Month: February 2020

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New Palestinian Peace Plan May Succeed, Despite Palestinian Leadership

On January 28, the White House, at a meeting both with both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Natanyahu and his domestic political opponent Lt. General Benny Gantz, introduced the most comprehensive proposal for peace between the Jewish State and the Palestinian people in a two-state solution,
 
  The “Peace to Prosperity” concept differs from its predecessors in that in provides significant expanded territory for the Palestinians, as well as links between Gaza and the West Bank, and a capital in a portion of Jerusalem. Geography, however, may be the lesser of the difficulties in getting a Palestinian agreement. Gaza is controlled by the terrorist organization Hamas, which at this point continues to oppose any compromise with Israel, a state the group does not even recognize as having the right to exist. The refusal of the Palestinian leadership, at times widely seen as corrupt, to compromise in the past has caused considerable suffering to their people. In 2008, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas rejected a plan for sovereignty.  Yassar Arafat refused to sign on to the Camp David accords in the 1970s which also would have fulfilled most his people’s goals.  

The Arab news service Al Jazeera cited a number of Palestinians sharply rejecting the concept, terming it a “New Balfour Declaration,” a reference to the  a public statement issued by the British government in announcing support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people.” There have several past attempts at a settlement that would have given the Palestinians most of what they sought, only to be ultimately rejected by the Palestinian leadership. The current proposal notes that “For nearly a century, international leaders, diplomats, and scholars have debated the issues and attempted to resolve this conflict…Over the decades, many proposals and ideas have been put forward, but elements of those plans were unachievable given the realities on the ground and in the broader Middle East. “ The proposal then goes on to explain that “The world has changed greatly during this period, as have the security challenges facing the Middle East…” There is a great deal behind that observation. The proposal reiterates that .” The State of Israel has made peace with two of its neighbors. It made peace with the Arab Republic of Egypt in 1979 and it made peace with the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in 1994, two countries with which the State of Israel had fought multiple wars and numerous border skirmishes. The State of Israel has also exchanged sizeable territories for the sake of peace, as it did when it withdrew from the Sinai Peninsula in exchange for peace with the Arab Republic of Egypt. “ Just six months into his administration, President Trump and the Saudis significantly improved U.S. relations with the wealthiest Arab state.  Overriding all other considerations for Middle Eastern nations is the fear of Iranian expansionism. Israel may not be liked, but it is seen as something of a bulwark against Iran’s aggression.
 
The economics of this latest plan make it one that would be truly embarrassing for the Palestinian leadership to reject, considering the hardships currently endured in both the West Bank and Gaza. Under the proposal,  billions of dollars of investment in the electricity, water, and telecommunications sectors, increasing generation capacity would be facilitated, while creating efficient transmission and distribution networks. The plan also calls for, following the adoption of key policy reforms and the construction of essential infrastructure, extraordinary private-sector investment in entrepreneurship, small businesses, tourism, agriculture, housing, manufacturing, and natural resources. The goal of early-stage investment will be to remove constraints to growth and to target key projects that build momentum, generate jobs, and increase gross domestic product.
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Illustration: Palestinian flag (Pixabay)

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Hypocrisy on Campaign Reform

The opposing sides in the 2020 election differ more substantially in outlook than in any previous campaign in recent memory. The contrast is seen not just in particular issues, but in the most fundamental concepts of how America should be structured.    

While most of the attention has been paid to the radical ideas presented by leading Democrats on tax and economic issues, that party’s glaring departure from traditional American thought on free speech is equally important.

Restrictions on the First Amendment regarding political campaigns are the most prominent example. Attacks on freedom of speech have become somewhat of an ongoing theme for Democrats. In 2012, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) urged “there ought to be limits” on First Amendment rights. At a Senate Rules Committee hearing, Schumer, the senior senator from New York,  issued the stunning statement that ”The First Amendment is sacred, but the First Amendment is not absolute.”

