Ben-Gurion University engineers develop one of the most efficient amphibious robots - Judy Siegel Itzkovich

 

by Judy Siegel Itzkovich

Powered by a single motor, the robot's movement mirrors the way flippers move in water and centipedes move on land.

AmphiSAW among the lily pads

(photo credit: DR. DAVID ZARROUK/BGU)

One of the fastest and most efficient amphibious robots – with potential applications in search and rescue, especially during natural disasters such as floods and tsunamis – has been developed by engineers at Ben-Gurion University (BGU) of the Negev in Beersheba. Called AmphiSAW, it also has potential applications in marine agriculture and fish feeding, as the robot attracts fish instead of repelling them. 

Dr. David Zarrouk, the director of the Bioinspired and Medical Robotics Lab and his student Omer Guetta, developed the robot, whose movement in water was inspired by the movement of flippers and its land movements by centipedes. Dan Shachaf and Rotem Katz also contributed to the project. Their findings have been published in the peer-reviewed journal Bioinspiration & Biomimetics in an article entitled “A novel wave-like crawling robot has excellent swimming capabilities.”

Amphibians can live on land and in the water. The most common amphibious animals are snakes, salamanders and frogs. Their dual habitat increases their ability to capture prey – primarily slow-moving animals – and offers protection against predators. 

Although crawling and swimming are antithetic capabilities in terms of performance, some amphibians such as salamanders and snakes are excellent swimmers; however, they cannot equal the performance of the fastest fish. Multiple animals ranging from micro-meter-scale bacteria to meter-scale vertebrates rely on undulatory motion to propel themselves on land and in the water. While undulatory motion can be used for both crawling and swimming, it requires the coordination of multiple joints, so only a few robots have the ability to mimic this motion. 

Limitations of bio-inspired robots

“One of the key limitations of the [bio-inspired] robots is that they generally rely on a large number of actuators which require complex control and require continuous maintenance.”

Researchers

While bio-inspired robots have continued to close the gap, they are still unable to match the performance in terms of speed, energy efficiency and coordinated movement of their biological counterparts,” the BGU team wrote. “One of the key limitations of the robots is that they generally rely on a large number of actuators which require complex control and require continuous maintenance. They may also produce pollution to the environment and noise and water-surface ripples that can intimidate animals. Moreover, most of the current designs are energy consuming and require complex control,” they wrote.

 

Dr. David Zarrouk, director of the Bioinspired and Medical Robotics Lab at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (credit: DANI MACHLIS/BGU)

Many of the existing robots still rely on external tethers that limit their usage in real-life applications. Their moving speed on land and/or in the water remains low and many robots are unable to transition between land to water and vice versa.

Whether on land or in the water, the robot moves quite quickly. On land, the robot crawled at 1.5 body lengths per second (B/s) and swam at 0.74 B/s. It can be outfitted with legs or wheels at the front that increases its crawl speed, especially over uneven terrain. “The single motor and bioinspired design contribute significantly to the robot’s efficiency and the relative simplicity of its design means it is scalable to any size,” Zarrouk explained. His research goal is to produce robots that can complete complex maneuvers yet use very little power to run and are straightforward to produce. 

Judy Siegel Itzkovich

Source:https://www.jpost.com/business-and-innovation/article-732335

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A Heaphy-handed Jan. 6 lead investigator tells all, or at least too much - David Zukerman

 

by David Zukerman

So much for preserving democracy...

One of the arguments raised in opposition to the bona fides of Nancy Pelosi's Jan. 6 Select Committee (to end our two-party system) was its apparent lack of a legitimate legislative purpose.  This argument is proved unpersuasive with federal judges caught up in the leftist narrative that the events of January 6, 2021 at the Capitol were the greatest assault on country since — Pearl Harbor, the Civil War, the burning of the White House in 1814 — name your particular horrible.

Now along comes Timothy J. Heaphy, lead investigator of the Pelosi partisan panel, in colloquy with Luke Broadwater, New York Times print edition, February 20, to acknowledge: yes, the committee's proceedings were more akin to a sitting grand jury than a congressional hearing — and, later in the interview, apparently deciding to "kick over the traces" (in the marvelous phrase of the late Yale law constitutional scholar Alexander Bickel) to assert, "Hearing is not the right word for what we did.  We called them hearings, but they were presentations more than hearings."

