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Ruth King

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Yechiel Leiter’s refreshing ‘undiplomatic’ candor Ruthie Blum

By on May 27th, 2025

https://www.jns.org/yechiel-leiters-refreshing-undiplomatic-candor/

The Foreign Ministry announced on Sunday that its director general, Eden Bar Tal, was summoning Israeli Ambassador to the United States Yechiel Leiter for a hearing, in accordance with “the directive of the senior director of the disciplinary division at the Civil Service Commission.”  

The anticipated wrist-slapping is over remarks that Leiter made in an interview last week on the conservative PragerU podcast, “Real Talk with Marissa Streit.”

During the course of the one-on-one—an articulate and comprehensive discussion about the war in Gaza; the death of his son, Moshe, who was killed last year fighting Hamas; U.S.-Israel relations; normalization with Saudi Arabia; the Iranian nuclear threat; and predictions for the future of the Middle East—Leiter committed what the Foreign Ministry considers a diplomatic faux pas.

This consisted of his spending six out of the 66-minute tete-a-tete defending Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against demonization. The passage in question begins with his referring to the “accusations on the international stage to call our prime minister a war criminal?! What is that? That’s insane.”

He goes on to point out that “there’s no way you can really fight antisemitism until you remove the stain of Cain” from Netanyahu. Because, he explains, “if you call the Number One Jew in the world a war criminal, well, Jews are responsible; they’re like their prime minister. They’re war criminals, right? Jews who identify with Israel identify with a war criminal. So, why shouldn’t there be antisemitism?”

Yet then he’s asked by Streit about the claim—“made not just by antisemites; also by Israelis”—that Netanyahu is prolonging the war in Gaza in order to “keep him[self] out of political trouble or from going to jail.”

And here’s the section that spurred the ostensible need to “discipline” the relatively new diplomat, who’s been in his post for a mere four months: “Political opposition sometimes is a horrible thing, but they go too far. There is nothing more malicious and malevolent than to level such charges at the prime minister. I know the prime minister for 40 years. He’s a sensitive man who cares about people. Prolong a war? What kind of insanity is that? How dare they say something as malicious as that?

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‘Tyranny in Disguise’: Will Democracy Survive in Europe? by Guy Millière

By on May 27th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21652/democracy-tyranny-europe

In 2022, the European Union adopted the Digital Services Act (DSA), which is supposed to “protect the rights of social media users” and “provide a safer online environment” by “limiting the spread of illegal and harmful content.” What constitutes “illegal and harmful content” was not defined and could be anything the European Commission defines as such, along with the right to impose fines and shut the websites down.

The reason given by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency for designating AfD an “extremist organization” is neither fascism nor racism. In fact, not a single AfD leader advocates fascist or racist positions, and, what actually may be objectionable to many Europeans, is that AfD is “the most pro-Israel and philo-Semitic” party in Germany.

This anti-democratic drift has taken hold in several European countries. Politicians and parties who disagree with the worldview of the officials in power are increasingly being excluded from any possibility of running for an official position…

In France, Marine Le Pen, who polls show is in first place for the 2027 presidential election, was sentenced to five years of election ineligibility and four years in prison for allegedly embezzling public funds.

Le Pen did not embezzle public funds…. The Democratic Movement, a centrist party led by French Prime Minister François Bayrou, did exactly the same thing as the National Rally with its MEPs’ assistants, but Bayrou was acquitted by a judge.

Most European leaders today refer to the parties and politicians they wish to exclude as “far right.” The term is used to refer to racist, xenophobic and authoritarian parties. None of the parties mentioned above shows the slightest tendency toward racism, xenophobia and authoritarianism half as much as their opponents do.

Many European leaders today appear blind to the consequences of ever-increasing immigration, and a growing Muslim presence in Europe. They are dismissive of the Muslims’ continuing mass-migration, enthusiastic birthrate, and they remain stubbornly deaf to the concerns shouted by their non-Muslim citizenry.

