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Ruth King

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel’s Peace With Some Arab Neighbors? Intriguing developments with the UAE and Bahrain. Joseph Puder

By on February 17th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/02/has-israel-finally-secured-peace-its-arab-joseph-puder/

The Jewish state’s dream of warm peace with its Arab neighbors has eluded it for more than 72 years. In September 2020, President Donald Trump helped engineer the Abraham Accords between Israel, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates. The very treaty signing on the White House lawn projected human warmth, and signaled a warm peace. Subsequently, Sudan and Morocco joined the normalization of relations with Israel.

It is true that peace, as opposed to war, came much earlier than September 2020. Israel signed a peace treaty with Egypt in 1979 and with Jordan in 1994. These peace treaties, however, were essentially between governments, coldly exchanging territory for peace. Israel gave up the entire Sinai Peninsula; it received a cold peace in return. The late Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak avoided visiting Israel. In his 30-year reign as Egypt’s dictator, he visited Israel only once, and only for three hours, to attend the funeral of the assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. He did not encourage Israeli-Egyptian trade or tourism. 

Although Mubarak fulfilled the security commitments under the Camp David Accords, he deliberately perpetuated the cold peace. Mubarak was motivated by the desire to reduce Egypt’s massive military burden, and cement Egypt’s relationship with the US. He also sought to return Egypt to the bosom of the Arab world that expelled Egypt from the Arab League and leadership in the Arab world following Anwar Sadat’s Camp David Peace Accords with Israel. Israelis were not welcomed in Cairo, and the majority of the Egyptian population has been hostile to Israel and peace. The Egyptian media in particular has displayed frequent bursts of anti-Semitism. Israel’s consolation was that it didn’t have to allocate burdensome resources in manpower and treasure.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Boris Johnson’s Foreign Policy Magical Thinking Meeting aggression with bluster and sermonettes only produces more aggression. Bruce Thornton

By on February 17th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/02/boris-johnsons-foreign-policy-magical-thinking-bruce-thornton/

Last week British Prime Minister Boris Johnson published an op-ed about the brewing conflict between Ukraine and Russia. And, no surprise, it comprised a catalogue of “new world order” idealism of the sort we’ve watched crash and burn for the last three decades. Vladimir Putin would not be impressed were he to read it, any more than he’s worried about the modest increases in NATO forces near his borders, since the U.S. Commander-in-Chief already announced that we will not go to war over Ukraine. Plus the NATO countries are still disunited over how to respond should Putin go kinetic.

Once again, the hard questions of what threatens our interests and how to meet those threats are ignored in favor of bankrupt idealism and magical thinking.

Amidst all the virtue-signaling and braggadocios rhetoric, Johnson offers this strange sentence that epitomizes that idealism: “If I may adapt some famous words: All nations are created equal, they are endowed by international law with certain inalienable rights, and first among these is the right not to have their territory seized, or their foreign policy dictated at gunpoint, by a powerful neighbor.”

Talk about a false analogy. No, nations are not all “created equal” and  do not have “unalienable rights,” but only such rights as are created by treaties with other nations, not by shared universal “norms” or “values.” Nor, as Johnson implies, is “international law” like “nature and nature’s God” that the Founder believed make certain human rights unalienable, a feature of our inherent humanity, not a gift of earthly power. International law, in contrast, is the contingent product of treaties negotiated by sovereign nations that enter into such agreements in order to further their national interests. They do not reflect universal morality or values, and so are regularly violated, or simply abandoned, as those interests shift.

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HISTORY, MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

An Undiscovered Coronavirus? The Mystery of the ‘Russian Flu’ Scientists are grasping for any example that could help anticipate the future of Covid, even a mysterious respiratory pandemic that spread in the late 19th century.

By on February 16th, 2022

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/14/health/russian-flu-coronavirus.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab

By Gina Kolata

In May 1889, people living in Bukhara, a city that was then part of the Russian Empire, began sickening and dying. The respiratory virus that killed them became known as the Russian flu. It swept the world, overwhelming hospitals and killing the old with special ferocity.

Schools and factories were forced to close because so many students and workers were sick. Some of the infected described an odd symptom: a loss of smell and taste. And some of those who recovered reported a lingering exhaustion.

The Russian flu finally ended a few years later, after at least three waves of infection.

Its patterns of infection and symptoms have led some virologists and historians of medicine to now wonder: Might the Russian flu actually have been a pandemic driven by a coronavirus? And could its course give us clues about how our pandemic will play out and wind down?

If a coronavirus caused the Russian flu, some believe that pathogen may still be around, its descendants circulating worldwide as one of the four coronaviruses that cause the common cold. If so, it would be different from flu pandemics whose viruses stick around for a while only to be replaced by new variants years later that cause a new pandemic.

