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Taqiyya for Easter by Mark Steyn

Posted By on April 22nd, 2019

https://www.steynonline.com/9317/taqiyya-for-easter

Let’s say a fire breaks out at Notre Dame cathedral in Paris at the start of Holy Week, and just after two of the city’s other most prominent houses of worship – St Sulpice and the Basilica of St Denis – have been attacked and vandalized.

Well, I think we can all confidently say as the first flames are beginning to lick the ceiling that it’s undoubtedly an accident. Cigarette butt. Or maybe computer glitch. Probably just an overheated smart phone. We don’t need to get in there and sift through the debris. We can just announce it.

On the other hand, when there are coordinated attacks on Easter services at several churches in Sri Lanka, it becomes a little more challenging to pass off multiple suicide-bombings killing nearly three hundred people as an electrical malfunction.
So, in contrast to the confident declarations of a week ago, on Sunday morning the media opted for a subtler narrative. Lead sentence from The Economist:IT HAS BEEN nearly ten years since the guns fell silent in Sri Lanka’s civil war. But bloodshed returned with a vengeance…So it’s something to do with the Tamil Tigers? Their guns fell silent, but now they’ve returned with a vengeance, eh?Well, er, no, er, not, ah, precisely… But it’s useful for “context”, lots and lots of context. And, if you pile up enough context, you can bury the actual story. My old chums at The Age in Melbourne produced an especially fine example:Colombo: More than 200 people were killed and hundreds more wounded in eight bomb blasts that rocked churches, luxury hotels and other sites in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday – the deadliest violence the South Asian island country has seen since a bloody civil war ended a decade ago.Ah, there’s that bloody civil war flaring up all over again, right?

MOVIES AND TELEVISION, MY SAY: Comments turned off

MY SAY: REFLECTIONS ON THE MOVIE “CAPERNAUM”

Posted By on April 22nd, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/04/4_21_2019_16_40.html

Capernaum: a film review By Ruth S. KingWhen I heard that the movie Capernaum was short-listed for a foreign film Oscar, I braced myself. Capernaum was a fishing village established during the time of the Hasmoneans, located on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee.  The trailer for the film showed squalid scenes of Arabs squeezed into makeshift homes on streets with running sewers and diapered children hungry and weeping.

Another tale I told myself, of the “Palestinian Arab refugee” camps maintained by UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) to be used and recycled as Potemkin proof of Arab dislocation and Israel’s tyranny.

In Arabic, “capernaum” means chaotic and disorderly. The locus of the movie is actually Beirut, where unregistered Syrian refugees live in unspeakable conditions. Amenities such as potable water, electricity, proper housing, and medical care are virtually nonexistent. Children have no birth records or schooling. Their lives consist of begging or stealing for crumbs. Girls as young as eleven are sold to degenerate grooms. Menial jobs amount to slavery. The conditions in jail are inhuman. Infants in diapers wander the mean streets often abandoned by their parents and multiple siblings.Zain, the lead character, about twelve and desperate and illiterate, runs away from home after his sister is sold to a sexual predator for a few chickens. An Eritrean refugee takes him in and feeds him, but he is obliged to care for her baby.  When she is jailed and fails to return, Zain’s efforts to find her and take care of the baby become impossible and he relinquishes the child’s care to a vendor who traffics in humans.

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Russian ‘Collusion’s’ Greatest Hits By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on April 22nd, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/04/21/russian-collusions-greatest-hits/

From late 2015 until April 2019, the media, the Left, and the Obama administrative state hierarchy warned us nonstop that candidate, president-elect, and inaugurated President Trump “colluded” with Russia to defeat Hillary Clinton, to assemble a suspect cabinet, and to rule in treasonous fashion in the interests of Vladimir Putin. The former head of the CIA and the director of national intelligence were birthed as permanent analysts at MSNBC and CNN to sermonize—with wink-and-nod assurances that their past billets and security clearances substantiated their authority—that the treasonous Trump would likely be impeached, indicted, or quit.

A mostly progressive team of lawyers, with an unlimited budget, no restrictions on time, and with enormous legal powers found all of that to be a lie.

Unable to find Trump likely guilty of either collusion or obstruction of investigating the non-crime of collusion, they instead salted their report with innuendo and rumor of what the enraged Trump was supposedly thinking about, raging about, and talking about among his closest confidants, including the insurrectionary statement of his press secretary who allegedly sinned by exaggerating the extent of FBI rank and file unhappiness over the firing of James Comey.

All that was a long, slow distraction over real culpability on the part of a number of our supposed best and brightest. And here are some of their most absurd moments from the Orwellian hunt for collusion.

