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April 2021

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Despite Biden’s efforts, the mullahs may be in trouble By Hassan Mahmoudi

By on April 9th, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/04/despite_bidens_efforts_the_mullahs_may_be_in_trouble.html

After years of struggle, Iranians finally gained the right to vote.  Their first election was held in August 1906.  However, one of the complaints Iranians had about the Pahlavi regime was that was the king would decide who would become prime minister or designated candidates for important government positions.  After the Shah’s fall in 1979, the Islamic Republic increased this election engineering.  Iranians now call them “magical elections.”  This year, though, Iranians are done with magic — and even Biden lifting some sanctions may not help.

Iran will hold a presidential election on June 18, 2021.  As always, Ayatollah Khamenei, the supreme leader, using so-called “legal” methods, will pick the head of the Judiciary, the Legislature, and the president.  The way this works is that the “Approving Council” filters out the candidates, and then the “Guardian Council” mass eliminates the candidates in favor of the candidate closest to the supreme leader.

In March, Khamenei himself acknowledged in a speech for the Iranian new year that there are complaints about how the Guardian Council operates.  He urged Iranians to ignore them.  “Our enemies want to destabilize the elections, and for this reason, they accuse the organizers of electoral engineering or accuse the Guardian Council or try to discourage people from voting by inducing the idea of ‘people’s ineffectiveness.'”

But the main issue in this year’s election is something entirely new: the distrust the Iranians feel for the government of Khamenei and President Rouhani has created a gulf too wide to close.  Many no longer consider the government legitimate, leading some to think that the situation is ripe for another revolution.  This is yet another aspect of how weak the regime is.  These are some indicators of that weakness:

Iranian’s economic conditions are getting worse every day with increasing prices, inflation of 65%, government corruption, and the closure of thousands of industrial units and production workshops.  Unemployment, the disappearance of the middle class, and the poor’s crushing poverty have up to half of Iranians living in shantytowns.  This phenomenon has pushed the Iranian economy to the verge of collapse.  (The National Council of Resistance of Iran, while a partisan activist site, has articles with data about Iran’s economic despair.)

The coronavirus pandemic has taken a toll on Iran.  Again, information comes from opposition sites (such as this one), but the facts do seem to bear out claims that the mullahs have handled COVID disastrously.  People say Khamenei has used the coronavirus as a defensive shield for the survival of his regime.  This has created deep mistrust between the people and the government in Iran.

When IRGC missiles downed a Ukrainian passenger plane, killing 176 people, and then tried a cover-up, Iran severely downgraded its world standing.

The bloody crackdown on protests in December 2017 and especially in November 2019 in more than 200 cities, where 1,500 people were killed by Islamic Revolution Guard Corps (IRGC) security forces, also weakened the regime from within.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Biden Administration to Support Palestinian Dictatorship by Khaled Abu Toameh

By on April 9th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17188/biden-administration-palestinian-dict

Sadly, while the Biden administration is talking about the “need to protect [Palestinian] civil society through the reduction of arrests of bloggers and dissidents,” the Palestinian leadership is evidently moving in precisely the opposite direction.

While the Biden administration says it wants to strengthen Palestinian civil society organizations, the Palestinian leadership is working to tighten its grip on these organizations.

The elections are part of Abbas’s attempt to curry favor with the Biden administration and present himself as a leader who cares about democracy and fair elections. The fact is that Abbas is desperate for US funding to preserve his regime and remain in power until his last day.

Abbas’s punitive measures against [Nasser al-Kidwa, a former PA foreign minister] are aimed at sending a warning to these officials that they would meet the same fate should they run outside the Abbas-led list. Abbas is essentially announcing that anyone who challenges him will be expelled from Fatah and deprived of money and employment.

Instead of holding Abbas to account for his repressive measures, the Biden administration seems to be headed toward financially supporting his totalitarian regime.

According to the internal memo, the US is planning to resume unconditional financial aid to the Palestinians in late March or early April. This means propping up Abbas and his associates ahead of the elections and allowing them to step up their campaign of intimidation against any candidate who dares to demand reforms and an end to rampant corruption.

The Biden administration is about to pump millions of dollars into Abbas’s coffers to help him cut off the emergence of new and young leaders and to help him maintain his authoritarian rule over the Palestinians. Once the bounty is paid, Abbas shows all signs of stepping up his repressive measures against his rivals and critics to ensure that he and his Fatah faction triumph in the elections.

