FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

To The Biden Admin: To Eradicate Iran’s Terrorism, Confront the Ruling Mullahs by Majid Rafizadeh

Posted By on February 19th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18245/iran-terrorism-mullahs

The administration, however, then made an astonishing announcement: that it is unfreezing $29 billion to the Iranian regime, despite that Iran is still, according to the State Department, an officially designated state sponsor of terrorism.

The move is apparently part of a US effort to appease the mullahs into redoing the 2015 nuclear deal that gives Iran a glide path to having nuclear weapons. Three American negotiators have already resigned and the US is not even welcome in the room.

A recent report by the United Nations, based on the last six months of 2021, acknowledged that in Iran, “terrorist groups enjoy greater freedom there than at any time in recent history.”

Even Iran’s leaders have pointed to their ties with terror groups. A former general of the IRGC, Saeed Ghasemi, shared a surprising revelation in 2019 when he pointed out that the Iranian government sent agents to Bosnia to train Al Qaeda members, and that those operatives hid their identity by posing as humanitarian workers for Iran’s Red Crescent Society.

One only need look into the Iranian regime’s relationship with Al Qaeda to understand what a catastrophe it is to give billions of dollars to Iran’s regime. Iran has reportedly had ties to Al Qaeda for nearly three decades.

Appeasing the ruling of mullahs of Iran and unfreezing billions of dollars to give them will only further empower them, increase their terrorist activities and accelerate their destabilization of the Middle East – another legacy of failure for which the Biden administration will be able to claim credit, along with the worst inflation in 40 years; the skyrocketing price of gasoline and heating oil from shutting down America’s historic energy independence; more than 100,000 U.S. deaths in 2021 from fentanyl and other drugs; enriching and empowering Russia as well as Mexico’s drug cartels; failing to give Ukraine adequate materiel to deter a Russian offensive or to protect itself from one, and the crowning $83 billion surrender to the Taliban terrorists of Afghanistan.

As long as the Biden administration is surrendering to the Iranian regime and pursuing appeasement policies with the ruling mullahs, the administration’s counterterrorism strategy will be ineffective and counterproductive.

The Biden administration, to its credit, recently reported the death of Islamic State leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashemi al-Quraishi as a national security win and a sign of success of its counterterrorism strategy.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The View From Budapest American statesmen and legislators can still find much to admire and possibly emulate in Hungary, at least at the level of principle. By Josh Hammer

Posted By on February 19th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/02/18/the-view-from-budapest/

I’m writing from Budapest, the beautiful, Danube-bestriding Hungarian capital. Hungary, though a faraway land and modest in both size and population, has played an outsize role in the American conservative conscience for the past half-decade or so. After just a few days, it is not difficult to understand why. Hungary, under Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his ruling Fidesz party, is a real-life experiment in government under a framework of “national conservatism.” Lessons for American conservatives are clear and legion.

Western media typically covers Orban in hysterical fashion, accusing him of autocracy, crypto-fascism, or outright thuggery. It is difficult to believe that any of these left-wing keyboard warriors have ever met Orban, much less spent any time with him. I spent a couple of hours standing directly next to him earlier this week, when he met with a small group of visiting media, think-tankers, and other public figure types. That meeting was illuminating.

From firsthand experience, I can attest that the prime minister is nothing like the caricature the media portrays him as. He is personally quite funny, gregarious, and engaging, and he handled even critical questions with aplomb.

Perhaps most surprising for blue-checked Twitterati types who view him as a power-hungry, barbaric European dictator, he is also a genuine conservative intellectual. Orban spent time at Oxford, and he dedicates one day every week to reading up and immersing himself in substantive political reading material. To borrow a popular online phrase, he has “done the reading.”

At our meeting, Balazs Orban (no relation), the prime minister’s political director, expressly referred to the Hungarian government’s philosophical lodestar as national conservatism, even name-checking one of national conservatism’s chief intellectual architects, Yoram Hazony (full disclosure: my Edmund Burke Foundation colleague). In the past, Orban has also embraced the mantle of “illiberal democracy.” That may sound rhetorically jarring to overly sensitized Western ears, but it amounts to the same criticism of the liberal order as that which is aired by American national conservatives and “postliberals.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The false claim that Trump was in wrongful possession of confidential documents By Andrea Widburg

Posted By on February 19th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/02/the_false_claim_that_trump_was_in_wrongful_possession_of_confidential_documents.html

The National Archives, which is controlled by a hard leftist cadre, very excitedly announced that President Donald Trump took classified information with him when he left the White House. The problem—which the AP reluctantly concedes—is that, as President, he had the final say over what’s classified. That means that there’s no hypocrisy in his reaming Hillary Clinton for her conduct.

