Challenging Opinions >>

Rob Bluey is vice president for communications at The Heritage Foundation and Founding Editor of Daily Signal. I mentioned in the interview an article that Rob wrote during the Obama administration criticizing the removal of a website about earmark reform, and contrasted it to the Trump cull of the EPA’s website.

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Last month, a mob of more than 70

men, armed with baseball bats, knives, and rocks launched a series of vigilante

attacks around the towns of  Clichy-sous-Bois

and Bobigny, about an hour east of Paris. French police arrested at least

20 of them.

The mob launched attacks against Roma, also

known as Gypsies, living in the area, and the trigger for violence was a series

of rumors spread online, along with photos or video of the incident, that the

Roma had kidnapped a young French girl using a white van, intending to sell her

into sex slavery. Or perhaps it was a red van. Or maybe yellow, and maybe it

was a boy that was kidnapped, or maybe several children, and the intention was

maybe to harvest their organs. Sometimes Roma are the culprits, sometimes

Bulgarians, sometimes other types of outsiders.

The wandering details should tell you the

same as it should have told the members of the mob. All the rumors were

nonsense. French police confirmed that they had no reports of any abductions,

and no reason to think that any of the rumors were true. In addition, reverse

image searches of the supposed photographic evidence showed that it was from

unrelated incidents, often years old, taken in distant locations, and showing

incidents that are completely different to what the accompanying text claims.

French police were so frustrated with the persistence

of these rumors that they issued a

formal notice that they are false and instructed people to stop sharing them.

One spokesman said of the people who believed and acted on the rumo...

David Dayen is a contributing writer The Intercept and a weekly columnist for the New Republic. He is the author of the book Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street’s Great Foreclosure Fraud., and he’s shortly to become the executive editor of the American Prospect.

We talked about his article How Vaping Giant Juul Explains Everything that’s Wrong with our World.

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There’s a story in the last couple of weeks

that, if you’re in Australia, you’ve almost certainly heard, if you’re not in

Australia, you’ve almost certainly not heard.

The story is about a political party called

Pauline

Hanson’s One Nation, that’s its real name, the leader of the party is

called Pauline Hanson, but she’s literally put her stamp on the party too. It’s

not a very big party, they have no members of Australia’s House of

Representatives, but they do have two members out of a total of 76 of the

Australian Senate. The party got about nine per cent of the vote in Australia

when it was set up, in the late 1990s, then they fell away into obscurity, but they’ve

had a bit of a comeback in the last few years.

It’s an anti-immigrant, right-wing populist

party, it’s one of those parties that feels the need to clarify that they

aren’t racist on a regular basis.

The story is that the party’s chief of

staff James Ashby and another senior member, the leader of the party in the

state of Queensland, Steve Dickson went to Washington DC and met

representatives of the NRA, America’s National Rifle Association. They were

looking for funding for their party, and were offering political favors as a

result.

What they didn’t know was that one of their

party was filming the meeting for the Al Jazeera news channel. It’s a bit

difficult, but I’ll play you one clip.

What they are talking about there is that,

Mitchell Robinson is a writer for Eclectablog and associate professor and chair of music education at Michigan State University, as well as being a former high-school teacher. His research is focused on music education and education policy.

In the podcast we mentioned the Startup podcast featuring the Success Academy, and the Kipp schools.

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I was really concerned

to read about something called the Momo Challenge. This is a social media meme,

a chain message spread on Whatsapp, Facebook and other platform which tells of

a powerful internet message that could induce young people to harm themselves.

Except it’s not.

The whole thing is a hoax.

And that’s not the bit

I’m concerned about. Sure, stupid people make up stupid stories from time to

time. What I’m really concerned about is the degree of traction this story got

from people who should know better, and from people who should know that they don’t

know. The basic message was that by some evil technical magic, messages were

being inserted into children’s videos on YouTube which would, a bit like the film The Ring, make the kids go and commit suicide.

In the UK, for example, school administrators warned pupils and parents of the danger, major newspapers ran breathless stories of how dangerous it was for teenagers, and the Police Service of Northern Ireland issued an official warning as did various local forces in the US, and the RCMP in Canada said they were devoting resources to monitor the situation.

Not to be outdone, the

French ministry of the interior said it was reviewing the situation daily.

Spanish police issued a warning to people though it’s not clear what they

Cathy Reisenwitz is a writer whose work has appeared in The Week, Forbes, the Daily Beast, VICE Motherboard, Reason magazine, Talking Points Memo and others, and she’s appeared as a commentator on Fox News and Al Jazeera, which an interesting combination to say the least.

In the discussion I mentioned the coining of the word NEETs, young people who are Not in Employment, Education or Training. I also mentioned how many young men have not worked a single hour in employment the last year – over 17 per cent.

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On October 29 last year, Lion Air Flight 610 in Indonesia crashed, killing all 189 people on board died. On March 10 this year, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 crashed killing all 157 passengers and crew.

