I have in equal balance justly weighed
What wrong our arms may do,
what wrongs we suffer,
And find our griefs heavier than our offences.’
The Archbishop of York in 2 Henry IV
https://www.frontpagemag.com/americans-leaving-cities-destroyed-by-democrats/
For decades, Democrats have controlled the nation’s largest cities. The results have been catastrophic, including high crime rates, blight, failing public educational systems, rampant poverty, and an expanding homeless population.
These horrific outcomes are due to Democrats supporting failed policies, such as raising taxes, increasing regulations, growing the government, and refusing to prosecute violent criminals. Consequently, citizens voted with their feet and left in droves, a trend which has started to accelerate.
For example, while the country’s population soared sixty million to 341 million since 2000, it was a much different situation in the progressive hellhole of Chicago. The “Windy City” lost 231,000 people in 24 years, the most out migration of any city in the nation.
No one can blame citizens for wanting to exit a city led by a leftist like Lori Lightfoot. Unfortunately, Chicago voters did not learn their lesson and recently elected Mayor Brandon Johnson, an even more radical Democrat.
Chicago is not alone among our nation’s largest cities. Since the onset of the pandemic, New York lost 492.928 people, while 379.447 citizens fled Los Angeles and 173,877 exited San Francisco.
https://victorhanson.com/will-dei-end-america-or-america-end-dei/
At the nexus of most of America’s current crises, the diversity/equity/inclusion dogma can be found. The southern border has been destroyed because the Democratic Party wanted the poor of the southern hemisphere to be counted in the census, to vote if possible in poorly audited mail-in elections, and to build upon constituencies that demand government help. Opposition to such cynicism and the de facto destruction of enforcement of U.S. immigration law is written off as “racism,” “nativism,” and “xenophobia.”
The military is short more than 40,000 soldiers. The Pentagon may fault youth gangs, drug use, or a tight labor market. But the real shortfall is mostly due inordinately to reluctant white males who have been smeared by some of the military elite as suspected “white supremacists,” despite dying at twice their demographics in Iraq and Afghanistan. And they are now passing on joining up despite their families’ often multigenerational combat service.
The nexus between critical race theory and critical legal theory has been, inter alia, defunding the police, Soros-funded district attorneys exempting criminals from punishment, the legitimization of mass looting, squatters’ rights, and general lawlessness across big-city America.
The recent epidemic of anti-Semitism was in part birthed by woke/DEI faculty and students on elite campuses, who declared Hamas a victim of “white settler” victimizing Israel and thus contextualized their Jewish hatred by claiming that as “victims,” they cannot be bigots.
There is a historic, malevolent role of states adjudicating political purity, substituting racial, sex, class, and tribal criteria for meritocracy. They define success or failure not based on actual outcomes but on the degree of orthodox zealotry. Once governments enter that realm of the surreal, the result is always an utter disaster.
After a series of disastrous military catastrophes in 1941 and 1942, Soviet strongman and arch-communist Joseph Stalin ended the Soviet commissar system in October 1942. He reversed course to give absolute tactical authority to his ground commanders rather than to the communist overseers, as was customary.
Stalin really had no choice since Marxist-Leninist ideology overriding military logic and efficacy had ensured that the Soviet Union was surprised by a massive Nazi invasion in June 1941. The Russians in the first 12 months of war subsequently lost nearly 5 million in vast encirclements—largely because foolhardy, ideologically driven directives curtailed the generals’ operational control of the army. After the commissars were disbanded and commanders given greater autonomy, the landmark victory at Stalingrad followed, and with it, the rebound of the Red Army.
https://issuesinsights.com/2024/03/26/tulsi-gabbard-for-vp
“Gabbard is, of course, not perfect. She once endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders for president, the crank from Vermont, and still holds some positions on the left. Yet she has moved right since breaking with her party. But has she gone far enough to be a running mate that Republicans voters would support? A robust vetting would help determine that.
In the meantime, we should recall that Ronald Reagan was once a Democrat, too.”
Donald Trump either has a short list or a long one, depending on the media source, in his search for a running mate. Either way, he could do a lot worse than Tulsi Gabbard. At least she knows, unlike many establishment Republicans, just how malicious Democrats are, since she used to be one and saw the depravity up close.
Maybe Trump will choose Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, or New York Rep. Elise Stefanik. He might turn to Ben Carson, a Cabinet official in his previous administration, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, or South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem. All would be acceptable, as would other Republicans not named.
It’s possible, however, the best candidate isn’t even a member of the party.
Gabbard was for eight years a Democrat representing Hawaii’s second congressional district in the U.S. House. She ran for the White House in 2020 as a Democrat, but has since left the party, declaring her independence in October 2022.
