ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Middle East reality and the Palestinian issue Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

Posted By on March 15th, 2019

https://bit.ly/2Jee60s

In 2019, the national security policy of all pro-US Arab countries, such as Saudi Arabia, other Gulf States, Egypt and Jordan – including their burgeoning ties with Israel – is a byproduct of the rapidly intensifying lethal threat posed to them by the still-raging Arab Tsunami, Iran’s Ayatollahs and Sunni Islamic terrorism.

The tectonic reality of the Middle East, in general, and the intensifying lethal threats to every Arab regime, in particular, compelled the Foreign Ministers of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, the UAE and Bahrain to convene in Amman, Jordan during January 30-31, 2019. They discussed the top priorities on their national security agenda: the clear and present threats of Iran’s Ayatollahs (whose subversive/terroristic/military involvement is expanding beyond Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Bahrain and eastern Saudi Arabia), the Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS. No Palestinian representative was invited, nor was there a discussion of the Palestinian issue, which has always ranked at the bottom of inter-Arab priorities.

In fact, these six countries, in addition to Oman, respect Israel’s posture of deterrence (which would be abandoned if Israel were to retreat from the mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria), and therefore they perceive Israel as the most effective “life insurance agent” in the region. In addition, they consider Israel a source of essential and advanced irrigation, agricultural, health, medical, telecommunications and cyber technologies and systems. Consequently, their defense, intelligence and commercial ties with Israel have expanded unprecedentedly.

In 2019, the pro-US Arab countries have realized that the well-documented Palestinian track record (e.g., intra-Arab betrayal, subversion and terrorism, collaboration with international terrorism, Saddam Hussein, the USSR, No. Korea and Nazi Germany) would produce a Palestinian state, which would exacerbate regional instability. A Palestinian state would provide a tailwind to Iran’s Ayatollahs, ISIS and Muslim Brotherhood terrorism, escalating the deadly threats to their own regimes, while advancing the national security interests of Russia, China and Turkey’s Erdogan, at the expense of vital US national security and homeland security interests.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The Sudden Unpopularity of Neoliberal Centrists written by Uri Harris

Posted By on March 14th, 2019

https://quillette.com/2019/03/14/the-sudden-unpopularity-of-neoliberal-

EXCERPT:…..” This is especially relevant with the mainstreaming of intersectionality as an analytical framework. Here, people are represented as being intersected by a number of oppressive systems, including capitalism. Now, some people have argued that intersectionality with all its many different systems of oppression, especially those related to race, gender, and sexuality, shift the focus away from class. (And thus from wealthy individuals and corporations.) This is true, but probably only for the short term. In the long term, it seems apparent that capitalism will become more and more central.

Ultimately, there’s a good argument that corporations and wealthy individuals who engage in modern social progressivism with its basis in critical theory are sawing the branch they’re sitting on. While they might themselves see no conflict between laissez-faire capitalism and social progressivism, they’re contributing to the build-up of a mainstream worldview that sees society as consisting of oppressive systems to be dismantled, and capitalism naturally fits at the top of the intersectional matrix.

Add to this a culture where attacks on privilege have become quite common and where people are fearful of being associated with it, and where anything that can be construed as a defence of privilege is considered unacceptable, and now imagine that this shifts from racial- and gender privilege to class privilege, even to a modest degree. I suspect we’re going to see more instances like this, where people like Schultz all of a sudden find themselves under attack by progressives and are blindsided by it.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

A Carefully Miseducated Generation of Climate Warriors Dave Pellowe

Posted By on March 14th, 2019

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2019/03/a-carefully-miseducated-generation-of-climate-warriors/

School students are being recruited and organised to strike from school tomorrow, 15 March. The website, schoolstrike4climate.com claims the purpose is “to tell our politicians to take our futures seriously and treat climate change for what it is – a crisis.”

After careful analysis of historical trends and with far more reliability than a United Nations’ “scientific consensus”, I’m prepared to boldly predict the political climate will not be warmed or cooled one-tenth of a degree by kids striking. Like all prophets of the apocalypse, the stamping and tramping of their furious little feet will have little impact in and on the real world. The Labor-Greens coalition will still be environmental extremists denying developing nations cheap, reliable electricity and aspiring to deliver Australians intermittent electricity at any cost. The Coalition will still present as lukewarm environmental realists while wooing voters from the centre-left with half measures of the Greens’ full-strength moonbattery.

Real grownups will observe there’s a reason schoolkids aren’t allowed to get married, sign contracts, fight for their nation, get a driver’s licence, drink alcohol, smoke tobacco, or vote on matters of national importance. Their developing brains aren’t mature enough to weigh the balance of evidence, consider all the consequences and make objectively rational decisions. They can barely cross the road safely or wear clothes properly. They are important, but they are children – undeveloped clumps of cells, if you prefer.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Charles Lipson :The question isn’t if Joe Biden will screw up: it’s when Can anyone win the 2020 Democratic primary without destroying their chances in the general election?

