MEDIA Comments turned off

The Left Finds Its Alger Hiss Paul Kengor

Posted By on July 26th, 2018

In the case of Mariia Butina, the lengths to which derangement is driving the left.

Another sign of the left is losing its mind and overplaying its hand in the Trump-Russia saga is the sudden obsession and fulmination over a Russian woman named Mariia Butina.

“Republicans Have an Alger Hiss Problem Named Mariia,” exclaims the title of a Politico piece getting a lot of play in the press. It states:

Alleged Russian spy Mariia Butina was arrested just a few days short of the 70th anniversary of the last major accusation of Russian infiltration in America’s political system: when on August 3, 1948, Time editor and ex-communist Whittaker Chambers publicly accused former high-ranking State Department official Alger Hiss of being a Soviet agent.

Rattled Democrats, including President Harry Truman, handled the fallout poorly, hesitating to distance themselves from Hiss and unwittingly feeding a conservative narrative that they were soft on communism.

Republicans are now having their own Alger Hiss moment.

The author maintains that Butina’s alleged efforts to ingratiate herself with conservative organizations and the GOP speaks to “how intertwined Russia and the Republican Party are becoming, and whether the Republican Party is willing and able to disentangle itself.” (A noteworthy aside: this Politico piece could use an update in light of Reuters’ exclusive report that Butina in 2015 had met with “wider high-level contacts in Washington than previously known,” including actual government officials from the Obama administration.)

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Chautauqua Institution’s Destruction Chautauqua Institution was once a fine place to visit, many years ago. Josh First

Posted By on July 26th, 2018

ht/25/chautauqua-institutions-destruction/tp://joshfirst.com/blog/2018/07

It was safe, quiet, full of interesting people reading books or lecturing about the most recent book they had written. The on-site opera and orchestra provided just about everyone with any artistic taste with something.

Decades later, it has been completely taken over by the same people who have targeted every other American institution for capture and control, or destruction.

Chautauqua is now a summertime parade of communists, bigots, America haters, partisan political activists. Each speaker is treated to lavish welcome ceremonies as if they are the most gifted thinker on Planet Earth, when in fact they are the meanest, most close-minded political street brawlers in America.

The place reeks of radical, angry politics everywhere you turn. The air is poisonous with hate and tension, but always sold as love and open-mindedness.

I think the institution is still physically safe, for now, but my own kids have this sense that all is not well there. They have grown up going there every summer, and they report back feeling that same tension that anyone with different views feels there now. Unwelcome.

The last time I was there, or one of the last times, I sat at the Amp for a lecture by Donna Brazile. Of course she was presented as some kind of open-minded Deep Thinker, when in fact she is a narrowly partisan fighter and proven liar. Brazile helped fix Hillary’s illegal cheating “win” over Bernie Sanders in the Democrat primary.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Palestinian polygraph – hate education and incitement Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

Posted By on July 26th, 2018

http://theettingerreport.com/Palestinian-Issue/The-Palestinian-polygraph-%E2%80%93-hate-education-and-inc.aspx

The Palestinian Authority’s school curriculum, dogmatic education system and controlled-media reflect its worldview and core values, as is the case in all non-democratic regimes.

The Palestinian school curriculum has been the most critical tool to indoctrinate and mold Palestinian youth – K through 12 – in accordance with the dominant ideology and policy of the Palestinian Authority, aiming to sustain the regime and advance its goals.

Anti-Israel and anti-Jewish themes, which have dominated the Palestinian curriculum and controlled-media, reflect the inherently primary geo-strategic goals of the Palestinian Authority. As documented by the Palestinian curriculum, the Palestinian Authority has not been preoccupied with the size – but with the existence – of the “infidel” Jewish State in the “abode of Islam.”

For example, “Where are the cavalrymen who will dash to liberate [the Jerusalem Al Aqsa Mosque] from the fists of the infidel aides of the devil [the Jews]” (7th grade, Arabic Language, volume 1, p. 66)? “The Jews did not honor the accord [with the Prophet Muhammad] and resorted to betrayal, treachery and hostility, which forced the Moslems to fight them” (7th grade, Islamic Education, volume 1, p. 50). “The Jews repeated their attempts to murder The Messenger [Muhammad]” (5th grade, Islamic Education, volume 2, p. 66). “Jihad [a binding Holy War] is one of the gates to Paradise” (7th grade, Arabic Language, volume 2, p.92).

