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Turkey’s New Mosque a Monument to Western Decline We may think we’re exhibiting high-minded principles, but our enemies know the score. Bruce Thornton

Posted By on July 13th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/turkeys-new-mosque-monument-western-decline-bruce-thornton/

Last week Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced that on July 24 Hagia Sophia, for a thousand years one of Christendom’s most storied and significant churches, will once again become a mosque. So far, the remnant of established Christianity has been silent. But this affront to the faith that is one of the pillars upon which the West was founded reveals how damaging has been the historical amnesia and appeasing double-standards that have compromised our response to the challenge of Islamic jihadism.

Until recently Turkey had been a poster-boy for the dubious globalist consensus that liberal democracy and free-market capitalism are the destiny of all humanity, including Muslims. In 1923 founder Kemal Atatürk created Turkey to be a modern Western nation-state, with religion separated from the secular government. He abolished the caliphate, closed Islamic courts, gave women equal rights in divorce and inheritance, allowed them to vote, restricted sharia to religion, and secularized education for females as well as males. In 1934 Hagia Sophia was turned into a museum, part of Atatürk’s program to recognize Turkey’s pre-Muslim history and strengthen Turkey’s modern global identity and prestige.

But over the years it took the military to maintain this modernizing, secular program in the face of the more traditional and conservative Muslim masses and their discontent. Starting as mayor of Istanbul in 1994, Erdoğan became their champion, and as president has abandoned Atatürk’s democratic, secular program: He has jailed more journalists than any other country, and built 17,000 new mosques. Nearly a century of efforts to reconcile Islam with liberal democracy are failing under Erdoğan’s incremental Islamization. Turning Hagia Sophia back into a mosque is an important sign of his success, and a gesture of defiance of the “rules-based international order.”

MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

Hollywood is falling victim to its relentless virtue signaling By Andrea Widburg

Posted By on July 13th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/07/hollywood_is_falling_victim_to_its_relentless_virtue_signaling.html

During the 1930s and 1940s, there were many genuine communists, as well as fellow travelers, working in Hollywood. Once the Cold War began, Hollywood turned against those people and instituted its blacklist, which made it impossible for anyone with communist sympathies to work openly in Hollywood.

Of late, the further left you lean in Hollywood, the more you are to be applauded. That’s why it’s incredibly ironic to realize that Hollywood is once again blacklisting people – only this time, blacklisting means that the only people listed for employment have to be black.

That at least is the story that Caroline Graham tells in the Daily Mail. According to Graham, the message has gone out in Hollywood that, if you want to work, you had better not be white:

A revolution is under way. White actors are being fired. Edicts from studio bosses make it clear that only minorities – racial and sexual – can be given jobs.

A new wave of what has been termed by some as anti-white prejudice is causing writers, directors and producers to fear they will never work again. One described the current atmosphere as ‘more toxic than Chernobyl’, with leading actors afraid to speak out amid concern they will be labelled racist.

The first sign came with one of the most powerful black directors in Hollywood, Oscar-winning Jordan Peele – the man behind box office hits such as Get Out and Us – stated in public that he did not want to hire a leading man who was white. 

‘I don’t see myself casting a white dude as the lead in my movie,’ Peele said. ‘Not that I don’t like white dudes. But I’ve seen that movie before.’

As one studio executive responded privately: ‘If a white director said that about hiring a black actor, their career would be over in a heartbeat.’ Few doubt it.

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No more pandemic panic, please By Jeffrey I. Barke, M.D. *******

Posted By on July 13th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/07/no_more_pandemic_panic_please.html

As expected by most observers, the number of cases of Covid-19 continues to increase across the country. There are primarily three reason for the spike in cases:

More testing is being performed
People are moving about as the economy opens up
Massive protests and riots across the country

The next statistic that will be used to frighten the American people will be the increase in hospitalizations that will follow the expanded number of cases. Days or weeks after hospitalizations grow in number, even more deaths are likely to arise.

