RUTHFULLY YOURS

In the past few years, the American Studies Association (ASA) has been diverted from its scholarly mission—promoting the study of American culture—to a political one, by leaders seeking to turn the ASA into an organization that advocates for social change far beyond American borders, and with an unwavering focus on delegitimizing Israel. This effort culminated in a resolution for an academic boycott of Israel in December 2013.

The Israel boycott was put together by a small group that has commandeered the ASA, and is opposed by a substantial number of ASA members. It has torn the group asunder. It has sullied the name of the ASA. And, we contend, it violates the law.

This week, the four of us filed a lawsuit against the ASA to return the group to its core scholarly mission. We are lifelong academics in the field of American studies.
All of us care deeply about the study of American civilization. We have given our professional lives to the study of this rich field, and through our teaching, we seek to pass along our passion to our students. Combined, we have been teaching American studies for approximately 150 years. One of us is the editor of the ASA’s Encyclopedia of American Studies and an ab officio officer of the ASA, and another is a former editor of the annual Bibliography Issue of the American Quarterly, the official journal of the ASA. Two of us are winners of the Marie Turpie Prize, the ASA’s award for outstanding teaching, advising and program development in American studies.

We now fear what will happen to academic programming in American studies. We see how the ASA’s anti-Israel boycott has alienated our students. Few of our students and fellow faculty members attend ASA meetings any longer.

If you haven’t yet heard of Ayelet Shaked, Israel’s justice minister, you will soon. It doesn’t matter whether you agree with all her policies, some of which are undeniably hardline. She is quite simply the most charismatic, formidable and ambitious female political leader to have emerged in Israel (or anywhere else, for that matter) for a long time. She hails from the high-tech industries that have transformed the Israeli economy, she is articulate (in English as well as Hebrew), energetic and ruthless. As she’s just 39, she has a long career ahead of her and, barring accidents, will sooner or later be prime minister. Israel hasn’t had a woman in that job since Golda Meir and many people think it’s about time.

So who is Shaked (pronounced “shah-ked”)? Her background is typical for a third-generation Israeli, combining Ashkenazi and Sephardi (her mother’s family came from Russia in the 1880s, her father’s from Iran in the 1950s), liberal and conservative, secular and religious elements. Growing up in Tel Aviv, the most sophisticated and progressive city in the Middle East, she served in the army and — like so many conscripts — moved seamlessly into computer engineering. Promoted to marketing manager for Texas Instruments, she might easily have made a career among the entrepreneurial yet left-leaning Tel Aviv elite. But she had already made Judaism and Zionism the core of her outlook and, while still secular, gravitated to centre-right politics. By the age of 30 she was running the office of Benjamin (“Bibi”) Netanyahu, the prime minister, and seemed poised for a stellar career in Likud, the dominant party of the Right.

The first sign that this might not happen came in 2010 when, with Netanyahu’s former chief of staff Naftali Bennett, she launched a new Zionist ginger group, My Israel. Then, in 2012, Shaked demonstrated the boldness that would become her trademark. She left Likud and joined Bennett, who had become leader of Jewish Home. A year later Shaked was elected to the Knesset, where she made a dynamic impression as the only secular woman in a religious party. During the Gaza war in 2014, she caused outrage by sharing an article on Facebook that referred to Palestinian children as “little snakes”. By last year’s general election, Jewish Home had become a key part of the ruling coalition and Netanyahu appointed Shaked to the key portfolio of justice.

Dire climate change, predicted by atmospheric models but not substantiated by reality, has become the coinage of statists. Wealth transfer executors never had it so good. No wonder free-market thinkers and scientists whose currency is reality are targeted by the climate police.

But what if climate model output is not good enough to justify the transfer of trillions of middle-class tax dollars to politically-favorable machinates, let alone send someone to jail under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) act? What if promoters of doom are somewhat biased in their thinking and even have some incentive for hoping for the worst where the atmosphere is concerned?

As hard as this may be to accept, it is possible that climate model results may be in serious error and doomsayers may be biased and incentivized somehow. After all, some of the most vociferous champions of climate chaos are not scientists but political types–Democratic presidential candidates, Democratic attorneys general, Democratic president, vice president, cabinet members, and former Democratic vice president. And, among those most likely to gain in power and profit are political types–Democratic presidential candidates, Democratic attorneys general, Democratic president, vice president, cabinet members, and former Democratic vice president.

Endorsement by politicians, along with the establishment of “settled science,” doesn’t particularly help science, rather it’s more likely to harm it. Examples of negative impact of politics and magisteriums on science abound–from Aristotle’s geocentrism to eugenics and Lysenko’s practice of science in the service of the Soviet state.

