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European Appeasement Is Alive and Well By Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld

Posted By on March 1st, 2020

https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/europe-appeasement/

The word “appeasement” evokes dark memories of the Munich 1938 agreement, in which Britain and France made far-reaching concessions to the aggressive German Nazi state in order to avoid violent conflict. The betrayed victim was Czechoslovakia, which was not even invited to the conference at which its fate was to be decided. The outbreak of WWII in 1939 showed, of course, that the agreement was a gross error in judgment. Sadly, the West does not appear to have learned much from Neville Chamberlain’s misguided proclamation of “peace in our time”.

The reality that antisemitism is an integral part of European culture is not the only issue dividing the EU and Israel. There is also the serious problem of chronic and habitual appeasement, though it is not often identified as such.

The quintessential example of Western appeasement in recent years was the 2015 nuclear agreement forged by the Obama administration with the Islamic Republic of Iran (known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA). The four other members of the Security Council plus Germany all signed this flawed agreement alongside the Americans. The pact, which was ostensibly intended to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of Tehran’s Islamist regime, allowed it to continue to design and test missiles and develop advanced centrifuges.

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu appeared before the US Congress to protest the agreement—a highly unusual and undiplomatic act, but justified under the circumstances. Obama was appeasing an aggressive and hostile Iranian regime that made (and continues to make) unceasing threats to destroy the State of Israel.

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Is Manhattan About To Get Drowned By The Sea? Francis Menton

Posted By on March 1st, 2020

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-2-29-is-manhattan-about-to-get-drowned-by-the-sea

Nothing, and I mean nothing, leads so quickly to the loss of all critical faculties as global warming hysteria.

One key claim in the maelstrom of global warming hype is the assertion that sea level will shortly rise and swamp coastal cities. I would put this claim in the category of total BS. For more detail than you would ever want to know on that subject, go to this link.

But for today’s purposes, assume that there is something to the claim of a big impending sea level rise. I live here in Manhattan, specifically Lower Manhattan (the southern part of the island). If sea level is about to rise and swamp coastal cities, Manhattan looks like ground zero, and Lower Manhattan in particular. We are an island surrounded by estuaries, otherwise known as the sea. Most of the southern half of our island, Lower Manhattan — the half with the high end business districts and pricey residential areas — rises up barely at all above sea level. Lower Manhattan has about 15 or so miles of shoreline, with the sea surrounding us on the East, West and South. The northern half of the island is hilly, and has much higher elevations; but in Lower Manhattan the first few blocks in from the waterfront are around 10 to 20 feet at best above mean high tide. If a big sea level rise is imminent, we are going under.

Belief in anthropogenic global warming and its associated natural disasters like sea level rise is an essential component of Manhattan groupthink. Therefore, it is clear that our politicians must “do something” about the impending calamity. But what? We’re not about to jack up some thousands of buildings by 30 or 50 feet each, even assuming that somebody could figure out how to do that.

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The media’s clueless coverage of the Biden candidacy Michael Tracey

Posted By on March 1st, 2020

https://spectator.us/media-clueless-coverage-biden-candidacy/

At the time of writing, Joe Biden is on course for an approximately 30 point victory in South Carolina. Not that he won with 30 percent of the vote; rather, he is beating his nearest competitor (Bernie Sanders) by approximately 30 percentage points. That’s a truly romping win — but ironically, given his many many decades on the political scene, the American elite media has never known quite how to cover the Biden candidacy.

 

First, if you are a consumer of online political news and commentary, you might have noticed the conspicuous lack of virtually any vocal Biden supporters on social media. Online political journalism is dominated by graduates of elite American colleges and universities between the ages of 25 and 45, who constitute the diametric opposite demographic of Biden’s core support base. I would hazard a guess that the vast majority of people running political magazines, newspapers and websites in the United States have roughly zero Biden supporters in their immediate peer group. So of course this dynamic will lead to analytical failure in assessing Biden’s appeal.

 

Take a look at some of the exit poll findings tonight: Biden won 62 percent of South Carolina voters who never attended college. Yes, many of these people are older black voters. But more significant than race is educational attainment, in this key respect: you will encounter almost nobody working an elite media job who has never interfaced with the higher education system. However, people who have never interfaced with the higher education system comprise a significant portion of Biden’s support base. Hence the flustered and confused reactions to his rousing victory.  

 

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Israel, Zionism, & Explaining The Bernie Sanders Ilk… by Gerald A. Honigman

Posted By on March 1st, 2020

Before getting into high gear regarding Bernie Sanders & Co., it may be useful to review some previous thoughts for good background information. So, let’s take a look…

Spend some time on many-to-most university campuses these days; read or listen to numerous Jewish commentators and editorialists in the mainstream media dealing with Israel and the Middle East.

