THE LEFT’S LONG MARCH THROUGH THE INSTITUTIONS: Who Does the Anne Frank Center Represent?

The Jewish world is full of organizations that advocate against anti-Semitism and discrimination, including groups like the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee. Unlike the Anne Frank Center, these organizations have years of experience, dozens of offices, and sizeable grassroots support. They also have clear frameworks for defining and combatting anti-Semitism—even the ADL, which is known for its strongly worded statements, didn’t call Spicer’s ill-advised comments “Holocaust denial.” The Anne Frank Center has reliably been willing to criticize the Trump administration in more aggressive and hyperbolic terms than any of these well-established groups, and media outlets have credulously rewarded it with extensive coverage.

The center’s transformation was no accident. It recently got a new board chair, a private-wealth manager named Peter Rapaport, and he brought on Goldstein, who has a background in political organizing. It shuttered its small museum and disbanded its board of advisers comprised of Holocaust experts. All of the staffers who were working there when Goldstein arrived have left.

With just its famous name and a savvy social-media strategy, the Anne Frank Center has transformed into a putative authority on anti-Semitism and American politics. But it’s not at all clear the organization speaks for anybody other than its own leaders—not Holocaust scholars, Anne Frank’s family, or the Jewish community. Ultimately, by politicizing Anne Frank, the group may undermine her legacy.

“Background in political organizing” is about all you need to know.

FAKE NEWS: Former Obama Official Suggests ‘Opposing Viewpoints Button’ for Facebook.

Cass Sunstein, former administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Obama administration, suggested that Facebook experiment with an “opposing viewpoints button” in the website’s newsfeed but cautioned against the company curating content based on policy positions.

“You could just click on it and you would get, for a certain amount of stuff that comes on your newsfeed, things that think differently from how you think – and it could make you very unhappy that you clicked the button because ‘why are they sending me this nonsense?’” he said during a discussion about his book, #Republic: Divided Democracy in the Age of Social Media, at the American Enterprise Institute.

Smart.

And a smart algo might put challenging viewpoints into everyone’s feed, instead of using left-leaning Snopes or Politifact to tell people what the “real” news is.

POLITICO: Obama’s hidden Iran deal giveaway.

Obama, the senior official and other administration representatives weren’t telling the whole story on Jan. 17, 2016, in their highly choreographed rollout of the prisoner swap and simultaneous implementation of the six-party nuclear deal, according to a POLITICO investigation.

In his Sunday morning address to the American people, Obama portrayed the seven men he freed as “civilians.” The senior official described them as businessmen convicted of or awaiting trial for mere “sanctions-related offenses, violations of the trade embargo.”

In reality, some of them were accused by Obama’s own Justice Department of posing threats to national security. Three allegedly were part of an illegal procurement network supplying Iran with U.S.-made microelectronics with applications in surface-to-air and cruise missiles like the kind Tehran test-fired recently, prompting a still-escalating exchange of threats with the Trump administration. Another was serving an eight-year sentence for conspiring to supply Iran with satellite technology and hardware. As part of the deal, U.S. officials even dropped their demand for $10 million that a jury said the aerospace engineer illegally received from Tehran.

And in a series of unpublicized court filings, the Justice Department dropped charges and international arrest warrants against 14 other men, all of them fugitives. The administration didn’t disclose their names or what they were accused of doing, noting only in an unattributed, 152-word statement about the swap that the U.S. “also removed any Interpol red notices and dismissed any charges against 14 Iranians for whom it was assessed that extradition requests were unlikely to be successful.”

And this:

Three of the fugitives allegedly sought to lease Boeing aircraft for an Iranian airline that authorities say had supported Hezbollah, the U.S.-designated terrorist organization. A fourth, Behrouz Dolatzadeh, was charged with conspiring to buy thousands of U.S.-made assault rifles and illegally import them into Iran.

A fifth, Amin Ravan, was charged with smuggling U.S. military antennas to Hong Kong and Singapore for use in Iran. U.S. authorities also believe he was part of a procurement network providing Iran with high-tech components for an especially deadly type of IED used by Shiite militias to kill hundreds of American troops in Iraq.

The biggest fish, though, was Seyed Abolfazl Shahab Jamili, who had been charged with being part of a conspiracy that from 2005 to 2012 procured thousands of parts with nuclear applications for Iran via China. That included hundreds of U.S.-made sensors for the uranium enrichment centrifuges in Iran whose progress had prompted the nuclear deal talks in the first place.

