The Permanent Government Strikes Back

Posted on January 16, 2017 by Joe Benning

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” George Orwell, 1984.
George Orwell

As we approach inauguration day the Lefty meltdown has morphed into a strategy that Orwell would recognize. It is to embed in the psyche of the body politic the narrative that the election of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the U.S. was so deeply flawed as to make his impending Presidency illegitimate. Civil Rights icon John Lewis was explicit on the point. He said: “I don’t see this president-elect as a legitimate president. I think the Russians participated in helping this man get elected. And they helped destroy the candidacy of Hillary Clinton. ”

 

That is the type of casuistry that politicians routinely, if dishonorably, employ. However it is unusual in the United States to take it to the point of questioning the legitimacy of a Presidential electioCongressman John Lewisn. And so Mr. Lewis should be prepared to answer a few questions. For instance: Who, if not Donald Trump, is the legitimate President? And if not Donald Trump, are his actions ipso facto illegal? If not, why not? Should citizens feel free to ignore any regulatory rules promulgated and implemented under a Trump Administration? If not, why not?

 

I doubt that the Congressman will consider, much less address, these points.

The Intelligence Community

The intelligence community—really the intelligence bureaucracy—is in the middle of the scrimmage. They are, after all, the source of most of the leaks about Russia’s interference in the 2016 election cycle. And they continue to pretend to be surprised about Russia’s behavior. The critical question is: What possible motivation could the intelligence bureaucracy have in leaking all this stuff?

 

The answer is that the intelligence bureaucracy, like all bureaucracies, is a bureaucracy that is first and foremost interested in protecting its hide. And the President-elect has made his disdain for the intelligence services clear. He has a point in his criticism. The intelligence bureaucracy has been caught flat-footed on key national security events more than once, to put it mildly. What better way to protect the bureaucracy than to change the subject by attacking the messenger?

 

A History of Missed Signals

The CIA’s history of screw-ups is long and colorful. For instance, there were the comic opera attempts to assassinate Castro, not to mention the disastrous invasion at the Bay of Pigs, led by the CIA. The Berlin wall came down in 1989 catching the CIA in its usual position—asleep at the switch. Likewise the intelligence services did not have a clue that Saddam was going to invade Kuwait until he was at the doorstep.

 

In 1983 terrorists bombed a Marine barracks in Beirut killing 241 American Marines. In 1996 terrorists blew up Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, which was being used by coalition forces who were enforcing a no-fly zone in Southern Iraq. In 1998 U.S. embassies were simultaneously bombed in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya. There is no evidence that the CIA was even vaguely aware of an imminent threat. And obviously, the terrorist plots succeeded.

 

The intelligence community was surprised by the nuclear tests conducted by Pakistan in May 1998 code named Chagai-1. And on the subject of nukes, CIA chief George Tenet famously declared it a “slam dunk” that Iraq had nukes. Most famously, the U.S. was blindsided by both World Trade Center bombings—the one in 1993 and 9/11. Students of the game will remember that immediately after the attack, the CIA went it CYA mode, proclaiming the method of attack to be unprecedented and therefore unpredictable. Which conveniently enough, let the CIA off the hook.

 

But the CIA claim was a lie. Back in 1996, Robin Wright, an expert on Islam and Middle East politics published a book on Islamic militancy called Sacred Rage. Note the date. (An updated version was re-published in 2001, but the original was published in 1996). In the book Wright recounted the story of an unusual style of civilian jet take off at an airport in the Middle East not too far from an American base. That incident started a scramble by the Americans because officials at the time were afraid that the plane might be used as a weapon to attack them. So the U.S. government was well aware as early as 1996 that civilian jets could be hijacked and used as weapons against U.S. targets.

 

Beyond Incompetence

The observation “Never ascribe to malice that which is easily explained by incompetence” is usually and probably incorrectly attributed to Napoleon. Rather than malice in the case of the intelligence agencies, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that self-interest has played a part in their piling on Trump. Consider the role of Mike Morrell, former acting CIA Director.

Michael Morrell

Over the summer of 2016 Morrell (having already stepped down as acting CIA Director) penned an op-ed, published by the New York Times, in which he endorsed Hillary Clinton for President. Having a top former CIA executive, one who is privy to the secrets, come out as a political partisan is extraordinary. What he said is even more astonishing. He wrote: “In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.”

 

As it turns out, that is the same Mike Morrell who was accused by six Republican Senators of lying under oath in testimony to Congress over his role in the Benghazi affair. Two of the topics that drew interest according to the Weekly Standard were: (1) Morrell (according to the Senators) obfuscated his role in rewriting Benghazi talking points, and (2)he falsely claimed that the talking points were provided to the White House as a heads-up, not for co-ordination purposes.

 

Mike Morrell is now a Senior Counselor at Beacon Global Strategies, a firm close to Hillary Clinton whose founders include Philippe Reines, who also served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under Hillary Clinton from 2009—2013. Prior to that he served as Senator Clinton’s Senior Advisor and Press Secretary from 2002 – 2009. So let’s dispense with the idea that Michael Morrell is like Jimmy Stewart, speaking truth to power in a modern day Mr. Smith goes to Washington.

