FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

The Mullahs Close in on the Bomb Darkness descends on a region’s stability. Bruce Thornton

Posted By on February 11th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/02/what-about-iran-mullahs-close-bomb-bruce-thornton/

While we try to figure out Russia’s intentions for Ukraine, Iran is getting closer to a deal that will leave it a nuclear power. Discussions in Vienna are back on, and hopeful dispatches are sent out by Western diplomats. But given Iran’s maximalist demands, and the Biden administration’s fetish of “diplomatic engagement,” things aren’t looking good for the region’s stability.

Ever since Biden rejoined the talks to restart the deal Trump wisely walked away from, Iran has shown patent contempt for this country and its diplomats. Meanwhile, the advanced centrifuges keep spinning weapons-grade uranium. What else explains the arrogant, dismissive tone Iranian negotiators take with the U.S., particularly the demand that we lift punitive sanctions before the real talks begin? When Biden’s team restored the sanctions waivers on European nations, “Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian called it ‘good but insufficient’ on Sunday, while Foreign Ministry spokesperson Saeed Khatibzadeh went further, calling sanctions relief a ‘red line’ in the talks.”

You don’t need a degree in foreign relations to see what Iran’s game is––keep talking until they can present their bomb as a fait accompli. North Korea successfully played that game for 30 years. With Biden’s team so eager for a deal that they’ll stand for this contempt, no wonder Iran thinks they can pull off that scam once again. In fact, they’re even more confident now that Russia and China are playing big-brother to the regime. China’s money and oil purchases have taken the sting out of U.S. sanctions. So of course, Biden restores the waivers so Europeans, faced with mounting energy costs, can contribute to Iran’s fisc as well.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

The Mystery of the Migrant Kids the Feds Are Spiriting Into the U.S. Interior by James Varney

Posted By on February 11th, 2022

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2022/02/10/the_mystery_of_the_migrant_kids_the_feds_are_spiriting_into_the_us_interior_815986.html

After months of delay, the Department of Homeland Security replied late last month to a Congressional demand for information about the number of illegal migrants the department has flown from border towns to communities around the country. In 2021, it said, 71,617 were dropped off in nearly 20 cities including locales as far from the Mexican border as Atlanta, Chicago, New York and Philadelphia.

Todd Bensman: “The government knows. But they are being as opaque and ‘darkened-windows’ as they can be about the entire matter.”
Center for Immigration Studies

Immigration experts critical of the Biden administration’s permissive immigration policies believe those numbers are incomplete, especially regarding the most vulnerable migrants, those under 18, whom DHS classifies as “unaccompanied children.” The agency says some 40,000 of the total transported are such minors, but that number is only a fraction of the 147,000 “encounters” the agency reports having with unaccompanied migrant children at the southern border between January and October 2021.

Paramount among the questions raised by the transports is what happens to the unaccompanied children once they leave the airport?  The major cities DHS lists, the experts say, are probably simply way stations rather than final destinations.

“Everyone wants to know where they’re going, but nobody knows,” said Todd Bensman, a national security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington-based think tank.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

The Middle East: The US Is All In or All Out by Pete Hoekstra

Posted By on February 11th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18223/middle-east-us

Despite multiple attacks on Abu Dhabi, which include an air base that hosts American military personnel, the current American administration seems unwilling to designate the Houthis as the terrorist organization it is. At the same time, however, it wants to put constraints on the use of weapons the U.S. might sell to the United Arab Emirates, whose civilian population has been targeted by the Houthis… For Yemen, this is no longer acceptable.

While the Biden administration has made clear its desire to restart nuclear talks with Iran, why not try doing it from a position of strength, for instance deterrence? One of the pillars of strength would be presenting a united front against Iran, with our Gulf allies and Israel at its core. Iran recognizes and responds to strength. It also recognizes weakness and responds by taking advantage of it.

It is vitally important the Biden administration stabilize relationships with key U.S. allies in the Middle East before Iran and Russia destabilize them, or it will justly receive the blame for the chaos that will ensue. The Middle East is one area where the U.S. is a dominant power-influencer, and we must make clear to our friends that we will stand by them and to our enemies that they are endangering only themselves.

