China Is Now Goading Iran into Attacking Israel by Gordon G. Chang

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20855/china-goading-iran-attack-israel

As countries around the world pressure Iran not to strike Israel — Tehran blames the Jewish state for the bomb that killed Haniyeh on July 31 — China was, in effect, publicly goading Iran to act.

Hamas is a proxy of Iran. Iran’s regime believes that it is no one’s proxy, but the Chinese seem to think that Iran is indeed theirs.

First, there is Beijing’s direct economic lifeline to the ailing Iranian economy.

Beijing also provided diplomatic cover for the assault on Israel. Propaganda support may have been even more important: Some 96.5% of the videos on Hamas carried on the Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok support the terrorist group. China’s Communist Party uses that platform to amplify favored narratives.

[T]he [Gulf] region is now especially concerned about the flood of Chinese weapons into the hands of Iran and its terrorist proxies. Regional leaders should be: All three of Iran’s main proxy groups—Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis — fight with Chinese arms.

China’s President Xi Jinping, apparently adopting the views of Mao Zedong, has been promoting “chaos” to pave the way for worldwide Chinese rule. Wang Yi in his call on the 11th to Tehran made a bold chaos move.

China, from all indications, wants more war in the world’s most war-torn region.

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi on August 11 told Iran’s acting foreign minister that Beijing supports the Islamic Republic defending its “sovereignty, security, and national dignity.” Wang said that killing Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh, the terrorist group’s political leader, in Tehran violated Iran’s sovereignty and threatened regional stability.

As countries around the world pressure Iran not to strike Israel — Tehran blames the Jewish state for the bomb that killed Haniyeh on July 31 — China was, in effect, publicly goading Iran to act.

Why would the Chinese foreign minister do that? Perhaps because Beijing believes that its proxy, Iran, is losing a war and has to act fast.

Hamas is a proxy of Iran. Iran’s regime believes that it is no one’s proxy, but the Chinese seem to think that Iran is indeed theirs.

How the West Bank became an ‘occupied Palestinian territory’ – opinion ICRC’s rulings have distorted and confused the issue of Israel’s legitimate claims to the territories, and are used to condemn Israel. By Moshe Dunn

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-814137

Shortly after the Six Day War in 1967, the United Nations asked the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) – a private Swiss organization that is the official guardian of the Fourth Geneva Convention (FGC) – for its opinion on the legal status of the territories that Israel had conquered, including Judea and Samaria, known as the West Bank of the Jordan River.

Unilaterally, the ICRC decided that Israel had violated international law (meaning the FGC) and declared the disputed areas to be Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). This decision was adopted by the international community as law. The basis for the committee’s decision, however, was, and still is, secret – as are many things in Switzerland.

The ICRC later claimed that its decision was based on the Hague Regulations (1907), particularly Article 42, which defines occupation. It chose to ignore Article 43, however, which stipulates that occupation occurs when “the authority of the legitimate power… passe(s) into the hands of the occupier…” Since neither Jordan nor Egypt were the sovereign legitimate powers in the territories, Israel’s claims are not illegal.

In fact, earlier decisions of the international community, such as the San Remo conference (1920), which supported the idea of a “Jewish national home” in Palestine, validate Israel’s claims.

A Palestinian state did not exist at the time, nor has one ever existed.

Deep State Plutocrats Have Nowhere to Hide By J.B. Shurk

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/08/deep_state_plutocrats_have_nowhere_to_hide.html

The worst mistake the Deep State ever made was to turn conservatives against Big Business.  Traditionally, fighting corporate power was the purview of the political left.  Conservatives have generally backed “free markets” because they despise socialism’s predilection for choosing economic winners and losers.  Conservative voters have long seen government regulation as more of a threat than Wall Street wheeling and dealing.  

This makes sense.  American conservatives largely embrace the principles of the Founding Fathers’ laissez-faire liberalism, and many share policy preferences that overlap with today’s self-described libertarians.  For conservatives, the left’s “politics of envy” is unappealing.  The left’s desire to redistribute private property within some sort of Marxist system is seen as a dangerous impulse toward legalized theft.  The left’s love for collectivism over individual freedom is regarded as insidious.  Voters who support limited government do not tend to care how Sam Walton became a millionaire.  They are much more likely to applaud individual success as the product of hard work and innovation.

