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Ruth King

HISTORY Comments turned off

Chanukah 5779: Vilification, Indoctrination, Corroboration… by Gerald A. Honigman by Gerald A. Honigman

By on November 26th, 2018

www.geraldahonigman.com

As I prepare to try to once again fill in some important gaps which too many Jewish students–let alone others–have in education prior to or during their years of anti-Israel higher indoctrination and vilification on many, if not most, campuses, Chanukah 5779/2018 is fast approaching.

This endeavor will serve as a follow-up to my last analysis with this goal in mind. That earlier one dealt with, among other things, what perhaps the greatest Muslim scholar of all time, Ibn Khaldun, had to say about both the historical Jew and the Jew of the Nations–Israel–some six centuries ago… https://ekurd.net/asabiyah-wandering-desert-2018-11-18. If I say so myself, like this current essay, the former is also just what the doctor ordered when confronting groups like SJP/Students for Justice in Palestine (which is having its annual hate Israel fest conference at UCLA as I write this), J Street U, and duplicitous “Progressive” professors who specialize in using one set of lenses to scrutinize Israel and Zionism, and an entirely different set with regards to the rest of the neighborhood.

With that said, what you’re about to read is something precious to those interested in historical truths–not just religious and theological claims and inspiration…corroboration.

Too many of our younger folks (not to mention parents) are simply naive in these matters, and when confronted by hostile instructors and groups on campus, either cower or join the increasingly popular anti-Israel (and frequently anti-Semitic) chorus.

Let’s begin…

Chanukah is the first war ever recorded which was fought over religious liberty and it was waged by the Jewish nation…the one which Zionism’s opponents claim never existed.

One (very important) aspect of that nation–besides its unique culture, language, and so forth–indeed included a religious dimension, and there are prominent professors, not just Arab ones, who claim that since Jews are just a religious community, they do not deserve to have a state of their own…http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/4068

So, what’s the story?

For millennia, Jews have had a very unique set of religious beliefs and ethical standards which they are supposed to adhere to. One could join the nation of the people of Israel/Judah/Judea by conversion to the religious faith of that people.

“Jew” comes from the name Yehudah/Judah, originally the Hebrew tribe named after one of Jacob’s sons and later Judah/Judaea as the land was known in the times of the southern kingdom and the Greeks and Romans.

Judaean equals “Jew.”

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MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

The Green Book – A Review : Marilyn Penn

By on November 26th, 2018

http://politicalmavens.com/index.php/2018/11/26/the-green-book-a-review/

Sometimes a movie that’s been panned turns out to be more enjoyable than those that appeal to critics who pay attention to words like auteur and oeuvre. Sometimes a bowl of mac and cheese is preferable to pate de foie gras and so it is with great pleasure that I urge you to treat yourself to some comfort food in the sizable portion of Viggo Mortenson as you haven’t seen him before.

Playing a mob-connected, volatile bouncer who loses his job at the Copacabana, Viggo accepts a temporary job as chauffeur to Dr. Don Shirley, a classically trained pianist and head of a trio who must do a road trip from New York to the deep south. He needs a man like Viggo, trained in the public relations insights of bouncers because Dr. Shirley is a black man who will be barred from hotels, clubs and dining rooms yet is determined to provoke precisely those confrontations while en route.

To a certain extent, the set-up is a reverse rip-off of Driving Miss Daisy with a working class white man chauffeuring an elite and educated black man who trained in Russia, speaks multiple languages, knows little about pop music or its new stars but is immensely gifted and sought after as a performer. These two men have virtually nothing in common and the gentle comedy that ensues from their mismatch is what fuels the plot. It is the best part of the movie which loses its panache when it tries to drive home the already obvious message – segregation was bad and racists resisted the legal efforts to integrate the south.

Part of the problem is that Dr. Don Shirley, a man invested in the power of personal dignity is a stiff-necked goody two-shoes, determined to correct Viggo’s grammar, speech patterns and habits learned in the old neighborhood in the Bronx. We are amazed at his talent and genius (he was a real person for those who never heard him). But of course, Viggo – handsome even with a paunch – has the charm and common sense that often tag along with the personalities of bad boys and he remains the object of interest throughout.

