MEDIA Comments turned off

First Leftist Hysterical Fit of New Trump Era: Musk Gives Nazi Salute Spoiler alert: he didn’t. Robert Spencer

Posted By on January 23rd, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/first-leftist-hysterical-fit-of-new-trump-era-musk-gives-nazi-salute/

The left has just suffered a series of staggering rebukes. Not only did their campaign to destroy Donald Trump and his movement fail spectacularly, but his second Inaugural Address was a forthright and comprehensive declaration of war against the policy agendas they have pursued for decades now. The establishment media, meanwhile, has likewise been rejected on a grand scale, with Elon Musk even proclaiming repeatedly that citizen journalists and news analysts on his X platform “are the media now.” That is likely why Musk became the target on Monday afternoon of the first leftist freakout of the new Trump administration: it seems that he gave a Nazi salute, and that reveals what this Make America Great Again business is all really about, now, doesn’t it?

A CNN talking head said: “It’s a salute. It was quick. I think our viewers are smart and they can take a look at that, but it certainly was, it’s not something that you typically see at American political rallies.” Rolling Stone was all over the big story, claiming that actual National Socialists were thrilled: “Right-Wing Extremists Are Abuzz Over Musk’s Straight-Arm Salute.”

The New Republic was in just-asking-questions mode: “Did Elon Musk Seriously Just Do a Nazi Salute at Trump’s Inauguration?” was their headline, but they were ready in the article itself to run with the insinuation: “During a speech at Capitol One Arena Monday following Donald Trump’s inauguration, Elon Musk appeared to deliver a Roman salute not once, but twice. The gesture is associated with Nazi Germany, and Musk was speaking triumphantly about Trump’s election victory when he made the salute.” The New York Times was a trifle more circumspect, going with “Elon Musk Ignites Online Speculation Over the Meaning of a Hand Gesture: Speaking at a celebratory rally in Washington, Mr. Musk twice extended his arm out with his palm facing down, drawing comparisons to the Nazi salute.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

In Two Days, Trump Answered More Reporter Questions Than Biden Did In Four Years – And Without A Cheat Sheet

Posted By on January 23rd, 2025

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/01/23/in-two-days-trump-answered-more-reporter-questions-than-biden-did-in-four-years-and-without-a-cheat-sheet/

OK, we admit, we haven’t actually counted the number of reporters’ questions President Donald Trump has answered since being sworn in. And four years is certainly an exaggeration. In any case, someone covering the White House should keep track, because it won’t take long for Trump to beat Biden on this score.

Biden held the fewest number of press conferences of any modern president. He would answer questions only from pre-selected reporters. He had to have a cheat sheet with him at all times to give his answers, and even then the White House would often have to rush out to correct the record.

Biden’s first press conference wasn’t until March 2021 – and it was a disaster. As the BBC reported it:

Biden’s performance was more akin to a cautious walk across a not-quite-frozen lake. Every step was careful and calculated, lest an unexpected crack led to a dark, icy fate.

He relied heavily on notes and called from what appeared to be a pre-determined list of reporters – one that didn’t include Fox News or any other right-leaning outlets.

At one point, in an answer about the filibuster – an arcane Senate rule that has thwarted many a president’s ambitious agenda – Biden appeared to lose his train of thought, ending his sentence with the wave of a hand.

On Trump’s first day in the White House he answered reporters’ questions for 45 minutes while signing hundreds of executive orders. On Tuesday, he held an impromptu press conference after announcing a $500 billion investment in artificial intelligence, taking questions for half an hour.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Democratic Republic of Congo: Muslims murder at least 53 Christians in two jihad attacks on the same day Robert Spencer

Posted By on January 23rd, 2025

https://jihadwatch.org/2025/01/democratic-republic-of-congo-muslims-murder-at-least-53-christians-in-two-jihad-attacks-on-the-same-day?utm_

“More Than 50 D. R. Congo Christians Killed in Single Day of Violence,” Barnabas Aid, January 16, 2025:

At least 53 Christians were killed on January 15 in two Islamist attacks in Lubero, North Kivu, north-eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

The Islamic State Central Africa Province (ISCAP, also known as the Allied Democratic Forces) announced the killings in two social media posts, according to the Terrorism Research and Analysis Consortium (TRAC).

