ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Climate Cabal Purges ‘Deniers’ By Julie Kelly

Posted By on February 10th, 2018

The climate cabal is in a panic. The Trump Administration is systematically dismantling President Obama’s climate change legacy: Federal agencies are scrubbing references to climate change, President Trump announced the United States. would exit the Paris Climate Accord, and his cabinet is peddling American-made fossil fuels around the world.

Climate change barely registered a blip in the 2016 presidential election, and even members of the alleged Party of Science are increasingly uninterested in global warming. Only 19 percent of Democrats say climate change is the most important issue in the mid-term elections, and that support drops to 11 percent for independent voters. On the heels of an El Nino season where temperatures were customarily warm, most of the country is now enduring a frigid, blizzard-like winter, which the climate propagandists counterintuitively also blame on global warming.

So, as the climate cabal feels their grip on federal policy and public opinion weaken, its zealots are becoming more desperate. Michael Mann, a Penn State University climatologist and the media’s go-to-guy for any apocalyptic quote about how anthropogenic global warming will kill us all, seems more unbalanced than usual. As the “Citizen Secretary of Science and Environment” in Donald Trump’s so-called “Shadow Cabinet”—which also includes Laurence Tribe and Robert Reich—Mann appears to be taking his pretend post a bit too seriously. Mann recently called White House advisor Kellyanne Conway “evil incarnate,” said Trump is a “moron” and a “threat to the planet,” and denounced Devin Nunes as “a traitor to this country” and demanded he “be subject to appropriate sanctions.” He’s mocked the president’s son and tweeted at the First Lady. (Pretty ironic coming from a guy who filed a lawsuit because someone called him a mean name.)

BOOKS Comments turned off

Review: When ‘The Marshall Plan’ Helped Plot a New Course for the West Economic aid did not cause a Keynesian miracle but was a diplomatic master stroke, convincing wavering nations to reject the Soviets at the dawn of the Cold War. By Paul Kennedy

Posted By on February 10th, 2018

‘Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine, but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos.” It is difficult to think of any words delivered at any university commencement that had more historical weight than those spoken in the final minutes of George C. Marshall’s speech at Harvard on June 5, 1947.

The venue was carefully chosen as a dignified but noncontroversial place. The speaker was one of the greatest secretaries of state this country ever produced. The words had been crafted and recrafted by some of the most brilliant minds at the State Department and on its Policy Planning Staff. But while key sentences took the high moral ground, there was an urgent political purpose to this declaration by Marshall. He addressed the pressing issue of how to prevent European nations from collapsing into economic ruin and despair, and in some cases suffering a Communist takeover.

Marshall’s speech announced a great act of American statecraft, and marked a significant step away from the prewar, Rooseveltian era of noncommitment in European matters. In this dramatic move, the Truman administration—glumly recognizing it was the only Western country with any money after World War II, shocked by the reports of near-starvation across Europe and desperate to shore up friendly governments—stepped up to the plate.

With an equally frightened American Congress behind it, the government offered huge sums of money to any democratic country in Europe able to come up with a plausible recovery scheme. These countries—and this was a deliberate gesture—could be on either side of the zonal division of Europe established at Yalta; all that was needed was a willingness to produce a rebuilding plan and join in the common effort. America’s aid package was unprecedented in size, threatened no one and therefore ought to have been opposed by no one. Who on earth would want to stop this act of extraordinary generosity? Who could be against the Marshall Plan?

That is, of course, a rhetorical question, because one person would definitely want to stop the scheme: the powerful and increasingly paranoid Joseph Stalin. He feared America’s economic power, was scared stiff of Germans (still) and any future unified Germany, and in fact by this time saw demons everywhere. As Benn Steil details in his brilliant book “The Marshall Plan,” the Soviets had shown ever-greater intransigence throughout 1946 and 1947 in regard to all proposals for the economic rebuilding of Europe and the political reconstitution of the defeated Germany. The exceptions, to be sure, were schemes of theirs that calculated to have all Germany fall into the Eastern orbit. CONTINUE AT SITE

EDUCATION Comments turned off

There’s One Thing Worse Than Paying Bad Teachers Not to Work Bill de Blasio’s New York has started putting them back in the classroom, especially in poor areas. By Marcus A. Winters

Posted By on February 10th, 2018

What should a city do with poor teachers who, thanks to union rules, cannot be fired? For years New York has let them linger on its Absent Teacher Reserve, where they are paid without having a permanent spot in any school. But now the city is taking the opposite approach: putting them back into classrooms.

