The moral incoherence of an academic boycott against Israel - Richard L. Cravatts

 

​ by Richard L. Cravatts

There is another, far darker and more pernicious aspect to the call by Virginia Tech graduate students for a boycott of Israeli universities – Israeli academics would be suppressed and robbed of the ability to speak.

Seeming to give credence to George Orwell's wry observation that "there are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them," the fatuous members of the Virginia Tech Graduate and Professional Student Senate (GPSS) passed a "Resolution to Divest in Compliance with the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions Movement," tendentiously pronouncing their solidarity "with the Palestinian people in their struggle for liberation from Israeli apartheid, colonialism and military occupation … ."

Resolution 2021-22N3 calls on the university administration and staff Virginia Tech administrators and employees to "immediately begin to implement the academic and cultural boycott of Israel" by "adopting as a general principle a boycott of all Israeli academic institutions complicit in maintaining the Israeli occupation and the denial of basic Palestinian rights."

The poisonous and historically inaccurate language of the GPSS resolution, including such loaded terms as "apartheid, colonialism and military occupation," was troublingly similar to that found in the dozens of unctuous statements that oozed from university departments, faculty unions, student groups and other organizations in the wake of the latest Gaza insurgency in May.

All of the blame and condemnation for the ongoing conflict was assigned to Israel, and conveniently, for instance, no mention was made – either in this resolution or the many solidarity statements in May – of the more than 4,000 lethal rockets Hamas had fired into Israeli towns with the express purpose of murdering Jewish civilians, nor any recognition that each of these instances of rockets being fired constituted a war crime, or that Israel had every legal right under the laws of war to suppress such aggression and to retaliate in an effort to protect its citizenry from attack.

What was different about the Virginia Tech resolution, however, is that included a demand for Virginia Tech to join the BDS campaign since, the resolution claimed, "academic institutions are not neutral arenas of knowledge production, exchange and dissemination" and, therefore, "academic institutions are demonstrably key sites of contestation that can either uphold or challenge Israeli apartheid and colonialism … ." Moreover, any consideration that an academic boycott, in practice, constricts academic freedom should be ignored because the resolution asserted without providing any evidence, "it is clear then that the existing status quo is not one which upholds academic freedom, but rather is one which violently denies Palestinian academics the ability to freely participate in academic institutions and conferences around the world."

While they would never accept an attempt to boycott themselves – in which individual academics are tarred not only by the institutional behavior of their respective universities but also for the actions and policies of their governments – that is precisely what the GPSS boycott does to Israeli academics and why it is so intellectually grotesque. Because they heeded the call from Palestinian "civil society" to implement a boycott against Israel, the GPSS has become a group of academics boycotting fellow academics, even though GPSS members are shameless in their assertion that this is not actually an academic boycott, that it targets institutions and not individuals, and that, at any rate, it is critical because the Palestinian cause is so profoundly important to the world that it is reason enough to abandon fundamental academic values.

"BDS does not," the resolution fatuously claimed, "constrain academic freedom, but rather promises to open a path to support Palestinian academics as they resist the oppression they face at the hands of complicit Israeli academic institutions."

In other words, Israeli scholars are too privileged to enjoy the same academic freedoms as anyone else, and especially the perennially suffering Palestinians, whose fate is clearly, at least in the opinion of the GPSS, the responsibility of Israel. Statehood, academic freedom, national sovereignty, the rule of the law – all these are brushed aside by the ideology of the left in their pursuit for social justice for the ever-present victim, a way of thinking critiqued by James Burnham in his insightful book, Suicide of the West: An Essay on the Meaning and Destiny of Liberalism. The academic virtues – the "exceptionalism" of the United States and Israel that GPSS members dismiss and demean – are, according to Burnham, precisely the "ideals and institutions that liberalism has criticized, attacked and in part overthrown as superstitious, archaic, reactionary and irrational. In their place liberalism proposes a set of pale and bloodless abstractions – pale and bloodless for the very reason that they have no roots in the past, in deep feeling and in suffering."

There is another, far darker and more pernicious aspect to the call for a boycott of Israeli universities. Because what such a boycott does is to effectively silence the scholars of an entire country – a group comprised of what the GPSS seemingly defines as racists, imperialists and colonial interlopers on stolen Arab land – Israeli academics would be suppressed and robbed of the ability to speak.

There is no surprise that an academic association like the GPSS would call for a boycott against only one country – Israel – precisely because a large number of its ranks are steeped in a world view defined by post-colonial, anti-American, anti-Israel thinking, and dedicated to the elevation of identity politics and a cult of victimhood. That they profess to hold high-minded, well-intentioned motives, and speak with such rectitude, does not excuse the fact that their efforts are in the end a betrayal of what the university has, and should, stand for – the free exchange of ideas, even bad ones.

In its own 2006 statement, "On Academic Boycotts," the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), was very clear in its belief that academic boycotts represent a strategy that is contrary to the purpose and ideals of academia. "Academic boycotts," the statement read, "strike directly at the free exchange of ideas even as they are aimed at university administrations or … political parties in power. The form that noncooperation with an academic institution takes inevitably involves a refusal to engage in academic discourse with teachers and researchers, not all of whom are complicit in the policies that are being protested. Moreover, an academic boycott can compound a regime's suppression of freedoms by cutting off contacts with an institution's or a country's academics."

A boycott barring all Israeli academics from participating in academic endeavors with scholars from other nations is also defective because it necessarily must assume that all Israeli scholars, regardless of their political orientation and social values, are painted with the same moral brush. As such, they deserve to be condemned and excluded merely because of the perceived political sins of the nation in which they live.

If those calling for an academic boycott take the outrageous first step of denying Israeli academics any discourse at all in what is usually called "the academic marketplace of ideas," of banishing them from the world of dialogue, research and learning, have not they already struck a fatal blow to the core guiding principle of the academy?

Since when has it been the responsibility of the university to control the actions of the state, or for its members to share culpability for the political decisions of a nation?

Also inherent in the GPSS resolution is the defective belief that Palestinian universities and scholars suffer and are suppressed academically because of Israeli policy and control – that the defects in Palestinian higher education, including its close involvement in the recruitment of terrorists and the development of weaponry, should lie at Israel's feet. As is the habit of woke social-justice warriors in the West, victims like the Palestinians have no agency of their own, and their failure to thrive – economically, socially and culturally – is regularly blamed on Israel, the oppressor.

