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Report: US Tips Off Israel to Strike Iranian Terror Cells

Written on . Posted in PT Middle East.

Jerusalem Online: A US intelligence official has claimed that the United States and Israel coordinated the intense airstrikes that targeted eastern Syria over the weekend.

Yellen says U.S. must ‘act big’ on next coronavirus relief package

Written on . Posted in PT Global Economy.

  • Janet Yellen, U.S. President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee to run the Treasury Department, will tell the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday that the government must “act big” with its next coronavirus relief package.
  • Biden, who will be sworn into office on Wednesday, outlined a $1.9 trillion stimulus package proposal last week.

Why Not Just Print More Money?

  • In her prepared testimony, Yellen also says the U.S. economy must be rebuilt “so that it creates more prosperity for more people and ensures that American workers can compete in an increasingly competitive global economy.” Read More

Trump to Erect Statues of America’s Heroes After Year of Vandalism

Written on . Posted in PT World Order.

On Monday, President Donald Trump released his list of statues for the National Garden of American Heroes — a fitting and powerful response to the wave of vandalism against statues of American heroes following the death of George Floyd in police custody.

“Across this Nation, belief in the greatness and goodness of America has come under attack in recent months and years by a dangerous anti-American extremism that seeks to dismantle our country’s history, institutions, and very identity,” Trump warned in his executive order.

George Washington statue in Baltimore defaced with red paint | Daily Mail Online

“The heroes of 1776 have been desecrated, with statues of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin vandalized and toppled. The dead who gave their lives to end slavery and save the Union during the Civil War have been dishonored, with monuments to Abraham Lincoln, Hans Christian Heg, and the courageous 54th Regiment left damaged and disfigured. The brave warriors who saved freedom from Nazi fascism have been disgraced with a memorial to World War II veterans defaced with the hammer and sickle of Soviet communism,” Trump lamented.

Indeed, while the attacks on statues began with Confederate monuments, vandals defaced and toppled monuments commemorating America’s heroes, such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln. Then came Mahatma Gandhi, Union General Ulysses S. Grant, black Union soldiers, and freed slave Frederick Douglass. Vandals even attacked a monument to 9/11 firefighters and painted a statue of Jesus black. Cities began removing statues of Christopher Columbus in the lead-up to Columbus Day.

The president framed his National Garden as the fitting “answer to this reckless attempt to erase our heroes, values, and entire way of life. … When the forces of anti-Americanism have sought to burn, tear down, and destroy, patriots have built, rebuilt, and lifted up.” Read More

Joe Biden: Amnesty for Everyone Who Was Here on January 1

Written on . Posted in PT World Order.

Breitbart: President-elect Joe Biden’s amnesty plan will reportedly provide the glittering prize of U.S. citizenship to everyone who can show they were in the United States illegally on January 1, if Congress passes the wage-cutting, nation-changing legislation amid a deep economic recession.

“To qualify, immigrants must have been in the United States as of Jan. 1, a move meant to blunt any rush to the border,” according to a description provided “by transition officials” to the Washington Post.

But the “rush to the border” is likely because migrants and the coyotes’ smuggling industry can backdate documents and forge new identities, especially when the prize is the opportunity to escape their lives in undeveloped countries and then become citizens of the United States of America.

“Biden, he’s going to help all of us,” one English-speaking Honduran told CNN on Sunday. “He’s given us 100 days to get to the U.S. and give us legal [unintelligible] paper so we can get a better life for our kids and family.” Read More

For Israeli right, Trump’s Middle East legacy will shine bright

Written on . Posted in PT Middle East.

JNS: For most of the Israeli right, U.S. President Donald Trump’s pro-Israel legacy will outshine other elements of his controversial presidency.

U.S. President Donald Trump at Jerusalem's Western Wall on May 22, 2017. Credit: Matty Stern/U.S. Embassy in Israel.

Pro-Trump leaders, activists and analysts said that the Jan. 6 mob invasion of the U.S. Capitol, for the most part, will not change the nationalist camp’s high regard for the Trump administration’s pro-Israel achievements, which include moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem; recognizing Israel’s sovereignty of the Golan Heights and the legitimacy of Jewish settlements in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria); and the brokering of the Abraham Accords despite the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

American-Israeli activist Avi Abelow, who runs the pro-Israel media platform, Pulse of Israel, said it is wrong to blame Trump for the violence in Washington.

“I believe it will be a blip on the historical timeline, and even within a few years, the true Trump legacy will be accepted and taught in the history books, and not this stain that is part of a four-year-long campaign to delegitimize Trump and the whole movement,” said Abelow, a resident of Efrat. Read More

The Rich Are Minting Money in the Pandemic Like Never Before

Written on . Posted in PT Global Economy.

Bloomberg: Americans have become, by some measures, richer during the pandemic than ever before.

It’s a difficult thing to fathom, what with the economic collapse and the surge in the ranks of the jobless, the homeless and the hungry. But there’s a whole class of people — at least the top 20% or so of earners — who’ve had to worry little about such matters.

For them, not only has it been relatively easy to carry out their white-collar jobs from home. But the Federal Reserve’s unprecedented emergency measures — including slashing benchmark rates to zero — have padded their wallets too. They’ve refinanced their mortgages at record low rates, purchased second homes to get away from cities and watched the value of the stocks and bonds in their investment accounts surge.

Their massive wealth accumulation is, in large part, obscuring the toll felt by all those who don’t enjoy the same easy access to credit or financial markets. As household net worth surged to a fresh record, hundreds of thousands of businesses are estimated to have permanently shut, over 10 million Americans remain jobless, and nearly three times as many are going hungry at night.

