Headlines

… Though it has avoided the worst outcomes, South Africa is hardly a multiracial paradise. Instead, it has trended toward chaos and internal disaster; its economy is in shambles, its once-budding space and nuclear programs are long gone. Crime rules in place of law and order … The economic aspect of South Africa’s decline is primarily a result of its post-apartheid obsession with extending the country’s cursed racial logic, this time in the name of justice and equity … Post-Mandela South Africa is in a state of disaster that seems likely to get worse. In public life, tyranny reigns as the government enforces race-based mandates on companies that are suffering mightily under the burden … Sadly, America has flirted with following the same dark path as South Africa … Though America is not at South Africa’s disastrous level, it may be trending that way.

President Biden privately raged that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was a “f–king liar” when Israel invaded Rafah — and seethed to the PM’s face that he had “no strategy,’’ a blistering new book says. “That son of a bitch, Bibi Netanyahu, he’s a bad guy. He’s a bad f–king guy!” Biden told an aide, according to CNN in a preview Tuesday of Bob Woodward’s upcoming book “War.” The two leaders have had a tumultuous relationship even in public as Israel continues to fight Hamas, and that tension was only elevated behind the scenes, according to Woodward. Biden reportedly called Netanyahu a “f–king liar” in private after Israel expanded its military operations to include Rafah in southern Gaza this past spring.

It is important to remember the brutal assault former President Jimmy Carter faced from militant supporters of Israel, and the number of times there were attempts to silence him, claiming he was “anti-Semitic,” the usual tactic used to silence criticism of Israel … Carter was repaid for his success and for his commitment to both Israeli security and Palestinian rights with a consistent campaign of vilification by American Jewish leaders … Carter himself lamented that whenever an issue arose between the U.S. and Israel, “American Jewish leaders would always side with the Israeli leaders and condemn us for being even-handed in our concern for both Palestinian rights and Israeli security.” When he wrote the book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, which became a New York Timesbest-seller in 2007, the attacks on Carter became brutal.

At the age of 82, Jimmy Carter entered the lion’s den. With the publication of his book, “Palestine: Peace not Apartheid,” he did what a patriot would do: rally Americans to vigorous debate of a critical issue that affects our future. He deserves a hero’s praise. Instead, he has been attacked and defamed … I also experienced firsthand what Carter now faces. Toward the end of my 22-year tenure in Congress, I spoke in favor of Palestinian rights and was critical of Israeli policies of Palestinian land confiscation and Jewish-only settlements on Palestinian lands. These actions were counter to American policy and values.

Former President Donald Trump spoke to conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Monday and yet again expressed his frustration with American Jews. Hewitt ended the interview by referring back to the one-year anniversary of the devastating October 7th terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas … Trump replied, adding: … “I think that Israel has to do one thing. They have to get smart about Trump, because they don’t back me. I did more for Israel than anybody. I did more for the Jewish people than anybody. And it’s not reciprocal, as they say, not reciprocal.” … Trump had previously made headlines when he told a crowd in late September that Jews would be in part to blame if he is not reelected. His comment was widely condemned by critics and anti-semitism watch groups.

… Many were voicing their belief not just that Austria has in the past few years taken in immigrants from outside Europe faster than it can integrate them but also concerns about economic stagnation and the spiraling cost of living. Sunday’s election [Sept. 29], which gave the Freedom Party (FPOe) led by the Russia-friendly, eurosceptic Herbert Kickl 29 percent of the vote, its best-ever showing, delivered a clear message … FPOe supporters are more likely to be edgy about terrorism and immigration, and also the least likely to agree that democracy is the most effective form of government, according to a survey of 1,248 voters … Some 57% of voters said Austria had been on the wrong track over the last five years, up from 32% in 2019, the Foresight study found.

