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November 2021

Why Palestinians Are Fleeing The Gaza Strip by Khaled Abu Toameh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17943/palestinians-fleeing-gaza-strip

Referring to the lavish lifestyle led by most Hamas officials in the Gaza Strip and abroad, many Palestinians complained that while the fish are eating the poor emigrants, Hamas leaders continue to enjoy the best fish and seafood on offer in Qatar and the Gaza Strip.

Apparently, the two million Palestinians living under the rule of Hamas have reached the conclusion that it is Hamas, and not Israel, that is responsible for their misery.

“During the past 15 years, Hamas has taken Gaza from bad to worse. Gazans are a people under a brutal Islamist regime who are held hostage to stagnant policies that only serve the interests of Hamas and their global Islamist allies. If the international community could help liberate Gaza from such forces, they could help Gazans create a Dubai on the Med or a new Singapore.” — Ghanem Nusseibeh, a Palestinian Muslim belonging to the oldest Arab family in Jerusalem, Al-Arab News, May 29, 2021.

Blaming Israel for everything wrong in the Gaza Strip may fool many in the US, Canada and the UK. But the Palestinians fleeing Gaza and their families who remain behind know the truth — that it is Hamas that has brought them to the abyss, including the sea in which they are now drowning.

A tragedy that recently hit the Gaza Strip has again exposed the extent of the suffering of Palestinians under the rule of the Iranian-backed group, Hamas.

The tragedy also serves as a reminder of the double standards of the international community in dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, especially the obsession with Israel and the tendency to ignore any wrongdoing on the Palestinian side.

MY SAY: WHAT’S IN A NAME?

I recently saw “The Lehman Trilogy” a splendid play with dazzling narrative, dialogue, acting and set.

In the opening scene a man steps forward and announces himself as “Chaim Lehman” whose name morphed into Henry Lehman.

In my enthusiasm for the play I browsed some reviews:

Laura Collins Hughes, in The New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/14/theater/the-lehman-trilogy-review.html)wrote:

“The year is 1844, he is Heyum Lehmann, and in a moment we will see him reborn as Henry Lehman — his moniker bestowed by a port official too obtuse to comprehend the newcomer’s real name.”

Ms. Hughes is really “too obtuse to comprehend the newcomer’s real name” but don’t blame her.

Wikipedia calls Henry Lehman Hayum….as in ” Lehman was born under the name of Hayum Lehmann.”

Google spells it “Haym” when writing about Chaim Salomon the financier of rebels against British rule in the Revolutionary War.

Would  the foregoing phonetic spellers  write She Jinping instead of Xi Jinping.  rsk

Misery Index: Average Americans Feel the Pinch of the Biden Economy By Gwendolyn Sims

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/gwendolynsims/2021/11/14/misery-index-average-americans-feel-the-pinch-of-the-biden-economy-n1532815

Americans would do well to remember this misery and these economic numbers under Biden when it comes time to vote in 2022 and 2024.

Each month economists attempt to gauge how average Americans are weathering the ups and downs of the U.S. economy. By using the simple yet clever technique of adding the U.S. unemployment rate (4.8%) to the current rate of inflation (6.22%) economists quantify the economic well-being of the country into a Misery Index. The current U.S. Misery Index stands at 10.82%.

Why The Left Always Projects The slurs and smears levelled by the elites are all the more toxic because they have always known these sins firsthand as their own. By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2021/11/14/why-the-left-always-projects/

The Left is addicted to projection—the psycho-political syndrome of attributing all of one’s own sins to one’s opponents. The woke apparently do this out of some Freudian effort to square the circle of their own guilt or sense of privilege, by fobbing off their own fearful realities onto others. It is the atheist version of confession or medieval penance. In addition, in the spirit of “always being on the offense,” wokists know that those who slander do so most successfully when they lodge exactly those charges most familiar and applicable to themselves.  

The Privileged Damn Privilege 

Take for example, the worn-out charge of “privilege,” as in the phrase “check your privilege.” This trope originates exclusively from the Left. Purportedly, it signifies a rigged system in which white males have gained, unfairly and undeservedly, “privilege” to exercise cultural, economic, political, and social control over the “other”—occasionally defined as women, more often “people of color,” and most frequently African Americans. 

How odd, given that by any indicator the political Left is the party of wealth and privilege. The wealthiest ZIP codes are found in blue states such as California, Illinois, Massachusetts, and New York. Twenty-six of the 27 wealthiest congressional districts, gauged by per capita incomes, are represented by liberal Democrats. 

Registered Democrats on average have higher incomes than their Republican counterparts. Democratic presidential candidates have vastly outspent Republicans over the last 20 years. Note that the old liberal saw about “dark money” has steadily disappeared from the left-wing lexicon (nothing is darker than Mark Zuckerberg’s infusions of cash to warp particular voting precincts). Likewise, in the once trendy academic trifecta of “race, class, and gender,” class” has been dropped quietly.

