ISRAEL Comments turned off

Ruthie Blum :Netanyahu, Iran and threats that have come to light

Posted By on November 26th, 2018

https://www.jns.org/opinion/netanyahu-iran-and-threats-that-have-come-to-light/

Without the prime minister’s persistence in exposing the extent of threat posed by the regime in Tehran, as well as his forging of alliances to combat it, Israelis would not have the luxury to laugh at his diagrams.

In an address to the nation last Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to critics angry with him for agreeing to a premature ceasefire with Hamas, and those accusing him of being more preoccupied with keeping his government from falling than with implementing wise policies.

“Most Israeli citizens know that when I make security-related decisions, I do so … out of a genuine and deep concern for the welfare of our country, the security of our citizens and the safety of our soldiers,” he said. “These are not slogans.”

He went on to state ominously that a multi-pronged operation is in the works. “I have a clear plan,” he announced. “I know what to do and when to do it. And we are going to do it. … This will involve sacrifice, but … we will overcome our enemies.”

Netanyahu seemed to imply that he was not solely referring to “our enemies” in Gaza or Ramallah, but to the mullahs in Tehran. Those of us convinced that his incessant harping on the Iranian nuclear threat is warranted can only imagine, with both hope and trepidation, what his “clear plan” entails.

The remaining minority of the Israeli public thinks that Netanyahu dangles the dangers of a nuclear Iran as a scare tactic to garner votes. This sector is responsible for ridiculing him every time he opens his mouth on the topic, especially when he whips out props for backup.

The most famous example is a cartoon-like diagram of a bomb that he held up during a speech to the U.N. General Assembly in 2012. To stress his point about the need for the international community to draw red lines on Iran’s nuclear program, he drew an actual red line between the base of bomb and the fuse. For this, he was made fun of relentlessly by every Israeli comedian, satirist, caricaturist and rival politician for months.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Monica Lewinsky: Clinton Told Me to Lie about Affair in Sworn Affidavit By Jack Crowe

Posted By on November 26th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/monica-lewinsky-bill-clinton-told-me-to-lie-about-affair-in-sworn-affidavit/

Then-president Bill Clinton urged Monica Lewinsky to lie to investigators about their affair while under oath, Lewinsky revealed in the final episode of the new A&E docuseries The Clinton Affair.

Lewinsky, 45, described in the episode how Clinton called her at 2:30 a.m. one morning to inform her that she was on the witness list in the Paula Jones case and urged her to submit a sworn affidavit denying their affair in order to avoid being deposed.

“I was petrified. I was frantic about my family and this becoming public,” Lewinsky said through tears. “Thankfully, Bill helped me lock myself back from that and he said I could probably sign an affidavit to get out of it, and he didn’t even know if 100 percent I would be subpoenaed.”

Lewinsky, then a 24-year-old White House intern, was subpoenaed days later and, in response, reached out to Clinton’s friend, attorney Vernon Jordan, who introduced her to another attorney and Clinton associate, Frank Carter.

“Frank Carter explained to me if I’d signed an affidavit denying having had an intimate relationship with the president it might mean I wouldn’t have to be deposed in the Paula Jones case,” she said. “I did feel uncomfortable about it but I felt it was the right thing to do, ironically, right? So, the right thing to do, to break the law.”

Lewinsky then speculated that Clinton still trusted her to lie to investigators at that point because he returned from vacation on Martha’s Vineyard with a number of gifts for her.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

What’s Really in Congress’s Justice-Reform Bill By Tom Cotton

Posted By on November 26th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/11/first-step-criminal-justice-reform-bill-whats-in-it/The bad outweighs the good.

It remains to be seen whether the lame-duck 115th Congress will debate a sweeping overhaul of our federal criminal-justice system before we adjourn for the year. You may have heard about the legislation at hand, the FIRST STEP Act. I oppose it. I urge my fellow conservatives to take the time to read and understand the bill before signing on in support of this flawed legislation.

