Universities hide full DEI spending, threaten public with lower bar for med school: watchdogs - Greg Piper

 

by Greg Piper

Medical University of South Carolina pays new chief equity officer "base compensation" of $370,000 plus potential "executive variable compensation" of 5-15%, and another $40,000 just for staying 30 days and finishing "onboarding."

 

As more diversity, equity and inclusion bureaucracies in higher education face gutting or substantial reorganization in response to new state laws and feared legislation, less visible programs may actually pose a threat to public health.

The UCLA Geffen School of Medicine has lowered admissions standards so far in the name of equity that medical students finishing clinical rotations and applying for residencies have staggering failure rates on exams measuring "basic medical knowledge," according to internal data obtained by The Washington Free Beacon.

Its students learn even earlier, in a mandatory first-year course on "Structural Racism and Health Equity," that medicine has proven "weight loss is a useless, hopeless endeavor" and oil and gas drilling is functionally racist.

UCLA Geffen plunged a dozen spots in U.S. News & World Report medical school rankings – from No. 6 to No. 18 – since hiring its Dean of Admissions Jennifer Lucero, who is also the anesthesiology department's vice chair for equity, diversity, and inclusion, three years ago.

In some of Lucero's admitted cohorts, most students "failed standardized tests on emergency medicine, family medicine, internal medicine, and pediatrics," and a tenfold spike in "shelf exam" failures in some subjects "coincided with a steep drop in the number of Asian matriculants," the Free Beacon reported.

The dean may have violated California's ban on affirmative action by citing race to justify admitting a below-average applicant when other admissions committee members balked, and refusing to "blind" race on applications to her department's residency program, the report says. 

Four admissions committee members told the publication it "routinely" lets in black and Latino applicants with lower scores but requires "near perfect" metrics for whites and Asians. Professors said "a student in the operating room could not identify a major artery when asked" and that "students at the end of their clinical rotations don't know basic lab tests."

UCLA Geffen media relations didn't answer Just the News queries.

The University of North Carolina System Board of Governors voted Thursday to replace its DEI policy with one "ensuring equality of all persons & viewpoints," institutional neutrality and employment nondiscrimination, CNN reported, 10 days after the flagship Chapel Hill campus board held a special meeting to divert its entire DEI program budget to police and public safety.

Government watchdog Open The Books released a report on the UNC system's DEI bureaucracy two days earlier, claiming it includes nearly 700 employees who cost more than $90 million a year: 288 on its payroll and 398 more listed on university websites as "members of DEI committees, commissions and counsels," plus 80 students in "mostly" volunteer roles.

The total cost is certainly higher because the system provided only "base salary," ignoring Open the Books' public records request for "all cash compensation" including bonuses and benefits, founder and CEO Adam Andrejewski wrote. The watchdog estimated the cost of benefits by adding 30% of base salary.

The top campuses were UNC Chapel Hill with 231 employees and $39.2 million, and North Carolina State University with 161 employees and $21.3 million. 

The top individual earners in pure DEI roles were UNC Chapel Hill Chief Diversity Officer Leah Cox at nearly $413,000 and North Carolina State Vice President of Institutional Equity and Diversity Sheri Schwab at nearly $303,000. Those who have "DEI responsibilities attached" to their full-time roles earn more than $500,000, Andrejewski said.

System President Peter Hans and a spokesperson didn't respond to the watchdog's request to explain why it spends "so much money and energy into DEI," Andrejewski said. The system's media office didn't respond to Just the News queries.

The system said the new policy is not intended to eliminate jobs but some "could be discontinued to comply," WFDD reported Thursday. It doesn't outline the responsibilities of DEI officers and liaisons, unlike the five-year-old policy it's replacing, though it won't affect classrooms, research, student organizations or cultural centers.

Open the Books said Tuesday it found another 100-plus University of Virginia employees with unofficial DEI-related jobs, from deans to "JEDIs" – Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion personnel – after a March payroll review that found 235, including 80 students, costing an estimated $20 million for a public university without a larger system.

Those include 20 DEI reps in the medical school, nine directors in the engineering school and six JEDIs in the architecture school. Global Chief Diversity Officer Martin Davidson and Vice President for DEI and Community Partnerships Kevin McDonald each earn more than an estimated half-million in pay and benefits, Andrejewski wrote in City Journal.

UVA officials challenged Open the Books' estimates in April but have "refused to release factual backup for their claim" that the school employs only 55 in DEI and may have violated the state Freedom of Information Act by claiming they have "no records responsive to your request" for records of employees with "primary or secondary" DEI roles in 2023, Andrejewski said.

The university didn't respond to a Just the News query for its response.

The Medical University of South Carolina pays its new chief equity officer, Michael de Arellano, a "base compensation" of $370,000 plus potential "executive variable compensation" of 5-15%, according to a Freedom of Information Act production obtained by Do No Harm. He gets another $40,000 if he stays with MUSC for 30 days and completes his "onboarding goals."

The public medical college also incorporates DEI into admissions, rating applicants for "cultural awareness" and awarding them extra points for "Cultural Experiences/DEI Efforts" while depriving interviewers of GPA or MCAT scores to guard against "implicit bias," the anti-woke medical advocacy group said Thursday. 

MUSC lists lower GPA and MCAT thresholds for admission interviews for South Carolina residents than for admission itself, Do No Harm emphasized. The school is running against the current by "demonstrating its dedication to divisive concepts in the name of 'health equity' – with no credible evidence to support their effectiveness," the group said.

High-profile public figures are also connecting DEI to campus antisemitism in the wake of the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas on Israeli civilians. 

