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November 2016

President Trump and the Iran Nuclear Deal Let us hope that President Trump will be tough in deeds, not just with words. Joseph Puder

The U.S. House of Representatives this week voted overwhelmingly (419-1) to extend sanctions on Iran for the next 10 years. This legislation is meant to ensure the radical Iranian regime complies with the international nuclear agreement. The Iran Sanctions Extension Act needs the approval of the Senate, and President Obama’s signature. If President Obama should refrain from signing the Act, it is more than likely that the Republican dominated House and Senate will submit this piece of legislation to President-Elect Donald Trump for his signature. The Iran Sanctions Extension Act is due to expire at the end of the year.

While President Trump may not keep to his promise to scrap the nuclear deal with Iran, he would certainly seek to use U.S. economic leverage to punish the aggressive regime of the Ayatollahs. According to the official Islamic Republic News Agency, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani informed his cabinet ministers following the U.S. elections last week that the nuclear agreement between the P-5+1 and Iran “Cannot be overturned by one government’s decision,”

During the campaign appearance last March before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Donald J. Trump described the Iran nuclear deal as “terrible,” and used as an example, the Obama administration’s bad negotiating skills. He said, “My number one priority is to dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran.” Trump also said that he would “police that contract so tough that they (the Iranians) don’t have a chance.” Trump pointed out the deficiency of the nuclear agreement in that it has time-limited restrictions on Iran’s enrichment of uranium and its other nuclear activities. Trump also railed against the excessive concessions made to the mullahs of Iran. But, like many other promises made during the campaign, Trump will probably modify his promise on Iran’s nuclear deal.

In a recent position paper, Trump’s two top advisors on Israel, David Friedman and Jason Rosenblatt stated that, “The U.S. must counteract Iran’s ongoing violations of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action regarding Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons and their noncompliance with past and present sanctions, as well as the agreements they signed, and implement tough, new sanctions when needed to protect the world and Iran’s neighbors from its continuing nuclear and non-nuclear threats.”

It would be difficult to re-negotiate or re-litigate the nuclear deal given that the U.S. is one of the signatories to it, and it is unlikely that the Iranians will be open to such negotiation. The alternative open to Trump is to turn over the nuclear deal to Congress, where the Republican majority voted against the deal. Republicans in Congress are considering options in dealing with Iran. Some such legislative ideas include targeting sectors of the Iranian economy involved with acquiring ballistic missiles, which were not included in the nuclear deal. Congress is certain to consider punitive actions against Iran’s Revolutionary Guards involved in the conflicts in Syria and Yemen, and in sponsoring worldwide terrorism.

The Progressive Disintegration The self-destruction of so many failed progressive gods. Bruce Thornton

A month ago, progressives were having a conniption fit over Trump’s refusal to accept the outcome of the election. So of course, now that Trump has won, they are rioting, vandalizing, staging “cry-ins,” ditching class, group-hugging, tweeting threats, calling names, seeking counseling, and doing everything in their power to make sure that their party declines even further. If this behavior continues, and if––a big “if” –– Trump governs the way he promised, we may be witnessing the start of the progressive disintegration.

Start with the melting snowflake millennials, all those “cocksure women and hensure men,” as D.H. Lawrence once described feminists of both sexes. These layabouts have become used to throwing tantrums whenever they don’t like something or they feel “unsafe.” Most of them are spoiled brats, the pampered detritus of the middle class. But don’t forget the Alinskyite activists who manipulate these juveniles and bus them in on George Soros’ dime. These two-bit Leninists are adept at using “useful idiots” in order to further their aim of destroying America’s political and social order. They’re skilled at manipulating empty slogans like “income inequality,” “fair share,” “social justice,” “diversity,” “inclusion,” and all the other bumper-sticker bromides in order to consolidate and increase their power and influence.

If the delicate millennial Eloi were really interested in reforming their team instead of indulging phony moral exhibitionism, they would start with the Democrat party. No true leftist would have sat still for the nomination of a candidate so obviously part of the fat-cat ruling class as Hillary Clinton. (And no, he wouldn’t be happy with Bernie Sanders either, a bumbling blowhard who thinks imitating Sweden’s “social democracy” ––which means an overregulated capitalism leavened with over-generous social welfare benefits––is somehow an epochal revolutionary change.) It was electoral malfeasance to choose a geriatric insider and establishment plutocrat with no charisma and a long record of abusing her privilege and power. So, kiddies, go protest against the DNC and Barack Obama. They’re the reason the Republican party is the strongest it’s been since 1928.