What will not be reported in the gloomy news roundups is the fact that we now have effective treatments for Covid-19. More appalling, many doctors and hospital systems are refusing to use these effective therapeutics.

Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, a New York family medicine physician, has pioneered a treatment strategy that works well but is still shunned by most of the medical profession and ignored by the mainstream news media. Dr. Zelenko said this on The Dennis Prager radio show of July 10, 2020:

I don’t care what ‘they’ say anymore, I would rather speak directly to the American people and tell them I have some very good news for [them].  We have an answer to the terrible infection, we have a very effective way of treating it. In the high risk groups there is a 99.3% survival [rate] and a 84% reduction in hospitalizations. There is also a 100% survival rate in low risk patients when [our] treatment is started in the first 5 days [of the onset of] an infection.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Good Riddance to the World Health Organization by Gordon G. Chang

Posted By on July 13th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16223/good-riddance-who

China was malicious, and there is plenty of evidence of planning.

“Whether WHO can reform effectively is directly tied to the accountability issue,” wrote Dr. Xiaoxu Sean Lin, former lab director of the viral disease branch of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, to Gatestone. The structure of the organization defeats accountability he argues, because its leaders report to many member states and therefore to no one. As a result, unacceptable conduct goes unpunished.

To make matters worse, the WHO is a UN body, and the UN is composed of some of the world’s most malign actors. Accountability in such an organization is extremely unlikely as long as China, for instance, is considered a legitimate participant in issues of global concern, such as public health.

America should have forced a review of the WHO years ago, but the religion of multilateralism dies hard. We can be sure that the forces of “one worldism” will be working with Director-General Tedros to keep the U.S. in his organization.

No, President Trump, abandoning a dangerous organization, is giving the world a chance to succeed and save lives.

A tearful Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Thursday pleaded for international cooperation in the fight against the coronavirus. “The COVID-19 pandemic is a test of global solidarity and global leadership,” said the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO). “The virus thrives on division, but is thwarted when we unite.”

At the same time, Tedros publicly thanked Helen Clark, former prime minister of New Zealand, and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, former president Liberia, for agreeing to serve as co-chairs of the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response.

It is no surprise the embattled Tedros has been active in recent days. He has, after all, begun what is a long-term campaign to keep his organization going. The Trump administration gave formal notice to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday that the United States was withdrawing from the WHO. The withdrawal is scheduled to take effect July 6, 2021.

The withdrawal may never happen, however: Tedros is not the only party mobilizing to prevent the WHO’s biggest contributor from leaving. Joe Biden, sitting on a long lead in the polls, tweeted he will reverse the withdrawal “on my first day as President.”

Nonetheless, President Donald J. Trump’s decisive action was justified, furthering the interests of both America and the global community.

Why? The WHO was complicit with China in the spread of the coronavirus around the world and is not capable of meaningful reform.

P.C.-CULTURE, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Now the army of overgrown babies who say everyone must think like them are invading our bedrooms Douglas Murray

Posted By on July 13th, 2020

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8513779/DOUG

Do you believe in thought crime? In picking people off, one by one, till everybody agrees with just a single point of view? Each week, we see this world come a little closer.

Many of the victims are famous. But people who are not remotely well known are writing to me every week to say that they, too, now fear for their livelihoods.

Still more are keeping their heads down, fearing what will happen if they dare to speak out against the dogmas of the time and the new totalitarians who promote them.

Killing Eve actress Jodie Comer is pictured with new boyfriend James Burke. Mr Burke is alleged to be a registered Republican and a Donald Trump supporter. Cue an internet meltdown and a demand by activists that Comer be prevented from working again. It’s ludicrous 

There’s been a steadily rising tide of conformity in recent years. Increasingly, we have been told what we are allowed to say, hear, see and know.