They include Harvard law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz and House Oversight National Security Subcommittee Chairman Glenn Grothman, R-Wis., in "Just the News, No Noise" TV interviews. Former Anti-Defamation League National Director Abe Foxman, a member of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's board of trustees, blames DEI for "institutionalized antisemitism." 

Netflix reality show star Sheila Nazarian, a plastic surgeon, said in a Daily Caller op-ed the "revolutionary fervor" on campus since Oct. 7 is "eerily reminiscent of what I witnessed in Iran during its Islamic Revolution."

DEI credits Jewish "overrepresentation in high-status professions like medicine" to "injustice and exploitation," she also wrote.

Greg Piper

Source: https://justthenews.com/accountability/watchdogs/universities-hide-full-dei-spending-threaten-public-lower-bar-med-school

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A Final Indignity to the Arsenal of Democracy? - Thaddeus G. McCotter

 

by Thaddeus G. McCotter

Abetting communist Chinese subnational incursions into our states has been a bipartisan disgrace—and this is despite the bipartisan warnings of the military, intelligence, and law enforcement.

 

It is Memorial Day weekend. A time for us to commemorate and reflect upon the ultimate sacrifices given by our fallen citizen-soldiers and the enduring grief of their families and loved ones, which were and are selflessly borne in the defense of their fellow Americans and our free republic.

This spirit of self-sacrifice is rarely evidenced by far too many of the elected officials who will publicly eulogize these same fallen patriots and extend condolences to their families and loved ones. While exhorting others to emulate the example of those who made the ultimate sacrifice, these disingenuous politicians refuse to risk an ounce of political capital—not by opposing public sentiment—but by supporting it in the defense of our national security. Why? Because they fear alienating major corporations and their own party leaders.

While currently occurring primarily in “Blue States,” abetting communist Chinese subnational incursions into our states has been a bipartisan disgrace—and this is despite the bipartisan warnings of the military, intelligence, and law enforcement communities.

The complicit politicians’ reasoning is as follows: using taxpayer money to subsidize CCP-linked businesses locating in states will provide jobs and boost the economy of not only the local populace but also the profits of these companies’ American corporate partners. In sum, having failed to implement the necessary fiscal and free market policies to produce domestic economic growth, these politicians have latched onto these Chinese-linked companies as an electoral lifeline. Apparently, these politicians think the public believes a job is a job and will not care about the use of their tax dollars to import CCP-linked companies into our backyard.

To wit: my home state of Michigan, which during World War II was rightly lauded with the name “The Arsenal of Democracy.” The “greatest generation” of Michiganians not only fought in foreign fields, they toiled in machine shops’ and factories’ floors to produce the armaments needed not only for our forces but for our allies as well. One shining example of American industrial and military might was the Ford Motor Company’s Willow Run Facility (Air Force Plant 31).

As the Detroit Historical Society records, Willow Run was built in 1941 with $200,000,000 investment by the federal government. At its wartime peak,

…Willow Run was able to achieve remarkable production rates. At its peak in 1944, it produced a B-24 [bomber aircraft] every hour. By 1945, it was able to produce 70 percent of its B-24s in two nine-hour shifts, with pilots and crew members sleeping on 1,300 cots as they waited for the B-24s to roll off the assembly line. The Ford Motor Company eventually produced half of their 18,000 total B-24s at Willow Run.

Yet, over time, even as the threats to America ebbed and flowed, morphed and intensified, Willow Run ebbed in the minds of policymakers and the public. In 1953, Willow Run changed hands by lease and, ultimately, by deed from Ford to General Motors; and by 2010, Willow Run plant became a casualty of GM’s bankruptcy proceeding:

Most of the plant was demolished in 2014 but a 175,000 foot portion was offered to the Yankee Air Museum, housed in a hangar until a 2004 fire. After successful fundraising, the Museum reopened in 2017 in the historic building.

“The American Center for Mobility claimed the remainder of the massive site and in 2018 opened a proving ground and research facility for self-driving cars, the only one in Michigan and one of ten in the U.S., as designated by the U.S. Dept. of Transportation.

What is of note to the present discussion is this: back in 1941, the U.S. government expended taxpayer dollars to an American corporation to provide employment in making armaments for the defense of our nation. Today, state governments are expending taxpayer dollars to CCP-linked companies that use the mantra of “jobs” to deflect from the potential to undermine our national security. All this for a talking point how “[Politician Name] Created [X Number of] Jobs.” (Sadly, the economic mendacity of this message remains lost upon far too many of our citizenry.)

And the offending politicians show no signs of slowing in their feckless endangering of our national security. As the Daily Caller’s Nick Pope reports:

Michigan Democrats shot down an effort to significantly expand the vetting process for China-tied companies seeking to cash in on state incentives earlier in May.

Republican lawmakers in both chambers of the state’s legislature pushed budget amendments that would have prohibited the use of state funds to subsidize corporations originating from adversarial countries like China, but neither amendment made it into the budgets that passed on May 9 and May 15. House and Senate Democrats leveraged their control of each chamber to shoot down both amendments.

The reason for the partisan divide is the support of the democratic administration of Governor Gretchen Whitmer for “Gotion, a company looking to build a subsidized facility in the Grand Rapids area… The state announced in October 2022 that it would be providing Gotion with incentives worth $715 million to attract its $2.4 billion factory to Michigan.”

This is despite the fact that Gotion

…is tied to China and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) via its parent company, Gotion High-Tech. The Daily Caller News Foundation has reported extensively on the company’s links to China and the CCP, which include Gotion High-Tech’s employment of more than 900 CCP members as of 2022 and the fact that a visiting delegation of CCP officials set up a talent recruitment work station at Gotion’s California headquarters in 2017.