The Samoan-American, a U.S. Army Reserve lieutenant colonel and decorated combat veteran, showed her plucky streak, and her inclination to think independently, while speaking in December at Turning Point USA’s Americafest.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20518/eighth-amendment-violations
It is high time to call on all judges and patriots to put a stop to crimes committed by those who have been elected or appointed to uphold the laws of the nation and the US Constitution, but who instead have been violating the law and assaulting the Constitution – sadly with impunity. We have seen former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton allegedly obstruct justice by reportedly ordering her staff to destroy 33,000 subpoenaed emails with BleachBit and smash two of her 13 BlackBerry mobile devices. We have seen President Joe Biden violate a ruling by the Supreme Court that blocked him from using taxpayer funds, some from people who, for whatever reason, did not participate higher education, to pay off the student loans amounting to $138 billion of other people who did.
We have seen governmental violations of the First Amendment — from Soviet-style whispers to Facebook to quash the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop by declaring falsely – knowingly so, it turned out – that the material in it supposedly had “all the earmarks of Russian disinformation,” to calling true medical information false during the COVID-19 pandemic. The first maneuver was election interference – probably decisive in undermining the integrity of the 2020 election. The false medical information disseminated by the government, depriving the ill of alternative medicine – may have cost countless lives.
Sadly, as of late, we have been witnessing even more governmental abuse of power, astronomically out of control, by individuals elected or appointed to safeguard our laws and our Constitution, but who have been disregarding them at best and upending them at worst, specifically in the treatment individuals who supposedly walked through “the people’s house” on January 6, 2021, and most recently in disfiguring the Eighth Amendment to our Constitution to prosecute not a crime, but a person. The Eighth Amendment, in its entirety, states:
“Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.”
To the severe detriment of our global reputation, the entire planet has just been witnessing staggering violations of those protections, through which District Attorneys and at least one judge have been permitted to skate.
https://www.nysun.com/article/america-israel-rift-widens-following-un-security-council-vote?lctg=1474934676&recognized_email=ruthsking%40aol.com&utm_source=MG&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Evening%20Sun%20%202024-03-25
A Monday United Nations resolution, largely dictated by America, demands a two-week cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war start immediately while all 134 Israeli hostages are released. America abstained from voting on the resolution, and even as Hamas refuses to accept a cease-fire, the Biden administration is putting increasing pressures on Israel to end major military operations in Gaza, as the rift between the countries widens.
As members of the UN Security Council rose in applause following the 14 votes in favor of the resolution and America’s abstention, Prime Minister Netanyahu canceled a government delegation’s trip to Washington that was scheduled for Monday. The Israeli government sees the American engagement at the UN as a new phase in President Biden’s pressure to wind down the Gaza war.
The Israeli delegation was to be led by Mr. Netanyahu’s close adviser, Ron Dermer. It had been invited by the White House to lean on the Israeli government to cancel a plan for a major operation at Rafah, Hamas’s last major stronghold. Four Hamas battalions and the terrorist organization’s leadership are holed-up there.
Israel is yet to commence the evacuation of more than a million Gazans from the Rafah area. It is therefore unlikely to start its assault in the next two weeks. And as Hamas is yet to accept a deal for releasing even some of the hostages, let alone all of them, the council’s resolution is unlikely to make much difference on the ground in Gaza or Israel.
The CIA chief, William Burns, returned to Washington from Doha over the weekend after Israeli negotiators there reportedly agreed to a deal for a temporary cease-fire and freeing 40 hostages and hundreds of terrorists in Israeli prison. Perhaps encouraged by America’s pressure on Israel, Hamas keeps amassing new demands.
“Releasing prisoners may have been the main Hamas demand a few months ago,” an Israeli activist who is known to occasionally speak with Hamas officials, Gershon Baskin, told Israel’s Channel 11 news Monday. “Now their top demand is to end the war and for a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.”
The UN Security Council resolution demands a cease-fire lasting until the April 9 end of Ramadan, in tandem with the release of all hostages. The two-operational-paragraph resolution was initially proposed by France in the name of the 10 elected members of the council. Yet, American diplomats leaned on the sponsors to change the text.
The council “demands an immediate ceasefire for the month of Ramadan respected by all parties leading to a lasting sustainable ceasefire, and also demands the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages as well as ensuring humanitarian access to address their medical and other humanitarian needs,” the resolution reads.
While the American mission at the UN exerted pressure on council members, including a last-minute word change to “lasting” from “permanent” cease-fire, administration officials and Washington lawmakers intensified the pressure on Israel to avoid a Rafah operation.
