RUTHFULLY YOURS

Dr. Carol Swain was born in segregated Virginia. The second of twelve children, she grew up sharing a bed with her sisters in a shack that had no running water. Her family was so poor that she had no shoes and had to stay home from school when the weather was bad. She never did make it to high school.

And now 1,400 leftist fascists have signed a petition to Vanderbilt University demanding that one of the most respected African-American scholars in this country take diversity training or be “terminated.”

The petition to force a conservative black woman to undergo diversity training comes from Nick Goldbach, a white hipster student and self-described “urban enthusiast” who claims that working as a waiter at a “sustainable” luxury urban resort in Connecticut taught him about “common humanity.”

Nick cares about “civil rights and social action,” “chic and unassuming” dining experiences and getting a black woman whose writings about race and racism were cited by Supreme Court justices fired.

And once that’s done, Nick and a few of his closest social justice warrior pals can celebrate with another “chic and unassuming” dining experience. Dr. Swain had worked her way up from a GED to a PhD by taking a job at McDonald’s where the dining experiences are unassuming, if not especially chic.

A federal judge has refused to stop Texas from withholding the birth certificates of children born in the U.S. to mothers who are illegal immigrants. But he has also called for a full court hearing to determine if the civil rights of these newest U.S. citizens are being violated by the policy.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton called U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman’s ruling that the Texas Department of State Health Services can continue denying birth certificates to “undocumented” immigrant families’ U.S.-born babies if their identification doesn’t meet Texas standards “an important first step in ensuring the integrity of birth certificates and personal identity information.”

“Before issuing any official documents, it’s important for the state to have a way to accurately verify people are who they say they are through reliable identification mechanisms,” Paxton said in a statement his office released following Judge Pitman’s ruling.

The Texas Department of State Health Services refuses to recognize some forms of identification offered by illegal-immigrant families including the identification cards known as “matriculas consulares” that are issued by Mexican consulates.

Today’s undergraduates probably know little, if anything, about the cataclysmic movement in China known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. It began in 1966 before all of them (and even a great number of their professors) were born. This massive national crusade, instigated by Chairman Mao Zedong, was intended to create a pure communist man and woman, devoid of the constraints of materialism and personal ambition.

It started with the closing of the schools and the re-education of intellectuals and the bourgeoisie and ended up with years of incredible violence, taking millions of lives. The actual statistics are still a state secret, but a recent biography of Mao states “at least 3 million people died violent deaths and post-Mao leaders acknowledged that 100 million people, one-ninth of the entire population, suffered in one way or another.”

Boris Johnson got himself disinvited from several events in the West Bank this week. More’s the pity in a region that needs the sort of truth-telling with which the London mayor caused such a stir.

On a visit meant to boost trade ties with Britain, Mr. Johnson sought to reassure Israelis that the long-running boycott, divest and sanction movement against Israel in the West is not a majority position:

“I cannot think of anything more foolish than to say that you want to have any kind of divestment, sanctions or boycott against a country that, when all is said or done, is the only democracy in the region, is the only place that has in my view a pluralist, open society. Why boycott Israel?”

“And by the way,” he continued, “I think there’s some misunderstanding over here [in Israel] about it. The supporters of this so-called boycott are really just a bunch of corduroy-jacketed . . . lefty academics who have no real standing in the matter and I think are highly unlikely to be influential on Britain.”

This was too much for the Palestinian charities that pulled the plug on meetings with him later in the week. The Sharek Youth Forum canceled Mr. Johnson’s visit, describing his remarks as an “inaccurate, misinformed, and disrespectful statement” that “fails to acknowledge our very existence as Palestinians,” according to the Independent newspaper. Several other sessions were dropped as well.

Following the forced resignations of the President and Provost of the University of Missouri, demonstrations against campus administrators has spread across the country. Students — many of whom are Black, gay, transgender and Muslim — claim that they feel “unsafe” as the result of what they call “white privilege” or sometimes simply privilege. “Check your privilege” has become the put-down du jour. Students insist on being protected by campus administrators from “micro-aggressions,” meaning unintended statements inside and outside the classroom that demonstrate subtle insensitivities towards minority students. They insist on being safe from hostile or politically incorrect ideas. They demand “trigger warnings” before sensitive issues are discussed or assigned. They want to own the narrative and keep other points of view from upsetting them or making them feel unsafe.

Someone has to ask the question: is it ignorance or is it malevolence?

The U.S. State Department justifies hiding behind a claim that a new European effort at ethnic labeling for Israel is something other than an effort to force the Jewish State to capitulate to the world’s demand it welcome yet another neighbor Arab state committed to her end. And to claim that this latest European effort is merely a new consumer information initiative? Really?

You decide.

