RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/october-7-coming-to-america/

During the last 20 years I’ve written extensively about two things. One is the dangerous rise of Islam in the West. The other is the ideological destruction of the American academy. The aftermath of the Hamas atrocities of October 7 has brought both of these concerns to the fore. In the wake of the most horrific attack on Jews since the Holocaust, there were massive rallies across the country in sympathy with the terrorist perpetrators, and the participants in these demonstrations belonged largely to two groups: (1) college students and (2) Muslims.

If the jihadist butchery of October 7 was monstrous, the spectacle of huge crowds applauding it was appalling. It shocked many people. It shouldn’t have. Many of us have spent years writing endlessly about the ugliness of Islamic ideology – notably the murderous hatred of Jews that is enshrined in the Koran, taught in the madrassas, and preached in the mosques – only to feel that our words were falling on deaf ears. Similarly, many of us have been writing for a long time about the far-left professors, especially at our so-called elite colleges, who teach their students that America, the West, Christians, Jews, and white people are always the oppressors and aggressors and that people of color, especially Muslims, are always victims. The public displays of solidarity with Hamas are at once a dramatic illustration of both of these phenomena and the strongest argument yet for major action on both of these fronts.

First, something drastic needs to be done about American higher education. The ideological depredation wrought by far-left faculty and administrators at private colleges needs to be addressed by responsible-minded trustees, alumni, and donors. Speaking of donors, something needs to be done about them, as well: as Eli Lake reported on October 25, not a few U.S. colleges have accepted fortunes from Muslim countries and have built whole campuses in those countries – with the syllabi tailored, of course, to local requirements. That repulsive intellectual compromise needs to be quashed. Then there’s the matter of administrative bloat: as the College Fix website noted on October 24, Harvard has over 1.3 administrators per student. Most of these people are superfluous at best and mischief-makers at worst – DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) bureaucrats who strive to protect students from “microaggression” but who shrug indifferently at cries of “kill the Jews.”

As for public universities, responsible state and municipal leaders could do worse than to emulate Florida Governor Ron de Santis, who appointed anti-ideology crusader Christopher Rufo as a trustee at Sarasota’s New College and – in an October 24 order – banned chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine, a student organization that provides support to Hamas, from Sunshine State campuses.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-case-for-foreign-national-deportation/

Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced that he will rescind student visas of foreign nationals in the U.S. and deport them to their home countries if they expressed support for Hamas terrorists’ attack against Israel.

In unequivocal terms, the presidential hopeful made it clear that the United States had no place for terrorist-supporting foreign nationals attending U.S. colleges and universities, as many pro-Palestinian student groups at various institutions across the nation release statements and organize demonstrations endorsing Hamas’ largest attack against Israel in decades.

“You see students demonstrating in our country in favor of Hamas,” DeSantis said. “Remember, some of them are foreigners.”

DeSantis told them he will be “canceling your visa, and I’m sending you home” if he wins the presidency in 2024.

DeSantis’ statement comes against the backdrop of hundreds of pro-Hamas and Pro-Palestinian student rallies across the United States.

After the attack against Israel by Hamas on October 7, Harvard Palestine Solidarity Groups released a statement signed by about 30 student organizations that read, “We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.”

Students for Justice in Palestine chapters and other pro-Palestinian student groups at many other universities, including George Washington University, the University of Virginia, and the University of California, Berkley, also released similar statements on the weekend of Hamas’ attack.

Many other pro-Palestinian student groups at institutions across the U.S. still have their statements posted online and continue to participate in protests celebrating Hamas’ attack.

This is all reminiscent of Britain in 2019. In that year Britain stripped ISIS terrorist Jack Letts (known as Jihad Jack) of his British citizenship. Letts also possessed Canadian citizenship. Since the Islamic State fell in March of 2019, Britain faced the horrific possibility of scores of ISIS terrorists returning to the UK. Letts had travelled to Syria when ISIS declared its “caliphate” in 2014; there he admitted to fighting on the frontline with SIS and offered himself as a suicide bomber. After being wounded, he grew disillusioned with ISIS.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20080/china-encircling-america

What is the Communist Party of China up to?

Xi Jinping, who reveres Mao Zedong, is taking a page from his hero’s “peasant revolution” playbook. Mao in 1949 prevailed over his enemy, Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist government, by “encircling the cities from the countryside.”

Ukraine, North Africa, and Israel, as Beijing sees it, are parts of the “countryside” today. So, what is the “city”?

The main enemy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is the United States of America.

[T]he Party believes it must destroy the U.S. because of what America stands for. An insecure ruling organization in Beijing is worried about the inspirational impact of America’s form of governance and values on the oppressed Chinese people. This means the United States will never have amicable relations with China as long as the Communist Party rules it.

Today… the Communist Party is waging proxy wars against America, such as Russia’s campaign to annex Ukraine…. Splitting off Europe from America, in turn, would be another step in starving the U.S. Similarly, China is buying friends in, among other places, Latin America, the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean as a means of further isolating America.

