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August 2024

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Kamala’s Gospel of Envy Can you buy votes by attracting freeloaders? by Terry Paulson

By on August 29th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/kamalas-gospel-of-envy/

Winston Churchill warned the free world 80 years ago: “Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.” Yes, a gospel of envy can be attractive to anyone who doesn’t have to pay for what they want. It’s easy to understand why “equity” is such a powerful word in the progressive world of the left. Equal opportunity is for conservatives. After hours of watching the Democratic National Convention, it’s clear that leftists feel they are entitled to equal results no matter how little people have to do to earn those results. Can you buy votes by attracting freeloaders? The left seems to think so.

It’s clear that many Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, credit card debt is hitting record highs, and their savings have shrunk or all but disappeared. President Biden has boasted that wages are up, but when you take into account inflation, real wages have declined. The average household has lost nearly $2,000 of purchasing power since Biden and Harris took office. So, it is no wonder that “free” sounds pretty attractive. Maybe that is why Kamala Harris is calling herself the candidate of “joy” for all the people, but the Biden/Harris policies have ravaged the middle class she says she is here to serve. Her acceptance speech at the convention was an emotional message to fight for all, but her vicious and inaccurate attacks on Trump were so over the top and filled with lies that she proved to be the worst divider of all. She went from joy and love to anger and attacks without substance.

President John F. Kennedy campaigned with a message of personal responsibility—“Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for our country.”  Today’s leftists don’t want to hear about what they have to do for our country; they want to know what they are going to get from their government. The left feels entitled to the American Dream by just living here.

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A Most Obvious Lie

By on August 29th, 2024

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/08/29/a-most-obvious-lie/

While at times it’s been hard to pin down just what Kamala Harris stands for – somehow she’s both a tough prosecutor and an advocate for defunding the police – she is at her core a hard-left progressive. But her campaign team, which includes the mainstream media, is putting in the extra hours to recast her as a centrist.

Don’t fall for the lie.

In the weeks following her party coronation, never-received-a-vote-outside-of-California Harris has been presented to voters as a “sober-minded centrist.” Other media outlets and personalities have eagerly covered her fundamental transition.

She no longer opposes fracking.

She’s doesn’t want to outlaw private health insurance.

She now wants to control the border.

She really doesn’t plan to ban internal-combustion engine automobiles.

Harris has also stolen Donald Trump’s “no tax on tips” proposal, and she’s of course become a supporter of a strong military, swearing she’ll be sure that the U.S. will continue to have the “most lethal” armed forces in the world.

“Kamala seems to trade in her old principles and positions for new ones every few days,” say our friends at the Committee to Unleash Prosperity.

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Hindus in Bangladesh Facing Genocide? by Uzay Bulut

By on August 29th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20890/hindus-bangladesh-genocide

The protests that started against the former Bangladeshi government have since descended into rampant violence against the Hindu community.

” Jamaat-e-Islami has made a list of Hindu houses and businesses, and they are systematically targeting Hindus. I am also being told that JeI has blocked several roads with mobs walking around with guns. The network is also intermittently down and they are hardly able to contact each other. Essentially, the Hindus are boxed in a situation where they are not being allowed to communicate with each other and form groups to help each other. The situation, according to them is extremely dire. There is also news of at least 3 Hindu girls being abducted by the Muslims. There are probably far more…” — Nupur J Sharma, a journalist in Delhi, X, August 7, 2024.

“That Bangladesh has violently toppled a democratically elected government and is going in the direction of Afghanistan is not news anymore…. The victims have no one to turn to, as global organizations such as the United Nations sold their souls to their Islamic masters long ago…. Bangladesh has descended into a true Islamic abyss. There are mutilated, naked, dead bodies suspended from giant structures in full public view. Islamic apologists in India have done everything in their power to whitewash the Islamic onslaught on Hindus in Bangladesh…. Leftists dub the anarchy in Bangladesh as a victory of democracy….” — Ashlyn Davis, political analyst, jihadwatch.org, August 6, 2024.

Ironically, the land that is now called Bangladesh was majority-Hindu before its Islamization, which occurred after Islamic armies invaded and conquered the Indian subcontinent beginning in the eighth century. So was Pakistan.

“[T]here has been a long history of violence and repression against Hindus in Bangladesh including genocide of an estimated two million then East Pakistani citizens (mostly Hindu), the ethnic cleansing of 10 million ethnic Bengalis (mostly Hindus) who fled to India, and the rape of 200,000 women (also mostly Hindu) in camps set up for the sole purpose of raping and terrorizing.” — The Hindu American Foundation.

