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February 2023

A trio of new intrusions leaves America’s leaders grasping for explanations by Stephen Collinson

https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/13/politics/unknown-objects-leaders-response/index.html 

A deepening national security mystery is threatening a political storm after US fighter jets scrambled three days in a row to shoot down a trio of unidentified aerial objects high over the North American continent.

The flurry of attacks on the unknown crafts came a week after the highly public tracking and ultimate downing of a Chinese balloon suspected of carrying out surveillance. Now, the thin details trickling out of the Pentagon and Capitol Hill about are making an already highly unusual international episode even more bizarre and confusing.

No one – not the White House, the Pentagon or the government of Canada, whose airspace has also been infringed – seems able to say exactly what is going on with these latest downed crafts. This raises questions for top military brass and US spy agencies as well as for the potential safety of civilian aviation. And it creates an information vacuum that Republicans are again using to question President Joe Biden’s leadership.

The intrigue is also unfolding against a tense global situation, with already difficult relations with rising superpower China becoming ever more hostile and with the US leading the West in an effective proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.

“What’s gone on in the last two weeks or so, 10 days, has been nothing short of craziness,” Democratic Sen. Jon Tester of Montana said Sunday on “Face the Nation” on CBS, hours before an airborne object was shot down over Lake Huron.

“The military needs to have a plan to not only determine what’s out there, but (to) determine the dangers that go with it,” Tester said.

With the North American Aerospace Defense Command on heightened alert, US fighters have now blasted three objects out of the skies since Friday following the shooting down of the Chinese balloon off the South Carolina coast on February 4:

In the latest event, a high-altitude object was shot down on Sunday afternoon by an F-16 over Lake Huron, which lies between Michigan and Ontario. The Pentagon said the object was not assessed to be a military threat but was a flight hazard. But it did connect the craft to a radar signal picked up earlier over Montana, the home to US intercontinental missile silos and other sensitive sites.
On Saturday, a US F-22 warplane operating on the joint orders of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Biden fired a missile that took down an object flying at 40,000 feet over central Yukon in the far north of Canada. Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand described a “cylindrical object” smaller than the Chinese balloon.
On Friday, an F-22 shot down another unidentified craft over Alaskan airspace. US pilots were able to get up around the object before it was shot down and reported that it didn’t appear to be carrying surveillance equipment.

China’s Balloon Reveals the Weaknesses in US National Security Decision-Making by Lawrence A. Franklin

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19399/china-balloon-us-weakness

If China perceives that the America’s leaders lack resolve or that its national security decision-makers are divided, these failures can only tempt Chinese aggression against Siberia or Taiwan. After watching America’s debacles in Afghanistan and a week of hosting the balloon, China must be asking: If not now, when?

These reconnaissance flights seem but one dimension of a vast, multidimensional intelligence-collection effort by China.

The most important lesson China might have learned, unfortunately, is that Washington’s bungled balloon performance could well be replicated if Communist China’s President Xi Jinping invaded Taiwan or other targets.

The second-most damaging impact to US security regarding spy balloon that the Chinese Communist Party floated over the entire US continent may have been the assessment that China’s decision-makers gleaned from the perceived clumsy and indecisive manner in which America’s political and military leaders responded to the incident.

China, flaunting a lack of respect for the US, publicly ridiculed the balloon’s shoot-down and did not answer the phone when US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin called. If China perceives that the America’s leaders lack resolve or that its national security decision-makers are divided, these failures can only tempt Chinese aggression against Siberia or Taiwan. After watching America’s debacles in Afghanistan and a week of hosting the balloon, China must be asking: If not now, when?

The saga of China’s balloon, as well as other unidentified objects in the skies over the US and Canada, only adds to the confused and feckless decision-making process of America’s political military leadership. Why, as reported, did the Pentagon brass really not follow Biden’s order to shoot down the balloon immediately after the White House was notified?

