EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Teachers Unions Go Woke The NEA and AFT get behind progressive political indoctrination.

Posted By on July 8th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-teachers-unions-go-woke-11625697757?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Parents didn’t ask to be thrown into the trenches of America’s culture war, but progressives aren’t giving them a choice. Witness the way the national teachers unions are adopting woke values and pressing them into K-12 curriculums across the U.S.

The National Education Association, the largest teachers union, held its annual meeting last week and the measures approved by delegates deserve broader attention. One calls for the union to support and lead campaigns that “result in increasing the implementation of culturally responsive education, critical race theory, and ethnic (Native people, Asian, Black, Latin(o/a/x), Middle Eastern, North African, and Pacific Islander) Studies curriculum in pre- K-12 and higher education.”

Critical theory is a neo-Marxist ideology that is pervasive in higher education and teaches that a person is defined above all else by race, gender and sexual orientation, and that American institutions are designed to ensure white supremacy and “the patriarchy.”

The delegates also directed the NEA to lobby for “professional development around cultural responsiveness, implicit bias, anti-racism, trauma-informed practices, restorative justice practices and other racial justice trainings” for “all school employees.” The delegates called for similar training for students. Just what second-graders need: instruction on how to distrust kids with different skin colors.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Biden Inc.: Hunter, Joe, and the Mexican Oligarchs Charles lipson

Posted By on July 8th, 2021

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/07/07/biden_inc_hunter_joe_and_the_mexican_oligarchs_146043.html

The indictment of the Trump Organization’s chief financial officer has received a lot of press, and properly so. But while the media has been focused on the former president, they have ignored another corruption story involving the sitting president and his family. Like so much news that has been buried, the latest comes from Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop. You know, the one the Bidens and their allies in Congress and the media suggested was a “Russian plant” and disinformation campaign, before that cynical claim was demolished by the director of national intelligence.

The latest buried story involves some photographs, taken in Joe Biden’s office in 2014. They include the then-vice president, his son Hunter, and Carlos Slim, the richest man in Mexico (and once the richest in the world), plus some of Slim’s associates.

Why are the pictures newsworthy? Not because some U.S. officials met with some rich foreign businessmen. That happens all the time. Their real significance is that the vice president met with these guys and included his son at the same time Hunter was working on lucrative business deals with the same people. That looks like self-dealing by the Biden family, despite Joe’s repeated insistence that he knew nothing about his son’s business.

Hunter had other meetings with Carlos Slim and associates in Mexico. Those came after he flew there with his father on Air Force Two, just as he had flown to similar business meetings in China. When you arrive on Air Force Two, when your father is the second-highest official in the U.S. government, and when you bring your business associates to meet him, you are sending a clear signal to potential partners around the world: “I’m incredibly well connected and, if you do business with me, I can open the biggest and best doors in the U.S. government for you.”

Since Hunter has no other marketable skills, opening those doors is the only thing you are paying him for. In country after country, the oligarchs Hunter was wooing had the good fortune to meet with the vice president, meetings that Hunter apparently arranged. Some were held in the host countries, some on the White House grounds.

When you have connections like this in Chicago, you whisper, “I know a guy.” Hunter virtually shouts it. He knows a guy: the “Big Guy,” as one of his secret notes describes his father. That note laid out how the lucre from another deal would be divided, with the “Big Guy” as a silent partner. A partner in that deal, Tony Bobulinski, has publicly stated that all the partners knew the “Big Guy” (or BG) was Joe Biden.

ELECTIONS, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

“Thoughts on Voting, Including Ranked Choice Voting” Sydney Williams

Posted By on July 8th, 2021

https://swtotd.blogspot.com/

Because of technology we are able to live in a complex world. Yet, we make better decisions, when, as Confucius said, we make the complicated simple. Through early voting and no-excuse absentee voting, officials have made voting more accessible but associated complexities have increased the likelihood of fraud. Debate persists as to whether those changes have proven efficacious.  Now, there is a renewed effort to improve the election process through the (re)introduction of ranked choice voting (RCV).

From a personal perspective, I am not a fan of early voting for two reasons: One, it deprives the voter of weighing issues until Election Day and, two, early voters are more likely to go to the polls following a pep rally, so their decisions are likely to be emotional rather than deliberative. As for absentee voting, I believe that, to the extent possible, voters who are able should vote in person. Not only does is it simpler, it is easier to assure that the voter is legitimate. As for ranked choice voting, I lean in its favor.