This is not a one-off by the wholly Democrat-controlled Michigan legislature, who, according to state Senator Jonathan Lindsey (R-17):

Governor Whitmer and the Democrats in Michigan are so married to this idea of taking Michigan taxpayer dollars and giving them to these corporations with ties to China, they refuse to budge. Last year they voted against preventing tax dollars from supporting child slave labor in China. This year they voted against reviews and limitations on those dollars flowing toward our global adversaries. What they’re doing is absolutely wrong for the people of Michigan.

As Michigan Senate minority leader Aric Nesbitt (R-20) further points out, “It’s shocking to watch the Democrat majority in Michigan hand over hundreds of millions in tax dollars from struggling Michigan families to multinational corporations that pledge allegiance to the Chinese Communist Party in their corporate documents.”

Yet, what of the Ford Motor Company, the quintessentially American corporation that was a major artery pumping munitions and materiel through the heart of the Arsenal of Democracy and into our military and allies’ hands? Like the Willow Run plant, Ford has another project seeking public subsidies. Unlike the Willow Run plant, however:

…Ford’s licensing deal with CATL, a Chinese battery manufacturer, has also drawn scrutiny. Ford planned to open a facility in [Michigan] – with the help of state incentives in excess of $1.5 billion – where it would manufacture batteries using CATL’s technology and know-how, but the company has since scaled down its planned factory, according to CNBC.

Perhaps it is an elected official and Navy veteran, State Representative Andrew Beeler (R-64), who, being well versed in the self-sacrifice made by our men and women in uniform and their families, so well expressed his consternation and concerns:

I didn’t spend years in the Navy pushing back against the Chinese Communist Party in the South China Sea only to come to the Michigan Legislature and give them government handouts… But House Democrats voted to let hostile foreign powers keep spreading influence and gathering intelligence on Michigan taxpayers’ dime.

Given the bipartisan opposition to spending taxpayer money to subsidize CCP-linked companies, one might be tempted to chalk this up to a case of imbecilic political hacks cutting off their nose to spite their face and hoping no one notices. Granted, it would not be the first time. Yet this is far worse. These useful elected idiots are spending taxpayer dollars to buy the CCP the razor that barbaric regime will use to cut our throat. That this is happening in Michigan could well constitute a final—suicidal—indignity to the arsenal of Democracy.

That this is happening at all constitutes an unconscionable affront to the citizen-soldiers who gave their last full measure of devotion for us.

An American Greatness contributor, the Hon. Thaddeus G. McCotter (M.C., Ret.) served Michigan’s 11th Congressional district from 2003-2012, and served as Chair of the Republican House Policy Committee. Not a lobbyist, he is a frequent public speaker and moderator for public policy seminars; and a Monday co-host of the “John Batchelor Radio Show,” among sundry media appearances.

Thaddeus G. McCotter

Source: https://amgreatness.com/2024/05/25/a-final-indignity-to-the-arsenal-of-democracy/

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Has America Finally Had It With Joe Biden? - Victor Davis Hanson

 

by Victor Davis Hanson

A record that remains indefensible.

 

[Order David Horowitz’s new book, America Betrayed, HERE.]

Joe Biden’s personal approval rating is at historic lows; almost all his policies do not poll fifty percent. He is behind Trump in almost all the swing states. And now he lies serially even to sympathetic interviewers. In short, finally Biden has been exposed for what he always was and represented.

Senator and Vice President Joe Biden was always sort of a buffoon. He is by nature a grandstander who handsomely profited from his office while posing as good ole Joe from Scranton.

He is a blowhard meddler, one who proverbially has been “wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades (Robert Gates),” from dissenting on the Bin Laden raid to his trisection of Iraq scheme.

He is a fabulist who believes that the more animated he misleads and slurs (“semi-fascists” “fat”, “lying dog-faced pony soldier”, “chumps”, “dregs of society”, etc), the more likely he is to get away with it. He is a confessed plagiarist. And he has also invented much of his biography, from would be star, college-scholarship athlete and brilliant law student to semi-truck driver and jailed civil rights activist. His uncle, we are instructed, was eaten by cannibals. Joe assures us that he was the first in his family to go to college.

And he is a racist with a repertory of racial taunts and smears unrivaled among modern politicians (“junkie”, “boy”, “you ain’t black”, “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy”, “put y’all back in chains”, the Corn Pop and golden-leg hairs sagas, the “racial jungle” memes, the strange brag about Delaware as a “slave state” (e.g., “You don’t know my state. My state was a slave state. My state is a border state.”), and his encomia for the old Democratic racists of the Senate from former Klansman Robert Byrd (Biden’s self-described “mentor” and “guide”) to segregationist James Eastland (“never called me boy”).

Biden has always had a mean streak that explains why for years he lied about the tragic, fatal auto accident of his first wife and child, using it to libel the truck driver, who was neither drunk nor culpable but smeared publicly for years by Biden as intoxicated and guilty. For years he ignored the pleas of the trucker’s family to please stop libeling an innocent driver.

Biden just told his greatest whopper that inflation was at 9 percent (actually 1.4 percent) when he took office and yet soon spiked to 9 percent due to his reckless deficit spending and money printing spree.

But recently Biden has reached a nadir and even the Left is resigned to him as a mere construct. After bragging after October 7 that his support for Israel was rock-solid he is now cutting off military aid as it attempts finally to end the Hamas murderous threat—a reversion to old Joe Biden who in his long past has previously threatened to cut off Israel while boasting later that anyone who did so was reprehensible. (Leveraging congressional mandated aid for political advantage is precisely the (false) allegation of politicking that the Democrats demagogued to impeach Trump—to the then cheers of Biden himself).

