EDUCATION Comments turned off

TUFTS UNIVERSITY CRITICIZED AFTER LAUNCHING DIVERSITY EVENT SEPARATING WHITE AND BIPOC COLLEAGUES Stacy Jackson

Posted By on October 16th, 2022

https://www.blackenterprise.com/tufts-university-criticized-after-launching-diversity-event-separating-white-attendees-from-bipoc-colleagues/

Tufts University is in a tough spot.

The Massachusetts university is being heavily criticized for the structure of its upcoming “Dialogue Series” that is reportedly set to commence on Oct. 17. Launched by the Office of the Chief Diversity Officer, the event is supposedly aimed toward understanding a “cross-cultural dialogue.” Eyebrows were raised when the public learned that the sessions would be split based on the race of attendees.

The sessions are set to separate Black and ethnic minority staff from white colleagues and discussions are reportedly specifically structured for each group, according to Daily Mail. In one part of the series, labeled Radical Healing, Tufts faculty and staff who racially identify as Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) are encouraged to join.

Although white colleagues are not banned from attending, the free sessions are reportedly designed for BIPOC who’ve experienced being the “only or one of a few in predominately white spaces on campus.”

According to the university, Radical Healing attendees who meet the said criteria will assemble to discuss how marginalized and oppressed groups should live “free of discrimination, racism, and oppression.”

The other part of the series, called Unpacking Whiteness, is designed for Tufts colleagues who identify as white. They are invited to practice “anti-racism” and participate in discussions specifically for white people “holding spaces of privilege.”

According to Fox News, a description for the series states, “Anti-racism is an active and ongoing process of identifying and eliminating racism by changing systems, organizational structures, policies, practices, and attitudes in a way that redistributes power, policy, and structures to be more equitable while drawing attention to the lived experiences of Black people, Indigenous people, and people of color.”

Since launching, the university has received harsh criticisms toward the upcoming dialogue series.

Daily Mail provides that one response exclaimed that the university was setting their students back by years, while another called the separated sessions discrimination.

A response from a person who claimed to be a Tufts alumni said, “As a once proud alumnus of Tufts, I am speechless that they are promoting SEGREGATION and RACE SHAMING.”

“I am cancelling my annual donation and urging fellow alumni to DEFUND Tufts University until they restore racial compassion and respect.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Dishonest and Dishonorable Disagreements of Former Friends It is astonishing to be accused of anti-Americanism by longtime denigrators of America, and even more astonishing to be accused of divisiveness by people who casually throw around the term “Nazi.”  By Michael Anton

Posted By on October 16th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/10/15/the-dishonest-and-dishonorable-disagreements-of-former-friends/

Most of us, at some point or another, fall out with friends. It’s a painful and, perhaps, inevitable part of life. It’s especially disquieting when former friends turn on you suddenly and publicly, devoid of any goodwill, charity, or benefit of the doubt that one might think were warranted by years of amity. All this, however disagreeable, is at least “normal” in the sense that it has been going on forever—though it massively intensified in the Trump Derangement Era. 

About four years ago, I was finishing a small book, the centerpiece of which was an article I had already published. The new material consisted of a shortish defense/explanation of the classical idea of “natural right”—that is, the doctrine or assertion that good and evil, right and wrong, just and unjust, legitimate and illegitimate, etc.—exist by nature and are not mere products of human will or preference. This idea undergirds not merely the regime of the American founders and the very idea of “human rights,” but also the entire notion that anything political can be good or bad, right or wrong. For example, when Never Trumpers speak of the alleged danger from Donald Trump to “Our Democracy™” and declare this to be bad, they are—wittingly or not—endorsing natural right. 

You’d think this would be, if not uncontroversial, at least well within the bounds of civic discourse. Nonetheless, I predicted to some friends that at least one of our former friends would denounce natural right simply because I had defended it. 

I didn’t need to wait long for that prediction to come true. Shortly after the book’s publication, it was scathingly reviewed by Gabriel Schoenfeld, a man I had known for something like 20 years. We were never the best of friends, but we had been friendly, meeting occasionally for meals or otherwise seeing each other at events in Manhattan’s small but close-knit community of conservative intellectuals and fellow travelers. 

Needless to say, Gabe and I no longer speak. Trump, naturally, is the reason. Still, given that long history, one might have assumed some charitable consideration in a review by a former friend. A good review was not necessarily expected; reviewers of course ought to say what they think. But it was odd, to say least, to see a review so jaundiced as to reject out of hand a core foundation of Western Civilization out of anti-Trump spite. 

I let that review go at the time, and wouldn’t even mention it now, were it not for similar attacks from the same quarter. I am half-persuaded to let those go, too, but another friend pointed out that a continuous stream of libels not responded to eventually constitutes a kind of public record. 

