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Turkey: Erdoğan Fishing for Trouble in the Aegean Sea – Again by Burak Bekdil

Posted By on July 5th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18652/turkey-erdogan-aegean-trouble

Various opinion polls put [Erdoğan’s] popularity at less than 30%, compared to the 52% with which he won re-election in 2018.

Many Turks, although starving, are nevertheless proud that they have a leader who can confront the “infidel West” — including their traditional rival and neighbor, Greece. It is precisely this feeling that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, whose popularity has been plummeting in recent months, sees as a national weakness to stoke.

What should Erdoğan do, therefore, as former loyalists of his powerful Justice and Development Party (AKP) seem to be deserting en masse?

Erdoğan has already set the stage for the new episode of his theatrical extravaganza. His coalition partner, ultranationalist leader Devlet Bahçeli, claimed that U.S. military bases in Greece pose a “direct threat” to Turkish security… How could a peaceable NATO ally, Greece, pose a direct threat to another NATO member, Turkey, home to US military bases? Are US bases in Turkey a direct threat to Turkey?

Erdoğan did not mention that the same treaties also ban the militarization of Turkey’s islands in the Aegean Sea and Turkey’s Dardanelles and Bosporus straits.

Fortunately, all these theatrics are about barking, not biting. Turkey does not have the political, military or economic might to invade a member of the EU… Turkey invading Greece is not Russia invading Ukraine. Erdoğan is a gambler who has used the same tactic for domestic consumption many times before. The ruse never ended up in a war across the Aegean. This one is no exception: Erdoğan, whatever he is, is not suicidal.

Turkey is a year away from presidential and parliamentary elections. Many Turks are starving. Literally. Their per capita GDP of around $9,500 has crushed many of them under a triple-digit inflation rate and a fast-depreciating national currency, while independent economists warn that this may be only the beginning of worse torment in a country of 84 million people, excluding 9 million refugees and migrants.

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Biden’s Middle East Follies His hosts may be wondering, “With friends like these…” Donald Losman

Posted By on July 5th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/07/bidens-middle-east-follies-donald-losman/

From his first day in office, President Biden’s Middle East policies, a seemingly “win them over with kindness” approach, have been misguided and self-defeating. From the start, Biden strongly sought a new Iran deal, as if financially rewarding Iran for its signature would ensure its compliance. Indeed, one basis for the first deal was Iran providing its nuclear history—Iran lied. Apparently we did not learn. During the deal’s tenure Iran consistently cheated, obstructed inspections, and ramped up its ballistic missile program, which was foolishly left out of the first agreement. Iranian efforts to bring uranium enrichment to weapons-grade has continued, supposedly due to Trump’s withdrawal from the deal—talk about excuses! The mullahs are clearly determined. Over the past two years the International Atomic Energy Agency has regularly complained about Iranian non-compliance, finally issuing a resolution in early June condemning Iran after traces of uranium were found at three undeclared locations.

But isn’t it strange, or very convenient, that a country whose self-declaration is peaceful use of nuclear materials would then block 27 inspection cameras. To bring Iran to the now-interrupted negotiating table, the Administration accepted its demand that we cannot be in the negotiating room, which should have stopped everything then and there.  Instead we huddled outside while Putin’s Russia represented us! Further sweetening things, the Administration earlier rescinded the foreign terrorist organization designation of the Houthis, a group armed and abetted by Iran, one which occasionally lobs missiles into Saudi Arabia or the UAE when it takes a respite from augmenting the Yemen civil war. Iran now requires that sanctions against its Revolutionary Guards be dropped before any negotiations proceed. Congress apparently has had enough, resisting this almost silly ceremonial demand, while the Administration currently tries to work around this latest obstruction. There is a clear pattern —the more we overlook and the more we give, the more intransigent Iran becomes. Alas, Robert Malley, previously Obama’s point man, and now Biden’s, has pursued this holy grail mission with enormous, but blind passion. Unfortunately, his dream is likely to become the world’s nightmare.

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After the Oslo Bloodbath Oslo warns gays not to inflame terrorists further by marching – then permits terrorists to build a mosque. Bruce Bawer

Posted By on July 5th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/07/after-oslo-bloodbath-bruce-bawer-0/

On the night of Friday, June 24, a 42-year-old Muslim named Zaniar Matapour shot up the city’s largest gay bar, London Pub, and the tiny watering hole next door, Per På Hjørnet (Per on the Corner). He killed two and wounded twenty-one. But even though Matapour kicked off his evening of mayhem by shouting “Allahu akbar” and was later shown to belong to a radical Islamic clique, don’t think for a moment that his offense had anything to do with Islam. And even though he committed his dastardly deeds on the eve of Oslo’s scheduled Pride parade, a week after his buddy Arfan Bhatti, a convicted terrorist, posted a note on Facebook calling for the murder of gays, don’t dare suggest that the crime might have been rooted in Islam’s deadly view of homosexuality.

