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June 2017

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THE NEW YORK TIMES ON PROFESSOR BRET WEINSTEIN

By on June 6th, 2017

When the Left Turns on Its Own

Bari Weiss https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/01/opinion/when-the-left-turns-on-its-own.html?_r=1

Bret Weinstein is a biology professor at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., who supported Bernie Sanders, admiringly retweets Glenn Greenwald and was an outspoken supporter of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

You could be forgiven for thinking that Mr. Weinstein, who identifies himself as “deeply progressive,” is just the kind of teacher that students at one of the most left-wing colleges in the country would admire. Instead, he has become a victim of an increasingly widespread campaign by leftist students against anyone who dares challenge ideological orthodoxy on campus.

This professor’s crime? He had the gall to challenge a day of racial segregation.

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‘Racist’ Evergreen State Professor Was Apparently Loved by Students By Tom Knighton

By on June 6th, 2017

Bret Weinstein probably didn’t intend to become a rallying point for conservatives and libertarians who take issue with the rampant political correctness that has infected American campuses. The self-described liberal probably finds himself in agreement with the typical SJW on most issues.

However, he dared to take issue with an event that kicked every white person off campus for the day, and that is all the evidence social justice jihadis needed to claim Weinstein is suddenly a white supremacist.

It’s hard to believe that a school offering feminist biology classes — yes, you read that correctly: check out “Reproduction: Gender, Race, and Power” and “Feminist Epistemologies: Critical Approaches to Biology and Psychology” — would have missed Weinstein’s intense hatred for everyone with a different amount of melanin, right?

Well, according to Rate My Professor, where reviews can get rather nasty, Weinstein had a rating of 4.2 out of 5, with 100 percent of students saying they would take a class from him again.

Sound like the record of a white supremacist on a progressive campus?

Not everyone loved him, such as the student who gave the following review:

I have a very different view of Bret’s teaching. He was very unorganized, and didnt know what he was going to teach until he came to class. I can honestly say that I learned nothing in this class, and was very disapointed with the content and quality. Instead of learning about adaptations of organisms, we played frisbee and watched movies.

Hmm. No white supremacy there.

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Teen Daughter of University of Surrey’s Jewish Chaplain Beaten, Left Bleeding for Hours in Park by Rachel Frommer

By on June 6th, 2017

The teenage daughter of the University of Surrey’s Jewish chaplain was allegedly beaten by an antisemitic gang and left bleeding in a park for two hours late last month after police failed to respond to an emergency call.

Hannah Goldberg — whose father is prominent community member Alexander Goldberg — was reportedly sitting in a public park with two friends on the Shabbat of May 27, when a group of five men approached them with comments like, “Hitler should have killed all you Jews when he had the chance” and “You should have all been gassed.” The men were also said to have used terms like “c*nt.”

According to Alexander Goldberg, the girls, who were identifiably Jewish in their modest skirts, had started to leave the area when one of the boys threw a basketball at Hannah’s face and kicked her in the chest, while another boy punched her in the face repeatedly.

Hannah’s friends approached a nearby postal worker for help, who in turn called the Metropolitan Police Service.

Officers never arrived and the girls eventually made it home.

The attack was detailed in a Facebook post this week by Alexander Goldberg, in which he wrote, “Proud of my daughter…for standing up to sexism, racism and religious abuse…for continuing to fight for the rights of others despite a viscous assault of her.”

He added that, “Both my daughter and I…shall be jointly writing to the Met Commissioner in light of the lack of police response,” and that he had published the story, with his daughter’s permission, “in the hope that the Met Police sort themselves out here.”

Goldberg, a lawyer, has served as chief executive of the London Jewish Forum and chair of the Faith Forum for London, as well as serving as Jewish chaplain to the 2012 London Olympic Games. He has also reportedly worked closely with police to develop standards in response to discriminatory acts.

The Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) wrote in a statement that it was “appalled by the lack of a police response to a violent antisemitic assault on Jewish children.”

