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October 2023

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Hate Trump All You Like, The Gag Order Is Still Wrong If you’re cheering on a judge inhibiting political speech, you’re no friend of the ‘democracy’ or the Constitution.David Harsanyi

By on October 18th, 2023

https://thefederalist.com/2023/10/17/hate-trump-all-you-like-the-gag-order-is-still-wrong/

This week, U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan overseeing United States v. Donald Trump issued a gag order prohibiting a leading presidential candidate, Donald Trump, from engaging in speech aimed at “government staff,” among others, during his trial.

Listen, I understand the disdain some conservatives feel for the former president. I share the sentiment. But if you’re cheering on a judge who’s inhibiting political speech on rickety grounds, you’re no friend of the “democracy” or the Constitution.

“Mr. Trump may still vigorously seek public support as a presidential candidate, debate policies and people related to that candidacy, criticize the current administration and assert his belief that this prosecution is politically motivated,” Chutkan explained. “But those critical [F]irst [A]mendment freedoms do not allow him to launch a pre-trial smear campaign against participating government staff, their families and foreseeable witnesses.”

Who is Chutkan to dictate the contours of a presidential candidate’s political speech? What if one of the “participating government staff” or a family member is compromised by partisanship? Moreover, preemptively suggesting that without gagging, Trump will engage in a “smear campaign” is as prejudicial to the case as any of the inflammatory things Trump has thrown around. It implies that any accusation now aimed at prosecutors is untrue.

Trump contends that he is being railroaded by special counsel Jack Smith, the longtime federal prosecutor who works on behalf of Democrats and Joe Biden. You might believe the special counsel is a chaste defender of Lady Justice, but there’s ample evidence that partisan considerations are in play. Fears of a politicized justice department are real. As we speak, the head of the Democratic Party is being mollycoddled by the state in a very similar case involving classified documents.

Whatever the case, the Justice Department now plays a big part in Trump’s campaign for the presidency — and probably his legal case, as well. If the state’s accusations can be spread throughout the media before a trial, why can’t the defendant speak openly, as well?

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

America’s Hamas double failure Don’t expect the Biden administration to acknowledge its errors, any more than it did after the catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan Charles Lipson

By on October 18th, 2023

https://thespectator.com/topic/america-hamas-double-failure-israel-iran-biden/

Did American failures contribute to Hamas’s war of terror — its unprovoked attack, its total surprise, its horrific butchering of innocent civilians simply because they are Jews?

Yes, but a lesser one. The failures to discover the plans, deter the attack and, having failed at deterrence, to defeat it promptly are Israel’s. The secondary actor here is Iran, not the United States. It was the Islamic regime in Tehran that supplied its terror partner with funds, plans, intelligence and weapons.

Still, the US played a role — a combination of bumbling incompetence and fundamental policy errors that contributed to the onset of the conflict and to Hamas’s success.

Israel’s elaborate network of signals intelligence and human sources failed to uncover a massive plan of attack that involved thousands of terrorists and was months in the making. How could they have missed it? That’s a question its leaders must answer after the war is over. They must also ask why their deployment of military resources near Gaza was insufficient to deter the attack and, failing that, inadequate to protect civilian lives across southern Israel or defeat the rampaging invaders.

But America’s agencies failed, too. They were never expected to unmask internal operations in Gaza, but the CIA and other US intelligence agencies should have discovered what Iran was up to. After all, that regime ranks as one of America’s four enemy states, along with China, Russia and North Korea. Those should be a primary focus of US intelligence efforts — and this was Iran’s biggest foreign policy adventure in years.

Will anyone in the US government be held responsible? You’re kidding. This is The Government. No one is ever held responsible for failures, no matter how grotesque. If the first rule of Fight Club is, “we don’t talk about Fight Club,” the first rule of the Inside the Beltway Club is, “we don’t talk about our mistakes. We protect each other.”

