FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Extremists the Biden Administration Does Not See by Bassam Tawil

Posted By on December 14th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19232/israel-palestinian-extremists

If [Bezalel] Smotrich and [Itamar] Ben-Gvir are “extremists” – at least in the eyes of the Americans – then under what category do Faraj and Al-Sheikh fall, as well as many other Palestinian officials who were previously involved in terrorism?

These US officials expressing concern over the rise of the far-right parties in Israel… do not seem to have any problem at all with the growing incitement and continuing terrorist attacks by Palestinians against Israel. Those onslaughts against Israelis, carried out in both the West Bank and inside Israel, include shootings, stabbings, car-rammings and the hurling of rocks and firebombs.

The US officials ignore that Hamas, the Palestinian terror group whose charter openly calls for the obliteration of Israel, remains more popular than ever among Palestinians.

The students who voted for Hamas are saying that they do not recognize Israel’s right to exist; do not believe in any peace process with Israel and, like Hamas, are totally opposed to the two-state solution that the Biden administration has been advocating day and night.

Like Hamas, the students believe only in a solution that would see Israel replaced by an Iranian-backed terror state controlled by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. This scenario does not seem to bother the Biden administration in the slightest.

To see what real extremism looks like, those voicing concern over the return of the right wing to power in Israel only need to catch a glimpse of what is happening under the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

The streets of the West Bank and Gaza Strip are full of armed terrorists and gunmen who are openly stating their intention to kill Jews.

Some even say that it was precisely actions of the Palestinian terrorists that spurred this “extremist” group in Israel to win the election in the first place.

If the Biden administration wants to see real extremism, it only needs to turn its gaze to the failing state of Lebanon, now under the de facto control of Iran and its terrorist proxy, Hezbollah. The Biden administration could also take a look at Syria, where tens of thousands of people have been slaughtered since the beginning of the civil war in 2011.

Real extremism is on display every day on the streets of Jenin, Nablus, Ramallah and the Gaza Strip; it claims the lives of Jews virtually every week.

The real extremists are also the Palestinian leaders who deprive their people of the international aid and encourage their youths to kill Jews. The real extremists are those who are responsible for firing rockets at Israeli cities from the Gaza Strip. The real extremists are those who do not believe in the right of Israel to exist and work non-stop to destroy it.

There is no comparison between the alleged extremists in Israel, and the murderous terrorists in Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. It is high time for the Biden administration to open its eyes to that fact.

The Biden administration has reportedly expressed reservations about the rise of far-right parties in the recent Israeli election. The administration, however, has failed to express reservations about the continuous incitement against Israel by Palestinian leaders and media outlets.

BOOKS, HISTORY Comments turned off

Weimar: Intoxication and Calamity: Wolfgang Kasper

Posted By on December 14th, 2022

Professor Harald Jähner, a German cultural historian, became well known in the English-speaking world as the author of a best-seller about post-war Germany, Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich, 1945–1955 (2021). Now he has published another remarkable book, Höhenrausch. This book, so far available only in German, deals with the hedonistic, turbulent years of the Weimar Republic. Given the success of his first book, I expect it to be published before long in English.

The history of the short-lived Weimar Republic (1918 to 1933), Jähner justifiably complains, is always described from the hindsight standpoint of the Nazi takeover, as if that outcome had been inevitable. In this book, through quotes from diarists, letter-writers, film-makers, journalists, song-writers, cabaret performers and novelists, the facts and feelings are retold as they appeared to observers at the time. The name Hitler thus appears in a substantial context for the first time only after 74 per cent of the text, namely when we read about the growing brutality of the storm-troopers during the incipient Depression.

