Aug 6, 1945 – Aug 9, 1945
During the final stage of World War II, the United States dropped nuclear weapons on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, respectively.
Thus began the end of World War 11…..rsk
It’s easy to get fired from an American college these days. Just make some innocent remark that a member of a recognized victim group claims to find offensive and you’ll be on your way to the unemployment office pronto.
On the other hand, it’s really, really tough to lose your college teaching job by spouting off leftist slogans. Which makes Kevin Allred a very special guy. He is a white man who, for several years, taught a course in the Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University entitled “Politicizing Beyoncé.”
Judging by all accounts, it was a perfect example of a thoroughly ridiculous 21st-century humanities course, heavy on pop culture and political correctness and light on anything remotely resembling academic or practical value. It was a very popular course with the Rutgers student body, doubtless because it was less challenging than, say, Quantum Mechanics.
(Sample student comments from Rate My Professors: “Awesome professor! Doesn’t believe in grades and is very lenient. No actual homework.” “BEST. PROFESSOR. AT RUTGERS. Like the second class the computer wasn’t working and he cancelled class.” “He doesn’t even lecture, we watch one or two of Beyonce’s music videos and then we discuss them … super easy.” “SUPER CHILL! Like literally, he let us choose our final grade!”)
Allred had a sweet deal. After studying his Twitter and Facebook accounts and listening to his idiotic podcast, I can testify that he has very little in the way of intellectual heft to offer. Indeed, not to put too fine a point on it, he’s a silly drama queen whose mind, such as it is, is a ratatouille of left-wing ideological clichés.
Nonetheless, he had succeeded in landing a job teaching – or, rather, “teaching” – at one of the best colleges in the country. Note well that a far more highly qualified individual with moderate or conservative political views would find it tough, if not impossible, to secure such a gig in a Rutgers humanities department.
In short, Allred was one lucky fluff-head. But his ivory-tower idyll would not last forever. In November, Trump’s election victory unhinged him so much that comments he made on campus – and on Twitter – led to a visit to his home (in Brooklyn, where else?) by members of the NYPD, who took him to Bellevue for psychiatric evaluation.
Professor Calls Whites “Inhuman A**holes,” Tells Blacks to “Let Them F*cking Die”
“We were informed by Rutgers PD,” explained the NYPD in a statement, “that he made threats to kill white people.” Allred himself, in a piece published online last month, maintained that “[a]n anonymous complaint from a parent claimed I forced students to destroy an American flag, threatened every white student in class by saying I would shoot them all given the chance, then returned home and tweeted proof of my dangerous behavior.”
The tweet read as follows: “will the 2nd amendment be as cool when I buy a gun and start shooting atrandom [sic] white people or no…?”
Although the doctors at Bellevue sent Allred home, he was later visited (he says) by members of the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force. And Rutgers, after temporarily suspending him, gave him the heave-ho. In the aforementioned piece, in which he depicted himself (naturally) as a victim and rejected all the accusations made against him, Allred said that the whole episode “makes me want to teach harder, more ferociously, and more unapologetically than ever.”
American liberals never cease to amaze. As juvenile as their behavior can be, they now appear to have regressed to the infantile.
There is a booming business in (naturally) California that has taken anti-Trump hysteria to heights never seen. Indeed, Donald Trump has so incapacitated some people that only the “healing touch” of a good cuddle can help them deal with their angst.
Yeah, you read that right — “a good cuddle.” Now don’t get me wrong. Cuddling with a loved one can be comforting, emotionally satisfying, even arousing if you’re doing it right.
But how about with a total stranger? I guess as long as you both have had your life ruined by Trump’s election, a good cuddle will temporarily blot out your hysteria and give you peace.
Rolling Stone:
The reasons one seeks out a professional cuddling experience range from average adults seeking connection, those on the autistic spectrum, those healing from sexual trauma, adults dealing with sexual dysfunction or for older virgins to practice touch in a safe environment. The elephant in the room during some of these sessions, though, is the current state of the country’s affairs. Since November – and the election of Donald Trump – professional cuddling services have seen a spike in client interest.