The most elite and wealthy institutions in America are predominantly liberal bastions: Silicon Valley, entertainment, universities, professional sports, Wall Street, the mainstream media, and foundations. Most “people of color,” who are the loudest about focusing on the evils of privilege and lack of equity, are themselves multimillionaires or multibillionaires, such as the Obamas, Oprah Winfrey, LeBron James, Jay-Z, or Meghan Markle. 

Accusing an entire group—white people, or conservatives, or Trump supporters—of being privileged deflects the apparent shame of elitism away from oneself on the cheap. After all, accusing some part-time lecturer or Trump deplorable of “white privilege” is a lot easier, both psychologically and materially, than giving up a nanny, trading in the gas-guzzling big Mercedes, or just saying no to private jets.

The elite accuser knows especially how to level such charges given his own intimacy with what wealth, power, and influence bring. Worse still, the projectionist feels he is making the greatest sacrifice of all by his empty confessions—even as he is a beneficiary of the rigged system that he demands be ended.

When Barack Obama flies to Glasgow to lecture the western world’s climate-wrecking middle class that it is going to have to be content with less—while acknowledging that his own wealth and privilege mean he will suffer less than others—one wonders why Obama simply does not, right now pledge to live in just one mansion rather than two? 

After all, if Obama urges the middle to class to cut back on energy use and to forfeit lifestyle privileges, why wouldn’t  Obama himself set the moral example, given his huge carbon footprint. Why would he be so cynical to warn the world that our shores will soon be inundated shortly after he himself bought a shoreline estate?

Feds Warn of Rise in ‘Domestic Violent Extremists’ – But Where Are They? Look in the mirror.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/11/feds-warn-rise-domestic-violent-extremists-where-robert-spencer/

Diversity is our strength, y’all, and so here is some good news: a new bulletin from the Department of Homeland Security that took effect Thursday notes that “the Homeland continues to face a diverse and challenging threat environment.” But before you start celebrating diversity too enthusiastically in this case, be aware: the diversity that they have in mind means that they think you and I are part of the threat now as well.

They say that the threat is coming from both “domestic violent extremists and those inspired or motivated by foreign terrorists and other malign foreign influences,” and they really aren’t all that interested in the threat from those foreign terrorists: USA Today noted that “FBI Director Christopher Wray referred to the rising domestic terror threat, telling a Senate committee that domestic terror cases had more than doubled since early 2020.” If you’re wondering why you haven’t heard about all this new domestic terrorism, it’s because you’re not looking in the place where the feds are finding it: in your mirror.

We know this because the ostensible president’s handlers, and even Old Joe Biden himself, have repeatedly warned about a “white supremacist” terror threat that is supposedly the greatest threat the nation faces today. The only thing this scenario lacks are actual white supremacist terrorists. And so they have to be invented. Old Joe and the establishment media defamed Kyle Rittenhouse as a white supremacist last year, doing everything they could to make him fit their ridiculous myth of violent, racist, right-wing fanatics menacing the good and decent spiritual descendants of the soldiers who stormed the beaches of Normandy, the fine young men and women of Antifa.

The Left’s Big Lie About Critical Race Theory How Democrats bury the truth about CRT in public schools. Sara Dogan

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/11/lefts-big-lie-about-critical-race-theory-sara-dogan/

In the recent governor’s race in Virginia, won handily by Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin, the debate over teaching Critical Race Theory in public schools played a crucial role. Parents concerned by the racially charged lessons being taught in their children’s classrooms rallied around Youngkin and his pledge to remove CRT from Virginia schools. Through it all, Democrats illogically maintained a bald-faced lie, claiming that CRT in public schools is a non-issue, that it simply doesn’t exist.

“It’s not taught in Virginia, it’s never been taught in Virginia,” Democrat candidate Terry McAuliffe said in an interview, adding that Republican’s claims about CRT were “racist” and a “dog whistle.”  

So what is the reality? Have conservatives across the nation really colluded fight a straw man?

The answer is obviously, no. Critical Race Theory is a real threat and it has increasingly been taught in public schools.

Critical Race Theory (CRT) is a radical revision of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream that each American be judged “not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” While Dr. King and the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s promoted “colorblindness,” CRT insists on the exact opposite view, teaching that our character, our beliefs, and our place in society is predetermined by our skin color. By this reckoning, Whites are deemed to be inherently racist, born into a framework of “white supremacy” which infiltrates all American institutions. By contrast, racial minorities, and especially Blacks are regarded as perpetual victims of the “white supremacist” society into which they were born.

The Islamophobia Industry An interview with the author of a new book about Islam’s insidious infiltration of the West. Mark Tapson

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/11/islamophobia-industry-mark-tapson/

“There is an industry at work today, taking advantage of our liberty, infiltrating and influencing Western values and democracy,” writes Canadian author and blogger Diane Bederman in her brand new book The Islamophobia Industry: The Insidious Infiltration of Islam into the West. As the memory of the 9/11 attacks on American soil a generation ago recedes for many, this courageous short new work serves as an essential wakeup call to a Western world that, in the name of tolerance and inclusion, is allowing our rights and freedoms to be eroded as the value system of Islam grows in influence and power.

