MEDIA Comments turned off

Jesse Singal: Bluesky Has a Death Threat Problem

Posted By on December 18th, 2024

https://www.thefp.com/p/jesse-singal-bluesky-has-a-death-threat-problem?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

It was supposed to be a gentler, left-wing alternative to X. My grim experience proves that just isn’t the case.

Recently, like a lot of journalists, I joined Bluesky, a social media platform that is enjoying a burst of postelection growth and positive press attention. It’s been lauded as a “kinder, gentler”—and, perhaps most importantly, more left-wing—alternative to X, which is increasingly seen as infested with what a Bluesky user might call “MAGA chuds.”

While I thought some of the critiques of X were overstated, over the last six months or so I’ve increasingly soured on it. It felt like an ever more hostile, hateful place, the technology seemed more broken every day, and I am not a fan of owner Elon Musk’s recent conspiracy theorizing and all-in support for Donald Trump. It seemed like time to scope out a potential alternative.

This was a mistake.

On December 6, I made my first post on Bluesky—which was actually launched by Twitter in 2019, before becoming an independent company two years later. As I soon found out, it is an exceptionally angry place. And in part because of a widespread culture of impunity when it comes to violent threats among some of its users, it comes across as a potentially dangerous one—in a way X, or Twitter, never did for me in my decade-plus of actively using that platform. Bluesky has either made a conscious decision to take a laissez-faire attitude toward serious threats of violence, or its moderators are incapable of guarding against them, or both.

There’s at least some evidence for the latter theory. While many left-wing people announced they were leaving X after the election, one million users joined Bluesky that week. The results weren’t pretty. As The Verge reported on November 17, “the Bluesky Safety team posted Friday that it received 42,000 moderation reports in the preceding 24 hours.” That’s more than 10 percent of the number received in the entirety of 2023, which was 360,000.

But given what I’ve learned about Bluesky’s “moderation” over the last week, I feel compelled to inform the site’s users—and potential users—about its staggeringly negligent policies toward violent threats and doxxing.

ANTI-SEMITISM, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Michael Murphy Ireland’s anti-Israel stance is embarrassingly hypocritical The Taoiseach seems only to be in favour of international law and human rights when it suits him

Posted By on December 18th, 2024

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/12/18/irelands-anti-israel-stance-is-embarrassingly-hypocritical/

Ireland and Israel are now locked in a zero-sum war of reputation destruction. On Sunday, Israel announced it was closing its Dublin embassy because of the “extreme anti-Israel policies of the Irish government”. It then doubled down, branding the Taoiseach, Simon Harris, an anti-Semite. An irate Harris shot back that Israel was merely attempting to distract from its “killing” of children.

These accusations are so grave it’s difficult to see how either side can walk them back. Who, after all, would make such claims frivolously?

Let’s consider for a moment what led both countries to go nuclear. Since the start of the war in Gaza, the Irish government has been one of Israel’s most strident critics. It backed South Africa’s genocide case against Israel in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), claiming there was sufficient evidence to answer the charge. But just last week, it went further, calling to “broaden” the definition of genocide to vaguely include civilian harm, effectively turning Israel into a perpetrator of a crime yet to exist.

For Jerusalem, this attempt to shift legal goalposts, redefining established terms to engineer guilt, was the final straw. After years of diplomatic snubs, boycotts, and genocide accusations – not to mention Ireland’s recognition of a Palestinian state soon after October 7 – Israel decided to cut its losses. “We will now channel and transfer resources to a place that is interested in cooperating with us,” its ambassador explained.

The Taoiseach, for his part, called the decision regrettable but dismissed accusations of Irish hostility toward Israel. “We’re just pro-peace, pro-human rights, and pro-international law,” he protested. But Ireland’s record speaks louder than platitudes.

