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Ruth King

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The Deep State Comes Out Of The Shadows by John Merline

By on October 21st, 2019

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/

“Trump’s critics say that his claims about a deep state are the result of his paranoid delusions. But after what the country has witnessed over the past three years, and now the bragging by State Department officials bent on getting Trump out of Washington, it’s the denial of the deep state that is delusional.”

Two news stories published over the weekend had the same message. The State Department was out to get President Donald Trump after suffering years of “frustration.” At least these denizens of the deep state are being honest.

Politico’s 2,000-word story – titled “The Revenge of the State Department” – begins by reporting on the fact “current and former Foreign Service officers have defied Trump administration orders and trudged to Capitol Hill to testify before House committees investigating whether to impeach the president.”

These officials, the story says, are “furious,” “terrified,” “incredulous,” “disappointed,” “fed up,” “livid,” with a “deep well of resentment,” in an “unbearable” situation.

Some of them, Politico reports, are using the hearings as a “platform to air long-held grievances over Trump.”

And their colleagues are “hailing them as heroes.”

What, exactly, are these career State Department bureaucrats angry about?

They’re mad that several of them “were demoted or sidelined following attacks by the conservative media.”

They complain about what they see as Trump’s “dangerous brand of diplomatic malpractice.”

They’re upset that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo didn’t publicly support Marie Yavonovitch after Trump removed her from her post as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, and that Pompeo “is willing to sell out the department to keep favor with Trump.”

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Poll: Majority of Germans alarmed over anti-Semitism following synagogue attack The poll was published after German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer announced a six-point plan to combat anti-Semitism and right-wing extremism.

By on October 21st, 2019

https://www.israelhayom.com/2019/10/20/poll-majority-of-germans-alarmed-over-anti-semitism-following-synagogue-attack/

A majority of Germans expressed that “a lot more” anti-Semitism has spread throughout their country, according to a new poll taken one week after the Oct. 9 attack on a synagogue in the German town of Halle.

“That’s a lot more – +19 points – than one year ago,” stated the German broadcaster ARD, which conducted the poll, on its website, in comparison to last year’s finding that just 40% of Germans believed anti-Semitism in the country is alarming.

Only 35% of respondents thought Jew-hatred wasn’t increasing in Germany.

The poll was published after German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer announced on Thursday a six-point plan to combat anti-Semitism and right-wing extremism through tougher regulations to limit online hate speech along with cracking down on purchases of illegal guns and other weapons by members of the far Right.

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It’s time critics saw Boris for the Churchillian figure he is Tim Stanley

By on October 21st, 2019

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/10/20/time-critics-saw-boris-churchillian-figure/

Boris Johnson was fantastic yesterday. I’m not going to bother to be objective about it. No one else does, so why should I?

Ever since the blond magnificence threw his hat into the leadership ring, we’ve been told he’s incompetent and far-Right. Well, an idiot doesn’t do “the impossible” and renegotiate the Withdrawal Agreement, and as for far-Right, his words in the Commons were so temperate and liberal they could teach the world to sing.

Let us “bring together the two halves of our hearts”, he told the Commons, meaning Leave and Remain. It was a strategic appeal, of course: the deal can only pass if enough Labour MPs back it, so he has to soften his language. But this also happens to be what the PM believes. He sits in the One Nation tradition and his Euroscepticism has always been nuanced by a love of the continent. He is anti-EU but pro-European.

That’s the sense in which he’s truly Churchillian. I can hear teeth itching when I write that. No, I’m not saying he’s a reincarnation of one of the greatest Britons who ever lived: BoJo has never won a war or the Nobel Prize for literature. But the comparison is there in the rhetoric.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Our Alliance With Turkey Through NATO Is a Mistake Valuing means over ends is a bad idea. And alliances should never become ends in themselves. Angelo Codevilla

By on October 21st, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/10/20/our-alliance-with-turkey-through-nato-is-a-mistake/

Who wags? Who gets wagged? What good are alliances? Most defenses of President Trump’s abandonment of America’s Kurdish co-belligerents to Turkey’s cruelties are insincere—for example, Trump was elected to leave the Middle East; his detractors want to stay there. No doubt some do. But the real argument is over how we leave. Nothing obliges us to leave in a way that puts our friends into the hands of our enemies.

