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February 2022

Biden Admin and EU Silent on Iran’s Rising Persecution of Religious Minorities by Majid Rafizadeh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18187/iran-persecution-religious-minorities

In 2021, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi signed two alarming amendments to Articles 499 and 500 of its Penal Code, making it easier for the authorities to crack down on religious minorities. The amendments impose prison sentences and fines on whoever insults “divine religions or Islamic schools of thought recognized under the Constitutions with the intent to cause violence or tensions in the society,” as well on whoever conducts “any deviant educational or proselytizing activity that contradicts or interferes with the sacred law of Islam.”

Persecution of Christians in Iran has especially been on the rise. While Iranian leaders celebrate and publicize those who convert to Islam, those who convert to Christianity are severely punished.

Another religious minority that faces persecution in Iran is the Baha’i faith… [Others] include Zoroastrians, Sufi Muslims, Sunni Muslims and Yarsanis.

Meanwhile, the European powers are not only failing to hold the Iranian regime accountable, they are busy appeasing the ruling mullahs of Iran and doing business with them.

Since the Biden administration lifted the “maximum pressure” imposed by the previous administration, the ruling mullahs have only escalated their persecution of religious minorities. Instead of incessantly lecturing the world on human rights, the EU and the Biden administration would sound more credible if they would stop appeasing the human rights catastrophe that Iran’s regime has become, and hold the ruling mullahs accountable.

While turning a blind eye to the Iranian regime’s increasing persecution of religious minorities, the Biden administration and the European Union are focusing only on lifting the sanctions against the Islamic Republic. The move will help to revive the disastrous nuclear deal that will empower the ruling mullahs to race toward nuclear weapons breakout; strengthen Iran’s internal militia, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and expand the country’s proxy militias abroad: the Houthis in Yemen, and the designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. That does not even include any plans Iran might have to expand its operations, which threaten America, in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua.

The Capitol Police have been fully weaponized against Republicans By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/02/the_capitol_police_have_been_fully_weaponized_against_republicans.html

If you visited D.C. in the days before COVID and January 6 madness, and wandered around (or got permission to go into) the Capitol, you saw Capitol police officers on duty. They were doing pretty much what all police officers do, which is to stand guard at vulnerable spots, making sure no one did anything naughty (e.g., graffiti) or downright dangerous (e.g., gun or knife attacks, etc.). However, beginning with January 6, 2021, it became apparent that Nancy Pelosi’s Capitol police officers have a different mandate: Defend the Democrat party hold on power.

On January 6, the Capitol police failed to protect the Capitol. We know this because Capitol police chief Steven Sund, after being fired on January 7, 2021, explained that he requested backup from the National Guard, which never arrived, and that his people just weren’t ready. Trump stated that he requested that 10,000 National Guard troops be deployed to the Capitol before January 6 to provide protection for his rally. According to him, congressional leaders said no. What really happened remains a mystery despite the “investigation” by the January 6 Committee. You’d think they would have figured that one out.

Also bizarrely, on January 6, someone (the Capitol police?) opened from the inside the Capitol’s 20,000-pound doors, which are secured by powerful magnetic locks. We then saw footage of the same Capitol police graciously welcoming people inside, which led many innocents to believe that they had the perfect right to be inside the People’s House.

For those of us (like me), who think that January 6 was an entrapment scheme, it would appear that the Capitol police were part of the plan.

The ugly nature of progressive race views By Mark R. Zuccolo

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/02/the_ugly_nature_of_progressive_race_views.html

We’re entering a new era of discrimination, dressed up in better sounding terms. It must not become the new normal.

When it comes to race, we are witnessing an ugly return to segregation, unequal treatment, and forced outcomes. A re-examination of our concept of race is becoming overdue.

Race is not just the coloration of one’s skin, as it may widely vary in hue and intensity and over time in the same group of individuals. For example, not all Caucasians are fair-skinned, and not all Africans are black. Generally, we ascribe to a geographic location (original or changed by migration) a racial characteristic, whereby Europe and parts of America are majority “white,” Africa is “black,” Asia is “yellow,” etc. These are mere historical shorthand words that are visual in origin and fail to convey the true meaning of race. They are what the human eye may see or have seen, and they are incomplete descriptions, at best. Indeed, these “colorations” have become stereotypes and have been further compromised by the introduction of slur words equivalent to each race group.

So what is race and how can we best go beyond our simple awareness of it, understand it more thoroughly, and make good use of that understanding in interpersonal relationships?

