Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (l) greeting Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (r) in Finland in July.
Two years of anti-Russia hysteria may have led to the realization that a deal with Vladimir Putin may be necessary for President Trump to settle conflicts in Venezuela, North Korea and Ukraine.
The horrific attempted massacre at Chabad of Poway on the last day of Passover, April 27th, raises questions about possible links between Neo-Nazi and Islamic Fundamentalist terrorism that must be investigated by the Trump Administration.
As lightning illuminates a darkened landscape, the burning of Notre Dame exposes not a "Clash of Civilizations" but an existential struggle with what French philosophe Bernard Henry-Levi calls Islamo-Leftism, an "anti-American religion" opposed to the existence of Western Civilization itself.
Yesterday, by accident of chance or fate, I found myself seated next to a lawyer for The Hammer Museum on a transcontinental flight from LAX to Reagan National Airport in Washington, DC.
As a chatty person, I thought an attempt at conversation might pass the time, so discovering my seat mate was in the museum business, I shared some pet obsessions about over-restoration, forgery, looting, de-accessioning, and the sacrifice of great art for contemporary garbage by museums such as the now-suicided Corcoran Gallery of Art.
As The Hammer Museum is operated by UCLA, and I had an MFA from UCLA, and was still involved in the arts, I looked forward to an interesting discussion with an art world insider that could perhaps shed some light on what was going on. I shared my admiration for the Getty Museum and Crystal Bridges in Arkansas, and the fact that I'd published a novel about the art world, Alice Goldfarb Marquis' murder mystery set at the Museum of Modern Art, Brushstroke!
But more I talked, the quieter my seat mate got, until she said that she had work to do, put on her headset, and never spoke again for the duration of the flight.
I thought the reaction a bit strange. Someone I know said I was probably just an annoying gabby seat mate, the person didn't want to talk, and not to read anything into the reaction.
But something about her silence set me to thinking, and so I looked up The Hammer Museum on Wikipedia, once I got home.
What I discovered didn't exactly shock me, but it explained the silent treatment. The attorney apparently represented an institution which was doing the kind of stuff that I had been complaining about. Most interestingly, The Hammer Museum had auctioned off Leonardo Da Vinci's Codex Leicesterin 1994 for some 30 million dollars--although it had been Armand Hammer's favorite item (he renamed it the "Codex Hammer") and among the most valuable and important works in the collection. Bill Gates bought the Codex and used it for a Microsoft screensaver, among other things. It still tours around different museums today, drawing crowds.
Who better represents the greatness of Western Civ than a universal genius like Da Vinci? Curiously, that same year UCLA entered into a 99-year agreement to manage The Hammer Museum. I wondered, why would any educational or cultural institutions want to get rid of a material relic of the greatest genius in history, especially when it could inspire students, faculty and members of the public--and symbolize a connection between arts and sciences that might inspire future generations? Money could certainly be a reason, but then a thought occurred... Leonardo Da Vinci was obviously a Dead White Man. Could another reason have been "Social Justice?" After all, universities in recent years have seemed obsessed with denigrating genius, part of a continuing assault on Western Civilization So, I took a look at The Hammer Museum website today, and found that while they seem to have not yet sold off their Rembrandts or Impressionists, they have indeed added quite a bit of ghastly contemporary art...and programs on "Social Justice." The homepage even featured a special section (scroll down) decorated with an ugly picture:
Discussing Social Justice
Public programs and exhibitions at the Hammer that have engaged art and ideas on issues of social justice.
President Trump took a strong public stand on behalf of free speech on campus in his March 2nd speech to the Conservative Political Action Coalition, making it an issue for the upcoming 2020 elections.
I admired Mike Cernovich for his stand for freedom of speech with Milo and Pam Geller at UC Berkeley in September 2017 (an event Ann Coulter declined to attend). He stood up for freedom of speech then, and he has stood up for freedom of speech once again in this film. HOAXED deserves to be seen by every American who cares about the First Amendment, without regard to political orientation. Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/mike-cernovich-hoaxed-a-defense-freedom-speech-donald-trump-covington-catholi-1550345691
President Trump's recent State of the Union address demonstrated his uncanny ability to conduct members of Congress like a well-tuned orchestra to deliver a message of unity and hope for the future, on behalf of his crusade for American civilization's motto: "E Pluribus Unum."
