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October 2020

Palestinian Education Mirrors Policy and Vision Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

https://bit.ly/3lkaKHy, https://bit.ly/30HZ8Gw   

The 2020 Palestinian Authority’s Arabic Language, Vol 2, Grade 5, pp 51-61 and Social Studies, Vol. 1, Grade 9, p. 40 herald Dalal al-Mughrabi, who led – and participated in – the March 1978 massacre of 38 Israeli civilians (mostly passengers of two Haifa-Tel Aviv buses), including 13 children and wounding 72. The 5th and 9th graders are encouraged to become “martyrs” and follow in the footsteps of “the crown of the nation” and “the role model of Palestinian resistance… whose struggle portrays challenge and heroism, making her memory immortal in our hearts and minds.”

Education mirrors leadership and society

Education is the most authentic reflection of the identity, core values, culture, track record, worldview and vision of the architects of the education system and (subsequently) the society at-large. 

Education plays a major role in shaping the personality of individuals and society at-large, especially in non-democratic societies, such as the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinian education system has been overseen by Mahmoud Abbas since 1993, when he established it in his capacity as Arafat’s deputy. The Palestinian education system is a byproduct of the 1959 and 1964/1968 Fatah and PLO Charters and the 1974 Palestinian Phased Plan, which stipulate the Palestinian vision.  

Education in non-democratic societies mirrors the worldview of its leaders much more credibly than diplomatic statements, briefings and media interviews. The latter constitute “screen savers,” aiming to conceal the real vision, which is lucidly expressed by the educational curriculum.

While free societies promote education in order to enhance enlightenment, expand information and upgrade the standard of living, rogue regimes employ education as a means to advance their brutal goals and brainwash the younger generation into full-submission, including the perpetration of terrorism.

While free societies foster education as a hothouse of tolerance, peaceful-coexistence and innovative ideas and technologies, rogue regimes exploit education as a hothouse of fanaticism and violent intolerance, as well as terrorism and suicide-bombing.

The 2020-2021 Palestinian school curriculum highlights

Did the VP debate change a single mind? A predictable clash between two solid professionals Charles Lipson

https://spectator.us/single-mind-change-vp-debate/

It was a predictable clash between two solid professionals, who said what they came to say, and not one jot more.

Both evaded the awkward questions. Pence never explained how a second Trump term would handle pre-existing medical conditions and Harris never renounced a potential court-packing scheme. Neither answered questions about abortion beyond repeating their parties’ positions.

We did learn Harris admires Abraham Lincoln. Pence admires police and first-responders. The controversy surrounding these bold positions should die down over the next week or two.

Moderator Susan Page jumped over the low bar set by Chris Wallace, but she made two predictable errors. She asked some biased questions and stuck to a formulaic format that produces two parallel interviews. When a real debate threatened to break out, she stepped in to quash it. Voters were left exactly where they were when the night began.

Oh, yes, and children are our future. The final Q&A made clear. We can all rest a little easier after that was settled.

DOJ Announces British ISIS Terrorists Will Stand Trial in U.S. for Murder of American Hostages By Mairead McArdle

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/doj-announces-british-isis-terrorists-will-stand-trial-in-u-s-for-murder-of-american-hostages/

The Justice Department on Wednesday announced that two ISIS terrorists are are en route to the U.S. to face charges in the the capture and murders of four U.S. citizens in Syria from 2012 to 2015.

Alexanda Kotey, 36, and El Shafee Elsheikh, 32, two former British citizens who were part of a group of four ISIS guards known as “The Beatles,” will make their initial appearance in court later Wednesday in Alexandria, Va.

The two former ISIS terrorists grew up in the United Kingdom, where they became radicalized, the Justice Department said.

They “participated in the abduction of American and European hostages in Syria” including British and Japanese nationals and “allegedly engaged in a prolonged pattern of physical and psychological violence against the hostages, including against American citizens James Wright Foley, Kayla Jean Mueller, Steven Joel Sotloff, and Peter Edward Kassig,” according to a 24-page indictment unsealed Wednesday.

“Today, we remember the victims, Jim Foley, Steven Sotloff, Peter Kassig, and Kayla Mueller, and their families who are forever affected by these senseless acts of violence,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said during a press conference. “These families have suffered with the painful loss of their loved ones at the hands of brutal killers; today’s charges demonstrate the FBI’s dedication and commitment to giving them the justice they deserve. We, along with our partners in the U.S. Government, remain steadfast in our duty to bring to justice those who have harmed our citizens — no matter where they are, and no matter how long it takes.”

Gov. Wanda Vázquez asks Puerto Rican diaspora to vote for President Trump [Miami Herald] Syra Ortiz-Blanes

https://news.yahoo.com/gov-wanda-v-zquez-asks-221249299.html

Puerto Rico Gov. Wanda Vázquez endorsed President Donald Trump in a televised interview on Monday and rallied Puerto Ricans in the diaspora to vote for him in the Nov. 3 presidential election.

