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More Lies from the UN by Maria Polizoidou

Posted By on May 8th, 2017

If the UN honestly wants peace, then it must accept that the modern Jewish state is the tugboat that will pull the whole Middle East into the 21st century. Rejecting the historic Jewish legitimacy in Jerusalem, is rejecting the quintessence of peace.

In historical terms, the modern Jewish state has greater historical legitimacy than most modern European states – and far more than at least the five Middle Eastern states artificially created out of the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement: the newborn countries of Greater Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq. In Europe, what we now call Germany and France only appeared in the historical space of the Western world in the 3rd Century AD.

Or could it be that secretly the United Nations does not want “peace” but instead the obliteration of Israel and its replacement by another Islamist state?

You can run away from history, but you cannot hide from it. History does not care about your religious beliefs, your political beliefs or your political correctness. History records facts, regardless of how you feel about them.

UNESCO’s latest resolution about Jerusalem, which denies the Jews’ and Israel’s legacy over its historical capital, Jerusalem, is yet another proof of the UN’s corrupt decline. It not only offends the historical truth and archeology of the Jewish people. It also offends the Greek people, and all Christians, who for thousands of years have also had ties with the area and the nation of Jews. As it also offends the foundations of Greek Orthodox Christianity, the Greek government — to is honor — voted against this hallucinatory UNESCO resolution.

Here are more facts: The King of Sparta, Arius I, who lived between 309-267 B.C., sent a letter to Onias the First, the High Priest of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem:

“The King of Sparta, Arius, sends greetings to the High Priest, Onias. It is written about the relations between the Jews and the Spartans that they are brotherly nations and that they originate from Abraham. Now that we have discovered this, tell us how your prosperity is. We write to you that your possessions and your animals are ours and our own possessions and animals are yours”.

The king of Sparta, Arius, not only accepted that the relationship between Spartans and Jews are much older than his reign, but also that there was (as we would call it today) a federation.

King Arius further established the cultural privilege and right between Greeks and Jews to be called brothers.

What the King Arius was really saying here is that two states with different religions — without common economic interests, without a common border and without even the same geographical area — can interact in a political and cultural way. It is an important lesson for modern politicians. It also shows that for millennia, the cultural and historical depth of the Jewish people is undeniable, as well as the foundation for friendship among the Middle East nations. The problem of interacting with other people, as we can even see throughout Europe today, is on the Muslim side, not on the other side.

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It’s Time the UN Stopped Congratulating Kim Jong Un By Claudia Rosett

Posted By on May 8th, 2017

Protocol has its uses, not least at the United Nations. But when it comes to lavishing on murderous tyrants the same pro forma felicitations accorded to the elected leaders of free nations, it’s time for Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to clean up the act of the UN Protocol and Liaison Service — which reports to him.

What’s the problem? There are many problems, actually, and they stem from the UN’s morally incontinent practice of doling out to all member states — whether totalitarian or democratic; North Korea or Costa Rica — the same perquisites, including a lot of diplomatic swag for the most monstrous dictators on the planet.

Lest that sound too abstract, let’s turn to one of the latest outrages. This cameo starts with a UN communique to war-wracked Syria, where last month the state news agency, SANA, reported that President Bashar al-Assad had just received “a cable of congratulations from United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on the occasion of Syria’s independence day.” According to the SANA dispatch, (boldface mine) Guterres in this cable “expressed his warmest congratulations to the Syrian people and government on this occasion.”

For anyone even remotely familiar with the doings of Assad and the condition of Syria, that message sounds more than a tad out of touch. Assad is a despot who inherited power upon the death of his despotic father 17 years ago. During the first decade of his rule, operating as Iran’s chief mascot in the Middle East, Bashar Assad presided over a terror-sponsoring state (a patron of the terrorist groups Hezbollah and Hamas), employed the help of North Korea in building a clandestine nuclear reactor with no evident purpose except to produce nuclear bomb fuel (the Al Kibar reactor, destroyed by an Israeli air strike in 2007) and — with his secret police, torture chambers, dungeons and related atrocities — oppressed his own countrymen so thoroughly and brutally that in 2011 they rebelled.

