McConnell Stepping Down As Senate GOP Leader

WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 7: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) speaks during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol on March 7, 2023 in Washington, DC. McConnell spoke on a range of issues after a closed-door lunch meeting with Senate Republicans. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) speaks during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol on March 7, 2023 in Washington, DC. McConnell spoke on a range of issues after a closed-door lunch meeting with Senate Republicans. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

OAN’s Sophia Flores
9:35 AM – Wednesday, February 28, 2024

SEE: https://www.oann.com/newsroom/mcconnell-stepping-down-as-senate-gop-leader/; republished below in full, unedited, for informational, educational, & research purposes:

The longest serving Senate leader in history, Mitch McConnell, is set to step down from his position in November.

McConnell (R-Ky.), announced the news on Wednesday afternoon in the well of the Senate. A place he first became acquainted to in 1985.

“One of life’s most underappreciated talents is to know when it’s time to move on to life’s next chapter,” he said in prepared remarks obtained by The Associated Press. “So I stand before you today … to say that this will be my last term as Republican leader of the Senate.”

“As I have been thinking about when I would deliver some news to the Senate, I always imagined a moment when I had total clarity and peace about the sunset of my work,” McConnell said in his prepared remarks. “A moment when I am certain I have helped preserve the ideals I so strongly believe. It arrived today.”

While McConnell will be stepping down as the GOP leader, he plans to serve out his Senate term. It concludes in January 2027.

This is a breaking story. Check back for updates.

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At Harvard, Another Case of Plagiarism

No Harvard student so guilty of plagiarism would be allowed to remain.

SEE: https://www.frontpagemag.com/at-harvard-another-case-of-plagiarism; republished below in full, unedited, for informational, educational, & research purposes:


There was Claudine Gay, the onetime Harvard President, who was a serial plagiarist, beginning with her dissertation and extending through seven of her eleven brief papers (she has no book), only one of which was peer-reviewed, that make up her scandalously small list of publications. Her extensive plagiarism was the main reason she was forced to resign her position. For reasons that remain unknown, she continues to be paid her her former presidential salary of $900,000; possibly those now in charge at Harvard wanted to keep her from accusing the university of “racism,” and letting her keep that preposterous salary was the best way to keep her quiet. More on Gay’s plagiarism can be found herehere and here.

There was Sherri Ann Charleston, the chief diversity officer at Harvard, who was discovered to have plagiarized extensively in her dissertation and handful of academic papers. So far she has managed to hold onto her job. I suspect Harvard administrators do not want to force the resignation of a second black woman found to be a serial plagiarist so soon after Gay’s demotion. More on Charleston’s plagiarism can be found here.

And now a third serial plagiarist in the Harvard administration has just been found. She is Shirley Greene, a Title IX coordinator affiliated with the Office for Gender Equity. According to the indefatigable Christopher Rufo, Greene claims to have worked to advance “Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging,” without any evidence of how she has been doing this, and once led a panel on “The Past, Present, and Future of Juneteenth” with the DEI department. Hmm. There doesn’t seem to be much there there. She has just been found to have plagiarized at least 40 passages in her dissertation. More on Shirley Greene, the latest — but almost certainly not the last — serial plagiarist to be uncovered at Harvard, can be found here: “Harvard’s Plagiarism Problem Multiplies,” by Christopher F. Rufo, City Journal, February 22, 2024:

…Now allegations have emerged that another Harvard DEI [Diversity, Equity, Inclusion] administrator, Shirley Greene, of Harvard Extension School, plagiarized more than 40 passages of her 2008 dissertation, “Converging Frameworks: Examining the Impact of Diversity-Related College Experiences on Racial/Ethnic Identity Development.” According to the Harvard directory, Greene is a Title IX coordinator affiliated with the Office for Gender Equity. She has worked to advance “Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging,” and hosted a panel on “The Past, Present, and Future of Juneteenth” in conjunction with the DEI department. (Harvard did not respond to an emailed request for comment.)…

In the most serious instance, Greene lifts directly from Janelle Lee Woo’s 2004 dissertation, “Chinese American Female Identity.” In two significant sections, Greene copied words, phrases, passages, and almost entire paragraphs verbatim, without proper attribution or quotation. She also copies most of an entire table on “Racial/Ethnic Identity Development Models,” a foundational concept in the paper, without acknowledging the source.

