ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran Will Host International ‘Hourglass’ Festival Celebrating Israel’s Imminent Demise By Tyler O’Neil

Posted By on March 6th, 2018

An international conference dedicated to anti-Israel art and media will take place in Iran next month. “The First International Hourglass Festival” celebrates the secret plan developed by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to ensure the Jewish state will cease to exist in 25 years.

The “festival aims to promote the attention movement to the Supreme leader of Revolution (regarding to the collapse of the Zionist regime over the next 25 years) & the attention movement to the Quds as the first issue of Islamic world and support of the oppressed Palestinians as one of the most strategic slogans of Islamic Republic of Iran,” the website’s garbled English version explains.

The official poster of the festival, released Monday, emphasized the idea that time is running out for the state of Israel. The image features a blue Star of David (the Jewish symbol on the Israeli flag) decomposing at the top of an hourglass, with elements of that symbol collecting on the bottom of the glass.

The festival’s organizer, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, an aide to the Speaker of Iran’s Parliament, told Iran News that the event will celebrate the fact that “the Islamic Republic won’t allow the Zionists to play with the security of the sensitive region of Middle East. Iran and its allies in the region, who defeated terrorists, will never allow the Zionists to endanger the region’s security.”

Amir-Abdollahian said Iran’s plan to grant the Palestinians victory over Israel relies on the aid of other Muslim states, all of whom “must play their role in this regard.” (Perhaps he means every Muslim state except Saudi Arabia, as the festival website slams “damned Wahabism,” along with the USA and Israel.)

The organizer admitted that he “cannot publicize the Islamic Republic’s plan to realize the Leader’s prediction that the Israeli regime will collapse within 25 years, but it will definitely happen,” Iran News reported.

In another twist, the paper reported that Amir-Abdollahian “also referred to U.S. President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem al-Quds as the capital of the Zionist regime, and described it as a great help for the Palestinians as it united the Muslim World against Israel.”

This is far from the first anti-Jewish celebration held under the Khamenei regime. The regime also hosts a conference centered on denying the Nazi atrocities committed against Jews in the Holocaust.

In recent months, Israel has launched airstrikes against Iranian targets in Syria, engaging in a proxy war against the Khamenei regime. Israel has threatened to escalate these strikes in an attempt to “dismantle the axis of evil — Syria, Iran, and Hezballah.” CONTINUE AT SITE

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Haley Says UN Job is About Having ‘Absolutely No Patience for Bullying’ By Bridget Johnson

Posted By on March 6th, 2018

WASHINGTON — UN Ambassador Nikki Haley told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee annual policy conference that “standing up for your friends is critical” and the administration is looking at tying foreign aid to voting with the U.S. at the United Nations.

Haley told the crowd that she was raised with “absolutely no patience for bullying” as she grew up in the only Indian family in small South Carolina town. “That didn’t mean every day was great,” she said. “My family were immigrants. My father wore a turban. My mother wore a sari.”

“You don’t pick on someone just because they look differently than you, you don’t pick on someone just because they think differently than you, or because you can,” she added.

Haley said that upon arriving at the United Nations she learned that Israel “gets bullied because the countries that don’t like Israel are used to getting away with it — just like that little girl in South Carolina, that doesn’t sit well with me.”

As examples of the administration countering UN bullying, Haley cited the U.S. withdrawal from UNESCO for “attempting to change ancient history” by recognizing Hebron in the West Bank as a Palestinian world heritage site in need of protection.

Haley said when she started attending a monthly UN session on the Middle East and found it to be “an Israel-bashing session it was actually shocking.”

“I can’t say that we’ve solved the problem but I can say that several other countries have followed our lead,” she said. “What used to be a monthly Israel bashing session now has more balance.”

On moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, Haley declared, “Like most Americans, I knew what the capital of Israel was.”

