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Ruth King

ISRAEL, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The generals’ marvelous Doha adventure Caroline Glick

By on June 22nd, 2022

https://www.jns.org/opinion/the-generals-marvelous-doha-adventure/

The resignation from the Brookings Institute of former commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan Gen. (ret.) John Allen could have massive implications for Israel.

A drama now unfolding in the United States has massive implications for Israel. Unfortunately, since there is no anti-Netanyahu angle to the story, the media are ignoring it, and the police are pretending there’s nothing to see here.

Last Monday, former commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan Gen. John Allen resigned his position as president of the Brookings Institute under a cloud of criminal suspicion. Allen has been the subject of an FBI probe for the past several months. He is suspected of deliberately failing to register as a foreign agent while acting as an agent of Qatar in 2017. Under U.S. law, a citizen is permitted to serve the interests of a foreign government only if he registers as its agent with the relevant federal authorities. Failure to register is a felony.

Allen’s resignation was precipitated by an AP story earlier in the month that set out the contents of a 77-page search warrant for his electronic communications that the FBI submitted to federal court in April. The warrant, which was removed from the court’s online docket after the AP published its report, set out the evidence the FBI had gathered in support of its request to search Allen’s electronic communications.

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BOOKS Comments turned off

Daughters of the Flower Fragrant Garden: Two Sisters Separated by China’s Civil War

By on June 21st, 2022

Sisters separated by war forge new identities as they are forced to choose between family, nation, and their own independence.

Jun and Hong were scions of a once great southern Chinese family. Each other’s best friend, they grew up in the 1930s during the final days of Old China before the tumult of the twentieth century brought political revolution, violence, and a fractured national identity. By a quirk of timing, at the end of the Chinese Civil War, Jun ended up on an island under Nationalist control, and then settled in Taiwan, married a Nationalist general, and lived among fellow exiles at odds with everything the new Communist regime stood for on the mainland. Hong found herself an ocean away on the mainland, forced to publicly disavow both her own family background and her sister’s decision to abandon the party. A doctor by training, to overcome the suspicion created by her family circumstances, Hong endured two waves of “re-education” and internal exile, forced to work in some of the most desperately poor, remote areas of the country.

Ambitious, determined, and resourceful, both women faced morally fraught decisions as they forged careers and families in the midst of political and social upheaval. Jun established one of U.S.-allied Taiwan’s most important trading companies. Hong became one of the most celebrated doctors in China, appearing on national media and honored for her dedication to medicine. Niece to both sisters, linguist and East Asian scholar Zhuqing Li tells her aunts’ story for the first time, honoring her family’s history with sympathy and grace. Daughters of the Flower Fragrant Garden is a window into the lives of women in twentieth-century China, a time of traumatic change and unparalleled resilience. In this riveting and deeply personal account, Li confronts the bitter political rivals of mainland China and Taiwan with elegance and unique insight, while celebrating her aunts’ remarkable legacies.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Justice for J16 Stephen Colbert’s insurrectionists must be met with the swiftest and harshest punishment possible. By Julie Kelly

By on June 21st, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/06/20/justice-for-j16/

An already overworked grand jury in Washington, D.C., presumably will be very busy in the days to come.

For nearly 18 months, at the behest of Joe Biden’s Justice Department, grand juries in the nation’s capital have issued a nonstop flood of criminal indictments against Americans who protested Joe Biden’s election on January 6, 2021; hundreds of people who peacefully entered the building as police stood by face serious felony charges punishable by decades in prison. Even those accused of low-level misdemeanors such as “parading” in the Capitol have been sentenced to months in jail.

Now, following last week’s arrest of Democratic Party activists disguised as staffers for “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” for unauthorized incursions into Capitol buildings, one must assume prosecutors are hastily preparing similar indictments against Colbert’s team to reflect a fair handling of the two incidents. Colbert’s employees, after all, were caught not once but twice unlawfully entering areas of the Capitol complex—in Justice Department parlance related to January 6, that is known as a “restricted area”—on June 16.

News reports indicate the crew had the run of the place with the blessing of none other than Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), a member of the January 6 select committee. Capitol Police finally arrested the interlopers around 8:30 p.m. on Thursday night near the office of Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), a frequent target of the Left, in the Longworth building and charged them with illegal entry. (Colbert’s thugs the day before harassed the family members and lawyers for January 6 detainees during a press conference on Capitol Hill.)

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P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

In a crisis-ridden era, the U.S. Navy focuses on…pronouns By Andrea Widburg

By on June 21st, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/06/in_a_crisisridden_era_the_us_navy_focuses_onpronouns.html

Winston Churchill memorably described British Navy traditions as “rum, sodomy, and the lash.” In America, the lash, thankfully, is gone and rum is for off-duty hours but sodomy (that is, homosexuality) has moved front and center. The latest example is the childish video the Navy is having its members watch so that they can learn how pronouns work, including avoiding “misgendering” fellow members of the Navy.

