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Merchan’s Verdict: A Conviction Without Consequence The New York legal system’s crusade against Trump ended in farce, with a biased judge delivering a hollow conviction and wishing Godspeed to the president-elect. By Roger Kimball

Posted By on January 12th, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/01/12/merchans-verdict-a-conviction-without-consequence/

I was at a dinner event on Thursday night when the news came that Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett decided to throw a sop to the left.  At issue was whether the Democrat activist New York judge and Joe Biden contributor Juan Merchan should be allowed to sentence Donald Trump in the magic bookkeeping-error-non-disclosure-agreement case in which a possible misdemeanor underwent a legal transubstantiation and suddenly became a polished thirty-four-count felony. Amazing.

Along the way, Merchan issued gag orders against Trump,  interfered with his campaigning, and generally made it plain that he was singling Trump out for unfair treatment.  Still, Roberts and Barrett joined the Court’s left flank to render a 5-4 decision against Trump. Merchan could proceed with the sentencing of the past and now future president of the United States.

Merchan found Trump guilty, guilty, guilty last May. Thirty-four times did he pronounce “guilty.”  The world was amazed. The entire case was unprecedented. Not only was Merchan himself a Democrat activist, his daughter Loren has made millions from consulting for progressive candidates from Kamala Harris on down. What a long time ago it seems. Joe Biden was still running for president in May. Donald Trump had yet to be shot by a would-be assassin.  And Kamala Harris was still cackling in the wings.

We’ve had a lot of legal decisions since then, most of which have gone decidedly against the anti-Trump, lawfare establishment.  We also had an election, which Trump won handily, and a vast and sudden change in the emotional weather of the country.

When Ronald Reagan won the presidency in 1980, there was a surge of optimism and people said that it was “morning in America” again. The bad Carter years gave way to a period of enthusiasm and confidence. Gone was Carter’s gas rationing, his skyrocketing inflation, unemployment,  and interest rates (what Reagan called “the misery index”).  Gone too was the hostage crisis in Iran. Reagan jump-started a period of economic growth through which the developed world saw the greatest accumulation of wealth in history. Reagan’s philosophy of “we win, they lose” put the Soviet Union on the fast track to disintegration, which happened in 1991, just a couple of years after Reagan left office.

ANTI-SEMITISM, EDUCATION, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Lessons in antisemitism from the NEU The powerful teachers’ union is obsessed with Palestine Nicole Lampert

Posted By on January 12th, 2025

https://unherd.com/2025/01/lessons-in-antisemitism-from-the-neu/?utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_yFAhbURchNuZp4BR0L9vfyjgbV0AxKPiW

Perhaps the clues were always there. When the “national education union” was formed in 2017, it dispensed with the rules of grammar for its new image. Capital letters, typically used for proper nouns, were dispensed with in its logo. This new union said it planned to “shape the future of education”.

Today, with nearly half a million of the nation’s teachers in its ranks, the NEU (capitals allowed) is the biggest education union in Europe. It is also the most powerful. During the pandemic, it was sufficiently influential to close Britain’s schools. For such services, Mary Bousted, its leader at the time, was made a Dame in this year’s New Year honours.

Under her replacement as general secretary, Daniel Kebede, the NEU has remained a campaigning organisation, lobbying on gender equality, racism and LGBT rights. But in recent years, it has dedicated itself to one cause in particular: Palestine.

One might wonder what a British teaching union has to do with a geopolitical conflict 3,000 miles away, but the question would be moot. Every year — excepting wars and pandemics — the NEU subsidises two propaganda trips to the Palestinian Territories, while its magazine Educate frequently denounces Israel. In one recent editorial, Kebede wrote: “As educators whose instincts are humanitarian, members are appalled by the willingness of political leaders to let this situation go on. Why do arms sales continue? Why has the verdict of the International Court of Justice not restrained their behaviour?”

