NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The George Soros Partner Who Disrupted Right-Wing Publishing All Seasons Press, founded by billionaire investor Scott Bessent, has a funny habit of signing big-name MAGA authors to book contracts, then suing them by Armin Rosen

Posted By on November 9th, 2023

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/the-george-soros-partner-who-disrupted-right-wing-publishing

Americans are used to their country’s cultural and political life reflecting the beliefs and personal whims of a hyperwealthy class that’s beyond public scrutiny. A few levels below Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Rupert Murdoch there are so many astronomically rich attention entrepreneurs trying to manipulate the content and structure of the country’s information channels that it’s possible to stumble across a new one entirely by accident. One such surprise encounter with an infinitely moneyed, would-be media visionary explains why the publication of South Carolina-based writer and Tablet columnist Lee Smith’s next book was tied up in court for nearly a year.

In October of 2022, Smith filed a lawsuit against a publisher called All Seasons Press (ASP), to whom he had sold the rights to a book proposal based on a February 2021 essay he had written for Tablet. “The Thirty Tyrants” argued that Americans at the top of the financial, entertainment, and political industries had sold their country out to communist China. Unsurprisingly, according to an outline Smith submitted to an editor at ASP in July of 2022, one of the book’s targets would be George Soros, who in the 2010s lauded China’s “doctrine of harmonious development,” hailed the Chinese government as “better functioning” than its American counterpart, and advocated “partnership with China to avoid world war.”

Upon the launch of All Seasons Press in early 2021, The New York Times reported that the new publisher was “pitching itself as an alternative to mainstream houses” for pro-Trump or Trump-adjacent conservatives who the Manhattan-based “big five” now refused to publish. ASP appeared to be a natural home for Smith, whose 2019 book The Plot Against the President had presented a favorable look at Congressman Devin Nunes’ campaign to expose the origins of the investigation into President Donald Trump’s “collusion” with Russia. Under the leadership of Louise Burke and Kate Hartson, two former big-five editors—the latter of them Smith’s editor for The Plot—ASP would “publish the best writers, politicians and pundits in the conservative movement,” according to the June 2021 press release announcing the company’s founding.

In his October 2022 complaint, filed in the federal court system’s Eastern District of Virginia, Smith claimed that contrary to its right-wing, pro-Trump presentation, ASP is secretly owned and controlled by a longtime Soros associate named Scott Bessent.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

GOP Debate Takeaways: Nikki Haley Takes Fire as She Jockeys for Second Place Candidates fail to find a breakout moment at Miami forum; ‘You’re just scum,’ Haley tells Ramaswamy. By Alex Leary and John McCormick

Posted By on November 9th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/gop-debate-takeaways-haley-takes-fire-as-she-jockeys-for-second-place-27ee6cb0

MIAMI—Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who has shown momentum in recent weeks, came under sustained attack in Wednesday’s Republican presidential primary debate as she competes with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to be the leading alternative to former President Donald Trump.

She also delivered several of her own shots at DeSantis, who tried to float above the fray, but engaged with her on China, energy policy and a handful of other issues. A confrontation between the two had been brewing, amplified by a closely watched poll that recently showed Haley and DeSantis tied for second in Iowa, where nomination balloting starts Jan. 15.

But second place may not be worth much given Trump’s commanding lead in the polls. After an opening question that asked candidates to make a case against Trump, who skipped the event, the debate centered on testy exchanges between those on stage.

“You’re just scum,” Haley said at one point to biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, after he said her daughter had used TikTok, amid a discussion of banning the widely popular Chinese app.

Here are key takeaways from the debate, moderated by Lester Holt and Kristen Welker of NBC News and Hugh Hewitt of the Salem Radio Network:

Rivals Try to Slow Haley

Haley was a top target throughout the evening as others tried to slow her momentum. She took heat over her foreign-policy positions, attempts to spur Chinese investment in her home state and earnings from Boeing and other corporate boardships.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

So, How’s That ‘Historic Investment In Clean Energy’ Paying Off?

Posted By on November 9th, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/11/09/so-hows-that-historic-investment-in-clean-energy-paying-off/

Anyone following the news might be confused by recent talk of offshore wind projects in trouble, automakers pulling back on EV production, and now multi-billion-dollar bailouts for the green-energy industry. How could that be, since President Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats rammed through $370 billion in “clean” energy subsidies a little more than a year ago?

When Biden signed the criminally misnamed “Inflation Reduction Act” in August 2022, he boasted that it was “the most aggressive action ever — ever, ever, ever — in confronting the climate crisis and strengthening our economic — our energy security.”

So-called green-energy companies, not surprisingly, were ecstatic.

