BOOKS Comments turned off

An Expansive Python By Kyle Smith

Posted By on January 10th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/01/john-cleese-of-monty-python-book-review/

A new book by Monty Python’s John Cleese revisits the wide variety of topics he delved into in the course of his two decades as a Cornell professor. Monty Python’s John Cleese, for many years a Cornell professor, weighs in brilliantly on a wide assortment of topics.

In 1986, John Cleese saw an ad in a Los Angeles magazine that claimed the following: “Buddhism gives you the competitive edge!” The oblivious machismo proved inspiring when he created the character of Otto, the dimwit thug in A Fish Called Wanda, whom Kevin Kline won an Academy Award for playing.

That ad captured Cleese’s attention because he has done a lot of thinking about religion and the sometimes curious gap between the lessons taught by religious leaders and the lessons learned by some followers. Cleese has done a lot of thinking about a lot of things, and he revisits his various fields of study with an engaging curiosity and able wit. Everything from the science of facial recognition to the art of screenwriting turns up in his slender but brilliant new book Professor at Large: The Cornell Years.

Cleese studied science when he entered the University of Cambridge, switched to law while he was there, graduated, did some other things, and in 1999 became a professor-at-large at Cornell University, where he lectured intermittently on a variety of subjects for nearly 20 years. The book collects transcripts of seven of those appearances, four of which are actually conversations between Cleese and someone else.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Health Officials Fear Setbacks in Effort to Contain Ebola Outbreak By Bridget Johnson

Posted By on January 10th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/health-officials-fear-setbacks-in-effort-to-contain-ebola-outbreak/

The World Health Organization warned in its most recent Ebola update this month that containment of the second-largest outbreak of the virus in history could suffer disastrous setbacks if the security situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo continues to deteriorate.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its travel advisory for the region on Wednesday, covering the North Kivu and Ituri provinces that are under a travel warning from the State Department because of militant activity and dangers to civilians.

“The armed conflict and violence in the outbreak area is hampering response activities including early identification of cases, and monitoring of ‘contacts’ (people who may have been exposed to Ebola),” the CDC said. “The North Kivu and Ituri provinces are among the most populated in DRC. These provinces share borders with other countries (Rwanda and Uganda) with frequent cross-border movement for trade activities. The provinces have been experiencing a prolonged humanitarian crisis and deteriorating security situation, which is limiting public health efforts to respond to this outbreak.”

The outbreak began on Aug. 1, days after the conclusion of another Ebola outbreak on the other side of the country in Équateur province.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Venezuela swears in an illegitimate president Maduro’s second term could be a tipping point to transition

Posted By on January 10th, 2019

https://www.ft.com/content/401e52a0-1405-11e9-a581-4ff78404524e?segmentId=b385c2ad-87ed-d8ff-aaec-0f8435cd42d9

When Nicolás Maduro was sworn in by Venezuela’s Supreme Court for a second six-year term as president on Thursday, a notable judge was missing. Christian Zerpa, a one-time Maduro ally, recently fled the country. Interviewed this week in Florida, the former Supreme Court justice called Mr Maduro’s government “disastrous” and, more importantly, “illegitimate”. It was a crucial legal point. By the end of this week, the US, Canada, and most European and Latin American countries will not recognise Mr Maduro’s presidency as legitimate either.

Venezuela is in social, economic and political freefall. Its institutions have been suborned by Mr Maduro and his inner circle. The legal basis of his second presidential term is the elections in May last year, which most of the world, although not Russia, China or Turkey, declared to be fraudulent. As a result, so too is his presidency. To put the situation baldly: if Mr Maduro were removed from power next week, many international powers would not treat it as a coup as they never recognised the presidency in the first place. Mr Maduro’s swearing-in for a second term therefore marks a tipping point for the country. Greater international isolation is a given. Although military intervention has been all but ruled out, South American attitudes are hardening, especially in neighbouring Brazil under its rightwing president Jair Bolsonaro.