To understand this obsession, one need only attend the NEU’s annual conference. Even before the conference, different branches were thinking up novel ways to attack Israel. Natasha Brandon, a Jewish secondary school teacher based in North London, was surprised to find it top of the agenda for the LBGT+ division when they got together ahead of conference.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Keeping BDS Out of Academia: A Canadian Case Study Recordings from a recent Brock University faculty union meeting illustrate the tactics that anti-Israel activists use to co-opt ostensibly neutral academic institutions. Jonathan Kay

Posted By on January 12th, 2025

https://quillette.com/2025/01/07/keeping-bds-out-of-academia-a-canadian-case-study-2/

A Canadian professor once complained to me that academia is nowhere near as radically leftist as conservative culture critics tend to imagine. Yes, there’s plenty of “wokeness” on display. But almost all of these woke controversies, he argued, originate with a tiny minority of dedicated extremists. Most of his colleagues—well over 90 percent, by his estimation—would prefer to stay out of the public eye, avoid political fights, and focus on their areas of specialised research.

He may well be right. But as numerous examples reported by Quillette have shown, even small groups of highly motivated ideologues can exert an outsized influence on the intellectual climate at their schools—especially if they succeed in co-opting ostensibly neutral bodies such as hiring committees, DEI oversight teams, and academic unions.

Intersectionality’s Cosmic Inquisitor
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein has made a name for herself as one of STEM’s most implacable activists. Now the targets of her online attacks are fighting back

A recent case study concerns the Brock University Faculty Association (BUFA), the labour union that represents about 600 full-time faculty members and professional librarians at Brock, a large public research university located about two hours west of Toronto. At BUFA’s general meetings, quorum requirements may be satisfied by just 5 percent of the membership—or about 30 people.

According to one Brock professor who monitors BUFA’s activities closely, most meetings attract just a few dozen people. Few workaday profs can even spare the time required to scrutinize the agendas, which are sent out five days before each meeting.

And so it apparently wasn’t difficult for an assistant professor of sociology named Gökbörü Sarp Tanyildiz to get his “Motion on Scholasticide in Palestine” onto the agenda of BUFA’s December 16, 2024 meet-up—where it was duly seconded by his old master’s-degree supervisor, Nancy Cook (an expert on, among other things, “critical mobilities studies, and feminist, postcolonial and poststructural theory”).

Consistent with other campaigns inspired by the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, Tanyildiz accuses the Jewish state of not only “scholasticide,” but also apartheid, genocide, and war crimes. He calls for Brock’s administration (and its pension planners) to execute a “complete divestment” from any organization that’s even indirectly “complicit” in this regard—including multinational corporations and Israeli universities—and demands that Brock enact a long laundry list of pro-Palestinian policies.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Who Really Denied Statehood to the Palestinian People? by Alan M. Dershowitz *****

Posted By on January 12th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21310/palestinian-statehood-denied

Israel agreed to Palestinian statehood in 1937-1938, 1947-1948, 1967, 2000-2001, and 2007. In each case, it was the Palestinian leadership that refused to agree to the two-state solution….

The Jews accepted the [1937] Peel partition plan, while the Arabs categorically rejected it, demanding that all of Palestine be placed under Arab control and that most of the Jewish population of Palestine be “transferred” — ethnically cleansed — out of the country…

The Jewish leadership [in 1948] declared statehood in the area allocated to it by the UN. The Arab leadership responded by declaring a genocidal war against the new state of the Jewish people. They did not want a Palestinian state. And they wanted there to be no Jewish state.

No one, therefore, should believe that it was Israel that has made the Palestinian people stateless. It was the Palestinians themselves… The current anti-Israel protesters in the West are not calling for a Palestinian state living in peace alongside Israel. They, like the failed Palestinian leadership, just wants to end Israel’s existence. It is not going to happen. Until the Palestinians recognize this reality, they will be denying themselves any possibility of statehood.

One of the most pervasive myths of the Palestinian protest movement is that Israel has denied statehood to the Palestinian people. To the contrary, Israel agreed to Palestinian statehood in 1937-1938, 1947-1948, 1967, 2000-2001, and 2007. In each case, it was the Palestinian leadership that refused to agree to the two-state solution that would have created a Palestinian state, alongside a state for Jewish inhabitants.

In 1937 – in the midst of the terrorist revolt inspired by Adolf Hitler’s ally, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem – the British published the Palestine Royal Commission Report (also known as the Peel Commission Report).

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Do Not Fall for Iran’s Nuclear Negotiation Trap: A Strategy to Buy Time by Majid Rafizadeh

Posted By on January 12th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21299/iran-nuclear-negotiation-trap

Lest anyone think that this is a genuine attempt at diplomacy, it is not. Rather, it is a maneuver aimed at deceptively buying time, avoiding sanctions and deflecting impending actions of the Trump administration.

