General

Israel-Iran war

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Discuss: Israel would not have attacked the Iranian embassy in Damascus if they didn’t think they could win a war with Iran. The U.S. and U.K. are already involved shooting down drones. Iran seems to want this to be a limited gesture–aimed at military bases as I understand it and how they say the issue is settled, but Israel will surely escalate it further, knowing the U.S. and the West will be on their side. Israel would love to set back the anti-Zionist forces for a long, long time if not permanently and can only do this with a major escalation.

Dershowitz on Newsmax: WE have to topple the Iranian regime, meaning the U.S. and Israel. Biggest opportunity in years to end the conflict. Iranians will support this. “They’ve given us the opportunity, do waste it.”

The Beautiful Humanity on Death Row

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The Beautiful Humanity on Death Row

The New York Times is weeping over the death penalty again, publishing a glowing review of Nashville reporter Steven Hale’s book Death Row Welcomes You.  FYI, this was not on the cover of my book review — but we may get a different version here. Obviously, it’s an important book, since only 1 million journalists have already written about their touching and personal relationships with men sentenced to death.

Although I am generally a hate-reader — having, for example, at least skimmed nearly every book about Trump (he’s a Russian asset, a threat to democracy, a conman and sociopath) — I can’t in good conscience contribute to an author who waxes on about his “friends” on death row, their “beautiful paintings,” and how supporters want to “celebrate” the life of men who just happened to mercilessly torture and kill helpless human beings.

So this will be a review of the Times’ review, with supplementary information from Amazon’s book sample, plus news reports and court records about the crimes that put Hale’s friends on death row.

Hale, the Times writes, gives an insider’s account of death row — a place “shrouded by myths of monsters and abominations.”

Myths?

Yes. For example, the Times starts with three paragraphs on Billy Ray Irick, such as the “abuse” he suffered as a child. (If you’ve ever been spanked, the media will turn you into the star of Mommy Dearest.) We also get Hale’s description of Irick’s response to lethal injection: “He jolted … His face turned almost purple.”

Hey, does anybody know what landed Irick on death row? The Times says, “Irick raped and murdered a girl.”

A girl.

Her name was Paula Dyer, and she was 7 years old.

While babysitting Dyer, Irick raped her — anally and vaginally — then suffocated her, bursting blood vessels in her face and eyes. When the police arrived, she was lying on the living room floor with blood pooling between her legs. She was still alive, so we know she suffered.

Lead investigator Don Wiser told The Knoxville News Sentinel: “I saw her body at the hospital that night — just a beautiful little girl. You had to wonder who could do something like that to a 7-year-old child.”

Irick’s only explanation: “I lost it.”

I stand corrected. It’s totally a myth that death row is full of monsters.

Suggestion for the one-millionth and one reporter to write about his pals on death row: If you’re going to vomit out prose like this, please don’t —

“I heard far more about the grace of Jesus Christ growing up than I did the state’s duty to repay killing with killing. I suppose this is why, at some point in my teenage years, I came to the belief that an earth as it was in heaven would not include the execution of prisoners if it had any prisoners at all.”

But as long as Hale has graced us with that paragraph, we absolutely do not “repay killing with killing.” We repay unimaginably hideous murders with 30 years of free room and board, including time for exercising, reading, socializing, making friends, dating, getting married, having children and telling your life story to gullible reporters — all while your victims are in the ground being eaten by worms — and then, being delivered a quick and merciful death.

Hale says his book will reveal “the true horror of executions and the full beautiful and painful humanity of the condemned.”

How about the painful humanity of Lee Standifer and the horror of her execution? In 1981 — yes, that’s how swift and certain the death penalty is — this 23-year-old mentally disabled girl was on a date with David Earl Miller, whom she’d met at the library. He got her drunk, took her home and smashed her head with a fireplace poker so hard it fractured her skull and burst one of her eye sockets. He then dragged her outside, undressed her, tied her up and stabbed her over and over again in the neck, chest, stomach and mouth.

A brisk 37 years later, the “beautiful … humanity” who did that to Standifer finally got the electric chair.

Another piece of beautiful humanity, Donnie Johnson, refused his last meal, asking that instead his supporters “feed the homeless.” Gosh, what a great guy.

