UN Rewards Iranian Atrocities by Judith Bergman

http://UN Rewards Iranian Atrocities by Judith Bergman

In 2012, [Nasrin Sotoudeh] received the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for her work, which included representing dissidents arrested during mass protests in 2009, an effort for which she previously served three years in prison. She has also represented convicts on death row for offenses committed as minors. She is perhaps most famous for her defense of women’s rights, including the defense of several women who protested against wearing the headscarf, or hijab….

There seems to be little hope for the political prisoners of Iran today. Even despite a global outcry, the young wrestler Navid Afkari was executed on September 12 by the Iranian regime. US President Donald J. Trump had also appealed to Iran to let him live: the wrestler’s “sole act,” he said, “was an anti-government demonstration on the streets”

Meanwhile, the international community rewarded Iran. On August 14, the UN Security Council voted against a US resolution to extend the 13-year arms embargo against Iran indefinitely. Instead, the embargo will expire in mid-October, allowing Iran to buy and sell conventional weapons without UN restrictions. Perhaps it is time for the US to defund the UN, rather than bankroll and be complicit in these crimes against humanity.

In March 2019, Iranian human rights activist and lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh was sentenced to 38 years in prison and 148 lashes. Last month, she was committed to a hospital after more than 40 days on a hunger strike. She was held at a hospital for a few days, heavily guarded by Iranian security, then returned, despite a serious heart condition, to notorious Evin Prison, where she is serving her 38-year sentence. As she began her hunger strike, Sotoudeh wrote in a letter from Evin prison:

“In the midst of the coronavirus crisis engulfing Iran and the world, the situation facing political prisoners has become so difficult that their continued incarceration under these tyrannical conditions has become impossible.

“Political [activists] have been accused of unbelievable acts: espionage, corruption on earth, undermining national security, prostitution… which can keep them behind bars for up to 10 years or even lead to execution.

MUST SEE: JUSTICE CLARENCE THOMAS SWEARS IN AMY CONEY BARRETT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qi8yZdOmESE

Media Firemen Scramble to Save Biden Candidacy By Jack Cashill

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/10/media_firemen_scramble_to_save_biden_candidacy.html

Watching the media scramble these last two weeks to save Joe Biden’s candidacy, I am reminded of a scene in Ray Bradbury’s 1953 dystopian sci-fi classic, Fahrenheit 451, 451 degrees Fahrenheit being the temperature at which paper burns.

In the novel, the state employs “firemen” to burn paper lest the few civilians who care about books avail themselves of information the state does not want them to have. During the Biden stretch run, the firemen on the left have shredded what is left of their reputations as journalists to destroy information the Deep State does not want their audiences to have.

Even before Hunter Biden’s laptop surfaced, the media busied themselves suppressing information that was readily available to the ordinary citizen — montages of Biden plagiarizing, groping little girls, making racially insensitive comments, eulogizing exalted KKK cyclops, threatening Ukrainian prosecutors, even sexually assaulting at least one very credible Democrat — and they did so with enough success that the Biden camp felt comfortable positioning Joe as the candidate with “character.”

The Hunter laptop was too tangible to dispose of subtly. Not since Joseph Goebbels urged the German Student Union “to commit to the flames the evil spirit of the past” has a western nation so flagrantly thrown in on the side of ignorance. Twitter has gotten most of the attention for its total blocking of the New York Post, which broke the laptop story, but the firemen at NPR were not far behind.

“We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories, and we don’t want to waste the listeners’ and readers’ time on stories that are just pure distractions,” NPR Managing Editor for News Terence Samuel told his audience in the way of answering a reader question. “And quite frankly, that’s where we ended up, this was… a politically driven event and we decided to treat it that way.” NPR’s public editor added that, in any case, “the assertions don’t amount to much.”

Senate confirms Amy Coney Barrett to Supreme Court, cements 6-3 conservative majority Barrett will be Trump’s third justice appointed to the Supreme Court, the most for any president since Ronald Reagan

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/senate-amy-coney-barrett-vote

The Senate voted 52-48 on Monday night to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court in a move that makes the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals judge and Notre Dame law professor the third appointment to the high court by President Trump, solidifying his administration’s legacy even further just a week before Election Day as he seeks a second term. 

The last president to nominate three new justices to the Supreme Court was Ronald Reagan. 

“Justice Barrett made clear she will issue rulings based solely upon a faithful reading of the law and the Constitution as written not legislate from the bench,” Trump said during a swearing in ceremony at the White House on Monday. ““The American people put their trust in you and their faith in you as you take up the task of defending our laws, our Constitution and this country we all love.”

Monday’s vote marked the end of a confirmation process that lasted less than 40 days from when late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died to when her successor, Barrett, was confirmed. During that time Democrats objected loudly to the speed and timing of the confirmation just before an election. Meanwhile, Republicans have touted Barrett’s record as an academic and a judge as impeccable — and her “Well Qualified” rating from the American Bar Association (ABA) whose representatives relayed descriptions of her as “brilliant” and an “intellectual giant.”