RCV is used in elections when three or more candidates are on the ballot, as it eliminates the need for a runoff election. As the name implies, it allows voters to rank choices by preference, i.e., 1 – 5. When the votes are tallied, if one candidate has won an outright majority, then he or she wins the election. If not, the candidate with the fewest number of first choice votes is eliminated. Those who voted for that candidate have their votes transferred to their second choice. This continues until a single candidate gains a majority. If the process is prolonged, some ballots will be eliminated – “exhausted” is the term used.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Why Palestinian Leaders Are Really Inciting Violence Against Israel by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on July 7th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17533/palestinian-leaders-inciting-violence

Less than three hours after Banat, 42, was taken into custody, the PA announced that he had “died after his health deteriorated during the arrest.”

Banat’s family has called for a neutral international committee to investigate….

The Palestinian government, which is responsible for the killing of Banat and assaults on journalists, political activists, and social media users, is now supposedly trying to beautify its image by joining a UN treaty against torture.

If the PA were really serious about human rights, it would stop arresting, torturing, harassing and intimidating its critics and political rivals. The PA talk about joining the anti-torture treaty is solely aimed at deceiving the international community into believing that Abbas and his government actually care about reforms and human rights.

Senior Fatah official Ahmed Bahar said that any Palestinian who protests against the Palestinian leadership, and not Israel, is a “traitor.”

This is the same Palestinian leadership that has told the new US administration that it is keen on resuming the peace process with Israel. While Abbas and senior Palestinian officials are talking about the resumption of the peace process with Israel, they are at the same time urging their people to forget about the killing of the anti-corruption activist and continual attacks on their own citizens, and instead engage in violent confrontations with Israelis.

The Palestinian Authority (PA), facing growing criticism over the death of Palestinian anti-corruption political activist Nizar Banat, is trying to redirect the anger on the Palestinian street toward Israel.

Although Israel had nothing to do with the brutal killing of Banat, steering anger toward it is an old tactic used by Palestinian leaders for many years; whenever your people are angry with your corruption and repressive measures, you tell them that it is all Israel’s fault.

Banat was killed on June 24, shortly after more than twenty Palestinian security officers raided the home where he was staying in the West Bank city of Hebron. Banat’s family said that even before taking him into custody, the officers beat him with metal clubs and rifle butts.

Less than three hours after Banat, 42, was taken into custody, the PA announced that he had “died after his health deteriorated during the arrest.”

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Class at Yale Compares American Prisons to Nazi Concentration Camps By Eric Lendrum

Posted By on July 7th, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/07/06/class-at-yale-compares-american-prisons-to-nazi-concentration-camps/

In the fall of this year, the Ivy League university of Yale will be offering a class that explicitly compares the American prison system to Nazi concentration camps, Soviet gulags, and other brutal authoritarian regimes throughout history, the New York Post reports.

The class, titled “Mass Incarceration in the Soviet Union and the United States,” falsely claims that the United States is currently operating “one of the most brutal prison societies in human history.” The course description says that the class will be “an investigation of the experience and purposes of mass incarceration in the Soviet Union and the United States in the twentieth century.”

To this end, the class will also compare the American prison system to “important comparative cases, such as Nazi Germany and Communist China.”

“Incarceration is central to the understanding, if not usually to the self-understanding, of a society,” the course description claims. “This course proposes a frontal approach to the subject, by investigating two of the major carceral systems of the twentieth century, the Soviet and the American.”

The class will be taught by History professor Timothy Snyder and Philosophy professor Jason Stanley. Stanley took to Twitter to further justify the course’s existence, claiming that “the United States is the nation with the highest incarceration rate in the world…almost 10 percent of the world’s prison population comes from the US’s traditionally oppressed minority, the 38 million black Americans.” He then went on to further claim, without any evidence, that “US prisons are famous for brutality.”

In the Soviet Union, such concentration camps – known as “gulags” – were primarily used for the imprisoning of minorities and political prisoners, often put to heavy labor or starved to death for opposing the Communist regime. In Nazi Germany, similar concentration camps were primarily used for rounding up and executing various minorities that did not support the Nazi regime, with Jews being the primary target, as well as Christians, Communists, homosexuals, and other groups.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

What Is Trump To Us? To be worthy of following, post-Trump leadership must become consistent in deed with the insight that vaulted Donald Trump to public attention. By Angelo Codevilla

Posted By on July 7th, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/07/06/what-is-trump-to-us/

Donald Trump became the political vehicle for the American people’s resentment of an overweening, corrupt ruling class. Trump’s invaluable contribution to the Republic was to lead Americans publicly to disrespect that class. 

Americans elected Trump to preserve freedoms and prosperity against the encroachments of that class. But instead, he became the catalyst by which that class cohered to transform the American Republic into an oligarchy. 

During Trump’s presidency, more wealth passed from ordinary Americans to oligarchs, and more freedoms were lost than anyone imagined possible. As we consider how to remedy these losses, Trump’s fateful combination of things said and unsaid, of things done and not done, must be part of our search for the persons and policies most likely to lead republican Americans out of our quandary.