“I ask all Puerto Ricans that are listening to go vote. They have to go vote, exercise their right to vote, and evaluate who has Puerto Ricans and their needs in the hardest moment…It’s Donald Trump,” said Vázquez in an interview with the local Telemundo station.

Regarding Trump’s throwing of paper towels at a crowd of Puerto Rican residents after Hurricane Maria in 2017, Vázquez, a pro-statehood Republican, said that people should move forward because “no one is perfect.”

Vázquez, who lost the island’s local pro-statehood primary in mid-August, was sworn in as governor after former governor Ricardo Rosselló was forced to resign in the summer of 2019, following weeks of historic protests calling for him to step down.

Vázquez was supposed to travel to Central Florida and participate in a Trump campaign rally in Sanford last Friday. However, Trump’s rally was canceled after he tested positive for the novel coronavirus. Vázquez said that besides campaigning, she had also planned to meet with the president to discuss “subjects about Puerto Rico.”

“Biden thinks so little of Boricuas that he believes that by playing ‘Despacito’ we will forget how his horrible policies hurt Puerto Ricans,” said Juan Carlos Benitez, a Latinos for Trump board member who is Puerto Rican, of Vázquez’s endorsement. “But Hispanics have not forgotten how Biden presided over the most ‘despacito’ economic growth since the Great Depression.”

New Files Highlight Brennan’s Role Promoting Clinton’s Russia Collusion Narrative By Andrew C. McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/new-files-highlight-brennans-role-promoting

The CIA was not seeking an FBI probe of Clinton; rather, it was pushing an investigation of Trump consistent with her baseless allegations.
On Tuesday, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe declassified and released parts of the documents underlying his earlier revelation about Hillary Clinton’s role in orchestrating the Trump-Russia collusion farce.

The new revelations are important, particularly in clarifying a suggestion, made last week by Ratcliffe, that U.S. intelligence agencies referred former Secretary of State Clinton to the FBI for investigation. That suggestion was then repeated by Senate Republicans and in media commentary (including my column, here).

There was no referral of that kind. That perhaps explains why, in his Senate testimony last week, former FBI director James Comey maintained that he recalled no such thing – to the seeming exasperation of Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.). In reality, when read in conjunction with other information that I addressed in Ball of Collusion, Ratcliffe’s disclosures underscore that the Obama administration, including its law-enforcement and intelligence agencies, was on the same page with the Clinton campaign in peddling the collusion narrative.

Ratcliffe’s revelation last week, in a letter to Senator Graham, related that, in late July 2016, Russian intelligence agents assessed that Clinton sought to blame Donald Trump, her opponent in the presidential race, for Russia’s suspected hacking of Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails. U.S. spy agencies “obtained insight” into this Russian assessment through some highly classified method. That explains, at least in part, why the documents Ratcliffe has disclosed are so heavily redacted (and probably why it has taken so long for the Trump administration to disclose this crucial information).

Clinton’s alleged objective was to divert attention from the scandal over her use of a non-secure homebrew server system to conduct State Department business. According to Ratcliffe, the U.S. intelligence community (IC) judged that the Russian assessment was authentic, in the sense that it really did come from the Kremlin’s intelligence services. The IC drew no conclusion, however, about whether the Russian government actually believed the assessment was true – i.e., as Ratcliffe put it, to some extent, “the Russian analysis may reflect exaggeration or fabrication.” For what it’s worth, I surmise that the Russians probably did believe Clinton had approved this political narrative because it lines up with contemporaneous events – it would not have taken a genius to figure it out. But that is a story for another day (coming soon).

Trump, Atlas: Time to Face Down Coronavirus Fear Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2020/10/06/trump-atlas-time-to-face-down-coronavirus-fear/

It’s increasingly likely the election will be a referendum on Coronavirus and its after-effects, which means Trump’s new tack is a risky, but necessary, one.

The uproar over the president’s COVID-19 diagnosis made one thing abundantly and terrifyingly clear: Coronavirus hysteria is here to stay—and there are signs it might be getting worse seven months after we first confronted the unknown disease.

Rather than accept that nearly all the early advice dispensed by self-proclaimed “experts” was not just wrong but resulted in devastating consequences that will impact the country for years to come, lots of Americans—including the entire news industry and leaders of both political parties—are endorsing more punitive government decrees to “stop” a virus that poses almost no serious health threat to the overwhelming majority of Americans.

People are fixated on masks; the president of the United States isn’t allowed to take a brief ride in an SUV with people trained to take a bullet on his behalf without enduring widespread condemnation for “risking the lives of others” even though everyone wore a mask and other protective gear. Most of Monday night’s town hall meeting with Joe Biden revolved around mask use.

Panic rules daily life at the same time we have fewer reasons to panic. Recent data crunched by the Centers for Disease Control confirms that nearly everyone under the age of 70 who contracts the disease recovers; 95 percent of adults over 70 recover, too. Most sufferers report mild symptoms; overly-sensitive tests give false positives for people showing no symptoms at all. Hospitals are not overflowing with COVID patients and, with few exceptions, never were.

