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Conservative Voices
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3 w

Israeli Air Strikes and Iranian Missile Barrages Are Far From Over 
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Israeli Air Strikes and Iranian Missile Barrages Are Far From Over 

The decades-long showdown, muscle flexing, and verbal sparring between Iran and Israel reached a new milestone in the early morning hours of Friday, June 13, as Israel carried out massive attacks on Iran’s nuclear and military infrastructure and repelled retaliatory missile and drone barrages from Iran over Israeli civilian centers. Trump praised Operation Rising Lion in an ABC News interview on Friday. “We gave them [Iran] a chance, and they didn’t take it. They got hit hard, very hard. Sirens went off across Israel around 3 AM on Friday as the population scrambled out of bed for the nearest bomb shelter, anticipating the all-too-familiar sound of rocket interceptions overhead. But no interceptions came, and the early morning hours remained uncannily quiet. When sirens stopped, a series of cell phone notifications alerted the population that the Israeli Air Force (IAF) had initiated Operation Rising Lion to cripple Iran’s nuclear capabilities and that Israel was now under a new state of emergency for Iranian retaliation. Operation Rising Lion The opening salvos of Rising Lion involved over 200 IAF jets easily traversing Syrian and Iraqi airspace to drop more than 330 munitions on key Iranian targets. The operation unfolded in five successive waves throughout Friday morning and afternoon, causing devastating damage to Iran’s uranium enrichment and nuclear facilities, destroying ballistic missile depots, launch sites, military and defense infrastructure, and executing targeted strikes on top Iranian military and nuclear officials. Reports confirmed 78 dead with more than 300 wounded. The Natanz uranium enrichment facility, Iran’s largest underground nuclear site with the infrastructure to enrich military-grade uranium, was attacked multiple times while the country’s other two enrichment centers at Fordo and near Isfahan were not hit. The attack had been years in planning, evident by Mossad operations to smuggle weapons systems, drones, and commandos inside Iran that were activated on Friday morning to destroy Iran’s surface-to-air defense systems, allowing Israeli jets to have air superiority. The objective was to cripple Iran’s nuclear program. For two months, U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration had engaged the Iranian regime in talks concerning the future of its nuclear program and concerns over obtaining nuclear weapons. As talks faltered and stalled, Israel grew increasingly concerned at the possibility that Iran was on the verge of producing a nuclear weapon if not already possessing one. Tensions escalated early last week as Netanyahu upped his rhetoric of preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, while the Iranian regime warned that any attack on its soil would trigger a retaliation beyond Israel’s comprehension. Both sides boast conventional military capabilities and weapons yet to be revealed that would inflict devastating damage. All the while, Trump urged restraint on both sides to let the diplomatic process take its time, especially as the next round of nuclear talks was scheduled for Sunday. By the middle of last week, tensions had escalated. U.S. embassies in the Middle East ordered an evacuation of all nonessential personnel. Navy vessels in Bahrain were placed on high alert, while oil tankers transiting the Strait of Hormuz were required to elevate their security status to Maritime Security (MARSEC) level 3. These measures were implemented on credible military intelligence that Iran had enriched enough uranium to build 15 nuclear bombs. An Israeli official speaking to the Times of Israel exposed how this was all a ruse. The verbal tension between Trump and Netanyahu, Trump’s plea for restraint before the weekend talks, and even other peripheral dialogues over new hostage deals in Gaza, and the potential collapse of Netanyahu’s coalition government earlier this week, had been a distracting ruse to convince Iran that an Israeli attack would not happen before Sunday. Trump praised Operation Rising Lion in an ABC News interview on Friday. “We gave them [Iran] a chance, and they didn’t take it. They got hit hard, very hard. They got hit about as hard as you’re going to get hit. And there’s more to come. A lot more.” On Truth Social, Trump stated: “I gave Iran a 60-day ultimatum to ‘make a deal.’ They should have done it. Today is day 61. I told them what to do, but they just couldn’t get there.” Although the U.S. military played no role in Israel’s Friday morning strikes, Trump’s administration was kept informed of Israel’s surprise attack. Iran Retaliates Against Israel Soon after Israeli jets entered Iranian airspace in the early hours of Friday morning, Iran launched a drone barrage numbering between 500 and 800 drones, according to different reports, that was expected to reach Israel before 11:30 a.m. The barrage was successfully intercepted outside of Israeli airspace by the IAF with assistance from British jets arriving in the region from Cyprus. The Friday afternoon hours in Israel were quiet and peaceful, but tensions were palpable. Schools and workplaces had closed, and shabbat gatherings were canceled, but the tranquility in grocery stores, on the street, and at the few cafes that remained open exuded the peaceful calm before the storm that permeates Israeli society. The major Iranian response came around 9 p.m. on Friday and lasted until about 5 a.m. on Saturday. The first wave of ballistic missiles from Iran targeted highly populated centers between Jerusalem, Beer Sheva, Tel Aviv, and Netanya. Of the hundreds of missiles intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome, several made impact, striking residential neighborhoods in the cities of Rishon LeZion and Ramat Gan, killing three. The second wave came less than an hour later and focused on the country’s northern region and the economic heartbeat around Haifa. Successive waves of lesser intensity, and involving drones and missiles, set off continuous sirens throughout the country as interceptions could be heard throughout the night until around 5 a.m. In the past 24 hours alone, Israel’s intelligence backed precision, strategic creativity, and military capabilities have taken out some of Iran’s top leadership and inflicted crippling damage to their nuclear, military, and defense infrastructure. Other strategic targets — such as petroleum and maritime assets and other nuclear facilities — have also been left intact as leverage against future strikes, with Iranian airspace completely vulnerable. Iran’s response, on the other hand, was expected, following the same tactical playbook as their previous air assaults on Israel by indiscriminately bombarding civilian centers with missile barrages in the hopes of overwhelming Israel’s air defense systems. Meanwhile, neighboring Arab countries, such as Jordan, and governments in Germany, France, the UK, and the U.S. are in coordination to defend Israeli airspace, while Iran’s regional proxy, Hezbollah, has voiced their desire to sit this round out. The spat is far from over. As of Saturday afternoon local Israeli time, warnings are circulating of another expected Iranian missile barrage this evening, while Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has vowed to make Tehran burn. READ MORE from Will Barclay: Immigration, Islamism, and Antisemitism in Canada Hamas, Not Israel, Has Caused Gaza Suffering The post Israeli Air Strikes and Iranian Missile Barrages Are Far From Over  appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.
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3 w

Syriac Christians Mark 110 Years Since Genocide
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Syriac Christians Mark 110 Years Since Genocide

Sunday, June 15 marks a day of commemoration as the genocide of Syriac Christians reaches its 110th anniversary. Undertaken alongside the genocides of Armenian and Greek Christians by the Ottoman Empire during the First World War, the genocide, known as the “Sayfo” in the Syriac language, claimed at least 275,000 lives. At least half of the Syriac Christian community perished under this persecution, with higher estimates reaching as many as 750,000. Syriac Christians comprise members of the Syriac Orthodox Church, the Assyrian Church of the East, the Chaldean Catholic Church, and the Syriac Catholic Church. The smaller and newer Assyrian Protestant community also faced persecution. The Chaldean Catholic and Syriac Catholic Churches are constituent Eastern Catholic Churches within the wider Roman Catholic Church that are in full unity with the Vatican but maintain linguistic and self-governing independence. All of these groups are united by historically speaking the Syriac language, a modern dialect of the Aramaic language spoken by Jesus Christ. Ottoman Turkish Minister of the Interior, Talaat Pasha, sought the removal of Christian groups from their historic lands so that Muslim Turks and Kurds might be resettled there. Beginning in 1915, Syriac Christians were forced to flee their homes, subject to long marches where thousands succumbed to illness or starvation, and in many cases were outright slaughtered.  Firsthand accounts from the time such as The Rage of Islam by Yonan (John) Shahbaz relate the public murder of Catholic and Assyrian priests and the torture of families, including children, who were given the option of renouncing their faith or death. Ottoman authorities set churches ablaze, burning to death their congregants within. Others were shot en masse. The Christian population in what is today Eastern Turkey fell by as much as 90 percent, concurrent with the loss of the Greek and Armenian Christian populations elsewhere in Turkey. Several areas lost the entirety of their Christian population. Eight of the 20 Syriac Orthodox dioceses were wiped out. Many Syriac Christians fled, both across the Middle East and to locations abroad such as the United States, where a diaspora community of all three groups has existed for over a century. In fact, the non-Catholic Syriac churches are both led today by Americans.  