HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Microsoft and the DOD’s Digital Escort Service: How in the World Did This Happen? Chinese engineers accessed Pentagon systems via Microsoft’s cloud—raising alarms over Big Tech’s ties to America’s top adversary. By Thaddeus G. McCotter

Posted By on August 2nd, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/08/02/microsoft-and-the-dods-digital-escort-service-how-in-the-world-did-this-happen/

“When it comes time to hang the capitalists, they will vie with each other for the rope contract.” While the statement has been variously (and erroneously) attributed to Lenin, Stalin, and Marx, the point remains as true today as it was yesterday and will be tomorrow—if there is a tomorrow for free people and free markets.

In the wake of a disturbing ProPublica investigation, Microsoft executives and the United States Department of Defense (DOD) bureaucrats are busy trying to cover their butts and close the barn door on potential Chinese espionage by fixing the digital escort program. As CNBC reports, “Microsoft on Friday revised its practices to ensure that engineers in China no longer provide technical support to U.S. defense clients using the company’s cloud services.”

While it is too early to determine whether communist China has penetrated the DOD’s classified information stored in its cloud, it is high time to ask, “How in the world did this happen?”

Sure, it is a rhetorical question, but it is helpful to review yet again how the cozy confluence of American multinational corporatists, bureaucrats, and Chinese communists triangulates to imperil our national security.

To begin, a cursory sketch of the digital escort program, per Breitbart:

The ProPublica report revealed that Chinese-based Microsoft engineers had been helping maintain Defense Department computer systems, potentially exposing sensitive military data to cybersecurity risks. The report revealed that Microsoft’s Chinese Azure engineers were overseen by “digital escorts” in the U.S., who typically had less technical expertise than the employees they managed overseas.

ISRAEL, POLITICS Comments turned off

Democrats, Israel, and Trump Derangement Syndrome The left’s hatred of Trump—and now Israel—runs so deep, it’s willing to abandon decades of principle just to spite its enemies. By Stephen Soukup

Posted By on August 2nd, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/08/02/democrats-israel-and-trump-derangement-syndrome/

A long time ago, long before he self-radicalized and became a parody of himself, Peter Beinart was the young liberal who wanted to save liberalism. Beinart was still in his twenties when he took the helm of the flagship journal of progressivism, The New Republic, and began speaking and writing about recreating the positive, muscular, America-loving liberalism of the post-war era. In 2004, Beinart penned a long essay for his magazine titled “A Fighting Faith,” in which he articulated the ideas that would become the foundation of the book, The Good Fight: Why Liberals—and Only Liberals—Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again.

Although most of Beinart’s case—in the article and the book—was based on what he saw as the inherent righteousness of American liberalism, the underlying premise was that “conservative” leaders simply couldn’t win the war. Part of this was a flaw in conservatism itself, its practices and tactics, but another part of it was the belief that the conservative administration of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney had squandered the world’s good faith and no longer possessed the moral authority necessary to shepherd the West to victory over the forces of radical Islam.

Although Beinart didn’t intend it as such, his case for liberal leadership in the War on Terror became a corollary to Charles Krauthammer’s theory of “Bush Derangement Syndrome.” The late, great Krauthammer described BDS as “the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency—nay—the very existence of George W. Bush,” and used it to explain how otherwise moderate or sane people (usually Democrats) came to detest everything George W. Bush said or did, even if they knew, in their heart of hearts, that he was right. Because BDS was especially prevalent in connection with the War on Terror, Beinart’s theory that only a “liberal” could win that war became something of a truism. The left and the media (I know, I know…) would never allow Bush—or any conservative—to win the war because of their irrational hatred of him (them). As a result, if the war were ever to be won, a liberal would have to do it.

In short, then, the unified Beinart-Krauthammer theory held—accurately and with little credible opposition—that leftist irrationality and hatred of George Bush made the War on Terror essentially unwinnable. The left’s hatred was more powerful than any instinct it might have to do the right thing.

