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IDF will stop Iranian threat in Syria, declares Israeli defense minister

August 25, 2017

August 24, 2017

Source: IDF will stop Iranian threat in Syria, declares Israeli defense minister

Israel will do what it takes to prevent an Iranian threat on its northern border, Liberman declared. 

Israel will not stand by while Iran advances in Syria and establishes itself militarily on Israel’s northern border, Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman stated.

In an address to a forum at the Israeli Institute of Energy and Environment (IIEE) on Thursday, Liberman explained that “Iran, through its Revolutionary Guard, is trying to create a new reality around us with Iranian air and naval bases in Syria, with Shi’ite militias which number thousands of mercenaries and by the production of accurate weaponry in Lebanon.”

The Iranian forces are currently estimated to number 500 Iranian army soldiers, 5,000 Hezbollah terrorists and several thousand guerrillas from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq.

Liberman vowed that Israel “has no intentions of accepting these attempts, and will not be satisfied to serve as bystanders.”

The potential for a growing Iranian influence across the region is raising concern in predominantly Sunni Arab countries and in Israel, the nemesis of both Iran and Hezbollah.

Israel has repeatedly warned it will do what it takes to keep Iran from threatening its borders and has carried out airstrikes in Syria against suspected weapons shipments bound for Hezbollah.

Israel pushed hard for a US- and Russia-brokered truce that came into effect recently in southern Syria to keep Iranian-backed militias at a distance from the Golan Heights, Israel’s northern border.

Liberman’s statements come just a day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi on the Black Sea, where he warned that Iran’s military buildup is a significant danger not only to Israel, but to other countries as well.

“Iran makes huge efforts to cement its presence in Syria. This poses a threat to Israel, the Middle East and the whole world,” Netanyahu told Putin.

The Israeli leader was joined by Mossad chief Yossi Cohen and Meir Ben Shabbat, the recently appointed head of the National Security Council who reportedly presented Putin with sensitive intelligence materials on the issue in discussion.

Netanyahu further noted that wherever the Islamic State (ISIS) has retreated in Syria and Iraq, Iran has taken over and filled the vacuum. While ISIS poses a tactical threat to Israel, Iran poses a strategic one.

“We cannot forget for a moment that Iran continues to threaten the destruction of the State of Israel every day, arms terrorist organizations, encourages and initiates terror,” Netanyahu underscored, explaining why Israel opposes Iran’s continued entrenchment in Syria and saying Israel would do whatever it takes to defend itself.

The two leaders also discussed other recent developments in the region, including the ceasefire in Syria, which Russia is sponsoring. Israel opposes aspects of the ceasefire because it solidifies Iran’s presence on Israel’s northern border.

“Israel has no objection to a (peace) agreement in Syria, but we are firmly opposed to such an agreement in which Iran and its proxies will be left with a military presence in Syria,” Netanyahu told Putin already in May.

By: World Israel News Staff
AP contributed to this report.

 

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The Racist Attacks on America and Trump

August 25, 2017

The Racist Attacks on America and Trump, Front Page Magazine, David Horowitz, August 25, 2017

Let’s start by noticing the obvious. The biggest hate group in America – by a wide margin – is the anti-Trump chorus, which has advanced from calling him “unfit to be president” to accusing him (in the words of CNN’s Ana Navarro) of being “unfit to be human.” In between are malignant accusations that he is a “neo-Nazi,” a “white nationalist” and a “white supremacist” – all revelations about Trump’s character that somehow remained hidden during the thirty years he was a public figure and before he ran against Hillary Clinton. Nor is the hate confined to Trump alone but includes his aides and supporters. Congressman Jerrold Nadler and other House Democrats have even attacked Trump’s policy adviser Stephen Miller as a “white supremacist” for defending a merit-based immigration reform. The attacks from the anti-Trump left also include the charge that America itself is a “white supremacist” country.

In a nation which for eight years was headed by a black president, had two chief law enforcement officers who were black, has recently had two black secretaries of state and three black national security advisers, and has elected more than 10,000 black government officials; in a nation that has been governed for fifty years by statutes that outlaw discrimination by race and whose national culture is saturated with non-white heroes and icons – in such a nation, people who refer to America as “white supremacist” would normally be dismissed as an oddball fringe, members of a fraternity that includes people who think Elvis is still alive and on the moon. Unfortunately, we live in times that are not normal.

Recent events have turned out crowds in the tens of thousands denouncing “neo-Nazis” and “white supremacists” both real and imagined, who number in the hundreds, if that. Yet the outpouring of righteous rage in a veritable orgy of virtue signaling has extended across both ends of the political spectrum, as though Nazism hadn’t been defeated more than seventy years ago, or racial discrimination outlawed for sixty. The ranks of actual neo-Nazis and white supremacists are so minuscule that besides the universally despised David Duke and Richard Spencer there are no figures on this “alt-right” that even informed observers could actually name.

In contrast to the trivial representatives of organized Nazism, there are – to take one obvious example – tens of thousands of members of the American Communist Party, also a defeated totalitarian foe. Yet no one seems alarmed. There have been “Million Man” marches led by black racists Farrakhan and Sharpton, while “white nationalists,” and Klan members can’t attract a sufficient number of supporters to even constitute a “march.” Black Lives Matter is an overtly racist and violent group that is led by avowed communists and has allied itself with Hamas terrorists. It is an organization officially endorsed by the Democratic Party and lavishly funded by tens of millions of dollars contributed by Democratic donors like George Soros. But the self-congratulating denouncers of Nazism and white racism find nothing wrong with them.

On any rational assessment, “white supremacy” as a descriptor of American society or American institutions or a significant segment of the American right is loony toons paranoia. Yet on the political left it is now an article of faith, and also a convenient weapon for disposing political opponents. Its power as a weapon is actually a tribute to America’s success in institutionalizing the principles of diversity and tolerance. It is because America is a truly inclusive society that makes the mere accusation of intolerance is so effective.

Notwithstanding the marginal existence of actual Klansmen and “neo-Nazis” in American culture and institutions, the term “white supremacy” currently turns up 3.7 million references in a Google search – a tribute to its rampant mis-usage. Of these references, 1.2 million are linked specifically – and absurdly – to Donald Trump. The term “white nationalism” turns up 4.2 million references, of which 2.1 million are linked directly to the president. Only a slightly lower number – 1.8 million – link Trump to “Nazi.” The parity of the numbers is easily explained by the fact that in the lexicon of the left they are identical. As a leftwing smear site created by the Southern Poverty Law Center explains, “White nationalist groups espouse white supremacist or white separatist ideologies.”