For what purpose?  Clearly not for the purpose of legitimate legislation.  Clearly for the partisan purpose of preventing Donald J. Trump from seeking a second term — with the added aim of crushing the Republican Party.  Briefly stated, rulings by federal judges upholding the validity of Pelosi's partisan panel amounted to topsy-turvy justice, with the blindfold stripped from the eyes of Justice and the scales tilted way, way over to the left.  How sad.  How deplorable.  How undermining of democracy.

Heaphy and Broadwater even were bold enough to boast how they leaked the quasi — and improper — grand jury testimony to the media for dissemination to the public to (my take) influence prospective jurors against Jan. 6 defendants.  In Broadwater's interview, Heaphy is quoted: "there were days when we would interview a witness and literally 30 minutes later, there's Luke Broadwater [emphasis added] on TV saying the select committee interviewed the witness."  Consider the post–Jan. 6 committee braggadocio: Heaphy telling Times propagandist Broadwater how he, Broadwater, pierced the secrecy of the Jan. 6 proceedings, which were not really hearings at all!

In his conversation with Broadwater, Heaphy referred to Pelosi's witch-hunting panel as a "select committee" but refrained from calling Broadwater's attention to the irony of the term "select committee" —Pelosi having personally selected all committee members, including the two Republicans, who were as virulently opposed to Trump as were the seven Democrats.  Pelosi would have it no other way.

Heaphy concludes with the ironic comment: "I didn't fully appreciate sometimes how fragile democracy is."  Next he stated the Big Lie that I will here redraft: "I never comprehended how a relatively small number of people, putting a lie-driven narrative above principled application of congressional hearings, could have subverted the notion that 'No Person Is above the Law,' into the totalitarian concept: 'The law is whatever we leftists say it is.'"

If Heaphy were truthful, he would have ended his remarks with this added observation: "Thank our heavy-handed stars, the Republicans don't have a representative willing to stand in the well of the House and, in the manneer of an Emile Zola, point a finger at Democrats, and begin a speech full of facts, and say, of the Jan. 6 Select Committee cum grand jury: "J'accuse..."

Image via Pxhere.

David Zukerman

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/02/a_heaphyhanded_jan_6_lead_investigator_tells_all_or_at_least_too_much.html

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January 6 Panel Chairman Issues Warning Over Tucker Carlson Getting Tapes - Daniel Chaitin

 

by Daniel Chaitin

McCarthy has not yet commented publicly on the disclosure to Carlson, but the speaker did say last month he was looking to release the tapes because of the “politicization” he believed had been fostered by former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and the January 6 Committee.

 

The chairman of the n0w-defunct January 6 Committee warned of the “potential security risks” of U.S. Capitol security footage being released to the media.

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) issued a statement hours after Axios broke the news that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) gave Fox News host Tucker Carlson access to 41,000 hours of Capitol surveillance footage from the Jan. 6, 2021 — the day a crowd of people entered the U.S. Capitol, disrupting lawmakers who were meeting to certify President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.

“When the Select Committee obtained access to U.S. Capitol Police video footage, it was treated with great sensitivity given concerns about the security of lawmakers, staff, and the Capitol complex,” Thompson said.

“Access was limited to members and a small handful of investigators and senior staff, and the public use of any footage was coordinated in advance with Capitol Police. It’s hard to overstate the potential security risks if this material were to be used irresponsibly,” he added.

Statement from Rep. Bennie Thompson, who chaired the Jan6 committee, on @Axios report @SpeakerMcCarthy is giving special access to Jan 6 videos to Fox host. pic.twitter.com/Vsvbei7K6J

— Patricia Zengerle (@ReutersZengerle) February 20, 2023

A Fox News spokesperson confirmed the Axios report, which said excerpts will begin to air in the coming weeks, to the Daily Wire.

Claiming that Carlson is a purveyor of misinformation, Thompson said McCarthy “owes the American people an explanation of why” he shared the footage with the Fox News host and “what steps he has taken to address the significant security concerns at stake.”

McCarthy has not yet commented publicly on the disclosure to Carlson, but the speaker did say last month he was looking to release the tapes because of the “politicization” he believed had been fostered by former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and the January 6 Committee.

The January 6 Committee did air some clips of security footage during its summer hearings last year, including one showing Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) running though a Capitol hallway.

