Saturday, March 20, 2021

Our Growing China Problem - Jeff Lukens

 

​ by Jeff Lukens

[N]ow, with a doddering and corrupt Joe Biden in the Oval Office, the CCP may be in a position to make their boldest moves yet.

The People's Republic of China is an existential threat to the national security, health, and prosperity of the United States.  Communist China has viewed the U.S. as its primary enemy since its founding by Mao Zedong in 1949.  For Beijing, the idea of the Chinese people embracing American-style freedoms is always a threat to their rule.  We are a threat to them just by being who we are.  As such, we must be attacked. 

Over the years, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has expanded its economy and military relentlessly, intending to supplant America in world prominence.  And now, with a doddering and corrupt Joe Biden in the Oval Office, the CCP may be in a position to make their boldest moves yet.

The CCP's goal has been to defeat the U.S. through countless attacks below the threshold of war.  They use our openness against us for intellectual and economic theft.  So far, their strategy has been to gradually grow their strength while weakening us through a myriad of cyberattacks and other actions below the level that would prompt a kinetic military response.  It is a stratagem of war by other means worthy of Sun Tzu. 

For insight on their strategy, we turn to a brilliant book, Unrestricted Warfare. China's Master Plan to Destroy America, written by two PLA colonels, which contends that war between the U.S. and China is inevitable.  With that premise, the book says the CCP must be prepared to use whatever means are necessary to achieve victory.  These actions include economic warfare, cyber warfare, information warfare, political warfare, terrorism, biological warfare, and conventional and nuclear warfare.  The book's purpose was to shape Chinese policy and set U.S. policymakers' idea that the CCP regards nothing off the table.  By understanding the lengths to which the CCP is willing to go, they hope the U.S. might prefer some accommodation instead of open conflict.

First, they infiltrate our institutions.  Brian T.  Kennedy, President of the American Strategy Group, explains:

The CCP operates a vast intelligence network in the US.  It is made up not merely of intelligence operatives working for the Ministry of State Security, but also a myriad of business and industry officials, Chinese scholar associations, Confucius Institutes operating on American campuses, and 370,000 Chinese students attending American universities.  Every one of these Chinese citizens is subject to Article 7 of the PRC's National Intelligence Law of 2017, which requires that "any organization or citizen shall support, assist, and cooperate with state intelligence work." Students and others must report to handlers in Chinese consulates and embassies about who they meet, the research they're working on, and whatever else is demanded.

Then they weaken us from within, which leads us to the COVID pandemic.  While we are not entirely sure the Wuhan Institute of Virology created the virus, it likely did.  We will probably never know the whole truth of what happened.

Dr. Li-Meng Yan has been a courageous whistleblower making headlines alleging that the coronavirus was manufactured inside the laboratory instead of a wet market.  She worked there as a virologist and alleged her seniors all knew about it and chose to keep it a secret.  Dr. Yan left Hong Kong fearing for her life and contacted authorities upon her arrival in Los Angeles in April 2020.  She met with the FBI to tell her story and provide them with evidence. 

The wet market story may have been a ploy.  We know the CCP knew the virus had been released into their population for more than a month before they announced they had a problem.  They closed down China but allowed thousands of their citizens to travel to the U.S. and Europe to spread the virus.  They stockpiled personal protective gear leaving little available for other nations.  The CCP possibly wanted the U.S. and the EU damaged more than they would be by the virus.

Some would consider their behavior an act of war.  Regardless of whether the COVID originated in a wet market or was an accidental release from the virology lab, the CCP is to blame for its spread worldwide.  It was criminal for them to keep the nature of the virus secret from other nations in the early stages of the pandemic.  They may have knowingly harmed the U.S. in an election year to take out the president who stood up to them.  Never mind the hundreds of thousands of people around the globe who died in the process. 

And relations with the CCP may grow worse still.  With Joe Biden in office, they may view his weakness as their long-awaited opportunity to seize Taiwan.  They could probe with air patrols and naval incursions into Taiwanese waters to see what reaction they will get from the Biden administration.  If Biden's response is as feckless and inept as they expect it to be, a full-on island invasion will likely occur with lightning speed.  This action will upset the balance of power and shipping lanes in the western Pacific and worldwide.  European and American dependence on Taiwanese computer microchips could cause an economic catastrophe across the developed world.  Could this nightmare scenario happen in the coming months? We may soon find out.

The CCP believes that a powerful America will eventually cause its demise.  Communism opposes individual freedom, and the example of American liberty may cause its population to arise and bring an end to the regime.  For this reason, any engagement with the Chinese government, any negotiation, any trade agreement, or another kind of understanding will ultimately fail. 

The American public is slowly awaking to the CCP's covert influence operations at all levels of U.S. society.  There's a growing recognition that officials at all levels are targets of co-opting efforts, whether federal officials and congressional members or local universities, school boards, and mayors. 

The CCP is an existential threat to the United States, and we must develop a new long-term strategy to address the danger.  There needs to be a significant decoupling from the Chinese economy.  It starts in Washington and works its way down to the institutions and individuals who boycott products made in China.  We must disengage with them and understand our security will be in jeopardy until we do so.  Our future depends on it.

Image: Echo Point Books

 

Jeff Lukens is a West Point graduate, a U.S. Army veteran, and a political activist in his community.  He can be reached here

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

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The Chinese know very well with whom they’re dealing - Andrea Widburg

 

​ by Andrea Widburg

Tucker Carlson revealed on Friday that the Chinese have a special, disdainful term for Biden and America’s other White wokesters.

On Thursday, during a meeting in Anchorage, China’s top diplomat and its Foreign Minister showed Secretary of State Tony Blinken (an empty suit) and national security adviser Jake Sullivan stunning disrespect. It was almost as if the Chinese knew that these are weak, self-loathing, confused men – and it turns out they did know. Tucker Carlson revealed on Friday that the Chinese have a word for Biden and the other White wokesters now in power. They call them “baizuo,” and can describe their values with stunning and disdainful accuracy.

Blinken opened the meeting with a two-minute attack against China for its failure to follow global rules and norms. To his credit, he did mention “our deep concerns with actions by China, including Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Taiwan, cyber-attacks on the United States, [and] economic coercion towards our allies.” However, he somehow failed to mention either COVID or the Uighurs – that his actual or negligent biological warfare and mass genocide. Hmmm.

The Chinese were not impressed. Top Diplomat Yang Jiechi, who was there with Foreign Minister Wang Yi, launched into an 18-minute long lecture against America which showed how closely the Chinese watch American news. He castigated America for an election that caused many Americans to doubt our democracy, the way Black Lives Matter highlighted human rights problems, Washington’s many alleged cyberattacks, and America’s habit of meddling in foreign affairs. It was the verbal equivalent of slapping Blinken across the face with a glove and calling him a knave and a churl.

Tucker Carlson touched upon all these things in his opening monologue on Friday night. He made it clear that America is governed by a feckless, ignorant political class and that the Chinese are miles ahead of us in understanding who we are – and, more significantly, in understand who America’s new leadership class is.

As part of that understanding, the Chinese have coined a term – “baizuo” – which roughly means “White liberal” (although it applies with equal accuracy to non-Whites such as Obama and Kamala Harris). Tucker adds that “it is definitely not a compliment.” The stunner is how Chinese state media defines the term baizuo:

“There are people who only care about topics such as immigration, minorities, LGBT, and the environment, who have no sense of real problems in the real world, who only advocate for peace and equality to satisfying their own feelings of superiority, and who are so obsessed with political correctness that they tolerate backward Islamic values for the sake of multiculturalism.”