But the Palestinians are singularly responsible for the sorry state of higher education in the West Bank and Gaza. In fact, as Cary Nelson fastidiously examined in his new book, Not in Kansas Anymore: Academic Freedom in Palestinian Universities, despite the jaundiced view of GPSS and other of Israel's critics, Palestinian higher education is defined by radical politics, rival political factions who use harassment, violence and intimidation to promote their views, alignment with terror groups such as Hamas, repression of opposing views, the use of terror cells within university facilities for weapon production, and violence against and even the murder of dissenting faculty who do not conform to the prevailing hatred of the Jewish state or the tenets of Islam.

According to Nelson, former president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP and professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), it is the Palestinians themselves who shoulder much of the responsibility for the fragile state of academic freedom and free speech at their universities.

"The pervasive politicization and militarization of education that took place in Palestinian Universities in the 1980s has left a legacy that is still relevant today," wrote Nelson. A group like GPSS is wrong-headed when it "assigns the responsibility to protect academic freedom to Israel alone and ignores the primary responsibility the PA and the universities themselves must take. … Allying with a Hamas cell is not the same as joining a chapter of College Democrats or College Republicans on an American campus. In the West Bank and Gaza, we are not in Kansas anymore," wrote Nelson, alluding to Dorothy's iconic line in The Wizard of Oz.

Irrespective of blame, the suppression of academic freedom and the real, and potentially lethal, threats to free speech that both faculty and students face in Palestinian institutions of higher education are cause for alarm. It is not only Israel's security that is threatened by the ongoing incubation of hatred and terrorism inside the universities' walls. The integrity, value and moral clarity of Palestinian education are also victims to the systemic culture of violence, extremism and warring political factionalism – all with long-term, deleterious effects for Palestinian culture and society.

There is no surprise that a sententious academic group like the GPSS would call for a boycott against only one country – Israel – precisely because a large number of its ranks are steeped in a worldview defined by post-colonial, anti-American, anti-Israel thinking and dedicated to the elevation of identity politics and a cult of victimhood. That they profess to hold high-minded, well-intentioned motives, and speak with such rectitude, does not excuse the fact that their efforts are in the end a betrayal of what the university has, and should, stand for – the free exchange of ideas, even bad ones.

Reprinted from JNS.org.

 

Richard L. Cravatts

Source: https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/the-moral-incoherence-of-an-academic-boycott-against-israel/

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Ibram X. Kendi just gave away the con - Andrea Widburg

 

​ by Andrea Widburg

Not only did he undermine the "anti-racist" theories that have made him famous but he also outed himself as a “transphobe.”

Ibram X. Kendi (born Ibram Henry Rogers) has made a name for himself as an “anti-racist” activist, which is an Orwellian way of saying that his entire career is based upon arguing that America is a systemically racist country and that all White Americans are complicit. However, in a tweet that he swiftly deleted, Kendi effectively acknowledged that power in America lies with racial minorities, not with Whites. Oh, and he’s a transphobe.

Kendi’s breakout best-seller, How To Be An Antiracist, is on every Critical Race Theory reading list, whether in America’s K-12 schools, its colleges (some of which have made it mandatory), its corporations, or the American military. In 2019, Kendi wrote an essay for The Atlantic claiming, as all race hustlers do, that America’s real founding was 1619, when the British brought slaves to America’s shores:

Her name was Angela, one of the first known Africans in British North America.

His name was John, the first known antiblack racist in colonial America.

In 1619, this black woman and white man—what they embody—arrived months apart in 12-year-old Virginia, the first of the 13 British colonies that became the United States. Angela was the original embodiment of enslavement, of survival, of the 400-year African American struggle to survive, to be free of racism. John was the original embodiment of elite white male power, of the democracy of racists, of its 400-year struggle to survive, to be free of anti-racism.

 And there you have the whole systemic racism theory in full. Of course, even ardent leftists, if honest, concede that this is all an ahistorical lie.

But we shouldn’t expect more from Kendi, for he’s not the brightest bulb in the box. Watch him struggle to explain what’s constitute racism. It’s embarrassing but also really funny:

In which academic discipline is this circular, naive, deer-caught-in-the-headlights response to a basic and urgent question considered insightful or excellent?

A national culture exempting this (which, sadly, is typical of him) from judgment is unintentionally racist itself. pic.twitter.com/n493NpjFmx

— John McWhorter (@JohnHMcWhorter) June 1, 2021

 

Of course, Kendi could have stood there picking his nose and he would have been feted, because he’s saying what leftists long to hear. Dividing America along racial lines is the perfect way to break this country and lead it into the glorious new morning of socialism.

Still, the intellectual deficit is Kendi’s Achille’s heel. It explains why he tweeted (and then deleted) a message that undercuts everything he’s been hustling:

Wow! America must be really racist if the only way Whites can get into college is if they pass as minorities. Oh, wait! Never mind....

That was bad enough but, when people started calling Kendi out on the true import of that now-deleted tweet, he pulled the race card, which is only the only card in his deck:

Kendi’s tortured “logic” reminds me of Tweedledee’s and Tweedledum’s logic in Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll’s sequel to Alice in Wonderland:

“I know what you’re thinking about,” said Tweedledum; “but it isn’t so, nohow.”

“Contrariwise,” continued Tweedledee, “if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic.”

Yes, indeed, Prof. Kendi. “That’s logic.”

Kendi may have a bigger problem than just picking fights with people smarter and better informed than he is. It turns out that Kendi doesn’t admire so-called transgender people:

In a video posted on Twitter Ibram X. Kendi, the man celebrated by the left for his efforts to insert Critical Race Theory in the nation’s schools, said it was “horrifying” when his daughter announced she wanted to be a boy.

“Even talking about gender, you know, I think it was last week my daughter came home and said she wanted to be a boy,” Kendi said in a video that includes his name on the screen. “You know, which was horrifying for my wife to hear, myself to hear.”

“And so of course, you know, we’re like, okay, what affirmative messages about girlhood, you know, can we be teaching her to protect her from whatever she’s hearing in our home or even outside of our home that would make her want to be a boy,” he continued.

I agree with Kendi on this one but he’s going to discover that, when you pick fights with the activist alphabet people, you’re going to lose. Expect Kendi’s groveling apology any day now. After all, he’s got to sell his upcoming book, How to Raise an Anti-Racist. I expect a new chapter about How to be a Transophile.

Here’s an idea for Xendi: Celebrate the fact that you’re in America, not Africa, and that, by virtue of your skin color, even the fact that you’re incredibly ill-informed and really not very bright hasn’t stopped you from reaching the pinnacle of woke society.

