RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, one of the few openly authoritarian organizations functioning in the United States, once sued the Food and Drug Administration for refusing to regulate Americans’ salt intake. No worries: This week, the Obama administration finally embraced CSPI’s junk science and allowed the FDA to set new “guidelines” to “nudge” companies into treating a perfectly harmless ingredient as if it were a dangerous chemical.

Health and Human Services secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell explained that pressuring private companies into lowering sodium levels is “about putting power back in the hands of consumers.” Of course, consumers already have an array of bland, low-sodium choices, if they desire. But in progressive-speak, limiting people’s choices is the same as giving them power. According to our government, consumers’ having too many choices means “the deck has been stacked against them.”

The good news is that the FDA is almost always wrong about everything. The bad news is that these guidelines set an incredibly ridiculous precedent that allows our intrusive government to mislead Americans with bad advice.

But let’s concede the point for a moment and say that sodium is killing you.

If you’re one of those last starry-eyed idealists, you may ask yourself: “What governing principle empowers the Obama administration to launch crusades that ensure that every citizen is living salubriously? What principle authorizes the state to control how salty my soup is?” Life is a killer, after all. If Washington, D.C., can regulate the amount of ingredients in foods — not poisonous ingredients, or instantaneously unhealthy ingredients, or even hidden ingredients, but ingredients that the CSPI has decided to whine about — what can’t it regulate? And if salt is worthy of all this attention, why is the Obama administration allowing citizens to commit mass suicidal acts by ingesting sugar? Or dairy? Or bleached white flour? Or canola oil?

President Obama has been traveling around the country touting the robustness of the nation’s economy during his two terms. You might call it the Wishful Thinking Tour.

“From 1950 to 2000, the U.S. economy grew at an average rate of 3.5% annually,” Hoover Institution economist John Cochrane pointed out in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed. “Since 2000, it has grown at half that rate — 1.76%. Even in the years since the bottom of the great recession in 2009, which should have been a time of fast catch-up growth, the economy has only grown at 2%.”

A Wall Street Journal editorial on February 5 provides context to that slow economic growth: “The overriding problem continues to be a lack of business confidence and investment, which leads to slower growth, which gives the U.S. economy a lower margin for absorbing growth shocks from around the world.”

But the crisis in business confidence and investment is only a symptom. The underlying disease is the panoply of anti-innovation policies, actions, and attitudes of the Obama administration. Obama’s White House has been an outlier — to the high side — in the number of “economically significant” regulations (those that are expected to cost Americans $100 million or more annually) it has added. According to Daniel Pérez, of the Regulatory Studies Center at George Washington University, “As of the end of January 2016, Obama had 393, with 12 months remaining in his administration,” and the most recent of the administration’s “unified agendas,” released last November, indicated that more than 2,000 regulations are in the pipeline, of which 144 are deemed economically significant, a new record.

The regulations cut a huge swath through the American economy. They include labeling requirements for pet food, new test procedures for battery chargers, mandated paid sick leave for contractors, and speed governors for trucks, and a host of new rules that will limit energy consumption and increase the price of household appliances.

This month will mark the 49th anniversary of the Six-Day War, fought between June 5 and 10, 1967 by Israel against the neighboring states of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. It was a war intended to annihilate Israel as stated clearly by Gamal Abdul Nasser in 1965: “We shall not enter Palestine with its soil covered in sand; we shall enter it with its soil saturated in blood.” His threats were echoed by then Syrian Minister of Defense Hafez al Assad who was to become Syria’s President: “Our forces are now entirely ready not only to repulse the aggression, but to initiate the act of liberation itself, and to explode the Zionist presence in the Arab homeland. The Syrian army, with its finger on the trigger, is united. As a military man, I believe that the time has come to enter into a battle of annihilation.”

In their jihadist agenda they received the blessings of the entire Arab world. President Abdur Rahman Aref of Iraq exulted: “The existence of Israel is an error which must be rectified. This is our opportunity to wipe out the ignominy which has been with us since 1948. Our goal is clear — to wipe Israel off the map.”

King Hussein of Jordan, the pluckier papa of the present King Abdullah, was repeatedly asked by Israel’s leaders to stay out of the war, but anxious to shore up his standing in the Arab League he signed a defense pact with Egypt and joined the war against Israel. As a result, he lost control of the West Bank and Jerusalem.

