WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran’s Mullahs Celebrate More Rewards from the ‘Nuclear Deal’ by Majid Rafizadeh

Posted By on July 18th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16224/iran-nuclear-rewards

On June 30, 2020, U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo urged the United Nations Security Council to extend the arms embargo on Iran. The Security Council was reluctant to do so. The UN Security Council’s unwillingness seems yet another indication of why the United States, having pulled out of the Human Rights Council and threatening to pull out of the World Health Organization in 2021, should finally go all the way and pull out of the whole “Club of Thugs” that the United Nations has become… At the very least, as has been suggested, “We pay for what we want. We insist [on] what we get, what we pay for. We abolish the system of mandatory contribution….”

The United Nations seems to have turned into a place that, instead of preventing war, preserves war.

“Iran is already violating the arms embargo, even before its expiration date. Imagine if Iranian activity were sanctioned, authorized by this group, if the restrictions are lifted. Iran will be free to become a rogue weapons dealer, supplying arms to fuel conflicts from Venezuela, to Syria, to the far reaches of Afghanistan.” — Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, UN Security Council, June 30, 2020.

In short, thanks to the previous administration, the Iranian regime, the top state sponsor of terrorism, is about to be legally free to buy and sell, and import and export advanced weapons across the world.

While Iran’s ruling mullahs have been celebrating their rewards from the nuclear deal — which, by the way, Iran never signed — according to its terms, the arms embargo against the Islamic Republic is scheduled to be lifted on October 18, 2020.

On June 30, 2020, U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo urged the United Nations Security Council to extend the arms embargo on Iran. The Security Council, however — particularly China — was reluctant to do so. The UN Security Council’s unwillingness seems yet another indication of why the United States, having pulled out of the Human Rights Council and threatening to pull out of the World Health Organization in 2021, should finally go all the way and pull out of the whole “Club of Thugs” that the United Nations has become. At the very least, as has been suggested, “We pay for what we want. We insist [on] what we get, what we pay for. We abolish the system of mandatory contribution….”

Rather than being the cure for world peace, the UN is now a major obstacle to world peace. The Soviet dissident, Natan Sharansky, once suggested at a meeting attended by Gatestone that if delegates to the UN are not allowed to vote in their own countries, they also should not be allowed to vote at the UN. The United Nations appears to have turned into a place that, instead of preventing war, preserves war.

The primary objective of any nuclear talks with Tehran should have been to halt Iran’s nuclear program permanently, thereby eliminating the possibility of a nuclear arms race in the region and removing the strategic threat that a nuclear armed Iran would pose to the world.

MEDIA Comments turned off

Media bias and bullying go well beyond Baris Weiss By Jack Hellner

Posted By on July 18th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/07/media_bias_and_bullying_go_well_beyond_baris_weiss.html

The media, entertainers, educators and other Democrats claim they care deeply about bullying, diversity and women.

But they’ve shown very little support when a woman editor was bullied out of the NYT because, heaven forbid, she thought more than one opinion should be in the opinion page of the newspaper.

Bari Weiss Claims Bullying Led Her To Quit The New York Times

There is a lot of pretending going on that the reason the media is so hostile and one-sided today is because of President Trump, but they have been ripping and calling Republicans racists at least since Reagan.

They intentionally bury stories that don’t fit the agenda and will even endlessly attack and run stories, without evidence, to destroy Republicans.

All that seems to matter is getting more power for leftist Democrats and push for bigger government and less freedom for the people.

Most of the media sought to destroy Judge Brett Kavanaugh, with no evidence, while they intentionally buried true stories about Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer, Jeffrey Epstein and Bill Clinton. A few stories, such as these, ran. But they got no wall-to-wall coverage the way Kavanaugh did.

MEDIA Comments turned off

Top 16: ‘Worst President In American History’ Trump Has ‘Rivers of Blood On His Hands’ Geoffrey Dickens

Posted By on July 18th, 2020

https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/geoffrey-dickens/2020/07/16/top-16-worst-president-american-history-trump-has-rivers-blood

Yikes! Lefty reporters and hosts went nuts over the last few weeks as they attacked Donald Trump as the “worst president in history” whose anti-pandemic efforts have left him with “rivers of blood on his hands.” 

Liberal journalists also distorted Trump’s patriotic speech at Mount Rushmore (that “grandiose symbol of U.S. imperialism”) as an attempt “to weaponize the anger and resentment of some white Americans for his own political gain.”

