Flo and Joan 2016

A friend sent me this vid, saying it well summarised his thinking on 2016.  When I challenged this, saying I thought it was "arrant undergraduate nonsense", he said, well, it was just "tongue in cheek".  I don't think so, because "tongue in cheek" is ironical, and this is simply in-your-face whining...
If you click on the "Most Popular" in the comments, you find the vast majority think like me: that it's a couple of whiners.
And really, really annoying.
But I managed to struggle through it again -- me, a "straight white male muggle" -- and have these comments:
0:11.  Flo & Joan's misandry in full view right at the outset: all the world's problems are down to us, we "straight white male muggles". I had to look up muggle. I hate Harry Potter, books and films alike so while I'd kind of heard of the word, I'd not really understood it.  Now I know it means a non-magic person, i.e. an actual normal person, but it's used pejoratively by Potterphiles, especially women.  Right, that about sums up these two dimwits: they're "magic" and the rest of the world is non-magic and hence racist, bigoted, misogynous, and so on.
0:35.  Zika.  Has been effectively wiped out. Keep up, ladies!
0:40.  Brock Turner is mentioned.  Well, here's the sad story.  You'd only mention this if you were misandrists like Flo & Joan.
1:01.  Police shootings. Studies at Harvard and in Texas show that white police officers are slightly less likely to shoot black suspects than they are to shoot white suspects.  That's studies by black professors, and are replicated by other studies I've seen over the years.
See, e.g. Larry Elder talking to Dave Rubin in the vid below:

1:04. "Spike in racist hate crimes".  Yes, but FBI figures show that the largest increase is in hate crimes against Jews.  Jews remain the group that suffers most hate crimes in total and by far the most in per capita terms.  Yet we don't hear about that.  Flo & Joan leave us to draw our own conclusions, that the spike in hate crimes is against Muslims.
1:06.  "Death toll is upsetting".  Not sure what they mean here, but if it's humans in general, of course we know it's wrong, because homo sapiens have never been healthier or longer living.
1:13.  "It's not looking good for you if you're female, Muslim, POC or LGBTQ".  Actually, the opposite is true.  There are more females studying at university than males. Muslims are a protected class, immune from criticism on pain of howls of protest from the Left. POC have also made huge strides since the 60s-70s (See Larry Elder, above or Thomas Sowell ), and ditto for LGBTQ.  All of which apply at least in the West, though not in the Muslim-majority countries that the Left so loves to protect from our "bigoted" and "racist" criticism.
1:24.  "Racist (Brexit) referendum".  What exactly was it about the campaign that was "racist".  Sure there was concern about immigration, but that's because many working class people lost their jobs to lower-wage foreign workers.  That's hardly racism. That's an economic issue. Or are the urban liberal Left to think that the working class should just take it on the chin?  If Flo & Joan had suffered the same, I wonder how they would react.  In any case, the main issues were -- and I followed the Bremain debate closely -- were economy, employment and sovereignty.
1:39.  Trump and his "neo-Nazi" crew.  Well, that's just nonsense.  Study the Nazis, girls.  This is the sort of nonsense that makes everything a "holocaust" or "genocide".
So that's about it for me: covering a vid that doesn't really deserve this attention.  I've only done this because of the number of people that really do think that Flo and Joan have offered us a witty incisive critique of 2016 and its strange happenings.
They don't.  They offer us a lesson in rhyming nonsense.