Release the full details of the nuclear deal, President Trump.

REGULATORY CAPTURE: Dodd-Frank could be driving small banks to consolidate, but protecting big banks from competition.

RICK MORAN: Sessions ‘Can’t Imagine’ Dems Shutting Down Government Over Border Wall Funding. “Democrats may fume but Republicans have the votes.”

Elections have consequences, as the man once said.

BEYOND LIVONIA: Genital mutilation victims break their silence: ‘This is demonic’

STUFF JUST GOT REAL: French Parties Unify Against Le Pen: ‘This Is Deadly Serious Now’.

Pieces like this one are trying to pass off centrist Emmanuel Macron as an outsider, but his centrism is what made him the French establishment’s preferred candidate-of-last-resort.

JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON: Sorry, College Kids, There’s No Such Thing As Hate Speech.

GOOD MORNING: Make it better with Liz Sheld’s Morning Brief.

JAMES POULOS: The trouble with Emmanuel Macron.

Yes, fellow Americans, this is how bad it’s gotten abroad: Squeaking out a first-round win by symbolizing a future of niceness now strikes the status-quo-ites as the beginning of a world made new.

The reality is considerably grimmer. How dire it was, throughout the French campaign, to watch centrists left and right insist that only they could beat back the forces of “extremism,” that catchall term which has served the West so poorly in organizing its resources against foes foreign and domestic. The continued rise of populist, nationalist, and, yes, even communist parties in Europe has shown just how extreme a reaction established neoliberalism has provoked in its failings to date — inadequate, costly efforts, by turns ham-handed, shambolic, and impotent, to manage everything from the Eurozone crisis to the immigration debacle.

Yes, it’s all been a tall order; yes, the ruling (or is it managing?) classes should have seen it coming. And yes: However well-intentioned and authentic the likes of Macron and Co., who probably grasp how truly bad it can get in Europe, their ilk are still locked into policies guaranteed to further aggravate political extremism left, right, and Islamic. They think their political stalemate with Le Pen and her fellow travelers is a victory. Really, it spells a fiercer culture war.

Read the whole thing.

LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Death toll jumps to 20 in Venezuela protests.

The death toll in three weeks of violence at anti-government protests in Venezuela jumped to 20 people after a night of clashes and pillaging left 12 people dead in Caracas.

Riot police and pro-government vigilantes fought running battles with protesters demanding the ouster of President Nicolas Maduro on the capital’s east, west and south sides, witnesses said.

“It was like a war,” said 33-year-old construction worker Carlos Yanez, a resident of the southwestern district of El Valle.

“The police were firing tear gas, armed civilians were shooting guns at buildings. My family and I threw ourselves to the floor. It was horrible,” he told AFP.

Eleven people were killed in the neighborhood, according to officials.

Socialist governments “for the people” always seem to end up with a lot of dead people.

IT’S COMPLICATED: China Tightens the Screws — on South Korea.

China is having a difficult time reconciling its economic need to act like a responsible grownup on the world stage, with its political desire to be a Communist-Nationalist hegemon.

SPENGLER: Come to Me, My Mélenchony Baby. “In France, U.S. Conservatives Should Hope for Fillon.”

More:

Elsewhere in Europe, the alternative right has flopped. Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders polled lower than expected in last month’s Dutch elections. Germany’s Alternative fuer Deutschland is in chaos following the resignation of its chairman and lead candidate Frauke Petry, who was effectively forced out by the extreme right wing of her party.

But France is different. Many American conservatives are cheering for Le Pen. So are some elements of the French Establishment, who see the National Front leader as the country’s last hope to stop the creeping tide of Islam.

But if Le Pen is elected, I guarantee that her American admirers are not going to like the outcome.

Indeed.

I DO SO LIKE IT HERE AND THERE, SAY, I LIKE FRACKING ANYWHERE: Fracking could fuel Alaska’s next oil boom.

OF COURSE THEY DID: Clinton Camp Instituted ‘Loyalty Scores’ Following 2008 Loss.

