Progressives Judge Past American Actions and Ignore Today’s Foreign Culture

Progressives in America have taken a liking to toppling statues of famous people who do not measure up to their views of purity. Statues of presidents like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson are viewed as insulting to Black people because they owned slaves 250 years ago. They condemn their legacy and view them as racists who should be banned from the public sphere. So shall they be unwritten; so shall they be undone.

It is curious that these same progressives have no issue judging people who lived hundreds of years ago but cannot make a passing comment to criticize countries with racist, homophobic, misogynistic and antisemitic behavior, particularly those from Brown and Black societies.

Consider Iran, a country which progressives insist should have a legal pathway to nuclear weapons. The Iranians hang gay people in the streets and execute minors. No worries. Former President Obama said they will probably come around in ten years and may even drop from the leading state sponsors of terrorism list, so his nuclear deal had a sunset while it left the country’s nuclear infrastructure intact.

Think of Ghana, home of the Khente cloth worn by the most powerful Democrats in Congress as they bent a knee in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. No, George Floyd wasn’t born in Ghana; he was American. But Ghana does imprison gay people for life. Seems like it’s a logical country to honor.

Leading Democrats don Ghana Khente cloth and bend a knee

Somalia, birthplace of Ilhan Omar (D-MN), has public executions for adultery, usually by stoning. Gays are killed by the al-Shabab terrorists who roam the land. Yet Omar has defended Somalia.

Omar gave a pass to Turkey, one of the largest jailers of journalists every year. She refused to acknowledge and condemn Turkey’s genocide of Armenians a century ago. Could it be because she wanted Turkey to provide aid to her old homeland of Somalia, as Turkey pushes its influence into the horn of Africa to confront Saudi Arabia?

Another member of the progressive wing of Congress, Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), has Palestinian parents and is proud of her heritage. Palestinian law excuses men who kill women who “shame” family honor. The Palestinians are also the most antisemitic people in the world, with 93% holding antisemitic views. They elected the terrorist group Hamas to 58% of parliament with an antisemitic charter which blends Hitler’s Main Kampf and the forgery Protocols of the Elders of Zion. They elected a president who wrote his doctoral thesis on Holocaust denial and demands a country free of Jews. The Palestinian Authority has a law which calls for the death sentence for any Arab who sells land to a Jew. Tlaib ignores it all (or agrees with such sentiments).

Mauritania is a 100% Muslim country governed by sharia law which still has slavery. The United Nations didn’t seem to care as it voted the country to the Human Rights Council. Yet progressives still believe that the opinions and rulings of the corrupt world body should carry weight.

Uzbekistan is considered among the worst countries in the world according to Freedom House and also has slavery today – as much as 4% of the population according to some counts. Obama awarded this tyrannical country the largest military donation ever to a country in central Asia.

The Clinton Foundation received millions of dollars from foreign entities, with more than 40 per cent of the large donors coming from outside the United States. Saudi Arabia gave Clinton $10 million, that same country that doesn’t allow a woman to leave home without permission of the male head of household or to drive and that publicly beheads adulterers (including women accused of rape) and those who convert from Islam, a right guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The country hit a new record of executions with 184 in 2019, many of them religious minorities.

The South American country with the worst human rights is Venezuela according to Freedom House. No matter. The champion of progressives, Sen. Bernie Sanders, was the only Democratic candidate for president who would not condemn the far left Maduro government‘s corruption and failed socialist economic policies.

Amid the COVID pandemic, Senator Elizabeth Warren along with other alt-lefters like Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Barbara Lee singled out Iran as a country to get aid to fight the pandemic. A few days earlier Warren asked for money to be sent to the Palestinian Authority. Eventually, U.S. territory Puerto Rico showed up on her radar worthy of care.

Progressives defend and support some of the worst regimes regarding slavery and human rights abuses but cannot fathom seeing a statue of the founding figures of the United States on a pedestal. To suggest that the underlying reason is because the statues are of White men and that the offending countries are headed by Black and Brown people would let your privilege show, so no one utters the obvious.

Considering that much of the world has a human rights record today that falls short of America 250 years ago is too woke for progressives. We are in the midst of a purge, and it is not of relics and racism but the position of the patriarchy.


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Israel and the US Collaborate on Emergency Response

When the United States was attacked by radical Islamic jihadists on 9/11/2001, the country was faced with the reality that it was unprepared for how the handle massive attacks on its shores. It turned to an ally who had developed systems to keep its citizens safe from harm.

Israel has long suffered from jihadist terrorists killing civilians.

Airplane Hijackings

In July 1968, Palestinian Arabs hijacked an El Al flight from Rome to Tel Aviv. It was the last time an Israeli airline was hijacked as the government began to institute several security measures to protect the flights.

Palestinian terrorists would continue to target airplanes including a massive operation in September 1970 in an attacked called the “Dawson’s Field Hijackings” in which members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) hijacked four planes heading to New York and one to London.

Other hijackings by Palestinian Arab terrorists included:

Airplane hijackings continued around the world with as many as dozens every year until Muslim terrorists hijacked four planes on September 11, 2001 in a coordinated attack which killed nearly 3,000 people. It was already the eighth airplane hijacking in the new decade, not two years old. The scale of the attack, casualties and damage made countries and airlines take many new precautions, adopting policies that Israel had been using for decades such as pre-flight interviews and screening luggage and passengers. The 2010’s decade had nine airplane hijackings, down from sixty in the 1970’s.