Vice President Harris told ABC News Sunday that she has “studied the map” of Gaza and concluded that Rafah refugees have no place to go. She declined to exclude the possibility of “consequences” if Israel fails to heed the administration’s dictate to avoid a Rafah invasion, such as denial of arms to the IDF. On CNN, meanwhile, Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez insisted that Israel is committing “genocide” at Gaza.
Her allegation — that Israel is deliberately starving Gazans and therefore is guilty of genocide — is fast taking hold around the world. It started when South Africa officially demanded that the International Court of Justice declare Israel in violation of its obligations under the anti-genocide convention.
Despite Jordan’s peace treaty with Israel, its foreign minister, Ayman Safadi, announced on Friday that the Kingdom supports the South African ICJ motion. “The Israeli aggression on Gaza and its continued committing of war crimes against the Palestinian people and violating international law with impunity are responsible for the rising tensions witnessed in the region,” Mr. Safadi said.
Israel is facilitating the entry of hundreds of aid trucks a day into the Strip, and the IDF takes caution to avoid hitting civilians as it conducts its war against Hamas’s armed men. Yet, a group of Democratic American legislators, known as the “Squad,” insists that Israel is committing genocide. Election-year pressure from the party’s leftist base has moved Mr. Biden away from full support of Israel.
Separately, President Trump also seems to be calling for ending the war. “The world is turning on Israel, and that’s not a good thing,” he told the Israel Hayom newspaper in an interview published Monday. And so, he added, “you have to finish your war” and move toward peace.
https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/israel-alone?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
In my article here last week, I wrote that America was abandoning Israel. Today, the Biden administration wrote its name in the annals of infamy by openly joining the axis of evil against those defending civilisation.
The UN Security Council has passed a resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza for the remainder of Ramadan, and the immediate and unconditional release of Israeli hostages.
Breaking with its historic policy of vetoing hostile resolutions at the UNSC to protect Israel against those working for its destruction and the defeat of the west, the US abstained today and so the resolution was passed.
Even more appallingly (if that’s possible) the UK, the Biden administration’s poodle and whose Foreign Secretary, Lord Cameron, has been threatening Israel with an end to arms sales unless it does what he and the US State Department are demanding, actually voted for the resolution.
So both the US and UK are now aligned with the west’s foes Russia and China against Israel, the sole defender of the west in the Middle East. What a disgrace.
The resolution is obnoxious because it fails to condition a ceasefire on the release of the hostages, thus destroying the chances of the latter actually occurring.
Last Friday, the US brought forward a draft resolution which said the UNSC “unequivocally supports ongoing international diplomatic efforts to secure such a ceasefire in connection with the release of all remaining hostages” (my emphasis). That resolution’s linkage between a ceasefire and the release of the hostages was the reason it was vetoed by China and Russia. On that occasion, America’s ambassador to the UN ambassador declared:
We should not move forward with any resolution that jeopardises the ongoing [hostage] negotiations.
http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com
War is messy. It is cruel. It cannot be refined. It cannot be sanitized. Wars were once fought on battle fields. No longer. Civil War historian James McPherson has estimated that about 50,000 civilians died during that conflict, still less than 10% of all military deaths. That changed in the 20th Century. About half of all deaths in World War I were civilians. In World War II, twice as many civilians died as military personnel. Innocent people get hurt in modern wars, as residents of London, Dresden, Hiroshima, and Naples learned during World War II, and as residents of My Lai and Hué learned during the Vietnam War. And as people today in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, in Gaza City, Jabalia, and Rafah understand, and in the border villages of Israel’s north where residents have evacuated due to threats from Iran’s other proxy, Hezbollah.
When the fight is between good and evil, a “proportional” response, as attractive as the concept sounds, is not an alternative. “The moral thing to do,” the columnist Moshe Phillips wrote recently in Israel National News, “is to destroy evil when it poses a ‘clear and present danger’ or likely will again.” Hamas presents to Israel such a threat. In September 1864, on the cusp of taking Atlanta, General William Tecumseh Sherman sent a telegram to President Lincoln: “War is the remedy our enemies have chosen. Other simple remedies were within their choice. You know it and they know it, but they wanted war, and I say let us give them all they want; not a word of argument, not a sign of let up, no cave in until we are whipped or they are.” When Hamas attacked the Kibbutz Nir Oz, during the Tribe of Nova music festival, on October 7, raping women, slaughtering babies and children, mutilating those they had killed and kidnapping those they had not, war was the choice they made. Now, the only way to end the war is for Israel to totally destroy Hamas.
