AMIL IMANI: IRAN IS RIPE FOR REGIME CHANGE

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/07/iran_is_ripe_for_regime_change.html

It is hard to believe that four decades has passed since the Islamic Revolution was forced upon the Iranian people and their freedom disappeared. Under the rule of these adherents of death, everything in Iran is deteriorating while Iran’s religious government is strong and has a great deal of control on everything. Too much control without independent checks and balances encourages corruption, nepotism and inefficiencies. As a result, the bulk of the nation’s wealth flows to a few select individuals.

This is a wake-up call for Iran’s authorities and the international community. Although denied by many through the past four decades, Iran is literally a political, social and economic time bomb closing in on a colossal detonation.

While Iran continues to develop its missile program that is sharply criticized by the United States and Israel, they simultaneously seek to suppress people’s desire to keep a share of the country’s wealth. Prosecution and imprisonment of innocent people and systematic and illegal abuse of detainees, along with hundreds of gruesome acts, have also been reported.

Iranians have witnessed several uprisings, but they have become numb and unable to function and conduct a normal life. The battle against the Islamic regime remains arduous and long. The mullahs will not give up power easily, even if that means the complete destruction of Iran.

Pressure To Break Up Facebook Builds The conservative-hating social media giant may soon get its comeuppance. Matthew Vadum

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270691/pressure-break-facebook-builds-matthew-vadum

America’s largest communications union, the 700,000-member Communications Workers of America (CWA), has joined an activist coalition called Freedom from Facebook that seeks to break up the monopolistic social media giant.

So far the groups supporting the Freedom From Facebook coalition are predominantly left-wing. Among them are MoveOn.org and Public Citizen. Facebook has about 2 billion users worldwide.

But the ideological makeup of the FFF coalition could change in a heartbeat if Facebook continues down its intolerant, authoritarian path. That’s because conservatives have long been abused by Facebook and this ill treatment has only intensified since the election of President Donald Trump. Conservatives are getting wise to being used and taken advantage of and they don’t like it.

The Left claims to have only the purest motives for wanting to take action against Facebook.

“We should all be deeply concerned by Facebook’s power over our lives and democracy,” said Brian Thorn of CWA, the newest member of the Freedom From Facebook coalition.

Facebook’s workers are not represented by CWA, but the union does represent more than 100,000 employees at AT&T Inc. Facebook’s contracted shuttle drivers and cafeteria workers reportedly belong to labor unions.

A Champion of Constitutional Safeguards Brett Kavanaugh has a fine record as a judge. Senate Democrats will give him their worst anyway. By David B. Rivkin Jr. and Andrew M. Grossman

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-champion-of-constitutional-safeguards-1531189515

Days before President Trump announced his choice of Judge Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court, Senate Democrats had vowed to oppose any nominee. Backed by an activist-fueled propaganda machine, they now will unleash relentless personal attacks—on Judge Kavanaugh’s Catholic faith, his “elitist” Yale degrees, his service in the George W. Bush administration.

As with the attacks last year on Justice Neil Gorsuch, they should be unavailing. Over Judge Kavanaugh’s 12 years on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, he has developed an impressive record as a legal thinker and a champion of the Constitution’s structural safeguards against overweening government.

Typical is a 2008 dissent in which Judge Kavanaugh concluded that the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board was unconstitutionally structured because it improperly insulated the agency from political accountability. The opinion was a tour de force of historical exposition and originalist methodology—that is, interpreting the Constitution’s text as it was originally understood. The Supreme Court ultimately agreed, adopting the reasoning of Judge Kavanaugh’s dissent.

Yet he is equally wary of unbridled executive authority, as a 2013 case shows. When the Nuclear Regulatory Commission declined to proceed with licensing the proposed waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nev., which the agency appeared to oppose on policy grounds, he wrote: “The President may not decline to follow a statutory mandate or prohibition simply because of policy objections.”

In articles and speeches as well as formal opinions, Judge Kavanaugh has been a leading critic of Chevron deference, the courts’ practice of giving agencies free rein to interpret their own statutory authority. In a 2016 law-review article, he wrote that Chevron encourages the executive branch “to be extremely aggressive in seeking to squeeze its policy goals into ill-fitting statutory authorizations and restraints,” cutting Congress out of the picture. “The American rule of law, as I see it, depends on neutral, impartial judges who say what the law is.”CONTINUE AT SITE

The UN Fraudulently Addresses “Extreme Poverty” in the United States by Francis Menton

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12629/un-poverty-united-states

You may be aware that the UN actually has an official definition of “extreme poverty,” which is “liv[ing]… on less than $1.90 per person per day.” $1.90 per day would come to just under $700 per year.