We can examine one representative paragraph that illustrates the brazen nature of this adaptation. In her paper, Woo writes:

Stage 2, White Identification (WI), is a direct consequence of the increase in significant contact between the individual and white society. This stage entails the sense of being different from other people and not belonging anywhere. The individual’s self-perception changes from neutral/positive to negative, and she begins to internalize the belief systems of white society. Consequently, the individual does not question what it means to be Asian American. The individual alienates herself from other Asian Americans, while simultaneously experiencing social alienation from her white peers. Only when the individual seeks to “acquire a political understanding of [her] social status” (Kim 1981: 138) does she enter into the next stage.

Here is Greene’s version, with the duplicated portions of Woo and Woo’s citations italicized:

White Identification (WI), is a direct consequence of the increase in significant contact between the individual and white society. Individuals in this stage have the sense of being different from other people and not belonging anywhere. Their self-perception changes from neutral/positive to negative and they begin to internalize the belief systems of white society. Consequently, the individual fails to question what it means to be Asian American and alienates themselves from other Asian Americans, while simultaneously experiencing social alienation from their white peers. In order to move to the next stage, the individual must acquire a political understanding of social status.

The complaint, which has been sent to Harvard’s research-integrity officials, features more than three dozen other examples of Greene allegedly lifting language from other scholars, without proper attribution or quotations….

What will Harvard do? Does it want to uphold its own rules on plagiarism or ignore them?

No Harvard student who was found to be guilty of as much plagiarism as Gay, Charleston, and Greene have been would be allowed to remain at the university. More than a month after her plagiarism was laid bare, why hasn’t Charleston been fired? And what will happen to Shirley Greene? Anything? Nothing?

Establishment Media Lies to Cover for Biden Regime’s Latest Betrayal of Israel

Drew Angerer/Pool via AP
The Israel-hating far-left has put Old Joe Biden on notice: betray Israel, or lose our votes. Votes, and all the perks that go with seeming to get more of them than the other fellow, are what The Big Guy lives (if you can call his somnabulent incoherent state living at this point) for, so the Biden regime has been assiduously working to abandon the Jewish state without anybody noticing. In their latest betrayal of Israel, Biden and his henchmen got substantial help from the establishment media, which for a Democrat administration is always happy to play the role of the guy with the shovel who follows behind the circus elephant.

The betrayal unfolded on Friday, when the Biden regime, according to the Associated Press, “restored a U.S. legal finding dating back nearly 50 years that Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories are ‘illegitimate’ under international law.” See? The Biden regime is conservative at heart! All it did was restore a fifty-year-old policy that the source and summit of all evil in the modern world, Donald Trump, had reversed: “Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. believes settlements are inconsistent with Israel’s obligations, reversing a determination made by his predecessor, Mike Pompeo, in the Biden administration’s latest shift away from the pro-Israel policies pursued by former President Donald Trump.” 

The New York Times likewise cast the Biden regime’s declaration that the Israeli settlements were illegal as a restoration of long-settled U.S. policy that had been disrupted during the aberrant reign of the Orange Upstart: “During a trip to Argentina on Friday, Mr. Blinken called the settlements ‘inconsistent with international law,’ a break with policy set under the Trump administration and a return to the decades-long U.S. position.” There they go again, spinning a tale of a safe and sane Biden administration reversing the unwise and ill-considered policies of Old Joe’s aberration of a predecessor. 

The only problem with this scenario is that, as is so often the case with the establishment media narrative, it’s not true. The indefatigable pro-Israel researcher Elder of Ziyon notes that while Jimmy Carter claimed that the Israeli settlements violated the Geneva Conventions, which meant that they were indeed illegal, this was by no means settled U.S. policy after Mr. Peanut began his seemingly endless post-presidency. Ronald Reagan “said when he was campaigning for President and in an interview two weeks after he took office that the settlements are not illegal. Later in his presidency, he said that settlements are an ‘obstacle to peace,’" but that is not remotely the same thing as saying that they’re illegal or illegitimate.

The presidents after Reagan, says Elder of Ziyon, were not happy with the settlements. George H.W. Bush “was strongly against settlement construction but did not call them illegal.” Bill Clinton cribbed Reagan’s phrase, saying that they were an "obstacle to peace," but even Monica’s dude was “softer on  expansion of existing settlements.” George W. Bush “called for a settlement freeze but did not characterize them as illegal or even an obstacle to peace.”