Times are changing, though.  Over the last forty years, middle-class Americans who put their faith in “free markets” have gotten smacked upside the head by corporate interests time and again.  The savings and loan scandal, pension scams, derivatives-juiced market crashes, the housing collapse, the offshoring of good jobs, tech bubbles, predatory lending, reverse mortgages, and countless other corporate schemes have left working-class Americans in dire straits.  All of these various gut punches have produced a kind of “awakening” among “live free or die” Americans: “free markets” are an illusion, and the economic game is rigged.

Veterans Will Not Be Fooled By Tim Walz A choice made out of Kamala’s fear. by Kurt Schlichter

https://www.frontpagemag.com/veterans-will-not-be-fooled-by-tim-walz/

Kamala Harris’s disastrous and cowardly choice of Tim Walz as her running mate over Josh Shapiro – who was the logical pick and was shamefully passed over because he is Jewish – is simply more of the same with her. He’s a choice made from fear. She feared somebody who would be competition. She feared somebody who would be smarter, which really limited her choices. So she chose this guy, who no doubt told her exactly what she wanted to hear. This is her modus operandi. She’s afraid. She operates from fear, and now she has exactly the kind of sergeant major she wants by her side – one who will be sure to enable her worst instincts all the way to defeat.

You just know that Walz being in the Army checked a box for her – DEI hacks love checking boxes – and she didn’t look any deeper than that. No one around her did either. None of her flunkies ever served. None of them understand. They just thought that they could flash some pictures of Walz in his uniform strutting about, and that would be enough to nail down the votes of all the rubes with DD 214s. But what you don’t know can hurt you. And what she doesn’t know is that Tim Walz is going to alienate vets, except for the pinko blue falcons like the loathsome Vindmans and those Twitter goofs who insist you shouldn’t have an AR15 because they are experts, having once qualified “marksman” on an M4.

You can Google “blue falcon” if you want. Just don’t do it with kids around or on your employer’s computer.

Civilians aren’t going to understand this. It’s a veteran thing. Civvies will look at pictures of him in his BDUs or ACUs and think he looks STRAC. But vets know what they see when they look at this guy and it’s not good.

Walz’ Former Superior: He ‘Quit’ Rather Than Deploy, And Went Over My Head to Get Out Ed Morrissey

https://hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2024/08/10/walz-former-superior-he-quit-and-went-over-my-head-to-do-so-n3792960

We covered this a couple of days ago based on a clip, but the entire interview with retired Minnesota National Guard Command Sergeant Major Doug Julin is worth watching. CNN’s Laura Coates spent ten minutes on Thursday night trying to defend Tim Walz through most of it, but Julin would not be deterred. Not only did Walz know that his unit would be deployed when he suddenly retired, Walz back-doored Julin in applying for retirement, he explains, leaving his unit in the lurch. 

And there’s a reason Walz did that — a very clear reason, Julin points out:

COATES: Is your concern that it’s — oh, go ahead. I do want to ask this question quickly, Sergeant Major, and I appreciate your time, but is your — [crosstalk] — concern about the manner in which he did not speak to you or his decision to retire, which he, as we’ve talked about, he would have been entitled to do, which causes the most concern? Because that is the focus that so many people are wondering about, whether he has done something wrong in service or done something personally to offend you.

JULIN: No, he did something wrong in service, as I stated before. He knew the policies and procedures and how we go to leadership and address issues or discuss issues and concerns out there. Again, backing up, he had told me, no, I’m going forward, we’re going to go with the battalion, and go from there. So, I’m under the believing, he told me he was going forward. I’m underneath that believing that he’s going forward. He went around me, which he should have addressed it with me so he could help me with some things out there.

A Campaign Of ‘Joy’? 

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/08/14/a-campaign-of-joy/

The Democratic talking points were issued and the media enthusiastically accommodated: The Harris-Walz campaign is now a moveable feast of joy. But there’s nothing even remotely joyful about Kamala Harris’ and Tim Walz’s political orientation. Their positions are founded on militancy and just plain meanness.

The media are nothing but shills for the Democratic Party. They are so willing to please that they will run with whatever theme the party tells them to. Take a look at recent headlines. 

“Harris Used to Worry About Laughing. Now Joy Is Fueling Her Campaign,” says the New York Times.

“Harris is pushing joy,” according to the Associated Press’ surely unbiased reporting.

The British Guardian swears that the “Democrats’ joy is unconfined,” while ABC News wants Americans to know that “early Harris-Walz rallies feature big crowds, talk of ‘joy.’”

