ELECTIONS, NATIONAL SECURITY AND DEFENSE Comments turned off

China Casting the Decisive Vote in U.S. Election by Gordon G. Chang

Posted By on September 11th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20930/china-casting-the-decisive-vote-in-us-election

[W]hat about similar efforts of the far larger People’s Republic of China?

Attorney General Merrick Garland mentioned China in passing in remarks on the 4th—he promised to be “relentlessly aggressive” against foreign powers interfering in American elections and undermining democracy—but there were no indictments or other actions by his department, Treasury, or State against the Chinese regime for election-interference offenses.

It is clear that China, at this moment, is doing the same things as Russia, only on a larger scale.

“China’s trolls are conducting one of the world’s largest covert online influence operations. Its attack element is the group called ‘Spamouflage,’ and it is impersonating U.S. voters to denigrate U.S. politicians and push divisive messages ahead of the November 5 election.” — Kerry Gershaneck, former U.S. counterintelligence official, to Gatestone, September, 2024

The operation, reported Jack Stubbs, Graphika’s chief intelligence officer, was attempting “to portray the U.S. as this declining global power with weak political leadership and a failing system of governance.” The effort was comprehensive. As Stubbs said, this operation was run by “Chinese state-linked actors.”

This election cycle, Spamouflague achieved its greatest success on TikTok. That is probably not a coincidence as the Wall Street Journal “found TikTok pushing thousands of videos with political lies and hyperbole to its users.”

So, what are federal authorities doing about China now? Said Canfield: “Nothing, zero, zilch, nada.”

The Justice Department on September 4 announced it was seizing 32 internet domains “used in Russian government-directed foreign malign influence campaigns colloquially referred to as ‘Doppelganger.'” DOJ also announced criminal charges against two Russian media executives.

NATIONAL SECURITY AND DEFENSE Comments turned off

Another 9/11 Anniversary, and We Have Still Learned Nothing Willful ignorance about our enemies. John Steinreich

Posted By on September 11th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/another-9-11-anniversary-and-we-have-still-learned-nothing/

In the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks which turned the World Trade Center into a hellscape, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, where the Taliban government had protected the 9/11 mastermind, Saudi cleric Osama Bin Laden. Two years later, we invaded Iraq at least partly on the premise that Saddam Hussein was connected to Bin Laden.

Saddam was deposed and captured quickly enough, being executed in 2006. Bin Laden survived in hiding until Navy SEALs killed him in May 2011. In December of that year, the U.S. withdrew from Iraq. The U.S. military stayed in Afghanistan until a debacle of a withdrawal in August 2021.  As of this writing 30 detainees are still in Guantanamo Bay on 9/11-related charges.

The Watson Institute reported that the Afghanistan war took 70,000 civilian lives and that between 186,000 and 316,000 civilians were killed in Iraq.  Over 7,000 Americans died in these two conflicts. Harvard University estimates that the American taxpayer paid between $4 and $6 trillion for our Afghanistan and Iraq ventures. With such an astronomical price in blood and treasure for 9/11 and its aftermath, we need to ask some questions as we reach another anniversary of that evil day.

Do we truly understand why 9/11 happened?

Have we assessed our response to determine if it has been effective?

Did the pain of 9/11 cause us to increase our determination to cherish and protect our civilization all the more from hostile enemies?

Forgive my cynicism, but the answer to these questions is no, no, and no.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Trump Debates ABC News A debate with an establishment, not with a candidate. by Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on September 11th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/debate/

What was supposed to be a presidential debate between former President Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris hosted by ABC News, instead became a debate between the former president, his current challenger, and ABC’s two moderators: David Muir and Linsey Davis.

Even as Kamala Harris lied about her positions on fracking, gun control, and Israel, Muir and Davis repeatedly jumped in to argue with Trump under the guise of ‘fact-checking’ him.

The 3-on-1 debate format may very well mark the end of mainstream media presidential debates. It also represented a new low in not just media bias, but election interference.

The media marks each year by giving the public new reasons to distrust it, and ABC News, Muir, and Davis were clearly so insecure about the performance of their candidate that they repeatedly felt called on to argue with Trump instead of letting Kamala rebut him.

ABC News, Muir, and Davis also had no trust in the voters to decide for themselves. 

And so what was supposed to be a debate between two candidates instead became a debate between the establishment and an insurgent. Paradoxically this cut against efforts by the Kamala campaign to brand her an “underdog: and an insurgent candidate swimming upstream.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Trump debate performance panned as well-prepped Harris gets help from ABC moderators: ‘3 on 1’ By Steven Nelson and Diana Glebova

Posted By on September 11th, 2024

https://nypost.com/2024/09/11/us-news/trump-debate-performance-panned-as-well-prepped-harris-gets-help-from-abc-moderators-three-on-one/

PHILADELPHIA — Former President Donald Trump repeatedly found himself on the back foot Tuesday night during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris — as Republicans seethed over repeated fact-checks of the GOP candidate and a noticeably lighter touch for the Democrat’s own disputed statements.

