Donald Trump meant everything he said

Interesting article by Christopher Caldwell in the Financial Times yesterday. He makes the point that Trump means as president what he said as candidate.  His is a sympathetic reading of Trump's inauguration speech. I doubt that Caldwell is actually a Trumpisto, which makes his reading of Trump one that's outside the common "wisdom" on the Left: namely that Trump is a dangerous egoistic loony. 

I've liked Caldwell since reading his seminal 2009 book "Reflections on the Revolution in Europe". His warning then -- that a culturally self-doubting morally equivocating Europe will cede to a confident, assertive Islam, an Islam that has no intention of integrating, but to hew Europe to Islam -- has turned out to be truer than many acknowledged at the time. If anything, things are worse than Caldwell predicted -- and many thought him too apocalyptic in 2009. For example in the book he thought that France's republican history, its laicite traditions, might well deal better than other European nations with the challenge of assertive Muslim immigrants. That's hardly been the case, as we now know. 

/Snip

Globalisation is sucking the lifeblood out of the American yeomanry, one decaf mocha extra-skim Frappuccino at a time: anyone surprised that US President Donald Trump feels this way did not pay much attention to last November's election. 

Yet Friday's inaugural address seems to have thrown Mr Trump's adversaries into a state of shock. It turns out he actually meant those things. He spoke of "America first" as his principle; "protection" as his policy and "buy American" as his motto. Millions gathered on Saturday in cities across the country and globally for "women's marches" to protest against his presidency. Mr Trump accepts the radical implications of his world view. In fact, he has a good chance of enacting it. More....

Trump’s Vainglorious Affront to the C.I.A. - The New Yorker

Worth reading.
Since this was written it's been revealed that the "laughter and applause" at the meeting was by 40 10 (thanks to PN) or so Trump cronies shipped in for the event. Trump's performance at this meeting with the CIA was toe-curlingly awful.

Trump’s Inauguration vs. Obama’s: Comparing the Crowds - The New York Times

To BBC:

Why on earth don't you challenge Trump's FALSE claim about the size of his crowds. And why let his spokesman get away with also clearly false assertions in the so-called "press conference"??
See article here proving his crowd was substantially smaller than Obama's.
Please don't be cowed already!!
Peter Forsythe
HK

Donald Trump’s rhetoric is at odds with reality

I don't always agree with the editorial in the South China Morning Post, in fact most often don't. But I think this one today gets it pretty right on Trump's inauguration speech which I thought horrible. 

Interesting that this Editorial is so critical of Trump, given that he was recently schmoozing with Jack Ma, the owner of the SCMP. So, at least for now, the Post is maintaining its independence. Trump would cal the Post part of the "horrible, lying media"!

(Though, to be fair, I've yet to see the Post be critical of Xi Jinping, leader of our motherland....)

Remembering Nixon, a Trump White House can only be bad for China-US ties | South China Morning Post

I was in China or nearby for all this change, from the opening to China by Nixon to Trump's challenge to China.  I share M. Lehmann's concern about Trump's adventurism.  It could lead to military conflict and it's hard to see anything positive in that.

Lehmann also mentions what seems to be some growing wishful thinking around the non-Trumpian intertubes: that Trump could be impeached.  We have to hope he'll do or say something so awful and dangerous to America's security that he will indeed be impeached. Or maybe he'll just resign, when he finds that it's a bit of a bore.

/Snip:

Nixon and Trump differ greatly in intellectual capability and policy orientation. The first opened up relations with China to the great benefit of China, the US and the world. The second seriously risks antagonising relations with China, which will be to the great detriment of the US, China and the world.

There is, however, one thing they may come to share in common. Two years after his historic visit to Beijing, in 1974, Nixon once more made history by becoming the first – and so far only – US president to have been forced to resign from office. On the basis of all the noise that his candidacy has generated and the many closets that may be opened, Trump may stand a chance of being the second. Beijing will no doubt be closely watching.