The 103-page bill that was released the Friday before Thanksgiving has some good parts, and I don’t question the intentions of the bill’s proponents. But you may have noticed that they talk more about their intentions than about the consequences of the bill. As conservatives, we know that good intentions say little about actual consequences. And to paraphrase Thomas Sowell, intellectuals who generate ideas with good intentions rarely have to face the consequences of those ideas personally.

When proponents of the bill discuss the substance, they claim that “nothing in the FIRST STEP Act gives inmates early release.” Instead of early release, proponents say, it merely provides incentives for inmates to participate in programs. This is nothing but a euphemism. Let there be no doubt: If the bill is passed, thousands of federal offenders, including violent felons and sex offenders, will be released earlier than they would be under current law. Whatever word games the bill’s proponents use will make no difference to the future victims of these felons.

Proponents also claim that only “low-level, non-violent” offenders will benefit, and that there are adequate safeguards to protect the public. If I believed these assertions, I would support the FIRST STEP Act. But a careful reading of the bill’s text, as opposed to the talking points used to promote it, shows that violent felons are eligible for early release, and that many of the bill’s provisions go against core conservative principles.

For background, according to the Department of Justice, the Senate version of the FIRST STEP Act creates a new “time credit” system that allows federal prisoners to accrue credits by participating in “evidence-based recidivism reduction programming or productive activities.” These new credits are in addition to existing “good time” credits and are worth up to one-third of the offender’s sentence.

The first problem with this new system is that “productive activities” is defined so vaguely that, according to the Bureau of Prisons, playing softball, watching movies, or doing activities that the prisoners are already doing today will result in new time credits. The whole idea behind these incentives is that prisoners will be less likely to recidivate upon release. But if the credits are this easy to get, how will this change the behavior of serious felons?

HISTORY Comments turned off

Chanukah guide for the perplexed, 2018 Yoram Ettinger

Posted By on November 26th, 2018

https://bit.ly/2KxtSRi

1. The miracle of Chanukah. According to ancient Jewish sages, Chanukah highlights a critical, non-conventional interpretation of the term “miracle,” which is a derivative of – and not superior to – reality. Thus, the Hebrew translation of “miracle” – Ness נס – is the root of the Hebrew translation of “(life) experience” – נסיון.

Accordingly, that which is conventionally perceived to be a super-natural outcome/miracle, attests to the unique capability of genuine leaders to overcome awesome odds, challenges, threats and adversities by leveraging personal, national and global experience, in addition to their outstanding capability to assess and impact future developments. Such capabilities shaped the victories of the Maccabees over the Seleucid Emperor in the 2nd century BCE, the US Founding Fathers over the British Empire in 1776 and the 650,000 Jews over the coalition of invading Arab armies in 1948.

2. The Chanukah-David Ben Gurion connection. Such a unique capability – to realistically and strategically assess past experience and future trends – was demonstrated by a modern day Maccabee, David Ben Gurion, the 1948 Founding Father and the first Prime Minister of Israel, who stated (Uniqueness and Destiny, pp 20-22, David Ben Gurion, IDF Publishing, 1953, Hebrew): “The struggle of the Maccabees was one of the most dramatic clashes of civilizations in human history, not merely a political-military struggle against foreign oppression…. The meager Jewish people did not assimilate, as did many peoples. The Jewish people prevailed, won, sustained and enhanced their independence and unique civilization…. The Hasmoneans overcame one of the most magnificent spiritual, political and military challenges in Jewish history, due to the spirit of the people, rather than the failed spirit of the establishment….”

HISTORY Comments turned off

Chanukah 5779: Vilification, Indoctrination, Corroboration… by Gerald A. Honigman by Gerald A. Honigman

Posted By on November 26th, 2018

www.geraldahonigman.com

As I prepare to try to once again fill in some important gaps which too many Jewish students–let alone others–have in education prior to or during their years of anti-Israel higher indoctrination and vilification on many, if not most, campuses, Chanukah 5779/2018 is fast approaching.

