EDUCATION Comments turned off

Harvard Hosts ‘Gathering To Breathe And Heal’ Event To Help Students Grieve Claudine Gay’s Ouster The event hosted by Harvard Divinity School’s Office of Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging will allow participants to ‘process the departure’ of Claudine Gay By Kassy Dillon

Posted By on February 3rd, 2024

https://www.dailywire.com/news/harvard-hosts-gathering-to-breathe-and-heal-event-to-help-students-grieve-claudine-gays-ouster

The Harvard Divinity School’s Office of Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging hosted a “Gathering to Breathe and Heal” event on Thursday to help students grieve the resignation of disgraced former President Claudine Gay.

“For this gathering, we will create a space for us to discuss and process the departure of our former president, Claudine Gay,” the office wrote in a newsletter announcing the event, obtained by The Daily Wire. The event was intended to give participants the opportunity to “gather to breathe and to heal.”

Gay was forced to resign from her position last month amid allegations of plagiarism in various academic works that came to light while she was already under immense pressure for her failure to address the rise of antisemitism on campus.

The newsletter stated that many students are feeling grief upon their arrival to campus.

“This grief and loss may be connected to our personal lives; national and global unrest, harm, and violence; storms and natural disasters; or these increasing times of tension and divide on our campus and in our communities,” it said. “For many of us, this grief and loss also includes the resignation of former President Claudine Gay after her short tenure.”

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

An Incredible Exposé of the Illegal Immigrant Pipeline and the Players Involved

Posted By on February 3rd, 2024

https://twitter.com/realmuckraker/status/1747334332421714056?t=y5RdUovNBUbk-mBToNeeaA&s=09

The breadth of this coordinated operation and the so-called legitimate NGOs and foreign governments cooperating with cartels and other criminal elements in what is a lucrative and dangerous enterprise is astounding!  (Plus, many of our political leaders are on board to facilitate this feature of the Great Reset even while it is opposed by the vast majority of “we the people.”)

With rampant death, disease, rape, human, weapons and drug trafficking and other crimes along the route, it is anything BUT a “humanitarian” mission.  

The unchecked invasion of our once sovereign nation is changing the face of America and imperiling all citizens, stressing our infrastructure to the breaking point and damaging the economy.

The country we leave our children and grandchildren will be unrecognizable in the not too distant future. Janet Levy

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

PENTAGON TO AUDIT SPENDING ON VIRUS RESEARCH IN CHINA, OTHER FOREIGN NATIONS

Posted By on February 3rd, 2024

Taxpayers will finally learn what their hard-earned tax dollars are funding on research of Coronviruses, Ebola and more.

OpenTheBooks had a record-breaking year in 2023 thanks to your support.

Our investigations were cited at least 20 times in congressional floor speeches or in congressional oversight letters to federal agencies. Then – Congress voted on seven of our budget amendments and five of them passed – each was a direct result of our exposures.

Now we’re turning our investigations into 2024 wins!

Just this week, we had a major victory when the National Defense Authorization Act included language that directs the Inspector General to quantify and report on all Defense spending into Chinese entities and on virus research over the last 10 years. 

This doesn’t just include coronaviruses like COVID, but also Ebola, nipa, influenza and more. 

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Strangest Case of E. Jean Carroll and Donald Trump Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on February 3rd, 2024

https://victorhanson.com/the-crazy-story-behind-the-ridiculous-news-part-five/

80-year-old E. Jean Carroll, a former relationship- and sex-advice columnist, just won a huge $83.3 million settlement from Donald Trump in connection with a previous finding that she was “defamed” by Donald Trump.

New York is not a hospitable place for any conservative politician or celebrity, much less one ex-president Donald Trump—as we have seen from prosecutors Alvin Bragg and Letitia James, who both promised voters that they would get Trump if just elected.

But here are some strange facts about the case—with the proviso we have no idea of what exactly happened when both Carroll and Trump consensually and strangely entered into ribald banter in a department store’s lingerie section, then mutually and apparently willfully entered a dressing room, at which point their stories radically diverge (as opposed to somewhat diverged, since Trump at various times said he didn’t recall meeting her at all).

