NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The American right needs to cut out the vice-signalling Steve Bannon’s dumb salute is further proof of the right’s drift from normalcy. Brendan O’Neill

Posted By on February 26th, 2025

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/02/25/the-american-right-needs-to-cut-out-the-vice-signalling/

So having voted out the virtue-signallers, now the good people of America must suffer the vice-signallers? Take Steve Bannon’s salute at CPAC. We all know what he was up to. He was triggering the libs and titillating the Very Online right. It was a massive troll designed to get the CNN crowd fuming and the ironic fascists of X chuckling. So 77million US voters say a firm No to the eccentric ideologies of the faux-virtuous liberal elite, only to see them replaced by the eccentric antics of vice-flirting conservatives? Great.

It was at the end of his CPAC speech that Bannon – a key intellectual player in the first Trump administration – executed a forceful straight-armed salute. Exactly as he will have anticipated, and no doubt desired, the leftish media went nuts. He’s playing ‘footsie with Nazism’, said CNN host W Kamau Bell. Some on the right weren’t happy, either. Jordan Bardella, leader of France’s far-right National Rally, pulled out of his CPAC spot over Bannon’s ‘gesture referring to Nazi ideology’. Listen, when even the National Rally, a party founded by a literal Holocaust denier, thinks you’re a tad too fascist-adjacent, it’s time for some self-reflection.

Bannon says it was just a ‘wave’. Come on, Steve – I regularly wave at friends but I usually manage to do it without looking like Hitler at Munich in 1937. There are two possible explanations for his salute: either he’s a Nazi and he wants the world to know or he is so insanely invested in the tragic virtual sport of ‘owning the left’ that he’s even willing to mimic a Sieg Heil to piss these people off. I think it’s the latter. And while that’s definitely better than his being an actual SS fanboy, it still doesn’t bode well for the new America that such digital conservative frivolity has exploded into the real world.

I have no time either for those shouting, ‘This is proof he’s a Nazi!’, or those saying, ‘It was just a Roman salute!’, a gesture some claim was a customary greeting back in Ancient Rome. The former are just airing their long-held, lazy belief that Trump and everyone connected with him is a fascist. It’s not 2016, guys – the Literally Hitler stuff doesn’t land anymore.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Uncivil Education Too many government-run schools are getting bad Marx. By Larry Sand

Posted By on February 26th, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/02/26/uncivil-education/

hile Donald Trump’s effort to end the Department of Education is admirable, much else must be done to right the country’s wayward K-12 ship. One glaring issue that needs to be addressed is the ongoing far-left slant of school curricula.

A report by the Goldwater Institute released in late January shows how politically skewed our schools are. The policy organization’s Tyler Bonin states that Marxist Howard Zinn’s work is used in about 25% of American classrooms.

Zinn’s best-selling book, A People’s History of the United States, which is used in conjunction with the online “Zinn Education Project,” misinforms students and borrows from Karl Marx to present American history as a “conflict between capital and labor,” Goldwater discloses.

Zinn maintained that the teaching of history “should serve society in some way” and that “objectivity is impossible and it is also undesirable.” When called on the carpet for writing a history book that played very fast and loose with the facts, the author freely admitted it, saying that his hope in writing the book was to create a revolution.

Well, at least Zinn was honest enough to admit he was a liar.

Here are just a few of Zinn’s suppositions: He resents Abraham Lincoln and the people of the northern states during the Civil War for “insufficient opposition to the institution of slavery.” He has “condescension toward those opposed to the spread of communism.” He also maintains a belief that “civil rights reforms have amounted to little more than window dressing amid a backdrop of ongoing, intractable systemic oppression.”

While students may now be experts in Marxist dogma, they are ignorant of real history. In 2024, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) conducted a national survey of college students that delved into their basic knowledge of American history and government and found that significant numbers of college students graduate without a basic grasp of the nation’s history and political system.

For example, 60% of college students could not correctly identify the term lengths of members serving in U.S. Congress, and 63% could not identify the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Importantly, these were multiple-choice questions. Hence, students didn’t have to recall John Roberts’ name, only recognize it. A majority of students believe that the Constitution was written in 1776 rather than 1787.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

What’s the Alternative to Negotiating with Putin? What, exactly, can end the bloody meat-grinder stalemate? by Bruce Thornton

Posted By on February 26th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/whats-the-alternative-to-negotiating-with-putin/

Donald Trump’s bilateral effort to put an end to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has incited the usual NeverTrump Dems, along with other foreign policy commentators not necessarily hostile to the president. Some are criticizing Trump for freezing Ukraine and the NATO nations out of the negotiations, insulting Ukraine’s government as corrupt, and denigrating Zelensky. But the real issue is, so far, that there’s been no other plausible plan for ending the bloody meatgrinder stalemate.

