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February 2020

Palestinians: The Dangers of Singing by Khaled Abu Toameh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15555/palestinians-danger-singing

The only songs Hamas and its followers want are those that promote hate and violence…. “I will eat you alive, tastes best without salt, Zionist – Yes, yes, you.”

The members of Sol Band did not call for “scattering the body parts” of Jews; that is probably why they are being targeted by Hamas and its allies in the Gaza Strip.

What is disturbing, however, is the silence of the international community, specifically the EU partners of Islamic University in Gaza, where Farra serves as a lecturer. Do the Europeans working with the university condone threats against musicians?… The EU countries and educational institutions are most likely ignoring such threats because they were not made by Israel.

The silence of the international community emboldens Hamas… and allows them to continue their repressive measures against Palestinians. It also allows Hamas and terror groups to continue calling for blowing up the skulls of Jews and eating them alive.

Palestinian musicians in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip are facing death threats after a Muslim scholar, Sheikh Mohammed Sliman al-Farra, published a fatwa (a legal opinion or ruling issued by an Islamic scholar) prohibiting a local band from performing.

Farra works for Islamic University of Gaza, a member of four regional and international associations of higher education, and has project partnerships with more than 130 European universities and research centers located in 21 EU countries.

Published on November 23, 2019, the fatwa targets Sol Band, a Palestinian music group established in the Gaza Strip eight years ago:

“The music group Sol Band, which has been roaming the streets of the Gaza Strip, has been violating God’s sanctities by promoting tabarruj (women dressing up immodestly in violation of Islamic teachings) and the mixing of the sexes… Their actions weaken the young men and encourage sinners. Indulging it leads to great corruption and evil and results in behavioral and intellectual deviation among young people. It is not permissible to promote or meet with them or listen to their songs, even if they are patriotic.”

Russia and the return of civilizations in the near East David Wurmser

https://www.fasfreedom.com/2020/01/russia-and-the-return-of-civilizations-in-the-near-east-part-i/

Part I:

As the new year begins, the Middle East looks eerily similar to the way it has for the last several new years’ eves. Despite civil war in Syria and Libya, those who based their prognosis on the persistence of the reigning paradigm appear vindicated. That paradigm rested on several assumptions. First, the savviness of the rulers of the Arab states, along with the predictability of the traditional opposition (namely the Muslim Brotherhood) survived as the foundation for understanding the region. Second, the outlier power, both geographically and religiously, namely Iran, remains the greatest challenge. Third, the outlier revolt, namely ISIS or al-Qaida, while disturbingly resilient, failed to genuinely challenge the predominance of the ruling elites or established opposition of any Arab nation, and thus remains contained. And fourth, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains at the edge of eruption and thus begs resolution.

And yet, as George Elliot observed in Silas Marner, “The sense of security more frequently springs from habit than from conviction, and for this reason it often subsists after such a change in the conditions as might have been expected to suggest alarm. The lapse of time during which a given event has not happened, is, in this logic of habit, constantly alleged as a reason why the event should never happen, even when the lapse of time is precisely the added condition which makes the event imminent.”

In fact, the warning signs of change are present that very little of what has been will continue to be. In short, as we enter the new year and decade, our understanding of the architecture of the Middle Eastern politics will founder, our imagination will be challenged, and an entirely new “shape” driven by hitherto ignored or nigh-invisible forces will define the Middle East.

In an article making waves, especially among those who are still seeking to realize their dream first articulated during the initial “Arab Spring” that Google and the internet would transform the region, Jonathan Alterman at the Brzezinski Center, believes his studies reveal a rise of individualism informing the current wave of demonstrations in the fertile crescent capitals.

Were such individualism to emerge, then it would indeed upturn the established order. And yet, such a rise in individualism would be startling since it contradicts the essence of familial, social, political, economic and religious life among Arabs Muslims, the culture of which is an amalgam of tribal and communal structures of safety and protection and a theological sense of being on the historically right side of revelation – itself also an intangible structure of protection. Neither pillar serves as a firm foundation for individualism, and in fact, gravitates against it. Thus, if there is indeed a rise in individualism, it would mean a cultural, religious and indeed civilizational shift in these communities. As such, the optimism in the liberal West that the Arab world is finally beginning to modernize would be warranted.