President Duterte Is Repeating My Mistakes - NYTimes.com

Cesar Gaviria was president of Colombia 1990-1994. He took down the narco-Lord Pablo Escobar, immortalized by Mexican actor Raul Mendez in the excellent Netflix series "Narcos".
Here in the International New York Times, Gaviria argues that the "War on Drugs" has failed and continues to fail. That much is obvious to the sentient and honest observer.
Gaviria promotes alternative policies through The Global Commission on Drug Policy of which he is a founding member (His Wikipedia entry needs updating with that position...).
These proposals include making drug taking a public health issue, not a criminal one, squeezing out the corrupting profit motive from illegal production and distribution.
That's been often proposed. The group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition that I've often quoted here, are an example and they too know the WOD from the front line.
But Gaviria is different: he's been president of THE major cocaine producing country in the world, right on the front line, in the thick of the toughest Narco wars in the world.
So Gaviria knows whereof he speaks. Unlike most people on the Right, the "law and order", the "jail 'em and throw the key away" crowd. The likes of Bill O'Reilly & Co on Fox who are pretty much all ignoramuses on this issue (not sure about Gutfeld, but certainly O'Reilly, Carlson and Hannity are all harmful idiots about our drug scourges).

Taking a hard line against criminals is always popular for politicians. I was also seduced into taking a tough stance on drugs during my time as president. The polls suggest that Mr. Duterte's war on drugs is equally popular. But he will find that it is unwinnable. I also discovered that the human costs were enormous. We could not win the war on drugs through killing petty criminals and addicts. We started making positive impacts only when we changed tack, designating drugs as a social problem and not a military one.

Read on.... 

Diaspora Jews lose the moral plot | MelaniePhillips.com

The acerbic and lucid Melanie Phillips takes a contrary view to most of the media on the Trump immigration ban -- arguing that it's not discriminatory, but based on valid security concerns. Moreover, similar security based actions have been taken by presidents Carter and Obama, and are supported by Muslim majority UAE.
I recall, though spottily, that Australia had a temporary ban on immigrants from Somalia at one stage while we worked on better vetting procedures. Again, based on security concerns.
So the issue seems to be the hasty and chaotic implementation of the measure. Though the left attacks it straight out with no consideration of its security implications.
Read on, by Melanie....

Maher & Sam Harris: Left Has Allied With Islamists; "Self-Loathing" Liberals Think We're Just As Bad

"We are never going to defeat terrorism if we are not going to reform Islam," Maher ended on. "And we are not going to reform Islam if we can't talk about it."

Sam Harris, in conversation with Bill Maher on HBOs Real Time.
A lot more in the discussion that makes sense of the otherwise puzzling alliance between Islamists and the Left in the west.
Muslims in the west, when polled, do show attitudes -- about women, gays, minorities, free speech -- that are deeply inimical to ours, and which number in the majority or large minority (see my "Islam in figures" page above).  They are deeply inimical to views on the Liberal Left.  But still they hew to Islamists: mainly because they hate the US, and because they are (mostly) brown skinned, so to oppose them is "racist".
Another quote:

"When you take jihadists and Islamists who want Sharia law, they just want to use the leverage of a state that are not committing violence immediately, and then you have a larger subset of conservative Muslims who may not have any alliance to jihadists they still have attitudes about free speech and the rights of women and the rights of gays that are deeply at odds with our own and we have to win a war of ideas with these people. This is not -- we don't fly drones to solve this problem. And so this is why we need to empower real reformers."

Video and transcript here.

"Arab Islam has embraced outside influences". Letters 4 February.

LETTER TO FINANCIAL TIMES 

Professor Coury asks us to believe that Arab Islam is open to outside influences because they once were so. ("Arab Islam has embraced outside influences". Letters 4 February). 

He quotes the Arab Muslim philosopher al-Kindi to support his assertion.  

The good professor must know but  chooses not to tell us, that the environment allowing tolerant views such as those of al-Kindi did not last long after al-Kindi's death in 873. 

In the 12th century al-Gazhali and his acolytes routed cosmopolitans like al-Kindi. 

Since then it's been the "closing of the Muslim mind". 

Only Allah has power. Hence cause and effect are denied. Hence rational science is denied.  Hence progress is denied. 

I expect that professor Coury will cry "what about the Crusades", next time we decry today's Islamic inspired terrorism. 

That makes about as much sense as quoting medieval scholars who embraced "outside influences".  In both cases this is the response: that was 1200 years ago, dude. 

