Category: Middle East

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Steve Bannon explains what is happening

Steve Bannon takes some young puppy interviewer and whips him for being a snot-nosed idiot. He also explains why he is a nationalist populist and not a globalist. Bannon is far ahead of the interviewer, who is both tendentious and none too bright.

“You guys love liberal democracy until you start losing elections, then it becomes dangerous nationalism”.

“The Party of Davos” is Bannon’s term for what governs Europe.

“Central banks are in the business of debasing your currency”.

“Crony capitalist governments have been imposed for the past thirty years”.

Bannon identifies the Financial Times, the Economist, the BBC and MSNBC as the media arms of the Davos Party.

“I admire Orban because he took a very tough stand and saved his country”.

“Angela Merkel panics, realizes she made a great mistake and the EU tries to farm out the problem to other countries”.

“George Soros is one of the most evil people in the world. He has been trying to destroy the United States for years with his open borders policy”.

Bannon does not take an inch of  guff from the journalist, who is so deep into the world view of the Davis Party that Bannon’s points essentially escape him. An entertaining tour through the world view of Bannon and of his Davos Party opposition.

“The US doesn’t need Europe as a protectorate, it needs Europe as an ally.”

 

 

Paris attacks and it-is-all-Bush’s-fault meme

Inevitably the leftist press will circle back and state that ‘only if Bush hadn’t attacked Iraq’ this would have never happened. With that in mind it is instructive to recall some facts.

An op-ed in the liberal NYT in 2003.

President Bush sketched an expansive vision last night of what he expects to accomplish by a war in Iraq. Instead of focusing on eliminating weapons of mass destruction, or reducing the threat of terror to the United States, Mr. Bush talked about establishing a ”free and peaceful Iraq” that would serve as a ”dramatic and inspiring example” to the entire Arab and Muslim world, provide a stabilizing influence in the Middle East and even help end the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The idea of turning Iraq into a model democracy in the Arab world is one some members of the administration have been discussing for a long time. But it is not one that Mr. Bush has devoted much effort to selling to the American people. Most Americans would certainly rally around the idea of a strong, stable and open government in Iraq. But they haven’t been prepared for the cost of such an undertaking. For most people, the vision of a new gulf war is one of relatively quick victory, not years of American occupation.

In a speech to the American Enterprise Institute, the president described an undertaking that resembled American efforts in post-World-War-II Japan and Germany. This week Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff, said he believed that hundreds of thousands of soldiers would have to remain on Iraqi soil to create a stable environment for democratic change. Mr. Bush, a man who ran for office scoffing at the idea of ”nation-building,” is now betting his presidency on that idea.

Notice the ‘expansive vision.. instead of focusing on eliminating weapons of mass destruction’ but for the current crop of leftist the only thing that matters is the letters W, M & D..

Joe Biden in 2010, emphasis added.

I am very optimistic about — about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of the great achievements of this administration. You’re going to see 90,000 American troops come marching home by the end of the summer. You’re going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government

Barrack Obama in 2011, emphasis added.

Iraq’s future will be in the hands of its people.  America’s war in Iraq will be over” he remarked.  And “Iraq is not a perfect place.  It has many challenges ahead.  But we’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people.  We’re building a new partnership between our nations.

Obama and his administration took ownership of Iraq and if Iraq is one of those ‘root cause’ then the blame lies with Obama..

Things about to get lot worse in Middle East

Prior to today, the biggest bank robbery was in Beirut:

Beirut, Lebanon: The world’s biggest bank robbery took place in 1976, when guerrillas in Beirut blasted the vaults inside the British Bank of the Middle East and escaped with safe deposit boxes containing £22m – the equivalent of £156m in today’s money.

Today we learned the following:

The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Shams (Isis) has become the richest terror group ever after looting 500 billion Iraqi dinars – the equivalent of $429m (£256m) – from Mosul’s central bank, according to the regional governor….

Following the siege of the country’s second city, the bounty collected by the group has left it richer than al-Qaeda itself and as wealthy as small nations…

This is not only going to make things worse in Iraq, but will also allow the Jihadis to fund their ideology across Middle East. Our only hope now is a great speech from Obama!

