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Ruth King

POLITICS Comments turned off

Identity Politics Shape Dem Fight for House Leadership Pick one and you’re sexist, pick the other and you’re racist. Daniel Greenfield

By on November 20th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271949/identity-politics-shape-dem-fight-house-leadership-daniel-greenfield

Democrats who question Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s leadership are sexist. And Democrats who question Rep. Jim Clyburn’s qualifications for the No. 3 spot in the Democrat leadership are racist.

Even before the midterms, Pelosi was accusing critics of sexism.

“I think some of is it a little bit on the sexist side,” Pelosi had complained about those who suggested that she might want to step back from her leadership position.

“Nobody ever went up to Harry Reid and said that. Nobody ever says that to anybody except a woman.”

Unless they’re saying it to a black man.

Rep. Jim Clyburn made his case for the No. 3 Dem position by accusing fellow Democrats of racism.

“But someone came to me over the weekend and told me that, when I was whip before, I was a figurehead,” he whined, and suggested that they were “the little dog whistles that have been floating around this side for a long time.”

“Pelosi is swiftly moving to ensure that the diversity of voices that make up the majority are empowered on Capitol Hill,” Valerie Jarett gushed in a CNN op-ed.” It is imperative that women not only have a seat at a table but also lead the table.”

Unless it’s more imperative that black people lead the table.

Pick one and you’re sexist. Pick the other and you’re racist.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Americans Turned to Trump to Roll Back the Progressive Tide To understand his appeal, look at the excesses of liberals in recent years. He’s a wall against the wave. By Joseph Epstein

By on November 20th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/americans-turned-to-trump-to-roll-back-the-progressive-tide-1542672973

At lunch the other day, a friend and strong anti-Trumper wondered aloud what brought all those thousands of people out to Donald Trump’s rallies. “After all,” he said “they’re pretty much the same show.” Mr. Trump on stage, in his usual bragging mode, attacking the press, settling scores with people he feels have betrayed him, while the audience in their red hats applaud uproariously, yelling approval for 90 or so minutes. “What’s the attraction? I don’t get it.”

Not a bad question, really. As I thought it over, it occurred to me that what genuinely excites Mr. Trump’s crowds and draws them to him is their shared antiliberalism. By liberalism I do not mean liberalism of the kind that was at the center of our fathers’ Democratic Party—which supported labor unions, civil liberties, racial integration, involvement in international affairs. I refer to the liberalism now metamorphisized into progressivism, at the heart of the thinking of such Democrats as Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others.

This is the progressivism that edges into socialism, that is said to attract the young, that promises a newer, kinder America—the progressivism that exalts identity politics and has no argument with political correctness. As one looks upon the people who attend Mr. Trump’s rallies, one sees the faces not of Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” but of the proletariat out of which Karl Marx’s dictatorship was supposed to derive. Yet these people, despite the progressives’ promises to them of free Medicare, free college tuition, and the rest, want nothing to do with Sens. Warren, Sanders, Booker & Co. Quite the reverse: They loathe them.

The man who attends a Trump rally turns on his television set and that night’s news leads off with a Black Lives Matter protest in his city. If that city is Chicago, he might recall that this year some 2,619 people have been shot, 475 shot and killed, the preponderance of these being black people shot by black youth gangs. If it is another city, there is a distinct possibility, as fairly often in the past, that the protest will lead to looting of nearby shops. Al Sharpton, nattily turned out, is likely to have flown in for the festivities to remind everyone about the world’s injustice.

Our man changes channels and is greeted by a story of a long and happy lesbian marriage. He reads in the papers that people are fired from jobs for remarks that, under the reign of political correctness, are interpreted as racist, sexist, you name it; that students feel unsafe at Yale; that a year’s tuition, room and board at Dartmouth is $74,000. Doubtless before long he will read a story about an 11-year-old who is suing his parents for not allowing him to transgender himself.