PF

If We Can’t Unite Against Rioting, We Can’t Unite at All

I find nothing to disagree with in this article by David French.
I can't recall any demonstrations on the right in recent months that's been violent. But many on the Left have been.
Hypocrisy of the left.

Nine questions those protesting against Donald Trump's immigration ban must answer | Coffee House

What I also didn't know till just now is that Obama had restrictions on a number of these countries. And recall that every country discriminates in its immigration policies on a country-by-country basis.
Back in the 80s (IIRC), Australia placed a short term ban on immigrants from Somalia for national security reasons. And we didn't allow known Nazis in either.
In any case, thinks what you will about the new Trump Executive Order on immigration, these questions by Douglas Murray are germane.

"City does not need divisive Thatcher clone". Oh Yes, we do!

Letter to South China Morning Post: [407 words]:

Keith McNab is "filled with horror" that a Thatcherite might become CEO of Hong Kong. ("City does not need divisive Thatcher clone", Letters, 3 February)

I am an Australian who spent three years in Britain in the seventies.  I remember the three-day work week, the chaos of incessant strikes: before she became PM.  Please allow me to defend the "Iron Lady".

First, McNab says she was the "worst… prime minister in the last 100 years". 

Fact: Not true. In 2004 the most extensive survey of UK prime ministers rated Thatcher fourth most effective after Attlee, Churchill and Lloyd George.

Second, he says her policies led to "mass unemployment".  Fact: her shake-up led to immediate unemployment, but employment quickly returned to normal.  Those employed were in better jobs than mining coal. McNab ignores the union stranglehold, the high unemployment (15%) and the crippling inflation (25%) before her tenure.

Third, he claims that selling off council housing led to a "social housing crisis".  Fact: the sale of council houses to tenants ("the Right to Buy"), had been Labor Party policy.  Thatcher liked and accelerated it.  It was highly popular. Michael Heseltine said  "no single piece of legislation has enabled the transfer of so much capital wealth from the state to the people." Yes, not enough new housing was built to replace that sold.  But that was due to the Labor Party blocking the use of sale proceeds to build more public housing.  Thatcher had wanted more built.

Fourth: the Poll Tax.  I agree this was an own goal.  It was a clear misjudgement by Maggie which she quickly corrected. It doesn't detract from her legacy.

Finally: McNab calls for a HK leader that can "unite the people". This may seem inarguable.  But it's part of human nature that division is the norm.  (Mao Tse-tung: "one divides into two").  That's why we have Conservative-Labor,  Republican-Democrat,  Liberal-Labour, man-woman, dog-cat, yin-yang, and so on.  A call for "unity" sounds uncontroversial; but it's impossible.  A common criticism of our government is that they're paralysed by trying, through various "consultations", to work for "unity".

Thatcher carried the following quote from President Lincoln in her handbag:

·      You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.

·      You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.

·      You cannot help the wage-earner by pulling down the wage-payer.

I would certainly be happy with a CEO of ours that hewed to those principles.  Just as she did.

Peter Forsythe, 

9 Siena One, Discovery Bay, 

9308 0799

BBC Poll: 45% of UK Muslims endorse hate preachers; 11% support Jihad; 24% support Charlie Hebdo execution

This news story about a BBC poll of British Muslims is a bit old (Feb 2015), but still relevant. I note that the headline in that linked story on the Muslim Statistics Blog gets a couple of the figures wrong. Sloppy! (as Trump would tw**t). I've fixed that in my own headline.
The stats won't have changed much and the ones in this BBC poll are consistent with all the other polls, which I've gathered in "Islam in Figures" page above.
By no means are all the results bad.  Look at the "loyalty to the country":  95%.
But some really are scary, like views of Jihad, violence against the west, and killing those who blaspheme Islam. Those figures in support are too high for comfort. And we know from many other studies ("Islam in Figures" above), that a majority of Muslims want to have Sharia law in the U.K. and indeed in the rest of the west, as well.  Sharia's not Jihad or terrorism, but it's not good at all either. There's nothing I've read in the Sharia Manual of Islamic Sacred Law, which we would want to have in the liberal west. This manual is endorsed by Al-Azhar University, in Cairo, which is the oldest and most authoritative university in the Islamic world.
/Snip:
Poll of 1,000 Muslims in Britain for BBC Radio 4 Today

