RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.theblaze.com/columns/opinion/how-george-soros-funds-anti-semitism

Congress is debating legislation to strip tax-exempt status from “terrorist-supporting organizations.” The Open Society Foundations would be a prime target.

As pro-Hamas, virulent anti-Semitic propaganda against Israel and Jews erupted and continues spreading after Hamas’ brutal attacks on Israeli civilians on October 7, the silence of the poster boy of anti-Semitic victimhood, George Soros, is deafening.

Deafening but not surprising.

In his 1995 book, “Soros on Soros,” the Hungarian-American financier declared that Zionism “doesn’t appeal” to him because it is “the founding of a nation [Israel] where the Jews are in the majority.” For Soros, “being a Jew [is] being in a minority.” He also asserted moral equivalence between the Jews’ response to attacks and that of their attackers, saying that sometimes Jews choose to “identify with their oppressors” and even “try to become like them.”

In 2003, at a Yivo Institute for Jewish Research event, Soros blamed the rise of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish hatred in Europe on the George W. Bush administration’s war on Islamic terrorism and “likened the behavior of Israel [in defending itself against Arab terrorist attacks] to that of the Nazis, invoking some psychological jargon about victims becoming victimizers.” He was booed, and many walked out of the event.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/climate-protests-at-the-met

So there I was, in the middle of the opening night of Tannhäuser at the Metropolitan Opera, when the shouting started. “Climate protesters,” or “climate activists”—the usual grotesques—were shouting “No opera on a dead planet,” and other such inanities. They placed themselves around the theater, timing it so that when one was arrested, another started shouting somewhere else. I counted five interruptions, though the first press reports say there were only four; did I get it wrong? The audience was displeased; I heard shouts of shame! and even, briefly from one member of the audience, U.S.A.! U.S.A.! The management finally announced that the program would go on no matter what, keeping the lights on so that security could remove people more quickly; either the thugs were exhausted, or the remainder figured that it wasn’t worth bothering with. So we finished the opera, with too much light, and (at least for me) some nervousness at every loud noise, thinking it might be another interruption.

There have been at least two previous intrusions at operas, in Amsterdam and Milan. Less than a day ago, pro-Hamas goons tried to interrupt the lighting of the Rockefeller Christmas tree. Less than a week ago, others tried to disrupt the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. It’s a general campaign to try to make normal life impossible until you give in to the radical demands.

That’s the short version, but it’s worth considering the various elements.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/12/02/why-are-todays-politics-so-awful/

Editor’s note: This is a first in a four-part series).

People often ask, “Why are today’s politics so awful?” There are several reasons, many of which will be explored in this four-part series. In a nutshell (pun intended), the Communications Revolution has enormously contributed to the belief that politics is more awful than ever due to its impact upon the public, the media, the politicians, and the country.

Yet, before considering these reasons, one must avoid the temptation to romanticize the political past as a time of eminently genteel debate in a country where that civility led to a destructive civil war. Even during the period of our nation’s founding, American politics has been contentious as evinced by the political battles between the Royalists and the Revolutionaries. Later, one need only look at how Federalist political pamphleteers attacked President Thomas Jefferson (with the truth, by the way); or how President Andrew Jackson was decried as a “tyrant” and “would-be king” by his political opponents, obloquies later echoed in attacks upon Presidents Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and, most recently, Donald Trump.

Nevertheless, while the intensity and invective of political battle has not waned, its visibility has exponentially increased. Due to the Communications Revolution, on a subway or runway, at home or abroad, 24 hours every single day, people possess the ability to casually survey and/or directly engage in politics. No longer does one have to hope the local newspaper publishes their letter to the editor or hope someone in Washington reads their constituent letter. The expression of one’s political opinion and/or agenda can be voiced to the political class and one’s fellow citizens instantaneously and – especially, when in concert with like-minded individuals – effectively.

The consequence of the Communication Revolution’s empowerment of the public it to make politics appear more prevalent and contentious than in the past. While true that more people are publicly expressing their political views, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are new to their opinions or that the intensity of these opinions has increased. What has undoubtedly happened, though, is that technology has facilitated the public’s ability to express their views.

This results in the sense that Americans are more political and, generally, politics more prevalent and awful than ever. True, it can be a bit unsettling to see a friend or neighbor’s political post, more so when one never thought that friend or neighbor shared your views or party affiliation. (They feel the same when they see your post).

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/12/globalism_is_a_disease_that_deprives_life_of_meaning.html

Two recent statistical surveys keep bouncing around in my head.  One study concludes that one out of every four young people in the world feels lonely today.  The other study finds that 72% of Americans have no interest in defending the United States in a major war.  In other words, a quarter of the planet’s emerging leaders are clinically depressed, and nearly three-quarters of the voters in the world’s wealthiest, most powerful nation have no interest in fighting to preserve the “American dream.”  People, it seems, are so disappointed in the present that they have no appetite for the future.  

Signs of such debilitating malaise should be a smack across the face to those who insist on ruling planet Earth from privileged perches secured behind steel gates at private social clubs such as the World Economic Forum, the World Health Organization, and the United Nations.  Across the globe and in poor and rich countries, alike, the human race is suffering.  Real leaders would recognize this phenomenon for what it is: a worldwide cry for help.

