HISTORY, MEDIA Comments turned off

The 1619 Project’s Potted History By Michael Brendan Dougherty

Posted By on August 28th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/08/the-1619-projects-potted-history/

Here’s why conservatives reacted the way they did.

There is something almost antique about progressives in 2019, at least when they are defending the New York Times’ 1619 Project, a series of essays examining the legacy of slavery in America. Some of the essays deliver the goods, offering perspectives that are genuinely new and provocative. But the project’s packaging and the strident defenses of it make me feel like I’ve been transported back to the mid 1990s and an eager classmate is shoving James Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me into my hands and telling me, “But you gotta give Howard Zinn props for People’s History of the United States. Prepare to have your mind blown!” 

Listen, I understand that when you’re gunning for a Pulitzer and trying to get news consumers to take in slightly more dense work, you’re liable to marketing gimcrack about how it’s “finally time to tell our story truthfully.” And some conservatives have responded trollishly. But there’s a pattern in the project and among its defenders of making an outlandish claim but defending only a modest one. The project presents a simplified and mythologized history, and rather than defend what the Times actually printed, the project’s supporters accuse its critics of simplifying and mythologizing history.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The cosmic combination of Hong Kong, Brexit and the trade war Events could align against Beijing Augustus Howard

Posted By on August 27th, 2019

https://spectator.us/trade-war-brexit-courage-hong-kong/

Over the past several months, we have witnessed remarkable courage in the streets of Hong Kong. What began as limited protest against a single act of pro-Beijing legislation now has the markings of existential struggle, if not revolution. As the people of Hong Kong understand, the city government’s proposed extradition bill — enabling removal of its citizens to mainland China for trial — was not an isolated event. It was, instead, a sign of things to come, the gradual encroachment of Beijing upon the rights and freedoms promised Hong Kong for 50 years in the 1997 Basic Law. These constitutional guarantees — negotiated with the United Kingdom before it transferred the city — have come steadily under attack as the clock ticks ineluctably towards midnight. When 2047 dawns, Beijing surely wants the ‘transition’ to be ‘seamless’, a mere legal technicality ratifying what would be, by then, a matter of practical fact: full control and dominance of Hong Kong by the Communist, mainland power.

President Trump has pulled his punches thus far. He has not taken a tough, public line against Beijing on human rights or fully acknowledged the protesters’ legitimate grievances. Interestingly, however, in a culture where rhetoric usually outpaces action — one recalls Michelle Obama holding a makeshift sign, asking Boko Haram terrorists to ‘Bring Back Our Girls’ — Trump has taken actions that place real pressure on Beijing. It may be that Trump’s main, or only, contention with China rests with its economic abuses — among other things, its currency manipulation and the pilfering of American intellectual property. Whatever his motivations, though, Trump’s actions in the current trade dispute have the potential to evolve beyond economic matters, important as they are.
It is likely already the case that Trump’s trade war has energized the protests in Hong Kong. Protesters rightly intuit that Beijing, for all its bluster, has been knocked off kilter. The rising Bully of Asia is finally receiving a reciprocal dose of strength; America has finally questioned China’s way of doing business. The people of Hong Kong are now questioning it, too. These are people who, of course — notwithstanding the spirit of the United Nations Charter and the postwar, international settlement in favor of self-determination — were never consulted about their own governance in the first place.

EDUCATION, ISRAEL Comments turned off

A Plague Of Col(e)itis In Academia… by Gerald A. Honigman

Posted By on August 27th, 2019

Please allow me to introduce this analysis with some important background excerpts from a widely-published piece a while back:

“…Decades ago, while engaged in undergraduate and graduate work in Middle Eastern Affairs and related studies, the only way I learned of struggles of scores of millions of non-Arab peoples in the region occurred solely via my own initiative. Of all the hundreds of books in my library, hardly a jot or tittle on such subjects. And even when, on rare occasion, you might find mention of some of these folks in a book, a discussion on the subject never made it into the classroom.

In just one of many examples, only by becoming a member of the London-based Anti-Slavery Society did I learn of problems black Africans faced regarding genocidal and 20th century slave trading Arab tormentors.

