ISRAEL Comments turned off

US and Israel facing the mutual threat of Islamic terrorism Yoram Ettinger

Posted By on February 22nd, 2024

http://bit.ly/3T7N2lM

*FBI Director Christopher A. Wray visited Israel on February 14, 2024, during the Israel-Hamas and Israel-Hezbollah wars, meeting with leaders of the Mossad, Israel’s Secret Service, and Israel’s National Police in order to benefit from Israel’s unique urban and tunnel warfare experience and battle tactics in the war against Islamic terrorists, who are advancing the vision of Iran’s Ayatollahs and the Moslem Brotherhood.

*Director Wray considers Israel’s as the most effective battle-tested laboratory of the US armed forces, law enforcement agencies and defense industries.

*Director Wray is aware of the Ayatollahs’ and Hezbollas’ growing entrenchment in Mexico, along the US-Mexico border and throughout Latin America. In fact, since the early 1980s, Iran’s Ayatollahs and Hezbollah have entrenched themselves in Latin America, bolstering collaboration with the drug cartels of Mexico, Columbia, Bolivia, Ecuador and Brazil, all Latin American terror organizations, and each anti-US Latin American government. They supply the drug cartels underground tunnel construction equipment, and train them in the areas of car bombs and Improvised Explosive Devices. In addition, they have leveraged the convoys of illegal aliens from Guatemala to the US-Mexico border, smuggling terrorists and drug traffickers into the US.

*Islamic terrorism has targeted the US since the early 19th century irrespective of US policy and independent of the identity of the US President.  Thus, Islamic terrorism afflicted the US during the presidencies of both Trump and Obama, G.W. Bush and Clinton, Reagan and Carter.

*Hamas is a branch of the Moslem Brotherhood – the largest Sunni terror organization with religious, educational and welfare branches – whose charter aims to topple all national Islamic regimes, establish a universal Islamic society, bring the Western “infidel” – and especially the USA – to submission, and establish Islam as the only legitimate and divinely-ordained religion.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Renu Mukherjee Supreme Injustice The Supreme Court declines to hear a case about an admissions policy adopted in defiance of its affirmative-action ban.

Posted By on February 22nd, 2024

https://www.city-journal.org/article/did-scotus-green-light-racial-discrimination

The Supreme Court announced yesterday that it would not hear Coalition for TJ v. Fairfax County School Board, a case concerning revised admissions policies at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, an elite magnet school in Alexandria, Virginia. The school has adopted a new admissions policy that, while race-neutral on its face, effectively penalizes Asian American applicants. The Court’s denial of certiorari practically endorses efforts to discriminate against Asian American students and may lead other schools to follow suit.

Before 2020, TJ’s admissions process was strictly merit-based. Any student who had completed or was enrolled in Algebra I and held at least a 3.0 grade point average was eligible to apply. Applicants were required to take a standardized test, similar to the SAT/ACT, and those with the highest scores advanced to the process’s second round, in which they had to submit two teacher recommendations and complete three writing prompts and a problem-solving essay. TJ’s class of 2024 (the last admitted under the old, merit-based system) is 73 percent Asian, 17.7 percent white, 3.3 percent Hispanic, and 1 percent black.

The high number of Asian American students at TJ—and the correspondingly low number of black and Hispanic students—troubled education officials in Fairfax County. TJ principal Ann Bonitatibus, for example, said in October 2020 that she wanted a student body that “more closely aligns with the representation in Fairfax County Public Schools.” One school board member wrote in an email that she was “angry and disappointed” with TJ’s racial makeup. Other education officials in Fairfax County stated that TJ’s entrance exam had led to too many “students who had been in test prep since second grade.”

Apparently in response to these objections, the school board crafted a new admissions policy in December 2020. The new scheme limits how many students each area public middle school can send to TJ (the equivalent of 1.5 percent of its eighth-grade enrollment). It also calls for applicants to be evaluated on several criteria, including GPA; a “portrait sheet” where they must demonstrate “graduate attributes” and “21st century skills”; a problem-solving essay; and “experience factors.” These “experience factors” include whether a student is economically disadvantaged, an English language learner, participating in a special-education program, or attending an underrepresented middle school. Notably, the school board struck the standardized-testing requirement.