Does it seem as if the post-WWI eruption of think tanks, international associations, economic clubs, and foreign policy institutes has had a net-positive effect on human happiness?  Has the Council on Foreign Relations successfully steered the planet toward sustained peace?  Have the privately controlled central banks that are empowered to manipulate national currencies at whim safeguarded middle class families from regular economic disaster?  Has the League of Nations’ successor, the UN, prevailed in its self-appointed mission to build a better world?  Or, after a solid century of international busybodies obsessively micromanaging the world’s affairs, is it perhaps time to conclude that a glut of governmental and non-governmental organizations with a penchant for starting wars and triggering economic calamity has, quite demonstrably, done more harm than good?

With so many global institutions dominating private life, is it any wonder why so many people now behave as if they should be committed to institutions?  True meaning — the kind formed through personal struggle, adventure, hard work, religion, community, and family — has been replaced with the incremental oppression of international rule-making.  The sanctity of the family home has been bulldozed, so that a global cabal of atheists — whose only real mission is to severely reduce the human population — can poison the natural bonds nurtured between parents and children.  The blessings of marriage have been paved over with such vulgar elevation of sin as to condemn human beings, who would otherwise have been made whole through matrimonial commitment, to lonely lives — bereft of hope and adrift in promiscuous isolation.  

Culture, marriage, children, and a devotion to God are the bricks that build communities, which in turn fortify nations against the evils propagated by those who lead drab, meaningless lives drenched in self-loathing and hatred for humanity’s existence.  The UN and its sister organizations do one thing well: they vanquish cultural bonds and, by doing so, demolish civilizations.  And with the wreckage that they reap, they extinguish human happiness.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20190/human-rights-watch

Two major revelations have ripped away the curtain from HRW’s moral facade, and revealed a thoroughly corrupt organization.

A week later, a second earthquake ripped through HRW’s carefully manicured curtain of secrecy.

In 2009, Roth and HRW started hiding the full list of donors – an early red flag for an NGO claiming a moral agenda.

[A]n independent investigation of all financial activities covering the past 25 years is required, accompanied by the examination of possible violations by Roth, Whitson and others of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

The damage done to the moral core of human rights and to Israeli victims of Hamas terrorism is incalculable and irreversible. But an internship or work experience at HRW is no longer an asset, and being listed as a donor in HRW’s glossy PR publications is worse than embarrassing.

Two recent major revelations have ripped away the curtain from Human Rights Watch’s moral facade, and revealed a thoroughly corrupt organization. In 2009, then Executive Director Ken Roth and HRW started hiding the full list of donors – an early red flag for an NGO claiming a moral agenda. Pictured: Roth at a press conference at the United Nations on January 14, 2020 in New York City. (Photo by Johannes Eisele/AFP via Getty Images)

On October 7, the Palestinian Hamas terror group slaughtered 1,200 Israelis and foreign visitors in a carefully planned massacre that included the brutal torture and disfigurement of victims. Hamas abducted more than 240 other people, including more than 30 children, and took them to the Gaza Strip, holding them as hostages.

https://pjmedia.com/stephen-kruiser/2023/11/29/breaking-nixon-era-fixture-henry-kissinger-has-died-at-100-n4924341

Henry Kissinger, one of the most dominant figures of the Watergate and Vietnam War eras, has died. 

The Wall Street Journal:

Former presidential adviser Henry Kissinger has died, according to a statement posted on his website, bringing to a close one of the most polarizing and influential diplomatic lives in U.S. history.

He died Wednesday at his home in Connecticut, said a statement by his consulting firm. He was 100 years old.

The German-born academic was the only American official ever to concurrently serve as both secretary of state and White House national security adviser, giving him immense power during the Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford presidencies. That helped him end the U.S. war in Vietnam and to shape American foreign policy toward the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/11/30/the-unhinged-among-us/

October 7 should have been an open-and-shut case of moral condemnation.

During peace and holiday, invading Hamas gunmen murdered, tortured, mass raped, decapitated, and mutilated some 1,200 Israelis. The vast majority were unarmed women, children, infants, and the elderly.

The cowardly murderers proudly filmed their atrocities and then fled back to Gaza—to cheers from the Gaza street.

Before Israel even retaliated, the mass murdering of Jews earned praise from the Middle East, the international hard left, and especially the faculty and students of elite Western campuses

When the Israeli Defense Forces struck back, the killers dispersed to the safety of their multibillion-dollar subterranean cities. The cowardly elite architects of the mass murder fled to Arab sanctuaries in Lebanon and Qatar.

From its headquarters burrowed below hospitals, mosques, and schools, Hamas bartered hostages for a reprieve from the IDF and the release of its own convicted terrorists in Israeli jails.

Hamas shot any of its own supporters who refused to shield Hamas gunmen.

It continued launching rockets at Israeli civilian centers. It serially lied about its casualties, expropriating intended relief food and fuel for its underground tunnel city of killers.

