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Ruth King

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Who Will Fall First: Trump or the ‘Praetorian Guard’? Julie Kelly *****

By on October 25th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/10/24/who-will-fall-first-trump-or-the-praetorian-guard/

The race is on to see who will survive—the duly-elected president of the United States or a modern-day Praetorian Guard comprised of former law enforcement and intelligence officials tasked with taking down that president.

Attorney General William Barr has suggested that top officials in the Obama Administration behaved like a “Praetorian Guard” in their unprecedented and possibly criminal investigation into Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

“Republics have fallen because of a Praetorian Guard mentality where government officials get very arrogant, they identify the national interest with their own political preferences and they feel that anyone who has a different opinion, you know, is somehow an enemy of the state,” Barr told CBS News reporter Jan Crawford in May. 

The Praetorian Guard originated in the Roman Empire to protect the emperor and his commanders. The elite cohort quickly grew from a few bodyguards into a massive army, complete with armor, weaponry, and a cavalry. The Guard enjoyed special privileges including a guaranteed tenure and vaunted social status. 

But the Guard became emboldened by its own power. “Over the years, the guard would become a dangerous threat to imperial power and emperors were forced to gain its favour in order to ensure their reign,” according to historian Mark Cartwright. “The body specifically created to protect the emperor’s person had become his greatest liability.”

Sound familiar?

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The Empty Absurdity Of The Democrats’ Dangerous Foreign Policy Part 1Thomas McArdle

By on October 25th, 2019

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/10/25/th

Despite the huffing and puffing during last week’s CNN debate against President Donald Trump’s withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syria, the Democratic Party’s deep thoughts about America’s strategic role in the world are more dovish and non-interventionist – and illogical – than ever.

We see this from some members of Congress who may not be household names, but who for years have been vying to be a future Democratic president’s secretary of state.

Take Maryland’s Sen. Ben Cardin, second in seniority among Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Cardin always presents himself as tough against the terrorist state of Iran, having been one of only four Democratic senators who voted against the resolution supporting Obama’s deeply flawed 2015 Iran nuclear deal. He loves to lash out at “one of the most nefarious actors on the world stage, playing a destabilizing role across the Middle East and proudly carrying the mantle of the greatest nation-state threat to Israel today.”

But by the time two years ago that Trump pulled out of the deal, which released $100 billion to Tehran with which to go on a terrorism spree, Cardin had fallen in love with it. He said, “I did not support the agreement, but we want to make sure the agreement is enforced. We don’t want the United States to be the one who walks away from preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear weapon state.”

And asked last month on Fox News if there should be a U.S. military response in the event of another attack by Iran on American ally Saudi Arabia, Cardin replied, “there’s really not a military solution to the problem of Iran. We need to make diplomacy work.” He added, “We have to defend ourselves, no question about that, but … It would be disastrous if we got into a fighting war in Iran.”

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Ribat: The Truth Behind “Muslim Enclaves” An ancient secret reveals what Islamic “No-Go” zones in the West really are. Raymond Ibrahim

By on October 25th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/10/ribat-truth-behind-muslim-enclaves-raymond-ibrahim/

Last March, 2019, Reuters reported that the “Islamic State’s last enclave in eastern Syria” had fallen.  “Its enclave at Baghouz was the last part of the massive territory it suddenly seized in 2014, straddling swathes of Iraq and Syria, where its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared a new caliphate.”

While this was welcome news, it also prompted one to wonder: what of all those other Islamic enclaves, those unassimilated ticking time bombs that proliferate throughout the West, which are packed with ISIS-sympathizers, not to mention ISIS members, and which the West largely fails to recognize as such?  I am referring to those many so-called “No-Go Zones”:   Western cities and regions that have effectively become Islamic ghettoes.  There, Sharia is de facto law; Muslims are openly radicalized to hate infidels; non-Muslims, even police, are afraid to enter lest they get mugged, raped, or killed. 

In short, the ISIS worldview continues to proliferate—and not in some distant theater of war, but right smack in the West itself (an internet search for terms such as “no-go zones” and “Muslim enclaves” demonstrates the prevalence of this phenomenon).

Although these enclaves are unique to the modern era, they have precedents in history and even a nomenclature within the Islamic consciousness.