POLITICS Comments turned off

The Party of Bias and Bigotry By Rabbi Yaakov Menken

Posted By on April 22nd, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/04/21/the-party-of-bias-and-bigotry/

Let’s review: one individual, Representative Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), consistently minimizes terrorism while condemning efforts to combat it. Prior to coming to Congress, she wrote to a judge to request leniency for a man convicted on terrorism-related charges. She laughed in an interview when discussing how a professor’s reaction to mentions of al-Qaeda or Hezbollah differed from when America or England were mentioned.

And during a speech on behalf of a group created at the behest of the Muslim Brotherhood, she expressed an offhand dismissal of the worst act of terrorism in U.S. history.

A second individual, President Donald Trump, tweeted a video of her comment alongside images of the horrific act of terrorism to which she referred, pointing out how callous it was to brush off that traumatic event as “some people did something.”

Without question, one of these two individuals made comments “designed to incite hatred” that are putting “life at risk.” But according to leading Democrats, that person would be the president and not Omar. One could hardly look for a better example of the inversion of morality, and of hater and hated.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Earth Day: Opposing Progress Trumps Protecting the Planet By Andrew I. Fillat and Henry I. Miller

Posted By on April 22nd, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/04/21/earth-day-opposing-progress-trumps-protecting-the-planet/

April 21 is Earth Day, a celebration originally conceived by then-U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson (D-Wis.) and first held in 1970 as a “symbol of environmental responsibility and stewardship.” In the spirit of the time, it was a touchy-feely, consciousness-raising, New Age experience. Most activities were organized at the grassroots level.In recent years, however, Earth Day has become an occasion for professional environmental activists and alarmists to warn of apocalypse, dish anti-technology dirt, proselytize, and raise money more to sustain their movement than to sustain the planet. Provability inevitably takes a back seat to alleged plausibility.

The Earth Day Network, which organizes Earth Day events and advocacy, regularly distorts or ignores science and exaggerates fears in order to advance its anti-technology, big government agenda. With a 2019 theme of “Protect Our Species,” this year’s event is no exception. Predictably, “our species” refers not to us humans, homo sapiens, but only to the other species on the planet, which we are destroying.

BOOKS, EDUCATION Comments turned off

More Academic Malfeasance by Daniel Pipes

Posted By on April 22nd, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14106/more-academic-malfeasance

So, how does anyone, much less a professor, promote views that are so clearly stated and so profoundly wrong?

John Maszka probably figured that he knew what my views were well enough not to have to bother with the tedious exercise of verifying what they actually are.

In this, he depressingly typifies much of Middle East studies: too dim to have common sense, too lazy to bother with research, too ideological to fix factual mistakes, and too smug to care about the harm caused by them.

Did you know that that the War on Terror actually “is a war for natural resources – and that terrorism has little to do with it”?

So argues John Maszka in his book, Washington’s Dark Secret: The Real Truth About Terrorism and Islamic Extremism (Potomac, 2018), as summarized in the publisher’s blurb. If you were curious how this “Terrorism Scholar” (his capitals) and professor of international relations at the Higher Colleges of Technology in Abu Dhabi, would pull off so implausible a thesis, you might want to dip into the book.

A sentence, however, on p. 54, might give you pause: “Islamophobes such as Daniel Pipes insist that there is no such thing as a moderate Muslim.”

Okay, you might ignore the predictable “Islamophobe” silliness; but where did that statement come? Wherever did I “insist that there is no such thing as a moderate Muslim”?

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Burning of Notre Dame and the Destruction of Christian Europe by Guy Millière

Posted By on April 22nd, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14107/notre-dame-destruction-christian-europe

Barely an hour after the flames began to rise above Notre Dame — at a time when no explanation could be provided by anyone — the French authorities rushed to say that the fire was an “accident” and that “arson has been ruled out.” The remarks sounded like all the official statements made by the French government after attacks in France during the last decade.

The Notre Dame fire also occurred at a time when attacks against churches in France and Europe have been multiplying. More than 800 churches were attacked in France during the year 2018 alone.

Churches in France are empty. The number of priests is decreasing and the priests that are active in France are either very old or come from Africa or Latin America. The dominant religion in France is now Islam. Every year, churches are demolished to make way for parking lots or shopping centers. Mosques are being built all over, and they are full.

The fire that destroyed much of the Notre Dame Cathedral in the heart of Paris is a tragedy that is irreparable. Even if the cathedral is rebuilt, it will never be what it was before. Stained glass windows and major architectural elements have been severely damaged and the oak frame totally destroyed. The spire that rose from the cathedral was a unique piece of art. It was drawn by the architect who restored the edifice in the nineteenth century, Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, who had based his work on 12th century documents.

