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June 2022

Russia slogs through the Donbas Ukrainian victory hinges on Western supplies of artillery and ammunition: Charles Lipson

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/hard-slogging-donbas-ukraine-russia-artillery/

A brutal artillery battle: that’s what the latest phase of Russia’s war on Ukraine has become. Vladimir Putin failed in his original goal of seizing the entire country swiftly, beginning with the capital of Kyiv, and installing a puppet government. When Ukrainian resistance prevented that, Putin shifted to a smaller, more achievable objective: establishing complete control over two eastern provinces, Luhansk and Donetsk, which border Russia and are jointly known as the Donbas region. That’s where the war is being fought now, with an uncertain outcome. Victory will depend on who wins the artillery battle. Russia has more blunt firepower; Ukraine has more precise, longer-range weapons — or at least it will have them when more NATO supplies reach the frontlines.

Seizing the Donbas provinces would complete a project Russia began in 2014, when it captured parts of that region, plus the Crimean peninsula. Establishing complete control now would give Russia a secure “land bridge” from its own territory to Crimea, as well as a base to continue destabilizing Ukraine. From there, it could launch further attacks and seize still more territory after regrouping and resupplying its battered army. Putin’s ultimate goal is the same as it has been since the beginning: seize as much Ukrainian territory as possible, terrorize the population, eliminate the country’s independence and turn Ukraine into a subordinate satellite.

Ukraine’s goals are to prevent that conquest, retake as much land as possible, reestablish complete sovereignty over its territory and prevent future attacks and destabilization. Its immediate, minimal goal is to push Russia back to the territory it held in February, before Putin launched this unprovoked war.

HOPE IN THE HOLY LAND-

https://hopeintheholyland.com/

“If there is one film you’re going to watch to understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, HOPE IN THE HOLY LAND is it!”
Col. Richard Kemp, Former Chief of Command of British Forces in Afghanistan
Todd Morehead, an American Christian with a deep love for Israel, sets off on a journey across the Holy Land to confront his indifference toward the Palestinians and to search for the deeper truths behind one of the most perplexing and polarizing conflicts in the world.
Along the way, he discovers the painful struggles of Jews, Muslims and Christians on both sides of the conflict. The result is an enlightening journey that exposes viewers to perspectives rarely seen in the media, and a challenge to a man’s heart to love his enemy.

Iran’s Nuclear Program: Where Is the Biden Administration’s Plan B? by Majid Rafizadeh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18619/iran-nuclear-program-plan-b

There also exists the dangerous likelihood, if and when Iran’s regime has nuclear weapons, that they will fall into the hands of Iran’s proxies and militia groups, or that the regime will share its nuclear technology with its proxies and allies, including the Syrian regime and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Iran’s regime has already been setting up weapons factories abroad, and manufacturing advanced ballistic missiles and weapons in foreign countries, such as in Syria. These weapons include precision-guided missiles with advanced technology to strike specific targets.

“The mission of the constitution,” the preamble [of Iran’s constitution] stipulates, “is to create conditions conducive to the development of man in accordance with the noble and universal values of [Shiite] Islam.” The constitution goes on to say that it “provides the necessary basis for ensuring the continuation of the revolution at home and abroad.”

Eliminating Israel was not only one of the main religious prophecies of the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, it is also a leading policy of his successor, the current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that Israel will be erased from the face of the earth.

If the Biden administration allows Iran to obtain nuclear weapons, President Joe Biden and his associates, like Neville Chamberlain’s illusory “Peace for our time,” will have as their legacy that it was their acts alone that destabilized global security and set the world at risk.

It is therefore imperative that the Biden administration let the ruling mullahs know — credibly — that Iran’s regime must eliminate the possibility of its having nuclear arms, period. No nuclear deal, no sunset clauses. Sunset clauses merely pave the way for Iran to resume enriching uranium at any level it chooses. The regime’s ballistic missile program, which is linked to its nuclear program, must also be eliminated.

It must be made unmistakably clear to the Iranian regime that the United States and its allies will not allow the current regime, a state sponsor of terrorism, to arm itself with nuclear weapons and emerge as yet another global nuclear threat.

