Posts Tagged → United Nations
Middle East ain’t like Mid-Town Manhattan
Despite President Trump’s best efforts at creating “peace” or at least the absence of violence, for a while, in the Middle East, the latest agreement, deal, whatever we call it, is failing.
Of course it is failing. The Gaza “ceasefire” was declared to be the “peace in our time” of most-mistaken Neville Chamberlain, without anything backing it up beyond President Trump’s own public standing. Which is taking a beating now that Hamas has killed a bunch of Israelis, in violation of the supposed ceasefire terms.
Vice President JD Vance said that there is “no mechanism to dis-arm Hamas”, which means the Trump Administration rejects the only mechanism there is: the IDF. Vance is going to Israel momentarily, mostly to strong-arm Israel into not responding militarily to Hamas violence against Israel. This is just going to result in more ceasefire failure and policy failure and more one-sided violence.
President Trump has oddly placed his own personal credibility in the hands of those who support Hamas, Qatar and Turkey.
I give Hamas some credit, for returning the twenty remaining living Israeli hostages. Hamas did get a hell of a boost to their fighting ranks, however, with the simultaneous release of over 2,000 hardened criminals held in Israeli prisons, most of whom with innocent blood on their hands. So it was a careful calculus that Hamas did. Had nothing to do with peace, and everything to do with rebuilding its obliterated ranks.
The mistake that all Westerners make when dealing with Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East (versus the Muslim Arab American guy in the cubicle down the hall from your own office here in America, who has a chance of being fairly acculturated into American values) is believing that if we are nice, they will reciprocate, and that their pledges mean something.
Their pledges -hudna, takiya- don’t mean anything, except for buying time, so Hamas et al can regroup and go back to war better than before.
President Trump is a good man, with good intentions, good hopes, good dreams. He is trying to do good in the Middle East, but he is failing. Badly. He is trying to do a deal there like he would do a real estate construction deal in mid-town Manhattan, where the shared win-win 360-degree rising tide of financial success floats all boats whether they are contractor, union, supplier, or whomever. This is a fine model for rational problem solving in America, and we certainly do need more of it here.
But the Middle East is not Manhattan, and it is not New York, or America, or even Europe, yet. Rather, the Middle East is the martyr-littered place that the Christian Crusaders attacked for hundreds of years, sometimes successfully, sometimes unsuccessfully. It is the place that is riven by a million bloody blood feuds, run by back-stabbing and suicide bombing and civilian murder as a matter of course. Western ideas of mercy, fairness, kindness, earnestness, honesty etc have no place in the Middle East, and President Trump is only now beginning to learn this hard fact.
Because Israel will go along with most of what President Trump wants or needs, it is natural for the Trump Administration to lean ever more heavily on Israel to acquiesce and bend and absorb the foolish notions, rather than push harder on Qatar, Turkey or Hamas, who will never bend or acquiesce. They will lie, at best. But Israel will once again be put in a weakened position, and this will incite the blood lust of its enemies, and the cycle of violence will begin anew.
Because the Trump Administration wants to “be nice.” For God’s sake.
Similar foolish mistakes:
- Forcing Israel to stop bombing the evil Iranian regime when it was at its most vulnerable and the most change could be brought to the region. President Trump believed that showing the Iranian mullahs mercy would inspire them to act like Westerners and acquiesce. But nope. Iran says they will get the nuclear bomb and the ICBM means to shove it up America’s ass no matter what. Iran learned nothing from Trump’s largesse, and Trump gained nothing from his largesse, and the world is a more dangerous place because of his largesse.
- Giving evil terrorism sponsor and Hamas-hiders Qatar protection from Israel. This inspires Qatar to double down on its active terrorism and rotgut far-left academic investments in American universities.
- Failing to hold Egypt accountable for its unwillingness to accept fellow Arab Muslim refugees from Gaza, and for creating a huge offensive military buildup in the Sinai Peninsula, contrary to the peace agreement with Israel.
- Failing to hold Turkey accountable for its Islamist terrorism machinations and imperialist dreams.
- Failing to help establish Kurdistan once and for all.
- Giving the psycho sadist ISIS and Al-Qaeda terrorists in Syria any credibility.
The list of policy failings in the Middle East grows longer every day, and as a result the world becomes less safe and less stable. Again, President Trump deserves credit for trying something new, but now that we all see that it has failed and that his empty threats against Hamas are laughed at (and that his real threats against Israel for retaliating against Hamas ceasefire violations damage Trump’s standing even more), it is time for this incredible president to stop being Mister Nice Guy.
