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February 2024

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Dangerous Global Order with a Nuclear Armed Iran by Majid Rafizadeh

By on February 10th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20384/global-order-nuclear-iran

America’s actions now – or else its inaction – will determine the ability of global powers to mold an international order that either upholds democratic values or succumbs to the dominance of terror groups and dictatorships.

Inaction or a failure to adopt a resolute stance against the ascent of Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism armed with nuclear capabilities, can only pave the way for a world where autocratic regimes and extremist factions dictate the course of international affairs.

As Iran is on the verge of achieving a significant milestone in obtaining nuclear weapons, concerns are mounting over the Biden administration’s lack of a coherent strategy to prevent Iran from going nuclear. Since the Biden administration took office, Iran has been rapidly advancing its uranium enrichment, approaching levels of 83.7% close to the 90% needed for nuclear weapons capability.

The consequences of Iran possessing nuclear weapons should not be downplayed or overlooked. The Iranian regime has repeatedly threatened to annihilate Israel, and views that goal a central pillar of its ideology. This commitment is rooted in religious prophecies from the regime’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, foreseeing the eventual eradication of Israel.

General Hossein Salami, chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), has explicitly outlined the regime’s aggressive stance, stating on Iran’s state-controlled Channel 2 TV in 2019, “Our strategy is to erase Israel from the global political map.” Khamenei’s 416-page guidebook, Palestine, further emphasizes the regime’s dedication to Israel’s destruction.

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U.S. Asset or U.S. Adversary? Why Qatar Looks Worryingly Like Both Ben Weingarten

By on February 10th, 2024

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2024/02/07/us_asset_or_us_adversary_why_qatar_looks_worryingly_like_both_1008791.html

After Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, one of the terrorist organization’s chief financial sponsors, hosts of its leaders, and backers of its propaganda found itself singled out by America’s leaders – not for condemnation, but praise.

Timmy Davis, Biden envoy: “Qatar could not have done more than it did in 2023 to play an indispensable role on the world stage.” 
Department of State/Wikimwedia

“The U.S.-Qatar partnership could not be stronger, and Qatar could not have done more than it did in 2023 to play an indispensable role on the world stage,” U.S. ambassador to Qatar Timmy Davis wrote on X last December.

The Biden administration, from the president on down, has lauded the emirate throughout the Israel-Hamas war, especially for its shepherding of negotiations between the two sides for a ceasefire and hostage releases – a role Qatar is singularly capable of filling in part because it maintains Hamas’ “political office” in its capital city, Doha.

At the annual Qatar-led Doha Forum last December, Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham echoed the Democratic administration, while also thanking Qatar for its assistance evacuating Americans during the deadly Afghanistan withdrawal – a success attributed in part to its harboring of another terrorist group, the Taliban.

Graham too thanked Qatar for accommodating “10,000 American airmen who live better than [at] any air base in the … world” – a reference to Al Udeid, the largest such facility in the region

House Armed Services Committee member Rep. Jack Bergman, a Michigan Republican, highlighted the irony of this bipartisan praise, noting, “Our brave men and women in uniform who have served out of Al Udeid … have gone on missions to combat terrorist groups funded by Qatar.”

Richard Goldberg: Qatar’s playing a “kind of terror-finance double game.”
Foundation for Defense of Democracies

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

The DEI Rollback Hasn’t Made It to Nebraska DEI is is alive and well at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s College of Engineering By John Sailer

By on February 10th, 2024

https://www.thefp.com/p/diversity-equity-inclusion-nebraska-john-sailer

The University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s College of Engineering might sound like one of the last places in higher education where you’d expect to find evidence of DEI orthodoxy influencing big decisions. Nebraska is a red state and UNL is a public school. Plus, you’d expect hiring at an engineering school to be based on, well, scientific criteria. 

But through a public records request, I reviewed every diversity recruitment report created by the school over the last four years. And I’ve discovered that even here, DEI has been central to hiring decisions. 

For example, in 2020, when the school set out to hire a professor of National Defense/Computer Network Security, the search committee made its priority clear: each candidate’s “diversity” score—assessing how well applicants understand things like “many intersectional aspects of diversity”—was given equal weight to factors like research and teaching experience. 

Another search in 2021, for a professor of Big Data/Cybersecurity, stated: “the weight of the ‘diversity’ scores were equal to the other scored areas that contributed to the candidate’s overall score.”

And applicants have been ruled out for failing to clear DEI hurdles. According to one report, from 2021, “a small number of candidates” in a search for a professor of thermal sciences “were eliminated based on absence or weak diversity statement.” In another case that year, three applicants for a role in environmental engineering “did not include diversity statements and were disqualified from the search.”

Per the college’s diversity and inclusion plan, which is still in place, the reports carry high stakes: a search that fails to show “a serious consideration” of DEI-related issues risks being canceled, resulting in no hire at all.

