WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Evan Gershkovich’s Stolen Year in a Russian Jail The Wall Street Journal correspondent has been deprived of 12 months of normal existence; a year of missed weddings, reporting trips and travels with friends By Eliot Brown

Posted By on March 29th, 2024

https://www.wsj.com/world/russia/evan-gershkovichs-stolen-year-in-a-russian-jail-61234ec9

Evan has lost 12 months of normal existence as a kinetic and curious 32-year-old, a year he should have been jetting around Europe and the U.S. between groups of friends, his family and his reporting trips to Russia.

There has been a burst of weddings and engagements of friends from high school and college. He has missed a year of monumental changes and intrigue in Russian reporting—a cornerstone of many of his friendships with reporters and a key part of his identity. He has missed a year of Arsenal, the Mets and the Jets—his favorite teams. He has missed the final episodes of “Succession,” the finale of “Ted Lasso” and the 16th season of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.”

“A year is a long time. I feel like a lot has happened in my life,” said his friend and onetime Brooklyn roommate Mike Van Itallie. “To just contrast that with Evan being in the same confined place for literally that entire period of time—it’s pretty tough to fathom.”

Glimpses of soccer

For 23 hours a day, Evan sits in his cell in Lefortovo prison in eastern Moscow.

He meets with his Russian lawyers weekly, and periodically goes to court where a judge extends his pretrial detention. Reporters circle around him taking photos as he stands in a courtroom cage in light wash jeans, occasionally flashing a smile. 

Friends and family send letters with updates on the world and drama at work. He plays chess via mail with his dad and makes suggestions for his fantasy basketball league. He devours Russian-language classics and history books from the jail library. 

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The world is accustomed to terrorism against Israelis Moshe Phillips

Posted By on March 29th, 2024

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-794069

A seemingly small detail in a news report caught my eye. The firebombs were “filled with nails,” a police spokesperson revealed. That was a new one for me, and I follow this kind of news closely.

A few days ago, Israeli police officers arrested two Palestinian Arab terrorists for throwing firebombs at Jewish homes in the mostly Arab Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Hanina. Beit Hanina is not some remote area: it is just five miles from the Western Wall Plaza and less than three and a half miles from Hebrew University.

It’s alarming how quickly the public has become accustomed to such assaults. Imagine if two white supremacists tried to burn down the homes of African-Americans in Washington, D.C. There would be an outpouring of angry condemnations—and rightly so—from political leaders, civil rights groups, and American Jewish organizations. But not a word is heard when Palestinian Arab attackers try to burn Jews alive in Jerusalem.

A seemingly small detail in the news reports about the incident caught my eye. The firebombs were “filled with nails,” a police spokesperson revealed. That was a new one for me, and I follow this kind of news rather closely.

A terrorist is carefully filling a bottle with gasoline. He is just about to stuff a rag into the top, which he will light when he is ready to turn it into a firebomb. But before adding the rag, he and his comrade pause. “Wait a minute,” one must say to the other. “In addition to setting Jews on fire, this could fire nails at high speed when it explodes. Let’s put a bunch of nails in the bottle, so the Jews will both catch on fire and be stabbed by sharp, high-velocity pieces of metal!” 

It seems as if Palestinian Arab terrorists are constantly trying to invent new ways to inflict pain on Jews. Of course we saw unimaginably horrible new types of savagery on October 7. But before anybody thinks that such behavior is unique to Hamas, or to Gazans, let’s not forget that Palestinian Arab terrorists in Judea-Samaria, whether affiliated with Fatah, Hamas, or other organizations all use the same playbook.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Feminist Silence: Hamas’s Sexual Violence by Nils A. Haug

Posted By on March 28th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20522/feminists-hamas-sexual-violence

In November 2023, it was reported that the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls, Reem Alsalem, notwithstanding overwhelming evidence to the contrary, claimed the evidence against Hamas “was ‘not solid’ enough to warrant a statement” — to which London’s Victims’ Commissioner, Claire Waxman, replied: “How can we talk about eliminating violence against women and girls if we are tacitly saying its acceptable to rape Jewish ones?”

Alsalem, from Jordan, claims the charges against Israeli forces are “reasonably credible,” but refuses to divulge the source. In reality, no credible or proven instance of this behaviour by Israel’s forces in Gaza since October 7 has been publicly recorded.

