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Biden and Iran: Temptation to Save the Zombie by Amir Taheri

Posted By on May 16th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17371/biden-iran-temptation

[S]ensing that the American side is keen on producing the fudge, the Iranian side is raising the stakes.

On Monday “Supreme Guide” Ali Khamenei said that “liberating Palestine” is the “number one goal of the Islamic ummah”, making it clear that even if the “nuclear deal” is revived, the clash of two visions on the future of the Middle East will not come to a close.

The Iranian side is also trying to have over 1,000 sanctions imposed on the Islamic Republic for issues not related to the “nuclear deal” lifted without offering any concessions in return.

Rouhani’s spokesman dropped another bombshell: whatever deal is made by officials representing the formal government of Iran in Vienna would have to be approved by “higher-up” in Tehran. In other words Khamenei would have a veto that he could exercise anytime he deems propitious.

Once the sham election is over [Khamenei] could revert to the “retreat-then-cheat” tactic that he describes as “heroic flexibility”. The tactic has been used in numerous cases besides the hare-brained scheme concocted by former President Barack Obama, including a variety of deals Tehran made with the European Union, China and Russia.

Today, none of those factors [of 40 years ago] are in play. The Cold War has ended, Iran has been knocked out of the oil market and Arabs are moving towards normalization with Israel for reasons of their own.

Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif estimates that the zombie regime in Tehran needs a minimum of $60 billion a year to stay erect and do the mischief it needs to do to survive.

The Vienna talks may end up providing the extra cash Tehran needs to stay in the game. The question Biden needs to ask is this: would such an outcome serve the interests of the US, not to mention that of the Iranian people, who are now thirsty for a change of direction?

Judging by what Iranian and US diplomats involved in the current talks to revive the moribund “nuclear deal” say, the widow of opportunity opened by Joe Biden’s victory in last year’s presidential election is likely to shut within the next few weeks.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Math Is racist and 2+2 = 4 is just a ‘trope’ By Eric Utter

Posted By on May 16th, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/05/math_is_racist_and_22__4_is_just_a_trope.html

“2+2 does not equal five. Nor do two wrongs make a right.”

Laurie Rubel, a professor of math education at New York’s Brooklyn College, does not appear to be fond of the discipline she teaches. In fact, she apparently believes math is inherently racist. She recently tweeted, “the idea that math (or data) is culturally neutral or in any way objective is a MYTH.” In a separate tweet she noted that math “reeks of white supremacist patriarchy” after stating, albeit incoherently, “along with the ‘of course math is neutral because 2 + 2 = 4 trope’ are the related (and creepy) ‘math is pure’ and ‘protect math.’” Appearing drunk on her own peerless wokeness, she added, “I’d rather think on nurturing people & protecting the planet (with math in service of them goals).” Well, maybe just drunk.

What an amazing social justice warrior! What a flawless person! She’d rather “think on” nurturing people! And protecting the planet! Not that she’d actually do anything in furtherance of her stated goals. It is enough that she has stated them. And she wants to take that racist (and no doubt misogynistic, homophobic, and Islamophobic) math and use it “in service of them goals.” It’s a good thing she isn’t an English teacher. Though, to be fair, Ms. Rubel may believe English is at least as racist as math is. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would be a better instructor.  Or Barney Rubble.

Seemingly every week another professor claims math, data, facts, good behavior, competence, proper hygiene, discipline, a work ethic, speaking ability, or another such basic building block of a successful society is prima facie evidence of the white supremacist patriarchy’s evil and unwarranted hold on American society. (How racist is that?) Yet, Rubel’s assertion that 2+2=4 is a “trope” still boggles the mind.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran: Election, or Referendum? By Hamid Enayat

Posted By on May 16th, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/05/iran_election_or_referendum.html

Iranian society is enduring hardships on many fronts under the reign of the mullahs.

The spectrum is quite broad, including domestic, regional, and international matters, economic challenges for its citizens, and ethnic and religious inequalities. In all of these areas, the regime’s report card reflects an atmosphere of disappointment and frustration.

In this respect (according to the Iranian calendar year), the Year 1400 presidential election (to be held June 18) is being held during the most unprecedented public despair. There is even a boycott of public participation in the election compared with other elections in the last forty years of the Islamic Republic.

In an interview with Le Monde, Faezeh Rafsanjani, Hashemi Rafsanjani’s daughter, and a dissident, called for a boycott of this election.

The unprecedented antagonism between the ordinary people and the government has intensified. 

This presidential election should be evaluated from different angles. The accumulation of public discontent, people’s total distrust regarding the regime’s economic plans, the destruction of the middle classes and lower strata of society, as well as the weakness and crisis of the legitimacy for the Supreme Leader, leads the society closer to a revolt. It is now a while that the slogan “My vote, NO Islamic Republic but YES to the Democratic Republic” has been shared widely on different social media platforms. In a way, this presidential election could be considered a referendum for the regime in Tehran.

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After De Blasio Says Subways Safe, 4 Slashed on Subway Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on May 16th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2021/05/after-de-blasio-says-subways-safe-4-slashed-subway-daniel-greenfield/

You can set your clock by what New York’s Mayor Bill de Blasio says as long as you want to be late everywhere and to everything.

“What’s happening right now is clearly at the instruction of the governor, MTA leadership is fearmongering,” de Blasio said in an interview Friday. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“I’ve ridden the subways. So many folks in my life ride the subways all the time. They’re overwhelmingly safe,” the mayor said, adding that “there have been some incidents that truly are troubling.”

Here’s the latest “troubling incident”.

A group of men who are believed to have attacked at least four different people – slashing three of them – during a 12-minute violence spree on Friday morning

The first of Friday’s incidents was reported around 4:25 a.m., when a 44-year-old man riding a southbound No. 4 train was approached by two men, one of whom slashed him in the face, police said. The victim got off the subway at Manhattan’s Union Square Station.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Pro-Terror Mob Attacks Pro-Israel Activists in Canada

Posted By on May 16th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2021/05/pro-terror-mob-attacks-pro-israel-activists-canada-daniel-greenfield/

As bad as things are in the United States, they’ve been worse in Canada for a while as the 2002 riot in Concordia showed. This footage of assaults on pro-Israel activists isn’t quite as bad, but it’s up there.

Material posted by Toronto Jewish Advocacy shows repeated assaults by thugs with keffiyahs over their heads. There’s also a report of a sexual assault.

Bnai Brith Canada has a statement.

“We condemn in the strongest terms these brazen acts of assault, intimidation, and hate targeting members of Toronto’s Jewish community and supporters of Israel. There is absolutely no justification for political violence in the streets of Toronto, whatever one’s cause may be. To put it bluntly: Those who hate Israel so much that it inspires them to pelt eggs and assault their fellow Canadians aren’t just a threat to Jews. They threaten the very fabric of Canadian society.

The media headline is, “Thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters gather at Nathan Philips Square to denounce violence.”

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The Paranoid Style in Progressive Politics Its attempts to pathologize every instance of Republican opposition to the Democratic program say much about the Left’s own anxieties. Lee Siegel

Posted By on May 16th, 2021

https://www.city-journal.org/the-paranoid-style-in-progressive-politics

The other day I found myself staring at this headline in the New York Times: “GOP Focuses on Polarizing Cultural Issues in Drive to Regain Power.” For a moment, I thought the article would, in a commonsense way, explore how Republicans were confronting the polarizing cultural issues that had been created by liberals. That is to say, I thought the article would be about the hardball nature of American politics.

Instead, it presented Republican opposition to explosively controversial questions like packing the Supreme Court, defunding the police, and giving legal status to illegal immigrants as part empty cynicism, part mental imbalance. The reporter, Carl Hulse, portrayed the Republican resistance to such extreme Democratic initiatives as a determined effort to appease the “conservative base.” That’s a phrase that has become a Democratic mantra signifying chthonic forces of disorder, and it has the effect of halting in its tracks any political argument or debate.

Nowhere in Hulse’s report was there an acknowledgment that the Republican focus on these matters was a legitimate form of democratic politics—as robust, and constitutional, as the calculating Democratic manipulation of same. What’s more, Hulse noted that “Republicans are also hammering at issues of race and sexual orientation, seeking to use Democrats’ push to confront systemic racism and safeguard transgender rights as attack lines.” The article treats “systemic racism” as a settled historic fact, as though it were the institution of slavery in the antebellum South. But systemic racism—the assumption that white racism is fundamental to American identity—is not a settled historical fact, having been discredited by, among others, at least a score of distinguished liberal historians. And transgender rights are a complex matter, extending from protection of transgender people under the law to the question of transgender athletes—on which there is no consensus on the right—and the issue of sexual-reassignment surgery for children. But Republicans violently “hammer” at such settled questions “in a drive to regain power,” while Democrats gently “push to confront” and “safeguard” them in a spirit of truth and justice.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Arizona Senate considers expanding audit of Maricopa County ballots to all races Robert Anglen Ryan Randazzo

Posted By on May 16th, 2021

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-investigations/2021/05/14/arizona-senate-considers-expanding-audit-maricopa-county-ballots-all-races/5100735001/

The Arizona Senate is considering expanding its audit of Maricopa County ballots cast in the 2020 election to include all contests, not just for president and U.S. Senate.

Audit organizers now say they want to test county voting machines by examining results from all of the races.

“We are looking with other companies to do a machine tabulation of all the races on the ballot to compare with the Dominion tabulation back in November,” said Ken Bennett, who is serving as the Senate’s audit liaison.

“We will be looking at the images of all 2.1 million ballots.”

The examination would not involve a physical recount like the one underway at Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum. Rather, it would be a separate audit using digital images of each ballot, Bennett said.

The effort would, however, require a reexamination of the nearly 500,000 ballots that auditors have gone through since the audit began April 23. 

Bennett said the Senate is considering hiring a California company to conduct the digital tabulation, but he declined to name it. He said the imaging would be done “in the time of the rest of the counting.”