Posted By on March 14th, 2019

https://spectator.us/joe-biden-three-plusses-three-minuses/

Joe Biden seems on the verge of announcing he will run for president. He begins in a strong position, leading his primary opponent in the polls. His numbers, which are just shy of 30 percent, reflect his high name-ID and years as a party stalwart. When he does jump in, the first question is whether his lead will grow or shrink as competitors begin attacking his record and garner name recognition of their own.

Biden must smack his head every time he thinks about 2016. He would have been a stronger candidate than Hillary — not a very high bar — which means he might well have won the presidency. That’s far less likely this time around, and not only because Donald Trump has the advantages of incumbency and smooth sailing through the primaries. It’s also because Biden is no cinch to win the Democratic nomination.

Within the party, Biden holds three huge advantages, three disadvantages, and one major question mark. Let’s sort them out.

Two of his advantages are obvious: his association with President Barack Obama and his ability to relate to blue-collar voters. Although the party has moved left since Obama’s day, the former president is still the most popular Democrat, by far. That helps Biden since he is the candidate most closely associated with Obama. That’s a big f***ing deal, as Joe would put it. He also benefits from Obama’s legacy as a proven national winner.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Unmasking the College-Admissions Fraud The real scam has less to do with the wealthy cheaters who got caught than with the university system itself. Heather Mac Donald

Posted By on March 14th, 2019

https://www.city-journal.org/college-admissions-cheating-scandal

The celebrity college-admissions cheating scandal has two clear takeaways: an elite college degree has taken on wildly inflated importance in American society, and the sports-industrial complex enjoys wildly inflated power within universities. Thirty-three moguls and TV stars allegedly paid admissions fixer William Singer a total of $25 million from 2011 to 2018 to doctor their children’s high school resumes—sending students to private SAT and ACT testing sites through false disability claims, for example, where bought-off proctors would raise the students’ scores. Singer forged athletic records, complete with altered photos showing the student playing sports in which he or she had little experience or competence. Corrupt sports directors would then recommend the student for admission, all the while knowing that they had no intention of playing on the school’s team.

None of this could have happened if higher education had not itself become a corrupt institution, featuring low classroom demands, no core knowledge acquisition, low grading standards, fashionable (but society-destroying) left-wing activism, luxury-hotel amenities, endless partying, and huge expense. Students often learn virtually nothing during their college years, as University of California, Irvine, education school dean Richard Arum writes in Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses. They may even lose that pittance of knowledge with which they entered college. Seniors at Princeton, Yale, Cornell, Duke, and Berkeley scored lower in an undemanding test of American history than they did as freshmen, according to a 2007 study commissioned by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute. College is only desultorily about knowledge acquisition, at least outside of the STEM fields (and even those fields are under assault from identity politics).

EDUCATION Comments turned off

TWO ON EDUCATION…..

Posted By on March 14th, 2019

http://thefederalist.com/2019/03/14/do-you-want-your-kids-to-go-to-an-elite-college-or-get-an-education-theyre-not-the-same-thing/

Do You Want Your Kids To Go To An Elite College Or Get An Education? They’re Not The Same Thing Mark Hemingway
College entrance has become the primary, all-consuming educational goal for far too many parents, at the expense of understanding what constitutes a good education and what it should accomplish.

The Biggest Higher Education Scam Isn’t Hollywood Fraud, It’s Academia Itself By Inez Feltscher Stepman

The justifications for propping up universities, which often act as little more than elite sorting mechanisms as well as left-wing indoctrination centers, are growing thin.

http://thefederalist.com/2019/03/14/biggest-higher-education-scam-isnt-hollywood-fraud-academia/

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Parliament against Everything By Michael Brendan Dougherty

Posted By on March 14th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/parliament-against-everything/

In the wake of the Parliament’s second rejection of Theresa May’s negotiated withdrawal agreement, the House of Commons is voting on many amendments that are meant to determine what Parliament would like to see happen. The answer turns out to be: almost nothing.
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Parliament already narrowly expressed its wish not to leave the EU without a deal. And today the action is swift. A vote supportive of delaying Brexit and carrying on a second referendum, was defeated resoundingly. Only 85 MPs voted for it. A vote to give parliament more control over the Brexit process-the Benn amendment-taking things out of Theresa May’s hands, was also defeated. The “EEA” or Norway option, of retaining economic ties to the European Union was defeated. Leaving the political project but remaining in the customs union, defeated. And the “Malthouse compromise” which had been promoted by arch-Brexiteers like Jacob Rees Mogg has also been defeated. A plan to allow “indicative votes” — that is, where MPs express support for different options, rather than follow a party plan and the guide of party whips — was also rejected. One of the only things that was approved was an amendment that urged seeking an extension of Article 50 to June 30 if Parliament approves May’s Brexit deal by March 20.

MEDIA Comments turned off

When Cabin Boys Attack By Julie Kelly

Posted By on March 14th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/03/13/

Victor Davis Hanson is about as accomplished and credentialed a commentator you can find. He’s an author, a military historian, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, and a farmer in California. President George W. Bush awarded Hanson the National Humanities Award in 2007. By all accounts and appearances, he is a decent, humble man who spends a great deal of time analyzing our current political moment and discussing what it portends for the future.

