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September 2024

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

The Unbalanced Foreign Policy of the Biden-Harris Regime The current administration’s overreliance on diplomacy through the State Department, sidelining the Defense Department, has led to disastrous foreign policy failures and weakened national security.

By on September 15th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/09/15/the-unbalanced-foreign-policy-of-the-biden-harris-regime/

By James E. Fanell and Bradley A. Thayer

One of the hallmarks of the Biden-Harris administration has been their obsession to have the U.S. State Department be the lead agency for all of America’s foreign policy decisions regardless of the situation. This was infamously made evident during the events surrounding the retreat from Afghanistan in August 2021, which was motivated by partisan political reasons to be able to get American troops out of the country before the 20th anniversary of the heinous attacks on 9/11.

In the months leading up to that disastrous decision, the State Department operated as the lead agency of the U.S. government, making all decisions, even after it was clear that a non-combatant evacuation operation (NEO) was going to be required. Yet, despite this reality, the Department of Defense was relegated to a subordinate position, which ultimately led to their professional advice being ignored.

The results included the deaths of 13 American military service members, hundreds of Afghani citizens killed, and thousands who had supported the U.S. during the proceeding years being displaced and their lives ruined. Strategically, the loss of our airbase at Bagram was a strategic blow to America’s ability to hold the PRC at risk from their western flank.

Americans have seen similar results from the Biden-Harris administration, which has hobbled American foreign policy by their decision to make the State Department the lead agency rather than being balanced equally with the Defense Department under the President and National Security Council.

Similarly disastrous results have occurred since that failed retreat, for instance in the failure to deter Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and their failure to provide uninterrupted assistance to our ally Israel in the face of the devilish evil that was unleashed on October 7, 2023. The same is occurring as well in the Indo-Pacific as the world watches the PRC daily threaten our national interests with assaults against our treaty ally, the Republic of the Philippines and their increasing military alliance with Russia as their two militaries threaten another treaty ally—Japan.

In each of these tinderbox areas, the Biden-Harris regime has turned America’s decision-making over to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and has openly subordinated the Department of Defense to second-tier status on critical national security issues.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

On Truth and Lie in an Extramoral Sense The debate last week on ABC was, from one point of view, a dog’s breakfast, but, from another, it was a mesmerizing exercise in vertiginous, pseudo-Nietzschean legerdemain. By Roger Kimball

By on September 15th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/09/15/on-truth-and-lie-in-an-extramoral-sense/

Students of Friedrich Nietzsche, or those who consort with such dubious people, will recognize the source of my title. It is the English version of the title Nietzsche employed for his early, unfinished essay Über Wahrheit und Lüge im aussermoralischen Sinne (1873).

The essay made a splash among pampered graduate students who endeavored to relieve the boredom of their humdrum lives with dreams of derring-do. Consider the essay’s opening:

Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner of that universe which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing. That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of “world history,” but nevertheless, it was only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths, the star cooled and congealed, and the clever beasts had to die.

Cozy, armchair nihilists just love that sort of thing.  They repeat such slogans to themselves while primping before first dates, seldom wondering why there never seems to be a second.

Cosmological angst was not Nietzsche’s only sweetmeat on offer in this essay, though. Even more popular were his epistemological-moral musings.  This is the key passage:

What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding. Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions; they are metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins.

In short, says Nietzsche, “to be truthful means to employ the usual metaphors.” From a moral perspective, he concludes, “to tell the truth” is “the duty to lie according to a fixed convention.”

Such observations are like catnip to aspiring relativists. Who knew that Kamala Harris, vice president of the United States, was a deacon in this church of cosmic futility?

Well, I am not sure that Harris herself is a paid-up member of this cynical coven. But her stage managers and stunt doubles certainly are.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Only Deal Hamas Wants: Israel’s Surrender by Bassam Tawil

By on September 15th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20941/hamas-deal-israel-surrender

Abandoning the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt would enable Hamas to carry on with its decades-long practice of smuggling weapons into the enclave. It would also allow the new head of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, to escape – along with many of the hostages with whom he is thought to be surrounding himself for protection — through the tunnels into Egypt’s Sinai Desert.

The most recent statement from Hamas makes it clear that the terror group wants Israel to leave the Gaza Strip before any hostages are freed.

According to some reports, Hamas has stated that it is willing to free the hostages in stages. It undoubtedly wants to hold on to as many hostages as possible as an “insurance policy” that Israel will not resume the war against the terror group and that the terrorist group will be able to have a free hand to attack Israel in the future. This implies that a large number of the hostages remain captive in the hands of the terror group for years. It is important to note that for the past 10 years, Hamas has been holding hostage two Israeli civilians who are believed to be still alive, as well as the remains of two IDF soldiers.

