ISRAEL Comments turned off

Commemorating the Balfour Declaration By Michael Curtis

Posted By on November 2nd, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/11/commemorating_the_balfour_declaration_.html

Before World War I, the area of Palestine was a region of the Ottoman Empire with a small Jewish population. After the start of World War I, the British government began considering changes in the Ottoman Empire, the sick man of Europe, which had entered the war on the side of Germany and the Central Powers in October 1914. Among other proposals, Prime Minister David Lloyd George favored partition of the empire. In the Middle East, the last generally recognized sovereign power was the empire, and the area of Palestine was a district, not a political entity.

The Balfour Declaration was not a declaration but a letter of November 2, 1917, written by Scottish-born Arthur Balfour, former prime minister and foreign secretary, to Lord Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community.  Balfour, who was raised as a Protestant in the evangelical tradition, had been a friend of Chaim Weizmann, the most important Jewish personality of his day,  since 1906 when they opposed the Russian pogroms.   The Balfour letter was the result of prolonged discussion in the British cabinet and with Zionist leaders, and the subject of several drafts of the letter. Various individuals have been suggested as the primary author, including Lord Milner and Leopold Amery, but there is no definitely acknowledged single writer.

The declaration stated that “His Majesty’s Government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object.”   In the statement, two factors are clearly understood: nothing should be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

The declaration gave rise to conflicting emotions: Jewish hopes and Arab disappointments. Lord Rothschild remarked that “for the first time since the dispersion, the Jewish people have received their proper status by the declaration of one of the great powers.”

The declaration was the first public support for Zionism by a major political power since Cyrus, the Persian king who liberated the Jews from their Babylonian exile in the 6th century BC.

MEDIA Comments turned off

How Journalism Abandoned the Working Class What explains the media’s obsession with race and power? It has very little to do with social justice and everything to do with class. Batya Ungar-Sargon

Posted By on November 2nd, 2021

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/how-journalism-abandoned-the-working

If you read this newsletter you are acutely aware of the transformation of the mainstream media over the last decade and, especially, over the past couple of years. But few have offered a fully satisfying answer to the question of why. 

Why is it, for example, that between 2013 and 2019, the frequency of the words “white” and “racial privilege” exploded by 1,200 percent in The New York Times and by 1,500 percent in The Washington Post? Why was the term “white supremacy” used 2,400 times by National Public Radio in 2020?

What changed? Why was there suddenly a relentless focus on race and power? And who—or what—was driving it?

At last those questions have been answered with unusual clarity by Batya Ungar-Sargon in her new book “Bad News: How Woke Media is Undermining Democracy.” 

Batya, who is an opinion editor at Newsweek, is hard to pin down politically. I first met her in 2018 and I would have described her then as woke. These days I’d call her a left-wing populist. (She’s part of an endangered species: a person willing to change her mind.) But what I appreciate most about Batya, and what I think you’ll find when you read the essay below, is someone who is able to put ideology aside and pursue to illuminate why the news is broken, how it is fueling one war (culture) to distract from another (class), and how that might be changed. — BW

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Joe Biden is asleep at the wheel The only thing worse than not showing up is showing up and making a fool of yourself by Dominic Green

Posted By on November 2nd, 2021

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/joe-biden-asleep-wheel-cop26-glasgow/

Did Joe Biden fall asleep during the opening speeches of the COP26 climate jamboree in Glasgow? It’s hard to blame him if he did. A conference dedicated to saving the planet is generating nothing but hot air, some of it carboniferously heavy with the exhaust of the armada of private jets that brought the guests. But it’s Biden’s job to stay awake, look lively and remember his lines.

The footage shows a frail man who’s jetlagged, pushing eighty and trying his best to absorb the torrent of heated eco-bilge that’s being pumped into his ears. But he’s only human. The presidential eyelids start to flutter as a speaker pleads “on behalf of everyone, disabled and non-disabled…to stop the destruction of this magnificent planet.” Biden gives a desperate, hostage-like look at the camera, but there’s no way out. The shutters are coming down. Soon, the president of the United States is heading down, down, down to the Land of Nod.

Yet again, the president’s feebleness is there for the world to see — or not. On Friday, Biden became the first American president in living memory not to go live before the cameras with the Pope. Was it because they’ve fallen out over abortion — or because Biden’s team didn’t want a jetlagged president to embarrass himself and his nation?

