Displaying posts published in

May 2024

Hannah E. Meyers Adults in Blue At Columbia University this week, the NYPD demonstrated again why it’s the best—and taught protesters something about individual accountability and character, too.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/adults-in-blue

This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of CompStat, the technology-enabled innovation that turned the gritty New York City Police Department into a modern, transparent, and strategically intelligent public safety force. Every week, commanders from the city’s roughly 100 precincts come in front of top chiefs for a grilling on what’s happening in their command, what they plan to do about it, and if they’re succeeding. It can be terrifying. But the demand for individual accountability—on a podium, exposed under scrutiny—is what created an agency of leaders and the nation’s best police force.

This week, former NYPD captain and current mayor Eric Adams went through a version of this exercise in front of the press as he was grilled on the situation at New York City’s campus protests (especially at Columbia University), how police planned to deal with it, and how it was going. He shared the tactical and strategic planning that went into the arrests of roughly 300 people from Columbia and City College of New York on Tuesday. (An additional 13 from NYU and 43 from the New School were arrested today). He explained the authority granted for these raids by the school administrations—and by the laws allegedly broken, from criminal mischief to burglary.

And, Adams explained: “Young people are being influenced by those who are professionals at radicalizing our children, and I’m not going to allow that to happen as the mayor of the City of New York.” What is the NYPD doing now? “We are processing the arrests to distinguish between who are actual students and who were not supposed to be on the ground,” the mayor said.

It was quite a scene on Tuesday night: NYPD officers entering Columbia’s illegally barricaded Hamilton Hall via an armored vehicle that got them through a second-floor window. Bodycam video illustrates what they encountered inside: physical blockades of furniture, garbage cans, and other objects obstructing their path, which they cut through with electric saws and blow torches. Then they had to deal with the demonstrators, some resisting—“Put it down, you’re gonna get hurt,” a cop told one idiot trying to block him with a makeshift shield—others complying, all amid the steady din of the rioters’ frenzied chanting. Not an easy day’s work: how many of us could handle it, even for a few minutes, without losing our composure? Yet the NYPD accomplished its assignment in an intensely hostile environment without using undue force. And when they were done, they lowered the Arab colors of the Palestinian flag that protesters had raised over CCNY and reinstated Old Glory.

Contrast this professionalism and competence with the squawks of protesters, most of whom have likely never been tested away from the protection of social media, group-based entitlements, and the safety blanket of anonymity. Unlike protesters of earlier generations—Mayor Adams conjured his own participation in bygone demonstrations with Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton—the current crusaders distinguish themselves by cowering. They hide their faces behind pandemic-era masks, sinched hoodies, and keffiyehs wound tightly around their faces as if to keep out the worst Arabian sandstorm. They demand those who might challenge their ideas, mission, and strategy to stay away. And they block pro-Israel students from coming close enough to ask them a question—or even attend final exams in their vicinity.

Whatever the breakdown may be between outside agitators and enrolled students, these campus crusaders are leaders in the mold of Hamas’s own, who prolong the suffering of Gazans in their perennial dream of destroying Israel and world Jewry from the safety of hideaways throughout the Middle East and Europe. Even October 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar is reportedly hiding underground with his family, surrounded by hostages as human shields.

Media reporting this week has been inundated with the petulant accounts of arrestees complaining about how “brutal” they found the experience of being held, finally, accountable for their actions. “As a human chain, draped in keffiyehs and shaking like leaves in the autumn wind, we sang with hushed tones,” recounts Columbia student and arrestee Allie Wong. “As [NYPD] approached from multiple directions, we sang with frail and cracking voices.” And then: “We clung tighter to one another as they approached us, and seized us like rag dolls.”

Wong professed herself shocked by the “brutality” of being “arrested, bound and shuttled down to 1 Police Plaza,” where “they threw us in cells like animals—cells where the only toilets women could use lacked any privacy.” (While, she gripes, the NYPD “had a pizza party prepared for arresting officers.”)

For these protesting rag dolls, getting arrested must have been jarringly consequential. You can’t put your hand over the camera when police are taking your mugshot—not like you do on campus when someone critical of what you’re doing approaches to ask you a question. And your fingerprints are permanently yours—as is the recorded account of what laws you have been charged with trampling. Like the officers whose faces, badge numbers, and activities were all fully exposed and documented on video, campus agitators now have their personal identities and actions memorialized for all to see and judge.

This week has thrown into sharp relief for Americans, in New York and beyond, the difference between leadership—which the NYPD showed throughout—and what passes for courage and character among those who sow disorder.

