BOOKS, ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Triumph and Tragedy of Abba Eban Eban’s meteoric rise and dramatic fall was a classic tragedy—and one that extended beyond his personal political career. It holds a lesson for today. By Rick Richman

Posted By on March 11th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/03/10/the-triumph-and-tragedy-of-abba-eban/

This essay is adapted from And None Shall Make Them Afraid: Eight Stories of the Modern State of Israel, by Rick Richman (Encounter, 388 pages, $33.99.)

Abba Eban was a key member of Israel’s government for more than a quarter century—from 1948 to 1974. In Israel’s first decade, he served for nine years as its U.S. ambassador in Washington and simultaneously as its U.N. ambassador in New York. Then he was education minister for three years; after that, deputy prime minister for three years; and finally, foreign minister for eight years. In 2002, his obituary in the New York Times ran 2,800 words, saying that he: 

[sent] his supremely cultured voice using the King’s English into forensic combat. His orations, fierce in their defense of his country, were also marked by rich appeals to history, soaring visions of a peaceful Middle East and withering scorn for Israel’s enemies.

Eban’s speeches were a record of eloquence unequaled by any diplomat during that period. Conor Cruise O’Brien, representing Ireland in the U.N. (sitting next to Eban in the General Assembly), called him “the most brilliant diplomatist of the second half of the 20th century.” 

In 1974, however, Yitzhak Rabin left Eban out of his new Israeli government, and Eban never again held a ministerial job. By 1988, he was so low on the Labor Party electoral slate that he was not reelected to the Knesset. Humiliated, he retired from political life, relocated to New York, and spent the rest of his life teaching, writing, and speaking.

Eban’s meteoric rise and dramatic fall was a classic tragedy—and one that extended beyond his personal political career. It holds a lesson for today.

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Liz Peek: Unrepentant US health agencies issue more bizarre directives

Posted By on March 11th, 2023

https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/3893118-unrepentant-us-health-agencies-issue-more-bizarre-directives/

You might think U.S. health authorities would be embarrassed. After all, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other agencies oversaw policies that produced more COVID-19 deaths per capita than nearly any other developed country.

More humiliating, they earned that distinction while dictating draconian shutdowns and school closures that profoundly damaged our economy and our children’s educations. And even though Americans had early access to the world’s best vaccines.

You would be wrong. Instead of adopting a humbler or more cautious approach to managing the waning virus, the CDC and the Biden administration are more truculent – and incomprehensible – than ever.

Most recently, the Biden White House has doubled down on not allowing Novak Djokovic into our country because the world’s top tennis player is not vaccinated. The tennis star was similarly prevented from coming to the U.S. last year, causing him to miss out on playing in the prestigious U.S. Open and for a brief period leading to his losing his number one status.

At the same time, the White House is set to announce that people coming to the U.S. from China will no longer need a negative COVID test to gain entry. Neither policy makes sense.

The Djokovic decision seems bizarre, especially given what we know about the vaccines and their impact over time. The vaccines’ efficacy declines rapidly, meaning that booster shots are needed to revive its protections and to address today’s most prevalent variants.

One study of veterans showed that the protection derived from the Johnson & Johnson vaccine (admittedly, the worst) dropped from 86 percent in March 2021 to 13 percent in September, just six months later.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

American suppression of fossil fuels courts a national security disaster By Ronald Stein

Posted By on March 11th, 2023

https://www.cfact.org/2023/03/08/american-suppression-of-fossil-fuels-courts-a-national-security-disaster/

The capacity of a modern economy to produce food and products for its citizens, and weapons and fuels for its military to project power, are the undeniable twin pillars of global power. Both depend on reasonably priced and readily available products made from the oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil. In other words, American literally runs and fights on products from fossil fuels.

The renewables of wind and solar only generate occasional electricity, but manufacture nothing for society.

Take for example the medical industry that did not exist just a few hundred years ago, that is now maintaining the health and well-being of the 8 billion now on this planet. Today, as an exercise in energy literacy, try to identify something, anything, in your doctor’s office, or the hospital, or the pharmacy, which was not made from the oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil.

President Biden has been campaigning for years for the elimination of fossil fuels. But ridding the world of oil, without a replacement in mind, would be immoral and evil, as extreme shortages of the products manufactured from fossil fuels will result in billions of fatalities from diseases, malnutrition, and weather-related deaths. Shortages of fossil fuel products would necessitate lifestyles being mandated back to the horse and buggy days of the 1800’s, and could be the greatest threat to the planet’s eight billion residents.

The ruling class in wealthy countries are not cognizant that the planet populated from 1 to 8 billion in less than two hundred years, and that population explosion began right after the discovery of oil. That growth in the population was not just based on crude oil by itself, as crude oil is useless until it can be manufactured into something useable. Today, through human ingenuity, we have more than 6,000 products  currently benefiting society and fuels for the 50,000 jets moving people and products, and more than 50,000 merchant ships for global trade flows, and the military and space programs.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

America’s Crisis is the Universities Crime, treason, riots, open borders and our other threats are coming out of campuses. by Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on March 11th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/americas-crisis-is-the-universities/

“The source of our current ills – the  lawlessness in our streets, the destruction of our borders, the racist ‘equity’ policies of the Democrat Party, the “woke” derelictions of our military leaders, can all be traced to the indoctrination of our educated classes in hatreds spawned by cultural Marxism.”
–David Horowitz, ‘De-Fund the Universities!’

