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August 2023

After Destroying Lebanon, Iran-controlled Hezbollah Threatens War with Israel by Bassam Tawil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19916/lebanon-iran-hezbollah-war

Hassan Nasrallah, Secretary-General of the Hezbollah terror group, recently threatened to send Israel back “to the Stone Age” if it goes to war with Lebanon — meaning defend itself against an Iranian-Lebanese attack.

While Nasrallah’s threat to destroy Israel is not new, he surely knows a thing or two about sending countries back to the Stone Age. His Iran-backed group, which functions as a state-within-a-state in Lebanon, is responsible for turning the Arab country into a failed state.

Two days after Nasrallah made his latest threat against Israel, Lebanon witnessed widespread blackouts, forcing Beirut Airport to run on electric generators.

“On the other side of the spectrum is the understanding that Lebanon was coerced into collapse by Hezbollah and its regional broker, Iran.” — Fadi Nassar, assistant professor in political science and international affairs, Lebanese American University; Saleh El Machnouk, lecturer in political science, Saint-Joseph University, Beirut; mei.edu, March 24, 2023.

“Lebanon has been hit by a debilitating new wave of hyperinflation, the imposition of its judiciary over the local investigation into the Port of Beirut blast, and a European investigation into the Central Bank.” — Fadi Nassar and Saleh El Machnouk; mei.edu, March 24, 2023.

“Hezbollah and [former Lebanese president Michel] Aoun have destroyed everything that made Lebanon great. The Arab world’s banking capital is bankrupt. Tourists don’t frequent destabilized states run by terrorists. Former regional partners refuse to have anything to do with us. Our celebrated culture is trampled underfoot by barbarian theocrats. Beirut no longer has a viable port.” — Baria Alamuddin, award-winning Lebanese journalist and broadcaster, arabnews.com, September 27, 2020.

Since the explosion at the Port of Beirut [which killed more than 200 people, injured thousands more, and displaced half of Lebanon’s capital city], Hezbollah has been trying to obstruct the investigation into the incident by the Lebanese authorities.

“All indications, signs, and collected evidence of weapons and explosives, prove beyond the shadow of a doubt, that Hezbollah, backed by the mullahs in Iran, have turned Lebanon into a massive arms and explosives warehouse.” — Mohammed al Shaikh, Saudi political analyst, alarabiya.net, September 29, 2020.

“Hezbollah’s militia, as was publicly and boldly recognized by its Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, is trying to convert Lebanon into an Iranian mullah’s province, from which he receives his arms and all the funds and equipment he requires. Hence, the crimes committed by Hezbollah, including the Beirut explosion, are in fact an extension of Tehran’s orders… Although they cannot be publicly vocal about it, all the Lebanese hold Hezbollah responsible for the port bombing. People know that if they do express their opinion, physical liquidation awaits them….” — Mohammed al Shaikh, alarabiya.net, September 29, 2020.

Nasrallah and his masters in Iran care nothing about the suffering of the Lebanese people. What they care about is power, spreading their control to other Arab countries, and fulfilling their ambition to destroy the only successful and democratic country in the Middle East: Israel. Besides Lebanon, Iran’s terror proxies have also wreaked havoc in Syria, Yemen and Iraq. How ironic that Nasrallah, the terrorist leader who has decimated his own country, is now, with the backing of Iran, threatening to take another state back to the Stone Age.

The Ruling Class Sits atop a Boiling Pot By J.B. Shurk

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/08/the_ruling_class_sits_atop_a_boiling_pot.html

In the history books, great social revolutions are often distilled into digestible reasons for their emergence.  Rising unemployment, widespread illness, cultural upheaval, and rapid technological change have all been diagnosed as the proximate causes for various sudden shifts in society.  If you look past those antiseptic historical autopsies, though, and concentrate on the feelings and passions of the people who experienced the revolutions firsthand, you will find another symptom present in every single movement for great change: popular rejection of ruling class lies.

