MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

Cold War’s Devastating Anti-Communism By Matthew Continetti

Posted By on March 2nd, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/03/cold-war-movie-anti-communist

Director Pawel Pawlikowski’s masterful film mounts a subtle, power-packed critique of the socialist phenomenon.

The best narrative art eschews didacticism in favor of subtlety and nuance and moral reflection. The Polish film Cold War, released last year and directed by Pawel Pawlikowski, is no exception. It tells the story, inspired by Pawlikowski’s parents, of Wiktor Warski (Tomasz Kot) and Zula Lichón (Joanna Kulig), whose amour fou burns against the backdrop of postwar Europe.

Wiktor’s passion for Zula consumes him. It haunts him for years after he flees Poland, and drives him to return despite the certainty of imprisonment. Zula herself is a beautiful, broken creature, the victim of abuse, talented but insecure, flirtatious, charming, impetuous, melancholy, who dulls her anxieties with alcohol. This passionate and doomed romance also has a political dimension. Which is why Cold War is not just melodrama. It’s a masterpiece.

The film is a subtle but devastating critique of the socialist phenomenon. Wiktor and Zula meet shortly after the end of World War II, when Wiktor is tasked with assembling a musical troupe that will perform folk music for the nomenklatura of the Soviet client government. With his partner, choreographer Irena Bielecka (Agata Kulesza), Wiktor tours the countryside, recording ancient melodies. They occupy what looks to be an old estate — a ruin of the ancien régime — where they hold auditions. Among the aspiring dancers and singers is Zula, to whom Wiktor is immediately drawn. Irena doesn’t share Wiktor’s enthusiasm, especially after Zula performs a song from a Soviet movie. But she relents. Zula joins the group.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Rep. Ilhan Omar: Anti-Semitic to the Bone By Rick Moran

Posted By on March 2nd, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/trending/rep-ilhan-omar-anti-semitic-to-the-bone/

Rep. Ilhan Omar is once again under fire for using an anti-Semitic trope about the “dual loyalty” of supporters of Israel.

It’s beginning to look like her anti-Semitism is embedded so deeply that she has no conscious thought about Israel and Jews that doesn’t drip with Jew-hatred.

She said this during a town hall meeting in Washington:

What I’m fearful of — because Rashida [Tlaib] and I are Muslim — that a lot of our Jewish colleagues, a lot of our constituents, a lot of our allies, go to thinking that everything we say about Israel to be anti-Semitic because we are Muslim.

Not everything. Just those things you say that are blatantly anti-Semitic.

To me, it’s something that becomes designed to end the debate because you get in this space of – yes, I know what intolerance looks like and I’m sensitive when someone says, “The words you used, Ilhan, are resemblance of intolerance.” And I am cautious of that and I feel pained by that. But it’s almost as if, every single time we say something regardless of what it is we say… we get to be labeled something. And that ends the discussion. Because we end up defending that and nobody ever gets to have the broader debate of what is happening with Palestine.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Are We Seeing the Start of a Global Centrist Revolution? By Neal Simon

Posted By on March 2nd, 2019

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/03/02/are_we_seeing_the_start_of_a_global_centrist_revolution_139630.html

By Neal Simon

In the past week, we have witnessed the creation of new centrist coalitions in the United Kingdom and Israel — and here in the U.S. in the state of Alaska. In each case, members of the legislative bodies left their current parties to form a new power bloc in the middle of the political spectrum.

In Alaska, one moderate legislator (pictured), by refusing to caucus with his own party, was able to lead the formation of a bipartisan, centrist coalition that will likely put the interests of Alaskans ahead of the interests of either party. In the U.K., 11 members of Parliament from the Conservative and Labour parties left those parties in protest of their leaders to begin a new, independent, centrist coalition. In Israel, the top two centrist candidates for prime minister just joined forces, creating a new party to challenge the increasingly conservative Bibi Netanyahu, who will seek a fourth term when Israeli elections are held in April.

In the U.S., frustration with our government is at an all-time high. A Gallup poll released Feb. 18 revealed that a record number of Americans believe that poor government leadership is the largest problem in the country today. This dim view of our politics is shared about equally by Republicans and Democrats.

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

American Sheikh: “We All Have a Higher Goal … the Establishment of the Caliphate”

Posted By on March 2nd, 2019

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/

That’s the view expressed at the end of January byAmerican Sheik Omar Baloch, whose views on Zionists, Freemasons, and other matters can be discerned from his YouTube channel here .
To quote MemriTV, the uploader of the above,

‘On January 29, 2019, Illinois-based Sheikh Omar Baloch uploaded a video titled “Constructive Criticism of Islamic Relief Organizations” to his YouTube channel. In the video, Baloch said that Islamic relief organizations do not place enough emphasis on the establishment of an Islamic caliphate as the long-term solution to humanitarian problems.

