ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Contemplate the Rise in Religious Hatred, Then Confront It by Lawrence Kadish

Posted By on April 10th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19573/confront-religious-hatred

As Jews around the world gather this week to observe the holiday of Passover and as Christians celebrate Easter, and Muslims, Ramadan, it comes at a time when violent acts of anti-Semitism and the slaughter of Christians have spiked as incidents have been reported around the world.

It is one of history’s oldest and most virulent of prejudices where Jews have cynically been used as scapegoats by empires and despots to ensure their own survival.

As early as 1899, following a year in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the iconic American author Mark Twain observed that the leaders of the Habsburg Empire directed scorn at the Jewish community to maintain unity within their precarious empire.

Twain would take stock of the Jewish will to survive throughout multiple epochs by writing, “He has made a marvellous fight in this world, in all the ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him.”

The Passover holiday that observes the Jewish exodus from Egypt is just one more chapter in the history of a people that have been singled out for persecution. While history, and today’s headlines, remind us there are others who have suffered violent religious bigotry, none were the victims of an organized genocide that enlisted the power of a modern state to commit murder on an industrialized scale.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

No Money, No Nukes: Time to Bankrupt China’s Regime by Gordon G. Chang

Posted By on April 10th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19572/bankrupt-china-regime

America can stop China’s nuclear weapons development and other monumental programs.

The Chinese Communist Party needs America for, among other things, money, and the U.S. does not have to provide it.

In reality, China’s economy in 2022, after price adjustments, almost certainly contracted, perhaps by as much as 3%.

Exports fell 6.8% year-on-year. More significantly, imports, one of the best reflections of domestic demand, plunged 10.2%.

“Everything is down, whether plane travel, freight, or buying on the Alibaba platforms.” — Anne Stevenson-Yang, author of China Alone: Return to Isolation, to Gatestone, April 2023.

China, therefore, needs factory orders from abroad and foreign investment. The American president can crimp both of these lifelines by, among other things, using his authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 and by joining or liberalizing free-trade agreements with other countries. For instance, U.S. President Joe Biden could encourage factories to move to the Western hemisphere by making a few fixes to the Dominican Republic-Central America-United States Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR). The American market is the largest in the world, and the president can use it to redirect trade flows.

“We now know that China spent $240 billion on country bailouts from 2008 to 2021, correlating with a drop in Chinese lending for infrastructure projects that are the core of this Belt and Road Initiative. It is clear that China is now overstretched and unable to continue with the BRI overall plan into the foreseeable future.” — China analyst Charles Burton of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, to Gatestone, April 2023.

Municipalities and cities across China have not been able to pay civil servant salaries and promised benefits, and for months there have been protests, even in wealthy cities like Wuhan in Hubei province and Dalian in Liaoning.

There is a lot America can do to stop China’s fast buildup of its most dangerous arsenal, and in any case Americans must not under any circumstances fund, with trade and investment, the weapons pointed at them.

President Ronald Reagan bankrupted the Soviet Union by reducing the flow of cash to Moscow. It is now time to bankrupt China.

After all, no money, no nukes.

“We are probably not going to be able to do anything to stop, slow down, disrupt, interdict, or destroy the Chinese nuclear development program that they have projected out over the next 10 to 20 years,” said Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley on March 29 at a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee. “They’re going to do that in accordance with their own plan.”

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

The Border: 10,000 Apprehensions in 48 Hours And those are just the people who got caught. by Robert Spencer

Posted By on April 10th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-border-10000-apprehensions-in-48-hours/

What was once known as the Southern border of the United States is essentially nonexistent in this time of Biden regime misrule, and so it was no surprise Wednesday when Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz tweeted some figures showing just how bad the border area has become:

Past 48 Hours…

– 10,070 Apprehensions

– 52 lbs. of Fentanyl

– 38 lbs. of Ecstasy

– 11 lbs. of Meth

– 11 lbs. of Cocaine

– $48,000 Seized

– 20 Firearms

– 5 Stolen Vehicles Recovered

– 5 Sex Offenders

– 4 Warrants

– 1 Gang Member

Significant numbers for just 2 days!

Indeed, and it was just business as usual for the border, although Ortiz didn’t mention the terrorists. It came to light last October that up to that point in 2022, the Border Patrol had caught at least 98 people at the border who are on terror watchlists. There is no indication that they’ve stopped coming since then. Terrorists can see what’s happening at the border as much as anyone else can; why shouldn’t they take advantage of the mess Old Joe has made? And those 98, of course, were just the ones who got caught.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Ron DeSantis: The next Scott Walker? Joe Concha

Posted By on April 10th, 2023

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/3940807-ron-desantis-the-next-scott-walker/

“After listening to Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin as he has traveled the country preparing his campaign for president, which officially begins on Monday, admiring voters most often describe him as ‘authentic,’ ‘real’ and ‘approachable,” Mr. Walker’s advisers say.” 

