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Do You Trust the U.S. Government? Maybe the Russians are doing what the Pentagon and State Department say they are doing.  But our mantra should be “Don’t trust unless you can verify.”

Posted By on February 6th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/02/05/do-you-trust-the-u-s-government/

Do you trust the U.S. government? I don’t recommend it.  

Consider what John Kirby, a spokesman for the Pentagon, said a couple of days ago at a press briefing. “We believe,” Kirby said, that Russia is planning to stage a fake attack by Ukrainian military or intelligence forces against Russian sovereign territory, or against Russian speaking people,” in order to justify an invasion of Ukraine. Kirby had lots of details: “We believe that Russia would produce a very graphic propaganda video, which would include corpses and actors that would be depicting mourners, and images of destroyed locations, as well as military equipment, at the hands of Ukraine or the West.” 

Gosh. Should we be worried? Yes. But not necessarily for the reasons that Kirby and his puppet masters want you to be worried. The United States is sending troops and arms to aid Ukraine, so of course there needs to be an emergency to justify that action. John Kirby just outlined a scary scenario. But inquiring minds want to know: What’s his evidence for this dramatic claim? 

That was the burden of the remarkable exchange between State Department spokesman Ned Price and veteran AP reporter Matt Lee. 

OK, Lee said, we’ve just heard that Russia is in the process of organizing a gigantic false flag operation to justify its attack on Ukraine. “What evidence,” Lee asked, “do you have to support the idea that there is some propaganda film in the making?”

Bingo. What followed is the stuff of legend.

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Mischief on Life Support Machine by Amir Taheri

Posted By on February 6th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18205/iran-mischief-life-support

Seen from China and Russia, the nuclear issue is an effective means of preventing Iran from returning to its historic pro-West path. An isolated Iran has helped Russia to capture a good chunk of its oil market while preventing it from using its immense resources of natural gas, probably the largest in the world, to help Europe shake its dependence on Russia.

Both Russia and China have been careful to show Iran its place, as low as possible by normal standards. China has excluded Iran from its grandiose “One Belt-One World” project while Russia, as seen in the recent humiliation that Russian President Vladimir Putin inflicted on Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in Moscow, has shown that it treats the regime in Tehran as a vassal and not an equal partner.

Obama went further than any of his predecessors to help the mullahs live another day. He invented a “fatwa”, presumably by “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei to declare building and using a nuclear arsenal is “forbidden” (haram) in Islamic shariah, forgetting that Pakistan, an Islamic republic with a population twice that of Iran, has been a nuclear-armed nation for decades. Unable to pass his scheme through the US Congress, Obama also invented the P5+1 scheme that keeps issues related to Iran out of the normal framework of international law. To emphasize his keenness on helping the mullahs at a crucial time, he even arranged for $1.7 billion to be smuggled to Tehran in cash via Cyprus, straight into the hands of Gen. Qassem Soleimani’s Quds Force.

Ever since the roadshow known as “nuclear talks with Iran” started almost 15 years ago, we have witnessed an event unique in diplomatic annals. On the surface the whole process is designed to deal with something simple: Iran should comply with the terms of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), of which it was one of the founders. In exchange the “international community” would recognize Iran’s right to enrich uranium, a right that is already granted under NPT and does not need further endorsement by “the international community”.

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Look with dawning horror at the presidential line of succession By Pete McArdle

Posted By on February 6th, 2022

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

In Major League Baseball, starting pitchers get plenty of press, all the glory, and the really big bucks.  But true afficionados of the sport know that a team is only as good as its bullpen, a collection of lesser known pitchers who are called upon when the starting pitcher runs out of gas.

When it comes to the U.S. government, who’s our big stud starting pitcher?  Why, that would be “Clueless Joe” Biden, the crusty old conniver who turns eighty in November.

Clueless Joe may have once had a political fastball and the ability to put it where he wanted.  But as he turns eighty, Joe Biden’s physically and mentally shot.  All he serves up now is slop.  Even the lying left-wing media are starting to admit what’s been patently obvious to anyone with a working cerebrum: clueless Joe has run out of gas.

