NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Our So-called ‘Experts’ and their Silly Group-speak Letters As a general rule, anytime we read an election-cycle solicited letter from retired functionaries, replete with their grandiose former titles, we should completely discount it. By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on September 23rd, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/09/23/our-so-called-experts-and-their-silly-group-speak-letters/

One of the most preposterous recent trends has been the political use of supposed expert letters and declarations of support from so-called “authorities.”

These pretentious testimonies of purported professionalism are different from the usual inane candidate endorsements from celebrities and politicos.

Instead, they are used by politicians to impress and persuade the public to follow the “expertise,” “science,” or “authorities” to support all sorts of injurious initiatives and policies—of dubious value and otherwise without much political support.

Think of all the health experts who collectively swore to us that the COVID mRNA vaccinations would give us ironclad and lasting protection from being either infectious or infected and were without any side effects.

Other “authorities” assured us the first nationwide lockdown in U.S. history would stop COVID without hurting the social or economic life of the country.

Ditto testimonies about the pangolin-bat origins of COVID or the authenticity of the bogus Steele dossier.

Do we still remember the 1,200 healthcare “professionals” who in June 2020 told us that hitting the streets in mass numbers to protest during the post-George Floyd riots was a legitimate exemption from their own prior insistence on a complete nationwide quarantine? Or as these ideologues lectured us as “experts”:

“We wanted to present a narrative that prioritizes opposition to racism as vital to the public health, including the epidemic response. We believe that the way forward is not to suppress protests in the name of public health but to respond to protesters demands in the name of public health.”

To convince the public to get behind the agendas of politicians—increasingly on the left—ideologues round up groups of politically kindred professors, researchers, retired officials, and former bureaucrats to show off their supposed expertise and convince the public by means of their “authority”.

Perhaps one of the most notorious examples was the “70 arms control and nuclear experts,” who in 2015 were gathered together by Obama subordinates to persuade Americans to support the administration’s bankrupt Iran Deal—the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

UN Official Denounces Use of ‘Human Shields’ A sound message to the establishment media. by Hugh Fitzgerald

Posted By on September 23rd, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/un-official-denounces-use-of-human-shields/

Seldom does a UN official denounce Hamas for the way it fights its war, so that when it happens, it ought to be carefully noted in the media. But that isn’t what happens. Instead, the mainstream media either downplay, or leave out altogether, any denunciation of Hamas by UN officials. On September 10, the UN’s Tor Wennesland, the UN’s Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, delivered a statement, critical of Israel for the IDF’s bombing of a Hamas command and control center that was embedded in a humanitarian zone in Khan Younis. Amazingly, however, Wennesland also stated that Hamas must stop using human shields. It was a rare case of an attempt at “balance” by a UN official. More on his statement can be found here: “A UN official said Hamas must stop using human shields. International media ignores it.” Elder of Ziyon, September 11, 2024:

UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Tor Wennesland, issued a statement condemning the IDF  airstrike in Khan Younis yesterday condemning Israel for hitting a civilian area. But his statement was unusually balanced for a UN official:

While the IDF said it struck Hamas militants who were operating in a command-and-control center embedded inside the Humanitarian zone, I underline that international humanitarian law, including the principles of distinction, proportionality, and precautions in attack, must be upheld at all times. I also emphasize that civilians must never be used as human shields.

Yet again, such actions only underscore that nowhere is safe in Gaza.

Wennesland appears to have added the statement about human shields to appear even handed. His tweet on the statement didn’t mention that part of it.

But Wennesland emphasized that using human shielding is unacceptable and said that was one of the reasons that “nowhere is safe in Gaza.”

And almost no one reported on this part of his statement.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Climate Hysteria and the End of Hope We are a civilization embracing suicide. by Mark Tapson

Posted By on September 23rd, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/climate-hysteria-and-the-end-of-hope/

Recently the reliably Left-wing rag The Los Angeles Times published an opinion piece that wrestled with a question no one in history ever thought to ask themselves until our own time, when it has become a common refrain among young generations: Is it morally right to bring children into a world so fraught with dangerous uncertainty?

