ISRAEL Comments turned off

Palestinians: No to Normalization with the ‘Zionist entity’ by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on February 3rd, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17024/palestinians-normalization-israel

The anti-normalization campaign, which is also waged by Palestinians, means that any Palestinian leader or negotiator who is seen sitting with an Israeli will be condemned by Palestinians and possibly other Arabs as a traitor…. and accused of committing treason.

The last thing any Palestinian officials wants is to be labeled a traitor because, in the world of Fatah and Hamas, that crime is punishable by death.

If… Abbas wants to avoid such a fate, he must do an about-face and put an end to the anti-Israel incitement that is coming, first and foremost, from his very own loyalists.

If and when the Biden administration manages to revive the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, it will have to take into consideration that the Arab campaign against normalization with Israel remains as aggressive as ever.

The anti-normalization campaign, which is also waged by Palestinians, means that any Palestinian leader or negotiator who is seen sitting with an Israeli will be condemned by Palestinians and possibly other Arabs as a traitor.

Two recent examples of the ongoing campaign:

On January 6, the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS), a body dominated by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s ruling Fatah faction and representing hundreds of Palestinian journalists, issued a warning to its members against engaging in normalization activities with Israelis.

The warning came in response to reports that the Israel Defense Forces had invited Palestinian journalists to participate in a Zoom briefing on Israel’s measures to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

Some of the Palestinian journalists who reportedly received the invitation alerted the PJS, which swiftly issued the warning to all its members.

BOOKS, HISTORY, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

When a Far-Left, Female-Led Domestic Terrorism Group Bombed the U.S. Capitol Forgotten in the wake of January 6.

Posted By on February 3rd, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/when-far-left-female-led-domestic-terrorism-group-lloyd-billingsley/

In the furor over the January 6 riot, which Sen. Mitt Romney called an “insurrection incited by the president of the United States,” a more serious assault on the Capitol has been overlooked. For those who weren’t around or may have forgotten, here’s what went down on the evening of November 7, 1983.

“Listen carefully, I’m only going to tell you this one time,” a caller from the “Armed Resistance Unit,” told the operator at the Capitol switchboard. “There is a bomb in the Capitol building. It will go off in five minutes. Evacuate the building.” A Senate document, “Bomb Explodes in Capitol,” describes what happened.

The caller warned that “a bomb had been placed near the chamber in retaliation for recent U.S. military involvement in Grenada and Lebanon.” At 10:58 p.m. “a thunderous explosion tore through the second floor of the Capitol’s north wing.” The device, hidden under a bench at the eastern end of the corridor outside the Senate chamber, “blew off the door to the office of Democratic Leader Robert C. Byrd.  The blast also punched a potentially lethal hole in a wall partition sending a shower of pulverized brick, plaster, and glass into the Republican cloakroom.” The adjacent halls were virtually deserted, so “many lives had been spared.”

Later than night, the Armed Resistance Unit called National Public Radio and proclaimed, “Tonight we bombed the U.S. Capitol.” The bombers “purposely aimed our attack at the institutions of imperialist rule rather than at individual members of the ruling class and government. We did not choose to kill any of them at this time. But their lives are not sacred and their hands are stained with the blood of millions.”

Tonight We Bombed the U.S. Capitol is the title of the 2020 book by historian William Rosenau. In a Smithsonian magazine article headlined “In the 1980s a Far-Left, Female-Led Domestic Terrorism Group Bombed the U.S. Capitol,” Rosenau outlined the group’s back story.

POLITICS Comments turned off

4 Democrat Conspiracy Theorists Who Should Be Denounced By Matt Margolis

Posted By on February 3rd, 2021

https://pjmedia.com/columns/matt-margolis/2021/02/02/4-democrat-conspiracy-theorists-who-should-be-denounced-n1422485

At least 50 House Democrats have called for Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s expulsion from Congress for her alleged embracing of QAnon conspiracy theories. PJM’s Tyler O’Neil recently called on conservatives and Republicans “to condemn Greene’s previous statements on social media and demand an explanation for them.”