The aforementioned quotes featured in a June 2018 study of over 200 Palestinian school books – many of them used in UNRWA schools – which was conducted by the veteran researcher of Palestinian curriculum, Dr. Arnon Groiss, commissioned by the Jerusalem-based “Center for Near East Policy Research” and published by Israel-based “Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center.”

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Donkeys, and Falcons, and Qassams, Oh My! by Gerald A. Honigman

Posted By on July 26th, 2018

www.geraldahonigman.com

So, the Arabs of Gaza have come up with a new method to attack Israel.

At least one dead falcon was found tied to incendiary materials to set the Jewish State ablaze–along with fire kites, balloons, and other such materials already being used. Not to mention mortars, missiles, and Qassam rockets. The latter, along with Hamas’s Qassam Brigade, are named for that late, great “native Palestinian” throat-slitter-of-Jews hero, Sheikh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam.

Like many, if not most, other alleged Arab “aboriginals,” Izzy came into the early post-World War I Mandate of Palestine from elsewhere, outside the Mandate. In his case–along with scores of thousands of other Arabs–from Latakia and other parts of Syria. Primary sources from the period such as the Minutes of the Permanent Mandates Commission of The League of Nations, are filled with such accounts. Scores of thousands of their Syrian Jewish neighbors would flee Syria as refugees a while later. They had lived in Syria since biblical times, long before Arabs conquered the land many centuries later.

Moving on to current news…

Regarding the deceased bird of prey drafted for the Arab cause (i.e., the latest Arab use of live creatures, Homo sapiens included, as ILEDs–Improvised Living Explosive Devices), one of the most vocal animal rights groups offered:

“As an animal-protection organization, PETA notes that animals claim allegiance to no nation, don’t choose sides, and can only rely on human beings to show them mercy, and it is unacceptable to use them as weapons of war.”

PETA, of course, is correct–but there’s more to this callous disregard for life than what one dead bird might suggest. So, please bear with me…

Let me begin by stating that there is a tradition in both Judaism and, much later, Islam to treat animals in a humane way. And, in the modern age of factory farming and such–with all the inhumane practices which accompany them–none but the vegetarian comes out really looking good regarding this matter. Having stated this, there are still, nevertheless, some vey real differences in general practice between adherents of those two faiths.

BOOKS, MEDIA Comments turned off

Why Does Facebook Think I’m ‘Political’? The robots won’t let me advertise my book on nationalism.By Yoram Hazony

Posted By on July 26th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-does-facebook-think-im-political-1532559704

The robots at Facebook always urge me to “boost my post.” This sounds kinky, but it’s Zuckerspeak for buying advertising. I’ve avoided these offers because I’m no computer genius. For me, high-tech is writing down my password somewhere.

But then I kept seeing ads for Yossi Klein Halevi’s new book, “Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor.” I have a book coming out called “The Virtue of Nationalism.” Like a knucklehead, I figured if Yossi could boost his post, so could I.

I pressed “Boost Post.” Soon thousands of people were seeing my ad, and I was psychotically checking the click count every four minutes. “Your ad is doing better than most promotions on Facebook,” the robots flattered me. I was like Fast Eddie playing big-time pool. How could I lose?

It lasted two weeks. Then a red announcement appeared: “Your ad was not approved because your Page has not been authorized to run ads with political content.” My boost was now stamped with a verdict in red letters: “Rejected.”

I found a window for submitting appeals. “My book is concerned with the historical development of the nation-state and the case for preferring it to imperialism,” I groveled. I offered to send the robots a copy so they could see for themselves.

Facebook’s sentient programs don’t wear dark glasses or have menacing names like Agent Smith. A response came from “Veronica”: “The text and/or imagery you’re using qualifies as political, based on the definition we’re using for enforcement,” it said. “You must authorize your page to run political ads.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Some Good Trade News Europe and the U.S. call a truce and pledge to negotiate ‘zero tariffs.’

Posted By on July 26th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/some-good-trade-news-1532560648

The meeting on trade Wednesday between President Trump and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker had all the makings of a potential crackup, but in the event it provided the best economic news in weeks. Financial markets were clearly pleased, as stocks rose across the board before the closing bell on the statements by the two presidents after their White House session. Call it a relief rally.