One of the two posts declared, “By the grace of God Almighty, the soldiers of the Caliphate attacked the village of Makoko in the Lubero region and killed 41 Christians [who] were stabbed with knives.”

The other post confirmed killing of 12 others in the village of Masakuki.

The terrorist group also abducted 16 Christians, as well as burning houses and motorcycles.

Attacks of this type have been carried out consistently by ISCAP since the group first affiliated to Islamic State (IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh) in 2017. However, the scale and frequency of the attacks has increased in the past few weeks.

Relentless Targeting of Christians

Including the January 15 attacks, at least 128 have been slaughtered in North Kivu and the neighboring province of Ituri since Christmas Day 2024….

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Red Cross is humiliated as it again serves murderers of Jews It succeeded in making its profile invisible while not gaining the release of a single hostage or providing them with any assistance.Mitchell Bard

Posted By on January 23rd, 2025

https://www.jns.org/the-red-cross-is-humiliated-as-it-again-serves-murderers-of-jews/?utm_campaign=

It was a joyous moment to see three female Israeli hostages finally released from 15 months of harrowing captivity. That happiness was tempered by the disgusting spectacle orchestrated by Hamas and enabled by the Red Cross. This humiliating episode highlighted its total failure to assist Jewish victims, evoking bitter memories of its inaction during the Holocaust.

I wrote in November 2023 about the attitude of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) from the beginning of the war. On Oct. 7, 2023, the ICRC released a statement expressing concern over “armed violence in Israel and the occupied territories.” This mealy-mouthed response ignored the slaughter of civilians by Hamas terrorists, instead framing the events as mutual violence and subtly implicating Israel.

Days later, the ICRC issued another statement acknowledging “premeditated killings of civilians” but avoided identifying either the perpetrators or victims. In the same breath, it criticized Israeli “bombings in residential neighborhoods,” drawing a false equivalence between terror massacres and defensive military actions.

It took more than a month before the American Red Cross said the ICRC was pursuing “every possible avenue to secure the release of all remaining hostages.” It would remain silent, however, because its experience—ignoring the Holocaust—was that it was most effective if it kept a low profile. Well, it succeeded in making its profile invisible while not gaining the release of a single hostage or providing them with assistance.

For the transfer, they showed up as if they were heroes when they were essentially Uber drivers taking the former hostages a few miles to an awaiting military helicopter.

First, though, they played a part in the grotesque Hamas spectacle in which heavily armed masked terrorists in freshly laundered uniforms delivered and surrounded the hostages. Hundreds of jeering civilians lined the streets celebrating the dehumanization of the women right to the end of their ordeal. Civilians, including children—frequently portrayed as innocent victims of “genocide”—actively participated in the degradation of survivors of the Hamas massacre.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The 11th Commandment: Thou Shalt Not Rape by Linda Goudsmit

Posted By on January 23rd, 2025

https://goudsmit.pundicity.com/28355/the-11th-commandment-thou-shalt-not-rape

goudsmit.pundicity.com  and website: lindagoudsmit.com 

Globalism’s war on nation-states cannot succeed without collapsing the United States of America. The overall attack strategy is to destabilize and destroy both the morality provided by our Judeo-Christian infrastructure, and the individualism protected and preserved by our Constitution.

Meryl Nass has provided her readers with David Schonbrunn’s excellent infographic (see below). It is an extremely helpful overview that identifies the strategic objectives and tactical operations of the globalist war on nation-states, but it is incomplete. The infographic is missing its most essential element: Children are the primary target of the globalist predators. The implosion of the United States of America requires the destruction of America’s future––her children.