Carlson told Axios he believes there was “never any legitimate reason” for the footage to remain secret.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) said in a tweet the footage will also be available to January 6 defendants. “Americans deserve to see the truth, not a one sided narrative and unfair two tiered justice system,” she said in another tweet.

Meanwhile, another Democratic member of the January 6 Committee, Maryland’s Rep. Jamie Raskin, questioned whether the release of the tapes could become a “roadmap” for a 2024 “insurrection.”

Brandon Drey contributed to this report.

Daniel Chaitin

Source: https://www.dailywire.com/news/january-6-panel-chairman-issues-warning-over-tucker-carlson-getting-tapes

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James Clapper Can’t Stop Lying - David Harsanyl

 

by David Harsanyl

When you just can't own up to your role in the Hunter Biden laptop story.

 

In an interview with The Washington Post’s “fact-checker,” former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper contends that Politico misled the public about a letter he and 50 other former intel officials signed during the 2020 presidential campaign warning that the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story could be Russian deception. “There was message distortion,” Clapper tells The Washington Post. “All we were doing was raising a yellow flag that this could be Russian disinformation. Politico deliberately distorted what we said. It was clear in paragraph five.”

It was not clear, at all. The purpose of the letter, apparent then as it is now, was to discredit the Post’s scoop and provide Democrats and the media with ammunition to reject it. (SET ITAL) Of course (END ITAL) intel officials couldn’t definitively say that Hunter’s emails, which implicated Joe Biden as a business partner, were concocted by Vladimir Putin’s spooks. They had no access to the laptop. The purpose was to enlist former intel chiefs to cast doubt on the story. A perfunctory CYA paragraph doesn’t change anything.

The laptop lie began, as is often the case, with Adam Schiff, the California congressman who used the intelligence committee as a partisan disinfo clearinghouse. As soon as the story broke, Schiff claimed that “we know” — a phrase he used numerous times — that the emails had been planted by the Kremlin. By then, though, everyone understood the congressman was an irredeemable liar. The director of national intelligence, John Ratcliffe, issued a statement stressing that, actually, there was no evidence to back Schiff’s claims.

That’s when Politico reported that more than 50 former senior intelligence officials had signed a letter asserting that the laptop “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” The most notable signees were Clapper, a man who ran a domestic surveillance program and then lied about it to Congress, and former CIA director John Brennan, a man who once oversaw an operation of illegal spying on a Senate staffer, and then also lied about it to the American people.

The letter worked exactly as intended. “Look,” Biden said during the last 2020 presidential debate when asked about the laptop, “there are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what he’s accusing me of is a Russian plan.” On “60 Minutes,” Biden called the story “disinformation from the Russians.” Clapper tells The Washington Post that he had absolutely no idea how the former vice president had framed the contents of the letter — which is, to be generous, implausible nonsense.

If Clapper’s letter was merely a good-faith warning, then why didn’t any of the other signees push back against Biden’s contention during their numerous television appearances? Did none of them watch the presidential debates? Why didn’t Clapper send a follow-up statement clarifying his position after the Politico headline purportedly “distorted” the letter? Did he not see the piece until now — just as Republicans are about to investigate?

All the Post’s pedantic “fact check” does is offer the signees, and itself, cover. The Washington Post excuses the media’s (ongoing) suppression of the Hunter Biden story by arguing that the “leak of emails from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta,” which “may have contributed to Donald Trump’s unexpected victory in 2016,” made journalists extra cautious about relaying uncorroborated information. That contention is gravely undercut by the hundreds of pieces and columns the Post ran based on the Democratic oppo research that contained what was almost surely Russian disinformation. Any skeptical journalist would have also immediately identified the letter, and the Politico piece, as a nakedly partisan attempt to undermine the legitimacy of a story.

Indeed, the New York Post’s Hunter story had far more substantiation than any of the histrionic Russia-collusion pieces that the public was subjected to during the Trump years. The Post detailed how it came into possession of its evidence. It interviewed the owner of the Delaware computer shop where Hunter had abandoned his laptop. It provided Hunter’s signature on a receipt. The Post had on-the-record sources with intimate knowledge of Hunter’s business dealings. They had on-the-record interviews with people who claimed to have interactions with the presidential candidate — incidents we now know Biden had lied about for years. And later, the emails were authenticated by forensic specialists at other outlets, as well.

