RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nysun.com/foreign/diplomatic-dodge-biden-hiding-behind-the-skirts/91623/

America — the founder of the United Nations, its biggest benefactor, and once its leading power player — now hides behind the skirts of the UN’s diplomats.

Exaggeration? It’s hard to escape President Biden’s attempts, via his aides, to convey a hyped-up, almost comical confidence in the magical powers of the UN to change realities in places like Afghanistan

In the face of horrifying images of deadly chaos at Kabul’s airport and reports of the Taliban conducting door to door executions, Mr. Biden appeared to be unable to slow — or even gauge — the catastrophe that his decisions had precipitated. Instead, he hid at Camp David

So it was the United Nations to the rescue, after a fashion. With Mr. Biden practically AWOL as the largest crisis of his presidency unfolds, Washington officials touted one success: uniting on Monday the 15-member Security Council behind a press statement, its least enforceable form of action. They presented that statement as a silver bullet with which to scare the Taliban into submission.

America’s Turtle Bay ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told CNN, “We have expressed in no uncertain terms here at the United Nations, through a very strongly-worded press statement from the Security Council, that we expect the Taliban to respect human rights, including the rights of women and girls. We have also indicated that they have to be respectful of humanitarian law.”

The State Department spokesman, Ned Price, added in his daily briefing, “The UN Security Council . . . spoke with one voice to underscore that Afghanistan must abide by its international obligations, including to international humanitarian law, and insure the safety and security of all Afghans and international citizens.”

Mr. Biden, meanwhile, spent the crisis at his Delaware home and at Camp David. On Monday he delivered a widely-panned speech from the White House, after which he immediately hightailed back to Camp David. He then spent some more quality time at Delaware before, finally, returning to Washington today.

During that time the commander in chief declined to brief Congress on steps, if any, taken to ease the stress of up to 15,000 American citizens trapped in the Afghan mess that his decisions have created. Also ignored were a number of Afghans that have aided America for 20 years and now face the Taliban’s ire, and likely their bullets, too.

After the press outcry following National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan’s disclosure Tuesday that Mr. Biden has not consulted any foreign leader since the crisis started, the White House hastily arranged a quick phone call with Prime Minister Boris Johnson. That was far from enough to calm global fears about America’s commitment to participate in, let alone lead, world affairs.

At the UN’s headquarters at Turtle Bay, New York, speeches were made, briefings were listened to, and allies united behind meaningless pronouncements. How meaningless? To pass Monday’s statement, all 15 council members had to agree, including Beijing, which earlier had rushed to recognize the Taliban rule and is widely expected to be its top benefactor.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/08/new-dhs-alert-youre-potential-terrorist-if-you-gen-michael-flynn/

https://www.westernjournal.com/exclusive-gen-flynn-since-new-dhs-alert-potential-terrorist-oppose-white-house-lies/

On Sept. 17, 2021, our nation will celebrate the 234th anniversary of our beloved U.S. Constitution.

The fact that this document has lasted for such a period is a remarkable feat. Legal scholars have reviewed national constitutions that have been adopted since 1789 and concluded that they lasted an average of only 17 years.

But as I travel the country, Americans are asking me, “How much longer do we have before our constitutional protections are wiped away? How long before our nation descends into a real tyranny?” One friend went as far as saying, “If you criticize this administration, they call it hate speech; if you disagree with their actions, they call you a domestic terrorist.”

My friend wasn’t exaggerating, reading the most recent Department of Homeland Security issuance on Friday of a nationwide terrorism alert message titled “National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin.”

To be frank, I was stunned and found myself asking, have we, the United States of America, sunk to a new low? Although we are approaching the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks against our nation, this terrorism alert does not say one word about Muslim extremism being a threat and it barely mentions al-Qaida.

Rather, this terrorism bulletin focuses on the Bidens’ political opponents. Its sweeping rhetoric was so broad that it could put under suspicion more than half of all Americans. Is the Biden administration redefining domestic terrorism? Will having a pro-American set of beliefs and using the word “patriot” get you labeled a domestic terrorist?

The alert focuses on those who resist the Anthony Fauci COVID-19 narrative, stating that “threats are also exacerbated by impacts of the ongoing global pandemic, including grievances over public health safety measures and perceived government restrictions.” I wonder what “perceived” government restrictions they had in mind — aren’t the real restrictions damaging enough?

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/08/where-are-gays-bruce-bawer/

In the last couple of days, as the Taliban consolidated its position in the Afghan capital, I had to go all the way to New Zealand to find an English-language gay news website which acknowledged that this lightning reconquista wasn’t exactly a great development for gay Afghans.

Under the headline “Taliban Plan to Crush Gay Men to Death as they Close in on Capturing Afghanistan,” the Gay Express reminded readers that during the years of Taliban rule (1996-2001), adulterers were executed, thieves subjected to amputation, girls over 10 denied schooling, movie theaters closed, Western TV and music banned, women forced into burkas, and men ordered to wear beards.

In what seems a strict violation of the unwritten rule of Western gay media – i.e. never to say anything positive about the U.S., and especially about Republican governments in the U.S. – the Kiwi website noted that “[w]hile homosexuality has always remained illegal in Afghanistan, laws making it punishable by death were repealed when the United States invaded in 2001.”

But that, warned the website, will surely be reversed, given Taliban judge Gul Rahim’s recent assurance, in an interview with Bild (Germany), that gays, under a new Taliban regime, would be “crushed to death by toppling walls.”

But that story was, as noted, an outlier in the gay Anglosphere. When I turned from the Gay Express to other sites, I found nary a word about the Taliban’s grim plans.

At Pink News (UK), the highlighted stories concerned the firing of a gay teacher by a Christian school in Sydney, Australia; a ban on Pride flags at another school in Newburg, Oregon; and the loss of a lawsuit by Hobby Lobby, a chain of arts-and-crafts stores, which had refused to let M-to-F transsexuals use its ladies’ rooms. 

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/08/18/how-did-we-go-from-energy-dominance-to-energy-begging-in-8-months/

In his first day in office, President Joe Biden embarked on a campaign to rein in domestic oil and gas production. On his 204th day in office, he was pleading with OPEC to increase its production to stem the sharp rise in gasoline prices, to which OPEC said no dice.

Virtually overnight, the nation has gone from Trump-era “energy dominance” to a Carter-era energy crisis.

But unlike Jimmy Carter, who blundered his way into gasoline shortages, Biden is intentionally creating the current situation to pay homage to climate “crisis” environmentalists.

During his presidential campaign, Biden promised to “get rid of fossil fuels.” Since taking office, he’s been busy trying to carry out that pledge.

One of the first things he did in office was to call a halt on oil and gas leases on federal lands and off our coastlines, and has yet to resume allowing them even after a federal judge ordered the administration to do so. He shut down construction of the Keystone Pipeline. He blocked energy development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He directed federal agencies to “eliminate fossil fuel subsidies as consistent with applicable law.” He’s promised to add some $90 billion to the industry’s tax burden by eliminating what he calls tax “subsidies.”

Even now, the administration “is preparing to release a blueprint for limiting sales of U.S. drilling rights as rising oil and gasoline prices highlight the risks of curtailing domestic crude production,” reports Bloomberg. “The Interior Department also is expected to limit new leases in some sensitive coastal and Western areas and begin a broad study of the climate effects of oil and gas development on federal property.”