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Ruth King

Iran Once Again Is Denying UN Inspectors Access to Suspected Nuke Sites By Rick Moran

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2020/06/19/iran-once-again-is-denying-un-inspectors-access-to-suspected-nuke-sites-n555063

The International Atomic Energy Agency has passed a resolution that demands Iran open two sites suspected of harboring nuclear material or trace elements of uranium. Iran, which is still party to the 2015 nuclear deal with the West, has refused access to the sites, saying it was based on intelligence gathered by Israel.

Reuters:

A resolution, adopted in a vote called after China expressed opposition to it, raised pressure on Iran to let inspectors into the sites mentioned in two International Atomic Energy Agency reports because they could still host undeclared nuclear material or traces of it.

The text of the resolution submitted by France, Britain and Germany and obtained by Reuters said the board “calls on Iran to fully cooperate with the Agency and satisfy the Agency’s requests without any further delay, including by providing prompt access to the locations specified by the Agency.”

The IAEA has tried for several months to get Iran to comply, to no avail.

The IAEA suspects activities possibly related to developing nuclear weapons were carried out in the early 2000s at these sites. Iran has suggested the IAEA is seeking access based on the Israeli information, which it argues is inadmissible. It also says the IAEA file on its old activities has been closed.

The resolution, the first by the board since 2015 and the implementation of the nuclear deal, was passed by a 25-2 margin with seven abstentions, diplomats said.

The Climate Campaign Is Less And Less About  Francis Menton

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-6-18-biyb4kqu2wfj71beidexgg8exb

Here in the United States, the environmental movement has been completely taken over by the campaign to ban use of fossil fuels, with the stated goal of slowing or preventing “climate change.” But at this point, is the “climate” campaign really about the climate in any meaningful way? The alternative hypothesis is that the principal goal of the anti-fossil-fuel movement in the United States is destruction of the American freedom-based economic system, commonly going by the name of “capitalism.”

So let’s consider whether the anti-fossil-fuel campaign in the U.S. could really be about its avowed goal of saving the planet from climate change caused by greenhouse gases. If that were the case, then the campaigners would be principally focused on the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions, mostly CO2, not only in the U.S. but in the world.

The campaigners are definitely focused on blocking any and all fossil fuel development in the United States. Environmental groups with what seem like infinite funding sources bring litigations on any and every possible theory to seek to block absolutely every proposed fossil fuel development in this country.

To illustrate the relentlessness of the litigation war, consider something called the Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP), a multi-billion dollar project intended to deliver natural gas from sources in West Virginia over to the Atlantic coast of Virginia. An environmental group called the Cowpasture River Preservation Association, represented by environmental lawyers from the Southern Environmental Law Center, brought a suit to stop the pipeline on the ground that its permit to cross the Appalachian Trail, which had been granted by the Forest Service, was not properly authorized. As you are likely aware, earlier this week the Supreme Court ruled in that case that the Forest Service had the power to issue the permit.

Dept. of Coronavirus Good News More than 1,500 treatment studies are underway world-wide.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/dept-of-coronavirus-good-news-11592606957?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

Alarming headlines about surging Covid-19 cases in some states dominated the news this week, but there was some good news: A University of Oxford drug trial found that a low-cost steroid can substantially reduce deaths in severely ill patients. As results from more studies roll in this summer, improved treatments could blunt the impact of any second wave.

The randomized trial compared 2,100 hospitalized patients who received the steroid dexamethasone at low-to-moderate doses for 10 days with 4,300 controls receiving standard hospital care. Dexamethasone reduced fatalities among patients receiving supplemental oxygen by 20% and by a third among those on mechanical ventilators. The drug had no impact on less sick patients.

Oxford researchers estimated that the drug could have prevented 5,000 deaths in the United Kingdom had doctors used it to treat the sickest patients at the outset of the pandemic. “For less than £50 (US$63), you can treat eight patients and save one life,” said Oxford epidemiologist Martin Landray. Dexamethasone is the first drug shown in a large clinical trial to significantly reduce Covid deaths among the severely ill. Another trial last month found that Gilead’s antiviral drug remdesivir reduced the duration of hospitalization on average to 11 days from 15 but did not reduce deaths.

Remdesivir could help make more hospital beds available in hot spots, but antivirals probably won’t be able to save severely ill patients experiencing a hyperactive immune response known as “cytokine storms.” Dexamethasone and other anti-inflammatory drugs that are being studied in Covid patients can help tamp down the immune system.

Political Predators Threaten America with Extinction  by Linda Goudsmit  

http://goudsmit.pundicity.com/24290/political-predators-threaten-america-with
http://goudsmit.pundicity.com  http://lindagoudsmit.com

A predator is defined as an animal that naturally preys on others. Predation is a natural and accepted fact of life in the wild animal kingdom – eat or be eaten is a matter of survival. 

A predator is also defined as a person or group that ruthlessly exploits others. Predation is an unacceptable fact of life in the civilized world of ordered liberty and mutuality where predation is a matter of domination, not survival. 

Sexual predators live in this group. Sexual assaults, including rape and childhood sexual abuse, are crimes of power, dominance, and submission. Political predators are a variation on the same theme of power. Like sexual predators, political predators commit crimes of dominance and submission against unsuspecting members of society. This is how it works.

