ISRAEL Comments turned off

“Settler Colonialism”: More Of The Usual Progressive Racism And Hatred Of Freedom Francis Menton

Posted By on May 24th, 2021

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2021-5-22-settler-colonialism-more-of-t

Several years ago, in connection with a family trip to Israel, I looked into the issue of Israeli “settlements” in the areas of East Jerusalem and the West Bank. I then had a post in June 2017 titled “Do You Know The Difference Between ‘Settlers’ And ‘Immigrants’?” .

The Israeli settlements, and the “settlers” who inhabit them, have come in for constant attacks from the international left, culminating in condemnation from a UN Security Council resolution in 2016. The resolution was approved by a 14-0 vote in 2016 (on which vote the U.S., during President Obama’s tenure, abstained, rather than exercising its right to veto). Yet viewed in a broader context, the Israeli settlements are a tiny part of annual migrations of millions of people around the world, going from one political jurisdiction to another. All, or nearly all, of these other migrations are applauded by the international left. Indeed, these other migrations are applauded even when they are clearly violative of the law of the destination — illegal immigration into the United States being the most prominent example.

So what makes the Israeli settlers so subject to widespread condemnation while other migrants are applauded? I thought the answer was not difficult to discern, but the intervening years made things even more obvious. In those years we have seen the ascent of another one of these trendy academic concepts, this one going by the name of “settler colonialism.” The basic idea is that you can tell the difference between (bad) “settler colonialists” and other (good) immigrants by a combination of racial identity and hatred of places that practice freedom-based economic systems.

But how do we know where to draw the line between the “settlers” and the “immigrants”? You can count on the left to take this immediately to the extreme. On May 19 the Black Lives Matter group tweeted its support for “Palestinians” in the current conflict between Israel and Hamas, and in the process associated Israel itself with the term “settler colonialism”:

BOOKS, ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Fake Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom by Dr. Patrick Moore

Posted By on May 24th, 2021

Here is Dr. Patrick Moore’s description of his unique thesis as presented in “Fake Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom”.

“It dawned on me one day that most of the scare stories in the media today are based on things that are either invisible, like CO2 and radiation, or very remote, like polar bears and coral reefs. Thus, the average person cannot observe and verify the truth of these claims for themselves. They must rely on activists, the media, politicians, and scientists – all of whom have a huge financial and/or political interest in the subject – to tell them the truth. This is my effort, after 50 years as a scientist and environmental activist, to expose the misinformation and outright lies used to scare us and our children about the future of the Earth. Direct observation is the very basis of science. Without verified observation it is not possible to know the truth. That is the sharp focus of this book.”

The book contains 98 color photographs, illustrations, and charts. A key target audience is parents who do not approve of the “progressive” school curriculum and its alarmism about the future of civilization and the natural world. Dr. Moore hopes these parents will read his book and pass it on to their high-school and older children to give them an alternative to the bleak future predicted by the prophets of doom. Many other audiences will also find the book informative and convincing.

In 11 chapters the reader is clearly shown that citizens are being misinformed by many environmental doomsday prophesies, ones they cannot verify for themselves. We are told that nuclear energy is very dangerous when the numbers prove it is one of the safest technologies. We are told polar bears will go extinct soon when their population has been growing steadily for nearly 50 years. We are told that there is something harmful in genetically modified food crops when it is invisible, has no name and no chemical formula. We are told severe forest fires are caused by climate change when they are actually caused by poor management of fuel load (dead wood) in the forest. We are told that all the coral reefs will die by 2100 when in fact the most diverse coral reefs are found in the warmest oceans in the world. And of course, we are told that invisible CO2 from using fossil fuels, accounting for more than 80 percent of our energy supply, will make the Earth too hot for life. All of these scare stories, and many more, are simply not true. And this book will convince you, your family, and your colleagues of that. There is no substitute for the truth.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Georgia Judge Approves Audit Of 145,000 Absentee Ballots In Fulton County By Tim Pearce

Posted By on May 24th, 2021

https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-georgia-judge-approves-audit-of-145000-absentee-ballots-in-fulton-county?itm_s

A judge in Georgia unsealed roughly 145,000 absentee ballots from the November election for review in a Friday ruling.

