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Alaska Gov. Dunleavy Praises Trump’s Bid to Reduce Reliance on China for Critical Minerals By Isabel van Brugen

Posted By on October 30th, 2020

https://www.theepochtimes.com/alaska-gov-dunleavy-praises-trumps-bid-to-reduce-reliance-on-china-for-critical-minerals_3558640.html

Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy (R) on Thursday praised President Donald Trump’s bid to ramp up domestic production of critical minerals such as rare earth elements and support mining jobs in the United States to reduce the nation’s reliance on Beijing.

In an interview with The Epoch Times’ “American Thought Leaders” program, Dunleavy said that the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic has exposed the nation’s weakness in a number of supply chains, including rare earths.

The president last month signed an executive order declaring a national emergency in the U.S. mining industry. It asks the Department of the Interior to look into implementing the Defense Production Act to fund mineral processing “that protects our national security.”

China is currently the top global producer of the specialized minerals, used to build electronics, military weapons, and other high-tech equipment. Last year, 80 percent of rare earths imported by the United States came directly from China.

“I think to some extent, we as a country have fallen asleep at the helm over the last several decades. And that, plus the concept of globalization has put us in somewhat limited position of weakness,” the governor said.

“From a strategic point of view, a defense point of view, at the very least … I think what the President is doing is absolutely correct. And that is identifying the fact that we have these weaknesses.”

Rare earths are an obscure group of 17 minerals, and there are no known substitutes for them. They are often found in precision-guided missiles, smart bombs, and military jets.

While the United States used to be the leading producer of the minerals, China currently commands a lion’s share of the market after it displaced competitors by strategically flooding the global market over the last few decades.

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The plight of Palestinian ‘refugees’ The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) has not liberated them. Rather, like UNRWA, it has consigned them to permanent “refugee” status to justify its own existence. Jerome Auerbach

Posted By on October 30th, 2020

https://www.jns.org/opinion/the-plight-of-palestinian-refugees/

If I was a Palestinian, I would be immersed in gloom. As I look around the Middle East, where my staunchest allies were once located, I now see nothing but betrayal. First, the United Arab Emirates, then Bahrain and now Sudan have reached agreements with the despicable Jewish State of Israel. In the foreseeable future, Saudi Arabia will likely join them. My people have been abandoned, and any possibility that even a sliver of Israel and its illegal settlements on Palestinian land will become a Palestinian state has all but vanished. Our scattered 5 million refugees and their descendants, cared for by UNRWA, will remain forever homeless.

Although I am not a Palestinian, I sympathize with the Palestinian lament of homelessness even if it is self-imposed. But as a historian, I must rely upon facts, not fantasies. Palestinians may fervently believe that they are being robbed of “their” land, but history—from antiquity to modernity—suggests otherwise.

Ever since the Jewish nation was shattered in the second century C.E. after Bar Kokhba’s failed rebellion against Roman conquerors, Jews yearned to return to their ancient homeland, especially Jerusalem, where King David had ruled and the Holy Temple was built. (“If I forget thee, O Jerusalem,” was embedded in Psalm 137.) There were no Palestinians then. Indeed, the oldest surviving indication of an Arab (not Palestinian) national identity is an inscription in 328 C.E. referring to the “King of all the Arabs.” Islam appeared three centuries later, during Muhammad’s lifetime. By then, Jews were a well-established, if widely scattered, people with an embedded attachment to their promised land.

Late in the 19th century, after nearly two millennia in exile, Jews began their return to the Land of Israel. Nearly 30 years before Theodor Herzl called for the revival of Jewish statehood, Hovevei Zion (“Lovers of Zion”) had built more than a dozen new communities in Palestine. During World War I, the Balfour Declaration called for a “national home for the Jewish people in Palestine.” There was no mention of Palestinians. Even when Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill reneged on that promise, gifting three-quarters of Palestine east of the Jordan River to Abdullah ibn Hussein for his own kingdom of Transjordan, there still was no recognized, or self-identified, “Palestinian” people.

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Is America Going To Let The Party Of Riots, Re-education Camps, Coups, Intolerance And Segregation Win The White House Tuesday?

Posted By on October 30th, 2020

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/10/30/is-america-going-to-let-the-party-of-riots-re-education-camps-coups-intolerance-and-segregation-win-the-white-house-tuesday/

Tuesday’s election is without question the most important in most of our lifetimes. America can pick the soft tyranny, guaranteed to grow harder, of the Democrats, or stand athwart history, to borrow a phrase from William F. Buckley, and yell stop. Voters must choose wisely. There’s a future at stake.

