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Trump II: Challenges Ahead by Amir Taheri

Posted By on November 17th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21119/trump-challenges

The real question, therefore, is what could Trump II do to restore America’s prestige across the globe and reassert itself as the indispensable power that it still is? The answer is: plenty.

In fact, Trump, even if he doesn’t do anything, will repair some of the damage that the past three administrations shaped by Barack Obama have done to US standing and credibility as a world power.

In those 12 years of Obama and Biden, US leaders went around the world to apologize for imaginary injustices done by Americans to various segments of mankind, mused about “leading from behind” and presented the United States as a room service that doesn’t even ask you to sign the bill let alone offer a tip.

Under the three Obama administrations, with Trump I as a brief interlude, the US saw Russia attack and occupy parts of Georgia and annex Crimea and eventually invade Ukraine, and the US did nothing.

Obama drew a red line against the use of chemical weapons to kill Syrian people, but when Bashar al-Assad, backed by Russia, did so, went into purdah.

To divert attention from the Middle East, Obama conjured the “pivot to Asia” slogan, while letting China grab a bigger chunk of the world, including US markets, in the name of free trade.

Also remember that regardless of what experts or even Trump himself say, the 47th president is likely to be as unpredictable as the 45th one, a feature that helped him in foreign policy last time and may do so again.

What will Donald Trump’s foreign policy look like in his second term?

This is the question currently making the buzz in the commentariat around the world.

Western European pundits claim that Trump will abandon the Ukrainian lamb to the Russian wolf or, at least, force the European shepherd to foot the bill for keeping it half alive.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Trump Would Be Wise To Deliver Regime Change in Iran by Con Coughlin

Posted By on November 17th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21120/trump-iran-regime-change

The October 7, 2023 attacks carried out against Israel by Iranian-backed Hamas terrorists…. was the direct result of Tehran’s ability to fund the terrorist movement to the tune of $100 million a year, an operation that would not have been possible without Biden’s lenient attitude towards the ayatollahs.

Trump may come to see as well that, unfortunately, due to the deep-seated commitment of Iran’s regime in exporting its brand of Islam, as enshrined in its constitution, there can be no real long-term peace in the Middle East without regime change, especially if Iran has nuclear weapons — not to mention the global arms race that would follow such an event.

Not only would many of Iran’s neighbours be relieved, but its captive citizens could then be free to choose leaders better aligned with their aspirations. A liberated Iran might even join the Abraham Accords….

Now that Donald Trump has secured his remarkable victory in the US presidential election, supporting regime change in Iran could soon emerge as one of his new administration’s top priorities after he takes office in January.

Trump’s no-nonsense approach to confronting the ayatollahs’ malign influence in the region was one of the defining characteristics during his first term in the White House.

One of his more laudable foreign policy initiatives was to withdraw from the flawed nuclear deal with Iran agreed by former President Barack Obama in 2015.

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Things Worth Remembering: The Last Words of Alexei Navalny ‘If they decide to kill me, it means that we are incredibly strong.’ By Douglas Murray

Posted By on November 17th, 2024

https://www.thefp.com/p/things-worth-remembering-alexi-navalny?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

The word historic is overused. It is often deployed for something people will forget within a cycle of news. But sometimes, in these modern times, somebody does something that can genuinely be seen as historic. Something so brave, and so actually stunning, that it will inspire people for generations.

Alexei Navalny’s decision to return to Russia in January 2021 was just such a moment. By then, he had become one of the most open and daring—some might say reckless—critics of Vladimir Putin. And the previous time he had flown to Moscow, he had collapsed midair, poisoned by the deadly nerve agent, Novichok. He had recovered from this assassination attempt in Germany, before boarding the flight home. It was an act of extraordinary courage. I almost wrote that it was suicidal courage, but that term is too loaded. Perhaps better to say fatalistic courage.

The world knows what happened next: Navalny was arrested before he could make it through customs in Moscow, one final time, and charged with various crimes. He was ultimately taken to a remote penal colony in the Arctic Circle, and in true Stalinist style, the Russian authorities announced in February of this year that he had died, at the age of 47.

But Americans could be forgiven for not registering, in the weeks leading up to the recent, febrile elections, the posthumous release of a memoir penned by this brave man. Patriot is a journal of sorts, begun during his recovery in Germany and continuing through his Siberian internment. In it, he explains why he returned to Moscow in 2021.

“I have my country and my convictions. I don’t want to give up my country or betray it. If your convictions mean something, you must be prepared to stand up for them and make sacrifices if necessary,” he writes.

Navalny lived by this belief, and died by it.

