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Ruth King

Evidence that Iran Violated the Nuclear Deal Since Day One? by Majid Rafizadeh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14910/iran-nuclear-deal-violations

The IAEA first ignored the reports about Iran’s undeclared clandestine nuclear facilities. This should not come as a surprise: the IAEA has a long history of misreporting the Islamic Republic’s compliance with the deal and declining to follow up on credible reports about Iran’s illicit nuclear activities.

New evidence shows that Iran’s theocratic establishment was most likely violating the nuclear agreement since the day that Obama’s administration and Tehran struck the deal in 2015.

The international community would truly do itself a great service to recognize that the nuclear deal was nothing more than a pro-mullah agreement which provided Iran’s ruling clerics with billions of dollars to pursue their anti-American, anti-Semitic, anti-Iranian people and pro-terror activities, while simultaneously providing cover for Iran to pursue its nuclear ambitions.

The Iranian government is advancing its nuclear program at a faster pace. Recently, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) declared that Tehran took the third step in increasing its nuclear activities by activating advanced centrifuges: 20 IR-4 and 20 IR-6 centrifuges.

Nancy Pelosi’s Constitution Editorial of The New York Sun

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/nancy-pelosis-constitution/90842/

Go ahead, make our day. That’s our reaction to Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s call for a new law to provide for the indictment of a sitting president. The California Democrat endorses the idea, telling NPR that a president “should be indicted, if he’s committed a wrongdoing — any president.” Adds she: “There is nothing anyplace that says the president should not be indicted.”

Except in the Constitution, where the bar against indicting a sitting president is hiding in plain sight. It lurks in the logic of separated powers. And also in the stinginess with which the Constitution parcels out the power — and obligation — to take care that our laws be faithfully executed. That power is granted to the President alone — and his alone is the obligation.

It certainly doesn’t go to the Congress. Not only does the Constitution fail to grant to Congress the power to take care that our laws are faithfully executed. It also pointedly — with the prohibition on bills of attainder — forbids the Congress condemning individuals. The fact is that the Founders just didn’t trust the Congress to faithfully execute the laws it passed.

Nor is the power to execute faithfully our laws granted to the courts, whose pointedly particular powers are parsimoniously parcelled out in the parchment. The judicial power of the United States, the Supreme Court has marked, is limited to only actual cases and controversies. The courts can’t initiate cases; that is left to prosecutors or civil litigants. The courts can but decide them.

Rush To Renewable Energy Doesn’t Match Up With Basic Tenets Of Science, Economics Henry I. Miller and Andrew I. Fillat

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/09/22/resist-being-brainwashed-on

Whether it’s the Green New Deal, in which climate change abatement is only one of several radical proposals, or the general brainwashing of the younger generations about the impending end of the world, the absence of rational analysis and the willful ignorance of facts is counterproductive. Rather than promoting a feasible approach to dealing with climate change, the magnitude of which remains uncertain, the focus is on unfeasible approaches and unachievable goals. Leaders from around the world will be at it in earnest this week during the United Nations Climate Action Summit 2019.

Many approaches to climate change are analogous to saying that the best way to produce energy is to build perpetual-motion machines, which perform work indefinitely without an energy source — a concept that violates the laws of thermodynamics. In other words, the goal is laudable, but the means to achieve it is, literally, fantastic. In the case of climate change, the anti-hydrocarbon contingent seeks to violate basic tenets of science and economics.

The reality is that there are insurmountable or cost-prohibitive obstacles to the scale-up of renewable energy and to creating the necessary infrastructure for it. Here are some facts that provide a reality check:

