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Ruth King

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A Shameful Season for American Journalism The Nation, the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books all run scared from criticism. By Christopher M. Finan

By on September 25th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-shameful-season-for-american-journalism-1537830679

Ian Buruma was forced out last week as editor of the New York Review of Books after publishing an essay by a man who admitted that he has abused women. Mr. Buruma’s sudden departure caps a shameful season of American journalism.

In July, the Nation apologized for a poem for the first time in its 153-year history. In August, the New Yorker canceled a conversation at its annual festival between editor David Remnick and former White House aide Steve Bannon. All three publications were responding to outrage that they had dared provide a platform for views—or people—seen by a certain segment of the population as offensive, even dangerous.

The U.S. is deeply polarized, with divisions over race, class and sexuality widening under a president who exploits them. Social media brings out the worst in us. But good journalism has traditionally helped society find balance in unsettled times by giving voice to all sides of the debate, by helping people talk through their differences and seek compromise.

These three august institutions failed to do that. To put it plainly: They caved in.

In “How-To,” the poem published by the Nation, a street hustler offers advice on how to panhandle. The use of dialect suggests that the hustler is black, drawing complaints that the poem is racist. Because the hustler suggests faking a disability, it was condemned as “ableist.” The poet, Anders Carlson-Wee, who is white, was also accused of “cultural appropriation.” “We are sorry for the pain we have caused to the many communities affected by this poem,” wrote the magazine’s poetry editors, Stephanie Burt and Carmen Gimenez Smith. They said they were “revising our process for solicited and unsolicited submissions.” The New Yorker’s change of heart occurred after many liberals expressed outrage that Mr. Bannon had been invited to its festival and several celebrity speakers threatened to withdraw.

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Peter Schweizer: ‘Google and Facebook Brought’ AG Anti-Trust Meeting ‘on Themselves’ By Tyler O’Neil

By on September 25th, 2018

https://pjmedia.com/trending/peter-schweizer-google-and-facebook-brought-ag-anti-trust-meeting-on-themselves/

On Tuesday, state attorneys general met with Attorney General Jeff Sessions to discuss strategies to rein in Big Tech companies like Google and Facebook, using anti-trust laws. The team behind “The Creepy Line,” a new documentary about Big Tech, praised the meeting as vital, and argued that Google and Facebook brought this meeting on themselves.

“Google and Facebook have brought this meeting between the Department of Justice and several attorneys general on themselves,” New York Times bestselling author Peter Schweizer, writer and producer of “The Creepy Line,” said in a statement Tuesday. “With documented bias that has harmed consumers, Google’s abuse of the public trust has impacted users of all political stripes, and the recent leaked emails show them considering putting their finger on the scale on important national debates.”

Schweizer was referring to one email revealing a Google executive bragging about helping to increase the Latino vote, assuming Latinos would vote for Hillary Clinton, and another series of emails showing Google employees scheming about how to tweak he search engine function to harm Trump’s travel ban.

“Because of these documented problems, Google, Facebook, and other Internet platforms warrant closer scrutiny from government and non-government organizations,” Schweizer declared.

He further warned about an earlier leaked video in which “Google leadership and employees expressed their desire to use their platform to ‘spread our company’s values.’ With control over 90% of searches, they have the ability to do it.”

Finally, Schweizer cited the work of Ph.D. psychologist Robert Epstein, revealing that “Google and Facebook have the ability to manipulate and bias the information we see without us even knowing it. This is not only creepy, it’s dangerous. And, it’s time all of us took a closer look at these companies, their capabilities, and their goals.”

Epstein, senior research psychologist at the nonpartisan American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology, and author of 15 books and more than 300 articles on Internet influence and other topics, also emphasized the importance of the meeting.

“Randomized, controlled, peer-reviewed research I have been conducting since 2013 has repeatedly demonstrated the unprecedented power that Big Tech companies — Google, in particular — have to shift opinions and votes on a massive scale,” Epstein said in a statement. “My research suggests, for example, that Big Tech companies can shift upwards of 12 million votes in the November, 2018, election without people knowing they are being manipulated.”