[snip]

Other observations about baisuo as reported by Chinese state media include the fact that they “advocate inclusiveness and antidiscrimination but cannot tolerate different opinions.” Baizuo’s political opinions are “so shallow that they tend to maintain social equality by embracing ideologies that run against the basic concept of equality.”

As Tucker says, “Amazing!”

If you can, take the time to watch what Carlson has to say about how China understands the Biden administration and the deep fissures in American society:

 

 

 Andrea Widburg  

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/03/the_chinese_know_very_well_with_whom_theyre_dealing.html 

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Kamala Harris, Traitor - Matthew Vadum

 

​ by Matthew Vadum

The radical veep’s virtual apology tour begins.

 


Vice President Kamala Devi Harris attacked her own country as violent and racist when she appeared on the world stage with Ireland’s prime minister this week.

She kicked off a St. Patrick’s Day online summit by assailing America in what can be seen as a tribute of sorts to Barack Obama, a mentor of hers who pioneered the globetrotting national self-denunciation when he was president.

Before much was known about a deadly shooting spree at Asian spas in the Atlanta area, Harris seditiously declared on the world stage that it was a hate crime.

“It is tragic,” she told Irish premier Micheal Martin.

“It speaks to a larger issue which is the issue of violence in our country and what we must do to never tolerate it and to always speak out against it. The investigation is ongoing. We don’t yet know, we’re not yet clear about the motives, but I do want to say to our Asian-American community that we stand with you and understand how this has frightened and shocked and outraged all people but knowing the increasing level of hate crime against our Asian-American brothers and sisters we also want to speak out in solidarity with them and acknowledge that none of us should ever be silent in the face of any form of hate.”

Whether “hate” as in “hate crime” was involved in the killings wasn’t clear when Harris spoke, and still isn’t clear at time of writing.

Robert Aaron Long, 21, was soon arrested in connection with the shootings that left 8 people dead, 6 of whom were Asian women, accordingly to the intermittently accurate Heavy website.

The fact that the victims were mostly Asian females in “spas” does not prove Long targeted them because they were a) Asian b) female or c) massage therapists, but because Long is a white male and the media nowadays is obsessed with race, journalists feel entitled to ascribe racial motives to him.

Long reportedly told police his motive had something to do with sex addiction, making him, perhaps, more Travis Bickle than Godzilla.

Harris herself is black, well, sort of. According to some on the Left, she’s not black because she has no slave blood. This woman of Indo-Caribbean ancestry is descended from slaveowners, which makes her the oppressor, not the oppressed.

Harris, who was such a dud during the Democrats’ presidential primaries that she didn’t even make it to the first vote, won the Democrats’ diversity lottery when Joe Biden picked her as his running-mate. Harris is a token. Her only qualifications were her skin color and her genitalia.

Harris sees the world as a kaleidoscope of intersectional differences so when the spa shootings happened, she threw women under the bus in favor of Asians because they rank higher in the hierarchy of victimhood.

Hatred of America is what animates this former San Francisco district attorney and Willie Brown plaything. She only denounces violence she considers to be bad. If the violence consists of Black Lives Matter and Antifa burning the nation’s cities down to the ground to protest the self-caused drug death of a loser like George Floyd, that is good violence in her view.

As her party’s voting base was turning urban America into cremains last summer, Harris cheered them on.

“They're not gonna stop, and this is a movement, I'm telling you."

"They're not gonna stop, and everyone beware, because they're not gonna stop," she said. "They're not gonna stop before Election Day in November, and they're not gonna stop after Election Day."

"Everyone should take note of that, on both levels, that they're not going to let up — and they should not. And we should not," she said.

And let the world beware that Kamala Harris isn’t going to stop reminding the planet’s inhabitants that America is a rotten, violent, racist country, even when she replaces the mentally feeble placeholder president who chose her.

 

Matthew Vadum 

 Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/kamala-harris-traitor-matthew-vadum/ 

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Biden Says He Supports Filibuster Rule Changes - Joseph Klein

 

​ by Joseph Klein

Ploy to enact radical 'progressive' legislation must be stopped in its tracks.

 


President Joe Biden said that he supports a reversal of the current filibuster rules and wants to go back to “the old days” when he first became a senator. Biden reminisced during a March 16th interview with ABC News' anchor and former Clinton flack George Stephanopoulos. “You had to stand up and command the floor, you had to keep talking," Biden said. He added, "It's getting to the point where, you know, democracy is having a hard time functioning."

With the kind of change that Biden has in mind, one or more senators would have to remain on the Senate floor and speak continuously to keep a filibuster challenge to legislation alive. This is an indirect way of busting the filibuster a bit more slowly than immediately eliminating it altogether. If the Republicans surrender to this gambit, the result will be to allow radical legislation on open border immigration, nationalization of voting rules, and other fundamental transformative changes to America’s constitutional republic and capitalistic economy to squeak through a 50-50 divided Senate. Vice President Kamala Harris would cast the tie-breaking vote. So much for Biden’s hollow pledges of bipartisanship and unity.

Back in the day when Biden was serving in the Senate, he spoke out strongly in favor of the filibuster as a way of preventing “a fundamental power grab by the majority party.” Now, with Democrats in charge of the executive and legislative branches of the federal government, President Biden is fine with Democrats leveraging Harris’s tie-breaking power to engineer the mother of all power grabs. All that Biden cares about is placating his leftwing progressive base.

Biden is making an obvious appeal to Democrat Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a relative moderate in the Senate Democrat caucus, to vote for weakening the filibuster. Manchin had previously spoken very strongly in favor of the filibuster as a means to protect the rights of the minority in the Senate and foster bipartisan compromise. For example, last November Manchin told CNN, “I’m not voting for -- for basically breaking the filibuster because that means that we’ve given up on the Senate that’s supposed to work in a bipartisan way.”  On January 11, 2021, Bret Baier, the anchor of Fox News’ “Special Report,” asked Manchin what he would tell Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer if Schumer pressed him to “break the filibuster, to change the rules.” Manchin responded, “I would say, Chuck, have you sat down and tried to work with Mitch? And, Mitch, would you sit down with Chuck? Can you all try to work this out? Can we find some compromise to where we can get 60 or 65 of us voting for the same thing?”

In recent days, Manchin has changed his tune, signaling his willingness to turn the filibuster into attrition warfare. Biden and Schumer see an opening to use their raw power to nullify fifty Republicans – half  the Senate – and enact the Democrats' radical progressive agenda.

Biden already signaled his “ends justify the means” attitude when he worked with Democrats to jam through his so-called “American Rescue Plan Act of 2021” via the budget reconciliation process. This maneuver allowed the Senate to bypass the filibuster altogether. The Democrats passed, without a single Senate Republican vote, a radical wish list that White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki described as "one of the most consequential and most progressive pieces of legislation in American history." Most of it had little to do with actual COVID-19 relief. Now there is talk about using the budget reconciliation process again to pass historic tax increases and infrastructure pork legislation.

However, to pass their complete leftwing progressive legislative agenda, Biden and his Democrat pals in Congress know that they cannot rely on the budget reconciliation process alone. They saw its limits when the Senate parliamentarian ruled that the $15 hourly national minimum wage provision did not belong in a reconciliation bill. Thus, they must rally all 50 Democrat senators to stick together and use their ace in the hole – Harris’s tie-breaking vote - to change the legislative filibuster rules for the first time since 1975.