Oh God, he thinks, make America great again, make America straight again, make America anything but what it is becoming. What elected Donald Trump, and what sustains him, is not his rather dubious charisma, his ideas, his obvious jolt to the country’s earlier slow economic growth, and no, not even the wretched campaign run by Hillary Clinton. Mr. Trump was chosen as a rebuke to the progressivism that has made life in America seem chaotic, if not a touch mad, and that now threatens to take over the Democratic Party. CONTINUE AT SITE

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Kremlin’s Interpol Power Play Vladimir Putin attempts to install a loyal general atop the international police agency. By Kamran Bokhari

By on November 20th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-kremlins-interpol-power-play-1542672759

A close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin is likely to be elected the new head of Interpol this week at the organization’s general assembly in Dubai. Maj. Gen. Alexander Prokopchuk has already coordinated the abuse of Interpol extradition requests, known as “red notices,” to pursue Mr. Putin’s enemies, including prominent American businessmen and environmental activists.

China’s arrest and detention of Meng Hongwei, the previous president who disappeared mysteriously earlier this month, has provided an opening for Mr. Putin to pursue his meddlesome agenda. But if the Kremlin tramples on the agency’s neutrality, how will the West respond? How will the civilized nations of the world—the ones that recognize and respect the rule of law—protect their citizens from the wrath of Mr. Putin’s new global police force when it is headed by a loyal general?

Gen. Prokopchuk’s allegiances are clear. He was appointed to Russia’s Interior Ministry in 2003, not too long after Mr. Putin ascended to the presidency. He became a key surrogate in the Putinization of the Russian state. Since 2011, when he was appointed head of Russia’s Interpol Bureau, he has been indispensable in Mr. Putin’s manipulation and abuse of what is supposed to be a neutral, apolitical international organization.

Part of the problem lies in how Interpol’s red-notice system works. The process for applying for one of these international arrest warrants is notoriously fickle, requiring a member state simply to submit a form. There is almost no oversight. Interpol rarely investigates the validity of these warrants. The organization acknowledges that approximately 97% of notice requests are not reviewed in depth. CONTINUE AT SITE

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

ISRAELI SCIENTISTS DEVELOP IMPLANTED ORGANS THAT WILL NOT BE REJECTED

By on November 20th, 2018

https://worldisraelnews.com/israeli-scientists-develop-implanted-organs-that-wont-be-rejected/

Breakthrough development uses a patient’s own stomach cells, cutting the risk of an immune response to implanted organs.

Israeli researchers report that they have invented the first fully personalized tissue implant, engineered from a patient’s own materials and cells. The new technology makes it possible to engineer any kind of tissue implant, for the spinal cord, to the heart, or brain, from one small fatty tissue biopsy.

“We were able to create a personalized hydrogel from the materials of the biopsy, to differentiate fatty tissue cells into different cell types and to engineer cardiac, spinal cord, cortical and other tissue implants to treat different diseases,” said lead researcher Prof. Tal Dvir of Tel Aviv University’s Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology and Sagol Center for Regenerative Biotechnology.

“Since both the cells and the material used derive from the patient, the implant does not provoke an immune response, ensuring proper regeneration of the defected organ,” Dvir explained.

The research was conducted by Dvir’s postdoctoral researcher, Reuven Edri, and doctoral students Nadav Noor and Idan Gal, in collaboration with Prof. Dan Peer and Prof. Irit Gat Viks of TAU’s Department of Cell Research and Immunology and Prof. Lior Heller of Assaf HaRofeh Medical Center in Israel. It was recently published in the journal Advanced Materials.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Extreme Moderates of Islam: Peter Smith

By on November 19th, 2018

ttps://quadrant.org.au/opinion/muslim-extremists-vs-moderates-how-to-tell-the-difference/

Unless one is coming at you with a knife it can be hard to tell an extremist from a moderate, so here’s a handy guide: Muslim extremists will kill you while moderates deal in excuses and rationalizations for their more ardent brethren. Ultimately, though, both take their cues from the Koran.

Case one: Hassan Khalif Shire Ali drove a truck loaded with gas bottles into Melbourne’s CBD on November 9. After the vehicle became engulfed in flames, Ali attacked passers-by with a knife. He killed café bar owner Sisto Malaspina, 74, and wounded two other men.

