So, the Rebel Media's Having Some Problems...

Following-up from the other day, "Faith Goldy Fired from Rebel Media."

I just saw this Reuters piece, linked at Mediagazer, "Canada's conservative Rebel Media site down after service cut." And reading it I find that, in addition to Goldy, "Several other contributors have left the online publication over the past week and some prominent conservative Canada politicians have also sought to distance themselves from the site .... The defections include co-founder Brian Lilley, who according to the Globe and Media was uncomfortable with the site's increasing harsh tone and growing association with the likes of white nationalist Richard Spencer."

Oh, ahem, that's pretty major.

So, googling around I see this piece at the Daily Caller, "Rebel Media Implodes" (safe link):

It’s chaos this week at Rebel Media, one of the few conservative media resources available in Canada.

In the last week, the news service has lost at least four employees to resignation and another to a firing while Rebel founder and editor-in-chief Ezra Levant now says he is being blackmailed over alleged misuse of fundraising dollars.

And forget the November cruise where Levant promised up close and personal interaction between Rebel personalities and supporters. Norwegian Cruise Lines is no longer sponsoring the Caribbean voyage, citing the Rebel’s politics being “inconsistent” with their own vision of the world.

New Canadian Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer cancelled a Friday interview with the Rebel, citing in a statement the need to change the “editorial directions” of the news service.

The cancellation just the latest in a series of corporate rebuffs that have hurt Rebel Media’s advertising base.

The trouble all started last weekend when headline reporter Faith Goldy — fired on Thursday — was covering the Charlottesville protest. Her on-scene commentary was perceived as favorable to the white supremacists that leadership candidates in the newly-minted United Conservative Party of Alberta began to complain and insist that the party distance itself from The Rebel.

Levant sent a memo to supporters — and obtained by The Daily Caller — on Tuesday that disaowed any support for the alt-right; but it was not enough to satisfy malcontents within the organization.

Co-founder and commentator Brain Lilley quit on Wednesday. That resignation was followed by the departures of contributors Barbara Kay and John Robson.

Levant announced Thursday that provocative right-wing commentator Gavin McInnes had also left the company.

Now Levant says he is being blackmailed by former British contributor Caolan Robertson, who released a video on Thursday on YouTube that alleges Rebel Media has been conducting dishonest fundraising campaigns for the express purposes of raising money for the organization and increasing into database...

More.

And see Ezra Levant himself, at the Rebel, "Blackmail: Setting the record straight."

It's hard out there.

Pamela Geller Banned (Then Restored) by PayPal

If anyone knows it's a multi-front war over the battlespace, it's Pamela.

See, "EXCELSIOR! PAYPAL RESTORES AFDI."

.@PayPal banned me. It's like pre-war Germany. Leftists run amok. #Boycottpaypalhttps://t.co/QxQQ0XrQzi pic.twitter.com/ayUixhMW3Z

— Pamela Geller (@PamelaGeller) August 21, 2017

Norman Mailer, The Naked and the Dead

At Amazon, Norman Mailer, The Naked and the Dead (50th Anniversary Edition).

What #PresidentTrump Gets Right About #NATO

This is great!

From Professor Michael Mandelbaum, at Foreign Affairs, "Pay Up, Europe":

Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States, has a point about Europe and NATO. In May, in a speech at the alliance’s headquarters, in Brussels, he told his fellow leaders that “NATO members must finally contribute their fair share.” In July, he repeated the warning in Warsaw. “Europe must do more,” he said.

European leaders may find these demands grating, especially given Trump’s unpopularity among their constituents, but they should heed them. In recent years, Europe has become a dangerous place. In search of domestic support, Russian President Vladimir Putin has turned to aggression abroad, invading Ukraine and intervening in Syria. Since any one military adventure can provide only a temporary popularity boost, Putin will always need new victims. That makes him an ongoing threat. Just when NATO has once again become necessary for Europe’s security, however, Trump’s election has thrown the future of the U.S. role in the alliance into doubt.