Next, look at yourselves. As Piers Morgan––no conservative he––said recently, “The tragic truth is that America’s millennials are a bunch of phone-addicted, selfie-obsessed, hashtagging, snapchatting, kale-munching, twerking, lazy, whining, ill-informed, politically correct, cossetted narcissists who find absolutely everything mortally offensive and believe there are 165 ways to sexually identify.” It follows that your politics are merely symbolic, expressions of your inflated self-regard, privileged life-style, and arrogant pretensions to sophistication and intelligence. Unsurprisingly, as Morgan points out, according to the National Institutes of Health, 40% of you think you should be promoted every two years despite performance, 77% of you can’t name a senator from your home state, and 80% of you think you’ll be richer than your parents, even as you pile up student debt earning junk “studies” degrees utterly useless for employment in the real world.

German Court Rules That ‘Sharia Police’ Are Not Illegal The slow German national suicide continues.Mark Tapson

And the slow German national suicide continues, as prosecutors have tried but failed to build a case against a fundamentalist Muslim group patroling German streets enforcing sharia law.

The self-styled vigilantes, wearing orange vests marked “Sharia Police,” walked the streets of the western German city of Wuppertal in September 2014, telling nightclub-goers to refrain from drinking alcohol and listening to music, and arcade customers not to play games for money.

The city’s district court ruled that the vests worn by seven accused members of the group did not breach a ban on political uniforms. Judges said there could only be a violation of the law – originally aimed against street movements such as the early Nazi party – if the uniforms were “suggestively militant or intimidating.” In this instance, the judges declared the vests to be non-threatening, noting that one witness even thought the men were part of a bachelor party.

The same court had already thrown out the case last year, but was overruled on appeal by a higher court which agreed with prosecutors that the ban on uniforms could be applied in this case. Monday’s verdict is not yet final and may still be appealed.

So-called “sharia patrols” by sometimes violent radical young Salafists have also been seen in other European cities such as London, Copenhagen and Hamburg.

The Wuppertal group is under the leadership of German Salafist convert Sven Lau, one of Germany’s most controversial and best known Islamist preachers, according to The Local website in Germany. He is currently on trial in a separate case on charges of backing a terrorist group fighting in Syria.

Check out the video above about the Sharia police, from Ezra Levant at The Rebel Media.

ADL Allies With Anti-Israel Activists Against Trump Mainstreaming anti-Semitism through anti-Trump alarmism. Daniel Greenfield

The media’s story is that Trump’s win unleashed anti-Semitism on the right. Instead it’s unleashing anti-Semitism on the left. From the elevation of Keith Ellison to head the DNC, despite his ugly history with anti-Semitism, to the mainstreaming of Islamist anti-Semites from CAIR, ISNA and other hate groups with a history of supporting anti-Semitic terror, the atmosphere on the left has only grown uglier.

Equally troubling is the way in which anti-Israel hatred is being mainstreamed within the Jewish community under the guise of a collective front to oppose Trump. The groups taking the lead in these protests include some of the ugliest anti-Israel organizations around, including JVP and If Not Now.

From the beginning they have camouflaged attacks on centrist pro-Israel groups, such as AIPAC and ZOA, in anti-Trump rallies. Their real agenda isn’t opposition to Trump, but to the Jewish State.

And many establishment Jewish groups that claim to be pro-Israel have proven all too willing to mainstream anti-Israel groups and their hostility to Israel to be able to hold anti-Trump events.

Given a choice between supporting Israel and opposing Trump, they have made their priorities clear. They have chosen to attack Trump and give aid and comfort to those working against the Jewish State.

The ADL has been one of the loudest voices against Trump. But while the former Jewish civil rights organization claims that it’s protecting Jewish values, it’s partnering with vocal opponents of the Jewish State. Its new campaign against Trump is normalizing organizations that are hostile to Israel.

While the headlines for ADL events rarely mention them, behind the latest splashy rally or conference vowing to fight “hate” are groups that hate and fight against the rights of Jews to live in Israel.

On a cold day in Boston, the Anti-Defamation League of New England rolled out its “Massachusetts Speaks Out Against Hate” rally. Top Boston political officials were in attendance. The ADL’s partners included the Greater Boston JCC and the JCRC, along with radical leftist groups, and J Street.

In New York City, the ADL convened what it billed as an inaugural summit on anti-Semitism. Its urgent title, and accompanying hashtag, was #NeverisNow. It promised TED Talks and “interactive sessions on the challenges posed by modern-day anti-Semitism.”

Instead it provided a platform for opponents of Israel to spew their hatred at the Jewish State.

