Dear PragerU Supporter,
Parents are awake, and they are ready to act.
Families are finally aware and outraged that Critical Race Theory (CRT) is poisoning our children’s minds in thousands of grade schools across the country.
This is exactly why PragerU Kids was created.
PragerU Kids is providing parents the tools to teach the truth and the courage to defend our values, protect our children, and help save America.
It’s working. Parents are showing up, speaking up...and winning.
Parents have power. They are starting to move the ideological needle.
But we still have a lot of lost ground to take back from the left.
US officer observed IAF drill simulating attack on Iran
The operation and confidential drill took place about two weeks ago and involved dozens of aircraft.
A US officer was allowed to participate as an observer in an Israel Air Force drill in recent weeks that simulated an attack on Iran, KAN news reported on Tuesday.
The operation and confidential drill took place about two weeks ago and involved dozens of aircraft.
According to the report, the fact that Americans were allowed at sites they're normally not allowed in has a lot of importance, especially as it comes amid talks in Vienna to return to the nuclear deal between world powers and Iran.
The training reportedly included a number of scenarios, including aerial refueling, hitting a long-range target and dealing with surface-to-air missiles.
In mid-January, IAF pilots and the US Air Force Central Command (AFCENT) held a joint training exercise called Desert Falcon. The exercises simulated airstrikes and dog fights.
In December, KAN reported that the IDF was planning a massive mock strike aerial drill for this summer to prepare for a potential strike on Iran's nuclear program.
On Tuesday, the IDF announced that the Israel Navy is for the first time taking part in one of the largest American-led naval drills in the Red Sea alongside dozens of other countries.
“The Israel Navy will join 60 naval fleets for the US Navy-led ‘IMX’ International Naval Exercise,” the IDF said. “For the first time, our Flotilla 3 & Underwater Warfare Unit will train with the US Fifth Fleet in the Red Sea. We look forward to strengthening security & global cooperation.”
Israeli troops have held several drills with CENTCOM, the United States Air Force Central Command (AFCENT) and NAVCENT in recent months in the South of the county, including one in November with Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates in the Red Sea.
Anna Ahronheim contributed to this report.
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Bringing Saudi Arabia into Abraham Accords is strategic goal for US, Israel
Riyadh's economic, political and military capabilities mean that its entry into a normalization agreement with Israel would be a regional game-changer.
In its annual strategic survey released in recent days, the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies pointed to a central understanding that has rippled through the region. The United States is focusing its attention and resources on dealing with China (and, more recently, Russia), and is unwilling to be significantly involved in further conflicts in the Middle East.
Washington's enthusiasm for reviving the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran is one such signal of this intention to detangle from the Middle East.
The US withdrawal from Afghanistan in August was another. The INSS's survey called that withdrawal "winning proof for the countries of the Middle East" that Washington was no longer prepared to commit resources and major attention to the region. Middle Eastern leaders began to understand that even if they still rely on the United States, they must begin to prepare to deal by themselves with challenges.
With this in mind, the coming year forms a golden opportunity for Saudi Arabia to join the Abraham Accords. Under the agreement so far, Israel has normalized relations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan – all with quiet Saudi support.
Bringing Saudi Arabia into the accords forms one of the most important strategic goals of the coming year, due to the economic, political and military weight that the Kingdom brings with it to the table. The result of bringing such a dominant Sunni power into the fold could be a strategic game-changer.
The modern Middle East can basically be divided into two opposing camps, or "blue" and "red" colors. The red zones represent Iran's area of radical influence – stretching from Iran itself and encompassing Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and the Gaza Strip. The blue zones represent the moderate regional states.
In the past 20 years, the Iranian red zone has expanded dramatically. This means that when Israeli strategic planners looked at a map in the year 2002, Iran's nuclear program – a severe strategic threat – was located more than 1,000 kilometers from Israel's borders. Now, in addition to the threat posed by the Iranian nuclear program itself, Iranian-backed terror armies and Iranian weapons produced by capable Iranian military industries are on Israel's borders.
The radical Iranian-Shiite axis injects weapons and destabilization wherever it expands to. It sends funds and capabilities to radical actors through a range of supply lines. The axis threatens Gulf states and Israel alike; the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen fire Iranian-made drones and missiles at Riyadh and Abu Dhabi; while the Iranian-backed Hezbollah and Gaza's terror factions point a large arsenal of projectiles at Israeli cities.
