China’s Belt and Road Initiative loses its appeal over hidden military ambitions, corruption, and lack of economic results.

By Terri Wu, EPOCH TIMES                           12 January 2024

China’s $1 trillion global infrastructure investment program just turned 10, and it’s losing its luster.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), touted as a platform for China to build trade and investment links in developing countries, has evolved much in the past decade.

But wariness from countries in recent years has grown, and the program has drawn criticism over issues ranging from saddling partners with unsustainable debt to fueling corruption and labor abuses.

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By Clarice Feldman, AM THINKER

In 2008 the media lapped up the master of Shuck and Jive, Barack Obama and his high-falutin’ promise:

Now, Mizzou, I just have two words for you tonight: five days. Five days. After decades of broken politics in Washington, and eight years of failed policies from George W. Bush, and 21 months of a campaign that’s taken us from the rocky coast of Maine to the sunshine of California, we are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.

“In five days, you can turn the page on policies that put greed and irresponsibility on Wall Street before the hard work and sacrifice of folks on Main Street. In five days, you can choose policies that invest in our middle class, and create new jobs, and grow this economy, so that everyone has a chance to succeed, not just the CEO, but the secretary and janitor, not just the factory owner, but the men and women on the factory floor.

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#BREAKING: The massive explosions which took place in the Naval Base of #Houthi rebels of #Iran in Al Hudaydah, #Yemen was most likely caused by an #Israel Air Force airstrike. #IsraeliAirForce conducted also another airstrike at Yemen back in November 2023. pic.twitter.com/DSiD95q0ll

— Babak Taghvaee – The Crisis Watch (@BabakTaghvaee1) January 13, 2024

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In case you missed, here is the full video of Prof. Malcolm Shaw’s masterful display in international law and meticulous take-down of #SouthAfrica‘s case at #ICJ, during his submission on behalf of #Israel. pic.twitter.com/mew2DzcEwg

— Arsen Ostrovsky ?? (@Ostrov_A) January 13, 2024

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By Mordechai Ben-Menachem

Escalation of Red Sea tensions, with the little US/UK attack on Houthi positions since the start of Operation Prosperity Guardian, has diverted many tankers from the Suez Canal and Red Sea transits. Brent futures traded above $80 per barrel. The shipping industry is tilting towards a blanket ban on Bab el Mandeb Strait transits; the rise in oil and gas is far from over; the cost of chartering a Very Large Cargo Container ship, from the United States to Asia, jumped to more than $10 million, up 25% week-on-week.

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A military operation along Gaza’s southern border would be tricky, with Egypt on one side and a million displaced Palestinians concentrated on the other

By Jared Malsin and Summer Said, WSJ

For Gazans, losing control of their southern border would roll back a symbol of Palestinian sovereignty. HAITHAM IMAD

While the West must support Israel to achieve a decisive victory in Gaza, this is only one small piece of a much broader war.

By Michael Hochberg and Leonard Hochberg, AM GREATNESS Jan 11/24

There are two prevailing interpretations of the recent Houthi attacks on ships in the Red Sea.

The first interpretation is that these are proxy attacks, sponsored by Iran, aimed at undermining freedom of the seas and the American-led international rules-based order. By disrupting shipping and trade flows, Iran gets to extract a price from the West for supporting Israel against Hamas and Islamic Jihad, their proxies in Gaza. Certainly the relevant weapons are being provided by Iran, which suggests that Iran sees strategic benefits in these attacks.
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Peloni:  This is an important detail review of the old conception as explored thru the military and political career of the current Defense Minister and his colleagues.  It is a long essay filled with the background to much of what is being dealt with today, well worth the read with some interesting editorial reflections and queries raised towards the end.

Yoav Gallant does not want Benjamin Netanyahu’s job.  But he might wind up with it anyway.

By Armen Rosen, Tablet 

The death of a soldier dissolves some of the informality of Israeli life. Gal Eisenkot, the 25-year-old son of Gadi Eisenkot, a former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff and an observer in the war cabinet, died on a Thursday afternoon. He had to be buried on Friday morning, as soon as possible and before the early start of a winter Shabbat. There had to be infrastructure in place for family, friends, the wartime leadership of the country, and multitudes who had never known Eisenkot in life. A tent-shaded gravesite with rows of chairs and bags of earth had materialized according to a strict halachic timeline in the old cemetery in Herzliya, where cigarette-smoking policemen with the seal of the State of Israel on their black yarmulkes stalked through a network of metal crowd barriers.

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By Alexander G. Markovsky, AMERICAN THINKER  12, Jan 2024

The State Department and the press have been involved in numerous cases of deception and falsehoods. Certain instances, like The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that sparked the Vietnam War or the accusation of Saddam Hussein developing nuclear weapons that led to the Iraq war, had devastating consequences resulting in the loss of thousands of American lives. The recent depiction of the war in Georgia serves as another example of misrepresentation and a false narrative.