MEDIA, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The impotent rage of the flailing woke elites Brendan O’Neill

Posted By on November 16th, 2024

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/11/15/the-impotent-rage-of-the-flailing-woke-elites/

So the Guardian has flounced off of X. With characteristic pomposity it announced this week that it will no longer post its articles on this ‘toxic media platform’. X has become a volcanic mess of noxious opinion since evil Elon Musk took over, say the crybabies of Kings Place. So they’re off, to Bluesky, whatever that is. Quite how X’s users will cope without such fine journalism as ‘My toddler is vegan. What’s the problem?’ and ‘What if the mega-rich just want rocket ships to escape the Earth they destroy?’ remains to be seen.

The Guardian charges Musk with letting X be overrun with ‘disturbing content’. This once nice joint now simmers with ‘far-right conspiracy theories and racism’, it says. Let’s leave to one side the industrial-strength gall it must require for a media group that wanged on for years about how Brexit was the handiwork of a ‘shadowy global operation’ spending oodles of ‘dark money’ to accuse anyone else of being a conspiratorial crackpot. The more striking thing is the Guardian’s fantastically haughty refusal to hang out anywhere there are people who have a different opinion.

Let’s be real: that’s what this hissy fit is about, this exodus of the entitled, this fleeing of the self-important from X. They just can’t abide being around people who like Trump and don’t like mass immigration and think lesbians don’t have cocks. Musk’s true crime, in their eyes, was to open X up to views that lie outside the fiercely policed parameters of correct think. Their ‘X-odus’ is an oik-avoidance strategy, a retreat from the madding crowd of lowly opinion-havers into the safety of the liberal echo chamber where everyone agrees Trump is Hitler, Brexit is ‘Brexshit’ and Eddie Izzard is a woman.

It was summed up in a column in the Guardian about the Guardian’s abandonment of X. (The Guardian’s favourite topic of discussion is itself.) ‘Hell is other people’, the writer cries. ‘Or, more specifically, other people on social media.’ Of late, she says, X has become ‘the digital equivalent of a pub notorious for glassing at chucking-out time’, whereas Bluesky hosts a ‘more measured, less emotive conversation’. The hints of class hatred are delicious. X is depicted as a shady pub in the chavvy bit of town while Bluesky is apparently akin to the hot-desking zone at Soho House. God bless the Guardian, they gave mingling with the masses their best shot but it’s just not for them.

One thing the Guardian really came to hate on X was the dreaded community note, which is when users can collaboratively correct a post they feel is misleading. Guardian posts on Brexit and Net Zero and other matters were often targeted by these organic swarms of sceptics. That’s the ‘glassing’ they feared – the shoving of the glass of public doubt into the face of elite ideology. Just imagine how painful it was for the posh and virtuous of the Guardian to have some sunburned bloke with the England flag in his social-media bio waging a war of community notes against their online blather. The horror!

The least convincing thing in the Guardian’s smug justification for its retreat from X is its cry that Musk is using the platform ‘to shape political discourse’. Now, this is true, of course. Musk is not shy about his conversion to the cause of Trump. He took every opportunity to push Trumpism on X in the run-up to the presidential election. Yet the idea that the Guardian has some classically liberal hatred for billionaires using their swag and clout to shape politics is bullshit. The Guardian was fine with Twitter, as it was then, when a ‘nicer’ breed of Silicon Valley fat cat was using it to big up the Dems, silence pesky feminists and gag anyone judged to be ‘far right’. What really horrifies the Guardian is that its class of anti-populist, post-truth graduate hysterics has lost control of X. It hates Musk not for stomping his political bootprint on X but for erasing its own.

MEDIA Comments turned off

Editor-in-Chief of ‘Scientific American’ Resigns After Anti-Trump Rant By Eric Lendrum

Posted By on November 16th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/11/15/editor-in-chief-of-scientific-american-resigns-after-anti-trump-rant/

The editor-in-chief of Scientific American has resigned from her position following a vulgar rant against President-elect Donald Trump and his supporters.

As the New York Post reports, Laura Helmuth announced her resignation on Thursday, declaring that she was “going to take some time to think about what comes next (and go birdwatching).”

As previously reported, Helmuth reacted to the results of the 2024 election in real-time, beginning her deranged rants once it became clear that former President Trump was going to win an historic second, non-consecutive term.

“Every four years I remember why I left Indiana (where I grew up) and remember why I respect the people who stayed and are trying to make it less racist and sexist,” said Helmuth in a series of social media posts.

“Solidarity to everybody whose meanest, dumbest, most bigoted high-school classmates are celebrating early results because f*** them to the moon and back,” she continued. She also declared that “Gen X is so full of f***ing fascists.”

