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January 2019

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

MY SAY: SIC(K) TRANSIT GENDER

By on January 18th, 2019

As of January 1, 2019, “…..residents of New York City can change their birth certificates to legally indicate they believe they are not the male or female they were born. They can also legally declare they are neither male nor female, with a simple X.”

I scoured the internet for education and illumination on a national issue that is altering perceptions as well as vocabulary, pronouns, and the laws. Who are zey? What do them want?

Eureka! In Australia, the Centre of Excellence for Equity in Higher Education (CEEHE) and a team of feminist scholars in the Faculty of Education and Arts at the University of Newcastle sponsored a conference on gender, post truth and pedagogy. December 9-12.

https://www.geaconf2018.com.au/QuickEventWebsitePortal/geaconf2018/eventinfo/Agenda

Here are some pithy excerpts:

The first speaker Prof Raewyn Connell of the University of Sydney spoke of “Truth, Power and Pedagogy.”

“Feminist critique of the mainstream curriculum remains essential. Yet we need to look critically at the global politics of our knowledge about gender, which itself has an imperial history and is challenged by decolonization campaigns. Claims for the universality of knowledge, which provide some resistance to post-truth politics, are subject to familiar feminist critiques, yet cannot be replaced by claims of epistemic privilege. We need, in current conditions, a feminist model of truthful practice as a basis for knowledge and curriculum. I hope to illustrate what this means for teachers’ working lives as well as in theory. “

Dr Melissa Wolfe who is a Senior Lecturer at Monash University explained in her brilliant peroration: “Generative knowledges: thinking the liminal within gender and education research.”

“Education assemblages, as emergent collectivities entangled with gender and sexuality, continue to be active and productive of binary relations that reiterate inequity. Liminal threshold concepts abound within the field of gender and education research. In this symposium, we propose a focus on the concept of the liminal beyond thresholds. We understand the liminal, without before and after, as an ambiguous state of simultaneous flux – of being affected and affecting, within the co-constitution that is relational becoming.”

Dr. Jacqueline Ullman a Senior Lecturer at Western Sydney University spoke of “Gender & sexuality diverse teachers & the interplay & impact of socio-cultural discourses on individual lives”

“Despite increased socio-cultural visibility of gender and sexuality-diversity alongside national discourses of tolerance, acceptance and homonormativity, gender and sexuality-diversity remains marginal across the education sector – often experienced by educators as individual identity work with significant affective outcomes. “

Ms. Briony Lipton Academic at Australian National University opined in “Care-full Academics: shifting temporalities and recognisabilities of care-work in the academy.”

“What are the personal meditations that take place when feminist academics resist and re-work ideas of care-work to negotiate how we are able to occupy academic spaces? How can care-work act as feminist resistance in queer responses to competitive career trajectories which shape academic belonging?”

I could go on and on about how much I learned from the learned about the critical thinking on binary dystopian notions, but it is time to watch another soap opera on TV where she and he do it in various permutations which are biologically sound.

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A Bloody Month of Jihad Politicians may want to look away, but al Qaeda and ISIS aren’t done.

By on January 18th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-bloody-month-of-jihad-11547769108

The Trump Administration says Islamic State has been defeated, and it is moving ahead with its withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syria and reducing America’s antiterror commitments in Africa. Meantime, House Foreign Affairs Chairman Eliot Engel is replacing a terrorism subcommittee with one focused on investigating what he apparently thinks is a bigger threat: Donald Trump.

The world’s terrorists don’t seem to have received this news that they’ve been defeated, as a spate of recent attacks around the globe shows.

• On Wednesday a suicide bomber killed two American soldiers, one civilian Pentagon employee and a Defense Department contractor, as well as 15 allied fighters and civilians, in Manbij, Syria. Islamic State took responsibility for the attack and claimed it specifically targeted Americans. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham says the incident shows that Mr. Trump’s retreat and declarations of victory in Syria are emboldening jihadists—and he’s probably right.

• Also on Wednesday federal prosecutors charged a 21-year-old Georgia man with planning to attack the White House, the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial and a synagogue. According to a criminal complaint, Hasher Jallal Taheb planned to form an assault group armed with guns, homemade bombs, an antitank weapon and hand grenades.

