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December 2021

FOREIGN POLICY, HISTORY Comments turned off

US military minds still stuck in Pearl Harbor mentality Eighty years after Japan’s surprise strike on Pearl Harbor, US is at risk of making the same mistakes vis-a-vis China David Goldman

By on December 7th, 2021

https://asiatimes.com/2021/12/us-military-minds-still-stuck-in-pearl-harbor-mentality/

“What would Winston Churchill say?,” protested China hawk Michael Pillsbury when Michael Anton, a former national security official in the Trump administration, asked him what he would do if China sank a US aircraft carrier. I reported the exchange in a November 3 analysis, “Sleepwalkers in the South China Sea.”

More relevant is what Churchill actually said just before the war. Like most of the Allied leadership, Churchill refused to believe that Germany could bypass France’s Maginot Line, or that the Japanese could roll up British forces in Asia in a matter of weeks. Hitler and Hirohito both threw the British into the sea, respectively at Dunkirk and Singapore.

With 350 intermediate-range missile launchers and DF-21 and DF-26 ship-killer missiles, China can sink American carriers as surely as Japanese torpedo bombers sank Allied battleships in World War II.

Allied leaders refused to believe that battleships were sitting ducks. Churchill and his cabinet were mental giants compared to the counterinsurgency soldiers who now lead the American military, but they got it terribly wrong. The Americans now may do worse.

America’s Navy, predictably, wants more aircraft carriers. “When we think about how we might fight, it’s a large water space, and four aircraft carriers is a good number, but six, seven or eight would be better,” Seventh Fleet commander Admiral Karl Thomas said on November 30 after exercises in the Pacific.

Not a replacement for the aging Aegis anti-missile system that can’t protect American ships from Chinese missiles dropping from the stratosphere at Mach 10; not a space-based anti-ballistic missile system that could intercept such projectiles at launch; not a defense against Chinese and Russian hypersonic glide vehicles that can evade all existing anti-missile systems; not an alternative to American GPS and communications satellites, which Chinese or Russian lasers and missiles could disable in a matter of hours. Admiral Thomas wants more of the same century-old weapons platform that the Chinese have spent billions learning how to sink.

The idea is Churchillian, to be sure, but that is not necessarily a recommendation.

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CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Biden’s ‘Covid-19 Winter Plan’ Ignores Science David Catron

By on December 7th, 2021

https://spectator.org/bidens-covid-19-winter-plan-ignores-science/

Last Thursday, President Biden announced his “COVID-19 Winter Plan.” Despite his claim that it will fight the disease with “science and speed,” it ignores virtually everything scientists have learned about coronavirus during the past two years. Indeed, it contains a number of elements that epidemiologists have denounced and that evidence has proven counterproductive. These include an irrational emphasis on vaccinating low risk children, the promotion of booster shots that the World Health Organization (WHO) has pronounced ineffective, travel bans that could very well jeopardize efforts to contain future outbreaks, and strident calls for private businesses to bully their employees into getting vaccinated.

During his introduction of the plan, Biden insisted: “Vaccinating our children is critical to keeping our schools open. But while over 99 percent of schools are open now, we need to make sure we keep that throughout the winter — this winter.” He went on to say his administration would expand efforts to vaccinate children ages 5 and up. It is difficult to think of a more scientifically illiterate policy. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that the virus is responsible for the deaths of 200 children aged 5 to 14 between 01-01-2020 and 11-27-2021. This is tragic, of course, but statistically negligible. Nature recently published an analysis of several studies that unequivically confirm the infinitesimal COVID-19 mortality rate among school-aged children:

Of 3,105 deaths from all causes among the 12 million or so people under 18 in England between March 2020 and February 2021, 25 were attributable to COVID-19 — a rate of about 2 for every million people in this age range. None had asthma or type-1 diabetes, the authors note, and about half had conditions that put them at a higher risk than healthy children of dying from any cause.

Why, then, would the latest Biden plan put so much emphasis on such a low risk segment of the population? This is clearly the result of pressure by the teachers’ unions upon which the Democrats depend so heavily for campaign cash.

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CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

COVID Is a Pandemic of Fear ‘Manufactured’ by Authorities: Yale Epidemiologist

By on December 7th, 2021

https://americanfaith.com/covid-is-a-pandemic-of-fear-manufactured-by-authorities-yale-epidemiologist/

The COVID-19 pandemic has been one of fear, manufactured by individuals who were in the nominal positions of authority as the virus began to spread across the globe last year, according to Yale epidemiologist Dr. Harvey Risch.

In an appearance on EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” program, Risch, an epidemiology professor at the Yale School of Public Health and Yale School of Medicine’s Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, argued that by and large, what has characterized the entire CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic has been a “degree of fear and people’s response to the fear.”

“Overall, I’d say that we’ve had a pandemic of fear. And fear has affected almost everybody, whereas the infection has affected relatively few,” said Risch.

“By and large, it’s been a very selected pandemic, and predictable. It was very distinguished between young versus old, healthy versus chronic disease people. So we quickly learned who was at risk for the pandemic and who wasn’t,” he added.

“However, the fear was manufactured for everybody. And that’s what’s characterized the whole pandemic is that degree of fear and people’s response to the fear.”

Risch has authored over 300 original peer-reviewed publications and was formerly a member of the board of editors for the American Journal of Epidemiology.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

The US and the Iranian Octopus (part 2) Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

By on December 7th, 2021

https://bit.ly/32WalHj

Since the 1978/79 revolution against the Shah of Iran, the Ayatollahs regime has adhered to its mega-goal of global Shite domination, developing mega-capabilities (nuclear, ballistic technologies and worldwide terrorism), aiming to remove/subordinate its mega-obstacle, the USA.

During 1962-1970, then anti-US Egypt was involved in the Yemen civil war, as a springboard to topple the pro-US regime in Saudi Arabia and, subsequently, all other pro-US Arab regimes in a most critical region to global trade, oil and security, the Arabian Peninsula.

Since 2011, Iran’s anti-US Ayatollahs are deeply involved in the Yemen civil war on the side of the anti-US Shite Houthis (“Soldiers of Allah”) – via Iranian and Hezbollah manpower, military supplies, training and intelligence – as a springboard to oust the pro-US Sunni House of Saud (bordering north Yemen), and subsequently, all other pro-US Sunni regimes in the Arabian Peninsula.

In February, 2021, the US removed Yemen’s Shite Houthis – who are Iran’s proxy – from the list of terrorist organizations, courted Iran’s rogue Ayatollahs, terminated US support of the pro-US Saudi military offensive against the anti-US Houthis, and pressured Saudi Arabia on account of human rights violations. However, in November, 2021, the Houthis stormed the US Embassy in Sanaa, holding a few of the local staff hostage, demonstrating – once again – that Islamic/Arab terrorists bite the hands that feed them.

Yemen’s geostrategic importance for the US

The limbs of the Iranian octopus extend from the Persian Gulf and Central Asia to the whole Middle East, Europe, Africa, South, Central and North America, including Yemen, where Iran’s Ayatollahs outflank the Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden, playing a decisive role in fueling the civil war, as a dagger aimed at its Sunni arch-rival, the pro-US Saudi Arabia.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

What Russia Wants in Ukraine by Soeren Kern

By on December 6th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18000/russia-ukraine

In July, Putin published a 5,000-word article — “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians” — in which he wrote that he was convinced that the “true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia.”

“The Russian regime’s foremost interest is its own hold on power. All policy, internal and external, stems from this overriding goal.” — Edward Lucas, Ben Hodges and Carsten Schmiedl, Center for European Policy Analysis.

“The Russian Federation…has two main options: to escalate the armed conflict in the Donbas in order to achieve a rapid breakthrough, or to intensify long-term pressure, i.e. to play for Kyiv’s gradual exhaustion. The choice of strategy depends on the Russian perception of the situation, the attitude of Ukraine itself, and the behavior of key Western actors.” — Marek Menkiszak, Center for Eastern Studies.

The first important factor here is Moscow’s likely perception of the relative weakness of the US. The Kremlin’s initial fear of ‘retribution’ from the new Joe Biden administration for its interference in the 2016 presidential election seems to have given way to the belief that Washington is focused on domestic problems and the challenge from China, so it is seeking to improve relations with the Russian Federation. — Marek Menkiszak.

“Do not make the mistake of handing an essential part of Europe’s future to a country that is demonstratively not the EU’s friend. Time will not be kind to such decision or to those who made it.” — Olexander Scherba, Ukrainian diplomat, Jamestown Foundation.

“Russia has a clear aim: to weaken Ukraine so much that it will be relatively easy to control the country’s politics. Moscow can achieve this by forcing Kyiv to implement the Minsk agreement on its terms — which would establish a de facto Russian veto on Ukrainian domestic affairs — and by starting…anti-government revolts. Alternatively, Moscow could pressure Washington to ‘deliver’ Ukraine by signing security guarantees that favored Russia. These guarantees would prohibit Ukraine from not only joining NATO but also engaging in any form of cooperation with the West that would strengthen its resilience. This would eventually force Ukraine back into Moscow’s sphere of influence.” — Gustav Gressel, European Council on Foreign Relations.

“If Russia’s coercive strategy works well, there is no guarantee that it will stop with Ukraine.” — Gustav Gressel.

“Many European leaders do not seem to grasp the seriousness of the situation…. Ukraine has a gun to its head, but the German government only seems worried about the survival of its pipeline…. This is just the kind of poor judgement that enables Russian military aggression.” — Gustav Gressel.

A massive build-up of Russian troops along the Ukrainian border is fueling speculation of an imminent invasion. Western leaders have warned Russian President Vladimir Putin against military action, but, especially after the catastrophic American withdrawal from Afghanistan, they appear divided and weak and may be unable to stop him.

A Russian invasion of Ukraine, if successful, would expand Moscow’s sphere of influence along its western border and pave the way for Eastern Europe and the Baltics to come under Russian domination once again.

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HISTORY Comments turned off

Misremembering Pearl Harbor The tactically brilliant but strategically crazy attack on Pearl Harbor unleashed incalculable furor against a once sophisticated Japanese empire, which foolishly attacked the United States at peace. By Victor Davis Hanson

By on December 6th, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/12/05/misremembering-pearl-harbor/

Most Americans once were mostly in agreement about what happened on December 7, 1941, 80 years ago this year. But not so much now, given either the neglect of America’s past in the schools or woke revisionism at odds with the truth. 

The Pacific war that followed Pearl Harbor was not a result of America egging on the Japanese, not about starting a race war, and not about much other than a confident and cruel Japanese empire falsely assuming that its stronger American rival either would not or could not stop its transoceanic ambitions. 

On an early Sunday morning at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the Japanese Imperial Navy conducted a tactically successful, but strategically imbecilic, surprise attack on the U.S. 7th Fleet—while at peace and without a declaration of war. The assault—synchronized with subsequent bombing and invasions of the Philippines and British-controlled Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong, and some Pacific Islands—did not just ensure an existential Pacific theater war between Japan and America. It also prompted the entry of the United States on December 11 into the European theater of World War II, after both Italy and Nazi Germany first declared war on America. Had the latter not done so, it is arguable that the United States would have instead concentrated on Japan alone and might have knocked it out of the war even earlier.

Revisionists often cite conspiracy theories that the Roosevelt Administration lured Japan into the war by previously limiting oil exports to Tokyo (a mere five months before Pearl Harbor) or by foolishly moving the 7th Fleet from San Diego to a deliberately exposed and not so well defended Pearl Harbor. 

Such contrarian views fail to persuade because the one-sided source of tensions had been clear to all for a decade. Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931. It resumed its war with China by invading the mainland in 1937. In September 1940, it absorbed French colonial Indochina. The idea of a Japanese Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere was informally circulating by 1940, as a blueprint of consolidation of the planned Japanese imperial wartime acquisitions of China, and the former British, American, French, and Dutch colonial territories. 

The mercantile system was envisioned as a sort of Asian version of a would-be Napoleonic Europe but based on the supposed racial superiority of Japan and the propagandistic and cynical notion that even harsher Japanese imperialism would be less resented by Asians in the Pacific than then current nation-building colonialism of Western powers. Such crude propaganda was never taken too seriously outside of Tokyo, given the Japanese mass civilian killings of conquered Asians in Nanking, China and the massacres that followed from the takeover of Singapore. 

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Chicago is what happens when a culture loses its moral grounding By Andrea Widburg

By on December 6th, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/12/chicago_is_what_happens_when_a_culture_loses_its_moral_grounding.html

Chicago’s Loop encompasses the city’s central business district, which is also the second-largest commercial business district in America (or so Wikipedia tells me), filled with restaurants, offices, retail stores, hotels, and historic attractions. It lies at the heart of Cook County, the same county that elected Kim Foxx, the Soros-designated district attorney who doesn’t believe in prosecuting crime. When you couple Foxx’s aversion to enforcing the law with generations of people who have grown up without any moral grounding, you get a weekend in the loop complete with beatings, a shooting, and general misbehavior.

CWB Chicago reported on the madness Saturday night in the Loop:

A 15-year-old was shot, a CTA bus driver was beaten, and about 20 juveniles were taken into custody as a “large group incident” unfolded in the Loop on Saturday evening, according to police and initial information from sources.

[snip]

Among the more serious incidents: A CTA bus driver was beaten on the 100 block of North Michigan when he stopped his vehicle to inspect it for damage after he heard a loud noise around 8:50 p.m., according to a CPD statement.

As he examined the bus, a male and female began to push him and then punched him repeatedly before running away, police said. An ambulance took the 49-year-old driver to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in fair condition with bruises to his face and body.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Demonizing Kyle Rittenhouse By Janet Levy

By on December 6th, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/12/demonizing_kyle_rittenhouse.html

On November 19, Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted of all charges in the shootings of Joseph Rosenbaum, Anthony Huber, and Gaige Grosskreutz in Kenosha, WI.  His defense established that the teenager was acting in self-defense; the prosecution was unable to prove otherwise.  Even media outlets not aligned with the conservative view were constrained to observe that among the “undisputed facts” of the case are that Rosenbaum chased and later advanced on Rittenhouse when he stood his ground; that Huber hit him with a skateboard and lunged for his rifle; and that Grosskreutz pointed a handgun at him.

Yet, the young man continues to be vilified.  Students for Socialism, an avowedly Marxist-Leninist student club at Arizona State University (ASU), is rallying to deny Rittenhouse “further admission” to the university. (He is no longer enrolled there, though he had taken an online course in nursing earlier.) In its petitions, the group describes him as a “racist killer” and says that “even with a not-guilty verdict from a flawed justice system — Kyle Rittenhouse is still guilty in the eyes of the people.”

Similarly, an opinion piece describes him as a “young armed vigilante killing unarmed protesters.” It says he was “given a pass” for “roaming the streets of Kenosha with an AR-15.” House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler has threatened a Department of Justice investigation against Rittenhouse for interference in a protest protected by the First Amendment.  It’s amazing how the Left quotes the very Constitution it has been abusing and tearing up when it suits its purpose.

It doesn’t matter to Nadler and others like him that many at the Antifa/BLM-organized Kenosha protest in August 2020 were armed with guns, chains, and bats. Nor does it matter to them that Rosenbaum, Huber, and Grosskreutz had criminal records.  The protesters rampaged through downtown looting and torching properties, and attacking those who tried to stop them.  Despite claims of ‘wokeness’, they did not spare black-owned businesses and homes. During the mayhem, local police and the mayor stood by as rioters set fire to the Wisconsin Department of Corrections, used baseball bats to smash street lights and cars, assaulted a business owner, and pointed a gun at a Fox News reporter. There were no police or National Guardsmen to be seen.  The governor had clearly failed the state.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

America’s Enemies Fill the Vacuum She Leaves Abroad By Seth Cropsey & Harry Halem

By on December 6th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/12/americas-enemies-fill-the-vacuum-she-leaves-abroad/

The oft-discussed Middle Eastern power vacuum does not exist. America’s adversaries have already filled it.

P resident Biden’s meeting with Xi Jinping on November 15 shifted media attention from COP26 back to great-power politics, but a more subtle, yet perhaps more consequential, shift has occurred over the past month. This shift is remarkable for its lack of American involvement — it presages a Middle Eastern regional transformation over which the United States will have little to no influence. Rather, Russia and increasingly China have become the region’s key external powers. The central question for both as they move forward will be the degree of Iranian expansionism they will accept.

On October 22, Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett met Russia’s maximum leader Vladimir Putin at the Black Sea resort city of Sochi. The meeting was critical for Bennett given his domestic political position. Prime Minister Bennett’s minority right-wing Yamina/New Right party holds only seven seats, compared to his coalition ally Yair Lapid’s 17. Moreover, the rest of the coalition is composed of numerous splinter, generally secular parties from left and right. Bennett will retain some control in 2023, when the premiership is scheduled to rotate to Lapid. But his numerical disadvantage bodes ill for his and his party’s long-term political prospects.

In the next election, one would expect Bennett to tilt back toward the Right, playing a key role in a center-Right coalition government to box out the secular Left, with which Yesh Atid aligns. Yet Bennett’s erstwhile ally and mentor, recently ousted prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, retains significant political power despite his ongoing corruption trial. Not only has Netanyahu emerged as Bennett’s fiercest critic — his policy criticisms have some substance. Bennett is a shrewd politician, having served in ministerial positions since 2013, and as defense minister from 2019 to 2020. But Netanyahu’s foreign-policy experience was a critical selling point for Likud voters, and a line of attack he has exploited since leaving office. Netanyahu claimed that his personal relationship with Putin gave Israel greater flexibility in Syria, allowing the IDF to conduct a long-term interdiction campaign against Iranian targets without sparking Russian resistance.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Giving Cover to Palestinian Extremists The UN and other apologists who continue to enable Palestinian terror and lies. Mon Dec 6, 2021 Joseph Klein

By on December 6th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/12/giving-cover-palestinian-extremists-joseph-klein/

The executive director of the Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR) Nihad Awad, speaking at a panel that was part of the American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) annual conference in Chicago on November 27, 2021, demanded that the Biden administration move the U.S. Embassy in Israel back from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv. Adding insult to injury, Awad described Tel Aviv as “occupied,” but, he vowed, it “will be free later.”

AMP is an extremist pro-Palestinian group that promotes the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. There is “a significant overlap between AMP and people who worked for or on behalf of organizations that were designated, dissolved, or held civilly liable by federal authorities for supporting Hamas,” according to Jonathan Schanzer, Vice President of Research Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Schanzer testified about AMP and its radical agenda at a 2016 Joint Hearing before the House Foreign Affairs Committee Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade and the Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa.

The theme of AMP’s 2021 annual conference was “On the Road to Free Palestine.” In addition to Awad, other pro-Palestinian extremists who spoke at the hate Israel propaganda fest included Linda Sansour and Zarefah Baroud.  The latter wrote an opinion piece earlier this year claiming that “racialized violence has always defined Israel,” which was posted last May on Hamas’s website.

But you don’t have to go to an American Muslims for Palestine conference to hear the vile rhetoric directed against the Jewish State of Israel and its supporters. All you need to do is to go to the United Nations.

United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres (pictured above) issued a statement on November 29th commemorating the “International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.” He blamed Israel for the Palestinians’ self-inflicted plight. Guterres fed into the Palestinian victimhood narrative, claiming that “[P]ersistent violations of the rights of Palestinians along with the expansion of settlements risk eroding the prospect of a two-State solution.”

False. It is the rejectionism of the Palestinian leaders and their enablers, starting with their refusal to accept the UN General Assembly’s original two-state partition plan in 1947, and lasting to the present day, that is responsible for the Palestinians’ failure to achieve their aspiration for an independent state. By rejecting the idea of living side by side under secure and durable peace terms with the Jewish State of Israel, the Palestinian leaders and their enablers have nobody but themselves to blame for the decades-old stalemate and violence.

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