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April 2019

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Ridd Case: Much More Than Just One Man’s Victory Walter Starck

By on April 17th, 2019

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2019/04/the-ridd-case-much-more-than-just-one-mans-victory/

A vicious and prolonged attempt by James Cook University’s administration to silence Professor Peter Ridd’s criticism of dubious and misleading research claims concerning the Great Barrier Reef has culminated in a resounding legal decision by Judge Vasta of the Federal Circuit Court in Brisbane. Handed down on April 16, the decision found that all of the seventeen findings, two censures, eight directions, and final employment termination made by JCU against Professor Ridd were illegal. The court’s decision can be downloaded here.

This is a major victory, not just for Peter Ridd, but also for science, academic freedom, the legal system and the public. It also presents a clear need, as well as an obligation, for the JCU Council to intervene and take steps necessary to stop the rot and repair the damage. The panel should see that Professor Ridd is re-employed, issued an apologisy, and compensated for all he has been subjected to in this sordid episode. Doing so without delay, with full acceptance of the court decision and the sacking of those most culpable is fully demanded, in my opinion, by the court decision. To do this would go a long way to salvaging the university’s reputation. To allow the perpetrators of this farce to continue to spend further millions of dollars on lengthy appeals can only inflict further damage on both Ridd and the university. The council is empowered to do this; it is their clear duty to do so.

The ongoing saga of questionable claims by James Cook University researchers entails much more than just an academic spat. It involves the credibility of millions of dollars annually in taxpayer funded research on which important national policies are being implemented. In the case of JCU, they are a preeminent institution involved in research on the Great Barrier Reef and the policies affected include major impacts on tourism, fishing, mining and the agricultural sector for the whole region.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

A Turning Point in the Campus Free-Speech Crisis By Stanley Kurtz

By on April 17th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/campus-free-speech-turning-point-university-of-arizona/

Amid the weekly cavalcade of campus horrors, it’s easy to miss a story that will mark a major turning point in the campus free-speech crisis, whether for good or ill. The growing confrontation at the University of Arizona over students who disrupted a Career Day presentation by Border Patrol agents is not your run-of-the-mill campus outrage. Instead it’s that rare case where student disruptors are facing real consequences for their actions. This is in significant part because of a new Arizona law strengthening discipline for such disruptions. If the university holds fast and the disruptors pay a price for silencing others, the move will carry national implications. Yet if the growing rebellion by anti-free-speech students and faculty at UA gets its way, the university will back down, the border patrol will be permanently barred from campus, and the university president could lose his job. That would be a disaster for free speech, and would mark a new and dangerous turn in America’s campus crisis.

Before taking the measure of the stakes in this battle, we’ve got to review the precipitating incident.

On March 19, a UA student named Denisse Moreno Melchor noticed a pair of U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents at the school. “I was like, ‘Get out,’ and started chanting and disrupting that space until they left,” she told the school paper the next day. The March 19 event that Melchor had — in her own words — disrupted, was a Career Day presentation being given by two border-patrol agents to the school’s Criminal Justice Association. You can see from videos originally taken by Melchor and reposted here that a she is hurling insults at the officers through a door, continuously calling them “murderers,” the “murder patrol,” and an “extension of the KKK.” As the officers are distracted by the chanting, some of the students in attendance move toward the door to help secure the scene.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

Notre Dame: What Happened? Diana West

By on April 17th, 2019

https://www.theepochtimes.com/notre-dame-what-happened_2881890.html
Even as fires raged and consumed Notre Dame uncontrollably before the crying eyes of the world, the narrative was being carefully constructed in its newsrooms. Had to be an accident, most likely. Just one of those things, probably. Renovation work was going on, dontcha know. There must have been a spark in the attic and, whoosh, Notre Dame was aflame.

Maybe that is exactly what happened. However, there was something doubly nightmarish about watching not one, but two Fox News anchors (Shepard Smith and Neil Cavuto) prevent guests from discussing a spate of recent attacks, including arson, on Catholic churches in France lest some logical discussion of the possibility that we were looking at an epic attack of anti-Catholic or anti-Christian arson might ensue—and you know where that goes.

Given what we have all been through as veterans of the jihad, lo, these nearly 18 years, it’s the pathetic height of absurdity to try to stop a rational being from wondering whether there is an Islamic connection to the burning of Notre Dame—amid all of the other possibilities, including criminal negligence on an epic scale. Maybe Pierre the Electrician went off duty after a hard day’s work renovating Notre Dame yesterday, lit a Gauloise Brune, and tossed his match into some 17th century Gazettes de France heaped on the 13th century floorboards in the medieval attic—and the rest is tragedy. But maybe not.