The man had “a hand-drawn diagram of the ground floor of the West Wing” and noted “the areas where the Secret Service and Homeland Security operated in the White House,” the complaint says. Credit the FBI for stopping him, but it shows that the threat from ISIS-inspired homegrown jihadists continues.

• On Tuesday militants from al-Shabaab, an al-Qaeda-linked group based in Somalia, attacked a hotel and office complex in Nairobi, Kenya. The 18-hour rampage killed at least 21 people, including American businessman and 9/11 survivor Jason Spindler.

• A Taliban suicide bomber hit a foreign compound in Kabul, Afghanistan, on Monday. Four people were killed and more than 100 wounded. Since word leaked that Mr. Trump may withdraw some or all U.S. forces in Afghanistan, ISIS and the Taliban have ramped up attacks and peace talks with the Taliban have faltered.

• Fighters from Islamic State in West Africa stormed a Nigerian military base on Sunday. The following day militants attacked a military-controlled refugee town, causing thousands of civilians to flee.

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What Bruce Ohr Told the FBI The Justice Department official’s testimony raises new doubts about the bureau’s honesty. By Kimberley A. Strassel

By on January 18th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-bruce-ohr-told-the-fbi-11547770923?cx_testId=16&cx_testVariant=cx&cx_artPos=0&cx_tag=pop&cx_navSource=newsReel#cxrecs_s

Everybody knew. Everybody of consequence at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Justice Department understood fully in the middle of 2016—as the FBI embarked on its counterintelligence probe of Donald Trump—that it was doing so based on disinformation provided by Hillary Clinton’s campaign. That’s the big revelation from the transcript of the testimony Justice Department official Bruce Ohr gave Congress in August. The transcripts haven’t been released, but parts were confirmed for me by congressional sources.

Mr. Ohr testified that he sat down with dossier author Christopher Steele on July 30, 2016, and received salacious information the opposition researcher had compiled on Mr. Trump. Mr. Ohr immediately took that to the FBI’s then-Deputy Director Andy McCabe and lawyer Lisa Page. In August he took it to Peter Strzok, the bureau’s lead investigator. In the same month, Mr. Ohr believes, he briefed senior personnel in the Justice Department’s criminal division: Deputy Assistant Attorney General Bruce Swartz, lawyer Zainab Ahmad and fraud unit head Andrew Weissman. The last two now work for special counsel Robert Mueller.

More important, Mr. Ohr told this team the information came from the Clinton camp and warned that it was likely biased, certainly unproven. “When I provided [the Steele information] to the FBI, I tried to be clear that this is source information,” he testified. “I don’t know how reliable it is. You’re going to have to check it out and be aware. These guys were hired by somebody relating to—who’s related to the Clinton campaign, and be aware.”

He said he told them that Mr. Steele was “desperate that Donald Trump not get elected,” and that his own wife, Nellie Ohr, worked for Fusion GPS, which compiled the dossier. He confirmed sounding all these warnings before the FBI filed its October application for a surveillance warrant against Carter Page. We broke some of this in August, though the transcript provides new detail.

The FBI and Justice Department have gone to extraordinary lengths to muddy these details, with cover from Democrats and friendly journalists. A January 2017 memo from Adam Schiff, the House Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat, flatly (and incorrectly) insisted “the FBI’s closely-held investigative team only received Steele’s reporting in mid-September.” A May 2018 New York Times report repeated that claim, saying Mr. Steele’s reports didn’t reach the “Crossfire Hurricane team,” which ran the counterintelligence investigation, until “mid-September.” CONTINUE AT SITE

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HISTORY Comments turned off

How Hinduism Has Persisted for 4,000 Years With no compulsory dogmas, the religion can reinvent itself over and over. By Shashi Tharoor

By on January 18th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-hinduism-has-persisted-for-4-000-years-11547770953

The word “Hindu” denotes more than a set of theological beliefs. In many languages, French and Persian among them, the word for Indian is Hindu. Originally foreigners used it when referring to the people beyond the Indus River, which is now in Islamic Pakistan. In fact, the word Hindu did not exist in any Indian language until its use by outsiders gave Indians a term for self-definition. Many Hindus, in other words, call themselves by a label that they didn’t invent but adopted cheerfully.