Political predators disguise their motives. No stranger ever seduced a child with spinach. Marxist political predators have been seducing American children with leftist anti-American indoctrination in public schools since 1979 when Jimmy Carter established the Department of Education. Political predators launched their Culture War war on America with a disinformation campaign promising social justice and income equality that begins in kindergarten.

Barack Obama, political predator-in-chief, escalated the propaganda campaign against American children with Common Core and its anti-American leftist narrative of moral relativism, historical revisionism, and political correctness. During his seditious two terms, Obama aligned himself with the equally anti-American Islamist Muslim Brotherhood. 

SYDNEY WILLIAMS: IS ANYBODY IN CHARGE?

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Civilization moves inexorably forward. Over centuries, more and more people have enjoyed the freedom that democratic forms of government offer, and the fruits that industrial and technological advancements and free market capitalism provide. But bumps and potholes inhibit progress. The United States (and the western world) must not allow the disruptions by a few to impede the rights of the many. In the midst of chaos, we ask: Is anybody in charge?

Reminiscent of the takeover of deans’ offices in 1968, college students at UCLA, already granted safe spaces where they are protected from white-privileged professors and students, demand a “no-harm” grading system, shorter exams and extended deadlines for Black students. As a form of virtue signaling, corporations empower activists, in hopes of reducing the threat of litigation. The New York Times, at the instigation of the staff, fired James Bennet, a white, male editor for publishing a Republican Senator’s op-ed. A headline in the Philadelphia Inquirer, “Buildings Matter, Too,” led to the resignation of a top editor. In a dozen and more cities, like New York, Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C. and Des Moines protests turned into riots, and looters took to the streets, burning cars, smashing windows and robbing stores. Police stepped aside and knelt in obeisance to protesters.

Mayor Jenny Durkan of Seattle has allowed a vigilante group to take over six blocks in the residential area of Capital Hill, which includes a police station, as an autonomous zone (CHAZ). They patrol its border with weapons, demand rent control and reverse gentrification. They want to abolish the police force and receive free healthcare, and they want the release of all those imprisoned on marijuana charges. Under the banner of Black Lives Matter, mobs have defaced and destroyed statues across the country. While their preferred targets are Southern Civil War Generals, they have been indiscriminate in their targets. In Los Angeles, a statue of Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat who saved the lives of thousands of Jews during World War II was marred with irrelevant slogans: “BLM” and “Free Palestine.” In Washington, D.C., vandals defaced the Lincoln Memorial and the World War II Memorial. World War I American doughboy statues in Birmingham, Alabama and Pittsburg, Pennsylvania were vandalized. The Sacred Heart of Jesus statue at St. John the Evangelist Parish in Wasco, California had its head ripped off.

THE NEW NORM: EDWARD CLINE

https://ruleofreason.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-new-norm.html

“Racism claims that the content of a man’s mind (not his cognitive apparatus, but its content) is inherited; that a man’s convictions, values and character are determined before he is born, by physical factors beyond his control.”

As I have queried elsewhere: Will Americans reclaim their freedom to go about their lives without the government or the “experts” on the virus “crisis” dictating how they must conduct  their lives, as they had decades ago? Do they even remember the time?  I’ve said it before: This is not my culture, and it seems to be becoming worse;  statists have jumped at the opportunity to impose more and more restrictions and controls, and proclaim that they are the “new norm.”.

One blog offered this advice on how to submit: 

“You can start over again! Don’t even think about quitting now! It is easy to replay in your mind how things did not work, how much you lost, what you are going through, how angry you are. There is no amount of conversation or magic that is going to wipe the slate clean. You are wasting valuable time and energy that could be used to regain a new normal and start another version of your life. Even though you are hurt and you may be feeling down — stop kicking yourself! Face what has happened. Make the decision to start over again.”

Are US international agreements carved in stone? (e.g., The “Deal of the Century”)

https://bit.ly/37PDd2r

Do commitments made by a US president bind his successors? History proves that these commitments do not even bind the president who signed them.

Even when the US commitments are driven by the purest of intentions, one should recognize certain features – a derivative of the US Constitution and the power struggle between the Legislature and the Executive – which have characterized all US international agreements, pacts, memoranda of understandings and guarantees since 1776 (thoroughly researched by Hebrew University Prof. Michla Pomerance).  These inherent features are designed to subordinate the implementation (or non-implementation) of all US international commitments to the overriding US interests, as defined by the implementing president, not necessarily the president who signed the commitments.

Take for example, the feature of vagueness and non-specificity, as demonstrated by “the Deal of the Century.”  The Deal stipulates Israeli security control in the entire area from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean. But, who defines “control?”  Will it be President Trump and his team, or the more pro-Palestinian team of President Biden? Obviously, each team will have a different interpretation, reflecting their different worldviews and ideology, minimizing or maximizing the scope of “control,” which could render Israeli “control” highly-constrained and quite ineffective.