Response to Mass Casualty Attacks

The sheer scale of the attacks on civilians in the streets and office buildings of U.S. were beyond standard emergency protocols. America had waged wars abroad, but the scale of the terrorism against ordinary people going to work overwhelmed the local emergency response teams.

America turned to Israel for assistance, which had long been forced to respond to Palestinian Arab terrorists killing civilians in the streets.

In early September 2003, two years after the attacks on the United States, New York City hosted a major symposium on the medical response to mass casualty attacks. One of the speakers was Rabbi Dr. David Applebaum who flew to New York City from Jerusalem, Israel to address the audience. Dr. Applebaum was the head of Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center’s Department of Emergency Medicine and was often the first responder at the scene of terrorist attacks. He was well recognized for developing innovative methods for handling emergency situations and tracking patients, introducing time- and life-saving techniques.

Dr. Applebaum flew back to Jerusalem a few days before the end of the symposium for his daughter, Nava’s wedding. The night before the wedding, on September 9, he took his 20-year old daughter out for a late dinner and a father-daughter talk. A Palestinian Arab walked into Cafe Hillel where they sat and blew up the restaurant, killing Dr. Applebaum, his daughter and five other diners ranging in age from 22 to 52. The Palestinian political party and terrorist group Hamas claimed responsibility.

Rabbi Dr. David Applebaum and daughter Nava

Israel and the United States have been the victims of terrorism for decades and continue to come under attack. They will continue to fight the scourge of hatred together.


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BLM Does Not Celebrate Father’s Day

Father’s Day in the USA felt a bit different this year. Beyond the pandemic keeping family members at a distance, was the increased traction of the Black Lives Matter movement due to the recent killings of Black people by police.

One of the statements of the BLM agenda directly addresses the construct of family:

“We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.”

It’s quite a proposition: BLM believes that “Western” society “prescribe[s]” a “requirement” that a family contain two parents taking care of children. They advocate a wide community approach to child-rearing, to the extent that “mothers and parents” would welcome the community’s involvement.

First, the United States doesn’t impose any such requirement. The country has no ban on single mothers, sperm donors, gay parents adopting children, etc. There may be many Americans with a Judeo-Christian notion of a “nuclear family,” but it is not the government. One is left with either concluding that BLM is completely uninformed about US law or it is deliberately attacking Judeo-Christian values.

Second, it is curious that the platform highlights “mothers” but not fathers. Does BLM believe that fathers have no right or say in the upbringing of children? The platform is seemingly deliberately omitting fathers, which leads to a reading of the entirety of the clause above as a motion to get society to fill the gap left by Black men who are not part of a “nuclear family” unit.

Consider a review of the statistics:

Exhibit 1: Single Parent Households

Roughly 2/3rd of Black families are headed by a single parent. This rate is multiples of the levels found in Asian and White families (15% and 24%, respectively) and also above the 41% rate found in Hispanic families. One can therefore understand the desire of BLM to bring up this issue – Black families do not look like other families in America.

Exhibit 2: Fathers with Kids Outside of Marriage

While the information on Exhibit 1 does not specify whether the single parent household is headed by a man or woman, Exhibit 2 gives a bit more color: 76% of Black men have children outside of marriage, whether never being married or have a child with a women other than the current wife. That rate is more than twice the rate of White men.

It would appear that the notion of marriage/ monogamy is not part of many Black men’s orientation, and having children outside of the home is not culturally taboo. This is again seemingly the basis for the BLM platform about “disrupting” Western’s view of a nuclear family.

Exhibit 3: Age of Parents, by Race

Exhibit 3 gives a bit more color about the timing of having children. It would appear that many Black people have children at much younger ages than other races, except for Hispanics. It is therefore not surprising that many Black people have children outside of marriage if they’re having them so young.

Exhibit 4: Parent with High School Diploma

When considering that so many Black women have children when they’re in their teens, it’s surprising and impressive that so many still graduate high school. The 11% rate of heads of households without high school diplomas is barely higher than the 9% rate found among Asian heads of households who almost never have children in their teenage years.

Exhibit 5: Fertility Rates

By starting to have children at a younger age and not being restricted to marriage to have children, it is not surprising that Black people have a higher fertility rate than many other races. Asians have a fertility rate of only 1.5 and Whites at 1.7, while Blacks are closer to 1.9 children per woman. Only Hispanics have more children, but their rate of decline is dramatic (-26% over 8 years), indicating that they may soon have a lower fertility rate than Black women.

According to a recent study, the decline in fertility rates is a cultural, not economic one. The analysis concludes that “fertility declines are most strongly associated with factors that are race- or region-specific, not broadly class-specific, as different economic classes appear to have quite similar trends.

Exhibit 6: Job Security

Despite the good level of high school diplomas (Exhibit 4), Black heads of households still lead in poor job security. This is likely tied to being the sole income provider, living in relatively expensive areas with more kids on average. A second income would help cover items like rent, food and clothing. A second person would provide flexibility for someone taking a child to a doctor or visiting school. Overall, it affords the single parent flexibility to pursue other career choices without the need to be counted upon for basic life expenses and events.

