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March 2022

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

A Final Warning from Arabs to Biden by Khaled Abu Toameh

By on March 16th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18332/arabs-warning-biden

In a message directed at the Biden administration and the other Western powers involved in the Vienna negotiations, the Arab countries said that Iran and its terrorist militias are continuing to create chaos and instability, especially in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon.

The Arabs, including the Arab League, are telling the Biden administration that, in their view, it is not only Iran that threatens their security, but also its terrorist proxies, including Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, and the Houthis.

The Arabs are clearly worried about the financial and military aid that Iran is providing to the terrorist groups.

Any deal with Iran will further strengthen these groups and encourage them to step up their terrorist attacks.

The Arabs are also worried that when Iran obtains nuclear weapons, they will sooner or later find their way into the hands of its terrorist proxies and other terrorist groups, including Islamic State (ISIS) and Al-Qaeda.

“This president [Biden] is deaf. He cannot be trusted.” – Ali Al-Sarraf, Iraqi political analyst, Al-Arab, March 12, 2022.

If the Biden administration and its friends reach a new deal with Iran’s mullahs, we are likely to see more Arabs come out against the US.

“We have made it very clear that if Iran acquires a nuclear capability we will do everything we can to do the same.” — Adel al-Jubeir, then Saudi Minister of Foreign Affairs, to CNN, May 9, 2018.

The Arabs consider Iran a lethal threat to their national security and the stability of the entire Middle East and other parts of the world. If the Biden administration is going to align itself with the mullahs, it will lose the support of its Arab and Muslim allies, who feel bitterly betrayed and fear that nuclear weapons will end up in the hands of these very mullahs and their terrorist groups.

In what appears to be an eleventh hour and desperate warning to the Biden administration against striking a deal with the Iranian regime, four Arab countries have expressed deep concern over Iran’s ballistic missile program and ongoing support for terrorism.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

First, Brook No Dissent The medical-school accreditation body places an increasing emphasis on “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” John Sailer

By on March 16th, 2022

https://www.city-journal.org/medical-school-accreditation-body-solicits-dei-initiatives

The University of California–Davis School of Medicine has developed a mandatory anti-racism course and introduced a webinar series with talks on “Addressing Structural Racism” and “Moving from Ally to Advocate.” At Louisiana State University Health Shreveport School of Medicine, faculty must undergo annual training on cultural sensitivity, diversity, and bias. The University of Minnesota School of Medicine collaborates on its curriculum with the Medical Education Reform Student Coalition (MERSC), an offshoot of the activist organization White Coats 4 Black Lives.

All these measures exist, at least in part, to help the medical schools meet their accreditation requirements. The Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) accredits medical schools in the United States, and has long required schools to bolster student and faculty diversity and teach cultural competence. Increasingly, however, these requirements appear to carry more weight, as schools have implemented far-reaching diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies with the express goal of satisfying them.

The Oregon Health and Science University, ranked first in the nation for family medicine, was reaccredited in the summer of 2020, but the LCME found it “unsatisfactory” in the area of “faculty diversity.” In response, the school’s senior associate dean for education promised a “concerted effort and sustained commitment at the highest levels of the institution.”

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Vladimir Putin’s Ever-Darkening Room John O’Sullivan

By on March 16th, 2022

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2022/03/vladimir-putins-ever-darkening-room/

“A man who starts a war enters a dark room.” I sent out this quote in a tweet a few weeks before the start of the full-scale Russo-Ukrainian war. To avoid any possible misunderstanding, I pointed out that though the words were those of Adolf Hitler whom I would normally quote only to condemn, he had nonetheless established an impressive reputation as an expert on war. And I added: Vladimir Putin, take note.

Apparently, my influence doesn’t extend to the upper reaches of the Kremlin. On February 24 Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine and entered a much darker room than both he and his enemies expected. He is thought to have foreseen a lightning advance on Kiev that would last three days, be welcomed by the Ukrainian population (garlands, confetti, kisses), and climax in a victory parade for which Russian soldiers had already packed their dress uniforms. Most Western experts then forecast a longer campaign and a less welcoming victory—but a victory nonetheless.

