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May 2023

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Dithering Biden is Seriously Harming Ukraine’s Victory Prospects by Con Coughlin

By on May 18th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19646/biden-harming-ukraine-victory-prospects

While U.S. President Joe Biden has constantly pledged his support for Kyiv, his rhetoric has invariably failed to result in providing the Ukrainians with the military support they require. Even when, as happened earlier this year, the White House reluctantly agreed to provide Ukraine with Abrams tanks – a move that was only approved after Washington came under intense pressure from allies such as Poland – the slow delivery timetable has made Ukrainian commanders despair that the equipment will ever actually arrive.

As for the promised Abrams tanks, U.S. officials readily admit that the Abrams are months away from arriving as the Pentagon looks at its stocks to see what it can send.

In a recent interview with Foreign Policy magazine, Sasha Ustinova, a Ukrainian lawmaker, confirmed the U.S. military had delivered far less than what Valeriy Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s top general, had asked for from the Pentagon. U.S. military aid is only arriving piecemeal as the Biden administration warns it is nearing the end of its ability to provide weapons that can be pulled off of the Pentagon’s shelves to give to the Ukrainians.

Ustinova said that Ukraine hoped to begin the offensive in April, but the lack of weapons has pushed the launch date back indefinitely.

Certainly, any delay in the Ukrainians launching their offensive will only help to convince the Kremlin that, despite all the setbacks it has suffered over the course of the past year, it may still end up winning the war.

The Biden administration’s constant dithering over supplying weapons to Ukraine is proving to be a decisive factor in the Ukrainian military’s decision to delay its long-awaited spring counter-offensive against Russian forces.

Since the end of last year, when the Ukrainians inflicted a series of humiliating defeats against their Russian foes, Kyiv has been warning that it is in urgent need of fresh supplies of military equipment from its Western allies if it is to continue its campaign to liberate Ukrainian territory from Russian occupation.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

New York Mayor Eric Adams praises yeshivah learning “We need to be duplicating what you are achieving,” he said.

By on May 18th, 2023

https://www.jns.org/new-york-mayor-eric-adams-praises-yeshivah-learning/?utm_source=sendinblue&utm_campaign=Daily%20Syndicate%2005-17-2023&utm_medium=email

(May 17, 2023 / JNS) New York City Mayor Eric Adams called for public schools in the five boroughs to learn from the success of some of their non-public counterparts.

Adams said at the annual 2023 Teach NYS dinner on May 10 that “instead of us focusing on how we can duplicate the success of improving our children, we attack the yeshivahs that are providing a quality education that is embracing our children.” Teach NYS is partnered with the Orthodox Union.

The mayor also noted that yeshivahs “have turned around the question mark of ‘how are our children.’ You are making an exclamation point that’s saying, ‘Our children are fine.’ ”

Referencing the recent criticisms and investigations into New York’s Jewish schools, Adams said that “people are asking questions … about what is happening in our yeshivahs across the city and state, while at the same time, 65% of black and brown children never reach proficiency in the public-school system, but we’re asking, ‘What are you doing in your schools?’ ”

He urged: “Let’s reach across our ethnic, cultural and religious philosophies … and appreciate the religious philosophies that are part of the educational opportunity.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Joe Biden, the Habitual Racialist Demagogue His racist commentary and demagoguery is an old story, deployed as needed and in the direction most likely to suit the moment. By Victor Davis Hanson

By on May 18th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/05/17/joe-biden-the-habitual-racialist-demagogue/

The most recent liberal ABC News/Washington Post poll showed Joe Biden’s approval rating at 36 percent—the lowest in history for a president at this point in his first term.

Biden’s low popularity is no mystery. 

He inherited energy independence, affordable gas prices, historically low interest rates, low inflation, calm overseas, a low crime rate, and a largely closed border with legal-only immigration. 

And then Biden destroyed that inheritance. 

He has begged illiberal foreign governments to pump oil he refuses to drill domestically. 

He spiked inflation at the highest rate in over 40 years. 