In fact, the first administration after Jimmy Carter’s to claim outright that the Israeli settlements were illegal was that of Barack Hussein Obama, and of course, since the Biden regime is made up of multitudes of old Obama hands, it’s no surprise that this particular manifestation of Obama’s deep hostility to Israel would become Biden regime policy.

It’s also no surprise that the establishment media, since it is a propaganda arm of the hard left, would attempt to portray Old Joe’s new stance as the same old thing, the product of the cooler, sharper, more dispassionate heads who ran the State Department in earlier generations. 

     Related: CNN Worries That Muslim Migrant Gang Rape in Italy Will Bolster the ‘Far Right’

Another problem with all this, however, is that the settlements aren’t illegal at all. The West Bank, contrary to popular belief, is not “Palestinian territory.” There is no Palestinian territory, as there never was a Palestinian state, and there is no occupation. The West Bank was part of the territory that the League of Nations set aside after World War I for the creation of a Jewish National Home. That Jewish National Home is Israel, and there is no other nation on earth that has any claim to sovereignty over the territory where the settlements are located.

Antony Blinken, however, will never tell you that, and neither will his accomplices at AP and the New York Times.

Feds charge two Iranian nationals in elaborate oil scheme to fund jihad terror

SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2024/02/feds-charge-two-iranian-nationals-in-elaborate-oil-scheme-to-fund-jihad-terror; republished below in full, unedited, for informational, educational, & research purposes:

The failure of the mainstream media to report adequately about this elaborate multi-million-dollar scheme “to fund Islamic terrorism through the violation of U.S. sanctions and the trafficking of Iranian oil” is another demonstration of how regularly the most important news stories are being ignored and concealed. As the article below points out, “no U.S. agency or news outlet has released any photographs of the alleged terrorists.” Why protect them?

The promotion of woke indoctrination has become the focus of primetime news features, while stories involving national security and the defense of Western traditions and freedoms are largely underreported, inadequately reported or relegated to a minor file. The article below points out that Iranian oil is a major funding source for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. This in itself demonstrates that this story should be headline news, with photos of the two people who have been charged. Reuters did manage to report that the charges were “linked to a billion-dollar oil trafficking network that it says finances Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and other militant groups.”

Add in the entire network of terrorism funding streams via Muslim Brotherhood-connected sources, and one can see that America and other globalist Western countries have become lucrative bases of activity for powerful terror networks. This, combined with open borders, is quickly leading to the demise of the West. Yet none of this gets discussed in mainstream news outlets.

“U.S. Charges Two Foreign Nationals for Trafficking Iranian Oil to Fund Islamic Terrorism,” by Amy Mek, RAIR Foundation, February 25, 2024:

Curiously, despite the high-profile nature of this case and the serious charges levied against Shaoyun Wang and Mahmood Rashid Amur Al Habsi, it appears no U.S. agency or news outlet has released any photographs of the alleged terrorists.

In a striking demonstration of the ongoing challenges facing the United States in keeping terrorists at bay, a joint operation by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Washington, D.C., and the FBI Minneapolis has led to the indictment of two foreign nationals for their roles in a sophisticated scheme to fund Islamic terrorism through the violation of U.S. sanctions and the trafficking of Iranian oil. The operation reveals not only the intricate methods employed by individuals to operate within American borders but also underscores the persistent threat and the nation’s ongoing battle against the financing of global terrorism.

On February 2, Shaoyun Wang, 54, of China, and Mahmood Rashid Amur Al Habsi, 39, of Oman, were charged under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the Iranian Transactions and Sanctions Regulations, in addition to facing charges of conspiracy to commit money laundering. The duo is accused of facilitating the export of over $100 million worth of Iranian oil to Chinese government-owned refineries, with the profits intended to support the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF), a designated terrorist organization.

This case forms part of a broader effort by the Justice Department to dismantle the illicit financial networks that fuel Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its malign activities, as announced in a recent comprehensive enforcement action. The unsealing of three federal cases across two U.S. Attorneys’ Offices marks a significant stride in combating the trafficking of Iranian oil, which serves as a major funding source for the IRGC, a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), and its Qods Force, Iran’s primary vehicle for supporting terrorist organizations abroad.

