ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Energy Commentary A Lesson for America: Green Policies Crush German Economy Diana Furchtgott-Roth / Alexander Frei

Posted By on March 11th, 2024

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/03/08/lesson-america-green-policies-crush-german-economy/

Germany’s gross domestic product has been falling since the third quarter of 2022, causing fears of the first 2-yearlong recession since the early 2000s. German farmers are openly protesting new climate regulations that would raise the price of diesel fuel, vital for tractors and farm machinery. This discontent is mirrored by the general public, which is opposed to higher energy costs that drag down the economy. Recent polls show a significant shift in public opinion that’s increasingly opposed to the coalition government.

Unlike the U.S. House of Representatives or the Senate, where invariably one party secures a ruling majority, multiple German parties must form a coalition to reach the required 50%+1 majority threshold.

Currently, the Green Party, the Social Democratic Party, and the Free Democratic Party comprise this coalition. The latest polls show all these parties polling far below their 2021 election results while the more right-leaning parties, such as the Christian Democratic Union and the Alternative for Germany, are surging in popularity.

The recent economic slowdown has resulted in widespread political discontent, and the core of the slowdown has been disastrous energy policy.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Biden’s Criminally Fuzzy Tax Math

Posted By on March 11th, 2024

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/03/11/bidens-criminally-fuzzy-tax-math/

At one point during his State of the Union speech, President Joe Biden ranted about how billionaires don’t pay enough in taxes and asked the public to envision all the great things that we could do if the super-rich “paid their fair share.”

In doing so, he took lying with statistics to a new, otherworldly level.

Here’s what Biden said:

THE PRESIDENT: You know, there are 1,000 billionaires in America. You know what the average federal tax is for those billionaires?

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Zero!

THE PRESIDENT: No.

They’re making great sacrifices — 8.2%.

AUDIENCE: Booo —

THE PRESIDENT: That’s far less than the vast majority of Americans pay.

No billionaire should pay a lower federal tax rate than a teacher, a sanitation worker, or a nurse.

I proposed a minimum tax for billionaires of 25%— just 25%. You know what that would raise? That would raise $500 billion over the next 10 years.

And imagine what that could do for America. Imagine a future with affordable childcare, millions of families can get what they need to go to work to help grow the economy.

Imagine a future with paid leave, because no one should have to choose between working and taking care of their sick family member.

Imagine — imagine a future with home care and eldercare, and people living with disabilities so they can stay in their homes and family caregivers can finally get the pay they deserve.

All Biden has is imagination — and no facts to back it up —  when it comes to this issue.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Senator Fetterman blasts Hamas ‘cowards’ hiding behind Ramadan

Posted By on March 11th, 2024

https://worldisraelnews.com/senator-fetterman-blasts-hamas-cowards-hiding-behind-ramadan/

Pennsylvania Democrat says Hamas ‘must be destroyed,’ gives backing to Israel’s counter-terror campaign.

Hamas terrorists attacked Israel on a Jewish holiday on Oct. 7—50 years and a day after a group of Arab nations launched a surprise attack on the Jewish state during the High Holiday of Yom Kippur.

Many world leaders, including in Washington, are saying that Israel should halt attacks during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) is not one of them.

Sharing a Wall Street Journal article titled “Hamas bets on Ramadan to help it survive Israel’s assault,” Fetterman wrote, “Of course. Hamas cowards hide in tunnels, hospitals, schools and refugee camps. Now, behind a holy time.”

“Hamas must be destroyed, and Sinwar brought to justice or eliminated,” he added, of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar. “I fully support Israel’s campaign to achieve this.”

David McCormick, a Republican candidate for the other Pennsylvania senate seat, agreed with Fetterman. “He’s right,” McCormick wrote. He added of his opponent, “It’s past time for Bob Casey to agree.”

Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, also responded to Fetterman’s post.

ANTI-SEMITISM, MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Leading California Hospitals Are Becoming a ‘Battlefield’ as Jewish Patients, Doctors Face Surging Antisemitism ‘The halls of medicine should be to treat humanity,’ one doctor tells the Sun, not fodder for political protest. M.J.Koch

Posted By on March 11th, 2024

https://www.nysun.com/article/leading-california-hospitals-are-becoming-a-battlefield-as-jewish-patients-doctors-face-surging-antisemitism

Brazen acts of antisemitism are tearing apart one of the top hospitals in the nation at the University of California San Francisco, with Jewish doctors being bullied, cancer patients encountering antisemitic graffiti, and one pregnant Israeli woman reportedly being refused care. 

The university has seen a surge in antisemitism at its sprawling network of seven Bay Area hospitals and on the social media posts of its most prominent doctors since Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Israel. Jewish doctors tell the Sun that they are “paranoid” about speaking out on the issue despite a growing number of complaints from patients regarding their providers’ views on the Israel-Hamas war.

