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January 2021

On One Big Issue Americans Unite: Press Has Failed By Ira Stoll

https://www.nysun.com/national/one-one-issue-us-is-united-the-press-failed/91395/

Concerned about deep political divisions ripping apart the United States? Relax — there’s at least one issue on which there’s an emerging consensus across the political spectrum.

That is that the press has failed.

President Trump, in his remarks on January 6 before a mob of his supporters disrupted Congress, said, “We don’t have a free and fair press. Our media is not free. It’s not fair. It suppresses thought. It suppresses speech, and it’s become the enemy of the people. It’s become the enemy of the people. It’s the biggest problem we have in this country.”

It was not just Trump and the Republicans expressing this view. President Obama, in a statement on “today’s violence at the Capitol,” said, “for two months now, a political party and its accompanying media ecosystem has too often been unwilling to tell their followers the truth — that this was not a particularly close election and that President-Elect Biden will be inaugurated on January 20.”The Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, returning to the Senate floor after the disruption, denounced what he called “a demagogic president, the people who enable him, the captive media that parrots his lies.”

Nikole Hannah-Jones, the Pulitzer-Prize-winning reporter for the New York Times Magazine, tweeted, “Trump placed open white nationalists all throughout his admin from the beginning and we — mainstream media, polite society — normalized that and we should all be absolutely appalled.” She named one “mainstream media” outlet in particular: “MSNBC was running Trump’s speeches in full and giving platform to disinformation trolls from Trump Administration almost his entire presidency.”

What apartheid? When B’Tselem director Hagai El-Ad, who is Jewish, decides that I, my Arab family, and my Arab friends are all living under an apartheid regime, he and his organizations are basically telling us they see us as second-class citizens. By Yoseph Haddad

https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/what-apartheid-2/

Last week, I woke up one morning in my Nazareth home and was astonished to discover I was living under a racist apartheid regime whose only purpose is “the promotion and perpetuation of the superiority of one group of people – the Jews.” I rubbed my eyes, read the story in greater depth, and calmed down as soon as I realized the reports were based on yet another report by the left-wing NGO B’Tselem.

The problem is that this report has spread like wildfire around the world, and the propaganda is working. B’Tselem, which presents itself as a human-rights organization, is in fact known as an organization with a clear political stance that is in contrast to Israel’s position. As it turns out, people have no boundaries. How dare they say that I, an Arab Israeli who served along with Jewish soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces and managed hundreds of Jewish employees, live under an apartheid regime?

How can anyone say our society is living under an apartheid regime when among us you will find doctors, judges, and even lawmakers? How can you say Samer Haj-Yehia lives in an apartheid regime when he is the head of the biggest bank in Israel? B’Tselem has already broken the record for hypocrisy, but to compare Israel to an apartheid regime for its racial laws is not only a distorted lie but an insult to all those South Africans who actually lived through apartheid. It is contempt for and cynical exploitation of the concept.

Honduran Migrant Caravan Clashes with Guatemalan Authorities En Route to U.S. By Mairead McArdle

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/honduran-migrant-caravan-clashes-with-guatemalan-authorities-en-route-to-u-s/#slide-1

A caravan of thousands of migrants from Honduras headed to the U.S. southern border clashed with Guatemalan authorities on Sunday after they crossed the countries’ common border on their journey north.

An estimated 7,000 migrants have entered Guatemala in recent days hoping to make their way to the U.S. border.

The caravan clashed with only about 3,000 Guatemalan officers near the village of Vado Hondo, about 34 miles from the border of Honduras, Reuters reported. Security forces attempted to block their way by using tear gas and beating the migrants back with sticks. Several were injured in the confrontation Sunday morning.

“Guatemala’s message is loud and clear: These types of illegal mass movements will not be accepted, that’s why we are working together with the neighboring nations to address this as a regional issue,” the Guatemalan president’s office said of the influx of traveling migrants.

Meanwhile, a senior Biden transition official is warning migrants hoping to cross the southern border into the U.S. during the early days of the new administration that “now is not the time” to come.

“The situation at the border isn’t going to be transformed overnight,” the official told NBC News, and migrants seeking to gain asylum right away “need to understand they’re not going to be able to come into the United States immediately.”

After Siege, Will GOP Fight Scandal-Tainted Biden Nominee? . By Susan Crabtree

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/01/18/after_siege_will_gop_fight_scandal-tainted_biden_nominee_145055.html

A sprawling series of barbed-wire barricades surround the U.S. Capitol, and so many members of the National Guard are camped out inside they’re sleeping on floors.

While bracing for the possibility of more violence in Washington and beyond, Democrats are urging swift confirmation of President-elect Joe Biden’s national security team.

There’s one obvious problem, however: Before the storming of the Capitol that left five dead and a nation aghast and on edge, Alejandro Mayorkas, Biden’s choice to lead the Department of Homeland Security, was facing one of the toughest confirmation fights of any Biden nominee. And concerns about him among Republicans have not dissipated along with the tear gas.