Following the end of the government shutdown, President Trump needs to take a "Listening Tour" of federal agencies to remind government employees he's in charge while giving them a chance to vent face-to-face. It would signal a change of tone in leadership, while disarming the "Resistance" and encouraging good government.
Perhaps Kenny Rogers' 1978 song, "The Gambler" best explains why President Trump ended the Government Shutdown yesterday. He folded because he saw didn't have the cards in his hand to win. He now needs to come up with an alternative to end the stalemate before the February 15th deadline.
The standoff seemed go on for at least 45 minutes, yet no officer appeared to "de-escalate" the conflict, as called for in police guidelines. No one interposed themselves between two hostile camps. No one asked anyone to "move along" or "break it up." Instead, police permitted a tense confrontation between crowds which could have led to a bloody brawl, or worse.
Washington attorney Joseph I. Goldstein suggests President Trump and Congress establisha bipartisan commission to oversee Border Wall construction, to end the Government Shutdown now. This would allow appropriation of $5 billion dollars, as promised by President Trump in his 2016 campaign, while Congress could condition actual expenditures upon expert oversight, thus retaining authority, while permitting both sides to save face.
Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/a-bipartisan-commission-could-end-government-shutdown-now-government-shutdown-border-wal-1547827560
The current government shutdown isn't about construction of a wall along the US-Mexican border; rather it's a symbolic struggle over whether President Donald J. Trump is allowed to remain President. This is a fight President Trump can't afford to lose.
Like Ayatollah Khomeni's 1989 fatwa against "The Satanic Verses," Patreon's purge of "Sargon of Akkad" for "hate speech" marks a tipping point for freedom of speech on the internet, revealing the totalitarian objectives of the censors. Dissident YouTubers must be protected by President Trump, just as Margaret Thatcher protected Salman Rushdie. Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/patreon-purge-one-most-important-speech-wars-our-time-jordan-peterson-sargon-of-akka-1546986446
After half a century, Mary Poppins returned to movie theaters this Christmas with something for everyone--older viewers who saw the original, younger viewers who met her for the first time, and middle-aged viewers who wanted to share their own childhood experience with a new generation.
Jane Jacobs' 1992 "Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics" might explain Donald Trump's 2016 victory better than Steve Bannon's "Fourth Turning" or President Obama's "Arc of History."
Steve Bannon and David Frum's Munk Debate from November 2nd was one of the stranger television shows that I have seen. Contra Frum, Bannon argued President Trump is a transformative figure in "the Fourth Turning" of American history (The Revolution, Civil War and New Deal were the other three). So the Obama Administration's end represented the exhaustion of one cycle, the Trump Administration the beginning of another. Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/bannon-frum-debate-trump-american-populism-canada-trump-administration-populism--1544894974
Sometime in 1993, fate seated me next to former Attorney General William Barr on the Washington-NY shuttle. We spoke for about an hour about the recent tragic raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas which killed 76 people. He told me no one would have died if it had been properly handled. He knew because he supervised a similar raid at a prison in 1991--where everyone lived. I never forgot that conversation... Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/the-unforgettable-william-barr-william-barr-trump-waco-1544458494
President George H.W. Bush is memorialized as an American war hero and symbol of civility. However, Americans need to remember that opposition to Political Correctness is equally his legacy, declared in a May 4, 1991 University of Michigan commencement address.
Joseph Gelman with former Israeli President Shimon Peres
Following the Tree of Life synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh last Saturday, Joseph Gelman urges the American Jewish community to reject politicization and instead work with people of goodwill across the political spectrum--including President Trump.
For Woodward, artistic beauty isn’t merely a social construct. It is actually inherent in human nature. In fact, it is found within our DNA. The pull of beauty is eternal, and from the cave-dwellers of Lascaux, to the cliff-dwellers of Washington, people commune with nature via art.
Palestine and Latin America: Marches for Justice meet
On Tuesday, April 10, the Mexican Coordination for Palestine (CORSOPAL) and the #WorldwithoutWalls delegation handed over a letter from the Palestinian Stop the Wall Campaign to the Via Crucis March of Migrants as it arrived in Mexico City. At the same moment that Palestinians in Gaza started the #GreatReturnMarch, migrants from all over Central America, in particular Honduras, started their march towards the US border, militarized by the Wall of Infamy. The letter highlights the connections between the people struggles as well as the complicity between the powers that oppress them.
From Palestine, as part of a people whose majority is refugees and displaced persons because of Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing of our lands, we want to extend our solidarity.
