Professors and Activists Spin 9/11 Conspiracy Theories While Claiming Victimhood - Andrew E. Harrod

 

​ by Andrew E. Harrod

Variations on "some people (but certainly not Muslims) did something"

Zaid Shakir on 9/11: "Was it Mossad, the CIA, and how did bin Laden get operatives in the building to orchestrate a controlled demolition."

The webinar "9/11: American Muslims Twenty Years Later" does not concern "who did it, was it Mossad, the CIA, and how did bin Laden get operatives in the building to orchestrate a controlled demolition," stated Zaytuna College co-founder and professor emeritus Zaid Shakir. On 9/11's twentieth anniversary, he and his fellow panelists spun absurd conspiracy theories about the terrorist attacks, while doing their best to obscure the plain facts of Al Qaeda's guilt.

Shakir, who organized the webinar on behalf of the radical, anti-Israel Muslim Alliance in North America (MANA), has long embraced conspiratorial nonsense. After the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, he wrote that "some [unnamed] observers" said it "was undertaken by the Zionist forces" in order to "intensify their anti-Islamic propaganda campaign." Admitting he "was an extremely anti-American person" when 9/11 happened, he stayed true to form by expressing his desire to focus the webinar on 9/11's subsequent effects on the American Muslim community, "regardless of who is responsible" for the attacks.

Post 9/11, Shakir noted the political quandaries traditional Muslims including him face in the modern West. The number of American Muslim politicians has grown and they have been "doing some great things, especially in terms of foreign policy," he said. By contrast, he lamented, "in terms of domestic policy" these policymakers "have almost universally . . . adopted a progressive, leftwing agenda that advocates for things that Muslims traditionally have held to be forbidden and/or repugnant."

Yasir Qadhi claimed 9/11 still presents "a lot of unanswered questions."

Leading American Muslim scholar Yasir Qadhi tried (and failed) to simultaneously condemn and embrace 9/11 conspiracies. Despite Shakir's earlier statements, Qadhi quipped to him that "even you and I have a redline that we are not going to cross" regarding theories about 9/11 that they would discuss publicly. "We are not going to go down certain things," Qadhi said, before claiming that 9/11 still presented "a lot of unanswered questions."

Qadhi likewise raised questions about Islam's relationship to democracy while discussing Muslim Americans in the two decades before 9/11. Back then, the "norm was to hear this notion of voting is haram [forbidden], it was the default in most suburban masajid [mosque]. And our imams and sheikhs from Al Azhar and from other places [said] there was this identity, we shouldn't really get involved in the system too much," he said. Post-9/11, "that's literally out the window," for Muslims realized the necessity of political engagement for protecting their civil rights. Although Qadhi condemned 9/11 as "un-Islamic; it was unethical, it was unjust, regardless of whatever political grievances that existed before," he argued that 9/11 brought "Islamophobia," the "demonization of the ummah, of our texts, of even our prophet."

Howard University assistant Dean for religious life Nisa Muhammad expressed similar sentiments. She is a follower of the rabidly antisemitic Louis Farrakhan, who inspired her to abandon her Baptist roots and convert to Islam as graduate student at Howard University. Muhammad is a writer for Farrakhan's Final Call magazine and a television host for the Islamic Republic of Iran's antisemitic Press TV.

After 9/11, she said, the "entire faith of Islam was blamed for the actions of a few. This was unheard of when the Ku Klux Klan terrorized black people in America. The entire faith of Christianity was never condemned or criticized." She never explained which Christian doctrines justified racism or how she, Farrakhan, Al Qaeda, and Iran's Islamic Republic represented just a "few" marginal extremists.

Saafir Raab II, a former consultant to President Barack Obama, also questioned 9/11's historical record. Raab organized Obama's 2016 visit to the Islamic Society of Baltimore, a mosque under FBI surveillance because of links to jihadists and a past imam who preached that suicide bombings were justified. Raab described 9/11 as an exceptional event involving a "few individuals who are clearly mentally deranged, whoever was involved with that effort, those are people who are not mentally fit for civility . . . whoever they were."

