Central Intelligence Agency Director William … CIA. “We are at a critical stage. All sides … The CIA director’s role as an intelligence chief …
Day: May 10, 2024
By C. Todd Lopez
While unfavorable sea conditions have slowed deployment of two piers meant to deliver humanitarian aid into Gaza, the Defense Department has found a way to use the delay to its advantage and get ahead on the mission once it gets underway.
Earlier this week the Defense Department announced completion of the construction of two floating piers, which will be used to deliver humanitarian aid into Gaza.
Construction of the Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore, or JLOTS, system on the Mediterranean Sea was completed Tuesday. One floating pier will be deployed several miles offshore outside Gaza, while the other, called the Trident pier, or “causeway,” will be pushed onto and attached to the Gazan shore. Together they will be used to move humanitarian aid into Gaza.
Both of the floating piers, along with the MV Roy P. Benavidez — a large, medium-speed, roll-on, roll-off ship — are off the coast of Israel near the Port of Ashdod, about 18 miles north of Gaza. Unfavorable sea conditions prevent movement of the piers to their final location.
In the meantime, the MV Sagamore — a commercial cargo ship — has been loaded with humanitarian aid in Cyprus and has made its way to Ashdod. Instead of waiting for the piers to be deployed, humanitarian aid on the Sagamore will be moved to the Benavidez so that the Sagamore can go back to Cyprus to get more aid supplies, said Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder.
“In this period of time that we have before the pier becomes operational, we’re essentially using that time to get ahead,” Ryder said during a briefing today. “Since the Sagamore has been loaded with humanitarian assistance, by transloading that on to the Benavidez, the Benavidez is essentially in position to immediately start loading that onto the floating pier for subsequent shipment to the causeway and delivery to the shore.”
Because the Benavidez will remain near Gaza when the humanitarian mission begins, Ryder said, the Sagamore is free to go back to Cyprus to get additional aid.
Once the two floating piers are deployed, ships loaded with humanitarian aid will dock at the floating pier off the coast of Gaza and have their cargo unloaded onto trucks that are onboard Army-owned landing craft utility ships, or LCUs, and logistic support vessels, or LSVs.
The Army ships will then travel toward Gaza where they will meet up with the Trident pier. There, the trucks onboard the LCUs and LSVs will drive onto the pier and onto the shore of Gaza where the humanitarian aid supplies can then be staged for delivery inside Gaza. Ryder said non-U.S. civilian contractors will be responsible for driving those vehicles.
It’s expected that initially about 90 truckloads of supplies will transit the causeway each day and make their way into Gaza. When the operation reaches full capacity, as many as 150 trucks will make their way into Gaza daily.
“This is a complex operation which requires close coordination with many partners,” said Ryder. “The United States is joining an international community-backed effort, led by [U.S. Agency for International Development] with support from the United Nations, the World Food Programme, the Republic of Cyprus, other partner nations and the [Israeli Defense Forces] to expand the delivery of humanitarian assistance via a maritime corridor to the people of Gaza.”
Antisemitism in the UK has reached a level only surpassed in the 1930s, when Oswald Moseley and his blackshirt thugs, mimicking Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party, dominated Britain’s political scene.
Moseley, like Hitler, based his political philosophy on identifying the Jewish people as the source of all the world’s economic and social ills. In a telegram to Hitler sent in May 1935 Moseley wrote ”The forces of Jewish corruption must be overcome in all great countries before the future of Europe can be made secure…”
In the UK today racist sentiments are considered unacceptable, and openly expressed anti-Jewish remarks risk being condemned, so the state of Israel stands proxy for them. Since it is universally accepted that any government is a legitimate target for adverse criticism, anything that is done, or not done, by Israel is used as the excuse for protests, demonstrations and antisemitic incidents.
The Community Security Trust (CST), which monitors anti-Jewish abuse in the UK, recorded 4,103 antisemitic incidents in 2023 – the highest total ever. Two-thirds occurred after October 7 – 2,699, compared with 392 over the same period in 2022. The involvement of Israel, even as victim, was enough to unleash an unprecedented flood of antisemitic bile.
