EDUCATION Comments turned off

Osama bin Laden, Big Man on Campus His 2002 ‘Letter to America’ is consistent with what students have been taught. By Christopher Nadon

Posted By on December 1st, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-osama-bin-laden-became-the-big-man-on-campus-bff1c53b?mod=opinion_lead_pos10

College students haven’t always been persuaded by Osama bin Laden’s prose. Yet when his 2002 “Letter to America” went viral among young Americans earlier this month, I wasn’t surprised. I had assigned the document for a course on religion and politics when it first appeared. Students found it compelling as a clear and concise statement of al Qaeda’s motives, intentions and understanding of world and Middle Eastern history. They were horrified, as were most faculty.

Yet a year earlier, only a few days after Sept. 11, 2001, a cultural Marxist professor lectured a staff meeting on the need to understand and sympathize with the 19 unfortunate men who had been driven to their martyrdom by Western colonial oppression. Those in the towers, he intoned, had it coming. On that day, my colleagues reacted to this claim with derision and contempt. But the virus had arrived. It would soon spread.

I began to teach the course again in 2017, after a 12-year hiatus. By then the class was filled with students whose education took place entirely within the post-9/11 world. Again we read bin Laden’s letter, and again the students were horrified—this time, not at bin Laden but at me for having assigned it. The students had been trained to consider anyone who might suggest a connection between al Qaeda and religion as racist. The ground had been prepared to insulate so-called non-Western discourse from critical discussion. They denounced me as “Islamophobic” and walked out of class. But at least at that stage they hadn’t yet taken bin Laden as a model.

Today his letter appears prescient to the young because the views it espouses resonate with what their professors have taught for years. Opposition is rarely heard. At the Claremont Colleges, where I teach, 186 faculty members signed onto a letter blaming “Israeli settler colonialism” for the Oct. 7 massacre and supporting the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. Students erected a shrine “to the insurgents who have died for the liberation of Palestine.”

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Forget The ‘Red v. Blue State’ Debate: This Was A Great Debate Bob Maistros

Posted By on December 1st, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/12/01/forget-the-red-v-blue-state-debate-this-was-a-great-debate/

Who won – and lost – Thursday night’s primetime clash between mega-Governors Ron DeSantis, Republican of the Free State of Florida, and Gavin Newsom, Democrat of the Golden State?

On this scorecard, the winners were the American people. And the losers: one and the same.Why was America writ large the winner? 

Because though the event was billed as Great Red State v. Blue State Debate, a nationwide audience was actually privileged to see a just-plain great debate between two attractive and transcendently talented politicians.

America took in more substance, more facts, more clear contrasts, more smart thrusts and parries, and more rhetorical skill, intellectual heft and displays of energy in the first five minutes of this MMA-quality cage match than in the entire series of Republican contests to date. 

The no-holds-barred, mano-a-mano square-off was the Thrilla to those debates’ Vanilla.

Your commentator will leave fact-checking to the “fact-checkers.” Because what mattered much more was the quality and skill of the participants.

Face it, folks. This Newsom guy is good. Surprisingly good, even to this jaded observer.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Save The Salmon, Kill The Humans? Think of the Insanity in all This

Posted By on December 1st, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/12/01/save-the-salmon-kill-the-humans/

A leaked Biden administration document is “a strong sign” that the U.S. will consider breaching four Snake River dams to promote salmon populations on the river. Normally, we wouldn’t care, but the push to tear down these (and other) dams exposes the rank hypocrisy of the “climate change” zealots.

Those four dams are hydroelectric stations. In other words, they are sources of clean, carbon-free energy. According to the non-profit NW Energy Coalition, they produce about 1,000 megawatts of power throughout the year, but that can climb to 2,200 MW during peak energy demand.

So, where’s that energy to replace that loss supposed to come from? Coal plants?

Well, that’s what this leaked document was about. The Biden administration says it’s willing to spend $1 billion to find new “clean energy” sources to replace what the dams produce today.

“The draft agreement says the government will help plan and pay for tribes in the Pacific Northwest to develop enough clean energy resources to serve as replacement power for the lower Snake River dams,” reports ABC News.

