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March 2025

A savage rupturing of our civilisation A new report leaves no doubt: 7 October was a hyper-violent onslaught against Jews and humanity. Brendan O’Neill

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/03/20/a-savage-rupturing-of-our-civilisation/

They reduced Jews to ashes. In 2023, a fascist army burnt Jews to death. The Jews’ names were Ram Itamari, 56, a transportation manager, and his wife, Lili Itamari, 63, a schoolteacher. They were in their home in Kibbutz Kfar Aza in southern Israel on 7 October 2023 when the unit of anti-Semites showed up. The gunmen saw the Jews through a window so they set fire to the house. It burned at such a scorching temperature that when the Israeli authorities finally went in, they found not one trace of the couple’s bodies. It took archaeologists three weeks of sifting through the soot to discover a sliver of bone. It was DNA-tested. It was them.

It is the 21st century and we are searching among ash for the remains of Jews. Following decades of the cry, ‘Never Again’, humanity once more found itself foraging in the blackened remains of a building for the incinerated remnants of the Jews who lived there. This detail from the new UK parliamentary report on the barbarism of 7 October should chill the blood of everyone who reads it. For it is 7 October’s clearest echo, among thousands of clear echoes, of the Nazi atrocities of the last century. This report leaves no doubt: 7 October was more than terrorism, more than a war crime – it was a savage rupturing of human civilisation itself.

The 7 October Parliamentary Commission Report, overseen by historian Lord Roberts, is a horrifying and essential document. It bears witness, in grim, meticulous detail, to the carnival of anti-Semitic violence carried out by Hamas and its allies on 7 October. It is a forensic account, over 300 pages, of every crime committed by those armies of anti-Semities on that darkest day. And it names and pays tributes to the Jews and others who were slaughtered. ‘We have done this so that future generations will not be misled about the true extent and the horror of the massacre’, says Roberts. This report is a ship of truth in the West’s frothing waters of denialism and apologism.

It lays out all the brutal facts. It tells us that 1,182 people were murdered and more than 4,000 were wounded. Of the dead, 863, or 73 per cent, were civilians. Two-hundred-and-fifty-one people were taken hostage, 210 of them alive, 41 of them dead.

Every Dollar Spent on Solar Energy is Wasted By Norman Rogers

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/03/every_dollar_spent_on_solar_energy_is_wasted.html

Solar electricity has big problems. Solar is intermittent. It stops working if clouds obscure the sun. It does not work at night. Solar works much better in the summer than in the winter. Solar is peaky. Electricity delivery peaks in the middle of the day and is weaker in the early morning or late afternoon.

Solar electricity is very expensive compared to electricity generated by natural gas or coal. Unsubsidized solar electricity costs about $150 per megawatt hour. Using natural gas, one can generate electricity for as little as $20 per megawatt hour — over seven times less. The high cost of solar is hidden by an extensive system of subsidies.

The intermittent delivery of electricity could be smoothed if it were possible to store the electricity for use when solar is not working. But it’s not possible. Bridging the times and seasons when solar is not working by means of storage is not remotely possible because the amount of storage needed would cost ten or even a hundred times more than the solar farms generating the electricity.

There is a demand for electricity storage. Storage can solve the peakiness problem that plagues solar. Because solar output surges in the middle of the day It will often overtax the ability of the local electrical grid to accept the electricity. The solution is time-shiftng batteries that store excessive midday power and release it later in the day or in the early evening. New solar plants in solar-heavy states are equipped with time-shifting batteries. Time-shifting batteries increase the cost of solar electricity by about a third.

The U.S. is spending about $50 billion per year on new solar electricity plants. The money comes from government subsidies and increased electricity rates. New solar plants with a capacity, or peak output, of 27 terrawatts were built in 2023. The solar plants are backed up by fossil-fuel plants capable of stepping in when solar is not working. If existing solar plants were razed, the electric grid would continue to work smoothly using the fossil-fuel plants that would otherwise be on backup duty for solar.

