CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

SPLC Keeps Conservative and Christian Nonprofits on the ‘Hate Group’ List, Doesn’t Mention Antifa By Tyler O’Neil

Posted By on February 4th, 2021

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2021/02/03/did-the-splc-just-admit-its-hate-group-number-isnt-a-reliable-measure-of-hate-n1422928

On Monday, the far-left smear factory the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) released its annual list of “hate groups” for the previous year, in this case, 2020. The SPLC had to acknowledge that the list of “hate groups” declined, but the organization insisted that “hate” had not declined, so its “hate groups” are of limited value when it comes to measuring hate. This admission comes after years of accusations — from former employees, mainstream conservatives, and some liberal leaders — that the “hate group” number is inflated or a fundraising scam.

The SPLC claimed to identify 838 active hate groups in 2020. “Though numbers have dropped 11% overall, we are still recording historic highs,” the organization claimed. “In 2015, the numbers jumped from 784 to 892, and they have remained well above 800 for the duration of the Trump presidency.”

The SPLC insisted that hate did not decrease in 2020, even though the number of “hate groups” supposedly did. “It is important to understand that the number of hate groups is merely one metric for measuring the level of hate and racism in America, and that the decline in groups should not be interpreted as a reduction in bigoted beliefs and actions motivated by hate,” the report states (emphasis added).

HUMOR AND SATIRE Comments turned off

Democrats Announce It Is Safe To Reopen Now That Federal Government Has Tested Negative For Trump

Posted By on February 4th, 2021

https://babylonbee.com/news/democrats-announce-it-is-safe-to-reopen-now-that-federal-government-tested-negative-for-republican

U.S.—Democrat leaders around the country are declaring it is now safe to reopen since the federal government’s tests have come back negative for Trump.

“The key indicator we were looking for before we could begin the reopening process was that Trump wasn’t president,” said Governor Gavin Newsom. “While we are at the worst point yet in this pandemic, it now makes sense to open– even though the science said the exact opposite last year when it was comparably mild. Because now, all the tests are indicating we have tested negative for Trump.”

Governor Cuomo agreed, saying that all his key science experts — the ones who haven’t quit yet in disgust — are advising him to go ahead and reopen since the tests are coming back negative for Trump. “When the tests were positive some weeks ago, we were pretty concerned,” Cuomo told a reporter down by the docks as he threw a dead senior into the harbor. “Now, the tests are all looking really good for Democrats, so we’re gonna go ahead and get started.”

Governor Whitmer last year cast a spell on Michigan so it would be always winter and never Christmas, but she says she is canceling the spell now and encouraging Michiganders to celebrate “the true Christmas: Biden getting elected.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Dems’ COVID-19 Bill Is A Grab-Bag Of Leftist Goodies — Not Stimulus

Posted By on February 4th, 2021

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/02/04/dems-covid-19-bill-is-a-grab-bag-of-leftist-goodies-not-stimulus/

After a group of 10 Senate Republicans duly trudged to the White House on Monday to show their “bipartisanship” on yet another COVID-19 stimulus bill, President Joe Biden did the predictable: He looked at their outreached hand of political comity and spat on it. Just as well, since the only thing the Democrats’ plan will “stimulate” will be more debt.

Biden and his party were never really interested in bipartisanship at all, despite their claims to the contrary. The whole point of this choreographed Kabuki political theater was to humiliate the Republicans, who foolishly took Biden and the Democrats at their word.

Republicans had suggested a more-or-less stripped-down bill of “just” $600 billion, compared to the Democratic wish-list of $1.9 trillion, which includes such non-COVID-19-related items as a $15-an-hour national minimum wage, a $350 billion bailout for poorly run states and cities, $170 billion for K-12 schools and colleges, $25 billion for “rental assistance,” and so on. Democrats also want checks of $1,400 for most households.

Republicans seek checks of $1,000, but would exclude families with more than $50,000 in income from the handouts. Their spending on all other aid is roughly two-thirds what the Democrats seek.

In rejecting compromise, Biden gave Congress a green light to totally ignore Republican input by passing a stimulus package through reconciliation, not the normal budget process. That will require a simple majority of 51 senators, not a supermajority of 60, to pass.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Less than 5% of five million people deemed ‘Palestinian refugees’ meet the criteria for this status. By Richard Goldberg and Jonathan Schanzer

Posted By on February 4th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-u-n-refugee-agency-with-few-actual-refugees-

Lost amid President Trump’s unceremonious send-off were a pair of Jan. 14 tweets from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo : Of the more than five million people identified as “Palestinian refugees” by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, fewer than 200,000 meet the criteria for refugee status.

This is a breach of trust by a U.N. agency, but Unrwa is not the only one to blame. One administration after another, Democrat and Republican, enabled Unrwa to perpetuate its fiction. It’s time for a new U.S. policy that promotes regional peace, advances Palestinian human rights and defends the U.S. taxpayer.

History can explain, in part, how this mess was created. In 1948, five Arab armies invaded the fledgling state of Israel but lost. Unrwa was established to care for Arab residents displaced by that conflict. The organization was dedicated solely to Palestinian Arabs—independent of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, which took responsibility for all other world refugee populations.

