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November 2021

ISRAEL Comments turned off

ADL’s anti-hate speaker accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing” The ADL conference on anti-Semitism should not be a forum for criticism of Israel. Moshe Phillips

By on November 7th, 2021

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/316346

The Anti-Defamation League’s upcoming international conference on combatting hate will include a speaker who has publicly accused Israel of perpetrating “ethnic cleansing” against the Palestinian Arabs.

Was she the only speaker available in the whole world? Couldn’t the ADL find anyone else?

The ADL says that the conference, titled “Never is Now” and scheduled to take place (via Zoom) on November 7-9, will be “the largest annual summit on antisemitism and hate” ever held.

If the event will indeed be that large, that makes it all the more urgent that the featured speakers not include anybody who has engaged in smears against Israel.

Yet Dr. Sara Yael Hirschhorn, who has repeatedly circulated anti-Israel slurs, will be one of the featured speakers. Hirschhorn, who teaches at Northwestern University, has repeatedly criticized Israel on Twitter.

One particularly extreme and troubling string of accusations appeared in a series of Hirschhorn tweets this past January 12:

— Hirschhorn wrote: “The Palestinian case shares some common features with South Africa—population transfer/ethnic cleansing, restriction of movement, lack of citizenship rights (beyond the Green Line), continued second class citizenship and technocracy.”

Isn’t it remarkable to hear Israel accused of “transferring” and “ethnic cleansing” of an Arab population which has constantly grown over the years? Where were the Palestinian Arabs all “transferred” to, exactly?

— Hirschhorn declared that Israel is guilty of “daily violations of human rights.” That’s the kind of vicious smear I would expect from Arab propagandists, not from a speaker at an ADL conference.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

NANCY PELOSI IN HER OWN WORDS….IS THIS DEMOCRAT NEWSPEAK?

By on November 7th, 2021

https://conservativebrief.com/pelosi-descends-54057/

Concern Mounts After Pelosi Descends Into Incoherent Rambling Carmine Sabia

Is there a glitch in the Matrix? And if there is can someone explain what House Speaker and California Rep. Nancy Pelosi is saying?

The House Speaker gave her weekly press conference this week, which started as normal, but by the end she was stammering and making no sense.

As she was speaking on passing President Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda the press conference delved into an incoherent mess.

We grabbed the transcript from the Speaker’s website to make some kind of sense of what she was saying, or at least get the words she was saying.

“The other thing that we’re getting or – we’re sending stuff over to the Senate.  Most of the product that we’ve done is – except now we may have added in the last hour or so – and some of what we added is Senate, to the bill, like hearing.  Bernie doesn’t like hearing – excuse me – Bernie loves hearing.  Manchin doesn’t want hearing in the bill and all that stuff.  So, some is Senate-oriented, and then we have the family/medical leave.  We figured if they’re putting things in, then we can put something in, even if Manchin doesn’t like it,” the Speaker said.

“So, we are getting some Byrd and privilege.  I think mostly we’re getting privilege scrub because privilege scrub is deadly to a bill.  Byrd?  Well, it’s important.  You have to take it out, but a privilege violation can take you out.  So, we’re, again, getting that as we go along as well.  But when we pass a bill, then they will see it in its aggregate and make some –,” she said.

If you are scratching your head and wondering what you just read do not worry, it is not you. We are baffled too but we assume she was talking about Medicare coverage for hearing aids.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Learjet Liberals Against Gasoline and Goshawks In Glasgow Cars are only as clean as the original source of energy generating the vim that powers them. By Ilana Mercer

By on November 7th, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/11/06/learjet-liberals-against-gasoline-and-goshawks-in-glasgow/

The Learjet liberals—the world’s wokerati—flew into Glasgow, Scotland, to plot against gasoline, goshawks (birdies), and you. 

The annual “Conference of the Parties” (COP26), as well as Joe Biden’s plans for greenhouse-gas pollution reduction and clean-energy technologies demand the following reminders: 

Gasoline is a glorious resource. Drilling for oil is the second most efficient, cheapest—and hence cleanest—source of energy. “It requires only a narrow hole in the earth,” explained the Wall Street Journal, “and is extracted as a highly concentrated form of energy.”

[It] is up to 1,000 times more efficient than solar energy, which requires large panels collecting a less-concentrated form of energy known as the midday sun. But even solar power is roughly 10 times as efficient as biomass-derived fuels like ethanol.