Micromanaging Microschools Government intrusion in education must be reined in. By Larry Sand

https://amgreatness.com/2025/03/20/micromanaging-microschools/

In 2020, the concept of home-based “pandemic pods” went viral. At the time, Cato Institute scholar Jason Bedrick and EdChoice fellow Matthew Ladner released “Let’s Get Small: Microschools, Pandemic Pods, and the Future of Education in America,” a report on the phenomenon. They wrote that COVID-19 has “spurred the dramatic rise of microschools and ‘pandemic pods’ as school districts’ reopening plans (or lack thereof) drove desperate parents to explore alternative education options. For many microschooling or podding families, these options are merely temporary, intended to get them through the pandemic. However, given the considerable growth in microschooling in recent years, there are reasons to believe that the pandemic accelerated a growing trend that could significantly reshape K–12 education in the United States.”

A microschool is the reimagining of the one-room schoolhouse, where class sizes are usually fewer than 15 students of varying ages, and the schedule and curriculum are tailored to fit the needs of each class. Most microschools are independently parent-led, but some are affiliated with a formal network that offers paid, in-person instructors. Lessons are taught in various environments, such as homes, libraries, and other community centers.

The government, however, is very intrusive in this area. While parents can coach Little League teams, throw parties for their children, and take them and friends to a house of worship, when it comes to educating them, the government is in charge, even in homeschools and microschools.

In Iowa, for example, parents can go to jail if they talk about reading, writing, or arithmetic in a homeschool environment with more than four unrelated children. As the Institute for Justice’s Erica Smith and Darly James note, penalties for unauthorized teaching include “imprisonment not exceeding 10 days or a $100 fine. This is for a first offense. If parents continue dispensing knowledge without government permission, prosecutors can charge them with a serious misdemeanor.” Enacted in 2013, the law had a chilling effect on education innovation during the COVID-19 lockdown hysteria when parents sought alternatives.

The Left Knew They Were Lying to Us All Along The left knowingly pushed falsehoods on COVID, Biden’s fitness, Hunter’s laptop, and the border—dividing the nation while facing no accountability. By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2025/03/20/the-left-knew-they-were-lying-to-us-all-along/

For years, the left has advanced utter untruths for cheap partisan purposes that it knew at the time were all false. And now when caught, they just shrug and say they were lying all along.

Once it was known that the first COVID-19 case originated in or near a Chinese communist virology lab engineering gain-in-function deadly viruses—with help from Western agencies—the left went into full persecution mode.

They damned as incompetent, racist, and conspiratorial any who dared follow logic and evidence to point out that the Chinese government and its military were both culpable for the virus and lying.

A million Americans died of COVID. Millions more suffered long-term injuries. Still, the left-wing media and Biden administration demonized any who dared speak the truth about a lab origin of the deadly virus.

The lies were designed to protect the guilty who had helped fund the virus’s origins, such as Doctors Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins.

The Biden government also tried to use the lab theory to ridicule a supposedly pro-Trump “conspiracy.”

Western corporate interests deeply invested in China did not want their partner held responsible for veritably killing and maiming hundreds of millions worldwide.

Almost as soon as Joe Biden was inaugurated, the left knew that he was physically and mentally unable to serve as president.

Indeed, that was the point.

Charles Fain Lehman Stop Valorizing Campus Protesters People like Mahmoud Khalil aren’t heroes.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/mahmoud-khalil-columbia-campus-protest-hamas

Mahmoud Khalil—the green-card holder and Columbia-based Hamas sympathizer whom ICE detained last week—has overnight become a martyr for free speech. Advocates for his release, from Rep. Gerry Nadler and Sen. Chris Murphy to academic nonprofits, have framed Khalil’s detention as a violation of his speech rights. In this version of the story, he is an innocent campus protester caught up in the Trump administration’s crackdown on dissent.

These arguments don’t stand on firm First Amendment footing. As even the most Khalil-sympathetic legal scholars have acknowledged, the relevance of free-speech law in the case is at best unclear. Rather, as litigator Erielle Azerrad has explained, the case for Khalil’s deportation rests squarely on black-letter federal immigration law, and on the plausible threat that he posed to America’s foreign policy interests.

But Khalil’s defenders are not interested in the particulars of either his actions or the law. Many appear to be following a straightforward syllogism: Khalil protested on campus; thus, he is participating in the grand tradition of campus protests and deserves not only protection, but celebration.

The notion that campus protests are intrinsically noble has been advanced by baby boomers since their college days. That assumption has provided cover for many heinous acts since the 1960s. While students do enjoy First Amendment protections, the uncritical veneration of campus protest often serves to protect dangerous radicals like Khalil. We can’t—and shouldn’t—change the Constitution to regulate campus protests, but we should regard them with far more suspicion than we do.

