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November 2018

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

How the #MeToo Movement Helped Create a Script for False Accusers written by Diana Davison

By on November 10th, 2018

https://quillette.com/2018/11/06/how-the-metoo-movement

The complainant, whom I’ll call Chloe, wept as she labored through her testimony. At several points, she was so overcome by emotion that court proceedings had to pause for a break. Throughout that first day of the preliminary hearing, she projected a sense of soft-spoken vulnerability, but also a certain inner strength. In the hallway outside the courtroom, she was surrounded by trained victim-services support workers, who helped her family avoid contact with the accused.

As an observer in court that day back in 2016, I can attest that Chloe appeared highly credible. She seemed intent on answering every question to the best of her ability. On the drive home from the British Columbia courthouse where the proceedings were taking place, a colleague who’d accompanied me concluded, quite simply: “She’s very believable.”

It had been a year since the alleged assault. Still, she was able to summon up details that brought those past events to life. Her speaking style was natural and unaffected. Absent-mindedly pulling the sleeves of a somewhat ill-fitting cardigan sweater down toward her wrists, she recounted tearfully how the accused had acted after the assault, mocking her for not being able to look him in the eyes.

Chloe seemed to remember the words that the accused had used that day as if they were burned into her mind. “You’ll like this, just trust me,” and “You should be thankful I’m doing this to you. I could have any girl.”

I felt sorry for her—even though I suspected that the story she’d just told us was about to fall apart.

* * *

For several years now, I have regularly observed Canadian sexual-assault proceedings, as part of my work with a non-profit organization called the Lighthouse Project. Many of these sexual-assault prosecutions hinge entirely on the credibility of the alleged victim and the alleged assailant. In some cases, journalists will say that there is “no evidence” presented in these cases. But, as lawyers are quick to point out, testimony is evidence.

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EDUCATION, ISRAEL Comments turned off

An Israeli Agent on Campus written by Ari Blaff

By on November 10th, 2018

https://quillette.com/2018/11/09/an-israeli-agent

“Academia ought to be a forum for the battle of minds and the testing of arguments and ideas. Instead, students such as myself seeking a fair-minded supervisor face a paucity of options as departments congeal around a monolithic interpretation of Middle Eastern politics and history. The result is that a toxic political environment has been allowed to flourish, unrestrained, in specific departments across elite universities. In an environment struggling to balance the broad aims of diversity and inclusivity, many Jewish students remain on the outside looking in.”

In late 2017, having completed a Masters in History and another in Political Science, I was considering the possibility of a PhD in Middle Eastern Studies. The academic path and research-heavy workload were a natural fit and I figured it would buy me some time to reflect on what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. So, at the end of last year, I contacted a handful of professors whose academic interests overlapped with mine to ask their advice. The first two of these were productive and fruitful, and focused mostly on research, career advice, and language skills—par for the course for a graduate student in search of a supervisor. However, my third attempt did not go well at all, and the experience has led me to worry about the effects of ideological homogeneity on university scholarship, particularly in the field of Middle Eastern history and politics.

On December 13, I wrote a short email to Jens Hanssen, an Associate Professor of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean History at the University of Toronto. I explained that I was a graduate student at the Munk School of Global Affairs, that I had found his profile on the History Department website, and that I was hoping to ask him some questions about Middle Eastern history and academia. Later that day, Professor Hanssen responded:

Dear Mr. Blaff, You have probably contacted me because you were alerted to an interview I gave last week to the News Section of UofT’s website on President Trump’s declaration to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Now, you may be a graduate student at the Munk School, but you are also a Hasbara fellow. As far as I know, Hasbara fellows are Israeli advocacy activists sent to North American campuses on behalf of the World Union of Jewish Students, now under the auspices of the new Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy, which earlier this year has called for a “new offensive against Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions” activists.

He then informed me that I had received instruction from something called “The Hasbara Handbook: Promoting Israel on Campus”—a text I had never heard of, let alone read—about “how to approach professors, students and administrators and convince them that legitimate, non-violent criticism of the state of Israel amounts to discrimination against Jews everywhere.” Hanssen continued: “In fact you [are] instructed to conflate Judaism and Zionism and are encouraged to give the impression on our campus that such criticism constitutes antisemitism.”

He went on to accuse me of “slandering” a number of people in an article that he claimed (incorrectly) I had written for the student newspaper the previous September (it actually ran on the Hasbara Fellowship’s blog page). He concluded by announcing that, while the Munk School might be indifferent to the “grave threat Hasbara organizations such as yours pose to academic freedom and the intellectual independence of the university,” he most certainly was not. Consequently, for “ethical and academic” reasons, he would avoid any interaction with people such as myself.