As we all know, Assad refused to give up power. He talked about elections, and offered a complete sham. He fought back, as head of a merciless tyranny. He has by now used everything from barrel bombs to chemical weapons against his fellow Syrians. In the UN’s official protocol list, Assad has kept his place as Syria’s official head of state — a position he has retained at the cost of a war that has brought the deaths of more than 400,000 people, misery for millions of refugees, the rise of ISIS and the return of Russia to the Middle East as the weapons-bearing godfather of Damascus.

In this context, it was hard to believe that Guterres would send a message of “warmest congratulations” to Assad, whatever the topic. Surely this report from SANA was just another piece of propaganda from the Syrian regime? CONTINUE AT SITE

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University Sit-in Results in Administration Caving to All Demands By Rick Moran

Posted By on May 8th, 2017

Borrowing a tactic from the 1960s college protest movement, the University of California at Santa Cruz African-Black Student Alliance occupied the administration building and presented four demands to school officials.

In the 1960s, most administrators were made of sterner stuff than the spineless, groveling bureaucrats who run schools today. Back then, intelligent administrators might negotiate a settlement. Stupid authorities would get the police to expel the students by force.

But university officials at UC Santa Cruz caved in completely to the black activist demands, setting the stage for a repeat of the occupation by some other group at a later date.

Anyone figure out how much all of this is going to cost?

Santa Cruz Sentinel:

• UCSC committed to extending up to a four-year housing guarantee to all students from underrepresented communities who applied to and live in the Rosa Parks African American Theme House.

• UCSC committed to converting the first floor lounge area of the Rosa Parks African American Theme House from housing back to a community lounge space.

• USCS committed to painting the exterior of the Rosa Parks African American Theme House in the Pan-Afrikan colors red, gold and green.

• USCS committed to delivering a mandatory “educational diversity” orientation to all incoming freshmen and transfer students.

Lest anyone think the fearless leader of UCSC had any intention of standing up to the bullies, here’s how he decided to “confront” the protesters:

Two hours earlier, an agreement that would end the three-day occupation did not seem likely. About 3:30 p.m., members of the Alliance leadership announced through a bullhorn that Blumenthal had declined to meet at Kerr Hall, citing concerns for his safety.

Instead, Blumenthal sent members of his administration, including campus diversity officer Linda Scholz, to speak with the students at the entrance of Kerr Hall. Surrounded by hundreds of chanting, screaming students, Scholz invited the leadership group of the Alliance to speak with Blumenthal in the nearby Thimann Labs building.

It initially appeared as if the Alliance would decline to speak with Blumenthal and, instead, insist the chancellor meet on their terms. However, the leadership group eventually accompanied the administrators to Thimann Labs.

After more than an hour in conference, the Alliance leadership and Hernandez-Jason returned to Kerr Hall to announce the university’s decision and allow the students to celebrate their victory.

Got that? The chancellor thought it was too dangerous for him to meet with the protesters but had no qualms about sending some of his staff. They were screamed at and threatened with bodily harm for their troubles.

No word on how that private meeting between the chancellor and the protesters went but you can bet there was a lot of screaming and threats. CONTINUE AT SITE

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What Happened in France? By Bruce Bawer

Posted By on May 8th, 2017

How could Marine Le Pen have lost in a landslide?

Why, after the Brits chose Brexit, and Americans chose Trump, did the Dutch fail Wilders, and the French fail Le Pen?

How could a country that has been hit by several major terrorist attacks in recent years, and that has undergone a more profound social transformation owing to Islamic immigration, vote for business as usual?

Wilders, buoyed by the Brexit and Trump victories, said that 2017 would be a “Year of the Populist.” So far, alas, it’s not turning out that way.

Yes, there are positive signs. The Sweden Democrats are on the upswing. And Wilders did gain seats in the Dutch Parliament.

But if you’ve witnessed the reality of Islamization in cities like Rotterdam and Paris and Stockholm, you may well wonder: what, in heaven’s name, will it take for these people to save their own societies, their own freedoms, for their own children and grandchildren?

