NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

A Word About Democracy from a Man Brought Up in a Dictatorship By Alex Gordon

Posted By on November 16th, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/11/a_word_about_democracy_from_a_man_brought_up_in_a_dictatorship.html

I am a Jew, and like many Jews, I fled the land where I was born. That was the Soviet Union. I am far from alone. Seems that at every stage of history, someone has been sure to throw the Jews into the sea. The Jews, however, had already been to the sea – when they left Egypt – and got out safely. That sea was the Red Sea. When I got out of the red, socialist sea, I found a sea of democracy in Israel. And here is what I have since learned:

Under Soviet socialism, there was no democracy. The state controlled the press to the extent that there were no automobile disasters, no mine collapses, no factory fires, no train, streetcar or airplane crashes, no earthquakes nor floods.

There were no natural disasters under socialism. If cold winds blew in the USSR, they came from the West. Imported cold currents and cyclones also came from there. If hot winds blew, they were called Afghans. If there were organized thefts of socialist property, their authors were known to have Jewish surnames.

Bad news was forbidden under socialism. And it seems that people got used to it. How much easier it is to live as a person who is not constantly bombarded with reports of catastrophes and crimes, right? Such a person has a life of calm, other than the aspect of life that was streamlined in long queues for food and goods, all of which were sorely lacking under “developed socialism.”

In a totalitarian state, the majority of the population is doomed to be content, for the alternative is dangerous.

In a democracy, the majority of the population is condemned to dissatisfaction, for the alternative is boring: one is too free to enjoy freedom.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Biden’s Dirty Deal With the Taliban Biden abandoned Americans to protect his deal with the Taliban. The deal isn’t over yet. Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on November 16th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/11/bidens-dirty-deal-taliban-national-security-threat-daniel-greenfield/

Every week new revelations arrive about the scale of Biden’s betrayal in Afghanistan. After months of claiming that only a few hundred Americans had been abandoned behind enemy lines, the real numbers are still growing. Shocking reports continue to come to light including a military memo which claims that over a hundred family members of servicemen may still be trapped under Taliban rule.

Biden and his brass promised an accounting, but have offered only lies and excuses. Congressional hearings have produced nothing except cable news theater. While the Taliban throw parades showing off captured American military equipment, the Biden administration is dispatching $144 million in aid.

With more to come.

The humiliating collapse in Afghanistan is not a mystery. It was the product of a deliberate strategy to maintain relations with the Taliban at any cost. Every step of the disaster was really a betrayal.

Why did the Biden administration abandon Bagram Air Base and the nearby prison facility holding thousands of Taliban, Al Qaeda, and ISIS-K prisoners without notifying the Afghans?

When the Taliban repeatedly violated their agreement to stop the violence, why did the Biden administration still insist on keeping our side of the agreement, withdrawing by the deadline even if it meant leaving Americans behind?

As the Taliban approached Kabul, why was the Biden administration trying to cut a deal to provide a sizable cash delivery if the Taliban included the existing government in its administration?

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Compulsory Racist Training Beliefs are no longer the province of the individual. Tue Nov 16, 2021 Kent Runnells & Loyd Pettegrew

Posted By on November 16th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/11/compulsory-racist-training-kent-runnells-loyd-pettegrew/

Webster’s unabridged dictionary defines the term compulsory as “required by law or a rule; obligatory.” Welcome to the politicized world of Americans. Since words now matter more than ever before, it is important to use the correct word at all times and no “incorrect” words!  “Compulsory” should not be allowed to masquerade as “Critical” but it has.

Freedom of speech enshrined in and protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution has finally come a cropper, at least for conservatives. CRT, or Critical Race Theory, spawned by the Marxist intellectual elite in our colleges and universities, has taken hold of how we think, speak, and act in our everyday lives. It is enforced by the cancel culture that is no longer limited to progressive imbeciles spewing divisive drivel on social media and has been speciously elevated (by the legacy media) to extend it beyond academics to society at large. Its proponents believe it constitutes a legitimate and worthy social construct. The time has come to call it out for what it is—an effort to disingenuously reset the premise of all issues of race so desperately needing an honest debate in these challenging times.

As the CitiJournal’s John Sailer has written, “Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) [CRT’s first cousin] has almost single-handedly propounded the pedagogical concept of ‘social and emotional learning’ (SEL).” To hell with objectivity in math and the sciences. Three times three is no longer permitted to equal nine, because that microagresssively ignores the needs of eight and ten, themselves some secret code for race, gender or other self-identifications that only the truly Woke can perceive. As long as the left is permitted to write the rule book, the right will never have a level playing field.  

MEDIA Comments turned off

Please Stop Trusting Anything The Mainstream Media ‘Report’

Posted By on November 16th, 2021

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/11/16/please-stop-trusting-anything-the-mainstream-media-report/

America’s mainstream, or legacy, media have an agenda. It’s not to subjectively report the truth but to further leftist ideas and policies, all of which are toxic. The press’ disinformation campaign to prop up critical race theory is yet another example of its effort to deceive, manipulate, and divide on behalf of the party it is constantly shilling for.

