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April 2022

FOREIGN POLICY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Biden’s Middle East: Saudi Arabia Embraces China; Will They Topple the Dollar? by Judith Bergman

By on April 20th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18450/biden-middle-east-saudi-arabia-embraces-china

If Saudi Arabia were to break the tradition of pricing its oil in dollars, as it is contemplating doing, others could well start to price oil in yuan or various currencies — negatively affecting the US dollar’s status and potentially the entire US economy.

“China must brace for a full-blown escalation of the struggle with the United States and prepare to gradually decouple the Chinese yuan from the US dollar,” Zhou Li, former deputy director of the Communist Party’s International Liaison Department, South China Morning Post, July 5, 2020.

That Saudi Arabia now seems to be seriously considering selling its oil in yuan signifies the extent to which the Biden administration’s Middle East policies have left countries such as Saudi Arabia hedging their bets on China, as the ascendant power in the Middle East. China, on the other hand, is simply taking advantage of the current US administration’s deprioritization of the region and its alienation of strategic US allies such as Saudi Arabia.

That alienation has mainly come, according to reports, because of Saudi “security concerns” — a diplomatic euphemism, presumably, for America’s enabling Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. This game-changer is doubtless seen by Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich Sunni Gulf states, as a mortal danger.

The vacuum that the US left behind – the second one after Afghanistan — is rapidly being filled by China.

The BRI initiative seeks dramatically to enhance China’s global influence from East Asia to Europe by making countries worldwide increasingly dependent on China. China has signed cooperation agreements with 19 Arab countries for construction projects under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

China is also Saudi Arabia’s largest trading partner — an arrangement that extends to military cooperation….

In August 2021, the fifth China-Arab States Expo took place in China; during it, agreements worth an estimated $24 billion in investments between China and Arab countries were made.

Saudi Arabia is considering selling oil to China — which buys more than 25% of Saudi oil exports — in exchange for yuan (China’s currency), according to a recent report by the Wall Street Journal. The move would be unprecedented. Saudi Arabia, ever since its 1974 agreement with US President Richard Nixon, has been selling oil in exchange for US dollars.

The change, if realized, would be significant. The status of the US dollar, including as the world’s reserve currency, depends on its dominance of global markets, especially the oil market, where 80% of sales are done in US dollars. If Saudi Arabia were to break the tradition of pricing its oil in dollars, as it is contemplating doing, others could well start to price oil in yuan or other currencies — negatively affecting the US dollar’s status and potentially the entire US economy.

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BOOKS, HISTORY Comments turned off

The Middle East: An American Vision Review of Behind the Silken Curtain by Amir Taheri

By on April 20th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18437/middle-east-american-vision

“If my experiences in the days and weeks devoted to this problem have taught me any one thing, it is that everywhere the need is felt for an American foreign policy — a foreign policy so firmly embedded on principle that it will hold equally for United States troops in China or the atom bomb, or Palestine.” — Bartley Crum.

[Crum’s] account … clearly shows that President Truman, who always… sided with the forces of freedom and progress, was often opposed by his own State Department that practiced a value-free diplomacy in the name of preserving the status quo.

“We can throw our lot in with the forces… who prop up feudalistic regimes in the Arab states in the hope that these will serve as a cordon sanitaire against Soviet; who believe they can successfully continue the same processes of exploitation in the future which have proved successful in the past. Or we can throw our lot in with the progressive forces in the Middle East. We can recognize that there is a slow rising of the peoples, and that we must place ourselves on the side of this inevitable development toward literacy, health, and a decent way of life.” — Bartley Crum.

