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July 2022

Sri Lanka’s Green New Deal Was a Human Disaster An ill-advised national experiment in organic farming yielded starvation, poverty and political chaos. By Tunku Varadarajan

https://www.wsj.com/articles/sri-lankas-green-new-deal-was-a-human-disaster-gotabaya-rajapaksa-borlaug-synthetic-fertilizers-hunger-organic-agriculture-11657832186?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

The Green Revolution of Norman Borlaug, the American agronomist who did more to feed the world than any man before or since, set Sri Lanka on the path to agricultural abundance in 1970. It was built around chemical fertilizers and crops bred to be disease-resistant. Fifty-two years later, Sri Lanka has pulled off a revolution that is “antigreen” in the modern sense, toppling its president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa. In an uprising that has its roots in Mr. Rajapaksa’s imperious decision to impose organic farming on the entire country—which led to widespread hunger after the agricultural economy collapsed—Sri Lanka’s people have wrought the first contra-organic national uprising in history.

Footage of protesters swarming the presidential palace—splashing in the swimming pool, watching cricket on television in the bedroom, making tea in the lavish kitchen—resembled the mass break-in at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, but with none of the menace of the American trespass. Mr. Rajapaksa was in fact an American citizen until 2019, the year he was elected Sri Lanka’s president. He has now fled the country.

Will this environmental visionary be offered refuge at Berkeley? At the headquarters of the Sierra Club? Or even by the Biden administration? Perhaps not, for he bears on his head some serious accusations of war crimes that would make housing him inconvenient. But the truth is, Mr. Rajapaksa was driven from office in part because he was an overzealous green warrior, who imposed on his countrymen a policy that the American environmental left holds sacred.

Sri Lanka came to detest Mr. Rajapaksa for other reasons too. He was an autocrat, the latest in the Rajapaksa political dynasty to be president after his elder brother Mahinda, who held the office from 2005-15. Mahinda was a ruthless president, waging a scorched-earth war against Tamil separatists in the country’s north that resulted in a resounding victory for the Sri Lankan army in 2009. Gotabaya Rajapaksa was defense secretary during the war and is accused of signing off on tactics that resulted in the deaths of thousands of civilians.

From Rule Of Law To The Law Of The Jungle

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/07/15/from-rule-of-law-to-the-law-of-the-jungle/

“This country was at one time different, exceptional. But it’s been twisted and spindled and mutilated by the left. Welcome to the jungle, it sure seems like it gets worse here every day.”

Unwilling to take their political and legal losses like the good citizens of a democratic republic and work within the system, Democrats are more and more demanding they get their way through harassment that includes the threat of violence. What has set this country apart since its birth is unraveling.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling, the “unflinching repudiation” of Roe v. Wade, set an already fuming political left on fire. And the flame still burns. White hot. 

“The six justices who overturned Roe should never know peace again,” a Harvard law instructor, and democratic socialist, tweeted shortly after the decision was released. “It is our civic duty to accost them every time they are in public. They are pariahs. Since women don’t have their rights, these justices should never have a peaceful moment in public again.”

So rather than follow the non-violent process for making and clarifying law that was given to us by the Founding Fathers, the left wants to force its political positions and ideology on the country. Please tell us again who the fascists are.

The tweet above is but one of many examples of progressives, leftists, socialists and Democrats pitching dangerous tantrums when things don’t go their way.

Long lines are back at US food banks as inflation hits high Long lines are back at outside food banks around the U.S. as working Americans overwhelmed by inflation increasingly seek handouts to feed their families By Anita Snow and Eugene Garcia

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/long-lines-back-us-food-banks-inflation-hits-86817760

PHOENIX — Long lines are back at food banks around the U.S. as working Americans overwhelmed by inflation turn to handouts to help feed their families.

With gas prices soaring along with grocery costs, many people are seeking charitable food for the first time, and more are arriving on foot.

