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Ruth King

Refugee Camp for Families of Islamic State Fighters Nourishes Insurgency Violent ideology and money-making schemes flourish at Al-Hol in Syria, which houses women and children; punishment for dancing is death By Isabel Coles and Benoit Faucon

https://www.wsj.com/articles/refugee-camp-for-families-of-islamic-state-fighters-nourishes-insurgency-11623254778?mod=hp_lead_pos5

The United Nations warned last year that Islamic State is trying to use al-Hol escapees to develop cells in Europe.

AL-HOL, Syria—A refugee camp set up to shelter women and children after the defeat of Islamic State has instead turned into a mini-caliphate itself, where female leaders nurture the group’s violent ideology and run money-making schemes that help keep the insurgency alive outside the razor wire.

Authorities have recorded more than 40 murders, at least 10 of them beheadings, in the 736-acre camp since the start of the year. Most of the victims were accused by Islamic State of collaborating with camp authorities, according to the Rojava Information Center, an independent volunteer-staffed research organization based in northeast Syria.

Late last year, an Iraqi woman was strangled in front of her children with an electric wire after she posted a video on Instagram of herself dancing in her tent, an activity forbidden under the strict Islamist doctrine imposed by the group, say people in contact with al-Hol prisoners. On March 20, another 18-year-old woman, also Iraqi, was shot dead after being accused of being an informant, these people said.

The U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-led militia responsible for guarding al-Hol, say they lack the resources to properly secure the camp, which has grown into a small city of more than 62,000. Most Western nations have refused to systematically repatriate citizens who moved to Syria during Islamic State’s rise and were trapped there after its collapse.

What remains of Islamic State is making the best of the international stalemate. In this slum-like camp dubbed “Europe’s Guantanamo,” the group enforces its hard-line version of Islam, exfiltrates some detainees to its strongholds in Syria and takes a cut on the millions of dollars raised by sympathizers to free them, according to a recent United Nations report.

“Everyone in the camp wants to get out,” said Amal Bilifad, a Moroccan mother who says she unwittingly followed her husband to Syria and tried in vain to flee the self-declared caliphate after he was killed in an airstrike.

In recent months, fugitives from al-Hol have made it back to Sweden, the Netherlands, Finland and Belgium, according to judicial records and counterterrorism officials.

Part of the difficulty in controlling the camp lies in its complex structure. It is both a detention facility and a haven for people who were displaced by the conflict and cannot return home. Its biggest section is made up of Iraqi families including men, almost half of the residents, closely followed by a separate area made up of Syrians.

Biden OMB Doubles Down on Redefining Mothers as ‘Birthing People’ in Budget Proposal By Caroline Downey ???!!!???

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/biden-omb-doubles-down-on-redefining-mothers-as-birthing-people-in-budget-proposal/

During a congressional hearing Wednesday, Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Shalanda Young defended the 2021 Biden budget proposal’s redefinition of mothers as “birthing people.”

Republican Representative Jason Smith, a top-ranking member on the House Budget Committee, noted that the replacement of the word “mother” for the gender-ambiguous phrase, in reference to funding maternal health care, was unprecedented for a budget plan.

“The budget requests $26 million to reduce maternal mortality and eliminate race-based disparities in outcomes among ‘birthing people.’” Smith said. “This is a shift from recent budgets that referred to maternal health issues as women’s issues. I’ve never heard the term before, can you explain what it means?”

“There are certain people who do not have gender identities that apply to female and male, so we think our language needs to be more inclusive on how we deal with complex issues,” Young responded.

Incorporating jargon of both gender and racial inclusivity, Biden’s budget stipulates that over $200 million in funding will be allocated to reduce the high rate of maternal mortality and “race-based disparities in outcomes among birthing people.” The latter term is instead of “mothers,” which encompasses the strictly female capabilities of both child delivery and child-rearing.

Woke Inquisitors in the Medical World By Joel Zinberg

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/06/woke-inquisitors-in-the-medical-world/

A recent ‘controversy’ reveals how politically correct ideology is harming health care.

