ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Gaza Pier Scam Is Another Biden Disaster That Turned Deadly Shoshana Bryen

Posted By on November 20th, 2024

https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/2024/11/19/the-gaza-pier-scam-is-another-biden-disaster-that-turned-deadly/

U.S. Army Sgt. Quandarius Davon Stanley died earlier this month of injuries sustained last spring in the building of the Gaza pier. Rest in peace, soldier.

He died for a useless exercise in American arrogance. Disturbed by reports of “famine” in Gaza — the United Nations never said there was and admitted there never was such a famine — the Biden administration authorized the U.S. Army to build a floating pier in the Mediterranean Sea at the cost of either $320 million or $230 million U.S. taxpayer dollars, depending on which Department of Defense report you read.

The U.S. was going to swagger in and do what the administration said Israel was unable to do. But the pier was swamped and towed to Israel’s Ashdod port and repaired at a cost of $20 million. It was canceled in July.

Fast forward to October, when Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, demanded that Israel ramp up food aid to Gaza, and blamed Israel for the ongoing lawlessness in the northern area. If Israel didn’t meet U.S. conditions, they threatened, there could be delays or cancellations in U.S. military assistance. Israel had one month to comply. The State Department designated staff to audit Israel’s delivery of aid.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Why Is the National Book Award Going to a Publisher of Antisemitic Books? W. Paul Coates, the father of Ta-Nehisi Coates, is getting a lifetime achievement award tonight from people who don’t want to talk about what he’s actually done. By Mark Oppenheimer

Posted By on November 20th, 2024

https://www.thefp.com/p/national-book-award-w-paul-coates-antisemitism?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Even in a busy season of elections and wars, one might have thought that the announcement that a National Book Award will be given to a purveyor of antisemitic and homophobic tracts would have caused a bit more of a stir. It seems like the kind of story that would be picked up by major newspapers, major magazines, and public radio. 

It is remarkable, then, that there has not been greater attention to the work of W. Paul Coates, who will receive the award on November 20: tonight. As the publisher of The Jewish Onslaught, as well as assorted other books, Coates has promoted writing that is, in the parlance of our time, problematic, advancing pseudoscience while demeaning Jews and gays, among others.

Here’s the story. On September 4, the National Book Foundation, which gives out the National Book Awards, announced that the Literarian Award for outstanding service to the literary community, one of its two lifetime achievement awards, would be given to Coates, founder of Black Classic Press. 

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Immigration Is a Mess. Here’s How to Fix It. We need a plan that supports cultural dynamism and protects American workers. Ten commonsense proposals from Reihan Salam.

Posted By on November 20th, 2024

https://www.thefp.com/p/immigration-is-a-mess-heres-how-to

In 2018, I published Melting Pot or Civil War?, a short book on immigration. Despite its provocative title, the book offered a cautious, careful, almost hilariously mild case for immigration restriction. Having closely followed how countries around the world had handled, and more often mishandled, immigration, I laid out a road map for Making Immigration Great Again. Among other things, I called for rebalancing immigrant admissions toward the young and skilled; rejecting identitarian ideologies that undermined immigrant assimilation and sowed racial resentment; embracing labor-saving automation as an imperfect substitute for low-wage migrant labor; and investing in low-income youth.    

If this sounds like a boringly centrist Davos Man manifesto, I don’t disagree.

Keep in mind, though, that I wrote the book in the thick of the Donald Trump–era immigration wars, when the rhetorical temperature was high and public opinion was as pro-immigration as it had ever been. Against a backdrop of family separations, attempted Muslim bans, and anxious Dreamers, it felt taboo to even suggest that Steve Bannon and friends might be half-right about the wisdom of opening our borders, especially in my small, hyper-educated, blue state–parody world. 

As I was labeled a fascist by anonymous trolls, and my arguments were called “completely off the rails,” a vocal minority on the right was growing ever more extreme in its opposition to immigration. By making a moderate case, my arguments weren’t restrictionist enough for the hardcore restrictionists or cosmopolitan enough to satisfy enlightened opinion.