Mar Awa III, Patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East, was born and raised in Chicago. The Patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox Church, Mor Aphrem II, was born in Syria but immigrated to the United States, where he spent two decades as archbishop of the East American Diocese of the Syriac Orthodox Church. Within the realm of American politics, Syriac Christians have gained significant recognition as an important demographic contributing to Republican victories. On the campaign trail in 2024, Donald Trump took time to thank by name the Chaldean Catholic and Assyrian communities for their depth of support.  He also sat down for an hour-and-a-half podcast interview with popular Assyrian media figure Patrick Bet-David. Assyrian Patriarch Mar Awa III congratulated Trump the day of his victory in the 2024 election, referencing the long history of persecution his people have experienced. June 15 was chosen as remembrance day for the Sayfo to mark the murder of two bishops. This year’s Sayfo Remembrance Day will include mournful church services, the consecration of a rare monument honoring victims in the Middle East, and nationwide screenings of a documentary on the genocide hosted by the American Syriac Orthodox community. Memories of the Sayfo have loomed large in past decades amidst wars in Iraq and Syria. Islamic extremist groups such as ISIS abducted, displaced, and murdered thousands of Syriac Christians on a scale unseen in a century. In response, locally organized Christian militias played a key role in defending their remaining villages and eventually defeating ISIS. In a statement given by the Syriac Orthodox Church during last year’s commemoration, members vowed to “remember the atrocities” but also to “meditate on Christ’s words from His sermon on the Mount: ‘Love your enemies, and pray for those that persecute you.’” READ MORE from Shiv Parihar: Law and Order Leadership Tops Global Polls Trump Gives Hope To Somaliland, Conservative Cause in Africa Refugee Agency Forced to Fire Worker Who Disparaged Afrikaners The post Syriac Christians Mark 110 Years Since Genocide appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.
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Do the Democrats Remember Mississippi 1962?
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Do the Democrats Remember Mississippi 1962?

On September 30, 1962, when President John  Kennedy deployed the Mississippi National Guard and the U.S. Army to quell a lethal insurrection at the University of Mississippi, Nancy Pelosi was 22 years old, Bernie Sanders was 21, Joe Biden was 19, as was Connecticut Congresswoman Rose DeLauro. All of them were old enough to remember Kennedy’s action, an action that has been celebrated in Democratic lore ever since. That said, I would bet my house to the reader’s mailbox that none of these well traveled Democrats has compared President Trump’s decision to President Kennedy’s and defended it accordingly. Unlike Trump, Kennedy had no federal facility or agents to protect. His rationale for intervening in Mississippi was legitimate … but it was wildly unpopular in the State of Mississippi. On Tuesday, the eccentric DeLauro, she of the blue hair, had the opportunity to do just that when she grilled Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth before the House Appropriations Committee. Not surprisingly, she squandered her time, oddly with a pointless rant about ship building. Rep. Pete Aguilar of California has two excuses for not knowing about the Mississippi insurrection of 1962. For one, he is not old enough, and for another he was educated in California public schools, many of whose students don’t even know about the Civil War. In questioning Hegseth, Aguilar’s tone was respectful, at least by Democrat standards, but he proved as historically ignorant as his fellow panelists. In his smuggest moment, Aguilar quoted U.S. code to Hegseth as though he were delivering news. Said Aguilar, “The orders of these purposes shall be issued through governors of the states.” Hegseth had already pointed out the reason why that section of the code was irrelevant. Said Heggseth, “The governor of California is unable to execute the laws of the United States.” Hegseth might have added “unwilling.” In this regard Gov. Gavin Newsom resembles no one quite so much as the late Mississippi Gov. Ross Barnett, who proved unable and unwilling to stem the impending riot at the state university in Oxford. Sparking the protest at Ole Miss was the planned admission of Air Force veteran James Meredith, the school’s first black student. As Trump did with Newsom, Kennedy, and his Attorney General brother Robert attempted to reason with the governor by phone, but Barnett proved as oily and elusive as Newsom. Like the California governor, Barnett was afraid of his own base, and that fear translated, in each case, into fecklessness and empty showboating. At a critical moment Barnett had the opportunity to prepare his citizens for the inevitable integration of the university, but he chose to do otherwise. During halftime at a University of Mississippi football game on the day before Meredith’s arrival, Barnett addressed the crowd only to rile them up. Said Barnett,  “I love Mississippi! I love her people! Our customs! I love and respect our heritage!” Sensing the danger ahead, Kennedy federalized the National Guard. Meredith showed up on campus the day after Barnett’s war cry, September 30, 1962. He was escorted by two dozen