FrontPage Mag readers may recall that I interviewed Ms. Bederman here about her previous book The Serpent and the Red Thread, a unique history of antisemitism blending fiction, history and myth. She is also the author of Back to the Ethic: Reclaiming Western Values, which I reviewed for FrontPage Mag here.

I posed some questions to Ms. Bederman about The Islamophobia Industry.

Mark Tapson: To paraphrase a question you pose in the preface to your new book, why did you decide to write a book about Islam at a time when saying anything critical of it is immediately denounced as bigotry?

Diane Bederman: It says 365 times in the Bible: Do Not Fear.

Fear is debilitating. We often run away rather than confront.

I am of an age and in a place where being called an Islamophobe does not worry me. I cannot be canceled! I worry more about my children and grandchildren. We have to teach our children the importance of protecting democracy and freedom. Ducking and hiding will only lead to a loss of that freedom. The ethic that underpins our freedom, the Judeo/Christian ethic, is 3500 years old. We cannot let it perish out of fear of being called a name or even under threat of death. Without freedom, there is no life.

Glasgow’s Climate of Unreality The latest climate confab achieved little, which is for the best.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/glasgow-climate-of-unreality-emissions-cop26-change-agreements-china-11636922480?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

The latest global climate confab ended on the weekend in Glasgow having produced little of consequence. How could it have done otherwise? The conferees who warn that the Apocalypse is nigh absent draconian energy policies are disconnected from political and economic reality.

The climateers couldn’t agree whether they had failed to forestall climate catastrophe or set the world on a new path to banning fossil fuels. The apocalyptics were gloomy that countries failed to make more firm commitments to reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions, and failed even to agree to phase out coal after a last-minute intervention by India and China. Perhaps those nations noticed that even Europe is having to fall back on more coal power these days amid an energy crisis and rising prices.

U.S. envoy John Kerry was more optimistic, as usual. You have to admire his ability to spin the media that “United States reclaims leadership role,” as the Washington Post headlined it. He cited a statement by the U.S. and China that they will work together to reduce emissions.

Mr. Kerry could hardly admit failure. The international commands from Glasgow are supposed to justify President Biden’s agenda to regulate and tax U.S. oil and gas production out of business, while spending $550 billion in green-energy subsidies.

An Illegal Vaccine Mandate An appellate court blocks OSHA in a withering rebuke.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/an-illegal-vaccine-mandate-fifth-circuit-osha-covid-work-employees-11636921717?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

President Biden was warned that he lacked the power to mandate vaccines for private workers, but he ordered the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to do it anyway. Late Friday came a sharp rebuke by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that marks an important check on the runaway administrative state.

“The Mandate’s true purpose is not to enhance workplace safety, but instead to ramp up vaccine uptake by any means necessary,” Judge Kurt Engelhardt wrote for the unanimous panel in a withering opinion that extends the court’s earlier stay on the OSHA mandate, which had been challenged by GOP states, numerous employers and individuals.

With his approval numbers sagging, Mr. Biden in early September ordered OSHA to require private employers with 100 or more workers to mandate that their employees be vaccinated or tested weekly. “Our patience is wearing thin,” he declared. The mandate at the time polled well among most Americans.

After the announcement, White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain retweeted MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle’s tweet that stated, “OSHA doing this vaxx mandate as an emergency workplace safety rule is the ultimate work-around for the Federal govt to require vaccinations.” For “work-around,” read illegal.

Beware of Infrastructure Bill signing ceremony By Deane Waldman

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/11/beware_of_infrastructure_bill_signing_ceremony.html

When the White House holds a triumphant signing ceremony today for the Biden/Pelosi Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, H.R. 3684, keep the following facts clearly in mind. 

Democrats claim the bill will “supercharge the American economy and will create thousands of good jobs.” Translation: high-paying government, i.e., taxpayer paid for, jobs for Democrat supporters. 

When you look beyond the title, H.R. 3684 has numerous provisions that Americans don’t want.  

The bill will “restructuring the permitting process.” This is an excuse to expand an already Byzantine, massively expensive, and user-unfriendly federal bureaucracy. Permits will, of course, only go to companies favored by progressive Democrats. Recall the vendor chosen by the Obama Administration to build healthcare.gov was a Canadian company, CGI Federal, with a track record of going over budget and failing to deliver on its contracts. Democrats spent more than $2 billion for a website, that didn’t work! 

There will be “more public-private partnerships,” which is code for giving hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to corporations that support the Democrat party and its candidates, not to the most efficient and lowest bidders. 

H.R. 3864 will extend the reach of broadband internet access, especially to rural America, where such access can be spotty or absent. However, this activity is better done – better coverage at lower cost – using the free market than federal procurement, which is famous for delays, inefficiency, and over-spending. 

Of the $1.2 trillion probably under-estimated price tag, less than 10 percent –$110 billion – will fund true infrastructure: bridges, roads, tunnels, and waterways. This will be billions as political patronage. Companies that contributed to the Democrat party will build out the projects late and at inflated prices. If things go wrong, there will be no accountability.