That’s the opening paragraph of a July 2015 New York Times story following Scott Walker’s announcement of a presidential run. The hype for Walker was palpable. Here we had a young governor who had won three gubernatorial elections in the swing state of Wisconsin with tons of momentum seeking the GOP nomination. As a result, Walker was leading in a Monmouth University poll at the time over Donald Trump 22 percent to 13 percent in a crowded field. 

But a funny thing happened on the way to the nomination: Walker disappeared among the 17 other candidates seeking to represent the GOP. Within two months of his announcement, he had gone from frontrunner to near the bottom of the polls, capturing just 2 percent support in a September 2015 ABC News/Washington Post poll nationally and 3 percent in a Quinnipiac poll among Iowans. 

Many point to Walker’s careful approach, low-key manner and lackluster debate performances for his downfall. As ABC News noted after one debate:

“Walker’s performance came across to many observers as overly cautious and scripted. Sticking closely to his talking points throughout, Walker spoke quickly when it was his turn and didn’t use up all the time he was allotted. To the extent that Google search data offers insight into how voters responded to candidates’ debate performance, Walker’s name was one of the least searched during the debate.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Passover and a Warning to America Eileen F. Toplansky

Posted By on April 10th, 2023

“Our current leaders’ indifference to this existential threat as well as the spurning of core American beliefs and values are endangering our children’s future and undermining our very existence as the land of freedom and opportunity.”

The Jewish holiday of Passover is now being celebrated around the world.  The Haggadah is the guidebook  that helps Jews understand the circumstances of slavery while they grapple with profound questions and ideas that animate the holiday.

Because questions are vital to the understanding of Passover, rabbis of old would create commentaries on the Hebrew Scriptures.  These are known as midrash. In its broadest sense, a midrash is an interpretation or interweaving of Jewish historical events in order to see a larger picture.  A midrash can span very different time periods, yet ultimately there is a logic to be found as Jews seek to understand G-d’s intentions.

Centered on the liberation of the Jews from the cruel hands of Pharoah, the holiday examines how G-d helped the Jewish people through their tribulations. Indeed, Pharoah had issued an edict that ordered that all Israelite male children be murdered by being drowned at birth.  It is clearly stated in Exodus 1:22 that “every boy that is born, you shall throw into the river and every girl you shall keep alive”

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Can Anyone Beat Biden Or Trump In 2024 Primaries? I&I/TIPP Poll-Terry Jones

Posted By on April 10th, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/04/10/can-anyone-beat-biden-or-trump-in-2024-primaries-ii-tipp-poll/

It’s April but, with just 10 months to go, the clock is ticking down to January when the first two states (Iowa and New Hampshire) pick their favorites for president. The clear favorite for the Democrats is President Joe Biden, and for Republicans, former President Donald Trump. But neither contender can take their lead for granted, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows.

Look at the Democrats, for example. Biden is favored by 39% of Democrats and Democrat-leaning voters. That’s a four-point drop from 43% in March, according to the April online I&I/TIPP Poll of 662 Democrats/independents who lean Democrat, taken from March 29-31.
The poll has a +/-4.0 percentage percentage point margin of error.

Who’s No. 2? Well, it’s not a person. It’s “Not sure/Someone else,” which received 11% of the responses. The only other “challenger” within even sniffing distance of double digits is Michelle Obama, at 8%, the same reading as March.

What about Vice President Kamala Harris? Unable to reverse her flagging popularity, she actually fell in the latest poll, from 9% backing in March to just 7% in April.

Only Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has increased his tally, going from 3% support to 5% in April, a gain that’s still within the margin of error.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Fiddling America Away We fixate only on the irrelevant that we think we can address while ignoring the existential we know we no longer can solve. By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on April 10th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/04/09/fiddling-america-away/

The last few weeks, the world had been writing off the United States as either crazy or irrelevant as it watches America cannibalize itself. 

Friends tremble at our sudden decline. Enemies rejoice. Neutrals make the necessary adjustments to join the ascendant non-American side.

The symptoms of our decline abroad appear everywhere. The more Joe Biden brags about the crippling oil sanctions on Russia, friends like India and allies like Japan ignore them. And why not, when Biden has no idea how long the war in Ukraine will last, or how much wherewithal the United States can, should, or will give Kyiv, or how its on-to-Red-Square blank check will finally end?

Big Biden talks about more solar and wind farms, and green new deals won’t fill the gas tanks in Munich or heat the homes of Kyoto, or lower the price of imported oil in the United Kingdom. Claiming the Afghanistan mess was a success fools no one.

Allies ask who are our leaders. An impaired Joe Biden who never is quite sure where he is, what he is doing, or whom he is with?

Kamala Harris, whose only interests appear to be demagoguing racial and social tensions with a shrinking vocabulary? 

