https://www.frontpagemag.com/dhfc_videos/revealed-coverup-of-covid-vaxs-severe-damage-to-teens-hearts/
https://americanmind.org/salvo/the-crisis-of-the-west-revisited-self-flagellation-and-the-great-liberal-death-wish/
This crisis is nothing new.
From Sydney to London to untold numbers of American college campuses, we hear incendiary cries for destroying the Jewish state, for a new Jihad or Holy War, all in the name of an ostensibly noble and just “anti-colonialist” struggle. Tens of thousands march in major European cities, and with frenzied glee defend the indefensible. “From the river to the sea,” the mob of Islamists, Palestinians, activists, and radicals cry, shamelessly announcing their own genocidal sympathies and intent.
The “crisis of the West” is nothing new. In 1949, the political philosopher Leo Strauss lamented that the main currents of social science in the United States, and in the Western world more broadly, could not understand tyranny for what it was since they were blindly committed to the absurd position that “facts” had nothing to do with “values.” He added that a social science that could not speak reasonably, and forcefully, about the evil that is tyranny (especially in its modern ideological forms) was no better than a medical science that could not name and describe cancer. In the following decade, Raymond Aron and Hannah Arendt brought the full arsenal of political philosophy to bear on the “novel” form of tyranny that was totalitarianism and, in the process, lamented the indulgence of so many intellectuals toward it.
In 1964, James Burnham published a still potent and relevant book called The Suicide of the West, where he took aim at Western self-hatred, romanticism about what would soon be called the Third World (some of which came to resemble “Caliban’s kingdoms” in the striking and provocative words of Paul Johnson in Modern Times), and the degeneration of a once noble and hardy liberalism into rank sentimentality, free-floating compassion, and a suicidal preference for our murderous and tyrannical enemies over our sometimes imperfect friends and even our own country and civilization.
By 1970, the great English writer and journalist Malcolm Muggeridge could write with eloquence and biting wit about “The Great Liberal Death Wish” in a seminal 1970 essay by that name. Muggeridge saw in the decayed liberal mind a perverse preference for nihilistic self-flagellation that led to the systematic “depreciating and deprecating” of “every aspect of our Western way of life.”
https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2023/10/31/more_terror_suspects_reaching_the_us_here_are_the_known_unknowns_of_bidens_border_policy_989442.html
Hundreds of people on the FBI’s terrorist watchlist have almost certainly slipped into the United States amid millions of other illegal immigrants during the last three years, according to former federal officials and experts.
“You have to be extremely naïve to not be significantly concerned about this,” said Rodney Scott, former chief of U.S. Border Patrol from 2020 to 2021. “Regardless of what the Biden administration may claim, what it said during the campaign and the executive orders taken in January 2021 have been interpreted around the world as the border is open. You’re insane if you don’t think terrorists will use that to their advantage.”
In the aftermath of Hamas’ terrorist attack against Israel on Oct. 7, President Biden, without mentioning the border, told “60 Minutes” that the threat the U.S. could face from terrorists in the country had escalated.
Although the terrorist threat linked to the border crisis is impossible to quantify, some experts find the available numbers alarming. During Biden’s first three years, a record-shattering 6.5 million-plus immigrants have been “encountered” by border authorities. That pace is increasing: The most recent monthly figures, September’s, showed another record number of monthly encounters – 269,735.
At the same time, federal officials have seen an alarming increase in border crossers listed on the U.S. Terror Screening Dataset, the official name for what is commonly called the “terrorist watchlist.”
In fiscal 2023, which ends this month, Border Patrol agents have apprehended 172 such people, all but three of them along the southwest border. When all U.S. places of entry are added – by land, sea and air – another 564 people on the watchlist were caught, bringing the total to 736.
By way of comparison, between fiscal 2017 and 2019, Border Patrol agents apprehended a total of 11 people on the terrorist watchlist. Scott sounded an alarm to Congress in the 2021 period when the total jumped to 16. “When a number doubles it gets your attention, and we’ve moved way beyond that,” he says now.
