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U.S., Allies Too Eager to Resume Nuclear Deal with Iran By Lawrence J. Haas

Posted By on June 22nd, 2021

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/us-allies-too-eager-resume-nuclear-deal-iran-188016

With Tehran making significant progress on the nuclear front, Washington and its European allies seem engaged in an increasingly desperate effort to revive the 2015 global nuclear agreement with Iran, mirroring the earlier eagerness that helped produce the problematic agreement in the first place.

The operative question is whether – in reversing President Donald Trump’s 2018 exit from the deal and returning to the agreement, thereby presumably coaxing Tehran to adhere to its nuclear-related restrictions – Washington will find itself better placed in the long run to limit Iran’s nuclear pursuit, ballistic missile program, terror sponsorship, and regional expansionism.

Signs of Iran’s nuclear progress are mounting. For starters, Tehran announced on June 15 that it has enriched 6.5 kilograms of uranium to 60 percent purity (a short step to the weapons-grade purity of 90 percent) and another 108 kilograms to 20 percent – all far in excess of the agreement’s limit of 3.67 percent purity. Nor has Tehran become more transparent about suspicious activity at its undeclared nuclear sites, which is a problem that precedes the nuclear agreement and that has vexed international inspectors for many years. “The Iranian government has reiterated its will to engage and to cooperate and to provide answers,” Rafael Grossi, the International Atomic Energy Agency director-general, said as his agency’s board met in Vienna. “But they haven’t done that so far.”

Fox News, meanwhile, reported that satellite images since last fall at Iran’s Sanjarian site – where Iran is suspected of manufacturing work on “shock wave generators” (in order to miniaturize a nuclear weapon) – reveal vehicles, excavation work, and trenches that have prompted nuclear watchdogs to urge international inspections. In addition, Germany’s federal intelligence agency concluded in a new 420-page report that “the indications of proliferation-relevant procurement attempts by the Islamic Republic for its nuclear program increased in 2020.”

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‘Disturbing Trend’: The Weaponization of The Justice System to Ruin Those With Whom Activists Disagree

Posted By on June 22nd, 2021

https://harbingersdaily.com/disturbing-trend-the-weaponization-of-the-justice-system-to-ruin-those-with-whom-activists-disagree

The legal fight to ensure religious liberty protections for Colorado baker Jack Phillips continues after a state district judge ruled against Phillips in a case involving a request for a cake celebrating a gender transition.

Despite a favorable 2018 Supreme Court ruling for Phillips in a similar case, Colorado state District Judge A. Bruce Jones ruled Tuesday that Phillips violated the state’s anti-discrimination law when he refused on religious grounds to design a blue and pink cake to celebrate a gender transition for Autumn Scardina, a biological male who presents as female.

Jones, in his ruling Tuesday, argued Phillips’ refusal to fill Scardina’s request constituted a refusal to sell a product, not a case of compelled speech as Phillips has argued through his attorneys at Alliance Defending Freedom.

In Phillips’ 2018 high court case, the justices, in a 7-2 decision, ruled that Colorado had used “clear and impermissible hostility” in prosecuting Phillips for declining to design a cake for a same-sex wedding in 2013.

But following that ruling, the state again pursued Phillips on grounds he had violated Colorado’s anti-discrimination law in refusing to comply with Scardina’s request. Scardina approached Phillips with his request on the same day in 2017 that the Supreme Court announced it would hear Phillips’ case.

Phillips countered with a lawsuit against the state, and Colorado dropped its case against him. But Scardina, a local attorney, responded with his own civil lawsuit against Phillips.

In his ruling, Jones wrote that anti-discrimination laws are intended to “ensure that members of our society who have historically been treated unfairly, who have been deprived of even the every-day right to access businesses to buy products, are no longer treated as ‘others.’”

