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Saving Brexit By John O’Sullivan

Posted By on July 31st, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/brexit-theresa-may-must-go-save/

Every day seems to produce another item in Theresa May’s continuing betrayal of her promises on Brexit and the referendum. Here are the opening paragraphs of a front-page story in yesterday’s London Times to illustrate rather than (needlessly) to prove the betrayal:

Britain has privately conceded that EU judges will be legal arbiter of disputes over payments to Brussels and the residency rights of more than three million European citizens.

In an attempt to break the deadlock in a key part of the negotiations the government has agreed to give the European Court of Justice (ECJ) the final say in the arbitration of arguments over the working of Brexit and any disputes over Britain’s £39 billion bill.

EU judges will also have the final say over a Irish border “backstop” if the trade deal between Britain and Europe leads to frontier checks.

Brexiteers said that the concession was another climbdown by Theresa May.

Is “climbdown” the right word, however? It implies a reluctance to agree and a submission to force majeure. What evidence is there that May and her cabal of advisers feel any reluctance or that they are bowing to necessity rather than making a series of deliberate choices? The language of submission seems designed to deceive their supporters in Parliament, namely the Brexiteers, and in the country, the great majority of Tories, rather than to outline a prudent route to U.K. independence. Whatever the psychological motives behind this latest concession to Brussels, however, it is unmistakably a betrayal of May’s repeated “red line” that she would take Britain “out” of the jurisdiction of the ECJ. Of course, her Chequers package for a No Brexit Deal (not to be confused with a No Deal Brexit) had already erased two of her other major red lines. If the Chequers plan ends up being the basis of a final settlement, Britain will be “out” of neither the single market nor the customs union. Yet only two days before the Chequers cabinet meeting, May had declared in the clearest terms that the country would be “out” of all three — and others too.

MEDIA, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Fake News, Censorship, and Slush Funds By Andrew Stuttaford

Posted By on July 31st, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/fake-news-censorship-william-hague-proposal/

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, former British Conservative leader William Hague becomes yet another politician trying to use fake news as an excuse to extend the reach of the state into areas where it should not go. Inspired by the recent report of a parliamentary committee (which I discussed here), which was in turn itself partly inspired by Angela Merkel’s strikingly illiberal social-media law, Hague wants to take things even further:

I would encourage this committee and ministers to think even more radically in some respects. For instance, they recommend that the algorithms used to determine what news to show to each user should be audited by a regulator.

And who audits the regulator?

Hague argues that such algorithms should be published (not a bad idea), but also appears to believe that they should be programmed to furnish feeds “with news and comment from some alternative way of thinking so that people are not forever living on a diet of views and advertisements that confirm everything they already think.”

Hague is right to think that it’s not healthy to rely solely on information that is ideologically slanted one way (FWIW I try to make sure that I don’t), but it’s a big leap to go from that reasonable observation to insist that people must be served up with alternative views. And who decides what is or is not a sufficiently “alternative” way of thinking, and, for that matter, which of those alternatives to publicize?

The opportunity for manipulation of the audience, but this time with the force of law behind it is obvious. That this is being proposed by a former Tory leader is yet another reminder of just how far the Conservative party has been transformed from a party that paid at least some respect to the individual to being a party of the state.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, MEDIA Comments turned off

FAKE NEWS: Nat Geo Retracts Unscientific Message in Viral Climate Change Video By Tyler O’Neil

Posted By on July 31st, 2018

https://pjmedia.com/trending/fake-news-nat-geo-retracts-unscientific-message-in-viral-climate-change-video/

Last December, National Geographic published a video of a starving, emaciated polar bear struggling to cling to life. The caption: “This is what climate change looks like.” Eight months later, the magazine is issuing a retraction, while still clinging to the narrative that skeptics are “deniers.”

In an article for the August 2018 edition of the magazine, photographer Cristina Mittermeier admitted that neither she nor anyone else could clearly pinpoint “climate change” as the reason why this particular polar bear was on the brink of death.