 

Michael Morrell is hardly alone in his characterization of Trump. Michael Hayden, director of the NSA from 1999 to 2005, and Director of the CIA from 2006 to 2009 said, in the Washington Post,
Michael Haydenthat the term he prefers to describe Trump is “polezni durak, [which refers to a] useful fool, some naïf, manipulated by Moscow, secretly held in contempt, but whose blind support is happily accepted and exploited.”

 

 

John Brennan, the outgoing CIA Director, saw fit to give Trump a public lecture on the dangers posed by the Soviet Union on the Sunday talkies. He said, among oJohn Brennanther things, that Trump lacked a full understanding of the threats Moscow poses to the U.S.

 

Then there is the Buzz Feed story about the “dossier” containing all sorts of unverified accusations against Trump. At this stage of the game you have to wonder what anybody could have that would make any difference anyway. Be that as it may, reputable news organizations have had copies of this dossier, which originated as Republican oppo research, for months. They didn’t publish it, because they couldn’t verify it. But in the wake of the Buzz Feed story, somehow or other the story got out that President-elect Trump would be briefed on its contents. That made it front-page news, an utterly predictable event, that any leaker would have to know.

 

James Clapper, who has acknowledged he lied under oath to Congress, assures us that he doesn’t believe that the Intelligence James ClapperCommunity leaked the story. In discussing a recent meeting with Trump, Clapper said “We also discussed the private security company document, which was widely circulated in recent months among the media, members of Congress, and Congressional staff even before the [Intelligence Community] became aware of it. I emphasized that this document is not a U.S. Intelligence Community product and that I do not believe the leaks came from within the IC”.

Great. So we have a spy telling us that he doesn’t think any of his agencies leaked a particular document. Well that settles that.

 

The Upshot

It is entirely possible, in fact it is probable, that assessments by former and soon-to-be former intelligence officials about Trump’s understanding of world politics are entirely accurate if not understated. Trump continues to act like a belligerant adolescent when challenged. He has yet to demonstrate any sense of nuance, much less intellectual curiosity. Whether it’s all just an act is anybody’s guess.  That aside, it is way beyond the pale for the intelligence agencies to be acting the way they are acting. They are supposed to be independent providers of information to elected officials and certain appointees. They are not supposed to be policy advocates, much less in public.

 

Keep in mind that this sort of public hand wringing by intelligence officials was nowhere to be seen when Obama got caught on an open mike telling Putin that he could be more accommodative after the 2012 election. Nor were the alarmists anywhere to be found when Obama derided Romney during the 2012 election cycle when Romney pointed to Russia as our greatest geo-political threat. All of which suggests that the motives here are less than pure.

 

 

It ought to be crystal clear that there is an ongoing attempt to delegitimize the 2016 election, and its results. A bitter opposition party is in denial of its loss—not just of the White House, but also both Houses of Congress, and a majority of governorships and state legislatures. And it is working hard to convince its base that the election was stolen by Trump with the help of Russia. Recent polling data suggests that fully half of Hillary Clinton voters believe that Russia’s hacking changed votes on Election Day. For that matter something like 60% of Trump voters are convinced that millions of illegal votes were cast. There is zero evidence of either proposition.

 

It isn’t just elected opposition officials who are trying to gin this up. The permanent bureaucracy is threatened by the election result and is in semi-open revolt. The intelligence agencies are leading the pack, egged on by the elected opposition. The intelligence agencies have set about undermining the incoming Administration, by sowing doubt about the election result—which, by the way, is exactly what they were accusing Vladimir Putin of doing when they assumed Hillary Clinton would win.

 

Count on other agencies with their own agendas to do the same thing when they can.

 

It is especially disturbing, but not surprising, to see the permanent government, which is to say, the bureaucracy, at war with elected officials. It is an unmistakable sign that the bureaucracy’s first priority is self-protection. And it is a telling indication of how arrogant and dangerously unaccountable the permanent government has become. Note too that it is Progressives who are working with, and providing cover for, the permanent bureaucracy in order to achieve political goals.

 

A thorough housecleaning is in order. The sooner the better.

JFB

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“Silence” by Martin Scorsese

Posted on January 14, 2017 by Joe Benning

Martin Scorsese’s Silence is a complicated film. Based on a novel of the same name by Shusaku Endo, it tells the story of 2 Jesuit priests in the 17th century who set out for Japan to find their mentor, Father Ferreira (played by Liam Nelson). Father Ferreira has gone missing and is rumored to have renounced his Christian faith.

 

The mission of the two priests, Father Rodgrigues (Andrew Garfield) and Father Garupe (Adam Driver) is especially hazardous because Japan is in the midst of a brutal persecution of Christian missionaries and converts in an attempt to rid the island country of Christianity once and for all. The persecution tries to get Christians to renounce their faith, most especially by forcing them to violate symbols of the faith by, among other things, publicly spitting on a crucifix.

 

 

Scorsese pulls no punches in depicting the savagery of the persecution. There are burnings at the stake; beheadings and crucifixions galore that are designed to maximize suffering before death finally come as a relief. But it isn’t sadism for sadism’s sake. It has a point, and that point is to dissuade would be converts, and then to persuade the already converted, and especially the missionaries, to renounce their faith. The obvious analogy is to ISIS.

 

The priests, who are caught relatively early on, pray for guidance and courage as they face their persecutors. But as time goes by they fear there is no answer for their prayers. They hear silence. And so at a most basic level the film is a story of the struggle for belief and meaning in a cold and pitiless world gone mad. And, as Scorsese makes clear, it isn’t just any belief or Religion that will do. It is Christian religious belief.