Harris, 59, arrived well-prepared to rattle Trump by claiming that military leaders had told her that the Republican nominee and 45th president was a “disgrace,” that world leaders were “laughing” at him and even asserting that “people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom” after he was “fired by 81 million people” in 2020.

Trump, 78, found himself having to answer not only Harris’ repeated and pointed attacks on both his pride and policy, but also a pair of moderators who quibbled with some of his statements despite what his supporters viewed as a lack of even-handedness.

When Trump argued that crime in the US is increasing because of migrants allowed into the country on Harris’ watch, “World News Tonight” anchor David Muir interjected: “President Trump, as you know, the FBI says overall violent crime is actually coming down.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

JIHAD IN AFRICA-A NEW SERIES BY CHARLES JACOBS AND UZAY BULUT

Posted By on September 11th, 2024

https://www.jns.org/jihadists-massacre-hundreds-in-burkina-faso/

Jihadists massacre hundreds in Burkina Faso
More than 1,000 churches, public Christian properties, houses, shops and businesses were attacked, damaged, bombed, looted, destroyed, burned down, closed or confiscated for faith-related reasons in 2023.

Oct. 7-like attacks happen almost daily across Africa. In at least nine countries, armed jihadists, following what they believe to be the precepts of Islamist theology, storm villages, and torture and murder innocent Africans. Boko Haram in Nigeria, al-Shabaab in Somalia and the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan are Hamas by different names.

Like the Israelis, Africans have their homes and schools burned. Churches are a prime target. Women and girls are kidnapped and enslaved as concubines, “wives” of warriors, or merchandise to ransom or sell—all to the screams of “Allahu Akbar!”

Not all the victims are Christians; moderate Muslims and practitioners of tribal faiths are also attacked. This has resulted in the displacement of millions of people who have lost their homes and livelihoods. Yet this is generally ignored by the Western “human rights” establishment.

To break the silence, we have formed the African-Jewish Alliance: to recruit decent people for the tasks of liberating the slaves and protecting the innocent. The topic will be discussed in a series of pieces.

Jihad continues to ravage Africa.

At least 500 people in the central part of Burkina Faso were killed on Aug. 27 when jihadists opened fire on civilians who were digging defensive trenches. Hundreds of those wounded were transported to healthcare facilities.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Kamala Harris won the debate — and it wasn’t close The vice president was controlled and effective where Trump was angry, defensive and rambling Charles Lipson

Posted By on September 11th, 2024

https://thespectator.com/politics/kamala-harris-won-debate-philadelphia-2024/

If Kamala Harris is elected president — and that’s a big “if” since the race is still tight — she won it on the debate stage in Philadelphia Tuesday night. True, her answers were often vague, but they were also inspirational and forward-looking. She avoided the “word salads” that have so often marred her (rare) comments without a teleprompter. She was clear and articulate throughout. 

Harris showed the skill of a professional politician as she avoided being pinned down on her most extreme policy pronouncements from 2019-2020, often denying she ever made them. Trump could have pressed her on those but seldom did. 

Harris effectively stressed her winning position on “women’s right to choose” and damned Trump for his position. (She misstated his views on in-vitro fertilization, but he rebutted her on that.) She also underscored her support for Obamacare, a smart position nationally, and tied it to John McCain’s vote, a smart position in the swing-state of Arizona. 

Most important of all, Harris displayed the control, sureness and coherence voters demand of their president and commander-in-chief. Demonstrating her ability to occupy the Oval Office was job number one in the debate — and Kamala Harris accomplished it. 

Donald Trump, by contrast, hurt himself time and again. He was constantly angry and defensive, qualities that engage his rallies but alienate all Democrats and many Independents, especially women. On the plus side, he repeatedly emphasized his main points on immigration, crime and endless wars — all winning issues for him. He made a strong case that he would encourage fracking, a vital issue in Pennsylvania, and that a Harris administration would kill it. (She denied it.)

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel’s True Enemy: Hamas, Not Netanyahu by Bassam Tawil

Posted By on September 10th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20925/israel-enemy-hamas

More than 30 years ago, these “elites,” overwhelmingly on Israel’s political “left” (think “peace,” as if most people in democracies do not want peace) played a significant role in convincing the Israeli government to sign the Oslo Accord with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), headed by Yasser Arafat. The assumption back then was that if you bring Arafat’s PLO from the Arab countries to Gaza and the West Bank and help them create a government and police force, the Palestinians would renounce terrorism and give up their dream of destroying Israel.