Fifteen years ago, on August 8, 2008, Russia-Georgia war began. The portrayal of this conflict has drawn parallels to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels’ infamous quote, “If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth.”

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By Richard Goldberg, Senior Advisor, NY POST

President Biden’s three years of appeasing Iran has brought the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism closer than ever to developing a nuclear weapon.

While most Americans were on winter break, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog reported that Iran had tripled its production rate of near-weapons-grade nuclear fuel — 60%-high-enriched uranium — with a stockpile large enough to potentially produce one nuclear bomb in a week or six bombs in a month.

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T. Belman. There is little chance of the government falling apart.. The polls are so bad for Netanyahu that he has no choice but to embrace his coal;ition partners and they have no choice to embrace him. No one in the coalition wants an early election.

The Biden administration clearly sees moves toward a Palestinian state as the best way forward for Israel and the region, but Jerusalem vehemently disagrees

By ELLEN KNICKMEYER, MATTHEW LEE and MELANIE LIDMAN  Today, 2:43 pm

President Joe Biden is greeted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after arriving at Ben Gurion International Airport, on Oct. 18, 2023, in Tel Aviv. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

WASHINGTON (AP) — US President Joe Biden’s administration keeps pressing Israel to reengage with Palestinians as partners once fighting in Gaza is over and support their eventual independence. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu keeps saying no.

Even on actions to alleviate the suffering of Palestinian civilians, the two allies are far apart.

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By Majid Rafizadeh, GATESTONE       13 January 2024

• Because of the apparent lack of oversight from world leaders, especially the United States, the rising provision of ballistic missiles by Iran to non-state actors –including terrorist and militia groups, as well as rogue states — now presents a significant source of concern for global security.
• The regime continues to hide behind its proxies, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis. Those are Iran’s human shields. That is why they have proxies in the first place: then it is the proxies doing the dirty work and being attacked, not Iran.

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T. Belman.  Tiny Qatar casts a giant shadow. I wrote this in 2012.  I disagree with Nash in this regard.  I think that Qatar will be undone this year.

TOM NASH REPORT

As shocking incidents pile up and surveys show prejudice growing, the way woke ideology grants a permission slip for Jew-hatred cannot be ignored.

By  Jonathan S. Tobin  01-10-2024

We could look at it as just another day in New York, where protests on behalf of one cause or another have been part of the culture of the place for more than a century. But the organized effort to snarl traffic with demonstrations blocking a tunnel and three major bridges by people chanting support for the killing of Jews ought to be treated as more than just another day in Gotham.

The answer as to why this is happening is linked to recent controversies about college presidents who had trouble deciding whether advocacy for the genocide of Jews violates their academic institutions’ rules of conduct. Since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, there has been an epidemic of antisemitic incidents throughout North America. Jewish businesses and even Jewish neighborhoods have been targeted for boycotts or harassment. Jewish students are harassed and heckled with vicious antisemitic taunts, most recently during a high school basketball game.

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Terror attack on Iran shows Afghanistan-based militant group is expanding and intensifying its regional reach and influence.

By Amira Jadoon and Nakissa Jahanbani, ASIA TIMES   12 Jan 2024

More than 100 people were killed in the blast in Kerman, Iran, on January 3, 2024. Photo: Mahdi / Middle East Images / AFP via Getty Images

Since the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in 2021, the terror group Islamic State Khorasan Province, or ISIS-K, has sought to internationalize its operational and recruitment campaign.

Utilizing a sweeping propaganda campaign to appeal to audiences across South and Central Asia, the group has tried to position itself as the dominant regional challenger to what it perceives to be repressive regimes.

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By Alan M. Dershowitz, GATESTONE    12 January 2024

• What is the International Court of Justice? It is not international, because it excludes judges from certain countries. It is not a real court, because the judges are selected by their countries and many of them simply follow the instructions of those who appointed them. And it has never done justice, because it has long been biased against Israel. It is the United Nations court, and that tells you all you need to know about it.

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China’s Belt and Road Initiative loses its appeal over hidden military ambitions, corruption, and lack of economic results.

By Terri Wu, EPOCH TIMES   January 12, 2024

China’s $1 trillion global infrastructure investment program just turned 10, and it’s losing its luster.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), touted as a platform for China to build trade and investment links in developing countries, has evolved much in the past decade.

But wariness from countries in recent years has grown, and the program has drawn criticism over issues ranging from saddling partners with unsustainable debt to fueling corruption and labor abuses.

Read more…

Hundreds participated in the conference ” Wake – Up Call From Gaza- Put an End to The Two State solution” and tens of thousands more watched it live. Statesmen, politicians, intellectuals and people of action presented insights and lessons about the vision of sovereignty and encouraging the voluntary emigration of Arabs in the Gaza Strip.

[Click on the image. Simultaneous translation  into English]