NYPD Leaders Vow to Identify Outsiders Fueling Anti-Israel Protests, ‘Radicalizing Our Students’ Brittany Bernstein

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/nypd-leaders-vow-to-identify-outsiders-fueling-anti-israel-protests-radicalizing-our-students/

A New York Police Department leader said Friday that officials believe that an outside organization is likely behind the anti-Israel protests that have roiled college campuses and that have led to thousands of arrests around the country, and they intend to “find out who that is.”

“I just want to say, and I said it before, there’s somebody behind this movement,” NYPD deputy commissioner of operations Kaz Daughtry told reporters after police arrested 56 protesters at New York University and The New School on Friday.

“There is some organization behind this movement. The level of organization that we’re seeing in both of these schools and at Columbia,” he said, adding that officers discovered leaflets at the demonstrations that outlined how to protest or how to commit civil disobedience.

The leaflets told protesters what to do if they were to be arrested and what to say to police.

“There is somebody funding this. There is somebody radicalizing our students,” he said, adding that “we will find out who that is.”

ELECTIONS

Rasmussen:Trump 48, Biden 36, Kennedy 8,West/Stein 1 | RCP Avg: Trump +3.2

America’s Jenga Tower of Power By J.B. Shurk

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/05/america_s_jenga_tower_of_power.html

A majority of Americans believe that mail-in ballot fraud tainted the 2020 election, but most state and federal officials continue to pretend the results were aboveboard.  A majority of Americans wish to put an end to mass illegal immigration, but the Department of Homeland (in)Security continues to do nothing to protect our borders from foreign invasion.  A majority of Americans are worried about rising inflation, but the federal government continues to print and spend money and issue costly regulations.  A majority of Americans oppose widespread government surveillance programs that intrude upon their privacy, but elected officials continue to give the Intelligence Blob full access to Americans’ most sensitive records and communications, in total disregard for the Constitution’s protections against warrantless searches.  A majority of Americans distrust mainstream news sources, but prominent news organizations continue to push ideological propaganda at the expense of truthful and objective reporting.  

These are just a few of the many ways in which America’s most powerful institutions fail to faithfully represent or protect the American people.  As the disconnect between the governing and the governed continues to grow, the dishonest state of our Union will become undeniable: an insular cabal of financial, corporate, political, and bureaucratic “elites” hold 99% of the American people hostage.  When Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Mitch McConnell speak about protecting “democracy,” what they want to preserve is an outrageously unbalanced system in which a few control everything and most control nothing.  That’s a little like a Jenga tower of blocks, in which all the weight at the top sits perilously upon a couple of crooked supports.  Eventually, such an uneven structure will collapse.

Most of us already feel America’s Jenga tower wobbling.  The federal government feels it, too.  That’s why it spends so much time censoring Americans’ speech, spying on their conversations, and abusing the criminal “justice” system to batter perceived political enemies.  As with all budding totalitarian regimes that have risen in the past, the U.S. government has abandoned persuasive argument for intimidation and coercion.  It is an ugly factory that produces nothing but nagging regulations.  It is a second-rate club that protects D.C.’s privileged VIPs and shoves the rest of America behind a cheap velvet rope.  It is an ear-splitting bullhorn that endlessly screeches, “Do exactly what we say!”  And the more it nags and shoves and screeches, the more America’s Jenga tower wobbles.

Marx Still Reigns Supreme. But Why? Why and how did this angry, odious, insufferable fantasist become the intellectual lodestar for the global left? By Stephen Soukup

https://amgreatness.com/2024/05/04/marx-still-reigns-supreme-but-why/

This week, with the global celebration of May Day and with the ongoing protests on the nation’s college campuses, it is worth remembering that the man who largely inspired both was a hateful, intellectually shallow misanthrope, remembered by history and admired by jesters and dupes largely because of his odiousness.

The First of May is celebrated by socialists around the world, not specifically because of Karl Marx but to honor the anarchists hanged for the Haymarket Affair in Chicago in 1886. Nevertheless, this “International Labor Day” has very much become a Marxist tradition, formerly commemorated with parades and ceremonies by the Soviet Bloc nations and still very much acclaimed by those who still revere Marx and his communist ideology.

Marx is likewise celebrated these days in the pro-Hamas camps on America’s college campuses. The ideology of struggle expressed by the protesters is very much in the Marxist tradition. Reams of Marxist literature have been collected at various abandoned/disbanded protest sites around the country, most notably on the UCLA campus. And, of course, Marxist organizations and agitators have been front and center throughout the demonstrations. As the inimitable Mike Gonzales has repeatedly stated, noting that Marxism is always at the forefront of these types of protests: “The issue is never the issue. The issue is the revolution.”

The question is why. Why is Karl Marx, of all people, so adored and admired by the world’s angry and disillusioned youth? He was but one of hundreds of thousands of 19th-century communists and but one of hundreds of leftist intellectuals and theorists of his era. Why him?

