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October 2018

The Campus Comes to Congress By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2018/10/04/the-campus

The polarizing atmosphere of the university has now spread to Congress.

During the recent Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Judge Brett Kavanaugh, we witnessed how college values have become the norms of the Senate. On campus, constitutional due process vanishes when accusations of sexual harassment arise. America saw that when false charges were lodged against the Duke University lacrosse players and during Rolling Stone magazine’s concocted smear of a University of Virginia fraternity.

Americans may disagree about the relative credibility of either Kavanaugh or his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford. But they all witnessed how the asymmetry of the campus governed the hearings.

Ford’s veracity hinged on empathy and perceived believability. There was little requirement of corroborating testimonies, witnesses and what used to be called physical evidence. In contrast, Kavanaugh was considered guilty from the start. He had to prove his innocence.

One belief of the university is the postmodern idea of relativist truth.

On campus, all can present equally valid narratives. What privileges one story over another is not necessarily any semblance to reality, at least as established by evidence and facts. Instead, powerful victimizers supposedly “construct” truths based on their own self-interests. As a result, self-described victims of historical biases are under no obligation to play by what they consider to be rigged rules of facts, evidence or testimony.

This dynamic explains why Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J) insisted that Dr. Ford told “her truth.” In other words, evidence was not so relevant. Ford’s story of events from 36 years ago inherently would have as much claim on reality as Kavanaugh’s rebuttal—and perhaps more so, given their different genders and asymmetrical access to power.

There was little interest in discovering the ancient idea of the Truth. To do that would have required the messy work of taxing the memories of teenage behavior nearly four decades prior.

Truth-finding would have required difficult, time-honored examinations of physical evidence, the testimony of witnesses, and even unpleasant cross-examinations about the time and place of the allegations. Feelings might have been hurt. Motives might have been questioned, as they are under constitutional norms of due process.

2001 video shows Obama admitting being a ‘thug,’ fighting, drinking, drugging in high school By Thomas Lifson

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/10/2001_video_shows_obama_admitting_being_a_thug_fighting_drinking_drugging_in_high_school.html

The standards being applied to Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s fitness for high office would have killed the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama, among other recent Democrats (Clinton and Kennedy, for starters). Bill Clinton has adopted a low public profile, and deployed Hillary’s ”Bimbo Eruptions” squad to silence and discredit the women “survivors” of his sexual aggression. But Barack Obama went on the record in 2001, and nobody cared about behavior in high school they now feign outrage over in the case of judge Kavanaugh.

Kudos to Ryan Saavedra of The Daily Wire for uncovering a video from 17 years ago in which Barack Obama discusses his own behavior in high school. Evaluating it in light of the claims used to pretend that Brett Kavanaugh was too degenerate in high school and college to merit membership on the Supreme Court reveals the utter hypocrisy of Kavanaugh’s opponents.

While it is true that the unsupported claims of rape attributed to Kavanaugh have no counterpart in Obama’s admissions, the “evidence” against Kavanaugh’s character including drinking and “ralphing” is pale compared to what Obama admits to.

-“I was a thug,” a “mischievous child”
-“I got into fights.”
-“I drank and did–and consumed substances that weren’t always legal.”
-“I might have drank a six-pack in an hour before going back to class”

In point of fact, most people not crazed by desire to maintain the Supreme Court as a means of imposing progressive social policy that is too unpopular to pass Congress understand that childhood foibles should not be held against anyone.

Victor Sharpe Reviews “The Copper Scroll Project” By Shelley Neese

https://canadafreepress.com/article/the-copper-scroll-project-by-shelley-neese

“Within two full years will I bring back into this place all the vessels of Hashem‘s house, that Nebuchadnezar king of Bavel took away from this place, and carried them to Bavel;” Jeremiah 28:3 (The Israel Bible™)

The author of the Copper Scroll Project, Shelley Neese, has created a riveting and true story of one man’s epic search for the lost treasures from the First Jewish Temple, which stood on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount.