It’s only a matter of time before America has to make that call to the bullpen.  And whom do we have warming up in the bullpen, you ask?

Why, that would be the crafty leftie from California, “Heels Up” Harris.  Harris earned her moniker by being Willie Brown’s side piece as she, um, climbed the ladder of political success.

As California’s deputy attorney general, Heels Up sent hundreds of blacks to prison for marijuana offenses.  But years later, when the political winds had changed, Harris laughed off her prior actions.

Having “evolved” on the issue of pot, Harris smilingly admitted to smoking joints in school while listening to Tupac and Snoop Dogg, neither of whom had recorded anything at that time.  Referring to weed, Kammy averred that “it gives a lot of people joy, and we need more joy.”

EDUCATION Comments turned off

The ‘Jewish Question’ Has Come to America By Abraham H. Miller

Posted By on February 6th, 2022

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

There has never been in America a Jewish Question, at least, not until now.

America was built on the idea of a universal identity and a tolerance of differences. From the evolution of a liberal Protestant theology to George Washington’s embrace of the Jewish community, America — unlike Europe — did not see the Jews as strangers in its midst, as a people apart, or as a group whose identity stood at variance with others.

In America, there was no compelling desire for society to define the Jew. In Europe, Karl Marx, himself born a Jew and later a convert to Christianity, wrote an anti-Semitic screed, On the Jewish Question. Later Thomas Mann, who might be called a Philo-Semite, authored a lengthy essay with a similar title because the subject haunted Germany and Jews needed a defender.

Europe was consumed, if not obsessed, with the Jew in its midst.

While America had no shortage of anti-Semitic customs and displays of bigotry, Jews were well integrated into American society from the founding of the Republic until the great waves of Eastern European immigration began crashing on America’s shores and brought a different kind of Jew to its attention.

Nonetheless, Jews defined themselves. There was bigotry, hatred, and gentlemen’s agreements, but American intellectuals did not feel compelled to define the place of the Jew in society. To do so would have been contrary to America’s primary values.

America might not have uniformly adhered to its primary values, but its aspiration to embrace those values led to Jewish acceptance that never occurred in Europe even to this day.

But that has now changed and is the biggest threat to Jewish existence since the Klan almost took over the Democratic Party in the early 1920s.

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Terry Fox and the Truckers By David Solway

Posted By on February 6th, 2022

https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2022/02/05/terry-fox-and-the-truckers-n1556407

“The question needs to be posed. Who are the real yahoos? Who are the real defacers and defamers? Who are the real thieves and grifters and hypocrites? Who are those who inspire genuine disgust?”

Canadian national hero Terry Fox (1958-1981), after having had a leg amputated due to cancer in 1977, embarked on a cross-country run in 1980 to raise money for cancer research. An annual event held across Canada continues to honor his memory. Terry Fox became a national hero because he represented the spirit of courage and defiance, of rising above the odds, of refusing to surrender to the trials of his condition. He began his “Marathon of Hope” in St. John’s on the island of Newfoundland and ran many thousand kilometers to Thunder Bay, Ontario.

In a telling parallel, the Freedom Convoy, taking issue with the vaccine mandates and demanding the resignation of Canada’s discredited prime minister Justin Trudeau, traversed the country from Prince Rupert, British Columbia to the nation’s capital in Ottawa, travelling approximately the same distance, almost 4,000 kilometers, enduring sub-zero temperatures and without accommodations and salaried income. GoFundMe predictably suspended trucker crowdfunding, only a small portion of the over $10 million sum accumulated having been released owing to obstructionist government intervention. The transparent pretext is that the funds may be used to promote “extremism,” “hate” and “violence.”

