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Yoav Gallant’s exit, stage left Ruthie Blum

Posted By on January 7th, 2025

https://www.jns.org/yoav-gallants-exit-stage-left/

Former Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant’s resignation from the Knesset, which he tendered on Jan. 1, became official at 10 a.m. on Sunday morning. Despite pressure from retired defense officials-turned-talking heads that he reverse his decision, Gallant—whom Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu finally fired from his Cabinet post in early November—remained steadfast.

In a press conference Wednesday evening to announce the move, however, he indicated that he’d be returning to the political arena in the future. Given his simultaneous declaration of loyalty to Likud principles and harsh critique of its chairman, he seemed to be hinting at a plan to beat Bibi in the party’s next primary race.

If that’s what he’s thinking, he needs to have his head examined. Given his behavior since the government was sworn in at the end of 2022, he’d be lucky at this point to garner enough support among Likud voters to obtain a realistic spot on the party’s list for the 26th Knesset, let alone rise to the top of the heap.

So a comeback on his part is probably going to involve forming or joining a different faction that describes itself as part of the “center” or “center-right,” yet resides on the left side of the electoral-poll pie chart with the rest of the “anybody but Bibi” crowd.

Another possibility is that the warm embrace he received by oppositionists and the protest movement will grow chilly once he’s no longer of use to them as a tool to weaken or oust Netanyahu through the crumbling of the coalition.

In such an event, Gallant may find himself in the same boat as many of his colleagues with illustrious careers in the Israel Defense Forces: settling for a highly paid gig at a politically correct think tank.

It’s just as well. For the past two years, Gallant has exhibited a greater allegiance to the elitist “old boys’ network” of the IDF top brass than to the government he was appointed to represent.

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Joseph Figliolia The NIH’s Ideological Approach to Gender Medicine Under Jay Bhattacharya, Trump’s nominee to head the agency, it can recommit to evidence-based principles.

Posted By on January 7th, 2025

https://www.city-journal.org/article/jay-bhattacharya-nih-gender-medicine

In 2015, the National Institutes of Health launched the Sexual and Gender Minority Research Office. Its purpose: to rectify the absence of health data on this cohort by prioritizing research and improving data collection. While the new office (SGMRO) does not have grantmaking authority on its own, its wide sphere of influence shapes the nature of the grants being considered for funding and the overall spirit of research on sexual and gender minorities (SGM). Moreover, the SGMRO and its associated working group and coordinating committee function as connective tissue linking the NIH’s various institutes, centers, and offices, allowing them to spread their understanding of the health of “individuals who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, asexual, transgender, non-binary, Two-Spirit, queer, and/or intersex.” While many of the SGMRO’s priorities are laudable and in principle worthy of scientific inquiry, in practice they have enshrined activist assumptions about the nature of “gender identity,” “gender-affirming care,” and the causes of “health inequities” at NIH.

The catalyst for establishing the new office was a 2011 report commissioned by the NIH to survey the known research on “LGBT” health. Conducted by what is now the National Academy of Medicine, the report stated, “All aspects of the evidence base for transgender-specific health care need to be expanded.” The authors noted a need for more research on how treatment for gender dysphoria should be managed “under the new paradigm of greater diversity of gender identities” and on both the benefits and harms of sex-trait modification procedures, particularly related to hormone use.

With the benefit of hindsight, the 2011 report contains signs of things to come—for instance, recommendations to consider “intersectionality” and “minority stress” as guiding principles. But in many ways the document reads like a relic from a bygone era of scientific discourse, full of genuine humility and a desire for more scientific data on LGBT health more broadly. The report concluded that overall data on LGBT health was so sparse that a substantial research program was needed. In 2012, what is now known as the Sexual and Gender Minority Research Coordinating Committee issued a report that accepted the 2011 findings and recommendations, culminating in the founding of the SGMRO in 2015.

