ISRAEL Comments turned off

Equating Israel with Hamas isn’t the worst of the ICC’s turpitude Ruthie Blum

Posted By on May 25th, 2024

https://www.jns.org/equating-israel-with-hamas-isnt-the-worst-of-the-iccs-turpitude/

The only thing surprising about the decision by International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Karim Khan on Monday was that it included Hamas, alongside Israel, as deserving of target. Otherwise, it shouldn’t have come as a shock to anyone who’s been paying attention.

Given the ongoing harassment of the Jewish state by the similarly named International Court of Justice, also situated in The Hague, it was just a matter of time before the ICC would spring into abhorrent action.

Coupled with U.S. Secretary of State Blinken’s recent remark about the reasonableness of assessing that “in certain instances, Israel acted in ways that are not consistent with international humanitarian law,” Khan’s move was facilitated. His election to the post in February 2021 was backed by the United States, after all.

To grasp the depth of his perversion of justice, no more than a glance at his announcement is needed.

“On the basis of evidence collected and examined by my office,” he wrote, “I have reasonable grounds to believe that Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, and Yoav Gallant, the minister of defense of Israel, bear criminal responsibility for … war crimes and crimes against humanity committed on the territory of the State of Palestine (in the Gaza strip) from at least 8 Oct. 2023.”

The “crimes” he listed were: “Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare; willfully causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or health … or cruel treatment; willful killing … or murder; intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population; extermination and/or murder … including in the context of deaths caused by starvation; persecution; and other inhumane acts.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Biden is downsizing, politicizing our military Want to avoid war? Prepare for one Don Feder

Posted By on May 25th, 2024

https://www.washingtontimes.com/staff/don-feder/

History teaches us that the best way to avoid a war is to prepare for one.

After World War I, another global conflict was unthinkable, the leaders of the democracies declared. Hitler, Mussolini and the Japanese imperialists thought otherwise.

In the 1930s, Britain effectively disarmed, and France relied on static defense. The United States embraced isolationism, relying on two oceans for protection, while Germany rearmed and Japan invaded China. The cost of that lack of imagination was another world war and 75 million dead.

When World War II ended, shortsighted politicians rushed to downsize our military, even as communism advanced on four continents.

After Vietnam, the peaceniks who had taken control of the Democratic Party couldn’t wait to put our armed forces in mothballs. Then came Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, 9/11, ISIS, and radical Islam’s war on the West.

The Biden administration’s death march of folly began with the disastrous withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, with 13 service members dead, thousands of Americans stranded and $7 billion in military equipment left behind. The weakness we displayed to our enemies set the stage for the next round of aggression.

President Biden is Neville Chamberlain, George McGovern and Jimmy Carter rolled into one.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

All the Darkness They Cannot See: The Tunnel Vision That Drives Faculty Antisemitism: Andrew Pessin

Posted By on May 25th, 2024

https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/opinion/371559/all-the-darkness-they-cannot-see-the-tunnel-vision-that-drives-faculty-antisemitism/

All these faculty members can see are Israeli offenses, only Israeli offenses, out of their context, which they see as aggressions and describe using such inflammatory language as “apartheid” and “Jewish supremacy.”

After Oct. 7 I didn’t think I could be more shocked than by seeing American campuses explode in support rather than condemnation of that barbaric massacre. I was wrong. Now after seven months of open season on Jews both rhetorically and physically, culminating in the encampments on well over 100 campuses, I find myself struggling not to think of the disastrous years 70 C.E., 1492, and 1939, alongside America of 2024. 

Oddly, though, even though the encampments break so many campus rules and often local laws, my starting point is actually to be sympathetic to them. I think about how I would act, say, during the early 1940s, when I learned that a genocide against the Jewish people was occurring and people were not paying attention. Wouldn’t I protest, loudly? Disrupt “business as normal”? Maybe even break a few rules or laws? I hope that I would. 