The current legislative filibuster procedure prevents the majority in the Senate from freezing out the minority on legislation of major importance without holding up the business of the Senate on other matters. It is unconscionable that Schumer and his cohorts, with Biden’s support, are planning to neuter the only Senate procedural safeguard against their overreach in a Senate that is evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans.

The Democrats are acting as if they have a clear mandate from voters to forge ahead with their radical agenda in the absence of a single Republican vote. They want a blank check to enact all sorts of unprecedented progressive proposals into law solely by virtue of Harris’s tie-breaking vote. Democrats are thirsting, for example, to do away with states’ protections against voter fraud. They want to codify nationwide universal mail-in voting, turn the Federal Election Commission into their partisan tool, and silence the voices of those advocating political positions that deviate from their own. This is the first step on the way to one-party rule in Washington, D.C. The next step is to extend amnesty and citizenship to millions of illegal aliens, who will pay Democrat candidates for president and Congress back with their unearned votes. Then it is on to strict gun control legislation that could lead to gun confiscations, packing the Supreme Court, and so on.

Opponents of the filibuster argue that it is an anti-democratic relic of the past. Of course, that’s what many of them say about the Constitution itself. The filibuster as it now exists is needed more than ever today to stop the Senate Democrats’ onrushing freight train loaded with packages of leftwing progressive legislation.

If the Democrats proceed with their plan to change the filibuster rules to make the Republicans feel “pain” in using the filibuster in the future, the Republicans will need to inflict some pain of their own on the power-hungry Democrats. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has already warned his Democrat colleagues that if they change the filibuster rules, they will pay a very heavy price. Vowing to use every option and “scorched earth” tactic at his disposal, McConnell threatened that his Republican caucus will make the Senate "more like a 100-car pileup, nothing moving." Biden can then say goodbye to his legislative agenda for a long time, except for what he can push through the budget reconciliation process.

"Does anyone really believe the American people were voting for an entirely new system of government by electing Joe Biden to the White House and a 50-50 senate?” McConnell asked rhetorically. “This is a 50-50 Senate. There was no mandate to completely transform America by the American people on November 3. That may be what a few liberal activists want, but does anyone believe that millions of Americans thought that's what they were electing? Of course not."

McConnell also reminded the Democrats that the power pendulum swings both ways, "and it would swing hard." He added, "We wouldn't just erase every liberal change that hurt the country -- we'd strengthen America with all kinds of conservative policies with zero, zero input from the other side."

If the filibuster is to turn into a non-stop talking marathon, the Republicans supporting a filibuster of a radical piece of legislation (hopefully all 50) can take turns speaking on the floor every hour of every day and night, without any break between speakers if they must. They can start with multiple readings of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and then go from there. Maybe Biden, Schumer and their friends will learn something. Then again, probably not.

* * *

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore

 

Joseph Klein  

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/biden-says-he-supports-filibuster-rule-changes-joseph-klein-0/ 

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Lies in the Cognitive War Against Israel - Richard L. Cravatts

 

​ by Richard L. Cravatts

Striking down the falsehoods - one libel at a time.

 


Frontpagemag Editor's note: Below is Part I in a 2-Part Series on 'Lies in the Cognitive War Against Israel'. Part 2 will run in our next issue.

In the cognitive war against Israel, supporters of what historian Bat Ye’or called Palestinianism have come to accept the fact that Israel will not be defeated employing traditional tools of warfare. Instead, the Jewish state’s enemies, abetted by the academic and media elites in the West, have been using different, but equally dangerous, tactics to delegitimize and eventually destroy Israel in a cognitive war.

By dressing up old hatreds against Jews and transforming it into what comprises the “new anti-Semitism,” combined with a purported goal of seeking social justice for the oppressed and repackaging ugly biases as academic scholarship, professors, student activist groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), and Israel’s other ideological foes have found an effective, but odious, way to ensure that the Jew of nations, Israel, is still accused of being: a racist, apartheid oppressor of an indigenous people; white European Jews with no historical connection to the Holy Land who are colonial usurpers of Muslim land; the main impediment to Middle East peace; and a brutal military occupier of land on which illegal “settlements” are built as a way of subjugating an existing innocent population in the quest for a Great Israel that will swallow even more territory to which the Jews have no legitimate claim.

This is the current narrative in what Melanie Phillips has called “the world turned upside down,” an inversion of truth and fiction, calumnies and lies targeting the Jewish state in an effort to elevate the Palestinian cause, delegitimize Israel, and make Israel a pariah in the world community. But this narrative, unfortunately, is based on a presentation of lies, a series of repeated tropes about the malignancy and illegality of Israel that has little to do with facts, history, or reason. These lies are repeated promiscuously until they accepted as fact, a Goebbel-esque tradition which creates a new truth through the unrelenting repetition of falsity, disingenuity, and distortions of reality.

What follows are some of the major tropes which together serve to perpetuate the false narrative about Israel:

The Racism and Apartheid Lie

In what has become a perverse, recurring rite of spring, and yet more evidence that universities have become, as Abigail Thernstrom has described them, “islands of repression in a sea of freedom,” on campuses across America and Canada virulent anti-Israel student groups, the brownshirts in the cognitive war against Israel, sponsor what is called Israeli Apartheid Week. 

During these hate-fests, students are confronted by mock “apartheid walls,” vitriolic guest speakers who defame Israel, and posters, demonstrations, and other materials in which the actual facts about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict are omitted, contorted, or altered to promote the false narrative about Israel’s (and Zionism’s) fundamental racist ideology, its illegality as a colonial usurper of Palestine, its brutal oppression and occupation, and its ethnic cleansing of an indigenous people.

Even before the death of George Floyd last spring in Minneapolis, campuses were obsessed with the issue of race, and pro-Palestinian groups have been very strategic in positioning the conflict between the Jewish state and the Palestinians as being, at base, about race. Those who called for boycotts against South Africa for its actual inhumane system of apartheid, now draw comparisons between Israel and South Africa, falsely claiming that Israel has constructed an analogous system of racial subjugation.

At the Israeli Apartheid Week events, radical sponsors refer to the Israeli security barrier as an “apartheid wall,” and describe it as if it were a massive, unbroken structure that cruelly divides Palestinian areas, all in order to create a broader misconception about the Palestinians living under a South African-style apartheid regime, disingenuously equating race restrictions that blacks lived under in Soweto with the open society of Israel in which Israeli Arabs have more rights than in any Arab state and are asked only not to murder Jews in their midst. And Israel’s non-Jewish citizens, comprising some one-fifth of its total population, are, of course, able to enjoy all the civil and human rights enjoyed by Jewish citizens, including being able to serve in the Knesset and hold other government and professional posts.

But on university campuses, Jews have been successfully cast as white, and, the slander goes, Zionism itself is fundamentally racist, so that white supremacy and Zionism are conveniently, though disingenuously, conflated. At the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign’s SJP chapter, for example, this hateful ideology was on full display when, in a September 2017 Facebook post, the group announced that since “there is no room for fascists, white supremacists, or Zionists at UIUC,” they had organized a rally called “Smashing Fascism: Radical Resistance Against White Supremacy.”  

And this assumption is dangerous because, since it is accepted widely by the hate-Israel crowd, it has meant that, as the UN infamously achieved in 1975, Zionism again will be equivalent to racism, and any supporters of Israel can thereby be condemned and thrown into that ideological bucket of white supremacists, racists, and neo-Nazis that now seem to so animate the imaginations of Democrats, liberals, and marginalized and oppressed minorities.