I’m not here to condone anything she has said in the past. The problem is that unless those calling for her to be removed from office apply the same standard amongst Democrats, you won’t get me to endorse any punitive action against her. Some of her allegedly violent rhetoric isn’t all that dissimilar to the rhetoric we’ve heard from Democrats about Trump. Congressman Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.)  accused Trump of committing “innumerable crimes against the United States,” including “treason.” Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) accused Trump of treason over the debunked Russian bounties story. Many other Democrats, including pundits, activists, and the media, have accused Trump of treason for various things. Death is, by federal law, an accepted punishment for treason.

But forget that, I could pick a Democrat in Congress at random and find something repulsive about him or her that has equal if not more justification for their removal. Rep. Ilhan Omar’s views on 9/11 and her blatant anti-Semitism, in particular, come to mind. And how many times was Ted Kennedy reelected to the U.S. Senate after killing a woman?

But I digress. Violent rhetoric from the left is a topic for another time. As for Marjorie Taylor Greene’s embrace of conspiracy theories, Democrat “outrage” aimed at her is the epitome of hypocrisy. Democrats have plenty of conspiracy theorists amongst their ranks that somehow never get called out by their own party or the media.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Why We Still Need a Militia—and How to Build One It may seem ridiculous or paranoid, or simply unnecessary, to revive such an institution in a free society. But only a free society could support it. By Dan Gelernter

Posted By on February 3rd, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/02/02/why-we-still-need-a-militia-and-how-to-build-one/

In an obscure but important footnote to the first volume of the Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wonders what would have become of the Soviet terror if the citizens of Russia had armed themselves with hammers, axes, pokers—anything—so that arresting officers of the NKVD would have had to worry whether they would survive each night. The most powerful tyranny in the world could not have stood up against such action. Instead, tens of millions of Russians submitted meekly to the state, one by one. Why?

The same question came up in my elementary school unit on the Holocaust—why did the Jews get onto the trains? Did they fail to understand what was in store for them? In my childhood mind, I tried to unravel questions that seemed as bitter as the fact of the Holocaust itself: Why was there no effective resistance? Was submission so ingrained in these people, or individual courage so lacking?

The answer in both cases is that it was not courage that was lacking, but organization. This concept glimmers through Solzhenitsyn’s description like a fleck of gold in the pebbly shallows of a stream: He imagines a group of neighbors, a half-dozen perhaps, lying in ambush downstairs for the secret policemen. He specifies a group of neighbors. He specifies collective action. One courageous man resisting alone is a suicide. But one courageous man leading a few of his friends can put up a fight.

The wording of our Second Amendment—or, rather, the placement of a single comma—has engendered a raging debate that reached the Supreme Court and persists to this day: Is the second clause of this all-important sentence operative, or dependent? Is the right to bear arms absolute, or does it exist only because of the need for a militia?

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Child Suicide, COVID-19, and the Unions By Larry Sand

Posted By on February 3rd, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/02/02/child-suicide-covid-19-and-the-unions/
If teachers and their unions are truly concerned about dead kids, they should get back to work before the suicide rate for young people goes any higher.

The teachers’ unions’ resistance to opening schools is killing kids . . . literally.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about six percent of U.S. children aged 6 through 17 are afflicted with autism, severe anxiety, depression, trauma-related mental health conditions, and other serious emotional or behavioral difficulties. Due to forced school lockdowns, many of these children who depend on schools for access to vital therapies are being deprived.

So, it is not surprising that mental health problems account for a growing proportion of children’s visits to hospital emergency rooms. In November, the CDC reported that from March 2020, when the pandemic was declared, to October 2020, the figure was up 31 percent for those 12 to 17 years old and 24 percent for children ages 5 to 11, compared with the same period in 2019. And when severe mental health problems exist, suicides escalate.

The National Institutes of Health reports (pre-lockdown) about 70 children in the U.S., ages 5-14 kill themselves every year. While we don’t have national data yet for 2020, that reported number is likely to skyrocket. In Nevada’s Clark County alone, there were 18 youth suicides in the last nine months of 2020.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Did the Dems Have a Plan for the 2020 Election – Back in 2016? A reflection on what the Democrats did for Hillary in the 2016 primaries. Joseph Hippolito

Posted By on February 3rd, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/did-dems-plan-rig-2020-election-2016-joseph-hippolito/

Buried underneath the reams of data, statistical analysis and affidavits that put the Democrats’ win in the recent presidential election in serious question, lies one salient fact:

The Democrats planned to rig that election regardless of whether Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton won in 2016, because the Democrats were rigging the 2016 primaries for Clinton.

