EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Sesame Street Seduction by Linda Goudsmit

Posted By on June 10th, 2025

https://goudsmit.pundicity.com/28625/the-sesame-street-seduction

No stranger has ever seduced a child with spinach. Predators understand that seducing a child requires offering something the child wants or providing something that engages the child. So it is with educational seduction.

Preschool educational television program Sesame Street, originally created to help young children from low-income families prepare for school and stimulate their desire to learn, first aired in November 1969. The show was spectacularly successful with children from all socio-economic backgrounds across America, who watched their beloved Muppet characters, and learned letters, numbers, geometric forms, classification, ordering, problem-solving, and social interactions. Sesame Street revolutionized children’s programming and proved that children could learn through visual media. Edutainment, a new genre in television programming was born.

After decades of success teaching foundational skills in reading and mathematics, and helping children learn through music, iconic characters, and repetition, Sesame Street at 55 years old is no longer recognizable––Sesame Street has gone woke. The astonishing educational success of Sesame Street made it a prime-time target for those who understood how easily the programming could be repurposed and used for anti-American, anti-family woke indoctrination. Education is a dual-use industry, and the fall of Sesame Street represents the capture of the American education industry at the pre-school level. Sesame Street is now a favored edutainment weapon of the globalist War on America that targets our nation’s youngest children.

Globalist Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) articulated the power of educational indoctrination. “Chapter 15, Obama’s Grand Plan: Fundamental Transformation” from my 2022 release The Collapsing American Family: From Bonding to Bondage, further explains how educational indoctrination is the long-range tactical strategy for globalism’s strategic goal to rule the world:

The value of educational propaganda in the globalist campaign is described in chilling detail by English aristocrat Lord Bertrand Russell in his 1953 classic, The Impact of Science on Society.81 Educational indoctrination is the primary instrument for eliminating objective reality, dismissing the American family, subverting American culture, and destroying America from within. Russell unapologetically explained the process that drives a society to madness:

It may be hoped that in time anybody will be able to persuade anybody of anything if he can catch the patient young and is provided by the State with money and equipment.

Education should aim at destroying free will so that pupils thus schooled, will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their schoolmasters would have wished. . . . Influences of the home are obstructive; not much can be done unless indoctrination begins before the age of ten; in order to condition students, verses set to music and repeatedly intoned are very effective. . . . It is for a future scientist to make these maxims precise and to discover exactly how much it costs per head to make children believe that snow is black. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for more than one generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen. (pp. 27–28, Routledge Classics, 2016 edition)

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel’s brilliant handling of the ‘flotilla’ affair Ruthie Blum

Posted By on June 10th, 2025

https://www.jns.org/israels-brilliant-handling-of-the-flotilla-affair/

It was supposed to be a grand act of defiance—another headline-grabbing spectacle in the ongoing campaign to vilify the Jewish state. Instead, it became a floating punchline.

The so-called “freedom flotilla” set sail earlier this month from Sicily, bound for Gaza, carrying meager amounts of food and other forms of aid. Aboard the lone boat, the British-flagged schooner Madleen, was a small cast of sanctimonious “humanitarians.”

Chief among them was Swedish climate crusader Greta Thunberg. Joining her was French Member of the European Parliament Rima Hassan and another 10 or so activists trying to make themselves relevant.

What they billed as a noble mission was actually a farce. Wasting no time in exposing the charade, the Israeli Foreign Ministry mockingly christened the vessel the “selfie yacht.”

And with good reason.

From the moment the motley crew departed, the journey resembled an influencer retreat more than a relief operation. Social media lit up with snapshots of a gleeful, keffiyeh-clad Greta and her companions beaming with self-congratulatory pride.

Responding with neither alarm nor outrage, Israel chose an approach that blended humor with restraint and just the right amount of ridicule. When the ship was some 120 miles away from its destination, Israeli naval forces intercepted and boarded it—bearing refreshments.

Yes, really.

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Good riddance to Greta’s Gaza ship of fools This narcissistic stunt summed up the fake virtue and lazy theatrics of modern activism. Brendan O’Neill

Posted By on June 10th, 2025

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/06/09/good-riddance-to-gretas-gaza-ship-of-fools/

So the seafaring stunt is over. The ship of narcissists has been intercepted. Greta Thunberg and her gaggle of self-righteous keffiyeh clowns have been thwarted. They’re on their way, not to Gaza, but to the Israeli port city of Ashdod. One envisions the Med ringing out with wails of ‘HOW DARE YOU’ as Greta and her muppet apostles berate Israel for foiling their messianic mission to save the people of Gaza from evil.

