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Ruth King

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Netanyahu Says ‘Annexation,’ World Faints By Lori Lowenthal Marcus

By on April 12th, 2019

https://saraacarter.com/netanyahu-says-annexation-world-faints/

The foreign and the hostile local media were in an uproar: “The end of democracy in Israel!” they shrieked.

They were responding to the audacity of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s use of two super-charged words, “sovereignty” and “annexation,” regarding the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank,” as it is improperly referred to by most of the world) just days before Israel’s national election on Tuesday, April 9. This area is more properly referred to as Disputed Territory.

There is much to untangle here: geography, history and linguistics, just to name several threads. For a backgrounder on the area widely referred to as the “West Bank,” please see the section at the end of this article.

Netanyahu said several things to several different news outlets over the course of several days, some of which have been wildly misreported.

WHAT NETANYAHU SAID

Netanyahu said very clearly that Palestinian statehood would “endanger our [Israel’s] existence.” He ruled out that option. On the other hand, he said that the Palestinian Arabs would “run their own lives.” This means that for purposes of day-to-day governance, the Arabs are in charge of the residents of their communities. The one caveat to this is that Israel will continue to be in charge of non-domestic security, that is, terrorism against its own citizens, when committed by those residing in the Arab sectors.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

L’affaire Assange By:Srdja Trifkovic

By on April 12th, 2019

https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/laffaire-assange/

Julian Assange’s arrest inside the embassy of Ecuador in London would not have been possible had that country’s government not authorized the British police to enter its theoretically sovereign territory. The lesson is clear: if you plan to seek asylum in a foreign embassy, you should be careful to choose the diplomatic premises of a country (a) not likely to be pressurized into betraying you; and (b) comfortable enough to make a long sojourn tolerable.

The 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations reaffirmed the long-established principle of inviolability of diplomatic premises. The host-country’s police and security forces are not allowed access without a specific authorization of the chief of mission, which was granted in this case. Assange had spent almost seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy, after being welcomed there by the country’s former president Rafael Correa. The hosts’ political calculus has changed to his detriment over the past two years, however.

The British police arrested Assange supposedly for skipping UK bail seven years ago, but also—and far more importantly—under a previously secret U.S. indictment. The exact charge is for conspiracy, with Chelsea Manning, to hack into a “classified U.S. government computer.” Assange lawyer Barry Pollock said the allegations “boil down to encouraging a source to provide him information and taking efforts to protect the identity of that source.” Assange had predicted that this would happen years ago, and stated it as his reason for seeking asylum in the first place.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D, W.V.) gloated “He is our property!” when told of Assange’s arrest, and he accurately reflected the sentiment shared by the entire Beltway swamp, Democrats in particular:

Assange committed the unpardonable sins of embarrassing the establishment—from members of Congress to intelligence officials to the media. And he will now be punished for our sins. Despite having significant constitutional arguments to be made, it is likely that he will be stripped of those defenses and even barred from raising the overall context of his actions in federal court. What could be the most important free speech and free press case in our history could well be reduced to the scope and substance of an unauthorized computer access case.

Before becoming a fugitive Assange had unveiled a massive, likely unconstitutional NSA surveillance program potentially affecting all Americans. He later published emails that showed that the DNC and the Clinton campaign lied in various statements to the public, including the rigging of the primary for her nomination. As USA Today columnist Jonathan Turley says, “No one has argued that any of these emails were false. They were embarrassing. Of course, there is not crime of embarrassing the establishment but that is merely a technicality.” The American media machi

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BOOKS Comments turned off

The Plague of Radical Feminism Descends upon the Nation By David Solway

By on April 12th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/the-plague-of-radical-feminism-descends-upon-the-nation/

Despite its many falterings and regressions, the Judeo-Hellenic-Christian West over the long and tortuous course of its evolution has produced the most advanced civilization known to history. Characterized by the rule of law, scientific discovery, technological invention, educational opportunity for the masses, economic prosperity, individual autonomy and relative freedom from the harsh exactions of nature, it is now collapsing under the attack of forces rising from within its own existential frontiers.

Its internal assailants are myriad: domestic Marxism, “social justice,” global warming, Islam in its various avatars, anti-Semitism and hatred of Christianity, anti-white bigotry, educational decline, media malfeasance, and economic illiteracy leading to the willful accumulation of unpayable debt. But perhaps the most sinister and destructive of its homegrown adversaries is radical feminism, which seeks the ruin of motherhood and the breakdown of the relation between the sexes. It is a plague the Pharaoh was fortunately spared.

“Almost overnight,” writes Carrie Gress in The Anti-Mary Exposed: Rescuing the Culture from Toxic Femininity, “our once pro-life culture became pro-lifestyle, returning to an epicurean paganism that embraces everything that feels good.” How is it, she asks, that the women’s liberation movement “has demolished so decisively the moral and social structures of American society?” “There must be something more,” she answers, “than simple human vice behind the fact that millions of women have betrayed the most sacred and fundamental of relationships, that of mother and child,” leaving “husbands wondering what happened to their wives, fathers wondering what happened to their daughters, and children wondering what happened to their mothers.”