U.S. Marshals and discreetly backed by several hundred federal law enforcement officers, including border patrol agents and prison guards. Few of these agents were in uniform and fewer still had any relevant training. Unlike Trump, Kennedy had no federal facility or agents to protect. His rationale for intervening in Mississippi was legitimate — namely to honor a Supreme Court mandate — but it was wildly unpopular in the State of Mississippi. Local residents joined the students to express their outrage. As the evening wore on, thousands of protestors gathered around the Lyceum, the administration building where the federal agents had gathered. As in Los Angeles, local authorities played to the mob. In Mississippi, they went even further, withdrawing the state and local police that had been keeping outsiders at bay. Said one state senator, a Barnett ally, “You have occupied this university, and now you can have it.” Like Newsom, Barnett focused his theatrical rage not on the rioters but on the president, at every step challenging the president’s inarguable right to intervene. But unlike Newsom, Barnett had the courage of his convictions. He was only playing to one audience, and he was all in. At 11 p.m. he declared, “We will never surrender!” Then all hell broke loose. Much like their Los Angeles heirs, these insurrectionists hurled rocks, Molotov cocktails, acid bottles and whatever came to hand. They flipped cars and burned them. Many of them came armed with guns and used them. Before the long night was through 160 federal agents would be injured, 28  of them by gunshot. Two civilians were killed as well, one a French journalist. Running out of options, President Kennedy invoked the Insurrection Act of 1807 and ordered the U.S. Army to suppress the riot. Those interested in understanding this precedent should consult William Doyle’s excellent, eye-opening book, An American Insurrection: The Battle of Oxford, Mississippi, 1962. The unlikely heroes of Doyle’s book were the troops of the Mississippi National Guard. These were good old boys who signed up for a mix of reasons unsuspecting that one day they would have to square off against their friends and neighbors. Many officials doubted they would show up when called. Fortunately for the university, the state, and the country they did. Had they not, it is likely the rioters would have overrun the Lyceum and possibly killed the federal agents within. The mood was that intense. After some serious administration bungling, with Robert Kennedy in the predictable midst of it, the U.S. Army eventually arrived on the scene. Some 13,000 troops helped the Guard mop up. As Doyle relates, RFK was not a stickler on civil rights. He had Edwin Walker, a former major general who had been agitating on campus, seized off the streets without a hint of due process and committed to a federal prison for a 90-day psychiatric evaluation. The not yet fully corrupted ACLU intervened on Walker’s behalf and had him sprung after five days. Walker returned to Dallas where, in April 1963, fledgling assassin Lee Harvey Oswald took a potshot at him and missed by inches. History is weird that way. Weird too, at least from the Democrats’ perspective, was James Meredith’s path through life. After graduating from Ole Miss and getting a law degree at Columbia, Meredith involved himself in Republican politics, eventually serving as a domestic policy adviser to arch conservative Republican Senator Jesse Helms. For his flouting of progressive stereotypes, the heroic Meredith has never received the accolades he deserves. In addition to his daring admission to Ole Miss, he later led a civil rights march and was shot for his troubles. Meredith is still alive today. If looking for a black person to interrogate about Trump’s intervention, MSNBC might give him a call. READ MORE from Jack Cashill: Cancel Culture Trickles Down: An Up-Close Look The Semantic Burden of Speaking While White The post Do the Democrats Remember Mississippi 1962? appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.
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The Spectator P.M. Ep. 145: Southern Baptists Seek to End Same-Sex Marriage
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The Spectator P.M. Ep. 145: Southern Baptists Seek to End Same-Sex Marriage

Southern Baptists voted at the annual Southern Baptist Convention on a measure to support the overturning of Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court decision that said there is a right to same-sex marriage. (READ MORE: To Its Eternal Shame, the GOP Hands Victory to the Dems on Gay Marriage)  The Spectator P.M. Podcast hosts Ellie Gardey Holmes and Lyrah Margo discuss the significance of the Southern Baptists’ new measure and the importance of Christian political engagement. Ellie and Lyrah also discuss topics debated within the church, such as women’s leadership in pastoral roles. (READ MORE: Our Two Main Parties Are Non-Christian but Only One Is Demonic)  Tune in to hear their discussion! Read Ellie and Lyrah’s writing here and here. Listen to the Spectator P.M. Podcast on Spotify. Watch the Spectator P.M. Podcast on Rumble. The post <i>The Spectator P.M.</i> Ep. 145: Southern Baptists Seek to End Same-Sex Marriage appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.