An escalation of sanctions on Venezuelan officials deemed guilty of corruption and human rights abuses is likely. Also possible, if more extreme, is a ban by the Trump administration on US companies selling the dilutants and other chemicals that Venezuela needs to blend with its otherwise unmarketable heavy crude. If that happened, and the country could not find substitutes elsewhere, around 300,000 barrels a day, or one-quarter of current production, would be affected.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Repeal the Law That Is Sinking US Maritime Industry By Donald J. Boudreaux & Alice Calder

Posted By on January 10th, 2019

https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2019/01/10/repeal_the_law_that_is_sinking_us_maritime_industry_110980.html

For nearly 100 years the Jones Act has been restricting the U.S. shipping and fishing industry. It recently made news with the end of a long-fought battle to allow a brand-new fishing vessel, America’s Finest, to be freed from its moors to work. The reason for its detainment? It was made of over 7 percent foreign steel (coming from the Netherlands), which exceeds the 1.5 percent limit stipulated by this restrictive and outdated law.

The Merchant Marine Act of 1920, commonly referred to as the Jones Act, is legislation that aims to promote and maintain the American merchant-marine fleet for commercial and defense purposes. It requires that all goods transported by water between U.S. ports must be carried by U.S. owned, crewed, and flagged ships (thus protecting them from foreign competition). Arguments in favor of the Jones Act center on national security, the need to be prepared for global conflict, and the need to respond to crises.

But time and time again, the effects of the Jones Act — just like other protectionist boondoggles — fail to satisfy the intended goals. This losing record is more than adequate to justify the act’s repeal.

The domestic build and crew requirements of the Jones Act eliminate all foreign competition for U.S. coastal transport services. This stifled competition creates an artificial market for American-built cargo ships that cost as much as five times greater to build than similar ships built in China or Korea. Not surprisingly, the cost of operating an American flagged and crewed vessel is double that of foreign ones. Making matters even worse, this high cost and lack of competition means that the U.S. shipping industry has fallen behind in terms of innovation: Companies hang on to older, less efficient, and more dangerous ships rather than updating or retiring them.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Dems’ Diversity Push May Block White Males in 2020 . By Adele Malpass

Posted By on January 10th, 2019

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/01/10/dems_diversity_push_may_block_white_males_in_2020_139140.html

n the age of identity politics and increasing demands for diversity, especially on the left side of the political spectrum, can the Democrats nominate a male Caucasian for president in 2020? In a recent CNN poll of registered Democrats, the top three choices were all white men: Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Beto O’Rourke. If the 2018 midterms are a guide to Democratic voter sentiment, however, this may not cut it. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez put it bluntly in her primary campaign slogan against former Rep. Joe Crowley. “It’s time,” she said, “for one of us.”

“It’s hard to imagine the Democrats would end up with a straight white male,” said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball Report. “Expect some type of diversity on the ticket,” he added. “Democrats will want a contrast to the Republicans.”

Downplaying the importance of identity is Bill Galston, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “A candidate won’t be nominated just because they are a minority or a woman,” he said. “It might be a plus factor. But Democrats are united in loathing Donald Trump and will be pragmatic.”

House Democrats just installed the most diverse group of members in history, a milestone driven by candidate selection by the liberal grassroots. In 2018, a record number of women beat men in Democratic primaries. For the first time ever in the general election, white men were a minority in the Democratic candidate pool running for office. “The midterms did seem to indicate that Democrats like voting for women and people of color,” said Kondik.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

The Ironies of Illegal Immigration By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on January 10th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/01/09/the-ironies-of-illegal

Estimates suggest that there are 11 million to 13 million Mexican citizens currently living in the United States illegally. Millions more emigrated previously and are now U.S. citizens.

A recent poll revealed that one-third of Mexicans (34 percent) would like to emigrate to the United States. With Mexico having a population of about 130 million, that amounts to some 44 million would-be immigrants.

Such massive potential emigration into the United States makes no sense.

First, Mexico is a naturally rich country. It ranks 19th in the world in proven oil reserves and is currently the 12th-largest oil producer. Mexico certainly has significantly more natural advantages than do far wealthier per capita Singapore, Taiwan or Chile.

Mexico also is one of the world’s most popular tourist destinations and earns billions in foreign exchange from visitors. It enjoys a temperate climate, is rich in minerals, and has millions of acres of fertile farmland and a long coastline.

