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Ruth King

The New Cold War is at Sea If there ever has been a time to educate America about the strategic utility of maritime power, and its essential role in advancing American security, this is the time. By James E. Fanell and Bradley A. Thayer

https://amgreatness.com/2024/12/01/the-new-cold-war-is-at-sea/

Since the end of Operation Desert Storm and the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.S. Department of Defense has failed to maintain one of the principal dictates of great power competition—the necessity of having a well-balanced military force. This deficiency has been most evident in the maritime domain. Tellingly, the size of the U.S. Navy has shrunk from about 600 warships in 1986 to just over 290 ships today. This decline in the size, and capabilities, of the U.S. Navy occurred in large part because the nation’s leader was obsessed with what has been termed as “endless wars”—those fought in the land domains of the Middle East (ME), Southwest Asia (SWA), and now Eastern Europe. Unfortunately, this myopic focus on ground war has occurred just as the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has conducted the largest naval build-up and modernization of any nation since the end of World War II.

The reality of these two diametrically opposed trendlines was brought to a head this past week by a series of announcements from both the PRC and U.S., which signals what can be declared as the end of “endless ground wars” and what should be a return to a balanced national defense strategy—namely one that includes the foundational importance of maritime power—something that has been sorely neglected over the past three decades.

The first announcement was made by the PRC’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi who made the unusual statement that “China is ready to work with other countries to use the three global initiatives as an opportunity to elevate global maritime governance and improve the well-being of all people.” Since coming to power in late 2012, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping has implemented three global governance initiatives: the Global Development Initiative in September 2021, the Global Security Initiative in April 2022, and the Global Civilization Initiative in March 2023.

Yes, Mexico Knows Exactly What It Is Doing Mexico understands that an open border, the destruction of U.S. immigration law, illegal immigration, and emigration of millions of its own citizens to America are entirely in its own interests. By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2024/12/02/yes-mexico-knows-exactly-what-it-is-doing/

President-elect Donald Trump recently had a “talk” with newly elected Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum about the millions who have crossed through Mexico to enter the U.S. illegally.

Afterwards, Trump reported that their conversation went well, and supposedly both had agreed to secure the U.S. border.

But given long-standing, de facto Mexican policy to rely on and profit from an open U.S. border, it was not long afterwards that Sheinbaum claimed she had not been so accommodating.

Or, as she now put it of the Trump conversation, “I give you the certainty that we would never—and we would be incapable of it—propose that we would close the border.” And of course, she is right: Mexico never would wish for a secure U.S. border, although it is wrong that she is incapable of guaranteeing one should she choose to do so.

What, then, is going on?

Over the last half-century, Mexico has gradually, even insidiously, developed both a one-sided, asymmetrical relationship with the U.S. based on professed mutual benefit and yet sought to leverage America by claiming it is supposedly guilty for two centuries of oppressive treatment.

How does the strange U.S.-Mexico supposed co-dependence seem to work?

The Mexican government has traditionally seen the U.S. as an endlessly wealthy country, liberally governed, and more or less willing to listen to Mexico’s grievances of the sort that are common in asymmetrical partnerships.

About 60 percent of the Mexican people traditionally in polls have voiced a positive view of the United States, yet a surprisingly low number when considering the millions who try to cross its border illegally each year.

Nonetheless, Mexico for decades has conveniently explained the vast influxes across the border, unaudited and illegal, as largely in America’s interests—and mirabile dictu even to Mexico’s disadvantage. Polls tell, however, a vastly different and far more accurate story.

Leftist NY Attorney General and Judge vs. the Rule of Law How they weaponized the justice system to get Trump. by Joseph Klein

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm-plus/leftist-ny-attorney-general-and-judge-vs-the-rule-of-law/

New York State Attorney General Letitia James and New York Supreme Court Judge Arthur F. Engoron have provided a case study in how the Left conducts war against the integrity and impartiality of law enforcement and the judiciary. Together, they weaponized the justice system to wage their personal vendetta against Donald Trump. Their weapon of choice was a broad and vaguely written New York State fraud statute, Executive Law Section 63(12), which they maliciously twisted for the purpose of ruining Mr. Trump financially.

In 2022, Judge Engoron told Donald Trump’s attorney that Mr. Trump is “just a bad guy” whom Letitia James “should go after as the chief law enforcement officer of the state,” which is precisely what she was doing. Judge Engoron’s highly biased statement alone should have disqualified him from presiding over any case involving Mr. Trump. This judge should also have been disqualified for donating to the Manhattan Democrats in violation of Section 100.5(h) of the New York Courts Rules of Judicial Conduct. But Judge Engoron remained on the case.

Judge Engoron had no reason to doubt that Ms. James would zealously “go after” the man who Judge Engoron smeared as “a bad guy.”  After all, this left-wing fanatic had promised during her attorney general election campaign to target then-President Trump. “I’m running for attorney general because I will never be afraid to challenge this illegitimate president when our fundamental rights are at stake,” this election denier declared. “We need an attorney general who will stand up to Donald Trump.”