“The holiday season was the first time that since Trump won the election that a lot of people were seeing their family,” says Adam Lippin, co-founder and CEO of Cuddlist, which provides training services to professional cuddlers and allows clients to search listings of “Cuddlists” nearby. “People with different political views were going to be in the same place with relatives. That was the first hit of people having to confront it in a significant way. We saw an uptick around that.”
But what makes the organized effort of being held, a service that comes with a cost (Cuddlist sessions go for $80 an hour), something that aids in relieving the fear and discomfort that has come with Trump’s presidency?
[…]
As executive orders, cabinet appointments, abuse of power, protests and other signs of political unrest sweep the nation, there’s a sense of unease brewing in many. They are turning to alternative forms of care to alleviate these fears.
Marcia Baczynski, co-founder of Cuddle Party, has seen her already established clientele base reacting to the election. Many of them, she says, feel triggered by Trump’s actions, history of sexual abuse allegations and manipulative behaviors.
“The work is actually political now,” Baczynski says. “It used to be the case that you talked about cuddle parties because these are important skills for life – everyone’s navigating boundaries. And now we need to have boundaries with our government. How the fuck do you do that? How do you conceptualize having a leader who is essentially an abusive asshole?”
A significant number of those seeking professional cuddling services have experienced abuse, and some see in Trump qualities that remind them of past trauma. Three days after the election, Anastasia Allington, a professional cuddler in Austin, Texas, had a session with a client who was bereft and frequently broke into tears. Another scheduled a cuddle session on Election Day in order to alleviate the anxiety he was already experiencing around the campaign. CONTINUE AT SITE
One of the negative features of our daily double/triple/quadruple media outrage cycle is that many people lose the context and history in which these events occur.
There was a lot of heavy breathing from the media this week after it was leaked that a grand jury had been impaneled by special counsel Robert Mueller — just one of many illegal hostile leaks that have emerged from inside the administration targeting President Trump.
The person tasked with investigating those leaks — until he was fired — was FBI Director James Comey.
But it bears reminding that the only reason why a special counsel was appointed was that Comey himself illegally leaked memos of his conversations with the president to the media for the purpose of having a special counsel appointed days after he was fired.
Don’t take my word for it. Here is Comey testifying on June 8 in response to questioning by Sen. Susan Collins that he leaked the memo of his conversations with the president specifically to provoke the appointment of a special counsel (beginning ~1:48):
Collins: Did you show copies of your memos to anyone outside of the Department of Justice?
Comey: Yes.
Collins: And to whom did you show copies?
Comey: The president tweeted on Friday after I got fired that I better hope there’s not tapes. I woke up in the middle of the night on Monday night because it didn’t dawn on me originally, that there might be corroboration for our conversation. There might be a tape. And my judgment was I needed to get that out into the public square. And so I asked a friend of mine to share the content of the memo with a reporter. I didn’t do it myself for a variety of reasons but I asked him to because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel. So I asked a close friend of mine to do it.
Collins: And was that Mr. [Benjamin] Wittes?
Comey: No. No.
Collins: Who was that?
Comey: A good friend of mine who’s a professor at Columbia law school.
Comey’s friend, Columbia law professor Daniel Richman, later admitted that he was the conduit for Comey’s leak.
Comey’s defenders claim that there was nothing improper or illegal because the memos were his private property and he was free to leak them. That explanation doesn’t quite fly. CONTINUE AT SITE
Every day it becomes clearer why former National Security Adviser Gen. Michael Flynn was unmasked and the early target of a series of illegal leaks targeting Team Trump. Flynn was an unabashed critic of President Barack Hussein Obama and someone who would take a bullet for Trump in any political battle. He had to be dispensed with and someone less loyal to Trump and more accommodating to the “resistance” put in his place.
That man was to be General H.R. McMaster, and the story of how he got to be President Trump’s National Security Adviser speaks volumes about his true loyalties. As journalist Caroline Glick notes in a recent article:
… there is the issue of how McMaster got there in the first place. Trump interviewed McMaster at Mara a Lago for a half an hour. He was under terrible pressure after firing Flynn to find someone.
