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Ruth King

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Lies They Tell about the Temple Mount By Erielle Davidson

By on May 21st, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/05/the-lies-they-tell-about-the-temple-mount/

The notion that Jewish prayer must be silenced in order to keep violent rioters at bay is absurd.

Attempts to ban Jews from worship at their holiest site have become normalized and yet would be unimaginable anywhere else.

The Temple Mount has continued to be a political flashpoint in the Israeli–Arab conflict. During the most recent Ramadan, Palestinian Arabs rioted continuously throughout the month, stockpiling rocks and fireworks at the sacred site. The rioters alleged that the violence was “defensive” in response to Israel possibly altering the “status quo” of operations at the Temple Mount.

But what is the actual arrangement at the Temple Mount?

Since Israel liberated Jerusalem from Jordanian occupation in the Six-Day War, the Temple Mount has remained formally under Israeli sovereignty. However, in an effort to cool tensions in the Muslim world, Israel has permitted the day-to-day administration of the Temple to be overseen by the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf, a Jordanian institution that exercises guardianship over various holy sites. To this point, Article 9 of the 1994 Israel–Jordan Peace Treaty stipulates that both parties agreed to “provide freedom of access to places of religious and historical significance.”

While this arrangement appears reasonably conciliatory, it has developed an inescapable element of absurdity: The current status quo is that Jews are permitted to visit the Temple Mount, but they are not allowed to pray at the Temple Mount, which remains the holiest site in Judaism. Only Muslims are permitted to pray at the site. This may be normal in illiberal Muslim regimes such as Saudi Arabia, but in Israel, this is the only place where a religious group is banned from worship at their holy site — and it happens to be the Jews.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Another Bit of Academic Foolishness By George Leef

By on May 21st, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/another-bit-of-academic-foolishness/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=corner&utm_term=third

The perceived need among academics to pander to “underrepresented” groups is insatiable. Consider the invented term “Latinx.”

In today’s Martin Center article, Garion Frankel does so and regards it as “failed academic activism.”

Frankel, himself of Hispanic origin, writes, “Every time I receive an email from Texas A&M asking me to take part in a ‘Latinx’ group or activity, it makes my blood boil. It’s another example of the paternalistic panderings of the academic elite. It’s humiliating. Latinx’s similarities to Orwell’s Newspeak (intentionally ambiguous language used to spread political propaganda) have been well-documented, as has academia’s general lack of cultural awareness. But universities’ commitment to the word goes deeper than merely pandering to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. If DEI were the only goal, universities would treat Latino college students as people rather than as potential assets.”

The purpose of this bit of linguistic nonsense is to try to create more students with a revolutionary spirit. That’s always foremost in the minds of “progressives.” Fortunately, it seems to be a flop.

Frankel explains, “The reason Latinx is failing where Chicano succeeded is simple. While the Chicano movement saw academics turning student activists towards the very real problems affecting millions of people with similar backgrounds and values, today’s academics are asking people to change the way they talk and how they see themselves in order to cater to the desires of an extremely small minority of Latinos.”

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

When Will Antisemitism Be Taken Seriously? By Robert Cherry (March 22)

By on May 21st, 2022

https://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2022/03/24/when_will_antisemitism_be_taken_seriously_823368.html

Antisemitic hate crimes in New York City have recently increased by 409%, representing more than half of all hate crimes citywide. Many of these incidents targeted Orthodox people dressed in distinctive clothing, like the Jewish man who was punched in Bed-Stuy on Feb. 7 while walking on Shabbat, for which a 15-year-old was charged with assault and committing a hate crime. Yet it has not led civil rights organizations to act, unless they can connect these attacks to rightwing extremists or white supremacists, even when the evidence does not support such a link.

These organizations focus on instances of rightwing antisemitic propaganda rather than on those who are committing actual antisemitic hate crimes. For example, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) recently issued a report, “White Supremacist Propaganda Continues to Remain at Historic Levels in 2021.” It highlighted flyers posted by three obscure white supremacist groups in New England, none of which were responsible for any other antisemitic acts.