Virtually the entire censorious journalistic establishment, including The Washington Post, with the help of tech giants and former spooks, limited the story’s exposure by either banning it outright as disinformation, creating the impression that it didn’t meet proper journalistic standards or implying that it had been planted by Russians. The media wasn’t going to allow another Hillary Clinton-like scandal to sink the prospects of a Democrat. And Clapper played a big part in that deception.

David Harsanyl

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/james-clapper-cant-stop-lying/

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Trump pledges, if reelected, to end federal programs promoting gender transition - Madeleine Hubbard

 

by Madeleine Hubbard

"I will sign a new executive order instructing every federal agency to cease all programs that promote the concept of sex and gender transition at any age," Trump said.

Former President Trump says if reelected he will end President Biden's policies on gender-affirming care and sign an executive order instructing federal agencies to end all programs promoting gender transitions.

"I will revoke Joe Biden's cruel policies on so-called 'gender-affirming care.' Gender affirming? A process that results in the physical mutilation of minor children," Trump said Monday in Palm Beach, Florida, at an event for Club 45 USA, which bills itself as the nation's largest club of Trump supporters.

"I will sign a new executive order instructing every federal agency to cease all programs that promote the concept of sex and gender transition at any age. It's enough," Trump also said.

During his first year in the White House, Trump banned transgender people from enlisting in the military and ordered the Defense Department to stop funding gender-reassignment surgeries, except for those already in progress.

Republican lawmakers introduced a similar ban on transgender service members last week.

Madeleine Hubbard

Source: https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/all-things-trump/trump-pledges-end-federal-programs-promoting-gender-transition-if

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Congressional delegation visits Taiwan amid tense relations with Beijing - Madeleine Hubbard

 

by Madeleine Hubbard

The visit largely focused on competition with China and Taiwan's role in semiconductor chip manufacturing.

A bipartisan congressional delegation visited Taiwan and met Tuesday with President Tsai Ing-wen amid tense relations with China. 

Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), Tony Gonzales (R-Texas), Jake Auchincloss (D-Mass.) and Jonathan Jackson (D-Ill.) arrived Sunday in Taiwan, which is trying to distance itself from China's control. 

Such efforts have resulted in China increasingly showing its military might in response to Taiwan's movement toward democracy.

The United States acknowledges the Chinese government's position that Taiwan is part of China.

Tsai on Tuesday tweeted photos of herself with the delegation and said: "By continuing to deepen the #Taiwan-#US partnership, we will find more opportunities for cooperation & strengthen our resilience, post-pandemic & beyond."

The visit largely focused on competition with China and Taiwan's role in semiconductor chip manufacturing.

House Democrat Nancy Pelosi, as chamber speaker, visited Taiwan in August 2022. 

"Our efforts to come here are in no way provocative of China, but consistent with the president’s foreign policy that recognizes the importance of the relationship like Taiwan, while still seeking ultimately, peace in the region," Khanna said, according to the Associated Press.

 
Madeleine Hubbard

Source: https://justthenews.com/government/congress/congressional-delegation-visits-taiwan-amid-tense-relations-beijing

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US Supreme Court refuses challenge to Arkansas anti-BDS law - Gary Willig

 

by Gary Willig

Court refuses ACLU's request to review lower court decision that anti-BDS law does not violate freedom of speech.

 

US Supreme Court justices 2022                                                       SCOTUS Website

The US Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to hear a challenge against an Arkansas anti-BDS law, in a victory against anti-israel boycotts in the US.

The Supreme Court's decision not to hear the case upholds the ruling of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals that anti-Israel boycotts such as those advocated by the BDS movement are not protected by the First Amendment to the American Constitution because they are do not qualify as either speech or expressive conduct, and therefore, the Arkansas law is constitutional.

The State of Arkansas passed the law requiring companies to certify that they do not and will not boycott the State of Israel in 2017 in order to receive public contracts with the state. The law, one of many state anti-BDS laws passed in the US in recent years, would prevent public funds from being used to boycott Israel.

The Arkansas Times, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), filed a lawsuit in response to the law, alleging that it violates the right to free speech as guaranteed by the First Amendment.

After a series of appeals, the Eighth Circuit ruled that the law "does not ban Arkansas Times from publicly criticizing Israel, or even protesting the statute itself. It only prohibits economic decisions that discriminate against Israel. Because those commercial decisions are invisible to observers unless explained, they are not inherently expressive and do not implicate the First Amendment."

