USA - They keep telling us that economic conditions are improving, but if that is true why are the shortages worse than ever? For a moment, I would like to take you all the way back to 2019. Before the pandemic came along, we didn’t have any shortages. If you wanted something, you just went to the store and got it or you ordered it online. Prices were low, global supply chains were functioning smoothly, and to most people it seemed like it would stay that way for the foreseeable future. But then the pandemic hit, and “panic buying” caused short-term shortages of certain items such as toilet paper and hand sanitizer. It was understandable that people would want to hoard those things, because there was a lot of fear in the air. But we also knew that those shortages were only going to be temporary. Now here we are in 2021, and we were told that things would be getting back to normal by now. But instead, there are severe shortages everywhere around us. In fact, the shortages are far worse than anything that we experienced in 2020.

TURKEY - Turkey’s anti-Israel rhetoric has rapidly increased during the past eight days of fighting. The rhetoric targeting Israel and Jews has reached such heights that the US has condemned Turkey’s president for antisemitic comments. While the US works to bring an end to the Hamas war against Israel, Turkey is fanning the flames. Among its recent statements is a demand by Turkey to separate Jerusalem from Israel. The latest comments by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan were to demand a “separate arrangement” for Jerusalem. Since 2020, when Turkey turned Hagia Sophia into a mosque, the Turkish religious and political leadership of the AKP Party, which supports Hamas, has sought to “liberate” al-Aqsa Mosque and claims it will take over Jerusalem.

EUROPE - The EU’s political director has hailed the progress made at negotiations to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and said he is confident an agreement can be reached, as the fourth round of talks concludes in Vienna. “We have made substantial progress over the last 10 days, but there are still things to be worked on and we will reconvene next week, and we will continue working,” Enrique Mora told reporters in the Austrian capital on Wednesday. The negotiator has been among those facilitating indirect talks between Iran and the US for both parties’ return to the agreement known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), signed in 2015. The treaty was designed to prevent Iran developing nuclear weapons – an aim it denies pursuing – in exchange for sanctions relief from the US and European signatories.

ISRAEL - The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is, at its heart, about two competing national movements, and the only logical way to resolve it is by a negotiated settlement. The UN recommended a two-state settlement as early as 1947. It was accepted by the Jews, rejected by the Arabs. From 1948 to 1967, the West Bank, eastern Jerusalem, and Gaza were all in Arab hands. A Palestinian state could have been created at any time. It wasn’t. Israel, joined by President Bill Clinton, offered a viable two-state accord to the Palestinians during 2000-2001. Clinton describes in his autobiography how they refused.

ISRAEL - During the Gaza war this summer, it became clear that one of the most important aspects of the media-saturated conflict between Jews and Arabs is also the least covered: the press itself. The Western press has become less an observer of this conflict than an actor in it, a role with consequences for the millions of people trying to comprehend current events, including policymakers who depend on journalistic accounts to understand a region where they consistently seek, and fail, to productively intervene.

ISRAEL - To hear most of the Western media tell it, war's afoot in the Middle East, fueled once again by Israel's unquenchable belligerence. “Israel struck the Gaza Strip again Monday,” began the Washington Post's report. Not often or ever mentioned is the inconvenient fact that the Palestinians, not Israel, began the current round of violence. As of Monday, Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups have hurled 3,313 rockets at Israel.

ISRAEL - Why are there no demonstrations on behalf of the Kurds, the Chechens, the Uyghurs, the Tibetans? The answer can be summarized in one word: Jews. The enemy of these groups is not the Jews. Hence, there is little concern for their plight. If the perceived enemy of the Palestinians were not the Jews, there would be little concern for their plight as well. This was proved by the relative silence that greeted the massacre of Palestinians by Jordan during “Black September” in 1970, or the killings of Palestinian Authority leaders in Gaza during the Hamas takeover in 2007, or the 4,000 Palestinian civilians killed by Syria during that country's civil war. I support the legitimate rights of Palestinians to a peaceful state because it would be good for peace in the region and for Israel. But I refuse to prioritize it over other equally compelling claims just because Jews are on the other side.

ISRAEL - Israel did not start the war that now rages between it and Hamas. The Islamist movement began launching missiles indiscriminately at Israeli cities a week ago, using as a pretext several days of unrest in Jerusalem. Israel’s subsequent bombing of targets in the Gaza Strip, which has been aimed at killing commanders of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, eliminating rocket launchers and destroying the tunnel network used by the militant groups, is not morally or legally comparable to the rocket launches, which are war crimes. By early Monday, the Palestinian death toll had reached 200, including at least 58 children, some of whom may have been killed by the more than 400 rockets fired at Israel that fell in Gaza itself. Ten Israeli residents had died, including elderly and disabled people and a 5-year-old; were it not for the effectiveness of Israeli antimissile batteries, hundreds would have been killed. More bombing will inflict only incremental damage on Hamas, which cannot be destroyed by military means. But it could cause harm to Israel’s relations with the United States, and it could tear at the social fabric of the country. It’s time to call a halt.

