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Ruth King

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Environmental Playacting Today’s youth will fight climate change, we’re told—but they’re no more willing to give up luxuries than anyone else. Heather Mac Donald

By on September 10th, 2019

https://www.city-journal.org/todays-youth-climate-change

Youth will save the planet, according to the elite narrative about global warming. It was young voters who were “asking the tough questions” and holding “Democrats’ feet to the fire” at last week’s Democratic climate-change pontificon, reported the New York Times. A high school student challenged Julian Castro about his previous support for fracking and demanded to know why “should we trust you . . . to transition our economy to renewables?” Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar was grilled by a Columbia University student about her possible fealty to the beef and dairy industries. A Ph.D. candidate at Northwestern University berated Joe Biden for allowing a natural gas company executive to host a fundraiser for him; fossil-fuel companies are committing “crimes against humanity,” announced this shoo-in for a prestigious professorship.

The claim about youth’s transformative commitment to radical environmental change is—based on informal observation—bunk. The cardinal rule when it comes to environmental virtue-signaling is that people give up what they’re willing to give up. Young people are no different. If being environmentally sound required sacrificing anything that a self-described environmental warrior actually valued, the conversation would quickly change to a different topic. One’s own habits are necessary; it’s everyone else’s that need to change.

This always-unreached threshold for environmental sacrifice is particularly notable on the part of celebrity Greens, with their fortress-like SUVs, multiple residences, and massive carbon footprints—whether it’s the cavalcade of yachts and private jets that brought such luminaries as Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Zuckerberg, and Katy Perry to Google’s three-day climate-change summit in Sicily this July; environmental crusaders Prince Harry and Meghan Markle jetting off to Elton John’s French estate; or Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter’s “quick day trip” to Los Angeles from New York just ahead of the CNN climate-change debate. A police caravan drives New York City mayor Bill de Blasio 11 miles from his mayoral mansion in Manhattan to his favorite gym in Brooklyn. “Everyone in their own life has to change their own habits to start protecting the earth,” he has intoned, but taking the subway is not one of those changes appropriate for him.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The best speech on Brexit — from a shocking source By Thomas Lifson VIDEO

By on September 10th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/09/the_best_speech_on_brexit__from_a_shocking_source.html

Keep in mind that, according to most of our media (and even more so the European media), we are supposed to regard with fear the German “ultra-right-wing” political party, the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).  Also, keep in mind that we are supposed to believe that the Brexit battle pits Brits against a united Europe that is horrified at their effort to shatter the European Union.

But, in fact, the arrogant, unaccountable transnational organizations, of which the E.U. is a leading example, have served global elites better than ordinary citizens of their constituent countries.  

Watch this speech in Germany’as parliament, the Bundestag, by AfD’s co-leader Alice Weidel, and start to realize that populism is a global force in the highly industrialized world and that the complaints we Americans feel against our elites, and the complaints Brits have against ceding control to the E.U., are all of a piece.  She does not hesitate to point her finger at France, which is leading the resistance to a negotiated Brexit.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Tulsi Gabbard: The Rest of Democratic Primary Field Has Embraced ‘Open Borders’ By Jack Crowe

By on September 10th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/tulsi-gabbard-the-rest-of-democratic-primary-field-has-embraced-open-borders/

Representative Tulsi Gabbard (D., Hawaii) derided her fellow Democratic presidential candidates during a recent interview for embracing permissive immigration policies, accusing them of support for “open borders.”

Asked if she believes “open borders” is a fair descriptor of the positions embraced by her Democratic primary opponents, Gabbard told YouTube host Dave Rubin that it was an accurate label and dismissed the oft-repeated Democratic rejoinder that conservatives use the phrase to tar their political adversaries.

“I don’t support open borders. Without secure borders, we don’t really have a country,” she said. “And while some of the other Democratic candidates will say ‘well, open borders that’s a conservative argument and that’s not really what’s being advocated for’ — if you look at the practical implications of some of the things they’re advocating for, it is essentially open borders.”

Long-shot presidential contender Julian Castro, the former secretary of housing and urban development under President Obama, managed to pull the Democratic primary field leftward on immigration during the campaign’s first debate, by asking those on stage to commit to decriminalizing illegal border crossings. All ten candidates on stage, with the notable exception of Beto O’Rourke, endorsed Castro’s plan, as did eight out of the ten candidates who took the stage the following night.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

All in the Comey Family By Victor Davis Hanson

By on September 10th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/09/all-in-the-comey-family/

Baker, Page, Priestap, and Strzok are toadies who aided Comey’s efforts to turn an election and kneecap a presidency.

B y his own admission, the recently fired FBI director James Comey leaked at least four memos of private presidential conversations — at least one of them containing some classified secret material — variously to his lawyers and through liaisons to the press. In both phone calls and personal meetings, Comey never gave any hint to the president he served that he intended to leave a written record of the conversations for what turned out to be his own selfish agenda.