Exhibit 7: Health Insurance

Despite the poor job security of the head of household, Black Children have the same rate of health insurance as Asian and White children.

Exhibit 8: Children in Poverty

All of these exhibits can be seen coming together in Exhibit 8. There are more Black children living in poverty because their mothers have poor job security as most of them are doing the work of raising children alone. Further, they begin having children at a very young age making it more difficult to save money to invest and buy a home.

This is undoubtedly not news to the drafters of the BLM manifesto but rather than ask for changes in behavior within the Black community, they attack the mother-father family concept advocated in Judeo-Christian society. Further, they call on everyone to step into the gap left by absent fathers to help raise their children.

There is no Father’s Day for BLM, just “Village” Day when everyone is celebrated.


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WHY The Progressive Assault on Israel

On February 10, 2019, New York Times opinion writer Bret Stephens posted an article about the dangers of the Democratic Party moving sharply to the left and adopting anti-Israel positions. He used considerable ink to refute the claims of progressives that Israel is an apartheid state and generally debunked the various arguments made against Israel.

But he never touched upon WHY progressives are suddenly so ready to condemn Israel when they weren’t a decade ago. Stephens mentioned the relatively new “intersectionality” concept in which the suffering of one group is the suffering and common cause of all groups, but he offered no reasons why Israel alone was the celebrated cause of the alt-left (for example, no group attacks Iran for hanging gays in the street, Turkey for occupying northern Cyprus, Switzerland for banning minarets at mosques or Belgium banning kosher and halal meat) and why these progressives feel so comfortable cozying up to anti-Semites like Louis Farrakhan.

WHY only Israel versus other countries in the world and WHY now as opposed to ten years ago?

Underdogma

Underdogma is the notion that the downtrodden are always the victims. Not only is the cause of the powerless always right, but their actions must always be excused. Black progressives can easily defend Louis Farrakhan because he is considered powerless; he is punching up in society on behalf of poorly performing Black people. Similarly, Palestinian Arabs who rape and kill 19-year old Jewish girls in Israel are not cast as terrorists, as the Palestinian Arabs are stateless.

This is a point made by Bret Stephens and Matti Friedman. Israel is viewed as the bigger and more powerful party if one views the situation very narrowly, namely the State of Israel with a strong military, against the Palestinian Arabs without either a state or army. The Arab-Israel Conflict has become a narrower Palestinian-Israeli Conflict for progressives. However, if one viewed the situation more broadly, it is easy to see a single Jewish State dwarfed by dozens of Muslim countries, an Israeli Jewish population outnumbered 100-to-1 by Muslims, and Israel standing alone at the United Nations where 30 countries still refuse to acknowledge the existence of the Jewish State.

The Jewish State is very small, but it looms large and powerful for progressives.

Proportionality

Part of the Israeli – and Jewish – problem for progressives is specifically about proportionality. It is not only that the Jewish State appears too big in their narrow focus, it is too powerful based on the raw number of Jews globally.

Progressives want positions of power to reflect the demographics of society. With a Jewish population of less than 15 million in a global population of 7.8 billion, why should a people with 0.2% of the population have any country at all? Perhaps if there were 500 countries instead of the less than 200, progressives might be more sympathetic. Instead, this slice of the global population presents like elites, with a thriving economy and powerful military. Worse, it has these attributes abutting people who are poor and without self determination.

The Jewish State doesn’t look like an oppressed minority success story for progressives. Israel looks like “the 0.1 percent” with a disproportionate share of land and resources.  Progressives attacking these (coincidentally) Jewish one-percenters is as natural as attacking the (also coincidentally) Jewish bankers and real estate owners.

Narrative of Emotions versus Facts

Adding fuel to the fire for progressives to attack the Jewish State is the evolving philosophy which has caught hold in the far left. Progressives have advanced the notion that emotions are not only real, they are perhaps more relevant than facts. Such approach allows them to shut down debate and discussion if they feel under attack from “microaggressions,” a term coined in the 1970’s which has infected college campuses and left-wing groups today.

The counter-factual Palestinian narrative now has a natural audience in the far left. Jewish history in the holy land can comfortably be erased such as the fact the Jerusalem has been majority Jewish since the 1860’s, with the charge that Jews are changing the Muslim “character” of the city using the ominous language of gentrification. Thousands of years of Jewish history evaporate as Jews are transformed into “colonialists” seeking to expel and subjugate the indigenous Arab population and continue to steal “Palestinian land.

Falsehoods do not matter. Fighting emotional perceptions with facts as Bret Stephens did is a debate using different bases. When progressives embrace non-factual emotions of feeling wronged, is the best method of countering it using facts, fact-based emotions or non-fact based emotions? Are Israelis forced to only talk about the pain of antisemitism and the Holocaust (fact-based emotions) or conjure up something new (what can really be worse than the Holocaust to dream up? That Palestinians harvest Jewish organs like the Arabs claim Jews do?)

