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August 2019

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Taxpayers Forced to Cover Gender Surgery for Abuser and Rapist Daniel Greenfield …..???!!

By on August 28th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/274763/taxpayers-forced-cover-gender-surgery-abuser-and-daniel-greenfield

Have we reached peak human rights yet?

The state of Idaho has been ordered by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to provide gender confirmation surgery to inmate Adree Edmo.

According to Boise State Public Radio, the panel of judges agreed with a federal judge that it’s medically necessary and not doing so would violate the eighth amendment.

Edmo was convicted for sexually abusing a 15-year-old boy when he was 22.

The Framers truly intended Cruel and Unusual Punishment to mean that taxpayers are obligated to fund lifestyle surgery for child rapists.

The news outlet reports that Edmo suffers from gender dysphoria, which experts say can cause a person severe distress. He has twice attempted self-castration.

Without costing taxpayers anything.

The media, which advocates for Edmo, has little interest in his victim.

Brady Summers dated Mason Edmo, now Adree Edmo, for two years. It was his first relationship since coming out. It did not end well.

“He would beat me on a constant basis,” Summers said. “I had to keep my head low. I had to be careful what I said, careful what I did. And the final straw of me escaping that was him beating me with a frying pan.”

Edmo went to jail, but tried to reconcile with Summers when he got out. It also did not end well. Not long after that, Edmo was in prison for sexual abuse of a child under the age of 16. It was then that Edmo began to get treatment for gender dysphoria, or conflict over feeling like he, Mason, should be a female. Edmo was also diagnosed with “gender identity disorder” and now identifies as a female and goes by the name Adree. She says that she was living as a female before she went to prison. Summers says Edmo never showed signs of either of these conditions, but was always a masculine, gay man.

“Never once indicated anything of gender dysphoria or sexual indifference,” he said. “He was a predator. He, on several occasions, had his way with me. It was brutal.”

More great work by the 9th circuit court.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Who’s Funding Illegal Palestinian Settlements in Area C: Part 3 Terrorist links. August 28, 2019 Edwin Black

By on August 28th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274712/whos-funding-illegal-palestinian-settlements-area-edwin-black

Hundreds of millions of euros flow annually from European nations to fund illegal Palestinian settlements in Area C. Under the Oslo Accords, only Israel can issue construction permits. The current rapid expansion plan dispenses with any coordination with Israel.

According to Israeli activist watchdog groups, such as Regavim, during the last five years, illegal Palestinian settlements and infrastructure have sprawled across more than 9,000 dunams (9 square km) in more than 250 Area C locations, supported by more than 600 kilometers of illegally constructed access roads and more than 112,000 meters of retaining walls and terracing. This massive works project is being conducted in broad daylight. Palestinians no longer apply for permits in Area C; they deny Israel’s right to issue them. Now, they just start building, powered by millions of annual euros in joint projects with the EU.

How is the money routed? Among the many NGO recipients, one name keeps appearing:Union of Agricultural Work Committees.

A 2012 French Foreign Ministry report listing a €354,489 multi-year water development project states: “The first action proposed under this Action Plan is being carried out by the Union of Agriculture Work Committees,” adding, “UAWC … is responsible for project management.” Agence Francaise de Dévelopment (AFD) committed €130,000 to the UAWC, also in 2012, according to a 2012 Ernst and Young audit of the NGO Development Center. In February 2019, AFD also announced, “Union of Agricultural Workers Committees and relevant stakeholders … [would be] granted by AFD amounts up to 232,000 euros out of a budget of 650,000 euros.”

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

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

By on August 28th, 2019

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.

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P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

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

By on August 28th, 2019

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.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

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

By on August 28th, 2019

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.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

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

By on August 28th, 2019

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.

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HISTORY, MEDIA Comments turned off

The 1619 Project’s Potted History By Michael Brendan Dougherty

By on August 28th, 2019

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.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The cosmic combination of Hong Kong, Brexit and the trade war Events could align against Beijing Augustus Howard

By on August 27th, 2019

https://spectator.us/trade-war-brexit-courage-hong-kong/

Over the past several months, we have witnessed remarkable courage in the streets of Hong Kong. What began as limited protest against a single act of pro-Beijing legislation now has the markings of existential struggle, if not revolution. As the people of Hong Kong understand, the city government’s proposed extradition bill — enabling removal of its citizens to mainland China for trial — was not an isolated event. It was, instead, a sign of things to come, the gradual encroachment of Beijing upon the rights and freedoms promised Hong Kong for 50 years in the 1997 Basic Law. These constitutional guarantees — negotiated with the United Kingdom before it transferred the city — have come steadily under attack as the clock ticks ineluctably towards midnight. When 2047 dawns, Beijing surely wants the ‘transition’ to be ‘seamless’, a mere legal technicality ratifying what would be, by then, a matter of practical fact: full control and dominance of Hong Kong by the Communist, mainland power.

