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October 2023

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

What irony! The deranged defence of Hamas on campuses across the West is fuelling a counter-revolution that could finally loosen the stranglehold of wokeism Niall Ferguson

By on October 28th, 2023

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12681617/What-irony-deranged-defence-Hamas-campuses-West-fuelling-counter-revolution-finally-loosen-stranglehold-wokeism.html

Has wokeism jumped the shark? In other words, have the radical Leftists who for years have exercised increasing power in our universities finally gone too far?

I dare to hope so. The recent disgraceful responses to the attacks on Israel that we have seen — from American university campuses to the streets of London and Sydney — have dramatically increased awareness that something is rotten in the state of higher education in the English-speaking world.

Some of us have been battling against the ideological takeover of academia for close to a decade. Each year, we have been getting better organised. But we have struggled to convince people in the real world just how bad things are.

The past three weeks may finally have changed that.

The expression ‘jump the shark’ was coined in 1977 when the scriptwriters of long-running comedy series Happy Days — into their fifth series and getting short of ideas — tried to pep up the storyline by having the main character, Fonzie, preposterously jump over a shark while on water-skis.

‘It is only now people outside academia are noticing – The campus Left’s response to the attacks of October 7 was equally far-fetched and over-the-top — but immeasurably more offensive’

The campus Left’s response to the attacks of October 7 was equally far-fetched and over-the-top — but immeasurably more offensive.

Let’s remind ourselves what happened three weeks ago. Two Gaza-based terrorist groups inspired by Islamist ideology, committed to the destruction of the state of Israel and backed by at least one government, staged a trailer for a second Holocaust. In their savagery, they exceeded even the horrors perpetrated by the Russian butchers of Bucha in Ukraine.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Europe Facing Civil War? by Drieu Godefridi

By on October 27th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20103/europe-facing-civil-war

Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger explained in an interview recently that Europe had made a serious mistake by creating within itself, through mass immigration, populations that reject all its norms, values and a “constitutional basis”.

Finally, Europeans will have to do the unthinkable: actually apply their laws. If anyone — Muslim or non-Muslim — wants to celebrate the jihadist pogroms against the Jews, well, they can go and rejoice in Iran or Qatar. Not in Europe.

Every “Death to the Jews” or “Death to Israel” uttered in Europe… is an insult not only to Jews, but to us, what we are, our laws, our democracies and the will of the people.

In Vienna, London, Paris, Berlin, Brussels and dozens of other European cities, demonstrations “in support of Palestine” were organised even before the Israelis responded the jihadist pogrom perpetrated by Iran-backed Hamas on October 7, while the corpses of more than 1,400 Israeli victims — tortured, raped, murdered and mutilated, babies decapitated or burned alive — were still warm. According to a JNS report:

“[T]he IDF on Monday [Oct 23] published two segments from the interrogation of Hamas terrorists who participated in the massacre..

“‘The purpose of entering Israeli territory… was to kidnap civilians; they want as many hostages as possible,’ one of the terrorists revealed. He added, ‘They [Hamas] promised us that whoever brings a kidnapped person will receive an apartment and $10,000.'”

All the same, each and every one of these demonstrations in Europe was the scene of hate-filled slogans against Israel and Jews.

In Brussels, those slogans were shouted, and the atmosphere of violence and blood-lust was everywhere. Around me, surrounded by about 2,000 hate-filled demonstrators, a group of a dozen young Arabs were shouting “Death to the Jews” and “Death to Israel”, all the while exchanging knowing smiles and a few jokes. One of them ordered me to stop filming. I did.

Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger explained in an interview recently that Europe had made a serious mistake by creating within itself, through mass immigration, populations that reject all its norms, values and a “constitutional basis”. He deplored the fact that in Berlin in 2023, 80 years after the Holocaust, people, with complete impunity, are shouting “Death to the Jews” in the streets.

In the hours following the revelation of the butchery committed by Hamas, a wave of racist violence and attacks began in Europe, especially in France. Against Arabs or Muslims? Not at all. Against Jews, of course. In Europe, Jews are still the victims of hatred and violence. Apparently it is a way for our local pro-Hamas Europeans to celebrate the jihad pogrom of October 7.

