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July 2019

MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

Film In ‘Skin,’ an Israeli Director Portrays a Neo-Nazi’s Evolution Jamie Bell, who made his name in 2000 as a young dancer in ‘Billy Elliot,’ plays a neo-Nazi who changes his ways in Israeli director Guy Nattiv’s new movie, ‘Skin’ By Tobias Grey

By on July 22nd, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-skin-an-israeli-director-portrays-a-neo-nazis-evolution-11563802201?mod=hp_lead_pos10

The Israeli director Guy Nattiv decided to make a movie about a reformed neo-Nazi only after receiving the blessing of his grandfather who survived the Holocaust.

“Skin,” which opens in the U.S. on July 26, is Mr. Nattiv’s first American feature film. Mr. Nattiv said he dedicated it to Ruben Monowitz, who died two years ago at age 96, “because he taught us as grandkids how to accept and forgive.”

Mr. Nattiv wrote the screenplay for “Skin” after persuading Bryon Widner, a former skinhead who co-founded a violent white-power group in Indiana in 2003, to sign over the rights to his life story.

“I’ve got to give Bryon a lot of credit,” said Mr. Nattiv, who is 46. “He gave me full authority to tell his story the way I wanted to.”

“Skin,” which won the international critics prize at last September’s Toronto International Film Festival, draws its title from the hate-filled tattoos that Mr. Widner had removed from his face and body after dropping his racist beliefs and turning state’s evidence.

The film stars British actor Jamie Bell as Mr. Widner and Australian actress Danielle Macdonald as Mr. Widner’s wife, Julie. Mr. Nattiv’s script also focuses on the African-American antiracist activist Daryle Lamont Jenkins (played by Mike Colter) who helped get Mr. Widner into an FBI witness-protection program.

The film explores how easily teenagers with no family ties and limited means can be scooped up and indoctrinated by white-power groups. It also shows how dangerous it can be for them to try to leave the organizations.

Mr. Nattiv, who had already written and directed three movies in Israel, said he struggled to drum up interest for the script in 2016, when he began shopping it around Hollywood. “I did research in Ohio, Indiana and the Rust Belt, and I saw racism and I saw gangs,” Mr. Nattiv said. “However, the reaction to my script was: ‘We like it but there are no real neo-Nazis in America.’ ”

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BOOKS, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

When the Lion Wakes: The Global Threat of the Chinese Communist Party written by Aaron Sarin

By on July 22nd, 2019

https://quillette.com/2019/07/22/when-the-lion

It has become something of a truism to say that China will rise to a position of global dominance in the twenty-first century. All the evidence seems to support the thesis and we are flooded with the most fantastic figures charting the rise. Harvard political scientist Graham Allison treats us to a selection of these in his recent book Destined for War. He tells us that China’s GDP was less than $300 billion in 1980, a figure that had risen to $11 trillion by 2015. The country’s total trade with the outside world came to just $40 billion in 1980, but in 2015 it was $4 trillion—a hundredfold increase. Allison has plenty more shockers up his sleeve: “For every two-year period since 2008, the increment of growth in China’s GDP has been larger than the entire economy of India. Even at its lower growth in 2015, China’s economy created a Greece every sixteen weeks and an Israel every twenty-five weeks.” In fact, since the Great Recession of 2008, 40 percent of all the economic growth in the world has occurred in just one country: China. Allison quotes Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s founding father, for the coup de grâce: “It is not possible to pretend that this is just another big player. This is the biggest player in the history of the world.”1

If Lee was right, then there can be only one outcome. “This world will be China’s,” says the brother of Ye Cheng, the Communist Party billionaire who now controls Australia’s Port Darwin. It is time for China to “change the world where rules are set by foreigners,” according to Wang Jianlin, chairman of the Dalian Wanda Group and China’s second richest man. China will “lead the entire world on political, economic, military, and environmental issues,” in the words of president-for-life Xi Jinping. But when men like this use the word “China,” they mislead us. It will not be the Chinese people who rise to inherit the earth, who wake to shake the world. It will be the Communist Party.