Progressives demand no rebuttal, just a focus on the raw emotions of those in a disadvantaged state. The tacit conclusion is that to forge a peaceful coexistence, the outrageous lies should be ignored and/or considered as though they contain morsels of truth. Pretend that Arabs did not begin to arrive in the Jewish holy land in the Muslim invasion of the seventh and eighth centuries but are descendants of biblical Canaanites. Consider that the Palestinian Arabs did not try to destroy Israel in 1948 and 1967 but were arbitrarily expelled. Honor their counter-factual emotions. Do more than shut up as the stronger party, take steps to address their pain. To do less is cruelty.

The Masses Make History

One upon a time, history was written by the victor. In modern times it is re-written by the 99.8% with smartphones and social media accounts.

Jews have succumbed to raw power for thousands of years. Judaism was crushed by the power of the Catholic church which replaced the chosen people spiritually, and by the Moslems who replaced the Jews physically by taking over the Jewish holy land and building the Dome of the Rock atop their Jewish Temples. Both religions used the sword for execution and conversion, leaving Jews a paltry sum.

Today, Jews are falling to a new power: the stories, emotional narratives written by the masses. When feelings trump facts, billions of people will be drawn to compelling narratives such as a modern day David-versus-Goliath story and will love the irony of the Jew now being slayed as the Giant. Israelis are called Nazis without consideration of the deep antisemitism of the charge. Why pause to ponder, when it completes the chapter with a curious twist, and absolves the world from its role in the Jewish genocide as it shows that all people are just as evil when they obtain too much power.

Rip power from the elites, flatten society and distribute power equally is the logical conclusion say today’s socialists / Democratic Socialists. The stories secure alt-left converts with absolution, reward and righteous smugness. Empathy can be contagious: post it online and share it with friends. Take it to the streets. It doesn’t matter that the original whisperers came from Iran or Russia, when the emotions feel so real.

Why Progressives Attack Israel Today

In short, why now and why Israel:

  • It is laudable to attack the powerful. In the past, progressives wanted to empower the weak with programs like affirmative action. Now they want to pull down the powerful. It is no longer about making sure people do not live in poverty but to focus on the “gaps” in society including wealth and income. It is much easier to strip the elites than to build a long-term sustainable economy.
  • The alt-left believes Jews and the Jewish State are disproportionately powerful. Israel’s recent battles of 2008, 2012 and 2014 were with Gaza, a small impoverished strip of land, and not with the broader Arab world as in the early days of the state. Israel’s economy sailed through the global financial meltdown of 2008-9 and continues to have multi-billion dollar IPOs and sales of its flourishing technology and biotech industries. Progressives see elitists, not a minority success story.
  • Israel abandoned early socialism in favor of capitalism. Israel’s early days were scrappy and agrarian, working the land in collective kibbutzes. The left-wing Labor party dominated the political landscape for decades from its founding days. But the country pivoted to the right and the champion of privatizing the Israeli economy, Benjamin Netanyahu, has become the longest serving prime minister in Israeli history. For the alt-left, the right cannot be right: Israel’s success must have come from theft, corruption and abuse. The fact that Netanyahu is being charged with the same is too rich for the left to ignore.
  • Perception of White European Colonial Patriarchy. Israel has long had white Ashkenazi male leaders with the exception of Golda Meir in the 1970’s, so Netanyahu is not a new phenomenon. But the objection to his background in the middle of a Middle East with Arab leaders is suddenly more offensive to Americans who had a Black president for eight years. The fact that the majority of Israeli Jews are Brown and Black from Arab and African countries is ignored or not known. The face of Israel is portrayed as one of colonialism, white privilege and the patriarchy, all unforgivable sins to the newly woke.
  • Jewish liberals give them cover. Democrats once had champions for the Jewish State like Scoop Jackson, Patrick Moynihan and Joe Lieberman and a strong Israel advocacy group like AIPAC. Today, new alt-left wing Jewish groups like J Street and Jewish Voice for Peace loudly lobby for policies against the Jewish State and donate and back politicians with anti-Israel views. They supported the Iran deal, the declaration of Jewish homes east of the Green Line as illegal, boycotting Jewish Israeli businesses, and were upset with the US moving its embassy to Jerusalem. When Jewish groups which claim to be “pro-Israel” and “pro-peace” aggressively push the US and UN to take actions against the Jewish State, it becomes easy for all progressives to endorse anti-Zionist views without appearing antisemitic.

Among Progressives, the past dozen years has seen the Arab-Israel Conflict shrink into the Besieged and Impoverished Gaza Strip-Israeli Army Conflict. There is no longer an antisemitic Hamas or Palestinian terrorists, just poor Arabs seeking self-determination in the face of a powerful and rich alt-right foreign entity. It is a story recast to elicit empathy.

Israel’s supporters on the right may get excellent scores on Middle Eastern history but fail to connect with the masses who are craving a story of empathy. Tyrion Lannister summed it up in the finale of Game of Thrones: “What unites people? Armies? Gold? Flags? Stories. There’s nothing in the world more powerful than a good story. Nothing can stop it. No enemy can defeat it.” The alt-left gets it and has spun a tale which is being mainstreamed and going viral.

Israel is in a new war with progressives and it is clueless about how to confront it.