The problem, then, isn’t the mayhem, per se (though it’s appropriately against the rules and must be — is long overdue for being —punished). It runs deeper, rooted in the academy itself: It’s that these people falsely believe a genocide is occurring (when it clearly isn’t), and misidentify the true genocidal agent (as we’ll see). More generally, it’s that they have adopted an entire narrative that is one-sided, oversimplified, ignorant of history, often counter to the facts, mistaken about who are the good guys and the bad, and driven, ultimately, by hatred and bigotry—and that licenses the outrageously immoral violence of Oct. 7.

A painful glimpse of all this may be found in a revealing statement recently issued by some 90 faculty and staff at Connecticut College, constituting almost half the fulltime faculty at this typical liberal arts college, in “solidarity” with the encampments. Much is objectionable in it; but we will look only at one sentence: 

“We also stand in solidarity with Israeli organizations and activists who oppose Israeli apartheid and Jewish supremacy …”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Secret Reason Hamas’s Friends – Ireland, Norway, Spain (and Germany) – Are Helping the Palestinians by Bassam Tawil

Posted By on May 24th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20661/ireland-norway-spain-palestinians

Ireland, Norway and Spain should have advised the Palestinians that if they wanted anything from Israel, they should sit down and negotiate with the Israelis, and not try to impose any solution on them with the help of the international community.

They also should have told them that there will be no peace negotiations with Israel unless the Palestinians repudiate and renounce terrorism and recognize Israel’s right to exist.

Apparently, Ireland, Norway and Spain do not even realize that they just strengthened the terrorists in their own countries. When Muslims demonstrated in Hamburg last month and demanded that shariah law and a Caliphate replace democracy in Germany, politicians said they should be jailed and stripped of their citizenship.

Perhaps a few countries might also recognize a State of Catalonia?

[W]hen [Palestinians] talk about “liberating” the land, what they really mean is that they want to murder all Jews or expel them from Israel, and replace it with an Iran-backed Palestinian terror state.

The timing of the recognition of a Palestinian state, just months after Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, sent a message to the terrorists — which should be transposed to the Europeans in their own countries — that the more people they slaughter, including the Gazans Hamas kills as human shields, the more support they will have from the Europeans and the rest of the international community.

Ireland, Norway, and Spain are letting it be known that the international community is willing to overlook, submit to, or even condone terrorism. This attitude will not promote any peace process between Israel and the Palestinians — or among anyone trying to transform other countries. Instead, it encourages those who want to fundamentally remake countries in the West.

Finally, who in his right mind imagines that the Middle East would be secure and peaceful with a Palestinian state adjacent to Israel? Such a state will simply serve as a springboard for more attacks against Israel. The Palestinians openly stated as much in their ratified 1974 “10-Point Program,” known as the “phased plan,” in which any land acquired will be used to get the rest.

Basically, as Hamas openly states in its charter, its aim to eliminate the only homeland of the Jewish people and murder as many Jews as possible. It appears that the Europeans wish to finish the task that Hitler started — the secret reason they are assisting the Palestinians in achieving this goal.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

How Apple, Google, and Microsoft Can Help Parents Protect Children The case for device-based age verification Ravi Iyer

Posted By on May 24th, 2024

https://www.afterbabel.com/p/how-apple-google-and-microsoft-can

The current system for protecting children online does not work. It relies on parents understanding and managing their children’s online experience across a wide variety of applications. I live in the Bay Area and have many friends who work at large technology companies. I don’t know a single parent among them who feels completely comfortable with the options that currently exist. If the people who build technology products do not know how to protect their kids, we clearly need a better solution.

Parents are left on their own to figure out how to stop strangers from contacting their children and how to prevent anonymous cyberbullying. They need to figure out how to prevent their kids from seeing something they are not ready for in a world where 58% of teens report seeing sexually explicit content by accident and 19% of Instagram teens report seeing unwanted sexually explicit content every 7 days. And then there’s sleep: How do they ensure they don’t receive notifications at 1 am on a school night? Few parents feel confident in addressing these real and important concerns. 

