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January 2024

ISRAEL Comments turned off

A Hundred Days after Gaza’s October 7 (Part 2 of 4) Inconvenient History from the SS Einsatzgruppen to Hamas by Gwythian Prins

By on January 26th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20338/ss-einsatzgruppen-to-hamas

The BBC has used UNRWA voices — preferably, it seems, antipodean ones — as purportedly objective third-party commentators. That is deeply irresponsible journalism, and the BBC most likely knows why that is so.

Thus, according to the Covenant and echoing the Mufti in 1943… there is not, and cannot anywhere be a Jewish state in this world. It is what is written: here we are told that Jews in Palestine are incompatible with ‘true statehood’ and the Mufti will tell us that it is Allah’s will that Jews shall be forever stateless.

It is important to remember [GP1] that these are thrice legitimate Jewish lands: once from original patrimony; once by international mandate and the third time by force of arms after successfully countering assaults in 1948, 1967 and 1973. Anti-Semitic exceptionalism, however, means that only the Jewish state is not allowed to enjoy the peace of victory that winning wars brings to other nations.

Ever since the Abraham Accords were adopted on 15th September 2020, many regional states have shown that they would prefer to skirt around the ever-rejectionist “Palestinians” and to normalise relations with the amazing mighty midget Israel, which is the region’s creative powerhouse in every cultural and technological domain, as well as, by necessity, its dominant military power. Most significantly that includes the Saudis, whom the Ayatollahs have declared their sworn enemies.

In his platform speech, [the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin] al-Husseini responded by stating that Germany “… understood the Jews perfectly and decided to find a final solution to the Jewish menace,” and… “…Allah has determined that there never will be a stable arrangement for the Jews, and that no state should be established for them.”

Thus, in anti-Semitic ideology…the inconvenient history which can be traced in evidence from the SS liquidation task forces –- the Einsatzgruppen — to Hamas, is detailed, documented and direct.

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

It Is Not Texas That’s Defying the Law — It’s Biden Andrew McCarthy

By on January 26th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/it-is-not-texas-thats-defying-the-law-its-biden/

There is a great deal of moronic commentary accusing the State of Texas of defying the Supreme Court. In point of fact, the Supreme Court did not order Texas to do anything. It vacated an order by the Fifth Circuit that, during the pendency of an ongoing lawsuit between the feds and the state, barred federal authorities from cutting concertina wire that Texas has installed in parts of its 1,254-mile border with Mexico. That is, the Supreme Court (with no opinion, and over the objection of four justices, who also did not write) held that, for now, the lower courts may not prevent the federal authorities from dismantling barriers.

That Supreme Court action did not to direct Texas to do anything. The Court did not presume to tell Texas that it could not take action to protect its territory and exclude intruders — to have done so would have been constitutionally dubious for the reasons Justice Antonin Scalia explained nearly a dozen years ago in his Arizona v. United States opinion — which Governor Gregg Abbott has explicitly relied on, and which should be read, reread, and memorized. (Note: Abbott described the 2012 Scalia opinion as a “dissent”; it actually concurred in part and dissented in part with the Court’s multilayered decision.)

There is no doubt that the federal and state governments both have immigration- and border-enforcement authority. How they work out disputes, particularly under circumstances in which no attempt has been made by Congress in statutory law to prevent the lawful defensive measures Texas has taken, is a political question. This is vertical rather than horizontal separation of powers — collision between federal and state authority rather than presidential and congressional authority — but the dynamic is similar: The law’s preference is for the political officials who answer to the people whose lives are deeply affected to work it out.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

The end of the world is not around the corner Environmental predictions about the End Times have a long and embarrassing history. Fraser Myers

By on January 26th, 2024

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/01/26/the-end-of-the-world-is-not-around-the-corner/

The end of the world is in sight. Hell on Earth is around the corner. Or at least that’s the impression you get from the overheated predictions that are continually made about the climate these days.