“This incident should have resulted in police officers attending within no more than eight minutes, and the failure of the Metropolitan Police Service to deploy must be investigated thoroughly and transparently,” wrote the CAA. Like the Goldbergs, the CAA said it will be writing to the police commissioner.

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The Jews’ Hospital- no Mt. Sinai…by Lawrence Bush see note please

By on June 6th, 2017

In the Mount Sinai Medical School, Class of 2020, there is a brilliant and beautiful and charming student who calls me “grams.” rsk

New York’s 45-bed Jews’ Hospital opened for patients on this date in 1855. It would change its name to the Mount Sinai Hospital after the Civil War. Founded by Sampson Simson, a philanthropist, on land that he owned on 28th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues in Manhattan, the hospital found its resources especially taxed by the war-wounded of the Union Army and by the draft riots of 1863, which took the lives of scores of black New Yorkers. Mount Sinai began appointing women to professional positions in 1872, and founded a school of nursing in 1881, which graduated 4,700 nurses (only one man among them) in its ninety years of existence. Mount Sinai was also the first hospital to use kidney dialysis in the U.S., to combine chemotherapy with radiation to combat breast cancer, to use a cardiac stress test, and to perform a fetal blood transfusion, among many other medical firsts. During the Holocaust, Mount Sinai gave jobs to many doctors fleeing Nazi Germany as early as 1933 and became a new home for a large number of émigrés. In 2005, Mount Sinai established one of the leading stem-cell research centers in the U.S. In 2013 Dr. David L. Reich became the first openly gay physician to serve as president of the hospital.

“During the first few years that it functioned, most patients were immigrants to the U.S. As the Jews’ Hospital was a charitable enterprise, its directors depended on donations from Jewish friends and members, as well as payments from the government, to provide enough to subsidize care. . . . [In 2013, the] hospital boasted 2,510 physicians, 1,097 residents and fellows, 2,278 nurses, 58,332 inpatient discharges, 644,527 outpatient and 102,639 emergency room visits. . .” –Judy Siegel-Itzkovich, Jerusalem Posthttp://jewishcurrents.org/the-jews-hospital/

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ELECTIONS TO WATCH-RUNNING FOR GOVERNOR IN MICHIGAN-DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED

By on June 6th, 2017

He will be running against Republican Governor Rick Snyder. A quote from his issues page: ”

As governor, I will support our immigrant communities and fight for a pathway to citizenship. It’s time for Michigan to be a leader and consider what it can do to be a ‘Sanctuary State’.

Abdul El-Sayed was born and raised in Michigan. His family reflects the diversity of our state, including immigrants who left Egypt in pursuit of greater opportunity in America, and farmers, teachers, and small-business owners who have lived in Gratiot County, Michigan for generations. Abdul is a product of Michigan public schools. He captained his high-school football, wrestling, and lacrosse teams, and went on to play lacrosse for the University of Michigan. He graduated in 2007, where he was honored to deliver the student commencement speech alongside President Bill Clinton.

Abdul went on to become a Rhodes Scholar, earning a doctorate from Oxford University and a medical degree from Columbia University. As a public health professor, Abdul became an internationally recognized expert in health policy and health inequalities.

At 30, Abdul became the youngest health official of a major American city when he was brought home by Mayor Mike Duggan to rebuild Detroit’s Health Department after it was privatized during the city’s bankruptcy. As Health Director, he was responsible for the health and safety of over 670,000 Detroiters, working tirelessly to ensure government accountability and transparency, promote health, and reduce cross-generational poverty.

After witnessing the systematic failures of government only a few miles away in Flint, Abdul worked hard to ensure that children attending Detroit schools and daycares were drinking lead-free water. He has also served expectant mothers and women by creating programs aimed at reducing infant mortality and unplanned pregnancy. He built a program to give schoolchildren across the city glasses if they needed them. Abdul also stood up for children with asthma by taking on corporations that wanted to pump more harmful pollutants into our air, working with them to reduce emissions and invest in parks.