Swarming over the internet, the Left-wing mob is waging a campaign to silence dissenting voices and get free-thinking people removed from their jobs. And they have succeeded. Now the wokerati want to enter the bedroom and say who we may sleep with, too.

Take last week’s attempt to ‘cancel’ the Killing Eve actress Jodie Comer. Her crime? Nothing she has said or thought. 

Instead, the online trolls had been enraged to discovered who she is dating. The supposed culprit is an American lacrosse player called James Burke. 

POLITICS Comments turned off

Trump Needs to Scale the Real Wall of 2020 By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on July 13th, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/07/12/trump-needs-to-scale-the-real-wall-of-2020/

The president should emphasize not just the efficacy of his administration but its effects on real people. Focus on “Restoration 2021.”

Donald Trump is trying to break through a 2020 wall. 

By January 2019, after over three years of failed efforts to impeach him, sue him, indict him, impoverish him, and destroy him, the Left had failed. The economy was booming. Trump’s tweets were mostly bragging about his accomplishments. And the Left was dumbfounded that both impeachment and Mueller, in Nietzschean fashion, had only made Trump stronger.

Then came an unexpected trifecta catastrophe—plague, a quarantine-induced recession, and a leftist cultural revolution in the streets. Suddenly, the Left saw all of that as a gift that might succeed where its own self-constructed melodramas had failed.

By late May, Trump’s polls had dived. 

His enemies declared this time he was really, actually, truly finished. NeverTrumpers hit the media to boast they were finally redeemed. 

The discredited pollsters of 2016 reemerged, this time even convincing once-burned, never-again Las Vegas bookies that Trump was toast. Leftists, depressed over the progressive implosion in the Democratic primaries, now rebranded Joe Biden as a useful septuagenarian. He could carry them to victory before being pushed aside. 

Biden was put on ice, a virtual prisoner of the Democratic establishment, who gave him teleprompted messages and pre-canned interviews to stumble through on Skype. “Keep silent, keep hidden,” was the motto of Biden’s keepers.

Trump railed. He fumed. As a furious Achilles, he tweeted about the unfairness of it all—how he had defeated concocted attacks, but suddenly a virus from his nemesis China had unleashed sheer madness, with him as its target.

To get back on track, Trump almost alone became the defender of tradition under assault, of security, and safety. He deplored the statue toppling, the madness of cancel culture, the racial obsessions of the Black Lives Matter/Antifa cultural revolution. He praised America’s goodness and reminded the country it was good without having to be perfect. And still, the Left hobbled him. 

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Iran blames Ukrainian jetliner shootdown on miscommunication, misaligned missile battery The plane, en route to Kyiv, was carrying 167 passengers and nine crew members from several countries. Bradford Betz

Posted By on July 13th, 2020

https://www.foxnews.com/world/iran-ukrainian-jetliner-shootdown-miscommunication-alignment

A report released Saturday by Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization blames the shootdown of a Ukrainian jetliner on a misaligned missile battery and miscommunication between troops and their commanders.

The report comes months after the Jan. 8 crash near Tehran that killed all 176 people on board. Authorities had initially denied responsibility but changed course days later after Western nations presented extensive evidence that Iran had shot down the plane.

The report signals a new phase in the investigation into the crash, as the aircraft’s black box flight recorder is due to be sent to Paris, where international investigators will finally be able to examine it. It also comes as public opinion remains low over Iran’s government as it faces both crushing U.S. sanctions and vast domestic economic problems.

The shootdown happened the same night Iran launched a ballistic missile attack targeting U.S. soldiers in Iraq, its response to the American drone strike that killed Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad on Jan. 3.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Democrats Let The Vandals In The Gate And Joined Them Ernest S. Christian

Posted By on July 13th, 2020

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/06/13/democrats-let-the-vandals-in-the-gate-and-joined-them/

There is today an air of illegitimacy and political thuggishness about the increasingly illiberal Democrats who seem bent on destroying both logic and the evenhanded rule of law.  Democrats erase facts, cancel people, proscribe and punish unwanted thought and speech. They discriminate on the basis of race and gender, taking away and giving to the favored the jobs, money and property of the disfavored. Hypocrisy sets the standard and Jacobin-like terror enforces it.

