FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

On Iran, Biden Administration Ready to Undo Former Administration’s Work, whether It is Good for the World or Not? by Majid Rafizadeh

Posted By on April 14th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17273/iran-biden-administration

A basic rule in negotiations is to keep or gain leverage against the other party. The Biden administration, mystifyingly, is doing exactly the opposite in its negotiations with the regime of Iran.

Iran enriching uranium at any level — it is a negligibly small step to enrich uranium from “acceptable levels” to “nuclear” levels — puts the world at risk, especially as other countries in the region might well feel compelled launch their nuclear programs as a deterrent.

The US and the UN Security Council also would do well to impose sanctions on Tehran for its violation of Resolution 2231, which “calls upon Iran not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons, including launches using such ballistic missile technology.”

A basic rule in negotiations is to keep or gain leverage against the other party. The Biden administration, mystifyingly, is doing exactly the opposite in its negotiations with the regime of Iran.

Right before heading to Vienna to negotiate rejoining the disastrous 2015 nuclear deal, which, incidentally, Iran never signed, US State Department spokesman Ned Price dropped a bombshell when he told reporters that the US is prepared to lift sanctions against Iran:

“We are prepared to take the steps necessary to return to compliance with the JCPOA, including by lifting sanctions that are inconsistent with the JCPOA. I am not in a position here to give you chapter and verse on what those might be”.

Why on earth would the administration tell the Iranian leaders before negotiations that it is ready to lift sanctions while it has not yet received anything in return from the mullahs? The Iranian regime, of course, immediately scented weakness and desperation and began increasing its demands. The Biden administration then offered $1 billion to the mullahs in exchange for the regime freezing its production of 20% uranium enrichment. No, Iran wants more. Its leaders demanded $30 billion for one month of freeze.

Presumably to gain additional leverage and extort more concessions, the regime announced during those negotiations that it had begun testing its newest advanced nuclear centrifuges.

The Biden administration does not seem to understand that it is the Iranian regime that is desperate for the nuclear deal, not the US.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

While America Slept: The Story of a Distracted Military and a Rising China Rep. Mark Green M.D.(R-Tennessee -7)

Posted By on April 13th, 2021

https://townhall.com/capitol-voices/congressmanmarkgreen/2021/04/13/while-america-slept-the-story-of-a-distracted-military-and-a-rising-china-n2587805

Rep. Mark Green is a physician and combat veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq. He served on the mission to capture Saddam Hussein, and he interviewed Saddam Hussein for six hours on the night of his capture. He serves on the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees.

President Biden has diverted our military away from its mission. Instead of prioritizing military readiness, our new Commander in Chief is redirecting the military’s focus from fighting and winning wars, to using the military as a vehicle to advance the radical left’s agenda.

Redirecting precious time and resources to appease the woke mob is dangerous to our national security, and it’s putting America at risk. 

It began in January when the Biden Administration announced that climate change is now a national security priority. Instead of focusing on growing threats to our country from foreign adversaries such as China, North Korea, Iran, and Russia, President Biden will now direct our military’s resources to combat climate change, including replacing 173,000 gas-powered military vehicles with ones powered by electricity. While electric Humvees sound tempting, after three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, I know how dangerous active duty can be. The last thing I ever want to hear is that a unit got stranded in the middle of the desert because their vehicle ran out of electricity—all to appease the left’s woke agenda.

Then, the Biden Administration reinstated controversial Critical Race Theory seminars, forcing servicemembers to participate in hours of training, teaching them that they are either victims or oppressors. President Trump rightly disbanded these seminars throughout the Federal government because they promote division over unity. He understood that when soldiers put their uniform on, the only color they should see are the colors of our flag. Yet the Biden Administration has brought them back in full force—promoting a leftist ideology that poisons our combat effectiveness and unit morale.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Big Corporations Now Deploying Woke Ideology the Way Intelligence Agencies Do: As a Disguise By draping itself in the finery of political activism, the corporatist class consolidates political power, corrupts democracy and distracts from its real functions. Glenn Greenwald