The more efficient the source of energy, the less waste and pollution are involved in its conversion into energy. Think of the totality of the production process! The fewer resources expended in bringing a fuel to market, the cleaner and cheaper the process. 

State-sponsored “sexy” technologies in the West, moreover, have decidedly ugly outcomes for worker bees in the East. The Glasgow Crowd’s cravings must be sated, but not by despoiling California, if you know what I mean

Enter the Chinese worker.

“You buy a Prius hybrid car and think you’re saving the planet,” divulged Lindsey Hilsum of PBS’s “News Hour,” “but each motor contains a kilo of neodymium and each battery more than 10 kilos of lanthanum, rare earth elements from China. Green campaigners love wind turbines, but the permanent magnets used to manufacture a 3-megawatt turbine contain some two tons of rare earth.”

Mining for rare earth metals is a filthy undertaking. Hybrid hypocrites prefer by far that it be done by the poor villagers of the Baiyun Kuang District of Darhan Muminggan in inner Mongolia, northern China. There lie the largest deposits of rare earth metals.

The Prius is packed with these toxins.

The limousine and Learjet liberals who legislate “green” industries into being prefer to outsource all energy-related extraction. Leave it to the industrious Chinese to “meet 95 percent of the world’s demand for rare earth.” As most of the separation and extraction of rare earth metals is done in China, “the pollution stays in China, too,” reports Hilsum from Baiyunebo in Inner Mongolia.

The environmental problems include air emissions with harmful elements, such as fluorine and sulfur, wastewater that contains excessive acid, and radioactive materials, too.

And “local villagers whose farmland has been ruined by seepage from the lake pay the price.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Conspiracy Theory or Conspiracy In Fact? Roger Kimball

By on November 7th, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/11/06/conspiracy-theory-or-conspiracy-in-fact/

Something to keep in mind about January 6 is when the Soothsayer came to warn Caesar about the Ides of March, he wasn’t warning about a conspiracy theory. He was warning about a conspiracy in fact.

Last week, Fox Nation aired “Patriot Purge,” Tucker Carlson’s three-part series on the January 6 protest in Washington, D.C. No sooner had the program been announced than the regime media went nuts. The former conservative Anne Applebaum, writing for The Atlantic, said it was a “sinister” piece of anti-American propaganda. NPR described it as an “off the rails” “conspiracy theory.” CNN said that it promulgated a “false narrative” that was “politically, historically and logically confused.” 

Translation: Carlson disputes the accepted narrative according to which the protest at the Capitol was an “insurrection” aimed at undermining “our democracy.” Ergo Carlson must be wrong. Cue the heated rhetoric and wheel out that all-purpose epithet “conspiracy theorist.” 

As a side note, I have always wondered why people of a certain ilk believe that uttering the phrase “conspiracy theory” or charging someone with being a “conspiracy theorist” disposes of any argument. George Orwell noted that the term “fascist” had been rendered nearly meaningless by its promiscuous application to all manner of things or people one didn’t like. “Conspiracy theory” is on even shakier ground, because in addition to make-believe conspiracies, the world is full of plenty of real conspiracies about which one needn’t theorize but simply observe and describe. 

When the Soothsayer came to warn Caesar about the Ides of March, he wasn’t warning about a conspiracy theory. He was warning about a conspiracy in fact, something that Caesar came to appreciate personally when the fateful day rolled around. Caesar to the Soothsayer: “The ides of March are come.” Soothsayer: “Ay, Caesar; but not gone.”

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Newest Insanity Out Of Yale Law School These controversies could be wake-up calls—for the YLS community, legal academia, and society at large. David Lat

By on November 7th, 2021

https://davidlat.substack.com/p/the-newest-insanity-out-of-yale-law?token=

I realize that the tag line for Original Jurisdiction is “news, views, and colorful commentary about law and the legal profession,” not “the latest controversies and scandals at Yale Law School.” But one of my missions is telling readers about what we’d be gossiping about at the water cooler if we were all back in the office—and right now, the subject is once again YLS.1

Some of you are rolling your eyes right now and saying, “Seriously, Lat—Yale Law School, again?” If you have YLS fatigue, stop reading here; I take no offense.2

For those of you still reading, here’s the latest out of Yale Law School, reported in the Washington Free Beacon by Aaron Sibarium (who really owns this beat, having previously broken the news of the YLS party-invite controversy):

The Yale Law School administrator caught on tape pressuring a student to apologize for an allegedly racist party invitation pushed the Yale Law Journal to host a diversity trainer who told students that anti-Semitism is merely a form of anti-blackness and suggested that the FBI artificially inflates the number of anti-Semitic hate crimes.