Bad as the intelligence failures were, they were not Washington’s most important blunders. That shameful trophy goes to the Biden administration’s wrongheaded policy in Middle East. Its policy can be summarized in a single word: “appeasement.” The Obama administration pursued the same policy — and many of the same people are in charge now.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

The High Price of Historical Illiteracy – Knowledge of how we won our rights is a crucial part of keeping them. David Catron

By on October 18th, 2023

https://spectator.org/rights-high-price-of-historical-illiteracy/

Thomas Jefferson, in an 1816 letter to a member of the Virginia General Assembly, made this observation: “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” He wrote this passage to highlight the need for a system of primary schools in the Old Dominion. Eventually, the Commonwealth did establish a public school system, though Jefferson didn’t live to see it. That is just as well, perhaps. He would certainly be horrified by the ignorance of the people who attend and receive diplomas from our public schools.
 
During recent years, numerous studies have found that most Americans don’t know enough about the nation’s history and Constitution to pass the U.S. Citizenship Test. A particularly thorough 50-state survey of 41,000 Americans was published by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation in 2019. Nationally, only 4 in 10 passed. In only one state, Vermont, was a majority (53 percent) able to earn a passing grade for U.S. history. This dismal state of affairs was clearly exacerbated by the ill-conceived school shutdowns that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, as the low 2023 ACT test scores demonstrate.
 

But the problem predates the pandemic, which arrived on our shores a year after the foundation’s survey was conducted. The real explanation can be derived by breaking out the scores by age group: In the 65+ group, 76 percent passed. Only 51 percent of the 45 to 64 group passed. In the under 45 group, a mere 27 percent passed. This suggests that history instruction has been neglected in public schools for decades. As Timothy S. Goeglein explains in his book, Toward a More Perfect Union: The Moral and Cultural Case for Teaching the Great American Story, this neglect of history in public schools comes at a high price:

When there is no historical context to draw upon, no shared history, and no understanding of how government works, it becomes seed to sow division and discord in hearts and minds. When people are not equipped to refute an argument and lack the critical thinking skills to see beyond the rhetoric, they tend to accept it at face value. They become easy prey for demagogues — from the Left and the Right alike. They become tools to be exploited for a certain agenda.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

An Iran Proxy, Islamic Jihad, Turns Out To Be the Culprit That Rocketed a Christian Hospital in Gaza City, Israel Defense Forces Conclude ‘Those who murder our children also murder their children,’ Netanyahu says after the official conclusion is reached. Benny Avni

By on October 18th, 2023

https://www.nysun.com/article/an-iran-proxy-islamic-jihad-turns-out-to-be-the-culprit-that-rocketed-a-christian-hospital-in-gaza-city-israel-defense-forces-conclude

In an indication that Hamas is winning the propaganda war a mere 12 days after committing the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, Arab and Western leaders — and the New York Times — have quickly adopt the terrorists’ version of events that accuses Israel of killing hundreds of innocents in an air attack on a Gaza hospital. 

Hamas issued a statement Tuesday evening, declaring that some 500 people were killed and hundreds injured in an Israeli air attack on Al Ahali al Arabi, a hospital at Gaza City. Prime Minister Netanyahu then countered that Islamic Jihad rockets shot toward Israel were the culprit. 

Even before the Israeli version came out, the Hamas version was almost universally adopted as gospel. The Palestinian Authority’s president, Mahmoud Abbas, immediately left Amman, Jordan, where he was scheduled to participate in a summit with President Biden Wednesday, and declared a three-day period of mourning across the Palestinian territories.

Jordan then unilaterally announced that it will cancel the planned summit, which was designed to discuss humanitarian aid to Gaza civilians, Israel’s Channel 12 television is reporting. The Israeli embassy at Amman was besieged by hostile protesters. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and several other Arab countries immediately issued condemnations. American press outlets joined in. 

The Times led its website with the headline, “Israeli Strikes Hits Gaza Hospital, Killing 500, Palestinian Health Ministry says.” Like all other Gaza authorities, the health ministry is controlled by Hamas. 

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Woke Hits the Wall. Part Four Victor Davis Hanson

By on October 18th, 2023

https://victorhanson.com/woke-hits-the-wall-part-four/

Another tenet of woke was a veritable war on gas and oil. Note the same serial ironic theme: if Biden inherited a calm border, he had the luxury or rather the margin of error to demagogue it, destroy it, and not be swamped by illegals—for a while.

