David Petraeus: Perfect Avatar for America’s Corrupt Ruling Class By Michael Anton

https://amgreatness.com/2020/12/03/david-petraeus-perfect-avatar-for-americas-corrupt-ruling-class/

General David Petraeus, for many years (decades?) lauded as the greatest and most successful soldier of his generation, just insulted, in terms paradoxically both implicit and vicious, the men who made both his military renown and his post-military success and wealth possible.

“The most significant terrorist threat in the United States is not actually from Islamist extremists, it’s from right-wing terrorists in our own country,” he recently said to a gathering of elites.

This assertion, in a sense, is unremarkable given that it has become a common ruling-class talking point. It’s a lie, of course. Your own senses tell you so. When was the last time you even heard of a “right-wing” terror attack, much less one that actually inflicted mass casualties? 

Sure, the ruling class and its propaganda arm tell you that they happen all the time, but they’re lying. They don’t lie merely by predicting waves of rightist violence that never materialize—though they do predict that, often. 

Remember all those “warnings” of right-wing terror that would rock America in the event of a Trump loss? Allegedly violent Trump supporters have an even stronger case than mere loss to be angry, given the fishiness of the election and their belief that it was stolen. And yet none have so much as broken a window, much less committed any acts of terror. The one major demonstration in Washington, D.C. was entirely, not “mostly,” peaceful—that is, until leftist thugs showed up to beat on the marchers. Beatings which the same people who, naturally, never apologized for being wrong about imminent right-wing violence just as naturally never mentioned.

Shut Up and Take It It doesn’t matter how many times the ruling class has misled us, either intentionally or purposely. After all, who are you to complain? By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2020/12/03/shut-up-and-take-it/

“Now we are told that election fraud isn’t real, just another “baseless conspiracy theory” promoted by QAnon and the Bad Orange Man. Despite extensive evidence to the contrary, offered by a handful of Americans still fruitlessly tethered to the U.S. Constitution and a sense of patriotic duty, the ruling class assures us there is nothing to see. Witnesses are harassed, bullied, and mocked for having the wrong hair; any credible claims of law-breaking are met with promises to “get it right next time.”

Shut up and take it.”

Dave Morris was fed up.

As a gainfully-employed television news reporter aired a live segment outside a small café to tell viewers that Morris was keeping his business open despite a government order to close it, the Portage, Michigan restaurant owner confronted him. The Kalamazoo Health Department had issued a warning to Morris on December 1 for allowing indoor dining against the wishes of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer; he was instructed to shut down his business immediately or face a fine imposed by the government.

The local journalist was on the scene, however, to tattle.

“Everyone needs to stand up,” Morris told WWMT-TV reporter Tavarious Haywood on Wednesday. “This isn’t an order . . . this is tyranny. Wake up, stand up, this is America, be free.” (Haywood later tweeted about his own bravery in the face of an “angry business owner” who “interrupted” him.)

Morris, who has owned D&R’s Daily Grind Cafe for 12 years, said he’s lost $100,000 in business this year and is going broke. “I can go down quietly or I can go down making some noise so people understand what’s going on,” he said.

But this is America in the year 2020. People like Morris—or really anyone not empowered with an executive pen or a cable news gig or a sinecure in some public health bureaucracy—are supposed to go down and go down quietly.

Shut up and take it.

Arabs: Why Is the EU Mourning This Iranian Scientist? by Khaled Abu Toameh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16817/eu-mourns-iranian-scientist

“There is no gloating about death, but the Iranian scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh…. was not the scientist who discovered the anti-coronavirus vaccine, but the scientist called the father of the Iranian nuclear bomb…” — Tareq Al-Hameed, Saudi author, Okaz, November 30, 2020.

“[H]ow can they condemn the killing of a man who devoted his life to making a sinister bomb for an evil regime, but they do not condemn Iran’s killing of innocent people in the region. Iran kills Syrians, Iraqis, and Lebanese, and destroys Yemen, and sponsors all terrorist groups…” — Al-Hameed, Saudi author Okaz, November 30, 2020.