The Biden administration’s nuclear negotiations to revive the nuclear deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) with Iran’s ruling mullahs are going nowhere, all while the administration does not seem to have a Plan B.

Statesmen at the Helm If we want to recover “free and civilized human life,” we will need to recover the greatness that is Daniel Mahoney’s central subject. By Christopher Flannery

https://amgreatness.com/2022/06/17/statesmen-at-the-helm/

A review of “The Statesman as Thinker: Portraits of Greatness, Courage, and Moderation”,
by Daniel J. Mahoney (Encounter, 242 pages , $30.99)

With epic understatement, James Madison wrote in 1787 that “Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm,” prophetically consoling his future countrymen for the catastrophic presidency of Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. 

In his new book, The Statesman as Thinker: Portraits of Greatness, Courage, and Moderation, Daniel Mahoney writes not just about “enlightened statesmen” but about great-souled statesmen, with philosophic gifts and the full complement of cardinal virtues. Such men and women are not just unusual. They are rare—and indispensable: “On rare but vitally important occasions, democracies need such men of virtue and honorable ambition to preserve and perpetuate free and civilized human life.” 

Mahoney thinks Solon, Pericles, Cicero, and George Washington were such statesmen. Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Nelson Mandela, for all their gifts, virtues, and importance, were not. Daniel Mahoney takes seriously his highest duty as a student of politics—to remind himself and his readers of true greatness. He offers chapters on Edmund Burke, Alexis de Tocqueville, Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Charles De Gaulle, and Václav Havel, with helpful “Sources and Suggested Readings” at the end of each chapter. 

Democrats’ Selective Outrage Over ‘Insurrections’ For Democrats, what constitutes an actual “insurrection” is merely in the eye of the beholder. By Josh Hammer

https://amgreatness.com/2022/06/17/democrats-selective-outrage-over-insurrections/

To listen to House Democrats’—and Liz Cheney’s and Adam Kinzinger’s, but I repeat myself—shrieks of hysteria from the opening nights of the January 6 House Select Committee dais is to hearken back to the Soviet-era show trials of yesteryear. Vladimir Lenin, as the veteran conservative commentator Roger Kimball reminds us, referred to them as “model trials,” wherein the “aim isn’t to discover the truth—which was supposedly already known—but to stage a propagandist exhibition.”

For Democrats, the aim of the January 6 committee’s “propagandist exhibition” is twofold: First, to attempt (in vain) to distract a besieged citizenry from the myriad problems now tearing asunder the country, under their leadership, in this midterm election year; and second, to lay the foundation for a Justice Department indictment against the 45th president that could hamstring his efforts to seek a second term come 2024.

To anyone paying even a modicum of attention—and I’d recommend no more than that—to the committee’s theatrics, it is obvious that the game is rigged. Consider as but one data point how Cheney, who will be looking for a new job come January, deliberately edited Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” exhortation from that fateful rally to omit the fact that he urged his supporters to make their way to the Capitol “peacefully and patriotically.” 

Or how about the fact that the committee has thus far made no effort to subpoena the families of the roughly 800 people who have been arrested—and sometimes placed in solitary confinement, per columnist Julie Kelly’s exceptional reporting at American Greatness—for wandering in and traipsing around the Capitol, often shepherded right in by Capitol Police? Curious, that. A legitimate committee interested in investigation and arriving at the truth would surely want to call some of those families as witnesses. Perhaps that hypothetical legitimate committee would also be interested in hearing from the family of Ashli Babbitt, the Air Force veteran fatally shot on that day by a subsequently exonerated Capitol Police officer. Alas.

Instead, to take Democrats at their word—an always dubious endeavor—is to believe that January 6, 2021, represented the closest thing to an “insurrection” since the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter in April 1861. To be sure, some—a very small minority—of the protesters who made their way into the Capitol on that day did so with malicious intent. And that very small minority should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But as a whole, January 6 looks something like a limper version of the Whiskey Rebellion of the 1790s, which amounts to no more than an asterisk in the high school history textbooks.