The mainstream media can bring the conflagration “live” into our lives, burning a new scene of the last days of the West into our consciousness, but they won’t let us process it outside of their politically planted poles of “thought.” Inside their televised “safe space,” analysis is politically correct, sharia compliant, and led not by any sort of inquiring minds, but by functionaries following the playbook they were handed down from the front office.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

“President Trump Responds to Omar Accurately and Truthfully” Rabbi Arye Spero

By on April 17th, 2019

https://nationalconferenceofjewishaffairs.org

 The following letter to President Trump was hand-delivered at the White House by Rabbi Spero, who was attending a special gathering for key Jewish leaders:

“President Trump tweeted the appropriate response to Rep. Omar, who described the bombing of the Twin Towers as merely ‘some people did something.’ Omar trivialized 9/11, referring to it in a cavalier fashion.

The President correctly demonstrated via his video the enormity and the devastating catastrophe of 9/11. This has nothing to do with racism, rather the correct response to a disrespectful statement made by Omar regarding this country, demonstrating her gross indifference to the suffering of Americans.“Those that impute racism to the President’s tweet are living in their own make-believe world or, worse, are themselves trying to incite an issue of racism where such is not the case. People of truth and historical awareness cannot remain silent out of fear that their opposition will fabricate claims of racism.

“Freedom of expression is a two-way street. Patriotic Americans are as equally free to respond and give their opinions as are those, like Omar, who weekly express some type of hateful indictment of America. Let us not forget that Omar repeatedly agitates and incites her audiences to go out and ‘make people uncomfortable’.“Thankfully we have a man of President Trump’s candor and stature, who is willing to fight against the rewriting of history and protect the free speech of Americans defending their country.

Mr. Trump has issued an Executive Order protecting free speech from the politically-correct censorship prevalent on campuses and is, by his example, giving support to all those who wish to exercise their right to tell historic truth.”

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HISTORY Comments turned off

How The Allied Powers Won The Fight For The Sky In World War II By Madeline Osburn

By on April 17th, 2019

https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/17/allied-powers-won-fight-sky-world-war-ii/

To achieve air supremacy in war means to be able to put your assets in the air with the ability to destroy your enemy’s cities, troops, and ability to fight back. In the online course, “The Second World Wars,” Professor Victor David Hanson discusses the technological advances in air power made by German, American, and Japanese forces throughout the course of World World II, and how one side slowly achieved air supremacy.

Before 1941, there was a clear pattern to the victories achieved by German forces. Germany invaded Poland, Denmark, Luxembourg, Holland, Norway, Belgium, France, and Yugoslavia. Each one of these victories was against an unprepared neighbor and a surprise attack. Germany shocked everyone with their sudden domination of European democracies, especially with their success with a new military tactic: blitzkrieg. The blitzkrieg method involved violently and quickly mobilizing forces in the air and on the ground, defeating opponents with series of short attacks.
What we know now is that Germany’s opponents, presumably stunned and alarmed by the attacks, never stopped to evaluate the limitations of Germany’s power, specifically in the air. Could they defeat an enemy in a battle that was not a surprise attack? Could their planes reach the United States? Britain? The answer was no.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Buttigieg Bashes GOP for Embracing ‘White-Guy Identity Politics’ By Jack Crowe

By on April 17th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/pete-buttigieg-bashes-gop-for-embracing-white-guy-identity-politics/

Southbend, Ind. mayor and 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg suggested in a recent interview that the strain of populism harnessed by President Donald Trump represents a “white-guy identity politics.”
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“By far the political movement that is most based on identity politics is Trumpism. It’s based on white-guy identity politics. It uses race to divide the working and middle class,” Buttigieg told the Associated Press when asked whether Trump relied on racial animus to win the White House. “There are a lot of strategies to blame problems on people who look different or are of a different faith or even of a different sexuality or gender identity. . . . It’s a cynical political strategy that works in the short term but winds up weakening the whole country in the long term.”

Since rising over the past few months from relative obscurity to third in national polls of the race, Buttigieg has turned criticisms traditionally leveled by Republicans at Democrats around on the party of Trump.