Every Saturday since October 7 huge pro-Palestinian demonstrations have been organized in London and in other major cities across the UK, with protesters carrying banners and shouting slogans which morph into calls for the elimination of Israel. Whether well-meaning pro-Palestinian supporters realize it or not, the most popular slogan (“from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”) is a call for the state of Israel and its 7 million Jewish citizens to be removed, and its territory, which extends from the river Jordan in the west to the Mediterranean Sea in the east, to be handed over to Palestinians – a demand from the realms of fantasy.
Anti-Israel demonstrations began not only in the UK, but worldwide, immediately after the massacre of October 7, even before the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had taken any retaliatory action. Since then the Hamas-provided narrative, statistics and data – believed to be carefully manipulated to achieve maximum propaganda effect – have been universally accepted as a true picture of events in the Gaza Strip.
Even so it is clear that the civilians of Gaza have been the main victims of Hamas’s 17-year-long regime, which diverted literally billions of dollars donated over the years for their welfare into constructing a sophisticated subterranean military system beneath the Gaza Strip. Israel’s battle to defeat its declared enemy is conducted by its forces against armed opponents who do not wear uniform, who merge into the civilian population and often cannot immediately be identified. This must account for a fair percentage of the civilian casualties.
Now a large segment of public opinion, in Britain and the wider world, is demanding a ceasefire in the Israel-Gaza conflict on humanitarian grounds, while those in Israel and elsewhere who have in mind the welfare of the hostages still held by Hamas, are pressing for a negotiated deal involving a ceasefire and a hostage release. In effect the demand to lay down arms is being made only of Israel, for public opinion can have no binding effect on Hamas, which has declared that it intends to repeat October 7 again and again.
It was against this background that on March 14, 2024 the BBC aired its iconic TV show Question Time for its domestic audience. Question Time, regarded as the BBC’s flagship political program, has been a regular feature in its schedules for 45 years. Moving round the UK week by week, politicians, media figures and celebrities face questions from an audience carefully selected to be politically balanced. On the panel on March 14 was Melanie Phillips.
Melanie Phillips is among Britain’s leading political journalists and media commentators, notable for her trenchant opinions well to the right of what is now universally acknowledged as the political centre ground. She writes weekly in The Times, broadcasts regularly and speaks on public platforms throughout the English-speaking world.
Born in London to working class Anglo-Jewish parents, Phillips has won a well-earned reputation as a stalwart opponent of the misrepresentations and downright lies about Israel that constantly fill the world’s media. Yet until the year 2000 she had never visited Israel or, indeed, felt the least desire to do so.
During the broadcast on March 14 Phillips was strongly supported on the panel by UK Housing Minister Lee Rowley, and also by several members of the audience which, nevertheless, was largely opposed to her. The major clash occurred between Phillips and fellow-panellist Stephen Flynn, the leader in Westminster of the 43 Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) members of Parliament.
A member of the audience asked: “With 12,300 children dead in Gaza, will the government or the opposition put any meaningful pressure on Israel to end the slaughter?”
Flynn began by condemning the massacre perpetrated by Hamas on October 7, but quickly moved on to demand an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. He condemned Israel for what he called the “collective punishment” of the civilian population, quoting the Hamas-provided and unverifiable figures of 30,000 dead which, in any case, make no distinction between civilians and Hamas fighters. He called for Britain to use its influence in the UN Security Council to press for an immediate ceasefire, “no ifs, no buts” as he put it. He maintained that there was no justification for bombing civilians in support of demanding the release of the hostages held by Hamas.
Phillips responded passionately demanding how he could categorize Israel’s determination to destroy Hamas’s grip over Gaza as collective punishment of the Palestinian population. “Hamas are in tunnels for their own safety,” she said. “Not one shelter has been built by Hamas in all the time they have ruled Gaza. The only reason Israel has had to bomb Gaza is because they cannot get at the infrastructure of mass terror.”
Turning again to Flynn’s earlier remarks, Phillips poured scorn on his accusation that Israel was perpetrating “collective punishment” on the Gazans. “Collective punishment?” she said. “This is how he describes the defense against genocide, the desperate attempt by Israel to prevent another genocide and a second Holocaust from happening.”
As some of the audience began objecting, she rounded on them.
“What do you think Hamas mean when they say they want to kill every Jew?” she demanded. “A second Holocaust is what is threatened. Israel is trying to prevent it. That is not an exaggeration.”