Solar conversion to electricity is already more than 75% toward the maximum possible efficiency, according to the laws of physics. There are no possible breakthroughs that will reduce significantly the sheer numbers of solar panels needed to increase the overall power derived from the sun.
Likewise, with respect to efficiency, wind conversion to electricity is already approximately two-thirds of the way to the maximum physical limit. The number of wind turbines would need to increase massively.
A single wind turbine requires 900 tons of steel, 2,500 tons of concrete, and 45 tons of plastic (produced from hydrocarbons and not recyclable). Solar is even more resource consumptive.
The mining of silver, indium, and rare earths would have to soar by up to 20-fold over today’s yields just to meet the Paris climate accord’s goals. The mining process (for both those minerals and for battery materials) itself is dirty, ecologically destructive, and consumes significant amounts of hydrocarbon energy; and the plastic needed for solar and wind requires hydrocarbons.
No step-function improvement in batteries has been attained in spite of 25-plus years of huge investment, including that from dozens of innovative startup companies. Counting on a breakthrough at this point is probably wishful thinking.
To store the energy equivalent of a single barrel of oil, which can be stored in a $20 container at minimal cost, requires $200,000 and 10 tons of Tesla batteries.
Tesla’s “Gigafactory” produces only enough batteries in an entire year to store three minutes of U.S. power demand. That is not enough to handle a cloudy or calm day for the renewables, let alone provide the needed two months of backup. Proper backup would require the equivalent of almost 30,000 production-years of similar factories.
A single car requires 1,000 pounds of batteries. This, in turn, requires mining, moving, and processing some 500,000 pounds of raw materials. So, imagine scaling that up to provide batteries for a public utility the size of ConEd or Pacific Gas & Electric.
Neither batteries nor wind nor solar equipment lasts forever. Currently available, state-of-the-art batteries have a useful life of just seven years, leading to massive disposal and pollution issues. And all the steel and other elements of retired equipment need to go somewhere.
A shale-oil rig produces almost 15 times as much energy per hour/day/year as two 500-foot turbines turning in the wind. Putting it another way, one producing rig is the equivalent of 30 wind turbines.
Wind turbine farms are unsightly and kill huge numbers of birds.
The intermittent nature of wind and solar imposes huge infrastructure and operating costs due to the necessary continual re-balancing of the electrical grid. Extensive reliable backup sources are needed in the absence of massive batteries at every wind or solar site, which inevitably will consume hydrocarbons.

Trump’s peace deal – anything in it for Jordan? Jordan’s response to the economic component of the deal was that cash offers cannot replace a political solution. But some Jordanian officials reportedly believe the country could – and should – profit from any plan that promises billions in economic aid.by Neville Teller

https://www.israelhayom.com/2019/09/22/trumps-peace-deal-anything-in-it-for-jordan/

Jordan presents itself to the world as a constitutional monarchy – a state supporting a multiparty political system, an elected parliament, and a prime minister who is the head of government.

Constitutional experts beg to differ. Most maintain that Jordan is an autocracy in which authoritarian power is exercised by the king through legal manipulation, described by the Journal of Democracy as “selective economic reforms, new civil society regulations, and hollow pluralism initiatives.” In fact, the king is the country’s ultimate authority in respect of all three branches of government – executive, legislative, and judicial. He appoints the prime minister and chooses the cabinet. The judges are appointed and dismissed by royal decree. Political parties were legalized in 1992 provided they acknowledge the legitimacy of the monarchy.

These democratically dubious constitutional arrangements do not, however, affect the popularity of the monarchy, and there is no demand within Jordan for constitutional change. However, the usual consequences of autocratic rule – corruption, unemployment, poverty, high taxes, rising food prices, and poor government services – regularly result in outbursts of popular protest. Over the course of 2019, the scale and depth of Jordan’s economic problems have been unprecedented, and massive public demonstrations have been the result.

In May and June, the public took to the streets in great numbers to protest increased taxes and soaring prices. The rebellion was nationwide, uniting all sectors of Jordanian society. In response, King Abdullah dismissed the government, froze prices, and appointed a new prime minister, Omar al-Razzaz, whom he ordered to produce reforms.

The 2019 “Muslim Man Of The Year”, The Antisemitism Envoy, and The Pandemic of Muslim Antisemitism Andrew Bostom

https://www.andrewbostom.org/2019/09/the-2019-muslim-man-of-the-year-the-antisemitism-envoy-and-the-pandemic-of-muslim-antisemitism/

Appositely, Columbia University Jewish students are protesting the slated appearance of “proud” Jew-hating Malaysian Muslim Prime Minister Mahathir ibn Mohamad, Wednesday, September 25th at Columbia’s World Leadership Forum. Their protest petition references a comment this bigoted Muslim head of state made October 16, 2003, at the Putrajaya (Malaysia) summit for the leaders of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (now dubbed Organization of Islamic Cooperation), a de facto Sharia supremacist global Islamintern.

…the Jews rule this world by proxy and get others to fight and die for them.