But his sell out of Israel is but a small tessera in his election pandering mosaic. He will again begin drawing down the strategic petroleum reserve to lower gas prices during the campaign. He has badgered Ukraine not to hit Russian oil facilities. He has illegally forgiven billions in student loan aid to regain the elite youth vote. And as the campaign season begins, so too Biden suddenly poses as a border enforcer—after letting in nearly 10-million illegal aliens.

Biden has always put the agendas of his own and his family above the national interest. We witnessed that when he bragged that he fired the Ukrainian prosecutor looking into his son’s Burisma skullduggery. The Biden consortium is corrupt and was enriched with over $25 million through foreign interests’ assurance that Senator and Vice President Joe Biden would deliver on their quid pro quo investments in him.

Any other major politician who habitually invaded the private space of women and preteens to blow on their hair, gobble their necks, squeeze and hug far too long, and be accused of sexual assault would have long since been cancelled by the left.

Add the old disturbing narrative of a naked Vice President Joe Biden exiting his pool in front of female secret service agents, the showering with his pre-teen daughter, the Frank Biden and Hunter naked selfies, and there seems something eerie among the Biden family.

Despite fierce denials, the entire lawfare scheme directed at Trump originated with the White House. Biden was always said to have been exasperated with Merrick Garland for not hastily enough going after Trump.

The misadventurous Georgia prosecutor Nathan Wade met with and was tutored by the White House counsel’s office. One of the top Biden DOJ prosecutors was dispatched to rescue the bungling Alvin Bragg farce.

Jack Smith, appointed by the Biden DOJ to go after Biden’s 2024 presidential rival, timed his indictments to coincide with the campaign season, even as Smith’s office mishandled classified files taken at Mar-a-Lago to bolster its prosecution—and then lied about it.

Hard-won American deterrence was destroyed by the humiliation in Afghanistan and the lies surrounding the disaster, the Chinese balloon flight and the misinformation about it, the wars in Ukraine, Gaza, and on the Red Sea, and the accompanying disinformation from the White House.

Such recklessness abroad is the bookend to the home front where massive borrowing, the destruction of the border, crippling inflation, spiraling crime, and the epidemic of “progressive” anti-Semitism on campuses have made American almost unrecognizable.

Again, at the heart of this Biden catastrophe is the Faustian bargain of 2020 when unelectable leftist candidates dropped out in unison to use a fumbling Biden as their more presentable veneer. So he was foisted upon the nation to serve as “moderate” cover to advance a radical, veritable Obama third-term. In that sense, his duties were ceremonial—as the hard-left channeled through him the most radical agenda in U.S. history, and found his debility and dementia advantageous—the country be damned.

If Biden makes it to and through the convention, he and his record remain indefensible. And so expect his campaign largely to be waged through lawfare against Trump, and massive infusions of leftist cash to ensure record mail-in and early voting. In the campaign Biden will become an afterthought, a ghost, vapor, as his party seeks to construct the entire election one of leftwing, blue-city prosecutors, judges, and juries versus serial defendant Trump.

But will Nemesis first catch up to Biden’s long record of hubris and dishonesty?

Victor Davis Hanson

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/has-america-finally-had-it-with-joe-biden/

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Foreign governments threaten Americans' speech rights, lawmakers, civil liberties groups warn - Greg Piper

 

by Greg Piper

World Health Organization Pandemic Agreement less restrictive than earlier drafts but still lacks "adequate language protecting national sovereignty," group warns.

 

Americans who anticipate the Supreme Court will prevent the federal government from pressuring or collaborating with social media companies to remove purported misinformation shouldn't get too excited even if that ruling comes to pass when the justices' term ends next month.

Foreign governments from Geneva to Canberra are taking actions that may inhibit or even prevent what Americans can see and say online, though not without pushback from members of Congress, civil liberties groups and a mercurial billionaire.

This goes further than Brazil's censorship of social media within its territory alone, the subject of House Judiciary Committee reports this spring.

In a May 17 letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan and Administrative State Subcommittee Chairman Thomas Massie cited reports that State was considering joining the World Health Organization Pandemic Agreement.

The United Nations agreement's first six drafts required parties to "identify," "combat," "counteract," "tackle" and  "prevent" misinformation, disinformation and "false news" related to pandemics and treatments, while the most recent draft swaps those for a new preamble reference to preventing "misinformation, disinformation and stigmatization," the Ohio and Kentucky Republicans, respectively, said.

Following these provisions "may contravene the First Amendment," they wrote, asking Blinken to produce documents and communications among State Department personnel, between them and WHO personnel, and between them and "other third parties" pertaining to the WHO agreement and amendments to the International Health Regulations.

The documents are already responsive to a 13-month-old letter from Jordan requesting Blinken produce records about State's "interactions with social media companies and third-party groups regarding content moderation and the identification of so-called 'misinformation,'" the May 17 letter says.

Jordan and Massie said this is more troubling in light of State's Global Engagement Center working with the Department of Homeland Security-conceived Election Integrity Partnership, "which targeted Americans’ accounts and posts for censorship by social media companies" through a mass-reporting system with a self-identified 35% success rate in the 2020 election.

The Poynter Institute purported to debunk such claims the same day by citing an April draft's pledge that each signatory will show "full respect for the dignity, human rights and fundamental freedoms of persons" as they implement the agreement. The World Health Assembly will nail down the terms starting next week.

Partly funded by liberal megadonor George Soros, Poynter owns a fact-checking site that called the lab-leak theory of COVID-19 origin a "pants-on-fire" lie and its president helped award Pulitzer Prizes for reporting that promoted the Russia collusion hoax. 

It's not clear why Poynter, which partners with Meta to suppress such claims, waited until May 17 to challenge them, given that its primary examples of misinformation about the agreement were Tucker Carlson videos from January.

