Saturday, December 4, 2021

Iran walks back all prior concessions in nuclear proposals - Reuters

 

​ by Reuters

Iran continues to accelerate its nuclear program in provocative ways and China and Russia were taken aback at how far Iran had walked back its proposals in last week's talks in Vienna.

 

Deputy Secretary General of the European External Action Service (EEAS) Enrique Mora and Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani wait for the start of a meeting of the JCPOA Joint Commission in Vienna, Austria, December 3, 2021. (photo credit: EU DELEGATION IN VIENNA/HANDOUT VIA REUTERS)
Deputy Secretary General of the European External Action Service (EEAS) Enrique Mora and Iran's chief nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani wait for the start of a meeting of the JCPOA Joint Commission in Vienna, Austria, December 3, 2021.
(photo credit: EU DELEGATION IN VIENNA/HANDOUT VIA REUTERS)

Iran walked back any compromises it made in previous talks on reviving the 2015 nuclear deal, pocketed all compromises made by others and asked for more during indirect US-Iranian talks this week, a senior State Department official said on Saturday.
 
Iran continues to accelerate its nuclear program in provocative ways and China and Russia were taken aback at how far Iran had walked back its proposals in last week's talks in Vienna, the official told reporters on condition of anonymity.
 
The indirect US-Iranian talks on saving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal broke off on Friday as European officials voiced dismay on at sweeping demands by Iran's new, hardline government.
 
The seventh round of talks in Vienna is the first with delegates sent by Iran's anti-Western President Ebrahim Raisi on how to resuscitate the agreement under which Iran limited its nuclear program in return for relief from economic sanctions.
 
Iran came "with proposals that walked back anything - any of the compromises Iran had floated here in the six rounds of talks, pocket all of the compromises that others, and the US in particular, had made, and then asked for more," the senior US official said.
 
A general view of Palais Coburg, the site of a meeting of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in Vienna, Austria, November 29, 2021. (credit: REUTERS/LISI NIESNER) 
A general view of Palais Coburg, the site of a meeting of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in Vienna, Austria, November 29, 2021. (credit: REUTERS/LISI NIESNER)
 
The US official told reporters he did not know when the next round of talks would resume - other officials had said they would reconvene next week - and he stressed the date was less important than Iran's willingness to negotiate seriously.
 

Reuters

Source: https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/iran-walks-back-all-prior-concessions-in-nuclear-proposals-687838

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Like Obama, Biden Silent on Iran Mullahs Killing Peaceful Protesters - Majid Rafizadeh

 

​ by Majid Rafizadeh

"If the free world wants to stand on the right side of history, they should support the Iranian people who have been fighting for their freedom for the last 43 years."

  • "We call on President Joe Biden, Secretary Antony Blinken, and all members of Congress to stand with the Iranian people. Diplomacy with the world's leading sponsor of terrorism is never going to produce a favorable result that benefits the American people or the Iranian people. Diplomacy with the Islamic Republic was destined to fail from day one." — Iranian Americans for Liberty, reported by Benjamin Weinthal, Jerusalem Post, November 27, 2021.

  • "[W]hen millions of Iranians took to the streets in June of 2009, when they demanded freedom from a cruel regime that threatens the world, when they cried out, 'Are you with us, or are you with them?' – the American president was silent," — Mitt Romney, October 8, 2012.

  • "If the free world wants to stand on the right side of history, they should support the Iranian people who have been fighting for their freedom for the last 43 years. The Iranians need free internet because the regime has already shut down the internet in Isfahan. They want to kill the protesters ...." — Iranian dissident Sheina Vojoudi, Jerusalem Post, November 26, 2021.

  • Will the Biden administration stand with the Iranian people?

Recently, tens of thousands of demonstrators gathered in Isfahan, Iran to criticize the government over a severe water shortage. In response, the regime cut off access to the Internet, and security forces fired shotguns as well as tear gas at the protesters, resulting in deaths and hundreds of injuries. Meanwhile, the Biden administration chooses to be silent in the face of the Iranian regime's bloodshed, human rights violations, and crackdowns. Pictured: Tens of thousands of anti-regime protestors in Isfahan on November 9, 2021. (Photo by Fatmeh Nasr/ISNA/AFP via Getty Images)

The Biden administration appears to be repeating the Obama Administration policy of choosing to be silent in the face of the Iranian regime's bloodshed, human rights violations, and crackdowns that kill and wound peaceful protesters.

Recently, huge numbers of people in the province of Isfahan rose up against the Islamic Republic. Tens of thousands of farmers and other demonstrators poured into the streets and criticized government officials over a severe water shortage. Many were heard chanting, "The people of Isfahan will rather die than give in to disgrace"; "Zayandeh Rud [river] is our undeniable right"; and "We will not go home until we get our water back."

As the regime cut off access to the Internet, security forces fired shotguns as well as tear gas at the protesters, resulting in deaths and hundreds of injuries. As #BloodyFriday began trending on twitter, Mohammad-Reza Mir-Heidari, Isfahan's Chief of Police, threatened "to deal" with protestors.

The organization Iranian-Americans for Liberty has pleaded with the Biden administration to show solidarity with the protesters:

"We call on President Joe Biden, Secretary Antony Blinken, and all members of Congress to stand with the Iranian people. Diplomacy with the world's leading sponsor of terrorism is never going to produce a favorable result that benefits the American people or the Iranian people. Diplomacy with the Islamic Republic was destined to fail from day one."

The Iranian regime does not appear to have a practical solution for the water shortage. It continues to mismanage the economy, spends the country's resources on its proxies and militia groups, and allocates a significant portion of the nation's water to the projects of the regime. "We are not in a position to provide their water needs," the minister of energy admitted in the face of the protests. Instead, the regime has resorted to its usual modus operandi of cracking down with brute force on whoever protests.

Throughout all of this, the Biden Administration stays silent -- just as the Obama Administration did during the 2009 nationwide uprisings in Iran. As Mitt Romney said in 2012:

"[W]hen millions of Iranians took to the streets in June of 2009, when they demanded freedom from a cruel regime that threatens the world, when they cried out, 'Are you with us, or are you with them?' – the American president was silent".

As the non-partisan Council on Foreign Relations described it:

"While Obama initially opted for a muted response, the Iranian regime's violent crackdown of opposition supporters complicated his administration's attempt to balance outreach with its defense of human rights."

The latest protests are not limited to farmers. In recent weeks, retirees and pensioners have staged more than a dozen protests, each spanning multiple cities. The most recent of these protests adopted slogans such as, "We have seen no justice; we will not vote anymore."

Karmel Melamed, an Iranian-American journalist and commentator, posted on Twitter:

"Horrific images of my compatriots in the Iranian city of Isfahan being slaughtered by ruthless Ayatollah regime's thugs & security apparatus for peacefully protesting against the regime! This older woman was shot in cold blood on the streets. Are you seeing this @StateDept?"

