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The Islamic Republic of Iran: A Criminal Enterprise, Not a State by Peter Huessy

Posted By on August 24th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16392/iran-criminal-enterprise

Venezuela, Iran’s ally, has also made clear its intention to buy Iranian missiles that can reach American cities.

It is not as if China’s criminal track record is not well known. The CCP deliberately let the Covid-19 virus spread around the world. It has directed the theft of trillions worth of intellectual property from the United States and Europe. It has hollowed out some eight million US manufacturing jobs, and it is illegally sending tons of the opioid fentanyl across US borders in partnership with the Mexican drug cartels.

As for Iran, desperate for cash and weapons and pummeled by US-led sanctions, the mullahs are contemplating signing on as a partner of the Communist Party of China (CCP). In return for sending China cheap oil and giving the CCP military bases in the region, Iran will get billions in cash.

“Iran has to take a decision whether it wants to be a nation or a cause,” Henry Kissinger, former US National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, told The Washington Post in 2006. He was referring to the tension between Iran’s national interests and the religious ideology that took over the country after Iran’s 1979 revolution.

The Islamic Republic of Iran, however, is neither a nation nor a cause: it is a criminal enterprise. The button men for ayatollahs are the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, (IRGC), the Quds Force, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthi mountain bandits in Yemen.

Like the Salvadoran MS-13 and Mexican Sinaloa cartel, Iran specializes in regional aggression and “death to America” — and has used specially made improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to kill more than 600 American soldiers serving in the Middle East. But killing is not Iran’s only criminal activity. The Tehran thugs are the ones who make the deals with drug dealers, cigarette smugglers and human traffickers in the Middle East and in the Western hemisphere.

To rein in the mullahs’ criminality, the US had implemented tough economic sanctions on Iran. On January 3, 2020, the US also took out Qassem Soleimani, the head of the IRGC who had ordered the killing of more than 600 Americans. While the death of Soleimani was welcome news, it did not end Iran’s criminal empire any more than did the arrest in July 2019 of the head of the powerful Sinaloa Mexican drug cartel. The cartel remains in business today, smuggling tons of drugs into America.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

American University Administrators Must Step Up to Fight Beijing’s Authoritarian Influence By Jimmy Quinn

Posted By on August 24th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/china-american-universities-administrators-must-fight-beijing-authoritarian-influence/

The CCP seeks to make American campuses less conducive to open inquiry, and more dangerous for students and professors. It can’t be allowed to succeed.

With many American universities conducting classes online during the fall semester, some college professors are worried that the Chinese Communist Party will attempt to monitor lessons about topics that are politically sensitive to Beijing. The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday on the steps that instructors are taking to protect their students from CCP surveillance as U.S.–China relations continue their downward trajectory amid the coronavirus pandemic and China’s Draconian crackdown on dissent in Hong Kong.

The digital classroom is ripe for potential security breaches. Video-conferencing platform Zoom, which is widely used by universities, has in recent months faced allegations that it bows to pressure from the Chinese government. In June, for example, Axios reported that the company had temporarily suspended the account of a U.S.-based dissident for his participation in a virtual panel about the Tiananmen Square Massacre. But even for universities that use different video-conferencing software, the possibility of surveillance still exists. Under the new Hong Kong national-security law, Beijing claims the authority to prosecute anyone, Chinese or otherwise, who engages in what it deems subversive speech outside of China. Beijing has already charged American citizens for such actions. And while Chinese students have been hassled for things that they do and say in the United States before, the law’s astounding claim of universal jurisdiction puts them at greater risk.

All of this has alarmed a number of American educators. Rory Truex, an assistant professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton, told the Journal that he will warn his students that his course touches on topics of concern to the Chinese government. He’s also introducing a system whereby students will submit work labeled with numeric codes, not their names, so that they are not linked to the views that they express in written assignments. In a commentary for China File, Truex and four other instructors have also offered advice for how educators should navigate the difficulties of securing their online classrooms against CCP surveillance by, among other things, setting policies on recording class sessions.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Documentary: Seattle is Dying An in-depth look at the drug and homelessness crisis in Washington State’s largest city.

