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November 2022

ISRAEL, MEDIA Comments turned off

CNN Refers to ‘Palestine’ as if it Existed When an “error” is gravely serious. by Hugh Fitzgerald

By on November 3rd, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/cnn-refers-to-palestine-as-if-it-existed/

CNN has a little nomenclatorial problem when it comes to “Palestine.” A report on its latest error, and how the network was shamed into making a correction, can be found here: “CNN Takes Down ‘Palestine’ Reference Following Watchdog Action,” by Akiva Van Koningsveld, Algemeiner, October 27, 2022:

While Palestinian Authority (PA) chief Mahmoud Abbas might call himself the president of “Palestine,” most mainstream media outlets have rightfully refrained from recognizing Ramallah’s claim of independence. After all, the territory under Abbas’ control currently does not meet the formal criteria for statehood, as outlined in international law. formal criteria for statehood, as outlined in international law.

“Palestine” has no fixed, agreed-upon borders. The Palestinians answer to two separate Arab regimes – Hamas in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority in the P.A.-held parts of the West Bank, neither of which exerts full sovereignty. In the West Bank the Palestinians are not independent, but only exercise varying degrees of autonomy, based on whether they live in Areas A, B, or C, as defined by the Oslo Accords. The Palestinian Authority has a police force, but no military. At the U.N., “Palestine” has only non-voting “observer” status.

Statehood requires, as set out in the 1933 Montevideo Convention: “a) a permanent population; b) a defined territory; c) a sovereign government; and d) the capacity to enter into relations with the other states.” These qualifications have been used as the basis for statehood by the international community. “Palestine” argues that it has met these requirements and therefore has achieved de facto statehood. However, to be considered a state an entity must function independently of any other authority.

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ANTI-SEMITISM, EDUCATION Comments turned off

Indoctrinating School Children to Hate Israel and Jews Getting them while they’re young. by Richard L. Cravatts

By on November 3rd, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/indoctrinating-school-children-to-hate-israel-and-jews/

The cognitive war against Israel, a campaign on college campuses for well over a decade, has helped in positioning the Jewish state as an alleged racist, colonial oppressor of an innocent indigenous people, an illegal regime that exists on land wrongly confiscated from Palestinians.

Zionism, it is alleged, is a corrosive political ideology that inspires both the creation of an apartheid nation and the undiminished lust for more Palestinian land for a Greater Israel.

In this narrative, the Palestinians are cast as perennial victims whose human and civil rights are deprived for them due to white supremacy, racism, and the predations of an Israeli military that brutally enforces this unjust, illegal state of affairs.

Activists, both on and off campus, have been successful in promoting this flawed and factually inaccurate narrative, but the perceived injustices being done to the ever-aggrieved Palestinians resonates with young liberal minds who have an understandable affinity for the underdog and victim—especially if that bias and hatred are characterized by racism and oppression—exactly how Israel is now mistakenly perceived by many of its ideological foes.

Now, the same slanders, lies, and contortions of history and facts about the Israeli/Palestinian debate are being introduced to younger audiences with impressionable minds: school children.

A recent example of this troubling trend was revealed when critics became aware that the Newark, New Jersey school board had included an anti-Israel book on its mandatory reading list. The book, A Little Piece of Ground by Elizabeth Laird, found its way into the sixth-grade English curriculum for the 2022-23 school year, and, according to the description on Amazon, “explores the human cost of the occupation of Palestinian lands through the eyes of a young boy.”

Of course, the same premise that campus activists chant about when they scream, “Free, free Palestine,” the factually false assertion that the land allegedly occupied by Israel is or ever was Palestinian land, is taken as truth, so Israel is already guilty in this narrative of having stolen others’ land.

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MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

‘Nullectomy’: Physician-Assisted Mutilation By Wesley J. Smith

By on November 3rd, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/nullectomy-physician-assisted-mutilation/

I don’t know how much more of this our culture can take. “Gender-affirming” surgeries are growing increasingly extreme. A source sent me links to websites operated by doctors who perform “bottom surgeries” advertising “genital nullification” — a.k.a. “nullectomy” — procedures that remove genitalia in order to create a “smooth” appearance in the groin.

