EDUCATION Comments turned off

BDS and Antifa Bigots Shout “Back to the Ovens” at Toronto’s York U Anti-Semitic violence and hate at a Canadian university. Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on November 25th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/11/bds-and-antifa-bigots-shout-back-ovens-torontos-daniel-greenfield/

“Go back to the ovens, go back to Europe!”

That was what Jewish students, pro-Israel activists, and Jewish community members heard in Vari Hall.

It was a Wednesday evening at York University. Students and community members had come out to a modernistic building on York U’s Keele Campus in Toronto to hear the stories of former Israeli soldiers. The volunteers with Reservists on Duty, two women and five men, six Jews and one Arab Christian, were there to conduct a dialogue and answer questions about their experiences in Israel’s battle against terrorism.

Shar Leyb had grown up in Canada before making the decision to move to Israel and serve in the Israel Defense Forces. The ugly scenes that met him at York University was a Canada he did not recognize.

“It’s extremely sad,” he told Front Page Magazine. “In Canada, my home country, people filled with hate and violence were calling for the death of all Jews.”

York U’s Vari Hall had been the scene of some ugly confrontations in the past, but no one had expected 500 BDS and Antifa bigots to show up screaming hatred and attacking Jewish students on campus.

“Before the event, we were setting up and a deaf person could hear the chants,” Shar said. “We went to see and there were a couple of hundred people. Reservists on Duty is all about dialogue, talking to the other side, understanding their concerns and finding common ground. But they didn’t want to speak.

What happened can be seen in dozens of viral videos that quickly spread across the internet.

Amit Deri, the CEO of Reservists on Duty, had expressed concerns about the potential danger at York University even before the event. Posters depicting murderous Israeli soldiers had gone up calling for angry protests. “All out! No Israeli soldiers on our campus!” they had demanded. Another poster had urged protesters to wear black. That’s the color associated with antifa and violent anarchists.

EDUCATION, P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

‘Idea Laundering’ in Academia How nonsensical jargon like ‘intersectionality’ and ‘cisgender’ is imbued with an air of false authority. By Peter Boghossian

Posted By on November 25th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/idea-laundering-in-academia-11574634492

You’ve almost certainly heard some of the following terms: cisgender, fat shaming, heteronormativity, intersectionality, patriarchy, rape culture and whiteness.

The reason you’ve heard them is that politically engaged academicians have been developing concepts like these for more than 30 years, and all that time they’ve been percolating. Only recently have they begun to emerge in mainstream culture. These academicians accomplish this by passing off their ideas as knowledge; that is, as if these terms describe facts about the world and social reality. And while some of these ideas may contain bits of truth, they aren’t scientific. By and large, they’re the musings of ideologues.

How did this happen? How have those working in what’s come to be called “grievance studies” managed to extend their ideas far beyond the academy, while convincing people that their jargon adds something meaningful to public discourse? Biologist Bret Weinstein, who was run out of Evergreen State College by a leftist mob in 2017, calls the process “idea laundering.”

It’s analogous to money laundering. Here’s how it works: First, various academics have strong moral impulses about something. For example, they perceive negative attitudes about obesity in society, and they want to stop people from making the obese feel bad about their condition. In other words, they convince themselves that the clinical concept of obesity (a medical term) is merely a story we tell ourselves about fat (a descriptive term); it’s not true or false—in this particular case, it’s a story that exists within a social power dynamic that unjustly ascribes authority to medical knowledge.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Quit the racial demagoguery and start working for better schools By Karol Markowicz –

Posted By on November 25th, 2019

https://nypost.com/2019/11/24/quit-the-racial-demagoguery-and-start-working-for-better-schools/

Mayor Bill de Blasio and his schools chancellor, Richard Carranza, keep playing their race-baiting games with our schools. Yet somehow they’re surprised when racist discourse spills out of their administration.

Last week, de Blasio issued the blandest possible statement about offensive comments made by Jackie Cody, a member of a city schools advisory board. Cody had referred to Asians as “yellow folks” in a group e-mail.

“It sounds very insensitive to me,” Hizzoner said. “It’s not something I think anyone should say.” He then added: “I think if the chancellor hears about it, knowing the chancellor, immediately the chancellor would say that’s inappropriate and wrong, and that individual should apologize.”

Except — whoops! — Cody had made the comments back in September, and the chancellor didn’t do any of that. At the time Department of Education spokesman Will Mantell shot back: “This was an unacceptable comment made by one parent on a message board, and it has nothing to do with the chancellor.”

Sorry. It has ­everything to do with the chancellor — and also the mayor.

P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

The move to cancel Gauguin could kill off Western culture Steve Cuozzo

Posted By on November 25th, 2019

https://nypost.com/2019/11/23/the-move-to-cancel-gauguin-could-kill-off-western-culture/

Gauguin is being criticized for sex with Polynesian girls, including this one portrayed in his painting “Tehamana Has Many Parents.”