For these reasons, Trump is right: to strengthen NATO and encourage the United States to continue its commitment to European security, the alliance’s European members should contribute more. Just as important for European and Western security, however, is for the United States to lead other multilateral initiatives to defend the interests and values that North America and Europe have in common. Without that leadership, Europe—and the rest of the world—will be a harsher place.

OLD MISTAKES

For the two and a half decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the word that candidate Trump used to describe NATO—“obsolete”—was largely accurate. It no longer is. In 2014, Russia put an end to the post–Cold War European peace. It invaded Ukraine, backed pro-Russian politicians in eastern European countries, and has since meddled in elections in the United States and France. This renewed aggression stems from Putin’s need for public support to sustain the kleptocracy over which he presides. During his first two terms as president, from 2000 to 2008, the skyrocketing price of oil, Russia’s largest export, allowed Putin to buy popularity. But in 2014, two years after he returned to the presidency, the price of oil collapsed. He was forced to turn to the only other reliable source of support at his disposal: aggressive nationalism. That year, in response to a popular uprising in Ukraine, known as the Euromaidan revolution, that deposed the corrupt, pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, Putin launched an invasion, initially disguised as a spontaneous reaction by local forces. Russian troops seized the Crimean Peninsula and began a campaign to support pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine’s eastern provinces.

Putin claimed that Russia’s actions were necessary because the Euromaidan revolution stemmed from a Western plot to isolate, humiliate, and ultimately destroy Russia. The Russian public largely believed him. His approval ratings rose sharply, and then got a further boost from his intervention in the Syrian civil war on the side of the brutal dictator Bashar al-Assad.

Although Putin and his regime bear the primary responsibility for the return of war to Europe, the West, particularly the United States, has unintentionally helped bring about this dangerous state of affairs. In the 1990s, NATO expanded eastward, against the wishes of Russians across the political spectrum, even those favorably disposed to the West, and in spite of earlier assurances by Western leaders to their Soviet and, later, Russian counterparts that no such expansion would occur.

The West also pursued other policies to which Russia objected in vain, including the U.S.-led wars in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Iraq and the unilateral U.S. withdrawal in 2002 from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, an agreement that had restricted the number of missile defense systems the Soviet Union and the United States could build. Together, these initiatives created a constituency for Putin’s claim, used to justify his aggressive foreign policies, that the West was pursuing an anti-Russian campaign that he was acting to thwart.

Whereas NATO expansion mobilized Russia, it tranquilized the West. To gain domestic acceptance of the policy, Western governments portrayed it as a harmless gesture of goodwill made by an organization that was transforming itself from a defensive multinational army into a benign club of democracies. Expansion, its sponsors claimed, would require no exertion or expense on the part of current NATO members. Nor would Russia object to it, they added, in spite of considerable evidence to the contrary. These false claims have left the ultimate arbiters of NATO’s fate—the voters of the alliance’s member countries—unprepared for the renewed threat in Europe and the need for increased efforts to meet it...

Keep reading.

Demonstrators in Laguna Beach Decry Racism (VIDEO)

Normally, I'd go down to these local protests and take photos for my blog. But I quit covering these things after radical leftists physically attacked me in Anaheim a few years back. Unless I have my own posse as a security detail, I can't attend. It's too dangerous (and I'm too well-known, and thus targeted).

In any case, at LAT (FWIW), "Counter-protesters swarm rally against illegal immigration in Laguna Beach":

With protesters and counter-protesters facing off in tense confrontations across the country this weekend in the wake of the deadly clash in Charlottesville, Va., activists in Orange County wanted to try something different.

An “America First!” rally against illegal immigration was scheduled for Sunday evening. Counter-protesters, including the city’s mayor, staged their own protest but scheduled it a day earlier.

“As we’re constantly reminded to act and not react, we’re also reminded not to serve the racists’ purpose and provide them with a platform to spread their hatred,” organizers of the Saturday event wrote on Facebook.