With rare exceptions, you’ll be hard pressed finding Jews (let alone others) who have not succumbed to the pressure to adopt one set of standards by which Israel and Zionism is studied and judged, and another entirely different set by which the rest of the Middle East and North Africa—indeed, the rest of the world–is scrutinized. While Zionism is routinely vilified, have you ever heard the word Arabism even mentioned? https://ekurd.net/arabism-zionism-journeys-2019-01-12 Has it come up in any of the Democrat debates to see who gets to confront President Trump in the-fast approaching American election?

Frequently, Jewish organizations (J Street U, Jewish Voice For Peace, and too many others–including even Hillel, at times) are prominent, or at least collaborative, in partaking in the one-sided Israel and Zionism-bashing goings-on of other groups like Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), the Muslim Students Association, radical Leftists, and “Progressive” Liberals.

While students learn about the ‘evil’ quest of Jews to cast off their millennial victim, scapegoat, and whipping post status, they’ll neither hear nor read anything about the plights of scores of millions of other non-Arab peoples in the region. They won’t find, for example, a local chapter ofStudents for Justice in Kurdistan or for the Kabyle or Amazigh (Berber”) people, whose programs they can attend. And they won’t find a post-Zionist, “Progressive” Hebrew or other professor mentioning anything about them either. Together, just the Kurds and Imazighen alone account for some 75-80 million non-Arab people in a region that Arabs claim to be merely “purely Arab patrimony…the real main cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict in a nutshell.

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MY SAY: ISRAELI DIPLOMATS SHOULD NOT CRITICIZE AMERICAN CANDIDATES!

Posted By on March 1st, 2020

My e-mails overflow with news that Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon has harshly criticized Bernie Sanders calling him a liar and ignorant fool. To be fair Sanders started the volley by calling Israel’s Prime Minister a “racist.” Danon said these things at a public forum that guaranteed media coverage.
Israeli diplomats should not butt into American elections just as American diplomats and legislators should not butt into Israeli elections….rsk

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Dir Fauci’s welcome sobriety on corona/COVID-19, which “may ultimately be more akin to a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%)”

Posted By on March 1st, 2020

https://twitter.com/andrewbostom/status/1234166783516585984

THANKS TO DR. ANDREW BOSTOM, M.D.

NIAID Dir Fauci’s welcome sobriety on corona/COVID-19, which “may ultimately be more akin to a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%)” [published by the ideologically Left, NEJM, no less!] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMe2002387

The latest threat to global health is the ongoing outbreak of the respiratory disease that was recently given the name Coronavirus Disease 2019 (Covid-19). Covid-19 was recognized in December 2019.1 It was rapidly shown to be caused by a novel coronavirus that is structurally related to the virus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). As in two preceding instances of emergence of coronavirus disease in the past 18 years2 — SARS (2002 and 2003) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) (2012 to the present) — the Covid-19 outbreak has posed critical challenges for the public health, research, and medical communities.

In their Journal article, Li and colleagues3 provide a detailed clinical and epidemiologic description of the first 425 cases reported in the epicenter of the outbreak: the city of Wuhan in Hubei province, China. Although this information is critical in informing the appropriate response to this outbreak, as the authors point out, the study faces the limitation associated with reporting in real time the evolution of an emerging pathogen in its earliest stages. Nonetheless, a degree of clarity is emerging from this report. The median age of the patients was 59 years, with higher morbidity and mortality among the elderly and among those with coexisting conditions (similar to the situation with influenza); 56% of the patients were male. Of note, there were no cases in children younger than 15 years of age. Either children are less likely to become infected, which would have important epidemiologic implications, or their symptoms were so mild that their infection escaped detection, which has implications for the size of the denominator of total community infections.

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Imported Antisemitism and Those Who Support It by Denis MacEoin

Posted By on March 1st, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15020/imported-antisemitism-supporters

A 2014 survey of antisemitism by the US Anti-Defamation League covered 100 countries. It found that all the countries in the top 10 most antisemitic locations were in the Middle East or north Africa region, with an overall figure of 73%. The West Bank and Gaza came at the top, with 93% of Palestinians expressing antisemitic views.

The 1988 Covenant (Mithaq) of Jeremy Corbyn’s good friends (and Israel’s enemies)… could not be more religious in nature…. “Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious.” Note that they say they are fighting “Jews”, not “Israelis”.

In the end, the only thing that can oppose it will be a renewal of a secular reform that once had a deep impact in many Muslim countries only to falter after the Iranian Islamic Revolution of 1979. Without that, peace may never return to the Middle East.

On March 6, 2019, Britain’s Equalities and Human Rights Commission launched a probe into claims that the country’s Labour Party, currently led by the lifelong Trotskyite Jeremy Corbyn, is “institutionally anti-Semitic”.