Today, we’re told the world is no longer reckoning with mere climate change, but with ‘climate catastrophe’. Not global warming, but ‘global boiling’. A ‘mass extinction event’ is upon us, says Greta Thunberg. ‘I am talking about the slaughter, death and starvation of six billion people this century’, warns Roger Hallam, co-founder of Extinction Rebellion, who dubiously claims that he has ‘the science’ to back this up. The ‘collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon’, insists David Attenborough. Scarier still, the narrow window for saving humanity from eco-armaggeddon is apparently always just about to close shut. Or so scientists and activists say.

These kinds of predictions come cloaked in the authority of science. They’re given a huge amount of weight by well-credentialed academics and venerable institutions. But that is no guarantee that they will come true. To put it lightly.

Indeed, predictions of environmental doom have been made before – and they have been very, very wrong before. According to some of the earliest luminaries of the modern environmental movement, we should probably all be dead already. It seems we’ve actually been living in the End Times for a very long time now.

The scientific consensus around global warming didn’t fully emerge until the 1980s. Nevertheless, environmental scientists have always been convinced that changes in the climate could pose an existential threat to humanity. Ironically, in the 1960s and 1970s, some scientists were more concerned about the alleged threat of global cooling than they were about warming. ‘Are we heading for an ice age?’, the Sunday Telegraph asked in 1979.

The potential for the world’s ecosystems to collapse has long kept environmentalists awake at night.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

NYU Professor Tells Students of Hamas Atrocities: ‘We Know It’s Not True’ By Francesca Block

By on January 26th, 2024

https://www.thefp.com/p/nyu-prof-tells-students-hamas-atrocities-untrueu?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

An adjunct NYU professor denied reports that the terrorist group Hamas beheaded babies and raped women in Israel on October 7, telling a group of students last month: “We know it’s not true.”

“We live in a Zionist city,” Amin Husain added at the December 5 “teach-in” organized by Students for Justice in Palestine at The New School, according to a video obtained by The Free Press. “No, let’s be real about this, let’s be fucking real.”

He went on to joke about his reputation for being antisemitic, citing a petition launched by an NYU alumnus on October 17, 2023, calling for his dismissal: “I have a petition going around, right, because I’m antisemitic. I won the honors of antisemitic multiple times.”

In the video, taken from the livestream of the event, Husain sits behind a table, wearing a keffiyeh and woolly hat while speaking to a classroom of students who remain quietly attentive as he comments on what he calls the “Palestinian liberation struggle.” A former finance lawyer, Husain jokes that his profile on the site Canary Mission, which documents people and groups that promote hatred of the USA, Israel, and Jews, “is one of the best biographies I have.”

Husain’s Canary Mission bio states that he has “organized multiple violent New York City disruptions, promoted hatred of America and the police and incited hatred against pro-Israel supporters with Within Our Lifetime (WOL), an anti-Israel activist group in New York.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Two Americas The rich, as F. Scott Fitzgerald once noted, are different. Mark Tapson

By on January 26th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-two-americas-2/

This just in: the ruling class hates your freedoms.

The Committee to Unleash Prosperity (CUP), a D.C.-based nonprofit advocacy group led by Steve Forbes and economists Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore, released a report this month announcing the findings of a Rasmussen poll which confirms what the “average” American already knew: the elites, to paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald, are different. What the average American may not already know is just how much of an existential threat to freedom the ruling class is.

CUP calls the report, titled “The Two Americas and How the Nation’s Elite is Out of Touch with Average Americans,” a “first-of-its-kind look at the views of the American Elite.” This report is based upon two separate Rasmussen surveys of 1,000 members of the elite class conducted last September. It defined the elites as people having at least one post-graduate degree, earning at least $150,000 annually, and living in high-population density areas (more than 10,000 people per square mile in their zip code). They represent a mere 1% of the U.S. population, but of course they have a disproportionate degree of power and influence, not least in terms of the topics and views that dominate public policy and the national conversation.

“These results confirm what people have long suspected,” the report states. “Today, there are two Americas.” As the authors write in their executive summary,

The people who run America, or at least think they do, live in a bubble of their own construction. They’ve isolated themselves from everyday America’s realities to such a degree their views about what is and what should be happening in this country differ widely from the average American’s.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Google Sharpens Its Censorship Knives — Labels Trump Praise As ‘Dangerous’

By on January 26th, 2024

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/01/26/google-sharpens-its-censorship-knives-labels-trump-praise-as-dangerous/

We recently discovered that Google’s ad-serving network is blocking its ads from appearing on a story we published almost exactly three years ago.

