WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Trump to Pull Thousands of U.S. Troops From Germany Move would cut 9,500 American service members from Germany, where 34,500 are permanently assigned, amid strains between two key NATO allies

Posted By on June 6th, 2020

President Trump has directed the Pentagon to remove thousands of American troops from Germany by September, a move that would dramatically reshape the U.S. military posture in Europe and reflects growing tensions between Washington and Berlin over military spending and other security issues, U.S. government officials said Friday.

The removal order would reduce the U.S. troop presence in Germany by 9,500 from the 34,500 service members who are permanently assigned there. It would also cap at 25,000 the number of American troops in Germany at any one time. Under current practice, overall troop levels can rise to as high as 52,000 as units rotate in and out or take part in training exercises.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-directs-u-s-troop-reduction-in-germany-11591375651

The Trump administration ordered the change in a memorandum signed recently by White House national security adviser Robert O’Brien, the officials said Friday.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Economy Rises From the Dead The job market heals faster than expected as the lockdowns ease.

Posted By on June 6th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-economy-rises-from-the-dead-11591400329?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Friday’s surprisingly upbeat jobs report for May was no doubt cheered by most Americans, but not by all. Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer seemed glum, as they ignored the progress and demanded still more federal money. What do they have against good economic news?

The resilient American economy surprised nearly everyone by creating 2.5 million new jobs in the month, while the jobless rate fell to 13.3% from 14.7% in April. The number of unemployed fell 2.1 million to a still awful 21 million, but many good economists had predicted a jobless rate of more than 20%. The numbers look even better given that the jobs survey was taken mid-month, which was before the economic lockdowns eased in much of the country.

BOOKS, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Asaf Romirowsky: A Review of “The War of Return How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace by Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf”

Posted By on June 5th, 2020

http://www.romirowsky.com/24223/the-war-of-return

Palestinian identity is rooted in three basic ingredients: the “right of return” to Israel for all Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war and their descendants; permanent, sanctified struggle with Israel; and permanent recognition of their status as refugees, dispossessed at the hand of Israel with the participation of the international community. A corollary demand is that the international community must sustain all Palestinian “refugees” through the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) until the Palestinians themselves, somehow, declare the “refugee crisis” resolved.

This fundamental element of the Arab-Israeli conflict has eluded both many Western observers and Israelis, who have focused on the territorial aspect of the conflict. In fact, it is the right of return that fundamentally powers the conflict, while UNRWA serves as captain of the ship.

Both Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf, authors of The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace, have a liberal Israeli background and are supporters of the two-state solution. Wilf is a former Israeli politician who served as a member of Knesset for the Independence and Labor parties, while Schwartz is a former staff writer for the left-leaning Israeli daily Haaretz turned academic.

To Wilf’s credit, she was one of the few Israeli politicians to take on the UNRWA issue when she was in office; she launched an international parliamentary campaign to restructure UNRWA and “combat the inflation of the numbers of refugees” in order to make a two-state solution possible.

MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

Shirley – A Review By Marilyn Penn

Posted By on June 5th, 2020

http://politicalmavens.com/index.php/topic/politics/

This is a film based on a novel by Susan Scarf Merrell based on Shirley Jackson and Stanley Edgar Hyman, two famous American writers who were married to each other. The key word here is ‘novel’ but the viewer doesn’t know that this is not biographical and this presents serious ethical questions with the liberties taken as various behaviors are ascribed to these individuals without our ability to distinguish between authorial fantasy from reality.

The film hits many current popular marks: male philandering, abusiveness, narcissism along with female insecurity, emotional distress, lesbianism and dependency on drugs and alcohol. The plot concerns a young couple coming to Bennington College for the husband to assist Professor Hyman. They agree to have his pregnant wife do the cooking and housework for the Hymans in exchange for their room and board. At first, this seems like a doubly good idea, allowing the husband to try for a job in the English department the following semester by impressing Hyman and for the couple to save their money for their expected child. They are both unaware of how psychologically damaged Shirley is, spending all her time indoors, drinking, sleeping and writing. Her mood swings are so wide that she seems tri-polar and as abusive as her husband. Of course this becomes apparent as soon as they move in yet the young wife is willing to put up with the situation and becomes infatuated by Shirley, eventually in a sexual manner.

