The fact that Trump gave a foreign policy
speech yesterday which lacked specificity,
as if Obama's foreign is coherent.
========================================================================
At least I was right in thinking The Fed would defer raising rates because of the general weakness in global growth and our own mixed domestic economic recovery.
Though, I have been wrong and did not anticipate the recent rally, now that most earnings are in and were basically bland, I believe we still have a down market period ahead.
Technology and financials should be weakening sectors, the health sector and income stocks should perform relatively better. But then, as always, what do I know.
===
I do believe Trump gave a decent explanation of why he believed we needed to change our foreign policy approach. No, he did not flesh it out to the satisfaction of The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board all the way to a synopsis from an AP Reporter but he raised some valid issues and now we need to see where he takes his argument.
Certainly the decline in our military capability leaves us unable to back our commitments and obligations.
Certainly we have meddled, caused upheavals and then done nothing to follow through and most assuredly, Obama has generally made a mess of the lesser one he inherited.
I am willing to give Trump latitude until such time as he gives us a second serving.
===
Israel helped The U.S. dodge a nuclear fall-out bullet.(See 1, 1a and 1b below.)
===
A climate scam in the making ?(See 2 below.)
===
As Europeans become mired down by their own problems, caused by their own stupidity, their desire to appease the Muslim community, which intends to slaughter them, and as they pull away from Israel, Netanyahu seeks new alliances and friends. (See 3 below.)
===
Roger Simon offers Trump advice on how to appeal to black voters in order to obtain some of their votes. On his way to The White House, Trump needs to mingle in the black community and show he cares and has solutions.
Black voters should have the same concerns as everyone else because they have the same problems as everyone else even bigger ones.
From my and Simon's perspective, they have been trapped in poor union controlled schools, live in drug infested neighborhoods, have seen their family unit destroyed by welfare and they are unable to cut their ties to a party which has brought them nothing but misery.
Sen. Moynihan told his party they were doing harm to their black constituencies over 50 years ago and virtually everything he said has come to pass but Democrats did not listen because they knew black voters were their's for the taking.(See 4 below.)
===
Now for some humor:
This is the story of the young blonde flying in a two-seater
with just the pilot.
He has a heart attack and dies.
She, frantic, grabs the mike and calls out a May Day.
"May Day! May Day! Help me! Help me! The pilot had a heart
attack and is dead and I don't know how to fly. Someone help
me! Please help me!"
She then hears a voice on the radio saying: "This is Air Traffic
Control and I have you loud and clear. I will talk you through
this and get you back on the ground. I've had a lot of
experience with this kind of problem. Now, just take a deep
breath, stay calm and everything will be fine! Now give me
your height and position."
She then says, "I'm 5'4" and I support Hillary."
The Air Controller replies - "you are beyond my reach can't
help, sorry."
|
===
Dick
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1) Former White House Adviser: Thanks to Israel, the US ‘Dodged a Bullet in Syria’
Author: Ruthie Blum
The United States “dodged a bullet in Syria… all courtesy of the Israelis,” former US Vice President Dick Cheney’s national security adviser asserted on Monday.
John Hannah, a senior fellow at the DC-based think tank the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, was referring to Operation Orchard, Israel’s September 6, 2007 bombing of the North Korean-built, plutonium-producing nuclear reactor in the town of Al-Kibar, in the desert east of Damascus.
“Not only did [the Israelis] discover [it] in the nick of time,” Hannah wrote in the journal Foreign Affairs. “They also carried out the attack that was almost certainly the only means of ensuring the reactor never went hot.”
In his piece, titled “It’s the Proliferation, Stupid,” Hannah recounted the day he received an urgent call from Cheney “to drop everything and get over to his White House office. The head of Israel’s Mossad, the late Meir Dagan, had just been in to brief Cheney and President [George W.] Bush. What he revealed was chilling: “compelling evidence” that North Korea was covertly building in Syria “more or less a replica” of its own reactor at Yongbyon – and that it was “perilously close to completion.”
“Options for getting rid of it would narrow considerably once operations began and the reactor went ‘hot,’” he continued. “At that point, any effort to destroy it through military strike or covert action would run a high risk of dispersing deadly radioactive materials that could poison thousands of innocent civilians.”
Calling the Syrian civil war a “strategic catastrophe” — after raking the US intelligence community over the coals for having “totally missed Al-Kibar” and being “completely taken aback by Dagan’s stunning revelations” — Hannah added, “[J]ust imagine the nightmare that the world would have faced if, on top of everything else, we were also dealing with the nightmare of the Islamic State getting its hands on a plutonium-producing nuclear reactor.”