Google declared that the article violated its terms of service because it contained “Dangerous or derogatory content,” which it defines as anything that:

incites hatred against, promotes discrimination of, or disparages an individual or group on the basis of their race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, age, nationality, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or other characteristic that is associated with systemic discrimination or marginalization.
harasses, intimidates, or bullies an individual or group of individuals.
threatens or advocates for harm to oneself or others.
relates to a current, major health crisis and contradicts authoritative, scientific consensus.
exploits others through extortion.

Pretty raunchy stuff, in other words.

So what was the article that it flagged? “Trump’s Top-10 Triumphs: A Last Look At A Remarkable Presidency.”

We are not kidding.

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BOOKS Comments turned off

TWO RECOMMENDED BOOKS

By on January 26th, 2024

Loss and grief are equal opportunity predators. Two friends have written books which resonate with all who have mourned a loss of beloved parents, spouses, children and dear friends. “Everything is a Little Broken” is a poignant novel by Rebecca Sugar about the sorrow, and even humor when confronted by a father’s crumbling health. Warren Kozak’s “Waving Goodby” is about losing his lovely and loving wife after a grim diagnosis, extraordinary efforts to cure her and reinventing his life alone. Both will be available in February and April respectively. rsk

 

Waving Goodbye: Life After Loss

by Warren Kozak

To those around me—my friends, my colleagues, even my daughter—I appear normal, but in one very fundamental way, I am not.

The old me left with my wife. I’m not sure who this new person is—I am still evolving. But I will tell you this with absolute certainty: I am not the same person I was before my wife died on January 1, 2018.

For anyone struggling with the loss of a spouse—anyone whose world has been turned upside down in a way they’ve never encountered before—here is something that could help. Waving Goodbye is a candid, honest, and approachable guide to dealing with the death of a spouse written by a very ordinary guy who has lived through the ordeal.

Warren Kozak doesn’t just tell you that time heals all wounds; he explains how the passage of time actually helped. Despite the shattering heartbreak and insurmountable grief, Kozak shares what worked, what didn’t, and the insights he learned along the way to help anyone who has suffered this kind of loss.

 

Everything Is a Little Broken Paperback – February 27, 2024

by Rebecca Sugar

Aging is hard, but watching those you love get older isn’t much easier.

What do you do when the people you love are declining right in front of your eyes? What can you do but rage at all that is cruel, laugh at all that is absurd, and show up for whatever happens next?

Mira Cayne’s father has been in physical decline for decades, ever since his spinal cord injury at the age of forty-four. He was never the dad who ran a marathon, but he was the strongest and most resilient man Mira knew. Now, at seventy-nine, Matt Frank is recovering from his second surgery, and Mira can see a change in him. The compounding effects of old age and his infirmity are taking a toll on his fighting spirit, and Mira is trying to be strong for them both. She isn’t sure she is up to the task.

As Matt heals, his fragile condition produces daily indignities that offer the father and daughter a choice: to laugh or to cry. Luckily for Mira, she is built just like her father, and there is no doubt which choice they will make.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Crazy Story Behind the Disturbing News. Part One Victor Davis Hanson

By on January 25th, 2024

https://victorhanson.com/the-crazy-story-behind-the-disturbing-news-part-one/

The Unspeakable Precivilizational Barbarity of Hamas

A recent report from Israel chronicles the tragic, more than two-months-long hunt of a bereaved father, David Tahar, for the head of his slain son, Adir—a young Israeli soldier murdered by terrorists on October 7.

Tahar had been warned by Israeli authorities not to view the remains of his son. But he insisted, and thus discovered the mutilation perpetrated by Hamas killers and then sought to find the missing remains of his son.

Israelis, however, recently captured two terrorists who knew firsthand of the incident—given one was the perpetrator. And then the story descended further into barbarism.

Or in the words of the news report from The Times of Israel:

“Two terrorists who were captured by Israeli forces and interrogated by the Shin Bet security service revealed that one of them had tried to sell an IDF soldier’s head for $10,000 and gave details on where it could be found.”

