The word the Biden administration won't use when it comes to the border? 'Crisis' - Adam Shaw, Griff Jenkins

 

​ by Adam Shaw, Griff Jenkins

More than 100,000 migrants were encountered at border in February.

Exclusive look at migrant processing center in McAllen, Texas

The Biden administration is facing what it admits is an "overwhelming" number of migrants at the southern border while scrambling to construct new facilities to hold child migrants -- but it is doggedly refusing to describe the situation as a "crisis."

Agents in the Rio Grande Valley sector in Texas are encountering 1,500 migrants a day, overwhelming the sector -- and Fox News on Saturday obtained exclusive photographs of a temporary outdoor processing site there in Mission, Texas.

PSAKI SAYS 'LARGE FLOW' OF CHILD MIGRANTS COMING TO US, DENIES BORDER IS 'OPEN'

This site is near the point of contact after the migrants illegally cross the Rio Grande River. There, they sort them among family units, unaccompanied minors and single adults and bus them to the appropriate destinations.

But the administration isn't calling the situation a crisis.

"It doesn’t matter what you call it. It is an enormous challenge," White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Thursday, before saying: "We don’t feel the need to, you know, play games with what it’s called."

While numbers have been increasing at the border for months, particularly of unaccompanied children (UACs) and family units, they have spiked since President Biden took office. The number of UACs in custody has tripled in recent weeks, while there were more than 100,000 migrant encounters in February.

Critics have blamed the dramatic liberalizing of immigration policy and rollback of Trump-era border protections for encouraging the flow and removing the tools that allow migrants to be kept out or returned to their home countries.

The Biden administration has claimed it is moving to replace the "cruelty" of the prior administration with a more "humane" system and warned that will take time. But it has refused to acknowledge that there is in fact a "crisis" -- preferring instead to describe it as a "challenge."

"I think that the -- the answer is no. I think there is a challenge at the border that we are managing, and we have our resources dedicated to managing it," DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said last week.

BORDER ENCOUNTERS TOP 100,000 IN FEBRUARY AS MIGRANT CRISIS SPIRALS 

Psaki said earlier this week about a "crisis": "I don't think we need to sit here and put new labels on what we have already conveyed is challenging, what we have conveyed is a top priority for the president."

Last week, Biden said "no" when asked the same question.

 

It’s a sharp contrast from 2019, when President Trump was keen to brand that year’s migrant surge as a crisis as he pushed for stronger measures at the border. 

"This is a humanitarian crisis -- a crisis of the heart and a crisis of the soul," Trump said in January 2019, months before the surge hit its peak. 

So far in 2021, the numbers have been higher than in 2019, indicating the crisis or "challenge" could be significantly greater this year, and the administration has made moves to indicate it recognizes that. It has opened up migrant centers to deal both with family units and UACs, and has looked at a Virginia military base and other sites to house child migrants.

MCCARTHY SAYS BIDEN HASN'T RESPONDED TO HIS REQUEST FOR BORDER MEETING, AS GOP TIES CRISIS TO HIS POLICIES 

And while not calling it a crisis, officials have still been sounding the alarm about the situation.

"We continue to struggle with the number of individuals in our custody, especially in a pandemic," Acting CBP Commissioner Troy Miller said this week as he announced border numbers.

Mayorkas, who last week flat-out denied there was a crisis, this week emailed DHS staff urging them to volunteer to help CBP at the border amid what he described as "overwhelming" numbers.

"Today, I activated the Volunteer Force to support Customs and Border Protection (CBP) as they face a surge in migration along the Southwest Border," Mayorkas said in an email to staff, seen by Fox News.

"You have likely seen the news about the overwhelming numbers of migrants seeking access to this country along the Southwest Border," he said. "President Biden and I are committed to ensuring our Nation has a safe, orderly, and humane immigration system while continuing to balance all of the other critical DHS missions."

But officials have continued with sometimes acrobatic answers in response to questions about whether there is a crisis at the border.

"You know, I think the...I’m not trying to be cute here, but I think the fact of the matter is: We have to do what we do regardless of what anybody calls the situation," Roberta Jacobson, coordinator for the southern border, said in a press briefing Wednesday.

"And the fact is, we are all focused on improving the situation, on changing to a more humane and efficient system.  And whatever you call it wouldn’t change what we’re doing because we have urgency, from the President on down, to fix our system and make sure that we are better at dealing with the hopes and the dreams of these migrants in their home country," she said.

Biden was asked at a hardware store again this week by reporters if there was a crisis at the border. He did not respond, and reporters were ushered away by his team.

"Come on press, let’s go," an aide said.

 

Adam Shaw, Griff Jenkins

Adam Shaw is a reporter covering U.S. and European politics for Fox News. He can be reached at adam.shaw@foxnews.com.  

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-administration-wont-use-border-crisis 

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Uyghurs and Palestinians: What's in a Name? - A.J. Caschetta

 

​ by A.J. Caschetta

The Islamic world, especially, has kept Palestinians elevated on the geopolitical stage for a very long time. So why not the Uyghurs, whose land truly is occupied, who are actually being ethnically cleansed and who many believe are now the target of a calculated genocide?

A cartoonist bemoans that "Arab states support China's measures against the Uyghur Muslims."

Every fatuous distortion and hyperbolic accusation levied against Israel for its treatment of the Palestinians is true about China's treatment of the Uyghurs.

From accusing Israel of "occupying" the West Bank to "ethnic cleansing" of Palestinians to even genocide, the global Left has made major investments in exaggerating the Palestinians' various claims and minimizing the Palestinian Authority's own responsibility for the Palestinians' predicament. The Islamic world, especially, has kept Palestinians elevated on the geopolitical stage for a very long time.

So why not the Uyghurs, whose land truly is occupied, who are actually being ethnically cleansed and who many believe are now the target of a calculated genocide?

False accusations about Israeli treatment of Palestinians are actually true about China's treatment of Uyghurs.

The Palestinian people are surely the most catered-to "refugees" in the entire world. The United Nations is firmly in their corner. In fact, the UN's largest agency, UNRWA, is devoted entirely to the Palestinian people. Everyone knows their story—or at least the misleading version their leading advocates tell about Jewish settlers from Europe stealing their land.

Comparatively, the Uyghurs are barely known to the world. Unlike the Hui Muslims of China, the Uyghurs are a Turkic people, making them both ethnic and religious minorities. China's animosity towards the Uyghurs was well-known to then-President Barack Obama, who wanted to free 22 captured Uyghur al-Qaeda members from Guantanamo Bay but knew they would be immediately executed if returned to China (he arranged for other countries to take them).

But instead of making the plight of the Uyghurs a priority, the people and groups that are supposed to prevent genocide—or at least sound the alarm when the telltale signs begin to manifest—are too often focused instead on Israel and its alleged abuse of the Palestinian people.

In spite of the charge that Israel is "occupying Palestine," nearly all (over 90 percent) of the Palestinians who live in the West Bank are governed by the Palestinian Authority. If the Gaza Strip, where no Israelis have lived since 2005, is occupied, then it is the terrorist group Hamas who is the occupier.