The star of #NeverisNow was Ford Foundation CEO Darren Walker. The Ford Foundation not only financed much of the groundwork for the left’s wave of anti-Semitism, but it backed Black Lives Matter and funds various anti-Israel groups.

But it got worse.

Instead of wholly and utterly rejecting delegitimization of Israel, the ADL asked it as a question.

The “Is Delegitimization of Israel Anti-Semitism?” panel gave anti-Israel activist Jill Jacobs and the Forward’s Jane Eisner a forum. Jacobs denounced the Israeli “occupation” and argued that Jews had to stop equating attacks on Israel with anti-Semitism. She defended BDS tactics against accusations of anti-Semitism and criticized the Jewish community for backing legislation opposed to BDS.

The EPA Shows Again That It’s an Affront to Common Sense It’s cooking data to justify costly regulations with disproportionately small benefits. By Henry I. Miller & Jeff Stier

For decades, in administrations Democratic and Republican alike, the Environmental Protection Agency has been a paragon of waste, fraud, and abuse, a corrupt taxpayer-funded Evil Empire. “Science” there is just a tool to be manipulated in order to advance radical anti-technology and anti-industry agendas, even if it means distorting the intent of statutes and affronting common sense.

The EPA is the prototype of agencies that, driven largely by politics, spend more and more to address smaller and smaller risks. In one analysis by the Office of Management and Budget, of the 30 least cost-effective regulations throughout the government, the EPA had imposed no fewer than 17. For example, the agency’s restrictions on the disposal of land that contains certain wastes prevent 0.59 cancer cases per year — about three cases every five years — and avoid $20 million in property damage, at an annual cost of $194 to $219 million.

In his excellent book Breaking the Vicious Circle, written shortly before he was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, Stephen Breyer cited another, similar example of expensive, non-cost-effective regulation by the EPA: a ban on asbestos pipe, shingles, coating, and paper, which the most optimistic estimates suggested would prevent seven or eight premature deaths over 13 years — at a cost of approximately a quarter of a billion dollars. Breyer, appointed to the court by President Bill Clinton, observed that such a vast expenditure would cause more deaths than it would prevent from the asbestos exposure, simply by reducing the resources available for other public amenities.

Also, perversely, the very act of removing asbestos from existing structures poses greater risk from asbestos than does simply leaving it where it is: During removal, long-dormant asbestos fibers are spread into the ambient air, where they expose workers and bystanders to heightened risk. When the EPA banned asbestos in 1989, it was already an old product whose risks and benefits were well understood. Nevertheless, political pressures from environmental activists pushed the EPA into making a decision that actually raised public-health risks.

Breyer also addressed the EPA’s counterproductive efforts to eliminate the “last 10 percent” of risk from a substance or activity, noting that it involves “high cost, devotion of considerable agency resources, large legal fees, and endless argument,” with only limited, incremental benefit. Such overly stringent rules are also more likely to be challenged in court and overturned on judicial review. Breyer quotes an EPA official as observing that “about 95 percent of the toxic material could be removed from [Superfund] waste sites in a few months, but years are spent trying to remove the last little bit.”

Hillary’s Actions Deserve a Special Prosecutor President Trump should hand Hillary’s fate to a nonpartisan investigator. By Deroy Murdock

Let her go or lock her up?

Hillary Clinton’s fate is one piece of old business that will sit on President Donald J. Trump’s desk and fester like a warm mackerel.

Trump’s ambitious agenda involves scrapping and substituting Obamacare, cutting taxes, liberating the energy sector, securing America’s southern “border,” and much more — nearly everything controversial.

Congressional Democrats will be unusually obstructive due to Hillary’s upset loss, a unified Republican government in Washington, and the GOP’s strongest position nationwide since 1928, according to RealClearPolitics. Liberal politicians and activists called Trump a latter-day Mussolini for saying in his final debate that he would “keep you in suspense” before agreeing in advance to accept Election Day’s results. Leftist street thugs then fascistically rejected the outcome of a fair and decisive election, trashed personal property, smashed windows, sparked fires, and — like dedicated Brownshirts — physically pummeled Trump supporters.

As such, Democrats on Capitol Hill — and their enraged base — likely will be in no mood to compromise. Despite Republican control of the Senate, incoming Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York is no wallflower. He almost surely will tie Republican leader Mitch McConnell’s shoelaces together at every turn. This probably will include filibustering everything this side of legislation on National Asparagus Month.

Against this backdrop, it must be tempting for Team Trump to blow Crooked Hillary’s dank, lawless stench out the nearest window. Indeed, Trump’s senior adviser Kellyanne Conway told MSNBC Tuesday that “he doesn’t wish to pursue these charges.”