Alliance Defending Freedom International said its Geneva and D.C legal teams have been raising alarms for months about "the potential human rights implications" of the agreement, such as a previous draft requiring "management" of so-called "infodemics" – the same proposal made by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention scientists in a recent Lancet paper.

While the latest proposal is missing "vague mandates for parties to 'prevent' misinformation and disinformation," it also lacks "adequate language protecting national sovereignty," ADF International said.

"The United States should never promote censorship and should be the strongest advocate for free speech around the world," its legal counsel, Sean Nelson, said in praising the letter from Jordan and Massie.

Australia's "eSafety Commissioner" Julie Inman Grant united civil libertarians by ordering Elon Musk's social media platform X to "globally" remove posts with a video showing a Muslim man stabbing a Christian bishop during a church service last month or pay $500,000 in fines daily.

An Australian court initially forced X to comply with the global order by Grant, whom Musk calls “Australian censorship commissar," meaning no one in the world could see the video on X, the Associated Press reported April 22.

But the court refused to extend the injunction again at a May 13 hearing while X's challenge proceeds, according to The Guardian. Grant's barrister accused X of hypocrisy for "routinely" removing content worldwide of its own accord while resisting Australia's order.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression sought to intervene in the Australian case, relaying several other incidents of foreign governments using takedown orders to "erase history and silence dissent not only within its own country, but around the world."

As recently as 2020, China did this to human rights activists who hosted Zoom "meetings commemorating the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre" and to "speech outside Hong Kong by non-residents" through a national security law that vaguely bans “separatism and subversion," Director of Public Advocacy Aaron Terr wrote.

If a "respected Western country like Australia compels X Corp. to restrict content globally, there is a real risk that it may provide validation to authoritarian governments/regimes in attempting to do the same," undermining "Australia’s standing to oppose similar actions by other Governments," he said.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation also sought to intervene, telling the court that Grant's order not only violates Americans' First Amendment rights but also Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, "which has been crucial for the growth of the Internet as a platform for speech" globally.

"A global takedown order establishes a precedent that courts of other jurisdictions can rely on to justify adopting the same measure," since "judges often use international precedents to develop consistency," Legal Director Corrine McSherry wrote. 

It creates a "real risk" of a "fragmented and splintered internet" and a "race to the bottom" in which "the most restrictive rules of one jurisdiction dictate whether online content can be accessed," and gives cover to "authoritarian governments, which do not fully value the rights to freedom of speech and access to information," she said.

Greg Piper

Source: https://justthenews.com/government/congress/foreign-governments-threaten-americans-speech-rights-lawmakers-civil-liberties

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NGO Monitor in the Media Spotlight Following ICC Attack - NGO Monitor

 

by NGO Monitor

Since the announcement earlier this week, NGO Monitor was featured in Newsweek, Times of Israel, the Jewish Insider, Kaan 11, Makor Rishon, and dozens of other platforms around the world.

 

As the NGO campaign escalated, our experts  briefed Members of Congress and European Parliamentarians. This past week, NGO Monitor Head of Research Yona Schiffmiller testified before Congress, detailing NGO efforts to attack Israel – and American interests.

The NGOs behind the campaign receive humanitarian and human rights funds provided by European governments, including: Germany, the European Union, Sweden, Denmark, Spain, Norway, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Switzerland, Belgium, France, Austria and the Netherlands.  

In the coming weeks, we will be traveling to Europe to discuss the damaging impact of their support for anti-Israel NGOs. 

Media Highlights

Arrest Warrants Sought for Netanyahu and Hamas Leader Brendan Cole I Newsweek I May 20, 2024  Amal Clooney Plays Key Role in ICC Arrest Warrants for Netanyahu, Sinwar Ryan Smith I Newsweek I May 20, 2024    Netanyahu slams ICC’s ‘audacious’ comparison of Hamas and IDF Ruth Marks Eglash and Lahav Harkov I Jewish Insider I May 20, 2024   Legal earthquake: ICC charges against Netanyahu would be unprecedented in court’s history Jeremy Sharon I Times of Israel I May 20, 2024   International Criminal Court prosecutor seeks arrest warrants against Hamas leader and Netanyahu (Spanish) Agence EFE I May 20, 2024    Kaan English News Interview with Anne Herzberg   Kaan 11 I May 20, 2024   "Accepting the prosecutor's position - a historical crime": outrage over the request for the arrest warrants (Hebrew) Hodia Charish Hazoni I Makor Rishon I May 20, 2024    ICC seeks arrest warrants against PM Netanyahu and hamas terrorist leader Yahya Sinwar analysis by NGO Monitor Legal Advisor Anne Herzberg Media Central I May 20, 2024   "It's a shame"  (German) Sabine Brandes I Judische Allgemeine I May 20, 2024   Amid War in Gaza, Israel Challenged Again, This Time in International Criminal Court Keren Setton I The Media Line I May 21, 2024    90fm Radio: Now live on Yoman Ninety with Eli Orgad and Moshe Gabai (Hebrew) Yona Schiffmiller at 25:00 I 90fm Radio I May 21, 2024   "A war is breaking out in the north of Israel that is not talked about at all." (Serbian) Milan Vučković I KURIR I May 22, 2024   From "Betzlem" to "Al-Haq": the pressure on the criminal court in The Hague was successful (Hebrew) Liora Henig Cohen I Makor Rishon I May 22, 2024

Research

For more than a decade, NGO Monitor has been meticulously researching the NGO campaign targeting Israel at the ICC – a core goal of the “Durban Strategy”.
 

See our publications:

The Role of NGOs in Supporting the International Criminal Court (ICC) Investigation
May 23, 2024

Importantly, as part of the NGO Durban Declaration and accompanying BDS campaigns, advocacy organizations have sought to turn the ICC into a court of universal jurisdiction. Like their exploitation of the UN and other international frameworks, these NGOs seek to use the ICC for demonization and to brand Israeli officials as “war criminals.”