Auditors said in April the recount of ballots would be completed by May 14, when its lease on the coliseum expired. But with less than 24% of the ballots counted as the audit takes a week’s break for high school graduations, auditors have indicated the recount of the races for president and senator could last into July. 

Republican state senators launched the audit after questioning the validity of the general election results in Maricopa County, where President Joe Biden defeated former President Donald Trump by 45,109 votes. 

Senate President Karen Fann says the results will not be used to attempt to overturn the election results but instead will be used to ensure election integrity in future races

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Election audit in small New Hampshire town could have implications for 2020 results statewide In tiny Windham, a November hand recount in a state legislative race revealed vote count discrepancies up and down the ballot — all benefiting Democrats.By Sophie Mann

Posted By on May 16th, 2021

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/hold-new-hampshire-election-audit

An audit team sent to conduct a forensic examination of the 2020 election results in Windham, N.H. started the process off well enough on Tuesday. But by Wednesday, they hit a major snag: The live stream cameras that had been broadcasting the audit room around the clock went offline for close to 90 minutes, potentially obscuring any problematic intervention. 

The team decided Thursday morning to reinspect the ballot machines on camera in an attempt to maintain observers’ faith in their process. They needed to determine whether the machines had been tampered with over night when the cameras mysteriously went down.

With the country focused on the election audit in Maricopa County, Ariz. and early headlines about election night troubles centered on cities in Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan, it comes as a small surprise that the idyllic New England town of Windham — where Republicans ultimately won each of the races now being inspected — also now finds itself under scrutiny for possible election night machine malfunctions and numbers that just don’t add up.

While the audit is focused solely on tiny Windham (estimated population: 14,853),  the results could have statewide repercussions, as the AccuVote machines used in the town are the only vote-counting machines approved for use in New Hampshire.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

AN AMAZING STORY AMID THE CHAOS

Posted By on May 16th, 2021

There was one remarkable story amid all the chaos. A 3-year-old girl was badly wounded in a rocket attack in Holon. Her mother was also injured as well as her twin sister. But the girl’s injury was serious – her carotid artery had been partly severed by a piece of shrapnel. They were in a car at the time. The mother shouted for help and in another car a woman and her husband jumped out and rushed to their assistance. It turned out the woman was one of her customers (she was a hairdresser). The woman took her head-covering, called a mitpachat, which religious women wear, and bandaged the wound. They then started running. A moment later, they heard a loud explosion. It was the car in which the woman and her husband had been traveling. It had exploded, having been hit by shrapnel from the rocket, unbeknownst to them.

So they not only saved the little girl, the little girl saved them.

David Isaac

FOREIGN POLICY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Americans Have the Right to Know About Biden’s Upcoming Deal with Iran’s Mullahs by Majid Rafizadeh

Posted By on May 15th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17350/biden-upcoming-iran-deal

Is the effective US news blackout about the negotiations with Iran meant to keep the allies and American public in the dark to prevent an outrage that may scuttle the administration’s effort to revive the 2015 nuclear deal — which Iran by the way never signed?

If the Biden administration, like the Obama administration, suddenly surprises everyone that a deal has been reached, will it then be too late for the public to act? Is a return to the nuclear deal the price Biden agreed to for Obama’s support before the November 3, 2020 election?

The American public has the right to know what sanctions the Biden administration are planning to lift because this regime has been killing Americans and taking hostages for almost four decades.

“Last week, Iran’s chief diplomat allegedly admitted the IRGC calls the shots in Tehran. Now, Iran releases a fake video of the IRGC blowing up our Capitol. The Biden admin’s priority should be ensuring Iran cannot carry out such an attack, not capitulating by removing sanctions.” — US Senator Pat Toomey, Twitter, May 2, 2021.

Since the nuclear talks began in Vienna between the Iranian regime and P5+1, the Biden administration has avoided being transparent about what is going on with the negotiations and what exactly is being offered to the Iranian regime — the one that the US Department of Justice has called the “the world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism.

Ironically, it has been easier to get information about the talks from the Russian and Iranian leaders than from the Biden administration. While Iran and Russia, for example, have been saying for weeks that they are progressing towards a deal, the Biden administration, at home and in front of the allies such as Israel, has continued to downplay the possibility of a deal with Iran. Is the effective US news blackout about the negotiations with Iran meant to keep the allies and American public in the dark to prevent an outrage that may scuttle the administration’s effort to revive the 2015 nuclear deal — which Iran by the way never signed? Or is it meant to keep the public and the Congress’s guard down to later surprise them with a deal? If the Biden administration, like the Obama administration, suddenly surprises everyone that a deal has been reached, will it then be too late for the public to act? Is a return to the nuclear deal the price Biden agreed to for Obama’s support before the November 3, 2020 election?

After the Europeans admitted around May 1 that a deal is close to being finalized, the Biden administration finally had no option other than to reveal the truth on May 8 and acknowledge that a deal is in fact on the way.