Globalism’s War on America is a war of attrition. My generation of patriots is dying. My children’s generation of indoctrinated millennials is transitional. It is my grandchildren and great-grandchildren who are the primary targets of the avaricious globalist predators, specifically its global network of pedophiles and child-traffickers whose political purpose is soul murder––the spiritual and psychic annihilation of self. The total destruction of what exists includes the total destruction of childhood innocence––the obliteration of all boundaries of self. The development of an independent autonomous self required for individualism in a free society, is prohibited in order to advance the collective in preparation for life in globalism’s feudal totalitarian Unistate.

New World Order Graphic provided to Meryl Nass by David Schonbrunn:

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Trump takes on the climatecrats No one should mourn America’s withdrawal from the ridiculous Paris Agreement. Matt Ridley

Posted By on January 22nd, 2025

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/01/21/trump-takes-on-the-climatecrats/

Donald Trump has pulled America out of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement for the second time. The new US president signed an executive order following his inauguration yesterday, reversing the decision of his predecessor, Joe Biden, to drag the US back into the agreement in 2021. Bizarrely, like some dodgy insurance scam, the rules of the climatocracy say it takes a year to withdraw from the deal, so not until next winter will America be free of its obligations to reduce its emissions.

In truth, those ‘obligations’ are more like empty promises. The scandalous, nonsensical truth about the Paris Agreement is that it obliges literally nothing. It requires governments to, every five years, submit pieces of paper called ‘Intended Nationally Determined Contributions’ (INDCs), which can consist of saying you plan to go on doing what you are doing to cut greenhouse-gas emissions. Or even to do less than you were doing before. Most countries can then ignore the INDCs and do whatever they feel like anyway. There is almost no monitoring involved, let alone reprimanding, indicting or punishing. Only Britain has made its INDCs legally binding.

India’s latest Paris promise, made in 2023, consists of slightly relaxing, rather than tightening, its previous target for decarbonising. China has promised to continue to increase its emissions until 2030. Even if all the INDCs made under the Paris Agreement were kept to, climate economist Bjorn Lomborg has calculated that the global impact would be to reduce temperatures by less than 0.05 degrees Celsius by 2100. That is so minuscule it would be impossible to measure. Can you honestly say that, 75 years hence, your grandchildren could tell the difference between a day that’s 15.21 degrees and one that’s 15.26 degrees?

The Paris Agreement grew out of the chaos of COP15, the UN’s climate-change conference in Copenhagen in 2009, when the climatecrats decided that empty promises were not enough. They felt they must instead have the power to impose enforceable, mandatory emissions targets for all nations. Again and again, in the years leading up to the Paris meeting, the UN, the EU and US used the words ‘legally binding’ to describe what they planned. Nothing less would do.

At COP17 in Durban, South Africa in 2011, world leaders signed up to a promise to have a legally binding treaty in force by 2020. Greenpeace repeatedly insisted it must be a binding rather than a ‘voluntary approach’. The EU agreed. Ahead of the conference, its spokesman said: ‘The Paris Agreement must be an international legally binding agreement.’ Then French foreign minister Laurent Fabius said that John Kerry, then US secretary of state, was simply ‘confused’ when he worried whether a legally binding treaty was possible.

BOOKS Comments turned off

Destroying Legal Education A new book anatomizes the decline of America’s law schools. by Bruce Bawer

Posted By on January 22nd, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm-plus/destroying-legal-education/

As Donald Trump begins his second term as president with a mandate to undo the damage done to the country by leftist ideology, incompetence, and corruption, one of the many stables that most need cleaning up is academia – which is, of course, the source of virtually all of the most misbegotten ideas that have sent America astray.

To be sure, some parts of academia are more desperately in need of reform than others. As a rule, the elite universities, especially those in the Ivy League, are more poisoned by the new progressivism than most state schools, especially those in the heartland. Humanities and social science departments are worse off than STEM departments. And as Ilya Shapiro points out in his important new book, Lawless: The Miseducation of America’s Elite, the introduction of woke thinking into law schools is singularly damaging.

Yes, writes Shapiro, it’s unfortunate enough if, say, a sociology faculty is selling ideology rather than fact, for it represents “a loss to the richness of life and the accumulation of human knowledge.” But for a law school to head down the same road is far more perilous. For these schools turn out the lawyers, politicians, and judges who will serve as “the gatekeepers of our institutions and of the rules of the game on which American prosperity, liberty, and equality sit.”