Ireland is for international law when it suits. That’s why it now seeks to rewrite the Genocide Convention – an international cornerstone ratified by 153 states, including Ireland – to retroactively lower the bar for convicting Israel. This more closely resembles authoritarian justice, where the accused is condemned first and the crime tailored to fit. As Stalin’s secret police chief Lavrentiy Beria put it: “Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Charles Lipson Joe Biden has vanished, leaving behind an almighty mess The president has disappeared from view during the long interregnum before Donald Trump takes power

Posted By on December 18th, 2024

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/comment/2024/12/17/has-anyone-seen-joe-biden/

America and Britain share a rightful pride in the peaceful transfer of power. But they conduct the transfer very differently. The British vote in a day, count the votes that night, and install a new government almost immediately. Shadow ministers are ready to take over. 

Not in America, which takes weeks to cast ballots and, often, just as long to count them. This year, analysts were shocked to find the winner could be called on election night, a rarity due to Donald Trump’s victory in all seven “swing states”. It took longer to count the votes for other federal offices, sometimes much longer. In California, one congressional seat wasn’t decided until early December. Soviet workers got new cars faster.

Even if the votes had been counted swiftly, America’s new government would still have waited over two months before taking office. It used to take even longer. Until 1933, when the 20th Amendment was passed, the new president didn’t take office until early March. The vote was still held in early November.

Despite the Amendment, there’s still a two-month pause before the new president takes office. That gap poses dangers internationally and domestically. Foreign foes may choose to act while the old team is still in power, fearing the new administration may be tougher (as they do now) or less predictable. Domestically, the incumbent administration and lame-duck Congress have a last-minute chance to push through their priorities. The outgoing Congress can pass laws, the outgoing president can issue executive orders, and departing White House aides and Cabinet members can rush money out the door before the new administration cuts off funding for their pet projects.

Although such problems recur at the end of every presidency, they are always more serious when the other party is about to take power. They are even worse when the incoming president will have a new majority in Congress, as Trump will this time. That’s why president Biden’s team is trying to push through as many lifetime judicial appointments as possible before the Senate switches to Republican control.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran Tries To Make a Stand in Jenin by Seth Mandel

Posted By on December 18th, 2024

https://www.commentary.org/seth-mandel/iran-tries-to-make-a-stand-in-jenin/?utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz–

The future of Gaza depends to some extent on what’s happening in Jenin this week.

The West Bank city is a hotbed of Iranian-backed militias who have spent years carving out a separatist haven there. It is a significant challenge to Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority. Both Israel and the Palestinians who want self-determination share an interest in preventing the Iranian colonial project from accomplishing its primary aim in the West Bank: Palestinian civil war and the disintegration of the Palestinian Authority.

Since Oct. 7, 2023, that has only become more urgent. At some point, the PA is expected to take over the administration of the Gaza Strip after Hamas is removed from power. If Abbas cannot maintain control over the West Bank, the PA cannot take on Gaza as well.

And so Abbas’s decision to send Palestinian security forces into Jenin is a crucial test for the aging autocrat and his government.

“The gunmen in Jenin are not resistance fighters, but mercenaries serving the dubious agenda of an outside party,” declared PA spokesman Anwar Rajab.

The New York Times describes the riddle that the PA, Israel, and the U.S. are trying to solve. Israel has been stepping up its security raids in Jenin because Abbas is barely able to step foot in the city. Israel does not want an Iranian terror-and-tunnel project in the West Bank to match the one currently undergoing disassembly in Gaza. The U.S. wants Israel to back off a bit, to enable the Palestinian security forces to gather the strength to take back Jenin. But if Israel backs off too much or for too long, the PA will fail when it does try to restore order there.

That happened last week, in fact. According to Axios, Palestinian security forces fumbled a mission in which they were trying to arrest “several PIJ and Hamas militants who stole Palestinian security forces vehicles and used them for an armed parade through the refugee camp.” The mission failure, then was a double humiliation.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

South Africa: Next Rich Failed State? Perfect Target for a Hostile Takeover by Nils A. Haug

Posted By on December 18th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21230/south-africa-failed-state

South Africa… has an active and influential Muslim sector supportive of Hamas and Palestinian land claims. Coupled to its pathetic intelligence services, and its lamentable military and police forces, South Africa is ill-equipped to counter Islamist infiltration from neighboring regions or its growing internal extremist movements.

