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June 2022

FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Slow Joe goes to Israel By Barry Shaw

By on June 15th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/06/slow_joe_goes_to_israel.html

The dates have been fixed for Biden’s visit to the Middle East: July 13-16, and the schedule looks loaded with pitfalls for the fumbling president.

His visit to Israel coincides with the Opening Ceremony of the Maccabiah Games which is always covered live on Israeli TV. For many Israelis, who have low expectations, Biden’s visit will be a distraction. What can he deliver for Israel?

The only four items that Biden has been fixated on for 50 years are:

Stopping Jews living in Judea and Samaria,
Dividing Jerusalem our capital,
Pushing for a “two-state” non-solution, even if the other state will inevitably be controlled by Hamas,
Increasing U.S. taxpayer money to the unrepentant regressive corrupt Palestinian Authority. Biden ignores two U.S. laws banning such payments until the PA commits not to use the money to reward their terrorist killers.

We call it their “Pay to Slay” reward system. The more Jews you kill, the more money you get, courtesy of the funding from the United States, Europe, and the UN.

This obscenity has to stop, but under Biden the payments are increased.

After telling Israel he has our backs, he will meet Mahmoud Abbas, probably in Bethlehem, to tell him he has Biden’s full support and money, no strings attached.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Jan 6 committee flouts the rules of Congress, delivers propaganda By David Zukerman

By on June 15th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/06/jan_6_committee_flouts_the_rules_of_congress_delivers_propaganda.html

The Jan. 6 House Select Committee has been marred by officials acting in an arbitrary and capricious manner. The journalistic result is propaganda not fairly and honestly informing the American people on the conduct of this committee and its threat to democratic government

For example,

“[I]t is well established that, when a congressional committee seeks to use the implied authority to compel testimony, it must respect the Separation of Powers; it must do so only in pursuit of a valid legislative purpose (and not for the purpose of generating publicity or pursuing law enforcement) and it must follow the rules associated with the delegation on which its claimed subpoena authority relies.” 

This quote appears at page 4 of the Introduction to the reply brief (Case 1:21-cv-03217-CJN Document 38 Filed 06/06/22) filed by former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in his lawsuit against Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Jan. 6 committee.

The Meadows reply brief opened the Introduction with this statement:

“No authoritative appellate court has ever held that a senior aide to a President, or a President himself, can be compelled by Congress to appear and give testimony, let alone when there is a claim of Executive Privilege.” 

This statement makes clear how breathtaking Speaker Pelosi’s actions have proven to be, willing to dash to pieces the Separation of Powers tradition of our tripartite federal government. 

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Biden’s New Policy Funds China’s Military, Supports Slavery, Achieves Nothing by Peter Schweizer

By on June 15th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18616/biden-china-policy-support

Previously, U.S. policy was that Americans were forbidden to invest in companies included in a “blacklist” of Chinese companies directly involved in China’s military, and in producing applications used by the Communist regime to oppress its own people and threaten its neighbors. The new “answers” amount to a wholesale abandonment of a policy Americans of all political stripes supported.

[I]t can also be seen as part of a long easing of economic sanctions imposed by the Trump administration, without obtaining any benefit for American prestige or negotiating leverage with China in return.

The 48 companies included on the initial Trump administration blacklist all work directly with the People’s Liberation Army, Chinese intelligence, or otherwise provide artificial-intelligence products and services used by Beijing to deny the human rights of its Uighur minority.

While Hikvision and Sinochem’s listed subsidiaries are not traded on major U.S. exchanges, they have been included in index funds carried by such giants as Vanguard and BlackRock.

There is no penalty for investors who continue to hold these stocks after the grace period, which ended in June 2022. All the order says is they may not buy any more shares, nor can they (after the grace period) sell what they have, without OFAC approval.

[M]oves like this should be offered only in negotiation with the Chinese over things important to American national security, and the peace and freedom of our allies. Giving up on it because it was “confusing” to international financial institutions is a sad excuse.

And it comes at a time when the Biden administration has also announced a tariff waiver on solar panels coming from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam. This action, explained as a “bridge” while domestic solar panel manufacturing ramps up, re-opens a previously closed door to China’s dumping solar panels into the U.S. market.

