NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Will Meta’s Shift Away From ‘Fact-Checking’ Social Media Boost Free Speech? Most Americans Say ‘Yes’ In Latest I&I/TIPP Poll Terry Jones

Posted By on January 22nd, 2025

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/01/22/will-metas-shift-away-from-fact-checking-social-media-boost-free-speech-most-americans-say-yes-in-latest-ii-tipp-poll/

Meta, parent of social media giants Facebook, Instagram and Threads, has decided to make substantive changes to its fact-checking policies — changes that will mean less-onerous scrutiny of users’ posts by paid “fact-checkers,” and more by fellow readers. Is it a victory for free speech? A solid plurality of Americans say “yes,” according to the latest I&I/TIPP Poll.

Users have long complained about “woke” rules that lead to even innocuous posts being, in effect, censored by Facebook’s and Instagram’s legions of “fact-checkers.” A common complaint of users described a system that resulted in progressive politics being used as a template by which to stifle free speech.

Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg recently announced he would replace the formal fact-checking mechanism with a “community notes” system, such as the one favored by X (formerly Twitter) owner Elon Musk.

Do Americans like the changes?

In its January 2025 national online poll, taken from Jan. 8-10, I&I/TIPP asked 1,424 adults this question about the changes to Meta’s fact-checking rules: “Do you agree or disagree that Meta’s decision to end its fact-checking practices will positively impact free speech on its platforms?”

That answer came back “yes,” but with a large share of respondents describing themselves as “not sure” yet about the changes. The poll has a margin of error of +/-2.6 percentage points.

Overall, 43% said they agreed either “strongly” (19%) or “somewhat” (24%) that Zuckerberg’s move would bolster free speech, while 32% disagreed strongly (17%) or somewhat (15%). But a sizeable 24% said they weren’t sure how the changes would impact free speech.

And how people felt about it varied by age, with younger respondents agreeing it’s a good thing, while older ones are less likely to agree. Among those 18-24 years, 50% agreed that the changes were good; for those 25-44, it was 46%; 45-64, 42%; and the most skeptical group of all was those 65 and over, with just 36% agreeing that the move will benefit free speech.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Brussels: Is the Capital of Europe Crumbling Before Our Eyes? by Drieu Godefridi

Posted By on January 22nd, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21327/brussels-crumbling

Brussels has entered a wild-west era of “every man for himself,” in which people try to protect themselves as best they can without relying on the failing “authorities.”

Brussels’ financial situation is also alarming.

[Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration] Nicole de Moor… did acknowledge the problem of the high number of Palestinian asylum-seekers in Belgium, and that they had already been recognized elsewhere in Europe. Nevertheless, they demand to come to Belgium: it guarantees them more than any other country in Europe.

Since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, the streets and media of Brussels have witnessed the normalization of unabashed Islamist discourse and Jew-hatred — less and less hidden behind the pretext of “the fight against Zionism.”

When President Donald Trump compared Brussels, Belgium to a “hellhole” in 2016, the statement caused quite a stir, especially in Europe, and was treated with that mixture of contempt, ignorance and denial of reality typical of a certain “elite” in the European Union. Trump had made these remarks in the context of discussions on immigration and security, and suggested that Brussels had changed for the worse over the years, mainly as a result of uncontrolled lawless migratory submersion.

While the facts proved him right at the time, it might be said in 2025 that the Lebanonization of Brussels shows that his judgment was visionary.

ANTI-SEMITISM, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Germany’s Cultural Elites Perverted “Debate” on Israel by Gerald M. Steinberg

Posted By on January 21st, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21338/germany-cultural-elites-israel

Fringe activists and their “positions of moral outrage” continue to be funded by the German government, with high visibility platforms to promote their blatant anti-Israel and antisemitic campaigns.

In the face of poisonous propaganda, the Bundestag resolutions calling for an end to German government funding to “organizations or projects that spread antisemitism [or] question Israel’s right to exist” are important. Implementing them and stopping the support via cultural and academic institutions will not “silence” the voices of hate, but at least the German state will no longer be providing them with resources or legitimacy.

On November 22, 2024, at the National Gallery of Berlin, the American photographer and political activist Nan Goldin asked, “Why can’t I speak, Germany?” With apparently no sense of irony, she spoke at a lectern in front of a large audience, with numerous phones pointing at her, at the opening of her retrospective, titled “This will not end well.” The subject of her talk was not her artistic portfolio but rather her political agenda on Israel.