But this isolated remark is completely de-contextualized from Mohamad’s mainstream Muslim worldview, rooted in sacralized Islamic jihadism and Jew-hatred, which these overarching statements from the same 2003 address, elucidate:

To begin with, the governments of all the Muslim countries can close ranks and have a common stand…on Palestine…We need guns and rockets, bombs and warplanes, tanks and warships…We may want to re-create the first century of the Hijrah, the way of life in those times, in order to practice what we think to be the true Islamic way of life. 1.3 billion Muslims cannot be defeated by a few million Jews. There must be a way. And we can only find a way if we stop to think, to assess our weaknesses and our strength, to plan, to strategize and then to counter-attack. As Muslims, we must seek guidance from the Al-Quran and the Sunnah of the Prophet (i.e., Muhammad who waged a bloody proto-jihad which slaughtered and subjugated the Medinan Jews). Surely the 23 years’ struggle of the Prophet can provide us with some guidance as to what we can and should do.

 

Moreover the Columbia student protest petition also ignores this baleful reality: Mahathir Mohamad was designated the 2019 Muslim Man Of The Year in the 2019 Muslim 500, a yearly publication of the highly influential, mainstream, moderate Jordanian Muslim think tank, The Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Institute/Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought, renowned for its very active role in “interfaith dialogue.”    

China, One World Two Systems? by Francesco Sisci

http://www.settimananews.it/italia-europa-mondo/china-one-world-two-systems/
 
How Hong Kong’s and China’s position in the world is no longer tenable, as it was seen 20 years ago.

In the late 1990s, Beijing decided to adhere to the newly established World Trade Organization (WTO), which was to replace GATT (General Agreement on Tariff and Trade), regulating trade in the free world that had been battling the Soviet empire. The USA, leading those talks and promoting the new organization, had settled on allowing a grace period for China to fully integrate into the global system. This system was not just commercial, but also political.

China had then barely managed to skirt the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis, which brought down governments and regimes all over Asia and proved in this part of the world that the US was the paramount example of a well-managed economic system. In the previous decade, the US also caused the USSR to disband and later overawed the Europeans, whose monetary system was disrupted by the 1992 financial crisis. The euro, then an objective challenge to dollar dominance, had been approved by the EU but only in return for an eastward expansion of the Union, something that would weaken European ability to easily reach a unified consensus on the moves of the new currency.

Basically, in the late 1990s, the USA and China agreed on establishing a situation parallel to that of Hong Kong. The territory had just in 1997 been returned to Beijing under the principle of “one country, two systems” (一国两制): that is, China and Hong Kong were to be run according to different sets of rules, although both agreed they belonged to one China and eventually they would be united under one rule. Similarly, China was joining the WTO under the provision that we could call new “one world, two systems”, or to be more Chinese: “one heaven, two systems” (一天两制). The two systems were to be run differently although both understood they would eventually merge into one – the free market/free politics one would spread all over the world.

WHY THE OBSESSION WITH ISRAEL AND NOT WITH WEST PAPUA (HALF A MILLION DEAD)? [Note by Tom Gross]

https://madmimi.com/p/3bc55f?pact=527997-154157172-7235361215-a2bf1295d0adda667967478eaacccbfeb5cd35c2

In a short interview I gave yesterday evening, I discuss not only the continuing substantial coverage about Israel in media outlets such as France 24 and the international New York Times, where Israel continues to be the lead story.

I also ask why there has been so little coverage in the western media after the US military admitted killing over 30 innocent Afghan farmers in a drone strike last Thursday:

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/09/afghanistan-dozens-civilians-killed-drone-attack-190919072728303.html

I’m not making a military judgment regarding the Afghan conflict. I’m wondering why the western media does not even want to report and discuss dozens of other conflicts (even those the west is involved in) in anything like the way it scrutinizes the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a conflict where far fewer people have died compared to many of these other conflicts.

This is particularly the case in the New York Times’ international print edition which, day after day, fills much of its news and opinion pages with generally very one-sided pieces seemingly designed to portray Israel in a negative and misleading light.

At the same time, there is almost no coverage of, for example, West Papua where up to half a million people have been killed (and thousands raped) since it was illegally occupied by the Indonesian militarily in 1963.

https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/West-Papua-the-forgotten-people-481450

https://thediplomat.com/2014/01/the-human-tragedy-of-west-papua/

https://www.ipwp.org/about-west-papua/

India: Modi’s Welcome Move on Kashmir by Lawrence A. Franklin

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14908/india-mod-kashmir

Since the partition of India in 1947, which established the two independent states of India and Pakistan, Pakistan has infiltrated soldiers into Indian Kashmir, assisted anti-Indian Muslim terrorists in Jammu-Kashmir and sponsored many murderous operations inside India proper.

India is determined to safeguard its standing as the world’s most populous democracy, particularly in the shadow of the rising power of totalitarian China, which enjoys a close relationship with Pakistan. Revoking Article 370 sends a clear signal to both Pakistan and China that India will resolutely defend its territory against efforts by Islamabad or Beijing to whittle away at Indian sovereignty in any portion of its territory.