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HISTORY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

In 1938, a Tory MP’s account of post-Anschluss Vienna

By on November 10th, 2018

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2018/11/in-1938-tory-mps-account-of-post.html

(Sir) Beverley Baxter (1891-1964) was a Canadian-born journalist who spent most of his career in Britain, where he became a Conservative MP. His account of the persecution of Jews in post-Anschluss Vienna appeared shortly after the Kristallnacht pogrom, the 80th anniversary of which is being marked now.

Appearing in an Australian newspaper (Shepparton Advertiser, 25 November 1938), Baxter’s article was entitled “Jew-Baiting In Vienna: How the pogroms are organised”. Here is what he wrote (I’ve changed his original spelling of Brownshirts as two words):

What is the truth about the persecution of Jews in Germany and Austria? How far are tales of
atrocities figments of the imagination or inventions of propagandists? It was partly to answer these questions that I went recently to Vienna, where the Nazis are now in supreme control, and where purification of the Germanic race is proceeding according to plan.

It is difficult to describe the Nazi movement one way or another. To condemn it out of hand would be foolish and would show a lack of understanding. We who extol democracy must be willing to learn where this political and economic creed has succeeded against difficulties that would discourage the methods of democracy.

There is a tremendous and genuine idealism in the movement. It is written in the faces of the young men who have donned the uniform of the cause. One cannot look upon the clear eyes and fine physique of these boys without admitting that Hitler has accomplished miracles. Out of a defeated and disillusioned nation he has created a magnificent new generation — if we are to judge humanity by the welfare of the body and the purposefulness of the spirit.

Unfortunately, in the launching of this movement of “national regeneration,” and I do not mock the phrase — there were also let loose forces of national degradation which are now out of control. And the most vile of these is the persecution of the Jews.

In what I write here I have purposely refused to credit the stories of atrocities which cannot be proved. They may be in time. I only mention, however, those which I know to be true.

Herr Rudolf Bear was a director of the Vienna Opera. He was sitting in his box one night when three Austrian Brownshirts entered and drove him in a car to the outskirts of Vienna, where they beat him with truncheons.

When the director reached home, a bleeding pulp of a human being, he took poison. His servants discovered it in time, however, and he was rush ed to the hospital, where the best doctors in Vienna fought for his life — and won.

At last he was discharged, a cured man, and warned about his future conduct By the authorities.
That night he shot himself. [Emphasis added here and below.] Search the literature of tragedy if you like and tell me where fiction can outdistance that story of established fact.

One of the pranks of the Austrian Brownshirts that followed the invasion of the German army, was to make Jews scrub the pavements; and the favorite victims of this sadistic exploitation were young Jewesses.

But not always. A Jewish violinist was given a pail of water and told to scrub the pavement outside a Christian shop. To add point to the jest, acid was poured into the water. The violinist performed his task, to find that the acid had burned the skin from his fingers and that he could never again — or so he thought — play his violin. He went home and took poison.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Broward Elections Supervisor Mixed Good and Bad Provisional Ballots By Jack Crowe

By on November 10th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/report-broward-elections-supervisor-mixed-good-and-bad-provisional-ballots/

Broward County elections supervisor Brenda Snipes contaminated some 200 valid provisional ballots by combining them with more than a dozen rejected ballots, the Miami Herald reported late Friday.

The Broward canvassing board discovered the mistake when Snipes conceded to Republican attorneys’ demand that she present the board with 205 provisional ballots for inspection Friday evening.

The 205 contaminated provisional ballots were filled out by voters whose information did not appear in the databases at their respective polling stations, but whose registrations were confirmed when election workers called the Broward elections headquarters. As a result of the discrepancy, the ballots were not added to the final count and were submitted separately Friday evening at the request of attorneys representing governor Rick Scott, the Republican senate candidate.

Broward election officials have not explained how the rejected ballots were first introduced to the pool of valid ballots.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Labour-Party Anti-Semitism — Scotland Yard Launches an Investigation By Julie Lenarz

By on November 10th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/11/british-labour-party-anti-semitism-scotland-yard-investigation/

It’s the logical consequence of scandals that have rocked Labour since Jeremy Corbyn became leader three years ago.