Senator John Fetterman (D-Penn.), who was elected on the argument it was unkind not to vote for a candidate who was physically and mentally impaired?

Energy Department kingpin Sam Brinton, the cross-dresser in lipstick, now charged with felonies for stealing women’s luggage at airport carousels?

Pete Buttigieg, our transportation secretary, who virtue signals melodramas of the past when he is clueless how to fix crises in the present?

Our Pentagon brass who fixate on saying the correct thing now to ensure the lucrative defense contractor billets later? 

Allies fear that after abandoning billions of dollars in weaponry in Kabul to the terrorist Taliban, and pumping billions of dollars more of arms into the Ukrainian meat grinder, and failing to increase U.S. armaments production, Washington simply does not have the resources to match China in either a looming proxy or head-to-head war.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Macron Blunders on Taiwan—and Ukraine He weakens deterrence against Chinese aggression and undermines U.S. support for Europe.

Posted By on April 10th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/macron-blunders-on-taiwan-and-ukraine-france-asia-military-china-xi-jinping-military-support-303181c5?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

Emmanuel Macron fancies himself a Charles de Gaulle for the 21st century, which includes distancing Europe from the U.S. But the French President picked a terrible moment this weekend for a Gaullist afflatus following his meeting with Chinese Communist Party chief Xi Jinping.

“The paradox would be that, overcome with panic, we believe we are just America’s followers,” Mr. Macron said in an interview with a reporter from Politico and two French journalists. “The question Europeans need to answer . . . is it in our interest to accelerate [a crisis] on Taiwan? No. The worse thing would be to think that we Europeans must become followers on this topic and take our cue from the U.S. agenda and a Chinese overreaction.”

No one wants a crisis over Taiwan, much less to accelerate one, but preventing one requires a credible deterrent. Mr. Macron seemed to rule out European help with that when he told the journalists that “Europeans cannot resolve the crisis in Ukraine; how can we credibly say on Taiwan, ‘watch out, if you do something wrong we will be there’? If you really want to increase tensions that’s the way to do it.”

If Mr. Macron wants to reduce American public support for the war against Russia, he couldn’t have said it better. Without U.S. weapons and intelligence, Russia would long ago have rolled over Ukraine and perhaps one or more NATO border countries. Mr. Macron says he wants to make Europe less dependent on U.S. weapons and energy, which is fine. But then how about spending the money and making the policy changes to do it?

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

“Does This Compromise President Biden?” by Peter Schweizer

Posted By on April 9th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19539/does-this-compromise-biden

The notion that a declining power like Russia, which has domestic problems, a shrinking economy, a shrinking demographic base, is somehow a bigger threat than China is laughable. It is indicative of a larger issue, which is that Biden essentially has a soft spot for Beijing. The question, of course, is why?

This is a commercial relationship that not only has made the Bidens money. It has advanced the strategic and military interests of the Chinese government itself.

The first one is a private equity arrangement or deal that Hunter Biden has with the Chinese government itself. This is a deal that began and was finalized in December of 2013. It led to the creation of something called Bohai Harvest RST or BHR Partners…. the Chinese government poured in a billion dollars. They later expanded that to a-billion-and-a-half dollars…. One of the partnering firms that created BHR was Hunter Biden’s firm, Rosemont Seneca Partners.

Hunter Biden was put on the board of directors of BHR Partners…. What is astonishing about this is, first of all, that the Chinese government funded this venture. Again, these are not individual Chinese companies. This is Chinese government money.

In 2017, his lawyers admitted that he [Hunter Biden] also took a personal stake. In addition to the firm that he owned part of, he took a personal stake in these deals. That is deal number one. Then there is deal number two with the Chinese government. This involves a real estate firm called Rosemont Real Estate, of which Hunter Biden was a co‑founder.

Rosemont then becomes Gemini Rosemont Realty. The Chinese government is later to put in more than $100 million in cash. They publicly say that they are going to put billions of dollars of equity into this entity to make it even more successful. Here you have two large deals.

When you look at what that private equity firm does, the first thing they do is they become an anchor investor in a Chinese firm called China General Nuclear (CGN). Why is this interesting? This is a nuclear energy firm that about eight months after Hunter Biden’s BHR becomes an anchor investor, they are charged by the FBI in the United States. That firm was stealing nuclear secrets in the United States.

In particular, CGN is trying to gain technologies related to the small nuclear reactors that are put on submarines, which provide a huge military advantage to the United States.

Another acquisition they make is that Hunter Biden’s BHR firm buys half of a company called Henniges in Michigan — and another Chinese entity buys the other half. That other half is bought by AVIC, which is the Chinese state‑owned aviation military contractor. AVIC builds all the military aircraft for the Chinese military.