He was against a status quo that subjected the nations of the region to despotism and poverty. He also realized that Arab despots and their hangers-on used the issue of Palestine as a means of diverting attention from their own misdeeds, wasting Arab energies on xenophobia and religious bigotry. The irony in all this was that Great Britain… sided with the Arab despots, and did all it could to discourage and weaken the very forces of reform and change that Crum saw as the natural allies of Western democracies.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Multiple Democratic Candidates for Senate Disagree with Biden Ending Title 42 By Eric Lendrum

By on April 20th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/04/19/multiple-democratic-candidates-for-senate-disagree-with-biden-ending-title-42/

At least six Democratic candidates for the U.S. Senate this November have publicly called on Joe Biden to delay ending the pandemic-era immigration policy known as Title 42, which is all but guaranteed to cause another massive surge of illegal aliens across the southern border.

As reported by Politico, among the candidates distancing themselves from Biden’s increasingly unpopular immigration agenda is John Fetterman (D-Penn.), the incumbent Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania and clear frontrunner for the Democratic nomination for the state’s U.S. Senate seat being vacated by retiring Senator Pat Toomey (R-Penn.).

“We should not end Title 42 until we have a detailed plan in place,” Fetterman said in an interview. “And look, we don’t only need a long-term and detailed plan here for ending Title 42, but we still need to fix our broken immigration system as a whole.”

In North Carolina, Democratic frontrunner Cheri Beasley (D-N.C.) “believes that it is not the right time to lift this policy, especially without a plan in place to deal with a potential influx in migrants,” according to campaign spokeswoman Dory McMillan.

In the more contentious Democratic primary for the Senate seat in Wisconsin, held by incumbent Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), at least three candidates – Mandela Barnes, Sarah Godlewski, Alex Lasry – have all voiced their opposition to Biden’s plans to end Title 42, specifically citing the fact that the administration does not seem to have a concrete plan in place to deal with the influx that is sure to follow.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Uber Clueless By John Stossel

By on April 20th, 2022

https://pjmedia.com/columns/john-stossel/2022/04/20/uber-clueless-n1591236

The media’s ignorance about basic economics is galling.

I expect it from politicians. I expect it from The New York Times. But it’s sad to see in the New York Post, my town’s rare alternative to Democrat media.

Recently the tabloid freaked out over higher prices imposed by ride-share companies. “New Yorkers are fed up with forking over excessive amounts for Uber and Lyft rides.”

Excessive? Just what is “excessive?” Who decides?

Prices were already up because gasoline costs more, NYC keeps imposing new taxes and regulations, and the federal government pays so many people not to work that there’s now a shortage of drivers.

That day, unusually high “surge” prices were in effect because there had been a horrible shooting on the subway. Commuters, fearful of another subway shooting, turned to ride-share services.

How should a company like Uber deal with that? Suddenly, there is much more demand for rides than supply. Should customers just wait in line? Most wouldn’t get a ride for days.

So, ride-share companies do the sensible thing: They temporarily raise prices. They lower them again when there are free cars. This is the best solution for the most people.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Almost 50 Years Ago, Soylent Green Portrayed a Grim Future for 2022 By Anthony Watts *******

By on April 20th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/04/almost_50_years_ago_emsoylent_greenem_portrayed_a_grim_future_for_2022.html

In anticipation of Earth Day 2022, it is a good time to reflect on the upcoming 50th anniversary of the release of the eco-apocalypse movie Soylent Green:

It’s the year 2022. Cumulative effects of overpopulation, pollution, and “climate catastrophe” have caused severe worldwide shortages of food, water, and housing. Scientists confirm oceanographic reports saying the oceans are dying. The food chain is disrupted. Food is becoming scarce, and the temperature is so hot that heat waves have become year-round thanks to climate change aka “global warming.”

Homeless people are everywhere; only half the workforce is employed while the other half is barely making it. Many people are illiterate and few factories are producing new goods.

The homes of the elite are barricaded, with private security. Only the elite can afford air conditioning. Strawberries are now a delicacy at $75 a quart. The situation with food has gotten so bad that people are being harvested off the streets and “recycled protein” is being distributed to the population.