The Lie that Terrorism Against Israeli Occupation is Justified

Frequently confronted at anti-Israel demonstrations are protestors yelling angry chants, carrying signs, and shouting out the oft-heard slogan, “Free, Free Palestine,” or, as they regularly scream out, “Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea.” That phrase suggests the same situation that a rekindled Intifada would help bring about, namely that if the fictive nation of “Palestine” is “liberated,” is free, there will, of course, be no Israel between the Jordan River and Mediterranean—and no Jews.

Another deadly chorus often emanates from protestors during these noxious hate-fests: “When people are occupied, resistance is justified.” That is an oft-repeated, but disingenuous and false notion that stateless terrorists have some recognized human right to murder civilians whose government has purportedly occupied their territory. That is not true in Judea and Samaria and clearly not any longer the case in Gaza, where every Jew was removed in 2005 and where there is a blockade in effect to prevent the influx of weapons, but clearly no occupation or, as commonly referred to, a “siege.”

It may be comforting for Israel’s ideological foes to rationalize the murder of Jews by claiming some international right to do it with impunity and a sense of righteousness. Unfortunately, however, as legal experts have inconveniently pointed out, activists expressing this ambition and their terror-appeasing apologists elsewhere are completely wrong about the legitimacy of murder as part of “resistance” to an occupying force. Article IV of the Third Geneva Convention, the statute which defines combatants and legitimate targets in warfare, is very specific about who may kill and who may be killed, and it does not allow for the murder of either Israeli civilians—or soldiers—by psychopathic Palestinian terrorists who wear no identifying military uniforms and do not follow the accepted rules of wars.

So, when pro-Palestinian activists and critics of Israel repeat the claim that Palestinians somehow have an internationally recognized legal “right” to resist occupation through violent means, they are both legitimizing that terror and helping to ensure that its lethal use by Israel’s enemies will continue unabated.

Those who lend their moral support to terrorism, and who continually see the existence of “grievance-based violence” as a justifiable tool of the oppressed, have helped introduce a sick moral relativism into discussions about radical Islam and Palestinianism, not to mention Israel’s right to protect its citizens from being slaughtered. And the notion that Israel cannot, or should not, retaliate against these rocket attacks until a sufficient number of Israelis has been murdered is equally grotesque.

And when anti-Israel activists carelessly refer to “state violence and control” when describing Israel’s behavior toward terrorists and others attempting to murder its citizens, it is possibly the result of decades of Arab terror against the Jewish state, not the so-called occupation or the presence of Jewish settlers in Judea and Samaria. In fact, as historian Efraim Karsh has correctly pointed out, it was not the occupation that caused Arab terrorism against Israel, at all; in fact, historic and chronic aggression toward Israel and the desire to wipe it off the earth and drive all Jews into the sea precipitated the defensive war in 1967 that precipitated the occupation in the first place.

In fact, the checkpoints, the security barrier, a military presence, and other tactical elements of self-defense exist, not because of Israel’s cruelty and desire to be randomly oppressive, but because these measures have been necessitated by, among other things, 20,000 rockets and mortars sent into southern Israeli neighborhoods from Gaza by Hamas over the past decade, psychopaths with suicide vests, knives, stones, guns, and vehicles used as weapons against the IDF and Israeli citizens, and the publicly stated policies by Hamas of a sacred duty to murder Jews wherever they are found and to never accept treaties, peace plans, or Jewish self-determination of any kind.

Lies About the So-Called Occupation and the Settlements

When pro-Palestinians, the UN, and diplomats and other anti-Israel elites make repeated references to the West Bank and Gaza, as well as East Jerusalem, as “Arab” land, they imagine the putative Palestinian state in waiting, encumbered only by Israeli oppression, the dreaded occupation, and those pesky settlers.

This widely held notion that European Jews, with no connection to historic Palestine, colonized Arab land and displaced the indigenous Palestinian population, of course, is a key part of the false narrative against Israel; it serves the perverse purpose of validating Arab territorial rights to Judea and Samaria, portions of Jerusalem, and Gaza, and, more importantly, casts Israelis as squatters who have expropriated land that is not lawfully or morally theirs.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s 2019 confirmation of the legality of the settlements served to reverse the faulty historical assumptions and misreading of law that has animated the settlement debate, principally the fact that not only all of the land that comprises current­-day Israel, but also Gaza and the West Bank is part of the land granted to the Jews as part of the League of Nations Palestine Mandate, which recognized the right of the Jewish people to “close settlement” in a portion of those territories gained after the breakup of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. 

The Six Day War of 1967, in which Israel recaptured Gaza and the West Bank, including Jerusalem, resulted in Israel being cast in another perfidious role — in addition to colonial usurper of Arab land, the Jewish state was described as a brutal “occupier” of Arab Palestine, lands to which the Jews presumably had no right and now occupied, in the opinion of many in the international community, illegally.

But when did Judea and Samaria, Gaza, and East Jerusalem become Palestinian land? The answer is: never. In fact, when Israel acquired the West Bank and Gaza and other territories in 1967 after being attacked by Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, the Jewish state gained legally recognized title to those areas. In Israel’s 1948 War of Independence, Egypt, it will be recalled, illegally annexed Gaza at the same time Jordan illegally annexed the West Bank — actions that were not recognized by most of the international community as legitimate in establishing their respective sovereignties. 

While those seeking Palestinian statehood conveniently overlook the legal rights Jews still enjoy that enable them to occupy all areas of historic Palestine, they have also used another oft­-cited, but defective, argument in accusing Israel of violating international law by maintaining settlements in the West Bank, that since the Six Day War, Israel has conducted a “belligerent occupation.” But as Professor Julius Stone discussed in his book, Israel and Palestine, the fact that the West Bank and Gaza were acquired by Israel in a “sovereignty vacuum,” that is, that there was an absence of High Contracting Party with legal claim to the areas, means that, in this instance, the definition of a belligerent occupant in invalid. So, significantly, the absence of any sovereignty in territories acquired in a defensive war—as was the case in the Six Day War of 1967—means that it is incorrect to characterize Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria as an occupation, belligerent or otherwise.

The matter of Israel violating Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention is one that has been used regularly, and disingenuously, as part of the cognitive war by those wishing to criminalize the creation of Jewish neighborhoods in the West Bank and demonize Israel for behavior allegedly in violation of international law. It asserts that in allowing its citizens (the dreaded settlers) to move into occupied territories, Israel violates Article 49, which stipulates that “the occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into territory it occupies.”

The use of this particular Geneva Convention seems particularly grotesque in the case of Israel, since it was crafted after World War II specifically to prevent a repetition of the actions of the Nazis in cleansing Germany of its own Jewish citizens and deporting them to Nazi-occupied countries for slave labor or extermination. Clearly, the intent of the Convention was to prevent belligerents from forcibly moving their citizens to other territories, for malignant purposes — something completely different than the Israel government allowing its citizens to willingly relocate, build neighborhoods for their families, and settle in territories without any current sovereignty, to which Jews have long­standing legal claim, and, whether or not the area may become a future Palestinian state, should certainly be a place where any person could live, even if he or she is a Jew. 

Intersectionality and the Lie About Israel Being an Oppressor

The obsession with Israel and its various perceived modes of oppression and brutality toward a weak, innocent victim group is consistent with the worldview of many academics in the humanities and social sciences who increasingly find a linkage as they seek to affirm the rights of the victimized and name the villains responsible for this oppression. The more that seemingly unrelated instances of oppression can be conflated, it is thought, the greater the ability to confront these oppressors and neutralize the negative effect they have on society at large.

