ELECTIONS, POLITICS Comments turned off

David Christopher Kaufman Andrew Cuomo Is Betting on Jewish Voters. But Do They Want Him as the Next Mayor? The former New York governor has said that anti-Semitism is his campaign’s most important issue.

Posted By on May 9th, 2025

https://www.city-journal.org/article/new-york-city-mayor-race-andrew-cuomo-zohran-mamdani-eric-adams-jewish-voters

Even by the madcap standards of New York City mayoral races, the 2025 campaign for City Hall looks like a doozy. The election’s most unanticipated elements are the surprise surges of former New York governor Andrew Cuomo—who survived short-lived political exile to become the race’s frontrunner—and his chief rival, Queens socialist and state assemblyman Zohran Mamdani.

One of Cuomo’s big bets is on Jewish voters. Anti-Semitism, Cuomo declared in early April, is his campaign’s “most important issue . . . the toughest issue facing the city of New York and the country.” He’s made fighting the city’s anti-Semitic outbreak central to his tough-guy persona—and used it to present himself as the ideal foil to Mamdani, an outspoken opponent of Zionism.

Though Mamdani is trying to connect with Jewish voters—including making an appearance at an annual breakfast event hosted by the Orthodox-heavy Council of Jewish Organizations of Flatbush, in Brooklyn—he has a long road ahead of him in that effort. Mamdani has called Israel’s war with Hamas a “genocide,” and he protested with other Democratic Socialists in anti-Israel rallies just after Hamas’ October 7 massacre. He has taken part in a hunger strike—alongside celebrity activist Cynthia Nixon—in support of a Gaza ceasefire. And he introduced a bill that would make it harder to donate to charities that support West Bank settlements, part of his well-documented support of the odious Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement.

When it comes to the Jews, Mamdani also has questionable taste in allies. The mayoral hopeful recently called it “an honor” to meet with Rev. Al Sharpton, instigator of the infamous Crown Heights riots. And late last month he earned the endorsement of French Communist Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who has a long history of playing footsie with anti-Semites.

OPINION, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Collision of Islamic Culture With Western Civilization Importing Sharia. by Aynaz Anni Cyrus

Posted By on May 9th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-collision-of-islamic-culture-with-western-civilization/

There was a time when Europe stood as a beacon of liberty — the birthplace of Enlightenment ideals, the defender of individual rights, the champion of human dignity.

Today, that same Europe hosts classes to teach adult men — not boys — that women are not public property, sexual objects, or spoils of war.

Not because these men are mentally unstable. Not because they come from war zones. But because they come from Islamic countries, where modesty is law, where female autonomy is rebellion, and where sexual violence is normalized — by culture, by clerics, and sometimes by the law itself.

These aren’t fringe cases. They are embedded practices. This is not satire. This is policy.

In Norway, asylum seekers — overwhelmingly from Islamic-majority nations like Afghanistan, Somalia, Syria, Iraq, and Pakistan — are now enrolled in government-sponsored “rape prevention classes.” These men are shown images of Western women in dresses, walking alone, drinking wine, or dancing — and are told: “This is not an invitation.”

They are taught that a woman’s smile doesn’t mean she consents. That women are equal. That sex without permission is rape.

Here’s the chilling part: to many of these men, this is news. This isn’t remedial education — this is reprogramming.

Because the worldview they bring isn’t just incompatible with Western norms.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Nigeria: Sharia-Based Discrimination Against Christians Including blasphemy laws and extrajudicial mob violence. by Uzay Bulut

Posted By on May 9th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/nigeria-sharia-based-discrimination-against-christians/

Christians in Nigeria are murdered almost daily through indiscriminate attacks led by Muslims. Nigerian Christian women are abducted, raped, gang-raped and sexually abused on a widespread scale. Violence is only one of the many forms of persecution that Christians in Nigeria face. They are also subjected to systematic, Sharia-based discrimination, a situation which is particularly routine in the majority-Muslim northern states.

One of the methods used to silence Christian voices utilizes the deadly blasphemy laws. In many cases, Muslim mobs take the law into their own hands and execute Christians who they accuse of blasphemy.

In 2022, for instance, Deborah Samuel Yakubu, a second-year Christian college student, was stoned and burnt to death by a mob of Muslim students in Sokoto, Nigeria, after being accused of blasphemy against Islam.

The Council on Foreign Relations reported:

Ms. Yakubu was thought to have ‘blasphemed’ Islam and Prophet Muhammad after a voice note that she left on a WhatsApp group responding to another student’s post on the theme of Islam rubbed her colleagues the wrong way. After forcibly extracting her from a safe room where the school authorities had hoped to hide her, a mob comprising Ms. Yakubu’s colleagues struck her repeatedly with stones and clubs before eventually setting her lifeless body on fire, all the while shouting “Allahu Akbar” (God is great).

Footage of the killing would later appear on various social media platforms.

A Nigerian analyst said:

Christians have to be very careful in discussions with Muslims as their words can easily be used against them. Christians have been killed when they were accused of speaking ill of Muhammad or Islam. Many opinions spoken by Christians are deliberately misconstrued and regarded as blasphemous. In several instances mobs have killed Christians for simply preaching in public or expressing opinions on issues.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Let’s Face It, Dems Have Always Been ‘Dark Woke’

Posted By on May 9th, 2025

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/05/09/lets-face-it-dems-have-always-been-dark-woke/

By now, you’ve probably heard the term “dark woke.” It’s supposed to represent a new, edgy, gloves-off messaging strategy among Democrats.

But what’s new about this? Democrats have always taken the low road.

A recent New York Times feature says “As liberals try to get their groove back, some party insiders say Democratic politicians have been encouraged to embrace a new form of combative rhetoric aimed at winning back voters who have responded to President Trump’s no-holds-barred version of politics.”

An article posted on Yahoo News claims that “While traditional Democrats may still be pushing the idea of reaching across the aisle and finding a way to bring a fractured country together, this online faction is taking the gloves off and going ‘Dark Woke.’”

It’s all supposedly a response to Donald Trump’s abrasive personality.

But who are they kidding? Are we actually supposed to believe that Democrats were polite and deferential before Trump? That they were the ones reaching out to the other side for compromise? That they were the champions of civil discourse?

That’s how Democrats are routinely portrayed by their patrons in the media. But it is laughably detached from reality.

This is the party that, back in the 1960s, attacked a Republican presidential candidate with an ad showing a girl picking petals off a flower only to be obliterated by a nuclear bomb. Ronald Reagan was routinely on the receiving end of vicious attacks from Democrats. In 2003, Charles Krauthammer coined the term “Bush Derangement Syndrome” to describe the unhinged hostility Democrats had for George W. Bush.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Here on Island Israel, Bewilderment and Tough Questions It’s been a rough week and it’s not over yet. P. David Hornik

Posted By on May 9th, 2025

https://pdavidhornik.substack.com/subscribe?

It was reported Thursday evening that Israel’s Transportation Minister Miri Regev, Economy Minister Nir Barkat, and heads of Israeli airlines were holding an emergency meeting on what to do about thousands of Israelis who have been stranded abroad since Sunday—the day a Houthi ballistic missile from Yemen penetrated both Israeli and American air defenses and hit the perimeter of the main terminal of Ben Gurion Airport, injuring six people.

Those Israelis have now been stranded all that time because the Houthi airstrike prompted almost all foreign airlines to immediately cancel flights to Israel. Many of them now say their flights to Israel will be suspended until at least mid-May; for British Airways, at this point, it’s until June 14.

The two Israeli ministers and the airline chiefs were discussing ways to help the far-flung, stranded Israelis get home; the option of the local carriers, for the time being, reducing ticket prices; and “emergency plans in case of another wave of cancellations.”

Since October 7, 2023, the feeling of being isolated on Island Israel is not new to Israelis; many of the international airlines had suspended flights to Israel since that day and only resumed them in March or April this year.

Indeed, there was something almost bizarre about what happened on Sunday. Since March 18, when Israel resumed fighting in Gaza, the Houthis had launched 26 ballistic missiles and several drones at Israel, and all had crashed into the sea before getting here or been shot down.

Yet Sunday’s missile, aimed at the airport, managed to evade both Israel’s Arrow defense system and the US THAAD defense system, deployed to Israel amid heightening tensions with Iran.

ANTI-SEMITISM, EDUCATION Comments turned off

Probe the foreign influence behind these terror-loving, anti-Jew college agitators By Douglas Murray-

Posted By on May 9th, 2025

https://nypost.com/2025/05/08/opinion/probe-foreign-influence-behind-terror-loving-anti-jew-college-agitators/?utm_campaign=iphone_nyp&utm_source=mail_app

I wonder how Columbia University would behave in the following scenario. A bunch of students and outside agitators descend on their campus. They are dressed in the gear of the Ku Klux Klan, being careful to conceal their faces so as to avoid any personal criticism. They then enter the university’s library and other sacred spaces of learning and chant for the lynching of black Americans.

Would Columbia University sit by while this happened? Would Democrat prosecutors and left-wing activists claim that this was simply a case of people exercising their free-speech rights? And would conservative pundits wishing to appear as being “on the right side of history” insist that the hooligans should be allowed to continue their threatening actions with impunity?

I would guess that the answer to these questions would be “no,” “no” and “no” again.

So why do so many people think that a movement which dedicates itself to intimidating and threatening another minority group in America — specifically Jews — find itself so cosily protected?

The thought occurs after a friend at Columbia sent me footage from the university’s Butler library — the main library on campus — from earlier this week. The Butler library is a beautiful building, intended as a sacrosanct place of study and education. Which was what places like Columbia were once for.

But on Wednesday those students who did want to study had to put up with a mob of fascists descending on their place of learning. Scores of students and others came in dressed in their terrorist chic. Their heads were wrapped in Palestinian terrorist scarves and some of them — as ever — decided to mix this up with COVID-19 protective masks.

OPINION, RELIGION Comments turned off

Fear of freedom leads us to vote for more government Diane Bederman

Posted By on May 9th, 2025

https://dianebederman.com/fear-of-freedom-leads-us-to-vote-for-more-government/

The Jewish people gave the world the ethic of freedom some 3500 years ago. God said to all present and future:

All people are born with equal intrinsic value, all life is sacred and most importantly and most frightening – we have free-will.

God told us what is good and what is evil

God gave us the blessing and the curse; life and death; choose life. Choose Good over Evil.

Unheard of until that moment. It was the first time people were told they had the right to their own views and the responsibility to make decisions. They were no longer under the control of a supreme leader. This was the first time in history that people were given freedom: and it is frightening. And, too often, fear leads to submission. Today, that submission is to governments in so-called freedom-loving countries in the West.

On the sixth day, God created man and woman: not from an utterance, not from a word, but from His hands and His breath; we are created in His image, capable of reason, moral thinking, and free will. He created Adam and Eve, the first children, the first of His children. And He placed them in the lush Garden of Eden. And He told them to eat and enjoy all that was before them in the Garden of Eden, all but the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. That tree—right there in the middle of the garden. That sensual tree with luscious fruit. That tree. Don’t eat from that tree.

But, like all children, the admonishment not to eat piqued their curiosity, their childishness, and their innocence. How could they not try the fruit? It’s not as if it were hidden in a corner of the garden behind a fence. It was right there. In front of them. So easy to access. So forbidden. It is too much to bear. And the first children that ate of the fruit now exist in all of us, as does the first breath…

We naturally bemoan the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. Had they not disobeyed God’s commandment not to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, we would all be living in paradise. And the story of the human journey would have ended. But they chose to eat of the fruit and condemned—or gifted—all of us with free will.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Why Hamas Wants To Control Gaza’s Humanitarian Aid by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on May 8th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21598/hamas-gaza-humanitarian-aid

Palestinians… say that if anyone is stealing the humanitarian aid and food, it is Hamas.

Videos posted on social media have shown Hamas thugs brutally beating Palestinians suspected of stealing food for their families.

A day earlier, Hamas announced that three Gazans will soon be slaughtered with knives for allegedly “collaborating” with Israel. Others will have their limbs hacked off with blades for supposed “theft” of food.

“Since October 7, I’ve said it without hesitation: Hamas is ISIS – only with better PR. And that PR machine runs on Qatari money, through media outlets that spin terrorism into heroism and wash blood with propaganda.” — Hamza Howidy, Gaza-born peace and human rights advocate, X, May 4, 2025.

“There is no government, no law, no order – just fear. And as Palestinians dare to speak out, Hamas hunts them down, kidnaps them, threatens their families and silences them by force… They offer no protection, no aid, no leadership – only guns, terror, and slogans.” — Hamza Howidy, X, May 3, 2025.

“Hamas relied on criminal elements to create pandemonium that generated mass looting events which provided some cover for the terror group to commit the organized theft of what remains of food supplies in Gaza.” — Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a Gaza native and senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, X, May 2, 2025.

This criminality is precisely why the international community needs to back Israel’s effort to prevent Hamas from monopolizing and embezzling humanitarian supplies sent into the Gaza Strip.

The international community should support any initiative aimed at ending Hamas’s rule over the Gaza Strip and destroying its military capabilities. Both Israel and the Palestinian people, who are paying a heavy price as a result of Hamas’s decision to commit the biggest massacre against Jews since the Holocaust, will only gain from this.

The Iran-backed Palestinian terrorist group Hamas has reconstituted its “Executive Force” as part of an effort to control humanitarian aid and “impose law and order” in the Gaza Strip.

The 5,000-strong force, originally established in 2006, has been entrusted with preventing the “theft” of food and “deterring thieves and thugs responsible for anarchy and lawlessness.”

Members of the “Executive Force” have been deployed throughout the Gaza Strip and given orders to “take all necessary measures, including the use of excessive force,” to restore security and stability to the coastal strip, according to Palestinian sources.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

George Soros: The Man and His Empire By Hayden Ludwig

Posted By on May 8th, 2025

https://tomklingenstein.com/george-soros-the-man-and-his-empire/

He’s the universal symbol of progressive tyranny, the image of Davos despotism. He’s the immigrant who broke the Bank of England and hedge fund master who plundered Wall Street. He’s a globe-trotting globalist active in dozens of countries, yet loyal to none. He’s the embodiment of philanthropy’s decay from its biblical pedigree into cultural Marxism. He’s a narcissist out to remake the world in his own cynical image. To those familiar with his “open society” ideology, he’s a menace bent on killing the West. 

For millions across the world, George Soros is simply the face of evil.

But much of the notorious mega-donor’s life and legacy is complicated and hazy. Even at 94, Soros wields enormous influence over the institutional Left — the armada of activist, lobbying, policy, and litigation groups that really run the modern Democratic Party — something he aims to pass on to his 39-year-old playboy son and heir, Alexander, who took control of his father’s hedge fund and foundations less than two years ago.

This writer began reporting on George Soros’s dark money spigot at its zenith in the early Trump years, when it seemed money could buy anything in Washington. Fast forward to 2025, and Soros’s open society vision is itself on the ropes — and that’s stunning.

For decades, Soros shaped the Left into the emerging totalitarian force Americans roundly rejected in November 2024. Billions of his dark money dollars launched Washington’s professional activist class from the fringe to the heart of the Democratic establishment. Now, however, even Democratic strategists are complaining that the party takes too many directives from the woketariat: the “college-educated elites” guilty of “placing a hard ceiling on Democrats’ appeal and fatally wounding them in the places they need to win,” as one operative groused after Election Day. 

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“The only Democrat group that is not actually proud of their country to a large extent at this point is progressive activists,” says liberal pollster Ruy Teixeira, who once predicted the rise of a permanent Democratic majority. “If you are trying to sell to people the idea that…America is fundamentally a benighted, almost dystopian place that was born in slavery, marinaded in racism, and white supremacists of this very day, and, you know, runs around oppressing the world’s people[,] I don’t see why anyone would sign up with you.”

For anyone familiar with the Democratic machine’s inner workings, that’s tantamount to rebellion, and utterly unprecedented. For two decades, Beltway activists — and the multi-billion-dollar foundations behind them — have ruled America’s liberal party with an iron fist. Yet in his twilight years, George Soros may live to see that once unshakeable legacy collapse. 

The Early Years

The project to fundamentally transform America may have peaked around 2020, but its most influential architect began his life in 1930 Budapest.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Principles of New Environmentalism A new environmentalism challenges climate alarmism, rejects false scarcity, and defends both ecological integrity and human freedom through practical, market-based solutions. By Edward Ring

Posted By on May 8th, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/05/07/principles-of-new-environmentalism/

Last month, in recognition of the annual celebration of Earth Day, it seemed appropriate to compile a list of ten common myths that constitute the major premises of modern environmentalism. That list, along with explanations of why each of these premises is unfounded and counterproductive, can be summarized as follows:

1 – There is no climate crisis.
2 – There are not too many people on Earth.
3 – We are not running out of oil/gas/coal.
4 – Biofuel is not renewable or sustainable.
5 – Offshore wind is not renewable or sustainable.
6 – Renewables are not renewable.
7 – Renewables cannot replace oil/gas/coal.
8 – Housing should not be confined to densifying existing cities.
9 – Mass transit is almost never cost-effective.
10 – Wilderness areas are not sacred.

Environmentalism, pursuant to these myths, is not a movement primarily devoted to protecting the planet’s ecosystems. It is a totalitarian political agenda that aims to consolidate power and wealth in the hands of a managerial elite that will wield absolute control over every aspect of human life. Where you live or travel, what you purchase or produce, and what you can own and consume will all be specified, monitored, and rationed. And the moral justification for this will be the “climate emergency.”

There are few examples in history that can compare to the political power grab enabled by the alleged “existential threat” of climate change. But of equal concern is the fraudulent essence of the economic and technological agenda pushed in the name of fighting climate change. It not only discredits environmentalism in the eyes of awakening millions, but, as explained in the ten myths, it also will wreak environmental havoc.