Anarchy, American-Style The Left runs Oceania, and we work for their various bureaus. By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2023/01/29/anarchy-american-style/

The 1960s revolution was both anarchic and nihilist. But it was waged against—not from—the establishment. Hippies and the Left either attacked institutions or, in Timothy Leary fashion, chose to “turn on, tune in, drop out” from them.

The current revolution is much different—and far more dangerous—for at least three reasons.

The Establishment Is the Revolution

The current Left has no intention of “dropping out.” Why would it? 

It now controls the very institutions of America that it once mocked and attacked—corporate boardrooms, Wall Street, state and local prosecuting attorneys, most big-city governments, the media, the Pentagon, network and most of cable news, professional sports, Hollywood, music, television, K-12 education, and academia. 

In other words, the greatest levers of influence and power—money, education, entertainment, government, the news, and popular culture—are in the hands of the Left. They have transformed legitimate debate over gay marriage into a hate crime. Transgenderism went from a modern manifestation of ancient transvestism or gender dysphoria to a veritable litmus test of whether one was good or evil.

Students have no need to jam administrators’ offices because the latter, themselves, are as radical as the protestors and often lead them on in a top-down fashion. Had they not long ago demonstrated they were perfectly willing to subvert meritocracy, free expression, and equality under the law, they would not be occupying their present positions.

Apple, Google, Facebook, and other tech companies are not 1980s and 1990s “alternative” media geeks and hipsters creating neat gadgets for the people. They are not Steve Jobs and his pugnacious Apple battling the evil Microsoft or IBM, or the Macintosh commercial of 1984 depicting a maverick throwing a hammer into Big Brother’s screen. They are the Orwellian screen.

The current generation of techies is effectively Stalinist. Big Tech now colludes with the FBI, the Democratic Party, and the bureaucratic state to suppress free expression, warp balloting, and serve as contractors of government surveillance. Currently, the most totalitarian people in America are likely to wear flip flops, have a nose ring or pink hair, and disguise their fascism with ’60s-retread costumes.

There are no “armies of the night” marching on the Pentagon. Would-be demonstrators see no need, since radical identity politics, and gay, woke, and transgendered agendas are fast-tracked by the Department of Defense. 

There are no protests against the Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau or the “La Migra” anymore by advocates of illegal immigration, because the Left owns the border. And it has utterly destroyed it. There is no border, no border enforcement, and no meaningful immigration law. As many as 6 million illegal entries during the first two years of the Biden Administration are proof enough of that. 

The Graves of Academe: A Job Announcement Replace the word “Black” by the word “White” and see if there might be a problem. by Hugh Fitzgerald

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-graves-of-academe-a-job-announcement/

A job announcement posted at H-Net on January 19, 2023:

The Department of History in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Simon Fraser University, respectfully acknowledges the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), səl̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), q̓íc̓əy̓ (Katzie), kʷikʷəƛ̓əm (Kwikwetlem), qiqéyt (Qayqayt), qʼʷa:n̓ƛʼən̓ (Kwantlen), Səmyámə (Semiahmoo), and sc̓əwaθən (Tsawwassen) Peoples, on whose ancestral, traditional, and unceded territories Simon Fraser University’s three campuses stand. We are committed to reconciliation through decolonization and Indigenization, telling inclusive stories about the past, and acknowledging different historical epistemologies.

The Department of History invites applications for a full-time tenure-track appointment in History at the rank of Assistant Professor, to start as early as July 15, 2023. We seek a scholar with expertise in the history of the Black Americas, broadly conceived. We especially welcome scholars whose research and teaching focuses on Canada, the Caribbean, or Latin America, while also welcoming comparative, transnational, and cross-regional approaches.

The successful candidate must have research and teaching interests and lived experience in Black communities, including a demonstrable history of community involvement. Ideal candidates will have experience teaching a diverse student body.

Rewarding Anti-Israel Radicalism at SFSU Reflections on the Middle East Studies Association’s latest award – to a terror-promoting academic. by Richard L. Cravatts

https://www.frontpagemag.com/rewarding-anti-israel-radicalism-at-sfsu/

Unsurprisingly for an organization whose membership has been perennially hostile to Israel, the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) just awarded the 2022 Jere L. Bacharach Service Award to San Francisco State University (SFSU) Professor Rabab Abdulhadi.