And who recommended McMaster? You won’t believe this.
Senator John McCain. That’s right. The NSA got his job on the basis of a recommendation from the man who just saved Obamacare.
Obviously, at this point, Trump has nothing to lose by angering McCain. I mean what will he do? Vote for Obamacare?
President Trump has expressed his continued support for McMaster, even after a letter McMaster sent to Benghazi liar and serial unmake Susan Rice was revealed in which McMaster said he was perfectly fine with a person who should be a target of her very own special prosecutor retaining her security clearance. As Fox News Politics reported on August 5:
President Trump gave H.R. McMaster a vote of confidence after the national security adviser’s rivals seized on a letter McMaster sent to his Obama predecessor Susan Rice giving her continued access to classified information….
Trump issued a statement late Friday supporting McMaster.
“General McMaster and I are working very well together,” the statement read. “He is a good man and very pro-Israel. I am grateful for the work he continues to do serving our country.”
McMaster already had been in the spotlight for the series of firings he’s ordered on the National Security Council. Most recently, he ousted Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior director for intelligence at the National Security Council who had been viewed as a Trump loyalist.
But Circa first reported Thursday that McMaster sent a letter giving Rice access to classified material, weeks after her alleged role was disclosed in ‘unmasking’ identities of Trump associates in intelligence reports.
McMaster may have served his country well while in uniform, but he is not serving his country well as National Security Adviser. McMaster insists the letter to Rice was a pro forma letter sent to every former national security adviser and every former president. But Susan Rice’s record is anything but pro forma and precedent can be broken, especially when the individual arguably should be in jail and not in public service.
Every board game has rules. Every card game has rules. Every athletic competition has rules. Every election has rules. Every society has rules. WHY?
Rules establish the object of the game and provide the organizing principle for fair play – rules establish what is and what is not acceptable conduct in the game. You have to take turns, you cannot look at someone else’s cards, you cannot challenge or dispute the referee, you cannot vote twice – and there are penalties for not following the rules in every game. If you don’t play by the rules in a game you either lose on points or are disqualified.
Let’s examine the sport of wrestling and begin with the overview of wrestling rules provided by West Virginia Wrestling: http://www.wvmat.com/overview.htm
The object of traditional wrestling is to pin your opponent on his back. When you pin your opponent, the match is over and you are the winner. If nobody gets pinned, the winner is the wrestler who has scored the most points during the match.
The rules of traditional wrestling identify holds that are acceptable and holds that are not acceptable during the match. “No holds barred” means there are absolutely no restrictions or limits on the holds used to pin your opponent.
Laws are the rules of society and like any game there are penalties for not following the rules – but what happens when the rules are abandoned and a no holds barred mentality dominates the game in politics?
President Donald Trump thought he entered a traditional match of presidential election politics when he descended the escalator at Trump Towers. Instead he found himself fighting in a professional no holds barred kayfabe wrestling match against the entire Washington establishment of swamp creatures colluding in a sinister effort to pin him down. The 2016 presidential campaign, election, and aftermath are a professional political wrestling match with the corrupt mainstream media hired as the kayfabe referee.
Kayfabe is professional wrestling’s suspension of disbelief that presents fake staged events as genuine competitions. In professional wrestling the referee’s on-stage kayfabe purpose is to convince the spectators they are watching a legitimate traditional match. In reality the referee and the wrestlers are participating in the staged spectacle of a scripted match with a pre-determined outcome. The referee and the wrestlers are actors who maintain kayfabe by playing their parts and never breaking character.
There are five ways to score points in a wrestling match and the swamp creatures have tried them all:
1) Takedown – (2 points) You score two points for taking your opponent down to the mat and controlling him/her.