Project Veritas revealed the Democrats’ scam that year in a two-part video series, “Rigging the Election.” The series not only shows how paid agitators attempted to disrupt Trump’s campaign, as FrontPage Magazine reported in “Capturing the False Flag.” It uncovers schemes to register ineligible voters and transport non-residents into neighboring states to vote.

All this took place with the full knowledge and consent of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton herself.

Though Project Veritas conducted its undercover investigation five years ago, the information is more than relevant today — especially given Joe Biden’s fraudulent status as President.

Scott Foval, a regional coordinator for People For the American Way and the owner of his own consulting firm at the time, admitted the DNC’s complicity in the 2016 rigging.

FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Biden’s New Asst Sec of State Worked for Islamic Terror State That Funds Hamas “I was inspired by the Palestinian intifada.” Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on February 3rd, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/bidens-new-asst-sec-state-worked-islamic-terror-daniel-greenfield/

“I was inspired by the Palestinian intifada,” Hady Amr wrote a year after September 11, discussing his work as the national coordinator of the anti-Israel Middle East Justice Network.

Biden has now chosen Amr as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israel-Palestine.

“I have news for every Israeli,” Amr ranted in one column written after Sheikh Salah Shahada, the head of Hamas’ Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, was taken out by an Israeli air strike.

Amr warned that Arabs “now have televisions, and they will never, never forget what the Israeli people, the Israeli military and Israeli democracy have done to Palestinian children. And there will be thousands who will seek to avenge these brutal murders of innocents.”

He also threatened Americans that “we too shouldn’t be shocked when our military assistance to Israel and our security council vetoes that keep on protecting Israel come back to haunt us”

The future State Department official was making these threats less than a year after 9/11.

Hady Amr had accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing” and coordinated an organization that had accused Israel of “apartheid” making his appointment, like that of Maher Bitar, an anti-Israel activist appointed as the Senior Director for Intelligence on the NSC, a statement about the Biden administration’s hostile relationship to the Jewish State.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

‘Systemic Racism’ and the Biden Administration By Peter Kirsanow

Posted By on February 3rd, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/systemic-racism-and-the-biden-administration/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=corner&utm_term=second

The first two weeks of the Biden administration have been dominated by promotion of “racial equity” and eradication of “systemic racism.”

Setting aside the fact that structural/institutional/systemic racism is largely a canard, and the administration’s invocation thereof is primarily a tool to expand progressives’ power, there’s one inarguable case of systemic racism that the administration could address, but likely won’t: the blatant and staggering discrimination against Asian Americans in college and grad-school admissions.

The Trump Justice Department filed a brief supporting the appeal to the Supreme Court by Asian-American students who maintain that Harvard discriminates against Asian Americans in admissions. Evidence adduced in the case shows, e.g., that the combined SAT scores of Asian Americans admitted to Harvard between 2010 and 2015 were 218 points higher than those of similarly situated black admittees. Similar disparities, including those involving GPAs, occur in colleges throughout the country.

It’s widely expected that the Biden administration will switch the government’s position on the case, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. If it does, that will tell you all you need to know about the administration’s concerns about systemic racism.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Is Biden Blowing His COVID Vaccine Rollout?

Posted By on February 3rd, 2021

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/02/03/is-biden-blowing-his-covid-vaccine-rollout/

When not attacking the Trump administration for the pace of COVID-19 vaccine distribution, President Joe Biden said he’d dramatically accelerated the rate at which Americans got treated. What’s more, he was supposed to be ready on day one. At least, that’s what he and his team kept telling the public.

So why is the growth rate of daily vaccinations decelerating? And why is Biden now busy making excuses?

Before taking office,  Biden stated that he’d directed his team to prepare a “much more aggressive effort, with more federal involvement and leadership, to get things back on track.”