“America did not make Jerusalem Israel’s capital,” she said, but simply recognized reality “denied for too long.”CONTINUE AT SITE

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Will The Conspiracy Against Trump and American Democracy Go Unpunished? Paul Craig Roberts

Posted By on March 6th, 2018

Dear Readers: This is one of the most important articles I have written, along with this one: https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/02/02/nuclear-posture-review/. If the Russiagate conspiracy against Trump and American democracy goes unpunished, accountable government in the United States will cease to exist. US security agencies have long been involved in coups against foreign governments. Now they are involved in one against America. There is great danger that Republicans are so worshipful of “national security” and so determined to protect the reputation of the US government that they will give a pass to the high officials who participated in a conspiracy against the United States. As for President Trump, he lacks a government that he can count on and is threatened by the military/security complex. The conspiracy could easily be whitewashed as merely a case of the FBI and DOJ not following proper procedures, with the media’s participation in the conspiracy being dismissed with mea culpas of “sloppy reporting.”

Will The Conspiracy Against Trump and American Democracy Go Unpunished?

Paul Craig Roberts

“In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.” – Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

The American people do not realize the seriousness of the Russiagate conspiracy against them and President Trump. Polls indicate that a large majority of the public do not believe that Trump conspired with Putin to steal the presidential election, and are tired of hearing the media prostitutes repeat the absurd story day after day. On its face the story makes no sense whatsoever. Moreover, the leaked emails are real, not fabricated. The emails show exactly what Hillary and the DNC did. The public knows that these transgressions were pushed out of news sight by the false story of a Trump/Putin conspiracy. The fact that the entirety of the US print and TV media served in a highly partisan political way to bury a true and disturbing story with a fake news story—Russiagate—is one reason some polls show that only 6% of Americans trust the mainstream media. All polls show that large majorities of independents, Republicans, and youth distrust the mainstream media. In some polls about half of Democrats trust the media, and that is because the media is servant to Democratic Party interests.

MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

The Red Sparrow – A Review By Marilyn Penn

Posted By on March 6th, 2018

Viewing this movie right before the Oscars and anticipating all the virtucrat blather about MeToo, TimesUp and Parkland, one is forced to react strongly to the heavy dose of pornography and violence on screen. Don’t see this if you might be upset by people having their limbs broken, their heads and torsos bashed with a heavy metal object, their skin flayed, their bodies raped, their necks choked, and of course lots of shooting to kill. In fact, this movie is the equivalent of the assault rifle capable of discharging ten or twenty times more firepower than you ever thought possible.

The plot is too convoluted to explain but the gist of it concerns Jennifer Lawrence playing a Russian prima ballerina who is purposely injured by a jealous rival – think I Tonya with toes shoes instead of skates. Since she can no longer dance, she will lose her apartment and insurance both of which are paid for by the Bolshoi Ballet and essential for Jen’s sick mother, played lethargically by Joely Richardson who doesn’t look sick or old enough to warrant the worst of what’s to come. Poor Jen will have to use her special insight into people as a spy/hooker, hired by her pederast uncle who works for the state. For this training, she must go to Whore School where Charlotte Rampling will teach her a thing or two about male and female parts and how to find people’s v-spot (vulnerability) so as to get them to do what you want. This is where we get to see Jennifer frontally and backfully nude and we immediately notice that this voluptuous body belongs more to the art of pole dancing than the rigors of ballet. But never mind – Jen has other changes to consider, such as bleaching her hair, throwing away her cane and being able to run perfectly despite that badly fractured, twisted leg. Did anyone get hired to deal with the continuity in this script?

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The #MeToo Movement Will Produce Victims of Its Own By Paul Craig Roberts

Posted By on March 6th, 2018

When you think about America, what do you see? A society falling apart at the seams. A government unable to represent anyone but the rich and powerful.

From the standpoint of the #MeToo movement, the wrong country was banned from the Olympics. It should have been the US, not Russia. According to MeToo women, the US Olympic Committee and USA Gymnastics covered up Larry Nassar’s sexual abuse of US athletes for years. In contrast, the Russian doping scandal appears to be an orchestration by Washington as part of its ongoing policy to isolate Russia.

The entire story of systematic government-sponsored doping of Russian athletes rests essentially on the unconfirmed story of one person—the person running the alleged doping program. Curiously, this person fled Russia to the US and “confessed.” He is hidden somewhere under US protection. Why would the person running a doping program do this?