CONTINUE AT SITE

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Quick Roundup of the Latest Anti-Kavanaugh Lunacy By Jim Treacher

By on September 25th, 2018

https://pjmedia.com/trending/quick-roundup-of-the-latest-anti-kavanaugh-lunacy/

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think the unbiased liberal media can’t find any proof for the stuff they really want to believe. But hey, rumor and innuendo and wild conjecture will do in a pinch. Who cares? It’s not as if Kavanaugh was nominated by a Democrat.”

Sorry to turn my humble blog into All Kavanaugh All the Time, but I have a keen interest in liberal insanity, and right now this story is where all the action is.

All this stuff is happening really fast, and it’s only going to get crazier until Christine Blasey Ford fails to appear testifies before the Senate on Thursday. We already know that Brett Kavanaugh is probably a rapist because a couple of women have made completely unsupported accusations against him. But wait, there’s more! Here’s the latest proof that he’s probably a rapist, and even if not, he still stinks:

Exhibit A: Kavanaugh claims he was a virgin in high school, as if that exonerates him from rape.

On Monday Kavanaugh was interviewed by Martha MacCallum from Fox News (boo, hiss!), and he defended himself from a very serious claim by not-a-creepy-porn-lawyer Michael Avenatti. The claim is that Kavanaugh participated in a gang rape ring in high school. That sounds plausible, right? Kavanaugh’s rebuttal is that he was a virgin in high school, and for quite some time after. So I can add that to my list of Things I Didn’t Particularly Want Nor Need to Know.

But Kavanaugh’s claim of youthful sexlessness may have been a fatal mistake! It has now been thoroughly debunked by, um, a tweet from a guy who claims to have gone to Yale with him:
Steve Kantrowitz @skantrow

Perhaps Brett Kavanaugh was a virgin for many years after high school. But he claimed otherwise in a conversation with me during our freshman year in Lawrance Hall at Yale, in the living room of my suite.

I have questions.

How can a fact-checker ascertain whether a decades-old recollection of a college classmate’s sexual boast actually happened?
If somehow the fact of Kavanaugh’s boast is proven, via time travel or astral projection or some other unspecified means, how can a fact-checker determine if the boast was true or false?
How does any of this prove the so-far-unproven allegations against Kavanaugh?

I know, I know. I’m just nitpicking.

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Senate Republicans Eye Monday or Tuesday Floor Vote on Kavanaugh Schedule assumes Judiciary Committee hearing, markup does not alter GOP plans by Jacob Fischler

By on September 25th, 2018

http://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/senate-republicans-eye-monday-tuesday-floor-vote-kavanaugh

Senate Republican leaders want to schedule a floor vote for Monday or Tuesday on the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court “unless something derailed it along the way,” according to Senate Republican Conference Chairman John Thune of South Dakota.

Thune told reporters at the Capitol on Tuesday that if all goes according to plan, Republicans could get the procedural gears turning over the weekend. That assumes Thursday’s hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee featuring Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford, who has accused him of sexual assault, does not alter the current trajectory that Senate GOP leaders have set.

When asked if that meant floor debate on Kavanaugh could take place Monday or Tuesday, he said, “I would think so, if things were to stay on schedule, unless something derailed it along the way.”

“Again, we’ll see what happens on Thursday. But at this point, if nothing changes, my assumption would be from a timing standpoint that we could begin that process Friday, Saturday timeframe and wrap it up next week sometime,” the Republican Conference chairman said

Under that timeline, a Judiciary Committee markup might take place Friday, allowing Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to file a cloture to cut off debate on the nominee as early as Saturday, which would set up a Monday vote to limit the debate on the Supreme Court nominee.

