ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Fact Checking The Climate Claims

Posted By on July 22nd, 2025

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/07/22/fact-checking-the-climate-claims/

The climate alarmists regularly seize on weather events they believe will help them exploit their narrative. Naturally, they ignore contradictory information. So we see it as our duty to fill in the gaps from time to time. Following are a few examples that show why the global warming story is less scientific theory than conjecture in the service of a political agenda.

Let’s begin in the West Arctic, where the Northwest Passage is experiencing its third-highest level of sea ice extent in the last two decades. In 2009, Al Gore said, with his usual galling listen-to-me certainty, the Arctic polar ice cap could be gone during summer within five to seven years.
There has been “marked cooling since the early 2010s … which is likely linked to a documented slowdown in Greenland’s warming and ice loss,” say a pair of South Korean researchers.
Efforts to attribute the deadly Texas flood, in which the Guadalupe River rose by 37.5 feet, to human carbon dioxide emissions have been debunked (as has every other attempt to tie man’s CO2 to harsh weather). Our friend Steve Milloy of JunkScience.com points out that “much worse flooding had occurred more than a century earlier in July when the Guadalupe River had risen by a whopping 42.3 feet.”
Summer heat is always blamed on man’s fossil fuel use. This year, more than 160 million people in the Midwest, the South, and on the East Coast endured temperatures around the 100-degree mark. But nothing has happened to indicate that man is responsible. Have a look at the data.
Last month, H. Sterling Burnett of the Heartland Institute noted that polar ice has refused to follow the climate crisis narrative. “Having examined the data and history, I knew Antarctica has not been following the climate crisis script since the alarm was first raised with James Hansen’s theatrically staged 1988 congressional testimony in which he claimed the Earth was dangerously warming due to human activity.”
Last month, a Tampa, Fla., meteorologist blamed “climate change,” and we don’t assume he’s talking about natural variations that have always existed, for 90-degree days having doubled in the city. He was fact-checked by the Committee For a Constructive Tomorrow: “Tampa does not represent the rest of Florida. The average number of days reaching 95°F (35°C) or higher in Florida has not increased since 1895,” according to federal data. “Tampa’s temperature data has been contaminated with urban heat island effects, which have led to an artificial rise in the number of extremely hot days.”
The New York Times wants readers to believe that the June Air India crash that killed 241 is a curtain-raiser for future air crashes caused by climate change. Milloy had the best response: “No other plane crashed because of global warming. Just that one.”

If the climate tale were undeniably true, the activists in and out of the media would not have to exaggerate, disinform, and make connections that don’t exist. The fact that they feel they have to provides a clear insight into their duplicitous nature.

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“Our Revolutionary Origins & Today’s Paternalism” Sydney Williams

Posted By on July 22nd, 2025

https://swtotd.blogspot.com

“But what do we mean by the American Revolution? Do we mean the American war? The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments of their duties and obligations… This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people, was the real American Revolution.”

Letter from John Adams to Hezekiah Niles February 13, 1818

                                                                                                             In this year of the semiquincentennial of our Declaration of Independence, have we swapped individual independence for dependence on government paternalism?

Threats to democracy, a current rallying cry of the Left, have been a constant since our founding. They have come from both the right and the left. They fade, however, when exposed to unfettered free debate, and an unbiased study of the classics and our history. Today, supported by main-stream media, the Left puts the blame for such threats square on Republicans, especially those of the MAGA variety. Disallowing dissension, they wave their hands, and with crocodile tears flowing and with Republicans in control of both Houses of Congress they cite the deportation of illegal migrants, including those with criminal records, piggish billionaires, corrupt corporations and cuts to government services. It is ironic that Mr. Trump is accused of being authoritarian, when his attempts to reduce the size of government are at odds with Democrats who prefer a larger, more paternal government.

Beginning with Franklin Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’ ninety years ago, through Lyndon Johnson’s ‘Great Society’ in the 1960s, to Barack Obama’s ‘Cradle to Grave Care’ thirteen years ago, the United States has moved irrevocably toward a more paternalistic state. My point is not to argue that all federal welfare programs are wrong and should be abolished, but to point out that major entitlement programs consumed about 50% of the 2023 federal budget and are growing faster than all other programs. With total federal debt at $36.6 trillion and rising, interest expense already consumes over 13% of the federal budget, entitlement programs will be unaffordable for future generations. As well, some programs discourage aspiration, hard work, self-sufficiency and independence. Welfare reform is badly needed.   

