Trump’s Saudi Best Friends Are A Major Threat To Regional Stability

Donald Trump, Foreign Policy, Iran, Islam, Middle East

Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates have enlisted the West in “a proxy Sunni-Shia religious war,” Riyadh’s ultimate aim. The scary part: Donald Trump seems perfectly willing to partake.

Via Doug Bandow at Forbes.com:

Wealthy and pampered Saudi Arabia and the UAE, along with their satellites, particularly Bahrain and Egypt, whose loyalty has been purchased with abundant cash and military support, have declared diplomatic war on Qatar. They blame the latter for supporting terrorism, but almost certainly more important to them, dictatorships all, is the desire to silence criticism of their own crimes.

Doha supports opposition groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, the chief target of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s brutal rule in Egypt, and TV channel Al Jazeera, which speaks ill of most of the oppressive Gulf regimes. Qatar also maintains civil relations with Iran …

… Indeed, under Saudi Arabia’s ruthless new Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman—who apparently has put his cousin and ousted predecessor under palace arrest—Riyadh has become the major threat to regional stability. Although U.S. officials blame Tehran for destabilizing the Gulf, it is the Saudi royals who supported radical insurgents in Syria, launched an aggressive war against Yemen, and sent troops to support Bahrain’s Sunni monarchy against the oppressed Shia majority. If the House of Saud ever loses its hold on power, the crash will be heard around the world.

At one level there isn’t much to choose between the assorted Gulf kingdoms. They are monarchies in a world which mostly abandoned that ancient form of government a century ago. They are largely dictatorships. Kuwait is the freest, with an elected assembly and robust media; otherwise the picture is bleak. Most sit atop sizeable energy reserves and hire foreigners to do their dirty work. Including Americans to defend them.

Saudi Arabia is the Gulf colossus and usually takes the lead. But Qatar, with the largest natural gas reserves in the world—and consequently the world’s wealthiest nation—long has followed a very different foreign policy. This rankled Riyadh’s royals, who were used to being obeyed. Worse was Doha’s creation of Al Jazeera, which promoted the Arab Spring and has attained wide viewership in a region where the media is highly controlled. (Confession: I’ve appeared on the channel.) Egypt’s al-Sisi, who in 2013 ousted a democratically elected president from the Muslim Brotherhood and imposed a reign of terror to crush all opposition, most objects to Qatar’s support for the MB. …

…
A stupid title for what is a good analysis. READ: “Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates Should Put Own Houses In Order Before Accusing Qatar.”

The Left Loves Ivanka For A Reason. Lots Of Them.

Donald Trump, Ethics, Family, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Republicans

There’s a worshipful piece in the Washington Post about Ivanka Trump, who is a well-groomed intellectual lightweight, with enormous sway in the Trump White House. (Where oh where are the two thoughtful Steves (Bannon and Miller)? Hidden.) Her significant others confirmed that Ivanka nagged daddy to drop those dumb bombs in Syria. Had Hillary Clinton made it to the White House, and Chelsea and her house husband set up office there, as Ivanka and Jared have; Republicans would be FUMING. Both parties have no principles. Nepotism and conflict of interest are OK, so long as their side is practicing- and benefiting from it.

… This is her portfolio now: Workforce development. Childcare tax credits and paid parental leave — issues that no American Congress has ever passed, and which have become Ivanka’s signature topics, and bellwethers for her success. Human trafficking. Last Tuesday, she stood by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson at a crowded State Department ceremony, honoring award recipients who have contributed to the study and eradication of trafficking. …
… Ivanka sends out support for refugees on World Refugee Day, against a father interminably stumping for a travel ban. Ivanka wishes her LGBT followers a happy Pride month, while her father eschewed Barack Obama’s tradition of issuing a proclamation. At times, she comes across as earnest, if slightly oblivious; at times it seems like she knows exactly what she is doing, which is goading her dad.

More liberal illogic from my “What Ivanka Wants, Ivanka Gets”:

In Ivanka, you have a point person in an ostensibly populist, rightist administration who has no idea that men, not women, are lagging in the labor force and in institutions of higher and lower learning. Democrats appreciate that.
In Ivanka, you have a businesswoman, in an ostensibly business-friendly administration, who has vowed to “close the [mythical] gender pay gap” on our dime. A business magnate should have grasped the following logic: “If women with the same skills as men were getting only 78 cents for every dollar a man earns, men as a group would have long since priced themselves out of the market. That entrepreneurs like Ivanka haven’t ditched men en masse to employ women suggests that different abilities and experience are at work, rather than a conspiracy to suppress women” (“The Week of the Whining Womin”).
Democrat-dominated news networks are mum about the Susan Rice spying and unmasking scandal. GOP TV is deaf and dumb about the clash between the America First faction of the administration (Steve Bannon) and the Kushner couple (Ivanka and Jared). The gentle reader should know by now that there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the standard operating procedures of the two parties and their media.