The NATO West has not come off well in this crisis. First, the expansion of NATO to Russia’s borderlands after the collapse of the Soviet Union was ill advised, given that Putin as early as 2007 had called European NATO nations’ expansion to Russia’s near abroad a “serious provocation.” Even worse, many NATO members’ feckless neglect of their defense spending, and the sorry state of NATO’s military preparedness, meant that NATO was a paper tiger that couldn’t and wouldn’t backup its challenge to Russia’s ambitions.

Nor was the Biden puppeteers’ criminal negligence in their shambolic withdrawal from Afghanistan helpful in concentrating Putin’s mind. Was there any reason why Vlad wouldn’t think it was a good time to start restoring the Soviet empire?

Putin’s confidence was also strengthened by the mostly performative assertions of NATO nations that they would not let his adventurism stand. But what credibility could NATO summon, given that his initial aggression against Georgia in 2008 and Crimea in 2014 was met with blustering rhetoric and flabby sanctions?

And hadn’t Barack Obama also encouraged Putin with his talk of a “reset” with Russia, promise of “flexibility” after his reelection, and cancellation of antimissile batteries for Russia’s Eastern European nations? There’s also Obama’s earlier flip mockery of Mitt Romney’s warning about Putin’s ambitions during the 2012 presidential debate––“the Eighties called, and they want their foreign policy back.” A mere two years later Putin took Crimea, and was met only with sanctions and a school-marmish scolding from Secretary of State John Kerry.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Chicago takes a stand against Islamic terrorism and slavery in Africa The effort to bring the matter to a major American city was led by a coalition of human rights and abolitionist groups.Charles Jacobs Ben Poser

Posted By on February 26th, 2025

https://www.jns.org/chicago-takes-a-stand-against-islamic-terrorism-and-slavery-in-africa/

Charles Jacobs is president of the African Jewish Alliance and recipient of the Boston Freedom Award from Coretta Scott King for helping to liberate black jihad slaves in Sudan.

Ben Poser is executive editor of White Rose Magazine and research director for the African Jewish Alliance.

Less than a week after 70 Christians were beheaded by terrorists in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Chicago City Council resolved, on Feb. 19, to stand with the African victims of Islamic terrorism and modern-day slavery. It is the first American polity to take such a stand.

The effort to bring the matter of jihad massacre and the enslavement of blacks to a major American city was led by a coalition of human rights and abolitionist groups: our African Jewish Alliance, the International Committee on Nigeria (ICON), the Simon Wiesenthal Center, StandWithUs and the Abolition Institute.

Chicago City Alderperson Raymond A. López (D-Ward 5) was the driving force behind a groundbreaking condemnatory resolution against jihad and slavery in Africa. He eloquently promoted it among his colleagues and persuaded 41 of the other alderpersons, out of 50 members, to sign on.

The resolution’s final, adopted text expressed the Chicago City Council’s denunciation of the “ongoing enslavement of Africans within some Arab states by radical terrorist organizations,” calling it a “violation of international humanitarian law and a crime against humanity.” It included a statement calling for America’s third most populous city to “stand in solidarity with all victims of slavery including the people of Sudan, South Sudan, Nigeria and Mauritania, who have endured centuries of oppression and enslavement.”

The day before the full city council vote, African eyewitnesses testified before the Committee on Health and Human Relations. The presentations were raw and emotional.

Stephen Enada, director of ICON, the leading Nigerian American organization in the United States, described how terror has spread throughout much of his country. “Nigeria may be the worst place on Earth to be a Christian, yet the world remains mostly silent,” he said after his testimony.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran’s Intensified Penetration of Latin America and the Caribbean Yoram Ettinger

Posted By on February 26th, 2025

http://bit.ly/3D6KWNG

While attention has been focused on Iran’s nuclear ambition, it is Iran’s conventional power, which has made it the leading global epicenter of war, terrorism, drug trafficking and money laundering, including in Latin America and on US soil. Moreover, the aim to end war and terrorism, on the one hand, and Iran’s conventional potency, on the other hand, constitutes an oxymoron. In fact, the existence of the Ayatollahs regime, on the one hand, and any attempt to end war and terrorism, on the other hand is a contradiction in terms.