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Imagine if Biden Did What Spanish Prime Minister Has Done
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Imagine if Biden Did What Spanish Prime Minister Has Done

Imagine, for a moment, that a police investigation uncovers hours of recordings involving members of Joe Biden’s administration. In those conversations, the president’s two most trusted allies are heard discussing how they rigged the primaries by stuffing ballots to ensure Biden became the Democratic nominee. This is exactly what has happened and is happening in Spain under Pedro Sánchez’s government and the PSOE (Socialist Party). Yet he refuses to step down or call elections. Now picture another recording where Biden’s right-hand man — executive director of the Democratic Party and Secretary of State — uses his chief advisor to arrange his schedule of prostitutes, requesting specific girls because he knows them and they do “great work.” Imagine this official is also under investigation for taking bribes and illegal kickbacks on public works projects, despite overseeing the government’s largest public works budget. Now imagine that when the scandal about his Secretary of State breaks in the press, Biden fires him and appoints another close confidant, also the Democratic Party’s executive director, to replace him. Soon after, this new appointee is caught in fresh recordings orchestrating illegal kickbacks — some apparently to fatten the party’s coffers — rigging public contracts, and placing trusted prostitutes in public company roles. Now imagine Biden’s wife is also under judicial investigation for using her position as the president’s spouse to favor companies linked to the university department she heads. She’s also being investigated for corruption in business dealings, misappropriation of funds, professional misconduct, and possible embezzlement. Now picture Biden’s father-in-law running a network of gay saunas and brothels, built with his brothers, frequented by political, business, and media figures. According to intercepted police audio, recordings from these venues were allegedly used to blackmail those involved. Now imagine recordings of a Democratic Party advisor meeting with businessmen and a lawyer, asking for sensitive information to discredit (“we have to kill him,” she’s heard saying) the police officers investigating the various cases tied to Biden’s inner circle and the Democratic Party. Now imagine the Justice Department opens an investigation into Biden’s brother for benefiting from a tailor-made public institution position, as well as possible tax crimes and chronic absenteeism. Now picture Biden, for years, dismissing press reports on these cases as far-right hoaxes aimed at destabilizing his government. Motivated by these “hoaxes,” he pushes a gag law that effectively lets him financially choke dissenting journalists. Now imagine that when these recordings and police reports surface, Biden merely asks the implicated advisor to leave the party, forces the Democratic Party’s executive director to resign, and offers a public apology (complete with extra bags under his eyes and a sad face for the cameras). He claims he had no idea his closest collaborators for fifteen years, from the start of his political career, were raking in public money through kickbacks and cavorting with prostitutes. This is exactly what has happened and is happening in Spain under Pedro Sánchez’s government and the PSOE (Socialist Party). Yet he refuses to step down or call elections. The separatist parties, communists, nationalists, and heirs of terrorists — whose parliamentary support he secured to stay in power despite losing elections — continue to back him in Parliament. Corruption piled on corruption. The tragedy of my Spain. And a vivid picture of what postmodern socialism looks like across the West: a machine of power and corruption, willing to do absolutely anything to cling to that power. In the end, it always lands in the same place: illegal kickbacks, prostitutes, and mediocre leaders. READ MORE from Itxu Diaz: We Need to Return to Trump’s Law and Order Musk v. Trump Isn’t Funny The post Imagine if Biden Did What Spanish Prime Minister Has Done appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.
