IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

The border crisis has brought chaos to America Joe Biden has shown how much can go wrong when a government gives up on enforcing its border. Sean Collins

Posted By on February 19th, 2024

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/02/19/the-border-crisis-has-brought-chaos-to-america/

n 2023, the US reached a new milestone. Its foreign-born population reached 15 per cent, the highest-ever recorded percentage since the nation’s founding. This recent surge is driven primarily by illegal entry via the US-Mexico border, where the number of migrants continues to rise. In December 2023, we saw a new record monthly high in illegal entrants on the south-west border.

It is no exaggeration to say that the latest wave of migrants has caused a crisis. This unexpected influx has overwhelmed towns and cities across the country and left them straining to find the funds to house and feed these newcomers. Local news is full of stories of crimes being committed by newly arrived migrants.

Americans increasingly recognise that the situation is out of control. Some three-quarters say the condition of the south-west border is a ‘crisis’ or ‘very serious’. In fact, immigration has become the primary concern of American voters, recently overtaking even inflation and the economy.

Until recently, President Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats tried to argue that Republicans were exaggerating the border problem. But as the situation has deteriorated, that line has been harder to maintain.

This is a crisis of Biden’s own making. Biden, along with secretary of homeland security Alejandro Mayorkas and others in the administration, have systematically adopted measures that have encouraged a largely unrestrained inflow of migrants.

Having campaigned in 2020 on overturning Trump’s immigration policies, Biden got to work quickly. In his first 100 days in office, he signed 94 executive orders designed to dismantle the border protections installed by the Trump administration. He suspended the ‘remain in Mexico’ policy, which required applicants to stay in Mexico while they awaited an asylum interview. He also scrapped agreements with Central American nations to limit immigration to the US from those countries. And he tried to impose a moratorium on most deportations, though this was blocked by a federal judge. Biden did, however, manage to stop construction on the border wall.

MEDIA Comments turned off

When Journalism Dies :Sebastian Junger

Posted By on February 19th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2024/03/when-journalism-dies/

The truth dies with it

It’s hard to know what to make of the international press corps. Overwhelmingly white and college-educated, most have presumably ignored professional opportunities that pay orders of magnitude more money than journalism — and generally don’t get them killed. If you’re smart enough to tease the truth out of the confusion, nuance, and outright propaganda of most war zones — and most countries — you’re probably smart enough to do pretty well on Wall Street. Or in the restaurant business. Or flipping houses in Florida. And yet, every year, idealistic and ambitious young people troop off to make almost no money reporting on the world’s tragedies and failures. I hardly have a friend in the business who hasn’t been shot, kidnapped, blown up, detained, or threatened with execution. And yet they persist. I’ve lost one close friend and numerous acquaintances to war.

If you ask my fellow journalists why they do it, many will resort to the tired piety that someone must bear witness to the world’s horrors, but let’s have some honesty here. Journalism is one of the most important jobs in a democracy, and my involvement in the profession is a source of profound pride, but we don’t need to pretend selflessness to have merit. No other profession — lawyer, logger, preschool teacher — bothers to, so why should we? Journalists are some of the most ego-driven people I know, as well as some of the most principled, and they’re willing to risk their lives on both counts. Their supposed addiction to adrenaline can be thought of more accurately as an addiction to having a life of great meaning and consequence. What’s addictive is feeling different from everyone else, cut from a different cloth. Which indeed many of them are.

I’d now like to take a moment to get a semantic issue out of the way. Many people will tell you — or scream at you — that objectivity is a myth and journalists are just partisan hacks trying to advance their own agenda. Fair enough — some are. But such people aren’t actually journalists; they’re something else. News hosts who put on enormous amounts of make-up to make enormous amounts of money inflicting damage on our nation by lying about reality are (thankfully) outside the scope of this article. Now that that’s out of the way we can state that a journalist is a person who is willing to destroy his own opinions with facts. A journalist is a person who is willing to report the truth regardless of consequences to herself or others. A journalist is a person who is focused on reality rather than outcome.

Truth-tellers are everywhere in our society because we rely on them to survive. Trial judges, weather forecasters, safety inspectors, structural engineers, and radiologists all provide unvarnished opinions so that we can lead safer, better lives, and the press is no different.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Anti-Israeli Sentiment in Ireland Is Getting Worse By Barry O’Halloran

Posted By on February 19th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/02/anti-israeli-sentiment-in-ireland-is-getting-worse/

Recent cultural and political controversies in Ireland suggest a worrying — and growing — hostility to Israel.

In James Joyce’s Ulysses, Stephen Dedalus is asked why Ireland has “the honour of being the only country that has never persecuted the Jews.” When he can’t answer, he’s told it’s because Ireland “never let them in.” Despite the fact that the Jewish population there is very small, antisemitic prejudice in Ireland — and in the United Kingdom — has been a recurring issue.

