ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel halts fuel to Gaza power plant in response to arson attacks

Posted By on June 25th, 2019

https://www.israelhayom.com/2019/06/24/arson-balloons-from-gaza-spark-8-fires-in-southern-israel/

On Monday afternoon, explosives-laden balloons floated over the Israel-Gaza border spark eight wildfires in the space of an hour. Security coordinator for one of the communities near the Gaza border blasts government’s lack of response as a “disgrace.”

Israel announced early Tuesday that it was halting the transfer of fuel to the Gaza Strip’s only power plant until further notice. The decision was a response to a surge of incendiary balloons launched from the Hamas-controlled coastal enclave into Israel.

Explosives-laden balloons floated over the Israel-Gaza border sparked eight wildfires in the space of an hour on Monday afternoon as they landed in Israeli territory.

The fires broke out in farmland near Shaar Hanegev and the Eshkol Regional Council. Firefighters and employees of the JNF and Israel Nature and Parks Authority were successfully battling the blazes in the Eshkol region.

One of the fires erupted at a memorial to the late Staff Sgt. Asaf-Yaakov Siboni near Kibbutz Nir Am. Siboni was a Nahal Brigade soldier who was killed when two IDF helicopters crashed in northern Israel in February 1997.

Another incendiary balloon sparked a fire at a nursery school in Kibbutz Saad, which was luckily empty at the time.

POLITICS Comments turned off

At Hillary’s 50th Reunion at Wellesly College By Doris O’Brien

Posted By on June 25th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/06/at_hillarys_50th_reunion_at_wellesly_college.html

If Hillary Rodham Clinton insists she’s not running for president in 2020, why is she running… all over the place? Well, for one thing, Her Heinous has always believed in the value of high visibility as a means of enhancing her political chances  When she’s out of sight it’s  almost like she’s out of her mind.

To that self-serving purpose, she and Bill arranged  a cross-country tour of joint speaking engagements that began last year.  It was to be a means of keeping their power-presumptive connubial image front and  fresh in the public eye, but flopped almost from the start.  And recently a Broadway show based on her 2016 rpresidential run hit rock bottom in sales, closing after a shortened run.

But there is one audience that will always come through enthusiastically for  Mrs. Clinton.  Even before she came into national prominence, Hillary found comfort in  knowing  that  she could   always return  in triumph to the place where her  venture into  politics began:  Wellesley College, her alma mater in Massachusetts

As Hillary became increasingly famous, her welcome on campus grew even more jubilant. As the younger classes graduated and began to vote, the army of her dedicated collegiate “sisters” mushroomed, and the reciprocal affection flourished.  During the period when Bill Clinton was president, Hillary invited everyone in her Wellesley Class of ’69 to attend a state dinner at the White House.  If there were any Republicans among them, they were not turned away.  Neither, presumably, were they fools enough to discuss politics at the swank event.

For Wellesley alumnae, reunions occur  every five years based on  the last number of  their graduating  class.  As a result I have always shared the same “reunion cycle” with both Hillary and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright .  Both of them are younger than I am – and that, alas, is not their only distinction.  In addition, they share the  right  — or left, really — politics with  the majority of  our alma mater’s grads and undergrads.    And as American institutions of higher learning  deliver a more liberal doctrinaire, the likelihood of finding conservatives on campus  has diminished greatly.   

EDUCATION Comments turned off

A Campus Welcomes Conservatives President Bruce Benson embraced true diversity at the University of Colorado Boulder. By Steven F. Hayward

Posted By on June 25th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-campus-welcomes-conservatives-11561415989

While researching what would become their 2009 book, “Becoming Right: How Campuses Shape Young Conservatives,” sociologists Amy Binder and Kate Wood conducted extensive student interviews at two schools: Harvard and the University of Colorado at Boulder. Although the faculty members they encountered were overwhelmingly liberal, Ms. Binder and Ms. Wood found that students at Boulder “were far likelier [than Harvard students] to contend that their professors bring those personal politics into the classroom.” This stifling ideological conformity, they concluded, caused conservative students to adopt “the provocative style” as their favored tactic to fight back.

