Liberals Embrace Anti-Feminism in Transgender Sports Debate - Fletch Daniels

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by Fletch Daniels

The new feminist position is that we should cheer as men destroy women’s sports.

Anti-feminists continue their unapologetic efforts to destroy women’s sports at all levels. Not satisfied to just ruin high school girls’ athletics, they are setting their sights higher. 

This week’s headline indicated that Juniper Eastwood, a University of Montana cross-country runner, will become the first transgender (i.e. biological male) athlete to compete as a female in division I cross country.

Anyone want to bet against him completely dominating his sport? No disrespect intended towards Eastwood, but he is a biological male. This means that, no matter how much testosterone blockers that he takes, he will still have a massive built-in advantage in strength, speed and athleticism. 

As a recent report from Journal of Medical Ethics indicated, “Science demonstrates that high testosterone and other male physiology provides a performance advantage in sport suggesting that transwomen retain some of that advantage. To determine whether the advantage is unfair necessitates an ethical analysis of the principles of inclusion and fairness.”

Another study by the Karolinska Institute in Sweden found that the “effect of the hormone treatment in relation to reducing leg muscle strength, is almost negligible for men who transition to become women.” 

The reports were largely unnecessary, since there is already overwhelming anecdotal evidence of these facts since middle-of-the-pack male athletes who identify as women are dominating female high school sports wherever they are given that opportunity, regardless of whatever drugs they are taking. You hardly ever see the reverse, since a female who identifies as a male cannot compete in male sports.

The Journal of Medical Ethics reluctantly admitted that transgender females have a built-in advantage but then, fearful of the liberal backlash and unwilling to challenge liberal orthodoxy, implied that might be a wonderful thing in the interest of inclusion and fairness. 

This is also why you see headlines like the one in Slate that recently trumpeted that ”Betsy DeVos may force high schools to discriminate against trans athletes.”

Apparently, protecting women from having to compete against men is a horrible act of discrimination. While DeVos may be viewed as a cross between Cersei Lannister and Darth Vader in liberal circles and within the insanely liberal department she heads, she is adopting both a logical and feminist position. She is trying to protect girls from having to compete unfairly against biologically stronger and more athletic men. 

No matter how you spin it, that is exactly what is happening. The best female high school athletes in the country in twenty states are now routinely being demolished by boys who identify as girls. One would think that feminists would throw their full support behind DeVos, but they despise her for it.

Liberal support largely boils down to their embrace of “intersectionality,” which is all the rage in academic circles. Intersectionality was a concept introduced in 1989 by Kimberlé Crenshaw, a civil rights activist and legal scholar. In practice, it sets up a hierarchy of grievances, where the highest consideration and support must be given to those with the highest grievance score. 

On the hierarchy of grievances, a false (transgender) female scores higher than an actual (cisgender) female. Faux feminists rush to throw their support behind biological males as they destroy women’s sport while the real feminists, most of whom are now conservatives, try to protect women. It’s toxic liberal virtue signaling on steroids. 

Anyone with common sense understands that there are only two biological genders, regardless of how many genders liberals deem to exist. I realize that Joe Biden is out searching for that elusive third gender, but he isn’t going to find it. At the same time, presidential candidate Julian Castro is trying to protect transgender female’s right to an abortion, proving that no position is too ridiculous to adopt in the grievance sweepstakes. 

The fact that males are better athletes than females has nothing to do with privilege and everything to do with science. As a general rule, the average male is stronger, faster, and more athletic than the average female. They start receiving a massive amount of testosterone at puberty resulting in a significant athletic gap. Again, any C-grade freshman biology student should understand this reality. 

On a typical high school track team, the worst-performing male athletes regularly record better times than the best-performing female athletes. When I was in high school, we boasted the best female cross-country runner in the country. She was an absolute running machine, but had she been on the men’s team, she would have been the fourth best runner. That’s no small gap. 

When Martina Navratilova, not exactly a conservative icon, complained about the blatantly unfair situation, she came under such withering attacks from her former allies that she eventually apologized. No one is allowed to wander off the insane liberal plantation. She should have stood by her words because they were 100% true.

She said, "…a man can decide to be female, take hormones if required by whatever sporting organization is concerned, win everything in sight and perhaps earn a small fortune, and then reverse his decision and go back to making babies if he so desires. It's insane and it's cheating… I would not be happy to compete against her. It would not be fair."

But, the new feminist position is that we should cheer as men destroy women’s sports. This is an illogical and anti-woman outrage. Most of the true remaining feminists based upon the classic definition of fighting for women’s rights and equality are now conservatives. 



Fletch Daniels blogs at deplorabletouchdown.com and can be found on twitter @fletchdaniels.

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/09/liberals_embrace_antifeminism_in_transgender_sports_debate_.html

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China's Organ Harvesting - John Glynn

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by John Glynn

A gruesome violation against undisclosed victims.

In June of this year, an independent tribunal based in London came to a chilling conclusion: detainees in China are being killed, their organs are being harvested and some victims find themselves falsely accused of committing crimes that never occurred.

The China Tribunal, chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, who was a prosecutor at the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, determined that:

forced organ harvesting has been committed for years throughout China on a significant scale, [and] the tribunal has had no evidence that the significant infrastructure associated with China’s transplantation industry has been dismantled and absent a satisfactory explanation as to the source of readily available organs concludes that forced organ harvesting continues till today.