A Cretinous Beltway Reproduction of a Stalinist Show Trial Are Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger accomplices after the fact? By Thaddeus G. McCotter

https://amgreatness.com/2022/06/17/a-cretinous-beltway-reproduction-of-a-stalinist-show-trial/

If one watches episodic police and detective dramas, there often occurs a scene wherein a culprit is apprehended and charged as an accomplice “after the fact” for helping to cover up the crime. In the British equivalent of such shows, the police use the phrase “perverting the course of justice.” The bottom line is, if one aids in concealing, distracting, or diverting attention from the criminal act to prevent its detection, one is guilty of participating in a criminal enterprise, whether it be before or after the fact.

The House of Representatives’ January 6 committee has been called many things, such as a failed TV pilot, but sadly one knows what the committee is not and was never intended to be, courtesy of Victor Davis Hanson. As for the events of January 6 and its aftermath, the diligent and intrepid work of American Greatness’ Julie Kelly is essential reading.

Regarding the motivation behind the committee, one is to damage Donald Trump’s prospects in 2024, which the committee is in fact abetting by driving his base to rally around him. (Of course, this could well be the Democrats’ covert hope, as many of them, rightly or wrongly, consider him the most beatable GOP nominee.) Another motive is to deflect public attention from Joe Biden and the Democrats’ disastrous economy. (Good luck with that). 

Yet, in conjunction with current developments in an ongoing criminal investigation and upon further reflection following this cretinous Beltway reproduction of a Stalinist show trial, these Democrats’ hearings have a far more subversive motive: namely, concealing and preventing the detection of their own party’s weaponization of the federal government’s police and surveillance powers against its opponents, most notably in the instance of “Russiagate.”

The Truth Regarding Health Care By Keith R. Jackson, M.D.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/06/the_truth_regarding_health_care.html

There are truths regarding health care in America that need broadcasting.  Some truths are intimidating and discouraging, with no need for us to be reminded, such as the crazy costs of hospitalization, testing, procedures, and pharmaceuticals.  Another such truth is that along with ridiculously expensive medical care has come incredible success in the battle against the morbidity and mortality of disease.  But the truth about how we got here is worth reviewing.  It is the result of a unique, accidental confluence of circumstance.  Unfortunately, it is unsustainable in its current form.

Many of the residents of our country act as if cost should not be a factor in the delivery of health care.  They feel as if medical care is a right and not having a socialized, government-sponsored system of delivery is akin to slavery.  On the other hand, corporations successfully weave among the patient, the doctor, the current government-sponsored health care systems, and their fellow capitalist insurance companies, managing to make a good profit while driving up cost. 

How did we get to the point where it was conceivable to produce pharmaceutical agents that cost six figures a dose?  When did we conclude that it is cost-appropriate to pay doctors and facilities to transplant a pair of lungs, a kidney, a liver, or a heart?  Most telling for the future, what would we be willing to sacrifice to make things sensible?

Our way-out-in-left-field costs have their origins in a simple-to-understand source.  After World War II, the federal government froze wages in its concern for runaway wage inflation, knowing that businesses desired to employ the best of the huge returning workforce and pay them accordingly.  With no means to attract new workers through better wages, companies created benefits packages along with employment that included costs shared in health care.  (A harbor company in San Diego with the now familiar name of “Kaiser” was among the first.)

Health care insurance companies created from this new market accumulated monies with each employee paycheck.  Health care at the time was rudimentary and did not have much to offer sick patients.  As a result, prospective patients did not have the same desire to go to the doctor that we have today.  As money built up in the system, doctors and hospitals began to realize better, more predictable finances, and the costs of treatment options were barely considered, because insurance companies were more than willing to pay.

Climate McCarthyism A White House official asks tech companies to settle normative questions surrounding climate change. Jordan McGillis

https://www.city-journal.org/climate-mccarth

President Biden has deputized White House climate-change advisor Gina McCarthy to snuff out reckless talk on global warming. McCarthy, speaking at a virtual event hosted June 9 by Axios, said it is time for social media companies to crack down on climate “disinformation” online.