The Great War ended with the signature of the armistice on November 11, 1918, at Compiègne near Paris by a new, non-imperial government in Berlin. Most German soldiers were still entrenched outside the territory of the Reich. Now, many returned home convinced that they had been betrayed. The defeat was a sudden, abstract event, the result of a short negotiation in a faraway place. Many returned servicemen resented not only the social-democratic “peace mongers”, but also the wartime emancipation of women. Many among them detested the new republic, whose democratic constitution had been negotiated in a theatre at Weimar, as “Red Berlin” was deemed too dangerous. Some 400,000 of these humiliated soldiers remained in more-or-less organised units (Freikorps), while the communists were certain that the momentum of the Russian revolution would now sweep westward. They preached and practised violence to promote their cause.

The new republic’s social-democratic (SPD) government sought help from returned servicemen to fight the communist threat. And fight they did. The communist leaders Karl Liebknecht and the effervescent Rosa Luxemburg (originally Rozalia Luksenburg) were among the more than 1200 people murdered by the Freikorps. The communists of course engaged in the same sort of extreme cancel culture.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

How Xi Misreads the Taiwan Battlefield: Frank Mount

Posted By on December 14th, 2022

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2022/11/how-xi-misreads-the-taiwan-battlefield/

EXCERPTS:

In any war between China on the one hand and Taiwan, Japan, the US and their allies on the other, Chinese vessels of all kinds will be prevented from significant access to the Pacific Ocean. The Chinese (and Russian) Pacific fleets will almost certainly be enclosed in their coastal waters.

This is because the First Island Chain running parallel to the mainland from Sakhalin Island in the north down through Japan, the Ryukyu islands, Taiwan, and on to the Philippine Islands and Indonesia, is a natural barrier now being fortified by the Japanese and Taiwanese militaries and the US Marines. The Commander of the US Marine Corps, General David Berger, recently announced that the Marines were changing their policies and missions in reaction to developments in Asia. He said a “new mission” for the Marines would be “island hopping” in the Indo-Pacific armed with anti-ship missiles to meet the growing China threat. (see The Times, London dispatch, Weekend Australian 6-7/11/21). Presumably, they would carry Tomahawk anti-ship missiles and be supported by US specifically designed shallow-hulled coastal patrol vessels, armed with the same Tomahawks, as well as Japanese submarines.

This would make transit through the Chain almost impossible for hostile surface ships and submarines. One of the difficulties for Chinese and Russian submarines is the difference between the relatively shallow waters of the seas between mainland China and the First Island Chain and the vast depths and trenches of the Pacific Ocean east of the Chain. Submarines would have to surface or near surface to transit the Chain either way, making them easily detectable and vulnerable.

Furthermore, at the southern end of the Chain, other US forces along with the navies of Australia, France, Britain and hopefully India and Indonesia could block Chinese and Russian naval and merchant shipping transiting the Malacca Strait and contiguous Indonesian waterways and passages. As a result, China could suffer a serious trade blockade.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Wasteland of Leftist Compassion Compassion is not compassion when it is manipulated to fulfill a corporate socialist agenda of turning America’s cities into high-tech pens for human livestock and depopulating rural areas. By Edward Ring

Posted By on December 14th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/12/13/the-wasteland-of-leftist-compassion/

Compassion is one of the greatest of human virtues. But effective compassion comes with an obligation to do more than what merely feels and sounds good. Public policies motivated by compassion must also consider the full complexity of the challenge—the unintended consequences and the reality of human nature—and strike a balance between what is desired and what is possible. Often the most beneficial expressions of compassion appear harsh and punitive, yet in offering more lasting and comprehensive solutions, do more to alleviate human suffering.

Without taking a balanced and holistic approach to compassion, special interests hijack public policy and reap perpetual profits working on problems that never go away. For them, ineffective compassion is good business. But it leaves behind a wasteland.

If envy and resentment are the currency of the Left—driving, as it does, their attacks on privilege and their demands for equity—then compassion is the gold that backs their currency. Emotional appeals to voters and politicians demanding displays of compassion are the means by which the Left claims the moral high ground. And in those appeals, and the misguided policies that result, entire industries are created—industries populated by individuals whose careers depend on perpetuating the fraud.

