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How Ireland became a cauldron of the culture war Saturday’s protests for and against immigration perfectly captured the tensions of our time. Brendan O’Neill

Posted By on April 29th, 2025

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/04/28/how-ireland-became-a-cauldron-of-the-culture-war/

EXCERPT

This was Dublin on Saturday. There was a huge protest against the government’s immigration policy, and a counter-protest of self-styled radicals chanting ‘Refugees welcome here’. And it was about the most perfect distillation of the ‘culture war’ I’ve ever seen. Crowds of working people rallying behind the national flag as the virtuous of Dublin 4 flipped a collective middle finger at them and branded them fascist scum. There it was, in glorious technicolor, the great clash of our time: that between ordinary people worried about mass immigration, and an elevated class of high-status opinion-havers for whom borders are so 20th century.

The main protest was against the immigration policy overseen by both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in recent years. Immigration is the hottest topic in Ireland right now. Swarms of Irish people are both bemused and troubled that Ireland’s foreign-born population is heading towards a fifth of the whole population. They’ve watched as sleepy green towns have become 35 per cent foreign-born almost overnight. No, they’re not racist, just curious: curious to know how this happened, why it happened, and whether they get a say in it.

The other side, the counter-protesters, could not have been more different. They were rallied by United Against Racism, a leftish group backed by Sinn Fein, the Greens and others in Dublin’s noisy virtue-displaying class. They waved the trans flag rather than the tricolour, because apparently the right of men to shit next to women is more important than the right of nations to self-determination. The words ‘fascists fuck off’ were scrawled on one trans flag, beautifully capturing the seething animus these snobs disguised as radicals feel for Dubliners who’ve never darkened the door of a university and probably think there are only two genders.

Where the big demo was a sea of tricolours, the counter-demo was full of the accoutrements of the neo-religion of woke. People were adorned in the keffiyeh, the Arab garment appropriated by the bourgeois of the West to signal their moral fitness for polite society. The Pride flag fluttered, because to this new class of faux-progressive individual identity matters far more than national identity. It was a clash of two moral universes, the green, white and gold of the tricolour signalling an affinity with the nation, the multicolours of Pride signalling a preference for the neoliberal cult of self-regard.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Christopher F. Rufo “We Can’t Hire a White Guy”—a Professor on Life at Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber has created a system of widespread racial discrimination.

Posted By on April 29th, 2025

https://www.city-journal.org/article/princeton-university-president-christopher-eisgruber-anti-semitism-racial-discrimination

In 2020, Princeton president Christopher Eisgruber made headlines for declaring the university guilty of “systemic racism.” He meant systemic racism against racial minorities, but in truth, Eisgruber’s institution has practiced the opposite: systematically discriminated against supposed “oppressors,” like whites and males.

Though most Princeton faculty support Eisgruber’s “anti-racism” policy, a faction of dissenters—a few dozen in number—has grown bolder in recent months. In these professors’ telling, Princeton’s president is a vengeful administrator who punishes anyone who questions DEI orthodoxy. They have worked behind the scenes to assemble evidence of his discriminatory policies and hope the Trump administration will restore the principle of colorblind equality on campus.

I sat down with one of these professors for a wide-ranging discussion about anti-Semitism, radical ideologies, and DEI at Princeton. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Christopher Rufo: Harvard and Columbia have drawn the most attention for radical ideologies and anti-Semitism on campus. Set the stage for what’s happening here at Princeton.

Professor: Anti-Semitism is really a symptom of a deeper malaise at Princeton, which is that the university decided to go woke and—as President Eisgruber wrote in the last few months of the first Trump administration—declare that we were “systemically racist.” But if we have been systemically racist, it’s been against whites, Jews, Asians, and Indians, in favor of other demographics. We’ve always been told that we have to give special treatment to women and certain demographic minorities.

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Kenya: Jihadists Target Majority-Christian Country “If you were a Christian, you were shot on the spot.” Uzay Bulut

Posted By on April 29th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/kenya-jihadists-target-majority-christian-country/

This month marks the ten-year anniversary of when Islamic terrorists stormed the Garissa University College in Kenya, murdering 148 Christian students and injuring at least 79.

On April 2, 2015, gunmen took over 700 students hostage at the university campus. According to the witnesses, the terrorists asked the victims about their religion and segregated the Muslims from the Christians, intending to execute those who identified as Christians.

Student Collins Wetangula told the Associated Press that when the militants stormed his dorm, he could hear them demanding if residents were Muslim or Christian.

“If you were a Christian, you were shot on the spot. With each blast of the gun, I thought I was going to die.”

“All I could hear were footsteps and gunshots; nobody was screaming because they thought this would lead the gunmen to know where they are,” he said. “The gunmen were saying sisi ni al-Shabab” (That is Swahili for “We are al-Shabaab.”)