He’d killed his wife, Connie, by stuffing a 30-gallon garbage bag so far down her throat that only two inches protruded from her mouth. One of the officers who found her body told the Commercial Appeal that if the governor had “made the scene with us that night, he wouldn’t grant any clemency.”

But Hale is more interested in the last moments of the beautiful humanity. He bemoans Stephen West’s “violent death” in the electric chair. Violent death? A quick jolt of electricity is a full body massage compared to what West did to Wanda Romines and her 15-year-old daughter, Sheila.

After telling his pregnant wife he was going fishing, West and a teenage accomplice entered the Romines’ home, tied up mother and daughter and, for hours, forced them to watch each other being tortured and, in Sheila’s case, raped by both men. Wanda was stabbed more than 40 times. Worse, she had to watch helplessly as her daughter was raped and slowly stabbed to death.

What kind of moral ghoul could read about Wanda and Sheila’s murder and decide to write a book honoring West’s life?

Hale claims “support for executions, or indifference to them, could not survive a… night with the men facing them.” This isn’t clear to the reader because they don’t know what the Monday night thing references. Tell us the facts of the case first, and most people would pay to watch the executions on Netflix.

COPYRIGHT 2024 ANN COULTER

Andrea Widburg: If you believe that sociopaths are in charge, you’re right

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All that’s missing is a breakdown of the demographics of this poll. It’s often noted that Jews provide around 75% of the funding for the Democrats (and probably 40% for the GOP). And this is a group whose ethic is basically “what’s good for the Jews,” so cheating in order to advance what they see as Jewish interests would not raise ethical issues.

Andrea Widburg, in American Thinker

Anyone with a brain knows that there was epic cheating behind Biden’s “win” in 2020, ranging from official cheating (e.g., mail-in ballots, drop boxes, and ballot harvesting) to unofficiaHowdy, Kevin MacDonaldl cheating (e.g., delayed vote counts, faked ballots, and illegal registrations). Pollster Scott Rasmussen has discovered something very disturbing about all that cheating: While ordinary Americans want fair elections, the “elite”—that is, the rich, powerful, and connected—don’t. They want only to win.

According to the Issues and Insights editorial board:

Earlier this year, pollster Scott Rasmussen asked voters a simple question: “Would you rather have your candidate win by cheating or lose by playing fair?

The answers he got back were, as he put it in a Daily Signal podcast last week, “the most terrifying poll result I’ve ever seen.”

Among all Americans, just 7% said they would want their candidate to win by cheating. As Rasmussen put it, he’d rather see that number lower, but that’s not bad.

But more than a third of the elite 1% he surveyed would condone cheating. And among those who are “politically obsessed” – meaning that they talk about politics every day – that number shot up to 69%.

The same editorial notes that this 1% of “elites” is almost entirely Democrat. Credentialed people (i.e., college and university graduates) are more likely to be Democrats, as are the wealthy. These are the people who control the levers of power in society, so the fact that almost 70% of those who are most concerned with politics think cheating is a fine way to win is a terrifying thought.

And what do these powerful sociopaths intend to do with the power they attain through cheating? Nothing good:

  • Nearly 60% say there is too much individual freedom in America – double the rate of all Americans.
  • More than two-thirds (67%) favor rationing of energy and food to combat the threat of “climate change.”
  • Nearly three-quarters (70%) of the elites trust the government to “do the right thing most of the time.”
  • More than two-thirds (67%) say teachers and other educational professionals should decide what children are taught rather than letting parents decide.

…

Crowley & Wong: How and why the US gives billions of dollars of weapons to Israel every year

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This appeared in the mainstream media in Australia, The Sydney Morning Herald. 

You may have thought that U.S. aid to Israel was dependent on the proposed $14 billion aid for Israel proposed since the start of the Gaza war and held up in Congress, but not true. And Secretary of State Blinken has had  a major role in skirting U.S. requirements:

“At least three of the new Israeli orders have crossed the threshold required for congressional review – and Secretary of State Antony Blinken bypassed that twice. In December, Blinken invoked a rare emergency authority to avoid legislative review and push through two of those orders worth $US253 million in total, for tank ammunition and for artillery shells. The Pentagon then drew from US stockpiles to send those quickly to Israel.”

