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Ruth King

The US is investigating an unauthorized release of classified documents on Israel’s attack plans

https://www.aol.com/us-investigating-unauthorized-release-classified-001118308.html

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States is investigating an unauthorized release of classified documents that assess Israel’s plans to attack Iran, three U.S. officials told The Associated Press. A fourth U.S. official said the documents appear to be legitimate.

The documents are attributed to the U.S. Geospatial Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency, and note that Israel was still moving military assets in place to conduct a military strike in response to Iran’s blistering ballistic missile attack on Oct. 1. They were sharable within the “Five Eyes,” which are the U.S., Great Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.

The documents, which are marked top secret, were posted to the Telegram messaging app and first reported by CNN and Axios. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

The investigation is also examining how the documents were obtained — including whether it was an intentional leak by a member of the U.S. intelligence community or obtained by another method, like a hack — and whether any other intelligence information was compromised, one of the officials said. As part of that investigation, officials are working to determine who had access to the documents before they were posted, the official said.

Biden-Harris Admin Spied on Israel to Learn Iran Attack Plans, Leaked Them to Iran Treason. by Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/biden-harris-admin-spied-on-israel-to-learn-iran-attack-plans-leaked-them-to-iran/

The media has been filled with anonymous ‘leaks’ and ‘quotes’ from Biden-Harris administration officials regarding Israel’s attack plans on Iran. It was all too obvious that these leaks were deliberate and orchestrated.

The leaks now appear to have escalated to directly passing material on to Iran.

Senior American officials voiced serious concern on Saturday following the leak of two US intelligence documents allegedly outlining Israel’s preparations for a potential strike on Iran. These documents were published by a Telegram account linked to Iran.

While both the US Department of Defense and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment on the leaked documents, they did not deny their authenticity.

The leak occurred on Friday when the Middle East Spectator Telegram channel claimed it had received documents about Israel’s strike preparations from a source within the US intelligence community.

Is that an impossible scenario?

Rob Malley, Biden’s Iran envoy, is under FBI investigation for mishandling classified documents. Much of the State Department covered for him, lying to Congress and foreign officials.

And then there’s Ariane Tabatabai, the Chief of Staff to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations, an Iranian immigrant who was collaborating with the Iranian Foreign Ministry back in 2014 and ran her congressional testimony past Iran.

The Biden-Harris Administration Owes Israel’s Netanyahu An Apology by Bassam Tawil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21035/biden-harris-owe-netanyahu-apology

“Again and again we see that Israel absolutely made the right call in not heeding the Biden administration and the rest of the world’s insistence that the IDF not invade Rafah.” — Lahav Harkov, Israeli journalist, X, October 17, 2024.

“Pretty rich after a year of undermining Netanyahu, saying he MUST go to a ceasefire, MUST deescalate, trying to stop Israel from going into Rafah WHERE SINWAR WAS KILLED, and Kamala boycotting his joint address to Congress – now Biden & Harris have the nerve to congratulate him for setting the path to peace. I’m sure the phone call sounds something like ‘You were right Bibi [Netanyahu], we apologize,'” — US Rep. Mike Waltz, X, October 18, 2024

Israel’s killing Sinwar and destroying Hamas’s military infrastructure in Rafah sadly show how steadfastly the Biden-Harris administration was trying to prevent Israel from achieving victory over the Iran-backed Islamist murderers and rapists responsible for the deadliest attack against Jews since the Holocaust.

Netanyahu deserves credit for ignoring the warnings and threats by Biden and his senior officials. Thanks to Netanyahu, Hamas has been significantly debilitated and Sinwar has been eliminated, making the Middle East a safer place. It now remains to be seen whether the Biden-Harris administration will reconsider its failed foreign policies and apologize to the Israeli prime minister for attempting to undermine his efforts to combat terrorism and bring more security and stability not only to Israel, but the entire Middle East as well.
Earlier this year, the Biden-Harris administration spent weeks warning Israel not to enter the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, where many of the leaders of the Iran-backed Palestinian terrorist group Hamas were believed to be hiding. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had prepared to enter the city as part of a counterterrorism offensive to destroy Hamas’s military capabilities and rescue some of the Israeli hostages kidnapped by the terrorist group on October 7, 2023.