After all, as I reported here on June 27, no less eminent a figure than Masud Gharahkhani, the 39-year-old president of the Norwegian parliament who is (after the king) the country’s highest-ranking person – and who, like Matapour, came to Norway as a child refugee from Iran – was quick to deny that this was an Islamic act. “Hate is hate,” Gharahkhani told a reporter for VG, “and has nothing to do with religion or background.” (Why, then, did his parents flee Iran after it became an Islamic theocracy?)

Norway’s leading Muslim organizations agreed with Gharahkhani. The Islamic Council (IRN), which for years refused to take a position on punishing homosexuality with the death penalty,  condemned the atrocity and denied any Islamic connection. Ditto Senaid Kobilica of the Muslim Dialogue Network (MDN). Ditto, too, Fahad Qureshi of IslamNet, who asserted, in total contravention of the Koran, that “Islam does not permit taking the life of an innocent person, no matter gay or straight.”

You had to go into the archives to discover just how hypocritical Qureshi’s statement was. He’s on the record as saying that all Muslims support the death penalty for gays. (For obvious strategic reasons, he’s since announced that gays who abstain from sex need not be executed.)  As for Kobilica and IRN, get a load of what happened in 2009 when Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the world’s leading Islamic scholar, praised the Holocaust. Asked for a comment, IRN’s then Secretary General, Sultan Shoaib, referred reporters to Kobilica, who was then IRN’s head. Kobilica, in turn, passed the buck to the Islamic Association’s Basim Ghozlan, who declined to comment on Qaradawi’s remark because, he said, it was a “political statement.”

So the same Muslim leaders who now pretend to be appalled by two murders chose to stay mum on the Shoah.

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Does Iran Have a Hit Team in the US? Former U.S. and Iranian intelligence officials tell a haunting tale. Kenneth R. Timmerman

Posted By on July 5th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/07/does-iran-have-hit-team-us-kenneth-r-timmerman/

Iran’s Quds Force, which the Biden White House has reportedly discussed removing from the terrorism list, has more than a hundred active agents operating inside the United States, according to former U.S. and Iranian intelligence officials.

Their current goal is to penetrate the security perimeter surrounding former President Donald J. Trump and to kill him.

The Iranian plot is not a secret: Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamene’I, boasted in January that Iranian agents inside the United States were tracking the former president’s movements, and could penetrate the security systems protecting him.

That boast appeared in the form of a chilling video, posted to the Khamenei’s website and to Twitter by regime sympathizers and intelligence analysts, showing Quds Force operatives targeting the president on the tee of his West Palm Beach golf club. It ended with a photograph of Qassem Soleymani, the Quds Force commander killed by a U.S. drone strike outside the Baghdad airport on Jan. 2, 2020, and a black screen: “Revenge is Definite.”

They have also threatened to kill former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and CIA Director Gina Haspel in retaliation for their role in the drone strike that killed Suleymani and 17 others on Route Irish at the Baghdad airport. “Ironically, that’s the same road where Suleymani had killed dozens of Americans,” said John Maguire, a former CIA deputy station chief who worked in Iraq after the 2003 invasion.

U.S. intelligence agencies, including the FBI, have known for over a decade about Iranian programs to recruit and train Quds Force operatives – preferably non-Iranians – capable of penetrating Western countries.

“The Quds Force started creating this capability in Baghdad in 2004,” Maguire said. “They wanted educated candidates; ideally, candidates with foreign travel documents and experience traveling in the West. The Quds Force organized, controlled, trained and supported this capability.”

The prospective agents learned how to make improvised explosive devices out of common materials, how to identify concealed fire positions for a sniper attack, and how to conduct surveillance and counter-surveillance, among other operational skills. Many went to Lebanon for a full year’s paramilitary and martial arts training with Hezbollah.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Confirmed Again: The Green Agenda Is Taking Us Backward

Posted By on July 5th, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/07/05/confirmed-again-the-green-agenda-is-taking-us-backward/

All the cool kids say humanity has to abandon fossil fuels and rely on wind and solar for our electricity and battery-operated cars (which remind us of the toys we played with as kids) to get around. It’s the future, they say. So why does it seem more like the past?

Let’s begin with a fascinating “fer instance”: 

“Classic Cars,” says a Motorious headline from late last  month, “Are Greener Than Electric Vehicles.” The story below the headline refers to a study from ​​British insurance company Footman James, which is “refreshing,” says the article’s author, “because it doesn’t talk emotional rage, sticking  instead to the inconvenient facts.”

And what are those facts?

