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November 2024

Biden Administration Sent Over $2,000,000,000 to ‘Palestinians’ Since Oct. 7 Daniel Greenfield

https://jihadwatch.org/2024/11/biden-administration-sent-over-2000000000-to-palestinians-since-oct-7?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=biden-administration-sent-over-2000000000-to-palestinians-since-oct-7

Kill over 1,000 people in one of the worst Islamic terrorist attacks in modern history and what do you get?

Over $2 billion and counting. Or around $2 million for every person they murdered on Oct 7.

USAID, which has been repeatedly accused of complicity in funding Islamic terrorism around the world just bragged that it handed out another $230 million while boasting of its total of $2.1 billion in ‘aid’ since Oct 7.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is providing $230 million in additional funding to support economic recovery and development programs in the West Bank and Gaza. This significant investment highlights USAID’s commitment to improving the lives of individuals and communities in the region amidst challenging conditions. Since 2021, USAID/West Bank and Gaza has invested over $600 million in economic support funding of the Palestinian people, in addition to the over $2.1 billion in humanitarian assistance since October 7, 2023.

The Biden-Harris administration has made America one of the world’s leading funders of Islamic terrorism. Take away a lot of our ‘humanitarian aid’ and a lot of the terrorism will go with it.

The tide is turning against the green elites Western publics are rejecting the self-destructive and immiserating policies of Net Zero. Joel Kotkin

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/11/18/the-tide-is-turning-against-the-green-elites/

It is the global climate-change conference that no one cares about. The latest United Nations (UN) ‘conference of the parties’, otherwise known as COP29, is currently being hosted in oil-rich, authoritarian Azerbaijan. Not many political heavy-hitters have decided to attend but assorted elites, grifters and media have attended hoping it will bring them more financial manna from heaven.

The late-19th-century US political wire-puller Mark Hanna once quipped: ‘There are two things that are important in politics. The first is money and I can’t remember what the second one is.’ Billions, potentially trillions, have been sunk into green projects enriching the already wealthy and their nonprofits, in what outgoing US treasury secretary Janet Yellen has proclaimed the greatest business opportunity of the 21st century.

Hopefully, Yellen didn’t put all her financial eggs in the green basket. The election of Donald Trump as US president only adds to the current woes of the climate industry. The wind-energy sector is increasingly beleaguered and huge numbers of climate start-ups are failing. Despite receiving billions in subsidies, green companies are recording big losses, declaring bankruptcy or avoiding new projects – even in China. Yellen’s opportunity of the century is becoming its most obvious bust, with little apparent impact on the climate.

Of course, the green industry will keep going, as long as there are funds to subsidise it. The alliance between big corporate interests and activist bureaucracies has created what political scientist Bjorn Lomborg has labelled the ‘climate-industrial complex’. As energy analyst Robert Bryce points out, parts of Wall Street have been ‘feeding at the trough’ and will lobby Trump and Congress to keep some of their goodies. At the same time, some deep-blue states, like California and New York, are girding themselves by issuing their own green regulations to replace those that might have come from DC.

The only major country set to benefit from the ‘energy transition’ is China, which continues to spew more greenhouse gases than all advanced countries combined. It is using efficient, cheaper fossil fuels to dominate the solar-panel industry, building its battery capacity to roughly four times the size of America’s while exercising effective control of rare-earth minerals and the technology for processing them.

All this leaves the rest of the world, notably Europe and the UK, embracing a Net Zero strategy that is fundamentally unfeasible without imposing massive costs on the middle and working classes. One particularly dubious aspect of Europe’s all-electric policy lies in the energy grid. According to the Financial Times, UK businesses are already having problems getting extra juice. EVs, which are projected to double the demand for electricity by 2040, will only increase the pressure on the UK’s grid. The Labour government is already looking to ban the use of home chargers during peak hours.

The working classes in Western nations have particular reason for concern. In the UK, the path to lower emissions has been driven by deindustrialisation. The manufacturing sectors’ share of GDP has dropped by 50 per cent since 1990, at the cost of several million jobs. This parallels a two-thirds drop in the UK’s domestic energy production. It now increasingly depends on energy imports from the Middle East and other unstable regions.

Arguably, the most traumatic change is taking place in Germany, the last redoubt of European manufacturing and engineering prowess. Overall, Germany’s entire industrial structure is in decline. It is estimated that it could lose upwards of 400,000 of its estimated 800,00 car-manufacturing jobs by 2030.

Given the damage being done to Europe’s industrial base, the political tide is unsurprisingly turning against the greens. The gilets jaunes demonstrations in France in the late 2010s have been followed by large-scale farmers protests in the Netherlands, Poland and Germany. This year, voters gave the greens a ballot-box kicking at the European Parliament elections. Even as the technocracy sticks to its green religion, voters are headed in the opposite direction.