Hanna used the story of active North Korean involvement in Syria nine years ago to warn against its behavior today. “The greatest threat we face from [Supreme Leader] Kim Jong Un is probably not a suicidal attack against the United States or our allies in Northeast Asia with nuclear missiles. Rather, the more likely danger is that North Korea’s tyrant sells part of his ever-expanding nuclear arsenal to other rogue actors that mean us harm,” he wrote, going on to identify Iran and its proxy, Hezbollah, as particularly worthy of note and monitoring.
As a result of last summer’s nuclear deal, Iran is supposed to restrain its program for the next decade or so, while submitting to greater international scrutiny on its territory. In exchange, it will get tens of billions of dollars in cash and the ability to once again sell as much oil as it can on international markets. For its part, North Korea is cash and oil poor but under no such nuclear restrictions…The potential for synergy between these two rogue states and longtime proliferation partners is more than obvious. Especially in the wake of new U.N. sanctions, Pyongyang is desperate for money and fuel. Iran has ample quantities of both, but needs a place beyond the IAEA’s reach where its nuclear weapons efforts can advance covertly over the next decade…
[W]e’ve had ample warning for decades that almost anything is possible. Pyongyang has more than proven its readiness to sell some of the world’s most dangerous weapons and technology to the world’s most dangerous actors, so long as there is money to be made and no serious chance of meaningful punishment for its transgressions. As the North’s nuclear arsenal grows in size and sophistication, as its economic straits grow more desperate, and as the rhetoric and actions of its mercurial young dictator grows more bellicose and erratic, we should expect the worst from Pyongyang, while acting now to develop the necessary capabilities, strategies, and policies to ensure it never happens.
Israel’s airstrike on the Al-Kibar reactor was carried out during the tenure of former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who is currently serving a jail sentence for a corruption and bribery case involving his term as mayor of Jerusalem from 1993-2003.
It is only recently that Israel has begun informally to acknowledge conducting the airstrike, which Syria also kept under wraps.
According to Bush’s 2010 memoir, Decision Points, Olmert was “not pleased” with the strategy of the White House, which was to use diplomacy rather than “bomb… a sovereign country with no warning or announced justification.”
Bush wrote: “Prime Minister Olmert hadn’t asked for a green light, and I hadn’t given one. He had done what he believed was necessary to protect Israel.”
This was not the first time that Israel had launched a strike to prevent a nuclear site from going “hot.” On June 7, 1981, under the premiership of the late Menachem Begin, the Israel Air force carried out Operation Babylon, a strike on a nuclear reactor in Iraq. The attack was harshly criticized by the United States under President Ronald Reagan and condemned by the UN Security Council.
BY JOHN HANNAH
·
As the world prepares for a possible fifth nuclear weapons test by North Korea (and second since January), here’s something worth keeping in mind: The greatest threat we face from Kim Jong Un is probably not a suicidal attack against the United States or our allies in Northeast Asia with nuclear missiles. Rather, the more likely danger is that North Korea’s tyrant sells part of his ever-expanding nuclear arsenal to other rogue actors that mean us harm.
That danger is real, if the past is any guide. I well remember the day in spring 2007 when I got an urgent call from Vice President Cheney to drop everything and get over to his White House office. The head of Israel’s Mossad, the late Meir Dagan, had just been in to brief Cheney and President Bush. What he revealed was chilling: compelling evidence that in the Syrian desert east of Damascus, near the town of Al-Kibar, North Korea was covertly building a plutonium-producing nuclear reactor. It was more or less a replica of the North’s own reactor at Yongbyon, which formed the centerpiece of its weapons program.
Making matters worse, Al-Kibar was perilously close to completion. Options for getting rid of it would narrow considerably once operations began and the reactor went “hot.” At that point, any effort to destroy it through military strike or covert action would run a high risk of dispersing deadly radioactive materials that could poison thousands of innocent civilians.
For its part, the U.S. intelligence community had totally missed Al-Kibar. It was completely taken aback by Dagan’s stunning revelations. Indeed, since the early days of the Bush administration, senior officials like Cheney and Undersecretary of State John Bolton had repeatedly queried the CIA about indications that Syria was pursuing nuclear weapons, including via cooperation with North Korea. After all, ample evidence existed that Pyongyang had for years assisted Syria’s ballistic missile efforts. Government officials with connections to the North’s WMD programs were regular visitors to Damascus. Yet until the day in 2007 that Dagan showed up at the White House, the CIA’s answer never changed: The evidence was insufficient to suggest that the Assad regime might be seeking nukes. In fact, when Bolton raised his suspicions publicly in a 2003 congressional hearing, the intelligence community went berserk, launching a furious campaign of leaks to undermine Bolton’s credibility.