And:

“After Israel submitted its assurances last month [on compliance with international law], officials in the two State Department bureaus that focus on human rights and on refugees raised concerns with Blinken about Israel’s commitment, a US official said. But Blinken accepted Israel’s assurances.”

… At the time [2016], the agreement [to provide #3.8 billion/year in military aid] was uncontroversial. It was a period of relative calm for Israel, and few officials in Washington expressed concern about how the US arms might one day be used.

Now, that military aid package, which guarantees Israel $US3.3 billion a year ($5 billion) to buy weapons, along with an additional $US500 million annually for missile defence, has become a flashpoint for the Biden administration. A vocal minority of lawmakers in Congress backed by liberal activists are demanding that President Joe Biden restrict or even halt arms shipments to Israel because of its military campaign in the Gaza Strip.

Biden has been sharply critical of what he on one occasion called “indiscriminate bombing” in Israel’s war campaign, but he has resisted placing limits on US military aid.

The United States and Israel have had tight military relations for decades, stretching across multiple Democratic and Republican administrations. Israel has purchased much of its critical equipment from the United States, including fighter jets, helicopters, air defence missiles, and both unguided and guided bombs, which have been dropped in Gaza. Legislation mandates that the US government help Israel maintain force superiority – or its “qualitative military edge” – over other Middle Eastern nations.

“The problem with this American largesse is that it has bred a sense of entitlement among Israelis over the years.”

Martin Indyk, Obama administration special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations

The process of arms delivery to Israel is opaque, and the pipeline for weapons to the country is long. The United States has sent tens of thousands of weapons to the country since the October 7 killings by Hamas attackers, but many were approved by Congress and the State Department long ago and funded with money mandated by the Obama-era agreement, known as a memorandum of understanding.

“At any given time, delivery on these sales is constantly taking place,” said Dana Stroul, who recently departed as the Pentagon’s top official for Middle East affairs.

Biden has the power to limit any foreign arms deliveries, even ones previously approved by Congress. Far from cutting off Israel, however, he is pushing a request he made shortly after the October 7 attacks for $US14 billion in additional arms aid to the country and US military operations in the Middle East. The money has been stalled in Congress amid disputes over Ukraine aid and US border security and faces growing Democratic concern.

Because of a legal loophole, the State Department does not have to tell Congress and the public about some new arms orders placed by Israel since October 7 since they fall below a certain dollar value. Congressional officials have criticised the secrecy, which stands in contrast to the Biden administration’s public fanfare around arms deliveries to Ukraine.

Since the Hamas attacks, State Department officials have continued to authorise arms shipments to Israel that are tranches of orders, or what officials call “cases”, approved earlier by the department and by Congress – often years ago, and often for delivery in batches over a long period. Officials describe this step as pro forma. The authorisations have occurred almost daily in recent weeks and are in line with Biden’s policy of giving full support to Israel.

Biden has hinted about a possible shift. In a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday, he warned that US policy could change if Israel did not take more action to protect civilians and aid workers in Gaza, according to a White House summary of the conversation.

Israel regularly receives arms from the US Defence Department, as well as directly from American weapons makers. The largest arms orders are often filled over years in smaller groups of specific items. For such cases, arms buyers such as Israel come to the US government saying they are ready to pay for part of an order.

When the Defence Department is supplying the arms – which includes the most expensive weapons systems – the State Department then tells the Pentagon to issue a letter of acceptance to the buyer. That authorisation is often a pro forma step, and a buyer signing it means there is now a legal contract to fill that part of the larger order.

The State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, which manages foreign defence relationships and arms transfers, typically acts within two days of hearing about a buyer’s fulfilment request to tell the Defence Department to issue the letter. If defence officials decide to fill the case by placing an order with a US weapons maker, the assembly and shipment would normally take years.

For Israel’s immediate needs since October 7, defence officials have drawn from US military stockpiles, including one in Israel.

Since October 7, Israel has placed new orders. The State Department only needs to notify Congress when a price tag is above a certain threshold. That amount varies by country and the type of military aid. If Israel orders a major weapons system, the department only tells Congress if the tranche is valued at more than $US25 million.

