BOOKS, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Natan Sharansky: A Hero for All Seasons by Lawrence A. Franklin

Posted By on May 10th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17345/natan-sharansky

Sharansky reasons that until there is a fundamental internal transformation of Palestinian Arab society that embraces democracy, there can be no realistic negotiations. He roundly condemns Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as a dictator and a terrorist. He views his successor Mahmoud Abbas as a pale and equally corrupt reflection of his predecessor. Sharansky is under no illusions about Palestinian leaders. He believes that they still are wedded to the goal of Israel’s elimination. Sharansky underscores his point by quoting Soviet dissident and creator of the USSR’s hydrogen bomb, Andrei Sakharov: “Never trust a government more than it trusts its own people.”

Sharansky comes down hard on the Iranian regime as ideologically the most dangerous of enemies, claiming that he is in agreement with prominent Iranian analysts such as, Uri Lubrani, the last Israeli unofficial ambassador to Iran; Dr. Bernard Lewis, the most accomplished western Islamic scholar, and Ron Dermer, the long-serving Israeli ambassador to the US. Sharansky has sharp words of condemnation for Barack Obama; he accuses the former US President of having abandoned Iran’s dissidents by his refusal to offer even verbal support for anti-regime demonstrators during their nationwide protests in 2009.

Sharansky… is a fierce critic of the “new” campus-based anti-Semitism, and catalogues several programs that Israeli and some American Jews have developed to lend courage to Jewish-American youths to defend, fight back, and celebrate their Jewish identity in the face of radical Jew-haters as well as self-hating American Jews who serve as a poisonous brew that eventually destroy both the institutions of democracy and the freedoms of individual liberty.

Natan Sharansky. (Image source: Ram Mendel/Wikimedia Commons)

Natan Sharansky’s recent autobiography “Never Alone” is a testament to what a solitary soul can endure and then accomplish if he maintains a life of principled consistency. The book’s first section recapitulates Sharansky’s “refusenik” role in the USSR in defense of the human rights of Soviet Jews. This period also covers his nearly nine-year incarceration in the KGB’s infamous prisons. Sharansky credits his unwavering faith in the G-d of the Jewish Bible, his awareness of his wife Avital’s relentless efforts to rally global dignitaries and world Jewry to work for his release, and his mastery of mental chess matches to sustain hope for his ultimate liberation. In retrospect, Sharansky celebrates the improbable unity of Israeli Jews and the Jews of the Diaspora as the formula that forced the totalitarian Soviet empire to disgorge him to freedom.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Pete du Pont, Conservative Ahead of His Time By John Fund

Posted By on May 10th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/05/pete-du-pont-conservative-ahead-of-his-time/

Du Pont, who died Saturday, was a great two-term GOP governor and conservative innovator.

Pete du Pont, the man who inadvertently may have jump-started Joe Biden’s political career in Delaware, passed away on Saturday at age 86.

Du Pont, an heir to one of the most successful corporate legacies in America, had a bigger impact on American government than his failed 1988 presidential bid for the GOP nomination would indicate. He served as a congressman and then rescued his bankrupt state during two terms as governor by applying classic Reagan conservatism: cutting taxes, deregulating, restraining spending, and expanding economic opportunity.

His record as Delaware’s governor won bipartisan plaudits and prompted him to run for president in 1988, when Ronald Reagan retired. His campaign attracted plenty of attention from pundits, but GOP primary voters plumped for a more well-known member of another aristocratic family: George H. W. Bush, Reagan’s vice president.

Though he never ran for office again, du Pont devoted another quarter century to building and supporting the conservative movement, including a stint as president of the National Review Institute from 1994 to 1997.

He studied engineering at Princeton and law at Harvard, and then he worked for six years in product development at the family company. Frustrated that he would have to wait his turn to run the company until he was past 60, he entered politics at age 33 and won a seat in Delaware’s part-time legislature. In 1970, he easily won Delaware’s sole congressional seat.

