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The International Court of Justice: Can Israel Expect To Be Treated Fairly? A careful look at the current 15 justices. Hugh Fitzgerald

Posted By on May 28th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-international-court-of-justice-can-israel-expect-to-be-treated-fairly/

The list of the current 15 justices on the International Court of Justice bodes ill for Israel.

Here is that list:

The President of the Court is Nawaf Salam, a Muslim from Lebanon.

The Vice-President is Julia Sebitunde of Uganda. Religion unknown.

Judge Peter Tomka of Slovakia.

Judge Ronny Abraham of France.

Abraham is a native of Egypt, possibly a Copt. He is the author of, inter alia, Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. That title includes the phrase “Occupied Palestinian Territory,” which makes clear where his sympathies lie.

Judge Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf of Somalia. A Muslim.

Judge Xue Hanqin, China.

China is now being swept by an anti-Israel and antisemitic campaign in the media, promoted by the government. Judge Hanqin would not dare to defy the policies of the Chinese government.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The EU’s empire of censorship Brussels’ war on ‘hate speech’ and ‘disinformation’ is a brazen attack on democracy. Norman Lewis

Posted By on May 28th, 2024

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/05/27/the-eus-empire-of-censorship/

There is another war going on in Europe outside of Ukraine. It is one being waged by the EU elites, over what can be said, heard and thought. This is a war against ‘hate speech’ and ‘disinformation’, which the EU claims pose an existential threat to democracy. In truth, it is the Eurocrats’ censorious designs that are the real danger to Europeans’ liberties.

With the European Parliament elections fast approaching in June, the EU has ramped up its censorship campaign. Last month, several mayors of Brussels attempted to forcibly shut down the NatCon Brussels event. And last week, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen pledged to create a ‘European Democracy Shield’ if she were re-elected for a second term. She says this would combat ‘foreign interference and manipulation’ by establishing a new unit dedicated to detecting and removing online disinformation.

Von der Leyen’s speech follows a similar one made in January by EU foreign-policy chief Josep Borrell. He warned that disinformation is ‘not about a bomb that can kill you, it is about a poison that can colonise your minds… [that] spreads like a cancer and puts the health of our democracies at risk’.

Not to be outdone, Věra Jourová, European Commission vice-president for values and transparency, spoke dramatically of ‘rivers of dirt and hatred and lies’ at a conference organised by the European Digital Media Observatory last week. She also suggested that the EU must increasingly deploy AI to ‘detect manipulation’ and ‘better enforce what is qualified as crime’.

Brussels’ warnings about hate speech and disinformation have become almost apocalyptic.

BOOKS, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The smearing of JK Rowling How the lies of trans activists turned a beloved children’s author into an international hate-figure. Lauren Smith

Posted By on May 28th, 2024

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/05/28/the-smearing-of-jk-rowling/

If you’d have said 10 years ago that JK Rowling would become the No1 hate figure of the cultural elites, people would have thought you were mad.

Until quite recently, she was a beloved children’s author, whose Harry Potter series is credited with turning a generation of young people on to literature. The only people who raged against her were ultra-religious Christians in the US, terrified that her ‘Satanic’ novels would teach their children the ways of witchcraft.

For most of her career, Rowling was embraced by the great and the good. After all, she was immaculately liberal-left. She voted Labour. She loved Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. She voted Remain in the EU referendum. She was outspoken about feminism and women’s rights. What could she possibly be demonised for?

The answer? She believes in a thing called biological sex. She doesn’t believe that men can become women – views that are held by the vast majority of the population.

In 2018, her dark secret began to surface. Rowling had long been an active user of X, or Twitter as it was known back then. And it came to light that she had ‘liked’ a tweet describing transwomen as ‘men in dresses’. This was back when the trans issue had barely entered mainstream consciousness. So, when Rowling’s spokesperson claimed she had liked the tweet by accident, there was an element of plausible deniability.

Then, in 2019, Rowling made her views plain. This was the year that researcher Maya Forstater was forced out of her job at a think-tank due to her trans-sceptical opinions. Forstater took her case to court and eventually established that gender-critical beliefs must be protected from discrimination under the UK Equality Act. Rowling tweeted her support.

‘Dress however you please’, she said, ‘call yourself whatever you like. Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you. Live your best life in peace and security. But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real? #IStandWithMaya.’