It’s worth keeping all of this in mind today, as the Democratic Party slowly but surely abandons its support for the state of Israel.

ANTI-SEMITISM, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Edinburgh’s shameful cancellation of Jewish comedians Rachel Creeger and Philip Simon were dropped by venues over ‘safety’ concerns and pro-Israel social-media posts. Nicole Lampert

Posted By on August 1st, 2025

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/07/31/edinburghs-shameful-cancellation-of-jewish-comedians/

Two Jewish comedians, Rachel Creeger and Philip Simon, had their Edinburgh Fringe Festival slots cancelled last week thanks to alleged ‘safety concerns’. Simon was also dropped from a second venue in Edinburgh for his social-media posts calling, among other things, for the return of the Israeli hostages.

I wish I was making this up, but in 2025, being Jewish is considered a safety risk. Whistlebinkles, the venue that was slated to host Creeger and Simon’s gigs, decided to cancel the shows when bar staff expressed fears of feeling ‘unsafe’. These concerns were reportedly raised when the venue was told it would need extra police protection to guarantee the safety of Jewish acts.

Rachel is a friend of mine. I’ve seen her show, Ultimate Jewish Mother, and it mainly features laughs about motherhood and how to make good chicken soup. She is the only female Orthodox Jew on the comedy circuit and the only dangerous thing about her is that she may drown you in love and cuddles. Each year at the Edinburgh Fringe, she hosts Friday night dinners for other Jews and makes sure there is kosher food for everyone who needs it. It makes me sick to think her presence at a comedy venue might lead to anyone feeling ‘unsafe’.

Philip Simon was not only taken off the line-up at Whistlebinkles, he was then barred from the Banshee Labyrinth, too. The management cited its ‘duty of care to our customers and staff members’. Having monitored his social media, the venue said it was ‘inappropriate’ to host anyone whose ‘views and actions align with the rhetoric and symbology of groups associated with humanitarian violations’ – ie, Israel. The supposedly offending tweets included images from a vigil for Israeli hostages, a call to ‘stand strong against terror’ and a plea not to forget the rape victims of 7 October 2023. All demands for peace, in other words.

‘I am still processing the concept that in 2025 I can be cancelled just for being Jewish’, Simon said in a statement on Saturday. His and Creeger’s cancellations are the obvious, if alarming, outgrowth of the campaigns to cancel anyone with any connections to Israel.

ISRAEL, MEDIA Comments turned off

The Truth Gets Its Shoes On Noah Rothman

Posted By on August 1st, 2025

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-truth-gets-its-shoes-on/

Dozens of marginally curious media outlets and institutions had caught onto the lie promulgated by the New York Times long before the New York Times got around to acknowledging it.

Late Tuesday, the Times finally got around to clearing the caked and dried egg off its face.

NYTimes Communications@NYTimesPR

We have appended an Editors’ Note to a story about Mohammed Zakaria al-Mutawaq, a child in Gaza who was diagnosed with severe malnutrition. After publication, The Times learned that he also had pre-existing health problems. Read more below.

This was no minor error — a modest amendment to a fleeting aside in paragraph 25 of an otherwise airtight story. No, al-Mutawaq’s image was the feature art designed to illustrate the plight endured by all of Gaza’s 2 million people. It ran on the front page, stretching almost to the fold. And the Times wasn’t alone. This stricken child’s skeletal frame was picked up by the Times of London, The Guardian, the Daily Express, and more — all to morally blackmail Israel for pursuing its security priorities in Gaza, but not to pressure Hamas into surrendering in the war it launched and lost for the betterment of the people it supposedly serves.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Jasmine Crockett, Genuine Counterfeit By Jeffrey Blehar

Posted By on August 1st, 2025

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/jasmine-crockett-genuine-counterfeit/

Several months ago, I delivered what I still believe to be an accurate assessment of Dallas-area Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, the well-educated scion of a middle-class family turned camera-hungry vulgarian: She was a phony with a foreordained future, one I supported for very cynical reasons. Crockett’s relentless quest for notoriety seemed inevitably destined to come into conflict with the best interests of the Democrats as a party. Crockett can rise no higher in Texas politics — Texans are more likely to elect the ghost of Santa Anna as governor rather than a BLM activist turned progressive gadfly — so her career in Congress is reduced to that of a publicity-seeker, who can only succeed at the expense of greater party discipline and message control.

