Displaying posts published in

October 2023

I Went to the Border and This is What I Saw The egregious affront to Americans that must not be ignored. by Jonathan Emord

https://www.frontpagemag.com/i-went-to-the-border-and-this-is-what-i-saw/

The Biden administration’s open border policy has invited the most violent and lawless to flock to America and enter our country with virtually no impediments.  The unvetted come here neither pledging allegiance to the United States nor relinquishing their citizenship and loyalties to foreign powers.  Our government is giving each at taxpayers’ expense cash, a cell phone, health care, legal help, transportation, and lodging.  NGOs operating almost exclusively on federal grants buy the illegal aliens’ bus, train, and plane tickets to wherever they wish to go across the country.  For upwards of eight months, their livelihood is financed by tax dollars.  Our tax dollars are literally paying for the invasion and destruction of own country.  This massive welfare to the world and without limit grows every second of every day indefinitely into the future.

I just came back from an eye-opening CBP tour of the U.S.-Mexico border (San Diego Sector).  CBP agents who formerly policed the border have been reassigned to human processing, leaving our nation largely defenseless.  Just one of the massive 132,000 square foot human processing centers cost taxpayers $32 million to construct (a huge white tent with detention pods inside) and $9 million monthly to operate.  Along the border, CBP drove me to areas of peculiar national security interest, all left unprotected.

In one, CBP showed me where water sometimes flows from Mexico to the United States.  To accommodate the flows, large drainage tunnels have been constructed out of concrete.  CBP welds onto the openings of the tunnels iron grates.  Cartel agents who carry diamond cutters on their belts regularly cut the grates to facilitate illegal entry of drugs and gangs.  As the clip of me at this border intersection reveals, the tunnels into the United States were open at the time of my visit.

In another area, you can see where the Biden administration ordered border wall construction halted.  That area, the Zone 18 border gap, is wide open.  On the Mexican side there are cartel dwellings.  Before my visit, two illegal aliens crossed onto American soil at Zone 18 between the Mexican side and the wall for the American side, an area CBP calls “no man’s land.”  Cartel members tracked the aliens into no man’s land and shot them for failing to pay their full ransom for entry into the U.S.  One died.

Anti-Racists Should Stop Talking Like Racists Wokesters are pushing the same malignant ideas that MLK fought and died to expose. by Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/anti-racists-should-stop-talking-like-racists/

A paradox of the Civil Rights movement is that the driving force behind that great victory––the codification in law, acknowledged by a majority of the nation, that color could not and should not compromise black American’s political equality and unalienable rights––was quickly degraded by the continuation of the pseudo-concept of  “race,” an artifact of racist scientism.

Ever since, our racialist discourse has continued to legitimize and prioritize the idea of  “color” as the most essential dimension of our identities. As a result of this racial essentialism, racism has found a new life in the “woke” ideology of “systemic racism” and “white fragility,” which are predicated on the assumption that all so-called “white” people are indelibly stained with racist animus, even if they don’t know it. This claim is the real “Jim Crow 2.0” Joe Biden talked about in 2022, not the common-sense election reforms he was attacking.

So it is today that the central preposterous and destructive fallacy of racism––that every member of the “inferior” race is in all respects indelibly inferior to every member of the “superior” race––lives on.

This maximalist absolutism was necessary in the old South to protect the justification of slavery as a natural institution reflecting the alleged disparities between black and white. But bans on allowing slaves to learn to read, for example, were a tacit admission that totalizing inferiority was incoherent, since if all people of African descent were inferior, how could they learn to read or be further educated?  And without that “natural” inferiority, on what grounds could slavery be justified?

Next, despite several decades of activist historians claiming to find racism based on appearance as far back as ancient Greece, “race” and “racism” as we know them were a product of the Enlightenment and the scientism it fostered. This is not to say that bigotry and prejudice didn’t exist, and often lead to violence and injustice. But such bigotry was in the main not based on how people looked or the color of their skin.

Indeed, the “father of history,” Herodotus, in his 5th century B.C. work Histories, wrote of Ethiopia that “its men are the tallest, the most handsome, and the longest lived,” and said of swarthy Egypt that “it has more wonders in it than any other country in the world and provides more works that defy description than any other place.”

Rather than physical appearance, Greek bigotry reflected a dislike for how other ethnicities lived, their mores, customs, language, laws and, for the Greeks, whether they were free citizens or unfree subjects. The Athenians’ contempt for the Persians, for example, was based on their subjecting themselves to a Great King, in whose presence they had to prostrate themselves and kiss the ground. Even if a Persian was rich, to the Greeks he was still a slave who groveled before a tyrannical master.

