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September 2021

AUKUS Security Alliance Exposes EU’s Fecklessness by Soeren Kern

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17810/aukus-security-alliance

“If an authoritarian nation, such as China, displaces America as the dominant global power, then democracies all over the world will feel the consequences.” — Gideon Rachman, columnist, Financial Times.

“Too many European elites still do not want to admit that democracies are in a systemic rivalry with autocracies. Refusing to acknowledge reality is convenient for them since it justifies their inaction. But we need to do the opposite and double down in our defense of democracies.” — Andreas Fulda, China expert, University of Nottingham.

“The US thinks about how to contain China. And Australia too is in the position of thinking about how one contains, as opposed to how one accommodates; that’s the fundamental difference with France. As a consequence, the US looks like the better partner.” — Richard Whitman, professor of politics and international relations, University of Kent.

“I think it was the only option for Australia because the French were not going to annoy or unnecessarily irritate Beijing. They wanted trade, economic, and investment relations. Now, Australia will have the capability to sink the Chinese navy in 72 hours; that’s what this is all about. The Chinese know they have been outmaneuvered, and they’re very angry. In a very short period of time, Australia has gone from a doormat to something very considerable — it’s an extraordinary development.” — Joseph Siracusa, geopolitical analyst, Sky News Australia.

“The lesson of the past few weeks is that the world does not run on Brussels time, with its long periods for consultation, courteous attention to the electoral cycles of 27 countries, and sacrosanct weekends, evenings, and lunch breaks.” — Edward Lucas, Europe analyst, Center for European Policy Analysis.

“France underestimated how China’s naked military ambition, chronic disregard for international order, and barely concealed aspirations to control the deep Pacific and Antarctica pushed Australia to make tough decisions about the future.” — Craig Hooper, geopolitical analyst, Forbes.

“It is hard to overstate the importance of the so-called Aukus alliance between the US, the UK and Australia — and the implicit geopolitical disaster for the EU.” — Wolfgang Münchau, commentator, The Spectator.

“The extent of Emmanuel Macron’s fury is absurd, and only shows the sublime lack of self-awareness that has come to characterize Europe’s myopic political elites…. The European establishment has a long history of treating its geopolitical partners abysmally while wearing a mask of moral superiority.” — Editorial board, The Telegraph.

“The EU continues to decline to take any serious responsibility for global peace and security, preferring to see the economic and commercial opportunities in the relationship with China, rather than the threat the Chinese Communist Party represents.” — Gerard Baker, columnist, The Wall Street Journal.

Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States have announced a new tripartite strategic alliance aimed at countering China’s growing assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific region. The AUKUS defense agreement, under which Australia will acquire American-designed nuclear-powered submarines, is a welcome paradigm shift intended to enhance the projection of Western military power in the region.

New York Times Pits “Principle” against Powerful “Rabbis” in Iron Dome Vote by Alan M. Dershowitz

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17809/new-york-times-pits-principle-against-powerful

[Catie Edmondson] cited no support for her “reporting” on the pressure placed by “powerful …rabbis,” nor did she name them, because her “reporting” simply was not true. She just made it up, because it supported the anti-Semitic narrative that AOC and her Squad deploy to deflect justified criticism of their anti-Israel and anti-American votes.

No powerful rabbis or lobbyists were needed to pressure the nearly 500 Democrats and Republicans who voted to fund the Iron Dome defense system….

No mention was made by the Times of powerful pro-Palestinian lobbyists or Imams, or of the pressure placed on AOC and others by radical leftists who hate Israel. No: it was supposedly”principles” that motivated the anti-Israel votes, and “powerful” rabbinical pressures that determined the “yes” and “present” votes. And this purports to be objective “reporting” from the newspaper of record.

After much criticism, the Times quietly removed the reference to “rabbis” without apologizing for its reporter’s mendacious anti-Semitism or disciplining her for her journalistic malpractice. Just imagine how quickly a journalist would be cancelled if she engaged in comparable bigotry toward another group. But the Times has long suffered from a double standard toward Jews and the Jewish nation.