In addition to the fire, the water needed to extinguish the flames penetrated the limestone of the walls and façade, and weakened them, making them brittle. The roof is non-existent: the nave, the transept and the choir now lie in open air, vulnerable to bad weather. They cannot even be protected until the structure has been examined thoroughly, a task that will take weeks. Three major elements of the structure (the north transept pinion, the pinion located between the two towers and the vault) are also on the verge of collapse.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel Emerges as a Leader of Western Conservatism William D. Rubinstein

Posted By on April 22nd, 2019

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2019/04/israel-emerges

In recent years a historic reversal of support and hostility for Jews and the State of Israel has occurred, in which most of the political Right, and especially what might be termed the ethno-nationalist Right throughout the world, are now strong supporters of the Jewish state, while the political Left is increasingly and centrally hostile to it. While much has been written on left-wing anti-Semitism, little has been said about the growing and quite extraordinary links by the political Right with Israel.

To show the magnitude of the change, one ought first to set out the nature of European anti-Semitism as it existed between about 1870 and 1945, especially the doctrines held by the Nazis, and then contrast these attitudes with right-wing leaders today. Anti-Semitism as it existed in Europe (and elsewhere) before 1945 had a number of points as its main planks. First, the Jews were not simply a religious denomination but a “race”, or ethno-nationality group. According to Hitler in Mein Kampf, “the Jews’ entire existence is built on one single great lie, namely that here one had to deal with a religious brotherhood, while in fact, one had to deal with a race”. Second, and following from this, Jews were not and could not be a genuine component of the countries in which they lived, but were a separate entity which, however long they dwelled there, retained an independent existence. As Hitler expressed this in Mein Kampf:

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Victor Davis Hanson Presents ‘The Case for Trump’…VIDEO and Transcript

Posted By on April 22nd, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273514/victor-davis-hanson-presents-case-trump-frontpagemagcom

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273514/victor-davis-hanson-presents-case-trump-frontpagemagcomThank you very much. I was listening to Judge Jeanine last night, and it is strange times.  I was on a flight the other day coming back from a speech and a guy tapped me and said, “Did you write this book?” and he pulled it from under the seat.  I said, “Yeah” and he said, “Could you sign it?” He came over and then he put it back under the seat. He said, “It’s like wearing a MAGA hat, that cover.” So I was listening to her [Judge Janine] go through all of the things, and then sometimes when I’m at work, the Stanford Studio–our Hoover Studio– shuts down, so I went to do a Fox show.

When I got a call from the Fox producer he said, “They won’t let you on unless you write out in advance an outline of everything you’re going to say.”  So, I called him up, and I said, “I just heard two professors go on a rant on MSNBC with the Stanford logo from the studio about why Trump is treason and should be impeached,” and they backed down, and they said, “Okay, we won’t do it.” The next time, they did the same thing.So, there’s a climate we’re in right now that’s insidious everywhere.  We have a climate of fear that this popular culture has created, and it sounds like deterrence. They want to call you names.  But if you back off a little bit, then that’s a victory for them, and that’s why I thought that her final call to arms was well taken.  What I’d like to do is just ask a series of questions for about 25 minutes and open up for questions:How did this guy get elected, and I mean by that, how was he nominated?  How did he do pretty well for the first 2 years?  Why do two groups of people hate him, the left of course, but as I learned from a reaction to this book, the Never Right hate him even more– the Never Trump Right.  Then what’s the prognosis to the degree that anybody knows for 2020?

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Mueller Evidence Fails to Prove Obstruction Charge Against Trump Trump haters continue deranged obsession — by other means. Joseph Klein

Posted By on April 22nd, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273543/mueller-evidence-fails-prove-obstruction-charge-joseph-klein

The overblown Russian collusion balloon has burst. Democrats, their handmaidens in the mainstream media and other Trump haters are apoplectic that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation found “the evidence was not sufficient to charge that any member of the Trump Campaign conspired with representatives of the Russian government to interfere in the 2016 election.”

However, the Trump haters will never give up trying to unseat him by any means possible. They now are latching on to the Special Counsel’s evidentiary findings relating to possible obstruction of justice, even though the Special Counsel’s Office “did not draw ultimate conclusions about the President’s conduct.” The Mueller report admitted that the evidence it “obtained about the President’s actions and intent presents difficult issues that would need to be resolved if we were making a traditional prosecutorial judgment.” Nevertheless, the report concluded with tantalizing language that excited the imaginations of Democrats, the mainstream media and others who want to take President Trump down. The report’s authors stated that “if we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, we are unable to reach that judgment. Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”