An additional plot point is Shirley’s novel in progress about a young woman who disappeared from the town without being found. This offers more nuances concerning the perils of marriage, friendship and extra-curricular relationships. One of the pivotal scenes recalls Thelma and Louise as Shirley and Rose (the young wife and mother) stand at the edge of a precipice – a device too corny and contrived to be effective. The main reason to see this movie is the performance of Elizabeth Moss, an actress who is capable of making you read her most subtle thoughts without histrionics – a true artist or perhaps magician. The second reason is to remind you to re-read “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson, one of the great short stories of the 20th century

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Left’s Normalization Of Collective Guilt Is Ripping America Apart by Joshua Lawson

Posted By on June 5th, 2020

https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/05/how-lefts-normalization-collective-guilt-ripping-america-apart/

“Americans want to stand with those peacefully protesting injustice. But the radical Left offers either the choice of self-condemnation for evils Americans had no hand in, or to be silent and stay that way. If the second option is chosen, that very silence is viewed as an indictment of “complicity” often seen by the Left as akin to violence itself. Ultimately, that’s no choice at all.”

All decent Americans stand against racism. But if we’re to live as brothers, we must stop indicting all those who share a skin tone for the sins of others.

I was nowhere near the intersection of Chicago Avenue and 38th Street when George Floyd tragically lost his life. I wasn’t in Minnesota. I was more than 500 miles away. With the exception of the officers at that heartbreaking scene, there are more than 329 million additional Americans who had no part in that terrible evening.

So why are so many people acting as if it were their knee, not Derek Chauvin’s, that pressed down on George Floyd? The answer lies in the concerted effort of radical leftists and their unwitting accomplices to normalize the collectivization of guilt.

The Great Guilting

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trump Derangement Syndrome at The Lancet By Kyle Smith

Posted By on June 5th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/06/trump-derangement-syndrome-at-the-lancet/?itm_campaign=headline-testing-trump-derangement-syndrome-at-the-lancet&itm_

A retracted study about hydroxychloroquine’s dangers is another sign of the publication’s political bias poisoning its medical reports.

Remember when we were told that the administration of Donald J. Trump posed a pernicious threat to science and medicine? In an attempt to sharpshoot Trump’s most famous scientific claim, one of the world’s leading medical journals just blew off its own foot.

What other possible explanation can there be for the catastrophic failure of The Lancet’s thunderously hyped anti-hydroxychloroquine article, which this week was retracted after it was revealed to be unsubstantiated, if not a full-on hoax?

On May 22, the hugely influential medical journal published an article on the most talked-about drug of the coronavirus pandemic. In the midst of a public-health crisis, when one particular treatment is receiving inordinate attention, it is critically important for The Lancet and other medical journals to guide us with facts rather than add to the political noise. Lives were, and are, on the line.

Doctors who had some anecdotal evidence, but no clinical proof, that hydroxychloroquine might be part of an effective treatment for COVID-19 sufferers were desperate to learn whether the drug works, doesn’t work, or is downright harmful to such patients. The Lancet in effect constructed a flashing red neon stop sign warning the medical profession that the drug was worse than useless. This matters.

The New York Times and virtually every other media outlet took the study at face value; the Times ran the alarming headline, “Malaria Drug Taken by Trump Is Tied to Increased Risk of Heart Problems and Death in New Study.” The Washington Post ran this headline: “Antimalarial drug touted by President Trump is linked to increased risk of death in coronavirus patients, study says.” The World Health Organization and several other health organizations halted clinical trials of HCQ and several national governments altered policy for the same reason.

EDUCATION, ISRAEL, KRD NEWS Comments turned off

Outrage Greets Pro-BDS Petition to University of California Blaming Israel for Teaching Methods That Killed George Floyd by Benjamin Kerstein

Posted By on June 5th, 2020

https://www.algemeiner.com/2020/06/04/outrage-greets-pro-bds-petition-to-university-of-california-blaming-israel-for-us-police-brutality/

Outrage erupted on Thursday as a ferociously anti-Israel petition to the University of California blaming Israel for police brutality and the murder of people of color in the US circulated online.