National Public Radio says “Harris and Walz reintroduce joy,” as the Washington Post declares that “​​Harris and Walz seize on joyful message in contrast to darker Trump themes.” And from Salon’s perspective, “Vibes matter: Trump can hardly restrain his jealousy over the Harris campaign’s joy.”

Sleep Walking into WW3 Brought to you by the Biden-Harris catastrophe. by Kenneth R. Timmerman

https://www.frontpagemag.com/sleep-walking-into-ww3/

Donald Trump has warned several times over the past few weeks that we are closer to World War III today than at any time since the end of the Second World War.

It’s a theme he’s been sounding off and on for the past two years, but lately he’s making the threats to our security caused by Biden-Harris policies the central theme of his events.

“I think our country right now is in the most dangerous position it’s ever been in from an economic standpoint, from a safety standpoint,” the former president warned at a press conference recently at Mar-a-Lago. “Both gangs on the street and frankly gangs outside of our country in the form of other countries that are frankly very powerful.”

The problem comes down to leadership, the former president said. The Biden-Harris team have “no clue” about American power or world affairs.

Democrats just laughed at the former president, still drunk with the euphoria of having convinced Old Joe to bow out of the presidential race.

But the challenges to America’s security are very real, and it’s not just Donald Trump who is warning about them.

The congressionally-mandated Commission on the National Defense Strategy just issued a 114-page report that buttresses Trump’s concerns for the future of our nation.

Dhimmi Britain Sinks into Authoritarianism, Death to Free Speech by Robert Williams

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20852/britain-authoritarianism-free-speech

The teenage son of a Rwandan migrant family stabbed three little girls to death at a Taylor Swift-themed dance workshop in Southport, a city near Liverpool, on July 29. The murders triggered protests and riots by Britons who have apparently had enough.

Within a day of the first protests, Prime Minister Keir Starmer gave a speech in which he barely mentioned the murdered little girls, yet painted those who protested as “far right thugs…” He added that he was creating a special Violent Crime Unit, dedicated to fighting — guess who — the protesters.

Incredibly, Starmer’s first act after the murders was not, as one might expect, to deal with concerns over the safety of British citizens, but to dedicate funds to new emergency security for mosques.

Starmer could have stopped the demonstrators in their tracks by listening to — and addressing — the concerns of “ordinary” people in the wake of the murders. Instead, he chose to brand them as “far right thugs”, thereby inflaming an entire country…

Police further inflamed matters by setting their dogs on harmless protesters, arresting many, and handcuffing a 73-year-old lady with a pacemaker who had never been arrested before, and was guilty of just peacefully protesting the murders of young girls.

“I’m 73 years old and I’ve here because of them babies that has died and I’m being arrested,” said the woman, who was surrounded by riot police.

In Plymouth, according to one report, while leftist radicals were destroying a church… police were not stopping the radicals, but instead beating the protesters.

The director of public prosecutions of England and Wales, Stephen Parkinson, chillingly warned that sharing and retweeting online material of the riots was a serious offense that would lead to arrest.

So, retweeting posts on X now gets you sent to the pokey. A Muslim brandishing an AK-47 assault rifle on social media, however, while threatening to blow people’s heads off, is apparently acceptable.

What the police did not do was arrest the gangs of armed Muslim men who took to the streets across British cities. In Birmingham, Bolton, and Middlesbrough, “Muslim patrol” members beat white people, whom they accused of being part of the anti-mass migration protests.

Why were no police officers present? When West Midlands police were asked why they did nothing about “an awful lot of people armed with various weapons” (Muslim gangs) in Birmingham, the answer was that the Muslim communities had been allowed to “do their own policing”.

“We have really strong business and community relations [with Muslim communities]… we had the opportunity to meet with [Muslim] community leaders, meet with [Muslim] business leaders… to kind of understand the style of policing that we needed to deliver…” — West Midlands Police Superintendent Emlyn Richards.

He [Richards] then went on to note that the counter-protesters (the Muslim gangs) had “the right intentions” and that only “a small minority” of people had been intent on causing “either criminality, disorder or fear within our communities.”

Curiously, British police did not acknowledge “right intentions” of those protesting the Southport murders and that only “a small minority” had engaged in violence and riots against the police, hotels hosting illegal migrants, and mosques.

Contrary to what the police said, Muslim “elders” appeared to incite members of their community in Birmingham, telling them to “protect the house of Allah” against the “far right” and messaging Starmer that they were fully able to “defend themselves”.

