https://pjmedia.com/trending/m
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Is all the unscientific hot air about Global Warming causing Global Warning?
And:
I watched some fabulous tennis matches instead of the debate.
Do we really want a president who tells us we cannot eat a cheese burger and we cannot sip out of plastic straws? ,Are these the critical issues facing our nation and the world? Do we really want a government that tracks who "farts?" Where will government intrusions stop? What kind of freedoms will remain after a government is elected that is dead set on attacking our Constitution.
Do we really want one of the current radical Democrats to lead us God knows where? Trump may be crude but his policies have been working and those that have not have been intractable for years and, at least, he continues to press forward in a consistent manner. When it comes to China, he is very clear as to the threat they pose and the same for N Korea and Iran. (See 1 below.)
When it comes to China, the market liked what it heard that negotiations are moving forward. That said I have several concerns:
a) You cannot trust China any more than you can trust Russia. Lying is what dictators do. It is part of their tongue's DNA.
b) Trump might settle for something less than a victory in order to claim he negotiated a victory and/or he might be angered if he concludes Xi plays him and he might over react and lose sight of Xi's need to save face.
c) Given a choice, China/Xi probably would much rather negotiate with a Democrat nominee than Trump and might ultimately holdout for the election and endure more pain. The risk for Xi is Trump could win and Trump would gain more leverage.
Meanwhile, a modicum of co-operation from Democrats would help of course, so Trump could negotiate from a united position, but lamentably Democrats have a history of placing winning over doing what's best for the nation. and ignore the cost of their obstruction.
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Bibi's relationships cannot be ignored. (See 2 below.)
And:
Can Israel avoid attacking Iran at some future date. I personally doubt it. (See 2a below.)
And:
Hanson evaluates Israel's new friendships and their potential danger. (See 2b below.)
Finally, Eli Hertz is a friend and fellow memo reader. (See 2c below.)
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Watching American's helping those devastated by Dorian in The Bahamas is the real America and the optics and results are superior to when Clinton "raped" Haiti.
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If anyone is away and would like me to check their home please e mail me and I will be happy to do so.
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Dick
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1)
Why China Won’t Retaliate…
China indicated that it wouldn’t immediately retaliate against the latest U.S. tariff increase announced by President Donald Trump last week, emphasizing the need to discuss ways to deescalate the trade war between the world’s two largest economies.
“China has ample means for retaliation, but thinks the question that should be discussed now is about removing the new tariffs to prevent escalation of the trade war,” Ministry of Commerce spokesman Gao Feng told reporters in Beijing on Thursday. “China is lodging solemn representations with the U.S. on the matter.”
When asked if that meant China wouldn’t retaliate at all for the latest escalation by the U.S., Gao didn’t elaborate but repeated the same comments. China has hit back against each previous tariff increase by the U.S., so not responding in kind this time may signal a change in strategy.
Stocks across Asia pared losses and European stocks turned higher with U.S. equity futures as investors interpreted the comments as an olive branch from Beijing aimed at getting talks back on track. Gao said that both sides are discussing the previously announced trip in September by Chinese negotiators to Washington.
Gao’s remarks came amid signs China’s economy slowed further in August as weak domestic conditions. The downshifting is evident in a Bloomberg Economics gauge aggregating the earliest available indicators from financial markets and businesses.
The U.S.-China Tariffs
The U.S. announced new tariff rates earlier this month on $300 billion of Chinese goods that will come into effect in September and December. Beijing then retaliated last week, announcing its own higher import taxes.
That prompted a reaction from Trump, who tweeted that existing 25% tariffs on some $250 billion in imports from China would rise to 30% come Oct. 1, the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. He also lifted planned levies on $300 billion in Chinese goods due on Sept. 1 and Dec. 15 even higher.
“Escalation of the trade war won’t benefit China, nor the U.S., nor the world,” Gao said. “The most important thing is to create the necessary conditions for continuing negotiations.”
Gao also repeated Vice Premier Liu He’s comments on Monday that China is “willing to solve the problem through consultation and cooperation with a calm attitude, but firmly opposes escalation of trade war.”
If Chinese officials go to the U.S. for talks next month, the two sides should work together to create conditions for talks to progress, Gao said. Both sides are currently discussing the trip, and information on that will be released in a timely manner when available, according to Gao, indicating that the schedule isn’t set yet.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Wednesday that U.S. trade officials expect Chinese negotiators to visit Washington, but wouldn’t say whether the September meeting would take place.