You are not getting “all the news that’s fit to print” about Israel. You are getting only the “news” that its reporters and editors fit into their preconceived and biased narrative.

The Times must publicly, clearly and substantively apologize for its reporter lying about “powerful …rabbis” and explain how its editors could permit such an obviously anti-Semitic canard to be published on its pages. Quietly eliminating the offending words from its online version is cowardly and insufficient. It must acknowledge the harm that its false reporting has caused.

In purporting to “report” — not editorialize— about why AOC changed her vote from “no” to “present” on the iron dome funding, The New York Times congressional correspondent Catie Edmondson “reported” the following:

“[Progressives] have been caught between their principles and the still powerful pro-Israel voices in their party, such as influential lobbyists and rabbis.”

She cited no support for her “reporting” on the pressure placed by “powerful …rabbis,” nor did she name them, because her “reporting” simply was not true. She just made it up, because it supported the anti-Semitic narrative that AOC and her Squad deploy to deflect justified criticism of their anti-Israel and anti-American votes.

Seth Forman: What Our Universities Have Wrought A review of “The New Civil War: Exposing Elites, Fighting Utopian Leftism, and Restoring America,” by Bruce D. Abramson

https://amgreatness.com/2021/09/28/what-our-universities-have-wrought/

Abramson’s achievement is to show that trust in the neutral institutions that adjudicate knowledge has collapsed, and to adroitly locate our universities at the center of this calamity.

In the first few pages of his rigorous and incisive book The New Civil War: Exposing Elites, Fighting Utopian Leftism, and Restoring America, Bruce Abramson sets out the features of America’s current crisis, and it’s not pretty. An authoritarian utopianism, he writes, has swept through America’s ruling institutions, carried on there by a “credentialed elite” that has become religiously attached to a particularly corrosive version of progressivism. This has led to a civil war, pitting progressives “hell-bent on transformation” against “patriots loyal to the American constitutional tradition” who “are locked in a struggle for the nation’s soul.”

The ineffectual shutdowns of the COVID-19 pandemic, the doctor-approved George Floyd riots, and the anomalous presidential election of 2020, writes Abramson, were the events that revealed the depth and breadth of the gentry’s institutional capture. “In fact, the United States jettisoned the rule of law and ceased functioning as a republic in mid-March 2020.” 

In another context, such sweeping indictments of America’s leadership class might plausibly be dismissed as the angry hyperbole of a writer who, by his own admission, “failed” as an academic and card-carrying member of the credentialed elite. But with this book, Abramson, a widely published strategic consultant and proud member of the class of citizens he calls the “renegade elite,” has clearly found his footing. The case he makes that an American nobility has emerged, consolidated its power at the highest levels of society, sealed off these institutions from ideological opposition, and adopted a worldview substantially at odds with foundational principles of the republic, seems chillingly tenable.

Abramson’s thesis, at least in its broad outlines, has received formidable backing from other, less “renegade” critics. Former New York magazine columnist Andrew Sullivan has puzzled over the “sudden, rapid, stunning shift in the belief system of the American elites” that “has sent the whole society into a profound cultural dislocation.” David Brooks, who wrote admiringly about his own social class in Bobos in Paradise (2004), admits he had no idea that the meritocrats would coalesce into an “insular, intermarrying brahmin elite,” or how aggressively this overclass would “impose elite values through speech and thought codes.”

“I underestimated our intolerance of ideological diversity,” Brooks confesses.

New York Socialism: The Poor Subsidize the Rich You can’t be a good leftist unless you have someone else’s money to live on. And most of the country is busy paying for the lifestyle of the small remainder. By Dan Gelernter

https://amgreatness.com/2021/09/28/new-york-socialism-the-poor-subsidize-the-rich/

New York City’s budget will exceed $100 billion for the first time this year. Everything is open and above board, as you’d expect: The budget is broken down into eight separate documents and five supporting documents. The “Expense, Revenue, and Contract” portion, for example, is 781 pages. If you fancy a little light reading, you can browse it here. 