But I came by my position honestly. My parents, immigrants from Bangladesh, settled in Brooklyn in the mid-1970s. They were part of a larger wave of newcomers that helped revitalize New York and other cities that had fallen on hard times. I had seen all that immigration can do to enrich urban neighborhoods up close. Yet I also recognized that mass immigration wasn’t a free lunch, and that open borders romantics were inviting a backlash that risked slamming our borders shut for a generation. 

By offering a middle course, my hope was that some number of moderates would read my book and be convinced that the reaction to Trump’s shock-and-awe restrictionism must not be to heedlessly dismantle immigration enforcement altogether.

Instead, a few years later, the Biden administration came in and did just about everything I warned against, torching Democrats’ credibility on the most important issue facing the country. 

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Canada: ISIS arrests spiking, with youths driving the threat Christine Douglass Williams

Posted By on November 20th, 2024

https://jihadwatch.org/2024/11/canada-isis-arrests-spiking-with-youths-driving-the-threat?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=canada-isis-arrests-spiking-with-youths-driving-the-threat

The exclusive report below from Global News paints a grim and disturbing picture of what is developing in Canada, and developing rapidly. ISIS arrests are spiking, with youth driving the threat. The problem is so grave that Global News titled its report The Return of ISIS.

Recently, Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, expressed concerns about the terror risk from Canada, and warned Ottawa of “tough conversations” ahead.

Canada didn’t suddenly descend to this point. It has been a gradual process.

ISIS jihadis were invited to return to Canada by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who not only set out a welcome mat for them in the name of “diversity and inclusion,” but praised what he claimed could be their future “contributions,” saying:

We know that actually someone who has engaged and turned out from that hateful ideology can be an extraordinarily powerful voice for preventing radicalization in future generations, and young people within the community.

Never did he stop to think about the victims of the Islamic State, nor about their future possible victims.

The woke establishment has been equating opposition to open-border policies with opposition to all immigration. Canada’s government has encouraged this bizarre thinking.

In 2018, CBN published a telling article, “Canada Becoming a Potential Base for Terrorists to Attack the US.” A year before that, it emerged that dozens of jihadis were walking free in Canada, yet authorities wouldn’t charge them. Leaked documents from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) also showed a greater threat of Islamic terror inside the country than the government was admitting.

Now the power of social media in recruiting youngsters is a growing factor:

According to police and experts, today’s ISIS devotees are younger and more immersed in social media and gaming platforms, where they are connecting with propaganda, recruiters and fellow extremists.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Trump–Bragg–Merchan Chess Game Andrew McCarthy

Posted By on November 20th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/11/the-trump-bragg-merchan-chess-game/

Is the president-elect being played?

It is rare to witness such a disconnect between pro-Trump media commentators and the Trump defense team as we’re seeing in today’s news: Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg agrees that Trump’s sentencing must be postponed while other proceedings — in particular, Trump’s posttrial motion to vacate the jury’s guilty verdicts — continue. There is outrage in the commentariat, yet Trump and his lawyers are spinning this development as a great victory.

There is a chess game going on here. Bottom line: I believe Bragg is trying to manipulate Trump into asking that the prosecution be suspended for four years.

Despite the Democrats’ campaign rhetoric, Trump is not a convicted felon now, a jury’s guilty verdict notwithstanding. Only the court’s formal entry of a judgment of conviction after sentencing makes a defendant a convicted felon. Bragg knows Trump does not want to be sentenced and have the judgment of conviction entered on the court’s record (and thus on Trump’s personal record). I wager that the DA is calculating that if the president-elect is given the choice of either a four-year suspension of the case or a sentencing so that Trump can eventually appeal the conviction, Trump will choose the former.

If it is Trump himself who asks for that outcome, all the people complaining about the unfairness and harm to the public interest of having a criminal case hanging over a sitting president’s head for four years will have to mute their outrage. And I think Trump is going to ask for that outcome — which is why his lawyers are already equating postponement with victory.