The following is a top 16 countdown of the most vicious anti-Trump attacks from the ultra-left media over the last few weeks: 

16. President Gets an “F”

Host Wolf Blitzer: “How badly is he [Donald Trump] failing right now in dealing with this spiraling crisis? 

Correspondent Nia-Malika Henderson: “He’s doing terribly. I mean, the President gets an ‘F’ in terms of the handling of this global pandemic.”

—  CNN’s The Situation Room, July 14. 

15. Like “George Wallace,” Trump Pursuing Voters Who Think Wrong Team Won the Civil War

MEDIA Comments turned off

Fake News Becomes a Way of Life By Michael Brendan Dougherty

Posted By on July 18th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/07/media-fake-news-becomes-a-way-of-life/

The media has decided there’s more emotional satisfaction in failure than in performing the function with which the public entrusts it.

In December 2016, Ben Smith, then BuzzFeed’s editor-in-chief, wrote a memo to his staff that was meant to be a kind of charter for the dawning of the Trump Era. In truth it spoke to and aimed to speak for the entire mainstream media. Smith would eventually move on to the New York Times, which elevated him to a role as the supervisory voice of conscience for the whole media. But that December, he warned his staff of the danger of fake news, and the need of the media to be accurate and factual:

The information environment itself will become even more central to our coverage:

Fake news will become more sophisticated, and fake, ambiguous, and spun-up stories will spread widely. Hoaxes will have higher production value. It is, for instance, getting easier and easier to create video of someone saying something he or she never said — a tool both for fake news and false denials.

And powerful filter bubbles will drive competing narratives from parallel universes of facts.

The Times and The Atlantic have minted tens of thousands of new subscribers from across the nation since Trump’s election, readers who want to keep informed, even as their local newspapers shrivel into nothing. The importance of these institutions has lately been increased substantially by their ability to survive, grow, and set trends across a more tightly concentrated media environment. Their staffers have largely defined themselves as part of a resistance to Trump’s administration.

So how is the “information environment” now, three and a half years after Smith’s memo?

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Gov. Noem’s advice for states dealing with COVID-19: Trust your citizens, don’t ‘lay down mandates’ The South Dakota Republican governor says her constituents ‘stepped up”

Posted By on July 18th, 2020

https://www.foxnews.com/media/kristi-noem-covid-governors-trust-people-dont-lay-down-mandates

U.S. governors should put their faith in the residents of their states and forgo stringent coronavirus mandates, South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem said Friday.

In an interview on “Fox & Friends,” Noem told host Steve Doocy that her state is “doing really good” following President Trump’s Fourth of July visit, noting that cases “continue to decline.””I think what we did here in South Dakota is really remarkable because we gave people their freedom,” she said. “We let the businesses stay open, we let people go to work, we told them to be smart, and we also asked them to be personally responsible. And, we’re seeing benefits of that each and every day in South Dakota.”

On Thursday, the South Dakota Department of Health reported four new COVID-19 deaths, bringing the death toll up to 115. There were also 42 new cases confirmed — raising the state’s total to 7,694 — and hospitalizations are now at 757.

According to data from the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, there are now over 3.5 million confirmed COVID-19 cases in the United States and more than 138,000 deaths.

However, whereas pandemic-ravaged states like Texas and California are home to millions, the U.S. Census Bureau shows Noem’s state at just over 884,000 residents.

“We did, in fact, we according to the national experts, did everything wrong,” she said. ” We did what the people on the ground saw. We aggressively addressed those situations, and came out better for it.

“So, I really think the people of South Dakota stepped up. They did the right thing and they trusted me. I trusted them and they made the right decision,” Noem stated.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Race and Equality A conversation Glenn Yu and Glenn C. Loury

Posted By on July 18th, 2020

https://www.city-journal.org/conversation-on-race-and-equality

On June 24, amid great cultural upheaval and unrest, Glenn Yu reached out to Glenn Loury, his former teacher, to record his thoughts about the current moment. An edited version of their conversation follows.

Glenn Yu: I’ve asked to speak to you because I find myself in the awkward position of being at once uncomfortable with the liberal stance on race that seems to deny the underlying reality of the black experience today while also being uncomfortable with conservatives who seem to disdain the George Floyd-related protests in a manner that makes it hard for me to believe that they have any empathy for the problems. I am also confused about whether it’s even my place to talk about these issues.

