POLITICS Comments turned off

Who’s Afraid of Howard Schultz? Democrats seem to be afraid he might give them a policy debate.

Posted By on January 31st, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/whos-afraid-of-howard-schultz-11548893911

The way progressives are denouncing Howard Schultz, you’d think he is Donald Trump’s first cousin. The former Starbucks CEO said Sunday he might run for President as an independent in 2020, and Democrats have since been shrieking like teenagers at a horror movie. They seem to fear a policy debate, which is exactly why a Schultz candidacy could be good for the country, including Democrats.

Senator Elizabeth Warren wasted no time on Twitter deriding “billionaires who think they can buy the presidency to keep the system rigged for themselves while opportunity slips away for everyone else.” The Democratic pundit class, which means nearly every pundit, rushed to say Mr. Schultz should stick to grande cappucinos and leave politics to the professionals who . . . lost to Mr. Trump.

They’re trying to bully Mr. Schultz out of running, but along the way they’re making the case for why he should. Take economics, where Ms. Warren, Sen. Kamala Harris and other Democrats wants Americans to shut up and jump on their bullet train to Bernie Sanders’ utopia. On policy Mr. Schultz is closer to a John F. Kennedy or Bill Clinton Democrat.

He grew up in the projects in Brooklyn, worked in sales at Xerox and built his global coffee company from next to nothing. “I thought that was the American dream, the aspiration of America,” he said this week. “You’re going to criticize me for being successful when in my company over the last 30 years, the only company in America that gave comprehensive health insurance, equity in the form of stock options, and free college tuition?”

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

U.S. Changes Visa Process for High-Skilled Workers Immigrants with master’s degrees or higher get priority in new H-1B visa system By Louise Radnofsky

Posted By on January 31st, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-changes-visa-process-for-high-skilled-workers-11548879868?cx_testId=16&cx_testVariant=cx&cx_artPos=0&cx_tag=pop&cx_navSource=newsReel#cxrecs_s

WASHINGTON—The Trump administration unveiled changes to how the coveted visas for high-skilled foreign workers are allocated, starting this April, in an effort to boost the number awarded to people with advanced degrees from U.S. universities.

The change would result in up to 5,340 more immigrants with a master’s degree or higher getting selected for the visa, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which published the new rules.

The shift appears to fulfill a pledge President Trump made two years ago to help Silicon Valley companies by prioritizing the most skilled applicants for the visas, known as H-1B, and reducing the number of visas secured through outsourcing firms.

The new rules are likely to be challenged in court by those outsourcing companies, arguing that the administration has acted outside of its authority or sidestepped the full rulemaking process, said Leon Fresco, an immigration attorney and partner at Holland & Knight LLP.

He added that any court issuing a restraining order against the rules taking effect April 1 “could potentially throw the whole H-1B system into chaos.”

“If a lawsuit is filed, and an injunction is entered, it does have the risk of throwing the whole thing up in the air. That would be my greatest fear,” he said.

Michael Bars, a USCIS spokesman, said the rule was made “in compliance with the requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act.” CONTINUE AT SITE

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The World Council of Churches and Jew-Hate WCC’s telling policy on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Joseph Puder

Posted By on January 31st, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272670/world-council-churches-and-jew-hate-joseph-puder

A Jerusalem Post headline on January 14, 2019 declared “World Council of Churches (WCC) use anti-Semitic rhetoric and advocate Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS)” against Israel. Research by NGO Monitor found that, “The WCC project – Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) has sent 1,800 Ecumenical Accompaniers from around the world to serve as observers in the West Bank and Jerusalem over the past 15 years, and aim to have 25 to 30 of these unofficial observers on the ground at all times. This is the only program of its kind run by the WCC.”

The stated goal of the EAPPI observers, according to the WCC, is to “offer protective presence and witness…monitoring and reporting human right abuses…standing with local peace and human rights groups…and advocacy (for Arab-Palestinians).” Naturally, this is a one-sided enterprise and pseudo “human rights” effort. It looks the other way on Arab-Palestinian terror, gross violations of human rights, hate propaganda, and anti-Semitism taught in Arab-Palestinian schools and mosques by the official Hamas and Palestinian Authority school systems.