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Rewarding hostage-taking and terrorism only brings more of the same As cruel as this may sound, we must stop negotiating with terrorists and simply step aside to let the Israelis do what they and we need for them to do: eviscerate Hamas. Eric Levine

By on October 27th, 2023

https://www.jns.org/rewarding-hostage-taking-and-terrorism-only-brings-more-of-the-same/

All caring and loving people are delighted that 85-year-old Yocheved Lifshitz and 79-year-old Nurit Cooper have been released by their Hamas captures. Their grandchildren, in particular, must be thrilled to see their grandmothers again. Unfortunately, the Biden administration’s negotiations to release American hostages, no matter how well-intentioned, only makes it more likely that Yocheved’s and Nurit’s grandchildren will be either murdered or taken hostage in the future.

Hamas, in close consultation with their paymasters Iran, is not releasing the elderly hostages for nothing. They are getting something in return. We are not yet certain what the quid pro quo is. But we do know that Israel’s ground invasion has not yet begun. We also know that the United States is not pressuring Qatar to turnover Hamas leaders like Ismail Haniyeh who are living in five-star hotels in Doha. To the contrary, Qatar is being publicly thanked by the White House for its role in facilitating the negotiations.

We can expect the slow drip of one or two American hostages being released every week or so. We should expect that most, if not all, will be the elderly or infirm. This puts Israel in a difficult position. If Jerusalem attacks while the negotiations are ongoing, it runs the risk of being blamed for the deaths of Americans if Hamas murders them, as they surely will. “If only Israel showed restraint,” her critics will say.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Megadonors Should Fund New Universities By Robert Weissberg

By on October 27th, 2023

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

The size and vitriol of the anti-Israel/pro-Hamas rallies on campus has been a game changer. Yes, everyone knew that college students tend to be ill-informed politically, but the seething hatred of Jews and the misinformation — labeling Israel an apartheid society — was beyond belief. Obviously, something is terribly wrong with American higher education.

What can be done? Though many prominent donors threaten to close their checkbooks, and top school administrators offer lukewarm apologies, the answer is, sadly: not much. The only solution is to create educational alternatives, a long-term strategy where today’s elite schools fade into obscurity and join the ranks of Transylvania University, a once prestigious university that still exists but is now more closely associated with Dracula than higher education,

The good news is that this mission can be accomplished and all the ingredients — mainly brains, organizational skill, and money — exist in abundance. This strategy will not produce overnight change, but it is the only alternative.

The necessary reform is impossible. The hatred of Western Civilization that encourages woke kids to champion homophobic, misogynist militant Islam has entered American higher education’s DNA. And this is in addition to all the nonsense about gender fluidity and Critical Race Theory. No school can screen applicants for gullibility nor impose a litmus test for prospective faculty. Nor would champions of Western Civilization demand schools to return to an era when universities were church-run sanctuaries for doctrinal orthodoxy. Yes, these donations from angry billionaires are large, but funding is also fungible so Middle East billionaires or radical foundations can easily replace the likes of Leslie Wexner or Ron Lauder.

Hope starts by recognizing that many contemporary elite schools began as educational nonentities. The world-famous California Institute of Technology was founded  in 1891 as an Throop College, an obscure vocational school, and did not began its march to excellence until later. Throop College shed its name in 1910 and became Cal-Tech in 1920 thanks to the efforts of leading scientists on the faculty, notably Robert A. Millikan and George E. Hale. Only in 1934 it officially joined the ranks of other major American universities.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Biden and Islamophobia By Eileen F. Toplansky

By on October 27th, 2023

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

I was hoping against hope that Joe Biden would totally and irrevocably expose the evil of radical Islam in speaking of the dastardly Hamas attacks.

But once he asserted that “we must also, without equivocation, denounce Islamophobia” in bis October 2020 speech to the nation, it was patently clear that he had fallen into the clutches of those who would demand utter capitulation to Islamists and thus destroy free speech, and independent thinking.

Islamists would assert that “Islamophobia is “an allegedly irrational fear of losing life or liberty to Islamic rule merely because the laws, sacred texts, and traditional practices of Islam demand the submission of culture, politics, religion and social expression. But, in the real world, it is a product of rational observation.”

After all “[a]n ideology that has as its stated goal to put the entire world under its eternal rule, by force if necessary, and to kill those who stand in its way, criticize it or leave it, is genuinely dangerous. Having some healthy doses of fear and skepticism of such a force is perfectly rational.”