Sherman Jackson equated the Taliban's abolishment of female education to legislators' opposition to critical race theory.

University of Southern California professor Sherman Jackson, bemoaned that 9/11 opened Americans' eyes to what most recognize as the dangers presented by sharia. "Before 9/11 we could say all kinds of things, and America was kind of an ideological playground," he stated, before adding "9/11 said, no, no, no, you can't do that anymore, you now have to be more disciplined and more measured in what you say." He then offered a back-handed compliment to restrictions of traditional Islam by complaining that "given the levels of literacy we have within institutions we have today, the Prophet himself would have been condemned." "Cancel culture would have affected him," Qadhi agreed.

Jackson defends Critical Race Theory (CRT), a radical leftist ideology that considers racism intrinsic to American institutions and life. He falsely analogized opposition to CRT to the resurgent Taliban's abolishment of female education. "We can complain about that and yet turn around, have state legislators say, we are not going to have Critical Race Theory taught in our schools, and not see the double standard," he said.

While the webinar participants emphasized Muslim victimhood, their own comments clearly showed that Muslim self-reflection would have been a more appropriate response to 9/11. The panelists' conspiracy mongering, prejudices, and troubled relationship to democratic participation exposed their conflicts with America's constitutional regime and civil society. That several are professors of Islamic and Middle East studies demonstrates the toxic nature of academe and makes clear the urgent need for thoroughgoing reform.

 

Andrew E. Harrod, a Middle East Forum Campus Watch Fellow, freelance researcher, and writer, is a fellow with the Lawfare Project. Follow him on Twitter: @AEHarrod.

Source: https://www.meforum.org/campus-watch/62677/professors-and-activists-

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A ‘Real Muslim’ Tries to Run Down a Crowd of Jews With His Car in LA, and the Media Yawns - Robert Spencer

 

​ by Robert Spencer

Reuters took no notice. Neither did AP. The New York Times didn’t find it fit to print. Neither did the Washington Post, or CNN, or anyone else, including the hometown Los Angeles Times. It doesn’t fit the narrative.

On Wednesday night at Shaarei Tefila synagogue in Los Angeles, a man showed up at a Sukkot holiday concert, looked around, and said: “I’m a real Muslim, I’ll show you what real terrorism looks like.” About twenty minutes later, the man returned in a car. According to The Algemeiner, he “allegedly accelerated down a one-way alley into a crowd of women and children” as the concert was ending. “The crowd of about 20 to 30 managed to jump out of the path of the vehicle before the assailant stopped short in front of a metal gate, yelled ‘f**k the Jews’ and left.” One of the most striking aspects of this entire incident is that The Algemeiner’s report is the only one you can read about it. Reuters took no notice. Neither did AP. The New York Times didn’t find it fit to print. Neither did the Washington Post, or CNN, or anyone else, including the hometown Los Angeles Times. It doesn’t fit the narrative.

The Algemeiner describes itself as “a global news destination published online and in print, serves as an independent media voice covering the Middle East, Israel and matters of Jewish interest around the world.” One would think that the establishment media giants would be interested also in this matter of “Jewish interest,” but no dice. As far as they’re concerned, Muslims are always and everywhere victims of “Islamophobia,” and stories that depict them as such are the only ones worth reporting, not ones in which Muslims victimize others.

The reality is that anti-Semitic attacks such as the one in Los Angeles Wednesday evening are far more common than incidents of anti-Muslim hatred.  In 2018, there were 225 anti-Muslim hate crimes, and 896 anti-Jewish hate crimes; in 2019, there were 219 anti-Muslim hate crimes, and 995 anti-Jewish hate crimes. In 2020, anti-Muslim hate crimes decreased by 42%.

