EDUCATION Comments turned off

Brittany Bernstein :Pro-Palestinian ‘Anarchists and Communists’ Claim Responsibility for Vandalism at University of California President’s Office

Posted By on May 17th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/pro-palestinian-anarchists-and-communists-claim-responsibility-for-vandalism-at-university-of-california-presidents-office/

A pro-Palestinian group of “anti-colonial anarchists and communists” says it was behind a recent vandalism attack against the University of California Office of the President.

The group claimed to have released hundreds of cockroaches and defaced the building’s exterior in a Sunday morning assault.

“With the Aurora Borealis above us and the martyrs in our hearts, we attacked the UC Office of the President in solidarity with the Palestinian Resistance,” read a post by the “sacred black and red” on Indybay. “Using a fire extinguisher filled with red paint we covered the facade and smashed seven windows. Then, with access to the building, we released 500 cockroaches inside and emptied a second fire exintguisher [sic] onto the interior.”

However, while the president’s office confirmed to the San Francisco Standard there was damage done to its building, it did not confirm cockroaches had been released into the building. Police are investigating the incident as a “hate-related crime.”

The alleged vandals said they “finalized the act by leaving a water jug inscribed with ‘Bonk’ at the scene — an homage to the militants of Cal Poly Humboldt and the international student encampment movement.” The comment was an apparent reference to a pro-Palestinian protester at Humboldt’s California State Polytechnic University who hit a police officer with an empty water jug in April.

The vandals went on to post a screed about the UC system’s “entanglements” with Israel that calls for the abolition of the UC system.

“The University’s true fascist form has been put on full display, and hiding behind hollow progressive ideals is no longer an option for the dead-eyed desk killers,” the group wrote. “Abolish the UC showed us in 2020 that the University of California is nothing more than a settler colonial project, that their police are protecting the gates of colony, where knowledge is produced and captured by the State to only dig its claws deeper into the flesh of Indigenous lands here and abroad.”

“Let us not forget the UC became co-ed to breed settlers and populate the west coast,” it added. “Speaking only to the UC’s material connection to the Zionist entity obfuscates the extent of the political, theoretical, and cultural entanglements between the UC and the Israeli State. The University does not simply fund Israel, it creates Israel, and launches this white-colony into the post-modern Empire. What does divestment mean when the very essence and foundation of the institution is a fascist regime? Where does Zionism begin and end in the University of California? Is divestment an oxymoron? The UC must be abolished.”

EDUCATION Comments turned off

California University President Placed on Leave after Approving Israel Boycott:Zach Kessel

Posted By on May 17th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/california-university-president-placed-on-leave-after-approving-israel-boycott/

The president of Sonoma State University in California was placed on an indefinite leave of absence two days after he sent an email to the university community announcing that he had acceded to campus encampment organizers’ anti-Israel demands.

Ming-Tung “Mike” Lee issued a statement on Tuesday informing SSU students, faculty, and staff that, after standing for 19 days, the anti-Israel encampment on the university’s lawn had achieved at least one of its goals: an academic boycott of Israel.

“Over the past week, senior administrators met with students and faculty to listen to and discuss student demands. On Friday, May 10 and Tuesday, May 14, I joined the group to hear directly from them,” Lee wrote.

He went on to address the new academic boycott:

SSU will not pursue or engage in any study abroad programs, faculty exchanges, or other formal collaborations that are sponsored by, or represent, the Israeli state academic and research institutions. SSU also commits to immediately updating any SSU pamphlets and SSU-hosted websites that may still be circulating or searchable and to remove hosting or linking to any pamphlets, flyers, or brochures advertising the study abroad program where students are encouraged to study abroad in Israel. SSU will make it clear to any students that any such programs are terminated until further notice and not simply suspended.

Lee also indicated his desire to seek “divestment strategies” in accordance with the encampment organizers’ demands and wrote of his personal condemnation of what he called Israel’s “genocide.”

OPINION, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Left Bows Low and Cries ‘Allahu Akbar’ Phil Shannon

Posted By on May 17th, 2024

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/islam/2024/05/the-left-bows-low-and-cries-allahu-akbar/

Odd bedfellows are often found in politics or war, but is the secular Left’s lovey-dovey relationship with the anti-Semitic, genocidal Hamas fanatics in Gaza and, indeed, Islam generally, really such an odd pairing? We are entitled to speculate because there appears  no limit to what it would take for the woke Left to say, along with a majority of other Australians, ‘to hell with Hamas, to hell with Islam’.  Neither the bestial nature of the Hamas terror attack on Israel and the imported Jew-hate that consequently erupted here in Australia, nor the Muslim teen jihadi’s stabbing of a Sydney bishop, have proved to be a threshold too far for the modern Left.

