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Ruth King

House Passes Bill to Sanction ICC over Arrest Warrants for Netanyahu, Gallant By David Zimmermann

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/house-passes-bill-to-sanction-icc-over-arrest-warrants-for-netanyahu-gallant/

The House passed a bipartisan bill to sanction the International Criminal Court on Thursday after the body issued arrest warrants for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant in November.

The bill passed the House by a vote of 243–140, with 45 Democrats in support. Many lawmakers were absent for the vote, which coincided with former president Jimmy Carter’s state funeral in Washington, D.C.

Thursday’s vote marks the second time that the House has passed the measure, which went nowhere last year in the Democrat-dominated Senate. Republican lawmakers revived the bill now that they control both chambers of Congress.

The ICC accused Netanyahu and Gallant, as well as Hamas commander Mohammed Deif, of war crimes during Israel’s ongoing conflict in Gaza, which was sparked by the Palestinian terrorist group’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel. The Jewish state claimed responsibility for the death of Deif, one of the reported masterminds behind the terror attack.

The warrants prevent Netanyahu and Gallant from traveling to 125 countries that are party to the ICC. The pair would be arrested if they were to step foot in any of those jurisdictions.

Congressional Republicans and moderate Democrats, who ally themselves with Israel, sharply criticized the ICC for seeking the arrests of the Israeli leaders. As such, they backed legislation to punish the court.

“A kangaroo court is seeking to arrest the prime minister of our great ally, Israel, which is not only responding to an enemy which conducted a genocide, but an enemy who still holds 100 hostages,” Representative Brian Mast (R., Fla.), who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said on the House floor ahead of the vote.

What Venezuela’s Opposition Leader Said about Her Personal Safety before Maduro’s Forces Kidnapped Her By Jimmy Quinn

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/what-venezuelas-opposition-leader-said-about-her-personal-safety-before-maduros-forces-kidnapped-her/

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado was kidnapped by her country’s dictatorship today as she left a political rally in the Chacao neighborhood of Caracas. It was the first time she had come out of hiding since Nicolás Maduro stole elections in the country last year.

In a conversation with National Review on January 3 — among Machado’s last media interviews prior to the kidnapping today — she told me that she was in a “safe place.” While other opposition politicians had sought asylum abroad, she stayed in Venezuela, biding her time until she could launch a new wave of demonstrations today.

The article I wrote about our conversation focused on her remarks about the demonstrations she launched today to coincide with the inauguration of Maduro pursuant to last July’s sham election and her relationship with the incoming Trump administration. But other comments she made in our conversation speak to her immense bravery, especially in light of the regime’s attack on her today,

Right off the bat, I had asked Machado about the fact that she had gone into hiding after the election, from which Maduro disqualified her, almost certainly because of her immense popularity (and his unpopularity). I asked if she was safe.

“I’m sure you’re aware of what happened at the end of July and just after the election. The regime unleashed a brutal wave of oppression against ordinary citizens just because they were involved in monitoring the election, but also against everyone else that was involved and had a responsibility in organizing the process,” she said.

UK Parliament Votes 364 to 111 Against Muslim Rape Gang Investigation 250,000 votes of rape victims vs 4 million Muslim bloc votes. No contest. by Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/uk-parliament-votes-364-to-111-against-muslim-rape-gang-investigation/

The Labour government had announced that it was responding to the brutal Muslim killing of a little girl in the UK with a crackdown on homeschooling that it had dubbed the ‘Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill’.

While Labour was trying to turn that Islamic crime into an assault on homeschooling parents, Conservatives fought to include a call for an inquiry into the Pakistani Muslim ‘grooming’ rape gangs.

Labour however successfully blocked the inquiry in a 364 to 111 vote.

Not a single Labour MP voted for it. And that’s understandable.

Even assuming that the high numbers for rape victims in the UK are correct, the UK still has 4 million Muslims.

250,000 votes of rape victims vs 4 million bloc votes concentrated in key areas is really no contest.