Chinese citizens have been indoctrinated for decades with the idea that Party is country. The idea was introduced by paramount leader Deng Xiaoping soon after the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989. He realised that as long as the state and the people were seen as separate entities, then the door would remain open for recognition of the Party’s many historical crimes—and also for recognition of the ongoing subjugation of the people by the Party. He wanted to make sure that citizens would never again rise up as they did in 1989. As China-watcher Clive Hamilton explains: “For many new Chinese arrivals in the West, one of the hardest concepts to understand is the distinction, essential to democracies, between the nation and its government. When they do grasp the difference, they are open to becoming critics of the party-state without feeling they are betraying their homeland.”2

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MEDIA Comments turned off

MEDIA’S ANTI-TRUMP BIASED REPORTING IN AUSTRALIA: TONY THOMAS

By on July 22nd, 2019

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2019/07

America Observed With an ABC Squint
America Observed With an ABC Squint
“The national broadcaster operates a very large Washington bureau and you have to wonder why, given that so much of its ‘reporting’ is the distilled essence of anti-Trump coverage from newspapers and other media which, were he to cure, cancer, would accuse him of putting nurses out of work. Correspondent Connor Duffy’s coverage of July 4 celebrations is sadly typical.”

The BBC is facing a citizens’ crowd-funded lawsuit against its left-biased reporting, while the ABC is still forgetful that half of its funders are centre-right taxpayers. The latest ABC annual report trumpets Leisa Bacon, director ABC audiences, on its second page proclaiming, “The ABC is unique in its ability to
 unite the nation … we are here for every Australian”.

The ABC’s online surveys and Roy Morgan polls show massive trust in the ABC, but why do fewer than 20 per cent of the polled actually tune in? For 2017-18, by the way, ABC 7pm News audience fell 5-8 per cent.

The most naked bias at the moment is in the ABC’s pro-Democrat US reporting, since few Australians cross-check the material. So let’s sample ABC bureau’s July 4 Independence Day coverage in Washington DC.[1] The reporter is Conor Duffy, mocker-in-chief of President Trump.

For his print piece, falsely labeled “analysis”, the ABC gave us a choice of three headlines. “Trump dreamed of pomp and ceremony. Instead he got soggy tanks”. Maybe that was too deranged, even for the ABC, so a second version went: “ANALYSIS: Wild weather, small crowds and protesters rain on Trump’s parade.” The third top read: “Donald Trump hoped for a parade to rival Bastille Day, instead he got small crowds and soggy tanks”.

For starters, there were no tanks on the Mall, especially not soggy ones. The 25mm chain gun on the two parked Bradley Fighting Vehicles is a pet compared to an Abrams tank’s 5.3m smoothbore of 120mm calibre.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Crying ‘Racism’ for a Free Kick Anthony Dillon

By on July 22nd, 2019

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/bennelong-papers/2019/07/crying-racism-free-kick/

As someone with Aboriginal ancestry, I feel compelled to discuss the allegations of racism that have been dominating the media of late, with AFL star and all-round nice guy Adam Goodes at the centre of the storm. First, I don’t see him as the major reason for the furore. Neither do I believe racism is the cause, though some would have you believe it is. Rather, several factors have converged to sustain a story that, by rights, should have died quickly: a manipulative media and the insatiable hunger for attention that characterise what I call the ‘race bloodhounds’ who are always eager to catch the whiff of any and all perceived ‘racism’.

Professional ‘blactivists’ delight for reasons that will be discussed later in this article in talking about the assumed racism directed at Aborigines. All who dare challenge the absurd notion that Australia is racist to the core are themselves accused of being racist or, as I know from personal experience, branded a sell-out, an Uncle Tom or a coconut (brown on the outside, white underneath). So, if you are a blactivist or race bloodhound, don’t bother reading any further. The same psychology that lets you see racism where there is none dictates that, regardless of the argument presented, you will walk away even more convinced of your core position, which can be summarised thus: any criticism of, or disagreement with, any Aborigine for any reason represents a clear and irrefutable example of racism. It is a sad reaction, but a predictable one: that which does not start with reason will not end by reason.

