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September 2021

FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Squalid “Squad” Is Trying to Destroy Bipartisan Support for Israel by Alan M. Dershowitz

By on September 23rd, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17783/squad-israel-bipartisan-support

The fact that the Squad picked on the Iron Dome to make its stand against Israel is significant. The Iron Dome is a system developed jointly by the United States and Israel that is purely defensive. It does not kill, injure, or threaten anyone. It only protects civilians against war crimes committed by terrorist groups that direct lethal rockets against innocent civilians.

The fact that the Squad would try to deny Israel the right to defend its civilians speaks volumes about the lack of morality and decency among Squad members and their allies.

It follows from this effort that the Squad will oppose any and all aid to Israel, including protecting its innocent civilians against Iran’s nuclear threat. The obvious goal of Squad members is to deny Israel the right to defend itself against aggression. At least one of its members has denied that Israel has the right to exist.

These bigoted actions directly violate the platform of the Democratic Party (as well as that of the Republican Party). The Democratic Party must decide whether it will become captive to its most extreme wing or whether it will marginalize these radicals who are not only anti-Israel but, in many ways, anti-American. They are intolerant of dissent and due process for those who disagree with them. They are anti-police, anti-military, and anti-free market economy.

The time has come, indeed it is long past, for the Democratic leadership to stand strong against the anti-American, anti-Israel and anti-decency squalid Squad. The leadership can no longer stand idly by the bigotry of their members. If they persist in tolerating the intolerable, they will lose the support of the all-important mainstream voters.

The “Squad” is a small group of radical members of the U.S. House of Representatives who run for Congress under the banner of the Democratic Party but do not reflect its mainstream policies. They represent niche districts that are not typical of the Democratic base. They could not be elected in any statewide race, because they lack widespread support. They were nominated because of low turnout in primaries and were elected because their districts are overwhelmingly Democrat. They are fringe Democrats who should not have influence beyond their districts. But the House leadership of the Democratic Party has exaggerated their significance and given them more power than they deserve.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

We May Have Left Afghanistan, Mr. President, But We Are Still at War by Pete Hoekstra

By on September 23rd, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17784/left-afghanistan-still-at-war

I never liked that term, “war on terror.” Terrorism is a tactic; it is not the enemy we fought every day. The term has done more to confuse us than enlighten us.

[O]ne can see why the phrase “war on terror” became the widely accepted nomenclature. It was neutral. Gone would be the difficult references connecting the terrorist movement to Islam and Muslims. The need to define good Muslims versus bad/extremist Muslims would be eliminated. We would just paper over the difficult discussions that needed to take place but did not.

The terrorists, and their Islamist apologists in the West, actually used our response to their benefit. They widely labeled those who tried to connect al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations to Islamic dogma as Islamophobes and anti-Muslim.

It did not matter that the terrorists invoked Quranic passages as justification, or that groups such as ISIS and others explicitly state that their ultimate objective is a global Muslim state governed by religious law.

President Biden can say what he wants but that does not mean it is so. The other side has a say in this. And as we saw as we were leaving Kabul, the jihadists spoke clearly, they are still at war with us. If the crack team of foreign advisers that the president is relying on, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, advised him that the United States is no longer at war, the world is in serious trouble.

On Tuesday, Joe Biden presented his first United Nations General Assembly speech as president. I labored through almost 32 minutes of the speech when a most profound announcement was proclaimed: “I stand here today for the first time in 20 years with the United States not at war.”

It was an odd boast, considering how the United States left Afghanistan and what it means for the future.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Passing of a great and fearless American mind Angelo Codevilla, strategist and implacable critic of the US establishment, dead at 78 in a California car accident David Goldman

By on September 23rd, 2021

https://asiatimes.com/author/spengler/

 On September 20, I was sitting across a table from the foreign editor of a European news publication. Demons must have lurked and listened to our conversation. “Is there any American thinker who you find fresh and challenging?” the journalist asked me.

“You mean apart from Angelo Codevilla?,” I returned. A traditional Jew from the Old Country would have said “Angelo Codevilla, kein hora,” or “keine ayin hara,” a mix of Yiddish and Hebrew that means “no Evil Eye.” It is an imprecation against Fate’s envy of the truly gifted.

The next day Angelo was dead at age 78, reportedly run down by a drunk driver.

There were two former senior intelligence officials who knew enough where enough bodies were buried in the Global War on Terror to scare the American Intelligence establishment. Lieutenant General Michael Flynn was one, and the spooks got to him within days of his appointment as Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser.

Angelo Codevilla was the other. Flynn is a working-class kid who worked his way up the chain of command from reserve officer training at Providence College, while Angelo was an Italian-born connoisseur of Western culture, multi-lingual and the master of many disciplines, fiercely independent and contemptuous of attempts to co-opt him.