IDF still hasn’t internalized the tunnel threat, experts say David Isaac

https://www.jns.org/idf-still-hasnt-internalized-the-tunnel-threat-experts-say/

Tunnels have proven to be a critical threat to the Jewish state. While the Israel Defense Forces certainly hasn’t ignored them, it has been slow to grasp their strategic significance.

Some argue that it still hasn’t.

“I still don’t see the necessary change in the IDF’s worldview that would allow us to better deal with this phenomenon of underground warfare,” Yehuda Kfir, a civil engineer and researcher of subterranean warfare, told JNS.

Professor Joel Roskin, a geomorphologist at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, has reached the same conclusion.

Perhaps the best supporting example is that when the IDF built its defensive “smart wall” (completed in 2021) between Israel and the Gaza Strip, it continued to let Hamas build all the underground infrastructure it pleased as long as it stayed on its side of the fence.

The resulting underground city in Gaza, from which Hamas could command and control its forces, send them out to attack and recall them to shelter in place, has served to prolong the war and prevent Israel from saving the remaining hostages.

It allowed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar to elude Israeli forces for more than a year. Sinwar himself (along with 1,026 others) was released from Israeli prison in 2011 in exchange for IDF soldier Gilad Shalit—who had been kidnapped by terrorists who emerged from a tunnel.

Israel Didn’t Listen To Biden/Harris – Good! Shoshana Bryen

https://dailycaller.com/2024/10/18/opinion-israel-wisely-not-listen-biden-harris-shoshana-bryen/

The elimination of Yahya Sinwar improved the already-joyful Sukkot holiday for millions of Israelis and Jews and their supporters around the world. In all likelihood, it will also irritate President Joe Biden, as the Hamas leader was killed in Rafah, where he demanded Israel not enter under threat of an arms embargo and a warning by Vice President Kamala Harris that it was impossible.

Israel, wisely, didn’t listen.

It will also irritate Qatar, a regional partner of both Iran and the United States. Qatar has been hosting Hamas leadership in very swanky quarters in Doha while insisting that Sinwar, hiding under the ravaged streets of Gaza, held the key to a hostage release. If he ever did, he no longer does.

And Iran will be shaken by one more setback in its pursuit of victory in a broad religious war against Israel and the United States and their allies.

How did we get here? A reminder is useful: The Hamas orgy of rape, torture, mutilation and murder was accompanied by the transport of 241 people from Israel to the Gaza Strip — most living, some already dead. According to the International Humanitarian Law Database, hostage-taking is a war crime.

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) entered Gaza with guns blazing — destroying vast tunnel networks and military facilities that Hamas had built under the civilian population of Gaza City (also defined as a war crime under IHL). One of the announced aims of the IDF entry was the return of the hostages.

The U.S. was, apparently, unhappy with the intensity of military operations. In early November, Secretary of State Antony Blinken suggested that Israel use “smaller bombs,” try “targeted assassinations,” and offer Hamas a “humanitarian pause.” Israel declined the first two on military grounds and said the third was only possible after the hostages were released.

Interest Payments Top Defense Spending For First Time In History — Thank You Kamala

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/10/19/interest-payments-top-defense-spending-for-first-time-in-history-thank-you-kamala/

SUNNY HOSTIN: Would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?

KAMALA HARRIS: There is not a thing that comes to mind in terms of — and I’ve been a part of most of the decisions that have had impact.

On Friday, the Treasury Department released a report showing the kind of impact Harris is talking about. If nothing else does, it should cost her the election.

The latest monthly Treasury report shows spending and revenues for the full fiscal year 2024, which ended in September.

Among the terrible results: The federal deficit topped $1.8 trillion in 2024 — the third highest in history and eclipsed only by the two COVID-19 panic spending years.

That’s not for lack of revenues, which were up by nearly half a trillion dollars this year. Spending under Biden-Harris this fiscal year climbed more than $617 billion – a 10% increase.