Don’t minimize the skill involved in his performance – he is never out of character for a single moment and though he works with gangsters and people who don’t wait for backtalk, he manages to make us believe that he’s primarily a family man with a genuine capacity for friendship and love. Think Damon Runyon along with the mis-pronunciations and misunderstanding of vocabulary to distract us from what gangsters do. This movie will remind you of that disarming author and you’ll really enjoy yourself without working too hard. Just see it.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Junk Science Has Become a Profitable Industry. Who Will Stop It? . By S. Stanley Young & Henry Miller

By on November 26th, 2018

https://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2018/11/26/junk_science_has_become_a_profitable_industry_110810.html

Should we believe the headline, “Drinking four cups of coffee daily lowers risk of death”? How about, “Mouthwash May Trigger Diabetes. . .”? Should we really eat more, not less, fat? And what should we make of data that suggest people with spouses live longer?

These sorts of conclusions, from supposedly scientific studies, seem to vary from month to month, leading to ever-shifting “expert” recommendations. However, most of their admonitions are based on flawed research that produces results worthy of daytime TV.

Misleading research is costly to society directly because much of it is supported by the federal government, and indirectly, when it gives rise to unwise, harmful public policy.

Social science studies are notorious offenders. A landmark study in the journal Nature Human Behaviour in August reported the results of efforts to replicate 21 social science studies published in the prestigious journals Nature and Science between 2010 and 2015.

The multi-national team actually “conducted high-powered replications of the 21 experimental social science studies — using sample sizes around five times larger than the original sample sizes” and found that “62% of the replications show an effect in the same direction as the original studies.” One out of the four Nature papers and seven of the seventeen Science papers evaluated did not replicate, a shocking result for two prestigious scientific journals. The authors noted two kinds of flaws in the original studies: false positives and inflated effect sizes.

Science is supposed to be self-correcting. Smart editors. Peer review. Competition from other labs. But when we see that university research claims – published in the crème de la crème of scientific journals, no less — are so often wrong, there must be systematic problems. One of them is outright fraud – “advocacy research” that has methodological flaws or intentionally misinterprets the results.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Asia Bibi and the First Freedom By Matthew Continetti

By on November 26th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/11/asia-bibi-blaphemy-charges-religious-freedom-asylum/Why hasn’t she been granted asylum?

Asia Bibi got into an argument with her co-workers and ended up in jail. Bibi is a Pakistani Catholic and mother of five. She cannot read. For years, she picked fruit in her rural village. One day in June 2009, her peers refused to share a pitcher of water with her because she is a Christian. She argued with them, muttering some caustic words about the founder of Islam. They responded by accusing her of blasphemy: a capital crime in Pakistan. The next year she was sentenced to death row.

No longer. In October the Supreme Court of Pakistan acquitted and released Asia Bibi after a long legal battle, during which Islamic radicals assassinated a Pakistani official for supporting her cause. The response to her acquittal was unsurprising. Global media and human-rights organizations cheered, while Pakistani fundamentalists demonstrated and hung Asia Bibi in effigy. The outrage spooked Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan into making it more difficult for her to leave the country. Facing the risk of extrajudicial killing, Bibi remains in hiding. Her lawyer Saiful Malook fled to Europe. Protests greeted his arrival.

The other day in Frankfurt, Malook called on the German government to provide Asia Bibi and her family with documents that would allow them to exit Pakistan. Why no Western government has yet granted her asylum is something of a mystery. It is possible that Bibi and her family may be using the negotiations to secure the release of additional people whose safety they feel is also in jeopardy. European governments, including the United Kingdom’s, may also worry that Asia Bibi’s arrival would provoke a backlash from their own militant Islamists. Nor is Europe exactly the global standard in free speech. Around the same time the Pakistani Supreme Court reversed the verdict against Asia Bibi, the European Court of Human Rights upheld a verdict against an Austrian woman for “publicly disparaging religious doctrines,” namely Islam. She and Bibi should compare notes.

