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Ruth King

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Why did the Biden administration approve a pipeline for Russia to Germany but not from Canada to the US? By Jack Hellner

By on February 25th, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/02/why_did_the_biden_administration_approve_a_pipeline_for_russia_to_germany_but_not_from_canada_to_the_us.html

President Biden blocked the Keystone pipeline from Canada to the U.S., ostensibly due to environmental concerns and claims about global warming, even though the long planned project had cleared all environmental hurdles.

Yet the Biden State department just effectively approved an energy pipeline from Russia to Germany.

According to the Wall Street Journal:

The State Department in a report to Congress didn’t name new companies as targets for sanctions related to an $11 billion pipeline designed to transmit Russian natural gas to Germany, allowing work on the pipeline to continue unabated for now.

Some Republican lawmakers criticized the State Department over the Nord Stream 2 report, which was required by Congress, and both Republicans and a key Democrat requested an explanation of the administration’s position.

Count that as a win for pipelines — for others, just not us.  The rest of the press is focusing on Biden making his “decisions,” but with this news, the direction of this administration is clear.

It is clear that jobs in Europe and Russia are more important to Biden than jobs in the United States.  Energy from fossil fuels is also OK in Europe, just not here.

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Brexit Diary: As BoJo Waffles, Tory ‘Dinosaurs’ Turn on His Fiancée By Stephen MacLean

By on February 25th, 2021

https://www.nysun.com/foreign/brexit-diary-as-bojo-waffles-on-policy-critics/91429/

Not since the days of Benjamin Disraeli has a prime minister’s wife been cause for such conversation as has Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s fiancée. “Is Carry Symonds really a Downing Street manipulator — or a shrewd supportive partner?” asks the headline in the Times, though the Mirror suggests merely that she has become the prime ministerial hair-dresser who finally tamed the PM’s unruly mop.

I offer the comparison to Mary Anne Disraeli because Dizzy’s wife was quite the story in her day. In her case it was more bemusement — as with, say, Denis Thatcher, husband to Margaret — than hostility. Dizzy declared of his own wife, “She is an excellent creature,” with one of his few complaints being that “she never can remember which came first, the Greeks or the Romans.”

Mrs. Disraeli, accompanying her husband to Westminster on the eve of a great debate, managed to get her finger caught in the carriage door and, though the pain was great, “went on chatting and laughing as if nothing had happened, lest his concern for her should prevent him from doing his best.” Assessed Dizzy at another point: “We have been married thirty-three years, and she has never given me a dull moment.”

The current controversy concerning BoJo’s fiancée, Carrie Symonds, is far less comical — or dull. One leading Tory think tank, the Bow Group, is calling for a “judicial review and inquiry” to look into the influence wielded by Ms. Symonds in affairs at Downing Street. “Symonds is unelected, unappointed, and unaccountable,” the Group asserted in a statement, and “has no constitutional powers to hold any role in governing the UK.”

Among the issues raised by the Bow Group, according to Breitbart London, is Ms. Symonds’ role in hirings and firings of officials and in forming Government policy. “The public take a very dim view of cronyism,” Bow’s chairman, Ben Harris-Quinney, contends; “democracy in Britain is and must always be sacred, and no one should be involved in running our country without accountability to the people.”

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Pompeo: China’s Reckless Labs Put the World at Risk By Jim Geraghty

By on February 25th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/pompeo-chinas-reckless-labs-put-the-world-at-risk/

In today’s Wall Street Journal op-ed page, former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, along with Miles Yu, his top China policy adviser write that “China’s Reckless Labs Put the World at Risk,” and come right up to the line of outright declaring that the coronavirus pandemic is the result of an accident at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Pompeo and Yu don’t point to any new or smoking-gun evidence, but they do point to a few pieces of circumstantial evidence that haven’t gotten much attention. Perhaps most notably, the op-ed column declares, “in January 2021, the State Department confirmed that people had fallen mysteriously ill at WIV in fall 2019, and that WIV conducts secret bioweapons research with the PLA.”

This echoes the fact sheet issued by the department that began with the cautionary note that the U.S government did not know how the virus first jumped into humans, but then continued, “The U.S. government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses.”

This past Sunday, President Trump’s former deputy national-security adviser, Matt Pottinger, said on CBS News’ Face the Nation:

We have very strong reason to believe that the Chinese military was doing secret classified animal experiments in that same laboratory, going all the way back to at least 2017. We have good reason to believe that there was an outbreak of flu-like illness among researchers working in the Wuhan Institute of Virology in the fall of 2019, but right — immediately before the first documented cases came to light.

China signed the Biological Weapons Convention in 1984, which outlaws the development, production, acquisition, transfer, stockpiling, and use of biological weapons.

China claims that it is in complete compliance with the BWC; the U.S. government disagrees. In 2019, the U.S. State Department’s updated report on compliance with arms-control agreements concluded,

the People’s Republic of China engaged during the reporting period in biological activities with potential dual-use applications, which raises concerns regarding its compliance with the BWC. In addition, the United States does not have sufficient information to determine whether China eliminated its assessed biological warfare program, as required under Article II of the Convention.

