ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

A Dangerous Triple Fantasy by Amir Taheri

Posted By on August 14th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18800/dangerous-triple-fantasy

Last June Khamenei himself spoke of the “need to open a new front in the West Bank against the Zionist enemy”.

Reliable sources in Baghdad say that the Quds Force has been “transiting” significant quantities of arms and cash via Iraq to Jordan, to be smuggled to the West Bank. The Jordanian authorities say they are aware of these “hostile activities”‘. King Abdullah himself has publicly called on Iran to cease “destabilizing activities”.

Supporters of “pre-emptive initiative” speak of a triple alliance in which the Islamic Republic, the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation work together to drive the US and its allies out of Eurasia, eastern Europe and the western Pacific, bringing almost a century of “American hegemony” to an end.

In such a scenario, Taiwan, Ukraine and Israel must not remain as bases for the American “hegemon” and its European and regional allies. All three, each in its own way, also pose threats to China, Russia and Iran’s authoritarian systems by offering models for pluralist democracy and liberal capitalism.

It is clear that some dangerous pipe-dreamers in Beijing, Moscow and Tehran have fallen for the phantasmagoric vision of, “three great powers” banding together and with help from “the rest”, that is to say, the so-called Third World, as Kayhan says, to destroy an international system created by the “corrupt and decadent”.

[P]rudence demands preparing for even the improbable.

In his meeting in Tehran with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Islamic Republic’s “Supreme Guide” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei praised what he called “Your Excellency’s pre-emptive initiative” in launching “Special Operations ” against Ukraine.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Adam Andrzejewski : IRS STAFFED UP. ARMED UP.

Posted By on August 14th, 2022

File This Under: Too Ridiculous. 

The IRS is adding 87,000 auditors paid for by an $80 billion appropriation in the so-called Inflation Reduction Act. 

However, the IRS isn’t just staffing up…

Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com found that the IRS purchased of tens of millions of dollars in guns, ammunition, and military-style equipment since 2006. 

In fact, the IRS has stockpiled 5 million rounds of ammunition and 4,500 guns. For example, their gun locker includes 539 long-barrel rifles, 621 shotguns, and 15 sub-machine guns.

Thankfully, the issue is getting more attention, as legislation has been introduced in Congress to ‘Disarm The IRS.”

We broke the news in 2021 – Read It All Here!

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Defund the Teacher-Trainers By Frederick M. Hess

Posted By on August 14th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2022/08/29/defund-the-teacher-trainers/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_

It would be good for students, good for parents, good for schools

The debates over critical race theory (CRT) and gender ideology can feel like people on either side are talking past one another. Truth is, they often are.

There’s a lot more agreement than it seems. Parents and teachers tend to think that the Left has a point when it says schools should do a better job teaching about America’s complex racial history, and that kids should feel welcome in school regardless of their race, sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity. Meanwhile, most Americans share concerns about CRT dogma that demonizes hard work or personal responsibility as legacies of “white-supremacy culture” and don’t want teachers discussing sexual orientation or gender identity with eight-year-olds.

Indeed, it’s pretty clear that most Americans reside in both camps — think of it as the “inclusive but sensible” coalition. The American Enterprise Institute’s Survey Center on American Life has found that, among Republicans and Democrats alike, more than four in five say social-studies textbooks should discuss slave-owning by the Founders, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, and the maltreatment of Native Americans, and agree that students should read “works by a racially diverse set of authors.” 

At the same time, polling by the Economist and YouGov finds that more than half of Americans who are familiar with CRT say they have a “very unfavorable” opinion of it and 55 percent think teaching CRT is “bad for America.” This spring, Public Opinion Strategies found that two-thirds of registered voters deem it “inappropriate for teachers or school personnel to discuss gender identity with children in kindergarten through 3rd grade.”

Given that kind of commonsense agreement, why are schools riven by bitter fights over whether educators should teach that America is a “white supremacist” nation or talk to first-graders about gender identity? Who is responsible for pushing this toxic tripe?