“[D]isrupting the Iranian regime’s access to nuclear weapons is a long-term service to humanity.” Iran… sees nuclear weapons as a tool “that enables it to occupy the rest of the world….” — Mohammed Al-Saaed, Saudi political analyst, Okaz, November 30, 2020.

“We are talking about a gang that hijacked Iran, and its defeated people became its captive. It seeks to hijack the entire region, fueled by intense hatred for the Arab. Is it acceptable to allow it to produce nuclear weapons and use them to kill millions of people?” — Mohammed Al-Saaed, Saudi political analyst, Okaz, November 30, 2020.

 

While the European Union has condemned the killing of Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, widely regarded as the father of Iran’s modern nuclear program, many Arabs and Muslims expressed relief over the assassination.

By condemning the killing of Fakhrizadeh, the EU has found itself on the side of Palestinian terror groups such as the Iran-backed Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. These factions, together with Lebanon’s Hezbollah terror group, another Iran proxy, and the Muslim Brotherhood, have also voiced outrage over the killing of the scientist.

Fox News’ Murdochs Backed Clinton Foundation, Hillary Clinton For too long, viewers have been fed a false bill of goods. Elliott Fuchs

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/12/fox-news-murdoch-backed-clinton-foundation-frontpagemagcom/

The controlling shareholders of Fox News, the Murdoch family and its 89-year-old patriarch Rupert Murdoch, have a long history of backing Democrats like Hillary Clinton and their liberal causes.

After four years of fairly critical coverage of President Trump (Fox “confirmed”, for example, a skepticism-inducing report that Trump called fallen soldiers “suckers and losers,” a claim that even Trump foe John Bolton denied,) many conservatives are re-evaluating Fox News’ true commitment to “fair and balanced” media.

Federal election records show that Murdoch has donated to far-left Democratic politicians including John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Chuck Schumer, Anthony Weiner and even Hillary Clinton, for whom he hosted a fundraiser in 2006, just preceding her first presidential campaign.  

Reporting on the fundraiser, CBS News’ Dan Collins, exclaimed that “Rupert Murdoch Loves Hillary Clinton.”  

But it does not stop there. 

FAIR, a liberal media group, even bragged about how much Fox News (through its parent company News Corp.) was donating to Hillary Clinton during her 2016 campaign against Trump. FAIR wrote: 

“All of the broadcast giants are on board. Clinton is the largest individual recipient of campaign donations from Comcast (NBC News, MSNBC), Time Warner (CNN), News Corp (Fox News), CBS Television and Walt Disney (ABC News).” 

Declass of 2020 What President Trump should lay bare for all the world to see. Lloyd Billingsley

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/12/declass-2020-lloyd-billingsley/

While Joe Biden holds forth from the newly created “Office of the President Elect,” Donald Trump remains president of the United States. The most powerful man in the world commands extensive powers of declassification, and President Trump has good reason to get busy, starting with the Central Intelligence Agency. An unclassified CIA report on the Hiss case provides helpful background.

After CIA director John Deutch resigned in 1996, President Clinton nominated his former national security advisor Anthony Lake for the post. On “Meet the Press,” Tim Russert asked Lake, “Do you believe Alger Hiss was a spy?” Lake said he had read a couple of books on the Hiss case but “I don’t think it’s conclusive.” In due course, Lake withdrew his nomination and his doubts on Hiss, who was a Communist spy, were a factor. That makes a strong case that anybody who voted for a candidate of the Communist Party USA, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Soviet Union, should not even get near the CIA door.

In 1976, the CPUSA candidate for president of the United States was the Stalinist Gus Hall, and John Brennan (pictured above) voted for him, choosing the Communist Hall over Democrat Jimmy Carter, Republican Gerald Ford, Libertarian Roger MacBride, independent Eugene McCarthy, prohibition Ben Bubar, and socialist Frank Zeidler. Four years later in 1980, Hall was again the Communist candidate and his running mate was Angela Davis, winner of the Lenin Peace Prize. That year Brennan got a job with the CIA, rose through the ranks, and in 2013 President Obama tapped Brennan to run the place. After leaving in 2017, Brennan moved to cable television and became a bullhorn for the Russia hoax.