Masih Alinejad, an activist and Iranian-American journalist whom the Iranian regime plotted to kidnap from New York, tweeted:

"This is what happening in Iran right now. People took to the streets in Isfahan for a peaceful protest but they are being violently suppressed by the regime. West is busy getting a nuclear deal. You must warn the Islamic Republic that there will be consequences for such brutality."

And Sheina Vojoudi, an Iranian dissident, echoed what many Iranians believe as she told the Jerusalem Post:

"Iranians from other cities have announced that they will protest to support the people of Isfahan. Now we Iranians know exactly that the enemy of our nation has occupied our country since 1979 and we must liberate our country. This is a sure thing that will happen very soon. If the free world wants to stand on the right side of history, they should support the Iranian people who have been fighting for their freedom for the last 43 years. The Iranians need free internet because the regime has already shut down the internet in Isfahan. They want to kill the protesters like in November 2019 and that must be stopped. Soon Khuzestan, Yazd, and other cities will also come to the streets and they will face the same danger."

Will the Biden administration stand with the Iranian people? By being silent, the Biden administration is empowering, emboldening, and validating the ruling mullahs' human rights violations and brutal suppression of many people in Iran.

 

Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a business strategist and advisor, Harvard-educated scholar, political scientist, board member of Harvard International Review, and president of the International American Council on the Middle East. He has authored several books on Islam and US foreign policy. He can be reached at Dr.Rafizadeh@Post.Harvard.Edu

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17986/iran-killing-protesters

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Explosion at Natanz nuclear facility - Arutz Sheva Staff

 

​ by Arutz Sheva Staff

UAV was shot down above nuclear facility, Iranian source says.

 

Damage at Iran's Natanz nuclear facility
Damage at Iran's Natanz nuclear facility
Reuters

An explosion was heard at the Natanz nuclear facility heard Saturday night, the Iranian Student News Agency reported.

According to Sputnik, the blast has not yet been confirmed by officials.

Fars reported that an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) was shot down above the Natanz facility. According to that report, the Iranian air defense systems were activated in order to defend against a target southeast of the nuclear facility.

According to an Iranian report, the explosion occurred 20 kilometers away from the facility.

Maariv quoted Iranian media as saying that the Iranian Air Force conducted a test in order to examine its response time for attacks on Natanz.

The explosion occurred as talks on the renewal of a nuclear deal between Iran and global powers continue.

Reuters quoted a student news agency as saying that the explosion had been heard in the sky above the town of Natanz, but noted that official confirmation has not yet been issued.

"Local sources have reported hearing a large explosion in the Natanz sky. No official source has yet confirmed or denied the report," websites, including Faraunews, quoted the Daneshju (Student) News Agency as reporting.

An April explosion at the Natanz facility reportedly destroyed as much as 90% of the facility's centrifuges. Intelligence officials told The New York Times that the resulting damage would take nine months to repair.

 

Arutz Sheva Staff 

Source: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/318077

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UN adopts three resolutions condemning Israel, ignores Jewish ties to Temple Mount - JNS

​ by JNS

Since 2015, the U.N. General Assembly has passed 115 resolutions condemning Israel and only 45 against other countries.

 

A wide view of the 30th plenary meeting of the General Assembly. Credit: 
UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe
A wide view of the 30th plenary meeting of the General Assembly. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

The U.N. General Assembly passed three resolutions this week that targeted Israel, which brings the total to 14 resolutions being adopted in the next month that single out the Jewish state.

“The U.N’s assault on Israel with a torrent of one-sided resolutions is surreal,” said UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer after the three resolutions were adopted on Wednesday. “It’s absurd that in the year 2021, out of some 20 U.N. General Assembly resolutions that criticize countries, 70 percent are focused on one single country—Israel. What drives these lopsided condemnations is a powerful political agenda to demonize the Jewish state.”

One of the resolutions from Wednesday refers to the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site, only by its Muslim name, “Haram al-Sharif.” Another resolution solely puts the blame on Israel for the lack of peace in the Middle East and makes no mention of terrorist attacks and human-rights violations by the Palestinian Authority, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

The resolutions were adopted two days after the United Nations held its annual “International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People” on Nov. 29.

Neuer said France, Germany, Sweden and other European Union states are expected to support almost all of the 14 resolutions against Israel.

He added that “the same European nations have failed to introduce a single UNGA resolution on the human-rights situation in China, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Turkey, Pakistan, Vietnam, Algeria or on 170 other countries. Where’s the supposed E.U. concern for international law and human rights?”

UN Watch recently launched a detailed database that documents the U.N.’s bias against Israel. It revealed that since 2015, the General Assembly has passed 115 resolutions condemning Israel and only 45 against other countries.

The Conference of Presidents condemned the U.N. resolution omitting the Temple Mount designation.

“We are deeply disturbed by the deliberate and offensive omission of the ‘Temple Mount’ designation in the ‘Jerusalem resolution,’ passed by the United Nations General Assembly, which effectively denies both Jewish and Christian connection to one of the most sacred sites for all three faith communities,” said Dianne Lob, chair; William Daroff, CEO; and Malcolm Hoenlein, vice chair of the Conference of Presidents.

They emphasized that “the vote sets a dangerous moral precedent that is both historically inaccurate and detracts from critical efforts to promote inclusivity and peace in the region. We welcome the Biden administration and the governments of Australia, Canada, Hungary, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru and Palau for rejecting this shameful and false resolution, and call upon other nations to oppose resolutions that unfairly single out and condemn Israel while needlessly exacerbate political tensions.”

 

JNS

Source: https://www.jns.org/un-adopts-three-resolutions-condemning-israel-ignores-jewish-ties-to-temple-mount/

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The National Endowment for the Humanities Spends $250K to Fund a 1619 Project for Israel - Daniel Greenfield

 

​ by Daniel Greenfield

“To say that Jews were subject to restrictions that would not allow them to prosper and live in the Middle East is just nonsense.”

 


Last year, Lior Sternfeld and Michelle Campos signed the so-called Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism which argued that calling for the destruction of Israel was not antisemitic.

The signatures of Sternfeld and Campos alongside numerous other anti-Israel academics was unsurprising. Sternfeld had previously signed a petition in support of BDS activists which concluded with the assertion that the signers might refuse to “enter the State of Israel”. He and Campos had also signed another petition accusing the Jewish State of “apartheid”.

More recently, Campos, Sternfeld, and Orit Bashkin had signed on to the Statement on Israel and Palestine in Jewish Studies accusing Israel of engaging in “state violence” against Hamas. In language echoing Soviet propaganda, it denounced Zionism as “ethnonationalist” and “settler colonial” systems of “Jewish supremacy” that led to the “segregation” of “Palestinians”.

Israel, all of it, it asserts, exists on occupied territory, not only from the 1967, but the 1948 War of Independence.

From an academic standpoint, the various professors and graduate students declare that they will support their colleagues who boycott Israel and as scholars to “amplify, and support our Palestinian and other colleagues” and emphasize the “place of Palestine in Jewish Studies”.