Terrifying videos of riots, lynchings, and arsonists setting fire to houses and offices are being shared on social media platforms. Will the United Nations or anyone intervene and stop the atrocities? Or will the world once again see and ignore yet more crimes against humanity with no accountability for those Islamists who perpetrate them?

Hindus in Bangladesh are under attack. Islamists who have sabotaged the students’ anti-government protests have been rioting and hunting down defenseless Hindus across the country since Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was forced to resign and flee to India on August 5.

According to reports and social media posts from the region, Hindu homes have been burned, shops looted, and temples vandalized. Muslim mobs are wreaking havoc on the Hindu minority. Countless Hindus have been victimized by the rampaging Islamists.

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Iran’s War Against Israel – From the West Bank by Khaled Abu Toameh

By on August 28th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20908/iran-war-israel-west-bank

Armed and funded by Iran, the “battalions,” whose members are affiliated with PIJ, Hamas and the ruling Fatah faction headed by Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, began operating in the northern West Bank more than three years ago.

“Iran seeks as a strategic objective to surround Israel with a crescent of active fronts maintained by Iran and supported by Islamist client militias. As part of this, the [Iranian] regime is seeking to find a way to add an eastern component to this crescent – through Jordan to the West Bank… Tehran has succeeded in establishing and maintaining an arms route in which military materiel, brought from Iran into Lebanon, is then transported across the Syrian-Lebanese border, via Jordan, into the West Bank. “The maintenance of this route is of strategic importance to Iran. It is intended, over time, to flood the West Bank with weaponry, and by so doing, to eventually make this area a third front in the ongoing long war against Israel.” — Jonathan Spyer, journalist, expert on radical Islamic groups, Jerusalem Post, July 5, 2024.

The PA’s failure to crack down on the “battalions” means that Iran now has a small army in the West Bank. It will not be long before members of this army attack Israel in the same way as the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led invasion of Israel, in which 1,200 Israelis were murdered, with many raped, tortured and burned alive. In addition, more than 240 Israelis, including babies, women and the elderly, were abducted to the Gaza Strip, where 109 of them are still being held as hostages.

Those who persist in advocating for the establishment of a Palestinian state next to Israel must take into consideration that doing so would lead to the rise of more Iran-backed “battalions” in the West Bank and other areas over which the PA is given control. Since the gunmen are frequently praised as “heroes” by many Palestinians, neither Abbas nor anyone who replaces him would have the courage to take them on.

Even if Abbas does go back to the Gaza Strip, it is not probable that he would be able to confront Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups there. As in the West Bank, new “battalions” and militias will no doubt spring up in the Gaza Strip under Abbas’s PA to pursue the Jihad (holy war) to eliminate Israel and replace it with an Islamist state.

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NATIONAL SECURITY AND DEFENSE Comments turned off

Radical Islam Braying the Donkey Party The Biden administration has done little, if anything, to stop Iran’s belligerent and determined expansion throughout the Middle East and its completion of the development of nuclear weapons. By Rachel Ehrenfeld

By on August 28th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/08/28/radical-islam-braying-the-donkey-party/

The Hadith of the Islamic Shiite tradition talks about the Prophet Muhammed’s talking donkey, which he named Yaʽfūr. (“The Beginning and the End” by Ibn Kathir, Chapter Six: “The Conversation of the Donkey.”)

Today, Iran serves as the talking donkey. According to Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Iran has become not only a regional but also an international power. Salami attributed this transformation to Teheran’s large investments in developing its advanced military technology and defense industry. Salami did not thank the Biden administration for facilitating these developments, but he should have. It was the Biden administration’s lifting of sanctions on Iran’s oil sales that provided the Islamic Republic with hundreds of billions of dollars to invest not only in its defense industry but also in its “resistance” proxies in the region and around the world.

The United States feeble response to Iran’s direct aggression against US forces, as well as its proxies Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and others, allowing their violent disruption of more than 50 percent of the commercial shipping in the Red Sea, is suitably understood by the mullahs as weakness.

The Biden administration’s furtherance of President Obama’s disastrous policy to turn Iran into the leading power in the Middle East and its reluctance to act in its defense and regional interests strengthen Iran’s resolve to toss the United States from the Middle East. Iran’s supreme leader and preachers regularly bray for “Death to America.” But the Biden administration and, if elected, the anointed Democrat presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, will most likely continue supporting Iran and its proxies and recklessly turn a deaf ear to the blaring braying of Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Abdul-Malik al-Houthi‘s repeated dictum, “Death to America.”

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Adam Andrzejewski’s Remarkable Legacy R.I.P.