Justice Clarence Thomas administered the Constitutional Oath to Barrett at the White House on Monday night, while Chief Justice will administer the Judicial Oath to her in a private ceremony at the Court on Tuesday.

Dr. Fauci APPROVED Hydroxychloroquine 15 Years Ago To Combat Coronaviruses

https://en-volve.com/2020/05/06/dr-fauci-approved-hydroxychloroquine-15-years-ag

Dr. Anthony Fauci, whose “expert” advice to President Trump has resulted in the complete shutdown of the greatest economic engine in world history, has known since 2005 that chloroquine is an effective inhibitor of coronaviruses.

How did he know this? Because of research done by the National Institutes of Health, of which he is the director. In connection with the SARS outbreak – caused by a coronavirus dubbed SARS- CoV – the NIH researched chloroquine and concluded that it was effective at stopping the SARS coronavirus in its tracks. The COVID-19 bug is likewise a coronavirus, labeled SARS-CoV-2. While not exactly the same virus as SARS-CoV-1, it is genetically related to it, and shares 79% of its genome, as the name SARS-CoV-2 implies. They both use the same host cell receptor, which is what viruses use to gain entry to the cell and infect the victim.

The Virology Journal – the official publication of Dr. Fauci’s National Institutes of Health – published what is now a blockbuster article on August 22, 2005, under the heading – get ready for this – “Chloroquine is a potent inhibitor of SARS coronavirus infection and spread.” (Emphasis mine throughout.) Write the researchers, “We report…that chloroquine has strong antiviral effects on SARS-CoV infection of primate cells. These inhibitory effects are observed when the cells are treated with the drug either before or after exposure to the virus, suggesting both prophylactic and therapeutic advantage.”

Why Would Media Frighten People About a Virus? – Of course, they wouldn’t be media if they didn’t !! Donald Devine

http://Why Would Media Frighten People About a Virus? – Of course, they wouldn’t be media if they didn’t !! Donald Devine

Every morning we are greeted by blaring headline news telling us how many more of our neighbors have been infected by the “life-threatening” coronavirus, with the total now nearing eight million stricken Americans.

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer was typical. “Everyone should be afraid of COVID.”

Blitzer was reacting to President Donald Trump’s statement upon leaving the hospital after testing positive for the virus. “Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life.”

Didn’t he know he was supposed to be frightened? This expectation is more than the normal kneejerk media overreaction to Trump. It goes to the fundamentals of how the media and intellectuals generally exercise their control over most politicians and the public.

As New York Governor Andrew Cuomo put it: “People see the numbers going up. Close everything! Close everything! It’s not the best way to do it but it is a fear-driven response. The virus scares people.… The fear is too high to do anything other than: let’s do everything we can to get the infection rate down now. Close the doors. Close the windows. That’s where we are.”

For a person in his mid-seventies as is the President, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Center for Health Statistics (ages 75-84) report that between February 1 and October 3 of this year, 52,618 seniors have died from Covid-19. But 519,488 of that age group have died from all causes during that period. That means coronavirus represented merely 10 percent of fatalities even for the more susceptible elderly.

Still the numbers are scary. Yet old people like me do get sick and die more than younger ones.

Something to Think About Shoshana Bryen

https://www.jns.org/opinion/something-to-think-about/

The Jewish Policy Center doesn’t/can’t/doesn’t want to tell people what to do. We do, however, write about both foreign and domestic policy to encourage people to think about what to do – and our members are quite clear about what they think. We posted an article about the possibility of Chinese mayhem near, but not directly against, Taiwan. We thought it was useful for determining how to think about China, the U.S. defense budget, and American policy in the Pacific. A member very pointedly said we were foolishly missing a “historic moment” by writing about China. OK. So, I went back to our library and with the help of some outside sources put together a list of things to think about at this “historic moment.” It is not – nor is it meant to be – exhaustive.

We currently have the first president since Dwight D. Eisenhower that has not engaged us in a foreign war or new foreign peacekeeping. The Abraham Accords were done without the promise of American money or U.S. troops as “monitors.” (Remember President Clinton offering to put American soldiers in Syria to monitor an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights? How would that have worked when Syria and Iran decimated the country and dropped chemical weapons on Syrian civilians with Russian help?) This has allowed the U.S. to focus on broad defense of the global commons, not being involved in other people’s civil or border wars. (Hence the determination to leave Afghanistan.) Except for the appropriate punishment of Syria for using those chemicals, and the destruction of the territorial base of the ISIS caliphate.

The focus of Middle East peacemaking changed from requiring Israel to pay the Palestinians in the currency of statehood (“risks for peace”) to a request that the Arab States consider the economic and security needs of their own people in deciding whether and how to approach the State of Israel. The result is the Abraham Accords, broadly accepted by countries that have not signed; a new compact with Jordan; and feelers from other countries. The United States abandoned the untenable position of “neutral party” between Israel, which is our democratic ally, and the Palestinian Authority, which is not. The U.S. has moved to a position of honest broker, which is vastly more appropriate. U.S.-Israel security cooperation, grounded in our commonality, continues through the pandemic.