The struggles of the Anya Nya and other blacks in the south of the Sudan and elsewhere were in full bloom, yet one would never know anything about this stuff if the academic syllabus and classroom were the sources of information. If Israel was not the alleged villain, the problem was left untouched in far too many classrooms.

While frequently exposed to such things as alleged Zionist fascism, racism, colonialism, imperialism, and dozens of other Hebrew sins, barely a word was ever spoken about the subjugation (largely by Arabs, but also by others such as Turks and Iranians as well) and plight of folks like Kurds, Imazighen (“Berbers”), Copts, Assyrians, native Jews, and so forth. And when mention of such non-Arab people was made, it was about such things as Berber rugs or musicians.

To learn of Kurds back then, the Little Miss Muffet nursery rhyme provided more information than academia…and those were the wrong curds. Keep in mind that this was especially odd because the sixties and seventies were very socially conscious eras in history. But, I was young and naïve and so gave the situation the benefit of the doubt.

I know better now.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Trump Pushes Transformation; Biden Stresses Stability By Charles Lipson

Posted By on August 27th, 2019

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/08/27/trump_pushes_transformation_bhttps://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/08/27/trump_pushes_transformation_b

Normally, it’s a sitting president who urges the nation to “stay the course.” Voters prefer stability, so incumbents normally use it as a selling point while seeking reelection. But these are not normal times. In this campaign, the man in the Oval Office is selling transformation while his leading Democratic opponent is promising a return to the calmer days of “no-drama Obama.”

It’s a political oddity.

Although Trump’s slogan, “Promises Made, Promises Kept,” seems to stress continuity, he is really promising something quite different: to keep rolling back the Administrative State, recalibrating American foreign policy, and shaking up Washington. He is telling supporters that he has stuck with his major 2016 themes, especially fighting illegal immigration, lowering taxes, appointing conservative judges, cutting burdensome regulations, and reviving American manufacturing. Internationally, he is determined to wind down America’s long wars, avoid new ones, make America’s allies pay more for global security, and rework multilateral trade deals. Oh, and maybe purchase Greenland for the American people.

That’s an ambitious, transformative agenda, and Trump is running on it. Those policies, plus steady economic growth and an enthusiastic base, give him a decent chance of winning in November 2020, unless the economy falls into recession. His biggest liabilities are obvious: his grandiose personality and his erratic, thin-skinned behavior, which are on display daily.

Trump’s base loves his outsized persona, but it grates on prosperous, educated voters, many of them swing voters in the suburbs. Their switch to the Democrats in 2018 put Nancy Pelosi back in the speaker’s chair. To dislodge her, Trump is making no effort to tone down his personality or slow his tweets. Instead, he is painting the opposition as a Children’s Crusade of Crazed Socialists, led by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib.

HISTORY, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The clever fake rabbis who made millions off of Prohibition Alice Kassens

Posted By on August 27th, 2019

https://www.jta.org/2019/08/27/opinion/the-clever-fake-rabbis-who-made-millions-off-of-prohibition

SALEM, Va. (JTA) — The Roaring Twenties was a raging headache for Jewish leadership. 

The 18th Amendment, which prohibited the “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors,” soared through state legislatures and into law in 1919 fueled by the efforts of groups like the Women’s Christian Temperance Union and the Anti-Saloon League. It resulted in a period of angst, imposters and outrage — but not for the reasons you might imagine. 

Suspicion abounded in the 1920s, especially among Jews and Catholics, that Protestants were seeking to cleanse America of immigrants and racial religious minorities. Prohibitionists claimed that ridding the nation of “demon rum” and other intoxicating liquors would cure social ills such as domestic violence, but others suspected the temperance movement was another example of a Protestant establishment shackling American Jews and Catholics.

Regardless of intent, politicians did not foresee the incentives that would lead to all kinds of subterfuge — the growing class of “fake rabbis,” for one.

Because wine plays a role in both Catholic and Jewish rituals and customs, leaders of both faiths felt prohibition would violate their First Amendment rights. The Volstead Act provided the details of how the 18th Amendment would be enforced, including allowing an exemption for sacramental wine. 