Though the work continues, under Abdul’s leadership, the Detroit Health Department has become a state and national leader in public health innovation and environmental justice, in one of the fastest municipal public health turnarounds in American history.

Abdul is called to public service by a core belief in people. He believes that all people can thrive when we value each other and our communities, we seek to protect and defend our vulnerable, and when we create the kinds of opportunities that empower people to dream for a better future.

Abdul lives in Detroit with his wife, Sarah, a mental health doctor. He loves water sports, working out, good biographies, coffee, and Michigan sports.

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A New Tolerance for Anti-Semitism by Alan M. Dershowitz

By on June 6th, 2017

Although there has been hard-right anti-Semitism for decades, the bigotry of the hard-left is far more prevalent and influential on many university campuses. Those on the left, who support left-wing anti-Semites try to downplay, ignore or deny that those they support are really anti-Semites. “They are anti-Zionist” is the excuse du jour. Those on the right do essentially the same: “they are nationalists.” Neither side would accept such transparent and hollow justifications if the shoe were on the other foot.

Linda Sarsour supports Islamic religious law, Sharia. If taken literally, this would presumably mean that she also supports punishing homosexuality by death; amputation for theft; death by stoning for “adultery” (which can include being raped); women being valued at half the worth of a man, being flogged for drinking alcohol, and above all, slavery.

The growing tolerance for anti-Semitism by both the extreme left and right is quickly becoming mainstream. That is why it is so dangerous and must be exposed for what it is: complicity in, and encouragement of, the oldest form of bigotry. People on both sides of the aisle must have the same zero tolerance for anti-Semitism as they do for sexism, racism and homophobia.

All over the world anti-Semites are becoming mainstreamed. It is no longer disqualifying to be outed as a Jew hater. This is especially so if the anti-Semite uses the cover of rabid hatred for the nation-state of the Jewish people. These bigots succeed in becoming accepted — even praised — not because of their anti-Semitism, but despite it. Increasingly, they are given a pass on their Jew-hatred because those who support them admire or share other aspects of what they represent. This implicit tolerance of anti-Semitism — as long as it comes from someone whose other views are acceptable — represents a dangerous new trend from both the right and left.

In the United States, although there has been hard-right anti-Semitism for decades, the bigotry of the hard-left is far more prevalent and influential on many university campuses. Those on the left who support left-wing anti-Semites try to downplay, ignore or deny that those they support are really anti-Semites. “They are anti-Zionist” is the excuse du jour. Those on the right do essentially the same: “they are nationalists.” Neither side would accept such transparent and hollow justifications if the shoe were on the other foot. I believe that when analyzing and exposing these dangerous trends, a single standard of criticism must be directed at each.

Generally speaking, extreme right-wing anti-Semitism continues to be a problem in many parts of Europe and among a relatively small group of “alt-right” Americans. But it also exists among those who self-identify as run-of-the-mill conservatives. Consider, for example, former presidential candidate and Reagan staffer, Pat Buchanan.

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You’ve Been Cleared for a Faster Landing Trump’s air-traffic spinoff would be a great flight forward.

By on June 6th, 2017

An evening stranded on an O’Hare airport runway is enough to make anyone mad, and on Monday Donald Trump responded with a plan for improving American air travel. The President endorsed spinning off air-traffic control from the Federal Aviation Administration, a decades-old idea that would improve passenger experience and safety.

Mr. Trump announced principles for converting air-traffic control into a nonprofit. The new entity would be governed by a board of directors, including representatives for airlines, unions, airports and others. Instead of taxes, the outfit would be funded by user fees, which is how Canada has financed air-traffic services since 1996. The outline makes small tweaks to House Transportation Chairman Bill Shuster’s proposal that stalled last year.

