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By Karen Elliott House: Netanyahu and MBS Make a Play for Mideast Peace Diplomatic ties are in the interests of Israel, Saudi Arabia and the U.S., but security threats could impede their efforts.

Posted By on September 15th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bibi-and-mbs-make-a-play-for-mideast-peace-pipeline-g20-biden-d9f8e99d?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Political normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel is an idea whose time has come. At least that’s the increasingly optimistic view of Saudi and Israeli officials working to make it happen with the Biden administration’s support. But how realistic is it?

There’s little doubt Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, 38, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, 73, want to reach a deal. They’ve met at least twice in secret since November 2020, and both have serious reasons for doing so.

Mr. Netanyahu seeks to secure the survival of the Jewish state. Diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia—the wealthiest, most dynamic Arab nation—would be as significant for Israel as its 1979 peace with Egypt, which ended the threat of an Arab-Israeli war. Such recognition would encourage much of the Islamic world to engage with Israel and establish a new home for Saudi investment. A deal would also deepen already substantial Israeli-Saudi intelligence and military cooperation.

Crown Prince Mohammed knows he can’t create a modern high-tech economy without close links to Israeli technology and business. MBS envisions himself as the leader of a strong, economically integrated Mideast that serves as a bridge between Asia and Europe. Diplomatic relations with Israel would aid those goals, allowing the kingdom to lure much-needed Western investment and expertise and cementing MBS as the head of the second tier of world leaders.

For his part, Mr. Biden wants a splashy signing ceremony at the White House that would give him the ability to boast of historic success in the region. The president who once labeled Saudi Arabia a pariah now seems eager to make it a pillar of U.S. strategy in the Gulf.

Yet simply because three powerful men want the deal to happen doesn’t mean it will. There are many moving parts, including what the Israelis will offer the Palestinians. Do concessions exist that would satisfy the crown prince without irreparably dividing Mr. Netanyahu’s governing coalition? Will Congress accede to Saudi Arabia’s security demands? Will Iran stay on the sidelines or send its proxies to ruin efforts at peace?

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THE ERA OF BIG GOVERNMENT IS NOT OVER: SYDNEY WILLIAMS

Posted By on September 15th, 2023

http://www.swtotd.blogsot.com

“I say again, the era of big government is over.”  President William J. Clinton   January 23, 1996

                                                                                                                             

  “For he on honey-dew hath fed/ And drunk the milk of Paradise;” so ends Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “Kubla Khan.” Xanadu, an extravaganza, was located in Mongolia, north of Beijing. Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan, was Emperor of China. Xanadu became his first capital, later his summer palace. Khan was the founder of the Yuan Dynasty and ruled China for thirty-four years (1260-1294).

We in the United States have not been so grandiose…yet. However, in Washington there is a sanctimonious belief that all problems can be solved by government, that its bounty has no limits. In the September 12, 2023 issue of The Telegraph (London), Ambrose Evans-Pritchard and Jeremy Warner wrote: “The fiscal scale of Bidenomics is larger than Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1930s by a wide margin. It is larger than Johnson’s guns and butter in the 1960s, or Reagan’s military rearmament in the 1980s. We are witnessing an extraordinary experiment in U.S. economic policy.” The New Deal was a response to a global depression. Johnson’s Guns and Butter was to fund the Vietnam War and his “Great Society.” Reagan’s rearmament won the Cold War. Bidenomics was to mend the nation’s infrastructure, combat a pandemic that was already being addressed, and to fight inflation, a result of easy money, business closures during the pandemic, and rises in energy prices caused by Mr. Biden’s curtailment of exploration and production.

Expanding tentacles of our enlarged administrative state raise questions: How much larger can the federal government grow? White House employment alone, at 524 people, has grown by 27% in the past three years. Is it possible to shrink entitlements, the fastest growing segment of spending? What will be the effect of rising interest rates, which in two or three years will cost a trillion dollars a year? Interest costs are already roughly equal to defense spending. Will defense suffer in an increasingly dangerous world? (At 3.5% of GDP, defense spending is about half of what it was in 1982.)

The numbers are sobering. U.S. GDP is estimated to be $27 trillion in 2023. Total federal debt for this year is estimated to be $32 trillion, or 118.5% of GDP. In addition, state and local debt were $2.1 trillion in 2022. To put those number is in perspective, the ratio of federal debt to GDP at the end of World War II was 117.5 percent. That ratio declined for several years, troughing in 1981 at 32.5%. Fitch Ratings recently lowered their rating on U.S debt from AAA to AA+, saying that “the ratio of debt interest to tax revenue will reach 10% by 2025, the level where it starts to create a snowball effect.”