While I keep a skeptical eye on MAGA Republicans, Democrats should look in the mirror as regards threats to democracy. Their demand for conformity can be seen in the expanding interest in Socialism, the ultimate in paternalism. From Bernie Sanders in the Senate to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the House, Democrat Socialists of America (DSA) has risen from the ashes of the early 20th Century Socialist Party of America. Nine years ago the DSA was formed with a small number of adherents. Today it has 90,000 members, including an aspiring candidate for mayor of New York City, a young man who followed a privileged path to power. Socialists oppose capitalism and the personal freedom that allowed the talented and aspirant, regardless of economic and social class, to rise in our country – the magnets that attract so many to our shores.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

The ‘Fruitful’ Results of Increasing CO₂ Despite the taboo, rising CO₂ and warming temps have helped fruit crops flourish—boosting yields, nutrition, and resilience from North Carolina to outer space. By Vijay Jayaraj

Posted By on July 22nd, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/07/21/the-fruitful-results-of-increasing-co%e2%82%82/

Among the climatically correct, nothing is more scandalous than describing carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions as beneficial. You can be blacklisted from public forums and professional networking sites and even be removed from your tenured university position as an accomplished scientist.

Nonetheless, the truth is this: CO₂ is fundamental to the photosynthetic process by which plants make food for themselves—and ultimately for us. Furthermore, the increase in atmospheric CO₂ from industrial activity in the past century has helped vegetation over most of the planet to flourish. Also benefiting plants has been the relative warmth of recent decades.

Among the beneficiaries are fruit plants, whose sensitivity to cold is well established. In April 2007, an unseasonable freeze caused considerable low-temperature injury to small fruit plants, including grapes, strawberries, blueberries, and blackberries, in 21 U.S. states. The financial repercussions for the agricultural sector were substantial. In North Carolina alone, farming losses were estimated to be $112 million, including $86 million in damages to fruit crops.

During the Little Ice Age (1300–1850), many of the fruit crops faced significant challenges from low temperatures, shorter growing seasons, and extreme weather events like frosts, heavy rains, and drought.

In Iceland and high alpine areas, agriculture nearly collapsed. In China’s Jiangxi Province, centuries-old orange cultivation was abandoned due to cold. In temperate zones, apple and pear trees struggled with erratic temperatures, causing irregular blooming and lower yields.

Fast forward 175 years or so, and we have fruit crops thriving globally, thanks to elevated CO₂ levels, relative warmth, and a series of innovations in plant biotechnology. Regardless of whether certain politicians or news media believe it or not, plants love the warmer temperatures and increasing carbon dioxide of our season of plenty.

Rising temperatures extend growing seasons by delaying fall frosts and advancing spring thaws, allowing more plantings and reducing late-spring frost risks for orchard growers. The U.S. growing season has lengthened by over two weeks since the early 20th century.

A 2022 study led scientists to conclude that there is no doubt about the “fertilization effect of CO₂” on fruit species, which also benefit from natural warming as Earth recovers from the Little Ice Age.

EDUCATION, ELECTIONS, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Mamdani’s Father Defends Suicide Bombers Who will interview – and question – Mahmoud Mamdani? by Hugh Fitzgerald

Posted By on July 22nd, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/mamdanis-father-defends-suicide-bombers/

Zohran Mamdani has described how, at the dinner table, his views were formed in long discussions about politics and society with his father, Mahmood Mamdani, who is a professor of government at Columbia University. Mahmood Mamdani has described suicide bombers as worthy to be considered as “soldiers.” He has been a supporter of the anti-Israel BDS (Boycott, Divest, and Sanction) movement that hopes to so damage Israel’s economy that the Jewish state will have to submit to territorial demands by its Arab enemies, including the terror group Hamas.

More on Mahmoud Mamdani can be found here: “Mamdani’s father sits on council of anti-Israel group tied to terror, legitimizes role of suicide bombers,” by Andrew Mark Miller, Cameron Cawthorne, Fox News, July 12, 2025:

Mahmood Mamdani, the father of socialist New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, sits on the advisory council of an anti-Israel organization that supports boycotts and sanctions of Israel, routinely accuses the Israeli government of committing “genocide”, and has expressed sympathy for suicide bombers.

The Gaza Tribunal, founded in London in 2024, says its primary goal is “to awaken civil society to its responsibility and opportunity to stop Israel’s genocide in Gaza,” according to its website.

Also on its website, Mahmood Mamdani is listed as a member of the group’s “advisory policy council” and is mentioned as having attended the group’s official launch in London last year.

Richard Falk, the president of the tribunal, outlined the group’s support of BDS in an online post saying, “the aim of the Tribunal is or [sic] legitimize and encourage civil society solidarity initiatives around the world such as BDS.”