Let’s try to break it into the three relevant stages: (1) Trump’s posttrial motion to dismiss the guilty verdicts based on the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling (which is now on the table); (2) sentencing and entry of the judgment of conviction (which would happen if Judge Juan Merchan denies the posttrial motion); and (3) appeal, which most close observers experienced in criminal law issues believe Trump has a good chance of winning.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Debunking the lies about Israel Natasha Hausdorff on the new blood libels. VIDEO

Posted By on November 20th, 2024

https://www.spiked-online.com/video/debunking-the-lies-about-israel/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Nv-g1cE7Mk

Israel is easily the most demonised nation on Earth. Despite the Jewish State being a liberal democracy, Western activists spend vastly more time raging against it than they do genuinely despotic regimes. We’re told Israel is committing ‘genocide’ in Gaza, that it is going out of its way to kill civilians in its war against Hamas, that it is an ‘apartheid state’. But none of this bears any resemblance to reality. Here, barrister Natasha Hausdorff debunks the anti-Israel myths, which she says have become a kind of new blood libel. Watch, share and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Captured Documents Prove Iran’s Support for the October 7 Massacre Planning, funding, and providing training for the atrocities. P.David Hornik

Posted By on November 20th, 2024

https://pdavidhornik.substack.com/subscribe?utm_source=email&utm_campaign=email-subscribe&r=8t06w&next=

Was Iran behind Hamas’s massacre-and-mass-kidnapping attack in Israel on October 7, 2023? How much of a role did the Islamic Republic play in it?

The day after the attack, October 8, 2023, the Wall Street Journal published a report claiming that “Iranian security officials helped plan” the attack and “gave the green light for [it] at a meeting in Beirut” on October 2. Although the report gives further details, few have accepted it as authoritative because it relies mainly on the word of “senior members of Hamas and Hezbollah” and cites contradictory accounts by others.

A report by MEMRI (the Israel-based Middle East Media Research Institute) from July 24, 2024, cites several Iranian statements about its role in October 7.

The most notable ones include: On October 10, 2023, the Iranian regime’s mouthpiece Kayhan stated, in MEMRI’s words, that “a plan for Israel’s destruction, formulated and organized by Qods Force commander Qassem Soleimani and dictated by him to the commanders of the resistance organizations just before his assassination . . . had begun to be implemented. Kayhan in fact clarified that [Supreme Leader Ali] Khamenei was party to the plan and hinted twice that a great victory was on the horizon. Kayhan also wrote that Khamenei . . . in August 2023 had suggested that a major operation would take place soon.”

On October 15, 2023, a report by Iran’s Tasnim news agency “stressed that . . . Khamenei had declared that the operation’s name would be ‘Al-Aqsa Flood’ many years before its execution, and that he had ordered the establishment of a joint command and control center—commanded by Iran—for the resistance groups, with Iran providing weapons and training.”

On December 25, 2023, a spokesman for the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps) stated that October 7 was Iran’s revenge for Soleimani’s assassination by the US on January 3, 2020. Hours later, Iran’s Fars News deleted that specific claim from its website.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Is Burgum the Right Choice for Interior Secretary and Energy Czar? By Janet Levy

Posted By on November 20th, 2024

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/11/is_burgum_the_right_choice_for_interior_secretary_and_energy_czar.html

From running for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination himself, former North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum has proven himself a Trump loyalist who commands the president-elect’s trust. Announcing Burgum’s appointment at his Mar-a-Lago resort, Trump said, “He’s going to head the Department of Interior, and he’s going to be fantastic.”

However, given Burgum’s background, affiliations, and views on important issues, is he the right choice for Secretary of the Interior? Trump has also made him the nation’s energy czar by appointing him chairman of the newly formed National Energy Council. But is Burgum fit to chair the council and, under that post, take a seat on the National Security Council?

A close look at Burgum’s origins, career, political and policy plays, and most importantly, his association with people and ideologies in line with leftist-globalists is called for. The facts will make it evident that it won’t be unreasonable to ask if he will serve the interests of “We, the people” in the new Trump administration.

Burgum, a native North Dakotan, grew up in the small town of Arthur and earned a BA from North Dakota State University and an MBA from Stanford. His family had a thriving agribusiness started by his grandfather. His father’s death when he was in high school deeply affected him, and, showing initiative, he started a chimney-sweeping business while still an undergraduate. As an adolescent, he ran his own newspaper. These early efforts impressed his professors at Stanford.

