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Ruth King

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Despite Latest Iranian Outrage, Euro-Business Keeps Churning Money keeps flowing to the Mullahs as their Israel hatred heats up. P. David Hornik

By on March 6th, 2018

The website Iran Front Page proudly announces: “The first edition of International Hourglass Festival, dedicated to anti-Israel art and media productions, will be held in the Iranian capital Tehran in April.”

Last week a press conference on the festival was held in Tehran. During it Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, identified as “the Secretary-General of the International Conference on Supporting Palestinian Intifada and an international advisor to Iran’s Parliament Speaker,” explained that “the ‘Hourglass Festival’ is a symbol of the imminent collapse of the Zionist regime of Israel, as predicted by the Leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei.”

Amir-Abdollahian further explained that he “cannot publicize the Islamic Republic’s plan to realize the Leader’s prediction that the Israeli regime will collapse within 25 years, but it will definitely happen.”

What will the Hourglass Festival be like? Its executive secretary, Mahdi Qomi, offers a preview, saying it “will be held in 11 sections”:

Audio-visual productions, graphic design (poster, cartoons, etc.), mobile apps, mobile and web-based games, social media and websites, animation, motion-graphics, start-ups are among the fields in which the festival accepts entries.

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Populist Reformers Win Big In Italy’s ‘Trump Election’ The people send a message to the European establishment. March 6, 2018 Lloyd Billingsley

By on March 6th, 2018

​“The contours of the new regime are still unclear,” explained the Washington Post, “but an old one is certainly passing.” And the headline told the tale even better: “Italy’s election is another blow to the European establishment.”

The big loser was European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, who feared a “worst scenario.” The two big winners were “the anti-establishment Five Star Movement, founded less than a decade ago by a comedian, which won about 32 percent of the vote, and the League, a far-right, anti-immigrant, Euroskeptic party.”

In similar style, CNN headlined, “Italy’s voters choose populists, deliver stinging rebuke to Europe.” As the piece contended, “Italy was plunged into political uncertainty” with no party or coalition with enough votes to rule alone. A “right-wing coalition of parties won the most seats of any bloc in parliament with about 37% of the vote,” and the big winner in that group was “the anti-immigrant and xenophobic League.”

This result “will be met with alarm by European leaders who feared that big wins for Italy’s anti-establishment parties would spell further trouble for a continent already struggling to cope with the destabilizing rise of populist and far-right movements in France, Germany and elsewhere.” CNN quoted a tweet from “French far-right leader” Marine Le Pen that “The European Union is going to have a horrible evening.”

In its headline, the New York Times offered “4 Takeaways From a ‘Throw the Bums Out’ Italian Election.” As the piece explained, “migration matters” and “the mainstream parties have no answer.” The Italian economic recovery has been weak and Brussels was not much help, “further harming the center-left.”

Italian elites are “considered generally corrupt and inefficient,” explained Mark Leonard of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “Few wanted to vote for mainstream parties that were the authors of the stagnation of the last decade.” For Matthew J. Goodwin of the University of Kent, the Italian election fit a common European pattern: the demise of traditional social democratic parties; the rightward shift of voters. As the Times noted, “the Italians voted largely for parties that are euroskeptic.”

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Does President Trump Know What a Radical Environmentalist He Picked in Peter Navarro? By Colin Flaherty

By on March 6th, 2018

The strange case of Peter Navarro became curiouser and curiouser this week.

As the president’s pitchman for tariffs, Navarro was all over the airways this week with visions of new factories for steel and aluminum, all through the magical elixir of raising taxes on imports.

Maybe it will work. Maybe it won’t.

But if one of California’s most visible advocates of No Growth Environmentalism to stop jobs, housing, and growth of all kinds – and that is who Navarro was before he discovered the evils of China and Trump discovered him – can become the chief spokesman for more jobs, housing, and growth, then anything is possible.

