Displaying the most recent of 90914 posts written by

Ruth King

EDUCATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Liel Leibovitz Opportunity, Not Tragedy The DEI ship at Harvard and other elite universities is probably too big to turn around—it’s time to look elsewhere.

By on January 31st, 2024

https://www.city-journal.org/article/elite-universities-collapse-presents-an-opportunity

If you’ve ever watched a monster movie, you know the scene. The triumphant heroes walk away, the creature they had just vanquished left for dead behind them. And then, in a furious flash just before the credits start rolling, it opens its eyes and pounces, assuring us that evil never truly dies and that the sequel is coming.

That was the vibe at Harvard University last week. No sooner was its purported plagiarist president, Claudine Gay, forced to step down after struggling to find fault with calls on campus for genocide against Jews than the haughtiest Ivy found itself in trouble again. The university had announced the creation of an anti-Semitism task force, but before it could even convene, some critics pointed out that its co-chairman, history professor Derek Penslar, wasn’t exactly the man for the job.

Penslar, wrote the university’s former president, Lawrence Summers, “has publicly minimized Harvard’s anti-Semitism problem, rejected the definition used by the US government in recent years of anti-Semitism as too broad, invoked the need for the concept of settler colonialism in analyzing Israel, referred to Israel as an apartheid state and more.” Harvard, Summers went on, would never appoint anyone who made light of racism, say, to an anti-racism task force, which only proved the existence of a “double standard between anti-Semitism and other forms of prejudice.”

Summers and Harvard’s other critics are right about the facts but entirely wrong when it comes to the bigger picture. The problem isn’t really Penslar or Gay, and it won’t be solved by a task force, however honest and well intentioned. The problem is Harvard itself, what it believes, and its commitment to an insidious ideology—best-recognized by its acronym, DEI, for diversity, equity, and inclusion—that is inherently opposed to the notion of free and unfettered exchange of ideas.

Continue reading →
EDUCATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Incredible Denseness of the Academic Mind Our institutions of higher learning have degenerated into satiric parodies. Bruce Thornton

By on January 31st, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-incredible-denseness-of-the-academic-mind/

Dogmatically slumbering in its academic silo, Harvard seems to have missed the hard lessons that increasingly follow from doubling down on illiberal “woke” ideas like DEI. If the fates of Bud Lite, Disney, and left-leaning legacy newspapers and magazines, which are laying off reporters in droves, weren’t enough of a warning, the damage to Harvard’s reputation, donations, and enrollment that has followed the forced retirement of their serial plagiarist and functionally antisemitic president, should have penetrated even Harvard’s dense minds.

But the lessons of experience that the Romans believed even fools can learn, can’t penetrate the incredible denseness of the academic mind, a feature of intellectuals since antiquity. As Cicero once quipped, “There is nothing so absurd that hasn’t been said by some philosopher.” But today’s cognitive elite “brights” have gone far beyond even the silliest ancient philosophers. From the long, bloody scientism of Marxism, to the postmodern “higher nonsense” and preposterous intellectual gimmicks like “systemic racism” and “transgenderism,” our institutions of higher learning have degenerated into satiric parodies redolent of Juvenal and Jonathan Swift.

So what does Harvard do in response to the sorry spectacle of their students protesting in support of a sadistic gang of thugs who have sworn to wipe out the Jews; trading in antisemitic lies and slurs redolent of Der Stürmer, and bullying and assaulting with impunity Jewish students? Do they enforce their existing codes of conduct that the students are violating?

Of course not. They confect a “Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism.” Yes, they’re going to have a gaggle of profs and administrators and other “stakeholders” sit around and talk about “combating” the very behavior Harvard either ignored, rationalized, or approved. And as the Wall Street Journal points out, “Harvard simultaneously announced a task force to fight Islamophobia, in keeping with the new habit on the left that antisemitism can’t be condemned by itself.”

That must be what they mean by “equity,” which is a cant word for the equality of outcomes––even though historically, hate crimes against Jews comprise more than half of all religion-based hate-crimes, whereas those against Muslims are considerably fewer.