As thereligionofpeace.com explains that:

To obscure the fact that the same problems and reactions follow Islam into every country, no matter how tolerant, a word has been invented to suppress any assessment or criticism of Islam. 

Consider that Hinduism is different in almost every way from every other major world religion, but no one is accused of having Hinduphobia. 

In fact, Islam is the only religion that requires a pretend word to protect against critical inquiry.  The sole purpose of ‘Islamophobia’ is to conflate ideological truth with anti-Muslim bigotry.  The irony is that of all religions, the tenets of Islam are the least tolerant and most hostile toward the others.

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MY SAY: Comments turned off

MY SAY: ON THE HAMAS YOUTH MOVEMENT

By on October 27th, 2023

Who are the parents of Hamas-supporting students? By Ruth King

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/10/who_are_the_parents_of_hamassupporting_students.html

After the anti-Vietnam War turmoil of the late 1960s and early 1970s, Midge Decter wrote an outstanding book called Liberal Parents, Radical Children detailing a generation gap between young militants demanding an end to the Vietnam War  with a quasi-Utopian challenge to the “establishment” and their standard-issue liberal, mostly Democrat parents who did not call American troops “war criminals” nor did they blame America first for every ill in the universe.

When the war and the draft ended, the protests subsided and even stalwarts of the protests like Senator Eugene McCarthy and David Horowitz, editor of the radical magazine Ramparts and now editor of the conservative FrontPage, announced their support for Ronald Reagan.

Other protesters then turned their sights on community organizations and councils, the academy, and the media, but nothing has prepared parents and the general public for the present outpouring of support for Hamas terrorists and hatred for Israel among students.

As Victor Davis Hanson has stated: 

The sheer madness that has gripped many elite universities since October 7 and the butchery, rape, torture, and mutilation of some 1,000 Israeli civilians by Hamas murderers have shocked the public at large.  Campus craziness is, of course, nothing new. But quite novel for campuses was the sudden jettisoning of prior campus pretenses. Universities have brazenly dropped their careful two-faced gymnastics to reveal at last — unapologetic, proudly, and defiantly — the moral decay that now characterizes American higher education.

Noah Rothman adds: 

Younger Americans, aged 18 to 24, disagree with their elders. This demographic is split almost down the middle when asked if the slaughter of senior citizens, the rape of young women, the murder of children, and the immolation of whole families in their homes was justified. Indeed, a slight majority of respondents in this age group said the butchery could be “justified by the grievance of Palestinians.” What’s more, only a bare majority of this demographic backs Israel in this conflict. Forty-eight percent said they side not with Palestinians but explicitly with “Hamas” in this war.

But why blame only the media and the academies? Who are the parents?

That’s a rhetorical question. I know the parents. They are smug hypocrites who vociferously defend affirmative action but pay expensive tutors to give their own kids a leg up. They parrot trendy views on gender, cancel culture, trigger words, pronouns, and perceived offenses. They favor open borders, defunding police, bail reform across the board, and sanction the violence and arson occasioned by the death of George Floyd. They’ve ignored the drumbeat of rising anti-Semitism and support overtly racist organizations like Black Lives Matter. They ignore the turpitude of those who pervert truth and history by denying American exceptionalism and vie with their offspring on all liberal cant and demand for “flexible” history, science, and biology.

The Jews among them are called self-hating but that does not fit. They are self-loving with their preening. They see themselves as an aggrieved minority which rises above others with their empathy for both sides of every conflict and every issue. They curb all debate and dissent in their loathing of Donald Trump and Bibi Netanyahu while ignoring racist genocides throughout the world. They are mildly troubled by anti-Semitic leftist legislators and commentators because they “know where they are coming from.”  But now that the rising tide of global antisemitism is lapping at their toes, they are alarmed but blaming conservatives. Zero insight.

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ANTI-SEMITISM, EDUCATION Comments turned off

Anti-Semitic Academia Finally Getting Punched in the Wallet By Stephen Kruiser

By on October 27th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/columns/stephen-kruiser/2023/10/26/anti-semitic-academia-finally-getting-punched-in-the-wallet-n1737961

Ever since the terrorist murderers in Hamas attacked Israel almost three weeks ago, we’ve been witnessing the disgusting spectacle of American college students very vocally condemning Israel, some of which the esteemed VodkaPundit recently chronicled.

