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Ruth King

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Anti-‘Christian Privilege’ Activism in Academia At “Christian” colleges too. Jack Kerwick

By on April 9th, 2018

A few days ago, I had a conversation with a neighbor who revealed to me that, insofar as she would like to exercise her right to bear arms, she doesn’t consider herself especially “liberal.” For this reason, she would eventually like to leave our painfully blue state of New Jersey.

Yet during the course of our exchange, she also shared that her daughter is away at college. I responded: “I hope that she doesn’t come home hating you.” I was half-joking, of course, but only by half. It was then that I told her that, being an academic dissident, I make it my mission to inform otherwise uninformed parents of what their children can expect to experience during their time in today’s university.

A glance at a couple of recent events from two schools, one secular, the other Catholic, suffices all too easily to leave an indelible impression of the contemporary academy:

At George Washington University, just days after much of the Christian world celebrated Easter, a training session was held for faculty and students. The purpose of this “diversity workshop” is to expound upon the thesis that Christians “receive unmerited perks from institutions and systems all across our country.”

The seminar is titled: “Christian Privilege: But Our Founding Fathers Were All Christian, Right?!” According to the seminar description, Christians have “built-in advantages” over non-Christians.

Upon their completion of the workshop, participants should be able to “describe what is meant by privilege overall and white privilege especially;” “describe the role of denial when it comes to white privilege;” “differentiate between equality and equity;” “list at least three examples of Christian privilege;” and “list at least three ways to be an ally with a non-Christian person.”

Over at Providence College, a Dominican-founded, Roman Catholic institution, the school has succumbed to what Anthony Esolen, one of its former faculty members, characterizes as the “Totalitarian Diversity Cult.” Esolen is a practicing Catholic, a scholar who famously translated Dante’s Divine Comedy, who left Providence nearly a year ago because of what he insists is its abandonment of its Catholic Christian mission.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Fears About Chinese ‘Trade War’ Are Late And Dumb China has been waging economic war against the U.S. for decades. Michael Cutler

By on April 9th, 2018

President Trump’s political adversaries and globalists, including the media pundits, are frantically yelping about how the President’s proposed tariffs against Chinese imports would spark a “Trade war.”

In point of fact, concerns about a trade war with China are late — very late — and have nothing to do with Trump’s proposed tariffs.

In reality China has, for decades, engaged in a one-sided “trade war” with the United States that doesn’t involve tariffs but wide-spread and wide-scale theft of intellectual property.

One-sided relationships are not relationships!

Foolishly, a succession of previous administrations have facilitated this outrageous situation.

My previous FrontPage Magazine article, Educating America’s Adversaries focused on the lunacy of the United States hundreds of thousands of Chinese students to study STEM (Science Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) disciplines and also providing them with optional practical training at U.S. corporations unwittingly providing them with the opportunity to engage in industrial espionage.

My article today is predicated on an April 4, 2018 Justice Department press release, Chinese Scientist Sentenced to Prison in Theft of Engineered Rice, that reported on the sentencing of a Chinese scientist, Weiqiang Zhang, for his crimes that, although not related to military concerns, are related to intellectual property theft (trade secrets), specifically genetically engineered rice seeds with potentially profound implications.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

We’re Not the Thought Police That being said, what are you thinking? Bruce Bawer

By on April 9th, 2018

To read Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch website regularly is to get an unsettling daily dose of real-life Islam-related horrors. But on April 4, Robert posted a half-hour audio that was even more disturbing than the bulk of his usual offerings. The audio records the visit by a couple of British police officers to the home of a British subject who had apparently been reported to the authorities for posting anti-Islam comments on social media. The householder in question greeted the cops with surprising – perhaps nervous? – cheeriness, and for a half hour he earnestly, willingly, and good-humoredly answered their indefensibly intrusive and insulting questions about his opinions. Among them: What were his political beliefs? What did he think of Islam? Did he hate Muslims? Was he a racist? Was he a Nazi?