I’m also motivated to respond because, irrelevant or distasteful as one may think these people are, they are actually quite powerful. They, and many others like them, form authoritative opinion in our time. In an age, and a regime, in which propaganda and censorship are foundational sources of rule, the power to police opinion is quasi-governmental. They are information warfare specialists, backed by big money, and their role is to constrain what you get to hear in part by smearing and slandering dissidents. One may not pay them much heed, but others who also have power over what the public gets to hear do, hence their vitriol matters. 

Viciousness and Vitriol Demanding a Handshake?

EDUCATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Prodigies of Credulousness in the Ivory Tower of Utopia Places like The Wharton School which, by placing the imperatives of wokeness at the center of their curriculum, betray their students by downgrading actual education to an afterthought. By Roger Kimball

Posted By on October 16th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/10/15/prodigies-of-credulousness-in-the-ivory-tower-of-utopia/

“There are few ways,” Dr. Johnson said to a friend, “in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money.” 

This a great truth, and one might wish that The Wharton School had taken Dr. Johnson’s observation to heart. After all, this storied outpost of the University of Pennsylvania, is, or was, one of the nation’s premier business schools. As such it is, or rather it was, dedicated to instructing its students in the practical application of Dr. Johnson’s truism. To what end should management at a publicly traded company aim? Increasing shareholder value: period, full stop. 

In recent years, however, like its parent institution, and indeed like the education establishment in general, The Wharton School has become a repository of woke clichés and politically correct slogans. Toward the end of September, they took the momentous step of abandoning any pretense of being a business school. Doubtless they will continue to offer classes on finance and accounting. But the school’s “Curriculum Innovation and Review Committee” recently voted to approve two new majors and areas of concentration, one in “Environmental, Social, and Governance” issues (ESG for short), the other in “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI). In other words, henceforth at Wharton students at both the undergraduate and graduate level will be able to major in virtue signaling.

I was recently at a panel discussion concerned with locating the origins of the ideology of “wokeness.” The term itself is of fairly recent vintage. I first heard it five or six years ago. But in essence wokeness overlaps largely with the phenomenon of “political correctness,” a pathology that in its American context dates from the 1980s but which has its roots in that hideous assault on civilization we call “the Sixties.” 

For many years since, “the Sixties” has been less the name of a decade than of an existential provocation. As a slice of history, the purple decade actually encompasses some 20 years. It began some time in the late 1950s and lasted at least until the mid-1970s. By then it had triumphed so thoroughly that its imperatives became indistinguishable from everyday life: they became everyday life. The Sixties mean—what? Sexual “liberation,” rock music, chemically induced euphoria—nearly everyone would agree with that, even though some would inscribe a plus sign, others a minus sign beside that famous triumvirate. The Sixties also mean free-floating protest and political activism, a “youth culture” that never ages, a new permissiveness together with a new affluence: Dionysus with a credit card and a college education. Above all, however, the Sixties meant the insinuation of political correctness into the conduct of life. 

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Floods and droughts are nothing new By Viv Forbes

Posted By on October 16th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/10/floods_and_droughts_are_nothing_new.html

There is nothing unusual about today’s floods, fires, droughts, homelessness, and hunger — they have always been part of the human story.  But satellite technology allows us to track them better, and our worldwide media revel in disaster reporting, bringing tearfully tragic scenes into every living room, every night.

Population growth means that more people are affected by weather extremes, but there is no evidence that floods and droughts are getting worse.

Written flood records go back to biblical times, and geological records go back for epochs.  Every floodplain today is a testament to previous floods.  The width of today’s floodplains and the depth of their alluvial soils show that there have been really huge floods in times past — and almost every society has stories of great floods.

Droughts (and the starvation they often cause) are also written into our history of famines, wars, and migrations.  They are also recorded in massive deposits of barren, wind-blown sandstone and loess.  Much of Earth’s surface was smothered by desert sands or vast ice sheets in times past.

El Niño droughts have been recognized as far back as 1525, but the famines of 1877–78 changed history in China and India, where people starved; granaries were looted; dynasties fell; cannibalism became common; and people ate roots, bark and carrion.

The first Europeans to explore Australia recorded smoke from hundreds of small bushfires and noted the beautiful grasslands and open forests created by earlier fires.  Observant ones also noted with awe the nests of flood rubbish caught high up in big gum trees.

The 1812–1820 El Niño droughts caused wars and migrations in Africa, and the 1844/46 El Niño drought changed the history of Australia.  Gregory Blaxland found a way across the Blue Mountains to discover the vast inland grasslands, while Charles Sturt suffered incredible hardships looking for “the Inland Sea” in central Australia during a drought.

Australia was later scarred by the Federation drought and the Millennium drought.

