ISRAEL Comments turned off

Epitome Of Hypocrisy: The Israeli Goose & The Russian Gander by Gerald A. Honigman

Posted By on July 5th, 2020

So, it appears that the Russians–whose country is the largest in the world, even after the breakup of much of the former Soviet Union–have joined the international chorus of hypocrites assailing Israel. To create their enormous nation, numerous non-Russian peoples were conquered and had their lands annexed in the name of Russian national security.

Covering an area of almost seven million square miles, Russia includes nine different time zones and shares land borders with 14 adjacent countries. Its moves to absorb Ukraine’s Crimea are just the latest (renewed) examples of how Russia views the importance of its own interests–and to hell with everyone else.

Israel National News included a Reuters news organization report on July 4th (Happy Independence Day USA!) that Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, welcomed a pledge of unity between Fatah and Hamas against Israel’s plans to apply sovereignty in Judea and Samaria https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/282972.

And sovereignty is indeed the correct term.

Judeans don’t “annex” Judea–this isn’t Brits in the Falkland Islands; Arabs in Amazigh/”Berber” North Africa, black African Sudan, Syrian and Iraqi Kurdistan; the native Copts’ Egypt; and so forth  https://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/13420 

I have a question for my Christian friends: Was Jesus born in Bethlehem of Judea–or in Bethlehem of Palestine or the “West Bank”? Check the Gospel of Matthew if you forgot …certainly not Zionist propaganda.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Racism Is Recognized as Intrinsic to Western Societies. Why Isn’t Antisemitism? By Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld,

Posted By on July 5th, 2020

https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/racism-antisemitism/

Many understand that racism is an intrinsic part of Western societies. So is antisemitism, yet this is acknowledged by very few. Antisemitism was on display during mass demonstrations about the coronavirus pandemic and the problem of racism, but was scarcely remarked upon. There has also been an outpouring of new mutations of anti-Jewish conspiracy theories in the wake of the pandemic. As has occurred for millennia, western cultures are interweaving their antisemitism into issues of the day.

On May 25, 2020, a 46-year-old black man, George Floyd, was asphyxiated and killed by police in Minneapolis. His murder led to huge anti-racism demonstrations in the US. Some were accompanied by extreme violence and looting. Anti-racism demonstrations also took place in several European countries, including the UK and France.

Many people understand that racism is, to varying degrees, an intrinsic part of western societies, and they view it as a problem to be eradicated.  Antisemitism is also an intrinsic part of Western society with a very long history, yet this obvious fact is only acknowledged by a few.

The societal integration of antisemitism exposes itself clearly from time to time. In the past few years, the institutional antisemitism of the British Labour Party drew international attention. This was partly due to the inaction about complaints by the party’s then leader, Jeremy Corbyn, a self-declared “friend” and “brother” of genocidal Arab terrorist organizations.

In the past few months, the presence of antisemitism in Western societies has shown itself in two contexts: the coronavirus pandemic and the massive anti-racism manifestations. Antisemitism often infiltrates mass demonstrations that have no relation to Israel or Jews.

This is the case at the “hygiene demonstrations” currently taking place against the coronavirus lockdown in Germany. Thousands have participated in these protests. In some cases, demonstrators threw bottles at the police, who responded with pepper spray and arrests. Among the demonstrators were conspiracy theorists and right-wing populists.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

BALTIMORE, THE LEFT’S PLANTATION by Paul Schnee (May 16,2015)

Posted By on July 5th, 2020

Baltimore has been in the hands of the Democrats for over 45 years. What we recently witnessed there was the collapse of Democratic policies which continually throw money at problems without insisting on rigorous accountability.

A major cause of the riots was Mayor Rawlings-Blake who told the police to “stand down” and give the rioters “space to destroy”. She is directly responsible for all of the violence, injuries, looting and destruction of property mostly owned by minority businesses and now she has invited the federal government to investigate the BPD in a cynical attempt to distract attention from her glaring guilt and woeful incompetence. History teaches us that the only way to stop mob violence is with overwhelming force. Mayor Rawlings-Blake’s grade in History must surely have been an “F”.