Yet ABC News gave a Muslims-As-Victims spin to all this on September 11 when it stated: “Hate crimes against Muslims rose 1617% from 2000 to 2001, according to the FBI marking some of the highest numbers of Islamophobic hate crimes ever in the U.S. But even as the country moved further from the attacks and the Muslim American population in the country grew, discrimination against this community has not waned, Pew Research Center reports.”

This kind of “journalism” is published as Jew-hatred becomes increasingly legitimized on the Left, and leads media outlets to minimize, downplay, or ignore altogether stories that they think will lead people to think ill of Islam, driving the MAGA-hatted thugs of Leftist fever dreams to commit more “Islamophobic” attacks.

Back in the real world, Jews have been targeted in attacks like the one in Los Angeles many times, but not in the United States. In Israel in 2018, a Muslim murdered two people and injured three more in a vehicular jihad attack. And there have been many others. A billboard in Nazareth actually called for attacks of this kind. “Moderate” Fatah also called for such attacks. And the Islamic State issued this call in September 2014: “So O muwahhid, do not let this battle pass you by wherever you may be….If you can kill a disbelieving American or European — especially the spiteful and filthy French — or an Australian, or a Canadian, or any other disbeliever from the disbelievers waging war, including the citizens of the countries that entered into a coalition against the Islamic State, then rely upon Allah, and kill him in any manner or way however it may be….Smash his head with a rock, or slaughter him with a knife, or run him over with your car…”

Related: Anti-Semites Get Their Wish: Democrats Yank Money for Israel Defense

But you won’t read about that in establishment media sources, any more than you will about this attack. Nor are you likely to learn that this synagogue has been targeted before. In May 2020, The Algemeiner reported “a member of the Jewish volunteer security group Magen Am described fending off vandals intent on defacing another synagogue, Shaarei Tefila in Fairfax. ‘They were spray-painting this whole area,’ he said, but were unable to damage the synagogue before ‘I sent them off.’ Noting that several nearby stores had been ‘pillaged’ and the area ‘had tear gas galore,’ he nonetheless noted, ‘We defended Shaarei Tefila today.’”

From whom? Likely the culprits were Leftist activists, along with supporters of the Palestinian jihad such as the fellow who tried to drive into the crowd Wednesday. In the establishment media, however, such people are angelic children and heirs of the American troops who defeated the Nazis. Sure they are. And we’ll find our news elsewhere, thank you.

 

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 23 books including many bestsellers, such as The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), The Truth About Muhammad and The History of Jihad. His latest book is The Critical Qur’an. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here. For media inquiries, contact communications@pjmedia.com.

Source: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2021/09/a-real-muslim-tries-to-run-down-a-crowd-of-jews-with-his-car-in-la-and-the-media-yawns

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Critical Race Theory and the Many Piles of Dirt It Creates - Chuck Berk

 

​ by Chuck Berk

Critical Race Theory, and its precursor affirmative action, relegate the presumed victims of systemic racism to long-term failure by artificially granting accommodations, quotas, money, and status, thereby robbing a class of people of their sense of personal responsibility and self-esteem.

I grew up in the 50’s and 60’s on a quiet cul-de-sac on Long Island.  Playing by myself one day I noticed the dirt that had accumulated in the gutter and commenced with great enthusiasm to clean the street with my sandbox shovel.  I started in front of Mrs. Tissenbaum’s house who soon noticed what I was doing and stormed out of her front door to reprimand me for shoveling dirt onto her lawn.  The naïve good intentions of a seven-year-old failed to consider some important questions:  Was it really necessary to clean the whole street?  What about the problem of leaving piles of dirt on everyone’s lawns?   Clearly, I was trying to fix a problem that didn’t need fixing while making matters worse.  Mrs. Tissenbaum helped me learn an important lesson that day.

The quixotic goal of ridding the world of racism is as unattainable and wrought with unintended consequences.  Yes, racism remains among us, but America’s laws and practices have unquestionably helped our country evolve over the centuries and decades since slavery and Jim Crow were defeated.  In fact, America, despite its flaws, remains a shining beacon of hope for millions of people of all races and nationalities from around the world wishing to live a better life.  Certainly, we should all strive for self-awareness and improvement in our interactions with people of different backgrounds.  But, in the process of seeking perfection we are creating more destructive piles of dirt than the ones we initially tried to fix.