Most recently, graffiti invoking the language of the Holocaust was found on two signs near UCSF’s cancer center at its Mission Bay campus. The chancellor of UCSF, Sam Hawgood, condemned the incident in a statement on Monday and said that the local police are investigating it.

In another striking instance, a whiteboard was wheeled out and positioned at the entrance to a UCSF cancer building. It bore the words “Free Palestine from Nazi Zionist Schwein,” invoking the German word meaning “pig.”

In a physician lounge was a sign that said “stop bombing hospitals,” one UCSF doctor, who asked for anonymity given the sensitive nature of the situation, tells the Sun. He also noticed that a UCSF resident had a phone case with a Palestinian flag on it and the words, “warning, you are on Palestinian land.”

ISRAEL Comments turned off

POSITIVE NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

Posted By on March 10th, 2024

https://verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com/

Israel is at war on the ground with terrorist barbarians and virtually with a hostile media, international academies and ignorant and hypocritical protesters.

Thanks to Michael Ordman we learn about the real Israel which gives the lie to the narrative of the vile cretins who have made an art form of libeling and bashing Israel. Please read it all. rsk

POSITIVE NEWS DURING A WAR

Gap-year students mentor displaced kids.  Israeli high school graduates in a pre-army volunteer program are supporting children evacuated due to the war. 60 joined NGO Bakehila (see here previously) mentoring Jewish and Arab kids relocated from Kiryat Shmona to Haifa. Others helped at Bakehila’s Jerusalem’s communes.

https://www.israel21c.org/gap-year-israelis-mentor-kids-impacted-or-displaced-by-war/

Son of Chabad emissary surprises parents. (TY Sam Kramer) Chabad emissaries, who thought that their son was fighting in Gaza, were overjoyed when he was invited to join them on stage at a dinner in Florida.  Join Israel Good News Only WhatsApp: https://chat.whatsapp.com/LH48ij0tIvFHnxg0hL8f8T

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/386270

Residents of Shlomit return. (TY WIN) Residents have returned to the Israeli village of Shlomit, just a few kilometers from Gaza, five months after having been evacuated following Oct 7. They are building a daycare center, funded by JNF-USA., to show that life has restarted and give strength to all the families in the region.

https://israfan.com/2024/02/29/homecoming-to-shlomit-a-communitys-resilient-return-amidst-ongoing-struggle/  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPMs4yIcrwU

Regrowing Israel. Prior to Oct 7, the 40,000 hectares of western Negev agricultural land supplied 70 percent of Israel’s fresh produce. Regrow Israel (see here previously) intends to help farmers rehabilitate the land. It has support from the VIP non-profit, Israel’s Volcani Center, Ben Gurion University. and the MIGAL Institute.

https://www.israel21c.org/farms-deliberately-destroyed-by-hamas-to-get-long-term-rehab/

Aid for the war wounded. After Oct 7, Israel’s largest volunteer organization Yad Sarah went into war mode. It filled container loads of equipment and relocated them outside hospitals where Yad Sarah didn’t have a branch. It then opened “The Soldier Rehabilitation Unit” to aid disabled soldiers physically and socially.

https://www.israel21c.org/war-testing-israels-biggest-medical-aid-volunteer-group/ 

Massive land purchase discounts to IDF veterans. IDF soldiers leaving the war can qualify for a discount on the land in the Galilee or Negev regions to build a home.  A soldier who does not own an apartment will receive a 90% discount and a combat veteran will receive a 95% discount – making it almost free.

https://worldisraelnews.com/idf-vets-to-receive-massive-land-purchasing-discounts/

Ohad goes to Wembley. (TY Yanky) Freed hostage Ohad Munder (see here previously), who spent his 9th birthday in Gaza, travelled to Wembley to watch his favorite UK team, Liverpool, play Chelsea in the cup final. He also met Israeli international and Tottenham striker Manor Soloman.

https://www.thejc.com/community/released-hostage-ohad-munder-gets-to-watch-his-football-heroes-yvne4rgh

So many heroes. The Middle East forum mission to Israel met a country of heroes. They included Nova massacre survivors who were in uniform a week later to help clean up houses, feed pet fish, find missing cats and dogs, and empty refrigerators and freezers of rotting food. And the resilience of Israelis was everywhere.

https://www.jns.org/israels-heroes-will-ensure-victory/

Saved by paramedic who trained in his methods. Yonati is CEO at Extreme Solutions that trains elite units and emergency organizations to handle extreme emergency situations. On Jan 8, in Gaza, he was hit by six bullets, one piercing his lung. Luckily, IDF medic Litav had taken an Extreme course and saved Yonati’s life.

https://5townscentral.com/2024/02/26/ceo-saved-by-idf-paramedic-who-trained-in-his-own-lifesaving-methods/

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Pro-Palestine maniacs destroy painting of Balfour at Cambridge University By Monica Showalter

Posted By on March 10th, 2024

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/03/propalestine_maniacs_destroy_painting_of_balfour_at_cambridge_university.html

A menacing new low from the savages and barbarians who attack art.
So now we learn again why we can’t have nice things:

According to the New York Times:

A pro-Palestinian group slashed and spray-painted a century-old portrait of Arthur James Balfour at the University of Cambridge on Friday, defacing a painting of the British official whose pledge of support in 1917 for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people” helped pave the way to Israel’s founding three decades later.