It quickly became clear that this man – whose name we never learn, unless I missed something – is anything but a racist or Nazi or hater of any kind. On the contrary, he is a thoughtful citizen who, after considerable study, has come to some sensible conclusions about Islam. He made it clear that, unlike his visitors, he had read the Koran, had acquainted himself with the major specifics of the life of Muhammed, and knew the basics of Islamic theology. He was, it emerged, a strong opponent of Islam for precisely the right reasons, including (as he mentioned) the fact that it commands believers to do harm to infidels, Jews, and gays.

Yet even as he spelled out these indisputable truths about Islam, the police officers responded as if he was imagining it all. They suggested that he might want to sit down for a conversation with an Islamic scholar, who could clear up what they seemed determined to view as his misunderstandings. They insisted, moreover, that they were not the Thought Police – even though there is no other word for police officers who show up at the home of an innocent citizen to interrogate him about his personal opinions.

A couple of reader comments on the Jihad Watch audio suggested it was fake, on the grounds that police officers in a free country would surely never do such a thing. Wrong. For me, the audio brought back vivid memories – for I’ve had my own very similar encounter with European policemen. My experience was slightly different in that instead of being visited at home, I was summoned to a local police station in Norway, where I live. But the encounter itself, which took place in January 2014, was strikingly similar to the one recorded on the Jihad Watch audio. My interrogators even assured me, as their British colleagues assured the fellow in the audio, that they were not the Thought Police. When I heard that statement on the audio, I couldn’t help wondering: are cops around Europe, even in different countries, working off of the same script?

Immediately after returning home from my visit to the police station back in January 2014, I sat down and typed up everything I could remember about the exchange I’d had with my new uniformed friends. The conversation had been in Norwegian, and I wrote it out in Norwegian. I sent copies to a few friends of mine, including Hans Rustad, editor of the vitally important Norwegian website document.no, who, in response, told me that he had heard similar, and equally disturbing, accounts from other people living in Norway. He actually took a copy of my testimony with him to a meeting at the Norwegian Ministry of Justice, where he confronted officials with this example of thoroughly inappropriate police conduct.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

SJP: Neo-Nazis on Campus New Freedom Center pamphlet exposes the real neo-Nazi movement infecting American universities.

By on April 9th, 2018

Below is the Freedom Center’s new pamphlet, “SJP: Neo-Nazis on Campus,” which sheds light on the extreme depths of Jew-Hatred promoted by the organization Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). As the pamphlet documents, members of SJP have been caught praising Hitler, calling for a second Holocaust and wishing death upon Jews — all while spreading the propaganda of the terrorist group Hamas, whose stated mission is to exterminate the world Jewish population. The pamphlet is part of the Freedom Center’s campaign, Stop University Support for Terrorists.

There are two components of the Palestinian war to annihilate Israel: terrorism and propaganda,” writes author Caroline Glick. The organizations that Palestinian terrorists have created and funded on American campuses, most particularly Students for Justice in Palestine, function as political and propaganda fronts for their parent organizations, which blow up pizza parlors and weddings in the Jewish state. The relationship between terror and terrorist propaganda is exemplified in the coalition of campus organizations which over the past fifteen years have employed funds from the terrorist party Hamas to launch an all-out political assault on the Jewish state and to create a climate of hatred towards Jews and students who support Israel on campus.

While Hamas operatives in the Middle East launch rockets at Israeli civilian targets and dig terror tunnels under Israeli kindergarten classrooms, their supporters at American universities have a no less sinister mission: to spread lies that portray Israel as a criminal state, and thus to justify its destruction. The terrorist movement on American campuses has inspired an outpouring of neo-Nazi hate by falsely portraying the Jews as “colonial-settler” occupiers of a fictional state called “Palestine.” Members of Students for Justice in Palestine even openly praise Hitler and wish for another Holocaust. Witness the following tweets from Nancy Salem who is an alumna of the University of Texas and was an SJP activist supporting the Hamas-inspired and funded Boycott Israel movement there.