“I can’t say that this bear was starving because of climate change,” Mittermeier admitted, eight months after the video went viral. The video, “Heart-Wrenching Video: Starving Polar Bear on Iceless Land,” became National Geographic’s most watched video ever, and its opening text declared, “This is what climate change looks like.”

Even in admitting that the basic message of the video was false, Mittermeier insisted that climate change is man-made and a direct threat to life.

“Climate change kills slowly and by proxy: through fire, drought, cold, and starvation. The connection between an individual animal’s death and climate change is rarely clear — even when an animal is as emaciated as this polar bear,” the photographer began in her retraction article.

While Mittermeier admitted that “National Geographic went too far with the caption,” she oddly blamed audiences who “took it too literally.”

“We had sent a ‘gut-wrenching’ image out into the world. We probably shouldn’t have been surprised that people didn’t pick up on the nuances we tried to send with it,” the photographer wrote. She suggested that audiences were responsible for reading too much into the video.

She referenced an original Instagram post from her coworker Paul Nicklen. Nicklen wrote about this “soul-crushing scene” showing “what starvation looks like.” He went on to predict the extinction of polar bears, noting that “if the Earth continues to warm, we will lose bears and entire polar ecosystems.” Then he insisted, “We must reduce our carbon footprint, eat the right food, stop cutting down our forests, and begin putting the Earth—our home—first.”

There seems little “nuance” even in Nicklen’s first post. He clearly declared that this polar bear’s death is related to climate change, and that human beings are causing climate change.

Even in Mittermeier’s own article, the photographer laments “there were those who are still bent on maintaining the dangerous status quo by denying the existence of climate change.” This is slightly veiled “climate denier” language. CONTINUE AT SITE

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Trump, Russia and The Future By Herbert London

Posted By on July 31st, 2018

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/jul/25/trump-russia-and-the-future/

Herbert London is President of the London Center for Policy Research: https://londoncenter.org/

In what can only be regarded as an ingenuous diplomatic assertion President Trump agreed that the Russians had not attempted to influence the 2016 election, despite Intelligence reports to the contrary. It appeared as if President Trump had more confidence in Putin’s strength and powerful denial, than the general belief in Washington on both sides of the aisle. To his critics, President Trump abased himself abjectly to a tyrant. Senator John McCain said, “Today’s press conference in Helsinki was one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory.”

Recovering from this self-imposed injury won’t be easy, unless the president has a strategic vision that ultimately yields results for the United States. For example, if this modus vivendi leads to stabilization in the Middle East, it might have been worth the embarrassment at the Summit. Having been invited to cope with the Syrian poison gas question by President Obama, the Russian position continued to expand as an enforcer of Iranian imperial ambitions and Hezbollah defender. If the president can alter this arrangement by “peeling” Russia away from Iran, the threat of a Shia Crescent – an Iranian land mass from Tehran to the Mediterranean Sea – will diminish, thereby giving Sunni states a reprieve from the tension of potential war.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Wise Giants and Arrogant Dwarves The follies of our modern age. Bruce Thornton

Posted By on July 31st, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270886/wise-giants-and-arrogant-dwarves-bruce-thornton

In the 12th century Bernard of Chartres first pointed out that we have more knowledge than those who came before us not because of our greater intelligence and understanding, but because we are “dwarves sitting on the shoulders of giants,” and can see farther because of the accumulated achievements of generation after generation of intellectual pioneers who preceded us.

That intellectual modesty and respect for tradition that once characterized Western Civilization has been scorned and spurned by modernity, leading to many of the bad ideas and lethal ideologies that have plagued the last two centuries. Indeed, we are historically unprecedented––but only in the coexistence of an astonishing depth of knowledge about nature and its laws, with a profound lack of the wisdom and common sense once possessed by even our illiterate forbearers. Rather than acknowledge the traditions and wisdom on whose shoulders we sit, we arrogantly imagine ourselves to be self-created giants.