It is doubtful whether Phillips succeeded in shifting the opinion of any in that audience who supported a ceasefire. But they, and the million or so viewers of Question Time, at least got to hear a passionately expressed pro-Israel point of view rarely available from the BBC.
My father, Ed Reich, was haunted by antisemitism his entire life.
He grew up in New York City in the 1910s and 1920s. He was often taunted for being Jewish.
The colleges he applied to had quotas on Jewish applicants.
He and many in his generation witnessed or experienced the horrors of the Holocaust.
When he and my mother and their one-year-old baby (me) first moved to South Salem, New York, we were met by a delegation of old men who told us it was a “Christian community” and we would “not be comfortable” there.
He was a golf enthusiast, but his application to the local golf club was rejected because he was Jewish.
I have experienced far less antisemitism than he did but have not been free of it.
A kid in my grade school class told me he’d buy one of my prized baseball cards if I’d “Jew down” its price.
When I was secretary of labor, I received letters containing phrases like “You stinking Jew.”
This week, Joe Biden spoke out against antisemitism. I’m glad he did.
But I also worry that by speaking out against antisemitism without acknowledging what has sparked the student protests across America, he is conflating those protests with antisemitism.
By and large, the protests are not motivated by antisemitism.
There may be some antisemites among demonstrators. Protest movements are often ignited by many different things and attract an assortment of people with a range of motives.
But after many talks with demonstrators and faculty, it seems clear to me this protest movement is centered on moral outrage at the killings of tens of thousands of innocent people in Gaza, most of them women and children.
Many of the demonstrators are themselves Jewish.
Jews have been involved in these protests for the same reason Jews were so involved in other social justice movements — such as the struggles for women’s rights, worker’s rights, civil rights, voting rights, free speech, and LGBTQ+ rights. And against the Vietnam War, apartheid in South Africa, and the Iraq War.
The oppression that Jewish people have experienced for hundreds if not thousands of years has taught Jews the necessity of standing up to injustice — whatever its form and whenever it appears.
House Republicans continued their hearings on antisemitism. They called public school officials from three of the most politically liberal communities in the nation — Berkeley, California; New York City; and Montgomery County, Maryland.
Their hearings on antisemitism in higher education helped topple the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania and pushed Columbia’s president to promise a crackdown on campus antisemitism. Her crackdown led to the arrest of more than 100 protesters at Columbia and a further surge in student activism there.
House Republicans are politicizing and weaponizing antisemitism. They are using supposed antisemitism in education as a means of pursuing their cultural populist agenda, which for years has denigrated universities and public schools. They are also intent on splitting liberal Democrats over the war in Gaza.
Long ago, in kindergarten, I was cast as Baby Jesus in the school Christmas pageant because I was the shortest kid around. Another five-year-old told me it was unfair of me to play Jesus because I was Jewish, and the Jews had killed Jesus.
When I told my parents, they were livid — not only that I had to play Baby Jesus, but that any child would still believe that it was Jews who killed Christ. (Nine years later, in 1960, the Roman Catholic Church officially renounced the idea of Jewish responsibility for Jesus’ death.)
I was reminded of this by the Antisemitism Awareness Act, passed in the House of Representatives on May 1, by a 320-91 vote. It would codify, for the purpose of enforcing federal civil rights law in higher education, a definition of antisemitism that includes rejection of Israel as a Jewish state. The bill also adopts the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, which includes “claims of Jews killing Jesus.”
Although the bill was initiated by House Republicans, much of the opposition to it has come from the Christian right, which wants to be able to continue saying that Jews killed Jesus.
In an X post, Rep. Marjorie Taylor (“Jewish Space Laser”) Greene announced her opposition to the bill because it “could convict Christians for believing the Gospel that says Jesus was handed over to Herod to be crucified by the Jews.”
As Congresswoman Greene’s words demonstrate, antisemitism lives on. And it should be condemned.
But antisemitism can’t and shouldn’t be legislated away. Once we start defining what views are impermissible on a university campus or in public schools — for getting a job, receiving research funding, or getting promoted — we’re back in the era of Senator Joe McCarthy and communist witch hunts.
And once we start conflating antisemitism with protests against mass brutality, such as the slaughter in Gaza, we invite blindness to injustices in which America is complicit.