Yet the “known unknowns,” to use Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s famous phrase, indicate the problem is even worse, according to experts. For one, the “terrorist watchlist” is only as good as the information that has been entered into it.
“Not everybody’s on the watchlist,” said Todd Bensman, who has tracked Central American immigration routes and the southern border for years with the Center for Immigration Studies and is the author of “Overrun: How Joe Biden Unleashed the Greatest Border Crisis in U.S. History.”
“There have been thousands and thousands – tens of thousands – of people from the Middle East who have entered and it’s completely reasonable, even the president has acknowledged it, to worry that some of those could be, or could become, terrorist threats,” Bensman said.
Scott, who spent a half decade in counterterrorism at the Department of Homeland Security before moving to Customs and Border Patrol, said that as legal immigration channels dried up, criminals and terrorists began to seek people who would not appear on any intelligence agency’s datasheet.
https://issuesinsights.com/2023/11/01/bidens-democracy-is-at-risk-scaremongering-puts-democracy-at-risk/
So, when Democrats talk about how “our democracy is at risk,” what they really mean is “our socialist agenda is at risk.”
Now that they can’t use COVID to scare the public into submission, Democrats – from President Joe Biden on down – are working on Plan B. Shouting “Democracy is at risk!” every chance they get.
That’s become the default line for the left. This weekend, when CBS News reporter Bill Whitaker asked Vice President Kamala Harris about the possibility of Biden dying in office, her response was: “Let me just tell you, I’m focused on the job. Our democracy is on the line, Bill. And I frankly in my head do not have time for parlor games when we have a president who is running for reelection. That’s it.”
Notice the contradiction in Harris’ statement? If we have, as she says, “a president who is running for reelection,” how is it that “our democracy is on the line”? Aren’t elections what democracy is all about?
Let’s assume that Donald Trump wins the Republican nomination. (That’s a big assumption, since the first primary is still months away and because history is replete with presumed front runners not getting the nomination.) Let’s also assume that Biden is the Democratic candidate. (Another big assumption.)
Trump and Biden will have to campaign for the presidency, as will various third-party candidates. They will travel the country making their case. The press will spend a great deal of time covering the campaigns – mostly attacking the GOP candidate.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/black-lives-matter-and-the-worlds-oldest-hatred-anti-semitism-0e0c324e?mod=opinion_lead_pos8
Many who rushed to support Black Lives Matter following the death of George Floyd—professional sports leagues, Fortune 500 companies, placard-waving suburbanites—now seem shocked at how BLM reacted to the Oct. 7 terror attack in Israel. Yet nothing could have been more predictable.
During the previous round of major violence between Israel and Hamas, in May 2021, BLM made its position clear. “Black Lives Matter stands in solidarity with Palestinians,” it tweeted. “We are a movement committed to ending settler colonialism in all forms and will continue to advocate for Palestinian liberation.”
After Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israeli civilians, the same activists were just as unambiguous about which side they were taking and why. While the body count was still being tallied, BLM groups in Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington issued statements supporting Hamas’s tactics. “Their resistance must not be condemned but understood as a desperate act of self-defense,” BLM Grassroots in Los Angeles wrote on Instagram. “As a radical black organization,” the post continued, it sees “clear parallels between black and Palestinian people.” BLM Chicago tweeted an image of a Hamas paraglider with a Palestinian flag attached to his parachute and the caption “I stand with Palestine.”
Anyone surprised by this response either hasn’t been paying attention or refuses to take the activists at their word. Organizations such as BLM have done nothing to hide or sugarcoat their animosity toward Israel. In 2016, four years before Floyd was killed by police, BLM released an official platform that referred to Israel as an “apartheid state” and declared that America is “complicit in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12695497/columbia-university-professors-letter-antisemitism-defend-hamas.html
By HARRIET ALEXANDER and MACKENZIE TATANANNI
Almost 300 staff at Columbia University on Tuesday signed a letter condemning their colleagues for defending students who said Hamas’ terror attack of October 7 was justified.