Iran’s regime is playing a game of manipulation, apparently hoping to mislead the world and stave off serious consequences — namely losing their nuclear weapons program — which, mind-bogglingly, it denies even having, as well as, more importantly, losing their jobs…. It is a tactic known by every four-year old and absolutely should not be taken at face value.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who backed HTS, apparently now sees a neo-Ottoman Turkey finally replacing Iran as the aspiring hegemon in the region, with himself as sultan.

The regime’s goal is clear: buy time, reach a sweetheart deal similar to the one it was handed by the Obama administration, secure sanctions relief and opportunities to complete its nuclear weapons.

Unless Iran is stopped, it will continue covertly to advance its nuclear weapons program – regardless, of course, of any agreements made.

Will the incoming Trump administration let themselves be gamed and permit Iran to be capable of threatening the region again as soon as Trump’s term is up? Iran’s request for negotiations sadly seems part of a larger strategy to enable it to resume its reign of terror. The Trump administration must not allow it to succeed…. Make Persia Safe Again! — for the Iranian people and for enduring global peace.

The Iranian regime has made a sudden and calculated move to engage in talks about nuclear weapons. The UK, France, and Germany have announced that negotiations will begin on January 13.

BOOKS Comments turned off

Jack Cashill :What’s the Matter with California?: Cultural Rumbles from the Golden State and Why the Rest of Us Should Be Shaking

Posted By on January 12th, 2025

Prophetic words from Jack Cashill in 2007

A whimsical response to the best-selling What’s the Matter with Kansas? casts a skeptical eye on the nation’s most liberal and populous state, in an anecdotal survey that likens California to an American Rome of over-indulgence and over-regulation that fails to meet its ideals.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

American Free Speech vs. European Censorship by Drieu Godefridi

Posted By on January 10th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21307/us-free-speech-eu-censorship

What is important is the solidarity being forged between the major US social media platforms and the incoming US administration in support of real freedom of expression.

The new US administration will not tolerate levying fines of tens of billions of dollars on major US technology companies by an EU that is drifting towards authoritarianism and is at the same time more dependent than ever on American power.

It would be in Europe’s lasting interest to prepare for the return of free and unfettered expression.

Anyone wishing to gauge the extent of the European Union’s regulatory drift will need to read Articles 34 and 35 of the Digital Services Act (DSA). Given their length it is impossible to quote them in full here, so here is an extract:

DSA Article 34, “Risk assessment”:

“1. Providers of very large online platforms and of very large online search engines shall diligently identify, analyse and assess any systemic risks in the Union stemming from the design or functioning of their service and its related systems, including algorithmic systems (…) and shall include the following systemic risks (…) (a) the dissemination of illegal content through their services (which includes ‘hate speech’); (b) any actual or foreseeable negative effects for the exercise of fundamental rights, in particular the fundamental rights (…) to non-discrimination; (c) any actual or foreseeable negative effects on civic discourse and electoral processes, and public security; (d) any actual or foreseeable negative effects in relation to (…) public health (…) and serious negative consequences to the person’s physical and mental well-being (…).”

Article 35, “Mitigation of risks,” obliges these platforms to take a whole arsenal of preventive and repressive measures, basically to prevent the sharing of information that displeases the European Commission. In short, the idea is to force these platforms to pay hordes of patrol officers to relentlessly hunt down opinions that do not please the European Lord. The preventive nature of these measures means that they can be described as censorship in the strict sense. What’s more, general censorship, because the terms used by the European legislator – hate, non-discrimination, civic discourse, electoral process, public security, public health, well-being – are so vague that censors with (digital) scissors do cut wherever they please, at the whim of the European Prince.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

IDF Closes Down Kamal Adwan Hospital Arrests 240 suspected Hamas jihadis who had been in the hospital. by Hugh Fitzgerald

Posted By on January 10th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/idf-closes-down-kamal-adwan-hospital/

The reports about the IDF’s operation to capture the several hundred Hamas combatants hiding out in Kamal Adwan Hospital — “the last hospital in northern Gaza,” is how it is now formulaically described — make the IDF out to be villainous, indifferent to the wellbeing of innocent patients and medical personnel. The truth is quite different.