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Tulsi Gabbard Blasts FBI Raid on Mar-a-Lago, Says It ‘Changed the Country That We Grew Up In ’By Diana Glebova

Posted By on August 14th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/tulsi-gabbard-blasts-fbi-raid-on-mar-a-lago-says-it-changed-the-country-that-we-grew-up-in/?utm_

Former Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard criticized the FBI’s raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, saying it “changed the country that we grew up in.”

“Now, whatever your views are on Donald Trump, there is no denying that the unprecedented raid on his Palm Beach home earlier this week has set our country on a dangerous new course, and there’s no turning back. The FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago changed the country that we grew up in,” Gabbard said Friday in an appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight.

Trump was the first person to announce the FBI’s raid on his residence Monday, saying, “These are dark times for our Nation, as my beautiful home, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is under siege, raided and occupied by a large group of FBI agents.”

A federal judge unsealed the search warrant Friday. A list of items taken from Mar-a-Lago shows the FBI recovered eleven sets of classified documents, including some top-secret documents, roughly 20 boxes of items, binders of photos, a handwritten note, the executive grant of clemency for Roger Stone, and information about French president Emanuel Macron.

“We grew up believing that, ‘Hey, our government will apply the law equally to all Americans, whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat.’ We’re seeing more and more that, that country no longer exists. Law enforcement at the highest levels of government, whether it’s the DOJ, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and now even the IRS have been weaponized to target the political opponents of the uni-party, the permanent Washington and the Biden regime,” Gabbard continued.

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

The Suppression of Useful COVID-19 Treatments Robert Clancy

Posted By on August 14th, 2022

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/public-health/2022/08/the-suppression-of-useful-covid-19-treatments/

The author is Emeritus Professor of Pathology at the University of Newcastle Medical School. He is a member of the Australian Academy of Science’s COVID-19 Expert Database

Eighteen months ago, the first in a series of articles on the management of COVID-19 was published in Quadrant. The constant in these articles was that optimal management combined spaced vaccine administration with effective early drug treatment to cover breakthrough infections. This article compares two groups of drugs promoted as effective in the early treatment of COVID-19: recycled anti-viral drugs that target specific replication and re-purposed drugs of biological origin that render target cells hostile to viral infection.

Background: Those who have followed this series and perhaps others, will recognise how a “vaccine narrative” and its ideology, promoted by the pharmaceutical industry, led to the cancellation of non-patented drugs. These re-purposed drugs had an extensive data base supporting prevention and early treatment of COVID-19. Opposition to their use was unprecedented, denying both science and the established practise of the doctor-patient relationship. This opposition threatened use of “off-label” drugs regularly prescribed with benefit by most doctors. Governments also banned the use of these drugs for treatment of COVID-19, threatening and enacting the deregistration of doctors who opposed the narrative and prescribed ivermectin (IVM) or hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) for early treatment of COVID-19 infection. The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), the Australian licensing body, succumbed to pressure by banning use of IVM for treatment of COVID-19, not because it was  ineffective but because “it may interfere with vaccine uptake; it may deprive indigenous patients use for scabies; and there may be confusion re appropriate dosage regimen”. This win for Big Pharma was a loss for thousands of Australians who would benefit, including many at risk of developing serious disease.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Donald Trump, Designated Enemy of the State Salvatore Babones

Posted By on August 14th, 2022

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/america/2022/08/donald-trump-official-enemy-of-the-state/

“The American political establishment — leading Democrats and Republican never-Trumpers alike — is desperately afraid of a Trump political comeback in 2024. They fabricated a Russia collusion hoax, spent two years on a special counsel investigation, impeached Trump twice, jailed Trump supporters for trespassing at the Capitol, held partisan Congressional hearings to broadcast hearsay evidence against the former President without the opportunity for cross-examination, and weaponised the entire federal law enforcement bureaucracy (and some state ones, too) against this one man. And if they can do it to him, they can do it to anyone.”