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Trudeau’s Reign of Terror Will Likely Stop Short of Canada’s Total Destruction But he tried his best. by Robert Spencer

Posted By on January 7th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/trudeaus-reign-of-terror-will-likely-stop-short-of-canadas-total-destruction/

At long last, on Monday Justin Trudeau has announced his pending resignation, although it will be awhile before he is actually gone. In declaring his intention to resign, Trudeau prorogued parliament until March 4, which means it will not be in session, but will not be dissolved. During this period, the Liberal Party will select a new leader, after which Trudeau says he will finally depart from the scene. Thus the misrule of this curious man is likely to come to a definitive end reasonably soon, and we can only hope that he doesn’t do too much more damage between now and then.

Trudeau is the embodiment of David Horowitz’s indelible dictum that “inside every progressive is a totalitarian screaming to get out. He himself has been upfront about this. Back in 2013, before he was prime minister, he was asked what country he admired most. Trudeau answered: “You know, there’s a level of admiration I actually have for China because their basic dictatorship is allowing them to actually turn their economy around on a dime and say ‘we need to go green fastest … we need to start investing in solar.’ I mean, there is a flexibility that I know Stephen Harper must dream about, of having a dictatorship that he can do everything he wanted, that I find quite interesting.”

Then when Fidel Castro died in 2016, Trudeau’s statement gave no hint of the bloodthirstiness and repression of the Communist regime in Cuba. Instead, the vacant and vapid Canadian prime minister was fairly gushing with praise for “Cuba’s longest-serving President.” He declared that “Fidel Castro was a larger than life leader who served his people for almost half a century. A legendary revolutionary and orator, Mr. Castro made significant improvements to the education and healthcare of his island nation.”

Trudeau admitted that Castro was a “controversial figure,” but insisted that “both Mr. Castro’s supporters and detractors recognized his tremendous dedication and love for the Cuban people, who had a deep and lasting affection for ‘el Comandante.’” He said that his family was joining “the people of Cuba today in mourning the loss of this remarkable leader.”

This was not just an ill-considered outpouring of grief for a man Trudeau obviously loved dearly. His praise for China and for Castro have in common an admiration for the authoritarian’s ability to get things done with no regard for the opposition or the give-and-take of the democratic process. China was able to go green and Castro was able to make significant improvements to education and healthcare (in Trudeau’s view, not in real life) because they didn’t have to deal with all the carping and compromise that working with parliaments and voters entails.

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Biden’s Terrible Legacy: A Tsunami Of Growth-Killing Regulations

Posted By on January 7th, 2025

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/01/07/bidens-terrible-legacy-a-tsunami-of-growth-killing-regulations/

On Joe Biden’s first day in office, he signed a raft of executive orders, one of which we said was “almost entirely overlooked but could easily end up having the biggest impact.”

Turns out we were right.

The executive order – “Modernizing Regulatory Review” – would, we predicted, “unleash the regulatory state with a ferocity never before seen in this country.”

With this one executive order, Biden shows that he’s intent on giving regulators carte blanche to impose massive new rules on businesses and households, on virtually anything and everything they do, regardless of costs. There’s little else Biden has done so far that will have as wide-ranging an impact.

As the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Clyde Wayne Crews explains, that order “undermined the crucial watchdog mission of the White House Office of Management and Budget,” which had served as a check on the administrative state. “The federal government’s sole watchdog … has been transformed into a cheerleader for regulation.”

The CEI publishes the definitive guide to federal regulation each year, called “10,000 Commandments.”

Last week, the Federal Register, which is the repository of Washington’s rules and regulations, provided the latest evidence that Biden let regulators off the chain.

The 2024 Federal Register weighed in at 107,262 pages – the most in history and a 45% increase from Biden’s first year in office.

Last year, alone, Biden finalized 3,248 rules, of which 343 were deemed “significant,” meaning they added more than $200 million in compliance costs.

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

‘Globalize the Intifada’ Comes to New Orleans Editors The Free Press

Posted By on January 7th, 2025

https://www.thefp.com/p/globalize-the-intifada-comes-to-new?r=4crwli

The enemies of this country are clear about their aims. Have we lost the ability to defend ours?

What would it look like if the masked mobs in our cities vowing to “globalize the intifada” got their wish? It might look like New Orleans on New Year’s Day, when Shamsud-Din Jabbar plowed a pickup truck into the bodies of peaceful citizens, murdering young and old, then getting out and firing a gun at police officers who thankfully succeeded in killing him first, though two were hospitalized.

