h/t Instapundit
German Chancellor Angela Merkel's celebrated open-door policy encouraged the migration of more than 1 million refugees in 2015, and hundreds of thousands more in 2016. It was lauded as a courageous triumph of humanitarianism. Even in 2016's year-end accolades, Merkel has been given hosannas for "keeping the doors ajar."
But after last week's Berlin attack, in which a man -- suspected to be a Tunisian migrant -- intentionally plowed an 18-wheeler into a crowded Christmas market, killing 12 and injuring dozens more, it's fair to say that Merkel's celebrated policy has actually been a disaster. After all, "keeping the doors ajar" is precisely how a naive person learns of the bad intentions of an intruder. And Merkel is learning a hard lesson, indeed. She said that welcoming this enormous wave of refugees was the only way to be true to "European values." But the current wave of terrorism and the enormous fear of crime and disorder in European cities is proving mortally dangerous not just to her own party, but to the European Union itself. The way I see it, Europeans imported their own "Plaestinians".
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In 1908 Kaiser Wilhelm made a pilgrimage to Damascus and once there visited the tomb of Saladin. There, he vowed that the Ottoman Empire would thereafter be placed under German protection.
In a strange reversal of history, it now appears that Merkel has placed Germany under Ottoman protection.
...Obama’s predecessors’ opposition to the war against Israel at the UN was not merely an expression of their support for Israel. They acted also out of a fealty to US power, which is directly targeted by that war.
It is critical that we understand how this is the case, and why the implications of Resolution 2334 are disastrous to the US itself.
Resolution 2334 is being presented as an "anti-settlement" resolution. But it is not an anti-settlement resolution.
Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria and neighborhoods in Jerusalem are being used ‐ as they always have been used ‐ as a means of delegitimizing the Jewish state as a whole, and legitimizing Palestinian terrorists and Islamic terrorists more generally. Resolution 2334 serves to criminalize Israel and its people and to undermine Israel’s right to exist, while embracing Palestinian terrorists and empowering them in their war to annihilate Israel.
America’s historic refusal to countenance such actions at the UN Security was never a purely altruistic position. It was also a stand for American power and the inherent justice of American superpower status and global leadership.
[TheAmericanInterest] President B.O.’s decision not to block a UN Security Council resolution declaring Israeli settlements on the West Bank illegal can be read many ways. In part, it’s an Obama counter-strike against President-elect Trump’s unconventional moves aimed at sidelining Obama before the Inauguration. In part, it’s payback from the White House against a Netanyahu government that the White House feels has frustrated its quest for peace in the Middle East. In part, it’s a principled statement of sincere belief by a large group in the White House, representing many in the Democratic Party, reflecting the deep convictions of many American liberals and, especially, of American liberal Jews, about right and wrong in the modern Middle East. If American Jews were to hold a referendum on settlement policy, it is likely that the "no" side would win; American Jews are far more liberal than their counterparts in Israel, and the gap between the two communities is growing rather than shrinking over time.
Many Paleostinians and many of their sympathizers would like to see this vote as a landmark victory for the Paleostinian cause in a long campaign to isolate Israel diplomatically and to delegitimize it morally in the eyes of the world. The vote is certainly a propaganda victory for the Paleostinian cause, but it does nothing to help the Paleostinians in practical terms. Indeed, a sober look at the situation suggests that the Paleostinians have not been this weak, this divided or this helpless in many decades. Almost everywhere one looks around the world, the net effect of the policies of the Obama presidency has been to undermine the movements and the values that the President hoped to support; the cause of the Paleostinians and the quest for the two state solution are no exceptions to the rule.
Continued on Page 49
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I figure the Trump administration has at least 2 years and maybe more to clean up the mess left behind. The USA provides 22% of the UN operating budget more than twice as much as the No. 2 contributor, Japan (10.8 percent). Maybe if the UN got a much leaner, they might not be so likely to interfere with the sovereignty of member states.
h/t Instapundit
Did the Russians really rig the 2016 US election? You bet they did!
Secret documents recently discovered in a bin behind a Kremlin-district 24-hour cabbage and tobacco store reveal for the first time the devious extent of Russian interference. These plans were decades in the making.