But however wrong, damaging, and mendacious climate-change alarmists like New York magazine columnist David Wallace-Wells and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may be, they deserve, like anyone else, the freedom to say their piece. Though such figures have certainly misled Americans with their doomsday predictions, their right to expression ought not to be infringed. McCarthy has stepped beyond her mandate by overzealously seeking to keep climate debate within approved guardrails.

I jest, of course. It is not the exaggerations from Ocasio-Cortez or Wallace-Wells that find themselves in the crosshairs of the White House. Biden’s climate attack dog is hounding good-faith challenges to the administration’s policy recommendations and skeptical arguments about the viability of a renewables-only energy policy.

At the Axios event—dubbed “A Conversation on Battling Misinformation”—McCarthy called on tech companies to “really jump in” against allegedly inaccurate claims about the costs and benefits of different approaches to managing climate change. “Now it has moved from denial,” McCarthy said, “but the dark money is still there. The fossil fuel companies are still basically trying their best to make sure that people don’t understand the challenge of climate.” McCarthy then suggested that not only scientific dissent but also debate over what technologies are cost-effective is beyond the bounds of civil discourse. “What the industry is now doing is seeding doubt about the costs associated with [renewables] and whether they work or not,” she said. “We have to get tighter. We have to get better at communicating. And frankly, the tech companies have to stop allowing specific individuals over and over again to spread disinformation.”

Remembering the January 6 prisoners Some Republicans are calling attention to their squalid conditions

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/remembering-the-january-6-prisoners/

Cockburn has done his fair share of jail time, mostly on overblown bootlegging charges. Yet after paying his dues to society, he decided to venture to a recent press conference on the situation of those imprisoned after the January 6 riot.

The Patriot Freedom Project helps aid the families of the January 6 prisoners with legal costs and living expenses. Now, the organization is advocating for a review of the prison conditions of the inmates.

One inmate’s mother said, “The conditions at the DC jail are horrendous. His rations often smelled like cleaning fluid. There were pubic hairs included in the small portions of his food. The drinking water, visibly dirty. Mold was visible in cells, and roaches lived amongst [the prisoners].”

A note from a prisoner said, “I am limited to seeing the blue sky to a single hour once every seven days. Ants crawl all over my body when I attempt to sleep on my bunk. Cockroaches jumping out of my food is a common occurrence. Mouse poop is in the cereal and on dry food. At times there are yellow stains of yellow urine on dry food.”

The report, “Unusually Cruel,” written by the offices of Congressman Louie Gohmert and Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, compiles the testimonies of six eyewitnesses. It notes that the “walls of the rooms had residue of human feces, bodily fluids, blood, dirt and mold” (page 3), the inmates are allowed outside twice a week, and religious services and sacraments are withheld from the inmates unless they are vaccinated (page 17).

The report also speaks of a seventy-one-year-old inmate who was denied medical treatment, leading to his “lower forearm turn[ing] purple and his thumb, black” (page 18). Another inmate had a visibly broken finger. Another had celiac disease, causing him to go days without eating at risk of becoming violently ill from prison food.

BREAKING: U.S. SENATOR RAND PAUL KEEPS THE HEAT ON DR. ANTHONY FAUCI

Our investigation into the hidden stream of royalty payments to NIH scientists continues to make an impact on Capitol Hill!

Senator Rand Paul once again asked Dr. Fauci about the payments and once again, Fauci chose to evade and mislead rather than agree to just…
Open. The. Books! 

READ:
SINCLAIR: ‘It’s all redacted’: Rand Paul and Fauci clash over NIH royalty payments

FACT CHECKING DR. FAUCI’S STATEMENTS

Senator Paul asked whether Fauci had ever received royalties from an entity that he later went on to regulate or fund. Fauci said he didn’t know but “I doubt it.”

We rate that claim: FALSE. Here’s what the record shows:

In 2005, Fauci admitted receiving at least $45,000 in royalties for interleukin-2, an experimental AIDS treatment, and his division (NIAID) went on to spend $36 million testing it on humans.

Catch up on our latest Substack article covering the royalty payments. Here is a great example of why NIH must open the books on the $400 million during the last decade of third-party royalties paid to 1,805 scientists:

CASE STUDY: Who Is the #1 Recipient of Third-Party Royalty Payments at NIH?

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