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March 2025

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trial of Mann v. Steyn: Post-Trial Motions Edition Francis Menton

By on March 17th, 2025

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2025-3-14-qw44bfyfus1omeo4ao4zf20hjpmiv1

Way back in the ancient year of 2012 — before this blog had even been started — Penn State climate “scientist” Michael Mann brought a lawsuit for defamation against Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg, as well as against two websites (National Review and CEI) that had hosted the blog posts of those two individuals. Mann asserted that his reputation had been damaged by the Steyn and Simberg posts, which had compared Mann to fellow Penn Stater Jerry Sandusky. The point of comparison was that Penn State had investigated and cleared both men around the same time over allegations of misconduct — scientific misconduct in the case of Mann, sexual misconduct in the case of Sandusky.

In the succeeding years, the case went through a truly unbelievable history of procedural twists and turns, including multiple motions to dismiss and appeals. There was even an effort in 2019 to seek Supreme Court review, which the Court denied at that time; but Justice Alito issued a detailed dissent as to why he thought review should have been granted. The case finally reached trial in January 2024, by which time the two corporate entities, National Review and CEI, had been dismissed from the case, leaving only the individuals Steyn and Simberg as defendants. The trial was available for public view over the internet, and I watched substantial parts of it, leading to five blog posts over the period January 27 to February 8, 2024. Links to those five posts are here, here, here, here and here. A February 9 update to the last of those posts reported on the jury verdict that was delivered on the 8th. Readers who are at all familiar with the case will recall that the jury awarded only $1 of compensatory damages against each defendant, but awarded punitive damages of $1000 against Simberg and $1 million against Steyn.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Energy Fantasy Versus Reality In Woke-Land — Part III Francis Menton

By on March 17th, 2025

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2025-3-16-energy-fantasy-versus-reality-in-woke-land-part-iii

JP Morgan Chase — that’s the largest bank in the country. It has been headed for almost 20 years by celebrity CEO Jamie Dimon. For much of the 20 years, Chase and Dimon have been known for their fealty to woke orthodoxies, at least in their official pronouncements. For example, here is a Forbes piece from October 2020 citing Dimon on the subject of “systemic racism.” (Pithy quote: “Systemic racism is a tragic part of America’s history. . . . It’s long past time that society addresses racial inequities in a more tangible, meaningful way.”)

The fealty to woke orthodoxies has in the past extended in particular to the subject of “climate change.” In April 2021 JPM put out a big announcement of plans to facilitate investment of some $2.5 trillion in what they called “climate action and sustainable development.” In October 2021, JPM joined the so-called Net Zero Banking Alliance, then being organized by the UN (led by Mark Carney), promising to starve fossil fuels of investment capital in order to reduce CO2 emissions.

But meanwhile, over at J.P. Morgan Asset & Wealth Management, they have a guy named Michael Cembalest, who currently has the title Chairman of Market and Investment Strategy. For some 15 years, Cembalest has put out an annual Report called the Annual Energy Paper. I have covered a couple of Cembalest’s prior reports, here for 2021, and here for 2022. The titles of both those posts included the words “Fantasy Versus Reality In Woke-Land.” Cembalest is just out with the 2025 version of his Annual Energy Paper, so consider this to be Part III of this series.

These Reports by Cembalest are far from perfect. At a basic level, the Reports accept the ideas that there is a real energy transition going on, that it is somehow important, and that use of fossil fuels must eventually be eliminated. I don’t know if Cembalest really believes those things himself, or if accepting them for purposes of your public reports is the price of holding a highly-paid job at JPM. Either way, while I consider the failure to question those ideas to be a major flaw of these Reports, that failure does not prevent Cembalest from taking a serious and realistic look at many aspects of the supposed energy transition that are completely failing.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran’s Mullahs Can Never Change, Never Be ‘Friends’ by Majid Rafizadeh

By on March 17th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21466/iran-mullahs-never-change

The Islamic Republic of Iran is not a normal state, or even a conventional dictatorship. It is an ideological entity that derives its very identity from opposition to the United States, Israel and the West.

From the moment the Islamic Republic was born out of the 1979 revolution, its core identity was forged in opposition to the United States and Israel. These were not just foreign policy stances but central tenets of the regime’s existence. The regime refers to the United States as the “Great Satan” and Israel as the “Little Satan,” righteously positioning itself as the force of divine justice against these supposed embodiments of evil.

For the Iranian mullahs, hostility toward America and Israel is not just rhetoric; it is the fundamental pillar of their legitimacy. If the regime were to abandon its enmity toward the U.S. and Israel, it would lose the entire justification upon which it has built its power.

Every negotiation with Iran has followed the same pattern: the Iranian regime makes promises, secures financial and political gains, and then, once it has strengthened its position, resumes its belligerent actions.