The Iranian axis is ideologically committed to destroying the State of Israel. Those who doubt Iran's penchant to pay prices for its ideology should consider Tehran's willingness to drag its 83 million people through economic crises lasting many years to fulfill a nuclear vision.
Facing this combined threat of nuclear and regional malign activities is the moderate camp in the Middle East.
As the Abraham Accords develop and its members learn about one another's comparative advantage, cooperation between Israel and Gulf states could extend considerably to include capability-sharing, air-force overflights, deploying Israeli air-defense systems in the Gulf and intelligence-sharing.
Israel leads the way in gray-zone military warfighting in the region against Iranian entrenchment efforts. A reported Israeli airstrike overnight between Sunday and Monday near Damascus is the latest apparent indication of Jerusalem's total commitment to continue to enforce its policy of not allowing Iran to entrench itself or its proxies militarily in Syria, and not allowing a "Hezbollah 2" scenario to unfold unchallenged.
Those countries in the moderate camp have managed to safeguard their sovereignty, unlike nations infiltrated and dominated by the Iranian axis. The moderate members remain deeply disturbed by Iranian aggression.
Such concern has created a new readiness to cooperate with Israel to varying degrees. Some of the moderate Sunni countries have been prepared to come openly to the table with Israel, forming the basis for the Abraham Accords, and boosting the moderate architecture of the Middle East. Saudi Arabia has yet to cross this threshold officially. Enabling it to do so should form a top objective for 2022.
What unites these members of the moderate camp is a desire to see stability and prosperity in the Middle East.
While in the past, members of this camp had been held back by the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict – waiting for progress on the matter – these days, the threat posed by Iran to their security has become more important than their wish to patiently wait for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to come to an end.
The resulting Abraham Accords mean that Egypt and Jordan – the first moderate states to establish ties with Israel – no longer feel isolated. The accords provide them with more confidence and support to move forward with Israel towards cooperation in civilian, economic and defense sectors, as the recent Memoranda of Understanding signed between Jordan and Israel on energy and water agreements (with UAE support) demonstrate.
The Israeli government's push to enhance relations with Egypt and Jordan is welcome news since those countries represent Israel's strategic depth.
Iran is a major threat to all of this, as are the jihadist and Islamist movements of the Middle East.
Expanding the blue zone
This does not mean that the moderate camp will cooperate in offensive military operations against Iran. Still, the growing cohesion of the moderate camp is unmistakably bad news for Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Khamenei wants to turn as many countries on the map as possible to "red," building more and more proxy threats, and moving the friction away from Iran's borders to maintain his regime's stability and his ability to threaten Israel and Sunni states alike.
The blue camp – and its potential to grow in size and influence – is the antidote to this vision.
And while the United States is disengaging from direct military operations in the region, the blue camp's potential for growth and power still very much depends on American policy and the motivation of Washington to bring additional countries to the diplomatic roundtable.
When Sunni states like Saudi Arabia hold de-escalation conversations with Iran, it's a signal of their lack of confidence in future ironclad backing by the United States. It is therefore imperative for Washington to issue credible assurances of American support for their security.
The truth is that no amount of diplomatic de-escalation talks between Tehran and Riyadh will alter the fundamental animosity that defines Saudi-Iranian relations. The Saudis don't want to get dragged into an all-out war with Iran, but they haven't changed their hostile orientation regarding it either, based on the tangible threat that the Islamic Republic poses to the Kingdom.
Meanwhile, even though the United States wishes to pivot to the Far East, it may find that the Far East itself leads back to the Middle East. China is investing heavily in the Middle East through its long-term Belt and Road Initiative, purchasing ports and investing in a range of infrastructure.
Iran and China signed a 25-year, $400 billion agreement in March 2021, which ultimately presents financial backing for Iran and enables it to avoid the worst results of American sanctions against it.
This means that China has become a key aspect of the Iranian story in the Middle East.
Under these conditions, the Abraham Accords, together with the shift of Israel into the US Military Central Command's (CENTCOM) area of responsibility (the Middle East), creates increasing daily tools for joint operations and stability.