(Retired Army Gen. Lloyd Austin III, the incoming president’s choice for defense secretary, also faces confirmation hurdles, though some opposition comes from Democrats concerned about maintaining civilian leadership at the Pentagon.)

Democrats want to fast-track both confirmations, stressing the need to fill a leadership vacuum at key national security agencies. Former acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf was one of several Trump administration officials who resigned in the wake of the Jan. 6 riot on Capitol Hill by Trump supporters. Pete Gaynor, the former administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and a Trump appointee who is well-liked across the aisle, is now in charge at DHS, but Biden is eager to have his own team in place.  

Looking Through an Adversary’s Eyes: A KGB Agent’s Prophecy Jean Chen

https://www.theepochtimes.com/looking-through-an-adversarys-eyes-a-kgb-agents-

The Prophecy of a KGB Agent

I came across a YouTube video of a 1985 interview of Yuri Bezmenov, a KGB agent who defected to the West in 1970. The interview is about the Soviet Union’s strategy to subvert the United States. It is eye-opening and I wish to share a quote here first:

“Marxism-Leninism ideology is being pumped into the soft heads of at least three generations of American students, without being challenged or counter-balanced by the basic values of Americanism and American patriotism … The demoralization process in the United States is basically completed already … Most of it is done by Americans to Americans thanks to lack of moral standards.

As I mentioned before, exposure to true information does not matter anymore. A person who was demoralized is unable to assess true information. The facts tell nothing to him. Even if I shower him with information, with authentic proof, with documents, with pictures. Even if I take him by force to the Soviet Union and show him concentration camp he will refuse to believe it until he is going to receive a kick in his fat bottom. When the military boot crashes him, then he will understand, but not before that. That’s the tragic of the situation of demoralization.”

It is scary to watch the video. (More video here and here.) What Mr. Bezmenov described 35 years ago is unfolding in front of our very eyes. To me, what is most alarming is that the demoralization is mostly “done by Americans to Americans due to lack of moral standards.” Actually, as Bezmenov pointed out, “for the last 25 years, actually it’s over-fulfilled because the demoralization now reaches such areas where previously not even Comrade Andropov [KGB leader during 1967–1982] and all his experts would even dream of such a tremendous success.”

ISRAEL Memo to President Biden: Please Don’t Mess Up the Abraham Accords Memo to President Biden: Please Don’t Mess Up the Abraham Accords by Bret Stephens

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/bret-stephens/president-biden-abrah

https://mailchi.mp/a3b1df29446b/krd-news-bret-stephens-memo-to-president-biden

In November 2013, I participated in an interview at the Wall Street Journal with Alwaleed bin Talal, a Saudi prince of legendary riches and blunt, if sometimes unsavory, views.

To New Yorkers with long memories, Alwaleed was the man who, after September 11, 2001, had sought to donate $10 million to the city, along with the suggestion that the U.S. government “adopt a more balanced stance toward the Palestinian cause.” (Then-mayor Rudy Giuliani returned the check.) To the Journal, he was a major shareholder in News Corporation, the paper’s parent company. Getting a meeting with the editorial board, of which I was then a member, was not a problem.

It turned out to be an exceptionally interesting interview. Three months earlier, Barack Obama had surrendered his red line in Syria, refusing to make good on his prior threats of military action in response to Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons. Instead, Obama seized on a Russian proposal to have Assad voluntarily relinquish his declared arsenal—a proposal that proved remarkably easy to violate while heralding a new era of American fecklessness in the Middle East.

“The U.S. has to have a foreign policy,” Alwaleed said that day. “Well-defined, well-structured. You don’t have it right now, unfortunately. It’s just complete chaos. Confusion. No policy. I mean, we feel it. We sense it.”

As dismayed as Alwaleed was by Obama’s climbdown in Syria, he was even more alarmed by Obama’s turn toward Iran, in the form of an interim nuclear deal that would later become the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA. The prince warned that Iran’s supposedly moderate leaders were not to be trusted, and that the only policy that could work was to “put maximum pressure now on the United States not to succumb to the president of Iran’s soft talk.” He also hinted that Saudi Arabia had a nuclear option thanks to an “arrangement with Pakistan.”

And then Alwaleed dropped a little bomb of his own. “For the first time,” he said, “Saudi Arabian interests and Israel’s are almost parallel. It’s incredible.”

That a prominent Saudi prince was willing to say it on the record, in the pages of a leading U.S. daily and in impolitic defiance of an American president, proved how right he was.

Why Dems and the Media Demonize All Republicans Miranda Devine

https://nypost.com/2021/01/17/why-democrats-demonize-good-gopers-too-devine/

There’s a reason why blameless Republicans and Trump voters are being tarred with the same brush as the Capitol rioters. 

It’s not enough just to arrest and prosecute actual lawbreakers who smashed their way into the Capitol. 

No, anyone who supported the president, voted for him or worked for his administration now has to be hunted down and purged. 