By on August 28th, 2024

Adam, founder of Open the Books was a friend and most admirable person. rsk

One-of-a-kind. Relentless optimist. Fearless visionary. 

These are a few of the descriptors I’ve heard over and over again in the days since we lost our founder and CEO, Adam Andrzejewski. 

It’s with a heavy heart that I tell you he passed unexpectedly last weekend, but he leaves behind a tremendous legacy. 

Adam was a leader in business, a family man, a marathon runner, and unmatched in his advocacy on behalf of taxpayers. We’ll miss him for his good nature, his ability to motivate, his optimism, his collaborative spirit, and so much more. 

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We need more anger about Islamist terrorism, not less After Solingen, it’s time for a fightback against both the Islamo-fascists and our complacent elites. Brendan O’Neill

By on August 28th, 2024

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/08/26/we-need-more-anger-about-islamist-terrorism-not-less/

The wisdom of the late Norm Macdonald has rarely felt so prescient. ‘What terrifies me’, the Canadian comic once tweeted, ‘is if ISIS were to detonate a nuclear device and kill 50million Americans. Imagine the backlash against peaceful Muslims.’ It was a perfectly aimed jab at those who fear the public reaction to terrorism more than terrorism itself. At those leftish talking heads and phoney liberals who see people in Manchester, Paris or Brussels being blown limb from limb by radical Islamists and instantly think: ‘Oh no, the Islamophobia is going to be terrible.’ These cowards and fainthearts have been out in force once more following the ISIS knife atrocity in Solingen.

The bodies of the people slain by the Islamist fanatic were barely cold before sections of the media were fretting over how the ‘far right’ might react. It was on Friday evening, at a festival celebrating the 650th anniversary of the founding of the west German city, that a man went on a knifing frenzy. Three people were killed and eight wounded, four seriously. The suspect is a 26-year-old from Syria who, according to German prosecutors, shares the ideology of the Islamic State and was acting on those tyrannical extremist beliefs when he wielded his knife. He arrived in Germany as an asylum seeker in 2022, but although his claim was rejected, the authorities failed to deport him. ISIS has claimed responsibility for the slaughter, describing it as an intentional slaying of European Christians ‘to avenge Muslims in Palestine and everywhere’.

So this was an act of war. A low-level, lone-wolf act of war, but an act of war nonetheless. It was a violent assault not only on the citizens of Solingen but also on Germany itself, and in particular on its Christian heritage.

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The Gaza End Game Will the US let Israel win?Alan Joseph Bauer

By on August 28th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-gaza-end-game/

Tony Blinken is back in Israel for his ninth visit since 10/7. I wish I had his frequent flyer points.

Humor has always been a part of warfare. In order to endure oftentimes unspeakable experiences or images, people sometimes need to find a way to laugh. There is a story of British warships preparing to engage a German U-boat wolfpack in the Battle of the Atlantic. A submarine commander messaged his destroyer counterpart that in the event of engagement with the enemy, he would plan to stay on the water surface. The destroyer captain dryly responded, “So do I (meaning not get sunk).”

The Gaza war has also intertwined some jokes and laughter along with the pain, tears, and suffering. Very early in the war was the “Lego Gaza City” set with all gray parts heaped in a huge mound—just like the real thing. There was the UberEats type delivery soldier bringing food on a bicycle to his comrades in a destroyed building in Khan Yunis. And who could forget the soldier who knocked on the door of a house in Gaza to no answer. When he moved away the camera showed that nothing but the door was left to the entire building. While rockets and drones were actively on their way from Iran, one fellow put up a short video. He begged the Iranians to attack the “Jewish holy sites” as he showed on a detailed map of Israel. Each site was a branch office of the Israel Tax Authority.

As Tony Blinken once again returns to Israel, the question is what is the endgame? Hamas kidnapped so many Israelis—both live and dead—in order to use them as their strongest bargaining chip in finishing off the war. I do not believe that Yahya Sinwar or anyone else in Hamas expected the war to go as it has, with tens of thousands of Gazans dead, many of them Hamas members. I don’t think that they expected the massive levels of destruction that have led to thousands of buildings being destroyed and many thousands more being in need of dire repair before anyone will use them again. I doubt that they expected Israel to easily grab the Philadelphi Corridor on the Egyptian border and thoroughly flatten Rafah as Israel has done.