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Behind the ICC Prosecutor’s Narrative: The NGOs that Pushed the “Starvation” Libel in October
May 21, 2024

On May 20, 2024, International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Karim Khan announced that he was pursuing arrest warrants against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant. Khan alleged that both “bear criminal responsibility” for the war crime of “starvation of civilians as a method of warfare.” Many anti-Israel NGOs initiated the “starvation as a weapon” narrative immediately following Hamas’ brutal assault on October 7.

 

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Gaza Lawfare: Anti-Israel NGOs Abuse Courts in Pursuit of “Genocide” Charges
January 14, 2024

In the aftermath of the barbaric Hamas massacre of October 7, rather than use law and international justice frameworks to support the victims of the atrocities, supposed human rights NGOs have sought to use lawfare to spread anti-Israel propaganda and to target allied support for Israel in an effort to harm the IDF’s ability to defeat Hamas.

 

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NGO Monitor Amicus Brief to the ICC (2020) 
March 17, 2020

NGO Monitor submitted a briefing to the ICC regarding the "Situation in the State of Palestine."

NGO Monitor

Source:https://mailchi.mp/4e53e7af068c/countering-ngos-in-hostile-territory-5448513?e=59943add6b

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Who is Colonizing Whom? - Daniel Greenfield

 

by Daniel Greenfield

Islam was colonizing the world long before the British. Now it’s at it again.

 

[Order Daniel Greenfield’s new book, Domestic Enemies: HERE.]

College students being indoctrinated on campuses to take part in Muslim prayers are also taking part in a thousand-year-old process of Islamic colonialism that made Islam a worldwide religion. College students believe by embracing Islamic rituals, they are opposing colonialism when they’re actually practicing it.

The discovery of America and the apogee of European civilization which ushered in the modern world were based on resistance to Islamic colonialism. Since then, European nations withdrew from the Muslim world to avoid colonialism only to be colonized by millions of Muslims from their old colonies. Rather than ending colonialism, Europe went from the colonizers to the colonized, and European governments were called on to once again rule over millions of Muslims, no longer in the Middle East, Pakistan, North Africa or Asia, but in London, Paris, and across their own nations. With that the rulers swiftly became the ruled.

Where the old European governments had looked to pacify Muslims abroad, their EU descendants struggled to pacify them at home. And America soon followed. After 9/11, America had been primarily worried about Muslim terrorism coming from abroad. Now it mostly worries about Islamic terrorism coming from Muslim converts and immigrants within the United States.

A history of Islamic colonialism is repeating itself with the complicity of ignorant ideologues who describe the process by which the cruel imperialism that crippled most of the world made a comeback, subjugating women, cultural and racial minorities and all non-Muslims, as liberation.

The long march of Islam across the Middle East, and then Africa and Asia, had climaxed in a struggle in Europe between the invading Muslim armies and the indigenous population. The Gates of Vienna marked a turning point in which the Islamic empires dominated much of what we came to call the Third World, but were prevented from conquering and colonizing Europe.

The price of the struggle was high and a mostly forgotten Islamic trade in European slaves continued, alongside the traditional trade in African slaves, into the 19th century. The discovery of America allowed European civilization to expand laterally, bypassing the snake pit of pirates and slavers that Africa and the Middle East had become under Islam, and discover new shores.

Columbus had been seeking a new route to India that would replace the land route controlled by the Ottoman conquerors of Byzantium and would also avoid the North African Islamic pirates whose conquest of Spain had been thwarted, but who continued to prey on Spanish shipping, and who posed a hazard on the Portuguese sea route to India around the African coast.

The origins of the United States of America lay in resistance to Islamic Jihad. As Thomas Jefferson and John Adams rediscovered when dealing with the question of Islamic piracy.

When trying to persuade the Islamic emissary to stop attacking American ships and enslaving Americans, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were told that Islamic piracy and slavery were,  “founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners.”

America provided something better than a route to the Indies, although it ultimately allowed westerners to reach India, China and Japan while bypassing the raiding empires of Islam, because it also contained lands and resources that enabled European nations and colonies to build up their own civilizations without recourse to the slave nations under the Islamic boot.

Muslim pirates preyed on New World cargoes, leading to multiple conflicts, including the First and Second Barbary Wars, America’s first true international wars, but the tide had turned. The Ottoman Empire had lost its bid for Europe and would never be able to reach America. Where it had once threatened to swallow the West, it began to decline and was never able to recover.

The brief European colonization of the Middle East and North Africa was a good deal gentler than any of the horrors that Islamic conquerors had inflicted on the region. There was no genocide, mass slavery or the total repression of peoples because of their religion. The greatest Muslim complaints against colonialism are that the British and French provided civil rights to non-Muslims, especially Christians and Jews, and allowed them to form their own countries.

British colonialism ended the Muslim trade in slaves that had traversed the route out of Africa and into Egypt, across Israel and to Arabia. With the end of European colonialism, slavery resumed. Islamic tyrannies like Qatar or Saudi Arabia are serviced by millions of non-Muslim slaves. (Qatar had formally abolished slavery under British pressure in 1952 and Saudi Arabia had only abolished slavery in 1962 under pressure from the Kennedy administration.)

The end of colonialism also marked the end of equal rights for Jews and Christians in the Muslim world. The Christian and Jewish exodus from the Middle East sped up. Over a million Jews from Egypt, Iraq, Yemen and other ‘decolonized’ nations fled to Israel. They along with Arab Christians also continued making their way to America, Canada, Australia and Europe.