No matter what depths of depravity are reached by Islam, it remains ring-fenced by the impregnable force-field of ‘Islamophobia’, one of the top sins in the Woke catechism and zealously enforced by the Left, even though ‘Islamophobia’ should more accurately be called ‘Islamo-awareness’ rather than an ‘irrational’ fear of Islam. Whilst Islamo-Fascism has a long history (one common enemy in particular united both the  Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and the Fuhrer, for example), Islamo-Leftism is a relatively new phenomenon in a Left which has traditionally been wary of, indeed hostile to, ‘radical Mohammedans’ (in Trotsky’s words) and their milieu.

So, what is going on with the infatuation of the Left with the barbaric, Jew-killing, gay-hating, women-raping, head-lopping religious fundamentalists of the Islamic faith, and their often silently supportive, more ‘moderate’, brethren?

Islam’s demographic march

Like the rest of the West, Australia is beginning to undergo Islamicisation.  In 1966, Muslims made up fewer than one in a thousand Australians (Islam did not statistically reach even the 0.1 per cent population needed to warrant its own religion category in the Census of that year).  From that invisibly low base, however, the acceleration has been rapid.  By the 2021 Census, Muslims in Australia had reached a population of 813,392 or 3.2 per cent of the total population.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Biden’s $7.5 Billion EV Charger Plan Backfires Spectacularly

Posted By on May 17th, 2024

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/05/17/bidens-7-5-billion-ev-charger-plan-backfires-spectacularly/

At a Rose Garden event this week, President Joe Biden bragged that “Thanks to my Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, we’re building a network of 500,000 charging stations all across America.”

This is about as believable as the story of his uncle’s cannibalistic demise.

The truth is that Biden’s five-year, $7.5 billion effort to jump-start the development of electric vehicle charging stations is doing the opposite. The money has so far produced only eight new charging stations in two years. The overall growth rate in EV charging stations has slowed since he signed that bill. And earlier this month, Tesla gutted its EV charger efforts, dealing the entire scheme a huge blow.

In other words, this is shaping up to be a massive waste of taxpayer money.

The slow rollout of the Biden-approved EV stations is in part due to cumbersome rules and regulations required to access the money. That’s no surprise.

But it’s actually having a broader negative impact, slowing the growth of EV stations overall.

In the two years before Biden signed that infrastructure bill, the number of EV charging stations grew by roughly 20,000, according to data compiled by the Department of Energy. In the two years since, just 16,000 stations went online, even as EV sales accelerated. The result is that the ratio of charging stations to EVs is about half what it was in 2021. The administration says not to worry, because the buildout will soon take off. We aren’t holding our breath.

But even if the stations do start to roll out, these numbers don’t account for the large number of charging ports that aren’t working at any given time because of communication failures, power outages, software bugs, or other problems with the complicated tech.

A survey by J.D. Power found that almost 21% of drivers using public charging stations reported malfunctions. And when a Wall Street Journal reporter went around to 30 fast-charging stations in the Los Angeles area, she encountered problems at more than 40% of them.

BOOKS Comments turned off

‘The elites are hoarding the American Dream’ Batya Ungar-Sargon on the establishment’s betrayal of the working classes.

Posted By on May 17th, 2024

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/05/15/the-elites-are-hoarding-the-american-dream/

Whatever happened to the American Dream? Only a generation ago, millions of Americans still held to this vision of meritocracy. The US prided itself on being the land of opportunity, where the rigid class system of the old world could be overcome. But as Batya Ungar-Sargon lays out in her new book, Second Class: How the Elites Betrayed America’s Working Men and Women, the dream has collided with a new reality. An oligarchy has emerged, propping itself up by keeping the working classes down. The laptop class thrives, while hardworking Americans are increasingly struggling to get by.

Batya discussed all these issues and more on the latest episode of The Brendan O’Neill Show. What follows is an edited extract from the conversation. Listen to the full thing here.

Brendan O’Neill: What has happened to meritocracy in America?

Batya Ungar-Sargon: What’s happened in the US is tragic. Americans still like to see ourselves as a classless society. We want to believe that we’re a nation that has abandoned the burdens of aristocracy. Part of how we left those burdens behind was by believing that the US should adopt a meritocratic drive. We pushed the idea that a person’s talents should raise them up as high as possible. But this drive for meritocracy has effectively calcified into an oligarchy of credentialism.

What I mean by this is that certain kinds of talents, such as being able to sit and study for a very long time, can pretty much guarantee you a successful life in America. But the talents that we need much more, like being able to drive a truck for 12 hours straight or care for the elderly, are treated as though they are worthless. The people who do these tasks – the working classes – are treated like they’re nothing.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Russia, China and Iran Must Not Seize Control of Sudan by Con Coughlin

Posted By on May 16th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20640/sudan-control-russia-china-iran

Moscow has undertaken a radical change in its involvement in the Sudanese conflict, with the Kremlin now providing al-Burhan’s Islamist-aligned SAF its “uncapped” military support.

In return, Moscow is hoping the Sudanese leader will honour a deal struck in 2020 to allow Russia to establish a naval base in Port Sudan, a move that would enable the Russian navy to threaten directly Western trade routes passing through the Red Sea.

If, as now seems likely, both Russia and Iran, together with China, succeed in deepening their foothold in Sudan, as well as gaining access to key maritime bases such as Port Sudan, they will be in a strong position to challenge the West’s ability to protect key shipping routes in the Red Sea.

Iran’s presence in Sudan, moreover, will present a major challenge to Israel: it will complete Tehran’s strategic encirclement of the Israelis.

The Western powers must act urgently to protect this pivotal African state from falling into the hands of hostile autocratic regimes, such as Iran, Russia and China, which seek to use Sudan as a base from which to maintain their assault of the West and its key allies in the region.

A modern-day “Scramble for Africa” is taking place in war-torn Sudan, where an unholy collection of hostile autocratic states, namely Iran, Russia and China, are competing for a stake in the country’s key resources, especially the all-important maritime base of Port Sudan in the Red Sea.

Back in the late nineteenth century, the original “Scramble for Africa” was the term coined to describe the efforts of European colonial powers such as Britain, France and Germany to expand their influence throughout the African continent. Their campaign of expansion proved so successful that by the outbreak of the First World War, only Liberia and Ethiopia remained free from the shackles of European colonisation.

BOOKS Comments turned off

Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up, by Abigail Shrier reviewed by Kay Hymowitz

Posted By on May 16th, 2024

https://www.city-journal.org/article/review-of-bad-therapy-why-the-kids-arent-growing-up

Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up, by Abigail Shrier (Sentinel, 320 pp., $30)

Abigail Shrier’s first book, 2020’s Irreversible Damage, launched the mother of all cancel campaigns. Because the book attributed the sudden and inexplicable rise in juvenile gender anxiety to social contagion rather than the activist-approved explanation of social progress, Shrier, an occasional contributor to City Journal, was branded a “transphobe.” Amazon employees demanded the company remove the book from its virtual shelves. Unlike the suits at Target, who briefly did exactly that, Amazon stopped short of cancelling the book and settled for banning any paid advertising. Despite growing questions about juvenile transgender treatment, including among practitioners, many libraries continue to treat Irreversible Damage as radioactive. Only last month, a Japanese publisher reneged on plans to publish the book, proving that, whether or not transgenderism is contagious, the urge to cancel those out of line with approved ideas unquestionably is.  

Shrier’s new book Bad Therapy, an astute and impassioned analysis of the mental-health crisis now afflicting adolescents, may cause a similar emotional meltdown in some corners of American culture. Shrier’s target is more expansive than it was in Irreversible Damage; she aims her fire at the therapeutic mindset that pervades not just the offices of psychologists and counsellors, but elementary, middle, and high school classrooms, best-seller lists, middle-class homes, and government agencies. It’s a pernicious development because a therapeutic mindset easily paralyzes kids’ natural defenses and resilience, hence the crisis we confront today. Assuming a Bad Therapy backlash comes, it is unlikely to be as heated as it was in the case of Irreversible Damage—therapists, who have the most to lose if Shrier’s analysis were to win out, are a more sedate crowd than trans activists—but one hopes that for the sake of the rising generation, any pushback won’t prevent people from heeding the warnings of this important book. 

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Motherhood is the most important job in the world And it’s one fewer and fewer want Don Feder

Posted By on May 16th, 2024

https://www.washingtontimes.com/staff/don-feder/

When President Woodrow Wilson made Mother’s Day a federal holiday in 1914, the average American woman had six children. During the baby boom, the number was 3.62. Today, it’s an anemic 1.6, which should set off alarm bells.

Motherhood is the most important job in world. But it’s a job fewer and fewer want to do.

In 2023, 3.6 million babies were born in the United States, compared with 4.16 million in 1990.

The total fertility rate is the number of children the average woman will have in her lifetime. We haven’t had replacement-level fertility (2.1) since 1973.

Still, the United States is experiencing another baby boom compared to most of the industrialized world.

In Italy, the fertility rate is 1.21. The average Italian child has no brothers, sisters or cousins.

In South Korea, it’s 0.72. The nation will lose more than half of its population in each generation. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un can disband his army. In a few years, he’ll be able to just walk in and take over.

Last year, Japan lost 595,000 people. This is the 13th consecutive year of population decline. More than 20 million Japanese are 75 and older, a record high. The number of vacant homes also hit an all-time high of more than 9 million, or 13.8% of the housing supply.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

FBI: Assaults Against Law Enforcement at Highest Level in Ten Years By Eric Lendrum

Posted By on May 16th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/05/15/fbi-assaults-against-law-enforcement-at-highest-level-in-ten-years/

The latest data from the FBI reveals that the number of assaults committed against law enforcement officers is at the highest level in at least 10 years.

According to the Daily Caller, the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program recorded 79,091 different cases of assault against officers in the year 2023. The most common occurrences were during police responses to assaults against non-officers, with 6,783 such cases. The second-highest occurrence was during responses to drug violations, with 4,879 assaults taking place under such circumstances.

At least 466 officers were assaulted and injured by assailants with firearms, which is also the highest rate of such assaults in the last 10 years. The report also reveals that 194 officers were feloniously killed between 2021 and 2023, thus marking the highest rate of such murders in any three-year period in the last 20 years. The year 2023 saw 60 officers killed, while 61 were killed in 2022, and 73 were killed in 2021.

In 2023, there were 57 offenders who committed felony murder of law enforcement officers. Of those 57 culprits, 32 had previous violent arrests; 54 of the 57 culprits were men, while 8 allegedly suffered some form of mental illness.

Regionally, the South saw the highest number of officers killed in the line of duty in 2023, with 20; this marked a decrease of about 38% from 32 line-of-duty deaths in 2022.

The persistently high rate of violence against police officers is a continuation of the widespread anti-police sentiment that started in 2020, after an African-American named George Floyd died of a fentanyl overdose while in police custody in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His accidental death, falsely believed to be a murder, sparked nationwide race riots and led to numerous far-left politicians calling for a “defunding” of the police. Although political attempts to do so have either failed or been repealed in recent years, anti-police rhetoric remains high, and has also led to a wave of early retirements as well as recruitment struggles for many police departments.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

The Biden Reelection Strategy Bidenites believe they can reelect an unhealthy, unpopular, and unsuccessful president by any means necessary. And they may be right. By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on May 16th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/05/16/the-biden-reelection-strategy/

Joe Biden polls at or below 40 percent approval. Historically, such unpopularity has made it almost impossible for a president to be reelected.

His age advances by the hour. His voice falters, his memory fades, and his gait is reduced to short steps, with his arms, winglike and in tandem, offering balance.

Biden is not so much an octogenarian as an unhealthy and prematurely aging 80-year-old. It is America’s irony that he is fit for almost no other job in the country other than President, which apparently allows for a 3-day-a-week ceremonial role while others in the shadows run the country.

So how does Biden become renominated and reelected, as polls show he is behind in almost every critical swing state on nearly every issue?

Answer: not by campaigning, not by championing his record, and especially not by doubling down on his neo-socialist and now unpopular agendas.

Instead, his campaign is focused on four other strategies to beat Donald Trump.

First, left-wing local, state, and federal prosecutors are tying Trump up in court on crimes that have never been seen before and will never be again after the election. All the cases are politically motivated, with many coordinated with the White House.

Even if Trump is not convicted by blue-state prosecutors, in blue-state courtrooms, in front of blue-state juries, he will lose critical campaigning time.

Trump may end up paying out $1 billion in legal fees and fines. At 76, the monotonous days in court are designed to destroy him financially, physically, and mentally.

Biden and his operatives know that, in the long term, they may have fatally damaged the American legal system with such judicial sabotage. But short-term, they hope to destroy Trump before the ballots are cast.

Second, in his fourth year, Biden is suddenly selling government favors to special-interest voting blocs, or hoping to bring short-term relief to voters at the expense of long-term damage to the nation.

For elite college students and graduates, there are now billions of dollars in student-loan cancellations, despite a Supreme Court ruling declaring such targeted contractual amnesties illegal.