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In Iran: The Past is a Foreign Country by Amir Taheri

Posted By on July 30th, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12772/iran-international-agreements

Ayatollah Khomeini and his successors branded all accords that Iran signed under the Shah as “a Zionist conspiracy against Islam.” Now they are trying to eat humble pie in the hope of regaining some of the privileges Iran lost when they seized power.

“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” This is how English writer L.P. Hartley, in his novel The Go-Between, comments on the ambiguity of our relations with a past that fascinates and confuses us. I was reminded of Hartley’s enigmatic phrase last week as I skimmed through a series of news stories indicating the discovery by the Khomeinist establishment in Tehran of Iran’s past.

There was Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani advising US President Donald Trump not to ignore Iran’s “7,000-year old civilization” in stark contradiction to Ayatollah Khomeini’s claim that the whole of Iranian history before his seizure of power should be classified as “jahiliyah” (darkness).

Then there were the so-called “reformist Khomeinists” who took US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to task for expressing support for what is reported as a national uprising in Iran. They invited Pompeo to remember Mohammad Mosaddeq, the man who served as Prime Minister of Iran in the early 1950s and, so his supporters believe, was overthrown in a putsch backed by the United States. “Mussadeq was the hero of Iranian national uprising,” one Khomeinist apologist commented. He forgot that according to the propaganda of the regime he has served for almost four decades, Mussadeq was “a traitor and enemy of Islam” and that he had become a non-person in the Islamic Republic.

You may also remember the recent brouhaha made about the discovery of mortal remains reportedly belonging to a mummy of Reza Shah the Great. According to the governor of Rey, the place where the remains were discovered, the mummy was quickly reburied “with full respect” on orders from Iran’s Supreme Guide, Ali Khamenei. What a contrast with the campaign by Ayatollah Sadeq Giwi (alias Khalkhali), one of Khomeini’s key associates, to have the Pahlavi king’s mummy burned in public.

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The Switch That Never Happened: How the South Really Went GOP By Dinesh D’Souza

Posted By on July 30th, 2018

https://amgreatness.com/2018/07/29/the-switch-that-never-

This article is adapted from Dinesh D’Souza’s new book Death of a Nation, out July 31 from St. Martin’s Press. His movie of the same title opens nationwide on Friday, August 3.

An interesting phenomenon in politics is the flip flop. What would cause a politician who takes a stand on an issue to reverse himself and take precisely the opposite stand on the same issue? Even more interesting is the about face or volte face. The volte face goes beyond the flip flop because it represents a total and usually lasting shift of course, as when Reagan abandoned the Democratic Party and became a Republican.

More interesting even than the volte face is when a whole group or party makes this shift. Perhaps the most dramatic example in our lifetime is when the Soviet Communist Party in 1991 abolished itself. It’s one thing for an individual to undergo a wrenching conversion but what would cause a whole party to reverse itself in that way? Could it be a transformation of the collective conscience, or a new perception of group interests, or what?

Our exploration of the subject is deepened by a new possibility introduced by Winston Churchill, who in one of his essays takes up the subject of consistency in politics. Himself accused on more than one occasion of reversing himself and taking inconsistent positions on issues, Churchill defends himself by invoking the apparent volte face, the change of tactics that is not a change of goals or values.

Churchill writes, “A statesman in contact with the moving current of events and anxious to keep the ship on an even keel and steer a steady course may lean all his weight now on one side and now on the other. His arguments in each case, when contrasted, can be shown to be not only very different in character but contradictory in spirit and opposite in direction. Yet his object will throughout have remained the same . . . We cannot call this inconsistency. In fact, it can be claimed to be the truest consistency. The only way a man can remain consistent amid changing circumstances is to change with them while preserving the same dominating purpose.”

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Springtime for Snowflakes A professor’s memoir of the closing of the American mind. Mark Tapson

Posted By on July 30th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270828/springtime-snowflakes-mark-tapson

In the fall of 2016, New York University professor Michael Rectenwald created an anonymous Twitter account to critique the alarming spread across campuses of an “anti-education and anti-intellectual” social justice ideology. Before long he was outed as the man behind the controversial @antipcnyuprof account, and despite being a leftist himself, became the target of shunning and harassment from his colleagues and the NYU administration. But instead of caving in to the campus totalitarians as so many academics do, Rectenwald declared himself done with the Left, and though still not a conservative, began appearing often in right-wing media to defend free speech and academic freedom, and to expose the “bilious animosity and unrestrained cruelty” he endured from his former compatriots.

