IAEA chief: New agreement needed to revive Iran nuclear deal under Biden - Reuters and ILH Staff

 

​ by Reuters and ILH Staff

Teheran has breached too many of 2015 accord's limits on its nuclear activities for it to stand, Rafael Grossi says, noting "I cannot imagine that Iran is going to say, 'We are back to square one' because square one is no longer there."

 

International Atomic Energy Agency Director Rafael Grossi | Photo: Reuters/Lisi Niesner

Reviving Iran's nuclear deal under US President-elect Joe Biden would require striking a new agreement setting out how Iran's breaches should be reversed, UN atomic watchdog chief Rafael Grossi said.

Iran has breached too many of the deal's limits on its nuclear activities in response to US President Donald Trump's withdrawal from the deal and the reimposition of US sanctions against Tehran that the deal lifted. Tehran often says it can quickly reverse its breaches if US sanctions are removed.

Biden, who takes office on Jan. 20, has said the United States will rejoin the deal "if Iran resumes strict compliance" with the agreement that imposed strict curbs on its nuclear activities in return for the lifting of sanctions.

Grossi, who heads the International Atomic Energy Agency that polices the deal, said there had been too many breaches for the agreement to simply fall back into place.

"I cannot imagine that they are going simply to say, 'We are back to square one' because square one is no longer there," Grossi said at IAEA headquarters.

"There is more (nuclear) material, ... there is more activity, there are more centrifuges, and more are being announced. So what happens with all this? This is the question for them at the political level to decide."

Asked if that meant there would have to be a 'deal within the deal', he said: "Oh yes, oh yes. Undoubtedly. It is clear that there will have to be a protocol or an agreement or an understanding or some ancillary document which will stipulate clearly what we do," he said.

Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium is more than 2.4 tons, 12 times the cap set by the deal, though still far below the more than eight tons Iran had before signing it. Iran has been enriching uranium up to 4.5% purity, above the deal's 3.67% limit though below the 20% it achieved before the deal.

Iran is enriching uranium in places where it is not allowed under the deal, such as at Fordo, a site dug into a mountain. More recently it has started enriching with advanced centrifuges at its underground plant at Natanz, where the deal says it can use only first-generation IR-1 machines.

"What I see is that we're moving full circle back to December 2015," Grossi said, referring to the month before the deal's restrictions were put in place, after which large amounts of material and equipment were swiftly removed.

"If they want to do it [comply], they could do it pretty fast. But for all of those things we had a charted course," he said.

Iran's activities have increasingly worried some of the deal's other remaining parties, including Russia, which has urged Tehran to act responsibly and France, Britain and Germany, who have desperately tried to keep the accord alive.

When asked whether it believed a new protocol would be needed, France's Foreign Ministry stressed that Iran's actions were becoming a serious problem.

"Their consequences, especially in the area of enrichment, are serious. They call into question the advantages of this agreement in terms of non-proliferation," Deputy spokesman Francois Delmas said.

"Iran must therefore return without delay to full compliance with the agreement and refrain from any new action that would call into question its sustainability."

 

Reuters and ILH Staff  

Source: https://www.israelhayom.com/2020/12/20/iaea-chief-new-agreement-needed-to-revive-iran-nuclear-deal-under-biden/ 

Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter

2020: The Year of the Big Fraud - Clarice Feldman

 

​ by Clarice Feldman

 

In 2020 the endemic fraud underlying most of our institutions became undeniable. What will the response be in 2021?

 

This was a year in which a number of frauds were exposed: Election fraud, media fraud, and public health fraud, among them. Their exposure has stirred outrage and as the year ends, no relief seems in sight.

Election Fraud With No Apparent Judicial Relief

Many Americans -- according to some surveys, a majority -- believe that the presidential election was marred by massive fraud in five states without which the President would surely have been re-elected.

The short version of this disbelief in the integrity of the election results is this by Kenekoa the Great on the unrealistic belief that the frail, corrupt Joe Biden won:

@KanekoaTheGreat

When you win a record low 17% of counties, lose Black & Hispanic support, lose 18/19 Bellwether Counties, lose Ohio, Florida, & Iowa -- and lose 27/27 House "Toss-Ups" -- but you shatter the popular vote record

Peter Navarro has a longer version:

“Evidence used to conduct this assessment includes more than 50 lawsuits and judicial rulings, thousands of affidavits and declarations, testimony in a variety of state venues, published analyses by think tanks and legal centers, videos and photos, public comments, and extensive press coverage,” the report claims.

Additionally, the report cites affidavits alleging the exploitation of the elderly and the infirm by “effectively hijacking their identities and votes” and accuses Democrats of using the coronavirus pandemic to relax voter ID requirements to the point that ballot harvesting and fraud could slip by unnoticed.

The report outlined incidents in the key states of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, where ballots allegedly were illegally harvested and dumped into drop boxes.

The election was marred with examples of dead people voting, according to the report.

“In Pennsylvania, for example, a statistical analysis conducted by the Trump Campaign matching voter rolls to public obituaries found what appears to be over 8,000 confirmed dead voters successfully casting mail-in ballots,” the report claims. “In Georgia — underscoring the critical role any given category of election irregularities might play in determining the outcome — the estimated number of alleged deceased individuals casting votes almost exactly equals the Biden victory margin."

The report concludes: “The ballots in question because of the identified election irregularities are more than sufficient to swing the outcome in favor of President Trump should even a relatively small portion of these ballots be ruled illegal.”

None of this evidence has been rejected by any court; all have refused to consider it citing a variety of jurisdictional hurdles. 

Americans should know how perilous their democracy has become. The majority of Donald Trump’s voters already believe the presidential election was rigged, and there is no doubt that suspect voting changes, attributed to the requirements of voting in a pandemic, have created large anomalies in five states that made a great many such votes impossible to authenticate. Untold numbers of ballots arrived at a time and in a manner that incites the inference that they were substantially fraudulent. The numbers of votes involved in Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin are undoubtedly adequately numerous to have influenced the election. 