Many Trump-supporters in San Diego are still amazed at how this leader of a liberal cabal of Southern California environmentalists rose so quickly to such great heights in Trump’s conservative regime. They still remember when Navarro arrived in San Diego in the 1980s and formed his no-growth group called PLAN: Prevent Los Angelization Now.

The idea was that building new homes creates the demand for new homes, and that would fill San Diego up with more people than anyone wants.

It’s an “if they don’t build it, they won’t come” kind of thing. As for the kids who grew up to want homes of their own, they would just have to go somewhere other than here.

Soon after Navarro’s plan was on the ballot, so was he, running for mayor of San Diego. Twice he tried. Twice he won the primary. Twice he lost the general election. After a similar defeat as a Democrat running for Congress, Navarro moved on, leaving San Diego to start writing books about the Chinese menace from his new post at the University of California, Irvine.

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ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran Will Host International ‘Hourglass’ Festival Celebrating Israel’s Imminent Demise By Tyler O’Neil

By on March 6th, 2018

An international conference dedicated to anti-Israel art and media will take place in Iran next month. “The First International Hourglass Festival” celebrates the secret plan developed by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to ensure the Jewish state will cease to exist in 25 years.

The “festival aims to promote the attention movement to the Supreme leader of Revolution (regarding to the collapse of the Zionist regime over the next 25 years) & the attention movement to the Quds as the first issue of Islamic world and support of the oppressed Palestinians as one of the most strategic slogans of Islamic Republic of Iran,” the website’s garbled English version explains.

The official poster of the festival, released Monday, emphasized the idea that time is running out for the state of Israel. The image features a blue Star of David (the Jewish symbol on the Israeli flag) decomposing at the top of an hourglass, with elements of that symbol collecting on the bottom of the glass.

The festival’s organizer, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, an aide to the Speaker of Iran’s Parliament, told Iran News that the event will celebrate the fact that “the Islamic Republic won’t allow the Zionists to play with the security of the sensitive region of Middle East. Iran and its allies in the region, who defeated terrorists, will never allow the Zionists to endanger the region’s security.”

Amir-Abdollahian said Iran’s plan to grant the Palestinians victory over Israel relies on the aid of other Muslim states, all of whom “must play their role in this regard.” (Perhaps he means every Muslim state except Saudi Arabia, as the festival website slams “damned Wahabism,” along with the USA and Israel.)

The organizer admitted that he “cannot publicize the Islamic Republic’s plan to realize the Leader’s prediction that the Israeli regime will collapse within 25 years, but it will definitely happen,” Iran News reported.

In another twist, the paper reported that Amir-Abdollahian “also referred to U.S. President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem al-Quds as the capital of the Zionist regime, and described it as a great help for the Palestinians as it united the Muslim World against Israel.”

This is far from the first anti-Jewish celebration held under the Khamenei regime. The regime also hosts a conference centered on denying the Nazi atrocities committed against Jews in the Holocaust.

In recent months, Israel has launched airstrikes against Iranian targets in Syria, engaging in a proxy war against the Khamenei regime. Israel has threatened to escalate these strikes in an attempt to “dismantle the axis of evil — Syria, Iran, and Hezballah.” CONTINUE AT SITE

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Haley Says UN Job is About Having ‘Absolutely No Patience for Bullying’ By Bridget Johnson

By on March 6th, 2018

WASHINGTON — UN Ambassador Nikki Haley told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee annual policy conference that “standing up for your friends is critical” and the administration is looking at tying foreign aid to voting with the U.S. at the United Nations.

Haley told the crowd that she was raised with “absolutely no patience for bullying” as she grew up in the only Indian family in small South Carolina town. “That didn’t mean every day was great,” she said. “My family were immigrants. My father wore a turban. My mother wore a sari.”

“You don’t pick on someone just because they look differently than you, you don’t pick on someone just because they think differently than you, or because you can,” she added.

Haley said that upon arriving at the United Nations she learned that Israel “gets bullied because the countries that don’t like Israel are used to getting away with it — just like that little girl in South Carolina, that doesn’t sit well with me.”