Four hundred years ago, Italian astronomer Galileo was persecuted for advancing Copernicus’s theory that the earth and other planets rotate around the sun. This heliocentric theory violated the prevailing belief dating back to Aristotle and engrained in Christian theology that the sun and planets rotate around a stationary earth. Galileo was tried for heresy and placed under house arrest for the remainder of his life. Science would eventually vindicate Galileo.

Today’s scientists and physicians face a different orthodoxy that explains all disparate health outcomes as the result of structural or systemic racism. Doubters and those who investigate genetic and scientific alternative explanations face their own latter-day inquisition. Just ask Howard Bauchner, editor in chief of JAMA — the Journal of the American Medical Association — who was recently forced to resign. While the remaining JAMA editors offered fulsome praise in a farewell editorial citing his accomplishments, including a commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, make no mistake: He was purged for a thoughtcrime.

Dr. Bauchner’s offense was that he presided over JAMA when it aired a podcast titled “Structural Racism for Doctors — What Is It?” in late February. The podcast featured two white physicians — JAMA deputy editor Ed Livingston and Mitchell Katz, an editor at JAMA Internal Medicine, president and CEO of New York City’s public-hospital system NYC Health + Hospitals, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Katz described structural racism as societal policies or practices that perpetuate racial inequality, as opposed to individuals’ racist beliefs. Dr. Livingston wondered if “structural racism is an unfortunate term to describe a very real problem.” (emphasis added) He worried that people offended by being labeled racist would not address the societal barriers to equal opportunity. JAMA’s tweet promoting the podcast stated, “No physician is racist, so how can there be structural racism in health care? An explanation of the idea by doctors for doctors. . . .”

The Coming Backlash against Woke Public Schools By Michael Farris

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/06/the-coming-backlash-against-woke-public-schools/

Parents have had enough of the politicization of their local schools.

The reports coming out of the school systems of Portland, Ore., and its suburbs are simply terrifying. Children are being taught the narrative that America is fundamentally evil, and the rioters who continue to wreak havoc on that once-beautiful, quiet city are held up as heroes. As Christopher Rufo has reported, “The schools have self-consciously adopted the ‘pedagogy of the oppressed’ as their theoretical orientation, activated through a curriculum of critical race theory and enforced through the appointment of de facto political officers within individual schools.”

And it is working. The schools have become, Rufo notes, “a school-to-radicalism pipeline.”

But it is not just in radicalized Portland or Seattle where these forces hold sway. In my own home county of Loudoun County, Va., the radicals have seized control and plunged with abandon in a radical direction, leaving much of our community gasping at the temerity of their tactics and shuddering at the implications for the future of our community and our nation should they succeed.

Loudoun is the school district that suspended its teacher, Tanner Cross, for having the audacity to speak for one minute at a recent school-board meeting in opposition to a proposed sexual/political mandate. Let that sink in. Before the policy was in place, a highly regarded teacher was suspended for simply disagreeing with a proposed policy.

The legal organization I lead, Alliance Defending Freedom, represents Tanner. I was astounded when, in the midst of a hearing seeking a temporary injunction to reinstate him, which the court granted Tuesday, the school district’s lawyer volunteered the fact that he was the eighth employee in the past two years who has been suspended for out-of-school speech. Apparently, consistently violating the First Amendment rights of its employees makes everything all right in the minds of this school district.

Parents know that the curriculum has recently turned hard to the left. Racial and sexual politics are the prime directive of the school system. Every child will be immersed. And every teacher will recite the party line. No dissenting allowed.

The school district seems oblivious to the fact that they are losing not just conservative parents, but the great bulk of the middle-of-the road families who simply want their children to get a quality academic education.

The leadership of the Loudoun County Public Schools may be woke, but they are blind. They do not seem to see the growing signs of an educational revolution that is stirring in communities all across the nation. Parents have simply had enough of the politicization of their local schools and the attempts to turn their children into young but full-throated activists for the progressive movement.