Glenn Loury: Well, I can’t exactly answer that question, but I happen to be suspicious about the assertion of authority based upon personal identity, such as being black. Let’s take this example. Were the actions we’ve all seen of the police officer in Minneapolis, Derek Chauvin, expressions of racial hatred? I happen to think that we have no reason to suppose that about him, absent further evidence. There are plenty of alternative explanations for his actions that could be given, from negligence to him just being a mean son of a bitch. Sure, we could project a motive onto him, onto the expression on his face, onto his smirk; we could feed thoughts into his head that make him symbolically emblematic of a certain trauma or sickness in American society, and this all may or may not be true. It might be true. But it might not be.

You may or may not have an opinion about that, but suppose the question were to arise in the dorm room late at night. Suppose you have the view that you’re not sure it’s racism, and then someone challenges you, saying, “you’re not black.” They say, “you’ve never been rousted by the police. You don’t know what it’s like to live in fear.” How much authority should that identitarian move have on our search for the truth? How much weight should my declarations in such an argument carry, based on my blackness? What is blackness? What do we mean? Do we mean that his skin is brown? Or do we mean that he’s had a certain set of social-class-based experiences like growing up in a housing project? Well, white people can grow up in housing projects, too. There are lots of different life experiences.

I think it’s extremely dangerous that people accept without criticism this argumentative-authority move when it’s played. It’s ad hominem. We’re supposed to impute authority to people because of their racial identity? I want you to think about that for a minute. Were you to flip the script on that, you might see the problem. What experiences are black people unable to appreciate by virtue of their blackness? If they have so much insight, maybe they also have blind spots. Maybe a black person could never understand something because they’re so full of rage about being black. Think about how awful it would be to make that move in an argument.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

RISK- BY SYDNEY WILLIAMS

Posted By on July 18th, 2020

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Risk is confrontation with fear. Seventy years ago, my wife, as a young girl, would put on her roller skates and, with her older brother, sail down paths in New York’s Central Park. They went unaccompanied. At the same time, on a rocky farm in southern New Hampshire, I would get on my horse, along with a brother and/or sister, and gallop off along trails through the woods, also unaccompanied by an adult. Any concern our parents may have had, they kept to themselves. They loved us as much as we love our children. We were told to be careful; we respected their advice. Nevertheless, we took risks.

Immigrants, from the early 17th Century to today’s migrants, did and do take risks. The earliest immigrants had no idea what they would find when they set sail across an unmapped sea, yet they were willing to take a chance that a better and freer life could be had than the one left behind. Social media, communications and government largesse have mitigated those risks, but emigration is still a leap into the unknown.

Success is impossible without risk. Entrepreneurs take risks, as do writers, musicians and artists. However, in all societies, risk-taking is never ubiquitous. Success comes to the talented and the aspirant – and those willing to take risks. The result is a society unequal in outcomes, but a fair one. What makes for a fair society are equal opportunities and the willingness to take risks, to grab the ladder’s rungs and make one’s way up, step by step. Consider the obstacles overcome by Americans like Abraham Lincoln and Clarence Thomas. At birth, neither had material advantage. Both were born in rural poverty. What they had was diligence, a desire for self-improvement and a willingness to take risks. They both recognized that victimhood was not the answer. While they were endowed with aspiration, dedication and intellectual talent, they knew they had to take risks and work harder than their peers.

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Bashing Israel Only Way To Be Accepted In Some Social Justice Movements, Raheel Raza Warns

Posted By on July 18th, 2020

https://thej.ca/2020/07/15/bashing-israel-only-way-to-be-accepted-in-some-social-justice-movements-raheel-raza-warns/

Antisemitism is a Virus Too! program highlights the pandemic of antisemitic hate

The Canadian Antisemitism Education Foundation has been hosting a series of Web Talks since early April under the overarching theme, Antisemitism is a Virus Too! The programs have highlighted the pandemic of antisemitic hate being spread across communities and continents, with experts addressing the rise of antisemitism in Iran, Turkey, India, England; its incipient spread through Black Lives Matter and other social justice movements; and the history of antisemitism and the three-headed monsters— leftism, Islamism and alt-right. It is not enough to track the spread of this virus, CAEF is encouraging action to thwart it. 

Over the millennia, antisemitism has been sometimes dormant, but it always rises during tumultuous times and it conveniently morphs to suit the culture and conditions in which it is ever-present. Today’s antisemitism is stridently anti-Zionist and is built on hideous lies, media distortions, fakery, hoaxes, and myths.