The ATR is an example of what happens when reform runs up against inflexible labor rules. In 2005 Mayor Michael Bloomberg ended the practice of filling teaching slots in New York’s public schools by seniority. Instead, he gave principals increased power to hire the teachers they thought best. The complication was the union contract. Laid-off teachers could either look for a position elsewhere or join the ATR, where they receive full salary and benefits as they move across schools doing short-term work, often as substitutes.

The ATR differs from the notorious “rubber rooms,” or reassignment centers, where suspended teachers accused of misconduct once awaited adjudication of their cases. Teachers aren’t placed on the ATR because they are facing dismissal. They just can’t (or won’t) persuade a principal to hire them. Some have received ineffective teaching ratings. Others have records of disciplinary problems like absenteeism or sleeping on the job.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Rob Porter Mess A fiasco that hurts part of the White House that was working.

Posted By on February 10th, 2018

The story of Rob Porter has escalated from a personal and domestic trauma to one about failed White House vetting, and this time President Trump seems to be blameless. The damage would be compounded if it blows up the vast improvement that Chief of Staff John Kelly has brought to the West Wing.

Mr. Porter resigned this week after news broke that he was accused of abusing two former wives during their marriages. The truth of the accusations is impossible for an outsider to know at this point, and Mr. Porter has denied the allegations as “vile” and part of a “coordinated smear campaign.”

But by all accounts the allegations were holding up Mr. Porter’s security clearance, which he needed in the crucial job of staff secretary who controls the daily paper flow to the President’s desk. Both ex-wives say they shared this information with the FBI a year ago, and the Daily Mail is reporting that Mr. Porter’s former girl friend spoke to Mr. Kelly about the allegations in October.

The White House review process served the President poorly. The FBI typically takes such charges, and its impact on a security clearance, to the White House counsel’s office, whose job is to determine if those charges are disqualifying. They are automatically so if a clearance is denied, unless the President himself overrules the FBI.

One issue is whether anyone told any of this to Mr. Trump, who brought reporters into the White House Friday to wish Mr. Porter well and say his former aide had denied the accusations. We also don’t know what Mr. Porter told White House counsel Don McGahn or Mr. Kelly when confronted with the charges. But they ought to have recognized that sooner or later such allegations would become public—and that when they did it would embarrass the President.

Already New York Democrat Nydia Velazquez tweeted that the Porter affair exposes “a culture of misogyny” at the White House. But even before the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment, such serious accusations from three women would have driven someone out of such a prominent White House job.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Free Speech Gets Expensive A university sent the College Republicans a $17,000 security bill.

Posted By on February 10th, 2018

When University of Washington’s College Republicans invited controversial activist Joey Gibson to speak, administrators gave them the OK—and sent them a $17,000 security bill. The student group sued Tuesday, and in an 11th-hour ruling Friday a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order against the college, saying the bill “runs afoul [by] chilling speech.”

The free-speech rally will proceed Saturday on the university’s main plaza, the Red Square. Administrators are urging students to stay away for their own safety. University President Ana Mari Cauce said Friday that campus police have “credible information that groups from outside the UW community are planning to join the event with the intent to instigate violence.”

The threat is real. In 2017, when the College Republicans hosted alt-right parvenu Milo Yiannopolous, masked activists showed up to protest, while other nonstudents showed up to counter-protest. By the end of the night Joshua Dukes, a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, was hospitalized with critical injuries. The woman charged with shooting him in the stomach, Elizabeth Hokoana, told law enforcement Mr. Dukes was wielding “a big knife” and was “about to gut my husband.” She and her husband have pleaded not guilty to assault.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Europe Brussels Neighborhood Struggles to Break Ties to Terrorism Molenbeek confronts legacy as caldron of Paris and Brussels attacks with policing and job trainingBy Valentina Pop

Posted By on February 10th, 2018

BRUSSELS—This week’s trial of the only surviving assailant from the November 2015 Paris attacks has refocused attention on the Brussels district of Molenbeek where he grew up and was captured.