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When Old Becomes New: Blue Books Are Back
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When Old Becomes New: Blue Books Are Back

Students across the educational spectrum are outsourcing their work to Artificial Intelligence (AI), according to the Wall Street Journal. In other words, cheating is more widespread than ever. To counter this underhanded academic revolution, the professoriate is taking a page, or more appropriately, pages, from their analog days to solve an ongoing digital problem. Enter blue books — the academy’s counter to the AI revolution. Blue books first made their appearance at Butler University in Indiana a century ago and represent the school’s colors of blue and white, leading to their time-honored name. In my salad days, the illustrious blue book was as much a part of the collegiate landscape as payphones, textbooks, and typewriters. (RELATED: Yes, AI Is Taking Jobs From the Class of 2025. No, We Shouldn’t Be Concerned.) In a world shaped by algorithms, bureaucracies, and nonstop social media, the blue book is a welcome and needed blast from the past. They are a constructive, yet inexpensive tool that consists of blank, ruled pages waiting to be filled with knowledge obtained. In an era where computers and virtual schooling relegated the blue book to academia’s endangered list, its comeback solves a problem that didn’t exist until now. Blue books were a longtime staple of the academic exam world, particularly for subjects requiring written analysis. While their use declined with the rise of digital technology, they have seen a resurgence in recent times due to concerns about academic integrity. Blue Book vs. AI Blue books will help combat AI-assisted cheating, making it easier for students to generate essays and answers. ChatGPT is perhaps the most formidable cheat apparatus to date. Over the past two summers with school out, ChatGPT’s traffic has markedly declined. Moreover, ChatGPT references Wikipedia, proving that all things digital are anything but a scholarly, peer-reviewed provenance, underscoring why it is called “artificial” intelligence. (RELATED: The Big Beautiful Bill’s Moratorium on AI Regulation Is Dangerous) AI is anything but agnostic. AI is beholden to the bias of their programmers and their milquetoast drivel. Programming’s oldest adage applies — garbage in, garbage out. AI doesn’t think for you; it does other people’s thinking for you. Critical thinking skills are desperately needed in our era, which is overwhelmed with an army of mendacious charlatans who ply lies for a living. This return to what was once considered a relic of the past helps prevent AI misappropriation in every sense. The triumphant return of blue books is part of a broader symposium about how to balance educational technology with genuine learning and critical thinking. They allow a student to demonstrate their knowledge in context and without digital assistance, providing them with the opportunity to test their writing chops, accompanied by the once-common cursive penmanship that in recent times is greatly lacking. To call most penmanship today chicken scratch would be an insult to chickens. Such expression in their own words and in their own handwriting ensures academic integrity while expressing the personality of the writer with a distinct human touch. Blue books are an antidote for that compounded equation infecting campuses known as dumbed down plus group think equals grade inflation. Moreover, it is difficult to cheat on a handwritten, proctored exam. Best of all, it’s working as some universities have seen a surge in demand, with blue book sales increasing by 30 percent at Texas A&M, 50 percent at the University of Florida, and 80 percent at UC Berkeley. Adding an oral assessment component to the blue book exam is something that has been suggested to ensure the student can verbally communicate cohesively and effectively what they have learned. Teachers want their students to learn and succeed, not cheat their way to a diploma. Education is not just about gathering and regurgitating facts and figures. It is about critical thinking, analysis, and creation. Technology is a tool that makes life better, not a means to do your thinking for you. The brain must be exercised. The lack of critical thinking is our other national deficit, growing at unprecedented levels. Too often, collegiate critical thinking means undermining objective reality when it conflicts with students’ emotions that are suffused nonstop with leftist ideology. Like it or not, life is one big blue book. Blue books are the first hopeful sign of common sense emerging from the academic quad in decades. Proving what’s old is still useful. Perhaps fountain pens, textbooks, and slide rules are next. READ MORE from Greg Maresca: Corporation for Propaganda Broadcasting America’s Sport Export Autopen on Autopilot The post When Old Becomes New: Blue Books Are Back appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.