At the July 10th Web Talk, noted journalist, public speaker, human rights advocate, Raheel Raza spoke about Antisemitism, Racism and Social Justice Movements, and pointed out that Islamists have hijacked many just causes by attaching their anti-Zionist messages to the cause of others. So, for example, after the death in the US city of Ferguson in 2014 of a young Black boy, antisemites began chanting “From Ferguson to Palestine”.  The 2016 platform of Black Lives Matter carried disturbingly antisemitic clauses calling to end military support and funding for the IDF, and for altering the strategic alliance between the US and its ally Israel.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Why A Two-State Solution Is Doomed To Fail-We all know that land for peace never works By Lauren Isaacs

Posted By on July 18th, 2020

https://thej.ca/2020/07/12/why-a-two-state-solution-is-doomed-to-fail/

Herut Canada asserts that a two-state solution will not, and cannot, work. It is illogical, unrealistic, and immoral. Here’s why:

The first reason is track records. Let’s look at the track record of the modern-day Palestinians and surrounding Arab countries. When the Arab countries have had possession of the land in and around Israel – historically, what have they done? The first thing they have done was to prevent the Jews from visiting biblical Jewish holy sites. Jews were prevented from going to The Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron (where our ancestors are buried) when it was under Arab control. To think that it would be different this time, if we created this magical utopia of a two-state solution that they wouldn’t prevent us from visiting our biblical heartland, then we aren’t being intellectually honest with ourselves.

The reality is that it has happened in the past and it will happen again. How would you feel if you knew that you will be prevented from going to visit Rachel’s Tomb or if the Cave of the Patriarchs was once again closed off to you just because you are a Jew? Perhaps consider how we feel every time we are prevented from praying on the Temple Mount. I am not happy about that, and I hope you aren’t either.

Another thing we have to consider is the fact that Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian people and the Palestinian Authority for the last 15 years, has stated very clearly that not a single Israeli – civilian or soldier – will set foot in future Palestinian lands. This means that the future Palestinian state, this potential utopia that we are going to create for the Palestinians is going to be completely Jew-free. This is not a future plan that “may or may not” come to fruition – Mahmoud Abbas is in fact stating from the outset that he will ethnically cleanse his land of Jews. From the get-go, there are going to be no Jews in this Palestinian land. This should horrify you! Again, if we are being intellectually honest with ourselves … these are ancient biblical lands of Israel that have legally belonged to the Jewish people for over 3000 years.

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB Comments turned off

The Dangerous Passivity of the Intellectual Right ; And why they need to start fighting the war of ideas again. Richard Schinder

Posted By on July 18th, 2020

https://spectator.org/dangerous-passivity-intellectual-right-culture-war/

It is sufficiently obvious as to not require detailed explanation that in the modern era, movements for change require intellectuals, activists, and foot soldiers at scale in order to gain traction in the public square, much less achieve some measure of the outcomes sought. 

So why is it that in a so-called “50/50” nation, the activist Left in its various forms and combinations — the Women’s March, the Resistance, Black Lives Matter, et. al. — can rally tens of thousands to the streets at the drop of a hat, while similar movements of the Right — with the notable sectarian exceptions of the March for Life and the odd gun rights rally here and there — command no such passion and obeisance? How is it that those promoting leftist causes better sustain organizational vigor despite frequently advocating for execrable objectives (such as defunding the police) utterly bereft of intellectual rigor, evidentiary support, or logical consistency, while their counterparts on the right do little more than to speak hopefully of “silent majorities” who are only ever heard from in voting booths, if at all?

Put differently, why do the winning ideals of the classically liberal right — and by winning, I mean those values that contributed to creating the wealthiest, most just society the world has ever known, and which faced down the twin collectivist evils of fascism and communism in a single 50-year period — not inspire the masses to the same degree of those failed, faded pennants carried aloft by the Left?

Classical liberalism — which for these purposes is a term that can be used interchangeably with “conservatism” or “the Right” — prevailed in history through the force of its ideas and the material, cultural and civilizational wealth made possible by their application. In its ascendancy, it had to overcome functional theocracy, the divine right of kings, manorialism, and mercantilism, and it did so through a heady combination of life-affirming foundational principles, notably that of elevating the primacy of the individual, liberty, private property, and the rule of law above competing objectives. The self-actualization and material comfort realized through the practice of these universalist principles drew wide public support, in contrast with narrower ideologies designed largely to entrench incumbent interests.