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March 2024

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Shredding the Law to Get Donald Trump Peter O’Brien

By on March 23rd, 2024

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/america/2024/03/shredding-the-law-to-get-donald-trump/

Nothing has shocked me as much recently as the result of New York Attorney-General Letitia James’ prosecution of Donald Trump, following closely, as it did, on the absurd award of $83 million in damages for defamation to memory-challenged alleged sexual assault victim, E. Jean Carroll. 

If you’re not reporting for  the mainstream media, you know this is a politically motivated hit-job. In other words, an attack on the very essence of American democracy.  You know, the ultimate sin of which Trump stands accused.  The one for which he must be defeated later this year. James told us exactly that when she campaigned for election on a platform of getting Trump:

I will never be afraid to challenge this illegitimate president,” James said in a video during the campaign. “I believe that this president is incompetent. I believe that this president is ill-equipped to serve in the highest office of this land. And I believe that he is an embarrassment to all that we stand for.” She went on to say Trump should be indicted on criminal charges and charged with obstruction of justice.

So, even before she had any case, she was determined to pursue him, not because of any crime she may have suspected he committed but because in her eyes he was both an illegitimate president and incompetent. But, no doubt under the influence of Trump Derangement Syndrome, James would have been confident a fishing expedition would yield some dirt.  

There are many troubling aspects to this case.  The first is the staggering amount of the fine – US464 million.  And the second is that this matter was prosecuted as a civil fraud case.

New York, which reputedly has some of the toughest fraud legislation in the country, recognises two types of fraud – civil and criminal.  Here, from the website of East Coast Laws, is a short summary:

Fraud can be both a civil and criminal offense in New York. Civil fraud involves a breach of contract or a violation of a legal duty, resulting in harm to another party. The victim of civil fraud can sue the perpetrator and seek damages in court. Criminal fraud, on the other hand, involves intentionally deceiving someone for personal gain, which is a violation of the law. Criminal fraud is prosecuted by the government, and the penalties can include fines, imprisonment, and other criminal sanctions.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

The ex-Democrat catching Trump’s and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s eyes Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard has gone from running for president as a Democrat in 2020 to interest in the open VP slots for Trump and Kennedy in 2024.By Allan Smith and Alex Seitz-Wald

By on March 23rd, 2024

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/ex-democrat-catching-trumps-robert-f-kennedy-jrs-eyes-rcna143941

Tulsi Gabbard wanted to be president. Now she wants to be vice president. And while that’s hardly unusual, the paths — plural — she’s considering to get there are. 

Neither involve the Democratic Party, which Gabbard used to represent until she left it in 2022. The four-term former member of Congress from Hawaii is now getting consideration for both former President Donald Trump’s and independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s tickets, two sources familiar with the candidates’ deliberations told NBC News.

It’s a remarkable turnaround for the onetime progressive rising star, who within the span of eight years has gone from supporting Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign to running for the Democratic presidential nomination herself in 2020, eventually endorsing President Joe Biden, before then gravitating to the right and becoming a regular conservative media personality and conference speaker. 

More so, it’s exceedingly rare for a politician to attract interest from more than one presidential ticket or party. (Ahead of the 1952 election, Democrats and Republicans led dueling efforts to draft another politically ambiguous veteran, Dwight Eisenhower, the former supreme Allied commander in Europe during World War II, for the presidential race.)

But Gabbard’s 2024 possibilities are not fully in her control, nor are they both equally likely. As one source said, Gabbard would be more likely to seriously consider running as Kennedy’s vice presidential nominee had she not been swept up by the possibility of serving with Trump. This person said Gabbard “was enticed” by the chance of serving on Kennedy’s ticket but is now focused on the possibility that Trump will select her. 

“My understanding is that Tulsi is convinced that Trump is going to pick her,” this person said. “Had that not been the case, she probably would have gone with Kennedy.”

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Professors at Embattled Rutgers Center Call for Genocide Andrew Harrod

By on March 23rd, 2024

https://www.meforum.org/campus-watch/65704/professors-at-embattled-rutgers-center-call-for

Palestinian Arabs “have sought a future of liberation from the river to the sea for all peoples,” claimed Noura Erakat, a Rutgers University associate professor of Africana studies during a late February webinar. Although she tried to whitewash this

Palestinian Arabs “have sought a future of liberation from the river to the sea for all peoples,” claimed Noura Erakat, a Rutgers University associate professor of Africana studies during a late February webinar. Although she tried to whitewash this well-known call for the genocide of all Israeli Jews between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, her comments to Rutgers’ Center for Security, Race and Rights (CSRR) remained objectively horrifying.Erakat addressed the webinar on the topic of “Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine,” the title of her 2019 book. Israel’s ongoing campaign to destroy the jihadist terrorist organization Hamas following its brutal Oct. 7 massacre was the background for her discussion.

