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October 2019

Three Jews, Two Links, One Lesson By Rick Richman

https://jewishjournal.com/analysis/306066/three-jews-two-links-one-lesson/

On Nov. 10, Norman Podhoretz, the legendary editor of Commentary magazine, will receive the Herzl Prize from philanthropic and educational institution Tikvah. It is the latest in a long line of honors for Podhoretz, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom President George W. Bush awarded him in 2004. Now age 89, Podhoretz is the author of a dozen path-breaking books and countless essays on politics, literature, culture and religion.

Bush said: “Podhoretz ranks among the most prominent American editors of the 20th century. … Never a man to tailor his opinions to please others, [he] has always written and spoken with directness and honesty. Sometimes speaking the truth has carried a cost. Yet, over the years, he has only gained in stature among his fellow writers and thinkers. …[We] pay tribute to this fierce intellectual man and his fine writing and his great love for our country.”

Podhoretz takes his place among the Jews who, over the past century, have contributed immeasurably to both Zionism and Americanism, including Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis during World War I and renowned writer Ben Hecht during World War II.

When we examine their three lives together, we see they have two fascinating links, which provide a single, important lesson for our time. 

Brandeis was the first Jewish justice, whom Woodrow Wilson nominated in 1916. It was a controversial nomination because for the first time in its history, the Senate held hearings on a nominee, which lasted four months. Brandeis was confirmed only after a contentious process involving 43 witnesses. He served 23 years. 

He was born in Kentucky in 1856 to Jewish immigrants from Prague, who gave him no Jewish education. He never attended services, never observed Jewish holidays, and never made significant contributions to Jewish organizations before he turned 57. Then, in 1914, he agreed to head the American Zionist movement.

“Brandeis invigorated the American Zionist movement by articulating the connection between Zionism and American ideals.”

It was a time when most American Jews considered Zionism an unrealistic, possibly unpatriotic, European ideology. Out of 1.5 million Jews in the United States at the time, only 15,000 were members of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA). As Tikvah senior director Jonathan Silver has written, Americans “saw themselves as having fled oppression, crossed the wilderness, and arrived in a new promised land.” American Jews considered themselves not in exile, but at home in a new place.

OUR BANKRUPT NOMENKLATURA-VICTOR DAVID HANSON

https://amgreatness.com/2019/10/27/our-bankrupt-nomenklatura/

Take all the signature brand names that the Baby Boomers inherited from prior generations—Harvard, Yale, the New York Times, NPR, CNN, the Oscars, the NFL, the NBA, the FBI, the CIA, the Rockefeller and Ford foundations, and a host of others. And then ask whether they enhanced our diminished such inheritances?

Donald Trump is now in the midst of another coup frenzy that has the Left accusing him of being crazy. But he already took the Montreal Cognitive Assessment Test. It was a simple cognitive exam and he aced it, as would most people. The Left, remember, had called in a Yale psychiatrist to testify that Trump was demented, during the lulls between the first impeachment, the serial “Russian collusion” hoaxes, the emoluments clause psychodrama and Robert Mueller’s “walls-are-closing-in,” “turning-point,” and “bombshell” investigation.

Perhaps the wrong public figures took the test.

At times, former Vice President Joe Biden is unaware of which town, indeed which state, he is in. He slurs his words often. Biden strings together unconnected thoughts that result in utter incoherence—not alleviated by his near shouting emphatics or fits of pique at reporters.

Sometimes, Biden forgets names, and referents, and appears befuddled generally. His biography is mythical. He cannot address Ukraine and the role of his son, Hunter Biden, because, after all, what would a truthful person say? That the vice president of the United States allowed his wastrel son to become a multimillionaire by leveraging his father’s office with foreign corrupt governments? And was Biden’s moral lapse atypical, or rather reflective of prior ethical laxities that destroyed his two earlier presidential bids when he variously lied about his bio, plagiarized, and used a variety of racially insensitive remarks of the sort that would have characterized most others as racists.

Shouldn’t Hillary Clinton also take the MoCa Test? At times she seems completely delusional—or is she a bit unhinged?

Treating Atmospheric Apocalyptic Anxiety Michael Kile (Spoof)

Dr Fiona Synapse, the controversial consultant psychiatrist, treats climate change worriers for eco-grief, lachrymal depression and related mood disorders at her secluded practice in South Devon, United Kingdom, known locally as The Funny Farm. She first entered the media spotlight several years ago after delivering a paper at the Tripe Centre for the Very Nervous on mental illness and religious experience.