Outside of the sports’ pages, Ireland’s international basketball games usually pass without much notice. Last Thursday’s Women’s EuroBasket 2025 qualifier game between Ireland and Israel was an exception. It was originally slated to take place last November in Israel, but, because of conflict in the region, it was rescheduled to a neutral venue in the Latvian capital, Riga. The venue may have been neutral, but everything else about this game quickly became toxic.

Basketball Ireland (BI), the sport’s governing body, had been under sustained pressure to boycott the game. However, as the organization noted, “FIBA Europe has not excluded Israel from competing internationally,” so a unilateral Irish boycott would be “an effective 5-year ban from competing at international level” for Ireland. The organization’s CEO said, “I’m not prepared to destroy my sport for a gesture that will have no impact.” There would be no boycott.

Unwittingly, the Israeli Basketball Association reignited the controversy. It posted on its website photos of IDF soldiers visiting a team practice session. Then, a U.S.-based Israeli team member, Dor Saar, told the website, “It’s known that they are quite antisemitic, and it’s no secret.” In the febrile anti-Israeli atmosphere in Ireland, this set the cat among the pigeons.

BI blasted the comments as “inflammatory and wholly inaccurate” and stated, “There would be no formal handshakes before or after the game, while our players will line up for the Irish national anthem by our bench, rather then [sic] the centre court.”

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Hamas: Palestinian Civilians Are Also Terrorists by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on February 19th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20400/hamas-palestinian-civilians-terrorists

When Hamas decided to drag the entire population of the Gaza Strip into another war with Israel on October 7, it did not care what would happen to Palestinian civilians.

If the hostages were indeed held in an apartment of a Palestinian family, this shows that Hamas has no problem placing Palestinian civilians in harm’s way.

Consequently, Hamas has no right to complain about the death of civilians in the war it initiated against Israel while it uses its own people to hold innocent kidnapped Israelis.

Hamas leaders leading lavish lives in Qatar and Lebanon do not care about the two million Palestinians of the Gaza Strip, nor do the leaders of the terrorist organization who are hiding in the vast network of sophisticated tunnels in the Gaza Strip. All they care about is their own survival

“The humanitarian aid is being stolen by those who call themselves resistance fighters. They claim they are defending us, but they are stealing all the aid coming into the Gaza Strip and then they sell it to the people for a very high price.” — Palestinian man in Gaza, X (twitter.com), February 16, 2024.

On February 15, sources in the Gaza Strip reported that Hamas terrorists killed Ahmed Abu al-Arja, a Palestinian boy, while he was trying to get food for his family.

[T]he participation of some Palestinian civilians in the October 7 massacre and the kidnapping of Israelis is extremely worrying: it illustrates that a large number of people in the Gaza Strip actually do support Hamas and its terrorism against Israel.

Since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, leaders of the Iran-backed terrorist group have been trying to distance themselves from the atrocities by holding Palestinian civilians responsible for some of the crimes, including the murder, beheading, rape, torture, kidnapping, mutilation and burning of hundreds of Israeli men, women, and children.

These are the same civilians that Hamas has long been using as human shields in its Jihad (holy war) to murder Jews and obliterate Israel.

First, Hamas uses Palestinian civilians as human shields, then it accuses them of perpetrating atrocities against Israelis.

MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

Please Watch and Share “Juice: Power, Politics, and The Grid” by Robert Bryce-Jane Menton

Posted By on February 19th, 2024

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2024-2-19-please-watch-and-share-juice-power-politics-and-the-grid-by-robert-bryce

Most of what Robert Bryce covers in his new documentary Juice won’t be news to you if you’re a regular reader of this blog. However, it is exactly the tool we need to bring everyone else into the fold.

It’s gripping, well produced, and covers a ton of ground in short, extremely digestible, 20 minute episodes. In 5 parts (so about an hour and a half total), Bryce and director/producer Tyson Culver cover: how the energy market developed; where we are now; the politics and profits driving decisions; why solar/wind energy will never work; and hope for a possible nuclear renaissance. And they do it all without ever getting too technical for the average viewer.

The first three episodes should be required viewing for everyone, in my opinion, and provide a thorough overview of the grid, the players, and the politics. The last two episodes are very focused on nuclear as our best option for reliable, carbon-free energy, which comes off as hopeful and solution oriented, but may be much further from realization than Bryce optimistically portrays.

If you read this blog, I can safely assume you already know a lot about energy and why current government policies towards energy are absurd at best and dangerous at worst. But it’s just as likely that you have several people in your life who struggle to understand your obsession with energy policy or can’t see why it’s so important, so fundamental to modern society, and on the cusp of turning into the biggest political issue of our time.

You can start with the first episode, linked here, and then send it to someone you think could be convinced.

NATIONAL SECURITY AND DEFENSE Comments turned off

Happy Millard Fillmore Day: Don Feder

Posted By on February 19th, 2024

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2024/feb/18/like-biden-our-country-is-suffering-from-memory-lo/

As long as the left controls education, Americans will have a meager grasp of history

Republicans should try to avoid feeling smug about the president’s memory problems.