But cultures and civilizations do not easily change. In fact, the historical record shows that their persistence over eras and upheavals is stunning. Indeed, as Alexis de Tocqueville observed in the Ancient Regime, the underlying culture even after such a cataclysmic event as the French Revolution survived; its structures and patterns just assumed new masters derived from the disillusioned back benches of the old elites. Two thousand miles away, and a century later, the same observation could have been made about the Middle East after the Ottoman collapse: Arab-Ottoman elites, many of whom naturally even spoke Turkish rather than Arabic, who had become increasingly frustrated with the rise of Turkish nationalism rose to take over the residue of the Ottoman imperial administration after the war and became the new elite (in many ways not even new, but now just independent) of the old but now fragmented structures. Students of Russian history would probably make the same observations of the transition from Czar to commissar. Simply put, cultures, absent a millennially traumatic event or population shift, do not change much, and even then, only slightly.

NeverTrump Burns Leftist Cash on Failed Impeachment Crusade Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2020/02/10/nevertrump-burns-leftist-cash-on-failed-impeachment-crusade/

It’s only a matter of time before more left-wing largess flows Bill Kristol’s way and he’s running ads on Fox News trying—unsuccessfully—to convince Republicans to vote for Bernie Sanders. It will be NeverTrump’s inevitable, and humiliating, endgame.

The gathering featured a whos-who of Trump haters.

According to a weekend blurb in Politico, a launch party Friday night to celebrate the release of yet another screed about Donald Trump attracted journalists and lawmakers as well as NeverTrumpers such as Bill Kristol and David Frum. Unmasking the Presidency, a new book authored by Lawfare’s Susan Hennessey and Benjamin Wittes, went on sale a few weeks ago and is already available on Amazon for a deep discount.

The book party was sponsored by Democracy Fund, a nonprofit backed by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. Since 2016, Omidyar, a self-proclaimed Trump foe, has dumped tens of millions of dollars into projects to sabotage the president. (Lawfare, a wellspring of Russian collusion propaganda, received $600,000 from Democracy Fund between 2017 and 2019.)

So, of course, Kristol was in attendance at the soiree. Alleged “conservatives” in the NeverTrump cabal that Kristol commands have prostituted themselves by accepting money from the leftist tech billionaire with a grudge against the president and a record of hostility to conservatism.

“Omidyar has given $213 million to various causes, many of which are active in left-wing politics,” according to a report in InfluenceWatch, which tracks the activities of political interest groups. His name often is mentioned alongside other tycoons on the Left such as Tom Steyer, George Soros, and Michael Bloomberg.

Antifa Goons Allowed to Go on Another Violent Rampage in Portland Debra Heine

amgreatness.com/2020/02/10/antifa-goons-allowed-to-go-on-another-violent-rampage-in-portland/

Authorities in Portland, Oregon, appear to have given violent antifa militants free rein to assault journalists and innocent bystanders at will in the streets of the city.

Last June, independent journalist Andy Ngo was assaulted by a mob of masked agitators during a street rally in downtown Portland while police officers stood back and did nothing. He was initially treated at a hospital emergency room and later admitted into the hospital overnight to treat a serious head injury.

And over the weekend, local videographer Brandon Brown and several other independent journalists were attacked by a menacing mob of antifa militants while filming a demonstration in downtown Portland.

The antifa goons showed up to counter-protest a planned Ku Klux Klan/white supremacy rally at a downtown park, but that rally was apparently a hoax that was cancelled at the last minute. With nothing else to do, the militants targeted journalists who showed up to cover the event, the police, public property, and at least one person on their own side.