It was also easy to call for defunding the police and the BLM agenda, as long as such megaphones were safe—and they were until the full effect of their nihilism eventually rooted them out.

And so too it was easy to war on fossil fuels when Trump’s full-production agenda had given an incoming Biden seemingly limitless gasoline and natural gas at cheap prices, with a full strategic petroleum reserve.

But as in the case of illegal immigration and crime, Biden’s rhetoric of banning fossil fuels finally caught up with him. Grinding down the fracking industry, canceling and restricting federal energy leases, stopping pipelines, and freezing vast oilfields finally gave Biden what he wanted and most feared: record-high gas prices and an irate public that blamed him for its misery.

The iconic, jump-the-shark moment of his failed fossil fuels campaign was when Biden began draining the strategic petroleum reserve right before the 2022 midterms.

Biden’s woke subtext went something like this: “Because we curtailed production of our own horrific fossil fuels, we want to get our hands on more of the awful stuff by either draining what the evil Trump had stockpiled for us, or begging the illiberal Saudis, Venezuelans, and Iranians to produce the icky goo that we will not.”

What, then, is Biden’s energy policy? It is to virtue signal greenness and to damn the Saudis, the oil companies, and the MAGA Winnebago and snow-mobile crowd for two-year intervals.

And then before a national or midterm election, it is to turn on the oil spigots in order to get gasoline prices down before the mail-in-voting begins, by begging the now good Saudis and the noble Venezuelans and our partners the Iranians, draining the last drop out of the strategic petroleum reserve, and symbolically opening a new federal oil tract for leasing that likely has little oil beneath it.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Iran’s Direct Help to Hamas’s October 7 War on Israel The West Must Stand United Against Both Hamas and Iran by Con Coughlin

By on October 17th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20064/iran-helped-hamas-attack

The precise details of Iran’s direct role in authorising the attacks are gradually coming to light, with officials involved in the investigation insisting that both Iran and Hezbollah, the extremist militia it controls in southern Lebanon, were involved in the planning of the Hamas terrorist operation.

This is hardly surprising given the estimated $100 million a year Tehran gives Hamas to help develop its terrorist infrastructure, part of the £13.1 billion Iran has spent on developing its terrorist network throughout the Middle East during the past decade, from supporting Houthi rebels in Yemen to Shia militias in Iraq.

The true extent of Iran’s military support for Hamas was recently laid bare by the movement’s leader, Ismail Haniyeh, when he revealed that funds received from Tehran had helped to fund the development of missile and defence systems designed and built in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

The significance of Iran’s involvement with Hamas’s terrorist activity was also evident at the weekend when Haniyeh met with Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amirabdollahian, in the Gulf state of Qatar, a country that also has a long history of funding Hamas.

The significance of Iran’s involvement with Hamas’s terrorist activity was also evident at the weekend when Haniyeh met with Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amirabdollahian, in the Gulf state of Qatar, a country that also has a long history of funding Hamas.

Israeli warplanes have also been in action bombing airports in Syria which are used by Iran to transfer weapons and supplies to the network of military bases it has constructed in southern Syria.

The extent of Iran’s meddling in the current crisis in the Middle East should certainly serve as a wake up call to the US and its European allies about the danger the Iranian regime poses not just to the region, but the wider world.

With the Saudi negotiations now on hold, the US and its allies should accept the folly of trying to maintain a diplomatic dialogue with Tehran in the hope that the Iranian regime may be persuaded to sign up to a new nuclear deal.

As Iran’s open support for Hamas has demonstrated, the ayatollahs have no interest in reaching a peaceful accommodation with the West. They are only concerned with supporting groups that carry out unimaginable acts of violence against innocent civilians, and should be treated with the pariah status that they fully deserve.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel’s war on Hamas – Western defense against Islamic terrorism Yoram Ettinger

By on October 17th, 2023

https://bit.ly/3Qk6Cd6

Hamas’ anti-Western strategy

*Hamas was established in 1988, as a spin-off of the Muslim Brotherhood, as were ISIS, Al Qaeda, the Islamic Jihad, Boko Haram and scores of additional terror entities. The Muslim Brotherhood is the largest Sunni terror organization, haunting all pro-US Arab regimes, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Thailand, Africa, Europe and the USA. Its strategic goal is to topple all national Muslim regimes, bring the Western “infidel” to submission, and establish a universal Muslim society.  

