BIDEN WATCH: 5.15.21 - A powder keg, courtesy of Washington

A powder keg, courtesy of Washington – Caroline Glick - https://www.jns.org/opinion/a-powder-keg-courtesy-of-washington/ Israel’s ruling class refuses to see the effect the U.S. administration is having on the Middle East—from the Taliban in Afghanistan to Syria to surging Palestinian violenceagainst Israelis. Since the Democrats took control of the White House and both houses of Congress one hundred days ago, the Middle East has become a powder keg. But Israel’s ruling classsees nothing. In Afghanistan and Iraq, violent attacks against U.S. forces are rising steeply. From January through April, attacks on U.S. forces increased 40 percent. President Joe Biden’sannouncement that the United States will withdraw its forces from the country by Sept. 11, the 20th anniversary of the jihadist attacks on the United States, worsened the situation by communicating a message of profound American weakness and defeatism. TheTaliban, Al-Qaeda and Iran clearly believe they are now free to humiliate and bleed the United States as they take control of the country. In Iraq, Iranian-controlled Shi’ite militias launched three missile strikes against U.S. bases last week. Hoping to avoid confrontation with Iran as its emissaries appeaseTehran in Vienna, the Biden administration is assiduously avoiding acknowledging that Iran is behind the attacks, and so it guarantees that more attacks will soon follow. As in Afghanistan, Iran reads U.S. behavior as an invitation to strike with impunity. In Syria, Iran’s Syrian proxy President Bashar Assad and Iran’s Lebanese proxy Hezbollah continue to wage a war of extermination against Syrians who oppose them. While turning a blind eye to Syria, the Biden administration continues to empower the Lebanese armed forces and government—both wholly controlled by Iran through Hezbollah.Last month, the administration transferred armored trucks valued at $14 million to the Hezbollah-controlled Lebanese military and asked that Congress provide financial assistance to the government. Hezbollah for its part has launched a charm campaign on thepublic. Having caused the government to go bankrupt and forced the people of a once prosperous land into destitution, Hezbollah is now carrying out a well-publicized food drive, handing out Iranian basic foodstuffs to starving Lebanese, along with Hezbollahmembership cards. Just months ago, hope abounded that Saudi Arabia would join the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan in normalizing relations with Israel. But the picture isnow reversed. Recognizing the United States has changed sides, the Saudis no longer believe that with Israel they can contain Iran. So now they are hoping to cut a deal with the ayatollahs. Ties between Israel and the UAE are also showing signs of stress. Two weeks ago, the UAE joined the anti-Israel cavalcade, releasing a statement condemning Israel for quellingArab violence against Jews in Jerusalem. And last week, reports emerged that Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif paid a visit to the Emirates. In Vienna, Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Arachi told journalists that the U.S. team has agreed to remove economic sanctions on Iranian oil sales, banks, maritimeshipping, firms and officials. Arachi said that the United States has agreed to release $7 billion in frozen funds and Britain has agreed to release an additional $400 million pounds in return for four American and one British hostage being held in Iran. TheUnited States also agreed to release four Iranians being held in U.S. prisons. After days of vague denials, the State Department confirmed major sanctions relief is on the table. While the Biden administration has yet to focus on the Palestinians, its statements and appointments have empowered Fatah and Hamas to launch a new campaign against Israel. Following Palestinian Authority and Fatah chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s cancellation of the Palestinian elections, Fatah returned to killing Jews. For the first time in years,Fatah’s Nablus office publicly defended a terror attack, in northern Samaria, in which one seminary student was murdered and two more were critically wounded in a drive-by shooting as they stood at a bus stop. Ahead of Israel’s Jerusalem Day this week, Iran’s Jerusalem Day last week and the end of Ramadan, both Hamas and Fatah were focused on Israel’s capital. Although the focalpoint of Arab violence was initially the Damascus Gate to the Old City, where Arab gangs beat Jews in the street, it has now moved to Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in north-east Jerusalem. After decades of court battles, and countless court orders requiring Arab squatters to be removed from the Jewish owned homes in Sheikh Jarrah, the Supreme Court is setto end the legal saga with a final verdict on May 10. Hamas leaders Khaled Mashaal and Ismail Haniyeh announced last week that May 9 would be “a turning point for the war against the occupation and the settlers.” Hamas’s terror kingpin Mohammed Deif joined the threatening chorus as well. In his first statement since 2014, Deif threatened that if Israel evicts the squatters, “Themove will not go unanswered and the occupation will pay a heavy price.” On Thursday night the riots in Sheikh Jarrah began in earnest, with Arab mobs setting fire outside Jewish homes and assaulting Jewish residents of the neighborhood. Earlierin the week, the Palestinians launched their political warfare campaign to demonize Israel. As reported by the excellent Telegram page “Abu Ali Express,” which tracks events in the Arab world, Palestinians put English subtitles on a video of Israeli police arrestingan Arab suspect in