The Washington Post ran it just above a (news?) article titled “Inside Biden’s Hot Streak, from the Poolside to the Capitol”. Seemingly unsure whether or not they could trust Donald Trump even on this, they went with the headline “FBI Searches Trump safe at Mar-a-Lago Club, Former President Says”. Those final three words are the editors’ hedge: maybe it happened, maybe it didn’t, but no one can deny that he said it.

The Post helpfully explained that Trump has a history of stealing government property from the White House, and has been at loggerheads with the National Archives over presidential records ever since he left office. A previous trawl of Trump plunder yielded “a cocktail napkin, a phone list, charts, slide decks, letters, memos, maps, talking points, a birthday dinner menu, schedules and more”—this, from a confidential source inside the investigation!

The desperation of the American political establishment has come to this: attempting to prosecute a former president for appropriating a White House cocktail napkin. Not even a full-sized linen serviette! They probably don’t have little ‘White House’ monograms in the corner.

Well, Trump always did like monograms.

The Wall Street Journal — a News Corp outlet but editorially independent — reported that “Former President Donald Trump said FBI agents ‘raided’ his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida on Monday” (their scare quotes, not mine). In its full explainer article, the paper exulted that:

Officials can face up to five years in prison for removing classified materials to an unauthorized location. The penalties for breaking other laws related to the removal of official records also include disqualification from holding federal office—including the presidency.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

How to Clean House at the FBI and Justice Department The Mar-a-Lago raid has finished off public trust in federal law enforcement Charles Lipson

Posted By on August 14th, 2022

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/clean-house-fbi-justice-department/

The two most striking features of the FBI’s unprecedented raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home are its bold intrusiveness and the public’s mistrust of the Bureau’s honesty and integrity. The Department of Justice could have used low-profile subpoenas to force Trump to turn over any documents, including the most sensitive ones. It didn’t. Instead, it sent carloads of federal agents to search the former president’s house. That raid was also unusual in a second sense. Although mishandling federal documents is a felony, it happens with some frequency, alas, and is almost never subject to full-scale raids.

The blowback has been a Category 5 storm. The damage has grown because the FBI and Department of Justice remained silent for three days, refusing to explain their actions.

Now, the FBI or DoJ are busy leaking their justification, alleging (anonymously) that Trump took highly-classified nuclear secrets when he left office. That would be a grave matter, if true, but it raises several obvious questions. One is whether he really did wrongly remove such materials. The second is whether less-invasive means could have been used to retrieve them. The third is whether the real purpose of the raid was to collect materials for other investigations, such as January 6 and Trump’s efforts to delay Joe Biden’s certification as president. Seized materials can be used in other investigations, but it is illegal to get warrants for one purpose when your real purpose is something else. The fourth is public skepticism about the government’s explanations.

The blowback and public mistrust are nothing new. The past few years have been hurricane season for the FBI. The Bureau and, to a lesser extent, the Department of Justice have destroyed their reputations and undermined the public trust essential for law enforcement in a democracy.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

A Token of the Managerial Age Bewails Trump’s Surge David Brooks is very worried the FBI’s raid of Mar-a-Lago helps Trump. By Roger Kimball

Posted By on August 14th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/08/13/a-token-of-the-managerial-age-bewails-trumps-surge/

I was chatting with a politically mature friend today who, in the course of some delighted words about Attorney General Merrick Garland, reminded me that in his famous “evil empire” speech of 1983, Ronald Reagan quoted a few choice lines from the preface of C. S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters. “The greatest evil,” Lewis wrote, is not now done in any Dickensian “dens of iniquity” or even in “concentration camps and labor camps.” Such brutish moral cesspools, Lewis says, are rather “the final result” of the encompassing evil evoked in his awesome (in the old sense) satire. 