In the lead up to the announcement by the European Union that it would require ethnic labeling of Israeli goods made or produced beyond the so-called “Green Line,” reporters repeatedly peppered spokespeople for the U.S. government regarding the position it would take on this EU effort.

As of Tuesday, at the daily press briefing, spokesperson Mark C. Toner was completely unprepared to respond to questions about the government’s position. Instead, Toner repeatedly responded that yes, the U.S. is completely opposed to the “settlements” – Jewish communities situated in Judea and Samaria, the historic heartland of the Jewish people – but also, yes, the U.S. is opposed to boycotts.

The Germans are angry with the Greeks for retiring at age 50 and counting on Germans to keep working until they are 65 so as to have enough cash to lend to Greece. The French are angry with the Germans for demanding such harsh and humiliating terms from the Greeks in return for a few billion more euros. The Greeks are angry with the Germans for once again in effect telling them how to levy taxes and to organize their economy. Italy is angry with every other EU country for refusing to relieve it of the flood of refugees fleeing Africa. Britain is angry with the entire EU for denying it the right to control its borders and snatching from it large portions of its sovereignty. There’s more, lots more. But on one thing they all, or almost all, agree: products made in “occupied Palestinian land” must be labeled as such, rather than as “made in Israel.” Nothing to do with any anti-Israel attitude, of course. And horrors at the thought that the rule might have anything to do with anti-Semitism. Merely a clarification of existing rules, which are along the lines of those already issued by Denmark, Belgium and Britain—yes, Britain, home of the Balfour Declaration, but that was long before the Muslim population soared and academics began their drumbeat of criticism of Israel.

It’s official: the European Union will be sending out guidelines [1] to all 28 of its member states on how to label settlement products from Israel.

The move has been in the works for a while. In September the European Parliament voted 525-70 in favor of it. Israeli settlement products have been excluded from EU trade preferences since 2004.

This latest move, though, is something new.

Once it comes into effect, shoppers in any EU supermarket will see certain products labeled “Made in the West Bank” (Israeli settlement) or “Made in the Golan” (Israeli settlement).

They won’t see such labels on products from any other of the world’s 200 territories that are under dispute. Not, for example, Turkish products from Northern Cyprus. Not Chinese products from Tibet.

In some strange way, in a continent that has a long, unlovely history of subjecting Jews to boycotts and badges, it is only products from the Jewish state that are going to be specially marked.

Israel and some American allies have been urging the EU not to go through with the labeling. Their seemingly irrefutable arguments fall on deaf European ears.

A bipartisan letter signed by 36 senators [2], led by Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), stated:

As allies, elected representatives of the American people, and strong supporters of Israel, we urge you not to implement this labeling policy, which appears intended to discourage Europeans from purchasing these products and promote a de facto boycott of Israel, a key ally and the only true democracy in the Middle East.

Very soon, Malcolm Turnbull will jet off to Paris with the taxpayers’ chequebook and a store of telegenic sound bytes hailing Australia’s generosity in ameliorating the injustice of climate change’s impact on the Third World. Thieves, rorters, scam artists and assorted corruptocrats will cheer lustily
Ever used a dodgy builder? Then thank your lucky stars you’re not a granny cyclone victim in Bangladesh, with people from the government arriving to help. The money to build her a new house is provided by a climate-adaptation fund, but all she gets is a roof and floor but no walls. The structure then begins collapsing within two months.

The Paris climate talks next month are partly about creating a $US100b-a-year climate fund to help the Third World adjust to hypothesized global warming. In a bit of political theatre (we taxpayers bought her tickets), Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop last December pledged $200m to this fund, rhapsodizing about “investment, infrastructure, energy, forestry and emissions reductions.” [i] The Climate Fund is now taking heat for corruption and non-transparency. Newsweek, although a fervently warmist journal, ran a piece to that effect a few days ago.

An inkling of how such money actually gets spent comes from our Bangladesh example. Transparency International Bangladesh audited a $A4.5m project financed by a climate-change trust fund administered by the Bangladeshi government. It also tried to audit a sister-fund provided by aid donors, but couldn’t find enough documentation to even start the audit! One of its trenchant recommendations was to “mete out exemplary punishments to corrupt individuals.”

On November 5, 2015 the United States Department of Justice issued a press release, “Four Men Charged with Providing Material Support to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.” The Indictment that charged these individuals with their crimes was filed on September 30, 2015 and unsealed on November 5, 2015.

While most people reading the headline would think of this as purely a disturbing story about terrorism, in reality it is at least as much a story about immigration — not illegal immigration, but the legal side of the immigration system. Serious failures are endemic to the immigration system, but are seldom, if ever, reported on in the media or discussed by our political leaders. They were, however, reported in detail by the 9/11 Commission.