Perhaps because it wasn’t a state-sponsored program, and authorities were hot on his heels. Did he confess to Americans so as not to be handed over to the Russians for prosecution?

Some of the Russian-bashers claim that more evidence comes from non-doping Russian athletes who claimed they were disadvantaged by the state doping program. This means that they were not included in the program. How then could it have been an all-inclusive state-sponsored program?

The Court of Arbitration for Sport has cleared many of the banned Russian athletes of the false charge. Nevertheless the International Olympic Committee refused to admit the cleared athletes to the games. Faced with the intrusion of US foreign policy into the Olympic games, the court’s spokesperson backed off. He said that the absence of any evidence of the athletes’ guilt does not mean that the athletes are innocent. In other words, guilty by accusation until proven innocent.

Is there any Western institution that is not corrupt?

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Column: Harvard bows to political correctness Jenna Robinson

Posted By on March 6th, 2018

Harvard, like many elite universities, has become increasingly intolerant.

It has sought, through a series of administrative decisions, to substitute its own values for the individual moral consciences of its students and to punish those who stray from the university’s narrow dogma. Most recently, Harvard moved to ban all exclusive social clubs, including fraternities and sororities, by 2022.

Despite Harvard’s promises that student rights are of primary importance on campus, the proposal would deprive students of their fundamental right to freedom of association, enshrined in the First Amendment.

Ultimately, Harvard’s decision to punish students who are members of such organizations, which choose members based on gender, comes down to a difference of opinion about values.

President Drew Faust explained in a 2016 letter that Harvard’s commitment to having “a truly inclusive community” was one of the university’s “deepest values.” Faust also asserted that gender is an “arbitrary” distinction between individuals.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Trump the Deal-maker and the Middle East by Amir Taheri

Posted By on March 4th, 2018

The first reason that so many deal-makers have failed is that peace is never negotiated and is always imposed by the side that wins a war. There is not any instance in history, which is primarily a narrative of countless wars, in which an outsider has imposed peace on unwilling belligerents.

The second reason is that outside deal-makers have their interests and agendas which make an already tangled web even more complicated. For example, in the case of American deal-makers, how to win Jewish votes in the US without antagonizing the Arabs who sell us oil and buy our arms?

The third reason is that whenever a status quo is at least tolerable for both belligerents, the desire for risking it in the hope of an ill-defined peace is diminished. Many people in the world live with a status quo they don’t regard as ideal.

There is one thing that Trump the deal-maker could do. He could ask the Israelis and the Palestinians to work on an agreement, each in their own camp, on what they exactly want, and report to him.

Casting himself as the best friend Israel could hope for, President Donald Trump is promising, some may say threatening, to unveil his grand plan for a peace “deal” to end the so-called “Middle East problem”.

Trump has always fancied himself as a deal-maker; he has even written a book on the subject. It is, therefore, no surprise that he might want to put his skill to use on an issue which has defied numerous deal-makers for six decades.

What are the chances of him succeeding? The short answer is: nil!

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Why Is No One Talking about the Violence of Popular Entertainment after Parkland? By Douglas Murray

Posted By on March 4th, 2018

When President Trump raised the issue yesterday, his comments were either derided or ignored by pundits. But he had a point.

Since the mass shooting in Parkland, Fla., a considerable amount of energy has understandably been expended on the matter of which guns should be available to whom and when. But it is striking that the president’s comments on Thursday about film and video-game violence have been either derided or glossed over. They are worth lingering on.

Most of us probably inhabit a kind of bubble when it comes to violence on screen. We choose to watch the sorts of films we think we’ll like and, unless we are film critics, get to avoid the sorts of films we think will bore or repel us. Until we become parents, most of us probably pay no particular attention to the drip-feed of blood and gore that now forms the basis of almost all popular entertainment.

As it happens, I’ve had to be on a lot of planes recently, and have used some of the time to watch movies I would never otherwise seek out. Apart from concluding that the Oscars shouldn’t award anyone for anything this year (can’t the whole thing just be called off?), I have mainly been repulsed at the extreme violence (often mixed with the most crass “sexiness”) that seems now to be the cinematic norm.