(For this post, my pronouns are “Judge me by the content of my character, not the color of my skin,” and “Leftists always eat their own.” What are your pronouns?)

Image: Ibram X. Kendi by Montclair Film. CC BY 2.0.

 

Andrea Widburg

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/11/ibram_x_kendi_just_gave_away_the_con.html

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Poison Jihad: UK Lawyer Injects Food Items with Blood - Robert Spencer

 

​ by Robert Spencer

There are so many ways to kill, and jihadis try to utilize them all.

 

Leoaai Elghareeb, a 37-year-old Muslim in London, was recently charged, according to the UK’s Daily Mail, with “contaminating or interfering with goods with blood at three supermarkets in west London.” Elgareeb must be one of those people the establishment media keeps telling us about, those dirt-poor, woefully ignorant people who turn to jihad out of sheer desperation, right? Wrong. He is a solicitor for a firm known as Opus Legal contractors; legal work generally makes its practitioners affluent, and the Daily Mail tells us that “homes and flats in the area where Mr Elghareeb lives sell for upwards of £1.5m.” (that’s well over two million dollars). So why did he do such a thing? Could it have something to do with his Islamic faith? Of course not! Why, that would be “Islamophobic”!

Elghareeb contaminated food at three London supermarkets: Tesco Express, Little Waitrose and Sainsbury’s Local. According to the Guardian, Elghareeb is “alleged to have entered the Waitrose store at 7.30pm on Wednesday with syringes filled with blood. The prosecutor Jennifer Garland said Elghareeb was accused of using the syringes to ‘inject food items with blood.’” He is also “accused of doing the same in the nearby Sainsbury’s store, as well as throwing eggs, before going on to inject more items in Tesco Express and then being arrested.” No one could be sure of the extent of Elghareeb’s work, and so according to the Daily Mail, “Hammersmith & Fulham Council advised shoppers to throw away anything bought from the three shops.”

Elghareeb, the court was told, was a “man of previous good character.” Sure he was. So what happened? Neither the Daily Mail nor the Guardian would dare mention it, but jihad contamination and poisoning attempts are not new. Earlier this year in India, there were four incidents of Muslims spitting on the food of non-Muslims, one said he’d been doing it for years. Also in India in 2019, Muslims plotted to poison food offered in a Hindu temple that is consumed by at least 40,000 devotees.

Al-Qaeda has long considered the contamination of food as a jihad mass murder tactic. In 2018, a Muslim named Husnain Rashid called on other Muslims to murder four-year-old Prince George and poison supermarket ice cream. That same year, a convert to Islam was sentenced for distributing material calling for jihad and possessing a handbook for poisoning unbelievers. Another owner of that poisoning handbook ultimately plotted instead to attack non-Muslims with a knife. And in 2017, the Islamic State called on Muslims to poison food in Western supermarkets. And it has happened at least twice before in Britain: in 2008, shop owner Saeed Hashmi sold chocolate cake sprinkled with human feces.

The Daily Mail reported back in July 2017 that an Algerian Muslim named Sahnoun Daifallah, a chemist, “squirted a mixture of urine and faeces from a 1.5 litre weed killer container – concealed within a laptop bag – at the Air Balloon Pub in Birdlip, before moving on to a Waterstones bookshop in Cirencester. Two days later, he targeted a Tesco store in Quedgley and a Morrisons in Abbeydale. Damage to the businesses was estimated at £700,000 [$948,000].”

In 2008, according to the BBC, “a man has been remanded in custody charged with spraying urine at two supermarkets, a pub and a book shop. Sahnoun Daifallah, 42, of Bibury Road, from Gloucester, appeared before magistrates and pleaded not guilty to four charges of contaminating products.” In 2006, another Muslim in the UK was found to be selling poisoned hamburgers.

In Canada in 2009, according to the Canwest News Service, “Mastoora Qezil, 41, was arrested by Guelph police Thursday and is facing a common nuisance charge…The Canadian Food Inspection Agency issued warnings last week after sewing needles were found in meat products at a supermarket.”

There is much more. The Islamic State called on Muslims to poison the food that British royal Kate Middleton buys at supermarkets. The Islamic State told Muslims to poison food in Western supermarkets. Two jihadis were arrested for mass poisoning plots, one of the Lebanese army’s water supply.

We also know that jihadis have long wanted to poison the water supply. As far back as 2002, the feds arrested two jihadis who were carrying plans about how to poison water supplies. In 2003, al-Qaeda threatened to poison water supplies in Western countries. In 2011, a jihadi in Spain likewise planned to poison water supplies.

And in May 2013, seven Muslim “chemical engineers” were caught trespassing at the Quabbin Reservoir, a key supply of water for Boston, after midnight. Only months later and indirectly did we hear that it was a “criminal matter.” A month later, locks were cut at the aqueduct that supplies water to Greater Boston.

Also in May 2013, jihadists were caught in Canada who had considered poisoning air and water to murder up to 100,000 people. In October 2013, the FBI was investigating a possible water supply threat in Wichita. In January 2014, a Muslim broke into a water treatment plant in New Jersey. In 2017, Kerala police in India uncovered an Islamic State plot to poison the drinking water of Hindu pilgrims.

So far, none of these plots have caused widespread deaths, but the strange case of Leoaai Elghareeb is a grim reminder that some jihadis still think mass poisoning is a workable tactic. Authorities should be on guard against it – that is, if they can tear themselves away from their outreach events at the local mosque long enough to make adequate preparations.

 

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 23 books including many bestsellers, such as The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), The Truth About Muhammad and The History of Jihad. His latest book is The Critical Qur’an. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here. 

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/11/poison-jihad-uk-lawyer-injects-food-items-blood-robert-spencer/

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The Current Chaos: Incompetence or By Design? - William Kilpatrick

 

​ by William Kilpatrick

A reflection on deliberate destruction.

 

In a 2015 piece, I suggested that the chaos resulting from President Obama’s destructive policies was deliberate. I wrote that Obama and his advisors wanted to weaken America’s global position, wanted to encourage racial division, and wanted to overload the immigration system.

But how about Joe Biden?  Biden not only revived many of Obama’s initiatives, he added dozens more.  Biden has wreaked more destruction in eight months than Obama could manage in eight years.