BDS is described as “an international campaign to delegitimize the State of Israel as the expression of the Jewish people’s right to national self-determination by isolating the country economically through consumer boycotts, business and government withdrawal of investment, and legal sanctions,” according to Influence Watch.

Zohran Mamdani has also promoted BDS as recently as May, when he declined to say whether Israel has a right to exist and said his support of BDS “is consistent with my core of my politics, which is non-violence.”

ANTI-SEMITISM, EDUCATION Comments turned off

Israeli Scientist Strikes Back Shay Laps sues Stanford for anti-Semitic harassment and fabrication of sexual harassment charges. by Lloyd Billingsley

Posted By on July 22nd, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm-plus/israeli-scientist-strikes-back/

“Israeli chemist Shay Laps is suing Stanford University,” the California Globe reports, “for forcing him out of his lab job after he was targeted by workers in a campaign of anti-Semitic harassment that even included his supervisor fabricating sexual harassment charges against him.”

The lawsuit, filed by the Brandeis Center on July 10, charges that Laps endured “discrimination and insidious, malicious conduct” intended to permanently tarnish his career, tampered with his lab research, and fabricated a complaint against him “for being Israeli.” The Brandeis Center’s Rachel Lerman told Fox News, “This really made my jaw drop, the way they treated the guy, just unbelievable.”

Laps earned a PhD from Technion, one of Israel’s premier universities, and boasts an extensive record of achievement in his field. Highly recommended by prominent scientists, Laps came to Stanford in 2024 to develop a new insulin treatment. His Stanford colleagues, the lawsuit contends, “knew that he was Jewish and Israeli. From the moment he stepped foot in the lab, he was surrounded by hostility.”

Lab staffer Terra Lin told Laps never to speak to her and demanded that the Israeli sit apart from colleagues at lunch. In the style of other campus demonstrators, according to the lawsuit, Lin  “took issue with his Jewish faith, history, and heritage as well as his Israeli national origin.”

As Rachel Lerman told the California Globe, “We are used to seeing anti-Semitism on campuses but we are seeing a trend of Israeli students at all levels being subjected to bias and discrimination in egregious ways. It is important to understand the 1964 Civil Rights Act protects discrimination based on national origin. You can’t do that. It is a whole separate category that people are aware of. In addition to his being Jewish and being protected on those grounds.” (emphasis added)

ISRAEL, MEDIA Comments turned off

‘A Covenant of Blood’ Between Druze and Israel Israel’s moral battle to protect the Druze. by Christine Williams

Posted By on July 22nd, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/a-covenant-of-blood-between-druze-and-israel/

Just when you think the New York Times couldn’t sink any lower, after favorably showcasing and quoting Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, along with his “warning” that “Israeli attacks threaten ‘chaos’ in Syria,” the Times went on to serve as al-Sharaa’s mouthpiece by reporting that his attacks on the Druze were based on the paranoia of the Druze community. The Times stated that the Druze “deeply distrust Syria’s new authorities” and “thought that the government forces were coming to attack the Druze. The militias then mobilized to repel the incoming government forces.”

The Druze community in Syria is anything but naïve or jumpy. They are astute, know their enemy, and are of vital importance to Israel for strategic and historical reasons. The predominantly Druze city of Sweida is not far from the Israeli border. The Arab Weekly explains why the Druze are so critically important to Israel as allies, stating, “Beneath the moral justification lies a layer of realpolitik. Southern Syria has long been a zone of strategic anxiety for Israel”:

Unlike Muslim and Christian Arabs, Druze men are conscripted into the military. They serve in elite combat units, rise to high ranks in the IDF, and have long been held up as a model of Arab integration. Several senior military officers, intelligence officials and Knesset members are Druze.

The Middle East Institute points out that Druze political and military forces “wield a great deal of influence” in Sweida province, where they have “established checkpoints,” “enacted community policing,” and clashed with jihad terror groups whenever they “made incursions into the province.” Some of these clashes have been with Hizballah.

Newsweek points out a deep history of loyalty that binds Israel and the Druze together:

Druze in Israel have forged what is often referred to as “a covenant of blood” with the Jewish state. Jethro—the biblical prophet Moses’ father-in-law—is the most important prophet in the Druze religion and the ancestor of all Druze. Alongside the Jewish majority, the Druze in Israel are the only religious community that is required by law to serve in the Israel Defense Forces (at the request of Druze religious and communal leaders).

The Hill notes the immediate source of the Sunni government of al-Sharaa’s desire to persecute the Druze: the “Druze are Arabs but not Muslims,” even though the Druze religion is an offshoot of Islam that originated a millennium ago.