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The corrupt Palestinian Authority must not be a part of any Saudi-Israel deal: Mike Pompeo and Sander Gerber

Posted By on September 15th, 2023

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4192784-the-corrupt-palestinian-authority-must-not-be-a-part-of-any-saudi-israel-deal/

American officials are visiting Saudi Arabia to discuss Palestinian demands regarding a potential deal for the kingdom to normalize relations with Israel. The deal could include Riyadh’s reported proposal to resume its financial payments to the Palestinian Authority (PA) if it constrains militants. While Saudi Arabia desires any normalization deal to benefit the Palestinian people, it is financially and morally irresponsible to distribute funds through the corrupt, terrorist-funding PA.

Instead of funneling aid through the PA as part of any normalization agreement, the creation of a new nongovernmental organization would enable the Saudis to support fellow Muslims, develop a responsible organization to tangibly improve Palestinian lives, foster a civil society more amenable to Arab-Israeli normalization outside of the PA’s repression and create a much-needed alternative to the PA’s endemic misgovernance.

Building on the groundbreaking Abraham Accords that one of us helped negotiate during the Trump administration, Saudi normalization with Israel would demonstrate to the world that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is a historic figure focused on transforming his society and advancing global peace, as well as provide him an opportunity to chart a better course for Palestinians. Any deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel would mark a massive advancement of the Abraham Accords, creating the political cover for additional Muslim leaders to formalize relations with Israel.

A notable holdout to the goodwill of Saudi-Israel peace could be Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who was elected to a four-year term in 2005 yet still remains in office. Abbas has repeatedly refused or stalled U.S. and Israeli diplomatic proposals.

Yet providing funds to the Palestinian Authority, an organization that continues to reward Palestinian terrorism, would undercut the peaceful message and implications of normalization. Having recognized that the PA’s payments to the families of terrorists encourages violence, Congress passed the Taylor Force Act in 2018, which cuts U.S. funding to the PA until its stops this “pay for slay” program. Since money is fungible, any foreign aid to the PA would effectively incentivize further terror against Israelis. Riyadh should not provide funds to the PA that would exempt the PA from ending its “pay for slay.”

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China Taking Over While Europe Sleeps by Robert Williams

Posted By on September 15th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19960/china-taking-over-europe

Europe is in “complete denial” as China proceeds to spread its influence on the continent. At least that is the urgent, unequivocal view of Ivana Karásková, a Czech foreign influence specialist and a special adviser to European Commission Vice President Věra Jourová.

“Asked what parts of the Continent were most in the dark about Chinese influence, she added: ‘The whole of Western Europe is not looking. And yet there are cases that are so blatant.'”

In July 2023, the UK’s Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament released a comprehensive report on China’s threat to the country, and how the Communist power seeks both political and economic influence.

The Committee found that China had “successfully penetrate[d] every sector of the UK’s economy,” and that “the Government has been so keen to take Chinese money that it has not been watching China’s sleight of hand.”

“China sees almost all of its global activity in the context of what it sees as the struggle between the United States and China, and therefore it sees the United Kingdom fundamentally through that optic. China aspires to split off from the United States countries which it thinks might be detachable, and they sometimes have a sunnily optimistic view about which countries might be susceptible to that treatment. I would say that that was their single biggest issue with the United Kingdom.” — Sir Julian Lewis, Chairman of the UK’s Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament, July 13,2023.

China’s influence in the UK… reaches deep into the government, as well. Despite all of the above “the Government does not want there to be any meaningful scrutiny of sensitive investment deals” with China according to the report.

Meanwhile, the UK Foreign Office reportedly told UK government officials not to use the term “hostile state” about China in order not to offend the Communist country. The term, the Foreign Office said, should not be used in documents and internal messages via email and WhatsApp between advisers, civil servants and ministers.

“[T]he PRC’s influence is significantly higher in Germany than comparable European countries.” — The China Index 2022, an independent organization that tracks Chinese influence worldwide.

“A key concern is the high level of uncritical research cooperation between Germany and China, including in sensitive technological and military areas, which is one of the highest and among the most ‘captured’ globally… Huawei, BGI, ZTE, Hisilicon (Huawei-owned) and other Chinese companies collaborate with and fund projects at German universities and research institutions. Huawei alone has entered into at least 120 cooperation projects over the last 15 years, with annual budgets between 25,000-290,000 euros per project. The real number is unclear, as German universities sometimes cite their ‘academic freedom’ to refuse to answer freedom of information questions….” — The China Index 2022.