At a current Paul Gauguin exhibition at London’s National Gallery, visitors are warned that the famous French painter had sexual relationships with young girls, including two with whom he fathered children.

A wall text notes, “Gauguin undoubtedly exploited his position as a privileged Westerner [in French Polynesia] to make the most of the sexual freedoms available to him.”

An audio guide even raises the question, “Is it time to stop looking at Gauguin altogether?”

This is what art appreciation has come to: a PC prism through which a painting, a work of literature or even a popular song must be scrutinized for racism, sexism, gender bias or just plain hurt feelings.

New York museums haven’t banned anything yet. But look out: Metropolitan Museum of Art director Max Hollein told The New York Times that, “Art cannot solely be perceived in regard to its beauty and craftsmanship. You also have to evaluate it in light of its political messages.”

If you say so, chief. I thought most human beings turned to art not for ideological hectoring but for the joy of beauty and insight into the human condition — whether from Dante, Shakespeare or Springsteen.

The “warnings” against Gauguin are another step toward excommunicating every Western creative talent from the realm of permissible enjoyment. If left unopposed, the PC fascists will inevitably ban everything by Western-world artists, writers and musicians due to perceived “sensitivities” or “colonialist” violations.

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, POLITICS Comments turned off

PETE BUTTIGIEG, FAILURE! Kyle Smith

Posted By on November 24th, 2019

Pete Buttigieg’s polling strength is, as far as I can tell, based on one factor only: He’s a smooth talker. He speaks the kind of fluent Ivy League-technocrat-consultancy lingo that makes a certain kind of highly educated white liberal’s heart melt, especially when combined with an appealing sense of reasonableness and youthful, forward-thinking optimism. Alas for him, he can’t talk much about the wonderful improvements he made as two-term mayor of South Bend, Indiana, because they aren’t there.

James Freeman of the Wall Street Journal, notes that South Bend has an extremely high crime rate for a city its size and that a recent program to provide housing for addicts has just ended in complete failure. Buttigieg has not successfully navigated the problems arising from the shooting death of Eric Logan, a black South Bend man, by white police officers. More than a quarter of the city lives at or below the poverty line, well above the national average of 14 percent. A USA Today survey called it the 40th worst city in the country, noting it is “one of the most dangerous cities in America” and has depressed property values. The median South Bend home is worth $77,400.

Buttigieg has had eight years to turn around South Bend. If the Buttigieg candidacy implicitly says, “I promise to make America more like South Bend,” I don’t think he is going to find many takers. He certainly seems like a bright young man, but he wouldn’t be the first clever fellow to prove to be all talk and no action.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Revolutionary Guards honor Jewish soldiers at religious memorial in Iran

Posted By on November 24th, 2019

https://www.timesofisrael.com/revolutionary-guards-honor-jewish-soldiers-at-religious-memorial-in-iran

Troops, Muslim clerics filmed listening as Kadish is recited for Jewish victims of Iran-Iraq War, highlighting regime’s efforts to appear tolerant

Members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps recently participated in a Jewish religious memorial ceremony for Jewish soldiers, a rare occurrence in a country that is widely accused of persecuting its minorities and which regularly threatens to wipe out the only Jewish state.

In footage broadcast Thursday on Iranian state media, the Revolutionary Guard members could be seen saluting, alongside Muslim clerics, during this week’s memorial service at Tehran’s Jewish cemetery.

Members of the local Jewish community are heard reciting the Kadish mourning prayer in Hebrew, as well as other religious texts, in memory of the 13 Jewish-Iranian soldiers who died during the Iran-Iraq War fought in 1980-1988.

The footage wasn’t particularly surprising for Menashe Amir, a leading expert on Iran, who told the Kan public broadcaster that the Islamic Republic seeks to present itself from time to time as tolerant toward religious minorities by participating in such events, all while continuing to employ harsh policies against them.

Amir said that to be accepted by the Islamic totalitarian regime, the 8,000-strong Jewish community has to work hard to prove to authorities that they are an integral part of Iranian society, and that includes denouncing Israel.

He pointed out that a member of the Jewish community is currently in prison for the sole crime of visiting Israel — the location of Judaism’s most holy sites.

He added that like all Iranian citizens, Jews must serve in the Iranian military due to a mandatory enlistment law.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Benny Gantz’s Glass House Dr. Aaron Lerner

Posted By on November 24th, 2019

imra@imra.org.il

A company with no customers and no ready product got a NIS 4 millioncontract from the Israel Police because it claimed that it already had five customers and a ready product. The company even claimed that it was in existence for four years when it was actually established just two years previously.

Nobody checked?

Well. Benny Gantz owned the now bankrupt company, Fifth Dimension, that got NIS 4 million in taxpayer’s money by grossly misrepresenting itself.

Yes.  The same Benny Gantz who heads the Blue and White Party.

Last March the State Comptroller’s Office issued a report on the matter but its been a pretty much dead story ever since.  Last week, in response to the High Court petition demanding a probe into Fifth Dimension, the state
responded that it’s evaluating material.