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Equity = Inequality, Discrimination and Mediocrity The fixation on equity is a loser for all concerned. By Larry Sand

By on February 25th, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/02/24/equity-inequality-discrimination-and-mediocrity/

At the same time that the indoctrination of American students continues to work its way through the schools, its evil twin “equity” is advancing right along with it. As the race-obsessed Ibram X. Kendi explains, equity exists when “two or more racial groups are standing on a relatively equal footing.” In other words, if 10 percent of white kids are in a school’s gifted program, equity demands that 10 percent of black kids are also included. Kendi also claims, “There is no such thing as a nonracist or race-neutral policy.” The terms “equality” and “quality” are nowhere to be found in the equity playbook.

The gaslighting here is palpable. What Kendi is apparently saying is that we must discriminate to put an end to (alleged) discrimination. But, insane or not, this is what is happening throughout much of the country. In reliably woke San Francisco, the top-rated Lowell High School will no longer admit students based on their academic performance. Instead, the school will use a lottery to admit its students. This will, of course, discriminate against Asian students who make up 50.6 percent of its student body.

Similarly, in New York City, the gifted and talented program has been deemed unfair. Mayor Bill de Blasio and his equally reprehensible schools chancellor Richard Carranza insist that the testing program is unjust because the students who wind up in the program “don’t reflect the diversity of the city’s population.”

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The Denial of Evil Why it’s a moral obligation to know what communism did – and does. Dennis Prager

By on February 25th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/denial-evil-dennis-prager/

One of the most highly regarded books of the 20th century was Ernest Becker’s “The Denial of Death.” Winner of the 1974 Pulitzer Prize, the book is regarded as a classic for its analysis of how human beings deny their mortality.

But there is something people deny more than mortality: evil. Someone should write a book on the denial of evil; that would be much more important because while we cannot prevent death, we can prevent evil.

The most glaring example of the denial of evil is communism, an ideology that, within a period of only 60 years, created modern totalitarianism and deprived of human rights, tortured, starved and killed more people than any other ideology in history.

Why people ignore, or even deny, communist evil is the subject of a previous column as well as a Prager University video, “Why Isn’t Communism as Hated as Nazism?” I will, therefore, not address that question here.

I will simply lay out the facts.

But before I do, I need to address another question: Why is it important that everyone know what communism did?

Here are three reasons:

First, we have a moral obligation to the victims not to forget them. Just as Americans have a moral obligation to remember the victims of American slavery, we have the same obligation to the billion victims of communism, especially the 100 million who were murdered.

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Democrats Turn the Thumbscrews to Make Us Suffer Tormenting us with our perpetual imaginary sins. Don Feder

By on February 25th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/democrats-turn-thumbscrews-make-us-suffer-don-feder/

Everything the Democrat Party does should be seen not from an economic or a political perspective, but one of sin and suffering — the suffering it imposes on us to expiate our imagery sins.

It came to me in a flash of insight when I heard of a now-disgraced bureaucrat (“an undersecretary of climate change” in Massachusetts) who told a gathering of his colleagues that to fight melting ice caps and rising sea levels  they would have to “break the will” of ordinary Americans, by “turning the screws” — raising energy costs so high that they would have to “stop emitting.” Admirable candor from a functionary of the state with the soul of a Medieval torturer.

But it goes beyond the need to make us obey. Progressives believe Americans must be made to atone for our sins (environmental, racial, economic and national) with higher taxes and energy costs, a lower standard of living, crime, open borders, racial humiliation and national dissolution.

It’s not a power-grab as much as an attempt to force a sort of secular Calvinism on the nation.

Global Warming – Our sins here include the internal combustion engine and reliance on fossil fuel, leading to CO2 emissions said to cause depletion of the earth’s ozone layer.

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As Iran plays chicken with Biden, it also moves closer to the bomb By Lazar Berman

By on February 25th, 2021

https://www.timesofisrael.com/as-iran-plays-chicken-with-biden-it-also-moves-closer-to-the-bomb/

Tehran appears to be jockeying for position ahead of nuke deal talks by blackballing inspectors and threatening to increase enrichment, but the posturing carries dangerous risks.

With each step Iran takes to advance its nuclear program, a path out of the dangerous quagmire becomes even more murky.

On Tuesday, Tehran officially suspended its implementation of the Non-Proliferation Treaty Additional Protocol, which gave nuclear inspectors increased access to Iran’s nuclear program, including the ability to carry out snap inspections at undeclared sites.

“As of midnight tonight, we will not have… commitments beyond safeguards. Necessary orders have been issued to the nuclear facilities,” said Kazem Gharibabadi, Iran’s envoy to international organizations in Vienna.

A day earlier Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said that Tehran could enrich uranium to 60% purity if it so desired. US State Department spokesman Ned Price said the comment “sounds like a threat” and referred to it as “posturing.”

Analysts believe both the move to limit inspections and the enrichment threat are aimed at bolstering Iran’s negotiating position as it and US President Joe Biden’s administration maneuver ahead of expected talks aimed at bringing Washington back into the 2015 nuclear deal. But even if intended as bargaining chips, they carry the risk of moving Iran significantly closer to nuclear weapons capabilities.