We are seeing our adversaries exploiting perceived U.S. weakness and lack of resolve in other parts of the world. We cannot let that happen in the Middle East. We must have a long-term, strategic plan that does not rely on hope but instead on determination and strength. Let us go all-in: anything less will be perceived as not being in at all.

It is time for the Biden administration to come to terms with the challenging situation in Yemen. It seems that the administration is trying to pick a middle ground, but the Houthis’ ongoing terrorist attacks and the massive scale of the humanitarian crisis rules out staying the course of strategic compromise.

BOOKS, ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

The Misrepresentation Of The Scientific Consensus On Climate Change Iain Aitken

Posted By on February 11th, 2022

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/02/10/the-misrepresentation-of-the-scientific-consensus-on-climate-change/

[Note: This essay is abstracted from my eBook Myths: Widely Held But False Beliefs In The Climate Change Crisis, available on Amazon]

In their Fifth Assessment Report the IPCC, the ‘internationally accepted scientific authority on climate change’, gave their opinion of how much of the recent global warming was caused by human activity: ‘It is extremely likely [95-100 percent confidence] more than half of the observed increase in global mean surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic [i.e. man-made] increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together’. Reflecting that opinion Wikipedia states that the ‘Scientific consensus on climate change’ is that ‘the Earth is warming and… this warming is mainly caused by human activities’. It claims that 97-100% of actively publishing climate scientists endorse this opinion. Similarly, NASA claim that, ‘A consensus on climate change and its human cause exists… human activities are the primary cause of the observed climate-warming trend over the past century.’ And in an October 2020 interview on CBS’s 60 Minutes climatologist Dr Michael Mann said, ‘There’s about as much scientific consensus about human-caused climate change as there is about gravity.’ So is it actually true that 97-100% of climate scientists explicitly or implicitly endorse this key IPCC opinion?

Although science is not remotely democratic (it only needs one scientist to prove that the ‘consensus view’ is wrong and it is wrong) the fact remains that if this 97-100% consensus assertion is true then it is indeed very powerful. If the ‘internationally accepted scientific authority on climate change’ says something is almost certainly true and almost all climate scientists in the world agree then it almost certainly must be true – mustn’t it? Whilst there is undoubtedly almost total scientific consensus amongst the scientific authorities (literally dozens of scientific academies from around the world explicitly or implicitly endorse the IPCC’s opinions) that does not necessarily reflect the consensus view amongst climate scientists themselves. So what exactly is it that climate scientists agree on?

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

License to Misinform Gavin Newsom defends California’s lockdown policies with dodgy data. Kerry Jackson

Posted By on February 11th, 2022

https://www.city-journal.org/gavin-newsoms-license-to-misinform-on-covid

Last summer, while trying to survive a recall effort, California governor Gavin Newsom claimed that Texas middle-class families “pay more taxes than middle-class families in California” and challenged doubters to “look that up.” A few months later, he swore that “violent crime and property crime” is “higher in Texas than in California.”

The facts didn’t land on his side. Comparisons showed that taxes are a greater burden in California, and there’s little difference in crime between the states in recent years.

Because Newsom is a media darling, his exaggerations didn’t hurt him politically. So he’s free to continue to dish out misinformation. “We’d have 40,000 more Californians dead” if he had followed Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s approach to the pandemic, Newsom said last month while appearing on ABC’s The View. Though Newsom seems to have pulled that 40,000 number out of the ether, it is true that California did do a little better than Florida when looking at Covid deaths per 100,000 residents (California’s number currently stands at 110, against Florida’s 128—both of which are below the national average of 138). But if he believes that his lockdown regime was the reason for California’s lower rate, he’s deluding himself.

A year ago, one media outlet called California “the most locked down state across the country,” and San Diego County “the most locked down county in the state, with Los Angeles County about the same.” It might be hard to recall now, but California was the first state to shut down its economy and movement of people, and it appears that it will be the last to restore those lost liberties. While Newsom and other public officials were telling Californians that they were better off hiding under their beds, people were “flocking to Florida to find freedom, as other states and countries continue to keep their citizens locked down,” according to the James Madison Institute. In the spring of 2020, while Newsom was increasing his powers through executive orders, making a dodgy $1 billion mask deal with a Chinese company, and holding his made-for-TV performances every day at noon, DeSantis was already easing restrictions. By September of that year, all statewide rules in Florida were gone, never to return.