A radicalized Democratic Party is no more a normal political party benignly participating in the American electoral system than communist China is a normal nation participating in international trade and diplomacy in a benign and above-board manner.

It is easy to see the onrushing menace, but in America today, with constitutional protections and ordinary human decency already being swept aside by powerful Democrat forces in the Congress, in the media and in the streets, it is dangerous to sound the alarm and make oneself a target for retribution.

Avert your eyes, bend your knee and remain silent or suffer the consequences!

First, the evildoers came for President Trump with false charges and illegitimate prosecutions; then they illegitimately came for Judge Kavanaugh, General Flynn and others; soon, if they win or steal the election, a jackbooted squad of political sociopaths will come for all dissident Americans who refuse to knuckle under and be dehumanized by authoritarian Democrats.

HISTORY Comments turned off

Never Forget: Republicans Ended Democrat-Backed Slavery And Segregation Lewis K. Uhler and Peter J. Ferrara

Posted By on July 13th, 2020

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/07/13/never-forget-republicans-ended-democrat-backed-slavery-and-segregation/

Black Lives Matter and Antifa are not organizations of “protestors” seeking justice for Black people. They are defacing and seeking to overturn monuments to the very historical leaders who fought and ended slavery, former U.S. Presidents Abraham Lincoln and General Ulysses S. Grant.

The Republican Party was formed in 1854 to abolish slavery. By the 1850s, Lincoln  was a rising leader of the National Abolitionist movement, and the new Republican Party.

In 1858, Lincoln challenged the re-election of Illinois Democrat Senator Stephen Douglas, spawning the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates.  Douglas argued for “popular sovereignty”, with each new state to decide the issue of slavery by popular vote.  Lincoln argued against this expansion of slavery, proclaiming “all men are created equal” as set forth in our Declaration of Independence.

Douglas won the election, but Lincoln won the debate. In 1860, Lincoln ran for president, nominated by the anti-slavery Republicans, winning in a four-way race.  Even before his inauguration, Democrat southern states began to secede from the Union, creating the Confederate States of America.

War began in April 1861, when Confederate artillery fired on the U.S. Army at Fort Sumter, South Carolina.  The Civil War involved southern Democrats shooting and killing northern Republicans, and visa versa, a much more partisan affair than currently recognized and remembered.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Are We In The First Days Of A Lawless Era?

Posted By on July 13th, 2020

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/07/13/are-we-in-the-first-days-of-a-lawless-era/

Civilized people don’t behave in this way. When some portion of a society goes beyond the law, the larger portion has historically made the course correction. Today, it’s a far smaller segment than it has been in the past.

A nation founded on the rule of law appears to be yielding to the rule of the mob. Not everyone has surrendered. The trend, though, is worrisome. Too many of our “leaders” and institutions are failing us.

In 2020, law enforcement officers in this country are being treated not just with disrespect but in many instances are being abused verbally and physically. Rioters and looters are going unpunished, not because they can’t be identified or the cases against them are weak but because prosecutors (several of them backed by George Soros) refuse to uphold the law and charge the offenders. Violent gangs have been allowed, almost encouraged, to take over city streets, sidewalks, and private property; shut down the free movement of others; and topple public monuments.

Civilized people don’t behave in this way. When some portion of a society goes beyond the law, the larger portion has historically made the course correction. Today, it’s a far smaller segment than it has been in the past.

Right here we’re going to say something that might seem over the line. We believe that “the mobs of tearful, angry students,” as the Washington Post put it, who raged after the 2016 election, the current convulsion of violence, as well all the unrest in between, wouldn’t have occurred if Hillary Clinton was president. What we’re seeing is an extended tantrum over the Trump election.