“@DictatorHitler: How many Jews died in the Holocaust? Not enough’ @PrincessLulllu @thearabgirl HAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAHAHAHA”

“@DictatorHitler: Gassed a Jew, I’m sweating #Heil’ OMG.”

“Have a safe trip Lulu. I love you baby girl! See you in 3 weeks! Kiss the Palestine ground for me and kill some jews! <3 #IMissYouAlready.”[1] Nancy is not alone. Yousef AlYassir, a student at the University of Houston who was a member of his high school’s chapter of the Muslim Students Association, shared his insights on twitter as well: “F**K THE JEWS F**K EM ALL KILL ALL THE JEWS ATTA BOY HITLER”

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MEDIA Comments turned off

Sunday Schadenfreude: Jimmy Kimmel steps on a rake called ‘gay’ By Monica Showalter

By on April 9th, 2018

Professional clowns know what they are doing when they engage in slapstick stunts, such as stepping on a rake. Leftwing clown Jimmy Kimmel is different. The ABC Late Night host stepped on a rake of his own doing without any of the theatrical attention to planning and detail of professional comics. Now he has a key element of his ever-shrinking core audience angry at him.

The dolt went and insulted gays by making creepy, graphic, gross tweets about a broadcasting rival, Fox News’ Sean Hannity. with verbal images of Hannity supposedly engaging in gay sexual relations with President Trump, with graphic decriptions about sexual positioning, anal kissing, and other things, none of which is suitable for family viewing.

Since the tweets are public, here is one:

Don’t worry – just keep tweeting – you’ll get back on top! (or does Trump prefer you on bottom?) Either way, keep your chin up big fella..XO https://t.co/R4QJCoGYCL

— Jimmy Kimmel (@jimmykimmel) April 6, 2018 “>http://

Breitbart news has the rest.

Kimmel’s problem now is that his gay viewers are quite offended and now calling him out for insulting them. Apparently, they’ve heard a lot of this and aren’t interested in more from Kimmel in his bid to beef up his increasingly unfunny schtick. Breitbart has much of the offense taken here, as it happened on Twitter.

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ISRAEL, MEDIA Comments turned off

An Israeli’s Message to Mark Zuckerberg : Jean Vercors

By on April 8th, 2018

Jean Vercors left France and now lives in Israel….rsk

Writes Jean Vercors:

I have used Facebook for years as a platform to share my thoughts, comments and articles. I value that platform because of its global reach. It connected me to some of my friends in France, the USA, UK, Canada, Australia and many other countries. It is a window to the world to differing opinions by allowing me to see what my friends think and share on their walls.It gives me an outlet to speak my mind and to share my thoughts on topics ranging from domestic politics to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

However, I have observed that your social media has reached a point of violent antisemitism, at least for me, and I guess many other people too. I am appalled by Facebook’s insistence to allow this on social media. I cannot believe that a group that calls for the death of the Jews, your own people for that matter, does not violate Facebook’s “Community Standards.” Do you realize how dangerous your media has become allowing the antisemites of the world to vomit their hate on Israel with lies?

I am disgusted that Facebook not only calls this group socially acceptable, but it endangers the lives of our brothers, our families, our children, and more importantly, our people as a whole.

Free Speech should not be Hate Speech.

We all know too well that allowing such a negative behavior only encourages the killing of Jews as we have seen it lately when Facebook users that were anti-Zionists and posting anti-Jewish posts assassinated innocent people in France, Israel or elsewhere.

As a Jew, I was taught to stand up for Justice and truth against anyone not matter his faith or ethnicity. We Jews have been standing in front line for thousands of years, defending, protecting and teaching human rights.

As we celebrate Pesach, we all retell the story of our journey from bondage to freedom when we were slaves in Egypt reading the Haggada. Not only to ourselves but to our children and the future generations. It has been this way for 3000 years.