THE STATE OF ANTISEMITISM IN AMERICA

https://www.ajc.org/AntisemitismReport2022

American Jewish Committee’s annual State of Antisemitism in America report assesses and compares Jewish and general population perceptions of and experiences with antisemitism in the United States. Based on one of the largest-ever combined national surveys of American Jews and the U.S. general public, the report demonstrates the deeply disturbing impact that rising hatred of Jews has on America’s Jewish community.

The release of the data, from surveys done in Fall of 2022, comes two months after the White House announced the creation of a new federal interagency group that will develop a national strategy to combat antisemitism.

Use the links below to view the report results of each survey, a comparison between the two surveys, AJC’s analysis, and AJC resources to combat antisemitism.

For too many American Jews, being Jewish no longer feels as safe as it once did. And the younger those American Jews are, the more they experience that threat firsthand.

An American Jewish Committee (AJC) study released this week sheds light on that heartbreaking reality and more. How affected are American Jews by rising antisemitism? Does the general public understand the weight they carry?

Based on parallel surveys of American Jews and the U.S. general public on their perceptions and experiences of antisemitism in the U.S, AJC’s State of Antisemitism in America Report 2022 is the most comprehensive of its kind. 

Here are five key takeaways from the report.

Did a Government Intel Asset Plant Key Evidence in Proud Boys Case? We should be suspicious of weird coincidences. By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2023/02/13/did-a-government-intel-asset-plant-key-evidence-in-proud-boys-case/

It’s week five of the Justice Department’s most high-profile—and high-stakes—criminal trial related to the events of January 6, 2021. Five members of the Proud Boys face the rare “seditious conspiracy” charge. Guilty verdicts—almost certain given the government’s near-perfect conviction rate for January 6 defendants—would build legal momentum for a similar indictment against Donald Trump. (The trial is so crucial that Matthew Graves, the Biden-appointed U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia responsible for prosecuting every January 6 case, has shown up in the courtroom on at least three occasions.)

Trump is a major figure in this trial, an unindicted coconspirator of sorts. Last week, Judge Timothy Kelly allowed prosecutors to play a clip of Trump’s extemporaneous comment for the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by”—a remark uttered during a presidential debate in September 2020 more than three months before the Capitol protest. The Justice Department wants to portray the comment as a call to arms, tying the alleged “militia” group to the former president.

The clip is just another thin reed of evidence in the government’s landmark domestic terrorism case. In fact, much of the “evidence” amounts to nothing more than worthless trinkets, braggadocious group chats, and otherwise protected political speech. 

It now appears that one key piece of evidence was not the work of any defendant in this case but rather written by a one-time government intelligence asset with unusual ties to both the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, another group involved in January 6.

A document titled “1776 Returns” is cited by the government to indicate the group had an advanced plan to “attack” the Capitol. In two separate criminal indictments, prosecutors explained how the document ended up in the hands of Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys: “On December 30, 2020 [an unnamed] individual sent Tarrio a document—[that] set forth a plan to occupy a few ‘crucial buildings’ in Washington, D.C. on January 6, including House and Senate buildings around the Capitol, with ‘as many people as possible’ to ‘show our politicians We the People are in charge.’”

Why Israelis Have Moved to the Political Right When there’s clearly no “partner in peace.” by Joseph Puder

https://www.frontpagemag.com/why-israelis-have-moved-to-the-political-right/

Western governments and media critical of the newly elected government coalition led by Likud’s Benjamin Netanyahu failed to ask themselves how it happened that the likes of Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir are now prominent ministers in Netanyahu’s government. The same critics in the west labeling Smotrich and Ben Gvir “extremists,” haven’t attached that title to Mahmoud Abbas.

Had the western critics of Israel bothered to consult history as it unfolded since the Oslo Accords of 1993, they could easily grasp the political shift that occurred in Israeli politics. In fact, the turn to the political right began in May 1977, when Menahem Begin became Israel’s first right-of-center Israeli prime minister. It was because of disillusionment with the socialist, center-left Labor party who led stagnant economies, and failed to bring the yearned-for peace. Menahem Begin, who like Smotrich and Ben Gvir was labeled an “extremist” and “terrorist” by some in the western media, made peace with Israel’s most important Arab foe – Egypt.