Comey said his intent by leaking his versions of these conversations was to force a brouhaha that would in turn prompt Acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to appoint a special counsel. That gambit worked to perfection when, shortly after Comey’s scripted media leaks, Robert Mueller, his predecessor, former FBI director, and longtime friend, was appointed special counsel, apparently to do what the now fired James Comey could not.

Mueller immediately put together a left-wing “dream team” of “all stars” — Clinton supporters, Clinton donors, and former attorneys of Clinton interests. As we can now conclude from his often clueless congressional testimony, Mueller himself essentially outsourced control of the investigation’s direction to Andrew Weissman, another strong Clinton partisan and Trump opponent.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel’s Baseball Team: Now Starring Actual Israelis Over the past year, more than a dozen Jewish-American professional ballplayers have obtained Israeli citizenship under the nation’s Law of Return By Jared Diamond

By on September 10th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/israels-baseball-team-now-starring-actual-israelis-11568119037

The underdog Israeli team that emerged as a sensation at the 2017 World Baseball Classic came with an asterisk. Despite the name of the country splashed across their uniforms, almost none of the players who helped upset powerhouses like South Korea, Chinese Taipei and Cuba were actually Israeli. Instead, the roster featured a collection of Americans participating under the tournament’s heritage rule, which granted eligibility to anybody with a Jewish grandparent or spouse.

Buoyed by that unexpected success, Israel now hopes to earn a spot in the Tokyo Olympics next year, with baseball returning to the program for the first time since 2008. Unlike the WBC, the Olympic Charter requires all athletes to be a national of the country they represent—a problem, since only about 1,000 people play baseball in Israel.

So Israel found a solution: Over the past year, more than a dozen Jewish-American professional ballplayers have obtained Israeli citizenship under the nation’s Law of Return, a process known as making aliyah—Hebrew for “ascent.” With their help, Israel is one of 12 teams currently playing in the European championship, with the top five advancing to the Olympic qualifiers in Italy.

“Playing for us was the impetus for this,” said Peter Kurz, the president of the Israel Association of Baseball. “But they all feel something toward Israel. There’s a feeling among them that we’re doing something different, doing something more. The WBC experience was incredible. This could be even bigger.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Taliban Terrorists Have No Place at Camp David By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on September 10th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/09/peace-talks-taliban-terrorists-camp-david/

They remain aggressive foes determined to strike at America. They must be killed or captured, not invited to negotiations.

‘The Taliban, per se, is not our enemy.” Thus spoke Joe Biden, Obama-administration vice president and resident foreign-affairs solon. It was 2011 and the administration was rationalizing its desperation to negotiate its way out of Afghanistan, where we then had about 30,000 troops (more than three times the current deployment). It was nothing new. Hamid Karzai, president of the fledgling Afghan government propped up by the Bush administration after the Taliban’s ouster, had been seeking negotiations for years . . . only to be spurned by the Taliban.

Of course, the Taliban did not get to weigh in on Biden’s babble. If they had, they would surely have said bluntly what they have demonstrated blatantly for 20 years: They are absolutely our enemy, not just per se but in aeternum.

If, as he stated in a Saturday Twitter thread, President Trump actually was planning to host Taliban leaders at Camp David this past weekend for what he and the administration describe as “peace talks,” that boggles the mind.

The Taliban terrorists do not wish to hold “peace talks” with us. As shown by the humiliating negotiations that the Trump administration’s emissary has been conducting in Qatar, the Taliban wish, at best, to chat about the terms of our surrender — i.e., about how willing they may be to let the president’s determination to withdraw our troops look like an honorable armistice rather than a case of our being chased out of their country. Allowing their leaders into our country — into Camp David for an audience with the president — would be every bit as outrageous as President Obama’s release of five Taliban commanders from Guantanamo Bay (in exchange for deserter Bowe Bergdahl, no less). It would be every bit as outrageous as the Obama administration’s issuance of a visa to Hani Nour Eldin — a member of an Egyptian terrorist organization that, like the Taliban, conspires with al-Qaeda to kill Americans — so he could come to Washington for talks about post-Mubarak Cairo.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Ruthie Blum Was Netanyahu’s latest nuclear ‘bombshell’ election propaganda?

By on September 10th, 2019

https://www.jns.org/opinion/was-netanyahus-latest-nuclear-bombshell-election-propaganda/

You’d think that this was a bigger bombshell than the news of Iran’s continued and very concrete efforts to develop nuclear warheads for its long-range missiles. You know, in its pursuit of regional hegemony and its stated aim of “wiping Israel off the map.”

(September 10, 2019 / JNS) Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took to the airwaves on Monday evening to reveal the existence and exact location of yet another secret nuclear-weapons development site in Iran—this one at Abadeh, in the Fars province of Tehran.

In a brief message that he delivered first in Hebrew and then in English—pointing to a screen with aerial photos obtained by Israeli intelligence—Netanyahu said that the site was exposed in the trove of documents that the Mossad had retrieved last year from a warehouse in Turquzabad.

