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February 2021

The Biden administration offered to restart negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, but it was not clear if Tehran would accept.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/18/us/politics/biden-iran-nuclear.html?campaign

WASHINGTON — The United States made a major move on Thursday toward restoring the Iran nuclear deal that the Trump administration abandoned, offering to join European nations in what would be the first substantial diplomacy with Tehran in more than four years, Biden administration officials said.

In an effort to make good on one of President Biden’s most significant campaign promises, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken spoke with European foreign ministers and agreed that the 2015 nuclear accord with Iran “was a key achievement of multilateral diplomacy,” and one worth pursuing again, according to a State Department statement.

Mr. Biden has said he would lift sanctions imposed by President Donald J. Trump if Iran returned to the sharp limits on nuclear production that it observed until 2019.

Iran has said the United States was the first to violate the terms of the 2015 nuclear accord, and that it would act only after the United States reversed course and allowed it to sell oil and conduct banking operations around the world. A senior Biden administration official said on Thursday evening that closing that gap would be a “painstaking” process.

The announcement will open what is likely to be a delicate set of diplomatic offerings.

The sparring over who moves first will be just the first of many hurdles. And with a presidential election only four months away in Iran, it was not clear if the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the nation’s political and military leadership would fully support re-engagement with the United States.

Accidental Blast During Bomb-Making Class Kills 30 Taliban Fighters

https://www.breitbart.com/asia/2021/02/16/accidental-blast-bomb-making-class-kills-

At least 30 Taliban members died after an explosive device detonated during a bomb-making tutorial in Afghanistan’s northern Balkh province over the weekend, the Defense Post reported on Tuesday.

A group of Taliban jihadists gathered at a mosque in the village of Qultaq on February 13 to receive training on how to assemble bombs and improvised explosive devices (IED). An explosive device accidentally detonated, killing at least “30 Taliban fighters including six foreign nationals who were expert mine makers,” according to the Afghan Army’s 209th Shaheen Corps, which confirmed the deadly blast in a statement released Saturday. The bodies of the six Taliban-affiliated foreign nationals were rendered unidentifiable by the blast, according to the statement.

The Taliban has not commented on the incident. Such accidental explosions are fairly common in war-torn Afghanistan. A similar blast occurred at a mosque in Balkh’s Chahabar Bolak district in August.

“A group of eight Taliban IED experts were busy manufacturing a bomb inside a mosque in Sikandar Khel Village [when a] … premature explosion caused by [the] IED killed four Taliban militants and wounded at least four others,” Afghanistan’s Khaama Press reported at the time, citing a statement by Afghanistan’s Shaheen Corps.

Texas: Time To Get Rid Of This Ridiculous Wind Power Francis Menton

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2021-2-17-texas-time-to-get-rid-of-this-ridiculous-wind-powe

Texas. It is the number one energy producing state in the United States. It is both the largest producer of oil, and the largest producer of natural gas, and has been for decades. Texas also has abundant coal reserves. It has been ground zero of the fracking revolution, which has revolutionized oil and gas production, vastly increased supplies, driven prices down by around two-thirds since 2014, and turned the U.S. into a net energy exporter for the first time in decades. By all rights, Texas should be the shining beacon of fossil fuel energy abundance for everyone else to envy.

And yet in Texas this week, there has been a good blast of cold air, accompanied by some meaningful ice and snow storms, and suddenly Texas finds itself with widespread power blackouts covering much of the state. Although the levels of cold and ice have been somewhat unusual, they have also been well within the range of historical experience. Meanwhile, other states farther north have been colder and have had more snow and more ice and yet the power has not gone out. What gives?

The simple answer is that despite its great abundance of fossil fuel energy, Texas nevertheless fell big for the ridiculous scam of trying to produce a high percentage of its electricity from wind. Yes, the story is somewhat more complicated than that, as stories always are. But not much more complicated. Basically, with its grid stressed in many ways in the past week, the wind was useless to carry the load that needed to be carried.

The Wall Street Journal in an editorial today collects some basic data from Texas as to electricity supply capacity and usage. Total winter generation capacity for the state is about 83 GW, while peak winter usage is about 57 GW. That’s a margin of over 45% of capacity over peak usage. In a fossil-fuel-only or fossil-fuel-plus-nuclear system, where all sources of power are dispatchable, a margin of 20% would be considered normal, and 30% would be luxurious. This margin is well more than that. How could that not be sufficient?

Florida is completely exposing the lie of lockdown Daniel Horowitz

https://www.theblaze.com/op-ed/horowitz-with-no-mask-mandate-and-schools-open-florida-ranks-11th-lowest-in-excess-deaths-among-seniors

There’s a reason why the Biden regime is trying to attack Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and create an illusion of a disproportionate viral crisis in the state. With no declared emergency restrictions in place at the state level since last September, the fact that Florida is doing better than the national average completely exposes the lie of lockdown and masks having any effect whatsoever on the fixed natural progression of the virus.