Continue reading →
ISRAEL Comments turned off

World Court Advances South Africa’s ‘Genocide’ Case Against Israel Does this case belong in court? Joseph Klein

By on January 31st, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/world-court-advances-south-africas-genocide-case-against-israel/

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) decided in its January 26th provisional ruling to move forward with a peculiar case that South Africa brought against Israel, alleging that Israel has been committing genocide against Palestinians living in Gaza. South Africa claimed that it was simply enforcing rights protected by the international Genocide Convention to which both countries are signatories.

The ICJ is enabling South Africa to weaponize against the Jewish State of Israel the Genocide Convention, which was enacted in 1948 when the genocide of Jews by the Nazis during the Holocaust was still fresh in peoples’ minds. To hurl an accusation of genocide against Israel, where at least one of the nearly 150,000 Holocaust survivors still living in Israel was killed during Hamas’s October 7th attack, is obscene.

Hamas initiated the war with Israel when it invaded Israel on October 7th and went on a genocidal rampage against Israeli civilians. Israel’s military operations in Gaza following that attack are a legitimate exercise of Israel’s inherent right of self-defense, which is recognized in Article 51 of the United Nations Charter when “an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations.”

The ICJ deferred making a final judgment on the merits of South Africa’s genocide claims, which could take months or even years to decide. However, the ICJ issued provisional orders to take immediate effect, which are prejudicial to Israel’s inherent sovereign right of self-defense. Fortunately, the ICJ has no mechanism to enforce its ruling, although technically it is legally binding. Nevertheless, the ICJ’s decision that South Africa has presented a plausible case of genocide against Israel will put increased pressure on Israel to quickly wind down its military operations in Gaza.

While the ICJ did not order an immediate ceasefire, it did order Israel to “take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of Article II of this [Genocide] Convention.”

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trump Has Reason to Rage — But Needs to Stay Calm and Get Even Rather than Mad: Victor Davis Hanson

By on January 31st, 2024

https://victorhanson.com/trump-has-reason-to-rage-but-needs-to-stay-calm-and-get-even-rather-than-mad/

Donald Trump gave one of his best and most conciliatory speeches of his political career after his win in the recent Iowa primaries—that might explain why the media would not cover it. Later, to answer an ad hoc ambush reporter’s question whether he would hold grudges, he emphatically said he did not.

Yet after his win in New Hampshire, Trump went ballistic at Nikki Haley’s earlier charges that he, rather than Joe Biden, was cognitively challenged, past his prime, and a perennial loser of popular votes.

In response, Trump shed his short-lived Iowa temperance. He went wholehog after Haley’s dress and her affectations and trashed her character. He tweeted that she was a “birdbrain,” and on and on.

For six years, observers have noted the disconnect between Trump’s stellar record of governance, his occasional sense of humor and even self-criticism—and his ad hominem venom that often turns off the 3-7 percent of the electorate in the suburbs who otherwise might vote for him.

Reasonable calls to tone it down by pundits, aides, and friends do not work with Trump, and perhaps for several understandable reasons.

One, Trump is reactive in his “they started it, I finish it” mode. His theory of deterrence is to be disproportionate in retort to eliminate future preemptive attacks. Almost all of Trump’s crudeness was in disproportionate response, sometimes even to minor offenses.

In such a world of Trump deterrence, if you do not relish a crude Trump, then don’t first talk about cutting off his head, blowing him up, stabbing him, shooting him, or lighting him on fire, or don’t spread lies like “Russian collusion,” “laptop disinformation,” or that the influence-selling Biden consortium was innocent of shaking down foreign interests for millions of dollars that were routed into the clan’s coffers.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Economic Shock: 2/3 Of Voters Live ‘Paycheck To Paycheck’ Under Biden: I&I/TIPP Poll Terry Jones

By on January 31st, 2024

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/01/31/economic-shock-2-3-of-voters-live-paycheck-to-paycheck-under-biden-ii-tipp-poll/

Democratic politicians seem befuddled by the general lack of respect for what they believe are the accomplishments of Bidenomics. But they shouldn’t be. Because, despite some rebound in the economy since the COVID shutdown, Americans continue to struggle.