Could Musk-Starmer Spat Threaten US-UK Security Alliance? The battle over Muslim rape gangs heats up. by Christine Williams

https://www.frontpagemag.com/could-musk-starmer-spat-threaten-us-uk-security-alliance/

There is no doubt that multi-billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk has propelled the Muslim rape gang issue back into the public spotlight, where it should have been from the beginning. British politicians, the nation’s “security” apparatus, and its police all abandoned the victims, while protecting the  perpetrators in the name of “diversity.” But now the proverbial chickens are coming home to roost, and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is lashing out at Musk.

A Gateway Pundit report highlights the implications, and considers whether the incoming Trump administration holds Musk’s views. “Could Musk spat hit US-UK security alliance? Labour figures ‘horrified’ by billionaire’s tirade and ‘questioning intelligence sharing’ with closest ally,” by David Wilcock, Gateway Pundit, January 7, 2025:

The cracks are beginning to show in Britain and America’s so-called “special relationship…  British Prime Minister Keir Starmer may end his country’s security partnership with the United States if Donald Trump does not distance himself from Elon Musk’s recent comments on grooming gangs.

Nick Watt, a reporter for the nightly current affairs show BBC Newsnight, claims that Downing Street are going to give a “hard-headed assessment” of whether these views are held solely by Musk or by the administration as a whole….

Trump has been watching the Muslim rape gang horrors for some time, even prior to when he first became president in 2017. He read the Horowitz Freedom Center’s own Jihad Watch website and posted on Facebook: “Police arrest 900 Muslim migrants in England and Wales for ‘sickening’ crimes.”

Making Sense of Trump’s Mandate By Pavlos Papadopoulos

https://tomklingenstein.com/making-sense-of-trumps-mandate/

Anti-Trump conservatives struggle to interpret our current political moment. Some are the unfortunate victims of extreme cases of Trump Derangement Syndrome which, at this point, have permanently impaired their ability to perform political analysis. But there are others, still worth reading from time to time, who remain surprisingly blinkered by the stubborn march of history. These unfortunate conservatives seem unable or unwilling to acknowledge that the long twentieth century has come to an end. A new political analysis is needed for a moment altogether new.

Consider one scholar from whom I have learned much: Yuval Levin, who has in the past employed his background in political philosophy to explore the deep sources and undercurrents of contemporary politics. In 2014, he treated Thomas Paine and Edmund Burke as the distant founders of contemporary progressivism and conservatism, respectively. In 2016, he channeled Alexis de Tocqueville to diagnose the “fracturing of the American republic.” During the Age of Trump, he has written on the importance of renewing the fundamental institutions of American society and, most recently, on the prospects for a recovered constitutionalism to restore unity to the American polity despite our inevitable political disagreements.

For all his erudition, Levin seems unable to grasp the significance of the 2024 election. In a post-election essay for the Dispatch, he emphasizes “the continuity of our peculiar political era,” characterizing Trump’s victory as “a relatively narrow win owed almost entirely to negative polarization.” Levin dismisses the possibility that “Trump’s eccentric mix of interests and priorities” is “well aligned with the public’s hopes and fears.” In fact, he charges, “Most of what Trump himself is most eager to do, from mass deportations to steep tariffs, would likely prove fairly unpopular when actually put into practice.” 

Levin also expresses a contemptuous lack of curiosity about “the motley crew surrounding Trump, whose political instincts add up to an especially incoherent jumble.” He specifically disparages Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for his alleged fixation on “tak[ing] fluoride out of our drinking water.” Levin concludes by insisting on the continued relevance of his own brand of conservatism: Trump’s “victory does not mean that Trumpian populism alone will now own the right for good.”

Paradise Lost The Free Press Editors

https://www.thefp.com/p/paradise-lost-karen-bass-los-angeles-fires?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

The burning of L.A. is not just a natural disaster. It’s a man-made catastrophe.

