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June 2019

Why Are America’s Socialists — and Democrats and Journalists — Always So Angry?

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/06/03/why-are-americas-socialists-and-democrats-and-journalists-always-so-angry/

“The Left’s anger and seething resentment of the achievements of Western civilization is puzzling, especially when it’s directed toward America, and American institutions and traditions. To borrow the words of President Reagan in his first Inaugural address, no other nation has “achieved so much.” We have “prospered as no other people on Earth.” “Freedom and the dignity of the individual,” said the 40th president, “have been more available and assured here than in any other place on Earth.”

Bernie Sanders is mad. He fulminates about the abundance of consumer choices, such as “23 underarm spray deodorants” and “18 different pairs of sneakers.” He rails against credit card companies because he thinks their interest rates are too high. He thunders over the prices Americans pay for prescription drugs.

The Democratic senator from Vermont, who is truly a socialist, having campaigned for a Marxist group in the 1980s, is perpetually upset with the way private banks conduct their business, and forever enraged at corporations for making profits. When he speaks, he comes off as that bitter man who shakes his fist at those darned neighborhood kids. There’s a reason Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and others have called Sanders the “crazy uncle in the attic.” He’s mad because everyone won’t do as he says.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is another angry democratic socialist. She rages when her sophomoric Green New Deal is questioned. She was incensed when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced he was going to let the Senate vote on her legislation. She’s annoyed that cauliflower is grown in urban gardens, apparently because it’s a “colonial” vegetable. Columnist Peggy Noonan said Ocasio-Cortez was “sullen, teenage and at a loss” during President Trump’s State of the Union address. Her very manner is that of someone who is mad at the world and is always just seconds away from lashing out.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren carries anger around with her like a purse — it’s always there within easy reach. She’s “mad as hell at the influence of money in Washington, D.C.,” and is equally venomous toward Wall Street. Other things that make her furious: Congress’ reluctance to “refinance student loan interest rates” (whatever they are); “billions of dollars” in private sector profits; billionaires in general; the minimum wage.

Global Warming: Is There Anything It Can’t Do? June 02, 2019/ Francis Menton

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2019-6-2-global-warming-is-there-anything-it-cant-d

The general interest newsmagazines of the world have been in serious decline for years. Time, Newsweek, U.S. New and World Report — what ever happened to them? Although all of them still exist in some form, they are all shadows of their former selves.

But then there is The Economist of London. These people put out what at least looks on the surface to be a serious print edition every week. They devote real resources to gathering news from around the world. If you want to find out what’s going on in, say, Argentina or the Congo or Uganda, this is one of the few places that you can find it. But can you trust anything they say?

I’ve been a long-time subscriber to The Economist, and had long regarded them as relatively sensible, generally less infected by leftist groupthink than most mainstream sources. But then, a few years ago — I can’t pinpoint the exact date — they made what appears to be a corporate-level decision to go all in for global warming alarm. Henceforth, every issue would contain one or several global warming stories, always with the slant of trying to scare the readership about the allegedly terrible crisis at hand.

European Leaders Are Making a Show of Taking Anti-Semitism Seriously. But Will They Actually Do So?Ben Cohen

https://www.jns.org/opinion/malmo-2020-world-leaders-against-anti-semitism/
Malmö 2020: World leaders against anti-Semitism
The first potential danger of the 2020 conference is that it will allow a city linked to assaults against Jews to clean up its image without cleaning up its act.

In October 2020, Sweden will host an international summit to combat anti-Semitism. When Stefan Löfven, the Swedish prime minister, announced the parley last Friday, he didn’t disclose any further details, but the Swedish press depicted the event as a forum that would be attended by government leaders and heads of state.

So it’s worth thinking about. Before anything else, there’s the planned location: the southern city of Malmö. Over the last 10 years, Malmö has become a potent symbol of Europe’s rising anti-Semitism and especially of its spread beyond the far right to the ranks of the left, as well as extremist elements within the city’s large Muslim community. The most immediate effect of this has been to shrink what was already a small Jewish population of 3,000 in 2009 by around 50 percent a decade later.

Indeed, Löfven’s presence in Malmö to make the announcement was partly caused by an anti-Semitic scandal involving the local branch of his Social Democratic Party’s youth wing. On May 1, the party’s young activists were caught chanting the slogan “Long Live Palestine, Crush Zionism!” at an international workers’ day rally. Given that Malmö was the scene of violent anti-Israel demonstrations when the Israeli tennis team competed in the 2009 Davis Cup tournament in that city, one could perhaps regard these thundering denunciations of the Jewish state as an established local tradition. Here, then, is the first potential danger of the 2020 conference: that it will allow Malmö to clean up its image as a center of anti-Semitism without cleaning up its act.

The Death of Morton Sobell and the End of the Rosenberg Affair Davide Evanier

https://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/history-ideas/2019/06/the-death-of-morton-sobell

With the recent death of the unrepentant spy, his story, along with that of other American Jews steeped in Communism, can finally be told.

ast December 26, at the age of one-hundred-one, Morton Sobell died. His name may be unfamiliar today, but the names of his associates are not: he was the co-defendant of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg in the 1951 atomic-bomb spy trial. The Rosenbergs were executed in 1953, but Sobell lived on, one of the few remaining survivors of the corps of Americans who spied for the Soviet Union. He kept the faith, steadfastly and with gusto, proclaiming his innocence and that of the Rosenbergs until 2008, when he belatedly confessed in public to their conspiracy to commit espionage.