So far, so good for Jasmine. Spotting a market opening, she decided to make her national brand as a trash-talking gutter queen, the “sassy progressive black woman” analogue to Marjorie Taylor Greene’s “obstreperous MAGA populist lady.” (I use scare quotes around these characterizations because I very much believe both of them to be acts.) She has been successful at this. It is in fact fitting that she made her first big public splash by engaging in a classless congressional catfight with Greene, denouncing her “bleach-blonde bad-built butch body” in response to Greene’s equally trashy dig about Crockett’s false eyelashes.

Merely recounting the incident fills me with despair; John Fetterman disgustedly characterized it as akin to a taping of The Jerry Springer Show, providing the rare opportunity for a man who shows up for Senate business in a hoodie and shorts to raise a fair point about congressional decorum. Meanwhile, Crockett trademarked the phrase (she refers to it as “B6”) and sells it on shirts. Crockett, forever on the hunt for the next viral incident, topped herself a year later, in March 2025, when she gave a speech to the Human Rights Campaign in which she insulted Texas Governor Greg Abbott as “Governor Hot Wheels.” (Abbott is a paraplegic.)

It was then that I wrote the assessment mentioned above, with a fitting title: “Jasmine Crockett Is Tacky and Classless, and I Encourage This.” In response, I heard from some of the more predictable quarters of the left, which said that Crockett’s sass and combativeness was in fact quite appealing to them. (“She fights!”) I chuckled inwardly because, knowing who was saying this to me, I thought, “Well, of course you would. You are the target market. I am not.”

It seems that The Atlantic is aware of this phenomenon as well, and it recently published a wonderfully revealing in-depth profile of Crockett. The piece, by Elaine Godfrey, deserves to be read rather than summarized, because Crockett reveals a good deal about herself with her own words.

But I will say this: Boy, does this lady ever seem to believe in herself. We learn that Crockett spends most of her day monitoring her various social media accounts obsessively and dressing for “public performance” (including sporting fingernails painted “R E S I S T”). In a detail that speaks inadvertent volumes, we discover that, while the “lock screen” on your smartphone might be a picture of your partner or your kid, the one on Crockett’s is a glamour shot of herself.

NATIONAL SECURITY AND DEFENSE Comments turned off

Senator Cotton’s Bold Plan to Reform an Overstaffed Intelligence Behemoth Senator Tom Cotton’s new bill takes a wrecking ball to the bloated, politicized ODNI—finally restoring its original mission after two decades of mission creep. By Fred Fleitz

Posted By on August 1st, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/08/01/senator-cottons-bold-plan-to-reform-an-overstaffed-intelligence-behemoth/

On June 27, Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR), Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, introduced the Intelligence Community Efficiency and Effectiveness Act, a bill aimed at reforming and streamlining the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). Cotton’s bill is the most important legislation to reform U.S. intelligence in 20 years. It is intended to downsize the ODNI, depoliticize the organization, and return it to its original role of coordinating intelligence agencies rather than producing its own analysis.

Senator Cotton’s proposed reforms are long overdue and align with President Trump’s efforts to drain the U.S. government swamp.

A Bad Idea From the Beginning

The ODNI originated from a recommendation by the 9/11 Commission Report, issued in July 2004. However, it is a far cry from what the commission recommended.

Because of the failure of U.S. intelligence agencies to share critical information before the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the final report of the 9/11 Commission recommended creating a new intelligence position, the National Intelligence Director, “to oversee national intelligence centers on specific subjects of interest across the U.S. government and (2) to manage the national intelligence program and oversee the agencies that contribute to it.”