Though hampered by spiteful authoritarian manipulations, maligned by the press and the political elect, and libeled for the heinous act of profaning the statue of Terry Fox, the truckers, in fact, embody the buoyant spirit of Terry Fox as they bravely protest the sickly condition in which the country now finds itself—a corrupt media, a coercive government, a heretofore apathetic public and probably the absolute worst prime minister who has ever defaced not a statue but his very office. They want their traditional freedoms back. They want their Constitutional rights restored. And they are prepared to assert these rights.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Gov. DeSantis and Texas Pressure Forces GoFundMe to Release Freedom Convoy Cash Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on February 6th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2022/02/gov-desantis-and-texas-pressure-forces-gofundme-daniel-greenfield/

The two positive outcomes of this episode are that…

1. Every conservative now knows not to use GoFundMe. The tech platform has a long history of banning and discriminating against conservatives. This time its overreach went into the millions. 

2. Florida and Texas flexed their newfound legal muscle at a tech company and it backed off. GoFundMe is much smaller in scale than the real monsters like Google, Amazon, and Facebook, and lacks their layers of lobbyists and paid politicians. But it’s mid-size enough to make for a good field test.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said that he would “investigate” the company, accusing them of fraud.

“It is a fraud for @gofundme to commandeer $9M in donations sent to support truckers and give it to causes of their own choosing. I will work with @AGAshleyMoody to investigate these deceptive practices — these donors should be given a refund.”

GoFundMe also drew the ire of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who stated on social media that he would be launching a fraud investigation.

“Patriotic Texans donated to Canadian truckers’ worthy cause using GoFundMe. This BLM-backing company went woke, froze the funds, & failed to deliver Texans’ money,” Paxton said. “Today I assembled a team to investigate their potential fraud & deception. Texas donors will get Justice!”

GoFundMe had clearly been scrambling for excuses. 

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

China’s Shameful Olympics By Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas)

Posted By on February 6th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/02/chinas-shameful-olympics/

These Games never should have been in Beijing. But the Biden administration failed to keep them out. Now American athletes are at risk.

T he greatest athletes in the world have now gathered to compete in the 24th Olympic Winter Games. Usually, the American people await this event with enthusiasm and excitement. This year, we await it with disgust.

This year’s games will be held in the People’s Republic of China, a Communist nation that enslaves workers, imprisons children in concentration camps, forcefully sterilizes and rapes women, and — lest we forget — unleashed a plague on the world that has killed millions.

There’s a word for the Chinese Communist Party. That word is “evil.” No moral nation should celebrate such a regime or participate in pageantry that will glorify and enrich it.

Last December, the Biden administration announced a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Games. This action was inadequate and insufficient.

As early as last June, I urged the administration to pressure the IOC to rebid the 2022 Olympic Games and announce both a diplomatic and economic boycott of the Games if they remained in Beijing. The economic component was and remains key — these games will bring both prestige and profit to the CCP. A diplomatic boycott alone will do nothing to stop the Chinese regime from raking in cash and enriching its corrupt leadership.

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SUPREME COURT MATTERS: COLORBLIND CONSTITUTION V. RACIAL TRIBALISM Dr. Tom Krannawitter

Posted By on February 6th, 2022

https://vinoandveritassociety.com/articles/supreme-court-matters-colorblind-constitution-v-racial-tribalism%EF%BF%BC/

“When President Bush nominated him for the Supreme Court in 1991, Clarence Thomas quickly learned that his greatest opponent was neither the Ku Klux Klan nor any racist rural sheriff. It was Joe Biden — then a United States Senator and chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee — and the mostly-white, college-educated progressive political allies who joined Biden’s effort to destroy Thomas.”

Two years ago, Presidential Candidate Joe Biden promised to nominate someone with black skin for the United States Supreme Court, should he ever get the opportunity. With Justice Breyer announcing his retirement, President Biden now has the opportunity. 

Sorry, Dr. King. A nation in which citizens are judged “by the content of their character” and not “the color of their skin” isn’t going to happen on Joe Biden’s watch. He judges nominees on the color of their skin.

It’s curious that now, as President, Biden limits the pool of possible Supreme Court jurists to people with dark pigment. In 1991, then-Senator Biden had an opportunity to assist Clarence Thomas take a seat on the Supreme Court bench. Yet, Biden did everything within his power to stop it.