As a predicate, the National Archives management has turned that government office into a purely leftist entity determined to advance all leftist causes, including destroying Donald Trump. Recently, it was caught stating that the U.S. Constitution and all of America’s other founding documents contain “harmful content.” Why? Because they have “racist, sexist, misogynistic, and xenophobic opinions.”

Additionally, the National Archives management has concluded that the entire institution of the National Archives itself is structurally racist because it’s concerned with lauding the work of the White men who created our nation. You can read more about that insanity here.

Most recently, the leftist, impermissibly partisan National Archives management’s vendetta against Trump has management claiming that Trump was found to be illegally in possession of classified information:

Classified information was found in the 15 boxes of White House records that were stored at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, the National Archives and Records Administration said Friday in a letter that confirmed the matter has been sent to the Justice Department.

The letter from the agency follows numerous reports around Trump’s handling of sensitive and even classified information during his time as president and after he left the White House. The revelation could also interest federal investigators responsible for policing the handling of government secrets, though the Justice Department and FBI have not indicated they will pursue.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Schadenfreude: Eileen Gu learns the hard way about what comes of shilling for China By Monica Showalter

Posted By on February 19th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/02/schadenfreude_eileen_gu_learns_the_hard_way_about_what_comes_of_shilling_for_china.html

So things are not all bonbons and shark’s fin soup for Eileen Gu, the 18-year-old skiing sensation trotted forth as a propaganda gal at the 2022 Olympics by the red Chinese government, following her decision to ski for China instead of America.

Seems the Chinese themselves on their meager internet outlets are questioning why this San Francisco–born and bred golden girl is being shoved in front of them as a role model, given that she had so many more opportunities than they had as Chinese people still stuck in China.  And the whole thing is giving the Chicoms the perfect excuse for censoring their posts, if not rounding them up into jails.  Way to go, Eileen — hope you’re proud of yourself.

According to the Wall Street Journal, here’s how bad it is:

No sooner had Gu won her first medal, a surprise gold in the freestyle skiing big air event, than one viral online article posed a pointed question in its headline — “What does Eileen Gu’s success have to do with ordinary people?”  — that appeared to strike a chord with readers, and to have unnerved government censors.

The article, published on China’s ubiquitous WeChat messaging app by an education-focused blog widely followed by elite Chinese parents called Nuli Shehui — loosely translated as “Slave Society” — pointed out the lack of any concrete evidence to show that Gu had in fact renounced her U.S. citizenship, and attributed Gu’s success to her unique upbringing, which combined the freedom and well-rounded education offered by the U.S. with the rigors of China’s examination-oriented system.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Beginning of the End for the Ottawa Convoy? By Nate Hochman

Posted By on February 19th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-beginning-of-the-end-for-the-ottawa-convoy/#slide-1

Ottawa – Tensions are running high in Ottawa as hundreds of police officers in riot gear make a coordinated push to dismantle the trucker convoy that arrived in the city in late January. Police arrested at least two leading organizers of the convoy, Tamara Lich and Chris Barber, on Thursday night. But today, law-enforcement officers are engaged in a much larger-scale action, surrounding the encampments and methodically moving in to make arrests and disperse protesters, and even positioning armed officers on nearby roofs. It’s by far the most aggressive show of state force against the convoy to date.

This morning, large numbers of police officers — arriving on foot, on horseback, and in armored cars — began amassing around the convoy. By 11 a.m., lines of police officers on multiple sides of the encampments had begun to push inward, cutting off the main entrances and shrinking the reach of the convoy. They were met with loud and angry shouts of indignation from the truckers, who assembled to meet them on the other side of the line. But with some exceptions — at certain junctures, the officers’ advances pushed into a crowd of protesters who refused to move, leading to a sort of pushing match between the convoy crowd and the line of police — there were few physical altercations. Those who did resist police advances were promptly arrested and hauled out.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Biden’s Regulators Empower Putin FERC sets rules that will block new U.S. natural gas pipelines.

Posted By on February 19th, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-bidens-regulators-empower-putin-ferc-natural-gas-joe-manchin-11645217981?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

We live in strange and contradictory times. President Biden is trying mightily to deter a Russian invasion in Ukraine at the same time his regulators are working to give Vladimir Putin more leverage over global energy supplies. Obsessive climate politics gets more self-destructive by the week.

In an act of bizarre timing, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on Thursday revised its policy for approving natural gas pipelines and export terminals. FERC by law must vouch that projects are in the public interest and won’t have a significant environmental impact. But now the agency plans to include greenhouse gas emissions in this analysis. The vote was 3-2, with two Republican commissioners dissenting.