The courts have failed to address the questions raised by this disturbing pattern of votes confined to only five states. [snip]    

The refusal of the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the appeal from the state of Texas, joined by 18 other states, is an outright abdication. Of course, Texas and its co-petitioners have perfectly adequate standing to demand that all states, in choosing a president, conduct their elections credibly enough to assure the whole country that the Constitution has been followed in filling the nation’s highest offices. For the Supreme Court to take the position, as it did, that it could not hear the election challenge case because Texas and the others did not have the standing to challenge how another state conducts its presidential election is completely spurious in the circumstances. Where the courts don’t exercise their jurisdiction, a vacuum arises which is likely to be filled by lawlessness, and potentially, even violent lawlessness. 

The United States has become a country where a majority of Americans—people of good will from both parties -- believe presidential elections are not conducted honestly. 

As Daniel Greenfield details, not only did the Supreme Court abdicate any judicial responsibility for hearing the contested election cases, so have lower courts.

When should you file a lawsuit over an election? If you are a Democrat, the answer is at any time. But if you are a Republican the answer is never. [snip] You can sue over how an election was handled in 2018, and get a decision in 2020, but you can't sue over an election in 2020. Not if you are a Republican.There's no standing to sue over an election before it happens because then it's speculative; theories of potential future injury, nor can you sue while an election is underway. Because, come on, it's already underway.We're not on the eve of an election; we're in the middle of it, noted Charlene S. McGowan, counsel for Georgia's Office of the Attorney General. And then it's too late to sue afterward. But speaking of who gets to sue, here's who gets to sue when it comes to the Democrats. The federal lawsuit was initiated by freelance journalist Greg Palast along with Helen Butler, executive director of Georgia Coalition for the People's Agenda.F reelance journalists can sue over 2018 elections, but Republicans, no matter how clearly they can show injury, can't sue over the 2020 election.

This leaves the only remaining avenue to affect the genuine choice of the people to the Congress when it must vote on the selection of electors, a procedure clearly permitted by the Constitution.  Will they have the courage to do the right thing? If they don’t, we will see fraudulent elections forever with no judicial redress. In almost none of the counties whose votes are disputed was the Dominion system examined. In Maricopa County Arizona the vote officials are refusing to honor a subpoena to provide the machines for examination. In the only county where they have been examined (Antrim, Michigan) the analyst who audited the system reports that the machines flipped Trump votes to Biden.

It has been particularly galling to me that Facebook clipped hundreds of ”go vote” messages on my page, while parking its fat finger on reliable articles on vote fraud, censoring them or warning readers away, citing fact checks written by youngsters who themselves dissembled and misrepresented. 

Media Fraud

This partisan fraud has been ongoing for at least two decades but is no longer escaping the attention of great deal of its erstwhile consumer base. For years we have been examining  media disinformation and bias. This year it was particularly evident in the media’s discrediting the accurate reports of Hunter Biden’s corruption (and that of his father and uncle, who also benefited from it).

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 52% of Likely U.S. Voters think many news organizations ignored the Hunter Biden story to help his father’s presidential campaign. Thirty-two percent (32%) disagree and say they ignored it because they felt it was a partisan hit job. Seventeen percent (17%) are not sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.) 

Fifty-six percent (56%) believe it is likely Joe Biden was consulted about and perhaps profited from his son’s overseas business deals including at least one involving a company in mainland China. This includes 43% who say it’s Very Likely. This is little changed from late October. Thirty-eight percent (38%) still consider this connection unlikely, with 22% who say it’s Not At All Likely.

Now that Hunter Biden has acknowledged publicly that he is under criminal investigation for tax evasion, many major news organizations like the New York Times and CNN are covering his questionable overseas business dealings, first reported several weeks before Election Day by the New York Post.

Seventy percent (70%) of voters say they have been closely following news reports about Hunter Biden’s business dealings, with 38% who have been following Very Closely.

Among those who have been following Very Closely, 76% say the media deliberately ignored the story before Election Day to help Joe Biden, and 72% think the president-elect is likely to have been consulted about and perhaps profited from his son’s overseas dealings.

Add to this the media’s refusal to accurately describe the months-long BLM/Antifa riots, looting, arson, and killing, calling it instead “mostly peaceful protests,” it’s no wonder people are tuning them out. The heavy hand of the left wing played its part. Internet giants like Twitter suspended the account of the oldest newspaper in the country, the NY Post, which broke the story of the Biden family corruption with China, Russia, and the Ukraine as well as the account of the White House press secretary, and you can understand why “fewer than 15 percent of Americans trust the media.”

Treat your pen like a Democratic party weapon and be rewarded with pink slips to the unemployment line. “An estimated 28,637 job cuts were reported in the industry by late October, Variety, citing data from Challenger, Gray & Christmas, reported, nearly as many as the record 28,803 reported in the media sector in 2008. By comparison, the sector saw just over 10,000 job losses in 2019 and 15,474 in 2018.” The Hill attributes it to the China Virus. I think the mendacity and patent bias also has a great deal to do with the shrinking media employment.

2020: The Public Health Fraud

It was impossible to overlook the failures of the CDC (Center for Disease Control) to garner our respect. The Center’s constant shifting of advice based on little empirical evidence was maddening enough. Between the CDC and Dr. Fauci, we had a year of Simon Says. Worse was their obvious hypocrisy of condoning the “mostly peaceful protests” by thousands of people closely massed, often maskless, shouting and singing (and spraying droplets all about) while the rest of us who work and pay their salaries and unemployment benefits were in home confinement, deprived of normal entertainment, socialization, education, rent payments, work opportunities, and spiritual gatherings. 

This week was the capper. Due to incredible management by the President and Vice-President, vaccines were developed to deal with the virus and are on their way. One assumed that the first to be offered a chance to get it would be those most vulnerable to the virus -- the elderly. But, no -- per the New York Times, the CDC wants the first shots to go to the frailest of the elderly and health care workers, but from there the allocation is being debated. Is the vaccine to prevent deaths or to reduce transmission? Is it to redress imagined privilege if we emphasize the latter? The CDC chose to de-emphasize the elderly as a group  because “older populations are whiter....  Instead of giving additional health benefits to those who already had them, we can start to level the playing field a bit.” 