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The Justice Department won’t prosecute Biden? Color me shocked Don’t we have trials precisely to establish the guilt or innocence of a defendant? Roger Kimball

By on February 10th, 2024

https://thespectator.com/topic/justice-department-prosecute-biden-shocked-robert-hur/

“No reasonable prosecutor”: remember him? He’s back! No, not James “Higher Loyalty” Comey. He’s sitting in a corner somewhere counting his doubloons. But like some inky creatures of the deep, he emitted lots of spawn. They’re maturing now and taking after dear old dad. 

Remember the original sitcom. Despite the best efforts of every one from the country’s “intelligence” chiefs to its fawning media, news emerged that Hillary Clinton had essentially run the State Department from an insecure server in her home. 

On that server, it transpired, there were thousands of classified documents (along, of course, with yoga routines and plans for her daughter’s wedding). Presented with a subpoena to turn in the classified docs — there were some 30,000 of them. Hillary simply BleachBit the lot and dared Comey to do something about it.

He didn’t, of course. “No reasonable prosecutor,” you see would pursue such a case. Now James Comey’s spiritual heir has strode into the limelight. Meet Robert Hur, the very, extra-special, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious special counsel charged with looking into Joe Biden’s possession of classified (many “top secret” and above) in his den, basement, in his garage behind his vroom-vroom Corvette and in sundry other places in Washington’s Chinatown. 

Yes, Hur said, Biden’s behavior presented “serious risks to national security.” But he still was declining to prosecute. Why? In part because the president of the United States — an “elderly man with a poor memory” — would be “sympathetic” to a jury.

“Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen,” Hur’s 350-page report admitted. “These materials included 1) marked classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan, and 2) notebooks containing Mr. Biden’s handwritten entries about issues of national security and foreign policy implicating sensitive intelligence sources and methods. FBI agents recovered these materials from the garage, offices and basement den in Mr. Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware home.”

Not to worry, though. Hur concluded that the evidence “does not establish Mr. Biden’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.” I am not a lawyer, but isn’t that why we have trials, precisely to establish the guilt or innocence of a defendant? 

Back when the news about Biden’s illegal possession of classified documents broke, I wrote a story in these pages pointing out “it’s different when Biden does it.” If you are Donald Trump and have classified documents in a locked room in a secure building protected by the Secret Service, you can expect a raid from the FBI and Jack Smith’s ghoulish salivating rictus to hover over you with subpoenas and the threat of jail or firing squad.

But then Donald Trump is a Republican. He is treated one way. Joe Biden is treated another way. In our increasingly Stalinist system, members of the nomenklatura are treated one way, everyone else is on his own. 

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Here is How the Dems Could Replace Biden Through an Internal Coup And who could replace him. by Daniel Greenfield

By on February 10th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/here-is-how-the-dems-could-replace-biden-through-an-internal-coup/

I spent years telling skeptical conservatives that, yes Biden was going to run for reelection. Many didn’t believe it until he filed, became the automatic frontrunner, and had no opponents to speak of.

And while public perceptions of his state keep dropping, the Democrats have few options.

Sure, rank and file Dems could shift their support to Rep. Dean Philips, who is in possession of his full faculties and actually campaigning, but there’s zero sign of that happening. Instead, New Hampshire Dems wrote in Biden after he refused to even compete in their state in order to score a big hand-delivered win in South Carolina. (With 4% turnout.)

But here are the four scenarios ranked in order of probability.

1. Biden is the nominee – barring a serious medical breakdown, the frontrunner becomes the party nominee. – Most likely

2. Biden resigns – significant pressure is brought to bear on Biden, his aides and family members to get him to drop out – second most likely

3. Philips beats Biden – panicked by Biden’s poor polls and deteriorating condition, Democrats ignore the party and switch to Philips – least likely

4. DNC removes Biden  – that’s the interesting ‘X’ scenario.- third most likely

Even if Biden does drop out, the results will be messy. It’s too late for anyone else to file to run. The only other candidate on the ballot is Rep. Dean Philips who has few allies and the Dem establishment is not about to let a dark horse whom they piled on win. They’d rather have Trump than Philips. (If you’re skeptical, think of all the Republicans who would rather have had Hillary than Trump.)

But what if Biden doesn’t drop out?

Let’s go back for a moment to Hillary Clinton’s fainting incident which was publicly dismissed, but privately was taken very seriously.

Then-Democratic National Committee head Donna Brazile considered replacing Hillary Clinton at the top of the party’s ticket last year after the presidential nominee appeared unsteady and stumbled following a September 11 memorial service in New York, Brazile writes in her new book.

As rumors swirled about Clinton’s health and the future of her presidential campaign, representatives of Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley contacted Brazile, she writes, apparently to offer their services.