As woke clergy use their pulpit, prestige and resources to promote “Racial Equity and Justice” training in order to help us become “more aware of our own bias and privilege” allow me to offer a different perspective.  Critical Race Theory, the academic umbrella under which all such training is based, seeks to end racism with racism.  Based on skin color and gross generalizations about white people, CRT relies on the same bigotry that it claims to abhor. 

Despite obvious evidence of progress throughout our society, CRT teaches black people to believe that they remain victims of racism and white people through false narratives such as the 1619 Project.  Indeed, CRT claims that whiteness itself, is evidence enough of our implicit and unconscious bias.  Despite the virtuous actions of the vast majority of whites in America such as: advocating for civil rights, hiring regardless of race, engaging in interracial relationships, welcoming non-white neighbors, holding in high esteem blacks in business, government, armed services, medicine, academia, media, sports and throughout pop culture, twice electing a black man president and articulating these values to our children, CRT claims to know the unspoken thoughts, and unconscious biases that live within us, which must be exorcised in an interminable “healing” process.

CRT is based on the myth of systemic racism despite volumes of evidence to the contrary.  As Heather MacDonald wrote in an editorial in the Wall Street Journal shortly after riots broke out following the death of George Floyd:

“In 2019 police officers fatally shot 1,004 people, most of whom were armed or otherwise dangerous. African-Americans were about a quarter of those killed by cops last year (235), a ratio that has remained stable since 2015. That share of black victims is less than what the black crime rate would predict, since police shootings are a function of how often officers encounter armed and violent suspects. In 2018, the latest year for which such data have been published, African-Americans made up 53% of known homicide offenders in the U.S. and commit about 60% of robberies, though they are 13% of the population.  The police fatally shot nine unarmed blacks and 19 unarmed whites in 2019, according to a Washington Post database, down from 38 and 32, respectively, in 2015. In 2018 there were 7,407 black homicide victims. Assuming a comparable number of victims last year, those nine unarmed black victims of police shootings represent 0.1% of all African-Americans killed in 2019. By contrast, a police officer is 18½ times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer.”

Nevertheless, CRT has created martyrs of George Floyd, Michael Brown and many others who were not killed by alleged acts of racism but by their own poor choices and violent resistance to the police.  However brutal the death of George Floyd was at the hands of Derek Chauvin, there was no evidence of racism on Chauvin’s part or the police department he worked for.  Yet, a summer of riots in over 200 cities involving massive looting, billions of dollars of damage and the loss of over two dozen lives resulted.  These riots were not the reaction to police brutality but the false narrative of systemic racism. 

Critical Race Theory, and its precursor affirmative action, relegate the presumed victims of systemic racism to long-term failure by artificially granting accommodations, quotas, money, and status, thereby robbing a class of people of their sense of personal responsibility and self-esteem.  Imagine a first-year black kid at a university, accepted based on his skin color despite his under-performance academically.  How would he and his peers look upon this accomplishment?  How does this affect the view of the black student who earned her way in through actual achievement?  How does she overcome the stigma that this system creates? 

These same concerns apply to blacks once reaching the workplace.  Below the surface naturally exist the questions of who achieved and who received accommodations. And, as Jason Riley discusses in Please Stop Helping Us, placing students and job seekers at higher levels than their ability suggests, actually exacerbates the failure rate.  This is a pile of dirt we should not be creating.