At the same time, China is these days more belligerent, more aggressive, and more of a problem than ever. What exactly is the Biden administration getting for its quiet retreat from the tougher trade policies of the Trump administration?

Not a more conciliatory stance on Taiwan. China will “definitely not hesitate to start a war” over a Taiwan split, Chinese Defense Minister General Wei Fenghe warned the U.S recently.

Not help for American business.

Recently the Biden administration issued new answers for Americans invested in Chinese companies with direct ties to Beijing’s military. Previously, U.S. policy was that Americans were forbidden to invest in companies included in a “blacklist” of Chinese companies directly involved in China’s military, and in producing applications used by the Communist regime to oppress its own people and threaten its neighbors. The new “answers” amount to a wholesale abandonment of a policy Americans of all political stripes supported.

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ISRAEL, MEDIA Comments turned off

New York Times Lectures and Hectors Israel When will “the paper of record” ever treat Israel fairly? Hugh Fitzgerald

By on June 15th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/06/new-york-times-lectures-and-hectors-israel-hugh-fitzgerald/

The New York Times doesn’t much care for Israel. Its reporters always find some flaw to exaggerate, some Palestinian atrocity to explain away, some “settlers” in the “occupied West Bank” to denounce, some new way to libel the inoffensive, warmhearted, and permanently imperiled Jewish state. It recently ran a “staff editorial” on the killing of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akhleh which, for connoisseurs of its anti-Israel slant, did not disappoint. A report by Ira Stoll on this editorial that lectured and hectored Israel on “what it must do,” is here: “New York Times Editorial Lectures: ‘Israelis Should Care More,’” by Ira Stoll, Algemeiner, June 9, 2022:

The New York Times these days only rarely publishes staff editorials, and it saves the ones it thinks are most important for the Sunday newspaper, which attracts the largest readership.

This past Sunday, which was also the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, the Times unleashed an editorial headlined “Who Killed Journalist Shireen Abu Akleh?” The question is rhetorical, because the Times editorialists have already clearly decided who is to blame. You guessed it, Israel. The Times insists: “Israel needs to ensure the safety of journalists in the country and in areas that it occupies, to ensure the safety of its own democracy.”

The Times assumes that we all agree on who killed Abu Akleh – Israel. But despite the claims of the Palestinians, and the Timesmen who parrot them, it is not known, and cannot be known, until the bullet that killed her can be subject to ballistic tests by forensic experts. Israel is not insisting that it alone must conduct those tests – they could be carried out jointly with the PA and the American government. However, the PA adamantly refuses to produce the bullet, without explanation. That apparently doesn’t bother the New York Times, which sees nothing suspicious in the PA’s failure to produce the bullet. So Israel will be forced to issue an incomplete report, unable either to implicate or exculpate itself, until that bullet can be made available for forensic analysis.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Bizarro World: Mega-Terrorist Turkey When it comes to Turkey, Western countries behave like weaklings. David Boyajian

By on June 15th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/06/bizarro-world-mega-terrorist-turkey-david-boyajian/

Welcome to bizarro world.

That’s where Turkey, a notorious state sponsor of international terrorism, has the sheer gall to accuse Finland and Sweden of supporting terrorists.

Even more bizarre: Neither Finland, Sweden, the U.S., NATO, EU, nor any country or leader has, to my knowledge, pointed out Ankara’s glaring hypocrisy.

Turkey claims that Finland and Sweden host members of the PKK, the militant Kurdish organization that the U.S. and EU regard as terrorists. Both Nordic nations deny the charge.

Like many Europeans, however, Finns and Swedes sympathize with Kurds. Turkey has long repressed and ethnically cleansed the latter.

Regardless, Ankara is blocking uber-civilized Finland and Sweden from joining NATO.

Ironically, Turkey — autocratic, infamously violative of human rights, and systemically corrupt — would be unqualified to join NATO today were it not already a member.

The point is, who is Turkey to accuse others of terrorism?