Our hubris comes from the remarkable success of Western science at understanding the material world and its laws, and then using that knowledge to create transformational technologies. But the wonders of technology led us into a category error. We began to think that human beings could be understood in the same way and with the same predictability as we achieved with the material world. Such knowledge in turn would lead to “scientific” techniques that could transform humans and correct the evils caused by ignorance, tradition, and superstition.

This illusion and the hubris it nourishes dominates our culture, especially among those called progressives, who endorse the arrogance of technocratic elites who believe power backed by the “human sciences” can reshape and improve humans, and so create a perfect society free from the suffering and misery of the past.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

DISPATCHES FROM TOM GROSS: READ THEM ALL

Posted By on July 31st, 2018

https://wp.tomgrossmedia.com/ CORBYN CALLED MEMBER OF TERROR GANG WHICH KILLED ESTEEMED JEWISH DOCTOR AND HIS DAUGHTER, HIS “BROTHER” [Notes by Tom Gross] The first picture above is of Dr David Applebaum with his 20-year-old daughter Nava on the eve of her wedding. Dr Applebaum, one of Israel’s most distinguished doctors, ran the A&E department at Shaare […]

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Secret Reason Arabs Reject the Jewish Nation-State Law by Bassam Tawil

Posted By on July 31st, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12785/israel-arabs-nation-state-law

Some Israeli Arab leaders speak disparagingly about Israel for publicity. They know that no newspaper would ever mention them if they were dealing with issues such as sewage or a shortage of classrooms in Arab schools. If they say something bad about Israel or provoke the Jews, however, they will certainly receive a headline in the press.

Israeli Arab leaders can incite against Israel as much as they wish. Their slander will not change the reality that Israel is the only thriving democracy in the Middle East, and treats its minorities with respect. While minorities are being persecuted and murdered in Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, Libya and other Arab and Islamic countries, the Arab citizens of Israel are being integrated into the state. They hold high positions in the Supreme Court, the Foreign Ministry, the health sector and even the Israel Police. The majority of the Arabs in Israel can work anywhere they wish, they can travel anywhere in the country, and they will continue to enjoy all the privileges, benefits and freedoms that Jewish citizens do.

Some Israeli Arab leaders want Israel to give up its wish to be a Jewish homeland because they are hoping that one day Jews will become a minority in their own country. For far too long, they have been inciting their constituents against Israel and Jews. If these leaders are so unhappy in Israel, perhaps they would consider moving to Ramallah or the Gaza Strip or any Arab country. Perhaps they would care to resign from the Knesset. Why do they refrain from doing so? Because it is in the Jewish homeland, supposedly so harmful to them, that they and their children can live and thrive.

The hypocrisy of the leaders of the Arab citizens of Israel, who are now crying foul over the new Jewish Nation-State Law, has, in the past few days, reached new heights.

These are the same leaders whose words and actions for the past two decades have caused serious damage to relations between Jews and Arabs in Israel, and to the interests of their own constituents, the Arab citizens of Israel.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

HER SAY: LINDA GOUDSMIT ON TRANSGENDERISM

Posted By on July 31st, 2018

In response to a news item :

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2018/06/revolutionary-transgenderism-march/

Revolutionary transgenderism is on the march in Britain, with the blessing of a Conservative Prime Minister. The delayed consultations on proposed changes to the government’s new Gender Recognition Act that Theresa May promises are to go ahead. It is likely that, though opposed by traditional feminists as well as social conservatives, the Gender Recognition Act, backed by Labour, will pass through the Commons and into law.

Linda Goudsmit writes:

“Transgenderism is yet another example of political science masquerading as biological science – no different than the political science of “man-made” climate change masquerading as environmental science. The ultimate end game of blurred boundaries whether they are personal, sexual, political, national, international etc etc is the creation of a new world of socially engineered androgynous, mindless, unthinking, unaware and compliant global citizen who will be enslaved by the globalist elite. The lemmings are too narcissistic and arrogant to understand they are participating in their own destruction – they are the useful idiots of the 21st century.