The Poisonous Fruit of Appeasing Iran’s Mullahs by Khaled Abu Toameh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17452/appeasing-iran-mullahs

The Arabs clearly see what the Biden administration, Britain, Germany and France are refusing to see — that Iran has ambitions not only to acquire a nuclear bomb, but also aggressively to export its “Islamic revolution” and terrorism on a global scale.

It is also important to note that one of the missions of Quds Force is to “liberate Jerusalem and Palestine,” a euphemism for the elimination of Israel.

“The Quds Force is in Yemen to launch attacks on Mecca and Medina and their surroundings [in Saudi Arabia]. The goal of the mullahs in Tehran is to attack Muslims and inflict the greatest possible harm on them.” — Walid Al-Ghamidi, Saudi writer, YouTube, June 5, 2021.

“The Houthi’s missiles and drones nearly hit the holy sites in Mecca and Medina. How can Iran invest in the bombing of Saudi Arabia while claiming… that it seeks to liberate Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque? Iran’s claim to support Islamic holy sites is not related to any religious beliefs. It is related to regional ambitions, expansionist dreams, and striving to export the Iranian revolution to various countries in the region.” — Mohammed Hassan Mufti, Saudi author, Okaz, June 3, 2021.

“There is no dispute among experts and political analysts that Iran is a direct cause of the complete destruction of at least four Arab countries”: Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen. — Mohammed Hassan Mufti, Okaz, June 3, 2021.

“America’s entry into the Iranian nuclear agreement will…. enable the mullahs to obtain nuclear weapons and more than a billion dollars. Some of the money will go to Iran’s agents in the region.” — Bader bin Saud, Saudi columnist, Okaz, May 24, 2021.

“Does Iran want to liberate Jerusalem and give it to the Palestinians, or does it want to add it to the group of Arab capitals it occupies, such as Damascus, Baghdad, Beirut and Sana’a?” — Faisal Al-Qassem, prominent Syrian writer and journalist, Al-Quds Al-Arabi, May 14, 2021.

Qassem also pointed out that some commentators have come to prefer keeping Jerusalem under Israeli control over its liberation by Iran: “Look at the capitals occupied by Iran: Baghdad has become, according to the United Nations, the dirtiest capital in the world, while Beirut has become the largest dumpster in the Middle East. As for Damascus, it turned into a ruin, while Sana’a returned to the Middle Ages.” — Faisal Al-Qassem, quoting an Arab in Al-Quds Al-Arabi, May 14, 2021.

“Jerusalem is not in the mind of the regime. Rather, what concerns Iran is killing Arabs and occupying their countries.” — Dr. Bahera Al-Sheikhli, Iraqi author, Al-Arab, May 21, 2021.

“The truth is that Iran established the Quds Force to occupy Arab countries, recruit Arab traitors into terrorist organizations to overthrow Arab governments, and threaten Arab national security.” — Abdel Munim Ibrahim, Emirati political analyst, Akhbar Al-Khaleej, May 12, 2021.

The Arabs, however, are sending a very different message to the Biden administration and other Western powers: Appeasing Iran by reviving the nuclear deal, lifting sanctions or giving it money will only assist the Iranian regime in perpetrating more crimes and increasing instability and terrorism in the region.

Iran is continuing to exploit the Palestinian issue to promote its expansionist schemes in the Middle East and meddle in the internal affairs of Arab countries, including Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and Bahrain.

Denmark Cracks Down on Mass Migration “The Current Asylum System Has Failed” by Soeren Kern

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17450/denmark-mass-migration

The Danish Parliament has passed a new law that will allow the government to deport asylum seekers to countries outside of the European Union to have their cases considered abroad. The legislation is widely seen as a first step toward moving the country’s asylum screening process beyond Danish borders.

“Denmark is committed to finding new and sustainable solutions to the present migration and refugee challenges that affect countries of origin, transit and destination. The current asylum system is unfair and unethical by incentivizing children, women and men to embark on dangerous journeys along the migratory routes, while human traffickers earn fortunes.” — Danish Immigration Minister Mattias Tesfaye.