Before coming to their damning conclusion, the tribunal members spoke with medical experts and human rights investigators. According to the committee, thousands of people “have died indescribably hideous deaths for no reason.” The committee members warn “that more may suffer in similar ways and that all of us live on a planet where extreme wickedness may be found in the power of those, for the time being, running a country with one of the oldest civilizations known to modern man.”

China, it seems, is a place where “extreme wickedness” reigns supreme. After all, it is not uncommon for individuals who speak out against the government to disappear. However, the scope of the “disappeared” has expanded since President Xi Jinping came to power in 2013. Over the past six years, from prominent celebrities to brave journalists, hundreds of people in China have seemingly vanished into thin air — and yet the international community has remained largely silent. Almost immediately after election, Chinese President Xi introduced new laws that essentially made arbitrary and secret detentions legal under Chinese law. Many of those arrested were never seen again. Were their organs harvested? Sadly, it’s a perfectly reasonable question to ask.

After all, in the words of the aforementioned Geoffrey Nice, “There is no evidence of the practice having been stopped and the tribunal is satisfied that it is continuing.”

Among those killed, according to the committee, are members of religious minorities such as Falun Gong, a religious and spiritual practice that combines meditation and qigong exercises. Members are encouraged to adopt a moral philosophy centered on the tenets of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance. In China, a country known for silencing “unorthodox” views, truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance are at a premium.  

Of course, China’s organ bazaar has been in operation for years. Recently, however, knowledge of the gruesome practice has led to the retraction of fifteen science papers discussing organ transplantation. The retractors fear that the organs were inhumanely and unethically obtained. As the New Scientist’s Clare Wilson writes:

Fifteen studies about transplanted organs by researchers in China have been retracted this month due to concerns the work may have used organs from executed prisoners. Three other papers have been the subject of expressions of concern for the same reason, according to the website Retraction Watch which monitors questions raised over published research.
China’s government said in 2015 that the nation had stopped using organs from executed prisoners, which is illegal according to international conventions. But it is suspected that the practice continues in the country, particularly involving prisoners of conscience.

The retraction of papers is at least a step in the right direction, but obviously more action is needed.

As Wesley J. Smith writes,

Retracting papers should just be the beginning. Chinese organ-transplant doctors should be barred from international symposia and such events in China should be boycotted, as well as refusing or retracting other honors until the country proves that it no longer countenances kill-and-harvest, whether for sale, research, or otherwise

Investigations have found that British women regularly (and unknowingly) apply the collagen of executed prisoners to their faces . Worryingly, according to Ethan Gutmann, a longtime China analyst and author of the deeply disturbing book, The Slaughter: Mass Killings, Organ Harvesting, and China’s Secret Solution to its Dissident Problem, the realities of the practice are "far more awful” than one can ever imagine. As Gutmann, a human rights activist, affirms, authorities sometimes take the organs from prisoners while they are still alive. Yes, alive.

Though the Chinese government has recently made it illegal to provide transplant organs from executed prisoners to foreign, transplant tourists, there is little reason to believe that this law is in full effect. Moreover, the extreme shortage of transplant organs in the U.S. continues to make organ transplantation in China an appealing option for some patients with life threatening diseases, so desperate Americans still travel to China for surgery.

Although China has emerged as a genuine global power, with a rising and increasingly sophisticated middle class, its wicked practices must be addressed. Haile Selassie, the famous Ethiopian emperor, once said, “it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph.”
The international community must respond. Because, as the situation stands now, the world's silence is deafening.

John Glynn is a professor of psychology at American University of Bahrain. Follow him on Twitter: @John_A_Glynn.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274720/chinas-organ-harvesting-john-glynn

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Zinns of Omission - Bruce Bawer

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by Bruce Bawer

Mary Grabar definitively discredits America’s top history textbook.

[Order Mary Graber's new book, Debunking Howard Zinn: Exposing the Fake History That Turned a Generation against America: CLICK HERE.]

Perhaps the nicest thing you can say about Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States is that it shows that even in the era of the Internet a book can continue to have an immense social impact. In Zinn’s case, however, that impact could hardly be more dangerous. Published in 1980, Zinn’s book has for some time been, as Mary Grabar notes in her definitive new study of it, Debunking Howard Zinn, both the bestselling trade history of America and the bestselling American history textbook. When Zinn wrote it, he intended it to provide a skeptical (shall we say) alternative to previous accounts of US history, which Zinn, hardcore America-hater that he was, saw as excessively pro-American. Today, Zinn’s book isn’t just an insidious alternative; it is the reigning book in the field, and its once alternative take on US history has become received wisdom on the establishment left. Not a few of the students who read the book years ago when they were college students, and who fell for Zinn’s take on US history hook, line, and sinker, are now teachers who are using the same book to indoctrinate their own charges.

Many of us have been aware for years of Zinn’s perfidious influence – and have fretted over it in print. But to read Grabar is to realize that the situation is even worse than many of us thought – and to learn things about Zinn that one didn’t know before. One of the things I learned from Grabar is that Matt Damon – who, in the 1997 movie Good Will Hunting (which he co-wrote and starred in) worked in a plug for Zinn’s book that gave it a major boost – grew up with Zinn as a neighbor and was sucked in by People’s History by the age of ten.

