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June 2019

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Turkey: Attacks on Journalists Turn More Violent by Uzay Bulut

By on June 12th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14359/turkey-attacks-journalists

“We sincerely hope that, in the coming weeks… journalists across the country will be able to disseminate news and information without fear of retaliation…. Attacks like those against Demirağ and Özyol, if left unpunished, will have a serious chilling effect on the country’s journalists and further strengthen a climate of fear, which seriously hinders Turkey’s credibility as a democracy…” — Letter sent by The International Press Institute along with 20 other press freedom and freedom of expression organizations, to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, May 16, 2019.

Less than a week after that letter was sent, Ergin Çevik, the editor-in chief of the Güney Haberci news site, was badly beaten in Antalya by three assailants. Those detained in relation with the attack were released on probation.

On May 24, Hakan Denizli, founder of the Adana-based daily, Egemen, was the victim of an armed assault, which landed him in intensive care. On May 26, Sabahattin Önkibar, a columnist for the Odatv news site, was beaten while on his way home from work. Önkibar filed a complaint, yet the four suspects who were detained by police were subsequently released.

Journalists also face the risk of losing their jobs if the government does not approve of their reporting.

A new trend of physically attacking journalists has been emerging in Turkey. The country has already incarcerated of at least 146 members of the media, who are in prison serving sentences or are in pre-trial detention. A number of recent assaults not only illustrate this trend, but suggest approval for it on the part of Turkish authorities.

The first victim of this type of violence was Yavuz Selim Demirağ, a columnist for the Yeni Çağ daily, who was attacked in front of his house in Ankara on May 10 by a group of assailants with baseball bats.

Turkey’s Journalists’ Association (TGC) immediately issued a statement calling for the perpetrators to be brought to justice, and laying blame for the attack on the atmosphere created by the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

“The constant targeting of newspapers and journalists by politicians having difficulty embracing freedom of the press, thought and expression plays a major role in such attacks,” the TGC statement read.

As if to vindicate the statement, the six suspects arrested and taken into custody for the assault on Demirağ were shortly released on the grounds that “Demirağ had not been at risk of death.”

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Six Day War – 52 Years Ago The miracle in the air and on the ground. Joseph Puder

By on June 12th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273956/six-day-war-52-years-ago-joseph-puder

June 5, 1967 was a day that will live in glory in the annals of Jewish history.  On that day in 1967, the Israeli air force destroyed on the ground and in the air the Arab air forces, and gained full supremacy in the air, and ultimately on the ground and at sea. This was the Six Day War 52-years ago. It was one of the greatest victories in Jewish history, and a seminal event in Israel’s history.

It all began a month earlier. The Egyptian dictator Gamal Abdul Nasser, made bellicose statements on the Voice of the Arabs radio station, including the threat of drowning the Jews in the Mediterranean Sea. It was not only verbal threats coming out of Nasser’s and his underlings’ mouths, it was the actions he took, including the closing of the Straits of Tiran to Israeli navigation, making Israeli trade from Eilat to Asia and the Far East nearly impossible.

The vital shipment of oil to Israel came through the Straits to Eilat. On May 23, 1967, Nasser, addressing Egyptian pilots in the Sinai, announced the blockade of the Straits. He stated, “The Gulf of Aqaba constitutes our Egyptian territorial waters…under no circumstances will we allow the Israeli flag to pass through…” Earlier, on May 21, 1967, Egyptian troops occupied Sharm el-Sheikh, and two days earlier the United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF) contingent, based in the Sinai, was ousted by Nasser, in contravention of the decade long armistice agreement following the 1956-57 Sinai Campaign, in which Israeli forces reached the Suez Canal and captured the Sinai Peninsula. Under pressure from the U.S. and western powers, Israel withdrew from the Sinai.  Israel was guaranteed freedom of navigation through the Straits and the Suez Canal, and a UN observer force was dispatched to the Sinai and serve as a barrier against aggression.    

In Israel, the news throughout May 1967 filled the people with doom and gloom. In the streets of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa, as well as elsewhere in Israel, it was felt that once again Jews were abandoned to their fate by the world. In Tel Aviv, ditches were dug to bury the anticipated thousands of casualties. A sense of desperation pervaded the country, and memories of the Holocaust came flashing back. The Maritime powers did nothing to fulfill their promise. Israel was alone to face the Arab world seething with hatred and revenge and promising a bloodbath.

