NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The ‘Heart’ of Alvin Bragg’s Case Against Trump A nonsensical and irrelevant narrative. by Jacob Sullum

Posted By on May 17th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-heart-of-alvin-braggs-case-against-trump/

Porn star Stormy Daniels says she had sex with former President Donald Trump at a Lake Tahoe hotel in July 2006. To keep her from telling that story, former Trump fixer Michael Cohen says, “the boss” instructed him to pay Daniels $130,000 shortly before the 2016 presidential election.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg says that nondisclosure agreement was a serious crime that undermined democracy by concealing information from voters. Of these three accounts, Bragg’s is the least credible.

“This was a planned, coordinated, long-running conspiracy to influence the 2016 election, to help Donald Trump get elected through illegal expenditures, to silence people who had something bad to say about his behavior,” lead prosecutor Matthew Colangelo said at the beginning of Trump’s trial last month. “It was election fraud, pure and simple.”

Contrary to Colangelo’s spin, there is nothing “pure and simple” about the case against Trump. To begin with, Trump is not charged with “conspiracy” or “election fraud.” He is charged with violating a New York law against “falsifying business records” with “intent to defraud.”

Trump allegedly did that 34 times by disguising his 2017 reimbursement of Cohen’s payment to Daniels as compensation for legal services. The counts include 11 invoices from Cohen, 11 corresponding checks and 12 ledger entries.

Falsifying business records, ordinarily a misdemeanor, becomes a felony when the defendant’s “intent to defraud” includes an intent to conceal “another crime.” Bragg says Trump had such an intent.

What crime did Trump allegedly try to conceal? Prosecutors say it was a violation of an obscure New York law that makes it a misdemeanor for “two or more persons” to “conspire to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

A Landmark on the Road to Decline What the Biden regime and its political operators don’t consider. by Bruce Thornton

Posted By on May 17th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/a-landmark-on-the-road-to-decline/

The normalization of antisemitic terror we have witnessed among protestors since the October 7 attacks on Israel is a portentous landmark on the West’s road to civilizational degeneration. Every dimension of our socio-political order––all three branches of the federal government, and many blue-state governments; popular entertainment and high-brow culture; mainline churches; corporate boards and C-suites; national security and defense agencies, and education from K-12 to universities–– has been corrupted by illiberal, if not antihuman ideologies that undercut the foundations both of our political freedom and equality, and the morality and ethics that nourish both.

We’ve known for decades that our educational systems have been failing to educate the young, even as politics, social fads, and culture war propaganda have replaced foundational skills like reading, writing, basic science, critical thought, and history. More inimical to learning is the illiberal attacks on First Amendment rights to free speech and academic freedom, and the enforcement of a rigid orthodoxy that punishes and “cancels” those who challenge the party line. Such a regime stifles truth and replaces history with false narratives that serve autocratic agendas.

The protests in support of Hamas, antisemitism, and genocide show how ignorant of basic historical facts are many students attending our most prestigious universities. Consider the historical terms like “imperialism” and “colonialism” incessantly chanted like mantras. They are now stripped of their meaning and reduced to question-begging epithets ––“mind-blockers” and “thought-extinguishers,” as the great historian of Soviet mass murder Robert Conquest describes them, which serve “mainly to confuse, and of course to replace, the complex and needed process of understanding with the simple and unneeded process of inflammation.”

“Inflammation” is exactly the purpose of similar clichés like “genocide,” “settlers,” “famine,” “disproportionate,” “Palestinian homeland,” and all the other slogans and chants we’ve heard over the last eight months from the callow, self-righteous protestors. But it’s not just ignorance of history, but also moral idiocy that afflicts the “activists” siding with sadistic killers

And how grotesque is the lack of self-awareness among affluent “snowflake” undergrads who want to trespass, destroy, assault, and burn, and then demand they be fed, accommodated, and never required to be held accountable by the police, district attorneys, their universities, or future employers? They are the products of the same pathologies to which Sallust, the 1st century B.C. Roman historian, attributed the Roman Republic’s demise: “decadence and hubris—the natural dividends of prosperity.” Just as in Rome, the same cultural malignities now dominate our civilization.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Geert Wilders to Join New Dutch Government “‘strictest-ever’ asylum policy” by Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on May 17th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/geert-wilders-to-join-new-dutch-government/

