ISRAEL Comments turned off

There’s Apartheid in the Holy Land, but Not in Israel Palestinian law makes selling land to Jews a crime punishable by death, often without trial. By Eugene Kontorovich

Posted By on February 9th, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/theres-apartheid-in-the-holy-land-but-not-in-israel-amnesty-international-palestine-racial-discrimination-disfavored-group-11644338888?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

The report by Amnesty International accusing Israel of apartheid—a likely preview of similar moves at the United Nations and the International Criminal Court—has been widely debunked, including in these pages. Yet what is remarkable about its 200 pages of distortions is the evidence of real apartheid-like policies that Amnesty leaves out. There are reasons to be concerned about the emergence of apartheid in the Holy Land—but not the ones Amnesty cites.

The defining characteristic of apartheid—what distinguishes it from generic racial discrimination—is the rigid separation of groups in public spaces and positions of power. This is the apart in apartheid.

Thus, a sign of apartheid could be a government policy that bans real-estate sales or transactions to the disfavored group. Apartheid is suggested by policies that carve out massive zones where the disfavored group cannot live or work, create ethnically homogenous zones, and restrict the disfavored group to ghettos. One might consider it apartheid if a government enforced a policy of extrajudicial execution of members of a disfavored group.

All these policies are practiced in the West Bank and Gaza—by the Palestinian Authority government against Jews. What makes the “Israel apartheid” meme particularly despicable is that is not just a lie, it is an inversion of the truth. In all areas controlled by Israel, Jews and Arabs mix openly. Yet the Palestinian Authority has for decades ruled over Gaza and about half the West Bank—and all the areas under its jurisdiction are Jew-free.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Connecticut School Asked Eighth Graders to List Sexual Preferences during Lesson on Consent By Brittany Bernstein

Posted By on February 9th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/connecticut-school-asked-eighth-graders-to-list-sexual-preferences-during-lesson-on-consent/

Parents in Enfield, Conn. are outraged after a health class assignment asked eighth graders to list their sexual likes and dislikes and boundaries, according to a new report.

Documents obtained by the nonprofit group Parents Defending Education show students were subjected to a lesson called “Pizza & Consent” that told students, “we can use pizza as a metaphor for sex!”

“If you’re a vegetarian, but your friend is a meat-lover, sharing a pizza is going to bring up a lot of issues. You don’t know who you can share pizza with unless you ask!” the assignment said. “The same goes with sex! You have to check in with your partner(s) and ask for their preferences.”

The assignment features a blank pizza with space to share pizza preferences “in relation to sex.” Pizza toppings were likened to sexual likes and dislikes. The assignment used “kissing” and “giving oral” as examples of toppings students could choose for their pizza.

“Obviously, you might not be able to list all of your wants, desires and boundaries, but hopefully you’ll start feeling more comfortable about discussing them,” the assignment read.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

The Afghanistan Debacle Looks Worse and Worse By David Harsanyi

Posted By on February 9th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/02/the-afghanistan-debacle-looks-worse-and-worse/#slide-1

The more we learn about the administration’s Afghanistan withdrawal, the more it becomes clear that its decisions were driven by political considerations and panic.

A s the Biden administration’s chaotic and inept withdrawal from Afghanistan was unfolding in August 2021, a suicide bomber murdered 13 American servicemembers, and at least 170 Afghans, at the Abbey Gate outside Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport. It was one of the deadliest attacks on our troops in our 20 years in that nation.

“Know this,” Biden said after the bombing. “We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay.” This turned out to be face-saving political theater. Three days later, an air strike killed ten Afghans, seven of them children. Not one of the dead, as far as we know, was an “ISIS facilitator,” as the administration had alleged.

In fact, the Pentagon now says that the bombing was the work of a lone terrorist rather than a “complex” network, as the Biden administration had initially maintained. At the time, General Mark Milley not only referred to the strike as “valid” and “righteous” — let’s concede for a moment that he was basing this on the best available information — but went further to describe a “secondary explosion” and a supposed plethora of evidence justifying the bombing. None of that, it seems, was true. It seems increasingly likely that Biden was going to blow someone up to project his toughness.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Message of Canada’s Trucker Protest They are saying that it’s time for the pandemic emergency orders to end.

Posted By on February 9th, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-message-of-canadas-trucker-rebellion-covid-vaccine-mandates-restrictions-justin-trudeau-11644361250?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Canadian truckers opposed to a Covid-19 vaccination mandate used their rigs on Monday to block the Ambassador Bridge connecting Windsor, Ontario, and Detroit, the busiest international land-border crossing in North America.