The fact is that the United States dodged a bullet in Syria — and, it’s worth stressing, all courtesy of the Israelis. Not only did they discover Al-Kibar in the nick of time. They also carried out the attack that was almost certainly the only means of ensuring the reactor never went hot. The Syrian civil war has without doubt been a strategic catastrophe. But just imagine the nightmare that the world would have faced if, on top of everything else, we were also dealing with the nightmare of the Islamic State getting its hands on a plutonium-producing nuclear reactor.
While Al-Kibar may have been the most egregious case of North Korean proliferation, it was hardly unique. North Korea has for decades sold missiles and missile technology to any state willing to pay. Such transfers are believed to have constituted one of the impoverished country’s most important lines of revenue. Egypt, Iran, Libya, Myanmar, Pakistan, Syria, and Yemen have all been beneficiaries. The military relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran, in particular, has been longstanding and deep, commencing in the 1980s and continuing to the present. Virtually all of Iran’s most important nuclear-capable missile platforms can in fact be sourced to North Korean technology.
Importantly, Pyongyang’s proliferation bazaar has been open not only to states, but to dangerous non-state actors as well. Iran’s most deadly terrorist proxy, Lebanese Hezbollah, has also been an important recipient of North Korean military assistance. The North provided critical support to help Hezbollah build a massive network of underground military installations, tunnels, bunkers, depots, and storage facilities in southern Lebanon. Moreover, North Korea has played a major role in building up Hezbollah’s huge missile arsenal, sending rocket and missile components to Iran where they were assembled and then shipped to Hezbollah for use against Israeli civilian targets.
With that kind of proliferation rap sheet, one hopes that the American intelligence community is focused like a laser on this element of the North Korean threat. Here, the North’s link with Iran has to be priority number one — especially in light of recent developments.
As a result of last summer’s nuclear deal, Iran is supposed to restrain its program for the next decade or so, while submitting to greater international scrutiny on its territory. In exchange, it will get tens of billions of dollars in cash and the ability to once again sell as much oil as it can on international markets. For its part, North Korea is cash and oil poor but under no such nuclear restrictions. On the contrary, it has spent the first four months of 2016 dramatically ramping up its efforts to improve its expanding nuclear deterrent. Indeed, the North is seeking to perfect precisely those elements of its military nuclear arsenal that Iran has yet to develop: the testing of an actual bomb; warhead miniaturization; reentry technology; and a functional ICBM.
The potential for synergy between these two rogue states and longtime proliferation partners is more than obvious. Especially in the wake of new U.N. sanctions, Pyongyang is desperate for money and fuel. Iran has ample quantities of both, but needs a place beyond the IAEA’s reach where its nuclear weapons efforts can advance covertly over the next decade. Outsourcing the research and development for its military nuclear program to Kim Jong Un is hardly unthinkable — especially when so much of the critical test results can be easily transferred on something as small as a portable USB flash drive. Indeed, it’s almost certainly no more unthinkable than trying to get away with building a plutonium reactor undetected in the heart of the Middle East. And yet Al-Kibarr really happened.
No doubt less likely — but who’s to say impossible? — is the risk that North Korea, for the right price and perhaps in cahoots with the Russian mafia or another anti-Western power, might be tempted to share some part of its nuclear know-how with the likes of the Islamic State or some other jihadist non-state actor that’s focused on staging a terrorist spectacular against the West. There’s well-founded concern that the Islamic State is in very much in the market for WMD, especially radioactive materials. U.S.-led air attacks have clearly cut into its revenues, but the Islamic State probably remains the richest terrorist group in history, with legions of admirers on every continent, including throughout the West. As for motive, well, have you compared some of the videos and rhetoric coming out of Raqqa and Pyongyang recently? Notice any similarities? In terms of blood-curdling intent to lay waste to America and make the death and destruction of 9/11 appear as mere child’s play, Kim Jong Un certainly gives Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi a run for his money.
Assuming Kim thought enough plausible deniability might be built in to such an operation, just how big a leap would it really be for him to outfit Islamic State with the radioactive waste necessary for a few dirty bombs?
