Monday, January 03, 2022



AOC staffer is under fire for calling Israel a 'racist European ethnostate' built on 'stolen land'

Unsurprising. The Left have long been the chief source of antisemitism -- at least since Karl Marx. And Muslims are even worse. Note the Hadith about stones and trees (Sahih al-Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 52, Number 177), for instance. Al Tamimi is an Arab name, as is Hussain

A member of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's staff has reportedly condemned Israel as a 'racist European ethnostate' on social media.

It will reignite the row over attitudes to Israel by some elements of the progressive wing of the Democratic Party and its so-called squad, who had frequently highlighted how millions of Palestinians in the occupied territories are denied rights extended to Jewish citizens of Israel.

And it comes as AOC is under fire after photographs emerged of the congresswoman from New York drinking a cocktail, without wearing a mask, in Florida.

The latest controversy was triggered by Hussain Altamimi, who joined Ocasio-Cortez’s office in November as a legislative assistant, according to Fox News.

Last week he targeted Israel with an Instagram story.

'Israel is a racist European ethnostate built on stolen land from its indigenous population!' he wrote on Christmas Eve, according to a screenshot obtained by Fox News Digital. A

He added the comments to a post from the 'Let's Talk Palestine' account, which made reference to a 'racial hierarchy' in Israel.

'This reveals the principle underpinning Israeli apartheid: It’s not about where you’re born,' the shared post reads. 'It’s about whether you’re Jewish or non-Jewish. Your ethnicity determines your rights [and] level in the racial hierarchy.'

Critics of Israel point to the way Palestinians in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem - almost three million people - do not have the right to vote in Israeli elections, despite living under Israeli rule. Nor do the two million people living in Gaza.

However, some social media users were quick to condemn Altamimi and his definition of Israel as a racist state.

'That's wrong for many reasons, and it erases Mizrahi Jews like me,'wrote Sia Kordestani on Twitter. 'A majority of Jewish Israelis are descendants of 850,000 Jews violently expelled from Arab countries.'

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Abigail Shrier on the transgender craze

Bari Weiss

A few weeks ago, my friend Abigail Shrier—who you surely remember from this essay or this investigation—was invited to give a speech at Princeton. Abigail is the author of “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters,” a bestselling book that, for obvious reasons, is also a lightning rod.

This being a college campus in 2021, you can imagine what happened next. The event was moved off campus. It was limited to 35 people. And the police were called in because of threats.

The speech (excerpt):


I want you to think for a moment about a young woman here at Princeton. She’s a magnificent athlete named Ellie Marquardt, an all-American swimmer who set an Ivy League record in the 500-yard freestyle event as a freshman. Just before Thanksgiving, Ellie was defeated in the 500-free, the event she held the record in, by almost 14 seconds by a 22 year old biological male at Penn who was competing on the men’s team as recently as November of 2019. That male athlete now holds multiple U.S. records in women’s swimming, erasing the hard work of so many of our best female athletes, and making a mockery of the rights women fought for generations to achieve.

Ellie Marquart swam her heart out for Princeton. When will Princeton fight for her? Where are the student protests to say—enough is enough. When a biological male who has enjoyed the full benefits of male puberty—larger cardiovascular system, 40% more upper body muscle mass, more fast-twitch muscle fiber, more oxygenated blood—decides after three seasons on the men’s team to compete as a woman and smashes the records of the top female swimmers in this country, that is not valor. That’s vandalism.

Where is the outrage? Imagine, for a second, what it must be like to be a female swimmer at Princeton, knowing you must pretend that this is fair—that the NCAA competition is anything other than a joke. Imagine being told to bite your tongue as men lecture you that you just need to swim harder. “Be grateful for your silver medals, ladies, and maybe work harder next time,” is the message. Imagine what that level of repression does to warp the soul.

Now, imagine, instead, the women’s swimmers had all walked out. Imagine they had stood together and said: We will meet any competitor head on. But we will not grant this travesty the honor of our participation. We did not spend our childhoods setting our alarm clocks for 4 a.m. every morning, training for hours before and after school, to lend our good names to this fixed fight.

I know why students keep their heads down. They are hoping for that Goldman or New York Times internship, which they don’t want to put in jeopardy. Well, any institution that takes our brightest, most capable young people—Princeton graduates!—and tells you can only work here if you think like we tell you to and keep your mouth shut, that isn’t really Goldman Sachs and it isn’t the paper of record. It’s the husk of a once-great institution, and it’s not worth grasping for. Talk to alums at these institutions: they sound like those living under Communist regimes. That’s the America that awaits you if you will not speak up.