I previously interviewed Prof. Rectenwald for FrontPage Mag here back in January. At the close of that interview he mentioned a book he was working on about the experience, and it is now available in paperback and on Kindle: Springtime for Snowflakes: Social Justice and its Postmodern Parentage. Short but dense with insights about postmodern theory, social justice ideology, and academic conformity, the book is a must-read for understanding the intellectual collapse of the American university under the weight of a totalitarian ideology.

Rectenwald begins the book by relating his experience of “becoming deplorable” and being pushed toward political apostasy, which forced him to reexamine the herd with which he had formerly run. “I didn’t leave the left,” he writes. “The left left me” – echoing Ronald Reagan’s famous declaration, “I didn’t leave the Democratic party. The Democratic Party left me.” “In trying to correct me,” Rectenwald writes about his fellow academics, “they did indeed correct me – but not as they’d hoped. They corrected my vision by forcibly dislodging the scales of their ideology from my eyes.” He realized that the “institutions of North American higher education have taken a hairpin turn, and a wrong turn at that. They have surrendered moral and political authority to some of the most virulent, self-righteous, and authoritarian activists among the contemporary left.”

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Obama Blasts “Strongman Politics”— While Hyping Man Who Worshiped Castro The totalitarians Nelson Mandela celebrated and admired. Humberto Fontova

Posted By on July 30th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270853/obama-blasts-strongman-politics%E2%80%94-while-hyping-man-humberto-fontova

True to form, Obama whined over the rise of “strongman politics” and of “the utter loss of shame among political leaders who repeatedly lied” during a recent tribute to the late Nelson Mandela in yet another performance of his blame America — and Trump especially — first for the world’s supposed ills.

But speaking of “strongmen” and of “liars,” let’s survey some of the murderous dictators who inspired Nelson Mandela’s most quotable nuggets:

“Che Guevara is an inspiration for every human being who loves freedom.”

“The cause of communism is the greatest cause in the history of mankind!”

“There’s one place where Fidel Castro stands out head and shoulders above the rest – that is in his love for human rights and liberty!”

Now, just for fun, let’s review some observations by the man who so “inspired” Nelson Mandela:

“The Negro is indolent and spends his money on frivolities and drink, the European is forward-looking, organized and intelligent…The Negro has maintained his racial purity by his well known habit of avoiding baths.” (Che Guevara.)

“Mexicans are mostly a rabble of illiterate Indians.” (Che Guevara)

Just for fun, let’s now review some observations by the man who so inspired Barack Obama:

“If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America! They don’t care for human beings! (Nelson Mandela, 2003.)

The man Nelson Mandela hugs in this clip (Fidel Castro) jailed and tortured political prisoners at over TEN TIMES the rate as South Africa’s apartheid regime.

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Anti-Semitism in Hitler’s Birthplace and the College Campus How Europe’s Jew-hate problem was reborn on American campuses. Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on July 30th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270856/anti-semitism-hitlers-birthplace-and-college-daniel-greenfield

Burkay, an unemployed Muslim Turk, wearing a stained white “Miami Beach” shirt attacked three Jewish people in Vienna, Austria.

It was just another day in a city where Muslim terrorists had once thrown grenades into a synagogue during a Bar Mitzvah killing a woman who threw herself onto the grenade to save the children. The attack had taken place with the complicity of a government notorious for its friendliness to terrorism.

Last year, Austria had 503 anti-Semitic incidents.

That’s impressive considering that the country only has around 9,000 Jews. There has been 1 anti-Semitic incident to every 18 Jews in Austria.

That same year, Germany had 1,453 anti-Semitic incidents to approximately 100,000 Jews.

In Bonn, Germany, a Jewish professor from Baltimore was assaulted by a Muslim yelling, “No Jew in Germany!” When the police arrived, they assaulted the professor. There was a protest march. A videotaped attack by a Syrian Muslim refugee in Berlin had led to another protest march and a slap on the wrist for the assailant. 10 Syrians attacked a man wearing a Star of David while screaming anti-Semitic slurs. A Jewish teen was assaulted in a Berlin train station. “I’ll slit your throat, you f***ing Jew.”

One statistical survey listed the number of anti-Semitic incidents in Germany rising by 60% in 2017.