President Donald Trump is not a perfect man, nor is the Republican Party a faultless institution. But the Democrats, as constituted today, are flawed beyond repair. Their leadership mutters at times about patriotism and American values, but only to pander to select audiences. Today’s Democrats are defined by policy choices and actions that are not consistent with liberty and independence. They are the party of:

A coup attempt.
Re-education camps.
Riots.
Intolerance.
Segregation (through its support for Black Lives Matter and racially divisive policies in higher learning).
Marxist indulgence. (see BLM again).
Election fraud.
Using government to punish political enemies.
Reparations.
A modern serfdom.
The cancel culture.

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Yes, Media Are Rigging The Election Against Half The Country. Here’s How Mollie Hemingway

Posted By on October 30th, 2020

https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/30/yes-media-are-rigging-election-against-half-the-country-heres-how/

Even if Donald Trump had lost the 2016 election, instead of won it in a surprise, the media’s coverage of his campaign and supporters would have been a horrific failure. They presented that race as unwinnable for Trump and as if his support was inexplicable.

Their response to their 2016 failures has been not to improve their journalism in any way, shape, or form, but to decide that they didn’t do enough to bias that election in their preferred direction. Their nearly four-year temper tantrum has resulted in far worse 2020 campaign coverage than even the depths of their 2016 coverage. It’s as if they looked to the Candy Crowley debate in 2012, when she went out of her way to back Barack Obama when he said something false, and viewed it as a model, not an embarrassment.

Once again, regardless of the outcome next week, Big Media is actively at war with half of the American people and are desperately working to rig an election against them. Here are just five ways they’re doing that.

1. Refusing to Do Journalism on Joe Biden

On October 14, the New York Post published a story about how Hunter Biden had introduced his father to a top Ukrainian businessman. This contradicted Joe Biden’s oft-repeated claim to have had no knowledge whatsoever about his son’s overseas business affairs.

Hunter Biden was paid handsomely by Burisma, a Ukrainian energy concern, while his father was vice president. Hunter had no business acumen or relevant experience in the energy sector, but was paid millions of dollars by Burisma at the time his father was in charge of U.S. policy toward Ukraine.

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American Media Is Failing You Journalism has become partisan promotion Charles Lipson

Posted By on October 30th, 2020

https://spectator.us/american-media-failing-russiagate-obamagate-hunter-biden/

American journalism has lost its bearings, and we are all paying the price. The Washington Post is exactly right when it says, ‘Democracy dies in darkness.’ It is ironic, then, that the Post is part of the problem, not the solution. Like the New York Times and other major news organizations, it is less a neutral observer than a protagonist on a mission.

Before turning to the latest story killed by the mainstream media, consider their abysmal performance on the two biggest stories from 2016 to 2019. America’s mainstream media didn’t just make a few mistakes on those stories. It didn’t just give them some partisan spin. It missed both stories completely. It got them utterly wrong, and it did so for years.
 Failure #1: The media bought the Russia collusion story

Except for Fox News, all the major TV networks and national newspapers adopted the Russia collusion narrative and drove it forward. They relied almost entirely on leaked stories from anonymous sources, deeply opposed to Trump, mostly at the FBI and CIA, plus some Democrats on Capitol Hill. Together, they not only got a Special Counsel appointed but got him free rein. Robert Mueller’s prolonged investigation, managed by his deputy, Andrew Weissmann, hamstrung the presidency and helped the Democrats win the House in 2018.

All this time, Schiff was a media darling, repeating his claim that he had proof positive that Trump actively worked with the Kremlin. In fact, Schiff was sitting on secret testimony, given by all Obama’s top officials in national security and law enforcement. Under oath, all of them said they had no evidence of Trump working with Russia. Schiff knew that, of course, but he repeatedly told the press the opposite. Not surprisingly, he refused to release the testimony since it betrayed his lies. Schiff’s secrecy allowed the Obama-era officials to go on CNN and MSNBC and tell viewers Trump was a Russian asset who had worked with Putin to win the White House. When the deception was finally revealed, the media yawned.

The larger point here is that anti-Trump animus was so strong it overrode basic standards of journalistic integrity and judgment. That animus, coupled with disgruntled officials eager to destroy Trump, led to three years of dreadful reporting, spinning up flimsy tales of foreign contacts into an ominous-but-false suggestion of treason.