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Will North Korea Take Over South Korea? by Gordon G. Chang

By on September 25th, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13021/north-korea-takeover

Throughout his visit to North Korea, South Korean President Moon Jae-in went out of his way to downplay the legitimacy of the government he leads and the country he was elected to represent. He was not asserting South Korea’s right to exist.
Up to now, the South’s textbooks have stated that Seoul is “the only legitimate government on the Korean Peninsula.” New textbooks, however, do not include that declaration.
Moon, unfortunately, has undermined democracy in tangible ways. Since becoming president in May of last year, he has used control of big broadcasters to reduce access to dissenting views and to promote North Korea’s. Alarm is now widespread.
If all this were not enough, Moon is taking down defenses along invasion and infiltration routes into Seoul and proposing substantial reductions in the South Korean military. Americans should care because by treaty they are obligated to defend the South.

Kim Jong Un assembled a reported 100,000 people, many waving his North Korean flag or the blue-and-white unification standard, to greet Moon Jae-in, the president of South Korea, as he arrived in Pyongyang on September 18.

President Moon did not seem to mind that no one was holding the symbol of his country, the Republic of Korea. “What was glaringly missing was the South Korean flag,” Taro O of the Pacific Forum told Gatestone in e-mailed comments. “Maybe South Korean people take comfort in seeing that Samsung’s Lee Jae-yong wore the South Korean flag badge on the lapel of his jacket while in North Korea. No one in the Moon administration did.”

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TARGETS OF MALICE: EDWARD CLINE

By on September 25th, 2018

https://ruleofreason.blogspot.com/

This column is a follow-up of my “Amazon Bans Cline” column, in which I emulate Jeff Bezos’s fictional announcement that he is banning all my books from the Amazon sales platform. Now I link the ongoing, all-too-real farce of Brett Kavanaugh’s Judiciary nomination hearing to a fictional inquest in the Cyrus Skeen series, set mostly in San Mateo, California, in 1927. In this story, Inquest, a local assistant district attorney tries to pin a manslaughter charge on Skeen. The similarities between Skeen’s inquest, about whether or not he murdered a criminal, and Kavanaugh’s confirmation circus, are too similar to ignore.
Definition of inquest

1a : a judicial or official inquiry or examination especially before a jury a coroner’s inquest

b : a body of people (such as a jury) assembled to hold such an inquiry

c : the finding of the jury upon such inquiry or the document recording it

A succinct definition from Wikipedia is:

An inquest is a judicial inquiry in common law jurisdictions, particularly one held to determine the cause of a person’s death. Conducted by a judge, jury, or government official, an inquest may or may not require an autopsy carried out by a coroner or medical examiner. Generally, inquests are conducted only when deaths are sudden or unexplained.

The inquest in San Mateo was focused on the deceased Josephus Kringal. The Foreword to my novel reads:

Struggling to make a success of his detective agency, Skeen finds himself the target of an ambitious local assistant district attorney after an inquest is held surrounding the death of a criminal Skeen had tried to subdue and have him arrested; but the criminal resisted and chose to fight, resulting in the criminal’s death.

Skeen may be charged with manslaughter. The inquest is ended, over the medical examiner’s objections, with the assistant district attorney attempting to charge Skeen with manslaughter and demanding that he be arraigned on the charge. It is early February 1927. This is the twenty-seventh Cyrus Skeen detective novel. Skeen reflects on a case from earlier in his detective career, shortly after he had set up shop in San Francisco as a private detective.

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Castro’s Torture of American POWs in Vietnam Reflecting on an untold story — to honor National POW/MIA Recognition Day Jamie Glazov

By on September 25th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271415/castros-torture-american-pows-vietnam-jamie-glazov

Editors’ note: Last Friday, Sept. 21, 2018, our nation, led by our president, solemnly marked National POW/MIA Recognition Day, during which we honored all American prisoners of war and expressed our deep gratitude and respect for what they endured and — as empirical evidence suggests — in some cases may very well be continuing to endure. Indeed, we pay tribute to those who never returned — and, of course, also to their suffering families. In honor of this sacred day, Frontpage has deemed it important to run Jamie Glazov’s article, Castro’s Torture of American POWs in Vietnam from Breitbart’s Dec. 8, 2016 issue. We hope that our leadership and citizens will take serious action on this issue. We will always remember and we will never forget.