Conversely, CRT rejects the values of hard work, achievement, merit, colorblindness, and assimilation into our shared culture.  As a result, worthy non-black college applicants, job seekers and professionals attempting to move up are intentionally overlooked in the name of equity.  Not only does this illegally discriminate against people based on skin color but it reduces the quality of results from the positions now held by lower achievers.  Highly technical positions in healthcare, R&D and science, to name just a few fields, are now being filled by less capable people because of skin color.  (I am, of course, not suggesting that all or most blacks are incapable of filling high professional positions.)  Reducing the hiring standards of these important positions in the name of racial equity threatens the innovation and discovery we would otherwise hope would result by hiring the best and brightest among us, regardless of their skin color.  Another pile of dirt.

Rather than indoctrinating people with training sessions on newly-defined terms like racial equity, white rage, white fragility, unconscious bias and microaggression, we should be willing to discuss the root causes of the many hurdles facing black children growing up in fatherless homes and in crime-ridden cities across the country.

Furthermore, it is important to consider the roots of Critical Race Theory.  An inquiring and openminded person would see its alarming connections to Marxism as expressed by the founders of CRT, Black Lives Matter and the academicians who support these movements.  Where Marxism in America failed over the last one hundred years to attract the “proletariat” in a thriving middle class, today’s Marxists seek to overthrow capitalism through the divisiveness of identity politics and the reduction of the entire society to two classes: privileged/oppressor and victim/oppressed. 

Naïve solutions like reimagining and defunding the police, reduced prosecution of crime, liberalized bail and reduced incarceration have only made matters worse.  Crime is skyrocketing in cities across the country.  We now find ourselves avoiding urban shopping districts.  Drag racing on our streets and highways apparently no longer receives attention from the inert police.  This is the “Ferguson Effect” where police are reluctant to do their job when another violent encounter deemed “racist” might result.  Wave off these thoughts as conspiracy theories but those wishing to destroy America from within are enjoying witnessing the chaos.

In Exodus Chapter 33, following the crisis of the Golden Calf, God tells Moses, effectively: I’ll send an angel to help you but you’re on your own now.  Moses pleads for God to reconsider in 33.16: “For how shall it be known that Your people have gained Your favor unless You go with us, so that we may be distinguished, Your people and I, from every people on the face of the earth?”  The key point being that Jews like me are distinguished from all other people.  Yet, here we Jews are, despite our many ethnicities, languages, customs, cultures and histories within the Jewish people, being indoctrinated to believe that, based solely on the pigment of our skin, we are indistinguishable not only from each other but also from a 19th century slave owner or the hooded, white supremacists of the early 20th century. 

Critical Race Theory is the modern manifestation of the Golden Calf.  It is a false idol built on godless myths that aims to replace our history with a new “truth”.  CRT seeks to fundamentally change the world by subordinating common sense and wisdom, eliminating age-old societal structures such as the nuclear family and establishing manmade ideologies of dubious authority and destructive intent.   This is a very large pile of dirt!

Mrs. Tissenbaum was the adult on the cul-de-sac that needed to show me the foolishness of my street cleaning project.  I pray there are adults willing to stand up to a destructive movement that is based on falsehoods, is making matters worse and fails to confront the real problems facing blacks in America today.

 

Chuck Berk

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/09/critical_race_theory_and_the_many_piles_of_dirt_it_creates_.html

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Why Your Otherwise Smart Friends Think Stupid Things - Clarice Feldman

 

​ by Clarice Feldman

How the media creates an alternate reality for the benefit of the Left, the Democrats, and Joe Biden.

So many of our friends and family live harried lives, working, keeping households, caring for family members that they have no time to question the news accounts they hear on their car radios while chauffeuring the kids to school, shopping, for essentials, and commuting. And if they get newspapers delivered or watch the news, they get only enough for a header and a couple of graphs or a quick byte before other more pressing things require their attention. Those of us with more time and interest in the news get an entirely different picture and that makes our discussions with them so fraught. We live in two different realities.

I give you four examples from this week’s news stories. The anti-Semitism of the Squad (and a not insignificant part of the Democratic party), horse patrols in Del Rio, the Arizona election audit, and the Hunter Biden emails.  In three of the examples, one can see how if the error was not inadvertent, the effort to correct the record was either feeble or nonexistent, giving rise to a reasonable assumption that the publishers did not mind leaving readers with an utterly false impression for the benefit of Biden and the Left.

