Displaying posts published in

May 2019

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Afghan War: Hope for Exit, No Hope for Peace by Lawrence A. Franklin

By on May 21st, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14250/afghan-war-peace

President Trump should be lauded for working toward a withdrawal from Afghanistan, where 14,000 U.S. troops still remain. But he should not expect to leave behind a peaceful situation in the failed state, which is made up of a complex web of tribal divisions and hostilities.

Yet another factor militating against national unity is that Pashtun clans appear not to view Afghanistan’s non-Pashtun ethnic minorities as equal partners in a future Afghanistan.

These Persian, Mongol and Turkic peoples, based upon their past armed resistance to Pashtun attempts to control the whole of Afghanistan, will most likely fight to maintain their autonomy. This historical reality alone should be sufficient cause for U.S. policy-makers to abandon the seemingly impossible task of building a unified, democratic, pro-Western Afghanistan.

Sadly, no amount of blood, money or time spent in Afghanistan has been, or possibly will be, able to fashion it into a peaceful, united and democratic country.

In his State of the Union address on February 5, U.S. President Donald Trump said that his administration was “holding constructive talks with a number of Afghan groups, including the Taliban… [in order] to be able to reduce our troop presence and focus on counter-terrorism.”Trump continued, “We do not know whether we will achieve an agreement — but we do know that after two decades of war, the hour has come to at least try for peace.”

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EDUCATION, ISRAEL Comments turned off

How alumni are revolutionizing the Israel debate on campus Alumni can become the missing piece in countering bigotry, bringing years of practical and professional experience to the table. by Avi D. Gordon

By on May 20th, 2019

https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/how-alumni-are-revolutionizing-the-israel-debate-on-campus/

College might be the place where you found your career, met your significant other or forged friendships that would last a lifetime. One way or another, your alma mater likely played a significant role in making you the person you’ve become today.

Now, imagine that your alma mater’s faculty sought to end the school’s study-abroad program with an Israeli university. Suddenly, the institution you felt embodied your values has instead gone down the path of exclusion and discrimination.

That exact scenario played out this semester when the Pitzer College Council voted to suspend the school’s study-abroad exchange with the University of Haifa. If you were a Pitzer alumnus how would you react?

The marginalization of Jewish students and the de-legitimization of Israel on campuses nationwide have alumni searching for answers on how to counter the surge of bigotry at their alma maters. Some of the most recent incidents include anti-Semitic flyers and posters at University of California, Santa Barbara and the University of North Carolina; New York University honoring Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a group with a long history of anti-Semitism; and Jewish students at Emory University waking up to eviction notices on their doors.

This is why Alums for Campus Fairness (ACF) is galvanizing alumni like never before to tackle the unprecedented challenges facing Jewish and Zionist students and faculty. Until now, no organization has harnessed the untapped power of alumni to defend campus communities from discrimination. We are taking alumni off the sidelines, mobilizing them across the country to speak out against anti-Semitism at their alma maters.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel’s Best-Kept Secret: This Food City on the Mediterranean Acre, an ancient seaport in northern Israel, serves up mouthwatering meals with zero fanfare. From dueling hummus shops to bragworthy seafood restaurants, here’s where to dig in By Debra Kamin

By on May 20th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/israels-best-kept-secret-this-food-city-on-the-mediterranean-11557850111

““We don’t have Gucci Shmucci or any of those fashion shops [in Acre]. In fact, you won’t find one fashionable shop in the whole Old City market, because it’s just meant for all the locals who still come here to buy,” he said. “It’s all local food, with none of the plastic fantastic of the major global chains. And this is what makes Acre special.”

IT’S A STRETCH to call Maadali, a postage-stamp-size eatery in the northern Israeli city of Acre, a restaurant. This little stall, tucked inside the city’s Old Turkish Bazaar and featuring a single stovetop and three tightly packed tables, is no bigger than many home kitchens. You won’t find a set menu, or set operating hours, either.

But Adnan Daher, Maadali’s chef and owner, shrugs off the limitations of space and scope. A trip to Maadali is a trip to a mouthwatering one-man show, and Mr. Daher, who also serves as waiter, manager and short-order cook, turns out his own spins on hraime (spicy fish cooked in a simmering pickled mango sauce); fresh calamari with hyssop and tangy homemade yogurt; and roasted eggplant with smoky tahini and harissa.

Producing such big flavors in such a tiny space seems unlikely, but he does it. And in Acre (or Akko in Hebrew and pronounced Ah-koh), a 5,000-year-old port city that serves as the capital of Israel’s fertile Western Galilee, he is just one culinary magician among many.