***

Here’s the kicker: The pipeline analysis may include emissions from upstream production and downstream consumption even though there’s no reliable way to measure either one.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Biden misery index on rise as Americans pessimistic about country’s future Public concern over crime, inflation, other issues could spell trouble for Dems in November. By Aaron Kliegman

Posted By on February 19th, 2022

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/polling/biden-misery-index-rise-americans-pessimistic-about-countrys-future

Americans are growing increasingly pessimistic about the current state and future of the country as the political phenomenon of misery takes hold, presenting problems for President Biden and Democrats ahead of this year’s midterm elections.

As the national mood becomes gloomier under the Biden administration, a useful indicator for measuring economic pain has resurfaced after years of dormancy: the so-called misery index.

Created by the late economist Arthur Okun, the misery index became widely known in the 1970s and early 1980s during the presidencies of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. It adds together two measures of economic pain — the unemployment rate and inflation for consumers — to give a sense of the economic distress felt by everyday Americans.

The index hit 11% in November and December and reached 11.5% last month — higher than any month in 2008 when the Great Recession began and just behind its highest levels in late 2009 and early 2010 when unemployment was around 10%. The current level is the highest in a decade, not including the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Economists don’t consider the misery index a sophisticated metric but say it’s a useful tool.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

THE REAL COST OF WOKE POLITICS

Posted By on February 19th, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/02/18/the-real-cost-of-woke-politics/

To many, the poison that is identity politics can mainly be seen in the growing rifts and bitter divisions of the two main political parties. But as real as the Democrat/Republican split is, so-called Woke Politics has a far more insidious and far-reaching impact: It’s destroying Americans’ faith in the long-standing bedrock institutions of our republic.

It’s clear that Americans of different political affiliations no longer see eye to eye. Since at least the 19th century, the two major parties have never been farther apart in both governing philosophy and in policies.

For that, we can blame Critical Theory, the neo-Marxist philosophy that brought us “woke” politics based on racial and religious identity and that now governs the Democratic Party. It has led to widespread dissatisfaction, confusion, anger, and alienation among Americans.

But the damage, as we noted above, isn’t only to our now-hostile politics: It’s metastasized to other parts of American life and culture as well, as recent surveys plainly show.

Start with a recent survey of 2,022 Americans by RealClear Opinion Research. It compares Americans’ values and attitudes on a host of different topics.

And what it found was, in a word, troubling.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Why the well-educated see racism everywhere Universities are promoting a culture of racial grievance.

Posted By on February 19th, 2022

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/02/14/why-the-well-educated-see-racism-everywhere/

We are repeatedly told that racism is all around us today. It is supposedly systemic, surreptitious and present everywhere, from the boardroom to the university. It can be glimpsed in everything from disparities in income to microaggressions.

But if you dig a little deeper, a different picture emerges. It seems that racism is often in the eye of the beholder. So while some ethnic-minority individuals do indeed perceive racial discrimination everywhere, others do not. Interestingly, a clear disparity emerges when you look at educational attainment.

In a 2019 Pew Research Center survey, 81 per cent of black American respondents with ‘at least some college experience’ said they experience racial discrimination ‘from time to time’, and 17 per cent said they experience racial discrimination ‘regularly’. In contrast, just 69 per cent of black American respondents educated up to high-school level reported experiencing racial discrimination ‘from time to time’, while fewer than one in 10 said that they regularly experience racial discrimination.

The relationship between attending university and heightened reporting of racial discrimination among ethnic minorities is clear in Britain, too. During my PhD research, based on survey data collected in the aftermath of the 2010 UK General Election, I found that more highly educated ethnic-minority Brits were far more likely to report racial discrimination than other sections of the ethnic-minority population.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Why global warming is good for us Climate change is creating a greener, safer planet. Matt Ridley

Posted By on February 19th, 2022

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/02/15/why-global-warming-is-good-for-us/

Global warming is real. It is also – so far – mostly beneficial. This startling fact is kept from the public by a determined effort on the part of alarmists and their media allies who are determined to use the language of crisis and emergency. The goal of Net Zero emissions in the UK by 2050 is controversial enough as a policy because of the pain it is causing. But what if that pain is all to prevent something that is not doing net harm?

The biggest benefit of emissions is global greening, the increase year after year of green vegetation on the land surface of the planet. Forests grow more thickly, grasslands more richly and scrub more rapidly. This has been measured using satellites and on-the-ground recording of plant-growth rates. It is happening in all habitats, from tundra to rainforest. In the four decades since 1982, as Bjorn Lomborg points out, NASA data show that global greening has added 618,000 square kilometres of extra green leaves each year, equivalent to three Great Britains. You read that right: every year there’s more greenery on the planet to the extent of three Britains. I bet Greta Thunberg did not tell you that.