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May 2019

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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MEDIA, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

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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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Gaza, Israel Reach Cease-Fire After Days of Deadly Clashes Calm descends after a weekend of rocket fire from Gaza and explosions on both sides of the border By Felicia Schwartz

By on May 6th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/gaza-israel-reach-cease-fire-after-days-of-deadly-clashes-11557133042

TEL AVIV—Militant groups in Gaza said Monday they had reached a cease-fire with Israel after two days of the deadliest fighting since the 2014 war.

Israel lifted security restrictions in the south near Gaza in a sign that it expected calm, though it didn’t officially confirm the truce. Four Israelis and 27 Palestinians were killed since Friday evening after militants launched nearly 700 rockets, and Israel said it hit more than 350 military targets in Gaza in response.

The latest conflagration sparked fears of a wider war after a year of violent flare-ups and periodic cease-fires. But calm descended across Gaza and Israel on Monday after a weekend of rocket fire from the strip, blaring sirens over southern Israeli communities and explosions on both sides of the border.

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BOOKS Comments turned off

Thomas Sowell’s ‘Discrimination and Disparities’ The book that lays waste to myth after myth about the causes of human differences. Walter Williams

By on May 6th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273631/thomas-sowells-discrimination-and-disparities-walter-williams

My longtime friend and colleague Dr. Thomas Sowell has just published a revised and enlarged edition of “Discrimination and Disparities.” It lays waste to myth after myth about the causes of human differences not only in the United States but around the globe. Throughout the book, Sowell shows that socioeconomic outcomes differ vastly among individuals, groups and nations in ways that cannot be easily explained by any one factor, whether it’s genetics, sex or race discrimination or a history of gross mistreatment that includes expulsion and genocide.

In his book “The Philadelphia Negro” (1899), W.E.B. Du Bois posed the question as to what would happen if white people lost their prejudices overnight. He said that it would make little difference to most blacks. He said: “Some few would be promoted, some few would get new places — the mass would remain as they are” until the younger generation began to “try harder” and the race “lost the omnipresent excuse for failure: prejudice.”

Sowell points out that if historical injustices and persecution were useful explanations of group disadvantage, Jews would be some of the poorest and least-educated people in the world today. Few groups have been victimized down through history as have the Jews. Despite being historical targets of hostility and lethal violence, no one can argue that as a result Jews are the most disadvantaged people.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Islamic Terror Rocket Hits Israeli Kindergarten (VIDEO) Daniel Greenfield

By on May 6th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/273673/islamic-terror-rocket-hits-israeli-kindergarten-daniel-greenfield

There were no children in this room in an Israeli kindergarten when the rocket hit. But you can only get lucky so many times.

In the latest round of Islamic terror attacks on Israel, some got lucky, others did not. One man is dead. A number of others were wounded by the terror rocket attacks. And this kindergarten video of the aftermath of a rocket attack shows what might have happened.

The video shows what happened after a rocket landed in the yard of a Sderot kindergarten and shrapnel from the strike pierced the classroom.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Palestinian Rocket Terror Against Israel High time for Israel to deal a decisive blow. Joseph Klein

By on May 6th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273678/palestinian-rocket-terror-against-israel-joseph-klein

Palestinian terrorists fired at least 650 rockets into Israel this past weekend. Although most of the rockets either landed in open fields or were intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system, the rocket attacks killed at least four Israelis and injured more than 100 others. Israel retaliated with airstrikes against more than 320 key targets that included an attack tunnel, an underground rocket factory, rocket launcher sites and other military facilities used by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Gaza’s second-largest terror group and a proxy of Iran. Israel also went after specific militants, including, the New York Times reported, “a man who the Israeli military said had been responsible for large transfers of cash from Iran to Hamas…”

Moreover, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) appears to be preparing for a possible land war by deploying to the Gaza area on Sunday two reinforcement brigades – the Golani Infantry Brigade and the 7th Armored Brigade. Commenting on the deployment of the 7th Armored Brigade, IDF Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus said, “An armoured brigade is ready for various contingencies but earmarked for an offensive mission being by definition a mission that goes inside enemy terrain.” The Golani Brigade is considered one of the IDF’s most highly decorated infantry units and has fought in all of Israel’s wars.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

None Dare Call It Spying (But It Was Obviously Spying) Derek Hunter

By on May 5th, 2019

https://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2019/05/05/none-dare-call-it-spying-but-it-was-obviously-spying-n2545854

We used to be able to get along. We really did. We haven’t always been able to work together – it’s difficult to find common ground when you want the polar opposite of your opponent – but at the end of a long day of fighting, people were perfectly capable of eating a meal near or even with each other. Now we can’t even agree in the obvious definition of words.

Dictionary.com defines “spy” as:

1) a person employed by a government to obtain secret information or intelligence about another, usually hostile, country, especially with reference to military or naval affairs.

2) a person who keeps close and secret watch on the actions and words of another or others.

There is no possible interpretation of those definitions that does not cover what the Obama administration did to the presidential campaign of Donald Trump in 2016.

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