Grabar supplies a useful catalog of major historians who, although left-wing themselves, have given Zinn’s book an unambiguous thumbs-down. Eugene Genovese considered it nothing but “incoherent left-wing sloganizing”; Arthur Schlesinger called Zinn “a polemicist, not a historian.” Yet no amount of cogent criticism has dislodged the book from its pedestal. One reason is that teachers who use the book reflexively reject any criticism of it; another is that ignorant mainstream journalists routinely cite it as if it’s a legitimate, reliable work, and a constellation of even more ignorant showbiz Zinn fans, like Damon, have prominently sung its praises. Among the many highly disturbing examples of this misguided promotion was the 2006 publication of the book’s Russian translation – by, believe it or not, the US Embassy in Moscow. Imagine Russians getting their US history from Howard Zinn!

One of the big achievements of Zinn’s book was his utter discrediting of Christopher Columbus. Once regarded as a hero, Columbus is now commonly viewed as having initiated the genocidal destruction of a peaceful paradise. In her first chapter, by going carefully through Zinn’s account of the great navigator, Grabar demonstrates that it is based not on original sources but is heavily dependent on, indeed almost copied straight out of, the work of an earlier Columbus-basher, Hans Koning, who, for ideological reasons, engaged in extremely selective quotation and in wholesale misrepresentation. Ultimately, Grabar shows convincingly that Zinn, in his effort to smear the discoverer of America and to depict American Indians as noble savages, repeatedly ignores historical context, suppresses inconvenient facts, cites exceedingly dubious statistics, and so on. In short, Grabar thoroughly discredits Zinn’s discrediting of the Admiral of the Ocean Sea.

As Zinn progresses beyond Columbus to the British settlement of North America, he routinely deplores relatively minor anti-Indian actions by colonists while defending or ignoring huge, brutal massacres by Indians – whom he insists, against all evidence but in accordance with the historical revisionism of know-nothing Sixties radicals, on portraying as gentle and innocent, indeed, as proto-Communists who lived in hippie-type communes and had no concept of private ownership or gender inequality. In short, Zinn transforms violent warriors into flower children. In one instance, he accuses early Virginia settlers of wanting to “exterminate” local tribes when in fact the latter sought to wipe out the former. Of course, in the encounters between natives and settlers there were misdeeds on both sides, but Zinn reduces the entire history of colonization as a simple matter of genocidal whites constantly going to war against peace-loving Indians. Nor does Zinn just make virtual saints out of the Indians of the Caribbean and North America; he also whitewashes the Aztecs, Mayans, and Incas. Though he does, surprisingly, mention the Aztecs’ “ritual killing of thousands of people as sacrifices to the gods,” he claims that these bloodthirsty savages nonetheless exhibited “a certain innocence.” Neat trick!

Then there’s Zinn on slavery. In typical fashion, as Grabar notes, he “acknowledges that slavery existed in Africa…but presents it as a kinder, gentler kind of slavery” and is mum on the fact that it predated American slavery by centuries. In his effort to portray slavery, or at least the bad kind of slavery, as distinctively American, Zinn ignores the fact that it was without question opposition to slavery that was distinctively Western, whereas slavery itself had existed in every known African and Asian civilization since the beginning of recorded history. Far from recognizing the war to emancipate slaves as a uniquely American act of virtue, Zinn laments that the Civil War sought to free slaves rather than to overthrow capitalism, and maintains that blacks were, in any case, no better off after the war than before. He also fails to admit that America’s success in banishing slavery inspired emancipation movements around the Western world, even as he deep-sixes the role of Muslims in the slave trade and the fact that slavery continues to be practiced in the Islamic world.

Zinn manages even to make America’s role in World War II look perfidious. Here, as Grabar says quite rightly, he “hits a new low,” drawing moral equivalence between the US and Nazi Germany, painting Japan as America’s victim, and attributing America’s participation in the war entirely to “imperialist” motives. As for the Cold War era, Zinn dismisses Americans’ fear of Soviet Communism as “hysteria” and describes Americans’ demonstrably legitimate concern about Communist influence in Washington and Hollywood as “paranoid.” He even depicts the Marshall Plan – another unique act of American virtue – as a nefarious effort to prepare “the European capitalist countries for all-out war against the USSR and the People’s Democracies of Eastern Europe.”

Anyway, on it goes. Castro’s Cuba is great; Ho Chi Minh was a hero. Then there’s Grabar’s illuminating account of Zinn’s life. Not only was he almost certainly a card-carrying member of the Communist Party; he also belonged to several CPUSA front groups. Teaching in the late 1950s at the historically black Spelman College, which was “emphatically Christian,” he sought to turn it into a “school for protest.” In 1960, he co-founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, one of the major radical groups of that decade; years later, he co-founded the New Party, which Grabar identifies as “the socialist party that helped Barack Obama win his Illinois Senate seat.” Other groups with which he was associated included ACORN, the Democratic Socialists of America, a “Marxist-Maoist collective” called STORM, and International ANSWER.

This, then, is the man who has shaped the twisted picture of American history – and of America itself –that exists inside the heads of tens of millions of Americans. Grabar’s subtitle is Exposing the Fake History that Turned a Generation against America; my only problem with this subtitle is that in place of “a Generation” she could arguably have said “Generations,” because Zinn’s book, now almost forty years old, has poisoned the minds not only of countless college students today but also of many of their parents. In her introductory note, Grabar points out that there exist valuable challenges to Zinn, such as A Patriot’s History of the United States (2004) by Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen, which, I have been informed to my delight, is used in conjunction with Zinn in a number of history courses; it would be nice to see Grabar’s own, equally invaluable book find its way onto such curricula. A generation – or generations – of Americans raised on Howard Zinn can result only in an America that turns against its own founding values, in all their nobility, and that follows the likes of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and, God help us, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez down the path to socialist disaster.

