by Mike Konrad
An admission about homosexual influences, by a famous documentary, does much to explain society today.
India has just legalized gay sex. This is roughly one-sixth of the world's population. A few years ago, this would have been unthinkable. What happened? An admission about homosexual influences, by a famous documentary, does much to explain society today.
We must first go back to the 1960s, to an amazing documentary by CBS, hosted by Mike Wallace, called "The Homosexuals."
In the documentary, Mike Wallace noted that, as late as 1967:
Most Americans are repelled by the mere notion of homosexuality. A CBS news survey shows that two out of three Americans look upon homosexuals with disgust, discomfort or fear… The majority of Americans favor legal punishment, even for homosexual acts performed in private between consenting adults. "The Homosexuals," (6:39), CBS, 1967, with Mike Wallace.
Not too long ago, people received severe sentences for homosexual behavior.
This man is twenty-seven, college educated... He has been in jail three times for committing homosexual acts. If he is arrested once more, he faces the possibility of life in prison. "The Homosexuals," (6:03) CBS, 1967, with Mike Wallace.
Yet, within a generation, homosexuality became accepted, and today it is celebrated, almost as desirable and heroic. This would have been unthinkable, even in the 1960s.
I have also noticed older people, whom I have known for decades, change their attitudes. In the 1960s, they would have been one of those Americans who saw homosexuality as disgusting. Now, they are "tolerant." The brainwashing seems to have worked retroactively.
Do not get me wrong! I am not advocating the recriminalization of consensual homosexual acts. Some of the laws back then were unnecessarily strict. But neither do I celebrate homosexuality as a good thing, something to be sought. I would have preferred the limited accommodation of decriminalization, and nothing more.
The usual explanation given is that the Stonewall Riots of 1969 were the game changer. When police raided a homosexual bar, the patrons fought back. Homosexual rights were brought into the public eye. The problem is that the Stonewall Riots were not the cause.
One could track further back to the Mattachine Society founded in 1950, or the drawings by Tom of Finland, the latter of which would become the inspiration for the Village People.
Simply put, without Tom of Finland, there would have been no Village People. – The Guardian
An amazing admission in the 1967 CBS documentary confirms what many have said under their breaths, and what other have suspected.
Homosexuals are discriminated against in almost all fields of employment, in all parts of the country. But in the world of the creative arts, they received equal treatment; indeed, some would say better treatment. There is even talk of a homosexual mafia in the arts, dominating various fields. Theater, music, dance, fashion.
In painting, there is the commonly expressed notion that the homosexuals influence has been corrupting:
In the fashion industry, many observers see an effort to blend the sexes, to defeminize woman, to replace curve and counter with sexless, geometric sterility… "The Homosexuals," (31:05) CBS, 1967, with Mike Wallace.
If someone said that out loud today, they would be charged with hate speech and have their lives destroyed.
But the problem is not even limited to homosexuality.
If one were to watch fashion shows, with a discerning eye, one would wonder why so much of women's fashion has women dressed like boys. The women look almost androgynous.
This in not even a recent development
1920s women's clothing was also extremely androgynous, especially considering the flouncy skirts and cruelly exaggerated waistlines that had gone before it during the Victorian period. – A History Of Androgyny In Fashion
Writers have noted how the ideal runway model seems perilously close to looking pre-pubescent.
Acne Confirms: Fashion's Ideal Woman Is a 12-Year-Old Boy – Yahoo Lifestyle
Now, obviously, it is not the models who push this. It is the fashion designers. The very ones that Mike Wallace said might belong to a "homosexual mafia."
Neither am I a fulminating fundamentalist who thinks women should not wear pants. I think jeans look good on a woman, when they accent her curves and contours. I do not expect all women to look like the quasi-androgynous Twiggy of the 1960s or Kate Moss. And why would androgyny be pushed as the ideal, anyway?
Since the rise of Hollywood, and mass media, we have allowed our culture to be directed, and led, by a minority. Though it be politically incorrect to admit, it seems that a disproportional amount of these people are what many, in the 1960s, would have called sexually deviant.
With the advent of movies, they could influence the population, but only to a point. If they became too radical, the public would not pay for the tickets. With radio in the 1930s and 40s, there was no visual input. Androgyny does not translate well over AM.
With the introduction of visual TV in the 1950s and 60s, these creative professionals set the tone. Most of the public had no choice about what was broadcast. And since TV was ostensibly free at that time, there was no disincentive not to watch. An advertiser might balk if things went too far, but it was a process of erosion.
So within a short period from 1967 to 1976, the media could move the public to accept homosexual rights. Rod Stewart released "The Killing of Georgie," a song about the murder of a New York homosexual, and it got major airplay, something which would have been unthinkable nine years earlier.
There can be no doubt that Hollywood and New York were the most influential centers of art in the Western world, though that may be changing. Leveraging this influence, the embedded "homosexual mafia" changed the United States, which then started the ball rolling to change the world. Hence… India, which has just legalized gay sex.
A small "homosexual mafia" has foisted itself on the planet, and quite successfully.
The key was their control of the media.
The present cultural war is over that control. The internet truly democratized the media, which is no longer centralized. Hence, Facebook and Twitter are now shadow banning.
