NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Soros Open Society Foundations Closing Offices, Laying Off Staff By Lincoln Brown

Posted By on October 18th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/lincolnbrown/2023/10/17/open-society-foundations-closing-offices-laying-off-staff-n1735587

Have they tried turning the heat down? Putting on sweaters? Maybe couponing?

It may be a little premature to celebrate, but the Open Society Foundations are closing offices in Africa and laying people off. In fact, 40% of the organization’s offices on the African continent will be hanging out “Sorry, We’re Closed” signs, and the employees will be hitting the want ads. This is in spite of the fact that the organization is worth an estimated $25 billion. Closures also hit offices in Barcelona and Baltimore.

Bloomberg reports that earlier in the month, it obtained emails sent out to staffers announcing that the organization would be scaling back. One of those emails from Binaifer Nowrojee, vice president of programs, read, “With the decision by the board in June to cut the staff by more than 40%, our staffing size and footprint by necessity needs to diminish. We no longer have the bandwidth to operate multiple small offices, and thus the decision to further reduce our locations.”

In another email, Africa Executive Director Muthoni Wanyeki stated, “I’m very sorry that it’s turned out this way. It’s obviously not what any of us expected and I’m also very sorry that I didn’t have the information on this earlier,” she added, saying the changes aren’t what leadership ‘committed to two years ago.’” Grantmaker positions will reportedly be the hardest hit. Only three African offices will remain open. Programming positions outside of the United States will be pared down from 450 to 150 people.

According to Bloomberg, OSF announced that the offices in Spain and Baltimore were slated to be shuttered earlier in the year. The African offices have been in “transition” since 2021.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Are You Sure a Changing Climate Causes Severe Weather? Is so-called “consensus” a valid way to judge climate change? by William Balgord

Posted By on October 18th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/are-you-sure-a-changing-climate-causes-severe-weather/

If you can’t convince all the people with straight-forward advocacy, then conduct a poll and use the results to convince anyone who will listen. Lately, this tactic would seem to be AP’s preferred mode of operation. Abe Lincoln said it somewhat differently.

This time AP thought better of running out its climate guru Seth Borentein to unveil another of his well-worn stories regarding who’s more at fault for weather-related disasters—mankind or Mother Nature—and assessing the blame for “man-made” climate change.

It should be realized (but generally is not) that AP, Reuters, and certain other MSM outlets have been gifted several million in grants from one or another of the George Soros-connected charitable foundations. The grants are intended to nudge public opinion in the direction of accepting the scientifically (unsupportable) position that man-made climate change is the principal underlying cause of adverse weather events in recent decades.

Detailed re-analyses of weather data going back to 1950 and earlier show that assertion is not true, but the fact does not deter alarmists from spreading their message of doom and gloom.

But if an AP survey is to be given due credence, then the propaganda campaign in the MSM may in fact be doing exactly what its purveyors intend. The MSM invests considerable time and effort to spread alarmist narratives, so that the casual reader should not be surprised to learn that the AP’s interviewees harbored the opinions they expressed.

Most of us tend to have short memories. Very few present-day Americans even recall hearing about the desperate period of the 1930s, when the Great Depression and “Dust Bowl” with its prolonged heat waves and continent-wide drought became routine across the United States.

Today’s weather announcers often do not report true temperature readings but a calculated “heat index” that factors in the effect of humidity and lack of wind, to come up with a subjective temperature referred to as “real-feel.” It is the number most of us will hear or see tonight on TV.

It should also come as no surprise that the AP pollsters were able to get the kind of public responses they quote. AP reporters also took trouble to include some candid musings of a “Republican”, whom they portrayed as poster-child for those abominable “climate deniers.”

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Who or what are ‘the Palestinians?’ From time immemorial, Jews occupied the spot history knows as ‘Judaea.’ What happened to that? Roger Kimball

Posted By on October 18th, 2023

https://thespectator.com/topic/palestinians-plo-yasser-arafat-soviets/

It’s so cute when politicians like AOC and Rashida Tlaib, to say nothing of hysteric undergraduates and ill-informed lefties across the country, complain that Israel is an “apartheid state” that is illegitimately “occupying” the land West of the Jordan River from the Golan Heights down to the border of the Sinai Peninsula. 

Responding to the murderous attacks on Israeli civilians by Hamas on October 7, AOC decried “the occupation of Palestine” while Tlaib urged “ending the occupation, and dismantling the apartheid system” that can “lead to resistance.”

Hermeneuts of the world, unite! What does Tlaib mean by “resistance” here? Slaughtering innocent partygoers? Incinerating and beheading babies? Indiscriminately raping then murdering hostages? And what is the force of “lead to”? Is it meant to suggest that Israel is somehow to blame for such acts of “resistance” because — because why? Because the Jewish people occupy the place that was 1) their ancestral homeland and 2) with which they were reinvested by the Balfour Declaration of 1917, by the victorious Brits after World War One and and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, explicitly to provide a “national home for the Jewish people,” and 3) by the creation of the state of Israel in 1948?