As examples of the administration countering UN bullying, Haley cited the U.S. withdrawal from UNESCO for “attempting to change ancient history” by recognizing Hebron in the West Bank as a Palestinian world heritage site in need of protection.

Haley said when she started attending a monthly UN session on the Middle East and found it to be “an Israel-bashing session it was actually shocking.”

“I can’t say that we’ve solved the problem but I can say that several other countries have followed our lead,” she said. “What used to be a monthly Israel bashing session now has more balance.”

On moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, Haley declared, “Like most Americans, I knew what the capital of Israel was.”

“America did not make Jerusalem Israel’s capital,” she said, but simply recognized reality “denied for too long.”CONTINUE AT SITE

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Will The Conspiracy Against Trump and American Democracy Go Unpunished? Paul Craig Roberts

By on March 6th, 2018

Dear Readers: This is one of the most important articles I have written, along with this one: https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/02/02/nuclear-posture-review/. If the Russiagate conspiracy against Trump and American democracy goes unpunished, accountable government in the United States will cease to exist. US security agencies have long been involved in coups against foreign governments. Now they are involved in one against America. There is great danger that Republicans are so worshipful of “national security” and so determined to protect the reputation of the US government that they will give a pass to the high officials who participated in a conspiracy against the United States. As for President Trump, he lacks a government that he can count on and is threatened by the military/security complex. The conspiracy could easily be whitewashed as merely a case of the FBI and DOJ not following proper procedures, with the media’s participation in the conspiracy being dismissed with mea culpas of “sloppy reporting.”

Will The Conspiracy Against Trump and American Democracy Go Unpunished?

Paul Craig Roberts

“In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.” – Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

The American people do not realize the seriousness of the Russiagate conspiracy against them and President Trump. Polls indicate that a large majority of the public do not believe that Trump conspired with Putin to steal the presidential election, and are tired of hearing the media prostitutes repeat the absurd story day after day. On its face the story makes no sense whatsoever. Moreover, the leaked emails are real, not fabricated. The emails show exactly what Hillary and the DNC did. The public knows that these transgressions were pushed out of news sight by the false story of a Trump/Putin conspiracy. The fact that the entirety of the US print and TV media served in a highly partisan political way to bury a true and disturbing story with a fake news story—Russiagate—is one reason some polls show that only 6% of Americans trust the mainstream media. All polls show that large majorities of independents, Republicans, and youth distrust the mainstream media. In some polls about half of Democrats trust the media, and that is because the media is servant to Democratic Party interests.

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MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

The Red Sparrow – A Review By Marilyn Penn

By on March 6th, 2018

Viewing this movie right before the Oscars and anticipating all the virtucrat blather about MeToo, TimesUp and Parkland, one is forced to react strongly to the heavy dose of pornography and violence on screen. Don’t see this if you might be upset by people having their limbs broken, their heads and torsos bashed with a heavy metal object, their skin flayed, their bodies raped, their necks choked, and of course lots of shooting to kill. In fact, this movie is the equivalent of the assault rifle capable of discharging ten or twenty times more firepower than you ever thought possible.

The plot is too convoluted to explain but the gist of it concerns Jennifer Lawrence playing a Russian prima ballerina who is purposely injured by a jealous rival – think I Tonya with toes shoes instead of skates. Since she can no longer dance, she will lose her apartment and insurance both of which are paid for by the Bolshoi Ballet and essential for Jen’s sick mother, played lethargically by Joely Richardson who doesn’t look sick or old enough to warrant the worst of what’s to come. Poor Jen will have to use her special insight into people as a spy/hooker, hired by her pederast uncle who works for the state. For this training, she must go to Whore School where Charlotte Rampling will teach her a thing or two about male and female parts and how to find people’s v-spot (vulnerability) so as to get them to do what you want. This is where we get to see Jennifer frontally and backfully nude and we immediately notice that this voluptuous body belongs more to the art of pole dancing than the rigors of ballet. But never mind – Jen has other changes to consider, such as bleaching her hair, throwing away her cane and being able to run perfectly despite that badly fractured, twisted leg. Did anyone get hired to deal with the continuity in this script?

