ANTI-SEMITISM, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Frank Furedi:The woke scapegoating of the Jews The Western left’s response to Hamas’s atrocities has exposed a virulent new form of anti-Semitism.

Posted By on December 2nd, 2023

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/10/12/the-woke-scapegoating-of-the-jews/

The assault on southern Israel last weekend was more than an atrocity. This callous and systematic murder of civilians was nothing less than a 21st-century version of a barbaric pogrom. The videos recorded by Hamas operatives as they slaughtered people serve as a frightening testimony to human depravity. They more than match the numerous beheading videos that glorified the barbarism of Islamic State and other terrorist organisations in recent decades.

Seeing the Hamas-orchestrated pogrom was gut-wrenching. But what I have found almost as disturbing are the smug voices of those in the West who say that Israel is responsible for Hamas’s barbarism. That it brought this horror on itself.

Ever since Hamas operatives embarked on their depraved killing spree, self-styled ‘progressives’ have been queuing up to tell anyone who will listen that the evil Zionists had it coming. Not even this week’s reports of Hamas’s massacre of babies have given them pause for reflection. Their victim-blaming is echoed by numerous Western Muslim organisations and even by some mainstream politicians. They too say that Israel had it coming. With his usual smug complacency, former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis declared in an interview that he would never denounce Hamas for these atrocities. Pointing the finger at Israel, he stated that ‘the path to ending the tragic loss of innocent lives – both Palestinian and Israeli – begins with one crucial first step: the end of the Israeli occupation and apartheid’.

Varoufakis’s apologism for atrocities against Jewish men, women and children appears civilised compared with the response of the West’s Palestine-solidarity campaigns. Many of them have actively celebrated this pogrom. One speaker at an ‘All Out for Palestine’ protest outside the Israeli consulate in New York seemed to think that the systematic murder of 260 young people at the Supernova music festival provided excellent ‘comedy’ material. ‘As you might have seen, there was some sort of rave or desert party where they were having a great time’, he said, ‘until the resistance came in electrified hang gliders and took out at least several dozen hipsters’. The rabble assembled outside the Israeli consulate responded to this ‘joke’ about the mass murder and kidnapping of ‘several dozen hipsters’ with gales of laughter.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Diversity Rape of the Day by Mark Steyn

Posted By on December 2nd, 2023

https://www.steynonline.com/13949/diversity-rape-of-the-day

Have you ever been to Hamburg’s Stadtpark? They call it the “green heart” of the city, over 350 acres of woods and lakes and meadows, playgrounds and sports fields and concert stages, plus Germany’s largest planetarium. It’s also a great place to rape someone.

So a fifteen-year-old girl gets dragged into the bushes by a gang of four “youths”. They rape her, and take the trouble to film themselves doing so. Because, after all, if you gang-rape someone, you want to have something to show to the lads who weren’t able to make it. When they’re sated and push off, the girl gets to her feet and staggers away only to run into five more chaps, who rape her all over again. And film it all over again, in what by now is enough video for a full-length feature – over two-and-a-half hours. That’s getting close to Lord of the Rings – and with a cast to match: the semen of nine different men was found in and on her body. And from all over the map: Egypt, Libya, Kuwait, Iran, Afghanistan, Montenegro, Poland, Armenia… That’s a lot of diversity: it’s like the UN General Assembly of semen …although officialdom was eager to characterise most of the rapists as “German”, with two said to be of “uncertain nationality”. There’s a lot of that about.

The rape of a schoolgirl is a terrible thing – especially for the guys. As the eminent lady psychiatrist assigned to the case, Nahlah Saimeh, was at pains to explain, “a migrant background can push offenders to the margins of society” and lead to “fantasies of grandeur as an attempt to compensate for one’s own misery”.