Almost three weeks later (at the time of writing), those predictions look absurd. The latest estimates of deaths, refugees and destruction of property (gleaned from several sources) in the war are roughly 6000 to 12,000 Russian soldiers killed, 4000 to 6000 Ukrainians killed, 2.7 million refugees, and $119 billion worth of property damage.

Those estimates are already out of date as I write. His blitzkrieg having failed, Putin has now changed his strategy to a more traditional Russian one of pulverizing Ukraine’s cities and their civilian inhabitants as much as their defence forces by heavy missile and artillery bombardment. Deaths, casualties and destruction are therefore rising fast and likely to get far worse.

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BOOKS Comments turned off

In Search of an American Citizen America was built on the notion of possibility and growth rather than to become a static government that falls into tyranny and turns citizens into subjects. By Emina Melonic

By on March 16th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/03/15/in-search-of-an-american-citizen/

The meaning of American citizenship has been eroding for quite some time. American globalists—an oxymoron if there ever was one—have been taking pointers from the playbook of the European Union and its power station, the World Economic Forum. Arguments for open borders, against national sovereignty, as well as erasure of human differences under the guise of fake multiculturalism diminish the nation-state. Ideology has taken over and seeped into public policy.

In his book, The United States in Crisis: Citizenship, Immigration, and the Nation State, Edward J. Erler probes the philosophical and legal questions about American citizenship. The idea of global government is continuously imposed on sovereign nations, especially the United States since it is one of the most powerful nations in the world. Erler moves through several fundamental aspects of citizenship—sovereignty, birthright, and the needs of a functioning society—deftly and effortlessly. In particular, his contribution to the legal questions of American citizenship, particularly birthright citizenship, will be of great interest not only to constitutional scholars but also to a broader audience deliberately kept in the dark about legal and constitutional precedents. 

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BOOKS Comments turned off

Poking the Deplorable Bear Three recent left-wing tracts demonstrate how the Woke Occupation Army, and its pagan gods, are at war with traditional America and how they are determined to pin the blame on us.  By Glenn Ellmers

By on March 16th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/03/15/poking-the-deplorable-bear/

“The United States is coming to an end. The question is how.” 

Those are the opening lines of The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future, by Canadian journalist Stephen Marche. It is one of several new books examining the possibility of our current political differences escalating into open conflict. 

Marche’s book purports to be a fair-minded analysis of our partisan divide, but isn’t. His effort is interesting mainly as a sociological exhibit of the incurious leftist mind. The author launches his investigation by claiming that he has no stake in American politics, considering himself neither a Democrat nor a Republican. Yet on virtually the same page where he makes this statement he writes ominously about “the rise of the hard-right anti-government patriot militias” without so much as hinting at the existence of any leftist extremists. In fact, Marche claims “Left-wing radicalism matters mostly because it creates the conditions for right-wing radicalization.” (Keep that bizarre claim in mind; it turns up elsewhere.) 

Almost unbelievably, in a book devoted to the growing political divisions in the United States, the deadly and ideologically charged riots of 2020 are not even mentioned. In his single reference to the black-clad anarcho-Marxists who sacked the downtowns of major cities, Marche states, “Antifa does exist, but it lacks any power or the means to establish power. Left-wing defiance of federal authority, when it comes, tends to be legalistic and political.” 

The Next Civil War is shallow and tendentious, and Marche tells at least one flat-out lie, alleging that the January 6 “rioters beat a policeman to death on the steps of the Capitol.” Amazingly, however, Barbara Walter’s How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them is even worse, flaunting its ideological blinders right out of the gate. 

Walter opens her book, released in January of this year, by solemnly recounting the 2020 “plot” to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. As with Marche, there’s no excuse for not knowing the facts. Last July, Buzzfeed published a major story revealing how the FBI all but orchestrated this ridiculous escapade. Subsequent revelations by other journalists and media outlets (including Julie Kelly right here at American Greatness) have uncovered even more sordid details about the FBI’s questionable conduct. But Walter—a professor at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California, San Diego—studiously avoids noticing any of these inconvenient revelations, and clings dogmatically to the feds’ official narrative, which nicely confirms her narrative about the “white nationalist” threats that leave her “alarmed but not altogether surprised.” 