Persona Politica

In 2015 and 2016, candidate Trump’s disrespectful, disdainful attitude toward the ruling class put him at the head of presidential preference polls ab initio, and kept him there. Throughout the campaign, he said little of substance—just enough to give the impression that he was on the side of conservatives on just about everything. His leitmotif was “I despise those whom you despise because they despise you. I’m on your side, America’s side.” 

Trump promised to “make America great again,” but did not explain what had made it great in the first place nor how to restore it. Never a religious person, and one who had once expressed support for abortion, Trump delivered more stirring thoughts on religious freedom and the right to life than any candidate ever, including Ronald Reagan.

Trump believed in the unity between himself and his followers, and that they would stay with him, even if he were to shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue. Millions of them reciprocated. The political, and even the moral content of that unity mattered less. He did not try to support his many accusations with facts. Millions who disagreed with him or who disliked him personally voted to make Trump president, and even more voted to reelect him. 

But whatever Trump might have thought, his voters knew that hatred for the ruling class—not Trump himself—was why they supported him. It was about themselves, not Trump. The ruling class knew it, too. That is why, for most of the past six years, it brayed so much disdain from every available venue on him personally, trying to convince at least some of his followers that he is unworthy of decent people’s allegiance. 

We need not rehearse the size, provenance, ubiquity, and vehemence of the ruling class’ attacks on Trump. It is near impossible to recall any official, semi-official, corporate, educational, media, or professional association that did not take part in them, often repeating the very same words ad nauseam. Trump’s peculiarities made it possible for the oligarchy to give the impression that its campaign was about his person, his public flouting of conventional norms, rather than about the preservation of their own power and wealth. The principal consequence of the ruling class’ opposition to candidate Trump was to convince itself, and then its followers, that defeating him was so important that it legitimized, indeed dictated, setting aside all laws, and truth itself. 

FOREIGN POLICY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

In Afghan Peace Talks, the Taliban Gain Legitimacy While Pursuing War Drawn-out negotiations in Doha risk turning into a trap, Afghanistan officials warn

Posted By on July 7th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-afghan-peace-talks-the-taliban-gain-legitimacy-while-pursuing-war-11625584192

DOHA, Qatar—Taliban representatives and Afghan government delegates meet every few days at a beachfront Ritz-Carlton resort and spa here, the unhurried pace of their peace talks sharply contrasting with the raging war back home.

In recent weeks, the insurgents have seized nearly a third of Afghanistan’s rural districts and besieged several provincial capitals, taking advantage of the withdrawal of American forces that is nearing completion.

The Doha negotiations, launched last September, were meant to find a peaceful settlement to the four-decades long Afghan war. Now, they risk becoming a mechanism through which the Taliban could legitimize their recent military victories, gaining international approval for an eventual takeover, Afghan government representatives warn.

“The delays that we see from the other side in the progress of talks are not corresponding to the sense of urgency that we have. The violence needs to end, the war needs to end, and we need to reach a political settlement,” said senior government negotiator Nader Nadery, who heads Afghanistan’s civil service commission. “Are they hoping to take over militarily, and then to give it some sort of cover, to say ‘Oh, we are talking in Doha?’ We are aware of these traps.”

The Taliban agreed to sit down for negotiations with representatives of President Ashraf Ghani’s government and other major political forces in Kabul as part of the February 2020 deal between the insurgent group and the Trump administration to pull out all American forces from the country.

President Biden’s decision in April to implement the U.S. military departure without any preconditions about progress toward a peace deal has removed the main leverage to convince the Taliban to make concessions. Only several hundred U.S. troops still remain in Afghanistan, mostly at and near the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, following last week’s closure of the Bagram air base, the centerpiece of the 20-year American war effort there.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

India: Muslim Politician Demands All Deputy Chief Minister’s Offices Be Reserved For Muslims A jihad through the ranks. Ashlyn Davis

Posted By on July 7th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/07/india-muslim-politician-demands-all-deputy-chief-ashlyn-davis/

Adding to his party’s list of bizarre demands, Syed Asim Waqar, leader of the Islamic political party All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen, has asked all states to appoint Muslims as Deputy Chief Ministers (CM). The Muslim leader has skillfully made this demand just before the Uttar Pradesh State elections, to polarize the electorate.