Muslims however followed them to these havens. The Islamic settlers in the mediterranean region had never been at peace with the idea that these traditionally Jewish and Christian areas should once again break free and become independent of Islamic rule. Israel and Lebanon soon became known for having the worst terrorist problems in the region. This was no coincidence.

While Christians and Jews in the Middle East, and Hindus and Buddhists in Asia, were under siege by Muslim forces from Africa to Asia, a new wave of Muslim colonization washed ashore on the coasts of Western nations. The new arrivals adopted the protective coloration of identity politics and declared that they were part of a movement to “decolonize” Western nations.

But by decolonization, they mean colonization.

The Islamists are not here to liberate, but to enslave, not to decolonize, but to resume the colonization that had faltered at the Gates of Vienna, and had appeared hopeless when Europe unlocked the New World and no longer had to sail its ships or trade at the mercy of the bandits who had colonized, subjugated and destroyed all the learning and culture of the Middle East.

Their mission is to build armies capable of waging political or military conflicts, to divide and conquer their enemies in Western nations and to impose Islamic theocracy or Sharia law that will solidify their rule and end any hope of freedom, human rights or equality in the free world. It is in the name of this, along with their other colonizing enterprises, against India and Israel, the Yazidis in Iraq or the Buddhists in Bangladesh, that they launch their terrorist attacks against us.

It is not only America alone. Or Israel. Hindus are being butchered in India, and Christians in places as far apart as Nigeria and the Philippines as part of the new wave of Islamic conquests.

Islamic colonialism long predated British men with pith helmets strutting around the third world. Its death toll is in the tens of millions and the resumption of Islamic colonialism ought to be as great a concern as if Nazism had risen from the dead and tanks were speeding across Europe.

Unfortunately too many civilized peoples have forgotten their history and have been convinced that their former and future conquerors are the victims because they were briefly colonized for less than half a century, when Islamic colonialism lasted for over a thousand years, and would not be toppled by any number of peaceful protests or speeches the way that the British were.

Islamism is colonialism. The real decolonization is resistance to Islamic expansionism.

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/who-is-colonizing-whom/

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Islamic groups sue Gov. Abbott, others for antisemitism crackdown - Bethany Blankley

 

by Bethany Blankley

One of the groups suing the governor was sued earlier this month by Jewish groups who allege it is a “collaborator and propagandist for Hamas,” a U.S. federal government-designated foreign terrorist organization.

 

(The Center Square) -

Several Islamic groups have sued Gov. Greg Abbott and Texas public university officials for cracking down on students calling for the death of Jews and antisemetic protests on campuses.

One of the groups suing the governor was sued earlier this month by Jewish groups who allege it is a “collaborator and propagandist for Hamas,” a U.S. federal government-designated foreign terrorist organization.

The Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Houston and the University of Dallas and the Democratic Socialists of America filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas. Abbott, the University of Houston, the UH system Board of Regents and its members, the president and chancellor of the UH System, the University of Texas System Board of Regents and its members, and the president of the University of Texas at San Antonio are listed as defendants.

The plaintiffs are represented by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Legal Defense Fund.

The lawsuit “asserts that Governor Abbott’s executive order, along with the campus-level efforts to comply with it, are obvious attempts to illegally suppress a viewpoint critical of one particular foreign country.”

It argues Abbott’s executive order issued earlier this year to combat antisemitism “aimed to extinguish from public campuses a viewpoint critical of Israel and supportive of Palestinians. In so doing, Governor Abbott acted illegally, contrary to the First Amendment, and the students and groups suing here seek the Court’s intervention to remedy this grave violation.”

They also oppose Abbott calling for college campus rioters to be arrested, which they were on the University of Texas-Austin campus after allegedly violating criminal trespass laws. As they called for the death of Jews, Abbott said, “These protesters belong in jail. Antisemitism will not be tolerated in Texas. Period. Students joining in hate-filled, antisemitic protests at any public college or university in Texas should be expelled.”

CAIR argues Abbott’s order “purports to combat antisemitism but targets students advocating for Palestinians in Gaza as they face a genocide at the hands of Israel. The executive order directs public universities to punish students for using the liberation slogan ‘From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free’ and for being critical of the state of Israel.”

Its lawsuit asks the court to rule that Abbott’s order violates the First Amendment, and the chant, “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is protected speech. It also seeks to block public universities from incorporating the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's definition of antisemitism into their campus speech codes.

“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” is a call for the annihilation of Israel, referring to the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea, which border Israel to the east and west. It coincides with Hamas’ 1988 Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement preamble, which states, “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it,’” The Center Square reported.

The Jewish groups that sued American Muslims for Palestine and NSJP earlier this month argue they are knowingly providing “continuous, systematic, and substantial assistance to Hamas and its affiliates’ acts of international terrorism,” The Center Square reported.

Hamas, the acronym for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya (Islamic Resistance Movement), was designated by the U.S. State Department as a foreign terrorist organization in 1997. “It is the largest and most capable militant group in the Palestinian territories and one of the territories’ two major political parties,” according to the National Counterterrorism Center.

The Jewish groups’ lawsuit alleges AMP and NSJP are “collaborators and propagandists for Hamas” because on Oct. 8 they responded to a Hamas founder’s call to hold “resistance” events on college campuses after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7. The NSJP published a “tool kit” for Palestinian students in the U.S. to use against Israeli “occupiers” and “Zionist media campaigns,” The Center Square reported.

Their lawsuit, Abbott, Texas lawmakers and Texas public university leaders complying with his order, maintain that calls for death to Jews and hate speech is not protected speech.

Abbott’s executive order requires all Texas higher education institutions to comply with a list of requirements to ensure Jewish students are safe on campus, The Center Square reported. These include reviewing free speech policies, establishing appropriate punishments for antisemitic rhetoric on campuses, ensuring policies addressing the sharp rise of antisemitic acts are enforced, and including the definition of antisemitism in free speech policies.