With the support of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The NEH is one of the more toxic components of the federal government. While the Trump administration tried to defund it, the Biden administration is using it to push critical race theory into classrooms. But not to leave anyone out, it’s also funding a 1619 Project for Israel.

Sternfeld, Campos, and Bashkin were showered with a nearly $250,000 grant to “reimagine” Jewish life in the Middle East before Zionism. The NEH grant, one of the two largest in Pennsylvania, funds a “large-scale collaborative project to rewrite the histories, narratives, and memories of and by Jews in the Middle East in the 19th-21st centuries.”

“Most history books just want to show that Zionism was the only alternative for Jews living in the Middle East. To say that Jews were subject to restrictions that would not allow them to prosper and live in the Middle East is just nonsense,” Sternfeld contended in a story about the project.

The only nonsense here is Sternfeld, who can’t even enter Iran, insisting that a million Jewish refugees and a thousand years of discrimination are a figment of the imagination.

The NEH would never fund revisionist history that denied that black people were discriminated against during segregation. Why is it funding the same sort of revisionism against Israel?

The three beneficiaries of the NEH’s reappropriation of taxpayer money on their behalf have made little secret of their hostility to the Jewish State.

Lior Sternfeld has described Hamas a “bogeyman”, suggested that Israeli attempts to cut off Hamas “merited digging tunnels” and argued, “Can someone really compare the risk of living anywhere in Israel, to the risk of living anywhere in Gaza?”

Sternfeld slandered Israel as an “apartheid regime” and insisted that through “manipulation” Israelis "came to believe that the entire Middle East genuinely wants to eradicate Israel and the Jews" and for some reason, Israelis "do not believe the Arab leaders when they talk about peace (be it the Arab League peace initiative, or the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leaders". 

Orit Bashkin writes in one review of "discriminatory practices" as being the "building blocks of the meaning of Israeli citizenship" and rants about Israeli efforts to defend against Hamas.

Campos has accused Israelis of racism and repeated antisemitic tropes that the White House and Congress were “easily manipulated” by Israel and sent diplomats who lacked the “will to stand up to Israel”. She falsely claimed that Israel had killed "hundreds of Palestinians–among them militants, yes, but mostly civilians and those just defending their homes and villages".

Academic work does not have to be defined by personal politics, but “Reimagining Jewish Life in the Modern Middle East, 1800 – Present: Culture, Society, and History” from Sternfeld, Campos, and Bashkin, is unlikely to be anything but a grander distillation of anti-zionist revisionist history that falsely insists that Jews lived peacefully under Arab Muslim occupation.

A workshop proposal from Sternfeld co-signed by Campos and Bashkin cheers "groundbreaking studies that view Jewish communities as part of their respective societies" and proposes an attempt to counter the narratives "that lament the end of Jewish existence in the Middle East and the Muslim World".

Sternfeld writes revisionist history about Iran’s Jews without ever having been there. An academic who authored “Iranophobia: The Logic of an Israeli Obsession" even hailed his  "revisionist history of Jews in Iran". Campos similarly tackles Jewish life under the Ottoman Empire. Her work has even been translated into Turkish. And Bashkin writes about Iraqi Jews.

The common theme of anti-zionist revisionist history is that the Jews enjoyed a good life under Muslim rule. They only moved to Israel because the left failed to build its utopian tyranny.

The implicit underlying idea is that had the Arab world undergone a true leftist revolution, Israel would never have existed or even been needed. Instead, Jews, Turks, and Arabs would have all lived happily in a socialist utopia. No matter how thoroughly the reality of the Soviet Union discredited this sort of antisemitism wrapped in utopian garb, leftists can never abandon it.

Rather than some sort of insightful perspective, this just copies and pastes the old Communist arguments against Zionism into an Arab-Muslim context. Not only isn’t this sort of revisionist history new, but its Jewish proponents are just building on the old propaganda of Arab Socialist academics demanding that Jews accept their place in their own nationalist schemes.

All it takes is believing that the Jews were never a people, and never had a nation or a history.

Revisionist history of this sort is padded out with interviews with elderly Jewish refugees from Muslim countries with a fondness for Arabic. The resulting exercises are as hollow as interviews with German Jewish refugees who retain a fondness for Goethe and Berlin cafes.

But what’s old hat in the middle east looks like an exciting new idea in American academia.

Jews, like all minorities, were always oppressed under Muslim rule. While there were periods of greater and lighter persecution, the myth that Sephardi Jews living under Sharia law had it easier was largely a product of Ashkenazi Jewish mythmaking and local appeasement.

While Sternfeld and Bashkin appropriate the history and suffering of Sephardi Jews, both of them carry typical European Ashkenazi last names. Sternfeld even celebrated his NEH cash with “I am beyond verklempt to share the news” in the typical minstrel show comic Yiddishism embraced by anti-Israel activists trying and failing to appropriate Jewishness.

Wondering why Sephardi Jews "vote for right-wing parties", Bashkin agonized, "I often asked myself if I had been born to Iraqi Jewish Israeli parents, what my own political inclinations might have been".

The agenda behind appropriating the Sephardi experience is to justify antisemitic violence against some Jews. Or as Campos writes in a piece on the Hebron massacre of Jewish men, women and children of "the degree to which indigenous Jews lived intimitately within the broader Palestinian community". Jews who had remained behind under Muslim rule were “indigenous” while those who had been expelled and returned to their homeland were not.

Michelle Campos dismisses the brutal murder and mutilation of Jewish men, women, and children of Hebron as "sixty-seven Jews" killed in "countrywide clashes". Behind the slick academic discourse is a dismissal and dehumanization of the Jewish victims of Islamic oppression. Campos, like most revisionist historians, seeks to replace the brutal reality of over a thousand years of oppression with selective fond memories and unfulfilled leftist aspirations.

Lior Sternfeld hailed Jewish participation in Iran’s Islamic revolution in the form of Edna Sabet, born a Jewish woman, who "in the wake of her Muslim husband... joined the Mujahedin".

“Despite her tragic end, her story illustrates another aspect in the complex weave of identities and loyalties that characterized many of those from her generation,” Sternfeld argued.

There are hundreds of thousands of Persian Jews living in Israel, but revisionist historians insist on displacing them for the one Jewish woman who “joined the Mujahedin".

Revisionist history begins by erasing the past even as it insists that it is really reclaiming it. Like the 1619 Project, it seeks a particular vantage point for reframing the ongoing reality while erasing the larger history that doesn’t suit its ideological agenda.

Anti-Israel and anti-Zionist historians erase Jewish history to justify the erasure of Israel.

And like the 1619 Project, the revisionist history here is meant to be injected into schools.

“The book is not just for scholars. We want it to be accessible to high school students, to professors,” Lior Sternfeld contends.

Propaganda is rarely meant for scholars. And this particular brand of propaganda produced by radical anti-Israel leftists is meant to influence the American educational system.

Leftists demand that the United States stop providing military aid to Israel, but they’re happy to accept USAID money for their anti-Israel group and NEH funding for their anti-Israel histories.

