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January 2025

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Hamas Deal Puts U.S. Boots on the Ground by Daniel Greenfield

By on January 31st, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21366/gaza-boots-on-the-ground

Reprinted by kind permission of  Front Page Magazine.

The Biden administration rolled Steve Witkoff, Donald Trump’s envoy, into signing off on their deal to save Hamas…

Witkoff admitted to Fox News that he had done nothing but agree to the Biden administration’s May 27 protocol… and all he had done was to “speed up the process” by pressuring Israel into making every possible concession to Hamas. By getting Trump to accept the Biden deal, Witkoff and his allies in the Trump transition team, some of whom are associated with the pro-Iran Koch network, had also bound President Trump to a comprehensive nation-building project…

Trump is right to be skeptical. And he was right when he said: “You certainly can’t have the people that were there. Most of them are dead. But they didn’t exactly run it well. They run viciously and badly. You can’t have that.”

But the deal foisted on him by Biden, Qatar, Witkoff and his Koch network allies does just that. It saves Hamas and puts the terrorists back in power.

The Trump administration can exit the Biden deal and the sooner we do it, the easier it will be.

Any rebuilding will be to the benefit of Hamas. And will put billions into the pockets of Islamic terrorists, just the way that our reconstruction projects in Afghanistan financed the Taliban.

And having US veterans risking their lives to inspect terrorists moving around Gaza is senseless.

American soldiers are headed to Gaza.

They’re not there to fight Islamic terrorists, but to secure the disastrous Biden deal that saved Hamas by monitoring and inspecting the Gazans traveling across the “Netzarim corridor.”

One of the companies is UG Solutions, founded by a former Special Forces veteran, which hires US military vets to provide security. Hiring veterans as contractors became a common practice during the War on Terror because it allowed politicians to avoid accountability for US casualties.

Hundreds of Americans were killed working as contractors in Iraq, including, in one of the most infamous incidents in the war, when four ex-Special Forces contractors working for Blackwater had their bodies dragged through the streets, were beaten, hacked and hanged from a bridge while the Arab Muslim mobs of men, women and children cheered. The scene played out again in Benghazi, when two former Navy SEALS working as CIA contractors were murdered.

How soon until it plays out in Gaza?

Bringing in veterans as contractors has been a longtime way to disguise “boots on the ground.” But the men in those boots are still veterans who believe they’re serving their country. And when they die, it’s Americans dying to carry out the policies of their Commander in Chief.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

We Need a Reckoning on the 1619 Project By Peter Wood

By on January 31st, 2025

https://tomklingenstein.com/we-need-a-reckoning-on-the-1619-project/

The New York Times launched its torpedo at American history on August 18, 2019. I speak, of course, of “The 1619 Project,” which first emerged as a special edition of the newspaper’s Sunday magazine. In the ensuing five years and five months, the 1619 Project outgrew its original 100 pages of newsprint. It became a somber 50 second television commercial on February 9, 2020, that aired during the Academy Awards and featured the singer, song-writer, and actress Janelle Monáe. In 2021, it ballooned into a 590-page hardback book, supertitled “A New Origin Story.” In 2023, Hulu turned it into a six-part “docu-series” with Oprah Winfrey as executive producer.  

During those five-plus years, the New York Times ran thousands of print advertisements for the “project.” It substantively revised the magazine text without any public acknowledgment, which means unless you saved the original copy, you can’t know exactly what it said. 

One thing it said, on the inside back cover, was that the 1619 Project was on its way to the nation’s schools as a curriculum, including “a lesson plan that introduces this issue [of the magazine], summaries of the articles, an index of historical terms used, suggested activities that engage students creatively and intellectually and opportunities to connect with New York Times journalists featured in this issue.” 

That declaration came from the Pulitzer Center, a nonprofit founded in 2006 that attempts to amplify journalism that it judges to have broad public importance. It describes itself as “the venue for the world’s most innovative and consequential reporting, with journalism as the key element for mobilizing society through audience engagement strategies.” In other words, the Pulitzer Center is an activist organization that eschews the old journalistic ideal of providing the information people need to decide for themselves. It instead seeks to “mobilize” the public. And, as it happens, the reporting it selects for this mobilization is entirely of a progressive character.

Before the New York Times unleashed the 1619 Project, it entered into an agreement with the Pulitzer Center, in which the center became the Times’ “educational partner” for the project.  The center assumed the task of translating the 1619 Project into “programs for K-12 Classrooms, out-of-school time programs, and higher education programs.” 

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

The Frights of Climate Catastrophe in the Disco Era In the 1970s, the looming ice age was the climate crisis du jour—proof that today’s “settled science” may not be so settled after all. By Anthony J. Sadar

By on January 31st, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/01/31/the-frights-of-climate-catastrophe-in-the-disco-era/

Y.M.C.A. is back and badder than ever. The Trump team helped to resurrect this 1978 disco icon. Yet some in the media are not hitting the dance floor and the sphere of “settled science” is trying to bury the cultural climate of the 1970s.

