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May 2019

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Google’s Attack on the Claremont Institute Must Not Stand By Stanley Kurtz

By on May 6th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/googles-attack-on-the-claremont-institute-must-not-stand/

Ryan P. Williams of the Claremont Institute has a horror story to share about his experiences with Google:

We wanted to advertise our 40th Anniversary Gala on May 11, at which we’re honoring Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, to readers of our own online publication, The American Mind. But Google refuses to allow us to do so. . . .

Google, either its algorithm or some individual, had a look at my essay launching our new campaign for a unifying Americanism, “Defend America—Defeat Multiculturalism.” They decided it to be in violation of their policy on “race and ethnicity in personalized advertising” and shut down our advertising efforts to American Mind readers. We weren’t “advertising” anything in the essay, of course, but the relevant section of their policy lists “racially or ethnically oriented publications, racially or ethnically oriented universities, racial or ethnic dating” as examples of violations.

Somebody must have determined we were offering “racially or ethnically oriented publications.” This is news to us. The Claremont Institute has spent forty years teaching all who are willing to listen that the meaning of the proposition that all human beings are created equal is the central, animating principle of American political life.

One of my colleagues spent two hours on the phone with Google to determine whether we could appeal this ruling or determine which section of the essay was in violation. The response, in short? There is no appeal; we recommend you remove the content to bring yourself into compliance.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Law of War Permits Israel to Destroy Hamas By David French ****

By on May 6th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/the-law-of-war-permits-israel-to-destroy-hamas/

The double standards imposed on the IDF are yet another symptom of international anti-Semitism.

As of this moment, a fragile truce holds in southern Israel. After Hamas volleyed 600 missiles at Israeli civilian targets on Saturday and Sunday, prompting Israel to attack hundreds of targets in Gaza, the air-raid sirens have fallen silent, for now.

But over the weekend, when the rockets fell, we saw all the old arguments against Israel’s acts of self-defense crop up. The air raids were “disproportionate,” we were told. There were arguments over individual civilian casualties, as if it would somehow discredit Israel if its precision strikes killed more than a handful of noncombatants. Yes, there were rote condemnations of Hamas’s efforts to kill as many civilians as it could, but once again all too many voices on the left rose at once, demanding that the nation under attack — the nation defending its schools, hospitals, and homes from an indiscriminate rocket barrage — exercise restraint.

It’s important, however, to be very clear about Israel’s legal obligations. When it comes to Hamas, “restraint” is Israel’s choice — one it may make for tactical and strategic reasons of its own. The actual law of war would allow Israel to invade Gaza, utterly destroy Hamas, and occupy Gaza City until Israel’s safety is ensured, even if it burned in the fight.

Let’s break this down as simply as possible. First, firing 600 rockets at civilian targets in a neighboring country is an act of war. It’s an attack by an army against a nation-state, and as such it grants the nation-state the authority under the international law of armed conflict not just to disable the specific military assets used to carry it out but to destroy those who carried it out.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

“Capitalism – Mobility, not Equality” Sydney Williams

By on May 6th, 2019

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/

“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of misery Winston Churchill (1874-1965) In Parliament 1948

Capitalism is under attack. Democrats are fearful that their comfortable Washington lives may become subject to an investigation now that the Mueller investigation expired without a crime. The best defense, it is said, is a good offense, and that is the strategy being pursued by Democrats. One such attack is a renewed focus on income and wealth disparities – the “inherent vice” of capitalism, as Churchill noted. Doing so justifies their predilection for income redistribution. Inequality has become falsely synonymous with capitalism. Even some on the right have become fearful of defending capitalism. No one denies that income and wealth gaps exist. But, are today’s unusual? Most important, do they interfere with social and economic mobility?

While our two fundamental documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution say we are created equal and are provided equality under the law, neither says anything about equality of outcomes. The French, though, did in 1789, and they got a reign of terror, the dictatorship of Napoleon and a restoration of the Bourbons, before, eventually, falling into democracy. The Russian Revolution was supposed to bring equality, but it brought one of the harshest governments to which man has ever been subjected, and the Country remains unfree, with inequality higher than in western democracies. Inequality is the natural state of man.

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The FBI’s Trump-Russia Investigation Was Formally Opened on False Pretenses By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on May 6th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/fbi-trump-russia-investigation-george-papadopoulos/

The State Department and an Australian diplomat grossly exaggerated Papadopoulos’s claims — which were probably false anyway.

