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Ruth King

Ocasio-Cortez Boyfriend Troubles Reveal the Corruption at the Heart of Her Campaign By Tyler O’Neil

https://pjmedia.com/trending/ocasio-cortez-boyfriend-troubles-reveal-the-corruption-at-the-heart-of-her-campaign/

Last week, an enterprising conservative political consultant unearthed evidence that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) may have hired her boyfriend, Riley Roberts, to work in Congress. This news actually unraveled a far bigger story of corruption, however. As it turns out, a political group helping Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign had already paid Roberts during the campaign — and those payments from that shady organization may be the reason Ocasio-Cortez is in Congress today.

On Wednesday, Luke Thompson, a podcast host and former staffer for the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), shared some damning research into Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign. He discovered more about the relationship between Riley Roberts and the campaign, but he also unearthed a humongous corruption story.

Luke Thompson had originally unearthed the central piece of evidence tying Ocasio-Cortez’s congressional office to Riley Roberts — her boyfriend’s official congressional staff email. In the wake of this news, some people noticed that the Ocasio-Cortez campaign paid Roberts $1,750, but Thompson insisted this was only “a means of keeping accounting in order.” During the first half of 2018, the boyfriend volunteered with the campaign, and his efforts were classified as an in-kind contribution. This is normal.

Europe: Trying to Legitimize Iran’s Regime by Giulio Meotti

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13762/europe-iran-legitimacy

“The E.U. only seems to care about the nuclear agreement and trade ties. It pretends that the regime is legitimate and that Iranians have no alternatives to living under tyranny”. — Alireza Nader of New Iran, reported by Benjamin Weinthal, Fox News.

“The fact that the Ayatollah had executed thousands of people, including many writers and poets since his seizure of power in Tehran had provoked only mild rebuke from Western governments and public opinion… With the fatwa against Rushdie, we thought the whole world would mobilise against the ayatollah, turning his regime into an international pariah. Nothing of the kind happened”. — Amir Taheri, former executive editor-in-chief of Iran’s leading newspaper, Kayhan.

Worst of all, now Europe’s highest court has effectively adopted Khomeini’s idea of blasphemy. The European Court of Human Rights recently decided that an Austrian woman’s conviction for calling the Prophet of Islam “a pedophile” did not breach her freedom of speech. The sharia style of “blasphemy” has now become a potent weapon to stifle and suppress free speech.

“In looking to the future, Ayatollah Khomeini has spoken of his hopes to show the world what a genuine Islamic government can do on behalf of its people”, wrote Princeton University professor Richard Falk at the dawn of the Iranian Islamic Revolution in 1979. He was one of the many Western intellectuals who, in a mix of misconception and naiveté, supported Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s regime. These deaf Western secularists succumbed to the charm of the Iranian clerics who have just celebrated the 40th anniversary of their regime. It is useful to remind the public that Khomeini orchestrated his Islamic revolution from Neauphle-le-Château, a village 20 miles outside Paris.

Joan Ryan becomes eighth Labour MP to quit, blaming ‘culture of anti-Semitism’ under Corbyn leadership by Harry York

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/02/19/joan-ryan-eighth-labour-mp-quit-blaming-culture-antisemitism/

An eighth Labour MP has quit the Labour Party to join a breakaway group after accusing Jeremy Corbyn of presiding over a “culture of anti-Semitism”.

Joan Ryan said under Mr Corbyn’s leadership Labour had become a party that “allows racism to flourish” alongside a “hatred of Israel” and she would be joining the Independent Group.

She said that she felt she had a “duty” to resign after seven Labour MPs quit the party on Monday including Luciana Berger, who said that under Mr Corbyn anti-Semitism had become “institutional”.

She said that Mr Corbyn, the Labour leader, had introduced anti-Semitism to the party and was a “danger”.

Ms Ryan told The Times: “It’s obviously not a delight, it’s painful. But it is a duty. I wasn’t elected as a Labour MP to watch this happen, and I have no choice but to stand up to it. For me this is a moral issue.”

