FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Why Are the Biden Administration, EU, Appeasing the Iranian Regime? by Majid Rafizadeh

Posted By on March 12th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18315/biden-administration-eu-iran

Many Iranians, meanwhile, in defiance of Iran’s regime, gathered outside the Ukrainian embassy in Tehran to express their support for the Ukrainian people, criticize the Iranian government for supporting Russia, and chanted “Death to Putin”.

As police began cracking down on the protesters, the Biden administration and the EU remained silent.

Why are the Biden administration and the EU appeasing the Iranian regime, which has for four decades attacked Americans and carried out terrorist activities and assassinations?

The Biden administration and the other members of the JCPOA nuclear deal negotiated in 2015 (China, France, Russia, the UK and Germany) — with the European Union — instead of holding Iran to account, are evidently determined to reward it. It is not quite clear for what. For years of unspeakable behavior, both to its own citizens and internationally?

Meanwhile, as the US has been negotiating this new agreement, US intelligence services have just identified “at least two Iranians” as trying to assassinate former officials of the Trump administration. The Biden administration is said to have been trying to cover up the plot lest it derail the negotiations to shower Iran with “rewards”.

The Iranian regime, an official state sponsor of terrorism, has carried out terrorist activities around the world for almost four decades. Why are the Biden administration and the EU not implementing the same policies towards Iran’s regime as they are towards Russia?

While the European Union has leveled different kinds of sanctions on Russia, including restricting access to the EU’s capital and financial markets, the EU nevertheless continues to appease Moscow’s staunch ally, the world’s largest sponsor of state terrorism, Iran.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Janet Sobel: The woman written out of history: Kelly Grovier *****

Posted By on March 12th, 2022

-https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20220307-janet-sobel-the-woman-written-out-

In 1938, a Ukrainian-born grandmother created one of art’s biggest shocks – but it was attributed to the US painter Jackson Pollock. For International Women’s Day, Kelly Grovier explores the influence of Janet Sobel.

This is the way the story has always been told: in 1947, Jackson Pollock, the pioneering American painter whose rugged name rhymes with the verve of his virile persona, finally lost patience with the fussy finesse of careful brushstrokes that had defined art history. Chucking his bristles and easel aside, he grabbed some sticks and started flinging paint directly on a canvas he’d stretched out on the floor. With a flick of his wrist while galloping around the work like a ranch hand roping a rampant calf – not so much painting a passive image as lassoing an untamable one – Pollock had hit upon a fresh new mode of energetic artistic expression, one with muscle and swagger befitting the wild west of his Wyomingite birth and the wide, dry lightning plains of his unbridled psyche.

“During the summer of 1947,” Camille Paglia writes in her excellent survey of milestones in the history of image-making, Glittering Images: A Journey Through Art from Egypt to Star Wars, “there was a major breakthrough: he invented his signature ‘drip’ style, which would transform contemporary art.” Pollock’s was an instinctive, shoot-from-the-hip technique that didn’t painstakingly plot its next move – rather, one that grabs a bottle, takes a swig, wipes its lips on its cracked knuckles, and couldn’t care less who’s watching. This is painting free from form and formalities, the kind of painting that only an American, a real American, could invent.

BOOKS Comments turned off

M. Stanton Evans, Prophet of Our Moment It is always worthy to celebrate the legacies of our heroes, and there is much more of this capacious man that we can learn from today.  By Steven F. Hayward

Posted By on March 12th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/03/11/m-stanton-evans-prophet-of-our-moment/

The essay is adapted from “M. Stanton Evans: Conservative Wit, Apostle of Freedom,” by Steven F. Hayward (Encounter, 400 pages, $33.99).

 

Although M. Stanton Evans passed on only seven years ago, he is already being forgotten by the current generation of conservatives and is wholly unknown to a rising generation of young conservatives. This is a shame, not only because he deserves to be remembered on his merits alone, but because in many ways he anticipated both the conservative populism that finally expressed itself with the arrival of Donald Trump, and a deep antipathy toward our foreign and defense policy elites that is also a highly salient conservative disposition of today. Stan perceived both things more than 50 years ago, and can be said to have anticipated—and approved of—national conservatism before anyone else.

Evans was a remarkable figure who was in the middle of key moments of the conservative movement since shortly after he graduated from Yale in 1955. A working journalist for more than 40 years, he also found time to be the principal author of the Sharon Statement that marked the founding of the Young Americans for Freedom. He wrote the statement of the “Manhattan 12” that declared a “suspension” of conservative support for President Nixon in 1971. As chairman of the American Conservative Union in the mid-1970s, he founded the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) that is now the veritable Woodstock for any ambitious conservative politician.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

FEMINISM + JUSTICE BY THANE ROSENBAUM

Posted By on March 12th, 2022

https://whiterosemagazine.com/contributor/thane-rosenbaum/

Before Alice Sebold became a bestselling, critically acclaimed novelist (the film The Lovely Bones was an adaptation from her first novel of the same name), she signaled her arrival as a writer with an important voice and compelling tale, as evidenced by her memoir entitled, Lucky. 

