“War Crimes”

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As Eugene Kontorovich’s (of Jerusalem-based Kohelet Policy Forum and George Mason University Scalia Law School) in his lede notes,

[A]s Israel fights Hezbollah’s army in Lebanon, it has found a new foe: the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon. Having failed at its mission of neutralizing the Hezbollah threat, Unifil is now actively interfering with Israel doing the job.

Never mind that, per the UN’s Security Council, UNIFIL’s mandate includes

ensuring that no “armed groups” operate in southern Lebanon

Those barred armed groups include Hezbollah. Instead, UNIFIL

has allowed Hezbollah to entrench itself in southern Lebanon over the years, storing arms in many of the homes and building a network of fully stocked attack tunnels and small outdoor weapons depots in preparation for an Oct. 7-style assault. Israeli troops have found a tunnel about 100 meters from a Unifil outpost.
For 11 months Hezbollah fired more than 8,500 rockets and missiles at Israel, mostly from southern Lebanon, under Unifil’s nose. The area, militia-free by order of the UN Security Council, was soon crawling with the world’s best-armed terrorists. But the peacekeepers said little and did less.

Not just 100m away. In the IDF’s current move into southern Lebanon,

Israeli forces discovered Hezbollah tunnel entrances abutting Unifil posts.

Kontorovich is being generous. UNIFIL has not failed. It has been succeeding, in its internally defined mission to support Hezbollah and to operate against Israel.

Thus, war crimes. UNIFIL, via its conscious decision to abrogate its assignment of keeping Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon, and its equally conscious decision to shield Hezbollah politically and lately to attempt physical shielding, is the one committing war crimes. UNIFIL’s guilt is made manifest by its decision to allow Hezbollah to build tunnels for attacking Israel right up against UNIFIL buildings to contribute to those tunnels’ disguise.

UNIFIL is not the only entity guilty of war crimes, though. UN Secretary General António Guterres shares that guilt with his open support for UNIFIL, and for UNRWA, many of whose members are part of the planners for Hamas’ 7 Oct 23 atrocity and ensuing atrocities throughout the last year, and through them his personal support for terrorists and the terrorists’ atrocities.

It’s Not Only That

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The Wall Street Journal notes that the Federal Reserve says it makes its determinations based on what the data tell it, and then the WSJ notes that the Fed has been wildly wrong lately and lays that off to data volatility. The failures, it seems, are in the Fed’s data dependency.

The Fed says it sets policy based on incoming data, especially on inflation and jobs. And those data have been both unreliable and far more volatile than usual….

The WSJ then provides its definition of data dependency:

“[D]ata dependency” has come to mean looking only at recent data, ignoring projections for the effects of interest rates on the economy in future.

The problems with this definition are two. In the first place, projections of the future are just guesses, even if somewhat informed by current data. As a great 20th century American philosopher understood, it’s tough to make projections, especially into the future.

The other problem is that this definition of data dependency wholly ignores realized, empirical data: those that have occurred before “recent.” Decent data reliance requires those past data be included, even if as estimates of the underlying trend through that empirical past into “today” (and some little way into the future).

More…Misguided…Pressure Against Israel

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Once again, the Biden-Harris, or Harris-Biden, administration is targeting Israel rather than the terrorists bent on Israel’s destruction. This time it’s through their SecDef and SecState, Lloyd Austin and Antony Blinken, respectively.

In a letter to senior Israeli officials, dated October 13 and signed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, the US blamed Israel for a drastic drop in humanitarian aid into Gaza that contributed to starvation and widespread suffering, particularly in the enclave’s north….

This Progressive-Democrat administration went on to threaten Israel with a cutoff of American support, including cutting off “security aid:”

Blinken and Austin specifically cite a part of Foreign Assistance Act that bars the US from providing security aid to any nation that “prohibits or otherwise restricts, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance.”

They don’t care that it’s Hamas that’s applying the “restrictions”—directly, and through stealing the aid coming in, and by threatening the aid flow and the corridors for transporting the aid that Israel is trying to protect.

It’s telling that this Executive Branch isn’t applying a single minim of pressure on Hamas delaying, reducing, and outright blocking the flow of aid into Gaza.

Republicans Created Harris’ Title of Border Czar?

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That’s the claim of The Wall Street Journal news room writers.

Republicans exaggerated her role to label the vice president as “border czar,” though her initiative was much narrower.

They also claim that Progressive-Democrat Vice President and Party Presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ DOC was working with Northern Triangle nations to reduce the illegal alien flood. That last, not so much. Here’s Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden’s own statement announcing his appointment of Harris to the post:

I’ve asked her, the VP, today—because she’s the most qualified person to do it—to lead our efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle and the countries that help—are going to need help in stemming the movement of so many folks, stemming the migration to our southern border.

Not just the Triangle nations—included in Harris’ portfolio are Mexico, which is our southern border and those “countries…going to need help,” which are the aggregated origin of all of the illegal aliens flooding across our southern border.

Regarding the title—label if you prefer—Border Czar, Andrew Arthur, writing shortly after Harris’ appointment in a piece for the Center for Immigration Studies, noted

the executive branch has used the term loosely for almost 60 years to describe an official with a portfolio that includes the duties of other officials.

That’s hardly a current, Republican, creation. Instead, here’s the press, specifically, the New York Post, just two weeks after her appointment. First, the headline:

Where is Kamala? Two weeks since being named border czar, Harris still hasn’t visited

And in the body:

Instead, in her first two weeks as czar, she has traveled….

And NBC News, referring to Harris’ immediate predecessor:

In a statement Friday announcing that Roberta Jacobson, Biden’s border czar who has played a key role….

And so on.

Maybe the WSJ needs to get a new crop of interns for its newsroom research function. Or more accurate writers.

Fact “Checking”

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USA Today now is claiming that Progressive-Democrat Vice President and Party Presidential candidate Kamala Harris has visited our southern border twice. Harris has visited US southern border twice as vice president | Fact check goes the paper’s headline. The outlet even cited the El Paso Times (it’s necessary to look to the byline under the headline to see that the article is from the live reporting of Times‘ writers).

That live reporting, though, carries only reporting of Harris’ visit to the Customs and Border Protection processing facility that sits well back from the border. Times writers do make passing references to Harris “heading to” the Paso del Norte International Bridge and her claimed intention to “tour” the border fence, but there’s no reporting by these on-scene writers that she actually arrived or toured—which surely they would have done had she done so.

My rating of USA Today‘s fact “check:” FALSE

USA Today misleads again.

O the other hand, even if she has visited the border twice, that’s still breathtakingly few times for the Border Czar to have visited it over her three-and-a-half years of being charged with dealing with her and Biden’s border crisis and the flood of illegal aliens pouring in.

The spacing of Harris’ visit(s) is illustrative of her own lackadaisical attitude toward our border. Her first visit, if it occurred, was ‘way back in June 2021. She’s been nowhere near our border (though she has successfully made it to Europe) since then until this campaign season when she made a campaign stop to visit the Arizona border (actually, this time) last September.