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Iran’s Deepening Military Expansion Into Europe by Con Coughlin

Posted By on July 29th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18762/iran-military-expansion-europe

The Iranian regime’s decision to give its backing to Russia’s military offensive against Ukraine… represents an alarming expansion in Iran’s military ambitions beyond the Middle East.

Arguably Khamenei’s most revealing comment during the visit was his call for Iran and Russia to increase what he termed “reciprocal cooperation” between the two countries to counter the threat of Western sanctions.

The concern now, say Western security officials, is that the commercial ties between the two countries will lead to closer military cooperation.

Iran’s very public displays of support for Russia certainly undermine the long-standing assumption of American and European policymakers that the Iranian threat, allowing Iran unlimited nuclear weapons, relates only to the Middle East — and specifically against Israel.

US President Joe Biden’s confused position on the Iran issue has been further exposed by the head of Britain’s MI6 intelligence agency, who told this month’s Aspen Security Forum that, in his view, Iran had shown little interest in negotiating a new nuclear deal.

The truth of the matter is that Mr Biden’s policy on Iran has become completely untenable, and the sooner he and his officials recognise their courtship of Tehran is doomed to end in failure, the better it will be for all concerned.

Iran’s deepening involvement in supporting the Russian war effort against Ukraine should serve as a wake up call to Western leaders that Iran’s military threat is no longer solely confined to the Middle East.

Ever since the ayatollahs seized control of the country more than 40 years ago, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the regime’s standard bearers, have mostly confined their military activities to the Middle East region, whether it is waging war against neighbouring countries like Iraq or threatening Israel through its proxies in Lebanon and Syria.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

U.K. Transgender Clinic to Close after Damning Report: ‘Not Safe’ for Children By Wesley J. Smith

Posted By on July 29th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/u-k-transgender-clinic-to-close-after-damning-report-not-safe-for-children/

As the Biden administration continues to try to use its regulatory powers to force a “gender-affirming” approach to children who question their sex, in other countries the rubber-stamping of a gender-dysphoric child’s belief and the prescribing of puberty-blocking drugs are under serious reconsideration. The U.K., Sweden, Finland, and France — not exactly Bible Belt countries — are all pulling back from the rush to transition children.

Now, in the U.K., the Tavistock Gender Clinic — run by the National Health Service — is being shut down because it is not safe for children. From the Daily Mail story:

The NHS‘s controversial child transgender clinic will shut its doors after a damning report found it was ‘not safe’ for children.

The gender identity service at Tavistock & Portman NHS Foundation Trust will be replaced by regional centres at existing children’s hospitals, which will provide more holistic care with ‘strong links to mental health services’.

It comes in response to an ongoing review led by senior paediatrician Dr Hilary Cass, who warned the gender clinic was ‘not a safe or viable long-term option’. She found other mental health issues were ‘overshadowed’ in favour of gender identity issues when children were referred to Tavistock’s Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS).

In other words, children will not be pushed toward transitioning — as the Biden administration wants done here — but their mental and emotional issues will be more thoroughly explored.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Pelosi’s January 6th Committee and the Death of American Justice The Committee’s real agenda. Ed Brodow

Posted By on July 29th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/07/pelosis-january-6th-committee-and-death-american-ed-brodow/

One of my favorite Hollywood movies is John Frankenheimer’s thriller, “Seven Days in May,” which describes an attempted military takeover of the US government. Written by “Twilight Zone” fabulist Rod Serling, the plot seemed far-fetched back in 1964. We knew that could never happen in America. Something equally sinister is playing out right now, only this time it is not a movie. The very cornerstone of our republic, the American justice system, is being sabotaged by the Democratic Party with the eager collaboration of the Biden administration.

In 2020, American cities and towns were ravaged by marauding mobs of crazed leftists. Dozens of lives were lost and damages amounted to billions. Hundreds of businesses, the product of years of struggle and sacrifice, were utterly destroyed. Buildings were looted and burned. Statues were torn down. Innocent people were beaten and murdered. With the complicity of Democratic mayors and governors, police in 2020 were told to stand down and allow the violence to continue. As a consequence, beautiful cities like New York and San Francisco will never be the same.

In the aftermath of more than 600 violent riots, virtually no one has gone to jail and the public servants who enabled the chaos are seeking re-election. Thousands of rioters, looters, and arsonists either were not arrested or received suspended sentences. Democratic-controlled media went out of their way to label them as “peaceful demonstrators.” The laissez faire attitude toward the 2020 mayhem has encouraged all other forms of felonious activity. You are much more likely to be robbed, beaten, shot, or raped than you were before the 2020 riots. Our negligent justice system is more likely to support criminals than innocent victims of crime.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Our Other Foreign Policy of Stale Orthodoxy: Iran Where, exactly, did “diplomatic engagement” get us? Bruce Thornton

Posted By on July 29th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/07/our-other-foreign-policy-stale-orthodoxy-iran-bruce-thornton/

Next to the conflict between Israelis and Arabs, the war between the U.S. and Iran is the most significant illustration of our failed foreign policy idealism. The fact that we don’t consider it “war” –– despite the fact that the prime mover of the Iranian Islamic Revolution, the Ayatollah Khomeini, formally declared war on us –– is itself evidence of our myopic idealism. Calling the conflict what it is would force us to admit that 43 years of “diplomatic engagement” have failed at stopping wars.