Wherever the jihad was stopped, there, on the border with their infidel neighbors, jihadis formed strongholds, hotbeds of jihadi activities.  These became known as the ribat (رباط), an Arabic word etymologically rooted to the idea of a tight fastening or joining and found in Koran 3:200: “O you who have believed, persevere and endure and remain stationed [رابطوا] and fear Allah that you may be successful.” 

In Islamic history, the ribat referred to the chains of jihadi fortresses erected along and dedicated to raiding the borders of non-Muslims. 

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Turkey Advertises Its Koranic “Ecumenism” Accompanied by the image of a blood-splattered cross and star of David. Andrew Bostom

By on October 25th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/10/turkey-advertises-its-koranic-ecumenism-andrew-bostom/

Billboards belonging to the traditionalist Muslim Justice and Development Party (AKP) municipality are on public display in Konya, central Turkey, featuring the verbatim text of Koran 5:51 (in accurate Turkish translation). Accompanied by the image of a blood-splattered cross, and star of David, the text simply re-states Koran 5:51:

O you who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians as Auliya’ (friends, protectors, helpers, etc.), they are but Auliya’ to one another. And if any amongst you takes them as Auliya’, then surely he is one of them. Verily, Allah guides not those people who are the Zalimun (polytheists and wrong­doers and unjust).

Muhammad Husayn Tabatabai was (d. 1981) a towering modern Muslim religious scholar and philosopher, dubbed a “theosopher.” Allameh [Allamah] Tabatabaei [Tabatabai] University, named in honor of this celebrated authority and “theosopher,” is the largest specialized state social sciences university in Iran and the Middle East, with 17000 students and 500 full-time faculty members. Affirming his continued lofty stature, and relevance, an Iranian national conference was held on May 3, 2012, in Qom, dedicated to “recognizing the interpretative methods and principles used by Allameh [Allamah] Tabatabaee [Tabatabai] in [his Koranic] exegesis.” Tabatabai’s al-Mizān fi tafsir al-Qurʾān “The measure of balance/justly held scales in the interpretation of the Quran,” a 21-volume Arabic opus, is regarded as the most important contemporary Shiite Koranic commentary, and one of the seminal Koranic commentaries of the contemporary era, Sunni, or Shiite.

Tabatabai’s  modern Sunni counterpart is the late Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi (d. 2010). Not only was Tantawi the Grand Imam of Egypt’s Al-Azhar University, from 1996 to 2010—the Papal equivalent of Sunni Islam’s Vatican of religious teaching and authority—he was also arguably the most important modern Sunni Koranic commentator of the contemporary era. Tantawi produced a contemporary magnum opus 15-volume Koranic commentary, “al-Tafsīr al-wasīṭ lil-Qurʼān al-karīm,” “The Broad Interpretation of The Koran.” He also oversaw the establishment of the largest online resource for Koranic interpretation, ALTAFSIR.COM, which has published ~100 full-text, verse by verse searchable classical & modern commentaries on the Koran, including his own.

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NYU Newspaper Pulls Ad for Lowry’s Nationalism Book Out of Concern It Might ‘Marginalize People of Color’ By Jack Crowe

By on October 25th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/nyu-newspaper-pulls-ad-for-lowrys-nationalism-book-out-of-concern-it-might-marginalize-people-of-color/

The editor of New York University’s independent student-run newspaper, Washington Square News, pulled an advertisement for National Review editor Rich Lowry’s upcoming book from the paper because exposure to the ad may have “marginalized people of color,” according to a statement released Thursday.

Lowry purchased the ad in order to promote a talk he will deliver Thursday night at NYU on his new book, The Case for Nationalism: How It Made Us Powerful, United, And Free, which will be released on November 5th.

The paper’s business team accepted the ad and charged Lowry for its placement last week. He found out that it would not appear in the paper’s Monday edition only when he saw that his payment had been refunded.

When no explanation was forthcoming, Lowry wrote a post informing National Review readers that his ad, which “invited people to learn why their pre-conceptions about nationalism are incorrect,” had been pulled without justification.

In response, the Washington Square News editor explained that she had unilaterally decided to pull the ad in order to shield “people of color on campus” from exposure to the phrase “Nationalism is a good thing,” which, in keeping with the book’s topic, was placed prominently at the top of the page.

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Harvard’s Student Newspaper Chooses Ethical Journalism over PC Mob’s Demands By Katherine Timpf

By on October 25th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/harvards-student-newspaper-chooses-ethical-journalism-over-pc-mobs-demands/ 

The Crimson had the audacity to present balanced coverage of an anti-ICE protest.