Free speech exercised through political campaigns is the main target.

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The New York Times notes that seven Democratic presidential candidates have signed onto a “Reform First”  pledge that threatens free speech with further campaign finance restrictions.  Hypocritically, much of the press, ever eager to advocate for the left, has turned a comparatively blind eye (and quiet microphone) to the unprecedented sums spent by former NYC Michael Bloomberg and California environmental extremist Tom Steyer.

Even The New York Times, a key leftist bastion, wrote in an Alexander Burns editorial that: “Left-wing efforts to efforts to ban or severely restrict lobbying and PAC spending would silence the average Americans whose voices they promise to amplify.”

National Review explains that “If the plan ever passed, ‘a bunch of friends or civic-minded citizens in a small town who want to get together and pool their money to speak out about a school-board race wouldn’t be able to do that anymore without a lawyer, an accountant, registering as a PAC, and so on,’ says Ilya Shapiro, a fellow at the Cato Institute who specializes in First Amendment issues. ‘For everyday people who want to get involved in their congressional race, or their city council or what have you, it becomes a lot more complicated, advantaging the bigger players who can just run issue ads independent of a party or a campaign. It becomes a lot more complicated for someone who doesn’t have a phalanx of lawyers or accountants at their disposal.’”

Louis Michael Seidman, in a Columbia Law Review symposium, writes that “Free speech cannot be progressive. At least it cannot be progressive if we are talking about free speech in the American context, with all the historical, sociological, and philosophical baggage that comes with the modern American free speech right.”

Reason Magazine’s Jacob Sullum reports that

 “Every Democrat in the Senate is backing a constitutional amendment that aims to overturn Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the 2010 decision in which the Supreme Court lifted legal restrictions on what corporations and unions are allowed to say about politics at election time. That would be troubling enough, since Citizens United, which involved a film that was banned from TV because it was too critical of Hillary Clinton, simply recognized that Americans do not lose their First Amendment rights when they organize themselves in a disfavored way. But the so-called Democracy for All Amendment goes much further than nullifying one Supreme Court decision. It would radically rewrite the constitutional treatment of political speech, allowing Congress and state legislatures to impose any restrictions on election-related spending they consider reasonable. ‘To advance democratic self-government and political equality, and to protect the integrity of government and the electoral process,’ Section 1 says, ‘Congress and the States may regulate and set reasonable limits on the raising and spending of money by candidates and others to influence elections.’ By allowing restrictions on money spent by anyone to influence elections, that provision would nullify a principle set forth in the landmark 1976 case Buckley v. Valeo.”

Illustration: Pixabay

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Ignoring the Threat to the First Amendment

To Americans, engaging in free speech is as basic a concept as breathing. That is why the immediate, dire and unprecedented threats to the First Amendment are not taken with any significant level of seriousness. 

The concepts enshrined in the U.S. Bill of Rights are under profound attack, by politicians, academics, and the left.  In 2012, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) urged “there ought to be limits” on First Amendment rights. At a Senate Rules Committee hearing, Schumer the senior senator from New York,  issued the stunning statement that ”The First Amendment is sacred, but the First Amendment is not absolute.”

The assaults first became prominent during the Obama Administration’s tenure in office:

His commissioners on the Federal Communications Commission sought to place federal monitors in newsrooms. His attorney general openly considered criminal prosecution of anyone disagreeing with his views on climate change. He moved to place the internet under international control (which would permit censorship.) The Internal Revenue Service was used a bludgeon against groups opposing White House policies. The Justice Department seized telephone records of Fox news reporters.

The political left did not end their anti-free speech activities after losing the White House, but moved into different spheres of influence.  Ari Lieberman, writing for Frontpage  correctly noted that “The Left’s assault on free speech is an alarming trend that represents a grave danger to democratic values and principles. They employ code words like ‘safe spaces’ and ‘First Amendment opportunism’ to hide behind the fact that they are tearing apart the very fabric of the United States Constitution.”

