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Turkey: Stop ‘Fantastical Fiction,’ Free Osman Kavala! by Burak Bekdil

Posted By on December 23rd, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15301/turkey-osman-kavala

To no one’s surprise, on December 10, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) called for the immediate release of Kavala, saying there was a lack of reasonable suspicion that he had committed an offense,

According to its official statement, the [EU] court found that Kavala’s detention “pursued an ulterior purpose…namely that of reducing [him] to silence,” ruling that the charges he faced and the detention “were likely to have a dissuasive effect on the work of human-rights defenders.”

Although the indictment does not give any evidence of Kavala’s involvement in any violent protest, it claims Kavala’s phone conversations with ordinary people — academics and NGO people — are evidence of “terrorist activity.”

Even if Kavala is released shortly, as the Constitution dictates he should be, he will have spent nearly 800 days in jail for no crime, and, from the moment he is released, will have to carry on with his legal struggles against a state with no tolerance for dissent.

Businessman-turned-philanthropist Osman Kavala has been promoting arts, culture and history since he started to devote his time to civil society in the early 1990s. His understanding of promoting culture was to promote cultural diversity and pluralism. His resumé says, “he dedicated his life to building a civil and just society.” His Anatolian Cultural Foundation seeks to bridge ethnic divides through art, including with neighboring Armenia with which Turkey has no diplomatic relations.

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“Interest Rates, Debt and Demographics” Sydney M. Williams

Posted By on December 23rd, 2019

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/

Sound investment advice (which I have too often ignored) suggests that one should pay attention to outliers – valuations that are out of the ordinary, either too high or too low, like the extraordinary low level of interest rates today. Good investors (which I am not) find them in stocks, commodities, bonds, real estate, etc., and either purchase or sell the attractive or offending instrument. It strikes me that debt, driven by unusually low interest rates (or, at least, low by post-War measurements) has risen as a percentage of GDP to risky levels. When unfunded pension and health liabilities are included, and when one considers demographics, the picture darkens.

Examples of our unusual situation abound. In the U.S., federal debt as a percent of GDP has exceeded 100% for eight years. By the end of World War II federal debt – understandably – reached 118% of GDP. Subsequently, it declined as a percentage for thirty-five years – during a time that included the Cold War, the construction of the interstate highway system, the birth of the Great Society and the landing of a man on the moon. It reached a nadir in 1981 at 31% of GDP. Since, that ratio has risen.

I would be remiss in not pointing out that Japan and Singapore have government debt as a percentage of their GDP that exceeds ours, along with far worse demographic trends, so perhaps we should not be worried. But I am. Federal debt is $22 trillion. State and local debt are $2 trillion. Unfunded pension and health liabilities are estimated at $46 trillion. (Forbes puts the number at over $200 trillion). Mandatory spending, which includes Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, student assistance, veterans care and supplemental nutritional assistance programs, accounted for 72% of the 2017 budget. Such “transfer payments” are immune from budget cuts. In 1962, the comparable number for transfer spending was 28%. The effect on investments, in education, highways, R&D, etc., has been substantial – from 35% of the 1965 budget to 13% today. Complaints about roads, bridges and tunnels are understandable. Given trends, conditions are likely to worsen, not get better.

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Fact Check: Lack of Assimilation Is Economically Harming Latino Immigrants And Society James D. Agresti

Posted By on December 23rd, 2019

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/12/23/fact-check-lack-of-assimilation-is-economically-harming-latino-immigrants-and-society/

Early in 2019, a firestorm of criticism descended upon veteran journalist Tom Brokaw because he said on NBC’s Meet the Press that Hispanics “should work harder at assimilation” and shouldn’t isolate themselves “in their communities.” NBC condemned his comments as “inaccurate and inappropriate,” media outlets ran articles and editorials calling them racist and factually wrong, and Brokaw apologized.

Contrary to the blowback against Brokaw, scholarly sources show that modern Latino immigrants are not assimilating like previous generations of immigrants. Furthermore, this is having negative economic impacts on them and the nation at large. These facts have nothing to do with race and everything to do with factors that can foster or impede economic prosperity.

Rejecting the Melting Pot

While berating Brokaw for his remarks, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists claimed: “To assert that the U.S. is not the melting pot that the country prides itself on being, is disinformation as the U.S. has always had immigrants and a mixture of races, religious beliefs and languages in its history.”