The court further stated that the law does not constitute compelled speech, which would also be unconstitutional.

Following the ruling of the Eighth Circuit, The ACLU turned to the Supreme Court in October 2022 and filed a request for a 'writ of certiorari,' a request that the Supreme Court order a lower court to send up the record of the case for review. The ACLU claimed that the lower court had in its decision ignored the precedent set in the 1982 case NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co, which established a level of protecting for political boycotts.

The Supreme Court today denied the ACLU's request for a writ of certiorari.

Professor Eugene Kontorovich, a professor at the George Mason University Scalia Law School, and the director of its Center for Middle East and International Law, praised the Supreme Court's decision.

"The Supreme Court’s rejection of the ACLU’s effort to undermine anti-BDS laws further demonstrates the falseness of claims that these measures harm constitutional values. I am quite proud, as one who has supported these laws since the beginning, and has been involved, along with a great group of law professors, as an amicus in this litigation. Such laws' constitutionality have been upheld by many judges. Groups that oppose such laws now have a heavy burden explaining how they are not simply providing cover for boycotts of Israelis," said Professor Kontorovich.

The states of New York, California, New Jersey, Indiana, Florida, Tennessee, Arizona, Michigan, Montana, Kansas, Texas and Virginia, have also passed anti-BDS laws, in addition to Arkansas. The ACLU has challenged many of these laws in court as well.

In 2021, a federal judge temporarily blocked a Kansas anti-BDS law following a lawsuit by the ACLU.

In September 2018, a federal judge blocked Arizona from enforcing its anti-BDS law.

In Texas, a speech pathologist sued the local public school district after she was let go for refusing to sign an agreement that she “does not” and “will not” engage in a boycott of Israel.

Gary Willig

Source: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/367782

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The collapse of civilization on the altar of equity and diversity - Patricia McCarthy

 

by Patricia McCarthy

Forcing equal representation of skin tones in professional environments is suffocating excellence and innovation; restoring meritocracy ought to be of the utmost importance.

 

The Biden administration has gone stark raving mad. While they surely know better, they are moving ahead with the false notion that “diversity is our strength,” that forced “equity” will make the country a better place. It began under the Obama administration, the purposeful ginning up of the most vile racism since slavery; but this time Black against White. Before Obama took office, there was actually near racial harmony in America. The American left has become so radical now, “diversity hires” are now a thing. We are following in the footsteps of South Africa and mandating racial quotas. What has that meant for South Africa? Their economy is in near collapse. Their electric grid is failing because no one knows how to fix it. The country is wracked by violence. Mandated equity, the primacy of race over merit, means civilizational failure. 

Why have there been so many near misses in air traffic? Why so many railway derailments? Why horrific events like the murder of Tyre Nichols in Memphis? Those cops were clearly not qualified to be Memphis police. When standards are done away with, this is a predictable consequence. Why the grisly rise in crime all over the nation? That would be the calculated agenda of psychopaths like George Soros and the leftists who want to see America brought to its knees. Soros has funneled billions of his ill-gotten dollars to that end. Defund the police, and of course you get more crime. Let criminals out of jail with no bail, no punishment whatsoever, you get more and more crime. A third-grader could figure that out. Black Lives Matter is a Marxist organization, like Antifa, that revels in the chaos and violence it foments with Soros money. 

The left’s obsession with equity and diversity has led to the abolition of the SAT, the LSAT, and the MCAT. Does anyone think that people who cannot pass those tests will make good professionals, good lawyers, good doctors? Of course not. There will be life-threatening legal mistakes, horrific medical accidents, airline accidents, more derailments, and teachers who are grossly ill-equipped to teach.

All of this has nothing whatsoever to do with skin color. Talent and merit has nothing to do with race, but the left does not accept that fact. It is the left that is truly racist; Joe Biden has long been one of the worst racists in Congress. Watch his attempted humiliation of Clarence Thomas at his confirmation hearing to see just how racist Biden is. Thomas is a towering intellect with an IQ twice that of poor old Joe’s. But like most people who are both stupid and arrogant, they never recognize brilliance in others. They only know they resent such people but they don’t know why.  

