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A Slippery Patch in World Affairs by Amir Taheri

Posted By on August 23rd, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16389/world-affairs-slippery-patch

Today, as in the 1880s, big, small and even mini wannabe empire-builders are engaged in a ruthless power game…. The most intense activity comes from Russia and China.

China, for its part, is projecting power all over the world while bullying some neighbors and bribing others into submission. When deemed necessary, it also acts with military force, as it did recently along the ceasefire line with India. China treats some African, Asian and Latin American countries, notably Congo-Kinshasa, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and Ecuador as abatis or territory left by previous masters and open for pickings by new reapers.

Overall, in economic, political and even military terms, Western powers, still nominally led by the United States, remain involved in all continents but are increasingly behaving as if their hearts, not to say their pockets, are no longer in it.

As for Germany, it seems that its hapless Foreign Minister Heiko Maas has no ambition beyond caressing the corpse of the Obama “nuclear deal” with Iran.

The current lukewarm war may never morph into a hot one, but the risk should not be dismissed. Today, projecting power with low-intensity war, often waged through inexpensive proxies as Iran does in Lebanon, or through mercenaries as Russia does in Syria and Libya, enables even relatively poor countries to cast a larger shadow than they deserve.

“The world has stepped into a slippery patch, and we need to steady it.” This is how Benjamin Disraeli saw the international scene in the early 1880s.

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“We Have No Mercy on You People”: Persecution of Christians, July 2020 by Raymond Ibrahim

Posted By on August 23rd, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16391/persecution-of-christians-july

“[T]here are young girls who have been abducted and enslaved, forced into sexual slavery by some of these guerrillas, these insurgents, these terrorists… We know that the recruitment of boys and adolescents, some of them very young, aged 14, 15, 16, is also happening. It is obvious that these young boys are under coercion. If they refuse to join the group, they could be killed.” — Paulo Rangel, Portuguese Member of European Parliament, Catholic San Francisco, July 23, 2020; Mozambique, where Islamic State (ISIS) seized a port.

In one week in June, 15 people were beheaded in the Christian-majority nation. Discussing the situation, Bishop Lisboa said: “The world has no idea yet what is happening because of indifference.” — Mozambique.

A 16-year-old Muslim refugee from Syria pleaded guilty to four counts of terrorism. His schemes were shared with and exposed by an undercover FBI agent posing as a fellow ISIS supporter online…. “It was a bomb lab,” the report said. — Global News, July 31; Canada.

“Somalis generally believe all Somalis are Muslims by birth and that any Somali who becomes a Christian can be charged with apostasy, punishable by death.” — Morningstar News, July 9, 2020.

The following are among the abuses that were inflicted on Christians throughout the month of July 2020:

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We Need This Change in the Arab World by Sara Al Nuaimi

Posted By on August 23rd, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16390/arab-world-change

“What is the difference between a Jewish person and an Israeli?” my mother, a religious and traditional Emirati, asked.

“Well,” she said, “when they start coming here, we shall get to know them better.”

For women trapped in the dogma of tradition, half in-half out, adventurous but guilt-stricken, we now feel proud of the choices we made to carve a niche for ourselves, because this niche is the new center. We can finally be ourselves and create the lives we wanted: to be out in the world, not in the confinements of a golden cage.

There was for so long the mantra of “Israel is the enemy.” It was a mantra that people could not break out of and that they believed without proof. These people are now quiet. We need this change in the Arab world. It has taken so long to come.

It was easier than we thought, that joint statement of the United Arab Emirates, Israel and the United States.

There were so many steps that were skipped, though: you can tell by reading on Twitter the voices of opposition from other countries that were in shock at the news. They resist the possibility, but to us, now that we are capable of acknowledging the peace that was created, the opposition feels no bigger than ants with puny pincers.

This is perhaps the first time that peace has happened without a war. It is peace for the sake of peace

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

In his convention speech, Joe plagiarized from everyone, including himself By Andrea Widburg

Posted By on August 23rd, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/08/in_his_convention_speech_joe_plagiarized_from_everyone_including_himself.html

The Democrat National Convention is already fading in the rear-view mirror of history, and the country is preparing for the Republican National Convention (which sounds as if it will be a more cheerful, optimistic affair). The passage of time, however, has allowed people to compare Biden’s acceptance speech to other speeches and, lo and behold, Biden is back to plagiarizing, whether it’s stealing ideas from Trump, words from other politicians, or whole passages from himself.

Once upon a time, the American media was not in love with Joe Biden. That’s why, in 1987, when it emerged that Biden had copied a Welsh Labour politician almost word for word (albeit without the Welshman’s elegance and passion), the media ran with the story:

EDUCATION Comments turned off

College students say free speech is “unacceptable” By Eric Utter

Posted By on August 23rd, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/08/college_students_say_free_speech_is_unacceptable.html

The administration of Princeton University recently published a “Statement on Principles of Inclusivity and Free Speech.” The Statement affirmed that the school “cherishes both inclusivity and free speech, which can be protected even when the speech in question is ‘unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply offensive.’” It also noted that Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber is on record as saying the free expression policy “rests upon the idea that the pursuit of understanding, discovery, and truth benefits from the open and vigorous contestation of ideas.”