You were quoted coming to the defence of Muslims after the November 2015 Paris attacks “As a Jew, my parents taught me that we must stand up against attacks on all communities. Even if an attack isn’t against you today, in time attacks on freedom for anyone will hurt everyone. So I wonder Mr.Zuckerberg have you forgotten or ignored your statement that all of us should “stand up against attacks on all communities?” Maybe you do not even know about the double standards applied to Jews and Palestinians on Facebook?

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Cudgel of ‘White Privilege’ ‘I’m not interested in negotiating with racists,’ an Ivy League historian told me. By Zachary Wood

By on April 8th, 2018

Mr. Wood, a senior at Williams College, is a former Robert L. Bartley Fellow at the Journal.

‘White people need to be checked, Zach. End of discussion.”

I was talking with an Ivy League historian, a fellow African-American, about “white privilege.” I asked if his goal was to antagonize or to promote dialogue.

“Do you know who I am?” he demanded. “I’ve been helping black people longer than you’ve been alive. I’m telling you what I know: Lecturing these white kids is only the beginning.”

Is it really necessary to be so aggressive?

“Listen, I don’t give a damn. I’m not interested in negotiating with racists.”

I tried to close the conversation cordially, saying I’d have to reflect on the issue. But when I extended my hand, he looked at it, looked up at me, and then walked away.

Does white privilege exist? Sure. If you’re white and you excel at academic or other cognitively demanding endeavors, for example, the light of your success is never dimmed by speculation about whether you benefited from affirmative action.

White privilege has become the target of many initiatives in higher education. The goal, advocates say, is to fight racism and promote justice. Yet the practice often doesn’t seem constructive. In my college career, I’ve spoken to many peers and professors who insist adamantly that any conversation about race in America should begin and end with the accusation of white privilege. The aim seems to be to establish guilt, not build understanding.

As I see it, the main goal of discussing white privilege should be to promote a more complex and nuanced view of the world so that, for example, it would be difficult for one of my white peers to drive through the Washington neighborhood where I grew up and say: “What’s wrong with those people?” People of all races should aim to understand the range of attitudes and perspectives on race that make the issue a difficult one. CONTINUE AT SITE

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

North Korea Ready to Discuss Denuclearization, U.S. Officials Say Assurance clears the way for a summit meeting between Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump By Michael R. Gordon and Jonathan Cheng

By on April 8th, 2018

North Korea has told the U.S. that Kim Jong Un is prepared to discuss the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, clearing the way for a summit meeting between the North Korean leader and President Donald Trump, according to U.S. officials.

U.S. officials didn’t say when and how that assurance was delivered, but U.S. and North Korean officials have been in communication.

“The U.S. has confirmed that Kim Jong Un is willing to discuss the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” a Trump administration official said on Sunday.

Hopes for a breakthrough that might end more than six decades of animosity on the Korean Peninsula were raised last month when South Korean national security adviser, Chung Eui-yong, told the White House that North Korea was prepared to engage in talks on denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula and would refrain from nuclear and missile tests.

For weeks, however, U.S. officials heard nothing from the North Koreans, raising concerns that the South Korean government, which is eager to reduce tensions on the peninsula, might have exaggerated Pyongyang’s willingness to put its nuclear arsenal on the negotiating table.

The North Korean assurance doesn’t mean that talks will necessarily succeed. Pyongyang has indicated that progress toward denuclearization should proceed in phases that are synchronized with diplomatic and economic concessions from the U.S. side.

It is possible that North Korea’s timetable for reducing and ultimately eliminating its arsenal might be far longer than the Trump administration would be prepared to accept. The North, for example, may define denuclearization as a long-term goal that would only be achieved if the U.S. eliminated the potential military threat to its regime by withdrawing forces from South Korea.

North Korea also might ask for more concessions than Washington is willing to provide. Working out verification arrangements to confirm that North Korea isn’t hiding weapons could be an additional stumbling block.