The authors of the article, Abby Goodnough and Jan Hoffman, acknowledge there is some disagreement with using the vaccine to “level the playing field”:

Still, some people believe it is wrong to give racial and socioeconomic equity more weight than who is most likely to die.

“They need to have bombproof, fact-based, public-health-based reasons for why one group goes ahead of another,” said Chuck Ludlam, a former Senate aide and biotech industry lobbyist who protested putting essential workers ahead of older people in comments to the committee. “They have provided no explanation here that will withstand public scrutiny.”

Pesky of Mr. Ludlam to insist on medical reasons for providing priorities for limited supplies of  medical aid.

The debate by those in the field provides some shocking admissions. Marc Lipshits argues teachers should not be considered essential workers who would get priority for the vaccine. “Teachers have middle-class salaries, are very often white, and they have college degrees,” he said. “Of course, they should be treated better, but they are not among the most mistreated of workers.”

Elise Gould says they should be, but only because they serve minorities: “When you talk about disproportionate impact and you’re concerned about people getting back into the labor force, many are mothers, and they will have a harder time if their children don’t have a reliable place to go,” she said. “And if you think generally about people who have jobs where they can’t telework, they are disproportionately Black and Brown. They’ll have more of a challenge when child care is an issue.”

Last I saw, children are not very high spreaders of the virus. I should think that, not the racial makeup of the teaching force or the students, should be determinant of whether teachers are essential workers. But then again, it’s my understanding that the people most vulnerable to death from the virus are elderly black people, whom people like Gould would not give priority to. Even lefty Matthew Iglesias thinks this is idiotic.  

Last but by no means least, note the weird race craft here. We know the people who’ve been dying the most from Covid are black senior citizens. The decision here is to not prioritize them, but to instead vaccinate a different, less vulnerable group of people and then assert that this creates some kind of abstract collective racial benefit. There have been a lot of takes lately about woke liberals prioritizing symbolic racial issues over the concrete needs of non-white people, but this idea really takes the cake.

This week we also learned that in 1986 Uranus blasted a gas bubble 22 times as large as earth.  I think it might have landed here this year.

 

Clarice Feldman  

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/12/2020_the_year_of_the_big_fraud.html 

Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter

2020 Election Integrity – A Snapshot Showing Where We Stand - R. D. Wedge

 

​ by R. D. Wedge

 

The Supreme Court is MIA while fraud is rife, but President Trump may still have an executive order ace up his sleeve.

 

Chief Justice Roberts’s Supreme Court is manifestly reluctant to fulfill its statutory responsibilities, despite overwhelming, and steadily accruing, evidence of significant fraud that the election outcome. However, in 2018, President Trump may have prepared a time bomb that can still save the day.

Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton, filed a complaint asserting that election fraud disenfranchised Texas voters. Texas voting was done within the framework of the U.S. Constitution and battleground states strayed beyond legal boundaries, to put it mildly. The legal votes of Texans were nullified by the alleged fraudulent votes of those states.

Article III, section 2, of the Constitution states in relevant part, the Supreme Court “[J]udicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity . . . to Controversies between two or more states. . . .” (Emphasis added.)  Nevertheless, the Supreme Court has denied the Texas lawsuit challenging the election outcome in battleground states, asserting “lack of standing.”

Justices Alito and Thomas dissented from the majority opinion and wanted to hear the case. Alito wrote, “In my view, we do not have discretion to deny the filing of the bill of complaint in a case that falls within our original jurisdiction. I would therefore grant the motion to file the bill of complaint, but would not grant other relief, and I express no view on any other issue.”

Reading between the lines, Texas has standing under the Constitution. Hearing the complaint’s merits is warranted based upon the clearly expressed text. Further, SCOTUS could wisely have avoided picking winners and losers by disqualifying the election based upon malfeasance, which defers the matter to Congress as the Constitution mandates.

The only thing missing from their judgment is courage. To say that this is a disappointment would be an understatement.

The issue of election fraud is not new. The Heritage Foundation’s database on this issue shows 1,302 “proven instances of voter fraud” as of this writing. In 2020, issues of the deceased voting, non-citizens voting, and 120% of registered voter participation in certain counties are just a few examples of election corruption.

The convoluted nature of this election is by design. The progressive ruling class, under the guise of the coronavirus, flooded the country with unsolicited mail-in ballots. What could possibly go wrong?

There are times when the ruling classes show their hand. Remember when Rahm Emanuel said, “You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that, it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” Corporate media and Big Tech cover for these people all day long.

Crosscurrents of arrogance, power, and intimidation are at play here. If this corruption were to go unresolved, we would never have a free and fair election again. But, the American Spirit in pursuit of the truth, wherever the facts lead, is shining a light on this mischief.

Forensic Audit of Dominion Machines

The results of a forensic audit of Dominion tabulators in Antrim, Michigan have been released. This is the Republican stronghold that gave Biden a win by a few thousand votes. The 6,000 vote “glitch” was rectified, but further illustrates what appears to be a trend.

Proprietary coding has been redacted but the merits of the substance remain. According to the Washington Examiner, Allied Security Operations Group conducted the analysis. A synopsis of their findings is as follows:

1. Dominion machines are intentionally designed to create fraud
2. They are designed to manipulate data with no oversight
3. Eliminating transparency is part of their signature
4. They were intentionally designed to eliminate an audit trail
5. The observable error rate is 68.05% when the Federal Election Comm. standard is 0.0008%
6. Republican Clerk did not update software, exacerbating the situation
7. Dominion Voting System should not be used in Michigan

Audit bottom line: Michigan’s election should not be certified.