That statement is demonstrably untrue, as the popular culture and academia are now rife with people who reject the idea of the U.S. as a melting pot. Instead, they insist that the U.S. is and should be a “salad bowl” in which people mix but remain culturally distinct. The editors of the academic serial work American Immigration: An Encyclopedia of Political, Social, and Cultural Change explain that this trend is a substantial departure from the past:

As a nation of immigrants and their descendants, the United States has been described over the centuries as a “melting pot” of cultures. Today, most immigration scholars and activists eschew that term, contending that it implies a loss of native culture and an assimilation process that turns peoples of diverse backgrounds into a single, culturally homogenized populace.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The Era of ‘Good’ Fascism? Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on December 23rd, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/12/22/the-era-of-good-fascism/

If and when fascism comes to America, it will not arrive with jackboots, stiff arms, and military uniforms. To modern progressives, laws are fluid, to be enforced when they champion the “good,” to be ignored or subverted when they empower the “bad.”

Consider the recent statements and acts of iconic progressive celebrities.

Jane Fonda is chronically furious. This time she directed her wrath at those who disagree about the urgency of ending the entire fossil fuel industry and ruining the current economy. Her idea is to put climate “deniers” on trial for incorrect speech. So much for the First Amendment. “Now, because of the fossil fuel industry, it’s too late for moderation,” Fonda says. “And given the emergency, it’s those who believe in moderation, in pre-Trump business as usual, who are truly delusional. And those who lie and continue to lie about what they’re doing to the environment should be put on trial.”

Green teenage heartthrob Greta Thunberg has a different solution for those who disagree with her orthodox view on “climate change”: “World leaders are still trying to run away from their responsibilities, but we have to make sure they cannot do that. We will make sure that we put them against the wall, and they will have to do their job to protect our futures.”

If Thunberg is truly worried about past government decisions that have threatened the world, she might study Swedish history and ask why her forefathers sold iron ore to the Nazi war machine—without which it could not have waged the war it did—and often threw in Swedish transport in the bargain.

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Pakistan Sentences Fulbright Scholar to Death for “Blasphemy” Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on December 23rd, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2019/12/pakistan-sentences-fulbright-scholar-death-daniel-greenfield/

“The future must not belong to those who slander the Prophet of Islam.”

That’s what that looks like.

A Pakistani anti-terrorism court on Saturday sentenced a liberal scholar and former university lecturer to death on blasphemy charges.

In Pakistan, anti-terrorism courts terrorize.

In 2013, Junaid Hafeez was accused by students at the university where he taught of making blasphemous Facebook posts. Insulting Islam’s Prophet Mohammad carries a mandatory death penalty in Pakistan, which is about 95% Muslim.

His lawyers say he was framed by students from an extremist Islamist party for his liberal and secular views and this month a U.S. religious freedom commission placed Hafeez on its list of global victims.

“He (Junaid Hafeez) shall be hanged by neck till his death subject to its confirmation by the honorable high court,” a court order stated.

Hafeez, who quit his studies at Pakistan’s top medical college to pursue a passion for art and literature, secured a Fulbright scholarship and attended Jackson State University where he majored in American literature, photography and theater.

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Hanukah: The First Battle against Transnationalism and the Deep State By Rabbi Aryeh Spero

Posted By on December 23rd, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/12/hanukah_the_first_battle_against_transnationalism_and_the_deep_state.html

Many think of Hanukah as a fight for religious freedom. While religious freedom was at stake, it was part of a broader battle in behalf of the concept of national identity. The Maccabees, local Judeans who spearheaded the revolt against the overpowering northern Syrian Greeks and who inspired the grassroots, did so for the overarching cause of retaining Judea’s identity and Jewish character, which were under assault by those trying to denude Judea of its distinctiveness.

The story begins in the waning years of the Greek empire, 150 years after the death of Alexander the Great. The eastern branch of the Greek empire was headquartered in Antioch, Syria and under the Seleucid monarch, Antiochus. He expected all countries under his jurisdiction to surrender their national sovereignty and independence and its citizens begin seeing themselves as citizens of the world, the Hellenic world. 

