FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Secretary of State Blinken to Address Anti-Israel Group Along With “Infected With Jew-Hatred” Activist The Biden administration really hates Israel by Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on December 2nd, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/secretary-of-state-blinken-to-address-anti-israel-group-along-with-infected-with-jew-hatred-activist/

One would think this would be a problem. But it’s also routine in the Biden administration which, in recent weeks, elevated Hady Amr, a terrorism supporter, to a top-tier emissary to the PLO and sent the FBI after Israel. This is just one in a series of ugly hate messages, the latest being to dispatch Secretary of State Blinken to address an anti-Israel group set up by George Soros and some Hong Kong money laundering.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken will be the keynote speaker at leftwing J Street’s annual conference in Washington, D.C., the organization announced on Wednesday.

Blinken on Wednesday announced that he will serve as the headline speaker at the annual conference for J Street, which as recently as last month trashed Netanyahu, accusing the incoming prime minister of “building and bulldozing [his] way to permanent, undemocratic control of the West Bank.” The group also advocates conditioning U.S. aid to Israel, routinely attacks the Jewish state for defending itself against Palestinian terrorism…

The conference kicks off this weekend, with Blinken set to address the confab on Sunday, alongside former Bernie Sanders adviser and longtime Israel critic Matt Duss, Daily Beast writer Wajahat Ali, a cadre of pro-Palestinian activists, and several Democratic members of Congress, including Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D., Md.) and senator-elect Peter Welch (D., Vt.).

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

A GOP With Backbone Would Support Elon Musk, Punish Apple, And Fight For Free Speech On Twitter By: John Daniel Davidson

Posted By on December 2nd, 2022

https://thefederalist.com/2022/12/01/a-gop-with-backbone-would-support-elon-musk-punish-apple-and-fight-for-free-speech-on-twitter/

Instead of speaking out against Apple, Republicans have been disturbingly silent, which means they still have no idea what time it is.

Apple’s threat to remove Twitter from its App store for the crime of being a slightly more open forum for free speech under Elon Musk has been met with a chorus of outrage and substantive threats of congressional action by Republican leaders.

Just kidding. Republicans have barely said anything about it, and establishment Republicans have said nothing at all. With the exception of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who offered his opinion on a matter outside his purview as a governor, Apple’s threat to crush Twitter has been met more or less with silence, even from members of the GOP who consider themselves conservative. (Sen. Mike Lee, to his credit, tossed out a tweet saying Apple’s threat makes the case for the Open Apps Markets Act. But he’s the exception to the rule.) And though Apple leaders apparently smoothed over the “misunderstanding” with Musk on Wednesday afternoon, we have all seen this pattern: Big Tech’s anti-speech aggression always turns out to be a “mistake” or “misunderstanding” as soon as enough people notice.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

At Canadian Universities, Race and Gender Quotas Have Become a Way of Life In their recruitment efforts, some schools now flat-out exclude white males who don’t self-identify as disabled or LGBT. Margaret Wente

Posted By on December 2nd, 2022

https://quillette.com/2022/12/02/at-canadian-universities-race-and-gender-quotas-have-become-a-way-of-life/

On March 21st, the University of Waterloo—a Canadian public research university renowned for its STEM programs—published an unusual job posting for a professor in the Faculty of the Environment. “This opportunity is open only to individuals who self-identify as women, transgender, non-binary, or two-spirit,” read the announcement. The rationale? “Improving the representation, participation and engagement of equity-deserving groups within our community is a key objective of Waterloo’s Strategic Plan.”

A worthy goal, one might suppose. But you’d be excused for being unsettled by the way the university was pursuing it. Perhaps you’re surprised by the unusual specificity of the listed groups (including “two-spirit,” a term that recently has become popularized in Canadian academic and government circles to signify Indigenous people whose identity “predate[s] colonial impositions, expectations, and assumptions of sex, gender, and sexual orientation”). Or perhaps you simply thought such explicitly discriminatory hiring was illegal.