Posted By on August 24th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/08/documentary-seattle-dying-frontpage-editors/

KOMO Anchor Eric Johnson takes an in-depth look at the impact the drug and homelessness problem is having on Seattle in “Seattle is Dying” — a news documentary that aired on KOMO-TV in March, 2019.

Watch the video below:

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Significance of the Israel-UAE Peace The new paradigm in the Middle East. Joseph Puder

Posted By on August 24th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/08/significance-israel-uae-peace-joseph-puder/

Unlike previous peace treaties Israel concluded with Egypt and Jordan, the impending peace treaty between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), engineered by President Donald Trump, will be a warm peace. It won’t be just peace between the two governments that leaves the people of the two nations apart and hostile. This peace treaty will involve the Israeli and Emirati communities in trade, tourism, economic development, medical cooperation, intelligence sharing, sport exchanges, and cultural and religious activities. Israeli businesspeople are already operating in the UAE, and their Emirati counterparts have visited Israeli technology centers and Jerusalem. Both Emiratis and Israelis are awaiting with eager anticipation to have direct flights from Tel Aviv to Dubai. Thousands of Israelis are ready to visit the wonders of Dubai, the world’s tallest building (Burj Khalifa), the luxurious Burj al Arab hotel, the Palm Islands, the Dubai mall, and of course the upcoming Dubai Expo 2020. Emiratis are eager to visit the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, the biblical antiquities, and the Hermon ski slopes.  Israeli athletes have already been admitted to sport events in the UAE. Emirati athletes will also compete in Israeli sports events. 

Perhaps the most significant factors in the Israel-UAE peace are political, strategic, and psychological. Since there has never been any bloodletting or conflict between Israel and the Emirates, and no border disputes, it makes it easier for a people to people peace. Moreover, unlike previous peace deals that required Israel to make territorial concessions for peace, based on the formula of land-for-peace, the Israel-UAE peace deal is based on a different formula – of peace-for-peace. The former form of peacemaking was the case with Egypt, the Palestinians (Oslo Accords), and Jordan.  The peace with the UAE has no conditions attached to it, and while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to postpone the implementation of the promised annexation, or more correctly, extending Israeli sovereignty and law to the Jordan Valley and the Jewish communities therein, he could still do it at a future date. 

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Francis Buk Video: ‘My Escape From Slavery in Sudan’ The horrific story of an African boy’s ten years in captivity.

Posted By on August 24th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/08/francis-buk-video-my-escape-slavery-sudan-frontpagemagcom/

This new Glazov Gang episode features Francis Buk, a former slave in Sudan who escaped his enslavement and is now an abolitionist. (Read his memoir Escape from Slavery and help him to free modern-day slaves by supporting iabolish.org.)

Francis shares The Nightmare I Experienced Under Slavery and My Escape, revealing also how the Left has betrayed African blacks enslaved — till this day — by Muslim-Arab slave-masters.

Don’t miss it!

And make sure to watch Dr. Charles Jacobs, the president of Americans for Peace and Tolerance, discuss Do Black Slaves’ Lives Matter?, where he sheds a disturbing light on: When did the Left first go woke? When they betrayed black slaves.

He takes us into the horrific world of Racist Muslim Arabs Barbarizing Black Slaves in Africa.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

The Dems’ China Tilt Why Biden-Harris is the Chinese communist regime’s dream team. Joseph Klein

Posted By on August 24th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/08/dems-china-tilt-joseph-klein/

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are the Chinese communist regime’s dream team. If they prevail in the November election, China’s nemesis, President Trump, will be replaced by the soft-on-China Joe Biden. “I mean, you know, they’re not bad folks, folks,” Biden said last year. “They’re not competition for us.” As President Trump said following the Democratic National Convention snooze fest, “China will own our country, if he gets elected.”

The Chinese communist regime was not even mentioned at the Democrats’ convention. The speakers, from Biden on down, ignored the elephant in the room while portraying President Trump as America’s mortal enemy who had wreaked the coronavirus on Americans. For months, the Democrats have aided the Chinese regime’s propaganda campaign to deny the regime’s responsibility for the coronavirus that originated in Wuhan China.

