NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

California’s Biggest Cities Confront a ‘Defecation Crisis’ Lawmakers ban plastic straws as a far worse kind of waste covers the streets of San Francisco and L.A. By Charles Kesler

Posted By on August 17th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/californias-biggest-cities-confront-a-defecation-crisis-11565994160

They say there’s a smartphone app for everything, and doubters should know there are now at least two dealing with excrement on the sidewalks of San Francisco. The city has its official SF311 app, part of its “San Francisco at your Service” program, and last year a private developer introduced Snapcrap, which allows residents to upload a photo of an offending specimen directly to the SF311 website. This alerts the city’s new five-person “poop patrol,” which will follow up, presumably, with a smile.

Then there are the maps. At least three maps charting the location of “poop complaints” in the city have been assembled, the latest and best by the nonprofit Open the Books. Their map shows most of the city covered by brown pin dots, each marking a report to the Department of Public Works.

The website RealtyHop.com dubs San Francisco “the doo-doo capital of the U.S.” They noted that the city’s poop reports almost tripled between 2011 and 2017.

The problem draws attention because the poop increasingly comes not from dogs but from humans. In partial defense of his city, Curbed SF’s Adam Brinklow explains that the reports submitted to the city didn’t distinguish between human and dog excrement, and that there were 150,000 dogs and fewer than 10,000 homeless people within city limits. But he admits that homelessness was probably the leading edge of the problem in San Francisco as well as Los Angeles, where 36,000 people live on the streets, and many do their business there.

BOOKS, HISTORY Comments turned off

‘The Plateau’ Review: A Culture of Selflessness An isolated community in southern France showed what could be done to protect victims of persecution during World War II.By Caroline Moorehead

Posted By on August 17th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-plateau-review-a-culture-of-selflessness-11565736945?mod=ig_booksaugust17

It was in the spring of 1942, as the Germans occupying France began rounding up Jews for deportation, that the inhabitants of the remote Vivarais-Lignon plateau opened their doors to refugees fleeing capture. Situated in the Massif Central region of southern France, high in the mountains and cut off from the rest of the country by thick snow during the winter months, the Vivarais-Lignon had a long tradition of resistance. In the 16th century, it was a stronghold for the Huguenots during France’s wars of religion. Now, as the Nazis and the Vichy government intensified their own persecutions, Catholics, Protestants and Darbyists—followers of John Darby, a 19th-century English preacher—offered sanctuary to Jews. Some hid them in barns and attics; others pretended that they were family members. Many of these saviors were dour, silent people, accustomed to hard lives, who shared a belief that sheltering strangers was not only important but fundamental to who they were.

Much has been written about the plateau and its people, whose selflessness helped save thousands of lives, including many Jewish children. Historians have pored over the area, tracing both the individual acts of courage and the rivalrous interpretations of the past to be found there. In “The Plateau,” Maggie Paxson recounts the story of one brave young teacher who arrived in the region late in the summer of 1942. She also discovers, during the course of her research, something that has been happening on the plateau since 2000, when it became an outpost for the Centres d’Accueil pour Demandeurs d’Asile, a nongovernmental organization that provides assistance to asylum seekers fleeing war and persecution. Kindness to strangers, the author suggests, is imbued in the very soil of this area. “The sacred here” she writes, “feels quiet, steadfast.”

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Andrew McCarthy: Israel Is right to bar entry of ‘Squad’ mates Omar and Tlaib

Posted By on August 16th, 2019

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/andrew-mccarthy-israel-tlaib-omar-trump

“Israel has hypnotized the world. May Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.” So says Rep. Ilhan Omar, D., Minn. Well, it’s a free country. Omar is not only entitled to her political opinions; she is entitled to express them as long as she avoids unlawful incitement.

The same goes for Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D. Mich., who advocates the “one-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – a final settlement in which there would no longer be a Jewish state and the territory that is now Israel would gradually become Palestine. Omar and Tlaib are members of the hard left, self-styled “squad.” They are both BDS zealots. That is the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement by which opponents of the Jewish state seek its extirpation.

Israel later – graciously – agreed to allow Tlaib to visit her aged and ailing grandmother in the West Bank, provided she didn’t use the trip to undermine her host. But the Jewish State was on solid ground with its initial denial. After all, the liberty to express one’s views does not imply immunity from the natural consequences of doing so. Among these is that the nation Omar and Tlaib seek to destabilize and ultimately dismantle may deny them entry.

That is precisely what the Israeli government did on Thursday. President Trump not only endorsed the move; he appears to have catalyzed it with a tweet, asserting that Israel would “show great weakness” if it permitted a visit from Omar and Tlaib because, according to the president, they “hate Israel & all Jewish people.”

