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Ruth King

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Of course London is no longer an English city, but the rest of the country needs it more than ever Jeremy Warner

By on May 31st, 2019

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/05/30/course-london-no-longer-english-city-rest-country-needs-ever/?li_source=LI&li_medium=li-recommendation-widget

It was, I suppose, inevitable that John Cleese should get it in the neck for restating the blindingly obvious – that London is no longer an English city. The former Monty Python and Fawlty Towers star was only telling a truth that has long been recognised by foreign tourists, and indeed by just about everyone else with a modicum of worldly awareness. 

If you want a picture postcard caricature of what most people think of as England, you are much more likely to find it outside the capital than within the bounds of the M25. London is a global city, with more in common with New York and the other great metropolises of the world than much of its own hinterland. 

This is not a particularly new phenomenon; as early as the thirteenth century there are recorded complaints of London as an unrecognisable city, back then on account of supposedly being overrun by Moors. Today they come from all over the world; in my particular borough there are apparently more than 50 spoken languages. We have become a veritable tower of Babel.

To point this out is, however, to invite a tirade of condemnation from all the usual suspects. How dare Mr Cleese say that multicultural London is not England.

Time to get real. On so many levels, it is manifestly obvious that London is a world apart from much of the rest of the country, right down to the great Brexit divide, where support for leaving the European Union is at its highest outside the capital. Most Londoners would by some margin prefer to remain. 

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MY SAY: Comments turned off

My Say: The New York Times Libels Brisket

By on May 31st, 2019

I make Cuban style brisket called “ropa vieja”….It is boiled with onions and carrots and garlic and salt and then shredded and cooked some more with tomato sauce and more garlic and green peppers and saffron. My family loves it. It is labor intensive and makes a huge mess. When I gather the refuse from cooking and eating, I cadge a copy of The New York Times from the recycling pile in the disposal room and use it to wrap the soggy garbage… and to mop the kitchen floor…..rsk 

Thanks to my dear friend Joan Swirsky for this nugget.

New York Times Faces a Brisket Brouhaha  by Ira Stoll (https://www.algemeiner.com/2019/05/30/new-york-times-faces-a-brisket-brouhaha/)

The cover story in this week’s New York Times food section asserts, “Brisket remains oddly off limits for one large segment of the population: home cooks.”

The article was about Texas or Kansas City-style barbecued brisket, but the sentence sweepingly suggesting the cut of meat is rarely if ever cooked at home was enough to exasperate more than a few Times readers.

One comment, with 33 upvotes, was, “My first thoughts were, ‘excuse me, have you ever met a Jewish person…?’”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Barr: Counter-intelligence Probe of Trump Campaign Crossed ‘Serious Red Line’ By Mairead McArdle

By on May 31st, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/william-barr-counter-intelligence-probe-of-trump-campaign-crossed-serious-red-line/

Attorney General William Barr said Friday that the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign “crossed” a “serious red line” and should be “carefully looked at.”

“The use of foreign intelligence capabilities and counterintelligence capabilities against an American political campaign to me is unprecedented and it’s a serious red line that’s been crossed,” Barr said in an interview with CBS.

The attorney general is currently investigating the origins of the probe to determine whether the U.S. intelligence community’s surveillance of the Trump campaign was warranted. He has expressed skepticism about the explanations for some of the investigative actions taken.

During testimony to the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee last month, Barr stated that “spying did occur” on the Trump campaign, angering Democratic lawmakers.

“I guess it’s become a dirty word somehow,” Barr told CBS. “I think there is nothing wrong with spying. The question is always whether it is authorized by law.”

“There were counterintelligence activities undertaken against the Trump campaign, And I’m not saying there was not a basis for it, that it was legitimate, but I want to see what that basis was and make sure it was legitimate,” he added.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

GMO Fungus Mass Kills Malaria Mosquitoes By Wesley J. Smith see note please

By on May 31st, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/gmo-fungus-mass-kills-malaria-mosquitoes/

The late Nobel Laureate Norman Borlaug worked tirelessly on GMO to prevent famines and cultivate crops on poor soil….but the junk science purveyors thwarted all his efforts….rsk

Genetically modified organisms offer so much potential to save lives, improve the environment, and generally promote a more prosperous and healthier future. For example, “golden rice”–genetically modified to contain vitamin A — promises to be a great preventative of blindness and death for destitute children in the developing world.