• More than two in five (46%) feel that being a Muslim in Britain is difficult due to prejudice against Islam.
• Almost all Muslims living in Britain feel a loyalty to the country (95%). Just 6% say they feel a disloyalty.
• Nine in ten (93%) British Muslims believe that Muslims in Britain should always obey British laws.
• One in four (27%) British Muslims say they have some sympathy for the motives behind the attacks on Charlie Hebdo in Paris.
• However, two thirds (68%) say acts of violence against those who publish images of the Prophet can never be justified while a quarter (24%) disagree.
• Muslim women are more likely than men to feel unsafe in Britain.
• One in nine (11%) British Muslims feel sympathetic towards people who want to fight against western interests while 85% do not.
• Half (49%) believe Muslim clerics preaching that violence against the west can be justified are out of touch with mainstream Muslim opinion, while 45% disagree.

Take that last figure.  45% of UK Muslims think that preaching violence against the west is in touch with mainstream Muslim opinion. Around 3 million Muslims in the UK, of which 1.4 million believe that preaching violence against the west is "mainstream" belief. Even if it's not all mainstream belief, one assumes it's the belief of 45% of Muslim worldwide (the figure would surely be higher given the influence of secularism on those in the UK), so if Muslims worldwide number some 1.7 Billion, as they claim, then 765 Million Muslims believe in violence against the west.  Halve the number: it's still nearly 400 million.  Halve again: it's nearly 200 million.  There's no getting out of it: there's a disturbingly high number of Muslims who -- by their own account -- think they should perpetrate violence against the west.

Islamists and Jihadists are religiously inspired. They're not the "poor", "marginalised", "afflicted", "unemployed"....

Still to this day you get people apologising for Islamists and Jihadists by claiming they're marginalised or oppressed or unemployed and poor.  This Obama & Co's view.  At one stage his Attorney General (IIRC) claimed that terrorism could be cured by finding them all jobs.
This hasn't ever been the case and is not so now.  Look at the 9/11 hijackers: all middle class, educated, well-employed men. Engineers and doctors.  Similarly for the bomb-killers in the UK, the 7/7 bombers in the UK were fathers, husbands and well-employed citizens.
One of them made it clear:

Our drive and motivation doesn't come from tangible commodities that this world has to offer. Our religion is Islam, obedience to the one true God and following the footsteps of the final prophet messenger.

And those "footsteps" of Muhammad were those of a man who took part in at least 27 battles and personally beheaded captives.  He especially liked killing jews.

Here we have a report from India, that their problem with ISIS supporters there are specifically motivated by their religion. A religion which mandates, let's recall, that they "kill the unbelievers" and "terrorise the infidels wherever you find them".

Officials from the National Investigation Agency who are probing all IS-related cases say out of those arrested for ties with the outfit, only 20 per cent had studied in a madrasa. The rest had gone to regular schools and colleges and are also highly-qualified.

This shows that it is not the old school of thought which has driven youth towards the IS. The IS has successfully managed to capture the imagination of several Muslim youth through propaganda. The dream of the Caliphate or the virgins in heaven are some of the points that have been driven into the minds of youth who took to the IS.

 The "dream of the Caliphate" and the "virgins in heaven" are specifically religious motivations.
As Sam Harris said recently: "Belief in a beautiful life after death means lack of belief in tolerance in our present life".  (or words to that effect).  

Steve Bannon in 2010: 'Islam is not a religion of peace. Islam is a religion of submission' - CNNPolitics.com

TO: CNN.com
Bannon is completely correct. 

I don't have much time for the man, but his *fact* in this case is spot on. 

"Islam" really *does* mean "submission". 

