ISRAEL Comments turned off

Current Events from Israel Rabbi Ben Packer

Posted By on September 6th, 2024

https://mailchi.mp/dd9d88d97a17/israel-current-events***

As rural philosopher Dr. Gary Allan melodically lamented back in 2005: “Life ain’t always beautiful. Sometimes it’s just plain hard. Life can knock you down, it can break your heart”. He subsequently encourages us by crooning: “But the struggles make me stronger. And the changes make me wise. And happiness has its own way of takin’ its sweet time”. This song basically describes this past week in Israel. 

After the dramatic, still clouded in much secrecy, rescue of an Israeli-Arab hostage last week from a tunnel in Gaza, the first of its kind, many were hoping for more such rescues in the near future. Very unfortunately, this week as Israeli soldiers approached a tunnel where hostages were being held, the terrorists, following general orders from Hamas leadership, executed all six hostages at point blank range and fled. IDF personnel found the bodies about 2 days later. They were recovered, returned to Israel and identified. One of those killed was Israeli-American Hersh Goldberg-Polin, hy’d. Sadness enveloped the Jewish/civilized world. Although there were certainly some on US college campuses who were undoubtedly elated by the news. 

After over ten months of captivity and on the brink of rescue, terrible tragedy. Prime Minister Netanyahu has repeatedly declared that military action will lead to the release of the hostages, either through rescue or an acceptable agreement. The Israeli left has accused him of being disingenuous and has demanded a deal with Hamas at virtually any price. As a result of the loss of the 6 hostages, the left has taken to the streets to protest.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

How AI will embolden the tyranny of Big Tech The power of the Silicon Valley oligarchs is set to expand exponentially. Joel Kotkin

Posted By on September 6th, 2024

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/09/05/how-ai-will-embolden-the-tyranny-of-big-tech/

The emergence of artificial intelligence marks the latest acceleration of the digital age. Like any revolution, this one has winners and losers and will likely transform the relationship between people and machines. It could also lend yet more power to Big Tech and their technocratic elites in government.

Just as the Industrial Revolution elevated manufacturers and their financiers over the old aristocratic classes, the current shift erodes the power of the large industrial, often unionised, corporations and hosts of smaller businesses, in favour of a small coterie of elite firms, which are aggressively anti-union and have an unprecedented hold on both the capital markets and increasingly the human consciousness.

In the past, a major tech breakthrough would have naturally created a market for upstarts. The first phase of the digital revolution in the early 21st century caught many larger players, like IBM and AT&T, flat-footed as firms like Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook (now Meta) emerged, eventually well surpassing them in market value. These firms have now secured quasi-monopolistic control of everything from mobile browsers, operating-system software and online advertising sales. They also control two-thirds of the world’s cloud service infrastructure, which is critical for AI.

These Big Tech companies drive the economy, and with them the fortunes of the three-fifths of Americans invested in the stock market. About 60 per cent of the S&P 500’s gains for the year have been driven by just five tech companies – Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and Alphabet (the parent company of Google). Altogether, seven tech stars, adding Tesla and Apple, account for a remarkable 30 per cent of the index’s total value, a domination almost unprecedented in market history.

These same companies are uniquely positioned to raise the trillions of dollars that are needed to develop AI capacity – at a time when cash for startups is at the lowest ebb in five years. Among the AI superpowers, there is only one relative newcomer, Nvidia. It started out mostly selling chips to the videogame industry, but its hardware has since become essential to the AI boom. Overall the field is utterly dominated by the top giant interests.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Antisemitic Threats and Violence in the West: A Running Tally By Zach Kessel

Posted By on September 6th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/antisemitic-threats-and-violence-in-the-west-a-running-tally/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=h

Since October 7, antisemitism has metastasized, growing from chants and signs held at rallies to violence and threats against Jews. This is by no means an exhaustive list — sadly, the incidents are likely too great in number to catalog — but it is a window into the conditions Jews have faced in America and the West since Hamas attacked Israel and antisemites celebrated. We will update this list as necessary, and unfortunately, it seems like it will be necessary.

NATIONAL SECURITY AND DEFENSE Comments turned off

Helen Raleigh Beijing’s Spy Games We need to defend America from Chinese spies with diligence and accountability, while avoiding witch hunts.