They stressed that freedom of speech is vital – but that did not extend to justifying acts of terrorism.
They said they are ‘astonished’ and ‘horrified’ that anyone could condone the murders.
The Tuesday letter came 24 hours after more than 100 staff at the Ivy League college spoke out in support of the students.
The row was sparked by an October 9 statement from the Columbia chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, which saw the students praise the ‘against the odds’ terror attack – which left 1,400 Israelis dead.
‘Yesterday was an unprecedented historic moment for the Palestinians of Gaza, who tore through the wall that has been suffocating them in one of the most densely-populated areas on Earth for the past 16 years – an open-air prison blockaded by Israeli soldiers via land, air, and sea,’ they wrote.
‘Despite the odds against them, Palestinians launched a counter-offensive against their settler-colonial oppressor – which receives billions of US dollars annually in military aid and possesses one of the world’s most robust surveillance and security apparatuses.’
The statement sparked furious scenes, which have been replicated at colleges and universities across the country – roiling students and staff and seeing donors threaten to withdraw their funding. Some students who publicly defended Hamas have had their job offers rescinded. Billionaire investor Leon Cooperman has threatened to cut off donations to his alma mater over student support for Palestine.
https://tomklingenstein.com/higher-ed-support-for-hamas-exposes-disdain-for-america-in-top-colleges/
Why are American academics and American college students so drawn to an antisemitic movement?
If you don’t like the pro-Hamas demonstrations by American college students, then you won’t like American higher education, which is the garden in which these flowers were grown.
Within hours of the atrocities committed by Hamas operatives who invaded Israel on October 7, groups of American college students had organized to express their support for the terrorists. This caught many Americans by surprise. How could college students at some of America’s best universities sympathize with the perpetrators of gruesome attacks on unarmed civilians?
The surprise, however, was not universal. Those of us who pay close attention to American higher education were well aware of the rising tide of antisemitism on many campuses, and aware as well of the anger that these institutions had honed against Israel and the sympathies they had cultivated for Palestinian radicals. College officials were likewise aware that, among the students enrolled in their institutions, a significant number are affiliated with factions that loathe Israel, support Palestinian “resistance,” and are well-organized practitioners of public protest. Some college presidents initially issued mealy-mouthed disapproval or offered criticisms of both Hamas and Israel as equally at fault. After finding their equivocations poorly received, they issued new statements that were sometimes sterner about Hamas, but often continued to chastise Israel as well.
Some college presidents did forthrightly condemn Hamas and express strong support for Israel. At the end of October, a coalition founded by 16 college presidents issued a statement titled, “We Stand Together with Israel Against Hamas.” That statement eventually collected over 100 signatories.
But the larger academic scene lacks such common sense.
https://www.thefp.com/p/waking-up-from-woke-seneca-scott-migrant-crisis?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
A black activist fights the progressivism he says is destroying his city. Left-wing Jews say “screw the allyship” after seeing fellow progressives cheer Hamas’s pogrom. Immigrant New Yorkers oppose the new migrants coming to New York “with the expectation they’re going to be taken care of.”
Today in The Free Press, three stories paint a picture of a larger political shift happening in America.
It is sometimes said of the pandemic that it accelerated preexisting trends: we were already living online more and more, reinventing the traditional 9 to 5, automating ever larger parts of the economy, and abandoning shopping malls. And the lockdowns simply turbocharged it all.
Might recent weeks be having a similar effect on our politics? Could outrage at the horrifying events in Israel, the global explosion of antisemitism, and the Hamas apologism on campuses and in newsrooms, crystallize into a big political upheaval?