In many cases, the consequences of unbalanced compassion are obvious, as anyone can see if they visit the coastal cities of California. It was compassion that motivated state legislators to decriminalize hard drug addiction, now dubbed “substance use disorder.” Compassion was the moral justification to empty California’s prisons and downgrade property and drug crimes from felonies to misdemeanors. 

Compassion compelled politicians and judges to rewrite laws that kept mentally ill people safely off the streets.

MEDIA Comments turned off

ABC, CBS, And Other Corporate Media Black Out Coverage Of ‘Twitter Files’ Story By: Madeline Osburn

Posted By on December 14th, 2022

https://thefederalist.com/2022/12/13/abc-cbs-and-other-corporate-media-black-out-coverage-of-twitter-files-story/

Corporate media outlets have all but refused to cover the unfolding “Twitter Files” published by independent journalists including Bari Weiss and Matt Taibbi throughout the last week. According to Grabien, a news clipping and transcribing service, a search of its database finds that among the three major networks — ABC News, CBS News, and NBC News — the words “Twitter Files” have been discussed on air a collective total of one time since Dec. 2, the day Elon Musk announced the release of the first batch.

When it comes to cable network coverage, CNN and MSNBC have mentioned the words “Twitter Files” just 13 times and 17 times, respectively, since Dec. 2, compared to Fox News’s 374 mentions of the keywords. A Monday search on CNN’s website for “Twitter Files” turns up zero search results for any coverage of the independent journalists’ ongoing investigations.

The media blackout is odd, considering that the first five parts of the ongoing series have covered some of the corporate media’s previously favorite topics such as the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and Twitter’s subsequent banning of former President Donald Trump, which have received in-depth coverage for the last two years.

Other significant findings uncovered in the documents Musk turned over to Weiss and Taibbi include the role former FBI General Counsel Jim Baker played in Twitter’s suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story and the tech company’s frequent secret meetings with federal intelligence agencies in the run-up to the 2020 election. While most Americans are not frequent users of Twitter, the company’s relationship with government intelligence agencies and its apparent influence on federal elections is undeniably worthy of major network coverage.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Junk science lingers: one warm day cited as reason for an imminent climate catastrophe By Jack Hellner

Posted By on December 14th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/12/junk_science_lingers_one_warm_day_cited_as_reason_for_an_imminent_climate_catastrophe.html

The revelations from Twitter might be shocking, but it’s not much different from what the media has been doing for decades — picking and choosing what information to share in an effort to create a desired (leftist) narrative.

Just last week, The Washington Post used one warm day as evidence that mankind’s use of natural resources are causing Alaska to rapidly warm:

At the northern tip of Alaska, the city of Utqiagvik on Monday reached its warmest temperature ever observed between November and March, when the mercury shot up to 40 degrees — 36 degrees above the norm.

Since people pretending to be journalists won’t do research, I will. 

The highest daytime temperature in Utqiagvik in the next 15 days is 3 degrees. Temperatures are normal.

Basically, propagandists cherry picked one warm day to push an agenda that our use of natural resources caused the extra warm day. If the use of coal and oil caused the warm temperatures, they would have stayed elevated instead of immediately returning to normal.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Battle of Brittney Biden hands Putin a big win on the eastern front. by Lloyd Billingsley

Posted By on December 14th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-battle-of-brittney/

Bringing home Brittney Griner was an easy call for the Biden Junta, an “equity” demo, in the run-up to Christmas, that gives the Delaware Democrat the appearance of a victory. For all but the willfully blind, the trade of a basketball player for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout was an exceptionally bad deal.

Bout has sold sophisticated Russian weaponry to terrorist groups and Communist revolutionaries alike. Before his capture in a sting operation, Bout was poised to sell 100 surface-to-air missiles, 20,000 AK-47 rifles, and five tons of explosives to FARC the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia. “We are together in this,” Bout explained, the Americans “are my enemies also.”

This global arms dealer was traded straight across for a basketball player who brought marijuana products into Russia and pleaded guilty to charges.

“This is playing Putin’s game,” former CIA man John Sipher tweeted “Bout was an actual criminal charged through a credible legal process recognized around the world. Griner was a hostage taken in order to extort us.” This successful extortion traces back to the composite character David Garrow described in Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama.