The Biden administration is reportedly planning to “reset” US relations with the Palestinians.

An internal memo presented to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on March 1 states: “As we reset US relations with the Palestinians, the Palestinian body politic is at an inflection point as it moves towards its first elections in 15 years.”

The memo reintroduces some of the issues that the George W. Bush and the Barack Obama administrations pushed forward, such as the strengthening of Palestinian institutions, including civil society and media watchdogs.

The document, in addition, mentions the resumption of US financial aid to the Palestinians and “means to advance the prospects of a negotiated two-state solution.”

Sadly, while the Biden administration is talking about the “need to protect [Palestinian] civil society through the reduction of arrests of bloggers and dissidents,” the Palestinian leadership is evidently moving in precisely the opposite direction.

Instead of enhancing the role of civil society organizations, the Palestinian leadership is hampering their work by imposing severe restrictions on them.

Instead of boosting public freedoms and bringing democracy to its people, the Palestinian leadership is harshly punishing those who speak out against its policies.

While the Biden administration says it wants to strengthen Palestinian civil society organizations, the Palestinian leadership is working to tighten its grip on these organizations.

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CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

In Service of Progressive Values, US Military Has Become Detached From Reality

By on April 9th, 2021

https://www.theepochtimes.c
om/in-service-of-progressive-values-us-military-has-become-detached-from-reality_3762727.html

To mark International Women’s Day on March 8, U.S. President Biden honoured women in the U.S. military. “We’re making good progress designing body armour that fits women properly; tailoring combat uniforms for women; creating maternity flight suits; updating—updating requirements for their hairstyles,” he boasted.

Maternity flight suits? The idea provoked Fox News host Tucker Carlson to mirthful riffing on the absurdity of such a preoccupation in light of the escalating tension between America and China. This in turn produced apoplectic “revulsion” from Pentagon brass. Sgt. Maj. of the Army Michael Grinston tweeted that women “will dominate ANY future battlefield we’re called to fight on.”

Which gives you an idea of how detached from reality the present U.S. military has become in the service of progressive values. Not to mention how detached progressives in general are from the ineluctable truths of evolutionary psychology. In general, women are just not that into combat, and for good reasons related to the survival of our species. Of those relatively few who are, a nugatory handful are up to the physical rigours traditionally demanded of men. Because (I can’t believe I have to say this, but I must, because ideology is hostile to empiricism) the fittest men are bigger, stronger, and faster than the fittest women.

Ironically, science is entirely up to date on this issue owing to the fierce debate over transwomen in women’s sport. That males, even weakened by female hormones, hold inherent physical advantage over females is settled science. Yet here too you find ideologues insisting, against all evidence, that there is no proof of male advantage. (To be fair, I’ve yet to hear any gender ideologue proclaim, “transmen will dominate ANY competition in the Olympics men’s division.”)

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Pennsylvania Agrees to Remove Names of Dead Citizens From Voter Rolls: By Jack Phillips

By on April 9th, 2021

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/pennsylvania-forced-to-remove

The state of Pennsylvania agreed to remove the names of deceased people from voter rolls, an election-integrity watchdog group announced after reaching a settlement with state officials.

The lawsuit, (pdf) which was filed by the Public Interest Legal Foundation in November 2020, alleged that some 21,000 registrants who had died were still on the state’s voter rolls at the time of the 2020 presidential election. Pennsylvania agreed to compare its voter-registration database with the Social Security Death Index, and then direct all county election commissions to remove the names of dead registrants.

“This marks an important victory for the integrity of elections in Pennsylvania,” Public Interest Legal Foundation President and General Counsel J. Christian Adams said in a statement in announcing the court’s decision. “The Commonwealth’s failure to remove deceased registrants created a vast opportunity for voter fraud and abuse. It is important to not have dead voters active on the rolls for 5, 10, or even 20 years. This settlement fixes that.”

The lawsuit was filed after the Nov. 3 election and when then-candidate Joe Biden took a lead over President Donald Trump in Pennsylvania. Ultimately, the Pennsylvania Secretary of Commonwealth’s office certified the election.

The foundation said it found that 9,212 of the 21,000 voters had been dead for more than five years, and nearly 2,000 voters had been dead for more than 10 years.

