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Ruth King

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Yasser’s Terrorist Jesus by David Littman November 15, 2004

By on April 27th, 2019

In the past 2,000 years there have been numerous descriptions of Jesus of Nazareth, but the image of an Arab Jesus – “the first Palestinian fedayin who carried his sword” – as depicted by Yasir Arafat at a sideshow of the United Nations in 1983 was probably the most grotesque. Present at his first press conference at the Palais des Nations in Geneva on September 2, 1983, I heard the words from the UN simultaneous English interpretation of his spoken Arabic:

“We were under Roman imperialism. We sent a Palestinian fisherman, called St. Peter, to Rome. He not only occupied Rome, but also won the hearts of the people. We know how to resist imperialism and occupation. Jesus Christ was the first Palestinian fedayin who carried his sword along the path on which the Palestinians today carry their Cross.”1

There was a full house, but no one expressed either shock or disbelief, nor was there any later protestation from representatives of the Holy See or the World Council of Churches, even after my letter quoting his words was published in three Swiss newspapers.2 Yet few could ignore the historic fact that it was in 135 – 100 years after the death of Jesus – that the Roman Emperor Hadrian re-conquered Judea, changing its official name from Judea to Palestina. ( “Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod…” Matthew 2:1)

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Omar, Suleiman: ‘Jesus was a Palestinian’By Anne-Christine Hoff

By on April 27th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/04/omar_suleiman_jesus_was_a_palestinian.html

What do a Minnesota congresswoman, a Dallas imam, and the New York Times all have in common? In the past week all three have promoted the meme that Jesus was a Palestinian.On April 19, an op-ed in the New York Times stated that “Jesus, born in Bethlehem, was most likely a Palestinian man with dark skin.” On April 20 Congresswoman Ilhan Omar retweeted Dallas imam Omar Suleiman’s argument that Jesus was “Palestinian,” not Jewish.Such claims are part of a narrative that more and more seems to be insinuating itself into American political discourse. This narrative tends to paint both Jews and whites as inhuman oppressors and non-whites and Palestinians as their innocent victims.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

A Navy Veteran Went to Prison for Digging Ponds in the Mountains The Supreme Court can remedy the injustice done by the EPA’s unclear ‘navigable waters’ rule.The Supreme Court can remedy the injustice done by the EPA’s unclear ‘navigable waters’ rule. By Ethan Blevins

By on April 27th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-navy-veteran-went-to-prison-for-digging-ponds-in-the-mountains-11556317175

“I am haunted by waters,” wrote Norman Maclean in “A River Runs Through It,” his 1976 novel about growing up in a family of Montana fly fishermen. Joe Robertson was haunted by waters of a different kind—the kind that can land someone in federal prison without warning. These are “navigable waters,” which carry on their current the full force of federal power to bankrupt and jail people who meddle with them. The problem is that no one knows what they are.

Robertson, a Navy veteran who died in March at 80, spent 18 months in prison for getting the definition of “navigable waters” wrong. The land he owned in the Montana mountains was more than 40 miles from the nearest genuinely navigable river, but a trickle ran through it: the combined force of two garden hoses meandering down the slope in a channel about a foot deep and a foot wide.

Before he died, Robertson and his wife, Carrie, dug ponds in the path of their modest mountain trickle. The Environmental Protection Agency declared it a “navigable water” subject to the Clean Water Act and prosecuted him for “discharging” pollutants without a permit. He was found guilty in 2016. In addition to his 18 months in prison, Robertson was ordered to pay a $130,000 fine.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Tide Keeps Rising The Trump policy mix continues to pay economic dividends.

By on April 27th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-tide-keeps-rising-11556319160

With the comeback in financial markets this year, we probably should have seen it coming. But the headline rebound in first quarter growth to 3.2% reported Friday is still a pleasant surprise that shows again that the U.S. economy is remarkably resilient when government doesn’t get in the way.