Inflation in the U.S. is at a 40-year high and gas prices have been surging since April 2020, with the average cost nationwide briefly hitting $5 a gallon in June. Rapidly rising rents and an end to federal COVID-19 relief have also taken a financial toll.

The food banks, which had started to see some relief as people returned to work after pandemic shutdowns, are struggling to meet the latest need even as federal programs provide less food to distribute, grocery store donations wane and cash gifts don’t go nearly as far.

Tomasina John was among hundreds of families lined up in several lanes of cars that went around the block one recent day outside St. Mary’s Food Bank in Phoenix. John said her family had never visited a food bank before because her husband had easily supported her and their four children with his construction work.

“But it’s really impossible to get by now without some help,” said John, who traveled with a neighbor to share gas costs as they idled under a scorching desert sun. “The prices are way too high.”

NATIONWIDE INITIATIVE LAUNCHES TO CHALLENGE FAILED LEADERSHIP OF ESTABLISHMENT JEWISH ORGANIZATIONS

THE JEWISH LEADERSHIP PROJECT WILL EDUCATE, RECRUIT, AND ORGANIZE ACTIVISTS AND DONORS

http://TheJewishLeadershipProject.org.

WASHINGTON, DC (July 11, 2022) – Today, activists across the United States launched The Jewish Leadership Project (JLP), a grassroots non-profit initiative that will demand that major Jewish organizations—including Federations, the ADL, and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs—cease subordinating the safety and welfare of the Jewish-American community to partisan ideology.

 Much of JLP’s analysis of failed Jewish leadership was recently featured in essays published in a dedicated issue of White Rose magazine was co-founded by longtime activists Charles Jacobs and Avi Goldwasser, whose influential non-profit projects have ranged from highlighting the hostility faced by Jews on college campuses to exposing the threats Islamists pose in the United States.

For his work in helping to liberate thousands of black slaves from jihadist raiders in Sudan, Coretta Scott King presented Charles Jacobs with Boston’s Freedom Award. In 2007he was named by The Forward as one of America’s top 50 Jewish leaders. Today, Jacobs and Goldwasser realize that efforts to combat external foes cannot prevail given the feckless leadership within Jewish organizations.

“Jewish Americans are under siege,” said JLP co-founder Avi Goldwasser. “Campuses are rife with Jew-hatred. Jews have been attacked on the streets of Boston, Brooklyn and Los Angeles, and murdered in Pittsburgh, San Diego, Monsey, and Jersey City. They have been defamed by media outlets such as The New York Times and CNN, and even maligned by members of Congress.” Goldwasser continued, “Many once-venerable Jewish organizations have primarily become front groups for progressive political interests. The significant danger the Jewish community faces today is an indictment of these institutions and their leadership.”

“White supremacists are an immediate, lethal threat to the Jewish-American community, but the growing animus against Jews among black radicals, anti-Zionist leftists, and Islamic extremists constitutes the longer-term peril,” added JLP co-founder Charles Jacobs. “Unfortunately, establishment Jewish organizations are now led by individuals who refuse to recognize the nature of 21st-century Jew-hatred, let alone combat it, and so have abdicated their responsibility to the people they are meant to serve.

Israeli benefits to the US exceed US foreign aid to Israel Yoram Ettinger Video

https://bit.ly/3IzbK7q

*The US does not extend foreign aid to Israel. Rather, the US makes an annual investment in Israel, which yields to the American taxpayer an annual R-O-I (Return-On-Investment) of several hundred percent.

*Israel serves as the battle-tested, cost-effective laboratory of the US defense and aerospace industries and the US armed forces.

*Over 200 US high tech giants have established research and development centers in Israel, leveraging Israel’s brainpower.

*The US would have to establish five CIAs in order to procure the intelligence provided by Israel.

*Israel is the largest US aircraft carrier, which does not require American soldiers on board, sparing the US $15bn annually.
 