What would have been unthinkable 50 years ago – and might have landed one in jail – is today lauded and heralded. And much of this is due to the influences of a small, unrepresentative community. What is amazing is how easily people have allowed themselves to be led, rather than think for themselves. This mafia should never have had this much influence.
Now that the internet has broken the monopoly of those creatives, they seek new ways to reign in the true liberty that would counteract them.
Donald Trump has angered feminists all over again, after a new report suggests that he has told the female staff of his administration that they need to always "dress like women" when at work. – The Telegraph
Trump is not destroying democracy, he is contesting with the minority who would.
Mike Konrad is the pen name of an American who wishes he had availed himself more fully of the opportunity to learn Spanish better in high school, lo those many decades ago. He runs a website about the Arab community in South America at http://latinarabia.com.
Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/09/media_of_the_rise_of_homosexuality.html
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by Elad Benari
Oklahoma Senator James Lankford's law would require UNRWA to change its definition of Palestinian refugees or the US will sever ties.
Reuters
US Senator James Lankford (R-Oklahoma) has proposed legislation that
would permanently sever Washington’s funding to UNRWA if it does not
change its definition of “legitimate Palestinian refugees”, reports i24news.
Lankford said Thursday he was introducing a bill that would enshrine President Donald Trump’s decision
to end US funding to UNRWA in law and open the door to a resumption of
funding if UNRWA stops bestowing refugee status on descendants of male
Palestinian Arab refugees who fled what is now Israel in 1948 or the
1967 Six Day War.
“We are currently funding an entity that has ensured that a refugee
population of several hundreds of thousands 70 years ago has exploded to
more than 5 million,” said the Senator.
“This is not sustainable -- for American taxpayers, who are asked to
finance the welfare of these individuals, for the Palestinians
themselves, or for the Israelis,” he added.
Lankford alluded to his bill’s potential impact on the Palestinian
“right of return” to land in what is now Israel, arguing that UNRWA’s
methodology “wrongfully” implies that the 5.4 million who access its
services have an “internationally-sanctioned right to return to Israel.”
"This isn’t about cutting funding for aid to the Palestinians; it’s
about providing foreign aid the right way so people’s lives are actually
improved and American interests secured,” said Lankford, according to i24news.
He added that “UNRWA is a barrier to peace, and it must be reformed.
If it cannot reform, the US should find other ways to help the
Palestinians people access education, jobs, and healthcare.”
Lankford’s initiative comes a week after the Trump administration
announced it would no longer fund the UN agency for “Palestinian
refugees”.
The announcement by Washington came several months after it decided
to cut some of its funding to UNRWA, citing a need to undertake a
fundamental re-examination of the organization, both in the way it
operates and the way it is funded.
A report
last week said that the White House is expected to insist UNRWA that
slash the number of Arabs recognized as refugees, though the State
Department statement announcing the cut to UNRWA made no mention of
this.
The administration’s move was met with anger in the Arab world. Jordan’s foreign minister warned the decision would only fuel radicalism and harm prospects for Middle East peace.
The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) called on parliaments around the world to oppose the US decision and fight it through the UN General Assembly and Security Council.
Elad Benari
Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/251763
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by Andrew Harrod
Quakers join the global demonization of Israel.
“This is not prison; this is a genocide,” stated an audience
member following August 29 movie screenings concerning the Gaza Strip at
the Washington, DC office of the Friends Committee on National
Legislation (FCNL). Typifying the Israel-hating audience of about 25
that filled FCNL’s small Capitol Hill presentation room, this woman’s
comments demonstrated how Quakers at FCNL and beyond have joined the
global demonization of Israel.
The woman, a self-professed member of the radical anti-Israel organization Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), “was totally sickened” by the evening’s viewings of Gaza in Context and Gaza: A Gaping Wound. These two films formed the latest presentation of Voices from the Holy Land (VFHL), a Washington, DC-area film club that unites local members of Israel’s enemies such as JVP and is well-known
to this author. Gaza’s ruling Hamas terrorists could not have been more
pleased with VFHL’s pseudo-documentaries depicting victimized
Palestinians and fiendish Zionists, as the JVP woman declared, “I just
want to stand up and salute every Palestinian.”
Such bias belied the supposed objectivity of the evening’s introduction by VFHL’s Deepak Kenkeremath,
a member of Manassas Presbyterian Church in Virginia. The “mainstream
media” discusses Gaza in terms of “words and phrases like terrorists,
and Hamas, and rockets, and suicide bombers, and Israeli Defense
Forces,” he stated. Somehow the evening’s agitprop sought to expose a
deeper, hidden truth behind the clear meaning of these plain words, and
give “context for understanding what is going on in Gaza right now.”
Similarly, in his post-screening discussion of his recent charity trip to Gaza to perform surgery, VFHL’s James Cobey,
an orthopedic surgeon and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, engaged in moral
inversion of Hamas aggressors and Israeli defenders. The JVP woman’s
comments followed Cobey’s remark that omnipresent Israeli drones
overflying Gaza meant that there “everybody feels they are imprisoned.”
