Moving Day

For the past 17 and a half years, I've posted over 3,000 articles and commentary on world affairs, scientific matters, domestic politics and much more.

Effective today, May 4, 2024, most of my major posts will move to Substack at this address:

https://rogerpressman.substack.com

For the past month or so I've been dual posting—here and at Substack, but over the last few weeks, I've begun to post solely on Substack. Two of my more important posts are these:

Who's Behind the Anti-Israel Campus Protests?

and

The Pyramid of Lies—Revisited

I'll sometimes cross-post here, but going forward, all of my major commentary can be found on Substack. I hope you visit me there.

The Four Questions

In the Jewish religion, the first Seder (ritual meal) of Passover begins tonight. The holiday celebrates the departure of Jewish people from slavery in Egypt (that's right, "folx," people of color do NOT have a monopoly on being slaves). That same tyrannical Egyptian regime wanted them dead (once they broke the bonds of slavery). 

The people who lived in ancient Egypt are likely the genetic ancestors of the Arab Muslims who call themselves palestinians. Three out of four of those genetic ancestors (according to recent Arab polling data) currently support Hamas and cheered when it committed atrocities that leftists and their media have already relegated to the memory hole.

Over the past few months, we've witnessed Muslim activists and the useful idiots among leftist students descend into outright, vile anti-Semitism and violence against Jews. We've also seen far too many Democrats and many more "moderate" leftists, turn a blind eye to events at Harvard, Yale and Columbia (among many elite univerities. And worst of all, we've witnessed far, far too many Jews who still support a political party that is at best ambivalent about the rise in anti-Semitic behavior and more likely, has members who either overtly or covertly support it.

Karol Markowicz has had enough and calls out those Jews in this post on X:

Maybe this Passover Seder, instead of reading the traditional Haggadah, every Jewish family, but particularly those families that pride themselves on their true-blue worldview, should read Markowicz' post—out loud. And when the traditional Four Questions are asked, maybe they should substitute these instead:

1. Why is this time reminiscent of a time, no more that 90 years ago, when another evil stalked the Jews, and people who the Jews trusted did NOTHING?
2. Why do we still support a political party that has abandoned Israel in many ways, has done so for at least two decades, and is escalating that abandonment by the week?
3. Why should we feel anything for the "suffering" of people who want to eradicate all of us—mothers, fathers, children, and even dogs?
4. Why do we cast our votes and donate our money to people who clearly are NOT our friends, do not have our back, and will (or are) selling Israel and American Jews down the river?

The answers might be illuminating. This discussion, enlightening.

In Defense of Spanking

When I was a young tyke, I'd occasionally disobey my mom or dad, sometimes in ways that were sufficiently egregious to warrant immediate consequences. In my day, that meant a gentle spanking—sudden, just a tiny bit painful, and short. The parent involved would accompany the spanking (lasting no more that 5 or 6 seconds) with a quick verbal explanation of what I did to warrant it and why what I did was unacceptable. It was over in a flash.

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By modern standards, this was akin to "child abuse," but I beg to differ. Spankings taught me, rather quickly, that bad or unacceptable behavior had consequences, and that I has the agency—even as a small child—to moderate my behavior in order to avoid consequences I didn't like. Over the many decades that followed, I matured but never forgot the lessons learned. BTW, those rare spankings did absolutely no psychic damage—none.

Unfortunately, some coddled young adults today (those in the 18- to 30-year old bracket) have never really learned that actions have consequences. Rather than being punished for poor behavior, far too many have been protected and defended by parents and other authority figures. As a consequence, these 'children' are entitled and fragile, ignorant and aggressive, obnoxious and self-important—all at the same time.

Over the past six months, a small but very vocal subset of coddled, leftist young adults have decided to display their ignorance and aggressiveness in ways that are not only obnoxious, but borderline evil. The referenced subset pretends it is pro-Palestinian, when in fact, it is anti-Israel, implicitly pro-Hamas, and now, overtly anti-Semitic.

Up until this week, the authority figures at institutions that coddle these ignorant, aggressive young leftists have essentially protected them. University administrators allowed them free reign to spew anti-Semitic vitriol, threatening Jewish students—no consequences. Police and politicians in blue cities allowed them to block traffic, close down bridges and otherwise inconvenience thousands. In their abject ignorance, they claimed to be against hallucinogenic claims of genocide by defending the actual genocidal psychopaths who want to rid the world of Jews.