Israel can offer many capabilities to boost the moderate camp's shared vision, and so can Saudi Arabia. A normalization agreement that includes Saudi Arabia in it would represent a body blow to Iran's dangerous ambitions.
Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.
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Ain't going away.
Biden’s Southern Border Crisis Isn’t Going Away
The administration lets a crisis fester, and the Democratic Party will pay a political price.
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The Amnesty International hate group
To shore up its lies about Israel, it now demeans the suffering of black South Africans under apartheid
Melanie Phillips 25 min ago
Amnesty International has produced a report that claims Israel is an “apartheid” state. This follows similar diatribes by other NGOs obsessively promoting the delegitimisation and destruction of Israel.
Their strategy is to shift from their usual fare of false allegations about Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian Arabs in the disputed territories to false allegations about Israel’s oppression of Israel’s Arab citizens.
Libelling Israel as an “apartheid state” is the unconscionable agenda of the UN Human Rights Council commission of inquiry, about which I wrote here, which is working hand-in-glove with NGOs in a veritable axis of evil determined to bring about Israel’s destruction.
The accusation of Israeli apartheid is risible, and anyone with a functioning brain can see at a glance that Amnesty has produced a report as ludicrous as it is malevolent.
It’s ludicrous to claim apartheid is enforced against the Palestinian Arabs living in the disputed territories of the “West Bank” — because they aren’t even citizens of Israel.
It’s ludicrous to claim apartheid is enforced against Israel’s Arab citizens because they have full civil and religious rights. An Arab Islamist party, for heaven’s sake, holds the balance of power in Israel’s ruling coalition. An Arab judge sent a previous Israeli president to jail. Amnesty falsely claims:
Israel maintains Jewish domination over the Palestinian economy through the exclusion and intentional neglect of Palestinian communities inside Israel.
But as Elder of Zyon points out:
Yet Israel's largest Arab-majority city, Nazareth, is a high tech hub, hosting R&D centres from Amdocs, Microsoft, Broadcom and Salesforce. Nazareth hosts over 70 startups. Thousands of Arabs work in technology and the number is skyrocketing.
If Israel intends to have Jewish dominance over the Arab economy by neglecting Arab communities, then why does it allow so many major companies to open up in Nazareth?
Why indeed. And as this report observes, Arab Israeli superstars are making strides in culture, sports, medicine, environment, fashion, diplomacy, education and technology.
You can read excellent deconstructions of Amnesty’s falsehoods by Alex Safian of CAMERA here and NGO Monitor here. But it’s not just that its assertions about Israel’s behaviour and the situation of Israeli Arabs are baseless. More fundamentally, its claim that Israel is an apartheid state is based on a definition of apartheid that bears no resemblance to what that actually was.
As everyone knows, apartheid was the system of racial segregation and white domination and oppression of the black majority population that was practised in pre-1990s South Africa. It affected every aspect of black lives and was a regime that was particular to that country.
Amnesty itself acknowledges this. It states:
Amnesty International notes and clarifies that systems of oppression and domination will never be identical. Therefore, it does not seek to argue that, or assess whether, any system of oppression and domination as perpetrated in Israel and the OPT [Occupied Palestinian Territories] is, for instance, the same or analogous to the system of segregation, oppression and domination as perpetrated in South Africa between 1948 and 1994.
But then, in page after page of tortuous argument, it grossly mis-states and misinterprets international law in a brazen attempt to redefine apartheid itself — and thus claim that Israel’s behaviour fits that spurious definition.
As Honest Reporting notes:
Amnesty manipulates reality through its reliance on bits and pieces of text from the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. Drafted in the 1970s, only about half of the countries in the world signed on to this document. Meanwhile, modern, western liberal democracies — including the United States and the United Kingdom — did not adopt it. Additionally, Amnesty in its report used elements of the Rome Statute, which was also adopted by about half of existing nations but, tellingly, is strongly opposed by world powers including the US. In doing so, Amnesty constructed a new definition of apartheid that, obviously, had not been adopted by any country.
Amnesty redefines apartheid as oppression and domination. But these are obviously not the same as an apartheid regime. China oppresses and dominates its Uighurs; Russia oppresses and dominates its dissidents; Afghanistan oppresses and dominates its Hazara community. These are tyrannical regimes, but they aren’t apartheid states.