The ballots must remain with Fulton County election officials throughout the audit, and the results of the review cannot impact the outcome of the November election, Henry County Superior Court Judge Brian Amero said. The plaintiffs in the case accepted the terms, saying that the review is still needed after controversial behavior by Fulton County election officials last year, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

“Friday’s decision came in a lawsuit filed by nine plaintiffs, including Garland Favorito, a Fulton county resident and self-styled election watchdog,” the Journal-Constitution reported. “It’s one of more than 30 Georgia lawsuits stemming from the November presidential election and the January runoff for U.S. Senate. Some of the lawsuits are still winding their way through the courts.”

Former Sen. Kelly Loeffler, who now leads the voter registration group Greater Georgia Action after losing a runoff election in January, cheered the judge’s ruling in a statement:

Voter confidence in our election system is the bedrock of our republic. Unfortunately, inconsistencies in Fulton County’s November 2020 absentee ballots cast serious doubt on voters’ faith in our elections. An independent investigation even characterized Fulton County’s absentee ballot handling as ‘generally bad management.’ While there is a dire need to investigate a number of other well-documented issues, we must also inspect Fulton County’s absentee ballots to reassure Georgians that their voices are heard and their votes are counted. The integrity of future elections is critical, and Judge Amero’s decision is a helpful step in restoring transparency, accountability, and voter confidence. We look forward to the findings and their role in promoting transparency and rebuilding faith in our elections.

P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

The Revolution Comes to Juilliard Racial hysteria is consuming the school; unchecked, it will consume the arts.Heather Mac Donald

Posted By on May 24th, 2021

https://www.city-journal.org/racial-hysteria-is-consuming-juilliard?wallit_nosession=1

Turn on CNN or open the New York Times, and you may encounter someone explaining how exhausting it is to be a black person. The idea that systemic racism is leaving blacks scarred and spent has been embraced across mainstream America, articulated by corporate CEOs and university presidents. The latest performative assertion of black oppression is playing out at the Juilliard School in New York City. The controversy has significance beyond the school.

In September 2020, the Juilliard School’s Drama Division announced a series of “community meetings” to address “Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging (EDIB) issues.” The school’s growing cadre of diversity bureaucrats would discuss Juilliard’s’ “anti-racism work.” The head of the Center for Racial Healing would give a presentation. Workshops would address such topics as “race in rehearsal” and “voice and speech and race.” NYU theater professor Michael McElroy, one of the school’s two external diversity consultants, would offer a three-day seminar in black musical culture.

These Drama Division meetings were part of Juilliard’s broader effort to bring race into all its activities, including music and dance. Damian Woetzel, former principal dancer with the New York City Ballet, became Juilliard’s president in July 2018 and proceeded to put increasing bureaucratic clout behind the concept that Juilliard has a racism problem. The school added diversity curricula and audition requirements. It beefed up its system for reporting bias incidents. It mandated diversity workshops for faculty and students.

Those efforts picked up steam after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020. Within a week, Woetzel and the EDIB taskforce had sent out three schoolwide emails on the “work” Juilliard still needed to do to become an “anti-racist community.” The school sponsored a blacks-only “healing” space. It recommended that students and faculty read the books of Ta-Nehisi Coates, Robin DiAngelo, Ibram X. Kendi, and Michelle Alexander to understand systemic racism. On June 11, 2020, Juilliard’s provost, Ara Guzelimian, circulated a student petition. Lending an administration email account to a student communiqué violated school protocol, but the Juilliard Student Congress’s “Call to Action” was important enough to justify the exception, wrote Guzelimian in his cover letter.

The Call to Action charged Juilliard with “systemic injustice.” It demanded an end to the school’s “almost completely Eurocentric” faculty, curriculum, and performances and a “complete in-person season featuring the works of BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, and People of Color] artists.” It called on Juilliard to create #BreonnaTaylor and #GeorgeFloyd scholarships in music, drama, and dance.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Inside the Dems’ betrayal of Israel Michael Goodwin

Posted By on May 24th, 2021

https://nypost.com/2021/05/22/inside-the-democrats-betrayal-of-israel-goodwin/

As presidential press releases go, this one was very short and enormously consequential. Eleven minutes after Israel declared its independence on May 14, 1948, the  White House issued a two-sentence statement.

The first said simply, “This Government has been informed that a Jewish state has been proclaimed in Palestine and recognition has been requested by the provisional Government thereof.”

The second sentence made history: “The United States recognizes the provisional government as the de facto authority of the State of Israel.”

It was signed “Harry Truman.”

The president’s decision made America the first country to recognize the new nation and made him a hero to Jews around the world. It also helped make the Democrat Party a reliable ally of Israel for decades as war after war threatened its survival.