In this first book by Ms. Neese we meet Jim Barfield whose motivation, since he began his quest in 2006 to find the treasure, marks him as a deeply religious man who wants only to “return the Temple artifacts to the Jewish People.” As he says, “It’s time.”

Jim Barfield fervently believes the Biblical artifacts and treasures lie deep under the desert soil close to Qumran and the Dead Sea; a mere 18 miles from Jerusalem, Israel.
The copper scroll was first discovered in 1952 and although found near the famous Dead Sea Scrolls, which were written on papyrus, the copper scrolls were inscribed in Hebrew letters from the Roman period and engraved upon thin copper plates. Archaeologists and historians remain conflicted as to the origin of the treasure listed in the 64 locations as shown in the copper scroll map.

Could the treasure, if found, be of greater significance to Israel and the world than even the Dead Sea Scrolls? That is the hope that fills the pages of this most remarkable and fascinating book.

As Jim Barfield himself asks: “Is there a scholar, a rabbi, an antiquities authority, or an interested reader with the influence strong enough to loosen the stranglehold that prevents the project from completing our excavation?”

And as Jim Barfield writes in his foreword to Shelley Neese’s compelling book, “I am confident that once a massive recovery operation takes place in the Judean desert it may well reveal to the world messages, instructions and valuable wisdom from the heart of Israel’s past leading to a much deeper understanding of the Bible and an unrevealed history.”

It is this looming question that makes the book’s story so tantalizing. Why, after Jim Barfield’s scan of the soil with a sophisticated scanning device, which revealed the likelihood of highly possible artifacts lying some eight feet deep was an Israeli archaeologist, who had begun to dig shallow test pits, told to shut down the dig after receiving a mysterious phone call?

Vendyl Jones, a Texas preacher turned Biblical archaeologist who may have been the inspiration for the Harrison Ford cinematic character, Indiana Jones, believed Qumran to be the hiding place for the Temple vessels. He spent 30 years searching while using the Copper Scroll as a guide. Jim Barfield, a retired firefighter and arson investigator from Oklahoma, met with Jones, now deceased, and was deeply inspired to continue the challenge of locating the lost Biblical artifacts.

Investigate the Senate Democrat Wrecking Machine “This grand unearth-and-destroy spectacle was planned.” Michelle Malkin

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271502/investigate-senate-democrat-wrecking-machine-michelle-malkin

How did we get here? The Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination circus didn’t happen by accident. The emergence of incredible — and by “incredible,” I mean the literal Merriam-Webster definition of “too extraordinary and improbable to be believed” — accusers in the 11th hour was no mistake.

It is my contention that this grand unearth-and-destroy spectacle was planned, coordinated and facilitated by Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats and their staffers.

After the FBI finishes its Freshmen Booze Investigations, Federal Barfight Interrogations and Fraternity Barfing Incidents probe of every last Yale and Holton Arms acquaintance and publicity hound ever photographed with Judge Brett Kavanaugh, every cog in the Resistance Wrecking Machine must be investigated:

Protest Orchestration. The hearings were doomed from the very start, when 70 screaming demonstrators (including Women’s March holy warrior Linda Sarsour and actress Piper Perabo) systematically infiltrated the Hart Senate Office Building and disrupted the proceedings in Hour One of Day One. Day Two saw another 72 social justice mobsters arrested, with more than 200 total taken into custody by Capitol Police by the end of Day Three.

Taxpayers have a right to know who sponsored the deliberate sabotage and abuse of the gallery pass privilege, which has been in place since 1890. As the U.S. Senate website notes, “A code of conduct for visitors to the galleries is set by the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration and is enforced by the doorkeepers … each gallery pass requires the ‘signature’ of a senator or officer of the Senate.” We’ve seen this partisan-organized circus mayhem before.