There are “90 Chinese groups in Germany with direct ties to the United Front bureaucracy in China…. Add on about 80 Chinese Student and Scholar Associations, more than 20 Confucius Institutes and classrooms, a dozen united front-aligned, Chinese-language media…an as yet unknown number of “Chinese Aid Centers”… and the phenomenon is both large and complex. There are hundreds of groups working in Germany to maintain the CCP’s ideology, values, language and goals…. from the grassroots to the elite. Europe-wide, these groups are embedded throughout civil society…and likely number over a thousand, since they are present… in every country.” — Didi Kirsten Tatlow, China expert, synopsis.cz, February 10, 2019.

“The decision to join the Silk Road [Belt and Road Initiative] was an improvised and atrocious act,” Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto said recently.

“The Chinese Communist Party has always forged links with politicians from countries whose positions…they wished to influence.” — Paul Charon and Jean-Baptiste Jeangène Vilmer, “Chinese Influence Operations: A Machiavellian Moment,” October 2021.

“The CCP also seems very active within the Italian political class, targeting the M5S [Five Star Movement] in particular.” — Paul Charon and Jean-Baptiste Jeangène Vilmer, “Chinese Influence Operations: A Machiavellian Moment,” October 2021.

“In France, as much as anywhere else, the Party has forged strong relationships with individuals enabling China to infiltrate the political sphere, defend its interests and silence critical voices…. Beyond individuals punctually and diversely recruited by the Party, the construction of a Chinese network within the French elite runs through the France-China Foundation since 2013.” — Paul Charon and Jean-Baptiste Jeangène Vilmer, “Chinese Influence Operations: A Machiavellian Moment,” October 2021.

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China’s ‘CEO Whisperers’: Chinese Communist Party Takes Over Canada by Robert Williams

Posted By on September 14th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19961/china-ceo-whisperers-chinese-communist-party

“I was pretty dismayed at the extent of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) influence in the federal Parliament. I should probably not say any more to stay on the right side of the libel laws… [W]hat are the authorities doing about this? I think that’s the real measure of China’s influence.” — Australian professor Clive Hamilton, National Post, April 15, 2019.

Despite leaked intelligence reports about Chinese interference in Canada’s last two federal elections in 2019 and 2021, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has refused to hold a public probe into the matter.

[T]he passivity of Trudeau’s Liberal Party is “permitting China to colonize Canada.” — Tasha Kheiriddin, Canadian political columnist, National Post, August 22, 2023.

“On housing: Chinese money laundering inflated Canadian property values for decades and helped push home ownership out of reach for today’s buyers. On drug addiction: China is the main source country of fentanyl found in Canada, paving the way for thousands of overdose deaths. On the economy: China has targeted a host of Canadian industries for control, from lobsters to lithium.” — Tasha Kheiriddin, National Post, August 22, 2023.

“The CCP’s basic strategy of overseas influence and interference is to capture elites in politics, business, media, think tanks, universities, and cultural institutions…It deploys a range of techniques including flattery, financial inducement, exploitation of anti-racist and anti-American sentiment, bribery, and honey traps… Key figures in the Liberal Party have long historical ties to the CCP, not least through business connections…” — Clive Hamilton, thehub.ca, June 2, 2023.

“I’ve often said that Chinese leaders are what I call CEO whisperers, they’re very, very skillful when meeting foreigners, particularly senior foreigners. China inspires a kind of excessive affection in people and an excessive sense of wonder and a desire not to apply the usual sort of critical thinking skills, and people are seduced by it.” — Former Canadian Ambassador to China David Mulroney, thehub.ca, June 2, 2023.

China has reportedly openly been trying to influence [Canadian PM] Justin Trudeau for the past ten years. One unnamed CSIS source said that the CCP had its eyes on Justin Trudeau well before he became prime minister.

Trudeau, during his first election campaign in 2016, visited the homes of “wealthy Chinese-Canadians for private fundraising events. Some of the hosts had close connections with the CCP and had been actively promoting Beijing’s takeover of islands in the South China Sea.” — Professor Clive Hamilton, in his book, Hidden Hand: Exposing How the Chinese Communist Party is Reshaping the World.

