Saturday, September 05, 2015

RECOMMENDED READS: CLAUDIA ROSSETT ON THE "JOINT COMPREHENSIVE PLAN OF ACTION."

Over at American Thinker Claudia Rosett's Forbes piece offers a telling comparison between the 1994 “Agreed Framework” with North Korea and 2015's “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action” with Iran:


"With Congress due to vote by Sept. 17 on the Iran nuclear deal, there’s a warning worth revisiting. It goes like this: The president is pushing a historic nuclear agreement, saying it will stop a terror-sponsoring tyranny from getting nuclear weapons. And up pipes the democratically elected leader of one of America’s closest allies, to say this nuclear deal is mortal folly. He warns that it is filled with concessions more likely to sustain and embolden the nuclear-weapons-seeking despotism than to disarm it.

This critic has more incentive than most to weigh the full implications of the deal, because his country is most immediately in harm’s way — though it has not been included in the nuclear talks. He notes that the nuclear negotiators have sidelined such glaring issues as human rights, and warns that Washington is naive, and the U.S. is allowing itself to be manipulated by a ruthless dictatorship.

No, the critic I’m referring to is not Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, though he has warned of precisely such dangers in the Iran nuclear deal. I am citing the warnings voiced 21 years ago by the then-President of South Korea, Kim Young Sam, as the Clinton administration bargained its way toward the 1994 nuclear deal with North Korea known as the Agreed Framework.

As it turned out, Kim Young Sam’s misgivings were right on target. The 1994 Agreed Framework did not stop North Korea’s pursuit of the bomb. Instead, it became a pit stop on North Korea’s road to the nuclear arsenal it is amassing today.

Kim warned that the deal was “a half-baked compromise” that would “prolong the life of the North Korean government and send the wrong signal to its leaders.” It would result in “more danger and peril,” not less.

President Clinton ignored the warning. Signing the deal, brokered by Jimmy Carter, he claimed that it was “good for the United States, good for our allies, and good for the entire world.” It was “a crucial step drawing North Korea into the global community.”

That isn’t how it worked out. Despite our forwarding $4.6 billion for two lightwater reactors and oil for heating and electricity, North Korea cheated continuously, and became a nuclear power in 2006. President Bush then promptly tried again, reopening negotiations with Pyongyang and offering more incentives. North Korea, already the biggest recipient of U.S. aid in East Asia, took the money, then broke off negotiations two years later.

When Kim Jong Il launched an ICBM over Japan in 1998, Clinton sent one Wendy Sherman, a former social worker and Democratic bundler (head of EMILY’S list) to negotiate a missile deal. She brought with her a basketball signed by Michael Jordan. Kim turned her down.

 photo wendy_sherman_zpsog9hbvi6.jpg


Sherman was back again in Geneva, leading the negotiations with Teheran, having learned nothing, except maybe not to offer NBA paraphernalia to the mullahs.

Of course there are important differences between the 1994 and 2015 deals. But these don’t augur well for world peace. Compared to Iran’s attitude toward Israel and the U.S., North Korea feels fraternal affection for Seoul and Washington. Compared to Tehran, Pyongyang respects human rights and international law. Above all, Stalinists don’t believe in a global jihad. What was naiveté on the part of the U.S. team in 1994 was something more malignant in 2015."



Food for thought. Or should I say Fools bought out for naught.



MFBB.

Tuesday, September 01, 2015

RECOMMENDED READS: MARK STEYN'S "FIT OF PEAK".

Mark Steyn tears a couple of usual suspects a new asshole in today's Fit of Peak:


"Today, Tuesday, is the official release date of my new book "A Disgrace To The Profession". I'll be appearing with Sean Hannity later tonight on Fox News (details at right), but I'd like to thank His Holiness the Pope for arranging the ultimate promotional tie-in by proclaiming my book's launch day as the International Day of Prayer for Climate Change. Thousands of Kindle pre-order customers will find their prayers answered, as the digital "Disgrace" is magically waiting to greet them when they wake up this morning. As for the old-fashioned paper version, we're already on the book's third printing, which is a nice place to be on the first official day of sale in the United States and Canada and elsewhere. And it's Number One on the Climatology Hit Parade, with its sister book Climate Change: The Facts holding at Number Eight, and Michael E Mann's Dreary Predictions down at Number 15. "A Disgrace To The Profession" is also available in Nook and Kobo eBook format from today.

