Amazon tax - Wikipedia

To BBC:
AMAZON *Does* pay sales tax!
Don't repeat Trump's "fake news"!!

The Wrong Way for Germany to Debate Islam | Jochen Bittner | NYT

The money shot, with which I agree 100% snipped below  As in, when people ask, "ok so you're anti Islam / pointing out the issues in Islam.... so what do we do about it?" the answer is, at least: stand up for our own values.  And require that people who come to our countries abide by our values.
The money shot here:

So how do we move on? Instead of prolonging the mistakes of the past, the secular majority in Germany should make clear two things to their fellow Muslim citizens. Yes, Muslims belong here — but belonging brings with it expectations. Being a citizen means, first and foremost, upholding the values and laws that make this country so attractive. The secular majority must learn how to convey this expectation in a clear yet civil manner.Germans struggle with this because they are uncomfortable, for historical reasons, with making such demands of religious minorities. The problem, in other words, is not just politicians who wield stupid slogans. It is also the majority of nonpopulist Germans who are shy about expressing the terms of participation in a pluralist society.

The whole article, here online, but behind paywall, is below the fold.

Yasmine Mohammed on Twitter: "These Islamists are very honest. They are transparent about their plans...”....

... Yasmine Mohammed on Twitter: "These Islamists are very honest. They are transparent about their plans, but ppl in the West* just refuse to believe them because they think they're nothing but little brown dears incapable of actually being malicious. Meanwhile, they are succeeding at an alarming rate. https://t.co/HdnWjJTjCY"

*She could have added, The Left...

Genocide in South Africa: now that’s a black-and-white issue

Probably only Rod could get away with an article like this on Orania...

Rod Liddle in The Spectator.

There are two ways of looking at this tragedy but only one of them can be expressed

Last time I was in South Africa I spent two weeks deep in the Karoo, that desiccated wasteland in the Northern Cape which is home only to a handful of jackals, the occasional springbok and supporters of the Afrikaaner Resistance Movement. I had been visiting Orania, a smallish town in which no black people are allowed. Set up by the son-in-law of Hendrik Verwoerd, its existence now is very grudgingly protected by the South African government under regulations which preserve minority cultures — ah, the irony.

dodgy

How perverted that a religion should praise a father willing to gut his son, for the sake of voices in his head.  And this is supposed to be our moral guide?....
From here.
And Hitchens on the issue.

Opinion | The War on Drugs Breeds Crafty Traffickers - The New York Times

For every reasonable move Trump makes — like taking on China's predatory mercantilism — there's at least one other totally crazy thing he proposes. Here his proposal to kill drug traffickers. Yeah, like Duterte. 

I've long been against the war on drugs. What sane person hasn't?

Places that have tried decriminalisation and medication have proved they work. When will they learn? ("They" being those, mostly, on the right). 

Politicians often escalate drug war rhetoric to show voters that they are doing something. But it is rare to ignore generations of lessons as President Trump did earlier this month when he announced his support for the execution of drug traffickers.This idea is insane. But the war on drugs has never made any sense to begin with.Executing a few individual smugglers will do little to stop others because there is no high command of the international drug trade to target, no generals who can order a coordinated surrender of farmers, traffickers, money launderers, dealers or users. The drug trade is diffuse and can span thousands of miles from producer to consumer. People enter the drug economy for all sorts of reasons — poverty, greed, addiction — and because they believe they will get away with it. Most people do. The death penalty only hurts the small portion of people who are caught (often themselves minorities and low-level mules).Indeed, on the ground, the threat of execution will even help those who aren't caught because they can charge an increased risk premium to the next person in the smuggling chain. The risk of capture and punishment increases as drugs move from farm to processing lab, traversing jungles, through cities, across oceans, past borders, distributed by dealers and purchased by consumers. The greater the risk to smugglers in this chain, the more they can demand in payment.Without the drug war, substances like cocaine, heroin, marijuana and meth are minimally processed agricultural and chemical commodities that cost pennies per dose to manufacture. But lawmakers have invented a modern alchemy called drug prohibition, which transforms relatively worthless products into priceless commodities for which people are willing to kill or die.

Trump’s flaws should not distract from the greater imperfections of US-China trade relations | South China Morning Post

Another in the line of articles labelled "Trump may be an idiot, but...". 