How lucky one is to be born in the United States. The American tradition of religious freedom is strong, and it is neither to be under-appreciated nor to be tossed off lightly. Religious dissenters founded several of the original colonies. The first clauses of the Bill of Rights prohibit an established church as well as abridgments of the free exercise of religion. George Washington’s letter to the Touro synagogue in Newport reflects the American (and Biblical) ideal: “Every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.” Asia Bibi’s story pricks the conscience because it is so outside the American understanding of public speech, of religious practice.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Canada’s Treacherous “Faustian Bargain” by Salim Mansur

By on November 26th, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13349/canada-government-media

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, it seems, adheres to the principle of globalism, according to which the world is borderless, and the idea of sovereign nation-states is both reactionary and obsolete. In this borderless world, the governing body is the unelected, untransparent, unaccountable and deeply corrupt United Nations and its agencies, which possess the authority to legislate international law that is then enforced by member states.

The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration is a document detailing the requirements for UN member-states to adopt as policy that amounts to unfettered global migration. Trudeau has bought into this UN agenda and has decided to impose it on the Canadian people without their prior knowledge or consent.

The Global Compact requires the media outlets of member-states to adhere to the objectives and refrain from any critical discussions of these objectives that would be deemed as not “ethical” and against UN norms or standards consistent with the ideology of globalism.

This helps to explain the Trudeau government’s generous handout to the Canadian media. In this light, the $600 million can be viewed as a form of secretive soft control and censorship, ensuring that the Canadian press abides by the requirements of the Global Compact.

The Canadian government’s recent announcement that it will be providing more than CDN $600 million (USD $455 million) over the next five years to bail out the country’s financially strapped media outlets — as part of the fall fiscal update about the federal budget ahead of the 2019 federal election — is not as innocent as it may seem.

In response to the announcement, the heads of Canada’s media organizations promptly popped open the proverbial champagne and raised their glasses to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Unifor, a national union that represents Canadian journalists, was even more jubilant. It felt vindicated that its slogan of “Resistance” — which it touts as Conservative Party opposition leader Andrew Scheer’s “worst nightmare” — had so swiftly resulted in opening the government’s wallet, and handing out taxpayers’ money, to an industry that should actually be fighting to remain steadfastly independent of any form of government backing.

This is what a “free press” is presumably all about, after all; not as in countries with totalitarian regimes, such as the once-Czarist Russia-turned communist Soviet Union-turned Putinist Russia, or Maoist China, or the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, or the Islamic Republic of Iran, or Castroist Cuba and many third-world states in which the press is simply a propaganda tool of the government, subjected to the dictates and whim of its leader.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Qatar: Time to Shape Up by Debalina Ghoshal

By on November 26th, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13345/qatar-time-to-shape-up

We need a united anti-Iran front, and Qatar needs to come closer to its friends on the peninsula, us, the U.S., and Israel on that point. And in the meantime, let’s help Qatar along here. Why doesn’t the United States get on with the business of declaring the Muslim Brotherhood a foreign terrorist organization? And then that gives Qatar the excuse to go ahead and do it too, so we can cut off everyone’s funding for them, whether it’s in Egypt, the United States, or anywhere else in the world.” — Ambassador John R. Bolton, July 12, 2017.

The time is not only ripe for Washington to take this step; it is essential.

Since 2017, when five countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) severed diplomatic and trade ties with Qatar for siding with the Muslim Brotherhood and other terrorist groups, Doha has been forging new alliances, particularly with Russia and China.

During a military parade in December 2017, Qatar’s armed forces showcased new Chinese guided ballistic-missile systems that have a range — up to 400 km — that encompasses Qatar’s neighboring Gulf States. In September 2018, PetroChina struck a long-term deal with Qatargas to purchase 3.4 million tons per year of liquid natural gas.

Defense and economic ties with Qatar are crucial to China’s plans to extend its influence in the Middle East through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). China is aware that for the BRI to be successful, the GCC must be reunited. Given its own cordial relations with the GCC, Beijing sees engagement with Doha as an opportunity to become a key mediator in the Qatar-GCC crisis.

Qatar is also in talks to purchase Russia’s S-400 air-defense system. Despite Saudi Arabia’s reported opposition to the deal, Russia says it is moving forward anyway.

With Russia under U.S. sanctions, and Qatar under a GCC blockade, defense and trade ties between Moscow and Doha are mutually beneficial. In 2016, for example, Qatar purchased a huge stake in Russia’s state-controlled oil company, Rosneft.

