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Ruth King

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Spy vs. Spy Euphemism at the FBI: Eric Felten

By on May 20th, 2019

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2019/05/18/spy_vs_spy_euphemism_at_the_fbi.html

While Washington pols and pundits angrily debate who counts as a spy, and whether any such exotic creatures have ever been employed by the FBI, new evidence is emerging that the FBI not only uses spies, but has done so extensively, including in the Trump-Russia investigation.

On Thursday, CNN host John Berman asked former FBI general counsel James Baker: “Did the FBI spy on the Trump campaign as the attorney general suggested?” Baker didn’t initially say no, but rather objected that the word “spy” has negative connotations.

Baker then seemed to switch the question from whether spying occurred to its intent, saying: “There was no intention by myself or anybody else I’m aware of to intrude or do activities with respect to the campaign.” Then he continued his sentence with a clause that significantly modified even that claim. There was no intrusion of the Trump campaign, he said, done “in order to gather political intelligence to find out what the political strategies were.” The FBI was only interested in what the campaign was up to regarding Russia.

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Why Did America Give Up on Mass Transit? (Don’t Blame Cars.) Streetcar, bus, and metro systems have been ignoring one lesson for 100 years: Service drives demand.

By on May 20th, 2019

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/why-did-america-give-up-on-mass-transit-don-t-blame-cars?utm_source=pocket-newtab

One hundred years ago, the United States had a public transportation system that was the envy of the world. Today, outside a few major urban centers, it is barely on life support. Even in New York City, subway ridership is well below its 1946 peak. Annual per capita transit trips in the U.S. plummeted from 115.8 in 1950 to 36.1 in 1970, where they have roughly remained since, even as population has grown.

This has not happened in much of the rest of the world. While a decline in transit use in the face of fierce competition from the private automobile throughout the 20th century was inevitable, near-total collapse was not. At the turn of the 20th century, when transit companies’ only competition were the legs of a person or a horse, they worked reasonably well, even if they faced challenges. Once cars arrived, nearly every U.S. transit agency slashed service to cut costs, instead of improving service to stay competitive. This drove even more riders away, producing a vicious cycle that led to the point where today, few Americans with a viable alternative ride buses or trains.

Now, when the federal government steps in to provide funding, it is limited to big capital projects. (Under the Trump administration, even those funds are in question.) Operations—the actual running of buses and trains frequently enough to appeal to people with an alternative—are perpetually starved for cash. Even transit advocates have internalized the idea that transit cannot be successful outside the highest-density urban centers. CONTINUE AT SITE

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

ROGER FRANKLIN: AT YOUR THROAT OR AT YOUR FEET POST ELECTION BLUES

By on May 20th, 2019

https://quadrant.org.au/

“In order to achieve that “healing” for which Ms Wilkinson has been yearning since Saturday night, all the Morrison government need do is implement the very same slate of Left policies which the electorate rejected. Funny how that works.”

There are many misconceptions about the Left, whose louder advocates can strike those not of their tribe as being possessed by a hectoring absolutism. Don’t agree with what they say? You’re worse than wrong, you’re evil! That’s apt to be the take-home impression of any conservative who has survived a Northcote barbecue or Newtown soiree, but the fact of the matter is that it isn’t always true. Sometimes our Left-inclined fellow citizens can be the very essence of conciliation, good manners and empathy, extending much love and respect to those on the other side of politics.

This happens whenever they lose an election, as TV personality Lisa Wilkinson has just demonstrated. No sooner had it become apparent Labor couldn’t win on May 18 than she was pouring her broken, gentle heart into an open letter to once and future PM Scott Morrison.

“It might be good to start with some healing,” she begins, observing that “we” are all feeling “just a little broken right now”. We? According to the Australian Electoral Commission, some 52 per cent of the voting population has been pretty chipper for the past two days or so.

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Oppressed, enslaved and brutalised: The women trafficked from North Korea into China’s sex trade Nicola Smith and Ben Farmer

By on May 20th, 2019

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/oppressed-enslaved-brutalised-women-trafficked-north-korea-chinas/

Thousands of North Korean women and girls are being subjected to forced marriage, prostitution and sadistic abuse by trafficking gangs running a multi-million dollar illicit sex industry in China.

