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Iran Must Understand Returning to the Negotiating Table is the Only Way Forward by Con Coughlin

Posted By on May 28th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14297/iran-deal-negotiations

As Mr Trump has made clear at his press conference in Japan, where he is currently on a state visit, his main objective is to agree a new deal with Tehran, one that, unlike Mr Obama’s flawed arrangement, addresses all aspects of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, as well as its malign activities in the Middle East.

“I really believe that Iran would like to make a deal… I think that’s very smart of them, and I think that’s a possibility to happen. It has a chance to be a great country with the same leadership.” — US President Donald J. Trump, press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo, May 27.

Mr Pompeo told me that that Washington was not pushing for regime change in Tehran, but was instead seeking a revised agreement that satisfied all of Washington’s concerns about Iran’s conduct, and not just the narrow issue of uranium enrichment.

To date, the Iranians have responded to the Trump administration’s actions by threatening to intensify their policy of destabilization in the region.

There is one simple way for Iran to defuse the mounting tensions with the US and its allies in the Gulf: return to the negotiating table and agree to a new deal on Tehran’s nuclear programme.

Amid mounting concern that Washington’s recent military build-up in the Gulf region will lead to renewed conflict, many commentators appear to have lost sight of the Trump administration’s key objective when it withdrew from the 2015 deal negotiated, in large part, by former US President Barack Obama.

The aim of US President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the agreement was not, as his Democrat critics have alleged, to provoke a military confrontation with Tehran. On the contrary, as Mr Trump has made clear at his press conference in Japan, where he is currently on a state visit, his main objective is to agree a new deal with Tehran, one that, unlike Mr Obama’s flawed arrangement, addresses all aspects of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, as well as its malign activities in the Middle East.

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Climate Change is a Political Loser When voters catch on to being insulted and scorned. Bruce Thornton

Posted By on May 28th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273850/climate-change-political-loser-bruce-thornton

First came Donald Trump’s stunning victory in 2016, after a campaign in which he rejected the “scientific consensus” on catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW), and proved true to his rhetoric by withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accords. Then a few years later, France was rocked by the “yellow vests” movement that started with protests against a tax on fuel that President Emmanuel Macron, in true globalist technocratic fashion, proposed as a way to “nudge” the masses into using less of the carbon-based energy allegedly heating the planet. And now comes Australia, where contrary to the predictions of the globalist elite, the anti-carbon progressive who had proposed job-killing regulations to cut carbon emissions in half by 2030, failed to defeat the conservative incumbent who would rather save jobs than “save the planet.”

Climate change is looking like a losing election issue.

The global technocrats, for whom Climate Change has been one of those “crises” that progressives “never let go to waste,” no doubt are wishing they could “dissolve the people” rather than change the government through democratic elections. Persuading free citizens with arguments based on fact, or with appeals to their interests, is difficult when your “crisis” is nothing more than a politicized hypothesis based on appeals to authority, rigged computer simulations, and apocalyptic predictions laced with insults to the skeptics’ intelligence and morals.

The politicians should have seen the signs of global warming’s declining utility as an electoral scare-tactic. In the U.S., “climate change” for years has ranked low on the list of issues voters are concerned about. Before last year’s midterm elections, in a Gallup Poll “climate change” ranked next to last of 12 issues that voters judged “extremely/very important,” just above investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election. Of course, people will tell a pollster they’re “concerned” and think “something should be done” about climate change, because they’ve been told that’s what the “right” people think. But when it comes to election day, most will vote for a growing economy, wage increases, more jobs, lower taxes, and fewer federal Nurse Ratcheds trying to cram more social or environmental “justice” pills down their throats.

Moreover, we’ve had decades now of hysterical predictions followed by “never mind” when they are belied by facts, along with the vicious demonization and ostracization of scientists who question the dominant narrative of CAGW. The hypocrisy of this very unscientific demand for unquestioned obeisance not to a scientific fact, but to a working hypothesis has now become blatantly obvious. Real science, which is usually reluctant to claim it’s “settled,” works quite the opposite. As philosopher Karl Popper defined it, “The method of science is the method of bold conjectures and ingenious and severe attempts to refute them.”

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European Elections Deepen Divisions in National Capitals Vote for European Parliament became a referendum on countries’ leaders By Laurence Norman in Brussels and Giovanni Legorano in Rome

Posted By on May 27th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/european-elections-deepen-divisions-in-national-capitals-11558960543

The outcome of the weekend’s European Union elections threatened a fresh period of instability in the bloc, with some countries set for early elections and coalition governments in Italy and Germany facing deeper strains.