“First comes freedom, something that our conservative friends have come to think of as their own. . . . Let me tell you: Freedom doesn’t belong to one political party. Freedom has been a Democratic bedrock ever since the New Deal. Freedom from want, freedom from fear,” Buttigieg said when announcing his campaign Sunday.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Rashida Tlaib Hosted Activist Who Called Palestinian Terror Attack ‘Heroic’ By Jack Crowe

By on April 17th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/rashida-tlaib-hosted-activist-who-called-palestinian-terror-attack-heroic/

Representative Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) hosted an extremist anti-Israel activist who has openly and explicitly endorsed terrorism at her congressional office in mid-April to celebrate the American Muslims for Palestine Advocacy Day.

The organization American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), which organized the meeting, posted a photo on its Facebook page of Tlaib standing next to Joe Catron, a veteran anti-Israel activist who has openly praised various Palestinian organizations for committing acts of terrorism.

“A tip of my hat to Rashida Tlaib, who really goes above and beyond the call of duty in welcoming every supporter of Palestine to her office, listening to what we have to say, answering our questions, and posing for endless pictures,” Catron wrote on Facebook in a post first noted by the Daily Caller.

Catron serves as U.S. coordinator of the Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, an arm of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which the U.S., Australia, Japan, Canada, and the E.U. have all designated a terrorist organization.

In 2017, Catron used his personal Twitter account to praise a PFLP-organized terror attack in which an Israeli police officer was stabbed to death. Catron shared the PFLP’s official statement praising the members who perpetrated the murder and personally referred to the attack as “heroic.”

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MEDIA Comments turned off

Anti-Socialists Make the Time 100: Trump, Venezuela’s Guaidó, and Brazil’s Bolsonaro By Tyler O’Neil

By on April 17th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/trending/anti-socialists-make-the-time-100-trump-venezuelas-guaido-and-brazils-bolsonaro/

On Wednesday, TIME Magazine named the 100 most influential people, and three prominent opponents of radical socialist policies made the list. President Donald Trump has famously declared that the United States “will never become a socialist country.” Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has reversed socialism in his country, and Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó is challenging the authoritarian Nicolás Maduro.

Each of these leaders has a positive profile in the TIME 100. Former Gov. Chris Christie (R-N.J.) praises Donald Trump for his foreign policy. Ian Bremmer hails Bolsonaro as a force against corruption, even while warning about what Bremmer sees as his “ultraconservative” dangers. Former Colombian President Juan Miguel Santos praises the courage of Juan Guaidó.

None of these profiles mentions the anti-socialism activism of these powerful leaders, but each of them has made important strides for freedom in their countries.

Trump has cut taxes, benefitting a broad swath of the American people and boosting the economy. He has also worked to free Americans from some of the excessive regulations of the bureaucratic state.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Progressive Socialists Defend the Indefensible Again By Mike Huckabee

By on April 17th, 2019

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/04/17/progressive_socialists_defend_the_indefensible_again_140070.html?

A simple apology would have been the least Democrats could offer after a video surfaced of freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar brushing off the 9/11 attacks as “some people did something.” Yes, Rep. Omar, “some people” (radical Islamists) “did something” (they murdered almost 3,000 innocent citizens in an act of cowardly, cold-blooded hate). And your shoulder shrugging ambivalence about it as if someone accidently ran a stop sign is disgusting. Those weren’t soldiers wearing Kevlar and carrying weapons who were slaughtered. They were office workers, flight attendants, business people, but especially just moms and dads, sons and daughters, husbands and wives, friends and neighbors.

Instead, Democrats have gone on the offensive, calling Omar’s critics racist and accusing one of their Republican colleagues — an Iraq war veteran who lost an eye in combat — of not doing enough for his country.

Over the weekend, others joined in defending Omar as the victim and blaming the whole controversy on Republicans.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Ten post-Mueller questions that could turn the tables on Russia collusion investigators By John Solomon,

By on April 17th, 2019

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/439234-ten-post-mueller-questions-that-could-turn-the-tables-on-russia-collusion

Soon, the dust will settle from special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, and Americans will have a fuller understanding of why prosecutors concluded there wasn’t evidence to establish that Donald Trump and Russia colluded to hijack the 2016 election.

At that point, many voters exhausted by the fizzling of a two-year scandal, once billed as the next Watergate, will want to move on like a foodie from an empty-calorie shake.

But a very important second phase of this drama is about to begin, as Attorney General William Barr, Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General Michael Horowitz and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) put the Russia collusion investigators under investigation.

Their work will be, and must be, far more than just a political boomerang.

It must answer, in balanced terms, whether the FBI was warranted in using the most awesome powers in the U.S. intelligence arsenal to spy on Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s campaign at the end of the 2016 election.

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