This trend is called “intersectionality,” and it has meant that someone who is a gender studies professor, or queer theorist, or American studies expert can, with no actual knowledge or expertise about the Middle East, readily pontificate on the many social pathologies of Israel, based on its perceived role as a racist, colonial oppressor of an innocent indigenous population of Arab victims. For these Israel-haters, to know one victim group is to know any victim group—with Israel being a tempting and habitual target of their opprobrium.

The idea of brutal, militarized oppression by Israel of the wholly-innocent Palestinian victims is, of course, central to the false narrative that propels anti-Israel activism on campuses where SJP and other anti-Israel groups have a presence, and the current obsession with criticizing and dismantling domestic police forces conflates nicely with a discussion about the way Israel’s predations are perceived to be equivalent to the racist, oppressive behavior of white American police officers in their interaction with blacks and other marginalized groups and “people of color.”

The Deadly Exchange campaign, the name Jewish Voice for Peace and other anti-Israel groups have given to these police training programs, takes the accusation of racism one step further, making it part of a global, ongoing campaign to slander and delegitimize Israel by ascribing to it the worst moral characteristics, including, specifically, the one accusation that is the most grievous and unforgivable: racism. And not only does it provide yet another opportunity for anti-Israel activists to trumpet the predations of the Jewish state, to stress once again the alleged racism, apartheid, and ethnic subjugation of Arab Palestinians, it can also smear Israel with another, even more sinister, accusation: not only has Israel perfected its brutality and oppression toward the Palestinians but now, thanks to these cooperative training programs with U.S. law enforcement personnel, Israel now exports its moral depravity and cruelty, and its racism can metastasize itself in minority communities in the United States, too. The placards seen at protests for years now, reading “From Ferguson to Palestine,” echoed that very theme, purporting that the racial injustices experienced by blacks in America are mirrored in the experience of Palestinians who suffer under the similar racism and oppression of Israel.

That Israel has become of the embodiment of evil, that its racism, militarism, and oppression now are so powerful that they cross borders and infect minority communities in America, and that the Jewish state can now be held responsible for bigotry on campuses far from its own borders indicates how powerful the anti-Israel narrative has become, and how the obsessive hatred by activists against the Jewish state ensures that the oldest hatred shows itself in yet another hateful permutation.

 

Richard L. Cravatts, Ph.D., a Freedom Center Journalism Fellow in Academic Free Speech and President Emeritus of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, is the author of Dispatches From the Campus War Against Israel and Jews.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/lies-cognitive-war-against-israel-richard-l-cravatts/ 

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When Cultural Appropriation and Historical Revisionism Are Acts of War - Caroline Glick

 

​ by Caroline Glick

“If they needed rocks for the road, all the Palestinians had to do was bring up a truck and take as many as they needed. Instead, they brought a bulldozer all the way up here and deliberately destroyed 60 meters of a 3,250-year-old wall.”


Two weeks ago, a bus filled with veteran Israeli generals from the Bithonistim, a grassroots national security organization, slowly made its way up the slopes of Mt. Ebal in Northern Samaria to visit a biblical-era site that was severely damaged by a Palestinian Authority contractor in late January.

They came to draw the public’s attention to the strategic implications of the war the Palestinians are waging against Jewish history.

The site was excavated between 1980 and 1989 by the late Professor Adam Zertal, who identified it as Joshua’s Altar as described in the Books of Deuteronomy, (27; 1-9) and Joshua (8; 30-35). The animal remains at the site contained thousands of burnt bones of year-old male, exclusively kosher, animals. They were burned in an open flame 3,250 years ago—the time generally identified as the period of ancient Jewish settlement of the Land of Israel under Joshua. Other remains found at the site included earrings and scarabs made in Egypt at the time of Ramses II, the Egyptian pharaoh often associated with the story of the Exodus from Egypt.

As Zertal explained in a lecture in 2013, the altar was buried under a layer of rocks, in keeping with Jewish prescriptions for preventing the desecration of abandoned holy sites. In keeping with the biblical narrative, the altar is made of unhewn stones; instead of steps, there are two ramps for the priests to alight to the platform—blocks of plaster were found nearby. The altar at Mt. Ebal also matches a Talmudic description of an altar from the Second Temple period, around 900 years later, indicating a continuity of Jewish practices throughout the biblical period.

Although initially controversial, Zertal’s general finding that the site is around 3,300 years old and is a Jewish historical site, where sacrifices were carried out in keeping with biblical guidelines, has become widely accepted—although many continue to dispute the specific identification with Joshua.

In late January, the Palestinian Authority (PA) posted a video on its website of 60 meters of the ancient wall surrounding the altar being destroyed to pave a road connecting the Palestinian village of Asira ash-Shamaliya to Nablus. Nablus, built on the ruins of the biblical city of Shechem, is located in northern Samaria between Mt. Ebal and Mt. Gerizim.

Zertal was a fiercely secular son of hardcore socialists. Yet, he explained in a 2013 lecture, his scientific work compelled him to accept that the biblical narrative “from Deuteronomy through the Books of Kings was historically accurate.”

“There are people who refuse to acknowledge that the damage done here was deliberate,” Major General Gershon Hacohen explained to Newsweek. “That since it was the surrounding wall—rather than the altar itself—that was destroyed, the altar wasn’t harmed. That’s like saying that if someone destroys the steps to the Acropolis, they aren’t harming the Acropolis. It’s the same complex.”

“They also say the Palestinians weren’t trying to damage the site—they just needed stones for their road. But look at this place,” he said and waved his hand across the landscape.

The slopes of Mt. Ebal are strewn with loose rocks.

“If they needed rocks for the road, all the Palestinians had to do was bring up a truck and take as many as they needed. Instead, they brought a bulldozer all the way up here and deliberately destroyed 60 meters of a 3,250-year-old wall.”

As if to prove Hacohen’s point, this week, a group of Palestinians was filmed barbecuing on the altar itself.

The Palestinian effort to destroy the site is of a piece with the PA’s long-standing efforts to destroy the physical record of millennia-old Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel. That effort is now focused on destroying and appropriating the artifacts of Jewish history in Samaria.

Just across the valley from Mt. Ebal is Tel Samaria, which contains the remains of the city of Samaria—the capital built by King Omri of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, where both Omri and King Ahab ruled.

During the Roman period, Herod built the city of Sebastia at Tel Samaria and turned it into one of the most important cities in ancient Israel.

In November 2020, the PA held a ceremony at Sebastia in which Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh proclaimed it a “Palestinian heritage site” and foisted a massive Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) flag up a 15-meter flagpole.

The Palestinians claim Herod, known as “the King of the Jews”—the ruler who expanded the Jewish Second Temple complex in Jerusalem in the first century B.C.E.—was actually “the King of Palestine.”

The PA is also destroying the nearby archaeological site of Tel Aroma, a center of Jewish settlement for more than a millennium.

Since the PLO founded the PA in 1994 in the framework of its peace process with Israel, destroying and appropriating Jewish historical sites—with the enthusiastic support of international organizations like UNESCO—has been a constant effort.

Immediately after Israel transferred control over the city of Jericho to the PA in 1994, then-PLO leader Yasser Arafat directed the destruction of the ancient Shalom al Yisrael synagogue in Jericho.

But the central focus of its destructive activities has been the Temple Mount.

In 1999, the PA carried out a massive renovation project to transform ancient underground Temple Mount chambers into a new mosque, removing 9,000 tons of antiquities and debris from the complex and dumping them around Jerusalem. Alarmed archaeologists collected the debris and transferred it to Mt. Scopus, where the Temple Mount Sifting Project was inaugurated. Over the next 20 years, thousands of artifacts were discovered by volunteers who sifted through the garbage to salvage them.

