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Ukraine: Unintended Consequences by Amir Taheri

Posted By on March 18th, 2024

ttps://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20494/ukraine-unintended-consequences

Though Putin remains personally popular to a degree that would make any Western leader green with envy, the war is clearly losing popular backing. Latest polls, some sanctioned by Kremlin-controlled organs, show that the war enjoys no more than 30 to 40 percent approval among Russians. More interestingly, between 50 and 60 percent of Russians oppose a second wave of military call-up, something that the Kremlin’s military planners regard as imperative if Russia means to stay in the game.

Instead, NATO has found two new members, and not just anyone, because Finland and Sweden built part of their national identity on neutrality. Even worse for Putin, the US-led alliance is seeding up membership procedures for at least four other countries, notably Albania…

Being forced to sell its oil at a juicy discount to China is the last thing that Russia might have wanted, had it not been forced to do so because of Western sanctions.

What is amazing is that all those involved in this tragedy seem to be unable to read the runes even when plainly explained to them, notably that a war fought half-heartedly, almost as a weekend hobby, could go on without producing a winner and a loser, something without which no war can ever end.

Though Russian President Vladimir Putin remains personally popular to a degree that would make any Western leader green with envy, the war against Ukraine is clearly losing popular backing. Latest polls, some sanctioned by Kremlin-controlled organs, show that the war enjoys no more than 30 to 40 percent approval among Russians.

Even a year ago, some Russia-watchers believed that President Vladimir Putin might end his war on Ukraine with something like a victory in time before what could be his last re-election campaign.

However, now as Russians go to the polls, no victory is even remotely in sight.

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The Strategy of Atrocity in the Gaza War by Michael Hochberg and Leonard Hochberg

Posted By on March 18th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20495/hamas-strategy-atrocity-gaza-war

Hamas is perhaps the first regime in recorded history to fight a war designed to maximize casualties among their own population.

Failing to swiftly destroy Hamas and directly punish Hamas’s backers in Iran and Qatar will teach sympathizers in other parts of the Muslim world that strategies of atrocity should be added to the playbook of regimes challenging U.S. allies around the world. Even worse would be for Hamas to actually achieve a strategic victory and gain a Palestinian statehood; such an outcome would ensure that atrocity becomes a standard and widely used strategy for at least a generation to come.

The laws of war — primarily a Western innovation — are being weaponized by the enemies of the West, who do not subscribe to Western culture….. Today, the United States and our allies find ourselves at war with states and non-state entities who do not subscribe to the laws of war.

“[T]he Hamas terrorists killed by Israel in the ensuing war, and civilian non-combatants killed in the Gaza Strip while being used as human shields by Hamas. They are all considered “Martyrs” whose families are eligible to receive stipends of 1,400-12,000 shekels [$375-$3200] per month for life.” — Itamar Marcus; Founder, Palestinian Media Watch, palwatch.org, January 10, 2024.

The popular accusation of disproportionality is, in point of fact, aimed to prevent Western-aligned nations from achieving decisive victories. Even when the allies of the United States have the military capacity to break the will of the enemy, thereby imposing peace on the defeated, they will be forced to resort to fighting forever wars.

Why should the Israelis be compelled to allow aid into Gaza, when Hamas continues to hold hostage not just Israelis but also Americans? Under the guise of benevolence and generosity, international organizations promote forever wars.

If the type of warfare that we have seen from Hamas is allowed to succeed, and is not met with overwhelming violence and utter defeat, it will become the standard approach for those challenging Western dominance. If, however, we want to live in a world where the laws of war mean something, then the penalties for deliberately flouting them need to be terrible. Otherwise more regimes will be tempted to gain advantage through strategies of atrocity.

The US should stop imposing on our allies a doctrine of defeat.

Finally, the day after hostilities end, the Israelis must protect the new Gazan government from being undermined by renewed efforts to support terrorism and remilitarization.

The only path to peace, other than the destruction of Israel, is through a comprehensive Israeli victory and an unconditional surrender by Hamas in Gaza, and a post-war arrangement ensuring that the Gazans will not be able to commit such atrocities in Israel again.

Hamas is perhaps the first regime in recorded history to fight a war designed to maximize casualties among their own population. Pictured: Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen shows a photo of an Israeli soldier posing next to a Hamas weapons cache that was found at Rantisi Hospital in Gaza, at a press conference at the European Office of the United Nations in Geneva, on November 14, 2023. (Photo by Pierre Albouy/AFP via Getty Images)

“People should either be caressed or crushed. If you do them minor damage they will get their revenge; but if you cripple them there is nothing they can do. If you need to injure someone, do it in such a way that you do not have to fear their vengeance.” — Niccolo Machiavelli.