Those who say it means "peace" because the root of the word, "s", "l" and "m" are also the root of "salaam"" which does mean peace, are just blowing smoke in your eyes. 

It makes just about as much sense to say "telegram" means "television" because they both have the root "tele". Or that "awful" means full of awe. 

"Islam" means "submission". Simple as that. 

See detailed etymology of "Islam" here.

So you are criticizing Bannon for having his facts right. 

What of your current mania for "the facts", versus Trump people's alternative facts", also known as "lies". 

By the way, I have been studying Islam for many years and could quote many other sources both Muslim and non-Muslim attesting to the fact that "Islam" means "Submission". 

I suspect that your editors *want* to believe that Islam means "peace". 

Down that path -- of wanting certain things to be true and thereby accepting them as true -- lies the "Post-truth" society. 

Your article with its own "alternative facts".

Trump’s “Muslim Ban” -- Goal to Ban Sharia Supremacists, Not All Muslims | National Review

There's pretty much blanket denunciation of Trump's Executive Order (EO) banning US entry by refugees from various Middle Eastern countries, all of which are Muslim majority countries. 

Hence the EO has become known as the "Muslim Ban". 

I've been following the issue on BBC, CNN and Fox. 

They all -- even Fox; mostly -- rail against the EO as being in violation of the Constitution and "un-American".
But none of them talks of the main reason for the EO is as described by Andrew C. McCarthy. 

McCarthy argues that the main aim of the EO is not terrorism, but is to stop the immigration of Muslims who want to promote Islamic SHARIA law in the United States. It's not specifically aimed at jihadi terrorists. If that's the case then that's way more logical than trying to stop terrorism, because there have been no terrorist attacks on the US from any one of the Trump-named countries.
LATER (10 Feb): that's on "Half True", according to fact checkers Politifact:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2017/jan/29/jerrold-nadler/have-there-been-terrorist-attacks-post-911-countri/
I'm inclined to accept McCarthy's explanation because he was on the drafting committee of the EO and because I've read his excellent 2008 book "Willful Blindness". It was well written and well sourced. 

For example, he said that W Bush attacking Iraq was like the United States after Pearl Harbour attacking Mexico instead of Japan. So he's no war booster. 

Moreover I know from study of the issue that there are many Muslims who want to implement Sharia in the countries to which they emigrate. Look at he U.K. for example. There almost 100 SHARIA COURTS there.  They supersede U.K. Law.  That's slow-motion cultural suicide in my view. 

There's nothing to like about SHARIA.  Nothing.  Don't believe me? Read the "Reliance of the Traveler", the classic manual of Islamic jurisprudence, link at left. It's a shocker. Full of murderous hatred of we infidels, of gays, adulterers, women, minorities and apostates. Punishments include whipping, amputation, crucifixion and stoning to death. 

Lovely. 

The wonders of the "religion of peace".  

Yet that's what the U.K. Government is complicit in allowing. The US wants to avoid that with this latest EO. 

Fair enough I reckon. 

"Please Vote for Me": a primary school election in China.

To BBC:

What a TERRIFIC show! Well done!

(By BBC "Storyville Global": about a Chinese Primary School election for Class Monitor, in China's mid west mega-city of Wuhan).

Bright, alive, happy, sometimes naughty, lovely, likable primary school kids in Wuhan (home of my in-laws) fighting an election to be Class Monitor. And their interaction with their teachers and parents. They even have a debate in front of their rowdy and engaged classmates.

Really moving and interesting. So different from what I guess most in the west would think of Chinese schooling: rigid, authoritarian, blindly obedient. None of that.

Of course when they're adults these kids can't vote for their country's leader. Bummer. But grass roots voting like this must -- one hopes-- work through the system in some way. We see in Russia what happens if shift to democracy is too quick. You end up losing it. The basis of civic society needs to be planted first. And that's what's happening in "Please Vote for Me". At least I hope so.

Anyway, my warmest congratulations to the BBC for making this show.