When asked about Trump’s claims that China had called over the weekend to resume trade talks, Gao said the two teams have been in “effective communications,” but he had no more details to reveal.
“There are all kinds of rumors flying around right now. We will clarify the facts regarding trade and let the public know the truth.”
— With assistance by James Mayger, and Miao Han
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2)
Netanyahu's ‘trust factor' with superpowers is Israel's strength
By MIKE EVANS
The "trust factor" Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has with world leaders, especially the leaders of the global powers – Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Xi Jinping - is Israel’s strength, Dr. Mike Evans, founder of the Friends of Zion Museum and a member of the Trump Evangelical Advisory said this week.
"Who is the leader that the President trusts? Who does Putin trust? (Israel has) the golden opportunity of (its) life, everything is moving in (Israel's) direction,” Evans said at the Srugim Conference.
The conference was aimed at right-wing voters and was attended by the leading politicians like Yemina's Ayelet Shaked and Naftali Bennett, Blue and White's Benny Gantz and Moshe Yaalon, Likud's Yuli Edelstein and Ze'ev Elkin, as well as Itamar Ben-Gvir of Otzma Yehudit. Also attending were mayors of cities and regions and dozens of major media outlets.
Evans also notes Russia and China’s influence with Iran and that a novice Israeli prime minister would not have the ability to bring threats facing the Jewish state to the world’s attention and create cooperation between other global leaders. He said that an Israeli leader cannot bring attention and action to these issues alone, citing prime minister Menachem Begin’s crisis with the Reagan Administration over Israel’s security in the 1980s.
Last year, Evans met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Riyadh, Emirati Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed in the UAE, President El-Sisi of Egypt, and King Abdullah II of Jordan. According to Evans, Netanyahu’s leadership with Gulf Arab countries is essential and that these leaders have an immense amount of respect for Netanyahu.
Evans also spoke about the opportunity Israel has with the Trump Administration. Evans noted that it is the first time in Israel's history that there is an Evangelical Secretary of State (Mike Pompeo), Vice President (Mike Pence), and that President Trump was elected by Evangelicals and seeks their counsel.
Evans explained that one only has to look at what Trump has already done, including the recognition of the Golan Heights, moving the Embassy to Jerusalem, closing the PLO Mission in Washington DC, the Taylor Force Act and that his team is proof enough. He received a roaring ovation for his praise of President Trump and his Middle East Peace Envoy - US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, Special Representative Jason Greenblatt and Senior Advisor to the President Jared Kushner.
He also spoke about the importance of Judea and Samaria not only for Israel's security but to Evangelical Christians, mentioning that "Judea and Samaria are not occupied territories according to the US State Department, thanks to US Ambassador David Friedman."
2a)
Israel came close to attacking Iran and 4 other takeaways from NYT exposé
By BEN SALES/JTA
(JTA) — As of this writing, Israel has not bombed Iran’s nuclear program.
But according to an exposé in The New York Times that dropped Wednesday, it could still happen. And nearly did.
The 10,000-word story details how close Israel came to attacking Iran, how Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush tried to deter the Israelis and what actually stopped the would-be bombing raid.
It also tells the story of how President Donald Trump withdrew from the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement and what that means for the future of the Iran-Israel-U.S. hate triangle.
Here are five takeaways from the story.
Israel came really close to bombing Iran.
From about 2009 to 2013, a potential Israeli attack on Iran was the most talked-about surprise ever. Iran was suspected of developing nuclear weapons in secret and was publicly threatening to destroy Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded by making the Iranian threat his focus and consistently threatening to stop Iran’s quest for the bomb. The possible Iran attack was the subject of daily news coverage in Israel, and a story about it graced the cover of The Atlantic in 2010.
According to The Times story, the attack nearly happened in 2012. As early as 2009, when large protests called the Green Revolution were rocking Iran, Netanyahu suggested to U.S. officials that a strike could destroy the Iranian nuclear program and destabilize the regime. But by late 2010, Israel wasn’t ready to strike.
By 2012, that appeared to have changed. The United States had detected Israeli drones taking off from Azerbaijan to spy on Iran and saw clusters of Israeli planes preparing for an attack. That year, then-Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak canceled a joint U.S.-Israeli military exercise so it would not conflict with a potential strike. Michael Oren, who served as the Israeli ambassador to the U.S., slept with his phone by his ear, ready to wake up and alert the White House of a strike, the article reports.