Chicanery was the force behind the formal opening of the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation. There was a false premise, namely: The Trump campaign must have known that Russia possessed emails related to Hillary Clinton. From there, through either intentional deception or incompetence, the foreign ministries of Australia and the United States erected a fraudulent story tying the Trump campaign’s purported knowledge to the publication of hacked Democratic National Committee emails.

That is what we learn from the saga of George Papadopoulos, as fleshed out by the Mueller report.

The investigative theory on which the FBI formally opened the foreign-counterintelligence probe code-named “Crossfire Hurricane” on July 31, 2016, held that the Trump campaign knew about, and was potentially complicit in, Russia’s possession of hacked emails that would compromise Hillary Clinton; and that, in order to help Donald Trump, the Kremlin planned to disseminate these emails anonymously (through a third party) at a time maximally damaging to Clinton’s campaign.

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P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

The Humanitarian Hoax of Political Correctness: Killing America With Kindness – hoax 29 by Linda Goudsmit

By on May 6th, 2019

http://goudsmit.pundicity.com/22649/the-humanitarian-hoax-of-political-correctness

The Humanitarian Hoax is a deliberate and deceitful tactic of presenting a destructive policy as altruistic. The humanitarian huckster presents himself as a compassionate advocate when in fact he is the disguised enemy. Political correctness is a humanitarian hoax. It is a deceitful end-run around the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech. This is how it works.

The freedoms guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution award citizens the right to disagree without fear of reprisal. American civil society is predicated upon the freedom to express disagreement, and is diametrically opposed to the politically correct demand for avoidance of language that might be offensive and hurt someone’s feelings.

The freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution do not care about anyone’s feelings – political correctness does. Political correctness is a severe prohibition on free speech disguised as courtesy.

Political correctness (PC) is marketed by its devotees as progressive, compassionate, sensitive, and caring. It is defined as the avoidance of language or actions that are seen as excluding, marginalizing, or insulting to groups of people who are seen as disadvantaged or discriminated against, especially groups defined by sex or race. Political correctness has been embraced by leftist liberals with religious fervor in America. The problem of course is deciding WHO will determine what is and what is not insulting.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

My Say: An Academic Umbrella for Bigots By Ruth King

By on May 6th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/05/an_academic_umbrella_for_bigots_.html

There is a lot of justifiable hand wringing over the Israel bashing and overt anti-Semitism in American academia. The bias is correctly blamed on the leftist “progressives” who buy into the libels promoted by Moslem/Arab students and their campus affiliated organizations. It is no secret that Saudi Arabia has poured a huge sum of dollars both from government and private donors into American colleges to promote whitewashed Islamic studies and influence opinions on the Middle East. However, there is another culprit, namely the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) which feeds faculty to universities and colleges throughout the nation.

MESA promotes itself as: “…a private, nonprofit learned society that brings together scholars, educators and those interested in the study of the region from all over the world.”

Most of the “scholars” shamelessly upend Middle East history as follows:

The “learned society” soon sees to it that students who still bear an attachment to Israel “unlearn” Jewish historic religious ties to Palestine, the Balfour Declaration and the betrayal that deeded eighty percent of Mandate Palestine to the Hashemites with absolutely no historic ties to Palestine.

Instead, the narrative taught is that Israel is a colonialist state, which dispossessed an indigenous Arab population with Jewish Holocaust survivors, and now tramples on all Arab fundamental human rights. Furthermore, it follows that Israel’s “occupation” is the root cause of terrorism and instability in the region…..please continue at site

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EDUCATION, MEDIA Comments turned off

The Brainwashing of a Nation From campus identity politics cults to the media, brainwashing is bigger than ever. Daniel Greenfield

By on May 6th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273635/brainwashing-nation-daniel-greenfield

Brainwashing isn’t a secretive event that takes place in hidden rooms. No hypnotists or vials full of chemicals are required. It takes place every day on a massive scale across the United States.

Unlike Raymond Shaw in The Manchurian Candidate, brainwashing does not turn people into hypnotized zombies who would be ready to kill a presidential candidate at a command. Instead, it transforms them into the sort of people who would be willing to kill someone for political reasons.

The distinction is why so few people understand the sources of political radicalism and violence.