Technology and Foreign Interference

Col. Philip Waldron (US Army Retired) has a 30-year career as an intelligence officer, specializing in cybersecurity relating to election fraud. He reflects the best and brightest of experts in systems analysis. As part of the White House team, he’s been looking into election trends and irregularities since August of 2020.

Our voting system is not supposed to be internet accessible, but he has confirmed that it is. He has identified a dozen different ways these voting machines can be hacked. He says that a top level DEF CON (Defense Readiness Condition: an alert system for national defense) hacker can hack this system in “less than two minutes.”

In his testimony, which is publicly available, he states, “The voting systems in the U.S. and in Pennsylvania were built to be manipulated.” He also states that election equipment like Dominion, ES&S, and many other systems all have similar codes and functions that are compatible with Smartmatic voting software. This would make it easy for a systems analyst or hacker to manipulate votes across multiple platforms and states.

The colonel testified that he personally witnessed a data transfer from a Dominion machine to Frankfurt, Germany, on November 3rd . . . Election Day!

Additional foreign involvement has been confirmed by the Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe. He told CBS that China, Iran, and Russia had interfered with our election in November. His forthcoming report is in progress.

What we know, in such a short period of time, may be just the tip of the iceberg. Much needs to be unpacked and revealed.

It is this foreign involvement that sets the table for an ingenious move by the President.

The Trump Card

On September 12, 2018, President Trump issued an Executive Order that got little attention back then. Due to the toxic political environment, with adversaries both foreign and domestic, the president proactively put “Executive Order on Imposing Certain Sanctions in the Event of Foreign Interference in a United States Election” in play.

It states in relevant part:

In recent years, the proliferation of digital devices and internet-based communications has created significant vulnerabilities and magnified the scope and intensity of the threat of foreign interference, as illustrated in the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment. I hereby declare a national emergency to deal with this threat.

Under this EO, the Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, is instructed to conduct an assessment of the threat within 45 days from the conclusion of the US Election. As one would imagine, this report requires specificity including means, methods, and principals involved.

Under the premise of a national emergency, the government is empowered to freeze bank accounts, impound voting machines, seize assets, etc. There is also language that targets those who would undermine public confidence via “covert distribution of propaganda and disinformation.” Corporate Media & Big Tech, hopefully, some Karma coming your way.

Ratcliffe has been working behind the scenes for the past month on this report. He now says that he will not meet the December 18, 2020 deadline because his work is incomplete. The date for congress to certify the election is January 6.

Ratcliffe should lean on the investigators to complete the report ASAP, without any Deep State delays. The health and future of American elections are at stake.

 

R. D. Wedge  

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/12/2020_election_integrity__a_snapshot_showing_where_we_stand_now.html

Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter

George Soros Funds Research on the Evils of Men - Daniel Greenfield

 

​ by Daniel Greenfield

One of the biggest feminism funders in America isn’t much of a feminist.

 

George Soros is one of the biggest funders of the anti-male movement, even though the Hungarian billionaire whose past includes accusations of Nazi collaboration, has a troubled history with women. Five years ago, Adriana Ferreyr, his 30-year old ex-girlfriend, sued the financier, accusing him of assault and battery. Soros’ issues with women crossed over into his political activism when he blasted Democrats who had taken a stand against Franken’s groping.

“There’s only one whom I would not like to see succeed, and that’s Gillibrand of New York because she is responsible for pushing the comedian Al Franken, whom I admire, to resign,” he groused.

Franken had been accused of groping eight women at an Obama inauguration party, a Democrat fundraiser, the Minnesota Women's Political Caucus, and on USO tours.

One of Franken's accusers quoted him as saying, "It's my right as an entertainer."

And then there was the former Soros Fund Portfolio manager who was accused of assaulting women in his sex dungeon while screaming that he would, “rape you like I rape my daughter.”

The inevitable next step was to start funding the Institute for Research on Male Supremacism.

The Institute for Research on Male Supremacism is entangled with UC Berkeley’s Center for Right-Wing Studies. Despite the use of “institute” and “studies” in their names, both would be more accurately referred to as hate groups. Academic organizations that study the Left or oppressed groups have nothing but good things to say about them. The Center for Right-Wing Studies has nothing but bad things to say about the subject it claims to be studying.

And the Institute for Research on Male Supremacism is not especially fond of men. But calling it the Institute for Hating Men might be a little too much even at UC Berkeley. At least for now.

The Center for Right-Wing Studies has run into trouble because the anti-conservative hate group is a component of the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues which Berkely wants to shut down. That would interfere with such important projects as Marxism Engages Bourdieu. But at least ISSI is somewhat less obsessed with classical Marxism than its predecessor, The Institute for the Study of Social Change, instead it focuses on the Marxism of identity politics.

Recently, Tina Sacks, the Chair of the Center for Research on Social Change, suggested that Senator Kamala Harris' success can be attributed to "the fact that she is not a direct descendant of American slavery may have made the white establishment feel more comfortable with her."

While ISSI may be struggling, Alex DiBranco, the founder and executive director of the Institute for Research on Male Supremacism, is a fellow of the Dangerous Speech Project. And the Project is funded by the usual suspects, the Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and Soros' Open Society Foundation. Along with taxpayers through the Institute for Peace.

What are DiBranco’s qualifications for studying the inimintable evil that is the male sex? She did have high honors in creative writing for her BA in English from Dartmouth and her bio lists 7 years as a Sociology PhD candidate investigating the evils of the conservative movement.

At some point she decided that “male supremacism should be studied as a similar phenomenon to white supremacism and anti-Semitism”.

And here we are.

Before settling on fighting "male supremacism", DiBranco slithered through the Center for American Progress, another Soros operation.

The Institute for Research on Male Supremacism has 6 founders, 5 of them female: apparently the IRSM isn’t very interested in male perspectives on “male supremacism”.

There are also another 20 experts ready to be interviewed about male supremacism.

What amazing insights about male evil has the “Institute” produced from this giant staff? Its only listed publications are 5 papers by DiBranco, one of which claims that libertarian feminists allied with President Trump to promote "rape culture" while another contends that "male supremacist terrorism" is a rising threat. Valerie Solanas and SCUM apparently just can't keep up.