Bush opposed an Israeli attack as much as Obama.
So why didn’t Israel execute the attack?
One reason could be consistent American opposition to the idea — but not just from President Obama. Netanyahu criticized Obama repeatedly as soft on Iran and, according to the article, “part of the problem.” But President Bush opposed an attack as much as Obama — and was even more direct about it with the Israelis. In a 2008 meeting with Netanyahu’s predecessor, Ehud Olmert, and Barak, Bush interrupted as Barak was making the case for an attack on Iran.
“He banged on the table like this,” Olmert told The Times, “and he said, ‘General Barak, do you know what no means? No is no.”
The U.S. tried to stop an Israeli attack — but also simulated its own on U.S. soil.
During Obama’s his first term, according to State Department official Wendy Sherman, the United States told Israel “please don’t go off on a hair trigger and start a war.” As an Israeli attack appeared more likely, American officials began a tactic known as “Bibisitting,” a play on the Israeli leader’s nickname: A senior American official would visit Israel every few weeks, which meant the U.S. had a window of a couple weeks before and after the visit when it knew Israel would not launch the strike for fear of embarrassing the American official.
But the Americans also made their own preparations for an attack on Iran. The most intensive was when the U.S. built, in the western party of the country, a full-scale model of an Iranian uranium enrichment facility that’s embedded in a mountain. The Americans then detonated a 30,000-pound bomb on their own soil to destroy the pretend nuclear site.
Netanyahu would have attacked Iran if he’d had the votes.
In the end, Netanyahu told The Times, none of that dissuaded him from an attack. What ended up putting the kibosh on the strike was internal opposition in Israel. Netanyahu and Barak supported a strike into 2012, but it was publicly reported that senior military and security officials in Israel opposed one, as did a majority of the Cabinet there.
“If I’d had a majority, I would have done it,” Netanyahu told The Times. “Unequivocally.”
Among the opponents were Meir Dagan, the head of the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency; Yuval Diskin, the head of the Israel Security Agency, or Shin Bet; and Gabi Ashkenazi, the head of the Israel Defense Forces. Ashkenazi’s successor, Benny Gantz, also opposed a strike. He’s now running against Netanyahu in elections being held in less than two weeks.
Netanyahu’s threats may have helped lead to the Iran deal he hates.
As U.S. negotiations with Iran progressed toward an agreement during Obama’s second term, Netanyahu pivoted to vociferous opposition, decrying the impending deal at nearly every opportunity. He went so far as to deliver a controversial speech to the U.S. Congress in March 2015 lambasting the pact.
But The Times article suggests that Netanyahu’s threats of an attack may have persuaded Obama to resolve the situation diplomatically. Although some people, including Netanyahu, dispute that cause-and-effect, other officials say Netanyahu inadvertently advanced the very agreement he abhors.
“Netanyahu achieved exactly the opposite of what he wanted,” one Israeli official said.
Did the Israeli pressure affect the decision to begin talks?
“Without a doubt,” said Dennis Ross, who advised Obama. “Unless we could do something that changed the equation, the Israelis were going to act militarily.”
President Trump took office in 2017 with a promise to withdraw from the Iran deal, which he did the following year. Since then, tensions have risen and Israel has struck Iranian proxies. Now, according to the article, Netanyahu is again considering attacking Iran.
2b) Wall in 2009. (Darren Whiteside/Reuters) New alliances with Arab nations are positive but unstable, and old enemies are most dangerous when in a weakened state.
By Victor Davis Hanson
2b) Wall in 2009. (Darren Whiteside/Reuters) New alliances with Arab nations are positive but unstable, and old enemies are most dangerous when in a weakened state.
By Victor Davis Hanson
One of the most radical changes in the labyrinth of the Middle East is the near cessation of the old formal hostility of the Arab nations to Israel. That does not mean that the destruction of the Jewish state is not still a commandment among hundreds of millions of Arab speakers throughout the Middle East in general and on the proverbial West Bank in particular.
Rather, a number of currents has convinced most of the Gulf monarchies, frontline Arab states such as Jordan and Egypt, and the other North African nations that of all the existential crises in the world threatening their regimes, Israel is no longer perceived as their font.
Instead, elemental dangers to Israel arise mostly from Iran, Iranian-backed Hezbollah in the badlands of Syria and Lebanon, and Turkey. Why this fundamental realignment?