An enthusiastic audience applauded her outrage and indignation over the “genocide” in Gaza and Lebanon, and her immoral equivalence between the Palestinian population after the October 7 atrocities with pogroms against Jews under the Russian Empire. Goldin’s false claim that “antizionism has nothing to do with antisemitism” was followed by loud chants of appreciation and applause.

The one person who could not speak was the National Gallery’s Director, Klaus Biesenbach, who was shouted down when he attempted to distance himself from her statement, while adding the obligatory and obvious defense of Goldin’s right to express herself.

The “Nan Goldin incident” was widely covered in prominent media platforms, including the New York Times and German press, as well as in social media, almost everywhere repeating her false accusations regarding the ostensible silencing of Israel’s critics. Goldin is one of a number of examples (another is Judith Butler) in which Jewish anti-Israel activists are used by Germans as fig-leaves to claim that their agendas should not be labeled as antisemitic.

ANTI-SEMITISM, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

In Ireland Today, the Antisemitism is So Wide and Deep That One Despairs Hugh Fitzgerald

Posted By on January 21st, 2025

https://jihadwatch.org/2025/01/in-ireland-today-the-antisemitism-is-so-wide-and-deep-that-one-despairs?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=in-ireland-today-the-antisemitism-is-so-wide-and-deep-that-one-despairs

The government of Ireland has just announced that it has adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. Here is that definition: “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” Most of those adopting that definition also point to various examples of different ways in which that antisemitism is expressed.

Such a decision — to adopt the IHRA definition of antisemitism — is always to be welcomed, but given how antisemitic many Irish, including those at the very top of the government, have shown themselves to be this past year, in truly hair-raising pronouncements by the Irish president, Michael Higgins, the prime minister Simon Harris, the foreign minister Micheal Martin, the Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland Eamonn Martin, and the head of the Anglican Church in Ireland, Canon David Oxley, it’s hard to see that that adoption of the IHRA will do much good with those people still in office.

Ireland is, said one leader of the Irish Jewish community, the “most antisemitic” of all member states in the EU, and this announcement looks to be more of an attempt to deflect criticism rather than a genuine expression of sympathetic understanding for Jews, a tiny and embattled people fighting a seven-front war, who are now experiencing an increase in antisemitism worldwide that has not been seen since the days of the Nazis. More on what has been going on in Ireland that vitiates its pretense of becoming, if not a supporter of Israel, at least not a relentless and obsessive enemy of both the Jewish state and also of Jews, can be found here: “Ireland Adopts IHRA Definition of Antisemitism Amid Row With Israel,” by Dion J. Pierre, Algemeiner, January 17, 2025:

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Fred Bauer Trump Inaugural Blasts Biden, Lays Out Plan of Action In an address that sounded more like a State of the Union, the president excoriated his predecessors while promising concrete steps to secure his populist agenda.

Posted By on January 21st, 2025

https://www.city-journal.org/article/donald-trump-inauguration-speech

As he assumed the presidency again, Donald Trump proclaimed a “revolution of common sense” in his second Inaugural Address at the U.S. Capitol. Surrounded by the political elite and the captains of Silicon Valley, the new president pledged to restore faith in American institutions and championed a “manifest destiny into the stars,” with the United States expanding its territory and even planting a flag on Mars. The speech highlighted Trump’s many contrasts with his predecessors, even as it revealed how his political model has evolved.

Many recent presidents have used their Inaugurals to offer an ambitious vision for the nation or to rearticulate the terms of the national compact. Joe Biden’s, for instance, made a case for American “unity.” Some presidents have also sounded broad ideological themes, as in George W. Bush’s 2005 Inaugural Address, which committed the United States to the “expansion of freedom in all the world.”

But a series of disappointments and an embattled sense of national identity form the backdrop for the populist disruption of which Trump has been the avatar. His first Inaugural in 2017 lamented “American carnage,” and his second picked up that theme in assailing his predecessor’s record. Two signature moments of the end of the Biden administration—Biden’s bizarre attempt to “affirm” the Equal Rights Amendment as the 28th Amendment to the Constitution and his wave of preemptive pardons for his family and political allies—set up Trump’s denunciation of a “radical and corrupt establishment.”

Positioning himself against that establishment is essential to Trump’s outsider appeal, but his speech did not confine itself to complaint. Trump laid out a detailed set of policies that he would be implementing through executive orders.

ANTI-SEMITISM, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Australia is in the grips of an anti-Semitic nightmare How many more synagogues will be torched before the elites take this threat seriously? Hugo Timms

Posted By on January 21st, 2025

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/01/21/australia-is-in-the-grips-of-an-anti-semitic-nightmare/

The standard you walk past, as the famous Australian saying goes, is the standard you accept. Unfortunately for Jewish Australians, the standard set by the Labor government when it comes to anti-Semtism could hardly be any lower.

