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April 2019

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Malawi albinos kidnapped and sacrificed by witchdoctor gangs on the hunt for election charms

By on April 6th, 2019

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/04/06/malawi-albinos-kidnapped-sacrificed-witchdoctor-gangs-hunt-election/

“Crude superstitious beliefs, even if only upheld by a minority, are widespread in Africa, with albino attacks reported in 28 countries across the continent.”

It was a real-life Sophie’s choice: With the albino-hunting gang advancing through her house, Misa Maulidi had seconds to decide which of her children to save and which to abandon to the men who wanted to sacrifice them both.

She had always feared this would happen, particularly with Malawi’s general election looming and politicians reportedly in the market for albino body parts to use in the witchcraft rituals meant to help them win their seats.

It was why she and her extended family had chosen to live in a remote homestead deep in the tobacco plantations of central Malawi, miles from Dedza, the nearest town.

Here, secluded from the outside world but with security in numbers, she hoped she could safely raise Goodson, her 14-year-old son, and his three-year-old sister Faith, both born with albinism, a genetic condition that bleaches the skin, hair and eyes white.

But then, a little before midnight on Feb 12, five machete-wielding men smashed down the door of her hut. Mrs Maulidi, who is black, realised immediately what they wanted, but knew she couldn’t save both her children.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Socialism’s Endless Refrain: This Time, Things Will Be Different written by Kristian Niemietz

By on April 6th, 2019

https://quillette.com/2019/03/30/socialisms-endless-refrain-

Germany’s socialist left is currently embroiled in a row over the correct stance on Venezuela. The conflict came to the fore at the February conference of Die Linke, the country’s main socialist party, when a group of Nicolás Maduro fans stormed the stage, chanting slogans and waving banners with pro-Venezuela messages.

Nicolás Maduro is the successor to Hugo Chávez, and has served as Venezuelan President since 2013. The legitimacy of his presidency has been in free fall in recent years, and many now call him a dictator. As Maduro’s popularity has waned, his tactics have become increasingly brutal. In 2018, a panel of legal experts convened by the Organization of American States recommended that the regime be referred to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.

Many members of the Die Linke party establishment, however, still side with Maduro, whom they see as a comrade under siege. Others, especially in the party’s youth organisation, take the opposite view—which is why the February conference was contentious. One young member describes the party’s in-house Chavistas as “die-hard reactionaries, who have an antiquated understanding of socialism.”

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Gillibrand, Booker, Buttigieg Defend MS-13 By Jim Treacher

By on April 6th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/trending/gillibrand-booker-buttigieg-defend-ms-13/

There are plenty of valid criticisms of Donald Trump. There are plenty of honest, good-faith arguments against his policies. But that’s not good enough for our moral, ethical, and intellectual betters on the left. They hate him so much that they need to just make $#!+ up.

The following video from May 2018 is now making the rounds again:

.@realDonaldTrump on people asking for asylum “These aren’t people. These are animals.” pic.twitter.com/pTKY08Obm2

— Mark Elliott (@markmobility) April 5, 2019

Trump was talking about MS-13. The gang whose motto is “Kill, rape, control.” He was calling them animals. Having since educated myself on MS-13’s horrendous, repulsive crimes, I agree with him. If anything, the comparison is an insult to actual animals.

We went through this whole thing last year. The left thoroughly embarrassed themselves by claiming he was referring to all immigrants, not just the criminals who murder and rape.

But it’s been an entire 11 months, so why not tell the same lie all over again?

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Hijacked in Hong Kong Now Beijing wants to extradite dissenters for trial in China.

By on April 6th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/hijacked-in-hong-kong-11554506196

A sad fact is that bad behavior that would be condemned in any other part of the world is ignored in China because the large Chinese market makes people think twice before speaking the obvious. So kudos to the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong and their business allies for speaking up against a proposal to let the territory start extraditing people China wants to put on trial.

Last month AmCham noted the proposal threatens Hong Kong’s reputation as a “secure haven for international business.” No extradition arrangement exists because no one in his right mind trusts the Chinese justice system, and with good reason. In 2015 five Hong Kong men associated with a local shop that carried books critical of high-ranking Communist leaders went missing, only to resurface in China—where they then appeared on state TV making “confessions.” At least one, Gui Minhai, remains under detention in China.