European leaders and governments have moved away from what once bound Europe and the United States, such as freedom of speech and free and fair elections, the results of which are actually enacted. Can the anti-democratic drift that has gripped several large European countries be stopped? (Images source: iStock)

Instead, he says that the most worrying threat today is “the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values.” He adds that European countries and institutions are undermining democracy and freedom of speech — and gives examples.

“A former European commissioner,” Vance states, “went on television recently and sounded delighted that the Romanian government had just annulled an entire election.”

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China’s Covert Pursuit of Global Dominance By Janet Levy

By on May 27th, 2025

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/05/china_s_covert_pursuit_of_global_dominance.html

China’s global ambitions are rooted in the allure of an ancient concept for the Chinese people—the Middle Kingdom, envisioning China as a divinely appointed ruling nation that is central and superior to others. In the Art of War, Sun Tzu crystallized this idea into the ideal of a benevolent Chinese emperor conquering the entire world—Tianxia, or All-Under-Heaven—without violence or destruction.

But trust the communists to twist the very antithesis of Marxism — a God-based, imperialistic idea — to serve their own designs. Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), positions himself as central to a Chinese world order “that will surpass and supplant the Westphalian system” by 2049. Therefore, his actions must be viewed in light of Tianxia.

A year after he came to power in 2012, he launched the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), an ambitious investment in infrastructure aimed at connecting East Asia and Europe. This initiative has since expanded to Africa, Oceania, and Latin America. The BRI must be recognized for what it is: a covert, long-term operation for military expansion and strategic presence.

Through BRI’s extensive loans and assistance in building ports and highways, China has gained significant economic and political influence in nearly 150 of the 193 U.N. member countries. The U.S. and its allies must prepare for China transforming such vast influence into military advantages, as it has already done in many areas. In confronting the dragon, we must remain wary of its winding tail.

China’s influence-mongering is ideology-agnostic. If a country aligns with China’s strategy to displace the U.S. as a global power, the type of regime—whether fascist, authoritarian, Islamist, or communist—matters little. In fact, writes Col. John Mills (Ret.), China has primarily partnered with countries where regimes are insecure and individual rights are non-existent—much like in China.

He claims that Russia, North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Pakistan, and South Africa are all now “de facto colonies of China.” At the same time, he points out that China aims to dominate the U.N. and other international organizations. In this struggle, he argues that the efforts of those advocating for a free world have been undermined by globalist elites who pander to China when it benefits them.

China’s strategic activities in Africa and the Middle East over the last two and a half decades serve as a case study of how the dragon operates. The advantages China has gained now threaten U.S. interests in the Horn of Africa, which includes Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Eritrea, and provides significant control over the Gulf of Aden, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean.

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When the Ice Cracks: Michael Mann’s Legal Defeat and the Climate of Accountability David Manney

By on May 27th, 2025

https://pjmedia.com/david-manney/2025/05/24/when-the-ice-cracks-michael-manns-legal-defeat-and-the-climate-of-accountability-n4940123

There was a time, not so long ago, when climate scientist Michael Mann could bully critics into silence with the mere threat of a lawsuit. He was the face behind the infamous “hockey stick” graph, a man lauded by progressives, featured in Al Gore’s documentary, and embraced by a media eager to label skeptics as dangerous deniers. But the courtroom, as it turns out, is no place for manufactured myths or moral grandstanding.

A Washington, D.C. court just handed Mann a bruising legal defeat. After more than a decade of litigation, he has been ordered to pay over $1 million in attorney’s fees to the very people he accused of defamation: National Review, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), and writer Rand Simberg, a former PJM contributor.

Even more humiliating, the court revealed that Mann grossly misrepresented his financial damages. Once celebrated as a martyr for the climate cause, he now stands exposed as a fabricator, not just of projections, but of personal injury.

The Graph That Launched a Thousand Grants

Mann’s rise to prominence began with a temperature reconstruction graph published in 1998. It erased historical warming periods such as the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age in favor of a dramatic 20th-century spike. To the casual observer, it looked like mankind had shoved the planet off a climate cliff.