While the U.S. remains a wealthy country compared to others, nearly two-thirds of Americans say they are “living ‘paycheck to paycheck’ these days” in the latest I&I/TIPP Poll, conducted from Jan. 3-5 from among 1,401 registered voters. The poll has a +/-2.6 percentage point margin of error.

This shocking result comes as some on Wall Street and many politicians applaud recent data showing solid growth in the fourth quarter, along with a slowing rate of inflation.

What’s equally surprising is that the public’s concern is bipartisan, with 63% of Democrats, 67% of Republicans, and 62% of independents saying they’re just scraping by each payday.

Continue reading →
ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Rule of thuggery prevails in Denmark By Raymond Ibrahim

By on January 30th, 2024

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/01/rule_of_thuggery_prevails_in_denmark.html

Denmark recently capitulated, forfeiting its hard-fought freedoms to those who hate it. According to a recent report,

Denmark’s parliament has passed a bill that makes it illegal to burn copies of the Quran in public places… The bill, which prohibits “inappropriate treatment of writings with significant religious importance for a recognized religious community,” was passed with 94 votes in favor and 77 opposed… In practical terms, it will be forbidden to burn, tear or otherwise defile holy texts publicly or in videos intended to be disseminated widely. Those who break the law risk a fine or up to two years in prison… The purpose of the law is to counter “the systematic mockery” that, among other things, has contributed to intensifying the threat of [Islamic] terrorism in Denmark, the Ministry of Justice said.

There is much to say here.

First, it is interesting to note that the new bill does not single out Islam or the Koran by name, but rather seeks to protect from desecration “writings with significant religious importance for a recognized religious community.” By employing such generic wording that applies to and presumably protects every religious text and community — though everyone knows the law exists exclusively to protect the Muhammadan creed — the Danes appear to have copied a play from the Islamic gamebook.

As it happens, the blasphemy laws of many Muslim nations do not officially protect Islam alone but extend to other religions. (Egypt, for example, criminalizes the mockery of “heavenly” religions — Islam, Christianity, and Judaism — though the law is virtually exclusively used to protect Islam.) Muslim nations — and now Denmark — pretend to protect all religions in order to appear neutral, objective, not siding with this or that faith. Muslim nations also do it for their image: better to appear interested in protecting the sanctity of all religions rather than appear as rabid fanatics who cannot tolerate criticism.

Continue reading →
ELECTIONS Comments turned off

The ‘Deep State’ and the 2024 US Presidential Election: Down to the Crossroads Aware of the Deep State, will voters finally condemn it as fundamentally un-American? Or will they disregard, or worse, embrace it—and thereby affirmatively consent to their own subjugation? By Nicholas Kass

By on January 30th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/01/30/the-deep-state-and-the-2024-us-presidential-election-down-to-the-crossroads/

Since 2016, Americans have become increasingly familiar with the idea of the Deep State and its opposition to former President Donald Trump, whose victories in the Republican primaries and the presidential election that year served as a singular, if circumscribed, rebuke to the bipartisan Washington political Establishment.

Today, as voters prepare for elections in this fourth year of President Joe Biden’s tenure with Trump again as the likely GOP candidate, they see even more clearly the difference between the way the U.S. administrative state actually runs in contrast to the formal American constitutional system. This subterfuge against the “rules-based order,” the very mantra and creedal testament the Establishment professes to justify its preeminence, is a defining characteristic of Deep States the world over.

This brings us to what is shaping up to be the overriding issue for 2024: aware of the Deep State, will voters finally condemn it as fundamentally un-American? Or will they disregard, or worse, embrace it—and thereby affirmatively consent to their own subjugation? The country is at a crossroads.

Sustaining the Operational Tempo…

Public concern in America about what is now understood to be the Deep State predates the Trump era and, in fact, was present on both the political left and right during the unipolar moment of US global hegemony. These concerns became more acute with the concomitant expansion of the US security state under Republican and Democratic presidents following 9/11 and into the first decades of the 21st century. Even before then, almost exactly 63 years ago, in his farewell address to the nation, President Dwight D. Eisenhower—a Republican who was Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during World War II—warned Americans to “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence” by what he called the immense “military-industrial complex,” pointing to the potential of the Defense bureaucracy working with what today can justifiably be called oligarchic corporate interests to undermine liberty and corrupt the democratic process.

