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February 2024

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The Empty Sloganeering of a ‘Two-State Solution’ By Danielle Pletka

By on February 9th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/02/the-empty-sloganeering-of-a-two-state-solution/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_

The Palestinian people are pawns, props in a local, regional, and global game that puts their real interests last.

It is beyond ironic that the vile attacks of October 7 have revived the notion of a two-state solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians — an idea that was, until that moment, politically moribund. Of course, such a “solution” was far from Hamas’s aim, but it remains the only idea available to the lazy diplomatic and peace-processing class. The two-state idea serves the aims of political leaders in the United States and Europe flailing for a response to the far Left’s anti-Israel-driven outrage over the war in Gaza. It answers the mail to the demand to “do something.”

But the one question no one has bothered to ask is, Is it good for the Palestinians? And the short answer to that question is no.

“Two-state solution” is part of the lexicon of sloganeering-cum-politics that includes “black lives matter,” “defund the police,” and “cease-fire now.” And like all of those reductionist bumper stickers, it crumbles under scrutiny. The evolution of each of these ideas is predicated on a grain of truth: Of course black lives matter. There is indeed police brutality. A cease-fire now would indeed end the fighting in Gaza, albeit briefly. And a two-state solution would certainly satisfy the symbolic demands for a Palestinian state.

Also true of these parallel political constructions is that the slogan has precious little to do with the actual lives it purports to value. The Black Lives Matter movement, while soothing to upper-class suburban whites focused intently on their virtue and their Land Rovers, has enriched a few grifters at its heart and delivered shockingly little to the actual blacks who live in America’s cities and are disproportionately victims of crime, beset by poor schooling, drugs, broken families, and more.

Ditto the mindless effort to slash police budgets in the unreasoned hope that by destroying the instruments of law enforcement, somehow there would be fewer incidents of police brutality. Instead, as numerous failed experiments in a light police footprint have demonstrated, crime has skyrocketed, businesses have been forced to shut down, and cities like Portland, Ore., San Francisco, Oakland, and Washington, D.C., have spiraled into dystopia.

Back to the Palestinians. They are people before they are a nation or a movement. And like the hapless props for the various other slogans/movements, their fate is of little genuine interest to their putative champions. To be pro-“Palestine” has come to mean little more than to be anti-Israel, shortchanging the very people such a position is intended to support.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

A Quick Look at the 21st Century So Far by Drieu Godefridi

By on February 9th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20340/21st-century

If you add to this the European Union’s obsession with the environment, which has become little more than a machinery for imposing constraints, vexations, punishments and taxes in the name of “energy transition”, it appears that stagnation is a problem from which Europe might have the greatest difficulty in freeing itself.

China talks tough about Taiwan, but seems leery of using its considerable military force if it can count on the US failing to respond.

Above all, the Chinese regime is a ruthless dictatorship in which people and their property disappear, and there are no mechanisms for peaceful reform.

If there is a single element of the American system that Europe should replicate, it is this flexibility in the labor market.

Will that never happen? No, of course not. That is why Europe will continue to stagnate, while America, despite all its current difficulties, opens up the way of the future.

If the economic and geopolitical facts examined here are anything to go by, the 21st century will be more American than ever.

We are not quite a quarter of the way into the 21st century, but already a few clear structural trends have emerged, even if it is impossible to predict the next “black swans” — radically unpredictable events with far-reaching consequences – that might occur. Here are four of the trends.

Since 2000, Europe has stagnated on many fronts — anemic growth, a crashing birth rate, military disinvestment — from which countries such as Belgium and Germany have still not emerged. Perhaps most worrying of all, according to criteria such as patents, capital investment, and stock market giants such as GAFA (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon), Europe has stopped innovating. People innovate in the United States; they still innovate in Asia, but in Europe – hardly at all. If you add to this the European Union’s obsession with the environment, which has become little more than a machinery for imposing constraints, vexations, punishments and taxes in the name of “energy transition”, it appears that stagnation is a problem from which Europe might have the greatest difficulty in freeing itself.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Multiple ‘Drag Queens’ in the News This Week For Appalling Sex Crimes Against Children By Debra Heine

By on February 9th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/02/08/multiple-drag-queens-in-the-news-this-week-for-appalling-sex-crimes-against-children/

The left’s favorite expression of gay pride has been in the news this week for all the wrong reasons. Multiple “Drag queens” and “transgender stars” have been arrested for appalling sex crimes against children.