The enforcement actions have led to the seizure of more than $108 million and over 500,000 barrels of sanctioned fuel, significantly undercutting the financial backbone of Iran’s IRGC and its external operations wing, the IRGC-QF. This concerted effort demonstrates the U.S. government’s commitment to using every tool at its disposal to disrupt Iran’s unlawful revenue streams, highlighting the seizure as a pivotal step in curtailing the regime’s ability to finance its destabilizing activities that threaten U.S. national security and global peace……

The World Prepares to Recognize a Hamas Palestinian State

SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2024/02/the-world-prepares-to-recognize-a-hamas-palestinian-state; republished below in full, unedited, for informational, educational, & research purposes:

A “Palestinian” state will be a state of the terrorists, by the terrorists and for the terrorists.

Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the PLO’s Palestinian Authority and the other Islamic terrorist groups who make up the official “Palestinian” leadership have been invited for unity talks in Moscow.

The terrorist unity talks scheduled by the Putin regime for the end of February are a homecoming for a “Palestinian” movement invented by Soviet propagandists. Mahmoud Abbas, the long-serving dictator of the PA, wrote his Holocaust denial thesis while studying at Moscow’s Patrice Lumumba University which had trained a generation of third world terrorists.

The invitation to Moscow comes from Putin’s Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov. Materials from a KGB defector revealed that Abbas had worked for the KGB under Bogdanov. Back then Abbas had the KGB codename “mole”, these days, his code name is “president”.

Some of the same ex-Soviet operatives who helped set up and fund the PLO, the PFLP and the rest of the “Palestinian” movement are now trying to unite them all under one single banner.

While the State Department in D.C. and British Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron are talking about immediately recognizing a “Palestinian” state as soon as they can force Israel to stop its campaign to destroy Hamas, the Palestinian Authority is trying to bring Hamas into the state.

The media claimed that Abbas had visited Qatar to hold talks with the Islamic tyranny’s leaders on a “ceasefire”. In reality, the Palestinian Authority leader had been meeting with the Qatari regime, another state sponsor of Hamas, to pursue unity talks with the fellow terror group.

Putin’s relationship with Iran makes Moscow, like Doha, home turf for Hamas. Some weeks after Oct 7, top Hamas leaders had flown out to Moscow to meet with Bogdanov after the Russian official had previously chatted with leaders of the terror group in their home base in Qatar.

In 2006, Putin had reacted to the Hamas takeover of Gaza by declaring that “we are maintaining our contacts with Hamas and intend, in the near future, to invite the leadership of this organisation to Moscow” and emphasized that, “we have never called Hamas a terrorist organisation.” Putin invited Hamas leader Khaled Mashal, who recently claimed that “the Russians told us they would study our Oct. 7 attack in their military academies.”

A week after the Oct 7 attacks, Hamas stated, “we in the Islamic Resistance Movement (HAMAS) appreciate Russian President Vladimir Putin’s position on the ongoing Zionist aggression against our people and his opposition to the siege of Gaza”.

After Oct 7, Putin and China’s Xi had blocked a UN condemnation of the Hamas atrocities. Now Russia is working on uniting its old PLO friends and its new Hamas friends. But Russia and Qatar are not alone. The Biden administration and the European Union are all pushing for a “Palestinian” state after they force a ceasefire. And that state will inevitably include Hamas.

“Russia has invited all Palestinian factions who will be meeting on the 26 of this month in Moscow. We will see if Hamas is ready to come to the ground with us,” Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh informed the Munich Security Conference. “We are prepared to engage. If Hamas is willing to join us, that’s positive. We need Palestinian unity,”

“One should not continue focusing on October 7,” he warned attendees at the forum.

“Hamas is an essential part of the Palestinian political map. Israel’s talk of eliminating Hamas will not happen and are not acceptable to us,” Shtayyeh had told Qatar’s Doha Forum in December around the same time that the PA was holding unity talks with Hamas in Doha.

After the Oct 7 attacks, Biden claimed that, “the vast majority of Palestinians are not Hamas. Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people.” In reality, polls show that Hamas would easily win any current election, as it won the last set of “Palestinian” elections in 2006, leading Abbas and his Fatah faction to seize total control of the West Bank and reject any future elections. Hamas was able to take over Gaza leading to the two “Palestinian” statelets.

In January, Abbas’ spokesman had promised to “hold general elections, and if Hamas wins, the president will hand over the [Palestinian] Authority.”

With polls showing that Hamas would handily win an election, If Abbas is serious this time, that means recognizing a “Palestinian” state will mean creating a Hamas state inside Israel.