“Kim Jong Un being willing to discuss denuclearization is a good development given that in the past he has said that denuclearization was not possible,” said Joseph DeTrani, who served as the U.S. special envoy to the so-called Six Party talks on North Korea’s nuclear program from 2003 to 2006. The talks included the U.S., North Korea, China, South Korea, Japan and Russia.

“We now have to discuss whether his definition of denuclearization is similar to ours, which is complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantlement of all of their nuclear weapons and weapons programs,” said Mr. DeTrani.

North Korea has previously committed itself to denuclearization. A September 2005 statement issued during the Six Party talks noted that Pyongyang was “committed to abandoning all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs.” That statement also said that steps toward denuclearization would be taken “in a phased manner” and based on the reciprocal principle of ”action for action.” CONTINUE AT SITE

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Justice Stonewall Continues The House Intel Committee can’t see all of a key electronic memo.

By on April 8th, 2018

Hours after we published an editorial Friday about the Justice Department’s refusal to turn over a document subpoenaed by the House Intelligence Committee, Chairman Devin Nunes (R., Calif.) received an official response from Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd.

It was cleverly spun. Mr. Boyd played up the access to the secondary information Mr. Nunes had demanded—access to the application and renewals for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants on one-time Trump associate Carter Page. Mr. Boyd describes his department’s response as “extraordinary accommodation.”

Upon inspection, however, the focus on the FISA warrants looks more like an effort to distract attention from Mr. Boyd’s refusal even to mention Mr. Nunes’s main request of FBI Director Christopher Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. That request was for the “electronic communication,” or memo, that officially launched the counterintelligence investigation into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

On Friday Trey Gowdy, an Intel Committee member who has seen a redacted form of the memo, said Justice has redacted the “good stuff.” He means information that would tell whether the counterintelligence investigation was credible, and how and whether the FBI vetted the information. “All of that,” Mr. Gowdy said, “is in a paragraph I can’t read.”

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Hungary Decides By John O’Sullivan

By on April 8th, 2018

My bet: Orban and his party will not manage a landslide but will hang on.

Today, Sunday, April 8, sees Viktor Orban’s attempt to win a third successive term for his party, Fidesz, and for himself as prime minister, put to the test by the country’s eighth election since the end of Communism. Hungarians have become used to elections since 1989 and to power changing hands as a result. Governing parties lost elections in 1994, 1998, 2002, and 2010.

Usually an election in a small Central European country with this democratic record would struggle to get into the news at all, let alone into the headlines. Yet the restless caravan of the world’s media has for the last week been bidding up the prices of Budapest’s best restaurants and hotels (which, incidentally, are very good indeed — as a glimpse at the travel pages of the same media would disclose) to cover the result.

And this level of interest is itself a story — and a changing one.

Until a month ago, the international media consensus was that the election was a formality, or at best a foregone conclusion, because Orban was the authoritarian strongman of a nation that had ceased to be a real democracy. Fidesz had ensured its victory by gerrymandering the election system, suppressing opposition media, buying votes with EU money, and swamping the country with posters appealing to the nationalist and ethnic prejudices of the electorate. The conditions for genuine democratic elections were therefore no longer in place, and Orban’s victory would confirm the fact. To be sure, the media would still turn up in large contingents for the burial, but the story they wrote would be the end of democracy.

And then in Hodmezovasarehely, a town in the southeast of Hungary (pop., 47,019, local attractions: thermal bathing), there was a small political earthquake. An independent candidate for the local mayoralty, but one supported by all the opposition parties, easily defeated the front-runner Fidesz candidate by a healthy margin of 16 points.

That was genuinely a big surprise since the town had been a Fidesz stronghold. At once there was an outburst of optimism among the opposition parties along the lines of . . . a Fidesz election triumph wasn’t a foregone conclusion . . . if only the opposition parties united as they had done in Hodmezovasarehely . . . the mathematics for an opposition victory were there in the result . . . And so on and so forth. That response may have overinterpreted one small-town election result — we’ll know later tonight — but it made the result look less certain and gave the opposition a real fillip.

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