The last time that I wrote about Jeremy Corbyn, the British Labour leader, was in August 2018, after the decision by the party not to adopt in full the definition of anti-Semitism as enunciated by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. On Friday, the Metropolitan Police Service of Greater London announced that Scotland Yard had opened a criminal investigation into alleged anti-Semitic hate crime in the Labour party. The investigation is the logical consequence of the accumulation of anti-Semitism scandals that have rocked the party since Corbyn became leader in the summer of 2015.

The leaked dossier, police sources say, contains over 80 pages of alleged anti-Semitic statements, including Holocaust denial. Among the messages that are alleged to have been written or spoken by Labour-party members are “We shall rid the Jews who are cancer on us all” and “Zionist extremist MP who hates civilised people about to get a good kicking.”

This is just the tip of the iceberg. The climate within Labour is now so hostile that at a party conference in September a Jewish MP, Luciana Berger, required special police protection from violent anti-Semitic Labour members. In a different incident, a Jewish woman was kicked in the face outside a pro-Corbyn event in North London, where she demonstrated against the party’s handling of anti-Semitism charges. John Mann, another Labour MP who chairs the All-Party Parliamentary Group against Antisemitism, charged that he was trolled by Corbyn supporters who said his grandson’s falling ill was “karma” for the elder’s criticizing the Labour leader and standing up to anti-Semitism.

Corbyn, meanwhile, is paying lip service to the need to address anti-Jewish hatred. “Driving antisemitism out of the party for good, and rebuilding that trust, are our priorities,“ he wrote in the Guardian in August 2018. In the same article, however, he lamented “the killing of many unarmed Palestinian protesters in Gaza,” encouraging the very conflation — between British Jewry and the policies of the Israeli government — that is at the heart of many of Labour’s anti-Semitism scandals. Once you understand that mindset, you understand why anti-Semitism in the Labour party has been nurtured and is now endemic at every level within the institution.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Forget the Sweet Talk — Both Parties Will Go to the Mat By Charles Lipson

By on November 10th, 2018

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/11/10/forget_the_sweet_talk_–_both_parties_will_go_to_the_mat_138614.html

“We have two years to show we can make things work,” Republican Mike Braun told Indiana voters in his Senate victory speech. He is wildly optimistic. Both parties are already on war footing, and, barring divine intervention, they will remain that way until 2020.

Their only bipartisanship is a shared commitment to push hard positions favored by their activist bases and enraged donors. President Trump’s unprecedented fight with the legacy media deepens the division. He attacks with ferocity; they take the bait, fill the airwaves with unremitting criticism, and crush underfoot the wall between hard-news reporting and opinion.

Calls for compromise ring hollow from the politicians who make them. In the same speech, they often issue a call-to-arms, as Nancy Pelosi did in claiming victory. The House’s minority leader, who is expected to take the speaker’s gavel in January, spoke softly and urged bipartisan legislation — but quickly added that she and fellow Democrats would stand their ground on all major issues. Trump did the same, even as he spoke about possible deals on taxes, infrastructure and immigration. If he seriously pursues those deals, he risks alienating the very voters who carried him to victory.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Keystone Cops: How Democrats Kill American Infrastructure By Kyle Smith

By on November 10th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/11/democrat-politics-raises-costs-of-infrastructure-projects/

Democrats favor improving infrastructure as long as it takes longer and costs more.

W hy can’t the United States build or repair infrastructure on a par with countries in Europe or Asia? Why can’t we have all the nifty new airports, bridges, and trains that seem to spring up overnight in other parts of the world? The answer, in one word, is Democrats. Two groups that are virtually owned-and-operated subsidiaries of the Democratic party retard infrastructure progress here. One is labor unions, and the other is environmental activists.

The latest example of the absurd reach of the latter is to be found in the U.S. district court of Montana, where Obama-appointed Judge Brian M. Morris halted completion of the Keystone XL pipeline once again, ruling that President Trump’s permit to grant the bid by TransCanada Corp. to finish the pipeline that would transport oil from Alberta, Canada, to Nebraska “hadn’t considered all impacts as required by federal law,” the Wall Street Journal reported.

The first “final environmental review” approving construction was released by Hillary Clinton’s State Department seven years ago, concluding the impact on global warming would not be severe. Another “final environmental review,” also approving the project, was released in 2014 by John Kerry’s State Department, which also foresaw little impact on global warming. Floundering for any excuse to block the pipeline, Judge Morris concern-trolled members of the energy industry by wondering whether the project would be profitable enough given fuel prices. That is for oil guys to worry about, not judges. One interested party observed that Keystone would have “very little impact” on U.S. gas prices. That observer was the person who gave Judge Morris his job, Barack Obama.