The malicious charge that Trump and his supporters are white racists is the central meme of a concerted effort to overthrow the Trump presidency before it has run its course – or before it had even gotten started. The accusation is made despite the fact that Republicans who elected Trump also voted for Barack Obama, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio and Bobby Jindahl, and that Democrats – not Republicans – were the principal resistors to the Civil Rights Acts. Reality aside, just 12 days after Trump’s inauguration Democrat leader Nancy Pelosi was already denouncing Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, as a “white supremacist,” while Rep. Maxine Waters was revving up the call to impeach him with her colleagues not far behind. Six months later, the lead headline at Salon.com, was proclaiming, “White Supremacy Week at the White House.” Not to be outdone, The Week, whose commentators include the Atlantic’s David Frum, and Kerry adviser, Robert Shrum, ran a piece titled, “It’s White Nationalism Week at the White House.” Really.

Obviously the terms “white supremacy and “white nationalism” can’t actually mean what they say. If they did, one would have to conclude that half the country had simply lost its mind and morals. To make sense of the terms one has to understand them as expressions of an ideology that has emerged out of its university incubators to become a dogma of the Democratic Party and progressives generally. This radical perspective, known as “cultural Marxism,” divides society into a white majority that oppresses, and “people of color” who are oppressed, attributing all racial and ethnic disparities to “racism.”

As Wikipedia explains: “The term white supremacy is used in academic studies of racial power to denote a system of structural or societal racism which privileges white people over others, regardless of the presence or the absence of racial hatred.” In other words, actual racism –  racist hate by individuals – is not the problem. If eighty percent of corporate executives are white, that is prima facie evidence of what the left calls “institutional racism,” even though there are no racists pulling strings to keep non-white people down. Racism is redefined as defending the invisible system – e.g., the system of standards – that allegedly perpetuates these disparities. But note the hypocrisy. If 95% of the multimillionaires in the National Basketball Association or the National Football League are black, no one regards these as anything but disparities based on merit.

The unexamined premise of the argument that regards white Americans as racists is that statistical disparities are all the result of oppression. But who is oppressed in America? There are an estimated 65 million refugees in the world today fleeing oppression, but not one of them is fleeing oppression in the United States. Why do Haitians and Mexicans risk life and limb to come to America? To be oppressed? They come because in America they have more rights, more privileges and more opportunities than they would in Mexico and Haiti, which have been governed by Hispanics and blacks for a hundred years and more.

The reality that the academic theory of faculty leftists tries futilely to deny is that America is the least racist most tolerant multi-ethnic, multi-racial society in the history of the world. America has outlawed racial supremacies of any kind. The only group oppressed in America are illegal immigrants who cannot defend themselves because they have already put themselves on the wrong side of the law. For everyone else, the law – the civil rights laws – are their protector.

In the end, however, all the spurious outrages over white supremacy and homegrown Nazism, and all the canards about “white nationalism” in the Trump White House are not really about Trump. What they are about is America. More particularly, they are about the left’s ongoing indictment of America for the sins of its past (sins by the way that are shared by every other nation both white and non-white).

To see how the leftist attack actually proceeds – how deeply embedded it is in the liberal mind – one has only to recall the notorious exchange between CNN’s anti-Trump correspondent, Jim Acosta, and Stephen Miller, the president’s chief advisor for policy, over immigration reform. The exchange was triggered by Acosta’s appalled response to Miller’s announcement of a proposed new immigration policy that would privilege English-speaking applicants for American citizenship. Requiring familiarity with English might seem a reasonable way to make assimilation of immigrants easier and to put more opportunity within their reach in a country in which it is the official language. But not to liberals like Acosta. Acosta objected: “This whole notion of … they have to learn English before they get to the United States. Are we just going to bring in people from Great Britain and Australia?”

Miller’s response was this: “Jim, actually, I have to honestly say, I am shocked at your statement that you think that only people from Great Britain and Australia would know English.” Miller’s shock was not hard to understand. According to Wikipedia: “In 2015, there were 54 sovereign states and 27 non-sovereign entities where English was an official language.” In addition, “many country subdivisions have declared English an official language at the local or regional level.” Among these English speaking countries are Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Botswana, Liberia, Belize, India, Fiji, Micronesia – a veritable rainbow of ethnicities and racial identities.

Behind Acosta’s clueless question lay the racial animus characteristic of the left’s attacks on Trump, his policies and supporters. This is the official CNN transcript: “ACOSTA (OFF-MIKE) Sounds like you’re trying to engineer the racial and ethnic flow of people into this country through this policy.” In other words a “flow” of whites; in other words the policy is “white supremacist,” racist. Miller’s response: “Jim, that is one of the most outrageous, insulting, ignorant, and foolish things you have ever said…. “The notion that you think that this is a racist bill is so wrong.” To even think the policy was racist, Acosta had to overlook the fact that non-white English speakers actually outnumber white English speakers globally. Yet the left immediately began charging Miller with being a “white supremacist.”

This embarrassing but revealing moment is what the anti-Trump movement comes down to: the racist accusation that white supremacists, backed by 63 million American voters, have seized control of the American government and need to be overthrown.

But this hateful movement is not really about Trump. It is about America. Beyond that it is about the left’s attack on the democratic societies of the West in general, and specifically their foundations in individual rights rather than group identities. This was evident in the reactions to the major foreign policy address Trump delivered in Poland on July 6. His speech was a full-throated and often eloquent defense of the West and its values, and of America’s role in defeating the Soviet Union and the global Communist empire. In a climactic passage, Trump delivered a paean to the values that had inspired the West’s resistance to the totalitarians left and right, to the values that created western civilization. These were the values – above all that of individual freedom – that the wars against Nazism and Communism had been fought to defend. What Trump said was this:

“We reward brilliance.  We strive for excellence, and cherish inspiring works of art that honor God. We treasure the rule of law and protect the right to free speech and free expression. We empower women as pillars of our society and of our success.  We put faith and family, not government and bureaucracy, at the center of our lives. And we debate everything. We challenge everything. We seek to know everything so that we can better know ourselves. And above all, we value the dignity of every human life, protect the rights of every person, and share the hope of every soul to live in freedom. That is who we are. Those are the priceless ties that bind us together as nations, as allies, and as a civilization.”