Unrwa became part of a new Arab narrative: Millions of Palestinians were trapped as refugees, living in destitution and yearning for home. Until these people achieved their “right of return,” the Arab world insisted, the Middle East would never see peace. Meanwhile, Israel absorbed 800,000 Jewish refugees who were exiled from Arab states.

Over time, America somehow allowed itself to become Unrwa’s leading donor. From 1950 to 2018, American taxpayers contributed more than $6 billion, even as legislators from both parties raised concerns about the agency. Employees moonlighted as terrorists. Schools were used to store weapons and launch rockets against Israel. Concerns in Congress mounted over waste, fraud and abuse.

EDUCATION, MEDIA Comments turned off

Liberalism’s Ministry of Truth Academics and the progressive press mull state media controls.

Posted By on February 4th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/liberalisms-ministry-of-truth-11612395404?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

The academic establishment and progressive press want you to know two things: First, conservative claims of social-media bias are bogus. As Silicon Valley firms police content, their decisions are, miraculously, wholly uninfluenced by ideological preference.

Second, there is an urgent need for a much wider crackdown on political speech, perhaps led by the Biden Administration and requiring the creation of new government agencies. In other words, all that conservative suppression that’s, er, not happening? We need more of it.

New York University’s Stern Center for Business and Human Rights released a brief this week that is being amplified in the press entitled, “False Accusation: The Unfounded Claim that Social Media Companies Censor Conservatives.” It argues that “some conservatives believe their content is suppressed on partisan grounds when, in fact, it’s being singled out because it violates neutral platform rules.”

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Civics and History Education Is at a Crossroads By Michael DiMatteo

Posted By on February 4th, 2021

https://www.realclearpublicaffairs.com/articles/2021/02/03/civics_and_history_education_is_at_a_crossroads_658767.html

In the current academic climate, teaching social justice has become more important than content. This is especially true in the fields of history and civic education. For example, teacher training at the University of Illinois is centered around social justice, as more than one student teacher has related to me during informal interviews. Where once the emphasis was on such topics as Bloom’s taxonomy and classroom management, social justice topics seem to have taken precedence.

If alarm bells are not going off in your head right now, they should be.

Those of us who teach history or civics, whether at the high school or collegiate levels, are at the forefront of this battle. (Yes, it is not incorrect to call this a battle.) History is oftentimes in conflict as those who want to forward a political agenda are often pitted against those who seek to teach honest historical inquiry so that students, through prudent study, can arrive at their own conclusions.

History is not wrong. Those who teach it with a bias in order to forward a set of political ideals are.

Historiography, the way history is researched and told, has tentacles of different stripes based largely on time period. The Ancient Greeks and Romans told their histories in an effort to influence morality and what they considered to be the qualities of good men. Eventually, days and dates were included so as to preserve the great deeds of kings and queens for posterity’s sake, with critical histories being published only after the death of a monarch.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

A Pax Sinica takes shape in the Middle East David Goldman

Posted By on February 4th, 2021

https://asiatimes.com/2021/02/a-pax-sinica-takes-shape-in-the-middle-east/

The emerging Sinocentric bloc of Turkey, Iran and Pakistan could leave America’s ally India isolated and weak

A “Pax Sinica” is emerging in the Middle East and Central Asia in plain sight, albeit unnoticed by American planners. The main brace of the strategic architecture is an emerging alliance between Pakistan, a Chinese economic dependency, and Turkey, which relies increasingly on China for financing and trade. Chinese media reported the Turkish foreign minister’s visit to Pakistan Jan. 12 to 13th as a key step towards such an alliance.  And if Turkey and Pakistan ally, “Iran has no choice but to find a way to join the Turkish-Pakistan camp,” in the view of a Chinese military site reposted by NetEase.

I first raised the prospect of a “Pax Sinica” in the Middle East in 2013, and noted last year that a much-discussed (but so far only discussed) Sino-Iranian investment deal of up to $400 billion was “a move on a global game board in response to American efforts to hinder China’s breakout as a technological superpower.” The Turkey-Pakistan rapprochement of the past several months adds a new dimension to China’s ambitions in the region.

While America focused on the peace agreements between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain and Sudan, China maneuvered among the only three Muslim states with significant military capacity and economic potential. The $2 trillion Belt and Road Initiative will provide the economic foundation for Chinese hegemony from the Indian Ocean to the Black Sea. The emerging Sinocentric bloc of Turkey, Iran and Pakistan will leave America’s ally India isolated and weak, Chinese planners believe. It’s geopolitics played on the principles of Go, whose object is to encircle and isolate the opposing pieces.