Chinese Communist Party officials early on censored the hashtag #WuhanSARS. They also attempted to shift the blame for the virus to the United States. Joe Biden put out a statement last April complaining about President Trump’s calling the coronavirus the “Chinese Virus.” This was in keeping with Biden’s initial opposition to President Trump’s restrictions on travel from China that the president announced on January 31st.  Using words that the Chinese communist party propagandists could have written themselves, Biden accused the president of xenophobia and fear mongering.

Last May, Kamala Harris obliged the Chinese regime when she introduced a resolution in the Senate that singled out the terms “Wuhan Virus” and “Chinese Virus” as examples of language that should not be used.

On the first night of the Democratic National Convention, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo came up with another regional name for the coronavirus. “The European virus infected the Northeast while the White House was still fixated on China,” Cuomo said. This blowhard thinks it’s OK to scapegoat the Europeans while conveniently leaving out the fact that the coronavirus originated in China and traveled from China to Italy as well as other parts of Europe via infected Chinese visiting or returning to their residences in Europe. It then spread to the Northeast of the United States from Europeans traveling here who were infected with the Chinese Virus. Cuomo made things far worse with his directive forcing nursing homes to accept elderly coronavirus patients from hospitals.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

That Dirty Green Energy

Posted By on August 24th, 2020

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/08/24/that-dirty-green-energy/

We argued last week that California’s blackouts offered a grim preview of the left’s energy agenda. But that’s only part of the carefully concealed truth about renewables. Those solar panels so precious to the you-must-conform greenshirts are a particularly nasty environmental menace.

“The state, once known for its plentiful, cheap and reliable energy supplies, is now dealing with rolling blackouts as its green energy infrastructure buckles under the strain of summer heat,” we said Thursday, because the wind sometimes refuses to blow and the sun isn’t always shining, not even in California.

Of course a few virtue-signaling commenters charged to the table in their electric vehicles to praise the virtues of renewable energy, which in California will be limited primarily to wind and solar. Hydro sources, responsible for more than 12% of the state’s electricity, won’t be included in the portfolio in 2045, the year power is to be by decree generated by renewables only. Other renewables, such as geothermal, maybe 5%, and biomass, not much more than 2%, provide such minute portions of California electricity they are hardly worth mentioning.

Left out of the often mistaken, never in doubt assertions of renewables’ unalloyed goodness is the fact that the hardware used is hardly renewable. It wears out and needs to be replaced. Then what?

“The problem of solar panel disposal ‘will explode with full force in two or three decades and wreck the environment’ because it ‘is a huge amount of waste and they are not easy to recycle,’” writes energy analyst Michael Shellenberger, quoting a Chinese recycling official.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

America’s leading white supremacist announces his surprise endorsement By Andrea Widburg

Posted By on August 24th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/08/americas_leading_white_supremacist_announces_his_surprise_endorsement.html

One of the most revolting things about Joe Biden’s candidacy is his dishonest insistence that Donald Trump called white supremacists “fine people.” Democrats have successfully used this hoax to brainwash large parts of the American public into believing that Trump and his supporters are racists and anti-Semites. One wonders, therefore, how much consternation there is in Biden campaign headquarters now that Richard Spencer, one of America’s best-known neo-Nazis, is all in for Biden.

To fully appreciate what should be one of the biggest stories in the presidential campaign, there are two things you need to know: (1) Who Richard Spencer is and (2) what the “fine people hoax” is.

Richard Spencer

Richard Spencer is an unapologetic neo-Nazi. He’s frequently seen giving Nazi salutes, quoting Nazi propaganda, and making openly anti-Semitic statements. He thinks Haitians should be re-enslaved and that racial minorities should be removed from America. Not surprisingly, his wife has accused him of verbal and physical abuse. He is a terrible human being.

