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January 2022

Iran’s “Nuclear Blackmail”: Iran Has No Interest in Negotiating a New Nuclear Deal by Con Coughlin

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18091/iran-nuclear-blackmail

“If the Iranians think the world does not seriously intend to stop them, they will race towards the bomb. We must make it clear that the world will not allow this to happen. There needs to be a credible military threat on the table.” — Yair Lapid, Israeli Foreign Minister, interview with the author, December, 2021.

Mr Lapid’s calls have been echoed by US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan who, following talks with Mr Bennett in Jerusalem, called for world powers to adopt a “common strategy” for dealing with Iran.

Mr Lapid’s concerns about Iran’s approach to the Vienna talks are supported by Western security officials closely monitoring the negotiations, who state that, far from taking a constructive approach to the negotiations, the Iranians are simply playing for time.

In the meantime Iran has sought to string out the negotiations in Vienna by concentrating on relatively minor issues, such as whether UN inspectors can have surveillance cameras operating at key sites. Iran’s obstructive conduct, moreover, is being backed by Russia and China, which were also signatories to the 2015 deal but now want to embarrass the Biden administration by ensuring the current round of talks end in failure.

The hardline approach being adopted by Tehran certainly makes the prospect of military action to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities more likely in 2022, with US military officials confidently asserting that, if military option is required, it would be possible to target Iran’s entire nuclear programme.

The big question that remains, though, is whether, if the talks do fail, Mr Biden will have the resolve to initiate military action, or will instead seek to hit Iran with more — ineffective — sanctions.

In the meantime, Tehran continues to work on its controversial uranium enrichment activities so that, unless urgent action is taken soon, the world could soon find itself having to confront a nuclear-armed Iran.

Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid’s observation that Iran is engaging in “nuclear blackmail” with Western negotiators provides a damning indictment of the current state of play regarding the negotiations being held in Vienna on Tehran’s nuclear activities.

Yale’s ‘Anonymous’ By Jimmy Quinn

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/yales-anonymous/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=corner&utm_term=third

The Yale Daily News granted anonymity to a Chinese student who published a column on Peng Shuai’s disappearance by the Chinese Communist Party. The student paper’s editors explained why they published the piece that way:

Editor’s Note: The News has granted the author of this piece anonymity due to a risk to their family’s safety. The author is a University student with family in China who might be harmed by the piece being published with the author’s name. As a policy, the News does not accept anonymous submissions. However, we believed this piece could not be published without guaranteeing the author’s anonymity.

It’s an important piece that, fitting in with other recent events, deserves attention:

As a concerned Yale student, who has to remain anonymous for fear of putting those I love in danger, I’m writing to you so that she won’t be forgotten. We won’t forget her. And I want to tell you what I think #WhereIsPengShuai is really about. If we trivialize Peng Shuai’s allegations as just another social media hashtag, what she did will be for nothing…

The Yale endowment needs to divest from China. The track record of the CCP has made it more than clear that every dollar of investment in China is unethical, until the CCP is willing to positively respond to, and act on, allegations by Peng Shuai and many others. Despite having a significant Chinese portfolio, which includes top-earning tech companies like Tencent and JD.com, the Yale Investments Office currently has no publicly available ethical policy specific to China or a review of its ethical implications.

There are two critical points to take from this.

First, a counter-CCP campus divestment movement is taking shape, and this piece serves as a reminder of its significance. In October, Catholic University of America’s student government voted to support the school’s divestment from firms implicated in the Uyghur genocide, leading school officials to pledge to take steps toward that goal.

Rory O’Connor of the Athenai Institute, the group coordinating a nationwide boycott campaign, told me at the time that his organization is targeting a number of other schools across the country in the coming months.

Poll: Most Republicans Distrust the FBI By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2022/01/04/poll-most-republicans-distrust-the-fbi/

For decades, the Federal Bureau of Investigation enjoyed strong support from Republican political leaders and voters. But the agency’s reputation has crashed among its most dependable constituency amid scandal, corruption, and flagrant politicking on behalf of the Democratic Party.

A Rasmussen poll released today shows that 57 percent of Republicans hold an unfavorable view of the FBI; 47 percent of all likely voters surveyed at the end of December view the FBI unfavorably.