Meanwhile, “poopy pants Biden” trended on Twitter after Amy Tarkanian, the former chairwoman of the Republican party of Nevada, suggested that “the word around Rome” was that Biden’s private audience had to be extended because the president had suffered a “bathroom accident” in the pontiff’s presence.

These allegations cannot be substantiated without producing the presidential pants, but their tone shows how close Biden’s public appearances are to low comedy, and how quickly he has soiled his image in the American public’s estimation. He is underwater in the polls, his agenda is stalled in Congress, and when he does eventually appear in public, he blames everyone else.

The putative leader of the West is missing in inaction. On Sunday, after the G20 summit in Rome, the leaders of nineteen G20 states lined up for a photo at the Trevi Fountain. Only Joe Biden wasn’t there.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Ballooning Ivy League Endowment Forecasted To Top $1 Trillion By 2048 Adam Andrzejewski

Posted By on November 2nd, 2021

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2021/10/31/ballooning-ivy-league-endowment-forecasted-to-top-1-trillion-by-2048/?sh=3d82b6263a37

Why are Harvard, Yale, and Princeton charging $80,000 or more for tuition, room, and board?

The Ivies added $44 billion to their endowments this year, and new estimates show their collective endowment could exceed $1 trillion by 2048.

Organized as charitable non-profits, the Ivy League is a cash generation machine. Their collective endowment now stands at approximately $188.2 billion, which is up from $144 billion in 2020.

Now, critics are questioning whether the Ivies have gamed the federal, state, and local tax systems to operate as educational charities. These schools pay little or no taxes on their investments, endowment gains, and property.

Here are the new endowments by school: Harvard ($53.2 billion), Yale ($42.3 billion), Columbia ($13.5 billion), Brown ($6.9 billion), Dartmouth ($8.5 billion), UPENN ($20.5 billion), and Cornell ($10 billion). (Princeton is the only school not yet reported; however, we forecast their endowment at $33.3 billion, up 25 percent from $26.6 billion in 2020.)

Harvard’s endowment now stands at over $10 million per undergraduate student. Yale is just shy of this number at $9 million. Brown, far behind its colleagues, boasts just over $1 million in endowment assets per undergrad student.

However, the Ivies billion-dollar optics problem is soon to become a trillion-dollar optics problem. The size of their endowments is set grow substantially over the next couple of decades.

Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com forecast that the collective endowment of the Ivy League could surpass $1 trillion by 2049. This buildup of wealth for supposedly charitable educational purposes will trigger a host of public policy, legislative, and legal arguments. For example, Harvard alone could have $300 billion, or nearly $60 million per undergraduate student in endowment assets, by 2049.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

COP26 And The Hubris Of Our Political Overlords Francis Menton

Posted By on November 2nd, 2021

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2021-10-31-cop26-and-the-hubris-of-our-political-overlords

So we look upon our world leaders and laugh at their foolishness and hubris. It’s all we can do.

There is a very reasonable argument to be made that the climate-related Conferences of Parties (COPs) that occur annually under UN auspices are terrible things. They cost (i.e., waste) enormous resources, and they have the potential to do great damage to the world economy and the well-being of the people. Fair enough. But on balance, my view is that it’s a good thing we have them. I can think of no other comparable activities that put on such dramatic and widely-viewed display the immeasurable foolishness and hubris of our political overlords.

By the time you read this, COP26 will likely have opened in Glasgow, Scotland. Thousands will be in attendance. Most every country of the world has sent at least some high-level delegation, and the majority are sending the President or Prime Minister. U.S. President Joe Biden will be there in person, along with PM Boris Johnson of the UK, President Emanuel Macron of France, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, and comparable heads of state from across Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, Oceania, and North and South America. U.S. climate envoy John Kerry used his usual portentous tone to set the stage (as quoted by the BBC):

America’s climate envoy John Kerry says the COP26 climate change summit in Glasgow is the “last best hope for the world to get its act together”.

The idea is that hundreds of global leaders, not a one of whom has much if any idea how the world’s energy systems work, will come together to agree and order that those systems must be completely discarded and replaced. Currently, all the world economies run mostly on fossil fuel energy; but these political leaders are oh so much smarter than that, so they will order that use of such energy must be reduced and then ended, and associated carbon emissions will of course decline commensurately. These people equally have no idea how or whether the newly-ordered alternative energy systems might work, or how much the new systems might cost when fully implemented. Those things, you see, are mere engineering details, too insignificant to warrant the attention of great potentates. What they do know is, as the magnificent Barack Obama put it in 2008, “this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal. . . .”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

China’s ‘Satellite Crusher’: ‘Space Pearl Harbor’ Is Coming by Gordon G. Chang

Posted By on November 1st, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17907/china-satellite-crusher

The satellite, according to China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp., is “tasked with demonstrating technologies to alleviate and neutralize space debris.”