 

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center specializing in investigative reporting on the Left and Islamic terrorism.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/12/neh-spends-250k-fund-1619-project-israel-daniel-greenfield/

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Remember The San Bernardino Fourteen - Lloyd Billingsley

 

​ by Lloyd Billingsley

Key collaborator with terrorists Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik gets only probation.

 

 

On December 2, 2015, Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik drove up to the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California, and began firing automatic rifles while still outside on the grounds. The American-born Muslim Farook and the Pakistani-born Malik, then barged inside where a holiday party was in progress.

There Farook and Malik gunned down Robert Adams, Isaac Amianos, Bennetta Betbadal, Harry Bowman, Sierra Clayborn, Juan Espinoza, Aurora Godoy, Shannon Johnson, Larry Daniel Kaufman, Damien Meins, Tin Ngyen, Nicholas Thalasinos, Yvette Velasco, and Michael Wetzel. The pair then fled in a black SUV and fired more than 100 rounds at police, wounding one officer.

Police took down the terrorists and inside their SUV found a trigger device to detonate bombs the Muslims had planted at the Regional Center. Had the bombs exploded, many others would have perished.

“We must seek justice for those who lost their lives in the recent attacks in Paris and San Bernardino,” said California attorney general Kamala Harris in a December 17 statement. Like the composite character David Garrow described in Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama, Harris failed to name any of the fourteen murder victims. On the other hand, the attorney general did make her priorities evident.

“Ultimately,” Harris said, “not only is it immoral and contrary to our values to stoke fear and cast aspersions against an entire faith and the millions of law-abiding American Muslims, but it is also strategically unwise. This very community is a critical ally in the short and long term fight combatting terrorism and radicalization here at home and across the world.”

Harris was joined by officials from the Muslim Public Affairs Council and CAIR, whose Los Angeles director Hussam Ayloush said “Islamophobic and xenophobic rhetoric by certain public figures has made Muslim communities an easy target for hate crimes.” Attorney general Harris, Ayloush added, “exemplified leadership” by addressing “the spike in hate crimes against American Muslims and other minorities.”

In a statement one year later, Harris recalled “those who lost their lives and the loved ones they left behind,” but named not a single victim or any of the “brave first responders.” Those were the San Bernardino police, but the word “police” does not appear. In similar style, Farook and Malik were not named, and Harris does not mention their possible motive for “the tragedy that took place.” Like the president, Harris hailed the Muslim community as an ally against terrorism. In this case, it wasn’t.

Muslim convert Enrique Marquez procured weapons for Farook and Malik, and in February of 2017, Marquez pleaded guilty to federal terrorism charges. In October of 2020, Marquez was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Rafia Farook, mother of Syed, claimed she knew nothing of his deadly plans, but she shredded a map her son had made for the attack. As the U.S. Attorney announced on March 3, 2020, Rafia Farook, agreed to plead guilty to one count of “alteration, destruction, and mutilation of records.”

Last February, Obama judge Jesus Bernal rejected an 18-month prison term and sentenced Rafia Farook to only three years probation. Her daughter-in-law, Tatiana Farook, got three years probation for an immigration scam involving her younger sister. Tatiana Farook’s sister, Mariya Chernykh, pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy, perjury and making false statements to federal officials. Last May, Bernal sentenced Chernykh to only three years probation.

Vice president Joe Biden issued no official statement on the San Bernardino terrorist attack, but on others he did speak out. In 2009 at Fort Hood, Texas, jihadist Nidal Hasan murdered 13 American soldiers, including three women, Lt. Col Juanita Warman, Sgt. Amy Sue Krueger, and Pvt. Francheska Velez, who was pregnant. According to Biden the American soldiers only “fell” in a “senseless tragedy,” and the Delaware Democrat failed to name a single victim.

The American soldiers Hasan murdered were shipping out to Afghanistan. Joe Biden withdrew from that nation in disastrous fashion, leaving the Taliban billions in armaments, yet described the operation as an “extraordinary success.” While stranding Americans behind, the Biden Junta brought to the United States more than 80,000 Afghans.

The Biden Junta assured Americans the arrivals would all be carefully vetted but as Robert Spencer explains, “almost none of the 82,000 Afghans who are now in the United States after being airlifted out of Kabul in August were vetted first. Biden officials simply accepted the claims at face value, “without making any effort at all to check whether or not the evacuees’ claims were true.”

The evacuees could include jihad terrorists and other criminals but Americans won’t know for sure until they actually commit crimes or acts of terrorism. The same goes for the unvetted masses now streaming across the border and being shipped across the country.

In the meantime, with the holiday season at hand, remember the 14 innocents murdered by Islamic terrorists Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik on December 2, 2015, in San Bernardino, California, USA.

 

Lloyd Billingsley

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/12/remember-san-bernardino-fourteen-lloyd-billingsley/

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Patriotic NBA Star Slams LeBron James' Support for Communist Regime - Joseph Hippolito

 

​ by Joseph Hippolito

One player’s fight against Chinese manipulation and “woke” hypocrisy.

 


An NBA player used his shoes to send a colorful, imaginative and devastating message to the league's preeminent superstar when their teams met recently.

Through provocative art on his footwear, the Boston Celtics' Enes Kanter rebuked the Los Angeles Lakers' LeBron James for his self-serving attitude toward "social justice" during their game Nov. 19. In the process, Kanter inadvertently asked a disturbing question: are James and the NBA unwittingly acting as a fifth column for China's geopolitical agenda?

Kanter uses James' nickname, "The King," to mock him. The outside of Kanter's black left shoe shows rioters looting and burning, much like the protests after George Floyd's death. The instep features emblems representing Tibet and the Muslim Uyghurs whom China persecutes.

In between at the heel is James, kneeling as if he were responding to the national anthem, carrying a large, stuffed moneybag and wearing a crown emblazoned with the word, "silence."

But Kanter's red right shoe provides the most stinging rebuke. It shows James kneeling before Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is coronating him with a crown featuring the symbol for China's currency, the yuan. Behind James lie bulging sacks of money. Over the superstar's shoulders are the five stars featured in the canton of China's flag.

Kanter's shoes even engage in dialogue. On the instep of the right shoe is a mock quote from James: "I am informed and educated of the situation." That comment refers to pro-freedom demonstrations in Hong Kong. On the instep of the left shoe is a question from Kanter: "Hey, still researching and getting educated?" That question refers to James' public apathy concerning China's oppression of Tibetans and Uyghurs.

Unlike James, Kanter dedicates himself to ending that oppression. On Oct. 22, he used Twitter to call Xi a "brutal dictator" and to support independence for Tibet, which China annexed in 1951. Nine days later, Kanter led a protest in Washington, D.C. against China's use of Uyghurs as slave labor. Kanter wants Congress to pass a bill forbidding any Chinese goods made with slave labor to be sold in the United States.