Hamas is willing to fight to the last Palestinian. The terror group does not care if tens of thousands of its own people lose their lives as a result of the war it began. Its No. 1 priority is to hold on to power after the war. Hamas is evidently hoping that a ceasefire-hostage deal will help it achieve its goal of retaining control over the Gaza Strip.

If the Biden-Harris administration wants to understand the real intentions and aims of Hamas, it just needs to look at what the terror group is saying in Arabic. Hamas and its allies are saying in Arabic that the only deal they would accept is one that results in Israel raising a white flag.

If Hamas is permitted to win the war, Iran and its other terror proxies, such as Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Houthis, will gain confidence and feel more empowered. In addition, this will convey to Muslim Jihadis worldwide that Israel and the West are too weak to protect their people and values against Islamist terror organizations. This weakness will lead to more terrorism not only against Israel, but also the US and most Western nations.

Instead of applying pressure on Israel to end the war, the Biden-Harris administration needs to demand firmly that the Hamas murderers and rapists totally surrender, disarm, cede control over the Gaza Strip, and release all the hostages unconditionally.

All this needs urgently needs to take place before Iran breaks out its nuclear weapons and sets about attacking its oil-rich neighbors, such as the UAE and Saudi Arabia, again.

The Iran-backed Palestinian terrorist group Hamas has repeated its demand that Israel withdraw completely from the Gaza Strip in order to reach a ceasefire-hostage agreement with Israel. Hamas, in other words, is demanding that Israel lose the war so that the terrorist group can regroup, rearm and prepare for more attacks on Israel like the one it launched on October 7, 2023. In that assault, 1,200 Israelis were murdered, with many raped, tortured and burned alive. Another 240 Israelis were kidnapped to the Gaza Strip, where 101 are still being held as hostages, many of them already murdered (see here and here).

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

To Stop Hamas, Confront Qatar and Iran by Majid Rafizadeh

By on September 14th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20931/stop-hamas-qatar-iran

The Biden-Harris administration’s lifting of sanctions is what enabled Iran to profit to the tune of an estimated $100 billion, used for waging terror against Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia — and the US. Just since October, Iran and its terror proxies and militias have attacked US troops in the Middle East more than 160 times, killing three and wounding more than 120…

By turning a blind eye to the actions of the Iranian regime’s while releasing roughly $100 billion to the treasury of the mullahs, the Biden-Harris administration is responsible for empowering these entities.

This week in Gaza, more deaths were reported after Israel took out a Hamas command center embedded in what used to function as a school in a “humanitarian zone.” If Hamas cares about the Palestinians and does not want them killed, why does it deliberately put its terrorist command centers in the middle of crowded “humanitarian zones”?

“He was murdered by Hamas…. And if you want the hostages home, which we all do, you have to increase the cost to Iran…. Iran is the Great Satan here. Hamas is the junior partner…. They [could not] care less about the Palestinian people.” — US Senator Lindsey Graham, referring to the murdered US-Israeli hostage, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Fox News, September 1, 2024.

It is a clear call for the Biden-Harris administration to hold Iran accountable for the remaining hostages, and to target Iran’s oil refineries if the hostages are not immediately released.

So long as the US government continues to sit on the sidelines, the brutality and savagery of Hamas and their Iranian benefactors will only escalate. It is high time to confront Iran’s regime head-on and stop its spread of barbarity before more innocent lives are lost — above all, before the world’s “leading state sponsor of terrorism” produces nuclear weapons.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Who is running America right now? If Joe Biden isn’t fit enough to run for re-election, then how can he be fit to remain in the White House? Cory Franklin

By on September 14th, 2024

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/09/13/who-is-running-america-right-now/

Who is currently in charge in America? It’s sobering to realise that this critical question was never asked in this week’s presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. After all, what question could be more important than who is running the country?

The nominal answer should be vice-president Harris’s boss, President Joe Biden. However, the Democratic Party powers-that-be have staged something of a palace coup, deeming Biden insufficiently compos mentis to be the party candidate in November’s election. At the same time, there is an unwillingness to address whether he is capable of leading the US right now.

When seen on the day after the Trump-Harris debate, Biden was wearing a Trump 2024 hat during a visit to a fire station in Pennsylvania to mark the anniversary of 9/11. Perhaps he was demonstrating a sense of humour or a nod to bipartisanship. Or quite possibly, this was another King-Lear-losing-his-faculties moment.

Over the past year, Biden’s cognitive decline has been apparent to most observers, even as it remained unmentioned by his supporters and the press – until the disastrous June debate with Trump. In February, the New York Times published a piece by a neuroscientist that assured us that ‘we’re thinking about Biden’s memory and age in the wrong way’. The message this tried to send was: ‘Don’t worry, it happens to everybody as they get older.’ Except, of course, this particular elderly man is in charge of the nuclear codes.