Apart from succeeding in overcoming Apartheid, all that the ANC and allies have put their minds to since, ends in dismal failure. Every state-owned enterprise is broke and/or dysfunctional…. The same applies to government departments….

As a mineral-rich country… South Africa is a prime target for a hostile takeover by opportunistic authoritarian state players. Russia, China and Iran are strongly positioned already…

Of the three, China, with its vast financial and political investments in Africa, carries the most influence, and this will no doubt increase beyond the West’s capacity to match it as time passes. At this moment, with its primary focus on the Middle East and Ukraine, the West is unable or unwilling to match China’s multi-faceted influence in the region and thus offers China unbounded freedom to accelerate pursuit of its interests there.

[T]he West’s loss of influence in the region might be greatly regretted for decades to come.

Although the African National Congress (ANC) remains the dominant political party in South Africa after the 2024 national elections, its power is significantly diminished in addition to its reduced parliamentary representation. After failing to command a majority, the ANC is the largest faction of South Africa’s so-called Government of National Unity – although there is little unity among its large number of members. To describe the government as a fragile coalition would be more accurate.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, an ardent critic of Israel, is the authority behind South Africa’s actions condemning Israel’s actions in Gaza at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Ramaphosa is also a leading figure in BRICS – a group of nations seeking to bypass America’s dominance of world trade, and global financial and monetary control. As part of South Africa’s realignment from the West towards BRICS, the ANC has adopted Russia and Iran as replacement benefactors, and has strengthened ties with China.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

‘Censorship has a perfect failure record’ Jonathan Turley on why the exercise of free speech is at the core of our humanity.

Posted By on December 18th, 2024

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/12/18/censorship-has-a-perfect-failure-record/

Free speech is under assault from all angles. States across the West are arresting purveyors of so-called hate speech, and cracking down on alleged mis- and disinformation. Even the US government, despite the First Amendment, has been caught leaning on social-media firms in order to outsource censorship to the private sector. Universities, once places of vigorous, robust debate and unfettered inquiry, have been transformed into ‘safe spaces’ where contrarian views are Not Platformed. We’re not only losing the right to free speech – many seem to have forgotten why it matters at all.

As legal expert Jonathan Turley explains in his new book, The Indispensable Right, free speech is fundamental to our humanity. Without the ability to articulate our beliefs, we become not only less free, but also less human. Jonathan was the latest guest on The Brendan O’Neill Show. What follows is an edited extract from their conversation. Listen to the full thing here.

Brendan O’Neill: How are crusades against speech, particularly those driven by the state, undermining free speech?

Jonathan Turley: The Biden administration has created three categories for censorship: disinformation, misinformation and malinformation. Of the three, malinformation is my favourite. It’s defined as the use of true facts in a misleading way. It isn’t hard to imagine how the government might abuse that definition.

Current proponents of censorship make arguments that I find very disingenuous. For example, they will raise an issue like child pornography, which is an act that is against the law. They have a habit of taking the most extreme forms of conduct and using it to justify sweeping and ambiguous forms of censorship. If you take a look at the UK, France, Germany and Canada, you begin to see what happens when you allow censorship to take hold. It develops an insatiable appetite.

My book poses the challenge to name a single censorship system that has succeeded in stopping an idea or movement. Censorship has a perfect failure record and my book tries to explain why. In my view, it is because freedom of speech is a human right. It’s something we’re hard-wired for. I even refer to medical studies that show how parts of our brain can shrink if we don’t express ourselves. We are so designed for free speech that we can have a physical response when we fail to use it.