He said that the problem is that many Islamic organizations are scared to lose funding if they are too vocal about the establishment of a caliphate, and he criticized them because they “wear the garb of [piety]” by providing aid, but they do not call out the “forces of injustice,” for which they are serving as a “bandage.” He said that such organizations should use their platform to convey a message about the common dream, legacy, and hope of Muslims, and he elaborated: “We all have a higher goal… that is bigger than us, and that is the establishment of the caliphate.”

According to the Facebook page of the Furqaan Institute of Quranic Education (FIQE), Sheikh Omar Baloch was born in Chicago and is the scholar in residence at the Al-Furqaan Foundation, of which FIQE is a division. The Facebook page also says that Baloch studied at Georgetown University, at Al-Azhar University in Egypt, at Jamia Thul Ahlul Hadith in Pakistan.’ [Emphasis added]

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The United Church of Christ Wrongfully Attacks Israel by Denis MacEoin

Posted By on March 2nd, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13656/ucc-attacks-israel

Mistakes and falsehoods such as those we encounter throughout the UCC’s misnamed guide to “Promoting a Just Peace in Palestine-Israel”, each one seemingly trivial, cannot be dismissed as the results of a moment’s inattention. Much effort has gone into the writing of this Guide, and factual errors, which take up so much of the text, are clearly the result of conscious assumptions that have never been checked against reputable facts.

If a body of Christians really cares about Palestinian lives, Muslim and Christian alike, not to mention the lives of Israeli children, the lives of everyone on either side, then supporting an illegal and fanatical use of violence by telling lies and permitting distortions in order to incite an anti-Semitic hatred that will embolden and activate further terrorist attacks is beyond measure a contradiction of normative Christian ethics.

The UCC cannot continue to assert its association with Jesus Christ, a man of peace, when they so openly espouse the cause of Palestinian resistance that embraces violence as a solution above any form of peace-making. Jesus said “Blessed be the peace-makers”, yet here is a Christian church that blesses men of violence.

The United Church of Christ (UCC) is a shrinking Christian denomination mainly active in the United States, and “perhaps the most liberal of the Mainline Protestant American denominations”. With just under a million members and 5,000 churches (down from two million members and 7,000 churches in 1957, when it was founded), it still has prominent congregations in the heartland of the American Congregationalist movements, in states such as Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine.

Although the UCC’s membership has included many US governors, senators, Supreme Court Justices such as William H. Rehnquist; some outstanding theologians such as H. Richard Niebuhr, his older brother Reinhold, and Paul Tillich; and several writers, and academics, it is, however, best known today as the church that U.S. President Barack Obama attended for twenty years between 1988 and 2008. For all that time, it was his spiritual home: “Trinity was where I found Jesus Christ, where we were married, where our children were baptized.” He attended Trinity UCC in Chicago, with the largest of the denomination’s congregations, some 10,000 members. Trinity UCC is a black or “Afrocentric” church that bases itself on the pursuit of love and justice. Its black congregation stands out as different from the wider UCC’s mainly white membership.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Trump Knows When to Fold ‘Em By Michael Walsh

Posted By on March 2nd, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/03/01/

“So Kim, a dead man walking now, gets back in his armored train while Trump flies back to freedom aboard Air Force One, knowing that it’s just a matter of time before the phone rings again. And this time, his terms for what in effect will be North Korea’s final surrender will be even tougher than the ones he offered now.”

In the course of a high-stakes negotiation, the player who walks away from the table is the one with the least to lose. Ronald Reagan did it to Mikhail Gorbachev at Reykjavik in 1986, and Donald Trump did it to Kim Jong-un this week in Vietnam. Good for the president.

A lot of people have brought up Reykjavik; I discussed the similarities on the Hugh Hewitt radio show with guest host Kurt Schlichter on Thursday. Reagan met Gorbachev in Iceland in the fall of 1986 and the two men were approaching an agreement that might have included the abolition of all nuclear weapons. But the Soviet premier wanted the Americans to drop the Strategic Defense Initiative, colloquially known as “Star Wars.” That was a bridge too far for Reagan, who abandoned the talks and went home.

Naturally, the hostile press was appalled—the abolition of all nukes! And this cowboy won’t give up a pet program that probably won’t work anyway! Warmonger! Reagan was widely viewed at the time as an “amiable dunce” who didn’t understand the first thing about the complexities of international diplomacy; why, the doddering old fool actually thought “We win, they lose” was a strategy.

P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Politics and MusicBy David Solway

Posted By on March 2nd, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/03/politics_and_music.html

“Politics is for old men.” Thus a Serbian friend informed me when I visited Belgrade shortly before everything fell apart. He wanted me to send him Beatles albums not easily obtainable at the time so he could listen to “happy music,” by which he meant just music. Unfortunately, politics is for young men (and women) too, and although good music uncorrupted by politics can still be found, bad music with a political or subversive agenda abounds.