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

ITS TIME TO ASK: WERE ANY OF THE COVID LOCKDOWNS. MANDATES, CLOSURES WORTH IT?

Posted By on February 11th, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/02/11/its-time-to-ask-were-any-of-the-covid-mandates-closures-lockdowns-worth-it/

With COVID deaths now topping 910,000, the Biden administration and the rest of the Democratic left are deciding to ease up on their mandate regime. We need to learn to live with COVID, they say – repeating advice President Donald Trump issued back in October 2020.

We’re all for ditching the left’s COVID police state, even if Democrats’ reason is political, as we pointed out in this space yesterday.

But that leaves us with a question: Was any of it worth it? Did any of the guidelines, mandates, orders, shutdowns, cancelations, lockdowns do anything to alter the course of the disease, or change in any way the number of people who died from it?

Was it worth the massive disruption to our jobs and lives, the education losses suffered by our children, the trillions in debt piled up? Was it worth shutting down dissent by Tech Giants? Or the unleashing of mask scolds? Or vaccine passports? Or the divisiveness all of it fueled?

After all, even with all that in place, Centers for Disease Control data show that more than 77 million Americans have contracted COVID, and 910,373 deaths are linked to the disease.

What would have been different if we’d done nothing, other than encourage people to use common sense?

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Bankrolling terrorism and moral equivalence Ruthie Blum

Posted By on February 11th, 2022

The refusal of the Palestinian Authority (PA) to stop bankrolling terrorists is well known. Nevertheless, it’s worth reiterating in light of the efforts by the administration in Washington and government in Jerusalem to give it a good gloss-over. 

The attempts by Washington to deny or obfuscate the PA’s true agenda is aimed at returning to the non-existent two-state solution to the literal and figurative table. To fulfill this goal, it assigns moral equivalence to both sides of the Palestinian war against the Jewish state.

As the target of the aggression, Jerusalem doesn’t unequivocally embrace such a tactic; however, the current coalition has been more open to providing excuses for Palestinian hostility than its predecessor. It does this by espousing the view that appeasing Ramallah is in Israel’s best interest.

That neither of the above has ever led to anything other than an uptick in anti-Zionist violence does not seem to register on the diplomatic-Richter-scale. The constant need to restate the obvious is astonishing, but it’s not as jaw-dropping as the chronological proximity of Western goodwill gestures to bloodcurdling Palestinian statements and the actions they spur.

Only examine the events of the last couple of months. On December 22, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan visited Ramallah, where he met with PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas to discuss strengthening the ties that the Palestinian leadership severed with America during the administration of former president Donald Trump.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

What the Truckers Want I’ve spoken to 100 of the protestors gathered in the Canadian capital. What’s happening is far bigger than the vaccine mandates.Rupa Subramanya’

Posted By on February 11th, 2022

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/what-the-truckers-want?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxNDc5

For two weeks, the 18-wheelers, the semis, the tractors and the pick-up trucks streamed through the snow and ice into the center of Ottawa, the Canadian capital.

They came from across the country. Vaxxed, unvaxxed, white, black, Chinese, Sikh, Indian, alone or with their wives and kids. They huddled around campfires. They set up pop-up kitchens and tents with block captains doling out coffee and blankets. They honked (and honked and honked). They blasted “We Are the World.” And everywhere you looked, someone was waving the Maple Leaf.

It dipped to 4 degrees. The mayor declared a state of emergency. And they didn’t budge.

The truckers were scared of running out of gas—freezing to death in their little truck beds in the middle of the night. The city threatened to arrest anyone who brought it to them. In response, hundreds of Ottawans did just that. The truckers stayed put. 

They are a city inside a city whose inhabitants—there are an estimated 8,000 to 10,000—were outraged with a country that seemed to have forgotten they existed. This past Sunday, as if to confirm that suspicion, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who has yet to meet with Freedom Convoy leaders, took a personal day. On Monday, during an emergency debate at the House of Commons, he called them “a few people shouting and waving swastikas.” 