Yeah, but two-and-a-half hours? That’s some fantasy of grandeur.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

David Randall The Usual Grotesques Another day, another cultural event invaded by leftist goons David Randall

Posted By on December 2nd, 2023

https://www.city-journal.org/article/climate-protests-at-the-met

So there I was, in the middle of the opening night of Tannhäuser at the Metropolitan Opera, when the shouting started. “Climate protesters,” or “climate activists”—the usual grotesques—were shouting “No opera on a dead planet,” and other such inanities. They placed themselves around the theater, timing it so that when one was arrested, another started shouting somewhere else. I counted five interruptions, though the first press reports say there were only four; did I get it wrong? The audience was displeased; I heard shouts of shame! and even, briefly from one member of the audience, U.S.A.! U.S.A.! The management finally announced that the program would go on no matter what, keeping the lights on so that security could remove people more quickly; either the thugs were exhausted, or the remainder figured that it wasn’t worth bothering with. So we finished the opera, with too much light, and (at least for me) some nervousness at every loud noise, thinking it might be another interruption.

There have been at least two previous intrusions at operas, in Amsterdam and Milan. Less than a day ago, pro-Hamas goons tried to interrupt the lighting of the Rockefeller Christmas tree. Less than a week ago, others tried to disrupt the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. It’s a general campaign to try to make normal life impossible until you give in to the radical demands.

That’s the short version, but it’s worth considering the various elements.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Why Are Today’s Politics So Awful?” What is today’s cancel culture but a cyber-tarring and feathering?By Thaddeus G. McCotter

Posted By on December 2nd, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/12/02/why-are-todays-politics-so-awful/

Editor’s note: This is a first in a four-part series).

People often ask, “Why are today’s politics so awful?” There are several reasons, many of which will be explored in this four-part series. In a nutshell (pun intended), the Communications Revolution has enormously contributed to the belief that politics is more awful than ever due to its impact upon the public, the media, the politicians, and the country.

Yet, before considering these reasons, one must avoid the temptation to romanticize the political past as a time of eminently genteel debate in a country where that civility led to a destructive civil war. Even during the period of our nation’s founding, American politics has been contentious as evinced by the political battles between the Royalists and the Revolutionaries. Later, one need only look at how Federalist political pamphleteers attacked President Thomas Jefferson (with the truth, by the way); or how President Andrew Jackson was decried as a “tyrant” and “would-be king” by his political opponents, obloquies later echoed in attacks upon Presidents Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and, most recently, Donald Trump.

Nevertheless, while the intensity and invective of political battle has not waned, its visibility has exponentially increased. Due to the Communications Revolution, on a subway or runway, at home or abroad, 24 hours every single day, people possess the ability to casually survey and/or directly engage in politics. No longer does one have to hope the local newspaper publishes their letter to the editor or hope someone in Washington reads their constituent letter. The expression of one’s political opinion and/or agenda can be voiced to the political class and one’s fellow citizens instantaneously and – especially, when in concert with like-minded individuals – effectively.

The consequence of the Communication Revolution’s empowerment of the public it to make politics appear more prevalent and contentious than in the past. While true that more people are publicly expressing their political views, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are new to their opinions or that the intensity of these opinions has increased. What has undoubtedly happened, though, is that technology has facilitated the public’s ability to express their views.

This results in the sense that Americans are more political and, generally, politics more prevalent and awful than ever. True, it can be a bit unsettling to see a friend or neighbor’s political post, more so when one never thought that friend or neighbor shared your views or party affiliation. (They feel the same when they see your post).

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

One Senator is Blocking Hundreds of Biden DEI Nominees From Taking Over the Military 40% have expressed support for the imposition of DEI policies upon our armed forces.” by Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on December 2nd, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/one-senator-is-blocking-hundreds-of-biden-dei-nominees-from-taking-over-the-military/

It’s unfortunate that the destruction of our military isn’t a bigger story and it’s also a shame that so few Republicans and conservatives have backed Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s principled stand to block Biden’s radical military nominees.

Senate Republicans are seeking to bypass his insistence that Biden’s nominees pass proper confirmation with appropriate scrutiny instead of being shoved through.