ANTI-SEMITISM, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Posh Twats for Palestine How Israelophobia became the favoured hobby of the filthy rich. Brendan O’Neill

Posted By on July 22nd, 2025

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/07/21/posh-twats-for-palestine/

I knew it. As soon as I saw that cast member of the Royal Opera House smugly unfurl his Palestine flag, I knew he’d be some privileged they / them with either blue blood or blue hair. And I was right. His name’s Daniel Perry, he’s a they / them, he was educated at a £48,000-a-year high school, and he calls himself a ‘queer dance artist’. Now all we need to discover is that he has ADHD and he really will be a walking checklist of middle-class twattishness.

Mr Perry has got the pro-Palestine set salivating with infantile glee after he whipped out his flag during the curtain call for Verdi’s Il Trovatore on Saturday evening. A stage manager tried to snatch it from him but Perry yanked it back with all the wild-eyed frenzy of a bloke determined to trend online. He got his way. He’s being gushed over by the internet’s Sun-starved army of armchair Israelophobes. ‘Hero!’, they yelp from their bedrooms, the unbelievably sad bastards.

The Telegraph has Perry’s backstory. He attended an eye-wateringly expensive school in leafy Hertfordshire. He’s nonbinary – sorry, they’re nonbinary. He’s a self-styled ‘queer’ dancer. He seems blissfully unaware that if he ever set foot in Gaza the only pirouette he’d be doing is a mid-air one as Hamas hurled him off a tall building. He recently wore a ‘Free Palestine’ t-shirt to a performance of Cabaret, the musical about the Weimar Republic that foreshadows the rise of the Nazis and the burning of the Jews.

It didn’t take any special insight on my part to guess that this flag-waving irritant would turn out to be a knob of the most insufferably bourgeois variety. Because they’re all like that. Perry belongs to that most vexing clique of preening ‘activists’ – let’s call them Posh Twats for Palestine.

They’re everywhere. Venture into London on a Saturday afternoon and you’ll soon be swarmed by affluent tits in keffiyehs talking rubbish about Israel. Our leafier campuses have been all but colonised by plummy youths screaming the new lie (‘Israel is committing genocide!’) with the same demented fervour with which they once hollered the old lie (‘Transwomen are women!’). The am-dram arseholes of Palestine Action loved to splash around their red paint while wanging on in cut-glass tones about the unholy wickedness of Israel. The government calls them terrorists but they’re something far worse: rich theatre kids.

ANTI-SEMITISM, ISRAEL, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Yael Bar Tur Activists Say the Anti-Israel Cause Is Mainstream. New York Proves It’s Not Despite the rise in hate crimes, not everyone wants to “normalize the Intifada.”

Posted By on July 22nd, 2025

https://www.city-journal.org/article/new-york-jews-israel-hamas-anti-semitic

You knew something was off when Kylie Jenner deleted her Instagram story. On October 7, 2023, as terrorists dragged hostages into Gaza and roamed the streets of Israel, the reality star posted that she “stand[s] with” the Jewish state, a familiar “thoughts and prayers” gesture, typical of celebrities after tragedies.

But faced with a backlash from her millions of followers, Jenner deleted the post. Others followed suit, removing their own expressions of solidarity. The message was clear: acknowledging Israel’s suffering had become, at best, “problematic”—and, at worst, unwelcome in polite society.

Silence has become all too familiar to American Jews. They’ve experienced it from international organizations and women’s advocates in the face of the devastating evidence of Hamas’s sex crimes; from academic institutions as Jewish students were harassed on elite university campuses; and from fellow New Yorkers amid rising anti-Semitic hate crimes, particularly in New York City.

That silence has been broken—not by Jewish defenders, but by voices that accept or even condone violence against Jews, Zionists, and the people of Israel. Arguments once unthinkable are now aired openly: that the atrocities of October 7 were justified resistance; that Israel should be abolished; that terrorists held in Israeli prisons are morally equivalent with Jewish civilians held hostage in Gaza.

These views have proliferated in part because of our academic institutions. Schools offer students a distorted, one-dimensional portrait of the Middle East. They depict the Israeli-Palestine conflict as a simplistic struggle between oppressors and the oppressed. Young users on social media, where many Americans get their news, see these views reinforced in short, viral videos.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran: Its Foreign Ministry’s Agents of Influence in Sweden and the US by Nima Gholam Ali Pour

Posted By on July 22nd, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21770/iran-agents-sweden

The “Iran Experts Initiative” (IEI)… was first proposed in 2014 by… a member of the internal think tank of Iran’s Foreign Ministry, the “Institute for Political and International Studies” (IPIS).

Ali Vaez and Ariane Tabatabai… were also members of the IEI.

