Displaying posts published in

August 2019

Bahrain backs Israeli airstrikes on Iranian forces as ‘self-defence’

https://www.alaraby.co.uk/english/news/2019/8/27/bahrain-backs-israeli-airstrikes-on-iranian-forces-as-self-defence

The New Arab

Bahrain and other Gulf states have found common cause with Israel over Iran tensions. [Getty]

Bahrain’s foreign minister on Monday appeared to back alleged Israeli airstrikes on Iranian-backed militia forces in the Middle East, defending the military action as ‘self-defence’.

Israel has reportedly struck targets in three different countries within the past two days, widening its military campaign against Iranian-backed forces.

Late on Saturday, the Israeli army launched strikes in Syria to thwart what it said was an impending Iranian drone attack.

Just hours later, Lebanon’s army said two Israeli drones had violated Lebanese airspace over south Beirut, and the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement said one damaged a media centre it runs.

On Sunday, a purported Israeli strike killed a commander from the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), or Hashd al-Shaabi, near Iraq’s desert western border with Syria.

Lebanese President Michel Aoun and the powerful PMF militia in Iraq both declared the strikes on their countries as “declarations of war”.

Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Khalid bin Ahmed Al-Khalifa took to Twitter to throw his support behind the Israeli military strikes.

Making the Term ‘Illegal Aliens’ Disappear Meet the Castro brothers – the Democrats’ Matthew Vadum new Thought Police.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274755/making-term-illegal-aliens-disappear-matthew-vadum

Leftists are fond of summoning the magic of euphemism to make the social problems they create go away.

Like the editors of the Newspeak Dictionary in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, these social engineers define out of existence the atrocities that necessarily grow out of their ideology.

Take Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), who has introduced legislation that would strike “alien” and “illegal alien” from the federal law books and replace them with “foreign national” and “undocumented foreign national.” The lawmaker’s twin brother, Democrat presidential candidate Julian Castro, endorsed the measure.

Rep. Castro says his bill, the proposed “Correcting Alienating Names in Government Act,” or CHANGE Act, is “integral to creating a more welcoming and inclusive environment for incoming and current immigrants living in the United States.”

Castro wants “illegal alien” banished because it (quite properly) stigmatizes behavior –that is, being a foreigner present in the United States without authorization— that is unlawful.

There is a certain logic to this.

The Left has to make the hordes of illegal aliens their various so-called immigration law reforms have unleashed on their fellow Americans over the years seem normal and acceptable. This is also why the Left describes just about everyone touched by the nation’s immigration laws as an “immigrant” – whether they’re illegal aliens or legal permanent residents. Smearing anyone who believes in the rule of law as anti-immigrant over and over again makes people defensive and wears down the opposition. It’s a kind of brainwashing.

Radicals who carry “no human being is illegal” placards at protests and Associated Press reporters agree with Castro that lying to destigmatize unlawful behavior is morally virtuous. The thought police at the AP stylebook now declare that “illegal” should be used only to describe an action “such as living in or immigrating to a country illegally.”

They also give a thumbs-down to “illegal alien” and “undocumented,” which itself is already a euphemism. USA Today and other media outlets followed suit. Then-California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) jumped on the bandwagon in 2015 by signing legislation excising “alien” from the state’s labor code.

“Words matter,” Castro said in a press release.

“It’s vital that we respect the dignity of immigrants fleeing violence and prosecution in our language. The words ‘alien’ and ‘illegal alien’ work to demonize and dehumanize the migrant community. They have no place in our government’s description of human beings. Immigrants come to our borders in good faith and work hard for the opportunity to achieve a better life for themselves and their family. Eliminating this language from government expression puts us one step closer to preserving their dignity and ensuring their safety.”

And it makes illegals and their enablers feel good about breaking the law, which is largely the point of the exercise.

Well, that, and it helps to create pressure to get “comprehensive immigration reform,” a euphemism for immigration amnesty, through Congress.

President Donald Trump uses the words and phrases the Left hates because they’re accurate, his base loves them, and leftists hate them. All conservatives and right-thinking patriots should do the same.