Where Amnesty really ties itself in knots is over its need to prove that the Palestinian Arabs are a racial group. That’s because the Apartheid Convention and the Rome Statute both hold that the crime of apartheid relates specifically to the systematic oppression and domination by “one racial group over any other racial group or groups” with the knowledge and intention of maintaining that regime. And the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination defines racial oppression as “based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin”.
But the Palestinian Arabs are not a race. Nor are they people of a different colour from Israeli Jews, more than half of whom are Middle Eastern in origin and dark-skinned. They aren’t a distinct ethnic group. Nor are they a national group because they were never a nation — Palestinian national identity having been invented in the sixties as an artificial construct solely in order to write the Jews out of their own history and destroy the state of Israel.
So in desperation, Amnesty tries to redefine racial groups as being “perceived as being different and possibly inferior by other groups on account of particular physical and/or cultural attributes”. A racial group, according to Amnesty, is a group that defines itself as such. And so, hey presto:
“If a group is perceived and treated as a distinct racial group, it would qualify as a racial group in the meaning of the crime of apartheid”. It is this subjective understanding of “racial groups” that is applied by Amnesty International in this report with regard to the crime against humanity of apartheid.
Moreover, under this bogus definition apartheid doesn’t even need to be applied to an entire racial group. Its oppression and domination may be achieved by targeting only part of the group. So according to Amnesty, domination and oppression of one race by another — what apartheid actually was — is now redefined as domination and oppression of some members of one race by another.
This truly magical thinking manages to diminish the monstrous racial segregation and oppression of all black South Africans who suffered real apartheid imposed by white minority rule.
And it has also managed to offend Israeli Arabs who object to Amnesty calling them “Palestinians”. They are not. They are Israeli Arabs: proud citizens of Israel with equal rights. Here is one of them:
And here’s another:
As an Israeli Arab citizen, I condemn @amnesty report. I grew up studying and working with Muslim Christians, Druze and Jews,we all put together the Israeli puzzle,despite the challenges,we enjoy equal rights and even work to fix what is not This is what an apartheid looks like?
This travesty of a report doesn’t just insult Israeli Arabs and betray the history of black oppression under South African apartheid. It doesn’t just libel Israel. It also erases Jewish human rights.
By constructing its whole elaborate lie that Israel seeks to oppress and dominate Palestinians, it ignores the truth that the Palestinian Arabs seek to oppress and dominate the Jews of Israel by stealing and occupying their historic homeland.
Astoundingly for a supposed human rights organisation, it makes no mention of the murderous Palestinian Arab attacks on Israelis. It claims:
Palestinians in the OPT [Occupied Palestinian Territories: another misnomer, but let that pass] have, over the years, mobilised and organised non-violent popular resistance against Israel’s military occupation and expansion of settlements.
Would that be “non-violent popular resistance” like the murder of Eli Kay, the 26 year-old tour guide who was shot dead in Jerusalem’s Old City last November; or Yehuda Guetta, the 19 year-old yeshiva student who was shot dead in a terror attack last May; or Rabbi Shai Ohayon, who was stabbed to death in Tel Aviv in August 2020; or 20 year-old Ben Yigal who was killed after being hit on the head by a rock in May 2020; or the massacre of the Fogel family, five members of whom including a three month baby had their throats cut as they slept in 2011?
Amnesty makes no mention of these atrocities; nor does it condemn any of the 1,378 murders of Israelis committed by Palestinian Arabs since 2000.
Instead it trashes Jewish rights. It rehashes the fiction that Israel is evicting Arabs from their ancient homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of Jerusalem. This neighbourhood is actually known to Jews as Shimon HaTzadik, a sage whose burial site there inspired Jews to buy land from the Ottoman authorities in 1880s in order to settle near the sage’s tomb.
When Jordan illegally invaded the fledgling state of Israel in 1948, it stole this land from its Jewish owners. When Israel reclaimed it after the 1967 Six-Day War, its Arab tenants stayed on paying very low rents. They then decided to refuse to pay their rents to their Jewish landlords, leading to protracted court cases and eviction.