Salah Abdeslam’s trial for attempted murder is a painful reminder for the neighborhood of its role as the breeding ground of the terror cell that killed 130 people in those attacks and another 32 in Brussels in suicide bombings on March 22, 2016.Molenbeek Mayor Françoise Schepmans, who has lived in the neighborhood for over 50 years, keeps the memory of those attacks alive, among other things with a monument to Brussels victims installed in front of the district’s opulent 19th-century town hall. “This is part of our history,” she said. “Molenbeek was a fertile ground for terrorism.”

Now she says her office is working to make it less so, both by stepping up policing and by promoting efforts to improve cultural and economic opportunities for Molenbeek’s residents.

Under the authority of zoning regulations, district authorities have launched periodic checks to ensure Molenbeek’s mosques aren’t fostering militant versions of Islam. Five of the neighborhood’s 25 mosques and Quranic schools have been shut down on those grounds over the past two years.

Law-enforcement efforts have also increased since 2016, with a doubling of surveillance cameras and a beefed-up police force. Molenbeek now has three rather than just one security official charged with keeping tabs on two-dozen families suspected of radicalism.

Belgian prosecutors on Thursday asked that Mr. Abdeslam be given 20 years in prison for his involvement in a shoot-out with police officers in Brussels days before the Brussels attacks. Mr. Abdeslam’s lawyer on Thursday demanded his acquittal on procedural grounds and said there was no evidence his client opened fire. The trial will resume on March 29.Molenbeek, once home to Mr. Abdeslam and many of the dead men alleged to have been his co-conspirators, faces daunting economic challenges. Located just west of central Brussels, it is among the poorest of Belgium’s 589 districts, and its 27% unemployment rate in 2016—the latest year with available data—was more than triple the 7.8% national level. Youth unemployment was 38%, compared with 20% nationally, and youth workers say a third of local students are two or more years behind in school. CONTINUE AT SITE

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel Strikes Syrian Targets After Intercepting Iranian Drone Jet crashes in Israeli territory, but military says it wasn’t shot down By Rory Jones

Posted By on February 10th, 2018

Israel’s military said it carried out extensive airstrikes on Syrian targets Saturday after it intercepted an Iranian drone launched from Syria that had infiltrated its airspace, intensifying tensions between the two neighbors.

The Israeli jets came under fire from Syrian antiaircraft missiles and one crashed in Israeli territory, the military said. The F-16 aircraft wasn’t shot down and the pilots ejected, with one evacuated to the hospital in a serious condition, it added.

Syrian state media called the strikes a “new Israeli aggression.” The shots set off warning sirens in northern Israel of an imminent rocket attack, the Israeli military said.

While Israel and Syria have exchanged volleys frequently in recent months and the Israeli military has intercepted enemy drones, the incident Saturday was unusual in that Israel for the first time claimed it involved an Iranian unmanned aerial vehicle.

It was also the first time Israel has lost a jet during a strike in Syria, despite dozens of airstrikes in recent years.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Zionist answer to Arab and Muslim Terror Victor Sharpe

Posted By on February 10th, 2018

Facts on the ground. Let the likes of Mahmoud Abbas and the Fatah and Hamas goons see before their very own eyes how their encouragement of Muslim terror results in new Jewish communities.

The two wonderful women, Nadia Matar and Yehudit Katsover, founders of Women in Green and leaders of the Sovereignty Movement, call for the application of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria.

They do so in a Press Release in which they condemn the latest Muslim Arab atrocity against a Jewish Israeli civilian, 29 year old Itamar Ben Gal Hy”d (may G-d avenge his blood) who was struck down near the entrance to Ariel in Samaria.