To the degree that this belated confession shattered the vision of innocence still held by the remaining defenders of the Rosenberg ring—the vision, that is, that an entire generation of Soviet spies, including Alger Hiss, Judith Coplon, Harry Dexter White, Nathan Gregory Silvermasters, William Perl, Lauchlin Currie, and numerous others were pure and simple victims being hounded and persecuted by a paranoid United States government—then Sobell’s death marks the end of the entire sordid story.

But what exactly is his story? When I last saw him in 2016, at the age of ninety-nine, he threatened that if I wrote about him in a negative light, “You’ll take the consequences.” I found this strange, considering that he had already confessed to being a spy. But with his death it is at least possible to sketch that story in full.

Israel – a global innovation powerhouse. Amb. (RET.) Yoram Ettinger

https://bit.ly/2HOfaFJ

1. Arab integration in Israel. During 2017-2018, 18.3% of Israeli students studied engineering, compared to 17.9% studying social sciences.  25% of Israel’s undergraduates study engineering and computer sciences. During 2012-2018, the number of Israeli students studying tech subjects (electronics, engineering, software, optical, math, computers) grew 30%, compared to a 100% surge in the number of Arab students. In 2018, the number of Arab students in the hightech subjects accounted to 12% of the total, compared to 8% in 2012 (Israel Council for Higher Education).

2. Economist Intelligence Unit, May 15, 2019: Israel’s GDP of $356BN and $40,230 per capita in 2018 is expected to surge to $667BN and $62,070 in 2030, reflecting Israel’s advantage – over developed and developing countries – in the areas of technology and demography.  Israel spends the highest GDP proportion, in the world, on civilian research & development. Its high investment in military research & development has had positive impact on civilian technology. For example, Israel has overcome low rainfall through desalination and water/sewage recycling, evolving into a major exporter of water technologies. More than 50% of Israel’s workforce has gone through tertiary education, and is expected to grow due to a relatively high fertility rate and positive net-immigration. Population growth is faster than any high-income country. Israel’s dynamic hightech sector will continue driving export growth, together with a strong contribution by business services. Exports of natural gas will make an increasing contribution in the 2020s. Israel’s isolation in the region will diminish gradually, as relations with Egypt and Persian Gulf Arab countries are improved. Israel will maintain the free-trade agreements with the US and EU and will expand trade ties with Japan, China and India and mid-size Asian economies. Israeli exports will rise from $111BN in 2018 to $283BN in 2030, as imports rise from $108BN to $233BN.

5G: A Plan To Depopulate Earth? By Marilyn M Barnewall

http://newswithviews.com/5g-a-plan-to-depopulate-earth/

Do you use a cordless telephone?  A cell phone?  A Smart phone?  A Smart television?  Wi-Fi?  A Wi-Fi router?  A Smart meter?  If so, for the sake of your own life and health, you need to read this article.  Information about health dangers is being withheld from you.

In the following explanations of a highly dangerous and new technology, the letter G means generation and generation refers to a set of requirements that determine a standard and what compatible devices and networks qualify for the standard. It also describes technologies that power new types of communication.  The letters EMF mean electromagnetic force/field.

It sounds like it’s going to be a dull, complicated article.  It’s not.  It’s an attempt to help you save your health (possibly life) and that of your children.

Consumer use of the technology which has made our lives so much easier is not the only important reason you need this information.  A new 5G (5th generation) technology is about to inundate us with EMFs (electromagnetic fields/forces) which, according to scientific research, are much higher than allowed in most of the technologically sophisticated world.  Will they de-populate America?

Comparison of our limit alongside other countries’ standards:

USA\Canada = 1000 microwatts /cm2 (same as ICNIRP 1998)
Australia = 200 microwatts /cm2
Auckland (New Zealand) = 50 microwatts /cm2
Italy, Russia, Poland, Luxembourg, Paris (France),   Hungary, Bulgaria, China, Switzerland = 2.4 to 10 microwatts /cm2
Salzburg (Austria) = 0.0001 microwatts /cm2

David Marcus: From Occupy To AOC: The Rise Of The New Progressives, Part 1 In fall 2011, Occupy Wall Street captured the nation’s imagination and launched a platform that would come to define the New Progressives.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/06/03/from-occupy-to-aoc-the-rise-of-the-new-progressives-part-1/

This is part one of a three-part series.

The Occupation Will Be Televised

Over the past decade, a new and virulently illiberal progressive movement has taken shape in the United States. Centered around identity politics, control and censorship of speech, and proposed government takeovers of much of the economy, today’s New Progressive now sounds and looks almost identical to the radical fringe elements of leftism as recently as the late 1990s. Although the actual number of these New Progressives may be small, the movement has broad and approving reach in the media, and has become a disproportionally large part of the national political debate.