Today marks the one year anniversary of the remarkably successful Hamas raid on Israel, in which some 1,500 lightly-armed Islamic militants from Gaza so greatly humiliated the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his country’s entire national security establishment. The consequences of these last twelve months have been enormous, not merely for the Jewish State and the rest of the Middle East, but also for America and the entire world … After the events of the last twelve months, I tend to doubt that the country will survive much longer in anything like its existing form, and its collapse may also take down with it the entire political structure of organized Jewry worldwide, which today so heavily dominates both America and the rest of the West.

A self-described Nazi will become the first person in Australia sentenced to prison for performing an outlawed Nazi salute when a magistrate sets his term next month. Magistrate Brett Sonnet told Jacob Hersant on Wednesday he will be sentenced to a “relatively modest term of imprisonment” at his next court appearance … The maximum potential sentence is 12 months in prison plus a 24,000 Australian dollar ($16,177) fine … Hersant gave the salute and praised Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in front of news media cameras outside the Victoria County Court on Oct. 27, 2023 … Asked by a reporter during the court’s lunch break if he had anything to say in what then could have been his last moments of freedom, Hersant replied, “I regret nothing.” “I’m prepared to go to jail for my beliefs,” Hersant told reporters.

… The ban and subsequent backlash were tied to a massive culture shift at Wikipedia, precipitated by the rise of a new social-justice-minded power structure at Wikimedia Foundation … Where Wikipedia had been built on the principle of decentralized knowledge, the Movement Strategy would veer into the hyper-centralized space of top-down social justice activism and advocacy … The key concept undergirding the Movement Strategy was “inclusion,” an idea rapidly becoming buzzy amid the swirling culture currents that would soon crystallize into #MeToo, BLM and the trans movement.

… What we call revisionist history appeared at the very birth of written history. It wasn’t, as many allege, the product of the radicalism of the 1960s, nor did it spring up on the political left. … The most common source of revisionist thinking arises from shifts in perspective. The classic American example of repeated shifts of this sort concerns the enduring, complex, and deeply consequential debates over the causes and consequences of the Civil War … For many non-historians, disagreement among experts fits uneasily with their desire for certainty. Many condemn historians’ changing interpretations as evidence of political bias … All written history is — in one respect or another, on one scale or another, and with one impact or another — revisionist in intent or consequence. Revisionist history is a universal phenomenon.

… When people are offended or otherwise greatly displeased by historical analysis, they often employ the term “historical revisionism” as a synonym for falsified, distorted, or doctored accounts that fly in the face of what they, their history teachers, and perhaps even the most respected university historians believe to have been the case. The irony of such use of the term “historical revision,” which makes it practically a swear word, is that revisionism is and always has been an integral part of historical research and writing.

Revisionism as applied to World War II and its origins (as also for previous wars) has the general function of bringing historical truth to an American and a world public that had been drugged by wartime lies and propaganda … Revisionism brings to the artificial frenzy of daily events and day-to-day propaganda, the cool but in the last analysis glorious light of historical truth. Such truth is almost desperately needed in today’s world.

Israel is in grave danger due to the departure of its best and brightest who want to live in a “free liberal democracy,” not one where “the government forcibly takes power” and too many people are “silent and do not react,” Nobel-winning scientist Prof. Aaron Ciechanover said. Ciechanover, 76, a biologist associated with the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, is one of Israel’s leading scientists. He won the Nobel Prize in Biology in 2004 … “There is a huge wave of departures from the country,” Ciechanover said in a speech delivered Sunday … “Most senior doctors are leaving the hospitals; universities are finding difficulties in recruiting faculty members in critical areas. This community is “very narrow,” he added. Citing economic reports, Ciechanover said that “as soon as 30,000 of these people leave, we won’t have a country here.”

… According to this survey, the number of homeschooled children increased from 3.6million in the 2022-2023 school year to 4 million this year. As more parents become aware of how government schools short-change education in favor of indoctrination by incorporating “woke” subjects like critical race theory, transgenderism, and “green new deal” propaganda disguised as “climate science” into the curriculum, more parents will turn to homeschooling. The conservative counter to “woke” education is the mandating of “patriotic” education, which is code for promoting the neoconservative line that all of America’s wars were justified and America has a right and duty to use its military might to spread democracy. This may cause even more parents to abandon government schools.