MY SAY: Comments turned off

OUR SAY :PROFESSOR EDWARD ALEXANDER REMEMBERED

Posted By on August 24th, 2020

Eddie Alexander was an admired and respected and treasured friend. I was always dazzled by his erudition and brilliance and grateful for his unparalleled literary litigation in support of Israel’s historic rights, and against the nation’s hypocritical and venal opponents.  rsk

From Rael Jean Isaac:

“With the passing of Edward Alexander, my husband and I have lost one of our oldest and dearest friends, and the Jewish people have lost an irreplaceable champion.  Forty years ago, Alexander, then a professor of English at the University of Washington specializing in  Victorian literature, shifted his focus to the  Jews.  From then on he used his  erudition and extraordinary literary and polemical talents in service of  the Jewish people and the Jewish state.  He skewered the villains, both without and within the Jewish fold, from political and academic icons like Bishop Tutu and Edward Said to “Jewish” enemies like Noam Chomsky, Judith Butler and Seymour Hersh.  Some of his most devastating critiques were of those Jews who claimed to be “friends of Israel” while undermining her.  Indeed one of his books is entitled “With Friends Like These.” Alexander saw himself on a battlefield as the titles of his books reveal: The Jewish Wars; The Holocaust and the War of Ideas; The Jewish Divide Over Israel, Accusers and Defenders; The Jewish Idea and its Enemies. Nor was he hesitant to take on the enemies of Israel within the Jewish state itself, an intelligentsia  riddled with moral arrogance and self-hatred.  As Alvin Rosenfeld has said, Edward Alexander turned polemical writing into an “effective art form.”

Three years ago, Edward was devastated by the loss of Leah, his wife of  sixty years, and spent much time pouring over her letters and other writing, much of which he had never seen and which brought her closer. Rael Isaac

From  Stephen Rittenberg, M.D.

I met Eddie in the first semester at Columbia College in 1953. I brought with me arrogant biases from my private school, Fieldston and assumed no one from public school could possibly have had the education I possessed. It was a form of liberal arrogance imbibed as part of ethical culture’s training. And then I met Eddie. We hit it off immediately by talking about baseball, the Yankees (my team) and the Dodgers (his). Eddie  was knowledgeable about writers I had barely heard of, and he knew opera and aspects of culture I knew nothing about. He was clearly brilliant. I learned that he had been sports editor of the Tilden high school newspaper and had uncovered a scandal involving Brooklyn high schools stealing players from other districts that made it to the local papers. In recent years we reminisced about the great Brooklyn boys of summer. Eddie and I hit it off and sat together in various classes with Lionel Trilling, Fred Dupee and Mark Van Doren.  We developed a late adolescent friendship that lasted all our lives. When we went off to graduate school we wrote letters almost every day and I learned of Eddie’s beautiful romance with Leah.  More than friendship, and despite the continent that separated us we loved each other. I think ultimately Eddie not only lived up to the Trilling ego ideal, but surpassed it because, unlike Trilling, he drew strength from his Jewish identity. How we will miss his magnificent voice.

BOOKS Comments turned off

America’s Hundred Year War: Red October 1917-Red November 2020 by Roger Canfield

Posted By on August 24th, 2020

No informed American ought to be surprised by the cultural revolution of 2020.

America’s Hundred Year War: Red October 1917-Red November 2020 reveals the rise, “fall,” and the resurgence of communism in America. It is the story of a century of communist political operations among America’s cultural elites from Lenin’s Bolsheviks to Xi Jinping’s penetration of Hollywood, corporations, universities and media.

The outcomes are Antifa and BLM riots burning Democrat cities over issues of capitalism and race, the socialist platform of the Democrat Party, and Red November elections for President, House and Senate.

America’s Hundred Year War captures the long march of Communism through American cultural institutions from the Red October of 1917 to the Red November 2020.

The book highlights the major personalities and events in the struggle between American culture and Communism. Prominent American intellectuals, actors/writers, and journalists are inspired by Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, and Xi Jinping. They see a brighter future outside of American values and institutions. Anti-communism and reverence for America faded away.

The story begins in the year 1948, focusing on a spirited dialogue between Whittaker Chambers, Richard Nixon and Alger Hiss before the House committee on Un-American Activities in August 1948. The story then flashes back to the Red October of 1917 and forward into the Red November of 2020. There are major stopovers in The Russian Revolution, WWI, WWII, Vietnam culminating in consequences of 2020. 

Chambers, Nixon, Hiss and their friends and allies speak for their own versions of history. 

The book has a detailed INDEX of major events and words and deeds of the named protagonists and antagonists.

Roger Canfield, Ph.D.