Closing the book on Syria

It all started with Obama’s famous ‘red line’ on Syria’s chemical weapons which led to the Kerry-Lavrov agreement that was going to put an end to them.

Russia and the US agree on how to destroy Syria’s chemical arms, President Vladimir Putin said after meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry in Bali. He also said peace talks on Syria should include major players from the Muslim world.

Where do we stand with that agreement today? NYT fills in the details.

France’s foreign minister said Tuesday there were strong indications that the Syrian government had carried out attacks using chemical agents, especially chlorine, as many as 14 times in recent months, despite its promise to renounce such weapons in joining the global treaty banning them last year.

The minister, Laurent Fabius, who met here Tuesday morning with Secretary of State John Kerry, also said that he regretted that the Obama administration had decided against using force to enforce its “red line” after a chemical weapons attack in Damascus last Aug. 21 that Western nations, led by the United States, blamed on forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.

Guardian provides more background to this.

Iran and its close ally President Bashar al-Assad have won the war in Syria, and the US-orchestrated campaign in support of the opposition’s attempt to topple the Syrian regime has failed, senior Iranian officials have told the Guardian.

In a series of interviews in Tehran, top figures who shape Iranian foreign policy said the west’s strategy in Syria had merely encouraged radicals, caused chaos and ultimately backfired, with government forces now on the front foot.

Now let us turn the clock back to Sept 12, 2013 where Obama fanboi Andrew Sullivan shared this with us.

President Putin’s op-ed in the NYT today is fantastic. It’s a virtual end-zone twerk, as this botoxed former KGB hack brags about restoring a more peaceful world order, basks in the relatively new concept of Russia’s global stature, asserts obvious untruths – such as the idea that the rebels were behind the chemical attack of August 21 or that they are now targeting Israel – and generally preens.

Good. And whatever the American president can do to keep Putin in this triumphant mood the better. Roger Ailes was right. If the end-result is that Putin effectively gains responsibility and control over the civil war in Syria, then we should be willing to praise him to the skies. Praise him, just as the far right praises him, for his mastery of power politics – compared with that ninny weakling Obama. Encourage him to think this is a personal and national triumph even more than he does today. Don’t just allow him to seize the limelight – keep that light focused directly on him. If that also requires dumping all over the American president, calling him weak and useless and incapable of matching the chess master from Russia, so be it. Obama can take it. He’s gotten used to being a pinata.

All this apparent national humiliation is worth it. The price Russia will pay for this triumph is ownership of the problem. At some point, it may dawn on him that he hasn’t played Obama. Obama has played him.

Yes, you read that right, “Obama has played him”. With cheerleaders like that, no wonder Obama thinks that he can do no wrong.

The Alternate Universe of Doug Saunders

A debate was held last night in Ottawa between Doug Saunders, of the Globe and Mail, and author of Myth of the Muslim Tide, and Salim Mansur, Associate Professor of Political Science at Western University, on the topic “Resolved: Muslim Immigration is No Threat To Canada Or The West.” The MacDonald-Laurier Institute was the sponsor, and the War Museum provided the space.

Doug Saunders spoke first. His argument, as I recall it, went like this:

  • Controls on Muslim immigration would not have prevented most of the major Islamic terrorist attacks in Christendom – a word he never would have allowed to pass his lips (9/11; London subways)
  • Muslim birth rates are crashing abroad and are falling rapidly in their host countries;
  • accordingly there is no way for the demographic pressure of Islam to have significant political impact;
  • It is not Muslim immigrants who commit atrocities, it is Muslim converts and second generation Muslim immigrants.
  • If we have so little faith in the power of our civilization to repel political Islam, we are in trouble indeed.
  • fears of Islamic terrorist tendencies are similar to those that attended mass Catholic immigration from Southern Europe in the 19th century
  • the overwhelming proportion of Muslim immigrants who come here want to integrate to this civilization.

Doug’s observation on the catastrophic decline of Muslim birth rates all around the world is a true and under-appreciated fact. Overall his presentation was smooth, WASPy, plausible (until one thought about it), fact-based, kept within his time limits and yet inspired many to ask: “what planet is he from?”. There was an overwhelming sense conveyed by his arguments that there was “nothing to look at here, move on.” Islamic fanaticism was part and parcel of all fundamentalist religious beliefs, no different in kind from Christian or Jewish fundamentalisms. He clearly saw the source of terrorism in the unvarnished statements of the  Abrahamic religions per se, and not in anything specifically Muslim.