The US government currently imposes sanctions on a third of all nations on earth in a situation that disproportionately affects low-income countries – 60 percent of which are under US sanctions of some kind – according to an analysis of the White House’s long-standing policy of economic warfare by the Washington Post. This trend spiked during the last four US governments and reached a fever pitch under President Biden, who imposed over 6,000 sanctions in just two years … This approach by a revolving door of White House officials ignores the devastating effect of economic coercion policies on civilian populations, as countless studies have shown that sanctions cause immense suffering and possibly deaths in the hundreds of thousands.

.. “What, Me Worry? The Art and Humor of MAD Magazine,” a new exhibit at the Norman Rockwell Museum … The MAD team in its heyday included founders William Gaines and Harvey Kurtzman, editor Al Feldstein, and artists and writers from Mort Drucker, Al Jaffee and Dave Berg to Larry Siegel, Stan Hart and, more recently, Drew Friedman, all Jews (and all men, I know). Its pages dripped with Yiddishisms, some real (shmuck!) and some imagined (furshlugginer!). Nathan Abrams, in an article on MAD’s Jewish sensibility, argues that in the 1950s and ’60s the magazine “marinated in the same urban Jewish culture” that produced the New York Intellectuals …

How and why are Europeans, and the peoples of European origin around the world, different than others? In this insightful and exhaustively researched work, Prof. MacDonald examines how the peoples of western and northern Europe come to be so different than other peoples of the world. The author is a retired professor of psychology who has written extensively, and courageously, on cultural-racial group dynamics. This important book does much to explain why white Americans and Europeans now seem to be embracing their own racial and cultural destruction. The altruism of Europeans, including white Americans, has been turned against them, putting them on the path to cultural-racial obliteration.

Joseph Sobran, a senior editor at National Review and a nationally syndicated columnist, defends himself against accusations of “anti-Semitism” because he had written articles critical of the role of the “Israel lobby” in shaping US foreign policy. He speaks here with C-SPAN television host Brian Lamb in an episode titled “The Sobran Scandal” that aired on July 14, 1986. They discuss a piece by National Review editor William F. Buckley, which both praised and castigated Sobran. Buckley later fired Sobran from the magazine. The viewers who call in with comments and questions are overwhelmingly sympathetic to Sobran.

… There will only ever be one Joseph Sobran. When he was excommunicated from the conservative movement, we lost our best hope for intellectual credibility … He spent his career forging a social policy grounded in natural law — a tradition of conservatism he traced back through Johnson, Burke, Chesterton, Lewis, Oakeshott, and Orwell … Sobran had been slated to write a column for this magazine, an offer that was withdrawn after he refused to cancel his speech to the IHR [Institute for Historical Review]. Yet he still disavowed the label “Holocaust denier,” and confessed to having no “consuming interest” in the Holocaust at all. He simply admired the IHR’s “calm virtue of critical rationality” … It’s time to rake his books out of the ashes before they’re completely forgotten.

The news that I would be addressing the Institute of Historical Review came to some people as, well, news … The IHR’s mission can’t be fairly summed up as “Holocaust denial.” Its real mission is criticism of the suffocating progressive ideology that has infected and distorted the telling of history in our time … In short, the Holocaust has become a device for exempting Jews from normal human obligations. It has authorized them to bully and blackmail, to extort and oppress.

One of the great goals of education is to initiate the young into the conversation of their ancestors; to enable them to understand the language of that conversation, in all its subtlety, and maybe even, in their maturity, to add to it some wisdom of their own. The modern American educational system no longer teaches us the political language of our ancestors. In fact our schooling helps widen the gulf of time between our ancestors and ourselves, because much of what we are taught in the name of civics, political science, or American history is really modern liberal propaganda.