 

Scorsese presents the struggle on several levels. The first is with respect to the priests as they try to cope with the predicament they find themselves in after they are captured. Is it permissible for them to act strategically and to pretend to renounce their faith to save others? Are the priests really acting like Christians if they hold out, but others must suffer in their place as a result?

 

At another level he presents the problem of defining just authority. The priests who smuggle themselves into Japan make claims to universalism. Their beliefs are religious, not political. But Japanese political authorities see the world very differently. They view Christianity as a mortal threat. In fact, they see the Christian claim to universalism as the heart of the threat.

 

Claims to universalism, the inherent dignity of the individual and free will are theologically indispensable to Christianity, as is the view that human nature is essentially fixed, not infinitely malleable. These ideas are now, and always have been, threatening to Kings, Queens, dictators, authoritarians and totalitarians as well as utopians of all varieties. For they look at the Church in purely secular terms, as a competitor for power and influence.

 

To wall off the dangers posed by the West and Christianity, Japanese political authorities decided to keep Japan isolated. For example, only the Dutch were permitted to send their ships to trade with Japan, and the sailors were not permitted to bring religious objects like medals, crucifixes and rosaries on land with them. Here the allegory to the Middle East is unmistakable. In Saudi Arabia for instance, churches are not permitted, nor is it permissible to possess religious items from faiths other than Islam, even for Western guest workers.

 

The analogy to the Middle East is not the only one on display. There is another, albeit a subtler one. The Grand Inquisitor, who manages the Japanese persecution, is not all that interested in simply killing off peasants who profess Christian belief. To prevent Christianity from taking root, he means to publicly break the priests to the yoke of the State. Once he does that, the priests are no longer a threat. They are worse than neutered; they are transformed into instruments of the regime. It is a profound betrayal on the order of Winston’s in George Orwell’s novel 1984.

 

In 1984, Winston was finally broken by Big Brother when he screamed for his torturers to “do it to Julia” (his lover) so he could be relieved of the agony of his worst nightmare. His betrayal signaled his brokenness. Once broken, the State could proceed to execute him. When they did so Orwell describes Winston as content and happy as the executioner’s bullet entered his brain.

 

But there are differences in the two cases. Winston betrayed a person, his lover. Once broken, Winston was no longer useful to the State and could be killed. In Silence, the priests are meant to be useful to the State, and so are turned into instruments of the State. The State means to use them to control what people believe as well as how they behave.

 

Which of course brings us to the case of Little Sisters of the Poor vs. Burwell (2016). In that case the Obama Administration, through the Affordable Care Act, tried to force the Little Sisters of the Poor to provide or finance coverage for contraceptives including abortafacients, despite their well-established religious objection to doing so. After the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in favor of the Little Sisters, the Obama Administration admitted that it could achieve its goals in ways that did not require the contraceptive mandate. Which means that the point of the exercise was to break the Little Sisters to the yoke of the State.

 

There are lessons and analogies in Silence everywhere you look. It is in every respect a thinking man’s movie. It presents excruciatingly difficult dilemmas for which there are no easy answers, and it doesn’t pretend there are easy answers.   There is sufficient ambiguity right up to and including the end of the film, so that the questions and conflicts raised still linger after the final credits roll.

 

Silence cost $50 million to make and is projected to make just 2 to 3 million dollars its first weekend. That is unfortunate, but not altogether surprising. At 2 hours and 39 minutes, the movie is relatively long. It is decidedly adult. The actors are not the politically correct comic book super heroes that are all the rage these days, and the dialogue is often subtle and nuanced. It is well worth seeing.

 

JFB

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Hacking, Shmacking

Posted on January 5, 2017 by Joe Benning

As the controversy over Russian hacking swirls around the capital, it is well worth remembering Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s admonition that Intelligence should never be confused with intelligence. Consider this when listening to National Intelligence Director James Clapper’s testimony before Congress, especially when he said this: “I don’t think that we have ever encountered a more aggressive or direct campaign to interfere in our electoral process.”  He then went on to say that the Russian hacking efforts “did not change the vote tallies” in the election. In fact, no one has credibly asserted that the Russians (or anyone else outside of Cook County) even attempted to tamper with voting machines.
James Clapper

What it comes down to is this. The CIA has determined that the Russians probably tried to influence the results by planting unflattering stories about the Democrats in general and Hillary Clinton in particular. Well, you don’t say. Perhaps the real story is that James Clapper seems to think that Russia’s behavior constitutes the most aggressive campaign they (read the KGB) have ever launched to influence U.S. politics.

 

It’s pretty hard to understand why Clapper thinks this is so aggressive compared to past behavior. The KGB organized and financed huge demonstrations and all kinds of agitprop to try to prevent the U.S. from deploying Pershing missiles in Europe during the early 1980s. Just like they financed and helped to organize Peace groups in the 1960s in the U.S. and Europe. Including the more violent ones like the Red Brigades and the Bader Meinhof gang.

 

Then there was the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II in 1981, ordered by Yuri Andropov, General Secretary of the Communist Party in Russia. Prior to this assassination attempt, Andropov ran the KGB just like Putin. And while we are on this trip down memory lane, let’s not forget about the Weather Underground, an offshoot of the Weatherman, which in turn was an offshoot of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).