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Bibi Is Out, and They Are Back Want to kill the new Israeli government? Send in the peace-process clowns. By Leon Hadar

Posted By on June 22nd, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/06/21/bibi-is-out-and-they-are-back/

“They had learned nothing and forgotten nothing,” is the way Talleyrand referred (supposedly) to the restored Bourbon dynasty after the abdication of Napoleon, encapsulating in a nutshell those who keep doing the same thing again and again, expecting different results.  

Such people believe that every intelligent person should recognize that their theory is the right one. The wrong circumstances had failed the theory, and if one would just give it another try, one would see that this time the theory would work. 

It’s difficult to imagine foreign policy wonks dancing in the streets of Washington, D.C., but my guess is that was exactly what they were doing in their favorite think tanks and editorial offices, not to mention in Foggy Bottom and the White House Executive Office Building (which houses the National Security Council) when they heard last week that their long-time nemesis, former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (“Bibi”) Netanyahu, was out of power. Now that the circumstances have changed, they imagined, they will have yet another opportunity to retry their theory, and this time it will work. 

The only person that liberal internationalists despise (and I mean, really despise) more than Netanyahu is, of course, his personal friend and diplomatic partner, former President Donald Trump. 

One can more readily comprehend the animosity toward the Archie Bunkered Donald among the cosmopolitan graduates of Ivy League universities who ran foreign policy for the Obama-Biden Administration and are now doing the same thing for Joe Biden.

But Netanyahu is an intellectual who graduated from MIT, who opens his day with the New York Times, and reads the same books they do.  

So it’s nothing personal in the end, and has more to do with politics, and possibly the notion that Israel was led by a conservative statesman who could have probably run as a Republican for the U.S. Senate if only his dad had not decided to return to Israel with his family. (After watching Bibi on TV, one of my Millennial students asked me whether he was the Republican governor of Israel). 

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New Iran Prez Defends Mass Execution of THOUSANDS of Political Prisoners By Tyler O’Neil

Posted By on June 22nd, 2021

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2021/06/21/iran-prez-elect-on-mass-execution-of-political-prisoners-i-have-always-defended-peoples-rights-n1455992

On Monday, the soon-to-be-president* of Iran, Ebrahim Raisi, defended his role in the mass execution of political prisoners in 1988, claiming that he has “always defended people’s rights.” On the day Iran announced Raisi would become the next president, Amnesty International called for his investigation for crimes against humanity for the 1988 prison massacres, in which Raisi oversaw the executions of thousands of political prisoners and protesters.

“There are sanctions against you. Human rights organizations say thousands were executed whilst you sat on a committee that oversaw those executions in 1988. On the day you were elected, Amnesty International said you should be investigated for crimes against humanity,” an English-speaking reporter asked Raisi. “Do you think that these issues will be difficult for you when you interact with world leaders, especially western leaders?”

“From the start of my responsibility as a legal professional I’ve always defended people’s rights,” Raisi insisted.

“We should say to those who make accusations today, ‘We are the ones who should be making claims as those who speak up for human rights,’” the soon-to-be-president insisted. “Everything I’ve done in my time of holding office has been to defend human rights. In the face of those who disrupted people’s rights and engaged in Daeshi [ISIS-type] and anti-security moves, in the judiciary as a legal expert and as a judge, I have always stood up for people’s rights and defended human rights.”

“If a legal expert, a judge, or a prosecutor has defended the rights of people and the security of the society, he must be lauded and encouraged for preserving the security of the people against assaults and threats. I am proud that in my role as a prosecutor wherever I was I have always defended people’s rights, security, and tranquility,” Raisi declared.

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The New Refuseniks by Izabella Tabarovsky

Posted By on June 22nd, 2021

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/soviet-jews-stood-up-to-anti-zionism-once-before

Soviet Jews stood up to anti-Zionism once before. Now they are helping the younger generation of American Jews—including their own children—fight back against a wave of defamation and hate, while mainstream Jewish organizations wilt.

