British PM: Iran should face the consequences of attack on tanker British Prime Minister Boris Johnson: Iran carried out unacceptable and outrageous attack on commercial shipping.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/311044

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Monday that Iran must face up to the consequences of the attack on an Israeli-managed tanker off the coast of Oman in which two people were killed.

“Iran should face up to the consequences of what they’ve done. This was clearly an unacceptable and outrageous attack on commercial shipping,” the British Prime Minister told reporters, according to the Reuters news agency.

“A UK national died. It is absolutely vital that Iran and every other country, respects the freedoms of navigation around the world and the UK will continue to insist on that,” he added.

A Sober Review of Some Viable Options For Israel Protecting the Jewish state’s territorial integrity. Dr. Shmuel Katz

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/08/sober-review-some-viable-options-state-israel-dr-shmuel-katz/

The state of Israel is facing major challenges these days from multiple sources.

We have a building pressure from the outside and from the inside.

Unfortunately, too many people in the international community are being steadily brainwashed against preserving the interest and the integrity of the state of Israel and that of the Jewish people, by well-funded anti-Israeli operatives like the BDS movement, the Radical pro-Palestinian organizations and by state sponsors of terrorism like Iran. At the same time, there are also some oblivious good-willed people and states, who think that there are easy solutions to the complicated problems in the Middle East.

Within the state of Israel, where the decisions and the directives of the ministry of education are so important, we see inadequate attention to the education of students from all walks of life about the historic and current just cause of the state of Israel and the Jewish people.

If we look at what the Arab sector students are learning from their teachers and from their self-serving clergy, we will realize that the problem is even more challenging. In recent times it would have been unimaginable to have Arab youth riot in pogroms against their own Jewish neighbors within the state of Israel. Surprisingly, this happened very recently, for example, in Jerusalem, in Haifa, in Lod and in Akko.

In addition, when we look at the out of control building constructions and agricultural expansions in the territories of Judea and Samaria, the Negev and elsewhere, some of it sponsored by the EU, some by Muslim countries and by others, one can see a strategic plan to weaken the state of Israel and eventually to remove it from the Middle East all together.

On top of that, we have just seen an Arab member of the Knesset, who joined the newly created Israeli government, who served as the substitute chairperson of the Knesset, challenging a speaking member of the Knesset and ordering him to be removed by security, due to the fact that he did not address him specifically, in a way of his choice.

This Arab member of the Knesset and the newly formed Israeli government, stated recently that the Jews should not have the right to visit the Temple Mount, despite the fact that he is well aware of the fact that it is the holiest site for the Jewish people, even from before the times of the establishment of Islam as a religion.

One of the biggest challenges that. most probably, the state of Israel will have to face, is the pressure to relinquish a part of its ancestral homeland to the Palestinian Authority, despite the fact that the PA is not recognizing the right of the Jewish people to any part of the state of Israel, and is actively engaged in the attempt to liquidate the state of Israel in stages.

Biden Administration Takes Side of Russia, Syria, Iran, Hezbollah Against Israel Betraying an ally that has done more than any other to combat terrorism. Hugh Fitzgerald

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/08/biden-administration-takes-side-russia-s

Israel has for years been able to bomb targets in Syria virtually at will. These include Iranian bases, where precision-guided weapons are both assembled and made ready for delivery to Hezbollah, and Hezbollah bases which take delivery of these weapons and take them back to Lebanon. In hundreds of missions over Syria, Israeli planes have successfully avoided being hit; and the Syrian and Iranian defenses have proved unequal to the task of intercepting Israeli missiles.

Until now.

The latest report on Russian missile systems being transferred to Syria is here: “Report: Russia helping Syria thwart Israeli attacks,” by Neta Bar and Shahar Klaiman, Israel Hayom, July 25, 2021:

Russia assisted Syria’s aerial defense system in thwarting an Israeli attack near the city of Homs in western Syria, a senior Russian military official said Saturday.

Rear Adm. Vadim Kulit, who heads the Russian military’s Reconciliation Center in Syria, was quoted by Russia’s state-owned TASS news agency as saying Russia’s advanced BUK-M2E missile system intercepted eight missiles fired by Israeli F-16 jets.

Having had free rein in Syrian skies for so long, Israeli pilots now confront a different, much more difficult landscape: a Russian advanced missile system, the BUK-M2E, that has apparently managed, in its first day of use, to intercept eight Israeli missiles fired at targets in Homs.