Helmuth wouldn’t issue an apology for her remarks until November 7th, affirming that her insults were “offensive and inappropriate,” while claiming that she would “respect and value people across the political spectrum.” She deleted the posts in question, but they were preserved through screenshots that have since been shared by her critics, including X owner Elon Musk, who agreed with another user who described Helmuth as “a political activist who has taken over a scientific institution.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

President Trump’s Magic Show Begins By J.B. Shurk

Posted By on November 16th, 2024

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/11/president_trump_s_magic_show_begins.html

If you’ve ever played speed chess, then you can appreciate what President Trump is about to do to “official” Washington.  This won’t be like 2017, when the president did everything he could to work amicably with House and Senate Republicans.  This time, you either get on the “Trump Train” or kindly throw yourself from the back car.  There’s no time to waste, and the president won’t be slowing down for stragglers.  

After his first election, President Trump arrived in D.C. with Republican majorities in Congress, too.  He expected that the people who had promised to repeal Obamacare for seven years would have a legislative package ready for him to sign into law.  He expected that Republicans who had campaigned on securing the border for four decades would be prepared to do what it takes to achieve that goal for the American people.  His expectations were met with the disappointing reality of squishy Republican backbones and Uniparty backstabbing.

While Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell informed President Trump which of his potential nominees would get Republican support (McConnell’s wife, for instance, would have no problem winning confirmation), House Speaker Paul Ryan told him that there was just no money to build a border wall (because Ryan had already spent trillions supporting Barack Obama’s policy agenda).  Both Republicans took turns publicly laughing at Trump for arriving in D.C. with the misguided belief that the work of government could be anything other than slow.  McConnell and Ryan wasted most of President Trump’s first year in office bickering about how best to dismantle Obamacare before finally throwing up their hands in feigned exasperation after Senator John McCain saved the Democrats’ costly expansion of government-directed medicine with his final “screw you” vote. 

On the other hand, McConnell and Ryan took the Russia collusion hoax very seriously.  Although Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Brennan, Jim Comey, and numerous other coup-plotters inside the Intelligence Community had created that fantasy as a mechanism for illegally spying on candidate Trump before his election and as a mechanism for overthrowing President Trump after his inauguration, congressional Republicans treated the matter as if it deserved their utmost attention.  McConnell and Ryan both knew that the allegations against Trump were ridiculous, but they eagerly assisted Democrats in their efforts to paint the president as a Russian spy.  Why?  Because holding Trump’s fate in their hands gave them power over his presidency. 

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Possibility of a ‘Golden Age’ in the Middle East by Majid Rafizadeh

Posted By on November 16th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21117/golden-age-middle-east

Iran launched from its own soil hundreds of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and attack drones at Israel, a country smaller than the state of New Jersey — a demonstration of the regime’s fundamentalist commitment to destroying the Jewish state.

President-elect Donald J. Trump at present seems averse to regime change in Iran. Unfortunately — due to the regime’s commitment to “wipe Israel off the map” and, as stated in its constitution, to export its version of Islam across the world — there does not appear to be the possibility for a real long-term peace in the Middle East without regime change. Anything short of that simply invites the regime to wait Trump out, as well as whoever succeeds him.

Not enough can be said to warn nations of the dangers that can arise from a lack of robust leadership, the perils of underestimating the ambitions of adversarial states, and the paralysis of being unable to confront an adversary for fear of escalation. The adversary, not the leader of Free World, is supposed to fear “escalation.”

The repercussions of allowing Iran… to operate without meaningful deterrence, simply underscores the need for a “Golden Age” — especially a new regime in Iran more aligned with the dreams of so many of its citizens — and not a moment too soon.

Never underestimate the power of an administration’s single term or the harm that policies – whether constructive or poorly-informed — can have on the international stage.

As President Joe Biden’s administration approaches the end of its term, it is hard not to see the global volatility, emboldened adversaries, and fractured alliances.

Those are lessons to be learned about the costs of weakness in leadership and the consequences of strategic missteps in foreign policy.

ANTI-SEMITISM, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Intifada Was Globalized in Amsterdam by Alan M. Dershowitz and Andrew Stein

Posted By on November 16th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21118/amsterdam-globalized-intifada

There is no moral or legal equivalence between non-violent mischief — such as tearing down flags and shouting racial insults — and committing life-threatening assaults upon people based on their religion and ethnicity. The anti-Israel rioters were hunting down Jews…

Muslim extremists have a long history of hurling spears in response to non-violent insults. Recall the numerous deadly attacks — shootings, stabbings, bombings and lethal fatwas—against those who allegedly insulted the prophet by picturing him or authoring books about him. There was also violence against those who burned Korans or otherwise demeaned Islam. Even cartoons provoked deadly responses.