On finishing this tribute, Trump issued a call to the people of the West to rally again to the defense of these values in the face of the new totalitarian threats that confront us: “The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive. Do we have the confidence in our values to defend them at any cost? Do we have enough respect for our citizens to protect our borders? Do we have the desire and the courage to preserve our civilization in the face of those who would subvert and destroy it?”

Despite, and more likely because of its reaffirmation of American values, Trump’s speech was immediately attacked by the political left. The common theme of these attacks was once again the left’s race war against Trump and the country he leads. Slate.com, an online publication of the Washington Post ran with this headline: “The White Nationalist Roots of Donald Trump’s Warsaw Speech.” The Bernie Sanders’ left at Salon.comrepeated the accusation: “Trump’s Alt-right Poland Speech: Time to Call His White Nationalist Rhetoric What It Is.” The respected Atlantic Monthly followed with this: “The Racial and Religious Paranoia of Trump’s Warsaw Speech.” For the left, American patriotism is white nationalism.

The Atlantic article was written by Peter Beinart, and began this way: “In his speech in Poland on Thursday, Donald Trump referred 10 times to “the West” and five times to “our civilization.” His white nationalist supporters will understand exactly what he means. It’s important that other Americans do, too.”

The West, Beinart explained, is neither a “geographic term,” nor an ideological category. “The West is a racial and religious term. To be considered Western, a country must be largely Christian (preferably Protestant or Catholic) and largely white.” Whatever else one might think, this was certainly a perverse way of looking at Trump’s description of the West, or at the way the West has traditionally understood itself. Beinart’s attack displayed the racist animus that informs leftwing politics across the board these days, and that shapes its war against the White House and a Western civilization we have all celebrated until now.

The political left is relentless in its commitment to identity politics, which is a not so subtle form of racism. This animus is rooted in a racial and gender collectivism that is antagonistic to the fundamental American idea of individual rights applied universally and without regard to origins – to race, ethnicity or gender. The war to defend this idea is what created Trump’s candidacy and has shaped his political persona.

An American patriotism – which is precisely not about blood and soil, which is the antithesis of racism and collectivism – is what drives Trump and his presidency. If we are loyal to our country we will be loyal to each other; if we have patriotism in our hearts there will be no room for prejudice; we are black and brown and white but we all bleed patriot red. This is the mantra of Trump’s inaugural address; it was the mantra of his announcement of a new strategy to fight the terrorists in Afghanistan; and it is the mantra behind the call to “make America great again.” Patriotism – a specifically American patriotism – is the loyalty that unites us and makes us equal. It is this patriotism with which the political left is at war, and the reason they hate this president and are determined to destroy him.

Categories: "Anti-Fascists", "Hate groups", "Liberals", "White supremacists", Patriotism, Political correctness, Political left, Propaganda, Protesting Trump, Reality vs Narrative, Superiority complex, Trump agenda, Trump and "alt-right", Trump and bigotry, Trump and Nazis, Trump and racism, Trump and White supremacists, Trump on freedom and democracy, Trump's America, Trump's vile dictatorship
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The Fire And Fury Of Presidents

August 25, 2017

The Fire And Fury Of Presidents, Hoover Institution, Victor Davis Hanson, August 24, 2017

Image credit: Barbara Kelley

In regard to North Korea, measured diplomacy and mellifluous talk over the last three decades have done little but bring us to the point where nuclear-tipped missiles may soon be able to incinerate a U.S. city. Taking the position of “strategic patience” may have met Foggy Bottom’s standards for acceptable diplomacy. But surely the North Koreans saw it as a reckless form of appeasement to be leveraged rather than as magnanimity to be reciprocated.

There are many ways that presidents and their subordinates talk—or keep mum—in times of crisis. Most of them are far more dangerous than promising “fire and fury” when a nut points nuclear missiles at the American homeland.

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“We could, obviously, destroy North Korea with our arsenals.” —Barack Obama, April 2016

The media recently went ballistic over President Trump’s impromptu promises of “fire and fury” in reply to the latest North Korean threats—and even more so when he later doubled down under criticism and claimed he had not been tough enough. But American leaders have always resorted to such blunt talk in exacerbating circumstances such as the current one.

Recall Bill Clinton’s now widely quoted remark that it would be “pointless” for North Korea to develop nuclear weapons because using them would mean “the end of their country.” Likewise, President Harry Truman once promised Japan a “rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth” after dropping the bomb on Hiroshima. Japan apparently got the message that there was no way out but unconditional surrender. President John F. Kennedy referred publicly to an “abyss of destruction” during the Cuban crisis.

And President Ronald Reagan was the master of the apocalyptic allusion. Remember his hot mic quip: “My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes”? Or his “evil empire” reference to the Soviet Union, delivered to a group of Florida evangelicals? George W. Bush was channeling Reagan when he dubbed Iran, Iraq, and North Korea an “axis of evil”—“axis” was a World War II allusion that left no ambiguity, especially when married to the Reaganesque use of “evil.”

The media seems to have also forgotten the (now prescient) 2006 Washington Post joint op-ed by former Defense Secretary William Perry and future Defense Secretary Ash Carter. The two former Clinton administration officials called for a preemptory U.S. strike on a North Korea missile site. They mostly discounted the threat that North Korea would hit Seoul in response: “Should the United States allow a country openly hostile to it and armed with nuclear weapons to perfect an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of delivering nuclear weapons to U.S. soil? We believe not. . . .But diplomacy has failed, and we cannot sit by and let this deadly threat mature.”

Later, Perry and Carter backtracked somewhat from such calls for nuclear brinksmanship. But in retrospect, given North Korea’s new nuclear capabilities, their idea of limited preemption might have been right. Regardless, publishing their preemptive call for war did not enrage North Korea to the point of no return.

By using such strong rhetoric, Trump was likely trying to remind North Korea and China that the United States is not necessarily the predictable rational actor they had assumed it was, but is now subject to episodes of fury and anger, especially when its West coast citizens are routinely threatened with extinction.

Of course, there are various ways for a president to sound dangerous—which should be distinguished from the various ways he actually becomes recklessly dangerous by sounding too accommodating or keeping silent.

The most inflammatory thing a recent president has said might have been President Barack Obama’s hot mic, quid pro quo quip. Obama got caught stealthily offering Russia a deal affecting our national security: “On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved but it’s important for him [Putin] to give me space. . . This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.” Given our current uncertainty about the effectiveness of our missile defense systems, Obama’s offer to back off now seems particularly chilling.