Hamas ostensibly should be like Germany or Japan and simply say yes to whatever is offered to them. They—as the Palestinians always have—are certain that they are the victors. They “demand” (like a guy with a gun facing him “demanding” something) that Israel stop fighting, remove all troops and give Rafah back to Hamas for more weapons running. While the Saudis seem to have unlimited oil, the Palestinians seem to have unlimited chutzpah. Israel is supposed to just get up and leave Gaza as if nothing happened on 10/7 or thereafter during which over 300 Israeli soldiers have been killed fighting in Gaza. Hamas, or what’s left of it, is delusional. They want to go back to the 6th of October with a slightly less valuable real estate portfolio.

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The Progressives’ Long March Targeting the Constitution’s guardrails against tyranny. by Bruce Thornton

By on August 28th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-progressives-long-march/

The “long march through the institutions” is the name given to the left’s turn towards Cultural Marxism as the means for taking control of the political order and shifting it to the left. For many conservatives, this movement in the Sixties accounts for the subsequent changes in political ideology, government policies, sexual mores, culture high and low, history, and revisions of school curricula from kindergarten to universities.

That narrative is accurate to a point, but it often suggests that before the Sixties our culture and politics were still firmly grounded in the Constitutional order, and Western culture defined by its Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian civilizational origins. But the way for the left’s “long march” was prepared by the Progressives’ “march” that began over a century ago. The Democrats’ policy platform unveiled during their convention and endorsed by Kamala Harris is a good starting point for seeing Progressivism’s continuity with the Marxist march to the modern center-left Democrat Party that has been taken over by their expanding and hardening leftist caucus.

The platform obviously endorses the Dems’ technocratic, hypertrophied Federal Government, and the greater centralization of power necessary for their utopian ambitions. As the Wall Street Journal puts it, “the platform is also a peek into an economic worldview in which the government is the answer, almost no matter the question. While private businesses are always ‘gouging’ or adding ‘junk fees,’ or otherwise trying to rip somebody off, Washington’s wise men are capable of providing for the American people, if only they have the power to pass the laws and regulations.”

Here is an item from the platform predicated on a Progressive idea more than a century old: “Health care should be a right in America, not a privilege,” the platform asserts. “We’ll never quit fighting to protect and expand the Affordable Care Act.” The ultimate goal is to completely nationalize healthcare, which will no doubt make doctors unionized public employees, and lead to worse outcomes costing trillions of taxpayer dollar––as Britain’s National Health Service and Obamacare serially demonstrate.

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The Crisis in the Armed Forces By Will Thibeau

By on August 28th, 2024

https://tomklingenstein.com/the-crisis-in-the-armed-forces/

Editor’s Note: A cold civil war is won or lost by the capture of institutions. Even today, many conservatives regard the military as one of the last institutions resisting capture by the new regime. Will Thibeau, director of the American Military Project at the Claremont Institute’s Center for the American Way of Life, argues that precisely the opposite is true: that the Armed Forces were “among the first American institutions to formally embrace the radical logic of group quotas.“ This new organizing principle is directly linked to a steep decline in military standards and performance, with life-and-death consequences for Americans and America.

Part I of Identity in the Trenches: The Fatal Impact of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion on U.S. Military Readiness.

In August 2021, the world watched as American forces scrambled to evacuate Afghanistan as the Taliban reclaimed power. The panicked withdrawal reached a tragic climax on August 26, when 13 American service members (and more than 100 Afghan civilians) were killed by a suicide bomber in the Kabul airport, where security was a U.S. responsibility. Four days later, when the last military planes took off from that same airport, hundreds of American citizens were left behind. A month later still, when the secretary of Defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the CENTCOM commanding general were called before Congress to account for the failure, they neither offered explanations nor accepted responsibility. The message was clear: Incompetence would be the new norm for the U.S. military — a predictably lethal status quo.

The Afghanistan debacle was dramatic, but it was only one small part of a much larger picture. The United States Armed Forces were once the envy of the world, in large part because we selected the best of the best, and instilled in our fighting men an unshakeable military ethos. Both the ethos and the selection, however, have been in steady decline as the Department of Defense succumbs to a dangerous ideology: that of group quotas, or forced outcome equality for identity groups based on race and sex.

Critics of the current state of affairs in our Armed Forces waste precious breath on disturbing but minor issues like reading lists, drag shows, and TikTok trends. This paper serves as a call for focus and precision on the prevalence of race and sex-based quotas, and the accompanying collapse in professional standards, in the fight to reclaim the integrity of the institution of the military. 

Quotas, by one name or another, have been defense policy since 1965 when Secretary Robert McNamara decided to make the Pentagon the leading edge of the effort to adhere to the principles and policies of the Civil Rights Act. This history is important to understand because it clarifies the mission ahead. 

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