Accordingly, he claimed that in Gaza the “reason the Palestinians shoot
these rockets, which aren’t very powerful, is because they are
frustrated,” not because of Hamas’ jihad ideology.
The considerable dangers of Hamas rockets, as well as terror tunnels and more recently fire kites, must cause considerable loss of sleep among Israelis. Yet Cobey focused not on their necessity to quickly take cover
in bomb shelters, but on Gaza’s rest needs. He stated that the night
before he left Gaza, the Israeli Air Force dropped 90 bombs in six
hours, and complained that “it is hard to sleep with bombs all night
long.”
Cobey’s fellow Episcopalian and VFHL member Tom Getman demonstrated once again how his antisemitism was a primary factor in turning the Christian aid agency World Vision International against Israel. He has previously ranted this year before an anti-Israel conference audience (including this author) about Zionism’s “genocidist” God. His writings for the George Soros-funded Sojourners magazine have slanderously described the Old Testament Canaanite god of child sacrifice, Moloch,
as an “angry Israeli god.” As Dexter van Zile from the Committee for
Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) has documented, with Getman et al leading, “World Vision’s behavior is, simply put, scandalous” towards Israel.
Getman at FCNL noted that he “worked five years in Palestine” for
World Vision’s Jerusalem, West Bank, and Gaza operations. His comments
evoked those of the Massachusetts Episcopal Bishop Gayle Harris,
who recently apologized for fabricating Israeli atrocity stories. He
described an Israeli military that willfully attacked humanitarian
Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) like World Vision, as if the
standard human shield tactics of jihadists such as Hamas did not encompass NGOs.
Contrary to the Israeli military’s documented high ethical standards, Getman claimed to have once stood near Red Cross tents at a Gaza intersection
with my flak jacket on, clearly marked as an NGO. The men on either
side of me were shot, one right here in the forehead, and the other with
a graze wound. I could hear no sound of the shot; it was from 1,500
meters from across the barrier, across the fence. That happens every
day, not just what you are seeing, even when we would call regularly the
coordinates of our projects….I came to believe that when we called in
coordinates, they added us to their list, and that to me shows the kind
of evil we are facing, and how we must mobilize in ways that I think we
haven’t even begun to comprehend.
Corresponding to Getman’s comments, much of the post-screening
discussion concerned political advocacy against Israel. VFHL member
Thomas Johnson mentioned the Washington, DC Episcopal Diocese Companion Diocesan Committee—Jerusalem,
where he collaborates with both Cobey and Getman. Getman emphasized the
importance of weaning Christian Zionists away from Israel. “We have
many former Christian Zionist friends, inadvertent Zionist friends who,
when they have got the kind of picture we got today, will come over to
the winning side,” he said.
Cobey, meanwhile, praised President Barack Obama’s 2009 Cairo speech, with its politically correct pieties
about Islam, as “fantastic.” Cobey said that some saw in Obama a coming
“great change in the relationship to Israel after that, but he backed
off, he was told to stop, he wouldn’t be reelected.” Cobey hoped that
the former president freed from reelection concerns could be a “great
speaker” on Israel.
Similar sentiments came from the evening’s hosts, FCNL Legislative Director for Middle East Policy Kate Gould, and FCNL Quaker Field Secretary Christine Ashley. The Iran nuclear deal promoter
Gould noted people such as Hillary Clinton “who have supported past
attacks on Gaza, even those who we may not think of as natural allies on
this issue.” They have “frustration and anger about the continuation of
the ‘occupation’” by Israel over Palestinians, and therefore there are
politically “really some new opportunities.”
Gould said that
politicians are “hearing certainly from those who want to see more bombs
and they are saying we don’t hear enough from people who support human
rights.” Her ideas of human rights supporters such as the Virginia
Coalition for Human Rights (VCHR) were rather curious. This local group contains members of organizations supporting the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel, such as JVP and the Hamas-derived American Muslims for Palestine (AMP).
The evening’s affiliations with BDS supporters such as VFHL rendered hollow FCNL’s official online statement that FCNL members “do not take a position on BDS.” Meanwhile, the Quaker church has divested from companies doing business with Israel. Israel has also listed
the Quakers’ American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) among 20
organizations such as JVP that are banned from entering Israel due to
BDS support, as a result of the AFSC’s longstanding anti-Israel animus.
Most Jews would not have appreciated the event’s seething contempt
against Israel and the discovery that FCNL is no friend of the Jewish
state. Yet Ashley tried to end the evening on a note of John Lennon-like happy multicultural platitudes. She blithely quoted from the Quaker writer Parker J. Palmer, who apparently has never studied Islamic supremacist doctrines like jihad.
Palmer had stated that
all the great spiritual traditions when you boil them down, are
saying one simple thing, be not afraid…you don’t have to be your fears,
and you don’t have to create a world in which those fears dominate the
conditions of many, many people.
Many should fear the FCNL’s warped views.
Andrew E. Harrod is a freelance researcher and writer who holds a PhD from the Fletcher
School of Law and Diplomacy and a JD from George Washington University
Law School. He is a fellow with the Lawfare Project,
an organization combating the misuse of human rights law against
Western societies. You may follow Harrod on twitter at @AEHarrod.
Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271245/quaker-event-promotes-blood-libels-against-israel-andrew-harrod
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by Charles Ortel
Are Swedes required to welcome and subsidize all immigrants, even those who may despise secular government, and local mores?
Swedes are set to vote Sunday, and soon the world may view another example of citizens frustrated by arrogant politicians and bureaucrats upending the status quo and changing the landscape of a rich country whose leaders manifestly have failed the working class. For in truth, Sweden is burning, physically and figuratively. This reality is known better outside that country, because pro-globalist elites in Sweden work so hard to obscure brutal crimes and dislocations that occur as too many unvetted immigrants sweep into their generous nation.
But it is not simply burning cars, and savage assaults that capture the concern of Swedish citizens and international observers. An expensive, thirty year experiment in Sweden promoting global governance and attacking world problems has certainly helped Swedish elites, but many voters see more financial harm than benefit for themselves.
So, in mere days, the Swedish electorate will speak, and rumblings emanating various ways suggest that parties and politicians long in control of the government will suffer erosion in their influence. How much power will a right-leaning party – Sweden Democrats – win at the ballot box, and what roles might candidates in this party play either supporting or obstructing the coalition government destined to emerge after September 9, 2018?
How closely will voters examine the qualifications and backgrounds of candidates for office, including their criminal records, if any, and the stated goals of their political parties concerning Sweden and regarding the wider world?
These major questions and looming answers must be seen in context.
Sparks Igniting Political Changes
In February 2017, when newly inaugurated President Trump drew attention to Tucker Carlson's Fox News special on Sweden's mounting problems with immigration policies, most critics around the world scoffed.
So, who was correct?
Months later, on April 7, 2017, an asylum-seeker killed five persons, and injured many more. These are the brutal losses that can be seen and measured. How many more minds were wounded then, and how many still suffer from deep, lasting anxieties knowing there may no longer be safe spaces left in once-serene Sweden, especially for children and for grandchildren?
Lax vetting of visitors and immigrants is a poor choice for governments in rich nations. Evidently, the ancient lesson of the "Trojan horse" is one casualty of trends in education. When will we start learning from history, recent and long past?
For years, the Swedish police, government officials, mainstream "journalists," local educators and think-tankers did their best to cover up tragic incidents where newly settled immigrants committed violent crimes against persons and against property inside Sweden.
Much has changed following events in 2017 and then on August 14, 2018, when roving bands of black-clad youths overturned and burned vehicles in Gothenburg and several additional Swedish cities. Even Sweden's Prime Minister, Stefan Lofven, had to admit publicly that he was outraged over violent attacks that seemed coordinated almost with military precision.
As in other nations, crime statistics in Sweden apparently are not tracked carefully enough to catalog socio-economic characteristics of attackers and victims. Moreover, concerns arise whether crimes against the vulnerable are accurately reported in "No-Go" zones scattered across Sweden that are chiefly populated by immigrants.
Yet, evidence is unmistakable that immigrants streamed into Sweden to take advantage of taxpayer-funded financial benefits that are not available in the war-torn, economically depressed zones whence immigrants originate. Sadly, in too many cases these immigrants exhibited little interest in assimilating peaceably, and instead attacked their economic benefactors.
Long-time residents and visitors to Sweden understand that welcoming numerous immigrants who despise secular society and reject Swedish cultural norms entails profound risks.
Do Swedes really wish to inhabit a globalist world, where artificial borders unfairly deny fair access to Sweden to fellow world citizens living in economically depressed or politically challenging conditions? Are Swedes required to welcome and subsidize all immigrants, even those who may despise secular government, and local mores?
As challenging as Sweden's immigration problems are in September 2018, they seem to be symptoms of deeper concerns. Sending all unvetted immigrants back to their countries of origin would still leave Swedish workers as cogs in a globalist wheel of misfortune, where their wages may be crushed by cheaper human or machine alternatives.
Regulated Nationalism or Unregulated Globalism?
For 30 years, from 1989 to the present, the Swedish people have been in thrall to elites who tirelessly sell virtues of "globalism."
Considering who may actually benefit from submitting to globalist impulses, American observers need to understand that Sweden's economy is remarkably different from ours: Sweden's businesses are much more dependent on foreign customers. For example, in 2016, exports from Sweden were $228 billion. This figure is equal in size to the internal Swedish market for household goods and services (consumption). In contrast, American exports of $2,296 billion were just 17% of household consumption during 2016. Without export sales, many Swedish companies would experience substantial economic losses. Whereas, American companies, even now, can still thrive catering primarily to our large, vibrant home market.
So, it is easy to understand why Swedish politicians would embrace globalism, thinking that doing so might help Swedish multinational companies and their employees to promote export sales. And yes, large corporations there have indeed thrived – many Swedish-branded products sell across the world, and some private sector employees earn incomes that allow families to live well, even to save.
Academics, think-tankers, and writers in Sweden also have flourished while promoting unregulated globalism. But the people who have suffered are those in the private sector whose jobs and incomes stand ever more at risk. Despite abundant evidence that globalist policies failed to lift wages for private sector workers in richer nations, Swedish voters, until now, continue to elect pro-globalist governments, and in so doing exhibit classic signs of "Stockholm Syndrome," a condition that Merriam Webster's dictionary defines as "the psychological tendency of a hostage to bond with, identify with, or sympathize with his or her captor."
