RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/chinas-campaign-to-infiltrate-america-is-worse-than-you-thought/

On the menu today: Tear your eyes away from campaign coverage for a few moments and contemplate a pair of bombshells regarding the Chinese government’s far-reaching efforts to influence U.S. policy and suppress critics of the regime — violently, on U.S. soil. First, the Washington Post unveils a shocking report, showcasing how agents of the regime in Beijing attempted to curb-stomp pro-democracy activists during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco last November. Then, federal prosecutors announced charges against Linda Sun, the former deputy chief of staff to Kathy Hochul, for being an agent of the Chinese government in exchange for “millions of dollars in bribes.”

You know whom I want to win the 2024 elections? American elected officials who work for Americans, not Xi Jinping. Apparently, they’re rarer than you would expect.

Who Runs the Streets of San Francisco? Apparently, the Chinese Government Does

It will not surprise you that I feel more warm and fuzzy toward the Washington Post than the typical conservative.

When the mainstream media does good and important journalism, I think conservatives ought to applaud and encourage more of it, and yesterday, the Post unveiled a doozy, showcasing the scale and range of violence during Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s visit to San Francisco for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in November — violence that appears to have been directed and facilitated by agents of the Chinese government, targeting democracy activists and critics of the regime.

https://tomklingenstein.com/how-the-department-of-defense-went-woke/

The transformation of the United States Armed Forces over the last century has been as radical, as sudden, and as thoroughgoing as virtually any experienced by a military body in all of recorded history. Over the course of two world wars, the demands of combat at unprecedented scale sped along the integration of both racial minorities — especially black Americans — and women across every branch of the Armed Forces. 

It took less than a generation, however, for this integration (and the principles of color-blindness that emerged from it) to be overtaken by a new social imperative: proportional representation, enforced by group quotas and later the widespread framework of “DEI.” No longer would it be enough for the military to select the best of the best, regardless of race or other innate factors. Under the new regime, the Armed Forces became a representative institution, one whose political/racial composition — modeled on that of the nation at large — took priority over its warfighting capabilities.

This pivot was accomplished largely by successive commanders-in-chief, starting with Harry Truman and carrying on through the Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Obama, and Biden administrations. The transformation, however, cannot be blamed entirely on progressive presidents. Civil Rights-era Supreme Court decisions, racial conditions on funding imposed by Congress, initiative by the military bureaucracy, interference by outside activist groups — all these and more were essential to turning the merit-based force that won two world wars into an identity-centric institution that has not seen a major victory since 1991.

Today, the drive for proportional representation colors every action of the military establishment. Recruiting strategies are crafted with racial targets front of mind, and the entire DoD approach to personnel now revolves around identity groups. Each branch now works actively to increase the representation of women and minorities in the most critical roles, including aviation, combat operations, and the highest echelons of command. This identity-based decision-making is mutually exclusive with the singular insistence on merit that undergirds any strong military force.

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.”

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. 

The Biden-Harris administration has not lifted a finger against Iran for a reported 200 attacks on US troops in the Middle East, which include firing on US Navy ships, closing the Suez Canal, launching a Hamas-Hezbollah-Houthi War against Israel, not to mention the atrocities Iran’s regime commits every day against its own people. By ignoring sanctions against Iran and presenting no deterrence, the administration has, in fact, set up Iran to do all of that.

The US could probably close down Iran’s election-interference activities, but [m]ore to the point, the administration has the same goal as the Iranian regime: it does not want Trump elected, either.

These Iranian efforts include fraudulent websites posing as news sites, and the impersonation of social and political activist groups “to stoke chaos, undermine trust in authorities, and sow doubt about election integrity.” — Microsoft Threat Analysis Center, August 9, 2024

[T]here can be no doubt that a Trump presidency poses a genuine threat to Iran. Meanwhile, the lavish gifts, accommodations and appeasement that the Biden administration continues to shower upon the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism, ensures the Islamic regime’s survival.

The Kamala Harris campaign has previously said it had no indication it was hacked. Of course, why would Iran seek to harm Harris’s campaign in any way, when her presidency would guarantee the continuation of appeasement and accommodation that has been the norm for the Democratic party ever since Barack Hussein Obama was president?

The million-dollar question is what the Biden-Harris administration is doing to deter, discourage and hold accountable Iran’s Islamist regime for seeking to influence, destabilize, and hack the US elections? The answer appears to be: nothing

The Biden-Harris administration itself, after all, has been infiltrated by Iranian agents, as an investigation by Semafor showed last fall, with at least three Iranian agents working directly under U.S. Special Representative for Iran Rob Malley.

One of the agents, Ariane Tabatabai…. has been allowed to keep not only her job at the Pentagon, but her security clearance as well.

In the end, the Biden-Harris administration itself is the most important shill for Iran…. Why would the Biden-Harris administration want to deter Iran from anything?