The book was a searing and, at times, improbably witty retelling of her freshman year at Syracuse University when in 1981, while she was walking late at night, an assailant with a knife dragged her into a tunnel and raped her. The book details her experience with the hospital that treated her injuries along with her own efforts to heal—unsurprisingly, without much success. Much of the book is devoted to her reliance on law enforcement and the criminal justice system to hold her attacker to account. 

It made for a gut-wrenching read: A woman who served as an eyewitness to a heinous crime committed against herself. 

Sebold ended up identifying the man who assaulted her and testified against him. He was convicted of rape and sentenced to 25 years in prison, serving 16.

Stories of sexual violence against women are inexorably disqualified from happy endings.

At the police station, one of the detectives thought it might be helpful for her to know that the last sexual assault victim on campus was raped and dismembered by her attacker. In this way, he reasoned, Sebold should consider herself “lucky”—hence, the book’s alluring title.

HISTORY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Putin’s ‘De-Nazification’ Claim Began With Marx and Stalin Anti-Semitic myths have long been a staple of communist ideology and Soviet disinformation.By Juliana Geran Pilon

Posted By on March 12th, 2022

https://www.wsj.com/articles/putins-de-nazification-claim-began-with-marx-and-stalin-world-imperialism-russia-soviets-communism-11647032625?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

Vladimir Putin’s pretext for war against Ukraine—to “de-Nazify” a democratic country led by a Jewish president—would be preposterous were it not resting on a myth long a staple of Soviet disinformation and ideological warfare.

The rationale harkens back to the centuries-old caricature of the greedy Jew, Shakespeare’s Shylock, recycled by Karl Marx in his 1844 essay “On the Jewish Question.” Claiming that “the God of the Jew is money,” Marx, himself a Jew, blamed capitalist exploitation on greed, specifically the Hebrew variety.

Decades later, as fascism joined Nazism, Marxists consigned both to the last stage of capitalism and history. Come the revolution, the Marxists reasoned, when communism abolishes property and thus greed disappears, so will Judaism. That explains in part why many communist Jews in Russia abandoned their religion and traditions.

But that apostasy wasn’t enough for Joseph Stalin, who never trusted his Jewish comrades, notably his principal rival, Leon Trotsky (born Lev Davidovitch Bronstein ). In the 1930s, Stalin found the perfect rationale for killing his opponents and escalating internal repression: The “traitors” were in league with “world imperialism.”

This neo-Marxist narrative persisted and Mr. Putin, a KGB colonel turned billionaire, is using an updated version against Ukraine. Here’s a brief history.

FOREIGN POLICY, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Biden Dispatches ‘The Joker’ to Europe . By Charles Hurt

Posted By on March 12th, 2022

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2022/03/11/biden_dispatches_the_joker_to_europe_147320.html

This is what you get when you take more than 200 years of hard fought history, fearless progress and unrivaled leadership in the world to build the greatest global power ever devised by humans on earth — and hand it to an imbecile.

Asked at a press conference in Poland about the massive and growing humanitarian crisis caused by the savage Russian invasion of Ukraine, Vice President Kamala Harris burst into her signature cackling laughter.

The crazed woman really is the most terrorizing Joker ever played on the big screen. Jack Nicholson and Joaquin Phoenix sit in dark rooms before flickering TVs marveling in jealousy at her terrorizing performances.

And she does it all without smeared, garish makeup.

Her stunned host, Polish President Andrzej Duda, proceeded to answer the question about the refugees in light of the hilarity Kamala Harris found in the flood of widowed women and orphaned children gathering at Poland’s border.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Blackout Policy As energy prices soar, some states press on with anti-fossil fuel strategies at odds with reality. Steven Malanga

Posted By on March 12th, 2022

https://www.city-journal.org/states-waging-war-on-fossil-fuels

The war in Ukraine has sent world oil prices soaring and the Biden administration scrambling to find new energy supplies. Even Tesla founder Elon Musk, whose business model is built on supplying Americans with luxury electric-powered vehicles, has said that the United States needs to increase oil and gas production. “Extraordinary times demand extraordinary measures,” Musk recently tweeted.

But apparently the times haven’t been extraordinary enough to deter some states from their war on fossil fuels. Governors and legislators in several states are plunging ahead with a pipeline ban, new taxes, and added regulatory oversight—all aimed at raising prices further and weaning Americans off natural gas and oil.

Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer is pursuing closure of a major oil and gas pipeline, the Enbridge Line 5, which carries supplies from Western Canada to energy users in five midwestern states. Whitmer says the line, in operation since 1953, would present an environmental problem if it were to rupture in the portion that runs underwater beneath the Straits of Mackinac connecting Lakes Michigan and Huron—though that hasn’t happened in nearly 70 years. To allay fears, the pipeline owner, Enbridge, wants to move it into a tunnel dug below the straits, but Whitmer has decreed instead that the line be shut. A new study estimates that individuals and businesses in the five affected states would spend $23 billion more on energy costs over the next five years if the line closes, on top of any additional energy costs resulting from a sustained war in Ukraine. Hardest hit would be users in Michigan and Ohio, who would each sustain about $2 billion a year in new costs.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Gasoline Prices Headed Right Where the Democrats Want Them: The Higher, the Better for the Party at War With Cheap, Reliable Hydrocarbon Energy

Posted By on March 12th, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/03/11/gasoline-prices-headed-right-where-the-democrats-want-them/

While running for president, Barack Obama said electricity prices will “necessarily skyrocket” under his energy plan. As gasoline reaches unaffordable heights for many Americans, never forget that the Democratic Party wants to inflict painful energy costs on the country. It’s in its political DNA.

As of Thursday, the average U.S. price for a gallon of regular gasoline was $4.32, the highest ever recorded in this country. A month ago, it was $3.48. A year ago, about six weeks after Joe Biden took the oath of office, it was $2.82. 

Recent projections that the U.S. average would peak at $4.25 a gallon around Memorial Day weekend now seem quaint. Would anyone be surprised if prices were nearly double that in much of the country before they begin to recede?

Biden has blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine for soaring prices, and swears his administration is trying to bring down prices. But the truth is, the Democratic Party wants gasoline to be priced as a luxury good, even if it hurts Democratic voters in the middle and lower economic classes:

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Russian Roulette and High Treason: Sarah Stern

Posted By on March 11th, 2022

https://emetonline.org/russian-roulette-and-high-treason/

While all eyes are, understandably, on the horrific war Russia inflicted upon Ukraine, scant little attention has been paid to the Iran nuclear negotiations in Vienna and the imminent deal. What seems to have also escaped public purview is that America, which was not even allowed into the room to negotiate directly with the Iran, has allowed Russia interlocutor Mikhail Ulyanov to be our water carrier in these critical negotiations. 

It is nothing short of diplomatic malpractice for the American team, headed by Robert Malley, to let a Russian emissary to the Iran negotiations be our water carrier. For months during these talks, Russia has made its imperial designs on Ukraine quite clear, threatening NATO and all of the West as well.  

It has been made transparent that Russia under Putin has no love lost for the United States and wants to resurrect the Cold War, with Russia emerging as a major player on the world’s stage.  Yet, for some inexplicable reason, Malley depended on Russia to negotiate for us, in what State Antony Blinken promised to be “a longer, stronger deal” with Iran.  

One hoped for an agreement that would address the issues omitted from the 2015 agreement, such as Iran’s malign behavior throughout the region and the globe, its missile development, and the sunset clauses which are all due to expire in nine short years. (UN Security Council Resolution 2231, regarding the arms embargo, expired in October 2021.) 

A recent viral video shows Ulyanov gloating about his wins for the Islamic republic. Here are his exact words: “Iranian clerics are fighting for Iranian nuclear national interests like lions.” (His emphasis.)  “I am absolutely sincere in this regard. Iran got much more than it could expect, much more….Our Chinese friends were also very efficient and useful as co-negotiators. We could rely on each other on many, many points.” 

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Tech Totalitarians Are on the March Roger Kimball

Posted By on March 11th, 2022

https://www.theepochtimes.com/tech-totalitarians-are-on-the-march_4319982.html

The Chinese were pathbreakers.

With their system of “social credit,” which seeks to enforce conformity by “grading” an individual’s or business’s adherence to the party line and imposing penalties for deviations, they have showed the West the way.

If you don’t espouse the right attitudes, you might find yourself barred from public transportation, from work permits or travel visas, from preferred jobs and other social—which includes economic—perquisites.

It’s a totalitarian’s dream—one that was dreamt by George Orwell in the pages of “Nineteen Eighty-Four”—and it’s made all the more total by advances in technology.

Winston Smith, Orwell’s unhappy protagonist, had to contend with a tiny two-way television set in his flat that he could not turn off and that constantly eavesdropped on him.

Chinese citizens have to contend with having their texts, emails, and internet activity constantly scrutinized, which also means having every phone conversation docketed and financial transaction tracked.

Cameras, backed up with facial-recognition technology, are everywhere, watching, listening, building up a record that can always be marshaled as an indictment.

It’s a good thing, isn’t it, that we in the freedom-loving West eschew such totalitarian intrusiveness?

Just kidding.

The American Department of Justice showed how it is done in the land of the formerly free when it employed all those techniques to track down, arrest, and incarcerate hundreds of people involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, protest at the Capitol.

Phone and social media accounts were hoovered up and dissected; facial recognition technology was deployed and weaponized; financial transactions and travel records were subpoenaed and combed through.

Hundreds of people are still languishing in a Washington, D.C. gulag, waiting while the authorities expend vast amounts of legal ingenuity to transform various misdemeanors into felonies.