The Islamic Republic views nuclear weapons as the ultimate guarantor of its survival… Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has explicitly stated that Gaddafi’s fate proves why Iran should never surrender its nuclear weapons.

As with North Korea, negotiations may temporarily slow Iran’s nuclear weapons development; they can never stop it. The regime will agree to talks only when it needs to buy time — whether to rebuild its economy under the cover of diplomacy, to lull the West into complacency, or to wait out an unfavorable political climate, such as a Trump. Always, the regime’s goal remains the same: acquiring nuclear weapons to solidify its regional dominance and deter any attempt to remove the regime from power.

Regrettably, the only way to neutralize the Iranian threat is through strength. The regime in Tehran understands only force. Until the West recognizes this reality, it will continue to be bamboozled while the Iranian regime buys time to advance its ambitions unchecked.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Cryptocurrency: ‘Digital Gold’ or ‘Monopoly Money’? by Lawrence Kadish

By on March 17th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21475/cryptocurrency-digital-gold-monopoly-money

As Jack and his beanstalk can tell you, there are no magic beans. Unfortunately, those who believe cryptocurrency is their ticket to enormous wealth or financial security will soon find out that they, too, have no magic beans. What they may have is Monopoly money.

With that in mind, it needs to be said that recent actions to create a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve opens the door to potentially serious issues.

Equally chilling is the vulnerability of cryptocurrency to hackers. Media reports reveal that North Korean hackers recently stole $1.5 billion in cryptocurrency from Bybit, described as the world’s second-largest crypto exchange. One can probably assume those hackers were operating under instructions from their government.

Perhaps the larger issue is that there is no “there” there when discussing Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. At the core of a digital currency’s existence is only an algorithmic ledger. Yet it reflects the same dynamics that have historically created speculative bubbles that leave investors stunned and broke.

Consider the Tulip Mania of the 1630s. Dutch tulip bulb prices reached extraordinary heights before collapsing dramatically. Like a cryptocurrency, it featured “value” largely driven by certified scarcity and speculative trading.

A similar bubble occurred in 1720, when Britain’s publicly traded South Sea Company speculated on emerging South American trade opportunities. The eventual collapse of that pursuit was so widespread that it actually damaged the entire British economy. However, one needn’t travel back centuries to chronicle the cycle of grand promises that went up in smoke.

The dot-com bubble at the end of the 1990s saw internet companies with limited revenue but rosy visions attract massive investment before the market crashed. Coming even closer to our current crypto era, there was the mortgage-backed securities crisis of 2007. Complex financial instruments obscured underlying risks to investors who were chasing illusionary profits until it all collapsed.

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EDUCATION, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Qatar shaping anti-Israeli curricula for 8,000 American schools in all 50 states

By on March 17th, 2025

https://worldisraelnews.com/qatar-influence-rewriting-us-school-curricula-to-promote-anti-israel-narrative/

Pro-Hamas, Iranian-aligned Gulf state using its petro dollars to shape the curriculum used by thousands of American K-12 schools in all 50 states, report warns.  

The Qatari government is using its funding of an American college where the curriculum for thousands of American K-12 schools is drafted to reshape the way school children in the U.S. are taught, injecting anti-Israel bias into primary and secondary school education, a recently published report warns.

Last week, the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) published a report documenting the Qatari government’s extensive foreign influence and anti-Israel bias infiltrating U.S. K-12 classrooms through Brown University’s Choices Program.

This curriculum, used by over 8,000 schools across all 50 states and reaching more than one million students, operates with undisclosed foreign funding and has been found to systematically distort historical facts to delegitimize Israel.

The report also raises significant concerns about transparency, oversight, and compliance with federal disclosure laws.

According to the ISGAP report, Qatari funding has led to a systematic manipulation of educational materials used by the Choices Program within the same units over the last decade, gradually shifting its curriculum to present an increasingly anti-Israel perspective.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

More UN lies about Israel A new UN report on Israel’s ‘gender-based violence’ against Palestinians is full of hogwash. Brendan O’Neill

By on March 17th, 2025

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/03/16/more-un-lies-about-israel/

The United Nations is hardly known for fair or cool commentary on Israel. But its latest report really takes the biscuit. It comes from its Human Rights Council. It is titled ‘More Than a Human Can Bear’. It is a breathless account of all the ‘gender-based violence’ Israel has apparently visited on Gaza since the start of the Israel-Hamas War. ‘Gender persecution’ and ‘sexual violence’ have been rife courtesy of those monsters in the Israel Defence Forces, the report says. Guess what? It’s hogwash. This is without question one of the most dishonest official documents I have ever read.