President Trump should reveal the identity of the CIA officials who made the call to hire Brennan. The president should also declassify the bulk of Brennan’s communications, especially those made before President Trump suspended his security clearance, which no CIA boss should retain after leaving the agency. For example, in 1999, CIA director George Tenet suspended the security clearance of John Deutch for working with classified material on an unsecured computer at his home. President Trump might reveal what that was all about, then move on to the nation’s “medical CIA.”

The Dems Had No Choice But to Rig the Election This time they were ready — because there was too much at stake. Ayad Rahim

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/12/democrats-had-no-choice-rig-election-ayad-rahim/

Looking back at the unusual election we just had, and viewing it in the context of political events going back 150 years, it’s clear that the Democrats had no choice but to rig the presidential election — and, now, they’re going for all the marbles.

In the last weeks of the presidential campaign, Donald Trump was drawing tens of thousands of enthusiastic supporters several times a day, and people across the land, and at sea, formed massive rallies and caravans of their own. Meanwhile, the Biden camp was barely limping along, with one or two funereal gatherings a week, before, at best, a few dozen people (sometimes, overwhelmingly outnumbered by Trump supporters); the campaign’s apparent strategy was to minimize the candidate’s exposure (and let the media do the work for them) — not only because the candidate was feeble and the campaign advocated lockdowns, but also because evidence began emerging of the Biden family’s dealings with foreign oligarchs and corrupt countries — most importantly, Communist China.

So, as election day approached, things were looking good for the president. Indeed, as the results came in on election night, the president was headed for re-election. He was ahead in the electoral college, and had big leads in the handful of remaining states he needed to win.

Then, suddenly, the counting stopped. Late at night, five decisive states announced at the same time that they stopped counting. Has the counting of votes ever stopped on election night in any election, let alone a presidential election? It’s as if, with a couple of minutes left to play in a basketball game, one team is way ahead and “running away with it,” and the other team is down and dejected, staring defeat in the face; and all of a sudden, the referees stop the game for the first time ever, and for no stated reason. Then they send the team that’s winning, home, blindfold them, and tie their hands; leave the trailing team on the court by itself, with control of the scoreboard and the keys; and ask them to send in the final score, whenever they want. If there were fans in the stands, they’d yell, “How much they payin’ you, ref?”

The Woke Housewives of Silicon Valley Wrecking America in between chardonnay breaks.Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/12/woke-housewives-silicon-valley-daniel-greenfield/

When California store owners turned to voters to criminalize shoplifting again with Proposition 20, they never had much of a chance once Patricia Quillin threw in $2 million against them.

When Quillin paid $1 million to support Proposition 16, Asian-American opponents of the proposition, which would legalize racial discrimination against them in the form of affirmative action, protested outside her husband’s job. Her husband is the CEO of Netflix.

Netflix doesn’t have to worry about shoplifters and doesn’t care about the stores that do. Quillin and her husband, Reed Hastings, who are white, also don’t have to worry about college admissions. Quillin’s Meadow Fund has poured money into various forms of pro-crime advocacy and the Netflix CEO’s wife claims to be very engaged with “racial justice”.

Even though Quillin and her husband live in Santa Cruz, she poured $1.5 million into the campaign to elect George Gascon, a Soros backed pro-crime DA candidate in LA. That’s along with the $4.5 million spent on funding various destructive propositions that hurt Californians.

Patricia Quillin is part of a fundraising phenomenon: the Woke Housewives of Silicon Valley.

Is America In A Civil Disobedience Mood?

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/12/04/is-america-in-a-civil-disobedience-mood/

Governors, mayors, and county officials are again shutting down the activities and movements of an ostensibly free people, but this time the resistance looks like it will be more stubborn. No one is yet “up in arms.” But much of America has clearly had enough of the petty tyrants making rules for others.

Democratic Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said Wednesday, with the iciness of a Versailles royal, that “it’s time to cancel everything.” Outdoor dining is now verboten in Los Angeles County, even though the restriction is “senseless.” (At least a clear-thinking judge has told the county that it must present scientific evidence that outdoor dining increases the risk of spreading the coronavirus if it’s to ban it.)