18 Fundraisers Aiding Riots, Crime, Abortion, And Genital Mutilation That GoFundMe Didn’t Shut Down By: Elle Reynolds

https://thefederalist.com/2022/02/08/18-fundraisers-aiding-riots-crime-abortion-and-genital-mutilation-that-gofundme-didnt-shut-down/\

For all the company’s efforts to shut down freedom-minded Canadians, GoFundMe has done plenty to help unsavory fundraising campaigns on the left.

While GoFundMe races to confiscate millions of dollars from Canadians protesting the country’s coercive Covid response, the left-wing fundraising site has proven itself very willing to help raise funds for criminal riots, abortions, and genital mutilation.

“We now have evidence from law enforcement that the previously peaceful demonstration has become an occupation, with police reports of violence and other unlawful activity,” GoFundMe wrote in the company’s Friday announcement that it would steal millions from the truckers participating in the “Freedom Convoy” to protest Canada’s Covid mandates, diverting the money “to credible and established charities chosen by the Freedom Convoy 2022 organizers and verified by GoFundMe.” After backlash, the platform announced it would instead refund the money to donors.

Canadian Elites Created The Ottawa Crisis, And They Have No Idea How To End It :John Daniel Davidson

https://thefederalist.com/2022/02/08/canadian-elites-created-the-ottawa-crisis-and-they-have-no-idea-how-to-end-it/

There are no clear off-ramps for the protesters, and no one in a position of authority seems to know how to deescalate the situation.

Corporate media outlets like The Atlantic and The New York Times have been telling us for years now how Hungary and Poland are incubators of authoritarianism that represent an existential threat to democracy. But it turns out we should have been worried about Canada and Australia, of all places.

If you had told me 18 months ago that Australia, a democratic country that once seemed to exude rugged individualism, would devolve into a Covid police state that imprisons its citizens in quarantine camps and deploys riot police to crush lockdown protests with brute force, I wouldn’t have believed you. But here we are.

Now comes Canada, where the “Freedom Convoy” of truckers that arrived in Ottawa more than a week ago to protest Covid vaccine mandates has effectively shut down Canada’s capital. The mayor declared a state of emergency on Monday after the city’s law enforcement authorities talked openly about calling in the military over the weekend. 

Blinkmanship The talk of sanctions and crushing defeats from Antony Blinken and Joe Biden has an air of unreality, like Baghdad Bob’s claims of the Iraqi Army’s victories during the U.S. assault on Iraq in 2003.  By Christopher Roach

https://amgreatness.com/2022/02/08/blinkmanship/

Because of increasing specialization, most of today’s top government officials have spent their entire lives in government service. They lack the gentleman-amateur chops of a Dean Acheson or the business background of someone like Donald Trump. The results are not encouraging. 

One thing you learn in business is that bluffing is dangerous. It’s easier to make promises than to keep them, and that often it’s better to be ambiguous, to say nothing, or, if necessary, to communicate only in private. 

A good counterexample would be Barack Obama with his infamous “red line” in Syria. He said the Syrian government’s use of chemical weapons against civilians would cross a red line resulting in serious consequences and retaliation. Yet when Bashar al Assad allegedly approved the use of chemical weapons against a rebel civilian enclave, Obama did nothing. 

Setting aside the merits and demerits of our Syria policy, this is just bad business. It is the type of thing a coddled academic with no real life experience would think is a great idea, but something an ordinary real estate agent, bar manager, or car salesman knows is a bad idea. Threats box in the speaker and are only as effective as his perceived ability and willingness to back them up.

Biden’s life experience has done little more than Obama’s to prepare him for the moment. While he has been bloviating in the U.S. Senate since the 1970s, he has not covered himself with glory. His contributions to foreign policy typically have revealed him to be thoughtless and unsophisticated, opposing the mission to kill Osama bin Laden, among other things, while supporting the Iraq War. 

Amnesty International’s Pseudo-Scholarship More lethal ammunition for the campus cognitive war against Israel. Richard L. Cravatts

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/02/amnesty-internationals-pseudo-scholarship-richard-l-cravatts/

In May, while Hamas was firing more than 3000 deadly rockets from Gaza with the express purpose of murdering Jewish Israelis, members of academic communities around the world were falling over themselves to express their solidarity, not with the beleaguered citizens of the Jewish state again under attack, but with the genocidal psychopaths of Hamas and the Palestinian people they are said to represent.

The ideological enemies of Israel could not have been more pleased. The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel, the odious organization which put out the original call for efforts to slander the Jewish state, as one example, noted gleefully that “300 academic departments, program centers, unions and societies worldwide [had] endorsed statements supporting Palestinian rights, and statements from individual scholars, staff, students and alumni have garnered more than 15,000 signatures in what the campaign describes as ‘an unprecedented wave of solidarity.’”