The influence of the CCP is so pervasive that Canada’s minister of environment, Steven Guilbeault, at the same time as being Canadian minister, is also an “official adviser to the Chinese government.” – torontosun.com, August 16,

China…is a real threat to Canada’s sovereignty. “Recent Chinese actions and announcements are pointing to Beijing’s determination to have a military capability in the region that will exceed that of Canada.” — Rob Hueber, senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and associate professor of political science at the University of Calgary, theglobeandmail.com, August 25-27, 2023

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Academic Whose Work Was Cited As Proof Of ‘Systemic Racism’ Is Fired For Falsifying Research By: Shawn Fleetwood

Posted By on September 14th, 2023

https://thefederalist.com/2023/09/13/academic-whose-work-was-cited-as-proof-of-systemic-racism-is-fired-for-falsifying-research/

‘The narrative of police genocide of African Americans turned out … to be complete nonsense,’ said Wilfred Reilly.

A Florida State University professor whose work was foundational to perpetuating the false narrative that there is widespread “systemic racism” infecting American society has been fired for falsifying data in his academic research on the subject.

In a recently resurfaced report from last month, the New York Post revealed that Eric Stewart, an FSU criminology professor, had been fired by the university “on account of ‘extreme negligence’ in his research,” as well as “incompetence” and producing “false results” in his nearly 20 years of work.

“I do not see how you can teach our students to be ethical researchers or how the results of future research projects conducted by you could be deemed as trustworthy,” FSU Provost James Clark wrote in a July 13 letter formally notifying Stewart of his firing.

According to the Post, Stewart has had six studies published in major academic journals between 2003 and 2019 that were “fully retracted,” including a 2019 study claiming the historical legacy of lynchings “made whites perceive blacks as criminals, and that the problem was worse among conservatives.”

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Criminals Using TikTok to Teach People How to Shoplift By Eric Lendrum

Posted By on September 14th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/09/13/criminals-using-tiktok-to-teach-people-how-to-shoplift/

As the crime crisis worsens across the country, with hundreds of stores in major cities being targeted by mass looting attacks, some of the criminals who engage in organized theft have turned to the Chinese-owned social media app TikTok to teach looting techniques to their followers.

According to the New York Post, such videos appear under the hashtag “borrow tip and tricks,” which has accumulated 8.9 billion views as various “borrowers” share their methods for carrying out such criminal acts.

“Today I went to the mall so I’m going to show you what I borrowed,” said a user by the name of @borrowingqueen. Another user named @b0rrowing.t1ngz ranked stores based on how easy they are to steal from; the list puts Walmart, Walgreens, and Dollar Tree at the top for easiest to loot, while Target, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, and Sephora are ranked as harder to hit.

The user who gave the ranking then provided additional tips for theft, such as stealing small items first, heading to the restroom to remove the items from their packaging, and avoiding “suspicious” behavior such as looking around for security cameras.

Some of these videos are even being posted by current retail workers, providing information from the inside. One such clip, with over 7.1 million views, was posted by a Target employee who advised potential looters to avoid targeting the same store multiple times.

Mass looting has become a widespread problem in the United States, and particularly in states and cities run by Democrats who favor soft-on-crime policies. California in particular, having recently implemented a law which does not make it a crime to steal as long as the value of the stolen goods remains under $950, has seen a spike in looting even in luxury stores in such cities as Los Angeles. Combined with various bail reform laws that often see criminals released immediately after their arrest, and the penalties for such acts are now lower than ever before.

Looting and organized shoplifting has ultimately cost retail companies a total of over $100 billion, and has led to many prominent stores shutting down flagship locations in large cities due to being unable to combat the rise in crime.

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A Call to Quills for Writers Everywhere By J.B. Shurk

Posted By on September 14th, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/09/a_call_to_quills_for_writers_everywhere.html

From time to time, someone asks me for advice on writing.  I want to encourage people to write because this is a crucial time in history.  As the scourge of censorship takes hold across the West, we do not know whether the platforms of communication available to us today will be around tomorrow.  The days of handwritten samizdat may well return, and for this reason, it is important that freethinkers spend time recording their thoughts so that others may learn and do the same.

Writing is good exercise for the brain, and through trial and error, even non-writers will become writers quickly.  Most of what I know comes from reading the words of others — which is a testament to the power of writing.

The most important thing to know about writing is this: always write without fear.  The word “essay” actually means “an attempt.”  Our current understanding of the word as a form of written composition comes from the great sixteenth-century writer Michel de Montaigne, who recorded his thoughts in a collection of “attempts” (essays) during the French Renaissance.  Writing is not about producing perfection; it is about pursuing perfection.

Michelangelo said, “Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.”  When I sit down to write, I look for that statue and start to chip away at the rock the best I can.  I begin with an idea of what perfection might look like.  Invariably, I never achieve a perfect result, but sometimes I am a little closer to the ideal in my mind.  Everything I write is an “attempt” to reach this ideal.

