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Ruth King

The Great Social Media Purge: No One Is Safe By Eric Lendrum

Social media is often abuzz with politics—from immigration and gun control to infrastructure and tariffs. Rarely is the social media itself the topic of discussion. But now is long past time for that discussion.https://amgreatness.com/2018/03/07/great-social-media-purge-no-one-safe-2/

It is certainly no secret that social media companies are overwhelmingly left-wing, fueling the fake “Russia” conspiracy theory, and endlessly bashing President Donald Trump. But now, the social media giants of the Internet—Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube (one of the main subsidiaries Alphabet, which is the corporate parent of Google)—have been preparing their next big, heinous move: an attempt to ban right-wing voices outright from their platforms.

It started small, with random small-scale conservative accounts being banned from Twitter in small batches. Since December of 2017, a handful of fringe figures have also been banned from Twitter, including white nationalist Jared Taylor, alt-Right Internet personality Anthime Gionet (also known as “Baked Alaska”), and anti-Semitic congressional candidate Paul Nehlen. But this wasn’t the extent of it. While this period saw the banning of mostly fringe figures, a handful of larger voices were also no-platformed, including paleoconservative YouTuber James Allsup and longtime Trump advisor Roger Stone.

Then in late February, Twitter went all-out and banned more than 2,000 right-leaning accounts at once. These attacks were dismissed by the Left, who wrote off all of these accounts as either Russian bots or Nazis, without any evidence to support their claims.

The Rapid ‘Progress’ of Progressivism By Victor Davis Hanson

Not long ago I waited for a flight to board. The plane took off 45 minutes late. There were only two attendants to accommodate 11 passengers who had requested wheelchair assistance.

Such growing efforts to ensure that the physically challenged can easily fly are certainly welcome. But when our plane landed—late and in danger of causing many passengers to miss their connecting flights—most of the 11 wheelchair-bound passengers left their seats unassisted and hurried out. It was almost as if newfound concerns about making connections had somehow improved their health during the flight.

Two passengers had boarded with two dogs each. No doubt the airlines’ policy of allowing an occasional dog on a flight is understandable. But now planes are starting to sound and smell like kennels.

Special blue parking placards were initially a long-overdue effort to help the disabled. But these days, the definition of “disabled” has so expanded that a large percentage of the population can qualify for special parking privileges—or cheat in order to qualify.

In California, 26,000 disabled parking placards are currently issued to people over 100 years of age, even though state records list only about 8,000 living centenarians.

Current crises such as homelessness and illegal immigration did not start out as much of a public concern.

Originally, progressive politicians felt that cities should bend their vagrancy laws a bit to allow some of the poor to camp on the sidewalks. Bathroom and public health issues were considered minor, given the relatively small pool of so-called “street people.”

The Growing Crisis and coming White-Genocide in South Africa Urgent…Please Read

I am forwarding this desperate plea which was just received from one of our correspondents in South Africa. He is not a beggar, but is simply hoping to be heard, and hoping that somehow someone with authority in the American government will speak up on behalf of his people. Pastor Kemble
Dear Pastor Kemble

I write to you today, with a very heavy heart, but with the hope that you might be willing to help raise awareness in the US for the desperate situation in South Africa.

As you might be aware, the ANC government in South Africa has recently passed a motion in parliament by which they intend to seize all white-owned farms in South Africa – without any compensation. It’s all part of their insidious, communist plan to ultimately destroy all white South Africans and in particular the Afrikaans-speaking white community known as the “Afrikaner”. Of course this new law will pave the way to ultimately strip the White man of all his property & possessions. Their ultimate goal is to completely annihilate us as a people. It’s as simple as that. The ANC government has essentially declared war on the Afrikaner by attempting to legalize the wholesale destruction of the white minority in South Africa.

This morning I read on Newsweek that a petition is being signed by thousands of white South Africans in which they ask President Trump to please help white South Africans to emigrate to America as refugees. I have no idea if President Trump will even respond to it, as this could become a “sticky issue” for someone who is currently committed to stopping the flow of illegal immigrants into the US; but if anyone can help, he can. This crisis needs his urgent attention as the situation for our people in South Africa is getting worse by the day. Farm attacks are especially bad, with white farmers being slaughtered without mercy. Whole families are being wiped out and nothing is being done to stop it. The liberal, government-controlled newspapers are not reporting these murders, so the rest of the world is not aware of the real extent of these gruesome crimes. Our people are really in a very desperate situation, where total annihilation is now a reality staring us all in the face.

Through your reputation, I know you to be a bold and fearless preacher, one who won’t hesitate to call a spade, a spade. From my side, I just want to raise as much awareness in the US for our people’s desperate plea and our desperate situation. Would you be willing to help me in raising awareness of the South African crisis in some way? Perhaps you can also arrange for a petition to be drawn up in the US, so that the US government are forced to take note of what’s happening in South Africa and to speak-up on this terrible injustice being committed. Ultimately, I’m hoping that President Trump himself would speak up about this tragedy, as even a criminal government like the ANC would tread carefully around a man like President Donald Trump if he openly & publicly condemns this horrific injustice against the Afrikaner. They would be forced to sit-up and take heed of his disapproval and hopefully re-think this despicable criminal act.