Hanson also is a supporter of President Trump. This heresy has earned him scorn from quarters on the Left and the so-called Right. His new book, The Case for Trump, has generated a barrage of criticism from the cabal of NeverTrumpers. Embittered by their humiliating miscalculation of Trump’s candidacy and shamelessly contorting their previous views to be able to contradict the president, these anti-Trump “conservatives” viciously attack anyone who dares to support the president. This includes Hanson.

In a particularly vile hit piece posted on The Bulwark, the new blog of Weekly Standard refugees who were left unemployed after the publication was shuttered in December, Gabe Schoenfeld accused Hanson of defending evil—that evil being President Trump. Bulwark editor Charlie Sykes recently threatened to “raise the opportunity costs” for pro-Trump commentators, Hanson specifically. To do so, Sykes enlisted the facile services of Schoenfeld, an advisor for the failed Mitt Romney presidential campaign, to pretend to write a book review that was little more than an ad hominem attack on Hanson.

Schoenfeld intimates that Hanson is a racist, an anti-Semite, and a Nazi sympathizer.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Bombshell: Strzok Told Congress Robert Mueller Never Asked Him About Anti-Trump Texts By Tyler O’Neil

Posted By on March 14th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/trending/bombshell-strzok-told-congress-robert-mueller-never-asked-him-about-anti-trump-texts/
On Thursday morning, Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.) published a transcript of a June 2018 interview FBI Agent Peter Strzok gave to members of Congress before he was fired in August 2018 over anti-Trump texts between him and his lover, Lisa Page. Strzok had worked on three important investigations: the FBI probe into Hillary Clinton’s emails, the FBI investigation into possible Trump-Russia collusion, and the Trump-Russia probe headed by special counsel Robert Mueller.

After the anti-Trump texts came to light, Mueller booted Strzok from the special counsel probe, but according to the FBI agent’s testimony, Mueller’s team never asked him whether the anti-Trump bias revealed in his text messages impacted his investigation of alleged collusion between Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia.

In the June 2018 hearing, Strzok repeated over and over that Mueller’s team never asked him about the anti-Trump bias in the texts or whether that bias impacted his work. This news seems particularly damning since it suggests the special counsel’s team did not care whether Strzok’s work was colored by anti-Trump bias.

Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas) asked the FBI agent a long series of questions about the Mueller probe. Strzok told him that the FBI investigation began in late July of 2016, that he was “one of the senior leaders” on that team, and that he joined the special counsel investigation “within a month” after its inception in May 2017.

The FBI agent discussed “the existence of the text messages” in an August 2017 discussion with Mueller and another lawyer, he said.

“There was a sense that special counsel Mueller absolutely wanted to run an investigation that was not only independent but also presented the appearance of independence, and the concern that these texts might be construed otherwise,” Strzok said.

Ratcliffe pressed him, “Do you think it’s fair, as these texts have been characterized, do you think it’s fair to say that they were hateful texts with respect to Donald Trump?”

“I wouldn’t call them hateful. I would call them an expression of personal belief in an individual conversation with a close associate,” the FBI agent responded.

BOOKS Comments turned off

A Dissident’s Testimony: Vladimir Bukovsky’s ‘Judgment in Moscow’ Now in English By Bruce Bawer

Posted By on March 14th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/trending/a-dissidents-testimony-vladimir-bukovskys-judgment-in-moscow-now-in-english/
It’s the United States of America, and the year is 2019, and a hard-bitten old Commie named Bernie Sanders is, for the second time in a row, a popular candidate for the presidency. Meanwhile, the youngest and most high-profile new member of Congress is a staggeringly callow woman whose fatuously utopian rhetoric has made her a media darling. At the same time, the Democratic Party center itself is quickly lurching leftward, with once sensible politicians now spouting foolish and dangerous socialist bromides.

Some observers profess astonishment at these developments. In fact there’s no reason whatsoever for surprise. For one thing, as the legendary Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky laments in his book Judgment in Moscow (Ninth of November Press, $24.99 hardcover) — which appeared in French in 1995 and in Russian and German the year after, but is only now being published in English for the first time — the fall of the USSR was not followed by the kind of conspicuous moral reckoning and housecleaning that went on in Germany after Hitler’s defeat. There was no post-Soviet equivalent of the Nuremberg trials. Politburo and KGB members like Vladimir Putin, instead of being imprisoned or banished or fleeing to the Brazilian rainforest or the mountains of Bolivia, simply altered their public profiles and retained or resumed power in the new, purportedly post-Communist Russia.

As Bukovsky puts it: “To bring to justice those who took part in Nazi atrocities is a sacred task, the duty of one and all. But God forbid that you should so much as point a finger at a communist (let alone his fellow traveler); that is improper, a ‘witch hunt.’” How to convince the Western multitudes that Communism is horrible when its avatars were let off scot-free?