A similar instance occurred when New York antisemitic assaults jumped two years earlier. Then-New York mayor Bill de Blasio repeatedly insisted that the attacks were driven by a white-supremacist movement connected to Donald Trump, and a report by the ADL on the spike in antisemitic assaults in New York followed De Blasio’s lead. The report noted, “In 2018, ADL documented 67 white supremacist propaganda distribution incidents in New York State, 10 of which were antisemitic in nature,” although all the assaults were more specifically in New York City.

As reporter Armin Rosen pointed out, these spurious suggestions were made “despite clear evidence that … many of the attacks are being carried out by people of color with no ties to the politics of white supremacy.” Indeed, FBI statistics demonstrate that black Americans are disproportionately perpetrators of hate crime attacks on other groups, including Asian Americans.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Hillary Clinton approved Trump-Russia leak to media, her campaign manager says Erik Larson

By on May 21st, 2022

https://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/ap_news/washington/hillary-clinton-approved-trump-russia-leak-to-media-her-campaign-manager-says/article_dd742c3e-caf2-55f2-8ad0-f4af2d0b0574.html

Hillary Clinton personally signed off on a plan in 2016 to quietly pitch to the media the now-discredited theory that computer servers at former President Donald Trump’s company had a secret communications link with a Russian bank, her former campaign manager told a jury.

Robby Mook, a witness in the trial of a former Clinton campaign lawyer charged with lying to the FBI, on Friday testified that he and others at the campaign “weren’t totally confident” in the veracity of the server data, but they sent it to reporters anyway a few months before the election.

“All I remember is that she agreed with it,” Mook said of Clinton. “She thought we made the right decision.”

The purported server link between the Trump Organization and Russia-based Alfa Bank was ultimately debunked by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Former campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann is now on trial for allegedly lying to the FBI when he said he wasn’t representing any client when he brought that claim to the agency’s attention in September 2016.

Mook testified that neither he nor anyone else at the campaign directed Sussmann to take the information to the FBI and that the main focus was tipping off the media.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Princeton Targets a Dissenting Professor The school may purge Joshua Katz after he criticized a faculty letter.

By on May 21st, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/princeton-targets-a-dissenting-professor-joshua-katz-christopher-eisgruber-11653086208?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

Everyone knows American universities are dangerous places these days if you dare to express unpopular views. But Princeton University’s handling of classics professor Joshua Katz is still shocking for its procedural double jeopardy.

This week brought grim news for Joshua Katz, a classics professor who drew ire on campus in 2020 after criticizing a faculty letter on race relations. The Journal reported Thursday that Princeton president Christopher Eisgruber has asked the university’s trustees to fire Mr. Katz, who has tenure. The official complaint is a procedural charge, based on Mr. Katz’s supposed noncompliance in an investigation into his relationship with a student.

Princeton found in 2018 that the professor had maintained a consensual sexual relationship with an undergraduate student more than a decade earlier. Mr. Katz was suspended for a year without pay. Yet the university opened a new investigation of his conduct after Mr. Katz publicly criticized a faculty letter on race relations in 2020.

His colleagues decided the second time around that Mr. Katz hadn’t been fully forthright in the first investigation, and concluded that he could be punished again. The dean of faculty insists that Mr. Katz’s politics “is not germane to the case.” And if you believe that, you have been living in a cave off-campus.

Yet Mr. Eisgruber claims the proposed firing has nothing to do with political speech.

Mr. Katz became a target the moment he criticized a statement signed by hundreds of his colleagues that called for radical changes to Princeton’s policies on race and employment. In the weeks after George Floyd’s murder, the faculty authors sought specific concessions for nonwhite professors, including “course relief and summer salary.”

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

China Starting Next Global Crisis By Gobbling Up Sri Lanka by Gordon G. Chang

By on May 21st, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18545/sri-lanka-crisis-china

Sri Lanka is only the world’s opening act.

Events in Sri Lanka also highlight how China is going about dominating the world. Beijing is corrupting national leaders, drowning them in debt, and ultimately destabilizing their governments. Beijing, it appears, is particularly targeting democracies.