How can all these prominent think tanks and influential experts enter into cooperation with IPIS, which — apart from being an integral part of the Iranian regime — organized a Holocaust conference in 2006 featuring Holocaust deniers such as David Duke and the neo-Nazi German National Democratic Party (NPD)?

The purpose of the IEI for the Iranian regime has been to establish a number of reputable and knowledgeable contacts who support the idea of a “nuclear deal” — which, in the long run, means that the regime in Iran will get nuclear weapons — and to promote Iran’s perspective on this nuclear deal and its desired structure in Western Europe and North America.

[T]he Swedish Security Service considers Iran to be one of the three countries that pose the greatest threat to Sweden.

Does anyone seriously believe the mullahs’ lies that they do not want to build nuclear weapons?

If the mullahs truly wanted peace, they would dismantle their support for terrorist organizations, abandon their ambitions to build nuclear weapons, stop pouring resources into fueling conflicts in neighboring countries, and cease spreading hatred toward the Western world.

The door must be closed to these lobbyists for the Iranian regime…. The mullahs’ regime is an enemy of the West, but the mullahs’ lobbyists must be treated as enemies, too.

On January 31, Sweden’s TV4 reported that leaked documents from Iran’s Foreign Ministry linked Iran expert Rouzbeh Parsi, head of the Middle East and North Africa Program at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, to a network initiated by Iran’s Foreign Ministry, with the aim of increasing the country’s influence in the West. Since 75% of the funding for the Swedish Institute of International Affairs comes from the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Sweden’s Foreign Minister, Maria Malmer Stenergard (pictured), demanded more information regarding these allegations. (Photo by Nicolas Tucat/AFP via Getty Images)

On January 31, Sweden’s TV4 reported that leaked documents from Iran’s Foreign Ministry linked Iran expert Rouzbeh Parsi, head of the Middle East and North Africa Program at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, to a network initiated by Iran’s Foreign Ministry, with the aim of increasing the country’s influence in the West.

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Why Al-Jazeera Should Be Designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by Bassam Tawil

Posted By on July 21st, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21773/designate-al-jazeera-terrorist-organization

Since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war, Al-Jazeera has been openly serving as the unofficial mouthpiece of Hamas and its military wing, Izaddin al-Qassam.

Even before the war, Hamas’s political and military leaders often chose Al-Jazeera to spread their propaganda and call for jihad (holy war) against Israel.

Hamas knows it can trust Al-Jazeera: the two share the same radical Islamist ideology that calls for the elimination of Israel and replacing it with an Islamist terror state.

Hamas does not need its own television station. It has Al-Jazeera, one of the most influential and wealthiest TV networks in the Arab world. This is what happens when most of the funding comes from Qatar, which has used its ties with Islamist groups, especially Muslim Brotherhood, as soft power to boost its regional and global influence.

Al-Jazeera, for its part, has been extremely protective of its friends in Hamas. The television station does not allow any criticism of Hamas or Qatar. When a Palestinian dares to criticize Hamas during a live interview, Al-Jazeera quickly cuts off the interview.

Last year, Israeli security forces disclosed intelligence information and numerous documents found in the Gaza Strip that confirm the military affiliation of six Al-Jazeera journalists with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the second-largest terror group in the coastal territory.

One does not have to be an expert in journalism or the Middle East to understand that Al-Jazeera is nothing but a terrorist organization masquerading as a media outlet.

A number of Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain understand the dangers of Al-Jazeera.

That is why they have shut the offices of Al-Jazeera, blocked its websites and demanded that Qatar curb the television station. Even the Palestinian Authority (PA), headed by Mahmoud Abbas… suspended Al-Jazeera’s broadcasting in the West Bank….

Why do some Americans and Westerners still consider Al-Jazeera a credible and professional media station if so many Arabs view it as an organ of Islamist terrorists and Jihadis? … It is time to designate Al-Jazeera as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.

On June 18, the Qatari-owned Al-Jazeera TV network (in Arabic) broadcast another “exclusive” video of a speech by Abu Obaida, the masked spokesman of the Iran-backed Palestinian terror group Hamas.

This is the group that started the current war in the Gaza Strip, when thousands of its members invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, murdering 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals and wounding thousands. Another 251 Israelis and foreign nationals were kidnapped to the Gaza Strip, where 50 are still held captive. At least 20 of those hostages are believed to be alive.

It did not come as a surprise that the video of the Hamas spokesman was first broadcast on Al-Jazeera. Since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war, Al-Jazeera has been openly serving as the unofficial mouthpiece of Hamas and its military wing, Izaddin al-Qassam.