Unlike the Palestinians, the Uyghurs are a truly occupied people.

The Uyghurs, on the other hand, are a truly occupied people. Their home, which they call East Turkistan, was first conquered by the Qing dynasty in the 18th century and given the name Xinjiang, which means "new territory"—a signifier of colonialism if ever there were one. In 1949, when the People's Republic of China came into being, Xinjiang was essentially independent, and in 1955 it was designated the "Uyghur Autonomous Region." After Mao's Cultural Revolution, the region became far less autonomous. Today, oppression has become industrialized, as over one million Uyghurs endure life in de facto gulags constructed to exploit, "re-educate" and ultimately commit genocide against them. In Orwellian form, the Chinese government calls these gulags "vocational training centers."

Since the Palestinian population has grown steadily since the 1950s, only the most committed propagandists accuse Israel of "ethnic cleansing" or "genocide." There are no second-class citizens and there are no laws against miscegenation. Non-Jewish citizens of the Jewish state work the same jobs as Jewish citizens, serve in the Israel Defense Forces, the Knesset (parliament) and even on the Supreme Court. This is not how ethnic cleansing works. When Saeb Erekat, a PLO propagandist who himself charged Israel with "genocide," was gravely ill last year, he chose to be flown to an Israeli hospital to be treated. He knew the truth.

The Uyghur population, however, is declining due to what the AP calls China's "sweeping campaign to curb its Muslim population." A recently leaked Chinese government document revealed a program that is designed to "meld and assimilate" Uyghurs by dispersion, forcibly transporting them to jobs thousands of miles away. They are also subject to forced sterilization and abortions. This is what ethnic cleansing looks like.

Detainees listen to speeches in a Chinese re-education camp in East Turkistan (Xinjiang), April 2017.

One might expect the United Nations to be in diplomatic overdrive, working to prevent what everyone knows is happening. Instead, its International Court of Justice, International Criminal Court and Human Rights Council are all busy targeting Israel.

Back in July 2019, things briefly looked better for the Uyghurs after 22 countries accused China of "mass detention" in a letter to the Human Rights Council. But then a second letter from 37 other countries arrived, defending China's treatment of the Uyghurs as a praiseworthy "counterterrorism and de-radicalization" program. The second letter actually applauded the use of "vocational education and training centers," mimicking Chinese Communist Party propaganda. Surprisingly, among the 37 countries behind this letter were Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan and Qatar. So much for the Arab world's purported concern for fellow Muslims.

Likewise, one would expect the Organization for Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to be on top of the mass oppression of a Muslim minority. Since its inception in 1969 as the Organization for the Islamic Conference, the OIC has consistently lobbied on behalf of the Palestinians. Last December, it affirmed that, "the issue of Palestine and al-Quds is the OIC's raison d'être, pivotal cause and source of unity and strength."

The OIC denounces Israel, but "commends" China for "providing care to its Muslim citizens."

The Uyghurs, by contrast, are far less important to the OIC. Item number 20 in a 2019 OIC report "commends the efforts of the People's Republic of China in providing care to its Muslim citizens."

Even the world's most populous Muslim-majority nation, Indonesia, has been quiescent, no doubt partially to appease its giant trade partner. Perhaps equally persuasive was Ambassador Xiao Qian's reminder to the nation's largest Islamic NGOs (Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah) that "for decades, China has supported the Palestinian struggle."

China's ability to buy off critics only partly explains the silence.

China's ability to buy off critics with Confucius Institutes, Belt and Road Initiative investments and hard cash partly helps to explain the silence. But even ISIS has remained silent on China's treatment of the Uyghurs, so bribes alone cannot explain why Palestinians are the darlings of the Muslim world and the Uyghurs are on their own. At least one factor helps explain the situation: Islam's generally positive view of China. For example, a popular hadith (a saying attributed to Muhammad) urges Muslims to "seek knowledge even if in China."

More than anything, the plight of the Uyghurs sheds light on the hypocrisy behind so much of the Islamic world's contemporaneous advocacy for the Palestinians. We may reasonably conclude that searing Israel-hatred takes precedence over altruistic concern for fellow Muslims.

 

A.J. Caschetta is a Ginsberg-Milstein fellow at the Middle East Forum and a principal lecturer at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Source: https://www.meforum.org/62105/uyghurs-and-palestinians-what-in-a-name

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China and Military Power through Artificial Intelligence - Peter Schweizer

 

​ by Peter Schweizer

Military use of artificial intelligence may well determine the outcome of the next war, and it is far too strategic to American national security to look away for even a moment from the dangers of the Chinese Communist Party.

• Complacency or eased trade restrictions on dual-use technology would be the greater danger. So would any backing-off of counter-espionage investigations into Chinese bribery of American university professors or further infiltrations of PLA-linked Chinese nationals into research centers in the U.S. Both are prime examples of Beijing's willingness to play a long game as regards theft of intellectual property that has potential military applications.

• Interestingly, there is another Chinese firm that is often mentioned in discussions of China's push into facial recognition AI development. The company known as Megvii produces a software application called Face++ that has secured many patents in the use of AI for surveillance technologies. One of that company's stakeholders? Bohai Harvest RST, the investment company started by Hunter Biden and his business partners.

• We have seen that China is one of the many practitioners of the "Princeling" strategy, which enriches the associates or family members of powerful politicians in order to grease the skids for deals that, if considered on their own merits, would likely not be allowed by the national security gatekeepers whose mission is to protect valuable military technology from getting into the hands of America's adversaries.

• Military use of artificial intelligence may well determine the outcome of the next war, and it is far too strategic to American national security to look away for even a moment from the dangers of the Chinese Communist Party.

China's military buildup threatens its neighbors and regional stability in the Far East. Military use of artificial intelligence may well determine the outcome of the next war, and it is far too strategic to American national security to look away for even a moment from the dangers of the Chinese Communist Party. (Image source: iStock)

China's military buildup threatens its neighbors and regional stability in the Far East. Beijing's aggressive military expansion has made its navy the largest in the world, and it has been flexing its maritime muscle in the South China Sea and Indo-Pacific region. It continues to build its ballistic missile capacities as well.

Further, China's expertise in cyber-warfare is both well-established and feared. It has allowed the PRC to hack into computers and steal intellectual property, as well as other cyber crimes.

But the junction of China's growing cyber capabilities and its aggressive military buildup is in the application of artificial intelligence (AI) to military weapons and systems.

Conducted by the People's Liberation Army (PLA), China's strategy in military expansion moves on many fronts, and AI work is integral to all of its military goals. The PLA has been committed to prioritizing innovation over expansion in its modernization efforts at least since 2014.

The PLA believes it can leapfrog the U.S. in the course of this transformation. China, however, has many challenges to developing and deploying AI-based systems that the U.S. does not. They lack the kind of technical talent the U.S. has, as well as the skill to manage the enormous quantities of data that such systems rely on, both for development and for operations. Not surprisingly, their organization, too, is a hindrance to innovation in the military AI space.