The Keynesians who predicted an imminent recession are pointing out flaws in the GDP details, and they’re right that volatile categories like net exports (1.03%), inventory growth (0.65%) and state and local government (0.41%) contributed substantially to growth. Strip out those categories and growth would have been 1.3%.

Yet the government shutdown took some 0.3% off growth and that won’t be repeated in the second quarter. Auto sales took 0.49% off GDP in the quarter, but sales rebounded in March heading into the second quarter. Overall consumer spending contributed a relatively small 0.82% to GDP, perhaps due to the fall in consumer confidence after the stock market swoon in the last months of 2018. With job growth strong and wages rising, consumers should contribute more to the expansion the rest of this year.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Alexander Khan: Fear and cowardice at Middlebury College

By on April 27th, 2019

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/alexander-kahn-fear-and-cowardice-at-middlebury-college

Two years ago, I invited AEI scholar Dr. Charles Murray to speak at Middlebury College in Vermont. As is now well-known, the moderator of the event was injured after a riot broke out when she and Murray left the lecture hall.

While I was shocked by what had happened, I was proud of what I had done in inviting Dr. Murray and how the administration had acted to ensure that he could speak.

This past week, the pride I once had in my college dissolved entirely after the administration refused to secure a lecture by another controversial speaker.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Trump Moves To Withdraw U.S. From U.N. Arms Trade Treaty

By on April 27th, 2019

https://www.npr.org/2019/04/26/7175477

President Trump effectively “unsigned” an international arms sales agreement Friday, moving to withdraw the U.S. from the United Nations’ Arms Trade Treaty. The agreement sets global standards for regulating transfers of conventional arms, from rifles to tanks and airplanes.The treaty, known as the ATT, has been in effect since late 2014. The U.S. signed on to the agreement in 2013 but has not ratified the treaty.The U.S. withdrawal had been expected. Trump made it official at the National Rifle Association’s annual convention in Indianapolis, pulling out a pen onstage and signing a paper that he said would take back the Obama administration’s signature on behalf of the U.S.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

THE BARR IS RAISED: ROGER KIMBALL*****

By on April 26th, 2019

https://spectator.us/furious-mueller-report-america/

“What has happened over the past two-plus years is a fundamental attack on the legitimacy of our democratic republic. Tactical partisan maneuvering has overwhelmed the institution of presidential elections. Note that this is a one-party party. It probably started in earnest with the election of George W. Bush in 2000. Al Gore withdrew his concession and put the country through months of legal wrangling. Republicans were unhappy when Barack Obama was elected in 2008 and again in 2012. But there was no question of his legitimacy. But when Donald Trump won in 2016, the sort of antidemocratic forces that beset George Bush had mutated from an angry squad of activists into an army of deniers.”

OK, Possums, here it is in redact and white (drum roll, please): The Mueller Report, 448 color-coded pages, replete with almost 900 redactions. Who says the government isn’t effective at education: over the last months it expanded the vocabulary of many Americans by putting that nice word into general circulation.So quickly was the report edited and rushed into print that the Surgeon General’s warning against operating heavy machinery while or shortly after dosing up on the report was omitted. So let me supply the defect and warn you: the report is boring.

After Jerry Nadler’s commandos finish poring over it for dirt and discard the tome in frustrated disgust, the authorities are planning to collect the remaindered copies of the report and make them mandatory punitive reading in penitential institutions around the country.

The former newspaper known as The New York Times made a manful attempt to skew the results of the report, offering a pathetic ‘live analysis’ of cherry-picked excerpts. But Donald Trump is right. As anyone not named Bill Kristol has suspected for months, and known since the Mueller report was delivered to Attorney General Barr last month, it’s Game Over: finis, end of the line, thank you all for coming, the egress is just over yonder.