This latest act in a week-long show of civil disobedience is more akin to political life in France or the U.S. That it happened in restrained Canada is a signal to the political class across the West: Large swaths of humanity are done with Covid-19 restrictions, mandates and excessive meddling in their lives. They want to go back to making their own health-risk assessments.

The Ambassador Bridge, which carries some $323 million in goods daily in cross-border trade and an estimated $137 billion last year, reopened Tuesday morning. Yet truckers continue their protest in Ottawa, which is disturbing the peace and worse in that usually peaceable Canadian capital.

The truckers should be prosecuted if they break the law, as we argued for Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matters protesters on the left. But as the Omicron virus shows itself to be less lethal and positive test rates fall, the truckers are sending a message to democratic governments that it’s time for the pandemic emergency orders to end.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Liz Peek:’Authorities’ panic over COVID protests, dissent – here’s why Challenges to lockdowns and mask mandates have been viewed as undermining society

Posted By on February 9th, 2022

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/authorities-panic-covid-protests-dissent-liz-peek

What are the “authorities” so afraid of?  

Why are Canadian truckers protesting vaccine mandates considered a threat? The Freedom Convoy has garnered enormous popular support but is condemned by the liberal media and dismissed by Canada’s unpopular Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as a “small fringe minority.” 

Prodded by Canadian authorities, GoFundMe moved to confiscate and redistribute $10 million raised to support the drivers, prompting such outrage that they pivoted to returning the money to the original donors. A like-minded U.S. group, “Convoy to DC 2022,” attracted 130,000 members to its Facebook page before it was taken down by the social media giant.  

Meanwhile, Joe Rogan has come under blistering attack for hosting on his podcast a cardiologist and infectious disease expert who questions the efficacy and safety of the COVID vaccines. Rogan is viewed as such a threat that the White House – in effect, the president of the United States – is trying to shut him down. 

You have to wonder, why is the establishment in full panic mode every time someone challenges their COVID orthodoxy?  

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Andrew Cuomo Says He Feels ‘Vindicated’ and Won’t Rule Out a Political Comeback By Rick Moran

Posted By on February 8th, 2022

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2022/02/08/andrew-cuomo-says-he-feels-vindicated-and-wont-rule-out-a-political-comeback-n1557305

In the last several weeks, five New York district attorneys announced they were not going to prosecute former governor Andrew Cuomo on sexual misconduct charges. The fact that sexual misconduct is very difficult to prove in court — especially against a political heavyweight like Cuomo — played a large role in the DAs’ decisions not to go to trial.

Several of those prosecutors went out of their way to say that not pursuing charges against Cuomo should not take away from the credibility of the women who accused him.

Nevertheless, Cuomo has declared that he’s been “vindicated” and may seek office again.

The Hill:

Cuomo, however, sees the decisions from the district attorneys as absolving him from allegations, despite the state attorney general releasing a report last year that concluded the then-governor had sexually harassed 11 women — the report that led to his resignation in August.

“It turns out in a remarkably short period of time that it did become all bogus. 11 became zero,” Cuomo told Bloomberg in a telephone interview on Friday.

“If you do an honest summary, which is what I get from people on the street, I have been vindicated,” he added.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Louisiana’s Secretary of State Faces Lawsuit Over Election Integrity By Chris Queen

Posted By on February 8th, 2022

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/chris-queen/2022/02/08/louisianas-secretary-of-state-faces-lawsuit-over-election-integrity-n1557288

The integrity of our elections has become a front-and-center issue in the past few years. Between the legitimate concerns that the 2020 presidential election instilled in many people and the wild conspiracy theories that have cropped up on both sides of the political aisle, voters have become increasingly concerned about whether their votes even count.

In response to the craziness of 2020, several states, Georgia and Texas among them, have enacted laws that, in the words of Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, make it “easy to vote but hard to cheat.” Because these laws originated in states with Republican governors, the left decided to gin up fake outrage over “voter suppression” and even attempted a federal takeover of elections that would entrench Democrats in power for years.

With midterm elections coming up this year that could tip the balance of power in Congress, all eyes are on how various states are handling their voter rolls. Over half the states rely on the Electronic Registration and Information Center — ERIC for short.

Back in December, J. Christian Adams, PJ Media columnist and president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), introduced us to ERIC. The way ERIC works is that the states that pay into the ERIC program send in their voter rolls, and ERIC analyzes them for voters who are dead or registered in multiple states. The idea, of course, is that the states then clean up voter rolls based on this analysis.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

What Biden should have said on Jan. 6 By Liz Peek

Posted By on February 8th, 2022

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/588845-what-biden-should-have-said-on-jan-6

Here’s what we learned on Jan. 6: There will be no pivot. President Biden made it clear in his remarks that he will pursue the central theme that put him in the White House, no matter how low his polls sink or how bleak the outlook for his party.