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MY SAY:, POLITICS Comments turned off

My Say: Is Stacey Abrams being groomed for higher office? By Ruth S. King

By on June 12th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/06/is_stacey_abrams_being_groomed_for_higher_office.html

The practice of opposing a party rebuttal to the president’s State of the Union speech was started in 1966, when Republicans Senator Everett Dirksen and Rep. Gerald Ford responded to Democrat President Lyndon Johnson’s State of the Union on television.  

Since then, it has become an annual event. 

Until 2019, all previous responses were delivered by contemporary senators, representatives, or governors.

Since 2011, there have been two responses — one in English and one in Spanish.  And here I was, under the illusion that English is our national language. 

So how did Stacey Abrams, an ungracious loser with no national elective office, become the Democrats’ choice to deliver a response?  Now, that is quite a strange break from tradition.

Who is pulling her strings? 

Abrams has a meager political résumé.  She served as minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives from 2011 to 2017 until she became the Democratic Party’s nominee for Georgia’s gubernatorial election in 2018.  

She wrote many novels under the name Selena Montgomery.  The titles — Reckless, The Art of Desire, and Hidden Sins — evoke romance and mystery, but the reviews attribute them to her interest in social and economic policies.  Oh, well. CONTINUE AT SITE

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Politicians Must Face Consequences For Crimes They Enable Malfeasant politicians must find no “sanctuary.” Michael Cutler

By on June 12th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273975/politicians-must-face-consequences-crimes-they-michael-cutler

The phrase, Failure is Not An Option served as the title of the book written by Gene Kranz, Flight Director for NASA who helped create the U.S. manned space program and was instrumental in successfully returning the crew of Apollo 13 to the earth after their spacecraft suffered a catastrophic explosion half-way to the moon.

In most professions, especially where lives are on the line, failure to do the job is not an option.  This is particularly true where law enforcement and the military are concerned.  

Politicians, not unlike members of the military and law enforcement officers, take oaths of office where they swear (affirm) that they will enforce our laws and defend the Constitution.  While law enforcement officers and members of the armed forces may face dire consequences for violating their oaths of office, politicians generally do not.

Their oaths of office do not provide an “escape clause” whereby they may opt to ignore any of the laws that are not to their liking.

Unlike the entries on the menu of a restaurant where the patrons order the food that they find palatable or where they may substitute one item on the menu for another, their oaths of office demand that those who take that oath agree to enforce all laws and honor and defend all of the provisions of our Constitution.

Dereliction of duty is a serious offense for members of the armed forces and for law enforcement officers and one that carries significant consequences.

On June 4, 2019 ABC News reported, Police arrest ex-deputy who ‘did absolutely nothing to mitigate’ Parkland school massacre.

We will not delve in the specifics of this ongoing case, but it is important to note that the deputy sheriff in this case has been charged with multiple crimes, some of which are felonies, all emanating from his alleged failures to act to protect the children who were killed in that school.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Oberlin’s Comeuppance By Anthony Esolen

By on June 12th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/06/11/oberlins-comeuppance/

As I write these words, a jury in Ohio is about to decide whether an $11 million verdict against Oberlin College, for libel and tortious practices against a local family-run bakery, should be tripled for punitive damages. If it could be tripled and tripled again, it would still be only just.

Many readers will have heard the details of the events, which in quick summary are these: On the day after the election in 2016, an Oberlin College student tried to abscond from Gibson’s Bakery with two bottles of wine. One of the workers at the bakery confronted him, and a scuffle ensued both inside and outside the store, with the worker as the victim on the ground, pummeled by the perpetrator and a male friend of his, and kicked by two women, as some members of the fair sex are wont to do when their persons are not at risk.

Oberlin College then moved into action to squash the business like a bug. The dean of students passed around a flyer charging Gibson’s with a long history of “racial profiling.” She led a massive protest against the bakery, a protest that was cast entirely in the light of the recent election. The school ordered its food supplier to cancel all contracts with them. Gibson’s, which has been a fixture in town for more than 130 years, lost business which they never recovered. Finally, the owners decided to sue the college, when Oberlin refused to retract the charge of racism, and when the school demanded as a kind of blackmail that Gibson’s report all shoplifters first to the school and not to the police. The school would then give the perpetrator a warning, but no suspension. Naughty, naughty!