Though it positions itself as an organization of scholars engaged in research and teaching about the Middle East, MESA has gradually devolved into a highly politicized group of radical academics who display a singular and obsessive focus on Israel, and who have weaponized the organization to attack, degrade, and slander the Jewish state, allegedly in the name of Palestinian self-determination, and the naming of Abdulhadi is a not unexpected result of this toxic ideology.

MESA’s members, who Middle East studies expert Martin Kramer once described as “tenured incompetents” for their defective scholarship, further confirmed their anti-Israel bias earlier this year when its members voted overwhelmingly to endorse an academic boycott against Israeli scholars, a resolution that called “for an academic boycott of Israeli institutions for their complicity in Israel’s violations of human rights and international law through their provision of direct assistance to the military and intelligence establishments.”

There is no surprise that an academic association like the MESA would call for a boycott against only one country—Israel—precisely because a large number of its ranks are evidently steeped in a worldview defined by post-colonial, anti-American, anti-Israel thinking, and dedicated to the elevation of identity politics and a cult of victimhood. That they profess to hold high-minded, well-intentioned motives, and speak with such rectitude, does not excuse the fact that their efforts are in the end a betrayal of what the study of history and the university have, and should, stand for—the free exchange of ideas, even ones bad, without political or ideological litmus tests.

Biden Lets China’s Spies Slide Welcome to the Open-Door Policy for the Communist regime. by Lloyd Billingsley

https://www.frontpagemag.com/biden-lets-chinas-spies-slide/

“Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn have dropped their case against a New York Police Department officer who had been accused of acting as a foreign agent on behalf of the Chinese regime,” The Epoch Times reports.

Baimadajie Angwang, 33, an ethnic Tibetan and naturalized U.S. citizen, was arrested in 2020 for acting as an agent of Beijing, for wire fraud, making false statements, and obstructing an official proceeding. Prosecutors charge that Angwang reported on Chinese citizens, cultivated intelligence sources, and connected Chinese officials with senior contacts in the NYPD.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Eastern District of New York recently filed a motion asking federal judge Eric R. Komitee, a Trump nominee, to dismiss the indictment due to “additional information” on the case. The Eastern District did not reveal the information or explain its relevance to the case. So the move to dismiss may reflect official Biden policy of turning a blind eye toward Chinese espionage in the United States.

“The Justice Department is ending a controversial program, launched under the Trump administration, to hunt down Chinese spies,” CBS News reported in February of 2022.

President Trump’s “China Initiative,” targeted China’s theft of trade secrets and intellectual property.

As federal prosecutors charged in 2017, MIT professor Gang Chen failed to disclose ties to China and failed to disclose a foreign bank account on a tax document. Prosecutors dropped the case against Chen, but it wasn’t clear what motivated them to act. This was hardly the only proceeding against Chinese agents the DOJ chose to abandon.

In 2020, federal officials changed that Chinese national Tang Juan lied about ties to the Chinese military in order to gain access to the University of California at Davis. The FBI  found an April 14, 2019 article on a Xi’an, China, health care forum that showed Tang in a military uniform bearing the insignia of the Civilian Cadres of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The FBI also found two other articles listing Tang’s employer as the People’s Liberation Army’s Air Force Medical University (AFMU), also known as the Fourth Military Medical University (FMMU).

Who Was Really Behind the Jerusalem Terror Attack This isn’t random terrorism, it’s carefully calculated terrorism. by Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/who-was-really-behind-the-jerusalem-terror-attack/

On Thursday, Jan 26, the Palestinian Authority announced that it was suspending “security coordination” after Israel broke up a Jenin terror cell that had been planning a major attack.

On Friday, Jan 27, an Islamic terrorist opened fire outside a Jerusalem synagogue killing 7 Israelis, including Asher Natan, a 14-year-old boy, Eli and Natali Mizrahi, a married couple who rushed out to help the victims, and Shaul Hai, a 68-year-old synagogue sexton.

The shooter, despite being branded a “lone wolf” with no previous connection to terrorism, was described as having advanced shooting skills. And the death rate testifies to that. It seems highly likely that he was selected and secretly prepped to carry out this attack.

On Saturday, Jan 28, a second shooting in Jerusalem injured two other Israelis. Another armed terrorist was taken out by the town’s security team in Kedumim. That may not be the last of it.