Here’s the first one (I am not linking, as I wouldn’t want to be even indirectly complicit in anyone’s voluntary butchery):

Your Smooth Bottom Line: Nullectomy, Nullification, Nullo:

Nullectomy is the removal of internal and external genital structures to create a smooth appearance from the abdomen to the groin. Glans (penile or clitoral) and nerve tissue can be “buried” in the mons to retain a focused nerve center for sensation while maintaining a smooth appearance, can remain present as an “outie,” or can be removed.

For someone starting with a penis and testicles, nullectomy can include:

penectomy (removal of the penis)
orchiectomy (removal of the scrotum)
scrotomectomy (removal of the testicles)
urethral shortening

For someone starting with a clitoris, vulva, vagina, and uterus (if not already removed,) nullectomy can include:

hysterectomy with or without oophorectomy
vaginectomy (if a vaginectomy is chosen, a hysterectomy is required)
vulvectomy (partial or radical)
clitorectomy
urethral modification

How filled with self-loathing must one be to subject one’s body to such extreme desecration?

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

THE TAXPAYER-FUNDED CHILD ABUSE SYSTEM  Daniel Greenfield 

By on November 3rd, 2022

http://www.danielgreenfield.org/2022/11/the-taxpayer-funded-child-abuse-system.html?utm_source=MadMimi&utm_medium=email&utm_

The National Education Association was caught spending 9% of its budget on member assistance and 50% on various political programs. Teachers’ unions have become enormously powerful by turning their membership and their resources into assets for the Democrats.

Democrats have generously returned the favor by negotiating favorable contracts and allowing teachers’ unions to dismantle the educational system, including shutting down schools for an extended period during the pandemic, eliminating standards in favor of promotion and turning a blind eye to sex abuse. While the shutdown of schools traumatized a generation, leading to increased suicide rates, loss of learning skills, social decline and even higher crime rates, school sex abuse is an ongoing crisis that targets a narrower population of abused students.

That doesn’t mean that the damage is any less.

A recent report reveals that nearly one school employee has been arrested a day on child-sex related charges.

In just the last week, a Utah elementary school teacher was arrested for inappropriate behavior with two female students, a middle school teacher in Pennsylvania was caught sexually abusing a 13-year-old, an Oregon high school basketball coach was arrested for sexually absuing a 17-year-old, a California elementary school employee was arrested on 19 counts of abusing minors going back a decade, and a Washington middle school employee was charged with 137 counts of taking videos in female bathrooms: an incredible school crime log for one week.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Germany Selling Critical Infrastructure to China by Judith Bergman

By on November 3rd, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19077/germany-infrastructure-china

On October 26, Germany’s government decided to let the Chinese state-owned enterprise COSCO Shipping Ports, which has links to China’s People’s Liberation Army, buy a stake in the Port of Hamburg.

The port of Hamburg is Germany’s largest port and the second-largest port in Europe, making it part of Europe’s most critical infrastructure.

Germany’s Foreign Ministry had also reportedly warned that an investment by COSCO “disproportionately expands China’s strategic influence on German and European transport infrastructure as well as Germany’s dependence on China… while China itself does not allow Germany to participate in Chinese ports. In this respect, the acquisition of the container terminal does not only have an economic, but especially a geopolitical aspect.” — dw.com. October 26, 2022.

The Foreign Ministry clearly fears that in a time of crisis between the countries, China’s investment in the port would allow it “to possibly instrumentalize part of Germany’s – and therefore Europe’s – critical infrastructure.”

“Cosco already owns stakes in Europe’s two largest ports at Rotterdam and Antwerp….” — Politico, October 20, 2022.

