T. Belman. Even without it, it was destroyed long ago.

Americans once supported military withdrawal, but they will punish a president who leads the US to defeat

By Frank Luntz and RADM (Ret) Mark Montgomery, FDD

Some people are comparing the chaotic end of US involvement in Afghanistan to the final days of South Vietnam. They’ve got it wrong. What’s happening in Kabul is more akin to the Bay of Pigs under JFK or the disaster in Iran in 1979. That failure cost Jimmy Carter the presidency in 1980, and Afghanistan could cost Democrats the White House in 2024.

T. Belman.  Israel should be mindful of this when the US pressures them to accept a two-state solution and make concessions in that direction. Under no conditions should Israel do this.  One might ask, why is the US supporting the Palestinians at Israel’s expense.  What’s in it for them? Why doesn’t the US butt out of Israel’s internal affairs.  In pushing the TSS, the US is opting for conflict, not peace.

By C. Douglas Golden ,WESTERN JOURNAL

In the midst of the Vietnam War, during one of the many moments when America was potentially set to betray the South Vietnamese side, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger warned that if we did, “the word will go out to the nations of the world that it may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”

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By Daniel Greenfield 

The media is filled with absolutely worthless analyses of why the Afghan army surrendered.

Some commentators blame the United States for not providing logistics. Others claimed that we undermined its non-existent morale. There’s hand-wringing over the 300,000 Afghan soldiers who wouldn’t fight. And the $90 billion that we squandered on building up the army that wouldn’t fight.

These analyses are just as dumb as the ones that accompanied the collapse of the Iraqi Army in the face of ISIS.

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Bar Ilan confirms ransomware attack targeting its system, urges staff to shut down computers; national cyber authority involved

Computers at Bar Ilan University. The academic institution was targeted by what an internal email said was a massive cyber attack that is seeing Bar Ilan’s data deleted

HAARETZ

A cyberattack targeted Israel’s Bar Ilan University Sunday, the school reported. An internal email sent out by the university’s IT department said the attack was ongoing and urged staff to shut down their computers.

“A serious cyberattack is underway right now against Bar Ilan University,” the internal mail said. “The attack involves data being erased or encrypted,” they noted, likely indicating a criminal motive, rather than espionage. It may be a ransomware attack, or what is called a “wiper” attack: In both cases, the victim’s data or network is taken over and access to it is restored only if a ransom is paid to the hackers. If no payment is made, the data is erased or remains locked behind the hackers’ encryption.

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By Desk Blitz

An end to the current Iranian regime, and the replacement of the ruling Islamists by secular democrats, would put an end to regional aggression of Iran, that had been undertaken by the Islamic Republic to help other Islamist groups, from the Houthis to Hezbollah, in order to spread the Iranian revolution, and Iran’s power, across the Middle East. Writes Hugh Fitzgerald

The street protests that have taken place in Iran this summer are of two kinds. First, there are continued protests against the mismanagement of the economy, the corruption of the Islamic Republic’s leaders, and the continued transfer of Iranian wealth to support such proxies and allies as the Houthis in Yemen, Kata’ib Hezbollah in Iraq, and especially, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the terror group supported by $700 million transferred annually from Iran. Second, there are the demonstrations by ethnic minorities, who make up 50% of Iran’s population, and bristle under the continued dominance of the Persians.

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“Now is a critical time,” Israeli Minister of Health Nitzan Horowitz said as the 56-year-old got a COVID-19 booster shot on 13 August, the day his country became the first nation to offer a third dose of vaccine to people as young as age 50. “We’re in a race against the pandemic.”

His message was meant for his fellow Israelis, but it is a warning to the world. Israel has among the world’s highest levels of vaccination for COVID-19, with 78% of those 12 and older fully vaccinated, the vast majority with the Pfizer vaccine. Yet the country is now logging one of the world’s highest infection rates, with nearly 650 new cases daily per million people. More than half are in fully vaccinated people, underscoring the extraordinary transmissibility of the Delta variant and stoking concerns that the benefits of vaccination ebb over time.

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By Andrew W. Coy, AM THINKER

Repeatedly in the past year – before the election, when Democrats put into place unconstitutional election rules, and after the election, when people begged it to review fraud claims – a majority on the United States Supreme Court went through mental gymnastics to create reasons not to hear claims about the 2020 election. They did this even though there was already precedence from the top court in Bush v. Gore 2000. Why? Why the staunch refusal by the Supreme Court?

Just now entering the debate is former military intelligence Captain Seth Keshel (ret.), whose findings may force the Supreme Court to grapple with questions about the election. Keshel’s earthshaking scientific data election report contends that President Trump probably won seven states that had been called for Biden (Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Minnesota). If Kassel’s numbers are correct, that gives Trump 321 electoral college votes, well above the 270 needed to win the White House. Maybe that will give the Supreme Court reason to get involved in the fraudulent and duplicitous election of our president. For now, though, the Supreme Court believes the election was “stolen, fair-and-square.”
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Ordinary people, in their folkways and their local rule, are competent to pursue ordinary features of the common good in a sane and fair manner. 