Trump appeared raucously in person in court to turn the civil suit into a referendum on the supposedly coordinated leftwing efforts to damage his presidential candidacy. But he was fighting with a Bill Clinton-appointed judge, Lewis A. Kaplan, and with a New York liberal jury pool, in a suit concerning his denials of a sexual assault of Carroll some 30 years ago. She won an earlier ruling that his meae culpae were excessive and entered the realm of character assassination and therefore was suing for defamation damages. 

Judge Kaplan certainly grew tired of Trump’s editorialization and like most New York jurists probably did not enjoy Trump in his courtroom in the first place. And although a jury earlier did not find Trump guilty of “rape,” Kaplan de facto has stated that it was OK to claim publicly that Trump was nevertheless guilty of rape.Or as the judge put it, “The finding that Ms. Carroll failed to prove that she was ‘raped’ within the meaning of the New York Penal Law does not mean that she failed to prove that Mr. Trump ‘raped’ her as many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’”

But if that’s true, Judge Kaplan, why didn’t the jury, on the judge’s prior own instructions, simply convict Trump of rape, which it certainly had the power to do? How can someone not guilty of the definition of rape be guilty of rape?

FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

US’ Middle East policy defied by Middle East reality Yoram Ettinger

Posted By on February 3rd, 2024

http://bit.ly/3SoVuLR

*For the last 45 years, the US has attempted to pacify the anti-US Iran’s Ayatollahs, via dramatic financial and diplomatic gestures, to advance the cause of human rights and democracy in Iran, and to promote peaceful coexistence between Iran and its Sunni Arab neighbors. In fact, the 45-year-old US diplomatic option toward the Ayatollahs, has downplayed the centrality of the Ayatollahs’ ideology and their track record, assuming that “money talks.”  The US expected that dramatic financial and diplomatic gestures would induce the Ayatollahs to abandon their 1,400-year-old fanatical vision and become a constructive member of the global community.

However, as expected, Iran’s Ayatollahs would not allow financial and diplomatic temptations to transcend their imperialistic violent ideology. Moreover, they have leveraged the lavish US gestures, intensifying domestic oppression and persecution, and boosting their determination to humiliate and defeat “the Great American Satan,” expanding anti-US global terrorism, drug trafficking, money laundering and the proliferation of advanced weaponry, increasingly in Latin America from Chile’ to the US-Mexico border.

Furthermore, the US’ eagerness to conclude another agreement with the anti-US Iran, the courting of the anti-US Moslem Brotherhood (the largest Sunni terror organization), and delisting the anti-US Houthis from the terror list, while pressuring the pro-US Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt, has pushed these countries closer to China and Russia, militarily and commercially.

*In 2024, the US State Department promotes the establishment of a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River, contending that it would peacefully coexist with Israel.
However, all pro-US Arab regimes have systematically limited their support of the proposed Palestinian state to an embracing talk, while displaying a lukewarm-to-negative walk.    

Furthermore, the State Department has downplayed the Palestinian track record and ideology, basing its policy on subjective and speculative future scenarios and diplomatic Palestinian statements.  But, the pro-US Arab regimes have focused on the subversive and terroristic intra-Arab Palestinian track record in Egypt (1950s), Syria (1960s), Jordan (1968-70), Lebanon (1970-1982) and Kuwait (1990).  These pro-US Arab regimes recognize the despotic, corrupt and terroristic nature of the Palestinian leadership, its rogue education system, and its global track record (e.g., collaboration with Nazi Germany, the Soviet Bloc, Iran’s Ayatollahs, No. Korea and Venezuela and training international terrorists from Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America).

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Trial Of Mann v. Steyn, Part III: More On Damages; Simberg And Steyn’s First Witness Francis Menton

Posted By on February 3rd, 2024

https://us7.campaign-archive.com/?e=a9fdc67db9&u=9d011a88d8fe324cae8c084c5&id=4b9ad9bd14

Readers seem to be enjoying my posts on the Mann v. Steyn trial, so I’m going to continue with one more today. Meanwhile, the court does not hold trials on Fridays, so the proceeding has recessed for the weekend, to resume Monday morning. It’s likely that the trial will get very interesting next week, as the defendants present the heart of their case and as things wrap up. In the interim, I’ll provide some comments on the events yesterday, which was the 11th day of the trial.