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Georgetown Students Vote to Pay Reparations to Descendants of School’s Slaves By Jack Crowe

By on April 12th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/georgetown-students-vote-to-pay-reparation-to-descendants-of-schools-slaves/

Georgetown University student government passed a referendum Thursday night that, if approved by the administration, would create a reparations fund to compensate the descendants of slaves who were sold to keep the university open.

A campus group called the GU272 Advocacy Team (in a nod to the 272 slaves the school sold in 1838 to pay off its outstanding debts) created the referendum, which calls for the implementation of a $27.70 per-semester fee to create a reconciliation fund that would be overseen by a board comprised of students and slave descendants.

The group estimates the fund would raise more than $400,000 annually to “be allocated for charitable purposes directly benefiting the descendants of the GU272 and other persons once enslaved by the Maryland Jesuits,” according to the bill, which was obtained by CNN.

“The vestiges of slavery are still so evident, and so many of the African Americans whose ancestors were enslaved are still so disenfranchised,” GU272 member Eliza Dunni Phillips told CNN. “It’s not enough to say sorry. Georgetown has to put their money where their mouth is and invest into the descendant community.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Yes, Investigate the Investigators By Rich Lowry

By on April 12th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/mueller-probe-fbi-investigation-questions/

The Mueller probe was a national trauma.

Attorney General William Barr dared to use the “s-word.”

He said in congressional testimony that the Trump campaign had been spied on by the U.S. government. Pressed by incredulous Senate Democrats, he clarified: “I think spying did occur. The question is whether it was adequately predicated.”

“Spying” has a negative connotation, so perhaps “surveilling” would be the better way to put it. But a key question is indeed whether there was “improper surveillance” of the campaign, as Barr stated at another point in the hearing.

Barr is committed to reviewing the conduct of the Russia investigation, which is getting denounced as an outrage by his critics. But why shouldn’t the attorney general seek to understand his department’s role in the high-stakes investigative melodrama of the past two years?

The Mueller probe was a national trauma. Its boosters didn’t experience it as such, of course. They enjoyed it and played it up and hoped for the very worst. But it cast a shadow over the White House, occupied an inordinate share of the nation’s political attention, and saddled innocent people with large legal bills.

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ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

What Happens to Palestinians Who Demand a Better Life? by Khaled Abu Toameh

By on April 12th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14057/hamas-gaza-protests-torture

Mohammed Safi is reported to have lost his eyesight while being held in a Hamas prison. His crime: participation in demonstrations calling for an end to the economic crisis in the Gaza Strip and protesting new taxes imposed by the Hamas rulers.

“The interrogator hit him in the head from behind three times and told him: ‘This is so you won’t be able to see at all.'” — Ahmed Safi, Mohammed Safi’s brother.

Safi simply sought to communicate that Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are living under a brutal Islamist regime that has offered them nothing but terror — directed towards Israel and towards themselves. He wanted the world to know that Palestinian leaders deflect the heat on the Palestinian street towards Israel.

Safi chose to speak truth to power and place the misery of the Palestinians in Gaza squarely where it belongs: at the feet of Hamas. He paid dearly for that choice. Meanwhile, Hamas leaders can now claim another “achievement” in their jihad against Israel: they managed to transform a clear-headed and courageous young man into a blind and disabled one.

Mohammed Safi, 27, is the latest victim of Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement that has been controlling the Gaza Strip since 2007.

While voters in Israel were heading to the ballot boxes to elect a new parliament, Safi, who is from the town of Beit Lahia, in the northern Gaza Strip, is reported to have lost his eyesight while being held in a Hamas prison. His crime: participation in demonstrations calling for an end to the economic crisis in the Gaza Strip and protesting new taxes imposed by the Hamas rulers.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Don’t Assume Good Intentions from Campus P.C. Pushers By Mark Bauerlein

By on April 12th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/04/11/dont-assume-good-intentions-from-campus-p-c-pushers/

No matter how much the general public abhors political correctness is higher education, the monitors of the Left continue to find methods of surveillance. Two Villanova professors described the latest development last week in the Wall Street Journal.

It’s a revision to the course evaluation form that professors distribute to students at the end of the semester. Typical questions address workload, assignments, classroom management, grading, and the availability of the professor. But we now have an extra query. I’ve heard it floated before, but this is the first concrete implementation of which I am aware. As political scientist Colleen Sheehan and humanities professor James Matthew Wilson describe it:

. . . students are now being asked heavily politicized questions such as whether the instructor has demonstrated “cultural awareness” or created an “environment free of bias based on individual differences or social identities.