The authors’ visit to Boulder coincided with the arrival of Bruce Benson as president of the University of Colorado system. If they returned now, on the eve of Mr. Benson’s retirement this month after 11 years at the helm, they would find a decidedly different campus climate. The reason is Mr. Benson’s determination to bring vibrant and serious ideological diversity to the “Berkeley of the Rockies.”

Mr. Benson became president amid a sea of troubles after the 2007 financial collapse. The ensuing recession led the state to cut funding for the university system by about 35%. A successful businessman and one time head of the Colorado GOP, Mr. Benson didn’t limit himself to the traditional fundraising role of university presidents. He also made achieving viewpoint diversity a priority.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Donald Trump’s Iran Show He has a nose for power, and he thinks Tehran is weaker than Obama understood. By Walter Russell Meade

Posted By on June 25th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trumps-iran-show-11561416216

President Trump’s Iran policy over the weekend was both erratic and masterful. Doves and isolationists, panicked by what they see as the administration’s inexorable drift toward war, rejoiced when Mr. Trump announced that a military strike had been called back. Hawks criticized him for an Obama-like climb-down, but the announcement of cyberattacks and tightening sanctions helped smooth ruffled feathers.

The result? Mr. Trump more than ever dominates U.S. Iran policy; contending political factions within the administration and outside it must jockey for his support. And the more he talks and tweets about Iran, the less clear anyone is about his ultimate intentions.

None of this should be surprising. Consistently inconsistent on issues from trade with China and immigration from Mexico to Venezuela and North Korea and now Iran, Mr. Trump has been by turns more hawkish than any of his predecessors and dovish enough to thrill Sen. Rand Paul.

This president is first and foremost a showman. From his early real-estate days in 1970s New York through his time in reality television and into his third career in politics, Mr. Trump has understood and shrewdly deployed the power of fame. He has turned American politics into the Donald Trump Show, with the country and the world fixated on his every move, speculating feverishly about what will come next. Whether threatening on Twitter to rain down destruction from the sky, reining in the dogs of war at the last minute, or stage-managing high-stakes summit meetings, he is producing episodes of the most compelling reality show the world has ever seen.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Clue Hidden in Website Code Fuels Speculation on Rep. Omar’s Marital History By Jack Crowe

Posted By on June 25th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/clue-hidden-in-website-code-fuels-speculation-on-rep-omars-marital-history/

Representative Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) has long dismissed the accusation that she married her brother in order to skirt U.S. immigration law, but a clue uncovered in the source code of her sister’s website suggests that the freshman congresswoman may have perjured herself to hide her ex-husband’s whereabouts when filing for a divorce in 2017.

Omar, in an effort to obtain a no-fault divorce from her then-husband Ahmed Elmi, testified under oath in 2017 that she had not seen or heard from Elmi since 2011 and was unable to locate him because they had no mutual acquaintances, and that she did not know the names of any of his immediate family members. But website code reviewed by the Daily Caller suggests that Elmi designed a website for Grit Partners, a health-care-consulting company run by Omar’s sister, Sarah Noor, that same year.

The Grit Partners website includes code, generated by the web-design platform Squarespace, that links to the company’s Twitter and Instagram accounts. Elmi’s name is included in that code: “screenname: Ahmed Elmi” and “UserName: ahmednelmi,” the code reads.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

What the Viral Border-Patrol Video Leaves Out By A. G. Hamilton

Posted By on June 25th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/06/what-the-viral-border-patrol-video-leaves-out/

News outlets seized on the video as evidence of the Trump administration’s cruelty, but they omitted the crucial context.

In an attempt to justify Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s absurd comparison of American detention facilities to Holocaust-era concentration camps, many figures within the media have shared a viral video clip of a legal hearing in which a Department of Justice attorney debates a panel of judges as to what constitutes “sanitary conditions.” The majority of the shares were of a version put out by NowThis News, which claimed that the video shows a Trump administration official arguing that “children don’t need soap, toothbrushes, or beds to be ‘safe and sanitary’ while in Border Patrol custody.” The claim has led to several days of outrage, and has been used repeatedly as evidence that the current administration is being intentionally cruel to migrant children. Countless journalists, along with clickbait outlets such as The Hill and the Huffington Post, have highlighted the video inside this framing.