Defending Trump from a Tornado of Liberal Lies By Janice Shaw Crouse

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/10/defending_trump_from_a_tornado_of_liberal_lies.html

The fog of lies clouding the current political climate has all but completely hidden the truth.  Let’s clear some things up so the American public can see what’s going on.  Here are just a few of the major lies and the issues that have been wildly distorted.  

Trump is a liar: Rolling Stone claims that Trump is a “Hall of Fame” liar.  Other leftists call him a “pathological liar.”  CNN says the “defining characteristic” of the Trump presidency is the “bombardment of lies.”  You can even buy T-shirts with that logo.  The internet is full of references to the Washington Post’s claim that President Trump has made more than 20,000 false claims, averaging 23 lies a day.  A close look reveals that any generalized statement, any opinion some snowflake finds “hurtful,” any rounded-off number, and anything the left disagrees with is ipso facto judged by these supposed fact-checkers to be a lie.  Note that these “lies” include general statements like Trump saying he has “tremendous support” from blacks; the Washington Post deems this a lie because no poll had been taken to prove it.

When Trump said he was “ready to send the National Guard to Minneapolis and Seattle if local officials requested it,” some local officials said he was lying.  Trump claimed that Obama and Biden “spied” on his campaign and they “knew what was going on.”  This is repeatedly declared a vicious lie even though evidence has come to light showing that actually happened and that top officials knew it — including Número Uno himself!

Unlike his predecessor, whom the press idolized, the current president’s opinions and evaluations are considered lies — for instance when he claims something is “disgraceful” and the fact-checkers’ subjective evaluation differs, it’s deemed a lie.  If the president rounds off a number into an approximation instead of giving the specific number, it’s considered a lie.  In fact, under the gotcha standards the media apply to Trump’s comments, all public figures lie constantly.  I’d go so far as to dare a fact-checker to examine any politician’s rhetoric by that standard and find fewer such “lies.”

Jack Cashill: the Fascist America that Kamala Promises

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/10/the_fascist_america_that_kamala_promises.html

I do not use the term “fascist” lightly, but when even the liberal Los Angeles Times opens an article with a paragraph like the one that follows, I think fascist is apt:

“California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris is drawing fire from supporters of an anti-abortion activist whose undercover videos and identity cards were seized by the state Department of Justice this week after Harris’ political campaign sought to drum up support for Planned Parenthood.”

The activist is David Daleiden, 27 at the time of the April 2016 raid on his Huntington Beach apartment. In 2016, Harris was running for California’s open U.S. Senate seat. At the time of the raid, Harris’s campaign website was asking supporters “to take a stand and join Kamala in defending Planned Parenthood.”

In the course of Planned Parenthood’s history, no one had presented a greater threat to the organization’s federal funding than the young journalist whose apartment Harris’s agents had just raided.

In the way of background, Daleiden and his partner Sandra Merritt had gone undercover for two years posing as the brokers in the fetal tissue market.

Is The Left Preparing To Steal Your Vote?

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/10/07/is-the-left-preparing-to-steal-your-vote/

Growing signs that the anti-Trump left in the Democratic Party is gearing up to make this one of the most fraudulent elections in our nation’s history bear close watching. Illegitimate votes should never be allowed to sway a presidential election, especially true for one whose outcome might well decide the future of our republic.

With the clock ticking down to Election Day, it was heartening to see that the Supreme Court on Monday stepped in to stop questionable changes made to South Carolina’s absentee-voting laws mere weeks before the election. Such on-the-fly tinkering by state or local election officials or judges can only lead to confusion and canceled votes. Which might well be the intent.

But with COVID-19 serving as a rationale for Blue States moving to vote-by-mail, the possibility for massive voter fraud around the nation has become very real.

A new report by the Public Interest Legal Foundation conclusively and exhaustively documents the immense nature of the problem. It created an enormous database of voting practices and irregularities across the nation, based on data from 42 states. (The group is suing three states, Illinois, Maine and Maryland, for not supplying voting data.)

82% of Black People Want More Money Spent Fighting Crime Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2020/10/82-black-people-want-more-money-spent-fighting-daniel-greenfield/

In other news that surprises no one except white liberals and libertarians…

On the question of whether spending on crime should be increased, decreased, or kept the same, 84 percent of Black respondents said that spending should be increased. And when asked the same about welfare spending, 28 percent of Black respondents agree that spending should be decreased while only 31 percent adopted the more liberal view that welfare spending should be increased.

We have a war on crime because black leaders wanted one.

I wrote about this back in February before the madness began.

Rep. Charles Rangel, who helped the 1994 crime bill pass, had been rallying for action since the 70s. At a CBC meeting with President Nixon, it was Rangel who urged the Republican to take a stand.

“Public enemy number one in the United States is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new, all-out offensive,” Rangel told him.

And again in June.

A Monmouth University poll however shows that 72% of African-Americans are satisfied with their local police departments. Despite what you’re seeing on television, 21% of African-Americans are very satisfied with the local police and another 51% are satisfied.