The rest is history. Israel won a decisive victory, inspiring pride and confidence in Diaspora Jews, respect and admiration from military and defense experts throughout the world, and resolve among dissidents in the Soviet Union who organized a powerful army of “refuseniks.”

The 1967 war was won in battle but lost in the war of words. Israel’s media and leaders immediately referred to Judea and Samaria as “occupied territory,” and its Arab inhabitants as “Palestinians.”

After defeat, the Arabs and their protagonists replaced the emphasis on refugees with a myth of victimization under “occupation” by Israel. The media, academics, and politicians bought into the lies and “occupation” is now the buzzword for the morally degenerate boycott and divest movements ostensibly seeking “justice” for the Palestinian Arabs.

In fact, the West Bank and East Jerusalem were under illegal occupation from 1949 until 1967. Jordan’s rule was recognized only by Pakistan and England. In further contravention of international law which decreed that Jerusalem would be an open city, the Arabs trashed Jewish shrines, forbade access to Jews and limited access to Christian churches and shrines. Arabs built settlements throughout the area, but they made sure that the “refugee camps” were maintained in squalor as poster boys for anti-Israel propaganda.

There was no outcry about this illegal occupation, not even from the Palestine Liberation Organization which was formed in 1963 out of an alphabet soup of splinter terrorist groups who all adhered to one main principle of the Palestine National Charter, namely, the destruction of Israel, every inch of which was considered then and now as “occupied.”

The “occupied” Arabs of the West Bank enjoy basic freedoms unavailable to them in any Arab nations.

They might do well to consider some of the “justice” perpetrated on the Arabs by other Arabs.

Widely known as “the skeptical environmentalist,” Danish scientist Bjorn Lomborg has been vilified for his views on climate change. In this documentary, a companion to his book of the same name, Lomborg expounds on his opinion that the earth is not facing an imminent environmental catastrophe, contrary to the prevailing opinion of the scientific community. The filmmakers follow him as he travels the planet sharing his views in a series of interviews and lectures.

Cool It is a groundbreaking book that transformed the debate about global warming by offering a fresh perspective based on human needs as well as environmental concerns. Sundance ward winning director Ondi Timoner filmed a documentary with the same name based on the book and following Bjorn Lomborg for almost a year.

Conservative social commentator and Breitbart technology editor Milo Yiannopoulos is waging an epic battle against the insidious attack on free speech that is occurring across college campuses throughout the United States. The latest spectacle occurred at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), that bastion of a particular brand of progressive fascism characteristic of the new Left. This past week, UCLA’s College Republicans invited Yiannopoulos to give a talk on campus, one of many stops on Yiannopoulos’ “Dangerous Faggot Tour,” which has taken direct aim at university totalitarianism. Yiannopoulos, who is gay, is no stranger to controversy, espousing views that some regard as anti-feminist. This has made him a target of the radical Left, and particularly, of radical feminists who view him as one of their chief antagonists.

When students and the guest speaker arrived at the Broad Art Building where the Yiannopoulos event was to be held, they were greeted by protestors holding pro-feminist signs who physically blocked the entranceway. Campus police were dispatched and ushered guests in through alternative backdoor entrances, but the feminists caught wind of it and attempted to block these entrances as well, causing fights to break out. Once inside, Yiannopoulos’s address was interrupted by radicals who were ultimately removed by police. The event was further marred by anonymous bomb threats forcing police to evacuate the building.

One of the anti-Yiannopoulos protestors, who affixed black duct tape over her mouth, held a sign that read, “When you use your ‘First Amendment Right’ to spread hate and exclusion, you are silencing people and communities, not promoting ‘freedom of speech.’” That sentiment is typical of the mindset of the radical Left who believe that the concept of freedom of speech extends only to speech vetted for use in “safe spaces.” The radical Left has adopted techniques employed by assorted despots and autocrats to silence speech that they disapprove of.

The above incident is not unique and is occurring with alarming frequency. What is even more disconcerting is that on some occasions, student protestors and faculty members are working in tandem to disrupt scheduled events. Perhaps most troubling is that police who are dispatched to the area are often instructed to do nothing resulting in the event’s complete shutdown, thus making the university complicit in the suppression of free speech.

The Obama administration is rapidly accelerating its admission and resettlement of Syrian refugees. The administration is well on its way to meeting its target of taking 10,000 Syrians into the country by the end of the current fiscal year on September 30th. In the first five months of 2016, 2,099 Syrian refugees have been admitted, compared with 2,192 for the whole of 2015, according to a report by CNS News. However, only a very tiny percentage are Christians, a beleaguered minority who are facing genocide in their home country. The Obama administration is immorally discriminating against Christian Syrian refugees.