As final results trickled in Monday, there was relief in Brussels that the vote didn’t yield a broad anti-EU nationalist surge. The Greens performed particularly strongly and pro-European lawmakers are set to form a clear majority in the new European Parliament.

Still, the EU faces continued political volatility and the results in many countries—including the departing Britain—suggested voters remain disillusioned and divided.

“The electorate is crying out for change and is therefore volatile—preferring to back new insurgents rather than the status quo parties that have been around for decades,” said Mark Leonard, founding director of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

On Sunday, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, whose Syriza party was firmly defeated in the EU vote, called snap elections before summer. Austria was already headed for the polls after Chancellor Sebastian Kurz on May 18 dissolved his coalition. On Monday afternoon, Mr. Kurz was toppled by a no-confidence vote in parliament.

Belgium, which held national elections on Sunday, looks set for another protracted period of coalition building, with ethnic nationalist parties surging in Dutch-speaking Flanders, while the left performed strongly in French-speaking Wallonia.

In Germany, the election was a blistering indictment of the two ruling parties. Angela Merkel’s center-right Christian Democratic Union and her left-leaning coalition partner Social Democratic Party both suffered large drops in votes compared with the last European elections in 2014 and the general election of 2017.

The main winner from this erosion wasn’t the stridently nationalist Alternative for Germany—whose share of the vote fell almost 2 percentage points below that of 2017—but the centrist Greens.

The SPD’s dire showing poses the biggest risk to the stability of Ms. Merkel’s government. The party’s relentless shrinkage puts chairwoman Andrea Nahles under growing pressure from grass-roots activists who want her to leave Ms. Merkel’s coalition and reposition the party in opposition.

The absence of a leader-in-waiting with sufficiently broad support, however, could postpone a reckoning for Ms. Nahles—and for the coalition—until after regional elections in Germany’s east in September and October.

In Italy, the elections handed a resounding victory to the nationalist League that reversed a balance of power from last year’s national elections with its coalition partner, the antiestablishment 5 Star Movement.

During campaigning, League leader Matteo Salvini, who is Italy’s interior minister, and members of his party clashed frequently with their 5 Star allies.

Mr. Salvini on Monday discounted, for now, speculation that his strong showing could tempt him to trigger a government crisis leading to fresh national elections.

“We won’t use this [electoral] support to settle accounts internally,” he said. “Our government allies are friends with whom from tomorrow we go back to work serenely.”

Observers say the results will likely help Mr. Salvini dominate the government. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz ousted in no-confidence vote

Posted By on May 27th, 2019

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/05/27/austrian-chancellor-sebastian-kurz-ousted-no-confidence-vote/

Sebastian Kurz was voted out of office as Austrian chancellor on Monday, less than 24 hours after his party won a resounding victory in the European elections.

Mr Kurz’s government lost a confidence vote in the Austrian parliament following the collapse of his coalition with the far-Right Freedom Party (FPÖ).

President Alexander Van der Bellen will now appoint a caretaker government until elections scheduled for September.

Mr Kurz is the first postwar Austrian chancellor to lose a confidence vote, but he is unlikely to be out of power for long.

His Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) will be strong favourites in September, after coming first with a projected 35 per cent in the European elections, more than 10 per cent clear of their closest rivals.

Hailed as the future of European conservatism when he became the world’s youngest leader in 2017 at the age of 31, Mr Kurz was always going to be vulnerable after ending his coalition with the Freedom Party over a corruption scandal just over a week ago.

He attempted to continue at the head of a minority government, but his former coalition partners joined forces with the centre-Left Social Democrats (SPÖ) to vote him out of power.

Mr Kurz accused his opponents of “playing revenge games” ahead of the vote, and warned: “At the end of the day the people will decide”.

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SA’s Marshall Plan for Gender Activism Stuart Lindsay

Posted By on May 27th, 2019

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2019/05/sas-marshall-plan-for-gen

“The gender fluidity cult’s foundation is sheer irrationality after all; gender is to be seen, they contend, as a “social construct” and this notwithstanding that they know what we all know: that every cell in every one of our bodies betokens that we are indisputably forever male or forever female from the moment of our conception (save perhaps for the rare, rare, phenomenon of hermaphroditism).  If such people can think themselves out of the basic structure of biological reality perhaps they were able to think their way out of the common sense of propriety involved in staging such an event in the presence of and focussed upon the minds of infant children.”

