The surrender of Imperial Japan was announced on August 15 and formally signed on September 2, 1945, bringing the hostilities of World War II to a close.
And then it was really over…..
It would be the last time that Americans fought and died in a war that ended with total defeat and surrender of enemies…..rsk
https://amgreatness.com/2018/09/03/burying-the-dead-with-bile
The big news last week revolved around the funerals of a 1960s pop singer and an unreliable Republican senator with a cult following among masochistic conservatives and cynical leftists eager to capitalize on his capacity to spread dissension among his nominal allies.
I suppose the exploitation of funerals for grubby political ends is nothing new. Mark Antony did it with notable success when he eulogized Julius Caesar in 44 B.C. But there was something especially stomach-churning about the injection of partisan animus into the obsequies of Aretha Franklin and John McCain.
Both were reminders—as if we needed any—of how these jangled, hyperpartisan times have the capacity to infect even the most solemn ceremonies of life with bile-filled histrionics, our latter-day version of the theater of the absurd.
The race hustling reverends Al Sharpton and Michael Eric Dyson led the bandwagon at Franklin’s funeral, loading their praise of the soul singer with vicious anti-Trump rhetoric. Dyson described the president of the United States as an “orange apparition,” a “lugubrious leech,” a “dictator” and “fascist.” Nicely done, Reverend!
The tone at John McCain’s spectacle was more restrained but the message of hatred and contempt for the president was just as patent.
The professional NeverTrumper and Twitter activist Bill Kristol sniffed that “I don’t believe the name of the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was mentioned during the service for John McCain, and I’ll continue that practice, in McCain’s honor, for the rest of the day. Today was a moment to celebrate, appreciate and reflect on what is admirable.”
https://amgreatness.com/2018/09/02/trump
For months, I’ve been driving on different routes through the vast San Joaquin Valley back and forth from the California coast—and through the usually economically depressed small towns on and near the Highway 99 corridor through the Central Valley. The poverty rate in many valley counties is higher than in West Virginia. It is a world away from Hollywood, Silicon Valley, the Stanford or Caltech campus, Malibu, and Pacific Heights.
In an overregulated, overtaxed state of open borders and sanctuary cities, with the nation’s near highest electricity and gasoline prices, and facing a looming state and local pension unfunded liability of well over $300 billion, one might not expect much of an uptick from the supposed Trump economic revival. California’s calcified strategy, after all, is that global lucre pouring into coastal high-tech and finance will more than balance out the economic damage wrought by state government. Sacramento is a sort of court jester to Menlo Park.
Throughout California’s coastal and mountain forests there are waves of dead trees unharvested after a devastating drought. There are large fields of recoverable gas and oil in lots of places that are not being drilled, as well as valuable ores and metals not being mined, and unmatched farmland deprived of its long ago contracted water rights. The idea of a renaissance in the vast rich interior of the state seems implausible—especially when state government is more interested in banning plastic straws and mandating gender-neutral restrooms than in building dams or roads.
Signs of Hope in Central California
Yet signs for help wanted along highways are now ubiquitous—truckers, welders, fabricators, assemblers. Agriculture worries not just in perennial fashion about the lack of farm harvesters, even at wages of $10.50 to $14 dollars an hour. Now they’re short of forklift drivers, packing house workers, and mechanics.
New housing construction is growing after roughly a decade’s hiatus, at least to the degree carpenters, electricians, and plumbers can be found. Upward mobility is evident. At the local Walmart, the checkers often tell me they’re leaving despite raises—for better paying jobs. I drive home to my farm by a new warehouse that seems under endless construction. I finally ask the neighboring business, why? Answer: they cannot find or keep workers. The same reply comes from a friend redoing his house. Painters and floor workers no sooner start to paint and tile than they are hired away. Many now working have never held a fulltime job.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271188/mainline-protestant-churches-mantra-palestinian-joseph-puder
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) reported (August 21, 2018) that during a speech in July, 2018, the Episcopal Church Bishop Suffragen Gayle Harris claimed that “she had witnessed Israeli security forces arrest a 3-year-old on Temple Mount and shoot a 15-year-old in the back 10 times after making a comment to a group of soldiers.” Harris is the second-highest ranking Episcopal official in Massachusetts. As it turned out, these were bogus and unfounded allegations. Harris later apologized, saying they were second-hand stories. She said, “I had heard and unintentionally framed them as though I had personally witnessed the alleged events.” It has become symptomatic of left-leaning mainline Protestant church people to believe such stories tinged with anti-Semitic overtones, which are disseminated by Palestinian-Arab propagandists.
Earlier, the Episcopal News Service headlined its April 12, 2018 issue with, “The Episcopal Church Joins Call for End to Gaza Violence and Measures to Protect Palestinians.” The transparent anti-Israel bias of the statement by the 15 mainline Protestant churches was reflected in the comments made by reader Charles Banks who stated: “The suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza is agonizing to all of us, but what about the suffering of the Israelis, who are the victims of random, murderous Palestinians (especially Hamas) aggressions?”