The campus protest paints a powerful picture in our collective imagination. Since the 1960s, marching, carrying signs, and sitting in have been perceived as a college kid’s rite of passage. We dismiss their excesses as the excesses of youth.

In Khalil’s case, the actual content of Columbia’s protests is wildly at odds with this benign picture. Students called routinely for “intifada, revolution,” invoking the violence in Israel that left more than 4,000 dead. Columbia University Apartheid Divest—the group that Khalil helped lead—identified with militants from the global South and called itself part of an insurgency. And multiple student radicals occupied the school’s Hamilton Hall.

Liel Leibovitz, Asaf Romirowsky Who Are the Shadowy Figures Defending Mahmoud Khalil? The accused Hamas sympathizer is shrouded in mystery—and so are his supporters.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/mahmoud-khalil-columbia-hamas-speech-ramzi-kassem

As it unfurls, the saga of Mahmoud Khalil—the Columbia agitator picked up by immigration enforcement last week—looks less like a complicated immigration-law dispute and more like something out of a John le Carré novel.

But inspect the details, and Khalil’s case gives us a glimpse a well-established network linking American universities, international progressive NGOs, and government agencies. This network places ideologues like Khalil in positions of power and influence and promoting radical policies that challenge both the will of American voters and our national-security interests.

As always in such shady tales, the simplest questions are the hardest to answer. To start: Who, exactly, is Mahmoud Khalil? According to the Guardian, he was born in Syria in 1995 to Palestinian refugees, then fled at 18 to settle in Lebanon. After his detention, however, the U.S. government reported that he was a citizen of Algeria. How did he end up there?

His professional history is equally convoluted. The Guardian claims he worked for various international NGOs, then landed a job with Britain’s Foreign Office, where he helped administer the prestigious Chevening Scholarship program. (The Telegraph, to make an intricate story even more complicated, reported that Khalil worked for the embassy, not the Foreign Office per se). Then it was on to the UN, where Khalil interned for UNRWA—the organization’s agency for Arab Palestinian refugees that, as a recent lawsuit claims, is a major source of staffing and funding for Hamas. How did a Syrian refugee end up in these positions?

Palestinians: ‘We Are Dying Because of Hamas’ by Khaled Abu Toameh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21484/palestinians-dying-because-hamas

Hamas leaders have also repeatedly made it clear that their terror group has no intention of laying down its weapons.

Hamas leaders — based in luxury hotels and villas in Qatar, Lebanon and Egypt — appear in no rush to end the war. Many of them had fled the Gaza Strip together with their families during the past few years in search of a better life in Arab and Islamic countries. From their safe homes and offices, the Hamas leaders continue to issue fiery statements about their group’s refusal to make concessions to end the conflict.

“They are not the ones searching for food in the rubble. They are not the ones watching their children die. They sit in safety while others pay the price…. the suffering of Gaza has never been their concern, only their weapon.” — Hamza Howidy, Palestinian human rights and peace activist, X, March 18, 2025.

“Enough martyrs and death. Damn those who voted for you [in the 2006 Palestinian parliamentary election].” — Ranem El Ali, Palestinian journalist and author, X, March 18, 2025.

If the Palestinians living there want to end the war, they must revolt against Hamas and provide Israel with information about the whereabouts of the hostages. Sadly, most Palestinians seem unwilling to do so, either out of fear of Hamas or because they simply identify with the terror group and its goal of destroying Israel.

Palestinians are again paying a heavy price as a result of Hamas’s refusal to release the remaining 59 Israeli hostages (almost half of whom are believed to be dead) held in the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023. On that day, thousands of Hamas terrorists and ordinary Palestinians invaded Israel, murdering 1,200 Israelis and wounding thousands others. Another 251 Israelis – alive and dead – were kidnapped to the Gaza Strip.

Since then, Hamas could have avoided much of the death and destruction it brought on the Palestinians by simply releasing all the hostages, laying down its weapons and relinquishing control of the Gaza Strip.

Dozens of Wikipedia editors colluded on years-long anti-Israel campaign, bombshell ADL report claims By Taylor Herzlich

https://nypost.com/2025/03/18/business/dozens-of-wikipedia-editors-colluded-on-years-long-anti-israel-campaign-bombshell-adl-report-claims/

More than two dozen Wikipedia editors allegedly colluded in a years-long scheme to inject anti-Israel language on topics related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Anti-Defamation League claimed in a bombshell report released Tuesday.