This week was different and oddly satisfying. At Columbia University, 108 anti-Israel students were arrested for trespassing when they refused to leave university property when asked to do so. A few were suspended. Consequences. 

At Google, 28 anti-Israel employees were fired for occupying business offices and demanding that Google cease doing business with Israel. Consequences. 

These are small events and probably don't mean much. But nonetheless, they're an encouraging lesson that actions have consequences for those who are entitled and fragile, ignorant and aggressive, obnoxious and self-important . 

I suppose it's never too late to initiate a spanking, particularly for a group that so richly deserves it.

NPR

The media members of The Big Five are shocked, just shocked(!), at the allegations of bias, dishonesty, and censorious intent leveled again a darling of leftist media, NPR. In a long critique published in The Free Press, 25-year NPR senior editor, Uri Berliner, makes those accusations and a lot more. 

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NPR, like almost all leftist media, did absolutely no introspection to examine whether Berliner's critique had merit. Instead, it suspended Berliner without pay. 

Among the thousands of words NPR published after Berliner's critique are these:

Conservative activist Christopher Rufo is among those now targeting NPR's new chief executive, Katherine Maher, for messages she posted to social media years before joining the network. Among others, those posts include a 2020 tweet that called Trump racist and another that appeared to minimize rioting during social justice protests that year. Maher took the job at NPR last month — her first at a news organization.

In a statement Monday about the messages she had posted, Maher praised the integrity of NPR's journalists and underscored the independence of their reporting.

"In America everyone is entitled to free speech as a private citizen," she said. "What matters is NPR's work and my commitment as its CEO: public service, editorial independence, and the mission to serve all of the American public. NPR is independent, beholden to no party, and without commercial interests."

It's actually amusing to see NPR's CEO champion free speech. Her fellow travelers among media members of The Big Five have done everything possible to limit the free speech of anyone who opposes their worldview. Working in conjunction with the current regime in Washington and with many agencies within the deep state, they have worked to censor opposing views (via de-amplification, omission, shadow-banning or outright censorship) on everything from public health in the U.S.to support for Islamist doctrine in Gaza, if those views conflict with the Left's preferred narrative. 

The CEO's praise of the "integrity of NPR's journalists" might be tempered with the simple reality that those same "journalists" are irreparably biased, live in a world where advocacy journalism is the norm, and work aggressively to propagandize their audience on a daily basis.

That might be marginally acceptable if NPR was a private company, but it is not. Tax dollars are used to support at least some of its cost.

 

 

Iran and Proportionality

Here's my proposed text for a speech Bibi Netanyahu should make this evening:

Iran’s attack on Israeli population centers has failed. More than 300 kinetic weapons– drones, ballistic and cruise missiles – were launched from inside Iran and its proxies against Israel. 99% of them were neutralized and the few that did get through caused relatively little damage, and with the exception of 7-year old Bedouin girl, no serious human casualties. I would like to thank those countries that assisted us in intercepting Iran’s kinetic weapons. We are grateful for your support against an Iranian theocracy that subjugates its own people and foments Islamist terror throughout the Middle East and the world.

Our war cabinet met last night and developed strategies for both offensive and defensive moves against Iran at a time and in a manner of our own choosing.

I am certain that there will be calls from the United Nations and many western leaders for Israel not to respond, so that efforts at diplomacy can be attempted. It’s worth noting that those efforts have failed miserably over the last 40 years. Iran’s leadership is driven by hatred. They are violently anti-Semitic, and have little tolerance for any religion other than Islam. It is unlikely that the words of diplomacy will change their hateful position. But try if you must.

I am also certain that if and when Israel does respond, there will be demands that our response be "proportional." It may surprise many of these leaders that we wholeheartedly agree with the second condition.

 

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For many years now, Iran has used proxies to attack Israel. During that time, those proxies have launched well over 10,000 missiles into Israeli territory, almost always targeting civilian population centers and killing or wounding hundreds of our citizens. Iran proxies in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen have attacked American coalition troops, launched missiles against Israel, and attacked international shipping. In their unprecedented strike last night, Iran launched over 300 airborne weapons against our sovereign state. In addition, Iran’s proxy, Hamas, murdered, raped, and mutilated over 1200 mens, women, and children and kidnapped over 200 others.

We have known that Iran was behind all of those acts of terror. Last night proved that to be the case beyond any reasonable doubt.