Last year, the PA plundered Hasmonean graves at the Hasmonean palace outside Jericho and scattered 2,000-year-old bones.

UNESCO, the UN agency charged with preserving international heritage sites, has supported the Palestinian efforts, denied the Jewish ties to the Temple Mount—Judaism’s most sacred site—and declared the Cave of Machpela in Hebron—where the biblical patriarchs and matriarchs are buried—an Islamic heritage site, along with Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem.

The PLO and the PA have never agreed to recognize that Israel is the Jewish state. Since the PLO published its charter in 1964, the consistent Palestinian position has been to deny that the Jews have any history at all in the Land of Israel. An internal memo from the PLO’s negotiations support unit explained why. Published in 2011 by The Guardian and Al Jazeera, it warned, “Recognition of the Jewish people and their right to self-determination may lend credence to the Jewish people’s claim to all of Historic Palestine.”

In other words, the obliteration of the historical record is a fundamental feature of the Palestinian war to destroy Israel. Any acknowledgement of Jewish history in the Land of Israel risks revealing the otherwise-undeniable truth that the Jewish people are indigenous to the Land of Israel.

Arafat’s successor, PLO and PA chief Mahmoud Abbas, as well as all of his colleagues, live by these lies. Abbas has rewritten thousands of years of history to claim a 5,000-year history in the Land of Israel for the Palestinians. He alternates between claiming lineage from the Jebusites and Canaanites, while denying that there was ever a Jewish Temple in Jerusalem.

Benny Katzover, who served as Samaria Regional Council chairman during Zertal’s excavation, became close friends with Zertal during his long years of work. Speaking to the generals, Katzover said, “No nation would allow anyone to destroy its roots in this fashion. We, the Jewish people, have the deepest, most significant roots in our land of all of humanity. It isn’t a surprise that the entire world is trying to deny these ties, by turning a blind eye to the destruction and claiming that the Cave of Machpela is a Palestinian heritage site.”

Hacohen responded by recalling an interview from 2009 with Abbas Zaki, the PLO’s ambassador to Lebanon, in which Zaki revealed the PLO’s true purpose when it calls for a so-called “two-state solution” that would require Israel to withdraw from Judea and Samaria and northern, eastern and southern Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount.

“With the two-state solution,” Zaki said, “Israel will collapse, because if they get out of Jerusalem, what will become of all the talk about the Promised Land and the Chosen People? What will become of all the sacrifices they made—just to be told to leave? They consider Jerusalem to have a spiritual status. The Jews consider Judea and Samaria to be their historic dream. If the Jews leave those places, the Zionist idea will begin to collapse. It will regress of its own accord. Then we will move forward.”

In other words, the purpose of the Palestinian war against, and appropriation of, Jewish history in the Land of Israel is to set the conditions for Israel’s ultimate physical destruction. Where better to strike than the site where, in Moses’s words, the Jews became “the nation of the Lord your God?”

Originally published in Newsweek.

 

Caroline Glick  

Source: https://carolineglick.com/when-cultural-appropriation-and-historical-revisionism-are-acts-of-war/ 

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How Arabs Discriminate Against Palestinians - Khaled Abu Toameh

 

​ by Khaled Abu Toameh

Evidently, no one really does care about the plight of the Palestinians. They are only cared about if they can be made to appear as victims of Israel, never of an Arab country.

  • "Palestinians have effectively been stripped of their identity and travel documents by successive Iraqi governments," according to another report by Al-Araby Al-Jadeed.

  • In 2003 alone, 344 Palestinian families were forcibly expelled from their homes [in Iraq] by militias. Between 2003 and 2016, an estimated 300 Palestinian refugees were killed by these militias.... Palestinians have been demonized even in social media posts as potential 'terrorists' by accounts linked to the [Iraqi] interior ministry." — Al-Araby Al-Jadeed.

  • In 2017, Iraqi President Fuad Masum approved a law that stripped Palestinian refugees living in Iraq of their rights and classified them as foreigners.

  • The international reaction would, of course, have been completely different if Israel taken such measures against Palestinians. Evidently, no one really does care about the plight of the Palestinians. They are only cared about if they can be made to appear as victims of Israel, never of an Arab country.

  • Palestinian leaders are much too busy attacking Israel and demanding that the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecute Israelis for alleged "war crimes" against the Palestinians to notice the suffering of Palestinians at the hands of an Arab country.

  • The ICC, which appears obsessed with Israel, is unlikely to launch an investigation into Iraq's ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Likewise, the United Nations Security Council is unlikely to hold an emergency session to denounce Iraq for its discriminatory measures against the Palestinians. The international media, for its part, will also continue their usually venomous -- and usually unjustified -- attacks on Israel, while ignoring the horrendous treatment the Palestinians receive from their Arab brothers.

Iraq is among the many Arab countries where Palestinians continue to face discriminatory measures and laws. Worse, it seems the Iraqi authorities are carrying out a policy of ethnic cleansing against the few thousand Palestinians who still live in Iraq. Pictured: A man rides a bicycle under Palestinian flags hung for the celebrations marking "Al-Quds Day," on May 22, 2020 in Baghdad, Iraq. (Photo by Ahmad Al-Rubaye/AFP via Getty Images)

The Palestinian Authority (PA) has invited Iraq to send observers to monitor the Palestinian parliamentary elections, if and when they are held on May 22. The invitation was extended to Mohamed al-Halbousi, Speaker of the Council of Representatives of Iraq, by the PA ambassador to Iraq, Ahmed Akl, during a meeting in Baghdad.

It is not clear whether the Iraqis have accepted the invitation. What is clear, however, is that Iraq is among the many Arab countries where Palestinians continue to face discriminatory measures and laws.

Worse, it seems the Iraqi authorities are carrying out a policy of ethnic cleansing against the few thousand Palestinians who still live in Iraq.

According to a recent report, the Iraqi authorities are now demanding that Palestinians who leave Iraq for a period exceeding three months apply for an entry visa.

A member of the Iraqi parliament told the pan-Arab media outlet Al-Araby Al-Jadeed that the Iraqi Ministry of Foreign Affairs has circulated a directive preventing the return of any Palestinian who spends more than three months outside Iraq, unless he or she is granted an entry visa by an Iraqi embassy.

The unnamed MP said that the directive requires the Palestinian to explain the reason why he or she stayed out of Iraq for more than three months. The new measure, he added, also applies to Palestinians who were born in Iraq.

Some Palestinians who approached the Iraqi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, to obtain an entry visa so that they could return to their homes in Iraq were turned away, the Iraqi MK disclosed. "This is an immoral decision that is incompatible with the slogans raised by Iraq in support of the Palestinian issue," he remarked.

The new measure means that hundreds of Palestinians who left Iraq for various purposes, including medical treatment or education, will find now find it difficult to return to their homes. These Palestinians, who were never granted Iraqi citizenship, will become refugees in the countries they are visiting. The number of Palestinians residing in Iraq fell sharply from about 40,000 before the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 to fewer than 4,000 today.

Many Palestinians fled Iraq after they were exposed to campaigns of violence and killing from Iraqi militiamen, who accused them of being affiliated with the regime of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

"Palestinians have effectively been stripped of their identity and travel documents by successive Iraqi governments," according to another report by Al-Araby Al-Jadeed.