In addition to being strategically located as a bridge between North America and South America, Mexico has ports on both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

It is not an overcrowded country: Mexico ranks in the lower half of the world in population density. Too many people and too little land are certainly not the reasons why millions of Mexicans either emigrate or wish to emigrate to the United States.

Second, popular progressive narratives in both Mexico and the United States cite America for all sorts of pathologies, past and present. The United States is often damned for prior colonialism and imperialism, as well as current racism and xenophobia.

Why, then, would millions of people south of the border leave their own homeland and potentially risk their lives to encounter a strange culture and language, to live in such a purportedly inhospitable place, and to adapt to an antithetical system based on supposedly toxic European and Protestant traditions?

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Steele Dossier: Two Years On By Julie Kelly

Posted By on January 10th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/01/09/the-steele-dossier

Two years ago today, the “dossier” was officially introduced to the American public.

Although its author and his handlers had been circulating the document within Washington, D.C. circles for nearly six months, a scoop orchestrated by then-FBI Director James Comey and then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper allowed CNN to air its award-winning segment, “Intel Chiefs Presented Trump With Claims of Russian Efforts to Compromise Him” on January 10, 2017.

The reporters disclosed that President Obama and President-elect Trump had been briefed a few days earlier on classified documents that suggested Russian officials possessed compromising information about the incoming president. Reporter Jim Sciutto cited “multiple U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge of the briefings” who told the network that a brief summary of the damaging material had been attached to the in intelligence community’s official report on the Russian government’s plan to disrupt the 2016 presidential election.

“The allegations were part of a two-page synopsis,” Sciutto explained. “These were based on memos compiled by a former British intelligence operative whose past work U.S. intelligence officials consider credible.”

Later in the segment, author Carl Bernstein confirmed the information was sourced by a “former British MI6 intelligence agent who was hired by a political research opposition firm in Washington who was doing work about Donald Trump for both Republicans and Democratic candidates opposed to Trump.”

Buzzfeed published the entire series of memos online a few hours later, conferring a more official term—”dossier”—onto the document. (Perhaps the term was chosen because it sounded much better than “political dirt from a shady foreign operative and paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.”)

“The documents have circulated for months and acquired a kind of legendary status among journalists, lawmakers, and intelligence officials,” Buzzfeed admitted. “[It] includes specific, unverified, and potentially unverifiable allegations of contact between Trump aides and Russian operatives, and graphic claims of sexual acts documented by the Russians.”

The news rocked the political world and sent the incoming administration into panic mode: “The consequences [of the dossier] have been incalculable and will play out long past Inauguration Day,” warned a follow-up story in the New York Times on January 11, 2017.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

UK: Can Javid Stop the Boats? by David Brown

Posted By on January 10th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13512/english-channel-migrant-crossings

“A question has to be asked: if you are a genuine asylum seeker, why have you not sought asylum in the first safe country that you arrived in? Because France is not a country where anyone would argue it is not safe in any way whatsoever, and if you are genuine then why not seek asylum in your first safe country?” – British Home Secretary Savid Javid.

Migrants are entitled to free accommodation, cash support at £37.75 per person per week, free healthcare, free dental care, free eyesight tests, free glasses, maternity grants and free schooling — much to the chagrin of many British nationals and former service personnel who do not have access to many of these benefits.

Another tragedy of Aylun Kurdi proportions is only a matter of time… The media are poised and salivating at the prospect of capturing this impending disaster for their front pages; the hackles of a hundred migrant and refugee charities are raised in anticipation of the PR opportunities ahead of them.

Sajid Javid is a rising star in the British Conservative party…. If [he] can stop the boats across the Channel, he will be perfectly positioned to take control of the British Conservative Party as well as the rising migrant crisis.

The British Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, has called in the Royal Navy to help deal with the migrant crisis in the Channel.

Since November, 239 migrants successfully made the crossing from Calais, France to Dover, England in small inflatable boats. A total of 539 migrants tried to make the crossing in 2018.

According to the Daily Mail, “Most of those held by police crossing the world’s busiest shipping lane from France since November have claimed to be Iranian.” Whether this is factually correct, or a line given to them by the people smugglers they pay for their journey, is a reasonable question.

According to UK immigration lawyer Colin Yeo, “The latest asylum statistics show that around three-quarters of Iranian asylum claims succeed,” — a fact the people-smugglers presumably know well and capitalise on for profit.

The legitimacy of these migrant stories is a concern to the Home Secretary, who has been speculating as to what extent these migrants in the Channel are ‘genuine’ asylum seekers. During a visit to Dover he said:

“A question has to be asked: if you are a genuine asylum seeker, why have you not sought asylum in the first safe country that you arrived in?… Because France is not a country where anyone would argue it is not safe in any way whatsoever, and if you are genuine then why not seek asylum in your first safe country?”

MEDIA, MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

Peter Schweizer’s “The Creepy Line” Takes Tech Giants to Task by Ruthie Blum

Posted By on January 10th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13491/the-creepy-line

As if this were not “creepy” enough, there is another process going on that is far less transparent: “listing” — the order in which information appears on Google. The “list effect” on our cognitive functioning, Epstein explains, is that we believe that the items appearing at the top of a set of search results — whether the category is dog food or political candidates — are the most relevant, valuable or true. Google and Facebook are able, thus, to prioritize the information we receive, while pretending to be neutral platforms, rather than content producers exercising editorial control. It is this pretense that exempts them from being subject to the laws governing publishers.

“If they have this kind of power, then democracy is an illusion… There have to be in place numerous safeguards to make sure not only that they don’t exercise these powers, but that they can’t exercise these powers. The Internet belongs to all of us. It does not belong to Google or Facebook.” — Dr. Robert Epstein, American psychology professor; “The Creepy Line”.

“Today, we essentially have a totalitarian force in the world, and that is these large tech companies. But guess what? They didn’t use storm troopers…. We all opted in… We volunteered for this arrangement. And we live in a world today in which these tech giants have a level of control and an ability to manipulate us that Stalin, Mao, Hitler and Mussolini could only have dreamed of.” — Peter Schweitzer, producer of “The Creepy Line”.

A new documentary, revealing the way in which the major technology companies Google and Facebook manipulate consumers through the collection of users’ data, sheds light on current controversies surrounding privacy and political bias. Called “The Creepy Line,” the film argues that even the most intelligent people among us are serving as unwitting pawns in a power grab, enabled by mathematical algorithms, without our being aware of it.

The title of the 80-minute movie is taken from a phrase used by the former CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, who in a 2010 interview said:

“There’s what I call the ‘creepy line,’ and the Google policy about a lot of these things is to get right up to the ‘creepy line’ but not cross it.”

Produced by investigative journalist Peter Schweizer and directed by M.A. Taylor, the film both claims and illustrates that Google and Facebook not only crossed that line long ago, but continue to push it further away. Schweizer, author of the New York Times best-seller Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich, is among the prominent interviewees in the film. Others include Canadian clinical psychologist Jordan B. Peterson and American psychology professor and researcher Dr. Robert Epstein.

IMMIGRATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

New California Governor Doubles Down on Sanctuary State Status Gavin Newsom rolls out the red carpet for illegal aliens. Matthew Vadum

Posted By on January 10th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272505/new-california-governor-doubles-down-sanctuary-matthew-vadum

Newly inaugurated Gov. Gavin Newsom has pledged to make his home state of California “a sanctuary to all who seek it” in direct defiance of President Trump’s drive to secure the nation’s border with Mexico and enforce U.S. immigration laws.

California’s grossly unconstitutional obstruction of federal immigration laws is about to get ramped up, Newsom’s speech suggests. The state already has unprecedented sanctuary laws on its books that shield its 2.4 million illegal aliens from U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement (ICE). Federal prosecutors are considering filing criminal charges against elected officials harboring illegal aliens in sanctuary jurisdictions, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen told the Senate Judiciary Committee a year ago.

The Trump administration is suing California over its “sanctuary state” laws that punish compliance with federal immigration laws and provide legal cover for corrupt officials to continue brazenly flouting immigration laws and interfering with federal agents trying to enforce them.

The federal lawsuit targets three statutes curbing the power of California’s state and local law enforcement to hold, question, and transfer detainees at the request of immigration authorities, and punish employers for cooperating with those authorities. The laws also impose draconian restrictions on communication between local police and federal immigration enforcement, including information regarding when criminal aliens are scheduled to be released from local jails.