According to the WCC website, the group represents 350 member churches in 110 countries, and half a billion Christians throughout the world. WCC member churches can be found in all regions of the world and include most of the Orthodox churches (Eastern and Oriental, i.e. Arab), as well as African Instituted, Anglican, Assyrian, Baptist, Evangelical, Lutheran, Mennonite, Methodist, Moravian, Old Catholic, Pentecostal, Reform, United/Uniting and Free /Independent churches, Disciples of Christ, and Friends (Quakers). The Roman Catholic Church is not a part of the WCC.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Belgium Welcomes Multiculturalism by Judith Bergman

Posted By on January 31st, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13606/belgium-multiculturalism

The report notes that the texts used call for gays to be stoned to death or thrown off buildings, and described Jews as “corrupt, evil and treacherous people”…. The writings, the report continued…called for “war” on all people who do not follow Sunni Islam — From a recent report by the Belgian State Security Service.

“[T]he most important principle of jihad is to fight unbelievers and aggressors… Armed jihad becomes an individual duty for every Muslim.” — From a teaching manual used in Belgian mosques, according to a leaked intelligence report.

Such manuals, noted the report, are widely available “thanks to the unlimited financial and technological means of the proselytizing apparatus of Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states.” The manuals, the report added, were found not only in Belgium but also in neighboring countries.

Belgium, in its well-intended welcome of newcomers from the Middle East, is now facing a persistent terrorist threat and a “wave of jihadism”, according to a new report published by the Belgian State Security Service (VSSE) on November 30. The main reason for these recent acquisitions, notes the report, is the ongoing Islamic radicalization of inmates in Belgian prisons and the risk of terrorist convicts engaging in terrorist acts once they have served their sentences and are back out on the street.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Turkey’s Sweeping “Educational” Penetration into the Balkans by Uzay Bulut

Posted By on January 31st, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13639/turkey-balkans-education

Erdogan repeatedly has said that his government aims to raise “devout generations” in Turkey. To this end, he has Islamized Turkey’s education system. Now he is working on exporting Islamized curricula to Europe.

“Turkey’s experience in religious education is very important to us, as it has advanced in a remarkable way. If we also use the imam hatip school method in our countries, in ten years we could also have a president [such as Erdogan] raised in an imam hatip school.” — Participants in a conference of school administrators from Europe and the Balkans, 2017, according to the Maarif Foundation.

“…[J]ihad is obligatory until judgment day… in some places, jihad is done with the pen; in others it is done with the tongue. And in some other places, it is carried out with guns. What is your jihad in the lands where you reside? If Muslims are persecuted somewhere, it is because there is no caliphate where they live.” — Nureddin Yıldız, one of the first members of the World Union of Scholars from Turkey and also the founding member of the Union of Scholars in Turkey, in a fatwa on his website.

As part of its expansionist neo-Ottoman agenda, the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been building mosques and setting up Islamic educational institutions around the world. The mosque that Ankara is currently constructing in Tirana, Albania, will reportedly be the largest of the dozens of its mosques in the Balkans.

Through the Maarif Foundation — established in 2016 by means of a law enacted by the Turkish parliament, which gave it the authority to open schools abroad — a kindergarden, primary-, middle- and high-schools were built in Tirana. In October 2018, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu was the keynote speaker at the inauguration in Albania of the Maarif-run University of New York Tirana.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Duke University: Polyglot Boarding House By Helen Lamm

Posted By on January 30th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/01/29/duke-universit

Middlebury College is widely renowned for their top-quality, immersive foreign language learning programs. Central to the Middlebury curriculum is the infamous language pledge, a promise which all students must take to use for communication only the language one is studying for the duration of the program. Whether during the summer in idyllic Middlebury, Vermont, or overseas at one of the school’s satellite locations, hundreds of students every year commit themselves to Middlebury’s infamous language pledge, immersing themselves in the culture of the target language and internalizing all the subtle cues and linguistic patterns that occur over water cooler talk, gossip, run-of-the-mill transactions, etc.