"Having been maligned as being 'Baathist loyalists' and 'Saddam's favorites,' Palestinians refugees were heavily targeted by sectarian Shia militias. In 2003 alone, 344 Palestinian families were forcibly expelled from their homes by militias. Between 2003 and 2016, an estimated 300 Palestinian refugees were killed by these militias. The Iraqi authorities largely turned a blind eye, as Palestinians have been demonized even in social media posts as potential 'terrorists' by accounts linked to the [Iraqi] interior ministry."

In 2017, Iraqi President Fuad Masum approved a law that stripped Palestinian refugees living in Iraq of their rights and classified them as foreigners.

The Palestinian Return Center condemned in the strongest terms the law and said it discriminates against Palestinians living in Iraq. The center called on the international community to condemn the new legislation and apply strong pressure on the Iraqi government to respect its international obligations toward the Palestinians.

The international community and so-called pro-Palestinian groups and individuals, however, have still not uttered a word about the discriminatory measures targeting the Palestinians living in Iraq.

The international reaction would, of course, have been completely different if Israel taken such measures against Palestinians. Evidently, no one really does care about the plight of the Palestinians. They are only cared about if they can be made to appear as victims of Israel, never of an Arab country.

A Palestinian man who left Iraq for leg surgery in Turkey was quoted as saying that the Iraqi embassy in Turkey refused his request for an entry visa more than once. "I don't know where to go now," he said. "I was born in Iraq and I have no other place to go. My family and all my relatives live in Iraq."

Thamer Ali, a 66-year-old Palestinian from Iraq, said that the Iraqi government "still deals with us as foreigners, and we have no right to employment or work in governmental or private institutions."

Ali said that he and other Palestinians living in Iraq have appealed to the Palestinian Authority for help "dozens of times," to no avail.

The Palestinian Authority's silence about the mistreatment of Palestinians in Iraq comes as no surprise. Palestinian leaders are much too busy attacking Israel and demanding that the International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecute Israelis for alleged "war crimes" against the Palestinians to notice the suffering of Palestinians at the hands of an Arab country.

This ongoing silence means that soon no Palestinians will remain in Iraq.

The ICC, which appears obsessed with Israel, is unlikely to launch an investigation into Iraq's ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Likewise, the United Nations Security Council is unlikely to hold an emergency session to denounce Iraq for its discriminatory measures against the Palestinians. The international media, for its part, will also continue their usually venomous -- and usually unjustified -- attacks on Israel, while ignoring the horrendous treatment the Palestinians receive from their Arab brothers.

  • Follow Khaled Abu Toameh on Twitter

 

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

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17097/arabs-discrimination-palestinians 

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Should Anything Be Off-Limits to Debate and Discuss? - Alan M. Dershowitz

 

​ by Alan M. Dershowitz

There are several exceptions to this cancel culture rule. You can say almost anything negative about Jews, as evidenced by the recent Grammy awards, during which three overt anti-Semites were honored.

  • The fact that we even have to ask these questions demonstrates the precarious state of freedom of speech and the marketplace of ideas in the cancel culture....

  • Professors are being fired for private discussions of grades and race. Students are terrified of expressing politically incorrect views, especially about race, sex, sexual orientation and even politics. Even silence is not always an option.

  • There are several exceptions to this cancel culture rule. You can say almost anything negative about Jews, as evidenced by the recent Grammy awards, during which three overt anti-Semites were honored. These bigots did not even try to disguise their anti-Semitism behind the facade of anti-Zionism.

  • There has never been a time when respectful and nuanced debate has been more needed, especially about race and other taboo subjects— taboo unless you toe the line of political correctness.

  • Slate's decision to suspend Peska strikes a blow against diversity. Yes, diversity! —which includes diversity of views about every issue including how best to deal with racism and how best to achieve equality.

  • Slate should end Peska's suspension, apologize to him, and encourage debate about the issue over which he was suspended.

Professors are being fired for private discussions of grades and race. Students are terrified of expressing politically incorrect views.... Pictured: photo of Alan Dershowitz, Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Emeritus at Harvard Law School. (Photo by Senate Television via Getty Images)

Slate — the online magazine known for its provocative content—has indefinitely suspended one of its star podcasters, Mike Peska, for debating with a colleague, on an inter-office messaging platform, whether it is ever appropriate for a non-Black person to use the N-word in the context of a discussion about race. It is not clear whether in the course of the discussion Peska actually uttered the word itself or just used the term "n-word."

In defending Slate's decision, a Black staffer argued that "For Black employees, it's an extremely small ask to not hear that particular slur and not have debate about whether it's OK for white employees to use that particular slur." Not have debate?

Should anything be off limits to debate and discuss? Is this issue not reasonably debatable? Can only Black people debate this issue, as my colleague Randy Kennedy brilliantly did in his book whose title is the actual word—spelled out? Can the issue be discussed in racially mixed classrooms? Should that depend on the race of the teacher? Must a teacher who wants to have such a discussion issue a trigger warning? Is a trigger warning enough? Must he obtain permission from Black students in the class to discuss the use of the word even if the word itself is not uttered? Do these restrictions apply only to this word and only to slurs against Blacks, or do they apply as well to derogatory words against other groups.

There was, for example, a recent controversy over the use of the word "kike" by a basketball player. Can that word be used in debating the proper NBA response to the use of that slur, or comparable slurs against gays, women, Asian Americans or others? Are there even comparable slurs or is the N-word in a category by itself because of its history?

Finally, have I committed a suspendable offense by asking these questions in this column? Or on my podcast (The Dershow), which I have done?

The fact that we even have to ask these questions demonstrates the precarious state of freedom of speech and the marketplace of ideas in the cancel culture which is quickly becoming the American culture.

Professors are being fired for private discussions of grades and race. Students are terrified of expressing politically incorrect views, especially about race, sex, sexual orientation and even politics. Even silence is not always an option. An adjunct professor at Georgetown law school was suspended and pressured to resign for not criticizing a fellow professor who bemoaned grade disparity based on race. His sin: bystander complicity.

There are several exceptions to this cancel culture rule. You can say almost anything negative about Jews, as evidenced by the recent Grammy awards, during which three overt anti-Semites were honored. These bigots did not even try to disguise their anti-Semitism behind the facade of anti-Zionism. They accused "the Jews" of promoting white supremacy. They denied the right of the Jewish people to national liberation. They showed support for the bigot Farrakhan who calls Judaism a "gutter religion," and blames them for the slave trade. Imagine the Grammy's honoring a David Duke acolyte or someone who was critical of Black Lives Matter! It would not happen. We should discuss why this double standard is not only tolerated -- it is promoted and applauded by those who would cancel politically incorrect expression with which they disagree. Even discussing or debating this double standard risks cancelation.

There has never been a time when respectful and nuanced debate has been more needed, especially about race and other taboo subjects— taboo unless you toe the line of political correctness. We are a deeply divided nation. We need to find common ground where such exists, while at the same time respecting conflicting views.

Slate's decision to suspend Peska strikes a blow against diversity. Yes, diversity! —which includes diversity of views about every issue including how best to deal with racism and how best to achieve equality.

Slate should end Peska's suspension, apologize to him, and encourage debate about the issue over which he was suspended. I, for one, will not be intimidated into silence. I will continue to write and speak about these issues and encourage others to join me. That is one way to fight back against cancel culture.