And so it is—in the United States. But in Canada, where such practices are protected under the nation’s constitution, they’ve increasingly become mandated by governments, human rights commissions, and major funding bodies. Academic institutions such as the University of Waterloo not only tend to enthusiastically comply with these affirmative-action mandates, but also top up the officially prescribed requirements with their own initiatives.

At Canadian universities (virtually all of which are public, state-funded bodies), the most prestigious positions are Canada Research Chairs (CRCs)—funded federally under a “national strategy to attract and retain leading and promising minds.” In order to benefit from this program, universities must “set and meet equity targets in recognition of the persistent systemic barriers faced by researchers who are women, gender minorities, racialized individuals, persons with disabilities and Indigenous Peoples.” The task of meeting such quotas has given rise to a burgeoning administrative bureaucracy, charged with documenting the personal characteristics of faculty members in excruciating detail.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

What American Conservatism Exists to Conserve by Christopher DeMuth

Posted By on December 2nd, 2022

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2022/11/what-american-conservatism-exists-to-conserve/

EXCERPT

Have you noticed that almost every progressive initiative subverts the American nation, as if by design? Explicitly so in opening national borders, disabling immigration controls and transferring sovereignty to international bureaucracies. But it also works from within—elevating group identity above citizenship; fomenting racial, ethnic and religious divisions; disparaging common culture and the common man; throwing away energy independence; defaming our national history as a story of unmitigated injustice; hobbling our national future with gargantuan debts that will constrain our capacity for action.

But my program would also address causes of national political disorder in which recent conservative politicians have been fully complicit. This would include returning to a balanced federal budget outside of wars and other emergencies; redirecting federal spending from personal entitlements and income transfers to public goods such as national defence and infrastructure; withdrawing the collective-bargaining privileges of public-employee unions; and instituting a stable currency—not 10 per cent or 5 per cent inflation, nor even the current goal of 2 per cent inflation that quintuples prices in a single lifetime, but 0 per cent.

And my nationalist program would include not only measures that reinstitute the historical tried-and-true but also thoroughly modern innovations. These include universal school choice, which would give all parents the wherewithal to direct resources to the schools they think best for their children, and initiatives to mobilise science and enterprise to dominate China in advanced computation, communications and weaponry and to repatriate production of national essentials such as pharmaceuticals.

BOOKS Comments turned off

Vaclav Havel on Defying a System of Lies by Gary Furnell

Posted By on December 2nd, 2022

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2022/11/vaclav-havel-on-defying-a-system-of-lies/
“The Soviet bloc fell apart rapidly and unexpectedly, in large measure collapsing under the weight of its own dysfunction. Any system built on lies will eventually collapse, but it will cause great harm before this collapse and what replaces it may not be any better. Throughout, decent people will need to protect their own humanness by developing virtue and bravely living in truth.”

Written fifty years ago, Czech writer—later Czech president—Vaclav Havel’s The Power of the Powerless reads as if it was published yesterday to caution Australia today. I read and then re-read it during the Covid lockdowns when pervasive surveillance via QR codes, restrictions on association and movement, and—in most states—intolerance of even peaceful protests against official policies gave an alarming taste of the punishing control that government plus technology plus coercive policing and propaganda can achieve. Even without the Covid experience, it’s evident the social policies of state and federal governments—for example on gender equality, gay rights, the environment, indigenous matters and abortion—are broadly shared by domineering corporations, leading to a new type of societal levelling and mass-formation.

Fortunately for those who want to maintain some semblance of independent thought and some commitment to truth, Havel’s valuable book is compact (154 pages) and easy to read. It’s shrewd in its examination of politics and any society unfortunately soaked—and darkly stained—by stubborn, heavily-bureaucratised politics.

Havel, a poet and playwright, wrote The Power of the Powerless after the Soviet-instigated repression of the 1968 Prague Spring—an attempt to form a native Czechoslovakian socialism that worked for people rather than against them. A leader of Charter 77—a group associated with this gentler aspiration—Havel was harassed for years afterwards by the communists: his Prague apartment bugged, his movements followed, his plays banned. To survive, he worked in a brewery. 