Meanwhile, the president and veep of the Open Society Foundation are both men. All the past presidents of the OSF have also been men. The Open Society Institute’s board consists of 10 men and 3 women. And one of those women, Andrea Soros Colombel, is Soros' daughter.

Learn about the evils of male supremacism from male supremacists.

The Institute for Research on Male Supremacism is not especially effective. Its Giving Tuesday campaign attempting to raise $1,950 only managed 3 contributions totaling a miserable $140.

And the “protections” for scholars “doing vital work on male supremacism” may not happen.

While it’s easy enough to dismiss the Institute for Research on Male Supremacism as laughable, its content has been incorporated into the Southern Poverty Law Center, and it’s another in the almost endless organizations being spawned by divisive identity politics.

The major funders, like George Soros, who subsidize identity politics don’t practice it. Like taxes, the price of identity politics is paid by ordinary people much further down the ladder.

Identity politics was never meant to provide equality, but to manufacture endless division. Its creeds demonize and criminalize huge segments of the population, white people, men, married couples, and parents, not because they’re oppressors, but because divisiveness is the point.

The Institute for Research on Male Supremacism claims to be studying “male supremacist” violence and extremism, but identity politics is a radicalization and indoctrination tool.

Identity politics on college campuses seeks to identify emotionally vulnerable students, recruit and radicalize them into a worldview in which they are the victims who must fight for justice. The Black Lives Matter riots whose participants included young men and women of all races showed just how easily campus radicalism and the entertainment industry’s culture war tip into violence.

All the various supremacisms are refinements of identity politics that do away with the nuances of intersectionality and plunge directly into the duality of identity superiority and inferiority.

There’s no better way to tear apart a country, inspire terrorism, or destroy any sense of unity.

It’s not hard to understand why emotionally vulnerable young adults would join movements that tell them their doubt, uncertainty, and pain are the product of a Marxist clash between the oppressors and the oppressed that can be overturned with enough activism, anger, and conflict.

There’s less of a difference between domestic ISIS suicide bombers, alt-right synagogue shooters, and Black Lives Matter rioters than we would like to think. They’ve all been indoctrinated, online or in school, into an ideology that weaponizes their pain and anger.

The real problem is that two out of three of these ideologies operate freely on college campuses and radicalize new recruits using taxpayer funds and student fees.

A new generation of identity politics terrorists was created on campuses and unleashed in major cities this summer. Meanwhile the funders and institutions behind that political terror are trying to criminalize the race and sex of half the country. That enterprise can only end badly.

Soros’ feminism, like everything he does, is about power. Sexual assault is about power. So is weaponizing gender to radicalize and terrorize because it’s a convenient point of division.

And who better to fund research on the evils of men than a man who admires a serial groper?

 

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.  

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/12/george-soros-funds-research-evils-men-daniel-greenfield/ 

Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter

To Europe with Love: "Diplomats" or Terrorists from Iran's Mullahs? - Majid Rafizadeh

 

​ by Majid Rafizadeh

 

It was because of his diplomatic position that Assadi was reportedly able to bring the explosives from Tehran to Vienna without being caught. In other words, Iranian diplomats are key enablers of Khamenei's fundamentalist agenda abroad.

• The EU would to itself a big favor to realize that Assadi was likely not acting alone. High-level Iranian leaders and diplomats most probably instructed him to carry out the terrorist operation.

• It was because of his diplomatic position that Assadi was reportedly able to bring the explosives from Tehran to Vienna without being caught. In other words, Iranian diplomats are key enablers of Khamenei's fundamentalist agenda abroad.

• Unless or until Iran's mullahs stop their terror activities, the EU would do itself and the Free World another big favor by cutting off its diplomatic ties with a regime that is murdering European citizens and carrying out terror plots on European soil.

Assadollah Assadi is on trial in Belgium, accused of delivering explosives and a detonator to two agents in a bid to blow up a Free Iran rally in Paris in 2018. Assadi, serving at the Iranian embassy in Vienna, was also a senior officer for Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security. Pictured: Iran's embassy in Vienna, Austria. (Image source: Erich Schmid/Wikimedia Commons)

While the European Union appears excited that Joe Biden will be the next US President and then they can immediately rejoin the nuclear deal and lift sanctions against the mullahs, Tehran continues its terrorism on the European soil.

As the High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, is urging the US to rejoin the JCPOA, one of Iran's active diplomats in Belgium is currently on trial, accused of orchestrating a terrorist operation in Europe in 2018. French officials foiled a planned bomb attack in Paris against a large "Free Iran" convention attended by tens of thousands of people, including many high-level speakers such as former US House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and Canada's former Prime Minister Stephen Harper and former Foreign Minister John Baird.

If the terrorist plot were successful, it would have possibly been one of the largest terrorist acts sponsored by the Iranian regime. Where is the EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, on this issue? Completely silent.

In the terrorist plot, an Iranian diplomat at the time, Assadollah Assadi, is accused of delivering explosives and a detonator to two agents in a bid to blow up a Free Iran rally. Assadi, serving at the Iranian embassy in Vienna, was also a senior officer for Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security. The prosecutors have asked the court to sentence Assadi to the maximum 20 years; to sentence two of his accomplices to 18 years, and another defendant to 15 years in prison as well as strip them of their Belgian citizenship.

The Iranian leaders have demanded that the EU release Assadi on the ground of "diplomatic immunity". Assadi, under an order from the Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, did not show up for the first day of trial. He also seems emboldened to such an extent that he has threatened the EU authorities that if he gets convicted, Iran's proxies will take revenge. According to the newspaper Le Monde:

"During his preventive detention, Assadolah Assadi refused to collaborate with the Belgian justice, but he threatened reprisals. On March 9, 2019, he informed the director of Beveren prison that he wished to meet with an investigator. He told him that if he was convicted, 'armed groups' were ready to act against police officers, witnesses, or the PMOI supporters."