This raised the hackles of some among Rowling’s audience. But it wasn’t until the next year that the campaign against her really took off.

In June 2020, Rowling took to Twitter again to mock the use of awkward and nonsensical ‘trans-inclusive’ phrases to describe women. Responding to a headline which used the phrase ‘people who menstruate’, Rowling quipped: ‘I’m sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?’

Later that month, she responded to this Twitter controversy with a lengthy essay on her blog. Here, she clearly – and compassionately – articulated her position on the gender issue. In it, she made clear that she has no problem with transgender people. But she is concerned that the attempt to erase biological sex threatens hard-won rights. She is worried about the effects trans ideology might have on female healthcare, education, child safeguarding, freedom of speech – all completely valid concerns, you might think.

BOOKS Comments turned off

CHAPTER 20: In Their Own Words: The Sexual Revolution Begins in Kindergarten Space Is No Longer the Final Frontier—Reality Is (forthcoming release July 2024)

Posted By on May 28th, 2024

https://goudsmit.pundicity.com/27806/chapter-20-in-their-own-words-the-sexual

Pundicity page: goudsmit.pundicity.com  and website: lindagoudsmit.com 

Planned Parenthood[i] is the instrument of “transformative sexual change” in the United States. Marketed as scientificand evidence-based, transformative sexual change advocates changing restrictive laws that hinder the exercise of reproductive rights, and transforming social norms that perpetuate prejudices on reproductive rights. Over 40 percent of the organization’s revenue comes from your tax dollars in the form of government reimbursements and grants. Planned Parenthood (PP) is a political organization that disguises its political agenda as health education. My last book, The Collapsing American Family: From Bonding to Bondage (Chapter 10, “The Scheme and the Schemers Determined to Reeducate America”), exposes Planned Parenthood’s infiltration of the classroom, and its catastrophic Marxist agenda.

In an August 20, 2020, Daily Signal article, “Problematic Women: Planned Parenthood Ideology ‘Killing the Family,’ Ex-Volunteer Says,”[ii] Monica Cline, former volunteer and “comprehensive sex educator” at Planned Parenthood, is quoted. She explains how children were being pressured and deliberately sexualized in school because no adult was offering them the alternative of abstinence.

At one point she asks a group of thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds, “Guys, do you realize you don’t have to have sex? You don’t have to have oral sex, vaginal sex, or anal sex. And if you don’t, you never have to come in contact with someone else’s body fluids.” A little girl raised her hand and said, “Ma’am, no one has ever told us that.” That was the turning point for Monica Cline. She finally and fully understood:

There is a “huge movement to normalize childhood sex.” The sex education program of Planned Parenthood is “encouraging children to dehumanize themselves and each other, making them sexually active at a young age, normalizing every sexual behavior…. By doing that those children become dependent on getting condoms and contraceptives and getting treated, and yes, even getting abortions. And so, once that dependency occurs, and the parent who is purposely left out of the picture, there’s no one else who’s really guiding those children…. They empathize with them and say, “Oh, yeah. Your mom and dad would probably be really mad to know you are sexually active. But we know it is perfectly normal, and we’re here to help you.” … It sounds so positive. But what they are really doing is creating a barrier between a family and their child, the guidance of a parent.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

No, Israel didn’t ‘pave the way’ for ‘pariah’ status Ruthie Blum

Posted By on May 28th, 2024

https://www.jns.org/no-israel-didnt-pave-the-way-for-pariah-status/

Way to go, Jerusalem Post. In the midst of an existential war, you opted to engage in the very kind of Jewish breast-beating that’s music to enemy ears. And, as you know, Hamas and its patrons in Tehran are listening.

But you’ve taken rhetorical acrobatics to new heights. In your Sunday editorial—as its title reveals off the bat—Israel bears responsibility for “becoming a pariah state.” According to your assessment, “While it’s true that the world’s smug, sanctimonious attitude towards a just war that Israel has every right to fight is ludicrous and a disgusting double standard, our leaders made decisions that paved the way.”

If readers were wondering what, in your view, spurred the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor to push for arrest warrants against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and the International Court of Justice’s ruling that Israel must halt its moves in Rafah that will harm civilians, you provided an answer that would have pleased both bodies.