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MORE HEADLINES

Posted By on October 30th, 2020

Twitter CEO Admits: We Have No Proof the Hunter Biden Story Is False https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2020/10/28/twitter-ceo-jack-dorsey-admits-we-have-no-proof-the-hunter-biden-story-is-false-n2578956?
Sen. Gardner Asks Dorsey Why He’s Hidden Trump’s Tweets, But Not the Ayatollah’s https://townhall.com/tipsheet/cortneyobrien/2020/10/28/sen-gardner-asks-dorsey-why-hes-hidden-trumps-tweets-but-not-the-ayatollah-n2578937?
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey accused of lying under oath to the Senate: That’s a felony https://www.wnd.com/2020/10/twitter-ceo-jack-dorsey-accused-lying-oath-senate-felony/

STILL HIDIN’ HUNTER: Nets Spend a Meager 21 Minutes Out of 113 Hours on Biden Scandals https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/geoffrey-dickens/2020/10/27/still-hidin-hunter-nets-spend-meager-21-minutes-out-113-hours

Why Hunter Biden Really Does Matter… Big Time https://www.theepochtimes.com/why-hunter-biden-really-does-matter-big-time_3556068.html?
‘The Hunter Games’: Like prodigal father, like prodigal son https://www.wnd.com/2020/10/hunter-games-like-prodigal-father-like-prodigal-son/

RIGGED ELECTION: TX ‘Ballot Chaser’ Illegally Pressures Voters To Change Votes; “I could go to jail” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAhTVMikqgU&feature=emb_title

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

The Election – A Few More Things to Consider by Sydney Williams

Posted By on October 30th, 2020

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

The election will be over in four days, though the results may not be known for a while. This is written to raise questions, which give credence to the importance of this election.

The strongest case for Joe Biden is that he will (or so he claims) return the country to normalcy – whatever that is – and bring civility back to the White House. God knows, today’s politics do not appear normal and even Mr. Trump’s most ardent supporters would hesitate to affix the adjective “civil” when describing the 45th President. Calling Vice President Biden “sleepy Joe,” and referring to the Speaker of the House as “crazy Nancy” would not endear Mr. Trump to Emily Post. But is he alone? Was it polite for Mr. Biden to tell the black radio host Charlamagne, “If you have a problem figuring out if you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black!”? Was it gracious for the Speaker to tear up the President’s State of the Union speech on live TV? Civility is absent in Washington. Should that be blamed on Trump or do its roots extend further back? Could anyone describe Joe Biden’s behavior as civil, when as Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in the 1980s, he interrogated Robert Bork, claiming his America was “…a land where women are forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors…” or what about his “high-tech lynching” of Clarence Thomas? Was Senate Majority leader Harry Reid deferential (or even wise) to eliminate the filibuster, as it applied to judicial appointments, in November 2013? A decision regretted four years later.

And what is normal behavior? Is it normal to not acknowledge the results of an election, as numerous politicians did in joining the Trump “resistance” in January 2017? Have the looting, riots and killings in cities across the nation, in response to the horrific death of George Lloyd at the hands of a policeman, been normal? Was the refusal to accept the findings of the Mueller investigation, after three years and the expenditure of thirty to forty million taxpayer dollars normal? Was it normal for a sitting U.S. Vice President to allow his son to trade on his name with foreign nationals? Was it normal for the nation’s intelligence agencies to try to sabotage a duly elected President? Was it normal for the New York Times’ writer-at-large, Jim Rutenberg to admit, as he did in August 2016, that they (the Times) could not be “objective” when covering Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump?  Would it be normal, should Democrats take the Senate and the Presidency, to then try to “pack” the Supreme Court and/or attempt to make Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. states?

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Jay Bhattacharya: It’s time for an alternative to lockdown

Posted By on October 30th, 2020

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/it-s-time-for-an-alternative-to-lockdown

As France and Germany lock down again – and as Britain considers whether to follow suit – many people will be wondering: can’t we think of a better way to handle this pandemic? No one is in any doubt about the threat posed by the Coronavirus. But nor should there be any doubt about the harm posed by lockdown: the mental health, the economic destitution, the deep damage inflicted on families, communities and societies. Perhaps the worst of it is the idea that, when lockdown ends, the virus resumes – and you are back where you started. Where is the exit strategy? And where is the assessment of the costs?