While this rhetoric is abrasive in the Trumpian style, Israel’s exclusion of Omar and Tlaib makes eminent sense. Since when must a country, particularly one that daily confronts a terrorism challenge the likes of which we have never experienced, roll out the red carpet for aliens who mean it harm and encourage its enemies?

Naturally, because the alliance of Islamists and leftists calls the tune to which our media-Democrat complex dances, we are enduring gaseous denunciations from official Washington. Progressive groups are echoing Omar’s latest blather about how the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has “insult[ed] democratic values” (as if a nation’s survival were not a democratic value). Despite this precious sensitivity about insults, Omar could not help herself but add that President Trump is an “Islamophobe.” That term, shrewdly developed by sharia supremacists, intimates that critical examination of Islam – particularly, its doctrinal calls for jihad against non-believers – is racist.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

‘Global Temperature’ — Why Should We Trust A Statistic That Might Not Even Exist?

Posted By on August 16th, 2019

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/08/16/global-temperature-how-can-we-trust-a-statistic-that-might-not-even-exist/

The United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is quite certain Earth will be in trouble if the global temperature exceeds pre-industrial levels by 1.5 degrees Celsius or more. But how can anyone know? According to university research, “global temperature” is a meaningless concept.

“Discussions on global warming often refer to ‘global temperature.’ Yet the concept is thermodynamically as well as mathematically an impossibility,” says Science Daily, paraphrasing Bjarne Andresen, a professor at the University of Copenhagen’s Niels Bohr Institute, one of three authors of a paper questioning the “validity of a ‘global temperature.’”

Science Daily explains how the “global temperature” is determined.

“The temperature obtained by collecting measurements of air temperatures at a large number of measuring stations around the globe, weighing them according to the area they represent, and then calculating the yearly average according to the usual method of adding all values and dividing by the number of points.”

But a “temperature can be defined only for a homogeneous system,” says Andresen. The climate is not regulated by a single temperature. Instead, “differences of temperatures drive the processes and create the storms, sea currents, thunder, etc. which make up the climate”.

While it’s “possible to treat temperature statistically locally,” says Science Daily, “it is meaningless to talk about a global temperature for Earth. The globe consists of a huge number of components which one cannot just add up and average. That would correspond to calculating the average phone number in the phone book. That is meaningless.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Big Break-Up Boris Johnson’s prime ministerial infancy is lathering Remainers into the machinations of a jilted lover. Christopher Gage

Posted By on August 16th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/08/15/the-big-break-up/

Ever dated a crazy girl? Sorry. It is 2019. What I meant to ask is: Have you ever consensually courted a woman of alternative mental enthusiasm?

Well, it is marvelous. Narcotic and vibrating. Every fibrous sinew tensed and trilling. Sooner or later, however, that choppy high leavens into a faint despair. That vivifying alternative mien of hers? Nope. She’s just mental.

What follows is an anthropological study into the turbulent power of relationships. And how we over-brained monkeys may behave when something we depended upon is ripped from grasp.

We get desperate. Act in the strangest of manners. Convince ourselves of a reality calibrated to our fragile comfort.

The current Brexit saga resembles a mass break-up. The jilted resorting to the most desperate and unedifying of endeavors; pursuits which will purple their cheeks in years to come.

As the common knowledge attests, the aggrieved must survive five stages of grief. First, they deny, then comes anger, and then they begin to bargain. At a loss, depression besets them. Eventually, they accept it. And scrub their social media accounts of those projective 3 a.m. statuses authored in their state of poison.

Remainers have broken the Kubler-Ross model of grief. Swirling between denial and anger, imbibing upon grief, springing back from depression, swimming into denial, never lapping at acceptance. It has been three years.

A Brexiteer before it was even remotely cool, Jeremy Corbyn—Labour Party leader, and intellectual Maris Piper, this week implored other party leaders, and Conservative “rebels” to install him as caretaker prime minister so he could stop a spectral no-deal Brexit.

A man elected for his promise to inject some honesty into our politics, Jeremy is happy to sell his decades of political soul for a few weeks in the prime minister’s office.

His fantasy entails: winning a no-confidence vote against Boris Johnson; becoming prime minister; delaying Brexit; calling a snap election and then campaigning for another referendum.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Fusion, the ‘Collusion’ Puppeteer Bruce Ohr’s 302s, just released to the public, show Glenn Simpson pulling the strings.By Kimberley A. Strassel

Posted By on August 16th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/fusion-the-collusion-puppeteer-11565910174

The Justice Department is investigating how a former British intelligence agent, Christopher Steele, came to exert so much influence over the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s erroneous Trump-Russia collusion narrative. Let’s hope the department is also investigating an even more influential man who had even less business manipulating the government: Glenn Simpson, the head of opposition-research firm Fusion GPS.