I could describe the sheer awfulness of Charlize Theron in Atomic Blonde, a long-legged female spy dispatching her male foes in gruesome fashion between coolly pouring herself drinks, but I didn’t make it to the end. Far worse was a film I did slog all the way through, Kingsman 2. I won’t bother to explain the risible plot, but it is presented as a sort of cooler, wryer, modern take on James Bond. Certainly all the advertising for it, the cast, and the buttons it presses make it clear that it is not aimed at an adult audience. I was surprised at the opening to see that it had an R rating, not least because I had heard people (including an air-stewardess) talking about having taken their children to see it.

A culture that encourages enjoyment of horrific violence alongside a sort of flippant approach to its consequences cannot be helping matters.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Does Women’s March Leader Believe Jews Use Pot to Make Black Men Gay? Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on March 4th, 2018

What do you get when you combine the Women’s March, the Nation of Islam and pure crazy? The Pot Plot. And now here’s Calypso Louie Farrakhan.

Farrakhan told the crowd that the “white people running Mexico are Mexican-Jews,”… Jews are “the mother and father of apartheid.” He also promoted the “Pot Plot” conspiracy that the Jews and the US government are manipulating strains of marijuana to feminize black men.

He even mentioned the Women’s March, saying that while he thought the event was a good thing, women need to learn how to cook so their husbands don’t become obese. Tamika Mallory, one of the March organizers, was in the audience, and got a special shout-out from Farrakhan. Mallory posted two Instagram photos from the event, which Carmen Perez, another Women’s March organizer, commented on with “raise the roof” emojis.

#IntersectionalFeminism.

But wait, what? Jews are using pot to feminize black men? Apparently the Pot Plot is a Nation of Islam thing and its premise is suspiciously similar to some :PLO and Hamas conspiracy theories about Israel.

During a September appearance at a mosque in Chicago, Nation of Islam student minister Wesley Muhammad claimed that Jews and the U.S. government are engaged in a “Pot Plot” to emasculate black men and turn them into homosexuals by distributing specially modified versions of marijuana.

During his nearly two-hour long tirade at the Chicago mosque, Muhammad explained that the “Pot Plot is not the paranoid racial fantasizing of your brother, but the Pot Plot is the actual scheme of your enemy.” He continued, “It’s the US government and the Synagogue of Satan’s scheme to use manipulated marijuana along with other drugs to de-masculinize and feminize the black male of America.” (The “Synagogue of Satan” is a phrase that Louis Farrakhan, NOI’s leader, uses to refer to Jews.)

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Google Recruiters Told to “Cancel interviews with applicants Who Weren’t Female, Black or Hispanic” Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on March 4th, 2018

YouTube is a Google joint. And Google really needs to be investigated.

The media left has been trying to obstruct an investigations of discriminatory practices by spamming fake discrimination lawsuits by lefties. But the evidence still keeps pilling up.

YouTube last year stopped hiring white and Asian males for technical positions because they didn’t help the world’s largest video site achieve its goals for improving diversity, according to a civil lawsuit filed by a former employee.

“Last spring, YouTube recruiters were allegedly instructed to cancel interviews with applicants who weren’t female, black or Hispanic,”

This is blatant discrimination. Google is denying it, but it would fit with what we know about the toxic crybullying atmosphere inside the search and online ad monopoly.

Arne Wilberg, a former longtime recruiter filed the lawsuit. It alleges that,

“In April of 2017, Google’s Technology Staffing Management team was instructed by Alogna to immediately cancel all Level 3 (0-5 years experience) software engineering interviews with every single applicant who was not either female, Black, or Hispanic and to purge entirely any applications by non-diverse employees from the hiring pipeline. Plaintiff refused to comply with this request.”

Which is a good thing as it’s illegal.

The lawsuit is heavily documented. It documents for example that, “the manager of YouTube’s Tech Staffing Management Team, Allison Alogna, wrote an e-mail to the staffing team in which she writes, “Hi Team: Please continue with L3 candidates in process and only accept new L3 candidates that are from historically underrepresented groups.”

It also states that, “Google on occasion would circulate e-mails instructing its employees to purge any and all references to the race-gender quotas from its e-mail database.”