“A classic car notching up the national average of 1,200 miles emits 563kg of CO2 a year. By comparison, a new Volkswagen Golf has a carbon footprint of 6.8 tonnes of CO2 the day it leaves the factory, a figure it would take our average classic 12 years to match.”
“For an electric vehicle, the footprint is even greater. A battery-powered Polestar 2 creates 26 tonnes of CO2 during its production, emissions that would take a typical classic more than 46 years to achieve. By which time, the EV’s cutting-edge lithium-ion battery would have long since lost its ability to hold a charge and been consigned to the nearest recycling facility.”
“Footman James rightly points out that within that 46-year period, the Polestar 2’s battery will need to be replaced, maybe even swapped for a new one twice or more,” writes Steven Symes for Motorious. “And what happens to the battery? Can it really be recycled? The answer for now is no. Meanwhile, the classic car keeps running without contributing significantly to a landfill. But you should feel bad for driving such an awful pollution machine, or so we’re told.”

The narrative says EVs are greener but that’s because the true-believers “just look at tailpipe emissions, behaving as if that’s everything in the equation. They don’t consider pollution generated by the manufacturing process,” says Symes.

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The sinister strategy of the progressives running the Democrat party By George Duran

Posted By on July 4th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/07/the_sinister_strategy_of_the_progressives_running_the_democrat_partu.html

“Democrats are using a Leninist strategy to overthrow a government and install socialism.  By creating as much chaos, strife, terror, and pain on a populace and blaming these problems on the existing government, people will then be more susceptible to believing the lie that socialism will restore order, peace, and stability — enabling them to seize power and control. ”

Biden, leftist progressive Democrats, and legacy and social media news have all promoted a psychotic and psychopathological hatred of Trump, Republicans, conservatives, Christians, capitalism, our Constitution, and anyone who opposes or questions their policies.

Election improprieties were ignored and are not covered, yet they oppose commonsense election integrity laws such as requiring an ID to vote, and they call for “common sense gun laws.”

Our legacy news media spread Democrat talking points, propaganda, and lies.  For years they touted the Hillary-Clinton-paid-for, fake, and salacious Steele Dossier as true.  They have said “inflation will be transitory, high gas prices are not our fault, and our economy is much better under Biden.”  They have claimed that “America does not have open borders” as we see thousands freely crossing.  They say “crime is down” while at the same time releasing violent criminals back into our neighborhoods.  They ignore and not report contrary FBI reports documenting the tremendous increase in violent crime in Democrat-run cities.

Meanwhile, our schools are indoctrinating 1st- to 3rd-graders with hateful identity politics, promoting socialism as good and capitalism as bad, touting racist Critical Race Theory as anti-racist, preaching that Marxist “equity” theory needs to replace our foundation of “equality,” touting transgenderism and pedophilia as normal, and encouraging “sex change” surgery and puberty-blockers on our children.

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Who’s In Charge? Column: Biden’s drift and weakness Matthew Continetti

Posted By on July 4th, 2022

https://freebeacon.com/columns/whos-in-charge/

“Which way am I going?” asked President Biden when he ended Thursday’s press conference at the NATO summit in Madrid. He began to exit stage right, before someone redirected him toward stage left. This combination of ignorance and indecision was not new. Throughout his 18 months as president, Biden has been confused, uncertain, sluggish. He behaves as if he is guided by unseen forces. He moves on a course set by hidden captains.

People notice. Every time I speak to a conservative audience, I am asked who is really in charge in the White House. My answer has been that the president is in command. After all, institutions take on the character of their leaders. If all the White House has to offer is excuses, if decisions are made either slowly or randomly, if the communications team and the president and vice president seem to live on different planets, if incompetence and mismanagement appear throughout the government, it is because the chief executive allows it. No conspiracy is required to explain the ineptitude. This is Joe Biden we are talking about.

Lately, though, I have been having second thoughts. Not that Barack Obama or Ron Klain or Dr. Jill are running the show in secret. What I have been wondering, instead, is whether anyone is leading the government at all. There is no power, either overt or covert, in or behind the throne. The throne is empty.

Think of the economy, the border, and Ukraine. From time to time, Biden addresses these issues. He may even answer questions about them. The White House sends out press releases describing its latest initiatives. Vice President Harris or the second gentleman pops up somewhere to talk about all the good she and he are doing.

Yet each of these elements—the president, his staff, his spokesperson, his vice president, his policy—comes across as disconnected, discombobulated, as if each inhabits a separate sphere of activity. Whether because of Biden’s age, or his weekend trips to Delaware, or years of remote work, or lower-level staff turnover, or a painstakingly slow decision-making process, or ideological stubbornness, or a lack of a strategic plan, this administration drifts from crisis to crisis, and from one bad headline to the next. And nothing improves.