Don’t let ’em scare you to death

https://nypost.com/2020/10/25/hospitals-gave-gov-andrew-cuomo-a-campaign-

Don’t let ’em scare you to death

Get ready for the mother of all scare campaigns from Democrats and their media allies the next two weeks. They’ll tell you the coronavirus is on the rampage and it’s all President Trump’s fault.

But, before we fall for the fearmongering of Joe Biden’s “dark winter,” it’s worth noting that the CDC says flu numbers are down 95 percent. Have masks stopped it, or are flu symptoms being conflated with COVID-19?

Secondly, the University of Washington model used to forecast impending doom has been getting it drastically wrong since March. Finally, the mortality rate for COVID-19 patients is plummeting as better treatments appear. One study of 5,000 patients in the NYU Langone Health system, to be published in the Journal of Hospital Medicine, finds death rates between March and August dropped 18 percentage points, even for the elderly.

Be not afraid. Be sensible.

Media’s Burisma myth

Among the most stubborn myths around the Burisma scandal is that Ukraine’s top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, was not investigating the corrupt energy company at the time Joe Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in aid unless he was fired.

The Washington Post repeated the false claim last week.

But contemporaneous news sources from Ukraine show that Shokin was aggressively pursuing Burisma in 2016, while it was paying the then-vice president’s wayward son, Hunter Biden, more than $80,000 a month to sit on its board.

On Feb. 4, 2016, Interfax-Ukraine reported that Prosecutor-General Shokin had seized property belonging to Hunter’s boss, Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky, including four large houses, two plots of land and “a Rolls-Royce Phantom car.” The National Radio Co. of Ukraine reported the same.

Eight days later, Joe Biden phoned Ukraine’s president, Petro Poroshenko.

Four days after the call, Shokin was fired, although it took another month for the Ukrainian parliament to ratify his ousting.

Hospitals gave Gov. Andrew Cuomo a campaign booster shot: By Miranda Devine

https://nypost.com/2020/10/25/hospitals-gave-gov-andrew-cuomo-a-campaign-boos

It’s bad enough that Gov. Cuomo presided over the needless COVID-19 deaths of thousands of vulnerable people in New York nursing homes.

It’s bad enough that he wrote a shameful book praising himself for his pandemic response and now is doing a victory lap of self-congratulation in the worst-hit state in the nation.

It’s bad enough that he is mounting a pre-election scare campaign on COVID vaccines to stir up anti-vax sentiment for political purposes.

But now we discover that Cuomo got campaign funds from the hospital organizations that lobbied for his lethal policy for the elderly and which then bought TV ads whitewashing his culpability.

An exclusive audit of campaign donations to Cuomo by OpenTheBooks.com shows disturbing links with industry bodies which demanded the disastrous order forcing nursing homes to admit COVID-infected patients hospitals didn’t want.

Overall, the audit shows a “systematic pay-to-play culture in Albany,” says Adam Andrzejewski, CEO of OpenTheBooks.com, a nonprofit which has compiled a comprehensive database of US public sector expenditures.

The pattern of patronage in New York state amounts to “a legalized money-laundering scheme aimed at monetizing incumbent political power.”

Cuomo has received $6.2 million since 2014 from 347 companies who then made $7 billion from state contracts.

Biden Corruption: The Avalanche Continues  Francis Menton

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-10-25-biden-corruption-the-avala

As we get closer to the election, it’s beginning to appear that the corruption of Joe Biden via his son Hunter knows no bounds. You may have thought that my post just two days ago contained enough to sink any possible presidential candidacy; but there is plenty of new information in just the two days since. Most of the new information concerns efforts of the Chinese government and CCP to compromise the Bidens through influence investments.

Meanwhile, the media continue to make laughingstocks of themselves with their futile efforts at suppression of the story.

Here are a few examples of newly revealed instances of Biden corruption:

Peter Schweizer has been at the forefront of many of the revelations. In a piece at Breitbart on October 23, he has come up with yet another non-anonymous source, a former Hunter Biden business partner named Bevan Cooney, now serving time in prison for a separate scam. Cooney has turned over to Schweizer a trove of some thousands of emails and texts. Among the transactions brought to light by the new emails is a September 2015 acquisition of a strategically-sensitive Michigan manufacturer by Hunter Biden’s private equity fund, with the investment money coming from Chinese government/CCP entities. The transaction required U.S. government approval. Yes, Joe Biden was Vice President at the time. Schweizer:

In September 2015, the Obama-Biden administration approved the sale of a strategically sensitive Michigan manufacturer, Henniges Automotive, to a firm connected to Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, and a Chinese military contractor that was on an American watch list because of its close ties to the People’s Liberation Army. Hunter Biden’s equity fund, backed by the Communist Chinese government, and the Chinese contractor, Aviation Industry Corporation (AVIC), needed special approval for the deal from the Committee of Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) because Henniges produced technology with potential military use.

Go to the link to see emails of Hunter’s colleagues congratulating each other on getting the deal through.