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The Folly of Pandemic Censorship As the latest anti-Substack campaign shows, more and more people are forgetting why free speech works Matt Taibbi

Posted By on January 27th, 2022

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-folly-of-pandemic-censorship

Earlier this week, in the latest in a series of scolding campaigns, a Britain-based group called the Center for Countering Digital Hate gave a sneak peek at a research report on Substack to The Guardian and The Washington Post. Both outlets came out with their scare pieces this morning. From The Guardian:

A group of vaccine-skeptic writers are generating revenues of at least $2.5m (£1.85m) a year from publishing newsletters for tens of thousands of followers on the online publishing platform Substack, according to new research…

Imran Ahmed, chief executive of CCDH, said companies like Substack were under “no obligation” to amplify vaccine skepticism and make money from it. “They could just say no…”

The Post, citing “some misinformation experts” — the pandemic version of “people familiar with the matter” — added:

These newer platforms cater to subscribers who seek out specific content that accommodates their viewpoints — potentially making the services less responsible for spreading harmful views, some misinformation experts say.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Putin’s Waited 30 Years to Sort Out Ukraine BY DAVID P. GOLDMAN

Posted By on January 27th, 2022

https://pjmedia.com/spengler/2022/01/25/putins-waited-30-years-to-sort-out-ukraine-n1552603

“Ukraine’s induction into the Western alliance system would mean that the US missiles could hit Moscow in 5 minutes, rendering Russian air defence systems ineffectual and obsolete,” writes former top Indian diplomat M.K. Bhadrakumar in his blog. Since 1991, when the U.S. and Germany assured Gorbachev that NATO would NOT expand eastward if Russia agreed to German unification, Russia has believed that the West betrayed a solemn commitment by pushing NATO towards Russia’s border (this is disputed by most U.S. sources).

Russia thinks in terms of firepower and facts on the ground. Putin has spent the past dozen years turning Russia’s armed forces into a well-armed, efficient instrument (it took less than 24 hours to put Russia’s 6th Airborne into Kazakhstan and just three days to kill everyone who didn’t like it). He’s lurked in the tall grass waiting for an opportunity to settle accounts.

Why now? Because he can. U.S. sanctions mean less than they did in the past because China wants as much overland energy supply as it can get (in a scrap, the U.S. Navy could interdict tanker supply from the Persian Gulf). China and Russia are joined at the hip in high-tech (Huawei has a huge presence there). The specter of a Russian-Chinese alliance spooks the West, with good reason.

The Europeans don’t want a fight with Russia. When Germany’s equivalent of the secretary of the Navy, Admiral Schoenbach, said last week that Putin “deserves respect,” he was forced to resign, but he spoke for the overwhelming majority of Germans.

NATO is weak, China is ascendant, and the U.S. is confused; Russia is well-armed and prepared. That’s why Putin is making his move now.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Ukraine is the hollow man of Europe: David Goldman

Posted By on January 27th, 2022

https://asiatimes.com/2022/01/ukraine-is-the-hollow-man-of-europe/

Ukraine is disappearing, for two reasons. It has one of the world’s lowest birth rates at just 1.23 children per female, and one of the world’s highest rates of out-migration. No other country has willed itself out of existence so decisively.

Ukraine’s demographic decline is so pronounced that it should be high on the list of strategic considerations. For what, and for whom, might NATO and Russia go to war?

Ukrainians vote with their feet. Nine million have work abroad, according to the National Security and Defense Council of the Ukraine, and 3.2 million have full-time jobs in other countries. There are only 21 million Ukrainians between the ages of 20 and 55, which suggests that more than two-fifths of prime working-age Ukrainians earn their living elsewhere.

I do not know whether this estimate includes half a million Ukrainian prostitutes working abroad since independence, according to one scholarly estimate.

Even worse, a Wilson Center study reports, Ukraine’s best-educated people are likeliest to leave:

Ukrainians who go abroad to study often view their studies as the first stage of emigration. A survey of Ukrainian students at universities in Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic showed that students who studied in these countries had similar motives for doing so. Most said they intended to earn their diplomas in order to work in the EU in the future, since living conditions in Ukraine were unsatisfactory; few planned to return home after graduating. Those who do return may be the ones unable to settle abroad in permanent positions.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Harvard President Defiant in Admissions Fight By A.R. HOFFMAN

Posted By on January 27th, 2022

https://www.nysun.com/national/harvard-president-defiant-in-admissions-fight/91981/

Harvard is holding firm in its fight to use race in its admissions process, the university’s president announced in an email delivered yesterday to students, alumni, and faculty on Tuesday. The missive from Lawrence Bacow came just one day after the Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge to that very policy.