In that quest, they have gained notable successes. A recent  Campaign for Free Speech (CFS) survey found startling results:

51% of Americans think the First Amendment is outdated and should be rewritten. The First Amendment protects your right to free speech, free assembly, and freedom of religion, among other things.

48% believe “hate speech” should be illegal. (“Hate speech” is not defined—we left it up to the individual participant.) Of those, about half think the punishment for “hate speech” should include possible jail time, while the rest think it should just be a ticket and a fine.

80% don’t actually know what the First Amendment really protects. Those polled believed this statement is true: “The First Amendment allows anyone to say their opinion no matter what, and they are protected by law from any consequences of saying those thoughts or opinions.”

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It’s actually not true. The First Amendment prevents the government from punishing you for your speech (with exceptions such as yelling “fire” in a crowded area to induce panic).

But more broadly, freedom of speech does not mean you are protected from social consequences for your speech. You may have the right to say something extreme or hateful and not get thrown in jail, but others in society have the right to shun you.

CFS provided an explanation for the results:

 “… there are at least two factors at play. One is the obvious polarization of politics and the media…Second, we hear much about “hate speech.” …If the government is in charge of determining what is hate speech, then it inevitably becomes political—a weapon that can be used to punish people on the other side of an issue.”

Donald Trump, Jr., in a Hill opinion piece, notes that there is a distinctly partisan flavor to the censorship imposed by social media giants. “As Big Tech’s censorship of conservatives becomes ever more flagrant and overt… Our right to freely engage in public discourse through speech is under sustained attack…… we now know that Mark Zuckerberg’s social media giant developed algorithms to “deboost” certain content, limiting its distribution and appearance in news feeds. As you probably guessed, this stealth censorship was specifically aimed at conservatives.”

Examples throughout Academia are rampant. Breitbart recently reported that Students at the University of New Hampshire were caught on video tearing down conservative-oriented “Turning Point USA” posters. A leftist student said “I hate you and I hope you die” to one of the members of the school’s TPUSA group after being approached about tearing down the displays.

A Newseum white paper authored by the organization’s CEO Jeffrey Herbst found that “the real problem of free expression on college campuses is much deeper than episodic moments of censorship: With little comment, an alternate understanding of the First Amendment has emerged among young people that can be called ‘the right to non-offensive speech’…The crisis is not one of the very occasional speaker thrown off campus, however regrettable that is; rather, it is a generation that increasingly censors itself and others, largely silently but sometimes through active protest…”

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) maintains that “A culture of censorship has taken root and permeated universities, in part due to some students’ unfamiliarity or disinterest in their rights. A likely culprit, in my opinion, is deficient civic education in secondary schools across the nation. In the absence of engaging civics instruction and classroom debate, some students fail to grasp the content or significance of their First Amendment freedoms, allowing those rights to fall victim to restrictions on campus…”

The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal  reports that “Student intolerance and opposition to free speech have been gaining momentum. What began as isolated incidents at the University of Missouri and Yale University in fall 2015 quickly spread to other universities, leading to individuals being targeted for simply expressing their opinions…”

Picture: U.S. National Archives

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The Fentanyl Threat

One of the lesser reported stories has been the extraordinary push by the White House to respond to the opioid crisis.

When President Trump took office in 2016, opioid overdoses accounted for over 42,000 deaths, out of a total of 64,000 who died from all forms of drug overdoses. In that year, two million Americans had an addiction to prescription and illegal opioids.  Deaths from synthetic opioids increased by 72% from 2014 to 2016, caused a daily death total of 175 per day.   It has been estimated that over two million Americans suffered from related addiction. Over 300,000 overdose deaths have occurred since 2000.