The siege ended the same day, after all four of the attackers were killed.

The terrorist group al-Shabaab took responsibility for the attack. The group had also claimed responsibility for a deadly 2013 attack on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi. This incident left 67 people dead and over 150 wounded.

Since then, Islamic terrorist attacks in Kenya and many other African nations have remained ongoing. In the latest incident, on March 23, 2025, al-Shabaab killed six police personnel after assailants attacked a base near the Somali border.

A jihad group formed in the early 2000s, Harakat al-Shabaab al-Mujahideen, was quickly nicknamed al-Shabaab, which means “The Youth.” It seeks to establish an Islamic state in Somalia.

Al-Shabaab was created as a member of the Islamic Courts Union, a coalition of Sharia law courts united against the federal government of Somalia. In 2012, al-Shabaab pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda. Today, al- Shabaab controls parts of central and southern Somalia, where it enforces Sharia law.

According to the Council on Foreign Relations, in the areas it controls, al-Shabaab prohibits “various types of entertainment, such as movies and music; the sale of khat, a narcotic plant that is often chewed; smoking; and the shaving of beards. Stonings and amputations have been meted out to suspected adulterers and thieves. At the same time, the group bans cooperation with humanitarian agencies, creating a harrowing challenge in the face of unprecedented droughts.”

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

The Most Remarkable Thing About the Trump/Zelensky Sit-Down at the Pope’s Funeral Their first tête-à-tête since the fireworks in the Oval Office. by Robert Spencer

Posted By on April 29th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-most-remarkable-thing-about-the-trump-zelensky-sit-down-at-the-popes-funeral/

In their first tête-à-tête since the fireworks in the Oval Office on Feb. 28, President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky sat down for a remarkable fifteen-minute meeting at the Vatican Saturday, where both heads of state were attending the funeral of Pope Francis. The Saturday meeting was striking for several reasons, not least because it was just Trump and Zelensky talking things out alone. No aides or translators were present, and while photographers some terrific photos of the two leaders in intense discussion, reporters were not buzzing around performing their usual act of asking questions designed to show the world what an awful person Donald Trump is.

The privateness of the Trump-Zelensky confab is what makes it most remarkable. We just had four years of a president who not only couldn’t make the most insignificant of moves without a cheat sheet telling exactly what to do and when and how to do it. Now even Old Joe Biden’s top aides are admitting that the senescent corruptocrat simply wasn’t there, and that his dementia had advanced to the point that Old Joe knew nothing whatsoever about the policies his autopen was signing into law. What he appeared to know about the war in Ukraine, and everything else, was just an illusion created by his reading words off a teleprompter with reasonable competency.

Even before the misrule of Old Joe’s autopen, we have gotten used to seeing presidents surrounded by clouds of aides, and clearly those aides often did the real spadework in international diplomacy and other areas. Trump, however, is in this, as in so many ways, a sharp departure from what has become the norm for the chief executive. He is entirely capable of handling the negotiations with Zelensky (and others) without any input from aides, and even without their presence.

And on Saturday, amid all the pomp and bustle of the papal funeral, he did. White House communications director Steven Cheung later issued a terse announcement: “President Trump and President Zelenskyy met privately today and had a very productive discussion.”

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Human-Rights Bodies Corrupt Human Rights To Vilify Israel Defending Israel against politicized human-rights attacks is vital to preserving both human rights’ integrity and America’s founding principles. By Peter Berkowitz

Posted By on April 29th, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/04/29/human-rights-bodies-corrupt-human-rights-to-vilify-israel/

The United States has a special interest in safeguarding the integrity of human rights because America is founded on the rights inherent in all persons, and the nation’s political traditions revolve around them. Ordinary Americans as well as Washington policymakers, therefore, should condemn prominent human-rights organizations’ abuse of human rights to defame Israel and to legitimate jihadists’ efforts to destroy the Jewish state. Correcting the record about the Middle East’s only rights-protecting democracy and the Islamist forces sworn to its elimination is crucial to restoring the good name of human rights.

The Declaration of Independence holds that it is self-evidently true that human beings are endowed with “unalienable rights” – the 18th-century term for human rights. The Constitution aims to secure them. Much of the nation’s history revolves around the struggle to ensure that all Americans enjoy the rights that are theirs in virtue of their humanity. While the Constitution does not grant government a roving mandate to protect human rights around the world, it does invigorate the nation’s interest in serving as a beacon of freedom for those who suffer under authoritarian regimes and in cooperating with countries that share America’s understanding of the dignity of the person.