Remembering Nixon, a Trump White House can only be bad for China-US ties

Russia Gains When Donald Trump Trashes NATO - NYTimes.com

The big, nay, huge, worries about Trumpism: canning NATO and dissing Europe, while cosying up to thug Putin. All while presaging military conflict with China.
In the New York Times:

Scary. 

Many people in the United States and abroad have consoled themselves by assuming that Donald Trump's outrageous statements were just politically driven, and he'd temper them once he became president. That thinking seems more wishful than ever when the man chosen to lead the world's most powerful country keeps saying that two pillars of postwar security and prosperity — the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union — are obsolete.

China should beware the trap set by ‘dumb Trump'

How odd: the reversal of roles between China and the US.
China as the spokescountry for free trade, for the Paris Climate deal, for nuclear curbs. And the Trumpian US for all the opposites.
I could not have imagined this when I arrived in the Maoist peasant empire 40 years ago.
Still, I'm rather optimistic that the resilience of the US will survive Trumpism.
The thoughtful Tom Plate writes from his eyrie in Los Angeles.
His basic line: Trump is not smart, like Bill Clinton smart. He's smart like the fox. Now he's in the henhouse and don't underestimate him.

The U.N. Can Find Balance in the Middle East - WSJ

To balance the viciously anti-Israel UN Resolution 2334:
> The United Nations Security Council last month passed Resolution 2334, which states that Israeli settlements have "no legal basis." The resolution made the mistake of only looking at one side of the map. To complete the job, the U.N. should pass a resolution that condemns Palestinian maximalist claims with the same sharp legal language it used for Israeli claims. In the absence of that, the U.N. resolution and the coming Paris peace conference will do more harm than good to the prospects of peace and justice.

On Palestinian Statehood - WSJ

Spot on again, Bret!
The ongoing demonization of Israel and the imbalance of not holding Palestinians to any responsibility.

Brexit, Trump: Whose fault? The Basket of Bigots says the Left (Flo and Joan on video)

Hi Sal,

Great to hear the doings of a happy and active Grannie…  I envy your grand-motherliness.  Happy New Year to you and your multitudinous family!

But, oh dear on the "Flo and Joan" bit of nonsense!  

To be clear: If I were British I would have voted Remain. if I were American I would have voted for Hillary.  But with the losses on both sides of the Atlantic, the Left is in denial.

As for the "world-is-going-to-hell-in-a-handcart" view of current events, I think I may have suggested before "The Better Angels of our Nature" by Stephen Pinker.  There's also "The Rational Optimist, by Matt Ridley. A couple of solid books. Which lead to this:

For all the doom-mongering, the world has never been happier, healthier, longer-lived, faster-developing, safer, richer or more at peace.  In the UK, the economy is strong, even post Brexit win. In the US there's been an economic bounce, even post-Trump win.  

Even global climate change is going to be fixed in our life times, or in that of our kids. Fixed by technology: that is to say, by capitalism.  The only real world danger is radical Islam: and this, this topic alone, is off-limits to criticism by the regressive left….. (Maajid Nawaz, explains the "regressive left").  

Those "desperate people" you mention?  Syria was an Obama own-goal. Obama's failure to punish Assad's crossing of the "Red Line", a line Obama himself had set, made Assad contemptuous of the US.  Obama's failure to be more robust in Iraq and then Syria, led to ISIS and now to Russia ruling this radical roost. Line them up these Obama errors: withdraw from Iraq (>> Al Qaeda, then ISIS), do nothing in Lybia and Syria (ditto), do nothing about Crimea or Ukraine (weaken Nato, embolden Putin), diss the EU (ditto), fold to China's South China Sea hegemony (embolden Xi Jinping)…. so much, so sadly much…. and then his valedictory stabbing of Israel: not in the back but in the chest.  An ally and the only democracy in that part of the world, frontally skewered by a dishonest, biased UN resolution supported by such bastions of probity as China, Russia, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Senega, Uruguay, Ethiopia and Egypt. A sick joke. 