Scott Morrison said that the Islamic community must do more to stop extremism. “For those who want to stick their head in the sand, for those who want to make excuses, you are not making Australia safer. You are giving people an excuse to look the other way and not deal with things right in front of you … If there are people in a religious community, an Islamic community, that are bringing in hateful, violent, extremist ideologies into your community, you’ve got to call it out.”

Australia’s Grand Mufti, Ibrahim Abu Mohamed sharply rebuffed Morrison. “This bloody Prime Minister, instead of turning the heat on somebody else, he should answer us about what he did. He has spent billions of dollars — billions — on security services. And what is the end result? We have crazy people in the streets.”

Since 9/11, the Religion of Peace website records 34,150 deadly Islamic terrorist attacks. Over forty since the Melbourne attack. Lots of crazy Muslims around the world apparently.

Case two: Asia Bibi, a Christian, is in hiding in Pakistan after being acquitted of blasphemy. New prime minister Imran Kahn, you might recall he used to play the civilised game of cricket, has refused, under pressure of the rabid Islamic mobs, to let her leave the country pending a review of her acquittal. Her lawyer has already sensibly skedaddled. She spent eight years on death row, despite the intercession some years’ ago of Pope Benedict XVI, who, for his trouble, was sharply rebuffed by Pakistan’s prime minister at the time, Yousuf Raza Gilani.

In 2011, the governor of the Punjab, Salmaan Taseer, was assassinated by one of his police bodyguards. His ‘sin’ was opposing the blasphemy laws which had resulted in Bibi facing execution. The assassin was celebrated by the aforementioned mobs. Reportedly the British government has refused to offer Bib asylum in case it causes unrest among the same kind of mobs which now inhabit Britain.

What have these two quite disparate cases got in common? Yes, they have Islam in common; but it is more than that. They have in common a rejection of Enlightenment values; of civilised values. We like to pretend that differences can be worked through and resolved, but they can’t between people who have quite different value systems. Scott Morrison is whistling in the wind as was Pope Benedict.

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P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

The Institutionalization of Social Justice written by Uri Harris

By on November 19th, 2018

https://quillette.com/2018/11/17/the-institutionalization

Over the past few years, social justice activists have demonstrated an increased ability to suppress controversial viewpoints. To take a few examples:

A few months ago, mathematician Theodore Hill described in a Quillette essay how progressive groups were able to get a research paper of his on a biological phenomenon known as the “Greater Male Variability Hypothesis” removed from two separate journals, as well as to intimidate his co-author into silence.

Hill’s article was published just a week after another article by endocrinologist Jeffrey Flier, former dean of Harvard Medical School, who described how social justice activists had managed to get an academic journal to initiate a review of an already-published research paper by Brown University medical researcher Lisa Littman on gender dysphoria. Brown also deleted a reference to the paper from its website.

Both Hill and Flier point out that they’ve never experienced anything like this before. Hill wrote: “In my 40 years of publishing research papers I had never heard of the rejection of an already-accepted paper.” Flier noted: “In all my years in academia, I have never once seen a comparable reaction from a journal within days of publishing a paper that the journal already had subjected to peer review, accepted and published.”

Pressure to suppress controversial viewpoints isn’t just coming from external activists. In many cases, social justice activists within organizations have managed to exert pressure.

Last year, Google engineer James Damore was fired after an internal memo he wrote was leaked to technology website Gizmodo, causing an uproar within the company. His resulting lawsuit offered some insight into how social justice ideology has become institutionalized through training programs and lectures, and is now being implemented into a variety of company policies. This extends to Google’s products as well. Podcast host Joe Rogan announced on his podcast in February about having dinner with a highly ranked YouTube executive who, when asked why a user had received a community guidelines strike for putting a video of a conversation between authors Sam Harris and Douglas Murray on his playlist, was told that it must have been “hate speech.” (Murray is a prominent critic of contemporary European immigration policies.)