Bruce Bawer is the author of “While Europe Slept,” “Surrender,” "The Victims' Revolution," and "The Alhambra." "Islam," a collection of his essays on Islam, has just been published.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274799/zinns-omission-bruce-bawer

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So much for the lunatic charge that Trump is ‘in Putin’s pocket’ - Thomas Lifson

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by Thomas Lifson

The stupidity of this charge is refuted by the power play President Trump’s Secretary of Energy Rick Perry carried out over the holiday weekend

Die-hard Trump haters continue to maintain that the President of the United States is in thrall to, or maybe being blackmailed by Russia’s President Putin. As a corollary, they still push the notion that Russia will corrupt the 2020 presidential election, so that if and when Trump wins, they will deny him legitimacy.

The crashing and burning of the Mueller effort to prove this thesis means nothing to the deluded dead-enders. But the stupidity of this charge is refuted by the power play President Trump’s Secretary of Energy Rick Perry carried out over the holiday weekend. Via Reuters:

“We’re helping Poland to reduce its dependence on Russian gas,” U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry told a news conference in Warsaw after meeting officials from Poland and Ukraine.
The Polish government official responsible for energy infrastructure, Piotr Naimski, said Poland, which has increased purchases of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the United States in recent years, would be able to send six billion cubic meters of gas to Ukraine starting from 2021 compared to the current capability of 1.5 bcm.
“We will take every effort to diversify gas supplies to Ukraine, which is now completely dependent on Russian deliveries,” Naimski told the same conference.
Perry, Naimski and Ukraine’s Secretary of National Security Oleksandr Danylyuk signed a memorandum of understanding to enhance security of gas supplies in the region via LNG supplies from the U.S. through Poland’s and Ukraine’s infrastructure which still has to be expanded.

Russia’s domination of natural gas supply to Europe, with multiple pipelines running through Ukraine, has long been a strategic weapon. 

Natural gas pipelines from Russia to Europe

Image credit: Samuel Bailey

The threat to let Europeans freeze to death during winter months has been exercised before, and remains active, as this article entitled “Ukraine Faces a Bleak Winter as Russia Prepares to Cut Off Gas” demonstrates.

The ability of the United States to check Putin’s energy weapon is the result of the fracking boom that President Trump has unleashed. Instead of President Obama’s claim that it is impossible “to drill our way out” of energy dependence, President Trump has embraced – and strategically exploited – the mushrooming energy production that the United States is experiencing.

So, pause for a minute and ask yourself which president was behaving as if he were in Putin’s pocket? The one who protected Putin’s energy weapon against Europe (and also enriched the faltering Russian economy that mainly depends on oil and gas exports)? Or the one that checkmated Putin’s energy weapon and impoverished his economy?

Thomas Lifson

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/09/so_much_for_the_lunatic_charge_that_trump_is_in_putins_pocket.html

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Opponents of 'no-deal' Brexit defeat British PM - Ben Ariel

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by Ben Ariel

Opposition and Conservative rebels pass motion allowing them to take control of parliamentary business.

Boris Johnson

Reuters

A cross-party alliance defeated British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in parliament on Tuesday in a bid to prevent him taking Britain out of the EU without an agreement, Reuters reported.

In response, Johnson announced that he would immediately push for a snap election.

Lawmakers voted by 328 to 301 for a motion put forward by opposition parties and rebel lawmakers in Johnson’s party who had been warned they would be kicked out of the Conservative Party if they defied the government.

The vote allows the opposition and rebels to take control of parliamentary business. They will on Wednesday seek to pass a law forcing Johnson to ask the EU to delay Brexit until January 31 unless he has a deal approved by parliament beforehand on the terms and manner of the exit.

The Conservative rebels who now face expulsion from the party included Nicholas Soames, the grandson of Britain’s World War Two leader Winston Churchill, and two former finance ministers - Philip Hammond and Kenneth Clarke.

“I don’t want an election, but if MPs vote tomorrow to stop negotiations and compel another pointless delay to Brexit, potentially for years, then that would be the only way to resolve this,” Johnson told parliament after the vote, as quoted by Reuters.

“I can confirm that we are tonight tabling a motion under the Fixed Term Parliament Act,” he added.

Ahead of the vote, Johnson said would never accept another delay to Brexit beyond October 31.

Johnson’s government will now seek to hold a vote on Wednesday to approve an early election, most likely to be held on October 14. An election would pit Johnson against Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

After the vote, Corbyn told Johnson that he must get the Brexit delay bill that will be discussed on Wednesday passed before trying to call an election.


Ben Ariel

Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/268365

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The Media Master Race - Daniel Greenfield

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by Daniel Greenfield

How the media became the enemy of a free press.

Bernie Sanders wrapped up his appeal to the media by suggesting a tax on targeted ads to fund “civic-minded media” because, “more than two centuries after the constitution was signed, we cannot sit by and allow corporations, billionaires, and demagogues to destroy the Fourth Estate.”

The Fourth Estate is a European concept. There’s no room in America for a special status for the media (or any other estates). Sanders ignores what the constitution actually says about the press. The First Amendment prohibits Congress from making laws “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”

Freedom of the press doesn’t bestow a special status on the press. It springs from freedom of speech.