NO ENTRY Katie Hopkins reveals she is ‘BANNED’ from South Africa after being detained for spreading ‘racist views’ By Guy Birchall

The controversial writer claimed on Twitter she was now out of the country following her detention but joked that they must have ‘missed her on the way in’.

In a tweet she wrote: “Thank you for all the kind emails & concern. I am out of South Africa – together with my documentary footage the #ANC don’t want you to see.”

Also in the post was a link to an article she had written for Canadian outlet Rebel Media as well as a picture of an email from the Department of Home Affairs.

The email stated that the “Deputy Minister requested that the above person (Hopkins) be prevented from entering South Africa due to her strong racist views.

“Please proceed with V-list placement.”

The V-list is a list of people prohibited from entering the country.

In her article for Rebel Media however, Hopkins claims: “They detained me under section 29(1)(d) of South Africa’s Immigration Act — which bans: ‘A member of or adherent to an association or organisation advocating the practice of racial hatred or social violence.'”

She added: “But I am a member of no such organisation and I deplore both racism and violence.

Will Saudi Arabia Free Its Women? Imagine the humiliation of a middle-aged mother having to ask a young son’s approval for life decisions. By Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, is in the United Kingdom this week to meet two female leaders: Queen Elizabeth II and Prime Minister Theresa May. He will see for himself that women have as much to contribute to public life as men.

In Saudi Arabia, governed by Shariah (Islamic law), a woman must live under the authority of a male guardian, her wali al-amr. The Quran (4:34) says, “Men are the protectors and maintainers of women, because Allah has given the one more [strength] than the other, and because they support them from their means.” The General Presidency for Scholarly Research, an official body in charge of Islamic legal opinion, has issued a fatwa construing the verse strictly: “A woman should not leave her house, except with her husband’s permission.”

Saudi women do not have freedom of movement and never become fully independent legal persons. Regardless of age, they need permission from a male guardian to travel overseas, apply for a passport, marry, or be released from prison. The guardian is usually a woman’s father or husband, but can also be a brother, cousin or even son. Imagine the humiliation of a middle-aged woman having to ask a young son’s approval for important and mundane life decisions.

Guardians’ reach doesn’t stop at the border. Last April, 24-year-old Dina Ali Lasloom was held up by Filipino authorities as she changed planes at Manila International Airport. Ms. Lasloom had left Saudi Arabia against her family’s wishes. Her Saudi uncles appeared and whisked her back to Riyadh. An airline official told Human Rights Watch he heard Ms. Lasloom begging for help before being carried out in a wheelchair with duct tape on her mouth, feet and hands. The Saudi government said this was “a family matter,” and she has not been heard from since.

Could things finally be changing? Around the time Ms. Lasloom was returned to Saudi Arabia, King Salman loosened the guardianship law, permitting women to access services such as health care without the approval of a male relative. Since then, he and the crown prince have promised women the right to vote, work, drive and even join the military. But those rights don’t amount to much with the male guardianship regime in place.

As part of his tour of the U.K. and U.S., the crown prince is hoping to persuade investors to back his Saudi modernization plan, Vision 2030. He stood up to Wahhabi clerics to allow concerts and sporting events in the kingdom, and he confronted the country’s wealthy elite last November, detaining those suspected of corruption at the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton. CONTINUE AT SITE

Russia’s Trail of Poison Another murder attempt in Britain of a former intelligence agent.

Another Russian agent in exile, another poisoning in England. Former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal, 66, and his daughter Yulia, 33, were found unconscious on a bench in Salisbury on Sunday and are in critical condition. Mr. Skripal was a double agent for the British intelligence service MI6. He was sentenced to 13 years for spying, but he and other agents were exchanged in Vienna in 2010 for 10 Russian agents arrested in the U.S. The Skripals have been living openly in Britain.

Scotland Yard called the attack “a major incident involving attempted murder by administration of a nerve agent.” A police officer who found the Skripals fell seriously ill. The poisoning echoes the attack that killed Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko in November 2006. A British inquiry concluded that the operation to slip polonium into his tea in a London hotel “was probably approved’’ by Vladimir Putin. Yet Britain made only modest protests, and the accused killers, Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitri Kovtun, remain at large in Russia despite British demands for extradition.

The obvious suspicion is that the Russians wanted Mr. Skripal dead, and his son and brother have died in unexplained circumstances in the last two years. Mr. Putin is a former KGB agent, so you can draw your own conclusions about the role of the Kremlin. As a demonstration of Russian ruthlessness, the poisoning is more evidence of the nature of the Moscow regime.

Israeli Innovations Trigger Global Enhancement: Ambassador( Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

Since its 1948-49 War of Independence, the Jewish State has faced clear and present lethal challenges, adversities, assaults and threats, handling them as opportunities in disguise. This state of mind has catapulted Israel to unprecedented heights, commercially and militarily – a uniquely productive partner of the United States.