“Climate Anxiety and the Kid Question” is an excerpt from a new book by Jade S. Sasser, an associate professor in the – wait for it – Department of Gender & Sexuality Studies at UC Riverside. The book is called Climate Anxiety and the Kid Question: Deciding Whether to Have Children in an Uncertain Future.

Yes, climate anxiety is a thing. Psychotherapist Natacha Duke describes it thusly: “Also known as ‘eco-anxiety,’ ‘eco-guilt’ and ‘eco-grief,’ climate anxiety is characterized by a chronic fear of environmental doom that’s often paralyzing and debilitating.” It is one of the most effective and widespread psyops of our time, having traumatized an entire couple of generations into believing that we must take immediate, radical action to completely dismantle the capitalist, systemically racist, heteronormative, fossil-fueled power structures and exploitative mentality that purportedly have driven us to the brink of planetary annihilation.

The Times excerpt centers on a series of interviews Sasser conducted in 2021 and 2022 with millennials and members of Generation Z, “all of them people of color. Some of them identify as queer… which shapes their sensitivity to discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people.” All were college-educated, most having taken environmental studies classes. At least two of them have degrees in sustainability, whatever that means.

ELECTIONS, ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Call It Greenflation — And Kamala Wants More Of It

Posted By on September 23rd, 2024

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/09/23/call-it-greenflation-and-kamala-wants-more-of-it/

Every American should see (and share) the chart before they vote in November.

For families struggling to make ends meet, Kamala Harris claims she has a plan to lower energy costs. What she will deliver is more pain. Just ask anyone paying energy bills in a state her party controls.

On Harris’ campaign website, she pays lip service to reducing energy costs, but then rattles off a long list of plans to tackle the “climate crisis.”

We already know you can’t have one with the other.

At a congressional hearing last week, members of the House Budget Committee heard from witnesses about how Biden-Harris policies have fueled today’s energy crisis. One of the witnesses, Diana Furtchgott-Roth of the Heritage Foundation, presented lawmakers with a chart that deserves to be seen by anyone and everyone paying utility bills.

The chart ranks states based on the cost of electricity, as well as the cost of a gallon of gas.

Looking at the chart, you immediately notice something. Of the 16 states where electricity costs are higher than the national average, Republicans control only two. All the rest are either completely or partially run by Democrats.

BOOKS Comments turned off

TREY YINGST: BLACK SATURDAY

Posted By on September 23rd, 2024

Black Saturday: An Unfiltered Account of the October 7th Attack on Israel and the War in Gaza
Fox News war correspondent Trey Yingst shares his gripping, firsthand account of the events of October 7, 2023, and the ensuing war, offering riveting insight and fresh facts that clarify the scope and magnitude of this latest and most dramatic outbreak in one of the bloodiest, most nuanced, and longest-standing conflicts in modern history.

On the morning of October 7, 2023, the militant group known as Hamas launched a vicious attack on Israel in the most recent stage of the deeply complicated and decades-long Israel-Palestine conflict. The assault, which took place on Shabbat—the day of rest for the Jewish people—instantly became known among Israelis and the world as “Black Saturday.”

On October 7, Fox News Correspondent Trey Yingst was on the ground along the Gaza border and witnessed firsthand the devastation, shock, and deep sorrow that whirled through Israel. A seasoned journalist who has reported from some of the most dangerous hotspots around the world, including the frontlines in Ukraine, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, Yingst was just one among many people plunged into the terrifying chaos of that horrific event. In this shocking and eye-opening chronicle, he pieces together the story of that tragic day and reveals how he risked his life searching for answers to essential questions in real time–who within Israel had been attacked; what happened to them; who, potentially, was next–while exploring the impact on both Israelis and Palestinians as a full-scale war ramps up and peace grows more elusive. “We have a responsibility now to account for and record these events—and tell the world the truth,” Yingst writes. “We cannot look away.”