T.J. Ducklo, a spokesman for Biden’s transition, told CNN in early January that “the president-elect believes we must accelerate distribution of the vaccine while continuing to ensure the Americans who need it most get it as soon as possible.”

The Boston Globe reported on Jan. 8 that “President-elect Joe Biden plans to order the distribution of almost all available doses of the COVID-19 vaccines, in a striking departure from the Trump administration’s strategy of holding back roughly half of the stock to ensure those who have been vaccinated would receive their second dose.”

So, what’s happened since Biden took office?

POLITICS Comments turned off

Ex-Bush Officials Flee the Party of Reagan and Trump They’re following the cult of the GOP establishment instead. Jeffrey Lord

Posted By on February 3rd, 2021

https://spectator.org/bush-officials-republican-trump/

NOTHING NEW HERE…..EXCERPTS

And the GOP Establishment’s reaction to the idea of Reagan as a GOP presidential nominee? Not to mention the liberal media’s reaction? I described it here in The American Spectator in 2015, saying this:

New York Times: “Reagan’s candidacy is ‘patently ridiculous.’ ”
New York Times: “The astonishing thing is that this amusing but frivolous Reagan fantasy is taken so seriously by the news media and particularly by the President [Gerald Ford]. It makes a lot of news, but it doesn’t make much sense.”
New Republic: “Ronald Reagan to me is still the posturing, essentially mindless and totally unconvincing candy man that he’s been in my opinion ever since I watched his first try for the Republican nomination evaporate in Miami in 1968.”
New Republic: “Reagan is Goldwater revisited…. He is a divisive factor in the party.”
Harper’s magazine: “That he should be regarded as a serious candidate for President is a shame and an embarrassment for the country at large to swallow.”
Chicago Daily News: “The trouble with Reagan, of course, is that his positions on the major issues are cunningly phrased nonsense — irrationality conceived and hair-raising in their potential mischief…. Here comes Barry Goldwater again, only more so, and at this stage another such debacle could sink the GOP so deep it might never recover.”
Time: “Republicans now must decide whether he represents a conservative wave of the future or is just another Barry Goldwater calling on the party to mount a hopeless crusade against the twentieth century.”
Newsweek: Ronald Reagan is “a man whose mind and nerve and mediagenic style have never been tested in Presidential politics and may not be adequate to the trial.”
National Review (a conservative magazine): “Reagan’s image remains inchoate.… At the outset of his campaign, his image is largely that of the role-playing actor — pleasant on stage, but ill-equipped for the real world beyond the footlights. Reagan does not yet project the presidential image. He is not seen as a serious man.”
Manchester Union-Leader (a conservative New Hampshire paper): Reagan “lacks the charisma and conviction needed to win.”
Pravda, the official newspaper of the Soviet Union: Reagan is a “dinosaur from the ‘cold war.’… It is strange that there are still fish in the sea that are tempered by this putrid bait.”

That was just the Establishment media. Next up were the icons of the Establishment Republican Party of the day.

The Ripon Society: “The nomination of Ronald Reagan would McGovernize the Republican Party.”
Vice President Nelson Rockefeller: Reagan is “a minority of a minority” who “has been taking some extreme positions.”
New York’s Republican Sen. Jacob Javits: Reagan’s positions are “so extreme that they would alter our country’s very economic and social structure and our place in the world to such a degree as to make our country’s place at home and abroad, as we know it, a thing of the past.”
Illinois Republican Sen. Charles Percy said Reagan’s candidacy was “foolhardy” and would lead to a “crushing defeat” for the Republican Party. “It could signal the beginning of the end of our party as an effective force in American political life.”
Former President Gerald Ford: “I hear more and more often that we don’t want, can’t afford to have a replay of 1964.” If the Republican Party nominates Ronald Reagan “it would be an impossible situation” because Reagan “is perceived as a most conservative Republican. A very conservative Republican can’t win in a national election.” Asked if that meant Ford thought Reagan can’t win, Ford replied to the New York Times: “That’s right.” The Times story went on to observe that Ford thought “Mr. Reagan would be a sure-loser in November” and that Reagan held “extreme and too-simple views.”

Sound familiar? Of course it does.