She said that she found it “hard to say” that Mr Corbyn is not an anti-Semite. “I don’t want to say what’s in somebody’s heart,” she said.

“But I’ve long said if he wanted to prove he wasn’t then his actions could have done that for him, and he hasn’t done that.”

“And I’m surprised that he wonders when people think he is. But I think the bigger point is that he’s allowed the Labour Party to become institutionally anti-Semitic, and he has a direct responsibility as leader of this party.”

Turkey’s ‘Food Terrorism’: Blaming ‘Global Powers’ for Country’s Ills by Uzay Bulut

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13758/turkey-west-blame

“Until today, [neither global powers nor their local Turkish collaborator subcontractors] have… been able to make Turkey bend down the way they want it to on any issue. Seeing that they could not [achieve their goals] by means of foreign exchange rates, interest rates, diplomacy or perception politics, they are now trying to do it through onions, potatoes, eggplants, cucumbers and peppers.” — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Ankara’s anti-Western statements and politics not only make Turkey an unstable and unreliable NATO ally, but also blind many Turks to the realities of the world, thwart their intellectual growth and render them unable to grasp what is really happening to them in their own country.

At a rally on February 13, ahead of Turkey’s municipal elections — slated for March 31 — President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan blamed “global powers” (meaning the West) for the country’s serious economic problems and massive rise in the price of produce.

Alluding to “food terrorism,” Erdoğan said:

“Until today, [neither global powers nor their local Turkish collaborator subcontractors] have… been able to make Turkey bend down the way they want it to on any issue. Seeing that they could not [achieve their goals] by means of foreign exchange rates, interest rates, diplomacy or perception politics, they are now trying to do it through onions, potatoes, eggplants, cucumbers and peppers.”

The Cost of Democratic Socialism By Svetozar Pejovich

https://amgreatness.com/2019/02/19/the-cost-

A defining feature of the 20th century was the struggle between capitalism and three major types of socialism: Communism, national socialism, and fascism. All three types of socialisms, as well as Cuba and Venezuela today, failed to duplicate the accomplishments of capitalism in raising the standard of living. Yet, a supposed new brand of socialism, “democratic socialism,” is emerging in the United States. Democratic socialism has two objectives consistent with all other types of socialism: the top-down control of resource allocation and the top-down predetermined economic outcome. But democratic socialism also has one institution that is said to set it apart from its predecessors: democratic socialism supports democratic elections.

Unfortunately, the undeniable economic success of capitalism made it unlikely that voters would support democratic socialism at the ballot box on the basis of efficiency. Democratic socialists, the so-called progressives, instead found their rallying cry in income inequalities. They promise the equalization of incomes via a variety of redistributional policies such as extraordinary marginal tax rates on high incomes, government sponsored jobs, weakening of private property rights via regulations, and measures like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s return-to-the-cave proposal, called the “Green New Deal.” (As a footnote: In the Critique of the Gotha Program, Marx and Engels criticized German socialists for advocating income equality).

Redistributional policies call for more administrative programs. Those programs require more bureaucrats and bigger budgets. More bureaucrats and bigger budgets increase the role of government in the economy. More government in the economy increases the transfer of resources from competitive economic markets to political markets. And this transfer of resources to political markets incentivizes people to vote for a living. Clearly, democratic socialists want to throw out the equality of opportunity in favor of the equality of outcome. Electing the progressives must have consequences.

Dealing With Europe’s ISIS Returnees Will our allies heed Trump? Bruce Bawer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272907/dealing-europes-isis-returnees-bruce-bawer

“Seven hundred German citizens have gone to Syria to fight for the Islamic State. It’s not what they’re doing over there that scares us. It’s what happens when they come back.”
– Astrid, German intelligence officer, Homeland, season 5, episode 2.

Now that ISIS has been reduced from a caliphate to a cipher, the question arises: what to do with its former members who traveled from the West in order to crush the West – and who remain in the hands of the U.S. military and its local allies? Ship them all to Guantánamo so that the European media can paint them as victims of American abuse? Set them free to fight another day?