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BOOKS, EDUCATION Comments turned off

Do Race Academics Matter? Timothy Cootes

By on February 16th, 2022

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2022/01/do-race-academics-matter/

Brittney Cooper, a Professor of Gender and Africana Studies at Rutgers University in New Jersey, recently introduced herself via podcast to an audience much greater than your usual academic conference. The conversation topic, one that is always a bit short on cheer, was the depravity of white people, whom she described as “villains”. Her preferred method of dealing with these antagonists, and she expressed this with a good deal of vim, was “to take these motherf***ers out”. She sadly acknowledged the logistical constraints of this approach, but became noticeably chirpier when relaying the declining rates of white births in America, largely due, I understand, to poverty, addiction and other social maladies.

If Professor Cooper would like to shake off her lingering reticence towards the violent extirpation of whites, she should listen to the insights of Dr Aruna Khilanani, a psychiatrist recently invited to give a lecture at Yale University’s Child Study Center. The title of her speech, which handily calls for little elucidation, was “The Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind”. It’s difficult to select a favourite quote, but I would go with this one: “I had fantasies of unloading a revolver into the head of any white person that got in my way, burying their body, and wiping my bloody hands as I walked away relatively guiltless with a bounce in my step.”

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Anti-White Racism at NYU Law By Andrew E. Harrod

By on February 16th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/02/antiwhite_racism_at_nyu_.html

In the United States, “if you’re white, leave; it’s really that simple,” announced Regan de Loggans, an activist with New York City’s Indigenous Kinship Collective, a “community of Indigenous womxn, femmes, and gender non conforming folx” who “denounce colonial power structures of leadership and blood quantum.”

Her belligerence captured the intersectional radicalism of the N.Y.U. Review of Law & Social Change’s 2022 colloquium on “Resisting Settler Colonialism,” a February 9 NYU Law School webinar at which she and allied activists and academics spoke.

Moderating the webinar, Georgia State University Law School professor Natsu Taylor Saito introduced the self-identified “two-spirit” de Loggans, whose preferred pronouns are “they/themme.” Saito described de Loggans as an “indigequeer agitator” involved in “decolonizing, indigenizing, and queering institutions and territorial practices.” De Loggans later declared that she is also an “anti-Zionist Jew” who “advocate[s] extremely for the liberation of Palestine.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

You Will Never Guess Who’s in Charge of the $60 Million in Black Lives Matter Assets? By Rick Moran

By on February 16th, 2022

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2022/02/16/you-will-never-guess-whos-in-charge-of-the-60-million-in-black-lives-matter-assets-n1559825

Two weeks ago, PJ Media covered the growing scandal of the finances of Black Lives Matter. The group had raised $90 million and spent less than $30 million on “social justice” causes. The scandal is that no one appears to be in charge of that remaining $60 million.

The Black Lives Matter board members who were supposed to be running the foundation denied they had anything to do with it. CharityWatch Executive Director Laurie Styron said that BLM was like a “giant ghost ship full of treasure drifting in the night with no captain, no discernible crew, and no clear direction.”

To the rescue comes the Bill and Hillary Clinton cavalry. The Washington Examiner reports that several Clinton associates have taken up key positions at BLM, including Democratic Party fixer Mark Elias. It was Elias who funneled money to fund Christopher Steele’s discredited anti-Trump dossier and served as Hillary’s 2016 campaign general counsel.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

It’s Time For Americans To Rescue U.S. Cities From Greedy Leftists’ Crime-Infested, Drug-Riddled Chokehold By: Jordan Boyd

By on February 16th, 2022

https://thefederalist.com/2022/02/16/its-time-for-americans-to-rescue-u-s-cities-from-greedy-leftists-crime-infested-drug-riddled-chokehold/

Urban areas need to use upcoming elections to force out the hypocritical politicians whose policies are ruining the nation.

If the last two years have taught us anything it’s that progressive policies are ruining U.S. megalopolises and it’s time for Americans to take back the nation’s cities.

Urban hubs once hailed as beacons for American innovation have morphed into drug-crazed, crime-filled, dirty, sad, and expensive cities run by woke politicians that are just getting worse. Thanks to progressive policies, criminals guilty of violent and dangerous crimes are back on the streets instead of behind bars, drug addicts are incentivized with smoking kits and designated shoot-up areas, children are regularly indoctrinated and still forcibly masked in schools, essential police are let go, and rent prices are rising.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Hypocrisy of the Left’s Attacks on the Ottawa Truckers By Nate Hochman

By on February 16th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-hypocrisy-of-the-lefts-attacks-on-the-ottawa-truckers/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=first

Where were all these experts — and the journalists eager to quote them — when genuinely violent protest movements swept the country?

If you were to read the mainstream coverage of the Ottawa trucker convoy — or more specifically, to listen to the long line of researchers and academics who have been trotted out by the mainstream media to provide their expert insights — you’d think that the protests here are a hotbed of frothing-at-the-mouth right-wing extremism.