Much of the controversy has been the product of media manipulation, rather than of Adam’s own doing. I do not believe Adam has been milking this fiasco; indeed, it is obvious he has been deeply upset by it. But some media outlets certainly have been playing it up, and very much at his expense. Consider the booing, which is a hallmark of bog-standard mob mentality, not necessarily of racism. However, some have found it very convenient to respond with the truism “there is no place for racism on or off the field”. Few would disagree with that, but where is the evidence that the crowd’s booing was prompted by an inherent dislike of Adam based purely on his racial identity?

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Unlike His Critics, Former New York Yankees Closer Mariano Rivera Is A Mensch The Hall of Fame pitcher supports a pluralistic nation with democratic institutions and free association. By David Harsanyi

By on July 22nd, 2019

https://thefederalist.com/2019/07/22/unlike-critics-former-new-york-yankees-closer-mariano-rivera-mensch/

In a transcendently ridiculous column at The Daily Beast, readers are warned that MLB Hall of Famer Mariano Rivera has “served at the pleasure of a racist president, taken part in thinly veiled propaganda on behalf of a far-right government in Israel, and gotten chummy with outright bigots and apocalyptic loons.”

Mo Rivera? The greatest closer—perhaps the greatest pitcher—in Major League baseball history? Mo Rivera, the first player unanimously selected as a first-ballot Hall of Famer? As a longtime Yankees fan, and someone fortunate enough to see Rivera up close for a number of years, I can think of few greater pleasures in sports than watching him work. So I never thought I’d be able to admire him more. But here we are.

It’s not surprising that The Daily Beast, whose editor-in-chief blames Israeli Jews for white nationalism, would find Rivera’s support of Israel problematic (the original illustration for the piece, incidentally, had Rivera standing on a pitcher’s mound shaped like a yarmulke atop a Jewish star).

Nor is it surprising that the piece offers no evidence that Mariano has “served at the pleasure” of the Trump administration—even if you accept the debatable contention that the administration is racist. Rivera didn’t join the pinstriped Sturmtruppen, he merely accepted a nomination to the Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition. He signed onto the Opioid Drug Abuse Commission. He went to the White House as a delegate for the Special Olympics. He took “friendly photo op” as part of an interfaith conference in Israel with the U.S. ambassador to Israel. These days, I guess all of this qualifies as extremism.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Weiner Bounces Back Into Huma’s Life By Jim Treacher

By on July 22nd, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/trending/weiner-bounces-back-into-humas-life/

Once upon a time, a Democratic congressman named Anthony Weiner sent lots of pictures of his junk to women he met online. He claimed he was hacked or pranked or whatever, and he blamed his political opponents for his misdeeds. He even blamed Andrew Breitbart. And Weiner would’ve gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for those meddling bloggers.

Weiner resigned from Congress in disgrace, and all the people who defended him pretended they never did. He ran for mayor of NYC (would he have been any worse than de Blasio?), and his filth-ridden laptop even played a crucial role in making sure Hillary Clinton will never be elected president.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran Claims It Has Arrested 17 Iranian CIA Spies, Sentenced Some to Death By Mairead McArdle

By on July 22nd, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/iran-claims-it-has-arrested-17-iranian-cia-spies-sentenced-some-to-death/

Iran said Monday it has arrested 17 Iranians accused of spying on the country’s nuclear and military sites for the CIA.

The alleged spies had “sophisticated training” and worked on “sensitive sites” in “economic, nuclear, infrastructural, military and cyber fields or their counterpart private sector,” the Iranian Intelligence Ministry’s director of counterespionage reportedly said at a rare press conference in Tehran.

All the alleged spies are reportedly Iranian nationals arrested in the past few months. Some of the 17 who resisted cooperating with Iranian intelligence will be locked up for a lengthy period, and some have already been sentenced to death, the counterintelligence director said.

President Trump denied Iran’s claims Monday morning, calling them “propaganda.”