Today’s popular narrative about climate change contends that the public and scientists in the 1970s were not all that concerned about global cooling during that decade can be categorized as disinformation, or at least misinformation.

I was an undergraduate student of meteorology at Penn State in the mid-70s and even with published papers to the contrary, there was a real concern about the emergence of a new ice age. (Beyond Penn State, some non-science students were warned that soon polar bears might be roaming New York City. That turned out to be true, but thankfully the bears have been confined to the Central Park Zoo.)

Perhaps a majority of scientists weren’t overly worried that the downward global temperature trend since the 1940s would continue; however, I don’t recall much angst over imminent global warming either.

Also, cover stories in Time, Newsweek, and other popular magazines sensitized people to a worldwide cooling trend. And the public was primed for disastrous chilling with books confidently stating, “A handful of scientists denied evidence that the Earth’s climate was cooling until the 1970s, when bizarre weather throughout the world forced them to reconsider their views” (from The Cooling by Lowell Ponte, 1976). The book’s cover pondered, “Has the next ice age already begun? Can we survive it?”

Or, from Our Changing Weather: Forecast of Disaster? by Claude Rose in 1977: “Northern hemisphere temperatures have been falling steadily since the 1940s. Glaciers are advancing once again. Scientists no longer debate the coming of a new ice age: the question now is when?” The front cover of this book teased, “Will our fuel run out? Will our food be destroyed? Will we freeze?”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

John Brennan’s Protests to President Trump Lifting his Security Clearances are Absurd John Brennan’s outrage over losing his security clearance is as hollow as the falsehoods he peddled to shield Biden in 2020. By Fred Fleitz

By on January 31st, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/01/31/john-brennans-protests-to-president-trump-lifting-his-security-clearances-are-absurd/

Former CIA Director John Brennan is angry that President Trump signed an executive order last week lifting his security clearances. The president took this action because Brennan was one of 51 former intelligence officers who meddled in the 2020 presidential election by signing a letter they knew falsely claimed a damaging press story about a laptop owned by President Biden’s son Hunter was Russian disinformation.

Brennan indignantly asserted in an MSNBC interview that President Trump’s action was “bizarre” and said he misrepresented the laptop letter, claiming that based on their intelligence experience, the signatories were “deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case.”

Brennan also said he needs to hold security clearances as a former intelligence officer so administration officials can consult with him on national security matters.

Brennan’s objections are absurd and justify the President’s executive order.

Brennan’s claims defending the laptop letter are patently false. The 51 former intelligence officers did not sign the letter as a well-intentioned initiative to warn the American people about a possible Russian attempt to influence the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. They knew this wasn’t true.

We know this because one of the principal organizers of the letter, former acting CIA Director Michael Morell, testified during an investigation by the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees about the letter’s purpose:

“There were two intents. One intent was to share our concern with the American people that the Russians were playing on this issue, and two, it was to help Vice President Biden.”

The House investigation also found that the letter signers were informed “of the intent of the statement prior to its publication, writing that the statement was meant to insulate Vice President Biden from serious electoral vulnerabilities created by his family’s influence peddling activities.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

FLASHBACK: Biden’s FAA Focused on Diversity, Hiring Workers With Severe Disabilities Matt Margolis

By on January 31st, 2025

https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2025/01/30/flashback-bidens-faa-focused-on-diversity-hired-workers-with-severe-disabilities-n4936514

While we don’t know yet what caused the midair collision between the U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter and a civilian airliner in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday night, renewed attention is turning to Biden-era DEI initiatives at the FAA and whether they may have played a role.

“The Federal Aviation Administration is actively recruiting workers who suffer ‘severe intellectual’ disabilities, psychiatric problems and other mental and physical conditions under a diversity and inclusion hiring initiative spelled out on the agency’s website,” the New York Post reported a year ago.

“Targeted disabilities are those disabilities that the Federal government, as a matter of policy, has identified for special emphasis in recruitment and hiring,” the FAA’s website stated. “They include hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability, and dwarfism.”

The FAA’s website also noted that individuals with “severe” mental and physical disabilities are the most underrepresented group within the federal workforce.

“Because diversity is so critical, FAA actively supports and engages in a variety of associations, programs, coalitions, and initiatives to support and accommodate employees from diverse communities and backgrounds. Our people are our strength, and we take great care in investing in and valuing them as such,” the website stated.