The rogue editors, at least 30 of them, flooded one of the world’s most popular sites with “antisemitic narratives, anti-Israel bias, and misleading information,” according to the report by the ADL’s Center for Tech and Society.

The alleged bias also extended to pervasive “pro-Hamas perspectives” across Arabic-language Wikipedia content, the report claimed.

“The values of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation reflect our commitment to integrity and accuracy, and we categorically condemn antisemitism and all forms of hate,” a spokesperson for the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit that runs Wikipedia, told The Post in a statement.

Rolling Stone Warns DOGE Staffer’s Family ‘Has Ties’ to Russian Oligarch Activist journalism at its weakest. by Mark Tapson

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm-plus/rolling-stone-warns-doge-staffers-family-has-ties-to-russian-oligarch/

In an exclusive report online, far-Left Rolling Stone magazine, which has arguably the worst track record of any journalism outlet for posting false and defamatory stories that suit its political bias, warns that there is a new staffer at Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) “seeking access to sensitive data at the IRS – and his family has ties to a sanctioned Russian oligarch”! [Emphasis added]

Drawing on stories from other Left-wing propaganda outlets like The Washington Post and The New York Times, Rolling Stone (RS) reports that two DOGE representatives, Gavin Kliger and Sam Corcos, have been at the IRS “seeking private taxpayer information in unprecedented ways that would violate current IRS privacy law” in order to hunt down fraud.

Never mind that Rolling Stone couldn’t have cared less about the Democrat Party under both Barack Obama and Joe Biden violating taxpayers’ rights by weaponizing the IRS against conservatives. But when DOGE digs through IRS information exposing massive bureaucratic fraud, suddenly it’s an invasion of the average taxpayer’s privacy.

RS complains – as if it’s a bad thing – that Musk has led a “blitz” through federal agencies, firing thousands of federal workers, while “demanding sweeping access to sensitive personal data.” The former music magazine, which is fond of glorifying Islamic terrorists on its cover, also tries feebly to diminish DOGE staffers like Gavin Kliger, 25, as “young” and “inexperienced” – as if youth is a drawback in the tech world. As Musk has put it, “Judging an engineer by age is BS.”

The thrust of the “exclusive” investigation is this:

Corcos, 36, founded the health care start-up Levels in 2019 with a former SpaceX lead engineer Dr. Casey Means, a holistic doctor with “ties” (there’s that ominous word again) to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. RS does not elaborate on what those ties are, or on how RFK Jr. is a factor in this dark conspiracy. But it notes that Levels received seed funding from Andreessen Horowitz, a venture capital firm led by Trump donor (gasp!) Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, son of Freedom Center founder David Horowitz (gasp!).

How Trump Can Reform American Education By Jordan Adams

https://tomklingenstein.com/how-trump-can-reform-american-education/

President Trump has a crack team this time around. The president has come out swinging on parental rights, protecting girls in schools and sports, and stomping out CRT, DEI, and the rest of the insane woke agenda. 

With the White House’s statements on the disastrous new National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores, President Trump has even shocked  and received heavily caveated approval from many in the education punditry class, an almost exclusively left-of-center crowd. On top it all, Trump publicly directed Linda McMahon, his Secretary of Education, to prepare for the controlled demolition and hollowing-out of the Department of Education, whose workforce has now been reduced by roughly half.

Yes, we’re off to a great start. But there be dragons.

New to the Party

Republicans have long neglected education, partly because the teacher’s union arm of the Democratic Party controlled the space, but often because conservatives simply were not interested. Education was “boring” compared to fighting communism and bombing third-world peasants; curriculum reform didn’t get you invited to Wall Street soirees. After all, Jeb Bush — who admittedly did a tremendous amount to reform education in Florida — was the face of conservative education policy, and we know what Trump did to Jeb. School choice was about as daring as Republicans would get on the issue, and even that was tepid. Many still viewed local schools as a quaint bit of Americana, a trustworthy and decidedly small-c conservative system. The Left traded on that goodwill and trust for decades, quietly pushing their garbage down from on high, even as achievement eroded.

Then came the lockdowns, the remote schooling, the wokeness, and the National School Board Association collusion with the Biden administration to blacklist concerned parents as terrorists.