At a recent United Against Terrorism rally in Beverly Hills, Jennifer Karlan, 17, spoke passionately about why American Jews should stand for Israel. With remarkable confidence, she talked about a new form of antisemitism facing American Jews: “Today, they no longer say they hate the Jew; today they say they hate Zionists. Today they no longer say they hate the Jewish people; they say they hate the Zionist entity. But the hate is the same.” Some 2,000 people had gathered for the rally. Karlan drew cheers as she insisted that Jewish identity and Israel are deeply interconnected: “Israel is not just the name of the land; it is the name of our people. We are the people of Israel, each and every one of us: Am Yisrael Chai.” 

Karlan is a graduate of Club Z, a Zionist club for teens and quite possibly the most important American Jewish organization you’ve never heard of. Club Z was founded four years ago by Masha Merkulova, a Soviet Jewish immigrant from Minsk. Along with a handful of other organizations that Russian-speaking American Jews have started over the past few years, it is changing the conversation about Jewish identity, Jewish peoplehood, Zionism, and Israel. Disappointed with the way the United States’ organized Jewish community has treated these issues, and alarmed by the growing embrace of politically weaponized Zionophobia—the form of antisemitism that they know so well from their lives in the Soviet Union—these immigrants are taking matters into their own hands.

The recent Hamas-Israel confrontation unleashed an antisemitic onslaught on social media and in the streets of U.S. cities of a kind that American Jews had never seen before. It wasn’t just the intensity of the hate that was shocking—it was also its source and nature. Suddenly, violent antisemitism was coming at American Jews from the left. Suddenly, it was progressive politicians who were fanning the flames of antisemitism, while the Democratic Party—the political home of most American Jews—looked the other way. Nothing in American Jews’ background or system of beliefs had prepared them for this moment, and many did not seem to know how to respond.

In that moment of crisis, only a few individuals and groups stood out as they fearlessly fought hate and propaganda. They did not log off their social media accounts. They showed no signs of confusion, and they most certainly were not demoralized. They simply stood up and joined the battle against what they perceived as an assault not only Israel but on who they were as Jews. 

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The Unusual New Israeli Government It is the most diverse – and most fragile – in Israel’s history. Joseph Puder

Posted By on June 22nd, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/06/unusual-new-israeli-government-joseph-puder/

The unusual happened at the Israeli Knesset (parliament) in Jerusalem on Sunday, June 13, 2021. The bloc of Change (the anti-Netanyahu bloc) was able to form a coalition government with less than the required 61 Knesset members voting their confidence in the government led by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid. The vote was 60 for the new government and 59 against. Lapid, the force behind the Change Bloc, and the alternate Prime Minister in rotation with Bennett, had to summon Labor Knesset member Emilie Moatti from her hospital bed to vote while lying on a stretcher, just to make it 60… The Arab Islamist list (Ra’am in Hebrew), part of the new coalition government, had one of its four members abstain. Without Moatti’s vote there would have been no Lapid-Bennett government. Naftali Bennett will be leading the most diverse coalition in Israel’s history.

Another unprecedented fact about the incoming government led by new Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is that he leads a party of only six Knesset members in the unicameral Knesset of 120 members. The outgoing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the longest serving PM in Israel’s history (15-years in total, and last 12 consecutive years) leads the largest party in the Knesset with 30 members. Amichai Chikli of Bennett’s Yamina party voted against his own leader, pointing out that he could not bring himself to sit in the same government with the far-left Meretz party that is part of the new coalition.

The new coalition government has one binding issue in common; all eight parties wanted to get Netanyahu out of office. There is little else they share. Yair Lapid’s (57) center-left party, Yesh Atid (17 seats in the current Knesset) has a liberal agenda on domestic-economic affairs; its platform says little on foreign and security affairs. Interestingly, while its platform calls for an effective government with no more than 18 ministers, the current Change Bloc that Lapid has concocted has 27 ministers. Yesh Atid, a secular, Tel Aviv centered party believes in drafting Haredi boys into the IDF, and the integration of the Ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) community into Israeli society. Lapid served as Finance Minister in 2013, under Netanyahu, who subsequently fired him. Lapid was also a member of the security cabinet. A former journalist and a TV host, Lapid shares President Biden’s commitment to a two-state solution with the Palestinians, but he opposes the division of Jerusalem. Lapid is now Israel’s Foreign Minister and is slated to rotate with Naftali Bennett and become the Prime Minister in 2023.