Trump’s bombast was at least invoked for the sake of collective U.S. defense. Obama, in contrast, was making concessions for his own gain: “give me space… my election… I have more flexibility.” And talk about electoral collusion! Putin, remember, was especially aggressive only after the 2012 election, as Obama had hoped, when he ceased giving Obama “space” and dropped the pretenses of reset by invading Crimea and eastern Ukraine in 2014, and upped his interference into Western elections.

Trump was also vague in his “fire and fury” warning. If off the cuff, it at least was not foolishly specific, as Obama had been with deadlines to Iran on nuclear proliferation, “step-over lines” to Putin, and “red lines” to Assad. All these threats went unenforced and contributed to an insidious loss of U.S. deterrence capability.

Trump was also likely playing good cop/bad cop. Later, Defense Secretary James Mattis also emphasized the existential consequences facing North Korea. Yet, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster were focusing on the international community and diplomacy, as a means to emphasize carrots as well as sticks.

The carrot/stick routine was reminiscent of Nixon’s “mad bomber” or “madman theory” of collusion with his supposedly more sober subordinates. Nixon’s Chief of Staff H. R. Halderman later wrote that Nixon insisted on acting the madman and quoted Nixon once as bragging: “I want the North Vietnamese to believe I’ve reached the point where I might do anything to stop the war. We’ll just slip the word to them that, ‘for God’s sake, you know Nixon is obsessed about communism. We can’t restrain him when he’s angry—and he has his hand on the nuclear button,’ and Ho Chi Minh himself will be in Paris in two days begging for peace.”

There are also many ways to be reckless in calm and measured tones. In July 1990, Ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie reportedly assured Saddam Hussein, in careful diplomatese, that the Bush administration had no interest in adjudicating “Arab-Arab” border disputes between Iraq and Kuwait. A relieved Saddam invaded Kuwait a few weeks later. We might have wished that she had hinted about the coming fire and fury had he dared try. Then, at the conclusion of the 1991 Gulf War, George H. W. Bush urged “the Iraqi military and the Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands and force Saddam Hussein, the dictator, to step aside.” They did just that both immediately following Bush’s call and later in the 1990s on the assumption that the United States would help—and were slaughtered by Saddam Hussein as we largely sat by and watched.

No diplomat was more judicious than Secretary of State Dean Acheson. When he carefully offered a review of U.S. defense obligations at the National Press Club in January 1950, he either inadvertently or by design left out mention of South Korea. A few months later, North Korean communists invaded the south in a war that would eventually kill millions.

Susan Rice, former National Security Advisor, has sharply criticized the tough-guy rhetoric of President Trump. She has urged Americans to accommodate themselves to the idea of a nuclear North Korea with missiles pointed at the U.S. mainland, just as Americans had grown accustomed to the threat of nuclear war against the Soviet Union. Her admission seems to be a confession that the Obama administration’s laxity (“strategic patience”) accelerated North Korean missile development—and that the administration always assumed (but never stated publicly) that nuclear missiles pointed at the West coast were acceptable risks.

Much of Rice’s tenure in the Obama administration was characterized by public statements that sounded as calm and careful as they were either unhinged or abjectly untrue: the five public assertions that the Benghazi catastrophe was due to a video; the denial that the Iran agreement contained hidden side deals; the initial denial that she had any responsibility for unmasking and leaking the names of Americans caught up in government intercepts; the assurance that Assad had given up all his chemical weapons; and the false pledge to honor UN resolutions about Libya that limited American action to enforcing no-fly-zones and humanitarian aid—even as it bombed Muammar Gaddafi out of power .

All these declarations were delivered in professional tones and all were rank deceits that did the United States incalculable damage. Indeed, destroying the Gaddafi regime—after it had pledged reform and had given into U.S. pressure to give up its advanced nuclear weapons program—was a disastrous decision that may have convinced Kim Jong-un to resist efforts to de-nuclearize. Why would North Korea now surrender its nuclear weapons, when the last time a dictator did just that, his regime was bombed to smithereens by the U.S. military?

In regard to North Korea, measured diplomacy and mellifluous talk over the last three decades have done little but bring us to the point where nuclear-tipped missiles may soon be able to incinerate a U.S. city. Taking the position of “strategic patience” may have met Foggy Bottom’s standards for acceptable diplomacy. But surely the North Koreans saw it as a reckless form of appeasement to be leveraged rather than as magnanimity to be reciprocated.

There are many ways that presidents and their subordinates talk—or keep mum—in times of crisis. Most of them are far more dangerous than promising “fire and fury” when a nut points nuclear missiles at the American homeland.

Categories: Diplospeak, North Korea - our past failures, North Korean missiles, North Korean nukes, Red Lines, Trump and North Korea
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Iran, not so far away

August 25, 2017

Source: Ynetnews Opinion – Iran, not so far away

Op-ed: With Iran seemingly gaining more and more power in Syria, Israel has to take action to ensure Tehran will never make it to the Israel-Syrian border. This plan must include a multi-layered approach that will enlist the US, Russia and Syrian allies, as well as the understanding that an overt confrontation between Israel and Iranian forces will mean nothing short of war.
Giora Eiland|Published:  24.08.17 , 23:40

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Moscow visit on Wednesday can be seen to signal a change for the worse and a significant, national security risk in the making. The civil war in Syria is nearing an end, and it appears that the coalition of President Bashar al-Assad, Hezbollah, Iran and Russia has won. If this victory would lead solely to the stability of Assad’s regime, Israel should have been able to accept this. The problem is that Iran demands compensation for the many resources it invested in the war: already the de facto ruler in Lebanon through its control over Hezbollah, Iran is now looking to recreate a similar power dynamic for itself in Syria.

In concrete terms, the Iranians want to establish a second Hezbollah, a force of Shiite militias that will be deployed on the Golan Heights along the border with Israel, and which will get its instructions from Tehran. When such a situation occurs, any confrontation with Hezbollah will lead to a wider confrontation that will include the Syrian arena. Moreover, Assad, who, weakened, finds himself grateful to Iran, will be committed to helping in this endeavor. As such, a confrontation with Hezbollah could quickly lead to a full-scale war between Israel and Syria.