For being attacked.

Yes, parents, this is what a small fortune gets you when you send your kids off to have their minds polluted by the leftist filth that controls Academia.

These kids didn’t come out of the womb being virulently anti-Semitic, they had to be conditioned. To be sure, the American public education indoctrination mill helped get them there, but it’s the lunatics in Academia’s ivory towers who are responsible for the finished product. As I said in a recent podcast, the students are only working with the facts that their professors presented to them.

A handful of college presidents and boards of regents have issued statements condemning anti-Semitism and Hamas, but that can all be filed under “Too Little, Too Late.” The damage to young minds has already been done.

Wholesale changes in American public education and academia are long past overdue, but it’s been considered sacrilege — mostly by the left — to disparage the sainted teachers or institutions of higher learning. Eyes are being opened now, however. The corrupt agenda of the teachers’ unions that run K-12 public schools was revealed during the COVID-19 pandemic and got parents involved in curricula decisions in great numbers.

The behavior of the rabidly pro-Palestinian/Hamas students at many elite universities has shocked a lot of people who aren’t online and consuming news for most of their waking hours.

There is, of course, BIG money in academia. It takes a lot to keep the hegemonic brain-washing apparatus humming. Obviously, the best way to fight it is to hit them where it hurts the most — in the bank accounts.

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HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

October 7 Coming to America? Don’t fool yourself. by Bruce Bawer

By on October 27th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/october-7-coming-to-america/

During the last 20 years I’ve written extensively about two things. One is the dangerous rise of Islam in the West. The other is the ideological destruction of the American academy. The aftermath of the Hamas atrocities of October 7 has brought both of these concerns to the fore. In the wake of the most horrific attack on Jews since the Holocaust, there were massive rallies across the country in sympathy with the terrorist perpetrators, and the participants in these demonstrations belonged largely to two groups: (1) college students and (2) Muslims.

If the jihadist butchery of October 7 was monstrous, the spectacle of huge crowds applauding it was appalling. It shocked many people. It shouldn’t have. Many of us have spent years writing endlessly about the ugliness of Islamic ideology – notably the murderous hatred of Jews that is enshrined in the Koran, taught in the madrassas, and preached in the mosques – only to feel that our words were falling on deaf ears. Similarly, many of us have been writing for a long time about the far-left professors, especially at our so-called elite colleges, who teach their students that America, the West, Christians, Jews, and white people are always the oppressors and aggressors and that people of color, especially Muslims, are always victims. The public displays of solidarity with Hamas are at once a dramatic illustration of both of these phenomena and the strongest argument yet for major action on both of these fronts.

First, something drastic needs to be done about American higher education. The ideological depredation wrought by far-left faculty and administrators at private colleges needs to be addressed by responsible-minded trustees, alumni, and donors. Speaking of donors, something needs to be done about them, as well: as Eli Lake reported on October 25, not a few U.S. colleges have accepted fortunes from Muslim countries and have built whole campuses in those countries – with the syllabi tailored, of course, to local requirements. That repulsive intellectual compromise needs to be quashed. Then there’s the matter of administrative bloat: as the College Fix website noted on October 24, Harvard has over 1.3 administrators per student. Most of these people are superfluous at best and mischief-makers at worst – DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) bureaucrats who strive to protect students from “microaggression” but who shrug indifferently at cries of “kill the Jews.”

As for public universities, responsible state and municipal leaders could do worse than to emulate Florida Governor Ron de Santis, who appointed anti-ideology crusader Christopher Rufo as a trustee at Sarasota’s New College and – in an October 24 order – banned chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine, a student organization that provides support to Hamas, from Sunshine State campuses.

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ANTI-SEMITISM, EDUCATION Comments turned off

Fred Bauer Reaping the Whirlwind The anti-Semitism now on display on college campuses has one of its origins in the erosion of public order during the summer 2020 “racial reckoning.”

By on October 27th, 2023

https://www.city-journal.org/article/anti-semitism-at-the-cooper-union

Last night, a small cluster of Jewish students barricaded themselves in the library of Cooper Union, while a crowd outside banged on the doors chanting: “Free Palestine.”