The settlement stipulates that the “Department of State shall transmit to each county commission the names of the individuals registered in each respective county identified as deceased as a result of the comparison undertaken” with the “death data set received” from Electronic Registration Information Center that was then “compared to the full voter registration database … for the purpose of identifying persons who are ineligible to vote by reason of the registrant’s death.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Clarence Thomas Shows the Path Forward on Big Tech Thomas implied that Section 230 immunity for Big Tech firms may itself be constitutionally problematic and in conflict with the First Amendment. By Josh Hammer

By on April 9th, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/04/08/clarence-thomas-shows-the-path-forward-on-big-tech/

A realignment, as many have observed, is now unfolding in American politics. The Republican Party and its conservatism is now the home for the “Somewheres,” to borrow the term from David Goodhart’s 2017 book, The Road to Somewhere, which refers to the more traditionalist, hardscrabble patriots of the American heartland. The Democratic Party and its increasingly hard-left progressivism, by contrast, is the home for the “Anywheres”—those highly educated, mobile, “woke” elites comprising the bicoastal ruling class.

The Big Tech issue is the tip of the spear of the realignment. As has been made painfully obvious the last few years, with last October’s collusive Big Tech assault on the New York Post for its election-season reporting on Hunter Biden’s overseas travails serving as an eye-opening pinnacle, Big Tech is now the ruling class’s catspaw. These modern-day robber barons are willing and able to lend their censorious assistance to the ruling class’s ruthless entrenchment of its ideological and political hegemony. Big Tech, in short, is the leading private-sector appendage with which the Anywheres cow into submission and subjugate the Somewheres.

This emergent reality has caused no shortage of heart palpitations among some of the more “liberal” elements of the American conservative firmament. Conservatives, many were taught, stand for unadulterated laissez-faire and a staunch commitment to deregulating corporate America. What to do, then, when those unshackled big corporations turn around and come after us?

The answer, for many, has been to carefully reassess what exactly it is we stand for as conservatives—especially as it pertains to unaccountable, concentrated corporate titans who control the 21st-century equivalents of the old public square. To wit, there is nothing particularly “conservative” about a zealous, dogmatic refusal to countenance state actions that might better channel the content curation and moderation decisions of a behemoth such as Amazon—which has at least an 80 percent market share in digital books—toward the common good of the American polity. Ditto Google, which has a nearly 90 percent market share in online search.

But the historical bromance between the GOP and chamber of commerce-style corporatism has been an obstinate hindrance to reform. Big Tech-skeptical, pro-realignment conservatives have all too often had their legal and policy arguments on such issues as antitrust enforcement and Section 230 reform thrown back in their faces by doctrinaire, limited-government enthusiasts who insist that True Conservatism is synonymous with hands-off private-sector fundamentalism. “Build your own Google!” the corporatists and libertarians have scowled.

On Monday, the most important conservative lawyer in the nation, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, came out swinging on the side of the reformers.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

January 6 Is the New Russiagate Lie It will be a long time, if ever, before the truth about what happened—and didn’t happen—on January 6, 2021 is fully and fairly explained. By Julie Kelly

By on April 9th, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/04/08/january-6-is-the-new-russiagate-lie/

The Russiagate scandal, for lack of a better term, revealed to the general public the seamless compact between the Democratic Party, major news organizations, and powerful government agencies. 

Partisan operatives—be they ruthless DNC lawyers, paid spin masters, or former British spies—easily accessed the country’s influential decision makers to seed storylines targeting their political foes. Narratives were shaped with all the right terms, then dutifully recited by congressional leaders and media mouthpieces. Those on the other side taking incoming fire barely had a chance to see what was coming, let alone to respond with equal force.

Later, when the facts finally came out and the bad actors both behind the scenes and in front of the cameras were revealed as shameless frauds, no one was held accountable. And a sizable chunk of Americans continues to believe all the falsehoods because disowning them would vindicate people they unreasonably despise.

Which is why the overwhelming majority of Democrats still think Donald Trump was in cahoots with the Kremlin to steal the 2016 election.

The manufactured deception about the events of January 6 quickly is approaching Russiagate levels. The formula is familiar: Find a catchy phrase—in this case it’s “insurrection” instead of “collusion”—then fertilize the information ecosystem with the term and watch it grow like a weed.