Clinton had two staffers “toil” to rate every Democrat members of Congress on a scale of one to seven — one being the most loyal — after she lost the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama in 2008. Her husband Bill Clinton then deliberately campaigned against the disloyal “sevens” in subsequent primary elections, and succeeded in getting some of them removed. Some of those who remained apparently took note, and were quick to endorse Hillary in 2016.

The idea of this person controlling the weaponized Executive Branch is beyond unnerving.

THAT’S SOME STRANGE BED TRUMP AND PUTIN ARE SUPPOSEDLY SHARING:

NEIN MEANS NEIN: German Judge Acquits Turkish Man of Rape After 4 Hours of Forced Violent Sex.

A German judge has acquitted a Turkish man of rape, despite the fact that he forced a woman to have sex with him, and left her incapacitated. The judge argued that in “the mentality of the Turkish cultural circle,” what the woman “had experienced as rape” might be considered merely “wild sex.” The judge refused to convict the rapist, because “no intention is demonstrable.”

It’s different when they do it.

IT IS NOT MY FAULT; IT IS THAT OF MY NATURE: Tillerson considers adding North Korea to state sponsors of terror list, N.K. responds with more nuke threats.

IT’S COMPLICATED: North Korean ships dock in Chinese port despite coal embargo.

The ships docked Thursday and Friday at a port in the city of Tangshan in northern Hebei province, near Beijing.

All six North Korean ships were loaded with anthracite coal, according to a daily docking plan published on the port of Jintang’s website. Unloading times of up to six hours were listed for the ships.

Three of the ships — the Jin Hung 9, the Woory Star and the Kum Gang San 2 — had been due to dock since February, when China said it was halting all coal imports from North Korea for 2017 in accordance with a UN Security Council resolution passed last year.

It’s unclear what the ships unloaded. The three have since left the port.

Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Lu Kang said Friday that his country’s policy of not accepting coal imports from North Korea had not changed.

“There have been some reports that some coal ships have tied up in port. You are aware if these ships continue to remain out at sea, away from port, we need to make some humanitarian consideration for their crews,” Lu said.

China also reportedly has put bombers in the area on alert, which are probably a bigger threat to Pyongyang than to U.S./R.O.K forces.

AMERICAN SHARIA: More arrests for female genital mutilation in Michigan.

RENT OUR SOFTWARE, OR ELSE: Microsoft will cut services to standalone Office users so they’ll subscribe to Office 365.

When Microsoft launched Office 365 in 2010, Microsoft officials said then that customers were asking to move to the cloud. Beginning in 2020, some Office customers will need to buy Office 365 to do so.

In an update to Microsoft’s Office 365 system requirements released on Thursday, Microsoft said that consumers who have already purchased “perpetual”—i.e., standalone—versions of Office, such as Office 2010, Office 2013, and Office 2016, would be cut off from accessing the business versions of OneDrive and Skype after mainstream support expires. Those who have purchases those Office suites will be allowed to connect until Oct. 13, 2020—the day mainstream support ends for Office 2016, and the day the new support policy kicks in.

This software-as-a-service business model is irksome. I’d rather pay for software upfront and then own it outright until I’m ready to upgrade. Having bought-and-paid-for software held for ransom is worse than irksome.

WHEN THEY GO LOW… U Alaska Art Exhibit Features Painting of Captain America Holding President Trump’s Decapitated Head.

CLEANUP AT 600,000 FEET: As orbit becomes more crowded, risk from space debris grows.

AMANDA MARCOTTE: Women still do most of the work in preventing pregnancy — does it have to be that way?

Women, a new study published in the Journal of Sex Research has shown, are expected to do the majority (and often all) the work required so that heterosexual couples can have sex without making babies.

In a paper titled “More Than a Physical Burden: Women’s Mental and Emotional Work in Preventing Pregnancy,” sociologist Katrina Kimport — who works as an associate professor at the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health at the University of California, San Francisco — documented the way that women are tasked with the majority of physical work required to prevent pregnancy and also expected to do most of the emotional and mental labor as well.

“While the biotechnological landscape of available methods may explain the assignment of the physical burden for contraception to women,” Kimport wrote, “this does not mean the concomitant time, attention, and stress that preventing pregnancy requires must also be primarily assumed by women.”

Until medicine advances far enough to give us that elusive “pill for men,” it seems that Marcotte believes women are too emotionally fragile to be accountable for their own uteri.

THE ART OF THE DEAL: Freed Egyptian American prisoner returns home following Trump intervention.