That’s a pressing question in light of new documents from high-ranking Justice official Bruce Ohr, obtained recently by Judicial Watch. The papers include, among other things, a dozen official FBI interviews (known as 302s) of Mr. Ohr that date from just after the 2016 election through May 2017. The documents suggest Mr. Simpson was the real puppet master of the collusion drama.

Most of the FBI’s debriefs of Mr. Ohr center on information about or from Mr. Steele—itself a major breach of FBI protocol. The bureau fired Mr. Steele as a source in autumn 2016, when it became clear he was blabbing about the FBI investigation to the press. The FBI nonetheless continued to use Mr. Ohr as a back door to its discredited source. The 302s relate the numerous times and ways Mr. Steele contacted Mr. Ohr with information—although many of the details of the conversations remain redacted.

More eye-popping in the 302s is the ease with which Mr. Simpson landed meetings with powerful officials, for no apparent purpose other than to peddle unverified accusations against the Trump team. This isn’t a former intelligence officer or government official, or even someone with specialized knowledge of Russia. Mr. Simpson is a private citizen—and one who Mr. Ohr and the FBI knew was providing information to Hillary Clinton ’s team (as Mr. Ohr acknowledges in his initial 302). Yet when Mr. Simpson called, officials across Washington hopped to, swallowing the claims that would become the basis of a false hysteria.  CONTINUE AT SITE

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Is the Palestinian Authority Preparing for a New Intifada? by Bassam Tawil

Posted By on August 16th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14730/palestinian-authority-new-intifada

Needless to say, none of the Jews visiting the Temple Mount was involved in violence or any kind of “provocation.” The only violence that took place at the holy site came from Palestinians, who attacked the policemen with stones and chairs and hurled insults at the Jewish visitors.

By calling the visits “incursions” and “raids,” the Palestinians are trying to create the false impression that Jews are violently storming an Islamic holy site. The Arabic word Palestinians use to describe the visits: Iktiham (storm or break in). This rhetoric is meant to imply that the “extremist settlers” are carrying out a violent action against innocent Palestinians and their holy sites, thus signaling the Palestinians to rise to defend themselves and their mosque.

In the eyes of Palestinian leaders, Jews are always the “aggressors,” while Palestinians are the perpetual “victims”… in the Palestinian lexicon, a Jew peacefully touring the Temple Mount is an “aggressor,” while a Palestinian who throws stones and chairs at police officers and abuses the visitors is the real “victim.” This is the image Abbas, Hamas and Islamic Jihad are seeking to create in the minds of their people and the rest of the world.

The total number of Palestinians killed in Syria since 2011 now stands at 3,989. Where is the outrage from Palestinian leaders in the West Bank and Gaza Strip about that? It is reserved for a Jew peacefully visiting the Temple Mount. For them, such visits are far more important than 250 Palestinian children killed in any Arab country. This sums up the Palestinian leaders’ attitude – ruinous disregard for the lives of their own children, and malign intentions for the Jews and their children.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) spent the Muslim feast of Eid al-Adha this week inciting against Israel because of Jewish visits to the Temple Mount, or Haram al-Sharif in Arabic, in Jerusalem. The site is also sacred to Jews and Christians: it is where the First and Second Temples had stood before being destroyed by the Babylonians in 587 BCE and by the Romans in 70 CE. (The Western Wall, or so-called Wailing Wall, sacred to Jews, an ancient retaining wall of the Temple Mount, is all that remains of them.)

Depicting the peaceful visits as “incursions by Jewish settlers and extremists,” PA officials and media outlets accused the Israeli government of repeatedly carrying out “provocations and assaults against holy sites in Jerusalem, particularly Al-Aqsa Mosque.”

Mahmoud Habbash, religious affairs adviser to PA President Mahmoud Abbas, went as far as describing the Jews visiting the Temple Mount as “terrorists.” Habbash, who also serves as Supreme Shari’a Judge, also accused the Jewish visitors of “defiling the Haram al-Sharif and provoking the feelings of Muslims.” He further appealed to all Muslims to “defend Al-Aqsa Mosque against Israeli conspiracies and barbaric violations.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

When Britain Died Welcome to Sharia. John Glynn

Posted By on August 16th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274592/when-britain-died-john-glynn

In April of this year, in an article titled “4 Reasons Why London is The Worst,” Maria Ebele had this to say: “London has the reputation of one of the greatest cities in the world. But I’ll let you in on a secret: if you ever want to make friends with a Brit who is not from London, casually drop in conversation that London isn’t your most favourite place in the world. Then sit back and watch. Most likely, you’ll see his or her eyes light up with glee at the opportunity to rip into the nation’s capital.”