Home interest rates have skyrocketed from less than 3 percent to 7 percent. 

He nearly doubled the price of gasoline. 

His hare-brained retreat from Afghanistan marked the greatest humiliation of the American military in the last half-century. 

Kabul is now selling billions of dollars’ worth of abandoned American equipment to terrorists and anti-American regimes.

After that fiasco, Biden foolhardily played down a possible “minor” Russia invasion of Ukraine. He implored Russia to exempt some American institutions from its cyber-attack target list. 

No wonder an empowered Putin went into Ukraine. 

Biden’s family is corrupt from top to bottom. 

Its influence peddling schemes increasingly are targets of congressional investigations. Biden himself is explicitly mentioned by his son Hunter as the recipient of a 10 percent commission on monies the family syndicate leveraged from foreign interests. 

Biden promised “unity.” Instead, he habitually smears half the country as “semi-fascists” and “ultra-MAGA” extremists. 

Biden is cognitively challenged and often incoherent. And he is now losing support in the polls from African Americans, once his most loyal constituency.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

The ‘Nakba’ and How it Grew A narrative of deceit dating back to the fall of the Ottoman Empire. by Hugh Fitzgerald

By on May 18th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-nakba-and-how-it-grew/

Along with “apartheid” used as an adjective – as in “Israel is an apartheid state” – haters of Israel have taken to referring to the “Nakba,” the Arabic word for “catastrophe.” The “Nakba” is the word the Arabs now use to describe the failure in the 1948 war of five Arab armies to destroy the Jews of Israel, by expelling or killing every last one. That, of course, is not how the Arabs put it to the Western world: they claim the “Nakba” refers to the defeat of the Arabs who had intervened only to help their Palestinian brothers hold onto the land that had been theirs for centuries, land that the “Zionist entity” was stealing for itself. More on the history of the “Nakba” can be found here: “The Nakba Narrative: A History of Deception,” by Chaim Lax, Honest Reporting, May 8, 2023:

“The Nakba” is repeatedly invoked in the media, academic literature, politics, and popular culture surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Its appearance is so ubiquitous at this point, that it seems like it has always been part of the general lexicon.

However, that is not the case.

Here, we’ll look at the significance of the term “Nakba,” the history of the term from 1948 until the present, how this Arabic term gained popularity around the world, and the new adoption of the term to refer to anti-Jewish persecution by the Arab and Muslim worlds.

In Arabic, the term “al-Nakba” means “the catastrophe.” In the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the catastrophe that the “Nakba” is referring to is the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, and the disintegration of Palestinian Arab life in Israel.

For those who adopt this narrative, the Zionist movement and Israel are solely responsible for the displacement of Palestinian Arabs between 1947 and 1949, while the Arabs themselves are the exclusive victims of the conflict.

By failing to take into account the Palestinian and Arab refusal to accept a two-state solution in 1947 and the subsequent military attempt to destroy the Jewish state, the Nakba narrative advances the claim of perpetual Palestinian victimhood and serves as a historical basis for the Palestinian “right of return.”

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Daniel Cameron Runs Away With Kentucky GOP Gubernatorial Primary By Chris Queen

By on May 18th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/chris-queen/2023/05/17/daniel-cameron-runs-away-with-kentucky-gop-gubernatorial-primary-n1696091

If the Republican Party is full of racists and white supremacists, as some Democrats are fond of saying, somebody may want to tell Daniel Cameron. On Tuesday night, Cameron, the state’s current attorney general, ran away with the Republican primary for governor, emerging triumphant from a crowded field.

Cameron just so happens to be black, which goes to prove Democrats wrong again. He’s also the state’s first black gubernatorial nominee from either party.

The attorney general won with 48% of the vote, which means that, since Kentucky’s primary system awards the win to the candidate who gets the most votes with or without a majority, Cameron proceeds to the general election without a runoff.

The Associated Press reports that Cameron pointed out in his victory speech how historic his win is, stating that his campaign goal is to “embody the promise of America, that if you work hard and if you stand on principle, anything is possible.”