Mega-Terrorist Turkey

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BOOKS Comments turned off

The Crushing of Tibet-Michael M. Rosen

By on June 15th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2022/06/27/the-crushing-of-tibet/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=third

When the Iron Bird Flies: China’s Secret War in Tibet, by Jianglin Li (Stanford University Press, 576 pp., $35)

The recent depredations of the People’s Republic of China in East Turkestan/Xinjiang have had the unfortunate effect of obscuring and displacing a similar oppression that the Chinese perpetrated in another region: Tibet. More than half a century before it began persecuting the Uyghurs, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) engineered and executed a brutal, enduring domination of Tibet that persists today. But while the Tibetan cause enjoyed its heyday in the West in the 1990s, the region has largely faded from the headlines since.

Jianglin Li, a historian of Tibet, seeks to remedy this forgetfulness. In When the Iron Bird Flies, a masterly account of the CCP’s invasion and subjugation of the Tibetan regions in the 1950s, Li exhumes decades of archival Chinese records and interviews survivors of the onslaught. She tells the story through the eyes of the overwhelmed and ultimately defeated Tibetans, as well as from the point of view of the CCP officials who quelled their hard-fought rebellion.

While even the Chinese-nationalist government had sought to integrate Tibet into the Chinese body politic in the first half of the 20th century, the story truly begins with Mao Zedong’s rise to power. He was determined, no matter the cost, to swallow the Tibetan provinces of U-Tsang, Amdo, and Kham — which form more than a fifth of contemporary China by area. On January 2, 1950, Mao, visiting Moscow, cabled the CCP Central Committee, noting that “although the population of Tibet is not large, its international status is crucial. We must occupy Tibet and reform it into a people’s democracy.” Not for Mao the traditional religious and herding lifestyle of this peaceful people of the northwest steppe; they must be fundamentally remade in the image of Socialist Man.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Jerry Nadler on the Rocks?A blockbuster primary pits two long-serving Democrats against each other.By Arjun Singh

By on June 15th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/06/jerry-nadler-on-the-rocks/

You don’t often see political heavyweights in a fight to the death in the midterms. Incumbents usually win — and when they don’t, it can be because they were caught by surprise, whether in a primary or general election, heralding a larger wave.

Recall Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, who was taken down by Tea Party upstart Dave Brat in 2014 — the first time in history that a sitting House leader had lost in a primary. More recently, AOC felled Joe Crowley, the Democratic Caucus chairman, which marked the ascendance of the New Left.

Sometimes, incumbents do lose. But rarely do they lose to each other in races that pit powerful politicians against each other, fighting for political survival. One such battle is unfolding in New York City between two powerful House Democrats. Congressman Jerry Nadler, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, is running in a primary against Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, chairwoman of the House Oversight Committee, for New York’s twelfth congressional district. Both are high-profile members who’ve been in Congress for decades and vehemently opposed the Trump agenda more recently. It was Nadler atop the Judiciary Committee who pushed both of Trump’s impeachments through the House, led arguments against him in the first trial, and investigated his administration on a host of other issues. Maloney, meanwhile, hauled the heads of agency after agency before her committee for oversight hearings to grill them on Trump’s policies — especially immigration. They’ve continued chairing these powerful bodies into the Biden years. With these credentials, each has high name recognition and high fund-raising potential. They’d be near-unbeatable in their seats on their own.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Joe Biden and the Powerless Presidency Byron York

By on June 15th, 2022

https://townhall.com/columnists/byronyork/2022/06/15/joe-biden-and-the-powerless-presidency-n2608742

There’s no doubt inflation is the nation’s most pressing concern. All the polls show it. All the data shows it. And everyone just personally knows it.

President Joe Biden will not admit that his policies, and his party’s policies, have made inflation worse — and that, if Biden and congressional Democrats had their way, they would make it worse still. He just can’t say that. Instead, the president’s reaction has been a mixture of denial, finger pointing, ineffective gestures and, perhaps most of all, the argument that he, as president, is virtually powerless to address the nation’s most pressing concern.