The sadness of transgenderism is that body dysphoria is an emotional/psychological disturbance that needs compassionate, patient, support from someone who can help the unfortunate sufferer come to terms with the trauma of his/her childhood that caused the disturbance. Hacking off body parts exacerbates the problem – it can never solve it.”

POLITICS Comments turned off

The Democrat Future Isn’t Socialist, It’s Crazy Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on July 31st, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270900/democrat-future-isnt-socialist-its-crazy-daniel-greenfield

The socialists are having a moment. At least if you believe the media

But if the socialists were really having a moment, their big show wouldn’t be a 28-year-old birdbrain whose big achievement was beating a boring white guy in a Hispanic district he didn’t even live in.

If you’re going to take over the Democrats, you need something more to show for it than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or a senile socialist who came in number 2 in the primaries and then again in the DNC.

The Democrats are adopting socialist ideas wholesale. The 2020 Dem nominee will run on a guaranteed minimum income or ‘Welfare for All”. Along with free health care, free college and free copies of Das Kapital. And socialism polls brilliantly with the four core Dem bases of angry government workers, angry college students, angry welfare recipients and San Francisco eco-billionaires who keep all their money in Caribbean banks. But that’s because the Democrats have no ideas except hating Trump and Republicans.

Eight years of Obama ushered in primary elections notable for a nominee who jumped on every bandwagon she could catch with both feet, her socialist ankle biter who flip-flopped almost as much as she did, even flipping and flopping on the question of whether he was a Democrat, a distant third place loser running on painting all the electricity green, and a fourth placer still running against the Iraq War.

The House Dems have switched their slogan twice and no one cares. Legislative visionaries like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have never had an idea that didn’t involve their own careers. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton hollowed out the DNC and left behind a bankrupt dysfunctional shambles.

And they’re blaming that on the Russians instead of on their own self-serving shenanigans.

Trump’s victory tore the mask from the Democrats leaving them nothing but rage. Formerly mainstream Democrats are quick to embrace every insane lefty position from abolishing borders to supporting Hamas, not because they understand or believe in them, but because they’re “resisting” Trump.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Legitimacy of Israel’s Nationality Law Why it’s fair. Joseph Puder

Posted By on July 31st, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270878/legitimacy-israels-nationality-law-joseph-puder

Upon passing the Nationality Law in Israel’s Knesset (Parliament) by a vote of 62 to 55, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took to the podium and declared, “One hundred and twenty-two years after Theodore Herzl published his vision we have enshrined into the law the basic principle of our existence.” He added, “This is our country, the state of the Jews. But in recent years there have been some people who have been trying to undermine that, and by so doing, to undermine the foundations of our existence and rights. Well, today we etched into the rock of law: this is our country, this is our language, this is our national anthem, and this is our flag. Long live the state of Israel.”

Netanyahu, in defending the Nationality Bill pointed out that “When Ben Gurion declared the establishment of the state, he didn’t see the need to legislate Basic Laws to ensure its Jewish and democratic character…now there are those that challenge the state of Israel’s Jewish character…” Netanyahu’s reference had in mind Mahmoud Abbas’ refusal to recognize Israel as the “nation-state of the Jewish people.” Netanyahu also made the point that Israel is the only state in the Middle East that honors equal rights.

Isaac Herzog, the Opposition leader, told the plenum, that “it’s a little sad to me that the last speech I make will be against this kind of backdrop. The question is whether the law will harm or benefit Israel. History will determine. I really hope that we won’t find the fine balance between a Jewish and democratic state to be hurt.”

Yariv Levin, Israel’s Minister of Tourism, was one of the sponsors of the Nationality Law. Speaking prior to the vote, he appealed to the opposition by saying, “I ask you my friends from the Zionist Union, (a left-of-center Zionist party) to reply honestly to the question of what is in the law that you oppose. It is a law that expresses the deepest foundations of Zionism and the foundation on which the State of Israel was built. It states the obvious: The State of Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people,”