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Why the TikTok Ban is So Dangerous Did they tell you the part about giving the president sweeping new powers? Matt Taibbi

Posted By on March 16th, 2024

https://www.racket.news/p/why-the-tiktok-ban-is-so-dangerous

It’s funny how things work.

Last year at this time, Americans overwhelmingly supported a ban on TikTok. Polls showed a 50-22% overall margin in support of a ban and 70-14% among conservatives. But Congress couldn’t get the RESTRICT Act passed.

As the public learned more about provisions in the bill, and particularly since the outbreak of hostilities in Gaza, the legislative plan grew less popular. Polls dropped to 38-27% in favor by December, and they’re at 35-31% against now.

Yet the House just passed the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act” by a ridiculous 352-64 margin, with an even more absurd 50-0 unanimous push from the House Energy and Commerce Committee. What gives?

As discussed on the new America This Week, passage of the TikTok ban represents a perfect storm of unpleasant political developments, putting congress back fully in line with the national security establishment on speech. After years of public championing of the First Amendment, congressional Republicans have suddenly and dramatically been brought back into the fold. Meanwhile Democrats, who stand to lose a lot from the bill politically — it’s opposed by 73% of TikTok users, precisely the young voters whose defections since October put Joe Biden’s campaign into a tailspin — are spinning passage of the legislation to its base by suggesting it’s not really happening.

“This is not an attempt to ban TikTok, it’s an attempt to make TikTok better,” is how Nancy Pelosi put it. Congress, the theory goes, will force TikTok to divest, some kindly Wall Street consortium will gobble it up (“It’s a great business and I’m going to put together a group to buy TikTok,” Steve Mnuchin told CNBC), and life will go on. All good, right?

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How Sweet It Is: Defending the American Dream Hardcover – by Winsome Earle-Sears

Posted By on March 16th, 2024

This amazing woman deserves national prominence. She is also charming and interesting. Sears served as an electrician in the United States Marines from 1983 to 1986. Before running for public office, Sears directed a Salvation Army homeless shelter. rsk

The first Black woman elected to statewide office in Virginia reveals in her memoir how her Christian faith, unwavering patriotism, and fervent commitment to conservative principles propelled her to serve and sacrifice for her country and a better future.

Winsome Earle-Sears sent shock waves across Virginia and the country at large when she pulled off her stunning upset victory in November 2021 and became the first woman lieutenant governor of Virginia and the first Black woman, the first naturalized female citizen, and first female veteran elected to statewide office. She earned intense national coverage because of her unwavering support for Second Amendment rights and her strong commitment to education opportunity for all students. Now in her memoir, How Sweet It Is, Winsome will tell her story and explains how she arrived at that historic moment in time.

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The Biden Administration Attacks Democracy Abroad The Biden administration is attacking the democracy of our ally Israel over the war in Gaza and how it is affecting democracy—American democracy, specifically Mr. Biden’s re-election chances. By Thaddeus G. McCotter

Posted By on March 16th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/03/16/the-biden-administration-attacks-democracy-abroad/

A friend sent me a link that, upon opening it, I initially thought I had been directed to The Babylon Bee. I rubbed my eyes and pored over the blurb again. Amazed, I remembered Mr. Biden’s State of the Union declaration: “What makes our moment rare is that freedom and democracy are under attack at—both at home and overseas at the very same time.”

Of course, I was aware of how Mr. Biden and his leftist supporters have been assiduously attacking American democracy. Indeed, in recounting how the Democratic Party is anything but democratic, Victor Davis Hanson concluded:

The Left talks grandly of ‘democracy dies in darkness’ as Joe Biden beats the dead horse of January 6 to warn that democracy is in its greatest peril. But all such rhetoric is projection. The verbiage masks the most comprehensive effort in modern American history to radically change, destroy, or warp American laws, customs, and traditions for the short-term aim of gaining and retaining political power.

The rationale is that the left is of such superior morality and wisdom that it has the right to violate the Constitution or the hallowed traditions of the country to achieve the higher end of ensuring a progressive agenda.

However, I was unaware of how Mr. Biden and his leftist supporters had been attacking democracy abroad. Of course, I knew the Authoritarian Axis of communist China, Putin’s revanchist Russia, terrorist-state Iran, and the Cuban and Venezuelan dictatorships had been persistently attacking democracy. But none of these rouge states besieging free peoples were the target of the Biden administration’s call for regime change.