The Duke of Wellington reportedly stated that the battle of Waterloo was won on the fields of Eton College. George Orwell countered that, “Probably the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton, but the opening battles of all subsequent wars have been lost there.”

America’s battles against foreign and domestic enemies have been lost in our ‘Etons’, our schools and universities which have turned their graduates against the country and its values.

The source of our social and political crises is the destruction of our educational institutions through a successful fifty-year effort by radical activists to purge conservatives and patriots from American academic faculties. This was followed by a massive reconstruction of the academic curriculum and the transformation of universities into one-party indoctrination and recruitment centers for the anti-American left.

We at the David Horowitz Freedom Center were among the first to confront the problem and take the battle to campuses across the country, but as the last conservative faculty are purged and conservative students are silenced, the old remedies of adversarial dialogue and debate are no longer available. Conservative speakers are violently assaulted on campuses and events are shut down. College administrators are finding ways to force out even tenured conservative faculty while mandatory anti-white, anti-Jewish, anti-Asian and anti-patriotic “diversity” measures keep the doors firmly closed to conservatives and patriots.

It’s time to recognize that this is an existential threat to America and to take action against it. That’s why we’re calling for the defunding of universities.

A Survey of the Problem

Universities have become efficient indoctrination centers that couldn’t be any more destructive if they were being run by China and Russia.

HISTORY, MEDIA Comments turned off

Another Pulitzer Prize discredited as propaganda By Monica Showalter

Posted By on March 11th, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/03/another_pulitzer_prize_discredited_as_propaganda.html

Remember all that political hay the far left and its media allies made during the Vietnam War about the wickedness of America’s South Vietnamese ally and the importance of abandoning that country to the communists?

Here’s the Pulitzer Prize–winning AP photo that was supposed to prick our consciences and make us turn against that “immoral” war against a communist takeover:

There’s no doubt about it, the photo is hard to look at. It’s crude, rough, wartime justice, a picture of South Vietnamese Police Captain Nguyễn Ngọc Loan coldly executing Viet Cong Captain Nguyễn Văn Lém. The film is even harder to look at.

It ran on the front page of the New York Times, cropped from the original to fill the space and make its impact even more immediate.

And it got the results the anti-war left wanted: public sentiment abruptly turned against the war as a result of this photo.  The Vietnamese people were abandoned by the Americans, whose cut-and-run evacuation from the Saigon embassy rooftop was only recently bested by Joe Biden’s Afghanistan pullout.  After that, the re-education camps rolled in, the boat people launched into the high seas, and the killing fields of Cambodia began.

Jane Fonda must have been so proud of herself.

FOREIGN POLICY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

China Winning Technological War: Biden Administration Allowing It by Judith Bergman

Posted By on March 11th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19451/china-winning-technological-race

China has made no secret of its ambition to become, by 2049, the world’s greatest power, surpassing the US as the economic, technological, political and military leader of the world. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been planning and operating in line with those ambitions for decades.

In July 2020, FBI Director Christopher Wray said that Chinese theft of US intellectual and other property is happening on “a scale so massive that it represents one of the largest transfers of wealth in human history.”

A particularly disturbing technological lead is the leap China has made in the military and space sectors… China’s research interests and performance in military and space sectors are particularly notable, including an advanced hypersonic missile that China tested, to the US military’s surprise. China, it turns out, houses seven of the world’s top 10 research institutions focused on the field of hypersonics.

The overriding importance of technology for the Chinese Communist Party is reflected in the fact that Chinese President Xi Jinping has filled 40% of the CCP Central Committee –- the institution that decides China’s major policies — with officials who have backgrounds and experience in aerospace, artificial intelligence and other critical technological areas.

If the US and other Western countries wish to check China’s rise, they will have to make a far more serious effort to prioritize and invest in research and technology, not to mention doubling down on preventing more theft of technology and intellectual property.

Without urgent action on the part of the West, the world will soon be run by China.

China is winning the technological race with the West, and is well on its way to becoming the world’s leading technology superpower, according to a new report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI).

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Biden Administration Allowing Iran’s Mullahs to Join the “Nuclear Club” by Majid Rafizadeh

Posted By on March 11th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19473/iran-nuclear-club

Ever since the Biden Administration shifted Washington’s Iran policy from maximum pressure to total appeasement, the ruling mullahs’ nuclear advances have been remarkable.

In the meantime, the Biden administration does not appear even slightly concerned that a regime which has frequently threatened to wipe two entire countries, America and Israel, off the map, is closer than ever to possessing nuclear weapons.

General Hossein Salami, the commander-in-chief of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has made the Iranian regime’s plans vehemently clear. “Our strategy is to erase Israel from the global political map,” he announced on Iran’s state-controlled Channel 2 TV in 2019. Khamenei has also published a 416-page book, “Palestine,” about destroying Israel.

