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Ruth King

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

RussiaGate: Hillary Clinton and John Podesta’s Troubling Ties to Russia By Debra Heine

By on March 30th, 2017

Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute and the author of “Clinton Cash,” explained on Fox News Tuesday how a Russia connection to the Clinton campaign and Obama presidency is much bigger and more troubling than anything Democrats have accused Team Trump of.

During his appearance on “Fox & Friends,” Schweizer alleged that Clinton campaign chair John Podesta probably violated federal law when he failed to disclose his stock holdings in a Kremlin-funded company.

“In 2011, John Podesta joins the board of this very small energy company called Joule Energy based out of Massachusetts,” Schweizer said. “About two months after he joins the board, a Russian entity called Rusnano puts a billion rubles — which is about 35 million dollars — into John Podesta’s company. Now, what is Rusnano? Rusnano is not a private company, Steve. It is a fund directly funded by the Kremlin. In fact, the Russian science minister called Rusnano Putin’s child. So you have the Russian government investing in one of John Podesta’s businesses in 2011, while he is an advisor to Hillary Clinton at the State Department.”

“Does anyone in Trump’s circle rise to the level where there’s this kind of money involved?” asked host Steve Doocy.

Schweizer answered that he hadn’t seen anything like that yet. “Nobody that has an advisory role in the White House has had this money exchange. And certainly the money hasn’t exchanged as far as we know while they have been advising the president,” he said, pointing out that while he was an advisor in the Obama White House, Podesta owned stock shares with “Putin’s Child” and failed to disclose it.

“So then in 2013, he goes to the White House, to be a special counselor to Barack Obama, and that requires that you, you know, have financial disclosures every year,” he explained. “In his financial disclosure form in 2013, he not only fails to disclose these 75,000 shares of stock that he has in Joule Energy, which is funded in part by the Russian government. He also fails to disclose that he is on one of the three corporate boards that this entity has. It’s got this very complex ownership structure. He discloses he is on the company in Massachusetts, that is he on the board of a company in the Netherlands, but he fails to disclose that he is also on the executive board of the holding company. That’s a clear violation of the disclosure rules that I think needs to be looked at.”

He added, “What makes the Podesta case clear is there was a transfer of money and there was a transfer of a lot of money that stood to make John Podesta a lot of money. That is unique and that’s extremely troubling because at the time that transfer is taking place he is advising Hillary Clinton at the State Department. We know that from the Podesta emails that he is helping her make personnel decisions, speech decisions, policy decisions. He is meeting with her monthly. It’s a transfer of money from a foreign government, at the time that he is advising America’s chief diplomat, Hillary Clinton.”

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel Has Made Enough Sacrifices By Dan Calic

By on March 30th, 2017

One of the oft-repeated laments from many world leaders when speaking about the long-festering Arab-Israeli conflict is regarding sacrifices.

How many times did former U.S. secretary of state John Kerry, former president Obama, or other leaders talk about the need for both sides to make sacrifices for peace? We’ve heard it repeatedly. Yet the truth of the matter is that only one side has made sacrifices, while the other side has not made any. One side has continuously demonstrated its desire for peace, while the other side has continuously demonstrated it wants the other destroyed.

The Arab population makes up over 98% of the Middle East, while geographically covers more than 99% of the land compared to the size of Israel. These facts are merely to provide some perspective. Yet despite of the overwhelming advantage the Arab world enjoys, the tiny Jewish nation of Israel is considered intolerable by many.

List of Jewish Sacrifices

1. In June 1967, Israel was forced to defend itself against Syria, Jordan, and Egypt in the Six-Day War. During this decisive Israeli victory the Holy Old City of Jerusalem was captured from the Jordanians, who had been in control of it since the Independence war ended in 1949. The victory reunited the Jewish people with Temple Mount and the Western Wall of the Second Temple compound. Israeli flags flew over their holiest site for the first time in modern history.

Yet, at the conclusion of the war, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan made a huge sacrifice in the interest of peace by awarding administrative control of Temple Mount to the Jordanian Waqf (Islamic Trust). He ordered Israeli flags removed and he banned Jews from praying on Temple Mount. This remains in effect today. In spite of Israel’s sacrifice Temple Mount remains a flashpoint issue and numerous riots have taken place at Al Aqsa mosque.