Hugh Fitzgerald: Jeremy Corbyn Calls For an Arms Embargo on Israel A disturbing glimpse at the U.K. Labor Party’s leader — and his dark Jew-hating world.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271500/jeremy-corbyn-calls-arms-embargo-israel-hugh-fitzgerald

The Labour Party — Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party –has called for the U.K to impose a total arms embargo on Israel. This would not be the first time the U.K. has imposed such an embargo on Israel. In the 1948-49 Arab-Israeli war, at the time of maximum peril to the Jews of Israel, with the nascent state invaded by the armies of five Arab states, Great Britain also imposed such an embargo. It was not alone. The United States also banned sending arms to the belligerents on either side. The most important weapons deliveries, including airplanes, for the Jews in 1947-49 came from Czechoslovakia.

The British, unlike the Americans, did not impose an arms embargo on both sides in 1948. Instead, they continued to supply arms to Egypt, Jordan, and Iraq. More important, the British armed, trained, and provided officers, to the Arab Legion of Jordan. Under the overall command of General John Bagot Glubb, the Arab Legion was the most effective fighting force on the Arab side, and the only one that could claim a clear victory — at Latrun — over the Jews during the 1948 war. Even before the war was declared by the Arab states, the Arab Legion joined forces with local Arabs, who attacked the four Israeli settlements that made up the Etzzion bloc. The Jewish forces consisted of members of the Hagana militia and kibbutzniks. Of the 129 Haganah fighters and Jewish kibbutzniks who died during the defence of the settlement, Martin Gilbert states that fifteen were murdered on surrendering.

Controversy surrounds the responsibility and role of the Arab Legion in the killing of those who surrendered. The official Israeli version maintains that the kibbutz residents and Haganah soldiers were massacred by local Arabs and the Arab Legion of the Jordanian Army as they were surrendering. The Arab Legion version maintains that the Legion arrived too late to prevent the attack on the kibbutz by men from nearby Arab villages. The surrendering Jewish residents and fighters are said to have been assembled in a courtyard, only to be suddenly fired upon; it is said that many died on the spot, while most of those who managed to flee were hunted down and killed. Israel continues to insist that members of the British-commanded Arab Legion took part in the killing of those who had surrendered.

John Bagot Glubb was one of those old-style British Arabists — some called him a second Lawrence of Arabia — who went native in a big way, even able to converse with the Bedouin in their own dialects. When he was finally discharged by King Hussein in 1956 — Hussein wanted to totally “arabize” the Legion and show other Arabs that he was indeed Jordan’s ruler — Glubb Pasha retired to his home in Great Britain, and wrote a series of books “to dispel Western misconceptions and prejudices about the Arab world and Islam.” Delving deep into the past, he started that series in 1964 with ”The Great Arab Conquests,” a book on seventh-century Arabia where, he wrote, the Bedouins ”established the greatest empire in the world of their day.” A second book, ‘The Lost Centuries,” published in 1966, “traced the destiny of the Moslem empires from the 12th century to the European renaissance in the 15th.” A third book. “The Life and Times of Muhammad” again was an effort to correct cliches he thought had “distorted the image of the founder of Islam and his religion.” Glubb was a great admirer of the Arabs. He adopted two Palestinian Arab children. He also was an apologist for Islam. And the Arab Legion stood for all the military aid that the British lavished on the Arab side in that 1947-1949 conflict.

International Court of Justice Sides With the Mullahs And what Trump must do. Joseph Klein

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271504/international-court-justice-sides-mullahs-joseph-klein

During his address to the United Nations General Assembly last week, President Trump rejected the notion of global governance institutions purporting to override national sovereignty. President Trump called out the International Criminal Court, which “has no legitimacy or authority,” he said. The president vowed to “never surrender America’s sovereignty” to such an “unelected, unaccountable” globalist body. The UN’s top court, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, has just rendered a decision against the United States and in favor of Iran that demonstrates why President Trump is so correct. The ICJ judges ruled that some sanctions imposed by the Trump administration on the Iranian regime were inconsistent with the “Treaty of Amity, Economic Relations, and Consular Rights” between Iran and the United States, which was signed in Tehran in 1955 and entered into force in 1957.