In this case he's right about China's predatory trade and economic policies. Even if his solutions — tariffs — are misguided. What he should be doing is applying reciprocity. Strict reciprocity. 

Trump didn't start the trade war; Beijing did. That he seems flawed in ways no other American president has been, including a questionable affinity for Moscow, doesn't reduce the necessity of changing the current condition with Beijing. Americans, ever resilient, will adapt. It may be a long and economically painful road, but another decade or two without change is likely to result in something more painful, in a darker world. Because the trade war, after all, is about much more than just trade.

100 French Intellectuals Issue A Warning About Islamic Totalitarianism

This is significant

/Snip

A group of 100 French intellectuals has just published in the newspaper Le Figaro (March 19, 2018), its denunciation of Islamic totalitarianism. Among the signatories are some of the most distinguished historians, philosophers, professors, jurists, and journalists, in France, known to all, and representing political leanings from Left to Right. Among them are some ex-Muslims. Not a group easy to dismiss. 

Anti-Semitism Is Rising. Why Aren’t American Jews Speaking Up? - The New York Times

Anti-Semitic hate crimes are on the rise, up 57 percent in 2017 from 2016, the largest single-year jump on record, according to the Anti-Defamation League. That increase came on top of the rise in incidents in 2016 that coincided with a brutal presidential campaign.

This is a useful article. 

Many people decry the rise of "islamophobia", but ignore or don't know that anti-Semitic hate crimes are more common (in total and per capita) and have been rising faster than so-called Islamophobic hate crimes. 

(That's in the US but likely elsewhere as well). 

But....

Weisman doesn't note that the biggest rise in anti-Semitic hate crimes comes from the Islamic community. Weisman only notes that "alt-right", the traditional source of anti Semitism. 

And he mentions Southern Poverty Law Centre approvingly. But this outfit has morphed from a decent fighter against the racism of the likes of the KKK into a smearer of anyone to the right of their hard-left views. Outlandishly, last year, they named Aayan Hirsi Ali and Maajid Nawaz as anti Islam extremists. They have failed to correct this travesty despite wide ranging criticism from all spectra. 

Why on Earth is a clearly caring guy like Weisman so ignorant of key facts like these? I dunno. 

Faris on Twitter: "I'm going to translate some tweets in this hashtag #مرتد_حفرالباطن the world must see this."

Wondering if this will link through. To a number of translations of Arabic tweets calling for death of an apostate. (It does link through)

Sadiq Khan’s Hate Speech Praise | National Review

More from the inimitable Douglas Murray and the insidiousness of "hate speech" laws.
In the U.K. you can now be banged up under "hate speech" laws for speaking the truth. About "certain communities", of course....

Opinion | Some Things Are True Even if Trump Believes Them - The New York Times

This makes sense to me. Someone strong like the US does indeed need to get tough with China's flouting of the world trade rules, but in a smart way. Not by crude steel tariffs. Cohn knew this, but he's gone. Economic adviser Navarro is just a misinformed lickspittle. Larry Kudlow?*

Tom Friedman in the New York Times:

So what would a smart American president do? First, he'd sign the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade accord. TPP eliminated as many as 18,000 tariffs on U.S. exports with the most dynamic economies in the Pacific and created a 12-nation trading bloc headed by the U.S. and focused on protecting what we do best — high-value-added manufacturing and intellectual property. Alas, Trump tore it up without reading it — one of the stupidest foreign policy acts ever. We Brexited Asia! China was not in TPP. It was a coalition built, in part, to pressure Beijing into fairer market access, by our rules. Trump just gave it up for free.

Once a smart president restored participation in TPP, he'd start secret trade talks with the Chinese — no need for anyone to lose face — and tell Beijing: "Since you like your trade rules so much, we're going to copy them for your companies operating in America: 25 percent tariffs on your cars, and your tech companies that open here have to joint venture and share intellectual property with a U.S. partner — and store all their data on U.S. servers."

Having a really tough trade negotiation with China on manufacturing and high technology, but doing it in secret, makes sense to me. Starting a public trade war with our allies over aluminum and steel that raises the costs for our manufacturers, that doesn't protect our growth industries and that loses allies that we need to deal with China makes absolutely no sense.