“COSCO’s status as an important backbone SOE [state-owned enterprise] means that it’s uniquely beholden to the CCP in a way that other SOEs aren’t… COSCO’s organisational structure includes paramilitary capabilities that can be mobilised by the Chinese regime to defeat threats to the CCP’s interests. One such capability is the company’s in-house militia…” — Report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

“[S]ome naval analysts to refer to COSCO as the fifth arm of the PLAN [People Liberation Army Navy]” — Naval War College Review, Winter 2019.

“Against the advice of his ministers, the chancellor apparently wants to increase dependence on China. This sell-out of German infrastructure would be a mistake. German ports do not belong in Chinese hands, especially since Europeans can’t take a stake in ports in China.” — Jens Spahn, Christian Democratic Union party, Twitter, October 20, 2022.

Out of 95 ports, 22 are in Europe, 20 in the Middle East and North Africa, 18 in the Americas, 18 in South and Southeast Asia, and nine in sub-Saharan Africa. Just three Chinese companies, among them COSCO Shipping Ports, account for the operations of 81% of those ports.

In Greece, COSCO has completely taken over Piraeus, Greece’s largest port.

Scholz, regardless of the hard lessons that Germany has had to learn with regard to German dependence on Russian gas, has a state visit to China coming up in early November with a German business delegation; letting the COSCO deal fall through would not look good while trying to attract lucrative business deals. China is a key trading partner for Germany: In 2021, it was Germany’s top trading partner for the sixth consecutive year.

“It is in their [Communist Chinese Party’s] interest that we are divided. It’s in our interest that we are united.” — Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, Axios, October 21, 2022.

“We’ve been naive because we considered… that Europe was an open supermarket.” The EU, needs to establish a framework on what it considers “sensitive points.” — French President Emmanuel Macron, The Telegraph, October 21, 2022.

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ELECTIONS, FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

More Reasons Voters Might Catch the Red Wave Soon those Americans who cherish freedom and American exceptionalism will face a dire decision. by Bruce Thornton

By on November 3rd, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/more-reasons-voters-might-catch-the-red-wave/

Last week I discussed the issues that concern voters the most and will likely decide their choices––inflation, rampant crime, and our porous southern border, as well as cultural-war issues such as transgenderism and school curricula. But there are other concerns with the policies and actions of the Democrats over the last two years that also might figure in voters’ calculations.

Foreign policy typically is not as urgent for voters as the economy, crime, or border security. Yet our actions and policies abroad necessarily impact our national security, though not as immediately as inflation hits our budgets or crime disrupts our lives. But we need to pay attention, for the current administration has weakened our national security and compromised our national interests by resorting to tired foreign-policy nostrums, feckless actions, and sheer neglect.

Most obvious is the shameful, hasty abandonment of our allies and assets in Afghanistan. We stranded hundreds of Americans, left behind thousands of Afghanistan allies, and squandered billions in military hardware and infrastructure. Worse, we returned to power the brutal Taliban, who nurtured and sheltered the perpetrators of the 9/11 atrocity. Now Iran, a genocidal theocrasy with 43 years of American blood on its hands, has filled the vacuum along with other jihadist outfits like ISIS and al Qaeda.

Speaking of Iran, the Biden administration is still pursuing a renewal of Obama’s flawed nuclear deal that transferred billions of dollars to the mullahs, lucre they have used to finance their terrorist adventurism in the Middle East. Meanwhile, their advanced centrifuges keep spinning enough enriched uranium to make nuclear bombs, at the same time they are developing ballistic missiles capable of delivering them. Biden exacerbated this blunder by alienating Iran’s enemies such as our allies like Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations in the region.

Despite Biden’s cringing, his negotiators have been treated contemptuously on the world stage by the mullahs, who emboldened by Biden’s desperate deference, continue to make impossible demands, as they buy more time to reach their goals. Finally, since the start of the Russo-Ukrainian war, Iran has moved closer to Russia and China, forming a triumvirate of evil ambitions to challenge the U.S. and its allies as the guarantor of global order.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Left Were the Mad Scientists, We Were Their Lab Rats Once the Left took the presidency, the House, and Senate, they tried a deadly experiment on the American people. By Victor Davis Hanson

By on November 3rd, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/11/02/the-left-were-the-mad-scientists-we-were-their-lab-rats/

As the midterms approach, one way of looking at America’s current disaster is that we, the American people, were lab rats. And since 2021, the Left were the mad scientists, eager to try out their crackpot leftist experiments on us. 