Of the money New York City plans to spend, about two-thirds comes from actual city taxes and revenues. The rest is a gift: $15 billion from the state, and $22 billion from the federal government. This is going to be used in a variety of constructive ways. Mayor Bill de Blasio announced, for example, he would spend $234 million cleaning up parks and graffiti. So at the very least New Yorkers can look forward to having the world’s cleanest parks by this time next year. 

After all, how could you possibly spend $234 million on a goal and fail to achieve it?

The best way, of course, is not to have goals: There are no “failure standards” for these expenditures, no way of judging success, no performance targets to be met. So forgive my cynicism if I suppose that quite a lot of money is going to end up lining peoples’ pockets. The New York Post reported in 2019 that de Blasio’s wife Chirlane McCray spent $900 million of public money on a mental health initiative and could show neither tangible results nor any accounting of how the money was spent.

But my main objection to someone like McCray spending hundreds of millions of dollars in New York City is that such a big chunk of that money is coming from taxpayers who don’t live there. It’s bad enough that New Yorkers are saddled with this trash. But why should New York’s Chirlane McCrays be sponsored by Missouri’s farmers?

The vast majority of American wealth is concentrated in the cities. So even if you believe in “spreading the wealth,” it should be cities that help subsidize the poorer countryside.  Why does the reverse happen so often? 

Video: Fauci’s Flip Flops Exposed Everything wrong . . . every step of the way.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/09/faucis-flip-flops-exposed-frontpage-editors/

Check out this compilation video of COVID czar Dr. Fauci flip-flopping on every position regarding the coronavirus pandemic, from school closures to social distancing to natural immunity and more. How is this fraud with his wildly vacillating recommendations still allowed to control every aspect of the lives of American citizens?

Don’t miss this must-see video below:

Six Lessons from The Road — in America Americans are different from the rest of us. Katie Hopkins

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/09/six-lessons-road-katie-hopkins/

Sixty days into my latest foray on the road around America, I finally find myself alone with a desk, time, and the warm evening skies of Orlando to enjoy.

I am trusting you will forgive the irregularity of my reporting these last few weeks. Sadly, the quieter art of writing has been somewhat pushed to the corners of my days between speaking, traveling, and documenting my time noisily on social media. And I miss it.

From California to Arizona, then Dallas to Denver, I have been given a temperature check on where America is at, as a foreigner and respectful outsider. Now, I wanted to share my dix lessons from the road as I listen to people laughing down by the pool and fireworks thudding somewhere Disney-ish in the distance.

1) America is filled with good people.

I am constantly amazed by the polite and mannerly way Americans greet each other, share pleasantries and kindness, and encourage each other throughout their day. Some of it is professional customer service, where you are world-class in your ability to offer choice and endless options and do it all with a smile. But it is much greater than that. It is the kindly gesture in the elevator, the stepping back to allow another ahead of you in a line, or a shared joke about nothing in particular. This nation still has goodness running through it, like a seam of gold in a mine.

2) Change and clean ups can happen.

When there is a political will, change is possible. I have seen it with my own eyes in Venice Beach and Skid Row, where former centers of squalor were swept clean (albeit temporarily) for disgraced Governor Newsom to survive the recall. The futility of this exercise is obvious, but it does give evidence to the fact that when a politician is concerned for their own survival, change can happen. When it is simply inconveniencing or distressing ordinary Americans, it goes unchecked.

To effect change, politicians need to be made to feel much less comfortable in power.