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Ethnic Cleansing and Crimes Against Humanity Perpetrated against helpless black Africans in the Sudan by well-armed Arabs. by Hugh Fitzgerald

By on January 30th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/ethnic-cleansing-and-crimes-against-humanity/

Not in Gaza, where there has been no ethnic cleansing and no crimes against humanity, though there were war crimes committed by Hamas on October 7 in the kibbutzim and at the Re’im Music Festival. Ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity have been committed, and are still being committed, in the Sudan, carried out on helpless black Africans by well-armed Arabs. Tens of thousands have been killed, and 7.5 million people have fled their homes. Half the population of 49 million now face famine. Half a million of these Africans have fled into Chad to escape the murderous Arab militias. More on this ethnic cleansing, and these crimes against humanity, that receive almost no attention in the world media, fixated as it is on Gaza, can be found here: “Ethnic killings in one Sudan city left up to 15,000 dead – UN report,” Reuters, January 20, 2024:

The war has left nearly half of Sudan’s 49 million people needing aid, while more than 7.5 million people have fled their homes – making Sudan the biggest displacement crisis globally.

Between 10,000 and 15,000 people were killed in one city in Sudan’s West Darfur region last year in ethnic violence by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and allied Arab militia, according to a United Nations report seen by Reuters on Friday [Jan. 19].

Within just a few days, in just one city, as many civilians were murdered in the Sudan as have died during more than three months of war in Gaza, where the IDF has estimated that of the 25,000 Gazans Hamas has so far declared dead, at least 10,000 were combatants, leaving 15,000 civilian deaths in Gaza, which is the upper estimate of the number of civilians killed in the Sudan.

In the report to the UN Security Council, independent UN sanctions monitors attributed the toll in El Geneina [Sudan] to intelligence sources and contrasted it with the UN estimate that about 12,000 people have been killed across Sudan since war erupted on April 15, 2023, between the Sudanese army and the RSF.

The monitors also described as “credible” accusations that the United Arab Emirates had provided military support to the RSF “several times per week” via Amdjarass in northern Chad. A top Sudanese general accused the UAE in November of backing the RSF war effort.

In a letter to the monitors, the UAE said 122 flights had delivered humanitarian aid to Amdjarass to help Sudanese fleeing the war. On Saturday, a UAE official told Reuters that it extended an invitation to the UN monitors to visit a field hospital in Amdjarass “to learn firsthand about the humanitarian efforts undertaken by the UAE to help alleviate the suffering caused by the current conflict.”

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Silencing a Piano Man In London, a group of Chinese Communists test their power to crush freedom. by Bruce Bawer

By on January 30th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/silencing-a-piano-man/

In London these days, if you’re lucky enough not to be hounded on the street by mobs of virulent pro-Hamas protesters, you just might find yourself assaulted by a gaggle of arrogant Chinese Communists. At least, that is, if you make your living by playing boogie-woogie on public pianos.

That’s what happened the other day to British piano man Brendan Kavanagh, whose YouTube channel has 2.4 million subscribers. Until this dustup occurred, I was unfamiliar with him. He comes off as a totally easygoing type, a middle-aged bloke who enjoys his music, loves sharing it online, and doesn’t take himself too seriously. In brief, a free spirit.

Alas, there are people moving among us in the Western world who, far from being free spirits, are agents of the planet’s largest terror regime. The other day Kavanagh was livestreaming while tickling the ivories at St. Pancras Station in London – on a Yamaha upright donated to the station, as it happens, by Elton John – when a half-dozen or so of them approached him. They were all wearing identical red scarves and carrying small Chinese flags.

At first it appeared as if one of them wanted to play the piano. But no: she said something in broken English about a “disclosure form” and about recording for Chinese TV. Then one of her male comrades told Kavanagh to turn off his camera, insisting that it was the group’s “right” not to have their images recorded. Kavanagh replied, firmly but pleasantly, that “we’re in a free country…..We’re not in Communist China.” To which the young man shot back: “Sorry, this is racist now!” And when Kavanagh’s hand grazed against one young woman’s flag, the Chinese guy exploded: “Don’t touch her!”