The media ran with it. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) elevated the hockey stick to icon status. Schools taught it. Politicians cited it. Al Gore plastered it in “An Inconvenient Truth,” like a gospel.

But critics soon noticed that something wasn’t right. Canadian researchers Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick uncovered glaring flaws in Mann’s methodology, showing that his algorithm could produce a hockey stick shape even when fed with random data. This wasn’t just bad science; it was political theater dressed in lab coats.

From Researcher to Legal Enforcer

Rather than engage in honest debate, Mann chose litigation as his cudgel. In 2012, he sued National Review and CEI after their writers criticized his work and compared how Penn State handled their investigations of Mann after the East Anglia emails leak, and of Penn State’s disgraced football coach, Jerry Sandusky.

This was not a matter of protecting one’s reputation from slander. This was a climate scientist declaring war on dissent. And for a while, it worked. The lawsuits dragged on for over ten years. Many media outlets pulled back from covering the criticisms, not out of agreement, but out of fear.

The recent rulings, however, dismantle Mann’s claims. The D.C. court awarded National Review $530,820.21 in legal fees. CEI and Simberg will receive $472,000. These were not sympathy payouts. They were direct rebukes of a man who tried to game the legal system as thoroughly as he gamed climate projections.

A Courtroom Beatdown

In one of the ruling’s most scathing parts, the court found that Mann and his attorneys misled the jury about the damages he suffered. He testified he lost grants, suffered financially, and had speaking engagements canceled because of the defamation.

But evidence showed the opposite. Mann’s career flourished during the litigation. His speaking fees increased, and his public profile soared. His hardship claim was a mirage, and the court wasn’t buying it.

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Mark Steyn’s Vindication: A Triumph for Free Speech and Personal Fortitude David Manney

By on May 27th, 2025

https://pjmedia.com/david-manney/2025/05/24/mark-steyns-vindication-a-triumph-for-free-speech-and-personal-fortitude-n4940136

In a previous column, I detailed Michael Mann’s unraveling legal crusade, focusing on his courtroom defeat and the staggering financial penalty levied against him. Readers’ responses were passionate, particularly about the absence of commentary on Mark Steyn.

Let me be direct: the omission was intentional. The Mann saga deserved focus, and Steyn’s fight deserves its own chapter.

This is that chapter.

Author, broadcaster, and unflinching cultural critic Mark Steyn did not merely weather a defamation trial. He survived it physically, financially, and morally when most would have buckled under the strain. What began as a battle over words became a battle over the soul of free speech.

The Lawsuit That Should Have Never Been

In 2012, Michael Mann filed a defamation suit against Steyn, the National Review, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), and Rand Simberg. Simberg had published a blog post likening Mann’s professional conduct to Penn State’s handling of Jerry Sandusky. Steyn quoted Simberg’s post and added his commentary, calling Mann’s famous “hockey stick” graph fraudulent.

Rather than engage in rebuttal, Mann went for the jugular. He sued.

Steyn endured a legal process that lasted over a decade, dragging him through courtrooms, draining his resources, and exposing him to smears. 

While National Review and CEI were eventually dismissed from the case, Steyn fought alone. There were no corporate backers or legal insulation, just Steyn, his pen, and a mountain of principle.

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The ‘Two-State Solution’ to Kill Jews, Destroy Israel by Bassam Tawil

By on May 27th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21650/two-state-solution

After the 2007 Hamas takeover, the Gaza Strip became an independent Palestinian state controlled by Hamas, with its own government, parliament, police force, and multiple armed groups. The Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip, in addition, had exclusive control over the border with Egypt, which was also abandoned by Israel.

In the absence of any Israeli military or civilian presence inside Gaza, Hamas had a chance to turn the coastal strip into a prosperous area, a “Singapore” or “Dubai” on the Mediterranean. Instead, the terror group chose to manufacture and smuggle weapons, including rockets and missiles, and invest tens of millions of dollars in building a vast network of tunnels for stockpiling its weapons, facilitating the concealed movement of terrorists, and providing shelter for its leaders and members.