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Castro’s Torture of American POWs in Vietnam.
By Jamie Glazov

The death of communist tyrant Fidel Castro has yielded much-deserved coverage of the monstrous nature of his tyrannical rule.

What has gone virtually unreported, however, is the direct and instrumental role Castro played in the torture and murder of American POWs in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. The story of Castro’s atrocities against American soldiers in this conflict is rarely ever told, least of all by our mainstream media.

During the Vietnam War, Castro sent a gang of his henchmen to run the “Cuban Program” at the Cu Loc POW camp in Hanoi, which became known as “the Zoo.” As Stuart Rochester and Frederick Kiley have documented in their book Honor Bound in a chapter entitled “The Zoo, 1967–1969: The Cuban Program and Other Atrocities,” one of the primary objectives of this “program” was to determine how much physical and psychological agony a human being could withstand.

Castro selected American POWs as his guinea pigs. A Cuban nicknamed “Fidel,” the main torturer at the Zoo, initiated his own personal reign of terror. He was described in documents based on POW debriefings as “a professional who was trained in psychology and prison control in Russia or Europe.”

Among Fidel’s torture techniques were beatings and whippings over every part of his victims’ bodies, without remission.

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Google vs. Border Security How Google employees colluded to undermine Trump’s executive orders. Michael Cutler

By on September 25th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271407/google-vs-border-security-michael-cutler

On September 21, 2018 Newsweek published a disturbing article that contained infuriating revelations titled Google Brainstormed Ways To Combat Trump’s Travel Ban By Leveraging Search Results For Pro-Immigration Causes.

The Newsweek report stated that Google and their hi-tech colluders took legal action to block the Trump administration from enforcing standing immigration law.

Google, along with Apple, Facebook and other technology companies, filed a joint amicus brief challenging the travel ban, stating that it “inflicts significant harm on American business, innovation and growth.”

It is clear that to the employees and the executives of Google (and other hi-tech companies), America’s borders and immigration laws are impediments to their wealth and to the goals of their companies, rather than what they truly are, our first and last line of defense.

This set the stage for Google’s efforts days after the Trump administration first issued an executive order on immigration in January 2017, which would temporarily prevent the entry of citizens of seven countries from entering the United States, not because of their religion but because they could not be effectively vetted.

The media has repeatedly noted that the countries on the list were “Muslim Majority” countries yet many other “Muslim Majority” countries were not on that list including Indonesia, the most populist ‘Muslim Majority” country on the planet.

Google is determined to obstruct the Trump administration from enforcing long-standing immigration laws to protect America from international terrorists.

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Stop Appeasing the Democrats Appeasing an aggressor invites only more aggression. Bruce Thornton

By on September 25th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271417/stop-appeasing-democrats-bruce-thornton

From the playground to geopolitics, appeasing an aggressor invites only more aggression. This timeless truth of human nature is one that we moderns can’t seem to accept. We reflexively assume that a rational accommodation or concessions will be reciprocated by those proven to be ready to use any means necessary to achieve their aims, no matter how amoral, unfair, or vicious. Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court illustrate that this false assumption leads only to more demands, and ultimately to defeat.

The last-minute accusations from Christine Blasey Ford, a woman who claims that decades ago Kavanaugh groped her at a high school party, and Deborah Ramirez, who accused Kavanaugh of exposing himself to her at a frat party at Yale, are transparent acts of aggression against the judge and Republicans, one engineered by the Democrats.