China retaliated by preventing the Celtics' games from being shown there. Undaunted, Kanter not only displayed another pair of shoes condemning China's intrusive surveillance policies; he leads a campaign to convince the International Olympic Committee to move this February's Winter Games from Beijing.

Unlike James, Kanter, a Turkish Muslim, has paid a steep personal price for his activism. After he called Turkish President Recep Erdogan "the Hitler of our century," Kanter's family disowned him publicly, probably under government pressure. His father, a medical doctor and professor, lost his academic position, faced trial for belonging to a terrorist group and briefly spent time in prison.

Kanter himself faced similar charges after Turkey revoked his passport, demanded his extradition and threatened to try him in absentia. The center so fears for his safety that he lives in hotels and even refused to travel to Canada and Great Britain with his NBA teams. Just last month, Kanter became an American citizen.

If "systemic racism" truly permeates a nation ruled by "white supremacists," especially in the White House, as "woke" activists constantly claimed during President Donald Trump's administration, then James would neither live in luxury nor receive acclaim from his homeland's elite for superficial gestures.

For James, kneeling during the national anthem, speaking at post-game press conferences, wearing a T-shirt proclaiming "Black Lives Matter," supporting a plan to boycott the NBA's playoffs after Jacob Blake's death, and mocking a defendant's tears during a criminal trial constitutes "activism."

"He cares about his PR more than anything," Kanter told CNN on Nov. 21. "I had so many conversations with LeBron's ex-teammates. They are the ones who told me that all LeBron's doing is (for) PR."

That explains James' reaction to Kanter's message following the Lakers' 130-108 loss Nov. 19: "He’s definitely not someone I would give my energy to. He’s trying to use my name to create an opportunity for himself."

It also explains James' reluctance to confront China, where he is extremely popular. As early as 2008, the superstar not only had two shoe designs sold exclusively in China but also his own museum in Shanghai, complete with personal mementos.

In 2018, James made $32 million from Nike, which earned more than $8.3 billion from sales in China during the past fiscal year. He has travelled to China at least 15 times to promote Nike's and the NBA's interests, not to mention his own.

China has become fundamental to the NBA's financial success. Mark Tatum, the league's deputy commissioner, told Forbes in 2018 that the NBA makes between $4 billion and $4.3 billion from its investments in China. More than 300 million Chinese play basketball and about 144 million follow the NBA on social media.

"In my opinion, China is the biggest growth engine of the NBA, in terms of what we're going to see in three, four, five years down the road," Forbes' Mike Ozanian said in 2018.

So in October 2019, when Daryl Morey, the Houston Rockets' general manager at the time, tweeted support for demonstrators in Hong Kong wanting freedom, James rebuked him.

"I believe he wasn't educated on the situation at hand," James told reporters before elaborating on Twitter: "My team and this league just went through a difficult week. I think people need to understand what a tweet or statement can do to others.  And I believe nobody stopped and considered what would happen. Could have waited a week to send it."

James' motivation came not from the protection of Hong Kong's residents but from the comfort of his teammates, members of the Brooklyn Nets and NBA Commissioner Adam Silver. All of them had to confront tension from authorities and unwanted exposure while visiting China for exhibition games that month.

More than a decade earlier, James expressed similar reticence concerning China's policies.

In a 2007 piece for the Christian Science Monitor, Jonathan Zimmerman called James "cowardly" for not signing a teammate's open letter condemning China's role in enabling the Darfur genocide in Sudan.

At the time, China spent billions of dollars to purchase as much as two-thirds of Sudan's oil. Sudan's government funneled some of that money to Arab militia groups that murdered, raped and dismembered Black Sudanese during a civil war.

James, then with the Cleveland Cavaliers, was one of only two players not to join their teammates in signing. The other had an endorsement contract with a new Chinese sporting goods firm.

The following year, James helped the United States win Olympic gold in men's basketball at the Games in Beijing.

James, of course, is not the only NBA figure engaged in "social justice." Several players and coaches used Twitter to bemoan Kyle Rittenhouse's acquittal. "We are treading down a dangerous path," tweeted Steve Kerr, the Golden State Warriors' coach and a noted Trump critic. "The system is broken," added the Minnesota Timberwolves' Karl-Anthony Towns.

The more such "woke" sentiments become part of American conventional wisdom, the more China benefits. As FrontPage Magazine reported in June, China not only seeks to benefit from American controversy, but to cause it.

"We first need to create the conditions to make it easier for the United States to make mistakes," said Jin Canrong, associate dean of Renmin University's School of International Studies and an advisor to China's Communist Party. "Second, we should make it as busy as possible, to the extent that it will feel depressed and want to give up. Third, we should become intertwined with the United States, so that it can’t attack us.

"The task of our next generation is to put the U.S. under our jurisdiction/management, too. But the premise is that we need to do a good job in our generation."

Black Lives Matter plays a pivotal role in China's quest to sabotage the United States, as FrontPage Magazine reported in "Beijing's Lies Matter."

For example, BLM co-founder Alicia Garza, a native of the Bay Area, has been working with the San Francisco chapter of the Chinese Progressive Association since 2012. The CPA helps fund the Black Futures Lab, which Garza formed to create policies and organize Blacks. BLM calls the Black Futures Lab "a fiscally sponsored project of the Chinese Protective Association."

"Black Lives Matter is a Communist organization 100 percent, tied to foreign Communists and directly to the Communist Party of China," said Trevor Loudon, an author and filmmaker who has studied Marxist movements for more than 30 years.

The NBA's substantial investment in China enables the Chinese to peddle their influence subtly, yet effectively.

"If they cultivate enough people in the right places," Jamestown Foundation fellow Peter Mattis said, "they start to change the debate without having to directly inject their own voice."

If James provides an obvious example of that policy, Gregg Popovich serves as a more understated one. Popovich, the San Antonio Spurs' president and head coach, has called anyone offended by BLM "ignorant" and even equated Columbus with Hitler. Nevertheless, his limp praise for Kanter obscures the refusal to address China's unjust policies forthrightly.

"I am glad that Enes speaks up when he feels like it," Popovich said. "I think it’s great. No reason not to."

Kanter reached the ultimate conclusion when he displayed his controversial shoes on Twitter.

"Sad & disgusting how these athletes pretend they care about social justice," he wrote. "They really do 'shut up and dribble' when Big Boss says so."

After the phrase, "Big Boss," Kanter included a small picture of China's flag.


Joseph Hippolito is a freelance writer and a regular contributor to FrontPage Magazine. His commentaries have appeared in The Federalist, The Stream, Wall Street Journal, Jerusalem Post and National Post.

 

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/12/if-shoe-fits-joseph-hippolito/

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The Counterrevolution and the Republican Party - Jared Peterson

 

​ by Jared Peterson

The Republican Party, the only electoral vehicle that can deliver America from the revolution being imposed from above, is the same Party that got us into this mess. Surprisingly, there is real hope in the two stubborn centers of resistance that remain.