Mainline Protestant churches have habitually used the phrase “Palestinian rights” in their condemnation of Israel. Few of those voices elaborated on what those rights were, and where those rights apply. Everyone, including most Israelis, agree that Palestinians should have human and civil rights, religious freedom, and the right to live in peace and security. Those same rights however, are ignored by critics of Israel in the mainline Protestant churches when it comes to Jewish-Israeli rights to live in peace and security.
First, let us point out that Israel is a democracy where civil and human rights are respected and religious freedom is extended to all its citizens – Muslim, Christian, Arab or Jew. This is not the case with the Palestinian Authority led by President Mahmoud Abbas based in Ramallah, and certainly not in the case of Hamas in Gaza. In the latter, Christians have been persecuted and killed by Islamist fanatics, and as for Jews, the area is “Judenrein.” Palestinian-Arabs have no rights in Israel since they are not citizens of the state. However, Israeli-Arabs do have such rights, and they are exercising them.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271199/pigs-palestine-anti-israel-left-spreads-anti-daniel-greenfield
Combatants for Peace, an anti-Israel group widely touted by the media, has been accusing Jews of attacking Muslim settlers in Israel by releasing the pigs.
Or the boars.
An undercover video by the pro-Israel group Ad Kann showcased a Combatants for Peace tour that included claims that Jewish “settlers” ship in wild pigs by trucks to Muslim settlements in Israel.
“We saw the truck bringing pigs. An Israeli truck carrying boars,” was the claim.
The pigs were allegedly coming from the town of Alei Zahav (Golden Leaves), which has a population of 1,643 people, and about half of them are Orthodox Jews, who are unlikely to harbor many pigs. Its Facebook page features horses grazing in a paddock without so much as a pig in a poke.
But while Alei Zahav’s residents busy themselves with community events and charity projects, a Bar Mitzvah and a children’s dance recital, a multinational conglomeration of radical groups has been accusing them of building a “giant settlement” and now of shipping around trucks full of wild pigs.
Combatants for Peace is funded by the Swiss government, a German foundation named after Rosa Luxemburg, a co-founder of the Communist Spartacus League, and the New Israel Fund. That may seem like an odd bunch to get together and fund accusations of Jewish pig warfare, but it isn’t really.
Israel’s motley of wealthy anti-Israel groups are funded by the Europeans and the New Israel Fund. The NIF basically operates as a slush fund for a variety of hostile groups that range from supporting BDS to involvement in terrorism.
And who funds the NIF? George Soros, Obama’s State Department and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/271221/iran-orders-7-journalists-flogged-media-yawns-daniel-greenfield
Remember all that media outrage over President Trump’s criticism of its fake news operation?
That’s the same media that is constantly doing unpaid ads for Iran’s nuclear program and its plot to take over Yemen (every story attacking US participation in the “Saudi coalition” and fake news claims about “atrocities” committed against the Shiite Jihadis of the Houthis).
The media claims that Trump’s criticism endangers it. Meanwhile it seems far less interested in Iran’s abuses of journalists.
Iranian courts in July and August sentenced at least six journalists affiliated with Majzooban-e-Noor, a news website that focuses on the Gonabadi Dervish religious order, and a journalist from the state-run outlet Ensaf, to prison terms of between seven and 26 years, and ordered them to be flogged publicly and forced into exile and banned from political and social media activities on their eventual releases, according to news reports and rights organizations.
“These horrifying sentences lay bare Iranian authorities’ depraved attitude toward journalists, as well as the hollow center of President Hassan Rouhani’s promises of reform,” said CPJ Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator Sherif Mansour from Washington, D.C. “Iran should end its vicious campaign against journalists, and allow them to report freely.”
Imagine if the media covered this the way it fulminates over Trump’s criticisms of CNN. But of course it doesn’t. Its claims that it cares about journalism (and its even more bizarre claims that Trump’s criticisms endanger journalists abroad) have always been as fake as its news.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271208/iranian-agents-charged-targeting-us-locations-michael-cutler
On August 20, 2018 the Department of Justice issued a press release, Two Individuals Charged for Acting as Illegal Agents of the Government of Iran.
That press release began with this paragraph:
An indictment was returned today charging Ahmadreza Mohammadi-Doostdar, 38, a dual U.S.-Iranian citizen, and Majid Ghorbani, 59, an Iranian citizen and resident of California, with allegedly acting on behalf of the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran by conducting covert surveillance of Israeli and Jewish facilities in the United States, and collecting identifying information about American citizens and U.S. nationals who are members of the group Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK).
On the very same day, ABC News reported, Feds charge man in Chicago in bizarre Iranian spy plot.
Although the two individuals who have been charged with committing serious crimes, we should note that they have not, as yet been convicted. However the information contained in the criminal complaints filed by the FBI for defendants Ahmadreza Mohammadi Doostdar and Majid Ghorbani paint a very disturbing picture of a sophisticated conspiracy in which the two individuals appear to be classic “sleeper agents” who were allegedly targeting locations connected to Israel and the Jewish community in the United States as well as members of the U.S. Congress.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/09/is_it_over_yet.html
There’s a huge difference between the solemn, sorrowful citizens who lined the streets to say good-bye to Ronald Reagan, John Kennedy, and FDR and the rubberneckers hoping to catch a glimpse of celebrity politicians putting in a public appearance for the late Senator McCain’s multiple memorials. Releasing those men we loved from afar to a higher and happier place bears no resemblance to spectators taking part in one of the “scheduled events” posted strategically on the Fox News website and elsewhere.