Biden’s Vax Mandate To Be Enforced By Fining Companies $70,000 To $700,000? Adam Andrzejewski

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2021/09/28/bidens-vax-mandate-to-be-enforced-by-fining-companies-70000-to-700000/?sh=1e5a568a1c0d

President Joe Biden didn’t just announce a Covid-19 vaccine mandate on companies employing 100 or more people, he plans to enforce it.

On Saturday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s House quietly tucked an enforcement mechanism into their $3.5 trillion “reconciliation” bill, passed it out of the Budget Committee, and sent it to the House floor.

Buried on page 168 of the House Democrats’ 2,465-page mega bill is a tenfold increase in fines for employers that “willfully,” “repeatedly,” or even seriously violate a section of labor law that deals with hazards, death, or serious physical harm to their employees.

The increased fines on employers could run as high as $70,000 for serious infractions, and $700,000 for willful or repeated violations—almost three-quarters of a million dollars for each fine. If enacted into law, vax enforcement could bankrupt non-compliant companies even more quickly than the $14,000 OSHA fine anticipated under Biden’s announced mandate.

The Biden Administration has already started implementing its vaccine mandate enforcement blueprint:

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) set precedent this summer and published an emergency Covid-19 rule in the Federal Register taking jurisdiction over and providing justification for Covid-19 being a workplace hazard for healthcare employment.
Early in September, Biden announced his 100-or-more employee Covid-19 vaccine mandate and tasked OSHA with drafting an enforcement rule to exert emergency vaccine compliance authority over companies with 100 or more employees.
The legislative provision that passed the Budget Committee raises the OSHA fines for non-compliance 10 times higher – and up to $700,000 for each “willful” or “repeated” violation. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has not announced when the House will vote on the reconciliation bill that includes the new OSHA fines.
If the legislation is enacted, OSHA could levy draconian fines to enforce Biden’s vaccine mandate, a move that could rapidly bankrupt non-compliant companies. The Biden mandate affects employers collectively employing an estimated 80 million workers.

The Democrats are playing hardball.                      

President Biden embraced an aggressive stance earlier this month when he challenged Republicans who are threatening lawsuits over what they decry as his federal overreach: “Have at it. … We’re playing for real here. This isn’t a game.”

Rashida Tlaib Finance Director Shills for Palestinian Islamic Jihad Prison Escapees Rasha Mubarak: “These 6 Palestinian freedom fighters offer us hope.” Joe Kaufman

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/09/rashida-tlaib-finance-director-shills-palestinian-joe-kaufman/

On September 6th, six Palestinian prisoners being held in an Israeli jail escaped, forcing Israeli authorities to launch a manhunt for them. All have been caught, since. Of the six, five are members of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and one is a commander in the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, two groups internationally-recognized as terrorist organizations. Democratic operative and Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib staffer Rasha Mubarak thinks otherwise; she has lionized the terrorists as heroes. It is not the first time Mubarak has championed Palestinian terror, and the Democratic Party continues to embrace her and even groom her for future political office.

In August 2014, at the end of the 2014 Gaza War, along with photos of a jubilant Hamas, who had bizarrely just declared victory over Israel, Mubarak tweeted, “Thousands of people celebrating in the streets of Gaza for the victory. Alhamdulillah. #VictoryForGaza.” The war had left nearly 2200 Palestinians and 70 Israelis dead.

Mubarak has promoted material from Hamas-supporting media, including the Palestine Info Center and Shehab News, both of which are directly affiliated with Hamas and publicize the group along with shocking anti-Semitic cartoons of evil looking Orthodox Jews. In July 2014, Mubarak copied onto Facebook a post from Falastin News Palestine, a site that glorifies Hamas and PIJ fighters as heroes; outright states, “God bless Hamas”; features numerous photos of armed masked terrorists interacting with little children; and showcases photos of dead US and British Jews murdered in a Jerusalem synagogue, grossly referring to the dead as “occupiers.”

In June and July 2020, Mubarak posted memorials onto her Twitter and Facebook pages for car-ramming terrorist Ahmed Erekat, who was shot and killed after attempting to run over a female Israeli border officer, at a checkpoint east of Jerusalem.

