ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Democrats’ fight against hate crimes vanishes in the face of antisemitism Julian Epstein

Posted By on May 23rd, 2024

https://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/4671152-democrats-fight-against-hate-crimes-vanishes-in-the-face-of-antisemitism/
Julian Epstein is the former chief counsel to the Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee and former staff director of the House Oversight Committee.

For the past few decades, Democrats have consistently demanded a strong response to the rising number of hate crimes motivated by race, ethnicity, ancestry or sexual orientation. Among other things, they have insisted on universal condemnation of the crimes and vigorous enforcement of federal laws that criminalize hate crimes. 

Spurred by the brutal hate murders of James Byrd Jr., and Matthew Shepard in the late 1990s, the Department of Justice has prosecuted hundreds of these cases in recent administrations, including 70 convictions by the Biden Department of Justice as last September. As chief counsel to the Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee years ago, I was involved in the push for stronger enforcement. It was a central part of the Democrats’ civil rights agenda.  

But now the Democratic Party has an antisemitism problem on its left flank, and its tune has changed a bit. Leftist professional organizers have mobilized student groups and mobs elsewhere to attack, harass and obstruct the free movement of Jews — all of which are crimes.   

Many openly support Hamas and the October 7 civilian massacre, calling for the destruction of Israel and for the repatriation of Jews to places like Poland. One student leader at Columbia asserted that “Zionists don’t deserve to live” in a livestream video. (University officials took no disciplinary action until the video was widely publicized.)   

Of course, the spike of over 8,873 antisemitic incidents of assault, harassment and vandalism in 2023 — a 140 percent increase from the previous year — was somewhat predictable.  

Numerous progressive groups like the Democratic Socialists of America (which counts among its supporters Democrats in Congress) and local chapters of Black Lives Matter celebrated Hamas’s genocidal attack as an act of liberation. A progressive Columbia professor called the attack “awesome”; one at Cornell was “exhilarated”; a Stanford instructor segregated Jewish students in an apparent slander of Israelis for being imagined “colonizers.” Democrats have largely looked the other way and declined to namecheck any of these bigotries.  

What would Democrats say if paid organizers incited mobs to attack Black students, impede their movement and publicly demand their repatriation to Africa? What would they say if college professors and their curricula slurred the ancestral heritage of Hispanics? They would rightly be outraged and would insist on maximum legal consequences against the perpetrators. 

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Has Gavin Newsom’s Brain Always Been Mush? Or has he grown battier over the years?

Posted By on May 23rd, 2024

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/05/23/has-gavin-newsoms-brain-always-been-mush/

California’s health is vital to this country. It’s too important to be run by political cranks. Unfortunately, it has become a True Blue state, setting much of the agenda for progressive politics everywhere. At the top is Gov. Gavin Newsom, who at one time seemed almost a happy warrior. Now it’s clear he’s an impulsive leftist hack who’ll say and do anything in the service of seeking ever greater power.

His most recent descent into Democratic madness was obvious a couple of weeks ago, when he blamed California’s $45 billion deficit on climate change.

“We anticipated that shortfall,” Newsom said at a news conference in which he outlined his plan to close the budget gap. “What we didn’t anticipate is these rain bombs … these atmospheric rivers that led to a federal declaration that led to FEMA and the IRS moving in a direction where we couldn’t collect our taxes until, I believe Nov. 16, as opposed to April 15.” 

He went on to say he considered “our financial delays as just another example of why we need to tackle” climate change, which “has impacts well beyond those that are often promoted.”

It’s a fact that California has had some heavy weather. To blame it on man’s combustion of fossil fuels is irresponsible. Actually it’s worse, it’s a sign of instability and desperation. As our friends at the Committee to Unleash Prosperity said, “This man has a serious case of climate change derangement syndrome.”

But the governor said what Democrats want to hear and he is happy to give it to them.

Newsom’s ongoing breakdown became obvious in his now infamous August 2021 “damn” interview with editorial and opinion writers from the McClatchy chain’s California newspapers.

Just weeks from a recall election that he won, Newsom was described as “unhinged,” “odd,” “testy,” and “angry.” He said “damn” nine times, at one point screeched that he loves “this damn state.” Those who had the patience to watch the video in its entirety said he smacked his desk with his hand and fist 59 times.

At least he wasn’t rolling around a couple steel balls in his hands.