Brainwashing isn’t magic, but it can look like magic. The sleight of hand that causes us to think so is our firm belief in our reason and free will. It’s easier to believe in changing minds through hypnotism and drugs, than to understand, what the successful practitioners of brainwashing do, that the human mind is more malleable than we like to think, and that the subconscious is more powerful than the conscious.

The art and science of brainwashing is well known. We don’t know it because we choose not to.

Brainwashing happens every day. It doesn’t have to mean a complete transformation of identity. On the simplest level, it means compelling someone to believe something that isn’t true.

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The Increasingly Narrow, Parochial Prism of Journalism by Douglas Murray

By on May 6th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14176/narrow-parochial-journalism

What is strangest — and most defamatory — is to call people “far-right”, or insinuate that they are linked to the far-right because they are saddened by the fire at Notre Dame.

For those who know the journalism business… the degradation exemplified by Tharoor, Taylor and Noack is no surprise. It is the consequence of a shrinking industry with shrinking budgets which cannot afford foreign reporters and finds itself instead paying low-grade hacks to sit in America and write about people in Europe who are tweeting about a massacre in Sri Lanka.

Apart from demonstrating quite a remarkable freedom with facts and ignorance of libel laws, these “journalists” also do something else. They see the world, and the terrible actions of some terrible people in it, only through their own narrow and deeply parochial vision.

Last month, immediately after fire had almost destroyed the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, the Washington Post ran a piece with the headline, “The Notre Dame fire ignites the West’s far-right.” The author, Ishaan Tharoor, used his piece to expand on that untimely and inaccurate claim. He wrote:

“A strange — though not altogether surprising — thing happened in the shadow of Monday’s tragedy. As many around the world watched an iconic cathedral in Paris go up in flames, others immediately set about trying to spark new fires. On both sides of the Atlantic, denizens of the far right took to social media to grind their culture-warring axes, locating in the calamity a parable for the political moment — or, at least, their understanding of it.”

Tharoor then went on to list the various people he wanted to grab at to make this prefabricated argument.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Fright of James Comey By Victor Davis Hanson

By on May 6th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/05/05/the-fright-of-james-comey/

In a recent op-ed, fired FBI Director James Comey was back again preaching to the nation about the dangers of Donald Trump and his capacity to corrupt any top-ranking federal official of lower character than Comey’s own.

Comey seems to have become utterly unhinged by Donald Trump, especially when the president, in his thick Queens accent, scoffs in the vernacular—quite accurately, given the transgressions of the FBI hierarchy—about “crooked cops.” What an affront to Comey’s complexity, his subtlety, his sophistication, his feigned Hamlet-like self-doubt—at least as now expressed in his latest incarnation as Twitter’s Kahlil Gibran.

One can say a number of things about the timing of Comey’s latest sermon and his characteristic projection of his own sins on to others.

First, Comey’s unprofessionalism was home-grown and certainly did not need any help from President Trump. His schizophrenic behavior both as a prosecutor and investigator in the Hillary Clinton email matter was marked by exempting Clinton aides Cheryl Mills and Huma Abedin from indictment, despite their lying to his own federal officials about their knowledge of a private Clinton email server. Comey wrote his summation of the Clinton email investigation before he had even interviewed the former secretary of state. He was hardly independent from a recused Attorney General Loretta Lynch in the Clinton email investigation. As her rubbery courier he bent to her directives on all key decisions that led to de facto exoneration of likely next president Hillary Clinton.

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ISRAEL, MEDIA Comments turned off

MY SAY: THE AIRBRUSHED HEADLINES

By on May 6th, 2019

Some things never change….

If you read or listen to the mainstream media you would be told that a conflict “broke out” between “a militant group” in Gaza and Israel. Just like that sui generis.

Furthermore, more Palestinians were dead because of Israel’s overly harsh response. Then, you will be informed with a quickie narrative of the justifiable rage of the victimized “Palestinians” and at the end it is all the fault of Israel’s “hard-line” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And, as usual the tale will be accompanied by pictures of injured children in Gaza,

Here is a sample headline from CNN yesterday:

“More than 20 reported dead in Gaza, 4 in Israel after hail of rockets and airstrikes”
https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/05/middleeast/israel-airstrikes-gaza-rockets-intl/index.html

Who started by lobbing more than 650 rockets into homes and schools in Israel? Never mind.rsk

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