Liz Peek: Biden’s accelerating inflation will lead to Biden’s recession

https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/3558302-bidens-accelerating-inflation-will-lead-to-bidens-recession/

President Biden was no doubt delighted to be far, far away from home when the latest – disastrous – report on inflation was released. Confronted with news that prices had jumped 9.1 percent from a year ago, worse than expected, Biden issued a statement downplaying the news, saying the report was “out of date” since gasoline prices have dropped 40 cents over the past month. Got that? 40 cents.

The president was echoing a statement that his economic brain trust issued the day before in which Brian Deese and Cecilia Rouse provided “context” for the anticipated inflation read. They wrote that energy and food prices were especially volatile.

Americans may see a different sort of “context.” They might notice that nearly everything is getting more expensive and that despite a softening in some commodities in recent months, inflation accelerated in June.

They may also conclude that Democrats in charge are not helping.

While much of Washington is focused on the Jan. 6 committee hearings, Americans in the rest of the country are focused on how they can afford to feed their families, with food prices 12 percent higher than a year ago.

As Democrat climate zealots push to kill off our oil and gas industry, voters find themselves paying not only 60 percent more for gasoline than they did a year ago, but also 98 percent more for fuel oil.

While liberals debate whether men can get pregnant, families struggle to pay 11 percent more for a new car, 10 percent more for toddler clothes, an additional 13 percent for baby formula, 17 percent more for health insurance, 14 percent extra for auto body repairs, 34 percent more for airline fares, an increased 14 percent on delivery services and 13 percent more for gift wrap. Did Putin raise the price of gift wrap?

Europe’s Palestinian blind spot: Ruthie Blum

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-712133

Nine European countries declared on Tuesday that they would continue backing the Palestinian NGOs designated by Israel last year as terrorist organizations. In a joint statement, the foreign ministries of Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden argued that Israel hadn’t provided “substantial information… that would justify reviewing [their] policy” towards the “civil society” groups in question.

Referring to the area in which the said organizations operate as the OPT (Occupied Palestinian Territories) – rather than the PA (Palestinian Authority) – these EU members said that “should evidence be made available to the contrary, we would act accordingly.”

This was after professing to take “accusations of terrorism or links to terrorist groups… with the utmost seriousness.” All well and good, if one’s definition of the deadly phenomenon is open to interpretation.

“A free and strong civil society is indispensable for promoting democratic values and for the two-state solution,” the countries concluded, to give grounds for their continuing to fund the NGOs on Israel’s list of outlaws. This sentence alone is proof of Western Europe’s willful blindness when it comes to all things Palestinian.

In the first place, there is nothing “free” about the PA, which is controlled by corrupt and evil leaders. Secondly, no “democratic values” are promoted by the honchos in Gaza and Ramallah. Nor do the rulers of either push for a “two-state solution.”

A Shocking Escalation of the Disqualification Campaign

https://www.nysun.com/article/a-shocking-escalation-of-the-disqualification-campaign?utm_content=%F0%9F%8C%85%20The%20Morning%20Sun

We don’t mind saying that from the start we have been concerned that this is where the push to disqualify Representatives Madison Cawthorn, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and others would end.

The latest move in the campaign to disqualify President Trump from holding public office — and block him from running for president in 2024 — features an outrageous demarche from Free Speech for People. That’s the group that, as our A.R. Hoffman has been reporting, is working to use the 14th Amendment’s “disqualification clause” as a sword to cut down Republican candidates from Georgia to Arizona. 

It turns out, as Mr. Hoffman reports in his latest scoop, that Free Speech for People is sending to all 50 secretaries of state a request to sign a declaration that what happened on January 6, 2021, was an insurrection under “all conceivably applicable definitions of the word,” and that Mr. Trump “engaged” with that uprising in “both words and actions.” Then they want the secretaries to sign a declaration. 

It would state that because of the events of January 6, “consequently” Mr. Trump “is disqualified from holding ‘any office’ under the United States — including the presidency. As a result, he is ineligible to appear on the presidential primary ballot.” They even have typed up a signature line for each secretary of state. It leaves a blank on which each can write the state of which he or she is secretary.