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MEDIA, P.C.-CULTURE, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Scruton tapes: an anatomy of a modern hit job How a character assassination unfolded on Twitter Douglas Murray

By on April 26th, 2019

https://spectator.us/scruton-tapes-anatomy-hit-job/

Sometimes a scandal is not just a scandal, but a biopsy of a society. So it is with the assault on Sir Roger Scruton, who in recent weeks has been smeared in the media, fired by the government and had his life’s work assailed. Scruton is the latest, though far from the first victim of the modern outrage mob.

It is now four years since the Nobel prize-winning scientist Tim Hunt was fired by University College London (among other institutions who were lucky to have him). That happened after one member of the audience at a conference in Korea tweeted something he had said about working with women and professed outrage at the comment’s alleged sexism. None of the institutions which dropped Hunt asked if there was any case for the defense. They all just behaved as almost everyone in authority now does: they saw a potential fight and ran. And though they left their man behind — as is also the new way — they also relied on the assumption that the world would soon forget and everyone (except the trampled victim) would move on.

In January, we saw the Covington Catholic scandal, when a group of schoolboys became the subject of a two-minute hate for allegedly surrounding and taunting a Native American tribal elder. By the time the facts came out (there had been no taunting, the boys had done nothing wrong) they had been denounced as racists in front of millions. But if winning a Nobel prize in science is no mitigation in being falsely accused, what chance do schoolboys or the rest of us have? Anyone, it seems, can claim a scalp using Twitter: twist the words of your victim and let the outrage mob do the rest.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

How Turkey’s Democracy Went From Insanity to ‘Beyond Insanity’ by Burak Bekdil

By on April 26th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14139/turkey-democracy-insanity

“Bad economic management, among others, brought him [Erdoğan] to power … It may remove him power, too.” — International banker who asked not to be named.

Ironically, the man who could recharge the machine called Erdoğan & Co. (or push it over the cliff) is the president’s son-in-law, Berat Albayrak.

In December 2015, Russia’s defense ministry said it had proof that Erdoğan and his family were benefiting from the illegal smuggling of oil from Islamic State-held territory in Syria and Iraq. “Turkey is the main consumer of the oil stolen from its rightful owners, Syria and Iraq.

So, guess when and where wonder boy Albayrak last came to the attention of the U.S. public? On April 16, when he met with President Donald Trump in Washington. A smiling Albayrak happily announced that Trump took a reasonable point of view regarding Turkey’s planned purchase of the Russian-made S-400 surface-to-air missile system. He also said that there was agreement at his meetings in Washington to increase annual bilateral trade between the United States and Turkey to $75 billion.

In the country he has ruled since 2002, 80% of the minorities cannot openly express themselves on social media, and a good 35% say they are subjected to hate speech on the same platform. His top ulama [Islamic scholars] once issued a fatwa that read: “… a father kissing his daughter with lust or caressing her with desire has no effect on the man’s marriage”.

Between August 2014, when he was elected president of Turkey, and April 2016 he sued at least 1,845 people for insulting him, thereby winning the title of “the world’s most insulted president”.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

The China-Iran Syndrome Thomas McArdle

By on April 26th, 2019

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/04/26/china-iran-nuclear-weapons-u-s-sanctions/

President Trump, true to his tough-guy form, this week announced the withdrawal of sanctions waivers on countries that don’t cease purchasing oil from the terrorist state of Iran by the beginning of May. China will almost certainly defy the U.S. and refuse to cut off Iranian crude imports, at least not cut them off completely.

Importing just under 30 million tons last year, China is Iran’s biggest petroleum customer, and Beijing has formally protested the Trump Administration move and argued that its commercial relationship with Tehran is justified.

Obviously, China isn’t interested in letting anything take it off track from its objective of permanent global economic dominance. Less obvious, however, is Iran’s sinister role in the rise of China at the expense of superpower America.

Speaking to the Wilson Center last fall, Henry Kissinger, sounding very much like his old, detente-designing, Nixon Administration self, expounded on his strategic views of the U.S. and China, over 45 years after engineering the opening to the long-isolated Communist regime.

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