ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel forces Iranian plane to reverse course over Syria The Mahan Air aircraft was suspected to be transporting weapons to Hezbollah in violation of the Lebanon ceasefire agreement • IDF eliminates Hezbollah cell near a church in Southern Lebanon. Joshua Marks

Posted By on December 3rd, 2024

https://www.jns.org/israel-forces-iranian-plane-to-reverse-course-over-syria/?utm_campaign=Daily%20Syndicate%20Emails&utm_

Israeli fighter jets on Sunday night intercepted an Iranian plane over Syria suspected to be transporting weapons to Hezbollah, forcing it to return to Tehran.

The operation was part of efforts to maintain the Nov. 27 ceasefire agreement that ended over a year of hostilities between Israel and the Iranian-backed terror group.

The “Letter of Guarantees,” an annex to the agreement, underscores the United States’ commitment to collaborating with Israel to counter Iran’s destabilizing activities in Lebanon, including halting the transfer of weapons, proxies and materials into Lebanon from Iranian territory.

Additional provisions in the two-and-a-half-page U.S.-Israel side deal reportedly include guarantees of Israeli operational freedom against Hezbollah violations of the ceasefire.

The Israel Defense Forces is authorized to counter immediate threats in Southern Lebanon, such as observed preparations for a Hezbollah rocket launch, and also to address emerging threats, for example the digging of tunnels or arms transfers, if Lebanon’s government is unwilling or unable to act.

According to a 2022 report by the Alma Research and Education Center, Mahan Air serves as the Islamic Republic’s main cover for transporting weapons.

OPINION, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Trump Redux: Defeating Identity Despots By Daryl McCann

Posted By on December 3rd, 2024

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/the-u-s-a/trump-redux-defeating-identity-despots/

Donald Trump’s victory on November 5 was more than just a defeat for his hapless opponent. It was a defeat for the Democrat powerbrokers who foisted Kamala Harris on the American public without the former senator from California attaining a single party delegate during this year’s primary season (or, for that matter, in 2019-20). It was, similarly, a defeat for the mass media, which reconfigured her as “the voice of a new generation” once she became the Democrats’ presidential nominee, despite deriding her performance as vice-president over the previous three and a half years. Finally, and most importantly, November 5 marks the day Americans rejected the despotism of Obama-style identity politics.

Leading Democrats are now arguing over whether to blame Joe Biden or Harris for the Democrats’ worst result in a presidential election since 1988, including the loss of all seven battleground states. The Biden camp points out that Biden won six of those states in 2020 and could have hardly done worse than Harris this time. But that argument does not hold up in the light of Biden’s abysmal performance in his televised debate with Trump. Old Joe was on target to do as badly as Harris did, or worse. More than 75 per cent of American voters believed their country was on the wrong track—inflation, a doubling of the price of petrol, soaring mortgage rates, 10 to 20 million unvetted immigrants pouring across the southern border, foreign wars, boys in girls’ sports, and so on were affecting the national mood. Biden was not the man to turn things around. Not only was his administration responsible for many or all of these problems, but in the June 27 debate, Trump exposed Biden’s serious cognitive decline for all the world to see; not even the Democrat powerbrokers and their allies in the mainstream media could hide it any longer.

OPINION, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Fight for Free Speech Rebecca Weisser

Posted By on December 3rd, 2024

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/editors-column/the-fight-for-free-speech/

“The taboo against telling the truth is what protects the woke establishment. Trump has been derided as everything from a boor and a buffoon to a fascist. Yet it was he, not his preening critics, who observed, “If we don’t have free speech, then we just don’t have a free country. If this most fundamental right is allowed to perish, then the rest of our rights and liberties will topple just like dominos one by one.” Amen to that. And merry Christmas, happy Hanukah, and happy holidays to all.”

The attack on free speech is one of the most disturbing manifestations of the “woke mind virus” which has captured ruling elites in the West. Donald Trump’s re-election is its most encouraging rebuttal. The historic size of Trump’s victory is evidence that we have, at last, passed “peak woke”. The lamentations and gnashing of teeth of America’s left liberals is, one hopes, its wake.