Some Things Are Unimaginable Hearing about barbarism is one thing, but staring straight at its rank, naked expression is another. That is exactly why we cannot look away — we need to be changed. Rebecca Sugar

https://www.nysun.com/article/some-things-are-unimaginable

Some things are unimaginable because they extend beyond the boundaries of what we allow ourselves to imagine. Yet videos streaming out of Israel over the last two days are tragic reminders that nothing is unimaginable. Jews should already know this, but prosperity has a way of muting memory and encouraging us to live in denial.

Brutal reality has now breached our moated American Jewish minds. The temptation is to avert the eyes. But this is the moment to look directly at barbarism and allow it to change us.

It isn’t possible to watch the video of 25-year-old Noa Argamani being abducted on the back of a motorcycle and to escape her voice crying out in your head at 4 a.m. There has been no movie about pain or fear ever made that has approximated the soul-shredding sound this desperate, innocent girl made as evil came to take her away. 

Yaacov Argamani sobbed on Israeli television after learning of his daughter’s fate. As he spoke, his eyes closed tightly as if he were trying to squeeze the horror of it all out of his mind. 

Another video shows a foreign worker lying on a cement floor. His neon yellow T-shirt is soaked in blood. He appears to be dead but then lifts his hand to his temple as if to protect it.

A garden hoe appears in the frame and rests for a moment across the neck of the victim, marking its target. Familiar calls of “Allahu Akbar” are heard as the hoe is raised and then slams down with precision. This is another sound that will never leave us. It is heard several more times as the murderer hacks away repeatedly, attempting not just to kill his victim but to demonstrate his consuming hatred for his existence.

So many vicious, upending scenes of depravity have spread across social media, and each one drags us farther out of our fog. “This is a pogrom,” some caption their posts. “Butchers, Nazis.” Before this, we were calling Americans with red baseball caps Nazis. That is how detached we were.

Iranian Agent in Pentagon Counterterrorism Office Accused of Sabotaging Intel Tabatabai had the opportunity to shape the intelligence to meet her needs by Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/iranian-agent-in-pentagon-counterterrorism-office-accused-of-sabotaging-intel/

Last month I wrote about the revelations involving Ariane Tabatabai, currently the Chief of Staff to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict, who has a security clearance, but who emails show had collaborated with the Iranian regime.

In 2014, a year before Tabatabai began working as a NATO consultant, she joined an initiative by the Iranian Foreign Ministry to mobilize “Iranians who have established affiliations with the leading international think-tanks and academic institutions, mainly in Europe and the US.”

Tabatabai, along with Dina Esfandiary, her co-author on the proposal to have the United States ally with Iran, who is currently a senior Middle East advisor to George Soros’ Crisis Group, allegedly became members of the “core group” of Iran’s influence operation.

Before Tabatabai testified about the Iran Deal in Congress, she allegedly checked in with the head of an Iranian Foreign Ministry think tank. “I am scheduled to go to the Congress to give a talk about the nuclear program. I will bother you in the coming days,” she wrote.

Jennifer Van Laar at Red State reports that sources have said that Tabatabai was sabotaging counterterrorism materials.

Counterterrorism analysts speaking to RedState on condition of anonymity, whose reports would have crossed Tabatabai’s desk, say that for at least the past year their product has been watered down, misquoted, or outright quashed. Tabatabai had the opportunity to shape the intelligence to meet her needs, the analysts say, and they say it’s likely that the overt intel collected during that period went to Iran.

Deeply troubling. Especially as the Biden administration has continued to stand by Tabatabai.

The kids are running the classroom Biden’s White House is hostage to a ferocious cadre of radical children Spencer A. Klavan

https://thespectator.com/topic/kids-running-classroom-democrats-hamas/

he Democratic Party is in a state of rhetorical paralysis. This weekend, as Palestinian terrorists streamed across the Israeli border, the White House maintained hours of thunderous silence. On Saturday, the Biden administration released a few limp paragraphs to the effect that “terrorism is never justified” and “Israel has a right to defend itself and its people.” This, after an uninterrupted outpouring of financial and oratorical support for Ukraine, is weak tea. But as the head of a party that is being overrun in not-so-slow motion by a vigorous young coterie of anti-Israel extremists, what more could Joe Biden say? 