This strengthening of ties is taking place in spite of the fact that Moscow and Doha are on opposite sides of the Syrian civil war, with Russia backing the Assad regime and Qatar supporting the rebel forces. Qatar is likely seeking Russian mediation to resolve its crisis with the GCC.

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MEDIA, MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

Google, Facebook, and the ‘Creepy Line’ By Kyle Smith

By on November 26th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/11/documentary-review-the-creepy-line-google-facebook-disturbing/
A new documentary reveals how much deeply personal information Google has on all of us.
O n Google, I just typed in “top races Republican,” and the word “races” got a squiggly underline suggesting I had misspelled the word. Beneath it ran Google’s helpful correction: “top racist Republican.” With “top races Democrat,” no such veering into the gutter. No squiggly line. The word “racist” did not insinuate itself into my field of vision. Oh, and before I completed the phrase, with just “top races Democra,” two lines below ran the following little hint: “best Democratic races to donate to.” Huh? Who said anything about donating? I’ve never donated to a political candidate in my life, and if I did, I wouldn’t donate to Democrats. Again, no parallel on the Republican side. No steering me to fundraisers.

The documentary The Creepy Line takes its name from a shockingly unguarded remark by the former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. He is smiling and relaxed in a conference as he explains that Google has (had?) a nickname for excessive invasiveness. “Google policy on a lot of these things,” Schmidt says, “is to get right up to the creepy line and not cross it.”

How is that going so far? The Creepy Line, a terrifying and important 80-minute documentary now streaming on Amazon Prime, is an attempt to answer that question.

The film delves into some of the troubling habits of our two Internet masters, Facebook and especially Google. An early segment of the film, produced and partly narrated by the journalist Peter Schweizer, illustrates how your search history gives Google an enormous, permanent cache of information about you, everything from what things you like to buy to what you like in bed. Naturally Google uses the data mainly to fine-tune ad sales. But what else might they do with it? Who knows?

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Costs of Presidential Candor By Victor Davis Hanson *****

By on November 26th, 2018

https://amgreatness.com/2018/11/25/the-costs-of-presidential

Predictably, Donald Trump was attacked both by the establishment and the media as “crude,” “unpresidential,” and “gratuitous” for a recent series of blunt and graphic statements on a variety of current policies. Oddly, the implied charge this time around was not that Trump makes up stuff, but that he said things that were factual but should not be spoken.

Trump’s tweets and ex tempore editorials may have been indiscreet and politically unwise, but they were also mostly accurate assessments. That paradox revisits the perennial question that is the hallmark of the Trump presidency of what exactly is presidential crudity and what are the liabilities of presidential candor?

Concerning the catastrophic California Camp Fire (150,000 acres) and the Woolsey conflagration (100,000 acres), which in turn followed prior devastating California fires in spring and summer of 2018 (perhaps charring 1 million acres in all), Trump tweeted: “There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor. Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!”

Certainly, while flames were devouring homes and lives, it was unwise and crass to talk of withholding federal disaster assistance funding in the future—a realization apparently soon known to Trump himself. In short order, he began signaling his admiration for the rare courage of California response teams and visited the fires promising full federal cooperation with state officials.

No matter. A chorus of critics claimed that Trump was ignoring the human tragedy to score points, whether about reviving the logging industry to salvage dead trees or punishing blue California. Perhaps, but he did not quite serially milk the catastrophe in the manner of California Governor Jerry Brown, who repeatedly warned that the disaster was a result of global warming rather than his own disastrous green agendas that have led to such destruction: “Managing all the forests in everywhere we can does not stop climate change. And tragedies that we’re now witnessing, and will continue to witness in the coming years.”

Both statements—Trump’s and Brown’s—may well have sounded crass in the midst of such lethal disasters, but there were a few differences. The likeliest immediate cause of the 2018 serial fires was the Brown administration’s continual failure on state lands to allow removal of millions of dead trees, lost in mountain and foothill forests during the four-year California drought, and to petition the federal government to do the same in national forests.

Instead, Brown throughout years of increasingly deadly forest fires has stayed wedded to the unyielding green orthodoxy that decaying trees were nearly sacrosanct and essential to the forest ecosystem (true perhaps in the long run, but absolutely a catastrophic short-term policy in a state of 40 million). Moreover, despite Brown’s diagnosis that that the fires rage because of a new normal era of hot and dry weather, 2016 had seen one of the wettest and snowiest years in California history, while 2017 had been a near normal year of temperature and precipitation. The point then was that Trump’s ill-timed admonishment was truthful, while Brown’s own politicking was either irrelevant, misleading—or abjectly dangerous for millions. And yet Trump’s candor was precisely the sort of bluntness that turns off suburban voters.