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MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

‘We Never Gave Up’: Texas Whistleblower Went Toe-to-Toe with the Gender-Industrial Complex — and Won By David Zimmermann

By on January 31st, 2025

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/we-never-gave-up-texas-whistleblower-went-toe-to-toe-with-the-gender-industrial-complex-and-won/

Just last week, Dr. Eithan Haim came days away from going to federal prison — and he has no regrets.

As federal prosecutors were preparing to accelerate the now-dismissed criminal case against the Texas Children’s Hospital whistleblower, President Donald Trump’s Justice Department stepped in just in time.

On Friday, the Justice Department’s new leadership dropped the second superseding indictment against the surgeon, who had been accused by the Biden Justice Department of violating the privacy of patients protected under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). The only problem is he didn’t.

Haim disclosed carefully redacted medical records in May 2023, showing that Texas Children’s physicians were surgically inserting hormonal devices into gender-dysphoric pediatric patients as part of the hospital’s transgender program. No individually identifiable health information was unethically revealed. Furthermore, he exposed that the Houston-based hospital was secretly continuing trans medical procedures in violation of Texas law after it had supposedly ended them.

Haim felt it was his moral obligation to tell the truth, even if he was punished for his actions.

“In the very beginning, I knew if I was gonna blow the whistle that we’d have to go fully in no matter the consequences,” Haim told National Review. “I asked my wife, ‘Is this something you’re willing to die for?’ And she said, ‘Yes.’ And I said, ‘Yes,’ too. It sounds kind of hyperbolic, but that was the only way we would do it.”

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Enough Is Enough Noah Rothman

By on January 31st, 2025

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/enough-is-enough/

The campus experience at Columbia University over the last week is illustrative of the hell to which America’s students have been consigned since the October 7 massacre.

As students embarked on the spring semester last week, a “band of masked keffiyeh-clad students” intruded on a course on modern Israeli history where they threw “flyers featuring a smashed Star of David underneath a boot, a burning Israeli flag, and weapon-carrying militants at students,” Fox News reported. The vandals continued to distribute literature insisting that “the enemy will not see tomorrow” and announcing their intention to “burn Zionism to the ground,” until this week, when they resorted to insurrection. “We cemented the sewage lines of the entire building,” the Columbia branch of Students for Justice in Palestine announced, “forcing them to shut down business-as-usual.”

It’s almost as if Columbia’s administrators learned no lessons from their efforts to appease the violent professional demonstrators who took over their campus last year when they threatened and harassed Jews, did violence to their campus, and forced the administration to reluctantly sic the NYPD on them.

The same could be said of colleges across the country. Despite the humiliation Republicans duly meted out to a few Ivy League presidents for their conspicuous tolerance of antisemitism, this menace still plagues colleges across the country. The onset of a fragile cease-fire between Israel and Hamas has had no effect on this tempo of antisocial activism, revealing once and for all that the unrest is fueled not by the war Hamas started but by the existence of the Jewish state.

Something must be done to force American colleges to do their jobs — elementary stuff, such as protecting from physical injury and stultifying intimidation the students who pay exorbitant sums to be there. “This failure is unacceptable,” an executive order promulgated by the president last night read, “and ends today.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Air Traffic Control and the DEI Debate By Dan McLaughlin

By on January 31st, 2025

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/air-traffic-control-and-the-dei-debate/

After last night’s air disaster culminated a series of near-misses over the past four years, American air travel remains astonishingly safe, and the likelihood is that a full investigation will find that last night’s crash of an Army Blackhawk helicopter into a commercial airliner was (1) a total freak accident, (2) the result of a mechanical problem with the helicopter, and/or (3) human error by the helicopter pilot, perhaps compounded by poor air-traffic control. Efforts to blame this on Donald Trump, whose transportation secretary Sean Duffy only took office yesterday morning, say more about the people pointing fingers than about the actual causes of the tragedy.

All that being said, it’s worth noting here as the inevitable hurdy-gurdy cranks into gear that Trump has actually moved to fix a problem with how we hire air-traffic controllers, in order to reorient it toward hiring the best people in order to make air-traffic control safer. The Biden administration was sued last year over this:

From 1989 to 2013, the Collegiate Training Initiative program was a pipeline to a career in air traffic control. The program aimed to ensure future air traffic controllers had the skills and knowledge necessary to carry out the job. More than ten years ago, the Obama Administration scrapped 1000 qualified candidates. The administration’s justification was that the pool of applicants was not diverse enough, so they would be purged from consideration. Instead of hiring candidates with the most competency, individuals were elevated for hiring consideration based on their race…I, along with Mountain States Legal Foundation, am litigating a class action lawsuit on behalf of more than 900 prospective air traffic controllers who studied, took the pre-employment exam, and passed the test with flying colors but were dismissed because of their skin color. Our lawsuit seeks justice for all air traffic control candidates who chose this career, dedicated their lives and education to it, and were summarily denied a job for no reason other than the color of their skin. In a system with only 14,000 air traffic controllers, purging a thousand of the next generation’s best and brightest was irresponsible and unsustainable.