So he thinks that the leaders of France and Germany are men who have been dead for decades. He confused the presidents of Mexico and Egypt, and he can’t quite recall the years he was vice president.

At 81, President Biden is the oldest man to serve in the Oval Office, and it shows.

But like our president, America, too, is suffering from memory loss.

On Monday, we’ll celebrate Presidents Day, which takes two real holidays and rolls them into one that’s surreal. Once upon a time, we observed the birthdays of George Washington, the man more responsible than any other for our independence, and Abraham Lincoln, who saved the Union during the Civil War.

Now we have a holiday to honor everyone who has ever held the office, including such towering figures as William Henry Harrison, James Buchanan and Jimmy Carter.

Like tearing down statues, this is part of the process of erasing our history.

A survey by the Woodrow Wilson National Foundation Fellowship showed that 37% believed Benjamin Franklin, not Thomas Edison, invented the lightbulb. In a 2017 survey, 43% of college graduates did not know that the First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech. And to think there are those who question the value of higher education.

This is the product of a relentless assault on teaching American history.

In his book “Toward a More Perfect Union: The Moral and Cultural Case for Teaching the Great American Story,” Timothy S. Goeglein identifies the principal culprit as Marxist historian Howard Zinn, whose “People’s History of the United States” is assigned reading for millions of high school and college students.

Zinn, coincidentally one of my professors at Boston University back in the 1960s, used history to indoctrinate. He taught that the American saga is one of genocide, exploitation and aggression. His book should be subtitled “Learn How to Hate Your Country in 729 Pages.”

MEDICINE AND HEALTH, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Truth is Coming Out

Posted By on February 19th, 2024

https://johnhabelesmd.substack.com/?utm_campaign=email-home&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack

These are tough times for the “great reset.” The broad and global EV market is failing, mRNA shots are in disrepute, the reality of surveillance and censorship is getting media attention, and public anger at the whole of the wild push to wreck freedom and rights is rising quickly all over the world. 

The more time has passed since lockdowns, the more clear it becomes that this was part of a much larger agenda. But here’s the problem. They are not giving up, not even close. The reason there have been no apologies is that they are not sorry. They are more determined than ever. 

The one path of resistance is the creation of new information infrastructures such as Brownstone Institute. It’s our hope to shine a light on truth, protect the rights of serious research and commentary, and use every freedom we have left to highlight genuine science, logic, and enlightenment ideals. 

In passing, our supper clubs are now selling out completely. This has to be a good sign! 

We deeply appreciate your support. Given the odds, we certainly need it! 

Here is some content since our last email:

Pfizer Never Stops Gaslighting Us By Lori Weintz. Pfizer’s cheery Super Bowl ad cannot change the fact that they never tested their BNT162b2 vaccine during clinical trials to see if it prevented transmission of Covid-19. Nor did Pfizer stop distribution when 90 days into the vaccination campaign, there had already been 1,123 vaccine-related deaths, and over 40,000 vaccine injuries.  

BOOKS Comments turned off

American Spirit or Great Awokening?Bruce D. Abramson

Posted By on February 19th, 2024

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=bruce+d.+abramson+american+spirit+or+great+awokening&i=stripbooks&crid=3DD7VMMKA8IET&sprefix=bruce+d.+abramson+american+spirit+or+great+awokening%2Cstripbooks%2C253&ref=nb_sb_noss

Two years ago, I sat down to write a column about Wokeism as a religion. I figured that it would run longer than 800 words—likely into the 2500/3000 word range.

The material kept flowing. I shared much of it with my loyal Substack readers. (Thanks!). Then I pulled it together in book form:

American Spirit or Great Awokening?  The Battle to Restore or Destroy Our Nation (Academica Press, 2024). 

It’s a relatively short book (~50K words) and intended for a general (i.e., non-scholarly) audience. 

My basic argument is straightforward:

America is suffering from a spiritual crisis, which is the root cause of our polarized politics & culture.

Wokeism is a brilliant, new, utopian religion that has arisen to meet the unspoken and often denied spiritual needs of America’s most spiritually starved people, namely our elite.

If we wish to save the country, we’re going to have to get back in touch with America’s own spiritual roots and re-inject faith and community into our culture.

I’m eager for help with reviews & publicity.  If you’ve got any clout with folks who tell other folks what to read, please help me get in touch with them. In the meantime, please buy the book, read it, enjoy it, and recommend it!

HISTORY Comments turned off

President Abraham Lincoln’ s Magnificent Gettysburg Address November 19, 1863

Posted By on February 19th, 2024

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

HISTORY Comments turned off

George Washington, Our Magnificent First President from his first Inaugural Address April 30, 1789

Posted By on February 19th, 2024

“I dwell on this prospect with every satisfaction which an ardent love for my Country can inspire: since there is no truth more thoroughly established, than that there exists in the economy and course of nature, an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness, between duty and advantage, between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy, and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity: Since we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven, can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained: And since the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the Republican model of Government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.”