Last November, Dutch voters rallied for Geert Wilders. The PVV party became the largest party in the Dutch parliament. Normally that should have meant that Wilders, who has spoken out against Islamization and globalization, should have been on track to become prime minister. But after quite a few months of negotiation, there will be a coalition government. Wilders isn’t being allowed to be PM but he has announced a tough asylum policy and an end to the EU’s ‘green’ war on farmers.

And the EU, the media and the rest of the machine will do everything possible to stop it.

Dutch voters have come out over and over again against an invasion of their country.

According to November exit poll data, men and women, urban and rural, old and young voted for the far-right party.

In parts of the Netherlands, such as the northeast, the previous election — in which, due to pandemic precautions, 70-plus voters could cast their ballot by post — revealed a generational gap between older voters, who still backed traditional parties, and younger voters, who supported Wilders more often. “The children of PVDA-ers [Labor Party] have become PVV-ers,” said De Voogd, referring to the Freedom Party by its Dutch acronym.

As well as luring voters away from other parties, the Freedom Party tapped into a major new voter potential: Non-voters. Dutch voter analysis has shown that Wilders’ second-largest source of new votes — about 11 percent — had come from people who had abstained in 2021.

And this is the first time there’s a government that may actually act.

The Netherlands has today said it will opt out of European Union rules and bring in its ‘strictest-ever’ asylum policy following Geert Wilders’ shock election victory.

The parties said they would file a request to the European Commission for an opt-out on European asylum policy ‘as soon as possible’. People without a valid residence permit will be deported ‘by force if necessary,’ said the report.

FOREIGN POLICY, OPINION Comments turned off

Only America First Can Reverse the Global Chaos Caused by the Biden Administration It is undeniable that our world today is much more unstable and dangerous because President Biden abandoned President Trump’s successful America First national security policies. By Fred Fleitz

Posted By on May 17th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/05/17/only-america-first-can-reverse-the-global-chaos-caused-by-the-biden-administration/

There is only one word to describe the result of President Biden’s foreign policy: chaos.

Just consider how we have seen the Biden administration treat Israel, one of America’s closest and most important allies.

Biden officials have been far more critical of Israel than Hamas in the aftermath of the horrific October 7 Hamas terrorist attack, during which over 1,200 Israelis were brutally murdered. Biden officials haven’t been demanding that Hamas release the hostages it took during this attack or agree to an immediate cease-fire. Instead, they have been publicly pressuring Israel to stop the war in Gaza because this conflict is extremely unpopular with Biden’s progressive base and is hurting him in the polls.

Moreover, because of his differences with Israel over the war in Gaza, last week Biden said he was withholding weapons from Israel that recently were approved by Congress. But this week, the Biden administration said it was moving forward on a new $1 billion arms deal for Israel.

Adding to this confusion, the Washington Post reported on May 13 that the Biden administration is withholding sensitive intelligence on Hamas and is refusing to share this information until the Netanyahu government makes concessions to not launch a full-scale raid into the southern Gaza city of Rafah. This intelligence reportedly concerns the whereabouts of Hamas’s leadership and Hamas tunnels in southern Gaza.

Think about that. President Biden is actually withholding terrorism-related intelligence from a close U.S. ally while it is at war against a terrorist group.

And it gets worse. Iran fired over 300 missiles and drones at Israel on April 13, the first Iranian attack ever against targets on Israeli soil. There have been more than 150 attacks by Iranian proxies against U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria since October 2023. Yemen’s Houthi rebels have fired dozens of advanced drones and missiles against ships in the Red Sea since last October. And the Biden administration’s refusal to enforce U.S. sanctions against Iran caused its revenues to be $71 billion greater by last fall than they would have been if Trump-era sanctions had been enforced.

