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September 2018

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Nicholas T. Parsons: The Fashion Industry: Not So Pretty Teen Vogue Celebrates Karl Marx!!!!

By on September 30th, 2018

http://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2018/09/fashion-industry-pretty-looks/

Double standards are far more consistent than hemlines in an industry which recently saw Teen Vogue, published by the decidedly capitalist Condé Nast, honour the anniversary of Karl Marx’s birth with a gushing article describing how he exposed the evils of, yes, capitalism.

Contra la moda toda lucha es inútil.
—Josep Pla

Fashion: A despot whom the wise ridicule and obey.
—Ambrose Bierce
The haute couture is a degenerate institution propped up by a sycophantic press.
—Kennedy Fraser

_____________________

fashionWhat most of us immediately associate with the word fashion is its ephemeral nature, likewise its capacity to generate irrational attachment. The most familiar object of such an attachment is clothes, anything from haute couture to jeans with holes scratched out at the knees, where the banal nature of the product is disguised (or in fact celebrated) by brand marketing. Moreover the emetic cult of catwalk celebrity and the narcissistic economy of fashion design would collapse if the majority, at any rate the majority of women, became so contented with last year’s fashion that they just decided to keep their closets unreformed. “The fashion industry is loath to see many days go by,” wrote Kennedy Fraser in The Fashionable Mind (1981), “without trumpeting new eras, and whenever a style emerges, or reappears after an absence, it hurries to coin a title before shoppers can rummage sinfully in closets.” “Fashion,” remarked the Queen of Romania dourly, “exists for women with no taste, just as etiquette is for people with no breeding.”

Happily for the industry, the particular nature of what has been tweaked to make a new frock is less important than the necessity of its purchasers to be, and be seen to be, up with the latest fashion. To quote Fraser again:

If, for many women, the choice of clothes is an anxious, irrational affair, it is made doubly so by our craving to be fashionable. The vagaries of fashion are a denial of constant aesthetic standards, objective ideas of grace or flattery, and the fact that women’s bodies remain much the same from one season to the next.

Dressing in fashion is therefore a matter of status as much as aesthetics, part of what Thorstein Veblen described as “conspicuous consumption”, now expanded to tempt those on lesser incomes with what the drugs industry calls “generic” versions of the stuff paraded before the fakes, cynics, psychopaths and allegedly creative geniuses at the annual fashion shows.

In Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) Veblen explained that, after the second industrial revolution, the emergent nouveaux riches established their social status through patterns of consumption, a conscious attempt to distance themselves from the less well-off and advertise their position in “the leisure class”. An unashamed contemporary demonstration of this phenomenon is afforded by a weekend supplement of the Financial Times stuffed with advertorial matter and the glossiest of glossy pictures, which emphasises the nature of the readership it aims at through its title, How to Spend It. Its critics have dubbed it the “Argos catalogue for the 1 per cent” (Argos being a downmarket mail order business), and it specialises in ludicrous and ludicrously priced goods for the über-rich, especially alpha males (a Rolex Steve McQueen Explorer II watch at £20,000, which is ridiculously cheap when you could instead buy a Franck Muller Aeternitas Mega watch for £2 million; or how about a Maybach Exelero car at £6 million or a Learjet at the giveaway price of £550,000?). Two things are notable about this supplement: first, the rest of the FT is emphatically liberal, even leftist, in its editorials, comment and news coverage. Second, the magazine is by far the most profitable part of the paper and indeed the editor apparently lamented recently that they hadn’t invented another money-spinner like How to Spend It.

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How the GOP Could Be the Party of Responsible Tech By Robert Miller

By on September 30th, 2018

https://amgreatness.com/2018/09/30/how-the

The veil separating Google’s inner workings from the outside world recently slipped again with revelations that the company discussed “tweaking” its search engine to help thwart the Trump Administration’s efforts to stem the flow of travelers into the United States from terrorism-prone countries. Adding to existing fears over the censorship of conservative ideas on Google’s platforms and elsewhere in cyberspace, this confirmation of big tech’s ideological echo chamber is only the latest in a growing array of concerns over the tech industry’s growing political power and its threats to public safety and constitutional governance. This techno-political sea change not only threatens to censor debate, it also underscores tech’s threat to privacy, the integrity of networks critical to national security, and the viability of employment in industries threatened by robotics and artificial intelligence.