Get political leaders including former presidents and top lawmakers of both parties to use the description, giving it immediate legitimacy. Issue dire warnings about the “threat to democracy” and “rule of law.” Identify the villain—Donald Trump, of course—and make solemn pledges to hunt down every perpetrator until justice is done.

Sympathy-inducing optics are helpful but not always necessary.

Critical cogs in this sort of performative outrage are government authorities who use their offices to convince the public the whole thing is on the square. This is precisely what happened with the now discredited trope that five people died as a result of the chaos on January 6. A brief report issued Wednesday by the office of the D.C. medical examiner confirmed only one person, Ashli Babbitt, was killed that day.

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Two Migrant Children Abandoned by Smugglers Found in California Wilderness near Border

By on April 9th, 2021

https://www.breitbart.com/border/2021/04/07/two-children-abandoned-by-smuggle

San Diego Sector Border Patrol agents found two small children after human smugglers abandoned them near Jacumba, California. The children were alone and crying when agents found them.

Agents patrolling the border near Jacumba observed a man and woman walking along the Mexican side of the border. The agents continued watching the couple who also had two small children with them, according to information obtained from San Diego Sector Border Patrol officials.

The agents observed the couple hoisting two children over large boulders in an area where the border wall ends. The side of the mountain abuts the large boulders.

Agents moved in and found the two children alone and crying. The agents determined the boy to be six years old and the girl to be five years old. The children could not communicate except to provide their names.

Agents transported the children to the station for care and processing. While examining the children, the agents found a handwritten note containing the mother’s name and phone number. The children also had the mother’s phone number and name written on their forearms with a marker.

Following the examination, the agents contacted the mother and obtained additional information about the children. When space becomes available, the children will be turned over to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services officials for temporary housing.

“It is unconscionable that anyone would abandon these small children and those responsible for smuggling events like this will be aggressively prosecuted,” San Diego Sector Chief Patrol Agent Aaron Heitke said in a written statement.  “Thankfully, our agents were able to quickly rescue these siblings.”

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BOOKS Comments turned off

A Crisis of Two Constitutions and Two Cultures Charles Kesler unveils the rise, decline, and recovery of American greatness. Daniel Greenfield

By on April 9th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/04/crisis-two-constitutions-and-two

“In thinking through the crisis of American national identity, we should keep in mind the opening words of the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence: ‘We hold these truths’. Usually, and correctly, we emphasize the truths that are held in common, but we must not forget the ‘We’ who holds them. The American creed is the keystone of American national identity: but it requires a culture to sustain it,” Charles Kesler writes in Crisis of the Two Constitutions.

That to some degree encapsulates the complex textual journey through a history of American political ideas to the fundamental cultural challenges captured in Crisis of the Two Constitutions.

Crisis of the Two Constitutions: The Rise, Decline, and Recovery of American Greatness, refers to what the respected Claremont McKenna College professor calls a struggle “between two rival cultures, two constitutions, two ways of life”. This linkage between culture and constitution, between how we live and our laws, is often tragically neglected in conservative thought.

But there’s no constitution without a culture. The “self-evident” truths of the Declaration of Independence and its natural rights are only natural and self-evident to a culture that has reached the same conclusions. When Americans revolted against British rule, their rhetoric of independence was neither foreign nor alien to the intellectual traditions of both sides.

The two nations may have been, as Churchill much later quipped, divided by a common language, but America now contains two nations that no longer share a common language of values. And even when speaking of the Constitution, they are really speaking of the two constitutions of the book’s title, the original Constitution and the “living constitution”.

The two constitutions also reflect two cultures, one traditional and the other forever changing, and two peoples, one centered in its origins, and the other pursuing an impossible future.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

University of Toronto’s Festering Anti-Semitism A grave moral failure of which administrators have yet to answer for. Richard L. Cravatts

By on April 9th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/04/university-torontos-festering-anti-semitism-richard-l-cravatts/

In a country where multiculturalism has a reverent following and criticism of protected minorities has essentially been criminalized as “hate speech,” it is more than ironic that on some Canadian campuses radical students have taken it upon themselves to target one group, Jewish students, with a hatred that is nominally forbidden for any others.