Unsurprisingly, it is not that simple. Indeed, the hearing in the video was related not to actions taken by the Trump administration, but to a challenge of a 2017 ruling that the CBP under the Obama administration had violated the Flores Settlement agreement with its treatment of children in custody. The judge in that case cited specific infractions that she felt were in violation of the “safe and sanitary” requirement under the Flores agreement and recommended a special monitor be appointed to ensure these facilities were complying with the original standard. The DOJ attorney in the video, Sarah Fabian, was not arguing that the United States should decline to provide those items to children, but rather that the Flores Settlement agreement didn’t specifically require those items. The notoriously liberal Ninth Circuit judges disagreed with this argument, preferring to read Flores narrowly. Fabian has been arguing similar cases on behalf of the Justice Department for years; that is her job. Some of her legal arguments have upset immigration advocates before. But they have never led to this type of media coverage, or to the claim that her fulfilling her legal role is indicative of a moral shortcoming.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Modern Times By Marilyn Penn

Posted By on June 25th, 2019

It’s cultural appropriation when privileged white people wear cornrows or braids or even sport sombreros. It’s fine for a Hispanic woman to refer to a detention facility as a concentration camp – and to use the phrase “never again” – a specific reference by Jews to the holocaust – to the congestion of illegal immigrants who have insistently forced their way across the border. The name of a raped woman must never be published by our newspaper of record but slanderous statements by the defense lawyer about the missing mother of 5 whose blood-stained clothes were found among 30 bags deposited by the husband and his girlfriend in 30 different garbage bins are freely published in the paper and broadcast on t.v. news. The trial of the husband and girlfriend has not even begun. A new law restricts landlords from de-activating rent stabilization from apartments whose tenants have moved out, thereby forcing landlords to continue to relieve the govt of providing its own housing for the indigent. Other businesses such as restaurants and stores are free to raise their prices without restrictive laws. State senators who passed the law that hogties landlords are scheduled to get large raises that would make their salaries the highest of any state.

Colleges and universities must take into account the sensitivities of diverse ethnic groups providing them with counselors and safe spaces – all except for Jews who continue to be treated as pariahs during the Israel Apartheid Week that occurs yearly across America’s campuses and the BDS resolutions that go hand in hand with them. Freedom of speech is touted when it refers to BDS but is non-existent for anything that would make people of color or in the LGBTQ protectorate uncomfortable. Conservatives and Zionists are persona non grata who must be hurried off stage in deference to mob rule but student protesters who occupy administrative offices are seldom if ever punished. Schools with billion dollar endowments are allowed to have their students incur prolonged debt which taxpayers will ultimately pay without govt insisting that private colleges and universities take care of their own scholarship payments. And lastly, it’s unfair that Asian students spend years studying hard in order to get into the elite free high schools in New York but it’s fine to discard testing on the grounds of discrimination against those who are less-endowed or just plain lazy. Hopefully the same standards will also be applied to sports teams and school orchestras.

MY SAY: Comments turned off

MY SAY: BRANDYWINE VALLEY- PENNSYLVANIA AND DELAWARE AND THE DU PONTS

Posted By on June 24th, 2019

I just spent delightful days in the Brandywine Valley driving through the beautiful countryside. Included were visits to the Brandywine River museum which features paintings by three generations of the Wyeth family and their acolytes, the magnificent American antique furniture and woodland gardens of the former home of Henry Francis Du Pont- Winterthur Museum, and Longwood Gardens which defies description with one thousand acres of woodlands, flower gardens, ancient specimen trees of every variety, fountains, water gardens and a Conservatory that is dazzling with its almost endless displays of plants, trees and flowers.
All of the foregoing were a sampling of the generosity and public spirit of the Du Pont family, whose largess contributed and continues to contribute to conservation and restoration and maintenance of American historical treasures.
It also evoked a personal recollection of the Du Ponts. My husband’s brother in law was a very accomplished PhD in chemistry who worked for Du Pont de Nemours in Wilmington in the 1950s. It was bruited that a Jew could sooner become President of America than a president of Du Pont. At the time there were many institutions and academies with anti-Semitic policies so I did not pay too much attention.
Years later in 1974, I heard that expression again about anti-Semitism at Du Pont at a dinner sponsored by the Weizmann Institute of Israel. It was repeated with much humor by the guest of honor Irving Saul Shapiro who was the first non-Du Pont family member to be appointed CEO of the company in 1973 where he remained until 1981.
That is what I love about this country. Injustice and prejudice towards minorities and women have been overturned by the principles of democracy and not by thugs like Antifa and so-called “justice warriors.” God truly shed his grace on America the beautiful…..rsk