In the latest example, scientists have genetically modified a fungus that infects malaria mosquitoes to contain lethal spider venom. In a controlled test, the population of these dangerous insects collapsed once the GMO fungus was introduced into the population. From the BBC report:

A 6,500-sq-ft fake village – complete with plants, huts, water sources and food for the mosquitoes – was set up in Burkina Faso. It was surrounded by a double layer of mosquito netting to prevent anything escaping. A so-called “mosquitosphere” tests the fungus in real-world conditions, without releasing it into the wild

The fungal spores were mixed with sesame oil and wiped on to black cotton sheets. The mosquitoes had to land on the sheets to be exposed to the deadly fungus. The researchers started the experiments with 1,500 mosquitoes.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Orbán’s Switch Back to the Center-Right By John O’Sullivan

By on May 31st, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/orbans-switch-back-to-the-center-right/

The European election results were fairly clear — the mainstream centrist parties declined again; the Greens and Left-Liberals benefited from this and rose in much of Western Europe; and the populists gained too in France, Poland, Italy, and Hungary, but not quite as well as expected elsewhere. (For a deeper dive into these events and their significance, see my column here). Not all is clear, however. A pall of obscurity hangs over the “populist” parties, not only about what they believe but even about what should they be called.

Roger Eatwell and Matthew Goodwin have written a good book about them — National Populism. While they concede that there are quite deep ideological divides between different parties, arising from their different national political cultures, they put them all into the same box labelled “national populism.” That’s not an unfair label. Indeed, many analysts in the European media, being left-liberal and acting on the principle of “No Friends to the Right,” calls them many much more hostile names.

But the term “populism” reflects the earliest stage in the rise of these parties when they were essentially protest parties angry that remote liberal elites had misgoverned their countries and avoided being held to account for their failures. Populists were then groping towards an understanding of what went wrong and how to put it right. The longer they are around in politics — and most European countries now have populists in their parliaments — they develop more serious analyses and more positive policies. If they don’t manage that, they will eventually disappear as the voters move on from being angry to wanting problems solved. And if they do, we will discover the color of their political philosophy and give them a different and more informative name.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Mueller Investigation Was Always an Impeachment Probe By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on May 31st, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/robert-mueller-investigation-was-always-impeachment-probe/

The special counsel abdicated on obstruction to avoid a confrontation with the Justice Department and get his evidence to Congress.

Why mention the OLC guidance at all?

That is the question for Bob Mueller, left hanging by the statement his office jointly issued with Justice Department flacks on Wednesday, clarifying (as it were) remarks he had made hours earlier at his parting-shot press conference.

At issue is Mueller’s decision to punt on the question of whether President Trump should be indicted for obstruction of justice. In his startling remarks, Mueller sought to justify himself by citing instruction from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. The longstanding OLC opinion, an outgrowth of Nixon- and Clinton-era scandals, holds that a sitting president may not be indicted. The two press offices were struggling to reconcile (a) Mueller’s pointed reliance on this OLC guidance at the presser with (b) his prior disclaimers of such reliance.

According to Attorney General Bill Barr, in a meeting over two weeks before Mueller submitted his final report, the special counsel emphatically denied that his refusal to render a prosecutorial judgment on obstruction hinged on the OLC guidance. Naturally, in their continuing quest to frame Barr as the most diabolical villain since Lex Luthor, the media-Democrat complex insisted that the AG must be lying.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Barr Unloads On Collusion Conspiracy Theory: ‘This Whole Idea That Trump Was In Cahoots With The Russians Is Bogus’ By Madeline Osburn

By on May 31st, 2019

In an hour-long interview with CBS News’ Jan Crawford released on Friday, Attorney General William Barr reflected on the Russia investigation, the Robert Mueller report, the personal attacks against him, and his career at the Department of Justice.

Barr laid into the abuses of power happening among top officials at the FBI, the lack of evidence found by Mueller’s investigation, and the media hypocrisy exposed by coverage of stories like the “appalling” texts between FBI agent lovers Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.

“Mueller has spent two and half years and the fact is there is no evidence of a conspiracy,” Barr said. “So it was bogus, this whole idea that the Trump was in cahoots with the Russians is bogus.”

Barr has been critiqued for seeking to declassify documents concerning the Russia investigation. He argued that reviewing standards and procedures at the highest levels are an “important way of making sure that government power is being conscientiously and properly applied.”

When Crawford asked if he was concerned with bias among FBI investigators, Barr said the Strzok-Page texts were “very damning” and argued that there would be an outrage if the same stunts had been pulled against the Obama campaign.

“If those kinds of discussions were held, you know, when Obama first ran for office, people talking about Obama in those tones and suggesting that ‘Oh that he might be a Manchurian candidate for Islam or something like that.’ You know some wild accusations like that, and you had that kind of discussion back and forth, you don’t think we would be hearing a lot more about it?” he asked.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

With Free Speech Zones and Safe Spaces for All… By Lathan Watts

By on May 31st, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/05/with_free_speech_zones_and_safe_spaces_for_all.html
“It’s frightening to think students walking out of or protesting at commencement ceremonies are the decision-makers of tomorrow.”

Each year during graduation season we are treated to what amounts to the closing ceremony of the Olympics of virtue signaling on college campuses across the nation. The competitors — students who have spent four years in training — huddling in safe spaces to avoid speakers with whom they disagree, using the free speech zone to learn what they’re supposed to be offended by, and demanding ridiculous measures be adopted by university administrators to remedy every perceived ill in human history. The gold medalists in this farce are the “walk-outs” — the students who draw as much attention to themselves as possible by walking out of the commencement ceremony in protest of the commencement speaker. This year is no different; ask Vice President Mike Pence.