Making matters worse was State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby whose “Verdict first, trial afterwards” statement that she would be seeking justice for Freddie Gray demonstrated not only a sense of prosecutorial panic and recklessness but also what appeared to be the first example of Stockholm Syndrome on the part of a prosecutor. Note to Ms. Mosby: Justice is supposed to be blind not intimidated.
 
Both of these disgraceful public servants should be held accountable for their weak and provocative behavior and resign in shame. Neither of them know what they are doing and are out of their depth to the extent they are positively water-logged.

 

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Cost of applying Israel law to Judea & Samaria (West Bank) Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

Posted By on July 5th, 2020

https://bit.ly/2Z4nFW1

The suggestion that the application of the Israeli law to the Jordan valley and parts of Judea and Samaria would severely undermine Israeli interests, jeopardize Israel’s peace treaties with Jordan and Egypt and Israel’s overall ties with Arab countries, is divorced from the Israeli track record and Middle East reality.

Israel’s track record

The resurgence of the Jewish State from the ashes of WW2 to global prominence, technologically, scientifically, medically, agriculturally, economically, diplomatically and militarily – despite systematic adverse global pressure and Arab wars and terrorism – has demonstrated that there are no free lunches for independent nations, especially in the Middle East.

For example, in 1948, Prime Minister Ben Gurion, Israel’s Founding Father, did no wait for a green light from the White House, in order to declare independence.  He was aware that a declaration of independence would trigger a costly Arab military invasion. The CIA estimated that it could subject the Jewish people to “a second holocaust.”  However, Ben Gurion concluded that achieving a supreme goal was preconditioned upon the willingness to pay a supreme cost.  Indeed, the war against the Arab invasion consumed 1% (6,000) of the Jewish population (600,000).  Fending off the Arab invasion, Israel expanded its borders by 30%, and did not retreat to the suicidal 1947 lines, despite brutal global (including US) pressure.  The pressure on Israel dissipated, but Israel’s buttressed borders were preserved.

In 1967, Prime Minister Eshkol preempted a planned Egypt-Syria-Jordan joint offensive, in defiance of a strong red light from the White House (“Israel will not be alone unless it decides to go alone”), and despite prominent Israelis who preferred the venue of negotiation and mediation, and predicted a resounding Israeli defeat on the battlefield.  Eshkol was aware that Israel’s existence, in the violently intolerant and unpredictable Middle East, required a firm posture of deterrence, which could entail heavy cost. In the aftermath of the war, Eshkol reunited Jerusalem and renewed Jewish presence beyond the 1949/67 indefensible Green Line, in spite of a very heavy US and global pressure.  Consequently, while the pressure on Israel has subsided, the Jewish presence in Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem has surged to 700,000 people.  

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Weapons of Mass Collusion By Julie Kelly

Posted By on July 5th, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/07/04/weapons-of-mass-collusion/

For two years, as Robert Mueller tried and failed to find evidence of a criminal conspiracy, NeverTrump Republicans tended to the right flank of the Trump-Russia collusion front. But their role in pushing the hoax went much deeper.

“The Clinton campaign got a bunch of dirty cops to frame and spy on their opponent, the Trump campaign. After Trump won, they rolled this dirty tricks operation, this spying campaign, into a coup.”

—Lee Smith, author of The Plot Against the President 

The biggest scandal in American political history started with NeverTrump conservatives. Desperate to tarnish Trump’s viability as a candidate, anti-Trump Republicans and Democrats joined together to convince the public that Donald Trump was working with Russia to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. Articles connecting Donald Trump’s campaign to Russian interests started appearing on conservative websites as early as March 2016. 

Just two days after then-candidate Trump announced his foreign policy team in the spring of 2016, the Washington Free Beacon posted a 1,100-word hit piece on Dr. Carter Page: “Energy investor Carter Page, one of Donald Trump’s handpicked foreign policy advisers, has heavily criticized what he considers American aggression toward Russia, even comparing U.S. policy to American slavery and high-profile police shootings,” Lachlan Markay wrote on March 23, 2016. “Trump’s selection of Page may indicate the reality-star-cum-politician’s opposition to U.S. policies that counter Russian interests in key global theaters.” 