In the UK, there were 1,382 incidents to 263,346 Jews. In Italy, there were 109 incidents to some 28,000 Jews. In the Netherlands, there were 113 incidents to 29,900 Jews.

Austria’s extreme proportion of anti-Semitic incidents to Jews is not so much an outlier as a signifier. The number of anti-Semitic incidents can have an inverse relationship to the Jewish population of a country.

Or of an area in the country.

While the vast majority of British Jews live in Greater London, there were 773 anti-Semitic incidents in London and 261 incidents in Manchester which is home to only 30,000 Jews. Manchester has a proportionately larger Muslim population and a smaller Jewish one. While a smaller Jewish population may make anti-Semitic Islamic attacks more challenging, it can also leave Jews more vulnerable.

These statistics suggest that the combination of a high Muslim population and a small Jewish population are the highest risk factors for anti-Semitic attacks. European countries like France and the UK that have both a large Jewish and large Muslim population may have a lower proportion of overall incidents, but the Jewish population will also experience more personally damaging violent anti-Semitic attacks.

Violent anti-Semitic attacks in France rose by 28% to 92 in 2017. British Jews saw a 25% rise in violent anti-Semitic attacks from 77 to 97. Meanwhile overall incidents in the UK had only increased by 3%.

A larger Jewish population creates more opportunities for violent attacks while smaller Jewish populations require the attackers to operate on the internet or limit themselves to vandalism.

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Obama’s Payout To Terror Financiers The Radical-in-Chief’s enabling of the enemy is exposed once again. Joseph Klein

Posted By on July 30th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/270887/obamas-payout-terror-financiers-joseph-klein

Islamic terrorists, whether affiliated with al Qaeda or the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, Iran, are enemies of the United States. They have American blood on their hands. The Obama administration aided and abetted these enemies by knowingly funding the terrorists and allowing them to evade the enforcement of U.S. law against them. As Andrew McCarthy once wrote, Obama was an “anti-anti-terrorist.”

For example, as the National Review has just reported, based on a discovery by the Middle East Forum, the Obama administration decided that an al Qaeda affiliate in Sudan was a worthy recipient of U.S. taxpayer funds to the tune of $200,000. The beneficiary of the Obama administration’s largesse, the Islamic Relief Agency (ISRA), also known as the Islamic African Relief Agency (IARA), had been designated by the U.S. Treasury as a terrorist-financing organization a decade earlier. The Treasury Department’s designation was based on ISRA’s links to Osama bin Laden and his terrorist organization, financial support for the Taliban, and fundraising in Western Europe to help finance Hamas suicide bombings.

Not only did the Obama administration disregard the U.S. Treasury Department designation. It overlooked the fact that, as set out in a July 28, 2010 press release issued by USAID (the U.S. Agency for International Development), the executive director of the Islamic American Relief Agency, the U.S. branch office of ISRA, pleaded guilty to illegally transferring funds raised in the United States as purported charitable contributions to Iraq. He had “the assistance of a Sudanese man living in Jordan, who was subsequently identified by the U.S. Treasury Department as a specially designated global terrorist.” Nevertheless, four years later, USAID itself awarded a grant of $723,405 to a charity known as World Vision Inc. for the purported purpose of providing humanitarian relief in Sudan, out of which $200,000 was provided to ISRA as a sub-grantee. The money was directed “to help provide humanitarian aid, including emergency food, water, sanitation, and hygiene services, to displaced people affected by the ongoing conflict in Sudan,” according to a USAID official.

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Fake News and Censorship (British Edition) By Andrew Stuttaford

Posted By on July 30th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/fake-news-and-censorship-british-edition/

To return yet again to the topic of how abusing the idea of ‘fake news’ could represent an ideal opportunity for censors on the make, here’s the BBC discussing a report by the British Parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Committee (that such a committee even exists is, incidentally, yet more depressing evidence of the reach of the modern state). The Committee’s report was prompted by Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal, but, however bad that mess may have been, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the cure may be worse than the disease.

BBC:

The committee highlights the “relentless targeting of hyper-partisan views, which play to the fears and prejudices of people, in order to influence their voting plans”.

And who decides which views are ‘hyper-partisan’ and which are merely the expression of sweet reason?

As to trying to influence people’s voting plans by appealing to their “fears and prejudices”, that’s something that politicians of all stripes–from pillars of the establishment to the wildest of the wild men–have been doing for centuries. Something tells me that some ‘appeals’ will be more equal than others.