Will Swedish voters escape their captors and chart a new, more productive course for Sweden's workers and entrepreneurs?
Will Sweden become safe again?
Soon, the world shall see.
Charles Ortel
Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/09/sundays_vote_could_snap_swedes_out_of_their_stockholm_syndrome.html
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by Discover the Networks
A closer look at the politics of the Democratic candidate for Florida governor.
A few days ago, 39-year-old Andrew Gillum – the Tallahassee,
Florida mayor who proudly embraces the socialist political and economic
agenda of Bernie Sanders
– won his party's gubernatorial primary race in that state. This sets
the stage for November, when Gillum will face Republican Ron DeSantis in
the election for governor. Gillum's campaign has been endorsed not only
by Sanders, but also by Our Revolution, an activist organization that explicitly promotes the Vermont senator's agenda.
Gillum has a long history of political activism that stretches back to
his school days. When he was enrolled at Florida A&M University,
for instance, he was very active in the Student Government Association. In early 2000, Gillum helped organize a large “March on Tallahassee” to protest Governor Jeb Bush's 1999 executive order abolishing
affirmative action in state university admissions and state
contracting. To reward Gillum's activism vis-a-vis this and other
matters, the Center for Policy Alternatives recognized him as the
nation's top student leader in 2001.
In 2002, Gillum became the Florida Field Organizer with the People For the American Way Foundation (PFAWF), spearheading its “Arrive With 5”
initiative – a pro-Democrat voter-mobilization campaign whereby young
people pledged to bring five additional voters with them to the polls on
Election Day.
In 2003, the Florida Democratic Party recruited Gillum to serve as its interim Political Director, but before long he returned to his previous position with PFAWF. Also in 2003, Gillum was elected to the Tallahassee City Council, a post he would hold for the next 11 years.
In late 2004, Gillum, in addition to his City Council duties, became
the National Deputy Director of PFAWF's “Young People For” program, a
campus-based initiative designed to develop young leftist leaders across
the United States. In 2006 he established the Young Elected Officials
Network, which had a similar mission. The leading funder of this organization was George Soros's Open Society Institute. Soros, of course, is the multi-billionaire who has long bankrolled a myriad of far-left causes.
In 2014, Gillum was elected Mayor of Tallahassee. Two years later, he was given a platform from which to speak at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.
On a variety of key political issues, Gillman:
- strongly favors the expansion of Obamacare as a step toward a government-run, single-payer, “Medicare-for-all” healthcare system;
-
strongly favors government-enforced affirmative action policies
designed to compensate nonwhites and women for the effects of past and
present discrimination;
- strongly favors a steeply
progressive income-tax structure where high earners pay
disproportionately high rates, and where corporate taxes are increased
significantly;
- strongly favors the implementation of a pathway-to-citizenship for illegal aliens;
- strongly favors the enactment of carbon taxes, higher CAFE standards for automobiles, and federal funding for the research-and-development of wind and solar power technology;
- strongly opposes Voter ID laws as racist schemes that are designed to suppress minority voting;
-
believes that the enactment of voucher programs through which
low-income parents can take their children out of substandard public
schools and send them instead to superior private schools, constitutes
bad public policy;
- believes that the availability of guns
should be severely restricted, even for law-abiding citizens who have
never been convicted of a crime, and that the 2nd Amendment does not
guarantee Americans the right to possess a firearm;
- supports a complete ban on so-called “assault weapons”;
-
believes that the federal government should inject large amounts of
funding – in the form of cash as well as federal job-creation programs –
to help the U.S. economy recover from downturns that it may experience;
-
believes that the nationalization of banks and corporations is more
appropriate than government bailouts of those entities when they fail
economically;
- calls for a national $15-per-hour minimum wage requirement for all workers; and
- advocates the repeal of Florida’s “stand-your-ground” gun laws which permit people to use deadly force if they feel that their lives are threatened by an aggressor or assailant.
Gillum also has released a video
demanding that President Trump be impeached because he allegedly
“obstructed justice” by firing former FBI Director James Comey.
The two leading individual donors to Gillum's 2018 campaign have been George Soros and another left-wing billionaire, Tom Steyer.
Scarcely two weeks ago, Soros, who already had contributed $1 million
to Gillum’s Forward Florida political committee, announced that he was
giving $250,000 more. And Steyer, who had previously funneled $500,000
to Forward Florida, pledged another $300,000. “I’m obviously deeply appreciative
of Mr. Soros, as well as Mr. Steyer, both men who I’ve known them for
some time,” said Gillum. The most recent Soros/Steyer donations
coincided with a $3.5 million get-out-the-vote effort by a coalition of
pro-Gillum leftist organizations.
In addition to his political activities, Gillum also serves as a Board of Directors member with the New World Foundation, a far-left entity that was once chaired by none other than Hillary Clinton.