But the real shocker is the explosive growth in interest payments on the national debt.

These payments hit $882 billion in FY 2024, the Treasury report says. That’s a 35% jump from last year.

And it’s $8 billion more than we spent on National Defense.

The Challenges of Utopian Thought in a Complex World By Allen Gindler

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/10/the_challenges_of_utopian_thought_in_a_complex_world.html

The phenomenon of children inventing imaginary friends is a well-documented and common occurrence in early childhood development. These imaginary companions are often endowed with idealized features, representing perfection in both character and behavior, and serve as companions in a fantasy world. However, as children grow and begin to form relationships with real peers, this phase of imaginary play typically fades.

In contrast to children, adults do not fabricate imaginary friends, but they do engage in the construction of grand ideals on a much larger scale. Rather than ideal companions, adults often imagine ideal societies — utopias in which human existence is perfected, and harmony with nature and fellow human beings is absolute. These utopian visions have historically shaped political and social ideologies. For instance, Karl Marx, while critiquing the utopian socialists for their collectivist fantasies, proposed a “scientific” theory for the construction of a communist society. In Marx’s vision, at the highest stage of communism, society would be free of class distinctions, inequality, and the state itself. Private property, conflicts, wars, and even the economic systems of commodity-money relations would cease to exist, and work would be driven by the common good, with individuals receiving according to their needs.

However, this utopian vision was not without its stipulations. To achieve such an ideal society, Marx advocated for the world dictatorship of the proletariat, a transitional phase in which the working class would mold the unconscious masses into a new kind of human being — one so ideal that it is reminiscent of Plato’s conception of ideal forms.

The new human being in Marx’s utopia would embody an ideal, perfect in nature, harmony, and cooperation. Yet, history has shown that those who resisted this transformation were quickly “crossed off the lists,” metaphorically and often literally, as the march toward communism pressed on. The tragic consequences of this pursuit were felt most acutely in the Soviet Union, where ordinary citizens, caught in the throes of communist ideology, cynically referred to their political and ideological leaders as “Kremlin dreamers.”

Michigan Voter Rolls Claim 8.4M Voters, When There Are Less Than 8M Eligible Residents By Eric Lendrum

https://amgreatness.com/2024/10/18/michigan-voter-rolls-claim-8-4m-voters-when-there-are-less-than-8m-eligible-residents/

The voter rolls in Michigan claim that there are 8.4 million people registered to vote in the crucial swing state, even though the state’s total population is almost half a million less than that.

According to the Daily Wire, the state of Michigan had previously been sued by the Republican National Committee (RNC) over the extremely inflated voter rolls, and other concerns regarding election integrity. But Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D-Mich.) dismissed such concerns in a statement on Wednesday, claiming with no evidence that these lawsuits “lay the groundwork to overturn the results of the election if they don’t like them.”

“The RNC and its members are concerned that Defendants’ failure to comply with the NVRA’s voter-list maintenance obligations undermines the integrity of elections by increasing the opportunity for ineligible voters or voters intent on fraud to cast ballots,” the RNC’s lawsuit states.

A spokeswoman for Benson’s office, Angela Benander, even admitted that there are at least 606,800 inactive voters currently on the rolls, but they will not be purged until 2027. Voters who become ineligible include those who have moved to another state, those who have mail returned from their address as “undeliverable,” and voters who do not vote in two or more consecutive federal elections.

In total, 78 of Michigan’s 83 counties appear to have more registered voters than residents of voting age. The largest county in the state, Wayne County – where the city of Detroit is located – has only 1.3 million residents of voting age, but 1.4 million registered voters, according to data from the U.S. Census. Another example is Genessee County, with 351,000 registered voters but less than 300,000 residents.

2024 Election Showdown: Harris’s America vs. Trump’s Comeback Were Kamala Harris elected, the “fundamental transformation of the United States of America” into a one-party socialist redoubt would be complete. By Roger Kimball

https://amgreatness.com/2024/10/20/2024-election-showdown-harriss-america-vs-trumps-comeback/

A couple of days ago, The American Mind published a scary tale in which I pondered the question: what would America be like in the (admittedly unlikely) event that Kamala Harris should win the 2024 presidential election?