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/08/another_u_s_military_base_under_attack_lackland_air_force_base_returns_fire_on_armed_group_in_vehicle.html

You’d think this might be bigger news, with reporters scruffing around for more information about it, pressuring public officials:

According to the Associated Press, which has the most complete account:

U.S. Air Force security guards exchanged gunfire with someone who twice opened fire on an entrance to Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland early Saturday, according to a spokesperson for the base.

“It was an off-base shooting from a passing vehicle that fired shots towards the gate, prompting our security forces to respond,” base spokesperson Stefanie Antosh said in a statement. “There is no threat to the installation. We had no injuries, no fatalities.”

Antosh said the shooting was being investigated by San Antonio police, who said in a release that the first shooting occurred about 2:15 a.m.

“The security personnel stated they heard several shots fired as well as the fired rounds go past them,” Sgt. Washington Moscoso said in the release. “After this incident, the security personnel added more armed guards as a precaution.”

A vehicle later stopped near the same entrance shortly after 4:30 a.m., Moscoso said.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20868/organize-for-revolution

Iran has made no secret of the immense importance it places on the US protests – as a way to export its Islamic Revolution. They have been making it clear that the regime sees the protesters at US campuses as an Iranian fifth column in America to be used in the future….

According to the analysts, “60 percent of Pro-Palestine campus protestors were not authentic online users….” — XPOZ analyst, iranintel.com, August 2, 2024.

At UCLA, “Those who occupied encampments on the university’s property disallowed Jews from passing through the quad unless they would disavow Israel and, by extension, their Jewish faith. UCLA’s position had been that the encampments preventing Jewish students from accessing certain areas of campus were not its responsibility.” — August 14, 2024 according to National Review.

Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines was not particularly forthcoming about exactly where and how Iran is peddling its influence on US campuses. Haines’s only suggestion was to warn Americans to be “more vigilant”. How does one go about being “more vigilant” if one is not given a clue what to be vigilant about?

Why are Haines and Kirby deliberately misleading the public about the nature of these protests, which are anything but organic?

Protests were apparently planned well in advance of October 7. One of the lead organizers of the campus protests, the Hamas-affiliated Students for Justice in Palestine had a toolkit ready for a “Day of Resistance” just days after the massacre. While Haines and Kirby claim that the protests are “organic” and “in good faith,” Hamas, an Iranian proxy, had been organizing protests on US campuses.

Other foreign powers are also involved in stirring up the pro-Hamas protests: China is connected by means of an organization named Code Pink….

Significantly, the People’s Forum was behind the three-day conference in Detroit, “People’s Conference for Palestine.” At the conference, the People’s Forum’s executive director Manolo De Los Santos — to great applause — called for the complete destruction of the United States….

According to NGO Monitor, Answer Coalition, along with a multitude of pro-Hamas organizations, including CODEPINK, Palestinian Feminist Collective, Students for Justice in Palestine Chicago, American Muslims for Palestine Chicago, National Lawyers Guild -Task Force on the Americas/San Francisco Bay Area chapter, ANSWER Coalition – Chicago, Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, Jewish Voice for Peace Chicago, U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN), and National Students for Justice in Palestine are planning to “March on the DNC” on August 19-22, when the Democratic Party is scheduled to host its convention in Chicago.

“Pro-Palestinian protesters are backed by a surprising source: Biden’s biggest donors,” Politico revealed in May. “The donors include some of the biggest names in Democratic circles: Soros, Rockefeller and Pritzker…”

Finally, the Biden-Harris administration itself, and therefore taxpayer money, is funding the protests, through the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)… “a $50 million grant was awarded from the EPA through the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) to ‘Climate Justice Alliance,’ a group that engages in pro-Hamas, anti-Israel, and anti-Semitic activities.” — US Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, May 21, 2024.

US officials shamefully use disinformation to confuse the American public.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/sleep-walking-into-ww3/

Donald Trump has warned several times over the past few weeks that we are closer to World War III today than at any time since the end of the Second World War.

It’s a theme he’s been sounding off and on for the past two years, but lately he’s making the threats to our security caused by Biden-Harris policies the central theme of his events.

“I think our country right now is in the most dangerous position it’s ever been in from an economic standpoint, from a safety standpoint,” the former president warned at a press conference recently at Mar-a-Lago. “Both gangs on the street and frankly gangs outside of our country in the form of other countries that are frankly very powerful.”

The problem comes down to leadership, the former president said. The Biden-Harris team have “no clue” about American power or world affairs.

Democrats just laughed at the former president, still drunk with the euphoria of having convinced Old Joe to bow out of the presidential race.

But the challenges to America’s security are very real, and it’s not just Donald Trump who is warning about them.

The congressionally-mandated Commission on the National Defense Strategy just issued a 114-page report that buttresses Trump’s concerns for the future of our nation.