The movie Soylent Green was produced and filmed in 1972 and released in 1973. It is a futuristic tale of doom, describing life in the year 2022.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

The Regime Media’s Quandary: By Exposing Joe Biden They Exonerate Donald Trump By Steve McCann

By on April 20th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/04/the_regime_medias_quandary_by_exposing_joe_biden_they_exonerate_donald_trump.html

The regime media (the amalgamation of the legacy media, elitist opinion writers, and the internet troika: Google/Facebook/Twitter) finds itself in a quandary of its own making.  As the nation descends into recession and societal turmoil, the candidate for whom they prostituted themselves, Joe Biden, reveals on a daily basis that he is not mentally or physically capable of being President.  Further, it has become increasingly more difficult to continuously obfuscate not only the ongoing revelations in Hunter Biden’s laptop but Joe’s life-long history of corruption and mendacity. 

By comparison, for four years, despite a lack of evidence coupled with numerous exculpatory investigations, this same cabal incessantly promoted the fictitious narrative that Donald Trump was a racist, a xenophobe, a demagogue, and the most corrupt person to ever serve as president of the United States. 

Accordingly, the regime media proclaimed that was in the nation’s vital interest to replace Trump with the “decent, honest, and honorable” Joe Biden.  As he has the “experience and character” to rescue the nation and restore “decency and honor” in the White House.

The quandary: how does the regime media avoid the exposure of Joe Biden’s lifelong corruption and failures without the public’s inevitable comparison of the two men, their families, and their accomplishments?   A comparison that would result in the effective exoneration and rehabilitation of Donald Trump, whom they relentlessly accused of being the most unscrupulous person on earth.  A cudgel they could no longer use if he decides to run for the presidency in 2024.

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EDUCATION, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Bulldozing Debate About the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict Princeton radicals promote a toxic referendum to divest from Caterpillar, Inc. Richard L. Cravatts

By on April 20th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/04/bulldozing-debate-about-israelipalestinian-richard-l-cravatts/

Last week, as Palestinian psychopaths murdered three more innocent Israeli civilians in Tel Aviv in an escalating campaign of terror, activist students at two American universities voted on repulsive resolutions to urge their respective universities to divest from companies doing business with Israel.

On April 5th, the undergraduate student government at Ohio State University passed what it categorized as an “emergency resolution,” asking the university to divest from Hewlett Packard and Caterpillar, Inc., and claiming that “by investing in such companies, The Ohio State University implicitly condones and profits from the decisions and actions of these companies, and, as such, becomes guilty by association . . , including, but certainly not limited to, the killing of innocent civilians.”

At Princeton University,  the Princeton Committee on Palestine (PCP) sponsored “Referendum Resolution 2-2022” that does not, like the Ohio State vote, include Hewlett Packard as a target of divestment but similarly calls on Princeton to “immediately halt usage of all Caterpillar machinery in all ongoing campus construction projects given the violent role that Caterpillar machinery has played in the mass demolition of Palestinian homes, the murder of Palestinians and other innocent people, and the promotion of the prison-industrial complex (among other atrocities).”

The Princeton Committee on Palestine is the University’s own version of the toxic Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), the rabidly anti-Israel student group responsible for most of the campus activism against the Jewish state. So, it is no surprise that this referendum is peppered with the counter-factual, demonizing language of social justice, oppression, victimization, and Jew-hatred.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

CNN Frets That Children Are Being Brainwashed – by Conservatives Hide your kids – the right-wing children’s entertainment complex is upon us! Mark Tapson

By on April 20th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/04/cnn-frets-children-are-being-brainwashed-%E2%80%93-mark-tapson/

Hundreds of righteously concerned parents gathered recently outside the Walt Disney Company’s Burbank, California, headquarters to protest the corporation’s woke stance on gender ideology. The following weekend, Moms For America hosted a rally at Florida’s Disney World for the same reason. Now a mainstream media outlet has finally chimed in to warn its readers about the insidious political indoctrination of children – by conservatives.