Have I mentioned that African-Americans who live in town, including one long-time employee, have treated as absurd and offensive any charge of racism against the Gibson family or the business? Should I have had to mention it?

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Another Media-Fueled Collusion Narrative Falls Apart By Julie Kelly

By on June 12th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/06/11/another-media-fueled-collusion-narrative-falls-apart/

It’s a familiar pattern in the Trump era: A partisan figure tasked with thwarting the president—say, Special Counsel Robert Mueller or former FBI Director James Comey—is portrayed as a fair-minded arbiter of truth and justice, a vanguard of our highest democratic institutions, bravely taking on the Bad Orange Man. Such figures are cast as heroes impervious to political bias. Every move they make, we are told, is for our own good. We are not to question their unimpeachable integrity, their stellar reputation or their motives.

Such was the case with Christopher Steele, the author of the infamous dossier that served as the raison d’etre for the FBI’s investigation into Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

In order to legitimize the dossier’s dubious claims, the media characterized Steele as an objective player in the nascent Russian collusion plotline, a former British intelligence officer leveraging his long-time Kremlin connections to root out a corrupt scheme between Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin to steal an American election. His work was a profile in courage, we were told; he was a highly-regarded compatriot in America’s fight to make sure our new president was not in fact a covert Russian stooge.

But now that Steele faces questioning by a federal prosecutor assigned to investigate the corrupt origins of the FBI’s probe into the Trump campaign, it’s obvious that the early hype about Steele was just one more example of the media’s complicity in the Russian collusion coup.

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ISRAEL, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Disband Students for Justice in Palestine and All BDS Movements An open letter to Attorney General William Barr. Professor Jason D. Hill

By on June 12th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273966/disband-students-justice-palestine-and-all-bds-jason-d-hill

Editors’ note: Jason D. Hill is a professor of philosophy at DePaul University in Chicago. Below is his Open Letter to Attorney General, William Barr making the argument to disband Students for Justice in Palestine and all BDS movements.

Mr. Attorney General, On May 16, 2019, The German Parliament voted, as you know, to condemn as anti-Semitic, the BDS movement in Germany. The BDS is a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement that targets Israeli organizations, academic institutions and companies engaged in entrepreneurial activities in Israel to weaken the Israeli economy and politically in an attempt to force Israel to change its policies towards Palestinians living there.

BDS movements, mainly conducted by their most visible branch,  Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP)  are prolific on US campuses and enact a reign of verbal terror, and physical and psychological violence against anyone who dares to be pro-Israel, critical of Palestinian terrorist or defend Israel against false charges of it being a genocidal an apartheid state. Really, it represents an assault against Western civilization and United States interests and should properly be considered a national security threat.

As a recent victim of vicious assaults by members of the SJP at DePaul University where I am full tenured professor, and, with the highest praises and respect from the Acting Provost Salma Ghanem, for the ways in which members of the DePaul community made their voices heard—I call for a disbandment of all SJP campus units by the US Justice department, and a thorough investigation into the motives and political involvements of higher level academic bodies that endorse these organizations which have ties with terrorist organizations such as Hamas.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Land and Demagogy in Africa By Sarah Ruden

By on June 12th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2019/06/24/land-and-demagogy-in-africa/

An author’s up-close view of how disregarding property rights entrenches misery

In starting to confiscate land from white farmers without compensation, the South African government is acting in one of Africa’s most destructive patterns. But to make that case I need the testimony of a most special inside-outsider, who died a number of years ago.

My friend John Broom, white and British-born, was a partner in the Zimbabwean branch of Deloitte & Touche, and then a long-term exile to South Africa and the finance director of the Quaker Peace Center. In 2000, shortly after the Zimbabwean farm invasions began, he nudged me into visiting his modest apartment in a Cape Town suburb: He had things he needed to say to me. Arriving, I found he had a small album lying ready on a table. It was a folder for business cards, more than a hundred of them from the Eighties, and he invited me to page through while he explained what this and that card represented.

