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January 2023

Iran’s Newest Commitments by Khaled Abu Toameh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19339/iran-newest-commitments

The Arabs are not only anxious about Iran’s efforts to achieve obtain nuclear weapons, but also about its ongoing meddling in the internal affairs of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

In a sign reflecting the Arab concern over the Biden administration’s perceived lenient policy towards the mullahs and their nuclear ambitions, Egypt and Saudi Arabia announced in mid-January that they have “agreed on the need for Iran to fully respect its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in a way that prevents it from acquiring nuclear weapons.”

“[W]e need negotiations on specific issues that allow us to eliminate security risks, support stability and bring an end to Iran’s interference in Arab affairs.” — Tariq Al-Homayed, Saudi journalist, former editor-in-chief of Asharq Al-Awsat, January 15, 2023.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran will continue supporting the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon and Palestine.” — Iranian Foreign Minister Amir-Abdollahain, iranintel.com, January 13, 2023.

The mullahs are telling the Arabs that they can continue barking to their hearts’ content, but Iran will do whatever it wants in their countries.

When the Iranian foreign minister says his country will continue supporting the “resistance” in Lebanon, he means that Tehran will continue to provide weapons and money to Hezbollah, the terrorist organization that effectively controls Lebanon and has turned the country into a state of anarchy and lawlessness.

Like Hezbollah, the Palestinian groups are largely responsible for the misery of the people living under their rule.

“As for foreign policy, ‘Khomeinism’ produced a country that lives in an economic blockade for decades and that no longer knows a language other than weapons for dialogue with its neighbors and countries of the world.” — Baha’ Al-Awwam, Syrian journalist, Al-Ain, December 3, 2022.

“During the era of former US President Barack Obama, the US wanted to unleash the hand of political Islam in the region, so it supported the ‘sons of Khomeini’ and ‘the grandchildren of [Muslim Brotherhood founder] Hassan al-Banna.'” — Baha’ Al-Awwam, Al-Ain, December 3, 2022.

It seems as though the Obama and Biden administrations are ultimately willing to agree to almost anything the mullahs want and throw in a trillion dollars if the mullahs just please do not use their nuclear weapons — as Obama candidly put it in 2015 — “on my watch.”

The Arab countries are still extremely anxious about the possibility that the Biden administration will return to the Iran nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The JCPOA — signed in 2015 between Tehran and several world powers, including the US — promises Iran’s regime, after a short time, the ability to possess as many nuclear weapons as it likes, the missiles to deliver them, and no constraints on its terrorism or “revolutionary” expansionism.

Reckless Reparations Reckoning The lesson from the $22 trillion record of Great Society compensatory payouts is that massive infusions of federal money are more apt to ensure social disruption and dislocation than alleviate them. By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2023/01/22/reckless-reparations-reckoning/

The last time racial reparations made the major news was on the eve of September 11, 2001 attacks. The loss of 3,000 Americans, which for a time fueled a new national unity, quickly dispelled the absurdities of the reparation movement, and turned our attention toward more existential issues. 

Now the idea is back in vogue again. Here are 10 reasons why the nation’s—and especially California’s—discussions of reparatory payouts are dangerous in a multiracial state, and why reparations are not viable either in an insolvent state or a bankrupt nation at large.

1) Identity Politics Absurdities

We live in an absurd woke age of retribalization. It has witnessed Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), for mutual advantage, advertised as Harvard’s first Native-American law professor. 

Fellow Montecito mansion denizens Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle and multibillionaire Oprah Winfrey swap ridiculous televised stories of their own racial victimization. 

“Empire” actor Jussie Smollett initially was canonized by our top elected leaders and exempted for months by Chicago legal authorities after claiming the following absurdity: two white, MAGA-hatted racists, on their apparently routine nightly racist patrols in a liberal Chicago neighborhood and equipped both with special bleach that does not freeze in subzero temperatures and an ever-ready, just-in-case noose, assaulted Jussie. They put a rope around his neck and libeled his predominately black “Empire” soap-opera show—only to be repulsed single-footedly by a courageous Smollett, while retaining in one hand his cell phone and in the other his late night Subway sandwich. 

Note that in these nutty cases and thousands like them, there is the cynical assumption that current American society, and the government as well, reward claims of racial victimization. That is why a Ward Churchill or Rachel Dolezal constructed new racial identities to game the system for profit. 

One of the racialist universities’ current admissions challenges is their checkbox of “mixed race.” Whites and Asians often feign mixed parentages in hopes of being assumed either part black, Latino, or Native American. Any such partial lineage is seen as preferable to their own race. In our old racist society, one used to attempt to pass for white; in our new racist society, one attempts to pass for non-white. 