Congressional officials are pushing the State Department to give them more information on orders that fall below the price tag threshold.

At least three of the new Israeli orders have crossed the threshold required for congressional review – and Secretary of State Antony Blinken bypassed that twice. In December, Blinken invoked a rare emergency authority to avoid legislative review and push through two of those orders worth $US253 million in total, for tank ammunition and for artillery shells. The Pentagon then drew from US stockpiles to send those quickly to Israel.

The State Department told Congress in January about a third one – a $US18 billion order of F-15 jets that Israel placed after October 7. The department is seeking approval from four lawmakers on two congressional committees with oversight of arms transfers. Two Republicans approved the order in January, a US official said, and two Democrats apparently have not so far.

The Biden administration is pressuring the Democratic lawmakers to approve the order, after which the State Department would officially notify it. The order is one of the biggest from Israel in years. The first jets would not be delivered until 2029 at the earliest, one official said.

And Israeli officials are expected to place an order for F-35 jets soon, US officials said.

If the administration tried to ram an order past informal congressional review, lawmakers could seek to block that through a super-majority joint resolution during the formal notification period. But even if such a resolution passed in both chambers, the president could veto it.

…

Within the State Department, there has been some dissent about the arms transfers, reflected in three cables sent to Blinken last fall and in an internal exchange after a recent White House move.

Biden issued a national security memorandum in February requiring all recipients of US military aid to provide written promises that their forces abide by international law. The move was intended to defuse growing pressure in Congress.

Critics say the exercise adds little to existing US requirements that military aid recipients observe international and humanitarian law.

After Israel submitted its assurances last month, officials in the two State Department bureaus that focus on human rights and on refugees raised concerns with Blinken about Israel’s commitment, a US official said. But Blinken accepted Israel’s assurances.

Speaking in general terms, Matthew Miller, the State Department spokesperson, said last month that when it comes to Israel, US officials “have had ongoing assessments about their compliance with international humanitarian law”. …

A Serious Jew Considers the Rise in Post-Gaza Anti-Semitism

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A peek into the mindset of a hyperethnocentric Jew on the backlash against the Gaza war. No context on the war in Gaza—not a peep about the oppression of the Palestinians, the land grabbing, the blockade of Gaza and the overwhelming majority of Gaza war casualties being women and children, the aggression of the West Bank settlers, etc. But the usual flabby analyses of anti-Jewish attitudes—”not all Jews are rich,” presumably as an argument against the idea of disproportionate Jewish influence and its effect on the American European-derived population; and “not all Jews are White,” presumably as an argument that Jews are not particularly ethnocentric or that there is no basis for a genetic commonality among the vast majority of Jews, despite repeated population genetic studies showing otherwise, not to mention general Jewish racialism toward non-Jews. And of course, her obligation to propagandize about the six million (for a contrary Israeli view, see here). …

 

American Jews Should Become a Little More Israeli

Instead of playing defense, we should learn how to stand up for ourselves better

BY

DIANA FERSKO
This article is part of Hamas’ War on Israel.
See the full collection →︎

On Dec. 4, I attended a special session at the United Nations called “Hear Our Voices—Sexual and Gender-Based Violence in the Oct. 7 Attack.” …

At one point, the organizers showed a video. Immediately, instinctively, I looked down. Yes, I was there to hear testimony, but I wasn’t ready to see a video. I just couldn’t watch whatever it was going to be, so I lowered my head and covered my eyes. But at one point during the video, I glanced up, in front of me were two of my dear friends, both Israeli women. Rather than burying their heads as I had done, they were not only watching the video, they both had their phones out, recording the video—presumably so that others could watch as well.

That was one of the many moments since Oct. 7 when I realized that American Jews, myself included, have a long way to go in understanding what it is going to take to stand up for ourselves. I had tried to hide from the horror, but my Israeli friends knew better. They understood that to stand up for ourselves, we would have to go to horribly uncomfortable places. They understood more deeply and more quickly than Jewish Americans about the denialism, the traumatic invalidation, and the blatant antisemitism that was on its way to Jewish people around the globe.