Another insincere defense: Americans should not die in a fight between foreign peoples. Of course not! But the Kurds—by far the region’s most formidable fighters—don’t need us to die for them. In fact, they died for us in the fight against ISIS. If we were to give them good weapons, they could take care of themselves. Why not do that?

One of the more thoughtful arguments against this, however, so touches the heart of the matter as to be self-indicting: Yes, the Kurds are our friends. But they are not our allies. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey is an enemy. But Turkey is an ally, part of NATO, and hosts an important U.S. air base.

The truth of that, however, raises the substantive question: how do the benefits we get from this or any alliance stack up against the costs of forbearing an ally who works against our interest?

The question applies not just to our alliance with Turkey today but, more importantly, to NATO as a whole. The closer we look at NATO, the more difficult it is to judge that it has ever been of net value to America. That, in turn, leads us to a deeper appreciation of how American statesmen from George Washington to Theodore Roosevelt—the men on Mount Rushmore—regarded alliances.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Why Do They Hate Him So? Victor Davis Hanson

By on October 21st, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/10/20/why-do-they-hate-him-so/

Democrats, NeverTrump Republicans, left-liberal celebrities, journalists, and academics all revile Donald Trump because he is trying and often succeeding to restore a conservative America at a time when his opponents thought that the mere idea was not just impossible but unhinged.

Joe Biden claims he wants to take Trump behind the gym and beat him up.

Senator Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) jokes that she would like to go into an elevator with him and see Trump never come out alive. Robert De Niro has exhausted the ways in which he dreams of punching Trump out and the intonations in which he yells to audiences, “F—k Trump!”

The humanists and social justice warriors of Hollywood, from Madonna to Johnny Depp, cannot agree whether their elected president should be beheaded, blown up, stabbed, shot, or incinerated. All the Democratic would-be presidential nominees agree that Trump is the worst something-or-other in history—from human being to mere president.

Former subordinates like Anthony Scaramucci, Omarosa, and Michael Cohen insist that he is a racist, a sexist, a crook, a bully, or mentally deranged—and they all support their firsthand appraisals on the basis they eagerly worked for him and were unceremoniously fired by him.

The so-called deep state detests him. An anonymous op-ed writer in the September 5, 2018 New York Times bragged about the bureaucracy’s successful efforts to ignore Trump’s legal mandates—a sort of more methodical version of the comical Rosenstein-McCabe attempt to stage a palace coup and remove Trump, or the Democrats efforts to invoke the 25th Amendment and declare Trump crazy, bolstered by an array of Ivy League psychiatrists who had neither met nor examined him.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Do Not Trade with a China that Lies, Cheats, and Steals by Gordon G. Chang

By on October 21st, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15045/trade-china-cheating

[I]t is especially difficult to trade with a thief, especially when the thief views commercial contact as an opportunity to steal more…. This crime is essential to the achievement of the extraordinarily ambitious Made in China 2025 initiative [to dominate 11 crucial technology sectors].

By his silence, Liu allowed Trump to think he had a deal when, in reality, he did not. So Trump made a real concession — the tariff deferral — for a promise that was not a promise.

[T]he “engagement” of China is Washington’s “greatest foreign policy failure.” – Arthur Waldron, University of Pennsylvania.

If all this were not bad enough, Xi’s future plans are especially pernicious… Americans are going to have to make a choice: take Chinese money or maintain a free marketplace of ideas. The disengagement of the two economies is, of course, unfortunate, but it is necessary as China presses Americans and leaves them no choice if they are to defend freedoms and sovereignty.

On October 11th, Beijing harvested another big benefit. Trump agreed to defer a tariff increase scheduled for the following Tuesday. Having gotten what it wanted, China then began to play hardball. On October 17, Beijing denied it had made a commitment to buy $40 billion to $50 billion of American farm products.