As if to prove the bureau has become the jackboots of the national Democratic Party rather than a nonpartisan law enforcement agency, a whopping 63 percent of Democrats have a favorable opinion of the FBI.

In a question that cribbed an accurate accusation made by Trump loyalist Roger Stone, 64 percent of Republicans agreed with the statement that “a group of politicized thugs at the top of the FBI who are using the FBI…as Joe Biden’s personal Gestapo.” Overall, 46 percent of those polled agreed with Stone’s sentiment.

Christopher Wray gets poor marks from Republicans; 61 percent say Wray, appointed by Donald Trump in 2018, is influenced by Joe Biden and not independent of the administration. Fifty percent of all voters and 35 percent of Democrats believe Wray takes his marching orders from the White House.

Over the past several years—under the leadership of James Comey, Andrew McCabe, and Wray—the FBI has torched its credibility among the majority of Americans. Comey opened Crossfire Hurricane, a counterintelligence probe into the Trump campaign based on imaginary Russian election collusion, in 2016. Comey used as evidence before a secret court a “dossier” of false political propaganda sourced by a foreign agent paid by the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee.

Text messages between top agents involved in the probe showed open contempt for Donald Trump and his voters. McCabe lied three times to FBI investigators about his role in leaking classified information; an FBI lawyer and Clinton campaign attorney also have been charged with perjury related to Crossfire Hurricane. (A special counsel continues to investigate the probe’s origins and those involved.)

DEI Must DIE The damaging “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” racket needs to be extinguished. By Larry Sand

https://amgreatness.com/2022/01/04/dei-must-die/

Researchers extraordinaire Jay Greene and James Paul have released a series of three carefully crafted studies on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion that detail many aspects of the harmful scheme. In a nutshell, the authors find DEI to be “counterproductive and politically radical.”

The part of the study that examines DEI’s effects on elementary schools is particularly damning. It looks at school districts with at least 15,000 students, of which there are 554, and finds that schools with Chief Diversity Officers (CDOs) “actually have larger gaps in achievement between black and white students, Hispanic and white students, and non-poor and poor students than districts without CDOs. And those gaps are growing wider over time. This pattern holds true even after controlling for a host of other observable characteristics of those districts.”

The authors explain that the gaps occur because CDOs “are more focused on promoting a political agenda than they are on finding effective educational interventions.” And that political agenda includes advancing policies that typically exacerbate achievement gaps, such as eliminating gifted programs and advanced math classes “while selecting English and Social Studies content for its political orthodoxy rather than educational quality.”

Why would such a bad idea be such an easy sell? Because when you dress up the words, they can sound good, at least to true believers. But in reality, it’s a nightmare for all concerned, except of course for the “progressive” elites who financially benefit from the racket.

One part of the study deals with the anti-Semitic nature of DEI. Interestingly, Greene and Paul compiled Twitter feeds of 741 DEI officials at 65 universities and find “605 tweets that bash Israel and just 28 that praise the Jewish state.” They add that 62 percent of the tweets that reference China were favorable.

When it comes to educational malfeasance, California, as usual, does its best to be the national leader. In fact, there are potholes galore on Equity Road in the Golden State. For starters State Superintendent of Public Instruction and Indoctrinator-in-Chief Tony Thurmond hired Daniel Lee as the state’s first “superintendent of equity.” But shortly thereafter, Politico revealed that Lee, a psychologist, life coach, and self-help author, is also a Pennsylvanian, and was given a job that was never publicly posted by the California state Education Department. Apparently being buddies with Phony Tony was enough to land Lee the $180,000 a year job. When asked if others were interviewed for the job besides Lee, Thurmond replied, “I can’t recall.” If nothing else, Thurmond is living proof that cronyism is alive and well in California.

‘One Nation Under Allah’ Revisited When religious liberty protections protect opponents of religious liberty. William Kilpatrick

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/01/one-nation-under-allah-revisited-william-kilpatrick/

I just came across a news item from last June about a girl (the class president) in a Fairfax Country High School who led the graduating class in a recital of the Pledge of Allegiance, but replaced “one nation under God” with “one nation under Allah.”

This caught my attention because about 11 years ago, I wrote a piece for FrontPage entitled “One Nation Under Allah?”  I noted that the founders were assuming a specifically Judeo-Christian understanding of God when they wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and I pointed out that substituting Allah’s name for “God” would create a number of difficulties.