Secretary of State John Kerry and other Western policy-makers – joined by the “elite” Western media – contend that 68 year-old Israel is increasingly isolated due to its defiance of global pressure to evacuate the mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria, which tower over Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Ben Gurion Airport and 80% of Israel’s population, transportation, technological and business infrastructure.

Since 1948, global pressure on Israel to commit itself to dramatic concessions has been a fixture of Israel’s foreign policy and public diplomacy, accompanied by warnings that Israel was dooming itself to painful isolation. An examination of Israel’s global position – economically, militarily and diplomatically – documents that irrespective of Israel’s uphill diplomatic challenges, these warnings crashed on the rocks of reality, and resoundingly refuted by an unprecedented integration of Israel with the global street.

Thus, side-by-side with the rough diplomatic talk which has always pounded Israel, there has been an increasingly mutually-beneficial, geo-strategic walk. This is highlighted by Israel’s unprecedented civilian and military integration with the international community, in response to growing international demand for Israel’s military, economic, technological, scientific, medical, pharmaceutical and agricultural cutting-edge innovations.

Israel’s increasingly global integration is reflected by a series of developments in the last few weeks, which are consistent with Israel’s well-documented 68-year-old track record on the global scene.

For example, notwithstanding Europe’s support of the Palestinian Authority and harsh criticism of Israel, NATO does not subscribe to the “isolate Israel” theory, follows its own order of geo-strategic priorities, and therefore refuses to cut off its nose to spite its face. Hence, on May 3, 2016, NATO significantly upgraded its ties with Israel, inviting Jerusalem to establish a permanent mission at their Brussels headquarters. This upgrade will expand the surging, mutually-beneficial Israel-NATO cooperation in the areas of counter-terrorism, intelligence, battle tactics, non-conventional warfare, science, cyber and space technologies and defense industries, where Israel possesses a unique competitive edge.

McGraw Hill’s decision to trash copies of its textbook Global Politics: Engaging a Complex World has been subjected to intense criticism on web sites propagating the “Palestinian Narrative” of the 100 years old Arab-Jewish conflict. The “Palestinian Narrative” is a concoction of lies and half-truths based on the 1964 PLO National Charter – as amended in 1968 – and the 1988 Hamas Covenant.

Catherine Mathis – a spokeswoman for McGraw-Hill – explained the Company’s reasons for destroying the textbook – which contained four misleading and inaccurate maps of “Palestine”:

“As soon as we learned about the concerns with it, we placed sales of the book on hold and immediately initiated an academic review. The review determined that the map did not meet our academic standards. We have informed the authors and we are no longer selling the book. All existing inventory will be destroyed. We apologize and will refund payment to anyone who returns the book.”

McGraw-Hill’s action follows similar criticism of MSNBC which aired the same series of maps last year on “MSNBC Live”.

Although climate change ranks at or near the bottom of issues most important to the American people, the Obama administration continues to push it like its agenda on radical wealth redistribution depends on it. Because in many ways, it does.

The latest move is the climate agreement reached in Paris last December, which will become effective on Earth Day, April 22, with a ceremony at the United Nations headquarters in New York involving at least 162 countries.

The deal set a target of keeping global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. In order to achieve that, the signatory nations will have to undertake the massive and expensive switch to clean energy and low-carbon infrastructure. The Obama administration intends to enforce the agreement by imposing the EPA’s Clean Power Plan (CPP) and other mandates.

The agreement’s cheerleaders reveal its true objective — global wealth redistribution — when they argue that it’s about reducing worldwide poverty.

“It’s a simple relation: More carbon equals more poverty,” says Christiana Figueres, the United Nations’ climate chief. “Net zero emissions is the only way to make poverty eradication possible.”

Climate change mandates aren’t really mostly about climate; they’re really mostly about coercing wealth from the industrialized world and transferring it to the underdeveloped one. The rich irony is that contrary to the agreement’s proponents that it will “eradicate poverty,” green energy mandates actually hurt the poor the most.

The university has declared that members of the all-male off-campus eating clubs will no longer be eligible for leadership positions on campus, including captains of sports teams. They will also be refused recommendations for post-graduate scholarships and fellowships. These restrictions will equally apply to all-female clubs and single sex fraternities and sororities. Presumably, the impetus for integrating the all-male clubs came from surveys and interviews with women who felt that an atmosphere of misogyny and sexual misconduct was re-enforced at these venues and since sexual assault is apparently a pandemic threat to women on campus, the obvious remedy is to alter the venue. It seems that Harvard students don’t read the classics anymore or they would have immediately thought of the Lysistrata solution for women to simply not attend gatherings, parties or any other events that take place at the offending clubs. Boycotts are popular at all the Ivies and they don’t require anything more than a signature on a petition and negative attendance – both of which students are good at. The boycott would guarantee zero sexual assault of women if no women showed up and before long, those lame-brained, horny men might figure out the problem and check their privilege without administrative interference.

http://jamieglazov.com/2016/05/07/naming-the-enemy-on-the-glazov-gang/
This special edition of The Glazov Gang was joined by Stephen Coughlin, the co-founder of UnconstrainedAnalytics.org and the author of the new book, Catastrophic Failure.