What group of people do they think belongs there?  

“Palestinians” is the usual answer.  But who or what are the “Palestinians”?“People from Palestine,” you say.  But what is Palestine?

From time immemorial, Jews occupied the spot history knows as “Judaea.” What happened to that? Gibbon said that Hadrian, who ruled from AD 117 to 138, was one of the “five good emperors.”  Maybe so, but there is a reason that the Jews proverbially accompanied any mention of Hadrian with the imprecation, “May God crush his bones.” 

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Gaza Hospital and the Missing Aid Hamas steals from a U.N. refugee agency, which plays along.

Posted By on October 18th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/gaza-aid-unrwa-united-nations-hamas-israel-45bfbfe?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

On Tuesday a blast at a hospital in Gaza City reportedly killed hundreds of people. Hamas blamed an Israeli airstrike. The Israel Defense Forces said it was a failed missile from Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a local proxy of Iran. About a quarter of Hamas and PIJ rockets fired in previous wars have fallen short and landed in Gaza. More details will come, but blowing up a hospital isn’t in Israel’s interest.

Hamas courts Palestinian casualties, knowing that it can blame Israel whenever the aftermath of its misfired rockets or human shields ends up on the news. Hamas shows such little concern for Gazans that it has long stolen their humanitarian aid. It’s another way the terrorist group uses Palestinian civilians, playing on Western sympathy to advance its jihadist brutality.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, known as Unrwa, took to Twitter on Monday: “@UNRWA received reports that yesterday a group of people with trucks purporting to be from the Ministry of Health of the de facto authorities in #Gaza, removed fuel and medical equipment from the Agency’s compound in #GazaCity.”

But hours later something strange happened: Unrwa deleted its tweet and said nothing was amiss. “With regards to reports on social media of looting of an UNRWA warehouse,” it wrote, leaving out that the reports had been its own, “UNRWA would like to confirm that no looting has taken place.” The agency didn’t reply to requests for comment.

Unrwa can pretend it never said what it said, but U.N. sources told Israel’s Walla News that the aid was stolen, and Israel’s military liaison to the Palestinians reports that 24,000 liters of fuel and medical supplies went to Hamas, whose underground bases use diesel generators.

Washington covers that tab. Since President Biden restored aid that was blocked by President Trump, the U.S. has been Unrwa’s largest donor, at $344 million in 2022.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Shlomo Brody All Options Grim No choice that Israel makes can avoid civilian casualties—a reality that will test the support of the civilized world.

Posted By on October 18th, 2023

https://www.city-journal.org/article/all-options-grim

On October 7, thousands of Hamas terrorists together murdered over 1,300 Israelis in villages near the border of the Gaza Strip. Most of their victims were civilians. Among their infamies, the terrorists torched the homes of families hiding in in-home bomb shelters, burning the families to death; they killed 260 partygoers at a music festival and raped many of the young women in attendance; and they took some 200 Israelis into captivity in Gaza, including toddlers and grandmothers. All told, Hamas was responsible for the largest and most horrific attack on Jews since the Holocaust ended in 1945.

Two days after Hamas’s murderous raids, Israel announced that it was shutting off the Gaza Strip’s water, gas, and electricity supplies. World leaders soon warned that the Israelis were creating an “untenable” humanitarian crisis in Gaza, while a European Union official condemned Israel’s “indiscriminate attack on civilians.” In response to American and international pressure, Israel partially restored the strip’s water supply.

What does the civilized world want Israel to do? Since the attack, Israel has launched thousands of air raids on Gaza, destroying key elements of Hamas military infrastructure. Meanwhile, Hamas showers the Israeli populace (that is, random civilian targets) with its own rocket attacks. Israel’s air power is far superior to Hamas’s, but Israel does not desire, and would not benefit from, a protracted rocket war. Israel left Gaza in 2005, and Hamas took over the strip from the Palestinian Authority through a violent coup in 2007. In the years since, Hamas has instigated conflicts with Israel in 2008, 2012, 2014, and 2021, launching intermittent rocket strikes to terrorize Israeli citizens in-between. The Jewish state’s response should be that of any normal country: to end its enemy’s ability to threaten it.

Israel has urged civilians to leave the northern region of the Gaza Strip, providing safety corridors to southern Gaza. Hamas leaders, however, have urged and sometimes forced Palestinians to stay in the danger zone, placing large obstacles on the evacuation roads; the IDF claims that Hamas explosives killed 70 fleeing refugees. These actions are in keeping with Hamas’s long-standing tactic of embedding its fighters within crowded civilian neighborhoods, resulting in the inevitable deaths of many noncombatants.