They’re losing their jobs, having their insurance canceled, their book contracts and recording deals torn up. They are being banned from flying or banking or speaking on social media. 

A petition at Harvard University even demands Trump staffers have their degrees revoked. 

A feverish mood is afoot, evoking the spirit of McCarthyism and the Salem witch trials, in which irrationality and hysteria point fingers at the innocent. 

But it is not just an emotional overreaction to the frightening events of Jan. 6. 

It is a deliberate tactic designed to intimidate conservatives and silence their protests when the Biden administration radically remakes the country, as it has promised to do from Day One. 

Democrats and their allies in corporate America are preemptively taking out the opposition because they know that their prescriptions don’t work and are opposed by the majority of Americans. 

MY SAY: MARTIN LUTHER KING. JR

April 4, 1968 · Memphis, Tennessee

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a Baptist minister, was the major architect of the Civil Rights Movement. He led and inspired non-violent campaigns which led to legislation to right the terrible wrong of injustice and segregation. He won the Nobel peace prize. He was assassinated as he prepared to lead a demonstration in Memphis. He was a great American and patriot whose words echo in these troubled days.  Rsk

Solving the Vaccine Crisis by Betsy McCaughey

http://Solving the Vaccine Crisis by Betsy McCaughey

Doctors are warning that as the virus becomes more infectious, even a trip to the supermarket with a mask is risky.

Vaccine supply is not the problem…. The problem is that state and local authorities are bungling vaccine distribution.

Every evening, Governor Andrew Cuomo sends out a blast e-mail blaming the vaccine chaos in New York on inadequate supply from the federal government. It is a lie. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show New York is delivering only 37% of its vaccine supply into people’s arms.

All this is proof that the states are failing miserably. It is time for a federal emergency mass vaccination program staged at malls, arenas and other public sites.

On Friday, President-elect Joe Biden announced his plan to improve vaccination rates. It is modest. He promised 100 million shots in the first hundred days of his term. That will not do the job. It is barely half of what is needed.

For the last week, members of Congress did not see fit to spend even one minute tackling the life-threatening virus terrorizing the rest of us.

Americans are desperate to get vaccinated against COVID. Deaths are soaring, and new strains of the virus, including the UK strain and a newly discovered US strain reported for the first time last week, are reported to be even more contagious. Doctors are warning that as the virus becomes more infectious, even a trip to the supermarket with a mask is risky. Survival hinges on getting vaccinated.

Yet only a third of the vaccine doses shipped to the states by the federal government are actually making it into people’s arms. The public hears they may have to wait months. That is unacceptable.

Vaccine supply is not the problem. The US already has 400 million doses in total of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines in the pipeline, enough to vaccinate 200 million people. (Both vaccines require a two-shot regimen.) In addition, this week, Johnson & Johnson announced it will be ready to seek FDA authorization for its vaccine by March. Initial results from its clinical trials indicate the same 90% plus efficacy as the Moderna and Pfizer products and with only one shot.

Iran-Backed Militia Offers Help to U.S. ‘Liberation Movements’ American leftists and jihadists find common cause—once again. By Robert Spencer

https://amgreatness.com/2021/01/17/iran-backed-militia-offers-help-to-u-s-li

Abu Ali al-Askari, military commander of the Hezbollah Brigades (Kata’ib Hezbollah), an Iran-backed Shi’ite militia operating in Iraq, announced Wednesday that “the advisors of the Islamic resistance” were ready to train “the liberation movements” within the United States. It’s an offer that some in the United States might take seriously.

Al-Askari wrote: “In the name of [Allah] Almighty, the security advisors of the Islamic resistance stand ready to offer counsel and direct and indirect training to liberation movements within the Non-United States of America, with special locations being secured for that purpose.” His offer comes in the wake of several indications that leftists and Islamic supremacists are already making common cause. 

The nationwide riots over the murder of George Floyd last summer provided new insight into the unholy alliance between the two groups. Zahra Billoo, executive director of the San Francisco Bay Area office of the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-SFBA), recently tweeted: “Non-Black POC, first and second-generation immigrant Muslims friends in particular, what are you doing today to support #BlackLivesMatter?” Imraan Siddiqi of CAIR-Arizona tweeted out a video of a hijab-wearing Muslim woman kicking a tear gas canister toward police with the approving comment, “Drop-kick that tear-gas canister, sister.”

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, rioters were so upset over Floyd’s death that they spray-painted “Free Palestine” on the wall of a synagogue. And in New York City, a Muslim housing attorney is in legal trouble for tossing a Molotov cocktail into the backseat of an NYPD cruiser during the Floyd riots. She is also a committed activist for the Palestinian jihad, having published agitprop spreading false claims of Palestinian victimhood. 

Despite the hot water Urooj Rahman finds herself in now, however, she has a bright future as an ideological leader of both the Left and the Islamic jihad. In an interview before her attack, she enunciated the common goal of both movements: “This s–t won’t ever stop unless we f—kin’ take it all down.