It is not working, so stop it, for your own good.
No Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to President Trump, despite him earning it a hundred times over. No recognition was given to him by the Islamist-run United Nations. Absolutely zero of the so-called self anointed “peace” organizations gave Trump any credit for his peace-making efforts. So, Mister President, forgetaboutit, as they used to say in the Bronx when they spoke American there.
You want to create peace in the Middle East?
Here is how: Tell Qatar that they and their oil fields now belong to America, and that the royal family will enjoy a generous stipend, but that they also no longer run the tiny country. Same goes for the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. Take their oil, take their lands, make it ours, and we will see peace like you never believed possible begin to reign across that crazy region. Hell, we will see peace right here in America and in Europe like we have not seen since the 1950s!
This is real out of the box thinking, and it is exactly the realpolitik that everyone in that region understands fully. It will work. The issue is whether or not the Trump Administration has the stomach for it.
Good luck, President Trump! We still love you. We just know what is best for you better than you do. You are blinded by good intentions.
Choices: Principles vs Institutions
Humans create institutions to institutionalize our values, religious practices, hopes and aspirations, cultural identity, etc. Our institutions are created in order to make permanent and carry our values forward, a sort of vehicle. Schools, libraries, government agencies, religious institutions, family foundations, charitable foundations, unions, associations, etc, every single one created with a mission to implement certain principles.
Over time people naturally identify with a particular institution, become a champion of it, and a stakeholder to it. Again, private schools, public school PTAs, library associations, the National Ukrainian Club, various church and synagogue umbrella groups, Democrat Party, Republican Party, etc, you know those particular institutions in your own life, because they reflect your values.
What happens when the institution no longer represents or reflects the founding principles that breathed life and cause into it?
Examples abound: The United Nations works against the western democracies who founded it and currently pay for it. The Democrat Party has become a wild communist orgy of anti-Americanism; the Republican Party has forsworn its abolitionist roots and has become a bunch of establishment do-nothing fuddy-duddies; the National Rifle Association accretes multiple layers of bureaucracy into everything it does, instead of spending its limited money pursuing individual freedom; school teachers unions become outlets for destructive radical politics, far outside the mainstream of American families; a local church or synagogue is poorly run by a small group of self-reinforcing, self selecting, like-minded establishmentarians who cannot and will not respond to changes in their respective demographics…
The one that got me thinking about this subject is the Pennsylvania Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs, a sportsmen’s group I had a long relationship with, which then attempted to take a hard left turn into climate alarmism and gun regulation back in 2020. In one quick weekend of fake votes and heavily manipulated elections, the PFSC leadership torpedoed the institution the leaders said they loved. Their far-left politics alienated their base, and the group has not yet recovered its former standing.
With PFSC, I took a hard and public stand, and while I succeeded in stopping the old group from becoming leftist stooges of the charitable foundation trust fund sector, I also lost a lot of friends. People who were loyal to the PFSC they remembered, and who they wanted it to still be. Some blamed me for damaging PFSC’s public reputation, while I blamed PFSC’s leadership for making unpopular decisions its base rejected. For sure the messenger got shot!
In 2020, PFSC’s leaders jettisoned the principles on which PFSC was originally founded, and a great portion of their natural base stopped believing in the institution.
Recently I stepped back from a formal leadership role in a local house of worship, as the venerable institution begins to crumble onto itself. Leaders there, who fondly remember this house of worship from their childhood, cannot make the tough decisions necessary to keep it alive, and in fact keep making decisions that guarantee few or no young people will join it and keep it going. This particular institution is beginning to greatly deviate from its own founding principles, and its base, its natural adherents and admirers, no longer recognize it.
One last example: The US Environmental Protection Agency was a place I badly wanted to work in while I was in college back in the mid 1980s. When I finally got to work at the USEPA, I realized that a great deal of the basic principle that had undergirded its founding had been long since tossed overboard. In place of the simple principle of a clean environment came a whole regime of anti-capitalism, anti-America regulations. After seven years as a policy staffer at USEPA, I could not wait to get out. I now think the agency needs a whole new name and a very clear mission change.
So should we be loyal to the hollowed out shells of institutions that now exist mostly in facade, gutted of what they once stood for, hopeful that they will somehow regain their former glory, or should we seek to create new institutions that are more representative of the principles that enervated the originals we so dearly loved and identified with?
