Displaying posts published in

January 2024

Lebanon Hosts Terrorists, Points Massive Arsenal at Israel, Then Complains When Israel Defends Itself by Bassam Tawil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20295/lebanon-hosts-terrorists

Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah revealed in a speech that his terror militia had conducted around 670 armed attacks against Israel since October 8.

Instead of blaming Hamas and Hezbollah for dragging Lebanon into another war, the Lebanese government is rushing to accuse Israel of killing a Hamas fugitive and violating Lebanese airspace to attack Syria.

Instead of criticizing Israel for defending its citizens against the Hezbollah and Hamas attacks, the Lebanese government should enforce Security Council Resolution 1701, according to which Hezbollah was supposed to withdraw all its terrorists north of the Litani River in southern Lebanon.

Lebanon has been in flagrant violation of Resolution 1701 since 2006, of course with no consequences. Similarly, the UN has never enforced its own Article 2(4) under which member states are not permitted to threaten each other. The UN, it would seem, is actually an instigator and conservator of war.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken should be addressing Lebanon, the Palestinian Authority and the United Nations about their accountability, concessions and compromises; not Israel.

It is high time for the UN and all its agencies, including the Security Council, to toss out anti-Israel complaints, including the latest one from Lebanon. Failing to do so will just once again expose the double standards — really, no standards — of the UN and once again throw the Middle East and the US into further violence and bloodshed.

In the past few decades, Lebanon has allowed the Hezbollah terror militia and several Palestinian terror groups, including Hamas, to use its territory to plan and launch attacks against Israel. Hezbollah, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad – the three major officially-designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations operating in Lebanon – are all armed and funded by Iran.

The Supreme Court’s Historic Challenge: Saving American Democracy by Lawrence Kadish

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20294/supreme-court-saving-democracy

Historians have an enormous advantage over the rest of us: they have the unique luxury of looking back through time and, with the power of hindsight, pinpointing the exact moment a new era began. Yet there are events that are so momentous, so crucial, and so obvious, that sometimes even those living in the moment can recognize their historic significance.

We are living through that moment.

Over the last several days, the turmoil surrounding the question of whether bureaucrats can unilaterally remove Donald Trump’s name from a presidential campaign ballot has only intensified. Colorado and Maine have already taken this action and other states are mulling the same.

As observed in a previous essay by this author, these actions attack the very fabric of our representative form of government. The idea that without so much as due process unelected persons in an individual state can remove a potential presidential candidate is the stuff of nightmares for a democracy.

Even leading Democrats have voiced opposition to this latest con by “ballot bandits.”

What this means, however, is that the future of our nation is now to the be in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court.

To their credit, they have recognized this threat and their need to consider the arguments as a matter of urgency for, make no mistake, this is an existential threat to our nation.

How Does a Navy Sailor Spying for China Come Away With Only 2 Years in Prison? Zhao transmitted the specific location and timing of US Navy movements and radar blueprints. by Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/how-does-a-navy-sailor-spying-for-china-come-away-with-only-2-years-in-prison/

I have no idea why the DOJ is putting out a press release about this. It seems more like the sort of thing to never mention again.

A U.S. Navy service member was sentenced today to 27 months in prison and ordered to pay a $5,500 fine for transmitting sensitive U.S. military information to an intelligence officer from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in exchange for bribery payments.

According to court documents, Petty Officer Wenheng Zhao, 26, aka Thomas Zhao, of Monterey Park, California, pleaded guilty in October 2023 to one count of conspiring with the intelligence officer and one count of receiving a bribe.

Between August 2021 and at least May 2023, Zhao received at least $14,866 in at least 14 separate bribe payments from the intelligence officer. In exchange for the illicit payments, Zhao secretly collected and transmitted to the intelligence officer sensitive, non-public information regarding U.S. Navy operational security, military trainings and exercises, and critical infrastructure. Zhao entered restricted military and naval installations to collect and record this information.

Zhao transmitted plans for a large-scale maritime training exercise in the Pacific theatre, operational orders and electrical diagrams and blueprints for a Ground/Air Task Oriented Radar system located in Okinawa, Japan.