Current racial tribalization obsessions have descended into a nadir that makes Al Sharpton’s 1990s Tawana Brawley/Crown-Heights career start (“If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house.”/ “We taught philosophy and astrology and mathematics before Socrates and them Greek homos ever got around to it.”) look amateurish in comparison. In this context, new calls arise for ludicrous reparations simply because we have become a ludicrous society.

Biden Lawyer Has History of Finding and Releasing Elusive Documents By Jack Cashill

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/01/biden_lawyer_has_history_of_finding_and_releasing_elusive_documents.html

In his own discreet way, President Joe Biden’s “personal” attorney Bob Bauer is back in the news again. On Saturday, Bauer released a statement about a new discovery of documents chez Biden.

According to Bauer, the Justice Department “took possession of materials it deemed within the scope of its inquiry, including six items consisting of documents with classification markings and surrounding materials, some of which were from the President’s service in the Senate and some of which were from his tenure as Vice President.”

This same CBS News report notes that this new find comes after 10 or so classified documents “were discovered by Mr. Biden’s personal lawyers at the Penn Biden Center on Nov. 2.” Others were found at his home on December 20.

Bauer goes unmentioned in those earlier finds, but he almost surely had to be one of those “personal lawyers.” Six days before the midterms, these attorneys made the strategic decision not to go public with their find. In Bauer’s case, I suspect the decision to go public after the election was strategic as well—but not necessarily on Biden’s behalf.

Bauer, of course, has a history of blocking the release of certain documents and then strategically releasing them. In the way of background, on August 21, 2008, a week prior to the Democratic National Convention, Democratic attorney Philip Berg filed a federal suit in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania challenging Barack Obama’s constitutional eligibility to be president.

A former deputy attorney general for the State of Pennsylvania and a credible pro-choice gubernatorial candidate in a Democratic primary against sitting governor Robert Casey, Berg expected to be taken seriously. He wasn’t. The media expressed zero interest in his suit.

Let Them Eat Bugs! By Janet Levy

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/01/let_them_eat_bugs.html

Give up cheeseburgers, and eat bugs instead.  That’s what the Davos elite want you to do, while they dine on $50 burritos and slabs of steak.  They would even have you feel good about being a meat- and diary-free insectivore.  To this end, they have carefully manufactured the cult of environmental alarmism, whose virtue-signaling adherents have been duped into thinking an ecological disaster is at hand.

The cult’s latest scapegoat is agriculture.  The wise global leaders of the World Economic Forum (WEF) have decreed that farming must be restricted to “save the planet.”  By 2030, they dictate, plebs must adopt the ecologically sound practice of entomophagy, or insect-eating.

In sardonic response to this vision — as Orwellian as it’s quixotic — Michael Shellenberger, the author of Apocalypse Never and a relentless campaigner against environmental hysterics, says pollution from farming is negligible compared to that from jet-setting around the world promoting bug cuisine.  He calls out the “woke” elite’s “festival of narcissism,” in which brazen hypocrisy is a flaunting of power.  He describes the WEF as a “cult wrapped in a grift wrapped in an enigma” that seeks world domination through business.

The strategy is to create a need (in this case, to protect the environment), through fear-mongering if necessary; make people feel virtuous about having that need; and only then launch products that will upend millennia-old paradigms, and hence earn massive profits.  Not surprisingly, millions of dollars have already been invested in bug farms.

After Georgia Police Kill Left-Wing Activist, Antifa Riots in Atlanta Matt Vespa

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2023/01/22/after-georgia-police-kill-antifa-comrade-leftist-brethren-riot-in-atlanta-n2618590

Julio had this story first. A left-wing agitator encamped near Atlanta’s future training facility for law enforcement, dubbed “cop city,” was killed this week as police executed a raid. The forested location is the new ground zero for leftists hoping to impede the construction of the new building. The city is looking to complete the center later this year. Left-wingers have flocked to the area, setting up barricades and occupying the location in a situation reminiscent of the CHAZ zone in Seattle during the 2020 election.

When police arrived, a confrontation ensued as the protester refused to leave his tent. He ignored repeated orders to vacate and then opened fire on officers, wounding one. Police returned fire, killing the suspect, which has infuriated leftists, calling for a night of rage to avenge their fallen “comrade.” Manuel Teran was identified as the protester killed in the officer-involved shooting. At least four others were also arrested: 

“An individual, without warning, shot a Georgia State Patrol trooper,” Register said. “Other law enforcement personnel returned fire in self-defense and evacuated the trooper to a safe area. The individual who fired upon law enforcement and shot the trooper was killed in the exchange of gunfire.” 

The injured state trooper is in stable condition in ICU after completing surgery. He was shot in the “pelvic-area” and he was wearing a bullet-proof vest. 

Last December, Police rounded up five others who were later charged with domestic terrorism (via Axios):

Five activists arrested during … [a] clash with law enforcement at the proposed site of Atlanta’s new public safety academy have been charged with domestic terrorism, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced Wednesday.

Why it matters: The domestic terrorism charges are the most serious to date since activists started building camps and living among the trees more than a year ago in the dense city-owned forest in DeKalb County.

Details: Tuesday, according to the GBI, a task force of local, state and federal law enforcement attempted to remove barricades installed by activists to block access to the property.

A Disaster For Every Month: The Worst Scandals, Abuses, And Embarrassments Of Joe Biden’s Second Year In Office By: Elle Purnell

https://thefederalist.com/2023/01/20/a-disaster-for-every-month-the-worst-scandals-abuses-and-embarrassments-of-joe-bidens-second-year-in-office/

At the end of last year’s roundup, I expressed hope that 2022 would see fewer Biden disasters. Unfortunately for the country, year No. 2 was just as grim.

he first year of Joe Biden’s presidency prolifically delivered examples of corruption and incompetence, and his second year in office — which drew to a close on Thursday — has been no different.

Last year, The Federalist collected “A Scandal For Every Month: The Biggest Botches, Failures, And Mess-Ups Of Joe Biden’s First 12 Months In Office.” At the end of that piece, I expressed hope that 2022 would see fewer disasters flow from the White House. Unfortunately for the country, the roundup from year No. 2 is just as grim.

January: Biden Compared Filibuster Defenders to Historical Racists

Last year’s list concluded with a bonus item for January 2022: Biden comparing his agenda’s critics — which include Democrat Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona — to former Alabama Gov. George Wallace and Confederate leader Jefferson Davis.

In a Jan. 11 speech urging the U.S. Senate to ditch filibuster rules in order to pass his radical and unconstitutional federalization of election laws, Biden asked, “Do you want to be the side of Dr. King or George Wallace? Do you want to be the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? Do you want to be the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?”

February: Incompetent Response to Russia-Ukraine War

Before, during, and since Russia’s decision to invade Ukraine in February, the Biden administration’s response has been marked by incompetence. Biden waived sanctions on the Russian Nord Stream 2 pipeline before the war in 2021, crippled American energy production, and turned to Russian ally Venezuela for oil after the conflict erupted. In January 2022, right before Russia’s invasion, Biden signaled a green light to Russian President Vladimir Putin, responding to a question about potential plans to impose sanctions on Russia with the comments, “It’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion [into Ukraine],” and “My guess is [Putin] will move in. He has to do something.”

“Are you effectively giving Putin permission to make a small incursion into the country?” a reporter asked. Biden’s answer: “That’s how it did sound like, didn’t it?”

A month into the Russia-Ukraine war, Biden recklessly called for regime change in Russia, before reversing course and insisting he did no such thing. By November 2022, the United States had shipped out a whopping $68 billion in aid to Ukraine, with Biden requesting another $37.7 billion to put total aid in the 12-figure range.

March: Hunter Biden Corruption Scandal Resurfaces as NYT Admits Laptop’s Legitimacy

Kenneth Roth, Crybaby of the Western World The anti-Semite hiding behind being a Jew has had his way long enough. by Hugh Fitzgerald

https://www.frontpagemag.com/kenneth-roth-crybaby-of-the-western-world/

Kenneth Roth retired last year as the head of Human Rights Watch, where he had been paid the colossal sum of $600,000 a year. He was looking forward to being a fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, figuring that someone of such earth-shaking eminence in the NGO world would have no trouble getting a fellowship. By the waters of the Charles he would sit down and write, forsooth, a book about his exploits as a defender of human rights. He had already been awarded a fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania for the coming year, but clearly, he preferred the cachet of the Kennedy School, and Penn would have to wait. Then something unexpected happened. His application for a fellowship was turned down by the Kennedy School. Roth was furious. How dare any institution turn down Kenneth Roth, one of the world’s foremost defenders of human rights, for anything? He wrote a self-pitying piece in The Guardian, claiming that a cabal of supporters of Israel, “rich donors” to the Kennedy School, must have pressured the school’s Dean, Douglas Elmendorf, to turn down his application because of what Roth demurely, and inaccurately, calls his “criticism of Israel.” He had not the slightest proof of this, but that has never stopped Kenneth Roth. He is still, along with his claque of admirers, hoping to pressure Dean Elmendorf into reconsidering. I don’t think it will work.