On the contrary, the evil he has in mind is “conceived and ordered . . . in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice.” Men, that is to say, like Merrick Garland, a lugubrious embodiment of the “Managerial Age,” the “world of ‘Admin’” that Lewis so abhorred. Here, he suggested, is the home office of Hell, “something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the offices of a thoroughly nasty business con­cern.”

The reason, by the way, my friend’s words about Merrick Garland were “delighted” was because of the huge, if inadvertent, boost the attorney general has just given to Donald Trump’s political prospects. 

Monday’s FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Palm Beach residence, was probably the single biggest boon to his stature among voters since he left office in January 2021, bigger even than the partisan witch hunt over which future CNN hostess, Liz Cheney, has been presiding with such ostentatious zeal.

This is obviously a concern among the beautiful, well-pressed people with white collars and clean fingernails who hate Trump. Employing a ju-ju they recognize but do not understand, Trump has time and again demonstrated an uncanny ability to goad his would-be attackers into contortions of self-immolation. 

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Tijuana, Mexicali, Ensenada, Tecate, and other Mexican border cities explode into orgy of cartel violence By Monica Showalter

Posted By on August 14th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/08/tijuana_mexicali_ensenada_tecate_and_other_mexican_border_cities_explode_into_orgy_of_cartel_violence.html

“Joe Biden’s open borders policies have led to a full-blown war zone at the very edge of the U.S., with scenes like these, all because of the money and power at stake.  It’s compounded by the Mexican federal government’s coddling of cartels.  That’s a toxic, explosive mixture that has led to this actual national security crisis.”

Less than 20 miles away from where I’m writing this in San Diego, the next city over is exploding into some kind of Ukraine-like hellscape.

According to local station CBS8:

TIJUANA, Baja California — The United States Consulate General in Tijuana is instructing employees to shelter in place after unrest in the region began on Friday.

The U.S. consulate is warning government employees near Tijuana, Mexicali, Rosarito, Ensenada, Tecate to shelter in place until further notice due to vehicle fires, roadblocks and heavy police activity.

U.S. citizens are being told to avoid the area, seek secure shelter, and monitor local media for updates.

It must be still on the national-news radar as a local story, maybe something that happens all the time, this being Tee Jay.

But it’s no local story.  It’s the logical consequence of Joe Biden’s open borders policy, which has made control of Tijuana and all border cities worth fighting for to Mexico’s brutal cartels.  Apparently, three have laid claim to these cities — and they are big ones.  TJ is bigger than San Diego, which is America’s sixth largest city, for one, putting these cities under an unprecedented siege.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Don’t let ‘woke math’ ruin your child’s education

Posted By on August 14th, 2022

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/community-family/dont-let-woke-math-ruin-your-childs-education

The Washington Examiner reported last weekend on the depressing fact that millions of dollars have been wasted attempting to shoehorn critical race theory and other ” woke ” concepts into math curricula, of all places. This means in school districts in which most students can neither read nor do math, race hucksters and charlatans are getting rich teaching them to hate one another because of the color of their skin .

This kind of educational malpractice needs to be purged with fire and the sword. It is the worst of all worlds to waste taxpayer funds on deforming young students’ minds. It’s a classic case of Why Johnny Can’t Read but applied to the extremely dumb and trendy educational theories afflicting schoolchildren today.

Wokeness — whether it comes under the label of “equitable math,” “social justice,” “critical race theory,” or “social and emotional learning” — is not about teaching that racism exists and played an important role in American history. Schools have done that successfully for decades. Rather, it is a hateful and toxic ideology that teaches students to hate and distrust each other because of the color of their skin and nothing more. It has no place in any school curriculum — but least of all in mathematics.

You cannot teach wokeness and math together because they are incompatible. It can never be anything more than a distraction from math to teach children that their country is an incurably racist place, that white people are inherent oppressors, and that there is a ritual intersectional hierarchy of victimhood that must be observed.