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May 2019

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The Best of All Possible Government Ministries by Mark Steyn

By on May 3rd, 2019

https://www.steynonline.com/9346/the-best-of-all-possible-government-ministries

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, the Emir of Dubai, is the driving force between government reforms aimed at making the United Arab Emirates the “best country in the world” by 2021, which is certainly faster than, say, the US Congress or Mrs May’s cabinet could pull it off.

So last week His Highness launched a new government ministry, with the inspired name of the Ministry of Possibilities. “The word impossible does not exist in our dictionary,” he declared. He could well be right on that – his dictionary’s in Arabic, after all.

The Ministry of Possibilities will have four subsidiary departments, including the Department of Behavioral Rewards (to be headed by Deputy Prime Minister Sheikh Saif) and the Department of Anticipatory Services (to be headed by Ohoud bint Khalfan al Roumi, Minister of State for Happiness and Wellbeing). These are ingenious names of government departments for those of us who come from countries with dreary ministries like treasury and foreign affairs.

Obama should have moved Hillary to the Department of Anticipatory Services (run out of the Clinton Foundation) and Justin Trudeau should have punished Jody Wilson-Raybould by moving her from Justice to the Department of Behavioral Rewards.On the other hand, the Ministry of Anticipatory Behavior would make a grand name for Theresa May’s new Internet thought-crimes apparat.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Let Them Speak Attempts by Jewish groups to stop a panel of anti-Israel speakers at UMass are misguided and bound to backfire By K.C. Johnson

By on May 3rd, 2019

https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/284319/let-them-speak

Several Jewish students at the University of Massachusetts, UMass, have filed a lawsuit in Massachusetts state court seeking to block the school from hosting a May 4 panel that includes Linda Sarsour, Marc Lamont Hill, The Nation sportswriter Dave Zirin, and British singer Roger Waters. The students are right to draw attention to the noxious views of the speakers and the support for anti-Israel extremism within their school’s own administration. But they are wrong, and perhaps dangerously so, to mount a legal case that relies on shutting down speech by equating it to a form of intimidation. That stance not only pits them against the deep, and mainstream, American tradition of defending free expression, but it also legitimates a set of ideas that will be used against Jewish groups who, as a minority on campus, are especially reliant on the First Amendment.

An organization called Not Backing Down had invited the quartet, and two UMass academic departments—Communication, and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies—found the Sarsour-Hill-Waters message significant enough to co-sponsor the event.

News of the panel has generated widespread condemnation from local and national Jewish organizations. The ADL’s regional director, for instance, wrote to the UMass chancellor to express concerns about the program “featuring speakers who engage in rhetoric that demonizes the State of Israel and seeks to marginalize its supporters,” raising “significant consternation among Jewish students and many others on campus and in the community.” Dozens of pro-Israel organizations added their concerns, though they made clear they were “not asking that this event be shut down.”

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BOOKS, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

When Obama’s ego blew out of his earsBy Monica Showalter

By on May 3rd, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/05/when_obamas_ego_blew_out_of_his_ears.html

We all saw the famous picture from the Obama administration on the day after President Trump was elected president in 2016. But now it’s coming out about just how bad it was at the top, according to a new book cited by Fox News.

Former President Obama took President Trump’s win and Hillary Clinton’s loss in 2016 as a personal insult, according to a newly updated book.

The former president was “shocked” by the election results and felt the American people had turned on him, The Washington Examiner reported, citing New York Times correspondent Peter Baker’s book “Obama: The Call of History.” It was originally published in 2017. He was also reportedly frustrated by Hillary Clinton’s “soulless” campaign after believing his legacy “was in safe hands.”

Personal insult? As if he didn’t start it (and keep at it), with his ‘clinging to guns and religion’ quote, one of his most famous? As if his chosen successor, Hillary Clinton, didn’t refer to Americans in less than coastal places as ‘deplorables’?

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Pompeo: Omar’s Venezuela Comments ‘Ignorant’ and ‘Disgusting’ By Mairead McArdle

By on May 3rd, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/mike-pompeo-ilhan-omars-venezuela-comments-ignorant-and-disgusting/

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Thursday evening that he finds Representative Ilhan Omar’s comments blaming the U.S. for the political crisis in Venezuela “disgusting.”