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Richard T. Bosshardt Not Cutting It Bad policies are leaving the next generation of surgeons unprepared.

Posted By on February 22nd, 2024

https://www.city-journal.org/article/bad-policies-leaving-next-generation-of-surgeons-unprepared

What is going on in surgery? Why are young surgeons are coming out of residency programs unprepared for clinical practice? A 2013 Annals of Surgery report revealed that 40 percent of surgical residents lacked confidence to practice independently after five years of training, the typical length of a full general-surgery residency. According to the same report, one in five surveyed program directors “felt that new fellows arrived unprepared for the operating room,” and program directors deemed 66 percent of new fellows incapable of operating unsupervised for more than 30 minutes in a major surgery.

While these statistics are frightening, that report is 11 years old. Have things gotten better since? Judging by more recent reports and my conversations with peers, they have not, and in fact, have probably gotten worse. Surgeons I have recently spoken to have observed that too many young surgeons are poorly prepared and need remedial help, such as operating with a more experienced surgeon before they can be trusted to operate on their own. The young surgeons themselves seem to realize their inadequate preparation, as nearly 80 percent of post-general-training surgeons pursue a one or two-year fellowship in a subspecialty, which for some may be a way to get more surgical experience and put off entering general practice.

One possible explanation for young surgeons’ lack of preparation stems from the American Council on Graduate Medical Education’s 2003 decision to limit residents in training to 80-hour work weeks and no more than 24 consecutive work hours. For surgery residents, fewer work hours means less time spent caring for patients and performing surgeries. Only with time and repetition do surgical residents develop the requisite cognitive and technical skills necessary to learn sound surgical judgement—knowing when to operate and what operation to do—and how to operate safely under all circumstances. The hour reductions also have resulted in less continuity, as residents hand off patients to one another, diminishing residents’ sense of responsibility for patient care.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

How To Understand Trump’s Jeremiad Against NATO Freeloaders Charles Lipson

Posted By on February 22nd, 2024

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2024/02/21/how_to_understand_trumps_jeremiad_against_nato_freeloaders_150529.html

Donald Trump sent a shiver through official Washington and America’s friends around the world recently when he once again fulminated against NATO allies who refuse to pay for their own defense. His specific target was NATO members that failed to meet their pledge of spending at least 2% of their GDP on their military. Their “free riding,” he stressed, is costly to the U.S., Britain, Poland, and other NATO members who pay more than their share.

The problem is not a new one, nor an easy one to solve. Rich allies in Western Europe have been free riding for decades. The U.S. has been complaining and coaxing them for just as long. Unfortunately, neither cajoling nor warnings have ever been enough.

The reason for that failure is simple. Allies who want to skimp on defense know that Uncle Sugar will ultimately pick up the tab, not out of generosity but out of self-interest. They know Washington has long considered it in America’s vital interest to defend Europe against Russian (or Soviet) aggression, whether France or Belgium pay their share or not. When countries know this, they can free load. And some do. They’ve got plenty of other uses for their money if the U.S. will pay for their defense.

This knotty problem is the essential background for Trump’s threat to allies who refuse to meet their NATO commitments. The former (and perhaps future) president was speaking to them and to isolationist voters in the U.S., not to Moscow, when he made his latest incendiary remarks. Although it wasn’t quite reported this way in the media, Trump claimed that when he was president the leader of one NATO nation in arrears on its funding asked if the U.S. would still come to its defense if it was attacked by Russia. Calling this bluff, Trump said no, adding that he would encourage Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to any ally that fell short of meeting its alliance commitments.

