roots that are at the core of his being and starts talking about how he’s decided to switch back to his old positions, that it’s reasonable to take your guns, to liberalize immigration, and to keep Obamacare, you’re going to feel like fools. You’re going to be humiliated. And the GOP establishment, which is terrible, is going to be looking at you saying, “I told you so.”
Like many of his rivals for the Republican nomination, Ted Cruz has embraced the mantle of Ronald Reagan. He regularly cites the Gipper as an inspiration, and last week gave a foreign policy address at the Heritage Foundation that was laced with tributes to him: “As Reagan knew well, the best way to project America’s leadership is by protecting and promoting America’s strength and this principle should always guide our actions.” I didn’t know Ronald Reagan (neither did Cruz), but I do know a lot about him. And from what I know, it’s fair to say that Ted Cruz is no Ronald Reagan. In many ways, he is actually an anti-Reagan.
That is, he criticises fellow Republicans, is unreliable on foreign policy and cannot get on with anyone. Trump feels like the emergency bailout position if there was no one else around, that is, if the next Republican President fails to deliver balanced budgets, a freer economy and a sound immigration policy.
Mr. Obama doesn’t need anyone to justify his actions, because he’s realized no one can stop him. He gets criticized, but at the same time his approach has seeped into the national conscience. It has set new norms. You see this in the ever-more-outrageous proposals from the presidential field, in particular front-runners Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
Mrs. Clinton routinely vows to govern by diktat. On Wednesday she unveiled a raft of proposals to punish companies that flee the punitive U.S. tax system. Mrs. Clinton will ask Congress to implement her plan, but no matter if it doesn’t. “If Congress won’t act,” she promises, “then I will ask the Treasury Department, when I’m there, to use its regulatory authority.”
Mrs. Clinton and fellow liberals don’t like guns and are frustrated that the duly elected members of Congress (including those from their own party) won’t strengthen background checks. So she has promised to write regulations that will unilaterally impose such a system.
On immigration, Mr. Obama ignored statute with executive actions to shield illegals from deportation. Mrs. Clinton brags that she will go much, much further with sweeping exemptions to immigration law.
For his part, Mr. Trump sent the nation into an uproar this week with his call to outright ban Muslims from entering the country. Is this legally or morally sound? Who cares! Mr. Trump specializes in disdain for the law, the Constitution, and any code of civilized conduct. Guardrails are for losers. He’d set up a database to track Muslims or force them to carry special IDs. He’d close mosques. He’d deport kids born on American soil. He’d seize Iraq’s oil fields. He’d seize remittance payments sent back to Mexico. He’d grab personal property for government use.
Mr. Obama’s dismantling of boundaries isn’t restrained to questions of law; he blew up certain political ethics, too.
Fears are mounting that Islamic State terrorists could destroy an ancient Roman site in Libya which they have seized in their march towards the capital Tripoli.
ISIS fanatics travelling in 30 pick-up trucks stormed the coastal city of Sabratha on Wednesday night after three of their men were captured by a rival militia.
Black-clad militants overpowered residents and set up checkpoints in the city, which is just 50 miles from Tripoli, before successfully retrieving the three men.
Here’s a story reprinted in The Australian from The Times in London: Ted Cruz, the man more dangerous than Donald Trump. Why is he more dangerous? Because he doesn’t look as dangerous to those rubes known as voters and citizens. This is the subhead of the article which spells it out, “Senator Ted Cruz is the acceptable face of right-wing Republicanism — which is why he’s scarier than The Donald.” This is from the article itself.
One leading Republican did not join the anti-Trump chorus, however. He is the man that many in the Republican establishment fear is more likely to become their presidential candidate than Trump: the Texas senator Ted Cruz. Cruz moved to the top of the polls this week in Iowa — the first state to vote in the presidential nomination race. At a press conference given by Cruz on Tuesday I waited and waited for a repudiation of Mr Trump but none came. He did say that he disagreed with the specific “no Muslims” policy idea but praised Trump’s contribution to the debate. Cruz will undoubtedly be aware that 78 per cent of Republican voters think Islamic values are somehow un-American.
Cruz has been the most consistently pro-Trump of all of the Republicans running for the White House. He has already said that he’d happily give Trump the job of building that US-Mexico wall if he became president. Cruz has also said that he’d consider putting Trump in charge of renegotiating America’s trade arrangements with China.
What scares me, of course, are authors as obtuse as this one. No clue what really does concern the rest of us. Meanwhile.
As big a problem as anything that now exists for the United States and the West in general is the far-left media who work hand and glove with the politicians of the left to pollute political debate. The genius of Donald Trump is that he is able to transcend the media and get through to the actual population in a way that no one else has previously been able to do.
Trump said it himself, the media are “unbelievably dishonest”. He says things that are so outrageous from the perspective of the left that they made him the formidable presence he is by publishing everything he said on the assumption that telling people what he says will be instantly discrediting. Yet finding out that Katrina Pierson, Donald Trump’s new press secretary, is black Tea Party activist, is quite astonishing and revealing.
Pierson says her alliance with The Donald is “perfect.”