The brief answer: it wouldn’t be pretty.

Although Harris has recently been pretending that she is in favor of border security (just as Donald Trump is), fracking (just as Donald Trump is), and law and order (ditto), she would quickly revert to form. The border would remain open and America’s oil, gas, and coal would remain in the ground. Who knows what would happen to Trump’s idea, also adopted by Harris, of exempting tips from federal income tax? We do know, however, that Harris would continue the Biden-Harris assault on free speech, weaponizing the DOJ against critics of her administration.

Assuming the Dems got control of the Senate, Harris would pack the Supreme Court, reinstituting the left-wing bias that had prevailed throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Donald Trump and his close supporters would finally be neutralized, bankrupted, and jailed for life. The federal debt would continue to skyrocket, as would taxes and anything like economic innovation would be stamped out by regulatory zeal masquerading as environmental sensitivity. The left-wing sacrament of unrestricted abortion would be nationalized, nominally by the readoption of Roe v. Wade but in fact by the sanctification of infanticide. The discriminatory culture of ESG and DEI would be further institutionalized, thus undermining any support for meritocracy or such traditional values as colorblind justice.

In short, though there would still be a place called the United States of America, the polity and the political values that existed under that name for nearly 250 years would have vanished, absorbed by the statist, freedom-tarnishing energies of an unaccountable administrative state. The masks would be dropped, the euphemisms retired. The basic hatred of what the United States has been would come to the fore. Harris gave us a little taste of what to expect in her remarks on Columbus Day (a holiday she wants to rebaptize as “Indigenous Peoples’ Day”): “European explorers,” she said, “ushered in a wave of devastation, violence, stealing land, and widespread disease.” Were she elected, the “fundamental transformation of the United States of America” into a one-party socialist redoubt would be complete.

As I say, I regaled readers with that horror story in my essay for The American Mind. Here I would like to offer a few thoughts on the alternative story: What if Donald Trump wins the election? What then?

Trump: Netanyahu Is Winning by Doing the Opposite of What Biden, Harris Say

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/10/19/trump-netanyahu-winning-by-doing-the-opposite-of-what-biden-harris-say/

Former President Donald Trump told a rally in Pennsylvania Saturday that Israel was succeeding in its war because Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did the opposite of what President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris had told him.

As Breitbart News has noted, Netanyahu had managed to destroy most of Hamas, kill Hezbollah’s leaders, and — in recent days — eliminate Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, largely by defying Biden and Harris.

Trump picked up on that point at a rally in Latrobe, east of Pittsburgh:

This election is a choice between whether we will have a[n] incredible four more years of failure — it’s such a horrible four years. We had a horrible think of that. Everything they touch turns to [Audience: “Shit!”]. Everything. Inflation, Afghanistan. How about Afghanistan — most embarrassing moment in the history of — everything they’ve touched. Even now. He’s telling Israel everything he said to Israel was exactly the opposite. He’s the greatest — I will say this about Biden. He’s the single greatest expert on foreign policy in history. You know what that means? If you did the exact opposite of what he suggested every single time, you’d go down as the greatest foreign policy president in history. If you did the exact opposite — everything is a failure. And he’s telling Bibi Netanyahu, don’t do this, don’t do that, don’t do this — all our great congressmen are there — and don’t do any of these things. And Bibi didn’t listen to him and I tell you what, they’re in a much stronger position now than they were three months ago. That’s for sure. Nobody’s ever seen anything like that like this happened. And Bibi called me today, and he said it’s incredible what’s happened. They said it’s pretty incredible, but he wouldn’t listen to Biden because if he did, they wouldn’t be in this position. And she’s worse than him. She’s not as smart as him. And I’m not saying he’s the smartest. I’m not saying he’s the smartest, but she’s not as smart as him.

The Times of Israel reported that Netanyahu and Trump spoke after an Iranian-backed assassination attempt in which a Hezbollah drone targeted Netanyahu’s home. Neither Biden and Harris called Netanyahu after the event.