This endeavor will serve as a follow-up to my last analysis with this goal in mind. That earlier one dealt with, among other things, what perhaps the greatest Muslim scholar of all time, Ibn Khaldun, had to say about both the historical Jew and the Jew of the Nations–Israel–some six centuries ago… https://ekurd.net/asabiyah-wandering-desert-2018-11-18. If I say so myself, like this current essay, the former is also just what the doctor ordered when confronting groups like SJP/Students for Justice in Palestine (which is having its annual hate Israel fest conference at UCLA as I write this), J Street U, and duplicitous “Progressive” professors who specialize in using one set of lenses to scrutinize Israel and Zionism, and an entirely different set with regards to the rest of the neighborhood.

With that said, what you’re about to read is something precious to those interested in historical truths–not just religious and theological claims and inspiration…corroboration.

Too many of our younger folks (not to mention parents) are simply naive in these matters, and when confronted by hostile instructors and groups on campus, either cower or join the increasingly popular anti-Israel (and frequently anti-Semitic) chorus.

Let’s begin…

Chanukah is the first war ever recorded which was fought over religious liberty and it was waged by the Jewish nation…the one which Zionism’s opponents claim never existed.

One (very important) aspect of that nation–besides its unique culture, language, and so forth–indeed included a religious dimension, and there are prominent professors, not just Arab ones, who claim that since Jews are just a religious community, they do not deserve to have a state of their own…http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/4068

So, what’s the story?

For millennia, Jews have had a very unique set of religious beliefs and ethical standards which they are supposed to adhere to. One could join the nation of the people of Israel/Judah/Judea by conversion to the religious faith of that people.

“Jew” comes from the name Yehudah/Judah, originally the Hebrew tribe named after one of Jacob’s sons and later Judah/Judaea as the land was known in the times of the southern kingdom and the Greeks and Romans.

Judaean equals “Jew.”

MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

The Green Book – A Review : Marilyn Penn

Posted By on November 26th, 2018

http://politicalmavens.com/index.php/2018/11/26/the-green-book-a-review/

Sometimes a movie that’s been panned turns out to be more enjoyable than those that appeal to critics who pay attention to words like auteur and oeuvre. Sometimes a bowl of mac and cheese is preferable to pate de foie gras and so it is with great pleasure that I urge you to treat yourself to some comfort food in the sizable portion of Viggo Mortenson as you haven’t seen him before.

Playing a mob-connected, volatile bouncer who loses his job at the Copacabana, Viggo accepts a temporary job as chauffeur to Dr. Don Shirley, a classically trained pianist and head of a trio who must do a road trip from New York to the deep south. He needs a man like Viggo, trained in the public relations insights of bouncers because Dr. Shirley is a black man who will be barred from hotels, clubs and dining rooms yet is determined to provoke precisely those confrontations while en route.

To a certain extent, the set-up is a reverse rip-off of Driving Miss Daisy with a working class white man chauffeuring an elite and educated black man who trained in Russia, speaks multiple languages, knows little about pop music or its new stars but is immensely gifted and sought after as a performer. These two men have virtually nothing in common and the gentle comedy that ensues from their mismatch is what fuels the plot. It is the best part of the movie which loses its panache when it tries to drive home the already obvious message – segregation was bad and racists resisted the legal efforts to integrate the south.

Part of the problem is that Dr. Don Shirley, a man invested in the power of personal dignity is a stiff-necked goody two-shoes, determined to correct Viggo’s grammar, speech patterns and habits learned in the old neighborhood in the Bronx. We are amazed at his talent and genius (he was a real person for those who never heard him). But of course, Viggo – handsome even with a paunch – has the charm and common sense that often tag along with the personalities of bad boys and he remains the object of interest throughout.

Don’t minimize the skill involved in his performance – he is never out of character for a single moment and though he works with gangsters and people who don’t wait for backtalk, he manages to make us believe that he’s primarily a family man with a genuine capacity for friendship and love. Think Damon Runyon along with the mis-pronunciations and misunderstanding of vocabulary to distract us from what gangsters do. This movie will remind you of that disarming author and you’ll really enjoy yourself without working too hard. Just see it.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Junk Science Has Become a Profitable Industry. Who Will Stop It? . By S. Stanley Young & Henry Miller

Posted By on November 26th, 2018

https://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2018/11/26/junk_science_has_become_a_profitable_industry_110810.html

Should we believe the headline, “Drinking four cups of coffee daily lowers risk of death”? How about, “Mouthwash May Trigger Diabetes. . .”? Should we really eat more, not less, fat? And what should we make of data that suggest people with spouses live longer?