And that may mean the end of the military as an American institution committed to defending the nation. Instead, it will become another DEI operation.

As this letter from Save America’s Military warns, “independently conducted research has revealed that some 40% of the promotable officers now awaiting Senate approval have publicly expressed support for the imposition of Diversity,
Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies upon our armed forces.”

We’re talking about hundreds of DEI nominees. Here’s the kind of thing we’re talking about.

In the weeks following George Floyd’s death in 2020, a U.S. Air Force officer—currently awaiting promotion to brigadier general—accused his fellow “white colonels” of being the “biggest barriers” to addressing “racial injustice” in the military and being “blind to institutional racism.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Muslim Assimilation and its Malcontents Rachel Kohn

Posted By on December 2nd, 2023

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2023/12/muslim-assimilation-and-its-malcontents-rachael-kohn/

I was recently called “Islamophobic” on Facebook by a Muslim convert I met once many years ago. The prompt was nothing I said about Islam, but about assimilation being the road to integration for Aboriginal Australians, as it has been for most other individuals and ethnic-religious groups in the West. It was a telling leap to make, given that for twenty-one years my program, The Spirit of Things on ABC RN, featured many Muslims, but perhaps the former community leader and school teacher remembered only the ones who rankled, those who advocated a modern, assimilated version of Islam and denounced some of its belligerent and oppressive expressions.

Marnia Lazreg is a Professor of Sociology at Hunter College and CUNY in New York, and when I went visited her in 2010, I remarked that she was the only faculty member without a photo of herself on her website. She told me that after writing her book Questioning the Veil, it was “dangerous” for her to be recognisable, given the resurgence of Islamist thinking in post-9/11 America. Her own mother took off the veil at the age of fifty after the independence of Algeria, and Marnia’s generation of students never thought of wearing the veil as they contemplated living a new kind of life, reflecting modernity. But Professor Lazreg’s writing about women and their desire to be free from the tyranny of a patriarchal Islamic tradition that confined them to full bodily coverage and the ambit of the home, was ironically problematic in mid-town Manhattan in twenty-first-century America.

Like Lazreg, a Canadian Muslim, Irshad Manji, was also imperilled by the publication of her book The Trouble with Islam Today, and when I interviewed her during a visit to Sydney in 2004, she had security around her at all times. Her book begins with her experience as a young bright student in a madrassa in Vancouver where she was punished by her teachers for asking questions about the Koran. Expected to recite the sacred text without understanding it, she questioned why Muslims are instructed to avoid Jews and Christians, when to her as a young Canadian they were friends and fellow citizens. As a highly successful young host on TV Ontario, where her boss was Jewish, she spoke and wrote about the irrationality of Muslim anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism. Consequently, her books are banned in many Muslim countries.

EDUCATION, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Palestine, Pedagogy and Protesting Kevin Donnelly

Posted By on December 2nd, 2023

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/education/2023/12/palestine-pedagogy-and-protesting/

The plea published in The Age and the SMH by Melbourne-based teacher Farah Khairat arguing teachers have every right to advocate on behalf of the Palestinians in the Gaza war illustrates how teachers, instead of being balanced and impartial, are intent on indoctrinating students with radical, cultural-left ideology.

Khairat argues she is entitled to present a one-sided, highly emotional account of the war in Gaza to her students — an account where the Palestinians are the victims and Israelis the criminals and there is no mention of Hamas’s evil and barbaric attack killing Jewish women and children. Ignored are the Israeli women raped and abducted, the babies killed and mutilated.  Instead, Khairat writes of “one Palestinian child killed every 10 minutes”, “dozens of teachers and school staff killed” and “children’s bodies covered in dirt, rubble and blood”. She also argues teachers should be allowed to politicise the classroom by “expressing solidarity with the Palestinian cause” and students allowed to wear a Palestinian scarf (keffiyeh) while at school.