Mr. Bacow wrote that he wished the Supreme Court “would have decided differently,” but his note makes clear that Harvard will do nothing differently absent a high court order.

The future of how America’s oldest university chooses its students will be decided not in faculty lounges in Cambridge, but in judicial chambers in Washington, D.C. As the Sun has reported, the high court looks set to decide the future of college and university admissions after elevating cases against Harvard and the University of North Carolina.

Mr. Bacow struck a defiant note in response to the dramatic legal development, maintaining: “Our admissions process, in which race is considered as one factor among many, makes us stronger.” He promised to “defend with vigor” that approach against “narrowly drawn measures of academic distinction.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Synergy between Iran’s global and domestic violence (More on Iran) Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

Posted By on January 27th, 2022

https://bit.ly/3o2RVMV

Iran’s domestic violence feeds the global Islamic Revolution

According to London-based Iran human rights review: “The combination of Iran’s human rights practices, its weapons programs, its democratic deficit and its support for listed terrorist entities make it a special and dangerous case. Human rights abuses in Iran threaten the peace and security of people elsewhere. It must be tackled, not just for the sake of justice, but also for the peace, order, and good government of Western democracies….”

Iran’s crackdown on religious and ethnic minorities, exacerbated by Iran’s anti-Western hate-education curriculum, is the most authentic reflection of the Ayatollahs’ worldview and strategic vision. However, this rogue domestic conduct has never featured prominently in the negotiation process between the US and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Moreover, Iran’s domestic fanaticism constitutes a most productive breeding ground of recruits for the global exportation of the Islamic Revolution.

However, downplaying – or even whitewashing – the centrality of Iran’s domestic violence, provides the Ayatollahs with a robust tailwind, while generating a sturdy headwind to the battle against Islamic terrorism.

Furthermore, a focus on Iran’s domestic conduct would set the current negotiation on realistic – rather than make believe – grounds, exposing the built-in contradiction between the assumption that Iran is a potential “good-faith negotiator” and the reality of Iran as a prime epicenter of anti-US violence, driven by a 1,400-year-old fanatic and imperialistic Shiite Islamic vision.

ISRAEL, KRD NEWS Comments turned off

THE BELIEVER Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch believes unapologetic Zionism is the key to Reform Judaism’s survival. His new initiative just may save it!

Posted By on January 27th, 2022

https://mailchi.mp/406400cf4e07/krd-news-the-believer?e=9365a7c638, 

ARMIN ROSEN profiles RABBI AMMIEL HIRSCH, Senior Rabbi at Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in NYC. Rabbi Hirsch holds that unapologetic Zionism is the key to Reform Judaism’s survival:

Hirsch explained, Reform Judaism had grown out of a rejection of the particular. “I think there is a risk in our movement that we will revert to the default position of liberalism, which is the elevation of universalism at the expense of Jewish peoplehood, not as an extension of Jewish peoplehood,” Hirsch said. He now fears that the movement could be in the course of a swing back to its original historical grounding, overlooking both the tragic and near-miraculous aspects of the Jewish experience of the 20th century. “It wasn’t that the anti-Zionist period of classical Reform Judaism was the exception that had been relegated to history,” he theorized to me. “It was the 20th century that was the exception, that forced the Reform Movement back into the embrace of Jewish peoplehood.” Without peoplehood, and without commitment to a shared purpose and destiny, liberal Judaism risked losing its ability to stand for anything recognizably Jewish.

Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch is a true liberal in the classical sense (as opposed to a progressive illiberal). Many of us understand it is classical liberalism that is in danger right now:

Here’s what I learned from decades of studying and embracing liberalism: The liberal mindset is one of openness and doubt. True liberals are never so sure of themselves. We acknowledge and embrace complexity. It’s why we rely on science and evidence. Every place where people live requires repair. One of the key insights of liberalism is that I could be wrong. And I am open to being convinced.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Going ballistic in Vienna By RUTHIE BLUM

Posted By on January 27th, 2022

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-694816

It was clear from the outset that the nuclear talks in Vienna would turn out to be a farce. Promoted by the administration of US President Joe Biden as a means of returning to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) from which former president Donald Trump withdrew in 2018, the move to go back to the literal and figurative table was born of a pipe dream, at best. At worst, it stemmed from cynical disregard for the consequences of a hegemonic regime in Tehran armed with weapons of mass destruction.

The fantasy on the part of American and European liberals is that achieving a new and improved JCPOA is the safest — or only — way to prevent Iran from building atomic bombs. Western “pragmatists,” meanwhile, are concerned more about trade with the Islamic Republic than matters of war and peace.

The far-left apologists for a Russia-China-Iran axis possess a mixture of the above, but with a heavier ideological bent. Members of this camp, which includes radical Islamists, have an inverted view of good and evil. They see the West in general, particularly the United States, as an embodiment of the latter.