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P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

California Dem Chair Who Called Kavanaugh, “Lying Predator”, Investigated for Sexual Misconduct Daniel Greenfield

By on November 26th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/272057/california-dem-chair-who-called-kavanaugh-lying-daniel-greenfield

The media keeps screaming that Republicans have a “problem” with women. But it’s women who have a problem with Democrats. This is the latest example of a national trend in politics and media.

The California Democratic Party has launched an investigation into unspecified allegations of sexual misconduct against Chairman Eric Bauman involving party staff members.

In a statement released Saturday evening, Bauman confirmed an investigation was underway but did not address the allegations against him. He said that independent counsel has been hired to investigate the matter.

“I look forward to putting these allegations behind us and moving forward as unified Democrats,” Bauman said in the statement.

Democrats unified behind sexual harassment. Meanwhile here’s Bauman’s statement on Kavanaugh.

The Republican Party has no shame and no soul. Todays vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh is nothing less than an assault on every woman in America. It shows the Republican Party is utterly devoid of humanity and decency…

The United States Senate has disgraced itself today. Its up to the millions of Americans who are feeling righteous anger including the millions of survivors of sexual violence who have been violated all over again today to rise up and defeat every single Republican who betrayed our Country by voting to confirm this lying predator to the Supreme Court…

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Netanyahu: Still Israel’s Preferred Leader Why none of the other party leaders are fit to be prime minister. Joseph Puder

By on November 26th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272038/netanyahu-still-israels-preferred-leader-joseph-puder

At the Likud party meeting on Monday (November 19, 2018), Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu declared, “We have an entire year until the elections.” He made the statement a day after he called on his coalition partner not to dissolve the government. Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the “Israel Our Home” party, originally a party of immigrants from the former Soviet Union, resigned last week as Defense Minister, and pulled his party out of the coalition government. He was hoping to bring down Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud (party) led government. The pretext for his decision was Netanyahu’s reluctance to engage the Israel Defense Forces in another Gaza war, and his decision to agree to a ceasefire with Hamas. Lieberman denounced the move as “surrender to terror.” Lieberman’s thinking was that his resignation will prompt other coalition partners to leave as well, and thus new elections will be called, since the Netanyahu government would not have the necessary 61 votes to govern. He failed. Now he will sit on the Opposition benches next to Ayman Odeh, of the United Arab List. Lieberman learned two lessons. One, the country and seated Knesset Members are not eager for new elections to take place, and two, Netanyahu is not led by his coalition partners, but rather the opposite.

Naftali Bennett, leader of the “Jewish Home” party and coalition partner was also in a heated disagreement with PM Netanyahu over the response to the massive rocket attacks from Gaza. Like Lieberman, Bennett also sought more aggressive action against Hamas and its terrorist partners in the Gaza Strip. Bennett used Lieberman’s departure as Defense Minister to petition for this job, the second most powerful post in the Israeli government. Bennett’s eight seats in the 120 Knesset seats (Israeli Parliament), three more than Lieberman’s party, posed a veiled threat to Netanyahu. The “Jewish Home” party departure from the coalition would have brought the government down, and new elections would become a certainty. Netanyahu however, decided not give in. He was aided by Jewish Home party constituents, who pressured Bennett to stay put. They simply figured that Bennett’s quest for the Defense portfolio was not worth risking an early election result that might harm the party, and diminish its representation in the Knesset.

Benjamin Netanyahu, who sought early elections at one point, has changed his mind and is determined to go on with his narrow coalition government of 61 seats until its official term expires next year. Polls have consistently predicted that the Likud would end up increasing its representation in the Knesset. And Netanyahu predicted in August of this year that the Likud might possibly garner “35 (mandates), 40 is the goal.” Netanyahu has held the office of Prime Minister for 12 years, and if he manages, as it appears, to hold on until next year, he could surpass Israel’s founding father, David Ben Gurion, as the longest serving prime minister.

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