In the same war Israel captured the Gaza Strip and virtually all of the Sinai Desert.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The World’s New Ideological Fault Line Runs Through France Presidential election is likely to pit nationalist Le Pen against globalist Macron By Greg Ip

By on March 30th, 2017

PARIS—In France as in most of the West, politics has long been dominated by a left wing and a right wing party. This year an earthquake is in the making: If current polls are borne out, neither the left-wing Socialists nor right-wing Republicans will make it past the first round of the presidential election in April.

Instead, two parties that have never held power will proceed to May’s runoff. And both agree their contest isn’t over traditional issues of right and left, such as taxes and spending. Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Front, says it’s between “globalists and patriots” or, as supporters of Emmanuel Macron, leader of the upstart En Marche (“Forward”) put it, “open and closed.”

That makes the French election the starkest and most consequential contest yet in the world’s ideological divide between nationalism and globalism.
The nationalists who led the British vote to leave the European Union and put Donald Trump in the White House operate within established conservative parties and thus co-exist uneasily with traditional free traders. The National Front arose outside the mainstream and espouses a more uncompromising, coherent rejection of economic, geopolitical and cultural integration. Ms. Le Pen wants to take France out of the EU and the euro, which could precipitate the collapse of both.France makes a singularly appropriate battlefield over nationalism. The modern nation state can be traced to the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 when France, putting national interest ahead of religion, sided with Germany’s protestant princes to contain the power of the Catholic Holy Roman Empire. Three centuries later it switched places, choosing, with Germany, to subordinate sovereignty to an ever closer European Union. CONTINUE AT SITE

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

‘Memory Unearthed: The Lodz Ghetto Photographs of Henryk Ross’ Review: Photos From Inside The Holocaust Henryk Ross risked his life to document the daily life of Jews living in Poland’s Lodz Ghetto, hiding his images until the end of the war By William Meyers

By on March 30th, 2017

Boston

Jews have a way with catastrophe; the hundreds of images in “Memory Unearthed: The Lodz Ghetto Photographs of Henryk Ross” are testimony to it. Ross said, “Having an official camera, I was able to capture all the tragic period in the¼ Lodz Ghetto. I did it knowing that if I were caught my family and I would be tortured and killed.” Ross (1910-1991) was one of the only two Jews in the Ghetto allowed to have cameras; they were required to take pictures to be used by the Nazis for propaganda, but each also surreptitiously documented the deterioration and removal of the Ghetto’s inhabitants. It is a tradition that goes back to the prophet Jeremiah crying, “Alas,” over the destruction of Jerusalem in 587 B.C.
Memory Unearthed: The Lodz Ghetto Photographs of Henryk Ross Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Through July 30

Very little is known for sure about Ross. He was apparently born in Warsaw and may have had a career there as a photojournalist of some sort. In 1939 he joined the Polish army, and when it was defeated he ended up in Lodz. In the middle of present-day Poland, Lodz was an important industrial city with a mixed population of Poles, Germans and Jews. With the Nazi conquest, the Jews were moved into a blighted section and physically segregated from the rest of the city. All Jews, eventually well over the original 160,000, were made to wear a yellow Star of David sewn on their clothes. The Germans found Ross’s name on the Photographers Association list and confiscated his camera, but when the Judenrat, the “Jewish council” set up by the Nazis for inhabitants to administer the Ghetto, was established, the camera was returned.

Ross was responsible for taking identity photos, recording the activities of the Judenrat, and documenting the factories established in the Ghetto in the hope that the Nazis would spare Jews doing productive work. Examples of these pictures were included in the 6,000 negatives Ross buried in the fall of 1944. “I buried my negatives in the ground in order that there should be some record of our tragedy….I was anticipating the total destruction of Polish Jewry. I wanted to leave a historical record of our martyrdom.” The negatives were in metal canisters placed in wooden boxes, but when they were retrieved in 1945, water had ruined half of them. The swirls and signs of deterioration on the prints made from the still usable ones are emblematic of the harrowing experiences of their subjects. CONTINUE AT SITE

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ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

David Friedman Sworn In as U.S. Ambassador to Israel Vice president says nomination shows ‘America stands with Israel’

By on March 30th, 2017

WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump gained his first ambassador Wednesday when attorney David Friedman was sworn in as America’s envoy to Israel.

Vice President Mike Pence administered the oath of office to Mr. Friedman and hailed Mr. Trump’s decision to nominate his former bankruptcy attorney for the sensitive diplomatic post as “one of the clearest signs” of the president’s commitment to the state of Israel and the Jewish people.