President Joe Biden is either unwilling or unable to defend the world from malicious Chinese communism. The catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan…. signaled that American policy was in collapse.

China’s leader will continue to attack… especially as Biden pays what are essentially ransoms and thereby provides incentives for further disorder. The ransoms include the unfreezing of $6 billion in connection with a hostage swap with Iran… and the October 18th announcement of “humanitarian assistance” to Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, apparently to free Americans held by Hamas.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20070/intelligence-failures

The failure of the U.S. intelligence community has three components: 1) It has become politically charged and lost focus on its mission protecting Americans, instead engaging in partisan politics. 2) It continues to focus on technological intelligence collection rather than the difficult and risky world of human intelligence collection. 3) It continues to suffer from a lack of creativity in anticipating and understanding the new threats being developed by our enemies.

There is little doubt that the Intelligence Community has become seriously politicized. In 2016-2017, its leaders and the FBI undermined the incoming President Donald Trump by raising the specter of Russian influence over Trump. The disproven Russia hoax would go on to shadow and undermine Trump’s entire time in office.

Despite warnings from the U.S. Intelligence Community, the Biden administration failed to anticipate or plan for the dramatic and quick collapse of Afghanistan’s government when U.S. troops were withdrawn.

A little more than a week prior to the Hamas attack, Biden’s National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, was talking-up successes in the Middle East… “the Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades.”

He could not have been more wrong. Boiling just under the surface was a terrorist attack that would result in more than 1,400 Israelis killed, at least 31 Americans killed, atrocities against Israeli civilians that include beheaded babies and babies burned alive…

The Intelligence Community also shifted some of its focus from international threats to domestic threats — often spurious — while ignoring the real ticking time bomb of 5.6 million migrants flooding onto the United States through the southern border, in addition to at least 1.5 million known “gotaways” and an unknown number of unknown “gotaways.”

The biggest U.S. intelligence failure of all so far, unfortunately, has been strenuously pretending not to know that Iran, Qatar and Turkey are the kingpins behind the current attacks by Hamas on Israel. If Iran, Qatar and Turkey are to be discouraged from continuing their malign actions destabilizing the region, the price they pay needs to be steep. Hamas. Iran, Qatar and Turkey must not be let off the hook. In addition, the US must move its military assets from Al Udeid Airbase in Qatar to the United Arab Emirates as soon as it can.

https://thefederalist.com/2023/10/11/dhs-admits-bidens-border-crisis-is-making-it-easier-for-terrorists-to-enter-america/

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) admitted in a September report that foreign terrorists are exploiting the Biden-manufactured border crisis to illegally enter the United States.

Released last month by the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis, the “Homeland Threat Assessment” for fiscal year 2024 includes an admission by the agency that international terrorists are looking to capitalize on the Biden administration’s open border policies and the resulting influx of illegal immigration across the U.S.-Mexico border to enter the American homeland. Under the section titled, “Border and Immigration Security,” the report specifically noted how “[t]errorists and criminal actors may exploit the elevated flow and increasingly complex security environment to enter the United States.”

The agency further acknowledged “individuals with potential terrorism connections” are actively attempting to enter the U.S. thanks to the ongoing crisis. Months before the 2023 fiscal year ended, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) had already encountered approximately 160 individuals on the Terrorist Screening Data Set (TSDS), or “watchlist” — more than the 100 or so encountered in the entirety of the 2022 fiscal year. According to the report, “Inclusion in the TSDS ranges from known associates of watchlisted individuals, such as family members, to individuals directly engaged in terrorist activity.”

Despite proclaiming support for a “secure” border, President Joe Biden and his administration have routinely dismantled policies that helped stymie the ongoing crisis. In addition to auctioning off border wall construction materials, Biden moved to gut the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy shortly after taking office. That policy required illegal border crossers seeking asylum to stay in the Latin American country until their court hearing.

It’s estimated that nearly 7 million illegal immigrants have been “encountered” at the U.S.-Mexico border since Biden took office, according to the New York Post. And that doesn’t even include the potentially millions of “gotaways” who evaded capture by CBP agents.

Last month’s DHS assessment was issued weeks before Hamas — an Iranian-backed terrorist organization operating out of Gaza — launched a series of unprovoked and barbaric attacks against Israel, killing at least 1,200 people, mostly civilians. The attacks have since prompted concerns that foreign-based terrorist organizations could exploit America’s open border to illegally enter the U.S. and launch similar operations.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/iranian-agent-in-pentagon-counterterrorism-office-accused-of-sabotaging-intel/

Last month I wrote about the revelations involving Ariane Tabatabai, currently the Chief of Staff to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict, who has a security clearance, but who emails show had collaborated with the Iranian regime.