Fulfilling one’s obligations under the language pledge is difficult. Most people process their emotions and thoughts by speaking about them. Living in a strange, new place with all of the emotional turmoil that brings can be overwhelming, especially when one lacks the vocabulary to articulate one’s experience. In rare moments of longing, the average Middlebury student might call home and speak in his native tongue for awhile. But those instances of quiet desperation are understood to be private.

The language pledge is as much a matter of respect for the other people in the room as it is a personal commitment to self-improvement. Speaking the language of the host country notifies the people of that country of one’s regard for their culture, time, and welcome. Thus, a certain intimacy may be achieved with friends of completely different backgrounds through speaking the host language. As for classmates, staying true to the language pledge in public and private settings communicates to them that their learning process is of as much value as one’s own. The shared experience of stumbling toward fluency also lends to the development of comradery among fellow students.

Ultimately, Middlebury Language School graduates are generally regarded as the best in the field. The positive outcomes of immersing oneself in the target culture cannot be overstated. From the national security perspective, Middlebury Language Schools are fantastic tools of cultural diplomacy.

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Learning the lessons of Australia’s recognition of the State of Israel, seventy years on Peter Wertheim ****

Posted By on January 30th, 2019

https://www.abc.net.au/religion/lessons-of-australias-recognition-of-israel-1949/10758504

Peter Wertheim is co-CEO of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.

Today, 29 January 2019, marks the 70th anniversary of an obscure and long-forgotten event in the history of Australia’s international relations: the day Australia recognised the State of Israel. The issue generated intense behind-the-scenes controversy, and ultimately open disagreement, between the then Labor government, led by Prime Minister Ben Chifley and Foreign Minister, “Doc” Evatt, and its sister Labour government in Britain.

Seventy years later, following the passing of a resolution at the recent ALP National Conference supporting recognition of a Palestinian State, it is worth recalling what the controversy was about and understanding why it still matters.
Recognising Israel ― 1949

In the late 1940s, support for the Zionist cause in Australia came primarily from the Labor side of politics, whereas the conservatives were the source of most of the opposition to it. Conservative views were shaped largely by traditional feelings of loyalty to Britain, which had ruled Palestine under a League of Nations mandate. Britain fought a bitter insurgency by Jewish forces for three years, sparked by its decision to bar entry into Palestine to tens of thousands of Jewish Holocaust survivors who were desperate to escape Europe and leave behind the traumas they had endured.

On 29 November 1947, the UN General Assembly voted to recommend the partition of the British Mandate of Palestine into a Jewish State and an Arab State, giving international endorsement to the principle of “two States for two peoples.” This was not an act of recognition, however; neither State yet existed. The British Mandate government continued to function.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Former Archbishop of Canterbury Dr George Carey on Anti-Semitism in the UK

Posted By on January 30th, 2019

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/

Former Archbishop of Canterbury Dr George Carey, now a life peer, is seen below asserting, in an interview on i24NEWS with video anti-antisemitism campaigner and Middle East analyst Jonathan Sacerdoti, a few home truths on Holocaust Memorial Day:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5E8Xx58zq68