Regional actors such as Egypt (which refuses to open its borders to Gazan refugees) and superpowers like China have argued that Israel’s approach has shifted from one of self-defense to one of “collective punishment.” Human Rights Watch claims Israel’s response, and the sheer number of resulting Gazan casualties, will likely by itself constitute a war crime. Even the United States, whose government has been supportive of its ally, has cautioned Israel that it can’t tolerate excessive civilian casualties.

The Biden administration’s warning highlights the Jewish state’s precarious position. Absent a popular Gazan uprising against Hamas, Israel won’t be able to uproot the threat against it without incurring significant civilian casualties.

EDUCATION, ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Alternate Universe of Anti-Israel Protestors By Robert Weissberg

Posted By on October 18th, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/10/the_alternate_universe_of_antiisrael_protestors.html

Contemporary universities have created youngsters who are willfully blind to reality and demand that others share their fantasies.

The sudden outpouring of anti-Israel, pro-Palestine outrage on countless campuses is hardly surprising given how universities are so grievance group friendly. More surprising is the content of these protests, namely proclaiming a morally upside-down world where Israel is the oppressor and Hamas the victim (the Harvard letter said, “Palestinians have been forced to live in a state of death, both slow and sudden.”) Here the killing of innocent civilians and the beheading of babies counts for nothing while Humas savagery becomes noble “resistance.” It is this rejection of reality that is truly puzzling.

What allows college students and even a few professors to justify the anti-Israel rage? That this occurs at some of America’s top schools — Harvard, Columbia, and Stanford — makes it all more remarkable.

Lacking mental health experts to psychoanalyze protestors, let me offer two possible explanations for this toxic flight from reality.

The first concerns the personal costs of living in a fantasy world for today’s college students and faculty. In the “real world” having totally wrong ideas can have dire consequences. You may decide that astrology is the key to knowledge, but normally friends will convince you of the truth. In nearly all circumstances, harsh reality constrains fantasy.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

3 Things America’s National Interest Demands After The Heinous Hamas Attack By: Ben Weingarten

Posted By on October 18th, 2023

https://thefederalist.com/2023/10/17/3-things-americas-national-interest-demands-after-the-heinous-hamas-attack/

Only exacting pressure from the American people and our representatives will ensure the Biden administration advances our interests over those of our enemies.

When the Iran-backed jihadists of Hamas attacked Israel, butchering Jews in numbers equivalent to more than 45,000 Americans, raping them, and taking them hostage, the genocidal Jew-haters sparked a potential global conflagration. By murdering and taking Americans hostage, as Iran and its proxies have been doing since the very start of the mullahs’ theocratic takeover, Hamas also took this fight to us.

That our greatest ally; most pivotal military, intelligence, and technological partner; and the first line of defense in a bellicose, often barbarous, and anti-American region is under existential threat, and that the threat has come for our people, compels an American response.

By the same token, many are rightly skeptical about involving ourselves in any foreign conflict — let alone one in the Middle East, where over the last quarter-century Americans have sacrificed so much in blood and treasure, only to see our nation’s power erode and the threats persist. We are a divided country, thinly stretched, and war-weary.

Given this volatile situation, and Americans’ competing concerns, what does the U.S. national interest demand with respect to the war forced on Israel and us? I propose three things.

1. Defend Americans and Secure the Homeland

This starts with using all elements of national power to pressure Iran and its proxies — including Qatar, where Hamas’ leadership lives in luxury — to force the return of American hostages immediately. The scandal that this has not yet occurred is only enlarged by the fact that the Biden administration’s coddling of the mullahcracy fueled the kidnapping of Americans in the first place.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Hate Trump All You Like, The Gag Order Is Still Wrong If you’re cheering on a judge inhibiting political speech, you’re no friend of the ‘democracy’ or the Constitution.David Harsanyi

Posted By on October 18th, 2023

https://thefederalist.com/2023/10/17/hate-trump-all-you-like-the-gag-order-is-still-wrong/

This week, U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan overseeing United States v. Donald Trump issued a gag order prohibiting a leading presidential candidate, Donald Trump, from engaging in speech aimed at “government staff,” among others, during his trial.

Listen, I understand the disdain some conservatives feel for the former president. I share the sentiment. But if you’re cheering on a judge who’s inhibiting political speech on rickety grounds, you’re no friend of the “democracy” or the Constitution.

“Mr. Trump may still vigorously seek public support as a presidential candidate, debate policies and people related to that candidacy, criticize the current administration and assert his belief that this prosecution is politically motivated,” Chutkan explained. “But those critical [F]irst [A]mendment freedoms do not allow him to launch a pre-trial smear campaign against participating government staff, their families and foreseeable witnesses.”