Read on, as never-before-seen communiques between Russian agents Sergei Potrov and Dimitri Bienko outline the wicked plot ‐ beginning in 1947, on the day of Hillary Clinton’s birth:
Dearest Dimitri
I am pleased to report that phase one of Operation Cankles is total success! Soviet implantation of stupid American woman resulted in birth today of hefty girl-child destined to be unelectable candidate 70 years from now.
Child is basically just ankles and head, similar to sturdy and hard-working female stock from adored Ilmensky Mountains. In decadent America, nobody will ever vote for such a noble being.
Yours in Soviet solidarity,
Sergei
...During the mid-70s, the Russians toast a mission-advancing coup:
It is not to be believed! Hillary is getting married ‐ to a man! You owe me 50 rubles, Dimitri.
The fellow is Bill, called by friends ’horn dog’, ’el squeezo’ and ’the Arkansas assman’. He is very political. All his girlfriends say so. By ’all his girlfriends’, I mean whole female population of Little Rock. He go through them like great winter purge of traitor generals.
This can only assist our mission. Perhaps this Bill will even make it to the White House, if he can keep it in his pants for long enough (is phrase I pick up here).
Yours in jubilation,
Sergei
Even tectonic global changes could not sway Agents Potrov and Bienko from their cause:
Dearest Sergei,
Alas, our beloved Soviet Union is no more. Gorbachev has ruined everything. Please do not give up on Operation Cankles. It may prove to be the final major accomplishment of our great land and heroic peoples.
In other news, our budget has been slightly trimmed. Suggest you monitor Hillary from American streets, where lucrative sign-holding job will provide cover and help pay rent.
Yours in Glasnost,
Dimitri
Finally, on November 8, 2016, Sergei’s long mission comes to a victorious conclusion ‐ on the veteran agent’s 94th birthday:
Dearest Dimitri,
I know you have been dead ten years already, but I write to you for fondness and memories. Great friend, it is done. All that we have worked for, all that we have planned, all that we have dreamed. Our unelectable candidate was truly unelectable. Even the other patients here in the home did not vote for her. One voted for Eisenhower.
My time is not long, Dimitri. Soon I shall see you again, in the heaven that is a frozen-solid Siberian grave. We will rest in honour. Our work on this earth is complete.
[Reuters] A Drexel University professor, whose tweet that he wanted a "white genocide" for Christmas sparked a fire storm of criticism from the school and social media users, said on Monday his comment was satirical.
George Ciccariello-Maher, a white assistant professor of history and politics at the Philadelphia university, posted "All I Want for Christmas is White Genocide" on Twitter on Christmas Eve, according to media reports.
He followed up on Sunday by tweeting, "To clarify: when the whites were massacred during the Haitian revolution, that was a good thing indeed."
Condemnation lit up Twitter after the comments from Ciccariello-Maher, an expert on Latin American social movements, were picked up by such conservative news sites as Breitbart News and The Daily Caller.
"What rock did this cretin crawl out from under?" Sean O'Reilly tweeted. Twitter user Camz wrote, "You want a white genocide, why not be the one who starts it and see where you end up. You coward."
Drexel University, a private school with about 26,000 students, said in a statement on Sunday that it had contacted Ciccariello-Maher to schedule a meeting about the tweets.
Drexel said that although it recognized the right of faculty members to express their views, the comments were "utterly reprehensible, deeply disturbing, and do not in any way reflect the values of the University."
Ciccariello-Maher said in an email on Monday that the tweets were only aimed at poking fun at white supremacists and that he and Drexel had become targets of a smear campaign.
He said that the concept of "white genocide" was used by white nationalists to denounce everything from interracial relationships to policies aimed at promoting multiple cultures.
"It is a figment of the racist imagination, it should be mocked, and I'm glad to have mocked it," Ciccariello-Maher wrote. Access to his Twitter account had been restricted on Monday.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Reuters] A Drexel University professor, whose tweet that he wanted a "white genocide" for Christmas sparked a fire storm of criticism from the school and social media users, said on Monday his comment was satirical.
