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The Woke Movement Is Assassinating MLK All Over Again

Posted By on March 27th, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/03/27/the-woke-movement-is-assassinating-mlk-all-over-again/

A week from Tuesday we will mark the 55th anniversary of the day the murderous James Earl Ray took the life of Martin Luther King Jr. The civil rights leader should be allowed to rest in peace, but he is being slain yet again, this time by a mob of mediocre minds with rock-bottom character that seeks to overturn his life’s works.

In what is widely acknowledged as his greatest speech, King dreamed that his “four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” that “one day right down in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.”

King also damned the “dark and desolate valley” and “manacles” of segregation. He identified us all as “God’s children.”

He couldn’t have been clearer about his vision for a color-blind society. And in the 40 years that followed his death, our country moved in that direction, year by year, heart by heart.

But much has changed. The woke mob, critical race theory, and the DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) movement have reopened a once-gaping, raw wound that had almost closed. Consider just a few of the many instances in which our “leaders” and institutional luminaries not only reject King’s teaching but actively try to return this country to an era of segregation and ugly, unapologetic bigotry. 

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Can Israel Survive? By David Solway

Posted By on March 27th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2023/03/25/can-israel-survive-n1681574

It has never been easy for Israel — the understatement of the century — from the moment of its establishment in 1948, when it was invaded by five Arab armies, to the present day, when it is facing multiple threats to its very survival. It suffers a history like no other nation in the world, surrounded by enemies, fighting wars on every front, infiltrated by terrorists, confronting the wetware dreams of genocidal regimes, in particular the prospect of a nuclear Iran sworn to the country’s annihilation, and subject to an international delegitimation campaign carried out via the United Nations, the World Council of Churches, spurious NGOs and “peace” organizations, labor unions, university campuses, and a hostile European Union.

As if this were not enough, there is yet another menace it has to face, deriving from the Cain and Abel paradigm, which has inwardly corroded the Jewish community since the thunderous instant it purportedly received the tablets from Mount Sinai: betrayal from within. The rebellion of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram against Moses and his mission to create a unified and cohesive people set the tone for much of what followed in the history of the Jews. The record is inexhaustible: the backsliding tribes and their idolatrous rulers whom the Prophets railed against, the conflict between the brother states of Israel and Judah, the quarreling Jews Josephus tells us about who were in considerable measure responsible for the Roman victory and massacre in the first century A.D., the apostates, “wicked sons,” and Court Jews who have proliferated through the ages, and those who contracted the wasting disease that Ruth Wisse in Jews and Power called “the veneration of political weakness.”

True, the quietest Jews who took refuge in ritual and scripture instilled an attitude of helplessness and defeatism into the plasm of the Jewish sensibility — precisely what the vigorous and determined Palmach fighters and the Zionist kibbutzniks who settled and farmed the land of Israel intended to counteract. They put the debilitating syndrome to rest, struggled valiantly to survive, and built a strong and proud country. However, the renegades and turncoats did, and continue to do, immeasurable harm. The motive for treachery seems to be immemorial. As Wisse writes, “For every Mordecai and Esther who risked their lives to protect fellow Jews, there were schemers who turned betrayal or conversion to profit.” Indeed, “the ubiquitous informer, or moser” is always with us. In the modern age, they beget like rabbits on aphrodisiacs.

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The Israeli defense minister’s shameful retreat By Ruthie Blum

Posted By on March 27th, 2023

https://www.jns.org/opinion/the-israeli-defense-ministers-shameful-retreat/

To borrow the favorite epithet of the demonstrators in the streets of Tel Aviv and other cities, “shame” on Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. In an announcement on Saturday night, the Cabinet member charged with the country’s most crucial portfolio called on the government to halt its judicial reform legislation and heal the rifts that have gone so far as to reach the military.
“I hear the voices from the field and I’m worried,” he said, while also urging the opposition to stop the protests to give negotiations a chance. Oh, and to “enable the nation to celebrate Passover and Independence Day together, and to mourn together on Memorial Day and Holocaust Remembrance Day.”

Prominently on display in this speech—which he had planned to deliver on Thursday evening, but refrained from doing so at the request of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—were two traits that make him unfit for his job: cowardice and betrayal.

Let’s begin with the former. Faced with the phenomenon of mainly Air Force and Cyber Division reservists threatening and refusing to turn up for military exercises, on the grounds that they wouldn’t serve in a “dictatorship,” Gallant got frightened.