Sen. David Carlucci Clarifies Positions on Israel

In response to the First One Through article “Will a Reliable Pro Israel Congressional Seat Flip?” New York State Senator David Carlucci’s office reach out to clarify his positions on Israel.

  1. Carlucci co-sponsored New York’s anti-BDS bill. S2430 was introduced for the stated purpose of “prohibit[ing] New York State from contracting with corporations that are boycotting Israel.” The bill has passed the assembly and has not yet been delivered to Governor Cuomo for signature. This is of particular importance as the United Nations recently assembled a list of 112 companies doing business in Israeli territories which will become the basis for global boycott action.
  2. Opposes UN Security Council Resolution 2334. One of the last acts by the Obama Administration was to allow the United Nations Security Council to pass Resolution 2334 which declared Israel’s activities east of the 1949 Armistice Lines to be illegal. Carlucci said the resolution “is an obstacle peace and should be rescinded.
  3. Recognizes and Supports the 2004 Bush letter to Ariel Sharon. President George W Bush sent a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in April 2004 which specifically stated that final borders in a peace agreement would incorporate “existing major Israeli populations centers” and that in a two-state solution, “the settling of Palestinian refugees [would be] there, rather than in Israel.
  4. Redo UNRWA. Regarding the UN agency which handles Palestinian refugees, Carlucci said “UNRWA failed the Palestinians and the cause of peace.  A new strategy is required to address the humanitarian needs of Palestinians and securing a prosperous future. Meaningful and sustainable investments in Palestinian society and realistic goals for a reinvigorated peace process are essential to bringing stability and growth to the Middle East.
  5. Supports the Taylor Force Act. The Taylor Force Act was designed to condition financial support to the Palestinians on their ceasing to support terror against Americans and Israelis, including paying stipends through the Palestinian Authority Martyr’s Fund to individuals who commit acts of terrorism and to the families of deceased terrorists.
  6. Opposed the Iranian nuclear deal. Carlucci stated “I oppose re-entering the Iran Nuclear Deal of 2015 for many reasons, including  most concerning is that it did not stop Iran’s path to nuclear weapons, it did not address Iran’s sponsorship of terrorism, it lacked inspections at military sites, it allowed Iran to continue its research into what could lead to the development of weapons of mass destruction, and it did not prohibit development of ballistic missiles.  Now that we have been removed from the Iran deal, we must restart negotiations as soon as possible with the goal being that Iran never get control of nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction.  These new negotiations must have these parameters in place to guide a productive resolution.

Sen. Carlucci also added that he supports “a secure Israel to protect our ally and Israeli lives” and will vote to supply Israel with the funding needed to defend itself against nations that want to do it harm. 

Significantly, he wants to ensure that Israel is not politicized and that both parties should be involved in the comprehensive work to support a two-state solution. 

New York State Senator David Carlucci


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CNN Changes Its Black Transgender Story to Target Police

On June 15, 2020, CNN published an article “Thousands show up for black trans people in nationwide protests” which picked up a theme of the Black Lives Matter movement protesting police brutality. It referenced a “Black Trans Lives Matter rally in New York,” which “took place amid global demonstrations in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, which has surged in the wake of George Floyd’s death.” It also wrote about a protest in Los Angeles regarding the killing of “Tony McDade, a black transgender man who was shot by a Tallahassee police officer last week” and one in Chicago which held a “Drag March for Change this weekend. They demanded justice for victims of police brutality.

CNN crafted its 2020 story to fit the backdrop of BLM and effectively paint the police as not only racist, but as people who discriminate against the transgender community as well.

Picture from CNN website with sub-header “Thousands rallied outside Brooklyn Museum in New York to support trans rights on Sunday, June 14, 2020.”

This was in sharp contrast to the story CNN published about transgender deaths on November 18, 2019.

That story never mentioned the police. It wrote that “Half of transgender and gender non-conforming people killed since 2013 have been killed by an acquaintance, friend, family member or intimate partner, according to the Human Rights Campaign.” This is a critical fact that was completely omitted from the 2020 story which sought to frame the police for the murder of Black transgender people.

What was also left out of the story is that most transgender people are attacked by Blacks according to statistics by the FBI.

Chart 1: FBI Hate Crimes Against Transgender People, by Race

         5.71x
White Black W/B Ratio Black Likelihood
2013 8 18          0.44        12.85
2014 37 36          1.03          5.55
2015 34 38          0.89          6.38
2016 30 57          0.53        10.85
2017 41 43          0.95          5.99
2018 57 76          0.75          7.61

Since the FBI began tracking information about hate crimes against transgender people in 2013, Black people have been greater offenders in every year except for one, 2014. In considering that there are 5.7 times as many Whites as Blacks in the United States, the Black community is much more disproportionately likely to attack a transgender person, by as much as 5 to 12 times.

That statistic is left out by CNN, even when it breaks down statistics by likelihood (events per X people) comparing the United States to other countries and the use of police force against both Blacks and Whites.