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Citizen Patriots Are Fighting Back Marxist propaganda, Critical Race Theory and the deterioration of American schools. Clare M. Lopez

Posted By on June 22nd, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/06/citizen-patriots-are-fighting-back-clare-m-lopez/

This is the fourth article in this series on Critical Race Theory (CRT). The earlier three may be seen here, here, and here. Their intent was to document the deteriorating situation across America, and especially in our schools, where curricula increasingly focus on Marxist propaganda that teaches children to hate their own country and seeks to instigate racial divisiveness intended to foment civil strife and eventually, a communist revolution. The series began with an explanation of the purely Marxist origins of CRT, its ideological roots in the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the transplant of the Frankfurt School to the U.S. in the 1930s, and the eventual spread of CRT narratives throughout American academia, faith communities, government, media, popular culture, and society in general.

With the Biden administration, and specifically the Department of Education, openly pushing the teaching of CRT in U.S. public schools, the situation is raising alarm among educators, parents, legislators, and ordinary citizens. As embedding of CRT into Ethnic Studies programs in California and other states became widespread over the last several years, parents increasingly began to realize the malignant nature of what was being taught to their children. Tried and true pedagogical methodology that rewards academic achievement, focuses on fact-based education, and operates on meritocracy was being replaced with meaningless policies of “equity”. Everything was reduced to race. Instead of Marxist economic class divisions, CRT substituted ethnic and race labels that identify Americans as either “oppressed” or “oppressors”. Identity by intrinsic, immutable characteristics took the place of Martin Luther King’s “content of one’s character”. The Marxist rot that spread throughout American society with what seemed a startling rapidity took many by surprise. In fact, though, that ideology had long been nurtured carefully, methodically, but below the radar, following Italian communist Antonio Gramsci’s blueprint for a “long march through the institutions”.

But now, it is everyday American citizen patriots who are waking up. Organizations like The Civics Alliance have formed to promote the teaching of the U.S.’s founding principles, accurate history, the brilliant ‘structure of our self-governing federal republic’, and the spirit of individual liberty. The American Cornerstone Institute, founded by former neurosurgeon and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Trump administration, Dr. Ben Carson, likewise focuses on promoting the first things principles that undergird our Republic: Faith, Liberty, Community, and Life. The Final Report of President Trump’s 1776 Commission offers an excellent outline to “enable a rising generation to understand the history and principles of the founding of the United States in 1776 and to strive to form a more perfect Union” through a restoration of American education grounded in a teaching of that history and those principles that is “accurate, honest, unifying, inspiring, and ennobling.”

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The Two Chinas One wants to kill democracy and freedom. Don Feder

Posted By on June 22nd, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/06/two-chinas-don-feder/

It’s a little-known fact that there are two Chinas.

One China unleashed a pandemic on the world that killed close to 4 million people and has the World Health Organization in its back pocket. The other isn’t even allowed to join WHO.

One China is a destabilizing force, poised to start World War III. The other wants only peaceful relations with its neighbors and the rest of the world.

One China is ruled by a totalitarian regime that crushes dissent, suppresses religious and ethnic minorities and even tries to regulate births. The other is a thriving democracy where civil liberties are protected.

One China spies on us, arms rogue states like Iran, and threatens our security. The other was our ally in World War II, Korea and Vietnam.

One is the hilariously misnamed People’s Republic of China, where the only role the people play is as hostages. The other is the Republic of China on Taiwan, the official name of the nation of 23 million, on the other side of the Taiwan Straits, that the PRC claims as its own.