Markay’s piece contained arcane details about Page’s views on Russia, including columns Page had written for obscure energy publications. (Page is a global energy consultant.) Even the most dogged reporter would have been hard-pressed to find so many specifics on an unknown campaign advisor, draft the article, and post it in less than 48 hours. How did Markay produce a lengthy article in such a short time—and why? 

According to Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that helped concoct the Russian collusion hoax, a Republican Party elder connected Fusion with the Free Beacon in the summer of 2015. Fusion chief Glenn Simpson sent an email to a “longtime Republican politico” in August 2015 to pitch their expanding file of dirt on Donald Trump. 

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Slavery Rampant in Africa, Middle East; The West Wrongly Accuses Itself by Giulio Meotti

Posted By on July 5th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16195/slavery-africa-middle-east

For the intersectional activists, the US is the world’s biggest oppressor — not China, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, or Iran.

“What the media do not tell you is that America is the best place on the planet to be black, female, gay, trans or what have you. We have our problems and we need to address those. But our society and our systems are far from racist”. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Twitter, June 9, 2020.

“The new anti-racism is racism disguised as humanism (…) It implies that every white person is bad… and that every black person is a victim”. — Abnousse Shalmani, born in Tehran, now living in Paris, to Le Figaro, June 12, 2020.

“America looks different if you grew up, as I did, in Africa and the Middle East”. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali, The Wall Street Journal, June 26, 2020.

It is high time for the United States to stop funding the United Nations…. The United Nations is now being used to perpetuate injustice, not stop it.

Real slave traders and racists — those who believe Western societies and values should not exist at all — most likely look at the current Western self-flagellation and cheer their approval.

The United States abolished slavery 150 years ago, and has affirmative action for minorities. It is the country that elected a Black president, Barack Obama — twice! Yet, a new movement is toppling one historic monument after another one, as if the US is still enslaving African-Americans. Activists in Washington DC even targeted an Emancipation Memorial, depicting President Abraham Lincoln, who paid with his life for freeing slaves.

Today slavery still exists in many parts of Africa and Middle East, but the self-flagellating Western public is obsessively focused only on the Western past of African slavery rather than on real, ongoing slavery, which is alive and well — and ignored. For today’s slaves, there are no demonstrations in the streets, no international political pressure, and virtually no articles in the media.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

For a Politically Corrected Paris by Amir Taheri

Posted By on July 5th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16194/politically-corrected-paris

Of the 5,400 streets in greater Paris, 287 are named after persons or events with colonial, imperial, or ideological bearings that clash with political correctness, the fashionable ideology of champagne and caviar leftists.

Paris is dotted with old buildings, museums, offices, barracks, schools and exhibition sites associated with events that would anger the politically correct.

Black Americans are under-represented. Martin Luther King has a park in a down-market neighborhood. But he wasn’t BLM enough. He emphasized equal citizenship, not skin color.

Ah! Rewriting history!

Caught in the Davy Jones locker room, a civilization may dream of … a device to reel back the past like a film and edit it as you please.

With bookshops closed during Covid-19 lockdown I was obliged to re-read books I had read before. Among them was Lamartine’s “Graziella”, the journal of his six-month stay in Naples. A love story, the novel also talks of the repression of Italian freedom fighters who try to end French occupation under Marechal Murat, one of Napoleon’s generals, as their king.

A stone’s throw from our place is the Boulevard Murat, named after the man who crucified Italian patriots.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Turkey Deporting Protestant Christians by Uzay Bulut

Posted By on July 5th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16175/turkey-deporting-protestant-christians

Dozens of Protestant Christian families, according to the Association of Protestant Churches, have been asked to leave Turkey or have not been allowed to enter the country — all based on trumped-up charges, such as “being a threat to national security”.

“According to the court, Turkey’s intelligence agency has a classified file on me that even our lawyer has been unable to review. According to this file, I am considered a threat to public order and security despite the fact that there is no legal complaint or court action against me.” — Carlos Madrigal, spiritual leader, the Istanbul Protestant Church Foundation.

