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Pseudo-Scholarship, Intersectionality, and Blood Libels Against Israel In the Left’s endless search for victims, Israel is always added to the list of oppressors. Richard L. Cravatts

Posted By on February 17th, 2016

Jews have been accused of harming and murdering non-Jews since the twelfth century in England, when Jewish convert to Catholicism, Theobald of Cambridge, mendaciously announced that European Jews ritually slaughtered Christian children each year and drank their blood during Passover season.

That medieval blood libel, largely abandoned in the contemporary West, does, however, still appear as part of Arab world’s vilification of Jews—now transmogrified into a slander against Israel, the Jew of nations. But in the regular chorus of defamation against Israel by a world infected with Palestinianism, a new, more odious trend has shown itself: the blood libel has been revivified; however, to position Israel (and by extension Jews) as demonic agents in the community of nations, the primitive fantasies of the blood libel are now masked with a veneer of academic scholarship.

On February 3rd, for example, Jasbir K. Puar, Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University delivered a lecture at Vassar College, “Inhumanist Biopolitics: How Palestine Matters,” sponsored, shamefully, not by radical student groups but by the school’s American Studies Department and departments of Political Science, Religion, and English, and the programs of Africana Studies, International Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, and Jewish Studies.

The lecture examined “the use of technologies of measure to manufacture a ‘remote control’ occupation, one that produces a different version of Israeli ‘home invasions’ through the maiming and stunting of population. If Gaza, for example, is indeed the world’s largest ‘open air prison’ and an experimental lab for Israeli military apparatuses. . , what kinds of fantasies (about power, about bodies, about resistance, about politics) are driving this project?” In other words, Professor Puar’s central thesis was that Israeli military tactics involve the deliberate the “stunting, “maiming,” physical disabling, and scientific experimenting with Palestinian lives, an outrageous resurrection of the classic anti-Semitic trope that Jews purposely, and sadistically, harm and kill non-Jews.

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BernieCare and Sanders’ Lies How Sanders’ proposed replacement for Obamacare will bankrupt America much sooner. Matthew Vadum

Posted By on February 17th, 2016

Socialist Bernie Sanders is lying about the crushing cost of his quixotic government-run universal health care scheme because he can.

Sanders and the true-believers who surround him claim implausibly that BernieCare will save America $6 trillion over a decade. Forbes, on the other hand, asserts that BernieCare could lead to an astonishing $44 trillion in new federal spending over a decade.

Of course, facts are malleable things to the Left.

The insurgent candidate for the Democrats’ presidential nomination will never admit just how damaging his totalitarian approach to health care delivery would be to America. That’s because Sanders is a Marxist ideologue to whom money isn’t something real. Sanders and the other small-c communists who dominate today’s Democratic Party regard people as playthings, and they don’t care about the laws of economics, which they regard as obstacles to be overcome in the furtherance of social progress. And the mainstream media, for the most part, is in no hurry to hold the Independent senator from Vermont to account.

To some, single-payer health care seemed like a good idea around World War Two.

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Palestinian Leaders: Who Are They Fooling? by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on February 17th, 2016

For Abbas and the Palestinian leadership, the death of more than 170 Palestinians and 26 Israelis in the past five months occurred in the context of a “popular and peaceful uprising.” One can only imagine what the uprising would have looked like had it not been “peaceful.”

Abbas assured his people that those who die defending their holy sites would go straight to heaven. “Every drop of blood that is spilled in Jerusalem is pure blood,” he stressed.

According to the Palestinian Authority, these youths are acting out of despair — over settlements, checkpoints and lack of progress in the peace process. The attackers are in fact targeting Jews because they have been incited and brainwashed by the same leaders who are now denouncing Israel for protecting itself.

Not a single senior Palestinian official has condemned the targeting of innocent civilians in this “peaceful” uprising. They are too busy glorifying the assailants and naming streets after them.

The blood of the Palestinians who are being shot and killed while attacking Jews is on the hands of Abbas and his senior officials.

It is a puzzle: are the leaders of the Palestinian Authority (PA) playing dumb, or do they believe their own ridiculous rhetoric?

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Saudi Arabia, Yemen and the Politicized UN by Richard Kemp and Jasper Reid

Posted By on February 17th, 2016

The UN’s assertion that the Saudi-led coalition has committed war crimes in Yemen is unlikely to be true. UN experts have not been to Yemen, depending instead on hearsay evidence and analysis of photographs.