Experts have questioned the Russian-manufactured system’s ability to intercept advanced guided missiles. In addition, images and video of explosions on the ground in Homs alongside reports in media outlets affiliated with rebels in the area of the destruction of weapons warehouses indicate the airstrikes attributed to Israel hit their targets.

The Russians may have intercepted eight missiles, but it sounds as if other missiles did indeed get through, the evidence being both the videos of explosions on the ground and reports, from the Syrian opposition on the ground, of weapons warehouses having been destroyed.

Nonetheless, it remains to be seen just how effective in the long run that Russian BUK missile system turns out to be against seasoned Israeli pilots and their precision-guided missiles. If their past behavior is any guide, the Israelis are quick learners, able to adjust their own techniques; they may have technology up their sleeve that was not necessary to use before but now will be brought into play. No one ever made money betting against the ability of Israeli pilots, planes, and missiles to rise to any challenge.

A Russian source told the London-based pan-Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat Moscow had already begun to aid the Assad regime in “closing off Syrian airspace to Israeli planes.”

When Will the COVID Revolt Come? At some point, there will be a revolt. The longer the arbitrary insanity persists, the more violent the reaction will be. By Roger Kimball

https://amgreatness.com/2021/07/31/when-will-the-covid-revolt-come/

The most cheerful headline I have seen in weeks was on Glenn Reynolds’ New York Post column: “No, Karen, we’re not masking again.” I hope he is right. I do wonder, though. I have no doubt that the second part of his headline—“A winning GOP message for 2022 [and] beyond”—is correct. At least it’s correct if it is expressed as a conditional: It would be a winning strategy were it adopted. As Reynolds notes, “There is a great deal of pent-up frustration and resentment over the inconvenience, the loss of freedom and the general climate of hectoring that the government’s pandemic response has created.” Indeed. And he’s right, too, that 

It’s irritating to be lectured by officials who claim to be smarter than you. It’s infuriating to be lectured by government officials who claim to be smarter than you—but clearly aren’t.

The on-again/off-again claims on masks and vaccination are just part of it. Tired of masks? Get vaccinated, they told us. Now they’re saying wear a mask, even if you’ve been vaccinated and even if you’re associating with others who’ve been vaccinated.

And there’s talk of more lockdowns, which a growing body of scientific evidence suggests were perfectly useless and downright harmful.

As Molly Bloom exclaimed in a different context, Yes, Yes, Yes!

But to return to the question of hope, I am reminded that hope was said by some cynics to have been the last evil in Pandora’s pithos. It seems like only yesterday—in fact, it was just this past May—that both the president and the vice-president of the United States insisted that (as Joe himself put it) “Folks, if you’re fully vaccinated—you no longer need to wear a mask.” 

Of course, that was more than a year after “15 days to slow the spread,” Anthony Fauci’s steady stream of contradictory, though authoritatively delivered, advice, not to mention the recent advent of (cue the scary music) The Delta Variant.  

It was the New York Post, again, that cut to the chase on the latest (unless we’re on to the epsilon variant already) with its cover of July 30. “Insanity!” read its oversized headline and below was a large grid with a tiny bit of the upper right square marked. Of the 161 million people who have been vaccinated, only 5,601 have been hospitalized with the new version of the virus. Of those, only 1,141 have died. That’s .0007 percent. (And how old, one wonders, were those who succumbed and from what comorbidities did they suffer?)

Now it turns out that the latest CDC advice was based largely on an outbreak at Provincetown after the informal party time of “Bear Week” in early July. Andrew Sullivan treated the news with some portion of the skepticism it deserves. In fact, as another commentator pointed out, what the Provincetown outbreak really shows is that “even under perfect conditions for a superspreader event, the vaccine works spectacularly well.”

But even to talk about studies and statistics and “expert” advice is to assume that we are talking primarily about an issue of public health. We aren’t. Consider this list from Jim Treacher: 

The Infrastructure ‘Pay-Fors’ That Aren’t The bipartisan deal is full of phantom revenue gimmicks.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/senate-infrastructure-deal-pay-fors-republicans-joe-manchin-11627940099?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin and his Senate Republican friends are stressing that their infrastructure deal is “fully paid for.” Read their lips: No new deficit spending. Read their bill: It relies to a great degree on savings and revenue already baked into the fisc or that are unlikely to happen.

Deficit financing is better than increasing taxes, and Republicans at least jettisoned the taxes (until Democrats raise them in their budget reconciliation bill). They also deep-sixed President Biden’s plan to give the IRS $40 billion to harass small businesses, which Democrats claimed would raise hundreds of billions of dollars in new revenue. Their IRS stimulus was dubious, but so are most of the bill’s remaining offsets.