Although the likelihood of Rep. Castro’s legislation making it all the way across Pennsylvania Avenue to President Trump’s desk is somewhere between slim and none, federal lawmakers do occasionally banish unfashionable words from the statute books.

Congress banned the perfectly good word “lunatic” in federal legislation in 2012 because it was deemed mean. In 2010 our elected representatives banned “mental retardation,” replacing it with “intellectual disability” in federal laws. And they’ll do it again when other useful words are no longer fashionable.

The feces-covered leftist hell known as San Francisco is getting rid of its crime problem by introducing new vocabulary.

College Board Nixes Plan for SAT ‘Adversity Scores’ By Jack Crowe

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/college-board-abandons-plan-sat-adversity-scores/

The College Board has abandoned its plan to augment students’ SAT scores with an adversity score, a metric designed to control for privilege in the admissions process, after enduring months of criticism from educators and parents.

The College Board introduced a new metric in May that admissions officers refer to as an “adversity score.” The score, which falls between zero and 100, reflects 15 socioeconomic factors, such as the crime and poverty rates in a given students’ neighborhood. It’s being replaced by a policy known as Landscape that will measure various discrete socioeconomic factors without combining them into a single score.

“We listened to thoughtful criticism and made Landscape better and more transparent,” David Coleman, the CEO of College Board, said in a statement announcing the change. “Landscape provides admissions officers more consistent background information so they can fairly consider every student, no matter where they live and learn.”

The College Board, which administers the SAT, planned to incorporate adversity scores into 150 schools across the country after initially rolling out the pilot program with 50 schools this year.

Trump — or What, Exactly? By Victor Davis Hanson *****

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/08/comparison-trump-record-former-presidents-current-critics/

Let’s compare Trump’s policies and behavior to that of prior presidents — and to his 2020 opponents’.

I n traditional political terms, there is always an alternate agenda to an incumbent president’s that reasonable voters can debate.

In Trump’s case, two massive annual budget deficits — coming on top of the previous two administrations that doubled the national debt — seem fair game. No president for the past 19 years has sought to offer any remotely sane budget. And with still relatively low interest rates, massive federal spending, a $22 trillion national debt, and an annual deficit of nearly $1 trillion, it is hard to imagine, in extremis, that there remains any notion of “stimulus” or “pump-priming” left.

Yet we hear little about such financial profligacy.

Not a word comes from Trump’s critics about the need for Social Security or Medicare reform to ensure the long-term viability of each — other than the Democrats’ promises to extend such financially shaky programs to millions of new clients well beyond the current retiring Baby Boomer cohorts who are already taxing the limits of the system.

To counter every signature Trump issue, there is almost no rational alternative advanced. That void helps explain the bizarre, three-year litany of dreaming of impeachment, the emoluments clause, the Logan Act, the 25th Amendment, the Mueller special-counsel investigation, Stormy Daniels and Michael Avenatti, Trump’s tax returns, White Supremacy!, Recession! — and Lord knows what next.

The 1619 Project’s Potted History By Michael Brendan Dougherty

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/08/the-1619-projects-potted-history/

Here’s why conservatives reacted the way they did.

There is something almost antique about progressives in 2019, at least when they are defending the New York Times’ 1619 Project, a series of essays examining the legacy of slavery in America. Some of the essays deliver the goods, offering perspectives that are genuinely new and provocative. But the project’s packaging and the strident defenses of it make me feel like I’ve been transported back to the mid 1990s and an eager classmate is shoving James Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me into my hands and telling me, “But you gotta give Howard Zinn props for People’s History of the United States. Prepare to have your mind blown!” 

Listen, I understand that when you’re gunning for a Pulitzer and trying to get news consumers to take in slightly more dense work, you’re liable to marketing gimcrack about how it’s “finally time to tell our story truthfully.” And some conservatives have responded trollishly. But there’s a pattern in the project and among its defenders of making an outlandish claim but defending only a modest one. The project presents a simplified and mythologized history, and rather than defend what the Times actually printed, the project’s supporters accuse its critics of simplifying and mythologizing history.