Scenes like this have become familiar on college campuses. Radical activists have spent years devising strategies to drown out and, in some cases, physically threaten undesirable voices. In March 2017, masked activists at Middlebury College mobbed the social scientist Charles Murray, chasing him and others into a car. They shoved and pulled the hair of the faculty moderator for the event (who said that she disagreed with Murray about many issues). These tactics of revolutionary exception are now being used to target Jewish people on campuses and in cities across the United States.

The ugly displays of anti-Semitism that have erupted across the United States over the past month are at once the extension of the racial “reckoning” of the summer of 2020 and a profound challenge to the legitimacy of this supposed reckoning. One of the reckoning’s premises was that the urgency of injustice demanded the suspension of civic order and the norms of a liberal society. Rioters were thus permitted to torch public buildings, loot businesses, and tear down statues of “problematic” figures from the past. When the New York Times ran an op-ed by Arkansas senator Tom Cotton calling for the military to help put down violent riots, the newsroom dissolved into a struggle session that ended in the departure of multiple staffers, including editorial page editor James Bennet. In workplaces across the United States at that time, an inopportune comment on Zoom could mean defenestration. For defenders of the reckoning, confronting the history of racism demanded such consequences.

Despite years of warnings about the importance of democratic norms and liberal democracy, the American establishment mostly blessed these efforts. Foundations poured hundreds of millions of dollars into identity-politics activist groups. Major public institutions adopted the creed of the reckoning. Even mild criticisms of ideological purges—such as the Harper’s “Letter on Justice and Open Debate”—were treated as reactionary screeds. Terrified of right-populism, part of the political establishment might have seen the reckoning as a weapon to be used against Donald Trump-supporting “deplorables”; or maybe anti-Trump coalitional politics simply demanded silence in the face of these excesses.

Now the promissory note of the reckoning has come due. In habituating people to the idea that righteousness justifies the abrogation of individual dignity and dismissal of political pluralism, the reckoning taught lessons deeply at odds with the functioning of American democracy.

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Johnson begins House speakership with focus on debt, inflation, ‘border catastrophe’ as top issues By Nicholas Ballasy

By on October 27th, 2023

https://justthenews.com/government/congress/johnson-begins-house-speakership-focus-debt-inflation-and-border-catastrophe#google_vignette

Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., the newly elected Speaker of the House of Representatives kicked off his leadership role on Wednesday with a commitment to establish a fiscal commission dedicated to rolling back excessive government spending as a way to reduce inflation. He also called on the Senate and White House to stop ignoring the “catastrophe” at the southern border.

Johnson described the nation’s rising $33 trillion national debt as the greatest threat to national security and connected it to the level of inflation that America’s families have been grappling with the last few years.

“The greatest threat to our national security is our nation’s debt and while we’ve been sitting in this room – that’s right – the debt has crossed almost $33.6 trillion and in time it’s going to take me to deliver this speech, we will go up $20 million in debt. It’s unsustainable,” Johnson said on the House floor to a standing ovation from Republicans and a handful of Democrats seated in the chamber.

“We have to get the country back on track. We know this isn’t going to be an easy task and tough decisions will have to be made but the consequences if we don’t act now are unbearable. We have a duty to the American people to explain this to them so they understand it well and we’re going to establish a bipartisan debt commission to begin working on this crisis immediately,” he added after formally taking the gavel.

At this point, Congress has until Nov. 17 to pass a federal budget to avoid a government shutdown. The White House and congressional leaders will soon be negotiating on an agreed upon level of federal spending, which will be the first major test of Johnson’s speakership.

Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., a member of the House Budget Committee, told Just the News on Wednesday that the GOP-led House might pass a temporary spending bill or “Continuing Resolution” through January.

“I don’t like CRs. I definitely don’t like omnibuses being crammed, you know, during the Thanksgiving or the Christmas holidays has got to end,” he said. “But he’ll [Johnson] have some leeway on that. He’s talking about January and we’ll see what the overall numbers look like and then go from there.”

The House has been working on passing single subject appropriations bills to fund each cabinet agency separately, which conservatives argue is a way to reduce wasteful spending. The House lost time in that process given that votes were frozen while the GOP conference searched for a speaker after McCarthy’s ousting. 

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