Here’s NPR: The Ottawa trucker protest is rooted in extremism, a national security expert says. Alternatively: Experts say online conversation around trucker convoy veering into dangerous territory, CTV News warns. “Canadians ought to be worried about whether crowdfunding websites could be used to finance hate groups and other extremist organizations, financial crime and security experts warn,” writes Canada’s Global News. A Politico headline informs readers that Ottawa truckers’ convoy galvanizes far-right worldwide, citing the influence of “American far-right influencers like Dan Bongino and Ben Shapiro” — Ben Shapiro! — as contributing to the convoy’s momentum. “Experts raise concerns about far-right, racist views arising from protests against vaccine mandates for truck drivers,” Al Jazeera reports. A national-security expert tells the New York Times that “this was an extremist movement that got mainstream attention.” The Washington Post announces that Canada’s Trumpian trucker protests show the global radicalization of anti-vaxxers.

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EDUCATION, ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

UC-Berkeley Gets Mugged by Environmentalists By Dan McLaughlin

By on February 16th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/uc-berkeley-gets-mugged-by-environmentalists/

Lots of things done by liberals and progressives sooner or later reach targets they were “never meant to” harm.
I am fond of citing Robert Conquest’s Three Laws of politics:

1. Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.

2. Any organization not explicitly and constitutionally right-wing will sooner or later become left-wing.

3. The behavior of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies.

The old saw about a conservative being a liberal who has been mugged is a variant on Conquest’s First Law. Something similar is now happening to the University of California at Berkeley. One would think that Berkeley, of all institutions, cannot be outflanked from the Left, but in California, eventually, the bill for leftism comes to everyone. In this case, the state’s oppressive regime of environmental regulation is threatening Berkeley’s enrollment:

UC Berkeley, one of the nation’s most highly sought after campuses, may be forced to slash its incoming fall 2022 class by one-third, or 3,050 seats, and forgo $57 million in lost tuition under a recent court order to freeze enrollment, the university announced this week. The university’s projected reduction in freshmen and transfer students came in response to a ruling last August by an Alameda County Superior Court judge who ordered an enrollment freeze and upheld a Berkeley neighborhood group’s lawsuit that challenged the environmental impact of the university’s expansion plan. Many neighbors are upset by the impact of enrollment growth on traffic, noise, housing prices and the natural environment. The University of California Board of Regents appealed the ruling and asked that the order to freeze enrollment be stayed while the appellate process proceeds. Last week, an appellate court denied that request. The regents on Monday appealed that judgment to the California Supreme Court. . . . The furor has left 150,000 first-year applicants to UC Berkeley in the lurch, just a month before the campus is scheduled to send out admission offers.

Faced with a pincer movement from environmental activists, neighborhood NIMBYists, and an activist judge, Berkeley is . . . fighting them and bemoaning the outcome, insisting that the environmental impact is being overstated:

“This court-mandated decrease in enrollment would be a tragic outcome for thousands of students who have worked incredibly hard to gain admission to Berkeley,” UC Berkeley said in a statement. “If left intact, the court’s unprecedented decision would have a devastating impact on prospective students, university admissions, campus operations, and UC Berkeley’s ability to serve California students by meeting the enrollment targets set by the state of California.”

Even some Democrats are shocked into action when it’s Berkeley, not some rancher, on the receiving end of this, although it appears that the proposed solution may protect only the favored state university:

State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) said he would unveil legislation next week related to the state environmental law that was used by the Berkeley neighborhood group. He declined to release details but said the state law was never meant to stop public universities from expanding to meet student needs. “It’s outrageous that a court is dictating a student enrollment cap for UC,” he said. “That’s a complete overreach.”

Lots of things done by liberals and progressives sooner or later reach targets they were “never meant to” harm.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

“Trust – In Government Bureaucrats or in the People?” Sydney Williams

By on February 16th, 2022

http://www.swtotd.b;ogspot.com

In 1863, on a cool, sunny November day in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, four months after the Battle of Gettysburg, President Abraham Lincoln gave a four-minute address. In it he reminded the audience: “Democracy is the government of the people, by the people, for the people.” The freedom we experience in this 233-year-old experiment, which is the United States, is based upon the individual citizen being the ultimate source of power, expressed through their representatives in municipalities, states and Washington, D.C. Granted, in times of emergency, presidents and governors have assumed exceptional powers, as did Lincoln when he signed the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act of 1863. Nevertheless, fundamental to our democracy is a belief that the people have a greater understanding of their self-interests than do the politicians, bureaucrats and experts who operate the machinery of government. It is, collectively, the wisdom of the people that combine to produce the political strength of our communities, states and nation.

All elections are important and as usual we are being told that the current one is critical, because the two sides are so far apart in how they define individual freedom and in their visions for the future. Democrats, too often, believe that government bureaucrats and “experts” can better decide what people should do than individuals themselves: lockdowns, mask and vaccine mandates, what courses should be taught children in public schools, what forms of energy we should consume, and what opinions should be allowed on social media. Republicans, in general, believe that people make wise choices when offered alternatives: to mask or not; to take a vaccine or not; to have their children learn Critical Race Theory or not; to buy a hybrid, a gas-guzzler or an electric vehicle. They want options in school choice and be able to weigh alternatives.

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