“When Iran realized that we uncovered the site, here’s what they did: They destroyed the site. They just wiped it out. They wiped out the site. … They destroyed the evidence or at least tried to destroy the evidence. … It’s incredible. Every time we reveal, they try to cover up their tracks,” he said.

Netanyahu went on: “Even before that, Iran knew that we were on to them, so they cleared the site. They cleared it of these capacities, they cleared them, and then they actually covered up the site. This is a [literal] cover-up. They put gravel on it to try and hide their traces. But they didn’t. The IAEA found traces of uranium that Iran hid in these sites. That’s a direct violation of the NPT, the nonproliferation treaty.”

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Trump Fires John Bolton In Final Break After Months Of Internal Policy Division

By on September 10th, 2019

https://www.npr.org/2019/09/10/724363700/trump-fires-john-bolton-in-final-break-after-months-of-policy-divisions President Trump has fired national security adviser John Bolton, the lifelong proponent of American hard power, after months of division between the men over the direction of foreign and national security policy. Trump announced the news Tuesday on Twitter. Bolton was Trump’s third national security adviser and continued the pattern of departures by advisers […]

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Life and Death of a Communist Tyrant A look at the long and brutal reign of Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe.

By on September 10th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274890/life-and-death-communist-tyrant-discover-networks

Robert Gabriel Mugabe, the longtime ruthless dictator of Zimbabwe, died on September 6 at a hospital in Singapore where he had been under observation for several months for an undisclosed illness. Let us take a close look at this communist tyrant’s long reign of racist brutality and inhumanity.

Mugabe was born in 1924 at the Kutama Mission in Zvimba, then Southern Rhodesia, only months after the country became a British crown colony. Son of a peasant farmer and carpenter, he began his education at a nearby Jesuit mission and then taught in various schools while studying for certification to go on to the University of Fort Hare in South Africa, from which he received a B.A. in English and History. He then studied at Drifontein, Salisbury (now Harare), Gwelo, and Tanzania, and eventually obtained by correspondence a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of London. Next he began teaching in Accra, Ghana (1958-60), where he met Sally Hayfron, his first wife.

When Mugabe studied at Fort Hare, which was paid for by apartheid South Africa’s white taxpayers, it was the premier black university of all English-speaking Africa, producing a number of famous African leaders. At that institution Mugabe became radicalized, as did such future “freedom presidents” as Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere and Zambia’s Kenneth Kaunda and future rivals over absolute power in Rhodesia like Herbert Chitep. By the time Mugabe returned to Rhodesia in 1960, he was a committed Leninist.

The term “Leninist” is used purposefully. There is no indication that Mugabe ever read Marx. If anything, he perhaps read Lenin and Stalin‘s brief treatises on how to take and keep power.

The Zimbabwe liberation movements of the 1970s — primarily Mugabe’s ZANU and its competitor ZAPU (Joshua Nkomo’s Zimbabwe African People’s Union) — had a confused history of idealistic rhetoric, Marxism-Leninism, and systematic atrocities.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Will Denmark Become Like Sweden? by Judith Bergman

By on September 10th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14839/denmark-crime-sweden

“Denmark is still relatively far from having reached the kind of crime epidemic that is currently plaguing Sweden. However, given the proximity of the two countries, the open borders and the apparent free flow of criminals across the borders — not to mention Denmark’s own crime level — there seems little to stop the situation in Denmark from getting out of control and becoming increasingly more like Sweden. ”

Sweden is exporting not only its bombings to Denmark. Gang crime, with its shootings and murders, has also traveled across the border.

Denmark has experienced 10 bombings since February. The latest took place on August 27 in a residential complex, Gersager, in the Greve area, very close to Copenhagen. No one was injured, but the building was seriously damaged. This year, the Swedish city of Malmö has experienced 19 bombings. An August 16 editorial in the Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidende said:

“No one wants Swedish conditions where shootings and bombings have reached an extreme degree. In addition to conflicts in the gang environment, there have been bombing attacks against police stations as well as courthouses, a town hall and the Swedish Tax Agency in Malmö in recent years.”

The piece was published after the Danish Tax Authority in Copenhagen was bombed on August 6, destroying its façade; one person was injured. Two Swedish citizens were charged with the attack. “The Swedish suspects have names that indicate that they have a different ethnic background than Swedish, but there is as yet no knowledge of the motives that may have driven them,” Berlingske wrote.

A few days later, on August 10, Copenhagen experienced another bombing that caused material damage, this time against a police station in Nørrebro.

Shortly after the bombings of the Danish Tax Authority and the Copenhagen police station, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen held a press conference. The government, she said, views the bombings “as an attack on our authorities and thus also our society”. She added that the government plans to strengthen the border with Sweden. “We have a challenge. It should not be the case that you can travel from Sweden to Denmark and place dynamite in the middle of Copenhagen”. She stressed that the border “has our full attention. And it needs to be strengthened”.

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