The result is that the housing market is tottering on the verge of collapse. 

As interest rates soar, our $31 trillion national debt crowds out everything else in the budget. 

Inflation roars at a rate of 8-9 percent per annum, higher than at any time in 40 years. Yet the prices of the stuff of life—food, fuel, shelter, energy—are far steeper still than the official rate. 

No one is safe from thugs anymore—whether a commuter on a New York subway or the Pelosis in Pacific Heights.

The country reportedly has a 25-day supply of diesel fuel—the energy source that runs the nation. Meanwhile, we keep draining the Strategic Petroleum Reserve of oil—a commodity we have in abundance but refuse to produce fully.

We never fixed the supply-chain crisis of last year, and so still face shortages of key consumer goods. 

The labor participation rate is at an all-time low—given fat government COVID subsidies, the Siren-song appeal of staying home after the lockdowns, fear of COVID, and millions of workers with long COVID.

The post-Kabul Pentagon is quiet about the depletion of its critical stocks of weaponry. We have sent billions of dollars’ worth in howitzer shells, javelin missiles, and Hilmar rocket launchers to Ukraine without replenishing our own arsenals. The Army’s recruitment rate is off 50 percent this year.

Our broken Navy is ossifying as China expands its fleet in expectation of absorbing Taiwan. 

When we look to the president for an accounting for these madcap experiments, we get nothing. In the last few weeks, Joe Biden has lied that gas was $5 a gallon when he took office when it was half that. 

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

How the Projectionist Game is Played. Part One—“Racist!”Victor Davis Hanson

By on November 3rd, 2022

https://victorhanson.com/how-the-projectionist-game-is-played-part-one-racist/

Almost anything or anyone the Left opposes is smeared as racist or a racist. And the rules are made only by the Left.

The N-word is utterly racist. Yet it continues and obviously gains currency when rappers and comedians use it promiscuously on the assumptions that leftists and blacks cannot be racist when using a racist word.

Cultural appropriation is said to be racist. So, blonds who have cornrows in their hair in racist fashion culturally appropriate the black experience.

But MSNBC anchor Joy Reid is not a cultural appropriator when she dies her blond as if she is a Scandinavian Valkyrie? White wannabe rappers are cultural appropriators, but not so black opera singers? Is the rule asymmetry? That those who smear others on racial grounds are exempt from their own racial smears or hypocrisies?

These rules of leftwing racism are so opaque and contradictory that almost everyone falls afoul of them.

It is not racist to demand Asian students have 450 points higher on standardized tests than blacks to enter Harvard and other Ivy League schools; it is racist to suggest that it is racist to use skin color to so discriminate. It is racist of course to pick the race of your future dorm roommate unless you are non-white and so is he/she.

We are told that the MAGA Republicans are racists. But from whom do such charges emanate? Joe Biden?

Did Biden not fabricate the racist corn pop sagas? Was not he the one who called a senior aide “my boy”? I remember Biden half-praising Obama as the first articulate black presidential candidate. He claimed donut shops were the sole domain of Indian Americans. Did not Biden talk down to black professionals that Mitt Romney would put them back in chains, as if an accomplished audience had ever been itself enslaved or would allow that to happen without Joe Biden’s help?

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HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Our Disunity Is a National Security Threat The military now reflects the selfishness and fragmentation of our culture. Welcome to the looting-the-treasury phase of imperial decline. By Christopher Roach

By on November 3rd, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/11/02/our-disunity-is-a-national-security-threat/

In the lawsuit challenging Harvard’s affirmative action practices, a group of senior retired military officers filed an amicus brief, which argued that maintaining affirmative action was a “national security imperative.” Those signing off include four former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, six former superintendents of the service academies, and 17 retired four-star generals, including Wesley Clark and William McRaven. 