Posted By on April 13th, 2021

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/big-corporations-now-deploying-woke?toke

The British spy agency GCHQ is so aggressive, extreme and unconstrained by law or ethics that the NSA — not exactly world renowned for its restraint — often farms out spying activities too scandalous or illegal for the NSA to their eager British counterparts. There is, as the Snowden reporting demonstrated, virtually nothing too deceitful or invasive for the GCHQ. They spy on entire populations, deliberately disseminate fake news, exploit psychological research to control behavior and manipulate public perception, and destroy the reputations, including through the use of sex traps, of anyone deemed adversarial to the British government.

But they want you to know that they absolutely adore gay people. In fact, they love the cause of LGBT equality so very much that, beginning on May 17, 2015 — International Day against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia — they started draping their creepy, UFO-style headquarters in the colors of the rainbow flag. The prior year, in 2014, they had merely raised the rainbow flag in front of their headquarters, but in 2015, they announced, “we wanted to make a bold statement to show the nation we serve how strongly we believe in this.”

Who could possibly be opposed to an institution that offers such noble gestures and works behind such a pretty facade? How bad could the GCHQ really be if they are so deeply committed to the rights of gay men, lesbians, bisexuals and trans people? Sure, maybe they go a little overboard with the spying sometimes, and maybe some of their surveillance and disinformation programs are a bit questionable, and they do not necessarily have the highest regard for law, privacy and truth. But we know that, deep down, these are fundamentally good people working within a fundamentally benign institution. Just look at their flamboyant support for this virtuous cause of social justice.

Similar agencies of deceit, militarism and imperialism now robustly use this same branding tactic. The CIA — in between military coups, domestic disinformation campaigns, planting false stories with their journalist-partners, and drone-assassinating U.S. citizens without due process — joyously celebrates Women’s Day, promotes what it calls The Agency Network of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Officers (ANGLE), hosts activities for Pride Month, and organizes events to commemorate Black History Month. The FBI does the same.

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

How Policy Reversals and Leaks Undermine Peace Shoshana Bryen

Posted By on April 13th, 2021

https://www.newsweek.com/how-undermine-peace-policy-reversals-leaks-opinion-1

The electricity went off at Iran’s nuclear plant at Natanz just as it began to spin up its uranium enrichment centrifuges as part of “National Nuclear Technology Day.” We don’t know yet the extent of any damage, but it certainly is not the first time Iran has experienced power outages, explosions or other failures at nuclear and precision missile facilities. Last July, an explosion at Natanz reportedly caused years’ worth of damage to a hall containing uranium enrichment centrifuges.

But, as usual in the region, the real action is on the sidelines, where the Biden administration has been undermining Israel and the Abraham Accords to the benefit of Iran.

On April 6, after an Iranian ship was attacked in the Red Sea, The New York Times reported that “the Israelis had notified the United States that its forces had struck the vessel at about 7:30 a.m. local time,” citing an American official “who spoke on condition of anonymity to share private intelligence communications.”

“Private intelligence communications.” That’s Israel’s intelligence.

The cornerstone of any security relationship is the ability to trust that “private” means private. This leak raises red flags for countries that have pinned their security future on the United States and undermines confidence in the move of Israel from the U.S. European Command to Central Command, which was largely meant to protect the region from Iranian aggression. Enacted by the Trump administration in the wake of the Abraham Accords, the move signaled that the U.S. could be a partner and an ally to both Arab states and Israel, and that they could partner with one another. But if the U.S. would reveal Israel’s intel secrets, what would it do to any other country?

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Great Awokening: America’s Latest ‘Religious’ Revival: Charles Lipson

Posted By on April 13th, 2021

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/04/13/the_great_awokening_americas

One of the most striking features of American history is its periodic waves of religious fervor. We are in the midst of another today, stripped of its references to God but filled with the same passionate desire to be reborn, absolved from past sins.

What sins need absolution now? America’s history of slavery and Jim Crow segregation. Those “original sins” continue, say the movement’s leaders, in a new (and vaguely defined) form: “structural racism.”