“If the world knows nothing else, the world will know this: America stands with Israel,” Mr. Pence said as Mr. Friedman’s wife, Tammy, their five children and most of their grandchildren watched. Ron Dermer, Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., also attended the ceremony.
Mr. Friedman, whose nomination faced resistance from Democrats and some Jewish groups, said he was “humbled” by the trust Mr. Trump had placed in him. He also noted his standing as the first of Mr. Trump’s ambassador nominees to win Senate confirmation and be sworn in to office.

“Those facts speak volumes about how highly the Trump-Pence administration prioritizes our unbreakable bond with the state of Israel,” Mr. Friedman said.

He said he recently resigned from the law firm in which he was a founding partner.

The Senate approved Mr. Friedman’s nomination last week by a vote of 52-46, largely along party lines.
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BOOKS Comments turned off

The Nerds Who Make English The Merriam-Webster editor informs us that the German word for a lower-back tattoo is “Arschgeweih,” which literally means “ass antlers.” Henry Hitchings reviews “Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries” by Kory Stamper.

By on March 30th, 2017

‘Lexicographer” is not a seductive word. Samuel Johnson famously defined it, more than 260 years ago, as “a writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge.” His own “Dictionary of the English Language” belied this impression of soulless passivity, but the image has stuck. There is a common assumption that dictionaries are put together by faceless dullards. In the judgmental world of online dating, saying that you’re a lexicographer has all the aphrodisiac potency of admitting that you enjoy reorganizing your sock drawer.

Yet the reputation of lexicography is starting to change, and the main reason is the emergence of a new generation of word mavens who brighten social media with linguistic curios and discussion points. Among these is Kory Stamper, an editor at Merriam-Webster. That venerable firm of course takes half its name from Noah Webster, and one of Webster’s key statements was that “the business of a lexicographer is to collect, define, and arrange, as far as possible, all the words that belong to a language.” As Ms. Stamper comments, modern practitioners shift the emphasis: Today the aspiration is “to collect, define, and arrange, as far as possible, all the words that belong to a language.” After all, no dictionary can document everything.

Ms. Stamper’s responsibilities at Merriam-Webster include defining new words and revising out-of-date entries. She also appears in its “Ask the Editor” video series, where she holds forth on matters such as the correct plural of “octopus” and the question of whether Alanis Morissette’s song “Ironic” actually has anything to do with irony—two topics beloved of half-informed pedants. Meanwhile, on Twitter, where wholly uninformed pedants outnumber any other group, she is a voice of sassy realism, apt to celebrate “badass word-nerd women” or proffer golden nuggets of trivia, such as the fact that the German word for a lower-back tattoo is “Arschgeweih” (which literally means “ass antlers”).

In “Word by Word,” Ms. Stamper maintains this “nitty-gritty, down-and-dirty, worm’s-eye view.” We learn that her suitability for her chosen career revealed itself when she was a child. Growing up in Colorado, she devoured her parents’ hoarded catalogs. At age 9, having gorged on a medical dictionary, she alarmed her father by announcing, “I’m reading about scleroderma.” Though she doesn’t say so, learning about an ailment that causes hardening of the skin may have been useful preparation for a life of being teased by people who think that logophilia is itself an illness, not an endowment. CONTINUE AT SITE

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

America’s Growing Labor Shortage Lack of workers in ag and construction is hurting the economy.

By on March 30th, 2017

President Trump approved the Keystone XL pipeline on Friday, and good for him, but will there be enough workers to build it? That’s a serious question. Many American employers, especially in construction and agriculture, are facing labor shortages that would be exacerbated by restrictionist immigration policies.

Demographic trends coupled with a skills mismatch have resulted in a frustrating economic paradox: Millions of workers are underemployed even as millions of jobs go unfilled. The U.S. workforce is also graying, presenting a challenge for industries that entail manual labor.

Construction is ground zero in the worker shortage. Many hard-hats who lost their jobs during the recession left the labor force. Some found high-paying work in fossil fuels during the fracking boom and then migrated to renewables when oil prices tumbled. While construction has rebounded, many employed in the industry a decade ago are no longer there.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are nearly 150,000 unfilled construction jobs across the country, nearly double the number five years ago. The shortage is particularly acute in metro areas like Miami, Dallas and Denver, and the worker shortage is delaying projects and raising costs.