Beijing calls Taiwan a breakaway province. That’s rich. Since the end of the First Sino-Japanese War (1895), Taiwan has been ruled by the mainland for at most half a dozen years – never by the Chinese Communist Party. One might as well say that America is a breakaway province from Britain.

It’s difficult to describe the systematic brutality and massive human rights violations that go on every day in the Peoples Detention Camp of China.

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The fascists next door By Ann Mclean

Posted By on June 22nd, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/06/the_fascists_next_door.html

Two University of Virginia professors — Manuela Achilles and Kyrill Kunakhovich — taught a history course this spring that reportedly portrays American conservatives as fascists. They weren’t being hyperbolic. They really meant it.

In their analysis, the wellspring of fascism is not worship of the all-powerful, totalitarian state — which conservatives totally reject — but the traditional American virtues of family and patriotism.

I first learned of this class from a young friend of mine. Here is her description: 

Recently, I enrolled in a fascism class thinking it would be a great way to weed through the constant accusations that politicians make about who is fascist and who is not. The class started out great. We studied Hitler and Mussolini and other fascisms in Europe, then moved to Asia to look at Japanism, but the more the course progressed, the more I was confused about what fascism actually is. My professors chose to leave fascism undefined and allow each student to come to their own conclusion. That seems pretty reasonable, right? I thought so, too.

That is, until we started a unit on American fascism. All of a sudden only conservatives were fascist, only Christians could be racist, only Trump supporters could be violent. The professor argued that traditionalists, those with a rural past, constitutionalists, and those who “fetishized patriarchal masculinity” were all hallmarks of fascism. Essentially, anyone with the slightest bit of conservative thought is now akin to Adolf Hitler.

The scary thing about it was not just that we were being taught lies, but rather that at first it made perfect sense. I could see how “American fascism” aligned with Nazi Germany and Mussolini’s Italy. After going back through the material we had previously studied that semester and doing outside research, I realized just how much information had been left out. Nowhere does the course mention that Nazi means “national socialist.” Nowhere do we dive into how exactly Mussolini amassed as much power as he did (through a SOCIALIST agenda).

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CONSERVATIVE AGONISTES; SYDNEY WILLIAMS

Posted By on June 22nd, 2021

https://swtotd.blogspot.com/

Most of us conservatives who take our politics seriously have struggled with the phenomenon that was (and is) Donald Trump. We were taught that character matters, but we also know that so do issues. When they collide, on which side should we stand?

All of us, regardless of political leanings, struggle to fit today’s partisan political environment into the moral universe we inherited. As a conservative, I struggle to keep my moral compass firmly fixed in a world turned increasingly woke, where facts are subordinated to the narrative, where truth is relative and where censorship is applied. As an essayist, it is not my function to convince the reader of the righteousness of my positions, but to explain why I believe as I do. The ethical standards I apply to political thought are based on my parents, lessons from school and college, from travel and conversations, and from reading.

I grew up during and just after World War II, when distinctions between good and evil seemed clear. We were raised to respect our elders, especially parents, and taught manners and civil behavior. We were read to from Aesop’s Fables with its universal moral lessons, and we were taught accountability and personal responsibility. In school, we saluted the flag and sang the Star-Spangled Banner. We were patriots, believing in the good of America. We knew she was not perfect, for we had learned our Founders met “to form a more perfect union,” not a perfect one. Memorial Day was a big holiday for us, as was the 4th of July. We celebrated, as separate holidays, the births of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. While we were taught humility, we were proud (and felt fortunate) to be Americans.

Yet, beneath that surface of 1950s calm lay social inequalities of which we were partially aware. Women were not treated as equals in the job market and segregation was a fact of life, and not just in the South. However, from our studies of American history we knew that progress had been made over the decades. And from our studies of world history, we learned of the uniqueness of the United States – not perfect, but better than the countries from which our ancestors had emigrated. That knowledge did not make us complacent; it made us aware of how we could effect change for the common good. In our later teens and early twenties, we witnessed historic changes in Civil and women’s rights, and we embraced those changes.