Obama's foreign policy, I'm convinced, will go down in history as a monstrous avoidable failure.  I think he may even be judged the uniquely awful foreign policy president in the pantheon of presidents.  The worst in 44.  It's hard to deny that his presidency has made the world more dangerous.  Yet that's the same Obama that won a Nobel Peace Prize. (And an Obama I would have voted for….). Obama Foreign Policy summary: a signal, unique, avoidable, disastrous, catastrophic, failure. 

As for those "refugees" from outside Syria, well, blame Mad Mutti Merkel.  The bulk are single young men, out for a better life. Young men who saw on social media her say "refugees welcome". Can we blame them?  No.  But they are not refugees. The are economic migrants. There's a process for economic migrants.  Unless you're Merkel. In which case you simply tear up the process, because you're still guilty over the Nazis (she is).

Anyway, I wrote a comment at YouTUBE video by the Dopey Duo, Flo and Joan, (about #445), as follows:

Arrant nonsense.

The Left needs to acknowledge why it lost to Trump. Which wasn't because of racism, or xenophobia, or bigotry, or islamophobia, or the FBI, or even the Russian hacking. It was mainly because Hillary and her team ignored the mid-west and the concern of white working class people about jobs. Bill C, had got it right, but they ignored him. Including his wife. But that's where it turned for them. The electoral college, remember? Not that popular vote. I put this failure down to Hillary and her team. Plus the fact of her own very flawed, disingenuous character. (Benghazi, e-mails)

And Brexit was not because of (or by a long way not *just* because of) racism, xenophobia bigotry and the rest of the dreary excuses that the Left reached for straight after the loss. It was mainly because of concern over sovereignty. (Flo and Joan may have to look that word up....). There was also concern over free flow of labour, of course, but then again, that impacted working class people (studies show that it did: in a negative way), but these are people and places -- the working class, middle England -- that the middle-class Left no longer seems to care about: and just sing dopey songs on YouTube about. The Left used to the party of the working class. No longer.

As for saying you're screwed if you're "female, Muslim, POC or LGBTQ" that's also arrant nonsense. They've never had it so good; at least in the West: just check history, and what things were like in the fifties. There's been huge advancement in the rights of POC, LGPBTQ, women. On the other hand, if you're a woman, a POC, or LGBTQ, in an Islamic country you're in line to be killed. Nothing of that in this nonsense of a video by these two brain-dead Straight White Females. For them, it's now and always has been OUR fault, the fault of the West, the fault of Cis-gendered White Men.... I don't' accept their critique at all. I've always voted Left: Labor in Australia, would have voted Remain, and would have voted for Obama. But if the Left takes this attitude, that nothing is their fault, that it's all the bigots and racists, then there's no hope for the Left to come back to political power.

Away w'yez Flo and Joan! You're yourselves as leftie-bigoted as were your near namesakes Flo and Jo right-bigoted (Qld in the 70s)…..

Luv,

F xx

Israel continues to be unfairly singled out by Un and the world

Alan Landau takes the words right out of my mouth in his letter to the editor of the South China Morning Post on 3 January.  I'd been planning a letter of my own pretty much along the same lines, but had not got around to it.
Good on Mr Landau!

Yonden Lhatoo rhetorically asks in his column (“Israel’s perplexing hold over America allows it to treat global opinion with contempt”, December 29), what it is about Israel that entitles it to treat the collective will of the world with contempt and defy the UN.

The answer is that Israel continues to be unfairly singled out by the world and the UN in the most biased fashion.

Donald Trump & Radical Islam -- Israel Palestinian Conflict a Test Case of the New Administration | National Review

I like this from the National Review:

The new president should begin by renouncing Obama's Palestinian power-play: Revoke any state recognition Obama gives the Palestinians; defund them; clarify the disputed (not occupied) status of the territories; move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem; reaffirm the principle that the conflict may only be settled by direct negotiations between the parties; and make clear that the United States will consider the Palestinians pariahs until they acknowledge Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, stop indoctrinating their children in doctrinal Jew-hatred, and convincingly abandon terrorism.