Waqar asserts that other political parties, such as the secular Congress and the socialist Samajwadi Party, must put forward their views on this issue. Waqar has expressed disappointment in politicians who approach the Muslims for votes but grow apprehensive when Muslims demand a Muslim Deputy CM. He complained that the Muslims were not given the promised 12% representation in 2012, and proclaimed, “We will definitely snatch away the Deputy CM post from them. You will have to make a Muslim the deputy CM of the state.” He also claimed that it’s only a matter of time before political parties agree to give the Deputy CM position to the Muslims. That this democratic post should be reserved for Muslims only is a fanciful idea that abolishes the very principles of democracy and secularism on which India is predicated.

Anyhow, what we must ponder is this: why is it that after 70 years of independence, a Muslim politician wants a special privilege for Muslims in a democratic state? It is not because India has denied them participation in the federal structure.

The Islamic rule in India that lasted for several centuries was marked by large-scale religious conversions and orchestrated mass massacres. When the British decided to leave, the man who became the founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, demanded an Islamic country for his people, and his demand was met. Unlike the Hindus, who were forced to leave the Islamic provinces of Pakistan and East Pakistan (present-day Bangladesh), a large number of Muslims chose not to relocate to Pakistan, and stayed back in India with assurances of safety and equality extended by the leaders who were leading the country at that time.

Muslims in India, from the genesis of its democracy, were appointed to key positions in the government. India’s first-ever Education Minister was Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, who was born in Makkah. He was home-schooled and self-taught. The Indian education system doesn’t recognize these concepts, but cordially extended the education ministry to a Maulana whose proficiency was in Islamic studies, the Quran, the Hadith, and Sharia. He had also learned other contemporary subjects from tutors hired by his parents. This should explain why the Islamic invasion in India has been glorified in school textbooks and invaders been introduced as great emperors.

Eminent Muslim personalities have been voted into the highest office of India, that is, the President’s office, multiple times; Zakir Hussain, Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, and A. P. J. Abdul Kalam have served as President, and Mohammad Hidayatullah served as acting President for a limited time as well.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Anni Cyrus Video: My Plight Under Sharia Slavery Former child bride unveils the true roots of Islamic child marriage.

Posted By on July 7th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/07/anni-cyrus-video-my-horrific-plight-under-sharia-frontpagemagcom/

This new Glazov Gang episode features Anni Cyrus, an artist, the producer of The Glazov Gang, the founder of Live Up To Freedom and National Director of American Truth Project.

[Learn more about how Anni has joined Mike Lindell in his fight for freedom and also about her new Etsy Channel.]

Anni shares her Horrific Plight Under Sharia Slavery, unveiling the true roots of Islamic child marriage.

Don’t miss it!

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Palestinian Analyst Bassem Eid Invites the Squad to Visit Him in Jerusalem Are they ready to confront the truth about Israel and Hamas? Hugh Fitzgerald

Posted By on July 7th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/07/palestinian-analyst-bassem-eid-invites-squad-visit-hugh-fitzgerald/

Bassem Eid is a Palestinian analyst and human-rights campaigner who chooses to live in Jerusalem, under Israeli rule, rather than in those parts of the West Bank where Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority hold sway. He’s not fond either of the PA, or of Hamas, and he’s horrified that those claiming to champion the Palestinians fail to realize how cruelly treated they are by their own corrupt leaders. Bassem Eid’s scolding of the Squad — Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, and Ayanna Pressley — is here: “Palestinian Activist: It’s Time Ilhan Omar and ‘The Squad’ Learned the Truth About Israel and Hamas,” by Bassem Eid, Algemeiner, July 1, 2021:

US Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN) appeared on CNN’s State of the Union on Tuesday, and was asked by host Jake Tapper about her long record of virulently anti-Israel comments (which included her comparison earlier this month of Israel to Hamas) and why some of her Jewish Congressional colleagues had called her out for again issuing antisemitic tropes….

“I’ve welcomed any time my colleagues asked to have a conversation to learn from them [and] for them to learn from me,” she said. “I think it’s really important for these members to realize that they haven’t been partners in justice.”

Bassem Eid had ready his reply:

I’m a Palestinian who grew up in a UNWRA refugee camp outside of Jerusalem, and have been a human rights activist all my life. Let me say this as directly as I can: Rep. Omar does not know what she is talking about….

Politicians like Omar, Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) spend a considerable amount of time attacking Israel for the supposed harm it inflicts on Palestinians.

But if they truly care about the well-being of Palestinians, they ought to focus their attention elsewhere. These days, the vast majority of suffering Palestinians experience is the direct result of the corruption of the Palestinian Authority and the influence of the terrorist group Hamas.

Corruption affects every aspect of life for Palestinians. It cripples our economy, which in turn makes government jobs among the most highly prized. However, those jobs are awarded based on connections rather than qualifications, which perpetuates the cycle of corruption. No announcements are posted for new government jobs. This lack of transparency is pervasive throughout the West Bank and Gaza.