The UN has a pattern of unsubstantiated allegations of war crimes against the armed forces of sovereign states. Without any military expertise, and never having visited Gaza, a UN commission convicted the Israel Defense Force of deliberately targeting Palestinian civilians in the 2014 conflict. It was an assessment roundly rejected by America’s most senior military officer, General Martin Dempsey, and an independent commission.

The Houthis have learned many lessons from Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, groups also supported by Iran. Those lessons include the falsification of civilian casualty figures and their causes. The UN swallowed the fake Gaza figures hook, line and sinker, and are now making the same error in Yemen.

The Houthis exploit gullible or compliant reporters and human rights groups to facilitate their propaganda, including false testimony and fabrication of imagery.

Forensic analysis shows that rather than deliberately targeting civilians, the Saudis and their allies have taken remarkable steps to minimize civilian casualties.

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Strategic Stability Vs Arms Control Follies :Peter Huessey

Posted By on February 17th, 2016

For much of the nuclear age, and certainly after the first arms control agreement between the US and the Soviet Union in 1972, America has sought to balance both arms control and deterrent imperatives by building both nuclear deterrent forces and later missile defenses that in combination make the use of nuclear weapons against the United States and its allies less and less likely.

As Admiral Richard Mies, the former Commander of US Strategic Command has emphasized, the watchword of nuclear deterrence has been to prevent nuclear war from ever breaking out between the nuclear armed superpowers. Critical to that effort has been to enhance what is known as “strategic stability” which means in a crisis there is no pressure on an American President to use nuclear weapons.

The current geostrategic landscape, however, is fraught with grave concerns which have heightened nuclear dangers. Civilian and military leaders of the Russian Federation just since 2009 have in more than two dozen instances threatened the use of nuclear weapons against the United States and its allies. China has threatened the use of military force against its East Asia neighbors as well as the United States should its hegemonic moves in the South China Sea be challenged. In North Korea, a rogue regime may now have an arsenal of upwards of 20 nuclear weapons which it routinely threatens to use against the Republic of Korea and the United States. And in Iran, the mullahs seek nuclear weapons while publicly denying any such ambition even as they remain the world’s number one state sponsor of terror while holding the largest missile arsenal in the Middle East.

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FEELING TOO MUCH BERN: MARK STEYN

Posted By on February 17th, 2016

The denouement of my appearance on the ABC’s Q&A echoes on. Chris Kenny writes in The Australian:

In the final minute, US-based Canadian commentator Mark Steyn was summing up the prospects of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders in the US presidential race. He quipped that Guardian journalist Lenore Taylor might get her wish — a socialist president. The audience burst into spontaneous applause, welcoming the prospect of a socialist president of the US. Steyn was flabbergasted.

“That’s not an applause line,” he admonished the crowd.

Host Tony Jones suggested it might have been a “laugh” line while a bemused Steyn suggested he might as well get a taxi to the airport. Then the insight of the moment seemed to dawn on Jones: “Well, it wasn’t the entire audience,” he protested.

Perhaps he was right. Maybe there were a few non-socialists in the ABC audience.

Speaking of Bernie, because of the openly corrupt nominating process in the Democrat Party, he’s getting stiffed in the delegate count by the so-called “super-delegates” who are pre-pledged to Hillary. So, even though he tied her in Iowa and whumped her 60-38 in the New Hampshire primary, she’s leading with 468 delegates to 53. The slugs who run the party loathe their voters and rig the system to render it a sham. Sporadic reader Bill Tomlinson proposes a solution:

Hi Mark

I have been a sporadic fan of yours for years, and I particularly enjoyed your “The March of Trump, and the Feel of Bern”.

But here’s a thought. Suppose Bernie wins the popular vote for the Democrat nomination, but Hillary leapfrogs him using her super-delegates. Bernie will be mad, but his supporters will be madder still.

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Administration Misses Deadline to Give Counterterror Strategy to Congress By Bridget Johnson

Posted By on February 17th, 2016

President Obama missed a Monday deadline to have a Middle East strategy, including his counter-extremism plan, in the hands of lawmakers.

The comprehensive plan, which was supposed to be delivered by the secretaries of State and Defense, was a provision in the National Defense Authorization Act signed by Obama last fall.

The Obama administration has been focused on their Asia pivot over the past several days, as the president hosted a retreat session with ASEAN leaders at Sunnylands in Southern California.

“Unsurprisingly, the administration cannot articulate a strategy for countering violent extremists in the Middle East,” House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) said. “Time and again, the president has told us his strategy to defeat extremist groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda is well underway; yet, months after the legal requirement was established, his administration cannot deliver that strategy to Congress.”

“I fear the president’s failure to deliver this report says far more about the state of his strategy to defeat terrorists than any empty reassurance he may offer from the podium.”