For conservatives it is essential to understand the origins and nature of this new progressivism. Although the cultural, economic, and political ideas that undergird this movement can be traced back to at the least the late 1960s and the emergence of European postmodern philosophy, in the American context, the most useful starting point for understanding what is happening today is Occupy Wall Street (OWS).

Occupy brought together three ideas for the first time that were formerly on the fringe. First is the idea that group identity bestows differing rights and obligations on individuals, rather than individuals all having equal rights and obligations. Second, OWS created the concept of a battle between the 99 percent and the 1 percent, which replaced a more nuanced approach on the left to how wealth is distributed. Finally, it offered a deep distrust of and desire to silence corporate entities that OWS claimed are not persons and therefore essentially have no rights.

Before delving into each, it useful to consider the backdrop and causes of Occupy Wall Street. On September 17, 2011, a group of protesters took over Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan. The idea of the protest was first proposed by the Canadian progressive magazine Adbusters, and quickly gained the support of the Internet hacking organization Anonymous. From there, several other national and local progressive groups coordinated to create the occupation.

I spent a lot of time at Occupy Wall Street, first out of curiosity, then out of concern. Early on, there was a convivial feeling, a library was set up, and there was free food and music. The whole thing felt like an urban Woodstock. The message was “We are the 99 percent,” which placed blame on a small cabal of super rich and suggested that opposing and defeating them would be easy given vastly superior numbers.

Mollie Hemingway:Top 28 Moments From Bombshell Barr Interview

https://thefederalist.com/2019/06/03/top-28-moments-from-bombshell-barr-interview/

The idea of resisting a democratically elected president and…really changing the norms on the grounds that we have to stop this president, that is where the shredding of our norms and our institutions is occurring.’

Attorney General William Barr’s nearly hour-long interview with CBS News’ Jan Crawford last week was full of fascinating details about the special counsel probe, the debunked Russia collusion theory that roiled Washington for years, and Barr’s investigation into how the FBI and Department of Justice used the “bogus” theory to investigate the Trump campaign.

The interview was downplayed by the media, which is implicated in perpetuating the Russia hoax Barr is investigating, and which came in for criticism from Barr for its failure to care about violations of civil liberties. Here are the top 28 take-aways from the interview.

1. Mueller ‘Could Have Reached a Conclusion’

Crawford, whose questions revealed a command of the facts not demonstrated by many of her mainstream media peers, asked Barr about Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s decision to outline 11 instances where President Trump’s frustration at falsely being accused of treason could amount to “possible obstruction” followed by a refusal to decide whether they did.

Egypt’s President Sisi Remarks on Muslim Treatment of Christians By Marlo Safi

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/egypts-president-sisi-remarks-on-muslim-treatment-of-christians/

Yesterday Egyptian president Abdel Fatah al-Sisi delivered a speech during a ceremony in Cairo for Laylat al-Qadr, which is one of the odd-numbered nights during the last ten days of Ramadan. Since before the Egyptian revolution in 2011 propelled the country into chaos and till this year, Egypt’s Coptic Christian population has been facing a wave of persecution that some Copts describe as the worst in 700 years. President Sisi’s remarks, however, may be a sign of his efforts imploring peaceful coexistence in Egypt between Muslims and Christians, of which between the two there is tension. From Egypt Today:

Strong religion could be weakened by its believers’ behaviors,” said Sisi, adding that Muslims should represent Islam in a good way through their practices.

  

“When we wish our Christian brothers a happy feast or [congratulate them] on building new churches, we represent our religion,” he said, noting that such gestures are not meant to show off. “There is a big difference between practicing and understanding the religion,” he added.

President Sisi added that Egypt’s main goal is to preserve the essence of religion, to raise the moderate religious awareness and combat the extremist threats among the youth, adding that the enlightened religious discourse is the best way to fight extremist ideology. 

Copts face daily discrimination; their churches often face attacks from mobs, or they are not permitted to participate in government or even soccer teams due to their conspicuously Christian names. On Saturday, Copts celebrated the first World Coptic Day, which President Donald Trump and Melania Trump wrote a letter to the community in support of. “Enlightened religious discourse,” as Sisi said, could be exactly what Egypt could use today to combat the threats that the minority Christians face and to demonstrate to the international community, and especially to the U.S., that Egyptians are moving in a direction of religious liberty.

Corbyn to Speak at Protest of Trump’s State Visit to U.K. By Mairead McArdle

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/jeremy-corbyn-to-speak-at-protest-donald-trumps-state-visit-to-u-k/

Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn will address a major demonstration against President Trump’s state visit to the United Kingdom on Tuesday.

Hundreds of thousands of protesters are expected at the London rally, which will march down Whitehall from Trafalgar Square to Parliament Square, past Downing Street, where the American president will speak with outgoing prime minister Theresa May.

“Jeremy Corbyn will attend and speak at the demonstration tomorrow against President Donald Trump’s state visit,” a Labour spokesperson told The Mirror.

Corbyn, a self-described socialist plans to boycott the state dinner Queen Elizabeth II will have Monday for the president, First Lady Melania Trump, and about 170 guests.