BOOKS, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West Hardcover – March 18, 2025 by Josh Hammer

Posted By on December 18th, 2024

A powerful, next-generation manifesto declaring that the future prosperity and ultimate fate of Western civilization is dependent upon the security and thriving of the Jewish people and the Jewish State of Israel—that the Jewish people’s right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland demands a distinctly realist foreign policy and tight-knit US-Israel relations.

Israel is the West’s man on the spot—the tip of the spear in the battle against Islamist terrorism and secularist nihilism alike. But the old-guard voices advocating for the full support of Israel as a nation-state and as an idea are being drowned out from all sides—theistic, secularist, right, left, and everything in between. To combat the uproars of multiculturalism, postmodern relativism, tolerance, and Jew-hating social media, the time is now for voices from a new generation. We must address modern antisemitism and sound a call not just to accept, but to enthusiastically embrace the centrality of Judaism to the very character of Western civilization.

In Israel and Civilization, acclaimed journalist, legal expert, and pundit Josh Hammer makes a righteous case that the key to the prosperity of the West is the flourishing of the Jewish people and the Jewish State of Israel. Hammer’s uplifting offense is our best defense against the enemies of the Jewish people’s right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland. And as Hammer makes clear, manifesting the promise of Israel requires action by the United States and its allies.

There can be no overstating the impact of the trauma of October 7, 2023, on the Jewish people. Yet the anti-Israel reactions the world over have been equally devastating. Rallies of hundreds of thousands explicitly or implicitly promoting Hamas violence; demonstrations of Ivy League professors celebrating the pogrom as awesome and exhilarating; so-called human rights organizations that refuse to unequivocally condemn the use of rape as a weapon of war; and a hydra of multiculturalism, postmodern relativism, and tolerance—it all threatens the physical and metaphysical survival of the West and our essential Jewish heritage.

Preserving the best of what’s been thought and said throughout history and ensuring that there will be centuries more requires a West that is proud of its Jewish heritage. In other words, the continued existence of the Jewish people is inextricably tied to the endurance of Western civilization. Israel is the center of the battle, and Israel and Civilization explains why and how the Jewish state must win.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Michael Bonner Justin Trudeau Should Resign Under his leadership, Canada’s Liberal Party has devolved to something like a cult of personality.

Posted By on December 18th, 2024

https://www.city-journal.org/article/trump-trudeau-tariffs-border-fight-canada

The problem with criticizing Justin Trudeau is not where to begin but where to end. Trudeau’s proclivity for gaffes and vulgarity was established long before he became prime minister. And this fluffy, insubstantial side even seemed like it might have an upside as he formed a government: as long as Trudeau focused on annoying stunts and virtue-signaling, he would have little time for screwing up the country. Sadly, however, his government’s long procession of scandals and missteps has proven that theory wrong.

Trudeau’s latest crisis is arguably the worst. The incoming Trump administration has threatened a 25 percent tariff on Canadian goods entering the U.S. unless Canada stops the flow of drugs and migrants over the border. The trade relationship between Canada and the United States is the largest between any two countries in the world. The total value of cross border trade was $926 billion in 2023, or roughly $2.5 billion a day. This reality should make any problem with border security a high priority for Canada; and any threat of tariffs is a national emergency.

How did Trudeau react? First, he had dinner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, which seems to have produced no result. Next, at the Equal Voice Gala for International Human Rights Day, Trudeau delivered a speech attacking the United States for failing to elect Kamala Harris and declaring himself a “proud feminist.” Then he executed a series of ham-fisted moves to reassign his minister of finance, Chrystia Freeland, and replace her with Mark Carney, former governor of both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England. Freeland refused this demotion and tendered her resignation.