Some of the best seafood in the Holy Land hides inside this creaking ancient town, where frothy, fish-packed waves beat against original Crusader-built sea walls and a Technicolor market teems with produce and spices. There’s Uri Buri, the now world-famous seafood restaurant beloved by Phil Rosenthal from the Netflix food series “Somebody Feed Phil”; there’s El Marsa, where homegrown chef Alaa Musa combines his Palestinian recipes with techniques he picked up in Sweden’s Michelin-starred kitchens; and there are endless hummus stands, fresh grills and salad bars. All anonymous and humble, they serve enough hyperlocal, slow food to wake up even the most jaded foodies.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Amid the Fog, Trump’s Real Agenda in Iran U.S. president uses economic sanctions to generate unprecedented pressure on Iran, with two apparent goals in mind By Gerald F. Seib

By on May 20th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/amid-the-fog-trumps-real-agenda-in-iran-11558357519?mod=cx_picks&cx_navSource=cx_picks&cx_tag=contextual&cx_artPos=4#cxrecs_s

Whatever other assets and liabilities he brings to the table, President Trump certainly offers this: He is a master at sowing uncertainty, so neither friend nor foe really knows what he’s up to.

And so it is right now with Iran, where Mr. Trump and his aides have in the past two weeks alternately raised and lowered fears about armed conflict. American warships moved toward Iran amid intelligence reports on pending Iranian attacks on U.S. targets in the Middle East.

Then, Mr. Trump lowered the temperature, telling aides he didn’t want a fight and tweeting: “I’m sure that Iran will want to talk soon.”On Sunday, he ramped the heat back up, tweeting: “If Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran.” Then he backed it down again, saying in a Fox News interview: “No, I don’t want to fight.”

It’s confusing, which may be the goal. Yet the underlying question is simple: What is Mr. Trump really trying to accomplish?

Here’s a reasonable guess, based on conversations with officials and diplomats tracking the situation:Mr. Trump almost certainly doesn’t seek armed conflict with Iran. He’s gone out of his way to avoid or end clashes involving American forces in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and North Korea, and has done little to suggest a military move against Venezuela.

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BOOKS, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Rumi Hasan: A review of Identity, Islam, and the Twilight of Liberal Values by Terri Murray

By on May 20th, 2019

https://quillette.com/2019/05/20/identity-islam-and-the-twilight-of-liberal-values-a-review/

After the collapse of the totalitarian Communist regimes in 1989-91, Francis Fukuyama famously wrote in The End of History and the Last Man that “we may have reached the end of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of government.” Terri Murray begins Identity, Islam and the Twilight of Liberal Values by arguing that Fukuyama’s optimism was premature, because the rise of religious fundamentalism—especially radical Islam—has become a powerful bulwark against the spread of liberal democracy. Rather than exposing and opposing the damage done by Islamism in the West, soi disant liberals, leftists, and progressives have acted as its supporters and cheerleaders. Murray instead labels them as “pseudo-liberals” and the “regressive Left” as a result of their abandonment of bedrock liberal principles, and progressive and secular values.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Grievance Proxies The College Board plans to introduce a new “adversity score” as a backdoor to racial quotas in college admissions. Heather Mac Donald

By on May 20th, 2019

https://www.city-journal.org/college-boards-sat-adversity-score

For decades, the College Board defended the SAT, which it writes and administers, against charges that the test gives an unfair advantage to middle-class white students. No longer. Under relentless pressure from the racial-preferences lobby, the Board has now caved to the anti-meritocratic ideology of “diversity.” The Board will calculate for each SAT-taker an “adversity score” that purports to measure a student’s socioeconomic position, according to the Wall Street Journal. Colleges can use this adversity index to boost the admissions ranking of allegedly disadvantaged students who otherwise would score too poorly to be considered for admission.

Advocates of this change claim that it is not about race. That is a fiction. In fact, the SAT adversity score is simply the latest response on the part of mainstream institutions to the seeming intractability of the racial academic-achievement gap. If that gap did not exist, the entire discourse about “diversity” would evaporate overnight. The average white score on the SAT (1,123 out of a possible 1,600) is 177 points higher than the average black score (946), approximately a standard deviation of difference. This gap has persisted for decades. It is not explained by socioeconomic disparities. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education reported in 1998 that white students from households with incomes of $10,000 or less score better on the SAT than black students from households with incomes of $80,000 to $100,000. In 2015, students with family incomes of $20,000 or less (a category that includes all racial groups) scored higher on average on the math SAT than the average math score of black students from all income levels. The University of California has calculated that race predicts SAT scores better than class.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

This Republican Wants To Impeach Trump :Thomas McArdle

By on May 20th, 2019

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/05/20/michigans-amash-lets-the-stupid-be-the-enemy-of-the-good/

In a series of tweets on Saturday, Amash declared that “Contrary to Barr’s portrayal, Mueller’s report reveals that President Trump engaged in specific actions and a pattern of behavior that meet the threshold for impeachment.”