There’s also $5 million for Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to “identify the best ways to meet the region’s energy resource needs and clean energy goals while accounting for breaching of the dams and the loss of their hydropower,” according to the Lewis County Chronicle.

Think about the insanity of all this.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Behind the Human Rights Watch Curtain: Hate and Corruption Dedicated to the memory of Robert Bernstein, founder of Human Rights Watch by Gerald M. Steinberg

Posted By on December 1st, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20190/human-rights-watch

Two major revelations have ripped away the curtain from HRW’s moral facade, and revealed a thoroughly corrupt organization.

A week later, a second earthquake ripped through HRW’s carefully manicured curtain of secrecy.

In 2009, Roth and HRW started hiding the full list of donors – an early red flag for an NGO claiming a moral agenda.

[A]n independent investigation of all financial activities covering the past 25 years is required, accompanied by the examination of possible violations by Roth, Whitson and others of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

The damage done to the moral core of human rights and to Israeli victims of Hamas terrorism is incalculable and irreversible. But an internship or work experience at HRW is no longer an asset, and being listed as a donor in HRW’s glossy PR publications is worse than embarrassing.

Two recent major revelations have ripped away the curtain from Human Rights Watch’s moral facade, and revealed a thoroughly corrupt organization. In 2009, then Executive Director Ken Roth and HRW started hiding the full list of donors – an early red flag for an NGO claiming a moral agenda. Pictured: Roth at a press conference at the United Nations on January 14, 2020 in New York City. (Photo by Johannes Eisele/AFP via Getty Images)

On October 7, the Palestinian Hamas terror group slaughtered 1,200 Israelis and foreign visitors in a carefully planned massacre that included the brutal torture and disfigurement of victims. Hamas abducted more than 240 other people, including more than 30 children, and took them to the Gaza Strip, holding them as hostages.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Douglas Murray: Wartime Diary ‘As the helicopters carrying the released hostages landed, traffic stopped. People got out of their cars and broke into song.’

Posted By on November 30th, 2023

https://www.thefp.com/p/douglas-murray-diary-israel-hamas-hostages-war?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

“What is life?” a child asks Oriana Fallaci at the beginning of her great 1969 book Nothing and Amen. As Fallaci wrote, the next morning she flew to the Vietnam War to find out.

I have thought about that question a lot in recent weeks, since arriving in Israel earlier this month to cover the war. I have seen plenty of wars before and they always throw up that question: “What is life?” To understand life you have to understand death, and to understand death you have to try to understand the worst thing that humans can do to each other: war.

Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7 has left 1,200 dead. Nearly 240 hostages—children, women, grandmothers—were taken to Gaza. Over the past few days, about 81 hostages have been returned to their loved ones during the cease-fire.

I was at the children’s hospital in Tel Aviv when the first children and their parents were released. When the helicopters landed and the hostages got out, IDF soldiers blocked their faces with screens to protect them from the glare of the cameras. But I’d already been sent a single photo taken by the Arab press that showed some of the mothers with their children inside a bus when they were still in Gaza.

The terror on their faces. They looked as though they’d aged by decades.

But at this moment, there was joy. As the helicopters landed, traffic stopped, and people got out of their cars and broke into song. They clapped and their voices rang out as they welcomed back the hostages with songs like “Hevenu Shalom Alechem.” (“We brought you peace.”)

As it happened, 12 of the 13 returnees that night were from Kibbutz Nir Oz, the first place I visited on my trip to Israel. But for every returnee, you remember those still in Gaza. I thought especially of the grandsons of the man who showed me around the kibbutz during my visit. On the morning of October 7, the teenage boys were alone in the house. Their grandfather was on the phone with them trying to tell them how to hold the safe room door shut while avoiding being shot from the other side. The two boys struggled with a wound-up sheet, and held out a while, but they couldn’t fight back against two grown men, members of Hamas. They were taken into Gaza.

So was Kfir Bibas, a baby of ten months. So was his brother. So was their mother. Yesterday, Hamas said that they would not be released because they died in captivity. 

Who knows if Hamas killed them, as they killed so many others, or if they are lying in order to torture those waiting for their return. 

