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Ruth King

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Charles Lipson: Joe Biden’s cognitive decline is the biggest scandal in modern US history Who was running America? Who is responsible for the cover-up?

By on May 23rd, 2025

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/comment/2025/05/21/joe-biden-cognitive-decline-biggest-scandal-modern-history/

News of former president Joe Biden’s prostate cancer diagnosis prompted Americans of all persuasions to offer prayers and sympathy. Human decency like that, transcending political differences, is laudable. Whatever our political differences, Biden and his family deserve our compassion.

What’s unusual is the scepticism – indeed, cynicism – surrounding the announcement, which came just before the release of a major book about Biden’s cognitive decline and its cover-up. There have been questions about whether officials knew about the cancer while he was in office and hid that from the public. Those doubts have been voiced by numerous specialists, including physicians who held high positions in Democratic administrations.

This cynicism is the bitter fruit of four years of the Biden administration’s deceit on countless basic issues, including the former president’s health. Americans were repeatedly told that “the president is mentally sharp and incredibly energetic”. That simply wasn’t true, and everyone knew it.

Still, some Democrats are attempting to downplay everything that happened over the past four years, as if it is old news that can be safely buried now that Donald Trump is in the White House. They won’t get away with it. The scandal surrounding Biden’s cognitive decline is the biggest in modern US political history.

In fact, there are three scandals, each reinforcing the other two. First, and most obviously, there is the blunt fact of the former president’s fading mental capacity. Second, there was the concerted cover-up, both by Democratic politicians and the mainstream media. The third is the still-unanswered question: who was actually making presidential decisions? Who controlled the auto-pen that signed almost every order from the Oval Office? To rephrase Senator Howard Baker’s pointed question during the Nixon-Watergate hearings: “What did the president not know? And when did he not know it?”

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ANTI-SEMITISM, EDUCATION Comments turned off

Attacking Jews at Harvard Doesn’t Just Go Unpunished. It Gets Rewarded.By Johanna Berkman

By on May 23rd, 2025

https://www.thefp.com/p/attacking-jews-at-harvard-doesnt?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Instead of discipline, the students behind an attack that went viral got a fellowship, accolades—and a commencement spotlight.

In the year and a half since the Hamas massacre of October 7, 2023, there have been so many alarming incidents on college campuses aimed at Jews. Many stick out for their grotesque imagery, for their outrageous slanders, and for their Soviet-style tactics. But the incident that I remember most vividly is the one that took place at Harvard University less than two weeks after Hamas invaded Israel, killing 1,200 people and kidnapping 250 more.

No one was physically injured that day. But the fact remained that the incident was wildly beyond the pale: a group of Harvard students surrounding another student, an Israeli named Yoav Segev, repeatedly screaming “Shame!” in his face, blocking his path, and forcing him to leave a part of campus that he was entitled to be in just as much as they were.

Video of the confrontation quickly went viral. You can watch it here.

The incident might have just disappeared from the news, like so many other videos of post-October 7 antisemitism on campus, if not for another shocking fact. The two aggressors who were the easiest to identify, because they were not wearing masks or hoodies and did not have keffiyehs around their faces, were not just Harvard students. They were also Harvard employees.

Ibrahim Bharmal was a Harvard Law School student and an editor at the Harvard Law Review. He was also a law-school teaching fellow in a civil procedure class. Elom Tettey-Tamaklo was a student at Harvard Divinity School. He was also a residential Harvard proctor, someone who advised first-year Harvard College students and lived in their dorm.

In other words, these were not random outside agitators or foolish 18-year-old college students trying to prove their radical clout. They had been chosen by Harvard—Bharmal by its faculty, Tettey-Tamaklo by its administrators—to be leaders, role models, and part of the very fabric of the institution itself.

For those who wanted to simply wave off the outbreak of harassment against Jewish students on elite American college campuses as much ado being done by outsiders, the Harvard video proved otherwise. Yet Harvard’s president at the time, Claudine Gay, said nothing publicly about it until three weeks later.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Domestic terror is the inevitable next step for Hamas sympathizers Jonathan Tobin

By on May 23rd, 2025

https://www.jns.org/domestic-terror-is-the-inevitable-next-step-for-hamas-sympathizers/?utm_campaign=Daily%20Syndicate%20Emails&utm_medium=email&_

The murders at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., are a warning that “pro-Palestine” activism is leading to antisemitic violence.

For the past 19 months, angry mobs have taken over college campuses and the streets of major American cities. These demonstrations, tent encampments and building takeovers have not just been expressions of opposition to Israel’s efforts to eradicate the Hamas terrorists who led the Palestinian Arab assault on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. They have also often been indicative of the protesters’ support for Hamas and the embrace of terrorist goals, as well as their antisemitism—something that was made obvious by the way they have targeted Jews during the course of their “activism.”