My previous post on Wednesday, January 31, was devoted mostly to the issue of plaintiff Mann’s claimed damages in the case. The post described what I found to be an extremely odd back and forth during Mann’s own testimony, where it emerged that Mann during the discovery process had provided three different, inconsistent and contradictory interrogatory answers on the topic of his main theory of damages, namely that he had lost grant funding due to the defamation. After initially being confronted on cross-examination with an interrogatory answer where he had refused to provide any list of allegedly lost grants and said the whole subject was “irrelevant,” Mann then on re-direct (highly unusual) attempted to use a second interrogatory answer as a basis for quantifying his damages from lost grants; only then to be confronted with a third interrogatory answer, which he had never mentioned under questioning by his own lawyer, where he had changed most of the numbers in the second answer, in the most notable case reducing the claimed loss from over $9 million to only about $100,000.

Well, it turns out that that oddity became the subject of extensive argument before the judge, in parts of the trial that were not broadcast to the public viewers. Yesterday, in connection with Mann resting his case, Steyn filed with the court something called a “Motion for Sanctions for Bad-Faith Trial Misconduct” against Mann, addressing many issues about the claimed damages and Mann’s proof of same. Steyn made a copy of that document available via a link on his website. The document gives much history of the subject of Mann’s damages claim in the case, including events that occurred at parts of the trial that have not been broadcast publicly. The document, only 11 pages long, makes for very entertaining reading if you have the time.

But first, some background. The law of defamation is one of the more complex subjects of American law. It arises under state rather than federal law (with D.C. defamation law arising out of D.C.’s role as a state/local governing entity, rather than out of federal law), and differs substantially from state to state. And then there is an overlay of Supreme Court case law interpreting the First Amendment to the federal Constitution, thus impacting the law in every state.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Two-State Delusion The Biden administration is leading a push to recognize a Palestinian state that will be a danger to the security of Israel BY Elliott Abrams

Posted By on February 2nd, 2024

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/two-state-delusion

Everyone knows what to do about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: Arrange the “two-state solution.” That has been a commonplace for decades, going back to the Oslo Accords, all the international conferences, the “Roadmap,” and the efforts by a series of American presidents and their staffs of ardent peace processors.

In the West, the call for a “two-state solution” is mostly a magical incantation these days. Diplomats and politicians want the Gaza war to stop. They want a way out that seems fair and just to voters and makes for good speeches. But they are not even beginning to grapple with the issues that negotiating a “two-state solution” raises, and they are not seriously asking what kind of state “Palestine” would be. Instead they simply imagine a peaceful, well-ordered place called “Palestine” and assure everyone that it is just around the corner. By doing so they avoid asking the most important question: Would not an autocratic, revanchist Palestinian state be a threat to peace?

No matter: The belief in the “two-state solution” is as fervent today as ever. The German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said it’s the “only solution” and Britain’s defense minister chimed in that “I don’t think we get to a solution unless we have a two-state solution.” Not to be outdone, U.N. Secretary General Guterres said, “The refusal to accept the two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians, and the denial of the right to statehood for the Palestinian people, are unacceptable.” The EU’s Foreign Minister Josep Borrell said recently, “I don’t think we should talk about the Middle East peace process anymore. We should start talking specifically about the two-state-solution implementation process.” What if Israel does not agree, and views a Palestinian state as an unacceptable security threat? Borrell’s answer was that “One thing is clear—Israel cannot have the veto right to the self-determination of the Palestinian people. The United Nations recognizes and has recognized many times the self-determination right of the Palestinian people. Nobody can veto it.”

In the United States, 49 Senate Democrats (out of 51) just joined to support a resolution that, according to Sen. Brian Schatz, is “a message to the world that the only path forward is a two-state solution.” Biden administration officials have been a bit more circumspect in public. At the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos in January, Secretary of State Blinken told his interviewer, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, that regional integration “has to include a pathway to a Palestinian state.” National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan called for “a two-state solution with Israel’s security guaranteed.” And President Biden meandered around an important security point: “there are a number of types of two-state solutions. There’s a number of countries that are members of the U.N. that … don’t have their own military; a number of states that have limitations, and so I think there’s ways in which this can work.”

What if ‘what the Palestinian people want’ is mostly to destroy Israel?