And the sad fact, alas, is that in too many American law schools today, a preponderance of students are the products of classrooms in which, as Shapiro puts it, “the classical pedagogical model of legal education” has been abandoned in favor of “the postmodern activist one” – a process that has been underway for decades but that was greatly accelerated during the Covid pandemic and in the wake of the irrational nationwide hysteria over the killing of George Floyd. Hence those students swallow such dangerous notions as critical race theory and its corollary, critical legal theory, and therefore believe that colorblind justice, due process, and freedom of speech aren’t desiderata but tools of  white supremacy.

Lawless has its roots in Shapiro’s own hellish encounter with this ideological leviathan. It happened like this: on January 26, 2022, the day that Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer announced his retirement, Shapiro tweeted that the “best pick” for a replacement was Sri Srinivasan, who, if appointed by President Biden, would be the “first Asian (Indian) American” on the Court. Yet because Biden had promised to name a black woman, lamented Shapiro, “we’ll get [a] lesser black woman.” After sending off the tweet, Shapiro went to bed – and awoke in the morning to discover that his comment had caused pandemonium in the legal community, where he was being viciously attacked as a racist and a sexist. Shapiro immediately deleted the tweet and issued an apology for expressing his opinion in such an “inartful” manner.

NATIONAL SECURITY AND DEFENSE Comments turned off

Don’t Wait for Iran to Get Nukes It’s time to use the “mailed fist.” by Bruce Thornton

Posted By on January 22nd, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/dont-wait-for-iran-to-get-nukes/

Donald Trump has twice issued ultimatums to Hamas: If the hostages held by Hamas are not returned by his Inauguration, “there’ll be hell to pay.”

It may not take that long, since last week a deal was announced for a cease-fire and 33 of the Israeli hostages returned in exchange for nearly 1000 Palestinian Arab prisoners in Israeli custody.  Once again, Trump’s foreign policy realism shames the Biden administration’s prissy foreign policy crew and its “rules-based international order” naïve idealism that for decades has ended in dangerous appeasement and shameful retreat.

But this deal is very questionable, fraught as it is with the same moral hazards that have always accompanied decades of such agreements: the Palestinian Arabs’ habit of not keeping their word, and serially violating the terms of every deal; the disproportionate number of prisoners to be released; Israel’s withdrawal from territories that Hamas has used for launching attacks; and the strong possibility that those released prisoners will help Hamas regroup and resume the war.

A much more strategically important goal should be destroying Iran’s theocratic regime, given that it’s mere months from having the wherewithal to make several nuclear weapons. More negotiations, “parchment barriers,” or “deals” piled on top of those that have been going on for ten years, are not viable, and have only provided time and billions of dollars for the mullahs’ nefarious purposes. What we need, as First Lord of the Admiralty Duff Cooper said during the doomed Munich talks, is not “the language of sweet reasonableness” but the “language of the mailed fist.” And we need it stat.

Moreover, it’s not just about the nukes. The bipartisan appeasement of the Islamic Republic of Iran for nearly half a century has been one of the most destructive assaults on our power of deterrence and national prestige, ranking with our retreats from Saigon and, for al Qaeda and other terrorists, from Mogadishu in 1993, and especially Beirut ten years earlier, when 241 American servicemen, mostly Marines, were bombed by an Iranian proxy gang of jihadists that became Hezbollah. Nor did the Reagan administration punish Iran, not even bombing its training camps in the Bekaa Valley, as France (sic!) and Israel did.

The wages of appeasing Iran include proving to the mullahs that Americans––for all their wealth and power––are corrupt infidels enslaved to pleasure and comfort. This perception has not weakened, despite the current setbacks inflicted on Iran by Israel. After all, during the Trump administration Tehran faced challenges like “maximum pressure” on its economy, further infuriating the regime’s already angry citizens. But given the mullahs’ passionate belief in their divine mission, and the continuing civilizational failure of nerve in Western nations, the Iranian theocrats still believe they will achieve the aims enjoined on them by their faith.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Seth Barron Don’t Call Trump’s Plan “Mass Deportation” It’s a propaganda term that doesn’t describe the specific detention and removal plans of the new administration.