These troubling developments in the Middle East are part of a broader deterioration of global security during the Biden administration, including the disastrous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, an increase in Chinese military provocations against Taiwan and in the South China Sea, a surge in North Korean missile launches, major advances in Iran’s nuclear weapons program, and a new anti-Western “axis” comprised of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Brittany Bernstein :Pro-Palestinian ‘Anarchists and Communists’ Claim Responsibility for Vandalism at University of California President’s Office

Posted By on May 17th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/pro-palestinian-anarchists-and-communists-claim-responsibility-for-vandalism-at-university-of-california-presidents-office/

A pro-Palestinian group of “anti-colonial anarchists and communists” says it was behind a recent vandalism attack against the University of California Office of the President.

The group claimed to have released hundreds of cockroaches and defaced the building’s exterior in a Sunday morning assault.

“With the Aurora Borealis above us and the martyrs in our hearts, we attacked the UC Office of the President in solidarity with the Palestinian Resistance,” read a post by the “sacred black and red” on Indybay. “Using a fire extinguisher filled with red paint we covered the facade and smashed seven windows. Then, with access to the building, we released 500 cockroaches inside and emptied a second fire exintguisher [sic] onto the interior.”

However, while the president’s office confirmed to the San Francisco Standard there was damage done to its building, it did not confirm cockroaches had been released into the building. Police are investigating the incident as a “hate-related crime.”

The alleged vandals said they “finalized the act by leaving a water jug inscribed with ‘Bonk’ at the scene — an homage to the militants of Cal Poly Humboldt and the international student encampment movement.” The comment was an apparent reference to a pro-Palestinian protester at Humboldt’s California State Polytechnic University who hit a police officer with an empty water jug in April.

The vandals went on to post a screed about the UC system’s “entanglements” with Israel that calls for the abolition of the UC system.

“The University’s true fascist form has been put on full display, and hiding behind hollow progressive ideals is no longer an option for the dead-eyed desk killers,” the group wrote. “Abolish the UC showed us in 2020 that the University of California is nothing more than a settler colonial project, that their police are protecting the gates of colony, where knowledge is produced and captured by the State to only dig its claws deeper into the flesh of Indigenous lands here and abroad.”

“Let us not forget the UC became co-ed to breed settlers and populate the west coast,” it added. “Speaking only to the UC’s material connection to the Zionist entity obfuscates the extent of the political, theoretical, and cultural entanglements between the UC and the Israeli State. The University does not simply fund Israel, it creates Israel, and launches this white-colony into the post-modern Empire. What does divestment mean when the very essence and foundation of the institution is a fascist regime? Where does Zionism begin and end in the University of California? Is divestment an oxymoron? The UC must be abolished.”

EDUCATION Comments turned off

California University President Placed on Leave after Approving Israel Boycott:Zach Kessel

Posted By on May 17th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/california-university-president-placed-on-leave-after-approving-israel-boycott/

The president of Sonoma State University in California was placed on an indefinite leave of absence two days after he sent an email to the university community announcing that he had acceded to campus encampment organizers’ anti-Israel demands.

Ming-Tung “Mike” Lee issued a statement on Tuesday informing SSU students, faculty, and staff that, after standing for 19 days, the anti-Israel encampment on the university’s lawn had achieved at least one of its goals: an academic boycott of Israel.

“Over the past week, senior administrators met with students and faculty to listen to and discuss student demands. On Friday, May 10 and Tuesday, May 14, I joined the group to hear directly from them,” Lee wrote.

He went on to address the new academic boycott:

SSU will not pursue or engage in any study abroad programs, faculty exchanges, or other formal collaborations that are sponsored by, or represent, the Israeli state academic and research institutions. SSU also commits to immediately updating any SSU pamphlets and SSU-hosted websites that may still be circulating or searchable and to remove hosting or linking to any pamphlets, flyers, or brochures advertising the study abroad program where students are encouraged to study abroad in Israel. SSU will make it clear to any students that any such programs are terminated until further notice and not simply suspended.

Lee also indicated his desire to seek “divestment strategies” in accordance with the encampment organizers’ demands and wrote of his personal condemnation of what he called Israel’s “genocide.”