Cameron’s win was so decisive that counting the votes was quick and easy, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal.

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

NYC Parents Are Protesting the Use of School Gyms to House Illegal Aliens By Rick Moran

By on May 18th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2023/05/17/nyc-parents-are-protesting-the-use-of-school-gyms-to-house-illegal-aliens-n1696081

New York City Mayor Eric Adams is denying that using school gymnasiums to house 60,000 illegal aliens who have arrived in the city in the last year will impact students.

“They will not be impacted directly,” Adams said during an interview on 1010 WINS. “They’re not going to be impacted. I’m never going to put our children in harm’s way.”

Is the mayor worried that some illegal aliens won’t be as peaceful and well-behaved as we’re led to believe? Otherwise, why is he denying he’s going to put New York City kids in harm’s way?

At any rate, NYC parents don’t believe hizzoner.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

How Long Does the Media Think It Can Cover for Fetterman’s Cognitive Impairment? By Matt Margolis

By on May 18th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2023/05/17/how-long-does-the-media-think-it-can-cover-for-fettermans-cognitive-impairment-n1696212

Hello, goodnight everybody. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) may have returned to the U.S. Senate, but contrary to the media’s attempt to paint a picture of a triumphant comeback, things really aren’t going all that well.

Following his discharge from Walter Reed, Fetterman eventually resumed his senatorial duties and was presented with an opportunity to showcase his triumphant return by chairing the lesser-known Senate Subcommittee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry. The media was poised to assure the public of his capability to fulfill his Senate responsibilities with the appropriate fanfare. However, Fetterman’s first major outing served as a painful reminder of the cognitive impairments he suffered.

If there was anything Fetterman’s first subcommittee hearing made clear, it was that despite his extended absence from the Senate, there appeared to be no visible advancements in his stroke recovery. So, the media instead opted to paint him as a hero for being so open about his bout with depression, hoping we’d forget about or excuse his obvious frailties.

One cannot help but notice a shift in the media’s strategy since that calamitous hearing in mid-April. Fetterman has discreetly made appearances at a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing, as well as a Senate Banking Committee hearing. The media took no interest. There was no extensive coverage of him back in the saddle, doing the business he was elected to do.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

A Game of Debt-Ceiling Chicken And the cliff we’re speeding towards is an unprecedented default. by Bruce Thornton

By on May 18th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/a-game-of-debt-ceiling-chicken/

A feature of divided government, especially when the House of Representatives is not controlled by the president’s party, is “debt-ceiling chicken.” The president’s party tries to bluff, with threats of a default, the House, which is responsible for initiating money bills, into giving the president whatever he wants, usually more money for redistribution, and no cuts to entitlement spending. The House does the same thing, usually pressuring the other party to accept spending cuts.

The cliff they’re both speeding towards is an unprecedented default on the government’s debt, which currently stands at $31 trillion. Each side calculates that voters will blame the other party, which will slam the brakes first as the cliff approaches. This year Joe Biden, or whatever Edgar Bergan or Edith Wilson is actually calling the shots, until a week ago took a hard stand against any negotiations on raising the debt ceiling with a “clean bill” as the early June deadline looms.

The spectators of this show usually decry the “partisanship” and lack of “bipartisan” cooperation the two parties are exhibiting. Yet disputes over the budget illustrate what the Founders had in mind when they crafted a divided and balanced government––to exploit this factional competition, which reflects a flawed human nature and its passions and interests, in order to protect freedom by setting ambition against ambition. Also, this process can force a more careful consideration of a proposed policy, and sift out the dangerous features and a bringing to light better ones.

Money is integral to this process. The desire for gain accompanies ambition and the lust for power. The ensuing disparities in property, as Madison pointed out, are the cause of rival political factions. Control of the public fisc allows factions to pursue their ideological aims at the expense of others.