Once again, however, we must ask if this destruction is deliberate.  Perhaps, as many suggest, the recent rapid descent of America is the result of incompetence rather than careful deliberation.  Because of his cognitive difficulties, it now appears that Biden is simply not up to the job.  Moreover, many of his appointees also seem incompetent.  Pete Buttigieg doesn’t seem to be up to the job of Transportation Secretary, Lloyd Austin doesn’t inspire much confidence as Secretary of Defense, and Merrick Garland seems better suited to the office of Chief Inquisitor than to the office of Attorney General.  And so on down the line.  Most of Biden’s appointments seem to have been selected for reasons of ideology rather than competence.  To top it off, should Biden be removed for incompetence, he will be replaced by a woman who seems to be the most incompetent vice president of all time.

On the other hand, by the laws of probability, Biden’s advisors and appointees can’t all be incompetent.  After all, many of them are retreads from the Obama administration.  And Obama, according to some, was just about the smartest president to ever occupy the White House.

Besides, you don’t need a high IQ to recognize that some policies are just plain dumb.  Currently, we are experiencing high inflation due in part to a disruption in the “supply chain.”  But supply and demand is a fairly simple concept.  You don’t need a Ph.D. in economics to understand the basics.  If you cancel pipelines and cut back on coal and oil production—as Biden has done—the price of gas at the pump will go up.  Either Biden and Buttigieg don’t understand that, or else they don’t care about the financial strain on average Americans.  Perhaps their refined nostrils are offended by the smell of gasoline engines.  In the 18^th century, the elites said “Let them eat cake;” now they say, “Let them drive electric cars.”

There is, undoubtedly, a great deal of incompetence in the Biden administration, but not enough to account for the escalating damage to America.  For one thing, it’s not just the administration that has imposed a totalitarian order on the American people; Our new set of rulers also includes the media, corporations, academics, medical professionals, school boards, and state and local governments.  In addition, the new totalitarianism is not confined to America; it’s spreading to once-democratic nations all over the world.

Moreover, the destructive new woke order is simply too comprehensive and too interconnected to be considered the result of random chance or sheer incompetence.  One is reminded of the “watchmaker” argument for the existence of God.  When you examine a watch with all its intricate complexity, you understand immediately that it couldn’t have come into existence by accident.  Someone must have designed it.

A similar argument can be made when the mechanisms of society suddenly stall and reverse in so many places simultaneously.  It seems to have been consciously designed. The system is not running the way you would like, but from a certain point of view it’s working just fine.

It’s difficult to know where to start when describing the system we now live under because there are so many wheels within wheels, so many interlocking parts.

But the education system is certainly one of the most essential components of the overall system.  It began its transition from serving the interests of parents to serving the interests of the left about 60 years ago.  We’ve just recently learned about Critical Race Theory indoctrination in the schools, but the schools have been indoctrinating students in leftist causes for decades. The kids were being exposed to distorted views of sex, family, society, and history long before the Internet was invented. For years, two of the most widely used American history textbooks were ones written by a Marxist who described himself as “something of an anarchist, something of a socialist.”

Having gone through this K-to- graduate school indoctrination system, American citizens—many of them at least—see no problem with whatever left-wing argument or initiative is being pushed on them.

• Increasing racial tensions?  Must be caused by systemic racism.
• Defund the police?  They deserve it.  They’re all racists anyways.
• Tear down statues of Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln?  They were slave owners, weren’t they?
• Boys in the girl’s locker room?  Boys have a right to be girls if they want.
• Media’s election season cover-up of Hunter Biden’s laptop story?  Who’s Hunter Biden?
• January 6^th incursion into the Capitol Building?  It was worse than 9/11.

In the last few years, the American populace has been subject to the biggest gaslighting campaign since Hitler and Goebbels tried to convince the German people that they were the master race.  The term “gaslighting,” by the way, comes from Gaslight, a 1944 film in which smooth-talking Charles Boyer almost convinces Ingrid Bergman that she is going crazy.  He tells her that she is seeing things and hearing things that aren’t there (but they really are).  You can understand how Bergman’s character must have felt if, back in last October, you tried to convince a liberal friend that Hunter Biden’s laptop was a real story, only to be soothingly reassured that you were seeing things, and that maybe you should see a doctor.

What may turn out to be the biggest gaslighting story of all, however, is the corona virus epidemic.  Fear of COVID-19 is being used to scare the public into submission to unnecessary and even harmful government mandates and edicts.  Thus, the propaganda surrounding the virus and the vaccines has become a useful tool in what seems to be a scheme to force people to yield up their civil liberties.

There is growing evidence, for example, that COVID death numbers have been greatly exaggerated both here and abroad.

In the Spring of 2020, Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator, admitted that the government was classifying all deaths of patients with the virus as COVID-19 deaths regardless of cause.

In July of 2020, both Admiral Brett Giroir, the Assistant Secretary for Health, and Dr. Robert Redfield, Director of the CDC, acknowledged that COVID death statistics were inflated.

In December 2020, the Brookings Institute published a study that showed that due to media distortion, “the average American dramatically overestimates the share of COVID-19 deaths from people aged 24 and under, putting it around 8% when in fact it was 0.1%.”

In June of 2021, a Lisbon court ruled that the number of verified deaths from COVID-19 in Portugal during a fifteen-month period was only 152 not the 17,000 claimed by government ministries.

A Recent article in Il Tempo, reports that the Higher Institute of Health has revised the number of deaths in Italy due to COVID since February, 2020 from 130,468 to 3,783.

In Grand County, Colorado on Thanksgiving Day, 2020, a man shot his wife in the head, then killed himself.  The next day, the homicide-suicide showed up on the state website as Covid deaths.

When it comes to the pandemic, it’s difficult to separate the facts from the gaslighting. Definitions and explanations change on an almost weekly basis.  It’s difficult to get reliable figures on vaccine efficacy, and even more difficult to get accurate information on adverse side effects.  Meanwhile, alternative treatments such as Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine have been subject to a smear campaign by the media.

There are, of course, some who believe that the pandemic was deliberately created by sinister forces for the purpose of controlling the masses and making them more obedient to authorities.

That’s difficult to prove.  After all, the sinister, wealthy people who are suspected of the crime would have ways of hiding their tracks.  However, the claim does bring us back to the question of whether or not the current chaos is the result of incompetence or of planning.

Of the many crises that currently face us, one has almost certainly been planned.  There may be a few naïve souls who believe that the southern border crisis just happened to have happened, but most realize that it happened because Biden and other top Democrats made it happen.  They wanted to open the border because they calculated that today’s illegal migrants would become tomorrow’s Democratic voters.