Sahar Aziz, the factually challenged director of CSRR and its jihadist apologetics, moderated the webinar. CSRR recently drew the scrutiny of Washington lawmakers in the wake of revelations that Adeel Mangi, nominated by President Joe Biden to the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, formerly served on the Center’s advisory board.

Moreover, recent research revealed that Aziz received $143,000 from anti-Israel billionaire George Soros’s network and that Erakat “participated in an online workshop along with senior Hamas leader Ghazi Hamad.”

Their comments on law and “Palestine” confirmed lawmakers’ concerns about the Center.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Destroying Hamas is the only goal that makes sense There is a lot more at stake here than another October 7th. Moshe Phillips

By on March 23rd, 2024

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/387184

On March 18 Jake Sullivan, the United States National Security Advisor, said “The president told the prime minister again today that we share the goal of defeating Hamas.”

And the very next day, on March 19, Matthew Miller, Spokesperson for the United States Department of State, said “every step must be taken to degrade Hamas so such an event like October 7th can’t be repeated.”

Is the State Department now saying that the Biden Administration policy is to see Hamas degraded and not destroyed? If the defeat of Hamas remains “the goal” why hasn’t State corrected its March 19 statement?

Is the delivery of conflicting signals intentional?

To have the goal that Hamas does not ever carry out another October 7th type event assumes that Hamas is evil and both needs and deserves to be utterly and completely destroyed. Destroyed because it is evil. The moral thing to do is to destroy evil when it poses a “clear and present danger” or likely will again.

When the Allies after World War Two conducted a systematic effort of denazification it was not because the Nazi Party or Nazi ideas were going to be threat in 1946 or 1947 but because the Nazis’ ideas were dangerous enough that if not outlawed and fought and vanquished on the battlefield of ideas then the Allies had every right to believe that they might have to return to combat on the actual battlefield in the 1950s or 1960s and fight the Nazis yet again. Israel has fought Hamas too many times already.

The purpose of war is to permanently eliminate the threat coming from your enemy. Far too often history has revealed the eternal truth that wars are things that must be won decisively or they will cause subsequent conflicts that will grow in both intensity and the degree of devastation. Evil must be confronted and evil must be destroyed. Hamas is evil. Hamas is the enemy. Hamas must be eliminated.

Destroying Hamas is the right thing to do.

Destroying Hamas is a necessary thing to do.

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FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Blinken’s Rafah blunder: Ruthie Blum

By on March 23rd, 2024

https://www.jns.org/blinkens-rafah-blunder/

In a press conference on Thursday in Cairo, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken reiterated his opposition to an Israeli ground operation in Rafah, saying that such a move would be a “mistake.”

An invasion into the southern Gaza city, he stated, was “unnecessary” to achieving the goal of defeating Hamas. This attitude, which the Biden administration has been expressing with increasing fervor, runs counter to Israeli assessments.

It has become the key bone of contention between Washington and Jerusalem since the start of the Oct. 7 war, spurred by a massacre of Jews that hadn’t been seen since the Holocaust.

Other disagreements—surrounding the use of Israeli force, civilian Palestinian casualties and plans for “the day after”—have been mild in comparison. Or at least they’ve been treated by Israel as arguments that can be addressed through a presentation of the facts.

This hasn’t been simply a tactical ploy to avert discord. On the contrary, the justice of destroying the genocidal terrorist organization that controls territory along Israel’s southern border and vows to repeat the atrocities of Oct. 7 “again and again and again” is irrefutable.

Anyone disputing Israel’s duty to eradicate Hamas—for the survival of the Jewish state, as well as for the benefit of the region and the world—is on the wrong side of history. Period.