That belief was the very foundation of colleges and universities for well over two centuries. Eisgruber correctly added, “We are in an era when many people mistakenly treat free speech and inclusivity as competing values. We need the benefit of multiple voices and perspectives, and we need real engagement among them.”

Not any longer. The president and two vice-presidents of the Princeton Graduate Student Government replied to their school’s shocking affirmation of free speech and the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, calling it “tone-deaf” and “unacceptable.”

In a letter written in response to Eisgruber and the administration, the three opined that the free speech policy protects “hate” at the university. They stated, “We as a student body are not looking for ‘dialogue’ on how to cope with institutional racism,” and averred that an emphasis on the importance of free expression “reads as a typical dog-whistle often used to excuse racist speech and hateful actions.”

Their admission that they are not looking for “dialogue” is a refreshing bit of candor, as leftists/progressives never seek dialogue, only victory and submission. Especially submission.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

A Revolution in Sensibility — and What to Do About It By David Solway

Posted By on August 23rd, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/08/_a_revolution_in_sensibility__and_what_to_do_about_it.html

The virus of collectivism has taken hold among the young, and equality of personal opportunity has yielded to equality of forced outcome.

For many Americans, the enemy is the conservative patrimony of individual agency, traditional marriage, competitive achievement, historical memory, freedom of thought, expression and peaceful assembly, and the morality of public reciprocity. The handshake has been replaced by the clenched fist, a communist salute and emblem adopted by BLM. The virus of collectivism has taken hold among the young, and equality of personal opportunity has yielded to equality of forced outcome.

This is no less than a revolution of sensibility, aggressively promoted by the big digital platforms and the open sewer of social media where the scourge of rampant vigilantism, infantilism run amok and mob justice has infected the entire culture and eroded the principle of legal justice by the politics of indiscriminate revenge for evils real and imagined. Twitter, of course, has now become the major conduit for the neural filth of the nation to disgorge into the mainstream.

The responsible and literate individual is gradually disappearing into a featureless mass. The mob and its movers prevail. The result is an epidemic of iconoclasm (destruction of images and statues), antinomianism (rejection of laws and customs), and the degradation of rational thought. America’s foreign enemies and competitors can scarcely contain themselves as they watch the country implode, a pervasive leftist fifth column doing their work for them.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Democrats Make This Nonnative Restless Most immigrants are in America legally, and we don’t think of ourselves as aggrieved victims. By Tunku Varadarajan

Posted By on August 23rd, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/democrats-make-this-nonnative-restless-11598035545?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

I watched all four nights of the Democratic National Convention. Huddled in front of my TV set, I was, by the end, yearning to breathe free. As an immigrant to the U.S., I found the Democrats’ obsession with immigrants grating. I’d like to tell Americans why.

Scarcely a speech or segment went by in which a fetish wasn’t made of immigrants. They were portrayed, almost uniformly, as victims—hapless people thwarted by “systemic racism” and American injustice, moored forever in a netherworld of murk and fear by President Trump’s refusal to be humane.

The Democrats are guilty of conflating the people who live in this country without authorization with those—a significant majority of immigrants—who are here legally. According to the Pew Research Center, 77% of America’s foreign-born immigrants are lawful permanent residents (like me) or naturalized citizens of the U.S.

With their relentless focus on the undocumented margins, the Democrats do an enormous disservice to the 35.2 million lawful immigrants who go about their dignified business away from the spotlight, getting on with such concerns as work, school and family, grateful for the opportunity to be in America—grateful, in fact, for the opportunity to be Americans.

Many immigrants have come to America from countries where the state interferes in people’s lives while pretending to help. What many of them really want—Democrats, please note—is for the state to step aside and let them carve out their own destinies. Which is why they came to America in the first place. Whether the left likes it or not, this is the primordial truth to which almost every immigrant subscribes.

No one suggests that the plight of the undocumented people in this country should be ignored. Yet the Democratic obsession with indigent illegal residents plays into the hands of racists and nativists, who, ironically, share the progressive caricature of immigrants as a brooding throng of people in perpetual limbo. (Nativists regard the foreign-born as inherently unassimilable, while progressives, for their own reasons, scoff at the very notion of “assimilation.”)

BOOKS Comments turned off

Inside the Rise of Mohammed bin Salman The Saudi crown prince ascended with a taste for opulence, a hunger for money and a drive for power: By Bradley Hope and Justin Scheck

Posted By on August 23rd, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/inside-the-rise-of-mohammed-bin-salman-11597931772

The models arrived first. Boats carrying some 150 women, from Brazil, Russia and elsewhere, docked in the summer of 2015 at Velaa Private Island, an opulent Maldives resort. Upon arrival, each woman was driven in a golf cart to a clinic, tested for sexually transmitted diseases and settled into a private villa.