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Breaking: Nixon Era Fixture Henry Kissinger Has Died at 100 Stephen Kruiser

Posted By on November 30th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/stephen-kruiser/2023/11/29/breaking-nixon-era-fixture-henry-kissinger-has-died-at-100-n4924341

Henry Kissinger, one of the most dominant figures of the Watergate and Vietnam War eras, has died. 

The Wall Street Journal:

Former presidential adviser Henry Kissinger has died, according to a statement posted on his website, bringing to a close one of the most polarizing and influential diplomatic lives in U.S. history.

He died Wednesday at his home in Connecticut, said a statement by his consulting firm. He was 100 years old.

The German-born academic was the only American official ever to concurrently serve as both secretary of state and White House national security adviser, giving him immense power during the Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford presidencies. That helped him end the U.S. war in Vietnam and to shape American foreign policy toward the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Unhinged Among Us Is the pro-Hamas crowd ignorant of Middle East history?   By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on November 30th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/11/30/the-unhinged-among-us/

October 7 should have been an open-and-shut case of moral condemnation.

During peace and holiday, invading Hamas gunmen murdered, tortured, mass raped, decapitated, and mutilated some 1,200 Israelis. The vast majority were unarmed women, children, infants, and the elderly.

The cowardly murderers proudly filmed their atrocities and then fled back to Gaza—to cheers from the Gaza street.

Before Israel even retaliated, the mass murdering of Jews earned praise from the Middle East, the international hard left, and especially the faculty and students of elite Western campuses

When the Israeli Defense Forces struck back, the killers dispersed to the safety of their multibillion-dollar subterranean cities. The cowardly elite architects of the mass murder fled to Arab sanctuaries in Lebanon and Qatar.

From its headquarters burrowed below hospitals, mosques, and schools, Hamas bartered hostages for a reprieve from the IDF and the release of its own convicted terrorists in Israeli jails.

Hamas shot any of its own supporters who refused to shield Hamas gunmen.

It continued launching rockets at Israeli civilian centers. It serially lied about its casualties, expropriating intended relief food and fuel for its underground tunnel city of killers.

Abroad, Hamas supporters also emulated the methods of the pro-Nazi demonstrators in Western cities of the 1930s. Unlike their pro-Israel critics, the pro-Hamas demonstrators in the U.S. and Europe turned violent.

They took over and defaced private and public property. They chanted genocidal anti-Semitic slogans calling for erasure of the nation of Israel.

They interrupted shoppers, blocked highways, attacked businesses, and swarmed bridges. They assaulted police.

The majority wore masks to hide their identities in the fashion of anti-semitic Klansmen.

Why did the doctrinaire left, the youth of the Democratic Party, and the campuses outdo each other in their anti-semitic venom toward Israel?

For the first time in their lives, many of the ignorant protestors suddenly professed concern about refugees, colonialism, disproportionality, innocent civilians, and the rules of war.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Five Reasons Why Climate Skepticism And Dissent Are Important

Posted By on November 30th, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/11/30/five-reasons-why-climate-skepticism-and-dissent-are-important/

Today a blithering throng of nascent tyrants, fevered zealots, useless office-holders, hypocrites and ignoble grifters will gather to kick off 28th United Nations Conference of the Parties in the grand pursuit of “global transformative climate action.” For nearly two weeks they will rail and prattle endlessly about how important it is to end fossil fuel use, nag those they slander as “deniers,” tell new lies, restate old lies, hold themselves up as saviors, dine sumptuously – then board jets, many of them privately owned, that burn oceans of hydrocarbon-based aviation fuel to return home.

The legacy media, naturally, will go gleefully along for the ride. They will employ the usual terminology – emergency, crisis, apocalypse, warmest, hottest, wettest, driest, melting, temperature records, accelerating change – that is intended to both frighten the public and boost their green cred that is earned by showing just how much one really cares about the climate.

