ISRAEL Comments turned off

Anti-reform protests reveal police double standards The force responds differently depending on who is demonstrating, analysts tell JNS. By David Isaac

Posted By on March 23rd, 2023

https://www.jns.org/anti-reform-protests-reveal-police-double-standards/

What began as Saturday evening mass protests against the government’s judicial reform program have morphed into “days of disruption” and increasingly extreme behavior as demonstrators block highways, clash with police, blockade Knesset members in their homes, refuse to show up for reserve duty, and, in one instance, barricade the prime minister’s wife in a hair salon.

This has raised questions about the limits of protest and eyebrows about how the police deal with the lawbreakers, suggesting different sets of rules apply for different citizens.

Itzhak Bam, an Israeli attorney specializing in freedom of expression, told JNS: “What is interesting in this case is the extreme tolerance of the police. From my experience as a criminal defense lawyer in cases of illegal assembly, and we have had a lot of such cases here in Jerusalem, I am pretty sure that if they were right-wing protesters, or haredim [ultra-Orthodox Jews], or Arabs—any of these groups—the police would be much more assertive, or maybe aggressive, in preventing them from blocking highways.

“Why softer tactics are being used now is a good question to ask the police,” Bam said, adding that rather than one rule for everyone, there are “good” and “bad” protests with the police taking a different tack depending on who is doing the protesting.

It’s not always about politics, said Bam, noting that police were tolerant of protests in 2021 by disability rights groups seeking more state benefits. Though few in number, they blocked major highways and even railroads.

The courts’ perspective

Ran Baratz, former head of public diplomacy in the Prime Minister’s Office and founder of MIDA, an online daily conservative magazine in Hebrew, echoed the view that police are acting less aggressively than they did against protesters who blocked roads during the 2005 disengagement from the Gaza Strip.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Democrats’ attitudes towards Israel reach a tipping point The rise of the intersectional left is the primary reason why, for the first time, Gallup says Democrats sympathize more with the Palestinians than with the Jewish state. Jonathan Tobin

Posted By on March 22nd, 2023

https://www.jns.org/opinion/democrats-attitudes-towards-israel-reach-a-tipping-point/?utm_source=sendinblue&utm_campaign=Daily%20Syndicate%2003-21-2023&utm_medium=email

The history of the pro-Israel movement in the United States was always predicated on one goal: creating a bipartisan consensus in favor of support for the Jewish state. And for many years, it succeeded in doing just that. There is a strong tradition of support for the ideas of a Jewish state that dates back to the earliest days of the American republic so Zionism is baked deep into the nation’s DNA.

AIPAC activists, therefore, had little trouble cultivating rising politicians from both major parties. The result was that in the last half-century, the ranks of Congress were filled with politicians who could be counted on to support Israel, even if they had few Jewish constituents.

But it’s time to acknowledge that the era of bipartisan support for Israel is over.

As the latest Gallup tracking poll of attitudes towards Israel and the Middle East conflict indicate, when broken down by party affiliation, Democrats now sympathize more with the Palestinians than with Israel. Currently, 49% of Democrats favor the Palestinians with only 38% backing Israel.  By contrast, Republicans now back the Jewish state by a staggering 78-11% margin.

That’s the culmination of a trend decades in the making as the two parties have largely swapped identities when it comes to Israel in the last 60 years. In the first years of the Jewish state in the aftermath of the Holocaust, Democrats were overwhelmingly sympathetic to Israel and took pride in President Harry S. Truman’s recognition of the fledgling nation on its first day of existence.

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

SEE THIS GREAT VIDEO OF FAUCI GETTING TOLD OFF!!!!

Posted By on March 22nd, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/03/epic_video_informed_black_guy_on_dc_street_destroys_fauci_to_his_face.html

Epic video: Informed black guy on DC street destroys Fauci to his face By Ben Bartee

I don’t know how this clip slipped past me, but a video has resurfaced of Anthony Fauci and Washington, D.C. mayor Muriel Bowser canvassing the streets to encourage the urban population to get vaxxed and filming it for propaganda purposes.

First, some background, via East of the River:

Fairlawn residents answered their door Saturday morning to find some surprise guests on the front stoop: Dr. Anthony Fauci and Mayor Muriel Bowser (D).

The two spent an hour and a half canvassing the neighborhood as part of the DC COVID-19 Community Corps Day of Action.