The proposal is being dismissed as one of Mr. Trump’s eccentric obsessions, though Al Gore supported a version in the 1990s. President Trump is right that while “every passenger has GPS technology in their pockets, our air-traffic control system still runs on radar,” circa 1945. The FAA’s modernization program known as NextGen is expected to crash through its 2025 deadline by as much as a decade.
One illustration is electronic flight strips. U.S. towers use pieces of paper to monitor a flight’s progress, even as FAA has promised to transition to digital slips, among other technology updates. How’s that going? The product will be rolled out somewhere between 2020 and 2028—to only 89 of the busiest towers, as the Reason Foundation’s Robert Poole has detailed. Canada’s air-traffic system NavCanada deployed electronic strips a dozen years ago.

In May the Transportation Department Inspector General offered some reasons why the FAA so routinely fails to deliver new technology: “overambitious plans, unreliable cost and schedule estimates, unstable requirements, software development problems, poorly defined benefits, and ineffective contract and program management.” Is that all?

FAA regulates itself, so a separation would end this conflict-of-interest and allow the agency to focus on safety and certification. This reform is endorsed by the International Civil Aviation Organization, and only the most cynical on the left could claim a spinoff threatens passenger safety. Democrats will say Mr. Trump is auctioning off air traffic to big business, but the principles are explicit that the entity must be a nonprofit. The outline gives airlines only two seats on the 13-member board.

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London Probe Focuses on Terrorists’ Wider Links Italian officials say one attacker was carrying Islamic State propaganda when stopped from boarding flight

By on June 6th, 2017

By Benoit Faucon and Laurence Fletcher in London and Giovanna Legorano in Rome

U.K. and other Western security agencies were seeking to nail down international connections of the attackers in London’s weekend rampage, as it emerged that one of them had tried to go to Syria from Italy.

Authorities had been warned about at least two of the attackers but weren’t actively monitoring them before the attack, exposing the difficulty national security services have keeping tabs on extremists and communicating with their foreign counterparts.

Security agencies are probing possible links to Islamist networks of Moroccan origin, a Western security official said Tuesday, focusing on the movements and connections of two of the attackers: Youssef Zaghba —a 22-year-old dual Italian-Moroccan citizen police identified on Tuesday—and Rachid Redouane, a 30-year-old Libyan-Moroccan with an Irish identity card.
They are also investigating a mostly South Asian group in London that has been a fertile recruiting ground for Islamic State in Syria, the official said. The third attacker, 27-year-old Khuram Butt, was a Pakistan-born British citizen known to U.K. authorities, but police have said no intelligence suggested an attack was being planned.

“People are going to look at our front pages today and they’re going to say, ‘How on earth could we have let this guy or possibly more through the net?’” Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson told Sky News, adding security services would have to answer to how Butt and the others were able to stage the attack.

Another security official said the attack was potentially put together quickly and it was still too early to draw conclusions about which of the three attackers led the operation and how deeply their networks extended in Britain and abroad.

The three men, all residents of east London, mowed down pedestrians in a van on London Bridge and slashed their way through the popular Borough Market pub-and-restaurant area before being shot and killed by police. CONTINUE AT SITE

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MY SAY: THE NORMANDY INVASION JUNE 6, 1944

By on June 6th, 2017

In September 1940 The Burke-Wadsworth Act calling for a peacetime draft in the history of the United States was imposed. Selective Service was born and the registration of men between the ages of 21 and 36 began one month later. There were some 20 million eligible young men—50 percent were rejected the very first year, either for health reasons or illiteracy (20 percent of those who registered were illiterate). In November 1942, with the United States now engaged in World War 11 the draft ages expanded and men 18 to 37 were now eligible. By war’s end, approximately 34 million men had registered, and 10 million served with the military.
Those were the young men who answered the call of duty- who fought and died with honor in the major battles which vanquished Japanese and German enemies. I think of them today on the anniversary of the Normandy Invasion.

The Western Allies of World War II launched the largest amphibious invasion in history when they assaulted Normandy, located on the northern coast of France on June 6, 1944.

https://www.dday.org/history/d-day-the-invasion/overview.html

“It is hard to conceive the epic scope of this decisive battle that foreshadowed the end of Hitlers dream of Nazi domination. Overlord was the largest air, land, and sea operation undertaken before or since June 6, 1944. The landing included over 5,000 ships, 11,000 airplanes, and over 150,000 service men.