What evidence is there of premeditation?  Well, there’s the fact that during the campaign, Biden invited illegal migrants on several occasions to come to the U.S. And when the migrants came, many of them thanked the president for the invitation.  One of Biden’s first actions as president was to halt construction of the border wall, and as thousands upon thousands of illegals crossed into the U.S., he did nothing to stop them.  In fact, he did everything to facilitate their arrival. Waiting charter buses brought migrants to hotels and other accommodations in Southwest Texas.  And secret nighttime charter flights flew them to cities across the U.S. To all appearances, the flooding of the border was quite purposeful.  It presented the American people with a fait accompli that would be exceedingly difficult to undo.

In addition, the administration correctly assumed that many in the media would give the border story minimal coverage, together with a positive spin.  The interlocking cooperation of government, media, corporations, non-profits, and so forth, is all the more reason to think that many of our problems are well-planned problems.

However, that doesn’t rule out incompetence as a factor.  Whoever is pulling the strings probably doesn’t mind that Biden appoints incompetent people.  The more incompetence, the more chaos.  And chaos is what the powers-that-be seem to want.

The breakdown of the economy?  Of law and order? Of education and health care? Why would anyone want that? Well, mainly because the breakdowns can be used as proof that the old system no longer works and needs to be replaced with a new one.  Besides, the failures can all be blamed on capitalism or racism or Donald Trump (who, in the imaginations of leftists, is the new Emmanuel Goldstein—the all-purpose villain in 1984).

Any explanation will do.  Thanks to America’s left-leaning educational system, a significant number of citizens aren’t capable of thinking logically.

Why else does the left want chaos?  Because social and economic breakdowns eventually breed resistance and protests.  And the resistance provides an excuse to crackdown on the protestors.  The crackdown, in turn, further intimidates the general populace into submission.  What’s more, any resistance will be used to reinforce the domestic terrorism/insurrectionist narrative that the left has so carefully cultivated. As the left has long understood, chaos creates opportunities.

 

William Kilpatrickis a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.  His books include Christianity, Islam, and Atheism: The Struggle for the Soul of the West (Ignatius Press), What Catholics Need to Know About Islam (Sophia Press), and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Jihad.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/11/current-chaos-incompetence-or-design-william-kilpatrick/

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Globalists Use UN Green Climate Fund to Redistribute Wealth - Joseph Klein

 

​ by Joseph Klein

Seeking more than a trillion dollars from “rich” countries this decade.

 

World leaders are convening in Glasgow for a climate summit meeting beginning on October 31^st. This get-together is a follow-up to the 2015 conference in Paris that resulted in the one-sided Paris Climate Agreement. As the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) gets underway, it is worth recalling the prescient words of a former United Nations climate change expert who candidly linked globalist policies to combat climate change with wealth redistribution.

More than ten years ago, Ottmar Edenhofer, a former co-chair of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group III "Mitigation of Climate Change," explained the connection as follows:

“Basically, it is a big mistake to discuss climate policy separately from the big issues of globalization…First of all, we industrialized countries have practically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must be clear: we are de facto redistributing world wealth through climate policy. It is obvious that the owners of coal and oil are not enthusiastic about it. One has to get rid of the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy.” [translated from German via Google Translate]

The UN Green Climate Fund (GCF), which will surely be a major topic of discussion at the Glasgow climate summit, demonstrates what Edenhofer was talking about.

The Green Climate Fund was established as part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. It describes itself as “the world’s largest climate fund, mandated to support developing countries raise and realize their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) ambitions towards low-emissions, climate-resilient pathways.” The Nationally Determined Contributions are supposed to embody objectives by each country, as part of  their participation in the Paris Climate Agreement, to reduce national greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change.

The world’s more economically advanced countries agreed to jointly provide $100 billion per year to the GCF by 2020. However, the $100 billion annual target has not been met so far.

Not only are the so-called “developing” countries pressing for the so-called “rich” countries to promptly fulfill their collective pledge of providing $100 billion annually to the GCF. The developing countries are demanding far more in redistribution of wealth to them through the GCF, with essentially no strings attached that would require them to meet firm decarbonization targets. Indeed, some developing countries are pushing for as much as $750 billion annually in additional contributions to the GCF from richer countries by the middle of this decade.

For example, as reported by Bloomberg Green, South African Environment Minister Barbara Creecy suggested that “post-2025, we most move from a floor of $100 billion. Taking the needs of developing nations into account, we must move toward a collective goal of mobilizing $750 billion a year” from developed countries. South Africa would be a funding recipient, not a donor country.

By all normal economic measures, South Africa should not even be considered a developing country that would be entitled to receive funds from the GCF. Yet by virtue of the UN’s own “Human Development Index,” South Africa is still classified as a “developing country.” No wonder South Africa wants “richer countries” to fork over $750 billion annually within just a few years to the Green Climate Fund piggy bank from which it will partake.

President Biden’s climate czar John Kerry, who loves to fly around to climate meetings in fossil fuel-guzzling private airplanes, promised to restore the funding to the GCF that had been scrapped by the Trump administration. He said this would be “just the beginning of what we intend to do.”  Kerry added that “President Biden knows we need to contribute going forward, and even now we have started to consider exactly how to provide scaled-up resources to the GCF.”

Yannick Glemarec, executive director of the Green Climate Fund, said that U.S. reengagement “will send an extraordinarily positive signal” to spur accelerated financial support for the fund’s projects.

But GCF whistleblowers are advising the Biden administration to spend its money elsewhere. Whistleblowers have complained about integrity issues at the GCF in vetting projects for funding and about political interference in what should be purely technical decisions.

A whistleblower from a developed country, a technical specialist who did not want to be identified, was quoted by Climate Home News as saying that “[T]here was inappropriate pressure to approve projects which could harm people.”

“Sincerely, I don’t think that the GCF, the way it is managed today, is a good channel for climate finance,” said Pierre-Daniel Telep, a German who worked on renewable energy projects at the GCF for over two years.

The Green Climate Fund funnels a significant amount of money to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), GCF’s largest project implementer. In fact, the GCF just reaccredited UNDP to receive GCF funds despite unresolved corruption allegations involving UNDP-administered programs in Russia, Samoa, and Armenia. An audit of UNDP practices has also revealed deficiencies in UNDP’s internal controls, accountability, and anti-money laundering implementation.

UNDP’s Administrator, Achim Steiner, dismissed the significance of these concerns, declaring to UN correspondents during a press briefing that the “reaccreditation speaks for itself.”