“Look, inflation is the bane of our existence,” Biden said when he appeared recently in a sympathetic forum, comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show. Kimmel was so sympathetic that he didn’t even ask Biden about inflation; Biden brought it up himself. But he had little to say. Remember that when Biden published his plan to fight inflation in The Wall Street Journal on May 30, his first measure was not to do anything himself but to let the Federal Reserve do the job. His role as president, Biden said, was not to say anything mean about the Fed.

As for all the other, little stuff Biden is doing in the name of fighting inflation, there are reports that he knows they won’t do any good. On April 12, for example, he went to an ethanol plant in Iowa to claim that alternative fuels lower energy costs. Ethanol is great, Biden said. It supports agriculture, creates good-paying jobs, reduces U.S. reliance on foreign oil and reduces the price of gasoline.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Report: 23 Pro-Life Organizations Vandalized, Firebombed by Pro-Abortion Activists in Recent Weeks: Wendell Husebø

By on June 15th, 2022

https://www.breitbart.com/crime/2022/06/14/report-23-pro-life-organizations-vandaliz

At least 23 pro-life organizations have reportedly been vandalized in recent weeks.

The pro-life organizations have been either firebombed or vandalized by radical pro-abortion activists, according to Catholic Vote:

Hollywood, FL — South Broward Pregnancy Center and Archdiocese of Miami Respect Life Ministry
Asheville, NC — Mountain Area Pregnancy Services
Manassas, VA — First Care Women’s Health
Alexandria, VA — Concerned Women for America
Reiserstown, MD — Alpha Pregnancy Center
Frederick, MD — BirthRight of Frederick
Frederick, MD — CareNet Frederick
 Reiserstown, MD — Alpha Pregnancy Center
 Buffalo, NY — CompassCare Pregnancy Services
 Madison, WI — Wisconsin Family Action
 Des Moines, IA — Agape Pregnancy Resource Center
 Denton, TX — Woman to Woman Pregnancy Resource Center
 Austin, TX — Trotter House
 Long Beach, CA — His Nesting Place Home for Mothers & Children
 Sebastopol, CA — Pregnancy Center Billboard
 Eugene, OR — Dove Medical Clinic
 Keizer, OR — Oregon Right to Life
 Gresham, OR — Gresham Pregnancy Resource Center
 Portland, OR — Southeast Portland Pregnancy Resource Center
 Vancouver, WA — Options360 Women’s Clinic
 Federal Way, WA — Care Net Pregnancy and Family Services of Puget Sound
 Lynnwood, WA — Next Step Pregnancy Services

The attacks follow a leaked Supreme Court decision that revealed Roe v. Wade may be overturned this month. If overturned, abortion would no longer be protected by the federal government but would still be legal in many states.

Though President Biden campaigned on unity, Biden has not condemned a single one of the attacks, the RNC reported on Monday. Moreover, many establishment television networks refuse to cover the extremism:

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MEDIA Comments turned off

An Implicit Admission That The ‘News’ Is Slanted

By on June 15th, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/06/15/an-implicit-admission-that-the-news-is-slanted/

Media giant Gannett, owner of USA Today, announced last week it was cutting back on newspaper opinion pages within its chain, the largest in the country. Apparently editors decided “readers don’t want us to tell them what to think.” Or, put another way, they don’t need opinion pages when the “news” is doing a fine job of tacitly telling readers what to think.

In the words of a Fox News report, Gannett is “scaling back its opinion pages in an effort to combat a perception of having a political bias” and a political agenda. But that seems more like a cover than a genuine reason. Since when has the leftist corporate media been shy about coloring the events of the day, and worshipping at the altar of their political gods?

In just the years since Donald Trump announced his 2016 presidential candidacy, the media, and not just newspapers, used “news” reports to do all they could to first run Trump’s campaign aground, and when that didn’t work, diligently peddle the narrative that Trump was a Russian stooge and had to be removed from office.

For anyone who even lightly scrolled through the media’s output during the Trump term, it was nigh on impossible to avoid claim after claim that the “bombshell” revelation which was going to bring down Trump was in the air on its way to the target. The media were – and still are – obsessed with Trump.

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