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Iran’s New Crackdown Christians, journalists and opposition leaders are the latest targets.

Posted By on March 18th, 2017

Iran will hold another Potemkin election in May, and we can already predict the media narrative if one of the so-called hard-liners wins the Iranian Presidency. The blame will lie with the Trump Administration for failing to show sufficient respect for “moderate” incumbent Hasan Rouhani. Except Mr. Rouhani’s rule hasn’t been moderate.

Witness the latest repression targeting the mullahs’ usual suspects. Tehran’s Prosecutor-General on Sunday announced it had sentenced a couple to death because they had founded a new “cult.” The announcement was short on details, but the charges could mean anything from running a New Age yoga studio to a political-discussion club.

The authorities have also detained Ehsan Mazandarani, a reporter with the reformist newspaper Etemad (“Trust”), according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. The nature of the charges against Mr. Mazandarani isn’t clear, and his relatives say he is on hunger strike in Tehran’s Evin Prison. He had previously served most of a two-year sentence on trumped-up security charges.

Mr. Mazandarani’s detention followed last week’s arrest of dissident reporter Hengameh Shahidi, who also faces “national-security” charges. Ms. Shahidi has been an adviser to Mehdi Karroubi, one of two pro-democracy candidates in 2009’s fraudulent election. Mr. Karroubi and opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi have been under house arrest since 2011. Having hinted at freeing them during his campaign, Mr. Rouhani has kept mum on their cases since coming to office in 2013.

Then there is the crackdown on Christians. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps late last month arrested two Iranian Catholics in northwestern Iran and seized their Bibles and prayer books. The incident came to light in a Fox News report last week.

It isn’t clear if the two Catholics, a mother and son, are converts, though that seems likely. Historic Christian communities such as Assyrians and Armenians are afforded second-class protection under Iranian law, while apostasy by Muslims is punishable by death. Despite some early rhetoric about tolerance, Mr. Rouhani has been unwilling or unable to improve conditions for religious minorities.

There is also the status of some half a dozen U.S. and U.K. dual citizens who have been taken hostage by the regime while visiting Iran. These include father and son Baquer and Siamak Namazi, both U.S. citizens, and Nazenin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British citizen who is serving a five-year sentence on secret charges.

Nearly four decades after it was born, the Islamic Republic remains an unbending tyranny. The Trump White House shouldn’t spend energy hunting for moderate negotiating partners in the Islamist regime because there aren’t any. They’re under arrest.

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Tillerson Tells the Korean Truth A warning to China that the U.S. wants action against a nuclear North.

Posted By on March 18th, 2017

Rex Tillerson caused a stir Friday on his first trip to Asia by—are you sitting down?—telling the truth about North Korea and China. The Secretary of State may be a rookie diplomat, but he can’t do any worse on North Korea than his recent predecessors in both political parties have.

“Let me be very clear: The policy of strategic patience has ended,” Mr. Tillerson said, referring to the Obama Administration policy of waiting for North Korea to give up its nuclear ambitions or collapse. A day earlier he criticized “20 years” of a “failed approach” to the North’s nuclear ambitions.

He’s right about the failure. Going back to Bill Clinton and diplomat Robert Gallucci’s Agreed Framework in 1994, three American administrations have sought to bribe Pyongyang into giving up its nuclear program and coax China to help. They engaged in years of multi-government talks and offered cash or other concessions for North Korean promises that it never fulfilled.

President George W. Bush even took North Korea off the list of terror-sponsoring states after the North tested its first nuclear weapon in 2006. And even as it came to light that Pyongyang had helped Syria build the beginnings of a nuclear program. Bush-era diplomats Condoleezza Rice and Christopher Hill have a lot to answer for after they persuaded President Bush to give up a pressure campaign against the North that was showing signs of success.

President Obama tried to coax the North with a similar invitation, but by then the Kim family regime had decided to build a nuclear-weapons stockpile along with the missiles to deliver them. That’s when Mr. Obama settled on the “strategic patience” doctrine that has now left the North close to achieving the ability to destroy Seoul, Tokyo or Seattle.