At the top of the president-elect’s to-do list he says is ending the “censorship cartel … that has arisen under the false guise of tackling so-called ‘mis-’ and ‘dis-information’” driven by a “sinister group of Deep State bureaucrats, Silicon Valley tyrants, left-wing activists, and depraved corporate news media … conspiring to manipulate and silence the American people” by suppressing “vital information on everything from elections to public health”.

The good news is that Trump’s proposed legislation to protect free speech in America will hamper Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s attempts to censor social media in Australia.It follows a pushback on the Starmer Labour government’s attack on freedom of speech in the UK. Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson’s attempt to quietly throttle the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act has been condemned by more than 600 academics, writers, and public intellectuals including Stephen Fry, Ian McEwan, historian Tom Holland, Lady Antonia Fraser, and former Poet Laureate Sir ­Andrew Motion. While they might have their political differences, they were united in condemning the government for not protecting ­“humane and liberal values” or opposing “cancel culture” in British universities.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Syrian tragedy continues Whoever wins this bloody battle between Assad and the jihadists, the Syrian people have already lost. Tim Black

Posted By on December 3rd, 2024

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/12/03/the-syrian-tragedy-continues/

The terrible 13-years-long conflict in Syria has been mainly framed as a civil war between the government of Bashar al-Assad and domestic opponents. The sight of jihadist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) capturing villages and towns in north-west Syria, before advancing on and taking the city of Aleppo on Friday, has largely been interpreted through this civil-war lens – as the reignition of a conflict between ‘rebel’ groups and ‘regime’ or ‘government’ forces.

This, though, is to tell only part of the story. Not just of the latest direct challenge to Assad’s hollow rule, but also of Syria’s long-standing descent into violent instability. (For one thing, ‘rebels’ seems like an oddly anodyne way to describe the vicious Islamists of HTS.)

Throughout this long conflict, there have certainly been domestic factors involved, chief among which is the illegitimacy and chronic lack of authority of Assad’s de facto, tin-pot dictatorship. This weakness gave rise to the initial popular uprisings against him in 2011. But since that initial eruption of anti-Assad protest during the Arab Spring, this has ceased to be a conflict determined by social, political forces internal to Syria itself.

In truth, the conflict in Syria has long since been shaped and fuelled by its internationalisation. Shortly after the moment in 2011 when the Arab Spring called the very viability of Assad’s government into question, global and regional hegemons crowded into the ensuing struggle, vying for influence and power. By 2012, NATO allies Turkey and America, with then secretary of state Hillary Clinton leading the charge, were simultaneously demanding Assad step down while backing various anti-government militias – some of which would turn out to be violent jihadists. On the other side, Russia and Iran attempted to shore up Assad’s crumbling regime, providing various forms of military support.

By the mid-2010s, Syria had been torn apart. To all intents and purposes, it had ceased to be a nation. It had become a patchwork of territories, each partially controlled by competing factions, which in turn were backed by competing international forces. There were the US-backed Kurdish fighters in the east, who were defending themselves against the insurgent jihadists while pursuing their own national ambitions. There were the Turkey-sponsored militias in the north. And there was the Russia-bolstered, Iran-aided government of Assad himself in the west. In the lawless chaos, Islamist militias, with backing from all around the region, flourished.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Dirty Green Money The UN’s latest global warming conference may be one of its last. by Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on December 3rd, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/dirty-green-money/

“I’m also listening to ‘Bitch Better Have My Money’ by Rihanna nonstop,” Juan Carlos Monterrey Gomez, the vice chair for the implementation of the UN Climate Convention, told reporters.

The 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference being held in Baku was all about money.

It wasn’t the planet, but the scent of money that had drawn everyone from Gomez, the negotiator for Panama, one of the most corrupt countries in the world, to the Taliban, to the UN climate conference in Azerbaijan, a post-Soviet Muslim oil and gas country.