In other words, this was a dispute between landlords and tenants.Yet Amnesty use this rent dispute to open their report by asserting that it illustrates a system designed to “privilege Jewish Israelis at expense of Palestinians”. Not only is this a falsehood; it also erases the human rights of Jews to their own property, land and history.
Indeed, Amnesty’s agenda is not human rights at all but the dismantling of the Jews’ human right to their own historic homeland. To underline this, CAMERA reports a revealing discovery. In an Alert for the media, it writes:
Notably, in the originally circulated version of the report, Amnesty tipped its hand, writing, “this system of apartheid originated with the creation of Israel in May 1948…” and recommending the “dismantling this appalling system of apartheid.” After widespread condemnation, in the final English language version that was publicly released, Amnesty changed it to read, “this system of apartheid has been built and maintained over decades….”
Nevertheless, the agenda behind this report remains perfectly clear. Amnesty thinks the Jewish State needs to be dismantled. Indeed, in the intensity and obsession of its hatred for Israel, its inversion of victim and aggressor and its disdain for Jewish suffering and Jewish human rights, it has the feel of Palestinian Authority or Hamas propaganda.
This is hardly surprising. In 2019, David Collier wrote a report on Amnesty pointing out that key figures on its staff were Palestinian propagandists and terrorist sympathisers, including fans of Islamic Jihad, Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Amnesty International is a hate group, and should be treated by all decent people as a pariah organisation beyond the pale.
And:
For those who profit from chaos and seek power, Israel's democracy stands in their way so they seek to destroy this small but powerful nation. All those with evil intent, from wherever and whatever walks of life, find democratic ways to be anathema.
Why does Putin want to attack Ukraine? Is he driven by a justified level of rational concerns or paranoia enhanced by his time as a KGB Agent?
What motivates Xi and N Korea's leader? What drove Hitler when history is replete with evidence master's of the world eventually bring about misery and their own demise?
Why is man discontent and desirous of fixing what works?
https://www.
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How can he go home?
Given that rates are rising and the Fed will no longer be supporting the mortgage bond market after March, if you intend to sell your home this year you may want to do that now and not wait. It is possible the prices of homes could flatten, or even decline this year as rates continue to rise and as home prices reach unsustainable levels. Houses are a little like bonds. As rates rise, the value can decline because buyers become fewer as the affordability declines. The higher the rate on the mortgage, the less buyers can afford the price as it is the monthly payment and the down that matters. The higher the rate the lower the loan amount will be available as the bank will consider the buyers ability to pay the monthly mortgage payment. Then the required down payment becomes more. Down go prices.
Where from here for the market. I had suggested it could go down 20% sometime this year, and while that is possible, I don't think it will get that bad for the short term. The NASDAQ has declined 13%, so a lot of the real froth has been washed out already. The kiddies playing with options on Robinhood have had their clock cleaned, as has Kathy Wood, the big media star of last year. It is over for the massive gains of the past three years, and especially 2021. We are now in a volatile, and likely down market for the rest of the year. You can sit on cash and wait it out, which might be a good strategy, or you can take the long view and ride it out with the big cash rich, well managed companies that will continue to grow earnings all this year and into next year. For example MSFT, APPL, TMO, etc. You have to decide what makes you comfortable, and the term of your investment horizon and cash needs. Despite my age, I take the long view, and believe the solid companies that will not get hurt by continued inflation or interest rates, will make me money over the next several years when I might need that money. The difference is, I am sitting with a substantial cash reserve, and a very nice recurring income from other sources that covers almost all my annual expenses, so I am in a different position than many of you. Whatever may happen this year, the market will be higher over time when all this bad policy is eventually in the rear view. Ukraine is the biggest risk for the moment. I continue to believe he will not invade, but will do things he has already begun to do to destabilize the government and try to replace it with his guys. He may move troops into Dunbas region, but maybe not into Ukraine itself. My assumption is that any effort to change the sitting government will fail, and he will use cyber and sabotage and other means to continue the destabilization. The cost to the Russian army of an actual attack would be very heavy casualties and a guerilla war he cannot win. On top of the regular army of 285,000 highly motivated and now well armed troops, Ukraine has a national guard of over 100,000, and they have now formed and armed local defense groups all across the country. With the anti-tank missiles and the stinger missiles, the Ukrainians can inflict real damage, and it is likely we would use cyberattacks to create further problems for Russian troops. Then there are the sanctions which his economy cannot afford. He knows if he wages asymmetric war, the Germans, and some others, will be reluctant to put on very strong sanctions, and he is betting Biden will act cautiously. In short he will be able to withstand whatever the US and Europe do so long as he does not actually send in his troops. In the end Biden will concede more than he should, and will confirm his weakness and lack of understanding of how to play the geopolitical game with the big boys. That will make the world a lot less safe.