The comments from diversity trainer Ericka Hart… shocked members of the predominantly liberal law review, many of whom characterized the presentation as anti-Semitic, according to a memo from Yale Law Journal editors obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

“I consider myself very liberal,” a student quoted in the memo said. But Hart’s presentation, delivered September 17 to members of the prestigious law review, was “almost like a conservative parody of what antiracism trainings are like.”

The administrator involved in both incidents is Yaseen Eldik, YLS’s director of diversity, equity, and inclusion. There’s some dispute over the exact nature of Eldik’s involvement in bringing Hart to the YLJ editors, with Yale law professor Monica Bell claiming on Twitter that Eldik didn’t urge the hiring of Hart and simply provided her contact info to the YLJ.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

Rachel Maddow’s Shocking New Low With last night’s loony response to the indictment of Igor Danchenko, the MSNBC anchor takes a bold leap off the credibility cliff Matt Taibbi

By on November 7th, 2021

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/rachel-maddows-shocking-new-low

Yesterday, Special Counsel John Durham indicted Brookings Institute analyst Igor Danchenko, better known as the primary source for Christopher Steele, the ex-spy who compiled the now-infamous “Steele Dossier” on behalf of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2016. The case has implications for higher-ranking figures, but the indictment is most immediately devastating to the reputation of the many famous news personalities who hyped the Steele story. They almost all look terrible today, but the response by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow was a thing beyond. Whatever the category below “disgraced journalist” is, she entered it with gusto with last night’s performance.

Much of the indictment concerns false statements Danchenko allegedly made to the FBI concerning his interactions with “PR Executive-1,” described as a “U.S.-based individual… who was a long-time participant in Democratic Party politics and was then an executive at a U.S. public relations firm.” New York Times reporter Charlie Savage received confirmation from the lawyer of a man named Charles Dolan that Dolan is, in fact, the executive:

Charlie Savage @charlie_savage
MORE: A lawyer for Charles Dolan, a public relations executive with a long history of ties to the Democratic Party, confirms his client is the person identified as “PR Executive-1” in the indictment. Updating story shortly.

Russiagate is already a sizable boil on the face of American journalism, but the indictment of Danchenko has the potential to grow the profession’s embarrassment to fantastic dimensions. For instance, a key claim of the Steele dossier involved a “well-developed conspiracy of cooperation” between Trump and Russia that supposedly went back years, and was managed on the Trump side by Paul Manafort and Carter Page. At one point, it was believed this claim was sourced to an anonymous phone call Danchenko thought came from the former president of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce, Sergei Millian. Danchenko moreover reportedly told the FBI that he and the “anonymous caller” made an appointment to meet in New York.

The indictment, however, asserts that Danchenko never even spoke to Millian, repeatedly emailing him and getting no response. As for that trip to New York, hoo boy:

From on about July 26, 2016 through July 28, 2016, DANCHENKO traveled to New York with a family member. On or about July 28, 2016, DANCHENKO visited, among other places, the Bronx Zoo with the family member. During this trip, DANCHENKO did not meet or communicate with Chamber President-I.

It’s bad enough that the “well-developed” conspiracy tale appears to have been sourced to a graduate of the Jayson Blair school of investigation, who was strolling in the Bronx Zoo during the time when he was supposedly landing the scoop of a lifetime (note that Steele himself reportedly believed the pee tape was sourced, “in part,” to Millian).

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Durham’s latest indictment: More lines drawn to Clinton’s campaign By Jonathan Turley,

By on November 7th, 2021

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/580391-durhams-latest-indictment-more-lines-drawn-to-clintons-campaign

“To my good friend … A Great Democrat.” Those words written to a Russian figure in Moscow, inside a copy of a Hillary Clinton autobiography, may be the defining line of special counsel John Durham’s investigation. The message reportedly was written by Charles Dolan, a close Clinton adviser and campaign regular whom news reports identify as the mysterious “PR-Executive 1” in the latest Durham indictment, this time of Igor Danchenko.

Danchenko, 43, was a key figure in the compilation of the infamous Steele dossier that led to the now discredited investigation of alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government during the 2016 presidential race. But Danchenko, a Russian emigre living in the U.S., seems unlikely to be the Durham investigation’s apex defendant. In fact, Durham describes him at points more like a shill than a spy, an “investigator” who was fed what to report by Clinton operatives such as Dolan.