The Palestinian Authority, established in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1994, had no intention of making peace with Israel, and still has not.

Palestinian leaders continue to praise terrorists as “martyrs” and “heroes” and pay monthly salaries to their families.

Many Israeli “elites” chose to turn a blind eye to the Palestinian leaders’ support for terrorism and incitement of violence and hatred against Israel. Some Israeli peace activists continued to argue that Abbas who, since 2014 has refused to resume peace negotiations with Israel, is somehow a credible peace partner.

“He [Arafat] did not negotiate in good faith; indeed, he did not negotiate at all. He just kept saying no to every offer, never making any counterproposals of his own.” – Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, quoted by Benny Morris from interviews in late March and early April 2202.

The Israeli pullout from the Gaza Strip in 2005 to enable the Palestinians to create a Dubai on the Mediterranean, instead enabled Hamas and other terror groups to turn the coastal enclave into a huge base for Jihad (holy war) against Israel. With the help of Iran, the terror groups smuggled weapons into the Gaza Strip from Egypt in tunnels dug under the border, and were taught to manufacture rockets and missiles. The Gazans also built a vast network of tunnels throughout the Gaza Strip, with many extending into Egypt.

It turned out the belief of Israeli “elites” that the expulsion of Jews from the Gaza Strip would contribute to peace with the Palestinians was a catastrophic mirage.

The Palestinians did not see the “disengagement” as an indication that Israel wants peace. Instead, many Palestinians viewed the withdrawal as an Israeli display of weakness and retreat in the face of rockets and suicide bombings. The thinking among the Palestinians became, “Oh, it’s working! So let’s do it more!”

In a similar way, Iran, Qatar, Hamas and Hezbollah have been gaining more confidence from the current anti-government protests in Israel, especially since the Biden-Harris administration began pressing Israel to make concessions, but never Hamas, Hezbollah, Qatar or Iran.

“Continue to exert psychological pressure on the families [of the hostages], both now and during the first phase [of the ceasefire] so that public pressure on the enemy government increases…. Arab forces should serve as a buffer to prevent the enemy [Israel] from entering after the war in Gaza ends, until they [Hamas] have reorganized their ranks and military capabilities.” — Hamas document, written in March for the terrorist group’s leader Yahya Sinwar, discovered on a computer allegedly belonging to him that was seized by the IDF.

ISRAEL, MEDIA, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The BBC’s Israelophobia is even worse than you think A new report exposes the true, shocking extent of the BBC’s moral decay.Brendan O’Neill

Posted By on September 10th, 2024

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/09/09/the-bbcs-israelophobia-is-even-worse-than-you-think/

Remember when the BBC went nuts at Nigel Farage over comments made by some of the candidates for his Reform Party? It was in the run-up to the General Election. Farage was taking part in a BBC debate. Presenter Fiona Bruce huffed and puffed at him for half the show about three candidates who’d said nasty things about immigrants, including calling them ‘savages’ who should ‘get off [their] lazy arses’. Looking back, we can see what a load of old cant that was, for the BBC employed far worse bigots than those Reform racists. It employed people who openly praised the worst act of Jew murder since the Holocaust.

A new report on the BBC’s coverage of the Israel-Hamas War in the aftermath of Hamas’s pogrom of 7 October is a sobering read. It’s outright jarring in parts. Some of it is pretty ‘dog bites man’. Anyone who’s watched any of the Beeb’s pained output since 7 October will not be surprised to learn it has exhibited a ‘deeply worrying pattern of bias’ against Israel. But they’ll be horrified – I hope – to read that the BBC used journalists who had ‘shown sympathy for Hamas’. Including one who described Hamas’s pogrom as a ‘morning of hope’, and another who appeared to mock the Jewish State even as its citizens were being raped and murdered, saying that ‘Israel… is crying in the corner’.

The Beeb has done many awful things of late. There’s its Brexit-bashing. Its indoctrination of schoolkids with bollocks about ‘white privilege’. Its gratingly woke podcasts, including one asking how ‘white women’ can avoid becoming ‘Karens’. Its transformation of Doctor Who into naff LGBTQ propaganda in an effort to stir the throng from its supposed bigoted stupor. But this – its association with journalists so anti-Israel that one defended a Lebanese reporter who had said ‘Sir Hitler, rise, there are a few people that need to be burned’ – is surely the worst. We’re paying for this fascist-adjacent nonsense?