Hillary attempted the takedown maneuver with her frontal attack on Donald Trump accusing him of being a misogynist. Amplifying her accusations with the infamous Billy Bush tape leaked intentionally just before the election, Hillary hoped to end the match by securing the women’s vote. Instead of pinning Donald Trump the tape ended the career of Billy Bush and exposed Hillary’s complicity in the real life misogyny, womanizing, and exploitation of women by her unfaithful husband Bill Clinton. No takedown.
2) Escape – (1 point) You score one point for getting away or getting to a neutral position when your opponent has you down on the mat.
Hillary tried the escape maneuver by accusing Donald Trump of being dangerously inexperienced. With the dexterity of a counter-puncher candidate Trump laughed in derision and asked the American public how the many years of “experience” of the career politicians in Washington had benefited anyone but the politicians themselves? Candidate Trump pointed out the unseemly corruption of the Clinton family – Hillary’s pay-for-play scheming while Secretary of State and the corrupt Clinton Foundation that only distributed a fraction of the monies they collected. Trump escaped.
3) Reversal – (2 points) You score two points when your opponent has you down on the mat and you come from underneath and gain control of your opponent.
Hillary thought she had Donald Trump on the mat when she romanticized the inclusiveness of Obama’s open border policies and support for illegal immigrants. She criticized Trump as a racist and an Islamophobe. Hillary campaigned around the country saying that real Americans needed to be with HER to be inclusive and accepting.
Donald Trump pointed out that open borders are designed to flood America with illegal immigrants who will vote illegally for their Democratic Party benefactors. He said the open border policy is a Trojan horse that will bring masses of immigrants from Islamic countries with cultural norms hostile to America and facilitate the social chaos necessary for the destruction of American democracy – the overarching goal of Hillary and her leftist Democratic Party. Candidate Donald Trump made a strong case for LEGAL immigration. After all, he married two legal immigrants. The distinction between illegal and legal immigration that Hillary tried to blur was clarified by candidate Trump and he accomplished a reversal.
The Al-Aqsa Mosque controversy has exposed, once again, the non-centrality of the Palestinian issue in the overall Arab order of priorities.http://theettingerreport.com/OpEd/OpEd—Israel-Hayom/Palestinian-issue-marginalized-by-Arabs.aspx
Contrary to Western media headlines, Arab policy-makers and the Arab Street are not focused on Palestinian rights and Al Aqsa, but on their own chaotic, raging local and regional challenges, which are not related to the Palestinian issue.
For example, while the top Palestinian religious leader, Mufti Muhammad Hussein, castigates Arab leaders for their inaction on behalf of the Al Aqsa Mosque, Egyptian President General Sisi, and the Egyptian street, are preoccupied with traumatizing economic and social decay and challenges; the dwindling level of tourism, which is a main source of national income; the lethal, domestic threat of Muslim Brotherhood terrorism; the Libyan chaos and its effective spillover into Egypt; the entrenchment of Islamic terrorism in the Sinai Peninsula, across the Gulf of Suez; the Gaza-based terrorism; the threatening collaboration of Turkey-Qatar-Iran and Turkey’s support of Hamas; the potentially-explosive border with Sudan; etc.
General Sisi invests much more time in geo-strategic coordination with Jordan, Saudi Arabia, other Arab Gulf States, the US and Israel – which are perceived as critical allies in combatting terrorism – than with the Palestinian Authority, which is perceived as a destabilizing entity.
According to the July 20, 2017 issue of the London-based Middle East Monitor, “Al Aqsa has been abandoned by those who profess the leadership of the Muslim World…. [Egypt’s and Saudi Arabia’s] cold indifference…is unworthy of institutions that profess to be the preeminent leaders of Muslims around the world…. The religious institutions in Makkah, Madinah and Cairo have gone absent without leave despite the dangerous situation at the Noble Sanctuary in occupied Jerusalem…. Both countries are spearheading a regional drive for full normalization of relations with Israel. Their reasoning is that friendship with Israel is the best guarantee of US support for themselves….”
The London-based Palestinian newspaper, Al-Quds Al-Arabi, published a cartoon, depicting the Arab World as an ostrich burying its head in the sand, while the Al Aqsa Mosque bleeds.