The Chief Constable of the West Midlands… released a video statement addressed to the Muslims in the region, greeting them deferentially with “Salam Alaykum,” and reassuring them of the police’s support and giving “huge thanks” to their “elders” for their “cooperation.”

Using the ongoing protests across Britain to crack down — one-sidedly — on basic rights, Starmer has successfully exacerbated racial conflict, inflamed tensions, created division, penalized free speech and neatly sneezed at legitimate concerns.

Hamas ‘Politicians’ and Terrorists: No Difference Between Them by Bassam Tawil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20853/hamas-politicians-terrorists

The fact that Sinwar was elected shows that Hamas’s political and military branches are the same. It also demonstrates that when it comes to Islamist terrorist organizations, there is no difference between a political and military leader. By electing Sinwar as its “political” leader, Hamas itself is stating that it does not distinguish between a politician and terrorist.

Has anyone ever considered referring to Osama bin Laden and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the heads of Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (ISIS), as the “political leaders” of their respective organizations?

In addition to Haniyeh, Hamas’s “political bureau” consists of several figures such as Khalil al-Hayya, Khaled Mashaal, Musa Abu Marzouk, Ghazi Hamad, and Taher a-Nunu who have long been advocating the armed struggle against Israel and glorifying acts of terrorism against Israelis.

“For the BBC, Ismail Haniyeh was ‘moderate and pragmatic;’ for the rest of us he was a monster,” commented British author and journalist Stephen Pollard. He pointed out that Haniyeh had recorded the following message to the Palestinians from his luxurious home in Qatar: “We need the blood of women, children, and the elderly of Gaza…so as to awaken our revolution spirit.”

“Haniyeh was indeed ‘moderate’. The total number of Jews murdered by Hamas does not come close to six million.” — Stephen Pollard, British author, thejc.com, July 31, 2024.

Now that Sinwar has joined Hamas’s inner circle of “political” figures, it is reasonable to presume that he too will be dubbed by the Western media as a “moderate” and “pragmatic” Palestinian leader.

What comes next? Will the Biden-Harris administration and other Western governments rush to discuss with the newly elected Palestinian leader and mass murderer the creation of an independent Palestinian state that will be used by the Iranian regime and its terror proxies, including Hamas, to destroy Israel?

The Iran-backed Palestinian terrorist group Hamas has chosen arch-terrorist Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the October 7, 2023, atrocities against thousands of Israelis, as the chairman of its “political bureau.” Sinwar, who has been hiding in the Gaza Strip since the Hamas-led attack, will take over from Ismail Haniyeh, the former chairman of the group’s “political bureau,” who was killed in the Iranian capital of Tehran on July 31.

Theater of the Absurd, Harris-Walz Edition The strategy of the “Harris-Walz” campaign depends on people being dazzled by their theater of the absurd. Both candidates claim now to believe things they have spent the last decades attacking. By Roger Kimball

https://amgreatness.com/2024/08/11/theater-of-the-absurd-harris-walz-edition/

H. L. Mencken apparently never quite said that “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.” He said lots of similar things, however, and I like to think he would have been proud of being the sort of chap to whom people attributed such astringent mots.

He would also, I feel sure, regard the theater surrounding the Kamala Harris-Tim Walz campaign as a test case of the proposition.

Last week in this space, I pointed out the irony of the Sudden Harris Ascendancy Syndrome.  Here she was, one of the least popular figures on the American scene—someone, moreover, whom everyone, no matter their political coloration, regarded primarily as political life insurance for Joe Biden—and yet, Wham!, the very moment Biden resigns, her media reconstruction begins in earnest.

I almost wrote “media rehabilitation,” but that would not have been quite right. We say that someone is rehabilitated when he has fallen from a previous state of health, competence, or popularity.

Kamala Harris has never been competent or popular.  So what the media has done to or with her these last couple of weeks is more of an outright fabrication project. In part, as I wrote last week, it is a product of “magical thinking,” the belief, or at least the hope or pretense, that by saying something is so, you magically make it so.

The primary aim of this bit of theatrical slight-of-hand is positive.  It is to make people believe, for as long as they inhabit this theater of the absurd (the show runs, by the way, until November 5) that the person answering to the name “Kamala Harris” is not against fracking, though her doppelgänger, who existed until July 21 when Joe Biden dropped out of the race, was adamantly against fracking.