In response to departmental directives not to discuss the Gaza war in the classroom, Khairat argues “As an educator, I question the appropriateness of feigning ignorance on such critical matters.  How could I pretend not to be knowledgeable on this topic”. Confusing her personal opinion of Israel and her primary duty to educate students in a balanced and objective way, she writes “I refuse to stay silent because trying to sweep this under the rug is just another form of oppression. To be silent is to be complicit”.

Given Khairat is a member of the Teachers and School Staff for Palestine Victoria group, it’s understandable she has such a jaundiced and one-sided view of the Gaza war.  What is inexcusable is that like-minded teachers have abrogated their responsibility as their students’ guardians. Rather than indoctrinating students with their personal political views and enforcing cultural-left mind control and groupthink, the role of the teacher is to educate students to be knowledgeable and able to evaluate arguments is a rational and balanced way.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran’s Regime Soon to Have Nuclear Bombs; Hezbollah Is Next by Majid Rafizadeh

Posted By on December 2nd, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20191/iran-nuclear-bombs

The threat of a nuclear-armed Iran must not be underestimated. Iran’s regime has frequently threatened to wipe a whole country — Israel — off the map, and is also increasing military cooperation with Venezuela and Cuba to threaten the US. Europe, too, remains a rich target for nuclear blackmail. Iran would not even have to use its nuclear bombs; the threat would be enough.

It is high time for the Biden administration and the European Union at least to stop Iran from selling its oil. If not, much of the planet will soon see itself either in World War III or a surrender.

It would have been so much less costly in life and treasure to stop Hitler before he sent the German army across the Rhine in 1936. Perhaps US President Joe Biden is trying to bribe the mullahs not to create any more mayhem before next year’s US presidential election – but the only result of such timidity is that the price goes up – with a worse war to follow. Biden would not have won WWII.

The Iranian regime, through its proxies, has already attacked US forces in Iraq and Syria at least 74 times since October 17. US retaliation – against the proxies, not Iran – apparently could not impress Iran’s regime less. Someone else takes the bullet: that is why Iran has proxies in the first place… The Biden administration is not only allowing to Iran’s mullahs to create a war cost-free, it is paying them to do it.
The threat of a nuclear-armed Iran must not be underestimated. Once Iran obtains nuclear weapons, it will most likely provide some of them to its proxies, including Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen. (Image source: iStock)

Iran is closer than ever before to obtaining nuclear bombs; meanwhile, the Biden administration’s only policy toward the ruling mullahs of Iran is to keep “rewarding” them with billions of dollars.

After the Iran-backed Hamas terror group launched its genocidal war against Israel and Jews, the Iranian regime ratcheted up its enrichment of uranium. The regime claims it now has enough enriched uranium to make three nuclear bombs, according to one of the two confidential reports by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and seen by Reuters.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

No Amount Of Subsidies Will Ever Make A Wind/Solar Electricity System Economically Feasible: Francis Menton

Posted By on December 2nd, 2023

https://us7.campaign-archive.com/?e=a9fdc67db9&u=9d011a88d8fe324cae8c084c5&id=a3f66ecf7b

The COP 28 climate confab opened today in Dubai. Some 70,000 true believers in the energy transition are said to be gathering. And not one of them appears to be either willing or able to do the simple arithmetic that shows that this can’t possibly work.

So far, no country that has made a commitment to “net zero” has officially backed off. (Argentina may soon become the first.). Things proceed as if all that is needed is to build sufficient wind and solar generation facilities, until eventually you have enough of them to meet demand. But that’s not how this works. The absurdity becomes more obvious every day. Can somebody please tell the poor people making fools of themselves in Dubai?

Let’s consider the latest from Germany. According to Statista here, Germany consumed 511.59 TWh of electricity in 2021 (latest year given, although the numbers have recently changed very little from year to year). Divide by 8760 (number of hours in a year) and you learn that Germany’s average usage of electricity is 58.3 GW. So, can you just build 58.3 GW of wind and solar generators to supply Germany with electricity?