“Americans can now rest assured that our leaders have acted to lower costs, strengthen American energy independence, and create hundreds of thousands of well-paid jobs, all while combatting the damaging impacts of climate change,” George Hershman, CEO of SOLV Energy, a solar developer, said at the time.

Has anyone checked up on those promises recently? Well, let’s see:

Lower costs? Electricity prices are up 3% since Biden signed that bill into law, and up 24% since he took office. Overall energy prices are unchanged compared with August 2022 and are up 44% since January 2021.

ANTI-SEMITISM, EDUCATION Comments turned off

Campus Anti-Semitism in 1970 An encounter with fringe lunatics then gave a foretaste of today’s bitter hatred. By Jonathan Kellerman

Posted By on November 9th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/campus-anti-semitism-in-1970-jew-hatred-anti-israel-academia-college-7c7373d0?mod=opinion_lead_pos10

I was a junior at the University of California, Los Angeles when Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban came to town. It was Nov. 12, 1970, and he’d arrived to give a speech on Israel’s conflicts with its neighbors. Alongside thousands of other students eager to hear him, I strolled to Pauley Pavilion, one of the campus’s largest venues.

On the way, my friends and I passed a small, vocal group of anti-Israel protesters, a motley bunch I’d seen on campus over the past year: three Libyan exchange students, a middle-aged German woman and a few members of Students for a Democratic Society, a radical group.

One of the SDSers confronted us, hurling insult after insult. He ended his tirade by screaming that we were Nazis. We walked on and enjoyed an eloquent, well-received speech by Eban. But the encounter remained with me.

Here I was—a second-generation American who had lost several relatives to the gas chambers, the son of a decorated World War II veteran who had fought the Nazis and survived both D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge—being branded as Hitlerian. What could be crueler and crazier?

Anti-Semitism at elite universities isn’t new. Those opposed to Israel planted the seeds of hatred following the Six Day War in 1967. Israel won that military conflict, but its enemies have since dominated the war of words.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Can/should Israel defy US pressure? A new 6-minute-video Yoram Ettinger

Posted By on November 9th, 2023

https://bit.ly/3ssfqV1

Can/should Israel defy US pressure to act against its (Israel’s) own most critical national security interest (e.g., allowing a ceasefire in the war to obliterate the anti-Western Hamas Islamic terrorism; bolstering the Palestinian Authority despite its terror-driven policy and education system; allowing a non-Israeli security control of Gaza following the current war) while the US extends Israel a highly-appreciated(!), vital support, militarily, financially and diplomatically?
 
2. Israel’s defiance of US pressure has been an inherent feature of US-Israel relations since 1948. It has caused short-term frictions, while generating long-term US strategic respect toward Israel, triggering a dramatic enhancement of mutually-beneficial strategic cooperation. 
 
3. As expected, Israeli defiance of US pressure spared the US economic and national security setbacks, dealing major blows to enemies and rivals of the US.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

A Palestinian state is still a dangerous idea – opinion In a perfect world, every group that wants a sovereign state could have one. But in the real world, they shouldn’t. By Moshe Phillips

Posted By on November 9th, 2023

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-772008

Despite the horrific October 7 pogroms in southern Israel, carried out by Hamas terrorists, US President Joe Biden continues to push for the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian-Arab state next to the Jewish state. Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to understand that October 7 has changed everything.

For decades, the debate over creating a Palestinian state revolved around two major issues: the intentions of the Palestinian Arabs and the actual borders of such a state.

Statehood supporters claimed that the Palestinian Arab leadership, and the majority of Palestinian Arabs, would live in peace with Israel if given a sovereign state.

Until the 1993 Oslo Accords, nobody knew whether that claim had real merit. Nobody knew for sure how the Palestinian Arabs would behave if given self-rule. But since 1993, the question of their intentions has been tested, and they have failed that test. Miserably. There’s just no debating that point.

The first test was in 1993-1995, when Israel signed the Oslo agreements and surrendered control of 40% of Judea-Samaria to the Palestinian Authority. The behavior of then-PA leader Yasser Arafat, and his successor Mahmoud Abbas, was supposed to show that it was safe to give them a full-fledged state.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

VIDEO:Charles Lipson – The Great Divide in America

Posted By on November 8th, 2023

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5uccoidgBY

HOMELAND SECURITY, IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Terrorists and Saboteurs Are Surging into America by Gordon G. Chang

Posted By on November 8th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20128/terrorists-saboteurs-border-migrants

Those who want to cross the U.S. southern border and do not live in this hemisphere usually fly to Quito because Ecuador allows visa-free entry to Chinese and others, such as those from the Middle East and the Central Asian “stans.”