President Trump has pulled his punches thus far. He has not taken a tough, public line against Beijing on human rights or fully acknowledged the protesters’ legitimate grievances. Interestingly, however, in a culture where rhetoric usually outpaces action — one recalls Michelle Obama holding a makeshift sign, asking Boko Haram terrorists to ‘Bring Back Our Girls’ — Trump has taken actions that place real pressure on Beijing. It may be that Trump’s main, or only, contention with China rests with its economic abuses — among other things, its currency manipulation and the pilfering of American intellectual property. Whatever his motivations, though, Trump’s actions in the current trade dispute have the potential to evolve beyond economic matters, important as they are.
It is likely already the case that Trump’s trade war has energized the protests in Hong Kong. Protesters rightly intuit that Beijing, for all its bluster, has been knocked off kilter. The rising Bully of Asia is finally receiving a reciprocal dose of strength; America has finally questioned China’s way of doing business. The people of Hong Kong are now questioning it, too. These are people who, of course — notwithstanding the spirit of the United Nations Charter and the postwar, international settlement in favor of self-determination — were never consulted about their own governance in the first place.

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EDUCATION, ISRAEL Comments turned off

A Plague Of Col(e)itis In Academia… by Gerald A. Honigman

By on August 27th, 2019

Please allow me to introduce this analysis with some important background excerpts from a widely-published piece a while back:

“…Decades ago, while engaged in undergraduate and graduate work in Middle Eastern Affairs and related studies, the only way I learned of struggles of scores of millions of non-Arab peoples in the region occurred solely via my own initiative. Of all the hundreds of books in my library, hardly a jot or tittle on such subjects. And even when, on rare occasion, you might find mention of some of these folks in a book, a discussion on the subject never made it into the classroom.

In just one of many examples, only by becoming a member of the London-based Anti-Slavery Society did I learn of problems black Africans faced regarding genocidal and 20th century slave trading Arab tormentors.

The struggles of the Anya Nya and other blacks in the south of the Sudan and elsewhere were in full bloom, yet one would never know anything about this stuff if the academic syllabus and classroom were the sources of information. If Israel was not the alleged villain, the problem was left untouched in far too many classrooms.

While frequently exposed to such things as alleged Zionist fascism, racism, colonialism, imperialism, and dozens of other Hebrew sins, barely a word was ever spoken about the subjugation (largely by Arabs, but also by others such as Turks and Iranians as well) and plight of folks like Kurds, Imazighen (“Berbers”), Copts, Assyrians, native Jews, and so forth. And when mention of such non-Arab people was made, it was about such things as Berber rugs or musicians.

To learn of Kurds back then, the Little Miss Muffet nursery rhyme provided more information than academia…and those were the wrong curds. Keep in mind that this was especially odd because the sixties and seventies were very socially conscious eras in history. But, I was young and naïve and so gave the situation the benefit of the doubt.

I know better now.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Trump Pushes Transformation; Biden Stresses Stability By Charles Lipson

By on August 27th, 2019

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/08/27/trump_pushes_transformation_bhttps://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/08/27/trump_pushes_transformation_b

Normally, it’s a sitting president who urges the nation to “stay the course.” Voters prefer stability, so incumbents normally use it as a selling point while seeking reelection. But these are not normal times. In this campaign, the man in the Oval Office is selling transformation while his leading Democratic opponent is promising a return to the calmer days of “no-drama Obama.”

It’s a political oddity.

Although Trump’s slogan, “Promises Made, Promises Kept,” seems to stress continuity, he is really promising something quite different: to keep rolling back the Administrative State, recalibrating American foreign policy, and shaking up Washington. He is telling supporters that he has stuck with his major 2016 themes, especially fighting illegal immigration, lowering taxes, appointing conservative judges, cutting burdensome regulations, and reviving American manufacturing. Internationally, he is determined to wind down America’s long wars, avoid new ones, make America’s allies pay more for global security, and rework multilateral trade deals. Oh, and maybe purchase Greenland for the American people.

That’s an ambitious, transformative agenda, and Trump is running on it. Those policies, plus steady economic growth and an enthusiastic base, give him a decent chance of winning in November 2020, unless the economy falls into recession. His biggest liabilities are obvious: his grandiose personality and his erratic, thin-skinned behavior, which are on display daily.

Trump’s base loves his outsized persona, but it grates on prosperous, educated voters, many of them swing voters in the suburbs. Their switch to the Democrats in 2018 put Nancy Pelosi back in the speaker’s chair. To dislodge her, Trump is making no effort to tone down his personality or slow his tweets. Instead, he is painting the opposition as a Children’s Crusade of Crazed Socialists, led by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib.

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