“Oh my god, it’s Dr. Fauci!” one woman screamed as she opened the door. “I’d come give you a kiss, but I’ve got a cold on.” The woman, who was already vaccinated, blew him a kiss from the top of the stairs instead. “Y’all see Dr. Fauci over here?” she called to her neighbors.

Another woman told Dr. Fauci that she hadn’t gotten the vaccine because she was worried she would contract the virus and then convey it to her children, who are not yet eligible to get the vaccine.

“You should get it then, because not only would it protect you, but then you’d protect your whole family,” Fauci said. “If you were to get infected, you could pass it on to them, but if you get vaccinated, you’re not going to get infected. Want to do it today?”

Their photo op was totally ruined by a poorly-conceived interaction with one resident, who not only expressed no interest in getting injected but destroyed the entire narrative right to Fauci’s face with a tenacity never duplicated in any media interview that I’ve ever seen (the handpicked “journalists” permitted to interview Fauci being heavily vetted beforehand).

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Philosophy Professor: ‘Don’t go to College! Become an Electrician.’ By Richard McDonough

Posted By on March 22nd, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/03/philosophy_professor_dont_go_to_college_become_an_electrician.html

I don’t think you should send your kids to any universities.  [I told] my daughter, “Don’t go to college.  Become an electrician.”  I never would have imagined 10 years ago that I would [say] that. … It’s better to stare at a wall … [or] do nothing than to learn things that are false.  — Peter Boghossian, former Philosophy Professor Portland State University, Feb. 28, 2023

It is astonishing when a liberal philosophy professor tells people, including his own daughter, not to go to university because they have become “indoctrination mills.”  Many other types of professors can make a living outside universities.  However, there is no real market for specialists in Kant’s transcendental deductions outside the university.  With slight exceptions, philosophers have little choice but to work in universities.  So, when Prof. Boghossian tells his own daughter not to go to university, he must believe that universities have become dangerously unhealthy.  Although Boghossian cites Harvard, Yale and Oberlin as “non-starters”, he says that all universities have been destroyed by “woke” nonsense and should be defunded.  University people, Boghossian says, “live in make-believe land.”

Boghossian was one of the professors who exposed the lack of academic standards in a set of “woke” journals in the 2017-2018 “Grievance Studies affair,” also referred to as the “Sokal Squared” scandal (referring to a similar case in 1996 perpetrated by NYU physics professor Alan Sokal). James Lindsay, Peter Boghossian and Helen Pluckrose, using pseudonyms or borrowed identities, submitted absurd papers to journals in culture, race, gender, fat, and sexuality studies to test the integrity of their editorial peer review process. 

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The World Economic Forum and the West’s Next Act? by J.B. Shurk

Posted By on March 22nd, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19512/world-economic-forum-crap

[E]conomic writer Charles Hugh Smith has repeatedly warned [about] the “crapification” of the U.S. economy…. customers with scant other buying options are forced to accept that few purchases will last.

Politicians seem to be heading in a similar direction…. Western governments are filled to the brim with people entirely lacking in real-world experience or specialized knowledge.

In recent decades, a noticeable trend in the West has been to elevate politicians, as young and inexperienced as possible, into offices as high as possible…. Such a system — in which those who have proven themselves the least are given responsibilities that would test even those who have proven themselves time and again — hardly looks ideal.

If Western politicians seem just as second-rate these days as what customers all too often find in stores, there may be a simple reason why: International financial titans make, sell, and own both… and may be planning to own you, too.

If you are a consumer today, inflation is only one of the problems harming you. As prices go up, quality continues to go down. What most stores have to offer you might crassly be called “cheap crap.” In fact, economic writer Charles Hugh Smith has repeatedly warned that the “crapification” of the U.S. economy is the natural result of a “neoliberal-hyper-financialization-hyper-globalization model,” in which quasi-monopolist manufacturers mass-produce goods with the cheapest possible components, while customers with scant other buying options are forced to accept that few purchases will last.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Legally and Morally Flawed Case Against Trump A twisted perversion of the justice process. by Philip Holloway

Posted By on March 22nd, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-legally-and-morally-flawed-case-against-trump/

Although we don’t yet know entirely how it will be structured, enough of the Manhattan District Attorney’s case against Trump has found its way into the public domain so that we know the general parameters. The centerpiece of the case is a misdemeanor charge under Section 175 for supposedly falsifying his business records. The theory is that Trump paid his former lawyer $130,000.00 in a series of reimbursements to Cohen and labeled them as legal expenses to conceal that the money was really to pay Adult Film Actress, Stormy Daniels for a nondisclosure agreement and that somehow this scheme violated federal election laws.

