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Ruth King

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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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Yes, Democrats Are Coming For Your Favorite Appliances H. Sterling Burnett

By on May 18th, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/05/15/yes-democrats-are-coming-for-your-favorite-appliances/

Back in January, an official in the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission let slip that the Biden administration was coming after Americans’ gas stoves.

There was an immediate, huge public backlash. In response, Joe Biden and his lackeys took to the media circuit saying the claim was a lie, MAGA-created fake news – the administration had no intention to ban gas stoves. The media fawningly parroted Biden, et al.’s claims that Republicans were lying about gas stoves – take a chill pill, your gas stoves are safe, said the media.

Weeks later, events proved that it was Biden and the Democrats who were lying when, with little attention paid to it by the media, the administration published energy efficiency and emission rules that banned the sale of all but the most expensive gas stoves. And, going further, the Biden administration has allowed cities and states to impose their own bans on gas hook ups and appliances.

If only the White House had stopped there it would have been bad enough, but it didn’t!

In the run up to the gas stove ban, and subsequent to it, the Biden administration has unleased the biggest, most comprehensive, strictest regulatory onslaught ever on home appliances. As the Washington Times documents, “President Biden’s green energy goals have resulted in an array of new efficiency rules for a slew of household appliances,” including microwaves, air purifiers, and even toothbrush chargers. Also among the appliances soon to be regulated out of existence or fundamentally altered are, gas furnaces, air conditioners, lightbulbs, refrigerators, clothes washers, and gasoline- and diesel-powered cars.

How bad will the impact on consumer choice be? Only about 4% of stoves currently on the market would remain for sale under Biden’s new rules. And, the new washing machine regulations would remove 98% of existing top loading machines from the market. Do you like your microwave to have an internal light and a clock? Too bad, because those features use too much energy according to Biden’s “ban ’em-all” cronies at the U.S. Department of Energy. Pick your favorite appliance and watch it disappear from the market under Biden’s new rules.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iranian Women Fight To The End Struan Stevenson

By on May 18th, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/05/15/iranian-women-fight-to-the-end/

As the nationwide uprising in Iran enters its eighth month, the bewildered mullahs, bereft of ideas on how to control their infuriated population, have reverted to their time-worn acts of vicious oppression.

The inappropriate wearing of the hijab by women has become front and center the key issue of the uprising, which began with the killing in custody by the morality police, last September, of the young Kurdish girl, Mahsa Amini, for not wearing her hijab properly. For the theocratic regime, the oppression of women and their status as second-class citizens, is fundamental to their survival.

Schoolgirls who joined the demonstrations led to a sharp rebuke from the Supreme Leader, the elderly and deluded Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who told a Friday prayer meeting that the girls should be punished for their disrespectful behaviour. Hardliners have interpreted this as an open invitation to act and there have been repeated reports of toxic chemical attacks on primary and secondary schools in towns and cities throughout Iran. Thousands of girls have been hospitalized with nausea and severe breathing problems, while two young girls have died.

In an attempt to appease the demonstrators, it even seemed as if the morality police had been reined in for a few weeks. Their notorious green and white vans, which regularly patrol the streets, had disappeared from view. But the new police chief – Ahmadreza Radan, appointed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in January after his predecessor was sacked, has reversed those commands, and ordered a renewed crackdown on women who violate the hijab rules.

CCTV cameras have been installed in public spaces and shopping malls to identify unveiled women. The mullahs have announced the closure of dozens of businesses that served women not wearing the hijab. Last week, the state-linked Tasnim news website reported that the sprawling Opal Shopping Center in western Tehran was facing closure because it had become a common meeting place for young women not wearing the hijab.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Tale of two whistleblowers highlights reprisal risk as Congress probes weaponization issues “It’s unacceptable,” Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga., says. “We need people inside the agencies to tell us, in many cases, the secrets of those agencies.”By John Solomon

By on May 18th, 2023

https://justthenews.com/accountability/whistleblowers/tale-two-whistleblowers-highlights-reprisal-risk-congress-probes

Two different whistleblowers from two separate law enforcement agencies in two separate high-profile criminal cases are raising a disturbing new question for Congress: Is the Biden administration seeking to squash those who report wrongdoing or challenge its official narratives?

Just 24 hours apart, the plights of a decorated FBI intelligence analyst and a decorated supervisory IRS agent burst onto the national scene with detailed accounts alleging they have endured retaliation and reprisal for blowing the whistle.

The publicly unnamed IRS agent – once a star on the Swiss bank tax evasion cases that stunned the world – was unceremoniously dumped along with his entire team from the Hunter Biden tax probe just a few weeks after alleging there was Justice Department political interference in the high-profile matter, his lawyers reported to Congress.

The removal stunned lawmakers who just a week ago won assurance from the IRS chief there would be no reprisals. It also stripped the Hunter Biden prosecution team of a bench with deep knowledge gained by years of investigation into the president’s son.

FBI intelligence analyst Marcus Allen – a combat-tested Marine who just a few years ago was named the Charlotte, N.C. field office employee of the year – has had his security clearance and paychecks revoked after reporting he had found open-source intelligence calling into question the accuracy of Director Chris Wray’s testimony about the Jan. 6 probe, according to his complaint filed with the DOJ inspector general.

The FBI declined comment on Tuesday when asked about Allen’s complaint.

Both cases have lawmakers scratching their heads, concerned that if the whistleblowers allegations are corroborated that Congress has been deprived of opportunities to fix problems impacting American taxpayers.

“It’s unacceptable,” Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga., a key member of the House Intelligence committee, told the “John Solomon Reports” podcast on Tuesday. “We need people inside the agencies to tell us, in many cases, the secrets of those agencies, if we’re going to pass legislation that is going to correct some of the wrongs of the past.

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