Sheikh Jarrah. In it, the suspect says, “You are suffocating me,” as the police restrain him on the ground and handcuff him. The purpose of the video is obvious—the Palestinians seek to draw a direct line between the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Israeli law enforcement inJerusalem. And it is working. On Thursday, the European Union and the governments of most major E.U. states, along with the Biden State Department, issued statements condemning Israel and insisting thatIsrael’s control over its unified capital, along with Judea and Samaria, is “illegal.” Whatever is coming this week will be the first expression of a coordinated Palestinian-Western assault against Israeli control over Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria since Bidenentered office. The Palestinians understand two key truths. First, the only unified foreign policy the European Union has is delegitimization of Israel. Second, for the Biden administrationand Democrats as a whole, there is no difference between foreign policy and domestic policy. The administration is supportive of Iran and the Palestinians because Biden and his advisers apply the same identity politics to their foreign policy as they do totheir domestic policy. Identity politics hold that the United States was born in sin and systemically racist. To cleanse its soul, America must adopt a two-tier system of governance in which membersof recognized “victim” groups are given extraordinary rights and members of recognized “oppressor” groups must be punished. And just as America is morally infirm and must mend its evil ways, so its allies—particularly Israel—must be similarly punished andforced to transform themselves. Biden gave voice to this position in his speech before Congress last week. There he presented a portrait of the United States as an inherently racist state. This racism,he claimed, was preserved and enforced by the law enforcement system, which suffers from “systemic racism.” Police reform laws that he and his fellow Democrats intend to promulgate, he said, will remedy the situation. To understand what Biden was referring to we can look to New York State, where the Democrat-controlled government passed a bail reform law in 2019. The new law effectivelygave tens of thousands of violent criminals a get-out-of-jail-free card by making it extremely difficult for judges to either remand criminal suspects to custody pending their trial or impose bail as a condition for pretrial release. The consequence of thereform has been a massive increase in violent crimes statewide. This week, and not for the first time, New York’s Jews were victimized by their state’s no-bail policy. For 11 days, a black assailant terrorized the Jewish community ofRiverdale in the Bronx. Jordan Burnette vandalized four synagogues, some multiple times, before police arrested him. After one judge imposed $20,000 bail on Burnette, the local prosecutor went to a more politically savvy judge, who cancelled her colleague’sruling and set him free. Thanks to Democrat control over the White House and both houses of Congress, soon the entire country will have the two-tiered justice system now in place in New York, wherefavored groups are protected and disfavored groups are left to fend for themselves. The tyranny of the identity-politics-driven Democrats has brought about a level of social and political polarization in America unseen since the Civil War. It is not a stretchto say that today there are two Americas and two American peoples living side by side in hostility and fear. While it is impossible to foretell how things will develop, it is also impossible to believe that a positive or peaceful outcome to this explosivesituation is likely. This brings us to Israel. At this moment of profound and perilous uncertainty, Israel’s ruling class—particularly in the media and the security establishment—is dangerouslyblind to what is happening. On Tuesday, Avi Benayahu, a former IDF spokesman and a fixture in the media-security establishment, gave voice to the ruling class’s myopia in a post on his Twitter account. Benayahu presented the current situation in the UnitedStates as utopian and gushed that Israel could enjoy the same lucky fate if Likud and the rightist bloc are replaced by what the left has euphemistically dubbed a “government of change.” That is, a leftist government joined by antisemitic Arab parties andopportunistic formerly rightist parties. Benayahu gushed, “You want to see what ‘change’ looks like? Look at the U.S. under Biden. Look and listen to the quiet, to the normalcy, to the sanity and tranquility thathave fallen on America. There’s no fake news, no racist statements, no attacks on the media and the judges and there’s great attention being paid to domestic affairs. Biden is working for America’s citizens. For everyone. That’s what change looks like!” Benayahu’s position owes to two factors. First, like his fellow leftists, Benayahu shares the Democrats’ progressive mindset. Second, Israel’s ruling class gets its informationon Israel’s most important ally from media organs like The New York Times and CNN. Benayahu and his fellow elitists fail to recognize that these outlets have long abandoned their role as news organizations and have transformed themselves into the propagandaarm of the Democrat Party. The reality obscured by the Democrats’ media echo chamber is that Biden’s domestic policies have launched American society into a downward spiral driven by hatred and fear.His foreign politics have placed Israel in the eye of a storm of epic proportions. With its members now grasping the reins of power, Israel’s ruling class must face the truth of the situation. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nearing Midnight: Washington Post Sees No Reason to Fact-Check Biden�sLies � Todd Strandberg - https://www.raptureready.com/category/nearing-midnight/ Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler drew fierce criticism last week after saying he did not plan to maintain a �database� for President Biden�s falsehoods beyondhis first 100 days in office. �I have learned my lesson,� Kessler tweeted. ��Learned my lesson� means who knows what the next four years will bring.� Kessler compares Biden�s (67 false or misleading claims) to Trump�s first 100 days (511 claims.) In the last 100 days before the 2020 election, he counted 8,859 claims madeby Trump. Being as it�s a leftist reporter determining if Trump had lied, the numbers don�t mean anything. The reason why Kessler is shutting down his database is because he�s not doing his job. President Biden�s senile mind hardly knows fact from fiction. He naturally presentsfalse information because of his age. A person on Twitter reminded Kessler that fact-checking is part of his job: �DO A DATABASE. This is your job. A database for every single president and politician. It is YOUR job to fact-check them & keep them handy for everyone. Come on, man. Butgo ahead and enjoy your 4-year vacation. Thanks for confirming your bias.� The Washington Post appears to be quite selective when it comes to the urgency of its �fact-checks� of certain prominent politicians. Senator Tim Scott, R-S.C., was thesubject of a lengthy hit piece by Mr fact-checker, Glenn Kessler. He went after Scott because he was chosen to give the Republican response to Biden�s address to Congress. Also, because he�s black, and liberals hate it when an African American leaves the Democraticplantation. Tim Scott often talks about being the descendant of slaves. Scott has said his grandfather dropped out of elementary school to pick cotton, so the liberal newspaper enlistedits fact-checker to get to the bottom of the claim. Kessler declared he �dug into the South Carolina census records� to �close this gap in Scott�s narrative� despite admitting �census data is historically questionable atbest � and at times unreliable.� Despite the fact that Kessler does not have any solid evidence to counter Scott�s claim, he argued that the senator was creating a narrative of Scott moving up from humblecircumstances to reach a position of political power in the U.S. Senate. But Scott separately has acknowledged that his great-great-grandfather, Lawrence Ware, once owned 900 acres in South Carolina. Because wealth can come and go, it�s understandable thatScott�s grandfather could have fallen on hard times. However, the Washington Post has yet to look into the �tale� from Vice President Harris, which has been accused of outright lies. Harris has repeatedly boasted of her parents� involvement in the civil rights movement of the 1960s. In an Elle magazine interview that was published in October, she recalled accompanying them to marches as a toddler in a stroller. The left doesn�t care at all if some ofHarris� claims are not historically possible. She could say she was the first Black woman to land on the moon. The problem with the Biden administration being able to do as it pleases without any check by the liberal media is that it will lead to corruption. The saying, �I�m fromthe government, and I�m near to help,� is a sure sign of danger because the government causes more problems than it solves. Ratings for CNN have declined because everyone knows that the network is just a lapdog for the Democratic party. People don�t need to watch this network because they canjust assume what type of coverage it will air about Biden. The only hope we have to avoid America turning into a banana republic is a blowback during the 2022 elections. The Democrats will win in the next election cycle becausethey will offer people more free money to buy their votes. When the system starts to break down and the value of money becomes nearly worthless, people will vote Democratic just to have a free meal. If more people put their faith in God, our nation would return to its glory days of prosperity. Because most people trust the government, darker days are in America�s future. �He that handleth a matter wisely shall find good: and whoso trusteth in the LORD, happy is he� (Proverbs 16:20). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Paying people not to work - Bill Wilson � www.dailyjot.com America always has been a capitalist economy, regulated to protect consumers and some businesses from corporate greed and graft. As the Democratic Party, led by extremistsocialists, tries to remake America into a totally socialist economy, and establish itself as �Party for Life,� the rugged individualism of being �American� is the reality check, albeit not as strong as it should be. Many small to medium sized businesses arecomplaining that they cannot find enough workers to fill jobs because of government-fed COVID relief programs that have essentially turned into a guaranteed minimum wage where there is no incentive to work. This feeds the socialist machine at the expense ofevery taxpayer. The wheels of the economy will grind to a halt if the workforce refuses to participate. Figure into the equation that trillions of dollars are being spent. We are witnessingthe transition from capitalism to socialism with COVID as the excuse. Print more money. Tax more people. Import more workers from other countries. All this adds up to the Democratic Party�s and big corporate America�s globalist, socialist agenda. The DemocraticParty leadership wants a guaranteed minimum wage. Republicans say �No.