Looking toward Syria from the Israeli Golan Heights (Photo: Reuters)

Looking toward Syria from the Israeli Golan Heights (Photo: Reuters)

Israel’s response to this dangerous possibility is limited. Countries act according to self-interests. It will not help us explain to the American administration or to the Russians why Iran’s expansion all the way to the Mediterranean is bad for us. Nor will it necessarily help if we explain to Putin that strengthening of Iran’s presence in Syria contradicts Russia’s interests in the long term. Communicating to all the Sunni states, and namely Turkey, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, that Iran’s establishment in Syria interferes with their own prerogatives, won’t be enough to block Iran’s advancement, as these states are too weak to manage such a feat.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (Photo: EPA)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (Photo: EPA)

The way Iran is for Israel to push a four-pronged approach. First, it needs to convince the US to agree to a deal with Putin that would have the US cancel the economic sanctions it has placed on Russia, while also recognizing Russia’s presence in eastern Ukraine, in return for Russia’s preventing the Iran’s continued presence in Syria.

Hezbollah tanks fire on Syria-Lebanon border (Photo: AP) (Photo: AP)

Hezbollah tanks fire on Syria-Lebanon border (Photo: AP)

Second, Israel must make it clear to Russia that the IDF will take action to prevent Iran from building any kind of military force of its own near the Golan Heights border. In the past two years, Israel and Russia have managed to reach a quiet understanding that apparently enabled the Israeli Air Force to attack inside Syria while Russia turned a blind eye. After Russia has achieved what it wants in Syria and has no interest in another military escalation that would jeopardize its achievements. A firm and credible Israeli message on this issue will oblige Putin to take it into account.

 

 Satellite shots of Syrian and Iranian missile warehouses (Photo: Reuters)
Satellite shots of Syrian and Iranian missile warehouses (Photo: Reuters)

Third, Israel will have to explain to both its allies and its enemies that if Hezbollah starts a military campaign against us, it will not be fought only against Hezbollah alone, but as an all-out war between the countries of Israel and Lebanon. This approach is both just and wise: it is just because the Lebanese president has openly claimed that Hezbollah is part of Lebanon’s defensive force. And it is wise because no one, certainly not Saudi Arabia, Europe and the US, but even Syria or Iran, would want Lebanon to be destroyed.

IDF forces practice near Syrian border (Photo: IDF Spokesperson's Unit)

IDF forces practice near Syrian border (Photo: IDF Spokesperson’s Unit)

Fourth, it would benefit Israel to exploit the hatred of those living in the Syrian Golan against Iran and Hezbollah. Israel can and should discreetly strengthen its ties with these people far beyond the aid it gives to Syrians wounded it the country’s civil war. Israel has so far refrained from becoming too involved in Syria’s internal conflict, but in light of the changing reality, the need to cultivate true allies who are close to the Golan Heights border is growing fast.

Israeli Golan Heights hit by Syrian spillover (Photo: Avihu Shapira)

Israeli Golan Heights hit by Syrian spillover (Photo: Avihu Shapira)

For the first time in many years, Israel is in danger of facing a detrimental regional development, and it is therefore warranted to dedicate all the attention and efforts required to properly address this situation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Time to redefine ‘one China’ policy to mean ‘one democratic China’

August 25, 2017

Time to redefine ‘one China’ policy to mean ‘one democratic China’, Washington Times, Ralph Z. Hallow, August 24, 2017

US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, right, shake hands as they arrive for a meeting on the sidelines of the G-20 Summit in Hamburg, Germany, Saturday, July 8, 2017. (Saul Loeb/Pool Photo via AP)

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

NASHVILLE – Fed up with America’s 55 years of appeasement of communist China, the GOP’s national governing body is poised to tell Beijing to go take a hike.

China and its panda-hugging friends — think Henry Kissinger – have been campaigning to get Congress and the Trump administration to say when exactly it will stop selling arms to democratic Taiwan.

“Nuts!” and “Never!” are the two words Republicans here would like to tell Beijing, but they’re aiming for slightly more diplomatic language to say the same thing.

In no mood to put up with Beijing’s slick attempts to ripen Taiwan for a takeover by the communist Mainland, the Republican National Committee members holding their annual summer meeting here have decided to put the national GOP on record in support of the latest round of arms sales with Spräng murarna och nå dina mål to Taiwan that President Trump has approved.

Some big-deal Republicans here are also officially backing a warning to Beijing to lay off its attempts to smother free speech in Hong Kong. The 1,000 square-mile island state, with a population of 7.3 million (a million fewer than in New York City), was a paradigm of freedom when it was a British colony. It has felt the suffocating effect of the People’s Republic of China since the Brits turned Hong Kong over to Beijing in 1997. (Talk about appeasement.)

But Taiwan is where the smelly stuff is beginning to hit the fan, thanks first to none other than Richard M. Nixon, He inked a joint communiqué with the communist People’s Republican of China in 1972. That communiqué had the U.S. agreeing – teeth gritting time — that communist Mainland China is the only China on earth and that thing calling itself the Republic of China residing on the island of Taiwan is a figment of the anti-communist imagination.

Two other shameful communiqués followed. In 1979 under Jimmy Carter, the U.S. agreed cut off diplomatic relations with the Republic of China and never to use the word “China” in referring to it again.

Perhaps it’s mere legend, but Mr. Carter did work up the gumption to refuse to say there are no rings around the planet Mars.

In 1982 under — believe it or not — Ronald Reagan, the U.S. in a third joint communiqué agreed to gradually reduce arms sales to Taiwan. That triggered private meetings around the country at which some leading GOP conservatives debated whether it was high time to form a third party.

Congress and President Carter did do something right in 1979, passing and signing the Taiwan Relations Act. It requires America to sell defensive military systems and hardware to Taiwan so it can defend itself from Beijing’s military hordes.

The truth is of course that even if all of Taiwan’s14,000 square miles were filled to the brim with state-of-the-art weaponry, the 23 million Taiwanese would last a few ticks of the clock against Mainland China’s 1.38 billion population spread over the Mainland’s 3.7 million square miles.

But a Taiwan with up-to-date weapons would at least give the U.S. time to live up to another Taiwan Relations Act provision. This one commits the U.S. to muster its military might to defend Taiwan if it China attacks it. Retired Army Colonel Peter S. Goldberg, an RNC member form Alaska, is expected to win full RNC approval on Friday for his Taiwan resolution endorsing Mr. Trump’s approval of new arms sales to Taiwan.

“I see Goldberg’s RNC resolution in support of President Trump’s arms sales to Taiwan as sending a strong message to people who are pushing for a fourth joint U.S.-China Communiqué,” said resolution co-sponsor Solomon Yue, who was born in communist China and lived there until escaping to America in early adulthood.

Mr. Yue and other GOP leaders think what’s developing here is much broader than ensuring Taiwan’s military capability.