The problem is larger than the endless delays on Keystone, though. Because of what Robert Kagan dubbed “adversarial legalism,” routine public improvements are tied up like Gulliver by the Lilliputians with a thousand environmental reviews. In a given year, some 350 Environmental Impact statements and 50,000 Environmental Assessments are being produced by the federal government. Meanwhile individual states and municipalities duplicate these requirements by slathering on their own regulations. Let it not be said that the U.S. doesn’t produce anything: We are the masters of paperwork. Progressive columnists keep wondering why we can’t be more like China and get things done; then they go out to brunch with their human-roadblock friends, all those litigators from the NRDC and Greenpeace and all the other economic reactionaries who spend their lives on lawsuits to stop American progress.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Renewable Mandates and Carbon Taxes Lost Big on Tuesday By Robert Bryce

By on November 10th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/11/renewable-mandates-and-carbon-taxes-lost-big-on-tuesday/

On Tuesday, Democrats won a majority in the U.S. House as well as gubernatorial races in several key state races. But a look at the results from four states — Colorado, Arizona, Florida, and Washington — shows that voters are still skeptical of bans on hydrocarbon production, renewable-energy mandates, and carbon taxes.

In Colorado, a state that has been trending Democratic, voters elected a Democratic governor, Jared Polis, and gave Democrats a majority in the state senate. But Coloradans handily rejected (57 to 43 percent) Proposition 112, which would have prohibited oil and gas drilling activities within 2,500 feet of homes, hospitals, schools and “vulnerable areas.”

The initiative was endorsed by numerous environmental groups including 350.org, Sierra Club and Greenpeace. Had it passed, the initiative would have effectively banned new oil and gas production in Colorado, the fifth-largest natural gas producer in the US. To defeat Proposition 112, the oil and gas industry in Colorado spent some $34 million.

In Arizona, voters overwhelmingly rejected (70 to 30 percent) Proposition 127, a ballot initiative that would have required the state to get 50 percent of its electricity from renewables. Had it passed, the initiative could have forced the closure of the 3,900-megawatt Palo Verde Generating Station, the biggest nuclear power plant in the U.S.

The fight over the proposition was the most expensive ballot initiative in the state’s history, with opponents, led by the state’s largest utility, Arizona Public Service, spending some $30 million. Proponents of the measure spent about $23 million, about $18 million of which came from California billionaire Tom Steyer, who told The New Yorker in October that “We’re on the side of the angels. . . . This is a black-hat, white-hat fight.” Steyer, a leader of the impeach-Trump wing of the Democratic Party, is contemplating a run for president in 2020.

Although Steyer lost the ballot initiative in Arizona, he got a win in Nevada on Question 6, which will require the state’s utilities to get 50 percent of their electricity from renewables by 2030. Steyer was a key backer of Question 6, which passed 59–41 percent. But the mandate won’t become law unless it passes again in 2020.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Obama’s Judges Continue Thwarting Trump By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on November 10th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/11/obama-appointed-lawyers-thwart-trump-policies-immigration-energy/

To the Lawyer Left, elections represent a policy choice only when Democrats win.

As I write on Friday, the restraining order hasn’t come down yet. But it’s just a matter of time. Some federal district judge, somewhere in the United States, will soon issue an injunction blocking enforcement of the Trump administration’s restrictions on asylum applications.

The restrictions come in the form of a rule promulgated jointly by the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, and a proclamation issued by President Trump. In conjunction, they assert that an alien who wishes to apply for asylum in the United States must act lawfully: An alien who is physically present here and wishes to apply must be in the country legally; an alien outside the country who wishes to apply must present himself at a lawful port of entry — not attempt to smuggle his way in or force his way in as part of a horde (i.e., no invasions by caravan).

Of course, what used to be assumed is today deemed intolerable. It is no longer permitted to expect of non-Americans what is required of Americans — adherence to American law while on American soil.

Therefore, the fact that the administration’s action is entirely reasonable will not matter. No more will it matter that, contrary to numbing media repetition, the rule and proclamation derive from federal statutory law. Nor will it make any difference that, in part, the president is relying on the same sweeping congressional authorization based on which, just four months ago, the Supreme Court affirmed his authority to control the ingress of aliens based on his assessment of national-security needs.