Biden Pardons Son and Co-Conspirator Joe Biden did not just pardon Hunter: he pardoned himself. by Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/biden-pardons-son-and-co-conspirator/

The long investigation of the Biden Crime Family ended when its principal member extended a “full and unconditional” pardon to its front man for any and all crimes that Hunter Biden might have committed or taken part in from January 2014 through Dec 1 2024.

The eleven year pardon by Joe Biden for his son and apparent co-conspirator is unprecedented in both its scope and its brazen shameless criminality. Biden’s pardon begins in the last two years of his vice presidency when the lame duck politician was using Hunter to aggressively monetize his fading political influence by conspiring with oligarchs around the world.

President Biden claimed in a press release that he pardoned his son to protect him from being charged for lying on his gun form and failing to pay taxes. But if Biden had been trying to deal with those two cases, he could have just commuted the sentences or offered a narrower pardon.

The gun form incident took place in 2018 and Hunter stopped paying taxes in 2016. Why start the pardon clock on Jan 2014? And why does it end at the vast last possible moment?

What is Joe Biden really trying to protect against?

2014 was the year that Hunter Biden joined the board of Ukraine’s Burisma, scoring a $1 million payday, and millions more for the Biden Crime Family. It was also the year that Yelena Baturina, the wife of former Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov sent $3.5 million to a Hunter organization and attended an event with Joe Biden in D.C. It was also the year that a Kazakh oligarch who had just taken over the BTA Bank with whom both Joe was photographed sent six figures.

Republicans Love Trump’s Top White House Picks — Dems, Indies Not So Much: I&I/TIPP Poll

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/12/02/republicans-love-trumps-top-white-house-picks-dems-indies-not-so-much-ii-tipp-poll/

Americans overall have a very favorable response to President-elect Donald Trump’s picks to staff his new administration, but they still appear to be in wait-and-see mode when it comes to some of Trump’s selections to help lead his White House. And it’s very much a political thing, the latest I&I/TIPP shows.

In the latest online national I&I/TIPP Poll, taken from Nov. 27 -29, 1,411 adult registered voters were asked the following short question: “Do you approve or disapprove of Donald Trump’s handling of his presidential transition?”

Despite the the irregular and at times bitter 2024 presidential election, a solid majority of 54% said they either “approve strongly” (30%) or “approve somewhat” (24%) of Trump’s transition and early selections to run his administration. The poll has a margin of error of +/-2.7 percentage points.

A sizable but still-smaller 38% said they either “disapprove strongly” (10%) or “disapprove somewhat” (28%), while another 8% described themselves as “not sure.”

Yiddish Is a Supposedly Dying Language That’s Thrillingly Alive John McWhorter

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/28/opinion/yiddish-hebrew-language-thriving.html?unlocked_article_code=1.eE4.Zue4.U9O4DqrnHWz9&smid=url-share

A Columbia University linguist explores how race and language shape our politics and culture.

If I tell you that there are languages other than English that someone in America could live a whole life in, which would come to mind? Spanish, maybe? Chinese? Both are spoken in (among many other settings) tight-knit communities that are continually refreshed by new immigration. Pondering a little further, you might think of rural Amish communities that speak dialects of German.

I doubt that many people would think of Yiddish.

In mainstream American culture Yiddish — an Eastern European blend of German with a great many Hebrew, Aramaic and Slavic words — is these days either a punchline (a “chutzpah” or a “klutz” in a comic’s monologue) or a historic footnote, a vanishing artifact of a long-gone era. Rueful tales of the days when New York supported a dozen Yiddish-language newspapers, or articles about the last of the Yiddish bookstores, always gave the language a twilight air. Even the stated intention of some younger people to revive Yiddish implies that the language requires some kind of resuscitation.

That would be a surprise to people who live in ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities such as Kiryas Joel and Monsey, N.Y., where Yiddish is the dominant language. Despite supposedly vanishing into history, it has 250,000 speakers in America alone, the majority of them in settings like these.

I have had the pleasure and privilege of getting to know one such family during my summer stays at an old Jewish bungalow colony. That family — a husband and wife, along with two of their grown daughters and a grandchild — have taught me a great deal about the language and what it means to them.

Ivy League Holocaust professor charges Israel with genocide -Andrew Harrod

https://www.jns.org/ivy-league-holocaust-professor-charges-israel-with-genocide/

Not even Jews facing a recent organized pogrom in Amsterdam received his complete sympathy.

Omer Bartov, Brown University’s Samuel Pisar professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, called Israel’s ongoing Gaza military campaign a “genocide operation” in a Nov. 11 podcast “Gaza and the Question of Genocide.”
Addressing Georgetown University’s Saudi-supported Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU), Bartov, an Israeli Holocaust historian, failed miserably to substantiate his outrageous accusation. The irony that a scholar of such reputation and subject specialty would make such egregiously false claims was not lost on Bartov’s hosts, who surely invited him knowing that his stance would be useful in their propaganda war against Israel.