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Real Apartheid in the Middle East by Khaled Abu Toameh •

Posted By on February 10th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18212/apartheid-middle-east

Where is the outcry from Amnesty International and other human rights organizations? When an Arab country subjects Palestinians to actual apartheid measures, the international community is too busy lying about Israel’s alleged abuses to take notice.

“It is estimated that 65% of the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon live under the poverty line.” — UNRWA, October 2017.

Palestinians in Lebanon have long been prevented from practicing such professions as medicine and law, given that only the Lebanese could join professional syndicates.

Thirty-nine professions remain prohibited to Palestinians in the following fields: healthcare (general medicine, dentistry, nursing, midwifery, pharmacy) transport and fishing, services and daycare, engineering, law, tourism, and accounting.

Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are at risk of food insecurity, electricity blackouts, increased health problems and complications amid the shortages of medicine and health-care interventions. — UNRWA, January 2022.

“My husband works as a driver and earns less than two dollars a day. We mainly eat vegetables and beans because that’s all we can afford. Meat and chicken have become a dream; we can’t buy them because prices have increased so sharply. We no longer eat three meals a day, and sometimes I send my kids to bed without dinner.” — Rihab Maajel, a 50-year-old Palestinian from Shabriha in southern Lebanon, UNRWA, January 2022.

“I fear that I may freeze to death this winter. I cannot afford to buy gas for heating.” — Nawal Kayed, 66, Palestinian in Lebanon, UNRWA, 2022.

The group also noted that Palestinian refugees in Lebanon who want to receive medical treatment in a Lebanese hospital have to wait for weeks to obtain a permit. — palhrw.org, January 20, 2022.

When Palestinians in Lebanon cannot feed their children this winter, chalk it up to the world’s unjust lethal obsession with Israel.

ive thousand homes belonging to Palestinians in Lebanon are at risk of collapsing and are in dire need of renovation, according to a report in the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Stacey Abrams and Voter Suppression By Jim Daws

Posted By on February 10th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/02/stacey_abrams_and_voter_suppression.html

The Democrat’s latest tactic is to accuse Republicans who dare secure the ballot box against illegal votes of engaging in voter suppression.

Most conservatives are well aware of the Democrat’s Alinsky tactic of accusing Republicans of whatever criminal, immoral, or unethical activities they themselves are engaged in. When Joe Biden was caught pressuring Ukraine to fire the state prosecutor who threatened to expose the Biden family protection racket, they impeached Trump for asking about it, accusing Trump of blackmail. After declaring for four years that Trump was an “illegitimate president” due to Russia collusion lies that she herself concocted, Hillary Clinton exhorted Joe Biden not to concede the 2020 election “under any circumstances.” Then when Trump challenged the manifestly rigged results in four battleground states, the Democrats accused Trump of undermining democracy. To this day, the Democrats’ January 6th Committee is busy trampling the civil rights of citizens who protested the election results after the Democrats themselves encouraged, justified, and funded many months of riots, arson, looting, and murder under the guise of legitimate protest. The instances of hypocritical Democrats using this cynical tactic have become all too obvious. 

But there’s a variation of Alinsky’s projection ploy that’s even more insidious: accuse Republicans who dare secure the ballot box against illegal votes of engaging in voter suppression. The Democrat’s field general this tactic is their former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. Abrams lost a close 2018 election to Brian Kemp and promptly accused Kemp of suppressing the black vote despite the fact that blacks voted in significantly higher percentages than whites. She continues, without evidence, to insist that that election was stolen from her and the same Democrats who are now accusing Trump of threatening our democracy still claim she is the rightful governor of Georgia. 

Abrams, who was neck-deep in tax and credit card debt, has turned her voter suppression scam into a lucrative position as head of a non-profit, the ironically named Fair Fight Action, that raked in tens of millions from leftist billionaires and major corporations terrified of crossing the woke mob. In addition to her salary — her mountain of debt has been vaporized — critics accuse Abrams of using her coerced windfall to promote her own political profile and another run for governor.