Start with using 10 years of savings from various programs to offset five years of spending. This includes extending by a decade a guarantee fee that government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac charge on mortgages they back.

Congress imposed the 10-basis point fee in 2011 to cover the cost of the government backstop on Fan and Fred. Extending the fee through 2032 is expected to raise $21 billion, but the taxpayer costs will be far greater if the housing giants start to lose money again after the Biden Administration takes steps to ease underwriting standards.

Then there’s magical Medicare accounting. The bill would extend Medicare provider payment cuts by a year through 2031, just inside the 10-year budget window. Senators are counting that as saving $9 billion, but Congress is almost certain to override this provision once hospitals squawk, as they surely will.

Betraying the Cuban People, Again by Chris Farrell  

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17606/betraying-cuban-people

Everyone knows that Biden’s hollow platitudes are utterly meaningless. “The United States stands with…” what, exactly, does that mean? What does “stands with” look like?

Here is the ugly truth: Biden does not care a damn about the Cuban people throwing off 60+ years of communism. Cubans are holding the largest anti-government rallies in decades. American media coverage has been near zero. Half of Biden’s White House staff probably does not understand what the president means by “repression,” admires Fidel and Raul Castro, and can be found wearing Che Guevara T-shirts on the weekends.

Cuban President and First Secretary of the Communist Party Miguel Díaz-Canel could order the machine-gunning of every protestor on the streets of Havana and the Biden administration would do nothing. Well, perhaps they might take the “strong action” of two weeks ago and sanction ONE Cuban government official, followed by the “stunning” sanctioning of TWO additional Cuban police officials. Díaz-Canel actually condemned protestors looking for food, calling them “counter-revolutionary mercenaries.”

Meanwhile, over on Capitol Hill, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Squad are advocating for programs and policies right out of the Cuban Communist Party’s playbook. They actually want the power outages, rationed medical care and food shortages ordinary Cubans are protesting against. Their militant ideology and policy proposals fit right into the anti-American, Marxist “Critical FILL-IN-THE-BLANK Theory” concepts taught from the Frankfurt School.

Under the Biden administration, the Cuban people will be ignored by the United States, again, as they have been for 60+ years. It is a horror for America — with brutal, bloody consequences for the innocent people that continue to hold out hope that America will finally help.

“Elections? What for?”
— Fidel Castro, January 1960

“The United States stands with the brave Cubans who have taken to the streets to oppose 62 years of repression under a communist regime.”
— President Biden, July 22, 2021

Take a look at the opening quotes to this essay, pause, and think about them. There is a long litany of American miscalculations, cowardice, gamesmanship, indifference, condescension, and exploitation centered on Cuba, the Cuban people, and Cuban-Americans. It has been a bipartisan problem for decades, with a lot of American political rhetoric; one double-crossed, failed invasion attempt; and brutal communist intransigence.

Everyone knows that President Biden’s hollow platitudes are utterly meaningless. “The United States stands with…” what, exactly, does that mean? What does “stands with” look like? Has Biden dispatched operational detachments from 7th Special Forces Group to parachute into Cuba, raise and train a partisan army to overthrow the Communist government, and establish a democratic republic? No? Why not? For that matter, why did President Trump fail to do that in Venezuela to Maduro? So much for the modern application of the Monroe Doctrine and the “American” Hemisphere.

Biden Attacks Alarmist COVID News Stories — Even As He Stokes Them

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/08/03/biden-attacks-alarmist-covid-news-stories-even-as-he-stokes-them/

CNN might be a horribly biased and woefully unreliable news organization these days, but its reporters do know how to convey the White House propaganda well. Case in point is the story posted on CNN’s website over the weekend about how the Biden administration is desperately trying to get the news media to stop playing up the risk of the Delta variant.

“The White House is frustrated with what it views as alarmist, and in some instances flat-out misleading, news coverage about the Delta variant,”  reported Oliver Darcy over the weekend. “That’s according to two senior Biden administration officials I spoke with Friday, both of whom requested anonymity to candidly offer their opinion on coverage of the CDC data released that suggests vaccinated Americans who become infected with the Delta coronavirus variant can infect others as easily as those who are unvaccinated.”

Darcy goes on to provide a multitude of examples of how the White House berated various news agencies for their coverage of the CDC report that prompted its mask-wearing mandate for vaccinated people.

After the New York Times tweeted that “The Delta variant is as contagious as chickenpox and may be spread by vaccinated people as easily as the unvaccinated, an internal C.D.C. report said,” a White House staffer responded:

CNN’s Brian Stelter also parrotted the White House talking points on his weekend show.