As Beijing sees it, American satellites constitute “debris.”

“[Communist China’s satellite] is a real-world offensive capability that can hunt and destroy American systems and render the U.S. military on earth deaf, dumb, and blind.” — Brandon Weichert, author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, to Gatestone.

At one time, America was dominant in space, and American political leaders decided to go slow on developing anti-satellite weapons for fear of triggering a competition.

All that American restraint did was to allow the Chinese and Russian militaries to grab commanding leads in the race to deploy these impossible-to-defend-against delivery systems for nuclear weapons.

Unfortunately, “the Department of Defense is still unbelievably bureaucratic and slow.”

The Pentagon’s bureaucracy “is just brutal.” — Outgoing Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General John Hyten, CNN, October 28, 2021.

Fortunately, there is also Elon Musk, a bureaucracy of one.

On October 24, China launched its Shijian-21 into orbit. The satellite, according to China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp., is “tasked with demonstrating technologies to alleviate and neutralize space debris.”

As Beijing sees it, American satellites constitute “debris.”

Shijian-21 has a robotic arm that can be used to move space junk—there are more than 100 million pieces of it floating around the earth—or capture, disable, destroy, or otherwise render unusable other nations’ satellites. That arm makes Shijian-21 a “satellite crusher.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

“White People, You Are the Problem” AT&T’s new racial reeducation program promotes the idea that “racism is a uniquely white trait.”Christopher F. Rufo

Posted By on November 1st, 2021

https://www.city-journal.org/att-racial-reeducation-program

AT&T Corporation has created a racial reeducation program that promotes the idea that “American racism is a uniquely white trait” and boosts left-wing causes such as “reparations,” “defund police,” and “trans activism.”

I have obtained a cache of internal documents about the company’s initiative, called Listen Understand Act, which is based on the core principles of critical race theory, including “intersectionality,” “systemic racism,” “white privilege,” and “white fragility.” CEO John Stankey launched the program last year and, subsequently, has told employees that private corporations such as AT&T have an “obligation to engage on this issue of racial injustice” and push for “systemic reforms in police departments across the country.”

According to a senior employee, who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity, managers at AT&T are now assessed annually on diversity issues, with mandatory participation in programs such as discussion groups, book clubs, mentorship programs, and race reeducation exercises. White employees, the source said, are tacitly expected to confess their complicity in “white privilege” and “systemic racism,” or they will be penalized in their performance reviews. As part of the overall initiative, employees are asked to sign a loyalty pledge to “keep pushing for change,” with suggested “intentions” such as “reading more about systemic racism” and “challenging others’ language that is hateful.” “If you don’t do it,” the senior employee says, “you’re [considered] a racist.” AT&T did not respond when asked for comment. 

On the first page of AT&T’s Listen Understand Act internal portal, the company encourages employees to study a resource called “White America, if you want to know who’s responsible for racism, look in the mirror.” The article claims that the United States is a “racist society” and lays out its thesis plainly: “White people, you are the problem. Regardless of how much you say you detest racism, you are the sole reason it has flourished for centuries.” The author, Dahleen Glanton, writes that “American racism is a uniquely white trait” and that “Black people cannot be racist.” White women, she claims, “have been telling lies on black men since they were first brought to America in chains,” and, along with their white male counterparts, “enjoy the opportunities and privileges that white supremacy affords [them].”

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

‘Bags of wind at Glasgow’s pantomime’ VIDEO

Posted By on November 1st, 2021

https://quadrant.org.au/bags-of-wind-at-glasgows-pantomime/

As world leaders, their retinues, activists, renewables rent-seekers, mendicant Third World corruptocrats and jet-setting green hysterics gather to posture and preen for their COP26 media courtiers, we’ll endure hours of news footage and a broad acreage of cookie-cutter prose about the so-called ‘climate crisis’.