That is even more obvious in Madison’s original words, “The people shall not be deprived or abridged of their right to speak, to write, or to publish their sentiments; and the freedom of the press, as one of the great bulwarks of liberty shall be inviolable.” A free press is an expression of everyone’s right to speak out. It is not a special institution that represents the public interest. It is the actual public.

When the Framers wrote of a free press, they meant printers like Benjamin Franklin and his brother, and anyone who wanted to distribute a pamphlet, as well as the small number of larger papers. Their idea of the free press looked a lot like a low-tech internet and had nothing in common with a handful of giant corporate monopolies declaring that they are a journalistic priesthood serving the public interest.

Sanders’ proposal for a government-funded “non-profit civic funded media” is even worse. The First Amendment banned government interference with a free press. The socialist politician would like to replace it with a government press that would promote his government takeover of medicine.

A government takeover of the media is the opposite of the constitution’s guarantee of a free press.

Ever since Trump won, the media has been insisting that it is a unique institution that must be protected from criticism by politicians (CNN and other outlets have claimed that Trump’s criticism of them is a threat to the First Amendment) and from competing speech by rival outlets and ordinary people.

Media pressure campaigns on tech monopolies have convinced them to ban a number of conservative outlets and personalities to fight ‘disinformation’, ‘fake news’, and other meaningless terms. The media and its allies set up ‘fact checking’ services that largely ignored their own biases to target conservatives. The purpose of these ‘fact checking’ services isn’t to argue, but to advocate for censoring conservatives.

Unlike Trump’s criticisms, the Democrats who added to the pressure campaign were violating the First Amendment. The media’s fact checking gimmicks set up to fight fake news were nothing more than a return to the licensing schemes and printing monopolies that the British authorities had once employed.

Democrats and the media have worked to revive the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers, exactly the sort of censorship mechanism that the First Amendment was directed against, through tech monopoly crowdsourcing, while wailing piteously that they are fighting for a free press.

The alliance between tech monopolies and media fact checkers constitutes a new licensing mechanism. Because it largely operates through the private sector, it’s a cartel and an anti-trust violation in action.

And the media keeps arguing that it is a special institution that needs protection from outsiders.

After a New York Times bigwig's anti-Semitic posts were exposed, the paper protested that using "journalistic techniques to target journalists and news organizations... is fundamentally different from the well-established role of the news media in scrutinizing people in positions of power."

It's “scrutinizing” when the media does it, but “targeting” when someone else does it.

But much of what the media does is targeting. And it’s often retaliatory. Take a recent Business Insider story headlined, “The mysterious family behind In-N-Out has donated more than $15,000 to Trump and the GOP”. There’s no purpose to this except stigmatizing donors contributing to the political opposition.

That’s the opposite of the free and open political culture that the First Amendment was meant to foster.

Even the targeting of reporters and editors who dissent in some way from a leftist position has become routine within the media. The New York Times, in particular, has been repeatedly targeted by the internal leaks of chats, emails and conferences, to pressure it into going after its own journalists.

The Slate transcript of the Times meeting, held because of leftist outrage over its neutral headline, carried Ashley Feinberg’s byline. Ashley is a veteran of the Gawker smear factory, and in her Huffington Post days posted leaked transcripts from the New York Times in a campaign against Bari Weiss: a young journalist who came under fire from leftist media figures for her opposition to leftist anti-Semitism.

(Ashley Feinberg is currently being sued by an African-American history professor whom she suggested, in a Kavanaugh hit piece, was linked to the drug overdose death of RFK’s son in the 1980s.)

The Times did not call this suppression and retaliation against a journalist, as it did when social media users exposed the anti-Semitism of one of its honchos. It’s not retaliation or suppression when leftist members of the Media Master Race do it to enemy civilians or even to moderates in the media.

The New York Times struggles to articulate the difference between its opposition research and those of conservatives. But the one clear difference is the “well-established role of the news media.” The news media has a unique right to target people and even retaliate against journalists over a political agenda. It’s an establishment and ordinary people with Twitter accounts don’t have that same right or role.

But there’s no room for this Media Master Race logic in the Constitution. The media is not a privileged estate. It is not the embodiment of a free press. The public interest is not an institution. It’s Americans.

The Framers would see the media as a cartel that usurped the free press by claiming that a free press is its membership organization that requires a degree and a corporate letterhead to belong to it. The media has the same relationship to a free press that any aristocratic estate does to public freedom.

This sort of Media Master Race reasoning is how we ended up with April Ryan’s bodyguard assaulting a local journalist while the CNN figure declared, "When I speak, I do not have news covering my speeches.” It’s how the New York Times can argue that its function of accusing conservatives of things is legitimate journalism, while conservatives accusing it of things is a violation of legitimate journalism.

It’s why the media was able to set up an entire infrastructure for suppressing outlets that aren’t part of the Media Master Race from being able to distribute their content over Facebook and Twitter.

It’s why Senator Bernie Sanders, who wants to run the entire country, is proposing that a special tax be leveled on targeted ads to fund the media because advertising is a traditional media sinecure. You can’t hunt deer in the king’s forest or use ads to look for customers unless you pay the media its toll.

The media agrees.

That’s why it won’t stop whining that the internet took away its ad business. And that the collapse of its business model is an attack on the vital public interest of spewing leftist lies that it serves.