Recruiting an adequate number of troops and increasing their quality also seems pretty important. But we know that recent efforts at recruiting have been a disaster, amplified by the mass expulsion of troops who refused the COVID vaccine. 

While things carried on for a while out of habit, eventually the patriotic, mostly white, rural Americans who formed the backbone of the military started doing an about face. Polls show that fewer veterans now want their kids to follow in their footsteps. Conservative Republicans, once the most stalwart supporters of the military, have lately become more critical and less trusting. 

Woke Military Has Difficulty Recruiting

The reason for these trends is obvious: the military leadership has lost its way and its moral compass. 

As the ruling class ethos has shifted leftward, military leaders have become imitators and flatterers of the powerful. That is, top military leaders have decided to move away from the military’s traditional nonpartisanship and color-blindness and instead identify with the managerial class leftism and identity politics of Washington, D.C. This is why they have gay pride events and talk about “white rage.” They confused this ideology with the values of the country as a whole.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

The Democrat War on Fossil Fuels By William Manning

By on November 3rd, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/11/the_democrat_war_on_fossil_fuels.html

On October 19, in the heat of an election campaign, President Biden told the American people, “We need to increase oil production.”  He went on to say, “My administration has not stopped or slowed U.S. oil production.”  It was a disingenuous statement from a man whose sense of reality, fact, and fiction have become an undecipherable narrative.  Biden failed to mention the executive order he issued which stipulates, “the Secretary of the Interior shall pause new oil and natural gas leases on public lands or in offshore waters.”  This pause is ongoing.  Biden uses the same executive order as an instruction to the secretaries of State, Treasury, Energy, Defense, and Homeland Security, “to organize and deploy the full capacity of its agencies to combat the climate crisis.”

Millions of Americans are employed by businesses supporting the fossil-fuel industry.  Others choose to invest in fossil-fuel businesses.  All Americans rely on fossil fuels to power their businesses, transportation systems, and utilities.  Democrats will destroy these people’s jobs, capital, and imperil the U.S. economy.  The Biden administration decreed that, “we must combat the climate crisis with bold, progressive action that combines the full capacity of the Federal Government with efforts from every corner of our Nation, every level of government, and every sector of our economy.”  By executive order Biden has weaponized the federal bureaucracy to destroy the fossil-fuel industry. 

The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA) makes the business of refining oil difficult.  The law provides broad powers to the EPA.  It “directs the EPA Administrator to revise regulations to ensure that domestic transportation fuel sold or introduced into commerce, on an annual average basis, contains a specified volume of renewable fuel.”  The George W. Bush Administration and a bipartisan majority in Congress enacted the EISA providing authority to the EPA to dictate terms for the blending of renewable fuels in refineries.

In 2021, 13.9 billion gallons of ethanol were blended into gasoline.  Unfortunately for refiners, they were mandated by the EPA to blend 20.17 billion gallons.  Since there was a shortfall in EPA mandated ethanol consumption in 2021, refiners had to purchase Renewable Identification Numbers (RINs) credits to make up the difference.  Each gallon of ethanol produced as a biofuel for blending  comes with a D6 RIN.  Each refiner/blender has a quota imposed by the EPA based on its annual mandate and the production capacity of the refinery.  If the refinery blends more than its quota, the surplus RINS may be sold as credits on the market.  If the refinery blends less than its quota, it must purchase RINS to make up the difference.  If no RIN credits are available on the market, they may be bought from ethanol producers.  In 2021 refiners had to purchase RIN credits for 6.27 billion gallons of ethanol and other biofuels they did not consume.  RIN credit costs vary as they are part of a RIN market that fluctuates.  In 2021 D6 RIN costs ranged between $.20/gallon and $1.20/gallon. A conservative estimate of RIN credit costs to refiners in 2021 is $6 billion.  This cost is passed on to consumers in the price of gasoline.  If the cost can’t be passed to the consumer, it comes out of the refiner’s margin.  

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