NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Indicting the Trump Organization Years of investigation and prosecutors come up with a small tax case.

Posted By on July 3rd, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/indicting-the-trump-organization-11625264755?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

Democrats of all stripes have devoted years to investigating Donald Trump and finding very little. The latest example is Thursday’s indictment of the Trump Organization and its chief financial officer for classifying employee benefits as business expenses rather than compensation.

Manhattan D.A. Cyrus Vance Jr. and New York Attorney General Letitia James subpoenaed millions of documents and years of tax returns, and that’s all they’ve come up with. The indictment lists 15 criminal counts, including second degree grand larceny. But the evidence in the indictment boils down to misreporting compensation to the Internal Revenue Service and New York tax authorities.

Prosecutors allege that Allen Weisselberg, the 73-year-old accountant and CFO, received as much as $1.76 million in compensation over a 16-year-period—for cars, an apartment rental, and tuition for Mr. Weisselberg’s grandchildren at a private school—in a way that kept them off the books for tax purposes. The indictment says he avoided paying $901,112 he owed in taxes and collected federal and state tax refunds of $133,124 he wasn’t entitled to.

If true and willful, this is rotten behavior. But it isn’t Teapot Dome, and disguising compensation as expenses is far from unusual in corporate America. It’s typically handled as a civil matter and settled with the payment of back taxes, interest and fines. It is rarely the basis for a criminal indictment.

The prosecutors are throwing the book at Mr. Weisselberg to get him to turn state’s evidence against the former President. The same goes for the highly unusual decision to indict the Trump Organization, which is presumably intended to squeeze its business prospects. Notably, neither Mr. Trump nor his children who run the business were charged.

The political motives at work are transparent. Mr. Vance has pursued Mr. Trump and his tax records for years, even as street and violent crime proliferates in New York City. Ms. James campaigned on a promise to shine “a bright light into every dark corner of his real estate dealings, and every dealing, demanding truthfulness at every turn.” She all but promised a selective prosecution—that is, pick a target, then search for a crime to allege.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

In Italy, Relief and Dread as Tourists Return The pandemic cost Italy billions in lost revenue from tourism, while giving residents of popular destinations like Rome and Venice a chance to have their cities to themselves By Mattia Ferraresi

Posted By on July 3rd, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-italy-relief-and-dread-as-tourists-return-11625232372

“It’s time for you to book your holidays in Italy,” Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi told international visitors in May, hoping to revive a tourism sector that contributes 13% of Italy’s GDP. In 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic put an end to most international travel, the country’s tourism revenue dropped by about $113 billion, and things are still far from back to normal.

“Italians go to the beach or the mountains during the summer, and in those areas, things are getting slightly better,” said Giuseppe Roscioli, a hotel owner in Rome and president of the local arm of the hotel lobby Federalberghi. “But historic cities are suffering the most.” The association has used the word “devastation” to describe what the hospitality business is going through. “Half of the hotels in the city are now closed, and most of them won’t reopen until next spring. I am afraid we will be back to the pre-Covid levels only in 2024,” Mr. Roscioli said.

‘Tourism is undoubtedly precious for our community, but at the same time it’s destroying its social fabric.’

— Pierpaolo Capovilla

The inconvenient truth is that ordinary Italians loved having their cities to themselves during the pandemic, finally free from the incessant flow of tourists. The Italian writer and publisher Roberto Calasso has noted that in the modern world, even a tourist doesn’t like being identified as just another member of the visiting pack: “He enjoys watching tourists, and even bemoaning them. He wouldn’t want to be confused with them.” So one can imagine how the residents feel in a city like Venice, where 75% of businesses revolve around tourism.

“Needless to say, the pandemic is a terrible tragedy, but as a Venetian, I can’t deny that I enjoyed that tourists suddenly disappeared,” said Pierpaolo Capovilla, a musician and artist who has been living in Venice for more than 30 years. “Tourism is undoubtedly precious for our community, but at the same time it’s destroying its social fabric, and it’s pushing regular people away,” said Mr. Capovilla, recalling that before the pandemic the number of visitors in Venice had reached “a distressing level.” Meanwhile, the city center, where 50,000 people currently live, is losing about 1,000 residents each year.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Is Harvard Sacrificing Science for Wokeness? Christopher Sanfilippo

Posted By on July 3rd, 2021

https://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2021/06/30/is_harvard_sacrificing_science_to_wokeness_783577.html

There is a cultural shift underway affecting all aspects of American life. Though hard to define, it usually takes the form of an emphasis on what is known variously as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), critical race theory, wokeness, anti-racism, and the like. Several scholars and writers have been raising the alarm about its anti-intellectual and illiberal aspects. Heather Mac Donald has shown how it has permeated the university. Is there reason to be suspicious?