If true, this would abandon the pledge that Trump made to the hundreds of thousands of Americans who chanted “Lock her up!” at his rallies and the 61.9 million voters who sent Trump to Washington to purify Hillary’s ethical Superfund site.

Hillary auctioned off public favors as if the Clinton Foundation were Sotheby’s and abused state secrets so flagrantly that her maid reportedly printed out classified documents for the former secretary of state to read. According to the New York Post’s Paul Sperry, this may have included the Presidential Daily Brief, the most secret document in Washington.

Iran, Hamas and the Dance of Death by Khaled Abu Toameh

It now appears that the Obama Administration’s failed policies in the Middle East have increased the Iranians’ appetite, such that they are convinced that they can expand their influence to the Palestinians as well.

Iran has one goal only: to eliminate the “Zionist entity” and undermine moderate and progressive Arabs and Muslims.

“Relations between Iran and Hamas are currently undergoing revitalization, and are moving in the right direction,” announced Osama Hamdan, a senior Hamas official. He went on to explain that “moving in the right direction” means that Iran would “continue to support the resistance” against Israel.

Hamas and Iran have no meaningful ideological or strategic differences. Both share a common desire to destroy Israel and replace it with an Islamic empire. Iran expects results: Hamas is to use the financial and military support to resume attacks on Israel and “liberate all of Palestine, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.”

As far as Iran is concerned, there is nothing better than having two proxy terror organizations on Israel’s borders — Hezbollah in the north and Hamas in the south.

The biggest losers, once again, will be President Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

Israel’s presence in the West Bank has thus far thwarted Iran’s repeated attempts to establish bases of power there.

The Iranians and Hamas are exploiting the final days of the Obama Administration to restore their relations and pave the way for Tehran to step up its meddling in the internal affairs of the Palestinians in particular and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in general.

The Atrocious Scandal of the UNESCO Vote on Jerusalem by Salim Mansur

It was over the ruins of these sacred Jewish sites, left behind by the Romans, that Arab conquerors of Jerusalem in the seventh century built two mosques, the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa, to lay claim on the City of David for Islam.

There can be no dispute about Jewish links with Jerusalem, and Jewish rights to their sacred sites that long pre-date the arrival of Arabs bearing Islam to the City of David. This latest effort by the UNESCO, however to deny the Jewish nature of Jerusalem is much more than a scandal; it is a Stalinist measure to airbrush history by an organization which, according to its own charter, is supposed to be devoted without prejudice to the preservation of historical records.

There is precedent for such a resolution to nullify the recent UNESCO resolution on Jerusalem. In December 1991 the UN General Assembly voted to repeal the UN resolution passed in 1975 that declared, “Zionism is a form of racism.”

When Arabs and Muslims deny Jewish links to Jerusalem they are also then in denial of their own history. Their claim on Jerusalem, or the holy land, on the basis of Islam is simply not found in the Quran.

Their claim on Jerusalem, or the holy land, on the basis of Islam is simply not found in the Quran. On the contrary, the Quran is explicit in addressing Jews as “children of Israel” and speaking of them, as in “Remember those blessings of Mine with which I graced you, and how I favoured you above all other people” (2:47).

Indeed, Muslim denial of the Jewish links to the City of David and their ancestral rights over Judea and Samaria, or Palestine, is ironically contrary to the Word of God in their own sacred scripture.

Gulag, Western Style By David Solway

There are various ways of quashing social and political dissent, some more effective than others. The “Soviet method” practiced in stringently repressive regimes—torture, imprisonment, the ever-expanding Gulag, summary execution—works extremely well in the shorter historical timeframe, until a people rise up in revolt or such demonic societies collapse from their own internal contradictions. Of course, the truly Stygian regimes, closed to the world, indifferent to economic pressures, and under the heavy boot of unbroken military control, such as North Korea, may persist indefinitely or until defeated in war. But generally speaking, the tried-and-true methods of political oppression are sufficient to the task of keeping a population in a state of enslavement for a prolonged historical period.

In the sphere of the liberal West, however, there are other means of subjection to the will of increasingly centralized governments. Because they tend to function gradually and under the radar, these tactics are enormously efficient in their deadening effects, going unrecognized until it is often too late to mount significant resistance. They operate through a process of curricular distortions, social pressure and incremental legislation targeting speech habits, facets of normal behavior, assumptions of what counts as morally legitimate, and financial and job security.