We should, in moments of crisis, be open to ideas about how best to handle it. The previous strategy – lockdown – cannot claim to have been a great success. Which is why it’s strange to see such hostility in so many quarters to the idea of even debating a better way out of this mess. The Great Barrington Declaration calls for another way. The focused protection ideas discussed in the Declaration would minimise the harms that would befall those at high and low risk of mortality from Covid should they become infected. The plan would protect higher-risk people (mainly older people over 70) by devoting overwhelming resources and ingenuity to the cause of preventing exposure to infected Covid patients. It would protect lower risk people who face a much greater medical and psychological harm from lockdowns than they do from Covid (an infection fatality rate of five deaths per 10,000) by permitting them to resume their normal lives.

Despite the evident common sense of these ideas – they represent a return to the successful way we have dealt with similar epidemics over the last century – the release of the Declaration has led to a fierce counter-attack by lockdown proponents. These attacks have routinely resorted to propaganda, inaccurately characterising the approach as a ‘herd immunity strategy’ in places like the New York Times. This despite the fact that population immunity is the inevitable endpoint of the epidemic, no matter what policy we adopt. Though a few stalwarts may pine for zero Covid, we would destroy civilisation worldwide in the quixotic bid to achieve it. All viable options – including the lockdown-until-vaccine and the focused protection strategy share herd immunity as an end state. The only open question is how best to minimise death and human despair from both Covid and non-Covid sources in the process of getting there. And the answer is focused protection.

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NY Gov. Cuomo Goes on Self-Congratulatory Book Tour As DOJ Probes COVID Nursing Home Deaths By Debra Heine

Posted By on October 30th, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/10/29/ny-gov-cuomo-goes-on-self-congratulatory-book-tour-as-doj-probes-covid-nursing-home-deaths/

As New York Governor Andrew Cuomo embarked on a self-congratulatory book tour this week, the U.S. Department of Justice requested additional data from his administration on coronavirus deaths linked to nursing homes.

According to the New York Post, the DOJ’s inquiry could reveal if the state significantly undercounted the number of COVID-19 fatalities among the residents of more than 1,000 private nursing homes.

New York records provided in response to an August Justice Department inquiry indicated that a quarter of deaths in the state’s roughly two dozen public nursing homes weren’t disclosed to federal health officials, administration sources said.

New York indicated that about 400 residents of the state’s public facilities died from COVID-19, according to federal sources, who said that state facilities had only disclosed about 300 deaths to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In total, the New York Health Department publicly reports about 6,720 deaths from the serious respiratory bug in nursing homes and adult-care facilities. But the true scope of New York’s tragic toll in nursing homes is expected to be much higher.

According to the AP, the state only counted residents who passed away on the nursing home premises but not those who were sent to the hospital. An AP analysis in August estimated that the state was likely undercounting such deaths by thousands.

With over 33,000 fatalities, New York leads by far all of the other states in the number of deaths by the coronavirus, while it is number four on the list of total COVID-19 cases in the United States.

The Democrat governor has denied accusations that his administration’s now infamous directive mandating that nursing homes accept patients diagnosed with the coronavirus contributed significantly to NY’s disproportionately large number of deaths.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Obama Can’t Get Past His Grudge Against Trump

Posted By on October 30th, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/10/29/obama-cant-get-past-his-grudge-against-trump/

Few politicians are as thin-skinned, petulant, and vengeful as Barack Obama—just ask Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn—and it’s obvious that Donald Trump still gets the best of him.

Barack Obama and Joe Biden head to Michigan this weekend to hustle votes in one of the three states that helped elect Donald Trump in 2016. Recent polls show Biden with a comfortable lead in Michigan, but Democrats are taking nothing for granted in the final stretch; Representative Debbie Dingel (D-Mich.) on Wednesday warned Team Biden that the race is tightening. “So many auto workers who I thought were going to go back to Joe Biden were very clear with me…that they were voting for President Trump.”

Enter the Anointed One. Obama already has been on the stump twice in Florida, attempting to bolster Biden’s flagging support among Hispanic voters, and once in Philadelphia. The former president was planning to stay out of the race, according to his longtime political consigliere David Axelrod, but Trump’s antics have forced Obama onto the campaign trail. “He doesn’t view it as a personal grudge match with Trump,” Axelrod told CNN last week, defending yet another breach of precedent and protocol by the 44th president of the United States.

But of course Obama’s last-minute campaign activity is completely about his grudge against Donald Trump. As much as the news media loves to portray Trump as the one who is easily rattled, it is actually Trump who very easily gets under Obama’s skin. The former president is fixated on the man who succeeded him, the political foe Obama repeatedly said would never win the presidency. Few politicians are as thin-skinned, petulant, and vengeful as Barack Obama—just ask Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn—and it’s obvious that Donald Trump still gets the best of him.