Early on Sunday morning, President Trump addressed this issue on Twitter. He wrote:

The United States is asking Britain, France, Germany and other European allies to take back over 800 ISIS fighters that we captured in Syria and put them on trial. The Caliphate is ready to fall. The alternative is not a good one in that we will be forced to release them….

….The U.S. does not want to watch as these ISIS fighters permeate Europe, which is where they are expected to go. We do so much, and spend so much – Time for others to step up and do the job that they are so capable of doing. We are pulling back after 100% Caliphate victory!

Ruthie Blum Palestinian ‘pay-for-slay’ policy will go on, despite Israel’s new law With or without the funds to keep Palestinian Authority civil society afloat, the terrorists will continue to be in clover.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/palestinian-pay-for-slay-policy-will-go-on-despite-israels-new-law/

The Israeli security cabinet decided on Sunday to put into effect a law passed in July to deduct half a billion shekels (approximately $138.2 million) from the annual tax revenues it transfers to the Palestinian Authority each year. The purpose of the legislation—like its precursor, the Taylor Force Act, which was approved by the U.S. Congress in May—is to coerce the P.A. to cease rewarding terrorists with hefty “pay-for-slay” stipends.

Initially, Israeli security officials opposed cutting the funds on the grounds that doing so could endanger security cooperation between Jerusalem and Ramallah, and lead to an escalation of terrorist attacks. But after 19-year-old Ori Ansbacher was raped and murdered earlier this month by a Palestinian wannabe “martyr for Allah,” public pressure on the government to crack down on the P.A. caused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to say that he would begin implementing the law to withhold funds as soon as he received the green light from the security cabinet. Which he finally did.

The P.A. was quick to issue an incensed response.

“The Palestinian Authority views the approval of the decision to deduct funds as a robbery of the Palestinian people’s money and as a unilateral violation of the agreements signed between the two sides, such as the Paris agreement,” P.A. chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s spokesman Abu Rudaina said in a statement. “This decision will have dangerous consequences on all levels.”

Alistair Crooks: Culture, Society and The Erosion of Both

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2019/02/culture-society

By the naïve gullibility of liberals, the conceit of socialists and the deceit of Gramscian Marxists, the march through the institutions continues, all too often aided by those who should know better. With history as our guide, the result is and has always been the descent into dictatorship and tyranny.

DARWINIAN theory suggests that our ancestor Homos have lived in evolutionary continuity with even older primate ancestors over several millions of years. Friedrich Hayek, in his book The Fatal Conceit : The Errors of Socialism suggested that, at its most basic level, human interaction is still controlled by simple, early primate behaviours. Think of the ‘flight or flight’ reaction, for instance. These are not learned responses but totally conditioned reflexes.

Hayek looked at remnant, innate behaviours in modern humans and suggested they included two separate patterns of behaviours for two separately identified groups of people. These he named as an ‘inner group’, comprised of family and close relatives, who could expect generosity, charity and altruism withing their circle, while ‘outer groups’ would be met with fear, suspicion and aggression. Hayek suggested that these behaviours are hard-wired, inherited from our primitive ancestors and developed over thousands of generations from an era when people lived in very small isolated groups in direct competition with neighbouring groups. Darwin would suggest these behaviours persisted because they conferred an evolutionary advantage to our hunting-and-gathering ancestors, who only rarely came in contact with ‘outsider’ groups.

Hayek also pointed to the significance of ‘culture’. With increasing interaction between groups caused by rising population densities, culture evolved as the set of learned behaviours which sit above this earlier innate behaviour and ameliorate its consequences. Culture is the set of negotiated ‘rules of conduct’ passed down orally, rather than genetically, which allowed people of an ‘inner group’ to deal with those of the surrounding ‘outer groups’ without having to resort to aggression, suspicion and fear.

The Internet Locusts Descend on Ristretto Roasters written by Nancy Rommelmann

https://quillette.com/2019/02/18/the-internet

Camila worked for Ristretto Roasters, my husband Din’s coffee roasting company in Portland, Oregon, for five years. She received regular promotions and by 2016 was earning a mid-five figure salary. In October of last year, Camila resigned. The end.