We want to tell you that we are in struggle together with you.
We salute your March of the over 1500 migrants that challenge US racist and exclusivist migration policies that stop the people from crossing borders, depriving them of their basic rights to freedom of movement and rights as refugees. We recognize that most of you have been forced to leave your homes because of US foreign policies and oppressive political regimes backed by the United States and, we add, Israel as the one state that has since the seventies until today militarily and politically backed each and every coup, dictatorship and anti-peoples regime in Latin America.
As Palestinians we feel deeply connected to your experiences.
70 years ago, our Nakba (catastrophe) began when Israel established itself on the mass ethnic cleansing of our people and over half of our people have been, often at gunpoint, forced out of their homes and their lands for Israel to establish its apartheid regime. Since 1948 when entire villages were fleeing Israeli military aggression and massacres, until today, Israeli policies of occupation and colonization continue to expel our people by taking our lands and destroying our communities. Israeli repression, including ongoing invasions, night raids and large scale incarceration, aims to make live impossible. Half of the Palestinian male population passes at least once through Israeli prisons.
Israel has built an up to 8 meter high Wall around Gaza to besiege its population and around the West Bank villages and towns our people so that today we are allowed to access and use only 13% of our historic homeland.
Like you, we know the Via Crucis of long marches.
As you are marching to claim your rights as migrants, in Palestine the people of Gaza, the large majority of them refugees expelled from their homes 70 years ago, have started their Long March of Return. Every Friday tens of thousands of people are marching to the militarized border of Gaza that is part of Israel’s wall structure that imposes since over a decade the brutal siege on Gaza. People demand an end to the siege and occupation, they demand their UN sanctioned Right of Return. They demand an end to Israeli apartheid. Regular marches to the military checkpoints at the exits of our cities and Israel’s up to 8 meter high wall that is ghettoising our villages in the occupied West Bank are ongoing as well.
We may be geographically far away from your march but our oppressors are united in the same criminal and cruel policies, mutually supporting each other. Israeli walls are the example for the US administration when promoting the Wall of Infamy at the US-Mexico border. Not by chance the same Israeli companies build both walls. Not by chance the same drones tested on our people in Gaza are being used to militarize the southern border of Mexico to comply with US dictates.
Just as Donald Trump has ordered a military troops to be deployed at the US-Mexico Wall to defend the US racist and exclusionary policies against your legitimate claims for rights, Israel has stationed its military and snipers behind the border wall to Gaza against unarmed civilians. Over 30 people have been killed so far by Israeli snipers inside Gaza, thousands injured while the international community remains in complicit silence. The US veto against any condemnation of Israel’s ongoing massacre of civilians at the #GazaReturnMarches aims to protest as well its own criminal policies. Yet, Palestinian popular mobilization will persist and grow.
We know that we share a struggle for our rights and dignity, for the right to freedom of movement, for the right to live on our lands and homes, for the right to self-determination.
For us all existence is resistance.
We know that our struggles united can achieve a #WorldwithoutWalls and Justice, Freedom and Equality for all.
In solidarity, Palestinian Grassroots Stop the Wall Campaign
Pundits have declared the gruesome death of Jamal Khashoggi an international crisis, but one authority on international politics disagrees. Dr. James Kurth of Swarthmore College confronted Uncle Adnan Khashoggi in 1977 and remains sanguine about the future of Saudi-American relations. He believes assassinations are normal in the Arab world, advises the Trump administration to do nothing to stop them, and resist the siren call of "Democracy Building."
In 2015, Dr. Eva Brann, a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis, published a 12-point essay titled “Reflections on Imaginative Conservativism” declaring: “The imaginative conservative’s practical project is survival without loss of soul.” After reading that, I ordered her book on the topic, "Then and Now," which begins with Herodotus. Still seeking to learn more, I went to Annapolis, to ask Dr. Brann in person how Imaginative Conservatism works.... Read the whole thing at TheLatest.com: https://thelatest.com/tlt/eva-brann-the-imaginative-conservative-conservative-imagination-trump-1539384109
Washington attorney Joseph I. Goldstein suggests President Trump and Congress establish a bipartisan commission to oversee Border Wall construction, to end the Government Shutdown now. This would allow appropriation of $5 billion dollars, as promised by President Trump in his 2016 campaign, while Congress could condition actual expenditures upon expert oversight, thus retaining authority, while permitting both sides to save face.