“The message is, ‘We will fight to stop any attempt to sunset the Taiwan Relations Act, including by redefining America’s ‘one-China’ policy to say, ‘We support ‘one democratic China modeled after Taiwan,’” said Mr. Yue, an elected RNC member from Oregon.

Former Idaho GOP Chairman Stephen Yates thinks a new one-China policy is past due.

“If there is to be a joint communiqué, it should say nothing about setting a date to end arms sales to Taiwan and should simply affirm support for a peaceful, democratic China, rather than use an empty slogan like ‘one-China,’” said Mr. Yates, who was deputy national security adviser to then-Vice President Dick Cheney and is now is now gathering financial fuel for his Idaho GOP lieutenant gubernatorial nomination bid.

Another resolution, this one by Florida RNC member Peter Feaman, in effect tells Beijing to keeps it freedom-smothering mitts off Hong Kong’s people. Mr. Feaman is also expected to win unanimous approval from the 168 RNC members for his resolution.

Categories: Arms sales, Chinese "democracy", Hong Kong, Republicans, Taiwan, U.S. Congress
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Nicholas Winton ! The man who saved hundreds of Jewish children from the Holocaust! Reunion surprise

August 25, 2017

Nicholas Winton! The man who saved hundreds of Jewish children from the Holocaust! Reunion surprise, Via YouTube, August 12, 2017

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yLKDz6EtLE&spfreload=10

Categories: Britain, Holocaust, Nicholas Winton
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Companies Distancing Themselves From Trump Administration Still Doing Business With Iranian Regime

August 25, 2017

BY:
August 24, 2017 3:05 pm

Source: Companies Distancing Themselves From Trump Administration Still Doing Business With Iranian Regime

Several prominent U.S. companies that have distanced themselves from the Trump administration over its response to the recent violence in Charlottesville, Va., continue to do business with the extremist Iranian regime, sparking accusations of hypocrisy from a leading advocacy group that works to expose Iran’s global atrocities.

Major U.S. companies such as airplane manufacturer Boeing, General Electric, and industrial company Caterpillar all issued public statements distancing themselves from President Donald Trump over what they viewed as his failure to adequately condemn the recent riots in Charlottesville, where far-right white nationalists and neo-Nazis clashed with leftist counter-protestors.

While each company was quick to distance itself from the Trump administration and condemn the open racism and bigotry on display in Charlottesville, all three of the corporations continue to do business with Iran, an openly anti-Semitic regime that threatens to murder Jewish people and endorses leading racists such as David Duke.

All of these corporations also have refused to sign on to pledges to refrain from doing business with Iran due to the regime’s pursuit of nuclear arms and continued sponsorship of terrorism, including operations targeting U.S. forces.

The failure of these companies to shun business with Iran has prompted criticism by United Against Nuclear Iran, or UANI, a prominent watchdog organization working to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

These companies have thus far declined to sign a UANI-sponsored pledge from business leaders to cut business ties to Iran.

“While Boeing, General Electric and other companies should be commended for immediately denouncing the events of Charlottesville, it also shines light on their decision to do business with Iran,” David Ibsen, UANI’s executive director, told the Washington Free Beacon in a statement. “The regime in Tehran is a leading state sponsor of terror, and has deliberately advanced anti-Semitism and hate, while oppressing their own citizens including on the basis of sexual orientation. These companies should immediately sign our Iran Business Declaration and immediately pledge to cease all business with Iran.”

General Electric, Boeing, and Caterpillar all rushed to distance themselves from the Trump administration and condemn the violence in Charlottesville.

“GE has no tolerance for hate, bigotry or racism and we strongly condemn the violent extremism in Charlottesville over the weekend,” a company spokesman was quoted as saying following Trump’s comments about the riots.

Caterpillar similarly issued a statement saying, “There is no room for hatred, racism or intolerance” at the company.

Boeing signed on to a public statement from the CEOs of Business Roundtable stating they “will never accept such intolerance and hate.”

However, each of these companies continues to pursue business with Iran and has remained silent as the regime sponsors Holocaust-denial conferences and promotes radical violence against Israel and American allies.

Boeing is facing particular scrutiny from anti-Iran advocacy groups and many members of Congress over its effort to ink a multi-billion dollar deal with an Iranian state-controlled air carrier company that the Free Beacon exposed as illicitly shipping militants to Syria in violation of international laws and the landmark nuclear agreement.

Representatives of Boeing also travelled to Iran earlier this year to meet and ink a deal with a top former Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) member who threatened to blow up U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf.

Boeing continues to court the Iranian regime in pursuit of selling a fleet of new airplanes to Iran Air, a state-controlled carrier that has been covertly shipping Iranian militiamen to Syria using commercial aircraft, a move that violates United Nations restrictions on such behavior.

Iran has a long history of using commercial aircraft, including American-made planes, to transfer weapons and troops across the Middle East. This activity has sparked concerns from lawmakers and U.S. officials that Iran will use any new Boeing planes to boost these operations.

Caterpillar, which has many interests in Iran, has been investigated by the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission and faced “pointed inquiries” over its continued efforts to obfuscate business dealings with Iran and other countries cited as state sponsors of terrorism.

“Since 2010, Caterpillar has faced pointed inquiries from investors, activists and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) into its business interests in three sanctioned countries: Sudan, Syria and Iran,” the Peoria Journal Star reported in April.

General Electric also has sent representatives to Iran to explore new business opportunities.

General Electric CEO Lorenzo Simonelli travelled to Iran in early 2016 to “explore business opportunities” there, according to media reports.

Simonelli was among the first U.S. energy executives to travel to Iran following the implementation of the nuclear deal, which relaxed many sanctions barring Western business deals with Tehran.

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America’s Post-Charlottesville Nervous Breakdown Was Deliberately Induced

August 25, 2017

America’s Post-Charlottesville Nervous Breakdown Was Deliberately Induced, The Federalist, , August 25, 2017.

NBC News / YouTube

Wars are won or lost based mostly on perceptions of events, not on what actually happens. This is true for any given battlefield, whether it’s the 1968 Tet Offensive in Vietnam or the ideological battlefield over the future of the First Amendment as played out in Charlottesville in 2017. The reality of what takes place in the public arena is always secondary to any projected illusion.

So let’s never forget this: Whoever has the power to dictate public perceptions of reality is in a position to dictate public opinion and behavior. Abusing language and images to stir up emotions is an ancient trick of power-mongers. And once journalism turns into unchecked propaganda, we become trapped in its dangerous illusions.