Earlier this year, the New York Times published an op-ed claiming that layoffs at the Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, and other digital media outlets were “devastating to democracy”. But the media layoffs were digital democracy in action. Enough readers had grown tired of the garbage and were moving on.

The New York Times wasn’t defending democracy. It was attacking it. And its op-ed complained about the "online hordes who’ll make content without pay". Those “hordes” are actual democracy.

It was a reminder that the media doesn’t serve a vital function. It usurps one.

The free press is not an institution. It’s the public. Its importance is not as an institution that acts as a watchdog through a collective set of professional standards and values, but as the voice of the people. Not metaphorically, but literally. The free press was the neighborhood printer and the pamphleteer. Today it’s the blogger and the tweeter. It’s anyone who cares enough to make their voice heard.

The professionalism, standards and trust of the press, or lack therefore, are completely irrelevant. Just as the First Amendment does not depend on the worth of the opinions of any protester or clergyman.

The point of the First Amendment is not to set standards, but to eliminate them.

The more the Media Master Race insists on defining the free press as an established institution with special privileges, the more of a threat to a free press its claims to an estate become. When the media controls the free press, it isn’t free. The only way to free the press is to dismantle the media cartel.

The media isn’t just the enemy of the democracy of the people. It’s the enemy of a free press.


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

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/274766/media-master-race-daniel-greenfield

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The Danger of Israeli Public Apathy Regarding Palestinian Construction in Area C - Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen

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by Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen

While Israeli Jews continue to move into urban centers, the Palestinians have been assuming sovereignty in the open lands and leaving the Jews with personal sovereignty solely in their areas of residence.

BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,274, September 2, 2019

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: While Israeli Jews continue to move into urban centers, the Palestinians have been assuming sovereignty in the open lands and leaving the Jews with personal sovereignty solely in their areas of residence. This trend is not restricted to the West Bank. It is also occurring in the Negev, the Galilee, and the Jezreel Valley, where Jews are moving into high-rise buildings while non-Jews are taking control of the open spaces. A contributing factor to this dangerous trend is the complete lack of interest in the subject displayed by most of the Israeli public.

Over the past decade, 28,650 illegal Arab structures have been built in Area C. Hundreds of kilometers of roads have been laid, and hundreds of thousands of agricultural dunams have been taken over in land that has never belonged to a Palestinian.

This invasion is being implemented with the involvement and guidance of the EU and with major financial support from abroad.

Meanwhile, PM Netanyahu has introduced a plan to build 700 housing units for Palestinians in Area C along with 6,000 housing units for Jews in the West Bank. Despite criticism from settler leadership, cabinet ministers, including Rafi Peretz and Bezalel Smotrich, have supported the plan out of a basic understanding that sovereignty in a territory entails not only setting restrictions on building but also issuing permits. In that regard, sovereignty in Area C is no different from sovereignty in other areas of the country.

The basis of a sovereign state – in Area C as in the Negev – is its ability to plan, which includes stipulating what and where it is forbidden to build and what and where it is permitted to build. These stipulations should apply to everyone, Jewish or Palestinian.

Apart from the threat Palestinian building in Area C poses to Israel’s national and security interests, one needs to ask why the issue has not gained traction among the Israeli public. It is this popular apathy that, among other things, allows the PM to keep ignoring this dangerous trend.

Netanyahu’s behavior on this matter is hard to understand. If it is fine with him to give the Palestinians open land for an eventual two-state solution, then presumably the land should be provided as a quid pro quo in an agreement – not simply taken over by the Palestinians in a unilateral process of attrition. If, on the other hand, Israel has an interest in retaining the land, why is Netanyahu allowing the invasion to proceed?

The Palestinians and Europeans understand something Israelis refuse to see. They grasp that while Maale Adumim is a fully-fledged city that will not be evacuated, it can be turned into a threatened and shrinking enclave by fast-tracking Palestinian building all around it and along the roads leading to it. Israeli disregard for the endgame of this tactic, including among most of the defense establishment, is amazing to the point of alarming.

Public apathy on the subject stems in part from the fact that most Israeli Jews spend no time in the West Bank and are simply unaware that this is happening. But their indifference can also be attributed to a traditional Jewish “disability” with regard to open, non-urbanized land.

In their protracted exile, Jews became people of the city. To them, open spaces were simply empty tracts of no value. As Yuri Slezkine, a Jew who emigrated from the Soviet Union to the US, put it in his book:

The Modern Age is the Jewish Age, and the twentieth century, in particular, is the Jewish Century. Modernization is about everyone becoming urban, mobile, literate, articulate, intellectually intricate, physically fastidious, and occupationally flexible. It is about learning how to cultivate people and symbols, not fields or herds…. No one is better at being Jewish than the Jews themselves. In the age of capital, they are the most creative entrepreneurs; in the age of alienation, they are the most experienced exiles.

The autonomy talks based on the 1979 peace treaty with Egypt explored the concept of personal sovereignty – meaning an arrangement whereby the Palestinians would exercise personal sovereignty in their areas of residence while Israel would retain sovereignty over the territory. What is emerging is exactly the reverse. As the Jews coalesce in urban concentrations, the Palestinians are assuming sovereignty in the open lands. The Jews are left with personal sovereignty only inside their communities.