At first, there were the usual military attacks by the Seleucids against Judea. But that changed. Instead of undertaking costly military campaigns to accomplish this, Antiochus, circa 175 BC, reasoned it would be easier and less conspicuous to bring Judea under heel by simply de-Judaizing it, by forbidding Israel’s core and distinctive religious practices and educating its children in the mores of the hedonistic gymnasium. It worked.

In the beginning, many Judeans were lulled into feeling that the multicultural push would not endanger their own culture and distinctiveness and were actually open to the benefits of global Hellenism. Soon, however, the Seleucid’s moved beyond multiculturalism to demonizing the Judean and Jewish way of life as anachronistic and an impediment to Hellenistic fraternity and progress. Religious observance — that part of the religious milieu that was distinctively Jewish — and religious teachers were outlawed. 

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President Trump Is Impeached. Or Is He? A party-line House vote leaves no principled argument against a party-line acquittal. Alan Dershowitz

Posted By on December 23rd, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/president-trump-is-impeached-or-is-he-11577045305?mod=opinion_lead_pos8

Suddenly, impeachment can wait. Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday she’ll delay transmitting the two House-approved articles to the Senate, in an obvious ploy for partisan advantage. For anti-Trump legal scholars Noah Feldman and Laurence Tribe, that has created a Schrödinger’s Cat scenario. They disagree on whether President Trump has been impeached at all.

Mr. Feldman says no: “If the House does not communicate its impeachment to the Senate, it hasn’t actually impeached the president.” Mr. Tribe says an affirmative vote on an article of impeachment is sufficient to impeach—but he also claims it’s proper to leave it at that. By declining to transmit the articles of impeachment, he argued in an op-ed that Mrs. Pelosi evidently found persuasive, the Democrats would get a win-win. Mr. Trump would carry the stigma of impeachment and be denied the opportunity to erase it via acquittal.

Messrs. Feldman and Tribe are both wrong. Mr. Tribe errs in asserting that the House can deny an impeached official a trial. Mr. Feldman errs in denying that the approval of articles of impeachment is sufficient to constitute an impeachment. The Senate need not wait for the articles to be “transmitted.” The Constitution grants the House the “sole power of impeachment,” and the Senate the “sole power to try all impeachments.” Now that the House’s job is done, it is up to the Senate to schedule a trial and make the rules for it.

My view—which I suspect much of the public shares—is that Mr. Trump was impeached by a partisan vote and deserves to be acquitted by a partisan vote. The representatives who impeached him along party lines after devising partisan rules of inquiry have no principled argument against a party-line acquittal.

Mr. Dershowitz is a professor emeritus at Harvard Law School and author of “Guilt by Accusation: The Challenge of Proving Innocence in the Age of #MeToo.”

EDUCATION, KRD NEWS Comments turned off

I Was Protested At Bard College For Being A Jew Batya Ungar-Sargon

Posted By on December 22nd, 2019

https://forward.com/opinion/433082/i-was-protested-at-bard-college-for-being

When I was asked to speak at last week’s conference on racism and anti-Semitism at Bard College’s Hannah Arendt Center, I think my heart actually skipped a beat.

Arendt, the German-born political philosopher who fled the Nazis in the 1930s and eventually settled in New York, is the thinker who has most deeply influenced me, and racism and anti-Semitism are two topics I think about constantly, the most pressing issues of our time. It was the perfect combination of topic and venue, and the list of confirmed speakers included luminaries whose work I had read, whose writing and thinking I deeply admired.

Watch video of the conference here.

“I am so incredibly humbled to be included in this event and I accept with great honor,” I wrote back to Roger Berkowitz, the founder and director of the center and organizer of the conference.

I was invited to host a breakout session of my choosing, and I proposed a workshop on navigating other people’s opinions in the age of Trump – a topic of deep importance to my work as Opinion Editor of The Forward, where we insist on representing the full gamut of legitimate opinion. Ten days before the conference started on Thursday, I found out I would also be one of three people on a panel called “Racism and Zionism: Black-Jewish relations,” and moderator of another session, with Ruth Wisse, a Harvard professor of Yiddish literature and scholar of Jewish history and culture, and Shany Mor, an Israeli thinker who is affiliated with the Hannah Arendt Center.

