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Ruth King

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The Women at the New York Times Are Sharpening Their Knives By John Ellis

By on December 28th, 2017

A well-established trajectory of witch hunts is that eventually, the purge will turn in on itself. Regarding the left’s efforts to upend perceived power structures through the redefining of men (as a group) as sexual predators, the left is finding that the sights on the identity politics cannon have been trained back on them. After the New York Times announced that embattled White House reporter Glenn Thrush would be keeping his job after his suspension in the wake of sexual harassment allegations, reports began to emerge that the women employed by the newspaper are expressing their concern for how the Gray Lady treats members of the fairer sex.

On November 20, Vox published an article by the website’s editorial director Laura McGann reporting claims that Thrush preyed on women working in political journalism. The bombshell of the article was McGann relating her own uncomfortable encounter with Thrush. McGann wrote that he “slid into my side of the booth, blocking me in. I was wearing a skirt, and he put his hand on my thigh. He started kissing me. I pulled myself together and got out of there, shoving him on my way out.”

Almost immediately after McGann’s story broke, the New York Times suspended Thrush and began conducting an investigation. A month later, the Times reported that Thrush would be returning to work, but with a different assignment. In a statement, the Times’ lawyer Charlotte Behrendt said, “While we believe that Glenn has acted offensively, we have decided that he does not deserve to be fired.”

Reporting on the NYT’s in-house fallout, HuffPost says,”The announcement set off a wave of indignation among Times observers, who thought it sent a message that the paper condones sexual misconduct and isn’t concerned about the safety of its female employees. But among the female Times employees who spoke to HuffPost, the takeaway was less about the dangers of sexual misbehavior and more about who actually matters at the paper.”

“We’re not really sure what the message is here,” one woman told HuffPost. “I feel really conflicted.”

According to HuffPost, another woman lamented that “while the Times took careful steps to nurture and protect its star male reporter, there were loads of women struggling to get help with flat-lining careers inside the newsroom. For her, the Thrush decision was another painful reminder of how the Times is failing its female reporters.”

In an internal survey, the Times has discovered that many of its female employees feel undervalued and unsure of how to advance their careers.

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ISRAEL, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

James Zogby Arab DNC Leader Denounces Rachel Ray’s ‘Cultural Genocide’ in Calling Food ‘Israeli’ By Tyler O’Neil

By on December 28th, 2017

James Zogby, founder and president of the Arab American Institute (AAI), a member of the Executive Committee of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), and a board member of the Bernie Sanders think tank The Sanders Institute, denounced a tweet as “cultural genocide.”

Celebrity cook Rachel Ray posted a picture of stuffed grape leaves, hummus, beet dip, eggplant, tabbouli, and sun-dried tomato dip, describing the “holiday feast” as an “Israeli nite.”

This unleashed a storm of controversy, with various commentators claiming the feast was actually “Levantine.”

Zogby jumped into the fray, declaring, “Damn it Rachel Ray. This is cultural genocide. It’s not Israeli food. It’s Arab (Lebanese, Palestinian, Syrian, Jordanian). First the Israelis take the land & ethnically cleanse it of Arabs. Now they take their food & culture & claim it’s theirs too! Shame.”Bret Stephens, an op-ed contributor for The New York Times, was aghast. “Please tell me this is a joke tweet, James Zogby,” he tweeted. “Or is it ‘cultural genocide’ when Arabs use Israeli technology? Do you use Instant Messaging? Waze? If so, please stop.”Zogby doubled down. “The equivalent would be if I start using IM & Waze & then declare them Lebanese technology,” he replied. “This isn’t a joke. It’s about a history of cultural appropriation & a systematic effort to erase Palestinian history & culture. Peace is possible, but not on those terms.”

Stephens shot back, “Hummus seems to have first been mentioned as a Cairene food in the 13th century or so. Maybe Maimonides came up with it.” If this suggestion is correct, hummus would be Jewish — as Moses Maimonides was a prominent medieval Jewish philosopher.

“Who knows? Who cares? Why not just enjoy it instead of declaring ‘cultural genocide’ and making a fool of ourself?” Stephens concluded. CONTINUE AT SITE

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Washington’s Carbon Overreach Another rebuke to climate change rule by executive diktat.