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Elites’ War On Food

Posted By on December 2nd, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/12/02/the-elites-war-on-food/

A few months back, stories of “suspicious” fires at food-production plants raged across the media. The narrative said the sites were being sabotaged to disrupt the food supply. And it was most likely wrong. But that doesn’t mean there is no effort on the part of Western elites to put the peasants on a strict diet.

Most by now have seen reports that Dutch officials are closing as many as 3,000 farms in the Netherlands, the world’s second-largest exporter of agricultural products by value even though it’s only slightly larger than Maryland, to comply with crackpot European Union carbon dioxide emissions rules. It’s possible that eventually more than 11,000 farms will be shut down, and 17,600 forced to sharply cut their livestock numbers.

On our side of the Atlantic, the malefactors are also busy. Just the News is reporting that the Environmental Protection Agency is quietly quadrupling the regulatory cost of carbon emissions in a new war on fossil fuels, which is, of course, also a war on the food supply.

“If you think about the fact that they would impose this damage factor, let’s say on farmers, because it applies to fertilizer,” Louisiana Solicitor General Liz Murill said on the John Solomon Reports podcast. “Fertilizer emits nitrous oxide. So fertilizer is a big contributor. If every family farmer now is going to have to pay more to obtain fertilizer to fertilize crops that feed us, well, what’s that going to do to the price of food?”

Are these mere coincidences, entirely unrelated, isolated events?

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Biden’s Venezuela Oil Dealings: Dumb and Dumber Andrew Stuttaford

Posted By on December 2nd, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/bidens-venezuela-oil-dealings-dumb-and-dumber/

The White House has combined disdain for human rights with a degree of geopolitical stupidity impressive even by its own dismal standards.

It’s not exactly news that, so far as the Biden administration is concerned, climate policy trumps both human rights and America’s strategic interests.

Even so, with its latest opening to Venezuela, the White House has combined disdain for human rights with a degree of geopolitical stupidity impressive even by its own dismal standards.

A columnist at the Wall Street Journal explains:

At the United Nations climate conference in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, the U.S. agreed to pay environmental reparations to developing countries. Days later it emerged that the Biden administration would issue a new license to Chevron to resume operations in joint ventures with Venezuela’s oil company, PdVSA.

The U.S. government thinks you’re a fool, dear reader. And not only because it waited until Americans were en route to grandma’s house for Thanksgiving to let news slip of a deal to increase heavy-crude output from joint ventures controlled by a dictatorship allied with Iran. Or that it expects you to believe that Venezuela is considering a return to free elections in exchange.

Presumably you also haven’t noticed Team Biden’s effort to impede the development of huge reserves of light sweet crude from Guyana, a U.S. ally.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Eric Adams Should Act Preemptively Michael Brendan Dougherty

Posted By on December 2nd, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/eric-adams-should-act-preemptively/

It would be wise for the mayor to increase NYPD presence in Orthodox Jewish Brooklyn neighborhoods for the foreseeable future.

I expect Kanye West’s pro-Hitler comments on Alex Jones’s program today to confirm in the minds of nearly everyone that West is in desperate need of mental-health intervention. That is, I expect most people, even most of the disaffected black radicals who have recently defended Kyrie Irving, to back away from Kanye West, not support him.

But, given recent threats against synagogues and the appalling pattern of street violence targeted upon Jewish men in New York City, particularly Orthodox Jewish men, it would be wise for Mayor Eric Adams to increase NYPD presence in Orthodox Jewish Brooklyn neighborhoods for the foreseeable future if he hasn’t already.

One way to avoid becoming Paris — where Jewish institutions have to be guarded constantly — is to remain vigilant against the violence before it becomes endemic.

MEDIA Comments turned off

Matt Taibbi, Douglas Murray Dominate Trust-in-Media Debate Ari Blaff

Posted By on December 2nd, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/matt-taibbi-douglas-murray-dominate-trust-in-media-debate/
The 39 point swing in favor of Murray and Taibbi’s position is the largest ever recorded in a Munk debate.

Conservative commentator Douglas Murray and veteran reporter Matt Taibbi soundly defeated their opponents in a Wednesday evening debate on the question of whether to trust the mainstream media, convincing a significant segment of the audience to abandon their faith in an institution they say is hopelessly compromised by bias.