I’m not the only one who’s been obsessing for years over this question. I’ve yet to see a totally convincing answer to it.

One way of trying to answer it is to look at countries one by one. For example, the Brits and French feel guilty about their imperial histories, and hence find it difficult to rein in the descendants of subject peoples. The Germans feel guilty about their Nazi past – and the Swedes feel guilty about cozying up to Nazis – and thus feel compelled to lay out the welcome mat for, well, just about anybody. The Dutch, similarly, are intensely aware that during the Nazi occupation they helped ship off a larger percentage of their Jews to the death camps than any other Western European country, and feel a deep need to atone.

Postmodernism, of course, is a factor. According to postmodern thinking, no culture is better than any other – and it’s racist to say otherwise. No, scratch that – other cultures are, in fact, better than Western culture. Whites, by definition, are oppressors, imperialists, and colonialists, while “people of color” are victims.

And Muslims are the biggest victims of all.

Not that that makes any sense. Over the centuries since the religion was founded, Muslim armies have gained control over much of north Africa, the Middle East, and large parts of Europe. Islam itself, by definition, is imperialistic. And whenever Islam has conquered non-Islamic territories, it has proven itself to be profoundly oppressive, offering infidels exactly three options: death, subordination, or conversion. But to say these things has become verboten.

Living in a Muslim neighborhood of Amsterdam in early 1999, I read up on Islam and realized very quickly what Europe was up against. Two and a half years later, when the terrorist attacks of 9/11 occurred, I assumed pretty much everyone else would get it, too.

But it didn’t work that way. Yes, some people did get it almost instantaneously, in both America and Europe. They caught up on a lot of reading, did a great deal of soul-searching, and underwent a major philosophical metamorphosis.

But even after other horrific attacks occurred – in Madrid, London, and elsewhere – a lot of people refused to accept the plain truth. The plainer the truth got, in fact, the more fiercely they resisted it. And as skilled propagandists began to represent Muslims as the mother of all victim groups, many Westerners were quick to buy into it all.

How, again, to make sense of this?

Yes, the mainstream media have played a role, routinely whitewashing Islam, soft-pedaling the Islamic roots of jihadist terror, and staying silent about the dire reality of everyday Islamization. But no one who actually lives in western Europe has any excuse for ignorance about these matters. The truth is all around them. Even in the remotest places, however dishonest the mainstream media, the truth can be found on the Internet.

But – and this is a fact that some of us are thoroughly incapable of identifying with, and thus almost thoroughly incapable of grasping – some people don’t want to know the truth. And if they do know the truth, they want to un-know it. CONTINUE AT SITE

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The New York Times and Upper West Side Segregation By Robert Weissberg

Posted By on May 8th, 2017

In the PC world of the New York Times, it is better not to offend certain sensitivities or raise uncomfortable questions than honestly address educational disasters. One can only be reminded of proper Victorians struggling to discuss venereal diseases as if sex never happened.

Of all of the taboo topics in today’s political landscape, absolutely nothing is more fraught with danger than race. Recall the old joke about how people dance at a nudist camp — carefully, very carefully. Everything from vocabulary to tone of voice must be carefully calculated and the slightest mistake can be career-ending.

A complex etiquette per se is not, however, the problem. Civil society would collapse if everybody spoke bluntly. The question is whether taboos blind us from serious problems that demand forthright, honest discussion.

A perfect illustration of how the race taboo undermines honest discussions of serious social problems can be found in recent New York Times articles (and here) about redrawing school district lines in Manhattan’s über-liberal Upper West Side. These articles abound in euphemisms and omissions guaranteed to obscure awkward truths.

Manhattan’s Upper West Side is home to a multitude of affluent white liberals and large numbers of poor blacks and Hispanics residing in public housing. Some schools, all overwhelmingly white, excel academically. Not surprisingly, “white” schools in this neighborhood have long waiting lists for prospective enrollees. But, often only a few blocks away, are schools with large poor black and Hispanic enrollments plagued by fights (often involving weapons), classroom disorder, and appalling academic outcomes. The polite nonracial euphemism for these schools might be “schools with low test scores.”