By Anthony Esolen, AM GREATNESS

The world distributes talent equally,” says the president of a college near us, in what I admit is a really effective advertisement, “but not opportunity.” How anyone can say that without blushing, I don’t know. By the time they are five years old, little children know very well that talent is not spread equally. Daddy is bigger and stronger than Mommy. Big sister can sing, but big brother can only croak. Uncle Bob can paint your picture. Uncle Dan can only paint your wall. And so it goes. The drive to enforce equality where there naturally is none is totalitarian in spirit. You have to control all the facets of the game to make sure it turns out “right.” Such a spirit has been on display at the Olympic Games, which, the promoters crowed, was the first ever to achieve gender equality. By that, they meant that there were as many women’s medals as men’s medals.

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By Andrea Widburg, AM THINKER

Image: The ancient city of Jerusalem with Solomon’s Temple. Library of Congress collection.

My father gave me Werner Keller’s The Bible as History when I was a kid. I’ve been a sucker for Biblical histories since then. Keller’s been superseded, both by the deconstructionists who claim the Bible isn’t true and by modern archeology, which has added to and reinterpreted many archeological findings since Keller’s time. And last week, in Jerusalem, an archeologist discovered an earring that helps confirms one of the most pivotal stories in the Bible: The destruction of Solomon’s Temple and the Babylonian captivity.
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By Janet Levy, AM THINKER

The assault on conservative Americans began several decades ago with attacks on traditional principles and values. Belief in individual liberty and responsibility, free enterprise, and the rule of law was willfully conflated with “right-wing extremism.” Pride in America, a desire to protect our borders, and opposition to illegal immigration were branded as xenophobic. Championing the constitutional right to bear arms was decried as gun-crazed zealotry. Belief in religion, natural law, and the sanctity of human life was maligned as backward and anachronistic.

This vilification of conservatives has coincided with a deliberate shift from the real threats: radical Islamic and leftist groups. Islamic terrorist attacks have been declared as having “nothing to do with Islam” or excused by spurious claims that the perpetrators were mentally ill or misunderstood religious doctrine. When a military psychiatrist massacred 13 people in Fort Hood yelling ‘Allahu akbar,’ it was dismissed as “workplace violence.” And the violence, arson, destruction of public property, and killing of citizens and police officers unleashed by Antifa and Black Lives Matter (BLM) during the ‘Summer of Love’ are described as “mostly peaceful protests.”
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War Room Responds To Biden’s Disastrous Speech On Afghanistan Debacle.

Prognosis: Grim in the US

41 deaths in 24 hours; 531 serious cases; positive test rate highest since February; 500 at-risk kids age 5-11 vaccinated, with mild or no side effects; new travel rules start

By TOI STAFF       16 August 2021, 11:57 am  

Medics with the Magen David Adom transfer a Coronavirus patient to the Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem due to full capacity in other hospitals following a sharp increase in the number of coronavirus infections in Israel, on August 15, 2021. (Menahem KAHANA / AFP)

The number of serious COVID-19 cases in Israel fell slightly overnight amid hopes that the effect of the third vaccine booster given to older Israelis was beginning to be seen. Meanwhile, active cases in the country rose to over 50,000 after standing at around 200 just two months ago.

Health Ministry data showed there were 531 patients in serious condition, a drop of 7 since midnight. Of the seriously ill, 94 were on ventilators. In total, there were 908 people hospitalized with COVID-19.

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The Biden administration is walking a fine line as it tries to balance a promise to the Palestinians to reopen the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem, and a desire to help Israel’s new government maintain political stability

By Jonathan Lis, Ben Samuels HAARETZ   Aug. 16, 2021 7:11 PM

The U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem on Agron Street, which was terminated by former U.S. President Donald Trump in 2018. Credit: Magister / CC-BY-SA-3.0

Three months ago, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced during a visit to Ramallah that the Biden administration will reopen the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem, which for years served as an unofficial American diplomatic mission to the Palestinians, until its termination by the Trump administration in 2018. Now, however, Israeli officials believe the Biden administration may significantly delay the move – and some even hope that the consulate will eventually be relocated farther away from its original location in central Jerusalem.

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By Devvy Kidd, NEWS WITH VIEWS     August 16th, 2021

Another lawsuit to stop forcing college students to take one of those experimental gene editing therapy injections has been killed thanks to Supreme Court Justice Amy Comey Barrett who continues to show what a coward she is:

Justice Amy Barrett denies appeal from Indiana University students fighting COVID-19 vaccine mandate – Barrett denied the request without consulting the full court

Apparently, that darling of the desperate has zero understanding regarding Emergency Use Authorization, federal law and the Nuremberg Codes.
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By Raymond Ibrahim, AM THINKER

This week in history, a large fleet transporting tens of thousands of jihadists across the Sea of Marmara was either drowned in a vicious sea-storm or engulfed in flames from a volcanic eruption.

One year earlier, in August 717, these selfsame jihadists were part of one of the largest (200,000 fighters) and most confident Islamic armies ever to invade and seek to conquer Constantinople, the capital of Eastern Christendom.

Although the caliphs had conquered thousands of square miles of Christian territory — from Syria in the east to Spain in the west — they were discontent; for their prophet, Muhammad, had, in the guise of a “prophecy,” personally called for the conquest of Constantinople, promising paradisiacal rewards beyond imagination (which is saying much) for the one who would accomplish it.
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