 

It turns out that some Members of the Weather Underground collaborated on and published a manifesto advocating the violent overthrow of the U.S. government in order to build socialism and create a Dictatorship of the Proletariat. I wonder where they got that idea? And is there any question where at least some of their support was coming from?

 

Anyway, here is what the manifesto said (in part). “The only path to the final defeat of imperialism and the building of socialism is revolutionary war … Socialism is the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the eradication of the social system based on profit … Revolutionary war will be complicated and protracted … It includes mass struggle and clandestine struggle, peaceful and violent, political and economic, cultural and military, where all forms are developed in harmony with the armed struggle. Without mass struggle there can be no revolution. Without armed struggle there can be no victory.”

 

The authors of this gem include Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, who as it happens are friends of none other than Barrack Obama. And it’s not like this was just idle chitchat. The Weather Underground and their ilk were responsible for multiple murders on top of a wave of rioting, bank robberies, bombings and other crimes.

 

Which brings us back to James Clapper. How can anyone, much less the Director of National Intelligence, profess to be in the least bit surprised that Vladimir Putin tried to influence U.S. elections for his strategic advantage. How can anyone look at the history and think that this go around comes close to some of the worst episodes in the past?

 

Which is why we need to bear in mind Patrick Moynihan’s distinction between Intelligence and intelligence.

 

JFB

 

 

 

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Fake News

Posted on January 3, 2017 by Joe Benning

The latest battle cry being test marketed by enemies of free speech is “Fake News”. It is the perfect bumper sticker slogan because the phrase is entirely devoid of substantive meaning, and it is sure to get partisan blood boiling. Like all propaganda campaigns, this one starts off with an ostensibly reasonable premise, namely that “fake news” is a problem. After all, who could be in favor of simply making stuff up?

 

Now is the time to state the obvious: people make stuff up all the time, and have done so forever. Politicians and advertisers have strong incentives to do so, which may be why they are so adept at it. That isn’t the issue. The real issue revolves around how to protect freedom of speech while still protecting citizens against libel and defamation.

 

Libel is not, and has never been, constitutionally protected. To be sure there are different standards for pursuing a libel case. For example, an ordinary citizen has a lower threshold to meet for pursuing a libel suit than does a public figure. In the landmark 1964 case New York Times v. Sullivan, the Supreme Court held that in order for a public official to successfully sue a news organization for libel, the official had to demonstrate that the news organization acted with malice, knowing that its reporting was false, or that it acted with malice with reckless disregard for the truth or falsity of its reporting.

 

But the fake news sloganeers are not interested in that, or in providing a remedy for libel. They are enemies of free speech and mean to shut down the speech of people with whom they disagree. They have tried to do so with campaign finance laws. Thankfully they were stopped in their tracks by the Citizens United case in a 5- 4 vote. They have promised to overturn Citizens United, but they are unlikely to succeed. With that avenue apparently closed down, the next gambit will be some attempt to regulate speech, i.e.—news, on the basis of its “accuracy”. The point of the fake news campaign is to soften the beaches for the next assault on the first amendment which will probably take the form of “recommendations” and “guidelines” for what constitutes news, how it should be reported, and by whom.

 

It will be instructive to see who falls in line as the campaign continues. His Majesty Donald the 1st of 5th Avenue has already suggested he wants to loosen libel laws to make it easier for politicians to sue the press. Charles Schumer attempted to amend the 1st amendment to allow legislatures to regulate political speech around election times. And now we have hedge fund manager Ray Dalio weighing in, proving once again Lenin’s prescience when he said that capitalists would sell communists the rope they would use to hang them.

 

In complaining about how that noted anti-capitalist newspaper the Wall Street Journal covered him, Dalio reportedly said the following.

 

“The failure to rectify this [fake news] problem is due to there not being any systemic checks on the news media’s quality,” he said. “The news media is unique in being the only industry that operates without quality controls or checks on its power. It has so much unchecked power that even the most powerful people and companies are afraid to speak out against it for fear of recrimination. In fact, I presume that I will be widely attacked in the media for what I am saying here.”

 

The ignorance embedded in that remark is nothing short of astonishing. Here we have a major Wall Street player, naively complaining that there are not any “systemic checks on the news media’s quality.” So would Mr. Dalio prefer to have a bureaucratic mechanism installed to replace the market? Perhaps a Ministry of News to do quality checks, meaning accuracy checks? That should send a chill down the spine of any sensible person.

 

Dalio, who is apparently unaware that news organizations compete, appears to believe the news media is a monolith. That would come as a surprise to Fox News and CNN, or to The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. But, Dalio says, “The news media is unique in being the only industry that operates without quality controls or checks on its power”. Seriously? No quality controls? What does he think fact checkers and editors do? No checks on their power? How is it that these supremely powerful news organizations, particularly newspapers, are under such intense financial pressure? Why, if they are so powerful, are newspapers going out of business everywhere you look? And why, if they are so persuasive, is trust in news organizations at an all-time low? And how did Trump get elected when virtually all the major media outlets except Fox News opposed him?