The Anti-Semitism of the Squad

To those of us paying attention, the shift to anti-Semitism from a not insignificant part of the Democratic party is unmistakable. But, probably because they share that view, the publishers of the New York Times have gone to some pains to disguise this. This week, the effort by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, her squad, and their hangers-on to strip from the budget funds for Israel’s Iron Dome, a major defensive weapon against rocket attacks, went down in defeat. The Times carried a quote from her on the loss in their print edition, which they later renoved from the online editions: "NYT Removes Line Saying AOC Changed Iron Dome Vote Because of “Influential Lobbyists and Rabbis." From the Jewish Journal:

The article stated that Ocasio-Cortez “tearfully” decided to change her vote after a meeting with her fellow Squad members, which the article initially said “underscored how wrenching the vote was for even outspoken progressives, who have been caught between their principles and the still powerful pro-Israel voices in their party, such as influential lobbyists and rabbis.” It was subsequently changed to say that the matter “underscored how wrenching the vote was for even outspoken progressives, who have been caught between their principles and the still powerful pro-Israel voices in their party.” As of this writing, the article does not provide an editor’s note explaining the change.

Do the Times’ most loyal readers on Manhattan’s Upper West Side ever rebel against the Times’ and AOC’s notions about Israel and the need for such an important defensive measure? Who knows? Maybe they were too busy running to Zabars and posting virtue-signaling Black Lives Matter posts on their lintels to notice. Others did, however:

"As a proud Zionist and Rabbi, I was surprised to learn that we Rabbis have powers far beyond those of mortal men that could somehow cajole AOC to change her anti-Israel vote to ‘present,’” Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean and Director of Global Social Action Agenda at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said in a statement to the Journal. “Another explanation is that The Squad’s anti-Israel tropes had exceeded their weekly quota.”

Stop Antisemitism Executive Director Liora Rez also said in a statement to the Journal, “We’re not sure if we’re reading Richard Spencer’s the ‘Daily Stormer’ or a vintage piece from 1939 Die Wehrmacht! Every time we think the [New York Times] can’t go any lower with their disdain for the Jewish people, they shock us with more antisemitism.”

Representative Ritchie Torres (D-NY) tweeted, “Embedded in the story is the assumption that support for Iron Dome, which defends civilians from relentless rocket fire, can only be explained by power (‘influential lobbyists and rabbis’) rather than principle. The causal Antisemitism never ceases to shock me.”

In any event, to my recollection this is not the first time major newspapers unethically have stealth edited reports, and worse yet, not the first time the publishers have printed the stealth edited material online without alerting the readers of the print edition.

Del Rio

Joe Biden has never before demonstrated the slightest concern about Haitians until thousands crossed the southern border and were camped out under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas. As late as 1994 he said, “If Haiti just quietly sinks into the Caribbean or rose up 300 feet, it shouldn’t matter a whole lot in terms of our interest.” But the picture of the migrant camp certainly riled the open borders fanciers with horrible pictures of destitute illegal migrants camping by the thousands under the bridge. The FAA even momentarily banned Fox News from overhead drone coverage of the scene.

One photographer on the ground, Paul Ratje, captured pictures of horse-riding border patrol members preventing the people from scattering off into the country where they would avoid even minimal processing. City folks who populate newsrooms and left-wing social media may never have seen the split reins the border patrols riders use to control the horses, but seeing them, they rushed to publication Ratje’s shots, claiming the riders were whipping the migrants. Not so, said the photographer, but the fake account spread far and was bought hook, line, and sinker by the administration.

Ratje is a photographer based in Las Cruces and has been in Del Rio since Friday. He said took the photographs from the Mexican side.

“I’ve never seen them whip anyone,” Ratje said. “He was swinging it, but it can be misconstrued when you’re looking at the picture.”

The photos drew immense criticism from many on social media and the White House said it will investigate.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki called images “horrific.”