After working as an analyst at McKinsey & Company, he adopted a data-driven approach to business and other decisions, which he still adheres to. In 1983, he invested in Great Plains Software, which he built into a billion-dollar business and sold to Microsoft in 2001. His Stanford classmate and friend Steve Ballmer was CEO of Microsoft. He is also friends with Bill Gates, the Black Rock group, and many deep-pocketed energy industry CEOs.

Today, he’s one of the wealthiest and shrewdest politicians in the U.S. During his short-lived run for president, he spent more than $2.9 million on ads, more than any other politician or group. To reach the quota of donors who would take him to the debate stage, he offered $20 gift cards to each person who donated $1.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

How Will Trump Handle Education Policy? I don’t know. You don’t either. By Larry Sand

Posted By on November 20th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/11/20/how-will-trump-handle-education-policy/

The education establishment is in a colossal snit over Donald Trump’s reelection.

At the college level, Berkeley’s official news outlet published a series of interview vignettes with nearly a dozen professors after the results were in, and they all suggested Trump’s “decisive” victory exposes sinister parts of America’s underbelly.

Additionally, some professors from at least three Ivy League schools—Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, and Columbia—canceled classes.

According to The Free Press, Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy concocted a “self-care suite” available to students to provide an escape from anxiety about the presidential election. The school reportedly informed students that the suite would be available from 10:00 a.m. until 6:00 p.m., where they will have the opportunity to enjoy Legos, coloring, and milk and cookies while visiting the suite.

The response at the K-12 level has been no less unhinged.

Virginia Education Association president Carol Bauer commented that its members may feel grief over the election results. Bauer noted that educators will likely have students coming to them seeking support and answers to “the hard questions.” Bauer warned VEA members that their professions and schools will “come under attack as never before” under the incoming Trump administration.

Bauer also proclaimed, “I know today feels like a dark day for many of you. Questions and doubts are likely swirling through your head, and it will take time to digest what happened and why. That is understandable.”

In California, a high school teacher from Los Angeles County allegedly stormed out of her classroom at the sight of a student wearing a “Make America Great Again” shirt after the election. The teacher said that wearing merchandise supporting President-elect Donald Trump is “a hate crime when worn at school.”

FOREIGN POLICY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Can Trump End Ukraine’s ‘Endless War?’ How he could pull that unlikely deal off. Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on November 20th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/can-trump-end-ukraines-endless-war/

Trump was elected in part on promises to avoid “endless wars” of the sort that cost American blood and treasure in Afghanistan and Iraq but without resulting in strategic advantage or civilized calm.

Yet as a Jacksonian, Trump also restored American deterrence through punitive strikes against ISIS and terrorist thugs like Baghdadi and Soleimani—without being bogged down in costly follow-ups. During the last four administrations, Putin stayed within his borders only during the Trump four years.

But upon entering office, Trump will likely still be faced with something far more challenging as he confronts what has become the greatest European killing field since World War II—the cauldron on the Ukrainian border that has likely already cost 1-1.5 million combined dead, wounded, and missing Ukrainian and Russian soldiers and civilians.

There is no end in sight after three years of escalating violence. But there are increasing worries that strategically logical and morally defensible—but geopolitically dangerous—Ukrainian strikes on the Russian interior will nonetheless escalate and lead to a wider war among the world’s nuclear powers.

Many on the right wish for Trump to immediately cut off all aid to Ukraine for what they feel is an unwinnable war, even if that abrupt cessation would end any leverage with which to force Putin to negotiate.

They claim the war was instigated by a globalist left, serving as a proxy conflict waged to ruin Russia at the cost of Ukrainian soldiers. They see it orchestrated by a now non-democratic Ukrainian government, lacking elections, a free press, or opposition parties, led by an ungracious and corrupt Zelensky cadre that has allied with the American left in an election year.

In contrast, many on the left see Putin’s invasion and the right’s weariness with the costs of the conflict as the long-awaited global proof of the Trump-Russian “collusion” unicorn.