(JTA) — President Donald Trump has selected a new special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, elevating a Miami businessman and fundraiser named Yehuda Kaploun to the role.
Kaploun is affiliated with Chabad, the Orthodox movement, and was a fundraiser and surrogate for Trump during last year’s campaign. He appeared with Trump at a ceremony in Florida to mark the one year anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
The role, which requires Senate confirmation and was elevated in recent years to the ambassador level, is the United States’ top position related to fighting antisemitism and has responsibility primarily for what happens overseas. Kaploun, who initially got connected to Trump through Miriam and Sheldon Adelson, the Jewish Republican megadonors, offered a clear sense in the Mishpacha interview of where he believes the greatest threat to Jews lies.
He presented a grim view of antisemitism in the United States. “Our situation is similar to that of Jews in 1930s Germany, on the eve of Kristallnacht,” he said. “They, too, lived in peace and quiet until the ground shook under their feet. And in the United States, the ground is already shaking.”
Kaploun must be asked if he is a Jewish Supremacist during his confirmation hearing. He should also be required to completely and unambiguously disavow Jewish Supremacism wherever it occurs. Basic common sense demands at least this much from our representatives in the Senate. News and media figures should also follow this line of questioning when they speak with Kaploun. ABN
Beijing’s best and brightest are pushing for a radical plan involving Australia – and it should make us all very nervous.
Is Australia the next Taiwan? The next Spratly Islands? The next Himalayan Ladakh?
Some of China’s up-and-coming Communist Youth are asserting the land Down Under is rightfully theirs.
Jamestown Foundation open source intelligence analyst Shijie Wang has stumbled across an online discussion among Beijing’s best and brightest young minds.
The posts, isolated from the rest of the world behind the Chinese Communist Party’s “Great Internet Firewall”, advocate the “annexation” of Australia based on similar arguments to those being applied against the Himalayas, the East and South China Seas, the Senkaku and Spratly Islands and Taiwan.
Along the way, the task group provoked controversy by conducting live-fire gunnery exercises beneath a busy Australia-New Zealand air traffic corridor.
KOBK, the game of apex power. The world has ever been thus. Be realistic. Understand the left is worse than the right. The left wants your mind—EU, communism, many Dems in USA. The right is milder, freer and better—Singapore, Japan, Russia, not enough GOPs or Independents in USA. ABN
When Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent took the podium at the American Bankers Association on Wednesday morning he was anything but ‘yippy’ – the president’s term to describe the handwringing of Republicans and financiers who were sounding the alarm on his tariffs.
Early on, Trump branded them as ‘Panicans,’ a ‘new party based on weak and stupid people,’ but Bessent struck a unique messaging balance that both reassured stock traders and his boss.
Bessent reassured the room of bankers that, thanks to the president’s tariff threats, 75 countries were willing to negotiate with him, and that 15 of those nations had already proposed a deal.
‘The president already had good calls with the Japanese prime minster, and the leaders of South Korea, and Vietnam,’ Bessent revealed, and he was working quickly to settle monumental trade deals.
‘I’m not planning on going anywhere for Easter,’ he grinned, revealing that he would have a ‘lead negotiating role’ in the effort.
Bessent’s tone was relaxed, but made it very clear that he was backing the president’s agenda.
To the world, he urged countries to come to the table with a deal, noting that America was listening.
‘If you don’t retaliate, that is a ceiling,’ he said, urging them not to start ‘cutting their own throat’ by aligning economically with China.
The tariffs are a KOBK game theory move par excellance—Kill-Or-Be-Killed. ‘Don’t cut your own throat by retaliating’, Bessent said, voicing an actual threat.
If you retaliate as China has done you will be ‘killed’, meaning neutered, your power taken from you, subordinated to USA. If you cooperate and are reasonable we will all prosper and all will be well.
USA has the military, and more importantly, economic power to make this very strong KOBK move against the entire world. China has been an ungrateful parasite against USA and most of the rest of the world. It’s a communist-Chinese cultural flaw; selfish zero-sum thinking from dawn to dusk.
If China continues its KOBK line of retaliation, they may start a war with Taiwan or raise threat levels high enough to greatly disturb Taiwan while distracting their own people. They could also make moves against South Korea or Japan, not to mention USA.
Bessent is the perfect person to lead this largest and strongest KOBK move in world history. It’s a beautiful move, extremely well executed. Rather than bitch and moan, understand that Trump is doing what is best for USA and for the world. Using Bessent to deliver the message is perfect, as his tone is gentle but certain and it is hard not to like or trust him. He speaks softly but is carrying an enormous club. ABN
The Department of Education Is Referring the Case to the Department of Justice; Initiating Federal Funding Termination Proceeding
April 11, 2025
Today, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) referred its Title IX investigation into the Maine Department of Education (MDOE) to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) for further enforcement action. Simultaneously, ED will initiate an administrative proceeding to adjudicate termination of MDOE’s federal K-12 education funding, including formula and discretionary grants.
These actions are a direct result of MDOE’s continued refusal to comply with Title IX. ED issued a noncompliance finding on March 19, and sent a final warning letter to the state on March 31.