The report made waves in the global media this week. And in the Israelophobic cesspit of social media, where there’s a voracious appetite for tales of Israeli evil. ‘UN experts accuse Israel of sexual violence and “genocidal acts” in Gaza’, said a BBC headline. The Washington Post wrung its hands over Israel’s use of ‘sexual humiliation’ as a weapon of war. These people should have read the report. They’d have discovered that many of the things these ‘experts’ refer to as ‘sexual humiliation’ and ‘gender-based violence’ are in fact normal wartime events, common to virtually every conflict in history.

Consider the report’s analysis of the IDF’s treatment of ‘men and boys’ in Gaza. There’s a whole chapter on ‘sexual violence against men and boys’. Apparently, men and boys were frequently ‘subjected to acts of a sexual nature’. It sounds awful, until you realise that the ‘experts’ include within this definition such run-of-the-mill activities as searching fighting-age males for weapons. The IDF, conscious that suicide bombings are a favoured military tactic of Hamas, sometimes requires arrested men to undress to their underwear. And the report refers to this as ‘forced public stripping’, violence with ‘sexual characteristics’. There’s no other way to put it: this is insane.

The idea that the IDF gets a kick from compelling fighting-age males to undress is at best misinformation, and at worst yet another defamation against the Jewish State, which is always seen as having uniquely nefarious motives. The report laments the ‘forced public nudity’ experienced by ‘men and boys’ in Gaza, as if the IDF were a gang of porn-sick voyeurs. Making fighting-age men remove their outer clothing is not ‘sexual violence’, you loons – it’s a means for the IDF to search for suicide belts. Hundreds of Israelis have been butchered by Hamas ‘men and boys’ wearing bombs under their shirts. To demonise Israel’s hunt for such weaponry as a perversion, as the sick thrill of ‘forced nudity’, is bad faith on steroids.

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EDUCATION, MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Heather Mac Donald Racist—But Underfunded? Universities have gone from arguing that science is biased to claiming that even the overhead on their massive federal research budgets must not be cut.

By on March 17th, 2025

https://www.city-journal.org/article/nih-university-funding-research-budgets-indirect-costs

It seems like just yesterday that medical institutions were touting their antiracism efforts. In October 2020, the American Association of Medical Colleges published “Framework for Addressing and Eliminating Racism at the AAMC, in Academic Medicine, and Beyond.” The publication calls for “individual self-reflection on systemic racism,” “anti-racism efforts within the AAMC,” “anti-racism efforts within the academic medical community,” and “anti-racism efforts within the broader community.” In 2021, the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA launched an initiative called “Anti-Racist Transformation in Medical Education.” The initiative aims to “mitigate racism in the learning and work environment of medical schools through a formal management change process.” In January 2023, an antiracism committee at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine offered a Facing Microaggressions in the Workplace training, part of the school’s Action for Cultural Transformation. ACT aims to eliminate “structural injustice across Penn Medicine”; it is overseen by the medical school’s vice chairs for Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity.

Now the University of Pennsylvania, the University of California, and the AAMC are telling a different tale about science and medicine. These fields are unqualified civilizational triumphs, they say, jeopardized not by racism but by MAGA ignorance. What changed?

On February 7, 2025, the National Institutes of Health, the nation’s biggest funder of biomedical research, declared that henceforth it was limiting the amount that it would pay universities for the indirect costs of NIH-funded science. Indirect costs (also known as overhead, or facilities & administration) might include the salaries of administrators across the university, campus-wide building and equipment maintenance and depreciation, utilities across the university, janitorial services, and general office equipment. Direct costs, by contrast, are grant-specific, covering particular researchers’ salaries, lab materials, animal specimens, cell lines, and the like.

Previously, the NIH was adding up to 69 percent of a research grant to cover the facilities & administration infrastructure that allegedly undergirded subsidized research. For every dollar that a university received to support a particular project, NIH would throw in as much as an additional 69 cents for indirect costs, say, bringing the total amount of the grant to $1.69. The NIH negotiated indirect cost rates individually for each university in a complex, resource-consumptive process; after a university’s rate was determined, that rate applied for the next three to four years to every NIH research grant that that particular university might receive, as well as to grants from other federal agencies.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

What Are the Left’s Solutions for the Problems They Created? The U.S. faces mounting trade deficits, immigration crises, and endless foreign wars, while critics of Trump’s policies offer no viable alternatives to Biden-era failures. By Victor Davis Hanson

By on March 17th, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/03/17/what-are-the-lefts-solutions-for-the-problems-they-created/

The Wall Street Journal has consistently criticized Trump’s economic policies, particularly his ongoing “trade war” with Canada, over the past several weeks. And certainly, the tensions are regrettable. Trump’s trolling of the insufferable Justin Trudeau, with talk of Canada becoming the “51st state,” perhaps only galvanized the Canadian left. It unfortunately may ensure that the only real hope for a Canadian return to normality, the election of Pierre Poilievre, may be lost.