Unfortunately, Truman would not recognize his party today.

An anti-Israel faction has taken root among Democrats and was on full display during Israel’s recent clash with Hamas. Because that faction is largely synonymous with the party’s ascendant far-left wing, more moderate Dems are increasingly afraid to speak up for Israel, just as they are afraid to speak up against the emergence of socialism and anti-white racism in their party.

MORE HEADLINES Comments turned off

MORE HEADLINES MAY 23, 2021

Posted By on May 23rd, 2021

BIDEN’S EPIC FAIL MAKES YOU WONDER HOW ITS EVEN POSSIBLE HTTPS://DFCTODAY.COM/BIDENS-EPIC-FAIL-MAKES-YOU-WONDER-HOW-ITS-EVEN-POSSIBLE/

Joe Biden is proving even more of a ‘master of disaster’ than Jimmy Carter https://www.naturalnews.com/2021-05-21-biden-more-of-a-master-of-disaster.html

Dan Crenshaw Shares ‘Devastating’ Video: ‘Do Those Palestinians’ Lives Not Matter, Rashida?’ https://www.westernjournal.com/dan-crenshaw-shares-devastating-video-palestinians-lives-not-matter-rashida/

 

Analysis: The Squad Can’t Stop Repeating Hamas Propaganda https://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2021/05/21/analysis-the-squad-cant-stop-repeating-hamas-propaganda-n2589752?

GOP sticks up ‘I stand with Israel’ posters in AOC’s hallway in message to ‘Hamas Caucus’ and Squad members who say the ceasefire is NOT enough https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9605681/Squad-members-Ilhan-Omar-Rashida-Tliab-say-Israel-Hamas-ceasefire-NOT-enough.html 

GOING VIRAL IN JAPAN: JOE BIDEN SENT OUT $1,400 STIMULUS CHECKS TO OVER 100,000 JAPANESE CITIZENS (VIDEO) HTTPS://REDRIGHTVIDEOS.COM/GOING-VIRAL-IN-JAPAN-JOE-BIDEN-SENT-OUT-1400-STIMULUS-CHECKS-TO-OVER-100000-JAPANESE-CITIZENS-VIDEO/

 

Tulsi Gabbard Calls on Chicago Mayor to Resign Over ‘Anti-White’ Racism https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2021/05/21/tulsi-gabbard-calls-on-chicago-mayor-to-resign-over-antiwhite-racism-n2589828?

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

“Tied Up and Tortured”: The Persecution of Christians, by Raymond Ibrahim

Posted By on May 23rd, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17394/persecution-of-christians-april

In a video released on April 17, Muslims connected to the Islamic State in Sinai executed 62-year-old Nabil Habashi Salama, a Christian. Salama appears on his knees in the video, with three men holding rifles standing behind him….

“We should remember that Greece spent 400 years under Turkish Islamic rule and that the fight for freedom was bloody. With that in mind it is even more dramatic seeing these images of fighting age migrants desecrating Greek holy places and having no respect for the country they are allegedly seeking refuge in.” — Greek City Times, April 12, 2021.

“[H]e was kept in at least three different police stations and illegal torture cells, where he was mentally and physically tortured to confess to the baseless accusation [of blasphemy]… [P]olice repeatedly threatened to kill him…. The police investigators…also tortured him into naming other members of the Bible study circle…” — Aneeqa Maria, Salamat Masih’s attorney, Morning Star News, April 29, 2021, Pakistan.

The Slaughter of Christians

Egypt: In a video released on April 17, Muslims connected to the Islamic State in Sinai executed 62-year-old Nabil Habashi Salama, a Christian. Salama appears on his knees in the video, with three men holding rifles standing behind him. The one in the middle launches into a typical jihadi diatribe: “All praise to Allah, who ordered his slaves [Muslims] to fight and who assigned humiliation onto the infidels” —pointing contemptuously at the kneeling Christian before him — “until they pay the jizya while feeling utterly subdued.” The words are a paraphrasing of Koran 9:29, which commands Muslims to “fight the people of the book,” understood as meaning Christians and Jews, “until they pay the jizya (monetary tribute) with willing submissiveness and feel themselves utterly subdued.”

The middle speaker continued by threatening “all the crusaders of the world” — a reference to Christians in the West — while singling out the countrymen of the one about to be slain: “as for you Christians of Egypt, this is the price of your support for the Egyptian army.” The speaker then points his rifle at the back of the Christian’s head —as chants of “jihad! jihad! jihad!” blare out — and fires at point-blank range, killing him.