In the early hours of Tuesday morning, Australians woke to the news that a Sydney childcare centre had been firebombed and sprayed with anti-Semitic graffiti. Last weekend, two masked figures attempted (and failed) to burn down a synagogue. Theses would once have been significant national events. But not so now, in Anthony Albanese’s Australia. They were merely just the latest of several recent attacks on Jewish property.

In December, Melbourne’s Adass Israel Synagogue, in the prominent and historic Jewish suburb of Ripponlea, was burnt to the ground in possibly the most significant act of anti-Semitism in Australian history. Last week, in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, two cars were set alight, many more were graffitied with anti-Semitic slogans, and the former home of Alex Ryvchin, co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, was doused in red paint.

Anti-Semitism now pervades Australian society. It began, as most of the world now knows, on the steps of the Sydney Opera House, with crowds celebrating Hamas’s atrocities on 7 October 2023. It blossomed into regular, vicious anti-Israel marches, including one mourning the death of Hassan Nasrallah, the Hezbollah leader responsible for the indiscriminate bombing of northern Israel. During that time, protesters have routinely damaged the offices of politicians deemed supportive of Israel – and they’ve done so, for the most part, with impunity. By the time the office of Jewish MP Josh Burns was targeted last June, with vandals deploying an age-old anti-Semitic trope by adorning his photograph with Satanic horns, hardly anyone could claim to be surprised.

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Her name is Emily Damari The left will never live down the shame of staying silent on the racist kidnapping of a British Jew. Brendan O’Neill

Posted By on January 21st, 2025

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/01/20/her-name-is-emily-damari/

There is a British woman who survived 15 months at the hands of a neo-fascist militia. A woman who was cruelly deprived of her liberty and dignity by racist monsters and yet who emerged from that hell smiling and defiant. A woman who spent her 28th birthday in the bondage of an army of bigots. A woman who was subjected to the most intolerable persecutions for one ‘crime’ and one ‘crime’ only – she’s a Jew.

And yet if you said her name on the streets of Britain, many people would not know who she was. No one on the ‘anti-racist’ left held a vigil for her. The activists of Antifa raised not a peep of concern for this Jew seized by a racist army. These people see ‘fascism’ everywhere, in every utterance made by Donald Trump, every bristling against mass immigration, every criticism of the Koran. Yet when a fellow Brit was cruelly incarcerated by a movement founded with the express intention of murdering Jews, they said not a word. To them everything is fascism, except fascism.

Her name is Emily Damari. Go and say it to people. Let them know that a British citizen was kidnapped by Hamas and that British ‘progressives’ said nothing. Let them know that this British-Israeli was brutalised by Jew-killers and it made not so much as a dent in the conscience of Britain’s bourgeois left. The people who cry ‘black lives matter’ and ‘trans lives matter’ and ‘Muslims matter’ could not bring themselves to utter these three poxy words: ‘Emily Damari matters.’

Ms Damari was taken from her home in Kibbutz Kfar Aza in southern Israel during Hamas’s orgy of barbarism on 7 October 2023. She was shot in the hand, causing her to lose two fingers. She was dragged to Gaza where she spent 471 days in the captivity of anti-Semites. She was released yesterday, as part of Phase 1 of the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, along with two other women: Romi Gonen, 24, and Doron Steinbrecher, 31. I have come ‘back to life’, said Emily on Instagram after her release.

To be clear, Emily was not forgotten. Britain’s Jewish community held vigils for her. Fans of Tottenham Hotspur – the team she supports – campaigned for her release. So did fans of Arsenal. Not for the first time, working-class football fans showed themselves to be the moral backbone of the nation, as our ‘betters’ shamefully looked the other way. It fell mostly to Emily’s heroic mother, Mandy, to keep her daughter’s plight in the headlines. Her dogged campaigning even compelled government officials to break their reprehensible silence and speak on the racist brutalisation of one of their own people.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Geography’s Revenge Trump’s bold vision to reclaim America’s dominance in the Western Hemisphere challenges outdated alliances and redefines strategic priorities for an era of fierce global competition. By Christopher Roach

Posted By on January 21st, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/01/21/geographys-revenge/

Over the last few weeks, Trump has raised a lot of eyebrows by suggesting that our country should annex Greenland, invite Canada to join as the 51st state, and seek the return of the Panama Canal. Together, these remarks signal a break from prevailing norms and a plan to consolidate America’s dominant position in the Western Hemisphere.