According to Dr. Evan Ellis, a Latin American specialist at the Strategic Security Institute at the US Army War College, Iran’s involvement in Latin America and the Caribbean constitutes a clear and present threat to the US mainland in the following manner:

*Increasing collaboration with China and Russia, in order to undermine the US strategic posture in its own backyard, Latin America;
*Planning, financing and launching anti-US terrorism in Latin America, around the globe and on US soil;
*Empowering and weaponizing anti-US regimes and organizations in Latin America and throughout the world;
*Bolstering illegal immigration to the US, which includes drug traffickers and terrorists;
*Undermining the stability of pro-US Latin American governments, such as Argentina and Paraguay;
*Leveraging ties with Latin America (e.g., export-import), in order to bypass US economic sanctions and score mega-billion-dollar money laundering.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Ruthie Blum : The Israeli media’s favorite villain

Posted By on February 26th, 2025

https://www.jns.org/the-israeli-medias-favorite-villain/

There’s nothing new about the unabashed slant of the mainstream Israeli press. Nor is it novel that the local media’s favorite villain is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (“Bibi”) Netanyahu.

So much so that an alien from another planet might assume that it is Bibi—not Hamas and the “civilians” in Gaza raised to annihilate the Jewish state—who perpetrated the Oct. 7 massacre.

This creature from outer space might be puzzled, however, by the way in which Netanyahu is accused by his elitist detractors of contradictory failings, often in the same breath. Indeed, the editorial line of most Hebrew dailies is that Bibi is everything bad and its opposite: He’s weak and dictatorial; too capitulatory and excessively belligerent. In other words, unlike a broken clock, he’s not even right twice a day.

It’s enough to give a UFO pilot a bad case of vertigo—intellectual dizziness caused by disingenuous rhetoric. We Israelis are used to it by now. But there’s a limit to the quantity of distortions we can tolerate.

Take the coverage of Netanyahu’s speech at the graduation ceremony of the latest Ground Combat Officers Course. In attendance at the packed event at the Holon Toto Arena were the 600 soldiers receiving their new ranks, along with proud parents, spouses and children.

“I know what we have achieved, and at the same time, I know what we have lost,” he told the crowd. “The sacrifice of our sons and daughters will carry meaning for generations—the eradication of evil and the guarantee of Israel’s eternity. … This is your home. You planted the seeds, nurtured them and provided the backing—and today, you and the entire State of Israel reap the fruits of success. Congratulations and thank you.”

After expressing appreciation for their “patriotism and willingness to fight,” the prime minister held up a photo of the Bibas family, whose bodies had been returned to Israel mere days beforehand.

ANTI-SEMITISM, EDUCATION Comments turned off

Qatar’s grip on education is causing an explosion of campus antisemitism By Amine Ayoub

Posted By on February 26th, 2025

https://worldisraelnews.com/qatars-grip-on-education-is-causing-an-explosion-of-campus-antisemitism/

Universities that claim to uphold academic freedom must be held accountable for their financial ties to foreign regimes that openly undermine the very values they profess to teach.

For months, I have followed the disturbing rise of antisemitism in US universities, especially after Hamas’s brutal attack on Israel on October 7. But nothing prepared me for the jaw-dropping moment I experienced while watching a recent Al Jazeera podcast.

Khaled Al-Hroub, a professor at Northwestern University in Qatar, spoke not as an academic but as a mouthpiece for Hamas, painting the terrorist group as a symbol of resilience. His rhetoric was not just disturbing – it was dangerous.

This wasn’t an isolated case of radical bias. It was a symptom of a larger, well-funded infiltration by Qatar, which has spent billions to manipulate American academia, indoctrinate students, and turn campuses into breeding grounds for hate.

When I tuned in to the Al Jazeera podcast, I expected an analysis of the war in Gaza. Instead, I found outright propaganda. Hroub, supposedly an academic, openly glorified Hamas.

He wasn’t alone – professors at Georgetown, Harvard, and other prestigious universities have been caught pushing similar narratives.

How can American universities allow their faculty to justify terrorism? Because many of them are funded – bought – by Qatar, a country with a vested interest in spreading extremist ideology.

The more research I did, the clearer the pattern became: Qatar is using America’s elite schools as vehicles for propaganda, erasing the line between education and indoctrination.

Qatar has poured over $6 billion into US universities in the past decade, making it the single largest foreign donor in American academia.

