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July 2018

MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

The Catcher was a Spy: A review By Marion DS Dreyfus

By on July 11th, 2018

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/07/emthe_catcher_was_a_spyem_a_review.html

One of the best films of the year, The Catcher was a Spy stars the superb Paul Rudd — more familiar to audiences as a light and lovable comic persona, or the droll Ant-Man (Ant-Man and the Wasp), in the Marvel franchise now doing boffo box office. Here, Rudd is enigmatic, restrained, a never-less-than compelling presence.

Here, he is the remarkably accomplished Moe Berg, who is scooped up by the Office of Strategic Services from the field as a catcher in the Boston Red Sox in the early 1940s, to stymie the potentially terrifying development of the atomic bomb by a German scientist, played by chameleon-actor Mark Strong as Professor Werner Heisenberg.

If you recall your high school physics, that is the very same Heisenberg as the originator of the Heisenberg Principle, which posits that you cannot pin anything atomic down, since the very act of studying it changes it, so uncertainty is the only certainty. (NB: My slight interpretation, of course.)

Playing with an accent and a curly hairstyle that irritated my colleague at our viewing, Paul Giamatti nicely conveys the heebie jeebies of a scientist, Samuel Goudsmit, guide-along who of necessity accompanies Moe Berg as Berg infiltrates, leads a double life, trying to reach and charm his way into the needed contacts behind enemy lines and execute his mission.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The Racism of the Alleged Affronted By Eileen F. Toplansky

By on July 11th, 2018

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/07/the_racism_of_the_alleged_affronted.html

At the Consortium of Higher Education for LGBT Resource Professionals, one learns that at an upcoming webinar, “queer and trans people of color are welcome to join and engage in or observe the space. However, we do want to provide a content warning that in these spaces we hope white folks will process our thoughts and behaviors in a learning environment so we can address them and discuss and [sic] tactics of decentering whiteness.”

The topic is “How our institutions center whiteness as a dominant narrative and how we can decenter whiteness at an organizational level. Facilitators: Jesse Beal, they/them, Director, Women’s and Gender Center, Amherst College” and “Kayla Lisenby, they/them or she/her, Assistant Director, LGBTQ Center, Wake Forest University.”

Under the social justice rubric, being born white makes one evil, plain and simple. In fact, according to Dr. Kathy Obear, one can either be a good white ally or a bad one. Thus, everything is seen through the prism of race.

If white people ask people of color to teach them how to say things correctly to avoid racism, this actually results in a burden on people of color to constantly educate. Thus, you are damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

In fact, calling on someone to check his so-called privilege is an ad hominem attack. In particular, this logical fallacy is guilt by association. Being a part of the Caucasian race automatically makes a person guilty.

In actuality, white privilege is predicated on the idea that there needs to be “universal white guilt on the one hand and universal black innocence on the other.” For example, at the Crunk Feminist Collective, one learns that in 2012 Arizona governor Jan Brewer should have kept her fingers to herself when she confronted President Barack Obama about his immigration policies. Brewer was engaging in white female privilege and was “being disrespectful as hell.” Rather than explaining that she was incensed that a president of the United States could trample over the rights of American citizens, this episode is seen only through the prism of race and gender.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Wrecking NATO By Shoshana Bryen

By on July 11th, 2018

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/07/wrecking_nato.html

The Washington Post headline blared, “Trump is bent on wrecking NATO. Prepare for catastrophe.” The Post fears that President Trump’s diplomacy will benefit Vladimir Putin to the detriment of American and European interests. European Council president Donald Tusk sniped, “Dear America, appreciate your allies. After all, you don’t have that many.”

The NATO countries are, indeed, among America’s closest allies, but some of them appear more interested in oil, natural gas, and trade with Iran than in the Fulda Gap. Some of our “closest allies” have been working overtime to undermine America. If Mr. Trump is irritated with them, there is a reason.

Iran is preparing to take $300 million in cash out of German banks to get ahead of impending U.S. banking sanctions. While American intelligence officials are concerned that the money will finance terrorism, the German government says it has “no evidence” to that effect. According to the German newspaper Bild, “Iran … says that they need the money ‘to pass it on to Iranian individuals who, when travelling abroad, are dependent on euros in cash due to their lack of access to accepted credit cards.'” The German government appears to think that one million Iranian tourists might need $300 each – or perhaps 300 tourists might need $1 million each.

The plan to send dollars to Tehran is in line with European negotiations, led by Germany and France, to help Iran mitigate the economic fallout of the American withdrawal from the JCPOA – the Iran deal. The E.U. has also begun to update its “blocking statute,” the rule that will prevent European companies from complying with impending Iran sanctions.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Making American Jews Right Again By Larry Greenfield

By on July 11th, 2018

https://amgreatness.com/2018/07/11/making-american

In his book Why Are Jews Liberals, Norman Podhoretz described a “Torah of Liberalism” as the guiding political philosophy of contemporary American Jews.

Lacking religious devotion to the ancient Biblical text and Rabbinic tradition, or to the ritual observances practiced by “Orthodox” Jewry, Jewish Americans affiliated with liberal denominations, or disaffiliated completely from religious life, not only mimic predominant secular, urban political faith, they often lead it.

For many decades, prominent political movements of the Left—Communism, socialism, feminism, environmentalism, statism, welfarism, gay rights activism, and pro-abortionism—have been led by Jewish atheists, academics, and activists replacing God-based religious belief and behavior with a secular “social action” agenda. Podhoretz argued these Jews are religiously passionate, it’s just that their religion is now liberalism (not classical liberalism but modern progressivism).

The common Hebrew term heard at left-wing Jewish seminaries, synagogues, temples, summer camps, and communal organizations is “tikkun olam,” translated as “repairing the world.” The actual historical term, “L’taken olam b’malchut shaddai” was once an idea that served the social order, for example, by endorsing capital punishment to protect the community. Some leaders of the American Jewish establishment now selectively hijack Jewish law to authorize a range of social justice warfare intent on moving objectively nuanced and long-debated Jewish ethical concepts into subjective partisanship.

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