Using almost the identical language, laced with descriptions of “colonialism,” “oppression,” “occupation,” “ethnic cleansing,” “human rights,” and “violations of international law,” these academic statements—oozing out of Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, Berkeley, CUNY, among many other universities — revealed a profound ignorance of history and fact, and attempted, unsurprisingly, to paint Israel solely as the party to blame for the condition in which the Palestinian Arabs now find themselves.

Truck Trudeau Hereditary rule is the most risible – and the most loathsome. Lloyd Billingsley

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/02/truck-trudeau-lloyd-billingsley/

In the dead of winter, thousands of Canadians have been streaming into Ottawa, led by a massive convoy of truckers protesting draconian Covid mandates that have harmed their ability to earn a living. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau refused to meet with the protesters and slammed the freedom convoy as “an insult to memory and truth.” Fils Justin thus invites memories of himself and Trudeau père.  

As Edward Gibbon noted, hereditary rule is always the most risible, and apart from the connection with his father, Canadians would be hard pressed to find any merit in Justin Trudeau his own self. He has no scholarly achievement, no record of publication, and no experience running business. To adapt a phrase from Ray Bradbury’s afterword to Fahrenheit 451,  Justin Trudeau has never said anything that would make a sub-moron’s mouth twitch. On the other hand, he does have a comic side.

Earlier in his brilliant career, Justin was fond of performing in blackface, singing “The Banana Boat Song,” a hit for Harry Belafonte. Trudeau now considers this racist but the revelation prompted no resignation. So no surprise that Justin Trudeau criticized “racist flags” in the convoy and spoke out over a perceived slight to a war memorial.

There’s Apartheid in the Holy Land, but Not in Israel Palestinian law makes selling land to Jews a crime punishable by death, often without trial. By Eugene Kontorovich

https://www.wsj.com/articles/theres-apartheid-in-the-holy-land-but-not-in-israel-amnesty-international-palestine-racial-discrimination-disfavored-group-11644338888?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

The report by Amnesty International accusing Israel of apartheid—a likely preview of similar moves at the United Nations and the International Criminal Court—has been widely debunked, including in these pages. Yet what is remarkable about its 200 pages of distortions is the evidence of real apartheid-like policies that Amnesty leaves out. There are reasons to be concerned about the emergence of apartheid in the Holy Land—but not the ones Amnesty cites.

The defining characteristic of apartheid—what distinguishes it from generic racial discrimination—is the rigid separation of groups in public spaces and positions of power. This is the apart in apartheid.

Thus, a sign of apartheid could be a government policy that bans real-estate sales or transactions to the disfavored group. Apartheid is suggested by policies that carve out massive zones where the disfavored group cannot live or work, create ethnically homogenous zones, and restrict the disfavored group to ghettos. One might consider it apartheid if a government enforced a policy of extrajudicial execution of members of a disfavored group.

All these policies are practiced in the West Bank and Gaza—by the Palestinian Authority government against Jews. What makes the “Israel apartheid” meme particularly despicable is that is not just a lie, it is an inversion of the truth. In all areas controlled by Israel, Jews and Arabs mix openly. Yet the Palestinian Authority has for decades ruled over Gaza and about half the West Bank—and all the areas under its jurisdiction are Jew-free.

Connecticut School Asked Eighth Graders to List Sexual Preferences during Lesson on Consent By Brittany Bernstein

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/connecticut-school-asked-eighth-graders-to-list-sexual-preferences-during-lesson-on-consent/

Parents in Enfield, Conn. are outraged after a health class assignment asked eighth graders to list their sexual likes and dislikes and boundaries, according to a new report.

Documents obtained by the nonprofit group Parents Defending Education show students were subjected to a lesson called “Pizza & Consent” that told students, “we can use pizza as a metaphor for sex!”

“If you’re a vegetarian, but your friend is a meat-lover, sharing a pizza is going to bring up a lot of issues. You don’t know who you can share pizza with unless you ask!” the assignment said. “The same goes with sex! You have to check in with your partner(s) and ask for their preferences.”

The assignment features a blank pizza with space to share pizza preferences “in relation to sex.” Pizza toppings were likened to sexual likes and dislikes. The assignment used “kissing” and “giving oral” as examples of toppings students could choose for their pizza.

“Obviously, you might not be able to list all of your wants, desires and boundaries, but hopefully you’ll start feeling more comfortable about discussing them,” the assignment read.