From her privileged and luxury bubble in Lansing, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, another Democrat, is threatening to issue new stay-at-home instructions. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, the target of a recall effort, has delivered a similar warning. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whose pandemic response has arguably been the worst in the country if not the world, said he might again put out another statewide “pause” order. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, the third Democratic governor referenced in this paragraph, is saying that the malign presence (our words) of a shutdown “has to stay on the table.”

The Democratic governors of Oregon and New Mexico have also dropped heavy-handed restrictions on their states. And on it goes in the land that our grade school teachers told us was free.

But this time, unlike during the first lockdowns, which were to last for 15 days so we could flatten the curve of positive tests, many are not taking the undeserved punishment from their “betters” without a fight. Everyday Americans weary of being bullied from on high have been inspired by one-time Stanford University Medical Center neuroradiology chief and former White House coronavirus adviser Dr. Scott Atlas, who suggested Michiganders “rise up” – nonviolently – against Whitmer’s petty tyranny:

The owner of Eat At Joe’s in Redondo Beach, California, has been defying the Los Angeles County outdoor dining ban. “I’m not a person that easily wants to fight the system or anything,” Alex Jordan said. “I just, I hit my wall.”

Macron Seeks an Enlightened Islam Laïcité worked well with Catholicism, but how hard is it to tame a domestic religion? By Christopher Caldwell

https://www.wsj.com/articles/macron-seeks-an-enlightened-islam-11607037298?mod=opinion_lead_pos10

Emmanuel Macron has resolved to be the president who finally eases tensions over France’s young and growing Muslim population. Every president since Valéry Giscard d’Estaing in the 1970s has resolved to do that. None succeeded, and the stakes have risen with each failure.

On Oct. 16, a Chechen-born 18-year-old living west of Paris decapitated the schoolteacher Samuel Paty, who had lately shown cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad to junior-high-age kids in a civics class on free speech. On Oct. 29, a 20-year-old Tunisian, who had been refused asylum in Italy after arriving by boat the month before, showed up in the south of France. He stabbed to death two worshipers and a sacristan in the Notre Dame Basilica in Nice.

Even before the incidents Mr. Macron had made a major speech about Islamist “separatism.” He aims to limit the sponsoring of imams by foreign governments. He has dissolved organizations allegedly sympathetic to Islamic radicalism, such as the charity BarakaCity and the “antiracist” Collective against Islamophobia. He plans to ban home schooling, popular among religious Muslims.

Mr. Macron is putting almost all his eggs in the basket of laïcité, the 115-year-old French system for regulating religion. (The word means “secularism.”) At a meeting with the French Council of the Muslim Faith (CFCM), an official Islamic umbrella group created almost two decades ago by then Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, Mr. Macron added more detail. The CFCM would create a “national council of imams.” Preachers would be accredited, or licensed, like doctors and lawyers. By next week the CFCM is expected to create a “Charter of Republican Values” to which the organizations that make it up will adhere. “Some will sign and some will not,” the president reportedly said at the meeting. “We will be watching. Either you are with the Republic or you are not.”

The Biden Terrorism Account Small investments help prevent major distractions later on.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-biden-terrorism-account-11607038651?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

Two decades after 9/11, Washington understandably is concerned more with great-power competition than terrorism. But a new report from the Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP) is a reminder that terror groups remain a global scourge.

First, some good news: In 2019 the death toll from terrorism around the world fell for the fifth year in a row, according to IEP’s Global Terrorism Index. Deaths declined 59% between 2014 and last year, but nearly 14,000 people still died in terrorist incidents. While far-right political terrorism is on the rise, the report notes that it’s generally less lethal than Islamist terrorism and “the absolute number of far-right attacks remains low.”

One reason for declining deaths is that the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State made the world safer. The report attributes 942 killings over 339 attacks to the group in 2019. It marks the first time that ISIS has been responsible for fewer than 1,000 deaths since it became active in 2013.

“Despite the decrease in activity from ISIL in the Middle East and North Africa, ISIL’s affiliate groups remain active across the world, and have become especially prominent in sub-Saharan Africa,” according to the report, which uses an alternative acronym for ISIS. “The expansion of ISIL affiliates into sub-Saharan Africa led to a surge in terrorism in many countries in the region. Seven of the ten countries with the largest increase in terrorism were in sub-Saharan Africa.”