The violent agitators are seen in videos using metal-tipped umbrellas to jab at people and chase them down the street. Police say they also threw rocks, concrete, batons, cans and food at members of the public and at officers.

The police—AGAIN—stood down to allow the anarcho-terrorists to assault their targets unimpeded.

Trump Administration Secures Funding for 1,000 Miles of Border Wall Eric Lendrum

https://amgreatness.com/2020/02/10/trump-administration-secures-funding-for-1000-miles-of-border-wall/

Representatives of the Trump Administration recently told The Daily Caller that the White House has shifted its focus away from “procuring resources” and instead towards acquiring new funds for additional construction, which has just secured 1,000 miles of new wall on the southern U.S. border.

“With funding available, the administration will build up to approximately 1,000 miles of border wall along the southwest border,” the official told the Caller. The official claims that the budget requests for fiscal year 2021 guarantee this, apparently by calling for “increases for infrastructure, technology, and law enforcement personnel” rather than new funding, which will “gain operational control of the border.”

This development confirms President Trump’s promise to construct at least 450 miles of new border wall by the end of 2020, as acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan declared in January. Additionally, officials reported that both the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security “will provide $8.4 billion to wall construction.”

China’s Stranglehold On Pharmaceuticals Threatens Americans’ Health And U.S. National Security Henry I. Miller and John J. Cohrssen

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/02/10/chinas-stranglehold-on-pharmaceuticals-threatens-americans-health-and-u-s-national-security/

As the cases of the Wuhan coronavirus (formally 2019-nCoV) continue to increase, and China and other countries aggressively perform screening, isolation, treatment and tracking of patients’ contacts, demand for various essential medical items is unprecedented, and shortages have been reported. For example, American dentists, who go through large numbers of surgical masks daily, are already finding their supply chain interrupted.

Ironically, most of the world’s supply of masks and respirators, along with other materials essential for health care, comes from manufacturers in China. That creates a vulnerable link in the global supply chain that supports everyday health care in hospitals around the world. However, those problems could pale if shortages spread to the pharmaceutical sector: China has become the world’s largest producer and exporter of the essential “active pharmaceutical ingredients” (APIs) used in the manufacture of drugs, not only in China but also in other countries, including the United States. 

Most of the medicines that Americans take — as much as 90% — are generic drugs that are manufactured abroad. 

APIs in China are currently produced without sufficient quality control to ensure drug safety and efficacy, according to the findings of a report late last year from the U.S.-China Economic Security Review Commission, which was established by Congress in 2000 when China was permitted to enter the World Trade Organization.

Obama Promised A ‘Middle Class’ Economy, Trump Delivered It John Merline

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/02/11/obama-promised-a-middle-class-economy-trump-delivered-it/

In his State of the Union address five years ago, President Barack Obama talked at length about what he called “middle-class economics.” After years of economic stagnation, he promised that the only thing needed to revive the economy was more middle-class benefits. The middle class has made substantial gains since then, but only because President Donald Trump ignored everything Obama said.

In Obama’s address, he described “middle-class economics” as “helping folks afford childcare, college, health care, a home, retirement.” In other words, still more federal middle-class entitlements and new mandates on employers (higher minimum wage, paid family leave, etc.).

Instead, Trump delivered tax cuts derided by the left as a giveaway to the rich, and deregulated measures that Democrats had claimed were pro-growth.

And when Trump addressed Congress last week, he rattled off a long list of economic gains that resulted from his break from Obama’s “middle-class economics.” It turns out that cutting taxes and regulations, not more government spending, is what the middle class needs.

Included in Trump’s list was the fact that the wealth of the bottom half of American households increased three times as fast as the “1%.”

 “That’s true, according to Federal Reserve data,” said Reuters. “On average, Americans have seen a 17% jump in household wealth since Trump’s election, while wealth at the bottom half has increased 54%.” The top 1% has seen a gain of 13%.

Democrats have been complaining about increases in income inequality for years. How do they explain the fact that it’s declining under Trump?