The group, Palestine Action, said in a statement that the destruction of the portrait in Trinity College, Cambridge, was intended to call attention to “the bloodshed of the Palestinian people since the Balfour Declaration was issued,” particularly in light of the current conflict in Gaza.

A spokeswoman for Trinity, whose alumni include King Charles III as well as Balfour himself, said in a statement on Friday that the college “regrets the damage caused to a portrait of Arthur James Balfour during public opening hours” and that it had notified the police. A Cambridge police statement said officers were on the scene to investigate a report of “criminal damage.”

We’ve been outraged before by this rubbish from activists, none of whom could draw a stick figure if they were playing ‘hangman.’

But this represents a new low in activist barbarism. In the past, environmental activists, such as those I described here, in 2022, merely chose to damage glass covering artwork, or color water of historic fountain sculptures, or glue themselves to the floor or the frame of western masterpieces, they always justified their acts by claiming they weren’t actually damaging the paintings, though that is arguable to some extent.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Treason of the Intellectuals & ‘the Undoing of Thought’ Benda’s call for faith in transcendent truth remains a beacon amid the turmoil of contemporary cultural debates. Roger Kimball

Posted By on March 10th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/03/10/the-treason-of-the-intellectuals-the-undoing-of-thought/

Last week, the commentator Lee Smith had me on “Words That Matter,” his show for Epoch TV. He had recently come across an essay I had written some thirty years ago about Julien Benda’s 1927 book La Trahison des clercs, “the treason of the intellectuals,” and was struck by its contemporary relevance. We covered a lot of ground in the half hour allotted to us. The show will air in a week or two.  I hope you will watch it.  In the meantime, I share the original essay, with some modifications, below. 

“When hatred of culture becomes itself a part of culture, the life of the mind loses all meaning.”
—Alain Finkielkraut, The Undoing of Thought

“Today we are trying to spread knowledge everywhere. Who knows if in centuries to come there will not be universities for re- establishing our former ignorance?”
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-99)

In 1927, the French essayist Julien Benda published his famous attack on the intellectual corruption of the age, La Trahison des clercs. I said “famous,” but perhaps “once famous” would be more accurate. For today, in the United States anyway, only the title of the book, not its argument, enjoys much currency. “La trahison des clercs” is one of those memorable phrases that bristles with hints and associations without stating anything definite. Benda tells us that he uses the term “clerc” in “the medieval sense,” i.e., to mean “scribe,” someone we would now call a member of the intelligentsia. Academics and journalists, pundits, moralists, and pontificators of all varieties are, in this sense, “clercs.” The English translation, “The Treason of the Intellectuals,” sums it up neatly.

The “treason” in question was the betrayal by the “clerks” of their vocation as intellectuals. From the time of the pre-Socratics, intellectuals, considered in their role as intellectuals, had been a breed apart. In Benda’s terms, they were understood to be “all those whose activity essentially is not the pursuit of practical aims, all those who seek their joy in the practice of an art or a science or a metaphysical speculation, in short, in the possession of non-material advantages.” Thanks to such men, Benda wrote, “Humanity did evil for two thousand years, but honored good. This contradiction was an honor to the human species and formed the rift whereby civilization slipped into the world.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Europe: Fear of the Elephant and Its Mahout by Amir Taheri

Posted By on March 10th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20469/europe-fear-trump

European dislike for the person of Trump, who is cast as the antithesis of the Davos-approved globalist worried about global warming, not interested in chest-beating about Palestine, and demanding that others not treat the US as a “room service” reachable by pressing a button, is running shivers down many spines in Paris and Berlin among other places.

This is why many Europeans prefer to see the Democrat donkey rather than the Republican elephant in the room. They miss the fact that the absent, that is present in the room, is neither the elephant nor the donkey but the leviathan.

In the recent summit in Paris of European Union leaders on Ukraine, there was an elephant in the room: The US Republican Party and its current mahout, former President Donald J. Trump.

According to those who were able to peep into the session, much of the discussion was about what the US will or won’t do in case the volatile mahout rides his elephant into the White House in November.