The women were due to spend the better part of a month with their hosts, several dozen friends of Saudi Arabia’s Prince Mohammed bin Salman, for a party marking his ascent. A 29-year-old prince with a taste for opulence, a hunger for money and a need for power found himself with an abundance of all three.

Prince Mohammed had worked doggedly for a year, outmaneuvering rivals and easing the path for his septuagenarian father Salman to assume the Saudi throne. After Salman took the crown in early 2015, he delegated extraordinary powers to Mohammed, who consolidated control of the military and security services and began upending the sleepy kingdom’s oil-dependent economy.

By that July, Mohammed wanted a break. His privacy-obsessed entourage booked the entire Velaa resort for a month, at a cost of $50 million, according to people familiar with the trip. Staff were banned from bringing cellphones with cameras. The American rapper Pitbull and the South Korean pop star Psy performed. The Maldives party was described by several people in attendance, including some involved in its planning.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The City Manager In Laredo, Texas Received A $880,486 Golden Parachute Last Year BY Adam Andrzejewski

Posted By on August 23rd, 2020

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2020/08/13/the-city-manager-in-laredo-texas-received-a-880486-golden-parachute-last-year/#14395c4bb979

In 2019, the city manager in Laredo, Texas, made $880,486. It doubled the earnings of the President of the United States ($400,000) and tripled the earnings of four-star generals in the U.S. military ($268,000).

In fact, in two of the past three years, Laredo employed two of the most highly compensated city managers in the nation.

Between 2017 and 2019, those two city managers collectively made a total of $1.85 million in cash compensation, not including the cost of benefits such as health insurance, the public pension and other perquisites.

Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com discovered this by filing 41,500 Freedom of Information Act requests each of the last three years. We captured and mapped by ZIP Code 23 million public employee salary and pension records annually.

We uncovered an eye-popping amount of money flowing to Laredo’s managers, despite the fact that the border city is home to 261,000 residents with an average income of only $15,127 per year.

In May 2017, the Laredo city council promoted Horacio De Leon, Jr., to interim city manager and the permanent position by August. Earnings for De Leon in 2018 were $314,556. The manager had worked his way up through city government and enjoyed a good reputation locally.

But in a surprising move, the city council parted ways with De Leon in 2019 – only 20 months after hiring him. Our records request showed that De Leon received a $880,486 golden parachute, an all-inclusive payout including severance.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

Posted By on August 23rd, 2020

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com 

The speed and frequency of positive developments in Israel has now accelerated to phenomenal levels. They include one-second Covid-19 tests, mass-produced anti-viral stickers, the Israeli Air Force flying over Germany, hundreds of Israeli companies working in the UAE, the fastest microchips from Intel Israel, radar and testing for autonomous cars, new driver safety and traffic management systems, flying cars, fast battery charging, meat without animals, precision irrigation systems and forward-thinking educational devices and training.

 

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Covid-19 one-second gargle test. Israel’s Sheba Medical Center is trialing a gargle-and-spit test that is 95% accurate in detecting Covid-19 infections. The USB-powered machine is the size of an ashtray and takes just one second to conduct light analysis of gargled mouthwash. Results from standard PCR tests take much longer.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-trial-israeli-gargle-test-gives-covid-results-in-1-second-at-95-accuracy/  
 
Maya goes viral.  “Maya” is the Israeli-developed 3D-printed nanotech sticker (reported here previously) that adds Covid-19 protection to surgical masks. It now will be mass produced at the DYKAM printing plant in Kibbutz Ein Harod and soon will be available to medical staff in Israel, Canada, Japan, Spain and elsewhere.
https://nocamels.com/2020/08/israeli-anti-viral-protective-stickers-masks/
 
Helping ADHD children to hear the teacher. Israel’s Nuancehear has developed the “Sound Selector” to help students with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The device filters background noise to help focus on hearing a teacher or lecturer. A trial on 31 students with Clalit Health Services has been positive.
https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2020/08/18/israeli-innovation-noise-filter-for-students-with-attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorder/   https://www.nuancehear.com/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gsSbqVUkRA
 
Treating intrauterine conditions. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s OCON Healthcare has been awarded $13 million of orders for its Intra Uterine Ball (IUB) proprietary platform. The purchasers are South America’s DKT and UK’s Consilient Healthcare, where the product will be fully reimbursed by the National Health Service.
https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-femtech-co-ocon-healthcare-wins-13m-intrauterine-orders-1001335168
https://www.oconmed.com/en/
 
Park ranger saves choking baby. Just a nice story featuring Afiw Bkreia, a park ranger at Nachal Amud in Israel’s Galilee. Afiw volunteers as a United Hatzalah paramedic, is a member of the canine rescue team, runs a photo club and much more. So, he did not panic when given a lifeless baby that was choking on a banana.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/285221