Reconstructing Gaza: The International Community’s Cycle of Impotence The people of Gaza are not going to invite a bullet from Hamas by renouncing them in return for the fool’s gold of international aid. By Thaddeus G. McCotter

https://amgreatness.com/2024/05/04/reconstructing-gaza-the-international-communitys-cycle-of-impotence/

If ever there was an example of the lethal, recurring consequences of the self-proclaimed “international community’s” inanity and impotence, it is their recurrent bouts of vows to reconstruct Gaza.

In their own version of the movie Groundhog Day (sans happy ending), the United Nations, the Biden administration, and other largely western nations have plans for rebuilding and revitalizing post-war Gaza. (Proximity to the Hamas terrorists makes neighboring Arab nations far more pragmatic in their planning.) The international community’s plans—much of them taxpayer subsidized—are expansive, expensive, and will ensure perpetuation of the Hamas terrorists’ cycle of violence against Israel.

And, tragically, this will happen regardless of whether the international community delivers on their promises.

To begin, the tragic recap:

Hamas launches a terrorist attack against Israel and murders, rapes, tortures, and kidnaps civilians;

Hamas holds the kidnapped civilians as an insurance policy and human shields against Israeli retaliation;

Hamas further uses Gaza’s civilians and critical infrastructure, such as hospitals, as human shields;

Hamas directs a propaganda operation through its supporters in the west, including leftists on college campuses, and in various international institutions demand a cease-fire to insulate Hamas against the consequences for their terrorism—as well as the large swath of the Gaza population that approves of their terrorist attack against Israeli civilians;

The international community rebuilds and revitalizes Gaza and insulates and rewards Hamas for its terrorist attack;

And reinforces among the Gaza population that they are correct in supporting Hamas’ hatred, terrorism, and genocidal aims, which are deemed justified, indoctrinated and celebrated throughout successive generations.

Rebuild, revitalize, repeat…

Jew-hatred and anti-Israelism: Why it’s on the rise Moshe Dann

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-799568

As Jews are fighting a war of self-defense against Hamas, the PLO, and other terrorist organizations, Israel is accused of genocide, war crimes, and perpetrating a Holocaust.

Eighty-five years ago, World War II began; the Holocaust had begun earlier, and the Nazi plan of the Final Solution was implemented in 1942.

Eighty-five years ago, the world turned its back on the Jewish people. Many countries in Europe welcomed the Nazis, and many locals supported the Nazis. Some countries declared “neutrality.”

The British implemented the White Paper of 1939, which prevented Jews who sought refuge in Palestine from immigrating. The US and Canada refused to allow most Jewish refugees to seek safety in their territory. The leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Amin al Husseini, moved to Berlin to support the Nazis.

Today, those who support the Iranian proxies such as Hamas, PIJ, and Hezbollah, and support anti-Israel demonstrations, are calling for another Holocaust, destroying the State of Israel, and the two-state solution (2SS) – a Palestinian state led by terrorist organizations. The international community, especially the UN and the EU, have joined these efforts. This is a world war against the Jewish people and Israel, supported by most Muslim countries and Muslim authorities. 

Something nightmarish: Israel accused of perpetrating a Holocaust

Something nightmarish is happening. As Jews are fighting a war of self-defense against Hamas, the PLO, and other terrorist organizations, Israel is accused of genocide, war crimes, and perpetrating a Holocaust against the Arabs in Gaza. Israel is accused of deliberately killing innocent civilians, and is compared to Nazis. The accusers are joined by non-Muslims in demonstrations against Israel, calling US President Joe Biden “Genocide Joe” for sending weapons to Israel. Many countries, organizations, and the media call for a “ceasefire” in the war against Hamas, and the 2SS which justifies their atrocities and will ensure their claims of victory.

Eighty-five years ago, World War II was launched against the Nazis; today, the world sees Israel as the enemy. 

Ironically, as the world briefly turns its attention to the greatest human tragedy in modern history on Holocaust Remembrance Day, there is growing Jew-hatred and condemnations of Israel around the globe. Why?