In 1972, Republican U.S. senator J. Caleb Boggs was preparing to retire. Du Pont prepared to run, but he would have faced then–Wilmington mayor Harry G. Haskell Jr. in a bitter Senate primary. To avoid a divisive primary, President Richard Nixon helped convince Boggs to run again with united party support.

But Boggs was 63 — he looked tired and ran a lackluster campaign. He was upset by a hard-charging young Democrat named Joe Biden, who beat Boggs, even though he didn’t reach the required age of 30 until after the election. We can speculate how different history might have been if du Pont had beaten Biden and sent “Uncle Joe” in a different direction.

Instead, in 1976, du Pont decided to tackle a real challenge. Delaware had 9 percent unemployment, some of the highest taxes in the nation, a staggering debt, and one of the lowest bond ratings in the country. Previous governors had failed to halt the slide: None had been reelected in 25 years.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Love Song of Bill and Melinda Is it the end of the Gates Foundation and its tyranny? Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on May 10th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/love-song-bill-and-melinda-daniel-greenfield/

After Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleoptra, and Pepé Le Pew and Penelope, there were Bill and Melinda. The Microsoft technocrat and his spouse were a love story for the ages.

In 1993, Bill proposed to Melinda: an executive at his company. In 1994, they were married. In 1995, Melinda debuted Microsoft Bob. Microsoft Bob treated computer users like idiots who were too stupid to be allowed to use their computers without a lot of handholding.

Condescending handholding was also what the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation offered the world as one of the industry’s most notoriously miserable human beings decided to become a philanthropist and save the world from all the people who weren’t running it properly.

In 2000, Gates stepped down as CEO of Microsoft, left his day-to-day role in 2008, and departed as chairman of the board in 2014. He also jettisoned 8 million shares of the company.

Forget CEO of Microsoft, Bill would use his vast wealth to become the CEO of the world.

Each of Bill’s resignations followed another ‘Microsoft Bob’, another failed Microsoft project, from Windows 2000, to Windows Vista in 2006, and most infamously, Windows 8 in 2014.

Every time Microsoft screwed up badly, Bill Gates seemed to decide that he should spend less time trying to make the company that had temporarily made him the richest man in the world succeed, and more time trying to run the world. Running the world hasn’t gone well for Gates.

FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

After Violent Muslim Riots in Jerusalem, AOC, Warren, Sanders Attack Israel Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on May 10th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2021/05/after-violent-muslim-riots-jerusalem-aoc-warren-daniel-greenfield/

During Israel’s War of Independence, the country was invaded by multiple Muslim countries and armies. While these forces were defeated in some areas, they succeeded in seizing and colonizing parts of Jerusalem. When Israel liberated the conquered part of Jerusalem in the Six Day War, the Jewish owners of some houses in Jerusalem began a prolonged Dickensian process of trying to reclaim their former homes.

The Arab Muslim colonizers were backed by international organizations and local lefties who prolonged the process as much as possible.

Losing court cases didn’t stop them, and getting a ruling evicting them meant riots. That’s exactly what happened in Jerusalem.

And top Socialist Democrat, AOC, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders, are siding with the Muslim colonizers and rioters.

“The forced removal of long-time Palestinian residents in Sheikh Jarrah is abhorrent and unacceptable. The Administration should make clear to the Israeli government that these evictions are illegal and must stop immediately,” Senator Elizabeth Warren falsely tweeted.

“Forced removal” is what happens when you’re living in a house you stole and refuse to relinquish. It’s called an eviction. And it’s fully legal.

“We stand in solidarity with the Palestinian residents of Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem. Israeli forces are forcing families from their homes during Ramadan and inflicting violence. It is inhumane and the US must show leadership in safeguarding the human rights of Palestinians,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez wrongly tweeted.

There’s plenty more, but this comes down to leftist Democrats choosing to stand with the colonizers who stole the property of Jewish homeowners over their rightful owners.

And that, in a nutshell, is the position of the Left on Israel.