Change is a constant, evolution is healthy, and institutions that do not change to some degree become stale, immobile, static, and fragile. But those that deviate from their founding principles are destined for a much faster devolution, because most people just simply stop believing in them.
The competitive free market will cause new institutions to spring alive, bringing hope and aspiration anew to old principles, replacing the old institutions as they dry up and wither away. For me, I am of two minds: Stay loyal to the old institution until that is no longer possible, on principle, and then help found a new one, on principle.
Watching Evolution Happen: UN dying like League of Nations & dinosaurs
Before the United Nations there was a League of Nations, spawned by the savage destruction of World War One.
The League of Nations was initially built by the victorious Allies (Britain, France, America) and later began to accept other minor nations, many of whom had been opposed to the Allies. Collective security, and an international court for settling disputes before they turned into warfare, were supposed to prevent wars either through large alliances, or through legal mechanisms.
All that great intention came crashing down in the 1930s, when Japan, Germany, and Italy dispensed with the notion of playing nice, and each pursued their own national interests with the bayonet. The League of Nations was powerless to stop them, powerless to prevent World War Two, and to some degree is to blame for not allowing Western nations to directly threaten military force against rogue nations like Hitler’s Germany and Imperial Japan before they got up a head of steam.
It was a classic situation where the moral people were constrained by their own laws, while the lawless people ignored those laws and in fact used them to buy the time they needed for territorial acquisition. Kind of like gun control: The good guys were disarmed, the bad guys were not, and the bad guys did what they wanted.
During the incredible destruction of World War Two, the League of Nations ceased to function altogether, and fell into disrepute, but afterwards the new United Nations took its place. Using a lot of the same concepts and mechanisms, the UN was supposed to bring order to international relations and prevent wars.
Anyone watching international relations today realizes that the UN is an utter failure. It is a monstrous and corrupt bureaucracy, wherein rogue nations like Iran are actually able to gain cover and a foothold in diplomacy, instead of being held accountable for their military threats. Anti-Americanism is the dominant theme there.
On the personal level, consider the many continuous media reports of UN diplomats gone wild in America, leaving personal wakes of rapine and property destruction. These diplomats cannot be held accountable because of their “diplomatic immunity,” and so they enjoy wild lifestyles at the expense of American citizens’ safety and wellbeing that they could never get away with in their own countries, and nor could any American, here or there.
Spies, too, get lots of cover in the UN, damaging American interests and blocking the spread of democracy and universal human rights. Judging the UN by its own charter, it is a total failure. Judging its leaders by their ridiculous, empty, and sanctimonious statements, the UN is an object of derision among the most dangerous nations in the world. It is a joke. It does and stands for nothing, at least nothing good.
When evil people use the UN to advance their goals, it has failed in its basic mission.
It is time to do what is so painfully obviously needed, and end the UN, as its predecessor died. This is natural and healthy evolution. The idea that the dinosaurs get to dictate how the modern humans live is crazy.
Sorry to be cliché here, but it is time to get the US out of the UN, and get the UN out of the US. Whatever new relationships the US can and should pursue with like-minded democracies like Britain, France, and Israel, let’s build them. Without all the hokum and artificial blocks of the Useless Nations.
We aren’t all “in this together,” but most of us are
As the “United Nations” and its ally Barack Hussein Obama demand that a sovereign nation immediately cease defending its citizens from incessant rocket attacks, Westerners can and should wake up.
Do not think that America will not be held to the same bizarre standard. Beware of what is behind that.
As illegal invaders are now bussed into the American interior and given free taxpayer-funded benefits, be aware that future attempts to remove these squatters from our soil can and probably will be met with the accusation of committing a “crime against humanity.”
The UN will probably make that accusation official.
Already, Americans who want our borders to be maintained in an orderly way are being falsely accused of racism, as if the trucking in of hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens – in violation of American law – is an act of caring and love to the people who actually built and run America.
Across the Middle East, Christians are being hounded out of their ancestral areas. Bethlehem, Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Turkey….you name it, these areas that once held large populations of Christians are seeing a growing refugee problem as these believers are chased, beaten, burned, tortured, and robbed to the point where they have no choice but to flee or perish.
Very little press is reporting on this crime.
Recently, the Jews were similarly driven out of the Muslim countries, and even once-Jewish places like Hebron and Tzfat, to the point where by 1958 a million refugees had mostly arrived in Israel, their homes, farms and businesses stolen and (still) occupied by Islamic supremacists. Populations that had lived peacefully for a thousand years before Islam was even created were suddenly attacked. That canary in the coal mine is being attacked again, now, from Gaza, and the world has turned against the canary.