“[W]hen Israel began its military operation, it didn’t do enough to give off the impression that it was concerned with the Palestinian population at large,” you asserted, using the example of “statements by government officials who said that basic needs will be cut off.”

Your failure to specify the “government officials” highlighted in January by the ICJ in its hearings on South Africa’s antisemitic “genocide” case against Israel was probably purposeful. Naming them would have put a damper on your argument, after all.

ELECTIONS, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Fear Trump—or Bust? Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on May 28th, 2024

https://victorhanson.com/fear-trump-or-bust/

As Trump continues to show leads in critical swing states, as various lawfare-inspired cases against him seem to the public to be more persecutions than prosecutions, and as Joe Biden appears daily more incoherent and lost, the left on spec has resorted to warning the nation about all the supposedly catastrophic consequences of a future Trump presidency.

Ironically, the left seems oblivious to the reality that one reason Trump leads Biden in the polls is precisely because voters can compare the four-year record of the prior Trump presidency to Biden’s last 40 months.

Recently, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez warned that Trump will conspire with oil executives to spike gasoline prices. But even after Biden drained the strategic petroleum reserve before the 2022 midterms and is now again doing the same as the 2024 election approaches, gas prices have averaged only one-third cheaper than under Trump.

Trump tried to top off the reserve but was blocked by Democrats in Congress. Nevertheless, he left Biden a nearly full reservoir of 638 million barrels (about 90 percent full), which Biden has now drained by some 270 million barrels to the present 51 percent full—and the levels are falling further as voting nears.

We are warned that 77-year-old Trump looks haggard after his long hours in court. He seems sleepy, we are told. He has aged terribly, the media tell us. But polls show that concern over Biden’s dementia greatly outweighs normal worry over septuagenarian candidate Trump.

Why would any sane pro-Biden handler bring up Trump’s supposed gait or occasional forgotten word when that only reminds the public of the contrast with Biden, whose speeches seem delivered in something other than English and whose transcripts must be heavily edited to airbrush away his incoherence?

We are told that Trump will increase racial tensions. Almost daily, blacks and Hispanics are warned that Trump is a racist—even as polls show that he may well receive the highest percentage of minority votes by any Republican in modern history and has some chance of winning outright the Hispanic vote. Oddly, the media is now attacking minorities on the Marxist principle of false consciousness, as if they are deluded into voting against themselves rather than being perceptive critics of the Biden disaster of high inflation, green mania, a deluge of illegal aliens, and loss of deterrence abroad.

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran Closing In on Nukes; World Targets Israel Hypocrisy and cynicism beyond all bounds. P.David Hornik

Posted By on May 28th, 2024

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

From the Wall Street Journal:

On Monday, the U.N. atomic-energy agency reported that Iran’s stockpile of 60% highly enriched uranium rose 20.6 kilograms to 142.1 kg as of May 11 from three months earlier, its highest level to date.

U.S. officials say that material could be converted into weapons-grade enriched uranium in a matter of days. It would then be enough to fuel three nuclear weapons.

Three Iranian nuclear bombs in a matter of days—sound alarming? Yes, but not, seemingly, to Washington.

The U.S. is arguing against an effort by Britain and France to censure Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency’s member-state board in early June, the diplomats said. The U.S. has pressed a number of other countries to abstain in a censure vote, saying that is what Washington will do, they said.

A censure resolution might not seem a very strong measure this late in the day—and it isn’t. But, at least:

Mark Dubowitz, chief executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said a censure resolution would help set out a record of Iranian noncompliance that could ultimately lead to a snapback of international sanctions.

British and French officials are telling Washington that an IAEA censure resolution could pave the way for a formal rebuke by the UN Security Council. The Biden administration says Russia and China would just veto it, handing Tehran a diplomatic coup. On that, the administration may be right.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

A Sneaky Way To End Fossil Fuel

Posted By on May 28th, 2024

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/05/28/a-sneaky-way-to-end-fossil-fuel/

When candidate Joe Biden promised while on the campaign trail that “we’re going to end fossil fuel,” could anyone have guessed that emptying the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve was part of the plan? Maybe Biden had that in mind all along – enact policies that raise the price of gasoline, dip into the reserves to lower prices for consumers, then finally wring them dry for, putatively, the same reason. That’s one way to get rid of quite a lot of fossil fuel.