The life of Clarence Thomas should be an inspiration for all Americans. Born into the mires of poverty, compounded by Jim Crow racism, violence, and injustice, Thomas was anything but destined by birth to high government positions and circles of political elites.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Ilya Shapiro has exposed the rot within Georgetown by Kaylee McGhee White,

Posted By on February 6th, 2022

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/ilya-shapiro-has-exposed-the-rot-within-georgetown

Perhaps the only good to come out of Georgetown Law School’s ridiculous response to the Ilya Shapiro controversy is that it has exposed the deep cultural rot within the university and its student body.

This week, Dean Bill Treanor announced he had placed Shapiro on administrative leave over a tweet in which Shapiro criticized President Joe Biden’s decision to consider only a black female nominee to the Supreme Court. Subsequently, a group of students held a sit-in to air their concerns about Shapiro. The meeting quickly devolved into a broader discussion about why Shapiro was even hired in the first place, which led to a condemnation of the school’s Center for the Constitution, which Shapiro was hired to help direct.

“Why was it created?” one student asked, adding that the originalist views of the center’s director, Randy Barnett, make it “seem like [the center] has done more harm than good.”

“You can do as much diversity training as you want with staff,” the student continued, according to National Review. “But I feel like that Center has a certain ideology … so I really want you to defend why we really need it, beyond, like, you know, free speech, and beyond diversity of opinion. I really want us to think critically about why we still need it.”

Another student demanded that Treanor offer a “reparations” package to black students who might be harmed by Shapiro’s hiring. Free meals, excused absences, and a place to cry were some of the things the student said this package should include.

“Is there an office they can go to?” she asked. “I don’t know what it would look like, but if they want to cry, if they need to break down, where can they go? Because we’re at a point where students are coming out of class to go to the bathroom to cry. And this is not in the future. This is today.”

And that’s not all. Students who have defended Shapiro, and even students who have stuck up for their peers defending Shapiro, are being bullied into silence by others on campus.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

The Russian hackers who interfered in 2016 were spotted targeting the 2020 US election Russia, China, and Iran have been caught conducting cyber espionage related to the US presidential race.By Patrick Howell O’Neill

Posted By on February 6th, 2022

https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/09/10/1008297/the-russian-hackers-who-interfered-in-2016-were-spotted-targeting-the-2020-us-election/

Thousands of companies and governments are racing to discover whether they have been hit by the Russian hackers who reportedly infiltrated several US government agencies. The initial breach, reported on December 13, included the Treasury as well as the Departments of Commerce and Homeland Security.  But the stealthy techniques the hackers used mean it could take months to identify all their victims and remove whatever spyware they installed.

To carry out the breach, the hackers first broke into the systems of SolarWinds, an American software company. There, they inserted a back door into Orion, one of the company’s products, which organizations use to see and manage vast internal networks of computers. For several weeks beginning in March, any client that updated to the latest version of Orion—digitally signed by SolarWinds, and therefore seemingly legitimate—unwittingly downloaded the compromised software, giving the hackers a way into their systems. 

SolarWinds has around 300,000 customers around the world, including most of the Fortune 500 and many governments. In a new filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the firm said “fewer than” 18,000 organizations ever downloaded the compromised update. (SolarWinds said it’s not clear yet how many of those systems were actually hacked.) Standard cybersecurity practice is to keep your software up to date—so most SolarWinds customers, ironically, were protected because they had failed to heed that advice.

The hackers were “extremely clever and strategic,” says Greg Touhill, a former federal chief information security officer. Even once they had gained access through the back door in Orion, known as Sunburst, they moved slowly and deliberately. Instead of infiltrating many systems at once, which could easily have raised suspicions, they focused on a small set of selected targets, according to a report from the security firm FireEye. 

Sunburst stayed quiet for up to two full weeks before it woke up and began communicating with the hackers, according to the report. The malware disguises its network traffic as the “Orion Improvement Program” and stores data inside legitimate files in order to better blend in. It also searches for security and antivirus tools on the infected machine in order to avoid them.