Vice President Kamala Harris was also asked about the photos, and called them deeply troubling. Harris also said there was a thorough investigation into how agents are treating migrants.

Biden threatened the border patrol agents, saying they “will pay.” 

WhippingGate snowballed with the usual race baiting. California Rep. Maxine Waters and CNN anchor Chris Cuomo invoked slavery. “Even the Biden administration has fueled the narrative with the White House condemning the "horrific" images, and the Department of Homeland Security launching an investigation and removing the horses from Border Patrol.” 

The Border Patrol, which is doing an incredible job under the administration’s absurd rules of engagement, were slandered by both the administration and most of the media. (Since they were at least temporarily banned from using horses to patrol this rugged landscape, the Babylon Bee satirically suggested they are now to patrol that area of the border on Segways armed with pool noodles. 

You could say it was an honest mistake, but none of the media “fact checkers“ have checked the  whipping story as fake, and the Washington Post, CNN, NBC, AP, USA Today, and Snopes are silent on the fake tale. From this one can fairly deduce they are happy to peddle lies to advance an open-border agenda.

In the event you hear your friends and neighbors decrying the abusive tactics of the Border Patrol, you know where they get their information from. Be nice, but explain Ratje and split reins to them if you can get a word in edgewise.

Maricopa County

Against enormous pressure, an independent audit was finally concluded on the voting in Maricopa County, Arizona. And the spin has begun. At PJ Media, Matt Margolis details how corrupt the coverage of the audit report has been.

CNN and others concluded the audit proved Biden won Arizona as the hand count matched the official canvass results. Whoa! There’s a lot more to the story. As Margolis observes, the summary of the audit shows a great deal more than that:

He republishes the table showing the vast discrepancies and other troubling issues found by the audit team in a state where Biden barely won. The audits found “There are sufficient discrepancies among the different systems that, in conjunction with some of our findings, suggest that the delta between the Presidential candidates is very close to potential margin-of-error for the election.” The discrepancies demonstrate there was a substantial potential for fraud and Maricopa’s refusal to allow the auditors to vet these 57,734 ballots in which discrepancies were found, means “we’ll never know if the election results were legitimate.”

The Hunter Biden Emails. 

In October 2020, shortly before the election, the New York Post published a scoop about Hunter Biden’s emails.

Hunter Biden introduced his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, to a top executive at a Ukrainian energy firm less than a year before the elder Biden pressured government officials in Ukraine into firing a prosecutor who was investigating the company, according to emails obtained by the Post.

The never-before-revealed meeting is mentioned in a message of appreciation that Vadym Pozharskyi, an adviser to the board of Burisma, allegedly sent Hunter Biden on April 17, 2015, about a year after Hunter joined the Burisma board at a reported salary of up to $50,000 a month.

“Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together. It’s realty [sic] an honor and pleasure,” the email reads.

An earlier email from May 2014 also shows Pozharskyi, reportedly Burisma’s No. 3 exec, asking Hunter for “advice on how you could use your influence” on the company’s behalf.

The blockbuster correspondence -- which flies in the face of Joe Biden’s claim that he’s “never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings” -- is contained in a massive trove of data recovered from a laptop computer.

Neither Hunter nor Joe disputed the account. Instead, as the Wall Street Journal reports this week, 

Both men counted instead on the rest of the media to serve as a cordon sanitaire, and did they ever. Twitter barred the Post’s feed for a time lest Americans be able to read about the emails and their content.

A press that was interested in telling the truth about both candidates would have pressed to confirm the Post’s story and examined the emails for themselves. Instead they rose nearly as one to denounce the Post and claim without evidence that the emails might have been Russian disinformation. That was a sorry repeat of the Russia collusion narrative from 2016, which the press flogged for more than two years but we now know was concocted by the Hillary Clinton campaign.