The election of Donald Trump, one of whose campaign slogans is ‘drill, baby, drill’, all but guarantees that the war on fossil fuels waged by the Obama-Biden administrations is dead. Whereas his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris, was strongly backed by ‘green tech billionaires’, Trump received strong support from oil and gas interests, who may enjoy at least a temporary boom. Delays on new liquified natural gas (LNG) export facilities will be lifted, and the tacit mandate for electrical vehicles is also likely to disappear. This shift represents an alternative to the expensive, economy-sapping, ultra-green policies being adopted by Britain’s Labour government and throughout the EU.

Unlike Their Membership, Teacher Union Leaders Are Far Left Ignoring the rank and file. by Larry Sand

https://www.frontpagemag.com/unlike-its-membership-teacher-union-leaders-are-far-left/

The teacher union leadership is in a collective snit after it became clear that Donald Trump would be reelected as U.S. president. American Federation of Teachers boss Randi Weingarten stated in a press release on Nov. 9, “At this moment, the country is more divided than ever, and our democracy is in jeopardy. Last night, we saw fear and anger win.”

National Education Association boss Becky Pringle was somber, posting on Facebook, “We woke up today to a world that feels darker than it did yesterday. I hear the fear about the safety of our families and communities. I feel the profound anxiety for the future of our country. I see the worry, anger, and heartbreak. But despair is not the answer.”

Pringle’s post was widely contested in the comments section, however. Typifying the pushback, educator Laurie Speed posted, “I wish that you would not assume that all of your members are liberals. Many voted for Trump, and they are feeling optimistic. I wish NEA were bipartisan. The education of our children is important to both parties. As educators, we can set the example for our students to follow regarding how to collaborate with others whose opinions differ from ours.”

Speed nails it! Ignoring its rank and file, teacher union leadership is far left, and has been for years. When NEA president Reg Weaver spoke at the Democratic Convention in 2008, his opening words were, “I am here today on behalf of 3.2 million NEA members to tell you why we support Barack Obama for president of the United States.”

It sounded as if every member of the NEA was backing Obama. Then, in his last sentence, he left no doubt. “That, my friends, is why the 3.2 million members of the National Education Association are organized, energized, and mobilized to help elect Barack Obama as the next president of the United States of America.”

Yet, the same Reg Weaver stated a few years before that one-third of NEA membership is Republican, one-third Democrat, and one-third “other.”

The Global Intifada Heats Up A war on Jews is a war on civilization. by Mark Tapson

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-global-intifada-heats-up/

On the night of November 7, curiously only two days shy of the 86th anniversary of Kristallnacht, Europe was the scene of a fresh pogrom in which hundreds of antisemites targeted Jews for pre-meditated, coordinated violence in the streets of Amsterdam.

Groups of attackers – many of them masked, carrying Palestinian flags, and shouting pro-Palestinian slogans – emerged from hiding in alleys and train stations and hotels to ambush Israelis who were leaving a soccer match between the local Ajax team and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Shocking video footage – some taken by the perpetrators themselves – shows Israeli and Dutch Jews being chased and assaulted with knives, bats, boots, and in at least one instance, an automobile committing hit-and-run.

This was no garden-variety soccer hooliganism, as it was initially described by some disingenuous media outlets. The attacks reportedly were orchestrated in advance and carried out by members of the Dutch Moroccan and Dutch Turkish community. De Telegraaf reported that perpetrators used the messaging app Telegram to announce a “Jew hunt” ahead of the attacks, prompting some to travel from far outside Amsterdam to take part. Muslim cab drivers throughout the city reportedly helped coordinate the assaults.

“They knew everything,” said 30-year-old Shachar Bitton, a Maccabi fan. “They knew exactly where we stayed. They knew exactly which hotels, which street we were going to take. It was all well-organized, well-prepared.”

The Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) subsequently published an exposé highlighting the involvement of an organization called the Palestinian Community in the Netherlands (PGNL in Dutch). PGNL, which uses instant messaging apps to organize activism in the country, is connected to the Palestinian terror group Hamas. It is led by Syrian-born activist Ayman Nejmeh, a self-described former teacher with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). UNRWA members in Gaza have been exposed for aiding and abetting Hamas terrorists.

Tren De Aragua Gang Terrorizes American Cities By Wendi Strauch Mahoney

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/11/tren_de_aragua_gang_terrorizes_american_cities.html

Joe Biden’s border policies are disastrous for communities nationwide, including cities that are nowhere near United States borders.  There have been at least 10.8 million encounters with illegal aliens nationwide since the start of Fiscal Year 2021 (FY2021), according to Rep. Mark Green’s September “Startling Stats” report on the border crisis.  The same report indicates that 2 million more aliens have entered as “known gotaways.”  According to former chief of Border Patrol Raul Ortiz, the total number of gotaways “could be underreported by as much as 20 percent.”  