As the 9/11 Commission instructed us, a failure of imagination contributed mightily to the attack that caught America totally unaware and vulnerable that awful day. In the case of North Korea, we’ve had ample warning for decades that almost anything is possible. Pyongyang has more than proven its readiness to sell some of the world’s most dangerous weapons and technology to the world’s most dangerous actors, so long as there is money to be made and no serious chance of meaningful punishment for its transgressions. As the North’s nuclear arsenal grows in size and sophistication, as its economic straits grow more desperate, and as the rhetoric and actions of its mercurial young dictator grows more bellicose and erratic, we should expect the worst from Pyongyang, while acting now to develop the necessary capabilities, strategies, and policies to ensure it never happens.
John Hannah is a senior counselor at Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
*
1b) The miniaturization myth
Obama and ‘experts’ wrongly measure North Korea’s nuclear intentions
By R. James Woolsey and Peter Vincent Pry
On March 9, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, a paranoid psychopath, displayed a nuclear missile warhead he threatens to launch against the United States and its allies.
The public is being misled by the White House, some so-called “experts” and mainstream media casting doubt on whether the Great Leader’s threat is real. They claim North Korea has not demonstrated sufficient “miniaturization” of a nuclear weapon to be delivered by a missile.
However, defense and intelligence community officials warn North Korea probably already has nuclear armed missiles. The Defense Department’s 2016 report “Military and Security Developments Involving the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea” warns that, in addition to medium-range missiles, they have six KN-08 mobile nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that can strike the U.S. mainland.
Recently, the Pentagon warned North Korea rolled out a new longer-range ICBM, the KN-14, that can probably deliver a nuclear warhead to Chicago.
So the notion that we don’t have to worry about North Korean nuclear missiles because they cannot “miniaturize” warheads is a myth. Adm. William Gortney, Commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) is correct to presume that is the case and to prepare to defend against that threat, as he said last October.
Technologically, “miniaturizing” a nuclear warhead is much easier than developing an atomic bomb or a multi-stage missile for orbiting satellites — as North Korea has already done. Ever since the USSR orbited Sputnik in 1957, analysts have rightly credited any nation that has tested nuclear weapons and orbited satellites with the capability to make a nuclear missile warhead.
Miniaturization was no huge obstacle to the United States.
According to the “Nuclear Weapon Archive” just a few years after destroying Hiroshima with an A-Bomb weighing 9,700 pounds, the U.S. Army had the T-1, a man-carried atomic landmine weighing 150 pounds.
In 1958, the United States developed its first ICBM warhead, the W49 for the Atlas, in about one year. Development could have been faster without USAF stalling because it preferred bombers, according to Edmund Beard’s book “Developing the ICBM.”
A major problem with warhead miniaturization was the bulky, heavy vacuum tube electronics of the 1950s. Microelectronics resulted in part from programs to miniaturize nuclear weapons.
The microelectronics revolution solved most technological challenges of warhead miniaturization long ago for North Korea and for all nuclear missile aspirants.
A nuclear missile warhead also needs shock absorbers to soften forces of acceleration during launching and deceleration when re-entering the atmosphere. A heat shield to penetrate the atmosphere, in order to blast a city, is also necessary — these are technologically simple and within North Korea’s capability.
Indeed, in 2013, a publicity photo by state media of North Korea’s KSM-3 satellite interior shows a shock absorber cage, allegedly for an earth observation camera but suitable for a small nuclear weapon. North Korea recently conducted another illegal missile test demonstrating a re-entry vehicle and heat shield.
The president and the press is missing, or ignoring, the biggest threat from North Korea — their satellites. On February 7, North Korea orbited a second satellite, the KSM-4, to join their KSM-3 satellite launched in December 2012.
Both satellites now are in south polar orbits, evading many U.S. missile defense radars and flying over the United States from the south, where our defenses are limited. Both satellites — if nuclear armed — could make an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack that could blackout the U.S. electric grid for months or years, thereby killing millions.
Technologically, such an EMP attack is easy — since the weapon detonates at high-altitude, in space, no shock absorbers, heat shield, or vehicle for atmospheric re-entry is necessary. Since the radius of the EMP is enormous, thousands of kilometers, accuracy matters little. Almost any nuclear weapon will do.
Moreover, North Korea probably has nuclear weapons specially designed, not to make a big explosion, but to emit lots of gamma rays to generate high-frequency EMP. Senior Russian generals warned EMP Commissioners in 2004 that their EMP nuclear warhead design leaked “accidentally” to North Korea, and unemployed Russian scientists found work in North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.
The 2004 EMP Commission report warns: “Certain types of relatively low-yield nuclear weapons can be employed to generate potentially catastrophic EMP effects over wide geographic areas, and designs for variants of such weapons may have been illicitly trafficked for a quarter-century.”