Dictatorships reject human rights, which place individual freedom ahead of dictators’ ambitions and decrees. Dictatorships’ aversion to human rights is as characteristic of the Iranian Ayatollahs’ Islamist theocracy as it is of Putin’s imperial Russia and of the Chinese Communist Party’s synthesis of Marxism-Leninism and traditional Chinese nationalism.

In the 21st century, powerful human-rights organizations have played into dictators’ hands by politicizing human rights. While persisting in affirming human-rights’ universality, these organizations equate them with a tendentious version of the progressive agenda. They wield human rights as a propaganda tool, inflating the claims of favored groups and disparaging the claims of the disfavored. The politicization of human rights sends the pernicious message to those who differ with the progressive left’s political priorities that human rights are a sham and should be expelled from respectable political discourse.

Nowhere do human-rights organizations more crudely politicize human rights than in the case of Israel.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Qatar and China Are Pouring Billions Into Elite American Universities By Frannie Block and Maya Sulkin

Posted By on April 28th, 2025

https://www.thefp.com/p/explosion-in-foreign-funding-for-american-universities?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Foreign countries such as China and Qatar have poured $29 billion into campuses over the past few years. ‘Hostile powers are buying influence on American campuses at an industrial scale.’

Foreign donors have given as much to U.S. universities in the last four years as they did in the previous 40, according to a new report by the Network Contagion Research Institute shared exclusively with The Free Press. The study shows an explosion in overseas funding for American schools between 2021 and 2024, with nearly $29 billion in foreign money donated during that period.

Qatar and China are among the largest sources of funding.

That $29 billion figure is more than double the total for the preceding four years, and accounts for half of the estimated $57.97 billion in foreign funding since 1986, when the federal government began tracking the data.

“The floodgates opened during the Biden era,” said NCRI’s co-founder Joel Finkelstein. ”This isn’t just a financial issue—it’s a national security crisis. Hostile powers are buying influence on American campuses at an industrial scale.”

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Palestinian Leaders Play Musical Chairs To Dupe Western Donors by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on April 28th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21577/palestinians-hussein-al-sheikh-musical-chairs

The appointment of al-Sheikh needs to be seen in the context of Abbas’s effort to dupe the international community into believing that he is serious about reforming the PA and sharing power. Abbas’s main goal is to rid himself of the image of an autocrat and present himself as a reformist and democrat, so that Western donors will continue to pour money on him – foolishly with no conditions.

[T]hose who think that al-Sheikh would be different from Abbas are clueless. Al-Sheikh, a veteran member of Abbas’s ruling Fatah faction, is an exact replica of his boss. Abbas and he share the same positions on almost every issue related to Israel. Both have always used harsh rhetoric to condemn and vilify Israel, especially in the international arena.

Al-Sheikh may not represent the old guard in the Palestinian leadership, but his statements and positions reflect those of Abbas and the old guard. The Palestinians need real reforms that will end the corruption in PA institutions and remove corrupt and incompetent officials. The last thing they need is a new game of musical chairs designed to deceive both the Palestinians and the international community.

On April 26, a group of unelected Palestinian Authority (PA) officials approved the appointment of Hussein al-Sheikh as “Deputy Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Vice President of the [non-existent] State of Palestine.”

PA President Mahmoud Abbas, who also serves as chairman of the PLO Executive Committee, had nominated the 64-year-old al-Sheikh for this position in accordance with a decision by the Palestinian Central Council, a body dominated by Abbas loyalists, to create the position of “Deputy Chairman of the PLO Executive Committee and Vice President of the State of Palestine.”

The 16-member PLO Executive Committee, which approved the nomination, is also dominated by Abbas loyalists, including al-Sheikh, who was appointed a few years ago by the now 89-year-old Abbas as its secretary general.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Mr. Globalism Goes Away Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on April 28th, 2025

https://bkdvk-zgpvh.campaign-view.com/ua/viewinbrowser?od=3z2bfeefc6e25f26cf812b76a5b

When the skies over the Swiss resort of Davos next fill with over 1,000 private jets bearing the elites of the world to discuss its fate, the Teutonic man behind it all may no longer be there.

Klaus Martin Schwab, born during WWII to a Nazi factory manager using forced labor to make flamethrowers, is Mr. Globalism. Even those who don’t know his name have seen that face with its cold fish stare through the rimmed eyeglasses looking back at them from under the towering futura font, slim and minimalist, of a solemn address at a World Economic Forum event.

“As I enter my 88th year, I have decided to step down from the position of Chair and as a member of the Board of Trustees, with immediate effect,” Klaus announced with dryly punctilious precision, declaring his departure while telling us nothing about why he’s leaving.

One reason may be that the WEF is investigating Schwab’s alleged withdrawal of cash from ATMs and use of the WEF to pay for hotel room massages, but the WEF founder has been accused of worse in the past.

But the real reason may be all the empty seats at the last World Economic Forum’s Davos event.

Not only Trump, who delivered virtual remarks, but most world leaders stayed home from 2025’s AI-themed Davos. Apart from Ukraine’s Zelenskyy, who can be counted on to show up at garage sales, dinner theaters and children’s puppet shows as long as there’s a chance photos will be taken, the WEF had to make do with personal addresses from the likes of South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa, the UN Secretary General, and the European Commission president.

The globalists, failed state leaders, and CEOs looking to mingle still come, but Davos is dying.

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Diana West: An Iconic Conservative Voice William Marshall

Posted By on April 28th, 2025

https://townhall.com/columnists/williammarshall/2025/04/26/diana-west-an-iconic-conservative-voice-n2656031

American conservatives have an excellent new book to enjoy when they want to tune out the cacophony of lunatic leftists to which they’re subjected endlessly in the Age of Trump. 

It is Diana West’s Wake Up and Smell the Culture and Other Selected Essays – a must-read collection of writings from one of America’s more gifted conservative thinkers, who has been fighting in America’s culture wars for decades.

Ms. West reminds me very much of another eloquent Yale-educated conservative iconoclast – the late William F. Buckley. They both offer insightful commentary on American culture from a 30,000 foot perspective. But Ms. West’s appeal to me also lies in her deep dives into the political intrigues of Washington. More below. 

Ms. West has published a series of landmark books in her long and storied career as a journalist, social critic, columnist and book author. She began her writing career as an editor of the Yale Political Monthly while an undergraduate at Yale. She would go on to become a reporter for the Washington Times. She then became a syndicated columnist from 1998 to 2014, with her columns appearing in 120 newspapers and news sites.  She has continued to write columns in various forums in the years since. 

She wrote her seminal first book, The Death of the Grownup: How America’s Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization, in 2007. It was a frank and refreshing assessment of an American culture in decline, in which adults lived in a perpetual state of adolescence, refusing to confront the hard realities of 21st century life. That book has not only aged well, but has become more relevant than ever, as many Americans in their 30s continue to live with their parents and refuse to grow up.

One of Ms. West’s greatest gifts is her ability to conduct intensive archival research, deeply trace the backgrounds of public figures, and then present her findings in a most compelling way for her readers. She did that in her last book, The Red Thread: A Search for Ideological Drivers Inside the Anti-Trump Conspiracy, in which Ms. West teased out, through painstaking research, the very curious backgrounds of the central players who tried to take down Donald Trump before and during his first presidency. You remember them: Bruce and Nellie Ohr, James Comey, Christopher Steele, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok and the Rest of the Treasonous Gang. 

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Trump, Tariffs, Trade—and a Taboo? Trump’s trade strategy aims to slash the U.S. deficit by forcing fairer deals with key partners—pushing reciprocity, not profiteering, to regain economic balance. By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on April 28th, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/04/28/trump-tariffs-trade-and-a-taboo/

After only a hundred days, the Trump counterrevolution has made quite miraculous progress on the border, illegal immigration, cost-cutting, curbing the DEI/woke revolution, and a historic Ukrainian War settlement.

The pushback to this multifront effort from the left has been formidable, if not hysterical. The greatest fury mostly centers around Trump’s efforts to force U.S. trading partners to adopt either reciprocal or no tariffs while obeying international trading norms—an effort aimed at vastly reducing the U.S. trade deficit.

If Trump could cut a proverbial deal in the next 100 days that, say, cut the annual $1.2 trillion trade deficit in half, coupled with multitrillion-dollar foreign investments, then stocks and bonds would settle down.

Wall Street would go back to its traditional platitudes that the trade deficit then would be no higher than the 3-percent-of-GDP red line.

Stocks would then soar in anticipation of the other news of a continuation of tax cuts, more budgetary reductions, robust energy development, and further deregulation.

The U.S. has run a half-century of trade deficits. And now the red ink has climbed to nearly $1.2 trillion, the largest in history. Yet for all practical purposes, only a few entities account for most of an astronomical sum. And they all have corollary concerns to the U.S. that make their surpluses part of larger problems.

The administration can accurately talk about “70 nations wanting to deal.” But, in truth, if Trump were to settle with just China, Mexico, Canada, the EU, and the ten-nation Southeast Asian trading bloc (ASEAN), then the so-called trade wars would be over.

Start with our North American partners Mexico ($171.9 trillion surplus) and Canada ($63 trillion surplus) that alone account for over 20 percent of the U.S. trade deficit.

Canada’s surplus is almost entirely attributable to its vast oil and gas sales to the U.S. Almost all its daily oil exports go to the U.S., some four million barrels—as well as half its natural gas shipments.