The Israeli public elected Itzhak Rabin in 1992. It was an endorsement of the peace platform with the Palestinians that the Labor coalition initiated. The Oslo negotiations were supposedly secret, hinted at by the Israeli media of a breakthrough and a final peaceful solution with the Palestinians. Earlier, at the 1991 Madrid conference initiated by the Bush Senior administration following the US triumph in the Gulf War, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was excluded from the negotiations that included a Syrian, Israeli, and a joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation comprised of Palestinian notables. Intimidated by Yasser Arafat and the PLO, little progress was made on the Israeli-Palestinian track.

Terrorism: An Ounce of Prevention? A British counter-terrorism report doesn’t mince words. by Bruce Bawer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/terrorism-an-ounce-of-prevention/

In the wake of 9/11, Britain’s Home Office concocted a counter-terrorism strategy that’s known as CONTEST – an acronym (kind of) for “counter-terrorism strategy” – and that consists of four distinct programs, each of which involves collaboration among a range of government agencies as well as businesses, community groups, emergency services, and the military. Those four programs are Prevent, which seeks to keep “vulnerable people from being drawn into extremism”; Pursue, which seeks to bring terrorists to justice; Protect, which seeks to safeguard potential victims of terrorism; and Prepare, which seeks to maintain a high level of readiness. Not surprisingly, CONTEST was controversial from the start for its basis in a frank recognition that Islamic terrorism is (hello!) the work of Muslims who carry it out in the name of Islam.

Take a 2015 article for the left-wing New Statesman, in which one Maria Norris – who at the time was a Ph.D. candidate at the London School of Economics and is now a professor (pronouns “she/her”) at Coventry University – charged that then Prime Minister David Cameron’s rhetoric about Islamic terrorism, like that of Tony Blair a decade earlier, drew unforgivably “sharp boundaries between Muslims and the west.” Moreover, complained Norris, Cameron proffered “an extremely reductionist understanding of terrorism” and “ignored the terrorists’ legitimate grievances.” Also, Cameron dared to suggest that millions of Muslims in Europe were enemies of “our way of life” and “our values.” All of which, in Norris’s estimation, resulted in “a counter-terrorism strategy that reduces the complexity and diversity of the Muslim community into a homogeneous group of potential extremists.”

Of course, Islamic terrorism isn’t about specific grievances, legitimate or otherwise. It’s jihad, plain and simple – part of a holy war on the non-Islamic world that’s been underway ever since the religion’s founding. But you can’t say such things in respectable circles in Britain, where the standard euphemism for Muslims is “Asians” and where such activities as brutal Jew-bashing by Muslim gangs are routinely whitewashed as “tensions between communities.”  

The State Department helped defund conservative websites By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/02/the_state_department_helped_defund_conservative_websites.html

Think about that: The government used your money to silence your politics.

Last week, news broke that American Thinker and other conservative internet sites were the subjects of a successful campaign to defund them by telling advertisers that their content was misleading. That’s bad. What’s worse is that we’re learning that the State Department was helping fund the campaign to defund conservative media.  

The Washington Examiner revealed in a two-part report (here and here) how various organizations claimed to track “disinformation.” That “disinformation,” of course, was anything that countered the Democrat narrative on politics and social issues. American Thinker was among the list of 39 conservative sites that also included Newsbusters, Town Hall, Rush Limbaugh, Daily Wire, Breitbart, etc. Rajan Laad explained how this worked:

Corporate houses seeking to promote their products online seek the services of corporate digital ad companies to run their online advertisement campaigns.

These firms contract “disinformation” trackers to obtain private information about the “blacklisted” websites in order to avoid placing their advertisements on them.

The Global Disinformation Index (GDI), a British organization, and its two affiliated U.S. nonprofit groups, based in Texas, are instances of such “disinformation”-trackers.