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3 w

A Dog’s Grave
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A Dog’s Grave

The eighteenth-century Hellenist Johann Joachim Winckelmann maintained that the “finest and most beautiful drawing in the world” could be found on the surface of the Meidias Hydria, a red-figured water jar attributed to the fifth-century Athenian potter Meidias, and today found in the veritable Wunderkammer that is Room 19 of the British Museum. Often have I looked upon the Meidias Hydria, with its marvelously detailed depiction of the abduction of the Leukippides, but whether it truly is the “most beautiful drawing in the world,” or even the most beautiful specimen of Greek vase-painting,  remains open to debate. And now we have adopted another shelter dog, Mina, part dachshund and part Jack Russell terrier, a huntress who now patrols our yard. Another work by the same painter, a red-figured lekythos (oil vessel) showing the birth of Erichthonios, now in the Cleveland Museum of Art, is no less remarkable, and other red-figure painters, like Euphronios, Euthymides, the Berlin Painter, and the Marsyas Painter, could all match Meidias brushstroke for brushstroke. And the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston has a red-figure calyx krater by the Dokimasia Painter depicting the murder of Agamemnon, a vessel which seems to me superior to the Meidias Hydria in most every way — with all due respect to Herr Winckelmann. Yet one of the most affecting examples of that particular art form can be found not in the Louvre,  the Pergamonmuseum, the Getty, the Fitzwilliam, or any of the other world-class collections of classical art you might care to mention, but in the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology, located on the University of Michigan’s central campus in Ann Arbor. It is an Apulian volute krater, two-handed with red-figured decoration, produced by the anonymous Gioia del Colle Painter around 340 B.C., and featuring the image of a young man reunited in the afterlife with his faithful canine companion. Most of us have never witnessed a violent mythical abduction, or the miraculous birth of a king from the unwanted seed of a god, or the murder of a proud monarch by his wife and her lover, but many of us are quite familiar with the relationship between a master and a hound, and with the nature of bereavement, and it is for this reason I find the krater at the Kelsey Museum, with its human scale and subject matter, so profoundly moving. At the center of the Gioia del Colle Painter’s composition is a youth seated in a naiskos, a small tomb building or temple, surrounded by grieving gift-bearers and libation-pourers. The deceased still has a spear in his hands, a sheathed sword at his side, and a military chlamys (cloak) pinned with a fibula at his left shoulder, but his fighting days are evidently over, since his bronze greaves and helmet have been hung up with care, never to be worn again, never again to produce the “earth-clash of bronze armor,” as it says in the Iliad. At his feet sits his dog, likely a member of the Lakonikoí Kýnes breed, the sort of swift Laconian hound made famous by Homer (the “swift-footed” Argos, loyal to Odysseus unto death) and Shakespeare (the hounds of Theseus “are bred out of the Spartan kind,” we are told). With his right hand the dead youth reaches out to his dog, who is seated obediently on its haunches, calmly gazing back at its owner with utter devotion. What better companion, for a soldier and a hunter at least, could there be in the underworld? How the ancient Greeks and Romans adored their dogs, a fondness we find ample evidence for in the touching epitaphs they had engraved on the headstones of their dead pets: This is the tomb of the dog, Stephanos, who perished, whom Rhodope shed tears for and buried like a human. I am the dog Stephanos, and Rhodope set up a tomb for me. Here the stone says it holds the white dog from Melita, the most faithful guardian of Eumelus; Bull they called him while he was yet alive; but now his voice is prisoned in the silent pathways of night. Surely even as thou liest dead in this tomb I deem the wild beasts yet fear thy white bones, huntress Lycas; and thy valor great Pelion knows, and splendid Ossa and the lonely peaks of Cithaeron. Thou who passest on this path If haply thou dost mark this monument, Laugh not, I pray thee, though it is a dog’s grave. Tears fell for me, and the dust was heaped above me By a master’s hand. I am in tears, while carrying you to your last resting place, as much as I rejoiced when bringing you home in my own hands fifteen years ago. In the very origins of our civilization, we find the relationship between master and hound already perfected. And here I am reminded of one of G.K. Chesterton’s finest essays, “On Keeping a Dog,” from February of 1911. Inspired by the “innovation which I of late introduced into my domestic life; he is a four-legged innovation in the shape of an Aberdeen terrier,” Chesterton described how “if the dog is loved he is loved as a dog; not as a fellow-citizen, or an idol, or a pet, or a product of evolution.” Somehow this creature has completed my manhood; somehow, I cannot explain why, a man ought to have a dog. A man ought to have six legs; those other four legs are part of him. Our alliance is older than any of the passing and priggish explanations that are offered of either of us; before evolution was, we were. You can find it written in a book that