What he should have said — what any decent person, irrespective of his more nuanced views on Middle Eastern politics, should be able at a bare minimum to muster — is that Hamas has exhibited a kind of savagery and cowardice more befitting of beasts than men. Charging into civilian territory, executing women and children at point-blank range, brandishing mutilated bodies like ghoulish trophies to the hooting and bawling of gore-hungry crowds: these twisted acts of barbarism should be unstintingly condemned — and quickly. That ought to be the easy part. 

Amazingly, Democrats now find themselves constrained to tread lightly around the feelings of cold-blooded murderers so as to avoid offending their deranged apologists — many of whom represent the future of the party. Biden — who is already contending with the awkward fact of having recently bestowed a cool $6 billion on the eliminationist Iranian regime, thus making it indirectly into Hamas’s acknowledgments section — can’t even run effective damage control. His loudest supporters are also the ones whose views are most likely to alienate the country at large. His own people can barely get on message. On Saturday, the State Department scrambled to erase not one, but two statements calling for “all sides to refrain from violence and retaliatory attacks.” With bright-eyed young staffers popping off tweets like that, who needs enemies? Disingenuous conciliatory pablum — usually Biden’s stock-in-trade — will now be harder and harder to come by as the genocide stans run roughshod over their senescent babysitter. 

They Kill, While Our Government Tweets and Deletes

https://twitter.com/VDHanson/status/1711526451227619620?ref_

They Kill, While Our Government Tweets and Deletes…. If wild reports are true that the inhuman Hamas will execute dozens of civilian hostages, and if it is further accurate that there are rumored Americans among them—and if Americans then are to be executed by Hamas—aside from a military response, the United States will have to change radically its policies in the Middle East.

In the last 32 months they have been proven utterly disastrous. Hamas has gone full ISIS, and is now in addition reportedly beheading captured Israeli soldiers. Note that the Mahmoud Abbas, “president” for life of the  PNA, and a recipient of U.S. aid, has been cheering on Hamas. So of course have the usual suspects, such as the hard Western Left, the Ivy-League pampered student crowd, the Squad constituencies, the Taliban, Qatar, especially Iran, the parent of the current mass killing, and even Turkey.

Is it the mass mutilations, the rapes, the desecrations of corpses, the beheadings, the murdering of women, the elderly, and children, that so excites them all—as if they were gleefully watching sacrificial victims marched up to the top of an Aztec temple in ancient Tenochtitlán?

Or rather is their frenzy due to unspoken terror that Hamas at last has gone too far in its premodern savagery? There are now no more of its patrons with the power to call off the IDF. And so they may finally get the existential war that Hamas always for decades had bragged about and begged for. And the proper response to all this here in the U.S.? All monies to the West Bank and Gaza should be immediately cut off.

The Iran transfers, if our State Department’s pleas are correct that they are not yet finalized, should be stopped immediately. Sanctions and embargos should be placed on all Iranian exports. The alternative would be to keep subsidizing those who provide the wherewithal for murderers, rapists and precivilizational mutilators.

Where’s Kamala When We Need Her Most? Truth in Inanity

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/10/12/wheres-kamala-when-we-need-her-most/

Not long after Russia invaded Ukraine, Vice President Kamala Harris showcased her keen grasp of international affairs by explaining the war thusly:

“Ukraine is a country in Europe. It exists next to another country called Russia. Russia is a bigger country. Russia is a powerful country. Russia decided to invade a smaller country called Ukraine. So, basically, that’s wrong.”

Despite being true, it was widely mocked for being so incredibly insipid. Kamala wasn’t talking to kindergartners, who probably have a better grasp of world affairs than she, but to listeners of a radio program.

Now, after Hamas invaded Israel and slaughtered hundreds of innocent civilians, including beheading children, Kamala has been silent. The only time we’ve seen her was as she stood stone-faced behind President Joe Biden while he attempted to express outrage that an ally had been brutally attacked.

Kamala has been missing in action for some time. On Sunday, the New York Times magazine even ran a big feature – which obviously had been in the works before the Hamas attack – titled “In Search of Kamala Harris.” The article laments that “After nearly three years, Vice President Kamala Harris is still struggling to make the case for herself – and feels she shouldn’t have to.”

An existential evil: Israel’s battle is a war for civilisation against barbarism Melanie Phillips

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/an-existential-evil?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

At some point, past experience tells us, pressure from public opinion is likely to become intense over the number of civilians who will be said to have been killed in Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. 

