Cal Thomas
HISTORY: “Taking an unprecedented step onto North Korean soil, President Donald Trump announced Sunday that Washington and Pyongyang will relaunch stalled nuclear talks. … Side-by-side with Kim in the heavily-fortified demilitarized zone, Trump became the first sitting U.S. president to cross the 1953 armistice line separating North and South Korea.” (NBC News)
ROUGH START: “Stephanie Grisham replaced Sarah Sanders as White House press secretary only recently, but Grisham reportedly has already been injured on the job. Grisham suffered bruises when a scuffle broke out Sunday between North Korean security guards and members of the media trying to get close to President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.” (Fox News)
HONG KONG UNREST: “Police clashed with protesters trying to storm Hong Kong’s legislature on Monday, the anniversary of the semiautonomous territory’s return to China, prompting authorities to issue an unprecedented ‘red alert’ and deepening a crisis that is testing Beijing’s grip.” (The Washington Post)
IRAN FLOUTS DEAL: “Iran has exceeded a key limitation on how much nuclear fuel it can possess under the 2015 international pact curbing its nuclear program, effectively declaring that it would no longer respect an agreement that President Trump abandoned more than a year ago, state media reported on Monday.” (The New York Times)
Around the Nation
BARRIER BAN EXPANDED: “A federal judge on Friday expanded a ban on construction of President Trump’s signature southern border wall that would have used money secured under his declaration of a national emergency, but that Congress never approved for the purpose. … In his order granting a permanent halt on the construction, Gilliam also cleared the path for an immediate appeal.” (The Washington Post)
FELON-VOTE LIMITATIONS: “The historic effort to allow more than a million felons in Florida to vote hit a roadblock Friday when Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed a bill limiting which can register.” (The Washington Post)
ANTIFA ATTACK: “Andy Ngo, a photojournalist and editor at Quillette, landed in the emergency room after a mob of antifa activists attacked him on the streets of Portland during a Saturday afternoon demonstration,” Reason reports. The Daily Wire adds that three antifa fascists were arrested, though it’s unknown “if any of the arrests were made in connection with the attack on Mr. Ngo.”
PREPARING FOR GUN CONTROL: “The bustle inside LAX Ammunition on the Friday before Father’s Day betrayed the gloom of the outside sky. Employees inside the Los Angeles-area gun shop had their hands full chatting with customers who were looking to replenish their ammo supply before July 1, with some customers spending hundreds of dollars in the process. Why the hurry? That’s the day a new state law will require almost all buyers to go through background checks before being able to buy bullets, potentially increasing the amount of time and money it takes to make purchases.” (USA Today)
Business & Economy
‘BACK ON TRACK’: “President Trump said the U.S. would resume trade talks with Beijing and would hold off on imposing new tariffs on $300 billion worth of Chinese goods. The announcement followed a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Osaka, Japan, during the G-20 summit with world economic leaders.” (Washington Examiner)
OIL MILESTONE: “U.S. crude output soared to new heights in April, highlighting OPEC’s dilemma just days before the producer group meets amid growing geopolitical threats. A government report on Friday showed U.S. production grew 2.1% in April to 12.16 million barrels a day. Booming shale production from places like the Permian basin of West Texas have enabled U.S. oil output to overtake Saudi Arabia and Russia.” (Bloomberg)
RAMIFICATIONS ON OPEC: “Global oil supplies will increase far more than demand next year with the start of a host of new projects, putting further pressure on the OPEC cartel, the International Energy Agency said. Even though growth in world oil demand will accelerate to 1.4 million barrels a day in 2020, it will be eclipsed by a 2.3 million barrel-a-day surge in output, as the ongoing boom in U.S. shale is augmented by new fields in Brazil, Norway and Canada.” (Houston Chronicle)
STOCK MARKET SOARS: Stocks rise to close out Dow’s biggest June gain since 1938; S&P 500’s best first half in two decades (CNBC)
Closing Arguments
POLICY: For regime change in Iran (National Review)
POLICY: Inconvenient energy realities (E21)
HUMOR: lowlife-Kamala Harris claimed Americans don’t want to see a food fight. Fact check: FALSE. (The Babylon Bee)
~The Patriot Post
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President Trump Tweets Details of U.S. -vs- China Status – Talks Resume, Tariffs Remain,
by sundance
By Adam Casalino
By Giulio MeottiCal Thomas
The Trump administration thinks appealing to North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un by dangling promises of prosperity in front of him if he agrees to change his ways is the path to peace on the Korean Peninsula. So far there have been no agreements to build a Trump resort and Kim has made no effort to adopt any other form of capitalistic behavior.
Undeterred, the administration’s front man for Middle East peace, the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has revealed part of his plan (the rest he says will come after Israeli elections this fall) to settle the multi-decade conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
Kushner told Reuters the plan includes $50 billion in economic incentives, if the Palestinian leadership will simply recognize Israel’s right to exist, promise not to engage in terrorist actions and seek a peace agreement with the Jewish State.
One critical element is being left out of what we know so far about the proposal and that is religion. Kushner, who is Jewish, should have some particular insight into the conflict that eludes secularists. The Palestinians and Muslims in some neighboring countries believe they have a religious mandate to wipe out Israel, killing as many Jews as possible, because Israel is an illegal occupier of “their” land and Allah has ordered it.
Evidence that Kushner’s plan is likely to experience the same fate as those that have gone before is contained in a study of textbooks used by Palestinian schoolchildren.
The study, conducted by Eldad J. Pardo of Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and published in April 2017, found the latest textbooks and curricula for grades one through four are “significantly more radical than previous (publications).” Pardo says the latest texts “(teach) students to be martyrs, demonizes and denies the existence of Israel and focuses on a ‘return’ to an exclusively Palestinian homeland.”
Even math books use martyrs to teach arithmetic.
In upper grades, writes Pardo, “The strategy of violence and pressure (in place of negotiations) is advocated as the most effective action to achieve Palestinian goals. … And in these upper-grade textbooks, the concept of ‘eternal war’ is instigated through the abuse of Islamic terminology.”
Real history is replaced with Palestinian and Islamic reinterpretations and even reinventions of history. One example: Pardo says Palestinians are being taught that they have always occupied the land. In fact, even their name — Palestinians — is a modern invention. As noted on the Jewish Virtual Library website, “Leading up to Israel’s independence in 1948, it was common for the international press to label Jews, not Arabs, living in the mandate as Palestinians. It was not until years after Israeli independence that the Arabs living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip were called Palestinians.”
There is much more from the study. “The Palestinian national anthem is taught in third-grade,” writes Pardo, and “instills the spirit of fighting, revenge and sacrifice.” And then there’s this from the same third-grade text: “Jerusalem is a Palestinian city and capital of the State of Palestine. The Palestinian flag will be hoisted on the city’s walls after the liberation from Israeli occupation, God willing.”
Add these incitements to the sermons from Palestinian mosques and media in which Israel and the Jewish people are degraded and their enemies are encouraged to destroy their state and evict or murder their people.
How does a Jewish-American who will be doubly hated for his citizenship and his religion bribe Palestinian leaders into reversing their religious mandate and political goals? If that strategy is not revealed in the rest of Kushner’s peace plan, and if the Palestinians refuse to take the bribe, the plan will fail.
In the mind of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas it already has. At a news conference last Sunday, Abbas appeared to reject Kushner’s plan, saying, “We will not be slaves or servants.”
The Kushner plan is a miscalculation similar to those made by previous administrations. Aside from abandoning the land-for-peace formula, which never worked, this plan appears to differ only in the amount of money being offered. ~The Patriot Post
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