Even with these challenges, China has shown it can compete with the U.S. in this field and has no qualms about stealing or extorting what it cannot build itself. Development of intelligent weapons systems is simply the most recent area in which the balance of power between the U.S. and China will be contested in the next 5-10 years. The United States must ensure that its own innovation stays well ahead, and far out of the reach of the grasping hands of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

China has determination, focus, and the funds to advance rapidly in many areas. Yet there is always a tendency to overstate the threat China poses, and the progress China will make, because of its size, resources, and the known propensity of the country's communist leadership to lie about most everything. Within the ever-advancing field of AI, there are reasons to be cautiously optimistic. For now.

Based on patents China has secured in the AI domain, it has thus far spent far more effort on technology meant to monitor and oppress its own citizens. This includes extensive research in facial-recognition software, which China uses to track its own people, especially the Uyghur minority that it has forced into concentration camps. China also has an advantage in patents for Chinese-language data processing and speech recognition.

The U.S., by comparison, has a decisive advantage in applying AI to business problems and to the development of autonomous vehicles. While "driverless cars" get most of the attention in the mainstream press, the promise of autonomous military aircraft and unmanned naval vehicles and weapons will be the next quantum leap for American military capabilities. The U.S. military is already experienced with remote-controlled surveillance drones and strike-ready airplanes.

Complacency or eased trade restrictions on dual-use technology, however, would be the greater danger. So would any backing-off of counter-espionage investigations into China's bribery of American university professors or further infiltrations of PLA-linked Chinese nationals into research centers in the U.S. Both are prime examples of Beijing's willingness to play a long game as regards theft of intellectual property that has potential military applications.

In the books Secret Empires and Profiles in Corruption, I traced the involvement of Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden, in the sale of a Michigan company called Henniges Automotive to a Chinese military-linked company known as Aviation Industry Corporation (AVIC). The identity of the purchaser was disguised via shell companies while the sale of Henniges, whose technology has dual-use (for civilian and military application) was approved by the Committee of Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) during the Obama administration. I also documented how Hunter Biden's investment firm took an interest in China General Nuclear Power Corp., a company that in 2016 was charged with espionage against the U.S. That deal was also approved under the Obama administration.

Interestingly, there is another Chinese firm that is often mentioned in discussions of China's push into facial recognition AI development. The company known as Megvii produces a software application called Face++ that has secured many patents in the use of AI for surveillance technologies. One of that company's stakeholders? Bohai Harvest RST, the investment company started by Hunter Biden and his business partners.

It is important to keep these sorts of false-flag transactions in mind now that Joe Biden is the president. We have seen that China is one of the many practitioners of the "Princeling" strategy, which enriches the associates or family members of powerful politicians in order to grease the skids for deals that, if considered on their own merits, would likely not be allowed by the national security gatekeepers whose mission is to protect valuable military technology from getting into the hands of America's adversaries.

Experience teaches that it is imperative to shine the light in the dark corners where this kind of cronyism lies and thrives. The Chinese, like the Russians and others, have gotten only too adept at exploiting the shadows to obtain what they could not otherwise get.

Chinese technology companies such as Huawei were sanctioned heavily by the Trump administration, which placed the company on the Commerce Department's "Entity List," preventing its products from being sold in the U.S. Signs are good that the Biden administration understands the threat to U.S. communications networks. When asked recently whether Biden would keep Huawei on the US Entity List, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said that technology remains at the very center of US-China competition:

"China has been willing to do whatever it takes to gain a technological advantage – stealing intellectual property, engaging in industrial espionage, and forcing technology transfer.

"Our view – the President's view – is that we need to play a better defense, which must include holding China accountable for its unfair and illegal practices and making sure that American technologies aren't facilitating China's military buildup."

The question, of course, is not what they say but they will do.

Military use of artificial intelligence may well determine the outcome of the next war, and it is far too strategic to American national security to look away for even a moment from the dangers of the Chinese Communist Party.

 

Peter Schweizer, President of the Governmental Accountability Institute, is a Gatestone Institute Distinguished Senior Fellow and author of the best-selling books Profiles in Corruption, Secret Empires and Clinton Cash, among others. 

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17110/china-military-artificial-intelligence 

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Palestinians: Why Terrorists Support Mass Murderers - Khaled Abu Toameh

 

​ by Khaled Abu Toameh

Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and all of Iran's militias throughout the Middle East have a single goal in common: the annihilation of Israel.

• For Hamas and Islamic Jihad, what matters is the money and weapons coming from Iran. They see Soleimani as a hero because of his role in providing the Gaza-based terror groups with cash and weapons in order to continue their jihad (holy war) against Israel and Jews.

• Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and all of Iran's militias throughout the Middle East have a single goal in common: the annihilation of Israel.

• "Instead of providing a fish or teaching how to catch a fish, we taught our allies and friends how to make a hook," Commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Aerospace Force Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh said, adding that Hamas and Hezbollah are now in possession of advanced missile technologies.

• Soleimani, the man responsible for the killing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and Arabs, is being commemorated as a hero and martyr by these terrorist groups because he was supplying them with cash and weapons. His death has not stopped Iran from continuing its support for Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and other terrorist groups.

• This is why the next US administration must maintain pressure on the mullahs in Iran. An easing of the sanctions will embolden the terrorist groups and facilitate their mission of pursuing their jihad against Israel. Iran's proxies want to see Israel obliterated -- and if that means aligning themselves with mass murderers such as Soleimani, so be it.

While many Palestinians hold Iran's slain military commander Qassem Soleimani responsible for committing massacres against Palestinians and Arabs, especially in war-torn Syria, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad continue to heap praise on him for supporting their anti-Israel terrorism. Pictured: A billboard in Gaza City honoring the memory of Soleimani, with a caption quoting Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, describing Soleimani as a "martyr of Jerusalem," photographed on December 29, 2020. (Photo by Mohammed Abed/AFP via Getty Images)

While many Palestinians hold Iran's slain military commander Qassem Soleimani responsible for committing massacres against Palestinians and Arabs, especially in war-torn Syria, the Palestinian Islamist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad are continuing to heap praise on him for supporting their anti-Israel terrorist activities.

Soleimani, former commander of Iran's Quds Force, was killed in a US drone attack in Iraq on January 3, 2020. Many Palestinians and Arabs have denounced Soleimani as the "murderer of hundreds of thousands of women and children" in Syria, Yemen and Iraq.

The Iran-backed Hamas and Islamic Jihad have marked the anniversary of his death by hanging large billboards with Soleimani's picture in some areas of the Gaza Strip. The two terror groups say they miss Soleimani, whom they describe as the "martyr of Jerusalem."

The billboards have provoked many Palestinians, including those living in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, who consider Soleimani a terrorist and mass murderer.

Majdi al-Mughrabi, a Palestinian man from the Gaza Strip who reportedly tore down a poster of Soleimani, was arrested by Hamas's Internal Security Force.

Commenting on the hanging of the Soleimani posters in the Gaza Strip, a prominent Palestinian political analyst, Dr. Ibrahim Hamami, wrote: "There is no justification for hanging the picture of Soleimani in Gaza and glorifying him. He is a criminal who killed innocent people."

