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July 2020

Despicable Behavior of Today’s Academicians Walter E. Williams

https://www.dailysignal.com/2020/07/15/despicable-behavior-of-todays-academic-intellectuals/

The Michigan State University administration pressured professor Stephen Hsu to resign from his position as vice president of research and innovation because he touted research that found police are not more likely to shoot black Americans.

The study found: “The race of a police officer did not predict the race of the citizen shot. In other words, black officers were just as likely to shoot black citizens as white officers were.”

For political reasons, the authors of the study sought its retraction.

The U.S. Department of Education warned UCLA that it may impose fines for improperly and abusively targeting white professor Lt. Col. W. Ajax Peris for disciplinary action over his use of the n-word while reading to his class the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” that contained the expressions “when your first name becomes ‘n—-r,’ your middle name becomes ‘boy’ (however old you are).”

Two regimes are fighting an ideological war in America today. But what side are you on? And how can you sharpen up on how to defend your position? Learn more now >>

Referring to white civil rights activists, King wrote, “They have languished in filthy, roach-infested jails, suffering the abuse and brutality of policemen who view them as ‘dirty n—-r-lovers.’”

Boston University is considering changing the name of its mascot Rhett because of his link to “Gone with the Wind.”

Literally Thousands of Doctors and Scientists Have Come Out Against Fauci’s Lockdowns Including a Nobel Prize-Winning Biophysicist. The Media Just Doesn’t Want You to Know Michael Thau

https://www.redstate.com/michael_thau/2020/07/13/many-medical-experts-were-again

As RedState’s very own Sister Toldjah reported earlier today, the doubts President Trump recently expressed about the wisdom of Dr. Fauci’s advice on COVID-19 have elicited a chorus of smug accusation from the usual suspects that he’s “ignoring the experts.”

Sister Toldjah pointed out that it’s hard to know what their complaint even means given how often Fauci and other media-anointed authorities have done total 180s.

But, even putting aside how their advice seems to change with the political winds, the idea that there’s some scientific consensus in favor of the extreme measures inflicted on us in response to COVID-19 couldn’t be further from the truth.

Though you don’t hear their perspectives on CNN, countless scientists and doctors have tried to warn us not only that COVID-19 isn’t nearly as deadly as we’ve been led to believe; they’re also certain that the real threat to public health we’re facing is from the lockdowns.

For example, though the establishment media has somehow failed to make it widely known, in May over 600 physicians from “all specialties and from all states” signed a public letter to President Trump  describing, not COVID-19, but the lockdowns as a “mass casualty incident.” Since the letter first appeared, the number of doctors signing on has grown into the thousands. Their letter warns:

Dr. Scott Atlas Slams “Hysteria” Over Reopening Schools: “I Feel Like I’m Living In A Kafka Novel” Posted By Ian Schwartz

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/07/14/dr_scott_atlas_slams_hysteria_over_reopening_schools_i_feel_like_im_living_in_a_kafka_novel.html

Dr. Scott Atlas, senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and former chief of neurology at Stanford University Medical Center appeared on Martha MacCallum’s FOX News show to discuss the “hysteria” of opening schools in the fall despite the coronavirus pandemic.

MACCALLUM: The latest political divide appears to be going back to school with Democrats mostly urging caution and Republicans mostly, starting with the president, saying that kids need to get back into the classroom or risk a learning loss that maybe irreparable.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. NANCY PELOSI, D-CALIF., SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: Going back to school presents the biggest risk for the spread of the coronavirus. They ignore science and they ignore governance in order to make this happen. If there are CDC guidelines, they should be requirements.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MACCALLUM: Dr. Scott Atlas, senior fellow at Stanford University Hoover Institution and former chief of neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical Center. Doctor, welcome back to the program. Good to have you.

SCOTT ATLAS, PROFESSOR AND CHIEF OF NEURORADIOLOGY, STANFORD UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER: Thanks, Martha.