As ACMCU’s reliably anti-Israel director Nader Hashemi moderated, Bartov discussed Israeli policies in the post-Oct. 7, 2023 context. He said the barbarous Hamas jihadist assault upon Israel “should be classified as a war crime and as a crime against humanity.”

Trump White House affords chance to confront Lebanese terror bank By David Isaac

https://www.jns.org/trump-white-house-affords-chance-to-confront-lebanese-terror-bank/

President-elect Donald Trump’s electoral victory offers a golden opportunity to shut down a Lebanese bank, one critical to Iran and Hezbollah, that has so far escaped sanctions even as it serves as one of the main conduits of terror financing, observers tell JNS.

While numerous Lebanese banks and individuals have been slapped with sanctions by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), the Middle East & Africa Bank (MEAB), the 15th largest by deposits in Lebanon, has fallen through the cracks.

In 2019, MEAB bank was named as a defendant in a case, still ongoing, in the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of New York, brought by American citizens and the families of American citizens who were killed or injured in Iraq between 2004 and 2011 in attacks orchestrated by Hezbollah in coordination with other terrorist groups.

In 2006, MEAB Bank’s offices were targeted by Israeli fighter jets after a fundraising appeal aired on Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television station asking that donations for the terrorist group be sent to a specific account at the bank.

Haig Melkessetian, a former intelligence operative for the U.S. Defense and State departments, has investigated MEAB extensively. He told JNS that the reason MEAB has evaded sanctions is that it has friends in high places.

In January 2015, during the Iran nuclear talks, Mohammad Zarif, the Islamic Republic’s foreign minister at the time, asked then-U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry “to go easy on MEAB,” in other words, that it be kept off the OFAC sanctions list, Melkessetian said.

David Wurmser, a senior analyst at the Washington-based Center for Security Policy, who has researched the bank and the Shi’ite clan behind it, told JNS, “It’s very clear that the Iranians were out to preserve their core structures, and this bank really lies at the center of the global reach of Hezbollah, and through Hezbollah, the global reach of Iran.”

Charging Netanyahu with War Crimes Shows the ICC Is Illegitimate and Not Fit for Purpose by Con Coughlin

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21169/icc-netanyahu-arrest-warrant

[T]he International Criminal Court (ICC)… should be defunded, dismantled, or both.

[By] law, the ICC is precluded from prosecuting any country that already has a valid judiciary system. This stipulation is the based on the treaty upon which the ICC was founded.

Another option that should be considered is for the incoming Trump administration’s new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), to establish whether maintaining US funding for bodies such as the United Nations and its affiliates, the ICC and ICJ, all of which display a strong anti-Israeli bias, is in Washington’s best interests. Certainly, without the lavish funding these bodies receive from Western governments, their ability to pursue their own twisted agenda will at least be severely curtailed.

The decision by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant on unsubstantiated war crimes charges, shows that the body is unfit for purpose, and should be defunded, dismantled, or both.

First, by law, the ICC is precluded from prosecuting any country that already has a valid judiciary system. This stipulation is the based on the treaty upon which the ICC was founded.

US defence attorney Alan Dershowitz is assembling a “legal dream team” to contest the charges. He emphasized that it would base its argument on the ICC’s lack of jurisdiction.

It’s Official — Trump Names Deep State Foe Kash Patel FBI Director Robert Spencer

https://pjmedia.com/robert-spencer/2024/11/30/breaking-its-official-trump-names-deep-state-foe-kash-patel-fbi-director-n4934745

The appointment has been rumored ever since Donald Trump was reelected president of the United States, and on Saturday evening, he made it official: “I am proud to announce,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, “that Kashyap ‘Kash’ Patel will serve as the next Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” This is an extraordinary and highly significant appointment, as Patel has been a harsh critic of the far-left, highly politicized and deeply corrupt FBI. A thoroughgoing housecleaning appears to be in the offing — unless the deep state that Patel will be targeting manages to defeat him in a head-on confrontation.

Trump added in his announcement:

Kash is a brilliant lawyer, investigator, and “America First” fighter who has spent his career exposing corruption, defending Justice, and protecting the American People. He played a pivotal role in uncovering the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, standing as an advocate for truth, accountability, and the Constitution. Kash did an incredible job during my First Term, where he served as Chief of Staff at the Department of Defense, Deputy Director of National Intelligence, and Senior Director for Counterterrorism at the National Security Council. Kash has also tried over 60 jury trials. This FBI will end the growing crime epidemic in America, dismantle the migrant criminal gangs, and stop the evil scourge of human and drug trafficking across the Border. Kash will work under our great Attorney General, Pam Bondi, to bring back Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity to the FBI.

Patel may very well do just that. Certainly it is something he has made no secret about wanting very much to do. Back in August, Patel was asked what he would do if he did become the director of the FBI, and his answer was pure gold.

“One of my biggest personal recommendations,” Patel said, “is you shut down the FBI headquarters building and open it up the next day as the Museum of the Deep State, and you send those 7000 agents in the headquarters building down range to chase down rapists, to chase down murderers, to chase down drug traffickers and let the cops be cops on the streets across America. You keep a small contingent in Washington, DC. That’s step one.”