All of this has been dumped in the lap of the Trump Administration, which has to figure out a way to stop the North’s progress or accept a new existential threat to America’s homeland. That’s the story behind Mr. Tillerson’s language, which seems aimed at both the North and its political patrons in Beijing.

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To Falk’s discredit by Ruthie Blum

Posted By on March 18th, 2017

The outrageous report released this week by the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Western ‎Asia — which concludes “beyond a reasonable doubt that Israel is guilty of policies and practices that ‎constitute the crime of apartheid” — should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with its co-author, ‎Richard Falk.‎

This is not the first time that the former U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian ‎Territories has given bias a bad name. Indeed, throughout his career, the American legal “scholar” has ‎shown a deep loathing for Western democracies, including his own, while not even attempting to ‎disguise his deep attraction to and affinity for evil Islamists. ‎

Though infamous since 2001 for blaming the U.S. for the 9/11 attacks, linking the Boston Marathon ‎bombings to America’s Mideast policies and warning that Israel was committing genocide, Falk was ‎busy apologizing for bloodthirsty radicals and their regimes long before that.‎

In January 1979, when he was still a professor of international law at Princeton, Falk accompanied ‎former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark and Don Luce, a prominent member of Clergy and Laity ‎Concerned (established in 1965 by the National Council of Churches to “struggle against American ‎imperialism and exploitation in just about every corner of the world”) on a private, eight-day fact-‎finding mission to Iran. At the end of the trip, the trio stopped over in France to meet Ayatollah ‎Ruhollah Khomeini, who had been living in exile for 14 years.‎

Right around this time, the ousted, cancer-ridden Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi fled the country. ‎Two weeks later, on February 1, Khomeini returned to his native land to take the helm of the new ‎Islamic Republic of Iran.‎

On February 16, Falk published an op-ed in The New York Times called “Trusting Khomeini.” In it, he ‎waxed poetic about the Muslim cleric, who would turn Iran into the nuclear weapons-hungry ‎theocracy that it is today. “The depiction of him as fanatical, reactionary, and the bearer of crude ‎prejudices seems certainly and happily false,” Falk wrote.‎

He then went on to praise Shiite Islam. “What is distinctive, perhaps, about this religious orientation is ‎its concern with resisting oppression and promoting social justice,” he said, concluding: “Having ‎created a new model of popular revolution based, for the most part, on nonviolent tactics, Iran may ‎provide us with a desperately needed model of humane governance for a Third World country.”‎

This “humane governance” began with the backing of students who took over the U.S. Embassy in ‎Tehran and held dozens of its staff hostage for 444 days, while then-U.S. President Jimmy Carter tried ‎to negotiate their release by “understanding the grievances” of Tehran’s mullahs.‎

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The Nihilism of Antifa: Edward Cline

Posted By on March 18th, 2017

The average Antifa recruit is a sociopath. He’s in the “resistance” irrespective of the “cause.” He’s in the mob because of his basic nihilism; freedom of speech means nothing to him. He would “oppose,” while carrying a stick or wearing steel-toed shoes or knuckle busters, a speech about the chemical composition of cow paddies. It could be about immigration, Brexit, Trump, pro-Trumpers, or MiloYiannopoulos. It matters not. He is an empty vessel. There is the chance to chant with countless others to feel “one” with them is that is his driving motive to physically assault demonstrators and be paid for it. Alone he is a non-performer, a non-entity. Antifac gives him a chance to vent his malevolent universe soul, to lash out at anyone who stands for something.

The mentality of an Antifa “soldier” is parallel with that of an Islamic jihadist. The latter’s end is his own death, or arrest, or “martyrdom.” They have said that in so many instances. But maybe it is also, if he survives being shot, the five minutes of TV fame as his carnage is televised and he is shown being led away by the police. But it is not “mental illness,” which is what European authorities invariably ascribe to Muslim attacks on non-Muslims. It is plain, unadulterated nihilism. Islam is a nihilist, death-worshipping “creed.”

Antifa “soldiers” are impervious to the charge that their “anti-fascist” mantra allows them to behave like fascists, just as Hitler’s brown shirts behaved.