Generals Contradict Biden on Afghanistan Withdrawal What advice did Biden hear from senior military officers — and when did he hear it? Lloyd Billingsley

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/09/generals-contradict-biden-afghanistan-withdrawal-lloyd-billingsley-0/

“I know president to be and honest and forthright man.” That was Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday. Trouble was, the questioner, Sen. Tom Cotton, did not ask Austin for his opinion of Joe Biden.

The Arkansas Republican, who served in Iraq with the 101st Airborne, wanted to know if it was true that, as Joe Biden said last month in an interview with George Stephanopoulos, no senior military officer advised him to leave troops behind in Afghanistan.

“Their input was received by the president and considered by the president for sure,” Austin testified but the senior military officers weren’t going to speak of “what they personally recommended in confidence.”

As U.S. Central Command Gen. Kenneth McKenzie testified, the officers recommended the United States maintain a presence of at least 2,500 U.S. service members in Afghanistan. Gen. McKenzie told the committee he made a similar recommendation in the fall of 2020 under the Trump administration. The general believed “the withdrawal of those forces would lead inevitably to the collapse of the Afghan military forces and eventually the Afghan government.”

Asked about future military involvement in Afghanistan, Gen. McKenzie said the United States reserved the right to go after ISIS and al-Qaeda targets, but “it will not be easy to do that.”

Gen. Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the committee his assessment was to maintain 2500-3500 troops and “move toward a negotiated solution.” On the other hand, Milley told Sen. Cotton, “I don’t discuss exactly what my conversations are with a sitting president in the Oval Office.”

Cotton pointed out that Kabul fell on August 15, and wondered why it took 10 days to ask about the continued presence of U.S. forces. If all this is true, Cotton said, “then why haven’t you resigned?”

Joe Biden, Nowhere Man By Joel Kotkin

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/09/joe-biden-nowhere-man/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=first

Unless Biden can reconcile his party’s competing priorities, his presidency will continue to unravel.

J oe Biden’s beleaguered presidency has fueled criticism of the man himself — his history of policy missteps, mental incapacity, and inept administrative style, as well as his family struggles. Whatever his personal flaws, though, the real cause of Biden’s incoherent and even contradictory policies lies not in his incompetence but in the contradictory nature of his agenda and his party.

Biden, despite decades in politics, remains something of a nowhere man, with no demonstrated, consistent worldview beyond expediency. He was elected because corporate power brokers saw him as the only viable alternative first to Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and then to the widely detested Donald Trump. These forces, joined by some labor unions and the older black establishment, pushed him over the top in a bizarre, heavily scripted campaign funded largely by the ultra-rich. The pandemic proved ideal for muzzling Biden’s gaffe machine.

In this tumultuous period, the Democratic Party could use a Bill Clinton or a Barack Obama, a leader who defines a coherent agenda and inspires voters. Some still believe that Biden’s reputation for compromise and bipartisanship is working, but his poll numbers suggest otherwise. The president’s approval rating, which was dropping before the Afghanistan debacle, is now heading toward the lows plumbed by his predecessor. Unless Biden somehow succeeds in elaborating a clear agenda, his presidency likely will continue to unravel.

Democratic Divisions and Contradictions

Like Caesar’s Gaul, the Democratic Party contains three distinct and often competing factions. The first consists of increasingly “woke” tech oligarchs and their Wall Street funders. They financed “a shadow campaign” for Biden, pouring millions into get-out-the-vote efforts and running media interference (most obviously in the Hunter Biden scandal) for his campaign.

Once elected, Biden duly inserted representatives of this class at the top of his administration. His cabinet is made up overwhelmingly of pedigreed, coastal metropolites (a third of the new cabinet went to Harvard). As the leftist Nation put it in a convincing story, under Biden the Democrats have become, without question, “the party of the rich.”