This exemption allowed for the use of wine by permitted individuals in religious functions and likely was a concession for the Jewish and Catholic vote. Catholic priests were permitted to serve wine in the church. Given that Jews conduct some ceremonies in the home, rabbis served as middlemen for their congregations, submitting a list of their congregation membership to Prohibition officials in exchange for permits for their members to purchase 10 gallons of wine per year from authorized dealers.  

ISRAEL Comments turned off

On Friday, They Buried Rina By Moshe Phillips

Posted By on August 27th, 2019

https://www.breakingisraelnews.com/135976/on-friday-they-buried-rina-opinion/

If ever there was a week that illustrated the dramatic difference between the lives of Israeli Jews and American Jews, this was it.

Over the course of the past week, Palestinian Arab terrorists stabbed and wounded an Israeli in the Old City of Jerusalem, drove a car into Israelis standing at a bus stop near Elazar, fired rockets into Sderot, set fields on fire in the western Negev, threw hand grenades at Israeli soldiers near the Gaza fence, and tried to stone Jews to death at the Tomb of Joseph.

And on Friday, they murdered 17 year-old Rina Shenrav, for the crime of hiking while Jewish. She had  just celebrated her 17th birthday the week before her murder.

That’s the reality for Israeli Jews. Surrounded by people who will use literally any weapon to try to murder them—a knife, a rock, a grenade, an incendiary balloon, a car.

It was a very different week for American Jews. It began with a lively debate over whether Israel should permit the entry of two indisputably anti-Semitic members of Congress.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Hebron Riots of 1929: Consequences and Lessons By Douglas J. Feith & Sean Durns

Posted By on August 27th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/08/hebron-riots-1929-consequences-lessons/

Arab anti-Zionism runs deeper than disputes over borders, water, and settlements.

In 1929, Arab clerics and politicians provoked riots across Palestine by accusing Jews of plotting to take control of Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa Mosque. This month marks the 90th anniversary of those riots — but they are not a bygone. Palestinian Authority and Hamas leaders incite violence today using similar falsehoods and ideology.

The 1929 riots destroyed the Jewish community in Hebron. They persuaded Labor Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion that socialist fraternity among Jewish and Arab workers and peasants would not ensure peace. They impelled Palestine’s Jews to bolster the Haganah, their underground self-defense group. And they vindicated Zionist warnings against relying on foreigners for security.

To investigate the riots, the British government, which controlled Palestine at the time, appointed an inquiry board known as the Shaw Commission.

The commission noted that Arab objections to Zionism were ideological, comprehensive, intense, and inflexible. In its report, it nonetheless devoted thousands of words to minute details of specific Arab grievances. It plumbed complaints that Jews, on one occasion, brought a chair to Jerusalem’s Western Wall and, on another, set up a screen there to divide male and female worshipers.

All this brings to mind the story of a man who thoroughly detests his wife but makes his case for divorce on the grounds that she doesn’t put the cap back on the toothpaste tube. Obviously, what he gripes about is not what accounts for his detestation. Confusion on this score was characteristic of Middle East policy officials in 1929, and it still is.

BOOKS, ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

A Kennedy launches a campaign to tell us little people to quit eating hamburgers and buying cheap cashmere sweaters By Monica Showalter

Posted By on August 27th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/08/a_kennedy_launches_a_campaign_to_guilttrip_us_little_people_about_eating_hamburgers_and_buying_cheap_cashmere_sweaters.html

One of the beautiful people out there riding jets for book tours and maybe global warming conferences is very, very, upset with the rest of us for our “inconspicuous” consumption.

Pay no attention any more to the superrich for that conspicuous consumption on carbon-spewing yachts and jets flying to global warming conferences, the big problem now is shaming those who can only afford hamburgers. Biteback, see?