The federal Strategic Petroleum Reserve is “the world’s largest supply of emergency crude oil,” says the Energy Department. It was created in 1975 by the Energy Conservation Act, “primarily to reduce the impact of disruptions in supplies of petroleum products and to carry out obligations of the United States under the international energy program.” The oil is stored in underground salt caverns at four sites along the Gulf Coast. Initially planned to hold up to 1 billion barrels of petroleum, the authorized storage capacity, at 714 million barrels, is a bit short of that. Still, says the Energy Department, this “makes it a significant deterrent to oil import cutoffs and a key tool in foreign policy.”

The SPR was never intended to be a political chip, to be tapped into by a president who wants to temporarily push down gasoline prices to gain votes.

Nor was it to be used as a means to end fossil fuels, a Democratic Party dream that would be a long national nightmare for the country.

The Biden administration has authorized two releases from the country’s petroleum reserves. Last week it announced the sale and liquidation of 1 million barrels from the Northeast Gasoline Supply Reserve, established after 2012’s Hurricane Sandy damaged refineries and terminals, and left “some New York gas stations without fuel for as long as 30 days.” The Energy Department says this “solicitation is strategically timed and structured to maximize its impact on gasoline prices, helping to lower prices at the pump as Americans hit the road this summer.”

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

What Was Anthony Fauci’s Top Aide Hiding? ‘I learned from our foia lady here how to make emails disappear,’ David Morens wrote in one email. Allysia Finley

Posted By on May 28th, 2024

https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-was-anthony-faucis-top-aide-hiding-investigation-0d890911?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

The Covid pandemic wasn’t government’s finest hour, not least because of a persistent lack of transparency. Emails released last week by the U.S. House reveal how Anthony Fauci’s former top adviser worked to keep the public in the dark and thwart investigations into Covid’s origins.

The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic has been investigating the National Institutes of Health’s funding of the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance, some of which flowed to scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology doing risky experiments with coronaviruses. The committee earlier found that the NIH and EcoHealth failed to monitor properly the Wuhan experiments.

Subpoenaed private emails from Dr. Fauci’s senior adviser, David Morens, now show how NIH officials and EcoHealth President Peter Daszak sought to conceal their lapses. After the Trump administration in April 2020 suspended funding for EcoHealth, Dr. Morens rallied to Mr. Daszak’s defense.

“There are things I can’t say except Tony [Fauci] is aware and I have learned there are ongoing efforts within NIH to steer through this with minimal damage to you, Peter, and colleagues, and to nih and niaid,” Dr. Morens wrote to Mr. Daszak on April 26, 2020. “I have reason to believe that there are already efforts going on to protect you.” (NIAID is the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which Dr. Fauci directed from 1984 through 2022.)

Dr. Morens led the Daszak protection program. His subpoenaed emails show that he helped edit EcoHealth’s press releases and worked to get its funding restored. He also sought to thwart Freedom of Information Act requests by outside groups regarding the EcoHealth grant.

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Bureaucrats vs. Kidney Patients A test can help catch kidney disease early. Why is it blocked?

Posted By on May 28th, 2024

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bureaucrats-vs-kidney-patients-at-home-test-fda-medicare-5adaf80d?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

Government healthcare often puts cost and bureaucratic control before the needs of patients, and a new restriction on kidney tests shows how this works. In August 2023, the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA), which evaluates healthcare quality for Medicare, cut an at-home kidney test from its list of approved tests. The change denied patients an easy way to check their risk for kidney disease. Now doctors and patients are pushing back.

The at-home test, known as a semi-quantitative test, uses a urine sample to measure the presence of albumin protein relative to creatinine, a key early indicator of kidney disease. The kits are a convenient tool for doctors to get more frequent screenings from patients than the use of laboratory tests. They’ve been on the market since the Food and Drug Administration approved them in July 2022.

So what’s the problem? Bureaucratic confusion, government codes and quality measures have made it impossible to get kidney patients the screenings they need. NCQA said it retracted its approval for the test because it discovered the code had been “erroneously misclassified” as a lab test. Hmmm. The home tests were expected to be used by about a million patients in 2024. Did NCQA’s action prevent a testing cost surge for Medicare?