One reason, of course, is Iran’s likely soon-to-be nuclear status. Iran detests Israel. But such hatred is relatively recent and dates from 1979 — unlike the ancient schisms between Shiite and Sunni, Persian and Arab, and the Straits of Hormuz versus the Persian Gulf.
Arab nations believe that a nuclear Iran will threaten them explicitly. They assume that a messianic Tehran is quite capable of carrying out what would be serial nuclear threats. And they are certain that such constant tensions would embolden Shiite minorities in their own states, much like millions of Eastern European Germans of the 1930s were suddenly deemed oppressed, and believed that they could be liberated only by eventual protection from and incorporation into Hitler’s ascendant Third Reich.
In theory, a few cash-rich Arab nations could nuclearize as easily as Iran. But, in fact, their economies are embedded within the West that does not so readily aid proliferation. And their countries are much less able to hide Korean, Chinese, or Russian help in building nuclear facilities.
Such vulnerabilities make them strangely dependent on Israel’s own nuclear capability — not in the sense that Israel would go to war to save Riyadh from an incoming Iranian nuke, or do much if there were widescale Sunni–Shiite civil wars erupting throughout the Middle East.
Rather, Arabs, in the-enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-
Indeed, if there exists a continuing strategic threat to Israel from the Arab world, it will be its increasing pressure on the Jewish state to get into a one-on-one fight with Iran. The Arabs could then play the role of Joseph Stalin from 1939 to 1941, when he gleefully saw the western campaigns of his new partner of convenience, Hitler, as a win-win that would weaken both the double-dealing Nazis on his new Polish border and the hated capitalists of the Western democracies.
A second reason for the Middle East’s realignment is that the U.S. is now the world’s largest producer — and soon exporter — of oil and gas, making it more or less immune to Arab strategic pressures. Even more important: While the U.S. can no longer be manipulated by the Arab world, the latter certainly can be by the U.S., given that the exporting lifeblood of the Gulf requires free passage through the Straits of Hormuz, the guarantee of which is beyond all the collective naval and air resources of Arab nations.
Only the U.S. can keep the straits open for global commerce, for the viability of the Arab exporting regimes, and for the survival of oil importers such as Europe and China. When Iran disrupts oil traffic, prices rise, but this is not altogether the evil that it once was to the United States, given America’s energy-producing dominance.
By the same token, Israel is now energy-independent and may soon become a major regional oil-producing partner and exporter. It is not just that Washington does not fret about an oil embargo of America; it does not worry about an oil cutoff to Tel Aviv either.
Third, in terms of strategic space, Israel’s most recent major enemies, Iran and Turkey, are distant, not on its immediate borders as in the past, and both are alienated from the U.S. More fundamentally, Iran and Turkey border a few Arab states, not Israel — a fact that reinforces the worry over Iranian nuclear weapons to come. In wars of the past, Israel prepared for a Syrian-Jordanian-Egyptian triplex assault. Now the first is an apostate failed state; the second, a quiet supporter; and the third, a de facto ally. As for the Palestinians, their own flirtations with anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli Iran have proven politically disastrous in the Arab world.
We may think of Turkey and Iran as widely distinct entities: Sunni vs. Shiite, Ottomanism vs. Persian, and NATO ally vs. pariah to the West. But the Arab world sees the pair’s new on-again, off-again alignment as a hostile northern anti-Arab crescent stretching from Europe to the Arabian Sea.
In other words, at a time when Turkey’s alienation from NATO, its estrangement from the European Union, its falling-out with Washington, and its increasing hatred of Israel might have made it more amenable to the Arab world, the very opposite has occurred. Recep Erdogan’s clumsy embrace of a new Ottomanism means one thing in the West and quite another in the Arab world once ruled by Istanbul for centuries. Erdogan’s hatred for Israel earns Turkey as little currency in the Arab world as Tehran’s similar anti-Israeli venom.
A fourth development has fueled these bizarre realignments: the radical change in American administrations.
Whatever the pretenses of the Obama diplomats, the Arab world viewed the Iran deal, the Obama administration’s earlier silence about the Green Revolution in Iran (in stark contrast to its intervention into the so-called Arab Spring and its misadventure in Libya), and the talk of justified, enhanced Iranian presence in the Middle East as a sort of community-organizing effort, an ACORN-like project for the oppressed on a Middle East scale. The Arabs were to play the role of The Man, while the Iranians and Shiites were to be the inner city in need of community organizing and empowerment.