On March 4th, for example, yet another troubling event was scheduled to be held at the University of Toronto, this time a panel discussion tellingly entitled, “Liberated Students in a Colonised [sic] Campus: Reflections on the Palestinian Experience at the University of Toronto,” sadly co-sponsored by the University’s Institute of Islamic Studies, Department of History, and Centre for the Study of the United States. 

As B’nai Brith Canada noted in a condemnatory statement, the marketing materials for the event included a drawing of some individuals, one of which was Ghassan Kanafani, a murderous figure that, as B’nai Brith pointed out, is “a leading member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a designated terrorist entity in Canada. Kanafani forged connections between the PFLP and other far-left terrorist groups, including the Japanese Red Army . . . .”

“The University of Toronto has an antisemitism problem,” said Michael Mostyn, Chief Executive Officer of B’nai Brith Canada. “It is morally grotesque that the University is advertising an event using the sympathetic portrayal of a terrorist whose group has been responsible for so many murders, airplane hijackings and suicide bombings targeting innocent civilians.”

This is not the first time in recent history that B’nai Brith has felt compelled to critique the anti-Israel, often anti-Semitic goings-on at the University of Toronto, and the organization’s frustration is exacerbated by the fact that its prior pleadings for administrative actions to correct the toxic atmosphere at U of Toronto have largely gone unanswered.

In June of 2020, for example, B’nai Brith Canada’s League for Human Rights, together with two U of Toronto professors, Stuart Kamenetsky and Howard Tenenbaum, produced a lengthy and substantive report, “Confronting Antisemitism at the University of Toronto: A Path Forward,” written for the University’s president, Meric Gertler. That report, which fastidiously reviewed a long list of anti-Israel events and their effect on Jewish students, went largely ignored by the university’s administration, troubling in light of the many bigoted events cataloged in the report.

At this particular university, as one example, the University of Toronto Graduate Students’ Union (UTGSU) is the only student union in Canada with a committee dedicated to promoting the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, and in 2019 outrageously rejected Hillel’s request to recognize the “Kosher Forward” campaign to have kosher food offered on campus since, as the Union decided in their grotesquely anti-Semitic way, Hillel is pro-Israel and therefore kosher food should not be allowed. In doing so, the B’nai Brith report noted, “the UTGSU openly discriminated against Jewish student rights, despite its mandate to represent all university students, and faced no consequences for doing so.”

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Biden crawls back to the nuclear drawing board Ruthie Blum

By on April 9th, 2021

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/joe-biden-crawls-back-to-the-iran-nuclear-drawing-

 Addressing a session of the Iranian cabinet on Wednesday, President Hassan Rouhani lauded the return of the United States to the nuclear negotiating table. Referring to Tuesday’s summit in Vienna, coordinated by the European Union and attended by representatives from the US, Iran, Russia, China, France and Britain, Rouhani said, “Today, a united voice is being heard, as all parties to the nuclear deal have come to the conclusion that there is no solution better than the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and there is no path other than its full implementation.”

The point of his speech was not to express “unity” with Washington, however. After all, the American and Iranian delegates didn’t even sit in the same room during the first day of the talks, which are taking place in the very city where the JCPOA was signed in 2015.
No, the purpose of his pontification was to praise his mullah puppet-masters for once again bringing the “Great Satan” to its knees. No wonder Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) spokesman Behrouz Kamalvandi announced the same day that “in less than four months, we have produced 55 kg. [121 lbs.] of 20% enriched uranium… in around eight months, we can reach 120 kg. [264.5 lbs.]”

It’s typical of Iranian officials to boast about the might of the regime, particularly with a presidential election fast approaching amid severe domestic woes. The country’s internecine problems have been increasing steadily since 2018, when former US President Donald Trump withdrew from the JCPOA and instated a “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign against Tehran.

The outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, which hit the Islamic Republic especially hard, only served to exacerbate an already untenable situation, with more than 70% of workers unemployed and 80% of the population falling below the poverty line. Nor are those Iranians who can’t afford basic food staples buying the regime’s repeated excuse for their plight: that the US is to blame for “violating” the JCPOA and refusing to lift all sanctions.

They’re also fed up with the leadership’s simultaneous bragging about its massively expensive military build-up. On March 15, for example, the government released footage of an underground Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps base, which it called a “missile city,” equipped with advanced weaponry and electronic-warfare technology.

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