You who are studying at one of the greatest academic institutions in the country only to be told that after graduation, you must think as we tell you and recite from this script—why were you born? What’s the point of being alive? Computers are vastly better at number crunching. They’ll soon be better at all kinds of more complex tasks. What they cannot do is stand on principle. What a computer cannot do is refuse to lend credibility to a rigged competition—to refuse to strengthen its coercion—making it that much harder for the next female athlete to speak up. What the computer cannot know is the glorious exertion of the human will when it refuses to truckle in the face of lies and instead publicly speaks the truth.

I didn’t write Irreversible Damage to be provocative. In a freer world, nothing in my book would have created controversy. I wrote the book because I knew it was truthful and I believed recording what I found—that there was a social contagion leading many teenage girls to irreversible damage—was the right thing to do. I also believe if I hadn’t written it, thousands more girls would be caught up in an identity movement that was not organic to them but would nonetheless lead them to profound self-harm. But I didn’t write it specifically to stop them. I wrote it simply because it was true.

When I testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee back in March, I started by stating that I am proud to live in an America where gay and transgender Americans live with less stigma and fear than at any point in American history. That is the glory of freedom as well—the chance for adults to live authentic lives and guide their own destinies. And allowing mature adults to make those sorts of choices for themselves is absolutely a requirement of a free society. Yes, you can reject the false, dogmatic insistences of Gender Ideology and still wish to see transgender Americans prosper and flourish and fulfill their dreams in America. I do.

I wrote the book because the story of one mom and her teen daughter compelled me, and so did that of the dozens of other parents who then spoke to me—mothers and fathers who sobbed as they described how their daughters had become caught up in a craze that seemed completely inauthentic to the child, but which they were powerless to arrest.

I wrote the book not because I believed the fancy institutions I’d attended would celebrate me, or even acknowledge me, after I had done so. I wrote it because I knew that the point of all the educational opportunities I received that my equally qualified grandmothers never had, the purpose of all the sacrifices my parents had made for my education—for all the time my teachers and professors had taken with me—couldn’t be to plod through life on a forced march. The point of all the hours my parents and teachers and mentors had devoted to me, was surely not to become the world’s best-oiled automaton. The point of all of that privilege—and yes, I think that was a kind of privilege—was to be able to write and think as others lacked the will to do.

Spotify employees tried to hold that company hostage because they carried my podcast episode with Joe Rogan. Amazon employees threatened to quit if they continued to carry my book. GoFundMe shut down a grassroots fundraiser by parents who reached into their own pockets, to advertise my book. And the ACLU threw its entire, century-old mission in the garbage, all because of one book with which it disagreed. Joining these petulant mobs is not a show of strength, and it is not freedom. It’s closer to servitude.

Take back the right to speak your mind—thoughtfully, courteously, with a goal in mind beyond giving offense. The list of unmentionable truths expands so rapidly, without reason other than the attempt to suffocate a free people so that they forget the exhilaration of a lungful of air.

If you are someone who believes you have pronouns or would like to supply them, by all means, that is your prerogative. Whenever anyone asks me to use their preferred pronouns, and I can do so without confusing my audience or muddying an argument, I do so and I think this is an important courtesy. But—when asked, I will not state my pronouns and if you don’t believe in Gender Ideology, you shouldn’t either. When you state your pronouns, you participate in the catechism of Gender Ideology—the belief that there are ineffable genders, unknowable to all but the subject. That no one can possibly know I am a woman unless I’ve supplied these. I do not believe this. I regard this as nonsense. When asked for my pronouns, I say: “I am a woman.” Take back your freedom. Reclaim it now.

Psychiatrists and pediatricians tell me they are afraid to resist an adolescent’s demand that she be given puberty blockers because they’re afraid—if they point out the risks or the hastiness of the decision—they will lose their licenses. Parents tell me they are afraid to push back on the activist teachers and social workers at their kids’ school for fear of being called some flavor of phobe. Whatever freedom is, it isn’t that. And all of the wonderful education you have earned here will have been wasted if you find yourself one day observing some lie predominating in your own field and the best you can do is sit on the phone with me anonymously lamenting the state of things. You will soon be graduates of Princeton. Show some self-respect and reclaim your freedom.

It isn’t in those moments when you do just what’s expected that your will is tested. It isn’t in those moments when you recite the script that you exceed what any computer can achieve. Those moments when you managed to make yourself a faceless member of a pre-approved chorus will slide away as though you were never part of them.