“Gee, I wonder what he wanted to talk to me about?” Brazile writes about Biden.

Brazile writes that she considered several potential replacements for Clinton and Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., the vice presidential nominee, and concluded Biden and Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., would be the strongest combination to beat Donald Trump in November.

Brazile, who was abruptly brought on to replace former DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz during the party’s convention last summer, did not have the power to unilaterally remove Clinton and Kaine.

But DNC rules give the party’s chairman the authority to set the ball in motion.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Moshe Dann: Can Israel Win the War Against Terrorism?

By on February 10th, 2024

https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/can-israel-win-the-war-against-terroris

The problem is that many Israeli leaders not only believe that Israel cannot win its war against terrorism, but that Israel should not win – that Palestinians deserve a state, regardless of who will be in charge – because this would relieve Israel of moral and legal dilemmas, e.g. “the occupation.”

Most (if not all) countries go to war to win; Israel, however, is different. First, neither Israel nor the PLO conceives of the conflict as a war, since they have mutual ongoing political, security, and economic interests; terrorism, therefore, is seen as part of an ongoing relationship. Until Oct 7, Israeli leaders assumed that this was also true for Hamas.

This leads to the second reason: Israel was not fighting to destroy terrorism, but to prevent attacks, neutralize or arrest terrorists, and then, temporarily, return to a “status quo.” That’s why warnings about what Hamas was doing were ignored by Israel’s political, military, and security leaders; they duped themselves.

Hope-doped, drugged by self-assurance, and seeking to appease the Obama/Biden administrations, the EU, the UN, and the international community, they accepted “the two-state solution” (2SS). They failed to understand that the conflict is not over territory, but is – as Hamas proclaims – a religious war to eliminate Israel. That explains why Palestinian leaders consistently reject offers of statehood in return for recognizing Israel’s right to exist, and why they continue to launch terrorist attacks against Jews. They are engaged in a “holy war” against Jews and Zionists as “invaders” and “occupiers of Palestine” – all of it. That is a call for genocide.

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Israeli basketball team wins after Irish team refuses to shake hands “Basketball Ireland fully supports our players in their decision,” the national governing body for basketball in Ireland said in a statement regarding the refusal to shake hands with Israel’s team.By Michael Starr

By on February 10th, 2024

https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-785904?utm_medium=email&_hsmi=293469766&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9zLrcE4y-

An Israeli women’s basketball team beat Ireland 87 to 57 in the first game of the 2025 Women’s EuroBasket qualifier in Riga on Thursday evening, a game in which sport was overshadowed by politics when the Irish team refused to shake hands with their Israeli counterparts.

The Israeli Basketball Association (IBBA) said on social media that the victory came “despite the lack of sportsmanship of the visiting team.”

“Basketball Ireland fully supports our players in their decision,” the national governing body for basketball in Ireland said in a statement.

Ireland’s team refuses to associate with Israel’s team

The statement by Basketball Ireland detailed that it informed the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) on Wednesday that its players would not be exchanging gifts or formal handshakes before or after the game, and that players would line up by the bench rather than at center court for the playing of their anthem.

The move came in response to comments made by Israeli players and published by IBBA that included “inflammatory and wholly inaccurate accusations of antisemitism.”

IBBA published an interview with Israeli basketball player Dor Saar on Tuesday in which she touched on the behavior and statements of the Irish team.

“It’s known that they are quite antisemitic and it’s no secret, and maybe that’s why a strong game is expected,” said Saar. “We have to show that we’re better than them and win. We talk about it among ourselves, we know they don’t like us and we will always leave everything on the field and in this game especially.”

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Trial Of Mann v. Steyn, Part V: Jury Instructions And Closing Argument Francis Menton

By on February 10th, 2024

ttps://us7.campaign-archive.com/?e=a9fdc67db9&u=9d011a88d8fe324cae8c084c5&id=90d2677a69

The last day of trial, yesterday, was devoted to jury instructions and closing arguments. Unfortunately, I had to miss the opening argument from Mann’s counsel John Williams. But I was then able to listen to almost the entire argument of Simberg’s counsel Victoria Weatherford, the entire argument by Mark Steyn on his own behalf, and the entire final rebuttal from Mr. Williams.

My overall comment on the closings of Ms. Weatherford and Mr. Steyn is that they were straightforward reviews of the evidence, or lack thereof, as it applied to each element of the claims, as those had been outlined by the judge in the jury instructions. Because Mann had presented little to know relevant evidence, the closings were quite devastating. Ms. Weatherford’s approach was more an item-by-item review of how plaintiff had failed to prove each element, while Steyn focused more on a few particularly noteworthy issues; but both were well within norms for this type of argument. By contrast, Williams’s rebuttal was almost entirely off point and/or improper. He drew repeated (and correct) objections, several of them sustained, ultimately forcing the judge to re-read to the jury the entire instruction as to the elements and burdens of proof for defamation in order to correct an incorrect statement of the law made by Mr. Williams.