Such an EMP nuclear warhead could resemble an Enhanced Radiation Warhead (ERW, also called a Neutron Bomb), a technology dating to the 1950s, deployed by the U.S. in the 1980s as the W48 ERW artillery shell, weighing less than 100 pounds.
Are EMP warheads on those North Korean satellites?
The immediate focus should be on Senate passage of the Critical Infrastructure Protection Act to protect the U.S. electric grid — not on the miniaturization problem myth.
R. James Woolsey was director of the Central Intelligence Agency and is chairman of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. Peter Vincent Pry is executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security.
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2)
Climate Deal Forecast: Frost for the U.S. Economy, Slush Funds for the Planet
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry holds his granddaughter as he signs the Paris Agreement on climate change, Friday, April 22, 2016 at U.N. headquarters. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
One of the best catalogues of human folly is the 19th century book by Charles MacKay, "Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds." MacKay chronicles a host of scams, superstitions and mass frenzies, including the South Sea Bubble, Tulipomania, Alchemy and Witch Mania. To this roster, some future historian may someday add the full tale of the early 21st century Climate Mania, in which a throng of politicians, United Nations bureaucrats, film stars and what not promised that if they were just given enough power over our use of lightbulbs, cars, planes, ships, oil, gas, electricity and energy in general, they would -- for the greater good of mankind, mind you -- arrange to control to within a few decimal points the temperature of the planet.
For the moment, however, this is not history we are talking about. We are stuck in the acute phase of Climate Mania. This Friday, "Earth Day," brought the signing ceremony at the UN's New York headquarters of the Paris Agreement on "Climate Change." More than 170 nations signed on, including such curators of human progress and enlightenment as North Korea, Sudan, Cuba and Iran. Actor Leonardo Di Caprio spoke from the podium of the General Assembly chamber. Secretary of State John Kerry brought his infant granddaughter, and held her on his lap while he signed the accord. UN leaders planted a tree in the UN "Food Garden."
General Ban Ki-moon called it "an historic day" (everything these days is "historic") and told the assembled eminences "The era of consumption without consequences is over" (if that's true, then surely one of the first things to go should be the UN itself, complete with the recent $2 billion-plus makeover of its NY offices -- except the UN has always enjoyed immunity from its own pronouncements).
For all the hoopla, the Paris accord is not yet a done deal. But it soon may be. For this agreement to enter into force, at least 55 countries, accounting for 55% of "global greenhouse gas emissions," must now sort out on the national level how they plan to comply, and deposit their instruments of ratification with the UN. Fifteen have already done so
And now we descend into some of the real dirt of this deal. In the U.S., President Obama -- in spirit similar to his ramming through of the Iran nuclear deal -- is preparing to slide right past such Constitutional requirements as acknowledging a treaty for what it is, and submitting it to be ratified by the Senate. Which, as Julian Morris notes, the current Republican Senate majority would not do.
In a background press briefing this past Wednesday, a senior State Department was asked about the process by which the U.S. would join the Paris accord. The official replied, "we have a standard State Department exercise that we are currently going through for authorizing an executive agreement." According to this official, the Obama administration has decided that because the U.S. joined the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change back in 1992, this new treaty is not really a treaty (never mind the "historic" festivities at the UN), but an extension of existing obligations, ergo merely a matter for Obama's pen. (Never mind the potentially colossal cost to the average American).
Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, and Rep. Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania take a very different view, writing for the Heritage Foundation's Daily Signal under the headline "Obama's Violating the Constitution by Not Submitting Climate Treaty to Senate." They note that under this climate accord the U.S. would be binding itself to a long-term framework, forcing it to choke its carbon emissions "for decades to come." They also note that when the Senate ratified the 1992 UNFCCC treaty, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee "specifically reported that any future emissions targets 'would have to be submitted to the Senate for its Advice and Consent.' President Obama has chosen to ignore this directive."
There's also the disturbing question of whether President Obama will try to couple his costly climate projects with an end-run around U.S. law that forbids government funding to any "affiliated organization of the United Nations" that grants the Palestinians membership as a state. Quick background: When UNESCO (the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) admitted the Palestinians as full members in 2011, the agency lost its U.S. funding. Since then the Obama administration has been lobbying Congress to waive U.S. law in order to resume sending American tax dollars to UNESCO.
Last month, the UNFCCC allowed the Palestinian Authority to become a full member. The Palestinians have now signed the Paris Agreement. As Sen. John Barrasso reports, Washington gives money to the UNFCCC, and the White House has "unilaterally pledged $3 billion for international climate change as part of the Paris deal." This week, 28 senators -- including Barrasso -- wrote a letter to Kerry imploring the administration "to hold the Palestinians accountable for their actions in circumventing the peace process, and to abide by current law prohibiting U.S. taxpayer funds for the UNFCCC and its related entities and other UN affiliated organizations that recognize the 'State of Palestine.' "
Then we come to the Paris climate treaty itself, complete with its stress on "climate justice" and "making finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development."