The law requires that the strategy include: “A description of the objectives and end state for the United States in the Middle East and with respect to violent extremism; a description of the roles and responsibilities of the Department of State in the strategy; a description of the roles and responsibilities of the Department of Defense in the strategy; a description of actions to prevent the weakening and failing of states in the Middle East; a description of actions to counter violent extremism; a description of the resources required by the Department of Defense to counter ISIL’s illicit oil revenues; a list of the state and non-state actors that must be engaged to counter violent extremism; a description of the coalition required to carry out the strategy, and the expected lines of effort of such a coalition; an assessment of United States efforts to disrupt and prevent foreign fighters traveling to Syria and Iraq and to disrupt and prevent foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq traveling to the United States.”

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Trump Again Threatens to Sue Cruz, Reveals Self-Serving Motive By Walter Hudson

Posted By on February 17th, 2016

If you need further evidence that Donald Trump is running for president in order to serve the best interests of Donald Trump, here it is from the Associated Press:

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Monday offered rival Ted Cruz an ultimatum, threatening to sue Cruz over his eligibility to serve in the White House unless the Texas senator stops airing what Trump calls “false ads” and apologizes for what the billionaire real estate mogul called a series of lies about his positions.

… Trump saved the bulk of his criticism for Cruz. “If he doesn’t take down his false ads and retract his lies,” Trump said in a statement bashing Cruz, he will immediately file a lawsuit challenging Cruz’s eligibility to serve as president.

Trump has previously said a federal court should decide whether Cruz meets the constitutional requirement of being a “natural-born citizen” to serve as president. Cruz was born in Canada to an American mother, and many legal experts have said he meets that test.

Ask yourself, does Trump really care whether or not Ted Cruz is eligible to be president of the United States? If so, by presenting this ultimatum, hasn’t he effectively agreed to let Cruz’s eligibility go unchallenged in exchange for favorable treatment? If Cruz’s qualifications are truly in doubt, shouldn’t his eligibility be challenged regardless?

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Climate Alarmists Botch Yet Another Prediction By Tyler O’Neil

Posted By on February 17th, 2016

A new study published Monday explains why sea levels have not been rising as much as predicted — “thirsty continents” are absorbing extra water. Perhaps this discovery will encourage humility among climate scientists.

Tom Hartsfield, a scientist and writer with a PhD in physics from the University of Texas, explained that this isn’t a failing of science so much as a call for nuance in a politicized field.

Our global system of air currents, ocean currents, cloud patterns, resonant temperature cycles, energy storage and release mechanisms, and further processes is mind-bogglingly complex.

Presently, the best climate models fall many orders of magnitude short of the power and intricacy needed to effectively predict the long-term climate patterns that emerge from the interactions of all these planetary systems. And that’s not a failure of science; it’s just the reality of how tough the problem is.

But there is a failure of science occurring as well, Hartsfield notes.

The failure is the lack of transparency and honesty about how feeble these models are and how much we should stake on their all-too-fallible forecasts. Thus the same problem continues: climate science has once again botched a prediction that its models were underequipped to make.

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A Republican Game Plan By David Solway

Posted By on February 17th, 2016

In The Race Card, a book examining the influence of racial stereotypes in manipulating election results, Tali Mendelberg’s analysis applies as well to voting patterns in general. “Norms and consciousness,” she explains, are the “necessary and missing factors” in shaping electoral response. The extent to which the individual feels that his self-understanding or desired identity resonates with the party’s implicit message and nature significantly conditions the way he votes. In other words, it is not only a question of policy compatibility but of an internal norm, a tacit or latent identification of the voter’s ideal self with the party’s, and its representative’s, manifested character.

This is why many potential Republican voters may sit out an election or, from a reaction of frustration or resentment, cast their ballots for the opposition. For they do not see their self-image reflected in the stance of the Republicrat who advances such policies as amnesty for illegals, entitlement spending, pro-choice abortion, hospitality for unvetted refugees, green energy boondoggles, carbon taxes to combat non-existent global warming, and the social leprosy of Islamic accommodation. Blue Republicans only kindle a feeling of disappointment or betrayal in those who would in optimal circumstances be natural constituents.

What most politicians forget is that the voter essentially votes for himself. Regarding himself as insightful, trustworthy and unafraid, his candidate must strike him as replicating these qualities. Thus, a Republican campaigner who fearlessly embraces the core tenets—what we might call the intrinsic platform—of his party’s history, or at the very least is not reluctant to be upfront, vocal and vigorous in disseminating his message despite the dead hand of political correctness, stands a good chance of succeeding.