“Out of the 2,099 Syrian refugees admitted so far this year, six (0.28 percent) are Christians,” CNS reported. Ten (0.3 percent) are Yazidis. Over 99 percent are Muslims. And the trend line is worsening as the year progresses. Last month, only two Christians (0.19 percent) were admitted compared to 1,035 Muslims.

Christians are estimated to have made up approximately ten percent of the total Syrian population at the outset of the conflict in Syria, according to the CIA Factbook. As Christians have come under attack by both the regime and jihadist groups, including ISIS, the Christian population in Syria has declined.

Patrick Sookhdeo, the founder and international director of the charity group the Barnabas Fund, which has worked to rescue Syrian Christians, said: “In Aleppo, to give you one illustration, there used to be 400,000 Christians four years ago. Today there may be between 45,000 and 65,000.”

Yet, according to data compiled by the U.S. State Department Refugee Processing Center, only 47 Syrian Christians have been admitted to the United States in all that time – slightly over 1 percent of the total number of Syrian refugees admitted. The current rate of Christian admissions is running far below even that miniscule level.

The UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines the crime of genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.”

PARIS—World powers gathered in Paris on Friday to kick off a French initiative to push the Israelis and Palestinians to restart peace talks, after a monthslong surge of violence that has left Western officials fearing the two sides are heading toward another full-scale conflict.

Amid severely strained relations between the two sides, the French have set a modest goal for the diplomats from 26 nations, including U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who are attending the meeting: an agreement to hold a peace conference near the end of the year, with the Israelis and Palestinians present.

French officials are hoping diplomats can approve steps to prepare for the conference but acknowledge that any substantive peace negotiations are far off.

“We can’t substitute ourselves for the concerned parties,” French President François Hollande said at the start of the meeting. “We can only give guarantees that the peace will be solid, durable and internationally controlled.”

Some 30 Israeli civilians and soldiers have been killed in more than 300 Palestinian attacks since September. Palestinian officials say more than 200 Palestinians, mostly alleged attackers, have been killed by Israeli security forces during the same period.

The violence has subsided in the past two months, with Palestinians carrying out fewer than a dozen attacks or attempted attacks since April, compared with almost daily assaults until then. Tensions still linger, however.

Given the bleak mood, officials question whether either side can be persuaded to return to the negotiating table.

“We know the path is difficult,” a French official said.

The nations represented at the conference include Egypt, China, Russia, Germany, the U.K. and Saudi Arabia. The meeting was originally scheduled for May 30 but pushed back to June 3 so Mr. Kerry could attend. CONTINUE AT SITE

My friend Rich, the Chicago scribe, sends out a batch of informative e-mails on a variety of issues. This week he focused on education. The funniest is first in this list:

Santa Monica college students have a wedding ceremony as they marry the ocean. Who served as best wave? How will community property be divided in the event of a divorce? Naturally, faculty members are organizing this.
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2016/05/26/insane-santa-monica-college-students-married-the-oceanand-got-intimate-with-it-n2169501?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=

The leftist pollution of the American mind does not begin in college, but earlier. California is about to adopt a new history curriculum for grades K-12. As the largest state, new textbooks designed for California will be adopted elsewhere, and the curriculum itself, in textbooks or not will also be transported outside the state.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/06/california-poised-to-adopt-ultra-leftist-k-12-history-curriculum.php

It is almost impossible to overstate the sickness that is now prevalent at American universities, especially elite schools , the ones for which parents and kids will do near anything in order to gain admission.
Yale : Students demand the right to determine what material they will learn in individual courses- no more colonialist dead white male poets
http://hotair.com/archives/2016/06/01/decolonize-yale-students-circulate-petition-opposing-white-male-major-english-poets-requirement/?utm_source=hadaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl

Free speech is risky at Yale: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/the-peril-of-writing-a-provocative-email-at-yale/484418/

Dartmouth: The gutless president whiffs, and there are no penalties for black students who invaded the library one night, disrupting those who were studying for finals,shouted racist epithets at them, taunted them, and physically threatened others. Now imagine the reverse, where white students shrieking white lives matter invades a library full of black students on a saturday night. This is of course an absurd thing to imagine, but try it out. Had the same events gone down with the races switched ,how many of the white students, all easily identifiable from the videos taken, would still be in school?
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2016/06/dartmouth-and-double-standards.php

Oberlin- the school where social justice warriors come to graze:
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/oberlin-is-an-insane-asylum/
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/05/30/the-new-activism-of-liberal-arts-colleges

Beaten down by decades of moral-equivalency abuse, Israelis treated the case of the gorilla killed at the Cincinnati Zoo this week as they do any debate surrounding the legitimacy of ‎firing a weapon.‎

With an IDF soldier on trial for shooting a subdued Palestinian terrorist to death — and a brouhaha that ‎attracted international attention while causing domestic angst — the issue of whether an ape suffered ‎a wrongful death pales in comparison.‎

This is not to say that the Hebrew-speaking media did not consider the case of Harambe the gorilla ‎worthy of coverage. On the contrary, the item captivated Israeli news outlets as much as it did others.‎

But what was absent in the discussion in the studios of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem was the vitriol ‎against the zookeepers in Ohio, who had been faced with a painful choice that had to be made in ‎unfortunate circumstances. When a 3-year-old boy fell into the enclosure of a 420-pound ape — ‎and was swung and dragged every which way, into and around water — the life of one was suddenly ‎thrust into the balance against that of the other.‎

What made the event particularly tragic for all concerned was that the gorilla did not appear to be ‎attacking the toddler with purposeful aggression; in fact, he seemed confused about what to do, and ‎had he been female, the whole episode might have turned out differently. But his immense strength, ‎grip and erratic movements could have killed the child, even inadvertently. Anyone watching the video ‎of the events can see this clearly. Indeed, the little boy is unlikely to have survived even minutes ‎more in the clutches of the 17-year-old silverback.‎

Furthermore, according to the zoo, shooting the gorilla with a sedative dart would first ‎have agitated him and would have taken time to take effect, and therefore was not an option. So the only ‎recourse was to rescue the boy at the expense of the ape. ‎

Animal-rights activists and many other Americans responded to this life-saving gesture as though it ‎was an act of first-degree slaughter. Indeed, “murder” was the word bandied about on social media — ‎aimed both at the zoo and at the child’s mother, who was accused of being at fault for not preventing ‎her son from climbing the fence of the enclosure and falling in. The harsh criticism culminated in a ‎Change.org petition titled “Justice for Harambe,” which has garnered hundreds of thousands of ‎signatures. ‎

TO CONTRIBUTE GO HERE: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/contribute.php

On Tuesday, the European Union (EU) announced a new online speech code to be enforced by four major tech companies, including Facebook and YouTube.

On Wednesday, Facebook deleted the account of Ingrid Carlqvist, Gatestone’s Swedish expert.

It’s no coincidence.

Ingrid had posted our latest video to her Facebook feed — called “Sweden’s Migrant Rape Epidemic.” As you can see, Ingrid calmly lays out the facts and statistics, all of which are meticulously researched.

It’s a video version of this research paper that Gatestone published last year. The video has gone viral — racking up more than 80,000 views in its first two days.

But the EU is quite candid: it is applying a political lens to their censorship, and it now has teams of political informants — with the Orwellian title of “trusted reporters” — to report any cases of “xenophobia” or “hate speech” to Facebook for immediate deletion.

It’s political censorship. It’s outrageous. And it’s contrary to our western values of free speech, political freedom and the separation of mosque and state. But in another way, it’s a tremendous compliment — the world’s censors think that Gatestone Institute’s work is important enough and persuasive enough that it needs to be silenced.

Well, not if we have anything to say about it. We raised such a ruckus about this attack that the Swedish media started reporting on Facebook’s heavy-handed censorship. It backfired, and Facebook went into damage-control mode. They put Ingrid’s account back up — without any explanation or apology. Ironically, their censorship only gave Ingrid’s video more attention.

Facebook and the EU have backed down — for today. But they’re deadly serious about stopping ideas they don’t like. They’ll be back.

As you know, just last week we started releasing high-quality original videos, hosted by our Gatestone experts. Our first four videos have already been watched by more than 150,000 people!

It’s a great way to make our research come alive — and as Ingrid’s viral video shows, to get our ideas noticed.

So I want Gatestone’s talented experts to make more videos — a lot more! We need to win the battle of ideas. Can you help?

Each video costs us approximately $500 to produce. But as Facebook’s attack on us shows, they’re worth every penny.

Will you help us do that?