The UN vs Israel

The great Jonah Goldberg on the perfidy of Obama-Kerry on Israel and on the United Nations.  Via concerns about "voting" being all that's needed for democracy.  As in: Not. There's a touch more to democracy than just voting.  And there's a touch more to justice than a UN vote by countries like Chile, Venezuela, North Korea and Saudi Arabia.
Really, really worth a read.
Here.

Security Council Settlements Resolution: Shameful Betrayal by Obama | National Review

After a brief foray into the other side of the argument -- Friedman in the post below -- back to caning Obama and Kerry in the National Review.

Bibi Netanyahu Makes Trump His Chump - Thomas Friedman, NYT

Thomas Friedman puts the opposite side of the story about the Israel UN Resolution, in the New York Times. Opposite, that is, to the one I've been promoting: that UN Resolution 2334 is anti-Israel, flawed and the US should not have abstained.
But there are problems with his analysis, the main one being why didn't he -- why doesn't the UN -- put the Palestinian feet to the fire. Why is it always just Israel that's attacked and impugned? The blame may be partly theirs, but is surely not *all* theirs. Palestinian terrorism in Israel is most assuredly a factor. The failure of Hamas even to accept an Israeli state is another.
And what about the fact that Israel has at least twice, in 2000 and 2008, offered the West Bank back, and been rebuffed by Yasser Arafat and the PA. Arafat's response to the offer -- basically all that he had demanded -- was to start an intifada!
Not to mention that when Israel was established -- by the World, in the shape of the UN, in 1948 -- Israel was happy for Arabs to set up a Palestinian state next door in the internationally-designated territory -- virtually identical to what they now demand -- but were attacked instead. (And failed, as they have every time they've attacked Israel).
Not also to mention that Israel has handed back the Sinai and Gaza, both occupied in defensive wars. It's normally the losing side in a war that sues for peace. Now the World -- the UN -- expects Israel to sue for peace. To give away preemptively the land that's supposed to be on the table in the "land for peace" deal that all sides accept (or have accepted until now) as being a cardinal principle.
There are many good comments to the Friedman article.

Obama's malice, May's shame. Drain the UN swamp | MelaniePhillips.com

Good on yer Melanie! Another sane and sensible attack on the Obama - Kerry treachery from Melanie Phillips.

Israel’s right to build homes is settled … under international law

Look at the tiny sliver in yellow, that is Israel (you can hardly see it)
All the other lands were won by Islam in expansion "by the sword"
[Referenced in the article below]

More in this recent series of the Kerry/Obama perfidy, in the Conservative Review. This one's rather for history and legal buffs as it makes the case that there is no "occupation" and therefore no "illegal" settlements, which even to Israel supporters like me, is a bit of a long bow to draw. Mind you, only because the other side has been so successful in pushing the other side, even if flawed or even a lie.

Here we go again with the U.N. peddling the biggest geo-political hoax of all time — that Israel's control over Judea and Samaria is illegal, that it belongs to a distinct Arab people called "Palestinians," and that the source of Islamist mayhem across the globe is a smattering of Jewish homes being built in their ancestral land. Land, which by the way, is virtually invisible on a map compared to the mass of land controlled by Islam. 

Security Council Settlements Resolution: Shameful Betrayal by Obama | National Review

More on John Kerry's shameful speech on Israel. His voicing Obama's betrayal of an ally, the only democracy in the Middle East, in the National Review

Undergraduate ramble lacking context, reality. John Kerry's awful speech.

Greg Sheridan's article in The Australian

John Kerry's imitation of Fidel Castro, with a speech as long and as mournful and as useless as those the Cuban dictator frequently delivered, helps explain why he was such a dismal failure as US Secretary of State.

Kerry's meandering speech blamed Israel for the failure so far to achieve a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.

The problem is, it read like the speech of an earnest undergraduate who has just come to the issue through the reporting of al-Jazeera and CNN and has no background in historic reality.