For nearly a year the Biden “presidency” -- whoever they are -- has subjected the United States to a destructive revolutionary agenda of unprecedented scope and virulence, all of it arising out of an irrational civilizational death wish for which there is no historical parallel.

No more than a small minority of Americans knowingly voted for this.

Given safety from reprisal, large majorities of the electorate would reject both the underlying unhinged beliefs and the ruinous policies and goals that have been promoted since Biden and his opaque gang took office.

Here’s an incomplete list of the reality-averse ideas and suicidal policies that America’s ruling revolutionaries have promulgated and pursued since January 20, 2021:  

  • Western civilization in general and America in particular are and always have been evil, and accordingly must be “fundamentally transformed,” i.e., abolished by revolution, whether or not majorities have ever expressed a desire for  revolution
  • Whites, by their nature, are congenitally, innately, permanently racist, and every child and student in the nation must be taught that as fact;
  • “Systemic racism,” whatever that is, is ubiquitous in America, and is the principal, indeed only, barrier to black success; that too must be universally taught and acknowledged as fact;
  • A multiplicity of “genders” exists -- rather than two biologically determined sexes – a subjective identity smorgasbord from which every person, including every child, may choose; all individuals and institutions must go along with that subjective choice, or endure social and career ostracism or -- soon -- worse;
  • It is highly desirable, indeed essential, to forcibly, explicitly, and in detail, expose young children to radical gender ideology and to the most bizarre and statistically rare expressions of human sexuality;  
  • It is racism, genderism, or some other criminal “ism” to base college admissions or employment decisions on demonstrated ability, behavior, and character -- “excellence” is a white male plot; human sorting must be predicated on group membership (race, sex or sexual orientation), and any underrepresentation of “oppressed” groups in desirable schools, careers or positions is irrefutable proof of invidious discrimination;
  • Permanently abolished borders and unlimited, unexamined immigration to America  are unchallengeable goods; those who oppose either are racists, xenophobes, Islamophobes, or generalized haters, and all of them deserve the same ostracism and career penalties as those who doubt the reality of subjective multi-genderism;
  • As a desirable consequence of open borders and unlimited immigration the nation-state will be abolished (that is, only those nation-states of the West), to be replaced by international boarding houses occupied by peoples with conflicting values and behavior patterns, and differing abilities, interests, and languages; this will be a great good and will usher in a period of historically unprecedented peace and prosperity; opposition in any form to unlimited immigration is “white nationalism”;
  • Many if not most crimes of theft are not crimes at all and should not be prosecuted; where mass looting and destruction of property occur, whether or not incident to political protest, the police, and armed private guards should always stand down, and nothing ever should be done that might cause harm to the looters; even violent felonies should be treated leniently, especially where the perpetrator is a member of an “oppressed” group and the ostensible victim a member of the “oppressor” group (i.e., a heterosexual white male);
  • To save Mother Earth from “climate change,” there must be a radical downward adjustment of America’s standard of living; this ultimately will include dramatically reduced single-family homeownership while most of the population lives in cramped urban glass and steel boxes; sharply reduced access to personal vehicles and commercial air travel; and radically altered diets; in sum, a civilization that affords the vast majority of its citizens far fewer enjoyments and material goods than now … while its elites continue to live large, as before; and
  • Finally, the foregoing beliefs are so indisputably true, and the resultant agenda so urgently necessary, that it’s fully appropriate to abolish free expression, if that’s what it takes, to compel universal acceptance of both the beliefs and agenda. The necessary abolition of free expression is already well underway through branding opposing opinions or inconvenient facts as “hate speech” or “disinformation;” this ongoing campaign of first amendment suppression will continue and be intensified. Appropriate internet banning, coupled with employment, career, and other penalties will be imposed on those so branded.

These lunatic beliefs and goals -- only a partial list – amount to the most astonishing embrace of guaranteed civilizational extinction in the history of government.  And their promulgation by the highest powers in the United States has been in high gear for almost a year.

It can’t be said strongly or often enough, that the destructive madness now passing as federal ideology and policy amounts to an unprecedented revolution more profoundly radical than any other in human history. It includes a redefinition of human nature and the human family; mandatory confession of evil and racism by a nation’s founding and still majority people; rejection of that country’s founding values of individual liberty and the rule of law; and replacement of merit and character with group identity as the primary basis of social reward.

Robespierre, Lenin, and Mao -- all would have shrunk from this prescription for assured social destruction.

How did we get here?

How did one of the two major political parties come to embrace an ideology whose fact-free, reality-averse explicit goal is the dismantling of its own highly successful, free, and prosperous country? 

The causes are several and beyond the scope of a brief column -- they include normal Americans’ negligent forfeiture to the Left of their public schools and universities, leading to the transformation of both major media and popular culture into instruments of leftist propaganda, the left’s near-complete control of the internet (also directly caused by forfeiture of the educational institutions) and growing electoral corruption by the left.  

Whatever the long, medium, and short term causes, the coup has happened and the revolution is in progress. We are now in the midst of it, and the only question worth asking is how, if at all, a counterrevolution of sanity can be mounted and succeed.

Surprisingly, there is real hope. That hope lies in two stubborn centers of resistance that remain: nearly 50% of the American electorate, judging by the 2016 and 2020 elections; and the Republican Party.

Mention of the Republican Party may have caused a few groans from the readership, and I sympathize. The Republican Party may not be much, but, institutionally, it’s all we’ve got. Every other major American institution has either signed on for the revolution or completely acquiesced to it.  

First, the more encouraging of the two holdouts: The stubborn 50%.

The last two presidential elections have established that despite all the institutional losses and capitulations, despite the massive information suppression and nonstop stream of unanswered leftist propaganda, nearly 50% of the American electorate remains actively opposed to the Left’s agenda and imbued with the same basic good sense and patriotism that prevailed in both major political parties 50 years ago. These two elections have revealed a huge and obstinate reservoir of national immunity to the Left’s informational monopoly and propaganda.  European patriots can only look on with envy. 

If the second remnant of the opposition, the Republican Party, can be made to grasp the significance of this tenacious and enormous reserve of patriotism and good sense, the route would still be open to the recovery of the presidency and the congress and, with that, to a gradual, albeit lengthy and tortured, reassertion of national sanity.

There’s the rub. The Republican Party, the only electoral vehicle that can deliver America from this mess, is the same Party that got us into it. Its decades-long failure to defend America from the Left’s malicious falsehoods and delusional notions goes back at least to 1992. 

But politically attentive conservatives and patriots must be charitable and realistic about the Republican Party:

In all Western democracies, it’s the left who are the political pros, the fanatics armed with utopian truth who live politics 24/7, most of them all their lives. Republicans and their center-right cousins elsewhere, as defenders of tradition and gradual change against revolution, are always and everywhere the amateurs.  This will never change. They are the part-timers, who before politics actually accomplished something: they are the mothers of elementary school children who were never interested in politics until they took a close look at what’s being taught to their children in the public schools; the successful heartland small businessman, respected and liked by everyone, who winds up in Congress; the entrepreneurial founder of a new company who’s made a fortune and now believes (mistakenly) that his proven business acumen will facilitate a seamless transition to political sophistication and success.