Prestigious institutions like Harvard, Georgetown, and Northwestern have eagerly accepted these funds, establishing satellite campuses in Doha and injecting Qatari influence directly into their programs.

What does Qatar get in return? Influence, power, and the ability to manipulate curricula, reward pro-Qatar faculty, and silence dissenting voices.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Time to Bring Down the Curtain on Iran’s Terror Axis by Robert Williams

Posted By on February 26th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21434/iran-terror-axis

In the US, in the past — many people may have forgotten — Iran was found guilty of supporting the 9/11 attacks…. Recently, Iranian state agents have been trying to murder senior US officials who served in the Trump administration, various dissidents, and Donald Trump himself.

Iran has an interest in having Democrats re-elected as soon as possible. Even while Iran fired on US forces in the region more than 160 times just since October 7, 2023, the Biden administration never stopped being inordinately generous to Iran and compliant with its nuclear weapons program.

Iran has also been busy setting up a drone factory in Venezuela, as well as expanding its presence in Cuba.

The mullahs might well hope simply to wait until President Trump’s term is over to break out their nuclear weapons and resume “exporting the Revolution.”

While the US might be reluctant to seek regime change in Iran, if the Trump administration allows the mullahs to stay in power, there will be no peace for the foreseeable future in the US, Europe or the Middle East. In addition, almost 90 million Iranians will continue to have to suffer unimaginable abuses and human rights violations that the mullahs daily impose on them.

Ending Iran’s regime would finally put a stop to its becoming a nuclear power and its incessant attacks on US assets in the Middle East, and finally could bring peace to the region. That prospect appears worth serious consideration by the Trump administration.

Iran’s terror axis, thanks to Israel’s military operations, is finally beginning to collapse. Iranian terrorist proxies have been seeming to disintegrate across the region.

In Gaza, Israel has degraded Iran’s Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorist infrastructure. In Lebanon, Israel has severely decimated Hezbollah’s capabilities and killed its leaders and commanders. In Syria, Hezbollah, along with Iranian forces, have been shown the door. Even though roughly 2,000 Hamas and 7,000 PIJ terrorists are still operating in Syria, while Iran retains proxies in Iraq and the Houthis in Yemen, the Shia terrorist “octopus,” overall, has had several of its tentacles detached. Now, what about the rest of the octopus?

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Dr Denis MacEoin’s letter to the Edinburgh University Students’ Association This letter was sent to the Edinburgh University Student Association in April following their vote to boycott Israel because of its ‘apartheid’

Posted By on February 25th, 2025

https://www.thejc.com/news/dr-denis-maceoins-letter-to-the-edinburgh-university-students-association-pf63hsy2

This letter was written in 2011 by the late Professor Denis MavEoin of blessed memory in 2011. It was reprinted in the Jewish Chronicle on February 25, 2025. It is both apposite and relevant today, rsk

“May I be permitted to say a few words to members of the EUSA? I am an Edinburgh graduate (MA 1975) who studied Persian, Arabic and Islamic History in Buccleuch Place under William Montgomery Watt and Laurence Elwell Sutton, two of Britain’s great Middle East experts in their day. I later went on to do a PhD at Cambridge and to teach Arabic and Islamic Studies at Newcastle University. Naturally, I am the author of several books and hundreds of articles in this field.

I say all that to show that I am well informed in Middle Eastern affairs and that, for that reason, I am shocked and disheartened by the EUSA motion and vote. I am shocked for a simple reason: there is not and has never been a system of apartheid in Israel. That is not my opinion, that is fact that can be tested against reality by any Edinburgh student, should he or she choose to visit Israel to see for themselves.

Let me spell this out, since I have the impression that those members of EUSA who voted for this motion are absolutely clueless in matters concerning Israel, and that they are, in all likelihood, the victims of extremely biased propaganda coming from the anti-Israel lobby.

Being anti-Israel is not in itself objectionable. But I’m not talking about ordinary criticism of Israel. I’m speaking of a hatred that permits itself no boundaries in the lies and myths it pours out. Thus, Israel is repeatedly referred to as a ‘Nazi’ state.

In what sense is this true, even as a metaphor? Where are the Israeli concentration camps? The einzatsgruppen? The SS? The Nüremberg Laws? The Final Solution? None of these things nor anything remotely resembling them exists in Israel, precisely because the Jews, more than anyone on earth, understand what Nazism stood for. It is claimed that there has been an Israeli Holocaust in Gaza (or elsewhere). Where? When?