I’m a rabbi. I’m the author of a book on antisemitism. I was raised in an active Jewish home. So, I thought I knew how to speak up for myself and for the Jewish people. But that moment at the U.N. taught me that even I didn’t know how to do those things well enough. It was one of many moments since Oct. 7 when I decided to really fight antisemitism in the United States, I needed to try to become a little bit Israeli. Maybe you should, too.

My Israelification began months before the U.N. session. Like many American Jews, on Oct. 8, I found myself emotionally paralyzed. I was frozen, in shock and disbelief. I could not believe that Hamas had penetrated the border. I could not believe that they had murdered over 1,200 civilians. I could not believe the barbarism or the kidnapping. I could not believe I was witnessing a pogrom. I couldn’t really move except to cry. I sat there, stunned, barely able to make a sound. But while I was processing, the Israelis in my community were acting. My phone filled with WhatsApp notifications. Ding: Someone’s nephew needed a Kevlar vest. Ding: Can you house a reservist on his way back to Israel? Ding: Does anyone have access to large quantities of boots? …

Not all Jews are rich, I tell people. I explain that about 20% of Jewish New Yorkers live below the poverty line. On the one hand I’m trying to show that the conspiracy theory about us is factually incorrect. But on the other, what if most Jews were rich? Would that mean that we actually were controlling the world? That the conspiracy theory of antisemitism was true?

Not all Jews are white, I tell people. I explain that about 70% of Jews in Israel certainly aren’t from European descent. On the one hand, I’m trying to explain to people that Jews have lived around the globe for centuries and that we are beautifully diverse. But on the other hand, what if we were all light-skinned? Would that make Jews guilty of racism or oppression? Would that “prove” the conspiracy theory? Or at least validate it?

And worst of all, we are genocide survivors, I tell people. I explain that 6 million Jews were murdered in living memory, including 1 million children. On the one hand, I’m trying to teach Jewish history. I am fighting for facts. A significant percentage of millennials believe that 2 million or 3 million Jews were murdered in the Shoah rather than 6 million. It’s my obligation to fight against these falsehoods. But on the other hand, am I also begging people not to hate us by reminding them we are victims?

Jewish Americans around the country are doing a similarly defensive dance: defending a war, defending a state, defending Zionism, defending Jewish existence in universities, on boards, in justice work, and in civil society. Defending the existence of Jews itself.

All this defense leads me to a core philosophical question: What would it look like if American Jews decided to play philosophical offense? The conspiracy theories of antisemitism aren’t true; rather they are a series of boundaryless lies. But we will also never be able to prove they are wholly false because they are not driven by rationale or reason. So, what if instead of defensively saying what we aren’t, we took a different approach and we chose to assertively say what we are?

It might look something like this: Jews are experts in civil disagreement—we have thousands of years of lived experience and documented evidence. …

Paul Joseph Watson on Scotland’s Hate Crime Law

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As predicted, Police Scotland was deluged with nearly 4,000 complaints in the first day alone after the passage of an absurd new hate crime law, proving the legislation is being weaponized by activists.

Under the new legislation, anyone deemed to have been verbally ‘abusive’, in person or online, to a transgender person, including “insulting” them could be hit with a prison sentence of up to seven years.

Transgender activists have been busy making lists of people they are waiting on to make such comments, including Harry Potter author JK Rowling herself.

Although it was announced yesterday by police that Rowling wouldn’t be investigated, the mere fact that she has been reported could create a ‘hate incident’ file on her that will remain in perpetuity.

“Calum Steele, the former general secretary of the Scottish Police Federation, said he understood that around 3,800 cases had been lodged over the previous 24 hours,” reports the Telegraph.

That figure is likely to now be almost doubled as deranged shitlibs feverishly report anything they deem offensive via an online form and a 101 non-emergency number.

Authorities are now being swamped with vexatious complaints exactly as the legislation’s critics predicted, with resources that would have been available to tackle real crime directed elsewhere to patrol speech.

Indeed, as we previously highlighted, Police Scotland admitted that the new law could create “additional demand”and create a “resource implication” for police.

This followed a trial of a separate program set to be implemented across the country to stop investigating crimes like theft and criminal damage, which authorities acknowledge will help criminals. … [Entire article is here.]

Does The New York Times Actually Care About Mass Shootings?

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Does The New York Times Actually Care About Mass Shootings?

