Iran’s Dissidents Plead with US to Keep Up “Maximum Pressure” by Judith Bergman

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17046/iran-dissidents-pressure

“[T]he Islamic Republic Theocracy is on the verge of collapse”. — Letter from 38 Iran-based dissidents to the Biden administration, February 1, 2021.

“The moment Biden joins the nuclear deal and unblocks the money for the Islamic Republic, the regime will once again dish out money even to Taliban, ISIS, Al Qaeda, but Iranians will keep remaining in a bad state.” — Fatemeh Sepehri, interview with Masih Alinejad, Twitter, February 5, 2021.

“We don’t have human rights in Iran….People are repressed in Iran… Executions, unjust sentences, abysmal prison conditions… We Iranians don’t want the Islamic Republic any longer”. — Fatemeh Sepehri, interview with Masih Alinejad, Twitter, February 5, 2021.

Returning to the JCPOA on Iran’s terms will require lifting sanctions — an act that will strengthen and embolden the Iranian regime. Lifting sanctions is what the dissidents in Iran are literally pleading with the Biden administration not to do.

Taking huge personal risks, 38 Iran-based dissidents have asked the Biden administration to retain “maximum pressure” on Iran. In a letter dated February 1, they urge President Joe Biden to maintain “maximum political, diplomatic, and financial pressure on the regime” and to support the Iranians’ “determination in seeking a secular democratic government through a non-violent, free, and fair referendum”.

“Following the JCPOA agreement, when Iran received substantial financial benefits, the Islamic Republic lost a major opportunity to implement meaningful welfare reforms for its people…” the Iranian dissidents write in their letter.

Cutler Video: Will the Mullahs Call their Sleeper Agents into Action? How the Biden administration’s immigration policies will impact America.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/cutler-video-how-biden-administrations-immigration-frontpagemagcom/

This video is brought to you by a Freedom Center-Glazov Gang collaboration on a new exclusive webinar series, Teach-Ins for the Twenty-First Century. Join us as some of the leading thinkers and pundits on the scene today discuss key issues related to the coronavirus pandemic and its ongoing implications, confronting the Left, the jihad terror threat, and much, much more. And make sure to ask your own questions of our experts.

Hosted by Anni Cyrus, producer of The Glazov Gang and Founder of Live Up To Freedom.

This new webinar features Michael Cutler, a retired Senior Special Agent of the former INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service).

Michael discusses How The Biden Administration’s Immigration Policies Will Impact America. He analyses how, as Iran races towards nuclear break-out, America needs to be concerned about the potential that the Mullahs could call their sleeper agents into action — if any measures are taken to stop their nuclear aspirations.

Don’t miss it!

Black Lives Matter Wants to “Dismantle the Zionist Project” (VIDEO) Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2021/02/black-lives-matter-wants-dismantle-zionist-project-daniel-greenfield/

This comes from Marc Lamont Hill, courtesy of an intrepid online researcher of antisemitism. Hill had previously gotten into trouble for combining his CNN gig with support for murdering Jews. But even though CNN parted ways with him, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are always happy to give an antisemites a forum, whether it’s Corbyn’s rep or Hill.

In 2014, Hill had claimed on CNN that the kidnapping and murder of three Jewish teens, Naftali Frenkel, Gilad Shaer, and Eyal Yifrah,  one of them an American citizen, wasn’t “terrorism”, but “resistance”.

Earlier this year, Hill had insisted that “occupied people have a legal and moral right to defend themselves” and that the idea that Israel has a “right to exist” is “propaganda”. In May of last year, he had argued that Trump’s “call for Palestine to ‘reject hatred and terrorism’ is offensive.”

“We have allowed this nonviolent thing to become so normative that we’re undermining our own ability to resist in real robust ways,” he complained.

A month after the Pittsburgh massacre, Marc Lamont Hill addressed a UN event in support of the terror colonialists occupying parts of Israel, endorsed BDS, called for the destruction of Israel and justified the murder of Jews.

The Anti-Trump Election Conspiracy Goes Public Time magazine provides a full confession. Matthew Vadum

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/anti-trump-election-conspiracy-goes-public-matthew-vadum/

A “conspiracy” between “left-wing activists and business titans” led to “an extraordinary shadow effort” to “protect” the 2020 presidential election from Donald Trump, according to Time magazine.