Hamas and the Palestinian Authority had been holding unity talks on and off, including four months before the Oct 7 attacks, and quickly began holding them again afterward.

The current proposal, like previous ones coming out of the unity talks, places Palestinian Authority officials up front, so that terrorists can receive foreign aid from America and the EU, while Hamas officials maintain an official subsidiary role but continue to control Gaza.

In the past, Hamas had been able to siphon foreign aid through UNRWA, but as it now faces the possibility of utter destruction in Gaza, it may be more willing to accept the proposal being advanced by Qatar, Russia, the EU and the Biden administration. While Russia and Qatar may be more publicly supportive of their Hamas allies, all the proposals come down to a government of “technocrats” serving as the public face of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.

Shtayyeh is an example of one of those “technocrats”, academics with experience in extracting foreign aid and telling foreign diplomats what they want to hear, but with no actual political power, who were put into place to act as a cover for the Arafat and Abbas regimes. A similar puppet regime of technocrats subsidiary to Afghanistan’s warlords had operated in Kabul before it fled the Taliban. The Taliban and the Biden administration have resurrected a version of its “technocrats” to administer the funds going from the United States to Afghanistan.

The current plan is to blame Oct 7 entirely on Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, and a few of his cronies, to demand their expulsion, and then to make a deal with the “moderate” Hamas leaders in Doha before putting the plan for a “Palestinian” state in overdrive. But the Moscow summit is a warning that any such state will never be anything other than a terror state.

The primary difference between the Qatari and Russian positions, and the Biden and EU position, is plausible deniability. Qatar and Russia want Hamas out front, while Biden and the EU prefer it out back. And we already know from Afghanistan how that will end up working out.

The Qataris negotiated our deal with the Taliban that would have made the Islamic terrorist group a part of a multilateral government. Americans died to maintain that State Department fiction as the Taliban were advancing to take over the entire country. Hamas had its chance to be part of a multilateral government with other Islamic terrorists and each time it chose to try and take everything. Biden and the EU may want to keep Hamas in the background, but history tells us that, like the Taliban, it will eventually seize power and dominate any “Palestinian” state.

It’s difficult to know whether Secretary of State Blinken and the State Department personnel who pretended until the last moment that the Taliban were not trying to take over Afghanistan, but only to take a stronger position in the negotiations for a united government really believed that. It’s also difficult to know whether they truly believe that their proposed “Palestinian” state will be anything other than a terrorist state that will eventually fall into the hands of Hamas.

But we know that not only Qatar and Russia, but the Biden administration and the EU, have urgently fought against any Israeli move into Rafah that would finish off Hamas in Gaza.

It’s obvious why Qatar or Russia’s Bogdanov are condemning an attack on Rafah, but the Biden administration has introduced a draft UN resolution calling for a ceasefire, and from Biden on down have warned Israel against going into Rafah. The internal reasoning is probably similar to the one that guided Nixon and Kissinger during another October war 50 years ago.

During the Yom Kippur War, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had told Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin that “my nightmare is a victory for either side.” He warned that without negotiations and a deal, “the Israelis [will] have pushed the Arabs out of every territory and “If we do nothing by Tuesday, Wednesday at the latest, Arabs will have been defeated.”

“I do not mean to imply that he wanted Israel to lose the war, he simply did not want Israel to win decisively. He wanted Israel to bleed just enough to soften it up for the post-war diplomacy he was planning,” Admiral Elmo Zuwalt, the former head of the Navy, wrote in his memoir.

The Biden administration also wanted Israel to defeat Hamas, but not to defeat it too much.

The administration is worried that if Israel wins in Rafah, it will win too much and be much less interested in its diplomatic solution of creating a “Palestinian” state which it believes is the real solution to the conflict. And it needs Hamas to provide pressure on Israel to create such a state.

The same failed idea that has haunted the region for decades is that Islamic terrorism can only be defeated by giving the terrorists some, but not all, of what they want. Much as it did not occur to the State Department that the Taliban would want everything, it refuses to believe that Hamas would want everything. And every time the negotiations fall apart, history is rewritten again.

In an article published in early October, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan described the negotiations that had brought peace between Hamas and Israel. “We have de-escalated crises in Gaza,” he boasted. The online version of the article has been edited to remove those words.