Durham is known as a methodical, apolitical and unrelenting prosecutor. Thus far, his work seems to betray a belief that the FBI got played by the Clinton campaign to investigate the Trump team. The question is whether Durham really wants to indict just the figurative tail if he can get the whole dog — a question that now may weigh heavily on a number of Washington figures, just as it did following Durham’s indictment in September of Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann.

Danchenko’s indictment on five counts of lying to the FBI serves two obvious purposes. First, these counts — with a possible five years in prison on each — are enough to concentrate the mind of any defendant about possibly flipping for the prosecution. Second, indicting Danchenko “hoists the wretch” for potential targets to see and consider that there but for the grace of God — and Durham — go they.

The background details of Durham’s three indictments so far have assembled an impressive list of “great Democrats” who contributed directly or indirectly to the creation of the Russia collusion scandal. Indeed, the collusion case increasingly is taking on a type of “Murder on the Orient Express” feel, in which all of the suspects may turn out to be culprits. While the statute of limitations may protect some, Durham has shown that he can use the crime of lying to federal investigators (18 U.S.C. 1001) as a handy alternative. Targets must admit to prior misconduct or face a new charge.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

New Team and New Fears in Tehran by Amir Taheri

By on November 7th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17916/new-fears-in-tehran

Major-General Hossein Salami, chief of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and keynote speaker in this year’s ceremonies, even claims that the US has already lost its global leadership position while a trio made of China, Russia and Iran is emerging as the new arbiter of human destiny.

Not responding [to an attack by Israel] would be a sign of strategic weakness and could encourage a fresh wave of domestic rebellion. Responding, on the other hand, could lead to a full-scale war for which the Islamic Republic is far from prepared.

What Biden does next could prove decisive.

If he surrenders too easily, he will re-energize Tehran’s old demons. If, on the other hand, he opts for empty huffing and puffing, he may miss a chance to help those who strive for regime change in Tehran.

What do you do when you want to do something and yet you feel embarrassed about doing it?

This is the question that the “Supreme Guide” of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, faced this week as he wondered how to deal with one of his annual rituals celebrating the seizure of the US Embassy in Tehran and the holding of American diplomats as hostages on November 4, 1979.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

European Army: Rhetoric versus Reality by Soeren Kern

By on November 7th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17917/european-army

The call for a supranational army, part of a push for Europe to achieve “strategic autonomy” from the United States, is being spearheaded by French President Emmanuel Macron, who, as part of his reelection campaign, apparently hopes to replace outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel as the de facto leader of Europe.

Many EU member states disagree with Macron. Eastern European countries, some of which face existential threats from Russia, know that neither the EU nor France can match the military capabilities offered by NATO and the United States. Other countries are concerned about a panoply of issues ranging from financial costs to national sovereignty.

“If the EU Army undermines NATO, or results in the separation of the U.S. and Europe or produces a paper army, Europe will be committing the most enfeebling and dangerous act of self-harm since the rise of fascism in the 1930s. An EU Army will amount to European de-arming.” — Bob Seely, Tory MP.

“It will be hard to convince some member states that collective EU defense would bring the same security as NATO’s U.S.-backed defense arrangement.” — Richard Whitman, professor of politics and international relations at the University of Kent.

“Few share France’s willingness to splurge on defense, or its expeditionary military culture. (Germany, especially, does not.) Nobody agrees what ‘strategic autonomy’ actually means.” — The Economist.

“The EU is not a credible substitute for what NATO represents. You will not see any appetite for the European army amongst member states.” — Kristjan Mäe, head of the Estonian defense ministry’s NATO and EU department.

“Even if national capitals wanted to lunge for a common army, there are so many technical, legal, and administrative differences between their militaries that it would take decades to produce a smoothly functioning force…. Conclusion: any talk of creating a fully-fledged common army, even within the next generation, is just that: jaw-jaw and not real-real.” — Brooks Tigner, analyst, Atlantic Council.

European federalists seeking to transform the 27-member European Union into a European superstate — a so-called United States of Europe — have revived a decades-old proposal to build a European army.

The call for a supranational army, part of a push for Europe to achieve “strategic autonomy” from the United States, is being spearheaded by French President Emmanuel Macron, who, as part of his reelection campaign, apparently hopes to replace outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel as the de facto leader of Europe.

Macron claims that Europe needs its own military because, according to him, the United States is no longer a reliable ally. He cites as examples: U.S. President Joe Biden’s precipitous withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan; the growing pressure on Europe to take sides with the United States on China; and France’s exclusion from a new security alliance in the Indo-Pacific region.

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