Jonathan Tobin has a complete account of the contretemps here: “Harvard Didn’t Cancel Kenneth Roth; it Decided Not to Honor an Antisemite,” by Jonathan S. Tobin, JNS.org, January 13, 2023:

Cancel culture in academia is a serious problem. There is no sector of American society in which dissent is so routinely crushed, or where free speech is most endangered, as the country’s leading institutions of higher learning. So, the story that someone was supposedly denied a fellowship at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government because of his political beliefs seems to fit into a familiar pattern of shunning and silencing those who don’t adhere to the orthodoxies worshipped by the elites.

Paul Johnson’s America “No other country represents so clearly the current wishes and long-term aspirations of the human race.” by Lloyd Billingsley

https://www.frontpagemag.com/paul-johnsons-america/

“What is America? It is not a race but a cohesion of all the races of the world. It will soon be a nation of 300 million, 10 per cent of whom were not even born there. Its creation from Europe, Africa and Asia is a continuing process, as countless immigrants arrive each year and are quietly absorbed and prosper. Moreover, these citizens, whose parents, grandparents or ancestors came from all over the world, are given the chance to participate in democracy at all levels, which exists nowhere else on earth. More than 600,000 offices in the US are elected. The entire public ethos of America is fashioned to finding out what the voters want and constructing policy on their wishes. America is successful precisely because it is a working multiracial democracy. To be anti-American, therefore, is to be anti-humanity. For no other country represents so clearly the current wishes and long-term aspirations of the human race.”

That is from “To hate America is to hate humanity,” an April 6, 2002 Spectator piece by historian Paul Johnson, who recently passed away at the age of 94. Five years earlier, Johnson published A History of the American People, a magisterial account that speaks to conditions at the time of the great author’s passing.

It’s hard to find any author, left or right, who devotes more attention to the issue of slavery, at the time of the American founding and leading up to the Civil War. In an 1855 election in Kansas, Johnson writes:

“Missourians crossed the border in thousands and swamped the polls. At all events the slavers swept the polls, expelled from the legislature the few anti-slavers who were elected, adopted a drastic slave-code, and made it a capital offense to help a slave escape or aid a fugitive. They even made orally questioning the legality of slavery a felony.” (emphasis added)

The demand for thought control and censorship derives from the people who kept human beings in subjugation and opposed all efforts to free them. This early version of the totalitarian mentality finds a counterpart in America under the Biden Junta.

All-Time Record Number of Illegal Alien Border Crossings in December By Rick Moran

https://pjmedia.com/uncategorized/rick-moran/2023/01/22/all-time-record-number-of-illegal-alien-border-crossings-in-december-n1663879

The Border Patrol stopped 251,487 illegal aliens trying to cross the border in December — an all-time record number for any month since records have been kept and 40% above the 179,253 illegals captured at the border in December 2021.

This is the tenth month in a row that has seen more than 200,000 people trying to cross the border.

The “gotaways” — illegal border crossers who evaded efforts to capture them — have also been increasing as the border patrol spends more and more time processing asylum seekers. This means that not only do illegals get away, but so do drug runners who are bringing record amounts of fentanyl and cocaine into the country.

Cubans and Nicaraguans made up the lion’s share of illegals trying to cross.

It Looks Like Biden’s Classified Documents Scandal Is About To Explode By Matt Margolis

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2023/01/22/it-looks-like-bidens-classified-documents-scandal-is-about-to-explode-n1663975

Joe Biden takes classified documents very seriously, so he says, but even after the search for classified documents has allegedly ended a couple of times now, it’s not yet over.

In the wake of more documents being discovered at Biden’s home in Wilmington, Del., the Department of Justice is now considering expanding its search for classified documents Biden may have absconded with, according to a report from CBS News.

“Justice Department officials are also considering the possibility of conducting other consensual searches at locations linked to Mr. Biden, said the source familiar with the investigation,” the report says.

So far, somewhere between 25 and 30 classified documents, some of which are marked top secret, have been discovered in Biden’s possession—either at his home in Wilmington or at his private office at the Penn Biden Center.

The decision to search more places for documents is a troubling development for Joe Biden and the White House team, who have clearly been caught off-guard by a scandal they had hoped to keep under wraps before it was leaked to the media a couple of weeks ago.