For example, The Declaration of Independence states that “all men are created equal,” but the Koran describes Muslims as “the best of people” and speaks of Christians and Jews as the “worst of created beings.”  In addition, the Islamic law books specifically state that the value of a Christian or Jewish life is only one-third the value of a Muslim’s life.  Where’s the equality in that?

A similar difficulty arises if we try to put the First Amendment to the Constitution in an Islamic context.  The First Amendment prohibits the establishment of a state religion, but Islam is a theocracy.  It is intended to be a state religion.  For instance, the Constitutions of many Islamic nations are based on Sharia Law. And so is The Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam which was signed in 1990 by all the member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference.  After reaffirming “the civilizing… role of the Islamic Ummah which God made the best nation” and after affirming that human rights and freedoms must be “in accordance with the Islamic Shariah,” the document goes on to speak of “binding divine commandments, which are contained in the Revealed Books of God and were sent through the last of His Prophets…thereby making their observance an act of worship and their neglect or violation an abominable sin…”

The Year of Living Stupidly How long will America continue witnessing our unalienable rights and political freedoms weakened? Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/01/year-living-stupidly-bruce-thornton/

In 2021, political, social, and cultural trends that had been developing for decades reached a level of surreal absurdity. Under the stress of the pandemic crisis, we witnessed our alleged “cognitive elites” in government, schools, popular culture, and media saying and doing things that an illiterate peasant in the 18th century would consider the words and deeds of a lunatic. In every dimension of our existence, gross violations of logic and common sense were shamelessly indulged, the lies never acknowledged even when exposed.

The presidency of Donald Trump was the accelerant of these developments. The bipartisan ruling elite found the straight-talking, braggadocios celebrity plutocrat a gross insult to their technocratic pretensions and guild “norms.” The depth of his challenge was especially obvious in the corporate legacy-media, which colluded with the progressive Democrats to inflate preposterous rumors of “collusion” with Russia into existential crises endangering “our democracy.” 

Even when two years of a dishonest, corrupt investigation by the special counsel couldn’t provide a scintilla of legitimate evidence to support these charges, the Dems and their media flunkeys simply moved on to the next fabrication. The four-hour mini-riot at the Capitol building on January 6 was similarly inflated into an “insurrection” and assault on the same “temple of democracy” that progressives have been vandalizing for over a century. The House conducted a second dead-end impeachment of Trump, and when that collapsed, shifted to a still-ongoing investigation of the January 6 protests in order to short-circuit our democratic process by preemptively disqualifying Trump from the 2024 election.

The dishonesty, hypocrisy, and sheer cognitive incoherence of the reaction to a president who for all his crude and insulting rhetoric, had one of the most successful first terms of a president in the postwar period––a judgement the validity of which it took “Joe Biden,” the simulacrum of a president, less than a year of failures and disasters to confirm. Inflation, supply-chain bottle-necks, unfilled jobs, hysterical covid protocols, drunken-sailor spending, exploding violent crime, a dishonorable abandonment of Afghanistan, geopolitical adventurism by our rivals and enemies, loss of our energy independence, runaway gasoline prices, and schools blatantly indoctrinating students with transgender and literally racist propaganda––all are the wages of the Trumpophobia epidemic.

A new Manhattan DA promises a surge of crime, violent and otherwise By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/01/a_new_manhattan_da_promises_a_surge_of_crime_violent_and_otherwise.html

Manhattan’s newly sworn-in District Attorney started by making a very important announcement: He will no longer be enforcing the law. This is, of course, illegal and should subject him to criminal prosecution at either the state or the federal level. Of course, that won’t happen. Instead, Manhattan will become a Mad Max-esque city, so rife with crime that, eventually, all normal life stops.

When Alvin Bragg ran to be Manhattan’s DA, his slogan was “Justice for All.” In his campaign biography, he explained to the voters that he “has spent the better part of two decades in the courtroom, standing up to the powerful and fighting to get justice.” He spent his career “standing up for tenants’ rights, civil rights and human rights.” Additionally, he “served as the first Chief of a special unit that investigated police-involved killings.” These are all interesting statements from someone running, not to be a defense attorney or a plaintiff’s attorney, but to represent the state of New York and the borough of Manhattan in actions against alleged criminals.