NATIONAL SECURITY AND DEFENSE Comments turned off

China’s Sea Power Leaves U.S. Adrift With Beijing pursuing global supremacy across the oceans, America must rebuild its maritime sector. By Mike Waltz and Mark Kelly

Posted By on May 23rd, 2024

https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-sea-power-leaves-u-s-adrift-e6a8681f?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

In his 1890 book, “The Influence of Seapower Upon History,” Alfred Thayer Mahan identified a crucial factor in the British Empire’s rise to global dominance: a battle fleet. A strong force could protect a nation’s merchant marine and maritime commerce, which could finance national power. Mahan subsequently exhorted the U.S. to build such a fleet and reap the rewards.

America today faces its most significant great-power threat since the end of the Cold War, especially on the seas. China has learned Mahan’s lessons well. Its international shipbuilding industry and expansive merchant marine, combined with its growing navy, pose a comprehensive threat to American prosperity and security.

China uses the world’s oceans to pursue global supremacy, employing coercion and economic intimidation against weaker nations. In the South China Sea it has seized more than a dozen islands in waters claimed by its neighbors. China is using the islands as military outposts, which serve to choke off the region’s economic and natural-resources lifelines. Beijing’s games of chicken with foreign ships contravene international law, risk dangerous escalation, and deny freedom of navigation to American allies and partners.

Yet the Communist Party’s reach and intentions extend beyond regional waters. China has become the world’s top shipbuilder. It controls one of the world’s largest shipping companies and boasts the largest navy. It has built these capabilities with the help of massive state subsidies.

By flouting international standards of fair market behavior, China has secured nearly half the world’s shipbuilding market as well as control over port and shipyard infrastructure around the world.

In shipbuilding, according to a conservative analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Security, China offered $132 billion in subsidies to the shipbuilding and shipping industries between 2010 and 2018. These industries are buttressed by policies like debt forgiveness, low-interest bond issuance, equity infusions and barriers to foreign competition.

Functionally, China’s shipbuilding industry is state-owned and leveraged to accelerate military-vessel construction. China has also invested nearly $60 billion into port projects around the world, including in such countries as Peru. Beijing makes the vast majority of cranes in these ports, including 80% in U.S. ports. Predatory lending practices enable it to gain control over facilities when poor nations can’t pay their debts, as happened in Sri Lanka in 2017.

BOOKS, NATIONAL SECURITY AND DEFENSE Comments turned off

China’s Dream, America’s Nightmare Daryl McCann

Posted By on May 22nd, 2024

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2024/05/chinas-dream-americas-nightmare/

Talk of a future war between Beijing and Washington is obsolete. Communist China is already at war with the United States even if, to quote Churchill, “all the great responsible authorities” have stood “gazing” at this disturbing truth “with vacant eyes”. So writes Peter Schweizer in Blood Money: Why the Powerful Turn a Blind Eye while China Kills Americans. Supported by an extensive research team, Schweizer chronicles the key methods the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) employs to pursue “disintegration warfare” against the United States, from fuelling the fentanyl crisis and arming criminal gangs to commandeering Hollywood and maximising the deleterious effects of COVID-19 on the American population: “It is often said that China is in a cold war with America. The reality is far worse: the war is hot, and the body count is one-sided.”

Disintegration warfare, writes Schweizer, is a modern-day adaptation of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, holy writ for every leader of the People’s Republic of China from Mao to Xi, and since 2006 required reading for members of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Sun Tzu, an ancient Chinese strategist, suggested that “all warfare is based on deception” and “the supreme act of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting”. The strength of Blood Money is that it comprehensively outlines how Xi Jinping and his coterie are going about the business of stealthily disintegrating the one power standing in the way of the Middle Kingdom resuming its place as the dominant force in the world. The mighty United States must, too, become a tributary state of China, but for that to occur America must be broken and defeated, preferably “without fighting” back or in any way defending itself.

Blood Money is mostly about how the CCP aims to defeat America (and the West) though there are moments when the discussion turns to why. For instance, Schweizer provides a
telling quotation from the Supreme Leader contained in a textbook given to all PLA officers. China and the West, according to Xi, are essentially incompatible because of differing ideologies and social systems: “This [incompatibility] decides it. Our struggle and contest of power with the West cannot be moderated. It will inevitably be long, complex, and at times extremely sharp.” The history of the CCP, after all, is a case study of destroying the independent integrity of everything that comes into its purview, from Tibet to the World Health Organisation. The only question is whether the politburo ever believed the Tibetan Autonomous Region would be, in any sense, self-directed. The belligerent paranoia of the CCP is a function of its Leninist nature and millennial fancies. Today the utopian vision is not Mao’s Great Leap Forward but Xi’s China Dream, though the same Leninist impulse prevails: the enemy must be “disintegrated”.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Deception and Misinformation Insidious weapons of terrorists — and of leftists in academia. by Dr. Shmuel Katz

Posted By on May 22nd, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/deception-and-misinformation/

It is becoming more and more challenging to get advanced academic education without being exposed to malicious educators and others, who are willing to advance their own agenda, and ignore the interest of their students.