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Paul T. Williams Equity Over Accuracy in Kidney Care A new formula moves blacks to the front of the line for treatment, regardless of need.

Posted By on March 16th, 2024

https://media5.manhattan-institute.org/iiif/2/wp-content%2Fuploads%2Fsites%2F5%2FEquity-Over-Accuracy-in-Kidney-Care.jpg/full/!99999,960/0/default.jpg

“Health equity” could be claiming new victims. More than 10 million nonblack Americans with chronic kidney disease may have seen their treatments or transplants delayed because of policy changes enacted after 2020’s “racial reckoning.” Some of those patients now face greater risk of death because national transplant organizations have embraced racial activism.

The United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS), a quasi-governmental nonprofit that runs American transplant centers, enacted a significant policy change. The network compiles the national waitlist for kidney transplants and consults a formula that helps determine which candidates it will prioritize. Before 2020, the network used a formula that measured serum creatinine concentrations to assess a patient’s estimated glomerular filtration rate—the best-known measure of whether a patient has chronic kidney disease. Since black patients typically have higher serum creatinine concentrations than nonblacks with the same kidney function, the formula had applied an adjustment for black patients to ensure a more precise GFR estimate.

Activists in the wake of George Floyd’s death claimed that the formula’s adjustment was racist. This prompted the National Kidney Foundation and the American Society of Nephrology to create a task force to “reassess inclusion of race in the estimation of glomerular filtration rate.” The task force decided to nix the racial adjustment and set to work choosing a new formula that would not take race into account, which it released in 2021.

In December 2022, the board of UNOS’s transplant system issued a directive requiring all transplant centers to apply retroactively the new formula to determine black patients’ spots on the national waitlist. Last December, the network announced the results of its application of the new formula. Removing the racial adjustments had moved the waitlist’s more than 6,100 black patients up by an average of 1.7 years, with just over 500 receiving a transplant. Of course, this meant that some nonblack patients were correspondingly pushed back in line.

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When and How Did We Get Here?—Gradually, then Suddenly. Part Two Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on March 16th, 2024

https://victorhanson.com/when-and-how-did-we-get-here-gradually-then-suddenly-part-two/

Our nation’s change into something unrecognizable just four years ago had a few precursors and catalysts.

The first was the Obama administration’s redefining of American norms. Before Obama, “racial relations” were largely defined as the historical 12 percent black/88 percent “non-black” dichotomy, in the context of dealing with the sins of southern slavery and Jim Crow and widespread discrimination—and the quest to make race incidental not essential to us all.

Sixty years of serial Civil Rights acts, affirmative action, increased integration and assimilation, interaction, and intermarriage, and “content of your character, not the color of your skin” mentalities were all working toward an ecumenical society, in which soon we would not consider race relevant to who were are and instead focus on the individual not the collective.

“Climate change” took over from “global warming” as Al Gore/John Kerry were unleashed. Suddenly clean burning natural gas was a culprit, a fossil fuel supposedly wrongly disguised as a valuable transition fuel.

Abroad, Iran was redefined as the oppressed Persian, Shiite counterweight to the overdog Gulf monarchies and Zionist Israel. We then would green-light a “Shiite Crescent”—Teheran to Damascus to Beirut to Gaza—that would balance our former pro-Western allies, Israel in particular. We then from time to time, as the rivalry heated up, would adjudicate the ensuing creative tension. America would be the honest broker with no real preference for a democratic Western Israel or pro-American autocratic governments in the Gulf, Jordan, or Egypt.

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The Prophets: D.A. Henderson Years before Covid, the scientist credited with eradicating smallpox warned against shutting down the world to combat an epidemic. Joe Nocera

Posted By on March 16th, 2024

https://www.thefp.com/p/the-prophets-da-henderson?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Welcome back to The Prophets, our new Saturday series about fascinating people from the past who predicted our current moment and make our world more understandable today.

Last week, we showed how civil rights hero Bayard Rustin predicted the rise of identity politics and affirmative action—and how they would divide us today. Today, Joe Nocera spotlights D.A. Henderson, the epidemiologist who warned that pandemic lockdowns won’t stop a disease, but could instead lead to a public health disaster. Bari Weiss

“In 2006, ten years before his death at the age of 87, the legendary epidemiologist D.A. Henderson laid out a plan for how public health officials should respond to a major influenza pandemic. It was published in a small journal that focused mainly on bioterrorism—and was quickly forgotten.