People despise lies, especially lies that have had the effect of making them feel foolish.  People despise lies so much that they will go out of their way to pretend obvious lies are somehow still based in truth.  It is much more comfortable to believe that governing institutions continue to make “honest” mistakes than to accept that those institutions abandoned honesty a long time ago.  It is easier to spin one lie away with yet another soothing lie than to accept the darker, harder, bitter truth.  However, officially sanctioned lies tend to coagulate in the body politic much like spike proteins clotting in the blood until, eventually, the whole system just bursts.

When that happens, people become rightly mad.  They are mad not only because they finally recognize that their government has been engaged in massive deceptions, but also because they are ashamed for having defended obvious lies as truths for far too long.  Rage is the inevitable result — a rejection of the people and institutions responsible for such degrading self-delusions.  And when rage arrives, a peculiar thing tends to happen: fewer and fewer ruling-class heirs remain to defend the status quo.  History records successful revolutions when the previous system’s liars rebrand themselves, recede into the background, or simply disappear.

Whatever else you might think about our current historical moment, one observation is inescapable: rage is in the air.  And how is the ruling class responding?  Instead of turning down the temperature under a boiling pot already spilling over, it is frantically pressing down an iron-laden lid and hoping the pressure won’t build.  The vast majority of Americans believe that their elections are tainted by fraud, but the ruling class chooses to see nothing.  Rising political dissent is met with government-engineered censorship and false imprisonment.  Popular opinions against illegal immigration and unnecessary wars and for energy independence and less government regulation are entirely ignored.  The people’s wants and needs are scorned, while the unaccountable bureaucracy imposes its will upon the unwilling.  Just as every other deposed ruling class has done in the past, our ruling class has chosen to stand on top of the lid barely containing society’s boiling pot of passions, buoyed by the false notion that raw force will make that pot less likely to explode.

Will Princeton Remove a Jew-Hating Blood-Libel Text From a Syllabus? Academia and venomous lies. by Hugh Fitzgerald

https://www.frontpagemag.com/will-princeton-remove-a-jew-hating-blood-libel-text-from-a-syllabus/

The International Legal Forum (ILF), a nonprofit organization based in Tel Aviv which advocates for equality in Israel and the Middle East, on Sunday asked Princeton University to remove from the syllabus of a new Department of Near Eastern Studies course a book that accuses the Israeli Defense Forces of “maiming” Palestinians and of harvesting the organs of Palestinians they have killed, about which I wrote on Thursday. More on this request can be found here: “Legal Group Seeks Removal of ‘Blood Libel’ Book from Princeton University Course,” by Dion J. Pierre, Algemeiner, August 9, 2023:

The International Legal Forum (ILF), a nonprofit organization based in Tel Aviv which advocates for equality in Israel and the Middle East, on Sunday asked Princeton University to remove from the syllabus of a Department of Near Eastern Studies course a book that accuses the Israeli Defense Forces of “maiming” Palestinians and harvesting their organs.

Students in the class are assigned Rutgers University professor Jasbir Puar’s The Right to Maim for a course titled “The Healing Humanities: Decolonizing Trauma Studies from the Global South,” which will be taught by Professor Satyel Larson this fall. Right to Maim has been accused by academics of being “pseudo-scholarship” for trafficking in antisemitic blood libels rooted in medieval conspiracies charging that Jews murdered Christian children and drank their blood during Passover.

Puar began making such claims in Feb. 2016, when she said at Vassar College  that “young Palestinian men…were mined for organs for scientific research.” At the same event, she accused Israel of committing “genocide in slow motion.” Later that year, during a panel at Dartmouth College she said Israel uses “maiming as a deliberate biopolitical tactic” to enforce settler-colonialism.

The FBI as Grand Inquisitor The American people need the truth, not political theatre. by John Nantz

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-fbi-as-grand-inquisitor/

The Domain product leaked from the FBI Richmond field office revealed an ugly, subterranean influence lurking within the analyst population. The presuppositions were faulty. The analysis shoddy. And, the footnoted sources were scurrilous at best. It was a left wing treatise masquerading as an analytical product.