“The nicest thing I can say is, it is unbelievable ignorance. It’s just factually wrong,” Pompeo told Fox News. “The problems in Venezuela have been years in the making. It’s been a socialist regime, first with Chavez now with Maduro. And for a member of Congress, who, frankly — one who sits on an important national-security committee — to make a statement blaming America first in this way, it’s not only ignorant, it’s disgusting.”

Omar, who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, was asked Wednesday by PBS’s Democracy Now! about the “U.S.-supported coup attempt against President Maduro,” to which the Minnesota Democrat responded that America’s push for regime change in Venezuela does not help the country’s citizens.

“A lot of the policies that we have put in place has [sic] kind of helped lead [to] the devastation in Venezuela,” Omar said. “And we’ve sort of set the stage for where we’re arriving today.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

FBI Official’s Testimony Raises New Questions about Surveillance of Trump Campaign By Eric Felten

By on May 3rd, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/fbi-official-testimony-surveillance-trump-campaign/

Deputy assistant director Jonathan Moffa’s testimony, which has been obtained exclusively by National Review, suggests there was more going on than has yet been admitted.

The deputy assistant director at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Jonathan Moffa, was involved with the Russia–Trump investigation from the start. He was asked, in a closed-door Capitol Hill interview on August 24, 2018, to describe his role: “I was the section chief over counterintelligence analysis during the period of the election,” Moffa told lawmakers and staff. “And as a result, I had analysts who reported to me who supported the full range of the FBI’s counterintelligence investigations and counterespionage investigations during that period. So in a sense, if there’s a Russian-election-related investigation underway in the division at that point, personnel reporting to me are a part of it.”

Moffa’s congressional interview was private, and no transcript has been released. But National Review has obtained a copy. The interview transcript reveals that the FBI’s use of Confidential Human Sources and other counterintelligence assets was far more extensive than has previously been acknowledged.

Much of the questioning of Moffa was done by Robert Parmiter, the chief counsel for the Republican staff on the Crime and Terrorism Subcommittee. He asked Moffa about August 2016 text messages between Moffa and FBI agent Peter Strzok, who was putting together a meeting to discuss the initial organization of the investigation. Even at that early date, Strzok specified that they needed to discuss the use of “CHS” and “liaison.”

Parmiter asked about the acronym CHS: “What does that stand for?”

Moffa replied: “Confidential human source.”

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Sharia Truth and the ‘Progressive Muslim’ Feminist [on Saadia Yacoob; incl. Jonathan Brown] by Andrew Harrod

By on May 3rd, 2019

https://www.meforum.org/campus-watch/58387/sharia-truth-and-the-progressive-m

As a “Muslim feminist scholar,” Williams College Assistant Professor of Religion Saadia Yacoob has a “very complicated relationship” with her Islamic faith, as her Duke University dissertation explains. This research, the basis for an April 3 presentation at Georgetown University’s Saudi-funded Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU), reveals the chasm between her “progressivism” and historic Islamic orthodoxy.

The leftist Jewish publication The Forward wrote over 15 years ago that Yacoob is a founder of the Progressive Muslims Network, whose members “appear to be working toward a new Islam.” She was a “heterosexual ally of Al-Fatiha,” a now defunct “national organization of gay Muslims.” Recently she has helped found the Feminist Islamic Troublemakers of North America (FITNA).

These biographical facts reflect the personal faith conflicts of Yacoob, a Pakistani-born woman who grew up in America, as noted in her dissertation:

As a Muslim woman raised in a devout and religious family that cultivated in me the love for my religious heritage as well as independence and confidence as a woman, I found certain aspects of that tradition oppressive as a woman, creating a sense of alienation.

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HISTORY, MEDIA Comments turned off

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in the American Jewish Press :Alex Grobman

By on May 3rd, 2019

https://thejewishvoiceandopinion.com/the-warsaw-ghetto-uprising-in-the-american-jewish-press/

On April 19, 1943, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, an act of Jewish resistance in German-occupied Poland undertaken to oppose the Nazis’ final effort to transport the remaining 55,000-60,000 Jews in the ghetto to extermination camps, began.

The effort to build bunkers and smuggle weapons and explosives into the ghetto had begun after the summer of 1942, when the German Nazis deported more than a quarter of a million Jews to be murdered in Treblinka.

On April 19, 1943, the ghetto refused to surrender to the Nazi police commander SS- Brigadeführer Jürgen Stroop.