By the Time Trump Gets to Tulsa ………… The Democrats will be attempting to incite a riot. David Catron

https://spectator.org/by-the-time-trump-gets-to-tulsa/

Any remaining doubt that curbing President Trump’s campaign rallies was a key goal of the Democratic response to COVID-19 should be quelled by the Democrats’ antic opposition to Saturday’s Trump rally in Tulsa. They began with shrill fear-mongering, despite data showing that daily case rates have plateaued nationally and death rates are declining. They followed up with absurd claims that the rally’s original date was a racist “dog whistle.” As Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.) put it, “Tulsa was the site of the worst racist violence in American history. The president’s speech there on Juneteenth [June 19] is a message to every Black American: more of the same.

Never mind that Juneteenth commemorates the end of slavery, which the Republican Party abolished in the United States after overcoming the violent resistance of the Democratic planter class in the Civil War. The point is to find some pretext to stop President Trump from communicating directly to the American people while his campaign team uses the rallies to register voters and continue to grow Trump’s support using its advantage in digital technology. Key to the latter is an online app that rally attendees can download by providing a phone number. It’s an advanced data mining tool that places the Trump team light years ahead of the Biden campaign on voter outreach. As CNN reports,

The user-friendly Trump app is self-contained, and features tutorial videos from top campaign aides and surrogates like Lara Trump, who explains how to become a “digital activist” on social media and host a “MAGA meet up.” Kimberly Guilfoyle explains how to become a fundraising “bundler” and political director Chris Carr discusses how to be a grassroots team leader.… Some Democrats publicly express concern that the Biden’s campaign’s digital presence is lagging in normal times, even more so in the age of coronavirus with everything happening online.

Defund colleges, not cops Police are not the root of our problems. Academia is by Peter Wood

https://spectator.us/defund-colleges-not-cops/#

‘Defund the police!’ That’s the spray-painted, placarded, pixeled demand of the moment. The American left, from Black Lives Matterers to their knee-taking social-justice allies in their hydrangea-colored masks, has decided now is the moment to drain public resources from the custodians of public order.

I have an alternative. Now is the moment to defund the colleges. We should defund them because they are the root of the virulent anti-Americanism that feeds the riots, the looting and the learned helplessness that afflict the country. And they have been feeding the protest culture for generations. The chief lesson taught by our nation’s colleges and universities is soft disdain for our country and its forms of self-government. And the soft disdain ripens to outright antipathy for about a quarter of the graduates.

Defunding the police is a supposed cure for endemic racism and white supremacy. But America is not a racist country. To denounce America as racist is to accept a falsification of history and a wild distortion of the everyday reality experienced by Americans of every race. That some Americans of every race are racists doesn’t mean the country is racist. Racism is a feeble and fugitive feature of American life.

Why are so many Americans at the moment willing to endorse such a manifestly false claim? Because so many Americans have been to colleges that marinate them in the brine of Howard Zinn-style Marxist polemics against America, feminist screeds against patriarchy, black victimization narratives and the whole gamut of identitarian, teeth-gnashing nonsense. The graduates then walk these messages across the street to jobs in media, entertainment and technology where the visceral hatred of American values has become the elevator key to the executive suite. America has a real problem not with racism but with miseducation. We can start fixing that problem by defunding the colleges.

The Rebirth of John Bolton Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2020/06/18/the-rebirth-of-john-bolton/

The mustachioed ogre who the Left once wanted tried for war crimes is finally earning the affection of the Trump-hating Beltway establishment that eluded him for years.

In 2008, a British environmental activist attempted to perform a citizen’s arrest on John Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, during a speech in London. He failed. Top officials with George W. Bush’s Administration, Bolton in particular, were widely considered war criminals for their role in launching a deadly war in Iraq, torturing prisoners, and hiding evidence of wrongdoing.

The crux of this international animus was Bush’s false claim that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and therefore posed an immediate and mortal threat to global security. As an advisor to Secretary of State Colin Powell during Bush’s first term, Bolton enthusiastically pushed the WMD pretext for war. 

“Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had a robust program to develop all types of weapons of mass destruction—nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, and the capability to deliver them,” Bolton said a few months after the 2003 invasion.

That was just one of Bolton’s many exaggerations—to put it charitably—about Hussein’s arsenal. A bipartisan Senate committee the following year concluded the Bush Administration’s pre-war intelligence about WMDs was faulty and the threat had been overstated—no stockpiles of active agents intended to kill large numbers of people were found. The war escalated and officially ended in 2011, even though U.S. troops remain in Iraq today. Nearly 5,000 Americans have been killed in Iraq, including seven this year alone.

But being a dishonest warmonger means never having to say you’re sorry to the country you misled, or to the families of the soldiers and civilians killed by your malfeasance; in fact, it means you land lucrative gigs at think tanks and news outlets—which is exactly what Bolton did—as you patiently await your next opportunity to infiltrate the perches of power and bring your incompetence, ego, and careerism with you—which is exactly what Bolton did to Donald Trump.

Now, the mustachioed ogre who the Left once wanted to see strung up at The Hague is earning affection and attention by the Trump-hating Beltway establishment that has eluded him for years. Bolton’s book, The Room Where It Happened, is the latest broadside against Donald Trump and, as the story goes, the president is really done this time!