China is the world’s predatory lender, something evident from its Belt and Road Initiative, also known as BRI. Beijing’s grand infrastructure project specializes in roads, ports, and railroads that have, like the Sri Lankan projects, little or no commercial justification. So far, 146 countries have signed BRI memo agreements with Beijing.

The Chinese have established a pattern. “China extends debt on onerous terms, backs up authoritarian governments when there are financial collapses or civil disobedience, and then takes everything it can find,” Cleo Paskal of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies told Gatestone.

In December 2017, Beijing took control of the Hambantota port…. Now there are concerns that Hambantota will eventually become a Chinese naval base. China’s admirals have long eyed Sri Lanka…

A base in Sri Lanka would allow Chinese aircraft and surface combatants as well as submarines to cut sea lanes in the Indian Ocean and force next-door India to divert military assets to a threatening presence.

Sri Lanka is now looking for a bailout from the International Monetary Fund, but that is not necessarily a good idea. The international community should not be helping a voracious China gobble up small, vulnerable societies.

If the IMF bails out Sri Lanka without ensuring that it is no longer aligned with Beijing, it will have subsidized Chinese investment and politically reinforced a country that becomes a Chinese proxy.” – Cleo Paskal, Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, to Gatestone, May, 2022.

On May 12, India confirmed that it would provide a desperate Sri Lankan government 65,000 metric tons of urea, pursuant to an existing $1 billion credit line. The sale, which overrides New Delhi’s ban on the exports of the commodity, relieves severe pressure on the government of Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

Sri Lanka since the end of March has been wracked by violent protests. “Shoot-on-sight” orders have for the most part restored order, but the unrest has led to the replacement of Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, once the country’s dominate political figure. His brother, the president, is unlikely to survive the tumult. The ongoing economic and financial crisis is Sri Lanka’s worst since independence from Britain in 1948.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Putin’s Useful Idiots: How U.S. Climate Extremists Are Funding Russia’s Agenda By: Victoria Coates and Jennifer Stefano

By on May 20th, 2022

https://thefederalist.com/2022/05/19/putins-useful-idiots-how-us-climate-extremists-are-funding-russias-agenda/

The desolation of U.S. energy security has bolstered Vladimir Putin’s dangerous geopolitical aims.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is illuminating an ugly truth: the anti-fracking war on America’s energy security is being waged by well-funded, radical U.S. environmental groups, as well as interests tied directly to Vladimir Putin. For years, the U.S. government has investigated Russian financial ties to environmental groups that push for ending U.S. fossil fuel production and have successfully shut down fracking sites and pipelines, to the detriment of U.S. workers and consumers.

Who benefits? Putin, because the desolation of U.S. energy security has bolstered state-owned Gazprom and his dangerous geopolitical aims.

Before the war on Ukraine, the U.S. Congress began exposing connections between Russia and little-known foundations that donate to major environmental groups such as Sierra Club and National Resource Defense Council (NRDC). The Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works released a 2014 report noting a small group of rich Americans was controlling environmental groups and collaborating with questionable offshore funders to maximize support. In 2017, two congressmen called for further investigation of the connection between these funders and Russia.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

America the Miserable Misery loves company. And unfortunately for America, the merchants of misery will be in charge for a long time. By Julie Kelly

By on May 20th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/05/19/america-the-miserable/

My daughter’s college graduation last weekend was the first convocation held at the university since 2019. Although everyone was grateful for a return to normalcy, the pandemic still clouded the ceremonies; professors recounted the ways in which the students’ lives had been upended, commending them for soldiering on despite the unprecedented disruption. 

Their praise only acted as a cruel reminder of the time, friendships, and experiences needlessly and irretrievably lost.

Campus, of course, never really returned to anything close to normal. Remote classes stifled learning; mask mandates and social distancing rules stifled activity. Any mild bump in local cases prompted stern warnings from the dean that soul-crushing lockdowns could return. What should have been one of the most enjoyable periods in their lives will be remembered instead as a black hole of fear and isolation.