These new technological changes combine to offer Republicans the chance to broaden their policy platform and make themselves the party of responsible technological regulation.

Who Will Regulate Responsibly?
When asked about where Democrats or the GOP stands on issues such as abortion, the environment, or gun control, even the most vaguely aware voters can draw from general knowledge and state where each party generally stands. Yet, the same cannot be said for problems involving software firms and social media companies. Are Democrats more committed to protecting American jobs from artificial intelligence? Does the GOP’s skepticism of government business regulation extend to companies tasked with protecting consumer information? Which party is more committed to freedom of speech online, or committed to the freedom to virtually assemble? Answers to such questions are not readily apparent because neither party has made a point of staking a claim on regulating big tech.

Voter demand for more responsibility and oversight in the tech industry is readily apparent in many recent polls. In a 2017 poll, more than 70 percent of Americans expressed fears of economic displacement and increased economic inequality caused by robotics and artificial intelligence replacing human workers. A similar survey found that majorities of voters across party affiliations support increased governmental regulation of artificial intelligence, with 73 percent of Democrats and 74 percent of Republicans favoring increased oversight.

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Jeff Flake’s Long Game By Karin McQuillan

By on September 30th, 2018

https://amgreatness.com/2018/09/29/jeff

Jeff Flake is an ambitious man. His ambition is to sabotage President Trump, the Republican Party, and Trump voters by any means possible.

Few Americans understand the dynamics of fake Republicans in red states, where politically aspiring liberals often put an “R” after their names and run as pretend conservatives, knowing that is their only viable path to high office. Once safely elected, they feel free, like Senator Flake, to actively and sanctimoniously betray their voters.

So it should come as no surprise The Hill newspaper in March reported that Flake has “kept in touch” with former President Obama. Flake told David Axelrod, the former Obama strategist turned CNN host, that Obama called to check on him after the junior senator announced he would not run for reelection.

Flake hates President Trump like poison. He didn’t vote for him. He’s vied with Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) for the title of senator displaying the most open contempt for the president. In his announcement from the Senate floor that he would not be running for re-election, Senator Flake thundered he would “no longer be complicit or silent” in the face of Trump’s supposed “reckless, outrageous, and undignified” behavior—behavior that includes ending the Iran deal, pulling out of the Paris Climate Accord, and bringing North Korea and China to the negotiating table.

Flake is proud of his friendship with Obama, a president who repeatedly ignored the constitutional limits of his power by using his “pen and phone” to enact executive orders on immigration, environmental regulations, and international agreements that he couldn’t get Congress to pass.

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You Can’t Make Women First-Class Citizens by Making Men Second-Class Citizens By Sarah Hoyt

By on September 30th, 2018

https://pjmedia.com/trending/help-ive-been-chained-to-a-hundred-and-fifty-million-lunatics/

Sophocles is reported to have said that the male libido was like being chained to a lunatic.

I can honestly say, being a woman in 21st-century America, that I have him beat cold. I have somehow been chained to over a hundred and fifty million lunatics.

Okay, not every woman is a lunatic. I even have women friends. But making friends with women is like making friends in the science fiction field. I start by assuming they will be part of a strange form of Marxist victim-group and I look for signs they might, just might, be safe.

Then there’s a whole dance as you reveal yourself to the other as not-a-standard-woman.

At first, I thought American women had a chip on their shoulder, but I didn’t realize it was nearly this bad.

First, so you can understand where I’m coming from – because I have been told the reason I’m not hot for “feminism” is that women won the fight for me. The country I grew up in gave women the vote in the seventies. Further, when I was a child, getting a private passport for a married woman was difficult, and my mom had a “family passport,” which meant dad had to affidavit her every time she wanted to go to Spain to shop. Married women needed to have permission from their husbands to get a job. (Which meant many women worked under the table.) When I was in fifth and sixth grade, both of which were in mixed classes, it was assumed as a matter of course that girls couldn’t outperform boys, and when I did – routinely – the teachers acted like a wondrous thing had happened.

There were a lot of other restrictions, like the fact that no sane woman would go out after dark because there was a very high chance you’d be confused with a prostitute.

But here’s the thing: I don’t remember ever attributing any actual reverses in my life to being a woman. I managed to enter college. Heck, my cousin, who is 14 years older than me, is a chemical engineer. I don’t think she ever attributed any reversals in her life to being a woman either.