He came on the show to discuss Naming the Enemy, analyzing the question: “Do we say the word?”

Don’t miss it!

Last year Sony Pictures Classics released Merchants of Doubt, a documentary alleging that paid hucksters peddle climate denialism. Marc Morano, who founded and runs the website Climate Depot, was featured prominently as huckster-in-chief. This week Morano struck back with Climate Hustle, a 90-minute film released by the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) and CDR Communications. Climate Hustle exposes the industry of climate alarmism through an impressive sequence of interviews and news clips revealing the politicized narrative pushed onto the public. It’s a film with an important message. Unfortunately, its reach will be limited by its low budget and a few missteps in narrative development. But anyone interested in the politicization of contemporary science must see it. It showed in theaters only on May 2 but is set for release on DVD later this spring.

Climate Hustle unveils seven “hustles” perpetrated by climate con artists. These include the sleight of hand (patching together data sets into misleading temperature records) and the “ol’ switcheroo” (the pivot from global cooling to global warming and then again to “climate change” and “extreme weather”). Damning sequences show original clips of news anchors and scientists changing their tune as doom-predicting climate models fail to match the facts.

More often — and this is the key point of Climate Hustle – the hustlers stick to their talking points long after the facts have left them behind. We see climate scientists fumbling to explain the 18-year pause in global warming. We also see the precarious positions of celebrity global-warming apologists stuck on repeat, unsure which island of pseudo-scientific messaging to leap onto next. The most hilarious of these (filed under “The limited time offer,” one of the seven hustles) is Prince Charles, who in five nicely timed clips declares that nations will be under water in ten years (that was in 1999); then in 100 months (2008), seven years (2009), 86 months (2010). Finally, in 2014, he enunciates the worn-out warning that we are once again “running out of time.”

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has at least four different problems.

First, an upcoming State Comptroller report seems set to accuse Mr. Netanyahu of keeping critical information from his cabinet in the buildup to Israel’s summer 2014 military action in Gaza, and of failing to adequately respond to tunnels Hamas used in launching attacks on Israeli soil.

Second, Mr. Netanyahu is under increasing pressure from coalition partners in his cabinet. As I noted last November, the Israeli government is defined by significant internal tensions. Leading the charge for tougher action against the Palestinians is Education Minister Naftali Bennett. A young, charismatic hawk and proponent of expanded West Bank settlement construction, Mr. Bennett wants to bend Mr. Netanyahu to his hard-line agenda.

Third, the likelihood of renewed conflict with Hamas is growing by the day. Recent weeks have seen Hamas escalate the pace of rocket, mortar, knife, and bomb attacks on Israelis. In response, the Israeli military is launching operations against Hamas facilitation nodes.

Fourth and finally, tensions are growing with Iranian proxies in the Golan region on Israel’s border.

Let’s take the third and fourth issues first. Israel’s strategic goal in dealing with Hamas is to constrain the group’s military capabilities. Partly motivated by the aforementioned domestic controversy over Hamas’s infiltration tunnels in 2014, Netanyahu also wants to ensure that they cannot launch a surprise attack on Israeli civilians. Such an attack would cost innocent lives, and, more important, it would embolden Israeli adversaries at a time of growing regional instability.

And that leads us to Iran. With President Bashar al-Assad of Syria now buoyed by Russia, Lebanese Hezbollah (LH) and Iran sense an opportunity to re-commit their energies toward Israel’s northern border. The Syrian Civil War has imposed a heavy military and political toll on Iran and LH, but their existential fetish for Jewish blood is unrelenting. As the Middle East sinks into unrestrained violence, the Obama administration has sat idly by, dancing to Vladimir Putin’s tune at every turn. And without any confidence that Obama would come to its aid in a time of need, Israel is now aligning with the Sunni-Arab monarchies against Iran. Netanyahu’s recent assurance of Israel’s continued claim to the Golan Heights was a physical metaphor for Israel’s evolving security strategy: Israel wants Iran to know that it will not replicate America’s strategy of acquiescence and will role the military dice to preserve its deterrent posture if it must.