One might suspect that the new ideology only affects intrinsically political areas of study, such as Government and History. But in fact it has infected every area, even science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Below is a sampling of new policies at Harvard that reveal how this ideology is affecting STEM education.

A few clicks away from the homepage of Harvard’s prestigious medical school, one finds among their “anti-racism initiatives” the following: “We will develop new classes for master’s and PhD students to acknowledge the ways in which racism is embedded in science.” What in the world does it even mean to say that racism is “embedded” in science? It has been pursued, certainly, by flawed people—but science is the pursuit of universal truth. It cannot itself be racist. At best, such classes will simply be a waste of time. At worst, as the language above suggests, they will attempt to indoctrinate students by teaching them that they, and the medicine they practice, are inherently racist.

Not even mathematics, the most rigorous and least ideological of the STEM disciplines, is unscathed. Harvard’s math department is currently implementing suggestions from last year’s town hall concerning “diversity and anti-oppression.” It is suggested to no longer require the GRE for graduate admissions, and, shockingly, to “reform Math 55 culture and content” for the sake of “promoting equity.” Now, Math 55 is known as the hardest undergraduate math class in the country—some years more than half the class does not finish. The rationale underlying these suggestions is unmistakable: there are not enough women and minorities succeeding in the department, so let us lower the standards to make our classes and programs more diverse. Such thinking has become disturbingly common. It’s both condescending and an open admission that diversity is more important than rigorous education. Is it lamentable that some years Math 55 has no women? Perhaps. But that is preferable to encouraging students to take it who may not succeed or lowering the standards for all.  

A final example, this time from the School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS). Buried on the 17th of the 37-page SEAS Strategic Plan for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging it is recommended that a “comprehensive training program” be created for all members of SEAS to address “bias, privilege, inclusive leadership, gender identity, etc.” including inviting speakers and in-house training. But what does this have to do with engineering? Naturally, they neglect to mention the cost of such a program or how it advances the core mission of SEAS.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Byron York: A new get-Trump committee?

Posted By on July 3rd, 2021

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/byron-yorks-daily-memo-a-new-get-trump-committee

A congressional investigation is a fact-finding enterprise. The members aren’t neutral finders of fact — they are Republicans and Democrats who often fight over the subject and scope of the investigation. But the idea is to find facts.

Now take a look at the new Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, created this week in a nearly party-line vote in the House. Even before the investigation begins, the chairman of the committee, Democratic Representative Bennie Thompson, has already found all the facts he needs to find former President Donald Trump guilty of incitement. We know because Thompson has said so, over and over again, in a lawsuit blaming Trump for the riot.

In February, Thompson, acting in his personal capacity, filed suit against Trump, presidential lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and the groups Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. Whatever its title, the suit is about Trump; the other defendants are just supporting players. Trump is named 126 times in the document, versus 40 for Giuliani, 47 for the Proud Boys, and 18 for the Oath Keepers. In other words, the suit is about Trump.

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Thompson begins with the declaration that Trump and the others “conspired to incite an assembled crowd to march upon and enter the Capitol of the United States for the common purpose of disrupting, by the use of force, intimidation and threat, the approval by Congress of the count of votes cast by members of the Electoral College as required by Article II, Section 1 of the United States Constitution.” The suit says Trump created a “unified plan” to incite and then carry out the riot — the suit calls it an “insurrection” 12 times — with the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers the junior partners doing the actual fighting. Thompson asks a judge to declare Trump guilty of violating 42 US Code 1985, the law covering “conspiracy to interfere with civil rights.”

So now the same Representative Thompson is leading the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. He has already decided who to blame — the task now is just to formalize the verdict.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

A Mobster and Turkey’s Arms Shipments to Jihadis by Burak Bekdil

Posted By on July 3rd, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17430/turkey-arms-shipments-jihadis

Erdoğan’s government claimed the cargo was humanitarian aid to Turkoman locals in Syria but then filed criminal charges against the editors Cumhuriyet, for being members of a “terrorist organization,” espionage and revealing state secrets…. The prosecution asked for life sentences for two Cumhuriyet editors. Since then, Can Dündar, then-editor-in-chief, has been living in Germany in exile.

At the beginning of May, Sedat Peker, a convicted Turkish mob boss and a fierce supporter of Erdoğan — until now — began posting videos on social media in which he made uncorroborated accusations of corruption, murder and drug-running against top politicians.