The first job of the government is to keep people safe. Failing that, its job is to show that someone is in charge when crisis erupts. On 9/11, there was nothing then–Mayor Rudy Giuliani could do to keep the World Trade Center from falling. Yet he became, in that long-ago era, the most popular person in America by staying on the scene and leading at his city’s moment of greatest danger.

That brings us to the fires in Los Angeles—the most devastating in the history of the city, with a reported 27,000 acres burned and the fires mostly uncontained. There, authorities have failed not only at protecting its residents but at inspiring confidence that they had the situation in hand.

We start with Mayor Karen Bass. As the Palisades fire began to consume wide swaths of America’s second-largest city, she was in Ghana to watch the inauguration of that country’s new president.

Bass left Los Angeles on Saturday—two days after the National Weather Service warned that strong winds and “extreme fire weather conditions” would soon threaten the city. On Sunday, the NWS announced a fire weather watch. By Monday, the warnings had become much more urgent, with the NWS tweeting in all-caps that “A LIFE-THREATENING, DESTRUCTIVE, Widespread Windstorm” would hit L.A. imminently.

Yet Bass remained halfway around the world, effectively leaving the crisis to her deputies. They, in turn, insisted Bass could run the city from anywhere via phone and tablet.

Fire, Snow And A Storm Of Climate Nonsense

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/01/10/fire-snow-and-a-storm-of-climate-nonsense/

Los Angeles is burning and the East Coast and Midwest have been walloped by cold and snow. Naturally, the global warming alarmists screech and honk about human reliance of fossil fuels. It a gross and irresponsible assumption.

It never takes long for the foolish to break out and Vermont socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders didn’t disappoint on Wednesday when he tweeted: “80,000 people told to evacuate. Blazes 0% contained. Eight months since the area has seen rain. The scale of damage and loss is unimaginable. Climate change is real, not ‘a hoax.’ Donald Trump must treat this like the existential crisis it is.”

Unfortunately, he speaks for the many who are uninformed and naive, as well as those who want to use the man-made global warming narrative as a means to fundamentally change this country – and the West – into a political society run by leftists who, to borrow an applicable phrase, have difficulty resisting their authoritarian impulses.

Overshadowed by the tragic Los Angeles fires is the Arctic blast that dropped temperatures and snow in much of the country. This too, is man’s fault. But then when it doesn’t snow, well, man is to blame for that, as well.

A COMMON CULTURE? SYDNEY WILLIAMS

https://swtotd.blogspot.com

Many Americans bemoan a decline in culture. But what do we mean by culture? Are we speaking of the arts, religion, traditions, or a shared history? Are we referring to behavior? In a review of Eliot Stein’s Custodians of Wonder, Brandy Schillace wrote in The Wall Street Journal: “Our lives are connected to the land and the animals. Yet we are also threads in the tapestry that stretches back into prehistory, a part of a superorganism that is culture itself.”

So, what is culture? Definitions have changed. Noah Webster, in his 1828 dictionary, defined the word according to its etymological roots: “The act of tilling and preparing the earth for crops.” Forty-three years later, Edward Burnett Tyler, in Primitive Culture, defined the term in words we better understand today: “Culture…is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.” From the Oxford English Dictionary: “Culture –The arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively.” In 1952, U.S. anthropologists A.L. Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn, in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions, cited 164 definitions of culture. I think of culture, first as a system of shared beliefs, values, behavior and practices – based on our Judeo-Christian heritage and embedded in our founding documents – and second as works of art, literature and music.

For most of our nation’s history differences ruled. Rural and immigrant communities were often distinct entities. Until the mid-19th Century, most Americans never ventured far from their homes. But from the mid 19th Century on, technological advances unified us in a way unknown to earlier Americans. First we had steam ships, trains and then, later, the automobile, which allowed people to experience the size of our country. Radio then television brought other parts of the country and the world into our lives. The number of newspapers began to shrink. So that by my generation, people read the same news, listened to the same music, watched the same TV shows, saw the same movies, and heard the same nightly newscasts. In 1956 (in a country half the size it is today), Elvis Presley sold 10 million copies of a single song, “Hound Dog.” According to Pew Research, every evening during the 1960s between 27 and 29 million people listened to Walter Cronkite’s news on CBS, an audience greater than today’s combined daily audiences for ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC.