I’m 43, which I realize makes me very old to many of you. But not so long from now, you’ll wake up and be 43 yourselves. And when I look back on my life thus far, it occurs to me that the decisions of which I am most proud—the ones that strike like an unexpected kiss—are not the times when I obeyed the algorithm. They’re the times when I defied it and felt, for a moment, the magic and power of being alive. When I felt, even for an instant, the exquisite joy of not being anyone’s subject. When I had the unmistakable sense that I’ve existed for a purpose, that I stood the chance of leaving the world better than I found it. You don’t get any of that through lock-step career achievement and you certainly don’t get that by being the Left’s star pupil.

You feel that frisson when you choose a person to commit yourself to knowing full well that any marriage may fail; when you bring children into a world where there are no guarantees of their safety or success. When you summon the courage to fashion a life, something that will remain after you are gone. When you speak the truth publicly—with care and lucidity. And when you say to the world: you cannot buy me with flattery. Purchase my colleagues or classmates at bulk rate. I am not for sale.

Thank you.

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UK: A new year, a new chance for the Government to rediscover conservatism

The Government makes noises about being on the side of the consumer/taxpayer, but the direction of travel has been the other way

The Government must make a resolution: do not repeat the mistakes of 2021 in 2022. The year just gone saw some remarkable scientific achievements in the fight against Covid, but momentum was lost, real reform put off and the wrong conclusions drawn. Nannyism has won.

Swollen by regulations and spending, the British state now imposes the highest tax burden in 70 years, and many decisions, unless reversed, will severely restrict our freedoms in the future – and thus recovery.

We begin the new year, said Sajid Javid, with rising cases but, thankfully, a brighter picture in intensive care, allowing us to enjoy some of the lightest restrictions in Europe. Future measures will be an “absolute last resort”, he promised. Yet the dance continues: the Government stops short of an actual lockdown while imposing piecemeal measures that prevent or discourage life from returning to normal.

Today we report that contingency measures are under consideration that would send home entire year groups from school if deemed necessary: an attempt to spare exam years from the worst is welcome, but these plans would still be another disastrous blow to a generation whose education has been put on hold even though they are at a much lower risk from the disease. Masks are also to be made mandatory in classrooms. This is not the last resort, nor “normal”, nor a desirable example of learning to live with a virus.

Then there is the cost of living crisis, which a group of backbenchers sensibly suggests should be alleviated with tax relief. Indeed, it’s a chance, finally, to cash in on Brexit by scrapping VAT on heating bills.

Elements of the crunch are beyond any country’s control, including rising wholesale energy prices, but, as with the pandemic, the UK Government is making policy choices that hurt their own supporters. The dash to carbon net zero, for instance, leaves us dependent on unreliable energy sources while passing the costs of transition onto consumers. Likewise, National Insurance is due to go up, alongside council tax, corporate rates and tax on dividends, and – unavoidably – the energy price cap.

The Government makes noises about being on the side of the consumer/taxpayer, but the direction of travel has been the other way. With Labour joining the call to reduce VAT on heating, we find ourselves retreading the 1990s, when New Labour attempted to outflank the Tories on economics following a disastrous decision by John Major’s government to raise taxes.

Conservatives lose office when they lose touch with their instincts. The decision to avoid a full lockdown over Christmas was closer to Mr Johnson’s famously liberal inclination, yet in this case he had to be encouraged by backbenchers, the resignation of Lord Frost and a confrontation with Cabinet. Thus far it seems to have been the right call, and should revive the ambition of the post-EU “sunlit uplands”.

Let this be the year in which the Mr Johnson starts to get done what he was elected to do: fulfil Brexit, deregulate, lower taxes, expand free trade and raise the standard of living in left-behind Britain with popular capitalism, not ill-conceived grands projets and public sector spending. The pandemic has proved that the NHS and social care sectors are unfit – time to reform them, particularly to create a thriving market in social care.

There are signs of a year of strong economic growth, so long as inflation is tempered – we have had real success in signing trade deals, the country is brimming with talent, and the early brilliance of the vaccine programme shows what can be done when we put our minds to it. There is much cause for confidence; but official doom-and-gloom threatens to undermine it.

The trick is to unleash potential, not stick it in a straitjacket – and allow Britons to get on with rebuilding their lives.

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Most prophecies are false prophecies

In Adventures in the Screen Trade, his 1983 memoir about life in Hollywood, the late William Goldman summarized the movie industry in three words: "Nobody knows anything." A two-time winner of the Academy Award for best screenplay, Goldman wrote some of the big screen's biggest hits, including "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" and "All the President's Men." If anybody was an expert on successful movies, he was. But experts, he wrote, are as clueless as everyone else about the future.

"NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING," Goldman repeated, putting the words in all caps. Why, he asked, did every single studio in Hollywood except Paramount turn down the chance to make "Raiders of the Lost Ark"? Why did Universal decide it wasn't interested in "Star Wars"? Why did Columbia, after spending a small fortune to develop "E.T.", eventually drop the project?

Goldman's answer: "Because nobody, nobody — not now, not ever — knows the least goddam thing about what is or isn't going to work at the box office."

What is true of Hollywood is true of just about every field: When experts say something is going to happen, the odds are generally even that it won't. As the odometer turns to 2022 and self-assured savants and insiders begin another 12 months of confidently forecasting what the future will bring, remember: Nobody knows anything.

Each December, Politico assembles an assortment of political predictions from the year gone by that prove the truth of Goldman's axiom. Among the most glaring of those misfires in 2021 was former White House press secretary Dana Perino's prognostication that Republicans would win both US Senate seats in the Georgia runoff election; Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Tom Ricks's prophecy that "by Labor Day, Biden's approval ratings will average low 60s"; and commentator Hugh Hewitt's serene assurance on the morning of Jan. 6 that "everything's going to be fine" when it comes to the transfer of power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden.

Things turned out rather differently: Republicans lost both seats in Georgia. Biden's approval in September was down to the low 40s (where it remains). And Jan. 6, when rioters stormed the Capitol to stop Biden from being certified as president-elect, was anything but "fine."

One reason for the sharp downturn in Biden's approval: the victory won by the Taliban in Afghanistan. That was something Biden had confidently predicted would not happen.

"The Taliban is not the North Vietnamese army," he said in July. "They're not remotely comparable in terms of capability. There's going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy.... The likelihood there's going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely." Within five weeks, helicopters were airlifting Americans from the US embassy in Kabul as the Taliban seized control of the country.

The COVID-19 pandemic likewise generated plenty of expert opinions that fell wide of the mark.

"Schools can become superspreaders and in September, it will happen," warned former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, insisting that "dramatic action" was necessary to keep the virus out of classrooms, especially in New York City. Many in the media looked to Cuomo as a leader in fighting the pandemic — in 2020, he received an Emmy for his "masterful" briefings — but he was completely wrong. Of nearly 708,000 COVID tests conducted in New York City schools in the fall semester, a mere 5,340 came back positive — a minuscule positivity rate of just three-fourths of 1 percent. (Cuomo was later stripped of his Emmy, though not because his pandemic predictions.)

It wasn't only in America that COVID crystal balls proved faulty. Health officials in the United Kingdom forecast a dreadful autumn, and anticipated 7,000 or more hospital admissions daily by October. It never happened. As the year ended, hospitalization rates remained far below the sages' doomsday scenarios.

On the economy, too, expert projections proved to be duds.

Vox's so-called Future Perfect team of seers predicted last January that, notwithstanding the "vaccine-driven recovery," the US unemployment rate would stay above 5 percent through November 2021. In, fact unemployment dropped below 5 percent by September. By December it was down to 4.2 percent.

This was also the year that many economic analysts and financial journalists pooh-poohed any suggestion that inflation was poised to explode. "No, you don't have to worry about inflation," MarketWatch's Brett Arends assured his readers in January. "Call me in six months if there's still inflation," said Saagar Enjeti on "Rising," the popular YouTube news program he co-hosts with Krystal Ball. "History Says Don't Panic About Inflation," Nobel laureate and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman insisted in a November column, one of many he wrote on that theme in 2021.

Oops. Inflation has become a huge concern. Prices are rising in the United States at the fastest rate since the early 1980s, and 45 percent of US households say they are feeling the financial strain. How did so many supposed experts miss — or misread — the evidence of what was coming?

The premise of that question is flawed. To be an expert is to possess considerable knowledge in a particular field, but it is not to possess any greater insight into what is to come. As political scientist and psychologist Philip Tetlock documented in his 2005 book Expert Political Judgment, specialists are no more reliable than non-specialists when it comes to making predictions — even in their own areas. "Expertise and experience," wrote Louis Menand in The New Yorker, summarizing the findings of many studies, "do not make someone a better reader of the evidence."

Experts know a great deal, and to listen courteously when they speak is only prudent. But it is not prudent to imagine that they see farther into the future than most people. The talking heads you watch on TV, the sports or money gurus you hear on your podcast, the opinionated columnists you read in the paper — take their words with a healthy dose of skepticism. And don't forget Goldman's Axiom:

"Nobody knows anything."

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Ghislaine Maxwell will not reveal details of others involved in Jeffrey Epstein’s child sex-trafficking network in exchange for a lenient sentence, her brother says

The British socialite’s decision not to co-operate with US investigators after her conviction last week will offer comfort to alleged co-conspirators, including four women who worked for the couple. High-profile men who have been linked to the abuse of under-age girls, including Prince Andrew, will also be relieved to discover that Maxwell, 60, does not intend to talk. The prince denies any wrongdoing.