Both of these books are simply regime-compliant propaganda, designed to indict the Right preemptively and hold it responsible for any open conflict that might unfold in the coming months or years. Like Marche, Walter mentions Antifa only once, and only to make the same repugnant argument: “anti-fascist” thugs bashing skulls are problematic only because “the specter of left-wing radicals flexing their muscle will be what right-wing extremists invoke—to stoke fear and, ultimately, justify their own violence.” 

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

White House Alters Transcript to Cover for Kamala Harris’ Stupidity By Robert Spencer

By on March 16th, 2022

https://pjmedia.com/columns/robert-spencer/2022/03/15/white-house-alters-transcript-to-cover-for-kamala-harris-stupidity-n1566566

You heard it. I heard it. The whole world heard it. Even CNN reported it. PJM’s Matt Margolis reported on it here. At the winter meeting of the Democratic National Committee in Washington on Saturday, Kamala Harris said: “The United States stands firmly with the Ukrainian people in defense of the NATO alliance.” Now, Ukraine is not actually in NATO, and so standing firmly with the Ukrainian people would not actually be an act in defense of the NATO alliance, and of all people, the person pretending to be vice president of the United States should know that. So over at White House.gov, the ever-helpful anonymous wonks who record every august word and deed of the socialists, clowns, puppets, freaks, and saboteurs responsible for this period of American misrule knew that they had to do something to prevent the American people from realizing just how oblivious and out of touch our putative vice president really is. Voilá! Now it has her saying: “The United States stands firmly with the Ukrainian people [and] in defense of the NATO Alliance.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Will Anything Be Left of the U.S. After Biden Is Done With It? By Victoria Taft

By on March 16th, 2022

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/victoria-taft/2022/03/15/will-the-u-s-dollar-be-dethroned-on-bidens-watch-n1566716

The Wall Street Journal is exclusively reporting that Saudi Arabia is in talks to deal with China in the yuan instead of the U.S. dollar. The reaction has been a worldwide collective gasp.

Joe Biden’s recent dumping of Afghanistan is just one of the reasons behind the Kingdom’s stepped-up talks with the communist regime.

The overwhelming number of oil deals in the world are done using the U.S. petrodollar. Moving to the yuan, at least in deals with China, which buys 25% of all Saudi oil, will have a huge impact on world markets. It also calls into question the U.S. dollar’s prominence as the world’s reserve currency.

It is hard to underestimate the fiscal calamity that such a possible move could have on the strength of the U.S. dollar and prestige in world markets. Conversely, the potential move to the yuan could elevate China’s currency to new prestige.

The Journal spoke to Gal Luft, a national security expert who’s written about possible “de-dollarization.” Luft said oil markets are the “insurance policy of the status of the dollar as reserve currency. […] If that block is taken out of the wall, the wall will begin to collapse.”

The Journal reported in Tuesday’s edition that “the talks with China over yuan-priced oil contracts have been off and on for six years but have accelerated this year as the Saudis have grown increasingly unhappy with decades-old U.S. security commitments to defend the kingdom.”

The Journal also reported that “the Saudis are angry over the U.S.’s lack of support for their intervention in the Yemen civil war and over the Biden administration’s attempt to strike a deal with Iran over its nuclear program. Saudi officials have said they were shocked by the precipitous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan last year.”

Bloomberg reported that news of the potential shift caused a price increase in the communist China currency after the news broke on Tuesday.

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MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

What if the COVID-19 vaccines are not really vaccines? By Paul S. Gardiner

By on March 16th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/03/what_if_the_covid19_vaccines_are_not_really_vaccines.html

Evidence has come to light strongly indicating that the Moderna and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines are not really “vaccines” in the medical and legal sense of the word, but rather “experimental gene therapies.”  If proven true, the significance and legal ramifications of this allegation are profound.

This article summarizes a presentation by Dr. David Martin, a national intelligence analyst and founder of IQ100 Index, a developer of linguistic genomics, and molecular biologist Dr. Judy Mikovits.

In the presentation, Dr. Martin states, “You cannot have a vaccine that doesn’t claim to result in either immunity or blocking transmission.”  He goes on to say, “By their own patents and reference material, neither Pfizer nor Moderna claims this.  Rather, they only classify their products as ‘gene therapy.'”