Discover the Networks
Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271250/who-andrew-gillum-discover-networks
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by Dr. Mordechai Kedar
My feeling is that the day the
coalition decides to surprise Israel and take all out revenge for its
attacks is not far off.
Wars are raging in various parts of the Middle East, although
there is a tendency not to call the conflicts by that name because of
the fear conjured up by the word.
One conflagration
is the war Iran is waging against those – headed by Israel – who stand
in the way of its plans to take over the entire Middle East.
Another is the Assad regime's war to take back control of the entire country, and a third is the PLO's battle for survival.
Much
has been written about the first of these wars, and reports have
claimed that from early 2017 on, Israel has launched over 200 attacks in
Syria, mainly at targets connected to Iran.
Two points should be emphasized:
1.
Israel has been battling the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah coalition from the
air for several years, with almost no reaction from the other side.
There are various reasons for this low level response, among them the
internal Syrian war, Israel's technological superiority, fears of the
coalition ending up in a war with Israel with its forces at a
disadvantage, as well as Iran's shaky economic and governmental
situation.
2. My feeling is that the day the
coalition decides to surprise Israel and take all out revenge for its
attacks is not far off. Israel must be prepared for an
Iranian-Syrian-Hezbollah reaction at the time and place that coalition
feels Israel least expects it. My wild guess is next week on Tuesday,
September 11th, the second day of the Jewish New Year holiday. Why?
Because that is Assad's birthday and his army officers will want to give
him a special present.
If that sounds hallucinatory,
may I remind you that the Yom Kippur War did not start on Judaism's
holiest day because the Arabs noticed its occurrence, but because it was
Hafez el-Assad's birthday and his army officers decided that the Golan
Heights made a nice birthday gift. He had lost the region in the June
1967 Six Day War, when he was serving as Syria's Defense Minister and
Commander of its air force. This is a wild guess, as I said, but
remember, the author of the biblical book of Proverbs (see Chap. 28)
wrote: "Lucky is the man who is always afraid."
I
figure Iran is about to implode economically because of the financial
paralysis brought on by the US sanctions. Even Japanese corporations are
limiting their activities in Iran to a mere fraction of what they were.
The distance from economic collapse to regime collapse is very short,
and my heart tells me that every one of the Iranian leaders has already
planned his escape route and the country which will let him in on the
day when the millions of unemployed, persecuted, humiliated and above
all, hungry Iranians burst out in the streets with knives in their hands
aimed at the necks of anyone who is part of the regime.
At
that point, Iran's army will return home from Syria, Yemen and Iraq to
protect the regime and its leaders. The entire Middle East will go out
to dance in the streets.
The Battle of Idlib
Idlib
and its environs are going to be attacked by Syrian, Russian, Iranian
and Hezbollah forces in the near future. Estimates of how many civilians
will pay for this attack with their lives run from thousands to
hundreds of thousands,depending on the type of bombs Russia uses and the
chemical weapons the Syrian forces have at their disposal. Most of the
pundits discussing the issue ignored the role of Turkey whose borders
are a short distance away. Will Sunni Islamist Turkey and its Islamist
leader be able to sit on the sidelines while Sunni Muslims are being
slaughtered?
Armed intervention will put Erdogan in
direct conflict with Putin, so it is more probable that Turkey will
simply open a secure escape route from Idlib to Turkey for fleeing
residents. Chances are that Putin and even Assad will turn a blind eye,
because it will show that Assad rules the entire country and enable him
to fill the empty spaces with Shiites from Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan.
The Battle of Ramallah
The
idea of a Palestinian State is on its deathbed, now that it has been
mortally wounded by attacks from every direction. First to attack was
Hamas, which divided the Palestinian Authority into two parts back in
2007 and has no intention of giving up its precious terror tunnels and
weapons for the sake of someone suspected of security and intelligence
cooperation with Israel.
Now America has joined the
realist camp that understands that any Palestinian State will soon
become a Hamas state, this time in Judea and Samaria. That can come
about through elections like the ones that were held in 2008 and gave
Hamas a majority in the Palestinian Legislative Council, or through a
violent conflict on the lines of the 2007 takeover of Gaza by Hamas.
The US has also decided to stop giving artificial respiration to the two main pillars of the Palestinian Idea:
a. Palestinian-Arab-Islamic control of Jerusalem, cutting it off from Israel
b.
Flooding the Jewish state with millions of so-called Arab "refugees"
whose status is being preserved by UNRWA until that hoped-for day
arrives.
Trump realized what Israel has known for a
long time and decided to burst those two terrorist bubbles. He
recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital, moved the Embassy to the Holy
City and decided to stop funding the "refugees" that the Arabs have
forced the world to keep on ice for the last 70 years.
Mahmoud
Abbas understands the mortal blow sustained by the false PLO narrative
upon which he built the future of the invented "Palestinian nation,"
realizing that without Jerusalem and "refugees" there is nothing left of
that narrative. The collapse of the Palestinian narrative made room for
other options, such as a Jordanian-Palestinian federation or
confederation. The Jordanian king is not terribly keen to have the PLO
in his midst, however, still remembering how his father was forced to
fight them to the death in 1970,
The PLO and Abbas,
left stranded in the ruins of the house of cards they built, do not see
any reason to talk to the US government, Israel or even Hamas, which
already has its own 11 year old Islamic state. Since many PLO members
realize what has happened, they are forming independent armed militias,
as the Arab world is fond of doing.