Senator Dianne Feinstein sat for months on Ford’s letter and then––just as the Dems did in 1991with Anita Hill’s charges of sexual harassment against Clarence Thomas’s during his hearings––released it only when Kavanaugh appeared to be heading for confirmation. Feinstein still hasn’t given the Judiciary Committee an unredacted copy of the letter. A few weeks after Ford went public, and after Kavanaugh said he had dairies from that summer detailing his whereabouts, The New Yorker published Ramirez’s account of a drunken party filled with obscene drinking games where he exposed himself to Ramirez.

Given that the Democrats had made public in advance their intention to derail the hearings and confirmation by any means possible, the timing of both sexual assault charges reeks of premeditated contrivance intended to delay confirmation as long as possible. But in the face of this naked ploy to bork Kavanaugh and derail the confirmation process for partisan advantage, the Republicans seem to be reverting to their customary preemptive cringe. All the Dems have to do is squeal “sexism” and Republicans start negotiating and offering concessions. Of course, after each concession comes another demand.

First the Dems demanded that Ford, a long-time Democrat activist, “be heard.” So last week the Chairman of Judiciary Committee, Chuck Grassley, granted another deadline extension for Ford to decide whether to testify before the Committee on Monday. Senator Dianne Feinstein calls these concessions “bullying deadlines.” As Feinstein put it, “Show some heart. Wait until Dr. Ford feels that she can come before the committee.” Ford doesn’t “feel” like she can testify on Monday because she’s afraid of flying, despite offers from the Committee to travel to her in California. Then she feared for her life because of death threats ––threats also made to Kavanaugh, his wife and two young daughters–– so she now demands enhanced security measures. The Committee caved and moved the date to Thursday.

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A Nasty Brexit Threatens the West The U.K. plays an important role in sustaining American support for Europe. By Walter Russell Mead

By on September 24th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-nasty-brexit-threatens-the-west-1537831191
Like many divorces, the struggle between the European Union and the United Kingdom gets more bitter as time drags on. At last week’s EU summit in Salzburg, Austria, the assembled countries, led by France, contemptuously brushed aside British Prime Minister Theresa May’s “Chequers” Brexit plan. Flexing its muscles, the EU made its message clear: Britain must conform to our demands.

If there is no deal by March 29, 2019, onerous trade barriers will snap into place. The likelihood that post-Brexit Britain will suffer severe economic shocks and dislocation is growing.

Mrs. May’s Chequers plan would allow British goods to continue to be sold freely in the EU after Brexit, while services would be governed under different rules. In return, Britain would accept EU standards governing manufactured and agricultural products. From the perspective of many Europeans, even those who sympathize with the U.K., the plan looks like an effort to continue to enjoy the advantages of EU membership while opting out of the obligations, like accepting migration from other EU countries. Moreover, EU leaders reason that if the path of secession is shown to be easy, more departures could follow and the union will be inexorably weakened.

Many Brexit opponents, both in the U.K. and on the Continent, hope that the chaos of a “no deal” Brexit will bring about a second British referendum. Next time, they hope, a chastened British public will vote to remain. But repeating the referendum until the people vote the “right” way is more likely to fan the flames of populist anti-Brussels sentiment around the EU than to quell them.

The U.S. has so far not been involved in the discussions between the U.K. and its EU partners. This is not because it has no interest in the matter. From America’s standpoint, a no-deal Brexit that weakens Britain and poisons EU-U.K. relations would be a disaster. It would undermine the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and one of America’s most important and valued allies. And if a radicalized Labour Party takes power in the wake of a Brexit calamity, the survival of the trans-Atlantic alliance could be at risk. The U.K. itself could come apart. It is crucial from the U.S. perspective that any divorce settlement maintain Western and allied cohesion in a dangerous world.

Some Europeans may view Brexit mainly as a matter of economics, but it is also inescapably a major security concern for the West. The relationship between post-Brexit Britain and the rest of the West cannot be evaluated simply as an internal matter for the EU. Britain may be leaving the EU, but it is not leaving the American-led Western alliance. The implications of a nasty and brutal Brexit for the Atlantic community are too consequential for Washington to ignore.

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