Abdel Rahman al-Rashed, a columnist with the Saudi newspaper Asharq al-Awsat, expressed outrage with Hamas for glorifying Soleimani:

"We know that Hamas has only a few remaining followers in the Arab world because of its affiliation with Iran, Syria and Hezbollah. The hands of Soleimani are stained with the blood of tens of thousands of Syrians and Iraqis."

Saudi blogger Munther al-Sheikh Mubarak pointed out that while the Palestinians have long been burning pictures and flags of Arab heads of state and countries, they are now punishing those who tear down the pictures of a murderer. "For years, they have been burning our flags and pictures of our leaders, and Hamas didn't do anything about it," Mubarak remarked.

"Today, after the picture of Soleimani was ripped, the Muslim Brotherhood group (Hamas) has arrested the man who tore down the poster of the murderer. They see the likes of Soleimani, [Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan] Nasrallah, [former Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad and [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan as heroes."

Kassab al-Otaibi, a former Saudi opposition figure, also commented on the arrest of the Palestinian who tore down the picture of Soleimani by posting a video of the Hamas raid on the man's home in the town of Rafah, south of the Gaza Strip. The arrest, he wrote, is similar to the actions of "Iranian gangs and militias in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, where women and children are terrorized."

Ahmad Rahhal, a Syrian opposition figure, said:

"I am not surprised by the Hamas gang raising the image of Qassem Soleimani on the streets of Gaza because we are used to Hamas's flaws. Rather, I am surprised that our people in Gaza accept the image of a criminal who killed hundreds of thousands of children and women in Syria, Yemen, Iraq and the Palestinian refugee camp Yarmouk [in Syria]. It's even more surprising to see that they call this murderer a 'martyr of Jerusalem.'"

Evidently, Hamas and Islamic Jihad do not care about the hundreds of thousands of women and children who were killed as a result of Iran's military intervention in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. The two groups do not care about the thousands of Palestinians killed, injured and displaced at the Yarmouk refugee camp as a result of Iran's support for the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

For Hamas and Islamic Jihad, what matters is the money and weapons coming from Iran. They see Soleimani as a hero because of his role in providing the Gaza-based terror groups with cash and weapons in order to continue their jihad (holy war) against Israel and Jews.

Recently, Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar revealed that Soleimani had handed him, during their first meeting in 2006, suitcases full of $22 million in cash.

It is worth noting that during the anti-government protests in Iran from 2009 to November 2019, Iranians chanted slogans expressing opposition to the funding of Hamas and Hezbollah at a time when Iran is facing an economic crisis.

A report by the US Department of State noted that Iran continued its terrorist-related activity in 2019, including support for Hezbollah, Palestinian terrorist groups in Gaza, and various terrorist groups in Syria, Iraq, and throughout the Middle East:

"Iran used the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF) to provide support to terrorist organizations, provide cover for associated covert operations, and create instability in the region. Iran has acknowledged the involvement of the IRGC-QF in the Iraq and Syria conflicts, and the IRGC-QF is Iran's primary mechanism for cultivating and supporting terrorists abroad."

The mullahs of Iran, however, do not appear overly worried about the warnings made by the US about Tehran's continued support for terrorist groups.

In a recent interview with Iranian media, Commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Aerospace Force Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh reaffirmed Iran's support for "whoever is fighting against the Zionist regime" and said that Gaza and Lebanon are "at the forefront of the battle and all of their missile capabilities have been supported by the Islamic Republic."

"Instead of providing a fish or teaching how to catch a fish, we taught our allies and friends how to make a hook," Hajizadeh said, adding that Hamas and Hezbollah are now in possession of advanced missile technologies.

Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and all of Iran's militias throughout the Middle East have a single goal in common: the annihilation of Israel.

Soleimani, the man responsible for the killing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and Arabs, is being commemorated as a hero and martyr by these terrorist groups because he supplied them with cash and weapons. His death has not stopped Iran from continuing its support for Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and other terrorist groups.

During a seminar in the Gaza Strip on the first anniversary of the assassination of Soleimani, representatives of Hamas and Islamic Jihad said that his death was a "big loss for Palestine and its resistance." They further expressed hope that the departure of Soleimani from the scene would not affect Iran's continued support for their efforts to eliminate Israel and kill Jews.

This is why the next US administration must maintain pressure on the mullahs in Iran. An easing of the sanctions will embolden the terrorist groups and facilitate their mission of pursuing their jihad against Israel. Iran's proxies want to see Israel obliterated -- and if that means aligning themselves with mass murderers such as Soleimani, so be it.

• Follow Khaled Abu Toameh on Twitter

 

Khaled Abu Toameh is an award-winning journalist based in Jerusalem.

 Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16931/palestinians-terrorists-murderers-soleimani 

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Shipping mysteries grow: Iran claims ship attacked days after WSJ report - Seth J. Frantzman

 

​ by Seth J. Frantzman

Is it a coincidence that one day a US newspaper reports on alleged Israeli attacks and the next day Iran says that a ship is targeted?

An enduring mystery surrounds the timing of Iran's claim that one of its ships was struck by an explosion on the way to Syria and Iran's assertion that Israel is the "prime suspect" in the attack. Iran reported on March 12 that the Shahr E Kord ship was damaged and by Saturday it had upped the claims to include allegations that this was "terrorism" caused by Israel. The timing of the Iranian claim came a day after the Wall Street Journal claimed that Israel had targeted 12 ships making their way to Syria with Iranian oil and possible Iranian weapons. Is it an amazing coincidence that one of Iran's ships was damaged a day before the WSJ report and that Iran then held this up as evidence against Israel a day after? Is this directly linked to the WSJ report somehow and what is the background of these kinds of attacks on ships in the region, that have increased tensions since 2019. 

 

 The WSJ report quoted US and “regional officials” and said the attacks went back to 2019. What was already known was that it was Iran that had been allegedly attacking ships. It is a major shift for Iran and media to claim that Israel has done the same. Let's recall that back in May 2019 four ships were hit with mines in the Gulf of Oman. Then two more were attacked in June 2019. This happened close to Iran and the US pointed fingers at Tehran for the attacks. 

 

More Iranian shipping tensions followed. Iran grabbed the Stena Impero, a British flagged ship, in July 2019. The UK had seized the Grace 1 ship that was moving Iranian oil to Syria in July prior to the Iranian raid. Timing is everything. Iran had seized ships in the past or harassed them usually as part of some kind of cycle of pressure. It seized a South Korean ship, for instance, in early January as part of demands to get back frozen assets in South Korea. Major countries, such as France, have sought to encourage more security for shipping in the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman. 

