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August 2020

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Portland Clashes Trump should tell his supporters to stay away from Antifa protests.

By on August 31st, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-portland-clashes-11598829099?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

The violent protests of the last three months in Portland, Ore., escalated on Saturday night into a right-left confrontation that resulted in one man shot dead in the streets. This is what happens when political leaders fail to perform the most basic responsibility of government to protect innocent lives and property.

The main failure here lies with Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler and Gov. Kate Brown, who have consistently indulged the rioters. Every night for more than 90 days, Black Lives Matter and Antifa protesters have demonstrated in Portland. Many are peaceful, but a hard core have repeatedly attacked police and burned buildings.

When President Trump sent federal law enforcement agents to Portland this summer to protect federal buildings, the mayor and Governor blamed Mr. Trump for the violent clashes. But when federal agents stood down, the violence continued against Portland police and property. On Friday Mr. Wheeler issued an open letter rejecting Mr. Trump’s latest offer of federal help to restore order.

“We don’t need your politics of division and demagoguery. Portlanders are onto you. We have already seen your reckless disregard for human life in your bumbling response to the COVID pandemic. And we know you’ve reached the conclusion that images of violence or vandalism are your only ticket to reelection,” Mr. Wheeler wrote.

Yet his city is the one burning and where someone has now been killed. Mr. Wheeler, Gov. Brown and state lawmakers have hamstrung police by limiting anti-riot tactics. At a Sunday press conference the Portland police chief said his department lacked the resources to separate the fighting factions, but the feckless Mr. Wheeler offered little more than a plea against violence and rhetoric about reform to address racial injustice.

That hasn’t stopped Democrats from blaming Mr. Trump for the violence, as they did all day Sunday. Democrats spent their convention never mentioning the urban violence, but after the Kenosha riots and the GOP convention, this has become a political liability. So they’re pivoting to blame Mr. Trump and claim that “his America” is causing it. As if Trump supporters belong to Antifa and dominate U.S. cities.

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FOREIGN POLICY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

On Iran, the U.N. Proves Its Uselessness Once Again By Fred Fleitz

By on August 31st, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/iran-nuclear-deal-united-nations-proves-useless/

With the Security Council refusing snap-back sanctions, the U.S. must go it alone to defend its national interests.

Given a recent surge in belligerent behavior by Iran and clear evidence that it cheated on the JCPOA, the deeply flawed 2015 nuclear deal, President Trump wants to reimpose U.N. sanctions that were lifted by the prior agreement. To do this, Trump wants to trigger a “snap-back” provision in a 2015 U.N. Security Council resolution. Security Council members — led by Russia, China, and America’s European allies — are blocking this effort because they prefer to appease Iran and protect the worthless nuclear deal.

On August 25, the Security Council’s current president refused to take up the U.S. snap-back proposal. By doing so, U.N. members are choosing to look the other way on a growing list of dangerous Iranian provocations and JCPOA violations. They also are validating President Trump’s conclusion that staying in the JCPOA and trying to rein in Iran through the U.N. is not in the national security interests of the United States.

When Israel revealed thousands of pages from Iran’s “Nuclear Archive,” obtained by Israeli intelligence in 2018, it proved Iran’s massive cheating on the JCPOA and ongoing covert work on nuclear weapons. This included undeclared facilities that Iran continued to use to pursue nuclear weapons after the announcement of the JCPOA. In response to Israel’s revelation, Iran razed one of these facilities and emptied another before IAEA inspectors could visit them.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

How to Stop Iran From Terrorizing Dissidents Abroad Western countries need to take Tehran’s murderous campaign seriously and hold officials accountable. By Cameron Khansarinia and Kaveh Shahrooz

By on August 31st, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-stop-iran-from-terrorizing-dissidents-abroad-11598822066?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

Jamshid Sharmahd, a California-based Iranian opposition activist, disappeared in late July while traveling to a technology conference in India by way of Dubai. Mr. Sharmahd’s family tracked his movements using mobile phone data to a remote region of neighboring Oman before he dropped off the map. Days later, he appeared blindfolded on Iranian state television as a result of what the Islamic Republic termed a “complex operation” by “anonymous soldiers.”

More frightening than the apparent kidnapping of the U.S.-based dissident is the fate that likely awaits him. This summer Tehran sentenced to death another kidnapped opponent, who had been living as a refugee in France. And in recent weeks a prominent Iranian women’s rights activist based in the U.S. revealed that her family had been pressured to invite her to a get-together in neighboring Turkey so she could be abducted.

Iranian democracy activists living in Western countries are understandably alarmed by this apparent uptick in kidnappings and hope that their adopted democratic homes will protect them. But safeguarding these dissidents will require world leaders to stop thinking of such incidents as isolated crimes, and instead confront them as state-sanctioned intimidation policy.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

California’s Radical Indoctrination A bill would establish a K-12 curriculum in the ‘four I’s of oppression.’

By on August 31st, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/californias-radical-indoctrination-11598829048?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

Conservatives and fair-minded liberals are alarmed that high schools are drawing up plans to teach the “1619 project,” the New York Times ’ revisionist account of race and the American founding, in history classes. The reality is turning out to be worse. The largest state in the union is poised to become one of the first to mandate ethnic studies for all high-school students, and the model curriculum makes the radical “1619 project” look moderate and balanced.

Last year California’s Assembly passed its ethnic-studies bill known as AB 331 by a 63-8 vote. Then the state department of education put forward a model curriculum so extreme and ethnocentric that the state Senate’s Democratic supermajority balked. The curriculum said among other things that “within Ethnic Studies, scholars are often very critical of the system of capitalism as research has shown that Native people and people of color are disproportionately exploited within the system.”

The bill was put on ice, but protests and riots in recent months gave Sacramento’s mavens of racial division more leverage. The education department delivered a new draft model curriculum this month, and AB 331 has been revived. It passed a Senate committee Aug. 20 and is expected to go before the full body soon. If Gov. Gavin Newsom signs it, the legislation would require all school districts to offer a semester-long ethnic studies class starting in 2025.

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