What is that theme? That President Trump is an enemy of the state, and many of his supporters are every bit as deplorable as Hillary Clinton thought they were.

Trump hatred elected Biden; that’s all he’s got.

Biden did have a choice. When he addressed the nation in remembrance of the riot that shook the U.S. Capitol, the president could have more aggressively addressed doubts about the outcome of the 2020 election, which continue to unsettle our nation.

In a recent poll, only 46 percent of respondents said Biden’s election was “definitely” legitimate. That is a horrible outcome. Some 71 percent of Republicans described his victory as “definitely not” or “probably not” legitimate, as well as 31 percent of independents.

That is not good for Joe Biden, and he should have tackled this running sore of his presidency.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

‘Organised Groups of Folks’ Terrorise Los Angeles Salvatore Babones

Posted By on February 8th, 2022

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/america/2022/02/organised-groups-of-folks-terrorise-los-angeles/

“California is, of course, enjoying a wave of (minor) wealth redistribution arising from Proposition 47, a ‘successful’ 2014 referendum that reclassified many erstwhile felonies (including all thefts to a value of less than $950) as misdemeanors. In the spirit of the times, state prosecutors no longer bring charges in these cases, since the maximum penalty is only six months in jail (rarely imposed) or a fine of up to $1000. In the likely worst case scenario (or best case, depending on your point of view), most thieves will thus only be required to return the stolen goods. Stealing is, essentially, legal.”

In a soundbite straight outta Compton, California governor Gavin Newsom blamed “organised groups of folks that move from site to site” for a spate of New West train robberies (above) in Los Angeles. His first instinct was to call them “gangs”, but he immediately apologised, publicly acknowledging his error. The word “gangs”, you see, is pejorative to … well, gangs.

Luckily for the gangs of L.A., Newsom and the Democratic Party have made the New West a safe space for criminals of all kinds. In Los Angeles, the newsmakers are the organised groups of folks who board trains leaving the west coast ports to ransack containers arriving from China (they’re probably racist Trump supporters), while in San Francisco it’s the folks who organise flash robberies of department stores and shopping malls.

At least 48 Los Angeles gangs are prominent enough to have their own Wikipedia pages. A personal favorite is the Culver City Boys, which sounds like a group of folks who do odd jobs on the MGM Studies lot, or perhaps for the west coast offices of National Public Radio. In 2018, the Boys won a $30 million settlement in a class action lawsuit over city-imposed curfews. Don’t be shocked: gangs hiring lawyers is an old tradition in America. That’s how you know they’re gangs, not just groups of folks.

The Culver City Boys are reputed to be composed mainly of Mexican-Americans. The Rollin 60’s Neighborhood Crips, one of California’s oldest gangs (as the name would suggest), is believed to be largely African-American. The shot back to national prominence in 2019 with the death of rapper and entrepreneur Nipsey Hu$$le, a member who was shot at least six times in front of his clothing store in a dispute of obscure origin. Police believe the shooting arose out of a “personal dispute”, but a case of shoplifting gone wrong cannot be ruled out.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Deep State control of the education system By John Dietrich

Posted By on February 8th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/02/the_deep_state_control_of_education_system.html

Progressive control of the U.S. educational system, operating secretly via entrenched bureaucrats and cooperating elected officials, has been exposed by incidents in Loudoun County, Virginia.  In other words, the Deep State rules the classrooms of America.

A major factor affecting the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial election (and destined to affect the 2022 midterm elections) is the public’s reaction to progressive control of the educational system.  This control had been successfully concealed by the major media until an incident at a Loudoun County school board meeting made national news.  At this June 22, 2021 school board meeting, parent Scott Smith was arrested.

Smith was protesting the fact that his daughter had been raped in the girl’s bathroom on May 28 by a “transgender” student.  School officials’ first response was an attempt to cover up the incident.  School board member Beth Barts proclaimed, “Our students do not need to be protected, and they are not in danger.”  Superintendent Scott Ziegler claimed: “To my knowledge, we don’t have any record of assaults occurring in our restrooms.”

Ziegler, who is paid $295,000 a year, intentionally lied to the public about this incident.  In fact, he was the creator of one of the records covering the incident.  On the day of the attack, he wrote school board members a note entitled  “CONFIDENTIAL School Incident.”  It stated, “This afternoon a female student alleged that a male student sexually assaulted her in the restroom.”  When this lie was exposed, he responded, “I regret that my comments were misleading and I apologize for the distress that error caused families.”  He added, “My heart aches for you and I am sorry that we failed to provide the safe, welcoming, and affirming environment that we aspire to provide.”