Thanks to the Biden Administration’s weakness, Iran’s anti-American, genocidal mullah regime, which is still calling for “Death to America!” and “Death to Israel!”, is about to join the “nuclear club.”

This — along with the surrender to the Taliban in Afghanistan and the many green lights offered to the Chinese Communist Party — will be the disastrous legacy of the Biden Administration.

Ever since the Biden Administration shifted Washington’s Iran policy from maximum pressure to total appeasement, the ruling mullahs’ nuclear advances have been remarkable.

The Iranian regime is rapidly forging ahead with uranium enrichment. Inspectors from the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), recently found uranium particles in Iran that were enriched up to 83.7%, just shy of the 90% needed for nuclear weapons. The enrichment has been taking place in Iran’s underground Fordo nuclear site. Before the Biden Administration, the regime was enriching uranium at 3.5%. This is a remarkable nuclear escalation in just two years.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Stanford Law Students Scream at Federal Appellate Judge, Call Him ‘Scum,’ After He Is Invited To Speak at Prestigious School Matthew Rice

Posted By on March 11th, 2023

DPS Comment: “If I even need an attorney, as with doctors, I will only hire one who is past his/her late 30’s or into their 40’s.” Could not agree more….rsk

‘You’ve invited me to speak here, and I’ve been heckled nonstop,’ the judge tells the seething crowd as a dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion denounces him for causing ‘pain.’

A conservative federal judge on the Fifth Circuit of the United States Court of Appeals was screamed at on Thursday by dozens of Stanford Law School students who disagreed with his rulings, bringing new light to the conversation about freedom of speech at America’s elite universities.

At an event titled “The Fifth Circuit in Conversation with the Supreme Court: Covid, Guns, and Twitter,” Judge Kyle Duncan was met by an angry crowd of students and faculty. The judge had been invited to speak by the Stanford chapter of the conservative Federalist Society. 

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Covid Worsened America Rage Virus, for Which There’s No Vaccine Critics of the pandemic response were silenced, permanently damaging trust in institutions. By Daniel Lee

Posted By on March 11th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-worsened-america-rage-virus-for-which-theres-no-vaccine-lockdown-vaccine-mandates-ron-desantis-stanford-masking-2670cd39?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

EXCERPTS

Three years ago, I was in St. Pete Beach, Fla., as the reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic was accelerating. On Monday I waited an hour for a seat in Skidder’s Restaurant. Then Gov. Ron DeSantis closed bars and limited restaurants to 50% capacity. By Wednesday evening, I had the back porch of the Wharf Restaurant to myself, my only company a seagull perched on a piling, eyeing my fried oysters.

On the drive back to Indiana I found exit-ramp restaurants closed to dine-in patrons. Families had to eat grumpily in their minivans. At home the usually bustling Greenwood Park Mall parking lot was empty. Some employees received “essential workers” letters from their companies allowing them to go to their jobs, but thousands of presumably inessential employees found their incomes drying up.

As horrific as Covid-19 was as a physical illness, it was even worse as a social pathogen. The virus leapt from the body to the body politic. People were arrested for exercising in public, holding church services and refusing to wear masks. Others lost jobs for refusing the vaccine. Confrontations between maskers and antimaskers went viral. Schools were closed, damaging kids’ development. In Canada nearly two years into the pandemic, the government froze the bank accounts of people daring to demonstrate against its Covid-abatement efforts.

Vaccine mandates poured gasoline on the smoldering distrust of media outlets and science that had seemed rife with political ideology even before the outbreak. The mandates provoked resistance to even common-sense disease-limiting practices.

And the disease was quickly politicized. Progressives found an opportunity to expand government management of health—by force if necessary. For conservatives this seemed to prove they were right to distrust activist government. Donald Trump was encouraging ingestion of horse dewormer and household cleansers. Joe Biden was forcing deadly shots on children. Or so some claimed.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

‘I Firmly Say Yes’: Italy’s Deputy PM Enthusiastic About Recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s Capital

Posted By on March 11th, 2023

https://unitedwithisrael.org/i-firmly-say-yes-italys-deputy-pm-enthusiastic-about-recognizing-jerusalem-as-israels-capital/

“I believe the time has come for Rome to recognize Jerusalem as the ancestral capital of the Jewish people for 3,000 years,” Netanyahu said ahead of his trip to Italy.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that he will ask his Italian counterpart to recognize Jerusalem as the Jewish state’s capital, prompting immediate backing from Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini.

“I believe the time has come for Rome to recognize Jerusalem as the ancestral capital of the Jewish people for 3,000 years, as the United States did with a gesture of great friendship,” Netanyahu said in an interview with Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper published ahead of his departure on Thursday, referring to the Trump administration’s 2017 recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and its subsequent embassy move.

Salvini expressed enthusiastic support for Netanyahu’s bid. “I firmly say yes to Jerusalem, capital of Israel, in the name of peace, history and truth,” he posted on Twitter.

Netanyahu also told the newspaper that Israel has “plenty” of natural gas, which he seeks to bring to Italy “to support its economic growth.”

In light of the fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Italy has committed to seeking energy alternatives.