A new study from the American Enterprise Institute found the media focus on schools teaching the history of slavery and racism, and largely ignore the “bedrock assumptions of CRT, including its explicit rejection of rationality and objectivity.”

AEI’s Frederick M. Hess “examined all news accounts addressing CRT published over a one-year period by four major newspapers (the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today),” and several “influential education press outlets.” All are news accounts. None are opinion pieces.

“Given that this admittedly revolutionary worldview is what motivates many objections to CRT-influenced pedagogy, one would expect news accounts to routinely address it,” Hess writes in “Media’s Misleading Portrayal of the Fight over Critical Race Theory.”

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Missouri teachers told ‘white supremacy’ includes ‘all lives matter,’ calling police on blacks Open records release of Springfield, Mo., training materials shows what prompted teacher lawsuit.By John Solomon

Posted By on November 16th, 2021

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/education/missouri-teachers-told-white-supremacy-includes-english-only-calling

Training materials for the Springfield, Mo., school district told teachers they could be engaging in white supremacy simply by insisting the English language be used or calling police on a black suspect, according to records released under a freedom of information request.

The materials, provided to Just the News, include a 40-plus slide training deck that proclaimed its goal was to train teachers on how to address “systemic racism and xenophobia” in the school district and to understand the difference between oppressors and the oppressed. Critics say the slide deck is part of a larger Critical Race Theory curriculum that parents are increasingly rejecting.

It included an “oppression matrix” that identified privileged social groups capable of oppression as including “white people,” “male assigned at birth,” “gender conforming CIS men and women,” “heterosexuals,” “rich, upper-class people” and “Protestants.”

The victims of oppression, the slide stated, included minorities, gays, transgender people, working class and poor Americans.

Instructing teachers that “systemic racism” was a real phenomenon in America, the training defined systemic racism as a system characterized by “public policies, institutional practices, cultural representations, and other social norms that, while not practiced consciously, reinforce and perpetuate racial group inequity.”

“It identifies dimensions of our history and culture that have allowed privileges associated with ‘whiteness’ and disadvantages associated with ‘color’ to endure and adapt over time,” one slide declared.

The training also gave a broad definition of white supremacy as “a culture which positions white people and all that is associated with them (whiteness) as ideal.”

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Patrick Leahy Will Not Run for the Senate in 2022 By Chris Queen

Posted By on November 16th, 2021

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/chris-queen/2021/11/15/patrick-leahy-will-not-run-for-the-senate-again-n1533034

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) has announced that he will not run for a ninth term in the Senate in 2022.Leahy is the longest-serving sitting senator and has the fourth-longest senatorial tenure of all time. He’s also the only Democrat ever to represent Vermont in the Senate (don’t forget that Bernie Sanders is technically an independent).

In his announcement, Leahy touted his accomplishments: pressing for standards for organic food and banning land mines. He also chaired various committees, including the Appropriations Committee he currently oversees.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

How to Stop Inflation—a Winning Republican Program By David P. Goldman

Posted By on November 16th, 2021

https://pjmedia.com/spengler/2021/11/15/how-to-stop-inflation-a-winning-republican-program-n1532966

Last August I wrote that inflation can crush the Democrats in 2022. After the Republican triumph in Virginia earlier this month, there’s no doubt about it. The 2022 and 2024 elections are the Republicans’ to lose.

Republicans need a clear program to eliminate inflation. Complaining about it won’t help (anyone else old enough to remember Gerry Ford’s “Whip Inflation Now” campaign, or Jimmy Carter’s Moral Equivalent of War, or MEOW?). Inflation is too much money chasing too few goods and services. The Reagan approach was less money (monetary tightening) and more product (tax cuts as an incentive to economic activity). That was designed by the late Nobel Laureate Robert Mundell, the grandfather of supply-side economics.

Establishment Republicans haven’t learned anything in forty years. The Kemp-Roth tax cuts worked wonders because the top federal marginal tax rate stood at 70% when Reagan took office. Now it’s 37%, and cutting from 37% won’t have the same effect. Paul Ryan’s 2017 tax bill cut the headline corporate tax rate but reduced investment incentives, so U.S. corporations spent more money in 2018 buying back their own stock than they did on capital investment. That’s one reason that U.S. supply chains are so creaky today. Trump had the right intentions, but the details fell to Ryan and the tech lobby.

Another part of Reagan’s success was the explosion of digital-age technology, which created new businesses and reduced the cost of computation drastically. I’ve discussed this in a number of lengthier pieces, including this one for American Affairs. That’s because the Defense Department was a driver of innovation rather than a porkbarrel for established defense contractors.

Here’s a six-point program to restore growth without inflation.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Dr. Erich Isaac,Fighter for Israel’s independence, Zionist activist and prominent geographer passes away

Posted By on November 16th, 2021

https://worldisraelnews.com/fighter-for-israels-independence-zionist-activist-and-prominent-geographer-passes-away/

By Atara Beck, World Israel News

One of the last of the Jewish Fighters for the Freedom of Israel (Lehi) and first chairman of Americans for A Safe Israel (AFSI) passed away on Nov. 5.