The creation of a National Intelligence Director had nothing to do with the 9/11 commission’s mandate. It reflected an attempt by the commission to capitalize on a crisis to implement a flawed idea that had been repeatedly rejected in the past. Congress made this much worse when it passed the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 (IRTPA), which created both the Director and the Office of National Intelligence. As a result of the IRTPA, the ODNI became the 17th U.S. intelligence agency with a mandate that went considerably beyond what the 9/11 Commission intended.

The 9/11 Commission recommended that the National Intelligence Director’s office have “a relatively small staff of several hundred people, taking the place of the existing community management offices housed at the CIA.” Congress ignored this recommendation and mandated a large bureaucracy for the ODNI, making the DNI the president’s chief intelligence adviser and creating several intelligence centers within the ODNI. Today, according to Senator Cotton, the estimated size of the ODNI staff is between 1,800 and 1,900 employees.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Rise of Radical Islamism in Bangladesh: A New Theocratic State? by Anna Mahjar-Barducci

Posted By on August 1st, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21790/the-rise-of-radical-islamism-in-bangladesh-a-new

The rise of radical Islamic influence under Yunus’s watch threatens to transform Bangladesh from a secular democracy into a theocratic state.

The passive response of Mohamad Yunus’s interim government’s to these demands signals either weakness or tacit approval of the country’s Islamization.

Yunus’s interim government lifted the bans imposed on Jamaat-e-Islami, its student wing Islami Chhatra Shibir, and “all associated organizations.” At the same time, the interim government banned Sheikh Hasina’s secular Awami League party. Yunus also freed hundreds of jihadists, and in the post-Hasina era, Islamist flags and “Islamic State” banners have been seen on the streets of Dhaka.

Islamist candidates from Jamaat-e-Islami will be allowed to run in the next elections, but not the secular Awami candidates.

The new Cyber Security Ordinance 2025, which has been criticized for potentially suppressing dissent, and the amendments to the Anti-Terrorism Act, which have enabled the banning of all activities of the Awami League, demonstrate how quickly the country is descending into chaos.

Even with Bangladesh Bank’s desperate measure of raising the policy rate to 10%, citizens continue to bear the brunt of economic mismanagement. The promise of economic recovery under a Nobel Peace Prize-winning economist, who has been a darling of the American Democratic administrations, has turned into a nightmare for millions of Bangladeshis who struggle with basic necessities as their purchasing power decreases daily.

Meanwhile, [Yunus’s] courtship of China and Pakistan, reveals a foreign policy that lacks strategic thinking. In April 2025, Yunus invited China to establish an economic base in Bangladesh, stressing that Dhaka is the “sole guardian of the ocean” in the subcontinent…. On June 19, 2025, China hosted a first trilateral meeting with Bangladesh and Pakistan, aimed at enhancing cooperation in trade, and revealing an intent to isolate India in the subcontinent.

The economic indicators paint a grim picture of Bangladesh under Yunus’ stewardship.

The political situation under Yunus reveals a government sliding into being another failed state, ripe for terrorists, and unable to chart a constructive course.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mohamad Yunus’s transition from economist to head of Bangladesh’s interim government has proven fatal for Bangladesh. Since assuming power in August 2024, Yunus has presided over a nation sliding into political chaos, radical Islamism, economic distress, and social fragmentation. Bangladesh has devolved into a governance crisis that threatens Bangladesh’s economic stability and democratic future.

ELECTIONS, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Fateh Would Be as Terrible a Mayor of Minneapolis as Mamdani Will Be as Mayor of NY A harrowing forecast. by Hugh Fitzgerald

Posted By on August 1st, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fateh-would-be-as-terrible-a-mayor-of-minneapolis-as-mamdani-will-be-as-mayor-of-ny/

The news from Minneapolis is not good. “Minneapolis Mayoral Candidate Omer Fatah Criticized Israel After Oct. 7, Accused Jewish State of ‘Genocide’ in Gaza,” by Corey Walker, Algemeiner, July 23, 2025:

Minneapolis mayoral candidate and Democratic Socialist Omar Fateh, who recently secured the Democratic–Farmer–Labor (DFL) Party’s endorsement for mayor of Minneapolis, is drawing scrutiny over his statements regarding Israel amid a heated mayoral campaign.

