EDUCATION Comments turned off

Ilya Shapiro, Noam Josse What Now on Campus? Donald Trump’s victory throws down a challenge to the unsustainable extremism at America’s colleges and universities.

Posted By on December 3rd, 2024

https://www.city-journal.org/article/what-now-on-campus

With Donald Trump’s election victory, U.S. college campuses have been humbled. The day after, the atmosphere at Columbia University was mournful, as Student Services handed out free pizza for students who needed support processing the results.

Students’ dismay at Trump’s victory contrasts with their jubilant, headline-grabbing anti-Israel activism over the past year. Ironically, student activists probably helped the Trump campaign by alienating moderates and creating an “uncommitted” movement, whose followers may have declined to vote for Kamala Harris.

Regardless of how many young people left the presidential line blank or voted for Jill Stein, college-educated voters generally were one of Democrats’ strongest cohorts in 2024. They were one of the few groups among whom Harris did not lose ground relative to Joe Biden in 2020, roughly matching Biden’s 12-point advantage in 2020. She outperformed Biden among white college-educated voters, which offset her relative underperformance among college-educated racial minorities.

College-educated voters’ preference for Democratic candidates is no surprise. Campuses incubate opposition to many of the ideas associated with the Trump campaign: patriotic pride in America and its history; a desire for the government to treat all Americans equally; and a preference for the interests of U.S. citizens to those of foreigners. DEI grandees and their acolytes consider such views retrograde and even racist; they believe, evidence notwithstanding, that Trump won by riling up a hateful white base. The broader electorate doesn’t see it that way. Their choice of Trump delivered a strong message to students, particularly at so-called elite schools: ravings about decolonization and gender theory are nonstarters for ordinary Americans.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

US follows France in warning Israel over ceasefire violations Restraint “from all sides” is necessary for the truce to hold, U.S. sources told Israeli media.

Posted By on December 3rd, 2024

https://www.jns.org/us-follows-france-in-warning-israel-over-ceasefire-violations/?utm_campaign=Daily%20Syndicate%20Emails&utm

Washington has backed up Paris’s assertions that Israel is violating the terms of last week’s ceasefire agreement with Lebanon, that formally ended 14 months of hostilities with the Hezbollah terrorist group.

U.S. presidential envoy Amos Hochstein, who played a pivotal role in brokering the deal, conveyed a message to officials in Jerusalem that they are not abiding by the truce terms, Ynet reported on Monday.

Sources told the Hebrew news outlet that the Americans believe that there have been violations on the Israeli side, primarily its use of surveillance drones over the skies of Beirut.

The sources stressed that for the ceasefire to hold, “restraint is required from all sides.”

Paris, a member of the Washington-led monitoring mechanism overseeing the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire agreement, had accused Jerusalem of committing 52 ceasefire violations, according to Hebrew media reports on Sunday that cited French diplomatic sources.

The sources alleged that Israel had bypassed the established channels for reporting violations before taking action.

The reports also claim that three Lebanese civilians were killed and highlight an increase in Israeli drone activity, claiming that low-altitude flights over Beirut had resumed.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

America’s future depends on Trump’s promise to punish woke universities Jonathan Tobin

Posted By on December 3rd, 2024

https://www.jns.org/americas-future-depends-on-trumps-promise-to-punish-woke-universities/

A leftist-dominated educational establishment and its media enablers fear that he will make good on his vow to defund institutions that embrace DEI and tolerate antisemitism.

Occidental College seemingly waved the white flag last week in its efforts to defend itself against charges of tolerating antisemitism on its Los Angeles campus. The school agreed to a “sweeping settlement” with the Anti-Defamation League and the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law that acknowledged the ongoing hardships, harassment and discrimination faced by Jewish students since the Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Occidental’s apathy to all this, which was little different from what has been happening at dozens if not hundreds of other American institutions of higher learning, violated its obligations to prohibit such discrimination under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

But for many observers, the context for the agreement was not so much a belated interest by one school to address the wrongs suffered by its Jewish students. Rather, it was the fact that it came a few weeks after the election victory of Donald Trump. As one headline in a news article about the settlement put it, “College settles antisemitism claims before Trump can make good on accreditation threats.”

Trump repeatedly made clear during the 2024 election campaign that the educational establishment would be as much a target for his second administration as the denizens of the Washington “swamp” such as the liberal-dominated federal bureaucracy that did so much to sabotage and obstruct his first four years in the White House.

More will hinge, however, on whether he makes good on this promise than the fate of school administrators or even the safety of Jewish students.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

“The End of Identity Politics?” Sydney Williams

Posted By on December 3rd, 2024

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Here we are in early December, almost a quarter of the way through the 21st Century. Growing up in the mid-part of the 20th Century, I thought I was living in the future. The 19th Century – the past – was ever-present in grandparents, great aunts and uncles, and older neighbors. The “future,” foretold in books like The Time Machine, Brave New World, 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 and movies like The War of the Worlds and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, provided fanciful entertainment, but hardly accurate predictions.