Ian Maxwell, 65, said his sister maintained her innocence and had no plans to cut a deal. “Prosecution confirmed no plea bargain offers were made or received” before the trial, he said. “I expect that position to be maintained.”

His sister faces up to 65 years in jail after a jury in New York convicted her of recruiting and trafficking girls as young as 14 for abuse by Epstein, her former boyfriend. Prosecutors described Maxwell as a “sophisticated predator” who groomed and manipulated girls in “one of the worst crimes imaginable”.

She had spent more than 500 days on remand in virtual solitary confinement at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan detention centre before her trial started. Maxwell could be there for another six months before a sentencing hearing.

Her brother said that Maxwell was “understandably subdued” by her conviction but “strong in spirit”. Epstein, 66, hanged himself in 2019 while awaiting trial for child sex offences. Ian Maxwell said his sister “is not now, nor has ever been, a suicide risk. She knows there are many people, including her family of course, who love and support her and who believe in her innocence.

“She will be appealing her conviction. She is a fighter and a survivor.”

Any appeal could focus on the judge’s decisions to deny anonymity to witnesses that Maxwell wanted to call in her defence and to allow the jury to hear the testimony of two accusers, including a Briton called “Kate”, who were over the age of consent in the jurisdictions where they say they were abused.

Maxwell has also complained that her “torturous” remand conditions “weakened” her physical and mental health, making it impossible for her to defend herself properly.

She still faces a trial on two charges of perjury relating to evidence she gave in a civil lawsuit in 2016 brought by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who has accused the Duke of York of rape. But her family believe that is unlikely to go ahead if she receives “a stiff sentence” for last week’s conviction.

US investigators are under pressure from victims to pursue other associates of Epstein or Maxwell allegedly involved in the abuse. They include four women in America – Sarah Kellen, Lesley Groff, Adriana Ross and Nadia Marcinkova – who worked as assistants to the couple. They were named as “potential co-conspirators” in a plea deal by Epstein in Florida in 2008 that protected them from charges.

Federal prosecutors have indicated that they are not bound by the agreement.

Ross, a Polish-born former model who allegedly removed computers from Epstein’s Florida home before a police raid in 2005, was originally lined up to give evidence against Maxwell. However, she was never called to testify. All four women have denied wrongdoing.

Kellen, once described as Maxwell’s “lieutenant”, has claimed that she was a victim. She has changed her name to “Sarah Kensington”.

Once Maxwell has been sentenced, she will be moved to another jail which is likely to be closer to her relatives. They include her US-based twin sisters Isabel and Christine, and Scott Borgerson, a tech entrepreneur whom Maxwell secretly married in 2016.

Borgerson, 46, did not attend Maxwell’s trial.

Prince Andrew is not the only powerful man whose name cropped up in evidence at Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial.

One victim, known as “Jane”, revealed that she was taken by Jeffrey Epstein to meet Donald Trump, 75, at the future president’s Florida resort when she was 14, although she did not suggest that anything inappropriate took place. Bill Clinton, 75, was named as a passenger on Epstein’s private jet, known as the Lolita Express. He too denies any wrongdoing.

Jean-Luc Brunel, 76, the French former model scout, appeared in a photograph taken on board the plane, which was presented as evidence. Maxwell appeared to be flashing her cleavage at him, while Epstein sat near by laughing.

After the British socialite’s conviction, victims’ lawyers have called on investigators to question a number of male VIPs who benefited from Epstein’s largesse while he was involved in the abuse of girls on an industrial scale.

Bill Gates, 66, visited Epstein’s New York mansion at least three times after the financier had been jailed for procuring a child prostitute in 2008. Gates also denies wrongdoing.

Most of these powerful men are unlikely to face any criminal action. Huge embarrassment and reputational damage is more likely to be their comeuppance – as was the case with Jes Staley, 65, who resigned in November as the head of Barclays amid reports that he exchanged 1,200 emails with Epstein.

Only Brunel has been arrested and charged with a crime – the rape of minors – in his native France. He denies the charges.

Andrew continues to fight a separate civil lawsuit brought by Virginia Giuffre, who has accused him of sexual abuse when she was 17. The duke denies the claim and cannot be extradited or jailed because it is not a criminal case.

Giuffre has also accused Epstein’s former lawyer Alan Dershowitz, 83, of abusing her. However, the Harvard professor claims she recently withdrew a civil action citing legal grounds.

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

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