“Organizations that fight for LGBT rights condemned the country that allows freedom, and marched for a terrorist organization that punishes gay people with death.” — Jared Kushner, townhall.com, March 7, 2024.

“Above all, we must at all times remember what intellectuals habitually forget: that people matter more than concepts and must come first. The worst of all despotisms is the heartless tyranny of ideas.” — Paul Johnson, historian, thepublicdiscourse.com, January 23, 2023.

Early women’s liberation movements, forerunners to present feminist activism, were founded to proclaim women’s rights to social equality. Radical feminism, as a narrow expression of the original movement, fails spectacularly in exemplifying society’s moral and ethical precepts. Its advocates appear to prioritize narcissistic, egocentric identity ideologies over the sanctity, dignity, and ontological security of the individual woman.

“We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” — Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, December 10, 1986.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Biden Lies To America, Tells the Truth To China by Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on March 28th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20524/biden-lies-china

When the spy balloon was first detected, the initial response by the Biden administration had been to suppress news about it and then to deny that the administration had been aware of it…. But when a Montana resident’s footage of the spy balloon went viral, the Biden cover-up fell apart.

…[T]he Biden administration fully committed to covering up “difficult subjects”… One of those difficult subjects was China’s spy base in Cuba. After the Wall Street Journal reported that China had agreed to pay Cuba billions to build a spy base, the Biden administration denied it.

And then it had to admit it anyway.

The cover-ups, in the name of anti-racism or diplomacy, allowed the Communist regime a clear field for spying on the United States while suppressing the story, so Biden wouldn’t get blamed.

By the fall of last year, the Wall Street Journal reported on Chinese infiltrators trying to access American military bases “as many as 100 times in recent years”.

[T]here is every reason to believe that the situation may be worse than we realize.

Governments normally conceal information about enemy activities so as not to tip off foreign spies, but the Biden administration’s consistent pattern has been to hide the information from Americans rather than from Russia and China… China can trust the White House, but we can’t.

“When I was director of intelligence for the Indo-Pacific Command, for example, I watched as numerous requests to publicize Chinese malign activities were disapproved by Washington,” US Navy Rear Admiral Mike Studeman recently warned.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

China’s digital fentanyl By Tiffany Meier

Posted By on March 28th, 2024

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/03/china_s_digital_fentanyl.html

While all eyes may be on TikTok right now as Congress debates the app’s future, this type of influence by the Chinese regime isn’t new. It goes back to the Chinese Communist Party’s goal of hegemony — to win without fighting. 

With the promise of massive profits in China, institutions like Hollywood started self-censoring for a piece of China’s market. For decades, the Chinese regime has used its soft power influence to shape perceptions in society, ultimately impacting politics. 

As French philosopher Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am.” James Scott, founder of the Center for Cyber-Influence Operations Studies wondered, “But who does one become when the thought is hijacked?”

TikTok takes that a step further, where the thought isn’t being hijacked, the thought is being planted. 

With over 170 million Americans on the app, stories of teens signing up for some laughs, but ending up dead doing challenges, have been making headlines. 

Is this just for entertainment, or is it, as some say “digital fentanyl” with deadly consequences?

That’s where soft power comes in. 

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Record High 10 Million Immigration Cases Completed in 2023 By Eric Lendrum

Posted By on March 28th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/03/27/record-high-10-million-immigration-cases-completed-in-2023/

A new report reveals that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) completed a record-breaking 10 million immigration cases in fiscal year 2023, showcasing the staggering amount of illegal aliens flooding into the country on Joe Biden’s watch.

According to Just The News, the stunning amount of cases completed led to the USCIS reducing its backlog for the first time in over 10 years. The agency received 10.9 million filings overall in 2023, completing about 10 million pending cases and reducing its backlog by roughly 15%. As a result, the median processing time for naturalization applications decreased significantly, from 10.5 months to about 6.1 months.

“We’ve completed a record number of cases, responded to emerging crises around the globe with essential humanitarian relief, and applied innovative solutions to improve customer experience and reduce backlogs,” said USCIS Director Ur M. Jaddou.

The agency also administered the Oath of Allegiance to over 878,500 immigrants for their naturalization ceremonies, including about 12,000 members of the military, in fiscal year 2023.

USCIS also “continued to support Biden-Harris Administration efforts to establish lawful pathways that allow for the safe and orderly processing of individuals into the United States,” according to the report.

