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September 2023

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By Karen Elliott House: Netanyahu and MBS Make a Play for Mideast Peace Diplomatic ties are in the interests of Israel, Saudi Arabia and the U.S., but security threats could impede their efforts.

By on September 15th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bibi-and-mbs-make-a-play-for-mideast-peace-pipeline-g20-biden-d9f8e99d?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Political normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel is an idea whose time has come. At least that’s the increasingly optimistic view of Saudi and Israeli officials working to make it happen with the Biden administration’s support. But how realistic is it?

There’s little doubt Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, 38, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, 73, want to reach a deal. They’ve met at least twice in secret since November 2020, and both have serious reasons for doing so.

Mr. Netanyahu seeks to secure the survival of the Jewish state. Diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia—the wealthiest, most dynamic Arab nation—would be as significant for Israel as its 1979 peace with Egypt, which ended the threat of an Arab-Israeli war. Such recognition would encourage much of the Islamic world to engage with Israel and establish a new home for Saudi investment. A deal would also deepen already substantial Israeli-Saudi intelligence and military cooperation.

Crown Prince Mohammed knows he can’t create a modern high-tech economy without close links to Israeli technology and business. MBS envisions himself as the leader of a strong, economically integrated Mideast that serves as a bridge between Asia and Europe. Diplomatic relations with Israel would aid those goals, allowing the kingdom to lure much-needed Western investment and expertise and cementing MBS as the head of the second tier of world leaders.

For his part, Mr. Biden wants a splashy signing ceremony at the White House that would give him the ability to boast of historic success in the region. The president who once labeled Saudi Arabia a pariah now seems eager to make it a pillar of U.S. strategy in the Gulf.

Yet simply because three powerful men want the deal to happen doesn’t mean it will. There are many moving parts, including what the Israelis will offer the Palestinians. Do concessions exist that would satisfy the crown prince without irreparably dividing Mr. Netanyahu’s governing coalition? Will Congress accede to Saudi Arabia’s security demands? Will Iran stay on the sidelines or send its proxies to ruin efforts at peace?

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

THE ERA OF BIG GOVERNMENT IS NOT OVER: SYDNEY WILLIAMS

By on September 15th, 2023

http://www.swtotd.blogsot.com

“I say again, the era of big government is over.”  President William J. Clinton   January 23, 1996

                                                                                                                             

  “For he on honey-dew hath fed/ And drunk the milk of Paradise;” so ends Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “Kubla Khan.” Xanadu, an extravaganza, was located in Mongolia, north of Beijing. Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan, was Emperor of China. Xanadu became his first capital, later his summer palace. Khan was the founder of the Yuan Dynasty and ruled China for thirty-four years (1260-1294).

We in the United States have not been so grandiose…yet. However, in Washington there is a sanctimonious belief that all problems can be solved by government, that its bounty has no limits. In the September 12, 2023 issue of The Telegraph (London), Ambrose Evans-Pritchard and Jeremy Warner wrote: “The fiscal scale of Bidenomics is larger than Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s by a wide margin. It is larger than Johnson’s guns and butter in the 1960s, or Reagan’s military rearmament in the 1980s. We are witnessing an extraordinary experiment in U.S. economic policy.” The New Deal was a response to a global depression. Johnson’s Guns and Butter was to fund the Vietnam War and his “Great Society.” Reagan’s rearmament won the Cold War. Bidenomics was to mend the nation’s infrastructure, combat a pandemic that was already being addressed, and to fight inflation, a result of easy money, business closures during the pandemic, and rises in energy prices caused by Mr. Biden’s curtailment of exploration and production.

Expanding tentacles of our enlarged administrative state raise questions: How much larger can the federal government grow? White House employment alone, at 524 people, has grown by 27% in the past three years. Is it possible to shrink entitlements, the fastest growing segment of spending? What will be the effect of rising interest rates, which in two or three years will cost a trillion dollars a year? Interest costs are already roughly equal to defense spending. Will defense suffer in an increasingly dangerous world? (At 3.5% of GDP, defense spending is about half of what it was in 1982.)

The numbers are sobering. U.S. GDP is estimated to be $27 trillion in 2023. Total federal debt for this year is estimated to be $32 trillion, or 118.5% of GDP. In addition, state and local debt were $2.1 trillion in 2022. To put those number is in perspective, the ratio of federal debt to GDP at the end of World War II was 117.5 percent. That ratio declined for several years, troughing in 1981 at 32.5%. Fitch Ratings recently lowered their rating on U.S debt from AAA to AA+, saying that “the ratio of debt interest to tax revenue will reach 10% by 2025, the level where it starts to create a snowball effect.”

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

The corrupt Palestinian Authority must not be a part of any Saudi-Israel deal: Mike Pompeo and Sander Gerber

By on September 15th, 2023

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4192784-the-corrupt-palestinian-authority-must-not-be-a-part-of-any-saudi-israel-deal/

American officials are visiting Saudi Arabia to discuss Palestinian demands regarding a potential deal for the kingdom to normalize relations with Israel. The deal could include Riyadh’s reported proposal to resume its financial payments to the Palestinian Authority (PA) if it constrains militants. While Saudi Arabia desires any normalization deal to benefit the Palestinian people, it is financially and morally irresponsible to distribute funds through the corrupt, terrorist-funding PA.