Posted By on January 22nd, 2025

https://www.city-journal.org/article/trump-mass-deportation-illegal-immigration

Since the second election of Donald Trump, activists, officials, and journalists have written repeatedly about the coming “mass deportation” of illegal immigrants. The National Immigrant Justice Center has put out a fact sheet warning its clients to “prepare for Trump’s mass deportation threats.” The ACLU observes that “Trump has repeatedly sought to rationalize his plans for mass deportation, blending military and national security rhetoric with xenophobia.” And Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, at a rally calling for Temporary Protected Status for Ecuadorians illegally residing in the United States, warned that Trump plans to deploy the “military to conduct mass deportations” of “those who serve as the backbone of our local economies.”

“Mass deportation” is a propaganda term that does not describe the detention and removal plans of the new administration, and it is not used by Trump or his representatives. Mass deportation is the wholesale detention and removal of an entire community based on nationality, ethnicity, or some other immutable characteristic. For example, Stalin engaged in large-scale reorganization of the population of the Soviet Union based on nationality, beginning with the mass deportation of 170,000 ethnic Koreans from their home on the Sea of Japan 4,000 miles west to Uzbekistan. Later, during World War II, Stalin’s secret police chief Lavrentiy Beria deported 200,000 Tatars from their home in Crimea thousands of miles to the east.

Other historical mass deportations include Andrew Jackson’s ethnic cleansing of Native Americans from the Deep South and their forced removal a thousand miles west, in what is known as the Trail of Tears. The removal of 112,000 ethnic Japanese from the American Pacific coast during World War II qualifies, too, as does the mass deportation of millions of Jews from German-occupied Europe to concentration and extermination camps in Poland during that same conflict. Mass deportations are indiscriminate in that every person associated with a national or ethnic group is rounded up.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Christopher F. Rufo Trump’s DEI Move Is One to Celebrate The two-year campaign for colorblind equality just notched its biggest win yet.

Posted By on January 22nd, 2025

https://www.city-journal.org/article/donald-trump-dei-executive-order

Yesterday, President Trump signed an executive order abolishing the “diversity, equity, and inclusion” bureaucracy in the federal government.

The move marks a stunning reversal of fortune from just four years ago, when Black Lives Matter, critical race theory, and DEI seemed unstoppable. Following the death of George Floyd, left-wing race activists made a blitz through America’s institutions, rewriting school curricula, altering government policy, and establishing DEI offices in major universities, big-city school districts, and Fortune 100 companies. The Biden administration immediately followed suit, mandating a “whole-of-government equity agenda” that entrenched DEI in the federal government.

No more. President Trump has rescinded the Biden executive order and instructed his Cabinet to “terminate, to the maximum extent allowed by law, all DEI, DEIA, and ‘environmental justice’ offices and positions,” and “all ‘equity action plans,’ ‘equity’ actions, initiatives, or programs.” In other words, President Trump has signed the death warrant for DEI within the federal government.

How did we get here? Through patiently building a movement and winning the public debate. At the beginning of 2023, I worked with Florida governor Ron DeSantis to launch the “abolish DEI” campaign. We began by terminating the DEI bureaucracy at New College of Florida, a small public university in Sarasota, where I serve as a trustee. The reaction from the racialist Left was intense. Protesters descended on the campus and the left-wing media published hundreds of articles condemning the move. But we held firm and made the case that public institutions should judge individuals based on their accomplishments, rather than their ancestry.

The argument began to take hold. The polling data indicated that Americans supported a “colorblind society” over a “race-conscious society” by large margins. Even the New York Times, one of the largest boosters of left-wing racialism, started publishing pieces that criticized DEI. At the same time, the Black Lives Matter movement was ensnared in scandals and the leading intellectual voices of DEI, such as Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo, faced sustained public scrutiny and seemed to disappear from the spotlight.