~The second highest peak in North America is Mount Logan in the Yukon, named after Sir William Logan, founder of the Geological Survey of Canada. When Pierre Trudeau died 15 years ago, his successor, Jean Chrétien, announced airily that Mount Logan would be renamed for the late Prime Minister. Given the number of women who got to mount Trudeau in the course of his life, having an actual Mount Trudeau seemed an oddly superfluous honor. But, in its insult to and obliteration of Sir William Logan, a Canadian of great accomplishments, it was a typically Trudeaupian act of historical vandalism.

So some of us pushed back against Chrétien's banana-republican name-change, and, unusually for the deranged Dominion, Mount Logan got to keep its name.

The only higher peak in North America was not so fortunate. On Monday, Barack Obama, by executive order, removed the name of his predecessor from Mount McKinley. It is a strange thing to do - the sort of public humiliation that in normal circumstances would accompany the revelation that the man was a pedophile or racist or some such. And it is an especially undeserved fate for William McKinley, who took a bullet for his country - back in the days before American presidents retreated behind the 40-car motorcade and no citizen could be permitted into their presence without a background check. It was a characteristically petty act for Obama, adding insult to injury, to fly to Alaska personally to strip McKinley of his mountain. I don't altogether rule out him detonating those guys off Mount Rushmore before his term's up.

~I regret while I was on The Tommy Schnurmacher Show in Montreal yesterday that I neglected to speak out against Quebec's appalling Bill 59, which gives the province's wretched "Human Rights" Commission the authority to launch "hate speech" prosecutions even when nobody's made a complaint. Jacques Frémont, the statist hack who heads the commission, has already signaled his intention to use his new powers to sue "people who would write against ...the Islamic religion".


 photo freacutemont_zpsptlu4hts.jpg

Jacques Frémont, sharia promotor, scoundrel, traitor, creep, and soi-disant sophisticate who would be of better use shoveling horseshit in Manitoba provided he would be capable of understanding you don't hold a spade by its blade.



Screw off, creep. Free people are entitled to "write against" Islam or any other religion whatever some state commissar in a cosy and entirely unnecessary sinecure thinks. Marc Lebuis, whose invaluable Point de Bascule website seems likely to be an early target of Commissar Frémont, provides an English translation of his very thorough evidence to the National Assembly in Quebec City:

We can never repeat it enough: the role of the State is to protect the individual freedom of expression: that is the freedom of individuals to criticize ideas and NOT to protect ideas from the criticism of individuals.

Instead, the proponents of Bill 59 argue that it is necessary to throttle freedom in order to save it:

Ironically, Lebuis says, supporters justify the bill by suggesting it will protect democracy against terrorism. They reason that "terrorism is a reaction towards people who criticize their religion," he explains, "so by banning the criticism of Islam, we would end terrorism." Such arguments have been made both by Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard and by Muslim groups such as the Association of Muslims and Arabs for a Secular Quebec (AMAL).

Shame on M Couillard for adopting as his own one of Islam's most stupid arguments: If you say we're crazy and violent, we'll go bananas and kill you.

To which the Government of Quebec adds: Because Muslims go nuts at the slightest provocation, we'll ban the slightest provocation, and therefore they'll no longer need to go nuts. Good luck with that.

If this bill passes, it will become necessary for all of us to break it and render it unworkable - and to support Marc Lebuis, a rare champion of genuine liberty in a province that could use more like him and a lot fewer totalitarian toads like Frémont and Couillard. It is exhausting to have to fight the same battle over and over and over again, but I am not prepared to let the western world retreat into darkness one jurisdiction at a time. As some bloke once said, Vive le Québec libre!"



These are very, very serious times. All over the planet the Right, or what passes for it these days, has withdrawn all too willingly in a coma, and the Left has gone totally, criminally insane.

How did Yeats put it? The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

Man W.B., you were some Prophet. A real one.



MFBB.

Sunday, August 30, 2015

BERLIN COPPERS GETTING HEALTHY DOSE OF CULTURAL ENRICHMENT.

Being a cop in the States is tougher these days than it was ever before. But if you thought their colleagues in multiculti Berlin have a pissy patoot job, think again:




Transcript:

0:04 What’s happening? Slowly…
0:08 [unclear — the German is broken and
0:12 heavily accented] Fatso (?)
0:16 [unclear]
0:20 Shut your trap, man.
0:24 Do you want to beat me or what?
0:28 Fat one, what kind of people are you?
0:32 What people are you, you sons of whores?
0:36 sons of whores
0:40 sons of whores
0:44 [unclear — Arabic? Turkish?]
0:48 sons of whores
0:52 sons of whores
0:56 s*** dirty cops
1:00 sons of whores
1:04 What miscarriages,
1:08 that’s typically democratic,
1:12 typical democracy.
1:16 These sons of whores, you are Nazis.



Hat tip our buddies at Gates of Vienna.


MFBB.