Abroad, Hamas supporters also emulated the methods of the pro-Nazi demonstrators in Western cities of the 1930s. Unlike their pro-Israel critics, the pro-Hamas demonstrators in the U.S. and Europe turned violent.

They took over and defaced private and public property. They chanted genocidal anti-Semitic slogans calling for erasure of the nation of Israel.

They interrupted shoppers, blocked highways, attacked businesses, and swarmed bridges. They assaulted police.

The majority wore masks to hide their identities in the fashion of anti-semitic Klansmen.

Why did the doctrinaire left, the youth of the Democratic Party, and the campuses outdo each other in their anti-semitic venom toward Israel?

For the first time in their lives, many of the ignorant protestors suddenly professed concern about refugees, colonialism, disproportionality, innocent civilians, and the rules of war.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/pro-hamas-muslims-attack-rockefeller-tree-lighting/

“Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant.”

CAIR co-founder Omar Ahmad

The Muslim American Society, which has links to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, and Samidoun, designated as a terrorist front group in Israel and banned in Germany, along with other terror adjacent groups, announced that they were going to “Flood the Tree Lighting for Gaza”.

By ‘Flood’, they were referencing the Hamas name for the Oct 7 massacres, Operation Al Aqsa Flood, and by “tree lighting”, they meant the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting.

Pause for a moment to consider that burning a Koran is considered an outrage and there have been constant calls to ban it, but a Muslim mob attacking a Christmas tree lighting is “speech”.

Religious tolerance only goes one way.

Imagine 500 Americans descending on a mosque to protest Islamic terrorism. There would be condemnations and endless lectures about Islamophobia. But when Muslim pro-terror groups do this, there’s no discussion about hate or religious intolerance.

Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters swarmed the streets surrounding Rockefeller Center Wednesday, clashing with NYPD cops and chanting “river to the sea,” long seen as an antisemitic slogan, in an effort to derail the annual tree lighting in support of Gaza.

Unable to get to the NYC Christmas tree, the enormous crowd instead swarmed around the tree outside the News Corp building, which houses The Post and Fox News, and has already been targeted by pro-Palestinian protesters on at least two occasions.

The protesters attempted to knock down the barricades cops put up to keep them separate from the throngs hoping to take in the Big Apple holiday tradition.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/11/30/does-anybody-know-what-books-biden-reads-or-if-he-reads/

Time was when the elite media class obsessed over how many and what books presidents read. But since President Joe Biden took office, they’ve completely lost interest. Do they know something we don’t?

Before Biden, the press loved to ask presidents about their favorite books. What’s on their nightstand? What are they reading on vacation? It has always been treated as a sign of intelligence. A measure of sophistication.

The Daily Beast once compared presidential reading habits to how historians ranked them as presidents. “The results are not surprising—the top-ranked presidents all made our list near the top of presidential readers,” it reported.

The press lavished praise on Barack Obama and Bill Clinton for their book-reading habits. When Clinton was running in 1992, for example, the New York Times reported glowingly that he was “an omnivorous reader.” Obama’s summer reading list was treated as front-page news.

This fixation on presidents’ literary habits usually comes out strongest when a Republican is president as a way to prove they’re dumb.

When George W. Bush was running for president, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that “just how much Bush hits the books — or doesn’t — has suddenly become a campaign issue.”

Trump was routinely attacked for his lack of interest in books.

The Atlantic ran a lengthy piece — “The President Who Doesn’t Read” — that began: “Trump’s allergy to the written word and his reliance on oral communication have proven liabilities in office.”

https://amgreatness.com/2023/11/28/businesses-begin-abandoning-diversity-initiatives/

Despite a concerted effort by many institutions, government entities, and other left-wing forces to push “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) initiatives on private businesses, 2023 saw a greater decrease in such measures than previous years.

As reported by the Daily Caller, the total number of businesses with a designated DEI budget dropped to 54% in 2023, down four points from 58% in 2022. In the same period of time, the number of organizations with a DEI strategy declined by 9%. Both of these statistics were compiled by the consulting firm Paradigm.

“After two years of unprecedented investment sparked by 2020’s racial justice movement, this year, global momentum around DEI slowed,” the report from Paradigm states in part. “There are a number of headwinds contributing to this shift: the first is economic uncertainty that not only led to reduced spending across the board, it also firmly shifted the power balance back to employers.”

After a slow, behind-the-scenes effort to implement such radical DEI initiatives across the country, there was an explosion in the number of companies pursuing such objectives in the aftermath of the race riots in 2020, where far-left black nationalist and Anarcho-Communist agitators destroyed dozens of cities, killed dozens of civilians, and caused $2 billion worth of damage nationwide. The riots were in response to the death of George Floyd, a career criminal who died of a  fentanyl overdose while in police custody in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in May of 2020

Despite the decline in funding for DEI programs, there was nevertheless an increase in DEI-related hiring in 2023, with the number of companies with a senior DEI leader position increasing by 6%, and an 8% increase in the number of companies that emphasized putting women in leadership roles. From 2022 to 2023, the number of companies dedicated to increasing the number of non-White employees rose by 4%, thus resulting in a new total of 20% of overall companies.