Gantz was involved in landing the ONLY business Fifth Dimension got and the lies about the company were crucial in having the tender process waived but the narrative is that Gantz was clueless that all of this was going on.

Suffice it to say that there’s a heck of a lot of glass in Mr. Gantz’s
house.

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB Comments turned off

LIE-A-WATHA John Hinderaker

Posted By on November 24th, 2019

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/11/lie-a-watha.php

Shrinking violets don’t become presidential contenders. Still, even at the highest level of overweening ambition, Elizabeth Warren stands out. She has clawed her way to the top by hook and by crook. One of her favorite techniques is the bald-faced lie. As an academic, she is best known for an article claiming that medical crises are largely responsible for personal bankruptcies. Warren’s article has been used (as she no doubt intended) to promote socialized medicine, but it has been thoroughly debunked. See Gail Heriot’s analysis in the Texas Review of Law & Politics, embedded below.

Warren’s deeply flawed, if not outright deceptive, article on “medical” bankruptcies largely made her academic career. But she wouldn’t have gotten to the big time on the basis of an article, no matter how useful to the Left. Warren’s plus-factor, sheer gold in the academy, was her claim to be an American Indian. One can imagine how Harvard’s administrators salivated at the thought of having an actual Indian on their law faculty. We all know how that turned out, although it is fair to point out that if Warren hadn’t run for the Senate, she would have lived out her academic career as a proud member of the Cherokee Nation. Or the High Cheekbones Nation. Whatever.

Then we have Warren’s lie about being fired from a teaching job when she was young because she got pregnant. That story has been conclusively disproved because someone took the trouble to dig up the school board meeting minutes from the relevant time. Warren wasn’t fired. The school district wanted her to stay, but she quit.

Which brings us to the subject of Warren’s two children. At an event a day or two ago, a school choice activist questioned Warren on education. The Free Beacon reports:

Sarah Carpenter, a pro-school choice activist who organized a protest of Warren’s Thursday speech in Atlanta, told Warren that she had read news reports indicating the candidate had sent her kids to private school. Though Warren once favored school choice and was an advocate for charter schools, she changed her views while seeking the Democratic presidential nomination.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

A people cannot be called “settlers” in their own ancestral and Biblical heartland By Victor Sharpe

Posted By on November 24th, 2019

http://bit.ly/2XFqiei

Liberals, leftists, socialists and secular folks may not like being told this, but the following are truths that cannot shrivel away.

So when did it become an accepted truism that a delusional peace between Israel and the predominately Muslim Arabs, those who call themselves Palestinians, require that Israel give to them it’s very own Biblical birthright in its Jewish heartland for a mess of potage? When did the Oslo Accords, the Wye Agreement, the Roadmap, ad nauseum, supersede the eternal possession of the Jewish people to their God given heartland of Judea and Samaria? To even ask the question would seem to be a monstrous tragedy, so enormous as to spit in the face of God and make the very angels in heaven weep.

“Who are they who dare divide the land that the Almighty bequeathed to Abraham and to his descendants through Isaac and Jacob? Who are they who would give any part of tiny Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel) to the descendants of Ishmael, they who possess vast lands throughout the Middle East and North Africa?

Unlike the deeply appreciated present incumbent of the White House, President Donald J. Trump, too many previous presidents displayed pro-Muslim Arab policies, which created a clear and present danger to the very existence of the Jewish state and, may I suggest, to the very spiritual and physical future of our own beloved America itself. Remember Genesis 12:3.

And then there was Barack Hussein Obama whose hatred of the Jewish state surpassed even that of the lamentable Jimmy Carter. Remember Obama’s Secretary of State, John Kerry, who came numerous times to pressure and threaten Israel, thus ushering in an even more baleful time for the Jewish state?

POLITICS Comments turned off

MICHAEL BLOOMBERG ENTERS THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL RACE

Posted By on November 24th, 2019

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/michael-bloomberg-launches-2020-presidential-bid-n1090216?cid=sm_npd_ms_tw_ma

Well the political chameleon bought himself a third term after having admonished then mayor Giuliani after 9/11 that New York City had term limits. Can he buy the Presidency? If he does win could he create a bike lane from NYC to D.C.????Rsk

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg officially entered the 2020 race Sunday, ending several weeks of will-he-or-won’t-he speculation about a late entry into the already-crowded Democratic primary.

“I’m running for president to defeat Donald Trump and rebuild America,” Bloomberg said on his campaign website. “We cannot afford four more years of President Trump’s reckless and unethical actions. He represents an existential threat to our country and our values. If he wins another term in office, we may never recover from the damage.”

Bloomberg’s entry was preceded by news of a massive television ad buy — $31 million, according to Advertising Analytics, which said it was the single largest single week expenditure the firm had ever tracked. A $30 million buy in the final weeks of the 2012 race for then-President Barack Obama held the previous record.

The ad promotes Bloomberg’s record as mayor in the aftermath of 9/11 as well as his post-mayoral work campaigning for gun control and against the coal lobby.