The EU would do itself a big favor to realize that Assadi was most likely not acting alone. High-level Iranian leaders and diplomats most probably instructed him to carry out the terrorist operation. It is highly unlikely to go ahead with such a large plot without having the blessing of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, his Foreign Minister, Javad Zarif, and Iran's Ministry of Intelligence.

The EU by now also doubtless realizes that the Iranian regime uses its embassies and consulates in foreign countries as cells to promote extremism and support militias and proxies. An Iranian ambassador and 14 other diplomats, for instance, were expelled from Kuwait in 2017 over links to a spy and terror cell, and Iran's cultural and military missions were also ordered to shut down. Iran, it should come as no surprise, does not respect international standards of diplomacy. Instead it exploits the trust of other governments to advance its revolutionary and hegemonic ambitions.

The mullahs can give anyone they desire a diplomatic position to allow that person freely to travel across the Western world. It was because of his diplomatic position that Assadi was reportedly capable of bringing the explosives from Tehran to Vienna without being caught. In other word, Iranian diplomats are key enablers of Khamenei's fundamentalist agenda abroad. The EU must not give Iranian officials a free pass because they are "diplomats", officials or employees of the Foreign Service.

The incident of this terror plot on the European soil is not an isolated case. Iran's regime has also been murdering dissidents on European soil. Ahmad Mola Nissi, a Dutch citizen of Iranian origin and a critic of the Iranian regime, was gunned down at his front door in November 2017. The Dutch authorities publicly acknowledged that it had "strong indications" that the Iranian government had commissioned the murder. Another of Tehran's political opponents, Mohammad Reza Kolahi Samadi, was killed in similar circumstances in Amsterdam in 2015. He had apparently been targeted for his opposition to the Iranian government since the 1980s.

Unless or until Iran's mullahs stop their terror activities, the EU would do itself and the Free World another big favor by cutting off its diplomatic ties with a regime that is murdering European citizens and carrying out terror plots on European soil. How many more European citizens need to be killed and terror acts to be carried out by the Iranian regime on European soil for the EU to act?

• Follow Majid Rafizadeh on Twitter

 

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/16867/iran-diplomats-terrorists-europe 

 Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter

The Biden Parenthesis Opens - Amir Taheri

 

​ by Amir Taheri

Many Americans hope that Trump's tenure will prove to be a mere parenthesis. They don't know that Biden's term will also be a parenthesis.

• On relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran, Biden holds the strong card of sanctions devised under Obama and applied under Trump. Obama offered only carrots and failed. Trump offered only stick and didn't achieve his aim of a photo-op with the top mullah, Ali Khamenei, or even Hassan Rouhani. Biden is in a stronger position than Obama or Trump because the Khomeinist regime is weaker than four years ago.

• Adopting the Paris Climate Accord is also not easy. Last week, signatories cheekily admitted they had not implemented it.

• Many Americans hope that Trump's tenure will prove to be a mere parenthesis. They don't know that Biden's term will also be a parenthesis.

(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

With the Electoral College confirming Joe Biden as the winner of last month's election, it is almost certain he will be confirmed as the next president of the United States on 6 January.

And, unless something surrealistic happens, he would take the oath of office on 20 January.

What might a Biden presidency look like?

Given the peculiarities of American democracy, such speculation amounts to giving a hostage to fortune. Presidents predicted to lead the nation into disaster turned out to have the safest pairs of hands. Those who inspired romantic dreams dropped into banality as Icarus did when his wings melted.

Some observers believe that Biden's administration will be a third term for former President Barack Obama. Biden was Obama's Vice President for eight years, and a large number of people he has picked in his team are Obama alumni.

I think they are wrong.

Biden's team is Obamaesque on a personnel level. But I doubt it will be Obamaesque in policy. The same troupe could play Much Ado About Nothing and Hamlet.

Lyndon Johnson inherited John Kennedy's presidency with the same personnel but turned out to be a different operator. Obama was exceptional insofar as he had little political experience before entering the White House. As a "community organizer" he believed that things get done by making speeches. In his brief tenure as senator, he was often absent and did almost nothing as a legislator. As president, he thought things get done by fiat and problems solved by dodging them.

With the bulk of his career covered by legislative experience, Biden is a different politician. He knows that claiming to "make oceans recede," as Obama did, is silly. He also knows that in American politics every issue could trigger what George Shultz called "a battle royal", and that nothing is ever settled "once and for all," as Obama said about his plan to solve the Arab-Israeli problem.

Also, the current situation in the country is different from what it was when Obama stood for election. At the time, many Americans went for Obama as an indulgence, some in atonement of real or imagined guilt inherited from forefathers, others in the hope of nudging the nation towards the left.

At the time, Obama was the inspiring candidate and John McCain the boring one. This time, the challenger was the boring one. As Mark Ash, a leading member of the Progressive wing of the Democrat Party says:

"The 2020 campaign was a weird one... The winner was not inspiring at all and the loser was arguably one of the most inspiring in American history. It was Trump, not Biden, who drove record voter turnout, among Republicans and Democrats alike. You were either inspired to vote Trump in or inspired to vote Trump out; Trump was absolutely the defining figure."

However, whatever Ash might say, I think, in a democracy, being boring could be an advantage. Wasn't Clement Attlee a boring man in the British political circus? And wasn't George Pompidou the greyest of the grey in French politics? Didn't Aristotle say that the best leaders in a democracy are "average citizens"? And didn't Confucius warn against "colorful men", even in despotic China?

Obama was elected because he was Obama; Biden won because he was not Trump.

Some observers claim that the Biden administration is going to fail because it is mostly made up of Robins, that is to say, sidekicks, rather than Batman figures. But underestimating number-twos is often as wrong in politics as it is in business. The first campaign of Xerxes to annex Greece succeeded thanks to Mardonius, the second-in-command. In Waterloo, the Marquis of Anglesey did the heavy lifting but Wellington took the credit.