As Michael Walsh argues in his magisterial The Devil’s Pleasure Palace, “we must see music and art as separate and apart from politics, no matter the quotidian circumstances that give them birth.” Certainly, aside from military marches and national anthems, music is for the most part not the right medium for political feelings, commentary and themes — except indirectly, as in Country and Western, when the singer expresses his or her love of country or commitment to traditional ways of life.

Far too much music exists to peddle a political or disruptive message, often a predictably leftist screed. Historian Victor Davis Hanson ruefully states in an essay titled Epitaph for a Dying Culture that many people now skip popular music “on the expectation that it is not just vulgar and foul, but incoherently politicalized.” As I pointed out in an earlier article for American Thinker, typical examples are furnished by such truly execrable groups as Rage Against the Machine, the violence-prone deathcore Slipknot (whose fans are known as “maggots”), the ludicrously named Prophets of Rage, the ostentatiously punky Red Hot Chili Peppers, along with Vampire Weekend and Foster the People shilling for socialist hack Bernie Sanders, the manically feminist co-ed War On Women advancing its new wave feminism agenda, and the hardcore rocker band Stick To Your Guns, the latter dedicating their piece of cacophonic rubbish “What Choice Did You Give Us” to the families of hooligans like Eric Garner, Mike Brown and Trayvon Martin.

BOOKS Comments turned off

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: “THE CASE FOR TRUMP”

Posted By on March 1st, 2019

From an award-winning historian and regular Fox contributor, the true story of how Donald Trump has become one of the most successful presidents in history — and why America needs him now more than ever.

In The Case for Trump, award-winning historian and political commentator Victor Davis Hanson explains how a celebrity businessman with no political or military experience triumphed over sixteen well-qualified Republican rivals, a Democrat with a quarter-billion-dollar war chest, and a hostile media and Washington establishment to become president of the United States — and an extremely successful president.

Trump alone saw a political opportunity in defending the working people of America’s interior whom the coastal elite of both parties had come to scorn, Hanson argues. And Trump alone had the instincts and energy to pursue this opening to victory, dismantle a corrupt old order, and bring long-overdue policy changes at home and abroad. We could not survive a series of presidencies as volatile as Trump’s. But after decades of drift, America needs the outsider Trump to do what normal politicians would not and could not do.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Canadian Court Rules Parents Can’t Stop 14-Year-Old From Taking Trans Hormones by Jeremiah Keenan

Posted By on March 1st, 2019

http://thefederalist.com/2019/03/01/canadian-court-rules-parents-cant-stop-14-year-old-taking-trans-hormones/

The Supreme Court of British Columbia thinks it’s okay for doctors to override a parent’s wishes and administer trans hormones to his child.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court of British Columbia, Canada ordered that a 14-year-old girl receive testosterone injections without parental consent. The court also declared that if either of her parents referred to her using female pronouns or addressed her by her birth name, they would be considered guilty of family violence.

As previously reported, Maxine* was encouraged by her school counselor in BC’s Delta School District to identify as a boy while in seventh grade. When Maxine was 13 years old, Dr. Brenden Hursh and his colleagues at BC Children’s Hospital decided that Maxine should begin taking testosterone injections in order to develop a more masculine appearance.

Although Maxine’s mother was ultimately willing to support hormone injections, her father Clark* was concerned about the permanent ramifications of cross-sex hormones. Suspecting that his daughter’s mental health issues might be more the cause than the effect of her gender dysphoria, he ultimately decided that it would be better for her to wait until she was older before she embarked on any irreversible course of treatment.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Bernie Sanders: Government ‘Cannot Go Too Far’ in Addressing Climate Change By Jack Crowe

Posted By on March 1st, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/bernie-sanders-government-cannot-go-too-far-in-addressing-climate-change/

Senator Bernie Sanders (D., Vt.) dismissed Friday the notion that the recently introduced Green New Deal plan is extreme and unrealistic, arguing instead that there is no action too drastic for the government to take to address climate change.

“Does the Green New Deal go too far?” Sunny Hostin asked Sanders Friday on ABC’s The View.

“No. You cannot go too far on the issue of climate change. The future of the planet is at stake, ok? . . . According to the best scientists in the world, we have twelve years to begin substantially cutting carbon emissions,” Sanders responded.

Hostin also pressed Sanders on Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s recent suggestion that couples are rightfully hesitant to have children because of the threat of climate change.

“[Ocasio-Cortez] claimed that the looming threat of climate change that continues to exacerbate global conflicts has gotten so dire that it is a legitimate question to ask whether it is moral for people to have children now. Does she have a point there or is that too radical?” Hostin asked.

“Obviously that’s an enormously personal choice that every couple is going to have to make,” Sanders said before redirecting the conversation to President Trump’s past skepticism of the threat posed by climate change.