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Palestinians and the Bahrain Conference: Condemning Arabs While Asking for Arab Money by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on June 24th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14431/palestinians-money-bahrain-conference

The Palestinian strategy is clear: to incite the Arab masses against their leaders and governments. The Palestinian attacks are no longer directed against US President Donald Trump… Now the targets are the Arab heads of state, particularly those who are seen by Palestinians are being in collusion with Israel and the Trump administration.

As the Palestinians were condemning Arabs for agreeing to attend the conference in Bahrain, Palestinian leaders repeated their appeal to the Arab states for financial aid. On the one hand, the Palestinians are condemning Arab countries for attending a conference aimed at boosting the Palestinian economy and improving living conditions in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. On the other hand, Palestinian leaders have no problem begging their Arab brothers for urgent financial aid…. The Palestinians are asking the Arabs to give them $100 million each month to help them “face political and financial pressure” from Israel and the US administration.

The Palestinians realize that some of the key Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, are no longer prepared to wait for them and have decided to board the train whose final destination is prosperity and economic opportunities for both Palestinians and Arabs.

The decision of six Arab states to attend the Bahrain conference despite the Palestinian boycott call shows that the Arabs have chosen to endorse a new direction – one that will leave the Palestinians to fend for themselves in a hell of their own making. For their choice to thumb their noses not only at the US but also at influential Arab states, the Palestinians are likely to emerge as the biggest losers.

In 2009, the late Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdel Aziz announced his country’s decision to donate $1 billion to contribute to the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip.

The monarch made his announcement during an Arab economic conference in Kuwait. The Saudi pledge never materialized, mainly because of the continued dispute between the Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip and Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank.

The king undoubtedly had good intentions and sought to help his Palestinian brothers, especially the two million residents of the Gaza Strip who remain in dire need of financial and economic assistance.

When King Abdullah bin Abdel Aziz died six years later, the Palestinians did not hesitate to show their contempt for the Arab leader who had offered to help improve their living conditions and ensure a better future for Palestinian children.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The US Should Designate Muslim Brotherhood a Terrorist Organization by Uzay Bulut

Posted By on June 24th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14296/muslim-brotherhood-terrorist-designation

The Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928, is a pro-jihad, Islamist movement that has branches throughout the world and seeks to implement Islamic sharia under a global caliphate. Terrorism is only one of the methods the Brotherhood employs, and among its, goals, “democratization” has never been seen as one of them.

The Counter Extremism Project “has recorded 44 individuals and groups tied to the Muslim Brotherhood, including terrorist groups, foreign fighters, extremist propagandists, and political leaders.”

The Trump administration’s designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a terror organization would be an effective blow to pro-sharia and jihadi groups across the globe and help to bring about less violence and more stability to both the Muslim and non-Muslim worlds.

US President Donald Trump is working to designate the Muslim Brotherhood a foreign terrorist organization (FTO), the White House announced on April 30. The spokesman for Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), Omer Celik, responded by saying that if the United States designated the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization, it would “hamper democratization efforts in the Middle East and serve militant groups like Islamic State.”

The Muslim Brotherhood, however, founded in Egypt in 1928, is a pro-jihad, Islamist movement that has branches throughout the world and seeks to implement Islamic sharia under a global caliphate. Terrorism is only one of the methods the Brotherhood employs, and among its, goals, “democratization” has never been seen as one of them.