I am a mere survival of a squabble of anthropoid apes; and perhaps I am. I am sure I have no objection. But my dog knows I am a man, and you will not find the meaning of that word written in any book as clearly as it is written in his soul. For Chesterton, it is in this symbiotic relationship between master and hound that we are at our most civilized: It may be written in a book that my dog is canine; and from this it may be deduced that he must hunt with a pack, since all canines hunt with a pack. Hence it may be argued (in the book) that if I have one Aberdeen terrier I ought to have twenty-five Aberdeen terriers. But my dog knows that I do not ask him to hunt with a pack; he knows that I do not care a curse whether he is canine or not so long as he is my dog. That is the real secret of the matter which the superficial evolutionists cannot be got to see. If traceable history be the test, civilization is much older than the savagery of evolution. The civilized dog is older than the wild dog of science. The civilized man is older than the primitive man of science. We feel it in our bones that we are the antiquities, and that the visions of biology are the fancies and the fads. The books do not matter; the night is closing in, and it is too dark to read books. Faintly against the fading firelight can be traced the prehistoric outlines of the man and the dog. Anyone who has lost a beloved pet understands the profound nature of this bond, one which stretches back to time immemorial, long before biologists sought to explain the human-canine relationship with recourse to oxytocinergic systems and socio-positive interactions and what have you. We recently lost our cherished dog, a long-haired dachshund named Magnus, adopted from a local shelter, who spent his many years with us defending our garden, red in tooth and claw if need be, from possums, rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks, rats, and short-tailed shrews, but otherwise curled up either in our leather writer’s chair, or in front of the fireplace, just like Chesterton’s prized Scottish terrier. His death was devastating. Lord Byron’s memorialized his Landseer dog, Boatswain, as one who who possessed Beauty without Vanity, Strength without Insolence, Courage without Ferosity, and all the virtues of Man without his Vices. This praise, which would be unmeaning Flattery if inscribed over human Ashes, is but a just tribute to the Memory of Boatswain, a Dog And the very same could be said of our own dearly-missed hound. When Argentina’s President Javier Milei lost his English mastiff Conan — his “true and greatest love,” his “friend and confidant,” “literally a son to me” — he insisted that his pet’s demise was merely “a physical disappearance,” and that he could still communicate with Conan, even using him as a intercessor between himself and the Almighty. Some might scoff at these unorthodox beliefs, but true cynophiles are more likely to understand. My Dog, Forever Magnus now rests beneath a mound of earth, in the shade of a gently swaying Korean fir, surrounded by the daylilies and ground elder and fallen leaves through which he snuffled and hunted. I would like to think his white bones still strike fear into the hearts of the vermin that threaten our vegetable patch, even if his voice has been imprisoned in the silent pathways of the night. And now we have adopted another shelter dog, Mina, part dachshund and part Jack Russell terrier, a huntress who now patrols our yard, yet enjoys nothing more than sitting and gazing lovingly into our eyes, in a posture identical to that of the Laconian hound so exquisitely rendered by the Gioia del Colle Painter on his volute krater. Chesterton marveled at how “one loves an animal like a man instead of merely accepting an animal like an optimist” — and it is precisely that sort of love that really ought to extend beyond the confines of this life and into the hereafter, where we will, with any luck, find ourselves seated beneath the ample roof of a naiskos, in the company of our faithful guardians, forevermore. READ MORE from Matthew Omolesky: Chopin Intime Confronting the Shadows: Shūsaku Endō’s Rediscovered Masterpieces Sede Vacante: China’s Provocations Against the Vatican The post A Dog’s Grave appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.
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O’Keefe Undercover in LA: “No Kings” Protesters Recruited by Communist Group, Graffiti Near Feds
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The WHO Pandemic Treaty: Medical Tyranny on Steroids. Speakers: Dr. Vliet and Major Gary
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The WHO Pandemic Treaty: Medical Tyranny on Steroids. Speakers: Dr. Vliet and Major Gary

from Vaxxchoice: TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
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Report: U.S. Quietly Sent Israel Hundreds of Hellfire Missiles While Touting ‘Diplomacy’
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Report: U.S. Quietly Sent Israel Hundreds of Hellfire Missiles While Touting ‘Diplomacy’

by Chris Menahan, Information Liberation: The US was shipping hundreds of Hellfire missiles to Israel while President Trump was out touting his push for “diplomacy” with Iran, according to a new report. From The Middle East Eye, “Exclusive: US quietly sent hundreds of Hellfire missiles to Israel before Iran attack”: The US quietly delivered hundreds of […]
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