� So along comes COVID and creates the perfect opportunity to dish out money to people as a safety net for locking them out of their jobs�the precursor to guaranteed minimum wages AND slothfulness. Now they are getting extra-unemployment and don�t want to go back to work. While denying that the extra $300 a week of federal unemployment benefits, in addition to statebenefits, is incentive to stay home, Joe Biden reiterated that if you are offered a suitable job, the law says you have to take it. But the Biden Administration relaxed, even reversed, Trump rules that required workers to take jobs rather than refuse them.State officials, participating in a House Ways and Means Committee roundtable, expressed alarm that fraudulent unemployment claims have seen a 1,500-4,800% increase. Yet businesses are complaining they cannot fill job openings. At the same time, Biden�s immigrationpolicies are importing more �workers� at the request of big corporations�again at taxpayers expense. See the cycle? The American work ethic has driven innovation, industry, entrepreneurship, and economic success. This ethic is based on biblical principles such as 2 Corinthians 9:6, ��Hewhich sows sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which sows bountifully shall reap also bountifully.� The Apostle Paul writes in 2 Thessalonians 3:10-12, ��this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat. For we hear that thereare some which walk among you disorderly, working not at all, but are busybodies. Now them that are such we command and exhort by our Lord Jesus Christ, that with quietness they work, and eat their own bread.� Remaking the most successful economy in historyinto a third-world socialist failure for the sake of long-term political power for an elite few, is ungodly. It is also, say it with me�Stupidocrisy. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It Took Just A Couple Of Days For Madness To Descend Upon AmericaOnce Gas Shortages Began - by Michael Snyder - http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/it-took-just-a-couple-of-days-for-madness-to-descend-upon-america-once-gas-shortages-began/ Did you react calmly when you learned that a cyberattack against one of our most important pipelines was causing thousands of gas stations to run out of gasoline? Sadly,lots of Americans didn�t. There was yelling, there was screaming, there was lots of hoarding, vehicles were waiting in line for hours at stations that still had gas, and there were reports that brawls were even breaking out between frustrated motorists. Eventhough we knew that the shortages were just going to be temporary, people were �panic buying� gasoline as if the apocalypse had arrived. In fact, one energy expert said that this was �the worst panic buying for gasoline since the Carter Administration�� �This is the worst panic buying for gasoline since the Carter Administration,� said Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis at the Oil Price Information Service. Kloza said outages at more than 10,000 gas stations are spreading �like a bad rash� on the East Coast. Much of the problem is people are buying gasoline at twice the normalrate in the Florida peninsula, as well as in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. For some individuals, just filling up their tanks with gasoline was not enough. Motorists began to fill up any containers that they had on hand with gasoline, and some ofthe things we witnessed were incredibly stupid. For example, you should never, ever try to fill up plastic bags with gasoline. I know that sounds obvious, but apparently so many people were doing this that the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission felt that it had to send out a tweet telling peopleto stop. The more gas stations that ran dry, the worse the panic buying frenzy became. At first we were told that 1,000 stations were out of gas, and then it was 2,000 stations, and finally we were told that more than 10,000 stations were out. In certain major cities, nearly all of the gas stations have run dry. Just check out these numbers� The supply crunch appears to be much worse in some major metro areas. GasBuddy reported outages Wednesday morning impacting 71% of the stations in metro Charlotte, nearly60% in Atlanta, 72% in Raleigh and 73% in Pensacola. All of this happened because a single pipeline got shut down by a cyberattack. The Colonial Pipeline is 5,500 miles long, and it supples approximately half of the gasoline for the east coast. On Wednesday evening, the company finally announced thatoperations were restarting, but they warned that it is going to take several days for things to �return to normal�� Colonial Pipeline initiated the restart of pipeline operations today at approximately 5 p.m. ET. Following this restart, it will take several days for the product delivery supply chain to return to normal. Some markets served by Colonial Pipeline may experience, orcontinue to experience, intermittent service interruptions during the start-up period. Colonial will move as much gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel as is safely possible and will continue to do so until markets return to normal. But something doesn�t add up here. The pipeline is being restarted, but the company has announced that it has absolutely no plans to pay the ransom to the hackers� Colonial Pipeline reportedly has no plans to pay rumored $5 million-plus ransom to Russian hackers who have paralyzed the key gas pipeline, as President Joe Biden vows toget the fuel crisis �under control� with pressure mounting on his administration to do more. Do the hackers no longer pose a threat to the pipeline? I don�t understand. Either the pipeline never needed to be shut down in the first place, or the hackers are still in a position to cause major damage if they carry through on their threats. Someone needs to explain which of those alternatives is