For those with school-age children who strongly care about their education, school district demarcations are vital. Having one’s offspring attend a stellar grade-school with bright classmates is seen as the first step to admission to an elite college. Equally crucial is safety — not even the most rabid Bernie Sanders fans would risk their children’s well-being, including the danger of acquiring bad habits (drug use, thievery, a penchant for violence, a rotten work ethic and similar underclass inclinations). As one education-minded parent said about these “diverse” schools, “My husband and I support public school education but not at the expense of our children’s educational and physical well-being,”

There are also major financial costs for parents in a lousy school district. For apartment owners, residing in a “bad school” attendance zone can substantially reduce the value of one’s residence, while the private school alternative can cost upward of $30,000 per child each year. If a private school is unaffordable, the remaining option is relocating to the suburbs, hardly appetizing to many Upper West Side liberals.

Now, what happens when a Department of Education bureaucrat announces that junior may be bounced from his nearly all-white (and often-overcrowded) high-test score school, and instead sent to the nearby “diverse” school that, say the bureaucrats, offers junior a chance to benefit from diversity since “studies show” that such a racial/ethnic mixture is essential mastering today’s multicultural world?

Ironically, these well-educated, affluent “good thinking” Manhattan (white) residents now confront the same tribulations faced by down-market white Southerners over court-ordered integration post Brown v. Board of Education (1954). But, unlike these bigoted Rednecks, white liberal New Yorkers, aided by the racially hypersensitive New York Times, need not block the doorway of junior top-flight nearly all white school and shout, “Segregation today, segregation tomorrow….” while the federal government orders the New York City’s police to forcibly enroll residents of nearby public housing as junior’s classmates. These white liberals are expert at walking on eggshells (I’m not a racist but….”) and playing politics to keep their kids in white schools; there is even a website on how to game the system.

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Healthcare Reform? Let’s Take a Close Look at Some Examples Abroad By Antonio R. Chaves

Posted By on May 8th, 2017

Republicans won the presidency and majorities in Congress based in part on promises to replace Obamacare. Nonetheless, with so many Republicans facing re-election in states that voted for Clinton, the strategy of “repeal and replace” is easier said than done. Furthermore, in view of the challenges involved in garnering enough votes for the “Obama-Lite” alternative that barely passed the House, Republicans appear to be running out of options.

If the “gradualist” strategy is so problematic, why not move to single payer? In Japan, healthcare spending makes up only 10% of GDP even though it has the world’s highest percentage of people 65 or older. In the U.S. it is an appalling 17% (Fig. 1). Japan also has the world’s lowest infant mortality, while in America this healthcare indicator exceeds that of all other developed nations with a comparable GDP (Fig. 2). If lack of access to healthcare is responsible for this shocking statistic, why not “get with the program” and shift these costs to taxpayers as they do in nearly all other affluent nations?

Before turning over 17% of GDP to the government, we should not overlook one extraordinary exception to this worldwide trend: Singapore is second only to Japan in having the world’s lowest infant mortality (Fig. 2) even though it has the least-subsidized healthcare in the developed world (Fig. 1). Singapore also stands apart from other developed nations in that it spends less than 5% of its GDP on healthcare (Fig. 1). If privatization works so well in Singapore, why have market forces failed so miserably in America?

While it is common knowledge that increasing the supply or decreasing the demand results in lower costs, many overlook the importance of having a critical mass of savvy customers shopping around for the best deals. This selective pressure ensures that the product or service gets better and cheaper for all consumers. In Singapore, patients shop around because co-payments cover a considerable portion of their medical bills and everyone is required to have a health savings account. In the single-payer systems that predominate in Europe, it is the government that does the shopping and bargaining. In America, health maintenance organizations stabilized prices in the 1990s by bargaining with providers and rationing services. However, many patients objected to “managed care” and the ensuing backlash resulted in government mandates that limited what these HMOs could do to cut costs. In the absence of a conscientious buyer, hyperinflation resumed by the end of the decade. Even though European governments provide healthcare at a lower cost, Americans who want to replace Obamacare with single payer should be careful what they wish for. More on this later.