Since 1948, and in defiance of Western foreign policy, academia and media establishments, the Arab/Islamic agenda has transcended the Palestinian issue.
While showering the Palestinian issue with substantial talk, the Arab/Islamic walk has mostly been directed at other issues: the 1,400-year-old regional, intra-Arab/Islamic unpredictability, fragmentation, instability and intolerant violence; the Islamic Sunni terrorist machete at the throat of all pro-US Arab regimes; the clear and present danger, posed by Iran’s Ayatollahs, to the same regimes; the destructive role played by Qatar in the context of – and in assistance to – the Ayatollahs; the lethal, regional ripple effects of the disintegration of Iraq, Syria and Libya; the inherent, tectonic (disintegration) potential in every Arab regime; the impact of the global energy revolution on the potency of the Arab oil producing regimes; and the enhanced role of Israel in the battle against the aforementioned threats.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Conflict management, when applied to the Israeli-Palestinian problem, is insufficient to achieve Israel’s interests. What is needed is a strategy of renewed settlement that will educate the Palestinians about the costs of their actions, divide their ranks instead of tactically unifying them, and keep it a conflict over land – which can eventually be resolved – rather than over religion, which is probably unsolvable.https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/temple-mount-crisis/
Israel’s bureaucratic establishment – the IDF, Shabak, and Mossad, as well as many politicians, opinion makers, and commentators – supports the idea of conflict management in the relationship between Israel, the PA, and Hamas until some future time that might be more auspicious for peace.
They are wrong. As any businessperson knows, maintaining market share means losing ground to the competition. The same is true of politics in our region. Absorbing and containing Palestinian violence is a losing strategy, as the recent events on the Temple Mount prove.
The answer lies in the vision and strategy of settlement.
Why settlement and not some other strategy?
Israel’s policy of conflict management has encouraged the Palestinians to focus on the Temple Mount. Throughout the conflict, the Temple Mount has been the Palestinians’ most successful rallying point.
In 1929, when the Mufti popularized the slogan “al-Aqsa Is In Danger”, the population of Mandate Palestine rallied to defend it. It was only on the Temple Mount, 33 years after the Six Day War, that Israeli Arab citizens rioted in large numbers together with their counterparts from over the Green Line. They chanted, “In spirit and blood we will defend al-Aqsa”. Never before had they rallied over any other symbol of Palestinian nationalism.
The strategy of conflict management – the approach of dealing tactically with Palestinian violence – is turning the clash into a religious conflict, and religious conflicts are notoriously difficult to resolve. A renewed strategy of Israeli settlement would shift the conflict once again to nationalist land claims. Conflicts over land are by no means easily solved, but they at least have the potential to be be resolved at some future date.
A strategy of Israeli settlement in Judea and Samaria is also tactically wise. Conflict management promotes tactical unity among the Palestinians, who agree that because Israel wants to contain violence, it is in their interest to continue to foment it. A settlement strategy would divide the enemy rather than unite it. Abbas’s PA and its ruling party would almost certainly turn their attention to stopping settlement, while the Islamists – Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hizb al-Tahrir, and their supporters – would champion the defense of al-Aqsa. Dividing the energies of Israel’s foes would go a long way towards reducing violence.
In the last 30 years, more mosques and Muslim prayer centers have been built in France than all the Catholic churches built in the last century.
The Church of Santa Rita used to stand in the fifteenth arrondissement of Paris. A few weeks after Father Hamel was murdered by Islamic terrorists, the French police cleared the church. It is now a parking lot. Police dragged the priests out by their legs as a Mass was being celebrated.
In France there are laws protecting old trees. But the state is free to flatten old Christian churches. The vacuums created in the French landscape are already being filled by the booming mosques. Cowardly French authorities would never treat Islam as they are now treating Christianity.