Dr. Fauci is suggesting a novel scientific principle – that schools can’t reopen until Congress passes yet another “stimulus” bill. Yet in Florida, schools have been open all year, and the state’s excess deaths for 2020 rank the 16th lowest in the nation, according to a new analysis. What’s more, the Sunshine State, which is regarded as God’s waiting room for seniors, experienced the 11th lowest per capita rate of COVID deaths for seniors in 2020.

A new analysis conducted by RationalGround.com and exclusively obtained by TheBlaze collated CDC excess death data for 49 states (excluding North Carolina, which has incomplete data) and ranked the states from smallest to largest increase in excess deaths from 2019 to 2020. As we have seen in study after study, there is absolutely zero correlation between non-pharmaceutical interventions, such as business and school closures or mask mandates, and a lower rate of excess deaths.

What Has the WHO Done to Deserve a $200 Million Blank Check From Biden? By Rick Moran

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/02/18/u-s-will-pay-who-200-million-in-dues-after-trump-cut-funding-n1426476

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has informed the United Nations that the U.S. will pay the World Health Organization $200 million in dues. The money is owed to WHO after the Trump administration cut funding to the group.

The cash certainly isn’t for a job well done. As of today, more than 2.5 million people have died in a pandemic that the WHO knew about early on and after the organization failed to take steps against China to mitigate the disaster. In fact, the organization has been a Chinese toady throughout the pandemic, running interference for China and keeping a lid on Chinese incompetence, mismanagement, and perhaps even negligence in handling a dangerous pathogen.

The WHO hasn’t saved a single life and probably cost lives with their contradictory and confusing directives on how to stay healthy. Why give them anything?

Unity Watch: Democrats Introduce a Bill to Punish Trump When He Dies By Victoria Taft

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/victoria-taft/2021/02/18/unity-watch-democrats-introduce-a-bill-to-punish-trump-when-he-dies-n1426572

Democrats want to make Donald Trump’s death as miserable as they tried to make his life in office.

The Democrats began trying to politically kill off Donald Trump before he took office and now they want to kill off his memory up to and after he leaves this mortal coil.

California Democrat Congresswoman Linda Sanchez has introduced a bill to deprive President Trump of the typical honors of every former president.

Her bill, HR 484, is called the “No Glory for Hate Act,” and seeks to deprive the former president from being buried in Arlington National Cemetery or to have any kind of memorials erected in his honor.

Attorney and GOP activist Harmeet Dhillon has a question for Sanchez and her co-sponsors.

This is pathetic, even for you, House Democrats. I heard some of you went to law school. Ever heard of a bill of attainder?

The First Step Towards Righting America Is Refusing To Believe The Left About Anything Jesse Kelly

https://thefederalist.com/2021/02/18/the-first-step-towards-righting-america-is-refusing-to-believe-the-left-about-anything/

Did you know that you can see The Great Wall of China from outer space? Is that not absolutely incredible? I heard this cool little fact from a friend some time ago and began telling everyone I knew about this cool trivia nugget.

What really blew me away was how almost everyone I told had already heard this and agreed with me that it is a very cool fact. A man-made wall you can see from outer space. That is just incredible.

I mean, it would be incredible, if it were true. You see, it is not true—not even a little. NASA and multiple individual astronauts have debunked this myth. Yet much of the general public believes it to be a fact, as NASA points out.

But why? The narrative. That is why. There is nothing more powerful (and destructive) in today’s world than the narrative.

The narrative, as I define it, is simply an assumption or set of assumptions widely accepted by the general public as facts. As we know, facts cannot be changed. That is why they are facts.

This is also why it is so critical to ensure the general public gets an accurate narrative. Otherwise, if the base set of publicly believed facts is wrong, every step after that will also be incorrect. It’s like getting swallowed up by an avalanche and digging ferociously in the wrong direction.

Mediocrity’s Envy of Genius: The Dirty Secret of Cancel Culture By David P. Goldman

The Cultural Revolutionaries at the New York Times this week reviewed the witch hunt against classical musicians, who stand accused of racism simply because the great Western composers happened to be white. Cancel culture is despicable in all of its manifestations, but I take this particular instance personally: I trained in the school of musical analysis founded by Heinrich Schenker (1868-1935). My principle teacher was Carl Schachter, who also taught Prof. Timothy Jackson of the University of North Texas, the target of this particular witch hunt

It’s all about envy.

My childhood piano teacher kept a recording of Florence Foster Jenkins, the deluded society lady portrayed by Meryl Streep in a 2016 comedy, as a horrible example for youth. Her voice would de-feather a screech-owl, but no-one was allowed to tell her she couldn’t sing. The only classical musician still active who bears comparison to Ms. Jenkins is a certain Philip Ewell, now a professor of music theory at Hunter College, who posts videos of himself torturing a cello until it squeals in pain. Prof. Ewell is African-American and has won his fifteen minutes of fame by denouncing whiteness in classical music.