Dr. Erich Isaac, born in Mainz, Germany, left his birth country with his parents for what was then Mandatory Palestine in 1938. Although he was only nine years old on arrival, he never forgot seeing the countryside on fire as the train took them to Tel Aviv. The conflagration was part of the ongoing 1936 Arab riots.

Isaac grew up in an Orthodox Jewish home. At around the age of his Bar Mitzvah, he became involved in the pre-state, underground Fighters for the Freedom of Israel, or Lehi.

Isaac was so young that he wasn’t allowed to participate fully in one of his first missions — a bank robbery (which is how Lehi raised its money) — and was told he could only be a lookout. (Reminiscing, he said with a smile that, fortunately, no one came.)

Lehi was misunderstood and vilified as a violent gang of thugs during its period of activity. It was referred to negatively as the Stern Gang, named after its founder Avraham “Yair” Stern, who was murdered by the British. The negative attitude toward Lehi persisted even after the modern Jewish state was established. One of its leaders, Israel Eldad — father of Aryeh Eldad, a prominent Israeli medical doctor and politician — was even forbidden by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion from teaching Israeli high schoolers lest he have a bad influence over them.

Over time, Lehi came to be recognized for its contributions, especially once Yitzhak Shamir, one of its leaders, became prime minister in 1983. After that, it won for itself a place in the pantheon of those who fought for the freedom of Israel.

“Once, when we were eating at a Middle Eastern-style restaurant in Jaffa – around 1982 — he walked up to a man,” his son David told World Israel News. “The blood drained from his face when he saw my dad. It was the restaurant owner. He’d been in the same Lehi cell as my dad. My mom, who witnessed this, said that the man was terrified that Dad would reveal that the owner had been in Lehi. Even in the early 1980s, it seems, being a former member of the ‘Stern Gang’ was bad for business…

“Unfortunately, we only know bits and pieces of his time in Lehi. My eldest brother said that once, while walking with Dad in Givatayim [east of Tel Aviv], probably around 1970, he pointed to a wall with bullet holes and said, ‘You see those bullet holes? That’s where I was involved in a gunfight with the British.’”

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Why Palestinians Are Fleeing The Gaza Strip by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on November 15th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17943/palestinians-fleeing-gaza-strip

Referring to the lavish lifestyle led by most Hamas officials in the Gaza Strip and abroad, many Palestinians complained that while the fish are eating the poor emigrants, Hamas leaders continue to enjoy the best fish and seafood on offer in Qatar and the Gaza Strip.

Apparently, the two million Palestinians living under the rule of Hamas have reached the conclusion that it is Hamas, and not Israel, that is responsible for their misery.

“During the past 15 years, Hamas has taken Gaza from bad to worse. Gazans are a people under a brutal Islamist regime who are held hostage to stagnant policies that only serve the interests of Hamas and their global Islamist allies. If the international community could help liberate Gaza from such forces, they could help Gazans create a Dubai on the Med or a new Singapore.” — Ghanem Nusseibeh, a Palestinian Muslim belonging to the oldest Arab family in Jerusalem, Al-Arab News, May 29, 2021.

Blaming Israel for everything wrong in the Gaza Strip may fool many in the US, Canada and the UK. But the Palestinians fleeing Gaza and their families who remain behind know the truth — that it is Hamas that has brought them to the abyss, including the sea in which they are now drowning.

A tragedy that recently hit the Gaza Strip has again exposed the extent of the suffering of Palestinians under the rule of the Iranian-backed group, Hamas.

The tragedy also serves as a reminder of the double standards of the international community in dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, especially the obsession with Israel and the tendency to ignore any wrongdoing on the Palestinian side.

MY SAY: Comments turned off

MY SAY: WHAT’S IN A NAME?

Posted By on November 15th, 2021

I recently saw “The Lehman Trilogy” a splendid play with dazzling narrative, dialogue, acting and set.

In the opening scene a man steps forward and announces himself as “Chaim Lehman” whose name morphed into Henry Lehman.

In my enthusiasm for the play I browsed some reviews:

Laura Collins Hughes, in The New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/14/theater/the-lehman-trilogy-review.html)wrote:

“The year is 1844, he is Heyum Lehmann, and in a moment we will see him reborn as Henry Lehman — his moniker bestowed by a port official too obtuse to comprehend the newcomer’s real name.”

Ms. Hughes is really “too obtuse to comprehend the newcomer’s real name” but don’t blame her.

Wikipedia calls Henry Lehman Hayum….as in ” Lehman was born under the name of Hayum Lehmann.”

Google spells it “Haym” when writing about Chaim Salomon the financier of rebels against British rule in the Revolutionary War.

Would  the foregoing phonetic spellers  write She Jinping instead of Xi Jinping.  rsk