‘…. Lord Carey of Clifton told i24NEWS on Sunday that ‘Christians are to blame as well’ for high-levels of anti-Semitism in the UK, which he suggested was linked to the one-sided narratives many received on pilgrimages to Israel and the West Bank. ‘What I think we need to do is to better educate Christians who go on these pilgrimages to see this as not the total story,’ Lord Carey said, urging the thousands attending such religious trips to prominent and widely-contested holy sites in the region to seek the entire picture with regards to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Many of the religious sites such as Jesus’ birthplace in Bethlehem and the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron are located in the West Bank, often flashpoint and conflict-centric areas. ‘What they don’t realize is what is happening to the Jewish communities in their own land who are sidelined and in a way persecuted by Palestinians. You’ve got to get a much more balanced view of what’s going on,’ he continued. ‘I think of Israel as a wonderful, sophisticated, democratic society surrounded by undemocratic nations. I mean we must support one another,’ he said, emphasizing shared the Judeo-Christian heritage. ‘Christians owe so much to the Jewish scriptures and Jewish history, so we stand as one,’ the former top church leader added. Lord Carey of Clifton has often spoken out publicly against anti-Semitism in the church and across the UK. ‘It’s not going to cost my life, it’s not going to cost my future, and this is what Jews fear, you know, the persecution, indirect persecution,’ he asserted, referring to the detrimental impact anti-Semitism can often have on daily life. ‘Think of Jewish children walking to school with armed guards, guards outside synagogues — in an advanced civilization such as ours, this is quite deplorable,’ he told i24NEWS’

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Federal Agencies’ Nutrition And Obesity Recommendations Are Junk Science Too often, medical research is stunted by cronyism, bad incentives, and lack of competent peer review. And it all comes at the expense of taxpayers.By Edward Archer

Posted By on January 30th, 2019

http://thefederalist.com/2019/01/30/federal-agencies-nutrition-obesity-recommendations-junk-science/

Over the past decade, my colleagues and I have published analyses in top medical and scientific journals showing that no human could survive on the diets the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Health and Human Services (HHS) used to create the dietary guidelines for Americans. To be precise, we demonstrated that the methods used by researchers at public health agencies produced data that were physiologically implausible and inadmissible as scientific evidence. We further showed that these pseudo-scientific methods and meaningless data generated a fictional diet-centric discourse on obesity and chronic disease, with significant consequences for public health policy.

Yet despite our rigorous analyses plus scathing critiques from scientists around the world, federal public health agencies repeatedly refused to address contrary evidence and re-examine their demonstrably invalid methods. As a result the USDA, HHS, National Cancer Institute (NCI), and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) continue to use meaningless dietary data to tell Americans what to eat and drink while promoting futile “diet-centric” public health policies such as menu-labeling mandates and banning large sodas.

Nevertheless, federal agencies impeding scientific progress is merely the tip of the iceberg. Recent events show that the U.S. research establishment is incompetent and corrupt, existing largely to transfer wealth from hard-working Americans to elite academics.
Taxpayer Funding Is A Substitute For Scientific Rigor

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Austria Reeling From Migrants’ Murder of Women When patriarchy and misogyny among foreigners spawn killings. Stephen Brown

Posted By on January 30th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272710/austria-reeling-migrants-murder-women-stephen-brown

It is definitely not how Austrians wanted to begin the New Year.

In a bloody start to 2019, four women have been brutally murdered in the peaceful Alpine nation of almost 9 million people in just over two weeks, shaking the country to its core.

With an additional two murders of women committed last December, the tally of this “femicide,” as it is being termed, stands at six in a little over five weeks. (There have been no male murder victims.) And this in a country with the very low murder rate of only .66 per 100,000 people! (The United States, by contrast, has 5.35)

What is conspicuous to Austrians about these terrible tragedies is that all the women-killers, except one, are not native Austrians. (Non-Austrians are only 15 per cent of the population.) Another visible factor is most murders were committed by partners or ex-partners of women who were about to leave, or had left, relationships with their killers.

“It is striking that many foreigners and asylum seekers are found over proportionally among the suspects. That suggests that this group is particularly misogynistic and patriarchist oriented,” said social scientist Birgitt Haller of the Institute for Conflict Research in Vienna.

Police concur. They report that sometimes when called to a migrant home where the husband is physically abusing his wife: “Then he doesn’t understand at all why he is not allowed to hit his wife and why he has to leave the apartment.”

Vice-Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache of the ruling conservative Freedom Party of Austria (FPO), horrified by the killings, says the fact most of the criminals have a migrant background “is not permitted to be withheld.”