FOREIGN POLICY, HISTORY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Bay of Pigs 60th Anniversary Part III – Humiliating Che Guevara and John Kerry A brave Cuban freedom fighter confronts Kerry’s lies. Humberto Fontova

Posted By on May 10th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/bay-pigs-60th-anniversary-part-iiihumiliating-che-humberto-fontova/

”This is the history of a failure.” — The oddly frank opening lines of Che Guevara’s Congo Dairies.

“Those Cuban-CIA men [Bay of Pigs vets] were as tough, dedicated and impetuous a group of soldiers as I’ve ever had the honor of commanding.” — Legendary anti-communist mercenary “Mad Mike” Hoare, commander of the “Wild Geese,” in his book Congo Mercenary.

“I stood above Che Guevara, my boots near his head, just as Che had once stood over my dear friend and fellow 2506 Brigade member, Nestor Pino. ‘We’re going to kill you all,’ Che said to Pino. Now, the situation was reversed. Che Guevara lay at my feet. He looked like a piece of trash. I said, ‘Che Guevara, I want to talk to you.'” — Former President of the Bay of Pigs Veterans Association Felix Rodriguez (pictured above), recalling Che Guevara’s capture in Bolivia, where he played a key role.

“Senator [John Kerry] your committee’s slander against me was in every g*dd*mmed newspaper after your committee’s last closed hearing! Saying I solicited drug money for the Contras. THAT, senator Kerry, is a D*MNED LIE!…and it difficult for me to answer questions from a man (you, the chairman of the committee) I do not RESPECT!” — Felix Rodriguez testifying for Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations hearings chaired by Senator John Kerry in 1986. These evolved into the Iran-Contra hearings.

After being ransomed back by the guilt-stricken JFK after his Bay of Pigs betrayal, many of these Cuban freedom-fighters were itching to get back into the fight (but with ammo and air cover this time). The CIA obliged and sent a group of them with ex-marine Rip Robertson to the Congo in ‘64 where Castro (with tongue tucked deeply in his cheek) had sent Che Guevara to foment a “war of liberation,” training and commanding the alternately Chinese-and Soviet-backed “Simbas” of Laurent Kabila, who were murdering, raping and munching (many were cannibals) their way through the defenseless Europeans still left in the recently abandoned Belgian colony.

Together, Mad Mike, Rip and the Cubans made short work of Che and Kabila’s Simbas. Guevara himself barely escaped by hightailing it with his tail tucked firmly between his legs across Lake Tanganyika into Tanzania, with the Cuba-CIA men in hot pursuit.

Too bad Hollywood never picked up on this exploit for one of their many glorifications of Che — worse still that Monty Python’s Flying Circus didn’t pick it up. I’ll even start the script for them: “In 1965, while planning a military campaign in the Congo against crack mercenaries commanded by a professional soldier who helped defeat Rommel in North Africa, Che confidently allied himself with ‘soldiers’ who used chicken feathers for helmets and stood in the open waving at attacking aircraft because a muganga (witch doctor) had assured them that the magic water he sprinkled over them would make .50 caliber bullets bounce harmlessly off their bodies. Six months later, Che fled Africa, narrowly escaping with his life and with his tail tucked tightly between his legs.”

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Forcing Jewish Students to Malign and Injure Israel at Pomona College Yet another vile tactic in the cognitive war against Israel. Richard L. Cravatts

Posted By on May 10th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/forcing-jewish-students-malign-and-injure-israel-richard-l-cravatts/

As more evidence that maligning and seeking to weaken and destroy Israel is still common behavior on American college campuses, the student government of Pomona College successfully pushed through a resolution that would compel student clubs to participate in a boycott of targeted companies doing business with Israel. Claremont Colleges Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Claremont Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) sponsored the odious bill and the Associated Students of Pomona College (ASPC) passed the resolution aimed at “divesting all ASPC funds from companies complicit in the occupation of Palestine, and banning future use of funds towards such companies.”

The resolution, revealingly named “Banning the Use of ASPC Funding to Support the Occupation of Palestine,” was not unique in targeting the Jewish state for divestment and boycott; other campuses have pushed through resolutions that call on their respective university administrations to divest from holdings in companies that do business with Israel or which somehow are “complicit in the occupation of Palestine.” When those student efforts to push for divestment are passed, university administrators have regularly rejected the demands, claiming, rightly, that such boycotts and targeted divestment are inconsistent with university policies and moral behavior by focusing solely on Israel.

The Pomona divestment bill, however, took the novel and troubling step of focusing the divestment on student funds for the college’s various student organizations, thereby sidestepping the inconvenient step of convincing administrators that seeking to punish Israel, and Israel alone, is a sound or reasonable policy in the first place.

This bill put the divestment activities in the hands of the students themselves so that the ASPC “will change its internal spending habits . . . by stopping . . . spending on items that knowingly support the Israeli occupation of Palestine or contributes to any companies on the . . . United Nations list . . . [of] companies involved in the creation of illegal Israeli settlements ‘in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan.’”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Texas: Muslim Who Helped His Father Evade Capture After Murdering His Sister Gets Ten Years But no one is facing up to the reality of Islamic honor killing in the U.S. Robert Spencer

Posted By on May 10th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/texas-muslim-who-helped-his-father-evade-capture-robert-spencer/

In Fort Worth, Texas on Tuesday, a 32-year-old Muslim named Islam Said was sentenced to ten years in prison for spending the last thirteen years helping his father, Yaser Said, one of the FBI’s Most Wanted criminals, evade capture. Yaser Said was wanted for murdering his two daughters, Islam Said’s sisters, Amina and Sarah Said. What kind of man would know that his father had murdered his two sisters and then help his father avoid justice, rather than turning him in? The answer to that question is far too uncomfortable and inconvenient for law enforcement officials to face honestly.

Islam Said was arrested along with Yaser last August. Apparently he was in hiding with his father, although he doesn’t seem to have had anything to do with the killings. And according to the Dallas Morning News, Islam Said denies that the killings were honor murders or had anything to do with Islam. “It’s something else. Religion has nothing to do with it.”

Yet that raises the question of why Islam Said was with his father at all. If these weren’t honor killings, why would Islam Said go on the run with Yaser and help him hide for all these years? Why wouldn’t he have the normal human reaction of thinking that what his father had done in murdering his sisters was abhorrent, and turn his father in to authorities? Did Islam Said’s commitment to the religion of Islam override that natural human reaction and make him think that what his father had done was good and praiseworthy?

For despite media denial and obfuscation of the fact, honor killing is something that many Muslims believe to be good and in accord with their faith. According to Islamic law, “retaliation is obligatory against anyone who kills a human being purely intentionally and without right.” However, “not subject to retaliation” is “a father or mother (or their fathers or mothers) for killing their offspring, or offspring’s offspring.” (Reliance of the Traveller o1.1-2). In other words, someone who kills his child incurs no legal penalty under Islamic law. In this case the victim was the murderer’s daughter, a victim to the culture of violence and intimidation that such laws help create.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The New Scientific Method: Identity Politics The National Academy of Sciences fights bias by explicitly introducing more of it.By Lawrence Krauss

Posted By on May 10th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-new-scientific-method-identity-politics-11620581262?mod=hp_opin_pos_1

The Biden administration is considering a laudable major expansion in funding for scientific agencies to shore up America’s research base. The money will help, but it doesn’t obviate the need to scrutinize who will be leading the government’s scientific efforts, as many of us did during President Trump’s term in office. The current emphasis in academic hiring on affirmative action shouldn’t be of concern here. We should expect that merit and accomplishment will guide promotion to the highest levels of scientific leadership. Even if the Biden administration may appear more in touch with the concerns of the scientific community, it isn’t excused from the duty to appoint qualified people to leadership positions.

Many don’t realize that the largest funder of physical science in the country isn’t the National Science Foundation, whose 2022 budget the Biden administration has proposed to increase by 20%, but the Energy Department. Here, too, the Biden administration is proposing a major funding increase.

The DOE Office of Science’s $7 billion budget, set to rise by $400 million, supports research in high-energy and nuclear physics with large accelerators, materials physics with X-ray synchrotrons, fusion and advanced scientific computers, and runs 10 national laboratories employing thousands of researchers.

President Biden has nominated Asmeret Asefaw Berhe, a soil biogeochemist from the University of California, Merced, to lead the Office of Science. Ms. Berhe will be the first black woman to lead the science office, happily lending a more diverse face to science in this country.

Ms. Berhe’s research program on soil chemistry, exploring the capture of carbon dioxide, is relevant to climate-change policy. But her research expertise isn’t in any of the Office of Science’s major programs, and she has no experience as a scientific administrator and minimal experience with the Energy Department itself.

POLITICS Comments turned off

The DC Statehood Proposal Could Give a Handful of People Three Electoral Votes By Derek T. Muller

Posted By on May 10th, 2021

https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2021/05/06/the_dc_statehood_proposal_could_give_a_handful_of_people_three_electoral_votes_775920.html

Proponents of District of Columbia statehood believe this is their moment. The House of Representatives has approved H.R. 51, and the Senate might bypass the filibuster to send the proposal to President Joe Biden for his signature. But election questions plague the bill.

H.R. 51 would turn most of the District of Columbia into a state called “Washington, Douglass Commonwealth” (after Frederick Douglass). A remaining federal enclave consisting principally of the White House, the Capitol, and federal buildings around the Mall would become the seat of government called “Capital.”

While nearly everyone in the current District of Columbia would be moved to the new state, the new Capital would still have about 30 to 50 people living in it. And under the Twenty-third Amendment, ratified in 1961, those few dozen people would have three electoral votes in presidential elections. Though the District of Columbia did not have representation in Congress, the amendment gave D.C. residents electoral votes equal to the smallest state in the country. States such as Vermont and Wyoming have three electoral votes; so does D.C.

If Douglass Commonwealth becomes a state, it gets two senators, at least one member of the House, and an equivalent number of electoral votes. But the remaining Capital residents are also entitled to three electoral votes in every presidential election. Critics of the Electoral College complain about the imbalance between small and large states, but this would be the most lopsided of all — Capital would have about 1/20,000th the population of Vermont. A sitting president’s family could change their voter registrations to Capital and have nearly unilateral control over three electoral votes.

It’s a problem for statehood proponents, but H.R. 51 calls for an expedited repeal of the Twenty-third Amendment. There’s no guarantee that two-thirds of each house of Congress, plus legislatures in 38 states, would vote for repeal. The Constitution has been amended once in the last fifty years, and a handful of resistant states or members of Congress could block repeal.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

‘Dude, Where’s My Workforce?’

Posted By on May 10th, 2021

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/05/10/dude-wheres-my-workforce/

It must be a nasty surprise for companies that have slavishly repeated Woke mantras and imposed overtly racist policies on workers and even customers in the name of “racial equality” to now find themselves short of the one thing they need to thrive and grow: workers. They can thank Joe Biden and the Woke Democrats for that.

No question, right now companies are sucking for air, finding it impossible to ramp up fast enough as workers stay home in droves rather than return to work.

People are said to be “scratching their heads” over why, after a year of pandemic-forced business closings, workers aren’t desperate to work and earn. After all, just a few months ago the concern was whether they’d have jobs to go back to.

President Biden’s comment that the economy is “moving in the right direction” after the number of new payroll jobs undershot expectations by nearly 800,000 shows a president out of touch with reality.

There are nearly 15 million jobs going begging, according to online job site ZipRecruiter, far more than the 7.4 million “old economy” estimate of the Labor Department. Yet, data from April’s distressing jobs report shows that nearly 9.2 million Americans remain unemployed, 29% of those for more than a year.