RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/texas-muslim-who-helped-his-father-evade-capture-robert-spencer/

In Fort Worth, Texas on Tuesday, a 32-year-old Muslim named Islam Said was sentenced to ten years in prison for spending the last thirteen years helping his father, Yaser Said, one of the FBI’s Most Wanted criminals, evade capture. Yaser Said was wanted for murdering his two daughters, Islam Said’s sisters, Amina and Sarah Said. What kind of man would know that his father had murdered his two sisters and then help his father avoid justice, rather than turning him in? The answer to that question is far too uncomfortable and inconvenient for law enforcement officials to face honestly.

Islam Said was arrested along with Yaser last August. Apparently he was in hiding with his father, although he doesn’t seem to have had anything to do with the killings. And according to the Dallas Morning News, Islam Said denies that the killings were honor murders or had anything to do with Islam. “It’s something else. Religion has nothing to do with it.”

Yet that raises the question of why Islam Said was with his father at all. If these weren’t honor killings, why would Islam Said go on the run with Yaser and help him hide for all these years? Why wouldn’t he have the normal human reaction of thinking that what his father had done in murdering his sisters was abhorrent, and turn his father in to authorities? Did Islam Said’s commitment to the religion of Islam override that natural human reaction and make him think that what his father had done was good and praiseworthy?

For despite media denial and obfuscation of the fact, honor killing is something that many Muslims believe to be good and in accord with their faith. According to Islamic law, “retaliation is obligatory against anyone who kills a human being purely intentionally and without right.” However, “not subject to retaliation” is “a father or mother (or their fathers or mothers) for killing their offspring, or offspring’s offspring.” (Reliance of the Traveller o1.1-2). In other words, someone who kills his child incurs no legal penalty under Islamic law. In this case the victim was the murderer’s daughter, a victim to the culture of violence and intimidation that such laws help create.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-new-scientific-method-identity-politics-11620581262?mod=hp_opin_pos_1

The Biden administration is considering a laudable major expansion in funding for scientific agencies to shore up America’s research base. The money will help, but it doesn’t obviate the need to scrutinize who will be leading the government’s scientific efforts, as many of us did during President Trump’s term in office. The current emphasis in academic hiring on affirmative action shouldn’t be of concern here. We should expect that merit and accomplishment will guide promotion to the highest levels of scientific leadership. Even if the Biden administration may appear more in touch with the concerns of the scientific community, it isn’t excused from the duty to appoint qualified people to leadership positions.

Many don’t realize that the largest funder of physical science in the country isn’t the National Science Foundation, whose 2022 budget the Biden administration has proposed to increase by 20%, but the Energy Department. Here, too, the Biden administration is proposing a major funding increase.

The DOE Office of Science’s $7 billion budget, set to rise by $400 million, supports research in high-energy and nuclear physics with large accelerators, materials physics with X-ray synchrotrons, fusion and advanced scientific computers, and runs 10 national laboratories employing thousands of researchers.

President Biden has nominated Asmeret Asefaw Berhe, a soil biogeochemist from the University of California, Merced, to lead the Office of Science. Ms. Berhe will be the first black woman to lead the science office, happily lending a more diverse face to science in this country.

Ms. Berhe’s research program on soil chemistry, exploring the capture of carbon dioxide, is relevant to climate-change policy. But her research expertise isn’t in any of the Office of Science’s major programs, and she has no experience as a scientific administrator and minimal experience with the Energy Department itself.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/05/10/dude-wheres-my-workforce/

It must be a nasty surprise for companies that have slavishly repeated Woke mantras and imposed overtly racist policies on workers and even customers in the name of “racial equality” to now find themselves short of the one thing they need to thrive and grow: workers. They can thank Joe Biden and the Woke Democrats for that.

No question, right now companies are sucking for air, finding it impossible to ramp up fast enough as workers stay home in droves rather than return to work.

People are said to be “scratching their heads” over why, after a year of pandemic-forced business closings, workers aren’t desperate to work and earn. After all, just a few months ago the concern was whether they’d have jobs to go back to.