Beyond the risk of causing most Americans to suffer repetitive stress injury from excessive eye rolling, this trend presents a real threat that must not be taken lightly. These students are being taught a perverse version of freedom. Namely that freedom is the right to never be made uncomfortable. Once these putative tyrants of “tolerance” graduate, they will inevitably be confronted with people and ideas very different from their own and they will react in the manner for which they were applauded in college — they will seek to silence opposition. My firm, First Liberty Institute, deals with the repercussions on a daily basis.

Consider Ken Hauge, a retired minister, who was threatened with eviction from his senior living complex in Fredericksburg, Virginia for leading a Bible study in a private apartment. His home is no longer a safe space for the free exercise of religion. Rabbi David Ribiat, one of our orthodox Jewish clients in the Village of Airmont, New York, has spent years and over $40,000.00 trying (unsuccessfully) to obtain a permit from the local government to simply host fellow Jews in his home to worship.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Barr: “Resisting A Democratically Elected President” Is Destroying Our Norms And Institutions, Not Trump Posted By Tim Hains

By on May 31st, 2019

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/05/31/attorney_general_william_barr_i_dont_care_about_my_reputation_i_took_this_job_to_protect_our_institutions.html

In an interview aired Friday on “CBS This Morning,” Attorney General William Barr explains why he opened an investigation into the origins of the Russia investigation. He doesn’t say what the evidence is, but Barr tells CBS News legal correspondent Jan Crawford that there is evidence that makes him believe senior government officials may have acted improperly to authorize surveillance of President Trump’s 2016 campaign. He says that led to “spying” on the campaign.

He said the hyper-politicized nature of politics today is a danger to longstanding institutions and he took the job of attorney general because he is at the end of his career.”Nowadays, people don’t care about the merits or the substance. They only care about who it helps, whether my side benefits or the other side benefits. Everything is gauged by politics, and I say that is antithetical to the way the Department [of Justice] runs, and any attorney general in this period is going to end up losing a lot of political capital,” Barr said. “And that’s one of the reasons I decided I should take [the job] on. At my stage in my life, it wouldn’t make any difference.”

“I’m at the end of my career,” he said. “Everyone dies. I don’t believe in the Homeric idea that immortality comes by having odes sung about you over the centuries.”

“In many ways, I’d rather be back at my old life, but I love the Department of Justice, I love the FBI, I think it is important that in this period of intense partisan feelings we do not destroy our institutions.”

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Right from Wrong: Electing to defend Israel from Iran As the ayatollahs were repeating their vow to wipe the Jewish state off the map, a group of Israelis obtained top-secret Iranian files. This feat deserves the highest praise. By Ruthie Blum

By on May 31st, 2019

https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Right-from-Wrong-Electing-to-defend-Israel-from-Iran-591197

The last-ditch efforts of Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu to form a coalition, culminating Wednesday night in the dispersal of the newly instated 21st Knesset, overshadowed crucial events that help to explain why the ruling Likud Party has been and should remain at the helm.

A committee headed by Netanyahu – who has been serving as defense minister since Avigdor Liberman resigned the post in November and spurred the election that he just caused to go down the drain – announced its decision to award the 2019 Israel Defense Prize to the Mossad agents who bravely broke into a warehouse in Tehran and retrieved thousands of documents related to Iran’s nuclear program.
The massive amount of material, proving beyond a doubt that Iran has been working to build nuclear weapons, was presented by Netanyahu to the Israeli public a year ago in April. In a televised appearance, Netanyahu walked back and forth between shelves full of folders and a wall covered in compact discs, to illustrate the extent of the find – the contents of which are thought to have contributed to US President Donald Trump’s final decision to withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), otherwise known as the “Iran nuclear deal.”
As in the past, the Israeli prime minister was ridiculed in this case for his tendency to use “props” to make his point. Guffaws can still be heard from the peanut gallery of Bibi-detractors over the primitive graphic of a bomb, with a red line drawn just below its detonator, which he held up during an address to the UN General Assembly in 2012.
Mockery may be the only method that Netanyahu’s rivals can come up with to distract and detract from the actual message that he has been conveying throughout his career. But the joke is on them.
Whatever the voting public feels about his penchant for melodramatic devices, it knows he’s right about the threats that Israel faces, and trusts him more than anyone else to stave off, if not eradicate, them.
No amount of Bibi-bating, however, was able to counteract the general sense in Israel that the Mossad guys who seized such a consequential trove from deep in enemy territory, and whisked it back to Israel without a snag, were heroic. Not since Operation Thunderbolt – the 1976 Entebbe raid during which Netanyahu’s brother, Yonatan, was killed rescuing hostages in Uganda – has the country experienced such a surge of national pride.
The Mossad maneuver was a reminder that the Jewish state still possesses the will, and often unparalleled ability, to pull off something so brazenly jaw-dropping.

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