Rather than nipping the subordination in the bud, he met with the men and women in uniform to let them vent their concerns. The cream of the crop of the Israel Defense Forces said that without an end to the “coup d’état” (the protest movement’s misnomer for judicial reforms), the powers that be in Jerusalem can forget about confronting Iran. You know, since there won’t be any pilots or computer geniuses to carry out the operations.

Instead of demanding that the IDF chief of staff warn them that such blackmail will result in their ouster from the IDF, or at least in a stripping of their ranks, Gallant not only conveyed their complaints to Netanyahu; he began, apparently, to see the merits of their point of view.

In other words, he didn’t make it crystal clear that political positions have no place in the army. Nor did he hit home the very points about judicial reform on which he based his campaign in the Likud Party primary—the very ones that earned him a top spot on the Knesset candidates list and subsequently the ministry he coveted.

He was simply too intimidated by the unprecedented situation to know how to handle it. Such gutlessness hardly inspires confidence about his ability to deal with Tehran and its tentacles in Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian Authority.

Now for the latter attribute Gallant exhibited that makes him unsuitable: extreme disloyalty. Indeed, he took the opportunity of Netanyahu’s trip to London to undermine the arduous efforts of his party and coalition partners in one fell swoop.

That he pulled the stunt a mere 48 hours after the prime minister’s carefully crafted address aimed at calming tensions was particularly egregious. Netanyahu took pains to articulate the purpose of the reforms—to enhance, not harm, Israeli democracy—and assure that all civil and minority rights would be guaranteed in the law.

What the prime minister didn’t do was capitulate. When the opposition responded by stepping up its war, Gallant opted for retreat.

His move was not only dismissive of Netanyahu. It dealt a blow to all the soldiers who shun the mere suggestion of laying down their weapons in protest over policy.

Worse, it sent a disheartening message to the sector of the public that’s been under political, cultural and social assault for electing and continuing to support the Netanyahu-led government. “Shame” doesn’t begin to describe what Gallant should be feeling at the moment.

Ruthie Blum is a Tel Aviv-based columnist and commentator. She writes and lectures on Israeli politics and culture, as well as on U.S.-Israel relations. The winner of the Louis Rappaport award for excellence in commentary, she is the author of the book “To Hell in a Handbasket: Carter, Obama, and the ‘Arab Spring.’ ”

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When Big Business Married Big Government From banking and chips to broadband and pharma, Biden has ushered in a new era of corporate dependency on D.C. By Allysia Finley

Posted By on March 27th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/when-big-business-married-big-government-biden-handouts-subsidies-chips-banking-svb-bailout-social-policy-59096477?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

When liberals look back on the Biden presidency, they may hail its greatest accomplishment as ushering in a new era of corporate government dependency. Without fail, and no matter the industry, the administration has hooked businesses on Washington handouts while attaching conditions that put taxpayers and consumers on the hook for leftist policy preferences.

The latest example is the banking panic. The 2010 Dodd-Frank Act provided an implicit taxpayer guarantee for the country’s largest banks. With Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse, midsize banks are now arguing they’re also too big to fail and lobbying the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to guarantee all uninsured deposits for two years to prevent more bank failures. In other words, they want the government to backstop poorly managed banks.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren has lent support to the idea but demands that a government guarantee be tied to increased regulation. And don’t think she has only stronger capital and liquidity standards in mind. Like-minded officials will surely demand a ban on stock buybacks and dividends, executive compensation caps and perhaps even growth restrictions.

Government help is never free, as semiconductor companies are learning. Chip makers lobbied Congress for enormous subsidies to build plants in the U.S., which they claimed would shore up supply chains and protect national security. Republicans joined Democrats last year in approving some $39 billion in direct financial aid, plus a 25% investment tax credit.

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INTERMISSION – NO POSTINGS UNTIL SUNDAY MARCH 26

Posted By on March 24th, 2023

NO POSTING UNTIL MONDAY MARCH 26

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Stanford Law Disruptions Were Orchestrated by the National Lawyers Guild by Alan M. Dershowitz

Posted By on March 23rd, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19511/national-lawyers-guild-stanford-law

Let us understand what the National Lawyers Guild is.

The Guild, in addition, refused to support Soviet or Cuban dissidents.

The Guild has never abandoned its Marxist-Leninist provenance. It supports Antifa, which also employs violence to disrupt speakers.