President Biden denounced those comments as “dumb … shameful … dangerous … un-American.” One of Trump’s erstwhile national security advisors, John Bolton, added that the former president wants to withdraw entirely from the alliance.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Stalinist New York Attorney General Scores A Big Win Against Trump (For Now) Francis Menton

Posted By on February 22nd, 2024

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2024-2-19-the-stalinist-new-york-attorney-general-scores-a-big-win-against-trump-for-now

Josef Stalin set the example for the world as the most ruthless practitioner of the art of using a thoroughly corrupt and subservient “justice system” to eliminate all political opposition. Many, many others have since followed Stalin’s lead. Current notable examples include the recent murder of Alexei Navalny in prison in Russia; Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, who fled that country in late 2023 after his arrest was threatened by the Maduro regime; and Pakistan’s former Prime Minister and current opposition leader Imran Khan, convicted in January 2024 of “disclosing a state secret” and sentenced to 10 years in jail. Funny how the countries that engage in such practices virtually always have failed economies as well.

The United States has been remarkably free of such practices during its history. But we have seen a sudden complete reversal of that commendable history with the efforts of multiple political actors and prosecutors to use the courts to take down former President Trump. Readers here are likely familiar with the long list of such efforts, from the two federal Jack Smith criminal prosecutions, to the Fani Willis criminal prosecution in Georgia, to the Alvin Bragg criminal prosecution in Manhattan (supposedly for incorrectly recording the blackmail payment to Stormy Daniels in financial statements), to the many efforts to remove Trump from primary and general election ballots.

Of all the multitudinous “get Trump” efforts, the most proudly and nakedly Stalinist is the civil fraud case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James. What distinguishes the James crusade from all the others, as political as those might be, is that the others all have had at least a pretext of investigating some known or suspected wrongdoing. With James, by contrast, from the start it has always been about finding some way, any way, to take out the man. James initially ran for AG in 2018 on a campaign explicitly promising to get Trump, who was President of the United States at the time. My first post covering James’s vendetta against Trump was on December 13, 2018, shortly after her first election victory and before she took office. That post quoted at length from an interview James had just given to NBC News. In her interview, James emphasized that her focus in office would be on somehow getting Trump, and she essentially conceded that she had no basis at the outset to believe that wrongdoing had occurred. A short excerpt:

“We will use every area of the law to investigate President Trump and his business transactions and that of his family as well,” James, a Democrat, told NBC News in her first extensive interview since she was elected last month. James outlined some of the probes she intends to pursue with regard to the president, his businesses and his family members. They include: – Any potential illegalities involving Trump’s real estate holdings in New York.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Germany cuts funding to NGOs labeled terror orgs by Israel in 2021 While Berlin had resisted halting its support for the six “Palestinian civil society groups” for two years, Oct. 7 “changed everything,” according to NGO Monitor. David Isaac

Posted By on February 22nd, 2024

https://www.jns.org/germany-cuts-funding-to-ngos-labeled-terror-orgs-by-israel-in-2021/

The German government will cease funding six Palestinian NGOs that were declared terrorist organizations in 2021 by then Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz, Germany’s Bild newspaper reported last week.

NGO Monitor, an Israeli watchdog group that spearheaded the effort to convince Germany to stop funding the groups, considers it a major development.

“It is huge because it is the first government in the world that is basically recognizing that Israel’s evidence was right concerning the designation of the six,” Olga Deutsch, vice president of NGO-Monitor, told JNS.

While Germany did freeze funding to the NGOs at the time pending review, for the last two years it had resisted calls to end funding altogether.

Indeed, in July 2022, Germany along with eight other European Union states said they would continue working with the six groups, claiming Israel had provided “no substantial evidence” justifying their assertion of the groups’ terror links.

The NGOs earned their terrorist designation from Israel for their close ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

“Part of the problem is that Germany is one of the least transparent countries when it comes to providing aid,” said Deutsch, describing 34 different funding mechanisms under two ministries. Government money is also funneled through development programs, political party foundations and church aid groups, among other means.

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Israel and Lebanon: Do cedars line the road to Tehran? It is imperative that the West switch from passivity and hope of moderation in Tehran—the very concept that failed on October 7—and turn to a more forward-leaning strategy. David Wormser

Posted By on February 21st, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/02/21/israel-and-lebanon-do-cedars-line-the-road-to-tehran/

U.S., French, and British diplomats are burning the midnight oil to concoct a formula to avoid escalation of the fighting started by Hizballah along the Lebanese-Israeli border shortly after Hamas’ invasion into Israel from Gaza on October 7. It is indeed a volatile situation, one that cannot simply fade out or smoothly slide into quiet. Israel has made clear it can neither accept a ceasefire in place along the northern border nor simply allow the current expanded border conflict to persist at the level at which it is currently fought. For Jerusalem, the realities on the ground require substantial change.