* Larry the-always-wrong Kudlow

“Occupation of the American Mind” wants to occupy the western Left mind

A friend brought my attention to this video of 2016, produced by Al-Jazeera with voiceover by Roger Waters.  That provenance might itself be enough for some people, but not me who will even watch Fox, sometimes.
It's a pan of propaganda, though it's propaganda itself; and a complaint about not having its message heard, when its message is spread abroad, and the reviews are uniformly favaourable.
I didn't start with any bias about it, despite its provenance.
So lets just see what it's about and if there's anything wrong with it.
Bearing in mind that all the reviews I could see online were and are favourable.
Mine is going to be unfavourable, because I've watched it twice and find it wanting.
Now these below are my Notes, and I need to tidy them up.
At this point, I just want to get them down on paper, as it were, and give a gist of what I'm thinking on this vid.

Basic thesis is that Israel (government) gets a lot more coverage than does the Palestinian side. They are in a PR “war” and are winning that war. But the reaction to this very video puts lie to that. All the reactions positive and was widely disseminated. So.... at the very least there’s been no conspiracy to suppress Palestinian sides voices.

Note use of “war”. Suggesting ill will and aggression. Maybe they’re just better (AIPAC). There’s a quote about how much AIPAC spends vs how much Palestinians spend. Why don’t PNO spend more then?

Is Israel just better at what it does and the whole film is a paean to envy? Note malicious envy. Part of reason for holocaust. (Ref to Hidden Brain. Shankar Vidantam. There’s also Hitchens theory that Mo felt dissed by the Jews hence the genesis of Muslim Jew hatred).

Opening scenes: 1947 and war. Makes it look like was a Jewish invasion. One of the commenters talks about the fact that it was not - as zionists (ZNO) claimed at the time -“a land without people for a people without land”. No it wasn’t. But neither was it a land invaded by Jews who ruthlessly killed and drove out the Palestinians.

Jews were about half the population of what became Israel. (NOT 8% quoted by Rami Khouri That relates to earlier period. Before Jewish immigration. By which Jews bought land from absentee Turkish landlords. And what? Is migration to be declared wrong? What about demands that Europe take in refugees to a land they’ve never had any claim to. Cf the ancient claims of Jews to Judea and Samaria).

Resolution 181 did give more land to Jews 54%, compared to their population 32%, but over half was the Negev desert.

Israel plays the “defence” card. Indeed they do and it’s correct. Only disputable if you dispute the very existence of Israel. Which of course many do, openly or not. And if that’s your view then there’s nothing more to talk about. Because Israel was created by the United Nations. (Palestinians love to quote UN resolutions but not the one that created Israel).

Resolution 242: quoted but only the bit about Israel’s obligations. Not the bit about Palestinian and Arab states obligations. That is to recognise Israel. Israel said it would abide by 242. PNO said no.

Israel has repeatedly offered terms along lines of 242 and been repeated rebuffed. Oslo, Camp David, Clinton.

Sabra and Shatila massacres carried out by right wing Lebanese militias NOT IDF.

(1). ZNO = Zionists and others, Zionist supporters.

(2). PNO = Palestinians and others, especially surrounding Arab states, and Iran, awa western supporters, mostly of the Left.

Opinion | Don’t Count Bibi Out — Yet - The New York Times

It should go without saying that a Palestinian state is a terrific idea in principle — assuming, that is, that it resembles the United Arab Emirates. But Israelis have no reason to believe that it will look like anything except the way Gaza does today: militant, despotic, desperate and aggressive. Netanyahu's foreign critics are demanding that he replicate on a large scale what has failed catastrophically on a smaller scale. It's an absurd ask.

[Snip from Bret Stephens' article linked here]
And let's not forget that the Palestinians have been offered their state numerous times and have repeatedly rebuffed the offers, a course snatching defeat from the jaws of victory laid down aby the horrid Yasser Arafat (nephew of the even more horrid Amin al-Huseini the viciously anti-Semitic murderer and would-be genocide enabler), and followed ever since by the Palestinian "leadership".

Opinion | Can the German Left Save Itself? - The New York Times

 ....the far-right party Alternative for Germany, widely known by its German initials as AfD, has managed to combine its fierce anti-immigrant stance with a new rhetorical and policy focus on social welfare — calling for higher wages, safer pensions and extended unemployment benefits. These are the kinds of issues that should be offered by the left, untainted by the AfD's putrid nationalism. (Snip from article linked here).