To the several hundred protesters who showed up Saturday, Laguna Beach Mayor Toni Iseman said: “Tell your friends that being here today means you won’t be dancing with the bad guys tomorrow.”

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“They want a fight; we’re not going to engage,” Iseman said.

Still, hundreds of counter-protesters showed up anyway at the “America First!” rally Sunday evening. A police spokesman estimated the crowd of protesters and counter-protesters grew to about 2,500 — only a few dozen in that crowd were there for the “America First!” rally, billed as a vigil for victims of crimes committed by immigrants in the U.S. illegally.

The protests remained largely peaceful, if tense and loud, for much of the evening. As of 8:30 p.m., police had made two arrests; one counter-protester was arrested after shoving a Trump supporter, another for disturbing the peace with a knife. It was not immediately clear which side the person with a knife was protesting.

Shortly before 9:30 p.m., as the protests wound down, police escorted the “America First!” group out of the area. Police declared the event an unlawful assembly and ordered the crowd to disperse.

Crowds started gathering hours before the planned protest. The modest cluster of anti-immigration demonstrators met in a circle on the beach, separated by the boardwalk and a phalanx of police officers in riot gear and on horseback from hundreds of counter-protesters chanting and drumming from the other side. Some yelled insults between the officers’ legs.

Waving signs that read “Curb your Nazism,” protesters on one side shouted, “Immigrants welcome here” and “Hey hey, ho ho, white supremacy’s got to go.”

"It's ridiculous. I don't understand this. They're the ones with all the hate," said Jesse Hernandez, who was attending the “America First!” rally. “It's just a vigil of patriots that recognize what illegal immigration has done to some Americans."

One of his fellow “America First!” protesters yelled, "We're not Nazis!" and said what upsets him the most is that people don't understand the difference between people like him and extremists. "There are no Nazis here," he said, shaking his head.

About 200 officers from Laguna Beach, Anaheim, Newport Beach and Irvine were at the rally to try to ensure that the protests would not erupt in violence. Orange County sheriff’s deputies on horseback were also separating the crowds.

Laguna Beach police spokesman Jim Cota said authorities strategized to spread protesters along the length of the beach rather than have them build toward the waterfront...

More.

Jennifer Delacruz Enjoying Summer

Following-up, "Jennifer Delacruz's Monday Forecast."

Well, since I've been lagging on my Ms. Jennifer blogging, here's a selfie from her weekend recreation activities. What a lady!

San Diego summertime ☀️🦀#SanDiegoWX pic.twitter.com/OUFub0pP7q

— Jennifer Delacruz (@10NewsJen) August 19, 2017

Jennifer Delacruz's Monday Forecast

ABC 10 San Diego uploads these weather videos quite late, otherwise I'd be posting my lovely Ms. Jennifer in the evenings.

No matter. She's the best!

Still quite mild this August, although it should clear up later today enough to view the eclipse.

Bonnie Rochman, The Gene Machine

Following-up, "The Disturbing, Eugenics-Like Reality Unfolding in Iceland."

At Amazon, Bonnie Rochman, The Gene Machine: How Genetic Technologies Are Changing the Way We Have Kids--and the Kids We Have.

The Disturbing, Eugenics-Like Reality Unfolding in Iceland

At Quartz:

Recently, a CBS news crew traveled to Iceland, producing a report titled “Inside the country where Down syndrome is disappearing.” As much as it sounds like it, the headline is not clickbait or hyperbole: In Iceland, nearly every women who undergoes prenatal testing and whose fetus receives a diagnosis of Down syndrome decides to end her pregnancy. Each year, according to their sources, only a child or two is born with Down syndrome in Iceland.

Up to 85% of pregnant women in Iceland choose to take prenatal testing. The specific test in question, which CBS calls the “combination test,” takes into account ultrasound images, a blood draw, and a mother’s age to determine the likelihood that a fetus has Down syndrome. (Older mothers are more likely to have babies with Down syndrome because chromosomal errors are more likely as women age.)