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The Left Can’t Stop Campus Riots Like Middlebury’s Because Their Ideology Deserves Blame: Peter Wood *****

Posted By on March 18th, 2017

Liberals need to appreciate the dangers posed by a radical movement that rejects the principles of intellectual freedom and freedom of expression.

The Middlebury College protest on March 2 that silenced an invited speaker and hospitalized a popular professor has continued to garner attention.

More than 100 Middlebury professors—included the one injured in the encounter—have signed a statement of principles, Free Inquiry on Campus, upholding the classic virtues of “free, reasoned, and civil speech.” The document implicitly repudiates the actions of some other Middlebury professors who instigated the effort to deny Dr. Charles Murray the opportunity to speak on campus.
The American Political Science Association, representing 13,000 professors and students, issued its own statement condemning “Violence at Middlebury College.” The APSA statement says, in part, “The violence surrounding the talk undermined the ability of faculty and students to engage in the free exchange of ideas and debate, thereby impeding academic freedom on the Middlebury campus.”
How Liberals Are Responding To Middlebury’s Protest

Harry Boyte, founder of the Public Achievement movement, has written in The Huffington Post to condemn Middlebury students’ intolerant, violent actions. Boyte pointedly evoked his memories of the 1960s: “the student actions recalled the mob violence across the South which I often saw as a young man in the civil rights movement working for Martin Luther King’s organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).” Boyte also underlined the essential point: “Free speech is a crucial value for education.”

The liberal commentator Frank Bruni devoted his Sunday New York Times column, “The Dangerous Safety of College,” to lamenting “the recent melee at Middlebury.” Bruni’s point is that “somewhere along the way,” the Middlebury protesters “got the idea that they should be able to purge their world of perspectives offensive to them.” Instead of using the occasion “to hone the most eloquent” arguments against Dr. Murray, “they swarmed and swore.” Indeed they did worse than that, but Bruni provides a nice round-up of comments from liberals who firmly reject the tactics of the Middlebury protesters, if not their message.

One notable figure Bruni failed to cite is Bill McKibben, the radical environmentalist who may well be Middlebury’s best-known professor. In the same vein as Bruni, McKibben took to the pages of The Guardian to chastise his fellow activists for choosing the wrong tactic to express their disdain for Dr. Murray. McKibben explains that by preventing Murray from speaking, they conferred on him a “new standing” and made him “a martyr to the cause of free speech.” It would have been better to have “taken all the available seats, and then got up and peacefully left.”

Many other Middlebury students, alumni, and faculty members have been writing and posting about the events as well, and because I published one of the longest and mostdetailed accounts of what happened, I received many private communications as well as pointers to other items of interest.

Interest in the story seems to be growing because it has implications well beyond the one small college in Vermont where the events took place. In that light, I think it useful to summarize the discussion so far, starting with the microcosm of Middlebury itself.
Yes, The Protest Really Became A Riot

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President Trump, Please Plug Those Leaks Among other things, they discourage foreign leaders from speaking with the president. By Deroy Murdock

Posted By on March 17th, 2017

The word “leaks” does not begin to describe President Donald J. Trump’s problem. “Geysers” is more like it. He should apply a giant wrench to this deluge.

The latest apparent leak involved two pages of Trump’s 2005 tax return. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow hyperventilated Tuesday night over this “absolutely historically unprecedented” news. She looked absolutely historically foolish when these records confirmed that Trump earned some $150 million that year and paid $38.4 million in federal taxes. His 25.3 percent effective rate trumped the 22.5 percent average for his income level, the 18.7 percent that Obama paid in 2015, and the 13.5 percent that Senator Bernie Sanders (Socialist, Vt.) chipped in for 2014. So, Trump actually is rich and pays more of his “fair share” than do these two leftists who have denounced people like Trump as “the top 1 percent.”

While this presumed leak benefited Trump, it still reeks of stolen goods. If, in fact, an IRS staffer or another federal employee swiped Trump’s return, he perpetrated a felony under 26 U.S. Code § 7213. Punishment could include a $5,000 fine, five years in the slammer, or both.