Never mind that Trump is the least authoritarian American president in probably a century and the most transparent American president ever – writer Molly Ball claims in an article titled “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election” that a huge effort was undertaken “fortifying,” but not “rigging” the election.

The American system of government hardly needed to be protected from Trump, who, throughout his four years in office gave away his presidential pay and barely had control over the federal Leviathan, filled as it is with disloyal left-wingers and careerist Democrats.

The same cannot be said of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris who view the government as a massive gravy train and a means of imposing one-party rule on the country and cleansing it of undesirables like conservatives and other patriots. Biden and Harris were fine with the deadly race riots that swept the country after drug-addicted career criminal George Floyd inconveniently died in police custody.

The shadow campaign, which was like a huge ACORN-style operation on steroids, “drew energy” from the Black Lives Matter-Antifa riots, which Ball describes as mere “racial-justice protests.” The effort eventually “reached across the aisle, into the world of Trump-skeptical Republicans appalled by his attacks on democracy,” she writes, assuming her readers agree with her baseless assertion that Trump attacked democracy.

Moral Narcissism and the Show Trial of Donald Trump Roger L. Simon

https://www.theepochtimes.com/moral-narcissism-and-the-show-trial-of-donald-trump_3690218.html

Discussing the Democrats’ impeachment trial in legal terms is a ludicrous waste of time. Anyone literate in the English language can see that the concept of impeaching a post-president is entirely absent from the U.S. Constitution.

Removing someone from office who is no longer in office in the first place is a serio-comic oxymoron straight out of the Theater of the Absurd.

What is actually going on is Trump Derangement Syndrome taken from a neurosis to some kind of bizarre psychosis with overtones of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

The level at which this “trial” is worth examining therefore has a psychoanalytic, not a legal, tilt. It raises, once again, the question of why the Democrats and their media cohorts despise Donald Trump so much.

Yes, I know they fear his political comeback above all things and wish to extinguish it, but what is it, on a deeper level, that makes them believe this man to be such a monster that they are going full Stalinist in conducting what Rand Paul aptly called a “Show Trial”?

Dems’ Sham Trump Impeachment: An Unconstitutional Abuse Of Power

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/02/09/dems-sham-trump-impeachment-an-unconstitutional-abuse-of-power/

With the second impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump looming, it can’t be said enough: This entire farce is an unconstitutional act, which has the sole purpose of silencing a political opponent and the more than 74 million who actively supported him in the last election.

Most people won’t recognize the dangerous precedent this sets. Nothing could stop a future Congress in the hands of a permanent Democratic majority from setting up political kangaroo courts for their political enemies. Nothing.

The goal of course is to come to a pre-ordained judicial conclusion, similar to the Soviet show trials of the 1930s. Then the Democrats will demand what prophetic George Orwell called, in his classic dystopian novel “1984,” “two minutes hate.” That’s when citizens of the totalitarian police state Oceania were expected to direct their rage at the government’s enemy.

For that reason, it’s important to repeat what we’ve stated before: America is a constitutional republic. That means the Constitution that has successfully guided our country for 234 years defines both our rights and the limits of our own government.

Why Democrats Want a Trump Trial They already know the result, but they think it will hurt the GOP.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-democrats-want-a-trump-trial-11612828183?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

The Senate on Tuesday begins the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump, now the former President. Democrats say the trial is crucial to punishing Mr. Trump for the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, but it seems more likely to do the opposite by acquitting him. It also looks like a needless partisan exercise that will further polarize America’s political factions.

***

As we’ve said several times, Mr. Trump’s actions that day and after the November election were disgraceful. He made false claims about a stolen election and later about overturning the Electoral College count. He also misled his supporters about Vice President Mike Pence’s solely ceremonial role in presiding over the vote count.

By rallying his supporters to march on the Capitol in the false hope of overturning the election result, and then refusing for hours to ask them to stand down, Mr. Trump tolerated an assault on a constitutional branch of government. Republicans who think this is impeachable conduct will get no criticism from us.

Yet the House impeachers don’t limit themselves to that charge. In their single and sloppy impeachment article, they accuse Mr. Trump of “incitement of insurrection.” This is a stretch, not least because Mr. Trump called on the marchers to behave “peacefully.” The House managers mention this only in passing in their trial brief. It is doubtful that Mr. Trump’s Jan. 6 remarks would qualify as incitement under the criminal code.