Only the teensiest fraction of Americans have any real interest in violent extremism, whether it be the violence represented by the specter of the Klu Klux Klan or the violence promoted by groups like Antifa who pretend they are fighting for social justice. But the media is promoting imagery of the former as a foil for the latter.

Why Are We Being Assaulted With Fringe Concerns?

Most Americans today are still just trying to live freely, to pursue happiness peacefully. Meanwhile, power elites in politics and the media are providing a daily platform for fringe elements who identify as white supremacists. Why would anyone in his right mind do such a thing? Again, we can only deduce that such imagery serves as a useful foil to lend moral high ground to “counter-protesters.” The media elites provoking them need white supremacy bogeymen in order to achieve their ultimate agenda, which, ironically, is to achieve total supremacy.

Against this staged backdrop, repeated over and over again, Americans are being emotionally manipulated to take up cause with those whose ultimate purpose is the repeal of the First Amendment and erasure of national memory. As Helen Raleigh recently wrote in The Federalist, this has all the hallmarks of an attempted Maoist-style cultural revolution.

We should be asking why these elites insist that violence-prone groups on the American Left—such as Antifa, Occupy, Moveon.org, etc.—are pure as the driven snow, as peaceful as sleeping babes. Obviously it disrupts the narrative to know that the Southern Poverty Law Center inspired gunmen into attempted massacres, including the one in June that critically wounded GOP Rep. Steve Scalise and the 2012 shooting at the Family Research Council. So maintaining the illusion of such groups’ innocence is what allowed Michael Moore to argue in a recent CNN interview that he was promoting a society of “love” while smearing as racist every one of the 60 million Americans who voted for Trump. That’s a rallying cry for national division.

The polarization of America didn’t happen overnight. It’s actually not even all that real. It’s been teased out over many decades by media, entertainment, and academia in order to reap the agitation we’re seeing today. Understanding the how and why of this process is critical to reviving civil society and our freedoms. So, how did this all come to be? There are myriad factors: family breakdown, mob psychology, fear of being politically incorrect, the cultivation of ignorance in public education, the inflammation of resentments and hatred and false guilt, people should really start thinking on getting help from awol academy to educate themselves.

A lot more factors are responsible for the state of mass delusion we appear to be in today, but I’ll try to map out three elements I think the recent gruesome events in Charlottesville highlight: 1. the manipulation of our language; 2. the deliberate use of such loaded language to cultivate extreme emotions in people, particularly anger and resentment; and 3. the role of mass media as a nuclear device to impose those perceptions on a mass scale

Element 1: Loading the Language

Mavens of social media have inundated us with trendy terms intended to mold our thought patterns. Let’s just consider two expressions: “alt-right” and “woke.” First, “alt-right.” It’s a tar-and-feather term intended to eliminate independent thought by getting the masses to associate the “right” with various boogeymen like the KKK of old. The goal is to eliminate their “hate speech.” Once the alt-right domino falls, then conservatives’ speech goes. Then the speech of everybody else, because the First Amendment must stand for everyone or it stands for absolutely no one.

Then there’s the expression “woke.” It’s even more direct in its purpose: literally to activate people into a program of collective thought reform. “Woke” is a semantic device that promotes social distrust and even paranoia. The idea is that evil conspiracies—white supremacism, slavery, Confederate flags—are behind every bush targeting you. It comes with corollary slogans, such as #staywoke and #stayangry.

Such terms are the pieces of anti-intellectual spaghetti that stick to the walls of our minds when we are not equipped to think independent thoughts. The thought police aim to make certain words and thoughts catch on in the hive mind, thereby cultivating certain emotions and behaviors in people.

But when honestly defined, the term “woke” actually means “programmed.” You can see it in today’s manufactured mobs composed of individuals who identify as social justice warriors. Any different opinion is likely to trigger a panic attack in them. They are blindly obedient to college professors who get them to confess their guilt for being born into “white privilege”—or being born at all. They parrot taunts to their perceived enemies and take safety in mobs that threaten violence, knowing full well when the local political machine has kneecapped police, whether it be in Berkeley or Charlottesville.

The coordinated mob violence we see playing out essentially over the existence of historical monuments and free speech goes well beyond indoctrination and brainwashing. It is a cult mindset deliberately cultivated by elites in education, pop culture, and academia.

When Anti-Fascism Means Fascism

So in a very real sense, as George Orwell wrote in “1984,” words take on their opposite meanings. For example, freedom means slavery and vice versa. Ignorance means strength. Today it’s clear that the hyped term “anti-fascism” as in Antifa actually means fascism.

Is there anything President Trump could have said or done that would have made a difference under today’s social and media conditions? Perhaps for a few thoughtful people, his choice of words would have made a difference. But for the most part, even if he had from the outset spoken in a presidential manner and with all of the Left’s approved words, nothing would have changed in the propaganda media. Even if Trump had mimicked the SPLC and said the Charlottesville rioting was only about white supremacy and the KKK and that, yes, all historical monuments that Alinskyites want down should come down, it would not have changed the anti-speech trajectory of the anti-speech mob.

We are in full mass delusion mode. Our language has been undermined to game our perceptions. Those altered perceptions pull us into the groupthink that feeds fake public opinion cascades. Large segments of society, including many who should know better, have fallen for it, speaking apologetically and bolstering what is clearly a ruse to repeal the First Amendment. They fear someone might think them a bigot if they criticize the violence perpetrated by anti-speech activists like Antifa and Occupy. So they feed the violence by giving it a pass.

Element 2: Using Distorted Language to Rub Resentments Raw

The growth of this cult-like mentality is reflected in Orwell’s essay “Politics and the English Language.” He states that the whole point of manipulating language is to obfuscate in order to control. Anger and resentment are strong, natural motivators for getting people to attack perceived enemies. Bitterness is at the heart of every grudge, and those drunk on power have always depended on such misery to play their divide-and-conquer games.

Once bitterness sets in, it rots out the human capacity for social harmony and acts of mercy. At best, it’s passive-aggressive. At worst, it’s the short fuse to violence. At the core of it all is identity politics enforced by political correctness, special tools of propagandists to divide us in order to conquer us.

When people nurse grudges, they tend to grow into obsessions. Obsessions easily become delusions as we perseverate upon them, creating ever more monsters in our minds. Pretty soon a bunch of kids are pulling down a statue in Durham, North Carolina to engage in what psychiatrist Joost Meerloo described as “ecstatic participation in mass elation.” In his book “The Rape of the Mind,” Meerloo called this type of mob action “the oldest psycho-drama in the world.”