During the writing of the Constitution, Gouverneur Morris similarly identified the major factions as comprising the poor and the rich, those with “great personal property” and the “aristocratical spirit.” The “Rich will strive to establish dominion & enslave the rest. They always did. They always will.” To check the ambition of the “rich,” “the popular [non elite] interest will be combined [against] it. There will be mutual check and mutual security.”

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

China’s Great Plan, Coming to a Country Near You Christopher Nance

By on May 18th, 2023

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2023/05/chinas-great-plan-coming-to-a-country-near-you/

“China is not interested in invading Australia. It is not a threat to anyone,” the former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating said in a National Press Club interview on March 15. It was an astonishing statement from a man who usually displays a sound awareness of national and global affairs, because the course of events shows that China is intent on being the dominant world power. Indeed, it has unwaveringly and determinedly followed a plan and a process to that effect for almost fifty years.

In 1976 Mao Zedong died and was replaced in 1978 by Deng Xiaoping. Deng never held the posts of chairman or president, but nevertheless he was the de facto supreme leader for over a decade and his government commenced a process and implemented a broad-brush plan which established the principles and the basis for all its actions ever since. The process has been applied in a resolute, methodical and single-minded fashion. Because of the secretive nature of China’s government it is not clear if a definitive original plan exists in a single document, but its key elements are clear from the trajectory of the nation’s development in recent decades. Countless papers have been written about China, but this article summarises the core features of the process and the plan as evidenced by the way they have been implemented. The plan and the process of implementation have been modified and refined over time, but there are several key elements that have remained steadfast.

The aim of the plan is simple and straightforward: to establish China as the pre-eminent nation in the world. This objective was prompted by the sense of national humiliation that Chinese people felt they had experienced at the hands of Western countries since the early nineteenth century. Also, it stemmed from the self-belief that China had always been a great nation and that it should become great again. The plan requires that everything—everything—must be dedicated to that end, and all the actions of the Chinese government, Chinese corporations, individuals, and all social and cultural agencies are expected to contribute. Moreover, all international activities undertaken by China, including those which appear to be benign and benevolent (such as foreign aid and Confucius institutes), must be seen as contributing in some way to the progress of the mother country.

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BOOKS Comments turned off

Mike Pompeo’s Conservative Internationalism Daryl McCann

By on May 18th, 2023

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2023/05/pompeos-conservative-internationalism/

The coherent and successful foreign policy Ronald Reagan pursued from 1981 to 1989 might be referred to, at least in retrospect, as “conservative internationalism”. The American political scientist Henry R. Nau, in Conservative Internationalism: Armed Diplomacy under Jefferson, Polk, Truman, and Reagan (2013), argues that conservative internationalism features the best aspects of the three main US foreign policy traditions—liberal internationalism, realism or realpolitik, and nationalism—and in doing so creates a fourth, often overlooked, tradition. Conservative internationalism, according to Nau, aims to promote freedom no less than does liberal internationalism, augment diplomatic outreach with military superiority as does realpolitik, and maintain national sovereignty as per anti-globalist patriotism. Mike Pompeo, former director of the CIA, and Secretary of State from 2018 to 2021, makes the case in Never Give an Inch that the Trump administration, sometimes despite Trump himself, followed a conservative internationalist path and that its “peace through strength” attitude mostly worked.

Conservative internationalism, so defined, was the mainstay of US foreign policy for most of the Cold War years. There were exceptions. One of them was the realpolitik of Nixon and Kissinger bringing Beijing in from the cold in 1972 as leverage against the Kremlin. Nonetheless, it was the imprudence of liberal internationalism that explains why our power elites in the West thereafter downplayed Beijing’s imperial ambitions. Trump vociferously disputed the long-accepted Washington (plus Wall Street, the mainstream, academia, Hollywood and so on) consensus that Sino-American relations were a win-win for both sides. In Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again (2015), Trump fired off this broadside at Beijing:

They have destroyed entire industries by utilizing low-wage workers, cost us tens of thousands of jobs, spied on our businesses, stolen our technology, and have manipulated and devalued their currency, which makes importing our goods more expensive—and sometimes, impossible.

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