Western Civilization: The Age of Perversion A Psychoanalytic Perspective Stephen Rittenberg, M.D.

https://stephenrittenberg.substack.com/

Part I

Civilization vs. Barbarism

Scholars have illuminated the historical, political, economic, sociological and religious sources of antisemitism. Almost none were prepared for its raw eruption on October 7, 2023 in our post Holocaust world. It was generally believed that education, historical knowledge provided by Holocaust museums, and the miracle of Israel’s post WWII founding would foreclose forever (“never again”) murderous and organized Jew hatred. Milder forms of antisemitism were thought to be legally manageable by laws against hate crimes. However, human nature doesn’t change and something deep in the psyche motivates murderous Jew hatred. Our hypothesis is a simple one: the quest for pleasure, the ‘pleasure principle’ is mankind’s prime motivator. Sado-masochistic acts provide intense pleasure, especially in the form of rape combined with murder. The urge to destroy, to annihilate while discharging sexual drives is what motivates Jihadists. Hitler’s einsatzgruppen killers reappeared as Hamas’s slaughterers—this time, exhibitionistically recording snuff pornography for millions. Jews are ideal scapegoat targets of sadistic pleasure for all the reasons cited by scholars. Ultimately Moses’s 10 commandments brought unwelcome restrictions on pleasure and Jews are forever hated for doing so. Civilization brought it discontent. Hamas and Islamo Nazism are attacking Western civilization at its roots.

The clinical setting of psychoanalysis provides a powerful psychosexual lens for observing human nature- up close and personal. I have employed that closeup lens for 60+ years to help suffering patients, driven by a need to understand themselves, Every one of them has revealed the conflict novelists like Conrad and Solzhenitsyn describe between the forces of light and darkness, life and death.

“Outside the civil garden of every day of love/there crouches a wild passion to destroy and be destroyed..”—W.H. Auden.

For example: a charming, intelligent woman in her forties came for treatment. She felt chronically guilty for not contributing financially to her otherwise happy marriage. As a child her younger sister was a behavior problem who consumed her parents’ attention. My patient became the “good girl” who caused no problems and therefore got little parental interest. She worked hard to keep the family intact, did well at school and was regarded as a ‘perfect’ child. Yet at night, in the privacy of her room she made a list of people she hated and would brutally murder, her “kill list.” She reveled in ways of torturing these ‘enemies’, including her sister and her parents. Now as an adult, she lived a seemingly healthy normal life— but was riddled with guilt and unexpressed longings to pursue the life of an artist—a wish she experienced in early childhood that was mocked by her parents. As analysis unfolded and her aggressive drives could be acknowledged they found their outlook as she pursued her childhood ambition to be an artist and began to receive recognition for her work. Animating her work was the desire to triumph over her sister and prove her parents wrong for dismissing her artistic talents as a mere ‘hobby.’ She was able to feel and tolerate the desires to violently destroy those she loved, to realize what Solzhenitsyn realized.

Iran and the US Administration: Mocking US Sanctions by Majid Rafizadeh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20613/iran-us-sanctions

Never before have sanctions been so ostentatiously disregarded without any seeming awareness by those violating them of the possible consequences.

The US administration, it appears, has actually been funding Iran to attack Israel and itself.

The Biden administration has provided a lifeline to the Iranian regime by providing it with much-needed financial relief to export more oil and terror.

The evasions of US sanctions by Iran and its allies – largely thanks to the Biden administrations’ sanctions waivers — mark a new chapter in America’s history. Never before have sanctions been so ostentatiously disregarded without any seeming awareness by those violating them of the possible consequences.

Flouting international agreements not only undermines the integrity of the sanctions themselves but has also been demolishing the authority and credibility of the US administration. The problem is that such ostentatious flouting of sanctions has been producing a global lack of respect for the United States. Such derision has been transforming the once formidable reputation of the US into little more than a punchline, and, in the eyes of allies and adversaries alike, reducing America’s stature to that of an attractive target.

Despite the sanctions, Iranian oil exports have continued to surge, funding Iran’s October 7 war on Israel — in addition to more than 150 attacks on US troops in the Middle East by Iran’s militias and proxies. The US administration, it appears, has actually been funding Iran to attack Israel and itself.

In addition, Iran continues sending weapons to Russia, to help it crush Ukraine.

Here’s How We Know The Climate Crisis Is Not About The Climate

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/05/03/heres-how-we-know-the-climate-crisis-is-not-about-the-climate/

Carbon dioxide is a pollutant, the Environmental Protection Agency says. It’s been drilled into us for more than 30 years that we have to cut our CO2 emissions if we don’t want the world to end too soon. But we know that the climate scare is in no way related to protecting the sky. The data tell us so.

Over the last three calendar years, 2021, 2022, and 2023, “​​​​no country has reduced its carbon emissions more than any other major nation on a per capita basis,” the Committee to Unleash Prosperity tells us.

“Even though our GDP is about 50% higher than China’s, our per capita emissions are roughly the same,” says the group.

The data also tell us that though China’s emissions grow every year, “ours have come down every year over the last decade.”

Yet the U.S. is continually singled out as the worst greenhouse gas offender, while China – and India – escape the wrath of the klimate kooks, from Greta Thunberg to Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to actor Leonardo DiCaprio, who actually “praised China’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”