MACCALLUM: She says, Nancy Pelosi says that this is the biggest risk to the spread of the virus if the kids go back in September.

ATLAS: I think we have a different scale because that’s just completely wrong and contrary to all the science. And when I say, when I say all the science, I’m talking about signs all over the world not just in the United States but Switzerland, Sweden, Canada, France, the Netherlands, Australia, Asia.

Wow! GOP ‘Never Trumpers’ Are Paid by a ‘Radical’ Leftist Billionaire By Victoria Taft

https://pjmedia.com/columns/victoria-taft/2020/07/14/wow-gop-never-trumpers-are-paid-by-a-radical-leftist-billionaire-n640740

They sound like Leftists. They act like Leftists. And now we learn that the Never-Trumper group called “The Lincoln Project” is funded by a Leftist billionaire, according to a new book on the subject.

And a collective “Oh, it all makes sense to me now!” just spread over the land.

The project features, among others, GOP political strategists Rick Wilson, Steve Schmidt, the Washington Post’s “conservative” columnist Jennifer Rubin, former “Weekly Standard” editor Bill Kristol, and disgruntled attorney, George “Mr. Kellyanne” Conway, who spends nearly all of his time trying to ruin his wife’s White House career.

Judging by their antics, the anti-Trump collective is like a latter-day mix of political saboteur Donald Segretti, lawless Yippie Abbie Hoffman, yellow gossip columnist Walter Winchell and political monkey-wrencher Saul Alinsky. Their goal is to do everything they can to cost Donald Trump the White House in 2020 in order to burn the GOP brand. So that’s why they’re supporting Joe Biden.

Hizballah Turns the Capital of Lebanon into a Human Shield By P. David Hornik

https://pjmedia.com/columns/p-david-hornik/2020/07/15/hizballah-turns-the-capital-of-lebanon-into-a-human-shield-n641995

In 2018 the then spokesman of the Israel Defense Forces, Ronen Manelis, published an op-ed on Lebanese opposition websites and in various Arab media about the Iranian takeover — via its terror proxy Hizballah — of the Land of the Cedars.

“Lebanon,” Manelis wrote,

has turned…into one large missile factory…. One in every three or four houses in southern Lebanon is a headquarters, a post, a weapons depot or a Hezbollah hideout. We know of these assets and we know how to attack them accurately if required.

The future of the Lebanese citizens is that of a pawn in the hands of the dictator from Tehran, and the heads of villages, towns and government institutions who see and choose to remain silent are also to blame.

Manelis was saying that: Iran, via Hizballah, has turned southern Lebanon into a big human shield. Israel knows where all the facilities are and in case of war can hit them. Lebanese authorities should at least speak out about it before it’s too late.

Now an Israeli watchdog called the ALMA Center has revealed for the first time that Hizballah also has “at least 28 missile launching sites” in Beirut itself, the capital.

“The world must understand and know,” said Tal Beeri, head of the ALMA Center’s research department, “that these launch sites are located at the heart of residential and urban civil infrastructure.”

As the center’s report details:

Almost all of the sites are in southern Beirut, an area controlled by Hezbollah, and are located in civilian neighborhoods, inside private houses, medical centers, churches, industrial sites, public offices, fast food chains, as well as in open spaces nearby, hence activating the “human shield” tactic….

Based on our insight into Hezbollah’s action patterns these sites are available for immediate operational use.

Israel has long been trying to make clear that, in case of another Israel-Hizballah war (the first was in 2006), it will have no choice but to inflict civilian casualties — or let Hizballah fire missiles into Israel at will from launch sites embedded in schools, hospitals, private homes, and the like.

The Second Islamic Conquest of Hagia Sophia By Cameron Hilditch

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/07/the-second-islamic-conquest-of-hagia-sophia/

President Erdogan’s power play should not go unanswered by the liberal-democratic West.