The two sides essentially declared a tariff truce, pending negotiations on a larger trade deal between the 28-nation European Union and the U.S. Mr. Trump agreed to step back from his threat of 25% tariffs on European car imports, while the two sides pledged to resolve the current U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs and Europe’s retaliatory levies on U.S. goods.

Europe also agreed to buy more soybeans immediately, and much more liquefied natural gas from the U.S. in the future as its import capacity expands. U.S. LNG export capacity is expected to nearly triple by 2020 to 9.6 billion cubic feet a day, as more export terminals come online and the fracking boom continues.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Tony Thomas The Extinction of Honest Science

Posted By on July 25th, 2018

http://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2018/07/extinction-honest-science/

Warmists’ predictions of climate doom haven’t come to pass or anything like it, but give them credit for agility and perseverance in always concocting a fresh scare. The latest meme to keep grants flowing and careers on track: the purported mass die-off of species large and small.

With no significant warming for 20 years, the climate alarmists need better scares. The temperature rise of about 0.8 degC in more than 100 years is not only non-scary, it’s been immensely beneficial for feeding the globe’s burgeoning population. Now the “extreme weather” furphy is at work, with any storm or flood attributed by Al Gore and the Climate Council to fossil fuel emissions. There’s the purported “ocean acidification” but I’m yet to see evidence that it has hurt a solitary crab, let alone a species.

As for sea-level rises, well, check my birthplace, Fremantle, butting the Indian Ocean: its tide gauge shows 12 cms rise in the past 120 years – compare that with 20cm for the length of my hand. To cap it off, the warmists, including the green-colonised CSIRO, have had to recognize that extra CO2 in the 30 years to 2010 has greened the earth to the extent of two and a half Australias in area.[1]

There are two handy scares still slithering around: “The Anthropocene” and “The Sixth Mass Extinction”. Both are fakes. Both are foisted on kids by green/Left educators. Both require as supposed remedies a supra-national enforcement agency run by the Left/liberal crowd, along with a roll-back of capitalist progress.

Here’s an example. I was in Chicago in 2013 and visited its great natural history centre the Field Museum (named after a 19th century $US9m donor Marshall Field). In the “Evolving Planet” gallery for kids, there was a chart, “The Geologic Time Scale” showing the classic geologic ages (Silurian, Devonian etc) with markers for the first five extinctions. At the top it read “Today” with a picture of a metropolis, and an arrow labeled “Sixth Mass Extinction”. A red-neon “Extinction Clock” ticked over each time another species supposedly becomes extinct. In the hour or two since the gallery opened, the counter had added another 22 supposed extinctions. The count was based not on reality but fanciful modeling 30 years ago by Harvard professor and environmental activist Dr E.O Wilson, who claimed that 30,000 species were going extinct per year. The true number of known extinctions per year among the planet’s reputed 10 million-or-so species and averaged over the past 500 years is about two, according to the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Yet climate activists want to compare this alleged“Sixth Extinction” with the end-Permian “great dying” (250 million years ago) and end-Cretaceous dinosaur die-off (66 million years ago).

As for the“Anthropocene”, it refers to the present geological era in which humans supposedly dominate the planetary processes and destroy other life forms. The label was first seriously proposed in 2001 by co-Nobelist Paul Crutzen, of ozone-hole fame. It supposedly succeeds our 11,500 year old Holocene, the brief warm spell that has fostered our agriculture and civilisation. No such era and label as “Anthropocene” has been endorsed by the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS), the global naming authority. An ICS working group (AWG) endorsed the concept in 2016, positing a start date of 1950. Most geologic eras last about three million years, so the ICS is in no hurry to make a ruling.