Like much of what Trump does, it all seems cheeky, but only at first glance. Even if these maximalist positions do not prevail, they form an anchor for negotiations. Trump is actively seeking to expand U.S. influence over strategically significant regions within our immediate vicinity.

A new order is emerging where regions and their shifting balances of power are the dominant force in the world, rather than conflicts between mere nation-states. Among these competing regions, Europe, under the institutions of the EU, is becoming an economic and political force in its own right, often sidelining the U.S. Unlike NATO, we are not a member of the EU, and it provides space for Europe to assert its own collective interests as distinct from our own.

The BRICS consortium is also gaining power and becoming a viable node of international power, while China is making inroads to consolidate its own influence over Eurasia through its “Belt and Road Initiative.” China also maintains robust commercial ties with Africa and Latin America. Russia, of course, has been asserting its own sovereignty over the former Soviet Union in Georgia, Ukraine, and among the various Stans.

The U.S. is no longer as powerful as it once was in relative terms. We have done a lot on autopilot in recent years, continuing to assert our prerogatives as if the rest of the world has not taken notice of the humiliations in Afghanistan, Niger, and the Red Sea. Our adversaries and competitors are reevaluating things from a realist perspective, and we should as well, abandoning outmoded ideas about friends, enemies, and our own capabilities.

After the Cold War, for a time, we were the most powerful, but this led to a failure to set any priorities. National security strategy documents consisted of meaningless word salad without any intelligent effort to rank threats or connect one activity with another.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

A Trump Inaugural Speech for a Trump Presidency

Posted By on January 21st, 2025

https://www.nationalreview.com/2025/01/a-trump-inaugural-speech-for-a-trump-presidency/

Donald Trump’s inaugural address was functionally indistinguishable from one of his rally speeches. It wasn’t as long or discursive but was just as plain-spoken and pointed, and made exactly the same promises.

The address was another sign that Trump intends to govern the way he ran.

His critique of the status quo was stinging and harsh, while a pained Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had to sit within feet of him and endure it.

The flip side of Trump’s often-decried gloomy portrait of the present is his vaulting optimism about the future he intends to bring about. So it was with this address. As usual, he didn’t stint on his bigger-and-better superlatives. It’s going to be a new Golden Age, as “we stand on the verge of the four greatest years in American history.”

Trump described himself as an exemplar of common sense, and, indeed, on some key issues he captured the center last November. His pledges in his address to shut down the border, deport criminals, make it government policy that there are only two genders, and judge people on their merits rather than their race and gender are firmly in the middle of the American consensus, and not too long ago would have been utterly uncontroversial.

His assurances that he will build up the military, push back on electric vehicle mandates, exploit our fossil fuel resources to the maximum extent possible, and end all government pressure for censorship were welcome, as well.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Biden Pardons Dr. Doom Sealing Fauci’s fate as “the architect, author, and godfather of the pandemic.” by Lloyd Billingsley

Posted By on January 21st, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/biden-pardons-dr-fauci/

On Monday, Joe Biden issued preemptive pardons for the January 6 committee, Gen. Mark Milley, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, explaining that “issuance of these pardons should not be mistaken as an acknowledgment that any individual engaged in any wrongdoing, nor should acceptance be misconstrued as an admission of guilt for any offense.” As the Delaware Democrat contends:

“For more than half a century, Dr. Fauci served our country. He saved countless lives by managing the government’s response to pressing health crises, including HIV/AIDS, as well as the Ebola and Zika viruses. During his tenure as my Chief Medical Advisor, he helped the country tackle a once-in-a-century pandemic. The United States is safer and healthier because of him.”

It isn’t, and Dr. Fauci got his start by declining to serve his country.

Anthony Fauci earned his medical degree in 1966 but to avoid treating wounded American soldiers, in 1968 he took a cushy “Yellow Beret” post with the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Dr. Fauci’s bio showed no advanced degrees in molecular biology or biochemistry but in 1984 the NIH made him head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).  Nobel laureate Kary Mullis, inventor of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique, was on record that Dr. Fauci “doesn’t understand electronic microscopy and he doesn’t understand medicine. He should not be in a position like he’s in.” That reality would quickly become evident.

Fauci’s drug of choice to treat AIDS was AZT (azithodomidyne, also known as Zidovudine), rejected for cancer treatment because of excessive toxicity. As Robert F. Kennedy Jr. showed in The Real Anthony Fauci, the NIAID boss forced AZT and other toxic drugs on black foster children in New York City, with deadly results. Fauci was never held accountable and remained in his post.