In 2014, a year before Tabatabai began working as a NATO consultant, she joined an initiative by the Iranian Foreign Ministry to mobilize “Iranians who have established affiliations with the leading international think-tanks and academic institutions, mainly in Europe and the US.”

Tabatabai, along with Dina Esfandiary, her co-author on the proposal to have the United States ally with Iran, who is currently a senior Middle East advisor to George Soros’ Crisis Group, allegedly became members of the “core group” of Iran’s influence operation.

Before Tabatabai testified about the Iran Deal in Congress, she allegedly checked in with the head of an Iranian Foreign Ministry think tank. “I am scheduled to go to the Congress to give a talk about the nuclear program. I will bother you in the coming days,” she wrote.

Jennifer Van Laar at Red State reports that sources have said that Tabatabai was sabotaging counterterrorism materials.

Counterterrorism analysts speaking to RedState on condition of anonymity, whose reports would have crossed Tabatabai’s desk, say that for at least the past year their product has been watered down, misquoted, or outright quashed. Tabatabai had the opportunity to shape the intelligence to meet her needs, the analysts say, and they say it’s likely that the overt intel collected during that period went to Iran.

Deeply troubling. Especially as the Biden administration has continued to stand by Tabatabai.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/america-needs-a-defense-buildup-and-fiscal-redirection-debt-military-house-speaker-47d6207c?mod=opinion_featst_pos3

America’s fiscal habits will be changing. In two of the three theaters of World War II, war has reappeared, in Europe and the Middle East. If Russia and Iran have not yet coalesced into a full military partnership, give them time.

In the Pacific, China threatens Taiwan with a large military buildup and near-daily provocations. To the extent China is supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine with more than words, the two are already cooperating more closely than Germany and Japan did in World War II.

In its economy of effort, this column has mostly sat out the inflation discussion, except to emphasize how the current puzzle differs from the 1970s. Then it was poorly conceived regulatory and tax systems, which Carter-Reagan reforms addressed with more suavity than was apparent at the time. Today’s vulnerability is different: the government’s gross overreliance on debt financing to give voters stuff without taxes to pay for it. Distorted, in ways many of us don’t recognize anymore, is our every choice of whether to work, how much to save, how much of our incomes to allocate to healthcare or homeownership or a college degree of questionable value in the marketplace.

All this will be changing in ways that will likely sneak up on us. When Jimmy Carter was president during the last big inflation, government debt was 34% of GDP. Now it’s 122% not counting $78 trillion in unfunded Social Security and Medicare obligations. In two years, the average interest rate on the U.S. debt has almost doubled, to 2.97%. Interest payments have more than doubled, to $985 billion, exceeding the defense budget.

This is just the beginning, short of a growth miracle. The truncated duration of our outstanding debt plus 10-year rates over 4.5% mean interest expense will soon outstrip $1.4 trillion in annual Social Security spending. So large is the wave of expected borrowing that Wall Street this week is signaling doubts about the global public’s willingness to fund it.

On top of this comes a need for a big investment in American rearmament.

Now you know why, between his drunken threats of nuclear war, Putin understudy Dmitry Medvedev sprinkles his social-media posts with sardonic comments about Western fiscal management. Phillips O’Brien, the military historian and Ukraine war student from the University of St. Andrews, puts it aptly in his Substack: “The return of conventional war is perhaps the single most important strategic development of this era, and it’s one that we must try to understand, prepare for (and ultimately try and prevent).”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-many-voices-of-tehran-in-washington-dc/

Important reporting by Iran International TV and former Wall Street Journal reporter Jay Solomon, has contributed substantial new facts to a long-brewing controversy over Iranian-regime agents of influence in the United States.

These agents were deeply engaged in negotiating the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal, aka the JCPOA, and more recently, in the Biden administration effort to revive the deal as an “understanding” that would not be submitted to a hostile Congress.

John Kerry made three separate last minute concessions to the Iranian regime in 2015 after he thought he had a deal. And the regime just happened to know that Kerry would cave on each one, so they pressed for more.

It was obvious to many of us who followed the negotiations as they were taking place that the nuclear deal could have been “written in Tehran,” as I pointed out in a column that appeared the day the deal was finalized.

Now it would appear, from the newly-released emails, that “written in Tehran” was not hyperbole. It was the literal truth.

And I was not the only one to smell a rat at the time. Former IAEA nuclear inspector David Albright, who heads the Institute for Science and International Security and tracks the Iranian nuclear program, recalled the lobbying of the pro-regime agents as well in a recent tweet.

“People often forget that during these negotiations, many of these folks were actively opposing US positions and pushing for Iranian ones. They all shifted to zealous supporters after the deal was finalized, but I remember very well what several were doing during the negotiations to try weaken US positions and our need at my Institute to fend them off privately and publicly, sometimes in informal coordination with US negotiators.

For years, pro-freedom Iranians have excoriated the role of Swedish-Iranian Trita Parsi and his National Iranian American Council, NIAC, calling them the “Iran Lobby” in Washington, DC.