https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/09/video-helping-saudis-slip-away-frontpagemagcom/
With the 19th anniversary of 9/11 having just passed, Frontpage Mag editors have deemed it vital to run the special Glazov Gang episode in which Clare Lopez discusses Helping Saudis Slip Away, unveiling the highly disturbing facts about an eerie evacuation right after 9/11.
Don’t miss it!
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16337/self-censorship-in-the-us
The US nominally enshrines the most far-reaching freedom of speech, thanks to the First Amendment of the Constitution. Yet the average number of Americans who self-censor is slowly beginning to approximate that of Germany, where… “Nearly two-thirds of citizens are convinced that ‘today one has to be very careful on which topics one expresses oneself’, because there are many unwritten laws about what opinions are acceptable and admissible”.
It is, however, not surprising. American campuses have steered a “leftist” course for decades. The tilt has had familiar consequences: the proliferation on campus of “safe spaces”, trigger warnings, de-platforming of conservative voices and a “cancel culture” aimed at professors and students who do not conform to an on-campus political orthodoxy that has become increasingly totalitarian. Most recently, the dean of University of Massachusetts Lowell’s School of Nursing, Leslie Neal-Boylan, was fired by the school after writing “Black lives matter, but also everyone’s life matters” in an email to students and faculty.
When citizens stop voicing their concerns in public about current events, policies and ideas out of fear that they will lose their livelihoods and social standing, it is — or should be — a huge problem in a democracy.
A democratic society of fearful citizens who dare not speak about what is on their minds — often important issues of their time — is doomed to succumb to the will of those who bully the hardest and shout the loudest.
A recent survey of 2,000 Americans by Cato Institute/YouGov found that 62% of Americans say “the political climate these days prevents them from saying things they believe because others might find them offensive”. This is up from 2017, when 58% agreed with this statement. “Majorities of Democrats (52%), independents (59%) and Republicans (77%) all agree they have political opinions they are afraid to share”.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16515/the-new-middle-east
In 2015, the UAE passed a law against religious discrimination by creating ministries of tolerance, happiness and youth to develop an enlightened community — everyone included.
A year later, schools in the UAE started teaching students peace and tolerance.
When the UAE prioritized national belonging over extremist obsessions, the decision immediately led to making peace with Israel.
My one hope as an Emirati is that we become a light for the world. It could make the entire region — the lives of everyone, including the Palestinians — so unimaginably great.
The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have taken a serious step in moving out of the draconian shackles of mindless and mumbling caliphate fantasies that some extremists mention as wiping out the Jewish people in a final conquest for the globe.
The UAE’s groundwork to weed out this hogwash began five years ago. In 2015, the UAE passed a law against religious discrimination by creating ministries of tolerance, happiness and youth to develop an enlightened community — everyone included. A year later, schools in the UAE started teaching students peace and tolerance.
By 2019, we were open and receptive to a memorable year in our national history — it was named the Year of Tolerance. It was then that the construction of the Abrahamic Family House was announced. It will include in one place a synagogue, a church and a mosque. That same year, Pope Francis made an epic visit to the UAE where, in the capital’s sports stadium, the first Papal Mass in Abu Dhabi was held, attended by close to 180,000 people.
When the UAE prioritized national belonging over extremist obsessions, the decision immediately led to making peace with Israel.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/09/donald-trumps-foreign-policy-successes-bruce-thornton/
The recent agreements between Israel and two Gulf states mark yet another foreign policy achievement by the Trump administration. Five years ago no one could have anticipated that two more Arab states would normalize relations with Israel, with others to follow, perhaps even Saudi Arabia, “The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques.” The decrepit “peace process” was stalled, and Barack Obama’s appeasing nuclear deal with the mullahs had left the region to the tender mercies of Iran and Russia. America was, as Obama put it, just one nation among others, “mindful of its imperfections.”
Then came Donald Trump, the amateur outsider whom the foreign policy establishment, trapped like a fly in amber by stale, failed paradigms, mocked and dismissed with predictions of existential doom from his foreign policy ignorance and bumbling. Yet Trump, like the “amiable dunce” Ronald Reagan, understood that the establishment’s narratives were endangering our security and interests. He brought some practical wisdom, common sense about human nature, and real-world experience to foreign policy, and recalibrated it with a few simple, Reaganesque principles: We win, they lose; America’s interests are paramount; and we should always be “no better friend, no worse enemy,” a foundational principle of foreign relations that Obama had turned on its head.