 

What is the context of the latest reports? The timing of the Iranian accusation that one of its ships was struck this week seemed uniquely timed to come after the report in the US media about Israel’s alleged targeting of ships going to Syria. Iran’s Press TV clarified that “last month, an Israeli-owned cargo ship said it had come under attack while it was in the Sea of Oman.” The Israel-owned Helios Ray was struck by a mysterious explosion on February 26 and went to the UAE for repairs. Israel blamed Iran on March 1 and Iran denied its involvement. Now Iran seems to claim that on March 9 or 10 its ship was attacked while going to Syria. Iran's ship did appear to drift around on March 10 in the waters about 150km off the coast of Haifa, according to analysis of the ship's route posted online. Then the WSJ published its article on March 11. Considering the time it takes to research and run an article of this depth on historic shipping incidents it would seem incredibly difficult for the article to have been written with any confirmed knowledge of the March 10 incident. Photos of a damaged Iranian ship that relate to the article show the Sabiti, damaged in 2019. This leaves a mystery about the timing of the WSJ article's appearance and Iran's immediate claims after that its ship was struck the same week. 

 

All of this leads to a lack of clarity about what is happening at sea. In August 2020, for instance, the US said it seized four shipments of Iranian petroleum headed for Venezuela. Then there were the four ships tracked heading to Venezuela from Iran in May 2020. The Shahr E Kord ship and its route, as well as previous allegations about the ship moving illicit cargo are now of interest to those who track ships. Reports in 2019 indicate the same ship was involved in shipments to Libya in the midst of the civil war there. 

 

The strange timing of Iran’s claims about the ship, which is named after a city in Iran, illustrate the murky world of shipping, especially when such shipping is linked to Iran or Iranian attacks and now Israel-Iran tensions. Is it a coincidence that one day a US newspaper reports on alleged Israeli attacks and the next day Iran says that a ship widely known as part of other shipments to conflict zones, is targeted in an attack?  

 

Many mysteries remain about the May and June 2019 attacks on ships, as well as Iran’s illicit use of ships to conduct trade to Syria and other countries amid US sanctions. Mysteries also surround an oil spill off the coast of Israel in early February that became an ecological disaster which Israel’s environmental protection minister blamed on Iran. And then there are cases like that of the Gulf Sky ship which disappeared in July 2020 off the coast of the UAE and ended up off the coast of Iran, allegedly hijacked. The crew remain unpaid. That ship now appears back in business. 

 

Seth J. Frantzman  

Source: https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/shipping-mysteries-grow-iran-claims-ship-attacked-days-after-wsj-report-661871

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My Democrat Friends are Getting Very Embarrassed - John Green

 

​ by John Green

The Democrats embraced socialists and anarchists -- to create the turmoil, and now they can’t turn it off.

Now that the implications of the Harris/Biden administration are setting in, my Democrat friends (yes, I do have a few) are becoming very embarrassed.  They bought into the propaganda that all the turmoil in Washington was created by the erratic and immoral behavior of Donald Trump.  Their vote for Harris/Biden was a vote to return to normal.  They didn’t realize that the Democrats weren’t offering a return to normal, they were offering the establishment of a “new normal.”

The “new normal” includes restricted energy exploration and cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline.  This has caused a loss of well-paying union jobs, damaged relations with Canada, and triggered skyrocketing gasoline prices.  It also threatens to return us to dependence on the most unstable region in the world.  To those who would like us to leave the Middle East to resolve its own problems -- we can’t now.

We’ve implemented more “humane” immigration policies, creating a flood of illegal immigrants across the border -- wearing “Biden” t-shirts.  Our humane policy has given us men, women, and children sacrificing their lives pursuing the dream promised them by the Democrats.  Thankfully, we’re no longer keeping illegal immigrant children in cages.  Now we’re keeping them in Conex boxes.  I guess we can feel good about that.

Those arriving illegal immigrants are putting more pressure on a struggling job market, decimated by COVID lockdowns.  Rather than help struggling small businesses, the Democrats seek to impose more economic distress with a $15-per-hour minimum wage.  As small businesses close their doors, the dreams of their owners are dashed, and entry level job opportunities disappear forever.

Since lunch-bucket Joe’s inauguration, the government has moved beyond its charter to ensure the rights, security, and safety of the citizens.  Now it’s engaged in social engineering.  Transsexuals will now be welcomed into the military.  Given that these folks require ongoing hormone therapy, a few minor changes to the DoD logistics infrastructure will be needed.  It’s a small price to pay to check our “wokeness” box.  Should any of our transsexual soldiers be captured, I’m sure our enemies will continue their therapy.  They need their “wokeness” boxes checked too.

President Asterisk has also signed an executive order ensuring that transgender people may use whatever facilities they prefer.  We’ll need to be on the alert for gender-fluid pedophiles seeking to spend quality time in bathrooms with young girls.  But, that’s a very small societal cost to show the necessary respect to a perfectly normal woman-with-a-penis, who wishes to shower with women-with-vaginas at the gym.

The Democrats have also arranged to reward blue states for disastrous fiscal decisions.  It seems that those states which imposed the most severe COVID lockdowns (New York, California, Michigan, and etc.) have suffered significant loss of tax revenue.  Who could have seen that coming?  The most recent COVID relief bill includes a $350B bailout for those states and municipalities which suffered tax loses during the lockdown.  The citizens from the red states who stayed on the job are going to bail out the blue states that took the year off.  San Fran Nan and Chucky Schumer owe a great big “thank you” to all the farmers, merchants, tradesmen, and truckers who have agreed to help them out.  I’m sure they’ll respond with, “You’re welcome. It was the neighborly thing to do.”

The “new normal” also includes a permanent military presence in Washington D.C.  You can rest assured that our representatives are doing the “people’s work” when they need a contingent of heavily armed soldiers to protect them from the people.  My friends who voted Democrat unwittingly facilitated the transformation of Washington D.C. into Pyongyang, North Korea. 

Consistent with our transformation into the North Korea of the west, censorship and cancel culture are now favored by our ruling class.  Expression of dissenting views will get one dropped from social media sites.  If you’re an outspoken conservative who runs a factory, your products will be boycotted.  Educators who express dissenting views will be forced out of their jobs.  Freedom of speech is becoming freedom of approved-speech.  Thankfully, the snowflakes among us need no longer endure those nasty Trump tweets.

But what really embarrasses my friends is that after they voted for a return to political harmony, the turmoil is greater than ever.  The Democrats called for unity, then slapped Trump’s supporters in the face by impeaching Trump two weeks before he was to leave office.  They’ve accused any Republican who questioned the election result of inciting insurrection.  The Democrats even considered not seating any Republican congressmen who questioned election integrity.  Some have even spoken publicly of the need for “truth commissions” and reeducation of MAGA supporters.  There’s nothing creepy about that, is there?

It seems that when the Democrats asked for unity, they were actually demanding obedience.  If there were only some means to demonstrate our obedience to our new masters.  How about we all wear facial coverings to demonstrate our fealty?  There’s a word that describes order through forced obedience -- tyranny.

My friends are belatedly realizing that the turmoil was not created by Donald Trump.  It was manufactured by the Democrats, simply to win an election.  The Democrats embraced socialists and anarchists (even though they never play well together) to create the turmoil, and now they can’t turn it off.  Radical elements of the left are political vampires. Once invited in, it’s not so easy to get them to leave.  The Democrats are stuck with the radicals, even though the voters aren’t. 