The 1852 flood in the Murrumbidgee River swept away the town of Gundagai, and the 1893 Bremer River Flood destroyed the Victoria Bridge and the Indooroopilly Bridge.  At least 60 people were killed when a flash flood destroyed the township of Clermont in 1916.  That whole town was relocated.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Proposed climate rule is bigger, badder deal than Manchin-Schumer climate bill by Rupert Darwall

Posted By on October 16th, 2022

https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/3688593-proposed-climate-rule-is-bigger-badder-deal-than-manchin-schumer-climate-bill%ef%bf%bc/

In his Florida v. Davos speech at last month’s National Conservatism conference, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) made important observations about the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) investing movement. He called it out as an attempt to use corporate and economic power to impose on society an ideological agenda that could not win at the ballot box. 

“Corporatism is not the same as free enterprise,” DeSantis argued. 

He warned of the danger from the growth of the administrative state, which he called the logical outcome of Congress abdicating its responsibility to hold the bureaucracy to account and letting it do much of the heavy legislating. 

In an opinion piece five days earlier, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg lambasted such Republican critics of ESG. “Critics call it ‘woke capitalism,’” he wrote. “There’s just one problem. They don’t seem to understand capitalism. And flogging ESG is not only a terrible economic mistake. It will be a political loser too.” 

Bloomberg’s forecast will be tested when Florida voters decide whether to reelect DeSantis on Nov. 8. 

The battle has been joined and that is good news, because it signals a much-needed debate on ESG and its climate-policy component. 

Although Democrats hail passage of the Schumer-Manchin Inflation Reduction Act, far more consequential is the Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposed climate-risk disclosure rule, currently being finalized. It will operate at the nexus of the administrative state, Wall Street and politically motivated institutional investors. The Net Zero Asset Managers initiative, part of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), has 273 signatories with $61.3 trillion in assets under management.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Meet the Temporary Republicans Who Will Save the Country from the Left Sasha Stone

Posted By on October 16th, 2022

https://sashastone.substack.com/p/meet-the-temporary-republicans?sd=pf#details

“Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

What did Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill all have in common? They could see the threat and had the courage to confront it.

Tulsi Gabbard is the one Democrat who could not only recognize the threat of the modern-day Democratic Party but also dares to lead a movement to help take them out of power. And they must be taken out of power until they can get a grip and restore some sanity to the party and the country.

You see the “Temporary Republicans” mostly on Twitter anonymously or in comment sections. But don’t be surprised if you see them turn out in November.

They are parents whose children’s lives or businesses were destroyed by crippling lockdowns. Parents whose toddlers were forced to wear masks inexplicably. Even questioning the absurdity of such an illogical command was verboten.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

The Need for Real Leadership: The Cost of Not Supporting Ukraine by Pete Hoekstra

Posted By on October 16th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18998/leadership-cost-ukraine-support

The difficult reality is that we may never know what would push Putin to make the decision to go nuclear…. The U.S. objective should be to deter him: make the potential cost to him so high that it would be suicidal for him even to try.

The clearest and most welcome statement was made by Biden himself in March: he stated, “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”

Biden is old enough to remember that “what happens in Sudetenland does not stay in Sudetenland.” If Putin is allowed to occupy Ukraine, Russia — and undoubtedly all the other aggressor nations waiting in the wings — China, Iran, Turkey, North Korea — will be emboldened to begin a free-for-all of invading their countries of choice. Putin could further move to take over Moldova, Poland and the Baltic states, for a start; Turkey could move on Greece and southern Cyprus, and China would most certainly move on the world’s computer-chip center, Taiwan.

Biden…. on day one, effectively closed down America’s ability to produce and export oil, thereby instantly creating an acute shortage of energy worldwide. Putin could not have dreamed of a bigger gift. Immediately, the price of oil tripled, from roughly $40 to $112. Russia was making a billion dollars a day, or $360 billion a year. Biden, with a stroke of his pen, had just financed Russia’s entire war on Ukraine even before granting Putin the use of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Europe, thereby guaranteeing Russia the ability to hold Europe hostage come winter.

The problem with this response [wishing to isolate America to avoid restoring Ukraine’s integrity] is that it is exactly the same view that, in 1938, led British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain to wave around a piece of paper and inaccurately claim “peace for our time” with Hitler. Chamberlain evidently saw that his British voters did not want war, so he tried to give them what they wanted. That is not great leadership; that is great followership.

People in thriving democracies usually do not want war — ever. They can see that they are enjoying magical, free lives — and wish to keep them. We all would like peace handed to us on a platter. Unfortunately, that is not always the available choice, particularly looking a few moves ahead. How much less costly it would have been in blood and treasure to have stopped Hitler before he crossed the Rhine. Surrender always remains an option — but usually not a happy one.