There is nothing coincidental about the timing of this surge of violence: the deadliest in years.

CIA director Bill Burns arrived in Israel on Thursday. The same day the PLO announced the end of its security coordination. Secretary of State Blinken is expected to visit Israel this week. Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan came to Israel the week before. The PLO’s suspension of security coordination and the attacks that followed were put on for their benefit. 7 Israelis thus far were killed to help the Biden administration pressure Israel.

Had Israel not taken out the terror cell in Jenin, the numbers might be far higher.

The last time attacks on this scale took place was when 11 Israelis were killed in three attacks in late March 2022. Those attacks also came after the Palestinian Authority had suspended “security coordination” a month earlier and overlapped with the Negev Summit featuring Arab leaders and Secretary of State Blinken.

What is happening is not random terror, it’s carefully calculated terror, executed, as usual, through plausibly deniable attackers who will be rewarded by the PLO’s pay-to-slay fund.

Environmentalism Impoverishes, Kills by Drieu Godefridi

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19364/environmentalism-impoverishes-kills

As you read this, some European families are already at 15 degrees (59° Fahrenheit) in their living rooms . Happy New Year!

Of course, nuclear energy is not without risks and shortcomings… After the progressive banishment of coal in much of Europe, however, and as the EU countries have practically no easily extracted gas of their own, there are only two options: nuclear energy, and imported gas.

The countless restrictions on heating and electricity that Europeans have to impose on themselves — they have no choice — will have devastating consequences.

Due to the current insane energy prices, The Economist explained, 147,000 Europeans will die this winter in excess of the annual average… If the winter is mild, according to the magazine, this drops to 79,000 “excess” deaths. If the winter is harsh, the number of “excess” deaths is projected to be 185,000…

Tens of thousands of soldiers are estimated to have been killed in the Ukraine war. Put another way, even in a best-case scenario — a mild winter — according to The Economist, exploding energy prices could kill more Europeans than the war in Ukraine has killed soldiers. Staggering.

Cold kills. The cold directly kills those who give up heating, those who perish in the street. The cold encourages the deadly diseases that thrive in winter. The cold kills those who try to heat themselves by alternative, makeshift means.

This tragedy the direct consequence of the green energy policies that have been pursued in Europe for the past 20 years.

The biggest European environmental organizations have been massively financed (bought, bribed) by Gazprom — in other words, by the Russian government.

The explosion in energy prices after the war in Ukraine began, but above all as a consequence of the “green” energy policies which have made Europe so dependent on Russian gas for the last 20 years, has led and is leading hundreds of millions of Europeans to restrict their energy consumption, especially this winter, in heating.

Not Seeing Clearly The VA wants to allow optometrists to perform some surgical procedures on veterans. Henry I. Miller

https://www.city-journal.org/veterans-admin-unwise-laser-eye-surgery-policy

The Department of Veterans Affairs is the federal government’s second-largest department. As of 2021, it operated approximately 1,600 health-care facilities, 144 medical centers, and 1,232 outpatient sites, of varying complexity. The VA has long been plagued by a wide spectrum of problems, including long delays in scheduling appointments, substandard care, and years of trying to get a $10 billion electronic system to work effectively.

As a veteran myself (I have never received medical care through the VA, though I did numerous medical school clinical rotations at a VA hospital), I know that veterans deserve better. And yet, the VA seems to be committed to a change in policy that would further degrade the quality of their care—specifically, by allowing underqualified practitioners to perform laser eye surgery.

Last September, the VA modified its eye-care guidelines for treatment from community providers by letting optometrists, who are neither medical doctors nor surgeons, perform some surgical procedures. Without soliciting input from the public or medical community, it removed language from the Community Care guideline, which had ensured that “only ophthalmologists can perform invasive procedures, including injections, lasers and eye surgery.” This change would permit optometrists to perform surgical procedures such as laser trabeculoplasty—an operation on the eye to treat glaucoma—rather than restricting them to ophthalmologists (who are highly trained, experienced, qualified surgeons), as had been the policy. The change would be felt immediately in a small number of states that already allow optometrists to perform laser surgery. But the VA is considering a broader policy change that would make it possible for optometrists in all VA facilities to perform these procedures.