Further macabre questions arise: is there a market for severed Israeli heads? Does the $10,000 dovetail with the earlier reports that Hamas was offering $10,000 bounties to Gaza “civilians” who tagged along opportunistically as soon as word spread that the wall was breached, Israeli civilians were being robbed, raped, and murdered—and bounties offered for ad hoc killing and hostage-taking?

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Subliterate Readers and Media Literacy California is rife with children who can barely read, but now all students have to learn “media literacy.” By Larry Sand

By on January 25th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/01/25/subliterate-readers-and-media-literacy/

Per Assembly Bill 873, media literacy skills must now be taught in California schools. The law requires that it not be done in a stand-alone class but rather must be woven into existing English language arts, science, math, and history-social studies classes.

Assemblymember Marc Berman, who authored the law, claims, “Teaching media literacy is a key strategy to support our children, their families, and our society that are inundated with misinformation and disinformation on social media networks and digital platforms. From climate denial to vaccine conspiracy theories to the January 6 attack on our nation’s Capital, the spread of online misinformation has had global and deadly consequences.”

It’s not only California that has a media literacy law. Texas, New Jersey, and Delaware have also passed this kind of legislation, and more than a dozen other states are moving in that direction. However, according to Media Literacy Now, a nonprofit research organization that advocates for media literacy in K-12 schools, California’s law falls short of its recommendations. The group explains that California’s approach doesn’t include funding to train teachers, an advisory committee, or any way to monitor the law’s effectiveness.

As noted by Berman, the rush toward media literacy is a priority because young adults are more likely to believe information from social media than traditional news outlets. While I am hardly a proponent of getting news from social media, is the mainstream media really any better?

The New York Times, aka the “newspaper of record,” may be, historically speaking, the worst, most deceitful media outlet in the country. Most notably, the Times and its writer, Walter Duranty, colluded to knowingly overlook the Stalin-led starvation of Ukraine in 1931. The newspaper also went all in for the great Duke University lacrosse team hoax of 2006, which centered around an alleged rape that never happened. Additionally, The Times also embraced the disgraced 1619 project in 2019. And in 2021, the newspaper referred to the blatantly satirical Babylon Bee as a “far-right misinformation site.”

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Public Education’s Alarming New 4th ‘R’: Reversal of Learning By Vince Bielski

By on January 25th, 2024

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2024/01/23/public_educations_alarming_new_4th_r_reversal_of_learning_1006226.html

Call it the big reset – downward – in public education.

The alarming plunge in academic performance during the pandemic was met with a significant drop in grading and graduation standards to ease the pressure on students struggling with remote learning. The hope was that hundreds of billions of dollars of emergency federal aid would enable schools to reverse the learning loss and restore the standards.

Four years later, the money is almost gone and students haven’t made up that lost academic ground, equaling more that a year of learning for disadvantaged kids. Driven by fears of a spike in dropout rates, especially among blacks and Latinos, many states and school districts are apparently leaving in place the lower standards that allow students to get good grades and graduate even though they have learned much less, particularly in math.

It’s as if many of the nation’s 50 million public school students have fallen backwards to a time before rigorous standards and accountability mattered very much.

“I’m getting concerned that, rather than continuing to do the hard work of addressing learning loss, schools will start to accept a new normal of lower standards,” said Amber Northern, who oversees research at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a group that advocates for academic rigor in schools.

The question is—why did the windfall of federal funding do so little to help students catch up?

Northern and other researchers, state officials and school leaders interviewed for this article say many districts, facing staffing shortages and a spike in absenteeism, didn’t have the bandwidth to take on the hard work of helping students recover. But other districts, including those that don’t take academic rigor and test scores very seriously, share in the blame. They didn’t see learning loss as a top priority to tackle. It was easier to spend the money on pay rises for staff and upgrading buildings.

The learning loss debacle is the latest chapter in the decade-long decline in public schools. Achievement among black and Latino students on state tests was already dropping before COVID drove an exodus of families away from traditional public schools in search of a better education. Although by lowering standards and lifting the graduation rate districts have created the impression that they have bounced back, experts say that’s the wrong signal to send, creating complacency when urgency is needed.

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