The recent turmoil in multiple universities in the USA and elsewhere, is only a symptom of many years of on-going indoctrination which is being ignored, due to various excuses.

Recently, there were again, alarms from the PJTN organization and from others, about the indoctrination of the young students in the K-12 classrooms, in multiple states.

I am glad that we have many organizations who would like to do better than the others, in exposing and marginalizing the bad operatives.

We need all of them, as there may be some that will reach groups of people, that others would not be able to do.

Some of the problems of having that many organizations are related to the fact that unfortunately, many times, they are not delivering the same messages, nor addressing the same problems, in systematically and repetitiously effective ways. We know from the science of commercial marketing, that if we want people to remember, identify, and ultimately, buy a product, they will have to hear the messages multiple times, and in different ways. Therefore, sharing well documented, similar, valuable, basic, and relevant information, by different sources, will significantly amplify the distribution of the messages, and will hopefully result in reaching and convincing more people, to act in their own interest, to expose and marginalize evil.

One of the hot topics of today is related to the insidious infiltration of radical groups into our educational system, with serious effects on the society at large. This phenomenon is not new. It happened already in the past, but recently it has gained momentum, which is affecting not only the students, but also educators and political decision makers. Consequently, it negatively affects the population at large.

EDUCATION, ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Fed Up With Anti-Israel Demonstrations On College Campuses? 60% Of All Voters Agree: I&I/TIPP Poll Terry Jones

Posted By on May 22nd, 2024

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/05/22/fed-up-with-anti-israel-demonstrations-on-college-campuses-60-of-all-voters-agree-ii-tipp-poll/

American college campuses have experienced mass demonstrations and occupations by students and outsiders in recent months following Israel’s powerful response to the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks by the Islamist group Hamas. Do Americans support this? No, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows.

Many average Americans expressed shock at the sudden violent, and well-organized, demonstrations and tent cities that sprang up at universities around the nation, largely in support of Hamas and the destruction of Israel.

A solid majority of Americans are not happy with this, according to May’s national online I&I/TIPP Poll of 1,435 adults, taken May 1-3. Some 60% of all those said they either disapprove “somewhat” (18%) or “strongly” (42%) with the demonstrations.

The poll has a margin of error of +/-2.6 percentage points.

A far smaller total of 24% said they either supported the demonstrations “strongly” (9%) or “somewhat” (15%). Another 16% said they were “not sure.”

But the repudiation of the demonstrations is not across the board, at least when it comes to the demographics of the respondents.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

PAUL SCHNEE- A RESPONSE TO AMAL CLOONEY

Posted By on May 22nd, 2024

http://www.PaulSchnee.com

Everyone knows, even if they do not want to admit it, that the Israel Defense Force (IDF) is known throughout the world for taking more care to avoid civilian casualties than any other military in the history of warfare.

Mrs. Clooney would be far better off pursuing Mahmoud Abbas and the leaders of Fatah for crimes against humanity who have boasted they took part in the October 7th. massacre and who, like Yahya Sinwar, have vowed to carry out similar attacks again and again until Israel is annihilated.

That over 70% of Arab Palestinians in Gaza and in Judea & Samaria have declared their support for this historically obscene massacre is lost on Mrs. Clooney.

Her Druze father must have told her Sunni Muslim mother that the Druze community was constantly persecuted by the Sunni Ottoman Empire including forced conversion to Islam. This should have given Mrs. Clooney some pause.

Not much has changed since then so one has to ask why Mrs. Clooney, a British barrister mind you, would attempt to claim the moral high ground by approving a charge of war crimes by the International Criminal Court against Benjamin Netanyahu and other members of the Israeli cabinet without a morsel of evidence. Of course, for some people being associated with any organization that has “international” in its title is just too tempting to resist.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Amal Clooney Admits to Advising ICC on Arrest Warrant for Netanyahu By Eric Lendrum

Posted By on May 22nd, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/05/21/amal-clooney-admits-to-advising-icc-on-arrest-warrant-for-netanyahu/

Left-wing activist Amal Clooney, wife of actor George Clooney, admitted on Monday to advising the International Criminal Court (ICC) when it came to the arrest warrant that was issued for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, alongside several other high-profile warrants.

According to The Hill, Clooney was one of several activists who was assembled onto a panel by ICC prosecutor Karim Khan to discuss his requests for the arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Netanyahu’s defense ministers, and three Hamas leaders. Clooney detailed her involvement in a statement posted to her Clooney Foundation for Justice website.