Kudos to Joe Biden for beginning to stand up to Netanyahu — saying he will block the delivery of weapons that could be fired into densely populated areas of Rafah. “If they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities, that deal with that problem,” Biden said in an interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett.)
- This article was pubished at Robert Reich’s Substack
Bipartisanship is often heralded as the pinnacle of legislative achievement. The recent votes on foreign aid to Taiwan, Israel, and Ukraine offered a display of this heraldry. But we should stop praising bipartisanship as a virtue. It is not inherently praiseworthy.
Bipartisanship is praiseworthy as a byproduct of the legislative process. When powers are divided, mechanisms slow down legislation and encourage debate, and legislators will pass fewer laws. Those they do pass will tend to reflect consensus. Bipartisanship is an outcome of a better legislative process, not a good in itself.
History gives us many examples of how bipartisan consensus is not inherently virtuous and can lead to grievous mistakes. A poignant example is the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, a dark piece of legislative bipartisanship driven by political expediency.
The Act, which prohibited all immigration of Chinese to the United States, was the first to prevent entry and naturalisation on the basis of race. Prior to 1882, there had been a nativist political current. It had started in the 1840s with the arrival of Irish and German immigrants. In California, the gold rush and subsequent railroad boom had initially attracted Chinese laborers to the United States. As economic conditions worsened, however, Chinese immigrants became convenient scapegoats for broader societal frustrations. Many states, including California, New York and Massachusetts, attempted to adopt anti-immigration measures that masqueraded as satisfying other purposes, even if they targeted immigrants. But federal policy began with the Act.
Until the Civil War, it was impossible to create a broad coalition that could win by using the topic as a wedge issue. Southern states wanted immigration to boost their population of free whites. The Northern states would split, allowing Southern-backed candidates to win. Midwestern states wanted immigrants to come as well. No stable coalition could emerge.
The Civil War changed everything. The North solidified around the Republican Party which would waive the bloody shirt at Democrats, claiming it was they who initiated the war. Moreover, from 1868 to 1876, Republican candidates were able to modestly break through in the South. At a competitive disadvantage, Democrats had to compensate. One way to do so was to adopt an anti-Chinese policy.
Facing electoral irrelevance, Democrats leveraged anti-Chinese sentiment as a wedge issue, particularly in California, a state rapidly increasing in political importance due to its growing population and economic significance. And unlike other immigrants who came from Europe, foreign-born Chinese could never become American citizens, because naturalization laws applied to “free white persons.” As such, anti-immigration planks against all immigrants might create hostility from those who would later become voters. Anti-Chinese proposals had no such downsides.
In a recent article with Linan Peng in The European Journal of Law and Economics, I point out how Democrats discovered they could conquer California and peel it off from the Republican hold. They rapidly became competitive in California and nearly won the state on multiple occasions. In fact, had the state flipped in 1876 (when Democrats lost by less than 2,800 votes) they would have gained the White House. More precisely, Peng and I find that counties in California where there were the largest Chinese population relative to the White population (a ratio that proxies racial animus) is where the Democrats became most competitive.
Peng and I point out what is often overlooked: Republicans, initially reluctant to alienate their Reconstruction-era allies among racial minorities, eventually capitulated and adopted similar stances on Chinese immigration. They had to, in order to win. By the 1880 election, both parties had developed platforms that were virtually indistinguishable in their support for Chinese exclusion. This bipartisan consensus was not a middle ground, but rather a race to the bottom driven by the worst impulses of politicians and voters.
When that bipartisan consensus was reached, the Chinese Exclusion Act was a guarantee. This historical episode raises critical questions about the role of bipartisanship in modern politics. While collaboration between parties is essential in a functional democracy, it becomes problematic when it serves as a cover for unjust policies.
- About the author: Vincent Geloso, senior fellow at AIER, is an assistant professor of economics at George Mason University. He obtained a PhD in Economic History from the London School of Economics.
- Source: This article was published by AIER
By Douglas French
Economics trumps sentimentality, and gold’s elevated price has some people raiding the family jewelry box to pay bills. “Young people are not wearing grandma’s jewels. Most of the young people, they want an Apple watch. They don’t want a pocket watch,” Tobina Kahn, president of House of Kahn Estate Jewelers told Bloomberg. “Sentimental is now out the door.”