The law in no Western nation grants the victims of non-violent insults the right to respond by violence. If a Jew were to physically assault the many Muslims who have repeatedly demeaned Judaism or its nation-state during recent protests, they would be appropriately punished, as some have been.

[W]e are likely to see more anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish pogroms in other parts of the world as antisemitism moves from the fringes to the mainstream.

Protestors – both pro- and anti-Israel – have the right to express their views verbally and even symbolically, but they have no right to attack individuals or groups based on religion, ethnicity or national origin. Those who engaged in physical assaults – and many were caught on video – must be prosecuted and, if convicted, imprisoned or deported. A clear line must be drawn between lawful, even if immoral, protests, and criminal violence…. It is a bright-line distinction that many in the media are deliberately trying to blur.

The U.S. has a stake in stopping this violence: the call to “globalize the intifada” is not limited to Europe. Those who advocate globalization are inciting violence against Americans of Jewish heritage. The incitement may be too general to be denied First Amendment protection against criminal punishment, but the single standard demands that universities apply the same standard to calls for intifada than they would to calls for lynching of blacks or assaulting of gays. The real difference is that no university student or faculty member would ever call for the latter, and if they did, they would be disciplined or expelled. Yet today it is entirely acceptable, indeed expected, that radical students will call for the lynching and assaulting of Jews and Israelis. That, after all, is what an intifada entails.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Farewell to the “Rising American Electorate” The Obama coalition is not coming back. Ruy Teixeira

Posted By on November 15th, 2024

https://www.liberalpatriot.com/p/farewell-to-the-rising-american-electorate

At one point in the initial rollout of Harris’s campaign, there was much happy (joyful?) talk of getting the band back together—the return of the mighty Obama coalition. The “rising American electorate” would have its revenge on Trump, the Republicans, and their retrograde supporters from declining demographics.

That’s not exactly how it worked out. Instead, Trump won every swing state and the election, carried the national popular vote and made dramatic headway among key demographics that were supposed to buoy the rising American electorate. In short, the rising American electorate didn’t rise, it crashed.

As Democrats dig out from their debacle, it’s important for them to understand just how far away they now are from the salad days of the Obama coalition. In 12 short years, they have lost two of three elections to Donald Trump and huge chunks of support from key demographics, including most of their rising constituencies. They need to face the uncomfortable fact that not only did the Obama coalition not come back, it’s likely never coming back. It’s time for a new coalitional strategy—a strategy that starts with rebuilding their support among working-class Americans of all races and forcefully jettisoning all the political baggage that is preventing them from doing so.

Here are data that illustrate the scale of decline since Obama vanquished Mitt Romney in 2012. For this exercise, I use the Catalist data from 2012, the best retrospective data available, and compare it to the demographic group estimates from AP VoteCast, the best 2024 election data currently available. (It would be preferable to use 2024 Catalist data for this comparison but their data are not yet available.)

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Newsom Wants to be the Leader of the Resistance But Californians are resisting him. by Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on November 15th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/newsom-wants-to-be-the-leader-of-the-resistance/

California is ready to fight,” Gov. Gavin Newsom threatened. “Whether it be our fundamental civil rights, reproductive freedom, or climate action – we refuse to turn back the clock and allow our values and laws to be attacked.”

But the fight had already been lost in California as state residents rose up against his radical policies. The aspiring leader of the resistance against a new Trump administration is facing his own resistance.

On Election Day, almost 70% of Californians voted for Proposition 36 in spite of Newsom.

“I was wondering what state I’m living in,” Gov. Newsom had complained about a poll showing that Prop 36, a proposition to make crime illegal again, was far ahead. “the public clearly has a different point of view.”

The public’s point of view in California was closer to Trump’s than Newsom’s.

The vast majority of Californians had rejected Gov. Newsom’s attempts to block, undermine, sabotage and campaign against the proposition criminalizing theft and locking up criminals. They ignored his complaints that locking up criminals would lead to “mass incarceration”.

After Election Day, Gov. Newsom is doubling down with an “emergency special session” to fight the newly elected Trump administration and “safeguard California values” by protecting illegal aliens, abortion and green fraud.

The Democrat state government that had tried to outlaw memes also promised to protect “civil liberties”. A federal judge had slapped down the meme ban and who accused it of stifling “the free and unfettered exchange of ideas which is so vital to American democratic debate”.

It wouldn’t be the first time.