In what sense is the AfD "far right". Its policies are classically of the Left. As the author himself points out.
The only way the AfD differs from the Left is to raise concerns about unchecked immigration to Germany by young men (70% of whom are not refugees, but economic migrants jumping the queue) from countries with cultural practices totally inimical to the values of the Left. A bitter irony.
Because of this one area differing from the Left the views of AfD are called "putrid nationalism".
Oh the Blindness. Oh the Hypocrisy.

Althouse: "For the past year, Donald Trump has repeatedly denied the existence of a profound national security threat..."

Ann Althouse takes apart the NYT editorial about the Mueller indictments, which I also found less than dispositive.

You’re Wrong! I’m Right! - The New York Times| Nickolas Kristof

What we were kind of talking about recently, cognitive dissonance, confirmation bias and all that and how we — youse and I — are free of all that nonsense. (Not!).
Nickolas Kristof here on the importance of seeing the other side. Though he infamously did not do so in a show with Sam Harris and Ben Affleck. (On YouTube).

Violent crime in Sweden is soaring. When will politicians act? | The Spectator

Another view, counter to the one I recently posted. This is by far the consensus on the issue. Namely: big problems for Sweden, the self styled "humanitarian superpower".

Opinion | Do Israeli Students Need to Visit Auschwitz? - The New York Times

"Israel is not a compensation for Auschwitz."  

One of the interesting points made in this article by Shmuel Rosner in today's New York Times. 

Do you agree with his main point: Jewish visits to Auschwitz should end?

World Hijab Day is an insult to Muslim women

Say many of the commenters on @WorldHijabDay

Last Night in Malmö - Areo

I've written a few times about Sweden and the problems it's having with its Muslim immigrants.
Here is an interesting first-hand eye witness account with what seems to me a balanced view of daily life in Malmo, where the problems are said to be most acute.

Bill Gates and Steven Pinker Discuss Enlightenment Now

I read Stephen Pinker's "Better Angels of Our Nature" some years ago. I think I bought it because Bill Gates had said it was his favourite book of all time.
I can't count the number of times I've quoted it to counter assertions that the world is going to hell in a handbasket. (Not that it's always had an effect, mind, as people hold to beliefs for emotional, not always rational or fact based reasons).
Pinker even has a YouTube on progressives denying progress. (And it's always progressives, especially of the regressive Left, who hew to such views.). https://youtu.be/PnitLNObR7c
Here's Bill Gates' new favourite book: Stephen Pinkers follow up, "Enlightenment Now".

[Thanks to Jerry Coyne.  ]

Muslims the biggest victims | The Age, Letters. 29 January 2018

Muslim victimhood and apologia in The Age

Muslims the biggest victims The horrific terror attack in Kabul has killed over 95 innocent civilians and injured hundreds more. This attack again demonstrates that Muslims are in fact the biggest victims of terrorism. It is only when attacks such as these get as much media coverage as those in the West, that the public will begin to realise that these extremists are the enemies of humanity at large. Khizar Rana, Walkerville, SAA weekly occurrence  As an Ahmadi Muslim, I strongly condemn the terrorist attacks in Kabul in recent weeks and my prayers are with the families of the victims. Most people don't realise that most victims of terrorism are Muslims themselves. The number of attacks that happen in Western countries during a year occurs every week in Muslim countries. Two attacks in two weeks in Kabul have seen hundreds massacred but I don't expect Islamophobes to highlight the religious affinity of victims because then they can't blame Islam if such an atrocity occurs in a Western country.

Why I burned my 'Proof of Aboriginality' - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Link to Kerryn Pholi's fascinating article. 

Kerryn also has interesting views on today's Australia Day, aka "invasion day" ~ the British  "invasion" was a loss for aboriginal men; but not so much for aboriginal women who were given opportunities, with settlers, to get away from a patriarchal and violent (to women) male aboriginal culture. They were liberated, she says. 

She's of aboriginal descent herself. But not a "victim". Rather she thanks her ancestral grand/mothers for running away from their stone age males. 

Interesting woman, and worth reading her other articles via Google News. 