The Dark Side of Free Speech The agent of our descent into tyranny. by Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-dark-side-of-free-speech/

The ongoing protests against Israel––from its defense policies and warfighting tactics, to its very existence as a nation and a people––have featured levels of irrational hatred and despicable endorsements of genocidal terrorists. The U.S., of course, is also a target not just for being Israel’s enabler, but for alleged historical crimes like “settler colonialism,” racism, and genocide. These charges are morally idiotic, ethically incoherent, and historically challenged. And they serve and advance political agendas dangerous for our national interests and security.

That such mendacious protests are legal in most Western nations reflects one of the foundational principles of Western civilization: the freedom of ordinary citizens to criticize and challenge their own country’s policies and actions. But these recent protests highlight the dangers of that freedom: the nurturing and spreading of a national self-loathing that undermines the patriotism and loyalty any country needs to survive.

Of all the world’s great civilizations, none has been as critically self-conscious as the West.  Starting with the ancient Greeks, the West has been willing to question its own beliefs and institutions, make them objects of thought and criticism, search for their meaning and significance, and use this process to make innovative improvements. The Greeks, as the 19th century historian Jacob Burckhardt said, “seem original, spontaneous and conscious, in circumstances in which all others were ruled by a more or less mindless necessity.”

Slavery, for example, has been a global evil since history began, and still persists in some regions of the world today. The Greeks’ critical examination of this practice––back then, no more questionable than the domestication of animals––on the one hand led to a justification for it, such as Aristotle’s infamous argument that those in bondage are “slaves by nature,” since they lack rational self-control and so can be justly controlled by another.

On the other hand, thinking critically about slavery also generated questions about the justice of it, as the early 4th century BC rhetorician Alcidamas did when he said, “The god gave freedom to all men, and nature created no one a slave.” It took two millennia, but this early argument that slavery is a consequence of force, and thus unnatural and unjust, bore fruit in the late 18th century when Christians started the West on the road to abolition.

Senator Floats Garlic As Newest National Security Threat David B. McGarry !!!!????

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/01/09/senator-floats-garlic-as-newest-national-security-threat/

The U.S. faces rapidly changing and increasingly precarious geopolitical conditions. Americans worry that communist China could become the new global polestar, that a revanchist Russia’s ambitions could stretch Ukraine into NATO, and that unrest in the Middle East could once again entangle the U.S. forces. Now, policymakers have identified a new looming threat: imported garlic.

Last week, Florida Republican Sen. Rick Scott asked the Commerce Department to investigate the national security risks posed by “Communist Chinese garlic.” Scott demands thoroughness; he wants an inquiry into “all grades of garlic, whole or separated into constituent cloves, whether or not peeled, chilled, fresh, frozen, provisionally preserved or packed in water or other neutral substance.” Should the department rule against China, the agency would likely impose new tariffs to protect “national security.”

Scott’s profoundly goofy request serves as a reminder that too many politicians, keen to serve some constituent industry, happily will invoke the specter of foreign threats to justify their preferred domestic economic interventions. Convincing bureaucrats to institute tariffs unilaterally avoids the procedural and political difficulties of passing legislation or otherwise operating the ordinary machinery of democratic policymaking.

The Tax And Command Party

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/01/09/the-tax-and-command-party/

In the sphere of Democratic Party politics, taxes can never be high enough and government never big enough.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre drove home this sad fact with a sledge hammer last week when she said “Republican tax cuts are responsible for about 90%” of the federal debt that has reached a record $34 trillion, and is larger than the entire U.S. economy, which is not quite $27 trillion.

It is insane to believe this. But Democrats cling to the narrative with the same fanaticism that drove Karl Marx. Of the obvious connection, we will say no more – for the moment. 

No government has ever had a revenue problem. Deficits are the product overspending. Yes, it’s that simple. Families know this. Businesses know this. Yet somehow policymakers – from both parties, unfortunately – refuse to operate under this fundamental truth. Freely and irresponsibly spending other people’s money is deeply ingrained within them.

This is especially true in Washington, where spending has with rare exception exceeded revenues for more than a half century. From 1968 to 2019, federal outlays averaged 20.3% of GDP. Projections indicate that by 2050, it will surpass 30% of GDP.

As the government grows, the private sector must shrink, at least in proportion to the entire economy. Where does it end? Do the Democrats have a point at which they say “enough”? Some might. But the trajectory of the party is a clear indication that most prefer a country in which government, not the private sector, dominates economic and social life.