You know what this means. Has the professor implied anything suggesting praise for Western civilization, a biblical conception of marriage and sexuality, American exceptionalism, or economic nationalism? Report him! Did he assign Huckleberry Finn (it has the n-word) or The Scarlet Letter (a woman has a child out of wedlock and is shamed and punished)? Write him up!

Watch your step, professor. Outside of class, students hear a nonstop mantra of diversity, tolerance, and inclusion, along with catechisms against -isms and -phobias. It has primed them to sniff out discrimination in its subtlest forms whenever it is aimed at historically disadvantaged identities. Now, with the sensitivity questions added to the evaluation form, the classroom is another setting of scrutiny, with the professor in the dock.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

America Needs New Export ControlsBy Stephen Bryen & Shoshana Bryen

By on April 12th, 2019

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

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union seriously outspent the United States on military equipment. The U.S. and its NATO allies worried that the Russians would have such overwhelming military power that, at any moment, Soviet and Warsaw Pact forces could flood Western Europe, starting with the Fulda Gap, where NATO would be pushed back and defeated.

The problem today is less Russia — with decent technology but not enough funds to produce great numbers — than China — with money to produce, but not yet a great technological base. So China uses ours.

American companies face no meaningful export restrictions and they are eager to take advantage of low-cost manufacturing in China and potential access to China’s huge domestic market. This has had an impact on Chinese electronics as well as aircraft manufacturing, submarine capabilities, and more. What China has not been able to get from legal American imports, it has worked to acquire by electronic and human spying.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Democrat Presidential Conference Opens with Communist Cop-Killer’s Chants Dems using American tax dollars to promote killers, terror-sponsors, and anti-American revolutionaries. Humberto Fontova

By on April 12th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273419/democrat-presidential-conference-opens-communist-humberto-fontova

“I’m gonna actually have you participate with me in repeating some words from a leader by the name of Assata Shakur!” — NAACP V.P. Jamal Watkins opening the We The People conference this week.

“[The conference speakers] included 2020 Democratic White House contenders Cory Booker, Julián Castro, Beto O’Rourke, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Jay Inslee and Kirsten Gillibrand.”

Now regarding that “leader” whose words seemed worthy of opening a conference showcasing the entire roster of the Democrat party’s Most-Likely-to-Succeed:

On May 2013 the FBI announced a $1 million reward for “information leading to the apprehension” of Joanne Chesimard (also known as Assata Shakur) whom they named a “Most Wanted Terrorist.” Chesimard is the first woman to make the FBI’s list. The New Jersey State Police Dept., which also wants her, added another $1 million to the pot.

You see, amigos, convicted killer of a New Jersey State Trooper and bona-fide “domestic terrorist” Chesimard (Assata Shakur) has been living in Cuba since 1984 as a Castro-coddled celebrity. But it’s not like bounty hunters can operate freely in a Stalinist country. So the $2 million was probably for show. Obama’s Justice Dept. was probably putting on a game face and saying, “Look Castro, we’re serious here! You better turn Shakur over, or…or–or ELSE!”

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Obama DHS Secretary: Border Is in ‘Crisis by Any Measure’ By Mairead McArdle

By on April 12th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/obama-dhs-secretary-border-is-in-crisis-by-any-measure/

Former Department of Homeland Security secretary Jeh Johnson on Thursday echoed the Trump administration’s language to describe the influx of immigrants at the southern border, calling it a “crisis.”

“By any measure, 4,000 arrests in a day, 100,000 in a month ― that’s the population of the city of Albany, N.Y. ― that suddenly shows up on our southern border in one month is a crisis,” Johnson said on Fox News. “It’s a crisis because it overwhelms our Border Patrol and our immigration officials’ ability to deal with it, and it’s a crisis because you have to absorb that population somehow into southern border towns.”

Johnson, who led DHS for the last three years of the Obama administration, said he had guided U.S. border authorities through a similar but smaller migrant crisis in 2014, by promoting the message that the journey to the border is dangerous, seeking the Mexican authorities’ cooperation in stemming the flow of migrants, and expanding U.S. detention capabilities for family units, the last of which was controversial.

“I know what a thousand a day looks like,” Johnson said. “I cannot begin to imagine what 4,000 a day looks like. It must overwhelm the system.”

The former secretary’s remarks came amid President Trump’s purge of DHS leadership this week, which Trump has said is designed to move the department in a “tougher direction.” Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen was forced out over the weekend, and the acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Ron Vitiello, resigned Wednesday after Trump pulled his nomination to lead the agency on a permanent basis last week.

The crisis “emanates” from Central America, which is “the most violent region of our world right now,” Johnson said. “We have got make the long-term investment in addressing the poverty and violence in those nations. It can be done. A lot of people don’t want to hear that. They want quick, easy answers. They want some legal lever to pull.”

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