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MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

‘The Brutalist’: A Must-See Masterpiece? Or a self-indulgent, exploitative, Hollywood agitprop? by Danusha V. Goska

By on January 31st, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm-plus/the-brutalist-a-must-see-masterpiece/

I have never witnessed the avalanche of acclaim for a new release such as I’ve seen for the 2024 film The Brutalist. The Brutalist is the biopic of a fictional character. Adrien Brody plays Laszlo Toth, a Hungarian Holocaust survivor who is commissioned to build a Doylestown, Pennsylvania community center in the Brutalist architectural style. A man of intense artistic dedication and integrity, he overcomes roadblocks, and realizes his dream.

Why is a movie about a Hungarian immigrant in Doylestown, PA advancing like a tornado through a wheat field, toppling critics into adoring prostration? Filmmaker Brady Corbet doesn’t understand. “If something is really radical, people initially don’t like it … people are connecting with The Brutalist … I’m completely confused.”

Below, a review of reaction to the film, a summary of the film, and then my own take on The Brutalist.

The Brutalist is a three-hour-thirty-five-minute long period drama. It was directed by former child actor Brady Corbet and co-written by Corbet and his life partner, Norwegian actress Mona Fastvold. It stars Adrien Brody, who won an Academy Award for his depiction of real-life Holocaust survivor Wladyslaw Szpilman in the 2002 Roman Polanski masterpiece, The Pianist. The Brutalist has been nominated for dozens of awards. It racked up five wins at the Venice International Film Festival, and Golden Globes for Best Motion Picture – Drama; Best Actor for Adrien Brody; and Best Director for Brady Corbet.

The Brutalist enjoys a 93% positive rating at RottenTomatoes. Fico Cangiano’s review is representational. “Stunning … sweeping … epic. An ambitious exploration of the immigrant experience, the pursuit of the American dream and human behavior. The best film of 2024.” The Atlantic says “An expansive but stark look at the successes and challenges involved in making personal art in a capitalist system.” The Washington Post says, “An irresistible object — Laszlo — meets the immovable forces of American caste, capitalism, aesthetics and exclusion … [these] slowly tighten” their “stranglehold on Laszlo’s dreams.” The San Francisco Chronicle reports, “Adrien Brody is a walking open wound.” American capitalists “attempt to distort his vision for budgetary or bonehead creative reasons. Yes, The Brutalist is a metaphor for ambitious personal filmmaking.” The Standard decrees that there is only one way to react to The Brutalist. “It is impossible not to recognize The Brutalist as anything other than a filmmaking triumph … a brutal parable for all immigrants and artists who struggle to sublimate themselves in the meatgrinder of America.”

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

A Day in the Life of a Christian – Under Pakistan’s Blasphemy Laws When, exactly, will the protests in the West begin? by Uzay Bulut

By on January 31st, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/a-day-in-the-life-of-a-christian-under-pakistans-blasphemy-laws/

In Pakistan, blasphemy laws carry a death sentence. These notorious statutes are often used abusively for settling personal scores, making personal gains or for satisfying grudges that one neighbor may have against another.

The country’s blasphemy laws are also used to target minority groups, and Christians are disproportionately affected. Indeed, roughly a quarter of all blasphemy accusations target Christians. Business rivals accuse Christian men of blasphemy as a means of destroying their business and reputation.

In 2020, a Christian man was sentenced to death for having allegedly sent “blasphemous” text messages to his former supervisor. He has been held in custody since 2013.

While the death sentence is seldom carried out, people accused of blasphemy are vulnerable to attack or murder by rampaging Muslim mobs. In June 2024, for instance, an elderly man was killed by mob violence after being accused of desecrating the Quran.

In its 2024 report, the human rights organization Open Doors found that anti-Christian violence in Pakistan has been at the maximum possible level for many years. Violence against Christians does not only include widely publicized attacks against the Christian community, such as in the city of Jaranwala in August 2023, but also small scale, localized, and increasingly persistent killings and attacks on Christians and churches, often spurred on by the country’s notorious blasphemy laws, which have been expanded in scope and punishment.

Christians in Pakistan are more frequently arrested and charged than acquitted, and although not all situations are linked with blasphemy accusations, those are the most prominent examples.

In 2023, Pakistan’s National Assembly passed legislation that increased punishment for some forms of blasphemy by raising the penalties from three years to no fewer than 10 years for insulting the companions, wives, and family members of Islam’s founder, Muhammad. The widening of the scope of blasphemy laws and the increase in penalties on conviction demonstrate the level of importance politics and society attach to this topic.

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