The U.S. and EU must put in place compelling plans to address the threat of slowing economies (growth); high inflation (stop government spending); rising energy prices (re-open the oil spigots), and potential shortages… at the same time as educating the public about the even worse consequences of not supporting Ukraine.

The idea is to make Putin afraid, not Americans.

Leaders of both U.S. political parties need clearly to articulate the American strategic interest in Ukraine, where a Western defeat could mean the beginning of the end of Europe, and let Putin know in no uncertain terms what the U.S. responses to any unpleasant escalation might be. The same can be done in European capitals and NATO countries, as well.

Leaders of both parties also need to lay out how they will address the current internal economic crises, their continuing support for Ukraine, defeating Putin and deterring further aggression by Russia, China, Turkey, North Korea and Iran. Short of delivering on these questions, they are doing no less than seriously jeopardizing the long-term national security of the U.S. and the West.

U.S. President Joe Biden is known for making confusing and sometimes wild pronouncements that his administration is known for frequently walking back. This might have been the case when he randomly decided to tell an audience of well-heeled Democrats at a fundraiser that Russian President Vladimir Putin is “not joking” about using nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. “We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon,” he added, “since Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran: Freedom-Lovers Win a Round by Amir Taheri

Posted By on October 16th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18996/iran-freedom-lovers

The various parts if the repressive machine didn’t know what do. In the city of Sari, for example, they arrested 786 people in one day before they realized they had nowhere to keep them.

Unlike supporters of the regime mostly of older generations, who gain self-esteem from bestowed but easily withdrawable privilege, the mostly young activists of horizontal society, regard themselves as being “somebody” even if only because they have the mandatory 5,000 followers on the Facebook. They want to be subjects in their own life-story, not objects in someone else’s dystopian dream.

The Khomeinist system was exposed as a colossus with a foot of clay.

As the uprising in Iran enters its fourth week, speculation about its future is rife.

Participants insist that they are on the path to victory, achieving regime change. They cite a number of reasons.

To start with, this is the first time that a national uprising isn’t about any particular grievance that could be rectified by the regime; what is at stake is total rejection of a system.

Next, there is the fact that the regime has been unable to regain control of the public space with the speed and efficiency it did on other occasions since 1979.

Adversaries of the uprising, regime apologists or those concerned about socio-political disintegration, believe that though the massive rejection of the regime by so many Iranians, if not the majority, is bound to cause permanent damage to it, straight regime change is not yet in the cards.

MY SAY: Comments turned off

MY SAY: MENDACIOUS MEDIA

Posted By on October 15th, 2022

This one is a great example:

Mike Lindell, the My Pillow boss distributed huge quantities of bedding to many families affected by Hurricane Ian in Fort Myers. Now, Lindell is openly a supporter of Donald Trump and a political Conservative and religious Christian.

 This was the headline on AOL’s Welcome page:

“My Pillow Boss Promotes Products Outside Wrecked Florida Home “

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

We’re in the Climate Army Now This is not the first time the Democrats have raised the specter of Armageddon to shamelessly try to pass off their failed policies. By Thaddeus G. McCotter

Posted By on October 15th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/10/14/were-in-the-climate-army-now/

During the Global War on Terror, when the United States was engaged battling terrorists and insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Left routinely lied to young voters that President George W. Bush in particular, and Republicans in general, were going to reinstitute the draft and send them to these active military theaters. The Left’s message was less than subtle: vote for Democrats or else the GOP will make sure you’re drafted and/or dead.

I was reminded of this in the heat of the 2020 election, when one of the Democrats’ smears was that an unstable President Trump was going to involve us in a war—likely a nuclear one. As during the Bush Administration, the scurrilous charge targeted young voters. What was different was that Trump was far less interventionist, and utilized American military power with significantly less frequency than did his predecessors. If one understands the Left’s tactics, Trump’s disinclination to use military power was not only insufficient to stop their “he’ll get us in a war” lie; it was, in fact, their reason for spreading it. (To those who contest this assessment of the Left’s tactics, does “Russiagate” ring a bell?)

Heading into the 2022 midterm elections, the Democrats and their media cohorts are now using the prospect of nuclear war to try and prop up Joe Biden’s sagging poll numbers, which threaten to drag his party’s federal and state candidates down to defeat. To wit, Biden opined to a gaggle of fat cat Democrats:

[For the] first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis, we have a direct threat of the use [of a] nuclear weapon if, in fact, things continue down the path they are going. We’ve got a guy [Putin] I know fairly well. He’s not joking when he talks about potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons because his military is, you might say, significantly underperforming.

Yes, if the Democrats’ stoking of “civil war” rhetoric isn’t enough to get their voters to the polls for the 2022 midterm elections, why not toss in the prospect of nuclear annihilation—along a path they and their minions have helped cement—even as they taunt the enemy to try to look like a tough guy? 

What could possibly go wrong?