The Republican Party has other types too (including a few grifters and those who’ve been bought by the Chamber of Commerce, but far fewer of these than the left); but most, like the school-politicized mother, the small businessman, the successful entrepreneur, are orders of magnitude less politically sophisticated and less certain their agenda than the Left.

Many of them compromise when they shouldn’t; are unsure of their agenda; actually believe the advice of the Washington Post and New York Times who “helpfully” counsel Republicans to “moderation” on the issues where clarity and toughness will resonate.

Conservatives’ job between now and the congressional elections of 2022 is to convey to the Republican Party, everywhere and at all levels, the historically unique destructiveness of what’s now coming out of Washington and, hence, the enormity of the stakes; and the need for absolutely resolute clarity and toughness in rejecting the entirety of the Democrats’ insane ideology and agenda.  If that message gets through to the Party -- and is coupled this time with an actual battle plan that includes troops on the ground to defeat electoral corruption -- the once-free American republic might be able to gain a significant political foothold to resist those trying to replace it with an interlocking globalist tyranny.

 

Jared Peterson

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/12/the_counterrevolution_and_the_republican_party.html

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Biden's Two-Faced Agenda on Turkey - Burak Bekdil

 

​ by Burak Bekdil

Is Biden the champion of human rights and universal democratic values that he claims he is? Or is he an unpleasant cheat with a disappointing fake democratic agenda?

  • Since the summer, everything on the Washington-Ankara axis seems to have gone wrong.

  • Is Biden the champion of human rights and universal democratic values that he claims he is? Or is he an unpleasant cheat with a disappointing fake democratic agenda?

U.S. President Joe Biden's increasingly hypocritical policy on NATO's increasingly difficult ally, Turkey, is badly zig-zagging. Pictured: Biden meets with Turkish President Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan during the G20 Summit on October 31, 2021, in Rome, Italy. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

U.S. President Joe Biden's increasingly hypocritical policy on NATO's increasingly difficult ally, Turkey, is badly zig-zagging between the U.S. leader's self-declared advocacy for universal democratic values and Biden's secret agenda, which he prefers dishonestly to hide: appeasing Turkish President Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan behind closed doors and condemning Turkey's democratic deficit in public. In less than two years Biden has swung from a pledge to oust Turkey's autocratic leader to appeasing him behind closed doors.

In a December 2019 interview, then-presidential candidate Biden said that ErdoÄŸan should be ousted from power through a democratic process and that support for the opposition was crucial. Turkey's human rights record has gone downhill from there. The Council of Europe has said that if Turkish courts keep ignoring rulings from the European Court of Human Rights, it would start infringement proceedings against Turkey at the end of November.

All the same, on October 31, Biden and ErdoÄŸan apparently had a 70-minute meeting in a "very positive atmosphere" on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Rome. They reportedly agreed to form a joint mechanism to improve ties. "During the meeting," an ErdoÄŸan aide told this author, "Biden's lecture on human rights did not exceed two minutes." It seems that a U.S. delegation will soon arrive in Ankara to work on that joint mechanism.

Since the summer, everything on the Washington-Ankara axis seems to have gone wrong. During a Senate Committee on Foreign Relations hearing in July, Republican and Democrat Senators criticized Turkish government policies and demanded more action from the Biden administration. Democratic Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey and other Senators expressed concern over the Turkish government's efforts to ban the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP). "That's like if President Biden banned the Republican party from participating," Menendez said.

The Turkish Democracy Project (TDP) in September called on three U.S. companies and one German one to cut ties with Baykar Makina, whose TB2 armed drones have become a weapon of choice for repressive regimes worldwide. According to Ambassador Mark D. Wallace, CEO of TDP:

"In refusing to cut ties with Turkey in the face of direct evidence of the crimes the ErdoÄŸan regime is committing using their products, these companies are demonstrating that they do not take seriously the moral or legal implications of their actions. Lawmakers must take this into account in determining how these companies ought to be dealt with."

Before that, a coalition of 27 U.S. Congress members had signed a letter saying that technology transfers such as the ones these companies show that Turkey continues to clearly violate the terms of the CAATSA (Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act) sanctions.

In October, U.S. lawmakers proposed legislation that would require the State Department to investigate whether a Turkish ultra-nationalist group with links to the Turkish government, the Gray Wolves, should be designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization. The Grey Wolves are closely affiliated with the Nationalist Movement Party, ErdoÄŸan's staunchest political ally.

In late October, ErdoÄŸan ordered 10 ambassadors in Ankara, including those from the U.S., Germany and France, be declared personae non gratae. The order followed a statement from the envoys calling for the urgent release of activist Osman Kavala, who has been in prison for more than four years while supposedly under investigation for participating in protests and a coup attempt, although he has never been convicted.

ErdoÄŸan stepped back only after the U.S. Embassy in Ankara stated:

"In response to questions regarding the Statement of October 18, the United States notes that it maintains compliance with Article 41 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic relations."

Article 41 stipulates that the internal affairs of other states should not be interfered with.

When bilateral ties seemed to be moving from one low point to another, ErdoÄŸan shocked the world by saying that the U.S. administration proposed to sell Turkey a batch of 40 F-16 Block 70 fighter jets -- a claim that quickly turned into a puzzle. On October 23, the day after ErdoÄŸan's claim, State Department Spokesperson Ned Price stated that the U.S. had not made any financing offers on Turkey's request to purchase F-16 warplanes. On November 15, however, a senior U.S. diplomat told this author that all of the State Department, the Pentagon and White House were "in agreement to encourage the F-16 sale to Turkey, but could not guarantee Congress's approval."

Two days after that, on November 17, Turkey's Ministry of Defense said in a statement that a high-level meeting between military delegations, held in Washington, was "positive and constructive." Apparently, the F-16 talks will continue on, with Biden ignoring the Congress.

Both Democratic and Republican U.S. lawmakers urged Biden's administration not to sell F-16 fighter jets to Turkey and said they were confident Congress would block any such exports. In an October 25 letter to Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, 11 members of the House of Representatives cited "a profound sense of concern" about recent reports that Turkey might purchase 40 new Lockheed Martin F-16s and 80 F-16 modernization kits.

Turkey's Ambassador to the U.S., Murat Mercan, an extremely skilful diplomat, said in an October 27 speech:

"Turkey's increased contributions to the transatlantic community's efforts opens a window of opportunity for a newly defined alliance relationship between Turkey and the United States that can still operate under extreme duress, no matter what the diverging opinions are."

There is something wrong about this Biden riddle. Is Biden the champion of human rights and universal democratic values that he claims he is? Or is he an unpleasant cheat with a disappointing fake democratic agenda?