The Church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople is a purpose-built structure, and its purpose is the worship of the Christian God. This particular function is not incidental to the way the church was designed and built by its two visionary architects at the high meridian of the Byzantine Empire. Anthemius of Tralles and Isidore of Miletus were what their contemporaries called mechanopoioi, a term that is best translated, according to Richard Krautheimer, as “architect–scientists.” Their elite proficiency in mathematics and physics suited them to the task they’d been given by the emperor: building an originally Christian place of worship. In the sixth century, Christians were still drawing on the aesthetics of pagan antiquity, and the basilicas and colonnades of classical Rome had been accepted as the supreme expression of architectural grandeur. Hagia Sophia changed all that.

When Emperor Justinian entered the church for the first time after its completion, he is said to have boasted, “Solomon, I have vanquished thee!” He, or rather his two architects, certainly had. With an interior space of almost 43,000 square feet, it was at the time the single-greatest building ever constructed. Its crowning jewel was its gravity-defying central dome, which in a single stroke supplanted the basilica as the defining feature of church architecture in Eastern Christendom. The dome serves as a mirror to heaven, believed in late antiquity to be the most distant in a series of concentric spheres, and its 40 windows allow light from above to shine upon the glittering religious mosaics inside the church. But its most important religious function is musical. The interior of Hagia Sophia was designed for the antiphonal singing of the Christian liturgy, with two choir sections alternating chants across from one another. The dome captures and enhances the sound of this exchange. Musical notes usually reverberate for two to three seconds in a modern concert hall. In Hagia Sophia, they resound for up to twelve seconds, enveloping worshippers in the sounds of the liturgy — or at least they did, until the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453.

“National Identity” by Sydney Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

As individuals, we are a combination of genetics and experience. Similarly, the United States is a product of its genetic makeup – its people, natives and immigrants – and its experiences, which includes everything that has happened over the past four centuries – the carving of towns and villages from the wilderness, the curse of slavery and its abolition, and especially the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Our experiences include the building of roads, railroads and the telegraph, the Civil War, the taming of the west, the industrialization of the economy and the rise of cities, schools and colleges, two world wars, the Cold War and its aftermath, and the internet. Our Country’s genetic makeup continues to expand as immigrants become citizens and new births add to our population. And, so do our experiences. Everything we do – the good and the bad – add to who we are.

We are a polyglot nation, not easily categorized. We are not, as The New York Times with its 1619 Project would have us be, a nation imbued with systemic racism, a country of victims and oppressors. On the other hand, we, as a nation, should be aware of the warts in our past. God, it has been said, cares little of what we have done. He cares about we do and will do.

Robert E. Lee has become symbolic of white oppression. As a defender of slavery and Commander of the Army of Virginia, he deserves reproach. But hatred for what he represented in that aspect of his life blinds us to the whole man. Like all of us, he was complex. His father “Light-Horse Harry” Lee was a Revolutionary War General and Governor of Virginia who landed in debtors’ prison around 1812. He abandoned his family and moved permanently to the West Indies. Lee was raised by his mother who died a month after he graduated second in his class from West Point, where he later served as Superintendent. When the Civil War broke out, he was torn between allegiance to the United States and loyalty to Virginia, his place of birth. (It was a time when people traveled less; so, one’s home state meant more than it does today.) In 1865, at Appomattox, General Lee surrendered his sword without animus to a younger General Grant, who had graduated in the bottom half of his class at West Point. In the aftermath of the War and at a time of bitter recriminations on the part of many Southerners toward the victorious North, Lee supported reconciliation with a reborn United States, later led by his former foe.

Museum Curator Resigns After He Is Accused of Racism for Saying He Would Still Collect Art From White Men Robby Soave

https://reason.com/2020/07/14/gary-garrels-san-francisco-museum-modern-art-racis

Irate employees of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art said the removal of Gary Garrels was “non-negotiable.”

Until last week, Gary Garrels was senior curator of painting and sculpture at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). He resigned his position after museum employees circulated a petition that accused him of racism and demanded his immediate ouster.