The stories feature cross-dressing men who allegedly abused children in Oregon, Australia, West Virginia, and Kentucky.

“Drag queen” Eron David Griffin, 42, accused of sexually abusing minors at his part-time home salon business in Salem Oregon:

BREAKING: Oregon drag queen Eron David Griffin arrested on child s*x crime charges. He was charged with 3 counts of third-degree s*xu*l abuse and commercial s*xu*l solicitation.

Griffin performed with and befriended another drag queen named Kelsey Meta Boren who’s a convicted… pic.twitter.com/Nj4BupB5oa

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) February 7, 2024

Griffin, who performed under the name “Stella Mess,” was arrested in November but police didn’t publicized the investigation and arrest until this week.  The investigation was reportedly launched in October after multiple minors claimed he sexually abused them.  Police are now seeking other victims of the alleged pedophile.

Griffin has ties to convicted pedophile Kelsey Meta Boren, whose drag stage name was  “Alwaiz Craving” (always craving) the Post Millennial reported.

Boren was convicted in Lane County, Ore. last year of 11 felony counts of encouraging child sexual abuse in the first degree. Boren had worked at an elementary school and was a drag queen ambassador for a queer nonprofit in Oregon.

Griffin was charged with three counts of third-degree sexual abuse and sexual solicitation.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Could Joe Biden Order a U.S. Attack on Iran? Given Biden’s low approval ratings, I am worried that a desperate “wag the dog” attack on Iran to distract Americans from the president’s political problems at home cannot be ruled out. By Fred Fleitz

By on February 9th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/02/09/could-joe-biden-order-a-u-s-attack-on-iran/

Could Joe Biden bomb Iran? There are loud calls by some members of Congress and pundits to do this in response to the surge in attacks by Iranian proxy groups against U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria and shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.

Some thought it was telling last weekend when National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan refused to rule out a U.S. attack on Iran during a press interview.

But why would anyone be calling for American airstrikes against Iran? Why didn’t the massive U.S. airstrikes against Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Syria last week and the 14 or more U.S. airstrikes against the Houthi rebels in Yemen halt their attacks?

The answer to both questions is that American deterrence in the Middle East has seriously eroded during the Biden administration.

Much of this erosion is due to three years of American weakness and foreign policy failures caused by the administration’s incompetent foreign policy. This includes the disastrous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, U.S. feuding with Israel and Saudi Arabia, the Biden administration’s attempts to appease Iran, and a frivolous foreign policy that treats climate change as the principal national security threat to the United States.

American credibility in the Middle East was further undermined by Biden administration policies in the aftermath of the October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack on Israel. Although Biden officials offered strong support for Israel immediately after this attack, there soon were signs of a split between the U.S. and Israel as administration officials began to publicly criticize the Israeli government for the way it was conducting the war against Hamas.

Worried about criticism from his progressive supporters, President Biden and his senior national security officials have pressed the Israeli government to end the war quickly and agree to a peace plan based on the two-state solution. Israeli officials have rejected ending the war before it can guarantee Israel’s security and defeat Hamas. They have also said two-state solution peace plans are off the table due to the October 7 attack.

There have also been press reports of growing tension between Biden and Netanyahu, including the president abruptly ending a December 23 phone call with the Israeli leader, Netanyahu repeatedly rejecting Biden’s calls for Palestinian sovereignty, and a report that Biden was running out of patience with Netanyahu

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EDUCATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

An Act of War “A Nation At Risk” sounded alarms over 40 years ago, but we keep hitting the snooze button. by Larry Sand

By on February 9th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/an-act-of-war/

In April 1983, U.S. Secretary of Education Terrell Bell created the National Commission on Excellence in Education, directing it to “examine the quality of education in the United States.” The panel found that “the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.”

The report famously asserted, “If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might have viewed it as an act of war.” It also insists that “…academic excellence [is] the primary goal of schooling [and it] seems to be fading across…American education.”

Edward B. Fiske, education editor of the New York Times at the time, described the report as “35 pages that “shook the U.S. education world [becoming] one of the most significant documents in the history of American public education.”

Sadly, however, a 1998 Hoover Institution report revealed that “little has changed” and that the nation was still very much at risk.

Here we are in 2024, over 40 years after the alarm bells sounded, and what have we done about the “act of war?”