Some of the businesses would have been small and ordinary — a picture-framing service and a gift shop, for example. The cards of individuals whose lines of work I couldn’t have identified on my own proved far more interesting. This guy, said John, was an engineer overseas, an expert in processing gold. He explained that, as a rule, Africa controlled too few stages in the addition of value to the raw commodities it produced. Gold, a big part of this natural wealth, was a painful example. Why couldn’t there be a broad-based jewelry trade in a place like Zimbabwe?

John was one of those people who know everybody’s business. He was talking to me because he knew I was stringing for a South African investigative magazine that I found too politically correct (it even supported President Thabo Mbeki in his AIDS denial) and also publishing in conservative journals back in the States. I was going to listen to him about the essential post-liberation role of capitalism.

About the gold processor, God alone knows how John had connected the dots over thousands of miles, but the 1979 end of the black–white civil conflict in Rhodesia, which turned it into liberated Zimbabwe and saw the lifting of international sanctions, coincided with the retirement of this man, whose wife wanted him out of the kitchen. He had agreed to set up shop in Zimbabwe if John would write him the business plan and obtain a license from the new government.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Church Hosts Summer Camp to Train Grade School Kids to Be Antifa Activists By Jeff Reynolds

By on June 12th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/parenting/church-hosts-summer-camp-to-train-grade-school-kids-to-be-antifa-activists/

I’m so old I can remember when disseminating communist propaganda in public schools was frowned upon.

Last Friday afternoon, I was sitting at my computer when I received an email from Peachjar. This is a service used by several school districts near me in the Portland area that sends home digital fliers to parents in lieu of paper fliers to advertise extracurricular activities sponsored by various groups in the community. My son’s middle school uses this service, and I receive a few emails a month from them. I’ve used the service myself to send advertisements for recruiting events for Scouts, and I’ve received other fliers such as music lessons, sports teams, and the like.

This one, however, was quite different.

There’s so much wrong here it’s hard to know where to start.

The first thing that struck me, before anything else, was the mask-clad, fist-raising elementary school kids in the illustration. Teaching incoming 4th-8th-graders how to riot, become members of antifa, and join a communist revolution seems a bit much—even for Portland, Oregon. Notice the star on the mask and the raised fist. Classic imagery from the USSR, China, and other violent Marxist revolutions in the 20th century.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

RUTHIE BLUM-AN ILL DESERVED ATTACK ON AMBASSADOR DAVID FRIEDMAN

By on June 12th, 2019

https://www.jns.org/opinion/an-ill-deserved-assault-on-ambassador-david-friedman/

He said nothing controversial whatsoever about the West Bank, except in the eyes of those who consider any Israeli territorial or other claims illegitimate.

Palestinian and leftist Jewish leaders called for America’s Israel ambassador to be fired for telling The New York Times in a recent interview that the Jewish state has, “under certain circumstances, the right to retain some, but unlikely all, of the West Bank.”

Yes, for daring to suggest that Israel has the right even to “some” of its land, David Friedman was called a “settler” by Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas, who had previously dubbed him a “son of a dog.”

And the P.A. Foreign Ministry announced that it would weigh filing a complaint against Friedman at the International Criminal Court for “trying to impose his racist visions and threatening peace and security in the region, as well as exposing the Palestinian people to several dangers and conspiracies.”

J Street president Jeremy Ben-Ami was equally incensed, accusing Friedman of “once again [making] clear that he is acting not as the U.S. ambassador to Israel but as the settlement movement’s ambassador to the United States. By essentially giving the Netanyahu government a green light to begin unilaterally annexing Palestinian territory in the West Bank, the Trump administration is endorsing a flagrant violation of international law.”

Peace Now chimed in, referring to Friedman as a “Trojan horse sent by the settler right, which sabotages Israel’s interests and the chance for peace,” and urging U.S. President Donald Trump to “send him packing.”

The outcry over Friedman’s perfectly reasonable remark is worthy of note, particularly in view of what the U.S. envoy said next.

When asked how Washington would react if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu followed through on his campaign vow ahead of the April 9 Knesset elections to annex part of Judea and Samaria, Friedman replied: “We really don’t have a view until we know how much, on what terms, why does it make sense, why is it good for Israel, why is it good for the region, why does it not create more problems than it solves. These are all things that we’d want to understand, and I don’t want to prejudge.”

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