Peter Forsythe
Hong Kong
(Overseas student in China of the 70s)

No, he didn’t: Obama’s legacy

http://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/01/no-he-didnt-obamas-legacy/

"Jihad" really does mean warfare on the unbelievers

On the Left and among apologists for Islam, there's the meme that "Jihad" means "spiritual struggle". It's about improving yourself, lerning a language, going back to school; it's about being a good citizen.  There was even a Tw***er campaign a while ago on this theme, "My Jihad is...."
The reality is that Jihad does mean spiritual struggle, but it also means, and more often in the Islamic canon does mean, "to fight a holy war against unbelievers". To deny this is to deny reality.  It's to deny the motivating factor for Islamic terrorism. From somewhere, I forget where, but all true, believe me:...

The Shafi’i legal manual (the Shafi’is are a school of Islamic jurisprudence) ‘Umdat al-Salik (Reliance of the Traveller), which has been certified by al-Azhar, the foremost authority in Sunni Islam, as conforming to the “practice and faith of the orthodox Sunni community,” devotes one paragraph to jihad as spiritual struggle and seven pages to jihad as warfare. It makes it quite clear that jihad is warfare against non-Muslims:

Jihad means to war against non-Muslims, and is etymologically derived from the word ‘mujahada’, signifying warfare to establish the religion. And it is the lesser jihad. As for the greater jihad, it is spiritual warfare against the lower self (nafs), which is why the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said as he was returning from jihad,
“We have returned from the lesser jihad to the greater jihad.”

ISIS Really IS Islamic

The concept on the Left and among apologists for Islam is that ISIS does not represent Islam, that they ISIS has "hijacked" and "twisted" or "warped" the "Religion of Peace".
This has been been soundly debunked many times by many experts, both Muslim and non-Muslim (eg, Muslim here, non-Muslims here and here).  ("Others are available" as the BBC says)

For the record:

The Islamic State’s beheadings (Qur'an 47:4), sex slavery (4:3, 4:24, 23:1-6, 33:50, 70:30), subjugation of Christians (9:29), global imperative (8:39) and more are all based upon the Qur’an. Indeed, everything the Islamic State does is scrupulously based on the Qur’an and Sunnah.

Larry Elder and Dave Rubin: Conservatives, Black Lives Matter, Racism (Full Interview) - YouTube

This video is just over a year old but well worth the hour's viewing.
You may know Larry Elder. I did not until Dave's latest video directed me to it as having had a major impact on Dave's thinking.
It had that impact for me too. I knew a lot of the stuff about black vs white crime levels and police shootings statistic. (E.g. Black suspects are shot at a *lower* rate than whites). As Elder says "where are Black Lives Matter on that"?).
But I didn't know about the connection between welfare state initiatives of the sixties and single parent households in the black community and in turn that connection with black crime levels. Welfare was offered, by well-meaning initiatives, to women if they were single moms. That led to unintended consequences -- moms *becoming single* deliberately. Growth of single parent families led to higher crime levels. And we know what a catastrophe that has been for the black community and black incarceration rates.
The sixties welfare initiatives -- all well meaning -- were a catastrophe for the black community with a rise in single parent households from 25% to 75% today.
Elder says black leaders -- Obama, Jackson, Sharpton, BLM -- should be talking about this. But not a one is.
He also talks of Black support for Trump -- higher then than it was for Romney. Working class blacks were displaced by immigrants, so Trump resonated with them on that issue, again not one covered in MSM.
Elder is most impressive. Eloquent and quick, with all facts at his fingertips.
Elder had not, at January 2016, decided if he was a Trump supporter. But he makes some interesting points about him.
Well worth the hour's viewing (there's a couple of edited versions on Dave's ChaNnel if you're pressed for time).
I'm sure you'd agree with pretty much all of that Elder says. Actually so do I. It's hard to argue with facts. Unless you want to replace them with "alternative facts"!
Meantime looking forward to the Trump - Theresa May meeting
Cheers
Forse
Video here.

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.