Posted By on September 6th, 2024

https://www.city-journal.org/article/beijings-spy-games

A former high-level New York State employee has been charged with acting as an undisclosed agent for Communist China. This incident, along with other similar ones, presents a significant challenge to the United States: How do we effectively address the national security threat from spies within our borders without descending into destructive witch hunts?

Linda Sun, who held several prominent positions in New York State government, including serving as deputy chief diversity officer under former governor Andrew Cuomo and deputy chief of staff under Governor Kathy Hochul, was arrested along with her husband Chris Hu early this week. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York has charged Sun, who never registered as a foreign agent, with “violating and conspiring to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act” and having been involved in numerous political activities to advance the interests of the People’s Republic of China and the Chinese Communist Party, including “blocking representatives of the Taiwanese government from having access to high-level New York State officers.” The couple allegedly collected considerable financial benefits for Sun’s actions, and their families in China received special treatment from the government.

This case is the latest of several incidents involving high-level Democratic politicians and alleged Chinese spies. Former California senator Dianne Feinstein, who served as the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, had a Chinese spy on her staff for an astonishing 20 years. In 2020, Americans learned that Fang Fang, a suspected Chinese spy, had been building relationships with up-and-coming local politicians in the Bay Area and across the country, including California representative Eric Swalwell, a member of the House Intelligence Committee.

These cases are only the tip of the iceberg. In the ongoing and escalating strategic competition between China and the United States, Beijing will undoubtedly recruit and deploy more spies. Notably, Beijing sees spies as more than just tools to collect critical information. The United Front Work Department (UFWD), a secretive Chinese government agency, is a crucial player in this competition. Its primary function is to conduct overseas influence campaigns by cultivating prominent people in the West and, through them, to influence policies and public opinion and silence or discredit critics.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Walz heads to PA where his staff tells media members not to ‘disrupt’ his photo op with pesky accountability questions By Olivia Murray

Posted By on September 6th, 2024

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/09/walz_heads_to_pa_where_his_staff_tells_media_members_not_to_disrupt_his_photo_op_with_pesky_accountability_questions.html

Another presidential election year, and another campaign to shield the Democrat ticket from the media’s cameras and microphones because their nominees are too incompetent to be trusted ad lib; all this is of course aided and abetted by a complicit media. But, after Joe Biden’s performance over the last four years, a humiliating reflection on Democrats, I’d say it’s par for the course. Here’s the story, from an item at Fox News:

A local Pennsylvania journalist revealed how reporters were not allowed to ask Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz questions during a campaign event in Lancaster County on Wednesday.

While Walz spoke with volunteers at the office, WPMT FOX43 reporter Alyssa Kratz wrote in a Facebook post how the campaign would not let the press speak with him.

‘Gov. Tim Walz speaking to people calling into Lancaster County Democratic Committee field office. His daughter Hope is with him. Spoke to supporters here for about 6 or 7 minutes. Walz is not taking questions from the media while here. We were also not allowed to put microphones up by Gov. Walz while he was speaking,’ Kratz wrote.

She added, ‘One reporter tried shouting a question and we were told to ‘not disrupt the program.’

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

The 2024 Democrat Presidential Ticket that was Twenty Years in the Making The carnage Barack Obama left behind over the past 20 years put Donald Trump in the White House and created today’s Harris-Walz debacle. It’s a mystery as to why Democrats still worship the guy.By Richard Truesdell and Keith Lehmann

Posted By on September 6th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/09/06/the-2024-democrat-presidential-ticket-that-was-twenty-years-in-the-making/

The Democrat Party has completely sabotaged itself by running the absolute worst ticket that could have been chosen against its rival. The vapid empty-pantsuit Kamala Harris teamed with military record fabricator and outright freak Tim Walz is a recipe for electoral disaster against the formidable Donald Trump and J.D. Vance.

Why did Democrats nullify the choice of 14 million primary voters and install Kamala Harris as the presidential nominee instead of holding an open convention primary? Were there no other contenders aside from the one that is uniquely incapable of facing Donald Trump? Why are Democrats and the media trying so hard to hide the Harris-Walz policy platform by refusing unscripted interviews and press conferences?