Steven Marshall is both Premier and Arts Minister of South Australia, so if anyone bears responsibility for the latest manifestation of the Safe Schools attack upon childhood innocence in this Liberal-governed state it is, I am sorry to say, him. We are in the middle of a bi-annual event here in Adelaide called the DreamBIG Children’s Festival, backed the Liberal government. It is jointly funded by the Arts ministry and the Education ministry and used to be called the “Come-Out” festival but that spoke too indiscreetly, I suppose, about the activist purposes of the bureaucrats who organised it.

This year, and specifically marketed to children under the age of eight, the programme included something called Drag Queen Story Time.

Yes, I am telling you the truth. It was staged in the august State Library in the heart of Adelaide. I went along, with intentions I will describe in a moment, and witnessed two of the performances. They involved two middle-aged men dressed as frumpy fairy tale Queens (one with devil’s horns) reading stories — haltingly and without charm or any kind of narrative tension — to pre-school and very young school-age children in the presence of their parents.

At the end of each session an opportunity was provided for the kiddies to meet and pose for photographs with the drag queens. Again, I am sorry to say I am telling you the truth. The photographs I took — one of which is at left — tell you I am. (Apologies, too, for my substandard lensmanship. Below, if you scroll all the way down, you’ll see another example of drag queen story time time, this one from the US. ‘The hips on the queen go swish, swish, swish‘. Why is it we adopt bad ideas and trends so readily from across the Pacific?)

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The American Revolution’s Starving, Barefoot, Heroic Troops By Jay Cost

Posted By on May 27th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/remember-soldiers-american-revolution/

Our young nation was very poor, the war was very expensive, and Congress and the states wanted everyone else to pay.

Memorial Day is a day to remember and appreciate the ultimate sacrifice given by men and women who have served in our armed forces. Far and away, the Civil War was the deadliest conflict in American history. After that is World War II.

Way down the list is the American Revolutionary War, with “only” 4,435 battle deaths, according to Veterans Affairs. Though few in number, these soldiers bore a unique sacrifice — for, unlike other soldiers throughout our history, these heroes had to fight off the would-be British conquerors without sufficient support from their own government.

On an absolute scale, the American Revolution was a relatively modest affair. However, judged in light of the tiny American economy of 1776–83, it was an enormous undertaking. As a percentage of GDP, the Revolutionary War cost the United States about as much as World War I did (and remember that, before the absolutely massive conflict of World War II, World War I was known as “the Great War”).

For such large-scale conflicts, financing usually comes through issuing public debt. It is just too much to pay via taxation on the citizenry. And indeed, if you look through the government propaganda of World Wars I and II, you will see a relentless emphasis on purchasing war bonds. The problem for America in the 1770s and 1780s was that debt financing was largely unavailable. Domestic wealth was tied up in land, which cannot be quickly turned into cash. And while foreign governments did loan some money to us, none of them lent enough to finance the entire conflict.

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Climate Is Unpredictable, Weather You Like It or Not! . By Frank Miele

Posted By on May 27th, 2019

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/05/27/climate_is_unpredictable_weather_you_like_it_or_not_140411.html

They say all politics is local; so is all weather.

So on behalf of my fellow Westerners, I have to ask: What’s up with all this cold weather? It may not be a crisis yet, but in the two weeks leading up to Memorial Day — the traditional start of summer activities — much of the country has been donning sweaters and turning up the heat.

I know, I know. Weather is not climate, and you can’t generalize from anecdotal evidence of localized weather conditions to a unified theory of thermal dynamics, but isn’t that exactly what the climate alarmists have done, on a larger scale, for the past 25 years?

Haven’t we been brainwashed by political scientists (oops! I mean climate scientists!) to believe that the Earth is on the verge of turning into “Venus: The Sequel.” You know, catastrophic overheating from greenhouse gases, rising oceans, death and mayhem — oh, yeah, and the world ending in 12 years if we don’t ban carbon or something.

But despite the best fake climate data and the scariest computer simulations, Mother Nature doesn’t seem to be cooperating with the global-warming scare scenario. Sure, there is warm weather in other parts of the country, but here in Montana we have been desperately seeking spring. Instead of enjoying our beautiful outdoors, we are stuck in perennial chill mode, shivering under our blankets and wondering if it will snow in late May.