Codevilla was an expert on Afghanistan starting in 1979, as chief of staff for the Senate Intelligence Committee, before the CIA could find the benighted country on a map. He knew that the Global War on Terror was a scam, a goof, a lavishly-funded reality show – and he told the world what he knew.

Here is what he wrote on August 24 in his last posting at The American Mind, the opinion site of the Claremont Institute where Angelo was a senior fellow:

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Problem With Canada By David Solway

By on September 23rd, 2021

https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2021/09/22/the-problem-with-canada-n1480521

The results of the recent and utterly unnecessary Canadian election, called two years before the expiry of a four-year term and returning Justin Trudeau’s Liberals to the same minority government status as before, were not unexpected. Indeed, they were graven in stone—a tombstone, I’m tempted to say.

Although the slogan “the natural governing party” has been applied to the Liberals since the lengthy administrations of William Lyon Mackenzie King, there have been thirteen Conservative prime ministers since the nation’s founding, including the architect of Confederation, John A. Macdonald. Nonetheless, Canada is no longer a conservative country. The one party true to conservative precepts and practices—belief in personal responsibility, freedom of choice, low taxes, small government, freedom of expression, a balanced budget, border integrity, energy self-sufficiency, and more—the People’s Party of Canada led by the principled Max Bernier finished out of the running—a scathing judgment on an anemic and ungrateful country. 

In fact, according to Justin Trudeau, Canada has no “core identity,” and he is probably right. Given a reasonably affluent electorate having taken its freedoms and privileges for granted and growing increasingly apathetic; a vote-rich portion of the country bought off by transfer payments from Western Canada, principally Alberta, to the Eastern provinces, primarily Quebec and the Maritimes; a species of internal balkanization owing to massive immigration; and the socialist march through the institutions, Canada’s traditional coherence and national character—with the exception of irridentist Quebec that never regarded itself as part of the Confederation—have undergone a sea-change. The country I once knew is no longer recognizable.

A political, social, and cultural upheaval has established a new and historically unprecedented dispensation. With few exceptions, our leadership, provincial as well as federal, has sold its stewardship for a mess of pottage. The electorate has been suborned by bribes—that is, government largesse sourced from foreign borrowing, the minting of fiat currency, and subventions gouged from the public’s own tax payments. Citizens have succumbed to the temptation of ethnic and sectorial advantages at the cost of national unity. And over the last years, the nation could not resist the glamor of a dynastic name and the Teflon superficiality of an incumbent prime minister.

We were—and are—wrong. A shallow, corrupt, and clapter politician, Justin Trudeau is not and never was prime ministerial material. There is nothing genuine or praiseworthy about this latest Trudeau iteration, despite the puffery of a battery of stringer journalists, as evidenced, for example, in a sycophantic piece by Jonathan Kay in Canada’s leftist literary journal The Walrus, painfully titled “The Justin Trudeau I Can’t Forget.” Even the presumably wise and pensive Conrad Black made a substantial donation to the Liberal Party in 2015 and extolled Trudeau rather extravagantly—”flexible in public finance…a very alluring personality, a quick intelligence and an apparently reasonable combination of principle and openness”—before changing his solemn opinion rather dramatically.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Back to Burning Books Again • Kevin Donnelly

By on September 23rd, 2021

http://• https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/free-speech/2021/09/back-to-burning-books-again/

The Ontario Catholic School Board’s decision to burn books deemed politically incorrect, a move prompted by Canada’s activist answer to fauxboriginal Bruce Pascoe,  became a hot issue in this month’s Canadian election.  Although the book burning began in 2019 and has just come to light it represents yet another powerful warning about the dangers of totalitarian cancel-culture and mind control.

What occurred in Canada is just one example of how widespread and virulent cancel-culture has become.  Targets include Tintin and Asterix, Enid Blyton’s Famous Five and Noddy, Thomas the Tank Engine and six children’s books written by Dr Seuss. All are considered guilty of either sexism, racism or cultural appropriation. Adult books are also targeted including Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird for having using the ‘N’ word, Moby Dick for killing whales and Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet for privileging the love between a boy and girl (condemned as promoting heteronormativity).

Couched in terms of impartiality and balance, critics argue such books are offensive and discriminatory. The reality is cancelling children’s stories like Snow White — out of favour because the Prince fails to get informed consent before kissing the sleeping maiden– is as dangerous as it is absurd. Stories and books written years ago are unfairly judged and cancelled because of today’s censorious, politically correct view about what is acceptable.  Like the moralistic puritans of old, cultural-left activists refuse to allow or entertain anything that fails to conform to their strict, inflexible ideology.

Stopping students reading literature now deemed politically incorrect in the belief they will be corrupted and converted automatically into racist, sexist and homophobic bigots also ignores that the overwhelming majority of young people are smart enough and independently minded not to be conditioned.

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

US Deports Over 1,000 Haitians But DHS Declines to Say How Many Released in America By Charlotte Cuthbertson and Zachary Stieberhttps

By on September 23rd, 2021

/www.theepochtimes.com/us-deports-over-1000-haitians-but-dhs-refuses-to-say-how-many-released-into-america_4010774.html

The United States has deported more than 1,000 Haitians who streamed into the small border city of Del Rio, Texas, although officials are refusing to say how many others have been released into America’s interior.

The number of illegal immigrants, primarily from Haiti, rapidly grew under the international bridge near the border last week, at one point topping 14,000. The quick jump sparked the deployment of more than 600 agents and officers, as well as repatriation flights to Haiti.

U.S. officials have since moved more than 6,500 people from Del Rio to other parts of the border in an attempt to alleviate pressure. Approximately 1,083 have been deported back to Haiti on nine flights through Sept. 21, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email.

Others are being released into the interior. How many is unclear, because DHS officials aren’t saying.

The same spokesperson declined to answer questions about those being released, while Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, both offices within DHS, referred The Epoch Times to DHS.

DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has twice this week declined before Congress to share data about the number of illegal immigrants being released. On Sept. 21, he told senators in Washington he didn’t have the precise numbers and wanted to wait so he could provide accurate information; on Sept. 22, he again said he didn’t have the data.

“Yesterday, you were asked exactly the same question and you gave exactly the same answer. You would think you would be a little better prepared now that you’ve been asked that question. … You don’t have that information?” Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-Fla.) wondered.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Support for Shouting Down Speakers on Campus Spikes after Political Chaos of 2020 By Brittany Bernsteinhttps

By on September 23rd, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/author/brittany-bernstein/

A majority of college students support shouting down speakers with whom they don’t agree, according to a new survey from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE).

Sixty-six percent of students said they supported speaker shout downs, an increase of 4 percentage points over last year, the study found. Meanwhile, 23 percent said they support going so far as to use violence to stop a speaker, an increase of 5 percentage points from last year.

Wellesley College and Barnard College, both of which are elite women’s colleges, had the highest number of students supporting the use of violence, at 45 percent and 43 percent respectively.

Sean Stevens, a senior research fellow in polling and analytics for FIRE told National Review in a recent interview that the shift is likely reflective of the national political climate of the last year.

The country was rocked by months of rioting and counter-protests beginning in summer 2020 with the murder of George Floyd. Protests for various causes persisted through the general election in November, culminating in the deadly January 6 Capitol riot when a mob of former President Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol.

Stevens noted that the FIRE study results echoed findings from similar studies by the American National Election Studies and other outlets that have asked Americans about the acceptability of violence and have seen upticks in their data as well.

The results come as part of FIRE’s 2021 college free speech rankings. FIRE, a non-partisan, non-profit group that focuses on protecting free speech rights on U.S. college campuses, worked alongside College Pulse and RealClearEducation to survey over 37,000 students at 159 of the country’s largest and most prestigious campuses.

FIRE then compiled a list of free speech rankings assessing a school’s free speech climate based on seven main components: openness to discussion of controversial topics, tolerance for liberal speakers, tolerance for conservative speakers, administrative support for free speech, comfort expressing ideas publicly, whether students support disruptive conduct during campus speeches, and FIRE’s speech code rating.

The top five colleges for free speech, according to the rankings, included Claremont McKenna College, University of Chicago, University of New Hampshire, Emory University and Florida State University. The worst five colleges were Boston College, Wake Forest University, Louisiana State University, Marquette University and DePauw University, which ranked last.

Public schools largely performed better than private schools, accounting for just five of the bottom 30 schools on the list.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

By Charles C. W. Cooke:Congressional Democrats are Being Played

By on September 23rd, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/09/congressional-democrats-moderates-are-being-played/

They’re starting to realize it, too.

F or the last two months, a ragtag group of parvenue political extremists has somehow managed to convince the leadership of the Democratic Party that what the swiftly ailing Biden presidency really needs at this moment is an acrimonious standoff over spending. More impressive yet, these radicals have managed to make it seem as if the blame for the standoff lies not at their own gormandizing feet, but with those whom they have routinely harassed. If, as they must, the Democrats wish to avoid a further collapse in their fortunes, they must snap out of this reverie and call their browbeaters’ bluff.

The progressives’ ploy rests upon their claim that the Democratic Party has just two political options before it: To go big, or to go home. More specifically, it rests upon their declaration that Bernie Sanders’s gargantuan, nation-changing reconciliation bill is nonnegotiable, and that, as a result, everything else that Congress does must be contingent upon its passage. Summing up this position last night, Representative Pramila Jayapal (D., Wash.) confirmed that she and her like-minded colleagues intend to kill even the colossal infrastructure legislation that has passed the Senate if they don’t get what they want. “Try us,” Jayapal told reporters who questioned how serious she could possibly be.

Underpinning Jayapal’s strategy is the asseveration that the Democrats will lose badly in next year’s midterm elections if they do not pass something enormous. But this, of course, is nonsense. Certainly, there are some political risks associated with President Biden’s achieving nothing at all this year. But there is an extraordinary amount of space between doing nothing at all and engaging in the largest spending binge since the New Deal on a panicked, party-line vote. It is, of course, to be expected that the progressives in the party will try to spend as much money as possible; that is what progressives do. But, by pretending that the whole party is doomed if they don’t get their own way, they are doing the rest of their colleagues no favors at all. There is political hardball, and then there is assisted suicide, and the Jayapal plan is beginning to resemble the latter.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The foreign policy amateur Peter Van Buren So far Biden has alienated allies and layered on the bureaucracy — what next?

By on September 23rd, 2021

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/joe-biden-foreign-policy-amateur/

Since Joe Biden was elected in part as a salve for Donald Trump’s perceived foreign policy blunders, it seems reasonable nine months in to go searching for the Biden Doctrine, to assess his initial foreign policy moves, to see what paths he has sketched out for the next three years.

…is that a tumbleweed?

Well, OK, there was Afghanistan, Biden’s most significant foreign policy action. Biden won election in November and took office in January. There was ample time for replanning and renegotiating anything that had been left behind by Trump, especially since Biden and his team had muddled in Afghanistan during the Obama era and knew well the mess they’d helped create.

The rush for the last plane out was a fully expected unexpected event. Yet the Biden administration did not quietly start the evacuation in February with high-value personnel, nor did it negotiate ahead of time the third country landing rights it knew would be needed. Mistakes made in Vietnam evacuating locals who worked with us were clear, yet Biden did not kick start processing SIV visas until literally the last flights were scheduled out of Afghanistan. The entire evacuation appeared as an unplanned free fall, just ‘land some planes and see if that works’.

Biden placed the fate of the evacuation, all those lives, in the hands of the Taliban, depending on them to uphold agreements, provide security, vet Americans en route to the airport, and generally play nice to save face as the door hit us in the ass on the way out. While the National Security Council spokeswoman called the Taliban ‘businesslike and professional’, Biden played like a rube. Even assuming good intentions (!), the Taliban are loosely organized, with plenty of local warlords and Isis spinoffs to ensure things can go wrong — like the terror bombing that killed 13 Americans and basically ended the evacuation.

Biden’s follow-up? Lie about the success of a revenge drone strike to make sure America’s final official act was to kill civilians. That capped the most amateurish foreign policy execution seen in a long time. Mistakes? How about assuming your enemies share your goals, negotiating after you have lost and hold no cards, failing to plan for anticipated events and then blaming your predecessor? For a foreign diplomat sitting in London, Tokyo, Beijing or Paris, the question had to have been ‘who if anyone is in charge in Washington?’

Biden’s other foreign policy gesture, the recent submarine agreement with Australia which alienated the French, raises the same question.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

How Russiagate Became a Story of Old Friends in High Places Eric Felten

By on September 23rd, 2021

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2021/09/22/how_russiagate_became_a_story_of_old_friends_indeed_795476.html

The indictment of Washington attorney Michael Sussman — accused of lying to the FBI in order to smear Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign — reveals the ace up the sleeve of high-powered Democrats. It’s a card they played time and again to advance the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory: friends in high places.

They used friends in law enforcement to launch secret investigations; they used friends in the federal government to broaden those investigations; and they used friends in the media to spread the word about Trump and his organization being under investigation.

Michael Sussmann: Securing a meeting with the FBI’s top lawyer can’t have been easy, but for him it was.

CSPAN

James Baker of the FBI: Sussmann came to him “based on a preexisting relationship.”

RCP

The Russia fiasco metastasized in large part because those involved in advancing the false allegations had important connections. They used friendships with powerful federal officials to encourage investigations against team Trump. Those targeted by Sussmann and others were unabashed outsiders, and as such lacked the sort of connections the insiders exploited so adroitly.

Sussmann was a partner at the Washington law firm Perkins Coie in 2016, which represented the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president. But, according to the indictment handed down by Special Counsel John Durham last week, when he met with the FBI’s general counsel, James Baker, to allege that Trump was in cahoots with the Russians, Sussmann claimed he was representing another client. The indictment alleges this was false.

Securing a meeting with the FBI’s top lawyer can’t have been easy. But for Sussmann it was.

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