“Hinduism,” then, is the name that foreigners first applied to what they saw as the indigenous religion of India. It embraces an eclectic range of doctrines and practices—from pantheism to agnosticism, from faith in reincarnation to belief in the caste system. Yet none of these constitutes an obligatory credo for a Hindu. We have no compulsory dogmas.

The religion is predicated on the idea that the eternal wisdom of the ages and of divinity cannot be confined to a single sacred book. While others might look to the heavens to find God, the Hindu looks within himself. There is no Hindu pope, no Hindu Vatican, no Hindu catechism, not even a Hindu Sunday. Hinduism does not oblige the adherent to demonstrate his faith by any visible sign. Instead Hinduism offers a smorgasbord of options to the worshiper: of divinities to adore and to pray to, of rituals to observe, of customs and practices to honor, of fasts to keep. Hinduism allows believers to stretch their imaginations to personal notions of the creative Godhead.

The Hindu texts operate from a platform of skepticism, not a springboard of certitude. The 3,500-year-old Rig Veda—in its creation hymn, “Nasadiya Sukta”—wonders about the mysteries of creation. It concludes, “In the highest heaven, only He knows—or perhaps He does not know.” Not even what one might think of as the most basic tenet of any religion, a belief in the existence of God, is a prerequisite: Agnosticism is a key principle of at least one major school of Hindu philosophy.

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Congress Earns ‘Nero Award’ for Fiddling While America is Invaded Why Democrats’ actions are especially egregious. Michael Cutler

By on January 18th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272576/congress-earns-nero-award-fiddling-while-america-michael-cutler

President Trump has decided to not sign off on the federal budget until it includes money for a physical barrier to finally secure the dangerous and highly porous U.S./Mexican border from the un-inspected entry of aliens and cargo.

That tough decision has been a long time coming.

With no budget, nonessential sections of the government have been shut down and some federal employees deemed “essential” are working without pay.

As a former federal employee I can certainly empathize with those federal employees. I recall working without pay when prior partial government shutdowns occurred.

Many pundits and “political analysts” have said that the administration should compromise. As things now stand, there is nothing to compromise about. Any “compromise” with Pelosi and company would only compromise national security. That “compromise” has been ongoing for decades and we have all too many dead bodies that prove how dangerous open borders are.

The media is focused on how many days federal employees have gone without pay, but no one is keeping track of how many years our borders have failed to prevent the entry of narcotics, weapons, criminals, terrorists and foreign workers who displace hard-working Americans and drive down the wages of those who are fortunate to keep their jobs.

The mainstream media has reported, as part of coverage about the impact of the partial government shutdown, that some TSA employees have failed to report for duty, thereby causing delays at airports as long lines of travelers wait to be screened by the diminished workforce.

Certainly there is not much that can be done when TSA personnel don’t show up for work. After all, no one would want to board an airliner unless all passengers and their luggage are carefully screened.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

A War to Achieve Modernity by Alia Al Ganis

By on January 18th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13571/modernity

I longed for a revival of a golden age when Muslims were mighty and triumphant, ruling large parts of the world, fighting victoriously in the name of God. I gloried in this past. Reviving medievalism, these fantasies were a way to escape modern life. I dreamed of a past and future glory, like many in their dogmatic slumber. I was entrapped in the golden cage of Islamism. I was a bird of paradise that did not want to escape.

There is an increased fear, and rightly so, about the free expression of extremist ideas and opinions that are polluting our social, cultural, economic and political orders in the Arab world, which is why Jamal Khashoggi stands as an enemy to free thinkers. “There can be no political reform and democracy in any Arab country without accepting that political Islam is a part of it,” he wrote.

Saudi Arabia’s Prince Mohammad Bin Salman is in the throes of a war to achieve modernity. We want our independence from religious extremism, the ills of our society; and “MBS,” as he is called, is leading the reform in order to fight it and move his country away from its temptations. He needs to go ahead with his reform and do his good works. Because Khashoggi wanted an uprising against the Saudi royal family, the Prince was facing the fears and possibly the threats of being assassinated by those opposing his reforms.