My mother ran her own business and out-earned my father for most of her marriage.

Sure, men discriminated against women. But women could still manage to be successful. And didn’t waste their time attributing their failures or their issues to men’s plotting.

Sure as a young woman I snapped off a lot of noses — and hands and… never mind. At fourteen grandma gave me a hat pin with which to discourage men rubbing against me in the bus. It worked too. And sure, I wished I could have more freedom and that people didn’t assume I was an idiot because I was a woman. But very few of them assumed I was an idiot after I had a chance to open my mouth.

And it truly never occurred to me to think that men were sabotaging me. Once you proved yourself, most men treated you fine.

I didn’t hear the phrase “he’s afraid of a strong woman” until I came to the States.

This was the eighties. To me, the U.S. was a wonderful place. No one acted like I was obviously less smart than boys. And no one treated me like I was a child.

And yet, I soon found that women about ten years older than me attributed all my issues or problems to “men are afraid of strong women.”

I’ve had bad bosses of both sexes, with a slight lead for women, mostly because I’ve had more female bosses. But none of those older women ever said, “Your female boss is afraid of strong women,” even though in my experience females are more likely to be afraid of women who are supposed to be their subordinates and whom they can neither intimidate nor control.

In fact, it was always a mystery to me how these male bosses were supposed to know that I was a “strong woman,” since in my twenties I was shy to the point of incoherence and polite to the point of self-effacement.

After a while that started annoying me, but even then, I don’t think I could possibly have guessed how crazy things were going to go.

Nowadays it seems to be an actual crime to be male. From schools to colleges, we are doing our best to make every boy behave like a girl and every man become just like a woman.

And even then, until this year I couldn’t have imagined the spectacle the Kavanaugh hearings have turned into.

How is it possible that Christina Blasey Ford has been asked to testify before the most august body in the land on a ridiculous, unproven and unprovable charge, which – should it prove true – amounts to the fact that a seventeen-year-old boy might have been uncouth and somewhat ridiculous at a drunken party, something that is neither a crime nor, to be fair, unusual. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Mukasey, Gray: Declassify Mueller records to protect against abuse By Michael Mukasey and C. Boyden Gray,

By on September 29th, 2018

https://thehill.com/opinion/criminal-justice/408425-trump-should-insist-on-declassification-of-mueller-documents

It has been 16 months this week since Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller III as a special counsel to “investigate any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump,” as described in Mr. Rosenstein’s May 17, 2017, letter appointing the special counsel.

But that appointment letter ignored the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) special counsel regulations set forth in 28 CFR SEC. 600 et seq., and the standards and regulations published by the DOJ in the “Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide” (DIOG) that require a predicate criminal offense before an investigation can be commenced.

Under the department’s guidelines, the agency is permitted “to conduct investigations to detect, obtain information about, and prevent and protect against federal crimes,” requiring some reasonable basis for commencing an investigation after having first identified “a particular crime or threatened crime.” Yet, the authorizing letter appointing the special counsel contained no “particular crime or threatened crime” by the president or his campaign, and none has been identified since, despite issuance of a later memo on Aug. 2, 2017, purporting to amplify the earlier appointment.

The president has now retracted his recent request for declassification and release of DOJ/FBI material that would shed defining light on the supposed crime (or, perhaps, lack thereof). It would be important in addition to have full, unredacted disclosure of the August 2017 Rosenstein memo to Mueller elaborating on his mission about which there should be no secrecy. But the DOJ and, now, the United Kingdom appear determined to continue to resist disclosure.

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The Organic Food Industry Gets Fat on Lies By Henry Miller

By on September 29th, 2018

https://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2018/09/29/the_organic_food_industry_gets_fat_on_lies_110755.html

In “The Wealth of Nations,” the 18th century economist and philosopher Adam Smith observed about the chicanery of some businessmen, “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” Nowhere is that truer than in today’s organic agriculture and food industries.

In an August Wall Street Journal op-ed entitled, “The Organic Industry Is Lying to You,” I described the ways those industries misrepresent the benefits of their products and broadcast spurious concerns about modern genetic engineering of crop plants – in other words, mendaciously trashing the competition.

The Journal published two responses to my op-ed from representatives of the organic industry that perfectly illustrate my thesis: Like tobacco industry executives before them, they have to lie in order to defend a flawed product.