We are all too familiar with the development that the conflation of antisemitism and antizionism may be found today within politics.[1] Challenging this distortion remains a priority in Western countries. Fortunately, as recent events within Britain’s Labour Party have shown, many constituents are rejecting the overt antisemitism and anti-Israel extremism of the groups who have often underhandedly taken control of their party.[2]

It increasingly seems as if one source of antisemitism — as shown by more than one survey in Europe and in the United States — is that there often seems to be widespread antisemitism within Muslim communities (here, here and here).

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Iran Elections: The Least Bad Outcome by Amir Taheri

Posted By on March 1st, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15660/iran-elections-outcome

For the first time in 40 years…. [t]he so-called “moderates” and “reformists” whose task was to give a North Korean-style regime a Scandinavian varnish have been reduced to insignificance…. Thus even without Ahmadinejad’s bloc, the IRGC and affiliates enjoy a solid majority.

The fact that the new Majlis reflects the true nature of the regime as never before must be regarded as a positive development…. In foreign policy, the new Majlis could end the illusion, most recently entertained by former US President Barack Obama, that the way to bring Iran back into the international fold is to back the “moderate” faction by offering concessions to the regime.

The next Majlis reveals the true nature of the Khomeinist system as a typical “Third World” regime with a military-security backbone and a thin ideological varnish. Something like the Castroist outfit in Cuba, the Zimbabwe of Robert Mugabe, and, above all, North Korea, which is Khamenei’s ideal model of government…. Seen in that light, no one would expect the Islamic Republic to respect human rights, encourage citizen participation in decision-making and put the quest for economic development above obsession with ideological purity.

The results show that the overwhelming majority of Iranians either reject the current regime or, at last no longer actively support it…. For the Iranian opposition, the unmasking of the regime is a great boon; knowing who exactly one is fighting against is the first step towards shaping a credible strategy for change.

Describing the latest exercise in voting in Iran’s “elections” may require a high degree of indulgence. When all candidates are pre-approved by the authorities and no one is declared a winner without the stamp of the “Supreme Guide”, to speak of elections would mean stretching lexical flexibility to breaking point. And, yet, the rigmarole in question merits attention for a number of reasons.

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America Has a Con Woman in Congress—Where’s the Law? Ilana Mercer

Posted By on March 1st, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/02/29/america-has-a-con-woman

To date, these are the facts on the fraud alleged to have been committed by a member of the U.S. Congress. Yet nobody is likely to do more than mutter at the striking absence of scruples in Ilhan Omar.

The FBI, which Americans are meant to trust with matters of life and death, is unable—or unwilling—to confirm whether U.S. Representative Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) perpetrated fraud by marrying her brother, Ahmed Elmi, to let him obtain a coveted green card, thus granting him permanent-resident status in the United States, and a path to citizenship. But the bureau is reportedly “investigating.”

Conversely, the Daily Mail, a British tabloid, had little difficulty gathering a critical mass of facts, enough to conclude that, in 2009, Omar did indeed secretly wed said sibling. The newspaper, and anyone else suggesting the same, has yet to be sued by Omar. Could the story be true?

As it happens, a Somali community leader has also outed Ilhan Omar as an outlaw. Abdihaikm Osman Nur contends that the Somali-born freshman congresswoman “had indeed married her brother.” So reported Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

Despite “a lack of paperwork in war-torn Somalia,” which complicates an investigation and a definitive determination, the British tabloid dug up the requisite information that the FBI has yet to release. The young man whom Omar is alleged to have married certainly bears a remarkable resemblance to the congresswoman. They’re both . . . pretty (although Elmi looks happier and a lot more festive).

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Democrats escalate the lies they’re throwing at Trump about coronavirus By Andrea Widburg

Posted By on March 1st, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/03/democrats_escalate_the_lies_theyre_throwing_at_trump_about_coronavirus.html

With the rise of coronavirus, the Democrats are so desperate to destroy Trump that they’re lying about everything possible, celebrating damage to the American economy, and working hard to drive ordinary Americans into a blind panic. This is an unusually sordid display of partisanship over country, although none of them have the grace to be ashamed. A look at Obama’s presidency reveals that the Democrats’ standards were quite different back then.

To set the stage, here are a few indisputable facts:

On January 31, 2020, as China confirmed that 259 people had died and there were about 100 cases reported outside of China, President Trump ordered that the U.S. would prevent foreign nationals who had recently visited China from entering the country. He also ordered quarantined American travelers who posed a high risk.  

Democrats called Trump a racist.

Democrats were worried that Trump’s germ phobia would make him issue even more and worse racist orders.

President Trump held a press conference during which (1) he was surrounded by government scientists who explained what was going on (2) he appointed Vice President Pence, a competent, experienced administrator, to be the White House point person on coronavirus efforts.

Democrats called Pence a killer.

Democrats also announced that henceforth they would call coronavirus “TrumpVirus” because Trump had appointed Pence to oversee the administrative end of dealing with coronavirus and because Trump said there was no need for panic.

Nancy Pelosi complained that Trump had waited too long to act, even though when she spoke not a single American had died.