In 2015, the Drug Enforcement Administration and CDC issued nationwide alerts identifying illicitly manufactured fentanyl (IMF) as a threat. Beginning in 2013, the distribution of IMF increased to unprecedented levels. Individual states have reported increases in fentanyl-involved overdose deaths (fentanyl deaths).  During 2013–2014, the number of drug products obtained by law enforcement that tested positive for fentanyl (fentanyl submissions) increased by 426%, and synthetic opioid–involved overdose deaths (excluding methadone) increased by 79% in the United States. Changes in synthetic opioid–involved overdose deaths among 27 states were highly correlated with fentanyl submissions but not correlated with fentanyl prescribing. Eight high-burden states were identified, and complementary data indicate increases in these states are primarily attributable to fentanyl, supporting the argument that IMF is driving increases in fentanyl deaths.

A Heritage Foundation study describes the allure and danger of fentanyl:

“The amount of fentanyl necessary to produce its painkilling effect is so small that manufacturers can ship it in ordinary packages such as envelopes used for ordinary letters. Cheap production isn’t the only economic benefit suppliers have on their side. Fentanyl is said to produce a better high and be more addictive and potent than heroin (50 to 100 times more powerful). This poison isn’t affecting only addicts. In some cases, first responders have inhaled airborne fentanyl, resulting in a contact overdose.” 

The Washington Post called this dilemma the “Obama Fentanyl Failure. “The fentanyl crisis represents an extraordinary public health challenge — and requires an extraordinary public health response… experts wrote to six [Obama] administration officials, including the nation’s ‘drug czar’ and the chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The administration considered the request but did not act on it. The decision was one in a series of missed opportunities, oversights and half-measures by federal officials who failed to grasp how quickly fentanyl was creating another — and far more fatal — wave of the opioid epidemic. In the span of a few short years, fentanyl, a synthetic painkiller 50 times more powerful than heroin, became the drug scourge of our time. Fentanyl has played a key role in reducing the overall life expectancy for Americans.”

Who, or what, caused this troubling situation, which seems to have expanded so rapidly?

Testifying before the United States Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control Caucus   last year, U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE) Assistant Director Mathew C. Allen stated:

“Illicit Fentanyl, Fentanyl analogies, and their chemical precursors are most often produced in China.  From China, these substances are shipped primarily through mail carriers directly to the U.S., or through TCOs in Mexico, Canada, and the Caribbean.  Once in the Western Hemisphere, fentanyl or its analogues are prepared and then mixed into heroin supply, pr pressed into pill form, then moved to the illicit U.S. market where dependency on prescription opioids ad heroin remains at epidemic proportions. In some cases, traffickers have shipped industrial pill pressed from China to the United States to operate fentanyl pill press mills domestically.  Mexican TCOs also receive shipments of fentanyl, fentanyl analogues and their precursors directly from China.  There is strong evidence that large shipments of fentanyl move from China to Mexico and the shipments are not opened until they are within the United States.  Mexican cartels have seized upon this business opportunity because the profit potential of synthetic opiods and have invested in growing their share of the market.  Because of its low dosage range and potency, one kilogram of fentanyl purchased in China for $3,000-$5,000 can generate upwards of $1.5 million in revenue on the illicit market…”

In October of 2017, the new White House declared the opioid crisis a “public health emergency.” The declaration was designed to expand access to telemedicine services; appoint specialists; and shift some resources from HIV/AIDS programs to those dealing with substance abuse

In 2018, President Trump unveiled an “Initiative to Stop Opioid Abuse.”  The measure involved:

  • As of October 2018, securing $6 billion in new funding over a two-year window to fight opioid abuse.
  • To curb over-prescription, implementing  a Safer Prescribing Plan designed to cut opioid prescription fills by one-third within three years.
  • Increasing security at land borders, ports of entry, and waterways.
  • Passing the SUPPORT Act, the largest legislative package addressing a single drug crisis in history.
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The White House notes that the number of first-time heroin users ages 12 and older fell by more than 50 percent in July 2017. Between President Trump’s Inauguration and October 2018, high-dose opioid prescriptions fell by 16 percent. In July 2017, the Department of Justice shut down the country’s biggest Darknet distributor of drugs. That same Fiscal Year, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement took more than 2,300 pounds of fentanyl off the streets. In terms of helping those struggling with addiction, there has been a 20 percent increase in young adults receiving outpatient treatment. And in 2017, America had an increase in the number of patients age 12 and older with illicit drug-use disorders being treated at specialty facilities and private provider offices.