“Gary’s removal from SFMOMA is non-negotiable,” read the petition. “Considering his lengthy tenure at this institution, we ask just how long have his toxic white supremacist beliefs regarding race and equity directed his position curating the content of the museum?”

This accusation—that Garrels’ choices as an art curator are guided by white supremacist beliefs—is a very serious one. Unsurprisingly, it does not stand up to even minimal scrutiny.

The petitioners cite few examples of anything even approaching bad behavior from Garrels. Their sole complaint is that he allegedly concluded a presentation on how to diversify the museum’s holdings by saying, “don’t worry, we will definitely still continue to collect white artists.”

Modern Saudi Scholar, Islam’s Prophet Muhammad,  & The Jews of the Arabian Peninsula… by Gerald A. Honigman

Let’s begin by referring to the following excerpts from what appears to be a ground-breaking development in the link below:

“…In what is being hailed as an “unprecedented” event, a senior Saudi Arabian researcher has had an article published in an Israeli journal–in Hebrew.

The essay aims to correct what its author, Prof. Mohammed Ibrahim Alghbban, head of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and Hebrew Studies at the Department of Modern Languages and Translation at King Saud University in Riyadh, calls ‘erroneous misperceptions about the origins of Islam and  distorted understanding of manuscripts’ written by the Prophet Muhammad…Alghbban writes that Islam’s founder did not clash with Jews on religious grounds, rather only on politics…” https://www.israel21c.org/in-first-saudi-academic-publishes-hebrew-essay-in-israeli-journal/

While it certainly is good news to hear about Arab scholars learning the Hebrew language, teaching it to others (for perhaps good and not-so-good reasons), and so forth, Alghbban’s assessment appears to be a whitewash of the actual Jihad waged against Medina’s (the second holiest city in Islam) founders–Jews–who fled the earlier Roman wars for their independence in Judea and escaping into the nearby Arabian Peninsula for refuge.

Jews had a long history in that Peninsula prior to the birth of Muhammad in the 7th century C. E.

Ilhan Omar’s Payments to Husband’s Firm Hit $1 Million in 2020 Cycle ‘Squad’ member has paid her new husband more than $1 million from campaign Joe Schoffstall 

https://freebeacon.com/democrats/ilhan-omar-funnels-228000-more-into-husbands-firm/

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) continues to dish out six-figure payments to her husband’s firm, which has now received more than $1 million from her campaign this cycle.

Federal Election Commission records released Tuesday afternoon show that Omar’s campaign funneled $228,384.93 last quarter to the E Street Group, a D.C.-based consulting firm run by the congresswoman’s husband, Tim Mynett. The payments, predominantly for digital and fundraising services, bring the total that Omar’s campaign has sent to Mynett’s firm to just over $1 million for the 2020 cycle.

Omar, a freshmen congresswoman, has faced scrutiny over numerous financial and personal issues since she was elected in 2018. She has drawn criticism for a lack of transparency about her previous marriages, over campaign finance violations, and for a potential violation of House ethics rules pertaining to the advance she received on a recently published memoir. Pressed for answers, she has routinely dismissed the inquiries as “smears” and “conspiracy theories.”

Mynett’s firm is the top vendor for Omar’s campaign, which doled out $521,000 between April 1 and June 30 with Mynett’s share accounting for 44 percent of that total.

The financial relationship between Mynett and Omar began before the two announced they were married this March, but it is unclear how long the two were romantically linked before they tied the knot. Omar denied the two were romantically involved, but Mynett’s then-wife alleged in divorce papers that the two were having an affair.

Omar refused to answer questions about her relationship with her campaign’s top vendor. “I have no interest in allowing the conversation about my personal life to continue and so I have no desire to discuss it,” she said last year. Her earliest payment to Mynett’s firm came in August 2018, during her first run for federal office.

The newly released filings also show that Omar’s Democratic primary opponent, Antone Melton-Meaux, drastically outraised her in the second quarter, bringing in $3.2 million to Omar’s $471,000.

Omar’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the payments.