A January survey by the Associated General Contractors of America found that 73% of firms had a hard time finding qualified workers. More firms identified worker shortages as a big concern (55%) than any other issue including federal regulations (41%) and lack of infrastructure investment (18%). Demand and salaries for subcontractors (e.g., carpentry and bricklaying) are going through the roof.

On the current demographic course, the shortage will worsen. The average age of construction equipment operators and highway maintenance workers is 46. When middle-aged workers retire, there won’t be many young bodies to replace them. Most high schools have dropped vocational training, and more young people are enrolling in colleges that don’t teach technical skills.

The farm labor shortage is also growing, which has caused tens of millions of dollars worth of crops to rot in the fields. Farmers can’t get enough H-2A visas for foreign guest workers, some of whom have migrated to higher-paying occupations. Workers also often arrive late due to visa processing delays by the Labor Department. The undocumented workforce has shrunk as more Mexicans have left the country than have arrived in recent years.

The Western Growers Association reports that crews are running 20% short on average. Boosting wages and benefits—many employers pay $15 an hour with 401(k)s and paid vacation—has been little help. Instead, employers are cannibalizing one another’s farms. In 2015 the country’s largest lemon grower Limoneira raised wages to $16 per hour, boosted retirement benefits by 20% and offered subsidized housing. But now vineyards in Napa are poaching workers from growers in California’s Central Valley by paying even more.

Some restrictionists claim that cheap foreign labor is hurting low-skilled U.S. workers, but there’s little evidence for that. One Napa grower recently told the Los Angeles Times that paying even $20 an hour wasn’t enough to keep native workers on the farm.

A new paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research concludes that terminating the Bracero program, which admitted seasonal farm workers from Mexico during the 1940s and ’50s, did not raise wages of domestic workers. Meantime, a 2014 study found that Arizona’s E-Verify mandate on employers reduced “employment opportunities among some low-skilled legal workers.”

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

The Deal Trump Shouldn’t Make With Russia Trading Ukraine for Syria would legitimize Moscow’s conquest and endanger Europe’s security.By Mark Helprin

By on March 30th, 2017

The new administration may be sorely tempted to close a showy diplomatic “deal,” the origins of which are President Obama’s extraordinary policy failures in the Middle East. With American financing rather than resistance, Iran has thrown a military bridge from Afghanistan to the Mediterranean, a feat the U.S. could not equal at the height of its powers when it unsuccessfully tried to construct the Central Treaty Organization in the 1950s. Worse still, Mr. Obama’s “executive agreement” with Tehran gives it a U.S.-guaranteed path to nuclear weapons.

As Mr. Obama denuded the Mediterranean of armed American naval vessels and backed off supposed red lines, Russia re-established itself in the Middle East after having been almost completely excluded during the previous nine presidential terms. The result of such astounding American incompetence has been genocidal wars and the metaphorical transformation of the regional security situation from gunpowder into nitroglycerin.

It threatens to become even worse, in that with the presence of rival great powers, the processes at work may leap the bounds of their containment in the Middle East and unravel the long peace of Europe. Because of the March 7 meeting of the American, Russian, and Turkish military chiefs, and simultaneous Russian signals that it is ready, for a price, to abandon its support of Iran, Iran—as documented by the Middle East Media Research Institute—is in a state of “shock.” It knows that it cannot stand against the might and favorable geographic position of a combination of these forces and the proximate Sunni states. President Hassan Rouhani recently rushed to Moscow, but his meetings there were conspicuously opaque about the future of Iran in Syria.

Excluding Iranian troops and arms from Syria and Lebanon would be a major achievement, which could have been a feature of the Obama foreign policy before Russia reinforced in Syria. American, Saudi, Turkish, and Jordanian air power might easily have laid an air blockade across the 1,000 miles from Tehran to Damascus, and kept the few roads in wide-open country clear of overland supply. Needless to say, Iran would have found the sea route unavailing.