When times are tough, treasures change hands, the late Burt Blumert, once a gold dealer and Mises Institute Board Chairman, used to say. “Prices are high, and I need cash,” Branden Sabino, a thirty-year-old information technology worker said, adding that with the cost of rent, groceries, and car insurance rising, he doesn’t have any savings. He sold a gold necklace and a gold ring to King Gold and Pawn on Avenue 5 in Brooklyn. “People are using gold as an ATM they never had,” said store owner Gene Furman.
At King Gold, fifty-five-year-old Mirsa Vijil pawned a bracelet to pay her gas bill. “Gold is high,” she said, adding she’d never pawned her jewelry before but will do it again if she needs to.
Adrian Ash, director of research at online gold investment service BullionVault says there is twice as much selling as a year ago on BullionVault’s platform. “People are very happy to take this price.”
“It’s very busy and we are getting more calls than ever before about clients wanting to bring in their jewels,” Kahn said. “I’m telling the clients to bring them in now, as we are at unprecedented levels.”
So while there is plenty of liquidating to pay the bills, demand at the United States Mint is tepid, with sales in March the worst since 2019 for its American Eagle gold coin.
It turns out more than a few of those well-publicized Costco gold bar buyers are having trouble selling them. The bars, not being American Eagles or other similar gold coins, are not as liquid, given that the seller, Costco, will not buy them back. The Wall Street Journal reports, thirty-three-year old Adam Xi called five different gold dealers to get a price he would accept for the gold bar he bought at Costco in October.
He was offered $200 less by one dealer than the $2,000 he had paid. But he found a Philadelphia coin dealer near his home willing to pay $1,960, or twenty dollars under market price.
Mr. Xi has learned, or should have learned, that buying gold to turn a quick profit is a fantasy. His plan was to rack up credit-card points buying the gold and then quickly resell it for a profit.
Buyers can expect their gold to immediately lose around 5 percent of its value, according to Tom Graff, chief investment officer at the wealth advising company Facet. One pays a premium to buy and pays fees to sell. “You need a holding period that’s long enough to overwhelm that cost,” said Graff.
Luke Greib told the Wall Street Journal that he sold a one-ounce Credit Suisse bar on a Reddit page dedicated to trading precious metals to avoid taxes and fees. Buying physical gold is purchasing insurance against monetary mischief by the Federal Reserve, not to earn a profit via a quick flip.
Perhaps it’s hard to imagine currency destruction so devastating that your gold would serve as not only a store of value but a medium of exchange. Peter C. Earle explains in a piece for the American Institute for Economic Research, “During the peak of its 2008 hyperinflation, [Zimbabwe] experienced a catastrophic economic downturn, characterized by the issuance of billion—and trillion-dollar banknotes that were, despite their nominal enormity, virtually worthless.”
Dr. Earle writes that twenty-eight years of inflation “topped a total 231 million percent” and “the ZWD was demonetized in 2009.” The government is making its sixth attempt at a new currency, Zimbabwe gold (ZiG). “ZiG is there to stay forever,” saidVice President Constantino Chiwenga. “This bold step symbolizes government’s unwavering commitment to the de-dollarization program premised on fiscal discipline, monetary prudence and economic revitalization.”
Reportedly, ZiG “is backed by a basket of precious metals including about 2.5 tons of gold along with $100 million of foreign currency reserves held by the central bank.” As always, the Zimbabwe authorities are already blaming speculators for price increases. “Speculators should cease,” Chiwenga said. “Behave, or you get shut down or we lock you up.”
Dr. Earle has his doubts about whether the Zimbabwean authorities will maintain the ZiG backing with the required rigor. While he hopes for success, “Without fundamental changes guaranteeing private property protection, pro-market reforms, and safeguards against corruption, though, the ZiG is likely to retrace the unfortunate steps of its predecessors.”
The reason to buy and hold gold is just in case the Federal Reserve goes the way of Zimbabwe.
- About the author: Douglas French is President Emeritus of the Mises Institute, author of Early Speculative Bubbles & Increases in the Money Supply, and author of Walk Away: The Rise and Fall of the Home-Ownership Myth. He received his master’s degree in economics from UNLV, studying under both Professor Murray Rothbard and Professor Hans-Hermann Hoppe. His website is DouglasInVegas.com.
- Source: This article was published by the Mises Institute