In general, I have great faith in juries. And in this case, where my view is that the evidence strongly favors the defense, it should be an easy decision. However, given the highly charged politics of the subject matter, I do not have confidence in how the jury will come out.

The Jury Instructions

The instructions had been negotiated between the plaintiff and defendants, and mostly came from standard forms. There may have been some objections that one side or the other had preserved, but that was not mentioned publicly. Although I am not an expert in defamation law, the instructions seemed to me to be a fair summary of the law, with the exception that I was surprised that the phrase “actual malice” was not used. However, the instructions did use the words that I understand to be the operative definition of that “actual malice.”

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The Empty Sloganeering of a ‘Two-State Solution’ By Danielle Pletka

By on February 9th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/02/the-empty-sloganeering-of-a-two-state-solution/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_

The Palestinian people are pawns, props in a local, regional, and global game that puts their real interests last.

It is beyond ironic that the vile attacks of October 7 have revived the notion of a two-state solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians — an idea that was, until that moment, politically moribund. Of course, such a “solution” was far from Hamas’s aim, but it remains the only idea available to the lazy diplomatic and peace-processing class. The two-state idea serves the aims of political leaders in the United States and Europe flailing for a response to the far Left’s anti-Israel-driven outrage over the war in Gaza. It answers the mail to the demand to “do something.”

But the one question no one has bothered to ask is, Is it good for the Palestinians? And the short answer to that question is no.

“Two-state solution” is part of the lexicon of sloganeering-cum-politics that includes “black lives matter,” “defund the police,” and “cease-fire now.” And like all of those reductionist bumper stickers, it crumbles under scrutiny. The evolution of each of these ideas is predicated on a grain of truth: Of course black lives matter. There is indeed police brutality. A cease-fire now would indeed end the fighting in Gaza, albeit briefly. And a two-state solution would certainly satisfy the symbolic demands for a Palestinian state.

Also true of these parallel political constructions is that the slogan has precious little to do with the actual lives it purports to value. The Black Lives Matter movement, while soothing to upper-class suburban whites focused intently on their virtue and their Land Rovers, has enriched a few grifters at its heart and delivered shockingly little to the actual blacks who live in America’s cities and are disproportionately victims of crime, beset by poor schooling, drugs, broken families, and more.

Ditto the mindless effort to slash police budgets in the unreasoned hope that by destroying the instruments of law enforcement, somehow there would be fewer incidents of police brutality. Instead, as numerous failed experiments in a light police footprint have demonstrated, crime has skyrocketed, businesses have been forced to shut down, and cities like Portland, Ore., San Francisco, Oakland, and Washington, D.C., have spiraled into dystopia.

Back to the Palestinians. They are people before they are a nation or a movement. And like the hapless props for the various other slogans/movements, their fate is of little genuine interest to their putative champions. To be pro-“Palestine” has come to mean little more than to be anti-Israel, shortchanging the very people such a position is intended to support.

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A Quick Look at the 21st Century So Far by Drieu Godefridi

By on February 9th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20340/21st-century

If you add to this the European Union’s obsession with the environment, which has become little more than a machinery for imposing constraints, vexations, punishments and taxes in the name of “energy transition”, it appears that stagnation is a problem from which Europe might have the greatest difficulty in freeing itself.

China talks tough about Taiwan, but seems leery of using its considerable military force if it can count on the US failing to respond.

Above all, the Chinese regime is a ruthless dictatorship in which people and their property disappear, and there are no mechanisms for peaceful reform.

If there is a single element of the American system that Europe should replicate, it is this flexibility in the labor market.

Will that never happen? No, of course not. That is why Europe will continue to stagnate, while America, despite all its current difficulties, opens up the way of the future.

If the economic and geopolitical facts examined here are anything to go by, the 21st century will be more American than ever.

We are not quite a quarter of the way into the 21st century, but already a few clear structural trends have emerged, even if it is impossible to predict the next “black swans” — radically unpredictable events with far-reaching consequences – that might occur. Here are four of the trends.

Since 2000, Europe has stagnated on many fronts — anemic growth, a crashing birth rate, military disinvestment — from which countries such as Belgium and Germany have still not emerged. Perhaps most worrying of all, according to criteria such as patents, capital investment, and stock market giants such as GAFA (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon), Europe has stopped innovating. People innovate in the United States; they still innovate in Asia, but in Europe – hardly at all. If you add to this the European Union’s obsession with the environment, which has become little more than a machinery for imposing constraints, vexations, punishments and taxes in the name of “energy transition”, it appears that stagnation is a problem from which Europe might have the greatest difficulty in freeing itself.

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