CHANGE MORE OF THE SAME: Cuba Postpones Historic Handover From Castro to New President.
Author Archive: Stephen Green
December 21, 2017
TAX PROF: AT&T’s Tax Cut Bonus Isn’t Just A Gimmick.
If it is, money in your pocket is a pretty good gimmick.
IS THERE ANYTHING HE CAN’T DO? Trump Revives Feminism, Saves Satire, Reinvigorates Journalism.
Actually, I’m pretty sure the author is only one-third correct, and that’s only if his piece is satire.
LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Beleaguered Maduro regime kills guilty and innocent alike in poor barrios, often with shots to the heart.
The young men had already been tortured at an army base when soldiers piled them into two jeeps and transported them to a wooded area just outside the Venezuelan capital.
Stumbling in the dark, with T-shirts pulled over their faces and hands tied behind their backs, they were steered to an open pit. Soldiers then used machetes to deliver blow after blow to the base of their necks. Most suffered gaping wounds that killed them before they hit the ground.
Others, bleeding profusely but still alive, crumpled into the shallow grave as their killers piled dirt over their bodies to hide the crime.
“We think they were alive a good while as they died from asphyxia,” said Zair Mundaray, a veteran prosecutor who led the exhumation and investigation that pieced together how the killings unfolded. “It had to be a terrible thing.”
For Mr. Mundaray and his team of investigators, the massacre in this area east of Caracas in October 2016 was the most bloodthirsty of killings by security forces in a country riven by unspeakable violence.
Prosecutors, criminologists and human-rights groups say it was only one of many recurring and escalating lethal attacks carried out by police or soldiers.
The full scope of the alleged atrocities is beginning to surface publicly now.
This one is behind the WSJ paywall, but I found it well worth my money.
UH-OH: U.S. warship unexpectedly docks in Port Colborne.
A U.S. navy warship named for Arkansas’ capital city that was to pass down the Welland Canal for its homeport in Florida docked in Port Colborne Wednesday afternoon due to a reported mechanical issue.
The USS Little Rock, a Freedom-class Littoral Combat Ship, was recently-commissioned alongside its namesake in Buffalo Harbor, marking the first time that has happened in the navy’s 242-year history, according to a website dedicated to the vessel’s commissioning.
The new warship is one of a number of Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) the navy will operate in waters close to shore.
It was built in Marinette, Wisc., at a cost of between US$300 million and $350 million.
It left Buffalo Wednesday morning and after the delivery of two pilots to it in the Port Colborne anchorage, some four kilometres offshore, it tied up along the east wall of the Welland Canal in the city.
The USS Little Rock was headed to Naval Station Mayport, its homeport in Jacksonville, Fla.
There was no word on how long the vessel would be tied up in Port Colborne. The area it is docked alongside on the canal is restricted and there is no public access.
The LCS ships have been almost nothing but trouble — late, over budget, and with serious operational issues.
ON TOP OF EVERYTHING ELSE, NOW WE HAVE THIS TO WORRY ABOUT: Loud orgies of Mexican fish could deafen dolphins, say scientists.
GOOD LORD: Illegal VA policy allows hiring since 2002 of medical workers with revoked licenses.
Every time you think you’ve gotten close to the bottom of the swamp, you find it goes deeper still.
ELI LAKE: Nikki Haley Confronts the U.N.’s ‘Jackals.’
She has made it clear that the U.N. needs America more than America needs the U.N. This is not just because the U.S. hosts the body’s headquarters. It’s because the U.S. remains the indispensable member of the organization. It contributes 23 percent of the U.N. annual budget. The U.S. provides nearly 30 percent of the budget to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA. That’s the agency that runs Palestinian schools and medical facilities and has often turned a blind eye to the participation of outlaws like Hamas. The U.S. provides the logistics for moving troops and material for peace-keeping missions and disaster relief. There is no U.N. without the U.S.
Haley made this point well in her speech announcing the U.S. veto Monday of the U.N. Security Council resolution condemning recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. “When the American people see a group of countries whose total contributions to the Palestinian people is less than 1 percent of UNRWA’s budget — when they see these countries accuse the United States of being insufficiently committed to peace — the American people lose their patience.”
Haley has delivered this message in public and private a lot in her first year on the job. She pulled the plug on U.S. participation in U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization after it declared Hebron to be a Palestinian world historic site with no mention of the deep Jewish historical connection to that city. She has sought ways to cut the fat from the U.N. peace-keeping budget, and has used the monthly U.N. Security Council meeting to deal with the Middle East to call attention to Iranian aggression.
Under the Obama-Carter theory, Haley’s approach would lead to America’s isolation at the U.N. But so far this has not been the case.
That’s because the UN self-evidently does need the US more than the US needs the UN — and it ought to give Americans a swelling sense of pride to have a UN ambassador who understands this and acts accordingly.
UPDATE: I should have added that the UN member states have always understood this, but have counted on the US pretending not to understand it.
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Dems Unhinged on Tax Reform, Corporations Dump $$ into Economy and Much, Much More.