After weeks of silence, Erdoğan… ordered prosecutors and judges to investigate and establish that all of Peker’s claims were lies and a smear campaign against his government. Who will trust the independence of a legal probe when the president has already ordered its verdict?

On January 19, 2014, the Turkish Gendarmerie command in southern Turkey searched three trucks heading for Syria. Accompanying the trucks were Turkish intelligence officers; the trucks had a bizarre cargo: In the first container, were 25-30 missiles or rockets and 10-15 crates loaded with ammunition; and in the second, 20-25 missiles or rockets, 20-25 crates of mortar rounds and anti-aircraft ammunition in five or six sacks. The crates had markings in the Cyrillic alphabet. One of the drivers testified that the cargo had been loaded onto the trucks from a foreign airplane at Ankara’s Esenboğa Airport and that, “We carried similar loads several times before.”

It was evident that the arms were bound for jihadists fighting against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s regional nemesis. Nearly two years later, Erdoğan would almost confess to the arms shipments. “What does it matter,” he said in November 2015, “if it [the cargo] was arms or not?”

BOOKS Comments turned off

WHY CHARLES MURRAY’S NEW BOOK IS HIS WEAKEST .. despite that he is 1) brilliant and 2) not a bigot. John McWhorter

Posted By on July 3rd, 2021

https://johnmcwhorter.substack.com/p/why-charles-murrays-new-book-is-his

I come not to bury Charles Murray, but not to praise him, either.

He has a new book out, Facing Reality. It’s a doozy.

His books have a way of being doozies, going up against ideas sacred to the American intelligentsia on race as well as class.

He is also one of America’s most brilliant thinkers.

To many familiar with Murray’s work, I have already revealed myself as a “racist” in engaging his work at all, and/or not calling him one.

However, Murray’s work is too carefully reasoned and too deeply founded on scholarly sources to be dismissed as “racist,” except by people whose definition of “racist” is “That which people of the black American race don’t like for any reason.”

Rather: I salute Murray’s brilliance while being disturbed by many of his arguments. What many will call racism is what I call being able to walk and chew gum at the same time.

* * *

Yet Facing Reality is seriously disturbing. Murray gives a great deal of evidence for two points. One is that black people aren’t, on the average, as intelligent as other people. The other is that black people in America are more violent than others.

Those who on some level celebrate the latter as black people getting back at the white man in the only way they can, should know that the facts don’t lend themselves to that vigilante justice analysis. More specifically, black people kill each other more than members of other groups kill each other.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

For Pride month, the U.S. Navy marches under a different flag By Andrea Widburg

Posted By on July 3rd, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/07/for_pride_month_the_us_navy_marche

When Winston Churchill was First Lord of the Admiralty and proposed some much-needed reforms, the pushback he received claimed the reforms ran afoul of Naval tradition. Churchill snapped back, “Naval tradition? Naval tradition? Monstrous. Nothing but rum, sodomy, prayers, and the lash.” More than 100 years later, it appears that the United States Navy is embracing that sodomy tradition. How else to explain that officers at a Naval Seabees unit allegedly forced everyone to attend a “Diversity Hike,” while waving a “stars and rainbow-stripes” flag as they went.

Matt Walsh first broke the news, which he received from a naval wife whose active-duty husband was one of the people forced on the march:

In the flyer announcing the hike – a flyer complete with not one, but two gay flags – the reason given for the hike was “We will support our brothers and sister [sic] whom [sic] are a part of the Pride community.” For attire, hikers were told to wear “Pride attire, colorful clothing.”

The only flag flying was this one, the stars and rainbow stripes:

Indeed, the Navy was so proud of the march and the flag that it put up a Facebook post boasting that, “In honor of Pride Month, Construction Battalion Maintenance Unit 303 went on a Pride Hike at Sunset Cliff on June 25, 2021.” It even highlighted the flag in its Facebook photos:
I won’t comment here on whether the military’s switching from “don’t ask, don’t tell” to openly LGBTQ+ service was a good thing or not. However, I see absolutely no reason why the Navy, or any branch of the American military, should be celebrating the LGBTQ+ cohort.

If people under the LGBTQ+ flag want to celebrate themselves, that’s fine, but to make it official American military policy to revel in the fact that people fornicate with people of the same sex and with people of every sex, or with people who can’t figure out their own sex is a joke. The military is about creating a force capable of defending this country at a moment’s notice. It should never be about making people who constitute a minority of American sexual identity feel good about themselves

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

How Biden funds Palestinian terrorists Moshe Phillips

Posted By on July 3rd, 2021

https://www.jns.org/opinion/how-biden-funds-palestinian-terrorists

The pro-Palestinian wing of the Democratic Party will make sure that the money flows to Gaza, come hell or high water.