“Are Turkish citizens who are Protestant Christians next?” — Association of Protestant Churches.

An alarming practice targeting Protestant Christians in Turkey has been brought to the attention of the public by the country’s Protestant community and its organizations.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Devil’s Pitchfork: Seeking the Origin of Our Present Troubles By David Solway

Posted By on July 5th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/07/_the_devils_pitchfork_seeking_the_origin_of_our_present_troubles.html

The progressivist campaign to destroy America is three-pronged, the tines of the devil’s pitchfork, namely: de-individuation, de-historicizing, and what I’m tempted to call pre-eminent domain (the power of the state to take more than one’s physical property). In other words, it is a war against three intimately related phenomena: self-governing personhood, historical memory, and the possession of property, whether intellectual or private property as understood by John Locke.1 Thus our ideas are no longer our own but state-injected bromides, history has been co-opted in the service of a political fantasy, and ownership is the prerogative of the state.

It is clear that the entire sensibility of the age, and certainly of the coming era, has changed dramatically, not only as the result of the onslaught of lethal political and cultural viruses like democratic socialism, “social justice,” postmodern relativism and radical feminism, but of the “Information Revolution” and its carrier, the Internet, in particular the social media platforms run by a cabal of corporate oligarchs. The ideological trifecta appears to be irresistible:

The contours of the reflective and stable self, as mediated in the family and local communities, are disintegrating by the day. As I’ve written previously, the individual, in the classic sense of a coherent center of cognitive awareness and moral responsibility, actuated by the conviction of individual responsibility for self, family, and nation, has become the relic of a vanishing tradition. The inclination is to identify with presumably benevolent but actually savage abstractions. In today’s ‘enlightened’ world, the pastoral fantasy — aka socialism — a dead idea embalmed with the illusion of vitality, has once again assumed massive and destructive proportions. The thinking, self-aware, common-sense individual is its prey, persuaded or coerced to surrender his autonomy to the false comfort of an all-embracing collectivism that spares him the anxiety of choice and risk.
Genuine scholarship is almost extinct and historical memory seems to malinger in a condition of permanent lockdown. There are many ways to abolish history: toppling and defacing cultural monuments (as we see happening today); re-writing the historical record (Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States2 or the New York Times’ 1619 Project, for example); and replacing the faculty of intellectual curiosity regarding origins — the historical imagination — with rote-learned slogans and dogmatic teachings, the program of modern education from kindergarten to graduate school. What we are observing is a chronosectomy in progress.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Evidence is in: Hydroxychloroquine works! By Howard Richman

Posted By on July 5th, 2020

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

The media is doing its best to ignore the solid new evidence that hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) works. Although they claim to be pro-science, they only report scientific studies that agree with their narrative. Although they claim that black lives matter to them, they purposely keep knowledge about successful treatments away from COVID-19 patients, a disproportionate number of whom are black. Here are some details of the two new studies that almost all of them are ignoring:

Henry Ford Health System. Last week, the International Journal of Infectious Diseases reported that hydroxychloroquine cuts the death rate in half when it is administered to hospitalized COVID-19 patients soon after they are admitted. The retrospective study of 2,541 patients was conducted by the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit Michigan. Only 13% of the patients who were given HCQ died as compared to 26% who were not given HCQ. HCQ worked whether or not it was given with the antibiotic azithromycin, but it appeared to work slightly better with azithromycin. Key to the study was early treatment with HCQ, with 91% in the HCQ group starting that medication within 48 hours of hospital admission.
Mount Sinai Hospital. Also last week, Nature Reviews Immunology published the results of the small but ideal type of experiment (a double-blind, randomized clinical trial) conducted by Mount Sinai Hospital in New York which found that 0 of 31 patients in the HCQ group progressed from mild to severe as compared to 4 of 31 patients in the control group.

The media is also ignoring the May 8 study of 932 patients by the New York University Grossman School of Medicine which compared the HCQ/azithromycin treatment with the HCQ/azithromycin/zinc treatment. NYU found that the addition of zinc sulfate pills to the HCQ/azithromycin treatment reduced the death rate from 23% to 13%, but only if given before the patients got so sick that they required intensive care.