Revivals like this have been called “Great Awakenings” since the first one, in the 1740s. Today’s acolytes use similar language, so this one might be called the “The Great Awokening.” Just as slavery and abolition were central to the Second Great Awakening of the 1850s, so race is central now. In both cases, the message is that white Americans must act decisively to correct historical wrongs and pay penance for them.

Today’s progressive politicians also offer a measure of absolution. It is a costly one, a whole series of race-based policies, massive government spending, centralized controls (including new rules for voting), and economic redistribution, plus “reimagining” local law enforcement.

Who are the sinful “whites” in this account? In practice, they are everyone except descendants of enslaved African Americans. In this reframing, Americans of Chinese, South Asian, Korean, or Cuban ancestry are all considered privileged and, in a political sense, “white.”

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Around the World of Woke in 80 Days Jeff Cruere

Posted By on April 13th, 2021

https://townhall.com/columnists/jeffcrouere/2021/04/11/around-the-world-of-woke-in-80-days-n2587725

The first 80 days of the Biden administration have been a nightmare for Americans who love our constitution and appreciate limited government. On Thursday, President Joe Biden announced another batch of executive orders, in this case, dealing with expanding gun control. It follows a blizzard of executive orders he has issued since his inauguration.

Biden is proving his “woke” credentials by pursuing a full-fledged progressive agenda. Although all leftist dreams have not been realized, dramatic action on their agenda has occurred in the first 80 days of the Biden administration.

To say Biden has been a disaster is an understatement

This has happened despite a disputed election in which Biden did not achieve anything close to a mandate. Even accepting the official election results show that Biden lost 25 states and his party barely maintained control of the U.S. House of Representatives, while achieving 50 seats in the U.S. Senate. With Vice President Kamala Harris voting, Democrats can control both houses of Congress; however, it is the slimmest of margins.

Instead of showing moderation and trying to work with Republicans, President Biden is dealing with Democrats only and acting like he achieved a 50-state landslide. In the process, he is working overtime to overthrow as many actions of President Donald Trump as possible.

The overwhelming flood of illegal immigrants at our southern border is the biggest crisis facing the country. Prior to Biden’s invitation for illegal immigrants to surge into the country, President Trump had the border under control. Unfortunately, Biden stopped construction of the border wall, reinstituted the failed “catch and release” program and wanted to enact a 100-day moratorium on all deportations, until his actions were challenged in court by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

POLICE INVESTIGATIVE MISCONDUCT RAILROADED AN INNOCENT CATHOLIC PRIEST Ryan MacDonald

Posted By on April 13th, 2021

https://www.saveservices.org/2021/02/police-investigative-misconduct-railroaded-an-innocent-catholic-priest/

In September, 1988, Keene, New Hampshire sex crimes detective James F. McLaughlin received a letter from Ms. Sylvia Gale, a New Hampshire child protection social worker. Ms. Gale’s letter reported third-hand information that Catholic priest, Gordon J. MacRae, had once been a priest in Florida “where he molested two boys, one of whom was murdered and his body mutilated. The case is supposed to be still unsolved.”

According to Sylvia Gale’s letter, the information was passed to her by an unnamed employee of New Hampshire Catholic Social Services who claimed that she had been told this information by her employer, Monsignor John Quinn, on condition that she would be fired if she ever divulged it.

Detective McLaughlin skipped the logical first steps that such a letter might have set in motion. He did not consult the priest’s personnel file – which revealed nothing about his ever being in Florida. And he did not consult Monsignor John Quinn, the named originator of the story.

Instead, armed with the explosive Florida murder-molestation letter, McLaughlin set out to interview dozens of parents and their adolescent sons who had prior contacts with MacRae. Within a week, the entire community was in a state of alarm about the murderous lecher-priest in its midst.

