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Republicans: Israel Not Just First, But Before the First Amendment

No matter how bad either side gets the other side can only try to outdo them. The Post:

On Wednesday, they passed the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which its advocates said would empower the federal government to crack down on anti-Israel protests on campuses by codifying a definition of antisemitism that encompasses not just threats against Jews, but also certain criticisms of Israel itself.

If it does become law, the federal definition of antisemitism, adopted from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, would include such speech as “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor”; “applying double standards” to Israel that are “not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation”; and “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”

The idea is that student-held signs, for example, like those displayed at Columbia University in New York this week, calling for “revolution” or “intifada” — which means “uprising” — would amount to antisemitism under the law. The Education Department, in turn, could then revoke federal research grants and other funding to a university that fails to take punitive action toward students who express such views, the bill’s proponents say.

Military Aviation Joins the Emerging Competency Crisis in the West

helcrash24

Trend-lines on military aviation accidents are edging upwards to rival in the commercial aviation industry in mishaps. Not only is this a barometer for readiness and training but an indicator for the emerging competency crisis plaguing the West. Peacetime military aviation is dangerous.

As of 9 April 2024, the Marine Corps sustained a sharp increase in Class A mishaps for the first and second quarters of 2024 with a rate of 4.31 per 100,000 flight hours, compared to a 10-year average of 2.24.

There is a pretty good article that gives a fair overview of this brewing crisis here.

Let’s examine the Army: here’s what is alarming, we are a little over half way in this fiscal year (FY) and the accident rate for FY24 is edging toward three times the previous year and that trend will go up more as the year progresses. Class A involves a fatality and Class B and C includes injury but not fatality. This is the Army and doesn’t includes troubling upticks in aviation accidents in the other services.

Flightfax, the online newsletter of the Army Aviation Accident Prevention program, covers the ongoing accidents and mishaps of Army rotary wing aircraft (rare instances of fixed wing but the majority of Army aviation is rotary wing thanks to the Key West Agreement in 1948).

It appears, this crisis will simply deepen.

Classification of mishaps:

screenshot 2024 05 01 at 05 53 55 mishap classification chart 20200324.pdf

Here’s a snapshot of of comparisons between 2023 and 2024 for incidents per 100k flight hours:

screenshot 2024 05 01 at 05 49 59 ff130 april 2024.pdf

Here’s a snapshot of one month from the April 2024 edition:

screenshot 2024 05 01 at 05 44 49 ff130 april 2024.pdf

My Latest Interviews

Michael Liebowitz, the host of The Rational Egoist, interviewed me about my life in the libertarian movement. Enjoy!

Also have a look at my interview covering my libertarian experience and the Israel-Palestine conflict on the Bob Murphy Show.

Pentagon Follies: Accounting for DEI Expenditures

pentawaste

Inclusion, Equity and Diversity (IED) is communism in blackface. This viral contagion has raced to the top of government bureaucracies and, of course, facilitates a race to the bottom in quality and competence.

The wizards at the Pentagon who have yet to account for and balance their books with trillions of taxpayer dollars can’t answer a simple Congressional inquiry on how much they have wasted on woke propaganda. Yet someone had to account for distribution of the dollars in the first place, I suspect even they are embarrassed by the amount of money that has been spent on this hot garbage.

“The Biden DOD spends over a hundred million dollars a year on DEI, but apparently they don’t have enough DEI staff to provide the House Armed Services Committee with a simple report about how they’re using all their money. It’s ridiculous,” Banks told the DCNF.

The military calculated the total cost in dollars and number of hours spent on the extremism stand down on Feb. 5, 2021 required after the Jan. 6 capitol riots and on training — $1 million and 5.8 million man-hours. Noting that, Congress asked the military to supply the total cost of training in DEI, the amount spent on salaries for civilian personnel working on DEI positions, and “how the objectives of the DEI and extremism training conducted in the last 5 fiscal years were satisfied by the training.

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