 

Undaunted by the evidence colliding with his hypothesis, Dalio soldiers on. Those who disagree with him must be misinformed. He flat out says, misinformation prevents the public from comprehending the truth, “which will threaten our society’s well-being.” Here is where he gives the game away. Ray Dalio and Co. are the high priests Who Know the Truth. In the blink of an eye “Fake news” becomes “misinformation” which blocks Truth. And it’s information that “the public” can’t comprehend, unless the great and the good are there to explain it to them. The perfect expression of bureaucratic paternalism.

 

All pretty amusing when you consider that Bridgewater Associates, Dalio’s firm, predicted that markets would tank all around the world if Trump won. Which leads to the question: When is the Ministry of Truth going to visit Westport Connecticut to explain things to the folks at Bridgewater Associates?

 

JFB

 

 

 

 

 

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So Long 2016, Hello 2017

Posted on December 31, 2016 by Joe Benning

Well, it’s been quite a year.

A lot of improbable things happened in 2016, not the least of which was the election of His Majesty King Donald the 1st as the 45th President of the U.S.

It may be difficult to do an inaugural using only 140 characters.

Perhaps foreshadowing Trump’s surprise victory, England voted to exit the EU.

The Cubs won the World Series. They last played in the Series in 1945. Before that the last time they won, in 1908, populist William Jennings Bryan of Nebraska was the Democratic nominee for President. He lost to William Howard Taft, Republican of Ohio.

The Wildcats of Villanova won the 2016 NCAA Men’s basketball championship.

Seven States legalized Pot in the 2016 elections.

In the meantime the FDA ruled that electronic smoking devices like Vape pens and e-cigarettes are to be considered “tobacco products” in spite of the fact that they do not contain tobacco. The regulation became effective August 8th, restricting sales to those over 18 years old.

 

After a fairly rocky start the S&P 500 managed total returns of 9.79% for all of 2016, pretty close to the historical average. 10-year Treasury note rates edged up about 35 basis points over the year.

 

Homicide rates in New York City continued to fall, dropping 13% from 146 in 2015 to 127 in 2016. However, the murder rate in Chicago skyrocketed 58% to 750 in 2016. Over the Christmas weekend at least 60 people were shot, 11 fatally. The population of New York is about 8.5 million and the population of Chicago is about 2.7 million, which implies that Chicago’s homicide rate is more than 18 times that of New York’s.

 

Hamilton continued on with its record setting ways. In 2016 it won a Grammy for Best Musical Theatre Album, 11 Tony awards and the Pulitzer for Drama. And it probably kept Hamilton’s picture on the $10 bill.

 

Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for literature, which makes the Cubs victory look kind of ordinary. Especially considering that past winners include Rudyard Kipling (1907), Anatole France (1921), William Butler Yeats (1923), George Bernard Shaw (1925), Thomas Mann (1929), Sinclair Lewis (1930), Eugene O’Neill (1936), Pearly S. Buck (1938), Hermann Hesse (1946), T.S. Elliot (1948), William Faulkner (1949), Winston Churchill (1953), Ernest Hemingway (1954), Albert Camus (1957), Samuel Beckett (1969) and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1970).

More recent winners have included Toni Morrison (1993), Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul (2001), Harold Pinter (2005), and Mario Vargas Llosa (2010). In particular it is well worth noting that Vargas Llosa, has for decades been a powerful voice against authoritarians and fanatics. So maybe the choice of Dylan isn’t so strange after all.

 

Campaign spending by the major party candidates fell from about $2.75 billion in 2012 to about $2.65 billion in 2016. That is a little less than half what the public spent for either pet grooming or legal marijuana, each of which clocked in at $5.4 billion. No word yet on whether the campaign affected sales of weed.

Perhaps we can go for an entire year without hearing from the Clinton’s, but don’t count on it.

Most importantly, let The Force be with you.

JFB

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Rogue One

Posted on December 29, 2016 by Joe Benning

In “Rogue One”, prequel to the original Star Wars film released in 1977, the mighty walking tanks of the Empire seem vaguely like Godzilla trampling through Tokyo. Chalk that up to Gareth Edwards, director of Monsters (2010) and the 2014 release of—Godzilla. But while Godzilla was a truly awful movie—in fact a truly awful series—Rogue One sparkles.

There is the usual jousting among the critics over the perennial question of what does it all mean, with some arguing that this is the first adult Star Wars movie in the series. There is something to that claim. This is more than just a shoot-em-up, although there is plenty of that. In this film some of the good guys get shot, which is relatively rare in the just-for–kids genre.

The movie calls to mind the Peloponnesian Wars with the Empire (Sparta) fighting to put down the Rebellion (Athens). The Empire is a military state. The Empire has a bit of a glass ceiling problem though; women appear to be almost totally absent from their midst. Needless to say the Empire maintains its rule with an iron hand of terror; its soldiers follow orders unblinkingly, and of course there is a brutal hierarchy of power with the Emperor at its pinnacle and Darth Vador as first henchman. Kind of like the IRS.

The Rebellion on the other hand is idealistic. It runs on hope, as we are reminded a couple of times. Its members are there for “The Cause”. The Rebellion, as you might expect, is kind of fractious. The members have their own minds. There is a Senate, so the Rebellion is democratic. And it has a President, not an Emperor. The President, like the eventual leader of the Rebellion (Felicity Jones), is a woman so they seem to have solved that glass ceiling problem that the Empire’s bureaucrats seem so unconcerned about. And the Rebellion has the best music.