Above, GBNews‘ Neil Oliver provides the advance antidote for Glasgow’s green gush of mush.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Who Eventually Won the Cold War? There is nothing like an old Bolshevik grinning that ossified American wokesters are stuck circa 1920s in the old Bolshevik Russia. Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on November 1st, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/10/31/who-eventually-won-the-cold-war/

Pause for a minute to recall the recent past: Did the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff unlawfully intervene in the chain of command to reroute decisions of nuclear weapon readiness through himself? Did he really contact his Chinese Communist counterpart to promise him that China would be warned of possible U.S. aggression? 

Did the lead medical authority on America’s COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci, deny under oath the fact that he routed U.S. aid money, through a third party, to the ground-zero Wuhan virology lab to enhance gain-of-function viral research? 

Did Attorney General Merrick Garland sic the FBI on parents complaining about critical race theory—on the concocted accusation from a school board group, in part cooked up with White House staffer help, that the parents were likely “domestic terrorists”? 

Did we really spend 22 months and $40 million chasing the “Russian collusion” hoax, a myth ginned up by the left-wing media and its enablers in the FBI and CIA? 

Does the public really believe our current ministry of information that the “border is closed”? Or that high gas prices are good? Or that empty shelves reflect strong demand and will result in a more mature public no longer needing to buy superfluous goods? 

Or that spiraling inflation is proof of a strong economy? Or that the road to the Kabul airport was open to anyone with a U.S. passport who wished to leave? Or that the accidental U.S. drone killing of a family in Kabul was a “righteous strike”?

Or that Russians and Trump operatives created a fake lost Hunter Biden laptop, as our former intelligence officials implied on the eve of the election? 

Since when did the government and the now state media issue such serial lies? When did we begin to resemble our old Cold War enemies—to the delight of our current enemies?

Commissars and Culturalists

BOOKS, ELECTIONS Comments turned off

How the 2020 Election Was Rigged Next time someone caricatures evidence of voting irregularities as a conspiracy theory, throw the book at them—Mollie Hemingway’s book. By Bruce Oliver Newsome

Posted By on November 1st, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/10/31/how-the-2020-election-was-rigged/

We are a year overdue for the true story of the 2020 elections. Mollie Hemingway has at last delivered it to us in one tidy volume.

It’s a complex story, which makes for a weighty book. The research is thorough, the writing is evidentiary, the style is clinical—like investigative journalism and social science used to be. The endnotes alone run nearly 100 pages. 

Reading Rigged, one isn’t jarred by hyperbole, conjecture, or spin. Hemingway is unequivocal on progressive malice, yet she can be scathing of Republicans, too. She is particularly critical of Rudy Giuliani’s attempts to publicize fraud nationally, thereby undermining prior case-by-case efforts to get particular state courts to recognize particular violations of particular state laws. 

She also calls out Republican officials who preferred to help the opposition rather than reveal their own state’s dysfunctions. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office, for instance, secretly recorded a telephone appeal from Trump to expose fraud in Fulton County, then misrepresented Trump to the press as asking for the statewide result to be changed. 

Overall, the story reads like a tragedy. One alternates between anger and consternation that bleeding obvious facts were not reported by the mainstream media at the time.

Some evidence of election irregularities broke through mainstream censorship: the strange spikes in votes counted for Biden overnight in counties with unusually strong Democratic Party governance and histories of criminal mishandling of votes (Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Fulton County, for example). 

Over subsequent days, a news consumer with time and effort could piece together strange disputes. Official election observers were denied access, or kept so far away they could not see any ballots. They sought emergency court orders, but some courts set hearing dates weeks in the future or simply denied jurisdiction. Even if observers did obtain a court order, election officials claimed not to understand it (as in Philadelphia). 

In Georgia, observers were told that counting was being suspended overnight, but a surveillance camera recorded video of four persons pulling boxes of ballots from beneath a cloaked table for unobserved digital entry. Still, Georgia’s officers continued to claim that voting had been suspended overnight. Surely this was a story worthy of investigative reporting? The mainstream media preferred to report all the disputes as conspiracy theories. 

Witnesses came forward testifying to ballot harvesting, ballot stuffing, counts for the Democratic Party without ballots, ballots for the Republican Party that disappeared without counting. Nevertheless, the Republican Party could not get most of the media to show up to hear these witnesses, or the courts to admit them. 

And so 2020 petered out, with the election still disputed but barely investigated. Most of the evidence, most of the admissions, most of the backtracking, waited until after Biden’s victory was confirmed by Congress in January.