This trend is not only occurring in the West Bank. In the Negev, the Galilee, and the Jezreel Valley, Jews are moving into high-rise buildings while non-Jews take control of the open spaces. Private agricultural lands in Metulla and Rosh Pina are being sold, and kibbutz lands are being leased mostly to Arabs. When one’s view from the high-rise on the coastal plain points west toward the sea, why should one care about another Palestinian housing unit going up in Area C?

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A Hebrew version of this article was published in the August issue of Liberal.

Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen is a senior research fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. He served in the IDF for forty-two years. He commanded troops in battles with Egypt and Syria. He was formerly a corps commander and commander of the IDF Military Colleges.

Source: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/israeli-apathy-palestinian-construction-area-c/

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The ball is in Nasrallah's court - Yoav Limor

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by Yoav Limor

Now that the IDF has exposed Hezbollah's precision missile program, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah must decide whether to drag his organization and Lebanon into war, or fold on the matter for the time being and lower the flames.

The information the Israel Defense Forces revealed about Hezbollah's precision missile program is unusual by any measure. It includes details like names, documents, locations and operational plans that would only be known to a select number of people, and as such, tells us just how deeply Israeli intelligence has managed to infiltrate Hezbollah and its Iranian patrons. It also provides a sense of the kind of additional information that Israel may have but has chosen not to make public at this time.

The details exposed by the IDF follow additional information revealed on Tuesday, first by the British newspaper The Times and later by Israeli media outlets, regarding the target, which according to foreign reports, was attacked on Sunday around 2:10 a.m. in Beirut. Until that very moment, Hezbollah had played dumb, claiming the target had been a negligible media center, which it said had only sustained light damages. The reports revealed that what had been targeted was, in fact, unique equipment manufactured for the terrorist organization in Iran, and was supposed to be used for the serial production of long-range precision-guided rockets on Lebanese soil.

These reports are the height of an impressive public diplomacy campaign being led in recent days by IDF Spokesperson Brig. Gen. Ronen Manelis, whose main focus is to ensure the public and international debate on the attacks focuses not on Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah's assertion that this was a case of as Israeli aggression and Hezbollah's response, but rather that Hezbollah's actions could lead both sides to war.

It's no secret that Hezbollah is trying to acquire precision weapons that will allow it to strike any location in Israel and present an unprecedented threat to day-to-day life. This threat has been the basis of hundreds of Israeli Air Force attacks on Syria, along with other actions, in recent years that have succeeded in almost entirely preventing the transfer of precision-guided missiles to Lebanon. As a result, Hezbollah switched to efforts to convert old rockets into advanced precision-guided missiles on Lebanese soil and now to efforts to manufacture the missiles from start to finish entirely by themselves.

This presents an operational, technological and economic challenge for Hezbollah of the first degree, and as such is being carried out under the close watch of Iran's Revolutionary Guards. Israel has kept a close watch on these efforts and has now begun to take action. By claiming Israel is the one who violated the status quo between the sides when it attacked Lebanon, Nasrallah has turned the situation on its head: Hezbollah is, in fact, the one who broke the rules. Israel, if reports attributing the drone attack to Jerusalem are correct, acted in a limited manner, in order to avoid a larger operation in the future.

The series of reports, which will obviously continue to come out, serve to expose the sites where the missiles are being converted to precision weapons, three of which were revealed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his speech to the UN General Assembly last year, are aimed at exposing the extent of Nasrallah's lies. They are also aimed at making Lebanon's citizens and government wonder what exactly Hezbollah is doing right under their noses and how likely the terrorist organization's activities are to bring disaster upon the country and spur Western governments to act before it's too late. But beyond that, these efforts are also aimed at explaining to Israel's citizens what exactly it is we are up against, should a series of events now be triggered that snowball into a large-scale campaign.

The hope in Israel is that this onslaught of information will also limit the retaliatory attack that Nasrallah has promised by the end of this week and, more importantly, will force him, as well as Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani, to chart a new course. It is not just the exposure of the minute details of their actions that should embarrass them, but what that exposure implies: This week, Israel made it clear that Hezbollah's  possession of precision-guided missiles in Lebanon is a red line, one it is not willing to compromise on, even if the price of this determination is war.

This now puts the ball back in Nasrallah's court. If Israel is determined to convey this message, the Shiite organization will not find itself in possession of large quantities of precision-guided missiles. Nasrallah must decide whether this goal – which he will not achieve – is enough to justify dragging his organization and Lebanon into a war, or whether it would be wiser to fold on the matter for the time being and lower the flames. While Nasrallah will likely prefer the latter option, Hezbollah will still aspire to have its revenge, in the form of an attack on Israel.

Still, Hezbollah and Iran will not change who they are, and the missile challenge – and the price of war as a result – will continue to present a problem for Israel in the foreseeable future.


Yoav Limor

Source: https://www.israelhayom.com/2019/08/30/the-ball-is-now-in-narallahs-court/

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Israel’s shadow war with Iran bursts into the open - AP, Israel Hayom Staff

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by AP, Israel Hayom Staff 

Tensions between the Jewish state and the Islamic republic are rising at a particularly fraught time: Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu is looking to project strength ahead of the Sept. 17 elections, while Iran has taken a series of provocative steps aimed at pressuring European nations to provide relief from crippling US sanctions.

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu and Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei | Photo: Marc Israel Salem, AFP

The long shadow war between Israel and Iran has burst into the open in recent days, with Israel allegedly striking Iranian-linked targets as far away as Iraq and crash-landing two drones in Hezbollah-dominated southern Beirut.