Eyewitnesses to the attack noticed that the murderer had an Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant flag in his truck. The FBI later confirmed that Jabbar, the Texas-born Army vet turned terrorist, “was 100% inspired by ISIS,” which rapes and enslaves girls, beheads captives, and makes war on the West as well as what it considers “apostates” in the greater Middle East—including all Muslims who reject its vision of an Islamic caliphate. ISIS grew out of al-Qaeda a decade ago and has roots in the Muslim Brotherhood. Jabbar traveled to Egypt—the seat of the Muslim Brotherhood—in the summer of 2023, and the FBI is now investigating what, exactly, he did there.

Even before the New Orleans attack, terrorist vehicle-ramming had already been globalized, with murderous effect. Locations of previous Islamist attacks, which this one eerily resembled, include Nice, France; Berlin, Germany; New York; and, of course, Israel.

But you wouldn’t know any of that listening to Tom Wilson, the CEO of the insurance giant Allstate, who bizarrely felt the need to address the public since the terrorist attack forced postponement of the Sugar Bowl that Allstate sponsors: “We need to. . . overcom[e] an addiction to divisiveness and negativity.” He further urged those tuning in to the football game delayed by the ISIS-inspired mass murder to “accept people’s imperfections and differences.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Biggest Peacetime Crime—and Cover-up—in British History Dominic Green*****

Posted By on January 7th, 2025

https://www.thefp.com/p/muslim-grooming-gangs-cover-up-keir-starmer-elon-musk?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

The serial rape of thousands of English girls went on for many years. Few in power cared. Then Elon Musk started tweeting.

LONDON — The grooming and serial rape of thousands of English girls by men of mostly Pakistani Muslim background over several decades is the biggest peacetime crime in the history of modern Europe. It went on for many years. It is still going on. And there has been no justice for the vast majority of the victims.

British governments, both Conservative and Labour, hoped that they had buried the story after a few symbolic prosecutions in the 2010s. And it looked like they had succeeded—until Elon Musk read some of the court papers and tweeted his disgust and bafflement on X over the new year.

Britain now stands shamed before the world. The public’s suppressed wrath is bubbling to the surface in petitions, calls for a public inquiry, and demands for accountability.

The scandal is already reshaping British politics. It’s not just about the heinous nature of the crimes. It’s that every level of the British system is implicated in the cover-up.

Social workers were intimidated into silence. Local police ignored, excused, and even abetted pedophile rapists across dozens of cities. Senior police and Home Office officials deliberately avoided action in the name of maintaining what they called “community relations.” Local councilors and Members of Parliament rejected pleas for help from the parents of raped children. Charities, NGOs, and Labour MPs accused those who discussed the scandal of racism and Islamophobia. The media mostly ignored or downplayed the biggest story of their lifetimes. Zealous in their incuriosity, much of Britain’s media elite remained barnacled to the bubble of Westminster politics and its self-serving priorities.

They did this to defend a failed model of multiculturalism, and to avoid asking hard questions about failures of immigration policy and assimilation. They did this because they were afraid of being called racist or Islamophobic. They did this because Britain’s traditional class snobbery had fused with the new snobbery of political correctness.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

What’s Wrong with the Postmodern Military? After fifteen months of war, and brilliant Israeli operations, Hamas and Hizballah have managed to avoid total defeat, and the IDF has not yet managed to secure total victory. Ron Baratz

Posted By on January 7th, 2025

https://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/israel-zionism/2025/01/whats-wrong-with-the-postmodern-military/

The October 7 attack from Gaza was not supposed to have been possible. Israelis were continuously assured by the security establishment and political leaders that Hamas was “deterred,” that Israel has an ample, sophisticated defense mechanism, and that its intelligence capabilities were second to none. And so, Israelis had to endure two shocks on that Simchat Torah morning: the large-scale surprise attack itself, which the IDF failed to avert, and the barbaric atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists and Gazan civilians.