Educayshun: Harvard Integrates ‘Climate Change’ in Medical School Curriculum By Catherine Salgado

https://pjmedia.com/culture/catherinesalgado/2023/02/13/educayshun-harvard-integrates-climate-change-in-medical-school-curriculum-n1670221

Harvard Medical School (HMS) is focused on protecting health — by putting “climate change” ideology in its M.D. curriculum. Because after fifty years of failed climate doom predictions, as well as recent evidence global warming is a hoax, Harvard is of course following the science… by putting leftist ideology ahead of scientific data. And elites wonder why people don’t trust the medical establishment.

The Harvard Crimson reported Feb. 3:

”A Harvard Medical School committee voted last month to embed climate change into the school’s curriculum.

In a meeting early last month, the HMS Educational Policy and Curriculum Committee voted unanimously to officially add climate change and health as a theme in the HMS M.D. curriculum … The new climate change curriculum will examine the impact of climate change on health and health inequality, applications of these impacts to clinical care, and the role of physicians and health institutions in arriving at climate solutions.”

Climate change and “health inequality” — there’s nothing like woke pablum to inspire confidence in medical expertise! Is there solid evidence that “climate change” is causing serious medical issues, or is this just the latest balderdash in half a century of lies and insufficient data? Who knows? Harvard clearly isn’t interested in objectivity on the subject.

The Harvard Crimson claimed that “climate change” can increase the spread of infectious diseases (unlike failed COVID-19 vaccines, of course) and lung disease, and added, “The curriculum change aims to integrate climate change themes throughout students’ medical school education rather than creating new courses specifically around climate change.” Because the more indoctrination, the better.

Biden’s Classified Documents Scandal Keeps Getting Bigger By Matt Margolis

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2023/02/13/bidens-classified-documents-scandal-keeps-getting-bigger-n1670131

Newly disclosed emails from the National Archives indicate that Joe Biden’s classified documents scandal is even bigger than we initially thought.

The emails reference Joe Biden’s attorneys handing over documents in Boston, “confirming a little-known detail in the chronology of Biden’s classified documents scandal,” according to the New York Post.

On November 7, 2022, National Archives general counsel Gary Stern wrote to Biden attorneys Patrick Moore and Bob Bauer, “Please ensure that the boxes in your office in Boston remain secure in a locked space and are not accessed by anyone.”

This was sent five days after Biden’s attorneys found classified documents in Joe’s office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C.

CNN reported last month that Moore had moved documents found at the Penn Biden Center to his legal office in Boston. According to that report, the documents weren’t sensitive in nature. However, the new emails “raise questions about the nature of the documents given the protocols requested by the National Archives.”

The FBI Isn’t The Only Guilty Party In The ‘Twitter Files,’ And It Isn’t ‘Partisan’ To Say So By: Samuel Mangold-Lenett

https://thefederalist.com/2023/02/13/the-fbi-isnt-the-only-guilty-party-in-the-twitter-files-and-it-isnt-partisan-to-say-so/

Matt Taibbi took to Twitter on Saturday to express his frustration with the politicization of the “Twitter Files.” The fact that a considerable number of the responses to the “Twitter Files” has been right-wing political outrage and leftist “whataboutism” has turned it into a “partisan pissing match,” he said. Instead, he would prefer that outrage be directed at the “real targets” of his and his peers’ reporting, the federal bureaucracy and intelligence agencies.  

And whereas bureaucrats and spooks alike were exposed for engaging in actual fascism, a truth that Taibbi is clearly uncomfortable with remains: Everything the “Twitter Files” exposed indicates that the federal government and Big Tech colluded to further entrench a despotic regime in accordance with the Democratic Party’s political and ideological goals.

Taibbi’s statement is somewhat puzzling. After all, which political party overwhelmingly benefited from the “meddling” of the intelligence apparatus and Twitter? Which political party’s interests did this meddling explicitly serve? And what political party did the disenfranchised overwhelmingly belong to? 

The first installment of the “Twitter Files” revealed that Twitter and the Democrats collaborated to suppress the Hunter Biden laptop story, which verifiably altered the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. In it, Taibbi noted that whereas Twitter did take specific content moderation requests from Republicans, the “system wasn’t balanced. It was based on contacts. Because Twitter was and is overwhelmingly staffed by people of one political orientation.”