Now, however, the wages of that delusional policy are more dangerous than ever. Iran has just announced that it has enriched enough uranium to quickly produce a nuclear weapon, the Gatestone Institution reports, and has over 3000 missiles, many capable of delivering nuclear bombs. Also worrisome is Russia’s recent visit to Iran to strengthen their geopolitical marriage of convenience. Both nations are facilitating each other’s evasion of Western sanctions, and Iran is slated to sell several hundred advanced drones to Russia and providing training in their use, while Russia may reciprocate by providing the mullahs with its advanced S-400 and S-500 air defense systems.

So, all that our decades of reliance on the “democratic, rules-based international order” has got us is a fanatic, illiberal, revanchist, oil-rich regime on the brink of possessing weapons of mass destruction.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Rigging the War on Fossil Fuels Taxpayer dollars to make the world green and red. David Horowitz and John Perazzo

Posted By on July 29th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/07/rigging-war-fossil-fuels-david-horowitz-and-john-perazzo/

With the 2022 midterm elections less than four months away, a New York Times/Siena College poll revealed that just 1 percent of registered voters viewed climate change as a “top priority,” let alone the most important issue facing the nation. The poll placed climate change far behind concerns about inflation, the economy, record crime rates, and the humanitarian crisis on America’s southern border. Even among voters younger than 30 — the demographic that is typically most energized by debates about environmental policy — the corresponding figure was a mere 3 percent.

The same poll showed that public concern about climate change has actually declined significantly from the already-low levels of concern documented by previous surveys. In the summer of 2020, climate change ranked a lowly eleventh in a Pew Research Center poll. In September 2020, a Gallup poll likewise found that climate change ranked eleventh in a list of registered voters’ top concerns – well behind such items as the economy, terrorism/national security, the COVID-19 pandemic, health care, education, race relations, gun policy, crime, abortion, and immigration.

Notwithstanding the public’s consistent and overwhelming lack of concern about climate change as an urgent problem, the main concern of the Biden administration and the entire agenda of the Democrat Party has been, and continues to be, driven by this issue. In the words of President Joe Biden, “climate change poses an existential threat” – in fact, the chief existential threat to the United States – greater than terrorism, or Chinese expansionism, or the invasion by 2,400,000 unvetted illegal migrants annually across America’s broken southern border.

BOOKS Comments turned off

Jews as enemy aliens in Britain By Harold Goldmeier

Posted By on July 29th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/07/jews_as_enemy_aliens_in_britain.html

Eighty million refugees roam the world today.  We view all of them through a political lens, and the language used to label runaways reveals our biases and defines their treatment.

There are 5 million (good) refugees from Ukraine.  (Bad) illegals flood America’s southern border.  British officers are deporting (bothersome) displaced persons to Rwanda.  Three million (ignored) Venezuelans seek political asylum in Colombia.  (Pitiful) African Blacks and Middle East Muslims drown, and others are enslaved trekking from Africa and Syria.  (Dismissed) Afghanis on the run are just dying.

My father was a German-Jewish (enemy alien) refugee.  The Nazis freed him from Buchenwald around 1940.  His mother bought him a visa to Panama.  Hitler expected refugees to be a burden to destination countries.  Dad traveled from Fulda to Hamburg, boarding a boat sailing to Panama.  The ship refueled and resupplied in England.  Dad jumped off.

The British interned him in a camp for enemy aliens, Jews and non-Jews, Orthodox and secular, working men and intellectuals.  Interns had to convince Colonel May that they were not spies.  From concentration camp to internment camp like a summer fling.  We visited a cousin who spent her teen years in a concentration camp.  My young son piped up, “I’m going to camp this summer.”  We busted out laughing until my cousin wished he would not go to the same one she survived.

Now there is a book that tells the rest of the story.  Internment in Britain in 1940: Life and Art behind the Wire by Ines Newman with Charmain Brinson & Rachel Dickson (Vallentine Mitchell 2021) fills in the details about the missing time.  They built the book around a diary kept by Newman’s grandfather, Wilhelm Hollitscher.