What I think is important about the Biden story is not simply the fact that the Biden family made money because of the Chinese military and that Joe Biden speaks very kindly about the Chinese since those deals have gone down, but also that the Biden family involving the son of the vice president directly benefit the Chinese military.

China is a power that has demonstrated over the last decade that they want, by 2025, to supplant the United States as the major economic power in the world. Then by 2030, they want to match the United States militarily.

The Chinese government has also spoken openly about their desire to upturn and change the global order for their benefit. What we have in the Biden family is a family that has become wealthy by enabling, helping, aiding and abetting the Chinese in doing exactly that.

In terms of Hunter Biden doing nothing wrong, it does not seem that there has been anything illegal. I have always contended that the problem in Washington DC is that some of the worst crimes or worst acts of corruption are done by people who engage in legal behavior. In Washington DC, the political class gets to make their own rules. They get to rig the game, as it were, to ensure that the real lucrative stuff that is corrupt — and should be illegal — is the very stuff that they engage in.

Hunter Biden has stepped off the board of directors of BHR. Here is the problem: he still retains his equity stake with this Chinese firm. He still has other deals that he conducted with the Chinese from which he benefited.

The Biden team has lied repeatedly. I can go into greater detail…. It has been subterfuge from the beginning. They need to be called out on it….. The American people understand if somebody’s giving you a sweetheart deal, particularly an actor like China… without getting something in return. They are not that stupid.

The problem is the way that rules are written in Washington DC, they are written by the political class themselves. They carve out certain things…. If [Biden] gets a $250 campaign contribution from a GE executive, it is disclosed by the FEC…. If his adult son flying on Air Force Two, clearly close with the vice president, strikes a series of deals with a foreign government that are lucrative and beneficial to him, there is no requirement for disclosure — which, to me, is shocking. One of the things that has to change is that we need greater transparency.

The great gold mine that they have discovered are these foreign entities. With Hunter Biden, you have these deals in China. You also have the deal in Ukraine that everybody’s familiar with…. [Hunter Biden] is given a million dollars a year by a company even though he has no background in Ukraine and no background in energy. Everybody knows what is going on. Unfortunately, it is legal.

There ought to at minimum be a requirement that you disclose any foreign dealings involving the family members of politicians, Republican, Democrat, executive branch, legislative branch. That would be very, very helpful. The way you discuss this and you explain this to people is: It is not a question about what is legal. There are lots of things that are legal in Washington that are highly corrupt. The key thing is, does this compromise Joe Biden?… Has he done favors for that foreign power?

One of the things that the great Roger Robinson has been working on…. He is looking into the fact that in 2013, the Obama administration signed a letter which said that the Chinese companies listed in the New York Stock Exchange did not have to conform to Sarbanes‑Oxley auditing and some of the other requirements that US and other foreign firms do. It is quite a cutout for the Chinese.

The question about blackmail, to be blunt about it, is, are they going to need to blackmail Joe Biden? Joe Biden’s posture towards China is incredibly soft.

[T]here has been a complete lack of curiosity by the media, and even, as we have seen, suppression.

Something may emerge but I am not sure there is something that they want that he is not already prepared to give them.

China is a rival power. They are supplanting the United States on the global stage, both in terms of their economic capability and in terms of their military capability.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Swimmer Riley Gaines Ambushed, Assaulted, and Held Hostage By Trans Mob After Speech at San Francisco State University By Debra Heine

Posted By on April 9th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/04/07/swimmer-riley-gaines-ambushed-assaulted-held-hostage-by-trans-mob-after-speech-at-san-francisco-state-university/

Swimmer Riley Gaines was ambushed, physically assaulted and held hostage for three hours late Thursday by a violent trans-rights mob who disrupted her speech at San Francisco State University about protecting women’s sports.

“I was physically assaulted by one person. I was struck twice, both times hitting my shoulder with the second strike grazing my face,” Gaines told CNN Friday. “The rest of the protestors just ambushed and cornered me before I was able to move out with the help of campus police.”

Gaines is a 12-time All-American champ, and a former competitor of trans swimmer Lia Thomas, a biological male who has taken the sport by storm since he started identifying as a female.

Her appearance at SFSU was booked by a conservative student organization and organized by Turning Point USA. Footage showed Riley being partially drowned out with chants as she was giving her speech. The agitators “rushed in when the event was over,” according to a university Turning Point USA spokesperson.

“Why are you running!” a protester yelped, after Gaines was ambushed. Flanked by university police, she made her way down a hallway.

Another agitator screeched “trans rights are human rights” before jumping in front of her to scream profanities in her face. “Yeah you f—ing transphobic bitch, I f–ing see you!” the unhinged woman bellowed as the distressed guest speaker was hustled away. “The prisoners are running the asylum at SFSU,” Gaines wrote in a video she posted on Twitter. “This is proof that women need sex-protected spaces. Still only further assures me I’m doing something right. When they want you silent, speak louder,” she said.