By on December 28th, 2017

Washington Governor Jay Inslee calls climate change an “existential threat,” and he has channeled President Obama in using executive powers to impose his policy response. But like Mr. Obama he suffered a major blow this month when a Washington court ruled that he exceeded his authority under state law.

Washington lawmakers have declined to pass Mr. Inslee’s signature cap-and-trade legislation, and in 2016 voters rejected a carbon-tax ballot measure. So “now we have to do it administratively,” the Sierra Club’s Doug Howell said last year.

Mr. Inslee suddenly discovered authority to act unilaterally under the Washington Clean Air Act and a 2008 law that required greenhouse gas reductions. The Department of Ecology’s subsequent Clean Air Rule required the state’s largest emitters to reduce carbon emissions by 1.7% annually, or else buy carbon credits or invest in carbon-offsets.

This sweeping regulation affected manufacturers, waste facilities and government buildings, and it imposed a de facto tax on “indirect emitters” like oil and natural gas suppliers. Regardless of their actual emissions, the Inslee Administration wanted to penalize businesses for peddling energy products it doesn’t like. And it estimated that indirect emitters were responsible for around three-fourths of the carbon emissions covered under the regulation—though they can’t control what others emit.

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Murder Most Foul in Argentina A judge rules that a prosecutor investigating Iran was murdered.

By on December 28th, 2017

Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman was investigating President Cristina Kirchner’s links to Iran in January 2015 when he was found dead in his Buenos Aires apartment with a gunshot wound to the head. Now a judge has ruled that he was murdered.

In 2015 Mrs. Kirchner’s secretary of security immediately declared Nisman’s death an apparent suicide. That made little sense to those who knew Nisman, in part because he was hours away from presenting evidence to Congress that Mrs. Kirchner had made a deal with Tehran to cover up Iran’s responsibility for the 1994 bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish community center that killed 85 people.

When President Mauricio Macri took office in December 2015 he pledged that investigators would have the independence to discover the truth. The Journal reported in September that “twenty-eight government forensic experts, toiling at a secret facility for seven months, concluded” that Mr. Nisman was killed. They handed their findings to a federal court.

On Tuesday in a 656-page opinion, Argentine federal judge Julián Ercolini ruled that “the death of Prosecutor Nisman was not a suicide, and was brought about by a third party and in a painful manner.” He charged Diego Lagomarsino, who was an aide to Nisman, as an accessory to the murder.

The judge says Mr. Lagomarsino was the last person in the apartment and the bullet that killed the prosecutor came from the aide’s gun. Mr. Lagomarsino denies any role in Nisman’s death and says his boss asked him for the gun for protection.

Nisman is being vindicated in death. His thorough investigation led to the indictment of Mrs. Kirchner on treason charges earlier this month. As a sitting senator she has immunity for now but her former foreign minister, Héctor Timerman, is under house arrest. Let’s hope investigators keep following the trail to Tehran.

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Josh Meyer Gets an Echo Chamber Beat-Down Politico reporter is punished for raising the curtain on Obama’s Hezbollah policy By Lee Smith

By on December 28th, 2017

A week after Josh Meyer’s Politico expose,“The Secret Backstory Of How Obama Let Hezbollah Off the Hook,” former Obama officials are still berating Meyer for his 13,000-word article detailing how the Obama administration killed a nearly decade-long DEA effort to stem a global Hezbollah cocaine-smuggling-and-organized-crime ring to help secure its nuclear deal with Iran. “This was a policy decision, it was a systematic decision,” former Defense Department analyst David Asher explained in the article. “They serially ripped apart this entire effort that was very well supported and resourced, and it was done from the top down.”

Asher helped establish and oversee the project, codenamed Cassandra, that looked into Hezbollah’s wide-range of illicit activities across the globe, including weapons procurement, drug trafficking, and money laundering. Senior Obama officials, according to Asher, ignored the legal and financial instruments that he and others had provided to target a terrorist organization with American blood on its hands and was still plotting against the United States.

In response, a Twitter mob of mid-level bureaucrats and former intelligence officers orchestrated in the usual fashion attacked Asher in tandem with the media echo chamber used to sell the Iran Deal, with former political operatives from the Obama White House supplying the usual talking points to their hatchet-men. Meyer’s “on the record sources have undisclosed anti-Iran deal bias,” tweeted former Obama speechwriter Tommy Vietor, who has remade himself as a podcast host. Meyer’s “entire piece,” tweeted Obama lieutenant and former CIA officer Ned Price, “is based on pure speculation by these ‘1 or 2 sources’ w undisclosed anti-Iran deal bias.”