The assassination of Khashoggi was a horrible mistake. There is a way of curbing religious extremists without violence. We must address the political aspects in the Quran that are at times interpreted with hate, instead of our always turning a blind eye to these verses. This study alone would stop religious extremists from having the means of justifying their crimes.

This article is not for the faint-hearted. I do not share a single sentiment with a single religious extremist, Jamal Khashoggi included. My heart is closed to them.

As a Muslim woman, my anger against them became especially determined when three of my relatives in Yemen, young brave, men, had left their homes and families to protect them. They joined the Saudi-backed Yemeni military to fight against Iranian imperialism, to fight for Yemeni independence, to fight for love and freedom. One was killed by a bullet; the other two on sand dunes when they stepped on landmines. Their bodies were so dismembered by explosions that it was difficult to identify them. Their families had to flee their homes; one woman, also terrified of stepping on a landmine, carrying a newborn baby in her arms.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Islamic Activist Advocates Using Public Schools to Convert Americans to Islam “We want to turn them into Muslim individuals.” Sara Dogan

By on January 18th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272591/islamic-activist-advocates-using-public-schools-sara-dogan

In a video clip that has recently gone viral, Islamic activist Sharifa Alkhateeb talks extensively about using U.S. public schools to proselytize Islam and convert America to an Islamic nation.

“We are in the process of developing Islamic education for our children. And yes, all of us have the hope and dream…of creating not only Islamic schools that cooperate with each other but Islamic schools systems that would span the country, that’s what our further objective is,” Alkhateeb explains. “So as we approach the public school system, we have to approach it with that credo, that we see ourselves as worshipping Allah in being involved with them in any way.”

“If we are Islamic individuals and we come to our relationship and our connection with the public school system as Islamic individuals then we will not be part of the great, what they call, American melting pot,” she asserts. “We do not want to melt into American society and disappear. We want to go into American society with Islamic ideals and revamp their thinking. We want to revamp them. We want to turn them into Muslim individuals.”

The recording is in fact not new, but was made during the “Muslim Americans Political Awareness Conference” in 1989. Alkahateeb, now deceased, was the managing editor of the International Institute for Islamic Thought’s American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences. She was a prominent member of the Muslim Students Association, an organization tied to the Muslim Brotherhood, and also served as president of the Hamas-linked North American Council for Muslim Women. She was also employed as a diversity consultant with the Fairfax County Public Schools in Fairfax, Virginia.

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The Blue, the Black and UC Davis Student commission disses murdered police officer Natalie Corona. Lloyd Billingsley

By on January 18th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272600/blue-black-and-uc-davis-lloyd-billingsley

Convicted criminal Kevin Limbaugh, 48, known for violence toward co-workers, thought the Davis, California, police department was attacking him with “ultrasonic waves.” On Thursday January 10, the unhinged criminal gunned down Davis police officer Natalie Corona, 22, a rising star in the Davis police department. The community hailed Corona as a hero who had dedicated herself to law enforcement and paid the ultimate price. The Ethnic and Cultural Affairs Commission (ECAC) at UC Davis didn’t see it that way.

A photo of Corona, clad in an elegant blue dress and holding the “thin blue line” flag, went viral on social media. The Commission’s Facebook post, now deleted, said, “this flag represents an attempt by law enforcement to undermine the Black Lives Matter movement.” And Blue Lives Matter was “an effort to evade accountability and critical awareness of police treatment of communities of color.”

The Commission’s post drew criticism from UC Davis student body president Michael Gofman, the economics and political science major who last year drew attention to anti-Semitic fliers on campus. Students for Justice in Palestine opposed a campus seminar on anti-Semitism to be held by the Anti-Defamation League.

Last year, Gofman also opposed a mandate to remove the American flag from meetings of the school senate. After the flag flap over Natalie Corona, Gofman said in a post, “I am ashamed that some of these same people, protected by the very officers that they are condemning, have the audacity to politicize the loss of a young officer. Her only crime was being a police officer.” Gofman urged the Ethnic and Cultural Affairs to take down their “disgusting post,” and issue an apology.