Despite of the wall-to-wall media coverage of a seemingly unending series of funeral services (five at last count), this nation does not mourn the passing of a hero. Yes, dignitaries showed up and slid fake praise into orations meant for something other than a heartfelt memorial to the dearly departed. John McCain may have been dear to a few people, but for the rest of us (and most likely 99% of the people invited to be part of his ostentatious Display of the Dead), he remains a clear and present exemplar of a petty plutocracy and blatant self-service. One ecstatic writer called it the “biggest resistance meeting yet” as Her Father’s Daughter saddled the next generation with the bitter Sins of the Father and was celebrated for embracing what many have called a world-class grudge. Somehow, she missed the message that “John called on us to be bigger… and better than that.” Others, disgusted by the “political theatrics and cheap shots” recognized her father’s signature spitefulness — nasty to the end and beyond. Yet it was the observation of a high-school junior that explained a certain hollowness to every news anchor’s claim that a nation mourns. CJ Pearson wrote: “At most funerals I’ve attended, it’s God’s love that fills the room, not hate and animus for a person who is not even in attendance.”
http://www.tmz.com/2018/08/30/john-mccain-casket-air-force-2-trump-approved/
John McCain is finally getting his due respect from President Trump — his body is being flown to Washington D.C. on an aircraft that had to be approved by POTUS.
The late Arizona senator’s casket was loaded onto one of the jets known as Air Force 2 — which is often designated for the VP or First Lady’s travel. As you know, 45 will not be attending McCain’s service in D.C. … reportedly because McCain wanted it that way.
Still, Trump announced earlier this week he had greenlit military transport for McCain, saying, “At the request of the McCain family, I have also authorized military transportation of Senator McCain’s remains from Arizona to Washington, D.C., military pallbearers and band support, and a horse and caisson transport during the service at the United States Naval Academy.”
Prior to the statement, Trump was being incredibly stubborn on publicly speaking about McCain’s passing … refusing to answer questions about the Senator, and even briefly returning the White House flag to full-staff. It was eventually lowered back to half-staff.
There was no love lost between Trump and McCain. Then-candidate Trump mocked McCain’s military service, saying he was not a war hero because he’d been captured in Vietnam.
A memorial service was held for McCain Thursday in Arizona, where a lot of people spoke in remembrance of the political maverick … including a teary-eyed Joe Biden. McCain will lie in state at the Capitol Rotunda Friday before another memorial service Saturday.
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-mac-donald-diversity-ucla-20180902-story.html
If Albert Einstein applied for a professorship at UCLA today, would he be hired? The answer is not clear. Starting this fall, all faculty applicants to UCLA must document their contributions to “equity, diversity and inclusion.” (Next year, existing UCLA faculty will also have to submit an “equity, diversity and inclusion statement” in order to be considered for promotion, following the lead of five other UC campuses.) The mandatory statements will be credited in the same manner as the rest of an applicant’s portfolio, according to UCLA’s equity, diversity and inclusion office.
A contemporary Einstein may not meet the suggested evaluation criteria. Would his “job talk” — a presentation of one’s scholarly accomplishments — reflect his contributions to equity, diversity and inclusion? Unlikely. Would his research show, in the words of the evaluation template, the “potential to understand the barriers facing women and racial/ethnic minorities?” Also unlikely. Would he have participated in “service that applies up-to-date knowledge to problems, issues and concerns of groups historically underrepresented in higher education?” Sadly, he may have been focusing on the theory of general relativity instead. What about “utilizing pedagogies addressing different learning styles” or demonstrating the ability to “effectively teach and attract students from underrepresented communities”? Again, not at all guaranteed.
As the new mandate suggests, UCLA and the rest of the University of California have been engulfed by the diversity obsession. The campuses are infatuated with group identity and difference. Science and the empirical method, however, transcend just those trivialities of identity that UC now deems so crucial: “race, ethnicity, gender, age, religion, language, abilities/disabilities, sexual orientation, gender identity and socioeconomic status,” to quote from the university’s Diversity Statement. The results of that transcendence speak for themselves: an astounding conquest of disease and an ever-increasing understanding of the physical environment. Unlocking the secrets of nature is challenge enough; scientists (and other faculty) should not also be tasked with a “social justice” mission.
But such a confusion of realms currently pervades American universities, and UC in particular. UCLA’s Intergroup Relations Office offers credit courses and “co-curricular dialogues” that encourage students to, you guessed it, “explore their own social identities (i.e. gender, race, nationality, religion/spirituality, sexual orientation, social class, etc.) and associated positions within the campus community.” Even if exploring your social identity were the purpose of a college education (which it is not), it would be more fruitful to define that identity around accomplishments and intellectual passions — “budding mathematician,” say, or “history fanatic” — rather than gender and race.