Twenty-nine year old Tatiana Celia Kennedy Schlossberg’s new book, “Inconspicuous Consumption” comes out today, and she’s already kicked off a cross-country book tour for it starting in Martha’s Vineyard, wending around to the Hamptons, Manhattan, Cambridge, Portland, Maine, hipster Brooklyn, Los Angeles Seattle, Portland (different Portland), Santa Cruz, Berkeley, Washington, then back to Telluride for the rich ski bums, Denver, then back again to Vermont and ending in Boston, burning a lot of carbon to do it unless she’s taking the bus. There were actually quite a few more toney towns and cities she’ll burn carbon for to make appearances at that I didn’t mention.

According to Mike Allen’s top-ten column in Axios:

Out today, from former N.Y. Times science writer Tatiana Schlossberg, “Inconspicuous Consumption: The Environmental Impact You Don’t Know You Have” (Grand Central Publishing):

When we think about climate change, melting polar ice caps, hurricanes, or forest fires might be the first things that come to mind. … Much lower down on the list, if it comes up at all, is average, everyday, run‑of‑the-mill stuff, including literal stuff: a pair of jeans, a hamburger, Netflix, an air-conditioner.But those four things, and many others, should be much higher on the list. In fact, almost everything we do, use, and eat … has a lot to do with climate change and the environment, because of the way we use resources, create waste, and emit greenhouse gases without even thinking about it. …

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel, Iran and Trump: Behind the rhetoric by Ruthie Blum

Posted By on August 27th, 2019

https://www.jns.org/opinion/israel-iran-and-trump-behind-the-rhetoric/

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has had faith that Washington would be his key ally in any confrontation with the Islamic Republic. It was Trump, after all, who withdrew from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

Referring to a Talmudic dictum relating to self-defense, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a video clip on Sunday morning, explaining the preemptive strike launched by the Israel Defense Forces in Syria on Saturday night.

“If someone rises up to kill you, kill him first,” he began, before uncharacteristically acknowledging that the IDF was behind the airstrikes, which were carried out after the Israeli defense establishment discovered that a special Quds Force unit was dispatched by Iran to Syria to murder Israelis on the Golan Heights with explosives-laded drones.

Standing next to a somber-looking IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Yaakov Dori, Netanyahu stressed that the “complex” military operation was undertaken to thwart a “very imminent” Iranian threat, and declared that Israel would continue to uncover and prevent further such plans by the regime in Tehran.

In a veiled reference to Lebanon—home base of the Iranian terrorist proxy Hezbollah—Netanyahu then warned, “Any country that enables the use of its territory for attacks on Israel will suffer the consequences.”

The significance of this remark, which was also aimed at the powers-that-be in Damascus and Baghdad, cannot be understated. During the 2006 Second War in Lebanon, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert stated, reiterated and kept his word that only Hezbollah was the IDF’s target. Of course, since Hezbollah, like all terrorist groups, used innocent civilians and facilities as shields, this made Israel’s mission nearly impossible.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Even Some of Israel’s Greatest Supporters Don’t Get the Middle East Conflict By David Isaac

Posted By on August 27th, 2019

freebeacon.com

Never has a U.S. administration been so favorable to Israel. And Israeli Jews are full of gratitude—anything good earns a Trump comparison: “It’s No. 1, like Trump,” an Israeli grocer told me the other day, pointing to an especially well-regarded mango.

Yet the Trump administration, like those before it, either doesn’t grasp, or won’t face, the truth about the Arab-Israeli conflict. Today, perhaps, the individual most voluble in telling the truth about the conflict is Prof. Mordechai Kedar, a lecturer on Arabic and Middle East studies at Bar-Ilan University.

His message is straightforward: Islam cannot accept a Jewish state in the Middle East, “not even a tiny one on the Tel Aviv coast.” It’s a theological threat. Jews and Christians do have a protected status under Muslim rule “by becoming subservient to Islam in what is known as dhimmi status, which means they are legally deprived of many rights including the right to own land and bear arms,” he writes.

Although this has been said many times, many ways, over the years, it fails to find an ear in America’s halls of power, partly because it’s foreign to modern Western ideas, partly because of well-oiled Arab propaganda and partly because it’s resisted by the conflict resolution industry (intractable religious problems leave it no part to play). And, partly, because Israel can’t face it either.