Allow me to translate: This is a framework outlining central planning for the planet. It is all about regulating energy use and redirecting wealth, around the globe, according to the preferences of such faceless international bureaucracies as the Paris treaty's "Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice" and the "Subsidiary Body for Implementation." There will be a largely unaccountable Green Climate Fund, and a prerogative for this Convention to proliferate lots more subsidiary bodies.
As a treaty, it's nonbinding in its particulars. Countries would set their own targets, binding themselves according to their own laws and preferences, for such ventures as limiting carbon emissions and contributing (or soliciting) funds, as they strive, officially, to promote such goals as "environmental integrity, transparency, accuracy, completeness, comparability and consistency."
Surely no one believes that this is how it will work for such signatories as North Korea, Sudan, or a great many of the unfree member states of the UN, where there is no real domestic accountability, and the rules boil down to whatever pleases the dictator, or enriches the corrupt bureaucracy.
But that's the very point. The agreement would effectively license governments around the globe to set up toll gates -- even more than they do now -- for the production and use, in many forms, of energy. This is a license for authorities in developed countries, especially in Washington, to impose confiscatory policies on their own people, further regulating production and channeling wealth.
The way this works is, America as a whole will suffer, especially the little guy; but well-placed cronies will enjoy enormous opportunities to get rich. This will be justified in the name of directing, under the holy mantle of a UN-driven treaty, flows of money to less developed countries. The rubber-stamp rationale will be that this is to help poor countries "adapt" to whatever goes on with the climate. The Paris convention states: "Developed country Parties shall provide financial resources to assist developing Country Parties with respect to both mitigation and adaptation."
Though no one should expect that much in the way of mitigating or adapting -- whether to climate, or to anything else -- would come of this treaty. As a rule, poor countries tend to be poor not because of climate (changing or otherwise), but because they are badly ruled. The tyrants usually do quite well for themselves. It's the people living under them who get short rations and no power. At the extreme, the difference between North Korea and South Korea is not due to some abrupt shift of climate at the 38th parallel. Nor is the difference between income (and innovation and adaptability and electrical power) in Miami versus Havana a matter of climate.
Sending money, or funding projects, to help poor countries "mitigate" change in climate, or "adapt" to it, is largely a farce, more likely to fortify dictatorships than to help the people living under them. But controlling such traffic in money and resources can translate into a jackpot. This is why the Paris Agreement got so many eager signatories so fast. The UN is a conclave of governments, and for government officials and their pals, from Pyongyang to Paris to Washington, there's a lot of potential cream in this deal -- the skim milk goes to the more lowly world populace that the UN pretends to represent.
The real mechanism for adapting to changes in climate, or simply changes in old-fashioned weather, has always been ingenuity and innovation -- from the use of fire, to the invention of clothes, housing, heating, air conditioning and all the other means by which mankind from Siberia to South Africa has arranged to survive. And for innovation, the best formula is capitalism; free markets, rather than state bureacracies filing biennial reports to international capacity-building committees.
As for the limits on carbon emissions -- the "science" of man-made effects on climate is about as settled as was once the idea that the sun orbited the earth. I'd recommend the recent congressional testimony of the intrepid and witty Mark Steyn, who describes the "climate of fear" now prevailing within climate science. The Paris agreement will not help.
But don't take my word for any of this. Have a look for yourself. The Paris document itself runs to 29 articles. The version concocted in Paris last December was amended to produce a final version which you can find in the annex, pages 21-36, of the UNFCCC's "Report of the Conference of the Parties on its twenty-first session, held in Paris from 30 November to 13 December 2015." One of the grand aims of Article 2 is to hold "the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 [degrees] C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 [degrees] C above pre-industrial levels, recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change."
This is to be combined with -- this is just a sample -- "country-driven, gender-responsive, participatory and full transparent approach, taking into consideration vulnerable groups, communities and ecosystems... with a view to integrating adaptation into relevant socioeconomic and environmental actions and policies, where appropriate."
Once countries such as America have bound themselves to upholding this deal (courtesy of Obama's pen), once the choke holds have been imposed and the slush funds have swelled, all of the above is supposed to come together in the second half of the century to control the temperature of the earth, alleviate poverty and usher humanity into a brave new world of "climate justice." What could go wrong?