“France is not a random space… fifteen centuries of history and geography determined its personality. Inscribed in the depths of our landscape, the churches, the cathedrals and other places of pilgrimage give meaning and form to our patriotism. Let us demand our civil authorities to respect it”. Two years ago, the French journalist Denis Tillinac promoted this appeal, signed by dozens of French personalities, after some French imams requested the conversion of abandoned churches into mosques.
A year later, terrorists who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State assaulted the Catholic parishioners in the church of Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray, murdering an elderly priest, Father Jacques Hamel, at the foot of the altar. An outpouring of great emotion followed the most serious attack on a Christian symbol in Europe since the Second World War.
After that attack, the French authorities prevented many Islamist plots against the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Last June, police shot a Muslim man outside the cathedral after he tried to attack them with a hammer. Another terror cell of French women, guided by Islamic State commanders in Syria, had previously been foiled before they could attack Notre Dame. France’s most famous Catholic house of worship is a prime target for the jihadists. A t the same time, France has been dismissing the religious and cultural heritage of France’s Catholic patrimony, which, in a time of religious clashes and revival, should instead be protected as treasures and sources of strength.
Last month, around the time of the first anniversary of the murder of Father Hamel, a wrecking crew demolished the famed Chapel of Saint Martin in Sablé-sur-Sarthe, built in 1880-1886 and deconsecrated in 2015. A parking lot will replace the old Christian building. Photographs and videos posted on social networks, in scenes reminiscent of ISIS’ vandalism of churches in Mosul, show the cross being ripped from the church and the church destroyed. A few days earlier, in Rouen, not far from where Father Hamel had been killed, the local authorities ordered the destruction of the Saint-Nicaise Church’s presbytery, for “safety reasons”.
In 1907, the French state appropriated all church property, and now an increasing numbers of local authorities are deciding they cannot or will not renovate their churches. French mayors call this process “deconstruction”.
For the past two weeks “Dunkirk” has been top of the box office in cinemas throughout the United Kingdom. The film is a fictional rendition of the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from the Dunkirk, in France, in May 1940, as Hitler’s invading divisions blitzed their way towards Paris.
The evacuation involved over 400,000 soldiers, including many Frenchmen and troops recruited in British Empire and Commonwealth units such as Canada and Australia.
The greatest retreat in the history of warfare, the Dunkirk operation prevented the Germans from annihilating the bulk of the British army, giving London the chance to prepare to fight another day.
t first glance, there was little heroism in such a vast force fleeing without fighting; armies usually retreat after they have fought and lost a battle. And, yet, what came to be known as “the spirit of Dunkirk” was truly heroic as thousands of ordinary Brits, defying Hitler’s vast war machine, made their way to the beaches of Dunkirk, often aboard small fishing boats and dinghies and even a few floating bath-tubs, to help bring the stranded soldiers back to England.
Over the following decades “the spirit of Dunkirk” came to indicate a key characteristic of the British: fighting when their backs are to the wall.
Not surprisingly, therefore, those who campaigned for Britain leaving the European Union last year have seized on the excitement created by the new film to inject a bit of heroism in their narrative.
“Yes,” they say,” Britain is heading for tough times outside the European Union. But, helped by the Spirit of Dunkirk, it shall overcome all hurdles.”
One leading campaigner for “Brexit” has even demanded that the new film be shown in schools to boost the morale of the young whose lives will be most affected by leaving the EU.
However, it is hard to draw a parallel between Brexit and Dunkirk, if only because the EU can’t be equated with Nazi Germany. Nor was the UK at war with the EU, an alliance of democratic nations which Britain played a leading role in the creation of its latest version.
The question the Brits faced in Dunkirk was one of life and death. As a member of the EU, however, Britain has enjoyed membership in the biggest economic bloc in the world, alongside most of its NATO allies.
Advocates of Brexit have cited four reasons why the UK should leave.
The first is “regaining lost national sovereignty”.
However, in its White Paper published earlier this year, the government solemnly declared that Britain never lost sovereignty. Membership of the EU meant a sharing of — and not a loss of — sovereignty. Britain already shares sovereignty in many international and regional organizations including NATO, the United Nations, the Commonwealth, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, among many others.