Furthermore, Israel has the data to support the extreme measures it employs to avoid non-combatant deaths in Gaza. It has proof of the huge quantities of humanitarian aid entering the Strip. It also has evidence of its efforts to prevent Hamas from stealing the goods.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The Triumph of the Blood Libel Caroline Glick

By on March 23rd, 2024

https://carolineglick.com/the-triumph-of-the-blood-libel/

According to Canada’s La Presse, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a vampire, and he is poised to suck the life out of the Palestinians in Rafah, Hamas’s final outpost in southern Gaza. The publication that was once a paper of record in Canada ran a political cartoon on March 20 portraying Netanyahu as a vampire, with a huge hooked nose, pointy ears and claws for fingers, dressed in Dracula’s overcoat while standing on the deck of a pirate ship.

The caption, written in blood-dripping red letters, read: “Nosfenyahou: En Route Vers Rafah.” Nosferatu, the Romanian word for vampire, was the title of a proto-Nazi German silent horror film from 1922 chock-full of anti-Semitic poison. The film, which became something of a cult flick, featured a vampire with a long Jewish nose. He arrived at an idyllic German town with a box full of plague-carrying rats that he released on the innocent villagers as he plotted to suck his realtor’s blood.

La Presse’s cartoon didn’t leave any room for imagination. It wasn’t making a political or military argument against Israel’s planned ground operation in Rafah. Its goal wasn’t to persuade anyone of anything.

The Netanyahu-the-vampire cartoon asserted simply that Netanyahu is a Jewish bloodsucker and, more broadly, the Jewish state—and Jews worldwide—must be vigorously opposed by all right-thinking people who don’t want Jewish vampires to kill them.

As the paper no doubt anticipated, the cartoon provoked an outcry from Canadian Jews and some politicians. And after a few hours, the newspaper took it off its website and apologized. Anyone who thinks that means that the good guys won misses the point of the move. The Jewish outcry and pile-on by politicians and media coverage proved the point. Jews are evil and control everything, even what a private paper can publish. Like Nosferatu in its day, the cartoon will become a piece of folklore, additional proof that the Jews are the enemy of humanity.

In other words, the cartoon was a blood libel.

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

America, look at Sweden and beware the chaos of uncontrolled immigration Douglas Murray

By on March 23rd, 2024

https://nypost.com/2024/03/21/opinion/american-reps-will-speak-up-for-illegal-immigrants-while-not-bothering-to-help-the-law-abiding/

I don’t think many Americans realize how difficult it is to come to America legally. 

Among my own friends, I know an academic who has spent the past year in legal limbo, not allowed to work between teaching positions and constantly waiting to learn whether he can stay in America. 

In Georgia, I know a couple — the husband is American, the wife British — who can still not legalize as a couple, despite years of marriage and years of being together, who want to get themselves to America. 

The only reason I mention the plight of the law-abiding is because it stands in such stark contrast to the situation of the law-breaking. 

Our pro-immigration politicians in America are loudly on the side of anyone who comes to America illegally. 

But it is rare to find representatives who are on the side of people who are trying to do everything by the book. 

While lots of representatives speak up for the law-breaking, few speak up for or help the law-abiding. 

That is because it is perfectly clear that the immigration situation in this country has run away from its representatives. 

Human cost 

The human scale of this is devastating

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Jew-Hate and ‘Inquisitions’ in Canada by Robert Williams

By on March 22nd, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20511/canada-jew-hate

“I would walk in every single day and I would see ‘f–k you Jews,’ ‘you are not welcome here,’ ‘we hate Zionists,’ and ‘kill yourself.'” — Samantha Kline, student at the Ontario College of Art and Design, Vancouver Sun, March 6, 2024.

In 2022, the Canadian government invoked the Emergencies Act to shut down the so-called trucker convoy protests, in which thousands of truck drivers and their supporters rallied to call for an end to the federal government’s COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

Last year, in a move reminiscent of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin’s “rehabilitation psychiatric wards,” the celebrated psychologist, Professor Jordan Peterson, was ordered by the College of Psychologists of Ontario to be “disciplined” in a “Soviet style re-training camp” or lose his license, simply for having expressed personal opinions about a variety of subjects, from obesity to transgender ideology.

The same Canadian leaders and officials, however, evidently see no need to comment on the mobs calling for the genocide of Jews.

As a final blow to Canadian Jews, the Canadian government has decided, at this time of all times, to implement new standards that will effectively end the practice of kosher slaughter in Canada.

Is Canada trying to get rid of its Jews? And its freedoms? It might just succeed in doing both.

Since the October 7 massacre in southern Israel, Jews in Canada have been under constant attack. Shooting attacks against schools, firebombings of Jewish institutions, boycotts and vandalism against businesses owned by Jews, imams inciting and telling their congregations that Jews are “vermin”, and the constant marches of pro-Hamas activists chanting “long live the intifada” and “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” — a euphemism for annihilating a democratic member of the United Nations, Israel.