The extradition demand clearly violates China’s promise of autonomy for Hong Kong for 50 years through 2047. Though the Hong Kong government has slightly modified its proposals by narrowing the crimes for which someone could be extradited, it is still bending to the mainland. AmCham says it still has “serious concerns,” and so do many others. Despite the many expressions of concern, the government introduced the bill Wednesday

This past weekend thousands of Hong Kong people turned out for a march against the extradition proposal. They know that next on Beijing’s list is a national security law on treason, sedition, secession and subversion that would likely gut speech rights in Hong Kong.

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HISTORY Comments turned off

The Forgotten Americans Who Died Fighting Communism By John J. Miller

By on April 6th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2019/04/22/the-forgotten-americans-who-died-fighting-communism/

Remember the Polar Bears

Troy, Mich. — At sunrise, following a sleepless night of trudging through the cold swamps of northern Russia, a couple of men from Detroit made breakfast. Corporal Morris Foley and Private Bill Henkelman brewed tea and opened a can of corned beef. As Foley prepared to finish the last of the beef, Henkelman spoke up: “Let’s save enough for after while.” Foley refused. “There might not be no after while.”

It turned out there wasn’t, at least not for Foley. Later that morning — on September 20, 1918, by the village of Seltso on the Dvina River — his company formed a skirmish line and charged a nest of Russian machine gunners. Bullets ripped through Foley’s face and neck. “Foley had his jaw shot off,” reported a sergeant. Somehow, the young man survived his brutal injury long enough to join a retreat. He died near his original position and was buried close to where he had scarfed down his beef.

Today, Foley’s recovered remains rest in Troy, Mich., in the 200-acre White Chapel Memorial Park Cemetery, alongside the graves of 55 other American soldiers who died fighting Communists in the frozen wilds of northern Russia in 1918 and 1919. They’re marked by one of the most striking sculptures to be seen anywhere, let alone at a cemetery: a snarling polar bear, carved in white marble by the artist Leon Hermant. It’s a tribute to what some U.S. soldiers took to calling themselves a century ago: the “Polar Bears.” They were the first and only Americans to fight a shooting war against Russian Communists.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Worst 50 U.S. Junior Colleges 

By on April 6th, 2019

https://www.openthebooks.com/

Last year, the Department of Education doled out nearly $925 million to the 50 worst performing community and junior colleges in the nation.

Among these under-performing schools, the 10 top funding recipients have an average graduation rate of 12 percent.

That’s right.

Just one out of every 8 students at these community and junior colleges actually graduate.

It’s clear these schools have internal issues that no amount of federal funding can fix.

It’s time to stop this dangerous cycle and demand greater levels of fiscal responsibility and transparency.

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P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

The ‘Trans’ Child as Experimental Guinea Pig By Madeleine Kearns

By on April 6th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2019/04/22/the-trans-child-as-experimental-guinea-pig/

Standards of evidence have been discarded, and children are being altered for life
Last year Jeanette Jennings, as part of the reality-TV show I Am Jazz, threw her 17-year-old child, Jazz, a “farewell-to-penis party.” Guests cheered as the teenager hacked at a phallus-shaped cake with a knife, shouting, “Let’s cut it off.” The party may have been a bit contrived even by reality-show standards, but the subsequent operation was all too real.

In any other context, we might consider the drug-induced stunting of a child’s penis, followed by its surgical removal, to be mutilation. But in an era of culturally and legally enshrined transgenderism, it’s not just permissible; it’s entertainment.

In February, Representatives Jackie Speier (D., Calif.) and Angie Craig (D., Minn.) participated in the “Jazz and Friends National Day of Community and School Readings,” sponsored by the Human Rights Campaign (a well-funded gay and transgender lobby group) and the National Education Association (a teachers’ union). They read aloud celebratory and euphemistic stories of transgender children (such as Jazz, with the amputated penis) on the House floor. But the mainstreaming of youth transgenderism goes way beyond Congress. In schools nationwide, children as young as five are being taught that they may have been born in the wrong body.

Transgenderism is the theory that each person has an innate gender identity that is distinct from that person’s sex. Theories about gender identity were pioneered by sexologists and academics in the mid 20th century, and they remain widely contested and poorly understood. Despite this, they are being applied in a radical and experimental way to children worldwide. Parents and professionals agonize over the fear that young people will suffer physical and psychological harm from the application of transgender theory, but all too often they are cowed into submission.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Can’t Any Democrat Here Play This Game? By Matthew Continetti

By on April 6th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/democratic-presidential-candidates-unimpressive/

The 2020 field continues to un-impress.

