Hollywood Chic The Emmys — and the earthquakes triggered by global warming. Herbert London

The Hollywood faithful turned out with all their finery to reward one another with self-reverential awards called Emmys. As the public now knows this event turned into a verbal auto de fe of President Trump.

That, of course, isn’t surprising. The anti-Trump vulgarity of Steven Colbert has already been on display before. But what always surprises me is the level of ignorance.

Last week the Hollywood Left was raising money to combat Global Warming. How these well meaning dupes intend to do so isn’t clear. Will DiCaprio give up his private plane? Stevie Wonder said if you don’t agree with these suppositions you either don’t care or you are dumb. This hardly seems like the right way to secure adherents.

But the celebrity who got my attention is Beyoncé. This self-appointed queen of pop said Global Warming, about which the Trump administration is presumably indifferent, causes earthquakes. Now this is a scientific breakthrough. Up until this “revelation” I assumed earthquakes were related to seismic waves that make the ground shake. When plates rub against each other they stick, the rocks break and earthquakes occur. However, I have been deceived; earthquakes develop from CO2 cast into the atmosphere. There is simply no telling where these scientific ideas will lead.

Now in order to be a star of the first magnitude, you have to have a cause. It must be bigger than the self. If it evokes tears, all the better. You might start in Africa, a continent in need of all kinds of aid. Angelina Jolie shows up there routinely as does Madonna. If I take off my cynical judgment, it is possible some of the Hollywood glitterati actually perform good deeds.

Nonetheless, it is best to maintain a wary eye where these devotees of good deeds are concerned. I make this claim because good intentions often foster bad results; in part because so many of these stars know so little. It is instructive that Sean Penn, a high school dropout, has arrogated to himself the role of environmental moralizer.

As I see it, the time has come for these folks to get over themselves. Rather than spend time telling me and others how to live our lives, they would be better off making good films. By the way, there are very few good films that are made as reduced Hollywood profits attest. The producers of the Emmys might also take notice of the fact this recent fiasco of Trump-bashing led to the worst rating for any of these shows. Don’t these people realize the U.S. has Trump supporters? America isn’t Hollywood, even if George Clooney, among others, doesn’t know that.

Brooklyn College: Advocating Genocide and a Third Intifada SJP issued demands for “Zionists off campus”. Sara Dogan

As revealed in recent congressional testimony, Students for Justice in Palestine is a campus front for Hamas terrorists. SJP’s propaganda activities are orchestrated and funded by a Hamas front group, American Muslims for Palestine, whose chairman is Hatem Bazian and whose principals are former officers of the Holy Land Foundation and other Islamic “charities” previously convicted of funneling money to Hamas. The report and posters are part of a larger Freedom Center campaign titled Stop University Support for Terrorists. Images of the posters that appeared at Brooklyn College and other campuses may be viewed at www.stopuniversitysupportforterrorists.org.

Brooklyn College:

Brooklyn College is home to a Students for Justice in Palestine chapter which has repeatedly promoted Hamas propaganda and defended terrorism against Israel. BC SJP posted an advertisement titled “The Third Intifada” on its Facebook page, and has also used the slogan “From the River to the Sea” which is a genocidal threat to destroy Israel and its Jewish population. BC SJP continues to promote the Hamas-inspired and funded Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel and held an event to discuss its policy of refusing to dialogue or establish “normalization” of relations with pro-Israel organizations and students. A gang of 10 campus activists affiliated with SJP stormed a campus faculty meeting, calling one faculty member a “Zionist pig” and issuing demands for “Zionists off campus.” In spite of these actions, Brooklyn College President Michelle Anderson ordered posters exposing the links between SJP and Hamas be immediately torn down and called them “hate speech,” while defending SJP’s right to continue its operations on campus.

Supporting Evidence:

In January 2017, BC SJP shared an announcement from NYC SJP about a protest on its Facebook page. The protest announcement stated “Fight Trump, Free Palestine, From the River to the Sea.” The statement “From the River to the Sea” is a genocidal call for the elimination of the entirety of Israel and its Jews which lie between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

In November 2016, Brooklyn College President Michelle Anderson responded to posters exposing the links between the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine and Hamas by tearing them down and denouncing their sponsor, the David Horowitz Freedom Center. Anderson’s response included lofty passages about the importance of free speech and intellectual diversity on a college campus, yet she exempted the Freedom Center from these protections by calling its posters “hate speech” and accusing the posters of “target[ing] individual SJP leaders with the aim of bullying them and making them vulnerable to additional harassment or worse.”

In May 2016, Brooklyn College SJP held a demonstration at City Hall Park in New York to commemorate “Al-Nakba.” Nakba is an Arabic term meaning “catastrophe” that is used by Hamas and its supporters to describe the creation of Israel. For the record, Israel was created by the United Nations on land that belonged to the Turks (who are not Arabs, let alone “Palestinians”) for 400 years previously. Israel was created in the same way Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and Iraq were created, without becoming the targets of terrorist aggression.

On April 15, 2016, the Doctoral Students Council of the City University of New York (CUNY), of which Brooklyn College is a subsidiary, voted 42-19-9 in favor of a resolution calling for a boycott of “Israeli academic institutions for as long as the Israeli state continues to violate Palestinian rights under international law,” thereby endorsing the Hamas-sponsored BDS movement and its false claims that Israel violates Palestinian rights. In fact, the million plus Arabs who are Israeli citizens have more rights than the Arabs of any other Middle Eastern state, including the territories of the West Bank and Gaza.

On April 03, 2016, Brooklyn College SJP posted an article defending terrorism and the BDS movement.

On February 17, 2016, a gang of approximately 10 anti-Israel activists stormed a campus faculty meeting, calling one faculty member a “Zionist pig” and issuing demands for “Zionists off campus” and for an end to supposedly “racist” course offerings. Some of the faculty present applauded the student demands.

On November 26, 2015, Brooklyn College SJP shared a video link on its Facebook page purporting to show the “loss of land” that occurred through a series of maps as Jews allegedly colonized Palestine. These fraudulent maps which begin with a map showing a non-existent “Palestine” in 1947, were created by Hamas to justify its terrorist war against the Jewish state.

Free Ebook: A Fractured Civilization The European Union’s failed world government. Daniel Greenfield

Once upon a time, the Ottoman Empire was known as the “Sick Man of Europe”. These days the sick man of Europe is… Europe. Or rather the European Union.

The ambitious plan for a regional government that would incorporate the hopes for a future world government look shakier than ever. Brexit dealt a severe blow to the credibility of the EU. And rumblings remain of other countries preparing to follow the Brits out of the “Prison of Nations” and into free market freedom.

As the EU reaches its senescent sixty, the Freedom Center’s own Bruce Thornton has a new ebook, A Fractured Civilization: The European Union at Sixty.

Bruce Thornton has written frequently about the foibles of the EU and his latest ebook is a detailed examination of a failed system. Like the USSR, the EU was an ideological ambition that was always bound to shatter against the sharp rocks of reality.

Financial, economic, cultural and political tensions threaten the EU. Issues from the unequal fiscal status of member countries to the flood of Muslim migrants spreading through the EU shake the very ideals that it was founded upon. But those ideals never had more than a passing familiarity with the tensions of the real world.

As Thornton writes in, A Fractured Civilization, “Decades of crises large and small are seemingly propelling the E.U. and Europe in general toward the point where the stresses become unsustainable and lead to dissolution or a reconfiguration of the union. This “bold, far-sighted” experiment has been troubled from its birth, and the “European Dream,” as one champion has called it, may be nearing its last days.”

A Fractured Civilization examines the economic stresses of a union that is almost as business friendly as North Korea. As Thornton points out, “On the World Bank’s “ease of doing business” scale, with 1 awarded to economies that are the friendliest to business, the U.S. earns an 8, while the two largest economies in the E.U., Germany and France, rank 17 and 29 respectively. The E.U. as a whole ranks 30.”

And then there is the European Union’s shocking lack of… Europeans. Low birth rates are threatening the future of Europe as anything more than a new Turkey. “It takes an average of 2.1 children per woman just to replace a population; Europe’s average is1.55, and it’s that high in part because of more fecund immigrants.”

And then there is the lack of political representation and the unsustainable commitments to ideological projects such as environmentalism and open borders.

The European Union was born out of a rejection of nationalism that, as Thornton argues, was an irrational overreaction. And nationalism is making a comeback because it can offer Europeans what the European Union cannot. Nations offer meaningful representation, identity and interests. The European Union provides none of these. Ideological projects cannot substitute for nations.

“No one will die for the E.U. flag or a shorter work week, or a longer vacation, or afternoon adultery, or more porn on the Internet. And that lack of a unifying ideal worth dying for is why the Eurocrats have failed at their mission to create a united Europe,” Thornton concludes in his penetrating diagnosis.

Good News for Diabetics: Israeli Scientists Engineer Super Enzyme to Detect Glucose Levels Hana Levi Julian

A team of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev life sciences researchers
recently engineered a new super enzyme that can detect glucose in the
blood stream much more precisely – an important capability for those
with Diabetes.

People with Diabetes must continually check their glucose levels to
make sure their insulin levels do not tip too low or too high. The
enzyme detects glucose but is not sensitive to other commonly found
substances in the bloodstream such as vitamins or pain killers, which
often mislead glucose measurements.

The findings of the research have just been published in the Journal
of the American Chemical Society.

In addition to much clearer readings, the enzyme produces much quicker
responses, thus lowering the test-taking time.

Standard tests have generally relied on a protein to cause a chemical
reaction and oxidize the glucose and turn it into a different
molecule. That process sends electrons to an electrode and the current
is interpreted as the glucose level. However, other substances in the
blood can also raise the electrical current level and provide
inaccurate readings. Now, the enzyme selectively oxidizes glucose and
offers a much more accurate reading.

Harvard Takes Top Honors in WSJ/THE College Rankings Schools in the Northeast dominate the top 10, with six Ivies making the cut By Douglas Belkin and Melissa Korn See note please

Other rankings, although Harvard, Yale, Princeton still dominate, vary in their judgements. The fact is that you can go to any of the top colleges and graduate a functional illiterate, ignorant of history and literature, but replete with bogus social justice and “progressive”notions, and political opinions force fed by peer pressure and openly biased professors and political correctness and fashionable “socialism” without even having to read crib notes on the depredations of Marxism….rsk

Silicon Valley is rising. Mobile Americans are flocking to the Sunbelt. But most of the best colleges and universities in the U.S. remain rooted in the Northeast.

Harvard University topped this year’s Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education College Rankings, and about a mile down the street in Cambridge, Mass., the Massachusetts Institute of Technology earned a tie for third place. Columbia, Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton and Cornell—all of which sit within 400 miles of Harvard Square—took five of the top 10 spots. Stanford, Duke and the California Institute of Technology rounded out the top 10.

“There are a lot of perceptions of Harvard you have before you arrive,” says Chris Cruz, who left his home in California to attend school there and graduated last year. “At least for me Harvard exceeded all of my expectations.”

Keep Students Safe From the Heckler’s Veto Colleges encourage more violence when they appease mobs. By Robert Shibley

Jeff Sessions has joined the debate over censorship on campus. At Georgetown Tuesday, the attorney general criticized institutions that capitulate to the heckler’s veto—when “administrators discourage or prohibit speech if there is even a threat that it will be met with protest.”

It’s been a banner year for hecklers, including violent ones. The University of North Carolina says that it “is not willing to risk anyone’s safety” to allow white nationalist Richard Spencer to speak on campus. He’s banned at Michigan State “due to significant concerns about public safety,” and at Texas A&M, though he spoke there last December.

At Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., professors had to hold classes off campus in a park while police politely asked radical students to stop arming themselves with bats and “patrolling” campus.

Social scientist Charles Murray was literally chased out of Middlebury College in Vermont, then disinvited from Assumption College in Massachusetts. Conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos still hasn’t spoken at the University of California, Berkeley, where Antifa extremists rioted to stop his appearance in February. Neither has Ann Coulter, leading her would-be student hosts to sue.

A recent Associated Press report claims colleges are “grappling with how to balance students’ physical safety with free speech.” But the idea that free speech is in opposition with safety is nonsensical.

You are not safe if you are under threat of physical attack for expressing or listening to political views. Debate and dissent are normal parts of living in a free and diverse society, and that should be especially true at an educational institution. Silencing dissenters in the name of physical safety simply punishes the victims of wrongful, sometimes criminal behavior.

In no other situation do colleges simply throw up their hands and say that student safety is an unreachable goal. Campuses have vast bureaucracies dedicated to combating sexual assault, eliminating discriminatory harassment, and discouraging alcohol abuse. Emergency phones, designated drivers and safe-escort programs are thick on the ground. Colleges even attend to students’ “emotional safety” by setting up “bias response” teams that “intervene” when somebody says something hurtful.

Yet colleges have allowed the heckler’s veto to flourish, which only encourages more violence. Under its new chancellor, Berkeley reportedly spent up to $600,000 to ensure that commentator Ben Shapiro was able to speak on campus two weeks ago. Critics moan about the expense, dismissing such speeches as stunts unworthy of academia and not worth the price. But the cost of bowing to mob rule is far higher.

Making the statement that violence will not be allowed to substitute for debate will save far more in the long run—and, more important, teach the coming generation about how a free society resolves its differences.

Mr. Shibley is executive director of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

LIGHTS IN THE “DARK CONTINENT” BY RUTH KING

Africa, mysterious and mostly unknown to the West was called the “Dark Continent” in the late 1800s. In fact, many Jews found beacons of light in African nations.

Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Rhodesia, Nigeria, South Africa, Congo and Ivory Coast had Jewish populations, some dating back centuries, largely unknown in the diaspora but clinging to an ancient faith.

Some migrated from the really dark corners of entrenched anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe.

Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, had a thriving Jewish population in Salisbury (now Harare) and Bulawayo where Jews from Lithuania migrated in the 1800s. A close friend of mine recently showed me a movie of children in the Bulawayo synagogue marching with stars of David embroidered on their shirts singing songs about Palestine in the 1940s.

I was in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia in the 1950s where large cities like Meknes, Fez, Casablanca. Rabat, Marrakesh, Oran and Djerba, had prominent synagogues, attended by thousands and local shops sold menorahs, candelabras and religious clothing.

When the Arabs declared war on the nascent Jewish State, Arab governments in Africa sponsored harassment of their Jewish populations and a large exodus of Jews began. Most of the small number who remained fled after the Six Day War of 1967. In many non-Arab and non-Muslim countries, decolonization unfortunately heralded coups, revolutions and tribal wars, prompting a Jewish exodus from the continent.

In the early years of decolonization, Israel reached out with targeted aid programs to what became known as the “emerging continent.” But when in the wake of the 1973 war OPEC threatened African states with economic punishment if they did not follow orders to isolate Israel, most fell in line, severing or sharply curtailing relations with Israel. Indeed, African nations joined in the anti-Israel fulminations at the United Nations.

From 1984-1988 Benjamin Netanyahu, now Israel’s Prime Minister, was his nation’s Representative to the United Nations. During his tenure he met many representatives from Africa ex officio and established cordial relations with some. One of his goals was to reestablish relations with African nations by offering agricultural, technical, medical and scientific cooperation. And he has been overwhelmingly successful.

Israeli involvement in Africa has been transformational aiding in control of epidemics, treatments for infectious diseases, crop management with innovative irrigation, water purification, computer education–the list is endless. Israel has improved millions of lives in virtually every nation in Africa.

African students travel to Israel to learn new modalities and technology and Israeli experts assist on site in building and maintaining facilities.

If It Weren’t for Israel… By Elise Cooper

September marked the beginning of the Jewish New Year and ends with Yom Kippur, known as the “Ten Days of Awe,” a period of introspection. People throughout the world, not just Jews, need to consider: if it weren’t for Israel, the world would be a much less safe place.

No one should forget that in June 1981, a surprise Israeli air strike destroyed an Iraqi nuclear power plant. If not for this courageous attack, al-Qaeda could have gained control of a nuclear arsenal in 2014 when it asserted control over the western Iraqi city of Fallujah, as it raised its flag over government buildings and declared an Islamic state in this crucial area. Then, in 2007, it was déjà vu as Israel destroyed the Syrian nuclear plant. As Vice President Dick Cheney previously told American Thinker, after seeing the photographs taken by Israeli intelligence, he pushed for U.S. air strikes to destroy the Syrian reactor, the al-Kibar complex. But the Bush administration refused to act, forcing Israel to go it alone and destroy the reactor.

Consider that ISIS still controls large portions of eastern and central Syria. It seems that without Israel’s existence the world will have to deal with not only the nuclear rogue regime of North Korea, but also many countries in the Middle East.

As Nikki Haley, the U.N. ambassador, pointed out, the Iranian regime has twice exceeded the amount of heavy water (a form of water in nuclear reactors) it was allowed to have. Iran has refused to allow international inspectors to check all of its military facilities, and there are hundreds of undeclared sites that have suspicious activity that inspectors haven’t looked at. In addition, the Iranians have tested ballistic missiles, continue to support terrorism, and have engaged in smuggling arms.

Although America is known as the “policeman of the world,” Israel should be known as the “policeman of the Middle East.” The Gulf States are recognizing Israel’s role in deterring Iran. These states know they need to work closely with Israel to confront Iran and are stepping up their cooperation with the Jewish State. They are considering moving from mainly secret intelligence-sharing with Israel to steps that would include setting up direct telecommunications links over flight rights and the lifting of some restrictions on trade.

It is not just the Gulf States, but also the world that relies on Israel’s intelligence and sees this small country, the size of New Jersey, as a role model on how to deal with terrorism. In recent years, Israel has provided intelligence that has prevented dozens of major terrorist attacks around the world, saving countless lives. Governments are working closely with Israel to keep their countries and citizens safe.

Florida Islamist’s “Human Rights” Organization Needs to Be Investigated for Possible Terrorism Ties by Joe Kaufman

“WE WILL OVERTHROW them ALL. US WILL PAY FOR ITS CRIMES” — Nidal Mohamed Sakr.

Sakr is a prime example of a radical Islamist taking advantage of the freedoms that the United States has to offer all its citizens, in order to undermine its existence — in the name of “human rights.”

Although voicing his enmity is precisely one of those rights, membership in a terrorist group is not, particularly if he is using his March of Justice organization as a front. A serious investigation into Sakr and his operations needs be launched to determine whether and to what extent he is a threat to US national security.

On March 19, 2014, Nidal Mohamed Sakr, an American citizen from Providence, Rhode Island, was detained by Homeland Security upon his arrival in the United States from an extended stay in Egypt, the country of his mother’s birth. Although Sakr is an active member of the Muslim Brotherhood and former al-Qaeda associate, he was released and has been operating freely in the U.S., traveling back and forth between Florida and California as the head of a Miami-based, self-described “human rights” organization called The March for Justice.

This was not the first time that Sakr, who describes himself as “US born from Palestinian origin,” had been interrogated by American authorities. According to an account he posted on the March for Justice website, he was questioned by Palm Beach police in January 2002 about the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden. This occurred as he, Sakr, left an event held by a Jewish organization to express unity and solidarity in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, which had taken place less than four months earlier. At the time, he penned a letter to President George W. Bush complaining that he was being victimized by anti-Muslim Jews.

Prior to 2014, when he was temporarily detained at a US airport, Sakr had spent time in Egypt, where he actively participated in the eruption of the “Arab Spring” — which led to the ouster and imprisonment of then-President Hosni Mubarak and the rise of Muslim Brotherhood chief Mohammed Morsi as Egypt’s president. While in Egypt, Sakr gave a lecture in which he recounted how he was recruited by al-Qaeda co-founder and bin Laden mentor Abdullah Azzam to a Palestinian terrorist cell operating out of Jordan in the 1970s and ’80s. He also spoke about having gotten to know bin Laden and his family.

In the aftermath of the July 2013 military coup against Morsi, which led to the current presidency of General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the Muslim Brotherhood was outlawed and anyone associated with it became a target. Thousands of people were arrested and hundreds sentenced to death, including Morsi — whose sentence was later reversed, but recently reinstated for a term of 25 years in prison.

Sakr was allegedly among 529 Muslim Brotherhood members sentenced to death by an Egyptian court “for murder and other offenses.”

Islam in Switzerland: The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Jihad by Bruce Bawer

What you would never know, from all this hand-wringing about “Islamophobia,” is that only a few weeks before the conference, the country’s media had reported on a popular imam in Biel who, in his sermons, “asked Allah to destroy the enemies of Islam — Jews, Christians, Hindus, Russians, and Shiites.”

The imam in question, Abu Ramadan, preached that Muslims who befriended infidels were “cursed until the Day of Judgment” — which, of course, is not radical at all, but is straight out of the Koran.

The crisis is real. But, says Swiss Muslim author Saïda Keller-Messahli, Swiss politicians, “especially on the left,” refuse to address it. Instead of trying to defend their country from radicalism, they think their job is to “protect minorities and multiculturalism.”

Mosque kindergartens and youth groups, too, are “places of religious indoctrination” for Swiss Muslims. So are the German-speaking public schools, in which imams are permitted to teach classes in Islam using instructional materials from Saudi Arabia or Turkey.

If you listen to some of Switzerland’s pollsters and government officials, the country is suffering from a serious and ever-intensifying crisis — anti-Muslim bigotry.

In August, a study concluded that Swiss Muslims “are generally well integrated into Swiss society.” Their main problem? They face “Islamophobia.”

Another study the same month found that the percentage of Swiss non-Muslims who feel “threatened” by Islam had more than doubled since 2004, from 16% to 38%.

At a September 11 conference, Switzerland’s Federal Commission against Racism (FCR) issued an explicit alert: “hostility toward Muslims,” it warned, was rising – and was “fed by facts that have nothing to do with Muslims themselves.”

Conference organizers blamed this “hostility” on online “propaganda”; Interior Minister Alain Berset accused Swiss citizens of erroneously holding “Islam responsible for all the extremist acts committed in its name.”

What you would never know, from all this hand-wringing about “Islamophobia,” is that only a few weeks before the conference, the country’s media had reported on a popular imam in Biel who, in his sermons, “asked Allah to destroy the enemies of Islam — Jews, Christians, Hindus, Russians, and Shiites.” The imam in question, Abu Ramadan, preached that Muslims who befriended infidels were “cursed until the Day of Judgment” — which, of course, is not radical at all, but is straight out of the Koran.

Abu Ramadan has been living in Switzerland for almost two decades. In 1998, he came to the Alpine country from Libya as an asylum seeker, but over the years has returned home several times — in addition to visiting Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries. This fact should have automatically negated his right to asylum and resulted in his expulsion. But the years went by, and the government, ignoring the evidence right there on his passport, did nothing.

On the contrary: over the years, in fact, the Swiss state had given Ramadan the equivalent of $620,000 in welfare payments.

Reportedly, some public officials were well aware of his hate sermons — but until the content of those sermons surfaced in the media, nobody in the government had made any effort to do anything about him. Instead, people such as Interior Minister Berset and the members of the FCR had kept busy going to conferences and tarring the general public as “Islamophobes”.

At least one high-profile individual in Switzerland has long rejected the official line about successful Muslim integration and unfounded infidel Islam-hatred: Saïda Keller-Messahli. Of Tunisian descent, living in Zurich, she has spent years investigating institutional Islam in Switzerland and urging politicians to take action against it. Asked in a recent interview whether Abu Ramadan is an isolated case, Keller-Messahli said no: such preaching, she explained, is common in Swiss mosques, part of an international strategy to plant a “discriminatory” and “violent” Islam in Switzerland and elsewhere in the West.

Keller-Messahli has just published a book entitled, Switzerland: An Islamist Hub (“Islamistische Drehscheibe Schweiz”). It is sort of a field guide to Islam in Switzerland. The country’s mosques belong to various networks based here and there in the Muslim world; many of the imams have been trained in Egypt or Saudi Arabia; many of the mosques receive funding — and take orders — from organizations in Turkey. In her book, Keller-Messahli draws all the connections, follows all the money trails, and spells out the poisonous articles of faith. And she prescribes strong medicine: monitor the mosques, cut off the foreign cash, and expel the preachers of jihad.