But I don’t get angry.  As my friends complain, I keep reminding them that this is what they asked for.  They’re beginning to realize they helped create this mess and they’re feeling a bit like that guy that gave the Nigerian prince $1,000 -- embarrassed!  But here’s the thing about embarrassment -- it’s the embryonic stage of anger.  I estimate gestation to require about 19 months.  Angry and motivated voters will be fully mature, just in time for the midterm elections.

Image: Sarebear

 

John Green  is a political refugee from Minnesota, now residing in Star, Idaho. He is a retired engineer with over 40 years of experience in the areas of product development, quality assurance, organizational development, and corporate strategic planning. He can be reached at greenjeg@gmail.com.

 Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/03/my_democrat_friends_are_getting_very_embarrassed.html 

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Most American Schools Are Damaging Your Child - Dennis Prager

 

​ by Dennis Prager

Children are being challenged about their sexual identity - and parents can't say they weren't warned.

 

I have been telling parents for decades that sending a child to almost any college is playing Russian roulette with his or her values.

But it is a different version of Russian roulette. In the traditional version, only one of the gun's six chambers contains a bullet. In the college version of Russian roulette, 5 of the 6 chambers contain a bullet. If your child attends almost any university in America (or Canada or anywhere else in the English-speaking world), the odds are that your child's decency, intellectual acuity, faculty of reason, character and moral compass will be damaged, perhaps permanently.

The worse news is that sending your child to almost any elementary school or high school — public or private — is fast becoming equally toxic. More and more schools are being taken over by left-wing ideologues and by nonideologues who lack the courage to confront the ideologues.

Once infected with leftism, these schools teach children to hate reason, tradition, America, Christianity, whites, excellence, freedom and masculinity. To cite one example, thanks to a million-dollar grant from Bill Gates through his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Oregon Education Department has announced that teaching there is "one right answer" in math — yes, in math — is an expression of white supremacy. Why, then, would an Oregon parent who cares about his or her child's mind, send that child to an Oregon school?

In addition to perverting education, teachers and their unions have exhibited a contempt for children that has taken even conservatives by surprise. Teachers' unwillingness to show up in class for more than a year is as unscientific as it is unprecedented. On Feb. 3, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told reporters during a White House news briefing that teachers do not need to get vaccinated against COVID-19 before schools can safely reopen: "There is increasing data to suggest that schools can safely reopen and that safe reopening does not suggest that teachers need to be vaccinated. Vaccinations of teachers is not a prerequisite for safely reopening schools."

Nevertheless, in the country's major cities, these cowards and hypochondriacs — people who claim to care more than anything else about their students — have refused to return to school (while demanding to be paid). They have refused to teach, despite the facts that child-to-teacher transmission of the COVID-19 virus is extremely rare and a teacher being hospitalized, let alone dying, as a result of interaction with students is rarer than a teacher dying in a traffic accident on the way to school. Why, then, would you send your child to be "taught" by people for whom you have — or should have — so little respect?

Why would you send your young child to a school that sponsors a "Drag Queen Story Hour" or that dwells on "nonbinary" gender identity? Do you think such things do not damage your child's innocence? Do you want your child to be challenged about his or her sexual identity?

Why would you send your child to any school that teaches The New York Times' "1619 Project"? This project holds that America was not founded in 1776 but in 1619, with the arrival of the first black slaves in North America, and that the Revolutionary War was fought not to gain independence from Britain but to preserve slavery. Virtually every leading historian specializing in American history — most of whom are liberals and Democrats, and some of whom were anti-Trump activists — have labeled "The 1619 Project" a lie.

Whenever I meet adults who hold traditional American values, I ask them three questions:

The first is, "Do you have children?"

If they do, my second question is, "How many of them share your values?" It is not common to meet people all of whose children share their parents' traditional values.

If they respond that any of their children do not share their values, my third question is, "What happened?"

In every instance, these parents attribute the alienation of their child(ren) from their (the parents') values to the college and, increasingly, the high school their child attended.

Moreover, not only are these children alienated from their parents' values, but they are often also alienated from the parent(s). One thing you learn when you become left-wing is to have contempt for those who hold other beliefs.

Had these parents known how their children would turn out, they would never have sent them to college — or even to the high school they attended. It appears, however, that no matter how many people lose their children's hearts and minds to left-wing indoctrination, and no matter how much information accumulates about the perversion of education in American schools, parents continue to take risks with their children they would never take in any other sphere.

I am well aware of the enormous obstacles. If your child wishes to study STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) or law, college remains a necessity. Otherwise, it isn't.

As for elementary and high school, parents must either find a school that teaches reading, writing and arithmetic rather than America-hatred, or they should home-school their child. This, understandably, sounds terribly daunting. However, it is becoming considerably easier to do so as home-school groups and quality home-school curricula proliferate around the country.

Whatever your decision, never say you weren't warned.

 

Dennis Prager  

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/most-american-schools-are-damaging-your-child-dennis-prager/ 

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Bennett, Sa’ar and Israel’s Legal Tyranny - Caroline Glick

 

​ by Caroline Glick

All aspects of public life in Israel today are dictated by the attorney general and the Supreme Court, which have devoured the powers of the Knesset and the government.

 

In a week and a half, Israel’s polling stations will open and Israelis will elect their representatives to the Knesset for the fourth time in two years. As was the case in the last three elections, the upcoming elections revolve around one issue – Israel’s legal fraternity.

All aspects of public life in Israel today are dictated by the attorney general and the Supreme Court, which have devoured the powers of the Knesset and the government. Over the years, the legal fraternity has acted through judicial and bureaucratic fiat to cancel the checks and balances on its power. Today, the attorney general and the court justices determine their own powers. Not surprisingly, as far as both are concerned, their powers are unlimited.

Whether the issue is deciding who is a Jew, public funding of cultural institutions, public health policy, land use, economic priorities, open fire orders, immigration policy, counter-terror policies, or other questions from the mundane to the existential, the only decision makers in Israel are the attorney general and the Supreme Court justices. Elected leaders are at best, advisors.

To preserve and protect their powers, the attorney general and the justices have the state prosecution. The attorney general’s role as head of the state prosecution gives him the power to strike terror in the hearts of Israel’s elected leaders. They know that he holds the power to open criminal probes against them whenever he wishes. The very existence of this threat generally suffices to convince a majority of politicians to keep their heads down and loudly extol the “rule of law” – that is, the unlimited power of state lawyers – as the guardian of Israeli democracy. Politicians who have spoken out against the legal supremacists have invariably paid the price.

This brings us to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Although substantively, every election since April 2019 has revolved around the unchecked powers of the legal fraternity, the media have presented the elections as referendums on Netanyahu.

While the pronouncement is a distortion of reality, it isn’t entirely ungrounded. It is not Netanyahu’s record that is being judged. As far as the anti-Netanyahu media are concerned, the less his record of achievement is discussed, the better.