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Noel Malcolm reviews “The Forsaken: From the Great Depression to the Gulags” by Tim Tzouliadis

Posted By on May 27th, 2019

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/non_fictionreviews/3556836/The-Forsaken-Americans-in-Stalins-gulags.html

Russia in the late 1930s was not a good place to be. People really did sleep in their outdoor clothes, with a ready-packed suitcase at their bedside, waiting for the NKVD (the secret police) to knock on the door.

You could be arrested and killed for a joke, for a factual remark about a food shortage, or for failing to denounce other people, including your immediate family. And you could also be arrested and killed for nothing at all, since the NKVD, like other elements of the Soviet economy, had productivity targets to meet.

Anyone who was different was suspect.

In 1937, 53 members of a deaf-mutes’ association were arrested in Leningrad, and 33 were sentenced to death for conducting ‘conspiracies’ in sign-language. Stamp-collectors, who had shown an unhealthy interest in letters from foreign countries, were hunted down, and so too were people who had learnt Esperanto.

If life was as bad as this for Russians, just think how bad it must have been for people who were trying to live like Russians, but were in fact Americans.

Not tourists, businessmen, or diplomats; no, these were just ordinary working people, who had moved to the Soviet Union. Their total number is unknown, but it must have run to several thousands, and their story – the subject of Tim Tzouliadis’s gripping and important book – has never been fully told before.

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PARDONS FOR MEMORIAL DAY?

Posted By on May 27th, 2019

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/pardons-for-memorial-day/90707/

So much hogwash has been written about the President’s pardon power that it’s hard to know where to start. One place, though, would be the New York Times’ editorial on President Trump’s use of pardons in military cases. It ran last week under a headline suggesting Mr. Trump’s general approach to pardons “may be lawful, but it is in no way normal.” In other words — blam! — before the Times even gets down to business it runs off the rails.

That’s because there is no “normal” way to pardon. If the Framers had wanted to specify norms for using the pardon, they were perfectly capable of doing so. They did that for, say, treason. They laid down so many restrictions in respect of the use of the treason charge that your average prosecutor won’t go near it. When it comes to the pardon, though, the only restrictions are that it can’t be used in cases of impeachment and is allowed only for federal offenses.

Other than that, the president doesn’t have to check with the Justice Department or the Senate. He doesn’t even have to clear his pardons with the New York Times. He could empty the federal prisons, if he wanted, just to save money. He can pardon members of his family (President Clinton pardoned his own brother). He doesn’t have to say why. He can lay conditions (President Kennedy freed Tomoya Kawakita on the condition he leave forever the country he betrayed).

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Colluders, Obstructionists, Leakers, and Other Projectionists By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on May 27th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/05/26/colluders-obstructionists-leakers-and-other-projectionists/

Before the defeat of Hillary Clinton, the idea that the Russians or anyone else could warp or tamper with our elections in any serious manner was laughed off by President Obama. “There is no serious person out there who would suggest that you could even rig America’s elections,” Obama said in the weeks leading up to the 2016 election.

Obama was anxious that the sure-to-be-sore-loser Trump would not blame his defeat on voting impropriety in a fashion that might call into question Clinton’s victory. After Clinton’s stunning defeat, Russian “collusion”—thanks initially to efforts by Obama holdover Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates to go after Michael Flynn and the successful attempts of the CIA and FBI to seed the bogus Steele dossier among the government elite—became a club to destroy the incoming Trump Administration.

Colluders, Inc.
How ironic that Russian “collusion” was used as a preemptive charge from those who actually had colluded with Russians for all sorts for financial and careerist advantages.

The entire so-called Uranium One caper had hinged on ex-President Bill Clinton, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and their Clinton Foundation uniting with Russian or Russian-affiliated oligarchs to ease restrictions on the sale of North American uranium reserves to a Russian company with close ties to Vladimir Putin. Coincidentally what followed were massive donations from concerned Russian parties to the foundation, as well as a $500,000 honorarium to Bill Clinton for a brief Moscow speech. Note that no more money has been forthcoming from Russia to either of the Clintons or their foundation.

Had Donald Trump been caught, as President Obama was in Seoul in March 2012, on a hot mic assuring the Russians that he would be more flexible with Russia after the 2020 election (“On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved—but it’s important for him [Putin] to give me space”) he would likely now be facing real impeachment charges.