Yet rather than being isolated and widely condemned, these pro-Hamas activists and demonstrators have been cheered by many in the media and even rationalized by former President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, as well as their party’s left-wing leaders, who spoke of them as idealists who “deserved to be heard” and validated, even if they disagreed with some of what they were saying.

In doing so, they were ignoring the warning signs that the pro-Hamas movement was more than just mainstreaming Jew-hatred in discourse. As has been the case throughout history, those who speak of their support for terrorism elsewhere often wind up committing it at home.

After the tragic murder on Wednesday night of two young Israeli embassy staffers outside an American Jewish Committee event at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., it’s obvious that this is also the case with those who embraced the war against Israel’s existence.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Gaza Health Ministry casualty numbers ‘deliberately fabricated,’ new analysis reveals By David Isaac

By on May 23rd, 2025

https://www.jns.org/hamas-casualty-numbers-deliberately-fabricated-new-analysis-reveals/

The casualty figures supplied by the Gaza Health Ministry are based on false and misleading data, according to a new report.

Despite the numbers being deeply unreliable, they have been widely accepted to support genocide claims against Israel, “and thereby are a major strategic victory of Hamas’s wartime information effort,” notes the report, titled, “Hamas Casualty Reports are a Tangle of Technical Problems.”

The report was co-authored by Lewi Stone, a professor of mathematical epidemiology in the mathematical sciences department at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, and Gregory Rose, an honorary professor of law at the Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security (ANCORS) at the University of Wollongong, Australia.

Stone and Rose obtained access to a dataset published in January 2025 by a London-based researcher, who had unique access to time-stamped data from the Hamas-run Health Ministry. The dataset “allowed us to undertake a more in-depth analysis of statistics at different dates of the war across regions in Gaza.”

They used data provided by the ministry itself to show that the Israel Defense Forces took measures to avoid harming women and children in Gaza.

Given that 75% of Gaza’s population comprises women and children, if attacks were random, 75% of the victims should also be women and children, Stone told JNS. But the data shows that 51% of the victims were women and children over the course of 17 months of the war. This disparity suggests women and children fatalities were far less than Hamas has been claiming, and the impact on civilians was likely smaller.

“Moreover, women and children casualties trended to become an increasingly lower monthly proportion of casualties as the war progressed across time, again something Hamas never publicized,” Stone noted.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Everybody Rejoice! Paul Krugman Is Predicting A Recession! He has a solid record of Being Wrong

By on May 23rd, 2025

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/05/22/everybody-rejoice-paul-krugman-is-predicting-a-recession/

“We are very probably looking at a global recession, with no end in sight.” – Paul Krugman, November 2016

“Joe Biden will eventually preside over a soaring, ‘morning in America’-type recovery.” – Paul Krugman, November 2020.

“Slower growth is certain. For 2025, I see little or no GDP growth, rising unemployment, and persistent inflation.” – Paul Krugmann, May 2025

If you want an accurate gauge of future economic conditions, look no further than Paul “Nobel-Prize-Winning-Economist” Krugman. He has a solid record of being exactly wrong, as the above quotations show.

So, the fact that he is now predicting stagflation should give everyone a boost of confidence that we are headed for a second Trump boom.

Krugman’s new prediction comes, in fact, just as signs are looking up.

The stock market is back in positive territory since President Donald Trump took office, and is up 7% compared with a year ago.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel is still the world’s scapegoat No other nation has faced so many spurious allegations of war crimes, just for defending itself. Rob Killick

By on May 22nd, 2025

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/05/21/israel-is-still-the-worlds-scapegoat/

Is Israel really orchestrating a mass famine in Gaza? That is one of the charges currently being investigated by both the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Ever since South Africa accused Israel of committing a genocide against Gazans in December 2023, Israel and its leaders have come under intense scrutiny from these international bodies, particularly in regards to the blockade of food and aid.

It is telling that Israel is the first and only country to have been charged with the war crime of starvation. Naturally, blockades of food and other forms of aid are and have been common throughout the history of warfare. This raises two obvious questions. First, do the accusations stand up? And second, why is Israel being singled out for punishment?

These are certainly serious claims. Earlier this week, Tom Fletcher, who is in charge of the United Nations’ relief operation in Gaza, claimed that 14,000 babies could die in Gaza in the next 48 hours if aid did not reach them. The week before that, Fletcher made a speech excoriating Israel at the UN Security Council. ‘Every single one of the 2.1million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip face the risk of famine’, he said. ‘One in five faces starvation.’ Throughout Israel’s war on Hamas since 7 October 2023, humanitarian agencies have warned of the risk of famine. In recent weeks this aspect of Israel’s supposed ‘genocide’ has particularly come to the fore. The reality is that, so far at least, it remains a ‘risk’ only.