Another reliable strategy for lowering costs is deregulation. We need not look abroad to see this principle applies to medical services: The cost of cosmetic surgery in the U.S. has remained remarkably stable despite a huge increase in demand. This has been attributed largely to a streamlined regulatory process that makes it easier for competitors to enter the market and for cost-cutting innovations to get approved.

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North Korea Detains Fourth U.S. Citizen for ‘Hostile Acts’ Kim Hak-song works for Pyongyang University of Science and Technology By Jonathan Cheng

Posted By on May 8th, 2017

Four U.S. citizens are currently detained in North Korea and a number of others have been held and released there since 2009.

SEOUL—North Korea’s state media said officials detained a U.S. citizen tied to a Christian-backed university in North Korea, two weeks after arresting one of his colleagues.

Saturday’s arrest of Kim Hak-song for committing “hostile acts” brings the number of known U.S. citizens detained in North Korea to four, adding another twist to troubled relations between Washington and Pyongyang as the U.S. seeks to slow the North’s nuclear and missile program.

According to Sunday’s report by North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency, Mr. Kim works for the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, a university founded in 2010 by James Kim, a Korean-American Christian businessman.

Two weeks ago, North Korea detained Tony Kim, a Korean-American accounting professor at PUST, as he was preparing to depart North Korea at Pyongyang’s main international airport, citing “hostile acts.”

PUST, while not officially Christian, hires largely Christian faculty, and says on its website that “churches can support PUST through prayer and through spreading the news about this project among congregation members.”

North Korea has arrested a number of U.S. citizens doing Christian-related work in the isolated country. Kenneth Bae, a Korean-American missionary, was sentenced to 12 years’ hard labor for hostile acts, and was freed after two years in November 2014.

In 2014, American Jeffery Fowle was detained and held for six months after leaving a Bible in a nightclub bathroom.

A spokesman for PUST’s leadership confirmed Kim Hak-song’s arrest on Saturday, just as he was about to leave North Korea after a visit of several weeks. The spokesman said Mr. Kim was at PUST to do agricultural work at an experimental farm operated by the university. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Israeli Politicians Pressure Trump on Mideast Promises U.S. leader expected to travel to Saudi Arabia, Israel and Europe later this month By Jay Solomon

Posted By on May 8th, 2017

NEW YORK—President Donald Trump came under increased pressure from the Israeli government to follow through on foreign policy pledges he made during the election campaign, including moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, just days before he embarks on his inaugural trip to the Middle East.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warmly welcomed Mr. Trump’s election, following eight years of butting heads with former U.S. President Barack Obama on issues ranging from Israel’s building in disputed territories to the nuclear deal with Iran.

But Mr. Trump’s pledge this month to resume Mideast diplomacy has unnerved members of Mr. Netanyahu’s cabinet, many of whom spoke at a conference Sunday in New York. The U.S. leader is scheduled to visit Saudi Arabia, Israel and Europe beginning on May 19, and peace between Israel and the Palestinians is expected to be high on his agenda.

Some of Mr. Netanyahu’s top aides questioned the nature of the Mideast peace process, which for decades has sought to establish an independent Palestinian state on lands in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. They sharply criticized the leadership of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, whom Mr. Trump welcomed to the White House last week.

“Can the Palestinian Authority be a genuine partner for peace in the Middle East?” asked Yuval Steinitz, Israel’s energy minister, who sits on Mr. Netanyahu’s national security cabinet. He accused Mr. Abbas of leading a government that was corrupt, anti-Semitic and divided.

Other members of Mr. Netanyahu’s cabinet were more blunt on Sunday. “As long as I’m a minister, the Palestinian state won’t be created,” said Ofir Akunis, Israel’s minister of science and technology.

Another, more pressing issue, is the status of the American embassy in Israel.