CNN rewrote the latest story of attacks on Black transgender people to feed the anti-police narrative of the moment, even though most of those attacks are from the Black community, including from friends and family members, not the police. It is a form of incitement and junkyard journalism that gives protesters fuel and a false sense of moral superiority. #MainstreamMediaIsFullofCrap


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Anti-Semitism Is Harder to Recognize Than Racism

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End the Civil War Before It Starts: Vote Engel and Schleifer

The tension in U.S. politics has grown progressively worse over the past few years. The center began to crumble several years ago when centrist Democrats felt like there was no room for them in a party lurching leftward (goodbye Evan Bayh (IN) and Joe Lieberman (CT)) and the moderate wing of the Republican party took a whipping with John McCain’s failed run for president in 2008. By 2016, outsiders began to take over each party, when Bernie Sanders (VT), an Independent on the far left extreme had a real shot at being the Democrat’s nominee, and a political novice who spent virtually his entire life as a Democrat named Donald Trump ran through the establishment Republican candidates.

The far left-wing of the Democratic Party was livid with the way Sanders was treated by the party establishment and even more that Trump became president. They organized themselves as “Justice Democrats” and pushed to elect socialists into congress and to rewrite the Democratic platform. They had success in 2018 with the election of a few of their favorites including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (nicknamed “AOC”) and three other women including Rashida Tlaib (MI), Ilhan Omar (MN) and Alyssa Pressley (MA), a group which became known as “The Squad”. These individuals would normally have only been found running on the Working Family’s Party or the Green Party with no shot at winning a seat in a system dominated by two-parties. But they have pushed their way in and are transforming the Democratic Party in a very toxic way, much the way Trump has in the Republican party.

The Justice Democrats are targeting additional seats long held by centrist Democrats in 2020. Two are in lower New York State, including Eliot Engel (NY-16) and the seat vacated by retiring Nita Lowey (NY-17). Their candidates are every bit as extremist as the Squad but with more up-to-date woke initiatives, and will push jobs and people out of the region and add fuel to the budding civil war in the United States.

Adam Schleifer versus Mondaire Jones

There are eight Democrats running for Nita Lowey’s seat, and Jones is currently in the lead according to polls. His vision for America is more radical than AOC, Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, all of whom endorsed him. His goal is best described as give everything away for free and let corporations and the rich pay for it. The fact that the numbers don’t add is irrelevant.

Behind Jones in the polls is Evelyn Farkas and Adam Schleifer. Voting for Farkas is equivalent to voting for former Secretary of State John Kerry (who endorsed her). She is well versed in foreign affairs but that doesn’t mean she has good ideas or capabilities to effectuate good US policies. Adam Schleifer is tied with her for second. He is so mainstream that the New York Times refused to mention his name even while profiling the other seven candidates.

New York Times endorsement of all alt-left candidates, refuses to even mention Adam Schleifer’s name

If you want to avoid being represented by an even worse-AOC or a John Kerry-clone, vote for Schleifer.

Eliot Engel versus Jamaal Bowman

Like Jones, Jamal Bowman is endorsed by the alt-left fringe. His pedigree as a middle school principal makes him as qualified for congress as Trump was for the presidency.

His platform includes:

  • Defunding the police
  • Abolishing the immigration department
  • Quick release bail reform
  • Medicare-for-all
  • Cancelling student debt
  • Free college
  • A full green new deal
  • Pouring additional tens of billions of dollars into the failed public school system rather than restructuring it completely the way he has proposed for the police
  • Expanding labor unions
  • Taxing the rich
  • Making tax payers spend $638 billion to bail out under-funded luxurious union pension funds
  • Paying people to have babies
  • Pushing programs to get the poor to own homes (like the initiatives that created the housing and market collapse in 2008).
  • Using financial pressure on Israel to end the “occupation of the Palestinian people
  • Re-entering the Iranian nuclear deal which gave the leading state sponsor of terrorism a legal pathway to nuclear weapons.

In the same breath as stating support for Iran’s nuclear weapons aspirations, he wrote that the US must “stand up to this far-right authoritarian movement that’s taking place across the world, not cozy up to them, whether that’s in Saudi Arabia, Hungary, Brazil, India, Israel.” Not Iran. Not North Korea. Not China or Venezuela. Israel.

New York voters have a chance to turn the tide against the growing cleft in America by rejecting the extremists running for office and push aggressively to get the vote out for Adam Schleifer (NY-17) and Eliot Engel (NY-16). Primary is June 23.

Adam Schleifer running for Congress


Related First One Through articles:

Please Don’t Vote for a Democratic Socialist

Bernie Sanders’ Antisemitic and Anti-Zionist Friends

Adam Schleifer Shares His Positions on Israel

The Left Wing’s Accelerating Assault on the Holocaust

As Ilhan Omar Clearly Demonstrates, Not Every “First” is Jackie Robinson

Naked Democracy

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Americans Welcome the Philosophy of ISIS

Just five years ago, the world watched in horror as Islamic fanatics went on a rampage through Iraq destroying artifacts. Headlines read “History in Ruins” and “Casualties of War” as the whole world cringed as physical history was obliterated.

Jim Cuno of the J Paul Getty Trust said of the vandalized artifacts: “it roots us in our origins. It understands that we are part of a much larger picture; a picture that is as diverse as the world itself.” Gayle King of CBS News added that “it is hard to watch the glee that goes into destroying something.