Whoever wrote and approved the now infamous document clearly has an axe to grind with what is described as radical-traditionalist Catholic (RTC) ideology. The footnotes describe RTC adherents as individuals who reject “the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) as a valid church council; [have] disdain for most of the popes elected since Vatican II…and [exhibit] frequent adherence to anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ, and white supremacist ideology.”

The footnotes continue, “Radical-traditionalist Catholics compose a small minority of overall Roman Catholic adherents and are separate and distinct from ‘traditional Catholics’ who prefer the Traditional Latin Mass and pre-Vatican II teachings and traditions, but without the more extremist ideological beliefs and violent rhetoric.”

The initial analysis of this document and subsequent reporting has been somewhat inaccurate. It is not accurate to assert that this document is focused on “Traditional Catholics,” but rather focuses on “a small minority” who allegedly espouse radical “extremist ideological beliefs and violent rhetoric.” However, the public’s concern is well founded. This document is a foray into the very sanctum of constitutionally protected religious liberty.

In fact, the often misquoted letter penned by Thomas Jefferson, used by militantly secularist liberals to mischaracterize the “wall of separation between church and state,” addresses this very issue.

Half of Dems Want Biden Gone If Bribery Charges Are True: I&I/TIPP Poll Terry Jones

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/08/21/ii-tipp-poll/

Congressional investigators claim to have strong evidence that President Joe Biden and his family received a staggering $20 million or more in payments from foreign sources while he served as vice president under Barack Obama. If proven true, two-thirds of Americans say that Biden should either resign or be impeached, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll indicates.

The accusation of possible bribery is serious. And a key House investigative panel says it has evidence, mostly bank statements, to back up claims that Biden took money from oligarchs in Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan.

“The tally of foreign money to the Biden family has hit at least $20 million, based on the third round of bank records the House Oversight and Accountability Committee released Wednesday — pointing to millions from oligarchs from Russia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine,” reported the Daily Signal.

In its latest monthly sounding of public opinion, the national online I&I//TIPP Poll of 1,369 voters, taken Aug. 2-4, asked Americans, what should be done if the allegations prove true?

A significant 67% majority responded that Biden should either “resign immediately” (24%) or “be impeached and removed from office” (43%). Those supporting more lenient treatment totaled just 23%, with 15% saying Biden should “be allowed to finish his term in office, but not run again,” and 8% supporting “run again in 2024, regardless of the findings.”

Another 10% responded “not sure.” The poll has a margin of error of +/-2.7 percentage points.

Trump Ducks the GOP Debate He thinks Republicans will nominate him for a third time without a real contest.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-ducks-the-gop-debate-candidate-politics-gop-nominee-race-election-2024-polls-indictment-c838c967?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

Donald Trump’s decision to skip Wednesday’s presidential debate shows that he wants to avoid having to tussle with competitors who might criticize him. The more interesting question is how Republican voters will respond to the former President’s evident presumption that he owns their allegiance.

Instead of debating, Mr. Trump says he will commune somewhere with Tucker Carlson. The former Fox News host will be on hand less as an interviewer than to endorse the former President’s claims that Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is America’s fault and that the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot was merely a case of exuberant supporters getting slightly carried away.

Mr. Trump clearly think he has the nomination all but wrapped up, and judging by the current polls he has reason to think so. But what a message he is sending about the loyalty he thinks GOP voters owe him.

It would mean the Grand Old Party is going to nominate, for the third time, a man who has been indicted four times on 91 felony counts. We don’t mean despite being indicted. We mean because he’s been indicted.

In order to spite the Democrats for their partisan prosecutions, GOP voters would be doing exactly what Democrats and the press corps want them to do. Democrats want Republicans to nominate the man who has shown over the last three national elections that he is the greatest voter turnout machine for the Democratic Party since Franklin Delano Roosevelt.