The devastating numbers fail to tell the whole story, however. Embedded in those historic numbers are criminal gangs like Tren de Aragua, whose members have taken root in communities nationwide.  Tren de Aragua is terrorizing communities, forcing the Biden administration’s U.S. Treasury to label the gang as a U.S.-designated transnational criminal organization (TCO).

The Treasury’s announcement states that the gang has “opportunistically infiltrated local criminal economies.”

From its origins as a prison gang in Aragua, Venezuela, Tren de Aragua has quickly expanded throughout the Western Hemisphere in recent years. With a particular focus on human smuggling and other illicit acts that target desperate migrants, the organization has developed additional revenue sources through a range of criminal activities, such as illegal mining, kidnapping, human trafficking, extortion, and the trafficking of illicit drugs such as cocaine and MDMA.

Tren de Aragua poses a deadly criminal threat across the region. For example, Tren de Aragua leverages its transnational networks to traffic people, especially migrant women and girls, across borders for sex trafficking and debt bondage. When victims seek to escape this exploitation, Tren de Aragua members often kill them and publicize their deaths as a threat to others.

Mad at the Election? Blame Obama Obama had a golden chance in 2008 to lock in Democratic rule for a generation. But Obama chose wealth and respectability over doing the right thing. By Josiah Lippincott

https://amgreatness.com/2024/11/18/mad-at-the-election-blame-obama/

Liberals who are in the throes of capitulation and despair after Donald Trump’s crushing electoral and popular vote win can lay blame for their disastrous loss at the feet of one man: Barack Hussein Obama.

Obama built the Trump wave. His failure to live up to the promises of his populist 2008 run has cursed the Democratic Party, probably for a generation. The Washington DC establishment in just two short months is going to get “scholonged” by an angry and vengeful Trump, ready to rain executive hellfire on the bureaucrats and institutions that have spent the last nine years fighting him tooth and nail.

All of this could have been prevented. In 2008, Obama swept into power with a crushing electoral college and popular vote majority. He won Iowa, Florida, Ohio, and North Carolina. He even won Indiana. Democrats swept into power in Congress with a 74-seat lead in the House, nearly 59% of seats, and were gifted with a magical 60-seat filibuster-proof supermajority in the Senate.

This was a generational victory, a sign that voters were fed up with politics as usual and the failures of the GOP and the Washington and Wall Street establishment as such. This victory wasn’t just about electing the first Black president, though that was important: The policies and platform at stake appealed deeply to voters.

It is worth remembering what exactly those policies were.

Obama promised to end the war in Iraq, end the Afghanistan war with honor, help the economy by reducing health care costs (prioritizing “Main Street” over Wall Street), and bring about a new era of racial harmony. Moreover, Obama explicitly eschewed radical leftist politics. He explicitly defended traditional marriage. In his DNC nomination speech, he condemned employers who “undercut American wages by hiring illegal workers.”

Can Trump End Ukraine’s ‘Endless War?’ There are lots of parties who want, and lots of incentives for, an end to our 21st-century Verdun. By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2024/11/18/can-trump-end-ukraines-endless-war/

Trump was elected in part on promises to avoid “endless wars” of the sort that cost American blood and treasure in Afghanistan and Iraq but without resulting in strategic advantage or civilized calm.

Yet as a Jacksonian, Trump also restored American deterrence through punitive strikes against ISIS and terrorist thugs like Baghdadi and Soleimani—without being bogged down in costly follow-ups. During the last four administrations, Putin stayed within his borders only during the Trump four years.

But upon entering office, Trump will likely still be faced with something far more challenging as he confronts what has become the greatest European killing field since World War II—the cauldron on the Ukrainian border that has likely already cost 1-1.5 million combined dead, wounded, and missing Ukrainian and Russian soldiers and civilians.

There is no end in sight after three years of escalating violence. But there are increasing worries that strategically logical and morally defensible—but geopolitically dangerous—Ukrainian strikes on the Russian interior will nonetheless escalate and lead to a wider war among the world’s nuclear powers.

Many on the right wish for Trump to immediately cut off all aid to Ukraine for what they feel is an unwinnable war, even if that abrupt cessation would end any leverage with which to force Putin to negotiate.

They claim the war was instigated by a globalist left, serving as a proxy conflict waged to ruin Russia at the cost of Ukrainian soldiers. They see it orchestrated by a now non-democratic Ukrainian government, lacking elections, a free press, or opposition parties, led by an ungracious and corrupt Zelensky cadre that has allied with the American left in an election year.

Is California Turning Purple?

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/11/18/is-california-turning-purple/

Two days after Donald Trump won the election, Calif. Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a special legislative session to “safeguard California values and fundamental rights in the face of an incoming Trump administration.”