Both planes were brand new Boeing 737 MAX 8s. In

the days since the second crash, aviation authorities in countries starting

with China, and finishing with the United States on March 13 have grounded all

of this type of aircraft. This is remarkable because not only are these

newly-delivered planes, they are a new model.

There are less than 400 of this type of

aircraft around the world, the first one was delivered less than two years ago have

been delivered around the world so far; Boeing

has an order book of nearly 5,000 more, but I wouldn’t be counting on that

now if I were them.

This could just be an unfortunate

coincidence, but the fact that the two tragedies had similarities in the way

that the aircraft crashed is worrying, as is the fact that during 2018 at least

two pilots reported problems that could be related that happened when they were

flying this model.

It’s notable that the government-ordered

groundings began in China, and that the US was the last holdout, which looks

like some political or national pride issues are in play here...

Christian Toto is the editor of Hollywood in Toto, and a regular commentator on both politics and the entertainment industry.

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Clement Atlee, the British World War II Labour Party leader, and minister was once quoted by Margaret Thatcher, the conservative party leader of the 1970s and 1980s. They both agreed that referendums are ‘a device of dictators and demagogues’.

It’s not surprising that Atlee took that opinion

in the middle of World War II, Britain was fighting Germany, led by Hitler who had

legitimized his seizure of power by referendum. The Germans have learnt that lesson;

nationwide referendums are now prohibited by the constitution in Germany.

In contrast, in neighboring Switzerland,

which is mostly German-speaking, referendums

are a regular occurrence, an accepted part of the political process. Also,

referendums are very rare in the UK, they have only had three in their history,

while they

are a regular occurrence next door in Ireland, they’ve had more than one

per year so far this century.

If you have been paying attention, you

probably know that the most recent referendum in the UK, the Brexit referendum,

is causing them particular difficulty. Britain, for the next week or two, is

part of the EU. Two and a half years ago Britain voted to leave, they voted for

Brexit. Or to be more precise, they voted against continuing their membership.

Therein lies the problem. Britain being in the

EU was a known quantity, but people voted for an unknown. A whole host of contradictory

and impossible promises were made by people campaigning to leave the EU. Different

politicians, nominally allied to each other, promised that Britain would and would

not leave the single market that allows all EU businesses to trade with each

other without tariffs or regulatory barriers.

Michael Tanner is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, with an emphasis on poverty and social welfare policy, health care, and Social Security and entitlement reform.

His most recent book, The Inclusive Economy: How to Bring Wealth to America’s Poor, looks at the ways government contributes to poverty in the United States and suggests reforms that will enable the poor to more fully participate in a growing economy. 

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I saw a couple of

things recently related to podcasts, or at least that might resonate with

podcast listeners. One was

a YouTube video that compared the market valuation of WeWork, the company that offers

hotdesking to remote workers, to Regus, a similar but much more established

company, now owned by the IWG

group. WeWork has a valuation

of $47 billion. WeWork have been advertising heavily on some podcasts.

Hell, if they have that much money, I should be tapping them for ads on

Challenging Opinions. Regus has a valuation of $4 billion and, get this, Regus

is does almost ten times the business. Almost ten times bigger, but less than

one tenth of the valuation.

What’s going on? Well,

for one, WeWork has a far snazzier brand image; they’re doing everything to

appeal to the Millennials, but seriously, $47 billion? Does a hip graphic designer

doing your website, along with serving moco-frappa-chappa-lattes to your

workers justify a one-hundred fold increase on your valuation? I don’t think

so. The other difference is that WeWork has big money venture capital from Softbank

and others. That

$47 billion dollar valuation is based on an investment of $2billion from them.

Scott Morefiled is a reporter for the DailyCaller and a columnist for Townhall. His writings have also been featured  on Breitbart, BizPac, TheBlaze, National Review, The Federalist, The Hill and others.

In the podcast we discussed his article from 2016, and I mentioned a quotation from HL Mencken, and the fact that Trump’s cabinet has a collective wealth of over four billion dollars.

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In the U.S., President

Trump was

reported recently as saying that EU countries must take back the estimated 800

Isis fighters captured in Syria by US-backed forces and put them on trial.

In the UK, Home Secretary Sajid Javid, the minister in charge of internal affairs, has announced that he is stripping Shamima Begum of her UK citizenship. Shamima Begum, in case you haven’t been following, is the girl who, at the age of 15, ran away from home with two of her classmates and flew to Turkey, crossed the border into ISIS-controlled Syria, and became the wives of Islamic State fighters.

Shamima Begum

It seems Begum’s friend

Kadiza Sultana was

killed in an air raid, and the fate of the third girl, Amira Abase is not

clear.