The catchphrase, “undisclosed anti-Iran deal bias,” is an extended replay version of the catchy slogans Team Obama used to market the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Opponents and critics of the nuclear deal were “warmongers” beholden to “donors” with “agendas” whose concerns were shaped by their loyalties not to America but rather to the Jewish state. Now, the echo chamber insisted, Meyer’s sources aren’t to be trusted because they were against the Iran deal, or have associated with think tanks that opposed the Iran Deal—which means that they are secret neocon slaves of Israel, of course.

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MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

The Phantom Thread – A Review By Marilyn Penn

By on December 28th, 2017

I always yearned to find an appropriate occasion to use the phrase “luxe et volupte” and after seeing The Phantom Thread, written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, I have found it. From the scene of a chiseled, sleek Daniel Day Lewis performing his morning ablutions and carefully dressing himself, to the extraordinary mise en scene of his homes, his staff, his elegant sister, his breakfast menu and finally, his exquisite couture, we are in a world of voluptuous beauty As Reynolds Woodcock, the celebrated go-to dress designer for royalty and the super-rich, Lewis’ movements are disciplined and exact His female staff are all attired in white coats and their workspace is as sanitized as a hospital, their stitching as precise as a surgeon’s. Plot develops when Woodcock goes to his country house, stopping to eat and finding himself engaged by the young waitress serving him. Alma is fresh-faced and reticent, a far cry from the world of high fashion, but strangely, he is entranced by her and in short order, invites her to live in his house and work as his model and muse.

Alma is a cipher about whom we know very little but we see her rise to his expectations and do her best to adjust to his bi-polar moods and demands. He is an artist – a man accustomed to having everyone around him yield to his every whim – a narcissist who can be mean-spirited and abusive. He is also handsome, dashing, creative, reckless in his driving but exacting in his beautiful designs and their execution. Alma watches quietly in a mostly compliant manner until we see a sudden change in her when she introduces herself to the Belgian princess who has come for a wedding dress. She says simply “My name is Alma – I live here” and we understand that she has begun to assert herself and feel the legitimacy of her own needs and desires. The more she demands recognition, the more resistance she gets from Woodcock who has always been the sole ruler of his roost.

At one point, after an argument, Woodcock falls ill and Alma takes care of him gently but with great authority. She counters the will of his sister and eventually succeeds in nursing him back to health, reversing their roles of dependency in a very significant way To say more about the plot would be a spoiler but this is a movie that should be seen for the dynamic performances by its three stars, its psychological insights, its understanding of the parameters of art and emotion, its beautiful cinematography and enveloping score blending classical and popular music of the 50’s to match the romanticism of the subject. The phantom thread refers to a secrret message sewn into the lining of each dress, much as the innermost secrets of people’s needs and illusions are not easily seen or deciphered yet remain intrinsic to their core. How eccentrically these get balanced between two very unusual people is the fulcrum for this stunning and momentous film. Best one of 2017

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Cal Thomas: Heritage Foundation’s new president breaks two glass ceilings

By on December 28th, 2017

Hillary Clinton was supposed to break the glass ceiling, which she said has kept a woman from becoming president, but the Heritage Foundation, a conservative public policy think tank based in Washington, D.C., has actually done it.

Their new president is Kay Coles James, a female, an African-American and a conservative, who fits no one’s mold. While her background is formidable — former director of the Office of Personnel Management, Virginia secretary of Health and Human Resources, and dean of Regent University’s School of Government among other accomplishments — her vision is even more compelling.

Perhaps that is because she agrees with me on the issue of liberating poor and minority children from failing public schools and building a foundation that will give them a better future.

In a telephone interview, James tells me school choice for these kids is one of her “top priorities.” The left has tried and failed to improve the lives of African-Americans through government programs. As Donald Trump said during the 2016 presidential campaign, why not try a different approach? President Trump has also placed welfare reform as a top priority in 2018. The last time it was tried, under Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich, it succeeded. As president of Heritage, James can give Trump the intellectual and factual resources to make further reforms and achieve this and other goals.

Winning an argument is preferable to destroying one’s opponent. It can also produce better results.

A return to the intellectual heft of William F. Buckley Jr. and outgoing Heritage president Edwin Feulner is much needed in a conservative movement that has been hijacked by nastiness and anger. Winning an argument is preferable to destroying one’s opponent. It can also produce better results. James’ inaugural address” hit just the right tone: “Heritage has always promoted economic growth and opportunity — and why it has never wavered in opposing those who would burden our freedoms and future with the suffocating force of mindless regulations and punitive taxes.”

Who opposes growth and opportunity? The debate has been over how to get there. History shows which ideas worked and which failed.

“Success in politics is about issues, ideas and the vision we have for our country in the world,” James said. George H.W. Bush dismissed “the vision thing,” but “Without a vision the people perish.” (Proverbs 29:18)

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We Are the Bollards by Mark Steyn on Australia

By on December 27th, 2017

So there will be more empty seats round the Christmas table this year, after an “Australian citizen” mowed down pedestrians at the junction of Flinders Street and Elizabeth Street in Melbourne. The casualties include “a pre-schooler with serious head injuries”. The “Australian citizen” (I presume this designation is being used to emphasize that he’s entirely eligible to serve in Mr Turnbull’s cabinet) did it deliberately, but relax, lighten up, there’s no need to worry because, according to Victoria’s police commissioner, all this terrifying terror is “not terror-related”.

So he’s not a crack operative with the Islamic State’s Australian branch office, he’s just, as The Age’s cheery headline writer puts it, “of Afghan descent and mentally ill”. A second man, arrested while filming the scene and found to have three knives in his bag, is believed to be nothing to do with the first man. Just another Australian citizen taking his knife collection out for a stroll.

You’ll recall there was a previous “vehicle attack” in downtown Melbourne earlier this year, after which the authorities ordered up the bollardization of every pedestrianized precinct in the vicinity. As Andrew Bolt writes:

All the bollards put up after six people were killed in Bourke St Mall in January have not stopped this.

After the Halloween jihadist killed eight people on a bike path in Lower Manhattan, New York’s bollardizers commanded similarly extravagant installation of Diversity Bollards up and down the city. As I wrote:

Last week I was tootling through Williston, Vermont, which has just reconfigured its highway system to run green-painted bike paths down the center of the streets. And the thought occurred to me that, once you’ve bollarded off every sidewalk, what’s to stop jihadists mowing down cyclists? After all, if the eco-crowd are installing them in the middle of the roadway, they’re kind of hard to bollard off.

I was over-thinking the issue. One of the problems with bollarding off pedestrians behind a wall of Diversity Bollards is that they still occasionally have to emerge from behind the bollards to cross the street, and it’s hard to bollard off a pedestrian crossing. In this case, the non-terror-related Australian citizen simply waited until the little green sign indicated it was safe for pedestrians to cross the street and then floored it. In an amusing touch, his car eventually came to a rest against a bollard.

What’s the solution? Maybe automobile manufacturers could replace airbags with Diversity Bollards timed to inflate whenever non-terror-related drivers with mental-health issues accelerate near pedestrian crossings. Or perhaps it would be easier to issue citizens of western nations at birth with an individual ring of bollards to wear about their persons at all time, starting with when they leave the maternity ward.

Alternatively, instead of attempting to ring-fence every potential target – ie, everything and everyone – with Diversity Bollards, we could try installing bollards where they matter – around the civilized world. To reiterate what I reiterated last time:

I don’t want to get used to it – and I reiterate my minimum demand of western politicians that I last made after the London Bridge attacks: How many more corpses need to pile up on our streets before you guys decide to stop importing more of it?

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Arab Apartheid Targets Palestinians by Khaled Abu Toameh

By on December 27th, 2017

Palestinians say that what they are facing in Iraq is “ethnic cleansing.” The new Iraqi law deprives Palestinians living in Iraq of their right to free education, healthcare and to travel documents, and denies them work in state institutions.

No one will pay any attention to the misery of the Palestinians in any Arab country. Major media outlets around the world will barely cover the news of the controversial Iraqi law or the displacement of thousands of Palestinian families in Iraq. Journalists are too busy chasing a handful of Palestinian stone-throwers near Ramallah. A Palestinian girl who punched an Israeli soldier in the face draws more media interest than Arab apartheid against the Palestinians.