Our military exists to defend America against foreign enemies, whether the battle is fought overseas or, God forbid, ends on American soil. Currently, we have a lot of enemies: Biden is busy trying to get us into a hot war with Putin, China is expanding its military and geographic reach, Iran continues its efforts to develop a nuclear bomb, and North Korea already has a nuclear bomb.

And while those threats face America, our Navy is focused like a laser on pronouns. This focus doesn’t just represent a complete collapse in the military’s mission. It also represents a serious threat to the military’s operational efficiency.

Pronouns actually aren’t complicated, whether in English or any other language. They are the word we substitute in lieu of nouns or proper nouns when referring to any person, animal, or object. A sentence such as “Mary went to her room to gather her books and bag so that she could go to her school” becomes a clunky nightmare if we remove the pronouns: “Mary went to Mary’s room to gather Mary’s books and bag so that Mary could go to Mary’s school.”

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MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

Netflix, Ron Howard Do Seth Rich a Major Injustice By Jack Cashill

By on June 21st, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/06/netflix_ron_howard_do_seth_rich_a_major_injustice.html

“It should have been an open and closed case of a tragic robbing,” writes Gretchen Small in Bustle.com of the 2016 Seth Rich murder, “but what ensued was an alt-right conspiracy theory movement designed to take attention off of Donald Trump and put pressure on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.”

Small accurately summarized the thesis of “A Murder in D.C.,” an episode in the Netflix series, “Web of Make Believe: Death, Lies and the Internet.” I suppose she could be forgiven her failure to know that Rich wasn’t robbed. The producers failed to share that rather critical detail, one detail out of many that allowed them to keep airheads like Small ignorant of the real scandal — the media scandal. In this case, the cover-up may well have been worse than the crime.

Although I do not know who killed Seth Rich, I do know that the media did everything in its power to discourage anyone from finding out. Ron Howard, a loyal Democrat, served as executive producer of this visually well-crafted series. Not surprisingly, the episode in question does little but showcase the media’s ongoing role as protector of Democratic secrets.

The Alt Right — whatever that is — had almost nothing to with the case save for a little internet gossip. Julian Assange, the darling of the media before he started releasing DNC emails, was the man who moved the curious beyond the “botched robbery” scenario trotted out by the D.C. Police.

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EDUCATION, MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

San Diego Med School Has ‘Orwellian Bureaucracies’ Focused on Adding CRT to Curricula, Nonprofit Finds Brittany Bernstein

By on June 21st, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/ucsd-school-of-medicine-has-orwellian-bureaucracies-focused-on-adding-crt-to-curricula-nonprofit-finds/

A new report by the nonprofit Do No Harm found the University of California San Diego School of Medicine has increasingly focused on “diversity, equity and inclusion” efforts in recent years, including incorporating principles of critical race theory into curricula.

“At the institutional level, UCSD’s medical school has created a number of internal bureaucracies dedicated to the ideas of DEI at both the staffing and teaching levels, including in ways that can foster active discrimination and a lower quality in medical outcomes,” writes Do No Harm, a nonprofit focused on stopping the “woke takeover” of health care.

The report notes that UCSD took “symbolic actions,” including implementing a “pass/fail” policy for medical students during their first two years and forming an “Anti-Discrimination Task Force” in the Division of Geriatrics, Gerontology and Palliative Care as part of its “commitment to becoming an anti-racist institution.”

The medical school also has a Family Medicine Diversity and Anti-Racism Committee, which is run with a mission to “help achieve greater health equity and social justice,” including by pushing to teach a curriculum “grounded on a framework of empathy and anti-racism,” retain and hire a “diverse faculty,” and promote scholarship focused on “healthcare disparities.”

The committee has hosted a number of talks on topics including race in medicine; implicit bias; microaggression; health disparities in women; contraception bias; border health; immigrant, refugee and asylee health; Asian American healthcare disparities; LGBTQ Health; advocacy; and spirituality.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Taboo Lifts on Discussing Biden’s Age By Jim Geraghty

By on June 21st, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/the-taboo-lifts-on-discussing-bidens-age/

Almost overnight, Biden’s age, mental state, memory, and health changed from the elephant in the room to a topic that is now acceptable for Democrats and the media to discuss. Hey, how about the rest of us who noticed all of this a long time ago?

Suddenly, It’s Okay to Say Biden Is Really Old and Out of Touch

Did you notice that discussing Joe Biden’s age, memory, and mental state — denounced as the “gross, lowest-common-denominator politics that drive people away from public life” by CNN’s Chris Cillizza when I wrote about this issue last August — became an acceptable subject for quiet and subdued expressions of public concern in the past week or so?