“Gang crime in no way belongs in Denmark. When foreigners or persons to whom we in Denmark have granted Danish citizenship participate in the gangs’ ruthless crime, it is a fundamental expression of contempt for the society of which they are a part. Therefore, it is good news that Parliament has today passed the government’s bill to provide the opportunity to revoke citizenship in the event of serious gang crime to the serious detriment of the state’s vital interests. It is a goal for the government to ensure that Danes can be safe in their everyday lives.” — Minister of Justice Nick Hækkerup.

The Danish Parliament approved a first-ever Repatriation Law which authorizes the government to deport failed asylum seekers and other migrants illegally in the country…. The Danish government tightened citizenship rules…. The Danish government announced a package of new proposals aimed at fighting “religious and cultural parallel societies” in Denmark…. The Danish Parliament approved a new law that bans foreign governments from financing mosques in Denmark…. The Danish Parliament approved a ban on Islamic full-face veils in public spaces.

“We hope that people will stop seeking asylum in Denmark.” — MP Rasmus Stoklund.

The Danish Parliament has passed a new law that will allow the government to deport asylum seekers to countries outside of the European Union to have their cases considered abroad. The legislation is widely seen as a first step toward moving the country’s asylum screening process beyond Danish borders.

The law, proposed by the Social Democrat-led government, is aimed at discouraging frivolous asylum applications. It has been greeted with fury by those who favor mass migration, presumably out of fear that other EU countries may now follow Denmark’s lead.

Denmark, which already has some of the most restrictive immigration policies in Europe, is at the vanguard of European efforts to preserve local traditions and values in the face of mass migration, runaway multiculturalism, and the systematic encroachment of political Islam.

Who Loses When the China Bat Cave Implodes? Charles lipson

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/06/08/who_loses_when_the_china_bat_cave_implodes.html

The story about Wuhan’s “wet market” is taking on water. We’ve moved well past the “trust but verify” stage. We’re now in the “don’t trust a damn thing they say” stage. In this case, “they” refers mostly to the Chinese Communist Party. But the public’s mistrust has spread to our own government’s public health experts, and to much of the Western media, as well.

We still don’t know where the COVID-19 pandemic originated, but the more we learn, the less China’s official story sounds right. The World Health Organization’s year-long endorsement of Beijing means nothing. At this point, even the WHO is starting to say we need a more thorough investigation. Good luck with that. China has prevented independent scientists from conducting any serious, open inquiry of the pandemic’s origins. That won’t change.

China’s secrecy tells us sometimes, but we can’t be sure what. Remember, U.S. intelligence agencies and the George W. Bush administration made the wrong inference from Saddam Hussein’s secrecy about weapons of mass destruction. Saddam impeded international inspectors to search freely for WMDs, which he possessed previously. There was no proof he had destroyed them. Yet he blocked unannounced international inspections of Iraqi sites that might contain WMDs. The natural inference was that he still had those weapons and was hiding them. American and British intelligence researched that conclusion. The CIA director famously told President Bush it was a “slam dunk.”

It wasn’t. What Saddam was actually hiding was that he didn’t have WMDs. He was hiding that less from his Western enemies and more from his dangerous neighbor, Iran, and possibly from internal enemies in Iraq itself. That mistaken inference is worth remembering as we ponder the still-murky origins of the Wuhan virus. We know China is hiding something. What we don’t know is what it is hiding and why.

Beijing could be hiding that a natural virus escaped from the lab.
Beijing could be hiding that the escaped virus was artificially enhanced, made more contagious and lethal (called “gain of function”).
Beijing could be hiding the fact that China’s military was involved in this gain-of-function project, or at least in some aspects of the lab’s research.
Beijing could be hiding that Chinese political leaders knew, early on, that the virus spread from human to human and that it kept this crucial finding secret for months. During that period, Beijing and the WHO were falsely telling the world that the virus could not spread from human to human.
Beijing could be hiding that Chinese leaders not only knew the virus was contagious, but that they acted on that knowledge by allowing Chinese nationals to travel freely around the world, spreading the disease, while sharply restricting travel within China from Wuhan. And, finally,
Beijing could be hiding anything and everything simply because that’s how totalitarian regimes operate. They always hide information, control the flow, and prevent outside inspections.