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
3)
As Old Friendships Cool, Netanyahu Looks East for Support
By Jonathan Ferziger
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s approach to Israel’s international relations is changing.
Criticized by U.S. and European leaders over his policies toward the Palestinians, the Israeli leader is cultivating allies in other parts of the world that share economic interests and enemies.
Netanyahu’s government started free-trade talks with China in March, is negotiating favored-nation status with Japan and last week hosted Singapore’s prime minister on his first visit to Israel. The four-time premier is planning a summer tour of Africa and says even Arab countries are drawing closer to Israel over shared fears of Iran. Netanyahu also has invested in ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin, visiting Moscow last week to discuss shared military concerns in Syria and pledging to return in June for his third visit in 10 months.
Those close to Netanyahu say global tectonic shifts — no superpower in charge, Iran rising, the Middle East imploding, China driving economic growth — have convinced him Israel must develop new alliances and tighten links to countries from which it was once estranged.
“Over the longer term, there are problems for Israel in its relations with Western Europe and with the U.S.,” said Mark Heller, principal research associate at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. In contrast, “relations with many important Asian countries are fairly stable and they don’t seem to indicate much interest or concern about how Israel gets along with the Palestinians, Arabs or anyone else.”
Superpower Vacuum
The collapse of peace talks has left little reason for Netanyahu to try to bridge the gap with the Obama administration on the Palestinians or Iran, said a former adviser who spoke on condition of anonymity.
It also may have emboldened the Israeli leader to confront critics more stridently. In recent months Netanyahu dismissed Swedish criticism of Israel’s anti-terror moves as “immoral and stupid,” stared down Brazil over the appointment of a settler leader as ambassador, canceled a White House visit without informing U.S. officials and declared Israel will never return the Golan Heights to Syria.
Opponents say Israel’s success attracting investment from Silicon Valley and from Asian tycoons like Li Ka-shing has inured the 66-year-old premier to criticism.
Netanyahu “says to himself: ‘Nobody’s punishing me, so why should I behave differently than I really want?’” said Yossi Beilin, architect of the 1993 peace accords with the Palestinians and a former leader of Israel’s left-wing Meretz Party.
His two-seat margin in the Knesset leaves Netanyahu in a constant balancing act that includes appeasing critics of the U.S. and Europe within his cabinet.
“With his constituency, there’s always a political benefit to saying, ‘Look, I stood up to these guys,’ ” Heller said.
Asian Boost
Still, the U.S. is by far Israel’s most important ally, vetoing critical U.N. Security Council resolutions and giving $3.1 billion in annual aid. The European Union remains Israel’s primary trading partner.
Exports to the U.S. and Europe have declined since the global financial crisis, however, while Israel’s exports to Asia rose to $17.7 billion in 2015 from $12.2 billion in 2008. Exports to China alone surged to $3.2 billion from $1.3 billion during that period. Trade with China rose 11 percent in 2012-14, compared with a 7.5 percent decline for the U.S.
“You want to go where the growth is,” Eli Groner, director-general of Netanyahu’s office, said in a telephone interview. “We’re looking eastward, where consumption’s growing significantly — China, India, Japan.”
Political Payback
Israel wants these trading partners to lend more political support.
“Many other countries want to learn about our technology, water desalination, agriculture,” Danny Danon, Israel’s U.N. ambassador, said in a February interview. “We’re eager to help them, but we also expect some reciprocity.”
Even half-steps are appreciated. Israel’s ambassador tweeted a thank you after India abstained on a UN Human Rights Council vote last July condemning Israel for alleged war crimes in the Gaza Strip. While European allies joined in the 47-1 vote against Israel, Kenya and Ethiopia — both central to Netanyahu’s strategy to boost trade ties in Africa — abstained.
Some Arab states, tired of the decades-old Palestinian conflict, are eager to buy Israeli cyber-security, agricultural and water-management products, Netanyahu said at a conference in February.
“They come for three reasons: technology, technology and technology,” he said.
International Cost
Longer-term, pressure on Israel is building, with Palestinian supporters launching an international campaign of boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel. The EU recommended last November that member states identify products made in West Bank settlements, and the United Methodist Church’s pension board, which manages $20 billion in assets, divested from five Israeli banks.
Earlier this month, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden told a liberal American Jewish group that Netanyahu’s policies are “moving Israel in the wrong direction.”
Still, Netanyahu may calculate the world has more important things to worry about than the settlements, said Yoram Meital, chairman of the Herzog Center for Middle East Studies and Diplomacy at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
“As long as the eyes of the international community are on Islamic State and on Syria, he knows they’re not going to twist his arm with the Palestinian card,” Meital said.