Among those McLaughlin interviewed about Ms. Gale’s letter in 1988 were four young adult brothers, Jonathan, David, Thomas, and Jay Grover, the adopted sons of another state social worker, Ms. Patricia Grover, a colleague of Sylvia Gale. According to McLaughlin’s 72-page report, she vowed to question each of her sons about their interactions with MacRae. None of them reported knowing or suspecting anything of a criminal nature.

McLaughlin’s report on this investigation was filled with innuendo, but no substance. He repeatedly attributed untrue information about MacRae to unnamed “informants” and other “subjects.” Toward the end of the report he finally quoted a “Sgt. Smith” from an unnamed Florida police agency.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Israel’s Cyberattack On Iranian Nuclear Facility So ‘Severe’ That Facility Might Be Down Till 2022: By Ryan Saavedra

Posted By on April 13th, 2021

https://www.dailywire.com/news/israels-cyberattack-on-iranian-nuclear-facility-so

A cyberattack allegedly conducted by Israel’s Mossad caused damage to Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility that was so “severe” that the facility might not be able to continue enriching uranium until next year.

The strike came only a day after Iranian officials bragged on the nation’s National Nuclear Technology Day about its new centrifuges, which expedite the process needed to create nuclear weapons.

“Two intelligence officials briefed on the damage said it had been caused by a large explosion that completely destroyed the independent — and heavily protected — internal power system that supplies the underground centrifuges that enrich uranium,” The New York Times reported. “The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a classified Israeli operation, said that the explosion had dealt a severe blow to Iran’s ability to enrich uranium and that it could take at least nine months to restore Natanz’s production.”

The debilitating strike comes as President Joe Biden seeks a nuclear deal with Iran, leading top former officials to warn that acts of desperation will give up America’s leverage on Iran. Former President Donald Trump, concerned about Biden’s weakness on Iran, reportedly considered launching a strike on the facility before he left office in an attempt to prevent Biden from going back to the Iran nuclear deal. One of Iran’s top nuclear scientists was assassinated during the final weeks of Trump’s term, an event that many believe that Israel was behind.

Following reports last week that Biden was going to lift sanctions on Iran, Hudson Institute Senior Fellow Rebeccah Heinrichs told The Daily Wire that “undoing the strategy that was working in the Middle East, and giving Iran what it wants, encourages nuclear blackmail, hostage taking, and terrorism against US bases.”

“What a waste of our leverage,” Heinrichs added. “If this is a preview of the larger Biden Mid East strategy, and it is, forget more normalization agreements between Arab states and Israel. Correctly identifying Iran as the primary source of instability and treating it as such was the bedrock of that success.”

Andrea Stricker, Research Fellow at Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told The Daily Wire that the cyberattack was proof that Israel will do everything in its power to protect itself.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

I Refuse to Stand By While My Students Are Indoctrinated Children are afraid to challenge the repressive ideology that rules our school. That’s why I am. Paul Rossi

Posted By on April 13th, 2021

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/i-refuse-to-stand-by-while-my-students?token=e

I am a teacher at Grace Church High School in Manhattan. Ten years ago, I changed careers when I discovered how rewarding it is to help young people explore the truth and beauty of mathematics. I love my work.

As a teacher, my first obligation is to my students. But right now, my school is asking me to embrace “antiracism” training and pedagogy that I believe is deeply harmful to them and to any person who seeks to nurture the virtues of curiosity, empathy and understanding.   

“Antiracist” training sounds righteous, but it is the opposite of truth in advertising. It requires teachers like myself to treat students differently on the basis of race. Furthermore, in order to maintain a united front for our students, teachers at Grace are directed to confine our doubts about this pedagogical framework to conversations with an in-house “Office of Community Engagement” for whom every significant objection leads to a foregone conclusion. Any doubting students are likewise “challenged” to reframe their views to conform to this orthodoxy. 

I know that by attaching my name to this I’m risking not only my current job but my career as an educator, since most schools, both public and private, are now captive to this backward ideology. But witnessing the harmful impact it has on children, I can’t stay silent. 