I’m speaking of a hatred that permits itself no boundaries in the lies and myths it pours out

No honest historian would treat that claim with anything but the contempt it deserves. But calling Jews Nazis and saying they have committed a Holocaust is as basic a way to subvert historical fact as anything I can think of.

FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Trump Revolution in the Middle East Has Just Begun by Guy Millière

Posted By on February 25th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21425/trump-middle-east-revolution

Most Democrats in the US seem to have forgotten the absolute horror of the attack of October 7, 2023. They seem not to understand why most Israelis think that there is no way to coexist with a Gaza Strip in the hands of terrorists thirsty for Jewish blood. These Democrats appear not to see that relocating Gaza Arabs elsewhere has nothing to do with “ethnic cleansing.” Trump did not propose to eliminate the Arabs, but to relocate them to safer places. These Democrats also appear to ignore that ethnic cleansing is precisely what is at the heart of the intentions of the members of Hamas, an organization with explicitly genocidal goals.

The leaders of the main European countries talk about the “two-state solution” while knowing perfectly well that the only outcome Hamas wants is a one-state solution: the destruction of Israel, not a state alongside Israel… Europe’s leaders ignore countless polls showing that the residents of the Gaza Strip, as well as those, in the territories mismanaged by the Palestinian Authority, celebrate the October 7 massacre and want above all else Israel’s destruction. That, in fact, seems to be the actual goal of everyone who disagrees with Trump.

A Palestinian state would indeed be — as the Palestinians have openly stated — a launching pad from which to keep trying to destroy Israel.

[I]n reality, Arab leaders do not like the Palestinians any more than the Israelis do, but it is considered impolite to say so. The positions of at least several leaders of the Arab world might become flexible.

Trump, however, possibly in a hurry to solve the Iran-Hamas-Israel War, should not under any circumstances “go wobbly”.

Qatar is reportedly trying to come up with a potentially duplicitous “peace plan” to allow its treasured client and Muslim Brotherhood associate, Hamas, to remain in power in Gaza so it can attack Israel again.

No one bothers to explain how the Gazans can continue to live in an area studded with unexploded ordnance, where 70% of the buildings are destroyed, and which Trump has rightly defined as a “demolition site,” while leaving nearly two million people to reside there and hundreds of armed terrorists in tunnels.

No one admits that massive population displacements have successfully taken place in the past. Millions of Germans were moved from territories conquered by Germany after 1945, with no protests voiced…. Jews who lived in the Gaza Strip were expelled in 2005 by decision of the Israeli government to give the Palestinians there a chance to create a peaceful “Singapore on the Mediterranean.”

What American Democrats and European leaders should be committed to is preventing Hamas, a terrorist organization, from remaining in power. Netanyahu explains: “[Y]ou can’t talk about peace, neither with Hamas or in the Middle East, if this, you know, toxic murderous organization is left standing, any more that you could make peace in Europe after World War II, if the Nazi regime was left standing and the Nazi army was left standing.”

American Democrats and European leaders still grant legitimacy to the Palestinian Authority (PA) and say that they would like to entrust it with the management of Gaza after the war. They apparently do not want to see that the PA is a corrupt entity that rewards terrorism and supports the atrocities perpetrated by Hamas. They appear to want Gaza to remain a terrorist entity able to attack Israel again and again. Interesting.

“The non-terrorists in Gaza move to a place where they can live in peace and dignity. The US and others then rebuild Gaza and recover their costs through the commercialization of 25 miles of what will become pristine beachfront, now open to the world… [P]eace prevails with no American boots on the ground nor expense to the American taxpayer. Hard to quarrel with this if you believe in peace, prosperity and human dignity.” — David M. Friedman, former US Ambassador to Israel, X, February 6, 2025.

Trump appears determined to profoundly change the Middle East. It is to be hoped at that he will not allow himself to be discouraged, misled or have his impressive visions diminished.

If Trump successfully manages to overcome the pressures and obstacles placed in front of him, what he is setting in motion today can magnificently transform the Middle East.

February 4, 2025, the White House, Washington, DC. President Donald J. Trump is at a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump says that Hamas must be eliminated, and that “the US will take over the Gaza Strip”, dismantle “all of the dangerous unexploded bombs”, “get rid of the destroyed buildings” and “create an economic development”. He adds that Gaza’s Arabs should go to other countries and “be able to live in comfort and peace”.