“Some inequality needed” | The Age

LETTER TO THE AGE PUBLISHED TODAY (26th Jan 2018) AS BELOW:

Your readers, and indeed leader writers, seem uniformly to believe: income inequality, bad; income equality, good. Allow me to dissent. China of the 1970s cured me of this absolutist view. When I first went to live there (1975), it was a very equal economy. From top leaders to factory workers, all earned pretty much the same – about $50 per month. This gave it a low (that is, "good") Gini index of 0.24.

Since then, China has opened up its economy and boomed. According to the World Bank, more than 500 million people were lifted out of extreme poverty as its poverty rate fell from 88 per cent in 1981 to 6.5per cent in 2012. But as this happened, inequality increased to give China a higher (that is, a "bad") Gini index of 0.46.

Someone has noted that inequality in an economy is much like water for plants. Water is needed, but too much and the plant drowns. And so for our economy. Unless we want the stultification of communism, some inequality is needed. Just not too much. Therein is the rub. But what seems certain is that it is not an absolute all or nothing.

Peter Forsythe, (former general manager for Austrade East Asia), Hong Kong

Inequality, like water for a plant

LETTER TO THE AGE, MELBOURNE

Your readers - and indeed your leader writers - seem uniformly to believe income inequality, bad; income equality, good.
Allow me to dissent.
China of the seventies cured me of this absolutist view.
When I first went to live there (1975) it was a very equal economy. From top leaders to factory workers all earned pretty much the same - about $50 per month. This gave it a low (ie "good") Gini index 0.24.
Since then it has opened up its economy and boomed.
According to the World Bank, more than 500 million people were lifted out of extreme poverty as China's poverty rate fell from 88 percent in 1981 to 6.5 percent in 2012.
But as this happened inequality increased to give China a higher (ie "bad") Gini index of 0.46.
Someone has noted that inequality in an economy is much like water for plants. Water is needed, but too much and the plant drowns.
And so for our economy. Unless we want the stultification of communism, some inequality is needed. Just not too much. Therein is the rub. But what seems certain is that it's not an absolute all or nothing.
P F etc...

LATER: This was run the on the 26th January in The Age

Climate sensitivity study suggests narrower range of potential outcomes | Science | The Guardian

Interesting article all the more so because in The Guardian...

“Joining China’s New Silk Road Will Help Fast Track Australia” |Stephen Loosley, The Australian

LETTER TO THE AUSTRALIAN
[NOTE to Letters Editor: this is not a letter to the editor so much as a comment to pass on to Mr Loosley, if you would. But by all means publish it if you wish]:
Mr Loosley, I found your article today well argued and persuasive. A good summary of how Australia ought to play its multilateral ties to best advantage in this increasingly complex world. 

But...

The figures on Chinese vs US economy projections can't be correct.
For the Chinese economy to be worth $42 Trillion by 2030 it would need to grow at 8% pa*. That used to be the case but is no longer.  Growing at the more likely 6% pa would give it a nominal GDP of about $30 T by then. (And even that may be a stretch)..
The US economy is worth today some $24 T. So for it to be the same in 2030 means zero growth, again unlikely.
If the US grows instead about 2% pa, its economy would be some $ 35 T, still larger than China's, not 43% smaller as implied by the Treasury figures quoted. 

This doesn't invalidate the point you make about the importance of our relationship with China and of its with the US. But still, lies, damned lies... and all that. Best to get the figures as correct as possible in these days of "fake news", what?

P F etc..

* Figures I use are from the World Bank. 

Of Leftism and Racism. (And shitholes and hypocrisy).

Those of the US Left argue that the Salvadorans on temporary protected status visas should not be sent home because El Salvador is still a corrupt, dangerous country, rife with crime and under the control of criminal gangs; riven by unspeakable violence and endemic poverty.
Yet when Donald Trump argues that countries like El Salvador, Haiti and other similarly lawless countries are “shitholes" for the very same reasons put forward by the Left, he is described at racist.
He might use colourful language, he might even be racist, but it cannot be because he agrees with the Left about El Salvador and the like. He is described as “racist" because that is the extent of the Left's arguments.

VIDEO: PM Netanyahu Spells Out The Threat Of Radical Islam | Yeshiva World News

Speaking truth to NATO. And a lot of common sense that we must heed. The potential, forthcoming, Sunni-Shi'a battle over the Middle East with severe and bad impacts in Europe.
Netanyahu be de man...