Officially everyone was in a country whose only real export was oil and gas to save the planet, but as the favorite song of the UN Climate Convention vice chair says, “Hold up, My money, Yo, my money.” Everyone in Baku wanted to save the planet. But only for the right price.

Even the Taliban who came asking for money to fix Afghanistan’s ‘climate change’ problems.

President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan kicked off the UN conference to end oil and gas by praising them as a “gift from Allah” and blamed America for polluting the world with ‘carbon emissions’.

Aliyev’s speech was representative of third world countries which had only shown up to trade votes for cash. UN climate conferences require a consensus. And that means bribing every third world dictatorship to get on board with whatever fictional climate target is being discussed now.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Ilya Shapiro, Noam Josse What Now on Campus? Donald Trump’s victory throws down a challenge to the unsustainable extremism at America’s colleges and universities.

Posted By on December 3rd, 2024

https://www.city-journal.org/article/what-now-on-campus

With Donald Trump’s election victory, U.S. college campuses have been humbled. The day after, the atmosphere at Columbia University was mournful, as Student Services handed out free pizza for students who needed support processing the results.

Students’ dismay at Trump’s victory contrasts with their jubilant, headline-grabbing anti-Israel activism over the past year. Ironically, student activists probably helped the Trump campaign by alienating moderates and creating an “uncommitted” movement, whose followers may have declined to vote for Kamala Harris.

Regardless of how many young people left the presidential line blank or voted for Jill Stein, college-educated voters generally were one of Democrats’ strongest cohorts in 2024. They were one of the few groups among whom Harris did not lose ground relative to Joe Biden in 2020, roughly matching Biden’s 12-point advantage in 2020. She outperformed Biden among white college-educated voters, which offset her relative underperformance among college-educated racial minorities.

College-educated voters’ preference for Democratic candidates is no surprise. Campuses incubate opposition to many of the ideas associated with the Trump campaign: patriotic pride in America and its history; a desire for the government to treat all Americans equally; and a preference for the interests of U.S. citizens to those of foreigners. DEI grandees and their acolytes consider such views retrograde and even racist; they believe, evidence notwithstanding, that Trump won by riling up a hateful white base. The broader electorate doesn’t see it that way. Their choice of Trump delivered a strong message to students, particularly at so-called elite schools: ravings about decolonization and gender theory are nonstarters for ordinary Americans.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

US follows France in warning Israel over ceasefire violations Restraint “from all sides” is necessary for the truce to hold, U.S. sources told Israeli media.

Posted By on December 3rd, 2024

https://www.jns.org/us-follows-france-in-warning-israel-over-ceasefire-violations/?utm_campaign=Daily%20Syndicate%20Emails&utm

Washington has backed up Paris’s assertions that Israel is violating the terms of last week’s ceasefire agreement with Lebanon, that formally ended 14 months of hostilities with the Hezbollah terrorist group.

U.S. presidential envoy Amos Hochstein, who played a pivotal role in brokering the deal, conveyed a message to officials in Jerusalem that they are not abiding by the truce terms, Ynet reported on Monday.

Sources told the Hebrew news outlet that the Americans believe that there have been violations on the Israeli side, primarily its use of surveillance drones over the skies of Beirut.

The sources stressed that for the ceasefire to hold, “restraint is required from all sides.”

Paris, a member of the Washington-led monitoring mechanism overseeing the Israel-Lebanon ceasefire agreement, had accused Jerusalem of committing 52 ceasefire violations, according to Hebrew media reports on Sunday that cited French diplomatic sources.

The sources alleged that Israel had bypassed the established channels for reporting violations before taking action.

The reports also claim that three Lebanese civilians were killed and highlight an increase in Israeli drone activity, claiming that low-altitude flights over Beirut had resumed.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

America’s future depends on Trump’s promise to punish woke universities Jonathan Tobin

Posted By on December 3rd, 2024

https://www.jns.org/americas-future-depends-on-trumps-promise-to-punish-woke-universities/

A leftist-dominated educational establishment and its media enablers fear that he will make good on his vow to defund institutions that embrace DEI and tolerate antisemitism.