The Kerry speech lacked all context, proportion, balance, history and any sense of reality.

Australians have long understood that Kerry was an extremely mediocre choice for secretary of state. In the published diaries of former foreign minister Bob Carr there is a long cable from then ambassador Kim Beazley concerning Kerry's appointment.

Kerry, Beazley said, had very little interest in Asia and almost none at all in Australia.

Beazley predicted, correctly, that Kerry would devote his tenure to trying to get a big historic prize for himself, namely an Israeli Palestinian peace deal.

For his entire tenure, Kerry has seemed disconnected from the real world crises of the Middle East, focusing instead on his undergraduate obsessions with Israel. Hundreds of thousands of people are slaughtered in Syria in part because of the strategic vacuum Kerry and his boss and their feckless sermonising created; Iran and Russia become dominant strategic players; Yemen and Libya collapse, but Kerry knows what his priorities are: to beat up on Israel.

Barack Obama has taken a characteristic personal revenge on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom he detests, with a profoundly destructive and irresponsible UN Security Council resolution, which declares every Israeli living anywhere beyond the 1967 borders, even in the Jewish quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, to be an illegal settler.

This means the Palestinians have no incentive to compromise and the Israelis are encouraged not to compromise either, because they cannot even rely on their best friend.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/greg-sheridan/undergraduate-ramble-lacking-context-reality/news-story/a4af14f12e1f30a35c0e800a28d77f37

Good Riddance… — Quadrant Online Re Kerry / Israel

Another on John Kerry"s shameful Israel speech, in Australia's Quadrant
Note the first comment on a Greg Sheridan article, in the Australian.

National Review | Conservative News, Opinion, Politics, Policy & Current Events

Spot on:

The world is aflame with threats and instability, yet Kerry and Obama, petulant leftists with an Israel fixation, could not resist this last kick in the teeth to the region's sole democracy. They knew it would harm Israel's moral standing – now the delegitimizers can claim that Israel is in violation of "Security Council" resolutions – and give an unmerited win to the Palestinians. Perhaps most infuriating of all, they claim to be doing it all for Israel's own good.

Too bad they couldn't follow their own advice: "Don't do stupid s**t."

http://www.nationalreview.com/

Obama’s Fitting Finish - WSJ

Commentators on left and right are agreed: Obama's foreign policy has been a disaster. Eight years of in incoherence and pusillanimity 

All are agreed apart, of course, from the man himself. He remains blissfully, if perhaps willfully, ignorant. So much so that he -- incredibly -- deems his failure to act in Syria after his "red line" was crossed, to have been a success, the "right thing to do". No, it wasn't. It was a disaster heaped upon earlier disasters from Iran to Afghanistan via his refusal to acknowledge Islamic ideology as the key driving force in global mayhem. 

Bret Stephens is sound. Here in this essay in the Wall Street Journal, he concisely summarizes the case against Obama's foreign policy legacy:

Barack Obama 's decision to abstain from, and therefore allow, last week's vote to censure Israel at the U.N. Security Council is a fitting capstone for what's left of his foreign policy. Strategic half-measures, underhanded tactics and moralizing gestures have been the president's style from the beginning. Israelis aren't the only people to feel betrayed by the results.

Also betrayed: Iranians, whose 2009 Green Revolution in heroic protest of a stolen election Mr. Obama conspicuously failed to endorse for fear of offending the ruling theocracy. 

Iraqis, who were assured of a diplomatic surge to consolidate the gains of the military surge, but who ceased to be of any interest to Mr. Obama the moment U.S. troops were withdrawn, and only concerned him again when ISIS neared the gates of Baghdad.

Syrians, whose initially peaceful uprising against anti-American dictator Bashar Assad Mr. Obama refused to embrace, and whose initially moderate-led uprising Mr. Obama failed to support, and whose sarin- and chlorine-gassed children Mr. Obama refused to rescue, his own red lines notwithstanding. 