Israelis—and indeed, it is appropriate to speak of the people rather than just its government since polls suggest a powerful majority, nearing a consensus—understand that Hamas’ invasion was a smaller version of Hizballah’s plans for the northern border communities at the hands of Hizballah’s Radwan force. The Radwan force itself is the template upon which Hamas modelled its Nukhba force—the elite terror army that spearheaded the October 7 invasion.

At the same time, also as a result of the catastrophe of October 7, Israel has learned that a defensive strategy alone—a border wall and missile defense—will not protect Israel from another deadly surprise attack. As a result, Hizballah’s very presence in southern Lebanon is now understood by Israel to be so dangerous that neither the current parameters of the border violence nor the status quo ante before October 7 are unsustainable, and that escalation is only a matter of time. Thus, diplomats are scurrying feverishly not only to reach a ceasefire but also to convince Hizballah to redeploy its terror forces kilometers northward in order to answer Israel’s need for a sharply expanded buffer zone.

The last war in 2006 between Israel and Hizballah ended in a UN Security Resolution (UNSCR 1701). The resolution defined a 30-km-wide buffer zone and an international force to enforce it. Sadly, neither the UN force (UNIFIL) nor the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) ever enforced it, and Hizballah almost immediately drifted back to establish itself in full along Israel’s northern border. Moreover, the UN resolution also called for Hizballah’s dismantlement and the demarcation of the Israeli-Lebanese border. Hizballah never disbanded, although the border Israel defined was acknowledged by UN surveys as the proper line.

Hizballah maintains this fiction of an unresolved border in order to justify its continued existence as a legitimate Lebanese faction defending Lebanese territory from an occupier, therein tying the legitimacy of its continued existence to the irresolution of the border. As such, it persists in demanding the ceding of territory, some of which Israel has held since 1948, as part of the border modification.

If press reports are to be believed, the current formula crafted by diplomats—which Israel has neither accepted nor rejected—is an immediate ceasefire that within days enables the withdrawal of Hizballah forces to at least 10 km northward. The idea emerges from the Israeli tactical concern that the longest-range anti-tank missiles, which so deeply threaten Israeli communities, can accurately hit targets 10 kilometers away. Distancing Hizballah 10 km would also obstruct the Radwan force’s ability to strike without detection since it must traverse a long distance before it even reaches the border. To enforce the withdrawal, the Western powers suggest that a reinforced LAF deployment into the vacated areas can keep Hizballah out reliably enough to allay Israel’s concerns. Moreover, the currently reported ceasefire proposal by the West uses the term “border modification” rather than “border demarcation,” suggesting a subtle but important concession to Hizballah already.

It is a bad deal. It should be rejected by Israel and abandoned by Western diplomats.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

How Censorship Drives the Woke Revolution By Nick Short

Posted By on February 21st, 2024

https://tomklingenstein.com/how-censorship-drives-the-woke-revolution/

The woke regime, like all totalitarian regimes before it, views your freedom of speech not as a right but as an obstacle. The suppression of dissent is a vital element of the power grab that will enable this regime to achieve its political goal: the establishment of group quotas as the organizing structure of American life, rather than individual merit and constitutional liberty.

What makes the group quota regime different from the tyrannies of the past is that it has access to mechanisms of political control that are entirely unprecedented in human history, thanks to the technological and social revolution of the last few decades. The migration of so much of our political life into the digital realm, the outsourcing of speech and information control to nominally private actors not directly bound by constitutional limitations, and the development of new tools for more efficient and effective manipulation — including, most recently, artificial intelligence — have created a perfect storm of censorship that is both more extensive and more subtle than that practiced by any previous authoritarian regime.

Those committed to individual merit and to the preservation of our constitutional order must first understand these mechanisms of control if they hope to combat them, and so preserve the hope of victory in the cold civil war against the group quota regime.