New lawfare tactic threatens all Israelis who serve in IDF By David Isaac

https://www.jns.org/new-lawfare-tactic-threatens-all-israelis-who-serve-in-idf/

The specter of her sons and daughters being hauled before foreign courts on war crimes charges has shaken Israel.

The lawfare tactic came to the public’s attention this week with the drama of an Israel Defense Forces reservist on vacation in Brazil being forced to flee the country, aided by the personal intervention of Israel’s foreign minister.

Yuval Vagdani, 21, a soldier in the IDF’s Givati Brigade, found himself in the crosshairs of the Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF), a Belgium-based NGO that targets Israeli soldiers for legal action.

Its modus operandi is to monitor the social networks of soldiers for posts about their service—for HRF, service in Gaza appears to be prima facie evidence of war crimes—and then to launch a suit in the countries those soldiers visit, typically on holiday.

It signals an aggressive shift in anti-Israel legal strategy, Brooke Goldstein, founder and executive director of The Lawfare Project, a group dedicated to defending Jewish civil rights, told JNS.

“Previous failed efforts to prosecute Israelis for alleged war crimes have focused primarily on political and military leaders rather than rank-and-file soldiers. The move to target lower-level personnel, like the IDF soldier in Brazil, represents a major escalation in legal and advocacy strategies,” she said.

HRF lawsuits started from a handful, rising as of last count to 28 in multiple countries, including Sri Lanka, Thailand, Holland, Ireland and South Africa. It brought two complaints in Argentina this past week. Israelis fear the number of cases will become an avalanche.

“Given Israel’s mandatory military service…this tactic poses a threat to the broader Israeli population, effectively putting all citizens at risk of legal action,” noted Goldstein.

Patrick Horan Things Are Looking Up for Argentina Under President Javier Milei, the South American country’s turnaround bolsters the case for free-market economics.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/argentina-president-javier-milei-economy-inflation

Just over a year ago, Javier Milei, the eccentric, chainsaw-wielding libertarian economist, won the presidency in Argentina against a backdrop of soaring inflation and rising poverty. Since taking office, Milei has aggressively pursued a free-market program of fiscal austerity and deregulation. This approach contrasts strongly with Perónism, the strongly interventionist economic ideology followed by most Argentine presidents since its namesake, Juan Perón, rose to power in 1946.

Milei’s critics, including prominent economists such as Thomas Piketty, warned that his agenda would prove catastrophic. Though Argentina still faces severe economic challenges, Milei has largely proven these doubters wrong and achieved several victories worth celebrating.

Monthly inflation has fallen sharply since Milei took office. Rising prices have been a recurring problem in Argentine history, with the government frequently turning to the central bank to print money to finance its excesses. Unlike many of his predecessors, Milei has reduced federal spending (by 28 percent) and cut the number of federal ministries in half.

This fiscal discipline has been paying off. In October 2024, Argentina achieved its first budget surplus in 12 years. Since last May, monthly inflation has stayed below 5 percent; in November, it was 2.4 percent, the lowest since July 2020.

If we annualize the data since May 2024 (that is, if we express these monthly changes as if they had lasted an entire year), we find annual inflation trending down to about 33 percent. While that is extremely high by American standards, it’s a welcome change for Argentina, which has been reeling from triple-digit inflation on a year-over-year basis since the beginning of 2023.

Austerity has not been painless, as Milei himself cautioned in his inaugural address. Slashing government spending deepened the recession that began in 2023, and poverty and unemployment have both risen. But the recession ended in the third quarter of 2024, as the economy grew at a 3.9 annual rate. Economists now forecast that Argentina’s economy will expand 4.2 percent in 2025.