OPINION, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Left Bows Low and Cries ‘Allahu Akbar’ Phil Shannon

Posted By on May 17th, 2024

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/islam/2024/05/the-left-bows-low-and-cries-allahu-akbar/

Odd bedfellows are often found in politics or war, but is the secular Left’s lovey-dovey relationship with the anti-Semitic, genocidal Hamas fanatics in Gaza and, indeed, Islam generally, really such an odd pairing? We are entitled to speculate because there appears  no limit to what it would take for the woke Left to say, along with a majority of other Australians, ‘to hell with Hamas, to hell with Islam’.  Neither the bestial nature of the Hamas terror attack on Israel and the imported Jew-hate that consequently erupted here in Australia, nor the Muslim teen jihadi’s stabbing of a Sydney bishop, have proved to be a threshold too far for the modern Left.

No matter what depths of depravity are reached by Islam, it remains ring-fenced by the impregnable force-field of ‘Islamophobia’, one of the top sins in the Woke catechism and zealously enforced by the Left, even though ‘Islamophobia’ should more accurately be called ‘Islamo-awareness’ rather than an ‘irrational’ fear of Islam. Whilst Islamo-Fascism has a long history (one common enemy in particular united both the  Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and the Fuhrer, for example), Islamo-Leftism is a relatively new phenomenon in a Left which has traditionally been wary of, indeed hostile to, ‘radical Mohammedans’ (in Trotsky’s words) and their milieu.

So, what is going on with the infatuation of the Left with the barbaric, Jew-killing, gay-hating, women-raping, head-lopping religious fundamentalists of the Islamic faith, and their often silently supportive, more ‘moderate’, brethren?

Islam’s demographic march

Like the rest of the West, Australia is beginning to undergo Islamicisation.  In 1966, Muslims made up fewer than one in a thousand Australians (Islam did not statistically reach even the 0.1 per cent population needed to warrant its own religion category in the Census of that year).  From that invisibly low base, however, the acceleration has been rapid.  By the 2021 Census, Muslims in Australia had reached a population of 813,392 or 3.2 per cent of the total population.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Biden’s $7.5 Billion EV Charger Plan Backfires Spectacularly

Posted By on May 17th, 2024

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/05/17/bidens-7-5-billion-ev-charger-plan-backfires-spectacularly/

At a Rose Garden event this week, President Joe Biden bragged that “Thanks to my Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, we’re building a network of 500,000 charging stations all across America.”

This is about as believable as the story of his uncle’s cannibalistic demise.

The truth is that Biden’s five-year, $7.5 billion effort to jump-start the development of electric vehicle charging stations is doing the opposite. The money has so far produced only eight new charging stations in two years. The overall growth rate in EV charging stations has slowed since he signed that bill. And earlier this month, Tesla gutted its EV charger efforts, dealing the entire scheme a huge blow.

In other words, this is shaping up to be a massive waste of taxpayer money.

The slow rollout of the Biden-approved EV stations is in part due to cumbersome rules and regulations required to access the money. That’s no surprise.

But it’s actually having a broader negative impact, slowing the growth of EV stations overall.

In the two years before Biden signed that infrastructure bill, the number of EV charging stations grew by roughly 20,000, according to data compiled by the Department of Energy. In the two years since, just 16,000 stations went online, even as EV sales accelerated. The result is that the ratio of charging stations to EVs is about half what it was in 2021. The administration says not to worry, because the buildout will soon take off. We aren’t holding our breath.

But even if the stations do start to roll out, these numbers don’t account for the large number of charging ports that aren’t working at any given time because of communication failures, power outages, software bugs, or other problems with the complicated tech.

A survey by J.D. Power found that almost 21% of drivers using public charging stations reported malfunctions. And when a Wall Street Journal reporter went around to 30 fast-charging stations in the Los Angeles area, she encountered problems at more than 40% of them.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Democrats Take Jewish Voters for Granted We are liberal and support Israel. The party risks losing us by pandering to its antisemitic elements. By Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch

Posted By on May 17th, 2024

https://www.wsj.com/articles/democrats-take-jewish-voters-for-granted-israel-antisemitism-e963a0e3?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

American Jews increasingly feel politically homeless. Liberal Jewish voters consider President Biden a longtime friend. At the same time, they are troubled by the growing influence of anti-Israel forces in the Democratic Party. They view Mr. Biden’s freeze on sending some weapons to Israel as evidence of capitulation to a radical fringe. Sen. Chuck Schumer’s recent speech urging Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to resign and call new elections was likewise disconcerting. Many American Jews would like to see Mr. Netanyahu gone, but they know that Mr. Schumer would never have given that speech had he not felt compelled to mollify his party’s hard left. Has a top American official ever called for the removal of a duly and democratically elected leader of an ally, let alone in the middle of a war?

American Jews overwhelmingly support Israel. Most consider the Jewish state an important component of their identity. They distinguish between legitimate criticism of Israel—they are often vocal critics of Israeli policies—and hatred of the Jewish state. Contrary to the impression the media often gives, anti-Zionist Jews are few, a marginal part of the American Jewish community.

Judaism hates war and American Jews share the world’s concern for Palestinian civilians. Revenge is for God, not human beings. We are prohibited even to rejoice in the deaths of enemy combatants, let alone civilians. Jewish tradition recounts God admonishing the angels on high: “Why do you sing songs of praise to me when my children are drowning in the sea?” These children of God were the warriors of Pharaoh, bent on killing every last fleeing Israelite.

Still, most American Jews understand that the West’s nearly exclusive focus on Palestinian casualties—the result of a war that Gaza’s own government launched—distorts reality. This war was imposed on Israel by genocidal forces seeking its destruction. Oct. 7 revealed what is in store for Israel if these forces win. Hamas promised more such massacres. This is the broader context. It is a struggle that involves Israel most acutely because Israel is on the front lines. But if Hamas defeats Israel, its Islamist supporters will come for us in Europe and America. Most Americans understand this and support Israel over Hamas by huge margins.

The explosion of antisemitism on university campuses is a matter of grave concern to American Jews. Simplistic binary categorizations of entire groups of people seem to have taken root in the minds of many professors and students: You are either oppressor or oppressed, racist or antiracist, colonialist or anticolonialist. These aren’t liberal attitudes; they are illiberal. They aren’t progressive views; they are regressive. The abandonment of the liberal order is never good for Jews. We will always find ourselves on the wrong side of the binary categorizations. We remain strongly supportive of Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of a society that judges people not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

BOOKS Comments turned off

‘The elites are hoarding the American Dream’ Batya Ungar-Sargon on the establishment’s betrayal of the working classes.

Posted By on May 17th, 2024

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/05/15/the-elites-are-hoarding-the-american-dream/

Whatever happened to the American Dream? Only a generation ago, millions of Americans still held to this vision of meritocracy. The US prided itself on being the land of opportunity, where the rigid class system of the old world could be overcome. But as Batya Ungar-Sargon lays out in her new book, Second Class: How the Elites Betrayed America’s Working Men and Women, the dream has collided with a new reality. An oligarchy has emerged, propping itself up by keeping the working classes down. The laptop class thrives, while hardworking Americans are increasingly struggling to get by.

Batya discussed all these issues and more on the latest episode of The Brendan O’Neill Show. What follows is an edited extract from the conversation. Listen to the full thing here.

Brendan O’Neill: What has happened to meritocracy in America?

Batya Ungar-Sargon: What’s happened in the US is tragic. Americans still like to see ourselves as a classless society. We want to believe that we’re a nation that has abandoned the burdens of aristocracy. Part of how we left those burdens behind was by believing that the US should adopt a meritocratic drive. We pushed the idea that a person’s talents should raise them up as high as possible. But this drive for meritocracy has effectively calcified into an oligarchy of credentialism.

What I mean by this is that certain kinds of talents, such as being able to sit and study for a very long time, can pretty much guarantee you a successful life in America. But the talents that we need much more, like being able to drive a truck for 12 hours straight or care for the elderly, are treated as though they are worthless. The people who do these tasks – the working classes – are treated like they’re nothing.