Clooney said that the panel came to a unanimous decision that there were “reasonable grounds” to announce the warrants for Netanyahu and the rest.

“We have unanimously determined that the Court has jurisdiction over crimes committed in Palestine and by Palestinian nationals,” said Clooney. “I served on this Panel because I believe in the rule of law and the need to protect civilian lives. The law that protects civilians in war was developed more than 100 years ago and it applies in every country in the world regardless of the reasons for a conflict.”

Other members of the panel include: Theodor Meron, former president of the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia; Adrian Fulford, a former ICC judge; and Helena Kennedy, a member of the House of Lords with the Labor Party.

In addition to Netanyahu, arrest warrants were issued for three leaders of the Islamic terrorist group Hamas: Ismail Haniyeh, the group’s main political leader; Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza; and Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri, the commander of Hamas’ military wing.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Karim Khan’s Outrageous Travesty of Law and Justice The ICC prosecutor flouts all the rules to get Israel in the dock. P. David Hornik

Posted By on May 22nd, 2024

https://pdavidhornik.substack.com/subscribe?utm_source=email&utm_campaign=email-subscribe&r=8t06w&next=

Israel got hit hard again this week when Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Karim Khan said he was requesting arrest warrants, pending the approval of three judges, against Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant for their conduct of the war against Hamas in Gaza.

Most egregiously, Khan charges the two Israeli leaders with “extermination and/or murder…including in the context of deaths caused by starvation, as a crime against humanity.” In international law, crimes against humanity are second only to genocide in severity.  

Simultaneously, Khan asked for arrest warrants against Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Muhammad Deif, and Ismail Haniyeh for charges including “extermination, murder, taking of hostages, rape and sexual assault in detention.” Khan did not stint to publicly bracket the two democratically elected Israeli leaders with the three heinous Hamas terrorists.

The charges against Netanyahu and Gallant are outrageous on a number of counts. As the Wall Street Journal notes in a stinging editorial (paywall):

Khan alleges “starvation of civilians as a method of warfare.” Hamas lists 31 Gazans who it claims died of malnutrition and dehydration in seven months of war. That’s out of 2.3 million whom Egypt won’t let out over its border.

Israel has facilitated the entry of 542,570 tons of aid, and 28,255 aid trucks, in an unprecedented effort to supply an enemy’s civilians, even while Hamas steals the aid and tries to frustrate delivery. Israel has begged Egypt for two weeks to let in aid at Rafah, while Egypt refuses. Is this the behavior of an Israeli government bent on starving Gazans?

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Squabbling Congresswomen Are Not the Problem Signs of Madison’s Constitutional guardrail that “ambition must be made to counter ambition.” by Bruce Thornton

Posted By on May 22nd, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/squabbling-congresswomen-are-not-the-problem/

Last week several Congresswomen went toe-to-toe in an exchange of insults during the House Oversight and Accountability Committee Hearings. The pugnacious Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) took on Democrat firebrand Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas), with Brooklyn Dem Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, an aggressive interlocutor, piling on.

This unseemly brawl is a litmus test for how we think about the state of our government and how it should work. Many people see such vulgar exchanges of harsh rhetoric and personal attacks as a failure of our system of partisan faction who sacrifice the good of the public to their parochial ideological interests, instead of “reaching across the aisle” to “solve problems.”

But such passionate confrontations are nothing new, and do not bespeak a breakdown in our Constitutional order. Rather, they are signs of James Madison’s Constitutional guardrail that “ambition must be made to counter ambition,” that in the political tournaments of power, the efforts of one faction to aggrandize more control and influence will be checked by those of other factions who possess the same political rights. The goal is not to “solve problems,” which is the job of citizens, civil society, churches, families and states. Rather, protecting our freedom by checking and balancing power is how our political freedom and equality can be fortified against tyranny.

This fundamental feature of our Constitutional architecture reflects another dimension of human nature. Not only is faction “sown in the nature of man,” as Madison said, but also reflects the reality of diversity in the settlement of the original colonies. Our Diversity Inc. industry ignores these true variations that comprise America’s complex identities, and instead reduces it to crude, racist categories primarily expressing physical traits and characteristic.

Such caricatures, moreover, have kept alive stereotypes predicated on victimhood and grievance, and embodied them in fictive cultural narratives, all at the expense of our most important identity––that of unique individuals who exist on this earth only once. As French philosopher Alain Finkielkraut points out, “Like the racists before them, contemporary fanatics of cultural identity confine individuals to their group of origin. Like them, they carry differences to the absolute extremes, and in the name of a multiplicity of specific causalities destroy any possibility of cultural community among peoples.” Hence, we end up with imperialistic homogeneity and an intellectual and political monoculture rather than diversity.