Judging from Beijing’s breaking one more trade arrangement in recent days, it is evident the communist regime in China is not able to work with the United States — or any other country for that matter. So let’s not trade with a China that lies, cheats, and steals.

“This won’t revolutionize the U.S.-China relationship or the terms of trade between us, but it shows that the two countries can work together on an important issue,” said Clete Willems of Akin Gump to Bloomberg, referring to President Trump’s “phase one deal” announced October 11. “Learning to do so is critical to avoid a broad deterioration of all aspects of our relationship, which is not in anyone’s long-term interest.”

Despite what Willems said, it now is in the long-term interest of the United States to walk away from trade deals with the People’s Republic of China.

Why? Four reasons: First, communist China has never accepted the notion of comparative advantage, which underpins the global trading system. Yes, the mercantilist Chinese believe we should buy their products, but they, the masters of non-tariff barriers and other forms of predation, have worked hard to keep foreign goods out of their market. How can America trade with a state that does not believe in the benefits of trade?

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EDUCATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trump Administration Calls Out Bias in Middle East Studies Programs by Raymond Ibrahim

By on October 21st, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15005/bias-middle-east-studies

“[T]here is a considerable emphasis placed on understanding the positive aspects of Islam, while there is an absolute absence of any similar focus on the positive aspects of Christianity, Judaism, or any other religion or belief system in the Middle East.” — US Department of Education, Notice of a Letter Regarding the Duke-UNC Consortium for Middle East Studies, September 17, 2019.
Virtually all Middle East Studies departments on campuses everywhere can, to varying degrees, be accused of focusing on irrelevant and superficial topics, sidelining language skills, whitewashing Islam — in short, indoctrinating students in highly distorted views.
The letter also raises questions concerning… foreign funding. A 2018 report , for instance, found that “elite U.S. universities took more than half a billion dollars” from Saudi Arabia in gifts and donations “between 2011 and 2017.” Why would a nation that treats women like chattel, teaches Muslims to hate all non-Muslims… that has elite units dedicated to apprehending witches and warlocks — become a leading financial supporter of America’s liberal arts? The answer is regularly on display: so that recipients can show their gratitude by indoctrinating students in a fictitious Middle East and Islam—both of which are supposed victims of America.
The reason U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East has tended towards disaster is arguably because policymakers depend on advisors and analysts who are products of such Middle East studies departments — as are the many scholars and “experts” who insist that Islam is a “religion of peace.” Until such time as Middle East Studies teach their topics with objectivity, balance, and above all, honesty, failure is likely to continue dominating America’s response.

The Trump administration recently called out and threatened to cut federal funding for the Consortium for Middle East Studies (CMES), a program run by Duke University and the University of North Carolina. CMES was accused by the U.S. Department of Education of misusing a federal grant to advance “ideological priorities” and unfairly promote “the positive aspects of Islam,” particularly in comparison to Judaism and Christianity.

The Department of Education summarized its position in an August 29 letter that opens with a reminder that institutions of higher education may receive federal funding via Title VI of the Higher Education Act of 1965:

The Secretary is authorized–

(i) to make grants to institutions of higher education, or combinations thereof, for the purpose of establishing, strengthening, and operating comprehensive foreign language and area or international studies centers and programs; and

(ii) to make grants to such institutions or combinations for the purpose of establishing, strengthening, and operating a diverse network of undergraduate foreign language and area or international studies centers and programs.

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BOOKS, HISTORY Comments turned off

Women Under the Spell Augusto Zimmermann

By on October 21st, 2019

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2019/10/women-under-the-spell/

The connections of early feminism with secular ideologies such as liberalism and socialism are well known. I have myself written about these in several of my articles, including a chapter in my book on Western legal theory. However, the spiritual dimensions that underpinned the early feminist movement in the nineteenth century were entirely unknown to me until I discovered this important book on the subject.

Dr Per Faxneld obtained a PhD in History of Religions at Stockholm University in 2014. He is a professor at Stockholm University, was a visiting professor at Cambridge University in 2014, and is currently a post-doctoral fellow at Mid-Sweden University. He has published numerous peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on the history of Satanism and Western esotericism.