The recent rise of Extinction Rebellion (XR) prompted Dr Synapse to return to the lecture circuit with a new mission: to get the technique that made her a world leader in the treatment of atmospheric apocalyptic anxiety (AAA) onto the National Health Service (NHS) approved list.

Here is an edited transcript of her presentation at Imperial College this month.

_______________________

Ladies, gentlemen and gendered others, welcome to my “coming out” show in London. It’s a great honour to be talking to you tonight at the home of UK science and technology. Judging by the XR banners outside, there’s a lot of people who would have been happier had I stayed in Devon (laughter). But I’m on a mission too, so let the chips fall where they may.

The human mind, like climate change, is extremely complex. Nine-tenths of it is irrational and prone to idiosyncratic paroxysmal expression. Only one-tenth is rational. Let me say that again for the benefit of those outside: only one-tenth of your behaviour is rational. That’s on a good day when the moon is not full. Shocking, yes, but true.

We don’t do dodgy computer modelling down at The Funny Farm; nor do we dance to the tune of that fiddler with the truth, confirmation bias, and make up stuff for a media moment. Yet we still have ways of discovering orderly – or indeed – disorderly patterns among the mind’s multitudinous facets that are just as controversial (laughter).

Psychoanalysis is one of them. Based on the inferences we make from the verbal utterances of the mentally ill (MI), the worried well (WW) or unwell (WU), it can give us insight into what’s going on – or switching off – in the psyche or unconscious.

Freud and Jung disagreed about a lot of things. Both agreed, however, that superstitious belief and ritual are deeply rooted in our cerebral cesspools. Both agreed that superstition is not a relic of the pagan past, nor confined to a gullible or fearful underclass. It is part and parcel of all of us. It can come to the surface at any time, especially when there’s constant chatter about the end of the world and the Doomsday Clock is, allegedly, at three minutes to midnight.

Their evidence consisted mainly of patient case histories. Both stressed the emotional element in superstition. This helps us understand why confronting a superstitious person with contradictory information makes so little difference. In such cases, the rational mind is out to lunch, or literally “possessed” in some way.

XR is making claims that are, frankly, hysterical. Your website says there’s the possibility of billions dying. That is just not credible, is it? Your extreme weather story is utter nonsense. (4.0min.) (LBC interview, Nigel Farage and XR protester, 15min., 14 October, 2019)

But what is superstition? Any irrational belief or practice is superstition. It can arise from ignorance, from misunderstanding causality, fearing the unknown, or believing in fate or magic. For example, reducing the world’s fossil-fuel energy consumption (currently 85%) in less than a decade would be a magical outcome, yet some people claim it’s possible.

Baghdadi Raid, Durham Probe Will Frustrate Impeachment by Thomas McCardle

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/10/28/baghdadi-

Though not yet manifest, the unexpected, astounding killing of ISIS “commander of the faithful” Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi over the weekend by Delta Force, with Rangers and other Army support, supercedes the 2011 takeout of al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden in its long-term magnitude.

In essence, ISIS is a sensationalist, media-savvy metastasis of Bin Laden’s al-Qaida, which conducted the 2001 attacks, but ISIS’ anti-American terrorism is of a different brand. Brookings Institution Mideast analyst Daniel Byman testified to Congress that “the primary target of the Islamic State has [unlike al-Qaida] not been the United States, but rather ‘apostate’ regimes in the Arab world” – but try telling the families of beheaded Americans James Foley, Steven Sotloff, and Peter Kassig that America, and its values and position in the world, are not squarely in ISIS’ sights.

As Radio France Internationale journalist David Thomson described it in 2017, “For ISIS supporters, Baghdadi is doing something concrete, controls territory, defies the entire world, unlike the old scholars of al-Qaida who appear behind the times.” As the trove of materials accompanying Baghdadi, retrieved by U.S. forces, are perused in the weeks ahead, the public will know in detail the importance of his leadership of the dislodged terrorist caliphate, and will learn of planned ISIS plots.

The carrying out of President Donald Trump’s order to eliminate Baghdadi will be paired with another big net minus for Democrats: U.S. attorney for Connecticut John Durham’s Russian election influence probe shifting into a criminal investigation. While some speculate that the criminal dimension may be in regard to peripheral matters, the speed with which Durham has come to this point, having only begun his work less than six months ago, strongly suggests otherwise. As does Democrats immediately – and groundlessly – accusing Attorney General William Barr of meddling in Durham’s probe. Highly unlikely since Durham has a Boy Scout-like reputation of integrity and thoroughness.