Rather, the media is able to cast Netanyahu as the central issue of the elections because he is the current target of the legal fraternity’s continued efforts to seize all governing powers from Israel’s elected leaders. Every pathology of the legal fraternity’s unchecked powers is present in the campaign it is waging against Netanyahu. Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit is waging an unlimited war against Netanyahu because he recognizes that Netanyahu’s political fortunes will determine the legal fraternity’s future. If Netanyahu prevails, the legal fraternity will be stripped of its unchecked power. If he is defeated, the fraternity’s control over the country will be institutionalized.

Netanyahu’s opponents on the Right don’t see things this way. Both Yamina chairman Naftali Bennett and New Hope Party chairman Gideon Sa’ar insist there is no connection between the legal fraternity and its war against the premier. Both men claim to support comprehensive legal reform and both say that such reform can happen without reference to the fraternity’s war against the prime minister. Sa’ar underlined this point this week by announcing that he is “considering” supporting a law that would give the attorney general the power to fire the prime minister by compelling a prime minister to resign if the attorney general indicts him. Bennett says he supports proposed legislation that would give criminal immunity to serving prime ministers, but would not apply the law to Netanyahu.

Bennett and Sa’ar start each discussion of legal reform by insisting Netanyahu has no credibility on the issue. For decades, they note, Netanyahu blocked efforts to rein in the legal fraternity. And they are right.

Not only did Netanyahu sit on the sidelines as the unelected lawyers seized ever-wider powers from the Knesset and the government. He also did nothing as successive attorneys general targeted politicians for destruction through frivolous criminal probes. Netanyahu voiced no objection as now-President Reuven Rivlin, now-Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, and then-ministers Avigdor Lieberman, Avigdor Kahalani, Raphael Eitan, Yaakov Neeman, Haim Ramon and Tzahi Hanegbi were brought before prosecutorial star chambers.

Only now, when the legal fraternity Netanyahu protected has come after him, Netanyahu has suddenly become a champion of the reforms he blocked for years.

Sa’ar and Bennett are right to say that Netanyahu’s sudden desire for legal reform is based on his personal interest. If Mendelblit weren’t seeking to destroy him, he would have continued to block all reform efforts.

But the fact that Netanyahu is an opportunist doesn’t make Bennett’s and Sa’ar’s substantive claim – that you can separate legal reform from Netanyahu’s legal woes – correct. To the contrary, they are entirely wrong. You cannot separate the two.

To be clear, there is nothing reasonable about Mandelblit’s prosecution of Netanyahu. In stark violation of Israel’s Basic Law, the criminal probes of Netanyahu were initiated without Mandelblit’s written authorization. And it was all downhill from there. The central charge in the indictment, “bribery” relates to non-criminal actions that Netanyahu undertook. Specifically, Mendelblit claims that Netanyahu’s efforts to receive positive coverage from a media outlet owned by a personal friend of his was solicitation of a bribe. And when his friend’s media outlet published a couple of supportive stories, Mendelblit maintains, his friend paid a bribe to Netanyahu. In other words, Mendelblit invented a new form of bribery, not mentioned in Israel’s criminal code or the criminal codes of any other democracy. The implication of Mandelblit’s determination is not simply that Netanyahu is being railroaded. It is far broader than that. His invention of this new form of bribery transforms the professions of journalism and politics into criminal enterprises. To pursue Netanyahu, Mendelblit has turned criminal law and criminal procedure on their heads.

Mandelblit’s predatory obsession with Israel’s elected leader has served not merely to put the fear of God into Israel’s politicians. He has used his outrageous campaign against Netanyahu as justification to expand his own powers beyond anything imagined in law. Citing Netanyahu’s scurrilous indictment, he seized the government’s power to appoint the chief prosecutor and barred the prime minister from being involved in the selection of the police commissioner.

He has similarly used his legally groundless indictments to take over Israel’s political life. Among other things, Mendelblit held a primetime press conference to campaign against Netanyahu and announced Netanyahu’s indictment while the premier was meeting with the US president in the White House. Mendelblit has even used his prosecution of the premier to seize the power to decide if Netanyahu may form a government.

Mandelblit’s behavior is the reason for Israel’s now two-year political deadlock. After his illegally initiated probes of Netanyahu destabilized the government and the political world, Mendelblit used the instability he caused to expand his powers.

The only way politicians will dare to take action to restrain the powers of the legal fraternity is if the fraternity’s power to retaliate by opening criminal probes against them is revoked. So the first step the next Knesset must take is to restore the substantive criminal immunity of Knesset members.

In 2005, the Knesset stood the immunity law on its head. Until then, the law provided automatic substantive criminal immunity to all lawmakers for actions they took while serving in elected office. Under the amended statute, lawmakers have no immunity unless the Knesset Ethics Committee grants it. Obviously, the only lawmakers who will ask for immunity are those that are facing indictment. In other words, the changed law empowered the attorney general to open criminal probes against lawmakers at will.

The lawmakers amended the law because together with the justices, the then attorney general waged a massive campaign, enthusiastically supported by the media to force them to do so – in the name of the “fighting corruption.”

Shortly after the amendment passed, the floodgates opened. Successive attorneys general massively expanded their criminal investigations and indictments of lawmakers and ministers. Almost every politician who tried to limit the powers of the legal fraternity found himself under investigation. Since the 1990s, every sitting prime minister has been placed under criminal investigation. Four justice ministers have been indicted.

If the next Knesset adopts Bennett’s and Sa’ar’s position and tries to advance legal reform without regard to the Netanyahu’s trial, their efforts will quickly come to naught.

With or without Netanyahu, they will still need to begin their efforts by restoring the Immunity Law to its original wording. The only way to deny Netanyahu the protection of a restored immunity law would be to determine that the law doesn’t apply to actions taken before the amendment comes into force. But if the lawmakers so determine, then their amendment will be rendered irrelevant from the outset. After all, the attorney general will be able to simply open investigations regarding actions all the lawmakers undertook before the amendment. Once this becomes apparent, all thought of legal reform will disappear faster than you can say “subpoena.”

But assuming that lawmakers figure out a way to give themselves immunity while leaving Netanyahu’s head on the chopping block, what impact will that have on the governing powers Mendelblit has seized? Will he no longer be empowered to haul journalists and editors into police interrogation rooms for publishing nice stories about politicians involved in clipping his wings? Will Mendelblit retain the power to appoint the atate prosecutor?

Moreover, if they leave Netanyahu hanging, why would his supporters support their efforts at legal reform? How can they get a majority of Knesset members to support legal reform without Netanyahu’s loyalists on board?

Bennett and Sa’ar are right that the only reason Netanyahu wishes to reform the legal system is because his survival depends on such reform. But they are equally, if not more cynical than he. They are hoping that Mendelblit’s war against Netanyahu will remove the leader they cannot defeat at the polls and so clear the road for them to rise to power. What they refuse to see is that if Mendelblit succeeds, all future elections will be irrelevant.