Given all of this, we promise that our proportional response will not exceed the bounds of the attacks plan, funded and coordinated by Iran over all of these years. We will not launch more than 10,300 airborne weapons against the state of Iran. We will never purposely kill any Iranian civilians, even though Iran's proxy, Hamas, did exactly that to over 1200 Israeli citizens just six months ago.We will not kidnap Iran's civilians.

The hateful leadership of Iran has come out of the shadows, and now shown its true nature. The people of Iran, on the other hand, are not our enemy. Our proportional response, when and if we decide to implement it, will not target them. But rest assured that the hateful leadership of Iran will pay a steep price for their actions. That price may come tomorrow, next week, or month, or next year. It will be hellaciously proportionate. 

The choice is choices ours.

Information laundering

Strong language is sometime necessary to counter malevolent lies, even when those lies are amplified by virtually every leader in the West (including our cognitively-disabled President), the UN and WHO (no surprise) and our left wing propaganda media (think: New York Times and WaPo, among many, many others). We're told that 30,000+ women and children have been wantonly slaughtered by Israel's war against the Islamist terror group, Hamas. We're told that the resultant humanitarian crisis is "unprecedented" and that "genocide" is on-going. 

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Now for the strong language—every one of those claims is Hamas propaganda, giddily reported by leftist leaders, organizations, and media without verification or investigation. Those claims are patent bullshit.

David Adesnik dissects the propaganda when he writes:

The [Gaza (Hamas) health] ministry says its casualty counts include two types of fatalities: those recorded by medical facilities and those reported by “reliable media sources.” In its March 31 report, the ministry attributes 15,070 of the dead, or 45.9%, to news reports. From which outlets? The ministry never says.

Its choices are limited, since Gaza has no independent media. It has networks like al-Aqsa that are extensions of Hamas and other armed factions. It has Al Jazeera, the Qatari state network that describes the atrocities of Oct. 7 as an “incursion” and denies that any “widespread and systematic” sexual assault took place. Western outlets report from Gaza, but they rely on the ministry for their casualty data ...

... Gabriel Epstein, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, did this [analyzed the data] soon after the ministry published its first statistical report in December. He found that the deaths attributed to “reliable media sources” consisted almost entirely of women and children. Of the 6,629 fatalities attributed to media, 1,941 were women, 4,678 children and only 10 men.

Amazing ... only 10 men were killed!! I've heard of "smart" bombs, but bombs that are smart enough to kill ONLY women and children are ... well ... unbelievable—in the literal meaning of that word.

Of course, facts and logic mean nothing to leftists who WANT to believe that Israel is indiscriminately killing innocents. The reason: it allows those useful idiots to draw a false moral equivalence between the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7th and the response by the Israelis—a response that every responsible report indicates is unprecedented in its attempt to warn civilians to get out of harm's way.

Of course, the casualty figures are but one of dozens of malevolent lies that have allowed the palestinians to construct their "pyramid of lies" (see here and here).  Adesnik continues:

Over time, media reports have accounted for an ever larger share of the ministry’s data. Of nearly 11,000 fatalities reported between Jan. 1 and March 31, the ministry derived 77.7% from media reports. [emphasis mine]

In reality, this is similar to money laundering, except its "information laundering." Hamas lies are published by Hamas controlled media. Those lies are then laundered through supposedly respected Western media and then quoted as fact by everyone from Joe Biden to the UN. At each step in the laundering process the propaganda is amplified—often knowingly by news outlets that are anti-Israel). The consequence is a false narrative that goes viral and ultimately gets translated into government policy. 

Despicable ... but effective.

 

The Big Five

People often ask how the Left's fantasy ideas, nutty narratives and insane public policies have pervaded almost every major institution in the West. It didn't happen overnight, and it will continue to become more and more prevalent as time passes. But why?

I try to answer that question in my new book, Normalizing Insanity, when I write:

... the Left has captured virtually all modes of mass communication using entities and organizations that I call “The Big Five:”

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Mainstream media. The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC, PBS, Reuters, AP, the BBC, Sky News, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and many, many others are decidedly Left in their editorial content and in their hard news reporting.  Ideological capture has been on-going in mainstream journalism. A study of 1600 journalists by Syracuse University found that only 3.4% identify as Republicans while 36.4% identify as Democrats.

Social Media and Google. The management and technologists who populate the workforce of all major social media companies (Twitter 1.0, Facebook, Instagram, Tic Toc, YouTube, and others) lean decidedly Left.  Google, the dominant search engine, biases its search results with content that supports ‘approved’ narratives, all promoted by left-leaning followers. Evidence uncovered over the past five years clearly indicates that these private companies worked to suppress narratives that threatened left-leaning political candidates or tried to amplify viral narratives  that had widespread support among progressives ... 