Yesterday, Elon Musk, responding to a Free Press story on X, said that “people are waking up from woke.” Last week, a similar argument was made by Konstantin Kisin in our pages with his essay “The Day the Delusions Died.” He wrote that “many people woke up on October 7 sympathetic to parts of woke ideology and went to bed that evening questioning how they had signed on to a worldview that had nothing to say about the mass rape and murder of innocent people by terrorists.”
One person who has felt disenfranchised from the left for years is Seneca Scott, a black Oakland activist fighting for the future of his city. Scott is a former progressive who used to support defunding the police. But then he changed his mind. In 2020, “I realized how deep the damage was,” Scott tells David Josef Volodzko in a profile for The Free Press. Oakland’s leaders, “the people we had put in place . . . were just complete frauds.” Now Scott says he’s aiming to start a revolution in his city that will spread across the country.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/10/yellow_fever_coming_to_the_us.html
The 19th-century viral scourge of the U.S. South known as “yellow fever” seems to be on the brink of a resurgence. Tropical disease experts predict a return of the historically devastating disease to the U.S.
Yellow fever is still active in Latin America and Africa, causing 30,000 deaths annually, but local outbreaks have been absent here since 1905. Other tropical diseases, however, have landed on our shores. Earlier this year, several cases of malaria turned up in Florida. Mosquitoes have recently tested positive for West Nile virus in Texas. Locally-transmitted cases of Zika, dengue, and chikungunya have also been identified in the past few years.
WHAT IS YELLOW FEVER?
Yellow Fever is a member of the Flaviviridae family of viruses and is a known arbovirus (transmitted through the bite or sting of an insect). In this case, the culprit is a mosquito known as Aedes aegypti.
Symptoms may appear within three to six days of the virus entering the body. Some experience no symptoms, but those who do experience headache, muscle pain, and nausea/vomiting. Fortunately, in most cases, symptoms subside in three to four days. If you survive the disease, it usually means lifelong immunity.
Yellow fever has no cure, and an unlucky 15-20 percent of victims, progress to a more serious second phase shortly after an apparent recovery. These develop high fever and inflammation of the liver and kidneys. Liver malfunction leads to a condition called “jaundice,” a yellowing of the skin and eyes (hence the name “yellow fever”). Damage to the GI tract leads to vomiting black blood in late stages. At this point, a death rate of 20-60 percent due to organ failure can be expected.
https://www.thefp.com/p/gender-affirming-care-dangerous-finland-doctor?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Dr. Riittakerttu Kaltiala, 58, is a Finnish-born and trained adolescent psychiatrist, the chief psychiatrist in the department of adolescent psychiatry at Finland’s Tampere University Hospital. She treats patients, teaches medical students, and conducts research in her field—publishing more than 230 scientific articles.
In 2011, Dr. Kaltiala was assigned a new responsibility. She was to oversee the establishment of a gender identity service for minors, making her among the first physicians in the world to head a clinic devoted to the treatment of gender-distressed young people. Since then, she has personally participated in the assessments of more than 500 such adolescents.
“Early in my medical studies, I knew I wanted to be a psychiatrist. I decided to specialize in treating adolescents because I was fascinated by the process of young people actively exploring who they are and seeking their role in the world. My patients’ adult lives are still ahead of them, so it can make a huge difference to someone’s future to help a young person who is on a destructive track to find a more favorable course. And there are great rewards in doing individual therapeutic work.
Over the past dozen or so years there has been a dramatic development in my field. A new protocol was announced that called for the social and medical gender transition of children and teenagers who experienced gender dysphoria—that is, a discordance between one’s biological sex and an internal feeling of being a different gender.
This condition has been described for decades, and the 1950s is seen as the beginning of the modern era of transgender medicine. During the twentieth century, and into the twenty-first, small numbers of mostly adult men with lifelong gender distress have been treated with estrogen and surgery to help them live as women. Then in recent years came new research on whether medical transition—primarily hormonal—could be done successfully on minors.