In the Arab
world, if you cannot convince your rival through negotiations, you
"convince" him by having him look down the barrel of your Kalashnikov.
According
to recent reports, Palestinian leaders – Jibril Rajoub, Mahmoud Elalul,
Toufik Tirawi and Maj'ad Farej – are collecting weapons, bullets and
fighters, in order to take over the PA institutions once Abbas is gone
for good. It seems that all the talk of a "Palestinian People" was a
pipe dream of politicians and academics in Israel and other places, who
know less than nothing about how the Middle East works and think it is
an extension of Europe or the US.
It seems that
Arabs who live west of the Jordan are not very different from those who
live all over the Middle East. The tendency to break up into warring
groups, the avoidance of taking responsibility for failure, the penchant
for blaming someone else for failure, lack of flexibility in thought
and politics, calling the other side traitor or heretic and resort to
live weapons whenever negotiations are stuck – all these characterize
the Middle Eastern Arab culture as well as the Arabs west of the Jordan.
It
is important to remember that the PA has several security organizations
attached to it, who we will probably join the militias. They will face
off against the other militias, including the one Hamas has established
secretly in Judea and Samaria without anyone being the wiser.
In
order to prevent a descent to violence (which Israel will be blamed for
no matter what) Israel must take a few preemptive steps:
The
first and most crucial is to disarm the PA by means of drying up its
sources of funds, transferring all authority to the heads of clans in
each and every city.
The second step is to take away
all the arms in the hands of the PA security forces, weapons which will
be turned against the other militias and the IDF (which wil be accused
of collaborating with the other militias).
The third
step is to find all the active members – or to be more accurate,
terrorists – belonging to Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Democratic Front,
the Popular Front, ISIS and every other terrorist organization and alien
ideology adopted by a few fanatics. This will purge the region from the
jihadist and nationalist ideology which has as its standard the
destruction of Israel in every possible way.
The fourth step, as I have said here in the past, is establishing emirates in the Arab cities of Judea and Samaria.
A happy new year to all
Dr. Mordechai Kedar is a senior lecturer in the Department of Arabic at Bar-Ilan
University. He served in IDF Military Intelligence for 25 years,
specializing in Arab political discourse, Arab mass media, Islamic
groups and the Syrian domestic arena. Thoroughly familiar with Arab
media in real time, he is frequently interviewed on the various news
programs in Israel.
Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/22709
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by Bruce Thornton
Slithering in the sewer of anonymous gossip.
The New York Times’s just published an anonymous op-ed
from a “senior official” in the Trump administration. This
self-righteous combination of clichéd anti-Trump tropes and arrogant
moral preening puts the QED on the proof of the NeverTrumpers’ moral
idiocy.
The stalest complaints involve Trump’s personality and
style, although the only difference between Trump and, say, Lyndon
Johnson is that Johnson with the help of the media knew that most of his
vulgarisms and epithets would never be made public until he left
office. And he wasn’t monitored 24/7 by a barrage of reports and images
from internet news and blogs, hundreds of cable channels, and social
media.
As for crudity and vulgarity, if you insurgent White
House employees want vulgarity, just look around you. We are saturated
with a culture of vulgarity, self-promotion, and crude sexualization. At
least Trump hasn’t besmirched the White House with Clinton-style sexual
antics, or like Obama brought foul-mouthed rappers who celebrate the
murder of judges to socialize in the White House. But to Anonymous, the
worst of Trump’s affronts is that he, with the help of deplorable uppity
citizens, has “allowed our discourse to be stripped of civility.” This
charge bespeaks an ignorance of the Constitution and its founders’
understanding of human nature. Given the variety and volume of colliding
“passions and interests,” “civility” was a luxury. More important was
protecting political freedom by preventing factions from joining forces
to increase their power.
The catalogue of Trump’s shortcomings
are stale, subjective epithets from nearly two-years of Trump-hating
screeds, without any awareness that in terms of actions, progressives
like Barack Obama have been much worse. For example, the brave anonymous
resister says Trump’s behavior is “detrimental to the health of our
republic.” Exactly how have excessive Tweeting, braggadocio, or insults
of rivals done more damage to the Constitution’s separation of powers
than Obama’s politicizing of the IRS, the EPA, two AGs, the Department
of Education, the FBI, and the DOJ?
Trump hasn’t demanded, as
progressives constantly do, that the Constitution and its protections
from the tyranny of the majority like the Electoral College be revised
or abandoned. Did these members of the underground cabal of Platonic
Guardians and Trump resistors complain about Obama’s incessant executive
overreach, or the Dems’ constant attempts to undo the Constitutional
order upon which “our Republic” rests, with the same level of personal
invective as they spend on Trump’s rhetoric? And to speak of Trump’s
“amorality” without any supporting empirical evidence of amoral actions, but based on subjective anonymous charges, is nothing but a craven smear.