“The Report of Iran capturing CIA spies is totally false. Zero truth,” the president wrote on Twitter. “Just more lies and propaganda (like their shot down drone) put out by a Religious Regime that is Badly Failing and has no idea what to do. Their Economy is dead, and will get much worse. Iran is a total mess!”

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Trump Approval Rating Hits Record High in New Poll By Jack Crowe

By on July 22nd, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/trump-approval-rating-hits-record-high-in-new-poll/

Well into his third year in office, President Trump’s approval rating has reached a record high, according to a poll released Monday.

Trump’s approval rating hit 44 percent in the new NPR/NewsHour/Marist poll, the highest level at which it’s been recorded in any mainstream opinion poll with the exception of a a July 7 Washington Post poll that recorded 47 percent approval.

Respondents were surveyed from July 15 to July 17, in the days following the president’s tweet instructing four freshman congresswoman of color to “go back” to their home countries.

Since taking office Trump’s approval rating has hovered between 35 and 43 percent in the Marist poll.

The poll, which included responses from 1,336 adults, also found that Trump has won over a small but significant group of independents in the last month. His approval rating among independents increased from 35 percent last month to 42 percent in the latest poll. Meanwhile, the percentage of respondents who said they will definitely vote against Trump remained unchanged from last month at 53 percent.

While Trump gained ground among independents, Democrats remain unpopular with the group: 43 percent of respondents in the poll said they believed Democrats would take the country in a positive direction if given the opportunity, compared with 46 percent who said the party would lead the country in a negative direction.

“Independents are on the fence overall,” said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion at Marist College. “They’re not willing to grant President Trump reelection, and yet they’re not persuaded by Democrats at this point.”

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MEDIA, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Breaking: Baseball Great Accused of Visiting Israel By Rich Lowry

By on July 22nd, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/breaking-baseball-great-accused-of-visiting-israel/

Mariano Rivera is the greatest closer of all time, and an exemplary human being, in other words, not a natural target for a hit piece upon his induction into the Hall of Fame. But the Daily Beast is here to serve, and offered up a truly pathetic attempted take-down of Rivera for allegedly being a right-wing extremist, by which is meant a pro-Israel Christian and Republican. Perhaps my favorite line in the piece is this one, which is supposed to be latent with sinister meaning: “He has traveled to Israel on multiple occasions, possibly beginning in 2013.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/inside-baseball-hall-of-famer-mariano-riveras-secret-far-right-politics

Inside Baseball Hall of Famer Mariano Rivera’s Far-Right Politics

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Deutschland über alles The Fourth Reich picks a new Führer. Bruce Bawer

By on July 22nd, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274333/deutschland-%C3%BCber-alles-bruce-bawer

No sane person could have witnessed the coronation this week of the new grand poobah of the European Union without recognizing just how utterly undemocratic – and dangerous – this institution is.

Her name is Ursula von der Leyen, a name that instantly communicates two important facts: (1) she is German; (2) she is a member of a hereditary elite.

To be sure, the “von” is courtesy of her husband, who belongs to an aristocratic family. But her own blood also runs blue. In addition to having a tony Teutonic lineage – she was born into the patrician Albrecht clan – she’s descended from a couple of the biggest slave traders in the American South. Her grandfather, Carl Albrecht, was a psychologist famous for his studies of “mystical consciousness.” Her father, Ernst Albrecht, was one of the very first bureaucrats to tread the corridors of power in what would later become the European Union 

Raised in Belgium, von der Leyen studied in Germany and Britain, and lived for a while in the U.S., along the way picking up degrees in economics and public health and also becoming a gynecologist. But she eventually settled on politics, hitching her wagon to Angela Merkel and climbing the ladder of power in Germany, getting herself elected to the Bundestag and serving in turn as Minister of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women, and Youth; Minister of Labor and Social Affairs; and Minister of Defense. In the last-named position, she didn’t exactly cover herself in glory: as President Trump has pointed out, Germany has consistently failed to pull its weight in NATO; British journalist Andrew Neil recently referred to her as a “failed” Defense Minister and as “the second most unpopular politician in Germany.”

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