The Texas Senate’s Higher Education Committee already held its first hearing on antisemitism occurring on Texas college campuses and began its oversight of compliance with Abbott’s order and state law. Texas law defines antisemitism as “a certain perception of Jews that may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. The term includes rhetorical and physical acts of antisemitism directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals or their property or toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

State law prohibits state agencies from investing in companies that “boycott” Israel and Texas has purchased $20 million in Israeli bonds.

 
Bethany Blankley

Source: https://justthenews.com/nation/states/center-square/islamic-groups-sue-gov-abbott-others-antisemitism-crackdown

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CIA prevented investigators from interviewing Hunter Biden lawyer, new IRS whistleblower docs say - Steven Richards

by Steven Richards

The new trove of documents released Wednesday provide details about the CIA’s intervention in the Hunter Biden investigation. From how high up did the orders come?

 

A new cache of documents from the IRS whistleblowers released Wednesday by the House Ways and Means Committee show how the Central Intelligence Agency directly intervened to prevent the IRS investigators from interviewing Hunter Biden lawyer and benefactor Kevin Morris.

The CIA’s involvement in the case was first suggested in earlier this year when the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees wrote a letter to Director William Burns that revealed impeachment investigators had at least one whistleblower who alleged the spy agency tried to interfere with a witness interview in the case, Just the News previously reported.

"According to the whistleblower, in August 2021, when IRS investigators were preparing to interview Patrick Kevin Morris, an associate of Hunter Biden, the CIA intervened to stop the interview," Chairmen Jim Jordan and James Comer wrote. "Two DOJ officials were allegedly summoned to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia for a briefing regarding Mr. Morris. At that meeting, it was communicated that Mr. Morris could not be a witness during the investigation.”

The new documents show IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler provided documents to the committee detailing the CIA’s intervention.

According to Shapley’s affidavit of the incident, Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf from the Delaware prosecutor’s office in charge of the case and the Department of Justice Tax Division Attorney Jack Morgan were summoned to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, for a briefing.

At the meeting, the officials were given a classified briefing and were told by the CIA that the IRS “could no longer pursue” Kevin Morris as a witness in their case. Wolf did not share CIA’s reasoning with the IRS whistleblowers, who then requested their own briefing from the intelligence agency through Wolf.

According to Shapley’s account, Wolf ultimately failed to secure a briefing for the case investigators.

“Although AUSA Wolf initially appeared to be receptive to facilitating a briefing for me on the information, she ignored multiple attempts by me to arrange the briefing. Since obtaining this briefing was outside of my control, eventually I was forced to accept it would not happen,” Shapley wrote in his affidavit. “However, it served as yet another example of deviations from normal investigative processes in this matter.”

You can read Shapley’s affidavit below:

Shapley-Affidavit.pdf

It remains unknown why the CIA intervened in the case, how they became aware that the IRS investigators had targeted Morris as a witness and most importantly, who at the CIA issued the directive.

“We don't know whether it's that Kevin Morris has some sort of asset for the CIA, whether he has some sort of target or whether they have other derogatory information about him being a national security threat. But whatever it was, it was enough that Lesley Wolf and the prosecution team said we're not going to put him on the stand,” Tristan Leavitt, whose organization Empower Oversight is representing Shapley, told the “Just the News, No Noise” TV show on Wednesday.

“And then when Gary Shapley tried to follow up and say I, at least at a bare minimum, need to know the issues involved, they initially told him, okay, we'll arrange that briefing for you, and then they just let it die,” he added.

“So this, this is one of the many things where he was pushing for answers, and was never able to get anywhere with the Delaware U.S. Attorney's office. And so ultimately, he never got any further information about exactly what it is that the CIA had on Kevin Morris,” he continued.

Kevin Morris was in many ways a central witness to the investigation into the first son’s tax violations. Morris—a high-powered Hollywood lawyer now nicknamed Hunter's "sugar brother" —acknowledged to Congress during an impeachment inquiry interview that he has provided millions of dollars in the form of loans to help the first son pay expenses and legal bills.

Documents reviewed and reported by Just the News show that Morris and Hunter Biden agreed to treat the more than $5 million in financial assistance as loans when the cash started flowing in early 2020 and began committing them to writing with promissory notes starting in fall 2021.

The first note was executed on Oct. 13, 2021, in the amount of $1.4 million and included the assistance that Morris had given the first son in calendar year 2020. The note called for an annual interest rate of 5% but did not require repayments to begin until October 2025, well after Joe Biden would face his final reelection bid.

Two days later, Hunter Biden and Morris executed a second promissory note totaling $2.6 million that covered Morris’ assistance to the first son in 2021, the lion’s share of which went to pay off tax debts and penalties to the IRS as well as state and local authorities dating to 2016, the memos show.

That agreement carried the same interest rate as the first but stretched out repayments to begin in October 2025 and end by October 2029.

Biden and Morris executed at least two more promissory notes in 2022 covering over $1.32 million in additional assistance from Morris, according to documents and interviews. Interest was again at 5% annual, and repayments are required between October 2025 and October 2028 under those agreements, the documents show.

Morris and Hunter Biden jointly engaged in other transactions tracked bv federal investigators.

In November 2021, Morris acquired the first’s son stake in a joint venture with a Chinese company called BHR, the memos show, In so doing, Morris “assumed” a $250,000 loan Hunter Biden received in summer 2019 from a Chinese business executive named Jonathan Li, the memos also showed.

 
Steven Richards

Source: https://justthenews.com/accountability/whistleblowers/cia-prevented-investigators-interviewing-hunter-biden-lawyer-new-irs

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