Trump’s musings about ending the war in Ukraine and taming Vladimir Putin without war and his quip about refusing to support a NATO member not paying its share, if attacked by Russia, took up a disproportionate part of the discussions. Then came the French President Emmanuel Macron’s bombshell about boots on the ground in Ukraine.

BOOKS Comments turned off

CHAPTER 9: Norman Dodd Interview Space Is No Longer the Final Frontier––Reality Is [upcoming release April 2024]

Posted By on March 10th, 2024

https://goudsmit.pundicity.com/27601/chapter-9-norman-dodd-interview
Globalism is a replacement ideology that seeks to reorder the world into one singular, planetary Unistate, ruled by the globalist elite. The globalist war on nation-states cannot succeed without collapsing the United States of America. The long-term strategic attack plan moves America incrementally from constitutional republic to socialism to globalism to feudalism. The tactical attack plan uses asymmetric psychological and informational warfare to destabilize Americans and drive society out of objective reality into the madness of subjective reality. America’s children are the primary target of the globalist predators.

The philosophical rationalization and justification for Barack Obama’s shift to Outcome-Based Education (OBE) was presented by John W. Gardner in the 1950s. Gardner served concurrent tenures as president of both the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (CFAT) and the Carnegie Corporation[i] in the mid-1950s.

In 1961 Gardner published Excellence: Can We Be Equal and Excellent Too? The book is a reflection on American excellence that debates the relative merits of focusing on equality and focusing on excellence, and asks if it is possible for society to do both.

Our Founding Fathers advocated meritocracy, a system based on ability, achievement, and equal opportunity. They understood that equality of opportunity achieves excellence. Gardner examines an alternative theory that focuses on equality of outcome, also known as equity, and argues that the goals of excellence and equity are not incompatible.

In 1965 President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Gardner secretary of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. His appointment institutionalized America’s move away from meritocracy, establishing the collaboration of government in the weaponization of American education for political purposes. Meritocracy was replaced with equity as the foundation of American education, and equal outcome became the educational objective. What was the political purpose of this fundamental change?

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

International Law or Antisemitism? by Bat Ye’or

Posted By on March 10th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20461/international-law-or-antisemitism

In his study on this subject, David Elber demonstrates that the UN has no possession of territorial sovereignty and therefore cannot decree the allocation of a territory over which it has no sovereignty (on the basis of the universal principle of law nemo dat quod non habet — no one can give what he does not possess), especially when this decision violates previous treaties endorsed by the UN itself. Resolution 181 only made suggestions to avoid the threat of war from the Arabs.

With the Venice Declaration, the European Economic Community demanded the creation of a Palestinian state on the territories liberated by Israel in 1967, which had been illegally occupied and rendered Judenrein [ethnically cleansed of Jews] by Arab countries since 1949. Since that time, the EEC/EU have never ceased to impose the concept of “Palestinian people” instead of Arab refugees, in order to justify its claim to a state that it has been striving to build for decades by monitoring, restricting and harassing Israelis in their own country, recognized by international treaties.

For the past 40 years, the EEC/EU, which wants to get rid of Israel at all costs, has invented a false people, the Palestinians, devoid of national particularisms and history, artificially constructed as a look-alike to Israel, even though they claim to follow the Koran, embody jihad against unbelief and adhere to Nazism.

UN Resolution 181, falsely called international law, authorizes the delegitimization of the Jewish presence in Jerusalem according to the 2,000-year-old anti-Semitic tradition, and the reduction of the Jewish state to an indefensible parcel that will soon be made to disappear. It has already created Palestinian ministries and ambassadors for a people that is not a people, but which it is determined to create in homage to the Hitler-Husseini alliance that symbolizes the jihad against Israel.

Over the last few decades, the EU’s alliance with the Palestinian jihad — a war to Islamize the planet… In its relentless fight against Israel, Europe has sacrificed its own territory and people to Palestinianism. Today, in a strange coincidence, we see the same alliances as in the 1940s: the majority of European countries, united under the government of the Third Reich, allied with Islam and at war with Russia and the Jewish people in a global anti-Semitic tsunami.

In its relentless fight against Israel, Europe has sacrificed its own territory and people to Palestinianism. Pictured: PLO chairman Yasser Arafat shares a laugh with French President Jacques Chirac at the Élysée Palace in Paris, on July 26, 1995. (Photo by Remy de la Mauviniere/AFP via Getty Images)

It is commonplace to hear it proclaimed everywhere and at every turn as a proven truth that the State of Israel is violating international law. Interviewed by Sonia Mabrouk on February 11, Manuel Bompard once again made this accusation, even specifying a date to a violation that dates back 70 years! This accusation, which determines all the European Union’s relations with the Jewish state, justifies, for example, discriminatory practices against Israel that are unprecedented and never applied against any other state.