 The next generation of Palestinian Arab terrorists is being raised right now, and it’s being underwritten by the Biden administration.

Not intentionally, of course. President Joe Biden undoubtedly is as opposed to terrorism as every other reasonable-minded American citizen. But in three specific, concrete ways, the administration’s policies will have the practical impact of contributing significantly to the training of young Palestinian Islamic terrorists.

In April, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that the U.S. will be sending $150 million to the Palestinian Arabs in the form of a grant to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which the previous U.S. administration had suspended. After the Hamas missile war against Israel in May, Blinken pledged an additional $38.5 million for Gaza, through UNRWA.

UN Watch has documented in its devastating report, “Poisoning Palestinian Children,” that “school teachers, principals, and other employees of UNRWA incite to terrorism or antisemitism.” The report, which includes examples from UNRWA schools in Gaza, shows how teachers and other staff members openly celebrate terrorism against Israel — including kidnapping Israeli children and firing missiles into Israeli neighborhoods; using maps which erase Israel’s existence; posting photos of Adolf Hitler and praising him; and posting “overtly antisemitic videos, caricatures, and statements.”

Some of the Hamas recruitment drives for summer camps that train children in Gaza to become terrorists are even being held on UNRWA school campuses.

When challenged at a Congressional hearing on June 8 about the renewal of funding for UNRWA despite its Jew-hatred, Secretary Blinken said that the administration is “determined that UNRWA pursue very necessary reforms in terms of some of the abuses of the system that have taken place in the past.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Western Silence as Gaza Summer Camps Train Future Terrorists By Lawrence J. Haas

Posted By on July 3rd, 2021

https://www.newsweek.com/western-silence-gaza-summer-camps-train-future-terrorists-opinion-1605704

The teenage boys of Gaza, some of whom are still in junior high, are learning how to shoot guns, launch anti-tank missiles and protect themselves while peering around walls.

The boys are attending summer camp, but it’s not the swimming and softball, hiking and cookouts that many of us fondly recall. It’s camp as run by the terrorist groups Hamas, which controls Gaza, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). It aims “to fan the flames of jihad among the generation of liberation, instill Islamic values and prepare the long-awaited army for the liberation of Palestine,” as the Izz Al-Din Al-Qassam Brigades of Hamas put it.

Through these camps, which Hamas and PIJ have run for more than a decade, the terrorist groups glorify military operations against Israel and recruit the next generation of terrorists – all of which suggests that Israeli-Palestinian peace will remain as elusive as ever.

One might expect that the terrorist-run camps in Gaza would engender some attention among Western intelligentsia, for which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is always a front-burner issue. That the camps, in fact, attract so little notice shows just how committed leading media and academic institutions are to a narrative of Israeli oppression and Palestinian victimization.

Information about the camps isn’t hard to find, if one is willing to look. The terrorist groups promote them on social media, announce their openings at news conferences and post pictures and videos from them.

Moreover, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), which brings news from the region to non-regional audiences, has written reports about the camps while posting pictures and videos, and distributes its reports for free.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Ban Ki-Moon Gets It Wrong Shoshana Bryen

Posted By on July 3rd, 2021

https://www.newsweek.com/ban-ki-moon-gets-it-wrong-opinion-1605816#slideshow/183474

Ban Ki-moon, former secretary-general of the United National, has had a thought. It is, unfortunately, not a good one. Acknowledging that the Oslo Accords are a failure (true), he then posits two things.

First, that the Israelis and Palestinians must recognize “the fundamental asymmetry between [them]. This is not a conflict between equals that can be resolved through bilateral negotiations, confidence-building measures or mutual sequencing of steps—the traditional conflict-resolution tools.” (Both untrue and true.)

Second, the negotiation failure is because “Israel has pursued a policy of incremental de facto annexation in the territories it has occupied since 1967, to the point where the prospect of a two-state solution has all but vanished.” (Just untrue.)

It is not a “conflict between equals,” but it is true that “confidence-building” and so forth will not work—because the Palestinians remain in a self-avowed state of war with Israel. It is the last remnant of the pan-Arab war against the Jewish state that began before 1948 and is now slowly resolving as follows: “Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.”

Those words should sound familiar to Ban because they are from UN Resolution 242, adopted in the wake of 1967’s Six Day War. Starting with Egypt and Jordan, followed by the Sunni Gulf states, then Sudan and Morocco openly as well as other Arab and African countries quietly, the normalization movement represents precisely the “new approach” Ban seeks.