One thing we do know is that Steiner is a big believer in wealth redistribution. “Inequality is not just about how much someone earns compared to their neighbour,” Steiner said in 2019. “It is about the unequal distribution of wealth and power: the entrenched social and political norms that are bringing people onto the streets today, and the triggers that will do so in the future unless something changes.”

The developing countries seeking handouts from the Green Climate Fund have objected to any decarbonization conditions imposed on their domestic development entities seeking to access GCF funding. GCF Board members from some of these countries have backed such objections in strident terms.

For example, GCF Board member Ayman Shasly, from Saudi Arabia of all places, described the imposition of a decarbonization timetable condition as “blackmail.” Shasly accused the GCF of being “manipulated by [developed countries] pushing their own agenda onto the fund.”

It is the developing countries and their left-wing supporters, crying “equity” and “climate justice,” who are seeking to manipulate the GCF into acceding to their demands.

Yan Ren, the GCF Board member from China, which is absurdly categorized as one of the GCF Board representatives of developing countries, said, “We should not impose conditions on developing countries to force them to achieve certain targets. There is no one size fits all on fossil fuels.”

China has the world’s second-largest economy, exceeded only by the United States. China is engaging in fossil fuel-intensive activities in trying to become the world’s number one economic superpower. In the process, China has become the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases.

To help greenwash its image, China is exploiting its membership on the GCF Board as a “developing country” that should not be required to meet firm decarbonization targets.

To add insult to injury, China has managed to obtain funding from the Green Climate Fund to pay for mitigating the greenhouse gas emissions that China is increasingly spewing into the air.

Sadly, the Biden administration intends to scale up U.S. contributions to the Green Climate Fund. It will thereby waste American taxpayers’ money on a dysfunctional globalist wealth redistribution device that even funnels funds to China.

 

Joseph Klein

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/11/globalists-use-un-green-climate-fund-radically-joseph-klein/

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In addition to Hezbollah, Venezuela a safe haven for Palestinian terrorists - Damian Pachter

 

​ by Damian Pachter

According to new information revealed by Venezuelan hacker group Team HDP, Venezuela hosts Palestinian terrorist cells involved in money laundering, drug dealing, and terrorist activity, among other crimes.

 

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, left, and Palestinian Autority President Mahmoud Abbas, share a laugh as they gather for an official group photo at the 17th Non-Aligned Movement Summit in Porlamar, on Venezuela's Margarita Island, Saturday, Sept. 17, 2016 | Archives: AP/Ariana Cubillos

 Last week, Israel Hayom reported that a Venezuelan hacker group by the name Team HDP broke into the country's Directorate General of Military Counterintelligence, gaining access to information on purported Hezbollah operatives living freely in the country under the protection of President Nicolas Maduro's socialist government.

Now, new details have emerged: According to the information stolen by Team HDP, Venezuela also hosts Palestinian terrorist cells involved in money laundering, drug dealing, and terrorist activity, among other crimes. It was also revealed that Cuba's foreign intelligence agency plays a central role in the matter.

One of the Palestinian cells, according to the information from Venezuela's Directorate General of Military Counterintelligence, allegedly belongs to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the military wing of the Fatah faction. The cell reportedly consists of at least four men identified as "doctors," whose cover includes working for Venezuela's national social security agency in Merida state in the country's northwest. "Fawaz Snofar," "Mahmoud Khalaf," and "Muhammad Abu-Rah" are some of the names that appear on the list.

The report alleges that the Palestinian "doctor" cell is responsible for the deaths of several patients due to medical malpractice, possibly the result of their questionable medical bona fides. One of the names mentioned on the list, "Khaled Badawi," is said to be of Pakistani origin and allegedly belongs to several Palestinian terrorist groups. Under the guise of being a doctor, his name was connected to activity in Merida, "a region in which uranium, thorium and coltan mines currently operate."

An Israeli source told Israel Hayom's Arab Affairs correspondent Daniel Siryoti that one of the names on the list is indeed known to the Israeli security services after he was questioned in Israel for throwing rocks at IDF soldiers as a 16-year-old. "Consequently, he was expelled from the country and forbidden from returning until the age of 21," the source said.

As stated, the report also sheds light on the role of a spy agency the Israeli public is likely less familiar with – the Cuban Intelligence Directorate, commonly known as G2. Aside from Iran, Cuba is a key ally of the regime in Caracas.

"The Cuban G2 are the architects of the reforms within the [Venezuelan] regime's intelligence services," explains Ivan Simonovis, an expert on Venezuelan intelligence matters and a former long-time intelligence operative himself who, among other things, created the first Venezuelan police tactical team and later also served as security chief of the Metropolitan District of Caracas.

Simonovis, 61, was arrested in November 2004 and accused by the Hugo Chávez government of the violence that took place in Caracas in April 2002. In 2009, he was found guilty and sentenced to 30 years in prison. Due to deteriorating health, Simonovis was granted house arrest to receive medical treatment in September 2014. Five years later, he fled to Miami, where was granted political asylum.

Addressing the Hezbollah terrorist cells supposedly based on Margarita Island, as revealed by Israel Hayom, Simonovis said: "Over the past 20 years, numerous mosques have been built on the island and massive amounts of people of Middle Eastern origin moved there. No one knows who they are and what they do exactly. It's easier to run into a Middle Easterner on the island than a native resident."

Simonovis also identified the man to which all roads apparently lead: Petroleum Minister and former Venezuelan Vice President Tareck El Aissami.

"They [Hezbollah operatives] trust him and prefer doing business with someone familiar. El Aissami's father is a known Syrian activist with longstanding ties to terrorist organizations," said Simonovis.

 

Damian Pachter

Source: https://www.israelhayom.com/2021/11/01/in-addition-to-hezbollah-venezuela-a-safe-haven-for-palestinian-terrorists/

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Additional construction to be pushed through in bid to bolster PA economy - ILH Staff

 

​ by ILH Staff

Defense Minister Benny Gantz reportedly seeks to expand plans to build 1,300 homes for Palestinians living in Area C.

Defense Minister Benny Gantz is reportedly seeking to implement several measures to strengthen the Palestinian Authority economy in the coming weeks, Channel 12 News reports.

One of the aims is to approve the construction of additional housing for Palestinians living in Area C of the West Bank, in addition to the 1,300 housing units that are expected to be authorized on Sunday.

Israel is also reportedly legalizing the status of more undocumented Palestinians, after 4,000 were regularized last week, mostly in the West Bank.

In October, Israel announced that it will issue an additional 9,000 work permits to Palestinians, according to the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories.