Then came a third shock, which might surprise those who rely on English-language news from Israel’s advocates abroad, its political leaders, or the IDF’s own spokespeople: the Israeli high command required weeks to formulate plans and prepare for an operation in Gaza. Even worse, within weeks of the ground operation’s commencement, it became evident that the initial strategy was flawed, poorly planned, and exposed a staggering number of failures in preparation, training, force buildup, equipment, munitions, and execution. Although Israeli society has sprung into action to help deal with logistical problems, it became clear that the IDF was in a dire condition. To this day, a year and three months after the attack, despite numerous tactical successes and an enormous national investment in the war, both Hamas and Hizballah have managed to avoid total defeat, and despite the accomplishments of Israel’s soldiers the IDF has failed to secure total victory.

It goes without saying that Israel has an exceptional national army. Its soldiers’ fighting spirit is second to none, their bravery and commitment are likely unparalleled in the West today. But tactics and bravery alone are not enough. The strategic capabilities of the high command are essential to give shape and direction to successful military campaigns. Therefore, my aim in this essay is to examine what I believe to be the most critical aspect of the reality revealed on and after October 7: the military doctrines and national-security mindset that have led to the decades-long deterioration of the IDF’s capabilities.

To do so, I will briefly turn to the U.S. and outline two successive transformations in Western military thinking. Admittedly, this depiction will be painted in very broad strokes, but despite exceptions and counterexamples, the trend it highlights—the marginalization of classical military and operational art—is very real and increasingly troubling. I will then shift focus to Israel to examine how it has navigated these two transformative waves of strategic thinking.

How the Cold War Upended Military Thought

From the beginning of recorded history until the Second World War, national-security doctrines relied on the operational capabilities of a strong, well-trained fighting force led by a professional high command. Generals were entrusted with the responsibility of winning wars, and warfare was regarded as a specialized art and vocation. Those who excelled in defeating enemy forces rose through the ranks to become military leaders.

Military professionalism was cultivated through two key endeavors. The first was experience, gained in active combat during wartime and through rigorous training during peacetime. The second was military studies. Most great strategists were ardent students of war. They identified something constant in war, an essence that transcended time, which helped would-be generals sharpen their intellectual and vocational abilities, adopt new technologies, develop new tactics and strategies, and adapt to changing threats. Thus, military history and theory were regarded as fundamental pillars of their expertise.

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Trump sentencing: A BS conclusion to a BS case Byron York

Posted By on January 7th, 2025

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/daily-memo/3278083/trump-sentencing-bs-conclusion-to-bs-hush-money-case/

This Friday, though, Trump will have to put aside his work to attend, either in person or virtually, his sentencing in the Manhattan criminal prosecution in which he was convicted of falsifying business records. The case, brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, was widely viewed as the weakest of the four criminal cases brought against Trump by elected Democratic prosecutors and the Biden administration. For one thing, the charges, questionable as they were, were misdemeanors, past the statute of limitations, which Bragg inflated into felonies by alleging that Trump falsified records in a plot to steal the 2016 presidential election, which Bragg did not have the authority to police.

Even anti-Trump commentators were baffled by the case. “When Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg first brought charges against Donald Trump in March 2023, the legal theory behind the indictment remained remarkably unclear,” Quinta Jurecic, an editor of the journal Lawfare, from the liberal Brookings Institution, wrote last April. “Now, a year later, with the trial finally underway … the charges against Trump still have an oddly inchoate quality.” To add to Trump’s problems, the case was presided over by Manhattan Judge Juan Merchan, who, in 2020, violated New York’s rules of judicial conduct to make a small donation to the Biden campaign.

Nevertheless, as the other cases against Trump fell by the wayside — the two federal prosecutions brought by special counsel Jack Smith were bogged down in litigation, and the Georgia case brought by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was sunk by prosecutorial misconduct — the Bragg case stayed on track. Anti-Trumpers came to support the case because they saw it as the only chance to get Trump before the 2024 election. 