It is unclear when the video was made — Salama was abducted at gunpoint over five months earlier for helping to build the only church in the area. “He kept the faith till the moment he was killed,” the group Sinai Province said of the slain Copt in a statement. During the months of his captivity, several Egyptian activists accused the authorities of indifference in not being able to locate and secure the release of Salama, which they say could easily have been done. Ironically, the Egyptian government issued a statement the day after the video was released saying that they had located and killed the same three terrorists that had executed the Copt—without offering any specifics. The claim was met with skepticism.

In a separate incident, on April 3, in the streets of Minya, a Muslim man butchered a Christian woman and her toddler son with a machete—”as if he were slaughtering chickens,” said eyewitnesses. The murderer, a tuk-tuk driver, is Abu Muhammad al-Harami; his victims were Mary Sa’d and her six-year-old son, Karas. When their paths crossed in the streets, he had made threatening and derogatory comments to Mary. When she said she would report him to police, Abu Muhammad leapt on her with his machete, butchering her and her son. Although Egyptian media and authorities claimed, as they always do, that the man’s motives appear not to have been religious, the fact is every once in a while such “random” attacks on Egypt’s Christians occur.

In late December 2020, for instance, two Muslim brothers went on a stabbing spree against Christians, killing one and critically injuring two others. Authorities said the brothers were in mourning and upset because their mother had died earlier that day. But as a local Christian clergyman said, “what does the death [of the Muslims’ mother] and the Copts have to do with each other?” The same year, on January 12, 2020, a Muslim man crept up behind a Coptic woman walking home with groceries, pulled her head back with a hand full of hair, and slit her throat with a knife in his other hand. Catherine Ramzi was rushed to a nearby medical center, where her throat was sewn with 63 stitches; doctors told her she came within an inch of dying. It is believed that he may have identified her as a Christian for not wearing a hijab around her hair or for having a cross tattoo on her wrist.

MEDIA Comments turned off

CNN Runs Free Advertising for Protests in Support of Palestinian Jihad By Robert Spencer

Posted By on May 23rd, 2021

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2021/05/22/cnn-runs-free-advertising-for-protests-in-support-of-palestinian-jihad-n1448976

First the Associated Press was exposed sharing an office building with Hamas in Gaza, which meant either that they were aware of Hamas’ activities and covered for the terror group, or didn’t know Hamas was there and are therefore the worst reporters in the world. And now comes more confirmation that what we are told are news organizations are actually propaganda arms not only for the Left’s agenda, but for the Palestinian Arab jihad against Israel. CNN on Saturday published an article entitled “Protests in support of Palestinians expected across the United States,” which was not so much a piece of reporting on those protests, but a free advertisement for them, complete with a case for why you should participate in your local orgy of Jew-hatred.

It doesn’t start out too badly: “Protesters are expected to rally in cities across the United States this weekend in support of Palestinians, as Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire ending days of destruction and bloodshed.” But immediately after that comes the staple of establishment media reporting on Israel and the Palestinians: the casualty count. “Since May 10,” CNN claims, “Israeli airstrikes have killed at least 243 people in Gaza, including 66 children, according to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health. Twelve people in Israel, including two children, died as a result of militant fire from Gaza, according to the Israel Defense Forces and Israel’s emergency service.”

Oh, hey, that’s bad: 243 Palestinians, including 66 children, were killed versus only twelve Israelis. The clear implication of CNN’s framing of the story here is that Israel responded in a disproportionate manner to the rockets Hamas fired into Israel, and indiscriminately bombed Gaza without regard for the lives of civilians. Reality is quite different. In the latest conflict, Hamas followed its longstanding practice of launching attacks from civilian areas so as to draw retaliatory fire that would harm civilians and be usable for propaganda purposes. This launching of attacks from civilian areas has been abundantly documented, even by the unflaggingly anti-Israel United Nations. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) tweeted Thursday: “It’s not easy fighting a terrorist organization that embeds its military infrastructure in civilian areas. We use the latest military technology to precisely strike Hamas targets, while minimizing damage to the surrounding areas.”

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Why Are Democrats So Afraid of Election Audits? Democrats claim election audits like the one in Arizona are an existential threat to democracy, but it’s difficult to see how—unless they reveal that our elections have been hijacked. By Charlie Kirk

Posted By on May 23rd, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/05/22/why-are-democrats-so-afraid-of-election-audits/

Democrats are positively terrified of election audits that aren’t completely controlled by the political establishment. If there’s a chance an audit might reveal meaningful information, you can bet Democrats (and certain weak Republicans) will stridently oppose it. The only audits Democrats and their allies support are the ones designed to rubber-stamp previous conclusions.