true. Meanwhile, we just learned that Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer is trying to shut down another important pipeline� Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer says Enbridge Inc. has until Wednesday to shut a huge crude pipeline that crosses the Great Lakes. The Canadian company says it�s gotthe law on its side, and the oil will keep flowing. The standoff is the latest milepost in the increasingly tense dispute over Line 5, a 540,000 barrel-a-day line that supplies half of the oil and propane used by parts ofthe U.S. Midwest and Ontario. Is she crazy? Needless to say, we have had the answer to that question for quite some time. But what she is trying to do now is beyond insane. Why in the world would anyone try to shut down a pipeline when there are gas shortages happening all over the country? Well, Governor Whitmer is apparently concerned that the pipeline �is too exposed to potential accidents�� Whitmer argues the pipeline, built in 1953, is too exposed to potential accidents where it crosses at the Straits of Mackinac in the northern part of the state. But thetwo sides are in a court-ordered mediation, and Enbridge plans to keep the line running while that plays out � prompting Whitmer to threaten to sue to take any profits it makes. Are you kidding me? She could have waited until this current crisis has passed, but Whitmer has decided that action must be taken immediately before any �potential accidents� are allowed tohappen. Is Whitmer really this incompetent, or is another agenda at work? We really don�t know what is going on behind the scenes. We are told that a �ransomware gang� attacked the Colonial Pipeline, but it actually could have been anyone. It could have been terrorists, it could have been another county, it could have been an attack from inside our own country, or it could have been the work of some smellyoverweight guy chomping down Oreo cookies in his mother�s basement. We just don�t know. But this just shows us how deeply vulnerable we are. If disrupting a single pipeline for just a few days can cause this much chaos, what in the world is going to happen when we are facing multiple long-term national emergencies? To me, this is another major league wake up call. Global events are starting to spiral out of control, our enemies know where our weak spots are, and this crisis has once again shown how easy it is to push American citizensinto a state of utter madness. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Of insurrections and coups � Bill Wilson � www.dailyjot.com Democrats in Congress are considering erecting a statue, complete with their narrative, honoring the Capitol Hill police officer that died during the �violent insurrection� of January 6. The officer, however, tragically died of natural causes, not because of the �violent rebellion.� To hear the extreme leftist media and Democratic Party leadership tell it, there was a violent attempt to overthrow the United States governmentwhen unarmed protesters got out of hand, broke into the Capitol and were taking selfies with the statues in the rotunda. Yeah, a real violent insurrection that was. While it was ill-advised and in poor judgment, it is nothing like the coup that is being donebefore your very eyes. After four years of hammering President Donald Trump with every accusation possible from election collusion with Russia to violating the ethics of the office with Ukraineto just about every wrongdoing possible�all of which was proven false after spending millions of taxpayer dollars and wasted time with hearings and investigations, the Democratic Party got a break. COVID caused a lockdown of businesses and people like neverbefore in history. Quarantining healthy people for the first time in history. Using fear to destroy a booming economy, sending elderly to their early deaths, and allowing anarchists and race rioters to burn and loot major cities at will, the extreme left stoodin the breech to foment a socialist coup. Every time they accused their opponents of something horrible, it was revealed that it was the accuser doing exactly what they were accusing others of doing. Trump spyingon Democrats/Democrats actually spied on Trump; Trump mistreating women/Democrats actually sexually assaulting women; Republicans are racists/Democrats actually demonstrating racism; False accusations about the election/Democrats actually trying to pass legislationto institute the very things that make it easy to cheat. If January 6 was a violent insurrection, the actions of the Democratic Party leadership are no less a deceptive coup to remake America into a socialist nation. Let it also be said that many Republicanleaders are participating. It is a disgrace and a betrayal of not only the American ideal, but also the intent of the Constitution. There is a tremendous redistribution of wealth going on right now because of the policies of the Biden Administration. Paying people to not work, and by doing so, essentiallyestablishing a guaranteed minimum income; Using COVID to justify school closings, population control, and record government spending and government growth; Trying to institute reeducation programs in public schools that change history and demonize white children;the list goes on and on. This is a distinct coup against God and God�s principles by replacing them with humanism. The first commandment in Exodus 20:3 says �Thou shalt have no other gods before me.� America was not designed to survive with government as godand a political party acting like god. It is time for all of us to take a stand for God and country. Just saying. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- VISIT: PROPHECY WATCHER WEEKLY NEWS: HTTP://PROPHECY-WATCHER-WEEKLY-NEWS.BLOGSPOT.COM