Not much at all. What follows is a very brief overview of our current condition.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Domestic Terrorism History Month Influence of violent leftist radicals still on the rise. by Lloyd Billingsley

By on February 9th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/domestic-terrorism-history-month/

Last Sunday marked 50 years since the Symbionese Liberation (SLA) Army kidnapped Patricia Hearst, granddaughter of newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst. Patty took on the nom de guerre Tania and joined her SLA captors in armed robberies. Arrested in 1975, Hearst drew 35 years but served less than two before President Jimmy Carter commuted her sentence.

In 2001, President Bill Clinton granted Hearst a full presidential pardon. She married police officer Bernard Shaw and now showcases her French bulldogs at the Westminster Kennel Club. Nice story, but reports come up short on the SLA and other domestic terrorists, whose influence is now on the rise.

The Symbionese Liberation Army was headed by Donald DeFreeze, also known as Cinque Mtume, who served five years for robbery, escaped Soledad prison, and hooked up with radical leftist Patricia “Mizmoon” Soltysik. DeFreeze drew inspiration from Ron Karenga, also known as Maulena Karenga, born Ronald McKinley Everett in Maryland in 1941.

In the late 1960s Karenga rose to prominence as a theoretician of the black nationalist movement. In “The Quotable Karenga” handbook, he told followers:  “When it’s burn, let’s see how much you burn. When it’s kill, let’s see how much you kill. When it’s blow up, let’s see how much you blow up.”

In 1971, a court convicted Karenga of kidnapping and torturing two women in his organization. According to “Karenga Tortured Women Followers, Wife Tells Court,” from the May 3, 1971 Los Angeles Times, Karenga stripped naked Deborah Jones and Gail Davis, whipped them with an electrical cord, and beat the women with a karate baton. Karenga also stuck a hot soldering iron into Davis’ mouth and cranked down on her toes with a vice.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

D.C. Jury Awards $1M in Damages to Suppress “Climate Denialism” Suppressing political dissent by punishing speech. Daniel Greenfield

By on February 9th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/d-c-jury-awards-1m-in-damages-to-suppress-climate-denialism/

It’s hard to believe, but this Mann case has been wending through the courts for over a decade. It’s the Jarndyce case of the conservative vs. environmentalist movement whose purpose was to silence dissent.

That was explicitly the point all along.

The two also had a heated exchange over a private email Mann wrote in 2012, in which he said it was his “hope” that through the lawsuit he could “ruin this pathetic excuse for a human being,” referring to Steyn.

Back in 2012, this whole thing seemed like a ridiculous joke. And back then it was. But with enough money and lawyers, the case kept going because it also tracked the descent of the American Left into lawless totalitarianism which abused the legal system in order to silence political opponents.

The judicial wrangle began in 2012, when climatologist Michael E. Mann, a professor of meteorology at Pennsylvania State University and climate-change activist, sued National Review and pundits Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg, claiming that they had libeled him in a series of blog posts. On National Review’s website, Steyn commented on an article by Simberg, published by the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Simberg likened Mann’s research on global warming to Penn State’s cover-up in the case of Jerry Sandusky, Penn State’s former assistant football coach and a convicted child molester. Simberg called Mann “the Jerry Sandusky of climate science,” except that instead of molesting children, Mann had “molested and tortured data in the service of politicized science that could have dire economic consequences for the nation and planet.” Though Steyn distanced himself from the Sandusky analogy, he noted that Mann was the scientist behind the controversial “hockey-stick” graph, which purports to depict a sharp rise in global temperatures in recent years. Steyn called the graph “fraudulent.”

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

The Invasive Species That Is Renewable Energy

By on February 9th, 2024

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/02/09/the-invasive-species-that-is-renewable-energy/

The ruling class’ obsession with building a carbon dioxide-free world has blinded it to material facts. The Al Gores and Gavin Newsoms and John Kerrys of the West believe they only have to bark orders and seize other people’s money and their green dreams will be realized. When are they going to understand their wishes are not everyone else’s command?

There are many examples of the ruling class’ failure to recognize its limitations in regard to energy. The electric vehicle backlash comes to mind. So do the many green “investments” that have turned out to be financial holes of a different color.

For this commentary, though, we’re focusing on the breakdown of the renewable infrastructure buildout. The hard truth is that people don’t want wind and solar farms overtaking their communities and chewing up rural land. The resistance is so forceful that a number of counties have banned the projects inside their borders.