A report by the Korea Future Initiative (KFI), which will be presented in the House of Commons on Monday, forensically details how vulnerable women and girls as young as 12 are being tricked into escaping North Korea only to be sold as sex slaves in China.

The women ensnared by the gangs face the sickening choice of becoming sex slaves or being repatriated to the oppressive state where they face torture in bleak prison camps or possible execution.

The report – Sex Slaves: The Prostitution, Cybersex and Forced Marriage of North Korean Women and Girls in China – has been compiled by researchers who interviewed 45 women in China and South Korea over two years and will make difficult reading for MPs.

It reveals a widespread Chinese trade which plumbs the depths of human depravity.

One survivor reveals in stomach-churning detail how a girl forced into prostitution had been so brutalised that she could not stand.

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Spain: Surge in Migrant Crime by Soeren Kern

By on May 20th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14249/spain-migrant-crime

“We have tasers, but they are stored in a closet because of political cowardice.” — Spokesperson, Municipal Police of Bilbao.

In Madrid, an elderly couple returning home from vacation discovered that their apartment had been “occupied” by African migrants. When a camera crew from the Madrid television channel Telecinco went to investigate, the migrants destroyed the camera…. Spain’s notoriously lethargic justice system now rules on who is the apartment’s rightful owner.

The Madrid city council, run by Mayor Manuela Carmena, in a case study of political correctness run amok, ordered police to keep out of the neighborhood of Lavapiés. The result is that illegal immigrants, far from facing the threat of deportation, are now secure in the knowledge that their violent actions have empowered them effectively to take control of an entire neighborhood of a major European capital.

Six African migrants gang-raped a 12-year-old girl in small town near Madrid, but Spanish authorities kept information about the crime hidden from the public for more than a year, apparently to avoid fueling anti-immigration sentiments.

On March 15, 2018, the 12-year-old girl was playing in a park in Azuqueca de Henares with several other girls when, at around one o’clock in the afternoon, six migrants — five Moroccans and one Nigerian — approached the playground. They carried two of the girls off to a nearby abandoned building, but then let one of them go after discovering that she was a Muslim. The migrants, aged between 15 and 20, grabbed the 12-year-old by her arms and legs and took turns raping her, first anally and then vaginally, for nearly an hour.

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The Intrepid Duo: Pipes, Father and Son by Jiri Valenta and Leni Friedman Valenta

By on May 20th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14246/richard-pipes-daniel-pipes

“My main contribution was revealing the flaws in the détente policy and urging a policy designed to reform the Soviet Union through a strategy of economic denial.” In other words, the USSR could be changed from within by raising the costs of its aggression. — Richard Pipes.

Daniel Pipes argues that, ironically, the Palestinians would actually fare far better if they were defeated: they could end their fantasies of genocide and, like post-WWII Germany, finally start to build a constructive and flourishing civil society.

“The hardest thing for Westerners to understand is… the nature of the enemy’s ultimate goal… to apply the Islamic law (Sharia) globally. In U.S. terms, it intends to replace the Constitution with the Qur’an…. Now, it has become widely accepted that, in Bernard Lewis’s words, “Europe will be Islamic by the end of the century.” — Daniel Pipes, “The Islamic States of America?”, FrontPageMagazine.com, September 23, 2004.

“Although the moderate Muslims appear — and in fact are — weak, they have a crucial role to play, for they alone can reconcile Islam with modernity…” — Daniel Pipes, Introduction, Militant Islam Reaches America.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Showdown in the Arabian Gulf Deployment of aircraft carrier battle group and B-52 bombers demonstrates unmistaken U.S. resolve. Ari Lieberman

By on May 20th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273816/showdown-arabian-gulf-ari-lieberman

During his presidential run, Donald Trump argued that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, colloquially known as the Iran deal, was among the worst deals ever negotiated by the United States with a foreign power and promised to withdraw from the JCPOA if elected. In May 2018, Trump kept his word but granted waivers to eight countries to continue purchasing Iranian oil. In May 2019 those waivers expired, further constricting Iran’s ability to export oil.