In a stunning move to appease Iran, the US pushed S Korea to send $18 million of blocked funds to Iran so they could pay their very overdue UN dues and get their vote back. Why would we want Iran to get its vote back. Biden's group of former Obama foreign policy geniuses apparently once again think if they do something to appease, that will get Iran to concede something . Chamberlain apparently was not mentioned in the history classes these people took. This is one more in a string of incredibly stupid and dangerous incidents that has terrible ramifications. Blinken and Sullivan are really misguided. Here is my concern of what could, but hopefully will not happen. Biden and his team are grossly incompetent on the economy and foreign policy. Germany is being a major problem and blockage to NATO forcefully responding to Russian demands. Instead of cooperating with NATO, Germany still refuses to spend the required 2% on defense. All due to their dependence on Russia for energy. Trump forced Merkel to start work on an LNG port to counter the dependence. As soon as Biden was inaugurated, all work stopped, and Nordstream was approved. A disastrous foreign policy error by Biden and the Germans. Netherlands said they would send 2 F-16 fighters in April, and they continue to reduce gas production in their major gas field. They are like the Germans. UK is the only NATO power outside of the east Europeans to fully respond to the threat. NATO still has not activated their quick reaction force, and the US has not given Ukraine the heavy arms it really needs. Anti-tank missiles are good, but Russia can launch an all-out attack with missiles, cyberattacks that shut down Ukraine infrastructure, and they can bring in thousands of troops by helicopter and overwhelm Ukrainian forces. Without all the weapons Ukraine really needs, it would become a bloody guerilla war with tens of thousands of dead on both sides. That is one of the big reasons I don't think Putin will actually invade, but will try all sorts of other tactics to disrupt life in Ukraine to unseat the government. Biden has again failed miserably, as he did in Afghanistan, and the world is at risk of major war in Europe for the first time since 1945. Recall Obama telling Romney Russia was no threat, and that Romney was living in the past. The press piled on to criticize Romney. That is the mentality of the national security team around Biden and the uninformed press. Same uninformed, same terrible outcomes.
The Fed has gotten inflation totally wrong, and with the new proposed appointees they will be more focused on climate change and regulation than on monetary policy. Powell has blown it again. The basis of inflation per Milton Friedman, is too much cash in the system. Until recently that cash went into asset purchases, and so house prices and stock prices rose to new highs. More recently that excess savings is going into spending on goods and services with a supply and labor situation that cannot accommodate the demand. Inflation was inevitable. After all the massive spending by Congress, especially the one in March, and the over accommodative Fed buying up all the Treasuries nobody else would buy, the world is now flooded with excess liquidity to an extent never before seen. The Fed made it possible for the Dems to pass the March spending program because Powell wanted to get renominated. The right solution would be to immediately begin to run off the Fed balance sheet and get hundreds of billions out of the system. They can also raise the rate they pay banks for reserve deposits. The Fed is still feeding cash into the system until early March. That is insanity. Powell should clearly be saying that Congress has to cut spending, not increase it. He sort of hinted at that Wednesday, but he should have been clear and said fiscal policy needs to be cutting not increasing spend. When he said they will wait to reduce the balance sheet until after they raise rates, he made a terrible mistake. He should have said we are at effective full employment now and we are ending QE now. The stock market would have really tanked, but he would have done the right thing. The big unanswered question now is what is the clearing rate for the ten year when the Fed is no longer the buyer. 3% on the ten year by year end is very possible.