But all share a desire for a deal to be forged with the mullah-led government of Ebrahim (“the butcher”) Raisi, along the lines of the one signed between the P5+1 countries (China, France, Russia, Britain, the US and Germany) and his “moderate” predecessor, Hassan Rouhani.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

New York State is worth fighting for By Irene Heron

Posted By on January 27th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/01/new_york_state_is_worth_fighting_for.html

Like our brothers and sisters in the other Blue State Gulags, we New Yorkers have been to hell and back these past couple of years under the reign of King COVID. Unless you have been here, those of you who are fortunate enough to live in a Free State have no idea what we’ve been going through.

We have seen our fundamental liberties and civil rights, which we used to take for granted as part of our American heritage, taken from us by a cabal of the most evil scientists, bureaucrats, and politicians ever assembled in America.

We have mask mandates, “vax” mandates, and everything in between that has been placed on our schools and workplaces, all without the benefit of the legislature’s imprimatur. Our power-hungry, unelected governor, who replaced Cuomo, the scourge of elder-care facilities, tells us that, just like her five-year-old daughter who had a meltdown because she had to wear sneakers to kindergarten, we will get used to it!

For Pure Bloods like me, New York City is pretty much off-limits these days. We are not allowed to eat in restaurants, go to concerts, shows, or museums, or pretty much do anything indoors because we haven’t been jabbed. Not only that, but who wants to take a chance on getting mugged or murdered by one of the thousands of criminals who now roam the streets courtesy of the Demo-Marxist politicians who implemented all kinds of “reforms” to enable these thugs?

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Holocaust Remembrance Day: Lessons to learn from the darkest chapter of history By Rajan Laad

Posted By on January 27th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/01/holocaust_remembrance_day_lessons_to_learn_from_the_darkest_chapter_of_history.html

The Holocaust is among the darkest chapters in the history of mankind. It was the first time an entire people were systematically targeted, discriminated against, persecuted, and murdered on an industrial scale for their religious persuasion.

But this genocide against the Jewish people did not occur in a vacuum. The Holocaust was the result of a prolonged and sinister campaign against the Jewish people.

While the shocking nature of barbarism, violence, and mass murder causes the Holocaust to the focal point of historians, the Nazi strategy that enable them to systemically target an entire people without much resistance needs to be studied.

A bit of history.

Following Germany’s humiliating defeat during World War 1 in 1914, the Germans were compelled to sign the Treaty of Versailles. The treaty required Germany to disarm, make considerable territorial surrender, and pay reparations that were the equivalent of US$442 billion in 2022.

The treaty caused great resentment among Germans who felt that the politicians had stabbed them in the back.

The Great Depression in Germany during the 1930s added to the woes of an already fragile nation. Unemployment was high and so was inflation, which eroded the purchasing power for regular people.

At such a juncture people often look toward easy scapegoats. 

Despite the fact that Jews had integrated into German society, many indigenous Germans perceived them as outsiders. There was resentment based on antisemitism, but it was seldom overt. In fact, the history of antisemitism and persecution of the Jewish people in Europe dates back to the Middle Ages.

The Nazis under Hitler managed to channel all public resentment towards the Jews; the historical antisemitism made the feelings more potent.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Virginia Governor Youngkin Opens Tip Line for Parents to Report Teachers who Teach Critical Race Theory By Eric Lendrum

Posted By on January 27th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/01/26/virginia-governor-youngkin-opens-tip-line-for-parents-to-report-teachers-who-teach-critical-race-theory/

On Monday, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin (R-Va.) announced that his office would be opening up an anonymous tip line for Virginia parents to report teachers and schools that they believed to be teaching curriculum that includes Critical Race Theory (CRT).

As reported by The Daily Caller, Youngkin made the announcement during an interview on the John Fredericks Show, with Youngkin saying that parents “can send us an email at helpeducation@governor.virginia.gov.”

“We’re asking for folks to send us reports and observations that will help us be aware of things like privileged bingo, be aware of their child being denied their rights that parents have in Virginia and we’re going to make sure that we catalogue it all,” Youngkin continued. “It gives us great insight into what’s happening at the school level and that gives us further ability to make sure that we’re rooting it out.”

Youngkin was referring to a recent incident where Fairfax County Public Schools assigned students to play a game called “privilege bingo,” where students were told that they had inherent “privilege” if they were White, male, Christian, cisgender, or the child of a member of the military, among other factors.

Since his inauguration on January 15th, Youngkin has taken numerous actions to eliminate CRT from Virginia’s schools, which was one of his signature promises on the campaign trail last year. His first executive order after taking office called for the end of “the use of inherently divisive concepts – including Critical Race Theory – in public education.”