One problem the Rebellion hasn’t solved is the project the Empire is so busy working on: the Death Star. If the Empire can demonstrate its power with the Death Star, the Rebellion will fall apart and all the inhabitants of the Galaxy will be forced to live under the thumb of the Empire.

But the Rebellion does have members who have The Force. And The Force is not to be taken lightly. It allows a blind Jedi to shoot down Empire fighter jets with a Bow and Arrow, not to mention fighting off machine gun toting Empire soldiers with little more than a walking stick and some Kung-Foo moves thrown in for good measure. Who says this movie is not aimed at adults?

All in all, Rogue One is very entertaining, and well worth seeing. Especially in 3D in an IMAX Theatre.

JFB

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Obama Tosses Israel Under the Bus

Posted on December 29, 2016 by Joe Benning

“Israel, we got your back” Obama famously claimed in August 2012. So the question must be asked, how  would U.S. foreign policy look any different if Obama’s goal were to put Israel on the road to extinction?

 

 

 

How for instance, Israelis are entitled to wonder, does it help for the United States to toss aside 50 years of policy in the waning days of an administration to delegitimize defensible borders for an Israel that is surrounded by hostile powers? How exactly does it help Israel for the United States to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran despite Israel’s strong objections? How does it help to put Iran on the path to a nuclear weapon? How does it help to send tens of billions of dollars in unmarked cash to an Iran committed to the destruction of Israel, and which the U.S. State department still considers to be the world’s leading State sponsor of terrorism.

 

It is probably true as John Kerry says, that the demographics of the Middle East require that Israel accept a two-state solution if it is to survive as both Jewish and a democracy. It depends on how democracy is defined. But it doesn’t mean that any two-state solution will do. A two state solution must recognize Israel’s right to exist as a sovereign state within defensible borders.

 

That poses a problem because Palestinian rejectionists refuse to concede Israel’s right to exist.

 

And why should they? They mean to win the war to eliminate Israel in the capitals of the West by isolating Israel and making it a pariah. They intend to do this by claiming the mantle of victimhood. They are, they claim, victims of Western colonial powers who seized their ancestral land in wars of aggression that date back at least as far as the Crusades. Their failures are the fault of the Western oppressors.

 

Except that there was that Muslim invasion of Spain that began in 711, not to mention Italy and France that came fast on its heels (historically speaking). Eventually Spain and Portugal fell under Islamic rule that lasted until 1492. Then there is that small matter of the Ottoman Empire’s entry into World War 1 on the side of Germany with an unprovoked attack on Russia, which was then allied with England and France.

 

But never mind. That was then.

 

Today progressives in Western capitals get to feel virtuous by simultaneously pulling the rug out from under Israel while insisting that Israel “take risks for peace”. This is the same crowd, by the way, that is busy creating safe spaces for undergraduates who live in terror that they might be forced to confront the horror of a gender specific pronoun.

 

There is a path to peace, but the path is not through Israeli settlements. Nor is it by surrender. Peace will come when the Arab and Persian governments of the Mideast stop using Israel as an excuse for their failures, liberalize their regimes and stop financing Hamas and their ilk.

 

JFB

 

 

 

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For Kevin Lara Lugo Born 2000, Died 2016.

Posted on December 26, 2016 by Joe Benning

The story is always the same; it is only the names that change. This time the name is Kevin Lara Lugo. He died on his 16th birthday. The New York Times reports that he had spent the previous day foraging for food in an empty lot because there was none at home. The family had gone without for three days, and they were getting weak, so he went out to find something, anything, to eat. What he did find turned out to be poisonous. Because the hospital lacked the simplest supplies needed to save him, the boy died on a gurney while his mother stood by helplessly.

 

His aunt told Nicholas Casey, the Times reporter, that “the boy [died] for no reason at all.” But that is not correct. The boy died because he was killed by Socialism, the most ruthless man-made killer the world has ever known.

 

In Venezuela, as a direct result of the Socialist revolution brought about by Hugo Chavez, there are widespread shortages of food and medicine. Doctors lack water to clean operating tables, and there are food riots. But Venezuela is just the latest to go down this path. People starve to death in North Korea every day. The most conservative estimates of North Korean starvation deaths in the late 1990s are in the neighborhood of 250,000 with some estimates greater by an order of magnitude.

 

During 1932-33 Joseph Stalin deliberately starved to death between 3 and 7 million Ukrainians in what Ukrainians call the Holodomor. This took place within a larger collapse of Soviet agriculture that accompanied–was caused by– the collectivization of the farms. Kazakhstan was particularly hard hit, losing about 2 million to starvation. From 1919 through 1933 Kazakhstan lost more than half its population as a result of the Soviet imposition of collective farming.

 

At the moment Cuba, which imports 80% of its food, is going through one of its periodic food shortages, and is looking north to U.S. farmers for help. And if you look at a list of 40 countries where people are going hungry you will find names like Zimbabwe, Chad, Liberia, Mali, Republic of Congo, Haiti, India, Nicaragua, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Sudan, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Uganda and Nepal. And that list leaves out places like Syria.