BOOKS Comments turned off

CHAPTER 37: Euphemisms, Propaganda, and “Losing Reality Bit by Bit”__Space Is No Longer the Final Frontier—Reality Is by Linda Goudsmit

Posted By on September 23rd, 2024

https://goudsmit.pundicity.com/28069/chapter-37-euphemisms-propaganda-and-losing

American-Canadian psychologist Dr. Kenneth Zucker, founder of Toronto’s Child Youth and Family Gender Identity Clinic (GIC), is an internationally acknowledged expert on children and adolescents with gender dysphoria. His cautious “watchful waiting” approach respected the natural maturation process in which the vast majority of gender dysphoria resolves itself without medical intervention. In 2015, Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, the hospital where Dr. Zucker’s clinic was located, accused him of practicing conversion therapy, and of shaming and traumatizing patients. Dr. Zucker, who was psychologist-in-chief at the time, was fired and the hospital closed the clinic. He was eventually exonerated and awarded damages in a lawsuit against the hospital, but radical gender ideology had won the battle.

Dr. Miriam Grossman writes about Dr. Zucker’s concerns about “iatrogenic persistence,” the result of medical intervention discussed in Chapter 35:

Dr. Zucker calls social transition a dangerous psychosocial intervention “with the likely consequence of subsequent (lifelong) biomedical treatments… (gender-affirming hormonal treatment and surgery).” He argues it’s an intervention often conducted by schools and other institutions unqualified to implement such a course of treatment.

In 2014, even the American Psychological Association still warned that “Premature labeling of gender identity should be avoided” and “early social transition…should be approached with caution to avoid foreclosing this stage of (trans)gender identity development.” (Lost in Trans Nation: A Child Psychiatrist’s Guide Out of the Madness,[i] p. 121)

MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

Two Great Classics: Values for Our Leaders by Lawrence Kadish

Posted By on September 23rd, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20951/two-great-classics-values-for-our-leaders

As we read the summaries below of Robert Bolt’s “A Man for All Seasons” and John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men,” it could help us determine our selections when we consider what values we would like for our leaders.

“A Man for All Seasons”

What is the main message in “A Man for All Seasons”? A synopsis of the play, about a king and his chancellor, highlights the importance of integrity and conscience, especially at a time when those in power discredit those values and even punish, sometimes with death, those who insist on them?

Why is the play called A Man for All Seasons?

“The title,” notes Wikipedia, “reflects playwright Bolt’s portrayal of More as the ultimate man of conscience, remaining true to his principles and religion under all circumstances and at all times.”

In the play, King Henry VIII’s Chancellor, Sir Thomas More (1478-1535), refused to agree to two of the king’s wishes: to have the pope annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon because she had not produced an heir, and for refusing to accept King Henry as Head of the Church of England. The king ordered More beheaded in 1535.

Soon after, in 1600, Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for proposing that the Earth travelled around the sun, rather than the sun around the Earth, and that we might not be alone in the universe; that there might be a multiplicity of universes. In 1633, Galileo was shown instruments of torture and threatened with them unless he recanted his view that the Earth travelled around the sun. He recanted.

FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

It Is Biden and Harris Who Are Not Doing Enough to Free the Hostages by Alan M. Dershowitz

Posted By on September 23rd, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20952/biden-harris-hamas-hostages

Why should Hamas agree to a ceasefire when its refusal is blamed on Israel by the president of the United States? In addition, when Biden blames Israel, he encourages other allies, such as Great Britain, Canada, France and Germany, to do the same.

[Biden] blamed Netanyahu alone without even mentioning Hamas. And this was after Hamas terrorists had murdered six hostages, including an American.

Although Biden did say that the Hamas killers would pay a price for the murders of the hostages, he did not say that Iran— which controls Hamas— would pay any price, including increased sanctions, or worse, unless the hostages, including the Americans, are released, unharmed, immediately.

[Biden and Harris] should warn Iran that if Hamas harms any American hostages, we will regard that as an attack on the US that warrants a military response against Iranian military targets.

Instead, Biden is demanding that Israel compromise its security by allowing Hamas to return to its terrorist tunnels under the critical Philadelphi Corridor.

Iran’s proxies are its human shields. Unless Iran itself is punished for the terrorism of its surrogates, the mullahs will have no incentive to stop, and we, the Middle East, and South America will all be less secure – especially after Iran unveils its nuclear bombs.

Biden should be placing maximum pressure on the criminals — Hamas and Iran — who continue to endanger our citizens and those of our ally. Instead, he is pressuring and blaming the victim, Israel, which has no control over the perpetrators.