In other words, at best, Arabs saw Obama’s plan as a naïve, warped effort to elevate the formerly ostracized at their own expense. At worst, they judged it an idiotic effort to allow a nuclear Persian Shiite hegemony that was supposed to keep wayward Arab states in check — convenient to the U.S. in its balance-of-power triangulations.
For decades the Arabs pressured the U.S. to break with Israel or at least privately assure them that Israel was no longer the preeminent American ally in the region. Once Obama began to do that, the Arabs suddenly objected that the world had changed — once-taboo support for Israel was now good for the Middle East.
Trump had no such qualms in recalibrating Obama’s Middle East policy and restoring the special relationship between Israel and the United States, and by extension America and the Arabs — at the expense of both Iran and Turkey.
In fact, one reason there is oddly little Middle East criticism of Trump’s restored tilt to Israel is that the Arab world views the realignment as a useful slap at Iran and Turkey, and a strategic enhancement to nuclear Israel, which the Arabs, privately, believe really would never preemptively strike any Arab capital with a nuke. In sum, the Arab world is relieved that the U.S. sees Iran and Turkey as its primary Middle East challenges.
The Middle East also interprets a volatile, mercurial Trump as a more reliable ally than a predictable, smarmy, and elegant-sounding Obama, and so feel they can be more overt in their new realignments. To the Arabs, Israel may be an SOB, but it is now perceived as one of their own SOBs, and Americans should know that better than anyone given their own prior Cold War realpolitik.
The downside of the new Middle East?
Iran and Turkey, in terms of both conventional and strategic power, are far stronger than the collective Arab world — and for now far crazier. Under the Trump doctrine of strategic realism, it is hard to envision any scenario of intervention in the Middle East on behalf of any beleaguered Arab state — a fact known to both our allies and enemies.
Moreover, throughout history, the greatest dangers often follow new realignments, whether because they are inauthentic and thus treacherous, or owing to the natural sense of laxity, naïveté, and reduced vigilance that sets in during periods of seemingly enhanced strategic advantage.
Think of the Soviet euphoria that followed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact — and soon led to Operation Barbarossa, or the misplaced American hope that the outlier Shah had turned Iran into a permanent pro-American and pro-Israeli ally in a sea of Arab hatred, a partnership that saw American weapons and thousands of American Westernizing contractors flowing into Iran prior to 1979.
In early April 1945, the U.S. was still supplying its wartime ally of convenience Moscow with essential materiel; two weeks later, by late April 1945, Truman had all but concluded that the Soviets and Americans were not just enemies but headed toward global confrontation.
Or perhaps worst of all was the misplaced 1970s notion in America that the original outreach to Mao’s genocidal China as a Cold War counterweight to Soviet expansionism could be followed by democratizing and humanizing the Chinese Communist party, as it joined the family of nations — as if we would all go back to the Chinese–American goodwill of the prewar period.
That naïveté entailed ignoring the inherent criminal nature of Chinese Maoism — and soon nearly a half-century of patent and copyright theft, technological appropriation, dumping, currency fraud, and mercantile commercialism that turned China into a very rich global monstrosity. China paid back American gullibility with utter contempt as the proper wage of its naïveté and perceived moral weakness.
Finally, failing states, or even those who are not but imagine themselves to be, are the most dangerous, especially as they become ostracized and isolated. Japan by 1941 was an international pariah, but one that had convinced itself that only a surprise preemptive war would reverse its long-term disadvantageous and worsening relationship with the U.S. And Saddam Hussein had wrecked Iraq in a disastrous war with Iran, subsidized by many Arab states — one of which he treacherously attacked and overran in 1990 to inaugurate the first Gulf War.
Israel’s immediate surrounding strategic neighborhood has recently become far more positive for it. After all, for now, Israel does not face simultaneous existential threats from both Iran and the Arab world. But that unexpected upturn will demand more vigilance than ever, given the lessons of the past: Alliances of convenience with antithetical states rarely last and do not always ensure long-term security, while enemies like Iran that are declining and desperate grow especially dangerous.
NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author, most recently, of The Case for Trump. @vdhanson
2c)
Israel's Major Wars
The Legal Aspects of Coming into Possession of the Territories
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© 2019 Myths and Facts Inc.
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