The ICJ disgracefully relied on this treaty to both assert jurisdiction over Iran’s complaint, and to decide at least provisionally in Iran’s favor on the merits. It ordered the immediate removal of U.S. sanctions on certain products for import into Iran, pending the court’s final decision in the case. President Trump must, as he is expected to do, disregard this disgraceful ruling, and any follow-on rulings. The ICJ decision is an affront to the United States’ sovereign right to decide what nations it chooses to do business with and which countries it decides not to do business with, for whatever reasons it chooses including national security.

Following the ICJ ruling, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the United States would cancel the treaty that anachronistically still includes “Amity” and “Consular Rights” in its title. That’s good, but unnecessary. The treaty is already dead as a result of the Iranian Islamist regime’s own gross violations of the treaty itself and of conventional international law principles, capped by the unlawful seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran and the detention of hostages under inhumane conditions by the regime’s supporters in 1979, which the regime endorsed.

The International Court of Justice’s entire rationale for its decision rests on this dead treaty. “The Court considers that the United States, in accordance with its obligations under the 1955 Treaty,” the ICJ declared unanimously, “must remove, by means of its choosing, any impediments arising from the measures announced on 8 May 2018 to the free exportation to the territory of Iran of goods required for humanitarian needs, such as (i) medicines and medical devices, and (ii) foodstuffs and agricultural commodities, as well as goods and services required for the safety of civil aviation, such as (iii) spare parts, equipment and associated services (including warranty, maintenance, repair services and safety-related inspections) necessary for civil aircraft. To this end, the United States must ensure that licences and necessary authorizations are granted and that payments and other transfers of funds are not subject to any restriction in so far as they relate to the goods and services referred to above.”

Is Criticizing Terrorism “Mental Illness”? by Guy Millière

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13072/le-pen-dissent-mental-illness

A 615-page report was recently released, written by an adviser to President Emmanuel Macron, Hakim El Karoui, who is in charge of designing the new institutions of an “Islam of France.” The report defines Islamism as an “ideology totally distinct from Islam” and also never addresses the links between Islamism and terrorism. The report also insists on the urgent need to spread “true Islam” in France and adopt the teaching of Arabic in public high schools.
The court’s request, for Marine Le Pen to undergo a psychiatric evaluation to determine if she is sane, indicates that French authorities might be reviving the old Soviet use of “psychiatry” to silence dissidents or political opponents.
The legal offensive against Marine Le Pen was actually added to the financial offensive. Even if Le Pen is not sent to prison, the law seems to have been used to open the possibility of declaring her ineligible for the European Parliament elections scheduled for May 2019.

On December 16, 2015, a French journalist on a mainstream radio station compared France’s right-wing National Front Party to the Islamic State (ISIS) by saying that there is a “community of spirit” between them and that both push those who support them to “withdraw into their own identity”. Marine Le Pen, the president of the National Front party, speaking of a “unacceptable verbal slippage,” asked the radio station for the right to answer. She then published on Twitter images showing the bodies of victims of the Islamic State and adding: “ISIS is this!”

The French media immediately accused her of broadcasting “indecent” and “obscene” images, and shortly after that, the French government ordered the Department of Justice to indict her. On November 8, 2017 the French national assembly also lifted her parliamentary immunity.

A few months later, a judge mandated by the French government, charged Marine Le Pen with “disseminating violent images,” citing article 227-24 of the French Penal Code, which defines the crime of:

“… disseminating… a message of a violent nature, inciting terrorism, pornographic or likely to seriously violate human dignity or to incite minors to engage in games that physically endanger them, or to commercialize such a message.”