[T]he war is continuing because of Hamas’s refusal to release the remaining Israeli hostages, relinquish control over the Gaza Strip and lay down its weapons. Hamas, backed and armed by Iran, is determined to fight to the last Palestinian because its primary goal is to destroy Israel and replace it with an Islamist state.

For more than a decade, these payments [to the Palestinian “pay-for-slay” program] have amounted to more than $300 million annually. Last year, the PA’s payments increased by $1.3 million per month. The murder of Jews is what the European Union and many European countries have been funding.

By advocating a “two-state solution,” France, Canada and Britain are essentially authorizing a genocide.

Before reviving their idea, the French, Canadians and British need to look at the results of all of the polls. They consistently show that most Palestinians support Hamas and the armed struggle against Israel. The last thing Palestinians and Israelis need now is to transplant the failed Gaza model onto the West Bank.

As the Hamas-Israel war in the Gaza Strip enters its 20th month, France, Britain and Canada have revived the talk about the need to establish a Palestinian state. In a joint statement in mid-May, the leaders of the three countries proclaimed:

“We are committed to recognizing a Palestinian state as a contribution to achieving a two-state solution and are prepared to work with others to this end.”

Next month, the United Nations is scheduled to host an international conference, co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia, to advance the idea of a “two-state solution” between Israel and the Palestinians.

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The So-Called Trump-Ramaphosa ‘Ambush’ Trump’s meeting with Ramaphosa was a long-overdue reality check on South Africa’s hostility, hypocrisy, and dependence on U.S. aid and trade. By Victor Davis Hanson

By on May 27th, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/05/26/the-so-called-trump-ramaphosa-ambush/

othing highlights the poverty of the media-Democratic mind than its weary use of echo-chamber buzzwords. Once Pravda-like instructions are sent out from DNC operatives, mindless media anchors mouth them in lockstep as gospel.

So, it was with the supposed “ambush” when South African President Cyril Ramaphosa met Donald Trump. Trump indeed pressed his guest on a number of issues, from the decades-long targeted killing of white agriculturalists on their farms by black hit teams that have totaled somewhere between 1,500 and 3,500, depending on how one defines such targeted killings.

Trump further wanted an explanation from Ramaphosa on his government’s new legislation aimed at land confiscation without compensation, and the de facto vanishing number of Boer farmers.

Trump was further bewildered by Ramaphosa’s assertion that the new law would not be used to take private property without paying for it (“No, no, no, no. Nobody can take land”), when in fact that was the very purpose of the new legislation in the first place. Trump also showed Ramaphosa videos highlighting a resurgence of South African extremism of the tired “Kill the Boer” sort.

The dictionaries define “ambush” roughly as “a surprise attack by people lying in wait in a hidden or concealed position.”

Ramaphosa’s visit was no surprise. He, not Trump, requested it. Ramaphosa spoke openly to the media before the meeting that he was planning to convince Trump that there were neither widespread killings of white farmers nor arbitrary confiscation of land.

In sum, Trump was the host; Ramaphosa was the guest, who requested the meeting to present his case for a return of a number of concessions from the U.S. He knew Trump would raise issues that had estranged South Africa from both the president and Congress, and he was calmly prepped, as expected, to offer counterarguments.

But why was Ramaphosa so eager for a meeting?

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Lyndon Johnson’s Disastrous War on Poverty America’s first war on a concept was an even more spectacular failure than the others. by Robert Spencer

By on May 27th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm-plus/lyndon-johnsons-disastrous-war-on-poverty/

It was the age when administrations had slogans: Franklin Delano Roosevelt had the New Deal, Harry S. Truman the Fair Deal, and John F. Kennedy the New Frontier. Lyndon B. Johnson, not to be outdone, proclaimed that his administration would create the Great Society. In pursuit of that, in his State of the Union address on January 8, 1964, only six weeks after he had become president upon Kennedy’s assassination, Johnson proclaimed: “This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America.” It was one of the biggest mistakes any American president ever made, and its damaging effects are still with us today.