The Political Logic of the Trump Trial Democrats seek to divide Republicans and see little downside. That may turn out to be a miscalculation Charles Lipson

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-political-logic-of-the-trump-trial-11612827029?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

What do Democrats hope to gain from Donald Trump’s impeachment trial? A conviction could prevent him from holding federal office again, but it isn’t clear they benefit from keeping him off the ballot. They beat him in 2020, and his looming presence could impede a new generation of Republican candidates.

But a trial will galvanize and unify the Democrats. It keeps the hated Mr. Trump in the spotlight and distracts from the central issue dividing Democrats: How progressive will President Biden’s agenda be? Even more important, they expect the trial to split the other party. Divide and conquer—pit pro- and anti-Trump Republicans against each other, not only now but for coming elections.

To recapture Congress next year and the White House in 2024, the GOP needs not only to retain Mr. Trump’s voters but to add to them. Republicans seen as anti-Trump fear losing contested primaries. In the general election, Trump supporters could lose swing voters. For the Democrats, by contrast, trying Mr. Trump seems a low-cost gesture. The only price, they believe, will be a brief delay in approving Mr. Biden’s nominees and momentary distraction from his agenda.

This isn’t to deny the bipartisan outrage over the assault on Capitol Hill, or the Democrats’ genuine belief (shared by many Republicans) that Mr. Trump’s actions after Nov. 3 breached the bounds of constitutional propriety. It is simply to recognize that Democrats and Republicans are political creatures who must make hard-nosed political calculations.

We Must Protect Women’s Sports By Nikki Haley

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/02/we-must-protect-womens-sports/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=first

Joe Biden’s recent executive order was framed as a matter of transgender rights. But really, it was an attack on women’s rights.

When I was a teenager, tennis was my life.

I started playing when I was ten. By the time I was 13, it was all I wanted to do. I practiced 24/7. A lot of days, my parents wouldn’t see me — I’d be up and at the courts before dawn, and back after dusk. On weekends, I got up extra early because our small South Carolina town only had a few courts. I wanted to make sure I got one before someone else did.

I wasn’t the best player at my high school. I was never first seed. But I was good enough to make the team. My dream was to be on the U.S. women’s team and meet my sports heroes, Chrissie Evert and Martina Navratilova. Of course, I never would have made it — I clearly didn’t! — but I still had hope. Frankly, I would have been just as happy to be the best at my school.

Will today’s young girls have that hope? Will they have any chance of being the best in their schools, much less in their districts or states? I worry many won’t, and not just in tennis. Across the sporting world, the game is being rigged against women and in favor of biological men.

THE MALLEY TEST BY MARTIN PERETZ

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/the-malley-test

Martin Peretz was Editor-in-Chief of The New Republic for 36 years and taught social theory at Harvard University for nearly half a century.

What does progressive foreign policy actually accomplish on the ground?

In the rhetoric of restoration-era Washington, D.C., reality is reclaiming a place. The post-insurrection hoopla was always going to deflate into the realpolitik of competing ideologies—and, in foreign policy, it already has. Robert Malley’s appointment as special envoy to Iran points to a deepening fissure within the Democratic Party: It is being hailed as a victory for those who reject the postwar liberal promotion of American capitalism and democracy and instead identify with the credo of institutional progressivism. This is an ideology increasingly endorsed by powerful American structures, in which correcting the West’s historical marginalization of people of color, people with different sexual identities, women, people from developing nations, and others is understood to be the determining goal of politics.

Malley is a policy expert and operative—he is a doer, not an active ideologue. But the policies he has promoted and facilitated over 20 years are consistently in the service of rapprochement with the Palestine Liberation Organization, Hamas, and Iran, which are held up by institutional progressives as the marquee victims of Western interventionism in the Middle East. To be fair, Biden’s entire foreign policy team, starting with Biden himself, supported and implemented the Iran deal, which was the cornerstone of Barack Obama’s second-term foreign policy and would now appear to be heading into its third term—with Malley, Jake Sullivan, Antony Blinken, Wendy Sherman, and Samantha Power all serving in nearly the same roles they occupied while ensuring the Iran deal’s implementation and passage. What’s new is the liberal Democratic establishment’s use of the new, harder progressive logic, which holds that any opposition to its policies is psychologically rooted in inherited racism, sexism, or trauma.