In previous wars, Israel has been accused of flouting international law by wilfully killing civilians and committing war crimes. This has been the opposite of the truth. The IDF (Israel Defence Forces) has always gone to greater lengths than any other army in the world to protect enemy civilians as far as possible, and its ratio of civilians to combatants killed has been far lower than any other country has achieved.

This pressure, however, imposed most critically by the US, has repeatedly forced Israel to curtail its military operations against the Gaza terrorist infrastructure.  

In US President Biden’s otherwise emotional and supportive speech yesterday, there was a lightly buried warning to this effect in which he said he had discussed with Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu “how democracies like Israel and the United States are stronger and more secure when we act according to the rule of law”. 

Israel has made clear that it is now taking the gloves off. Whereas in previous wars it aimed to degrade the capability of Hamas, now it intends to destroy it forever so that never again can it perpetrate the mass murder of civilians it achieved in last Saturday’s pogrom — an infernal aim it continues to prosecute through its rocket and other attacks. 

HONORABLE MENTION-L. Brent Bozell III President & Founder Media Research Center

Dear MRC Supporter,

As a rule, I don’t make appeals for anything outside of the Media Research Center universe simply because that must always be my priority, and our little enterprise must always be fed.

But there are exceptions when there are emergencies. And this is an emergency.

You are well aware of the atrocities being committed by Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists against the Israeli people. These are not just Jews being targeted but Christians and even Muslims if they don’t abide by the terrorists’ extremist religion. 

But with the Jews, it’s different. Their stated goal is to eradicate the entire Jewish state. Their stated goal is exactly what Adolf Hitler wanted. 

He did it with gas chambers. They are doing it by butchering men, women and children with indiscriminate bombing, shooting, raping and slitting throats. The terrorists are even using their own women and children as shields. 

Think about this for a moment. Imagine you are a father, or a mother, and return to a kibbutz to find that your little baby has been beheaded by these monsters.

That is exactly what these monsters did to 40 little babies.

Israel is fighting for its very existence – and the fight is about to become far, far worse as the ground war begins. And if they’re attacked by Hezbollah from the north, with Iran pouring in weaponry, they will be virtually surrounded.

What can we do to help? Our government can and is supporting the Israeli cause, and that is good. But we as Americans need to do our part individually as well.

This is a humanitarian crisis. Hundreds of thousands of Jews are being displaced. They need everything – food, clothing, transportation, medical help. Their soldiers fighting, wounded, dying – they need emergency medical treatment. 

I think we are all morally bound to help Israel in her existential moment of need.

How can we help? Over the past two days, I have done some extensive research, talking to top Jewish friends (you know one or two of them!) and asking for their recommendations for those organizations most in need with the best reputations.

These are their recommendations. All funds raised will go directly to them.

Friends of the IDF provide support to soldiers in the Israeli military. Click on this link, and it will take you to the site.

Lev Echad recruits emergency volunteers and provides them with critical funding. Click on this link, and it will take you to the site.

Natal is the Israel Trauma and Resiliency Center, providing treatment and support to victims of war trauma. Click on this link, and it will take you to the site. 

How much should you donate? Listen to your heart. Think about these poor, poor people who want nothing more than to survive. Then, follow your heart.

If you could give $25, $50, $100, $1,000 or more, please do so. My wife and I are sending $1,000. I only wish it could be more. 

God bless the people of Israel. God bless America. 

God bless you.

An American mom, 67, spent her life advocating for Palestinian rights. Now she’s a Hamas hostage.

https://www.aol.com/american-mom-67-spent-her-081059283.html

HEFAYIM KIBBUTZ, Israel − They exchanged text messages and emojis. Brief status updates with words of encouragement. A picture of the beloved family dog, Tutsi.

Until no more messages came.

And then, Cindy Flash, an American, and her Israeli husband, Igal, vanished into the violence, presumed kidnapped by Hamas.

Four days after Hamas attacked Israel, more than 100 Israelis and possibly dozens of foreign nationals are thought to be held captive in the Gaza Strip. At least 14 U.S. citizens have been killed and an unknown number are still unaccounted for.

Flash, 67, originally from St. Paul, Minnesota, is one of them. She lives in Kfar Aza, a kibbutz in southern Israel near Gaza, where some of the most harrowing and grisly stories have been emerging over the past few days.

“They are breaking down the safe room door,” Flash said in one of her final messages to her daughter Keren, 34. “We need someone to come by the house right now.” Keren had been communicating with her parents from a few houses away.