The most surprising thing about the failure of U.S. intelligence to discover for nearly nine months the SolarWinds penetration of U.S. government agencies, reportedly including the State, Energy, and Homeland Security Departments as well as private contractors, is that anyone is surprised. After all, the National Security Agency, responsible for protecting the communications of the U.S. government, had such a massive hole punched in its capabilities by a breach in 2013 that Michael McConnell, the former director of first the NSA and then the Office of National Intelligence, assessed “This [breach] will have an impact on our ability to do our mission for the next 20 to 30 years.”
The Arab world has moved on from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The rest of the world should join them
Before President Trump, the conventional wisdom was that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was and would forever be at the center of Arab nations’ foreign policy in the region. Fortunately, this illusion has not survived his presidency. How quickly the Arab world has moved on. Now, the rest of the world should follow suit.
For decades, the United States and the international community have myopically obsessed over the need for a peace agreement between Israelis and Palestinians. While the resolution to that conflict would be a positive thing in and of itself, narrow focus on this to the exclusion of all else effectively prevented anyone from making attainable progress in the region.
‘We Will Squash Them’: The Persecution of Christians, November 2020
Indonesia: On Nov. 27, Islamic terrorists beheaded a Christian priest and killed three other Christians by slitting their throats in Lembantongoa village. During the raid, a Salvation Army church and six Christian homes were also torched. While acknowledging that an Islamic militant group was responsible, authorities claimed that the attack was not “religiously motivated.” One human rights researcher said that this “latest strike was a ‘clear escalation‘ of violence against Christians.”
Pakistan threatens Google, Wikipedia over ‘sacrilegious content’
Pakistan regulators on Friday decried internet giants Google and Wikipedia for “disseminating sacrilegious content.”
The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) called for the immediate removal of “unlawful content” from Google. The regulators pointed to pages that name religious leader Mirza Masroor Ahmad as the current “Khalifa” or leader of Islam, thus contradicting dominant religious beliefs in the country. They also decried an “unauthentic version of Holy Quran” on Google Play Store.
He Was Offended By A Private Video She Sent To A Friend. So He Waited A Year To Post It And Ruin Her Life.
Four years ago, 15-year-old Mimi Groves, then a freshmen at Heritage High School in Virginia, was excited to get her learner’s permit. After receiving it, she sent her friend a 3-second Snapchat video in which she said: “I can drive, [n-word]!”
‘Racially Diverse’ Cops Dumping Portland in Favor of Lower Paying Jobs in Places Where They’re Appreciated
Portland cops are already retiring in record numbers, but now cops are fleeing mid-career to go to places for lower pay and a fiscal hit to their retirement accounts. The Democrats’ embrace of the antifa and BLM defund-the-police stance is working—leaving Portlanders even more defenseless against rioters, looters, arsonists, squatters, and terrorists. In essence, the exodus is “a win by those that would want the police to be defunded,” according to the Portland Police Bureau’s human resources officer.
Soviet-Style Media Propaganda in America
Over there in The Wall Street Journal as we travel through the Christmas holiday season, was this very perceptive piece by one David Satter. Mr. Satter is identified as the “author of Age of Delirium: the Decline and Fall of the Soviet Union and a member of the academic advisory board of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.”
At one stage in his earlier life he was the Moscow correspondent for The Financial Times of London, arriving in the Soviet capital in 1976. He went on to work for The Wall Street Journal as a special correspondent covering Soviet affairs. Suffice to say, he knows well how a state-run media runs.
WARMINGTON: Canadian dream ends in COVID nightmare at Scarborough nursing home
It’s not yet confirmed if Muoi Ha was the 39th resident to die at Scarborough’s Tendercare Nursing Home as a result of a coronavirus outbreak.
What is confirmed is the 93-year-old with an incredible life story was living the Canadian dream up until last week when the COVID-19 nightmare, which she had successfully been avoiding all year, struck her in the Tendercare facility on McNicoll Ave.
Hundreds of UK tourists flee Covid quarantine in Swiss ski resort
About half of the 420 visitors ordered to self-isolate left Verbier in ‘cloak and dagger’ operation
Hundreds of British tourists fled the upmarket Swiss ski resort of Verbier in a “cloak-and-dagger operation” this week, breaking quarantine rules retroactively put in place to contain the spread of the coronavirus variant first discovered in the UK.
Following the detection of the new mutation of Covid-19 in Britain, Swiss authorities announced on 21 December that all people who had arrived from the UK since 14 December would need to self-isolate for 10 days from their date of arrival.
The new quarantine rules also applied to hundreds of British tourists who had planned to spend the Christmas break in Verbier, an alpine village located in the municipality of Bagnes in Canton du Valais, nicknamed “Little London” by locals for the British visitors who make up 20% of tourists during a typical winter season.
Outrage in France as Muslim son of police officers roughed up for ‘un-Islamic’ behavior after he attended Christmas party
A young Muslim was attacked by fellow Muslims after he posted photos online of a Christmas party he had attended. The incident has prompted top French officials to condemn Islamic “separatism” and to pledge to keep fighting it.
The incident, which occurred in the northeastern city of Belfort, was reported by local media on Saturday. The 20-year-old victim is the son of law enforcement officers.
Everyone except Muslims knows that Islam is the religion of peace.
The Joys of Paris in Coronavirus Days
“You are lucky to be in Paris at this time,” says a friend phoning from New York. “Here, we are like rats in a box, going round and round.”
In the past few weeks I have heard similar lamentations from friends in London and Berlin, not to mention Beirut and Tehran.
It must be the name of Paris that leads our interlocutors into imagining the rosy times that I am supposed to have in these dark and dreary days of the coronavirus pandemic in the City of Light.
Christmas Day NBA ratings take another hit after year of political messaging and criticisms
NBA ratings took another hit on Christmas Day when under 4 million people turned on the Lakers vs. Mavericks game.
“NBA Christmas Day ratings were off 21% from last year. NFL dunked on NBA head to head, nearly quadrupling the NBA audience,” OutKick’s Clay Travis tweeted about the ratings that day. “To be fair, the NBA had more viewers in communist China, however.”
All pro-sports have lost their allure thanks to going woke.
2020 Men of the Year: The Experts
We were just three weeks into 2020 when Tom Cotton, the Republican senator from Arkansas, implored the country to take the Wuhan coronavirus seriously. The “experts” told us he was out of his mind—there was only a “minuscule” risk of the virus in the United States. “Not something that the citizens of the United States right now should be worried about,” they said. It was xenophobic fear-mongering for President Donald Trump to restrict travel from China.
Then, of course, the virus made it to the United States.
‘The Squad’ could become a thing of the past, insiders say
“The Squad” may be no more.
Despite a new class of progressives coming to Congress next term, the band of leading liberal firebrands — led by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota — is likely to dissolve, insiders say.
“I think the idea of ‘The Squad’ is going to go away, and I think that it is going to be fascinating to see how [AOC] shares the spotlight of progressivism,” one senior Hill staffer told The Post.