An April 2018 study by John Early for the Cato Institute found that counting the $1.2 trillion of annual redistributions toward the income of the recipients — a sum often misleadingly excluded from poverty statistics — reduces the official poverty level in the U.S. from 12.7% all the way down to about 2%. And the remaining 2% would be people who for some reason had not sought out the benefits.

In other words, the U.S. distributes to its low-income residents resources beyond their income equal to an additional 40 times per person the amount officially deemed by the UN to constitute “extreme poverty.”

Is the United Nations a group of people of good faith, joining together in the effort to help bring peace and justice and economic development to the world? Or is it a group of haters of freedom and capitalism engaged primarily in spewing ignorance, malice or both toward the United States? For a clue, you might take a look at the “Report of the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights on his mission to the United States of America,” recently issued by the UN’s so-called Human Rights Council.

Yes, this is the same Human Rights Council from which the U.S. just announced its withdrawal. It is also the same Human Rights Council that includes among its members China, Cuba, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela — with ambassadors who think that the best use of their time and resources is to criticize the economic and human rights record of the U.S.

Watching weather waves, missing climate tides By Viv Forbes

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/07/watching_weather_waves_missing_climate_tides.html

The climate alarm media, the bureaucracy, and the Green Energy industry follow an agenda served by inflating any short-term weather event into a climate calamity. They should take a long-term view.

Earth’s climate is never still – it is always changing, with long-term trends, medium-term reversals, and minor oscillations. Humanity is best served by those who use good science to study geology, astronomy, and climate history searching for clues to climate drivers and the underlying natural cycles and trends hidden in short-term weather fluctuations.

For the last 10,000 years Earth has basked in the Holocene Interglacial, which is the latest of many warm cycles within the Pleistocene Ice Age. There are small warm and cool cycles within the Holocene. Today we enjoy the Modern Warm Cycle (which started about calendar 1900), following the Little Ice Age, which bottomed in about 1750.

What does the future hold? The past gives clues to the future.

In every warm era, glaciers retreat, ice sheets melt, and sea levels rise. Coastal land, ports, and settlements are lost under the rising seas, but tundra, grasslands, and forests expand. Some corals manage to grow as fast as the seas rise, but others are drowned in deep water. The warmth drives more carbon dioxide from the seas, plants thrive, deserts shrink, and humans are well fed.

ELECTIONS ARE COMING: America Needs Leaders like Martha McSally By Elise Cooper

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/07/america_needs_leaders_like_martha_mcsally.html

“Drain the Swamp” is the rallying cry of Americans who want leaders, not politicians. This was the case for many World War II veterans who chose to serve their nation in a different capacity. It is no different today with Congresswoman Martha McSally (R-AZ), a representative of those veterans who care more about this country than their own political ambitions.

McSally has an impeccable resume. As a colonel in the Air Force she was part of the team that helped plan and execute U.S. air operations over Afghanistan shortly after 9/11. In January 1995, she became the first woman in U.S. history to fly a combat aircraft into enemy territory, in order to help enforce the United Nations’ “no-fly zone.” In July 2004, McSally took command of the 354th Fighter Squadron, becoming the first woman in U.S. history to command a combat aviation unit. A requirement that American military women wear veils while stationed in Saudi Arabia led her to stand up for American principles with a lawsuit in early 2002. This eventually led Congress to pass a bill ending the practice. She is now serving her second term after first being elected to Congress (R-AZ 8th district) in 2014. American Thinker had the privilege of interviewing her as she makes a run for Arizona’s open Senate seat.

Less than 1% of the total population serves in the military today. Yet, many post-9/11 veterans are stepping up to the plate to serve in Congress. McSally believes, “Being an elected official is a continuation of my service. Those who served in the military understand that our culture is not to walk away from a problem, but to do something about it. A lot of veterans are responding to this ‘call to duty.’ I am willing to work with those on the other side of the aisle, even the ones who I do not agree with. I think it is in a veteran’s DNA to be mission oriented, which means to see if there are any Venn Diagrams pieces that we can agree upon and work together.”

Nunes Targets the Real Collusion: The Media and DOJ By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2018/07/10/nunes-targets-the-real

Congress is finally closing in on the biggest perpetrator of the Trump-Russia election collusion hoax: the American news media.

After taking an eight-year break from its vital role as the executive branch’s watchdog, the media have been on a frenzied, anti-Trump bender since 2016. Every conspiracy theory, every rumor, every dubious source has been chased down and breathlessly covered by once-credible news organizations. (This shameful interview on CNN with a drunken former Trump campaign aide could be a new low in journalism.)