Sanctions instantly affected all aspects of the Iranian economy including its banking sector. The U.S. Treasury Department succeeded in disconnecting Iran’s banking industry from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT). SWIFT enables banks to communicate with each other and facilitates international transactions. Even if rogue nations, like Turkey, attempted to skirt sanctions and purchase Iranian contraband, it would be nearly impossible for Iran to receive payment given its cutoff from SWIFT.

Iran’s economy is contracting and its currency is in freefall. It is estimated that the ban on oil exports alone is costing the regime some $35 billion a year and that’s before the expiration of the waivers. In April, the U.S. declared the IRGC a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) and this past week, the U.S. Treasury Department slapped sanctions on Iran’s industrial metals industry.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Against “Practical” Knowledge The value of a Classical Liberal Arts Education. Jack Kerwick

By on May 20th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273760/against-practical-knowledge-jack-kerwick

Given the mess that is today’s politicized college campus, students have even more reason to wonder, as they so often have wondered, why it is that they are being made to enroll in courses that at least appear to be devoid of all “practical” value. Why should a mathematics major have to spend a semester enrolled in courses studying philosophers and poets?

This is not an unreasonable question. Nor should we expect for students to think otherwise given our culture’s emphatic, indeed, dogmatic, insistence that the only type of knowledge worth having is “practical” knowledge, i.e. knowledge that regularly lends itself to uses from which one can expect substantive (typically monetary) dividends.

Nevertheless, just a moment’s reflection on daily life readily puts the lie to the conventional wisdom that “useless” knowledge isn’t worth possessing, for such awareness reveals that it is wholly inaccurate to describe much of what human beings value, and what they value most, as “practical.”

Whether it is love, compassion, honor, or honesty, it would be a gross injustice to characterize the worth of these virtues in terms of their “practical” value. The relationship between friends, say, is not a mutually advantageous transaction, a “practical” arrangement that serves the interests of both parties. And millions of human beings don’t spend endless hours on social media perusing the posts of “friends,” followers, and strangers alike because they think that the knowledge that they’re deriving from doing so is going to serve a “practical” purpose.

One resolutely non-practical, “useless” activity in which people tend to relish (even if they aren’t always so good at it) is that of conversation. This undeniable fact about the human situation supplies faculty with an answer to this common inquiry among students: A classical liberal arts education is necessary because in being exposed to a variety of disciplines, students are becoming conversant with the several voices that compose the civilization to which they belong.

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John Stossel Video: Academic Hoax Fake papers on ridiculous subjects submitted to prominent academic journals.

By on May 20th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273779/stossel-video-academic-hoax-frontpagemagcom

In his new video, John Stossel focuses on Academic Hoax, unveiling how three people conducted what they call a ‘grievance studies’ experiment. They wrote fake papers on ridiculous subjects and submitted them to prominent academic journals in fields that study gender, race, and sexuality. Don’t miss it!

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P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

The Simple Preschool-Level Question That No Leftist Can Answer: Matt Walsh

By on May 20th, 2019

https://www.dailywire.com/news/47257/walsh-simple-matt-walsh

For the last few weeks I have been trying with increasing desperation to get a leftist — any leftist — to answer one simple question: what is a woman?

You’ll notice that folks on the Left use the word “woman” quite a bit. They make many claims about women. They say that these creatures known as women have something called “women’s rights.” They say that these rights are under attack. They say that women are persecuted and disadvantaged by something called male privilege. They say that women are the victims of a wage gap. They say things like, “We need a woman President.”

They also say that biological males can be women. They say transwomen are women. They say that someone can start out life as a male and transition into a woman. They make many other claims in this vein.

But how can I understand any of these claims and declarations if I do not know what they mean by the word woman? And how can they make any meaningful statements about women if they themselves do not know what they mean by it? So I ask again very simply: what is a woman?

I feel in fairness I should provide my own definition. I tend to agree with Merriam-Webster that woman means “an adult female person.” I agree not only with the dictionary but with the whole history of human civilization, which, collectively, has always understood woman in this way.

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