Occidental College seemingly waved the white flag last week in its efforts to defend itself against charges of tolerating antisemitism on its Los Angeles campus. The school agreed to a “sweeping settlement” with the Anti-Defamation League and the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law that acknowledged the ongoing hardships, harassment and discrimination faced by Jewish students since the Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Occidental’s apathy to all this, which was little different from what has been happening at dozens if not hundreds of other American institutions of higher learning, violated its obligations to prohibit such discrimination under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

But for many observers, the context for the agreement was not so much a belated interest by one school to address the wrongs suffered by its Jewish students. Rather, it was the fact that it came a few weeks after the election victory of Donald Trump. As one headline in a news article about the settlement put it, “College settles antisemitism claims before Trump can make good on accreditation threats.”

Trump repeatedly made clear during the 2024 election campaign that the educational establishment would be as much a target for his second administration as the denizens of the Washington “swamp” such as the liberal-dominated federal bureaucracy that did so much to sabotage and obstruct his first four years in the White House.

More will hinge, however, on whether he makes good on this promise than the fate of school administrators or even the safety of Jewish students.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

“The End of Identity Politics?” Sydney Williams

Posted By on December 3rd, 2024

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Here we are in early December, almost a quarter of the way through the 21st Century. Growing up in the mid-part of the 20th Century, I thought I was living in the future. The 19th Century – the past – was ever-present in grandparents, great aunts and uncles, and older neighbors. The “future,” foretold in books like The Time Machine, Brave New World, 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 and movies like The War of the Worlds and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, provided fanciful entertainment, but hardly accurate predictions.

But the world does move on, and change is one constant we can count on.  Politically things change. The Party of Lincoln lost the black vote. The Party of segregation became the party of civil rights. Today we are going through another political change, as the Party of the working class is becoming the Party of elites, and of those dependent on government, and the mindless woke. And the Party of Lincoln, the Party of opportunity, is beginning once again to make inroads among the nation’s minorities.

Mr. Trump’s victory on November 5th may have marked the end of identity politics as we know it. Economic class, the election showed, mattered more than ethnicity, race or gender. Identity politics is based on the natural tendency for people of a specific race, ethnicity, gender, cultural, or religious group to band together, in friendship and to rectify past injustices. But that tendency has been employed and advantaged by politicians who, with the assistance of allies in the media, have divided people into oppressors and oppressed. Identity politics has led to an absence of focus on issues more relevant to individuals.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Turkey Unleashes Jihadist Terror on Syria by Uzay Bulut

Posted By on December 3rd, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21178/syria-jihadist-terror-turkey

The government of Turkey has supported jihadists in Syria since the beginning of the civil war in 2011. Turkey has allowed Islamists to use the Turkish territory to cross the border to Syria to join terrorist organizations there.

Turkey has been targeting the US allies against ISIS through military incursions such as the 2018 “Operation Olive Branch” and 2019 “Operation Peace Spring.”

In June 2020, HTS began replacing the Syrian pound with the Turkish lira, indexing the prices of goods to the lira. The Turkish government, through its massive economic support to the group, thereby became a lifeline for the jihadist HTS.

The capture of Aleppo by Turkey-backed, Al-Qaeda-affiliated forces is terrifying news for Kurds, Yazidis, Christians and everyone else whom jihadists perceive as their prey. If one is celebrating the advance of these Islamists invading parts of Syria, one is celebrating the advance of bloodthirsty jihadists who want to establish an Islamic caliphate and would happily slaughter anyone who stood in their way.

Turkey is unleashing another gruesome jihad in Syria.

On November 27, jihadist terror groups — led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (Organization for the Liberation of the Levant; HTS) — launched a coordinated attack on Aleppo Governorate in northwestern Syria, cut off the main highway from Damascus to Aleppo, captured and killed dozens of Syrian Army soldiers, promised mass executions and beheadings “in front of TV cameras,” and seized control of a military base and several villages.