Many West Bank Palestinians employed in the construction industry will thus be allowed to work in Israel, in accordance with the government's decision to increase the quota of Palestinian workers by 15,000.

Some 120,000 Palestinians have so far been granted Israeli work permits, including 30,000 to work in Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

According to Channel 12 News, Gantz will visit Washington for talks on the issue next month with the approval of the construction of a new site on the agenda.

i24NEWS contributed to this report.

 

ILH Staff

Source: https://www.israelhayom.com/2021/11/01/additional-construction-to-be-pushed-through-in-bid-to-bolster-pa-economy/

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Democrats to call on Biden not to open Palestinian consulate in Jerusalem - Ariel Kahana

 

​ by Ariel Kahana

Efforts by Republicans to introduce legislation to prevent the consulate's reopening failed to garner Democratic support in Congress last week.

 

A view of the Jerusalem building where the US plans to reopen it diplomatic mission to the Palestinains, March 4, 2019 | Photo: Oren Ben Hakoon

Democratic members of the US Congress are expected to ask US President Joe Biden not to open the Palestinian consulate in Jerusalem.

The move is the initiative of senior representatives from the moderate wing of the Democratic party.

While they said their request would be made public, at this stage, the representatives asked to remain anonymous to bolster the chances of their success.

The Democratic representatives voiced their opposition to the consulate's reopening at a meeting with Binyamin Regional Council Head Israel Gantz and adviser for US-Israel ties Ruth Lieberman. At the meeting, the two explained the opening of the consulate would send a message of support for the future division of Jerusalem and explained such a move was contrary to accepted diplomatic policy and in violation of Israeli and US law.

The representatives said they would demand Biden halt efforts to reopen the US diplomatic mission to the Palestinians, noting both the president and the Democratic party had more important issues to contend with at this time, chief among them Biden's massive infrastructure spending plan to boost the US economy.

To date, all efforts to block the reopening of the consulate have been led by Republicans. Last week, 35 Republican senators introduced a bill to stop the move, although they were unable to garner Democratic support for the legislation.

Binyamin Regional Council head Gantz told Israel Hayom, "The members of Congress we met with understand the significance of opening the consulate – harm to Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem and harm even to US sovereignty as the transfer of the [US] Embassy [to Jerusalem] at the time was in effect the declaration of Jerusalem as Israel's capital."

Lieberman added: "It turns out the consulate issue is not a partisan one.

"We succeeded in spurring senior members of Congress from the Democratic party who will not hesitate to express their opposition to the move. They believe the opening of the consulate is a dangerous step for Jerusalem," she said.

The two Israeli officials also met with 60 Republican members of Congress. In that meeting, the Israelis presented US officials with evidence of "the Palestinian takeover of the territory" as well as the need to develop the area for the benefit of all residents.

 

Ariel Kahana

Source:https://www.israelhayom.com/2021/10/31/democrats-to-call-on-biden-not-to-open-palestinian-consulate-in-jlem/

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Israeli strike in Syria reportedly kills 5 pro-Iran terrorists - Neta Bar , Daniel Siryoti and News Agencies

 

​ by Neta Bar , Daniel Siryoti and News Agencies

The target of the alleged attack was a shipment of weapons and ammunition heading to Lebanon and Hezbollah, reports the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor from the Syrian opposition.

 

An explosion in Syria allegedly caused by an Israeli missile strike, captured on video and posted online, Saturday, October 30, 2021 | Screenshot: Social Media

An Israeli missile strike on Saturday killed at least five pro-Iran terrorists near Damascus and wounded several others, a British war monitor claimed.

Syria's state news agency SANA quoted a statement by an unnamed military official who said air defenses shot down several incoming surface-to-surface missiles from northern Israel just before noon, which also caused damage in the area.

The report also said that two Syrian soldiers were wounded in the attack.

Israel carries out raids on Syria mostly during nighttime and rarely comments on individual attacks.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor from the Syrian opposition, said the missiles hit northwest of Damascus, killing five Iran-allied militiamen. The Observatory, which relies on a network of activists on the ground, said it was not clear if those killed were Syrians or foreigners.

There was no official word on deaths.

The Observatory said the target was a shipment of weapons and ammunition heading to Lebanon. It had earlier said that the areas hit contain arms depots for Lebanon's Hezbollah terrorist group and positions of the Syrian military and Iran-backed militias.

Saturday's strikes came days after Syria accused Israel of carrying out an attack in the country's south, without offering details.

Israel has launched hundreds of strikes against Iran-linked military targets in Syria over the years but rarely acknowledges or discusses such operations.

Israel has acknowledged it is targeting bases of Iran-allied militias, such as the powerful Hezbollah. It is going after arms shipments believed to be bound for the group, which is a sworn enemy of the Jewish state.

Israel views Iranian entrenchment on its northern frontier as a red line, and it has repeatedly struck Iran-linked facilities and weapons convoys destined for Hezbollah.

According to Israeli and Western intelligence sources, Iran is moving parts of its advanced missile and arms industry into Syrian underground compounds to develop a sophisticated arsenal within range of Israeli population centers.

 

Neta Bar , Daniel Siryoti and News Agencies

Source: https://www.israelhayom.com/2021/10/31/israeli-strike-in-syria-reportedly-kills-5-pro-iran-terrorists/

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Supreme Court to hear first of two appeals on abortion rights, with arguments Monday over Texas' six-week ban - Bill Mears , Shannon Bream

 

​ by Bill Mears , Shannon Bream

The Texas law known as SB 8 would ban most abortions at about six weeks

Supreme Court moves quickly to hear Texas abortion case

Correspondent Shannon Bream has the latest from Washington on 'Special Report'

The U.S. Supreme Court will embark Monday on the first chapter of a legal saga over abortion that could see the nationwide right to the procedure sharply limited in coming months.

 It will mark a fresh legal look at a socially divisive issue, with a 6-3 conservative high court majority poised for a politically-charged ruling. 

The justices over the next month will hear separate challenges to restrictions on abortion access enacted by Mississippi – with its ban after 15 weeks of pregnancy – and Texas – with a more restrictive six-week ban.

The Texas dispute will be heard first, in two hours of oral arguments Monday, which will be more procedural in nature, and not likely to address the key question of whether the state law's restrictions on most abortions are constitutional.

That high-stakes debate will happen Dec. 1, when Mississippi's law will be argued before the nine justices. The state wants key Supreme Court precedents permitting abortions, known as Roe (1973) and Casey (1992) – struck down entirely.

