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October 2021

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

US rejoins UN Human Rights Council, reversing Trump exit By Laura Kelly

By on October 15th, 2021

https://thehill.com/policy/international/576797-us-rejoins-un-human-rights-council-reversing-trump-exit

“The Human Rights Council is often lambasted for the election of members who hold the worst records for human rights violations and for a disproportionate focus on condemning Israel for alleged human rights abuses compared to other countries. ”

The U.S. on Thursday was elected to serve on the U.N. Human Rights Council beginning next year, rejoining the highly scrutinized international committee after leaving it in 2018 under then-President Trump.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken welcomed the move, saying the council plays a “meaningful role” in protecting human rights and fundamental freedoms, but suffers from “serious flaws,” including disproportionate focus on condemning Israel. 

“Together, we must push back against attempts to subvert the ideals upon which the Human Rights Council was founded, including that each person is endowed with human rights and that states are obliged to protect those rights,” Blinken said in a statement.

The secretary had announced in February that the U.S. would return to the council as an observer, part of President Biden’s push to reengage on the global stage in general and among international forums, in particular.

Trump withdrew the U.S. from the U.N. Human Rights Council in 2018, part of a series of withdrawals from international bodies. Then-U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Niki Haley criticized the council as exercising a “chronic bias against Israel” and a “hypocritical” body that “makes a mockery of human rights.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

America’s state of malaise We have become cynical as Biden starts to blend with Jimmy Carter Peter Van Buren

By on October 15th, 2021

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/americas-current-malaise-biden/

The word malaise, a general feeling of uneasiness whose exact cause is difficult to identify, is creeping into discussions. It’s a politically loaded word, following its use by President Jimmy Carter in 1979 to describe the country he could not figure out to how lead.

Carter’s specific use of the term focused on the energy crisis, when OPEC monkeyed with America’s oil supply. But Carter saw that something much deeper was wrong. There wasn’t just an oil shortage to manage, but a recession of hope, a crisis of confidence that someone would have to lead America out of. He perceived that we were tired, worn down, unable to come together in common purpose and fix something.

It would be interesting to hear what Carter thinks about 2021, when things once again don’t work well. Flights don’t fly. Inflation has returned. Gas is expensive. Supply chain problems mean Americans for the first time since World War Two are rationing and getting used to hearing ‘we don’t have any and aren’t sure when we will’. Unemployment plagues us as COVID tore the wool off of many Americans’ eyes about how little meaningless jobs for sub-living wages contributed to their piggy banks or their sense of self-worth. Nurses who were last year’s heroes for working unvaccinated are fired today for being unvaccinated.

There appears no end to COVID. The promised conclusion, the vaccine, proved as rich a lie as two weeks to flatten the curve. Even fully vaccinated people are prisoners to restrictions and mandates that often make no sense, or at the very least vary so much from state to state as to challenge their usefulness. There is little faith that the economic devastation caused by mismanaged restrictions will ever be addressed; the poor will just get poorer. There is a declining sense that COVID is a problem that can be managed as it has been in much of the world (see Europe, especially Scandinavia). The conclusion is that no one is really in charge.

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BOOKS, ELECTIONS Comments turned off

The 2020 Election Wasn’t Stolen, It Was Vandalized By Democrats, Big Tech, And The Media by John Daniel Davidson

By on October 15th, 2021

https://thefederalist.com/2021/10/14/the-2020-election-wasnt-stolen-it-was-vandalized-by-democrats-big-tech-and-the-media/

Mollie Hemingway’s new book, ‘Rigged,’ explains how the 2020 election was corrupted by the concerted efforts of America’s most powerful institutions.

Hillary Clinton said Monday in an appearance on “The View” that we’re “in the midst of a concerted, well-funded effort to undermine American democracy.”

She’s half-right. There is indeed a concerted, well-funded effort to undermine American democracy, but it doesn’t come from Donald Trump, whom Clinton claims is responsible for the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol and ongoing efforts to question the legitimacy of the 2020 election. (Clinton would know all about questioning the legitimacy of elections; as recently as 2019 she was still repeating the outrageous accusation that Trump was an “illegitimate president” who seized the office by colluding with Russia.)

The former secretary of state and 2016 Democrat presidential nominee is wrong that Trump and GOP leaders are undermining election integrity — they have nothing on her when it comes to that — but she’s right about efforts to seize elections and thwart the will of the voters. Those efforts aren’t coming from Trump but from her own Democratic Party, which colluded with corporate media and Big Tech to tip the scales in favor of Joe Biden and actually undermine the 2020 election.

That’s the subject of an important new book out this week by my colleague, Mollie Hemingway. “Rigged: How The Media, Big Tech, And The Democrats Seized Our Election,” which grew in part from reporting we did at The Federalist in the months before and after the November 2020 election, which chronicled unprecedented changes to election laws in key swing states, as well as appalling abuses of power by local election officials in the days and weeks after Election Day.

“Rigged” doesn’t argue or allege that the election was stolen, but that it was corrupted by corporate media, Big Tech censorship, the courts, and Democratic activists. Taken together, it all amounted to heavy-handed election interference of a kind we have never seen before.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Sex, the Jewish Agency and Israel’s clueless intelligence minister  Ruthie Blum

By on October 15th, 2021

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/sex-the-jewish-agency-and-israels-clueless-intelligence-minister-opinion-682078  

Israeli politicians and pundits have been pretty preoccupied this week with the self-inflicted dashed hopes of Intelligence Minister Elazar Stern to become the next head of the Jewish Agency.

Stern, a member of Foreign Minister Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid Party, was the government’s candidate for the post, which means that he was also acceptable to Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, head of Yamina. Stern was an example of one of those so-called compromises that the motley left-right coalition was able to reach with ease.

For one thing, Bennett keeps telling himself that he has to pick his battles, not stand on principle over the more minor issues. And though he’d be the last to admit it, the Jewish Agency isn’t a body that he or his peers consider to be as important as they purport it to be. Nor do they consider it particularly controversial.

For another, Stern himself is a kind of nonentity, despite his years in the military – as a commander of the IDF officers’ school, head of the Education and Youth Corps and chief of the Manpower Directorate – before becoming a member of Knesset in 2015.

It was kind of startling, then, when he caused a stir of his own making on Sunday, for what appeared to be no good reason – certainly not where his own career was concerned.
In an interview on Sunday morning with 103FM Radio, Stern announced that during his tenure as IDF Manpower Directorate, he had “shredded many anonymous complaints” from soldiers, including, perhaps, ones involving sexual harassment and/or assault – though he couldn’t exactly remember.

HIS INTERVIEW came on the heels of and in response to an investigation into an anonymous letter alleging some sort of misconduct on the part of “R,” the top pick to replace Nadav Argaman as the head of the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency). By Monday, when the cabinet approved his nomination, he had been cleared and his name, Ronen Bar, was revealed.

Stern, on the other hand, was in the dog house, though mainly put there by members of the opposition. The men and women in his own camp were maneuvering the embarrassing mishap by reiterating their usually very loud #metoo stance: that all sexual accusations must be taken seriously, no matter when, where or how they are made.

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