North Carolina , a proud land of one hundred counties, finds twenty-five of its westernmost regions situated in the rugged beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains and their foothills.

These residents, salt-of-the-earth, Christian souls — many Baptists and Methodists — are known for their self-reliance, faith, and generosity, yet they now stand abandoned.

Don Brown : Are dying North Carolinians not as important as Germans in West Berlin ? The Democrats are, by calculation, waging war against the dying citizens of western North Carolina .

Biden could have mobilized the 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions to deliver food, medical supplies, and evacuate stranded citizens.

The federal government is likely to pick up the slack, and the armies of now unemployed DEI functionaries and future racial preference experts will undoubtedly find a home in the vast federal bureaucracy.

Federal government DEI mandate differs fundamentally from what occurs in private industry and higher education.

Biden/Harris administration has already gone on a DEI hiring spree.

According to FEMA ’s equity logic, those who suffered the most in the past, for example, black and sexual minorities, now need the greatest help when disaster strikes.

The opposite is true when people are hired according to their identities, not competence.

Firing any federal employee is near impossible, especially a protected minority.

Michael Van Der Veen was one of President Trump 's lawyers from his second impeachment trial.

The trial accused the president of inciting the January 6th riots.

The deep state wanted the head of Donald Trump , and this was their latest attempt to get it, says Julian Zelizer .

Zelizer : A week before the trial was to begin, the defense team quit.

Michael Van Der Veen and his team helped to bring a much-deserved acquittal for Donald Trump .

The defense team described the state of our nation’s capital as “tainted” “broken” and “cesspool.” The evening ended however on a positive note.

Frida Ghitis : U.S. economy is in the hands of racketeering union thugs threatening to shut down ports.

She says the union boss for the International Longshoremen’s Association , Harold Daggett , is accused of Mafia ties.

Ghitis says the strike would have potentially cost the American economy nearly $5 billion a day.

She asks: Why does part of the union's “bargaining” involve a demand that some longshoremen cannot be replaced by machines?.

In the late 1700s , 90% of Americans worked in agriculture; today , 10% work in agriculture, and food has never been more plentiful.

Frida Ghitis: The Industrial Revolution was, beyond any legitimate dispute, the greatest advancement of material well-being for humankind in all its history.

She says U.S. ports rank among the worst ports on Earth in terms of efficiency, according to a 2021 World Bank Group study.

Ghitis says the Port of Oakland , for example, is ranked 359 out of 370 in that study.

The past year in Israel has felt a bit like watching a split screen on TV: on one side, the events zoom by at Chaplin speed and epic-movie proportions, depicting an inconceivable massacre in Israel ’s southern kibbutzim that led to a firestorm of death and devastation raining down on Gaza .

And on the other side of the screen? The picture is frozen. This has been a year as long as eternity and as barren as a desert, and at the end of it, we find ourselves standing next to a heap of bodies, without an iota of insight or hope.

People on both sides of the Gaza border are dropping like flies, but none of them died because they were talking on their phones too much.

Mobile phones are probably here for ever, but this government does have an expiration date.

Let us pray together that it expires before the country itself does, and before the destruction of the Third Temple that Ben-Gvir and his cronies are fantasising about.

We may have reached a point beyond which the international order changes for ever, says Fawaz Gerges .

Gerges: Israel ’s year-long war in Gaza has led to humanitarian catastrophe and the heightened risk of an all-out regional war.

The consequences of the growing north-south polarisation will probably have transformative effects on international politics for generations.

Israel is already fighting on multiple fronts from Lebanon to Yemen to Iran to distract from the quagmire of Gaza and regain internal legitimacy.

Expanding the war is also a way to obscure the colonial nature of the conflict against the Palestinians , by turning it into a civilisational or religious confrontation against Iran .

Negotiations between Israel and Hamas that were ongoing until the last round ended in August 2024 have consistently failed due to the maximalist goals of Netanyahu and Sinwar.

After 12 months , with little pressure on them and few incentives to change tack, the two sides are still far apart.

Israel 's expanded operations in Lebanon aimed at dismantling Hezbollah are risking a broader multi-front war.

Battle of Cable Street took place 88 years ago this week .

It was a revolutionary uprising by Jews , leftists and workers against the threat posed by the British Union of Fascists .

The BUF was founded by Oswald Mosley in 1932 .

Mosley had been a Conservative MP before crossing the floor of the House of Commons to join the Labour Party .

The people of the East End were rather less taken with Mosley ’s fascist tribute act.

Would we see an uprising of resistance, a taking to the streets to see off the fascists and rally around their targets? I fear we would not. I fear such solidarity is all but impossible in the era of identity politics, intersectionality and progressive suspicion of Jewish privilege' I fear today the Jews might be on their own though hopefully joined by that smattering of the population that still appreciates that when anti-Semitism rears its head, society is in deep trouble.

The Battle of Cable Street is inconceivable in modern Britain .

The ideas, the bravery, the decency required for such a street fight with fascism no longer exist.

The atomising creed of identitarianism, the relentless rise of privilege policing, the cult of competitive grievance, the wariness of Zionism that so often crosses over into wariness.

Arab nationalists won a stunning victory in elections in Lebanon , a country the French had created two decades earlier .

The winners, Bechara el-Khoury and Riad al-Solh , had received substantial, surreptitious British help behind the scenes.

Soon afterwards they reached an unwritten deal known as the National Pact .

This division of responsibilities down religious lines has been followed scrupulously ever since.

Less well-known was the other important commitment that the two men made.

By the second half of the Fifties , there was growing tension.

The constitution enshrined a Christian bias to the electoral system based on a 1932 census of the population.

Many Lebanese were enthused by the charismatic Egyptian leader’s pan-Arab dream and feared he might take over.

The murder of a prominent, pro-Nasser journalist added to the tension.

Hezbollah became Israel ’s most dangerous opponent in Lebanon in the 1990s .

James Cleverly is not the clear favourite in the race for Tory leader.

But he is one of the few ministers to have emerged from the last few years of Tory government with his reputation intact.

Cleverly has, to be fair, has acquired a reputation for gaffes.

But the people who get to pick the leader are Conservative party members, and they have different priorities.

Mkhaimar Abusada lived comfortably in Gaza City in a good neighbourhood near Abu Mazen Square , and enjoyed the prestige that comes with an academic position in Palestinian society.

He left Gaza last November after his university was destroyed and then looted by Israeli forces.

Now the family is all in Cairo , but he must rebuild his life from scratch, a common fate among Palestinians .

More than 100,000 Palestinians remain in Egypt , almost all in the greater Cairo region.

With very few exceptions, they are not allowed to work or study, cannot receive residency status and must live on the charity of others or meagre savings.

Most Palestinians from Gaza now live in Cairo ’s poor areas like Faisal Street or Imbaba .

Tawfiq Rizk comes from a large family of ten daughters and four brothers.

The family lived in Rafah , not far from the famous crossing into Egypt .

He left Gaza to find medical help for his injured sister, leaving his wife behind.

He is 27 , and the oldest brother.