While this spectacle grinds on, it can’t be forgotten that the global warming narrative should not be taken as indisputable fact. Here are five reasons that we can’t blindly trust and follow the political left’s climate line:

As we recently mentioned in regard to the political left, which is now almost entirely radicalized, the issue it is raging about at any given moment is not the real issue. It is “only an occasion,” says David Horowitz, once a member of the New Left, “to advance the real cause which is the accumulation of power to make the revolution.” The constant screeching over man-made global warming is simply a pathway to accumulating ever-greater political power and control.
Science, real science, not politicized, self-serving Tony Fauci science, demands skepticism and dissent. Minds should never be closed off to the possibilities that are beyond current scientific findings and theories. Science can never evolve or grow if today’s accepted truths are not challenged tomorrow. The “politically motivated manufacture of scientific consensus corrupts the scientific process and leads to poor policy decisions,” says Judith Curry, former professor and chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and now president of the Climate Forecast Applications Network. “Consensus enforcement,” she continues, “interferes with the self-correcting nature of science via skepticism, which is a foundation of the scientific process.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Pro-Hamas Muslims Attack Rockefeller Tree Lighting Burning a Koran is hate, but a Muslim mob attacking a Christmas tree lighting is fine. by Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on November 30th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/pro-hamas-muslims-attack-rockefeller-tree-lighting/

“Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant.”

CAIR co-founder Omar Ahmad

The Muslim American Society, which has links to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, and Samidoun, designated as a terrorist front group in Israel and banned in Germany, along with other terror adjacent groups, announced that they were going to “Flood the Tree Lighting for Gaza”.

By ‘Flood’, they were referencing the Hamas name for the Oct 7 massacres, Operation Al Aqsa Flood, and by “tree lighting”, they meant the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting.

Pause for a moment to consider that burning a Koran is considered an outrage and there have been constant calls to ban it, but a Muslim mob attacking a Christmas tree lighting is “speech”.

Religious tolerance only goes one way.

Imagine 500 Americans descending on a mosque to protest Islamic terrorism. There would be condemnations and endless lectures about Islamophobia. But when Muslim pro-terror groups do this, there’s no discussion about hate or religious intolerance.

Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters swarmed the streets surrounding Rockefeller Center Wednesday, clashing with NYPD cops and chanting “river to the sea,” long seen as an antisemitic slogan, in an effort to derail the annual tree lighting in support of Gaza.

Unable to get to the NYC Christmas tree, the enormous crowd instead swarmed around the tree outside the News Corp building, which houses The Post and Fox News, and has already been targeted by pro-Palestinian protesters on at least two occasions.

The protesters attempted to knock down the barricades cops put up to keep them separate from the throngs hoping to take in the Big Apple holiday tradition.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Hamas Also Slaughters Muslims by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on November 30th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20189/hamas-also-slaughters-muslims

Awad Darwashe, 23, an Arab-Israeli paramedic, remained behind, refusing [on Octobet 7] to abandon the injured. “I speak Arabic. I think I can manage,” Darawshe said, supposing that he could reason with the terrorists. Perhaps he thought they would not harm a fellow Muslim Arab. He was wrong.

“I never felt that I’m deprived in any way….Stop the nonsense. It is empty whining. I don’t believe in that. Everyone here can get where they want. What – the country doesn’t let them study? Y’allah, be a lawyer, be a teacher. Does anyone stop you? Even in prayer. Does anyone stop you praying? We pray five times a day, five times no one stops us. Whoever wants to be successful can be successful. Whoever doesn’t want to be successful blames the country, the government.” — Ibrahim, a middle-aged man, “Is Israel an Apartheid State?”, YouTube, February 23, 2014

Where in the Middle East are Arabs thriving throughout society, not just in a privileged whirl of favors and nepotism? Israel.

“We are very proud of his actions…This is what we would expect from him and what we expect from everyone in our family — to be human, to stay human and to die human.” —

The family of Darwashe, the paramedic who would not abandon the injured, apnews.com, October 15, 2023

“People from all over the country come to hug and support the family. The entire nation is one family now.” — Ali Alziadna, whose four family members are currently held hostage, haaretz.com, November 13, 2023

Hamas has repeatedly demonstrated that it cares nothing for the well-being of Arabs and Muslims. From their luxury homes in the safety of Qatar and Turkey, its leaders give the orders to attack Israel and then sit back and let the world weep over the destruction they wrought upon their own people.

Perhaps the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip should look at the Arab citizens of Israel and note how they enjoy democracy, freedom of speech and a free media. If the Palestinians wish to live well, like the Arab-Israelis, this is the time for them to get rid of Hamas and all the terror leaders who, for seven decades, have brought them nothing but one disaster after another.