P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Who, exactly, gets offended by ‘cultural appropriation’? By Thomas Lifson

Posted By on July 29th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/07/who_exactly_gets_offended_by_cultural_appropriation.html

We live in an age of mass stupidity, with totally ridiculous notions elevated to the status of self-righteous causes. But among the most absurd complaints that predominantly young wokesters embrace is the censure of what they call “cultural appropriation.” By this, they mean people of one ethnicity using cultural artifacts of another culture.

Having lived in Japan, which eagerly embraced Westernization more than 150 years ago, and where classical music is far more popular than in the United States, this seems an odd complaint. Cultural appropriation has made Japan rich, diverse, and happy. McDonald’s is the biggest restaurant chain, thiough sushi and ramen remain immensely popular too. It is a delightful mix of opportunities for fun in every realm of human endeavor, with all the world’s cultural achievements available for sa,p[ling on today’s Japan. 

The wokesters, of course, have no knowledge of such matters, and focus almost exclusively on complaining about Caucasians dressing, eating, singing, or otherwise sampling cultures which the wokesters have decided are victims.

But what they fail to understand is the cultural pride almost everyone feels when others find their own practices worthy of emulation.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Defining Recessions Down: Biden Tries To Gaslight America

Posted By on July 29th, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/07/29/defining-recessions-down-bidens-attempt-to-defy-reality-wont-end-well/

‘For the first time in a decade, our economy is in recession. It’s not official yet – the group that dates recessions doesn’t act until after the fact – but there’s little doubt that we’re in the midst of a downturn.”

That was economist Jared Bernstein back in December 2001. He went on: “The downturn is already taking a toll on those who traditionally bear the brunt of recessions, blue-collar workers in manufacturing, minorities, and other less-advantaged workers.”

That year saw only two non-consecutive quarters of GDP decline. The unemployment rate never got over 5.7%. And when the year was over, GDP had climbed 1%. But it’s still listed on the recession roster.

Today Bernstein, who sits on President Joe Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers, is trying to argue that, despite two consecutive quarters of a shrinking economy, we aren’t in a recession right now.

“What is a recession?” he and CEA chair Cecilia Rouse asked in a blog post. “While some maintain that two consecutive quarters of falling real GDP constitute a recession, that is neither the official definition nor the way economists evaluate the state of the business cycle.”

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Biden is exacerbating America’s energy crisis Steve Milloy

Posted By on July 29th, 2022

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/fairness-justice/biden-is-exacerbating-americas-energy-crisis

“I guarantee you — I guarantee you — we are going to end fossil fuel.”

So said then-candidate Joe Biden to environmental activists at a campaign rally in 2019. The president has yet to deliver on his promise to turn the entire U.S. energy system on its head, but given the record high gas prices at the fuel pump, he’s certainly made driving and powering homes punitively unavailable to low-income households.

The administration is keen on blaming the war in Ukraine for the hardships people are facing. This attempt is window dressing at best and blatant misinformation at worst. While European nations are heavily reliant on Russian gas in particular, the United States only used to get about 8% of its supplies from Russia. Most crude oil is imported here from Canada. Indeed, even Mexico is more important for America’s oil trade than President Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Another striking difference with most European nations is the fact that the U.S. has its own oil reserves. In theory, this would mean more energy independence. However, oil drilling permits have been cut by more than half since Biden came to office. Biden says oil companies should feel encouraged to increase capacity. But the industry has hit back by revealing how the Biden administration delays its activities through actions such as initially banning and then slow-walking lease sales on federal land or making drilling permits more difficult to obtain.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

State Department’s Middle East policy assessed Yoram Ettinger

Posted By on July 29th, 2022

https://bit.ly/3zER3Ez

Conventional wisdom vs. evidenced-reality

According to the late Prof. John Kenneth Galbraith, “the notion of conventional wisdom… is commonly understood as knowledge that is accepted within a certain community or among the general public…. [They] tend to hold on to opinions and ideas that fit with their established worldviews. Accordingly, conventional wisdom provides an obstacle for the acceptance of new knowledge or novel and original thinking….

“To its adherents, conventional wisdom provides comfortable padding against inconvenient truths and the complexities of reality…. This is a prime manifestation of vested interest. For a vested interest in understanding is more preciously guarded than any other treasure…. Acceptable ideas are disinclined to change….

“In the struggle between what is correct and what is agreeable, conventional wisdom had a tactical advantage…. There are many reasons why people like to hear articulated that which they approve…. It serves the ego: the individual has the satisfaction of knowing that other and more famous people share his conclusions….

“The enemy of conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events [evidence].… The fatal blow to conventional wisdom comes when conventional ideas fail signally to deal with some contingency to which obsolescence has made them palpably inapplicable.… The concept of conventional wisdom accentuated the difference between established truths – fundamentally out-of-touch with contemporary challenges – and new knowledge….”

Yale University’s Prof. Harlan Krumholz adds: “In science, what seems obvious may not be true, and what is accepted as conventional wisdom, may sometimes be based on flawed assumptions.”