That said, does the WSJ truly believe that the current $1.7 trillion budget deficit stacked on top of $36 trillion in national debt and an annual $1 trillion trade deficit are sustainable in any fashion? Do they believe any Republican president would have survived the midterms if he cut or “reformed” Social Security? If so, consult the fate of the recommendations of left-wing Barack Obama’s 2010 Simpson-Bowles commission (“The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform”).

DOGE, the effort to demand either symmetrical or no tariffs, closing the border, the rare minerals agreement, etc., are all controversial, even desperate efforts to stave off insolvency.

NAFTA was sold on the promise of trade equilibriums, eventually leading to no tariffs and rough parity. Yet Canada currently runs a $60 billion surplus largely because of its energy sales and selective tariffs on U.S. agriculture and some manufactured goods. That sum might be tolerable from a friend and not worth the acrimony, even with the present massive trade and budget deficits—if it had occurred in isolation.

But it did not. The Canadian surplus is force multiplied by its chronic refusal to spend a measly 2 percent of its GDP on defense. Canada could have easily offered a partnership with the U.S. to explore joint missile defense or shared Arctic Ocean naval patrols with a new fleet of Canadian and American icebreakers.

But it did nothing of the sort.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Hamas-Linked CAIR Got Over $7,200,000 in Taxpayer Money And here’s the big surprise: that money is unaccounted for. by Robert Spencer

By on March 17th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/hamas-linked-cair-got-over-7200000-in-taxpayer-money/

Nihad Awad, the cofounder and longtime executive director of the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), has plenty of reasons to be happy. He notoriously said that the October 7 jihad massacre of 1,200 Israelis made him “happy,” and now it has been revealed that he has over seven million other reasons for a smile to break out on his taciturn, creepy face: that’s the amount of taxpayer funds his sinister organization has received, despite its links to one of the most evil groups on the planet.

The New York Post reported the appalling news on Friday: “According to the Intelligent Advocacy Network (IAN), a California-based, non-partisan advocacy group, the money was given to the chapter to help re-settle impoverished immigrants in California between 2022 and 2024.”

The “chapter” that the Post mentions is CAIR’s Los Angeles chapter, which appears to have gotten hold of the money in some irregular way: “In what appears to be a sleight of hand, the money – $7,217,968.44 — was sent to CAIR-Greater Los Angeles and not to CAIR-CA, which was the only group eligible to receive it, according to the complaint” that IAN has sent to the Justice Department.

The Post explains that “the Greater Los Angeles chapter of the Muslim organization, which is not a registered non-profit and not eligible to handle charitable donations, received the entire pot of money according to the complaint, viewed by The Post.” The complaint stated: “These sub grants from CAIR-CA to CAIR chapters raise serious legal concerns about whether CAIR simply shifted more money to itself.”

The fact that CAIR-Greater Los Angeles got the money instead of CAIR-CA is actually only a small part of the problem. Why is CAIR getting any money to resettle “impoverished immigrants in California” at all? CAIR claims to be “America’s largest Muslim civil rights organization.” It adds, improbably, that it works to “protect civil rights, enhance understanding of Islam, promote justice, and empower American Muslims.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Dems Cheered Obama’s DOGE-Like Initiative, But Cry ‘Fascism’ When Trump Does the Same Sarah Arnold (includes Obama Video)

By on March 17th, 2025

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/saraharnold/2025/03/16/obama-tried-doge-n2653882

A resurfaced 2011 video reveals former President Barack Obama launching a “Campaign to Cut Waste,” strikingly similar to the current Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative to eliminate government inefficiency. In the video, Obama emphasizes the need to reduce wasteful spending, highlighting the appointment of former President Joe Biden to lead the effort, saying that “nobody messes with Joe.” This initiative aimed to increase government accountability, reduce unnecessary costs, and promote fiscal responsibility echoes what the Trump administration is currently trying to do.

Elon Musk recently shared a 2011 video featuring Obama promoting his initiative, “Campaign to Cut Waste,” which closely resembles the efforts Musk’s DOGE program is currently undertaking. In the video, Obama highlights his efforts to eliminate government waste, pointing out unnecessary federal programs and absurd taxpayer-funded projects, such as an online fan page for a folk music group composed of Forest Rangers.

“Everyone knows that getting rid of the deficit requires some tough decision. And that includes cutting back on billions of dollars in programs that a lot of people care about. But what should be easy is getting rid of the pointless waste and stupid spending that doesn’t benefit anybody,” Obama said in the resurfaced video.

“Obama sounds exactly like DOGE!!” Musk wrote on X. 

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