“The Department has given Maine every opportunity to come into compliance with Title IX, but the state’s leaders have stubbornly refused to do so, choosing instead to prioritize an extremist ideological agenda over their students’ safety, privacy, and dignity,” said Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor. “The Maine Department of Education will now have to defend its discriminatory practices before a Department administrative law judge and in a federal court against the Justice Department. Governor Mills would have done well to adhere to the wisdom embedded in the old idiom—be careful what you wish for. Now she will see the Trump Administration in court.”
The Trump administration has ordered immigration agents to verify whether migrants have submitted their names and personal information to an online registry as part of an expansion of the president’s mass deportation effort.
If migrants fail to register or don’t carry proof of their registration with them, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are being told to “treat the alien’s case as an immigration enforcement priority” and to “refer the case to the US Department of Justice for criminal prosecution,” according to the memo.
An ICE source said they believe many illegal migrants won’t register, becoming prime targets for arrest and deportation.
I would take this seriously. CCP has played a zero-sum, parasitic trade game with USA for well over two decades. Trump is calling their bluff. CCP is thus pushed (in their own minds and by their own negative momentum) into Kill-Or-Be-Killed strategic territory. CCP leadership cannot survive domestic economic meltdown unless it takes the world down with it or creates a major light show to distract its people. It does appear that Trump’s tariffs have been designed to confront CCP, among others. The leaders of CCP and USA (and Russia) are trapped in KOBK options. ABN
Much discussion between races has been on the black and white, but it’s much more nuanced, and thus perhaps more intriguing, to analyze the achievement gap between the west and the east.
Richard Lynn and J. Philippe Rushton have produced credible and data-backed articles that show how East Asians fare better in a host of traits, primarily intelligence. However, during one recorded session with J. Philippe Rushton, he seemed to be not able to answer the question about how eastern societies had not been able to develop to the extent the Western ones had. This popular conception that Asians fare better than Whites in terms of intelligence contrasts with how East Asian societies fare compared to Western ones, both past and present, and with how the Chinese had been perceived.
In 1894, Arthur Smith published Chinese Characteristics, a collection of twenty-six essays. The author had great credentials: he had spent roughly two decades in China. This is a fairly accurate book, although a lot of the content seems to be more negative than positive. Throughout the book, Chinese are portrayed as little better than savages, vastly different from the current view. Judging from the essay titles alone, the ills of Chinese society are named in the title of nine essays, although many more are sprinkled throughout other essays: (5) Disregard of Time, (6) Disregard of Accuracy, (7) Talent for Misunderstanding, (8) Talent for Indirection, (12) Contempt for Foreigners (15) Indifference to Comfort and Convenience, (21) Absence of Sympathy, (24) Mutual Suspicion, (25) Absence of Sincerity.
Those who are both very poor and very ignorant, as is the fate of millions, have indeed so narrow a horizon that intellectual turbidity is compulsory. Their existence is merely that of a frog in a well, to which even the heavens appear only as a strip of darkness.
Life consists of two compartments, a stomach and a cash-bag. Such a man is the true positivist, for he cannot be made to comprehend anything which he does not see or hear, and of causes as such he has no conception whatsoever. Life is to him a mere series of facts, mostly disagreeable facts, and as for anything beyond, he is at once an atheist, a polytheist, and an agnostic.
As with much of what I post, I do not necessarily agree with this author but find the topic interesting and his viewpoint refreshing. Cultural differences are very real as are genetic difference which are molded or honed by culture over the centuries. The whole world needs to do much more talking about cultural and genetic differences and similarities. The essay above may get some people thinking and inspire others to delve into this topic.
Trump has launched a response to China’s decades-long trade war against us. One factor at play was referred to the other day when Trump said of Xi, ‘I don’t think he knows how to make a deal’, or words to that effect. Having lived in China for many years, I have noticed that most of the time most Chinese see ‘deals’ as win-lose propositions and they almost always go for the win at any cost. There are exceptions but not many, in my experience. On the world stage, we are seeing that same zero-sum strategy being played by Xi Jinping and the CCP; the only difference between him and CCP leaders who preceded him is he is more ruthless, more zero-sum in how he makes ‘deals’. A tangential observation to this one is over the past 10-15 years I seem to have noticed a decline in the dating value of Chinese women in the West. If true, that may be due to their not knowing how to make relationship deals that are good for both parties. ABN
Pituffik Space Base, Greenland — Colonel Susannah Meyers, commander of Pituffik Space Base was removed from command by Colonel Kenneth Klock, commander of Space Base Delta 1, on April 10, 2025 for loss of confidence in her ability to lead.
Commanders are expected to adhere to the highest standards of conduct, especially as it relates to remaining nonpartisan in the performance of their duties.
Just days after Vice President JD Vance’s March visit to Pituffik Space Base in Greenland, the installation commander sent out an email to the base distancing it from Vance’s criticism of Denmark and its oversight of the territory, Military.com has learned.
Col. Susan Meyers, the commander of the 821st Space Base Group who also oversees the Pentagon’s northernmost military base, sent a March 31 message to all personnel at Pituffik seemingly aimed at generating unity among the airmen and Guardians, as well as the Canadians, Danes and Greenlanders who work there, following Vance’s appearance. She wrote that she “spent the weekend thinking about Friday’s visit — the actions taken, the words spoken, and how it must have affected each of you.”
“I do not presume to understand current politics, but what I do know is the concerns of the U.S. administration discussed by Vice President Vance on Friday are not reflective of Pituffik Space Base,” Meyers wrote in the email, which was communicated to Military.com.
American Buddhist Net 