Trump’s current successes, on top of the agreement he brokered between bitter historical enemies Serbia and Kosovo, show that his paradigm-shift must be followed by a new foreign policy that can end the long string of failures under both parties. The longest of these is the Israeli-Arab conflict. Resolving this dispute has been the greatest prize for the “rules-based global order” that believes brokered negotiations, treaties, summits, photo-ops, and copious foreign aid, are the only means of ending conflict.
In terms of the Israel-Arab conflict, the old approach favored––and worsened––by Barack Obama illustrates the revolutionary nature of Trump’s foreign policy shift. Obama, a product of the elite’s unexamined received foreign policy wisdom, accepted the State Department’s hoary nostrums and doctrines. Seventy years of wars and terrorist violence were thus explained by the Palestinian people’s unfulfilled nationalist aspirations and dreams of independence, unlike the old colonies of the Western nations who gained independence after World War II.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/09/trump_is_right_science_doesnt_know_the_problem_is_that_supposed_journalists_dont_care.html
Here are some facts that most of the media, scientists, entertainers, and other Democrats choose to ignore as they indoctrinate the public, especially the children about ‘science’:
Environmentalists and politicians have mismanaged forests for decades in California and elsewhere. They won’t clear cut, clear out brush and leaves, allow logging or build in firebreaks. It leaves the area much more vulnerable to heat, lightning, wind, accidental or intentional fires to combust wildly. The fires are clearly not caused by oil use.
The Earth has had many lengthy warming and cooling periods throughout its history, long before humans and oil use could have had any effect.
Floods, storms, and droughts have been extensive throughout the Earth’s history. How else would it be covered by so many deserts and so many deep seas?
The English Channel was formed around 400,000 years ago because of massive floods.
The Sahara Desert used to be lush and green before it became a desert around 9,000 years ago. It has essentially been in a 9,000-year drought.
California has had decades long severe droughts before man or petroleum use could have had any effect. That is why it is covered by so much desert.
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-police-heroism-in-compton/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=first
Last Friday, when we marked the 19th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, one thing that did not get enough attention was the sacrifice of the police, firefighters, and other first responders, hundreds of whom were killed that day. First responders is an apt term for them. They are the people who show up. They knowingly charge into the dangers from which most of us flee.
Then on Saturday came the atrocious attempted murder of two Los Angeles County deputy sheriffs in Compton, by an assassin who is still at large. Once again, what is striking is the heroism of the police. It is awesome to see, but it is routine heroism if, like me, you’ve spent lots of time around cops.
One of the deputies who was shot was Claudia Apolinar, a 31-year-old former librarian, the mother of a six-year-old boy and on the job for a year, saved her 24-year-old partner (who has not been publicly identified at this time). Deputy Apolinar had been shot in the jaw area and the upper torso, and was bleeding profusely. Yet, she had the presence of mind, and the courage under circumstances where she could not be sure the attack was over, to lend medical aid — apparently including application of a tourniquet to her fellow deputy.
What do we see on the other side of the equation? A sneak attack on two law-enforcement officers who were simply protecting a community rife with anti-police hostility. More of those precious “peaceful protesters” blocking the entrance to the nearby hospital to make it difficult for ambulances to get through, with some of the “peaceful protesters” chanting, “We hope they die!” And other locals celebrating the deadly ambush of police.
Pure evil.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/09/california-forest-fires-taxes-homelessness-same-old-fall-problems/#slide-1
Tech titans and Bay Area Bourbons grow rich, the middle class flees, forests burn.
F all is almost here in California. So we know the annual script.
A few ostracized voices will again warn in vain of the need to remove millions of dead trees withered from the 2013–14 drought and subsequent infestations, clean up tinderbox hillsides, and beef up the fire services. They will all be ignored as right-wing nuts or worse.Environmentalists will sneer that the new forestry sees fires as medicinal and natural, and global warming as inevitable because of “climate deniers.”
Late-summer fires will then consume our foothills, mountains, and forests. Long-dead trees from the drought will explode and send their pitch bombs to shower the forest with flames.
Lives, livelihoods, homes, and cabins will be lost — the lamentable collateral damage of our green future. Billions of dollars will go up in smoke. The billowing haze and ash will cloud and pollute the state for weeks if not months. Tens of thousands will be evacuated and their lives disrupted — and those are the lucky.
California’s deer-in-the headlight progressive officials will blame “climate change” for the conflagrations. The accompanying power brownouts, tardy responses, and official blame-gaming will follow as a prelude for still more solar-panel farms and still less forest management.