Ukrainians, who gave up their nuclear weapons in 1994 with formal U.S. assurances that their "existing borders" would be guaranteed, only to see Mr. Obama refuse to supply them with defensive weapons when Vladimir Putin invaded their territory 20 years later.

Pro-American Arab leaders, who expected better than to be given ultimatums from Washington to step down, and who didn't anticipate the administration's tilt toward the Muslim Brotherhood as a legitimate political opposition, and toward Tehran as a responsible negotiating partner.

Most betrayed: Americans.... [more at link above]

“Sacrifice black Muslim slaves went through in this country is nothing compared to Islamophobia today”

Linda Sarsour again. Last reported on by me in 2012. Her main schtick is Muslim victimhood. Here in full paranoid, perfervid bloom....

One Law for All: how can you argue *against* that?

Below is from Mariam Namazie, and ex-Muslim, from her organisation, One Law for All in the UK.  The UK has some 80+ Sharia courts.  A scandal that they do. There's an enquiry into them, but the feeling around the interested blogosphere is that it'll be a whitewash.

OVER 300 ABUSED WOMEN ISSUE STATEMENT AGAINST PARALLEL LEGAL SYSTEMS: WHO WILL LISTEN TO OUR VOICES?

"We oppose any religious body – whether presided over by men or women – that seeks to rule over us.” So say more than 300 mostly Muslim women, but also others from different faiths who have been abused in their personal lives. From their own lived experiences, these women are voicing their alarm, through a powerful statement published today, about the growing power of religious bodies such as Sharia councils.  Read the full statement.

SHARIA COURTS HAVE NO PLACE IN UK FAMILY LAW: LISTEN TO THE WOMEN WHO KNOW

In a piece also published today, Southall Black Sisters Director Pragna Patel states: "Our demand is simple: no religious arbitration of any kind in family matters. We want a secular law underpinned by human rights values to be applicable to all without exception. As the One Law for All campaign has continued to assert, this is the only way to guarantee freedom of religion as well as freedom from religion. The challenges we face are too important to be reduced to a crude and regressive politics of representation".  Read full article.

DEVASTATING NEW EVIDENCE AGAINST SHARIA COURTS IN BRITAIN

Also published this week is devastating new evidence submitted by One Law for All to the Home Affairs Select Committee. It reveals how Sharia councils violate human rights, how discrimination and violence lie at the heart of the courts, how they are linked to the transnational Islamist movement, and why they are a parallel legal system, which must be dismantled.  The submission also objects to Naz Shah's line of questioning of Spokesperson Maryam Namazie and accusations of "Islamophobia" and "anti-faith" to discredit secular voices.

The evidence unequivocally finds that Britain is failing to meet its obligations to gender equality in family relations as specified in CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women) by permitting the continuation of these courts. Read the full submission.

Previous submissions to the Home Affairs Select Committee by One Law for All, Southall Black Sisters, IKWRO, Centre for Secular Space, Yasmin Rehman and British Muslims for Secular Democracy can be seen here.

Personal testimonies from women whose rights have been violated by Sharia courts continue to be added to our website.

#ONELAWFORALLBECAUSE  

#STRUGGLENOTSUBMISSION

We are calling on black and minority women and men as well as secularists and women's rights campaigners to highlight why they are opposed to parallel legal systems and defend one secular law for all. Post your messages on social media using the above hashtags, including with your photo. See some messages here.

SUPPORT THE IMPORTANT WORK OF THE ONE LAW FOR ALL COALITION

Please continue to support the work of the One Law for All coalition by donating. No amount is too small and every little helps. A special thanks to those who donate on a regular basis. We can't tell you what a difference it makes.

DON'T FORGET 22-23 JULY 2017 CONFERENCE

Please don't forget to buy tickets to the 22-23 July 2017 International Conference on Freedom of Conscience and Expression if you can make it. It will be a historic conference - one that you can join for as little as £85 a day (including refreshments, lunch, cocktails, and a brilliant line up of speakers and acts). Find out more about the conference here.