The differences in the amount of training and the scope of competence between optometrists and ophthalmologists are vast. Ophthalmologists log over 17,000 hours of clinical experience in general medicine, surgery, and emergency management during medical school and specialized postgraduate training.

Are ‘The Walls Closing In’ on Joe Biden? New Details Raise Questions By Matt Margolis

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2023/01/29/are-the-walls-closing-in-on-joe-biden-new-details-raise-questions-n1666036

According to a story published on Saturday, the scope of Joe Biden’s classified documents scandal may be bigger than previously thought. Sources close to the investigation say in addition to classified documents, the FBI also seized notebooks from Biden’s Wilmington, Del., home, which were reportedly written by Biden while he was vice president.

“The notebooks were seized because Biden’s notes on some of the pages relate to his official business as vice president, including details of his diplomatic engagements during the Obama administration, and may refer to classified information, this same person said, adding that the notebooks do not have classified markings on them, but some of the handwritten notes inside them could be considered as such given their sensitive content,” NBC News reported. “Other pages in the notebooks, while they may not contain potentially classified information, could still be considered government property under the Presidential Records Act because they pertain to official business Biden conducted as vice president, according to the person familiar with the investigation.”

According to Jason R. Baron, a former director of litigation at the National Archives, if Biden shared the notes with staff while he was vice president, they would be considered official records belonging to the government.

$60 Billion In COVID Fraud? Try $4 Trillion

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/01/30/60-billion-in-covid-fraud-try-4-trillion/

As auditors and congressional investigators try to figure out just how much federal COVID relief went to fraudsters, they are missing the trillions of dollars in fraud committed by the federal government itself in a war that we had no chance of winning.

Last week, the Government Accountability Office reported that fraudsters took in about $60 billion in unemployment checks. That’s on top of the tens of billions in fraudulent claims made through the Paycheck Protection Program, the tens of billions handed out through a Small Business Administration program, and on and on.

This Wednesday, the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability will hold a hearing “to investigate rampant waste of taxpayer dollars in COVID relief programs.”

Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., the chairman of the committee, said “we owe it to Americans to identify how hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars spent under the guise of pandemic relief were lost to waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement.”

That’s all well and good. But what we really need is an investigation into how the war against COVID wasted trillions of taxpayer dollars, imposed massive disruptions, handicapped millions of students, and probably didn’t save many, if any, lives.

That sort of investigation, if done honestly, would likely conclude that we would have been better off if we’d done nothing at all beyond asking people to wash their hands and stay home if they’re sick.

Shocking? Impossible to believe? Let’s review the evidence.

Start with the fact that since COVID-19 first landed on U.S. shores three years ago, 1.1 million have died from the virus, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Even now, deaths are averaging around 4,000 per week.

New Israel Fund accused of tax scheme—report The NIF is incorporated as a foreign company in Israel and therefore its Israeli donors aren’t entitled to tax benefits. David Isaac

https://www.jns.org/new-israel-fund-suspected-of-tax-fraud-report-says/

New research suggests that the New Israel Fund (NIF) directed donors to make contributions through another NGO so that they could claim tax benefits, an apparent violation of Israeli law.

Research by Ad Kan and Lavi, first reported by journalist Elhanan Gruner of online Israeli news site HaKol HaYehudi on Tuesday, indicates that NIF may have acted fraudulently, telling its donors to give money through an NGO called “Signing Anew.”

As the NIF is incorporated in Israel as a foreign company, its Israeli donors aren’t entitled to tax benefits. According to article 46a of Israel’s Income Tax Ordinance, only donors giving to recognized public institutions under the article are entitled to such benefits.

HaKol HaYehudi reported that about a month ago, the NIF held an end-of-year fundraising campaign. According to the NIF, the campaign raised 2,300,000 shekels (~$683,199). Unable to offer tax benefits to donors itself, according to the report, NIF directed major contributors to Signing Anew, which is registered as an eligible association under article 46a. Text conversations that came into the possession of Hakol HaYehudi appear to show NIF personnel directing donors in real-time as they made donations through Signing Anew.

When one donor wanted to understand how Signing Anew would know that his donation was intended for the New Israel Fund, he was allegedly told that all funds that went to Signing Anew would ultimately be part of a grant from Signing Anew to NIF.