From a legal perspective, this bizarre wielding of State prosecutorial power in pursuit of what is essentially an alleged federal crime is seriously flawed.

For starters, it is not a crime to be a philanderer, if in fact Trump did have an affair with Ms. Daniels. She has claimed publicly that there was no affair – but who knows. It is not a crime for Trump to pay so-called “hush money” either. I hate it when people call it that. It is a legal contract called a “nondisclosure agreement” and it is not in the least uncommon. Particularly for a celebrity who is a married man with many business interests. There are myriad reasons – unrelated to his Presidential Campaign – for Trump to pay the money to Ms. Daniels.

The case is legally flawed for a second major reason. Specifically the Manhattan DA has a major Statute of Limitations problem.

It’s worth noting that the Federal Elections Commission and the Department of Justice have already looked at all this and took no action back when it was fresh. Nevertheless DA Bragg is essentially trying to stuff a federal campaign finance crime into a state law business records charge. The business records case under Section 175 is a misdemeanor and the statute of limitations is two years. If DA Bragg manages to shoehorn an alleged violation of the federal campaign finance laws into the Section 175 charge – despite being a state DA and not a US Attorney – then the business records case becomes a felony and has a five-year statute of limitations. My iPhone tells me this is 2023 – nearly seven years after any such Section 175 business record crime would have occurred. So, the statute of limitations has clearly run. Nevertheless, I wait on pins and needles to see what whackado legal theory DA Bragg pulls out of his…..hat to claim the statute of limitations has somehow not expired.

FOREIGN POLICY, HISTORY Comments turned off

The Gulf War: 20 Years Later Was the war worth the blood and treasure we spent on it? Here’s whom to ask. by Kenneth R. Timmerman

Posted By on March 22nd, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-gulf-war-20-years-later/

Monday marked the twentieth anniversary of the second Gulf war, which detractors call the invasion of Iraq. I have always looked at it as the liberation, as do many Iraqis.

But most Americans have been taught a history of lies, a history forged by left-wing political activists and their allies in the media and rarely contradicted by those who knew the truth.

Even Britannica, the once authoritative encyclopedia, has bowed to the political orthodoxy, referring to Saddam Hussein’s “alleged” possession and manufacture of weapons of mass destruction.

That is the founding myth of the “Bush lied, people died” Democrats and the media.

So were there weapons of mass destruction in Iraq at the time of the U.S. invasion?

Absolutely. We know that because the United States and its coalition partners assembled a team of over 1,400 special forces operators, scientists and intelligence analysts to scour Iraq for the evidence. And what they reported has been wildly mischaracterized – at times, even by the leaders of that very effort.

David Kay, a former IAEA inspector who became famous for his parking lot “standoff” with Saddam’s goons, told the Senate Armed Services Committee on January 23, 2004, that WMD stockpiles would not be found in Iraq. “I don’t think they existed,” Kay said.

“Stockpiles” quickly became the defining term. But in Kay’s interim report to the House intelligence committee, just four months earlier, he painted a very different picture. “We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002,” he said.

This included:

*  A prison laboratory complex that may have been used for human testing of BW agents and “that Iraqi officials working to prepare the U.N. inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the U.N.” Why was Saddam interested in testing biological-warfare agents on humans if he didn’t have a biological weapons program?

*    New research on BW agents, brucella and Congo-Crimean hemorrhagic fever, and continuing work on ricin and aflatoxin that were not declared to the United Nations.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Our Response to Russia’s Invasion Still Muddled No wonder Iran, Russia, and China are licking their chops. by Bruce Thornton

Posted By on March 22nd, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/our-response-to-russias-invasion-still-muddled/

Last week Florida governor Ron DeSantis kicked the foreign policy establishment hornets’ nest in his response to a questionnaire Tucker Carlson sent to potential 2024 Republican primary candidates. Asked about our Ukraine policy, DeSantis called the Russo-Ukrainian war a “territorial dispute,” which his critics claimed suggested a moral equivalence between the two sides. But such criticism and dudgeon still leave unaddressed DeSantis’ questions and caveats about our “vital national interests” being served by our open-ended, yet hesitant support of Ukraine.