UPDATED (6/29): To See How Your Country Is Being Given Away, Visit Your State’s DHS

America, Britain, English, Etiquette, IMMIGRATION, Multiculturalism

Americans all should visit their state’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in charge of immigration, to get a feel for how American citizenship has been debased, the country turned into a Tower of Babel.

Early today, there were 2 other English-speaking people in the crowd, a total of 4 with my husband and me. The rest wore robes, doffed turbans and embroidered North African skullcaps. And they all spoke in tongues, were gruff and quite unfriendly. You see, the English-speaking people share certain social niceties. We often smile at The Other as he or she passes. We say, “Good morning,” “Good afternoon,” “lovely weather,” and, “I’m sorry” when we bump someone.

At least two were badly crippled. They’ll cost taxpayers many thousands in medical care. As the crowd grew, the ratio of English-speakers (Caucasians) to the rest remained the same.

Tower of Babel America is a hostile mass of aliens with no place for shared social pleasantries.

In 2013, I chronicled waiting in line at the ASC (the Application Support Center), in Washington State, when an officer of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services called out, “Number 69, number 69.” Number 78, yours truly, was there to renew the green card. Despite having been summoned time and again, #69 stayed put. She did not understand English.

UPDATE (6/29)” It’s too late. Without a moratoriums on immigration, the country will be lost. Or at least, allow only immigration enforcing the country’s host population:

“Two-In-Four: Six Fast Facts From Donald Trump’s First Immigration Report.”

* Over 1 million a year.
* 100,000 a month.
* 1 new immigrant for every four Americans who turn 18.
* 1 temporary foreign worker for every five new American workers.
* 170,000 new foreign workers per month
* 2 new foreign workers for every four Americans who enter the workforce.
* 50 percent of foreign temporary workers are white-collar professionals:”high-skill engineers, nurses, doctors, professors, accountants, and designers to take the place of many expensive American graduates and skilled technicians who are trying to pay off college debts.”
* “Only one-in-eight legal immigrants have worked their way into the country — the rest were pulled in by relatives, regardless of education or health or age or productivity or ability to integrate into American society.”
* The people who’ve gained power to determine elections: Trump’s data shows that 264,553 legal immigrants got citizenship during the six months in the first report, at a rate of roughly 45,000 a month. These new citizens come from 164 countries, speak more than 164 languages, and few have the skills to pay more in taxes than they receive in welfare or aid, and most vote Democratic.

HEADLINE ROUND-UP

Ann Coulter, Donald Trump, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Foreign Policy, IMMIGRATION, Islam, Middle East

Just when the need for real journalism intensifies, the great Seymour Hersh returns to the headlines. Military Officials: There Was NO Chemical Weapons Attack In Syria; Trump Bombed Syria DESPITE Advice From Military:

They advanced starvation and cholera in Yemen by bombing it. Now the Saudis, POTUS’s BFFs, donate relief and get praise. So why is Trump green-lighting Saudi aggression against Qatar?

Ridiculous: On the West’s ability to grapple with Islam, Ayaan Hirsi Ali shows she is FULL OF IT, and has adopted her adopted countries’ habit of babbling about a mystical ideology, instead of a brute religion (Islam). Ali has come out against a man who was once a friend to her: Geert Wilders.

We got some comic relief when a CNN “reporter,” having covered nothing but the no-news Russia non-story, moaned about the lack of attention to torture and murder ongoing in Venezuela. Fake News doesn’t even know it’s fake news.

Sean Hannity may have once promised to keep Trump honest, but as illustrated in the column “THE WAR ON TRUMP: The Big Picture for Conservatives, Libertarians & Liberals,” the two party apparatchiks simply move into the same firing positions when their men are in power. Hannity censors Ann Coulter’s criticism.

Deplorables supported the Trump who ran on diplomacy with Islam-fighting Russia. Sanctions & hostility don’t MAGA. But apparently Deplorables adapt once their guy is in the White House. Sanctions on Russia and on Cuba: Bad.

Suffer the helpless dogs: Animals, too, are in danger because America imports people with monstrous morals. Germany is no better.

I don’t know about you, but I no longer believed Trump In Iowa. He said immigrants were to enter only if they love us. Like Australia’s unwanted refugees, which POTUS has welcomed?

There was no excuse for North Korea’s mistreatment of poor Otto Warmbier, and no excuse for Obama indifference to Otto. Maybe if Otto, RIP, had looked more like Trayvon Martin? Remeber Obama’s “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon Martin”?

Finally, Democrat Jon Ossoff lost his race in Atlanta, but, oh how like Jared Kushner he looked: Both are in gender limbo, not quite man, not quite woman. (See “What Ivanka Wants, Ivanka Gets.”)