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The Abolitionist Aftermath of the American Revolution By Charles Hilu

Posted By on July 4th, 2022

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/07/the-abolitionist-aftermath-of-the-american-revolution/

The presence of slavery at the Founding is America’s great stain, but the Revolution was the beginning of its erasure.

‘I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”

Those were the words of John Adams in a letter to his wife, Abigail, after the Continental Congress’s approval of the Declaration of Independence. In predicting that America’s Independence Day would be celebrated in epochs succeeding his, he was mostly correct, but he was wrong on a couple of things. First, he was referring to July 2, when the Congress voted on the resolution on independence, not July 4, the day of its signing that we celebrate instead. Second, while most people in the country give proper due to the heroism of the Founding Fathers, some choose to denounce them. Their chief complaint is that Adams and the others did not do enough to outlaw slavery from the country’s outset. This grievance is pretty solid. Slavery is a moral abomination, and our country’s dereliction is our original sin.

But to say that the American Revolution was a mistake because of it, as did “3 Reasons the American Revolution Was a Mistake,” a notorious piece from Vox, is ill-advised and discounts the abolitionist fire already burning in the nascent nation. A main thrust of the argument is that America should have remained under British tyranny because the Crown outlawed slavery throughout the Empire in 1833, more than 30 years before the 13th Amendment in the United States. The factual basis for the claim is true, technically — but certain American states made tremendous gains for abolition in the immediate aftermath of the Revolution, which set the course for the country as a whole in the clash yet to come.

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Stop the War on Doctors By Pierre Kory

Posted By on July 4th, 2022

https://www.realclearhealth.com/articles/2022/07/02/stop_the_war_on_doctors_111360.html

Anyone in America who deviates from the group-think enforced by public health bureaucrats runs the risk of cancellation. Politicians, parents, comedians, teachers – now they’re even coming for the doctors.

As a lung and ICU specialist, I have practiced medicine for 14 years and successfully treated more than 450 patients during the pandemic. Long before anyone had heard of Covid-19, I was studying and implementing cutting-edge methods to treat critically ill patients. I’m the Senior Editor of a best-selling textbook in my field, now in its second edition, which has been translated into seven languages.

For my efforts, I now find myself on the receiving end of “disciplinary sanctions” from the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM), who sent me a letter threatening “suspension or revocation of board certification.”

The “sin” threatening to end my medical career was my unwillingness to go along with Fauci’s monolithic vaccines-above-all-else strategy. The failure of this approach is plain to see, and anyone with an ounce of curiosity knows there are many methods of treating the virus.

Ivermectin is one of them. This cheap, readily available generic medicine is approved by the FDA for certain uses in humans – but not for Covid-19, despite 85 controlled trials from around the world demonstrating its effectiveness. In Brazil, the largest study to date found a reduction in Covid mortality rate of 70%. In India, the second most populated country in the world, the drug has been credited with near eradication of the disease. Studies attempting to discredit ivermectin have been debunked again and again.

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The Establishment Is Running Out of Cannon Fodder for Its Woke Military Kurt Schlichter

Posted By on July 4th, 2022

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2022/07/04/the-establishment-is-running-out-of-cannon-fodder-for-its-woke-military-n2609664

Jump out of a perfectly good airplane, charge a machine gun nest, be stationed at Ft. Irwin – these are just three of the myriad miseries American patriots are willing to endure to defend our country. But today’s military is asking too much of our young people, as evidenced by the crashing recruitment rates that threaten to deplete a military already running short of soldiers. Have our young people suddenly turned from heroes to zeros, ne’er-do-well heirs of the brave warriors who confronted the forces of tyrannical gun control at Lexington and Concord?

No. The kids are alright. The problems lie echelons above.

Here’s a little leadership secret that’s actually not a secret at all to competent commissioned and non-commissioned officers. There are no bad cohorts of soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, Coast Guardsmen and whatever the hell Space Force people are called. There are only bad leaders, and we have the worst military leadership in American history, starting right at the top with a commander-in-chief who is less like Ike than Beavis.

In fact – and this rips me up to say because I would not trade my about 27 years in the Army for anything – the reluctance to enlist of the traditional, normal Americans who are most likely to serve and who are the most desirable for service, is entirely rational. You do have an obligation to serve your country in some way, the military being the highest and best way for those who are able. But you do not have an obligation to do so if your life is going to be squandered by a leadership whose strategies are a disaster, whose priorities are not the defense of this country but some sort of bizarre pan-global progressive ideology, and who will use you as a guinea pig in freakish and morally bankrupt social experiments, all while failing to fulfill even the most basic obligations of the leaders to the led. Our military today is failing to meet its recruiting goals because it has failed to earn the trust of normal Americans who would otherwise be inclined to raise their hands.