The information control apparatus that operates within the U.S. has the ability not only to censor facts but to construct pseudo-realities in which the truth itself becomes “disinformation.” Think of the narratives pushed by the woke regime regarding the origins of COVID-19, Hunter Biden’s laptop, or January 6th.  Alternative narratives, or pseudo-realities, were created about each of these events, then pushed by the media and supported by the government to silence discussion and suppress the facts. Those who spoke truthfully about these events were accused of spreading “disinformation” and were silenced. For the woke regime, individuals who challenge the constructed narrative or present facts that deviate from the prescribed ‘truth’ risk being labeled a “threat to democracy.” 

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Hunter Biden’s Lawyers Accuse Federal Prosecutors of Mistaking Sawdust for Cocaine in Evidentiary Photographs James Lynch

Posted By on February 21st, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/hunter-bidens-lawyers-accuse-federal-prosecutors-of-mistaking-sawdust-for-cocaine-in-evidentiary-photographs/

Hunter Biden’s attorneys are seeking to undermine special counsel David Weiss’s criminal prosecution by accusing his team of mistakenly identifying sawdust as cocaine in evidentiary photographs.

Biden’s attorneys, lead by Abbe D. Lowell, filed a motion in Delaware Tuesday to support his effort to compel discovery in his federal gun case. They criticized Weiss’s investigation by invoking the photographs and the indictment of a former FBI informant for making false allegations of bribery against Joe and Hunter Biden.

“Multiple sources have pointed out, and a review of discovery confirms, this is actually a photo of sawdust from an expert carpenter and it was sent to Mr. Biden, not vice versa,” the court filing reads.

“The prosecution was reckless in making such a hyperbolic and sensational claim in a public filing, which it surely realized would prejudice Mr. Biden in the public eye,” the motion continues.

A federal grand jury in California indicted FBI confidential human source (CHS) Alexander Smirnov Wednesday on false statement and obstruction charges. Smirnov is the CHS behind an FBI whistleblower form produced in June 2020 featuring allegations Joe and Hunter Biden took $10 million in bribes from Ukrainian oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky, the founder of Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings. Senator Chuck Grassley (R.,Iowa) released the FBI document in July after the FBI allowed a select group of House lawmakers to view the document.

The indictment features text messages from Smirnov to his FBI handler disparaging then-Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. Smirnov was previously thought to be credible by the FBI and supplied information about Burisma in 2017 memorialized by a different whistleblower form.

Hunter’s lawyers used Smirnov’s indictment in an attempt to undermine Weiss’s case.

“The Special Counsel charged Mr. Smirnov with lying and obstruction, but the more interesting part of this story is not that Mr. Smirnov lied. It is more remarkable that beginning in July 2023, the Special Counsel’s team would follow Mr. Smirnov down his rabbit hole of lies as long as it did,” the motion adds.

“Disclosure about why the Special Counsel abandoned its June/July 2023 agreements with Mr. Biden and the role played by the Smirnov allegations may reveal flaws worse than mistaking sawdust for cocaine.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Let’s Stop Fetishizing Article 5 The dire danger of putting the interests of the “global community” ahead of the voters’. Bruce Thornton

Posted By on February 21st, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/lets-stop-fetishizing-article-5/

At a rally in South Carolina recently, Donald Trump made some comments about Nato that predictably launched the usual NeverTrump suspects into stratospheric dudgeon. Recalling a conversation he claims he had with a Nato “president of a big country,” Trump told him that if Nato nations continued to stint their military spending and kept failing to meet the 2% of GDP requirement, ‘“No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You gotta pay. You gotta pay your bills.’”

The Wall Street Journal claimed such typical Trumpian caustic hyperbole will be “the reason many Americans won’t vote for him again even against a mentally declining President Biden,” but this prediction is highly unlikely, unless the editors define “many Americans” as the bipartisan political elite. I seriously doubt that some Trumpian trolling will even be remembered by most voters eight months from now.

More important than squawking over Trump being Trump is the uncritical, reverential acceptance of the Nato Treaty’s Article Five, which is a classic example of what James Madison called a “parchment barrier”–– like most treaties, a political document whose terms will be regularly violated. Consider its actual language:

“The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.”