Although many were number-two or even three in previous administrations, Biden's team brings forth a wealth of experience that could restore the state discipline shaken under Trump. Biden has put the most controversial members of the Obama administration into isolated slots.

The useless John Kerry will do his uselessness as coordinator for fictive environmental endeavors. Susan Rice, who tried to become Secretary of State, is given something called "domestic coordinator" which, one presumes, does not mean dealing with federal janitors. Hillary Clinton, who coveted the Pentagon, will continue chewing her chagrin.

Biden has also refused to bring so-called progressives to the high table. Elisabeth Warren campaigned to get the Treasury while Bernie Sanders asked to become Labor Secretary.

Last week Biden called in "civil rights" leaders and gave them a dressing down with the claim that their extremism, channeled through such outfits as Black Lives Matter, and the campaign to defund the police, prevented him from "crushing Trump" with a landslide victory. "Progressives" were blamed for the fact that Trump doubled his votes among African-Americans and Hispanics.

If Ronald Reagan's motto was "campaign in poetry and govern in prose", Biden seems to have opted for prose all along. This is why the platform he offered was even blander than the one marketed by Mitt Romney in 2008.

Despite pressure from "progressives," Biden has managed not to commit himself to reeling back all that Trump has done.

He is not going to make the US dependent on imported energy when oil-exporting areas including the Middle East, the Caspian Basin and Venezuela remain unstable. Efforts to clip China's wings will continue, perhaps even intensify if only because Hunter Biden's suspicious deals with Chinese businesses are certain to haunt Biden's presidency.

Nor is Biden likely to reel back the campaign to persuade Arab states to normalize with Israel, while no one thinks he would relocate the US Embassy away from Jerusalem.

On relations with the Islamic Republic of Iran, Biden holds the strong card of sanctions devised under Obama and applied under Trump. Obama offered only carrots and failed. Trump offered only stick and didn't achieve his aim of a photo-op with the top mullah, Ali Khamenei, or even Hassan Rouhani. Biden is in a stronger position than Obama or Trump because the Khomeinist regime is weaker than four years ago.

Adopting the Paris Climate Accord is also not easy. Last week, signatories cheekily admitted they had not implemented it. Biden cannot do more than submitting to the Senate where it is likely to be rejected in its present form.

Even if Republicans lose the seats still to be contested in Georgia, Biden won't have the Senate majority he needs. His own Democrat camp is divided into "progressives" and conservatives who could outflank him from left or right. In 2022, a third of the Senate, this time concerning more Democrat senators than Republicans, will be up for re-election. By then, the country will once again gear up for the next presidential election. The question could be: Will Biden stand and will he find Trump as a rival again?

Many Americans hope that Trump's tenure will prove to be a mere parenthesis. They don't know that Biden's term will also be a parenthesis. In fact, all American presidential terms are quickly closing brackets. What is permanent is American democracy, which keeps the ship of state steady even in the biggest storms.

Well, we started with prose, ending up with poetry. Not a good sign!

This article was originally published by Asharq al-Awsat

 

Amir Taheri  was the executive editor-in-chief of the daily Kayhan in Iran from 1972 to 1979. He has worked at or written for innumerable publications, published eleven books, and has been a columnist for Asharq Al-Awsat since 1987.

 Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16870/biden-parenthesis 

Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter

The Shuttering of Europe - Katie Hopkins

 

​ by Katie Hopkins

 

For what purpose? To what end?

 

At the risk of sounding like a small child being scolded by its mother for fighting, it was Germany who started it – and I am not talking about WWI. Or even WWII, though I will always hold a deep-seated grudge against the country for both of those events.

I am talking about the complete shuttering of Europe for Christmas.

One day Merkel was on German TV screens wringing her hands and imploring her people to be more cautious. (I wondered what was going on; Merkel does not do emotion.)

The next day she reverted to type and threw Germany into a hard lockdown, closing shops, schools and everything in between. (I felt some relief; at least this was the woman I knew.)

Merkel is the ginger German equivalent of Mark Zuckerberg. And by that I mean very odd.

I swear that woman could impound Santa’s sleigh and still be back in the European Parliament by 7am in a pant suit, calmly discussing Fiscal Stimulus while little children wake to empty stockings.

The vast population of Muslims she imported into Germany call her Mutti Merkel (Mother Merkel) and I am sure they are as excited as Polar elves to watch this angry woman all but cancel Christmas in a country famous for its festive season. Erdogan must be rewarding her well.

Most of the major Christmas markets in Germany have been canceled, as have New Year fireworks displays.

And so it began.

As if following a playbook written by some more powerful hand, one by one the countries of Europe have blown out the candles, turned off the music and shuttered their doors.

In Spain, social gatherings for Christmas will be limited to 10 people, including children. If any of you have Spanish or Greek friends, you’ll know that this is the cultural equivalent of being sent to solitary confinement while enduring insults to the memory of all your forefathers en route.

Austrians only emerged from a second lockdown a few weeks back and barely had time for a cup of hot chocolate in the sunshine before being ordered to stop smiling.

They are still imprisoned in their homes between 8pm and 6am, with no bars, restaurants or traditional Christmas markets allowed to provide respite or festive cheer.

It’s the same story elsewhere in Europe.

In the Netherlands, Prime Minister Mark Rutte has slammed the country into a five-week lockdown ending on 20 January. And just in case decent people start looking for an escape route, the Dutch have been ordered not to book non-essential travel abroad until mid-March.

Whatever happened to lockdown to ‘flatten the curve’?

To protestors gathered outside his office, Rutte offered this consoling thought: “There will come a time when coronavirus will be behind us, when our lives will be normal again.

"It won't be now, or in a week, or a month. But with the vaccine, 2021 will indeed be a year of hope and of light at the end of the tunnel.”

Note how any hope of normality has become inextricably linked to the adoption of a vaccine…

Italy has fared no better. In what will be an absolute affront to most good Italians, there will be no Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, people will not be allowed to leave their home towns, and there will be a curfew.