Palestinian leaders, meanwhile care nothing about the plight of their own people in Arab countries. They are much too busy inciting Palestinians against Israel and Trump to pay such a paltry issue any mind at all.

Iraq has just joined the long list of Arab countries that shamelessly practice apartheid against Palestinians. The number of Arab countries that apply discriminatory measures against Palestinians while pretending to support the Palestinian cause is breathtaking. Arab hypocrisy is once again on display, but who who is looking?

The international media — and even the Palestinians — are so preoccupied with US President Donald Trump’s announcement on Jerusalem that the plight of Palestinians in Arab countries is dead news. This apathy allows Arab governments to continue with their anti-Palestinian policies because they know that no one in the international community cares — the United Nations is too busy condemning Israel to do much else.

So what is the story with the Palestinians in Iraq? Earlier this week, it was revealed that the Iraqi government has approved a new law that effectively abolishes the rights given to Palestinians living there. The new law changes the status of Palestinians from nationals to foreigners.

Under Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi dictator, the Palestinians enjoyed many privileges. Until 2003, there were about 40,000 Palestinians living in Iraq. Since the overthrow of the Saddam regime, the Palestinian population has dwindled to 7,000.

Thousands of Palestinians have fled Iraq after being targeted by various warring militias in that country because of their support for Saddam Hussein. Palestinians say that what they are facing in Iraq is “ethnic cleansing.”

The conditions of the Palestinians in Iraq are about to go from bad to worse. The new law, which was ratified by Iraqi President Fuad Masum, deprives Palestinians living in Iraq of their right to free education, healthcare and to travel documents, and denies them work in state institutions. The new law, which is called No. 76 of 2017, revokes the rights and privileges granted to Palestinians under Saddam Hussein. The law went into effect recently after it was published in the Iraqi Official Gazette No. 4466.

“Instead of protecting the Palestinian refugees from daily violations and improving their living and humanitarian conditions, the Iraqi government is making decisions that will have a catastrophic impact on the lives of these refugees,” said Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor.

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Turkey: Still a U.S. Ally? by Lawrence A. Franklin

By on December 27th, 2017

But what of NATO? Is Turkey a reliable NATO partner? Here the picture is more mixed.

Turkey of late, with the purchase of two batteries of the Russian S-400 air defense system, appears to have taken a big step away from the NATO alliance. The Erdogan regime’s nationwide post-coup purge of civil and military personnel, and its threatening acts against freedom of speech, such as the mass arrest of journalists, are eviscerating the country’s independent civil society institutions. In addition, Turkey’s crackdown on the activities of non-governmental organizations in Turkey is another sign that Turkey is turning away from democratic values shared by NATO Alliance members.

Is Turkey still a reliable ally? After repeated endorsements by the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of policies inimical to U.S. interests, the answer seems to be not really.

Erdogan recently announced he will seek United Nations support to annul President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

In addition, the Turkish Ministry of Justice has issued warrants for the arrest of two American Turkey specialists, in effect placing a bounty of $800,000 on their heads.

Additionally, there is the somewhat comical furor in Turkey over the adoption by Turkish entrepreneurs of the American “Black Friday” sales concept. Several Turkish businesses, which had attempted to increase sales by borrowing the U.S. “Black Friday” market lure, were attacked by devout Muslims who accused store owners of disrespecting Islam’s day of prayer. The perceived insult to Islam’s Friday Prayer obligation is just another example of a widening antipathy towards the U.S.

While the misunderstanding by Turks over “Black Friday,” will likely fade quickly, the diplomatic damage brought on by the early October arrest by Turkey’s police of a Turkish employee at the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul allegedly for espionage is likely to be more long-lasting.

The arrest of the U.S Consulate’s employee precipitated the U.S. Ambassador’s suspension on October 8, of all non-immigrant U.S. visas for Turkish citizens. The incident underscores how bilateral relations have plummeted since Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan first came to power.

Shortly after Erdogan was elected in 2002, Turkey appeared to start turning away from its U.S. alliance when it refused to grant permission for U.S. troops to cross Turkish territory into northern Iraq. Turkey’s parliament, the Grand National Assembly, voted down the request. Erdogan seems now to be focusing on regional affairs rather than on Turkey’s traditional ties to the United States and Europe. Since Erdogan came to power, Turkey has increased its economic and diplomatic ties to Arab states.

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