India may therefore consider a strategic alliance with the U.S. to protect the Indo-Pacific region from Chinese territorial aggression and acquisitive claims of sovereignty in the South and East China Seas.

“Pakistan has threatened to use nuclear arms. Pakistan is somewhere where terrorists have been able to plan bloody terrorist attacks in Europe without mentioning tremendous human rights violation in Pakistan.” — Fulvio Martusciello, Italian MEP, speaking at the European Parliament, September 18, 2019.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently responded to the heavy criticism he has been receiving — and to violent protests that erupted — over his controversial decision to revoke Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which granted a certain degree of autonomy to Jammu and Kashmir, by calling for “hugging each Kashmiri” and for the creation of a “new paradise” in the valley.

Modi accused elements “from across the border” in Pakistan of spurring the protests that have been taking place since August 5, when New Delhi announced the revoking of Article 370 – a move he said “is going to be the medium for fulfilling the aspirations and dreams of the people of Jammu and Kashmir.”

Modi insisted that what the “youth, mothers and sisters in Jammu and Kashmir” want is “development and new job opportunities.”

The previously autonomous region of Jammu-Kashmir is an 86,000-square-mile Muslim-majority area in the north of India Proper, nearly half of which is controlled by India and the rest is divided between Pakistan and China. Territorial control of the area has been the prime cause of wars in 1947 and 1965, and of many deadly skirmishes between India and Pakistan.

The Madcap Adventures of ‘Buckaroo Banzai’ Biden Joe Biden reminds us that losers sometimes compose history. Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2019/09/22/the-madcap-adventures-of-buckaroo-banzai-biden/

Sometime-Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden was at it again, voicing his brand of tough-guy boasts that he can “beat Trump like a drum.”

A 1980s sci-fi cult film about a weirdo, Buckaroo Banzai, who travels through time dimensions in many manifestations battling evil and saving good guys reminds us of the latest incarnation of Joe Biden.

Biden sees himself as something similar, as Americans are reacquainting themselves with the three-time presidential candidate, who for years has been regaling audiences as the swashbuckling hero of an amazing repertoire of his own larger than life stories.

Sometimes the bard Buckaroo Biden entertains crowds as the self-sacrificing tribal white knight who physically stood down punks who threatened his family.

Sometimes Biden becomes Captain America Biden who stands up to his country’s enemy bullies abroad who would corrupt the international order.

And sometimes Biden can’t help but become the hero even in ceremonial duties where he is supposed to be honoring someone else.

The common denominator is that we elected a senator, then a vice president, and he hopes, soon a president—and got a Homeric hero in the bargain.

Diversity Inc. Is Becoming Even More Dangerous Applying “equality” to selecting brain surgeons and airline pilots. Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/09/diversity-inc-becoming-even-more-dangerous-bruce-thornton/

Back in the Eighties when “diversity” and “multiculturalism” were starting to invade the universities, critics like me used to ask proponents if they wanted to apply “diversity” to selecting brain surgeons and airline pilots. Seems our common sense was naïve. According to an op-ed by Stanley Goldfarb, a professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine, medical schools are under pressure to include in its curriculum  “social justice” shibboleths like gun-control, climate change, and eliminating racial disparities.

We are reaching new levels of dangerous absurdity when the study of medicine––perhaps our most practical, science-based discipline with concrete outcomes easily visible even to laymen––is being diluted to satisfy progressive ideology and dubious scientism.

Yet we should have expected that this day would come. From the moment that the Supreme Court in the 1978 Bakke case enshrined into federal law a concept the vagueness of which was exceeded only by its complete lack of empirical evidence that it provided any measurable benefits. More important, “diversity” as progressives understand it, is an ideological and political weapon divorced from reality.

To start, true diversity is a fact of human history, one oversimplified and corrupted by our continuing reliance on the modern concept of “race,” which was given scientific pretensions by “scientific racism” starting in the late 19th century. A term like “white” is useless, for example, when it comes to the ancient Mediterranean where Western civilization began. Europe at the time of Roman expansion was fragmented into hundreds of tribes with distinct languages and dialects, cultures and mores, religions and cults, geographical circumstances and available resources. Constant warfare, enslavement, and trade promoted continuous intermingling of these peoples and the creation of hybrid cultures that belie the notion of a unified, distinct “race.” To say all those peoples were “white” is to say nothing meaningful for understanding them.