Who is Chutkan to dictate the contours of a presidential candidate’s political speech? What if one of the “participating government staff” or a family member is compromised by partisanship? Moreover, preemptively suggesting that without gagging, Trump will engage in a “smear campaign” is as prejudicial to the case as any of the inflammatory things Trump has thrown around. It implies that any accusation now aimed at prosecutors is untrue.

Trump contends that he is being railroaded by special counsel Jack Smith, the longtime federal prosecutor who works on behalf of Democrats and Joe Biden. You might believe the special counsel is a chaste defender of Lady Justice, but there’s ample evidence that partisan considerations are in play. Fears of a politicized justice department are real. As we speak, the head of the Democratic Party is being mollycoddled by the state in a very similar case involving classified documents.

Whatever the case, the Justice Department now plays a big part in Trump’s campaign for the presidency — and probably his legal case, as well. If the state’s accusations can be spread throughout the media before a trial, why can’t the defendant speak openly, as well?

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

America’s Hamas double failure Don’t expect the Biden administration to acknowledge its errors, any more than it did after the catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan Charles Lipson

Posted By on October 18th, 2023

https://thespectator.com/topic/america-hamas-double-failure-israel-iran-biden/

Did American failures contribute to Hamas’s war of terror — its unprovoked attack, its total surprise, its horrific butchering of innocent civilians simply because they are Jews?

Yes, but a lesser one. The failures to discover the plans, deter the attack and, having failed at deterrence, to defeat it promptly are Israel’s. The secondary actor here is Iran, not the United States. It was the Islamic regime in Tehran that supplied its terror partner with funds, plans, intelligence and weapons.

Still, the US played a role — a combination of bumbling incompetence and fundamental policy errors that contributed to the onset of the conflict and to Hamas’s success.

Israel’s elaborate network of signals intelligence and human sources failed to uncover a massive plan of attack that involved thousands of terrorists and was months in the making. How could they have missed it? That’s a question its leaders must answer after the war is over. They must also ask why their deployment of military resources near Gaza was insufficient to deter the attack and, failing that, inadequate to protect civilian lives across southern Israel or defeat the rampaging invaders.

But America’s agencies failed, too. They were never expected to unmask internal operations in Gaza, but the CIA and other US intelligence agencies should have discovered what Iran was up to. After all, that regime ranks as one of America’s four enemy states, along with China, Russia and North Korea. Those should be a primary focus of US intelligence efforts — and this was Iran’s biggest foreign policy adventure in years.

Will anyone in the US government be held responsible? You’re kidding. This is The Government. No one is ever held responsible for failures, no matter how grotesque. If the first rule of Fight Club is, “we don’t talk about Fight Club,” the first rule of the Inside the Beltway Club is, “we don’t talk about our mistakes. We protect each other.”

Bad as the intelligence failures were, they were not Washington’s most important blunders. That shameful trophy goes to the Biden administration’s wrongheaded policy in Middle East. Its policy can be summarized in a single word: “appeasement.” The Obama administration pursued the same policy — and many of the same people are in charge now.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

The High Price of Historical Illiteracy – Knowledge of how we won our rights is a crucial part of keeping them. David Catron

Posted By on October 18th, 2023

https://spectator.org/rights-high-price-of-historical-illiteracy/

Thomas Jefferson, in an 1816 letter to a member of the Virginia General Assembly, made this observation: “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” He wrote this passage to highlight the need for a system of primary schools in the Old Dominion. Eventually, the Commonwealth did establish a public school system, though Jefferson didn’t live to see it. That is just as well, perhaps. He would certainly be horrified by the ignorance of the people who attend and receive diplomas from our public schools.
 
During recent years, numerous studies have found that most Americans don’t know enough about the nation’s history and Constitution to pass the U.S. Citizenship Test. A particularly thorough 50-state survey of 41,000 Americans was published by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation in 2019. Nationally, only 4 in 10 passed. In only one state, Vermont, was a majority (53 percent) able to earn a passing grade for U.S. history. This dismal state of affairs was clearly exacerbated by the ill-conceived school shutdowns that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, as the low 2023 ACT test scores demonstrate.
 

But the problem predates the pandemic, which arrived on our shores a year after the foundation’s survey was conducted. The real explanation can be derived by breaking out the scores by age group: In the 65+ group, 76 percent passed. Only 51 percent of the 45 to 64 group passed. In the under 45 group, a mere 27 percent passed. This suggests that history instruction has been neglected in public schools for decades. As Timothy S. Goeglein explains in his book, Toward a More Perfect Union: The Moral and Cultural Case for Teaching the Great American Story, this neglect of history in public schools comes at a high price:

When there is no historical context to draw upon, no shared history, and no understanding of how government works, it becomes seed to sow division and discord in hearts and minds. When people are not equipped to refute an argument and lack the critical thinking skills to see beyond the rhetoric, they tend to accept it at face value. They become easy prey for demagogues — from the Left and the Right alike. They become tools to be exploited for a certain agenda.