A Journalist Was Fired for Criticizing Ilhan Omar ‘Islamophobia’ cancel culture at work. Tue Feb 11, 2020 Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/02/journalist-was-fired-criticizing-ilhan-omar-daniel-greenfield/

Narmeen Choudhury spends a lot of time tweeting about Islamophobia. The daughter of Bangladeshi Muslim immigrants has claimed that she faced discrimination in the workplace. But the one man she accused of Islamophobia was fired after 22 years on the job and is now suing for justice.

Choudhury had come to work at WPIX in 2011. Ken Evseroff, the reporter she accused, had not only been working at the New York City television station since 1997, but had worked his way up the hard way. Where Choudhury had graduated from Boston U, Evseroff had come out of SUNY and had done everything from working as a reporter to laboring as a camera operator on everything from All My Children to Nightline. By the time he came to WPIX, Evseroff was a seasoned professional.

And he expected to be treated like one.

The clash between Choudhury and Evseroff encompassed not just her allegations of Islamophobia, but class, political and generational differences. Choudhury was a privileged millennial from Duchess County married to an executive director at JP Morgan. And, like many privileged millennials, the WPIX reporter had a history of building her brand and lubricating her career by alleging incidents of discrimination.

In 2015, she claimed, “my husband was called a sand n***er”.  The story didn’t seem like an especially plausible event in multicultural Manhattan in the final years of the Obama administration. And some might wonder how anyone would have guessed that her finance executive husband was Muslim.

Soros Starts $1 Billion Anti-American University Fighting nationalism and climate change are its goals. Matthew Vadum

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/02/soros-starts-1-billion-anti-american-university-matthew-vadum/

Radical anti-American financier George Soros recently unveiled a scheme to sink $1 billion into a new global university to fight nationalism and climate change, twin phantoms he emotes are “threatening the survival of our civilization.”

Why is this a bad thing?

Because global warming is a hoax and nationalism –at least in a good nation like the United States— is a good thing, and because Soros is a living, breathing malignancy who has devoted the past several decades of his life to advancing evil in the world.

If America is indeed “one nation under God,” as the Pledge of Allegiance states, then believing in and supporting this country is American nationalism.

That is a bridge too far for Soros, a naturalized American, who views himself as a citizen of the world.

Soros said in 2018 that nationalism was “the dominant ideology in the world,” but to him, all nationalism, including American nationalism, is bad. People like Soros regard nationalism as tribalism, jingoism, superpatriotism, or a combination of the three. Because he is an Esperanto-speaking, United Nations-loving internationalist, Soros hurls the word “nationalism” as an epithet.

A U.S. Senate candidate from Maine uses a guillotine for its logo By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/02/a_us_senate_candidate_from_maine_uses_a_guillotine_for_its_logo.html

“Democrat Bre Kidman, who’s challenging Susan Collins, wants people to think of a revolution when they think about this non-binary person’s candidacy.”

When most people think of a guillotine, they think of rivers of blood flowing during the French Revolution and during Hitler’s ascendancy in Germany (when he guillotined around 16,500 people). Civilized countries do not decapitate people to gain political power. Nevertheless, Bre Kidman, an attorney who is challenging Senator Susan Collins for her Senate seat in Maine, has decided that a stylized image of a guillotine is the perfect logo for its campaign.

(Kidman claims not to be either male or female and adopts the pronouns “they or them.” This is consistent with Progressive demands that individuals who call themselves non-binary should be accorded plural pronouns. That, however, is a grammatical bridge too far. The English language has a perfectly good singular pronoun for things – and people – that are neither male nor female: “it.”)

Of course, Kidman contends that the guillotine is merely symbolic. It’s not a call for actual blood; it’s just a suggestion that, if Kidman and the Left generally do not get the change they demand, there might be blood:

“The guillotine is an image which calls to mind what people have done for revolution before,” said Kidman, an attorney who’s running for the seat held by Republican Sen. Susan Collins. “If we can find a better path to revolution than that we owe it to ourselves and our country.”