Since December, Sullivan has taken to warning Israel to “transition” to a new “phase” of the war in which it stops its military campaign and goes back to occasional drone attacks on Hamas leaders. And then he and the rest can get started building their “Palestinian” state. And when Hamas takes over again, more articles will have to be edited and more bodies will be buried.

The Biden administration, the European Union (for now only being held off by Hungary), Russia and the rest of the international community are preparing to reward Oct 7 with a terrorist state. A ‘Palestinian’ state will be a state of the terrorists, by the terrorists and for the terrorists.

The 10/7 attacks reminded Israelis of what Americans had known and forgotten after 9/11.

The Israeli soldiers battling in Gaza are not just fighting for their country, but to remind America and the world that it is possible to defeat Islamic terrorists, instead of negotiating with them. A victory there will show everyone that we can all fight and win, instead of surrendering to Islam.

A lot is riding on that battle for Israel, for America, Europe and the free world. That is why the leaders of the international community and the diplomats of the world are fighting to save Hamas. What happens in the next weeks will hand the Islamic terrorists and their enablers either one of their greatest defeats or their greatest victory: a Hamas ‘Palestinian’ state.

Biden’s Strikes Against the Houthis Haven’t Touched a Fraction Of Their Arsenal

SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2024/02/bidens-strikes-against-the-houthis-havent-touched-a-fraction-of-their-arsenal; republished below in full, unedited, for informational, educational, & research purposes:

No, you didn’t misread that. Biden only struck 8 locations.

Two months later, the Houthis, an Iranian-backed Islamic terror militia that took control of much of Yemen due to Obama’s Arab Spring, are continuing to terrorize shipping in the Red Sea. The Biden administration’s efforts to stop their attacks have failed to end the violence.

Why? Let’s look at a few basic numbers.

In response to the latest Houthi attacks, the Biden administration and its allies launched the fourth set of airstrikes against 8 locations.

No, you didn’t misread that. 8.

Compare and contrast that with how many locations the Israelis had to strike to finally end the barrage of Hamas rocket attacks. After all the media condemnations, that is what it takes to stop an Iranian terror proxy.

We don’t have hard numbers on the size of the Houthi arsenal, but the Shiite terror group was able to launch over 1,000 rocket, drone and missile attacks across 7 years. Beyond utilizing the existing Yemeni arsenal (likely the subject of much of Biden’s airstrikes) that they captured as a result of the Arab Spring, the Houthis have plenty of Iranian weapons and like Hamas, weapons manufactured under Iranian guidance.

With hundreds of Houthi attacks launched in 2021, Biden’s attacks are woefully inadequate for dealing with the scale of their arsenal.

The Biden administration knows this and it’s not even trying to address the problem. Instead, two months in, it keeps threatening that consequences will eventually arrive.

“We will continue to make clear to the Houthis that they will bear the consequences if they do not stop their illegal attacks, which harm Middle Eastern economies, cause environmental damage, and disrupt the delivery of humanitarian aid to Yemen and other countries,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned.

It’s been two months. If there are consequences for terrorizing an international waterway, they should have arrived already.

Biden Regime Warns Israel Not to Interfere With Hamas Members Stealing Aid

SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2024/02/biden-regime-warns-israel-not-to-interfere-with-hamas-members-stealing-aid; republished below in full, unedited, for informational, educational, & research purposes:

After promising that Hamas wouldn’t get the aid and denying that Hamas was taking the aid.

When the Biden administration pressured Israel to open up more aid to the Hamas territories, it swore that the aid would not fall into the hands of Hamas.

“If Hamas in any way blocks humanitarian assistance from reaching civilians, including by seizing the aid itself, we’ll be the first to condemn it. And we will work to prevent it from happening again,” Secretary of State Blinken pledged.

Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finer assured CNN that “the president was quite clear that if this assistance goes in, it cannot be misappropriated, it cannot be taken by Hamas fighters and so we are going to be watching that very closely.”

On Halloween, John Kirby, Biden’s national security spokesman, denied anything was going on.

“We have seen no indication, none, that Hamas has gotten their hands on any of the humanitarian assistance that has gone in. None of it. It goes from these U.N. trucks to humanitarian organizations and the U.N. for delivery to the people of Gaza. That’s what we’ve seen with every single one of them,” he claimed.

In late December, an UNRWA official claimed that, “there’s no hijacking of our (UNRWA) supplies by Hamas.” The official then argued that accusations that Hamas was taking aid were a “disinformation campaign” which was “aimed at the very agency trying to help people.”