Did you know there was a mass shooting in Indianapolis over the weekend? I briefly saw it on a news crawl, but didn’t hear another word about it, so, by Monday, I assumed I had dreamt it.

     Nope. There was a real mass shooting, sending seven kids aged 12 to 17 to the hospital, one in critical condition. The gunfire came from a group of juveniles gathered outside a shopping mall in downtown Indianapolis Saturday night.

The New York Times didn’t report the shooting, which I found odd, because the gunmen were almost certainly black, meaning it was the gun’s fault.

I say “almost certainly black” because kids as young as 12 were out on a downtown city street, unsupervised, at 11:36 p.m. the night before Easter; a Google search of “Indianapolis mugshots shootings” looks like Gemini’s artificial intelligence version of a “Founding Father”; and also — the Times didn’t mention it.

Luckily for the kids, police were on the scene in about 10 seconds. Twenty-five officers happened to be patrolling downtown on account of this being the third consecutive weekend in Indianapolis with a mass shooting.

The previous weekend’s gunplay left one man dead and five wounded; the earlier shooting also killed one and wounded five. The Times didn’t report those incidents either.

By contrast, last August, the Times was all over a shooting at a Jacksonville, Florida, dollar store. I’m not sure why …

Subhead: “Three people, all Black, were fatally shot in a dollar store before the gunman, a white man, killed himself.”

First sentence: “A white gunman shot and killed three Black people in a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, Fla., on Saturday afternoon. He then shot and killed himself.”

Indeed, the article mentioned “white” eight times, even throwing in an extraneous story of evil Whites from 63 years ago. (“Sunday was the 63rd anniversary of Ax Handle Saturday, when white supremacists severely beat a group of mostly Black civil rights activists.”)

A Times’ compilation of some of the mass shootings in 2022 listed 24 gunmen in 19 separate incidents. Of the 24 mass shooters, 17 were black, five were white (one nonbinary and one in a dress), one was Asian and one was Hispanic. The Times gave the race of only two of the perpetrators.

GUESS WHICH ONES. Yes, White and White. Is there any chance the Times’ list excluded any mass shootings with white gunmen?

I’m not even counting the shootings that any normal person would assume, unless informed otherwise, were perpetrated by Whites, such as one at a Walmart, one at the University of Virginia and one at “a community event and car show in the small Arkansas farming community.” C’mon, that last one has to be a white guy!

In fact, all three gunmen were Black. But the Times decided the race of the perpetrator wasn’t relevant in those cases.

What is the point of this deception? To allow clueless Times’ readers to keep telling themselves that most mass shooters are White men?

E.g.:

–The Chicago Tribune: “Why are mass shooters overwhelmingly white men?”

–Maria Shriver’s Sunday Paper: “Mass Shooters Are Almost Always White Men.”

— The Conversation: “[M]ass shooters tend to be young white men.”

Leave it to NBC News to dress up the lie with gratuitous insults:

— NBC: “‘White heterosexual male entitlement fuses with downward mobility, subordinated masculinity, and other disappointing life course events’ to lead mass shooters to carry out their attacks.”

Do liberals actually care about mass shootings or do they just hate White men?

The coddling of Black criminals in response to the BLM movement has been a blood-soaked disaster — and I’m not only talking about Hollywood movies being put out by the new DEI hires.

So far, the main accomplishment of #BLM has been to inspire a mind-boggling surge in Black violence, creating thousands more murdered Americans than before #BLM. Four thousand more, in 2020 alone, according to researchers.

Although Black people have traditionally committed about half of all murders in the United States, after the racial reckoning, their percentage of known murder offenders rose to an unprecedented 60%, according to FBI crime reports. (This statistic has since been wiped from the FBI’s website, but is still available in a number of academic papers.)

Arguably, liberals’ BLM hysteria isn’t really helping Black lives inasmuch as it’s getting so many additional Blacks killed.

Any Black person who is more worried about his child being killed by the police than another Black is an idiot. But I don’t believe any normal Black person does believe that. Joy Ann Reid probably believes it. Yamiche Alcindor believes it. And everyone who reads The New York Times believes it.

So the killings will go on. And so will the cover-up.

     COPYRIGHT 2024 ANN COULTER