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Iranian Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi Speaks A sobering caution to Biden on his path with Iran. Thu Feb 25, 2021 Joseph Puder

By on February 25th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/iranian-crown-prince-reza-pahlavi-speaks-joseph-puder/

Iranian Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi isn’t likely to return to his homeland anytime soon. Nor, for that matter, is he likely to succeed his deposed father Mohammad Reza as Shah of Iran in the foreseeable future. Nevertheless, if Iran is to be liberated from its oppressive, radical, and messianic Ayatollahs regime, Reza Pahlavi would be considered a natural contender to serve as a future Iranian head of state. With a large supportive Iranian expatriate constituency in Los Angeles and in Europe, he is the obvious leader of the Iranian exile opposition to the Islamic Republic of the Ayatollahs.  

Reza Pahlavi was born on October 31, 1960, and married Yasmine Etemad-Amini in 1986. They have three daughters and reside in Bethesda, Maryland. In 1980, shortly after his father’s death and on his 20th birthday, Reza Pahlavi, declared himself to be the new Shah of Iran – Reza Shah II. The Jimmy Carter administration declined to recognize him, and instead recognized the Islamic Republic led by Ayatollah Khomeini.

In his address to the International Society of Human Rights, on March 27, 2010, Reza Pahlavi declared: “Since the establishment of the clerical regime in Iran, both democracy and human rights have been grossly compromised. Not only did the people not gain political freedom, which some may have thought would be attained as a result of the ‘Islamic Revolution,’ but sadly they ended up losing practically all of the social freedoms which have been attained and enjoyed for a long time, particularly since the advent of the Constitutional Revolution at the turn of the 20th Century.”

Honored with the Champion of Jewish Values International Awards Gala in New York on May 5th, 2016, Reza Pahlavi stated: “But while Iran has this proud history, my own compatriots have been held hostage for 37 years by a clerical regime that abuses the very notion of freedom. Since I left my beloved Iran, I have dedicated my life to fighting for my compatriots’ freedom and their human rights. I do appreciate the fact that, by recognizing my efforts, you have demonstrated your care and concern about the plight of the millions of Iranians who have suffered under the repression of the clerical regime ruling my homeland.”

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Protecting American Children from Today’s Educational Activists A healthy way to begin defending our children from leftist indoctrination. Jason D. Hill

By on February 25th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/protecting-american-children-todays-educational-jason-d-hill/

A friend of mine told me an apocryphal story that left me with a cold shudder. He is an old-fashioned left-leaning “liberal” and a strong advocate of public education. All his children attend public schools. In fact, he is vehemently opposed to the idea of promoting private schools on the premise that its implementation will result in a more stratified society because, he believes, poor whites and blacks will be disproportionately disqualified from attending such institutions.

In good faith, he has always entrusted his children’s education to what I had typically referred to as Government Schools. He was confident that his children would receive a robust education from K-12 grade.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, however, he was forced to monitor the classroom activities of his children. Unemployment had left him more time to inconspicuously sit-in — especially on the classes of his 6th grader son.

He was shocked, one afternoon, to come upon an assignment being conducted during an English class in which all the white students in the zoom online course were required to place their arms beside a brown paper bag. How his 6th grader had acquired a crisp brown paper bag was a mystery to him. The teacher asked them if they noticed a difference in color between their skin and the brown paper bag. All of the white students nodded, and some verbally assented. The teacher asked them if the color of the bag looked close to the color of some of the students identified as black in the class. His son peered at the zoom screen and raised the icon button identifying his acknowledgement. The teacher then announced with full moral rectitude and intransigence the following:

If your skin color is different from the color of the paper bag, then you are part of a problem in America known as systemic racism that does irreparable harm to all black and brown people in America. Further, if your skin color is different from the brown paper bag and you are identified as white you enjoy something called white privilege which means you are practicing racism every day without knowing it.

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Dems’ COVID Bill Takes Waste, Fraud, And Abuse To A Whole New Level

By on February 25th, 2021

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/02/25/dems-covid-bill-takes-waste-fraud-and-abuse-to-a-whole-new-level/

President Joe Biden recently defended his $1.9 trillion COVID bill by asking critics of the plan: “What would they have me cut? What would they have me leave out?” The easier question would be, what’s worth keeping?

The bill is riddled with spending unrelated to the COVID crisis, gifts to big unions, bailouts to states that don’t need them, and bad economic policies. It is, in short, a monument to Democratic-style political corruption bought with money borrowed from our children and grandchildren.

We have already exposed the many lies being used to justify this spending monstrosity. The details now available in the House bill add insult to injury.

While Democrats claim the need is urgent, almost $700 billion of of the funds won’t get spent until sometime over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

This is particularly true when it comes to money for education and labor – which includes dollars for schools, colleges, child care, and the $15 minimum wage. Less than 10% of the $293 billion thrown at these programs will go out this year, according to the CBO. More than a third won’t get spent until after the next presidential election!

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