The battle in Gaza, like the American Civil War and World War II, is a fight between forces of good and evil. (In one sense, this is a civil war, as both Israelis and Palestinians descend from Abraham.) This is not to suggest that all Israelis are paragons of virtue and that all Palestinians are devils incarnate. But Israel, according to the Economist Groups Democracy Index, is the only democracy in the Middle East, while Hamas is designated a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union, and Britain. The people of Gaza bear some responsibility, as Hamas was elected in 2006 with 75% of the vote. Citizens of Gaza know that terrorists hide and store arms in tunnels beneath schools and hospitals. On September 11, 2001 there was dancing in the streets of Gaza. Ismail Haniyeh, former Gaza Prime Minister and Chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau (and who now lives in Qatar), explained in 2020 why Hamas rejects ceasefire agreements: “We cannot, in exchange for money or projects, give up Palestine and our weapons. We will not give up the resistance. We will not recognize Israel. Palestine must stretch from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea.” Commenting on the loss of civilian deaths in Gaza on October 26, 2023, Mr. Haniyeh said: The blood of the women, children and elderly […] we are the ones who need this blood, so it awakens within us the revolutionary spirit.”
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20514/sharia-violence-against-women
“Sharia-linked violence is inflicted upon women in the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and Asia. This includes the recent extreme sexual violence committed against Israeli women in October 2023 by Hamas proven by the UN; the infliction of sexual slavery on Yezidi women by the Islamic State (IS); killing of Iranian women for not wearing the hijab; the trafficking, kidnapping, and conversion of Coptic Christian girls in Egypt; kidnapping of girls and women in Nigeria by Boko Haram; mass attacks on women in Germany in 2015; the rape of girls in the UK by the so-called ‘grooming gangs’; the forced conversion, kidnapping and murder of Hindu girls in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh to name a few.” — Press release, March 8, 2024.
Of especial importance is that the complaint shows how many aspects of Sharia directly contradict what the UN claims it stands up for. By relying heavily on UN documents, and quoting from the UN conventions that back them, the complaint essentially asks the UN to do what it should be but is not doing.
The complaint further shows that, according to the UN’s own definitions, the issues it raises cannot be deemed “Islamophobic”….
To redress these abuses, the complaint asks the UN Human Rights Council to do several things. One consists of requesting that the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which claims to represent the Muslim world at the UN, provide a “single consolidated response” as well as “one standardized, worldwide codification of the Sharia and an explanation as to why Sharia should not be considered a fundamental cause of violation of women’s human rights.”
The complaint also requests the appointment of “two non-Muslim rapporteurs, one who is a Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief and the second, a Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women…”
Should, as is likely, the UN not respond, it will have, once again, proven itself a defunct and corrupt organization.
https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2024/03/climate-change-on-trial/
On February 9, 2024, when a Washington DC jury found writers Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg guilty of defaming climate scientist Michael Mann (above) in articles and blogs about his work on climate change, the world’s reactions seemed to divide neatly into two distinct camps.
Much the larger group that knew about the trial from its sparse and occasional coverage in the mainstream media could hardly be either surprised, let alone disturbed, that Steyn and Simberg had lost and received punitive damages for launching attacks on climate scientists and climate science with, as the New York Times reported, “maliciousness, spite, ill will, vengeance or deliberate intent to harm”.
That morning’s AP media trailer for the trial’s climax, widely republished and copied, had been headlined as follows: “Jury to Decide on Climate Scientist Michael Mann’s Defamation Suit Over Comparison to Molester”. The story went on: “It’s been 12 years since a pair of conservative writers compared a prominent climate scientist to a convicted child molester for his depiction of global warming.”
Scientist defamed as molester by conservatives, eh? That framing doesn’t quite do justice to both sides. Michael Mann is indeed a climate scientist of some reputation, and though Rand Simberg presented himself in court modestly as a simple researcher, Mark Steyn is a formidable commentator in leading newspapers throughout the Anglosphere on—inter alia—climate change, demography and popular culture.
A smaller and more interested group was following the proceedings closely either in court or through the intensive internet coverage of news and commentary websites, including Steyn’s own website, but in particular Ann McElhinney’s and Phelim McAleer’s hour-long daily reconstruction of the trial with actors reading out court transcripts as a play—and an exciting one at that.
That group was amazed that the course of the trial they had been following (which certainly revealed lots of maliciousness, spite, ill-will and vengeance, not wholly or even mainly from the defendants) contrasted so markedly with its result. Instead of a verdict on defamation, they thought, the jury had delivered a public policy decision to protect climate science and scientists from criticism.