The “Abraham Accords” between Israel and several Arab states have symbolic importance, and expose the Arab-Israeli conflict as the least interesting fault line in Western Asia, as former Israeli ambassador Michael Oren wrote Jan. 12. They are the result of American weakness rather than strength; Trump’s declared intention to remove American boots from the region’s ground left the Gulf States to fend for themselves against Iran and Turkey. The Gulf monarchies decided that Israel was less objectionable than Iranian Shi’ites or the Turkish-backed Muslim Brotherhood. But Israel and the Gulf States cannot quite fill the gap left by the strategic withdrawal from the United States. China means to fill it by working with Turkey, Iran and Pakistan.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

UAE embraces trade with Israeli-owned businesses in Judea and Samaria Eliana Rudee

Posted By on February 4th, 2021

https://www.jns.org/?ct=t%28Daily+Syndicate+1-31-21+%28old%29_COPY_01%29

Yaakov Berg, who owns the Psagot Winery with his wife, expresses his hope that “peace with the Emirates will change our relationship with Palestinians.”

The Psagot Winery sits on the peaks of the Binyamin region mountains in Judea and Samaria, north of Jerusalem and just east of Ramallah. Though Psagot and many Israeli-owned businesses operating over the 1967 armistice lines have historically experienced boycotts in Europe and throughout the Arab world, many say that in the context of the Abraham Accords, this may be changing.

When Yaakov Berg and his wife, Naama, established the Psagot Winery in 2002, they made fewer than 3,000 bottles. Today, that number has grown to 750,000 bottles per year—70 percent of which are exported to 30 countries, including North America, as well as throughout Europe, Asia and Australia. Their new goal is to produce 1 million bottles with a vast majority of them for export, including to Arab countries, which was not before possible.

According to Yaakov Berg, he and wine suppliers in the United Arab Emirates are finalizing “several deals in the making” to export the Israeli wine to the Gulf, crediting the progress made in trade relations between Israel and the UAE to the Trump administration and former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who visited the Psagot Winery during his most recent visit to Israel, becoming the first top American diplomat to tour an Israeli-owned company located beyond the pre-’67 borders.

In December, Hamad Baumim, the UAE head of Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said in an interview with Globes that he has “no problem” with Israeli products made in the West Bank, and that when they are imported to the UAE, they will be treated as all other Israeli products and with no special labeling.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Andrew Cuomo Was a Villain All Along By Pradheep J. Shanker

Posted By on February 3rd, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/02/andrew-cuomo-was-a-villain-all-along/

A deep dive into New York AG Letitia James’ COVID report reveals disturbing truths about the celebrity governor’s pandemic deception.

F or much of the past year, the mainstream media and Democrats have largely blamed former president Donald Trump and his administration for most of America’s COVID-19 deaths. Trump did indeed fail in certain aspects of coordination, messaging, and inserting politics into the parts of the process where it didn’t belong. He deserves credit, however, for Operation Warp Speed, the initiative that (ultimately successfully) fostered the development of coronavirus vaccines, one of the most successful public-private ventures in modern history. But Trump’s overbearing personality tended to absorb all the attention, leaving little room for real debate on the successes and failures of other politicians, except when the media found time to criticize Republican governors. But serious criticism of Democrats in this period was rare.

Until now.

It is important not to dismiss a critical fact here: James herself is a longtime Cuomo political progeny. He supported her attorney general campaign. That someone who for years has been closely aligned with Cuomo released this report is damning in and of itself. Yet the evidence it contains is even worse than the report itself suggests. If anything, the media response to it has been an underreaction.

The 76-page report relates, in great detail, the state’s irresponsible reaction to COVID raging through extended-care centers, primarily nursing homes. James and her team went straight to nursing homes to obtain the data, bypassing the state’s own data-collection entities. They took a random data sampling from 62 nursing homes around the state and found that 1,914 of their residents had died from COVID, 56 percent more than the 1,229 the state reported. If that sample is truly representative of the total for New York, the state’s nursing-home deaths total more than 13,000, where the state tallies just 8,711. (Overall New York COVID deaths remain unchanged.)

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Why Israel Leads the World in Vaccinating Its Population Its fast start is producing lessons and benefits for other countries Charles Lipson

Posted By on February 3rd, 2021

https://www.discoursemagazine.com/culture-and-society/2021/02/03/why-israel-lea

No country has been more successful in getting COVID vaccine to its citizens than Israel. Why? Three reasons stand out, and the third one is likely to help people around the world.

Israel can vaccinate the population quickly because it has a very competent, comprehensive national health system, based on several health maintenance organizations, all supervised by the Ministry of Health. The system includes digitized medical records for everyone in the country.
Israel bought enough vaccine. Earlier in the pandemic, it contracted for millions of doses from Moderna. More recently, it agreed to buy millions more from Pfizer so everyone over 16 can be vaccinated by the end of March. To clinch the Pfizer purchase, Jerusalem gave the company two incentives: It paid well above the market price, and it offered to share medical data with the company—data that few other countries could gather.
Israeli biostatisticians can pair the medical reactions of millions of vaccine recipients with each one’s medical history and demographic data. This will allow public health professionals worldwide to gain a nuanced understanding of how the vaccine works, both in the entire population and in various subgroups, such as women over 80 or people with Type II diabetes.

The country could afford the mass purchases thanks to decades of economic growth, grounded in high-technology, medical research, water conservation, sophisticated weapons development, cybersecurity and more. The growth was spurred by market-oriented public policies, adopted after years of sluggish European-style socialism under Labor governments.