On President’s Day, while the people of East Palestine suffer from the worst environmental disaster since Chernobyl, Biden is in Kiev, promising the never-satisfied-with-our-generosity Zelensky billions more in cash and weapons. Any relief for the citizens of East Palestine? Nope. Not a dime, not a visit by anyone in the administration. The EPA guy showed up for five minutes and left for Africa. FEMA only agreed to go after Trump announced he would visit. If Biden’s priority on this day does not telegraph to every American his lack of character, or his allegiance to Ukraine rather than to Americans, or his servility to China, then they can wallow in their ignorance and be surprised when the nukes start flying. WWIII has begun; Biden invited it and is submissive to the wills of the military-industrial complex, our warmongering State Department, and China. This will not end well.

Jack Posobiec conducted a terrific interview with Heather Mac Donald in which they discussed the “collapse of complex systems.” “Gradually then suddenly”! Mac Donald puts the lie to the “diversity is our strength” nonsense. The West has thrived due to achievement, accomplishment, exploration, imagination, innovation, Constitutional government, etc. MacDonald says that “diversity” is a code word for racial preferences and she, of course, is absolutely right. Meritocracy must prevail without regard for race if the U.S. is to prevail. Biden just instructed Susan Rice to implement mandated equity (equality of outcome) throughout the federal government, and it will be the death of us. Is Biden demanding the NBA and the NFL be racially equitable? Of course not. Disproportionate representation in the vast variety of fields of endeavor are probably cultural, the result of dumbed-down schools that harm all children — whatever their skin color. Two generations of caring more about kids’ feelings than what they learn has had disastrous results across the board. No more honors classes, that wouldn’t be equitable. Mediocrity is the left’s ultimate goal. That goal, and the Biden administration’s lust for world war may well be the end of America. We should all be very afraid and we must all fight back against these despicable anti-American globalists who have set us on this course toward catastrophe.

Image: Free image, Pixabay license, no attribution required.

Patricia McCarthy

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/02/the_collapse_of_civilization_on_the_altar_of_equity_and_diversity.html

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The Dead End of Reparations - Christopher Chantrill

by Christopher Chantrill

More important than a thriving American black middle class is maintaining the power of the Anointed educated ruling class.

 

I don't know about you, but I am about ready to take the ruling-class enthusiasm for "reparations" and put it where the sun don't shine.

The current push for reparations, I assume, has occurred because Nikole Hannah-Jones' 1619 Project has jumped from the New York Times to the Hulu streaming service.

And, of course, all of a sudden, California has decided to empower its black politicos to decide how much reparation is enough. Don't know much about historee, but I think the Latinos of one-time "Alta California" might have a better claim to the loot.

But then, I thought, better check Google Ngram and Google Trends to see how the present Mass Formation Psychosis on reparations has arisen.

On Google Ngram, which is about books, "reparations" was going nowhere until a peak in the 1920s. Then it dropped away but shot up again in the 1940s. It is all about German reparations, the brilliant idea of the western powers to Make Germany Pay for World War One. But WWII reparations enthusiasm peaked in 1947. Reading the tea-leaves in books like American Occupation of Germany: Retreat to Victory by Edward N. Peterson, I get the feeling that our fearless leaders realized that, if post-Nazi Germany was going to be sent back to the Stone Age, we Yanks would have to feed it.

On Google Trends, which is about search, "reparations" was going nowhere until June 2019, the month of the virgin birth of the 1619 Project. Then it declined but shot up to a new peak in June 2020, right after the crucifixion of George Floyd. And now it is trending because of Gavin Newsom and the Hulu series.

Of course, to me, this fascination with "reparations" is just another confirmation of my idea that the left is a Great Reaction, a political lurch back to the primitive. "Revenge" and "Reparations" belong to stateless tribal societies where there is no legal system backed up by the state to enforce justice. How do tribal societies prevent escalation of blood feuds into general warfare? According to Francis Fukuyama in The Origins of Political Order, stateless tribes tried to resolve blood feuds with a culture of revenge, arbitration, and monetary damages -- called Wergeld by the Germanic tribes. But in our day, we have the glorious legal system and lawyers, backed up by government force, to assess damages and enforce payment without the intervention of the male relatives of the victim.

I want to say that "this is not that hard," but in fact it is hard. Americans do not learn about the history of law and the state and justice in public school, nor in college. If you want to educate yourself so you can write what I have written here, you have to read the books and ignore the union teachers and the woke professors and tread where cupcakes fear to tread, outside the Overton Window.