I prepared eagerly. I read everything Wisse had written on anti-Semitism, and formulated some questions to probe at the areas where our views diverged. I wrote up my thoughts the charge that Zionism as racism – a holdover of Soviet propaganda that I looked forward to debating, as well as polling that shows African-Americans overall to be more pro-Israel and less sympathetic to the Palestinians than white liberals.

EDUCATION, KRD NEWS Comments turned off

Save Me from My Defenders! A protest against me, and its aftermath, at Bard College by Ruth R. Wisse

Posted By on December 22nd, 2019

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/anti-semitism-conference-bard-colleg

Being silenced or harassed for unpopular speech on a university campus is by now such a mark of distinction that I may be accused of exercising bragging rights in describing a recent incident in which I was involved. The real danger I encountered, however, was different from the one against which I had been warned. Read on.

In January 2019, I received an invitation from Roger Berkowitz, founding director of Bard’s Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities, to speak at its annual conference. The topic: “Racism and Anti-Semitism.” In adopting the name of the German-Jewish philosopher it describes as “the most taught and arguably most influential political thinker of the 20th century,” the Center emphasized Arendt’s insistence on the need for public debate on controversial matters. She had theorized about anti-Semitism as a form of racism, and because I was among those who found this formulation unhelpful, the conveners thought I might provide some valuable critical engagement. For my part, I was readying a second edition of my book on anti-Semitism, Jews and Power, so writing a talk for the conference was a way of getting back into a subject that had become much more pressing since I first published the book 13 years ago. I accepted the invitation and spent many hours preparing the talk.

All the advance arrangements for the conference were handled graciously, and the courtesies accorded me from the moment I arrived at the Bard campus in New York’s Dutchess County went beyond the usual. Though I am by now among the oldest in any academic gathering, the solicitude of my greeters actually made me wonder whether I appeared much more fragile than I felt. Unusually, several members of the administration showed up for my talk. With the dean, a former fellow professor of literature, I conversed about the 19th-century British novel the way academics used to do when I began teaching in the late 1960s.

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“Silent Night”: Persecuted Palestinian Christians Kept Out of Sight by Raymond Ibrahim

Posted By on December 22nd, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15318/persecuted-palestinian-christians

In short, Palestinian Christians are suffering from the same patterns of persecution — including church attacks, kidnappings and forced conversion — that their coreligionists suffer in other Muslim nations. The difference, however, is that the persecution of Palestinian Christians has “received no coverage in the Palestinian media.”

“The only thing that interests the PA [Palestinian Authority] is that events of this kind not be leaked to the media. Fatah regularly exerts heavy pressure on Christians not to report the acts of violence and vandalism from which they frequently suffer, as such publicity could damage the PA’s image….. Even less does the PA want to be depicted as a radical entity that persecutes religious minorities. That image could have negative repercussions for the massive international, and particularly European, aid the PA receives.” — Dr. Edy Cohen, “The Persecution of Christians in the Palestinian Authority”, Begin-Sadat Center, May 27, 2019.

The bread and butter of the PA and its supporters, particularly in the media, is to portray the Palestinians as victims of unjust aggression and discrimination from Israel. This narrative would be jeopardized if the international community learned that Palestinians are themselves persecuting fellow Palestinians — solely on account of religion.

“The systematic persecution of Christian Arabs living in Palestinian areas is being met with nearly total silence by the international community, human rights activists, the media and NGOs…” — Justus Reid Weiner, attorney, “Palestinian Christians: The plight of believers under Palestinian rule”, International Christian Embassy, Jerusalem.

“The moment they [Hamas] took control [of the Gaza Strip], they started persecuting us, ruining our churches and forcing Christians to convert to Islam.”

Such are the recollections, reported recently, of Kamal Tarazi, a 60-year-old Christian man from Gaza, now living in the streets of Nazareth. Before fleeing, he tried to resist the Islamist takeover, including by calling on Muslims and Christians to unite against Hamas. As a result, “I was jailed several times. Do you know what a Hamas prison is? It is pure torture.”

The report adds that “the Islamic group decided to keep him alive to avoid depicting themselves as persecutors of the local Christian population, something that could potentially anger the international community.” Tarazi was eventually released, fled the region, returned, got imprisoned again, and fled again, permanently. “I am sure there are no more than 500 Christians left in Gaza,” he offers, “and it is just part of the general trend.”