Netanyahu’s self-serving position provides the Knesset with an unprecedented opportunity. Thanks to Mendelblit, there is solid majority support among members of Knesset for comprehensive legal reform. The job of lawmakers committed to such reforms – including Sa’ar and Bennett – is to join forces with the lawmakers who want to stop Mendelblit’s railroading of Netanyahu. Together they can do what lawmakers have been afraid to do since the outset of the so-called “judicial revolution” in the mid-1990s. They can restore the powers of the Knesset and the government by passing and amending laws to restore checks and balances on the judiciary and subordinate the attorney general and the state prosecution to Israel’s elected leaders.

Originally published in Israel Hayom.

 

Caroline Glick 

 Source: https://carolineglick.com/bennett-saar-and-israels-legal-tyranny/ 

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Architecture Goes Woke - Lawrence M. Ludlow

 

​ by Lawrence M. Ludlow

Critical Race Theory in the field of architecture? Where will it end?

It's no secret that the Biden administration is imposing the race-based ideology called Critical Race Theory (CRT) on impressionable children (through government schools) and on federal institutions nationwide.  Like other race-based theories — which can encompass everything from the eugenics of Francis Galton to the program of the National Socialist German Workers' Party of the Nazis and its persecution of Jews and other Untermenschen — CRT requires the imposition of politically defined penalties based on politically defined racial designations.  What could possibly go wrong — especially when it is applied to the architectural profession?

A Key Fallacy of Critical Theory

The "punishable" classifications of critical theory extend far beyond race and include "intersectional" categories such as biological sex, gender identity, sexual preference, overweight status, and other classifications that multiply like rabbits in a giant field of alfalfa without Mr. McGregor or his cat to thin them out.  But one thing CRT theory never examines is the individual himself.  The concept of the individual is replaced by group identity.  Never mind that conceptual categories, or groups, do not suffer, bleed, undergo cancel culture and censorship, or die a painful death.  They don't even exist in the same way that individual human beings do.  Recognizing the important distinction between real individuals and the mere concept of a group is one of the chief accomplishments of medieval thinkers such as the 12th-century nominalist, Roscellinus of Compiègne.  He rejected the extreme idealism (extreme realism) of Plato and his Neoplatonist followers, and he accurately characterized the notion of a concept as a mere flatus vocis (puff of air).  We now label such extreme conceptualization as the reification fallacy.  This fallacy is precisely what lies behind critical theory and all of its variants, including CRT.  Once we realize that a group is only a concept, we can properly evaluate the damage inflicted on real individuals by such thinking.  So if you hated the injustice of "group punishments" as a child, chances are you'll also despise the totalitarian practices of CRT.  

A Fetid History Opposed to the Western Liberal Tradition

Never mind that the worst crimes against humanity have been perpetrated by governments that enforce the collectivist concepts of race membership, economic crimes, unauthorized success, and other envy-based designations.  They have been used against Jews (Nazi Germany), Slavs (by Nazis), marginally successful farmers (kulaks in the Soviet Union), ethnic Chinese (outside China), blacks (in Africa, Europe, and the Americas), and whites (throughout the ancient world, with etymological roots in the word Slav).

In contrast to these dismal episodes in history, the existential reality of the individual and the related concept of individual justice help form the foundation of "negative" human rights — the idea that one must not commit aggression (initiate violence or its threat) against another person.  This also is the basis for many protections we currently enjoy by inheriting the Western classical liberal tradition.  Ironically, CRT aims a dagger at this legacy of genuine tolerance and the inviolable nature of human beings in the Western tradition.  Instead, the slippery faux "tolerance" of the inclusion-diversity crowd is the enactment of Herbert Marcuse's "repressive tolerance."  As it plays out before our eyes, careers are ended and books banned.  People forget the warning of Heinrich Heine as they cheer the elimination of Mark Twain from the curriculum of the poorly performing Grosse Pointe Public School System, rescind award categories for Laura Ingalls Wilder's book Little House on the Prairie, and cease production of a series of books by Dr. Seuss Enterprises: "Where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people."

Throwing Martin Luther King, Jr. under the Bus

Despite the intentionally deceptive claims of CRT advocates, CRT runs in complete opposition to the civil rights tradition of Martin Luther King, Jr.  Instead of being judged by the content of their character — which is something we can improve upon and develop throughout our lives — CRT defines us by our most superficial characteristics, many of which we cannot change.  Everything must bend the knee to the crude leveling tortures of the Procrustean critical-theory dungeon masters.  Even in what is considered their most "benign" form — the uncovering of implicit/unconscious bias — the products of critical theory have been debunked and proven to be unreliable pseudo-science as explained, by psychology professor Jordan Peterson again and again.

Architectural Firms Attempt to Cash In on Critical Race Theory

I wondered how long it would take for architects to cash in on the latest academic scam, and this week, I found an example.  Huckstering CRT consultants are about to contaminate the visual environment by collaborating with building-designers!  An outfit called SXSW EDU is hosting a critical theory–based "learning experience" to "confront negative cultural messaging in the built environment."  They add that "Critical Race Theory provides a lens for exploring and dismantling these expressions of socioeconomic power."  And look!  An architectural firm called SmithGroup has taken the bait.  These people proudly announce their desire to "create more inclusive educational settings."

What a great way to pump up the bottom line and recover from the Fauci-inspired economic collapse!  After all, the absurd COVID cult lockdown panic has all but destroyed the commercial real estate market, normally a great source of income for design firms.  Imagine the cash flow as woke architects use their Biden-supplied cash to remake public-school designs and space plans.  As if last year's injections of cash weren't enough!  I can just picture it: daily changes in the spatial configuration of classrooms as they reflect each intersectionality complaint stemming from today's Oppression Olympics mentality.  Each new case of hurt feelings among teens with thin skins and woke unionized teachers will feed the bottom line!

Perhaps the new "inclusive" structures will be able self-dismantle.  This would correspond to the down-the-memory-hole censorship of dumbed down schools as they mimic the grievance study pseudo-disciplines that implode on their own contradictions.  I can't wait to see the new visual bathos as it infests my local schools.  But how will woke designers possibly compete with the hilarious hoax papers concocted by Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay — the ones that were published as "serious science" a few years ago by leading grievance studies journals?  It's time for all of us to read their great book, Cynical Theories, but don't buy it from Amazon.

Conclusion?

The upshot of all this?  It's time to oppose woke corporations.  Why should collectivists have all the fun?  Inflict the same ridicule on CRT-based companies that they've been dumping on everyone else — from employees to customers.  How?  By publicly identifying, publicizing, and laughing at woke corporate cowardice wherever it shows its yellow butt cheeks!  Let's stop the spread of racist, authoritarian Critical Race Theory.  At best, to quote our friend Roscellinus, CRT concepts are a mere flatus vocis.  At worst, they are the building blocks for the next wave of crimes against humanity.  Identify, publicize, and ridicule the new corporate racism!

Image: TheDigitalArtist via Pixabay, Pixabay License.

 

Lawrence M. Ludlow provides international location analyses, marketing, and business writing services.  He holds an M.A. in medieval studies from the University of Toronto's Centre for Medieval Studies and has lectured on manuscripts, early printing, and art history at the Newberry Library in Chicago and the San Diego Public Library.

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/03/architecture_goes_woke.html 

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