But the world does move on, and change is one constant we can count on.  Politically things change. The Party of Lincoln lost the black vote. The Party of segregation became the party of civil rights. Today we are going through another political change, as the Party of the working class is becoming the Party of elites, and of those dependent on government, and the mindless woke. And the Party of Lincoln, the Party of opportunity, is beginning once again to make inroads among the nation’s minorities.

Mr. Trump’s victory on November 5th may have marked the end of identity politics as we know it. Economic class, the election showed, mattered more than ethnicity, race or gender. Identity politics is based on the natural tendency for people of a specific race, ethnicity, gender, cultural, or religious group to band together, in friendship and to rectify past injustices. But that tendency has been employed and advantaged by politicians who, with the assistance of allies in the media, have divided people into oppressors and oppressed. Identity politics has led to an absence of focus on issues more relevant to individuals.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Turkey Unleashes Jihadist Terror on Syria by Uzay Bulut

Posted By on December 3rd, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21178/syria-jihadist-terror-turkey

The government of Turkey has supported jihadists in Syria since the beginning of the civil war in 2011. Turkey has allowed Islamists to use the Turkish territory to cross the border to Syria to join terrorist organizations there.

Turkey has been targeting the US allies against ISIS through military incursions such as the 2018 “Operation Olive Branch” and 2019 “Operation Peace Spring.”

In June 2020, HTS began replacing the Syrian pound with the Turkish lira, indexing the prices of goods to the lira. The Turkish government, through its massive economic support to the group, thereby became a lifeline for the jihadist HTS.

The capture of Aleppo by Turkey-backed, Al-Qaeda-affiliated forces is terrifying news for Kurds, Yazidis, Christians and everyone else whom jihadists perceive as their prey. If one is celebrating the advance of these Islamists invading parts of Syria, one is celebrating the advance of bloodthirsty jihadists who want to establish an Islamic caliphate and would happily slaughter anyone who stood in their way.

Turkey is unleashing another gruesome jihad in Syria.

On November 27, jihadist terror groups — led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (Organization for the Liberation of the Levant; HTS) — launched a coordinated attack on Aleppo Governorate in northwestern Syria, cut off the main highway from Damascus to Aleppo, captured and killed dozens of Syrian Army soldiers, promised mass executions and beheadings “in front of TV cameras,” and seized control of a military base and several villages.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Vast Invisible Power Means vast visible injustice for the people. by Lloyd Billingsley

Posted By on December 3rd, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm-plus/vast-invisible-power/

As the name implies, the Supreme Court of the United States is the nation’s highest judicial body and Chief Justice John Roberts is the highest ranking judge. Behind the scenes in recent years, a secret court has usurped SCOTUS and a person outside of that body became the most powerful judge. If that seems a stretch, consider James Boasberg, Chief Judge for the US District Court for the District of Columbia.

The San Francisco native moved to Washington as a child when his father accepted a position in the Office of Economic Opportunity, which administered many of President Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty” programs. So Boasberg fils is something of a “Great Society” diaper baby. The Yale law alum rose through the ranks and in 2011 president Obama, the composite character formerly known as Barry Soetoro, appointed Boasberg to the DC District Court.

In 2014, Chief Justice John Roberts tapped Boasberg for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, better known as the FISA court, established in 1978 during the administration of Jimmy Carter as part of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. From January 2020 to May 2021, Boasberg served as that court’s presiding judge, a powerful position with important distinctions. The FISA court operates in secret, no advocates for the accused are present, and only the government’s arguments are considered. This is basically a deep state star chamber, but there’s more to it.

Unlike Supreme Court justices, the presiding FISA judge is not subject to confirmation by the U.S. Senate. That invites a look Boasberg’s treatment of Kevin Clinesmith, Assistant General Counsel in the National Security and Cyber Law Branch of the FBI’s Office of General Counsel. Clinesmith was assigned to the case of Carter Page, an American citizen and U.S. Navy veteran who worked on Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and had also served as an asset for the CIA. Clinesmith altered an email to show that Page was not a CIA asset, subjecting the American citizen to surveillance under FISA.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

TIPP Poll: Six Straight Presidential Wins Called With Unmatched Accuracy

Posted By on December 3rd, 2024

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/12/03/tipp-poll-six-straight-presidential-wins-called-with-unmatched-accuracy/

Editor’s note: For the past several years, Issues & Insights has worked with TIPP on a monthly poll, the results of which we published each week. This week, TIPP celebrated its unbroken streak of being the most accurate presidential pollster since 2004. The article below has been reprinted with permission. For more information about TIPP, click here. To read our I&I/TIPP poll reports, click here.