If you’re wondering how someone who clearly does not side with the institution he was supposed to represent ended up getting the job, look no further than the George Soros connection. The Color of Change PAC received $1 million from George Soros and, in return, Color of Change successfully spent the money to get Bragg elected. Of the 270,091 people out of Manhattan’s 1.63 million residents who voted (that is, only 17% of the population voted), 84% cast their vote for Bragg.

Upon being sworn in, Bragg immediately gave Soros value for his money. In his first memo to his staff, Bragg stated that his office will seek to incarcerate only those people who commit homicide, and a few other activities, including domestic abuse, public corruption, and some sex crimes. His assistant DAs have almost no discretion in the matter:

“This rule may be excepted only in extraordinary circumstances based on a holistic analysis of the facts, criminal history, victim’s input (particularly in cases of violence or trauma), and any other information available,” the memo reads.

Global warming traps hundreds in the snow By Pandra Selivanov

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/01/global_warming_traps_hundreds_in_the_snow.html

The United Nations warns that “a hotter future is certain” and considers climate change the greatest threat modern humans have ever faced. Before he was even elected, President Biden had a plan for curbing climate change that would also encompass environmental justice, whatever that is. Globe-trotter, or should I say globe-sailor, Greta Thunberg continues to scold that world leaders have stolen her dreams and her childhood by not conforming to green standards that have not been met since the Neanderthals.

Meanwhile, Mother Nature didn’t get the memo on global warming and dropped a storm on the Fredericksburg area. More than a foot of snow fell. Approximately 400,000 people lost power. A fifty-mile stretch of the I-95 freeway became impassable with snow and ice, trapping hundreds of people in their cars overnight.

Motorists turned on their engines to warm up, then turned them off to conserve gas as they waited for the roads to clear. There were as many as four inches of ice under some cars. Road crews are still working to clear the roads. Warming shelters have been set up. Thankfully, no deaths have been reported thus far.

When Government Uses The Private Sector As Agents Of Censorship

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/01/05/when-government-uses-the-private-sector-as-agents-of-censorship/

Over the weekend, Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene got the Donald Trump treatment from Twitter: The social media platform permanently banned her personal account. If this were simply a private group deciding who can and can’t participate in its forums, then there’s no problem. That would be Twitter’s right. But we know Democrats are using private companies to censor speech they don’t like, and any discussion that threatens their plans to accumulate ever more political power. This is not America, more like Amerika.

Twitter booted Greene due to her “repeated violations of our COVID-19 misinformation policy,” which is another way to say she’s tweeting messages contrary to the narrative constructed by the Faucists: There is no solution to the pandemic outside of vaccines, lockdowns, and masks.

Twitter, which regularly sends users to “Twitter jail” when their tweets challenge and offend left-wing orthodoxy, permanently banned Trump a year ago “​​due to the risk of further incitement of violence.” It has also permanently suspended a Newsmax reporter “for repeated violations of our COVID-19 misinformation policy,” which means his tweets didn’t meet the Twitter mob’s demand for conformity. Dr. Robert Malone, an mRNA vaccine researcher, has also been suspended from Twitter. The official word is he disobeyed the platform’s COVID-19 misinformation policy – he said something the Twitter hall monitors didn’t like.

Disapproval of Biden Hits New High Another reason Democrats would rather talk about Trump. James Freeman

https://www.wsj.com/articles/disapproval-of-biden-hits-new-high-11641334239?mod=opinion_lead_pos11

President Joe Biden’s popularity in the early months of his term proved to be transitory. Now surging inflation is among the reasons that more voters are expressing disapproval than at any point in his presidency. Adding ingratitude to injury, the progressive activists Mr. Biden has been indulging since the moment he took office are now talking about canceling him before the 2024 general election.

No wonder Senate Democrats want to talk so much about the last days of the Trump presidency. There’s precious little for them to celebrate about the current one. Nearly 54% of Americans express disapproval of the job Mr. Biden is doing in the Oval Office—a new high for his term in the RealClearPolitics average of public opinion polls. Meanwhile just 42.3% of Americans approve of the president’s work.

This column will offer the usual caveat that polling is not an exact science, if it’s even a science. But the bad Biden news across the survey landscape has to concern partisan Democrats.