Dr. Martin states the Moderna and Pfizer products “do not prevent you from getting the COVID-19 infection, nor do they prevent its spread.  They are really experimental gene therapies — unlike real vaccines, which use an antigen of the disease you’re trying to prevent, the Moderna and Pfizer injections contain synthetic RNA fragments encapsulated in a nanolipid carrier compound, the sole purpose of which is to lessen clinical symptoms associated with the S-1 spike protein, not the actual virus.”

If indeed Moderna and Pfizer corporations are misrepresenting their experimental gene therapies as bona fide vaccines, Dr. Martin states that “the legal ramifications of this deception are immense — from a legal view, both Moderna and Pfizer qualify as using illegal deceptive practices by making medical claims without clinic trial proof of immunity and transmission blocking.  The U.S. Federal Trade Commission Act, 15 U.S. Code, Section 41, outlaws such deceptive practices.”

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

No Amount Of Incremental Wind And Solar Power Can Ever Provide Energy Independence Francis Menton

By on March 16th, 2022

https://us7.campaign-archive.com/?e=a9fdc67db9&u=9d011a88d8fe324cae8c084c5&id=ab8ca5e27c

Here’s the single most important function of this blog: Saying the things that are patently obvious but that just can’t be said these days in polite society. Yes, it’s The Emperor’s New Clothes every day here at Manhattan Contrarian.

With war raging in Ukraine following Russia’s invasion, there is a renewed concern in many quarters for “energy independence.” Until recently, the sophisticated countries of Europe had thought the whole idea to be passé. They built large numbers of wind turbines and solar arrays, while simultaneously banning fracking for natural gas and shuttering electricity plants that used coal and even those that used no-carbon nuclear. Suddenly, at the very worst possible time, they found themselves completely dependent on Russian gas for heat and reliable electricity. In the U.S. it’s not nearly so bad (yet), but the combination of the Ukraine invasion with the Biden administration’s resumption of Obama’s war on fossil fuels has also left the U.S. vulnerable to an oil and gas price spike on world markets, whose supply side has been artificially reduced by government hostility to production of fossil fuels.

So what’s the answer? If you are a member in good standing in American media/academia/environmentalist/Democratic Party society, the answer is obvious: Just build more wind turbines and solar arrays until you have enough. These facilities will count as “domestic” electricity generation, and therefore will quickly lead to “energy independence.” What could be easier?

So permit me to say the blindingly obvious: No amount of incremental wind and solar power can ever provide energy independence.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Joe Biden’s Gender Obsession The president implies that God supports his gender agenda. How does he know? William Kilpatrick

By on March 16th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/03/joe-bidens-gender-obsession-william-kilpatrick/

“Women can’t reach ‘full God-given potential’ without abortion, Joe Biden claims.”

So reads a headline in a LifeSite News piece reporting on a statement issued by President Biden on International Women’s Day.

Biden didn’t put it quite so bluntly.  The part of the statement in question reads, “Every person deserves the chance to live up to their full God-given potential without regard for gender or other factors.”  But it’s obvious from the rest of the statement that pregnancy is one of those “other factors” that might get in the way of reaching one’s full potential.

It’s an odd way of thinking.  Biden almost seems to be saying that God endorses abortion if giving birth might interfere with the development of other potentials.

Our “full God-given potential”?  Never mind the “God-given” part, “full potential” is in itself a very slippery concept. It’s a term that owes more to human potential psychology than to Christian theology. We all have many potentials as human beings. But does God want us to fulfill all of them?  How about our potential to become a drug addict, a career criminal, a rapist, or a hit-man?

Biden’s statement ends with a plea to work for “limitless possibilities for all.”  But no person ever has or ever will have “limitless possibilities.”  It’s a well-known fact of life that fulfilling one potential cancels out the possibility (or desirability) of fulfilling certain other potentials.  A person who fulfills his ambition of becoming a world-champion sumo wrestler will in all likelihood have to forgo his hopes of becoming an Olympic figure skater.

Biden’s statement unintentionally acknowledges that life puts limits on our potentials when he says:

Yet too often, in too many places, women and girls face obstacles that limit their possibilities and undermine their participation in economic, political, and social life.

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