The murderous knife attack was perpetrated by a Muslim Arab with Israeli citizenship calling himself a Palestinian. His vile act, as with all other atrocities,was encouraged by the grisly terrorist, Mahmoud Abbas, whose so-called Palestinian Authority reeks of hatred against any and allmembers of the Jewish faith and people – including myopic liberal and left wing Jews.

The PA’s territory occupies large swathes of the Jewish ancestral and Biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria – territory which too many nation states and hostile organizations still prefer to call by the Jordanian Arab name: West Bank.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

MY SAY: ANTI-SEMANTIC IN POLAND?

Posted By on February 9th, 2018

The brouhaha regarding Poland’s new law is misunderstood. Poland’s defenders explain that it is all a matter of semantics. What are referred to as the “Polish death camps” were really German/Nazi camps. The correction is fair enough. But correcting a phrase leads so many Polish defenders to air-brush the complicity of Polish anti-Semites in aiding the Nazis. Oh yes…of course there were exceptions…noble people hid and helped Jews at great risk to their lives. But the majority did not and the word “Żyd”- Polish for Jew was an invective and curse.

My parents were Polish, and I speak Polish but I prefer to focus on present antisemitism hounding the Jews throughout Europe and in the entire Arab world, but to call the Polish history of brutal anti-Semitism “revisionist history, plagiarism and slander” is outrageous. My parents left Poland in 1930 because of the anti-Semitism that flourished long before the Nazi invasion. Of my family that remained- grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins – all were herded into the ghetto, and killed along with millions of “Zyds” with the undeniable indifference or outright collusion of the Poles. As usual it is blamed on economics:

Exhibit A: Today on Frontpage it is explained thus:

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/269267/polands-new-law-criminalizing-speech-about-danusha-v-goska

“It’s undeniable that in interwar Poland, that is, between the end of WW I in 1918 and the onset of WW II in 1939, anti-Semitism flourished. The interwar period, for complicated historical reasons, saw one of the worst outbreaks of anti-Semitism in Poland’s history. Interwar anti-Semitism was largely predicated on economic grievances. Jews had occupied the middleman minority caste. Most Poles were impoverished peasants. They wanted to own shops and study to become doctors and lawyers. For some, not all Poles, these honorable ambitions veered into the dark, twisted path of anti-Semitism.”

What a pathetic explanation and excuse. rsk

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Germany: Merkel Pays High Price for Fourth Term “This will not be long.” by Soeren Kern

Posted By on February 9th, 2018

“Merkel will govern…but her government will be under the heading ‘this will not be long.’ This refers to Merkel, and also to the fact that in many parts of the country there is the feeling that ‘this’ should not continue.” — Kurt Kister, Editor-in-Chief, Süddeutsche Zeitung.

“The CDU retains control of the beautiful-sounding, but in fact powerless, Ministry of Economy, the unpopular Ministry of Health, the crisis-prone Ministry of Defense and the shadowy existence of ministerial posts in the Chancellery, for education and agriculture. That is little for the strongest faction in the Bundestag.” — Editorial, Münchner Merkur.

“The CDU was transformed into Merkel’s own personal political party. On the way, though, the competition of political ideas—the policy conflicts that are the lifeblood of democracy and which provide voters with direction—was lost.” — René Pfister, head of the Berlin bureau, Der Spiegel.

Negotiators from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), their Bavarian partners, the Christian Social Union (CSU), and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) have agreed in principle on a deal for a new “grand coalition” government—one that, in fact, is the same as the one that governed prior to the last election in September 2017.

The deal, if formally ratified by the SPD’s rank and file members at a special party congress on March 4, would ensure that Germany has a new government by Easter—and that Merkel, already in power for 12 years, will remain in office for a fourth tenure as chancellor, albeit in a much-weakened position.

Unusually, the 177-page agreement, reached on February 7, is subject to review in two years, when the parties will reassess the coalition. Analysts have speculated that it may be an opportunity for Merkel finally to step down.

To ensure the deal, the three parties made concessions to each other, all in an effort to prevent fresh elections, in which the anti-immigration party Alternative for Germany (AfD), riding high in the polls, would almost strengthen its position in the German parliament, where it already is the main opposition party.