By way of opposition, Mansur insisted that Islam has been taken over by a pernicious doctrine of Salafism, that Salfism is wrecking the former pluralism of Islamic world, and that we ought to be on guard against significant Muslim immigration. He said he had fled one such Islamic civil-religious war and was shocked to see that it had caught up with him in Canada decades later. Mansur insisted that Islam had once been pluralist, but that Saudi money had infected Islam with what he called “Bedouin barbarism”.

Mansur insisted that numbers were a driver even if they were small; that elections are matters of going for the marginal voter, not the middle of the road majority, and that if 3%, 5% or 7% of the Canadian population were Muslim, as it is expected to become, that fact would have dramatic effects on freedom of speech and resistance to Sharia.

Mansur observed that former immigrant waves had come from the same Christian civilization, whether Catholic or Russian Orthodox, and that there was a qualitatively different aspect to modern Islamic immigration, as it came from a different civilization. He cited Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations with approval.

As the threats from fundamentalisms, Mansur observed that the Reformation   had happened 500 years ago in Christianity, and [I add] had occurred for Jews later in the Enlightenment period. Islam was unreformed.

At the question period, a Muslim woman in a hijab, in a perfect Canadian accent, suggested to Saunders that there was a felt pressure on young Muslim women to adopt the hijab involuntarily, and another Muslim woman , sans hijab, said the same in a foreign-born accent. This was all contrary to what Saunder’s Muslim researchers were telling him, said Saunders.

Saunders argued strictly to the proposition being debated, which was about Muslim immigration rather than Islam itself. But a moment’s reflection reveals the falsity of his narrowly construed argument. If the second generation of Muslim immigrants born here, and Muslim converts, are the source of domestic terrorism, then why is this not related directly to the presence of Muslim proselytizers and Muslim families already here?

The MacDonald-Laurier debates usually end with an audience vote. Brian Lee Crowley, the Institute’s head, thanked the debaters without calling for a vote. Presumably the sensitivity of such a vote at a debate sponsored by his Institute would have made fund-raising more difficult. I could think of no better argument for Mansur’s proposition that the MacDonald-Laurier Instutute thought better of having the proposition put to the audience. Like most instances of discussion about things Islamic, the vague but real menace that you will be boycotted, bombed, sued, threatened, or even killed for disputing Islam, or allowing a forum in which it could be disputed,  suggests that, in fact, Muslim immigration should be very carefully controlled for explicit political and cultural reasons.

As for Doug Saunders, all his reasoning did not amount to a persuasive case: he dwells in some alternate universe. The tone, the implicit condescension, the avoidance of obvious large and unpleasant facts, makes him a perfect fit for the  Globe and Mail.

Harper hits homer

The Israel trip tells the world, once again, that it has lost its moral compass.  Like calling the Durban gatherings what they are, anti-Semitic hatefests, Mr. Harper demonstrates that there are rights and there are wrongs, with a clear distinction.  And even when the press jumps on the MP who wanted to be on the shot at the Wailing Wall with the PM, the message gets through – of course the man wanted to be seen with his leader, leading. Thank you, non-Sun media, for making sure his voters saw him trying to do just that.

Leftist war-for-oil canard

Leftist are always fond coming up with hare-brained theories which are then amplified by the MSM and then further propagated by useful idiots amongst us. One of the oldest is “war-for-oil”, which is used to explain every military action in the middle east in context of access to oil. Perhaps leftist should consider this fact.

Last month the world witnessed a paradigm shift: China surpassed the United States as the world’s largest consumer of foreign oil, importing 6.3 million barrels per day compared to the United States’ 6.24 million. This trend is likely to continue and this gap is likely to grow, according to the EIA’s October short-term energy outlook. Wood Mackenzie, a leading global energy consultancy, echoed this prediction, estimating Chinese oil imports will rise to 9.2 million barrels per day (70% of total demand) by 2020.

Yes, all China had to do for that oil was to pay for it. An astonishing concept indeed, that further underscores Left’s limited understanding of economics.