“Across America, clean energy plants are being banned faster than they’re being built,” says the USA Today headline from last week.

After the obligatory nonsense about how green energy is necessary because humans are setting the planet on fire, which is found daily across the hysterical mainstream media, the reporters note that “at least 15% of counties in the U.S. have effectively halted new utility-scale wind, solar, or both.” Through its nationwide analysis, USA Today learned that “limits come through outright bans, moratoriums, construction impediments and other conditions that make green energy difficult to build.” 

And it’s not just local governments. Three states, ​​Connecticut, Tennessee and Vermont, have “implemented near-statewide restrictions,” according to USA Today.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Jury Orders Mark Steyn to Pay Michael Mann $1 Million for Defaming Him in Blog Post

By on February 9th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/after-12-years-michael-manns-defamation-case-against-mark-steyn-finally-goes-to-the-jury/

A Washington, D.C., jury on Thursday ordered conservative pundit Mark Steyn to pay $1 million in punitive damages to climate scientist Michael Mann, determining that he was defamed in a 2012 blog post on National Review’s website.

The jury also ordered science writer Rand Simberg to pay Mann $1,000 in punitive damages for defaming him in a blog post on the website of the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Mann also won $1 from each writer in compensatory damages from the six-person jury after a trial that started in mid-January and lasted three weeks.

The jury’s decision for Mann could have important implications for the free-speech rights of critics to comment on controversial matters without fear of legal reprisals. In a statement before the jury’s verdict Simberg said the case was about “the ability of myself and others to speak freely about the most important issues of our day, whether climate change or another issue,” according to the Associated Press. “If others are faced with over a decade of litigation for giving their opinions, we will all suffer.”

The case involved blog posts that Simberg and Steyn made over a decade ago criticizing Mann’s science and his “hockey stick” graph, which shows global temperature spiking over the last century or so. In his post on CEI’s website, Simberg accused Mann of molesting and torturing his data, and made a crude analogy between Penn State University’s investigation of Mann and its investigation of Jerry Sandusky, the school’s former football coach convicted of child molestation.

In his post on the Corner section of National Review‘s website, Steyn distanced himself from the Sandusky analogy, but added that “he has a point.” He wrote that “Mann was the man behind the fraudulent climate-change ‘hockey-stick’ graph, the very ringmaster of the tree-ring circus,” a reference to climate data obtained through the analysis of tree rings.

The jury found that both Simberg and Steyn had defamed Mann, that they had asserted or relied on provably false statements, that they had a high degree of awareness that their statements were probably false, and acted with “maliciousness, spite, ill will, vengeance, or deliberate intent” to harm Mann. The jury also found that Mann suffered actual injuries because of the blog posts.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Biden’s Doddering Document Defense Special counsel Robert Hur says a jury might not convict the elderly, forgetful President.

By on February 9th, 2024

https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-biden-robert-hur-report-classified-documents-119fbb16?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

In a famous case from the 1990s, the mobster Vincent Gigante offered what became known as “the bathrobe defense.” He attended his arraignment in pajamas and a bathrobe and claimed to be mentally impaired. Regarding President Biden’s misuse of classified documents, the country is now asked to believe the forgetful elderly man defense.

That’s likely to be the main public takeaway from special counsel Robert Hur’s 345-page report of his investigation into the secret documents Mr. Biden kept in various places. Mr. Hur reports that he “uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen.” But he concludes that “no criminal charges are warranted,” in large part because he doesn’t believe a jury would convict “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

The report says Mr. Biden kept documents with classified markings about Afghanistan, an issue about which he had taken a particular interest during the Obama Presidency. He also kept notebooks “implicating sensitive intelligence sources and methods” in his garage, offices and basement den.

Mr. Biden used these documents and notes to assist in writing his 2007 and 2017 memoirs, and he shared those secrets with a ghostwriter. Mr. Hur also discovered a recorded 2017 conversation in which Mr. Biden said to his ghostwriter that he “just found all the classified stuff downstairs.” Mr. Hur also makes clear that with his long experience in public life, Mr. Biden was well aware of the rules required to protect national secrets.

Yet while his report is scathing on the facts, it goes easy on the decision to prosecute. A sitting President can’t be prosecuted under longtime Justice Department rules, but Mr. Hur says he also wouldn’t have prosecuted without such a rule. The reason? He didn’t think a jury would convict beyond a reasonable doubt.

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