“USCIS is also a key partner in the Safe Mobility Office initiative, one of the many ways the United States is facilitating access to safe and lawful pathways in partner countries in Central and South America,” the report continues, detailing the numerous ways that illegal aliens can gain access to citizenship.

The numbers reveal the true extent of the mass migration crisis, and the Biden Administration’s desperation to naturalize as many illegals as possible ahead of the 2024 election, as most immigrants overwhelmingly vote Democratic in return for amnesty.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Gaza: Truths Behind All the Lies From civilian casualties, the use of disproportionate force, and international biases, the mainstream narrative of the Gaza conflict often obfuscates the truth behind lies. By Victor Davis Hanson *******

Posted By on March 28th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/03/28/gaza-truths-behind-all-the-lies/

“Occupied Gaza.” Prior to October 7, there were roughly two million Arab citizens of Israel but no Jewish citizens in Gaza. Gazans in 2006 voted in Hamas to rule them. It summarily executed its Palestinian Authority rivals. Hamas cancelled all future scheduled elections. It established a dictatorship and diverted hundreds of billions of dollars in international aid to build a vast underground labyrinth of military installations.

So Gaza has been occupied by Hamas, not Israel, for two decades.

“Collateral Damage.” Hamas began the war by deliberately targeting civilians. It massacred them on October 7 when it invaded Israel during a time of peace and holidays. It sent more than 7,000 rockets into Israeli cities for the sole purpose of killing noncombatants. It has no vocabulary for the collateral damage of Israeli civilians, since it believes any Jewish death under any circumstances is cause for celebration.

Hamas places its terrorist centers beneath and inside hospitals, schools, and mosques. Why? Israel is assumed to have more reservations about collaterally hitting Gaza civilians than Hamas does exposing them as human shields.

“Disproportionate.” We are told Israel wrongly uses disproportionate force to retaliate in Gaza. But it does so because no nation can win a war without disproportionate violence that hurts the enemy more than it is hurt by the enemy.

The U.S. incinerated German and Japanese cities with disproportionate force to end a war both Axis powers started. The American military in Iraq nearly leveled Fallujah and Mosul by disproportional force to root out Islamic gunmen hiding among innocents. Hamas has objections to disproportionate violence—but only when it is achieved by Israel and not Hamas.

“Two-state solution.” Prior to October 7, there was a de facto three-state solution, given that Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza were all separate states ruled by their own governments, two of which were illegitimate without scheduled elections.

It was not Israel, but the people of Gaza and the West Bank who institutionalized the “from river to the sea” agenda of destroying its neighbor.

Israel would have been content to live next to an autonomous Arab Gaza and West Bank that did not seek to destroy Israel in their multigenerational efforts to form their own “one-state solution.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Hannah E. Meyers Enough Already New York leaders keep searching for the “root cause” of crime—they should look in the mirror.

Posted By on March 28th, 2024

https://www.city-journal.org/article/murder-of-officer-diller-a-wake-up-call-for-nyc

New York City was shaken Monday by the shooting death of NYPD officer Jonathan Diller, 31, during a car stop in Far Rockaway, Queens. Diller reportedly sensed something was off about the Kia illegally parked, blocking a bus stop, and approached. After Diller repeatedly asked Guy Rivera, 34, to step out of the passenger seat, Rivera shot the officer through the door, fatally hitting him below his bulletproof vest.

Known as a selfless, already-decorated public servant, Diller lived on Long Island with his young bride and one-year-old son. His cold-blooded murder resonated with New Yorkers’ growing personal fears of crime and lawlessness. In a recent Citizens Budget Commission poll, barely a third of New Yorkers report happiness with their neighborhood’s safety. Less than half feel even somewhat secure riding the subway during the day, down from over 80 percent across recent decades; at night, that figure drops to 22 percent. And no wonder: Monday’s 6 p.m. gunfire sent those at the nearby Rockaway–Mott Avenue station scattering in terror.

The nightmare of such violence and of Officer Diller’s death should be understood as a referendum on New York’s current elected leadership, which takes every opportunity to undercut basic solutions to danger. Despite overwhelming evidence that police, prosecution, and incarceration are how cities keep citizens safe, New York’s clueless progressive leaders continue to demand laws barring these tools, advocating instead for magically curing crime’s “root causes.”