*Hamas, just like the Muslim Brotherhood, considers Israel as “an infidel” entity in “the abode of Islam,” a US beachhead in the Middle East and a deterring ally of all pro-US Arab regimes.

*The 1988 Hamas charter highlights the Quran as its constitution, Jihad as its path, and martyrdom as its loftiest tactic.  It urges the “believers” to kill Jews, as specified in Article 7 of the charter, quoting one of the Prophet Muhammad’s Hadiths (verbal teachings): “When the Jew will hide behind stones and trees, the stones and trees will say: O Muslims, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him….”

*Hamas is assisted, militarily and financially, by Iran’s Ayatollahs (as well as by Qatar and Turkey), who – just like the Muslim Brotherhood – perceive the war against the “illegitimate” Jewish State as a preview of their war on “the apostate” pro-US Arab regimes and “the infidel” West, with a focus on “the Great American Satan.”

*Hamas and other Islamic and Palestinian terrorist organizations have collaborated with enemies and rivals of the US and the West, such as Nazi Germany, the Soviet Bloc, Iran’s Ayatollahs, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba and terror organizations in Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Why won’t the Jews just let themselves be killed? Nothing better captures the moral decay of our woke elites than their haughty disdain for the State of Israel. Brendan O’Neill

By on October 17th, 2023

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/10/16/why-wont-the-jews-just-let-themselves-be-killed/

So let me get this right. If Israel bombs Hamas targets in Gaza, it is recklessly endangering civilian life. But if it gives civilians fair warning to move away from certain areas, it is engaging in ethnic cleansing. If it drops bombs in built-up suburbs, it is committing a war crime. But if it advises civilians to leave those built-up suburbs before the bombs come, it is also committing a war crime. If it attacks northern Gaza, that’s genocide. Yet when it tells the civilians of northern Gaza to leave first, that’s ‘forced transfer’, which is to say: genocide.

Everything Israel does is a war crime. Everything. Killing civilians – war crime. Trying not to kill civilians – war crime. Bombing populated areas – war crime. Giving a population time to leave before dropping bombs – war crime. The surrealism of these screams of ‘genocide!’ every time an Israeli soldier so much as picks up his gun was brought home by two headlines in the Independent last week, published just 10 hours apart. Israel is engaged in ‘collective punishment in Gaza’, claimed the first. ‘Israel accused of “trying to ethnically cleanse Gaza Strip” as one million ordered to evacuate’, said the second.

Got that, Israel? ‘Punish’ Palestinians and you’re a criminal. Do everything in your power to avoid ‘punishing’ Palestinians and you’re still a criminal. I’m starting to wish the Israel-haters would just say what they mean with their entire chest: ‘Let yourselves be killed, Jews. Don’t fight back. Don’t do anything at all.’

The twists in the public discussion of Israel’s military response to Hamas’s recent act of unspeakable barbarism have been extraordinary. It was predictable, given the Israelophobic myopia of the West’s cultural elites, that Israel would be damned the minute it took action against the neo-fascists who had just executed the worst act of anti-Semitic savagery since the Holocaust. All the usual accusations were made. Israel’s missile strikes add up to ‘collective punishment’. Israel is using ‘genocidal language’. It is committing ‘war crimes’. It is ‘breaking international law’. Etc etc. One is forced to wonder what kind of messed-up law prevents the victims of racist slaughter from pursuing their killers.

This time, what’s been most striking is that even Israel’s efforts not to hit civilians, not to ‘collectively punish’ Gazans, have been rebranded as war crimes. Consider its advice that the people of northern Gaza should evacuate their homes so that they won’t be injured or killed in bombings. This is being called ‘ethnic cleansing’. One Palestinian politician says it is further proof that Israel is waging a war of ‘annihilation’. This is linguistic contortionism of an Orwellian degree: in trying to avoid annihilating the people of northern Gaza, Israel is being annihilationist. War is peace, freedom is slavery, evacuation is annihilation. Ash Sarkar says the evacuation is a ‘Second Nakba’. Norway’s Refugee Council damns it as ‘forced transfer’, which – you guessed it – is a war crime. It must be. Israel’s doing it.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Another Trump Derangement Syndrome 2024 Election Interference Update By Stephen Kruiser

By on October 17th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/columns/stephen-kruiser/2023/10/17/the-morning-briefing-another-trump-derangement-syndrome-2024-election-interference-update-n1735418

There is plenty of division to be found anywhere right of center on the American political spectrum. Republicans spend more time fighting other Republicans these days than they do going after Democrats. I don’t worry too much about that because I figure it’s better for everyone to get it out of their systems now rather than fight over dinner on election night next year.