Can this level of state interference in the private and personal domain of family and faith really be possible? In 2020 families are being told not to kiss and hug at Christmas, nor to attend their church – in Italy, which, remember, invented kissing, hugging and family. Sometimes you have to pinch yourself to believe it.

As the Italians love to pray, so the French love to ski. So, naturally, Macron has shut the slopes as well, restricting the life-loving French with curfews, travel restrictions and police at the border with Switzerland should anyone think of crossing for a sneaky snow-fest.

These tyrannic shutdowns will shatter economies, but not before they have shattered lives.

I sit here with my husband and children, and all their noise and nonsense, and I wonder about young, single people who live alone and are dependent on their jobs to provide a social life. How will their Christmas be, under curfew and without company? Where will they find joy? Not to mention the elderly…

And as I spend hours on the phone with hotels and train operators, canceling my final road trip to London before Christmas, I feel real anger and bitterness towards all of these European governments – not least my own.

I had planned to visit those bravely standing up to state oppression by opening their businesses despite the ‘rules’, only for my own capital city to be thrust into Tier 3 closure without warning, throwing my trifling plans and, much more importantly, the livelihoods of tens of thousands into disarray.

I am truly apologetic to those I have let down by not turning up to show my support. I feel like a fraud because the truth is, I am worried that if I’m caught traveling into a Tier 3 area, I might be forcefully separated from my family at Christmas. Although, honestly, I no longer think in terms of ‘if' but ‘when’.

I look out across a Europe that ought to be a sparkling mass of lights and happy crowds and markets and see only rules, curfews and darkness. And I wonder: how did we get here, and so quickly, too?

Why is the state able to tell me how many people I am allowed to have inside my home? Why have more people been forced out of work than at any time since records began?

For what purpose? To what end?

I hear the phrase Build Back Better. And today there was a new one: Build Back Fairer. And I realize to build back, you must first completely destroy.

I may still hold a grudge for the wars Germany started, but at least in a time of war there are shots fired and bombs dropped. You can witness destruction by an enemy and use it to fuel your determination to fight back.

This time the enemy is the leadership we elected to represent us. Fighting back in this invisible war of attrition will be a far more bloody affair.

 

Katie Hopkins  

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/12/shuttering-europe-katie-hopkins/ 

 Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter

Watch: Peter Navarro Displays proof of sweeping election fraud - Sally Zahav

 

​ by Sally Zahav

Has the United States jettisoned the vision of the Shining City on the Hill and become just another banana republic? The answer depends on how this travesty of justice is addressed. Jesse Watters showcases Peter Navarro's convincing evidence of widespread election fraud.

 

 

Sally Zahav  

Source: https://youtu.be/7dDVMVl4SQU 

Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter

From China, With Love - Debra J. Saunders

 

​ by Debra J. Saunders

Sanctimony is proving to be a bad look for Rep. Eric Swalwell.

 

Sanctimony is proving to be a bad look for Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., since Axios reported on his ties with a suspected Chinese spy. Fang Fang, also known as Christine Fang, insinuated herself with a number of up-and-coming U.S. politicians between 2011 and 2015. Swalwell was the biggest fish.

The Chinese national's efforts, Axios reported, included raising money for Swalwell's 2014 reelection campaign. Fang also helped place at least one intern in Swalwell's House office.

According to Axios, Swalwell did nothing wrong and was unaware Fang may have been working for Beijing until U.S. intelligence officials alerted him in 2015. Swalwell cut off all ties with Fang, who left the United States.

Problem: If you judge Swalwell by the standard he applied to President Donald Trump, he shouldn't hold public office. Swalwell frequently met with an operative of a foreign government who was helping his campaign. When Trump campaign dons had one meeting with a Russian national with ties to the Kremlin, Swalwell called that collusion.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report concluded Trump's campaign did not collude with Russia's "sweeping and systematic" interference in the 2016 election. Didn't matter. Swalwell still saw "strong evidence of collusion."

Of course, House Republicans have started to demand that Swalwell surrender his seat on the House Intelligence Committee. As I write this, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has no such concerns.

I wonder why a national security apparatus that did not warn Trump about Russian mischief in 2016, even after he won office, nonetheless did warn Intelligence Committee member Swalwell and other elected officials in Fang's orbit in 2015. And unlike the Russian probe, there were no press leaks at the time.

Swalwell's reaction to the Axios story has been telling. On CNN, the California Democrat argued the story initially was leaked as he was working to impeach Trump. (It took a year to report the story out.)

Swalwell is peddling a dangerous conceit — that others seek to discredit him because he is so upright.

After railing against Russian mischief, Swalwell apparently believes China's meddling doesn't count as news.

Axios' Jonathan Swan scoffed at the suggestion the Trump team was behind the leak. "Does anybody remotely familiar with Trumpworld actually believe they would dump oppo & then spend *more than a year* waiting for the reporter — a widely-respected China correspondent — to report out a nuanced story?" Swan tweeted. "Give me a break. They would wait a week then launder it w a friendly."

Swalwell's office isn't talking, but sent me the statement sent to Axios: "Rep. Swalwell, long ago, provided information about this person — whom he met more than eight years ago, and whom he hasn't seen in nearly six years — to the FBI. To protect information that might be classified, he will not participate in your story."

Swalwell used to be my congressman. I met him in 2012, apparently shortly after Fang, who was on the lookout for politicians with a future, befriended him.

In a daring move, the then-city councilman for Dublin, California, challenged entrenched but out-of-touch incumbent Rep. Pete Stark, a fellow Democrat whom Esquire rated among the 10 worst lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Swalwell won that David versus Goliath contest.

Within a decade, Swalwell ran for president — briefly, as he got out of the Democratic primary in July 2019 — even as he had to know this story would come out and he'd have to have better answers.

Now Swalwell is the politician who seems out of touch. He runs onto cable TV at the drop of the hat to condemn Trump for colluding with Russia, and it turns out he was an unwitting tool for China. So he ought to have a little humility.

 

Debra J. Saunders  

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/12/china-love-debra-j-saunders/ 

 Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter