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February 2018

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Yet another way Obama’s spies apparently exploited the Trump ‘dossier’ by Paul Sperry

By on February 24th, 2018

The much-hyped Obama intelligence report that determined “Vladimir Putin ordered” Hillary Clinton’s campaign emails hacked and leaked “to help Trump’s chances of victory” has been accepted as gospel among DC punditry and given the investigations besieging the Trump presidency their legs. To date, no evidence has publicly emerged to corroborate the report, and the reason may have a lot to do with that sketchy dossier bought and paid for by Clinton.

Suspiciously, Barack Obama’s Intelligence Community Assessment matches the main allegations leveled by the Clinton-paid dossier on Trump, which wormed its way into intelligence channels, in addition to the FBI, Justice Department and State Department, during the 2016 campaign.

In fact, the shady dossier makes exactly the same claim — that Putin personally “ordered” the cyberattacks on the Clinton campaign and leaked embarrassing emails to “bolster Trump,” as part of “an aggressive Trump support operation.” Like Obama’s ICA, Clinton’s dossier provides no concrete evidence to back up the claim.

After learning Obama Justice and FBI officials relied heavily on unsubstantiated rumors in the dossier to wiretap a Trump adviser during the election, congressional leaders now suspect the dossier also informed Obama intelligence officials who compiled the ICA.

The report was released Jan. 6, 2017 — the same day intelligence officials attached a written summary of the dossier to a highly classified Russia briefing they gave Obama about the dossier, and the day after Obama held a secret White House meeting to discuss the dossier with his national security adviser and FBI director.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Bibi: “The Israeli Intelligence Services Thwarted the Downing of an Australian Plane”

By on February 23rd, 2018

“The Israeli intelligence services thwarted the downing of an Australian plane, an unimaginable slaughter. This would have caused a major disruption in global air transport and this is only one of dozens of terrorist attacks we have foiled around the world. I think that Israeli intelligence must be thanked for protecting not only Israelis but many civilians around the world.”

That’s what Binyamin Netanyahu has revealed today.

To quote the Sydney Morning Herald (one of the Fairfax stable of Aussie newspapers, not known for their love of Israel):

‘His comments, during a speech in Jerusalem to US Jewish leaders, followed a statement from the Israeli army that a branch of military intelligence known as “Unit 8200” had foiled an “aerial attack abroad by Islamic State”.

Israeli media said the army statement referred to an attempted bombing in July of an Etihad Airways flight due to leave Sydney for Abu Dhabi, which was foiled by Australian security forces before the plane took off.

An Australian man had sent his brother to Sydney Airport to catch the flight carrying a home-made bomb disguised as a meat-mincer, built at the direction of a senior Islamic State commander, Australian police said.

He caught the flight without his checked baggage after it was rejected at a Sydney Airport check-in counter because it was too heavy.

He then travelled to Lebanon, the Lebanese interior minister said.

Days after the alleged plot was revealed, Lebanon’s interior minister said Beirut had monitored the brothers for more than a year and had worked with Australian authorities to disrupt the attack.

A number of men were arrested in raids across Sydney last July relating to the alleged plot.

Two have been charged with acting in preparation for, or planning, a terrorist act.’

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Stephen H. Balch Race, Gender, Class: One Doesn’t Belong

By on February 23rd, 2018

Promoting the deconstruction of gender roles, as modern feminism urges, works to divorce women from their intrinsic natures—a very unhappy outcome. Worst of all, it creates one more wedge issue suitable for the further aggrandisement of government power.

In December 2016 a special episode of the BBC hit Sherlock reprised in cinemaplexes across the United States. “The Abominable Bride” had had its silver-screen debut eleven months earlier, but popular appeal induced the distributor Fathom Events to bring it back. Although primarily designed for Sherlock’s fan base, the show’s defining conceit, Holmes and Watson in modern dress, was suspended. Instead, the plot warped back to the London of Arthur Conan Doyle, where a succession of cads and bounders have been murdered by what seems a vengeful female ghost. Initially stumped, Sherlock consults his brother, Mycroft, who enigmatically confides that the perpetrators compose an invisible army, found everywhere, who cannot be resisted because “they are right”. Thus guided, Holmes eventually discovers a congregation of hooded feminists in a ruined abbey, plotting the murder of their nastiest victimisers. The drama never quite concludes—it’s but a drugged fantasy of the modern Holmes interrupted by anxious friends—yet there’s no doubt of the heroic status of the homicidal assembly. They’re true social justice warriors, if a bit avant la lettre.

While it never is, or has to be, made explicit, the episode’s moral premise, one that now saturates Western consciousness, is that women rate among the great victims of human history. Certainly none in the audience I joined seemed at all uncomfortable with it. And why should they be? It’s the core message of contemporary feminism, affirmed by politicians, the media and, most especially, our socially engaged professoriate. The latter, in fact, have “theorised” it in the now fabled formula of “race, gender and class”. Settled wisdom in the university, and holy writ for women’s studies, the formula is meant to link women with serfs, slaves and other forms of immiserated labour. Off-campus progressives embrace the equivalence as well—the unity and moral authority of their victims’ coalition demanding no less. Without it the recurrent political trope of a “war on women” would appear as risible as that of a war on cat fanciers.

So, is the formula valid?

Clearly not—at least if one is willing to use evolution’s scorecard in assessing winners and losers. Evolution’s bottom line is reproductive success, how many offspring are produced and, of these, how many themselves survive to reproduction. Prospectively it determines the size of an individual’s contribution to future gene pools. Retrospectively it suggests the degree of wellbeing an individual has likely experienced—wellbeing having much to do with succeeding at what comes naturally.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

DEFENDING THE RULE OF LAW The dire consequences for Israeli democracy if Netanyahu is forced from office. Caroline Glick

By on February 23rd, 2018

Israel’s system of democracy has been under assault for more than two decades. Since the early 1990s, elected officials have fought a losing battle to maintain their power. The legal fraternity and the police, acting with the enthusiastic support and often at the urging of the politically biased media, have seized politicians’ governing prerogatives and powers one by one. These actions have all been justified in the name of the rule of law.

Today, Israel’s democracy – that is, the ability of the nation to determine its course through the election of representatives that share their convictions – is threatened as never before.

Almost exactly 21 years ago, elected officials lost their most important battle to date. On January 10, 1997, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s first government approved the appointment of Ronnie Bar-On to serve as attorney-general. Bar-On was a private attorney in Jerusalem. He chaired the Beitar soccer organization in the capital and his was a close friend and former mentor of then-justice minister Tzachi Hanegbi who did his legal clerkship in Bar-On’s office.

The government’s announcement that Bar-On would serve as attorney-general was viciously criticized by the media and Israel’s legal elite. Much of the criticism was rank snobbery. Bar-On was not a member of the club. He had not served as a prosecutor. He was not a law professor. He was just a good lawyer with friendly ties to Hanegbi. How dare the government appoint him?

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

#MeToo in the Mosque by Giulio Meotti

By on February 23rd, 2018

“While the brave Iranian women protested against hijab laws, Western feminists celebrated hijab”. — Rita Panahi, Herald Sun, Australia.

Instead of a celebration of Islamist discrimination against women, the West should promote a #MeToo in the mosque, the idea of an Egyptian, Mona Eltahawi. She would like to raise the issue of rape and sexual abuse suffered by Muslim women during the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca.

Will the Western advocates of women’s rights also stand for the rights of Muslim women, or, in the name of “multiculturalism”, the will they keep appeasing those who persecute them instead?

While the march for women’s rights in Washington this year took place under the banner of #MeToo against sexual harassment, in Iran dozens of women were taking to the streets to protest against theocracy and compulsory wearing of the hijab. The Iranian women waved white flags to fight against the mullahs’ obligation to veil. But the white flag was not a surrender; it was apparently a symbol of Western feminists. As the Australian Rita Panahi wrote, “while the brave Iranian women protested against hijab laws, Western feminists celebrated hijab”.

On February 1, many of these Iranian women were arrested for not wearing a hijab. On that very day, the World Hijab Day was celebrated in the West, and Western appeasers celebrated the veil. Even British PM Theresa May backed the claim that women should be “free” to wear hijab. A few days after that, the American department store Macy’s decided to sell the hijab as an item of fashion clothing. Unfortunately, in some Islamic countries, women are not “free” to wear the veil; they are obliged to wear the veil, as the arrests in Iran show us.

Instead of a celebration of Islamist discrimination against women, the West should promote a #MeToo in the mosque — the idea of an Egyptian, Mona Eltahawi. She would like to raise the issue of rape and sexual abuse suffered by Muslim women during the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The State Submits by Mark Steyn Steyn on Britain

By on February 23rd, 2018

I’ve written many times over the last decade and a half about that rare bird the “moderate Muslim”. Surely one reason for his scarceness is that, whenever he pops his head above the parapet, he’s hung out to dry by craven infidel politicians and bureaucrats, who on the whole find the admirably straightforward demands of your average firebreathing imam more congenial. Hence the pandering to returning Isis warriors: Mods vs Raqqa’s – it’s no contest.

The latest examples are the headmistress and chairman of the board of governors of St Stephen’s Primary School in Newham, East London. St Stephen, you’ll recall, was the first Christian martyr, but observant Christians are thinner on the ground in today’s Newham than they were in first-century Jerusalem. So St Stephen’s School today is mostly Muslim. Nevertheless:

In June last year, [headmistress Neena] Lall removed the hijab from the school uniform for girls aged seven and under and tried to curb young children from fasting at school in case they became unwell.

Good for her. Hijabs for under-sevens? If you’re in most Muslim countries, you notice that the gals don’t disappear under the veil until puberty: Covered kindergartners is largely a western phenomenon.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Boko Haram Kidnaps More Schoolgirls in Nigeria Raid by Islamist militants at technical college leaves scores missing, echoing seizures in Chibok that sparked global outcry in 2014 By Gbenga Akingbule and Joe Parkinson

By on February 23rd, 2018

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria—Dozens of schoolgirls remained missing two days after a jihadist raid on a boarding school in northeastern Nigeria raised fears of a repeat of the mass kidnapping in Chibok in 2014.

A convoy of fighters in machine-gun-mounted trucks from the Boko Haram Islamist insurgency rolled into the Government Girls Science Technical College in the town of Dapchi, Yobe state, on Monday evening, local officials and Western diplomats said.

Police officers and teachers initially said they believed the 800-member student body was safe after fleeing to their homes and nearby villages. But dozens still remained unaccounted for, Yobe state police commissioner Summonu Abdulmalik said.

Nigeria’s government confirmed late Wednesday that the attackers were from the militant group that also carried out the Chibok raid.

The Nigerian military said it saved “some of the girls from the terrorists who abducted them” in an operation, without giving figures. Residents of Dapchi reached by telephone in Dapchi, a remote and dust-caked village less than 50 miles from Nigeria’s border with Niger, said they were celebrating the return of some of the girls, adding that not all had returned home.

President Muhammadu Buhari said on Twitter that he had dispatched his defense minister to Yobe and directed military and police “to mobilize immediately to ensure that all the missing girls…are found.”

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Notable & Quotable: Whiteness Studies ‘Empirically analysing how a racially conscious white male teacher interacts with his minoritised and White students.’

By on February 23rd, 2018

The abstract of a paper by Jacob S. Bennett published in the scholarly journal Whiteness and Education, Feb. 6:
IT IS HARD TO THINK THAT THIS IS REAL AND NOT A PARODY…..RSK
The goal of this interpretive study was to further research in the field of Whiteness studies by empirically analysing how a racially conscious white male teacher interacts with his minoritised and White students. The teacher’s classroom was examined using Critical Race and Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT). Two empirical assertions were developed based on the continual search for disconfirming evidence within interview and observational data. Results show the teacher participant created a learning environment in which his black minoritised students felt comfortable, trusted, and respected.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The GOP’s Gun Temptation In Parkland’s wake, Trump and Rubio flirt with feel-good but ineffective solutions. Kimberley Strassel

By on February 23rd, 2018

Republicans have held the political high ground on gun rights for decades, and they’ve done it by sticking together and sticking to the facts. Nothing will lose them that credibility faster than if they jump on the false-hope bandwagon.

The Parkland, Fla., school shooting is rightly causing a new national debate. With astounding cynicism, Democrats rushed to capitalize on dead teens, while ineffectually dragging out the same fatigued arguments they’ve been making since the Clinton era. They are back again with the “assault weapons” cry—calling for an arbitrary ban on a handful of scary-looking guns, when millions of other firearms can kill just as efficiently. (The 1994 assault-weapon ban was still in effect at the time of the 1999 Columbine massacre.) They are back again with confiscation, even though they know it’s a nonstarter with the Supreme Court and the public. The Parkland community deserves real policy proposals, not more empty posturing.

The GOP has excelled in recent decades in pointing out the barrenness of this gun-control agenda with statistics and common sense. And they’ve pointed out the unifying thread behind these mass-shooting events: mental illness. Former Pennsylvania Rep. Tim Murphy spent three years pushing legislation to overhaul and bring accountability to federal mental-health programs, and President Obama finally signed it in December 2016.

The Murphy bill was the product of a methodical and thoughtful effort to reform a system that wasn’t working. Such deliberateness is in contrast with the half-baked proposals now emanating from President Trump and Sen. Marco Rubio. Both men have said they favor banning adults under 21 from buying rifles. Mr. Trump is also talking about training and arming schoolteachers, and Mr. Rubio is latching on to restrictions on the size of magazines.

This is the politics of false-hope—Democrat-lite. Age limits may sound good, but most teenage violent criminals steal firearms from adults. An age limit wouldn’t have stopped Adam Lanza in Sandy Hook (who used his mother’s guns) or the Columbine killers (who obtained their guns from adult friends). It wouldn’t have stopped the Virginia Tech shooter or the Umpqua Community College shooter in Oregon, who were 23 and 26, respectively. An age limit is as empty a gesture as a ban on so-called assault weapons. As is a call for a large-capacity magazine ban, which is easily circumvented by reloading quickly. Arming teachers is an interesting idea, but it still doesn’t get to the root of the problem—stopping insane people from getting guns.

The Trump-Rubio proposals stem from that fatal Washington compulsion: a need to be seen as doing something. What’s odd is that it is unnecessary. There’s plenty Republicans could do in Parkland’s wake that is far more sensible, and would do far more good.

House and Senate committees could investigate the FBI’s failure to respond to warnings about the Parkland killer. This doesn’t need to be a bash-the-FBI episode, but law-enforcement failure has—along with mental health—become a defining feature of many mass shootings. CONTINUE AT SITE

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MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

Black Panther: Cultural Marxist Soul Food Edward Cline

By on February 23rd, 2018

You wake up in the morning, turn on your computer after fixing a coffee, and read the world and national news from a variety of blog sites, some of them your regulars (Sultan Knish, Pam Geller, Richard Spencer, Diana West, Gatestone, etc.). You’re overwhelmed by a waterfall of information. You’re inundated by the volume of things you’d like to compose a column about. But it’s hard to chose, because not a thing you read doesn’t flash its importance like a neon sign. They’re all important, just more ticks in the advance of cultural Marxism in the government, in society, and just in general.

You read the MSM sites to absorb the latest victory lap about the transgendering of society, or how Muslim “immigrants” were sentenced in Britain for repeated rapes of white British girls and children, but were given light or no sentences. But you do not believe what they have to say or report. You keep getting special invitations to subscribe to the New York Times and the Washington Post , via links from other blog sites with full transcriptions of significant articles of those articles, but you refuse to pay a dime to get regular news from the Gray Lady with a Walker, and its disinformation clone, Jeff Bezos’s new toy, the Washington Post, not after all the lies and evasions both newspapers have promoted and circulated, going as far back as Walter Duranty’s Pulitzer Prize award-winning articles on the Soviet Union that denied mass starvation and government murders in Stalin’s “paradise”.

Speaking of a Stalinesqe paradise, we visit again Black Panther, the latest victory lap of Cultural Marxism, courtesy of Hollywood. This is the fictional African country, Wakanda, that the MSM has touted as a glorious booster of black pride and a new direction of super-hero films. Black Panther is “soul food.”Wakanda is a hidden country whose Ayn Rand-borrowed device hides the country from prying eyes, has eschewd all contact with the world beyond its closed borders, and owes its existence to a vibranium meteor that fell into the regions ages ago, giving the tribe that found it magical powers. Wakanda is a kind of Shakespearean monarchy of elites whose throne is up for grabs, but with far less literacy or literary value.

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