President Trump should instruct the Justice Department to investigate how this document surfaced. Anyone at the IRS or elsewhere in the swamp who released it should be handcuffed, tried, and, if convicted, catapulted into a federal penitentiary.

Even more worrisome are the leaks that have scattered state secrets to the winds. Since Trump’s inauguration, the entire planet has read details about his phone calls with the leaders of Mexico and Australia, the communications of former National Security Council chief Mike Flynn with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, the CIA’s possible reopening of overseas interrogation sites, its eerily high-tech surveillance methods, and much more.

Trump haters in the bureaucracy may think they are harming him. In fact, they are wounding America.

Why would foreign leaders want to call Trump, knowing that their confidential words might get splashed across the world’s front pages within days? Why should Great Britain’s MI6, Israel’s Mossad, or Japan’s PSIA share intelligence with Washington? Why not skip the middleman and simply hold a press conference on such matters?

Never mind heads of state. Why should pro-American chauffeurs, secretaries, or soldiers abroad approach or cooperate with U.S. intelligence agents, given the risk that their identities might be exposed?

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With Help from the EU, the Palestinian Authority Builds Illegal Settlements in the West Bank

Posted By on March 17th, 2017

According to the Oslo Accords, the portion of the West Bank designated as Area C—which includes all of the Israeli settlements—is to remain under the control of Israel’s government until the parties reach a final agreement. Yet the Palestinian Authority (PA), backed by EU funds, has been systematically constructing illegal settlements there—mostly small Bedouin outposts—in an attempt to interfere with Israeli claims to the territory. Josh Hasten https://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/2017/03/with-help-from-the-eu-the-palestinian-authority-builds-illegal-settlements-in-the-west-bank/

Blueprints for the establishment of a legal town to be called Ramat Nueimah near Jericho were drawn up, but that plan has been shelved for the time being. Now, I don’t want to ruin anyone’s vacation, but the next time you are heading for some R&R at the Dead Sea via Jerusalem, pay close attention to the scenery on the sides of the road.

Over the past decade there has been a huge upsurge in the number of structures going up in illegal Beduin villages and encampments on both sides of Highway 1, from the entrance to the city through what is known as the “E1” area between Jerusalem and the “Adumims” all the way down the mountain toward the Dead Sea.So why should some illegal Beduin structures spoil your trip? Because these aren’t just small herding communities as they would appear, but strategically placed mini-towns set up by the Palestinian Authority and financed by the European Union to the tune of hundreds of millions of euros, with the explicit goal of taking over strategic lands in Area C with the aim of creating a de facto Palestinian state.

This plot is clearly outlined in a lengthy 2009 policy paper by then Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad. Known as the Fayyad Plan, the logic was that by creating substantial facts on the ground, the PA with the support of the international community would lay claim to those areas, and demand that they be part of “Palestine” in any future negotiations with Israel.

And that’s where the EU comes in – to serve as the key financier of the project. Over 1,000 illegal structures – including houses, bathrooms, storage spaces, etc., with more being erected nearly daily throughout Judea and Samaria, now proudly bear the EU flag. The EU’s false claim is that it is involved in these building endeavors for “humanitarian purposes” to provide for the Beduin in these areas.

Ironic though, that the EU symbol can only be seen on structures in Area C; none can be found in areas A or B, nor can they be found in Beduin communities throughout the rest of the Middle East. It makes you wonder.

Therefore in 2009 Regavim filed the initial petition against the community with the High Court of Justice. But eight years later it remains standing. Just this past summer rumors circulated that the Civil Administration was preparing to take action, starting with the dismantling of the school. But once the first of day of classes began, it was clear it wasn’t going to happen.

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Chelsea Clinton to Write Book for “Tiny Feminists” Comparing Hillary to Harriet Tubman Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on March 17th, 2017

The Clintons are like cockroaches. If there were a nuclear war, after the fallout the only survivors would be Bill, Hillary and Chelsea who would climb out from under a pile of radioactive corpses to start working on their next book. And with the entire human race dead, they would have their pick of ghostwriters.

Since Hillary’s defeat, no amount of bribes, intimidation and glass ceiling rhetoric will give her a third act in politics. So the Clinton crime family has everything staked on a dim daughter who couldn’t manage to successfully interview an actual sock puppet on NBC. So they’re all writing children’s books. Because child abuse is the final Clinton frontier.