Suddenly he’d become a totalitarian commissar, giving orders and expecting to be obeyed. Kavanagh, to his credit, refused to back down, and even dared to say: “Are you in the Communist Party?…You’ve got a Communist flag in your hand.” In reply to which the commissar accused him of “discriminating a different country,” told him to “educate yourself,” and again hurled the word “racist.”

Summoned by the Chinese group, two cops turned up. One of them, a middle-aged woman named Kerry, told Kavanagh to turn off his camera. He refused, as was his right.

Continue reading →
ISRAEL Comments turned off

A Hundred Days after Gaza’s October 7 (Part 3 of 4) Culpable Ignorance and the Devil’s Spreadsheet by Gwythian Prins

By on January 30th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20357/israel-gaza-culpable-ignorance

Sir William Shawcross’s much delayed and now recent report on “Prevent” – the British Government anti-radicalisation programme – which has documented the failure of efforts at integration and the degree of risk residing within Muslim extremism has secured this disturbing knowledge its place on the public record.

In a climate of Israelophobia, where moral compasses go haywire, Hamas is not being held to account. Predictably, the BBC has presented international law as superior to national law and the International Court of Justice as a higher court than any national court. Neither is true. Under the guise of “human interest”, the BBC repeatedly broadcasts prurient details of injuries to individual children in Gaza. Why? It is designed to shock and anger the listener and to demonize Israel; and it leaves those implications unspoken, hence deniable.

Predictably, the BBC has presented international law as superior to national law and the International Court of Justice as a higher court than any national court. Neither is true. The former Director of BBC Television asks, “When do individual errors add up to something more? When do ‘mistakes’ become a clear pattern of institutional bias? These are questions the BBC must answer when it comes to its reporting of Israel’s conflict with the terrorist group Hamas.” He then lists nine other cases of gross error since 7/10 where the bias has been always the same, namely anti-Israel. “…Is the BBC just unlucky that this keeps happening? The answer is no.”

Hamas has nowhere to hide under Geneva 4. Its crimes are war crimes of the highest order. The ICJ’s interim ruling is vexatious and, while unable to make an objective finding, tarnishes that Court by implying that Israel might in the future commit “genocide” when there is neither evidence of intention nor a community which meets the criteria to be victims of genocide. The same day as its ruling, evidence arrived that UNRWA on which in part it had relied had itself now been discredited by evidence of its operatives’ involvement in 7/10. This is the latest form of Holocaust denial.

It is a matter of moral and legal judgment about how a country with high moral standards wages war against a terrorist enemy that has none. The framework for such an assessment has not been satisfactorily spelled out.

Israel’s entire ground force is part of an interactive all-arms cyber/air/sea/land concept of operations optimised for precision targeting to minimise collateral casualties, maximise the extinction of Hamas terrorists and ensure the effectiveness of its own force protection.

Hamas, conversely, has only a homicidal interest in its own Gaza civilian residents. Bluntly, for its purposes, the more that are killed the better because their deaths can then be blamed on the IDF and added to the undifferentiated butcher’s bill in which Western media take figures issued by Hamas uncritically as being all civilian. Hamas repeatedly obstructed Gazans trying to evacuate south of Wadi Gaza, blocking the route — even shooting them — when, before the first phase of ground operations began, the IDF gave civilians notice to move.

The devil’s spreadsheet therefore brings the ethical terms of engagement squarely front and centre. Israel did not bring war on 7th October. It has Just Cause, is fighting by just means, and has clear precedent.

So the relevant ethical compass is all too clear. It is Hamas and by extension its supporters wherever they are – on the world’s streets, even in the BBC it seems – who carry all moral blame for the fate of Gaza and its people.

In the modern trope of woke “intersectionality”, as victims of purported “white, Jewish colonialism”, Arabs are licensed to do freely any depraved act; and by definition Jews can never be victims.

[F]ar from being an agent of indiscriminate warfare, the IDF is probably the most successfully discriminate modern army. Has the comparison with other modern armies been heard or discussed in BBC analyses? The genocide case was just an attempt to smear with loose language… and has no relevance to Israeli conduct, which will not stop attempts to claim that it has.

Continue reading →