The National Lawyers Guild is not a liberal organization. It does not support civil liberties, due process or freedom of speech. It is the epitome of “free speech for me but not for thee.”

Many decent people question whether hateful, offensive and even speech deemed “dangerous” by some, should be protected. The answer resides in history. Whenever governments are empowered to ban such expression, they use that power expansively, to censor speech critical of their leaders or partisans. The appetite of the censor is voracious. What are seen as legitimate opinions by dissenters are deemed by others — especially those in power — as hateful, offensive or dangerous. Freedom of speech for all is anything but free. It can be hurtful and risky. But in the end, it is worth the costs.

It deplores capitalism and the free market: “don’t fund capitalism, fund the groups working to dismantle it.” And it opposes due process for those with whom it disagrees, for instance, declaring of a “Mass Defense Program” that sends out “legal workers, law students, and lawyers providing legal support for protests”: “We will only show up to actions and in support of movements that directly align with our values.”

Since its inception, the National Lawyers Guild has relied on “useful idiots” – well-meaning left-wingers and liberals who have no idea what the Guild really represents. It disguises its most extreme positions when presenting itself to the public, but advertises them to its members. It also hides from the public the fact that despite its name, the membership Guild consists primarily of non-lawyers. When it was truly a lawyers’ organization, it was slightly more centrist. And then in the 1970s, the Guild opened its membership to “jailhouse lawyers” (who are not lawyers), legal workers (who are not lawyers), law students (who are not yet lawyers) and anyone else who works with or for lawyers or law firms.

The Guild has more than 100 chapters in American law schools. Its membership includes many law professors. It apparently plans to organize nationwide disruptions of the kind we have seen at Stanford. The Guild creates the illusion that these disruptions are spontaneous reactions to conservative provocations. They are anything but.

As the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall observed: “The freedom to speak and the freedom to hear are inseparable; they are two sides of the same coin.” These disrupters violated both rights.

Thus far disruptions have occurred at Yale, Stanford and Georgetown law schools. But you can be sure that they are coming to a law school near you. The NLG will not be satisfied until no conservative speaker is allowed to speak at any law school. That is its objective, and it may well succeed, because cowardly administrators — especially deans of diversity, in order to avoid the embarrassment of what happened at Stanford, Yale and Georgetown — will try to make sure that conservative speakers are not invited. They understand that it is much harder to object to the less visible non-invitation of conservative speakers than to publicly disrupting them.

We who support freedom of speech for all sides must organize as well. We cannot count on the American Civil Liberties Union anymore: its silence supports the censorship of the National Lawyers Guild. Our voices must be heard against censorship-by-disruption, by non-invitation or by any other improper means.

It turns out that the disruption by several dozen Stanford University law school students of a speech to be given by federal judge Kyle Duncan was not a spontaneous exercise of freedom to protest.

BOOKS Comments turned off

From Slavery in North Korea to Jeff Bezos’s Gulfstream I came to the U.S. prizing its freedoms. But I found that this nation’s most powerful people value something else entirely. By Yeonmi Park

Posted By on March 23rd, 2023

https://www.thefp.com/p/from-slavery-in-north-korea-to-jeff

Nothing I have ever read about the slave state of North Korea has affected me more than Yeonmi Park’s bestselling book, “In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl’s Journey to Freedom.” Her account makes it clear that that phrase—slave state—is not hyperbole.

Park grew up believing that Kim Jong-il was so powerful that he could read her mind. (“Even when you think you’re alone,” her mother warned her, “the birds and mice can hear you whisper.”) She survived a famine that killed nearly three million people. (She ate dragonflies to survive). At nine years old, Park witnessed the public execution of her friend’s mother. (The woman was put to death for the crime of watching a Hollywood movie.)

Almost no one escapes the Hermit Kingdom. Yeonmi Park did.

At 13, she fled to China with her mother. The two endured unspeakable things—rape by human traffickers; sexual servitude. Ultimately, they broke free again, crossing the freezing Gobi Desert at night to Mongolia, then onto South Korea and, finally, to America.

Last year, as she wrote in The Free Press, Park became a U.S. citizen.

Now, she has published a new book, “While Time Remains: A North Korean Defector’s Search for Freedom in America.” In the excerpt we are publishing below Park writes about her experience among America’s most celebrated, wealthy elites—and the moral corruption she found at their conferences and on their Gulfstreams.