Chelsea Clinton has written a children’s book, with a sharply worded title.

The book is called “She Persisted” and comes out May 30, Penguin Young Readers announced Thursday. Clinton will honor 13 American women “who never take no for an answer,” including Harriet Tubman, Sonia Sotomayor and Oprah Winfrey. “She Persisted” will also feature a “special” and unidentified cameo, presumably Clinton’s mother, Hillary Clinton.

So the Clintons stole Warren’s publicity stunt, but won’t be including her in the book.

Grifters gotta grift.

Also who can even tell the difference between Harriet Tubman, Oprah and Hillary. They’re all in the same category.

Chelsea Clinton introduces tiny feminists, mini activists and little kids…

Tiny feminists. Because they’re never too young to be brainwashed. That’s the bottom of the left. Also they’re never too young to give the Clintons money.

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Hezbollah Develops Domestic Arms Industry with Iranian Know-How Lebanon transforms into a vassal state of the Mullahs. March 17, 2017 Ari Lieberman

Posted By on March 17th, 2017

Not many people have ever heard of Souk El Gharb, a sleepy Lebanese village perched on a mountain top overlooking Beirut but in 1983, this village was the scene of ferocious fighting between the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) and an assortment of Syrian-backed leftist and Muslim anti-government militias. For a while, the LAF, backed by the United States, was holding its own against the militias, beating back several coordinated attacks and even mounting offensives of their own.

But the LAF was doing more than just winning; it was unifying the nation splintered after many years of civil war and Palestinian occupation. The bulk of the Palestine Liberation Organization – a foreign entity that had occupied nearly half of Lebanon for 10 years – had just been expelled by the Israel Defense Forces and a multi-national force (MLF) composed of U.S. Marines, French and Italian troops took up positions in and around Beirut to promote stability in the nation’s capital. Israel’s 1982 invasion and the presence of the MLF gave Lebanon a chance to re-assert its sovereignty.

But the LAF’s good fortune was short-lived. On October 23, 1983 Hezbollah suicide bombers slammed their explosive laden trucks into the U.S. Marine and French army barracks killing 241 U.S. military personnel and 58 French servicemen. In early 1984, the MLF withdrew and the LAF quickly unraveled in the face of overwhelming firepower. Lebanon once again fell under the malign influence of Syria and later Iran, through its Shia proxy force, Hezbollah.

In May 2008 the Lebanese government made one last effort to re-assert sovereignty over the nation, which was by now almost fully under the control of Hezbollah, and by extension Iran. The government declared Hezbollah’s parallel militarized telecommunication network to be illegal. It also sought removal of Beirut Airport’s security chief Wafic Shkeir, who was a Hezbollah operative and was actively assisting Hezbollah with the movement of clandestine arms shipments and other contraband.

Hezbollah responded ruthlessly and swiftly moved to the offensive, taking over government controlled buildings and neighborhoods while the LAF watched helplessly. Lebanon’s last gasp at freedom failed and the country was now firmly under the control of Hezbollah and the mullahs of the Islamic Republic.

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Nick Kostov and Stacy Meichtry:Eight Injured in Shooting at High School in France Seventeen-year-old gunman has been taken into police custody, official says

Posted By on March 17th, 2017

PARIS—A gunman opened fire inside a high school in southern France on Thursday, injuring eight people, according to the Interior Ministry.

The 17-year-old student who fired the shots at the Alexis de Tocqueville high school in the town of Grasse, near Nice, is now in police custody, said Pierre-Henry Brandet, a spokesman for the Interior Ministry. He added that the school’s principal was among the injured when the “very heavily armed” student opened fire.

All of the high-school students are now safe, Mr. Brandet said, adding that police had surrounded the school to look for possible accomplices.

Mr. Brandet said that there was no indication so far that the shooting is related to terrorism.

The assault revives concerns in a country that has been on high alert after a series of terror attacks. Grasse is only around 20 miles from Nice, where a truck attack, for which Islamic State claimed responsibility, killed 86 people in July last year.