Writing should be fun.  “I only write when inspiration strikes,” William Faulkner said before adding, “Fortunately it strikes at nine every morning.”  Although I have found the early morning hours a particularly rich time to write, I hardly ever write until my head is nearly bursting with ideas.  I let thoughts collect and percolate until my brain feels as if it might explode, and only then do I sit down and attempt to sculpt those ideas into something worth saying.

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Overcoming the False Presumption of Jewish Evil and Collective Guilt Confront the lies and fortifying ourselves. by Vanessa Jones

Posted By on September 14th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/overcoming-the-false-presumption-of-jewish-evil-and-collective-guilt/

A Jewish college student recently visited a local food court with some fellow students whom he believed were his friends.  He had previously confided his grandmother’s history as a prisoner in Auschwitz to one of the other boys.  He also had indicated his support for Israel.  While the group was seated at the table with their food, one of the boys suddenly decided to advise his Jewish “friend” to “go bake in a gas chamber.”  Immediately, the others began to spew antisemitic epithets while throwing food and other objects at their Jewish companion. There were many witnesses, but the people in the mall confined themselves to videotaping the spectacle.  No one intervened on behalf of the Jewish student.  Thus, the Jewish boy experienced the sudden and surprise transformation of his companions from so-called friends to undisguised enemies in the presence of an amused audience.  In the end, he responded by pouring a carton of juice over the head of the perceived ringleader for which the Jewish student received an immediate suspension from his college.

The attack on him and the swift punishment from the school constituted a painful wakeup call.  He had been the victim of a calculated and well-coordinated ambush.

If he could have anticipated it far in advance, would he have been more circumspect about his Jewish identity?  Would he have kept quiet about his Holocaust survivor grandmother?  Would he have hidden his support for Israel?  In short, would he have sought a way to avoid the pain, the humiliation, the rejection before any of it could have occurred?  After the fact, was he weakened in his Jewish identity, or did he become more determined to uphold it?  It would be understandable if he had decided to jump ship and join the majority.  In this case, he did not.

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Oslo at 30 Israel still bleeds from its self-inflicted wound. by Kenneth Levin *****

Posted By on September 14th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/oslo-at-30/

The formal initiation of the Oslo process on the White House lawn on September 13, 1993, was supposed to herald an era of peace between Israel and the Palestinians. But that hope was based on Israeli delusions.

The truth was readily evident. On the evening of the White House ceremony, Yasir Arafat broadcast a speech on Jordanian television assuring Palestinians that they should understand Oslo in terms of the Palestine National Council’s 1974 decision. This was a reference to the so-called “plan of phases,” according to which the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) would acquire whatever territory it could by negotiations, then use that land as a base for pursuing Israel’s annihilation.

Why did Oslo’s supporters insist peace was at hand? The Arab siege of Israel had been underway for nearly half a century, since the Jewish State’s founding. Invariably under conditions of chronic besiegement – whether involving minorities marginalized and victimized by the surrounding majority or small states whose neighbors seek their destruction – elements of the population under assault will shun reality. They will fool themselves into believing that sufficient self-reform and concessions will win relief. They do so out of desperate longing for respite and despite evidence in the rhetoric and actions of their attackers that their formulations are fantasies.

The promoters of Oslo were drawn overwhelmingly from the nation’s academic, cultural and media elites and elements of the political elite. Their sense of their own infallibility was captured and endorsed by Mordechai Bar-On in his 1996 text on the Israeli peace movement: “Higher learning, it is believed, exposes individuals to a wider variety of opinions, trains them in new analytical and flexible modes of thought, and enables them to relate to issues in a less emotional and more self-critical way, which leads to greater tolerance and understanding of the ‘other’ and of the complexity of the issues.” Oslo’s opponents, in contrast, those who took seriously Arafat’s words and actions, were uneducated and lacked such sophisticated understanding.

To advance Oslo, its proponents mounted an assault on the nation’s history and its people’s attachment to the Zionist project. The so-called New Historians rewrote the history to render Israel more culpable. Not only did they produce fiction in place of history but they set the overarching fact of the conflict on its head: The reality was, and is, that the end of the conflict will come on the Arabs’ timetable, not Israel’s. The Arab world is the dominant actor. The New Historians reversed this, depicting Arab decision-making as two-dimensional, a straightforward response to Israeli decisions. Therefore, if the siege persisted, it was Israel’s fault. Meanwhile, Israeli educators, from grade school to the universities, worked to distance their students from their nation’s history and, again, from attachment to the Zionist project; to ease the path to popular acceptance of dangerous concessions.