The new report is called ‘The Asserson Report: The Israel-Hamas War and the BBC’. It was overseen by Trevor Asserson, the British-Israeli lawyer. He deployed around 20 data scientists and 20 legal minds to analyse no fewer than nine million words of BBC output from the four-month period of 7 October 2023 to 7 February 2024. The researchers claim to have identified a total of 1,553 breaches of the BBC’s own guidelines on impartiality and accuracy. Time and again after the 7 October pogrom, they say, the BBC’s output soft-soaped Hamas’s atrocities while depicting Israel as ‘militaristic and aggressive’.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Deep State Is Past Its Shelf Life By J.B. Shurk

Posted By on September 10th, 2024

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/09/the_deep_state_is_past_its_shelf_life.html

At the Economic Club of New York, President Trump announced: “I will create a Government Efficiency Commission tasked with conducting a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government — and making recommendations for drastic reforms.”  Elon Musk is eager to get involved with the project.  In one fell swoop, every other reason for re-electing Donald Trump took a back seat to the tantalizing possibility of turning his second term into an Office Space sequel.  

No government since the Byzantine Empire has been in more desperate need of immediate downsizing.  Can you picture the billionaire boys putting on their “efficiency expert” hats and shearing the bloated federal workforce one incompetent functionary at a time?  Commissioner Musk: “So what is it that you would say you do here?”  Crickets.  President Trump: “You’re fired.  Bring in the next one.”  If that’s all those two did for four straight years, round two of Trumpalooza would be a colossal success.  

Most of the federal blob is dead weight.  Its chief purpose is to hook so many families on a federal paycheck that tens of millions of Americans will never stop voting for its continuing expansion.  Even worse, it’s a Janus-faced monstrosity with internally conflicting mission objectives.  We’ve got departments dedicated to fomenting wars abroad and departments dedicated to stopping them.  We’ve got agencies tasked with confiscating taxpayers’ income and agencies tasked with providing economic relief.  Committees are organized to study “problems,” but those problems can’t be officially solved because doing so would mean that committee-members are out of jobs.  That possibility becomes the only “problem” that needless federal workers decide to solve, and they “solve” it by doing absolutely nothing.  The end result is that an unknowable number of ghost programs dedicated to issues that arose decades ago are still bouncing around the bureaucratic ether for no other reason than to keep the federal blob paid and happy.  There’s probably some group out there still ostensibly studying whether the popularity of compact cassette tapes will adversely affect the 8-track cartridge industry — and still probably another group filing seasonal reports on the likelihood that 8-track will end demand for cassette tapes!  It’s madness.

BOOKS Comments turned off

Bringing ‘Dark Money’ Operatives Out of the Shadows Thorough and enlightening, ‘Arabella’ exposes how billionaire leftists and their ‘charities’ use influence and money to ‘manipulate’ people and lobby government. By Dustin Bass

Posted By on September 10th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/09/10/bringing-dark-money-operatives-out-of-the-shadows/

The term “dark money” gets thrown around a lot, and when politicians make claims about “dark money” coming from the lurid corners of opposing political party backers, it is hard to take such vague claims seriously. When an exposé is conducted by a research group that focuses solely on “dark money” matters, the claims become clearer, the culprits are brought into the light, and, most importantly, the money is followed. Scott Walter, “dark money” hawk and president of the Capital Research Center (CRC), has accumulated a wealth of information on “dark money” sources from the left.

In his new book, “Arabella: The Dark Money Network of Leftist Billionaires Secretly Transforming America,” Walter guides the reader through this network of billionaires and multi-billion dollar charity organizations who use their 501(c)(3) or 501(c)(4) tax statuses to funnel money toward social and political movements, ranging from abortion to climate change to lobbying against the appointment of conservative judges. The billionaires involved include some of the most famous Americans, like Warren Buffett, Mark Zuckerberg, and the most usual suspect, George Soros. Charity organizations include the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, OpenSociety, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Sierra Club. But how do all of these organizations and individuals coordinate? It starts with a group called Arabella Advisors.

The “Tentacles” of Arabella

“We need to understand more thoroughly how these tentacles of Arabella operate across America,” Walter writes early in the book. He notes that though a majority of these donors and their organizations originate in Washington, D.C., their influence is felt throughout the country at statewide and local levels. Upon digging into organizations with harmless-sounding names like “Arizonans United for Health Care, Floridians for a Fair Shake, Keep Iowa Healthy, New Jersey for a Better Future, and North Carolinians for a Fair Economy,” one realizes just how harmful and deceptive these groups are, but furthermore, just who is pouring money—from the hundreds of thousands to the tens of millions of dollars—into them. As Walter suggests, these “pop-ups” are merely tentacles, of which there are so very many. As he further notes, “Think of almost any left-wing position, and Arabella money—usually a lot of it—can be found promoting it.”