The author has a point. Over the past couple of years, more than 340,000 people have moved away from London amid rising levels of knife crime, according to reports. Extortionate property prices and poor air quality are also cited as reasons for people choosing to leave the capital and set up a new life elsewhere in the UK. Obviously, people want a better quality of life; also, people would prefer not to get stabbed.

However, could there be another reason for the mass exodus?

I ask this because London is acquiring an increasingly Islamic face.

In the words of Maulana Syed Raza Rizvi, an eminent preacher in the city, “London is more Islamic than many Muslim countries put together.” Yes, that London, as in the home of red buses and posh accents. The “traditional” picture of London has been replaced with a more worrying one. According to Giulio Meotti, a researcher at the Gatestone Institute, by 2020, “estimates are that the number of Muslims attending prayers will reach at least 683,000, while the number of Christians attending weekly Mass will drop to 679,000.” Next year, Islam looks likely to be the dominant religion in the capital.

HISTORY Comments turned off

Stalin-Hitler Pact Turns 80 And ignorance still prevails in the Democrat-media alliance. Lloyd Billingsley

Posted By on August 16th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274643/stalin-hitler-pact-turns-80-lloyd-billingsley

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg was born on March 15, 1933, and Senator Dianne Feinstein on June 20 of the same year. An event that occurred six years later is far more significant than both those active public figures but much less understood, if known at all.

On August 23, 1939, Joseph Stalin of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics signed a pact with Adolph Hitler’s National Socialist regime in Germany. “Fascism is a matter of taste,” quipped Soviet foreign policy boss Vyacheslav Molotov, confirming that the two totalitarian regimes were essentially the same. Though often described as a “non-aggression pact,” the reverse was true.

The month after the Pact, Stalin and Hitler both invaded Poland, starting World War II. As Ben Peck noted in 2009 at Marxist.com, the Pact provided the Nazis with raw materials which “funded the Nazi war machine in Europe.”  By 1940, Stalin supplied Hitler’s Germany with 900,000 tons of mineral oil, 100 tons of scrap iron, 500,000 tons of iron ore” and other important minerals.  Soviet diplomats “groveled before the Führer in order to ingratiate themselves. In his cynical fashion, Stalin expelled each ambassador from the territories of the USSR as their countries were occupied by the Nazi armies.”

During the Pact, the Nazi and Soviet intelligence services teamed up against the Western democracies, and as the leftist Guardian recalls, the Stalin-Hitler collaboration did not end there. “Stalin also handed back a substantial number of German communists who had taken refuge in the Soviet Union after the Nazi seizure of power.” These Jewish communists, “were taken directly from the Soviet Gulag to a German concentration camp.”  As Christopher Wolf notes, “not many people know that many Jews fled Stalin’s control as well.”

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Banned: Omar, Tlaib, Geller, and Me Should a country ban people who oppose its policies from entering? Robert Spencer

Posted By on August 16th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274644/banned-omar-tlaib-geller-and-me-robert-spencer

The vehemently anti-Semitic and anti-Israel Representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib have been banned from entering Israel, and Leftists are furious. Surely Israel, and its ally in the Oval Office, have made a major blunder, no? Not necessarily.

Rep. Justin Amash fumed: “Israel should stand up to President Trump and allow our colleagues to visit. Nobody has to agree with their opinions, but it will inevitably harm U.S.-Israel relations if members of Congress are banned from the country. We must find ways to come together; there’s enough division.” 

Sure, but would Omar and Tlaib touring around Israel, providing grist for the mill of the Palestinian propaganda jihad and calling for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) measures against the Jewish state really help us “come together”?

After all, they were banned due to “suspected provocations and promotion of BDS.” And there is certainly no doubt that they would have promoted the genuinely neo-Nazi BDS movement while in Israel. Is Israel, or any other state, really obligated to allow entry to anyone who is its implacable foe, dedicated to its ultimate destruction?

Rep. David Cicilline think so. “This is a grave mistake by the Israeli government,” he thundered. “Democracy is about accepting that others don’t always share your views and respecting the right to disagree.” Presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren also cast aspersions on Israeli democracy, tut-tutting that “Israel doesn’t advance its case as a tolerant democracy or unwavering US ally by barring elected members of Congress from visiting because of their political views.”