Harvard University’s student newspaper, the Harvard Crimson, was accused of “cultural insensitivity” and “blatantly endangering undocumented students” last month — all because it had adhered to journalistic ethics.

It’s true: According to an article in the Washington Post, all that the newspaper had done to deserve this was ask U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement representatives for comment on a story about an “Abolish ICE” protest. In other words? The paper’s reporters were attacked because they demonstrated basic journalism skills. It is, after all, not only not controversial to ask both sides for their views in a straight-news piece; it would actually be controversial not to.

Despite this, the Post reports that “hundreds” of students signed a petition calling on the newspaper to stop talking to ICE completely. Their cause was quite obviously absurd, and it depresses me that hundreds of our nation’s (supposedly) best and brightest could actually be ignorant enough to sign something like that.

The good news? Rather than back down from the pressure, the newspaper stood its ground. Earlier this week, Crimson editors Angela N. Fu and Kristine E. Guillaume published a defense of the paper’s work.

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Our Untenable Alliance with Turkey By Victor Davis Hanson

By on October 25th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/untenable-alliance-is-no-turkish-delight/

Turkey opposes, if not detests, almost every American ally in the region, and befriends almost every U.S. enemy.

There are about 5,000 members of the U.S. military, mostly airmen, stationed at the huge, strategically located air base in Incirlik, Turkey, northwest of the Syrian border.

The American forces at Incirlik are also the custodians of about 50 B61 nuclear bombs. Data on these weapons is classified, but at their maximum yield each is ten times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, according to Stars and Stripes.

It’s a “Dr. Strangelove” scenario: No one quite knows how the American contingent could manage to secretly remove the deadly nukes from their concrete vaults, bring them out to the tarmac, load them on planes and fly them out safely over Turkish objections.

Turkey in the past has threatened to go nuclear itself should the U.S. ever dare to transfer the lethal arsenal. Apparently, Turkey’s theory is that possession of bombs in one’s territory is nine-tenths of the law of nuclear weapons ownership.

In the aftermath of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, which led to a U.S. arms embargo, Turkey shut down all U.S. operations at Incirlik. American forces were expelled for three years — until Washington caved and resumed arms supplies.

In 2016, Turkey cut off power to the base and forbid U.S. flights, fearing that the dissident Turkish generals of a failed coup attempt might use the American facility as a sanctuary.

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It Should Be Illegal To Give Children Transgender Hormones And SurgeryBy Chad Felix Greene

By on October 25th, 2019

https://thefederalist.com/2019/10/24/it-should-be-illegal-to-give-children-transgender-hormones-and-surgery/

The left uses children as political pawns in the gender war and calls it a moral good, but the consequence of forcing kids into transition is denying them the ability to choose their own future.

When I was a child, I was fascinated with makeup. My grandmother would often let me sit on a small pink crushed velvet stool in her bathroom while she “put on her face,” as she liked to say. After putting every platinum blonde curl in place, she would carefully pout her lips and apply a thin layer of ruby red lipstick.

I watched, captivated by her transformation and the satisfaction on her face when every line, every shade was perfectly applied. My mother remembers catching me modeling my sister’s clothes, unaware of her presence and therefore entirely un-selfconscious of my movements. Everything about the female world inspired my imagination, and I longed to be connected to it.

A large contributing factor into this obsession was my grandmother’s open and repeated wish that she had a beautiful granddaughter to dress up and show off at social events. Per my father’s wishes, I was denied the ability to see my mother until I was about seven years old or so, and thus my need for a female role model fell squarely on my grandmother’s shoulders.

My grandmother improvised, highlighting my hair, painting my fingernails, and surrounding me exclusively with her female friends. Around my father, I had to pretend, as he grew aggressively angry whenever I presented the slightest feminine tendency.

At school I blended in with my female peers, who seemed to appreciate having a boy to give them attention, but it was safety for me. The boys were cruel and aggressive, and they never ceased in tormenting me daily. I only felt safe and free to be myself when I was alone with women. I would cry myself to sleep praying for G-d to turn me into a girl when I woke up so I could finally be free from the constant stress and conflict of my daily life. Each day I woke up sad and afraid.

My Struggle with Gender

As I grew up, I learned how to mimic my male peers just enough to avoid suspicion and to exploit my gentle nature as something adults found positive around their daughters. I was just “creative” or “sensitive” or, as was popular at the time, “in touch” with my feminine side to anyone who observed me.