Congress is run by far left members who are still going to try to pass another excessive spending program and a lot more very costly regulation. The exact wrong policy. Biden and his economic team are as misguided and incompetent as his foreign policy team. Result, inflation is here for longer than most expect, and raising rates without balance sheet reduction until mid-year will not fix that. Even Powell admitted finally that the Fed misjudged inflation. The chip shortage is here into late 2023. The ports are still in bad shape and not getting better. There is till a massive shortage of drivers and warehouse workers. Buttaboy has no clue what to do to fix that, or the ports. And Dems want to spend another $5 trillion, and they insist on reducing fossil fuel production. You cannot dream up a worse policy mix if you tried. November can't get here soon enough.
Just to compound the stupidity, Corona virus regulations and mandates are harming children, and the ability of the country to overcome shortages. And now Newsom and Gascone are blaming UP for the rail thefts disrupting the supply chain. All in, we have gross incompetence across the government. The left wing policies at all levels of government are creating a situation that is untenable. The good news is voters are realizing it, and it will change come January 2023.
If Ukraine goes badly, and Putin gets away with it without really massive consequences, then China will invade Taiwan. Iran will move to build a bomb and Israel will attack. In my view we are now in a similar situation as 1938. This could spin out of control very quickly due to some unexpected incident, or due to Germany not working to stop Putin. The US let Germany and Russia take over Poland in 1938. Poland is next to Ukraine. This part of the world has been filled with wars for centuries. Clearly Biden and his Obama acolytes have no clue about world history. Germany has not learned anything from its own history. Merkel's lenient policies toward Russia, and especially the dependence on Russia for energy will go down in history as one of the worst mistakes ever made in post war Europe. Germany has become a serious risk to peace and economic prosperity in Europe. Their policy toward China is no better. They only care about exports.
China as predicted is having serious problems at the province and local level. These governments borrowed heavily and depended on real estate and infrastructure development to sustain them. Now that strategy no longer works and Beijing has clamped down o the excessive leverage in the system. This is having serious impacts on the provincial governments. Along with Covid shutdowns, pressure on the successful entrepreneurs and private companies, and nil population growth and an aging population, China faces real economic problems. Covid and supply chain problems, along with higher labor costs, has pushed manufacturers to now make a renewed major effort to move out some more production from China.
The primary belief of the left is there needs to be equity of outcomes, instead of equal opportunity to succeed. Self-reliance and effort are replaced with you are a victim. Translation- teachers failed, and students' personal efforts were not sufficient nor encouraged, so we will give you a pass and promotion anyway just because you are black. Since blacks as a group have not been as successful as other ethnic groups, the left says that is due to racism and not culture, or lack of effort, so young blacks are getting the exact wrong message. The problem has been due to terrible schools which is due to the teachers unions preventing charters, left wing rules preventing schools from suspending disruptive students, doing away with pressing students to perform, and a community culture that ostracized kids who studied hard. Just look at the reading and math scores in these schools and it is clear the teachers are the ones at fault. They are failing to teach. As the pastor on the rooftop in Chicago said, stopping charters has been no different than George Wallace. It has been the teachers unions that stopped charters and learning opportunities for black kids. When you lower standards, and then advance students on the basis of color to make up for societal and cultural failure, you only reinforce more failure. There is more opportunity for blacks today than for anyone else given all the preferences in corporate policies that are exemplified by the AMA that says merit no longer is the measure, skin color matters more. In the end, it is self -reliance and hard work that creates success, not advancement by skin color. The pastor on the roof has it exactly right.
Now Biden has gone to the ultimate point on this left wing racial gender nonsense by saying he will appoint a black female to replace Breyer. What happened to, we should appoint the very smartest and most accomplished person to the court regardless of gender, race or anything. This is now going to be a radical left wing appointment that may make the Barrett and Kavanaugh hearings look little a tea party. Manchin may be the key once more. Kamala is not getting appointed. On the other hand, maybe the Republicans let it go ahead easily so they can't get attacked in November as being "racist". Besides abortion, the court will decide on racial preferences in college admission. An equally key case.
Israel's laser missile defense system really is a new Star Wars - analysis
Israel's powerful laser has many advantages, including the ability to effectively intercept long-range threats at high altitudes regardless of weather conditions and the ability to defend vast areas.
With Israel facing a growing threat posed by enemy rocket salvos as well as Iranian missiles, the Jewish State’s laser missile defense system is the talk of the town.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said that the system would be deployed, first experimentally and then operationally in the south, “within a year.”