 

Alan M. Dershowitz is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law, Emeritus at Harvard Law School and author of the book, Guilt by Accusation: The Challenge of Proving Innocence in the Age of #MeToo, Skyhorse Publishing, 2019. His new podcast, "The Dershow," can be seen on Spotify, Apple and YouTube. He is the Jack Roth Charitable Foundation Fellow at Gatestone Institute.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17189/should-anything-be-off-limits-to-debate 

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Convicted Sex Offenders, Including Pedophiles, Arrested at Biden’s Open U.S. Border - Natalie Winters

 

​ by Natalie Winters

A recent string of arrests of convicted sex offenders – including pedophiles – has occurred at the U.S. southern border.

According to a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) press release, “Rio Grande Valley Sector Border Patrol agents arrested three criminal aliens with prior convictions for sexual offenses.”

On Monday, agents apprehended a male Guatemalan national after he illegally entered the country.

“During processing, record checks revealed the subject, later identified as MARTINEZ, Jose Estuardo, was arrested in 2013 for indecency with a child/sexual contact by the Hopkins County Sheriff’s Office in Sulphur Springs, Texas. Martinez was subsequently found guilty and sentenced to 8 years probation,” CBP notes.

Hours later Border Patrol agents also apprehended a Mexican national illegally present in the U.S.

“At the station, the subject’s criminal history revealed an arrest in 2015 for rape by the Sandy Springs Police Department in Sandy Springs, Georgia. The individual was subsequently found guilty and sentenced to 20 years confinement, of which he served 5 years,” CBP notes.

What’s more, a group of nine illegal aliens was apprehended in Texas, and one member – Tony Canales-Velasquez – had a prior conviction for indecency with a child.

 

Natalie Winters  

Source: https://thenationalpulse.com/breaking/border-arrests-include-pedophile/ 

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Thursday, March 18, 2021

H.R.1 – Is It Really "For the People"? - Chris Farrell

 

​ by Chris Farrell

H.R.1 -- the so-called "For the People Act" -- is nearly 800 pages of meritless, militant, social engineering targeting the foundations of the U.S. Constitution, voting rights and political free speech

  • H.R.1 is nearly 800 pages of meritless, militant, social engineering targeting the foundations of the U.S. Constitution, voting rights and political free speech -- all dressed-up as being "for the people."

  • Here are just a few of the more egregious federal power grabs in H.R.1 concocted against the 50 states that run elections under the U.S. Constitution: 1. Ban voter ID laws and allow ballot harvesting; 2. Expand Election Day to "election season" by mandating mail-in ballots be counted 10 days after the election would normally be over; and, 3. Automatic voter registration of people who apply for unemployment, Medicaid, Obamacare, and college, or who are coming out of prison. There is a lot more, and it gets worse. Substantially worse. There are First Amendment restrictions on political speech.

  • What better way to design a worker's paradise? Or -- hypothetically, of course -- to make sure that a stolen election stays stolen, is never audited, and lays the groundwork for reproducible results for the next century?

  • Please let everyone influential know, clearly and politely, exactly what you think.

H.R.1 -- the so-called "For the People Act" -- is nearly 800 pages of meritless, militant, social engineering targeting the foundations of the U.S. Constitution, voting rights and political free speech -- all dressed-up as being "for the people." Pictured: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (center), along with other Democratic members of the House, speaks about H.R.1, the "For the People Act," at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, January 4, 2019. (Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

A lot has been written about H.R.1 -- the so-called "For the People Act of 2021." Former Vice President Mike Pence has opined on the bill. The Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal sounded the alarm back in January. The editors of National Review come right out and call it a "partisan assault on American democracy."

H.R.1 purports to, "expand Americans' access to the ballot box, reduce the influence of big money in politics, strengthen ethics rules for public servants, and implement other anti-corruption measures for the purpose of fortifying our democracy, and for other purposes." The Bill is 791 pages long.

Here are just a few of the more egregious federal power grabs in H.R.1 concocted against the 50 states that run elections under the U.S. Constitution:

  1. Ban voter ID laws and allow ballot harvesting;
  2. Expand Election Day to "election season" by mandating mail-in ballots be counted 10 days after the election would normally be over;
  3. Automatic voter registration of people who apply for unemployment, Medicaid, Obamacare and college, or who are coming out of prison.

There is a lot more, and it gets worse. Substantially worse. There are First Amendment restrictions on political speech and on the support or opposition of a bill and/or a candidate. Remember: This is supposed to be "fortifying our democracy."

If you are interested in a "through the looking glass" annotated analysis of H.R.1 -- then head over to the Brennan Center for Justice. They are happy to explain how those pesky constitutional rights can be whittled down to something more "fair" for everyone. For example, the Brennan Center analysis confidently assures readers about how H.R.1 "affirms Congress' power to protect the right to vote, regulate federal elections, and defend the democratic process in the United States." It seeks to airbrush Article I, Section 4 -- The Elections Clause -- from history and practice. The Clause directs and empowers states to determine the "Times, Places, and Manner" of congressional elections. H.R.1 would federally strangle the Elections Clause.

In order to find our way out, it is helpful to know how we got into this terrible predicament. The foundation for the madness of H.R.1 is legal positivism, a thesis, according to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which states "that the existence and content of law depends on social facts and not on its merits."

H.R.1 is nearly 800 pages of meritless, militant, social engineering targeting the foundations of the U.S. Constitution, voting rights and political free speech -- all dressed-up as being "for the people."

Authoritarians -- socialists and communists of different stripes, geography and eras -- like to use legal positivism because it allows enormous latitude to design, implement and (especially) enforce whatever they dream up as the way things ought to be. What better way to design a worker's paradise? Or -- hypothetically, of course -- to make sure that a stolen election stays stolen, is never audited, and lays the groundwork for reproducible results for the next century?

It's neat and easy under legal positivism. Draft up a one-sided, detailed plan (loaded with outrageous schemes) of nearly 800 pages that NO ONE will read or understand. Ram it through the one-party legislature and have the same party's president sign it into law. Presto! -- cheating has become nice and "legal."

For readers who find this technique troubling, or wonder why it does not sound like the great tradition of debate and compromise described in our founding documents and political history, there is good reason. The United States was founded on a theory of Natural Law, which adheres to universal moral principles for ethical and legal norms of human conduct whether a particular government recognizes them or not -- that is, essentially, the antithesis of legal positivism. There are now generations of Americans who have never been exposed to these ideas.

The "mind wipe" of Americans for all that is authentic and real about the foundation of our country as a constitutional republic began through the education system. We allowed people like Howard Zinn to dictate the historical framework for understanding who and what we are as Americans for millions of high schoolers and undergraduates. An intellectual diet of relativism, critical theory, deconstruction and subjectivity. That delegation of our educational standards was reckless, lazy and stupid. When you do not know any better, how can you act any better?

The co-opting and hollowing out of our education system is the main explanation for why and how we are wrestling with the loss of the Republic by legislative militancy, topped off with the Executive pen stroke.

This is terribly serious stuff and no one is telling you WHY you are losing. There is a lot of hand-wringing and outrage, and rightly so. But that nagging feeling tormenting you about why America seems to be slipping away -- and why everything you believed in is now being turned into a crime or a shaming social media joke -- well, no one is explaining that to you. Until now.

Now is the time to snap out of our Covid-induced somnolence and passivity. If President Joe Biden's election "victory" wasn't enough to get your attention -- then H.R.1 must be. Please let everyone influential know, clearly and politely, exactly what you think.

 

Chris Farrell is a former counterintelligence case officer. For the past 20 years, he has served as the Director of Investigations & Research for Judicial Watch. The views expressed are the author's alone, and not necessarily those of Judicial Watch.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17179/hr1-for-the-people 

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