Anonymous also claims Trump “has attacked” the ideals “long espoused
by conservatives: free minds, free markets and free people.” Name one
specific action that proves Trump has done any of these things. Even his
moves on tariffs––which have not yet played out–– are supported by many
economists, who also agree that the U.S. is being played for a chump by
many countries. As for “free minds” and “free people,” such bombast is
despicable considering the attacks on personal and political freedom
that Democrats have institutionalized in universities, the media, and
popular culture through cultural Marxist ideas like political
correctness. How has Trump’s “enemy of the people” epithet materially
damaged press freedom in this country compared to the decades of the
mainstream media functioning as the Dems private public relations firm?
All we hear is the press screaming night and day that they are being
silenced.
Perhaps the worst claim is that Trump is “anti-Democratic.” Here’s
hutzpah worthy of the kid who murdered his parents then threw himself on
the mercy of the court because he’s an orphan. Let’s see, a president
legally elected according to the Constitution, subject to voter
accountability through regularly scheduled elections, hemmed in by two
independent branches of government, is called “anti-Democratic” by an
unelected, unaccountable, self-selected gang of disgruntled employees
without the guts to give up their fat paychecks and insider status by
going public and making themselves accountable to the voters, and
answering publicly the questions and counter-arguments of those who
disagree with them.
Russia, of course, is the big gun in the
anti-Trump arsenal. Trump has “a preference for autocrats and
dictators,” another stale cliché. But what about all the actions Trump
has taken against Russia, a catalogue Obama matched only with childish
threats? Well, Anonymous boasts, actions like expelling diplomats and
imposing sanctions only happened because the “adults in the room” from
the national security apparatus somehow constrained and compelled him.
Maybe they did, as have many advisors changed the minds of numerous
presidents before Trump. But somehow Trump doesn’t strike me as someone
who lets underlings tell him what to do. In any case, such a charge is
meaningless without specific details and specific names that can
corroborate it. Again, absent such evidence, absent a public airing in
which those making the claim can be questioned and their arguments
supported with facts, this assertion is nothing but a political smear.
Finally, like most NeverTrumpers, this critic and his co-conspirators
are all about morally preening on the cheap and creating personae of
brave defenders of the realm. They are Marius on the barricades, Horatio
on the bridge, the “unsung heroes in and around the White House,” the
“adults in the room” who “have vowed to do what we can to preserve our
democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided
impulses until he is out of office.” What arrogant, self-serving,
narcissistic bombast.
As such, it’s fitting that the column
ends with a reprise of the elite praise for John McCain as the paragon
of bipartisan virtue and civility. McCain, according to the secret
guardian of the public weal, was a “lodestar for restoring honor to
public life and our national dialogue. Mr. Trump may fear such honorable
men, but we should revere them.” To paraphrase what I wrote recently,
what was honorable about McCain’s banishing Sarah Palin, who energized
McCain’s presidential campaign, from his funeral, or calling Ted Cruz a
“wacko-bird,” or saying that Trump “fired up the crazies,” or spitefully
voting against and spiking the Obamacare “skinny repeal,” or calling a
wheel-chair bound critic of McCain-Feingold “corrupt”?
McCain
was a fixture of the bipartisan elite for whom government was as much an
insider’s club as a venue for serving the country. Like many
Republicans, including the anonymous Fifth Columnists in the White
House, he represented the misguided call for “rising above politics,
reaching across the aisle and resolving to shed the labels.” First,
there is no “rising above politics” when dealing with today’s Democrat
Party, which politicizes everything from plastic straws to the nature of
the two sexes. The two parties represent conflicting “passions and
interests,” some of which can be reconciled, but many that cannot. If we
don’t have politics, then all that’s left is force controlled by
tyranny. Our own history illustrates this melancholy fact. Beliefs about
slavery were too passionate and too bound up in interests to be
resolved by politics, and had to be adjudicated by a brutal war that
killed up to 700,000 Americans.
Second, the Constitution
wasn’t created to foster national “bipartisan” solutions to problems,
but to protect freedom. Apart from times of war, a united federal
government, with power concentrated and centralized at the expense of
the states and civil society, is the precondition of tyranny, whether
hard or “soft.” Donald Trump has made a start at reining in Leviathan
and restoring autonomy to states and individuals, though he can be
faulted for not going far enough. Most important, his nominees to the
federal courts and the Supreme Court promise to restore the
Constitution’s authority for achieving the aims of freedom and autonomy.
Those achievements have so far made complaints of his personality and
style in the teeth of major achievements just another example of
NeverTrump moral idiocy. If the White House resistance has evidence that
those personality traits are materially dangerous, or that Trump’s
achievements are due to their own interventions; if they really want to
save the Republic from Trump, then resign, go public, and start trying
to persuade your fellow citizens with arguments and evidence. Relying on
anonymous gossip from political poltroons will only delight the
progressive choir that reads The New York Times.
Bruce Thornton is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, a Research
Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, and a Professor of Classics and
Humanities at the California State University. He is the author of nine
books and numerous essays on classical culture and its influence on
Western Civilization. His most recent book, Democracy's Dangers and Discontents (Hoover Institution Press), is now available for purchase.
Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271264/times-op-ed-definitive-proof-nevertrump-moral-bruce-thornton
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