Back to the BBC:

Companies such as Facebook and YouTube have repeatedly said they are just a “platform”, rather than a “publisher”. They have argued that they are not responsible for the content people post on their services.

The committee’s report is expected to say social media companies “cannot hide behind” this claim.

A “new category of tech company” which is something in between a platform or publisher should be created, the committee will suggest. This should establish “clear legal liability for the tech companies to act against harmful and illegal content on their platforms”.

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Hawaii Republicans, Once Near Extinction, Prepare a Comeback By John Fund

Posted By on July 30th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/07/hawaii-republican-party-prepares-comeback/

One-party rule has wreaked havoc in the state, and voters might turn to a new crop of Republicans.

A visit to the semiannual meetings of the national committees of the two major parties makes you realize that even in the polarizing Age of Trump, a midterm election isn’t one national election but 50 state ones. At last month’s Republican National Committee meeting in Austin, Texas, the mood ranged from optimistic to ready to ready for a funeral

On the one hand there was Maryland, where despite the fact that Donald Trump won only 34 percent in 2016, GOP governor Larry Hogan has a 68 percent approval rating. But in neighboring Pennsylvania, which Trump won against all expectations, Democratic governor Tom Wolf is favored for reelection, and a court-ordered redistricting map puts up to five GOP House seats at risk.

Then there is Hawaii. Local Republicans think they’ve hit rock bottom and begun to recover.

When Hawaii became a state in 1959 along with Alaska, it was the more Republican of the two. But gradually their positions reversed. As late as 1976, Hawaii still had a Republican U.S. senator, and Jimmy Carter won the state that year with only 50.59 percent of the vote.

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Far-Left Candidates Pushing the Democrats Further Away from Israel

Posted By on July 30th, 2018

https://unitedwithisrael.org/far-left-candidates-pushing-democrats-further-away-from-israel/?

Much like the 2016 presidential election, the 2018 midterm congressional elections are shaping up to be one of the most contentious in recent memory. Democrats are attempting to retake both houses of Congress in a bid to serve as a check on US President Donald Trump and to rectify their embarrassing defeat in 2016. Yet for the American Jewish and pro-Israel community, the upcoming midterms and their results may also have a profound effect on the future of bipartisan support for Israel.

Many worry that the leftward shift among Democrats in their opposition to Trump during this election season may bring the party closer towards the anti-Israel views found on the party’s far-left, as exemplified by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

One of the biggest surprises so far in the primary season was the upset victory by Democratic Socialist candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over incumbent New York City Democratic Rep. Joe Crowley in a party primary in June.

Shortly after her surprising primary victory, Ocasio-Cortez was criticized for a tweet that said Israel was committing a “massacre” in Gaza, in reference to the deaths of more than 60 Palestinian rioters massed along the Israel-Gaza on May 14, most of whom were later acknowledged to be members of Hamas.

In July, Ocasio-Cortez again drew criticism in an interview with PBS’s “Firing Line” when she said, “I also think that what people are starting to see—at least in the occupation of Palestine—is just an increasing crisis of humanitarian condition and that to me is just where I tend to come from on this issue.”

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The GOP’s Clean Bills of Health Savings Modest improvements in HSAs deserve votes in the Senate.

Posted By on July 30th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-gops-clean-bills-of-health-savings-1532895810

The Senate plans to stay in Washington for August this year, and here’s an idea to keep busy: Pass some House health-care reforms that are modest improvements even Democrats should like.

The House last week passed a set of bills that included changes in Health Savings Accounts, or HSAs, which are tax preferred accounts that allow individuals to save for future medical expenses. More than 20 million people have HSAs, which Congress created in 2003, but arbitrary restrictions cramp enrollment.

For one, a person has to be on a plan with a high deductible. A plan can’t cover certain services below the deductible like telemedicine or diabetic test strips, which can save costs over time. HSA money also can’t buy over-the-counter medicine, which is often cheaper than prescription drugs.

HSAs tend to be concentrated in the employer-sponsored or large group market, where insurance is likely to be available and comprehensive. But in the individual market less than 30% of ObamaCare plans are compatible with a health-savings account, according to an analysis from health consultant Roy Ramthun. The rest have deductibles too low (13.7%) or out-of-pocket maximums too high (56.6%) to comport with restrictions.