The militants felt justified in their vandalism, saying on camera: “these statues are idols to people in previous centuries which were worshiped other than God. God Almighty says ‘And we sent a messenger to you, just to reveal no God but I. Worship Me.’ The Prophet ordered us to get rid of statues and relics. His companions did the same when they conquered countries after him.

Members of ISIS destroy statues in Iraq in 2015

Bernard Haykel of Princeton University said “it is a gratuitous and barbaric act frankly, but one that is intended to appeal to an audience looking for some sort of authenticity.” PBS News noted that “the act [of destruction] fits into a broader campaign by the Islamic State to brazenly and publicly destroy cultural relics in the name of religious purity.

And so it seems today with a new religion with a single truth which demands complete purity. #BlackLivesMatter #WhitePrivilege #DontSayAnythingCounterToWokeNarrative

While there is a rationale and appeal to common decency to remove statues on US soil of people who fought against these United States such as generals of the Confederacy who were famous specifically for such acts, it is preposterous to attack statues of America’s founders like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison because they were not perfect. To read the Declaration of Independence or the Federalist Papers is to be a witness to the crafting of not only a new country but an entirely new construction of government: the break with monarchy and authoritarian rule to set a course for a government by the people for the people. The founders mission was liberty from tyranny and oppressive government.

Neither those documents nor the people who wrote them were perfect, and no one has ever claimed as much. To make a statue of perfection is indeed to craft an idol, the very objection of ISIS and other religious purists.

America names schools and has busts of leaders because of their positive contribution to the society we live in. We celebrate the achievements of the people who helped create and protect our great nation with their likeness which reminds us of the events that “root us in our origins… that we are part of a much larger picture,” as Cuno said of artifacts in Iraq.

Today’s woke movement answers to a higher authority. Like ISIS, it wraps itself in righteous smugness while it destroys anything viewed as impure, be it statues of the dead or reputations and livelihood of the living. It has no patience for a common past as it launches a crusade “intended to appeal to an audience looking for some sort of authenticity.”

Defenders of the rioters claim there is no common past in America and that “systemic racism” built into the founding of the country manufactured disparate societies. A constitution that advocated for free speech while ignoring enslaved people was never a template for justice. They seek a fresh start, a revolution of sorts, where diversity of people will trump diversity of opinion. Their New America will shatter Old America’s imperfect idols and enforce the Gospel of Wokeness. Liberty for all people will require a new form of tyranny: a Crusade to either destroy or convert non-believers.

Statue of Thomas Jefferson is removed from its base in front of Jefferson High School in Northeast Portland on June 14, 2020. Jamie Goldberg/Staff

UNESCO called the wanton destruction of cultural relics by ISIS in Iraq “a war crime” but it is highly doubtful it will do the same regarding the anarchists destroying statues of America’s founders. More importantly, is whether Americans themselves will let the philosophy of ISIS permeate its streets enabling the caliphate of cancel culture to raise its flag over every government building in the land.


Related First One Through articles:

The End of Together

The Monumental Gap between Nikki Haley and Donald Trump

BLM: Truth, Relevance and Association

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Hamas Charter, Articles 29 and 30

Articles 29 and 30 of the Hamas Charter are calls for the Islamic world to rally behind Hamas in any manner that they can.

E. Nationalist and Religious Groupings, Institutions, Intellectuals, The Arab and Islamic World:

The Islamic Resistance Movement hopes that all these groupings will side with it in all spheres, would support it, adopt its stand and solidify its activities and moves, work towards rallying support for it so that the Islamic people will be a base and a stay for it, supplying it with strategic depth an all human material and informative spheres, in time and in place. This should be done through the convening of solidarity conferences, the issuing of explanatory bulletins, favourable articles and booklets, enlightening the masses regarding the Palestinian issue, clarifying what confronts it and the conspiracies woven around it. They should mobilize the Islamic nations, ideologically, educationally and culturally, so that these peoples would be equipped to perform their role in the decisive battle of liberation, just as they did when they vanquished the Crusaders and the Tatars and saved human civilization. Indeed, that is not difficult for Allah.

“Allah hath written, Verily I will prevail, and my apostles: for Allah is strong and mighty.” (The Dispute – verse 21).

Article Thirty:

Writers, intellectuals, media people, orators, educaters and teachers, and all the various sectors in the Arab and Islamic world – all of them are called upon to perform their role, and to fulfill their duty, because of the ferocity of the Zionist offensive and the Zionist influence in many countries exercised through financial and media control, as well as the consequences that all this lead to in the greater part of the world.

Jihad is not confined to the carrying of arms and the confrontation of the enemy. The effective word, the good article, the useful book, support and solidarity – together with the presence of sincere purpose for the hoisting of Allah’s banner higher and higher – all these are elements of the Jihad for Allah’s sake.

Whosoever mobilises a fighter for the sake of Allah is himself a fighter. Whosoever supports the relatives of a fighter, he himself is a fighter.” (related by al-Bukhari, Moslem, Abu-Dawood and al-Tarmadhi).


Hamas called for a “jihad” to combat “the ferocity of the Zionist offensive and the Zionist influence in many countries exercised through financial and media control” and sought to enlist “writers, intellectuals, media people, orators, educaters and teachers from “the Arab and Islamic world.Amazingly, the non-Muslim alt-left has joined that Islamist call for jihad as well.