As it turns out, that paper, titled “Disease Mitigation Measures in the Control of Pandemic Influenza,” was Henderson’s prescient bequest to the future. If we had followed his advice, our country—indeed, our world—could have avoided its disastrous response to Covid. 

This month marks the four-year anniversary of lockdowns on a global scale. And though the pandemic has passed, its consequences live on. The lockdowns embraced by the U.S. public-health establishment meant that millions of young people had their education and social development disrupted, or left school for good. Mental health problems rose substantially. So did incidents of domestic violence and overdose deaths.

It didn’t have to be that way. 

NATIONAL SECURITY AND DEFENSE Comments turned off

There Goes Latin America: Iran’s Regime in America’s Backyard by Majid Rafizadeh

Posted By on March 16th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20487/iran-latin-america

The Iranian regime, which… has been calling for “Death to America,” now has ballistic missiles which it says can reach the US, and claims to have a hypersonic missile that, according to one report, “Can Destroy US In 40 sec.”

Venezuela appears to have willingly embraced Iran’s overtures.

The Iranian regime, in addition to Venezuela, has evidently also been exploring avenues for military cooperation with Nicaragua and Cuba.

It is critical to recognize now the gravity of this exponentiating national security threat.

Venezuela, near the US, emerges as a key player in Iran’s Latin American ambitions. As a potential launching pad for attacks on the U.S., Venezuela appears to have willingly embraced Iran’s overtures. Iran’s growing military capabilities, with ballistic missiles and armed drones capable of reaching Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana and Texas from Latin American soil, already pose a direct threat to the United States.

A threatening development has been brewing largely under the radar of the Biden administration and the mainstream media attention: Iran’s calculated expansion into Latin America, from Argentina to Mexico.

With alarming nonchalance, the Biden administration appears to have turned a blind eye to the Iranian regime’s concerted efforts to establish a military foothold right in America’s backyard. The ramifications of this complacency are profound. The Iranian regime, which, since it began in 1979, has been calling for “Death to America,” now has ballistic missiles which it says can reach the US, and claims to have a hypersonic missile that, according to one report, “Can Destroy US In 40 sec.”

Historically, Iran’s playbook in the Middle East involved the arming and sponsoring of proxies and terror groups such as Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas, with the ultimate aim of annihilating Israel and has carried out more than 180 attacks just since October 7 on U.S. interests in the region.

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Biden Should be Threatening Qatar and the Terrorists, Not Israel by Bassam Tawil

Posted By on March 15th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20486/biden-should-threaten-qatar

Biden’s reported threat to halt or suspend US military supplies to Israel if the IDF enters Rafah is what encourages Hamas to continue fighting and reject every proposal to release the hostages. When Hamas leaders hear that Biden is threatening Israel to prevent the IDF from entering Rafah, they must say to themselves: “Why should we make any concessions to Israel? America doesn’t want the Israelis to destroy the four remaining battalions. The US administration is opposed to Israel’s plan to eliminate Hamas, so let’s wait!”

A total defeat means the elimination of all of Hamas’s battalions. An Israeli victory will never be complete as long as one, or even half, a Hamas battalion remains intact.

Biden is actually sending a message to Hamas and Iran’s other terror proxies, including Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Houthis, that America is about to throw Israel under the bus. Cutting off US weapons supplies to Israel is the ultimate fantasy of the terrorists.

The administration could show impressive leadership and in fact “bring this to an end as quickly as we can” — not just for Israel but for all in the region who are seeking peace — by encouraging Israel to take out the terrorists in Rafah without delay.

Instead of pressuring Israel, Biden should be pressuring his friends in Qatar to force their Hamas puppets to hand over the Israeli hostages and surrender. Instead of threatening to cut off weapons supplies to Israel, he should be threatening the leaders of Qatar with the withdrawal of US forces from the country’s Al Udeid Air Base and to officially designate Qatar as a State Sponsor of Terrorism (for its funding of Hamas, Hizballah, ISIS, Al Qaeda, Taliban, Al Shabab, Al Nusra Front, among others).

This is the way – the only way – to end the war quickly, as well as to send a signal to America’s adversaries looking on, that the US is prepared to uphold the values of civilization, not the values of terror.

US President Joe Biden will consider conditioning military supplies to Israel if the Israeli army moves forward with a large-scale invasion of the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, according to four US officials.

Biden has also told MSNBC that a Rafah operation would cross a “red line,” although he balanced that statement with a commitment to support Israel’s right to self-defense.