 After years of meticulous planning and seemingly endless training, for the Allied Forces, it all came down to this: The boat ramp goes down, then jump, swim, run, and crawl to the cliffs. Many of the first young men (most not yet 20 years old) entered the surf carrying eighty pounds of equipment. They faced over 200 yards of beach before reaching the first natural feature offering any protection. Blanketed by small-arms fire and bracketed by artillery, they found themselves in hell.

When it was over, the Allied Forces had suffered nearly 10,000 casualties; more than 4,000 were dead. Yet somehow, due to planning and preparation, and due to the valor, fidelity, and sacrifice of the Allied Forces, Fortress Europe had been breached.”

And that was the beginning of the end of World War 2. The memory of all those who fought is a blessing….rsk

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Trump Lambastes London’s Muslim Mayor U.S. president calls out Sadiq Khan for his permissive attitude toward terrorism committed by his fellow Muslims. Matthew Vadum

By on June 6th, 2017

After terrorists slaughtered seven people Saturday in London, England, President Trump turned up the heat in ongoing debates over Islam, terrorism, and immigration by criticizing London’s Muslim mayor Sadiq Khan for his permissive, laissez-faire attitude toward terrorism committed by his fellow Muslims.

“We must stop being politically correct and get down to the business of security for our people,” Trump tweeted after the killings at London Bridge and nearby Borough Market. “If we don’t get smart it will only get worse.”

The Metropolitan Police and British Prime Minister Theresa May have labeled the incidents terrorist attacks and Islamic State has reportedly claimed responsibility for the atrocities. May appeared to agree with Trump, saying “We cannot and must not pretend that things can continue as they are. Things need to change.”

Khan, a member of the left-wing Labour Party, doesn’t particularly care about the threat that Islamic terrorism poses to Western civilization.

It was just last Thursday (June 1) that Khan sounded as detached from reality as former Vice President Al Gore. “Climate change remains one the biggest risks to humanity,” he tweeted. “Now more than ever world leaders must recognise and act on this threat.”

Muslim terror is no big deal, shrugs Khan, who says terrorist attacks are “part and parcel” of city life.

Khan is one of those “urban elites … grotesquely out of touch with the lives of ordinary citizens,” writes Monica Showalter at American Thinker. “They dismiss terror deaths as ‘tragic’ suggesting the victims had some role in their own deaths as in the definition of tragedy.”

It’s easy for elitist hipsters like Khan to “claim global warming is a bigger problem than the immediate and deadly threat of terrorism,” she writes.

Taking action on global warming makes them feel good, costs them nothing and only threatens the livelihoods of farmers and fishermen and miners, not their own. As for terrorism, that’s no problem for them, either – you’ll never find an elitist like Khan strolling on London Bridge on a Saturday night for terrorists to take down. With his bodyguards and the protective bubble he lives in, terrorism is for little people.

Khan’s arrogance and disregard for the safety of others may help to explain why President Trump felt the need to slap him around on Twitter.

Trump mocked Khan, a Sharia-loving darling of the mainstream media, for trying to create a false sense of security among Britons. “At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is ‘no reason to be alarmed!'”

“This is our city… and we will never be cowed by terrorism,” Khan had previously said in a press release, adding that the killers were “barbaric cowards.”

“Londoners will see an increased police presence today and over the course of the next few days,” Khan continued. “There’s no reason to be alarmed. One of the things the police and all of us need to do is ensure that we’re as safe as we possibly can be.”

Media-savvy Trump used social media to treat the horrifying events in London as a teachable moment. He urged the courts to reinstate his stalled temporary travel ban aimed at six terrorism-plagued Muslim countries.

“We need to be smart, vigilant and tough. We need the courts to give us back our rights,” Trump tweeted. “We need the Travel Ban as an extra level of safety!”

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