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Canada, the Panama Canal and Now Greenland. What’s Behind Trump’s Expansionist Rhetoric? by Robert Spencer

Posted By on January 6th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21274/trump-canada-panama-canal-greenland

Trump is once again being true to his America-First convictions.
[Trump’s] question to Trudeau was pointed, and remains unanswered: “So your country can’t survive unless it’s ripping off the U.S. to the tune of $100 billion?”
Trump explained that the Panama Canal “was given to Panama and to the people of Panama, but it has provisions, you gotta treat us fairly and they haven’t treated us fairly.”
There’s the bottom line: if the United States doesn’t control the Panama Canal and Greenland, China or Russia likely will, and the consequences could be severe both for the American economy and for national security.
President-elect Donald Trump recently said that the Panama Canal should once again come under American control, and that the US should buy Greenland from Denmark. If the United States doesn’t control the Panama Canal and Greenland, China or Russia likely will, and the consequences could be severe both for the American economy and for national security. Pictured: An aerial view of ships passing the Pedro Miguel locks in the Panama Canal, in May 2023. (Photo by iStock/Getty Images)

First, President-elect Donald Trump tweaked Canada’s far-left Prime Minister Justin Trudeau about becoming governor of the 51st state of the United States of America. Then he said that the Panama Canal should once again come under American control. Make that the 52nd state. And now, are you ready for a 53rd state? Last month, Trump renewed a call he made during his first term: that the United States should buy Greenland from Denmark. Could the man possibly be serious?

Maybe not. The left’s propaganda arm, also known as the mainstream media, loves to portray Trump and his supporters as angry, bitter, ignorant people lashing out against the people who know better what’s good for them. Trump has never gotten credit for his sense of humor, despite the fact that he is easily the funniest man to occupy the White House since Ronald Reagan, and may even surpass the Gipper.

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Why Europe and America need each other European elites have let their snobbery towards Trump blind them to their own interests.Joel Kotkin

Posted By on January 6th, 2025

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/01/03/why-europe-and-america-need-each-other/

European elites are greeting the incoming Trump administration with something less than enthusiasm. The UK has sent an ambassador to Washington with a well-expressed disdain for the returning US president. Le Monde, a French publication not known for its pro-American sympathies, called Trump’s election ‘the nail in [the] coffin’ for the US as a ‘democratic model’ for the world. The Guardian, predictably, has called for Europeans to fight to preserve the continent’s welfare and climate regime.

Some seem to think that Trump’s return is the spur Europe needs to finally stand on its own two feet. But they need to recognise, as was the case during the Second World War and the Cold War, that only a strong alliance between Europe and the US offers any hope of resisting the rise of an authoritarian bloc, this time grouped around China.

There are hopeful signs. Since the start of the Ukraine conflict, ties between Europe, Canada and the US have been strengthened. There is some promise in an incipient alliance between North America and India, Japan and Australia. But Europe cannot expect the US to bear the strategic burden itself.

Trump’s insistence that Europe rearm makes sense at a time when the continent is facing immediate threats, most immediately in the Red Sea and Ukraine. Today, almost all European countries outside the UK, Greece and the Baltic states do not spend more than two per cent of their GDP on defence, while the US spends roughly 3.5 per cent.

Although there is an isolationist tendency among MAGA activists, most US voters are in favour of expanding America’s ‘global presence’. In a reinvigorated alliance, Europe has much to offer in terms of production and expertise, particularly given the sad state of the US military industry, as evidenced by shortages of materials to send to allies like Ukraine, Taiwan or Israel.

A similar imperative exists in the economic sphere. Europeans have long prided themselves on producing a stronger, more equitable economy than the military-oriented Americans. Two decades ago, one could legitimately see Europe as a determinative third force in the world economy. This is no longer the case. It’s basically a choice between China and the US.

Europeans might once have hoped that the euro could replace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. But after last decade’s euro crisis, and with serious economic problems hitting the likes of France, this now looks like a fantasy. The dollar, despite attempts by China and some developing countries to supplant it, still accounts for close to 60 per cent of all foreign currency reserves and almost 90 per cent of all foreign exchange transactions.

Trump’s tariff threats may seem irrational and self-destructive. But the end of unrestrained free trade, without some sense of reciprocity, has long seemed inevitable. It has died amid a trade regime that helped cause the loss of over 3.7million jobs in the US alone. Living standards across the deindustrialising West have worsened, particularly for the middle class, while Europe has endured a decade of stagnation.