The evidence of Biden’s mental decline continues to mount up. Earlier this year, a special counsel found that he had retained classified government documents when he left the vice-presidency in 2017. But whereas Trump himself was charged with multiple felony accounts after he had done something similar – retaining dozens of classified files after he left office – Biden was exonerated in his particular documents case.

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BOOKS Comments turned off

To Overthrow the World: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Communism Hardcover – September 10, 2024 by Sean McMeekin

By on September 14th, 2024

From an award-winning historian, a new global history of Communism 

When the USSR collapsed in 1991, the world was certain that Communism was dead. Today, three decades later, it is clear that it was not. While Russia may no longer be Communist, Communism and sympathy for Communist ideas have proliferated across the globe. 
 
In To Overthrow the World, Sean McMeekin investigates the evolution of Communism from a seductive ideal of a classless society into the ruling doctrine of tyrannical regimes. Tracing Communism’s ascent from theory to practice, McMeekin ranges from Karl Marx’s writings to the rise and fall of the USSR under Stalin to Mao’s rise to power in China to the acceleration of Communist or Communist-inspired policies around the world in the twenty-first century. McMeekin argues, however, that despite the endurance of Communism, it remains deeply unpopular as a political form. Where it has arisen, it has always arisen by force. 
 
Blending historical narrative with cutting-edge scholarship, To Overthrow the World revolutionizes our understanding of the evolution of Communism—an idea that seemingly cannot die. 

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

There’s allegedly an affidavit claiming ABC gave Kamala the questions before the debate By Andrea Widburg

By on September 14th, 2024

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/09/there_s_allegedly_an_affidavit_claiming_abc_gave_kamala_the_questions_before_the_debate.html

One of the things that was obvious during the debate was that Kamala came in with a lot of memorized material. Those who like her were impressed by how well-prepared she was. Those who don’t like her noted that she had to memorize everything because she is incapable of answering substantive questions on the fly—and that her memorized answers were platitudes, canned phrases, and blatant lies. What didn’t occur to those of us who dislike Kamala was that the memorized lines invariably went right to the heart of the questions. Weird, huh?

That perfect alignment of prepared material and questions could, of course, have come about because it was fairly obvious what the moderators would ask. After all, we knew that they would frame the questions to support Kamala and hurt Trump. However, we believed that, after the scandal of Donna Brazile giving Hillary the debate questions in 2016, there was no way that the Democrats would try that cheat again.

It turns out that we might have been a bit naïve.

An X poster named “Black Insurrectionist” (aka @DocNetyoutube) claims to possess an affidavit from an ABC employee exposing ABC for having given Kamala the questions in advance and promising her that the moderators would never attack her but, instead, that they would only attack Trump:

I will be releasing an affidavit from an ABC whistleblower regarding the debate. I have just signed a non-disclosure agreement with the attorney of the whistleblower. The affidavit states how the Harris campaign was given sample question which were essentially the same questions that were given during the debate and separate assurances of fact checking Donald Trump and that she would NOT be fact checked. Accordingly, the affidavit states several other factors that were built into the debate to give Kamala a significant advantage. I have seen and read the affidavit and after the attorney blacks out the name of the whistleblower and other information that could dox the whistleblower, I will release the full affidavit.  I will be releasing the affidavit before the weekend is out.

In a later exchange, Black Insurrectionist implied that the same whistleblower wrote that Kamala’s campaign actually helped draft the questions:

As of now, we have only a promise. However, given the moderators’ disgraceful behavior, the Democrats’ past practice of cheating in debates, and Kamala’s surprisingly on-point debate preparation, it’s not unreasonable to believe that Black Insurrectionist will make good on his promise.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

‘Immediate and Profound Legal Consequences’ Await Brown If It Votes To Divest From Israel, State Attorneys General Warn

By on September 14th, 2024

http://Under anti-divestment laws, a majority of states will be required to sever business ties with Brown should the university vote to divest from Israel.

Brown University will face “immediate and profound legal consequences” should its governing body vote next month to divest from companies with connections to Israel.

Although the university’s president, Christina Paxson, has previously rebuffed student-led divestment efforts, her administration agreed last spring to have the Corporation, as Brown’s governing body is known, vote on the divestment proposal, known as Brown Divest Now, as part of an arrangement with anti-Israel encampment organizers.

In turn, the student protesters agreed to clear out their encampment on the university’s Main Green and not stage protests through commencement. The Corporation — which is run by 12 Fellows and 42 Trustees — is slated to vote on the measure during its October meeting.

Just the agreement to take a vote on the matter was controversial enough that one trustee, a prominent New York hedge fund manager, Joseph Edelman, resigned from his post, slamming the upcoming vote as “morally reprehensible.” 

In his resignation letter, which he published in the Wall Street Journal, he criticized the administration for choosing to “lend credence” to “antisemitic voices” and choosing to “reward, rather than punish, the activists for disrupting campus life, breaking school rules, and promoting violence and antisemitism at Brown.” 