Just two things will matter. The first is that the asylum restrictions represent a Trump policy that reverses Obama policies — specifically, policies of more lax border enforcement, and of ignoring congressionally authorized means of preventing illegal aliens from filing frivolous asylum petitions (with the result that many of them are released, evading further proceedings and deportation). The second is that, precisely to thwart the reversal of Obama policies, President Obama made certain that the vast majority of the 329 federal judges he appointed were progressive activists in the Obama mold.

The media-Democrat complex will tell you this is “the rule of law.” In reality, it is the rule of lawyers: the Lawyer Left on the front line of American decision-making, a line that runs through courtrooms, not Capitol Hill.

You can already hear the retort: Conservatives do the same thing — put conservative judges on the bench to dictate conservative results. Au contraire. Conservatives really do want the rule of law, as in the laws that Congress passes and the president signs. That is, we want the country run by accountable office holders who answer to us, whom we can remove if they make bad decisions. We are willing to live under laws we oppose, provided that we have a fair opportunity to repeal or amend them. To take an obvious constitutional-law example: Though we oppose abortion, we are not looking for robed right-wingers to “discover” a prohibition of abortion in, say, the due-process clause. We think it is a matter for legislation, primarily at the state level.

That is not what the Lawyer Left is doing. They talk a good game about “ground-up democracy,” but the actual goal is top-down control. Those judges — their judges — are in place to dictate policy outcomes, not to let democracy happen.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Norway’s Mosques Are Multiplying, and Taxpayers Foot the Bill By Bruce Bawer

By on November 10th, 2018

https://pjmedia.com/trending/norways-mosques-are-multiplying-and-taxpayers-foot-the-bill/

Founded in 2001, Oslo-based Human Rights Service (HRS) has been instrumental in supplying useful and illuminating research about the scale, nature, and social and economic impact of immigration into Norway. Its recommendations have resulted in important policy changes, its website is very widely read by Norwegians who are skeptical about Islam, and the latest book by its information officer, Hege Storhaug (just out in English as Islam: Europe Invaded, America Warned), was a massive bestseller.

In the U.S., a think tank like HRS would be funded by corporate donors and philanthropists, but, in accordance with Scandinavian practice, it gets its money — which, given how much it accomplishes, doesn’t really come to all that big a sum — from the national government. Pretty much every year brings another fight over how much, if anything, HRS should get from the public till, with almost everyone on the left (and not a few on the right) complaining that its work contributes to negative images of Muslims. This year, the proposed national budget for 2019 left untouched the generous handouts to such far-left PC enforcers as the “Anti-Racist Center,” but cut by a half minute kroner ($60,000) the annual subsidy to HRS. The planned cut drew so much attention that a couple of leading members of the Progress Party (FrP) — which voters put into power largely so that it could implement the kind of reforms that HRS has called for — were actually roused to action and saw to it that the budget line was left untouched.

Meanwhile, the Norwegian state budget doles out far larger sums to other, far more dubious recipients — and HRS, as it happens, has been instrumental in digging out and publicizing the numbers. I’m referring to the huge annual payouts to mosques, which for some reason almost all of the members of the Norwegian parliament think they have the obligation to fund.

In recent weeks, coincidentally, even as HRS was fighting to hang onto its own minuscule government appropriation, it was publishing bombshell reports on the stunning increase in the number of mosques in Norway — and on the corresponding rise in the amount of taxpayer funds transferred to their coffers. Norway, let it be remembered, has a tiny population of 5.25 million people — almost identical to that of Chicago — but at present it has 219 mosques, which represents a 65% upsurge since only eight years ago. This year, the mosques received a total of 187 million kroner ($22,359,347) from the government.

How does the government decide how much to give each mosque? I didn’t know the answer until the other day. It is rooted in the fact that, until January of last year, the Church of Norway (DNK) was the nation’s official state church. It used to be the case that unless your parents opted out of it, you were automatically registered as a member at birth. Naturally, the government covered the Church’s expenses, and each congregation’s annual endowment was based on its membership statistics. In Norway, as elsewhere in Western Europe, church attendance has radically declined over the past few years, but in Norway the amount of cash infused into those churches has remained relatively constant, meaning that the sum per worshiper has increased dramatically. In order to be fair, by its own lights, the Norwegian parliament supports mosques at the same rate per registered member as the DNK. Since official mosque membership has skyrocketed even as church attendance has dived (one in eight residents of Oslo now belong to a mosque), the amount of taxpayer money handed over to these houses of worship has, according to an FrP official, “escalated at an alarming tempo.” CONTINUE AT SITE

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