The providers of operating systems, which is a market that Apple, Google, and Microsoft dominate, could help. It would not only be the right thing to do, but it would also be a huge relief to the many parents who want their children to have rich social lives that require the ability to interact with their friends (who are online) — but do not have the time and energy to manage the myriad settings that exist across services. Parents need a simple way to protect their children online that doesn’t require them to know the difference between Snapchat, TikTok, and YouTube settings and how to manage each of them separately. There is even a business incentive here: Many parents might be *more* willing to buy a device that promises a simple solution.

Of course, the best solution might be for children to stop using these products altogether. The four norms suggested in The Anxious Generation—which include delaying entry into social media until age 16—would do a lot of good, but there will still be youth who need protection from technology-enabled harms, even if such usage is drastically reduced. Children mature continuously and at very different rates, and so a child is not necessarily more able to handle a smartphone when they start high school or able to interact productively on social media on their 16th birthday, as compared to the day before. Even if legislative changes occur such that children cannot sign up for social media accounts without their parent’s permission until their 16th birthday, most families will still want an option that reduces the risk of their newly eligible sixteen-year-old receiving unwanted advances from others, should they choose to use social media at that time.

Some children may develop slower and may need more time before fully engaging with these technologies. On the other hand, some children may benefit from access to technology sooner. Many researchers have pointed out the benefits of social media for kids who have specific support needs, such as some LGBT children—and parents of those children—may want to provide earlier access. Even as many may disagree with their decision, some parents may still want their children to have a smartphone in order to be able to access YouTube, which has a wealth of educational content, or to be able to FaceTime their grandparents – even at earlier ages. Those parents may want solutions that enable their children to use these devices more safely.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

A border so wide open even the illegals are warning us By Monica Showalter

Posted By on May 24th, 2024

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/05/a_border_so_wide_open_even_the_illegals_are_warning_us.html

How wide open is too wide a wide open border? Well, when you’ve got illegal immigrants themselves warning about it, it’s too wide.

That was what one illegal immigrant coming into the U.S. from Turkey at the Jacumba, California, non-port-of-entry border crossing told Fox News’s Bill Melugin:

He seemed like a nice enough fellow, someone who could assimilate and become a successful and grateful U.S. immigrant. Assuming he’s never lived in the U.S., his English was remarkably good, as Turkish is one of the most difficult languages for English speakers to learn, and the reverse is also true.

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

DEI Will Destroy Our Trust in Doctors By Jeffrey Blehar

Posted By on May 24th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/dei-will-destroy-our-trust-in-doctors/

In September of last year, I wrote about the University of California system’s truly radical embrace of DEI ideology in every aspect of its hiring, teaching, and administrative processes — an activist commitment so striking that even the New York Times wrote about it with genuine alarm. The issue back then was the barring of an academic from an expected position at UCLA because he had once evinced skepticism about the value of “diversity statements.” But what really worried me was what I saw coming over the horizon:

I am left wondering what our next generation of doctors and scientists will look like . . . where all present have been screened either for their desirable racial and sexual characteristics or their ability to demonstrate fulsome and abject fealty to this approach. Because that is the world these people are constructing.

I am not optimistic. I don’t take the occasionally alarmist gibes I hear about how “in a generation we’ll no longer even know how to build [X]” seriously, if for no other reason than projects involving engineering, mathematics, and the hard sciences tend to have pretty strict metrics for success. . . . But in other fields the decline will be disguised — reflected only indirectly over time in statistics like life expectancy, infant mortality, or suicide and addiction rates. There is no way that scientific (and particularly medical and psychological) fields permeated by these standards . . . will not be negatively and seriously affected in the long run.

My depressing vision of the future is arriving even faster than anticipated. Though I don’t often encourage people to go read someone else, I beg you to check out Aaron Sibarium’s nuclear-grade journalistic bombshell at the Washington Free Beacon about the scandalous state of the UCLA medical school. By the end of “A Failed Medical School,” you will agree with the title’s assessment, which the article copiously documents. Yet you might not even quite believe what you are reading.