He continued: “Brown’s policy of appeasement won’t work. It’s a capitulation to the very hatred that led to the Holocaust and the unspeakable horrors of Oct. 7.” 

Just hours later, the president of Brown University, Ms. Paxson, published a letter in response, claiming that Mr. Edelman “misunderstands and mischaracterizes the decision behind the October vote” and that the decision reflects the university’s commitment to giving “fair and due process to formal claims challenging its ethical responsibility.”

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ANTI-SEMITISM, EDUCATION Comments turned off

Haverford ‘doubled down’ on Jew-hatred since May lawsuit, per complaint before US District Court “It’s in vogue to believe that the Jews are evil and the Jewish state is evil,” the lawyer Lori Lowenthal Marcus told JNS. “They’re feeling like they’re on the side of justice.”

By on September 14th, 2024

https://www.jns.org/haverford-doubled-down-on-jew-hatred-since-may-lawsuit-per-complaint-before-us-district-court/

On May 13, the Deborah Project, a public-interest law firm, filed a lawsuit under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act accusing Haverford College in Pennsylvania of creating a hostile environment for Jews. Five days later, at the highly-ranked private liberal arts school’s graduation ceremony, Haverford gave awards to multiple people accused in the complaint of Jew-hatred.

The Deborah Project filed an amended, 278-page complaint on Sept. 9 before the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, in which the firm accuses Haverford of “doubling down on every policy at issue in this case,” as well as making a “mockery” of and leveling a “calculated insult” at the Jews who told the administration repeatedly that they are unsafe at the school.

Lori Lowenthal Marcus, legal director of the Deborah Project, told JNS that the college not only decided to go forward with the awards five days after the complaint was filed, but it knew for months that Jews were feeling unsafe and neglected on campus. Students had complained since October, for example, about social posts by a professor Tarik Aougab.

“There were many, many, many complaints about his callousness and repeated all kinds of things that he did throughout the year that were insulting to Jews, so it’s not like it happened when we filed our complaint,” Lowenthal Marcus told JNS. “The people who are being insulted here are the Jews who complained all year bitterly.”

“Absolutely, they knew of everything. Repeatedly. Well-documented. Absolutely no surprises,” she said of the Haverford administration. “That’s why it’s deliberate indifference.”

The amended complaint that the firm filed relates to alleged Jew-hatred on campus that occurred since the initial complaint, and things about which the firm didn’t know when it filed the first complaint, according to Lowenthal Marcus.
“They’re completely emboldened,” she said, of the school administration. “That’s the issue. There’s no concern what it’s doing to the Jewish population at the school.”

“What’s different at Haverford—there’s more of an informed support for allowing what we’re complaining about at the school. It’s very much about free speech, except at the same time, microaggressions are policed carefully. It’s really truly a double standard,” she said. “The Jews are the compliant model students, customers, fill-in-the-blank. They complain quietly and write letters to the editor, while the other side screams and yells and breaks things. The louder you are, the more compliant the administration or institution is.”

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Hamas Has More “Humanitarian Aid” Than It Knows What To Do With “We have everything. In the meantime, we have no room in the stores.” by Daniel Greenfield

By on September 14th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/hamas-has-more-humanitarian-aid-than-it-knows-what-to-do-with/

The Gaza famine hoax promoted by the media and endorsed by top elected officials, including President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, was always a lie. (Much like the previous Yemen famine hoax spread by the same network of Iranian, Qatari, and leftist activists which allowed the Houthis to build up enough firepower to terrorize the waterways and sink civilian ships.)

The twofold purpose of the Gaza famine hoax was to attack Israel’s campaign against Hamas and to funnel money into the coffers of the Islamic terrorist group. It’s working so well that Hamas has no idea what to do with the unprecedented amounts of “humanitarian aid” that it’s been reselling to fund its terrorism.

Channel 12 news plays intercepted recordings purporting to show Hamas operatives discussing how to disperse overflowing Gaza aid that they had seized.

In the recordings of radio conversations, one operative says, “We have trucks overflowing with goods.” The second operative declines the offer, saying “we have everything. In the meantime, we have no room in the stores.” He then suggests they send the goods to Khan Younis.

The report says the recordings indicate the difficulties in applying pressure on Hamas, which is making millions off control over the hundreds of trucks of international aid that enter Gaza every day.

The report also says that the IDF plans to reexamine efforts that allow private traders to import goods into Gaza because Hamas has been taking 20% of all the profits from the deals.

No one, in politics or the media, will ever admit to the lie no matter what. The closest thing to an admission is that they’ve mostly stopped pushing the famine hoax in favor of other hoaxes.

The Biden-Harris administration had initially promised Israel that the aid wouldn’t go to Hamas. And that there would be consequences if it did.

Like so much else that was also a lie.

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