These kinds of lies go through three stages.

1. It will never happen

2. It’s happening and it’s a good thing

3. How dare you prevent it from happening

There are numberless examples in the political arena, but we’ve now reached stage 3 in the Hamas aid lie.

The Biden administration asked Israel to stop targeting members of the Hamas-run civilian police force who escort aid trucks in Gaza, warning that a “total breakdown of law and order” is significantly exacerbating the humanitarian crisis in the enclave, three U.S. and Israeli officials told Axios.

U.S. officials say they are increasingly concerned “that Gaza is turning into Mogadishu” as a security vacuum and desperation have opened the door for armed gangs to attack and loot aid trucks, putting even more pressure on the Strip’s already strained humanitarian system.

Armed gangs? A Total breakdown of law and order? Who exactly do U.S. officials think Hamas is?

Months after the administration lied to our faces and told us over and over again that Hamas would never get the aid, that they won’t put up with it if they do, they redefine Hamas terrorists as members of the local police who are just providing an “escort” for aid trucks and killing them will lead to a “total breakdown of law and order”.

The alternative to a “total breakdown of law and order” is Hamas.

Here’s footage, by the way, of Hamas terrorists providing an escort for aid trucks.

And some more.

Hamas, much like the Houthis and the Taliban, appropriate aid, resell it and deliberately cause famines in order to profit from them, politically and financially.

We know how it works. We’ve seen it done in country after country.

There’s a larger significance to this messaging. The Biden administration is pivoting to protect Hamas. They’re redefining elements of Hamas as the thin line between anarchy. The “Mogadishu” talking point has been crafted and gone out.

Biden administration officials raised their concerns with their Israeli counterparts and asked that Israel stop targeting the Hamas civilian police as long there is no alternative that could provide security to the aid trucks, Israeli and U.S. officials said.

But Israel rebuffed the request because one of its goals in the war is to ensure that Hamas no longer runs Gaza, two Israeli officials said.

Go figure.

Macy’s Closing 150 Stores By 2026, Pivoting To Luxury Sales

NORTH MIAMI, FL - MAY 23:  Customers walk out of Macy's the day after the company announced that the 56 Burdines stores and the seven Macy's stores in Florida all will operate under the combined name of Burdines-Macy's May 23, 2003 in North Miami, Florida. The union is part of a strategy by parent company Federated Department Stores to use the national marketing clout of the Macy's name and take advantage of larger buying power. All of Federated's regional department store chains will make similar moves. The Miami-based Burdines will actually be the last one to be converted to the same name.  (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

OAN’s James Meyers
10:00 AM – Tuesday, February 27, 2024

SEE: https://www.oann.com/newsroom/macys-closing-150-stores-by-2026-pivoting-to-luxury-sales/; republished below in full, unedited, for informational, educational, & research purposes:

Macy’s plans to close almost 150 locations nationwide in order to move towards leaning more heavily on its luxury Bloomingdale’s and Bluemercury chains. 

The retail store made the announcement Tuesday morning, stating it was entering a “bold new chapter” with a new CEO, Tony Spring.

The announcement also stated that Macy’s will shut down approximately 50 stores by the end of the company’s current fiscal year. 

Once the planned closures occur, Macy’s will be down to 350 stores altogether. In response to the closures, the retail giant will add almost 45 Bloomingdale’s and Bluemercury locations. 

“A Bold New Chapter serves as a strong call to action. It challenges the status quo to create a more modern Macy’s, Inc. We are making the necessary moves to reinvigorate relationships with our customers through improved shopping experiences, relevant assortments and compelling value,” Spring said in a statement. “Our teams are energized by the work ahead as we accelerate our path to market share gains, sustainable, profitable growth and value creation for our shareholders.”

Additionally, Macy’s has been under pressure due to its underperformance over the past few years. According to The New York Times, the under-performing locations accounted for 25% of the company’s square footage but just 10% of its sales. 

The latest announcement comes less than a month after the retail store announced another series of closures in January. That resulted in the closure of five locations and removing 2,350 positions, or 3.5% of the company’s workforce. 

Furthermore, in October, the retailer announced that it’s increasing its small-format store expansion by opening up 30 smaller stores across the U.S.