Academia. Fantasy ideas (e.g., Critical Theory and its derivatives) are often hatched by academics in a university setting. At many universities, left-leaning faculty outnumber their right-leaning counterparts by a ratio of 7 to 1. In addition, those same academics are teaching (indoctrinating?) undergraduate students. The result is a set of contradictions and outright hypocrisy that is very concerning. For example, “pro-Palestinan” protests on college campuses at the end of 2023 had students and faculty espousing blatantly anti-Semitic rhetoric. Those same professors and students roundly condemned anyone who used incorrect pronouns only months earlier. Two narratives, two different sets of rules. 

Entertainment. The entertainment industry has always leaned left, but in recent years, virtually all of it has been captured and turned into a megaphone to promote approved narratives and defend against any critique of insane policy ... 

Organizations within the Deep State. The term “deep state” is a catchall phrase for all unelected federal officials and agencies in the massive federal bureaucracy that often establish the policies and mandates derived from viral narratives. Although politicians and lobbyists define the broad strokes, it is the bureaucracy that addresses the minutiae that makes the difference between an effective policy and an insane one ... 

The Big Five work to amplify narratives that are promoted by left-leaning follower groups, including many that are based on fantasy ideas. At the same time, they work to criticize and de-amplify those narratives that voice opposition ... 

There are countless examples of The Big Five at work, but the most insidious is their continuing attempts to censor opposing opinion that conflicts with their preferred narrative. A recent example illustrates this.

With the singular except of 9/11, The Big Five has had a way of quickly memory-holing mass casualty terror attacks conducted by Islamist terror groups (e.g., Hamas or ISIS-K) throughout the West. They're warned by Islamist front groups like CAIR, that investigating such attacks keeps them in the public eye, and that leads to "Islamophobia." The Big Five complies by burying the attacks ASAP.

In 2021, Frontpage Magazine published a retrospective entitled, "Remember the San Bernadino Five." It began this way:

On December 2, 2015, Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik drove up to the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California, and began firing automatic rifles while still outside on the grounds. The American-born Muslim Farook and the Pakistani-born Malik, then barged inside where a holiday party was in progress.

There Farook and Malik gunned down Robert Adams, Isaac Amianos, Bennetta Betbadal, Harry Bowman, Sierra Clayborn, Juan Espinoza, Aurora Godoy, Shannon Johnson, Larry Daniel Kaufman, Damien Meins, Tin Ngyen, Nicholas Thalasinos, Yvette Velasco, and Michael Wetzel. The pair then fled in a black SUV and fired more than 100 rounds at police, wounding one officer.

Police took down the terrorists and inside their SUV found a trigger device to detonate bombs the Muslims had planted at the Regional Center. Had the bombs exploded, many others would have perished.

Because of that article and others critical of islamist terrorists, Google decided that Frontpage was not eligible for its Google’s AdSense advertising program. Okay, I suppose Google can choose who it works with. But it gets worse ... much worse. Daniel Greenfield writes:

The article, “Remember The San Bernardino Fourteen” by Lloyd Billingsley, like a lot of our articles, is blocked in Google Search. The Front Page article doesn’t come up when you type in its name. It doesn’t even appear when you do a site search for the exact title in quotation marks that has been entirely limited to the Front Page Magazine site. That means that Google likely specifically excluded it. And it’s far from the only one of our articles banned by Google.

It’s an extraordinary act of censorship for a company that claims to want to collect all the information in the world and make it easily available for everyone to find. But it’s also a silent act of suppression that is hard to confirm and easy to blame on technical factors or errors.

But now here it was, Google flagging “Remember The San Bernardino Fourteen” as “dangerous” and “derogatory” content, not to mention guilty of “unreliable and harmful claims”.

What’s dangerous, unreliable and harmful about “Remember The San Bernardino Fourteen”?

Published on Dec 3, 2021, around the anniversary of the Islamic terrorist attack, it contains fairly little editorial commentary and a great deal of uncomfortable facts.

When you ask how it is that the Left controls the narrative, just think back to this one case of outright censorship and them multiply it a thousand ... no, likely a million times. Frontpage is undoubtedly a conservative publication with a masthead comment from its publisher  that goes like this: "Inside Every Progressive Is A Totalitarian Screaming To Get Out" —David Horowitz.

Google's actions in censoring and suppressing free speech demonstrate that truism rather nicely.