Cameron Harsh, of the rabidly anti-technology NGO, Center for Food Safety, denied that organic farmers use harmful chemicals. In fact, many organic-approved pesticides pose significant environmental and human health risks. They include nicotine sulfate, which his highly toxic to warm-blooded animals; another is copper sulfate, a widely-used broad-spectrum organic pesticide that persists in the soil and is the most common residue found in organic food. The European Union determined that copper sulfate may cause cancer and intended to ban it, but backed off because organic farmers don’t have good alternatives.

More than two dozen synthetic chemical pesticides are permitted in organic agriculture, and organic farmers are demanding more. The reason is revealing. Organic practices are so primitive and inferior that constantly-challenged organic farmers periodically go whining to USDA’s National Organic Standards Board (whose members are from the organic industry), which rubber-stamps their requests for new chemicals to be approved. For example, as described in Food Safety News earlier this year:

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The Turning Point by Mark Steyn

By on September 29th, 2018

https://www.steynonline.com/8881/the-turning-point

I mentioned with Tucker the other night the condescension of Gentleman Jim Acosta, who airily presumes that, if you’re a woman, any woman, you believe the accuser and assume this Kavanaugh guy is a serial gang-rapist. That’s how it goes: Identity politics makes moron cultures of formerly sophisticated societies. So it was inevitable that when a picture from yesterday’s hearing popped up, of the judge with three females sitting behind him, the wankerati of Twitter immediately assumed that they were just three regular all-American women staring in disgust at the rape beast of Bethesda.

In fact, they were Kavanaugh’s wife, mother, and one of their dearest friends. And the reason they look like that is because they’re crushed and broken by what Dianne Feinstein, Blumenthal, Whitehouse and the other whatever-it-takes Democrats chose to do to them. It is a testament to the thoroughness with which these malign carbuncles on the body politic set about their task that, in a certain sense, one could forgive the Twitter mob its carelessness: Mrs Kavanaugh was all but unrecognizable from the woman who’d sat behind her husband just a fortnight ago. She was, indeed, a different person, and she will be for the rest of her life.

Dianne Feinstein did that to her, consciously. The Ranking Member is in a tricky position back home. She’s on the California ballot this November, but, having been outflanked on her left, she is not the official Democrat nominee. So she cannot afford to be insufficiently “progressive”, and thus concluded it was necessary to, in Kavanaugh’s words, “destroy” his family.

Nothing personal, just business. Roger L Simon writes today with cold fury:

A real rape had taken place but it wasn’t the one everyone was talking about. It was simultaneously a rape of Judge Kavanaugh, his family, and the American people themselves. The collateral damage was Dr. Ford, her friends, and her family. And the perpetrator was the Democratic Party, principally their Judiciary Committee members, their ranking member, and the minority leader.

The GOP base, and Trump supporters in particular, weren’t in the mood for the usual milquetoast pantywaist routine from Republicans. That Deputy County Attorney from Arizona seems an affable lady, but the effect of her performance, punctuated by the usual bollocks from showboating Dems about the “courage” it takes to “speak your truth” (a horrible relativist phrase), was to ensure that for the first half of yesterday’s charade the ritual sacrifice of Brett Kavanaugh was a done deal.

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As I see it: Europe’s appeasement of Iran By Melanie Phillips

By on September 29th, 2018

https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/As-I-see-it-Europes-appeasement-of-Iran-568240

Remarks this week about Iran by US National Security Adviser John Bolton contained some of the most ferocious language ever used by an American administration about a foreign state.

Bolton told the Iranian regime: “If you cross us, our allies or our partners; if you harm our citizens; if you continue to lie, cheat and deceive, yes, there will indeed be hell to pay. Let my message today be clear: ‘We are watching, and we will come after you.’”

Earlier this year the US pulled out of the nuclear deal with Iran, re-instituting potentially crippling sanctions against the regime. At the UN, President Trump delivered a similar message. America, he said, would not allow “the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism” to possess “the means to deliver a nuclear warhead to any city on Earth.”Bolton went further and threatened “terrible consequences” for those doing business with Iran. But Britain and Europe are intending to do exactly that.

Earlier in the week, the EU and the three European co-signers of the Iran deal – Britain, France and Germany – said they would set up a new payment system to allow oil companies and businesses to continue trading without relying on the US-led global market. Commentators agree this sanctions-busting ruse is unlikely to work.