VLADIMIR BUKOVSKY R.I.P.

Vladimir Konstantinovich Bukovsky was a Russian-born British human rights activist and writer. From the late 1950s to the mid-1970s, he was a prominent figure in the Soviet dissident movement. He was a prolific writer. His last book was”Judgement in Moscow” described below:

“The movers and shakers of today have little interest in digging for the truth. Who knows what one may come up with? You may start out with the Communists and end up with yourself.” —Vladimir Bukovsky

Bukovsky’s Judgment in Moscow, called “stunning” by Richard Pipes and “a massive and major contribution” by Robert Conquest, has been published for the first time in English. Margaret Thatcher gave a grant to support the writing of the book, and the initial publication in Russia was paid for by Aleksander Solzhenitsyn. The book has an introduction by Edward Lucas and an afterword by David Satter.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, legendary Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky had the opportunity to steal thousands of classified documents from the Soviet archives. Judgment in Moscow is about the secrets exposed by those documents. It reveals the inner workings of the Soviet regime and the complicity of many in the West with that regime.

Judgment in Moscow was an international bestseller published in nine languages, but has only now been published in English for the first time. It was previously at Random House, but Bukovsky refused to rewrite parts of the book which accused prominent Westerners of behind-the-scenes dealings with the Soviets. In this edition, the author quotes correspondence with his editor, who says, “I don’t disagree, but I simply can’t publish a book that accuses Americans like Cyrus Vance and Francis Ford Coppola of unpatriotic — or even treacherous — behavior.”

“Vladimir Bukovsky uses the Kremlin’s own documents to show how the Soviet Union provided a false face to the world and how Soviet leaders used Western leaders as dupes or willing actors. Judgment in Moscow provides the written Nuremberg trial the Soviets never got when the USSR fell.” —Anne Applebaum, author of Gulag: A History (Pulitzer Prize)

“An essential warning of the dangers of collaborating with authoritarian regimes.” — Garry Kasparov, former world chess champion and author of Winter is Coming

“The most important work to appear for decades on the Soviet empire and its aftermath.” — Edward Lucas, former senior editor of the Economist, from the introduction

Is there no field in which the Jewish mindset doesn’t excel? Norman Lebrecht celebrates the explosion of Jewish talent between 1847 and 1947 in music, literature, painting, film, politics, philosophy, science and invention David Crane

https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/10/is-there-no-field-in-which-the-jewish-mindset-doesnt-excel/

Genius & Anxiety: How Jews Changed the World, 1847–1947Norman Lebrecht

More than 20 years ago, George Steiner, meditating on 2,000 years of persecution and suffering, posed the ‘taboo’ question that no one dared ask: ‘Has the survival of the Jew been worth the appalling cost?’  It was not just the horrors of the pogroms or of Auschwitz that ‘enforced’ the question for Steiner, nor the centuries of exclusion and violence but — equally destructive — ‘the fear, the degradation, the miasma of contempt, latent or explicit,’ which has been the hereditary birthright of every Jewish child ‘across the millennia’. ‘Would it not be preferable, on the balance sheet of human mercies,’ Steiner asked, ‘if he was to ebb into assimilation and the common seas?’

For the Orthodox believer, armed with the certainties of God’s covenant with His people, the question might not exist, but for those who cannot go down that road Norman Lebrecht’s urgent and moving history provides a different and stirring answer.  ‘Between the middle of the 19th and 20th centuries,’ Genius & Anxiety opens,

a few dozen men and women changed the way we see the world. Some of their names are on our lips for all time. Marx, Freud, Proust, Einstein, Kafka. Others have vanished from our collective memory, but their importance endures in our daily lives. Without Karl Landsteiner, for instance, there would be no blood transfusion or major surgery; without Paul Ehrlich no chemotherapy; without Siegfried Marcus no motor car; without Rosalind Franklin no model of DNA; without Fritz Haber there would not be enough food to sustain life on earth.