This isn’t about Biden falling off his bicycle. Last week, Mark Leibovich wrote in the Atlantic that Biden shouldn’t run for another term because, in his view, though Biden’s mental sharpness and physical health are just fine right now, they might not be in a few years:

They say, for the most part, that Biden is coping fine. You know, despite the 8.6 percent inflation, his depressed approval numbers, his vice president’s worse approval numbers, the looming wipeout in the midterms, and all the other delights attending to Biden as he awaits the big, round-numbered birthday he has coming up in a few months. But here’s another recurring theme I keep hearing, notably from people predisposed to liking the president. “He just seems old,” one senior administration official told me at a social function a few weeks ago.

He seems old, you say? Hmm. Has anyone else noticed this?

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

If Trump Committed ‘Insurrection,’ Indict Him Already Any first-year law student knows the DOJ has no hope of getting a conviction. Larry Elder

By on June 21st, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/06/if-trump-committed-insurrection-indict-him-already-larry-elder/

OK, so indict him already.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on the Senate floor the first day of the televised Jan. 6 select committee hearings, said: “(Former President) Donald Trump was at the heart of a coordinated effort to overturn the 2020 elections, to overturn our constitutional order, and inflict permanent damage upon our democracy.”

But Democratic committee member Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., when asked about possible Justice Department charges against Trump, said: “Attorney General (Merrick) Garland is my constituent, and I don’t browbeat my constituents. I think that he knows, his staff knows, the U.S. attorneys know what’s at stake here. They know the importance of it. But I think they’re rightfully paying close attention to precedent and history, as well as the facts of this case.” Not exactly full speed ahead.

And the day after the first hearing, committee chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss, said: “(Criminal referrals to the DOJ are) not our job. Our job is to look at Jan. 6. What caused it and make recommendations after that. … We don’t have the authority.” Committee member Liz Cheney, R-Wis., disagreed, tweeting, “The Committee has not issued a conclusion regarding potential criminal referrals. We will announce a decision on that at an appropriate time.”

Trump, on Jan. 6, in his speech before the riots, said, “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” Two days earlier, according to Alec Schemmel of the Media Research Center: “A Capitol Police timeline of the days and weeks surrounding Jan. 6 shows former President Donald Trump’s Department of Defense (DOD) offered the National Guard’s assistance in the days leading up to the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol, validating claims from Trump administration officials that were said to be false by liberal fact-checkers.”

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel’s Disastrous Coalition Government Collapses Daniel Greenfield

By on June 21st, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2022/06/israels-disastrous-coalition-government-collapses-daniel-greenfield/

I was in Israel some years back and no one believed that there would be a second election. Now the country is on track to a fifth election that may put Netanyahu back in power. Anything has got to be better than the abominable leftist-Islamist-RINO equivalent nightmare that’s been running the country into the ground.

Israel is based on a European-style parliamentary system. The only unifying theme of the coalition was to force out Netanyahu and the Likud Party.

In the service of that, Communists, the Muslim Brotherhood, assorted leftist parties and a former “conservative” party worked together. 

And the only amazing thing is that it lasted this long. 

Explaining the insanity is hard, but here’s a sample.

Justice Minister Gideon Sa’ar blamed the downfall of the government on “irresponsible behavior by Knesset members in the coalition,” referring to its multiple rebels. He said the goal of the next election would be to prevent Netanyahu from returning to power and “mortgaging the country to his own personal interest.”

There is still a chance that Netanyahu will succeed in forming an alternate government within the current Knesset. This would happen if members of the coalition, from New Hope and Yamina, switch sides and join Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc.

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HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Providing Former Taliban Associates with Visas and Asylum The Biden administration continues its assault on U.S. national security.Michael Cutler

By on June 21st, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/06/biden-administration-exacerbates-threats-national-michael-cutler/

Biden’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan has created unprecedented threats to U.S. national security as I noted in an earlier article, Biden’s Catastrophic Policies: Immigration and Afghanistan and those threats are about to be exacerbated by a policy change of the Biden administration.

On June 14, 2022 The Los Angeles Times reported, Some Afghan refugees now have chance to avoid terrorism designation that blocked path to U.S.

Here is how this disconcerting news report begins:

Doctors, teachers, engineers and other Afghans who were forced to associate with the Taliban will now have a chance at asylum or visas after the Biden administration loosened a terrorism-related designation on Tuesday, according to government officials and documents reviewed by the Los Angeles Times.

The exemption will be applied on a case by case basis after security vetting and is expected to help Afghans who fled their country after U.S. troops withdrew and the Taliban took over last August, as well as some Afghans who entered the U.S. earlier, said officials from the Department of Homeland Security.

The administration assurances that each case will be adjudicated on a case by case basis that will involve security vetting does absolutely nothing to assuage my serious concerns.

The fact that among the refugees are doctors, teachers and engineers does nothing to prove that these individual do not pose a threat to US security.  I would remind you that Osama bin Laden had a degree in civil engineering (which, in fact, made him all the more dangerous) and George Habash the founder of the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) an exceedingly violent terrorist organization, was a pediatrician.

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