Progressives on college campuses, the liberal media and members of Congress have attended “solidarity conferences, the issuing of explanatory bulletins, favourable articles and booklets, enlightening the masses regarding the Palestinian issueassuming tasks Hamas only imagined Islamic extremists like them would take, contributing their efforts “in the decisive battle of liberation, just as they [Muslim warriors] did when they vanquished the Crusaders and the Tatars and saved human civilization,” for the “sincere purpose for the hoisting of Allah’s banner higher and higher” over Palestine.

“Whosoever mobilises a fighter for the sake of Allah is himself a fighter [for the Islamic cause].” Participants in attacks on the legitimacy of Israel are pawns of Hamas.

Hatem Bazian was a professor at UC Berkeley  for years is a leader in the BDS Movement who has called for an intifada in America


Related First One Through articles:

Mahmoud Abbas’s Particular Anti-Zionist Holocaust Denial

The Holocaust and the Nakba

The Palestinians aren’t “Resorting to Violence”; They are Murdering and Waging War

Extreme and Mainstream. Germany 1933; West Bank & Gaza Today

Pick Your Jihad; Choose Your Infidel

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Genes Versus Leadership in the Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has received a lot of ink. Much of the writings from the liberal press has had virtually nothing to do with science and much to do with promoting a liberal narrative.

The New York Times pushed forward the idea that radical right-wing men were the worst kind of leaders in a pandemic in a June 2, 2020 article called “Where the Virus is Growing the Most: Countries with ‘Illiberal Populist’ Leaders.” It must have gotten rave reviews because Nicholas Kristof decided to write a similar piece in an Op-Ed story on June 14 called “Nations May Be Safer Under Women.

These stories are utter nonsense as described in “Where the Virus is Killing the Most: Countries with Socialist Leaders,” which uses actual statistics to show the exact opposite of what the Times conveys. This was not #AlternativeFacts; it was the essence of #FakeNews.

The news today has a set narrative that aggressively seeks an anchor in current events. If the facts don’t fit, the editors will reframe them somehow. Would the Times ever write that the worst hit country in the world by the pandemic is headed by a liberal woman? Never! (For those playing at home, it’s Sophie Wilmès of Belgium).

And it’s beyond a shame; it’s a crime. People are dying all around the world and the Times is playing politics rather than educating its readers and possibly helping point to a cure by looking at figures honestly.

Genes Versus Leadership in the Pandemic

During this election year, the mainstream media is pushing the notion that right-wing autocratic men like Donald Trump literally kill people, while progressive women save people. It’s a narrative tailored to November.

A more honest appraisal of why people are dying from COVID-19 has seemingly little to do with government leadership as much as circumstances. Age, season and genes are statistically the leading indicators of mortality.

AGE: According Worldometers, only 4.5% of all deaths in NYC occurred in patients under 65 years old who did not have underlying health conditions, even while almost 86% of the population is under 65. There is a direct correlation between advanced years and probability of dying from COVID-19.

SEASON: The northern hemisphere was rocked by the coronavirus. Countries like Belgium, the United States, Spain, Italy, Sweden and France were all hit hard. Meanwhile, countries in the Southern hemisphere were barely touched through May. That may be changing together with the seasons with winter coming to South America, Africa, Australia and New Zealand.

GENES: The liberal media has written about the higher mortality rate of Black people in the United States and has both implied and stated outright that it is because of systemic racism. But an examination of Jews and Arabs in the Middle East may point to a very different reason: genes or cultural habits.

The death rate in Israel is roughly 33 people per million as of this writing. Meanwhile, the mortality rate for Arabs in the West Bank and Gaza is only 0.6 per million and in Jordan it is 0.9 per million. A deeper examination into the numbers in Israel by the Taub Center in Israel, shows that Arab infections were less than half of Jewish infections inside of Israel.

Israeli Arabs, Palestinian Arabs and Jordanian Arabs are from a very similar gene pool and live next door to each other but each live in very different circumstances in regards to leadership, yet had roughly the same mortality rate. Meanwhile Israeli Jews living nearby died at a rate roughly 50 times as high. This suggests that either genes or cultural habits account for the dramatic differences in death rates, not whether the leader is male or female (the way that Kristof posits) or a monarch, autocrat or Democratically-elected (unless the liberal media wants to reframe its entire narrative about the besieged poor Gazans).

Seem too far fetched? Tests are beginning to show that people with Type A blood are more likely to be infected by COVID-19 and those with type O blood, much less.


People are dying in a pandemic and the New York Times is feeding its readership complete fabrications in order to secure a Democratic victory. It’s both sad that liberals have such little faith in their party leaders that they need to manufacture tales, and that they use a global tragedy for political ends.


Related First One Through articles:

The CoronavirUS is Not Us Versus Them

“The Death of George Floyd” Opera and The Humanity of Derek Chauvin

Toronto Star Sanitizes Hamas During Pandemic

Liberal Senators Look to Funnel Money into Gaza

The U.N. Doesn’t Care About Middle-Aged White Male Victims of Covid-19

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