"And this will enable us, as the years advance, to surround Israel with a wall of lasers which will protect us from missiles, rockets, UAVs and other threats," he said at a conference put on by Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Security Studies.
Israeli defense officials have said recently that the system would not be operational for the next few years, but Bennett has seemingly sped up the timeline.
Israel considers Iran’s nuclear program as the number one concern and though Iran has consistently denied seeking to build a nuclear bomb, tensions have risen as the West seeks to resume talks on reviving the deal to curb Tehran’s nuclear program.
The Islamic Republic is also continuing to develop the capabilities to produce ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, that would take less than 15 minutes to reach Israel.
Iran has several rockets which could reach Israeli territory including the Khoramshahr 2 with a range of up to 2,000 kilometers and Shahab-3.
The IDF has admitted that Iran’s conventional missile threat is a major worry for Israel which, despite its multi-layered air defenses, may not be able to contend with intensive missile barrages fired by Iran and its proxy groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon or Shiite militias in Iraq.
Terror groups in the Gaza Strip like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have already tested the Iron Dome’s ability to deal with heavy barrages, including during the last round of fighting in May that saw over 4,000 rockets, missiles, and mortars fired by the groups.
Following that round of violence, known as Operation Guardian of the Walls, IDF officials urged defense manufacturers to speed up their work on the systems and to have at least one of them operational by the middle of 2022.
According to a report by Haaretz, three additional systems are to be delivered by 2024.
All four are to be first deployed in southern Israel.
Israel’s comprehensive protective umbrella that counters the growing missile threats include the Iron Dome designed to shoot down short-range rockets, the Arrow (Arrow-2 and Arrow-3) system which intercepts ballistic missiles outside of the Earth’s atmosphere, and David’s Sling missile defense system which is designed to intercept tactical ballistic missiles, medium- to long-range rockets, as well as cruise missiles fired at ranges between 40 to 300km.
But these systems are expensive, with interceptor missiles costing tens of thousands of dollars to millions of dollars each. And the rockets fired from the Gaza Strip are a fraction of the cost.
The laser system, meanwhile, costs a few dollars per pulse.
Defense Ministry’s Directorate of Research and Development (DDR&D, or MAFAT in Hebrew) has been working on two laser-based systems.
“From the moment a laser is on the target, it takes a few seconds before they are downed,” MAFAT head Brig.-Gen. (ret.) Dr. Danny Gold told The Jerusalem Post in a recent interview, adding that such a system would be used alongside the Iron Dome.
But, Gold said, it will be another few years before a prototype will be operational and hopefully in another decade MAFAT will have a system that can down targets from a long range.
One of the systems being developed is being done with Rafael Advanced Defense Systems is in advanced stages of research and development of a ground-based high-powered laser that will be integrated with the Iron Dome. In parallel, MAFAT is also working on an airborne-based high-powered laser with Elbit.
The IMOD has already successfully carried out a series of interceptions using the airborne laser system installed on a civilian plane, downing several drones.
During the June trials, the high-powered laser system that had been installed on a civilian Cessna aircraft destroyed several unmanned aerial vehicles at different ranges and altitudes. According to the defense ministry, Israel is among the first countries in the world to succeed in integrating laser technology onto an airplane and intercept targets in an operational scenario.
The trials were the first phase in a multi-year pilot program of MAFAT and Elbit Systems to develop an aerial laser system to deal with a number of threats facing Israel, including long-range rocket fire.
The method of airborne interception using a powerful laser has many advantages, including a low cost per interception, the ability to effectively intercept long-range threats at high altitudes regardless of weather conditions, and the ability to defend vast areas.
In an interview with Globes, the head of the IDF General Staff Planning Division Brig.-Gen. Eyal Harel said that the system is already at a very advanced stage with final tests taking place early this year.
“We succeeded in getting somewhere no-one else in the world has managed to reach,” he said. “As soon as the final trial succeeds, we’ll enter into serial production of the laser systems, which within two years will put us in a different operating point, certainly relative to the Gaza Strip. The next stage will be miniaturization, reducing production costs for the ground systems, and also making it airborne. That’s where the big defense companies are involved. Laser is the next thing; it really is Star Wars."
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