Big companies are already pulling out of Iran because the US says they can trade with Iran or America but they can’t do both. The European maneuver is likely merely to antagonize the US. As its Secretary of State Mike Pompeo angrily said, the Europeans were now “solidifying Iran’s ranking as number-one state sponsor of terror” with “one of the most counterproductive measures imaginable for regional peace and security”.

So why are the Europeans hell-bent on propping up Iran and the wretched nuclear deal? Economic self-interest is an important factor, but it’s not the only one.

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Sanctuary Cities – for Whom? by David C. Stolinsky

By on September 29th, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13024/sanctuary-cities

Kathryn Steinle’s last words were, “Dad, help me, help me.” But her dad could not help her. It was up to us to help her by keeping the streets as safe as possible. We did not. We used up all our sympathy on those who do not deserve it, leaving none for those who do deserve it. We made a “sanctuary city” that was safe for José Inés García Zárate, but extremely unsafe for his victim, Kathryn Steinle.

There are many reasons that citizens vote for a candidate. Blue-collar families often vote for the one who will bring back manufacturing jobs. Military families often vote for the one who will leave no man behind. For me, public safety is a primary consideration. People have a finite amount of sympathy. I’m sure Mother Teresa had more than I do, but even hers was not unlimited. Wisely, she spent hers for the poor. But many people are not wise. They spend their sympathy on illegal immigrants and criminals, leaving none for law-abiding citizens. Take, for instance, the cases of Sarah McKinley and Kathryn Steinle.

Sarah McKinley was home with her three-month-old son on New Year’s Eve 2013. She lived in the rural community of Blanchard, Oklahoma, and police response times tended to be long. She was an 18-year-old widow. Her husband had died of cancer a few days earlier.

When she saw two men attempting to break in, McKinley recognized one as a man who had been stalking her since her husband’s funeral. Apparently he was looking for drugs in the cancer victim’s home. She gave her baby a bottle, then retrieved a shotgun and a handgun and barricaded the door. She phoned 911 and asked what to do. She was told she could not shoot unless they came through the door. The 911 dispatcher, though, who was a woman, added, “You do what you have to do to protect your baby.”

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Seven Palestinians Die in Clashes at Gaza-Israel Border Around 20,000 Palestinians gathered along border; Israeli military says grenades, explosive devices and stones hurled at soldiers By Dov Lieber

By on September 29th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/six-palestinians-die-in-clashes-at-gaza-israel-border-1538158029

TEL AVIV—At least seven Palestinians were killed in clashes with Israeli security forces on the Gaza-Israel border Friday, after militant group Hamas issued calls for bigger protests amid growing frustrations over stalled cease-fire talks with its neighbor.

Among the dead were a 14-year-old boy, a 15-year-old boy and an 18-year-old man, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, which said at least 506 people were injured.

The Israeli military said none of its soldiers were injured by Palestinians who hurled grenades, explosive devices and stones at its soldiers across the fence. The military said it also carried out two airstrikes in the northern Gaza Strip in response to violence directed at its soldiers.

Around 20,000 Palestinians gathered in several parts along the border fence between Gaza and Israel after Hamas called for protests on mosque loudspeakers and the radio, according to Israel’s military. More than 10,000 had gathered on the fence last Friday.

Demonstrations on the Gaza-Israel border have picked up in the past two weeks, sometimes turning deadly as protesters have clashed with Israel’s security forces. More than a thousand Palestinians have participated in nightly demonstrations, rather than just the weekly Friday protests held over the past six months.

A fragile cease-fire in early August, which ended intense bouts of fighting between militants in Gaza and Israeli forces, has largely held as the United Nations and Egypt have mediated talks for a longer-term truce. Cairo is also pushing for a political agreement between rivals Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, which largely governs Palestinians in the West Bank.

Israeli security officials attributed the increased protests to a breakdown in negotiations between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. Hamas officials said Israel is delaying any longer-term peace deal, but they also slammed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s speech at the U.N. on Thursday, in which he said he would not be responsible for the consequences if there is no agreement with Hamas. Many in Israel and the Palestinian territories interpreted Abbas’s statement as a veiled warning that he’d cut all funding for the embattled Gaza Strip, which he has threatened to do in past speeches.

Mr. Abbas said talks with Hamas could come to a close over the next several days.

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