Mr. Trump repeatedly pledged during the campaign to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv once he took office. Both Israel and the Palestinians claim Jerusalem as the capital of their states, making its status among the most contentious issues in the peace process. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Your Friends in Public School The lengths they’ll go to deny kids and parents an education choice.

Posted By on May 8th, 2017

A California appellate court has unanimously rejected an attempt by the Anaheim Elementary School District to throw out a petition by parents to convert a failing school into a charter using the state’s parent trigger law. The district wasted two years and hundreds of thousands of dollars fighting parents. Can the parents sue for damages?

California’s 2010 parent trigger law allows a majority of parents whose kids attend a failing school to catalyze reforms. In January 2015, Palm Lane Elementary School parents with the help of the law’s author Gloria Romero and education activist Alfonso Flores filed a petition with the school district. The teachers’ union abetted by district officials then used dirty tricks to thwart parents, including accusations of bribery. When intimidation failed, district officials tried to reject the petition on technical points, every one of which was dismissed by the appellate court.

The district claimed Palm Lane didn’t qualify as failing because California had obtained a waiver from the U.S. Department of Education that exempted schools from Adequate Yearly Progress benchmarks for the 2013-2014 school year. Yet Palm Lane had failed to meet those benchmarks for nine of the prior 10 years.

The appellate court affirmed the findings of Orange County Superior Court judge Andrew Banks who in July 2015 ruled in favor of the parents on all counts and blasted the district for being “unreasonable, arbitrary, capricious and unfair.” The school district appealed.

Maybe district officials were hoping that parents, who were represented pro bono by Kirkland & Ellis, would drop the case once their kids moved to middle school. But in the two years that the case has sat on appeal, the district and parents have racked up more legal expenses. And students have continued to be deprived of a quality education.

The appellate court ordered the district to cover the parents’ legal fees, but that won’t make up for the lost education. The district will merely pass on the costs to state and local taxpayers including Palm Lane parents who own homes in the district. The outrage is that this disgrace generates no outrage.

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Europe’s French Reprieve Macron beats Le Pen, but without growth the extremes will be back.

Posted By on May 8th, 2017

French voters chose a centrist reformer over the nationalist right on Sunday by electing Emmanuel Macron as their next President. The question now is whether Mr. Macron can deliver on his promise to reform France’s sclerotic economy and diminish the Islamist terror threat.

Mr. Macron’s decisive victory is as much a rejection of the far-right National Front as an endorsement of his platform. Despite Marine Le Pen’s yearslong effort to whitewash her party’s reputation for anti-Semitism and Vichy nostalgia, the keys to the Élysée Palace proved as elusive to her as they did to her father, Jean-Marie, in 2002’s presidential runoff against Jacques Chirac.

Mr. Macron deserves credit for his initiative. The 39-year-old former investment banker quit the incumbent Socialists to launch his independent centrist movement, En Marche! His outsider status and optimistic vision proved attractive to voters fed up with traditional political parties. He offered a clear if modest reform alternative, with proposals to shrink the bureaucracy, cut corporate taxes and modify the job-killing 35-hour workweek.
He was also lucky. The center-right Republican nominee François Fillon, a self-proclaimed Thatcherite, was felled by allegations of nepotism. Independent, hard-left firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon divided the socialist vote. In the runoff Mr. Macron was the default choice of voters who wanted to block the National Front.

This means President Macron will have a fragile mandate and a narrow window to press his agenda. France needs radical reform of a government that in 2015 took 57% of national GDP and an economy with a jobless rate that is 10% eight years after the financial crisis.

Yet political failure is the recent French norm. Successive Presidents have failed to undo the 1999 35-hour-workweek law amid militant union protests. Mr. Mélenchon and his “Unbowed France” movement are promising chaos if Mr. Macron dares to advance what the socialist calls “neoliberalism.” Mr. Macron’s best bet is to go big and abolish the 35-hour workweek as Mr. Fillon promised, rather than seek marginal fixes and pay the political price anyway. The same goes for cutting the corporate tax rate to 25% from 33.3%, especially as the U.S. heads toward a 20% rate.