Absolutely not. In fact, Germany already has way more wind and solar electricity generation capacity than the 58.3 GW, but can’t come anywhere near getting all its electricity from those sources. As of June 2023 Germany had 59.3 GW of generation capacity from wind turbines alone, and (as of end 2022) another 67.4 GW of generation capacity from solar panels. The total of the two is 126.7 GW — which would supply more than double Germany’s usage at noon on a sunny and breezy June 21. But, according to Clean Energy Wire here, through the first three quarters of 2023, the percent of its electricity that Germany got from wind and solar was only 52%. Capacity seemingly sufficient to supply double the usage in fact only supplies half. That’s because the supply does not come at the same time as the demand, and the wind/solar generation system provides no mechanism to shift the supply to a time to meet the demand.

And why doesn’t Germany just double the amount of its wind/solar generation, so that those sources would go from supplying 52% of usage to 100%. Because it doesn’t work that way. If they double the wind and solar generation, then on the sunny/breezy June 21 mid-day they will now have over 250 GW of electricity generation — more than 4 times what they need — so they will have to discard or give away the rest. But on a calm night in January, they will still have nothing and need full backup from some other source. Multiplying the wind/solar generation capacity by 10 or even 100 (referred to as “overbuilding”) will increase the costs of the system exponentially, but will never be enough to keep the lights on all the time. Or you can try energy storage to save up the surpluses to cover the deficits, but that also multiplies the costs of the system exponentially. For more than you will ever want to know about energy storage and its costs, read my December 2022 energy storage report, “The Energy Storage Conundrum.”

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Liz Peek: Top takeaways, real winner of DeSantis, Newsom debate

Posted By on December 2nd, 2023

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/top-takeaways-real-winner-of-desantis-newsom-debate

Against all expectations, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis absolutely destroyed California’s Gavin Newsom in Thursday night’s Red State-Blue State debate moderated by Sean Hannity on Fox News.

Yes, the governor of Florida had a stronger hand – his state has seen a massive inflow of residents attracted to the better quality of life offered by the Sunshine State, while people have been fleeing California. On issue after issue raised by Hannity, DeSantis could roll out statistics that prove the success of the conservative common-sense policies he has implemented in Florida. 

But the surprise was in his strong and persuasive presentation. DeSantis is generally perceived to be a wooden speaker and campaigner; maybe his run for president has made him more effective. Newsom, on the other hand, is reputed to be the Democrat’s smooth-talking, politically clever president-in-waiting, the likely successor to Joe Biden should the president drop out of the 2024 race.  

The California governor was glib, to be sure, but he turned out to be all fluff — unable to answer questions that he surely saw coming, like why people are fleeing his state or why gasoline prices are $4.85 a gallon compared to $3.17 in Florida and $3.25 nationwide.   

Newsom embarrassed himself by disputing indisputable facts presented by debate moderator Hannity; he had no answers. The California governor could not explain why 750,000 people left his state in the past two years, while 454,000 people moved into Florida, why violent crime is almost twice as high in California as it is in Florida, why taxes are so much loftier, or why homelessness is over three times greater than in Florida. (He actually tried to suggest that the homeless issue had begun under Ronald Reagan’s governorship.). 

Asked about these issues, Newsom mostly skirted the questions, denied the facts or pivoted to talking up President Joe Biden’s record. For instance, he resorted to White House talking points on the large number of jobs added nationally under the Biden administration rather than explain why unemployment is so much higher in California than it is in Florida. On our open border, Newsom blamed Republicans for not backing Biden’s plan for comprehensive immigration reform, rather than admit that the millions of people pouring into our country illegally pose a security threat.

Sometimes, Newsom made up completely non-credible statistics of his own. He claimed, for instance, that more people had moved from Florida to California in the past two years than the other way around. People watching immediately debunked that idea, posting on X, formerly known as Twitter, actual numbers that disproved the governor’s claim.