On behalf of One Law for All, we hope you have a lovely holiday and New Year.

We look forward to working with you over the next year against parallel legal systems and for one secular law for all!

Warm wishes

Gina Khan and Maryam Namazie

One Law for All

onelawforall@gmail.com

077 1916 6731

@GinaKhanUK

@MaryamNamazie

http://onelawforall.org.uk/

Donald Trump’s sharp contrast from Obama and Bush on Islam has serious implications - The Washington Post

Was going to post this ludicrous article in the Washington Post with some comment about its spurious moral equivalence e.g. between the Koran and the Bible ("revered by many Americans"), but see that commenter "Jason Born" has made the comment for me:

Again we witness a fatuous attempt to read Islam through a relativist prism that absolves it on any responsibility for the violence committed in its name and its ideological interests. To wit: "Many of its controversial rules, like death for blasphemy and apostasy, have parallels in the Hebrew Bible, a book revered by many Americans." Yes, to a point. But when was the last time a Christian or a Jew in America or elsewhere cut the throat of an apostate? When was the last time a Christian or a Jew (or a Hindu or a Buddhist or a Scientologist, for that .matter) gunned down writers and artists for committing blasphemy? This false equivalency, this peurile collapsing of history into some kind of generalised all-religions-are-equally-bad narrative, is expressly designed to prevent us asking questions of the all-too-real prevalence of Islamically inspired killing whether in Paris, London, Boston, California, Madrid, Iraq or Syria.
Again: "the kind of Sharia jihadists want is not the kind most American Muslims want" - as if Sharia comes in a choice of seventeen flavours instead of being a coherent, principle-specific body of jurisprudence defined, not by Isis, but by the hadith and rulings of classical Islamic scholars including Bukhari, Sahih Muslim and others, all of whom are largely unanimous in their rulings on killing apostates, dealing with unbelievers, the second-class status of women, the sanctioning of child marriage and punishments including amputation.
McCants makes assertions certain in the knowledge that most of his audience are ignorant of the facts, creating a hollowed-out space into which he and other apologists can decant fictional and dangerous misrepresentations of a truth that we will need, sooner or later, to face up to.

How Algeria could destroy the EU

Wow! I did not know this in The Spectator. That the president of Algeria is near to death and that his death may lead to Islamization of Algeria and a massive emigration to Europe.

When Bouteflika goes, Algeria will probably implode. The Islamists who have been kept at bay by his iron hand will exploit the vacuum. Tensions that have been buried since the civil war will re-emerge. And then Europe could be overwhelmed by another great wave of refugees from North Africa....An Algerian civil war would create huge numbers of refugees. One analyst told me he expects 10 to 15 million Algerians will try to leave. Given Algeria’s history, they would expect to be rescued by one nation: France. In its impact on the EU, even a fraction of this number would dwarf the effect of the Syrian civil war. Given the political trauma that the refugee crisis has already caused in Europe, a massive Algerian exodus could cause tremendous insecurity....

French Terrorism Suspects Appeared Anything But - The New York Times

Yet another case proving that Muslims don't go all jihadi because they're poor, or disenfranchised, or deprived. Remember also the 9/11 mob: every one of those mass murderers had a decent middle class job and had been well educated. Ditto the 7/7 bombers in London.
In the German case, the would be jihadis are shopkeepers and teachers. Good, friendly family men. Just that they'd got all gooey at the thought of randomly killing their countrymen.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/14/world/europe/france-strasbourg-islamic-state-isis-arrests-terrorism.html?hpw&rref=world&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well


Sent from my iPad,en.