If American and European Christians do not recognize what is in store for them both at home in America and Europe, and abroad, then they will eventually suffer the same fate as their Middle Eastern brethren.
Gotta make a stand against evil, folks.
NPR Goes for Broke on “Palestine”
National Public Radio Goes for Broke on “Palestine”
October 3rd, 2011
by Josh First
American tax dollars continue to fund National Public Radio’s left-wing agenda, one aspect of which is NPR’s aggressively anti-Israel, pro-Arab imperialism messaging.
April 22nd, 2011, saw NPR’s reporters across the board go for broke on the upcoming application for the creation of a second “Palestinian” state, this one planned for Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. The original and primary state that is 78% of the original Palestine Mandate is the current Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, ruled by the carpetbagging family of King Abdullah. In the 1920s, his family was chased out of the Arabian Peninsula by the al-Saud clan, now known as the Saudis. Approximately 80% of the Arabs living in Jordan identify as “Palestinians.”
NPR is no stranger to controversy over the issue of Arab imperialism and colonialism in the Holy Land. Last year Harrisburg’s local NPR affiliate, WITF, interviewed NPR’s ombudsman, who disclaimed any anti-Israel agenda.
“Critics call NPR ‘National Palestine Radio’, and we reject that, it’s ridiculous,” the ombudsman said in that 2010 interview.
Just months later, NPR’s president Mr. Ron Schiller was filmed making a pitch to supposed Arab donors, during which he bragged that NPR is known for its Leftist bias and known as “National Palestine Radio.” His fundraising ploy was that Arabs should naturally donate to NPR because it is a mouthpiece for their views. He was believable because his assertions about NPR’s Leftist activism have been widely observed and documented for decades.
Schiller promptly resigned from NPR after that film went public, and NPR promptly dropped heavy Israel reporting. Israel had been enormously disproportionately featured in NPR’s reporting for decades, and none of it was positive. After Schiller’s resignation, and the subsequent firing of the NPR vice president (Vivian Schiller, said to be no relation to Ron Schiller) who had been behind much of NPR’s political strong-arming of its reporters, NPR laid low and hid from scrutiny, knowing that it had finally been outed, all on the heels of NPR’s Ellen Weiss being dismissed for firing reporter Juan Williams in 2009. NPR is no stranger to political correctness, well, actually NPR is in the vanguard of it, but with so many firings and scandalous resignations associated with PC, the opinion service quieted down for a while.
Now, months later, NPR sees a unique opportunity to create pressure for the advancement of Islamic imperialism and Arab colonialism through the creation of another “Palestinian” state outside of Jordan, both of which NPR has long, long supported in the Holy Land.
In a September 22nd interview with Susan Rice, the Obama Administration’s United Nations representative, NPR’s interviewer asked question after question that revealed her support for Islamic imperialism and her anti-Israel bias. Even NPR’s late report on finance and the economy that same day featured a story on the supposed “Palestinian” economy.
That fawning report highlighted Arab business people supposedly working in quiet but successful obscurity, and failed to mention any of the enormous challenges facing Arabs in Judea and Samaria who wish to create a new Arab state there. In other words, it was just one more NPR propaganda piece, the kind that NPR executives used for fundraising among anti-Israel donors.
On October 3rd, 2011, incoming NPR CEO Gary Knell called for NPR to be fully funded by U.S. taxpayers and for elected officials to “depoliticize” NPR.
So, according to Knell, NPR is supposed to continue with business as usual, where every single molecule of the daily news is heavily politicized to the Left by NPR staff, but the American taxpayers who subsidize it are supposed to now ignore that and let NPR off the hook. Politicization-as-usual by NPR, but Heaven forefend that Americans raise that lack of balance to a political level where their tax money can be accounted for.
Like his predecessors, Knell either does not understand the problem, or, more likely, he wants to pretend the issues facing NPR are some sort of hoax. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, folks, is the message.
If there was ever a time to apply the Fairness Doctrine, this would be it. It’s a deeply flawed policy that undermines free speech, but when it comes to public money used to spread messages and promote policies that are directly opposed to American interests and policies, NPR is the poster child for its implementation.
Or better yet, disband NPR and return the savings to the taxpayers. There’s no compelling need or reason for NPR to exist any longer. Its inability to maintain journalistic balance is the constant proof of that.