The debate, held at Roy Thomson Hall in downtown Toronto and sponsored by the Canadian cultural non-profit Munk Debates, featured Taibbi and Murray squaring off against the tremendously popular non-fiction author Malcolm Gladwell and New York Times opinion columnist Michelle Goldberg, who made the case for continued trust in major American and Canadian outlets.

Pre-debate polling showed the audience virtually split 48 to 52 percent on the question of whether to trust the mainstream media.

However, over the course of nearly two hours, Taibbi and Murray compellingly persuaded over one-third of audience members (39 percent) to abandon their prior allegiance to the position championed by Gladwell and Goldberg.

To date, Taibbi and Murray won by the largest margin ever recorded at a Munk Debate. The result stunned the sold-out crowd of 2,630 viewers normally accustomed to smaller swings.

“I grew up in the press. My father was a reporter. My stepmother was a reporter. My godparents were reporters. Every adult I knew growing up seemed to be in media,” Taibbi said during his opening remarks to start the debate. “I love the news business. It’s in my bones. But I mourn for it. It’s destroyed itself.”

Taibbi’s opening remarks echoed those raised in his most recent book Hate Inc., in which he explores how the mainstream American media abandoned its commitment to neutrality in favor of fan service. Taibbi argues the change was driven by an effort to retain a niche audience of like-minded readers and viewers who remained after the industry was gutted by tech-driven changes in the advertising market.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Belgium’s World Cup Football Riots: A Symbol of the Failure of the Migration Policy by Alain Destexhe

Posted By on December 1st, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19178/belgium-world-cup-riots

In Brussels, Moroccans outnumber people of Belgian origin in the under-18 age group; many schools are attended exclusively by children of non-European origin. In those public schools where parents have the choice of religion classes, Islam is now followed by a majority of pupils. Whether one describes these changes as “diversity” or as a “great replacement” is of little importance; over a few decades the evolution has been considerable and has modified the social fabric of Belgium’s cities.

The hijab (Islamic veil) is increasingly present and is worn by a majority of women in some municipalities. During the month of Ramadan, almost all shops and restaurants are closed during the day in some areas. The number of mosques is exploding and all currents of Islam are represented in Brussels, where tensions between Sunnis and Shiites, or even between Moroccans and Turks, are sometimes high, especially within the Muslim Executive of Belgium, a structure that the federal government set up in order to have a single interlocutor for the Muslim community, but which has been going from crisis to crisis.

During trials or elections, it is common to see women arriving with their husbands, and explaining that they cannot be retained as jurors or assessors because they do not speak any of Belgium’s official languages, thus attesting to a completely failed policy of integration. The “vivre ensemble” (“live together”) praised by the Belgian political world is a myth, with communities living side by side but not mixing with each other. Moroccans marry Moroccan women and Turks marry Turkish women…

In France, the country’s colonial past is regularly evoked to justify the anger of young North Africans. It is an explanation that does not hold: similar incidents take place in Belgium, a country that has no historical link with North Africa.

What is most distressing is the denial and the total absence of debate on the issues of immigration and integration, mainly on the French-speaking side of the country. Neither the media nor the political parties talk about it. Sunday’s riots were attributed by the mayor of Brussels to “thugs and scoundrels”, a discourse that was widely repeated without any precision or analysis.

While in France and elsewhere in Europe there is a lively debate around this theme, it is as if Belgium has given up, accepting its destiny as a multicultural country with a Muslim majority in its capital and from time to time a “new normal” made up of urban riots, shootings and terrorist attacks.

Violent clashes took place in Belgium after the Morocco-Belgium football match during the World Cup in Qatar.

Riots took place in Brussels, Antwerp and Liege, where a police station was attacked by about 50 “youths”, and also in several cities in the Netherlands. Beyond these incidents, the popular jubilation in the predominantly Moroccan neighborhoods of Brussels, especially in Molenbeek, revealed that in these areas, the Moroccan identity has remained much stronger than the Belgian one, even though most of the inhabitants have dual nationality.