One thing that a lot of people in this fractured coalition can agree on is that the Democrats are using corrupt, politically motivated prosecutors and judges to preemptively interfere with the 2024 presidential election. Even Republicans who are no longer fans of former President Donald Trump find themselves saying, “You’ve GOT to be kidding me!” every time a rogue prosecutor or judge absolutely mangles the law in an effort to keep him off of the ballot.

They’re interfering with the 2024 election because they say Trump tried to interfere with the 2020 election.

Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?

We’re usually talking about unhinged prosecutors when we’re covering stories like this. Today we are dealing with a judge who has publicly been in the throes of Trump Derangement Syndrome for a while now. Victoria covered this latest legal circus:

The hearing in Judge Tanya S. Chutkan’s D.C. U.S. District Courtroom over whether to at least partially gag Donald Trump was at times contentious and at other times surreal and Kafkaesque. Chutkan ruled that Trump could not post or repost “attacks against Special Counsel, staff, court staff or personnel” as well as prohibited statements about witnesses or expert witnesses.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Our Post-Hamas Wreckage Middle East policy is in ruins By Victor Davis Hanson

By on October 17th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/10/16/our-post-hamas-wreckage/

As Hamas goes, so with it go many of the following related Western pretensions.

The Passions of 9/11, Redux

It has been 22 years since we saw crowds throughout the Middle East celebrating the murder of 3,000 civilians—and since newspapers had daily “idiot watch” notices of American intellectuals defending radical Islamist mass murderers. And now the madness is back again, and we are witnessing the recrudescence of normalizing radical Islamic terrorists abroad.

I suppose the theory is that no one in America cares much about radical Islamists foaming at the mouth, whether abroad or here. And the result is that they are empowered and their defense of murder is growing—yet its hubris will earn an almost-certain response, an anger slowly but insidiously growing at radical Islam.

A Middle East Policy in Ruins 

The current Biden appeasement of Iran and gift of billions of dollars in aggregate to the West Bank and Gaza are now, by bipartisan consensus, unsustainable. The only supporters of that lethal madness left are the embarrassments of BLM, the Squad, the Democratic Socialists of America, and the campus crowd.

Their collective hatred of Jews and Israelis was manifested in their delight over the post mortem mutilations of murdered women and children. And why—even before Israel had responded with air attacks—were leftists and Islamists suddenly celebrating the news of the executions of more than 1,200 Jews? It was instinctual, a Pavlovian response.

Even some leftist Democrats were shocked by their own constituents, whom they had created. Biden still might cling to his past destructive Middle East policies (and I expect him to restrict the Israelis within days after they begin to go in full force into Gaza), but the idea of continuing aid to the West Bank and Gaza or of “normalizing” relations with theocratic Iran will now be rightly seen as a suicidal delusion.

Ukraine and Gaza

Most Americans support arms for Ukraine to repel Russian aggressors.

But something is becoming strange about these two respective wars.

Why did the State Department more or less put no restrictions on Ukrainian retaliation, including operations against the Russian Black Sea Fleet—but the Secretary of State almost immediately called for a “ceasefire” to prevent Israeli retaliation, a mortal sin if he had dared say that about Ukraine’s similar response to aggression? Would an American diplomat lecture Ukraine about ending the “cycle of violence?”

Why does the U.S. discount any possibility of a strategic response from Russia—which reportedly has some 6,000-7,000 nuclear weapons—to attacks on its homeland, but seems almost terrified about calling Iran to account for its central role in arming and funding terrorists to start a war with Israel by slaughtering 1,200 civilians?

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