CNN’s website recently featured an opinion piece by Nicole Hemmer titled, “The right-wing children’s entertainment complex is upon us,” which attempts to discredit conservative efforts to counter the leftist brainwashing of children that is widespread throughout America’s schools and the entertainment industry. Hemmer, an associate research scholar at Columbia University with the Obama Presidency Oral History Project and the author of Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics, paints such efforts as paranoid, cynical, exploitative, insular, and bigoted, while pretending the culture war being waged on impressionable young minds by the left is nothing more than a right-wing fantasy.

The essay is couched in phrasing which suggests that conservatives are “hand-wringing” about nothing (“conservatives claim”; “what the right sees as liberal indoctrination”; “supposed liberal indoctrination,” etc.). She never acknowledges that parents have legitimate concerns about identity politics being inculcated in schoolrooms and through children’s entertainment programming. Instead, she implies that the rise of conservative alternatives to such cultural Marxism stems from paranoia and greed.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Voter Registration Drive: What’s Biden Hiding? Mobilizing the federal government to sign people up may sound benign. Far from it. By Tarren Bragdon and Stewart Whitson

By on April 20th, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/voter-drive-whats-biden-hiding-justice-department-freedom-of-information-foia-transparency-corruption-lawsuit-

President Biden is ordering all agencies in the federal bureaucracy to “expand citizens’ opportunities to register to vote and to obtain information about, and participate in, the electoral process.” That language, from a March 2021 executive order titled “Promoting Access to Voting,” may sound benign. It isn’t, and it may conceal an abuse of power. The administration is making it difficult for the public to find out.

Promoting voter registration and participation—i.e., mobilizing voters—is an inherently political act for a partisan president. The resulting efforts can be directed at groups expected to vote for the president’s party and may take the form of pressure to support the party or its policies. A president has every right to sway potential voters on the campaign trail. He has no right to influence them using the force of the federal government.

The Constitution doesn’t grant the president authority over federal elections. It reserves that power to the states and to a lesser extent Congress. Mr. Biden’s order ignores that prohibition by expanding the role of federal agencies in elections. Congress hasn’t approved such an expansion, and election legislation Mr. Biden backs is stuck in the Senate.

The White House refuses to release the plans that various agencies created under the executive order. Agencies submitted their plans by September, yet the administration has provided only overviews of slightly more than a dozen, with little detail. Their full plans should be available, and so should those of hundreds of other agencies. With the federal government throwing its weight behind voter registration and participation, Americans have a right to see what it’s doing and which voters it’s targeting, especially with crucial midterm elections in November.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

BLM’s Anti-Police Racket Is Coming Undone The organization has squandered its moral authority by acting like a hustler on the make. Jason Riley

By on April 20th, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/blm-antipolice-racket-black-lives-matter-mansion-purchase-donations-corruption-police-brutality-

BLM got its start in 2013 following the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. It gained traction a year later, when Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, Mo. According to a national poll published by the Daily Kos, support for BLM peaked at 52% in June 2020, a month after George Floyd was murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis. Its popularity has declined since then, and recent revelations about the organization’s spending habits are unlikely to reverse that trend.

After the New York Post reported in April 2021 that a BLM co-founder had purchased four homes for a total of $3.2 million, the head of a local BLM chapter in New York City called for an independent investigation into how money was being spent. In July, BLM leaders in Canada, with help from its U.S. affiliate, purchased another multimillion dollar mansion in Toronto, which prompted several activists in the local chapter to resign. And earlier this month, New York magazine reported that BLM leaders purchased a $6 million California home in cash with money that had been donated to the organization.

“The transaction has not been previously reported, and Black Lives Matter leadership had hoped to keep the house’s existence a secret,” the article said. “Internal emails dating to 2016 show activists voicing concern about how donations were being spent and how the organization was being run. . . . The families of some Black victims of police violence have complained that they have seen little of the funds that have flowed to the movements most visible facet.” Floyd’s death produced a windfall for the group. In October 2020, it took in $66.5 million in contributions. Weeks later, it purchased the California property. BLM told the magazine that it had “always planned” to disclose the purchase, but didn’t explain why it hadn’t.

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