The Ethnic and Cultural Affairs Commission is “responsible for investigating and recommending policies and programs concerning under-represented communities at UC Davis.” The student group’s goal is “to represent historically marginalized groups who face barriers in terms of institutionalized, internalized, and systemic oppression. We are here to propose legislation and support events that honor different ethnic, racial, and cultural backgrounds.” And the Commission seeks to “empower cross-cultural interaction in order to represent and bring awareness within our communities, student body, and the University of California, Davis.”

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Arbor Day (Tu Bishvat) Guide for the Perplexed, 2019

By on January 18th, 2019

1. The Jewish Arbor Day, Tu Bishvat (ט”ו בשבט) highlights human gratitude for the creation of the fruit-bearing trees. Jewish tradition stipulates a one-sentence-blessing before consuming any fruit.

2. The centrality of trees is reflected by the date of Tu Bishvat, which is during the week when Jews commemorate the receipt of the Torah (the Five Books of Moses), including the Ten Commandments (Exodus chapters 13-17).

3. Tu Bishvat (the 15th day of the month of Shvat – full moon, just like the holidays of Passover, Tabernacles, Purim) is one of the four Jewish New Years:

*The first day of the Jewish month of Nissan – the month of Passover, the Exodus from Egypt and the birth of the Jewish people.

*The first day of the Jewish month of Elul – the tithing of cattle during the days of the ancient Temple.

*The first day of the Jewish month of Tishrei – Rosh Hashanah.

*Tu Bishvat, the 15th day of the Jewish month of Shvat (January 21, 2019), whose zodiac is Aquarius (water bucket in Hebrew, דלי), is the New Year of the trees, highlighting the rejuvenation of trees. The cold, rainy season is winding down, sap starts to rise and fruit begins to ripen. Israel’s Legislature (the Knesset) was established on Tu Bishvat 1949.

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I’m A Senior Trump Official, And I Hope A Long Shutdown Smokes Out The Resistance

By on January 17th, 2019

https://dailycaller.com/2019/01/14/smoke-out-resistance

The Daily Caller is taking the rare step of publishing this anonymous op-ed at the request of the author, a senior official in the Trump administration whose identity is known to us and whose career would be jeopardized by its disclosure. We believe publishing this essay anonymously is the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers. We invite you to submit a question about the essay or our vetting process here.

As one of the senior officials working without a paycheck, a few words of advice for the president’s next move at shuttered government agencies: lock the doors, sell the furniture, and cut them down.

Federal employees are starting to feel the strain of the shutdown. I am one of them. But for the sake of our nation, I hope it lasts a very long time, till the government is changed and can never return to its previous form.

The lapse in appropriations is more than a battle over a wall. It is an opportunity to strip wasteful government agencies for good.

On an average day, roughly 15 percent of the employees around me are exceptional patriots serving their country. I wish I could give competitive salaries to them and no one else. But 80 percent feel no pressure to produce results. If they don’t feel like doing what they are told, they don’t.

Why would they? We can’t fire them. They avoid attention, plan their weekend, schedule vacation, their second job, their next position — some do this in the same position for more than a decade.

They do nothing that warrants punishment and nothing of external value. That is their workday: errands for the sake of errands — administering, refining, following and collaborating on process. “Process is your friend” is what delusional civil servants tell themselves. Even senior officials must gain approval from every rank across their department, other agencies and work units for basic administrative chores.

Process is what we serve, process keeps us safe, process is our core value. It takes a lot of people to maintain the process. Process provides jobs. In fact, there are process experts and certified process managers who protect the process. Then there are the 5 percent with moxie (career managers). At any given time they can change, clarify or add to the process — even to distort or block policy counsel for the president.

Saboteurs peddling opinion as research, tasking their staff on pet projects or pitching wasteful grants to their friends. Most of my career colleagues actively work against the president’s agenda. This means I typically spend about 15 percent of my time on the president’s agenda and 85 percent of my time trying to stop sabotage, and we have no power to get rid of them. Until the shutdown.

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