Department stores have seen an increase in revenue in recent years, with the COVID-19 Pandemic causing stores such as J.C. Penney and Neiman Marcus, both of which filed for bankruptcy protection in 2020. 

Macy’s announcement caused shares to trade at more than 2% lower in premarket action. 

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‘Disturbing’: weedkiller ingredient tied to cancer found in 80% of US urine samples

CDC study finds glyphosate, controversial ingredient found in weedkillers including popular Roundup brand, present in sample

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More than 80% of urine samples drawn from children and adults in a US health study contained a weedkilling chemical linked to cancer, a finding scientists have called “disturbing” and “concerning”.

The report by a unit of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that out of 2,310 urine samples, taken from a group of Americans intended to be representative of the US population, 1,885 were laced with detectable traces of glyphosate. This is the active ingredient in herbicides sold around the world, including the widely used Roundup brand. Almost a third of the participants were children ranging from six to 18.

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Academics and private researchers have been noting high levels of the herbicide glyphosate in analyses of human urine samples for years, but the CDC has only recently started examining the extent of human exposure to glyphosate in the US.

The health impacts of glyphosate are disputed and the CDC report makes no observation about what the detected levels mean in terms of human health outcomes. However, its work comes at a time of mounting concerns and controversy over how pesticides in food and water impact human and environmental health.

“I expect that the realization that most of us have glyphosate in our urine will be disturbing to many people,” said Lianne Sheppard, professor at the University of Washington’s department of environmental and occupational health sciences. Thanks to the new research, “we know that a large fraction of the population has it in urine. Many people will be thinking about whether that includes them.”

Sheppard co-authored a 2019 analysis of people highly exposed to glyphosate, which concluded there was a “compelling link” between glyphosate and an increased risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, and also co-authored a 2019 scientific paper that reviewed 19 studies documenting glyphosate in human urine.

Both the amount and prevalence of glyphosate found in human urine has been rising steadily since the 1990s when Monsanto Co. introduced genetically engineered crops designed to be sprayed directly with Roundup, according to research published in 2017 by University of California San Diego School of Medicine researchers.

Paul Mills, the lead researcher of that study, said at the time there was “an urgent need” for a thorough examination of the impact on human health from glyphosate in foods people commonly consume.

More than 200 million pounds of glyphosate are used annually by US farmers on their fields. The weedkiller is sprayed directly over genetically engineered crops such as corn and soybeans, and also over non-genetically engineered crops such as wheat and oats as a desiccant to dry crops out prior to harvest. Many farmers also use it on fields before the growing season, including spinach growers and almond producers. It is considered the most widely used herbicide in history.

Residues of glyphosate have been documented in an array of popular foods made with crops sprayed with glyphosate, including baby food. The primary route of exposure for children is through the diet.

Monsanto and the company that bought it in 2018, Bayer, have maintained that glyphosate and Roundup products are safe, and that residues in food and in human urine are not a health risk.

They are at odds with many researchers and the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a unit of the World Health Organization, which classified glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen in 2015.

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has taken the opposite stance, classifying glyphosate as not likely to be carcinogenic. But last month a federal appeals court issued an opinion vacating the agency’s safety determination and ordering the agency to give “further consideration” to evidence of glyphosate risks.

“People of all ages should be concerned, but I’m particularly concerned for children,” said Phil Landrigan, who worked for years at the CDC and the EPA and now directs the Program for Global Public Health and the Common Good at Boston College.

“Children are more heavily exposed to pesticides than adults because pound-for-pound they drink more water, eat more food and breathe more air,” Landrigan said. “Also, children have many years of future life when they can develop diseases with long incubation periods such as cancer. This is particularly a concern with the herbicide, glyphosate.”

The new CDC data was released as part of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), research that is typically highly valued by scientists.

Cynthia Curl, Boise State University assistant professor of community and environmental health, said it was “obviously concerning” that a large percentage of the US population is exposed to glyphosate, but said it is still unclear how that translates to human health.

 This story is co-published with The New Lede, a journalism project of the Environmental Working Group. Carey Gillam is managing editor of the New Lede and the author of two books addressing glyphosate: Whitewash (2017); and The Monsanto Papers (2021).

 This article was amended on 29 July 2022 to clarify that the 2019 meta-analysis looked for the existence of a link between glyphosate and non-Hodgkin lymphoma by studying the most highly exposed individuals. Reference to the CDC urine analysis drawing no conclusion about health impacts was also added.