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Biden Is a Prisoner of the Progressives’ War on Israel Andrew McCarthy

Posted By on February 2nd, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/biden-is-a-prisoner-of-the-progressives-war-on-israel/

In a pathetic sop to his political base in an election year when his approval ratings are dismal, President Biden slapped sanctions on dozens of Israeli settlers in Judea and Samaria (a.k.a. the West Bank), blocking travel and financial transactions.

As even the Biden fans and Palestinian sympathizers at the New York Times acknowledge, the move is “a gesture” to appeal to “American voters who are furious with the president’s backing of Israel’s war in Gaza.” (The Times ends the sentence there; I would have continued it with “that erupted when Iran-backed Hamas murdered over 1,100 Israelis, raping, wounding, and/or taking hostage hundreds of others in its October 7 sneak attack.”)

The sanctions will have negligible effect. Israel is currently at war on several fronts, including the West Bank, where it eliminated three Hamas terrorists in a raid on a Palestinian hospital on Tuesday. The capacity of a relative handful of people to engage in U.S. travel or finance is of little moment in the scheme of things.

Whether the president’s ploy will have the desired political effect of mollifying Biden’s base is similarly doubtful. The fringe to whom Biden is virtue-signaling (yes, this is their idea of virtue) will not be satisfied with a gesture; they want real action, you know, from the river to the sea. More importantly, they are mostly younger people who are not reliable voters; older voters, whom Biden will need in November, tend to support Israel.

How characteristic of Biden to cut off lawful visas for Israelis while he lawlessly issues hundreds of thousands of faux Biden visas to illegal aliens to usher them into the United States — heedless of the damage it is doing to the education, health-care, law-enforcement, and social-services budgets of American cities and states.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Choose your future: Trump or Obama? By Ned Cosby

Posted By on February 2nd, 2024

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/02/choose_your_future_trump_or_obama.html

Will it be former president Trump versus President Biden in 2024? Or will it be former First Lady Michelle Obama versus former President Trump? These questions and the instability of our times make for much handwringing and prayer here in the early days of 2024.

If you take a deep breath and break this down, it gets simpler. The election of 2024 sets Trump’s “Make America Great Again” against Obama’s “Transform America” mantra. If you want it down to bare bones, the election of 2024 pits Obama against Trump.

Some of you might doubt me, citing the fact that Obama has already served eight years as POTUS and that the Constitution forbids him from a Putin-like endless rule. I might be tempted ask you what other former President moved less than two miles from the White House to continue forcibly engraving his ego on American politics?

Obama, like Putin, does not want to leave the stage. He is willing, however, to let surrogates or the “right people” do his bidding as long as he retains control.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Biden Must Abandon Plans to Withdraw US forces from Syria and Iraq by Con Coughlin

Posted By on February 2nd, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20361/us-withdrawal-syria-iraq

[T]he priority now for the White House must be to strengthen its military presence in the region, not reduce it. Worse, the vacuum created by any withdrawal by US troops is sure to be filled by adversaries of America and the free world.

Any US withdrawal is sure to be seen, especially after the US surrender in Afghanistan, as America running away — again.

[I]t would be folly of the highest order for the Biden administration even to contemplate a reduction of US forces in the region. With Iran clearly intent on pursuing its proxy war against the US and its allies, the US needs to demonstrate its determination to prevent Tehran from expanding its malign influence in the Middle East, rather than capitulating in the face of Iranian violence.

With Iran seemingly intent on intensifying its confrontation with the US, it is hard to imagine a worse time for the Biden administration even to consider withdrawing any of the US forces currently based in the Middle East.

Prior to the latest Iranian-sponsored attack on US forces based in Jordan, in which three serving American service personnel were killed and another 34 were injured, the White House had already opened negotiations with the Iraqi government on the future of US and other allied troops based in the country.

A statement issued by the office of Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, after the first round of talks opened in Baghdad at the weekend, declared that the talks were aimed at ending the US-led coalition in Iraq.

There are currently an estimated 2,500 US troops based in Iraq. The US deployment in the country was originally part of the coalition formed in 2014 to fight Islamic State (IS). The force has continued to operate in Iraq despite the fact that the so-called IS caliphate established in the Syrian city of Raqqa has been destroyed.