Satanic Feminism is based on Faxneld’s doctoral dissertation, which was awarded the Donner Institute Prize for Eminent Research on Religion. It discusses how prominent feminists—primarily between 1880 and 1930—used Satan as a symbol of their rejection of the so-called “patriarchal traits of Christianity”. It shows that these women were inspired by the period’s most influential new religion, Theosophy, and how the anti-Christian discourses of radical secularism affected feminism.

Satanic Feminism sheds a new light on the early feminist movement. It discusses neglected or unknown aspects of the intellectual connections of early feminism with Satanism in a way that nobody before Faxneld has dared to do. In doing so, he richly illustrates how leading figures of the early feminist movement, such as the suffragette Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the actress Sarah Bernhardt and the poet Renée Vivien, viewed God as the precursor of patriarchy and Satan as an ally in the fight against it.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Fat black professor of gender studies blames Trump for black female obesity By Thomas Lifson

By on October 21st, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/10/fat_black_professor_of_gender_studies_blames_trump_for_black_female_obesity.html

No, this is not from the Babylon Bee.

It actually comes from the Oprah Winfrey Network, and a segment featuring Professor Britney Cooper, who sports a PhD from Emory University and who currently is an associate professor in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University. With that sort of background, perhaps it isn’t surprising to eternalize blame for obesity on racism and seem to indict President Trump for it. In fairness, she only mentions Trump before launching her indictment of racism as the cause of black female obesity.

Here are few screen grabs of her subtitled rant, followed by the entire segment embedded in a tweet, in case you want to hear her, the moderator, and the audience all enthusiastically accept the theory that white people in general and President Trump in particular are what make a disproportionate number of black women obese.

While this is all funny, it is also tragic. Obesity is unhealthy and unhappy to endure. Blaming others doesn’t ever lead to change in a positive direction.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Like Him or Not, Trump is Uniquely Suited for Such a Time as This By Scott S. Powell

By on October 21st, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/10/like_him_or_not_trump_is_uniquely_suited_for_such_a_time_as_this.html

With the constant drumbeat from the mainstream media, Democrats now hope that the whirlwind in Washington of the so-called impeachment investigation will spread so much smoke that people won’t be able to see what’s going on, except to subliminally conclude that with all that smoke around Donald Trump, there must be a fire, and that it’ll die down with his removal from office.  

In fact, President Trump has so much smoke around him because history has thrust on him the role of American firefighter-in-chief charged with extinguishing corruption in government and in the media, as well as fighting a myriad of other smoldering battles — from protecting the nation’s sovereignty and borders and redressing unfair trade deals and cost-sharing of military defense alliances to promoting policies to secure energy independence and drive economic growth, with a particular passion to deliver opportunity for those at the bottom.   

With a second term, Trump is likely to become a historically consequential political realignment leader — what Andrew Jackson was to the Democrats and Abraham Lincoln was to the Republicans.  He has already broadened the base of the Republican Party, and with a little more political jujitsu he can easily make more inroads and gain support from minorities and other constituencies who feel they’ve been neglected, or worse — have been used as political pawns by the Democrat Party elites, election cycle after election cycle.  

The United States is absolutely unique in human history being founded on two bedrock tenets.   First, the American people are endowed with unalienable individual rights that come from God and not the state — life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, along with privacy rights, due process and a presumption of innocence.  Secondly, the legitimacy of the American government established by the Constitution comes solely from the will of the people determined by their choice through elections. States and districts choose their senators and representatives by popular vote, but the chief executive — the President — is elected by an Electoral College system, with electors being proportionally equal to each state’s number of U.S. House Representatives plus one for each of its two U.S. senators. The Founders’ wisdom regarding a need for an Electoral College thus established a blueprint for a governing a large and diverse country by balancing the preferences and will of the people living in sparsely populated states with the different priorities of densely populated states and urban areas that typically have a greater concentration of government dependency and welfare — and the sort of patronage and political corruption that comes with that.   

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