This hubristic approach was epitomized at last week’s city council hearings by New York City Public Advocate and gubernatorial hopeful Jumaane Williams. After helpfully invoking “peace and blessings,” Williams insisted that crime is just a misperception, and that, since New York State enacted bail reform in 2019, “recidivism rates are pretty similar and some points have even gone down.”

ANTI-SEMITISM, EDUCATION Comments turned off

Academia Versus Civilization The antisemitism of campus leftism may be incidental. The barbarism is the point. Tal Fortgang / Jonathan Deluty

Posted By on March 28th, 2024

https://quillette.com/2024/03/25/antisemitism-campus-harvard-leftism-tal-fortgang-jonathan-deluty/

Not one week after the October 7 massacres, as America’s most prestigious institutions revealed themselves to be thoroughly embedded with pro-Hamas revolutionaries, we wrote: “Campus administrators should consider making significant changes before the American people realize what they are condoning.” Unfortunately, those administrators didn’t get the message.

On December 5, in what must surely rank among the most shameful moments in the history of academia, the presidents of MIT, Harvard, and Penn testified before a Congressional committee at a hearing about the surge of antisemitism on their campuses and refused to say that calls for the genocide of Jews would violate institutional policies. They opted instead for consultant-style newspeak, a whiplash-inducing rediscovery of the value of free expression, and contemptuous smirks. Their tone and coordination indicated that they stood not just for themselves but for the academy—a rarefied, insular, self-important world of its own—and they jolted Americans from their state of benign neglect towards our universities. In doing so, they revealed the acute need for a wholesale renovation of American universities to restore them as institutions that serve a socially useful function. We have subsidized and excused universities’ descent into factories of anti-social people and ideas. A band-aid will not suffice.

Many have responded to this moral collapse by demanding scalps. As of this writing, two of the three presidents who testified have resigned. Firings and resignations of leaders (and expulsions of students who vandalize property or occupy buildings) are necessary proximate goals, but cannot be the ultimate goal of the backlash. Rather, we must address the deeper problem of institutional capture by an ideology hostile to its host nation. What do we do when our finest schools have been overrun by students eager to cheer genocidal antisemitism, faculty and administrators who broadly agree, and a culture that could produce credentialed people so smugly disdainful of the West? 

Precisely diagnosing the disease is the first step towards offering effective prescriptions. The renovation of the American academy must be tailored to its problems, both quantitatively and qualitatively. 

One threshold observation is that a focus on the American university is warranted, because what happens on campus shapes our nation’s character and ethical instincts in sustained ways.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Mohamed Abdou, Deep Admirer of Hamas, Now Teaching at Columbia The self-described “Muslim anarchist” is “really proud” of his anti-Israel students. by Hugh Fitzgerald

Posted By on March 28th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/mohamed-abdou-deep-admirer-of-hamas-now-teaching-at-columbia/

Mohamed Abdou is an “Islamic scholar” who is lost in admiration for Hamas, and how it managed to launch its “stealth” attack on October 7. What most of the world sees as unspeakable atrocities, with Hamas operatives beheading babies, burning children alive, raping, torturing, mutilating, and murdering Israeli girls, cutting the breasts off women and using them to play catch, cutting off the genitalia and gouging out the eyes of men, murdering children in front of their parents and parents in front of their children, Mohamed Abdou sees as glorious deeds of derring-do, by a greatly outnumbered force of brave Muslim warriors, and he wants the whole world to know it.

Abdou is now teaching at Columbia, where he was appointed as that appetizing thing, a visiting professor, for the Spring Term. He’s already in his third month of teaching, no doubt singing the praises of Hamas in a lecture hall on Morningside Heights to a captive audience of entranced undergraduates. Why, if he performs to the satisfaction of Rashid Khalidi, Joseph Massad, and Hamid Dabashi, three other admirers of Hamas on the permanent faculty at Columbia, he may even be made an offer for a permanent appointment to the Middle East Institute.

Robert Spencer wrote briefly about Abdou here, and more on this man, the latest moral monster to slither through the underbrush on Morningside Heights can be found here: “He Endorsed Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Then He Landed a Professorship at Columbia University.” By Jessica Costescu, Washington Free Beacon, February 27, 2024:

During a Jan. 5 interview with socialist podcast Revolutionary Left Radio, Islamic scholar Mohamed Abdou declared his support for Hamas and “the resistance.” The terror group’s “dedicated few,” he said admiringly, worked in “stealth mode” on Oct. 7 to defeat a “larger enemy” in Israel….