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

What DEI Does to a Medical School Share By George Leef

Posted By on May 24th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/what-dei-does-to-a-medical-school/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=corner&utm_term=third

The DEI advocates always say that their admission policies favoring students just because they have the right ancestry has only the upside of promoting “social justice” and never the downside of wasting space on weak students. They accept only capable students, so goes the claim.

That line will be harder to sell once people have read this Washington Free Beacon piece.

For the past several years, UCLA’s medical school has had a crazed admissions director who won’t tolerate any dissent over her favored students. The result is that some faculty members are now talking covertly to the press about the distressing results.

Here’s a slice: “One professor said that a student in the operating room could not identify a major artery when asked, then berated the professor for putting her on the spot. Another said that students at the end of their clinical rotations don’t know basic lab tests and, in some cases, are unable to present patients.”

Will the school’s governing body do anything?

But look on the bright side. Some of these UCLA Med grads will become lousy doctors, but at least the profession overall will have more “equity,” and that’s what really matters.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Bungling Biden’s Commencement Whoppers The networks didn’t put any ‘fact-checkers’ on it. by Tim Graham

Posted By on May 24th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/bungling-bidens-commencement-whoppers/

President Joe Biden made a well-publicized commencement address on May 19 at Morehouse College in Atlanta, a historically black college. The networks touted the speech but didn’t put any “fact-checkers” on it. It contained at least four fibs.

In an echo of his 1987 lies that crumbled in first presidential campaign, Biden claimed, “I was the first Biden to ever graduate from college.” A newspaper obituary for his maternal grandfather Ambrose Finnegan noted he graduated college.

He repeated his story that his son Beau died of a brain tumor after he spent “a year in Iraq as a major — he won the Bronze Star — living next to a burn pit.” In 2019, FactCheck.org noted the science on cancer from exposure to burn pits in Iraq was “insufficient,” but Biden tells that story often.

Then Biden uncorked his typical race-baiting: “Today in Georgia, they won’t allow water to be available to you while you wait in line to vote in an election.” Georgia’s legislature passed a bill in 2021 that said no person should “give, offer to give, or participate in the giving of any money or gifts, including, but not limited to, food and drink” within 150 feet of a polling place. It doesn’t mean you can’t have water!

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Anatomy of a Kangaroo Court A trial that has nothing to do with law.Kurt Schlichter

Posted By on May 24th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/anatomy-of-a-kangaroo-court/

The Donald Trump New York City farce is on the way to being over. The prosecution (at least) rested after what would’ve been a disastrous performance by Michael Cohen in any other trial, but the standard rules don’t apply here because this is not actually a trial. This trial has nothing to do with law. It is a scummy attempt to frame a political opponent of the Democrats to keep him from winning an election against the desiccated old pervert in the White House. Normally, a jury would laugh this case out of court, except that it would never have been in court had the defendant been named Tronald Dump. Everything about it is a lie and a scam, and as soon as you understand that you will understand this disgraceful case.

The Democrats behind this charade are wearing the law like a skinsuit, presenting an exterior that makes this look like a real jury trial when, in fact, it is nothing of the sort. You see the forms and processes performed, but they mean nothing because the fix is already in. Let’s talk about what happens now in terms of procedure. In terms of legality, why bother? Again, this isn’t a legal matter. This is a joke.

The state must prove each of the elements of the charge beyond a reasonable doubt. Remember, in real trials, criminal charges have elements. For instance, fraud is typically a knowing misrepresentation intended to induce reliance that causes monetary damage to the victim. Each of those requirements is an element. Was there a misrepresentation? Was it knowingly false? Was it intended to induce reliance? Was someone who reasonably relied on it damaged in terms of losing money? Each of those elements must have substantial evidence in support of it. Remember, the state has to prove everything. The defendant can just sit there with his arms crossed like a late-80s rapper and say nothing, and if the state fails to provide evidence beyond a reasonable doubt proving each element, he must be acquitted. Others have discussed how the state has failed to prove any of the elements against Trump here — suffice it to say that, as a legal matter, the state has failed on every one of the elements. But again, this case isn’t a legal matter. This is a kangaroo court. We’re just talking about how the scam will proceed.