The increasingly desperate attacks on the ongoing audit in Maricopa County, Arizona—particularly those intended to undermine the credibility of the auditors—show just how much the Democratic Party establishment fears the whole process. Their entire argument is based on sarcasm, scorn, and scare quotes.

The auditors are inspecting the paper that ballots were printed on? They must believe in a far-fetched conspiracy theory!

The auditors are checking to make sure the ballots don’t have watermarks that are not supposed to be there? They must be members of fringe online message boards!

The audit is being funded primarily by private donations? It must be an elaborate “grift” rather than a serious fact-finding effort (not to mention they need the funds to fend off the litany of lawsuits they’re facing).

By smearing the auditors as corrupt and/or inept, and the audit itself as a partisan stunt, leftists are hoping they can discredit the process and convince Americans to stop asking pesky questions about whether any laws were broken or procedural loopholes exploited during the 2020 elections. That’s the way people respond to questions when they don’t want anyone to know the answers.

It’s not just the Arizona audit, either. Democrats and their media allies are already fully engaged in a crusade to preemptively impugn the legitimacy of any audits that might be conducted in other states, describing conservative support for audits in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere as “a bid to bolster former President Donald Trump’s lies about widespread fraud in the 2020 election.”

If they really believe the 2020 elections were “the most secure in American history,” then they should welcome audits as a way of substantiating that claim. Indeed, they should even be celebrating audits run by Republicans, since their conclusions will carry so much more weight with GOP voters. That said, the Arizona auditors have practically been begging Democrats to participate, but the Democrats have only been interested in attacking the process from afar.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Peter Wood :Nikole Hannah-Jones at the Summit The Pulitzer Prize-winning force behind “The 1619 Project” has begun the descent that favored radicals of the past such as Rigoberta Menchú suffered after people began to scrutinize their claims.

Posted By on May 23rd, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/05/22/nikole-hannah-jones-at-the-summit/

Nikole Hannah-Jones was having a very good year. She reached the summit on April 28, when it was widely reported that she had been appointed with tenure, effective July, to the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism at the University of North Carolina’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media. The news came a week after the American Academy of Arts and Sciences announced Hannah-Jones was among some 259 “outstanding individuals” elected to the Academy in 2021. She led the list of eight chosen in “Journalism, Media, and Communications.” 

A year ago May 4, Hannah-Jones won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for commentary. Between those bookends, she has been invited to present numerous prestigious lectures at universities and other august venues. She received the George Polk “special award” in 2019 after receiving it in 2015 for “radio reporting” for “The Problem We All Live With.” She also received a 2015 Peabody Award for “The Case for School Desegregation Today.”

Of course, she was also a 2017 recipient of one of the MacArthur Foundation’s “genius” fellowships for “reshaping national conversations around education reform.”

But her appointment to a named chair at the school from which she received her master’s degree in 2003 had to be among the sweetest distinctions. She was being recognized as a top figure in her chosen profession. 

But on May 18, the bottom fell out. 

The Fall

That day the UNC-Chapel Hill’s board of trustees took the unusual step of refusing to grant Hannah-Jones tenure. The board offered her an alternative: a five-year appointment as a “professor of practice,” with the option of a tenure review down the road. In higher education parlance, this would be a “probationary appointment.” In Hannah-Jones’ world, it might be called a humiliation. She sees herself as one of the most authoritative voices in journalism today. The news that she would still have to prove herself worthy of a tenured academic appointment must have hit her hard.

Be that as it may, it certainly hit the American higher education establishment hard. “The Tenure Denial of Nikole Hannah-Jones Is Craven and Dangerous” roared Silke-Maria Weineck, a University of Michigan German professor in the Chronicle of Higher Education. The Chronicle also features an essay by staff writers Jack Stripling and Andy Thomason, who explain, Hannah-Jones’ “‘1619 Project’ Is a Political Lightning Rod. It May Have Cost Her Tenure.” Colleen Flaherty at Inside Higher Ed headlines her account “A Blatant Intrusion.” She leads with a quote from an anonymous source who says UNC’s trustees acted under “pressure.” 

I would hope so. If there were ever a time when university trustees should be called upon to live up to their responsibilities to maintain the integrity of academic appointments, this was it.