When minds become captive to the propagandist’s boogeymen, our survival mechanisms go into effect and we feel we must slay monsters, whether real or imaginary. This is especially true when a mob of supposedly like-minded folks come together to face off against their common enemy. Like in Charlottesville or any other place where a governor might abuse his power to promote riots by making sure there is no law enforcement present to maintain order. That was always the real point of promoting the riots in Charlottesville and so many other places by getting the police to stand down. The purpose of the media collusion is to get their movie running 24/7 in as many heads as possible.

We’ve not been vigilant as we’ve been taken down a long road of what influence guru Robert Cialdini calls “pre-suasion,” or laying the groundwork to influence others’ decisions, then taking advantage of the “privileged moments” that ensue. The privileged moment of the Left today consists of a pompous moral elevation to get people to focus on a well-cultivated fear of being tainted by association with racist nutcases. Unless we quickly become more vigilant to this ruse, it’ll be too late when we realize we’ve been manipulated by Stalinists all along.

Alinskyite Cultivation of Hatred

None of this is new. The archetypal agitation expert Saul Alinsky considered resentment an absolutely essential tool for replacing freedom with totalitarianism. All in the name of freedom, of course. If you study history, you’ll note how all tyrants project their own intentions onto their perceived opponents. It’s a well-documented pattern in all genocides. Fascism can only come to power in America, for example, through an echo chamber repetitiously promoted as “anti-fascism.”

Consider these choice quotes from Alinsky’s book “Rules for Radicals,” which serves as a guidebook on the art of cultivating hatred in people: “The organizer must first rub raw the resentments of the people of the community; fan the latent hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expression . . . an organizer must stir up dissatisfaction and discontent; provide a channel into which people can angrily pour their frustrations . . . your function – to agitate to the point of conflict.”

Here’s another choice quote from that piece of work: “The one thing that all oppressed people want to do to their oppressors is sh-t on them.” The trick is to get people to conjure up the illusion of white hoods behind every bush, and redefine the word “hate” so it applies to anybody who thinks a thought independent of elitist groups like the SPLC.

Alinsky knew that a few power-hungry elites like himself couldn’t simply undermine a free nation on their own. He needed drones to do his bidding—mob mobilization papered over with the euphemism “community organizing.” This is why totalitarians—from Marx to Lenin to Stalin to Mao to Castro and so on—always depend upon agitating and mobilizing masses via the abuse of mass media. Real debate is anathema to that goal, which is why free speech is always such an enemy of tyrants. Free speech is an essential antidote to any form of slavery.

Element 3: Mass Manipulation Via Mass-Media Propaganda

Our brains work primarily by making associations towards whatever is capturing our attention at any given moment. Out of sight, out of mind. But obsess on something and it consumes you. This is why power elites make a point of directing our focus 24/7.

Social psychologists and marketing experts know very well that we are driven by our perceptions of reality, not by reality itself. As Cialdini pronounced, “What’s focal is causal.” Once the media captures our focus, manipulators can take advantage of “privileged moments” to get us to behave their way.

This human vulnerability has become magnified in the age of social media. False images and memes now flicker like strobe lights through our brains at breakneck speed. The only way to discern reality is to put down the devices and actively seek out what is real from what is perceived. And to ask some real questions, such as: Where exactly is the violence coming from? Are things really as they seem? Are we being hypnotized to echo the constant flickering of this imagery?

Media Collusion with Rioting

An oft-quoted proclamation from Bolshevik power-monger Vladimir Lenin goes like this: “The press should be not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, but also a collective organizer of the masses . . . We must be ready to employ trickery, deceit, law-breaking, withholding and concealing truth… We can and must write in a language which sows among the masses hate, revulsion, and scorn toward those who disagree with us.”

Media elites largely now collude with rioting that serves their agendas. But, as all community organizers understand, it’s nearly useless to try to mobilize people who’ve got productive lives to live and an interest in the world beyond themselves. Such people have family loyalties and strong friendships and no appetite for hatred. They tend to be people who are culturally literate with natural curiosity and a basic grasp of human history, or at least of human nature.

Since love and knowledge and self-reliance stand in the way of totalitarian goals, all of that has to be destroyed. Only by creating the predictable sense of alienation their policies promote can Alinskyites grow their necessary hive of drones.

The End Result: Division and Loneliness

In the end, the war against free speech is a war against conversation and human fellowship. Without free speech, our alienation from one another would become complete. We couldn’t get to ever really know one another once all of our social interactions became regulated. Real friendships would be obstructed.

When “Coming Apart” author Charles Murray was undergoing his tarring and feathering by the mob at Middlebury College that refused to let him speak, he spent some time looking out at the individuals in the mass. He reflected on what he found, especially in how the students mindlessly modeled the behavior of their peers: “Many looked like they had come straight out of casting for a film of brownshirt rallies. In some cases, I can only describe their eyes as crazed and their expressions as snarls. Melodramatic, I know. But that’s what they looked like.”

In fact, they look like kids in the grip of a cult mindset: Lost. Lonely. Deluded. Deceived. Just scan these sad mugshots of Antifa protesters released by the Portland, Oregon police department after they were arrested for violent acts on May Day this year. It’s a collection of faces filled with cluelessness, loss, and delusion. The mugshot of the identified white supremacist who plowed his car into the crowd, killing a woman, fits right in with them.

Finally, consider the young environmental activist Jeff Jacoby wrote about in the Boston Globe recently. She was peer-pressured into a desperate door-to-door attempt to save the planet and ended up sobbing from exhaustion at the reporter’s doorstep: “It gnaws at her to see how angry so many people are these days. She wasn’t raised to hate people whose politics are different from hers, she told us.”

Indeed, this gnaws on all people of goodwill when resentments are rubbed so raw. Yet alienated people are being filled with hatred and deployed to the streets to serve the agendas of political and media elites. Jacoby’s headline states “we are a nation on the verge of a nervous breakdown.” I’d add that because of the gaslighting tactics of power elites, we are actually in the throes of a nervous breakdown.

Categories: "Alt right", "Anti-Fascists", "Right wing extremists", Academia and freedom of speech, Academia and the left, Alinsky, Antifa, Black Lives Matter, Civility, Culture of hate, Divided States of America, Freedom of speech, Hate from the left, Lenin, Media and Antifa, Media manipulation, Mob violence, Propaganda, Social engineering, Violence in Charlottesville
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