I don’t know if Lebrecht actually buys into so simple a description of scientific progress, or whether it is just a good, combative kick-off to a book, but either way the main thrust of the argument is inescapable. For the best part of the past 200 years a small and threatened minority has exerted a creative influence out of all proportion to their numbers, and whether they flaunt it like a Disraeli or a Bernstein, or a convert like Mendelssohn, whether they hate it like Marx, are religious or atheist, Orthodox or Reform, assimilist or Zionist, the one thing they share is their ‘Jewishness’. While it seems a difficult thing to define without slipping into tautology — a ‘Jewish aphorism’ or a ‘Jewish joke’ takes one as close as one is probably going to get — the one quality, for Lebrecht, that distinguishes the ‘Jewish mindset’ is the rabbinical, counter-intuitive ability to think ‘outside the box’. He is quick to refute any suggestion of Jewish ‘exceptionalism’, but whether in the end it is a matter of culture, hereditary experience or the eternal, driven angst of a people who could only fear the worst, the western world has every reason to be grateful to this astonishing explosion of talent.

Amid Italy’s Beauty, a Vista of Decline The country’s rich history contrasts with today’s economic and political turmoil.By Gerard Baker

https://www.wsj.com/articles/amid-italys-beauty-a-vista-of-decline-11567180425

There was a joke that was popular when I was in college. “I had a great summer job this year,” it went. “What was it?” went the reply. “I was prime minister of Italy.”

I didn’t quite get the job this summer, though I did something even better—spending several weeks in the Tuscan countryside, resting, reading and writing. While I was there, on cue, the Italian government collapsed, and this timely juxtaposition of inner serenity and public turmoil prompted a few thoughts about our larger dispensation.

It’s hard to imagine a better place to ponder the arc of our civilization’s history than the rich, hilly lands from Tuscany down to Rome. It’s partly the views—across vine-covered slopes and cypress-studded hilltops to gorgeous honeyed-stone villages—and the long lunches of pasta and red wine that induce a contemplative mood under the relentless sun.

But it’s also the ubiquitous reminders of our historical roots in this fresco landscape. You can make a solid case that the small swath of hilly terrain between Florence and Rome has had more impact on our civilization than any other territory anywhere on Earth.

The empire that grew out of the little city on the Tiber bequeathed a language, literature and institutions whose heritage continues to shape our lives today. A millennium after the collapse of that empire, the Florentines and their local rivals secured achievements in art, architecture, science and commerce that represent the most intense flowering of human creativity in history. The church that still calls itself universal and ruled much of this land for centuries has guided the lives of billions of adherents.

The single-child family is almost standard, so millions of Italians have no siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins.

But what of it all now? The condition of modern Italy evinces the biblical lamentation for another lost civilization: Quomodo sedet sola civitas. How lonely the city stands.

You can see here a metaphor for the contemporary condition of the West. In Rome this week, they have just about finished putting together Italy’s 62nd (I think) government in 75 years. The country’s comic political instability was the source of humor for decades.

But no one is laughing now. Italy has had no real economic growth for almost 20 years. Its accumulated public debt is almost 1½ times the value of its GDP. Just about all the ambitious Italians I meet want their children to be educated in the U.S. or U.K.

The country was among the first in the West to enter a demographic death spiral. The Italian birthrate is below replacement. The single-child family is almost standard, so millions of Italians have no siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins. The extended family, that natural community of love and support, is going extinct.

The traditional centerpieces of life—family, workplace, community—have been eroded to the bone. Religious observance has collapsed. In the beautiful Tuscan churches I visited, there were probably more priceless works of Renaissance art than there were worshipers. A Caravaggio for every communicant.

The Italian genius for creativity is undiminished, though. I was staying near Montalcino, a small city in southern Tuscany of almost ineffable beauty. Fifty years ago, it was headed the way of many similar European towns. But someone discovered that the local grapes produced one of the finest wines in the world—Brunello—and with investment, a lot of hard work and marketing flair, the place exploded with energy.

In much of the country, however, depopulation is advancing. Moving into the empty spaces have been waves of immigrants, many from North Africa and the Middle East. The migrants have filled vital gaps in the labor force, but the transformation of Italian towns has left increasing numbers of citizens resentful, fearful for their identity. CONTINUE AT SITE

EU Supports Iran – World’s Leading Executioner of Children by Majid Rafizadeh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15080/iran-executioner-children

European leaders, of course, who seem never to tire of sanctimoniously posturing on behalf of human rights, are meanwhile pursuing appeasement policies with a government that is called the world’s leading executioner and torturer of children — and others.

Two 17-year-old boys, who apparently did not even did not even know about their death sentences, were flogged before being executed.

Iran’s Islamic Penal Code also allows girls as young as 9 and boys as young as 15 to be executed. Vague charges are generally brought up by the Islamic Republic’s judiciary system or the Revolutionary Court, such as “waging war against God”. These charges can be stretched to allow for presumably lesser acts, such as criticizing the Supreme Leader, to become a crime, so that that an order of execution can be carried out.