One Plus One: Maajid Nawaz - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

My Hero, the U.K.'s Maajid Nawaz just now on the Australian show ABC's One Plus One, here in Hong Kong. He's on tour in Australia.
Maajid says that his wife left him when he left the radical Hizb-ut-Tahrir. His wife is still a member. She has brought up his son, now 15, who says that his father is "not a good Muslim" and won't talk to Maajid.
Maajid says that he speaks up for Muslims of all stripes, feminist Muslims, gay Muslims, minority-sect Muslims, and for non-Muslims too.
Then, in answer to a question whether he questions what he's doing, he says that he does that every day. But that if he stepped down from his counter extremism organization the Quilliam Foundation he doubts someone would step in to run it because there are so few Muslims who talk like him.
The interviewer didn't ask the obvious question: if that's the case isn't this a big concern for the U.K.? That Maajid's family, his friends, other Muslims, think that he's a "bad Muslim" for speaking up in support of values that we fought centuries for and which are now firmly embedded in our liberal secular societies? What about that??!
It sure worries me. Maajid is just one man. And Muslims say they simply don't want to listen to him.
What hope is there? When a guy who spent five years in an Egyptian dungeon as a radical, reforms and tries to argue for a more tolerant Islam, but is reviled by his coreligionists? What hope? For an inclusive, secular, democratic, integrated Islam?
http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-18/one-plus-one:-maajid-nawaz/7181716?pfmredir=sm


Sent from my iPhone

The World Fears Trump’s America. That’s a Good Thing. - NYTimes.com

An amazing article to have in the leftie New York Times: The World Fears Trump's America.  That's a Good Thing.  Unusual in that it's severely critical of Obama's foreign policy. As of course it should be. His foreign policy has been catastrophic. The "red line" on Syria, ignored by Obama when it was crossed, was also a straight  line to ISIS and the refugee crisis. For that alone he deserves to be excoriated. 

/Snip

During the last eight years, President Obama showed what happens when the world's greatest power tries strenuously to avoid giving fright. He began his presidency with lofty vows to conciliate adversaries, defer to the opinions of other countries and reduce America's military commitments. Consequently, he received rapturous applause in European capitals and a Nobel Peace Prize. In the real world of geopolitics, however, the results have been catastrophic.

Mr. Obama's passivity in the face of provocations and his failure to enforce the "red line" in Syria led Russia, China and other adversaries to seek new gains at America's expense. His promises to "end the wars" in Iraq and Afghanistan satisfied the cosmopolitan chatterers of Stockholm, Paris and New York, but they deflated American allies in Baghdad and Kabul, and emboldened adversaries in Iran and Pakistan. So severe was the damage that he had to send troops back to Iraq in 2014, and had to abort his plans to withdraw all American forces from Afghanistan before leaving office.

Veiled Bigotry in Germany - NYTimes.com

LETTER to: International New York Times:

In Veiled Bigotry in Germany (NYT Editorial, December 9), you say: 

But the truth is that the bans [on face veils] are first and foremost a direct expression of antipathy toward Muslim immigrants, usually meant to appease far-right xenophobes.

The "truth is",  just because you say it is? 

Sorry, but polls show majorities in Europe and the U.K. support bans on face veils. Are these majorities now to be smeared as "far-right xenophobes"?

I'm a leftie myself (Remainer, supported Obama/Hillary), surely not a "far-right xenophobe", and still I support the bans. 

No other group of people can wear face masks in courtrooms, in schools or in banks. Why should Muslims be exempt?  This is a case of applying the law equally, not of discrimination. 

It's also a mistake to accept, as you do, the protestations of "Islamic leaders", who claim 

....that the bans lead women to feeling excluded from society, and thus facilitate radicalization. 

[Oh, how those Islamic leaders know how to push your buttons!  ... facilitate radicalization!]

But think about it. How much more excluded can one be than to wear a mask or the full body bag in public?  And that leads to "radicalization"?  Get real. And read something about the radicalization process. Read the Koran for starters. 

Later in your Leader you say the veil "poses no threat". Again, sorry but it does. There are numerous cases of crimes committed by veiled individuals, often men dressed in women's burkas, face veils 'n all. 

It is supercilious, condescending, holier-than-thou attitudes such as yours that enabled the stampede to Brexit and vote Trump, even by good lefties. 

Again, Get real. 

Shame on you. 

Peter F.
HK