The media will report this: “The IDF has attacked Kamal Adwan Hospital, the last working hospital in northern Gaza. The patients and medical personnel have been forced to evacuate. The Israelis have set fire to the hospital. The IDF claims that Hamas fighters were inside the hospital, hiding both themselves and their weapons. Hamas flatly denies using the Kamal Adwan Hospital.” The real story can be found here: “IDF completes raid on north Gaza hospital, says some 240 terror suspects arrested,” by Emanuel Fabian, Times of Israel, December 28, 2024:

The Israeli military said on Saturday that it had completed an operation against Hamas at northern Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital and the surrounding area.

Some 240 suspected terror operatives were detained, including the medical center’s director and 15 terrorists who participated in the October 7, 2023, onslaught on southern Israel.

The Israel Defense Forces, which last operated against Hamas at Kamal Adwan in October, said the operation was launched because the hospital had “once again become a key stronghold for terrorist organizations and continues to be used as a hideout for terrorist operatives.”

The army said the hospital was still used by Hamas “despite repeated calls to refrain from allowing [terror operatives] to exploit hospitals for military activities.”

The operation was led by the IDF’s 162nd Division. At the start of the raid, the IDF said troops of the 401st Armored Brigade surrounded the hospital, detained several terror operatives, and killed additional gunmen.

Members of the Navy’s Shayetet 13 commando unit then carried out “precise activities” inside the hospital, during which they located and captured weapons, including grenades, handguns, ammunition, and other military equipment, according to the IDF.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Sen. John Fetterman To Become First Sitting Democratic Senator To Visit Trump At Mar-A-Lago

Posted By on January 10th, 2025

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/sen-john-fetterman-to-become-first-sitting-democratic-senator-to-visit-trump-at-mar-a-lago/ar-BB1rbwVn?ocid=winp2fptaskbar&cvid=7148764e0eff4e62f664f37163b33dd4&ei=27

Democratic Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman said Thursday that he has accepted an invitation from President-elect Donald Trump to meet with him at Mar-a-Lago, which will make him the first sitting Democratic Senator known to have visited him at his Florida home since the election.

“President Trump invited me to meet, and I accepted. I’m the Senator for all Pennsylvanians — not just Democrats in Pennsylvania,” Fetterman said in a statement. CBS News first reported that Fetterman accepted Trump’s invitation to meet.

“That is the plan. Yes, we are going to have a conversation,” Fetterman told CBS News. “I think that one, he’s the president, or he will be officially.”

“And I think it’s pretty reasonable that if the president would like to have a conversation — or invite someone to have a conversation — to have it. And no one is my gatekeeper,” he added.

Fetterman has continued to break with his party over his support of many of Trump’s cabinet picks. He has also been very vocal on allegations of antisemitism in the Democratic party and has been a vocal supporter of Israel. Now, he will be the first sitting Democrat in the Senate to visit Trump at Mar-a-Lago.

BOOKS Comments turned off

Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson

Posted By on January 10th, 2025

https://www.amazon.com/Elon-Musk-Walter-Isaacson/dp/1982181281?crid=

When Elon Musk was a kid in South Africa, he was regularly beaten by bullies. One day a group pushed him down some concrete steps and kicked him until his face was a swollen ball of flesh. He was in the hospital for a week. But the physical scars were minor compared to the emotional ones inflicted by his father, an engineer, rogue, and charismatic fantasist.

His father’s impact on his psyche would linger. He developed into a tough yet vulnerable man-child, prone to abrupt Jekyll-and-Hyde mood swings, with an exceedingly high tolerance for risk, a craving for drama, an epic sense of mission, and a maniacal intensity that was callous and at times destructive.

At the beginning of 2022—after a year marked by SpaceX launching thirty-one rockets into orbit, Tesla selling a million cars, and him becoming the richest man on earth—Musk spoke ruefully about his compulsion to stir up dramas. “I need to shift my mindset away from being in crisis mode, which it has been for about fourteen years now, or arguably most of my life,” he said.

It was a wistful comment, not a New Year’s resolution. Even as he said it, he was secretly buying up shares of Twitter, the world’s ultimate playground. Over the years, whenever he was in a dark place, his mind went back to being bullied on the playground. Now he had the chance to own the playground.

For two years, Isaacson shadowed Musk, attended his meetings, walked his factories with him, and spent hours interviewing him, his family, friends, coworkers, and adversaries. The result is the revealing inside story, filled with amazing tales of triumphs and turmoil, that addresses the question: are the demons that drive Musk also what it takes to drive innovation and progress?