Whatever they’re hiding, they have powerful reasons. The Chinese Communist Party knows how high the stakes are if it is found responsible for a deadly lab leak and for keeping that information secret when others could have acted promptly and saved countless lives. Americans will be outraged, as they should be, and Washington will be forced to take serious action.

Critical Race Theory’s Poisonous Roots Trace Back To Harvard University Harvard bears a unique responsibility for disseminating the toxic ideology known as critical race theory into our national discourse.By Kenny Xu

https://thefederalist.com/2021/06/09/critical-race-theorys-poisonous-roots-trace-back-to-harvard-university/

In the past several months, multiple state legislatures have made moves to ban critical race theory — the latest hot-button issue in contemporary American politics — from their public schools. Activists have opined that critical race theory is either the cure for racial injustice in America or the most dangerous force threatening our democracy.

Plenty of writers have explained the main tenets of the theory, some in great detail. But where did it come from? How did an obscure academic theory come to dominate the national political conversation in only a few years?

The answer to these questions lies in the origins of the theory. Critical race theory emerged from one of America’s foremost institutions: Harvard University. Tracing the history of critical race theory reveals just how intimately connected it is with America’s most prestigious university.

In the wake of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, legal scholars grappled with how the sweeping legislation would affect America’s racial struggles. By the 1970s, it was clear that anti-discrimination law and racial integration had not fully healed the nation’s race relations. This frustrated many civil rights advocates, who after Martin Luther King Jr. died in 1968 lacked a moral lodestar to underpin their faith in American democracy to solve racial problems.

The Road Leads Back to Harvard

Borrowing from Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci, who posited a theory of “cultural hegemony” by the capitalist ruling class, a group of Ivy League law professors developed a school of thought called “critical legal studies,” synthesizing Gramsci’s theory of hegemony with racial classification. The most important thinkers of the group of critical legal theorists were all Harvard Law professors: Derrick Bell, Roberto Unger, Duncan Kennedy, and Morton Horwitz.

INTERMISSION

No posting until June 10…rsk

Fifty-four years after June 7, 1967 … taking a moment to reflect Daniel Gordis

https://danielgordis.substack.com/p/just-a-pile-of-rocks?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo

Today is June 7 – the secular anniversary of Israel’s capturing the Old City of Jerusalem. Israel has had the Old City for so long – for 54 of its 73 years – that it’s hard for us to remember Israel without it. It’s hard to remember Israel merely nine miles wide, or Israel without the Old City or the Western Wall. But what’s really almost impossible to fathom is something we hardly ever think about: Israel with no holy places whatsoever.

Israel before 1967 had already accomplished much, but it had a blemished soul; it was a Jewish state, but it had no hallowed Jewish places.

To bring Israeli history to life, to make it three dimensional, Israel from the Inside will periodically examine famous speeches, events, eulogies, songs and the like that afford us a more robust understanding of the Jewish state, certainly more than the news can, and even more than many books do. To understand the veritable messianic sentiment that the Six Day War unleashed, we have to return to a speech little known outside Orthodox circles today, delivered on Yom Ha-Atzma’ut 1967 by Rabbi Tzvi Yehudah Kook, the son of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the Chief Rabbi of the Yishuv (the pre-state Jewish community in the Land of Israel).

By 1967, Rabbi Kook the elder had already died (he did not live to see the state founded), but his son, Tzvi Yehudah, was at the height of his powers. And on Independence Day in 1967 (a few weeks before the war), he addressed the students at his yeshiva, explaining why unlike virtually everyone else on that famous night of the United Nations vote on November 29, 1947, he could not rejoice. (In a later post, we’ll examine Amos Oz’s now classic description of that night, one of the most powerful pieces of Israeli writing I’ve ever encountered.)