Visibly weary, her classmates gathered on Saturday afternoon to trudge across the finish line. But their torment was not yet over. The same adults who enforced Medieval disease policies under the guise of modernity and science and who stole a big chunk of their youth had to take one last swipe at their high-paying captives.

One speaker after another harangued the students about their duty to confront every societal ill, real or perceived. According to the Betters with Letters seated on the dais, life isn’t about pursuing individual passions or creating a vibrant social life, or—God forbid—raising a family. Personal fulfillment can only be attained by acting as one-man armies in the woke war against -isms and -phobes, the keynote speaker—a man who presumably hasn’t left a college campus in any professional capacity since his 18th birthday—admonished the crowd.

America quite literally took a back seat during the proceedings; one U.S. flag sat among an assortment of flags far behind the stage. When asked to rise for the national anthem, it took everyone a few moments to locate where Old Glory had been stashed. Few participated in singing along with the vocalist, and even fewer held their hands over their hearts.

After we exited the building, news spread of the horrific massacre that took place about 150 miles away. And several hours later, partygoers celebrating their last moments of college were fleeing for safety near the town’s two most popular bars as a gunman opened fire, shooting one employee in the stomach.

Make America Happy Again

Happiness is so central to the health of the nation that the founders wisely included a mention of it in the second sentence of the Declaration of Independence. And the right to the pursuit of happiness, they noted, isn’t something conferred by the state but is God-given and a right the government cannot legitimately take away. Seeking happiness isn’t just a self-serving endeavor but the basis of a free, functioning society. “The necessity of pursuing happiness is the foundation of liberty,” John Locke wrote in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Pumping Up Prices Blame the Russians says Biden, despite the facts pointing to him. John Stossel

By on May 20th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/05/pumping-prices-john-stossel/

The price of gas keeps rising.

“The reason for that is because of Putin’s war,” said President Joe Biden.

But that’s impossible. Most of the price rise came before Putin attacked Ukraine.

So some politicians simply blame “corporate greed.”

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse accuses the oil industry of collecting “excess profit.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren even introduced a bill to ban “price gouging.”

This is just economic ignorance, as my new video explains.

“If big oil could raise prices anytime they wanted and get away with it, then why were they so cheap in 2020, 2019, 2018?” asks the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Ben Lieberman.

Lieberman points out that companies are always greedy. Greed didn’t just start now. They were just as greedy when gas prices fell in 2019 and early 2020.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Forgetting the Genocide of the Yezidis While the international community hides behind virtue signalling. Zidan Ismail

By on May 20th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/05/genocide-yezidis-has-been-forgotten-zidan-ismail/

In the summer of 2014, the Islamic State (ISIS) committed genocide of the Yezidis in their largest city in Iraq and the world, Sinjar.

The Yezidis are a religious minority in the Middle East; their main center is Iraq. At the time that the genocide began, their number was no more than 550,000 people, according to the United Nations when it was evaluating the crimes committed by ISIS against the Yezidis, which were classified as genocide and crimes against humanity.

It seems clear that what happened at the time had a goal, namely to wipe out the presence of the Yezidis. While it appeared initially that the world had grasped the significance of these crimes, now the Yezidi cause is largely being neglected amid the many crises and regional wars around the world.

Iraq historically has been an area of great religious diversity; the genocide of the Yezidis was one aspect of the Islamic State’s efforts to destroy that. The captivity and rape of Yezidi women, using them as commodities and even opening slave markets in the twenty-first century, was not just mass exploitation and sexual assault; this type of attack was used as a means of ethnic cleansing.

One of those who observed these events, “Salloum,” an iraqi researcher and writer living in Baghdad and working at a Baghdad university, explains: “It was the commitment of women in war with the aim of intimidating and humiliating a religious minority and taking away their dignity, and also with the aim of influencing the ethnic composition of this religious minority, and therefore this act is part of the efforts (genocide) that tried to change the Yezidis and their beliefs and to influence the ethnic and religious composition of the region.”

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