AUSTIN, TX - SEPT 1: Pro-choice protesters march outside the Texas State Capitol on Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2021 in Austin, TX. Texas passed SB8 which effectively bans nearly all abortions and it went into effect Sept. 1. A request to the Supreme Court to block the bill went unanswered and the Court still has yet to take any action on it. (Sergio Flores For The Washington Post via Getty Images) (Sergio Flores For The Washington Post via Getty Images)

TEXAS ‘FETAL HEARTBEAT’ ABORTION LAW REINSTATED BY APPEALS COURT RULING

The opportunity for a sweeping pivot on abortion – at a time when the high court's own reputation and legitimacy is threatened – could be tempered by an unpredictable, cautious court that has shown it is not always eager to speak along sharp ideological lines. That may produce split rulings, with uncertain lasting impact.

"I'm sure that the chief justice would rather go fairly slowly. That tends to be his inclination in these situations," said Paul Smith, a Georgetown University law professor and appellate attorney who has argued frequently before the justices. "But there will be some justices who are impatient to get to the final determination of the validity of Roe. I could imagine a situation where you have three liberals saying those should be upheld; three saying we don't need to address that question yet; and three saying it obviously should be overruled."

Besides Chief Justice John Roberts, much of the focus at arguments will be on two of former President Donald Trump's picks: Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Their questioning of counsel could signal whether a compromise approach is possible. 

Texas Two-Step

The Texas law known as SB 8 would ban most abortions at about six weeks, when a fetal heartbeat may be detected.

The high court for now will keep the statute in effect while legal challenges continue in lower courts. Many of the roughly two dozen abortion clinics in Texas say they have turned away patients, forcing some women to go out-of-state for the procedure, or unwillingly continue their pregnancy.

GOP Gov. Greg Abbott signed it into law this spring, and while it allows abortions for "medical emergencies," there are no exceptions for rape or incest. Similar laws in other states have been passed, or are awaiting enactment, depending on what the Supreme Court ultimately decides.

Two separate arguments will be held back to back on the Texas dispute, just 10 days after the high court granted review. The breakneck pace with which the justices are confronting the issue is a sign that they recognize the high stakes involved.

But the issue at this stage is a more textured question: Who can sue and who may be sued under the law? The Justice Department and abortion providers have separately gone to federal court over a key provision, which creates financial incentives for private citizens – even non-Texans – to file civil lawsuits against physicians and those who help women obtain an abortion. That ambiguous enforcement scheme is at the heart of the current legal fights.

"The [state] government has no role in enforcing it," said Josh Blackman, a constitutional law professor at South Texas College of Law Houston. "So basically every Texas citizen is now a private attorney general."

The high court twice allowed enforcement of SB 8, including on Oct. 22, prompting criticism from Justice Sonia Sotomayor. 

"For the second time, the court is presented with an application to enjoin a statute enacted in open disregard of the constitutional rights of women seeking abortion care in Texas," she wrote. "For the second time, the court declines to act immediately to protect these women from grave and irreparable harm."

"The legal limbo is excruciating for both patients and our clinic staff.  Lack of access to safe abortion care is harming our families and communities and will have lasting effects on Texas for decades to come," said Amy Hagstrom Miller, founder and CEO of Whole Woman's Health, which brought one of the lawsuits. The group operates four clinics in Texas. "We've had to turn hundreds of patients away since this ban took effect."

More than 90 percent of abortions take place in the first 13 weeks of pregnancy, according to the CDC. Abortion rights groups say the six-week ban promoted by Texas and other states would occur before many women even know they are pregnant.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton told the court in a legal brief, "The heartbeat provisions in SB 8 reasonably further Texas's interest in protecting unborn life, which exists from the outset of pregnancy."

Abortion opponents applauded the high court's decision to intervene.

"This is a great development for the Pro-Life movement because the law will continue to save an estimated 100 babies per day," said Kimberlyn Schwartz of Texas Right to Life, "and because the justices will actually discuss whether these lawsuits are even valid in the first place."

Maria Peña holds a rosary and sign out outside a building housing an abortion provider in Dallas, Thursday, Oct. 7, 2021. (AP Photo/LM Otero) (AP Photo/LM Otero)

DISTRICT COURT JUDGE BLOCKS LANDMARK TEXAS 'FETAL HEARTBEAT' ABORTION LAW

Mississippi Stakes

The more direct challenge to abortion rights lies in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which will be presented to the justices exactly a month after the Texas cases.

At issue: whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional. Mississippi officials are boldly asking the court to overturn its 1973 Roe v. Wade precedent, under which abortions are legal nationwide until about the 24th week – the point of viability where the fetus can survive outside the womb.

Lower courts have blocked that and a subsequent state law banning abortion after six weeks. The state's only remaining abortion clinic, backed by the Biden administration, has asked the court to uphold Roe and invalidate the Mississippi law.

A Fox News poll out in late September showed that 65 percent of Americans favor keeping Roe as the law of the land. That includes, for the first time in the survey, a majority of Republicans. Just 28 percent want the ruling overturned.

But there is an even split on whether abortion should be legal.    

Other surveys in recent weeks have shown public confidence in justices acting in the country's best interests to be dropping. Some legal commentators say a sweeping ruling on abortion – however it turns out – is sure to further fracture the judiciary's reputation in increasingly partisan times.

Sandwiched between the Texas and Mississippi arguments will be a report in November from President Biden's Supreme Court Commission – tasked with studying potential changes to the high court – including adding more justices to the bench and imposing term limits, instead of the current life tenure.

Handicapping how this court will rule on abortion might start with a look back at what some of the justices have said on the issue.

The court's strongest proponent for overturning abortion precedent may be Clarence Thomas, the senior associate justice.

He strongly dissented in the 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision, which upheld the right to abortion, and has consistently held those views over the years. In a 2000 case, he called Roe "grievously wrong."

"Abortion is a unique act, in which a woman's exercise of control over own body ends, depending on one's view, human life or potential human life," he wrote. "Although a State may permit abortion, nothing in the Constitution dictates that a State must do so."

On the other side, Justice Elena Kagan has been a forceful advocate of stare decisis, the legal concept of respect for judicial precedence, which proponents say fosters clear societal expectations and judicial integrity.

 In a Sept. 1 dissent when the Texas law was first allowed to go into effect by the high court, Kagan criticized its intent, saying it "prohibits abortions for the vast majority of women who seek them — in clear, and indeed undisputed, conflict with Roe and Casey."

 

Bill Mears , Shannon Bream

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/supreme-court-abortion-rights-appeals-arguments-texas

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