But to me, I was struggling to feel a sense of holistic unity, divided by too many outside expectations that never quite fit into place. I explored transgender transition as a young adult and attempted to dress as a girl, change my voice, and wear makeup, but as the years passed, none of this felt quite right.

Eventually I found a balance between adolescent self-obsession and adult responsibility that did not allow for endless changes in identity or character, and I essentially grew up. Who I am now is everything left over from when I gave up on trying to be someone else, and for that I am grateful.

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Capitalism on trial: Profit is a good thing — except to the political left Rupert Darwall

By on October 25th, 2019

https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/467224-capitalism-on-trial-profit-is-a-good-thing-except-to-the-political-left

These are dangerous times for American capitalism. 

Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.) Accountable Capitalism Act would oblige large corporations to obtain a federal charter requiring directors to consider the interests of all stakeholders — not only shareholders and customers, but also groups representing society as a whole, such as their employees, local communities and civil society, including non-representative, anti-business NGOs.

The chief justice of the supreme court of Delaware – where more than two-thirds of Fortune 500 corporations have their legal home – has written a book arguing that corporations should be run for the benefit of their workers. The Financial Times has launched a “new agenda” campaign that intones: “Capitalism. Time for a reset. Business must make a profit but should serve a purpose too.”

None of this would have come as a surprise to Joseph Schumpeter, one of the 20th century’s great economists. No one understood better the dynamic, propulsive nature of capitalism. But, unlike most economists, Schumpeter also had a deep, subtle appreciation of capitalism’s cultural effects — that, while a system of free enterprise creates successful and prosperous societies, it also plants seeds that can lead to its own demise. “Unlike  any other type of society,” Schumpeter wrote “capitalism inevitably and by virtue of the very logic of its civilization creates, educates and subsidizes a vested interest in social unrest.” 

And, as Schumpeter saw it, the publicly traded corporation, lacking the visceral allegiance of private property, was capitalism’s weak point: “Defenseless fortresses invite aggression especially if there is rich booty in them.” It’s a prophecy that we’re seeing come to pass. 

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The Democrats’ impeachment inquiry is a doomed and desperate time-buying ploy Roger Kimball

By on October 25th, 2019

https://spectator.us/democrats-impeachment-doomed-desperate/

They hope that talk of impeachment will buzz about Trump’s head like a cloud of horse flies

Oh no! The walls are closing in again on Trump! We’ve reached a ‘tipping point.’ This time, finally, at last, we have the fatal ‘bombshell’ that will destroy him. The testimony of Bill Taylor, Deep State apparatchik and acting Ambassador to Ukraine, has given ‘devastating‘, ‘explosive’ testimony to Adam Schiff. They’ve certainly got Trump this time. An establishment lifer with deep ties to Burisma, the corrupt energy company that was so generous to Hunter Biden, has said that Trump insisted on a quid in the form of probing cokehead Hunter and his dad, Joe, in exchange for the quo of $400 million in military aid.

Or was pelf the quid and the investigation of the Joe and Hunter show the quo? Our experts are working on untangling that.

How do we know about this devastating quid pro quo-ness? Schiff’s press outlets, from CNN to The Hill, have said so. No, you cannot examine the testimony, silly. It took place behind closed doors. For the most part, the lynching — er, the hearing — even excluded Republican lawmakers. Moreover, the bits that GOP congressmen were allowed to witness are covered (or covered up) in a shroud of ‘non-disclosure’. Still, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy did mention that in a mere ‘‘90 seconds’ Rep. John Ratcliffe ‘destroy[ed] Taylor’s whole argument.’ Quoth McCarthy: ‘Adam Schiff won’t let us talk about what happened.’ But the bottom line is: ‘There is no quid pro quo…the one thing that you find out in this process is all this information is just like that whistleblower…everything is second-, third-, and fourth-hand information.’

Of course, we all know now that ‘second-, third-, and fourth-hand information’ is just the underhanded sort of hand-me-down ‘evidence’ that the Dems like to parade before a weary public in order to justify their demand for Trump’s head. Remember Christopher Steele? Just like the Queen in Alice in Wonderland, it’s ‘Sentence first — verdict afterwards.’

It’s pathetic, isn’t it? The first time around, the anti-Trump fraternity at least had the solemn imprimatur of Special Counsel Robert Mueller with the weight of officialdom and all the echoes of Watergate that that process brought with it.

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