 

Not a capitalist one in the bunch. Not one. Every single one of them represents some stripe of collectivism. Call it socialism, communism, fascism, planned economy or whatever you want. The result is always the same. Bureaucrats and politicians, not business people and entrepreneurs make key economic decisions. As a result, the poor and vulnerable, those without political connections, are left to deal with predictable shortages of food and medicines. Make no mistake: these shortages are brought about by the politicians and bureaucrats who substitute central planning, bureaucratic control and regulation for free markets.

 

 

Which begs the question. Why is it that the activists who seem to be constantly staging marches for social justice are nowhere to be found protesting the plight of Venezuelans? Where are Bernie Sanders and the professional left? After all, Bernie Sanders has spent his entire political career advocating for the policies that have produced the predictable (and predicted) disaster in Venezuela. Shouldn’t he have some explaining to do? Believe it or not Sanders actually described food lines as a good thing. He said, “You know, it’s funny. Sometimes American journalists talk about how bad a country is when people are lining up for food. That’s a good thing. In other countries, people don’t line up for food. The rich get the food and the poor starve to death.”

 

Please see the John Stossel  You Tube segment below.

 

 

So the question needs to be asked. Why does the mainstream press give Sanders (and his ilk) a pass? Why are his campus followers, decked out in their Che branded T-shirts, treated as idealists rather than as dupes? Let’s be clear. The collectivist ideology they so enthusiastically and foolishly embrace is what ultimately killed Kevin Lara Lugo on his 16th birthday.

 

Kevin Lara Lugo, born 2000, died 2016. RIP.

 

JFB

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Art of the 180

Posted on December 24, 2016 by Joe Benning

As Christmas and Hanukkah approach, it is altogether fitting that the hypocrisy of the professional left has been bared, and for the umpteenth time. Its utter contempt for the rule of law; its virulent hatred of freedom and of self-determination have been exposed for all willing to see. We need look no further than what is going on first, at the UN in the case of Israel, and second, the apoplexy on the left over U.S. foreign policy with respect to Russia and nuclear arms.
Betrayal

The UN has been a cauldron of anti-Semitism since at least 1975 when it adopted a resolution equating Zionism with racism. Back then, the US firmly and resolutely opposed attempts to beat Israel into submission. In one of the finest speeches ever delivered at the UN, US Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan issued a scathing indictment of the resolution and its proponents in decidedly undiplomatic language. An excerpt is below.

Fast forward to 2016. The Obama Administration joined with the jackals by pointedly refusing to veto a UN resolution that, on the surface, calls for an end to Israeli settlement building in the “occupied territories”. This not only broke with 50 years of bipartisan foreign policy; it broke with the Obama Administration’s own policy. As recently as 2011 Obama ordered a veto of what was essentially the same resolution. So what changed since 2011? Hillary Clinton had already lost the 2016 elections; that’s what.

 

 

Let’s not be fooled into thinking that the resolution is really about settlements, or that the resolution is “toothless”. The resolution is another step—and a big one—in the campaign to delegitimize the Jewish State. For instance, it puts a very big thumb on the scale by describing long-disputed territories as “occupied” territories; it declares Israeli settlements to be illegal and subjects Israelis to prosecution in European Courts. It removes one more set of incentives for Palestinians to negotiate for a just and lasting peace. (For a detailed discussion of the legal issues, please see this article by Andrew McCarthy of National Review Online.)

 

Meanwhile His Royal Highness, Donald of 5th Ave, got this one right when he successfully put pressure on Egypt to withdraw the resolution and then publicly came out against it. Unfortunately Venezuela, Senegal, Malaysia and New Zealand (what were they thinking?) picked up the Egyptian resolution and forced a vote. The result was 14 – 0 in favor with the US abstaining.

 

In response Trump said (Tweeted actually) that things would be different after January 20th. That would be refreshing. Perhaps the moral sensibilities of those titans in the fight for human rights like Senegal, Egypt, Angola, China, Russia, Venezuela and Malaysia will be taken with a very large grain of salt.

 

And, oh yes, in case you forgot, Trump is the one who is supposed to be anti-Semitic.

 

Just saying.

 

 

When Comrade Putin Speaks

 

For months U.S. progressives have been crying crocodile tears over Trump’s alleged “bromance” with Vladimir Putin, and Putin’s alleged influence over US affairs, particularly the 2016 US presidential election. For now, let’s leave aside the fact that there is no actual evidence that Putin and his KGB buddies actually influenced the outcome of the race. And let’s stipulate that Putin’s motives are not simply suspect—let’ say his motives are all nefarious. That’s a pretty good assumption.

 

For this exercise let’s note some facts. Around the time Comrade Putin invaded Crimea, he pointedly noted that his nukes were targeted at U.S. cities. He also claimed that the Russian soldiers in Ukraine were really just volunteers. Perhaps you didn’t know that Russia is famous for its citizens keeping T-14 Armata war tanks in their back yards. Just in case. You never know.

 

In the meantime, Putin has been modernizing his strategic nuclear forces for some time. As Time magazine put it back in April 2016, “Over the course of Obama’s presidency, Russia has managed to negotiate deep cuts to the U.S. arsenal while substantially strengthening its own”. Further “[Russia] has brought disarmament talks with the U.S. to a complete standstill for the first time since the 1960s. In its rhetoric, Moscow has also returned to a habit of nuclear threats, while in its military exercises, it has begun to practice for a nuclear strike, according to the NATO military alliance”.