 

Burak Bekdil, one of Turkey's leading journalists, was recently fired from the country's most noted newspaper after 29 years, for writing in Gatestone what is taking place in Turkey. He is a Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17987/biden-agenda-turkey

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Thursday, December 2, 2021

'Collaborating with the mullahs': Iranian dissidents warn US not to return to the nuclear deal - Eric Shawn

 

​ by Eric Shawn

Ali Khamenei, wants an Iranian nuclear bomb "to guarantee his power.

Iran anti-government activists talk to Fox News, share urgent message for Biden

Activists urge President Biden to side with Iranian protests against the regime; Fox News senior correspondent Eric Shawn has the exclusive.

While Iran announced that it is escalating its nuclear program, despite the Vienna talks aimed at preventing just that, Iranian activists are speaking out to Fox News.

"My message to President Biden, it is that the regime of Iran does not represent the people of Iran," said Ali, an Iranian activist who, like the others, warns of the consequences of the U.S. dropping sanctions against Iran if it re-enters the Iranian nuclear agreement.

"If the U.S. goes back to the nuclear deal, that's the same thing would happen as happened back in 2015. Iran, the regime of Iran, is going to gain almost $160 billion and 1.7 billion Euros, and yet it is not going to stop its nuclear actions, and actually they even develop their ballistics and drone military drone programs."

BIDEN, EUROPEANS TAKE UP IRAN NUCLEAR PROGRAM IN ROME TALKS

"You asked what will happen if the United States returns to JCPOA? I say frankly that this will be a tragedy," says Sima, another activist who says the administration should not even entertain Tehran's demands about the deal, known officially as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA.

"The message of the U.S.’s return to JCPOA to us, Iranians, is that the U.S. is collaborating with the Mullahs in suppressing and killing the Iranian people and the Mullahs’ crimes against us, that serves the dictatorship and religious fascism. How can ransom be paid to a regime that brutally kills its own people?"

"After the JCPOA deal in 2015, the regime took the cash and spent it on terrorism. Our women in Iran resort to prostitution for a piece of bread," she says. "Lifting sanctions or giving cash to the regime will only prolong its life, the life of the dictatorship."

TOPSHOT - This picture taken on July 4, 2017, and released by North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on July 5, 2017, shows the successful test-fire of the intercontinental ballistic missile Hwasong-14 at an undisclosed location. South Korea and the United States fired off missiles on July 5 simulating a precision strike against North Korea's leadership, in response to a landmark ICBM test described by Kim Jong-Un as a gift to "American bastards".

TOPSHOT - This picture taken on July 4, 2017, and released by North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on July 5, 2017, shows the successful test-fire of the intercontinental ballistic missile Hwasong-14 at an undisclosed location. South Korea and the United States fired off missiles on July 5 simulating a precision strike against North Korea's leadership, in response to a landmark ICBM test described by Kim Jong-Un as a gift to "American bastards". (Getty Images)

For months, massive protests have spread throughout the country from people calling for the overthrow of the regime, unhappy with government policies that have led to a troubled economy, rationing, and shortages of goods. Reports say thousands of demonstrators have been arrested or killed by regime forces. Fox News is not identifying the activists whom we spoke to for their own safety. But they are united in their opposition to the regime and steadfast in their message to President Biden and the American people.

"I want President Biden to be by the side of the people of Iran, the people who have been participating in different uprisings against the regime of Iran. Actually, now we are approaching the second anniversary of the November of 2019, where there was one of the biggest uprisings in the recent history of the regime. Where they could only maintain the people by killing more than 1,400 people on the streets and capturing and imprisoning more than twenty thousand people," Ali told us.

"I want President Biden to know that the experience of the past 42 years has showed that the politics of appeasement does not work anymore. For instance, we saw that the nuclear deal of 2015 did not to limit Iran's actions towards achieving a nuclear weapon. Therefore, there is no time for the politics of appeasement."

Iran's new President-elect Ebrahim Raisi speaks during a press conference in Tehran, Iran, on Monday.

Iran's new President-elect Ebrahim Raisi speaks during a press conference in Tehran, Iran, on Monday. (AP Photo)

The administration has said that it will only return to the deal and lift billions of dollars in U.S. sanctions, if Tehran lives up to the agreement. But the Iranian negotiators in Vienna have demanded that the U.S. sanctions be dropped first, potentially freeing up billions of dollars in new revenue for the regime, even before the talks can consider the nuclear program.

Supporters of the nuclear deal have said that it has prevented Iran from obtaining a nuclear bomb, and ensures transparency of the Iranian nuclear program for international monitors from the United Nation's IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency. But the activists say the agreement will pave the way for Tehran to be free to obtain nuclear weapons when the agreement ends, which is now set for October 2025.

IRAN DIGS IN AT NUCLEAR DEAL TALKS, CONTRADICTING EU DIPLOMAT

Some of the protestors, including the ones we talked to, are members of the largest Iranian opposition group, The National Council of Resistance of Iran. The group's leader, Maryam Rajavi, has been warning about Iran's nuclear intentions.

"The IAEA believes that the regime is close to making a bomb, an outcome of the policy of complacency," Rajavi recently told the French National Assembly.

"Because of the lack of a firm policy, the regime has always taken advantage of negotiations to strengthen itself and prepare itself for further aggressions."

TEHRAN, IRAN - NOVEMBER 03: (----EDITORIAL USE ONLY â MANDATORY CREDIT - "IRANIAN LEADER PRESS OFFICE / HANDOUT" - NO MARKETING NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS - DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS----) Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei gives a live broadcast on state television on the occasion of Mawlid al-Nabi or Prophet Muhammad's (PBUH) birth anniversary in Tehran, Iran on November 03, 2020. (Photo by Iranian Leader Press Office / Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

TEHRAN, IRAN - NOVEMBER 03: (----EDITORIAL USE ONLY â MANDATORY CREDIT - "IRANIAN LEADER PRESS OFFICE / HANDOUT" - NO MARKETING NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS - DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS----) Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei gives a live broadcast on state television on the occasion of Mawlid al-Nabi or Prophet Muhammad's (PBUH) birth anniversary in Tehran, Iran on November 03, 2020. (Photo by Iranian Leader Press Office / Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images) (Getty Images)

She says that Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, wants an Iranian nuclear bomb "to guarantee his power. He wants to hold world peace and security hostage to gain concessions. The only factor that can stop him is the Iranian people’s organized resistance and uprising."

The group says that the regime's hold is fragile, and that the reported killing of more than 1,500 protestors during street protests two years ago is proof that the government will resort to deadly brutality to try and maintain its grip on power.

"The Iranian people want the overthrow of the regime and a free and democratic society," Rajavi says.

Ali, one of the activists we talked to, echoes those sentiments.

"The truth is, no one is going to hand us freedom on a silver platter. As Thomas Jefferson said, the Tree of Liberty, most from time to time be refreshed by the blood of the Patriots. We are ready and willing to pay the full price and give our lives for the future of Iran to be free."

Follow Eric Shawn on Twitter: @EricShawnTV

 

Eric Shawn

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/world/iranian-dissidents-warn-us-nuclear-deal

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