Despite sanctimonious protestations that the media are not—as President Trump suggests—the “enemy of the people,” their collective conduct before and during his presidency has been disgraceful and borderline subversive. The elite press is complicit in one of the greatest political scandals of all-time: How the Obama administration concocted the tale that Donald Trump’s campaign was working with the Russian government to influence the 2016 presidential election.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) now is asking his congressional colleagues to compel open testimony from several people suspected of working as conduits between the Justice Department and the media to facilitate the Trump-Russia narrative.

Kavanaugh Gets the Call: Get Ready for the Smear By Lloyd Billingsley

https://amgreatness.com
Twelve days ago, Justice Anthony Kennedy stepped down and Monday night the pick to replace him was in. President Trump named D.C. Appeals Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh, 53, for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. The president sought a candidate who would “do what the law requires” and “apply the Constitution as written.”

That is also what Trump supporters are looking for, and why Democrats opposed Trump’s whole list. For Democrats, the Supreme Court is a robed politburo that gives them what they fail to win through the electoral process. Even before the announcement of Kavanaugh, who clerked for Anthony Kennedy, they were turning up the volume to eleven. The battle to confirm Kavanaugh is certain to be fierce, so all age groups, Millennials in particular, might profit from a review of the Democrats’ grand inquisitors of the past.

Ohio Democrat Senator Howard Metzenbaum, a veteran of Communist Party fronts such as the National Lawyers Guild, took the lead against black conservative Clarence Thomas in 1991. Metzenbaum thought he was intellectually superior to the Bush nominee, but Thomas, a Yale man like Kavanaugh, made him look a fool. It was likely Metzenbaum who leaked Anita Hill’s fake story, and the Democrat pushed hard on the sexual harassment allegations.

When black businessman John Doggett testified in favor of Thomas, Metzenbaum charged that Doggett was also guilty of sexual harassment. White liberal Joe Biden also attacked on that front.

“From my standpoint as a black American,” Thomas said, “as far as I’m concerned, it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you. You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S. Senate, rather than hung from a tree.”

France’s Latest Surrender to Jihad New anti-terrorist wall around iconic Eiffel Tower. New anti-terrorist wall around iconic Eiffel Tower. Stephen Brown

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270672/frances-latest-surrender-jihad-stephen-brown

It is being called “the biggest aquarium in the world.”

Perhaps the best known symbol of France to the world, the Eiffel Tower, will open this month with a new look that leaves some native French very disgruntled.

New walls of “extra clear”, bullet-proof glass, standing 10 ft. high and 2.5 inches thick, will now enclose Paris’s affectionately named ‘Lady of Iron’ on its north and south sides. Metallic walls of curved prongs of equivalent height will encase the other two sides, through which one will have to pass to access the Tower after submitting to security controls.

In addition, 420 blocks are being placed around the Tower to prevent jihadist vehicular attacks like those that occurred in Nice, Barcelona and Berlin. All of which has caused observers to complain the Tower will lose its aesthetic look, resembling now a “fortress.”

Under construction since last fall at a cost of about 40 million dollars, many French believe these latest security measures not only disfigure the venerable ‘Lady’, but represent, above all, the French political class’s impotence in face of the jihadist threat.

“Jihad Allowance”: Views of Work in the Middle East by Nonie Darwish

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12340/jihad-allowance-work-ethic

After the ruling class, the highest respect and wealth is given to the jihadist class or military leadership class. Otherwise, the jihadist or military class might turn against the leadership and Islamic system itself. That is one reason why the highest pensions in most Muslim countries, as in Gaza and the West Bank, go to widows, parents and children of jihadists and military retirees.

“We [the Muslim world], don’t work and if we work, we don’t do it professionally. We do not produce . . . and we import everything from the needle to missiles… Muhammad ordered us to excel in everything ‘if you kill, do it properly, and if you slaughter, do it properly…’ How come the Zionist gang has managed to be superior to us? They have become superior through knowledge and technology and work ethics.” — Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Chairman of the International Union of Muslim Scholars.

Today, as Muslims are escaping their vast, poverty-stricken Islamic territories in 54 Islamic nations for the greener lands of Europe and America, Westerners seem to think they are rescuing refugees. Many times they are, but other times this is just the latest version of a story that has been repeating itself for 1,400 years.

Recently, the President of Iran, Hassan Rouhani, dismissed President Trump as just a “tradesman” who lacked the qualifications to handle political and international affairs. At face value, the criticism might sound similar to that of an opposition party alleging that Trump lacks political experience. Coming from an Islamic leader, however, it reflects a much deeper meaning: on how differently the Islamic culture views the work ethic and the means of acquiring wealth.