Or, the end until last month, when she sent an email to more than two dozen former and current Ristretto Roasters employees, alerting them to the YouTube series, #MeNeither Show, that fellow journalist Leah McSweeney and I launched in December 2018. In three half-hour episodes, we had discussed, among other topics, celebrities who have exploited the #MeToo movement, and the difference between sexual predators and those swept-up in the excesses of the current moment. The show’s “about” page reads, “#MeNeither is an almost-weekly conversation about the cultural issues of the day, and an attempt to create a space where people can find ways to think out loud through uncomfortable topics.”

In her email to Ristretto employees, Camila described our show as “vile, dangerous, and extremely misguided” and announced her intention to “take this information to [local newspapers] Willamette Week and The [Portland] Mercury.” She went on to explain that, “it could be really powerful to have a formal letter singed [sic] off by as many RR employees as possible so that the community at large knows that the people who actually keep RR running do not stand for this.”

The letter Camila circulated to the local press read in part:

We believe it is a business owner’s responsibility to create a safe and supportive working environment for their employees. Invalidating assault survivors throws into question the safety of Ristretto Roasters as a workplace and has the potential to create a demoralizing and hostile environment for employees and customers alike. This cannot be tolerated.

The career-destroying potential of the internet mob immediately snapped into action. Articles appeared in at least four newspapers and on innumerable websites. People on social media hurried to declare that they would never again spend a penny at Ristretto and were rewarded with approval from like-minded peers. A college-age girl walked into one of the cafes screaming, variously, that the baristas were in danger, and that working for Ristretto somehow posed a threat to the community. Employees who had previously been secure in their jobs became jittery and quit. One of Din’s managers suggested that he sell the company and that I offer a public apology before it was too late.

This was within 48 hours of the first news reports appearing.

No, Female ISIS Members Should Not Get Tickets Back To Civilization Adding white wine instead of red to a Coq-au-Vin is a ‘mistake.’ Joining a mass murdering religious cult enslaving, raping, and conquering infidel land to spread Sharia is anything but. By Sumantra Maitra

http://thefederalist.com/2019/02/19/no-female-isis-members-not-get-free-tickets-back-civilization/

Superficially, the father of the ISIS bride interviewed by the BBC might seem like any other father grieving for his daughter. In a typical softball BBC interview, breaking down in tears he said the British state should ensure that this woman safely comes back to British land.

Not only that, he said, the government shouldn’t prosecute or jail her, because she’s arguably a youthful teen who made a mistake, and everyone makes mistakes. The mask slipped momentarily when he was asked whether he ever took part in an Islamist demonstration against Americans and British. The answer is anybody’s guess.

Apparently, that might have pushed this girl to join the Islamic State, a murderous death cult raping, pillaging, and enslaving in a land that once stretched almost from Tehran to Tartous. This woman, who left her privileged London lifestyle with full knowledge of the people she was joining, in the age of internet and mass media where no stories of ISIS atrocities are censored, declared war on her own countrymen and is now sitting at a camp in the Middle East, demanding to come back. The word treason is thrown around a lot, but if there’s one example where it fits, it is declaring war against your own country.

This is by no means the only sympathetic portrayal of ISIS brides that has flooded Western media recently. These women left the West to marry and commit jihad, and not just in the United Kingdom (UK). CNN wrote a sympathetic portrayal of one British female ISIS supporter who is pregnant and wants to return to the country she spurned to give birth.

A Canadian woman said she was clueless about the ISIS atrocities but has no regrets because, even though she wants to come home, she still believes in Sharia and wants it established. When asked about ISIS’s mass murder and enslavement of the Yazidis, she defiantly commented there might have been “a few” executions.

A German woman was featured in a Guardian tearjerker, saying she “just wants to go home.” Another British woman misses “fish and chips” and free health care, a German now has two children of her own and worries about an “uncertain future,” and a Moroccan married to a British/Australian jihadist “bonded over television shows.”