These incidents, along with an air raid in Syria that Israel says thwarted an imminent Iranian drone attack, have raised tensions at a particularly fraught time.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is looking to project strength three weeks before the national elections, while Iran has taken a series of provocative actions in recent months that are aimed at pressuring European nations to provide relief from crippling US sanctions.

Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah, vowed to retaliate after a drone crashed on the terrorist group's Beirut media office and another exploded midair early on Sunday. Israeli forces along the border with Lebanon are on high alert, raising fears of a repeat of the 2006 war. Netanyahu has warned Nasrallah to “relax,” saying that Israel “knows how to defend itself and how to pay back its enemies.”

The Israeli leader has also addressed Gen. Qassem Soleimani, head of Iran’s elite Quds Force and the architect of its regional entrenchment, telling him to “be careful with your words and be even more careful with your actions.” Israel said that Soleimani masterminded the alleged drone attack. Another commander in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, Gen. Mohsen Rezaei, dismissed the Israeli allegations as a “lie.”

Israel has also blamed Iran for recent rocket fire from the Gaza Strip, and on Monday struck a Palestinian base in Lebanon near the Syrian border.

Israel views Iran as its greatest threat and has hailed US President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the 2015 nuclear deal and re-impose sanctions. But Netanyahu may fear that the US is moderating that approach after Trump said there’s a “really good chance” he could meet with Iran’s president.

The two close allies already appear to be at odds over recent strikes on Iranian-linked militias in Iraq. In a rare move, US officials acknowledged that Israel was behind at least one of the strikes, and the Pentagon pointedly distanced itself from the Iraq strikes, saying that US forces were not involved.

None of the parties is believed to be seeking war, but the potential for miscalculation could lead to a regional conflagration.

Israel says it is responding to increasingly aggressive moves by Iran and seeking to roll back its regional entrenchment. As Netanyahu fights for an unprecedented fifth term in the Sept. 17 elections, he is eager to display his security credentials and discuss what many Israelis see as his signature achievement – countering Iran and its nuclear program.

Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes against Iranian-backed forces in Syria since the civil war began in 2011. In recent months it has gone increasingly public with the campaign, immediately confirming the kinds of strikes it used to rarely acknowledge.

Even Netanyahu’s political opponents support the operations, which are aimed at preventing Iran from establishing a permanent military presence on the Syrian frontier. But they have questioned his motives in making them public, with some accusing him of grandstanding, in what they suggest is an attempt to win over voters ahead of the elections.

“There is definitely a more aggressive line now, even if Israel isn’t saying so officially,” said Amos Harel, an Israeli military analyst. “Part of it has to do with the increased Iranian efforts and part of it has to do with all the other considerations.”

Netanyahu’s opponents have hammered him for refusing to strike harder at Hamas after recent rocket fire from Gaza. Netanyahu also faces a tide of corruption allegations that have raised the stakes ahead of the vote. He has denied any wrongdoing.

Despite his tough rhetoric, Netanyahu has traditionally been risk-averse in military matters. But he also views countering Iran as his primary mission and may hope to cement his legacy while he has a staunch supporter in the White House.

Meanwhile, Trump’s decision to withdraw from the nuclear deal and impose maximal sanctions on Iran has devastated its economy and left it desperate for relief.

Iran has begun openly breaching limits set by the deal, saying that it cannot abide by the agreement unless European signatories offer it a respite from sanctions. In recent weeks, Iran shot down a US military surveillance drone and has been blamed for mine attacks on six oil tankers near the Strait of Hormuz, something it denies. Iran has also seized a British-flagged oil tanker.

At the same time, Tehran has launched a fresh diplomatic offensive, with Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif making a surprise appearance at the G-7 summit in France as part of a worldwide tour ahead of next month’s UN General Assembly.

Experts say that Iran seeks sanctions relief and not war, but are alarmed by the potential for miscalculation, either by Tehran or its foes. Iran has spent decades building up powerful allies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and elsewhere, which it could call upon in a potential war with Israel or the United States.

Hezbollah is likely to respond to the drone attack in order to project strength and establish deterrence, but the nature and scope of its retaliation will depend largely on domestic considerations.

Nasrallah’s pledge to shoot down any Israeli aircraft that enter Lebanese airspace is in keeping with the bravado he regularly displays in public addresses, but he will have to perhaps weigh his response with the risk of igniting another devastating war.

Lebanon is already mired in an economic crisis that many blame on the government, which is dominated by Hezbollah and its allies. Nasrallah insists that such considerations won’t dictate his response, but officials close to Hezbollah’s leadership say it is mindful of being perceived as dragging the country into a ruinous war with Israel that would hasten its economic collapse.

Another consideration is the recent US-mediated efforts to open indirect talks between Lebanon and Israel aimed at demarcating the maritime border, which Lebanon hopes will allow it to begin offshore oil and gas exploration later this year.

Imad Marmal, a journalist close to Hezbollah, wrote on Tuesday that the group’s response will be “well studied and proportionate in a way that conveys the categorical message that changing the rules of engagement is prohibited, but without leading to the outbreak of an all-out war.”

That may be easier said than done. The monthlong war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006 was sparked by a cross-border raid in which Hezbollah killed and captured Israeli soldiers. Nasrallah later said he would have never ordered the operation if he had known it would lead to a war of that magnitude.


AP, Israel Hayom Staff

Source: https://www.israelhayom.com/2019/08/28/israels-shadow-war-with-iran-bursts-into-the-open/

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