Even as a new Democratic administration plans to seek trillions of dollars of additional spending to supplement last month’s Covid-19 relief package, economists warn of dire social and political consequences from the dramatic widening in the gap between America’s haves and have-nots. With income inequality already near the highest in at least half a century, the country’s response to the financial devastation wrought by the coronavirus raises questions about who emergency measures were designed to help, and who was left behind, they say.

“There has probably not been a better time to be wealthy in America. Read More

In one of his last acts as president, Trump again makes anniversary of Roe ‘Sanctity of Life Day’

Written on . Posted in PT World Order.

LifeSite News: U.S. President Donald J. Trump has once again declared January 22, the anniversary of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision imposing abortion on demand across the country, to be “National Sanctity of Human Life Day.”

In the proclamation, published yesterday, Trump called on the U.S. Congress to join him “ in protecting and defending the dignity of every human life, including those not yet born” and promised himself “to continue speaking out for those who have no voice.”

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

Every human life is a gift to the world.  Whether born or unborn, young or old, healthy or sick, every person is made in the holy image of God.  The Almighty Creator gives unique talents, beautiful dreams, and a great purpose to every person.  On National Sanctity of Human Life Day, we celebrate the wonder of human existence and renew our resolve to build a culture of life where every person of every age is protected, valued, and cherished.

This month, we mark nearly 50 years since the United States Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision.  This constitutionally flawed ruling overturned State laws that banned abortion, and has resulted in the loss of more than 50 million innocent lives. Read More

BOSTON, MA – JUNE 17: Members of Massachusetts Citizens for Life hold a rally outside the Massachusetts Statehouse on June 17, 2019 in Boston, Massachusetts. Opposing activists were rallying in advance of consideration by lawmakers of measures aimed at loosening restrictions on abortion, including removing criminal penalties for those performed after 24 weeks as well as removing the requirement for parental-consent for pregnant girls under 18. (Photo by Adam Glanzman/Getty Images)

Violating the nuke deal, Iran shows it wants to talk to Biden

Written on . Posted in PT Middle East.

Times of Israel: Iran announced last week that it would be taking steps toward producing uranium metal, in direct violation of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear agreement.

The revelation came only days after Tehran resumed enriching uranium to 20 percent purity at the underground Fordo facility. According to the JCPOA, Iran can enrich uranium only up to 3.67% until 2030.

Iran’s deliberate breaches of the agreement have rightly caused decision-makers in Israel and the six world powers known as the P5+1 to take notice.

“The production of uranium metal has potentially grave military implications,” said the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany, the so-called E3, in a joint statement. “Iran and — I say this clearly — is in the process of acquiring nuclear [weapons] capacity,” added France’s Foreign Minister Jean Yves Le Drian on Saturday. Read More

China Ties Raise Questions for Biden’s Pick for Top Defense Post

Written on . Posted in PT World Order.

Joe Biden’s pick for a top Pentagon post works at a research center partnered with China’s Peking University, a school that has long been eyed as a security risk by western intelligence.

Colin Kahl, whom Biden tapped for undersecretary of defense for policy, has served as a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University since the beginning of 2018. The institute oversees the Stanford Center at Peking University in northern Beijing, which opened in 2012.

Peking University, which is run by former Beijing spy chief Qiu Shuiping and has been linked to multiple espionage cases in the United States, recently updated its charter to require loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party, according to an NPR report. The school has also been ramping up its student and faculty surveillance system in what China watchers see as part of the government’s broader crackdown on independent scholarship.

Kahl is not the first Biden nominee whose employer has business entanglements in China. Biden’s pick for secretary of state, Antony Blinken, cofounded the consulting firm WestExec, which helped U.S. universities raise money from China without running afoul of Pentagon grant requirements, the Washington Free Beacon reported last month. WestExec scrubbed the details of this work from its website over the summer.

After Trump’s Departure, China’s Economy Will Lead The World

Written on . Posted in PT Global Economy.

The pandemic? Which pandemic?

 

If 2021 unfolds as economists predict, China will have weathered the crisis smoothly. Its gross domestic product is expected to reach, at the end of the year, the level that Western analysts had anticipated in their forecasts drawn up at the end of 2019, before the start of Covid-19. With one difference, however: instead of having experienced, in 2020 and 2021, two years marked by a growth of 5 percent [each], the Asian giant should record an increase in GDP of about 2 percent in 2020, but followed by a rebound, an exceptional 8 percent”. These are the first lines of an article by Le Monde.

No other G20 country will do so well. More than ever, China is the engine of the global economy. In the next few years, China will thus pass from the status of a developing country to a developed country. China’s GDP will reach that of the United States by 2028.

Last November, while in the West there was only talk of Covid (Trump’s “Covid Covid Covid”), China gathered fifteen economies in Asia-Pacific for the largest free trade pact in the world that excludes United States. It represents 30 percent of the world economy.

In foreign policy, 2020 was an extraordinary year for the Chinese Communist Party. Epicenter of the pandemic, Beijing has successfully censored and covered up the origins of the virus and its very serious responsibilities in managing the epidemic.

Commander in cheat? Donald Trump's 18 golf tournament wins examined | Golf | The Guardian

Donald Trump, the first American president to have tried to stand up to Beijing after years of failed commercial and political internationalism, will return to golf in ten days and we will soon see if Joe Biden will have the courage and the desire to continue on the path of economic and political confrontation with Beijing.