“It is time for a reset. A reset in how COVID-19 is covered by the media,” Stelter said. 

Inclusive Exclusivity In today’s race-obsessed America, where do Asians fit in? Bruce Bawer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/07/inclusive-exclusivity-bruce-bawer/

At a time when our elites have decided that absolutely everything in American society comes down to the supposedly fraught, brutal, and never-ending power relationship between oppressive whites and oppressed blacks – and where, according to Critical Race Theory, white-on-black racism must constantly and tirelessly be rooted out, challenged, denounced, and vigorously countered with anti-racist actions, statements, and preferences in accordance with the semi-literate but apparently divinely inspired directives of Ibram X. Kendi and his ilk – where do Asians fit in?

There’s no such question about Latinos and Native Americans, who, being recognized victim groups, can be pretty tidily bundled in with blacks on the “oppressed” side of the ledger. But Asians? Increasingly, Asians are seen as “white-adjacent.” Yes, many Asians have had it bad. Real bad. (Of course, we’re using “Asian” here not in the euphemistic way Brits do – to mean, mostly, Pakistanis and other Muslims from Southwest Asia – but in the American sense, to refer primarily to Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, and other East Asians.) As Xu reminds us, the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act was the only piece of legislation of its kind in American history, and the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II was without parallel. Many Asian immigrants to the U.S., moreover, have experienced poverty and oppression in their homelands beyond the imagining of even the poorest and most downtrodden American of any skin color.

But somehow their suffering doesn’t count. While blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans receive a leg-up in college admissions, job hirings, and other such circumstances, Asians don’t. On the contrary, the same systems that are rigged in favor of those other groups tend to be rigged against Asians – often to a grotesque degree. As Kenny Xu records in his definitive new book An Inconvenient Minority: The Attack on Asian American Excellence and the Fight for Meritocracy, an Asian student wanting to get into Harvard in 2009 (and the injustice certainly hasn’t disappeared since then) “had to score an astounding 450 points higher on a 1600-point SAT test than a Black student to have the same chance of admission.” Of course, when affirmative action started, it was supposed to make up for slavery and its aftermath. But if that’s the premise, then why do Latinos also get a boost? Presumably because as a group they’ve known suffering and oppression. Why not Asians, then?

Dr. Charles Jacobs Video: Arabs and Muslims Have Black Slaves And “progressives” don’t care.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/08/dr-charles-jacobs-video-arabs-and-muslims-have-frontpagemagcom/

This video is brought to you by a Freedom Center-Glazov Gang collaboration on a new exclusive webinar series, Teach-Ins for the Twenty-First Century. Join us as some of the leading thinkers and pundits on the scene today discuss key issues related to the coronavirus pandemic and its ongoing implications, confronting the Left, the jihad terror threat, and much, much more. And make sure to ask your own questions of our experts.

This new webinar features Dr. Charles Jacobs, the president of Americans for Peace and Tolerance who has been named by the Forward as one of America’s top 50 Jewish leaders.

Dr. Jacobs discusses Arabs and Muslims Have Black Slaves, exposing the outrage of modern-day Islamic enslavement of blacks in Africa — and why the Left doesn’t care about it.

He explains how this injustice arose and suggests things Americans can do to both combat the leftist abandonment of black slaves, and to help free the slaves.

Don’t miss it!

BLACK FRAGILITY AS BLACK STRENGTH? TRY THESE BOOKS INSTEAD. The next entry in the KenDiAngelonian universe is out. But why not branch out? John McWhorter

https://johnmcwhorter.substack.com/p/black-fragility-as-black-strength?token=

Fish don’t know they’re wet. And either do a lot of us when it comes to how we think about race.

Here are three pieces of advice for living.

1. What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker.

2. Always trust your feelings.

3. Life is a battle between good and bad people.

Do you see these three tenets as wisdom, or as something a person should be taught out of? I need not even ask.

But why, then, does enlightened America embrace the idea that where black people are concerned, living by these three tenets is cognitively healthy?

* * *

The tenets are the heart of Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt’s brilliant The Coddling of the American Mind from a few years back. They analyze these as counsel given to students, today, in general. However, this extends to black America as a whole.

Of course, the usual suspects will have a hard time recognizing themselves in these tenets when spelled out. However, they are the fish who don’t know they’re wet. They’ve never known anything but those tenets, and thus see them as a normal way of being. They don’t know that these tenets are “a thing.”