But why, you ask? Why, a century and a half after the abolition of slavery, and fifty years after the abolition of racial discrimination, why is the New York Times poisoning us with a reactionary movement for "reparations?" What is the point?

The point is that under the present regime of the Anointed, there comes a time when the Mascots fall away from a blind devotion to their masters. It happened with the working class, left by their Anointed rulers to die of despair; it is presently happening with TERF women who really don't like men in the women's bathroom. One fine day, the descendants of the African slaves may tumble to the truth that, to the exalted Anointed, they are just the Benighted in blackface. Meanwhile, our Anointed ruling class is doing its level best -- which admittedly is not that good -- to keep its black Mascots all riled up and voting 90 percent for Democrats.

(With Anointed, Benighted, and Mascots, I am here using the notion of economist Thomas Sowell in The Vision of the Anointed. Sowell, like Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, is sometimes accused by the Best and Brightest of being an "Uncle Tom." Your mileage may vary.)

Okay. Now we are going to fly up into the heavens. Make sure your wings don't melt.

It seems to me that almost all ethnic groups in America have started out as stateless tribes in their ethnic ghettos. They lived outside the law, with gangs instead of police and courts. Today we see black gangbangers obsessed by "dissing;" thus a lot of the killings in the stateless black inner cities are really honor killings.

A truly Anointed ruling class would help blacks advance beyond their stateless culture of gangs and honor killings and baby mamas and reparations. But our rulers don't.

We know why. More important than a thriving American black middle class is maintaining the power of the Anointed educated ruling class.

Image: Public Domain

Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also get his American Manifesto and his Road to the Middle Class.

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/02/the_dead_end_of_reparations.html

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Biden Administration Funds Anti-Netanyahu Protest Group - Daniel Greenfield

 

by Daniel Greenfield

A coup in Israel is backed by Washington D.C.

 

Even while Israeli children were being murdered by terrorists, the only thing the media wanted to talk about were the leftist protests against the new Israeli government’s democratic judicial reforms. And the Biden administration has joined this campaign attacking the move.

Israel’s new conservative government under Prime Minister Netanyahu has finally initiated the long overdue process of restoring democratic checks and balances by limiting the unlimited power of Israel’s Supreme Court. And the Left has threatened everything up to civil war to protect its illegitimate power while its angry protests have been spun as grassroots opposition.

What none of the news reports, editorials, public letters by prominent figures or statements by officials have revealed is that the Biden administration is funding the group behind the protests.

As David Isaac at JNS reported, the first major rally against democratic judicial reform attended by leftist opposition politicians was organized by a group known as the Movement for Quality Government. MQG receives annual funding from the State Department to purportedly conduct “classes” on democracy in Israeli schools. The State Department is well aware that MQG has a long history of waging lawfare against the Israeli government because its work has been cited in its “human rights” reports. While State Department funding was not programmed for protests, money is fungible and the Biden administration knows it’s funding an anti-Netanyahu group.

“The speakers at the rallies stand under the MQG banner when they call for insurgency, civil war and violence,” prominent Israeli journalist Caroline Glick wrote. “No one is asking the organizers who finances their activities. Someone is paying tens of millions of shekels to rent buses to transport scores of thousands of people to rallies, buy them flags, print banners and signs, rent stages and sound systems, and finance ad campaigns in every newspaper and on billboards across the country.”

MQG’s obsession with stopping the return of a Zionist government was so extreme that it generated a FARA registration by hiring a Washington D.C. law firm to for the “initiation of investigation of by one or more US government agencies” to look into ridiculous leftist smears that Netanyahu was having his laundry washed for free by the Trump administration.

(This may seem surreal, but the Israeli Left’s Netanyahu Derangement Syndrome is so extreme that one of its fake government investigations focused on his wife’s bottle recycling. The fake scandals invented by the Left were even referenced in a hilarious Netanyahu campaign ad.)

The Biden administration’s funding of MQG (a practice which technically began in 2020 under Trump, the year when the FARA registration happened) continued even as the group amped up its lawfare. The Obama administration had helped back the 2011 social justice protests in Israel, in which MQG was involved, that were widely seen as a rehearsal for Occupy Wall Street.

But MQG is a lot more than just an opposition group and its presence pulls back the curtain on the struggle to restore democracy and the motives of those opposed to it in Tel Aviv and D.C.