There is nothing that isn’t funny about the collapse of Greta’s white-saviour bullshit. I have especially enjoyed the juvenile bawling of the vain crew. ‘We’ve been kidnapped!’, cried Greta. They haven’t. They’re fine. They are ‘safely making [their] way to the shores of Israel’ and they have sandwiches. ‘This is a war crime!’, yelped one of the sailing saviours as Israeli forces boarded, in tones not dissimilar to Kevin the Teenager when his parents would send him to bed.

There’s the delicious fact that it was Greta that ended up getting aid. That pic of an IDF soldier giving her a plastic-wrapped kosher sandwich is equal parts touching and hilarious. ‘I thought Greta was going to deliver the humanitarian aid, not receive it?’, as Eve Barlow quipped. The soldier is in full military garb, as befits his role as a warrior against the army of anti-Semites that attacked Israel on 7 October 2023. Greta is wearing a frog hat, as befits her role as patron saint of the faux-virtuous idiot rich kids of TikTok.

Then there’s Israel’s trolling. The Jewish State is ripping the piss out of Greta and I am so here for it. We’ve intercepted the ‘selfie yacht’ of ‘celebrities’ whose ‘sole purpose’ was to ‘gain publicity’, said Israel’s Foreign Ministry. The ‘tiny amount of aid on the yacht [that] was not consumed by the “celebrities”’ will now be ‘transferred to Gaza’, it announced. Because, believe it or not, you can feed people in a way that does not ‘involve Instagram selfies’. Oh snap. Hold the salt, Israel.

Lunatics on the internet were worried that Israel might bump Greta off. ‘Nothing is too insane for Israel’, including the ‘murder [of] Greta Thunberg’, said soy leftist turned digital hysteric, Owen Jones. Calm down, folks. She’s being memed, not murdered. ‘Greta Thunberg is… safe and in good spirits’, said the official X account of the Israeli Foreign Ministry. ‘The show is over.’ Now that’s how you puncture the bloated self-regard of a sea-going gang of Israelophobes who are so high on their own supply of moral vanity that they really think they can ‘Save Gaza’.

It’s brilliant to see the fizzling out of this summer jaunt to the Med masquerading as a moral crusade. For nothing has ever captured the lazy theatrics and fake virtue of modern activism as much as Greta’s dumb boat did. This so-called freedom flotilla would have done precisely nothing to assist the suffering people of Gaza. That was never really its aim. The ship of fools was always more interested in raising awareness about itself and its moral brilliance than about the needs of Gaza’s civilians.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Christopher F. Rufo Trump Should Crush the L.A. Riots—with a Subtle Hand How the president can restore order and win the war for visual symbolism

Posted By on June 10th, 2025

https://www.city-journal.org/article/los-angeles-riots-trump-deportation-national-guard-immigration

Los Angeles is burning. Earlier this year, seasonal fires ripped through the Southern California city, but now, the fires are entirely manmade. In response to the Trump administration’s deportation policy, left-wing activists and opportunistic rioters have taken to the streets to vandalize property, incinerate automobiles, and assault law enforcement officers. The images emerging from the city are shocking: thugs hurling rocks from an overpass onto police; men spinning motorcycles around burning debris; a masked, shirtless rioter waving a Mexican flag atop a burned-out autonomous car.

In short, the Left is giving President Trump all the visual symbolism he needs to advance his immigration agenda. Most Americans see chaos in the name of a foreign flag and find it repellent. Though Trump’s language about a migrant “invasion” has sometimes been dismissed as hyperbolic, it seems that the Left is intent on turning it into a material reality.

The question: How should the president respond? Many on the right may feel an instinctual reaction to “send in the troops.” While this concern for law and order is natural and merited, it must be pursued in a way that maximizes the chance for success and minimizes the chance for blowback. As the president considers his options, he might keep in mind a number of strategic points that, if implemented, will increase his leverage in the fight for large-scale deportations.

The administration must deny the Left a strong visual counterargument. It’s easy to see how scenes of militarization, abuse of demonstrators, or a violent death could reverse public sympathies and present the administration as abusing its authority. The language of politics is visual—and therefore emotional, which means that a single mistake can reverse the flow of opinion and imperil the president’s immigration agenda. Left-wing tacticians have trained their foot soldiers to bait law enforcement into confrontation and to play victim for the press, to great effect.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel is Committing Genocide in Gaza! Let’s examine the lunacy of this statement. by Hillel Fuld

Posted By on June 10th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/israel-is-committing-genocide-in-gaza/

Let us examine the lunacy of that statement: Israel is Committing Genocide in Gaza:

1- If there was an actual genocide in Gaza, Hamas would return the hostages and surrender. Then the “Genocide” would end.

2- Which leads us to the next point. Has there ever been a genocide in history that the victim could end the second they wanted to? The answer is no. If they can end the fighting by simply returning our people and they choose not to, then it’s not genocide.

3- If Israel wanted to commit genocide, why not just bomb from the air and flatten Gaza? Why send in foot soldiers and risk their lives?

4- If Israel wanted to kill all Gazans, which is what genocide would mean in this context, why would Israel drop pamphlets to let civilians know where they’ll be attacking and when?

5- If Israel wanted to commit genocide, why would it send millions of tons of aid into Gaza?

6- Even if you believe Hamas’ ridiculously inflated numbers, in fact, double them, how are there not millions dead, or at least a million given Israel’s military superiority, if Israel wanted to commit genocide?

7- If Israel wanted to commit genocide, why use precision weapons and not just bomb the whole place?

8- If Israel wanted to commit genocide, why would it have agreed to multiple deals to end the fighting, all of which were rejected by the “victim” of the genocide, Hamas?

9- If Israel wanted to commit genocide, why would it treat Gazans in its own hospitals, including Sinwar himself whose life Israel saved when he had a brain tumor.

10- If Israel wanted to commit genocide (and ethnic cleansing. Don’t forget that insanity.) how is it that the population of Gaza has grown over the past 70 years by hundreds of percentages?

Bonus point: If there was a genocide in Gaza, why won’t Hamas let civilians hide in the miles and miles of tunnels they created? Why not give them the tons and tons of aid stored in warehouses in Gaza? Why prevent them from leaving?

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

A Conversation with Bat Ye’or by Grégoire Canlorbe

Posted By on June 10th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21679/a-conversation-with-bat-yeor

The networks organizing the EU’s migration policy wrap themselves in a humanitarian ambiguity that conceals their financial sources.

[A] fractured Christianity, devastated by wars and the hatreds they develop and nurture, has always been an easy prey to jihadist aggressions….This was particularly the case with the Islamization of the Byzantine Empire….

In the Eurabian context, the hatred and delegitimization of Israel provide a spiritual and theological weapon for the European trends of Islamophilia and anti-Semitism to abandon Judeo-Christianity and rally to Islam. The current war aims to replace Israel with Palestine, an entity that has never had historical existence and a creature forged by Christian anti-Semitism from the 1970s.

As for the Muslims, the word and notion of Palestine is absent from the Quran; their war against Israel is based on the jihadi ideology which requires that Islamic law rule the planet.

None of the sacred Arab and Muslim texts mentions a geographical location in the biblical Hebrew territories, nor any historical episode that would justify a connection with land in today’s Israel.

Europe never condemned the military invasions by five Arab States that seized and colonized Jewish lands according to both the Balfour and San Remo Declarations. There, their millenary old Jewish population were killed or expelled, their houses pillaged, their synagogues burned. Europe felt no need to provide help. It is true that just three years before, it was busy deporting Jews to the extermination camps spread over its territory.

[T]he 1923 Lausanne Treaty…. legitimized a sovereign State for the Jewish people in their historic homeland with secure borders from Gaza to the Jordan River…. Those decisions ratified by the League of Nations are endorsed by its successor, the UN and cannot be nullified.

In Islam, Jews and Christians are cut from the same cloth. What is done to Jews is done to Christians as well, and vice-versa…. This is the great lesson given to us by the knowledge of dhimmitude and for this reason, forbidden. Yet we can see by our own eyes Europe collapsing….

Bat Ye’or is an Egyptian-born British author and historian, who has focused on the history of religious minorities in the Muslim world and on the geopolitics of the European Union. She is known for introducing the West to the concept of dhimmitude [see below], and forging the concept of Eurabia.

Canlorbe: Could you start by reminding us of the motivations of the networks that orchestrate the EU’s migration policy and its anti-Israeli stance?

Bat Ye’or: The motivations of the networks in these two areas—the EU’s migration policy and anti-Zionism—are different but converge in their cumulative harmful effectiveness. This cumulative effect results from the deliberate policy of the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to link their relations with EU countries at every level to a European anti-Israeli policy.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Palestinians Weigh In: The Real Reason Hamas Wants To ‘Sacrifice’ Them by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on June 9th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21674/hamas-wants-to-sacrifice-palestinians

Like most senior Hamas leaders, [Khalil] al-Hayya and his family members live outside the Gaza Strip, having fled the Gaza Strip before the October 7 attack on Israel. These Hamas leaders are leading safe, often resplendent lives in Qatar, Lebanon, Algeria, Turkey and other comfortable countries.

Hamas, [these Palestinians] say, has decided to sacrifice tens of thousands of Palestinians to please its patrons in Qatar and Iran.

“Khalil al-Hayya’s statement of sacrificing Gaza isn’t a slip of the tongue – it’s the mask coming off. When he says Gaza ‘offered itself as a sacrifice,’ what he means is that the people of Gaza were handed over…to foreign capitals and thrones… Gaza wasn’t ‘offered’- it was ‘traded.’ Traded for relevance in Tehran, applause in Doha, and invitations to summits where men in suits congratulate themselves for their loyalty [to Iran and Qatar] while entire neighborhoods [in the Gaza Strip] are flattened. What al-Hayya revealed – with disturbing pride – is that Hamas has never seen Gaza as a society to build or protect, but as a tool to elevate themselves in the eyes of unelected monarchs and ideological overlords…. to secure long-term contracts of power and protection from the patrons they truly serve….. [f]or the Qatari ruling elite who fund the fire from a safe distance, then host the [Hamas] arsonists as statesmen. Hamas offers Gaza as a sacrifice … because they know that a Gaza in ruins keeps them relevant, funded, and feared.” — Hamza Howidy, a Gaza-born peace and human rights advocate, X, June 6, 2025.

“[O]ur lives have been stolen. People in Gaza… are furious. They’re asking: how dare he (Khalil al-Hayya) speak in our name while he lives safely abroad with his family in Qatar? His words echo something even more horrifying once said by the late Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh: ‘We need the blood of children and women to awaken the spirit of revolution within us.’ What kind of ideology is this? What twisted logic allows men living in comfort to turn the suffering of an entire people into a slogan? I can’t describe how infuriated I feel right now. I want to smash my head against the wall.” — “Alaa from Gaza,” X, June 5, 2025 [Emphasis in the original].

“Khalil al-Hayya’s statement of sacrificing Gaza isn’t a slip of the tongue – it’s the mask coming off. When he says Gaza ‘offered itself as a sacrifice,’ what he means is that the people of Gaza were handed over… Traded for relevance in Tehran, applause in Doha…” — Hamza Howidy, a Gaza-born peace and human rights advocate. Pictured: Al-Hayya speaks on Al Jazeera, in June 2025. (Image source: X.com/Osint613)

On the eve of the Islamic feast of Eid al-Adha (Festival of Sacrifice), Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya — in charge of the negotiations to release the hostages and reach a ceasefire agreement with Israel — delivered a speech in which he said: “Gaza has offered itself as a sacrifice for the Muslim ummah [nation] and deserves its full support in return.”

Al-Hayya’s statement triggered a wave of angry reactions and condemnations from many Palestinians, especially those from the Gaza Strip who have been facing death and destruction since October 7, 2023, when Hamas and thousands of “ordinary” Palestinians invaded Israel and murdered 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals. Another 251 people were kidnapped to the Gaza Strip, where 55 – dead and alive – remain in captivity.

ISRAEL, MEDIA Comments turned off

How the Media Manufactured a ‘Genocide’ A data-driven investigation into the way coverage of Israel’s war in Gaza surpasses actual genocides in Darfur, Rwanda, and beyond by Zach Goldberg

Posted By on June 9th, 2025

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/media-manufactured-genocide-gaza

Concept creep describes the phenomenon in which morally potent terms expand beyond their original definitions into ever broader applications. As these terms become more diluted, they also become politically weaponized, shifting public perceptions, priorities, and policy.

In August 2020, I illustrated in these pages how terms like racism, white supremacy, and privilege saw a dramatic surge in media usage, significantly reshaping public and political perceptions and discourse. The same dynamic, I feared, was beginning to reshape another crucial term: genocide.

Genocide is going the way of racism and white supremacy, I observed on Oct. 19, 2023. Israel hadn’t yet invaded Gaza, but the mainstream media template for response to Hamas’ murderous Oct. 7 attacks was already set. Sure enough, by 2024, mentions of genocide in The New York Times (1.43% of all articles) had eclipsed the paper’s earlier peak for white supremacy (1.41% in 2020) and, though not matching the peak for racism/racist(s) (7.2% in 2020), still reflected a similar pattern of conceptual escalation.

Upon closer examination, however, much like the widespread surge in race-related terminology during the “Great Awokening,” The New York Times was far from alone, as references to genocide reached unprecedented highs across numerous major news outlets, including The Guardian and the Associated Press.

To confirm that these recent spikes were driven primarily by the Israel-Gaza conflict—and to place them in historical context—I analyzed how frequently each of the six outlets paired genocide with countries or groups historically associated with genocide allegations or acts. Using Nexis Uni, I tracked annual coverage associating genocide with well-documented historical cases, including Rwanda (1994), Darfur (2003-2008), Bosnia (1995), Myanmar (2017-present), and the Yazidis (2014-2017).

The results were striking and unambiguous: Coverage linking Israel with genocide has surged far beyond every other agreed-upon historical case of genocide across all examined outlets. In The New York Times, for example, articles pairing Israel and genocide reached levels more than nine times higher than the peak for Rwanda and nearly six times greater than for Darfur. Similarly, in The Guardian, more than 1 percent of all articles now reference both Israel and genocide—a frequency unmatched by any other pairing in recent decades.

BOOKS Comments turned off

The Disenlightenment: Politics, Horror, and Entertainment by David Mamet

Posted By on June 9th, 2025

One of America’s greatest living literary legends invites you think for yourself in this compelling narrative of manipulation, power, and the human condition.

“Government, like Circe, turns men into swine,” David Mamet writes in his latest political tour de force. Prepare to be challenged, enlightened, and entertained by The Disenlightenment as Mamet dissects the modern world with enthusiasm, wisdom, and lots of references to movies about the mafia.

Once a stalwart of liberal thought, Mamet now turns his penetrating gaze on the cultural milieu that nurtured his artistic growth, revealing how America’s elites have twisted our institutions into tools of manipulation. With his one-of-a-kind wit, he exposes the intricate dance between power and myth, unmasking how the elites manipulate media and culture to maintain control.

The Disenlightenment fearlessly tackles topics from war to love, success to death, offering a fresh perspective on the human condition. His observations, ranging from the carnival-like nature of politics to the power of language, reflect a society where traditional values are under siege.

This book is an opportunity to engage with one of the most provocative and insightful writers of the modern era. Whether you’re a long-time Mamet aficionado or new to his work, The Disenlightenment promises to challenge your perceptions, stimulate your mind, and perhaps change how you view the world.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Gavin Newsom and His Cruel Notion of ‘Cruel’ Gavin Newsom calls law enforcement “cruel,” while presiding over chaos, crime, and policies that punish Californians just trying to survive his idea of compassion. By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on June 9th, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/06/09/gavin-newsom-and-his-cruel-notion-of-cruel/

Recently, Gov. Newsom weighed in on the Trump administration’s efforts to undo the last four years of border destruction, when an estimated 10-12 million illegal aliens entered the U.S. unlawfully—among them thousands with criminal records.

Of the recent Los Angeles efforts of ICE to detain those who entered and reside here illegally, the governor proclaimed:

“Continued chaotic federal sweeps, across California, to meet an arbitrary arrest quota are as reckless as they are cruel. Donald Trump’s chaos is eroding trust, tearing families apart, and undermining the workers and industries that power America’s economy.”

Dissect that statement, and almost everything Newsom said was either not factual or misleading.

“Chaotic?” What is chaotic is allowing 12 million unaudited migrants into the U.S. ahead of those waiting years for background checks and legal permission.

The current antidote to a truly chaotic, nonexistent border was to bring some legality and order back to immigration—and not to perpetuate a wild-west border, drug smuggling, cartel profiteering, and child trafficking and abandonment, which were the Biden-era norms.

Chaotic is 1,000 rioters in southern California swarming ICE officers, endangering their safety and lives—and then being contextualized, excused, or even supported by the governor of the state, who supposedly is an upholder of our laws and their enforcement.

Each time Mayor Karen Bass and Governor Gavin Newsom side with violent protests and the intimidation of ICE officers, the greater the chance that an officer will be seriously injured or killed—and the violence will spike. Apparently, both think they are riding a wave of public support, when in fact the latest CBS poll found 54 percent of Americans support such deportations.