As Paul Kengor noted in The Communist: Frank Marshall Davis: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s Mentor,  Obama’s strongest influence was an African American Communist dedicated to an all-white Soviet dictatorship. American missile defense played a major role in taking down the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Russia also objected to American missile defense and Obama was hopeful for change.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Racist Mayor: Jorge Elorza Providence fixes racism with $346 checks for every black person. by Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on December 14th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/racist-mayor-jorge-elorza/

During the long hot summer of Black Lives Matter race riots, Providence’s Mayor Jorge Elorza announced a truth and reparations commission, accusing the city and all of Rhode Island of perpetrating “generations of pain and violence and systemic oppression”.

The leftist racist, who has been steadily sending the city down the drain, urged the 33% of white people still left in Providence to “heal by discussing and accepting these uncomfortable truths”.

The commission would not be looking into Elorza’s alleged systemic racism which resulted in a lawsuit by the city’s former Department of Public Works director claiming that he was fired over a principled refusal to hire unqualified people “because of their ethnic backgrounds” while being banned from hiring “qualified applicants of a different ethnic background”.

These “uncomfortable truths” were not on the truth and reconciliation menu.

Instead, Elorza pushed forward with a plan to offer $10 million in reparations even though Rhode Island had actually been the first state to ban slavery and was founded by Roger Williams: an opponent of slavery. The tiny state had mobilized 25,236 soldiers in the Civil War including the 11th United States Colored Heavy Artillery Regiment. 1,771 Rhode Islanders paid the ultimate price and twenty were awarded the Medal of Honor.

That, not Eloriza’s $10 million grift, is what actually fighting racism looks like.

P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

The Cambridge Dictionary Redefines ‘Man’ and ‘Woman’ By Lincoln Brown

Posted By on December 14th, 2022

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/lincolnbrown/2022/12/13/the-cambridge-dictionary-redefines-man-and-woman-n1653318

EXCERPT:

Once upon a time, a dictionary could be used to provide you with the correct spelling of a given word, as well as its definition. No political commentary, no “directing” people to an acceptable mindset. Just the information you needed to help you express yourself properly.

Now? Not so much.

The Cambridge Dictionary has changed its definition of “man” to the following:

man

noun (MALE)

an adult male human being:

an adult who lives and identifies as male though they may have been said to have a different sex at birth:

Mark is a trans man (= a man who was said to be female when they were born).
Their doctor encouraged them to live as a man for a while before undergoing surgical transition.

The definition of “woman” now reads:

woman

noun

an adult who lives and identifies as female though they may have been said to have a different sex at birth:

She was the first trans woman elected to a national office.
mary [sic] is a woman who was assigned male at birth.

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Huge Development in Kari Lake’s Election Lawsuit By Matt Margolis

Posted By on December 14th, 2022

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2022/12/13/huge-development-in-kari-lakes-election-lawsuit-n1653242

Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors members, and Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake were all summoned to appear in court by the judge presiding over Lake’s electoral complaint.

“The Court has reviewed Plaintiffs’ Verified Statement of Election Contest filed December 9, 2022. Because this matter is an election challenge, the return hearing will be set on an accelerated basis,” Judge Peter Thompson wrote in his order.

Earlier this month, Obama-appointed U.S. District Judge John Tuchi sanctioned Lake and her lawyers for filing what he claimed was a frivolous, partisan lawsuit, prompting a harsh rebuke from Lake. This new order from Judge Thomspon appears to take the matter more seriously. Thompson was appointed to the bench in September 2010 by former Gov. Jan Brewer.

The previous two elections in Maricopa County, Ariz., have been controversial for how poorly they were conducted. Last year, a forensic audit of the presidential election found thousands of discrepancies in the county. On Election Day this year, many Republicans were expected to vote for Kari Lake. But in the districts where most Republicans were expected to cast their ballots, technical problems prevented thousands of individuals from voting.