There is no doubt that the war has, as wars do, brought hardship, danger and bloodshed to the people of Gaza. But Israel has made sure that, despite various periods of blockade, enough aid has gone into the region to prevent starvation. There is even a current plan for Israel to deliver aid directly to Gaza. Ironically, this plan is being blocked by the UN itself, which likely resents being left out of the aid-distribution process. The UN’s controversial United Nations Works and Relief Agency (UNRWA) had previously been administering aid there, but was banned by Israel after it emerged that some of its staff members had taken part in the 7 October massacre.

It is also worth noting that the world seems to have forgotten about the countless other famines that have been occurring elsewhere. Last week, US president Donald Trump announced the end of 13 years of sanctions against Syria. These sanctions – which were backed by the EU, UK, Canada and Australia among others – have had a devastating impact on the Syrian people. By 2024, according to the World Food Programme: ‘A total of 9.1million people are food insecure. Both maternal malnutrition and acute malnutrition in children under five are at global emergency thresholds.’

It is generally accepted that Western economic sanctions, alongside the impact of civil war, worsened living conditions for Syrian civilians to the point of starvation. Yet where were the calls to put the US, the EU, the UK or anybody else in the dock for the consequences of their actions? Instead, the international community has congratulated itself on its role in bringing down the Assad regime.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

THE FUTURE OF FRONTPAGE AFTER DAVID HOROWITZ

By on May 22nd, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-future-of-the-david-horowitz-freedom-center/

When David first told me that he meant me to be his intellectual heir, I thought it was an honor I was not worthy of. I still think that way because no one could possibly replace David. And it’s not my job to replace him, but to take his principles, to build on them, to introduce them to a new generation of readers, writers and activists, and to make them relevant every single day.

That’s what I already do in my writing. It’s what I intend to do as the Freedom Center’s CEO.

After his passing, the David Horowitz Freedom Center board appointed me to head the organization. What that really means is that the incredible team that David built, Michael Finch, our president, Todd Snider, Mark Tapson, whose writings you already know and podcasts you listen to, Jamie Glazov, the editor of Front Page Magazine who wrote the definitive article on David’s life and work, Lonny Leitner, whose Go for the Heart training has changed politics, the Shillman fellows Bruce Thornton, Bruce Bawer and Jason Hill, who represent some of the finest intellectual talent we have to draw on, Robert Spencer, another Shillman fellow (an honor I also share with him), whose determination to tell the truth about Islam is in the finest traditions of David’s life, John Perazzo of Discover the Networks, Sara Dogan on the campus beat and the other valued warriors are still fighting to defeat the enemies of our country and our culture.

They’re carrying on David’s fight.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Are Some Racist Slurs Okay? Racism doesn’t become justice when roles reverse—bigotry dressed as victimhood still poisons the well of a multiracial democracy. By Victor Davis Hanson

By on May 22nd, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/05/22/are-some-racist-slurs-okay/

One reason why the public turned on DEI was its insistence that roughly 70 percent of the country was stereotyped as victimizers by virtue of their skin color.

In contrast, the other “diverse” 30 percent were de facto considered the victimized.

In such absurd binaries, the left returned to the old “one-drop” rule of the antebellum South, suggesting that anyone with any nonwhite ancestry was a minority victim.

And once that Marxist-inspired dichotomy was institutionalized, a corollary was established that the self-declared racially oppressed cannot themselves be racist oppressors.

But human nature is universal and transcends race.

One lamentable characteristic of our species is that we are all prone to excess and crudity if not deterred, especially once civilizational restraint is lost.

We are now witnessing examples of what follows when anti-white stereotyping and racism are given a pass—as long as the purveyors can claim their victimhood entitles them to bias.

Recently, WNBA basketball stars Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark got into one of their now-characteristic on-court rivalries. But this time around, Reese mocked Clark as a “White gyal [sic] running from the fade.”

Reese assumes that her status as a Black star grants her immunity from backlash—a privilege unlikely to be extended if the roles were reversed.

Or is her crassness a simple reflection that 60 years after the Civil Rights movement, it is deemed cool or deservedly acceptable to use the word “white” derogatorily?

After all, loose-cannon Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX), in one of her accustomed racialist rants, recently went after her party’s big Democratic donors, who raised a record amount of money for Kamala Harris’s short-lived campaign.

Crockett played the race card when claiming that Democratic insiders were already backing the next party nominee as the “safest white boy.”

Her racist irritation is puzzling. After all, two out of the last four Democratic presidential nominees have been African-Americans.