A useful technique for anaesthetizing the individual citizen and rendering him compliant is the erasure of authentic historical knowledge. We’ve remarked the success of this approach in the U.S. with the “history from below” or “people’s history” movement, associated with Howard Zinn, and the foregrounding of a bowdlerized version of Islamic history in American schools. Canada is no different. Eric McGeer, author of Words of Valediction and Remembrance: Canadian Epitaphs of the Second World War, writes: “In my last years of high school teaching I was increasingly infuriated and disgusted at the portrayal of Canada in the history textbooks assigned for use in our courses. There was no sense of gratitude in the textbooks, no empathy with the people of the past or an attempt to see them in their own terms, no sense of the effort people made to create one of the few truly liveable societies on earth. You would have thought that this country was nothing more than a racist, bigoted, this or that-phobic hotbed. My first lesson involved taking the book and dropping it into the waste paper basket and advising the students to do the same.” (personal communication). The study of history, McGeer concludes, is nothing now but a progressive morality tale and a mechanism of social engineering. Sounds a lot like Title IX. Pride in one’s nation, its accomplishments and sacrifices, is contra-indicated. There is more than one way of burning the flag.

Analysts Tally at Least 52 Uses of Chemical Weapons by ISIS “High risk” of ISIS unleashing agents — even potentially a dirty bomb from looted radiological materials — as Mosul falls. By Bridget Johnson,

A threat-monitoring firm in London tallied at least 52 incidents of chemical weapons use by the Islamic State since 2014 and warned of a high possibility that more could be unleashed as Mosul starts to fall.

IHS Markit’s Conflict Monitor said chemical weapons were used around ISIS’ largest occupied city in Iraq, currently under attack by Iraqi and Kurdish forces with U.S. support, at least 19 of those times.

Most of the threat is posed by chlorine and mustard agents, but analysts said ISIS could use a “dirty bomb” — radiological dispersion through a conventional explosive device.

“Medical and industrial sources of radioactive material are present within territory held by the Islamic State, for example, at the Hazim al-Hafid Hospital, a specialist oncology and nuclear medicine facility in Mosul,” said Karl Dewey, a chemical, biological and radiological weapons analyst at IHS Jane’s.

ISIS acquired nearly 90 pounds of low-grade nuclear material from the University of Mosul soon after sacking the city in 2014, the company noted.

“Although the uranium compounds would only be of very limited utility for [radiological dispersal device] fabrication, comments made by Islamic State supporters suggest that members have at least thought about the idea,” Dewey said.

There has been a noted decline in chemical weapons use by ISIS in the run-up to the Mosul offensive, now in its sixth week.

But Columb Strack, senior analyst and leader of IHS Conflict Monitor, warned that as ISIS loses ground “there is a high risk of the group using chemical weapons to slow down and demoralize advancing enemy forces, and to potentially make an example of — and take revenge on — civilian dissidents within the city.”

Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook told reporters Tuesday that Iraqi forces “continue to make progress while exercising commendable care to avoid civilian casualties” as “they’ve been dealing, among other things, with vehicle-borne IEDs and the use of human shields by ISIL.” Defense officials have refused to say whether American advisers are in Mosul.

Strack noted that Mosul had been the home base for ISIS’ chemical weapons production, “but most of the equipment and experts were probably evacuated to Syria in the weeks and months leading up to the Mosul offensive, along with convoys of other senior members and their families.”

isis chemical weapons

Asked about the report at Tuesday’s State Department briefing, press secretary John Kirby said he couldn’t “confirm the veracity” of the findings.

“What I can tell you, though, is that we have, ourselves, talked about our view that in the past Daesh has proven capable of trying to use chemical agents, whether it’s mustard and/or chlorine,” Kirby said. “And DoD has spoken to their view that they have at least attempted to do that in the past. So this is very much in keeping with a methodology we’ve seen out of these terrorists.”

The United Nations has also presented evidence of ISIS chemical weapons use. Kirby called the State Department’s refusal to confirm any ISIS chemical weapons usage yet an abundance of caution “because you don’t want to levy such a charge unless you know you’re 100 percent sure about it.”

“It’s not about reticence. I mean, clearly this is a group we’re not afraid to talk strongly about it and to act strongly against. I think it’s really about information and wanting to be careful,” he added. “But obviously, I mean, if they did, it would certainly be in keeping with their methodology. I think we’re just — we’re telling you what we think we know when we know it.”

The State Department’s travel alert for Europe issued Monday warned that “credible information indicates the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or Da’esh), al-Qa’ida, and their affiliates continue to plan terrorist attacks in Europe, with a focus on the upcoming holiday season and associated events” and “terrorists may employ a wide variety of tactics, using both conventional and non-conventional weapons and targeting both official and private interests.”