“This is a nontraditional campaign,” the outspoken Republican and Dallas tea party activist said. “I can be a little bit more who I am. That’s what I mean when I say it’s like a perfect fit. [Trump’s] sort of not politically correct. He sort of calls it like he sees it. I’m kind of that way, too,”
Rush Limbaugh discussed all of this yesterday: How Donald Trump Plays the Media. If Trump is unique in what he is doing, non-transferable to anyone else for whatever reason, then it is a serious problem. But in the meantime he is changing the rules of the political process.
You Republicans, you can denounce Trump all day, all week, all month, and the Democrat Party and the media are still gonna say you laid the table for it. You can condemn Trump all you want, but it is not going to buy you any love or respect or admiration from the Drive-By Media and the Democrats. Now, folks, the conventional wisdom is that Trump is scum, that Trump is a reprobate, that Trump is dangerous, that Trump is obscene, Trump’s insane, Trump’s a lunatic, Trump’s dangerous, Trump’s got to go. Why join in with that phrase? Why join that crowd? We never fall in with conventional wisdom here. . . .
Meanwhile, I’ve never said anything like anything Trump says. But despite it all they can’t take him out. They can’t stop covering him. They can’t humiliate him. They can’t embarrass him. They can’t diminish his support. They’re powerless, and this has them in a panic. The media that can make-or-break anybody cannot touch Trump, and every time they try, all they do is make him bigger. They can’t explain this. They are frustrated to no end, and so are both political parties who rely on the media to be the great equalizer in all of this.
Nothing’s working. No matter what Trump says, the media is there, and every member of the media is there. Every network, every camera, every microphone is there. Last Friday night Trump was in Raleigh, North Carolina. Reuters lied. Reuters even tried lying to destroy Trump. They ran a story claiming that Trump’s performance and his appearance were shut down by Black Lives Matter protesters. MSNBC ran with it. . . .
Donald Trump is condemning ISIS. Donald Trump is condemning illegal immigration. Donald Trump is condemning a weak, stupid United States leadership. Over here, everybody else is not. They are condemning Donald Trump. In a political sense, Donald Trump, leading the presidential campaign, is the sole occupier of his position. He has no competition for it. Just in a political sense, that’s pretty brilliant positioning to me. He owns the media. They can’t stop talking about him.
What I find the most remarkable is that even the standard “97% of scientists” isn’t good enough for him but has to raise it to 99.5. And I can now see more clearly than ever that to go with his hatreds and narcissism, his lying and ignorance, he is also as thick as two planks. The story is titled Who’s the dumb one? Obama reacts to Trump climate criticism. And aside from everything else, I think on this and by now he even has the politics of it completely wrong. Here’s the story in full.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama defended his remarks about the threat posed by climate change, saying Republicans, including U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump, were “the only people” disputing the gravity of the problem.
Obama has called climate change a great threat to future generations. At a news conference on Tuesday before leaving the U.N. climate summit in Paris, he likened global warming to the threat posed by terrorism and Islamic State and said both problems can be addressed by applying steady pressure and new ideas.
Republicans seized on his comments as understating the threat of terrorism [not to mention overstating the threat of climate change]. Trump, front-runner to be the Republican nominee in the 2016 presidential election, told MSNBC that Obama’s comment was the “one of the dumbest statements I’ve ever heard in politics.”
“Well, you know, Mr. Trump should run back a tape or quote on some of the stuff he’s said,” Obama retorted, during an interview with CBS “This Morning” that was broadcast on Friday.
“But, look, here’s what we know: 99.5 percent of scientists in the world say this is a really urgent problem,” he said. “Political parties around the world. The only people who are still disputing it are either some Republicans in Congress or – folks on the campaign trail.”
Obama was among more than 150 world leaders in Paris this week at the start of a U.N. conference that aims to reach an agreement to curb global warming.
On Tuesday, Obama said rising seas and warming climates could be drain on economic resources.
“This is an economic and security imperative that we have to tackle now,” he said.
Why it has been kid gloves in dealing with Obama up till now I don’t know, but Donald does seem to have the kind of political abrasiveness that gets results. And by siding with the “0.5%”, which is now around 50%, Trump is even right about the issue itself.
America, and its trailing entities in Europe, has a problem now of gargantuan proportions. Barack Obama was and is precisely the wrong man, possibly the worst conceivable man, to be president of the United States at this point in history. No one more invidious could be invented.
Consider how, on hearing of the mass murders in San Bernardino, the first thing out of his mouth was … gun control. That is not just blindness. It’s something scarier — willfull distortion for evil political ends.
Consciously or unconsciously, probably both, this man seeks to destroy the very thing that nurtured him from Honolulu to the White House.
So now the game has changed and Islamic terror has reached our shores as never before, just as many have predicted. It has invaded our bourgeois neighborhoods, with the neighbor next door unwilling to a report a garage bomb factory for fear of being called racist. (This, too, is at the foot of Obama.) What, in the words of Lenin, is to be done?
But while Obama will no longer be president in 2017, the media and the Democrats will still be there, as dangerously empty-headed as ever.
Law of Markets 