ISRAEL - If you were running a country and somebody decided to fire close to 3,000 rockets at your cities, what would you do? I know what I would do, and it wouldn’t be pretty. Every nation on the entire planet has a right to self-defense, but right now Israel is being savagely attacked by the left and by corporate media outlets all over the globe for simply choosing to defend itself. Of course if 3,000 rockets were fired at Washington DC or New York City, many of those same voices would be calling for all-out war. The hypocrisy that we are witnessing right now is staggering. Hamas made the decision to start lobbing hundreds and hundreds of rockets at Israel, and now they are paying a great price for doing so. During an appearance on “Face The Nation” on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that his nation will continue to do “whatever it takes to restore order and quiet”. Hamas should just be thankful that the Israeli military has not invaded yet. If you fire 3,000 rockets at someone, you should expect them to fight back. I don’t know why this is so hard for some people to understand.

USA - No water for crops, horrific wildfires, colossal dust storms and draconian water restrictions. The megadrought that has almost the entire western half of the country in a death grip is starting to become extremely painful. In some areas, irrigation water is being totally cut off for farmers, and that is going to result in a totally lost year for many of them.

USA - Report finds that obesity, criminal records and other reasons preclude most from US military service. Make no mistake, the United States Army is in the midst of an identity crisis. Bloomberg is out with a report chronicling the sad state of affairs the US military has found itself in these days. According to the report, almost 71% of those aged 17 to 24 — roughly 24 million out of 34 million people — are ineligible to join the military because of “obesity, lack of high school diploma, or a criminal record,” according to Pentagon data. In order to lure the eligible Gen-Z’ers, the Army will be spending US$425 million on marketing, with the goal of recruiting 60,000 to 70,000 active-duty soldiers, along with 40,000-45,000 National Guardsmen, and 13,000 to 17,000 members of the reserve. Members of Gen Z are more racially and ethnically diverse than any previous generation, and they are on track to be the most well-educated generation yet. They are also digital natives who have little or no memory of the world as it existed before smartphones.

UK - BBC presenter Andrew Marr said it will become “very hard” to continue being neutral while working for the corporation. Mr Marr said his “biggest single frustration” was losing his ability to voice his opinion and that he wanted to “get out” at some point. He said: “There are many privileges of working at the BBC, including the size of the audience and all of that, but the biggest single frustration by far is losing your own voice, not being able to speak in your own voice.” It comes as viewers began to show support for GB News, a new 24-hour news network set to rival the BBC. GB news will launch from around the end of this month on Freeview 236, Sky and other platforms. It will be a 24-hour news channel. Bye bye BBC news programmes! Goodbye Maitlis, Bradby and other woke wonders.

UK - Voters from “Red Wall” seats will be parachuted onto boards running the UK’s museum and heritage bodies to stop them bowing to pressure from “woke” activists. Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden announced the move so the country’s top cultural organisations have “the courage to stand up against the political fads and noisy movements of the moment”. His announcement was prompted after liberals have been accused of trying to scrub away the UK’s history with recent protests. While acknowledging the UK’s history is far from spotless, many argued that people should be judged in the context of the time in which they lived. He added: “And as national institutions, heritage organisations should take into account the views of the entire nation: the people for whom they were set up, and whose taxes pay for them. That’s why I want to make sure the boards of these bodies are genuinely diverse and not solely governed by people from metropolitan bubbles.”

UK - Ladies & gentlemen, boys & girls, it’s time to tell the non-binary woke warriors where to stick their pronouns. The pronoun police have struck again, with a UK train operator apologising to a passenger who complained about a friendly conductor using the term ‘ladies and gentlemen’.

ISRAEL - There is a vast gulf between the way Israel is attempting to explain and market “Operation Guardian of the Walls” and the way in which Hamas is succeeding in presenting its fight against Israel to the Palestinian and Arab public. While Israel is seeking and achieving tactical successes — such as the air assault on Hamas’s “metro” network of tunnels across northern Gaza, the toppling of high-rise blocs of Hamas significance, and strikes at weapons stores and rocket launchers — Hamas is achieving strategic success, attaining primacy in the Palestinian, Arab and even Israeli spheres. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s 12-year policy to contain Hamas, while enabling it to strengthen militarily undisturbed, must be reconsidered. It is unthinkable that Israel continue to permit Hamas to improve and manufacture its rockets with impunity, that it allows Qatari and other aid into Gaza and all manner of other humanitarian support, under what is either the delusion that this will sate and calm the monster or the misconception that Hamas is being deterred.