Instead of funneling aid through the PA as part of any normalization agreement, the creation of a new nongovernmental organization would enable the Saudis to support fellow Muslims, develop a responsible organization to tangibly improve Palestinian lives, foster a civil society more amenable to Arab-Israeli normalization outside of the PA’s repression and create a much-needed alternative to the PA’s endemic misgovernance.

Building on the groundbreaking Abraham Accords that one of us helped negotiate during the Trump administration, Saudi normalization with Israel would demonstrate to the world that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is a historic figure focused on transforming his society and advancing global peace, as well as provide him an opportunity to chart a better course for Palestinians. Any deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel would mark a massive advancement of the Abraham Accords, creating the political cover for additional Muslim leaders to formalize relations with Israel.

A notable holdout to the goodwill of Saudi-Israel peace could be Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who was elected to a four-year term in 2005 yet still remains in office. Abbas has repeatedly refused or stalled U.S. and Israeli diplomatic proposals.

Yet providing funds to the Palestinian Authority, an organization that continues to reward Palestinian terrorism, would undercut the peaceful message and implications of normalization. Having recognized that the PA’s payments to the families of terrorists encourages violence, Congress passed the Taylor Force Act in 2018, which cuts U.S. funding to the PA until its stops this “pay for slay” program. Since money is fungible, any foreign aid to the PA would effectively incentivize further terror against Israelis. Riyadh should not provide funds to the PA that would exempt the PA from ending its “pay for slay.”

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

China Taking Over While Europe Sleeps by Robert Williams

By on September 15th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19960/china-taking-over-europe

Europe is in “complete denial” as China proceeds to spread its influence on the continent. At least that is the urgent, unequivocal view of Ivana Karásková, a Czech foreign influence specialist and a special adviser to European Commission Vice President Věra Jourová.

“Asked what parts of the Continent were most in the dark about Chinese influence, she added: ‘The whole of Western Europe is not looking. And yet there are cases that are so blatant.'”

In July 2023, the UK’s Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament released a comprehensive report on China’s threat to the country, and how the Communist power seeks both political and economic influence.

The Committee found that China had “successfully penetrate[d] every sector of the UK’s economy,” and that “the Government has been so keen to take Chinese money that it has not been watching China’s sleight of hand.”

“China sees almost all of its global activity in the context of what it sees as the struggle between the United States and China, and therefore it sees the United Kingdom fundamentally through that optic. China aspires to split off from the United States countries which it thinks might be detachable, and they sometimes have a sunnily optimistic view about which countries might be susceptible to that treatment. I would say that that was their single biggest issue with the United Kingdom.” — Sir Julian Lewis, Chairman of the UK’s Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament, July 13,2023.

China’s influence in the UK… reaches deep into the government, as well. Despite all of the above “the Government does not want there to be any meaningful scrutiny of sensitive investment deals” with China according to the report.

Meanwhile, the UK Foreign Office reportedly told UK government officials not to use the term “hostile state” about China in order not to offend the Communist country. The term, the Foreign Office said, should not be used in documents and internal messages via email and WhatsApp between advisers, civil servants and ministers.

“[T]he PRC’s influence is significantly higher in Germany than comparable European countries.” — The China Index 2022, an independent organization that tracks Chinese influence worldwide.

“A key concern is the high level of uncritical research cooperation between Germany and China, including in sensitive technological and military areas, which is one of the highest and among the most ‘captured’ globally… Huawei, BGI, ZTE, Hisilicon (Huawei-owned) and other Chinese companies collaborate with and fund projects at German universities and research institutions. Huawei alone has entered into at least 120 cooperation projects over the last 15 years, with annual budgets between 25,000-290,000 euros per project. The real number is unclear, as German universities sometimes cite their ‘academic freedom’ to refuse to answer freedom of information questions….” — The China Index 2022.

There are “90 Chinese groups in Germany with direct ties to the United Front bureaucracy in China…. Add on about 80 Chinese Student and Scholar Associations, more than 20 Confucius Institutes and classrooms, a dozen united front-aligned, Chinese-language media…an as yet unknown number of “Chinese Aid Centers”… and the phenomenon is both large and complex. There are hundreds of groups working in Germany to maintain the CCP’s ideology, values, language and goals…. from the grassroots to the elite. Europe-wide, these groups are embedded throughout civil society…and likely number over a thousand, since they are present… in every country.” — Didi Kirsten Tatlow, China expert, synopsis.cz, February 10, 2019.

“The decision to join the Silk Road [Belt and Road Initiative] was an improvised and atrocious act,” Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto said recently.

“The Chinese Communist Party has always forged links with politicians from countries whose positions…they wished to influence.” — Paul Charon and Jean-Baptiste Jeangène Vilmer, “Chinese Influence Operations: A Machiavellian Moment,” October 2021.

“The CCP also seems very active within the Italian political class, targeting the M5S [Five Star Movement] in particular.” — Paul Charon and Jean-Baptiste Jeangène Vilmer, “Chinese Influence Operations: A Machiavellian Moment,” October 2021.

“In France, as much as anywhere else, the Party has forged strong relationships with individuals enabling China to infiltrate the political sphere, defend its interests and silence critical voices…. Beyond individuals punctually and diversely recruited by the Party, the construction of a Chinese network within the French elite runs through the France-China Foundation since 2013.” — Paul Charon and Jean-Baptiste Jeangène Vilmer, “Chinese Influence Operations: A Machiavellian Moment,” October 2021.

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