There could be a long answer to explain why California for years abandoned dead drought- and insect-stricken trees — over some 60 million of these withered, towering time bombs in their coastal and Sierra forests — to rot. But the short of it was that the kindling and tinderboxes were seen as perfect green mulch for flora and fauna.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/japans-new-prime-minister-11600195666?mod=opinion_lead_pos4
Yoshihide Suga becomes Japan’s prime minister this week, having been elected leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party on Monday. His elevation comes at an important moment for the world’s third-largest economy, and presents new opportunities.
Mr. Suga succeeds Shinzo Abe, who resigned for ill health. He inherits an economy that contracted nearly 28% on an annual basis in the second quarter due to the pandemic. The 2020 Summer Olympics, intended to mark a national renaissance, were postponed. Tokyo has rolled out fiscal stimulus worth some $2.2 trillion, or 40% of gross domestic product—despite a debt-to-GDP ratio already at 230% before the crisis.
Mr. Suga seems set to respond by extending his predecessor’s reform program. Mr. Abe promised to revive the Japanese economy by firing “three arrows” of fiscal and monetary stimulus and policy liberalization. Only the first two arrows launched as hoped, although Mr. Abe did make progress on labor-law and corporate-governance reform and more open immigration. He also tried to negotiate high-quality trade deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership to spur domestic competitiveness.
Mr. Suga played a leading role in the development and implementation of this agenda as Mr. Abe’s long-serving cabinet secretary. Now he’s coming with ideas of his own, including an emphasis on reforming inefficient regional banks. Japan has too many and they earn too little profit. Mr. Abe’s monetary explosion hasn’t helped, and Mr. Suga has long believed that consolidation would boost their ability to lend to smaller companies. He also appears to want to remove policy hurdles to consolidation and mergers among smaller firms in the hope that this might stimulate productivity gains.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-long-road-to-israels-very-good-month-11600124843?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=9
Not since May 1948, when both the U.S. and the Soviet Union recognized the state of Israel in the critical weeks of its war for independence, has Israel had a diplomatic month like this. On Aug. 13, the United Arab Emirates and Israel signed an agreement to normalize relations, with the formal ceremony to be held Tuesday in Washington with President Trump. On Sept. 11, Bahrain followed suit. The Palestinian Authority, holding the rotating chair of the Arab League, introduced a resolution condemning the U.A.E. move at a Zoom session of Arab foreign ministers, but in a shocking departure from past practice, the motion failed to pass. On Sept. 13 another Arab nation, Oman, issued a statement of support for Bahrain’s decision to normalize relations.
Meanwhile, defying pressure from the European Union and in exchange for Israeli recognition of Kosovo’s independence, Kosovo became the first Muslim-majority country in the world to agree to place an embassy in Jerusalem in another Trump-brokered deal. (The status of a similar pledge from Serbia isn’t clear.)
With Saudi Arabia allowing flights from Israel to the U.A.E. to pass over its territory and Morocco reported to be close to allowing direct flights to the Jewish state, something of a tipping point seems to have been reached in the Middle East. Resentment of Zionism and sympathy for the Palestinians will no longer be allowed to interfere with what embattled Arab rulers see as a vital relationship.
These changes are evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Arab opposition to Israel’s existence has never been as unanimous or implacable as casual observers sometimes assume. Geopolitically, conservative Arab states have long understood that their interests and Israel’s are connected.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-art-of-a-mideast-deal-11600211909?mod=opinion_lead_pos1
How would official Washington respond if a Democratic President brokered a peace deal between Israel and two Arab states? The papers would be stacked with play-by-plays of how the historic breakthrough was achieved and adulatory profiles of the people in the room. The hosannas to the President’s strategic vision would flow from think tanks and academia, if not also from Oslo’s City Hall.
The reaction Tuesday to the signing of the Abraham Accords between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain at the White House was more muted, and maybe that’s for the best. Some groundwork for the cascading thaw in Arab-Israeli relations was laid by a decade of shifts in the Middle East’s balance of power as Israel grew stronger, the Iran threat persisted, and the U.S. signaled its intention to draw down.
Yet the Trump Administration deserves credit for taking advantage of these strategic shifts, and for setting aside the failed conventional playbook for how Arab-Israeli comity could be achieved. The Abraham Accords, named for the prophet of Jews, Christians and Muslims alike, are based on mutual interest. Mr. Trump has been criticized for a transactional view of world affairs, and we sometimes worry about how that will play out, for example, in East Asia. Yet in the Middle East, hard-headed transactionalism may have been what was needed.
American negotiators have tried for years to press the Israelis and Palestinians to give up something in a leap of faith and hope that peace will follow. Each side saw that as a lose-lose proposition. But peace between Arab states and Israel offered a win-win.
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