My school, like so many others, induces students via shame and sophistry to identify primarily with their race before their individual identities are fully formed. Students are pressured to conform their opinions to those broadly associated with their race and gender and to minimize or dismiss individual experiences that don’t match those assumptions. The morally compromised status of “oppressor” is assigned to one group of students based on their immutable characteristics. In the meantime, dependency, resentment and moral superiority are cultivated in students considered “oppressed.”

All of this is done in the name of “equity,” but it is the opposite of fair. In reality, all of this reinforces the worst impulses we have as human beings: our tendency toward tribalism and sectarianism that a truly liberal education is meant to transcend.

Recently, I raised questions about this ideology at a mandatory, whites-only student and faculty Zoom meeting. (Such racially segregated sessions are now commonplace at my school.) It was a bait-and-switch “self-care” seminar that labelled “objectivity,” “individualism,” “fear of open conflict,” and even “a right to comfort” as characteristics of white supremacy. I doubted that these human attributes — many of them virtues reframed as vices — should be racialized in this way. In the Zoom chat, I also questioned whether one must define oneself in terms of a racial identity at all. My goal was to model for students that they should feel safe to question ideological assertions if they felt moved to do so. 

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

China: Compromising U.S. Elected Officials by Peter Schweizer

Posted By on April 13th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17204/china-compromising-elected-officials

China is certainly not the only foreign government that has made American politicians wealthy, either directly or indirectly. Given the size of their economy and the wealth of commercial ties between U.S. business and China, however, they do it bigger and more broadly than anyone else. This beneficence, I believe, poses potentially serious questions about China’s influence, China’s access to American policy makers, and China’s activities in the halls of power. Further, it shows the toothlessness of American ethics watchdogs that these issues have not been more thoroughly reviewed and challenged previously.

The financial relationship between the McConnell-Chao family and the Chinese government has since only deepened. In 2017, as Elaine Chao joined the Trump administration, the Chinese government signed several new agreements with the Chao family.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but similar CSSC deals with other companies have recently cost about $47 million per vessel, which would place the total value of the deals Foremost has with the Chinese at nearly half a billion dollars. Under current disclosure laws, which do not apply to adult relatives, neither then-Secretary Chao nor Senator McConnell was required to report their family’s dealings with a major foreign military contractor.

Closer Chinese financial ties for the benefit of one of America’s most powerful political families also occurred in 2018 amid an aggressive push by Beijing for infrastructure deals around the globe. These deals are part of the strategic “One Belt, One Road” (OBOR) initiative, a massive plan to expand China’s influence across Asia and Africa.

Mitch McConnell and his wife, Elaine Chao, have operated for decades at the highest levels of American government. As the Senate Republican leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has long been a part of the power elite. His wife has been a member of the cabinets of two Republican presidents: secretary of labor in the George W. Bush administration and, most recently, as transportation secretary under President Donald Trump.

In the past dozen years, McConnell’s and Chao’s wealth has grown dramatically. In 2004, the couple was worth an average of $3.1 million, according to their required financial disclosures. Ten years later, they had a net worth of between $9.2 million and $36.5 million. The key to that growth was a 2008 gift from Chao’s father, James, who immigrated from China to continue his education in 1958, then brought his wife and three young daughters, including Elaine, to join him in 1961.

The Chao family’s fortune comes from their ownership of the Foremost Group, a shipping firm founded in 1964 and still run by her father and her youngest sister, Christine. “Shipping is our family tradition,” Elaine Chao said in a speech at National Taiwan Ocean University in 2016.

The source of this money is China. The Foremost Group operates bulk shipping vessels built in China and which primarily operate under the watchful eye of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and through contracts with it. The Chaos operate through agreements with the CCP and their business depends on these agreements to thrive.

The book Secret Empires, published in 2018, devoted an entire chapter to the McConnell/Chao family and their personal wealth through these connections. Yet, most of the press attention the book received was focused on the Chinese business dealings of Hunter Biden that happened while his father Joe served as Vice President and as President Barack Obama’s “point man” on foreign policy with China. In a recent television appearance, Maria Bartiromo of Fox News asked some of the first questions I have ever gotten about the McConnell-Chao financial connections with China.