Politics, of course, is a big reason for the attacks on DeSantis, as well as our muddled policies on Ukraine. You know politics is afoot when ad hominem attacks and distortions are deployed. Phrases used to smear DeSantis like “pro-Russia stance” and “sides with Russia against the West” are political dog-whistles for inciting attacks on a likely presidential candidate whose youth, political success, and anti-“woke” pushback scare the Dems and Republican Petainists.

This political weaponization of “Russia,” moreover, is a continuation of the 2016 campaign and the subsequent assaults on Donald Trump’s administration and person, fueled by the big lies of “Russia collusion” claims that Trump was under Putin’s thumb. Wasn’t that why Trump was “soft” on Putin?

That canard is easily exploded. It wasn’t Trump who, through Dmitri Medvedev, promised Putin “flexibility” on missile defense systems for Poland and Czechoslovakia, and followed through by stopping their delivery. It wasn’t Trump’s administration that prioritized a solicitous “reset” of relations with Russia. It wasn’t Trump who scoffed at his presidential election opponent’s warnings about Putin’s malign intentions, by saying “The Eighties called and they want their foreign policy back,” or who met Putin’s 2014 adventurism in Crimea with carefully parsed diplo-rhetoric and flabby sanctions.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Diversity Training Disaster By John Stossel

Posted By on March 22nd, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/columns/john-stossel/2023/03/22/diversity-training-disaster-n1680355

All big American companies now require DEI training: diversity, equity and inclusion. All big companies!

Really.

It sounds responsible. But it turns out DEI courses are often useless and sometimes racist.First comes groveling.

My new video about DEI shows a conference that begins with a “land acknowledgement.” A Microsoft employee apologizes for taking land from “the Sammamish, the Duwamish, Snoqualmie, Suquamish, Muckleshoot” and more.

I guess it’s a nice gesture. But they aren’t giving the land back!

Companies go through the motions.

“They feel like they have to,” says York College professor Erec Smith. “They have to signal to the world that they’re doing something.”

They hope it will protect them from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and lawsuits.

Smith was once a diversity officer. He left the position because he thought it was “useless.”

Or worse. “It makes people less likely to interact with people unlike them,” he says. “It’s a minefield now.”

At diversity trainings, employees learn about “microaggressions,” speech that’s subtly biased.

“If you ask somebody what they do for a living, somehow that’s racist,” says Smith. “If you learn that, then why would you take a chance? … ‘I’m going to silence myself’ … not talk to Black people.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Biden Executive Order on Equity Rhymes With Jim Crow By J. Christian Adams

Posted By on March 22nd, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/2023/03/21/biden-executive-race-order-on-race-rhymes-with-jim-crow-n1680276

President Biden recently issued an executive order entitled “Further Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government.” Make no mistake: this executive order has the effect of pushing us backward toward a racially divided nation, just like the good old days.

What a shame. Not thirty years ago, a very different spirit animated civil rights. Call it the Martin Luther King vision. Dr. King’s vision was fundamentally the Christian one, where every person has dignity, where racism is a sin, where race matters not at all compared to character.

Dr. King held the moral high ground here. His vision ushered in a few short decades of getting it right.

America had just emerged from two centuries as a nation embracing the opposite of Dr. King’s vision. First human slavery, then violent, racially motivated lawlessness ruled the night. This was followed by segregation in housing and transportation, separate and unequal schools, and bar-b-que only by takeout for blacks.

At the heart of all this wickedness was treating fellow Americans based on their race, not on what matters.

I fear America has lost the moral high ground. Instead of equality and dignity, new generations are schooled in racial division and the fundamental building blocks of the segregationist policies the nation fought so hard to end.

The foundation of segregation, simply, was treating people differently based on their race.  This immoral foundation supported all the structures of Jim Crow, from dilapidated schools to separate water fountains.

So why does the new executive order push us back toward that wretched past?  Why does it elevate race like the segregationists of old?

The executive order establishes offices throughout the federal government with legions of “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” bureaucrats at the highest levels. All bureaucrats pushing race consciousness will be coordinated out of the White House.