That same person, when asked why videos with psychologist Jordan Peterson are often flagged and demonetized, reportedly responded that he’s “a troublemaker.” Last year, Peterson was locked out of his YouTube account due to allegedly violating its Terms of Service, in the midst of widespread crackdown from YouTube against conservative channels. When Peterson reported the story to a conservative news outlet, his account was restored without explanation. (YouTube is a Google subsidiary.)

It isn’t just Google. A recent survey suggested that intolerance towards non-progressives is spreading throughout Silicon Valley, with one respondent claiming there’s a “concerted purge of conservative employees at Apple.”

It’s important to note, of course, that these are select incidents. Controversial research papers are published all the time. Harris, Murray, and Peterson all regularly speak in front of large audiences without issue. Peterson has sold two million copies of his recent book and is in the midst of a worldwide tour.

But it’s also clear that if the most ardent social justice activists could have their way, these restrictions would become the norm. And given what appears to be an increased ability of these activists to exert influence, especially through powerful corporations like Google and Apple, it would be foolish not to take this possibility seriously.

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BOOKS, EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Radicalization of Bedtime Stories More and more parents are buying picture books with politically progressive messages for their young children. Joe Pinsker

By on November 19th, 2018

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/11/childrens-book-storytime-political/575506/

More than 200 years ago, when books for children first became common, they delivered simple moral lessons about, for instance, cleanliness and the importance of prayer. Today, story time is still propelled by moral forces, but the issues have gotten a good deal more sophisticated.

In recent years, publishers have put out children’s books with political undertones and activist calls to action on topics ranging from Islamophobia to race to gender identity to feminism. “The trend has definitely exploded in recent years with the social-justice books and the activism books,” says Claire Kirch, a senior correspondent at Publishers Weekly who has been covering the book industry for 15 years.

For children of all ages, books about such charged topics are, in the words of one publishing executive, coming to be seen as more “retail-friendly.” This development applies all the way down to picture books—a category for which the intended audience and the buyers are two very different groups. In this sense, “woke” picture books can be thought of as products for parents, helping them distill some of the day’s most fraught cultural issues into little narrative lessons for their kids.

The wave of politicized children’s books has come more from the left than from the right. Kirch told me that “of the three publishers that are the most well known for publishing conservative books”—Center Street, Sentinel, and Regnery Publishing—“only one really has a kids’-book line.” That one is Regnery, which has put out titles such as Donald Drains the Swamp!, Land of the Pilgrims’ Pride (by Newt Gingrich’s wife, Callista), The Remarkable Ronald Reagan, and The Night Santa Got Lost: How NORAD Saved Christmas.

It seems there is more of an appetite for liberal-minded kids’ books: Kirch noted that another Regnery title—Marlon Bundo’s A Day in the Life of the Vice President, by Mike Pence’s daughter Charlotte and told from the perspective of the family’s pet rabbit—was far outsold by a parody of the book overseen by John Oliver’s HBO show that imagined the titular bunny to be gay.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Welcome to the Hotel Brexifornia by Mark Steyn

By on November 19th, 2018

https://www.steynonline.com/9023/welcome-to-the-hotel-brexifornia

The people of the United Kingdom face a political choice between Jeremy Corbyn, who is sincerely appalling, and Theresa May, who is insincerely appalling. Corbyn doesn’t like the Queen, the union, the army, the Jews; on the other hand, he’s quite partial to the IRA and Middle Eastern terrorists. And, somewhat to his credit, he’s either not very good at pretending otherwise or disinclined to do so. Mrs May, by contrast, is a shifty dissembler. Who knows what, if any, are her genuine beliefs – or even if she’s capable of recognizing such a concept.

Nevertheless, it is some considerable achievement for a Tory leader to have inflicted more damage on the nation than a polytechnic Trotskyite would. In June 2016, when David Cameron went flouncing off into the post-referendum sunset, Mrs May seized the prime ministership under a characteristically evasive battle-cry of “Brexit means Brexit”.