 

So after Putin decided once again to start yammering on about his nuclear forces, Trump responded by saying (Tweeting) that the U.S. would not shrink from the challenge and that if that meant there would be an arms race, so be it. Count on the media to report this as an unwarranted Trump provocation, not a response.

 

Anyway, Progressives who had been shouting from the rooftops mere weeks ago that Trump was simply a tool of Comrade Putin, putty in his hands, immediately headed for their now well-worn fainting couches. Warmonger Trump was needlessly provoking St. Vladimir. Billionaire Trump, that tool of the military-industrial complex, was about to start a new arms race that would bankrupt the U.S..

 

As it turns out, His Majesty called this one right. That’s two-for-two, a record of sorts. We have been in an arms race for quite some time, except that only one side has been running on the track, namely the bad guys. That would include Russia, China, North Korea and Iran to name a few. The Obama Administration has at best been fairly passive in the face of Russian aggression and North Korean sabre ratting; too accommodating of China in the South China Sea, and has facilitated Iranian nuclear goals.

 

Vladimir Putin, who called the collapse of the Soviet Union the greatest geo-political tragedy of the 20th century, is busy at work weakening NATO, which is incapable of defending Europe without the U.S. Truth be told, it may very well have been a mistake for the Clinton Administration to expand NATO thus stoking Russian fears. But that is water under the bridge.

 

In any event, by announcing that he was quite willing to modernize and rebuild U.S. forces, Trump served notice that the U.S. was no longer going to be a patsy for anyone. This is a message that needs to be, and will be heard loud and clear in Russia, China, North Korea and Iran among others. And let’s be clear. There is only one nation that can win an arms race. That is the United States. It is only a question of will.

 

The United States has a choice. It can choose to defend human rights. It can choose to affirm the sovereignty of the nation-state and its role as the primary organizational unit of world politics. And its government can act as defender of human rights. And it can back those choices with combinations of soft and coercive power. Or it can choose to yield to the progressive dream, actually a nightmare, of  global government, which inevitably means governance by corrupt and self serving bureaucratic elites.

 

Thus far there is a glimmer of hope this Christmas season. Wonder of wonders, His Majesty Donald Trump seems to be leaning toward the former rather than the latter.

 

Back in 1975 when the UN was equating Zionism with fascism U.S. President Gerald Ford signed the Helsinki accords that for the first time placed human rights front and center in world politics. According to the non-binding accords:

 

“Human rights are moral principles or norms, which describe certain standards of human behavior, and are regularly protected as legal rights in municipal and international law. They are commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights “to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being,” and which are “inherent in all human beings” regardless of their nation, location, language, religion, ethnic origin or any other status.”

 

Progressives, who believe that rights flow from the State, cannot truly abide by the Helsinki declaration because it declares human rights to be inherent to the person. So watch for the upcoming 180. The professional left, which despises the US and Israel precisely because they share Liberal values, will soon be arguing that Donald Trump, who only last week was supposedly a Vladimir Putin fan boy, is actually under the thumb of the Israelis. Because the modern locus of the ancient disease of anti-Semitism is mostly on the left.

 

Merry Christmas

 

JFB

 

 

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Absurdities

Posted on December 22, 2016 by Joe Benning

Really Surreal

His Majesty, King Donald of 5th Ave, now insists (by Tweet of course) that he could have won the popular vote had he chosen to do so. The basis for this latest round of nonsense is that he would have run a different campaign if the popular vote determined the winner. While it is arguably true in the case of Bush v. Gore that Bush could have run up the vote in places like Texas in a popular vote campaign, there is no chance that Trump could have harvested an extra 3 million votes or so around the country, much less in places like California and New York.

 

Trump sycophants have now taken to arguing that His Majesty beat Hillary Clinton by 3 million votes if you don’t count California and New York. Which is to say that Trump did even better if you don’t count the other guy’s votes.

 

In the meantime Politico reports that His Majesty intends to maintain his own private security force rather than rely exclusively on the Secret Service, a move that Jonathan Wackrow, a former Secret Service agent, calls “playing with fire.”

 

The Long Goodbye

To the surprise of almost no one, it turns out that remnants of the Clinton campaign kept tabs on the attempt to derail the Electoral College vote for Trump. Documents leaked to Politico show that while the campaign didn’t come out and endorse the effort, they didn’t wave it off either, just as they gave tacit support to the ill-fated recount efforts mounted by Jill Stein.

 

Spendathon

In a looming sign that fiscal sanity is unlikely to make an appearance in Washington any time soon, Charles Schumer, Senate minority leader, has said that Trump’s trillion dollar infrastructure plan “sounds good to him.” The spendathon is about to begin.

 

About that Russian Influence

Politico reports that Senator Tom Cotton, long a hawk on Russia, tried to force the White House to create a panel with representatives from various agencies to “counter Russian efforts ‘to exert control or influence’ including by exposing Russian ‘falsehoods, agents of influence, corruption, human rights abuses, terrorism, and assassinations’.”

The Administration rejected Cotton’s call saying that it would duplicate existing efforts.

 

The Youth Vote

A recent poll found that 62% of Democrats do not want Hillary Clinton to take a third run at the White House, leading to the obvious question, where did they find the other 38%? Anyway, the two candidates Democrats are most focused on for 2020 are Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. In 2020 Biden will turn 78 and Sanders will turn 79.

JFB

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