All this would be of scant interest except that Prof. Ewell has become the scourge of alleged racism in the classical music world, and may have succeeded in extirpating from the academy a grand tradition of musical analysis that began with Beethoven. Ewell also dismisses Beethoven as merely “an above average composer” whose prominence erases the contribution of composers of color. Thanks to Ewell’s rampage against supposed white supremacy in classical music, the living chain of teacher-to-pupil transmission of this aspect of Western civilization may be broken irreparably.

Masking the message of Purim By Ruthie Blum   

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/coronavirus-masking-the-message-of-purim-opinion-659433

According to the plan approved by Israel’s coronavirus cabinet on Monday, celebrations during the Purim holiday next weekend will be curtailed. Festive meals will be limited to nuclear family members; synagogues will operate at half capacity for the fully vaccinated, or with a cap of 10 people indoors and 20 outside; and the traditional nationwide Adloyada (“until one no longer knows”) parades and customary costume parties will be banned.

Purim, the annual commemoration of the Jewish people’s rescue from Persian empire vizier Haman, as told in the biblical Book of Esther, has been of particular concern to Israel’s health authorities of late. Last February, as the COVID-19 pandemic was just beginning to rear its head, a toy-store owner in Or Yehuda – who returned from a trip to Italy where he contracted the virus – spent three days interacting with customers bustling to buy Purim garb. By the time that the proprietor of the “Red Pirate” was diagnosed, he had infected several people.
Less than two weeks later, synagogues were packed with worshipers reading the Scroll of Esther while unwittingly catching and spreading the coronavirus. Ditto for the other mass gatherings of kids and young adults in wacky getups drinking and dancing. It was during Purim last March, as well, that many Jewish communities in the Diaspora were hit hard by COVID.

On the one hand, it’s hard to believe that a full year has passed since then. On the other, last Purim seems like a lifetime ago. One might assume, then, that Israel’s swift and successful vaccination campaign would be cause for the kind of optimism that enables a degree of patience. Within a mere few weeks, after all, a majority of the country’s nine million citizens 16 and older will have been fully inoculated. 

Iran: The Mullah’s Pursuit of Obtaining Nuclear Weapons by Majid Rafizadeh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17053/iran-pursuit-nuclear-weapons

The IAEA at first did not take these reports of a secret Iranian atomic warehouse seriously. This should not be surprising: the IAEA has a long history of misreporting the Iranian regime’s compliance with the deal and declining to follow up on credible reports about Iran’s illicit nuclear activities.

Iran’s nuclear deal has dangerous fundamental flaws, specifically the ability to enrich uranium in the first place — as the preeminent US nuclear negotiator Ambassador John R. Bolton wrote a few years ago, without it, no bomb — and the deal’s notorious sunset clauses that remove restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program after the deal soon expires.

After a significant amount of pressure was imposed on the IAEA, the UN nuclear watchdog, inspecting the suspected site that the Israeli Prime Minister referred to was implemented two years later, in the fall 2020. Even then, although Iran’s leaders certainly had enough time to clean up the facility, the IAEA’s inspectors nevertheless reported that traces of radioactive uranium had been detected by examining remaining samples.

It should also not come as surprise that the ruling mullahs of Iran are declining to answer the IAEA’s questions.

It is also important to point out that one of the most basic requirements of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to which Iran is a party, as well as one of the terms of the 2015 “nuclear deal,” was that the Iranian regime is required to reveal its nuclear activities to the IAEA — a condition with which it also failed to comply.

The detection of radioactive particles in Turquz Abad not only points to the high probability that Tehran has been undertaking work on nuclear weapons in secret; it also points to the high probability that Iran’s ruling mullahs have most likely been violating the nuclear deal since it was reached in 2015.

In spite of the Iranian leaders’ claim that their nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, evidence reveals that the Iranian regime has long sought to acquire nuclear weapons.

A recent report by the International Atomic Energy Agency pointed out that “Samples taken from two sites during inspections in the fall by the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) contained traces of radioactive material”.

This case was first brought to the world’s attention in 2018 when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Yukiya Amano to inspect an “atomic warehouse” in Iran. Netanyahu pointed out in his speech to the UN General Assembly that the Iranian government had a “secret atomic warehouse for storing massive amounts of equipment and material from Iran’s secret nuclear weapons program.” In addition, in 2018, two non-partisan organizations based in Washington, DC — the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD) — released detailed reports about Iran’s undeclared clandestine nuclear facilities, as well. Iran’s leaders claimed that the warehouse, in a village, Turquz Abad, in the suburbs of Tehran, was simply a place where carpets were cleaned.