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4)
How Trump Can Win the Black Vote to Win the Election
In the welter of cable commentary over Donald Trump's overwhelming victories in the so-called "Acela primary" Tuesday, among the most startling was an aside by CNN's Van Jones that Trump could win the election if he got just 25% of the black vote. Now this didn't make the African-American activist who co-founded and is the current president of Dream Corps, a “social justice accelerator,” particularly happy. Nor did or does it please BET's Tavis Smiley, who has made similar mention of Trump's possible inroads in the black community. But it's true.
Donald Trump really could win the general election by being the first Republican in years to gain a significant percentage of the African-American vote. He just has to make a serious and sustained effort, with genuine proposals, to do it. If the attempt is simply self-referential bluster (like bragging about the actually paltry number of Hispanics who voted for him in Nevada) coupled with unspecified pledges of "greatness," he might as well not bother. It will end up a disheartening misfire that will not only be an insult to his supporters but a continuing -- and worsening -- wound to our country.
Nevertheless, the auguries for Trump in this area are extremely good, certainly the best in recent years for a Republican, if he should choose to act upon them. And for the sake of all Americans, he should. In fact, he'd better.
The African-American community is in a miserable condition that has been getting worse for decades and has reached its nadir under Obama -- two-parent families disappearing, unemployment rates skyrocketing, incarceration rates catastrophic, drug addiction epidemic. We all look on in despair as gang members shoot children in the streets of Chicago and murders -- almost all black-on-black -- proliferate in Baltimore after years of decline.
What is to be done about all this? Hillary Clinton will certainly have plenty to say, but it will all be the same old disingenuous bilge. She can't be part of the solution because she -- like the Democratic Party she has served loyally for almost her entire life -- is part of the problem. For reasons of moral narcissism and political expediency, beginning with the Great Society that party has set up a system in black communities that has trapped African-Americans into a non-stop cycle of government dependency, turning them into what talk show host Larry Elder dubbed "victocrats," believers in perpetual victimhood, a self-fulfilling prophecy, if there ever was one. The #blacklivesmatter movement is only the most recent avatar.
Many black people -- just not the brilliant minds like Thomas Sowell and Elder -- know this. They are just constrained by the atmosphere in their communities, the evil influence and machinations of those like Reverend Al and Maxine Waters, against speaking up. Others have simply given up. It's hard to blame them. How do you break this cycle?
Enter Donald Trump.
No, Donald cannot solve the problems of black America by himself -- not by a long shot. That job goes to African-Americans themselves. But he can do something, get things kick started and possibly win (in this case deservedly) a presidential election in the process.
Here's why and how:
WHY: This is easy. He's Donald Trump. As the biggest celebrity ever to run for president, he'll get the full attention of African- Americans, especially if he goes to their communities personally, which he must. (Do you think any other Republican of recent vintage would raise a stir? In a recent episode of Watters' World, several Harvard students didn't even know who John Kasich was.)
HOW: This is the important part. As luck would have it, one of Trump's signature campaign goals -- bringing jobs back to America -- refers directly to one of the key problems of black America -- rampant unemployment. But it gets more specific. Trump speaks continually of American corporations -- Carrier, Pfizer, and Ford, among others -- moving their factories out of our country to lower their taxes and other costs, while we lose jobs.
What if Trump were to propose that those corporations could return to America tax free (for a certain amount of time), if they were to build those new factories not in foreign countries but in our own disadvantaged communities? (This is a variant on the old Jack Kemp opportunity-zone idea.) In the case of a Ford, Trump could go further, talking to the UAW and asking them to reduce their minimums in those communities as well (for a similar amount of time) until the local work forces were sufficiently trained and the factories humming. The man who invented, or at least wrote, The Art of the Deal should be able to get this done. It would be a win, win, win for everybody.
Republicans always claim capitalism is the true motor of society and that earning a decent wage for honest work is far better for the psyche than a welfare check. And they're right, of course. But they don't do anything to demonstrate it -- all talk and no action. This is their opportunity. At the same time it could begin to put a dent in the loathsome identity politics that drives us apart and help get rid of ugly hyphenates like African-American, which I use only regrettably. We should all just be Americans. There's nothing worse for black people -- or any other group -- than to continue voting monolithically for one political party.
Roger L. Simon is a prize-winning novelist, Academy Award-nominated screenwriter and co-founder of PJ Media. His next book - I Know Best: How Moral Narcissism Is Destroying Our Country, If It Hasn't Already - will be published by Encounter Books in June 2016.
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