The petition, signed by hundred of campus organizations and individuals, included a long and rambling list of demands, such as abolishing the police and returning “all Indigenous lands” to Native Americans.

The petition also tied Israel to US police brutality and racism and, specifically, the killing in Minneapolis last month of George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin.

“This complicity goes beyond domestic policing,” the petition read. “We also call on the UC to divest from companies that profit off of Israel’s illegal military occupation of Palestine, investments that uphold a system of anti-Black racism in the US.”

“We know the Minneapolis police were also trained by Israeli counter-terrorism officers,” it continued. “The knee-to-neck choke-hold that Chauvin used to murder George Floyd has been used and perfected to torture Palestinians by Israeli occupation forces through 72 years of ethnic cleansing and dispossession. Police departments view Israeli Defense Force tactics as models for responding to ‘public health and safety crises.’”

MEDIA Comments turned off

Alex Berenson: Coronavirus truth and why the media establishment hates me so much

Posted By on June 5th, 2020

Editor’s note: Author Alex Berenson first posted this essay on Twitter, but given its length, he decided to run it as a single piece of commentary on his website, AlexBerenson. In a note to readers, he writes: “‘Blue-checks’ is Twitter slang for people with verified accounts, who are often prominent reporters. As is sometimes pointed out, I also have a blue check, though I am no longer part of the media establishment.”

I’ve thought a bit about why the media blue-checks hate me so (and, let’s be honest, they do hate me so). I’m nobody, really; I don’t have a prime time news show or a syndicated column; I have all of 103,000 followers on Twitter. But I am a particular burr for three reasons:

I’m a class traitor. Not just because I worked for The New York Times for 10 years and wrote lots of hardball pieces about companies (not to mention our failures in Iraq) that make me tough to dismiss as a right-wing nutter, much as they’d like to try.

No, I’m a class traitor in another, arguably more important way, too; the media/academic left tries to cudgel its opponents with an attitude of mocking scorn and intellectual superiority. The president has been a useful foil for them in this (as they have been for him).

MEDIA Comments turned off

Alex Berenson’s coronavirus booklet hits Amazon after Elon Musk, others call out online retailer for ‘censorship’ By Brian Flood |

Posted By on June 5th, 2020

https://www.foxnews.com/media/amazon-alex-berenson-coronavirus-booklet-censorship-claims

Amazon is selling former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson’s booklet on coronavirus after initially claiming it didn’t meet the online retailer’s guidelines – as help rolled in from the likes of journalist Glenn Greenwald and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who considered the move blatant censorship.

“Unreported Truths about COVID-19 and Lockdowns: Part 1,” which included an introduction and a section on death counts and estimates, was expected to hit Jeff Bezos’ Amazon on Thursday but Berenson said he woke up to an alarming email.

“They said, ‘we’re rejecting this,’” Berenson told Fox News. “It didn’t say, ‘you can appeal,’ it didn’t say, ‘here is who you should email if you have a question.’ It just said, ‘This is rejected.’”

Berenson responded by launching a protest on Twitter, calling the move “outrageous censorship from a company that gained hugely from lockdown” as millions are forced to shop online.

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The new face of anti-Semitism in America is increasingly black, liberal and famous. Nolan Finley

Posted By on June 5th, 2020

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/columnists/nolan-finley/2018/12/30/finley-new-face-anti-semitism-black/2413724002/

Last weekend, LeBron James, the biggest name in basketball, posted on Instagram the lyrics to a song by the rapper 21 Savage.

The line James typed out to his followers feeds off the ancient libel against Jews, that they control the world’s money supply: “We been getting that Jewish money, everything is Kosher.”

James quickly apologized, saying he didn’t understand the historical context of the slur, or even that it was offensive.

The NBA and James’ Los Angeles Lakers accepted that lame excuse, and now want to move on. No mandatory sensitivity training for James, no scrutiny of pro basketball for evidence of a broader problem. Starbucks should cry foul.

James is in good company. Alice Walker, African-American novelist (“The Color Purple”), is being called out for her embrace of the notorious British Jew hater David Ickes, and for a poem she penned condemning Israel.