Time to check on the 20 Smurfs.

Joe Biden recorded a message on a friend’s iPhone in which he admitted that he’s made women and “some men” uncomfortable by, among other things, touching them, rubbing their shoulders, and smelling their hair. It’s his way of making a “connection,” Biden explained, as though he were a domestic animal introducing himself to another pet. Men, women, “young, old,” he’s touched them all. Handshakes and small talk aren’t enough for Joe. He’s “tactile.”

Biden pledged to be “mindful” of personal space because “social norms” have changed since he was born in the late Cretaceous period. He still hasn’t announced his presidential run, but has signaled to allies that his prospective candidacy is “full steam” ahead — in which direction, and toward what destination, no one can say. It already resembles one of those Amtrak trains Biden admires so much: rickety, noisy, a relic transiting badlands.

Biden’s old boss, Barack Obama, has maintained a studied silence throughout the controversy over his vice president’s creepiness. So has Michelle. The Obama team appears to be more intrigued by Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke, who launched his campaign at a rally in El Paso, Texas, last weekend. Andrew Stiles of the Washington Free Beacon wrote about it here. The AP had to correct its story on the speech, which said, “Mr. O’Rourke also spoke at length in his native Spanish.” Dios mio.

Beto is as lily-white as Elizabeth Warren, whose finance director is leaving because of a disagreement over money. The director would like to raise some. Warren’s not so sure. She pledged not to accept donations from millionaires and billionaires, holding out for small-dollar contributions from folks like you and me. The problem: Folks like you and me don’t want anything to do with Warren.

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The Folly of the Mueller Investigation By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on April 6th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2019/04/22/the-folly-of-the-mueller-investigation/

A hysteria without a cause; a report without a point

The pointlessness of it all. That is the major takeaway from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s much-anticipated final report on the Trump/Russia probe.

After an exhaustive 22-month investigation, Mueller found that there was no criminal collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. This was already manifest to anyone who had closely followed the investigation — anyone, that is, who had taken note that no predicate crime was specified when Mueller was appointed (the special-counsel regulations require one), or anyone who had read the indictments Mueller filed, which demonstrated that Russia’s operations predated Trump’s entry into the 2016 campaign, that some of them were actually anti-Trump in nature, and that Russia (which is notoriously adept at espionage) neither needed nor sought American collaborators. “There is no allegation,” observed Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in announcing charges against Russian operatives brought by the special counsel he had appointed, “that any American was a knowing participant in this illegal activity.” Never was such an allegation even hinted at against the president, nor against any of his associates, a handful of whom were charged either with crimes that had nothing to do with the 2016 campaign or with process crimes (mostly lying to investigators) that were not committed until after the campaign was over.

Mueller was even arguably needed to answer only one question: Did President Trump obstruct justice? On that, Mueller abdicated, refusing to render a prosecutorial judgment. This dereliction of duty in his final act further elucidated that there was neither a legal basis nor a practical need for the appointment of a special counsel.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Hungarian resistance The European Union’s quarrel over immigration intensifies.Clifford D. May

By on April 6th, 2019

https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/the-hungarian-resistance/

Most people want to survive. What could be more natural than that? Most peoples want to survive, too. That’s no less natural.

For a thousand years, the lands inhabited by the Hungarian people have been invaded, their settlements sacked, men, women and children enslaved and slaughtered. Mongols, Ottomans, Nazis and Soviets were among those who conquered and ruled the Hungarians. Somehow, they’ve survived.

Hungarians today, a clear majority, believe their national existence – their unique identity, language, culture and traditions – is threatened again. This time, however, it is not by nomads on horseback or soldiers in tanks. It is by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the European Union.

In 2015, Merkel decided, on her own initiative, to establish an open-door policy for “migrants” from the broader Middle East and Africa. Since then, she and other EU leaders have been pressuring Hungary to accept its “fair share.”

All members of the EU have a “duty to make legal migration possible to help countries that are in trouble,” she has insisted. Hungary should demonstrate “solidarity” by agreeing to participate in a “fair system of distribution” of those who have arrived – more than a million in 2015, several hundred thousand since – as well as those who will arrive over the years ahead.

Here in Budapest just over a week ago, a conference was convened by the Mathias Corvinus Collegium, Hungary’s largest multidisciplinary college. Its title: “Migration: The Biggest Challenge of Our Time?”

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