WHY DO YOU THINK? So why’s China setting up shop in the Caribbean?
Monica Showalter:
According to a front-page above-above-the-fold report in yesterday’s South China Morning Post, the extensive plan is a clear bid to increase the Asian superpower’s “influence” in the region. The Post reports:
Beijing’s blueprint envisions the construction of massive infrastructure projects in the small tropical nation, which has a population of about 100,000. They include the construction of a highway connecting the major towns on its main island, which is about four times the size of Hong Kong Island, and a railway line encircling it. The plan also calls for the building of deepwater ports that could accommodate a large number of cruise and cargo ships, a large wind farm to replace diesel-fuelled generators and a modernised airport with more, longer runways. It also sees a future for Grenada as an offshore tax haven for foreign companies or individuals.
And we suppose China will claim it wants nothing in return…
What this is really about is a likely retaliation for the U.S.’s attempt to reassert its naval presence in the South China Sea, standing up for and reassuring our democratic allies in Southeast Asia, most of which rim the South China Sea. Up until President Trump took command, China had been brazenly seeking to extend influence there, building illegal atolls for military purposes in the area, much to these countries’ dismay.
Now that the U.S. is back, China is back, this time seeking to set up a foothold in the U.S.’s traditional sea of influence, the Caribbean.
If President Trump were to make a pointed speech reasserting the Monroe Doctrine, would there be more heads spinning in Beijing — or at the State Department?
YUGE: Trump gives green light to selling lethal arms to Ukraine.
How long before “colluding with Kyiv” becomes a thing?
REEVALUATING THE F-35: The Pentagon’s Biggest Program Had Its Best Year Ever In 2017.
PETER INGEMI: Hezbollah Drugs, and how much Black Lives Actually Mattered to Barack Obama.
The Black Community stood behind Barack Obama and his administration tooth and nail. They ignored the bad economy, the failed policies, the rise of ISIS terror and furthermore in 2012 they turned out and saved him from defeat against a much more competent adversary.
Barack Obama didn’t just betray America by enabling international terrorists in order to allow himself to fund one of the World’s primary backers of said terror, but he did so knowing that the Hezbollah drug trade terrorized black neighborhoods, black families and particularly young black men, betraying those who had been his most loyal supporters.
Those black lives destroyed by the drug trade didn’t matter to Barack Obama or his administration as much as funding Iran did. That’s an uncomfortable truth that many who voted Obama will silently endure rather than admit how badly they have been played.
Obama Administration spokesmodel Ben Rhodes is still on Twitter, and still bragging about the deal he sold to the complicit mainstream media.
SILENT SPRINGSKI: The Soviet Era’s Deadliest Scientist Is Regaining Popularity in Russia.
Although it’s impossible to say for sure, Trofim Lysenko probably killed more human beings than any individual scientist in history. Other dubious scientific achievements have cut thousands upon thousands of lives short: dynamite, poison gas, atomic bombs. But Lysenko, a Soviet biologist, condemned perhaps millions of people to starvation through bogus agricultural research—and did so without hesitation. Only guns and gunpowder, the collective product of many researchers over several centuries, can match such carnage.
Having grown up desperately poor at the turn of the 20th century, Lysenko believed wholeheartedly in the promise of the communist revolution. So when the doctrines of science and the doctrines of communism clashed, he always chose the latter—confident that biology would conform to ideology in the end. It never did. But in a twisted way, that commitment to ideology has helped salvage Lysenko’s reputation today. Because of his hostility toward the West, and his mistrust of Western science, he’s currently enjoying a revival in his homeland, where anti-American sentiment runs strong.
There’s a lesson here for America’s own “science” worshipping progressives, if only they weren’t so immune to facts and reason.
Plus:
Lysenko promoted the Marxist idea that the environment alone shapes plants and animals. Put them in the proper setting and expose them to the right stimuli, he declared, and you can remake them to an almost infinite degree.
To this end, Lysenko began to “educate” Soviet crops to sprout at different times of year by soaking them in freezing water, among other practices. He then claimed that future generations of crops would remember these environmental cues and, even without being treated themselves, would inherit the beneficial traits. According to traditional genetics, this is impossible: It’s akin to cutting the tail off a cat and expecting her to give birth to tailless kittens. Lysenko, undeterred, was soon bragging about growing orange trees in Siberia, according to Hungry Ghosts. He also promised to boost crop yields nationwide and convert the empty Russian interior into vast farms.
Such claims were exactly what Soviet leaders wanted to hear. In the late 1920s and early 1930s Joseph Stalin—with Lysenko’s backing—had instituted a catastrophic scheme to “modernize” Soviet agriculture, forcing millions of people to join collective, state-run farms. Widespread crop failure and famine resulted. Stalin refused to change course, however.
To Stalin, the famine was a feature not a bug. And the Marxist belief that people can be endlessly reshaped using Lysenko’s methods continues to this day.
December 20, 2017
NEWS YOU CAN USE? 7 Mistakes Women Make with Men.
BOOK HER, DANNO: Arrest Rosie O’Donnell for attempted bribery, Mr. President.