We all know the answers to the above questions, yet it might be useful to look at how we got to this place. It was largely due to a single person who promised to “fundamentally transform the United States of America.”

When Junior Senator from Illinois Barack Obama was introduced to the nation at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, he was completely unknown to most Americans and, in fact, to most Democrats. His keynote address at the convention catapulted him into stardom among Democrats and began his upward rise within party ranks.

Having a decent senatorial record and no controversial baggage, Obama would eventually run for president as the “Hope and Change” candidate to appeal to voters exhausted from the two terms of George W. Bush, especially in the aftermath of the 2008 economic meltdown.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

With the November Election Looming, Biden Officials Are Suddenly Condemning Hamas We need a decisive and pro-Israel president with an America First approach to U.S. national security to restore American leadership and global peace and stability. We need Donald Trump. Fred Fleitz

Posted By on September 6th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/09/06/with-the-november-election-looming-biden-officials-are-suddenly-condemning-hamas/

This week, 11 months after the horrific Hamas terrorist attack against Israel on October 7, 2023, the Biden administration announced indictments against Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and five other Hamas officials for their “central roles in planning, supporting, and perpetrating the terrorist atrocities that Hamas committed in Israel,” which the Justice Department said represented “the culmination of Hamas’s decades-long campaign of terrorism and violence against Israel and its allies.”

The Biden administration claims this action was a sign that it will ensure Hamas leaders “will pay for their crimes.” But it is absurd to indict Hamas leaders for the worst attack against the Jewish people that occurred 11 months after this attack occurred. Moreover, these indictments are pointless not because the accused are in Gaza and will never be brought to the U.S. for trial but because three of them are dead.

Attorney General Merrick Garland made this look worse when he said in announcing the indictments, “These actions will not be our last,”—indicating that additional indictments are likely against the Hamas killers after more delays.

One might attribute the delayed indictments to the Biden administration’s incompetence. I believe it is likely that Biden officials slow-walked the indictments because they did not want to alienate Hamas leaders while they tried to negotiate a cease-fire agreement that they expected Hamas to support. The cease-fire agreement promoted by the Biden-Harris administration would require Israel to leave Gaza without defeating Hamas. It would leave Hamas intact and able to regain control of Gaza and use this region to stage more deadly attacks against Israel.

The cease-fire talks have been stalemated because although Israel has made significant concessions to get a cease-fire and free hostages held by Hamas, it rightly refuses to agree to such terms.

The indictments suggest that because of the upcoming presidential election and anger over Hamas’s recent execution of six hostages, including American Hersh Goldberg-Polin, the Biden-Harris administration is taking a different approach to the Israel/Hamas War. It now wants to be seen as acting tough against Hamas.

White House Press spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre made a related comment this week when she said in response to the killing of the six hostages, “Make no mistake, Hamas leaders will pay for these crimes.” Such a remark calling on Hamas leaders to be punished was almost unprecedented by a Biden official who usually only criticizes Israel and calls on it to make more concessions to Hamas to get a cease-fire agreement.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

An Iron Curtain is Descending On Us Freedom is disappearing across the free world. by Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on September 6th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/an-iron-curtain-is-descending-on-us/

Over the last five years, American, British, Canadian and Brazilian governments unleashed unprecedented waves of repression against political opponents using martial law, military occupations of major cities, government censorship of the internet, nationwide manhunts, televised raids and extended detentions without trial. Most of those arrested were guilty of political speech and protests generally far less violent than leftist riots by regime supporters.

Three of those leftist governments, the Biden-Harris administration, the Starmer and Lula regimes, unleashed crackdowns after taking power using various pretexts. The fourth crackdown, in Canada under the Trudeau regime, took place during an election year.

The pretexts, J6, Brazil’s election protests or the UK’s anti-migrant rallies, are far less significant than the pattern of leftist regimes taking power and launching crackdowns against opponents who disputed elections or, in the case of the Starmer regime, protested against policies.

Governments that moan about “authoritarianism” abroad eagerly adopted every element of the authoritarian playbook from endless investigations of political opponents like Trump and Bolsonaro to declaring states of emergency over political protests and censoring speech. They often justify their authoritarian measures as necessary to stop their “authoritarian” opponents.