First Report

The first news of the ghetto uprising was published three days later, on April 22, on the front pages of the New York Times and the Yiddish daily Forward.

The Times transmitted a dispatch from the Associated Press in Stockholm, Sweden, which reported that, one night earlier, April 21, the secret Polish radio had appealed from Poland for help after which “suddenly, the station went dead.”

The AP report continued, “The broadcast, as heard here, said: ‘The last 35,000 Jews at Warsaw had been condemned to execution. Warsaw is again echoing to musketry volleys. The people are murdered. Women and children defend themselves with their naked arms! Save us….’”

Appeals

On April 22, the Forward reported that the Nazis were slaughtering the last Jews in Warsaw, explaining that, on January 21, an appeal was sent by these Jews that was not received by the Jewish Labor Committee in New York until April 21.

According to the Forward, six requests were made, only a few of which could be revealed to the public. One was that 10,000 of the remaining children in the ghetto be exchanged for German prisoners of war. The Jews of the ghetto also demanded material help, including food.

The appeal ended with the warning: “Brothers, the remaining Jews in Poland believe that in these most frightening days of our history, you didn’t help us. Answer now at least in these last days of our lives; this is our last appeal to you.”

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Over In The Congress, It’s The “Hoax Of The Day” Every Day Francis Menton

By on May 3rd, 2019

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2019-5-2-over-in-the-congress-its-the-

If you have read my April 1 “April Fools Day Hoax Roundup” — and maybe even before you had read that piece — it may have started to dawn on you that an absolute majority of what you see in the news media these days is in furtherance of one or another of the current wave of big hoaxes. The hoaxes covered just in that one short piece included the Trump/Russia Collusion Hoax, the Climate Change Hoax, the Hate Crime Hoaxes (multiple examples including Jussie Smollett), and the Poverty Hoax.

For today, forget the news media and let’s take a look at the Congress. Do they even talk about anything over there any more that isn’t a hoax? To all appearances, it seems like they just move back and forth between and among one of the hoaxes and another on a kind of “hoax of the day” rotation. Lately the big ones have been the Trump/Russia Collusion Hoax and the Climate Change Hoax.

Yesterday it was all “Trump/Russia Collusion,” with Senators grilling William Barr about nothing whatsoever. Today, it is the Climate Change Hoax, as the House has just voted on something called the “Climate Action Now Act.” According to Climate Home News, the bill has passed on a party-line vote of 231-190. The bill had 224 Democratic sponsors, but not a single Republican. (It won’t go anywhere in the Senate, of course.) By its terms, this Act would compel the U.S. to meet its “commitments” under the Paris Climate agreement of 2015.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Iranian Mullahs are Nervous Shoshana Bryen

By on May 3rd, 2019

https://dailycaller.com/2019/04/30/bryen-iranian-cbs

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif’s appearance over the weekend on CBS’ Face the Nation showed him trying to convince someone — his minders at home, perhaps — that Iran is a moderate, trustworthy, terror-fighting country.

The designation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terror organization and the end of oil waivers, he said, would “show the Iranian people that the U.S. is not worthy of being a negotiating partner,” and the Trump administration as “squeezing the Iranian people, not the government.”

He added, “When the Iranian people are pressured, they do not respond with submission, they respond with resistance. They want us to represent them.”

That last one is a dead giveaway that the mullahs are nervous.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

U.S. creates 263,000 jobs in April as unemployment falls to 49-year low by Jeffry Bartash*****

By on May 3rd, 2019

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-creates-263000-jobs-in-april-and-unemployment-falls-to-49-year-low-of-36-2019-05-03?mod=mw_theo_homepage

The numbers: The U.S. created 263,000 new jobs in April to help drive the unemployment rate down to a 49-year low, the latest cue pointing to a rebound in the economy after a slow start in the new year.

The increase in hiring was concentrated at white-collar businesses, construction and health care. The only sector to suffer a big drawback was retail, whose employment fell for the third straight month.

The increase in new jobs easily topped the 213,000 forecast of economists surveyed by MarketWatch.

The unemployment rate, meanwhile, slipped to 3.6% from 3.8% in March, marking the lowest level since December 1969, the Labor Department said. The decline in April stemmed from nearly a half-million workers dropping out of the labor force, but by the any measure, layoffs and unemployment are scraping a 50-year low.

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