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ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Do Not Be Fooled by Iran: What They Really Want Is to Destroy America, Israel Is Just in the Way by Bassam Tawil

By on May 22nd, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21638/hamas-wants-to-destroy-america

The real nakba [catastrophe, for Palestinians] was that they started a war and lost it. Well, if you start a war, that is what can happen.

The Trump administration should beware of countries where the mouth says one thing but the legs do the opposite. Believe the legs. The Iranians and Palestinians have not given up their dream of eliminating Israel and America.

Iran’s leaders do the same thing. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian reassures Americans that “We are not seeking war, we favor negotiation and dialogue.” Meanwhile, Khamenei calls for the elimination of the “Zionist regime” and endorses “Death to America.”

It is time for the Trump administration and other Westerners to see that the Palestinians and the Iranian regime do not want Israel or America in the Middle East — period — and are prepared to do anything to achieve this goal, including with nuclear weapons.

In many respects, Hamas, the Iran-backed terror group, has always been more forthright and honest about its goals regarding Israel than its rivals in the Palestinian Authority (PA). When one listens to leaders of the PA and the leaders of Hamas in Arabic, it is almost impossible to tell the difference between them. Their rhetoric, for instance, to vilify Israel, is identical: “The Zionist Enemy”, “the Zionist Entity”, the State of Occupation”, and “the Apartheid State”.

Hamas and the PA both view the establishment of Israel as a “catastrophe” (nakba) and call for flooding it with millions of Palestinian “refugees” so that Jews become a minority to eliminate or cast out.

Hamas makes clear to everyone that its primary goal is to wage jihad (holy war) against Israel with the intention of replacing it with an Islamist state. The terror group’s covenant proudly quotes Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood organization, as stating: “Israel will exist and continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”

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ANTI-SEMITISM, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Two Israeli embassy staffers were killed by a lone gunman in Washington, DC, on Wednesday night

By on May 22nd, 2025

https://www.aol.com/reactions-shooting-two-israeli-embassy-091135618.html

Below are reactions from Israel, the United States and other parts of the world.

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER

“We are witness to the terrible cost of the antisemitism and wild incitement against the State of Israel. Blood libels against Israel have a cost in blood and must be fought to the utmost.

“My heart grieves for the families of the young beloveds, whose lives were cut short in a moment by an abhorrent antisemitic murderer.”

GIDEON SAAR, ISRAELI FOREIGN MINISTER

“This is a direct result of toxic antisemitic incitement against Israel and Jews around the world that has been going on since the October 7 massacre.”

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT

“These horrible D.C. killings, based obviously on antisemitism, must end, NOW! Hatred and Radicalism have no place in the USA. Condolences to the families of the victims. So sad that such things as this can happen! God Bless You ALL!”

KAJA KALLAS, EU FOREIGN POLICY CHIEF

“Shocked by the shooting of two Israeli embassy staff in Washington DC. There is and should be no place in our societies for hatred, extremism, or antisemitism. I extend my condolences to the families of the victims and the people of Israel.”

JEAN-NOEL BARROT, FRENCH FOREIGN MINISTER

“The murder of two members of the Israeli embassy near the Jewish Museum in Washington is an abhorrent act of antisemitic barbarity. Nothing can justify such violence.

“My thoughts go to their loved ones, their colleagues, and the State of Israel.”

JOHANN WADEPHUL, GERMAN FOREIGN MINISTER

“Nothing can justify antisemitic violence. I am shocked by the dastardly murder of two employees of the Israeli Embassy in Washington.”

ANTONIO TAJANI, ITALIAN FOREIGN MINISTER

“I stand with the State of Israel for the tragic murder of two young employees of the Israeli embassy in Washington. Scenes of terror and violence to be strongly condemned. antisemitism born of hatred against Jews must be stopped, the horrors of the past can never return.”

CASPAR VELDKAMP, DUTCH FOREIGN MINISTER

“Shocking news that two Israeli Embassy staff were killed in Washington DC. I condemn this antisemitic attack in the strongest possible terms and support U.S. investigative efforts. Violence and hate can never be justified.”

LARS LOKKE RASMUSSEN, DANISH FOREIGN MINISTER

“Horrified by the overnight killing of two Israeli embassy employees at the Jewish Museum in Washington, which I strongly condemn. My thoughts are with the victims and their loved ones.”

MICHEAL MARTIN, IRISH PRIME MINISTER

“I strongly condemn the horrific gun attack that killed two Israeli embassy staff in Washington DC last night. My deepest sympathies go to the family and friends of the couple, and the Israeli people. There can be absolutely no place for violence or hate.”

UKRAINE’S MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS

“We are shocked by the news of the appalling killing of two staff members of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, DC. Our thoughts are with the victims’ families and we wish a speedy recovery to the wounded.”

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