The leftist regimes that have taken to locking up people who merely express support online for opposition political protests are not averse to chaos, social unrest or riots. Before J6, Kamala Harris and every prominent Democrat and media outlet had endorsed BLM race riots. In the years since, leftist mobs have routinely invaded the United States Capitol, intimidated members of Congress, occupied their offices and fought Capitol Police officers in the name of every cause from banning oil to supporting Hamas with little result other than light slaps on their wrists.

In the years before Trudeau used martial law to silence truckers protesting against vaccine mandates, BLM rioters had been allowed to block streets in Canadian cities with the backing of the regime. No less a figure than Trudeau had ritually knelt to the race rioters and their cause.

Before and after the Starmer regime launched a ruthless crackdown on opponents of mass migration, Hamas supporters had rallied and rioted across London and other cities, threatening Jews and proudly flying the flags of Islamic terrorist organizations officially at war with the UK.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Climate Indoctrination Accelerates As The Narrative Breaks Down

Posted By on September 6th, 2024

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/09/06/climate-indoctrination-accelerates-as-the-narrative-breaks-down/

The global warming alarmist cabal continues to spin its many yarns and press forward with its propaganda program. Maybe the zealots are becoming desperate because they see the facts aren’t lining up with their hyperbole.

Following the get-’em-while-they’re-young school of thought, the climate agitators are targeting kindergarteners. NASA’s Climate Kids webpage, for instance, says “global warming will affect everyone on Earth.” While admitting that “fossil fuels have changed the course of human history,” NASA also says “these good things come at a cost. The cost is pollution, the destruction of landscapes and natural habitats, oil spills in the ocean, and nasty fracking chemicals in the ground. Global warming will be the biggest problem of all.”

On another of the “Kids” pages, NASA claims that in an era of “rising” global temperatures, “almost all climate scientists agree that a big cause of that is the burning of fossil fuels. The warming could lead to rising sea levels, droughts, flooding, and more severe weather. It is a challenge that we will have to deal with in the coming years.”

Remember, this proselytizing is intended to program kindergarteners. And it’s only the beginning. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is also dedicated to “educating” kids about “human-induced climate change” and making sure that they are afraid to burn fossil fuels.

This is the same NOAA that, according to the Daily Caller, “House Republicans are pressing … for answers about a signature dataset frequently cited as evidence that climate change is intensifying.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Niall Ferguson: History and Anti-History Podcasts are not reviving history, as is often claimed these days. They are mostly drowning it in a tidal wave of blather, at best sloppy, at worst mendacious.

Posted By on September 6th, 2024

https://www.thefp.com/p/niall-ferguson-history-and-anti-history?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

According to Tucker Carlson, Darryl Cooper is “the most important popular historian working in the United States today.” I had never heard of Cooper until this week and was none the wiser when I went to look for his books. There are none. 

According to Wikipedia, “he is author of Twitter — A How to Tips & Tricks Guide (2011) and the editor of Bush Yarns and Other Offences (2022).” These are scarcely works of history. It turns out that, as Carlson put it in his wildly popular conversation with Cooper, this historian works “in a different medium—on Substack, X, podcasts.” 

The problem, as swiftly became apparent on Carlson’s podcast, is that you cannot do history that way. What we are dealing with in this conversation is the opposite of history: call it anti-history. 

True history proceeds from an accumulation of evidence, some in the form of written records, some in other forms, to a reconstitution of past thought, in R.G. Collingwood’s phrase, and from there to a rendition of Leopold von Ranke’s was eigentlich gewesen: what essentially happened. By contrast, Darryl Cooper offers a series of wild assertions that are almost entirely divorced from historical evidence and can be of interest only to those so ignorant of the past that they mistake them for daring revisionism, as opposed to base neo-Nazism. 

Podcasts are not reviving history, as is often claimed these days. They are mostly drowning it in a tidal wave of blather, at best sloppy, at worst mendacious.

I could see early on where this conversation was going. It’s the moment when Cooper offers his appraisal of the Jonestown mass suicide of 1978 as microcosm. A microcosm of what? Of the civil rights movement, of course.