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Drug shortages upend hospitals care, cancer treatments Tina Reed

Posted By on March 23rd, 2023

https://www.axios.com/2023/03/21/drug-shortages-upend-cancer-treatments

Supplies of some essential drugs used in hospitals are hitting 10-year lows, forcing rationing and pharmacy workarounds.

Driving the news: Drug shortages are the worst they’ve been in a decade, according to the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists — a sign of how much we rely on low-margin manufacturers with limited capacity for basics like the inhalation drug albuterol and some common cancer treatments.

What they’re saying: Quality control issues, selected plant closures and other manufacturing woes have added up, Michael Ganio, senior director of pharmacy, practice and quality at ASHP told Axios.

Between the lines: Oncology drugs have been hit particularly hard in recent months, putting experts on high alert.

Those in short supply include methotrexate, an injectable chemotherapy drug, and one of several generics produced by Illinois-based Akorn Pharmaceuticals, which shuttered operations last month due to bankruptcy.
Manufacturing delays and increased demand have also led to shortages of the cancer treatments cisplatin, and fluorouracil, per ASHP.
Pluvicto — used to extend survival among patients with metastatic prostate cancer — will take months to be made available to patients again, the Wall Street Journal reports.
“People will die from this shortage, for sure,” Jonathan McConathy, director of the division of molecular imaging and therapeutics at the University of Alabama, told WSJ.
A survey of health systems conducted by the group End Drug Shortages Alliance found the injectable Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG), used for treating bladder cancer, was being rationed or was not available for use at all.
“This is a terrible crisis. We should be doing everything we can to give every single one of these patients the best chance of survival,” Laura Bray, a board member of the alliance, told CNN.

Between the lines: Manufacturing delays and quality problems are blamed for the shortages. But that’s often because there aren’t many alternative sites to pick up the slack in the system due to the challenging economics of the market, experts say.

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As China War Looms, Navy’s Priority is Going ‘Green’ “As Secretary of the Navy, I have made climate one of my top priorities.” by Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on March 23rd, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/as-china-war-looms-navys-priority-is-going-green/

The “age of American naval dominance is over”, Jerry Hendix, a former Navy Captain warned in a high-profile article in The Atlantic.

Hendrix’s article imagines a scenario in which China or other enemy nations seize control of what are now international waters and the cargo that moves across them. “The great container ships and tankers of today would disappear, replaced by smaller, faster cargo vessels capable of moving rare and valuable goods past pirates and corrupt officials.” A handful of nations would end up controlling the chokepoints of international trade and America would not be one of them.

Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro has already conceded China’s naval supremacy.

Last month, the Biden appointee stated that China has “got a larger fleet now so they’re deploying that fleet globally.”

The People’s Liberation Army Navy topped the US Navy in 2020. By 2025, it will have an estimated 400 ships. We’re still below 300.

Biden’s current defense plan is to have 350 by 2045. And by then we will have lost.

“They have 13 shipyards, in some cases their shipyard has more capacity — one shipyard has more capacity than all of our shipyards combined. That presents a real threat,” Del Toro conceded. “They’re a communist country, they don’t have rules by which they abide by.”

BOOKS, ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Auditing Biden’s ‘Victory’ A veteran CPA lays it all out for you. by Bruce Bawer

Posted By on March 23rd, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/auditing-bidens-victory/

I’ve never heard of Joseph Fried before, and it was only a few days ago that I became aware of his four-month-old book Debunked: A Professional Auditor Reviews the 2020 Election. But it turns out that this veteran MBA and CPA, who recently retired from his own auditing firm and now writes at Substack, has given us what must surely be the definitive work on the topic. Having “professionally conducted and reviewed hundreds of audits,” he brings his decades of experience in that field to bear on the administration of the 2020 presidential election in each of the six swing states that were awarded to our current dotard-in-chief, Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. Throughout the book, Fried’s objective is to “analyze the major claims of fraud or irregularity, the credibility of those claims, the available evidence, and the threshold audit standards the states applied, or should have applied, relative to those claims.”

I don’t know the first thing about the work of an auditor. But Fried is a very good teacher. Among much else, he explains that a recount is not an audit – the latter must be performed by independent professionals – and that a mere recount doesn’t preclude the need for an audit. Nor does a court’s ruling on procedural grounds negate an auditor’s findings.

In some cases, an election result cries out for an audit. One test is statistical likelihood. The 2020 election, as it turns out, failed this test spectacularly. A few examples: for almost sixty years, the winner of the electoral votes from Ohio and Florida has also won the nationwide election – but in 2020, no.