But Newsom could have a fight on his hands with Californians who are clearly tired of Newsom’s and his fellow leftists’ “values.”

Almost across the board, California voters rejected leftist ballot initiatives, often by wide margins. “State voters took a hammer to the most progressive propositions,” noted I&I contributor Thomas Buckley.

Examples:

After watching previous minimum wage increases devastate local businesses and do little to improve the welfare of unskilled workers, a ballot initiative to hike the state’s minimum wage to $18 lost by a 51% to 49% margin.
Even after Bidenflation drove up housing costs, voters rejected an initiative that would have let cities and counties impose strict rent control laws. Back in 1995, the state approved the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act, which blocked cities and counties from imposing rent control on certain types of housing or when units become vacant. By a whopping 60%-40% margin, Californians voted to keep that 1995 law in place.
A proposal to lower the threshold for local bond measures from a two-thirds supermajorty to a 55% majority went down in flames, with 55% of Californians voting against it.
By a 69% to 31% margin, voters who’ve watched their cities get ripped apart by crime said “enough,” and approved a tough-on-crime measure that would “increase penalties for certain drug crimes and theft convictions and allow a new class of crime to be called treatment-mandated felony.”

Even in bluer-than-blue Los Angeles, voters overwhelmingly ousted soft-on-crime Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón, replacing him with Nathan Hochman, who got widespread backing from law enforcement. In other local elections, voters in crime-infested Oakland recalled Oakland’s mayor and Alameda County’s district attorney, and San Francisco voters elected a moderate-ish mayor.

Elise Stefanik’s UN debut can’t come soon enough Ruthie Blum

https://www.jns.org/elise-stefaniks-un-debut-cant-come-soon-enough/

Whether the Biden administration is planning a last hurrah for the Jewish state at the United Nations—a lame-duck good riddance, à la Barack Obama, in the form of an abstention in a hostile Security Council vote—remains to be seen. The updated draft of a resolution relating to the war in Gaza and Lebanon is no better, if not worse, than its first anti-Israel version.

No surprise there. The only question is how Washington’s current dubious “ironclad commitment” to its key Mideast ally will stand up to scrutiny where the international vipers’ nest in Midtown Manhattan is concerned.

What’s certain is that President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to replace U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield can’t come soon enough.

To grasp the difference between Thomas-Greenfield and her soon-to-be-successor, Elise Stefanik, one need only compare their statements about Israel and the Iran-backed enemies bent on its annihilation.

Thomas-Greenfield opened her address last week to the UNSC by issuing a harsh rebuke. Not to Hamas, of course. No, instead, she began her Nov. 12 tirade by citing remarks by acting U.N. under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and relief coordinator Joyce Msuya.

 “There is no need to mince words here,” Thomas-Greenfield stated at the outset. “As we heard from our briefers, the situation in northern Gaza is dire. Catastrophic, as we heard from Ms. Msuya. An unconscionable number of Palestinian civilians, many women and children, have been killed.”

She proceeded to invoke a false Integrated Food Security Phase Classification report, according to which “nearly every civilian in Gaza is without adequate food, medication, clean drinking water or housing,” adding, “They simply cannot be left to suffer indefinitely.”

UNRWA Hires Palestinian Terrorists, Glorifies Violence And Terrorism by Bassam Tawil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21121/unrwa-hires-terrorists

According to Israeli intelligence, more than 450 terrorists belonging to terrorist organizations in Gaza, mainly Hamas, are also employed by UNRWA.

“By not firing them, the UN Secretary-General and UNRWA’s Commissioner General are brazenly demonstrating their determination to continue employing members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad even after having been presented with incriminating evidence to this effect. It is time for donor governments to wake up and stop funneling their taxpayers’ money to members of designated terrorist organizations.” – www.idf.il, August 5, 2024

UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini recently told the UN General Assembly that his agency provides tolerant, respectful and anti-extremist education in Gaza. However, IMPACT-se’s new report unveils institutional teaching material taught in five UNRWA schools in Gaza, where Hamas commanders have been exposed masquerading as school principals.

A poem taught to seventh-graders… calls on knights, symbolizing Arab leaders, to liberate the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem “from the fist of unbelief, from Satan’s aides – revenge to the Jews.”

What is disturbing is that the UN chief and other donor countries refuse to see what many Palestinians already see, namely that UNRWA has long been playing a significant role in inciting hatred against Israel and raising another generation of Palestinian children on the glorification of violence and terrorism. It is time for this agency, as well as the entire UN, to be dismantled and removed, or at least, as suggested years ago, to have nations pay only for what they want and to get what they pay for.

It is also time for the Palestinian “refugees” to move on with their lives and stop relying on Western taxpayers’ money.