In opining that President Trump has committed impeachable offenses, Amash is all alone among GOP members of Congress, disgracefully echoing the very worst, most socialistic Democrats. And it gets worse, with Amash accusing Attorney General William Barr of lying to protect the President.

It’s ironic in the extreme for someone who fancies himself a purist libertarian, with an absolutist interpretation of First Amendment freedom of speech, to call a distinguished, two-time AG’s considered opinions lies, simply because it suits his purposes to disagree.

So absolutist is Amash on speech that shortly after Trump’s election he couldn’t restrain himself from responding to the President-elect’s tweet condemning flag burning. “Nobody should burn the American flag,” Amash wrote, repeating Trump’s words exactly, then adding: “but our Constitution secures our right to do so. No president is allowed to burn the First Amendment.”

The ratifiers of the Bill of Rights in 1791 would have held open the door of the prison cell as law enforcement incarcerated someone desecrating Old Glory. No doubt Amash would accuse them too of burning what they brought into being.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Australia’s Election Did Not Involve a ‘Populist Wave’ By Douglas Murray

By on May 20th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/australias-election-did-not-involve-a-populist-wave/

The term is merely a way to put scare-quotes around any electoral victory for a conservative.

Regular readers will know that I am not a fan of the term ‘populism’. As I mentioned here in January, over the last three years the term has been turned into one more way to insult the decisions made by the general public in country after country.

In Britain, the “Brexit” vote was derided as a “populist” vote. The U.S. election of 2016 have repeatedly been described as a victory for “populism.” And in Europe, every time anybody on the political right looks set to achieve any electoral success, this is whipped up as being yet another victory for this amorphous, ill-defined but unarguably dark force.
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This has rarely been made clearer than in the New York Times coverage of the results of last week’s Australian elections. This was not a contest between Matteo Salvini and the Left. It was not even a debate about sovereignty. It was merely an election — of the kind Australia tends to have — between a party to the left of center, and one slightly to the right. But the New York Times managed to write it up as follows: “Scott Morrison, Australia’s conservative prime minister, scored a surprise victory in federal elections on Saturday, propelled by a populist wave.”

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POLITICS Comments turned off

The Great Misdirection By Rich Lowry

By on May 20th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/mueller-report-democrats-impeachment-theater/

T he House Democrats are frustrated, very frustrated.

They’ve gotten themselves entangled in procedural disputes with the Trump administration that no one particularly cares about and that might be litigated for a very long time.

A Washington Post report over the weekend spelled out how stymied Democrats feel and that they are considering, via the power of inherent contempt, fining or arresting people who are defying their subpoenas.

This is very unlikely to happen, obviously. A New York Times report a few days ago on the Democrats’ exasperation said they might consider having hearings with empty chairs. Oh, the drama.

Jerry Nadler, per the Times, “conceded that the White House strategy had thus far succeeded in tamping down energy around the Mueller report and investigations.”

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HOMELAND SECURITY, IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Sanctuary state of Oregon releases illegal alien who raped a dog to death after serving only 60 days in jail By Thomas Lifson !!!!????

By on May 20th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/05/sanctuary_state_of_oregon_releases_illegal_alien_who_raped_a_dog_to_death_after_serving_only_60_days_in_jail.html

People who abuse animals are sick and dangerous to rest of society.  Something is very wrong with the mental and moral wiring.  When the abuse involves sex and is such violent sexual assault that death results, the dangers are acute.

Now, consider what the sanctuary state policy in Oregon has released into society, even though the perp is not legally entitled to be in this country, free to express his sick urges again, next time possibly with a human victim.  John Binder reports at Breitbart:

As Breitbart News reported, illegal alien Fidel Lopez, 52-years-old, was convicted last month and sentenced to 60 days in prison after raping his girlfriend’s small Lhasa Apso which led to the dog’s death. The judge in the case said he would have given the illegal alien more prison time but that 60 days is the maximum sentence allowed in Oregon.

Following his sentence, Lopez was immediately released because he had already served 60 days while waiting to stand trial. Despite his illegal alien status, Multnomah County, Oregon officials released Lopez back into the community.

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