Earlier this year, the Iranian government was in the process of executing three Kurdish children: Mohammad Kalhori, Barzan Nasrollahzadeh, and Shayan Saeedpour.

The other two favorite pastimes of which the EU also never seems to tire are: increasing its censorship and demonizing Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, and one that actually implements human rights. When will the EU finally become nauseated by its own hypocritical self-righteousness?

The European Union continues to assist Iran’s ruling mullahs in evading US sanctions through appeasement policies, including a payment mechanism labeled as INSTEX. The initials stand for Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges; the organization is a payment mechanism that will permit European firms and corporations to continue doing business with the Iranian government in spite of US economic sanctions against Tehran.

The European Union recently boasted in a statement:

“France, Germany, and the United Kingdom informed participants that INSTEX had been made operational and available to all EU member states, and that the first transactions are being processed”.

In other words, the EU is legitimizing the despotic theocratic establishment through trade and diplomatic relationships, as well as empowering the it by helping Iran’s ruling clerics gain more revenues.

European leaders, of course, who seem never to tire of sanctimoniously posturing on behalf of human rights, are meanwhile pursuing appeasement policies with a government that is the world’s leading executioner and torturer of children — and others.

Some of the children who have been executed are as young as 12. The Un

Italy: Mass Legalization of Migrants is Suicidal by Giulio Meotti

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14942/italy-mass-immigration-suicide

“In my son’s kindergarten there is a serious integration problem, I have to take him away”…. At the time of enrollment, Mohamed explained, they had seen drawings with flags of all nationalities in the school, but, “when we arrived at school the first day, we found ourselves in a class with all foreign children. The teachers are even struggling to pronounce the children’s names.

The migrant reception center on the island of Lampedusa, the front line of Italy’s migration crisis, is now in a state of “collapse” due to the rapidly rising numbers of arrivals.

“The lifestyle of the migrants will be ours”. — Laura Boldrini, former president of Italy’s Parliament; Il Giornale, 2015.

Will Italians integrate into the new culture of the migrants?

With a native population already shrinking, if Italy is open to the mass legalization of migrants, we should be aware that it will be culturally suicidal.

Describing Italy, Gerard Baker, former editor in chief of the Wall Street Journal, recently wrote:

“In much of the country… depopulation is advancing. Moving into the empty spaces have been waves of immigrants, many from North Africa and the Middle East. The migrants have filled vital gaps in the labor force, but the transformation of Italian towns has left increasing numbers of citizens resentful, fearful for their identity.”

He went on to call this transformation, “a kind of pioneer of Western decline”. Already, the effects of mass migration are becoming dramatically visible in many of Italy’s elementary schools. In just the last few days, examples from two large cities have surfaced.

The first was in Turin, Italy’s fourth largest city, where there are now elementary school classes with not even one Italian child: “In all classes, school principal Aurelia Provenza explained, the percentage of foreigners is very high, equal to 60% of the total number of pupils”.

Framing Flynn The “Kill Shot” sets up a showdown at Deep State Corral. Lloyd Billingsley

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/10/framing-flynn-lloyd-billingsley/

“Lawyers for former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn reportedly filed a motion on Thursday in which they allege that the Department of Justice manipulated a document to frame their client and is withholding exculpatory evidence,” reports Joel Pollack at Breitbart.

Flynn’s legal team, headed by Sidney Powell, alleges that Peter Strzok’s FBI partner Lisa Page substantially altered the notes of Flynn’s interview. The Flynn team also flags former FBI general counsel James Baker as the source of leaks to David Ignatius of the Washington Post. The filing also alleges that former National Intelligence Director James Clapper told the reporter to “take the kill shot on Flynn.” Clapper’s team denied it, but the kill shot was hardly the only concern.

Attorney General William Barr tasked U.S. Attorney John Durham to investigate those 2016-17 events, and last week it emerged that Durham’s probe is now a full-blown criminal inquiry. As Fox News reports this means “Durham can subpoena witnesses, file charges, and impanel fact-finding grand juries.” Some of the potential witnesses boast a high profile.

Former CIA boss John Brennan, who voted for the Stalinist Gus Hall in 1976, is reportedly one of those Durham would like to interview. Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who thought that ISIS was a secular organization, is another. This pair, along with others in the “intelligence community,” are reportedly seeking counsel.