Even now, with a Russian air component in western Syria, it is unlikely that Moscow would risk breaking a blockade any more than it attempted to breach the 1962 quarantine of Cuba, for the reason that it could not then and cannot now project power into the area of contention with even a small fraction of the force that would resist it. As the Soviets did in the Cuban crisis, Russia might resort to nuclear bluffing, but it would be only that. Its interests in the Levant, which, given its lack of power projection and capable allies, it cannot exploit, would not be worth an empty threat that it would then have to withdraw.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Jews are safer in Israel’s bunkers than in French ghettos France is losing its Jews, who prefer a place where their children are free to live normal lives, where they are defended and can defend themselves. ByGiulio Meotti

By on March 29th, 2017

Abdelghani Merah, the brother of the terrorist who, five years ago, killed a little girl, a rabbi and two of his children in front of Toulouse’s Jewish school Ozar Hatorah, is busy these days with a kind of “journey” of tolerance to preach against his brother’s deeds. That massacre was the first of a long series of anti-Semitic attacks, culminating in the attack at the supermarket Hyper Kasher in Paris.

But Merah’s victims, the Jewish community, is busy with another kind of “trip”. Le Figaro newspaper reported the data on the situation in the French city. 300 Jewish families have packed and left Toulouse since the killing spree. The French newspaper speaks openly of “exile”.

300 Jewish families have packed and left Toulouse since the killing spree. The French newspaper speaks openly of “exile”.
Jean-Michel Cohen was among the first to rush to the site of the massacre, where the Muslim extremist killed Jonathan Sandler, his two sons Gabriel and Arieh, and Myriam Monsonego. “The situation has become unbearable and I was afraid for my family”, he says today from Israel. “Toulouse is the French city most affected by departures”, says Marc Fridman, vice president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in the Midi-Pyrenees. “It is a paradise for us”, says Cohen from Tel Aviv. “Here we are safe. My children walk to school. We have no concern for them. They are freer than in France”. His wife now works as educator in the city of Netanya, the “French Riviera” as it is called for its high number of immigrants from France.

Marc Fridman speaks of “a terrible sense of isolation and frustration after 2012. Only ten thousand people participated in the march for the Ozar HaTorah” school. The Jewish community of Toulouse then consisted of up to 20,000 people. Today only 10,000 Jews remain. Another bombing could be the end for one of the cradles of French Judaism.

Jérôme left the outskirts of Toulouse to settle in the suburbs of Tel Aviv with his wife and two children. “It was no longer France, where I was born. One day I asked myself what future I wanted to give to my children and I decided to go to Israel”. Despite the threat of terror attacks and the hostility of neighboring countries, Jérôme feels safer in Israel than in France. “You get used to living with sirens and shelters”.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Students Protest Charles Murray’s ‘Racism’ and ‘Classism’ at NYU They would be better served by engaging with scholarly ideas outside of their ideological bubble. By Paul Crookston

By on March 29th, 2017

Charles Murray was not met with riots when he showed up to speak at NYU last Friday, as he had been at Middlebury College a few weeks before. Still, his reception hardly served as a model for campus discourse. Security was beefed up, and his hosts, a student group affiliated with the American Enterprise Institute, had to restrict access to the event. A small crowd showed up to protest Murray’s presence — and to hurl insults at attendees and the university itself.

In response to what occurred at Middlebury, the speech’s venue was moved to an underground room in NYU’s Torch Club, and tickets had to be reserved ahead of time, angering many who had hoped to gain admission in order to protest.

The protest was an unimpressive showing. Demonstrators numbered about 20 and brandished signs with such inane slogans as “No Eugenics on Campus — Fight Fascism.” They chanted about Murray but also directed opprobrium at NYU for permitting his visit. Pairing Murray’s alleged prejudice with that of the university, a chant of “How do you spell ‘classist’? N-Y-U!” rang out as I stood waiting to get through security, and many signs accused Murray of racism. Indeed, NYU’s Faculty of Color Caucus wrote a letter indicting Murray’s talk as “hate and fear under the guise of scholarship and free speech.”

The strongest condemnation of Murray focused on his supposed view of the poor as an underclass deserving of their situation. One student, Shirish Sarkar, told me: “Charles Murray is the latest in a long line of people that have been pushing this sort of eugenics-based poverty myth, where there’s a correlation between intelligence and poverty.” The Faculty of Color Caucus summarized Murray’s book Coming Apart, on which the talk was based, as “[blaming] poor whites for their own poverty.” Those of us who listened to what Murray had to say in his talk in fact heard him sharply reprove the out-of-touch elite that had smugly abandoned the working class and poor to their fate.

As Murray entered the Torch Club through a side door, flanked by security, his talk began with shouts of “Shame! Shame! Shame!” faintly echoing from above ground, outside of the restaurant. He referred to the hullabaloo only with an opening joke that it was all wasted on a talk that will make listeners think, “That’s it?”

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