In essence, pregnant women in Iceland—and presumably their partners—are saying that life with disability is not worth living. It is one thing to decide that a child who will never walk, talk, feed herself, or engage with caregivers may not have a good quality of life. But children with Down syndrome do not fit this description. If a woman doesn’t want to have a child with Down syndrome, their bar for what qualifies as a life worth living is set quite high. Are babies who are born deaf destined to lead a worthwhile life? What about babies with cleft palates, which can be corrected but leave a visible scar?

Here’s the interesting thing: Down syndrome, or Trisomy 21 as it is also called, is actually one of the less severe chromosomal conditions. Unlike many other trisomies (genetic conditions in which a person has three copies of a chromosome instead of the standard two), it’s compatible with life.

People with Down syndrome have an extra copy of their 21st chromosome, which causes intellectual delays and readily identifiable facial features such as almond-shaped eyes. But the way that Down syndrome expresses itself in an individual can be highly variable. About half of babies born with Down syndrome have heart defects that require surgical correction. Some children with Down syndrome grow up to be adults who go to college and get married; others never live independently...

More.

Philippa Gregory, The Other Boleyn Girl

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Philippa Gregory, The Other Boleyn Girl.

Alison Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII

At Amazon, Alison Weir, The Six Wives of Henry VIII.

Alison Weir, The Life of Elizabeth

*BUMPED.*

At Amazon, Alison Weir, The Life of Elizabeth.

Female Trump Voters Defend President Trump's #Charlottesville Response (VIDEO)

NYT had this last week, "Deal Breaker for Trump’s Supporters? Nope."

Interesting.

And watch, at CBS News This Morning:

Enough is Enough: President Trump's a Threat to Our Democratic Institutions

And to think, I still subscribe to this rag of a paper. Don't ask why. I mostly just read the sports and entertainment pages nowadays. I'll blog the occasional front-page story as well. But you can see my exasperation.

From the idiot editors at LAT, "Enough is Enough." (They've been running a year-long series of editorial arguing the president's not fit for office. Yeah, we have the First Amendment, but it's still treasonous. The leftist media's been mounting an attempted coup.)

MiniJello in Instagram

Here, "MiniJello is a student at the University of Delaware and her boobs are so big that she has garnered almost 100 thousand followers on Instagram!"

She' seen taking a selfie with Bill Murray, who is a cool guy, lol.

Helen Hunt Bikini on the Beach

At Taxi Driver, "Helen Hunt in Bikini While Changing on the Beach."

10 Sailors Missing as USS John S. McCain Crashes Into Oil Tanker East of Singapore (VIDEO)

At the official Pacific Fleet Headlines, "USS John S. McCain collides with merchant ship near Strait of Malacca" (via Memeorandum).

"10 sailors missing" likely means "10 sailors trapped below the water line and presumed dead," but I'll update. Either way, it's unconscionable. This is like Groundhog's Day for the Navy. It's unacceptable.

University of Texas Removes Confederate Statues

The Austin campus is the flagship of the UT system. Authorities swept down in the cover of night to seize the statues from history.

At the Texas Tribune, via Memeorandum, "UT-Austin removes Confederate statues in the middle of the night."

And at USA Today, "University of Texas removes Confederate statues from campus."

Gareth Sampson, Rome Spreads Her Wings

At Amazon, Gareth Sampson, Rome Spreads Her Wings: Territorial Expansion Between the Punic Wars.

Big Sur by Alice Hawkins VIDEO)

"Follow Highway 1 as it traces the edge of the West Coast between Los Angeles and San Francisco – the Santa Lucia mountains rising out of dense redwood forests on one side, the Pacific Ocean crashing against the craggy shore on the other – and you will find Big Sur, where a thousand-strong community lives scattered across the landscape..."

For Love Magazine: