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January 2022

The UAE Is America’s Friend, Not Rival by Con Coughlin

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18145/the-uae-is-america-friend-not-rival

The Houthi attack against the UAE, which has long-standing defence ties with the US… makes a mockery of US President Joe Biden’s decision, taken in the first weeks of his presidency, to remove the Houthis from Washington’s list of designated terrorist groups….

The Gulf region has become a major battleground between the US and China, not least because American influence is seen as being in decline by Gulf leaders because of Mr Biden’s weak and ineffectual leadership, especially in the wake of his administration’s disastrous handling of the Afghan withdrawal in the summer.

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/08/16/politics/afghanistan-joe-biden-donald-trump-kabul-politics/index.html

This has led many Middle Eastern states that have previously adopted pro-Western policies to re-evaluate their long-standing relationship with Washington as they feel, quite rightly, that they can no longer rely on the US to defend their interests, especially when it comes to protecting them against the threat posed by Iran and its allies.

From China’s perspective, Abu Dhabi is seen as the “pearl” in its plan to establish what Chinese President Xi Jinping calls the Maritime Silk Road, a project that aims to secure Chinese dominance over key trading routes from Asia to the Middle East and beyond.

The fact that the Biden administration…should be pressuring the UAE over its ties with China is a classic example of how the White House has got its priorities all wrong.

As this week’s attack by Iranian-backed terrorists on the UAE graphically illustrates, Iran poses the greatest threat to Gulf security, and it is Washington’s failure to support its Gulf allies against the Iranian menace that has led them to develop ties with China in the first place.

If Mr Biden is truly concerned about nations like the UAE developing relations with Beijing, then the best way to reverse this trend would be to offer the Gulf states better protection against Iran. That would be a sure-fire way to get American relations with the Gulf back on track, and keep the opportunistic Chinese communists at bay.

The dramatic drone and missile strikes on the United Arab Emirates (UAE) by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels highlight the utter folly of the Biden administration’s willingness to question the loyalty of one of its key Gulf allies.

Trump v. DeSantis: Advantage, DeSantis Kurt Schlichter

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2022/01/19/trump-v-desantis-advantage-desantis-n2601998

Things keep changing. A few months ago I thought Trump would not run. Then I thought he would run. Now, I don’t think so once again. And one of the tells is the subtle shot he took at DeSantis over vaccines. The fact is that Trump, if he runs, is not a shoo-in. And this could be an epic battle for the chance to beat Kamala Harris like a drum in 2024. And, at least according to people like you who took my most recent Twitter poll, Trump is not a shoo-in. He’s dropped to just one-third support from nearly half six months ago. If he wants to win Round Two, he’ll have to fight for it.

But my gut is again telling me that 75-year-old Donald Trump will not run in 2024. Perhaps if the election was next week, but with it three years off, that’s a lot of time and he’s aging out. Does he want to follow President Crusty’s lead and decline on camera over the next seven years (three campaigning, four in office)? Is anyone more sensitive to such things than Trump? Maybe not.

But he still likes being the big dog, and he resents those coming along behind him who neglect to recognize. The purported shot at DeSantis over jabs last week seems significant. Trump is super proud of his vaccines, which is definitely not where the base is at right now. Does he know that? He’s off in his own world and TV does not reflect the depth of the anti-COVID dissension. He did a rally in Arizona and that’s nice, but the more he defends his COVID record – which includes not firing that malignant dwarf Fauci – the less the base is going to dig his rap.

Biden’s FCC Commissioner Nominee Gigi Sohn Wants To Nuke Right-Leaning Broadcasters From Air By: Jordan Boyd

https://thefederalist.com/2022/01/18/bidens-fcc-commissioner-nominee-gigi-sohn-wants-to-nuke-right-leaning-broadcasters-from-air/

President Joe Biden’s nominee for commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission hates Fox News and wants the federal agency to regulate conservative broadcasts because she disagrees with them.

The White House first announced Gigi Sohn as Biden’s FCC nominee in October.

“Gigi is one of the nation’s leading public advocates for open, affordable, and democratic communications networks,” the Biden administration claimed. “For over thirty years, Gigi has worked to defend and preserve the fundamental competition and innovation policies that have made broadband Internet access more ubiquitous, competitive, affordable, open, and protective of user privacy.”

Sohn’s inclination towards censorship and partisan regulation, however, torpedoed her chances of confirmation. Biden re-nominated Sohn at the beginning of the year but her chances of gaining Republican support are once again slim considering her history of criticizing and painting TV networks she disagrees with as threats to our democracy that need to be punished.

In one 2019 tweet, Sohn hinted that Fox News should be scrutinized because they “have played their own role in destroying democracy.”

“I agree that scrutiny of big tech is essential, as is scrutiny of big telecom, cable & media. And trust me, the latter have played their own role in destroying democracy & electing autocrats. Like, say, Fox News?” she tweeted.

The Nazi Next Door Dan Gelerntner

https://amgreatness.com/2022/01/18/the-nazi-next-door/

 Your Democratic neighbors won’t be ordered to vote for laws that ostracize you from society, steal your property, or send you away to a concentration camp. They will do it burning with pride.

Almost half of Democratic voters—48 percent—think the government should be able to fine or imprison individuals “who publicly question the efficacy of the existing COVID-19 vaccines on social media, television, radio, or in online or digital publications.” 

This is not the most astonishing finding of a poll just released by Rasmussen. Let’s go through the relevant points: Nearly the same percentage of Democratic voters—47 percent—think the government should be able to put a tracking system, like an ankle monitor or a locked collar, on people who refuse the vaccine. And 45 percent favor putting the unvaccinated in camps. Camps.  

More than half of Democratic voters—55 percent—think people who refuse the vaccine should be fined. Fifty-nine percent favor confining all unvaccinated people to their homes. More than a quarter of Democratic voters—29 percent—think that the government should be able to confiscate the children of unvaccinated parents . . . 

Is any of this Nazi enough for you yet? You are living next door to the people who would have turned you over to the Comité de salut public for opposing the “Law of Suspects”—the law that authorized the arrest of all suspected enemies of the Revolution and ushered in the Reign of Terror. You are living next door to the people who would have turned you over to the NKVD for “moral sabotage of the Soviet Union.” You are living next door to the people who would have called up the Gestapo and said, “My neighbor is hiding a Jew.” 

Examine these historical personages from Revolutionary France or Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany (or Nazi France): It’s not just that they were following orders. On the contrary, they thought they were doing a positive good for society. They were eager to help rid their community of dangerous elements. They were proud of what they did. 

The ‘Civil War’ Psy-Op Psychological operations can have many objectives, demoralization being the most common. But they can also be used to create opportunities that otherwise might not present themselves. By Michael Anton

https://amgreatness.com/2022/01/18/the-civil-war-psy-op/

Regime propaganda is so ubiquitous that even if, like me, you make no effort to seek it out and even take steps to avoid it, you can’t help but notice that our masters have fastened onto a new narrative: the coming “civil war.” 

This was the crux of all the maudlin, dishonest January 6 retrospectives, of several “think pieces,” and at least three new books: America is facing a second civil war and it will be started by the Right. 

Really? With what? In one of his more lucid moments, Joe Biden himself noted that the disaffected on the Right have no chance of taking on the United States government without F-15s and nukes. Like the blind squirrel finding a nut, the old man was onto something. The government’s overwhelming advantages in technology, firepower, manpower, money, transportation, supply networks, surveillance tools and much else would be so lopsided as to make the military buzzword “asymmetric” a grim joke. Think, instead, Bambi versus Godzilla. 

To fight a civil war, you have to organize. But organizing is all but impossible for those who genuinely dream of taking on the state. The U.S. government is incompetent at many (most?) of its assigned responsibilities. But it’s quite good at keeping tabs on any hint of “right-wing” “insurrectionary” impulses. That task is made much easier by the fact that there is so little such activity to monitor—so little, in fact, that the feds increasingly feel compelled to incite it. 

It would be hard to hide a mass movement of people gearing up to fight a civil war. Do you see one anywhere? I don’t. If there were one, don’t you think the feds would be all over it? Of course they would. And don’t you think regime media would be blaring about it 24/7? Again—of course. This is a classic case of a dog not barking. Silence is confirmation that nothing is happening. 

Organization, like civil war, requires elites. Indeed civil wars, like all wars, are fought between two opposing factions of elites. Even backwoods insurgencies have leaders. Where are the elites poised to lead red America in a civil war? Who are they? There is Trump to be sure, and regime propaganda insists that he’s a modern-day Jeff Davis-Robert E. Lee hybrid. But this is the same Trump who spent January 6 tweeting. The real elites made sure that was his last day on that platform—and then impeached him for the second time. The real elites—Republican and Democrat alike—wish he would crawl into a hole and die. Trump may have tens of millions of committed followers. But a real civil war requires generals and colonels and captains and lieutenants and sergeants. Go ahead—name some. I’ll wait.

Why Was Texas-Synagogue Jihadist Akram Allowed to Enter U.S.? By Andrew C. McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/01/why-was-texas-synagogue-jihadist-akram-allowed-to-enter-u-s/

When it comes to Western governments and jihadism, willful blindness is never fully cured.

EXCERPTS

Americans, particularly Jewish Americans, were justifiably nettled by agent Matthew DeSarno, who heads the FBI’s Dallas field office and who ridiculously claimed that Akram’s plot was “not specifically related to the Jewish community.” In his tin-eared way, however, DeSarno appeared to be conveying that Akram’s main objective was to extort our government into releasing convicted terrorist Aafia Siddiqui from custody, and reassuring Jewish communities across the country that the bureau does not believe that there’s a broader ongoing conspiracy to attack synagogues.

We should be understanding of officials who make good-faith errors in communicating facts about what otherwise seems to be a competent performance by government agencies. Nevertheless, we should also demand a complete, accurate accounting. The FBI and other agencies should not get to take a victory lap in which we are spun with information that casts them in a favorable light, while less-flattering facts are omitted and possibly concealed.

Which is to say, we need a lot more information about what happened here — in particular, about (a) the circumstances of Akram’s demise in the synagogue, and more important (b) how this jihadist managed to obtain a tourist visa allowing him to enter the United States.

Then there is the matter of how Akram managed to get a tourist visa. It raises questions that need to be addressed by both American and British authorities, whose close partnership in the lavishly funded counterterrorism field is said to set the first-world standard for international cooperation.

Never Forget Al Sharpton’s History By David Harsanyi

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/never-forget-al-sharptons-history/

In response to Al Sharpton: MSNBC’S Hands-On Antisemitism Expert

As Isaac notes, on Monday, MSNBC included Al Sharpton on a panel of pundits to discuss the hostage-taking situation in a synagogue in Colleyville, Texas. Of all the nearly 8 billion human beings available to chime in on an antisemitic incident, Nicolle Wallace thought that Sharpton was the best choice available. This would be akin to bringing David Duke on after the killing of Ahmaud Arbery to discuss how Americans could do a better job protecting African-American lives.

It will never cease to amaze me how Sharpton, one of the most pernicious characters in New York history, is constantly being trotted out by MSNBC as if he has the moral high ground on issues of tolerance. I’m old enough to remember one-time conservative congressman Joe Scarborough authoring the resolution, “Condemning the racist and anti-Semitic views of the Reverend Al Sharpton.” These days, the two are buddies.

It can never be repeated enough that before he was a kingmaker, sought out by national candidates and presidents, Sharpton infamously used a tragic 1991 car accident to incite a three-day race riot in Crown Heights. Sharpton took advantage of the accidental death of a boy named Gavin Cato to spread conspiracies about a Jewish “nexus” between “Tel Aviv” and “South Africa” (then still an apartheid state) and the “diamond merchants” of Crown Heights. “All we want to say is what Jesus said: If you offend one of these little ones, you got to pay for it. No compromise, no meetings, no coffee klatch, no skinnin’ and grinnin’,” went the eulogy from the Baptist minister.

Glazov Gang: Dr. Peter McCullough on ‘Is Fauci Really Science?’

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/01/glazov-gang-dr-peter-mccullough-fauci-really-frontpagemagcom/

Leading Covid-19 physician sheds disturbing light on Dr. Fauci’s “expertise” and intentions.

A Hollowed-Out Democracy An interview with author and educator Jeremy Adams. Mark Tapson

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/01/hollowed-out-democracy-mark-tapson/

It is no secret that America’s education system has been failing our children and our country for over a half-century now, ever since the radical left realized that subverting American institutions from within was more effective than outright domestic terrorism. But thanks to the coronavirus pandemic and remote-learning mandates, parents have gotten a glimpse of just how insidious and shocking the dumbing-down and ideological indoctrination are. Parental outrage has led to confrontations with bullying teachers unions, hostile school boards, and tone-deaf political leaders who declare openly that parents shouldn’t have a say in their children’s education.

A recent book from Regnery Press addresses this hot-button topic and laments a whole generation or more of American youth whose brains as well as souls have been “hollowed out” by ideological brainwashing, technological distraction, the disintegration of families, and the collapse of moral and civic virtues. Hollowed Out: A Warning about America’s Next Generation, by Jeremy S. Adams, explores the different facets of this disheartening crisis, but also concludes with a rallying cry for action from a California teacher writing from within the very belly of the beast.

A graduate of Washington & Lee University and CSU Bakersfield, Jeremy Adams was the first classroom teacher inducted into the California State University, Bakersfield, Hall of Fame. He has written on politics and education for the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Sacramento Bee, and many other outlets. Our mutual friend Evan Sayet, conservative political commentator and himself the author of The Woke Supremacy: An Anti-Socialist Manifesto and KinderGarden Of Eden: How the Modern Liberal Thinks, put me in touch with Adams to talk a bit about Hollowed Out.

Mark Tapson:           Jeremy, thanks for the insightful dissection of the state of our culture you’ve put forth in this book. Lamenting the divide that partisan politics has created in our country, you write, “Our democracy is hollowed out because the habits, the relationships, the institutions, and the values that allow us to become thoughtful, compassionate, magnanimous, and informed citizens no longer shape and define us in the ways they once did.” Can you give us a couple of key examples?

Jeremy Adams:       I wish I could go back and add the word “content” or “fulfilled” or “joyful” to that list because every day the evidence is mounting about just how miserable—uniquely miserable, in fact—our young people have become. As to their civic deficiencies, the basic problem is a profound lack of knowledge and awareness of what went in to creating the institutions of our civilization. Almost everything they see is a consequence, they believe, of malevolent power being exercised against innocent bystanders in society.

Soros General Demands Purge of Military While Democrats go after dead Confederate generals, we ought to look at living Soros generals. Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/01/soros-general-demands-purge-military-daniel-greenfield/

The United States has Soros prosecutors who have turned our cities into violent hellholes where criminals run loose, Soros politicians who wage war on this nation from the ramparts of their offices, and Soros generals who advocate for political purges of the nation’s military.

Recently the Washington Post ran an op-ed from three retired generals, Antonio Taguba, an immigrant who had accused America of war crimes during the fight against Islamic terrorists in Iraq, Steven Anderson, a board member of the left-wing VoteVets, and Paul Eaton, a senior VoteVets adviser, urging that the military prepare for a “2024 insurrection” in proper Soviet style.

The three left-wing ex-generals called for “intensive intelligence work” to “identify, isolate and remove potential mutineers” and “guard against efforts by propagandists.”

A Commie commissar couldn’t have said it any better than Taguba, Anderson, and Eaton.

These “propagandists” and “mutineers” are not the members of the pro-Hillary “Resistance” who pledged to undermine and sabotage the Trump administration in 2016. Nor are they the Democrats who insisted that President George W. Bush was illegitimately elected.

Only conservatives are up for the purge.