On January 10, 2018, President Trump signed into law the “Interdict Bill,”

The measure authorizes $9 million to purchase enhanced tools and hire more personnel to deal with the crisis; provides additional chemical screening devices available to detect opioid traffic; and requires analysis and data interpretation of relevant data.  

Illustration: Pixabay

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Foreign Policy Update

PALESTINE

“The Palestinian people have an enormous opportunity for a better life for the Palestinian people.” In a press conference in London, Secretary of State Michael Pompeo pointed out that the Palestinian leadership called for a “day of rage,” while the US called for “diplomacy to sit down at the table and have a negotiated resolution to a longstanding conflict.” The plan, if implemented, provides for real security and it reflects the reality on the ground for the Israelis. It also presents the Palestinians with an enormous opportunity worth $50 billion to the regional economy and, potentially, as many as one million jobs.

The Secretary said that he is confident the new peace plan is good for everyone – “every Israeli and every Palestinian.” He pointed out that they now have an offer on the table and are free to come up with a counter offer, if that’s what they think is appropriate. Pompeo said: “We’d look forward to that.  We’re prepared to listen,….” and he knows “the Israelis will be prepared to sit down and negotiate on the basis of the vision that the President laid out.”

This is the most detailed plan presented by an American administration and it is the first time the Israelis have ever conceded to a map that outlines what the region will look like with a Palestinian state. Pompeo called it a “real vision” and said that he hopes all the parties will consider it thoughtfully and move forward.

CHINA

As the 2020 novel coronavirus rampages across China and spreads across the globe, Chinese leaders are accepting blame for failing to be open and transparent at the start of the crisis. The mayor of Wuhan has offered to resign. In a city of 14 million, 5 million were able to leave prior to the travel ban. This essentially allowed the virus to spread quickly and to distant areas. The rate of infection is doubling ever 6.2 days with cases found now throughout the world. It is spreading faster than SARS but at this time the mortality rate remains lower. 

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Economically, it is impacting China by further slowing the domestic economy which already is feeling the effects of American trade sanctions. The virus is not expected to peak until the June-July period leaving some economists questioning whether, and how long, it will take China to recover. Despite the short-term disruptions from the virus, although impactful, Pompeo called China “The greatest threat of our times.” It is moving forward with Huawei’s expansion of the 5G network and pushing it out to countries in the west, including Great Britain.

GREAT BRITAIN

In addition to Brexit, Secretary of State Pompeo was in London to talk about that country’s acceptance of Hwawei and 5G. He pointed out that the Administration has spoken to the United Kingdom at great length at the political level and a lot at the national security level over the past months. He added that the US view of Huawei has been that putting it in the British system “creates real risk.” G5 is an extension of the Chinese Communist Party with a legal requirement to hand over information to the Chinese Communist Party, according to Pompeo. Washington is concerned about the impact on American security and what interactions it will permit with Great Britain if installed. The Trump Administration is pushing  for Western systems with Western rules and arguing that American information only should pass through trusted networks.

POLAND

In an effort to reinforce US NATO ally Poland’s ability to defend its territory the United States Pompeo says it welcomes the Polish government’s decision to purchase 32 F-35A Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter aircraft. The $4.6 billion sale made under the Foreign Military Sales program is overseen by the U.S. Department of State. Pompeo added that he commends “President Duda, Prime Minister Morawiecki, and the Polish government’s commitment to continue modernizing Poland’s military through the acquisition of the world’s most advanced fighter aircraft, which will improve Poland’s ability to provide collective and self-defense.”  

Illustration: Pixabay