That all happened on the same morning that Freeland was to present a budgetary update known as the Fall Economic Statement, which was already weeks overdue. Whatever disagreement unfolded behind closed doors between Trudeau and Freeland likely concerned increased borrowing and spending on two cynical vote-buying schemes: a two-month holiday from the Goods and Services Tax, and a $250 rebate to families making less than $150,000 a year. What purpose is served by shoe-horning Carney into the government is not clear. But the latest episode seems to repeat an old pattern familiar from the SNC Lavalin scandal, in which Trudeau bullied and expelled his own female (and indigenous) attorney general from his cabinet for resisting pressure to cut a deal for a politically connected corporation facing corruption charges. In the event, the “feminist” Trudeau sacked the woman and replaced her with a more obedient male.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Charles Fain Lehman Biden’s Mass Commutation Ignores the Purpose of Punishment Criminal-justice-reform groups like the ACLU deny the importance of retribution.

Posted By on December 18th, 2024

https://www.city-journal.org/article/biden-mass-commutation-criminal-justice-retribution

Last week, President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of nearly 1,500 federal inmates. The administration bragged that it was the largest single-day granting of clemency in American history. But a backlash swiftly followed as the public learned whom the president had released: pill-mill doctors, Ponzi schemers, and a judge who got $2.1 million in kickbacks for sending juvenile offenders to for-profit facilities.

Biden’s mass commutation came at the behest of the American Civil Liberties Union and others of what Ezra Klein and Michael Lind referred to in a recent postelection conversation as “the Groups”—the vast but inchoate network of left-wing advocacy organizations that moderate Democrats are blaming for the party’s 2024 defeat. Biden’s lame-duck concession to these advocates raises questions about how much influence such radicals continue to hold in the Democratic Party.

But even more importantly, the popular outrage at Biden’s mass commutation highlights a fundamental problem with the argument advanced by criminal-justice-reform groups like the ACLU. Specifically, they deny the importance of retribution, the notion that the criminal-justice system should impose punishments not just instrumentally—for instance, because it makes the nation safer or discourages crime—but also because criminals deserve it.

Many of those who benefited were, on paper, reasonable recipients of a presidential commutation. They had been released under the provisions of the CARES Act Home Confinement Program, a Covid-mitigation strategy created during the Trump administration that sentenced low-risk, nonviolent federal offenders to serve their time at home rather than in federal prisons.

The program seems to have been a public-safety success. Of the 13,204 releasees, just 22 were rearrested between March 2020 and June 2023, and 96 percent had no violations of their parole, technical or criminal, over the same time period.

BOOKS Comments turned off

THE STORY OF MARTIN KULLDORF: Complete biography of the medical professor at Harvard Medical School, encompassing the unbelievable dramas that happened in his career life by Millie Andrews

Posted By on December 18th, 2024

Embark on an extraordinary journey through the remarkable life and career of Martin Kulldorff, the Swedish biostatistician whose path from humble beginnings to Harvard Medical School is marked by unimaginable challenges, groundbreaking discoveries, and unwavering conviction. In “The Story of Martin Kulldorff,” delve into the gripping narrative of a man who dared to challenge the status quo, sparking controversy and captivating the world with his bold vision for public health.

From his groundbreaking research in epidemiology to his pivotal role in shaping global discourse during the COVID-19 pandemic, Kulldorff’s story is one of resilience, courage, and unyielding determination. Experience the highs and lows of his career, the triumphs and tribulations, as he navigates through the corridors of academia and confronts the complexities of public health crises head-on.

With gripping prose and meticulous detail, this captivating biography sheds light on the man behind the controversies, revealing the profound impact of his work on public health and society at large. “The Story of Martin Kulldorff” is a testament to the power of one individual’s unwavering commitment to truth, justice, and the pursuit of scientific excellence.

Join us on this exhilarating journey as we unravel the mysteries of Martin Kulldorff’s extraordinary life and legacy. Discover the untold stories, uncover the hidden truths, and be inspired to question, challenge, and advocate for a better world. “The Story of Martin Kulldorff” is not just a biography—it’s a call to action to stand up for what you believe in, even in the face of adversity. Are you ready to embark on this transformative journey?