Fateh’s victory at the DFL convention shattered expectations when he amassed a majority of delegate votes, surpassing incumbent Mayor Jacob Frey, who is Jewish. Moreover, Fateh’s unexpected victory has also drawn fresh attention towards his views on Israel-Palestine.

Following the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attacks on Israel, Fateh published a letter that was broadly critical of the Jewish state and called for an “immediate ceasefire.” Fateh drew an equivalency between Israel’s defensive military operations and the Hamas slaughter of 1200 people and abduction of 250 others.

“I am overwhelmed with sorrow for the victims of this violence as well as anger towards both the Israeli Government and Hamas who have senselessly injured and killed thousands of people in a matter of days,” Fateh wrote.

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Radicals who blocked Israeli ship didn’t represent Syros, locals say David Isaac

Posted By on August 1st, 2025

https://www.jns.org/radicals-who-blocked-israeli-ship-didnt-represent-syros-locals-say/

The island’s leadership calls it “the crisis.” The scene at Syros last week, when passengers from an Israeli cruise ship were prevented from disembarking at the Greek island by anti-Israel demonstrators, rose to the level of an international incident.

Israel’s foreign minister called his counterpart to intervene. The ambassadors of Israel and Greece became directly involved. Greece’s Minister of Citizen Protection promised to throw the book at anyone trying such a stunt again.

The stunt was tried again. On Monday, protesters, though fewer in number, gathered at the port in Rhodes to protest the arrival of an Israeli cruise ship. As it turned out, it was the same cruise ship that couldn’t stop at Syros—the MS Crown Iris operated by Mano Maritime, a Haifa-based shipping firm. This time, police were prepared, and the Israeli tourists disembarked peacefully.

Less reported is that the ship was received in a special ceremony by the mayor of Rhodes, the governor of the South Aegean Region, representatives of the Dodecanese Chamber of Commerce and other personages, who welcomed the passengers in a show of appreciation for Israeli tourism.

Greece is an enormously popular tourist destination for Israelis, to the point where many shopkeepers even speak some Hebrew.

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

There Goes The West

Posted By on August 1st, 2025

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/08/01/there-goes-the-west/

President Donald Trump has told Canada that if it recognizes Palestine as a state, it’s jeopardizing a trade pact with the U.S. The threat is more than leverage for talks. It’s a reminder that the West is giving up on civilization and needs to be rousted from its slumber.

“Canada has just announced that it is backing statehood for Palestine,” Trump wrote Thursday on Truth Social. “That will make it very hard for us to make a trade deal with them.”

Canada is not the only Western nation that feels the need to recognize the terrorist-controlled Gaza Strip, which, with the Israel-occupied West Bank, is considered by some to be Palestine, a country that has never existed. Both France and the United Kingdom have said they will recognize Palestinian statehood next month. As loony as that sounds, there might be a practical reason for it. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron “are likely terrified of their local Muslim populations — and probably not without reason,” says Stephen Green.

It’s unfortunate, but more than 75% of the United Nations member countries already formally recognize Palestine. (But the U.N. doesn’t consider Hamas a terrorist group.) Now the holdouts in the West are beginning to surrender, even though Hamas, designated widely as a terrorist organization, governs the Gaza Strip.

Much of the West seems no longer interested in maintaining even a veneer of civilization. In the name of diversity, inclusion, and tolerance, and for the purposes of virtue signaling and assuaging their guilt for enjoying the benefits of civilization, Western “leaders” have actively imported migrants who have not just disrupted society but have taken it backward. They are ceding ground to those who actively despise everything about the West other than its wealth. The results have been appalling.