The scarcity of natural resources and the nature of the Middle East – a prototype of conflict-ridden, violent, intolerant, merciless, unpredictable, shifty and tenuous environment – have shaped Israel’s do-or-die state of mind, producing game-changing innovations in the areas of health, medicine, agriculture, irrigation, science, communications, space, homeland and national security.

In Thou Shalt Innovate (How Israeli ingenuity repairs the world), Avi Jorisch – a senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council – documents the worldwide positive impact of Israel’s groundbreaking and cutting-edge hightech innovations upon critical challenges facing mankind.

Jorisch highlights the cardinal Jewish tenet of repairing – not controlling – the world (Tikkun Olam in Hebrew). This has generated a tailwind to Israel’s systematic sharing of its research and development with the world at-large, feeding reality-based optimism and upgrading the standard-of-living in the USA, India, Russia, China, Canada, Europe, Australia, Latin America, Asia and Africa. For example, since 2013 Israel has treated more than 2,500 Syrians seeking medical care, in addition to the dispatching of aid delegations to Turkey, Argentina, Mexico, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Rwanda, etc.

ELECTIONS ARE COMING: Democrats Sing the Texas Blues This week’s primaries shattered the dream of turning the Lone Star State purple. Karl Rove

Tuesday’s Texas primaries were supposed to show “rising Democratic enthusiasm,” in the words of National Public Radio’s Jessica Taylor, following reports that more Democrats were participating in early voting than Republicans in the state’s 15 most populous counties. “Such a swell in a bulwark red state could be an even more ominous sign for Republicans nationally,” Ms. Taylor wrote.

She was not alone. The New York Times’s Nate Cohn suggested that “surging Democratic tallies” in early voting may be “a sign that Texas may emerge as a fairly competitive state in the mid-term elections.” Vox’s Tara Golshan wrote that Democrats hope to “make Texas blue—or at the very least, purple” and that “a massive surge in voter enthusiasm is giving them hope.”

But with all the votes tallied, it turned out to be a case of “never mind,” as Gilda Radner, playing Emily Litella, used to say on “Saturday Night Live.”

Not only did more Texas Republicans (804,581) vote early than Democrats (565,355), but more Republicans than Democrats turned out Election Day. There were 1,543,674 total votes in the Republican primary—the GOP’s highest midterm total ever—compared with 1,037,779 in the Democratic primary. This gap of nearly 506,000 is less than the GOP’s margin in the 2014 and 2010 primaries (roughly 783,000 and 804,000, respectively), but still comparatively healthy.

The Flat Mind of Robert Friedman Like the French Bourbons, he has learned nothing and forgotten nothing. Helen Andrews

The French statesman Talleyrand famously observed about the Bourbons, “they had learned nothing and forgotten nothing.” Something similar might be said about New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. Once upon a time he was the avatar of a new age of economic interdependence that would lead to global peace. No two countries that each had a McDonald’s, he wrote, would ever go to war with each other. Then came the Balkans Wars in the 1990s. So much for the flat and interdependent world that Friedman purported to have discovered.

In a column of February 18, Friedman was in familiar form. Which is to say flat earth mode. Once more, his judgments were sweeping and apodictic. He declared a “code red” on the state of American democracy. “President Trump is either totally compromised by the Russians or is a towering fool, or both, but either way he has shown himself unwilling or unable to defend America against a Russian campaign to divide and undermine our democracy.”

The piece attracted more than 2,700 comments, “a personal record” according to Friedman, who credited the powerful public response to its being “the right column at the right time.” Funnily enough, he wasn’t even supposed to file a column that day. It wasn’t his turn in the weekly rotation. But he was so annoyed by Trump’s tweets in response to special counsel Robert Mueller’s most recent round of indictments that he emailed editor James Bennet to ask if he could file a bonus column, just for the web. “Not my day. Not in print. And it may be the most widely circulated column I’ve ever written,” he told CNN.

It is hard to know what exactly Friedman was so worked up about. It can’t be the Mueller indictments themselves, because nothing in the document released by the Department of Justice on February 17 suggests any collusion between Russians and the Trump campaign, much less Trump himself. It specifically describes the campaign staff who interacted with the paid Russians trolls as “unwitting.”

Passing the Torch to China? By Lawrence J. Haas

UNFOLDING EVENTS IN Washington and Beijing raise the disturbing specter of a global passing of the torch from the United States to China, one with frightening implications for freedom and democracy.

First, President Donald Trump seemed to applaud from afar as China’s leader consolidates his power over a more authoritarian government at home, while the regime promotes its model of governance in increasingly aggressive terms abroad. Second, Trump announced that he will slap steep tariffs on steel and aluminum and welcome a trade war that most of the world, and most of his own Republican Party, dreads.

These events may seem unrelated, but they’re really sides of the same coin, for they both signal a U.S. retreat from defending the Western liberal order of free-market capitalism and democratic government that it did so much to nourish in the decades since World War II.

Let’s take these one at a time.

In Beijing, the Communist Party is amending China’s constitution to end presidential term limits, enabling Xi Jinping to remain as party chief and Chinese president for as long as he likes and, thus, become China’s most powerful leader since Mao.