Two-and-a-half years on, Brexit means anything but Brexit. The Spectator has a grim hit parade of the Top Forty horrors to emerge from the PM’s “deal” with Brussels. Sample quote from her triumphant “agreement” with the Eurocrats:

All references to Member States and competent authorities of Member States …shall be read as including the United Kingdom.

As I said months back: Welcome to the Hotel Brexifornia. You can check “Out” any time you like, but you can never leave.

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ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Israel’s improved ties with China don’t diminish its US alliance A prejudiced double standard has been applied to Israel’s prudent cooperation with China David Goldman and Marc Zell

By on November 19th, 2018

http://www.atimes.com/article/israels-improved-ties-with-china-dont-diminish-its-us-alliance/

Israel often is called America’s best ally. After the first two years of the Trump Administration no-one can doubt it. Among all of America’s allies, Israel has aligned itself unambiguously and without deviation with Washington’s objectives, while our European and Japanese allies have complained, temporized, and occasionally dealt with China and Russia behind America’s back. The President’s unflinching support for the Jewish State, including the historic move of our Israel embassy to Jerusalem, is reason enough for Israel to cleave to its American alliance.

But there is also a deep confluence of strategic interests at work. There is only one country in the Middle East with the expressed intent and prospective ability to destroy Israel, and that is Iran. China is a major vendor of weapons as well as weapons technology to Iran, especially the know-how to make missiles that can reach Israel and eventually carry nuclear warheads. China also is Iran’s largest trading partner, and its most important provider of industrial goods and hydrocarbon investments. This is a consideration far more pressing than any economic benefits that Israel obtains from trade and investment with China.
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The Trump Administration’s pressure on China in response to its unfair trading practices, technology theft and strategic expansionism offers an inestimable benefit to the Jewish State: China knows that it will suffer consequences for its misbehavior in the form of tariffs, sanctions on individual companies, and possibly other means. That gives China an incentive to act responsibly with respect to Iran, where it exercises great economic influence.

To the extent that China cooperates with the Trump Administration’s economic sanctions on Iran, it will help to suppress the one serious existential threat to Israel. Israel has stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the Trump Administration in its diplomacy towards China, because American pressure on China bears directly on issues of life-and-death concern to the Jewish State. As participants in meetings with Chinese officials and academics in October, we heard Israeli representatives convey this message in the strongest possible terms.

American pressure with Israeli backing may be having an impact. Reuters reported October 23, “The Bank of Kunlun Co, the key Chinese conduit for transactions with Iran, is set to halt handling payments from the Islamic Republic under pressure of imminent US sanctions against the country.” China also has cut back its purchases of Iranian oil. That appears to be a small victory for the Trump’s administration muscular diplomacy, and one of great benefit to Israel.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Women’s March Founder Calls on Leaders to Step Down amid Accusations of Bigotry By Jack Crowe

By on November 19th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/womens-march-founder-calls-on-sarsour-other-leaders-to-step-down-for-indulging-anti-semitism/

Theresa Shook, founder of the Women’s March, called on leaders of the liberal political-protest movement to step down on Monday amid widespread backlash against their refusal to condemn anti-Semitic and homophobic allies.

“As Founder of the Women’s March, my original vision and intent was to show the capacity of human beings to stand in solidarity and love against the hateful rhetoric that had become a part of the political landscape in the U.S. and around the world,” Shook wrote in a Monday Facebook post.

“Bob Bland, Tamika Mallory, Linda Sarsour and Carmen Perez of Women’s March, Inc. have steered the Movement away from its true course,” she continued. “I have waited, hoping they would right the ship. But they have not. In opposition to our Unity Principles, they have allowed anti-Semitism, anti-LBGTQIA sentiment and hateful, racist rhetoric to become a part of the platform by their refusal to separate themselves from groups that espouse these racist, hateful beliefs. I call for the current Co-Chairs to step down and to let others lead who can restore faith in the Movement and its original intent.”

Mallory and Sarsour have been routinely criticized by public figures from across the political spectrum for praising Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who routinely espouses anti-Semitic and homophobic views to his large following. The co-chairs have also come under fire for partnering with and endorsing anti-Semitic pro-Palestinian groups.

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