At the end of last month, 17 Chinese nationals landed at Key Largo from Cuba.

Venezuela’s regime has been using migration as a weapon against the United States. [Joseph] Humire terms it “Strategic Engineered Migration.”

“It took only 19 terrorists to carry out 9/11,” Humire points out. “America is likely heading toward an era of increased terrorist attacks in the homeland.”

And Biden is welcoming the attackers onto American soil.

“The migration is going into hyperdrive,” Anthony Rubin, owner of investigative journalist site Muckraker.com, told Gatestone this week. He was referring to individuals traveling by foot, boat and truck to America’s southern border.

A caravan of some 7,000 people, one of the largest ever, is now making its way to the U.S. During the last few weeks, Rubin has been reporting on this mass movement of humanity as it surges toward America.

Those who want to cross the U.S. southern border and do not live in this hemisphere usually fly to Quito because Ecuador allows visa-free entry to Chinese and others, such as those from the Middle East and the Central Asian “stans.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Can Anyone Give An Example Of A Muslim Country Treating Members Of Another Religion Appropriately? Francis Menton

Posted By on November 8th, 2023

https://us7.campaign-archive.com/?e=a9fdc67db9&u=9d011a88d8fe324cae8c084c5&id=fcf96971c9

On and after October 7 the world has been treated to images of Hamas terrorists engaging in the most horrific acts against Israeli civilians, including even elderly people and babies. Surely all civilized people would react to these crimes with revulsion and outrage? To the contrary, the last several weeks have seen massive pro-Hamas demonstrations around the world, including on campuses of elite universities and in major cities like London, Paris, Washington, D.C., and New York.

Rationales that I have seen to justify Hamas’s conduct have included that Israel is supposedly an “apartheid state,” that Israel engages in “genocide,” and that the Israelis are “settler colonialists.” In each case the words used as accusations against Israel are completely detached from their usual meaning, or indeed from any meaning. Certainly, much that Israel has done over the years could be subject to fair criticism. But “apartheid”? “Genocide”? Ridiculous. “Settler colonialism”? I have no idea what that even means.

Here in the U.S. we have a well-established constitutional order of freedom of religion. People practice dozens of different religions, and members of one religion, and also the government, do not prevent or restrict the practice of other religions by other people. That was not an easy order to establish, but we have established it (at least for now), and it enables people who have come from all over the world and from many different religions to live among each other in peace.

The Muslim countries have no such principles. As far as I can determine, the record of Muslim countries with regard to treatment of members of other religions is universally abysmal, in every case far worse than anything Israel can possibly be accused of. Yet somehow in the torrent of criticism of Israel for “apartheid” or “genocide,” this subject never comes up.

So I thought it would be useful to put together a small round-up of treatment of members of minority religions in Muslim countries. I will focus on the countries of North Africa, and on their treatment of their Jewish populations, because that information is particularly relevant to the situation involving Israel today. The North African countries once had substantial and thriving Jewish communities, none of which exist any more. Nor was the abysmal treatment by the Muslims limited to Jews. Similar (if perhaps not quite as bad) treatment has befallen members of other religions like Christians or Baha’is by Muslims both in North Africa and also in places like Pakistan or Iran or Nigeria.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Sarah Schutte:Rothman: We’re Seeing ‘Some of the Most Grotesque, Overt, Unselfconscious Displays of Antisemitism That I Have Witnessed in My Entire Lifetime’

Posted By on November 8th, 2023

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/rothman-were-seeing-some-of-the-most-grotesque-overt-unselfconscious-displays-of-antisemitism-that-i-have-witnessed-in-my-entire-lifetime/

National Review senior writer Noah Rothman, on Tuesday’s episode of The Editors podcast, said antisemitism in the West is reaching levels he’s never before seen. The discussion followed the killing of a Jewish counter-protester in Los Angeles over the weekend.

“Attacks on Jews, for being Jews, are up by 388 percent in the last month,” he said. “That’s an estimate, so we don’t know. But it would comport with what we’re seeing.”

Rothman added, “We’ve seen acts of property destruction, specifically Hitlerian threats against lawmakers, ritualistic vandalism. This is all an act of intimidation and a sort of a rite, a ritual that summons in the people who engage in this, the will to engage in murderous violence.”

These acts, he said, amount to “some of the most grotesque, overt, unselfconscious displays of antisemitism that I have witnessed in my entire lifetime.” He noted that even New York City, with its large Jewish population, is hosting rallies “where people are chanting, ‘Globalize the Intifada,’ and, ‘There’s only one solution to the Jewish problem.’”