MEDIA Comments turned off

COMPARED TO WHAT? DIANA WEST

Posted By on July 25th, 2018

http://dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/3768/Compared-to-What.aspx

Good thing I got back from vacation in time for the really important news, the story Drudge, Breitbart, WaPo and NYT are all on the same page about this morning — or, at least, are all putting forth the same Page One about. The Michael Cohen tape. Big Story. Stop the whatever they’re called.
I have a question. It’s the same question I had last week about Trump and Putin in Helsinki. This question is one of the most important ones to ask about any such “news” blasted out by the news media, those special operators of the psychological battlefield, which they drive into every particle of collective American brain with exploding headlines and siren soundbytes. The Michael Cohen tape is the single most important thing for all of us to think about right now …. compared to what?
Compared to nothing, which is the media m.o. Last month was all Stormy Daniels, all the time. (Who?) Last week, it was “treason!” “impeachable offenses!!” “crimes!!!” committed by Trump at his press conference with Putin in Helsinki. Compared to what?
I don’t ask the question lightly. The truly brilliant anti-communist writer Josef Mackiewicz was a biologist by training. (By the way, so is Bukovsky.) “One of my professors,” he wrote in his 1962 book, The Triumph of Provocation, reissued by Yale University Press in 2009, “used to say that only a comparitive science is an exact science; only by comparisons can objective knowledge be gained. All my life I have tried to use this maxim as a guide, since it seems to me to be the only correct method in the assessment of all the truth that is accessible to man.”
We postmoderns feed on a poor diet of “all the news that’s fit to print.” Imagine, instead, assessing all the truth that is accessible to man.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

French Judge Protects Muslim Killer of Elderly Woman from “Hostile” Jewish Community Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on July 25th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/270848/french-judge-protects-muslim-killer-elderly-woman-daniel-greenfield

Vichy lives.

ONE NIGHT IN APRIL last year, in the largely working-class neighbourhood of Belleville in Paris, a 27-year old man stole into the apartment of a neighbour, Sarah Halimi, the 65-year old retired director of a Jewish kindergarten, an orthodox Jewish widow with three adult children.

Malian-born Kobili Traoré brutally attacked the sleeping woman before throwing her from the window of her third-floor apartment. Witnesses heard him cry, “Allahu akbar” as he pushed her body onto the balcony, and then, “I killed the devil” as she fell.

The police, who had been called earlier by another family in the building, did not attempt to enter the apartment; afraid that this was a terrorist attack they waited outside the building for reinforcements. By the time reinforcements arrived, Halimi was dead. She had been tortured for an hour before she was killed; the living room was covered in blood.

The usual excuse for the Muslim killer was mental illness.

Yes, he hit her screaming ” Allahu akbar ” and suras of the Koran: first with the phone’s handset, then with his fists. Yes, he threw it well over his third floor balcony. But, he assures, he remains unable to explain why he has committed such an act of barbarism. “I do not know, I do not remember,” slips the young man with each question asked on the motive of the murder. He repeats: “I can not describe what was going on in my head.”

Maybe the suras of the Koran can help. Or his attempt to cover up his crime by shouting that the victim had committed suicide.

But don’t worry, the judge will protect the poor killer.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Blood and Terror: Remembering the Romanovs By Madeleine Kearns

Posted By on July 25th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/07/death-of-the-romanovs-first-victims-of-soviet-ideology/One hundred years on, it’s worth remembering the first victims of the evil Soviet ideology.

‘What? What?” were the last words of Tsar Nicholas II, according to his murderer.

On July 17, 1918, at 2:15 a.m., the recently abdicated tsar; his wife Alexandra; their daughters Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia; their 12-year-old son Alexey; their doctor Evgeniy Botkin; chambermaid Anna Demidova; valet Alexey Trupp; and cook Ivan Kharitonov were roused from their sleep in their tightly guarded house in Ekaterinberg and led by Bolsheviks into the basement.

There, Iakov Iurovskii, under orders from Vladimir Lenin, told the Romanovs that because their relatives continued their offensive against Soviet Russia, the Executive Committee of the Ural Soviet had decided to shoot them. According to Iurovskii’s diary, Nicholas turned to face his family. Then, “as if collecting himself,” he turned around and asked, “Kакие? Какие?”

By 1917, Russia was ripe for revolution. The tsar’s slow-moving parliamentary reform and the 1905 revolution had shattered the unity of “the people.” War and food scarcity compounded the problem. In February 1917, riots broke out in Petrograd; in March the tsar was forced to abdicate. The provisional government was weak and short-lived, and the Bolsheviks came to power via a coup in October.

Who knows what one’s final thoughts are when faced with certain, murderous death. But this former emperor and current husband and father’s pain was surely tempered by his Christian faith. Days before, on July 14th, the Romanovs were paid an unexpected visit by a priest who had noted their astonishing forbearance and composure. Perhaps they had already accepted that their hope was in heaven, not earth.