A leading criticism of the abusive power of the Israeli Supreme Court is that it hears cases based on lawsuits from groups like MQG without any standing. This has allowed the Court, which recognizes no limitations on its powers, to intervene in anything. Once MQG generates a case, the Supreme Court can then step in. MQG is not just an opposition group, it’s a key piece of the illegitimate infrastructure that has replaced democracy with a totalitarian judiciary.

An example of the authoritarian intertwining of MQG and the Supreme Court came when the leftist group filed a petition demanding the removal of the head of the Israeli Bar Association because of “his criticisms of the court.” If MQG opposes even any criticisms of the source of its power, it certainly is not about to accept democratic efforts to return that power to the people.

“From the Knesset I don’t expect anything,” Eliad Shraga, MQG’s boss, said dismissively of the democratically elected legislature at a protest against judicial reform. “The only help will come from the heroes in the Supreme Court.”

The Israeli Supreme Court gets its ability to intervene in any matter from MQG. And MQG gets funding from the Biden administration. It’s not hard to see why the Biden administration is opposed to democratic reforms that would impose checks on the power of MQG and the Court. Much as American leftists have opposed forcing NGOs like it to disclose sources of foreign funding. And it’s a good thing because otherwise we might not know who pulls their strings.

Israelis have long been concerned about the ability of foreign organizations, like those funded by Soros and foreign governments, to set the agenda no matter what the voters decide.

Democratic judicial reform is crucial to ending those abuses and that’s why Biden is so opposed.

While the Biden administration has often criticized Israel over its fight against Islamic terrorists, it took the unusual step of intervening in its domestic politics by attacking judicial reform.

Biden warned that Israeli democracy requires “checks and balances” from “an independent judiciary” and urged “building consensus for fundamental changes”.

During his recent visit to Israel, Secretary of State Blinken met with Isaac Herzog, a former leftist candidate currently serving as president, to bond over their mutual hate for democracy.

Blinken replied to Herzog’s urging to intervene by praising, “the clarity of your voice when it comes to finding a good way forward that builds consensus on the question of judicial reform.”

The rhetoric was part of a leftist push to kill judicial reform by taking it away from the parties chosen by the voters and handing it to Herzog: another unelected official. The Biden administration, the media and assorted officials claim that turning over judicial reform to Herzog will be a compromise that will provide a unifying consensus and end the protests.

“They want to destroy the system because the system wasn’t nice to them,” Shraga had ranted to the Washington Post while attacking judicial reform. “This is a hostile takeover by a bunch of crooks.”

A hostile takeover of Israel by a bunch of crooks is what judicial reform opponents are after.

Blinken and Herzog would have some potential common ground dating back to the Clinton administration. Before Herzog was the Labor Party’s candidate to run Israel, he was serving as Marc Rich’s lawyer. The international fugitive lobbied for a pardon from Bill Clinton through Herzog who met with at least one State Department figure. It’s not hard to imagine Herzog and Blinken conferring over a deal for the criminal who violated the embargo to buy oil from Iran.

Now that’s some real dirty laundry.

Herzog, who collected leftist scumbag criminals, also worked for another international fugitive, Octav Botnar. Herzog served as the trustee for Botnar’s estate while millions were funneled through it to fund anti-Netanyahu ads by an associate of top Democrat campaign pros like James Carville. Good thing there was that investigation of Netanyahu’s ice cream budget.

Why does the Biden administration want Marc Rich’s errand boy to oversee judicial reform?

There’s a long trail of corrupt connections between America’s Left and Israel’s Left rooted in the Clinton era. This “hostile takeover by a bunch of crooks” has wrecked both countries. And now the crooks are afraid, they’re sweating and screaming in the streets, they’re paying formerly respectable people to pen editorials attacking judicial reform, and some people are falling for it.

Everything that they’re saying is the opposite of the truth.

Judicial reform is not a threat to democracy: it’s the sole hope for restoring democracy. It would not usher in tyranny, but eliminate it. And the protest movement against it is every bit as authentic as the last astroturfed protests that were also meant to force out Netanyahu.

The Biden administration, like the Obama administration, is trying to undermine Israeli democracy while preserving the power of its leftist allies to impose their coup.

Daniel Greenfield

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/biden-administration-funds-anti-netanyahu-protest-group/

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