President Biden’s comment that the economy is “moving in the right direction” after the number of new payroll jobs undershot expectations by nearly 800,000 shows a president out of touch with reality.

There are nearly 15 million jobs going begging, according to online job site ZipRecruiter, far more than the 7.4 million “old economy” estimate of the Labor Department. Yet, data from April’s distressing jobs report shows that nearly 9.2 million Americans remain unemployed, 29% of those for more than a year.

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/antony-blinken-continues-to-lecture?token=eyJ1c

How can you feign anger over others’ attacks on a free press when you imprison Assange as punishment for his vital revelations about U.S. officials?

Continuing his world tour doling out righteous lectures to the world, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday proclaimed — in a sermon you have to hear to believe — that few things are more sacred in a democracy than “independent journalism.” Speaking to Radio Free Europe, Blinken paid homage to “World Press Freedom Day”; claimed that “the United States stands strongly with independent journalism”; explained that “the foundation of any democratic system” entails “holding leaders accountable” and “informing citizens”; and warned that “countries that deny freedom of the press are countries that don’t have a lot of confidence in themselves or in their systems.”

The rhetorical cherry on top of that cake came when he posed this question: “What is to be afraid of in informing the people and holding leaders accountable?” The Secretary of State then issued this vow: “Everywhere journalism and freedom of the press is challenged, we will stand with journalists and with that freedom.” Since I know that I would be extremely skeptical if someone told me that those words had just come out Blinken’s mouth, I present you here with the unedited one-minute-fifty-two-second video clip of him saying exactly this:

That the Biden administration is such a stalwart believer in the sanctity of independent journalism and is devoted to defending it wherever it is threatened would come as a great surprise to many, many people. Among them would be Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks and the person responsible for breaking more major stories about the actions of top U.S. officials than virtually all U.S. journalists employed in the corporate press combined.

https://sapirjournal.org/social-justice/2021/05/critical-race-theory-and-the-hyper-white-jew/

Imagine you’ve just been accepted to college. You open your welcome packet. It contains the bestseller all first-year students are expected to read: Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility. You flip to a random page and read, “Only whites can be racist.” You flip to another page where you read that to deny being racist is itself evidence of “white fragility.” You wonder what you’re supposed to do in order to not have “white fragility.” 

You dutifully read the book.

Your first day arrives. You decorate your room with pictures. Your favorite is the one of you and your extended family in Israel when you were little. Your cousins live in Tel Aviv and you love visiting them. You hang a hamsa above your desk. Your roommate seems nice. 

The theme of orientation is “Campus Inclusion.” The first thing you learn about is “microaggressions.” The associate dean of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion explains that perpetrators of microaggressions are often unaware of the harm they’re causing. They can even have good intentions. But as the handout says, “almost all interracial encounters are prone to microaggressions.”

You were looking forward to meeting people from different backgrounds. You didn’t realize it would be so fraught — you don’t want to perpetrate anything. It never would have occurred to you that asking someone where he’s from could be a microaggression. Or that saying “I believe the most qualified person should get the job” is. Even saying “America is a melting pot” is on the list.

You cringe when you read that it’s a microaggression to say “there is only one race, the human race.” That’s something your grandmother always says. Her father, who survived several concentration camps, used to say that, too. They aren’t racist. But according to the list, it’s also a microaggression to deny being racist. 

You wonder whether it’s a microaggression to deny being antisemitic. You look on the list for examples of microaggressions against Jews. There aren’t any.

In your second year, you attend a campus protest against systemic racism. You hear from the Asian American and Pacific Islander Student Union, the Latinx Student Union, the LGBTQIA+ Alliance, the Black Student Union, and the leaders of student government. All of them reiterate in various ways that any system with unequal outcomes is a “white supremacist” system. “We’re either racist or antiracist,” says Sandra, the president of the student government. She adds, quoting this year’s summer reading for all students, Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist: “The claim of ‘not racist’ neutrality is a mask for racism.”