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The #MeToo Movement Will Produce Victims of Its Own By Paul Craig Roberts

By on March 6th, 2018

When you think about America, what do you see? A society falling apart at the seams. A government unable to represent anyone but the rich and powerful.

From the standpoint of the #MeToo movement, the wrong country was banned from the Olympics. It should have been the US, not Russia. According to MeToo women, the US Olympic Committee and USA Gymnastics covered up Larry Nassar’s sexual abuse of US athletes for years. In contrast, the Russian doping scandal appears to be an orchestration by Washington as part of its ongoing policy to isolate Russia.

The entire story of systematic government-sponsored doping of Russian athletes rests essentially on the unconfirmed story of one person—the person running the alleged doping program. Curiously, this person fled Russia to the US and “confessed.” He is hidden somewhere under US protection. Why would the person running a doping program do this?

Perhaps because it wasn’t a state-sponsored program, and authorities were hot on his heels. Did he confess to Americans so as not to be handed over to the Russians for prosecution?

Some of the Russian-bashers claim that more evidence comes from non-doping Russian athletes who claimed they were disadvantaged by the state doping program. This means that they were not included in the program. How then could it have been an all-inclusive state-sponsored program?

The Court of Arbitration for Sport has cleared many of the banned Russian athletes of the false charge. Nevertheless the International Olympic Committee refused to admit the cleared athletes to the games. Faced with the intrusion of US foreign policy into the Olympic games, the court’s spokesperson backed off. He said that the absence of any evidence of the athletes’ guilt does not mean that the athletes are innocent. In other words, guilty by accusation until proven innocent.

Is there any Western institution that is not corrupt?

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Column: Harvard bows to political correctness Jenna Robinson

By on March 6th, 2018

Harvard, like many elite universities, has become increasingly intolerant.

It has sought, through a series of administrative decisions, to substitute its own values for the individual moral consciences of its students and to punish those who stray from the university’s narrow dogma. Most recently, Harvard moved to ban all exclusive social clubs, including fraternities and sororities, by 2022.

Despite Harvard’s promises that student rights are of primary importance on campus, the proposal would deprive students of their fundamental right to freedom of association, enshrined in the First Amendment.

Ultimately, Harvard’s decision to punish students who are members of such organizations, which choose members based on gender, comes down to a difference of opinion about values.

President Drew Faust explained in a 2016 letter that Harvard’s commitment to having “a truly inclusive community” was one of the university’s “deepest values.” Faust also asserted that gender is an “arbitrary” distinction between individuals.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Trump the Deal-maker and the Middle East by Amir Taheri

By on March 4th, 2018

The first reason that so many deal-makers have failed is that peace is never negotiated and is always imposed by the side that wins a war. There is not any instance in history, which is primarily a narrative of countless wars, in which an outsider has imposed peace on unwilling belligerents.

The second reason is that outside deal-makers have their interests and agendas which make an already tangled web even more complicated. For example, in the case of American deal-makers, how to win Jewish votes in the US without antagonizing the Arabs who sell us oil and buy our arms?

The third reason is that whenever a status quo is at least tolerable for both belligerents, the desire for risking it in the hope of an ill-defined peace is diminished. Many people in the world live with a status quo they don’t regard as ideal.

There is one thing that Trump the deal-maker could do. He could ask the Israelis and the Palestinians to work on an agreement, each in their own camp, on what they exactly want, and report to him.

Casting himself as the best friend Israel could hope for, President Donald Trump is promising, some may say threatening, to unveil his grand plan for a peace “deal” to end the so-called “Middle East problem”.

Trump has always fancied himself as a deal-maker; he has even written a book on the subject. It is, therefore, no surprise that he might want to put his skill to use on an issue which has defied numerous deal-makers for six decades.

What are the chances of him succeeding? The short answer is: nil!

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