When Iranians took American diplomats hostage in 1979, and then ordered its surrogates to kill hundreds of US Marines in Lebanon in 1983, it essentially declared war on our nation. Now their surrogates have kidnapped and murdered more Americans. Our responses to these acts of belligerency have been woefully insufficient. Instead, the Obama administration enriched the Iranian mullahs in exchange for a controversial nuclear deal that would have enabled Iran to have as many nuclear weapons as it liked after about a dozen years…

The message sent by this administration’s weakness and lack of will is being heard loud and clear not only by Iran but by our other enemies as well.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Levitation 101 Victory for the Democrats will depend on the perpetuation of the illusion that Kamala Harris is in any way a plausible candidate for the presidency of the United States. By Roger Kimball Roger Kimball

Posted By on September 23rd, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/09/22/levitation-101/

Every honest commentator, and even some dishonest ones, acknowledges the supreme oddity of Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign.

As has been oft remarked,  the oddity begins with the campaign’s origin.  Exactly how is it that Kamala Harris even became the candidate?  By what process was Joe Biden, the undisputed winner of the Democratic primary, ousted, eliminated and defenestrated from contention?  The rumors and stories are plentiful, but the actual facts—to say nothing of the dramatis personae behind the facts—remain obscure.

But somehow, exactly two months ago, Joe Biden raised his sleepy head in Rehoboth Beach and announced his departure from the campaign but not, pointedly, from the presidency. (Will that happen before January 20, 2025?  I wonder.)

No sooner had the public begun to get its head around that surprise than they were hit with an even bigger one: Biden’s replacement would be Vice President Kamala Harris.  How did that happen?  Who voted for her? Shhh!  Some questions are mood breakers, and it was clear from the get-go that the Harris campaign was going to have to depend heavily, some experts say nearly exclusively, on mood.

In the weeks since July 21, when Biden made his fateful announcement, there has been a lot of Dr. Johnson’s dog about the Harris campaign.  When it came to female preachers, Dr. Johnson said, we are reminded of dogs who can walk on their hind legs.  They do not do it well, but we are surprised they can do it at all.

Mindful of Harris’s, er, challenges in public speaking and responding ex tempore to questions from interviewers,  her handlers have been assiduous about keeping her out of such dangerous situations. The more she vocalizes (I almost said “talks”), the more damage she does to her candidacy. Her embarrassing performance on a ninety-minute livestream exchange with Oprah Winfrey in Detroit a few days ago underscored the problem.

Even Winfrey, a prominent anti-Trump Harris supporter, seemed taken aback by her guest’s incoherent flights of flaccid, cringe-making glossolalia. Harris supporters just winced and bit their tongues while critics pounced upon and ridiculed the seeping, leaking emission of empty saccharine vocables.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

An America First Foreign Policy By James E. Fanell and Bradley A. Thayer

Posted By on September 23rd, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/09/22/an-america-first-foreign-policy/

America First is America’s traditional foreign policy, and only President Trump offers the possibility of returning the United States to its traditional principles.

A major component of Americans’ decision-making as they go to the 2024 polls will be foreign policy. That is entirely appropriate, first, because of the importance of what happens abroad to Americans’ lives. Americans should remember Leon Trotsky’s purported observation that “you might not be interested in war, but war might be interested in you.” That is, the world is a dangerous place. There are many people who wish to destroy America. They need to be met not by attempting to hide from them or with rainbow flags, but with the force of a Mike Tyson punch to the face. Second, this election provides Americans a choice between an America First foreign policy or the disastrous alternative of President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’s administration. In this essay, we offer our interpretation of an America First foreign policy and what it means for Americans.

Based on the past three and a half years of performance, the Biden-Harris regime has sustained a foreign policy, largely born from the Obama administration, that ignores the existential threat posed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC), undermines our allies like the Philippines, distances itself from key partners like India and Taiwan, fuels the Russo-Ukrainian war, punishes Israel, embraces the Islamic Republic of Iran, and supports international organizations like the World Health Organization (WHO) and international agreements like the Paris Climate Agreement that advance the PRC’s interests. All of which has undeniably damaged the sovereignty and national security of Americans. In addition, there is the joint domestic-foreign policy issue of America’s open borders. The Biden-Harris administration has imported 12 to 15 million people from around the world in almost four years, and tens of millions more will certainly enter the U.S. if Harris is elected.