These sorts of conclusions, from supposedly scientific studies, seem to vary from month to month, leading to ever-shifting “expert” recommendations. However, most of their admonitions are based on flawed research that produces results worthy of daytime TV.

Misleading research is costly to society directly because much of it is supported by the federal government, and indirectly, when it gives rise to unwise, harmful public policy.

Social science studies are notorious offenders. A landmark study in the journal Nature Human Behaviour in August reported the results of efforts to replicate 21 social science studies published in the prestigious journals Nature and Science between 2010 and 2015.

The multi-national team actually “conducted high-powered replications of the 21 experimental social science studies — using sample sizes around five times larger than the original sample sizes” and found that “62% of the replications show an effect in the same direction as the original studies.” One out of the four Nature papers and seven of the seventeen Science papers evaluated did not replicate, a shocking result for two prestigious scientific journals. The authors noted two kinds of flaws in the original studies: false positives and inflated effect sizes.

Science is supposed to be self-correcting. Smart editors. Peer review. Competition from other labs. But when we see that university research claims – published in the crème de la crème of scientific journals, no less — are so often wrong, there must be systematic problems. One of them is outright fraud – “advocacy research” that has methodological flaws or intentionally misinterprets the results.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Asia Bibi and the First Freedom By Matthew Continetti

Posted By on November 26th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/11/asia-bibi-blaphemy-charges-religious-freedom-asylum/Why hasn’t she been granted asylum?

Asia Bibi got into an argument with her co-workers and ended up in jail. Bibi is a Pakistani Catholic and mother of five. She cannot read. For years, she picked fruit in her rural village. One day in June 2009, her peers refused to share a pitcher of water with her because she is a Christian. She argued with them, muttering some caustic words about the founder of Islam. They responded by accusing her of blasphemy: a capital crime in Pakistan. The next year she was sentenced to death row.

No longer. In October the Supreme Court of Pakistan acquitted and released Asia Bibi after a long legal battle, during which Islamic radicals assassinated a Pakistani official for supporting her cause. The response to her acquittal was unsurprising. Global media and human-rights organizations cheered, while Pakistani fundamentalists demonstrated and hung Asia Bibi in effigy. The outrage spooked Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan into making it more difficult for her to leave the country. Facing the risk of extrajudicial killing, Bibi remains in hiding. Her lawyer Saiful Malook fled to Europe. Protests greeted his arrival.

The other day in Frankfurt, Malook called on the German government to provide Asia Bibi and her family with documents that would allow them to exit Pakistan. Why no Western government has yet granted her asylum is something of a mystery. It is possible that Bibi and her family may be using the negotiations to secure the release of additional people whose safety they feel is also in jeopardy. European governments, including the United Kingdom’s, may also worry that Asia Bibi’s arrival would provoke a backlash from their own militant Islamists. Nor is Europe exactly the global standard in free speech. Around the same time the Pakistani Supreme Court reversed the verdict against Asia Bibi, the European Court of Human Rights upheld a verdict against an Austrian woman for “publicly disparaging religious doctrines,” namely Islam. She and Bibi should compare notes.

How lucky one is to be born in the United States. The American tradition of religious freedom is strong, and it is neither to be under-appreciated nor to be tossed off lightly. Religious dissenters founded several of the original colonies. The first clauses of the Bill of Rights prohibit an established church as well as abridgments of the free exercise of religion. George Washington’s letter to the Touro synagogue in Newport reflects the American (and Biblical) ideal: “Every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.” Asia Bibi’s story pricks the conscience because it is so outside the American understanding of public speech, of religious practice.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Canada’s Treacherous “Faustian Bargain” by Salim Mansur

Posted By on November 26th, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13349/canada-government-media

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, it seems, adheres to the principle of globalism, according to which the world is borderless, and the idea of sovereign nation-states is both reactionary and obsolete. In this borderless world, the governing body is the unelected, untransparent, unaccountable and deeply corrupt United Nations and its agencies, which possess the authority to legislate international law that is then enforced by member states.

The Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration is a document detailing the requirements for UN member-states to adopt as policy that amounts to unfettered global migration. Trudeau has bought into this UN agenda and has decided to impose it on the Canadian people without their prior knowledge or consent.

The Global Compact requires the media outlets of member-states to adhere to the objectives and refrain from any critical discussions of these objectives that would be deemed as not “ethical” and against UN norms or standards consistent with the ideology of globalism.

This helps to explain the Trudeau government’s generous handout to the Canadian media. In this light, the $600 million can be viewed as a form of secretive soft control and censorship, ensuring that the Canadian press abides by the requirements of the Global Compact.

The Canadian government’s recent announcement that it will be providing more than CDN $600 million (USD $455 million) over the next five years to bail out the country’s financially strapped media outlets — as part of the fall fiscal update about the federal budget ahead of the 2019 federal election — is not as innocent as it may seem.

In response to the announcement, the heads of Canada’s media organizations promptly popped open the proverbial champagne and raised their glasses to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Unifor, a national union that represents Canadian journalists, was even more jubilant. It felt vindicated that its slogan of “Resistance” — which it touts as Conservative Party opposition leader Andrew Scheer’s “worst nightmare” — had so swiftly resulted in opening the government’s wallet, and handing out taxpayers’ money, to an industry that should actually be fighting to remain steadfastly independent of any form of government backing.

This is what a “free press” is presumably all about, after all; not as in countries with totalitarian regimes, such as the once-Czarist Russia-turned communist Soviet Union-turned Putinist Russia, or Maoist China, or the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, or the Islamic Republic of Iran, or Castroist Cuba and many third-world states in which the press is simply a propaganda tool of the government, subjected to the dictates and whim of its leader.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Qatar: Time to Shape Up by Debalina Ghoshal

Posted By on November 26th, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13345/qatar-time-to-shape-up

We need a united anti-Iran front, and Qatar needs to come closer to its friends on the peninsula, us, the U.S., and Israel on that point. And in the meantime, let’s help Qatar along here. Why doesn’t the United States get on with the business of declaring the Muslim Brotherhood a foreign terrorist organization? And then that gives Qatar the excuse to go ahead and do it too, so we can cut off everyone’s funding for them, whether it’s in Egypt, the United States, or anywhere else in the world.” — Ambassador John R. Bolton, July 12, 2017.

The time is not only ripe for Washington to take this step; it is essential.

Since 2017, when five countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) severed diplomatic and trade ties with Qatar for siding with the Muslim Brotherhood and other terrorist groups, Doha has been forging new alliances, particularly with Russia and China.

During a military parade in December 2017, Qatar’s armed forces showcased new Chinese guided ballistic-missile systems that have a range — up to 400 km — that encompasses Qatar’s neighboring Gulf States. In September 2018, PetroChina struck a long-term deal with Qatargas to purchase 3.4 million tons per year of liquid natural gas.

Defense and economic ties with Qatar are crucial to China’s plans to extend its influence in the Middle East through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). China is aware that for the BRI to be successful, the GCC must be reunited. Given its own cordial relations with the GCC, Beijing sees engagement with Doha as an opportunity to become a key mediator in the Qatar-GCC crisis.

Qatar is also in talks to purchase Russia’s S-400 air-defense system. Despite Saudi Arabia’s reported opposition to the deal, Russia says it is moving forward anyway.

With Russia under U.S. sanctions, and Qatar under a GCC blockade, defense and trade ties between Moscow and Doha are mutually beneficial. In 2016, for example, Qatar purchased a huge stake in Russia’s state-controlled oil company, Rosneft.

This strengthening of ties is taking place in spite of the fact that Moscow and Doha are on opposite sides of the Syrian civil war, with Russia backing the Assad regime and Qatar supporting the rebel forces. Qatar is likely seeking Russian mediation to resolve its crisis with the GCC.