Johnson proposed a broad range of social programs to accomplish this, including youth employment legislation, food stamps, expanded minimum wage laws, health insurance for the elderly, and housing and urban renewal programs. Much of this ambitious program was enacted and implemented. Federal spending rose to levels that had not been seen since World War II, and continued to rise ever after. Many of Johnson’s programs, although the nation had gotten along without them from 1776 until the mid-1960s, became, in the framing of Democrat propagandists, sacred rights that could never and must never be questioned.

Despite its sacred status in leftist mythology, however, the War on Poverty was a catastrophic failure. It has been a gargantuan exercise in applying the wrong solution to problems and only making them worse rather than solving them, yet the Democratic Party to this day is full of leaders who refuse to admit that it has been a defeat and a disaster and keep pushing to repeat its mistakes on an even larger scale.

The War on Poverty has cost American taxpayers over $22 trillion since 1964, over three times the cost of all the actual wars that the U.S. has ever fought. All that has resulted from it, however, is urban blight, nagging minority unemployment, and above all, more poverty.

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Elbows up: Woe Canada by Diane Bederman

By on May 27th, 2025

https://dianebederman.com/elbows-up-my-ass/

The Elbows Up campaign fooled Canadians and that led to too many Canadians voting for the Liberal libtards: again.

How many times do Canadians have to be hit in the head before they realize it’s time to say “No More”?

We are now learning that PM Mark Carney; appointed, installed, erected to his position, lied through his teeth. He lied about the tariffs. He talked the talk and crawled the walk. And now, because he only won a minority government, suddenly there are all these recounts and ALL of them are going Liberal. A playbook right from the Democrats. It isn’t going to work.

As a Boomer, I am appalled and disgusted that my age group voted Liberal, again. I spoke to 40 year old men with children who told me before the election that they thought Canada would be better for their children and grandchildren if Canada were to become 51st state. Now that’s a switch.  It has been said, if you vote Conservative when you are 20, you have no heart. If you vote Liberal when you are 40 you have no brain.

Trump was trolling. Do you really think Republicans want Canada? It is Liberal.

But Carney said he would be tough on Trump

“We must respond with both purpose and force,” Prime Minister Mark Carney said in response to American tariffs. Those comments were made on April 3 as Carney stood in Ottawa reacting to Donald Trump’s flurry of tariffs on his so-called “Liberation Day.” 

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UK poured millions into aid program linked to Hamas-controlled group David Isaac

By on May 27th, 2025

https://www.jns.org/uk-poured-millions-into-aid-program-linked-to-hamas-controlled-group/

The United Kingdom is one of the chief funders of Hamas, Israel’s Channel 12 “Weekend News” reported on Saturday night.

While a great deal of the money comes from private donations to so-called Muslim “charities,” the investigation revealed that the British government also funds the terrorist group. Admittedly, the money reaches Hamas indirectly, via UNICEF, but the British Foreign Office is aware of the terror connection, as evidenced in an internal 2022 report.

Hamas operates in the United Kingdom almost with impunity, reported Channel 12 journalist Omri Maniv, noting that Israel’s defense establishment refers to it as “Hamas’s financial capital in the West.”

“Britain is one of the three leading countries in the world in the volume of donations flowing from it to Hamas. The others are Muslim countries,” Maniv noted. “In fact, more than a quarter of non-state funding for the terrorist organization comes from the British Isles.”

But London also transfers tens of millions of pounds to Gaza, which ends up in the hands of the terrorist group.

“The British government is actually giving millions of pounds to the U.N., and especially to UNICEF, which works with the Ministry of Social Development in Gaza, which is controlled by Hamas,” Anne Herzberg, legal adviser at NGO Monitor, a Jerusalem-based research institute, told Channel 12.

According to a November 2022 document from the British Consulate-General in Jerusalem uncovered by NGO Monitor, “UK Humanitarian Support in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (FY 2022-2026),” the United Kingdom provided cash transfers to UNICEF, which works with the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Social Development (MoSD).

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