There’s been some

debate in the UK about whether to they were traitors or victims, and whether it

was right to remove her citizenship. She didn’t do her case any favours when

she gave an interview defending the bombing of the

Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, which specifically targeted young

girls,

Adam DeCollibus is the author of Caravan. I mentioned the excellent Caliphate podcast in the conversation.

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I’ve talked

about the Baltic republics, and Ukraine before – their governments, and to a

large extent their people – are anxious to make alliances to the West, join

NATO, join the EU. It’s notable that of the former eastern bloc countries, the

Baltic states that once were part of the Soviet Union, occupied by the Soviet

Union they would say, have been the most anxious to integrate with the west,

joining NATO and the EU, and adopting the euro currency as soon as they were

permitted to do so.

You don’t

really have to be a cynic to realize that they were doing this not so much out

of love of the west as fear of the east. Joining NATO allowed them to access

its common defense commitment. That means that an attack on one is an attack on

all, to which all must respond.

In short,

that means that any invasion by Russia of the Baltic States is deterred by the

knowledge that Russia would also be attacking nuclear-armed states such as the

US and the UK. That is also a good explanation why Russia wanted to contrive to

occupy some of the territory of the former Soviet states of Georgia, Ukraine,

Moldova and Armenia – while they are not in control of all their own territory,

they are not able to join NATO.

There is

one other country in that region that has gone down a different path. Belarus

is situated between Poland and Russia; it has a population just under 10

million, and it is about the same size as Great Britain or the state of Minnesota;

they have their own language, Belorussian, which is closely related to Polish,

but written in the Cyrillic alphabet, much like Russian. However that language

is very much in a minority, the leadership and elite all speak Russian, as do most

of the people in the cities, although speaking Belorussian has become somewhat fashionable

David Introcaso is a healthcare policy consultant based in Washington DC.  He worked for then house majority leader Stenny Hoyer and at Department of Health and Human Services, and he has consulted for the American Heart Association, the American Public Health Association and United Health Group.  He has taught as a adjunct at the University of Chicago and at George Washington University.

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I was reading a piece called Unholy Alliance: Why Do Left-Wing Americans Support Right-Wing Muslims? by Yasmine Mohammed. She’s a former Muslim who, in her own words, ran away from the religious far-right world in which I was raised, and … made [her] way left towards values … like gender equality, free speech and LGBT rights.

And she continued,

Now, try to imagine the shock, betrayal and sadness I feel

seeing fellow liberals celebrating right-wing, conservative aspects of Islam.

On February 1, I was so upset over World Hijab Day that I spent the day in bed

with a migraine. Hijab Day? … Is there a Mormon underwear day? What about a

chastity belt day? I risked my life, and my daughter’s life, to escape from the

darkness into the light — only to find the light celebrating and fetishising

darkness.

That’s what she said, and I think she has a point. I know that

many Muslim women want to wear the hijab, and do so without harassment, but for

many others, it’s a symbol of oppression and submission. And, let’s be real

here, for many women, it’s a bit of both.

Now, I can sympathise with the feeling that women who don’t want

to leave the hijab behind, or don’t want to do that yet, they shouldn’t be

victimised, they shouldn’t be treated badly on that basis, and them wearing the

hijab shouldn’t be used as  a proxy, an

excuse for racist or ethnic victimization. So, yes, defend the right of people

to wear silly religious garb if they want to do that, and it doesn’t restrict

the rights of others.

But there is a whole world of difference between that and saying

Jennifer Briney is the host of the Congressional Dish podcast.

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A lot of people are kidding themselves.

We have two rival presidents in Venezuela. Nicolás Maduro,

the elected president, the successor to Hugo Chavez. I won’t go so far as to

say democratically elected, but … elected.

And Juan Guaido, the speaker of the national assembly who

has declared himself interim president; he’s been supported strongly by the

current US administration, despite the fact that he has no constitutional

legitimacy at all, and to a lesser extent by the EU and other western

countries.

People on the left have been calling this just another

US-backed coup in Latin America, and there is some reason to say that, but they

are kidding themselves if they think that is the only thing going on here. People

like UK Labour Party leader tweeted in 2013 “Thanks Hugo Chavez for showing that the poor matter and wealth can be

shared. He made massive contributions to Venezuela & a very wide world”.

Thanks Hugo Chavez for showing that the poor matter and wealth can be shared. He made massive contributions to Venezuela & a very wide world— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) March 5, 2013

Maybe not quite. Whatever about the aims of Chavez and his

successor, their economics have been a catastrophe for the country. 90 per cent

of people live in poverty, and the

average Venezuelan lost 11kg, that’s 24 pounds, in 2017. Get that, the

economy is in such a mess, people on average lost enough weight to make

themselves a weightwatchers star, just because they can’t afford food.

That’s a disgrace in any country but for the

nation with the world’s biggest oil reserves, that’s an outrage. It’s said

that no society is more than two missed dinners from anarchy, so with years of