We are proud to share our 2024 performance with our readers. The TIPP Poll is the only national poll to correctly identify the winners of the last six presidential elections. By various measures, it consistently ranks as the most accurate. Here, we provide the data to substantiate this claim.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Gentle Art of Negotiating with Terrorists by Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on December 2nd, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21170/negotiating-with-terrorists

Offering to negotiate with Islamic terrorists is a statement of weakness. Jihadists only offer to negotiate out of fear, weakness or to entrap us, and they assume we do the same thing. Nothing would ever convince them that we genuinely want to live in peace with them, or that we prefer alternatives to violence. So any time we offer to negotiate, they see it as weakness or a trick.

If our diplomats ever understood this cultural reality, they would stop being baffled when the negotiations fall apart.

Western liberals believe that peace will be achieved when all the wars end, but peace in the Muslim world is not a permanent state; rather it is a temporary truce in an endless war. Liberals tell us that the problem is a lack of understanding, but the lack of understanding is coming from them.

The first rule of negotiating with Islamic terrorists is don’t. The second rule is if you do it, do it with heavy artillery.

Islamic terrorists don’t negotiate. They make demands in hopes of securing concessions without actually giving up anything. Only the most dedicated historian could find an example of a negotiation process during which the Islamic terrorists made an actual concession, followed through on it, and did not later take it back or turn right around and go back to terrorism.

The most prominent counterexamples are the three decades of negotiations between Israel and Islamic terrorist groups, which initially won a round of Nobel Peace Prizes and then degenerated into an endless war during which the terrorists took back every concession they ever made, did not follow through on any of them, and used Israeli concessions to become a much worse threat.

Negotiating with the Taliban, Hezbollah and Iran all had the same end result.

Offering to negotiate with Islamic terrorists is a statement of weakness. Jihadists only offer to negotiate out of fear, weakness or to entrap us, and they assume we do the same thing. Nothing would ever convince them that we genuinely want to live in peace with them, or that we prefer alternatives to violence. So any time we offer to negotiate, they see it as weakness or a trick.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

POSITIVE NEWS FROM ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN READ IT ALL

Posted By on December 2nd, 2024

Late news from Israel hints of a tenuous cease fire in Lebanon against Hezbollah. Put that news in the “we’ll see” category. The one thing that never ceases in Israel, 24/7, even during war, is the ongoing and outsize research and development of technology, medicine, and science to bring succor and hope to billions of people in in the world. To his enormous credit Michael Ordman’s weekly newsletter details the foregoing.  rsk

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com 

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

This is a truly dark day for our nation Our political class has just sanctioned death for the ‘worthless’. Brendan O’Neill

Posted By on December 2nd, 2024

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/11/29/this-is-a-truly-dark-day-for-our-nation/

For me, the grimmest thing about today’s ‘assisted dying’ debate in the House of Commons was when MPs emitted an audible groan upon hearing about Canada’s state-sanctioned killing of the wretched. It was the Conservative MP Danny Kruger who had the temerity to mention these unfortunates put to death by their own government. He referred to ‘medics’ in Canada, who are ‘specialists in assisted death’, who ‘personally kill hundreds of patients a year’. A collective whine shook the chamber as MPs were confronted with the truth of what they were voting for: the right of state-approved bodies to slay certain members of the public. ‘If honourable members have a difficulty with the language’, Kruger shot back, ‘then I wonder what they’re doing here’.

The groan spoke volumes. With their eye-rolling, our lawmakers exposed how utterly out of touch they are with the strife of the sick and poor who have indeed been killed – yes, killed – in Canada. They have so uncritically bought into the shadowy, euphemistic lingo about a ‘right to die’ that they appear to have forgotten that it involves the literal killing of a person on the basis that his or her life, in the state’s eyes, is miserable and ludicrous. Under Canada’s regime of death, this has included killing people who are not even terminally ill but who simply have ‘unmet social needs’, such as a lack of housing or of future prospects. Sorry for boring you by mentioning that poor people are being put to death under the very banner of ‘assisted dying’ you just pushed through the Commons.

The moan of the MPs was a sign of what was to come: following what was by all accounts a thin debate, MPs voted by 330 to 275 in favour of the bill to legalise assisted dying in England and Wales. After just five hours – shorter than the debates some of us have with mates in the pub – a majority of MPs said ‘aye’ to Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill. This doesn’t mean the bill will become law. There will be months of parliamentary scrutiny. But it does mean the bill has cleared a major hurdle. It does mean we’re on the road to a new, misnamed ‘health’ regime in which terminally ill adults expected to die within six months will be permitted to seek the state’s assistance in hurrying them off this mortal coil. It does mean we’re a step closer to people being able to apply for and receive the state’s assistance in taking their own lives.