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MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

The Worst Cold War Documentary Ever Made By Noah Rothman

By on March 22nd, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/03/the-worst-cold-war-documentary-ever-made/

The new Netflix series Turning Point pushes revisionist history that might as well have been lifted straight from Howard Zinn’s fevered imagination.

Netflix’s new documentary series, Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War, opens with a captivating premise: Vladimir Putin’s war of conquest in Ukraine has imposed on the West unenviable conditions akin to those that pertained during the Cold War. Indeed, the series posits that Putin’s war cannot be understood without a study of the rivalry between the superpowers. But that pretense is swiftly abandoned. The series’ real purpose is to push a revisionist history that manages to render the Soviet Union a bit player in a Cold War narrative that might as well have been lifted from Howard Zinn’s fevered imagination. Though this could not have been the documentarians’ intention, the series might even convince some viewers that Putin has a point.

Within the first few minutes of episode one, the audience is confronted with the documentary’s true objective. “We were so good. We were the country that finally was so virtuous, in addition to being powerful,” says Overthrow author Stephen Kinzer in a blithe summary of the post-war American ethos. “And it was logical that we would then be threatened by a hostile, evil force that wanted nothing but destruction and nihilism.” The documentary then sets out to prove these two presumptions wrong.

According to the series, the Cold War begins not with Winston Churchill’s observation in Fulton, Mo., that an “Iron Curtain” had descended across the European continent but with the atomic bombing of civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These were not the first civilians wantonly murdered by the United States through nuclear warfare, of course. The first casualties were American citizens, who were poisoned by their proximity to the Trinty test and lied to about their condition by the U.S. government.

That digression aside, the film maintains that racialized caricatures of the Japanese made the atomic bombings that ended the Second World War thinkable. It was an unnecessary act of violence aimed not at ending the war — the Japanese were willing to negotiate, and the U.S. wasn’t really seeking “unconditional” surrender as advertised — but at keeping the Soviets from invading Japan. “We didn’t need to use the bomb. Japan would have surrendered. We didn’t need a land invasion in order to be victorious,” one of the documentary’s interviewees postulates.

It’s a tidy narrative, but it elides the extent to which industrial war-making facilities in Japan, unlike in Germany, were interspersed within residential areas. Harry Truman’s advisers did seek relatively intact urban targets to demonstrate the weapon’s power, but neither city subject to atomic bombing was purely civilian. Hiroshima hosted the 2nd Army Headquarters, the command in charge of the defense of southern Japan (where Operation Olympic would have begun). Likewise, Nagasaki was home to manufacturing facilities producing ordnance, naval assets, and weapons platforms.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Shameful Success of Letitia James by Rich Lowry

By on March 22nd, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/03/the-shameful-success-of-letitia-james/

Her lawfare has worked brilliantly.

While other prongs of the lawfare campaign against Donald Trump are flailing or encountering timing issues, Letitia James has delivered.

The New York attorney general sought to use the power of the state to target Donald Trump, smash his business, and personally embarrass him.

So far, it’s promises made, promises kept.

While Fani Willis has disgraced herself and is hanging on by her fingernails, Jack Smith is beset by various delays that may keep him from achieving his goal of politically damaging trials before the election, and Alvin Bragg is stuck with a dog of a case, James has gone from strength to strength, gloating all the while.

All it takes, it turns out, to achieve lawfare success is a willingness to make abusive use of a broadly written statute, a pliant judge, and some moxie and determination.

Take note, America — this is how it’s done.

Even if her case somehow goes away tomorrow (and it won’t), she still will have gotten a fraud judgment against Trump and forced him to admit that he’s not liquid enough to produce the more than $450 million bond he needs to prevent her from beginning to collect the judgment. There’s speculation that Trump might resort to declaring Chapter 11 or simply let James take Trump Tower, both of which would be humiliations (and don’t seem likely).

There’s no doubt that in financial terms in this case, the walls really are closing in.

This is a great success for James and a great shame for our system. She has proven that it’s possible to stretch the law to make a dubious case against a political enemy in a major jurisdiction of the United States and impose a punishment with no connection to the underlying offense but with ruinous personal consequences.

We should all hope that this model is never repeated, whether the intended victim is a Republican or a Democrat, someone running for president or for alderman.

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