We also now know that the Russian email disinformation story was false. But that didn’t stop 50 former intelligence officials from signing a statement on Oct. 19, 2020, that floated the Russia canard.[snip]The signers included such Russia collusion myth-makers as former Obama officials James Clapper and John Brennan, but former Bush CIA director Mike Hayden and former Obama CIA director Leon Panetta should have known better.

There’s no doubt that the Fourth Estate massively distorts the facts in advancing their agendas. Perhaps the best motto for them would be "News You Shouldn’t Use."

 

Clarice Feldman

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/09/why_your_otherwise_smart_friends_think_stupid_things.html

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The ‘Science’ of Climate Change - Norman Rogers

 

​ by Norman Rogers

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”

The science surrounding COVID has been hijacked for political purposes. People who recovered from the disease are pushed to get vaccinated, even though they have a natural immunity that is stronger than vaccine immunity. People are required to wear masks even though masks are essentially useless for preventing infection. People that die are reported as dying of COVID even though they died of something else. The government demands that children be vaccinated even though they are naturally resistant to the disease and suffer disturbing side effects from the vaccine. Schools are closed for no good reason.

The “science” of climate change is also BS. That should be easier to accept after seeing what the government did to COVID science. Why do politicians want to hype a nonexistent climate crisis? In a word: power. By claiming that there is an urgent climate crisis the politicians can spend billions to fight the imaginary foe. Those billions create political allies and reward friends. H.L. Mencken put it nicely in 1918:

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”

The parade of imaginary environmental catastrophes during the last 70 years is very long. Here are some books predicting this or that environmental disaster: Our Plundered Planet (1948), Road to Survival (1948), Silent Spring (1962), Famine 1975! (1967), The Population Bomb (1968), The Limits to Growth (1972), An Inconvenient Truth (2006), This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. Climate (2014), The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming (2019).

Richard Lindzen, one of the most accomplished climate scientists in the world by virtue of his discoveries, does not have to kowtow to the global warming mob. In an essay, he pointed out that scientific data that challenge the global warming hypothesis are simply changed. He cites examples of how environmental extremists have infiltrated scientific organizations.

Tony Heller, an engineer and geologist, operates a long-running website, Real Climate Science. He specializes in exposing the changed data mentioned by Richard Lindzen. The promoters of climate change cherry-pick data when they are not changing it. Heller exposes the lie in the National Climate Assessment that heatwaves are becoming more common. He exposes “adjustments” to the U.S. temperature record to bring it into line with climate change predictions.

In her book The Delinquent Teenager Who Was Mistaken for the World’s Top Climate Expert, Donna Laframboise exposes the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a UN organization that pretends to produce very careful and serious reports on the Earth’s climate. Most climate hysteria traces back to the IPCC’s reports. The IPCC does not follow its own procedures and is populated by environmental activists with limited scientific credentials. Its reports are masterful examples of wordy expositions that circle around scientific problems rather than presenting solid ideas backed by facts. The IPCC is a political organization, not a scientific one.

Amusingly, the longtime head of the IPCC, Rajendra Pachauri, an Indian railroad engineer, is also the author of a porn novel: Return to Almora. The 75-year-old bureaucrat was forced out of an Indian environmental organization for making persistent and improper advances to young women that worked for him. But, of course, that is irrelevant to his accomplishments as head of the IPCC.

The predictions of climate doom are based on complex computer models of the Earth’s atmosphere.  Kevin E. Trenberth, an accomplished climate scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research said this about these models:

“None of the models used by IPCC are initialized to the observed state and none of the climate states in the models correspond even remotely to the current observed climate. In particular, the state of the oceans, sea ice, and soil moisture has no relationship to the observed state at any recent time in any of the IPCC models.”

The method of the IPCC is to average together the results from dozens of computer models to make their predictions. They don’t actually say "predictions," they say "projections," but the rest of the world sees predictions. The model developers try to make their models fit climate history on the assumption that if they fit the past, the models might have predictive value for the future. There are a few problems. The models are so complex and have so many adjustable parameters, that fitting the past becomes an exercise in curve fitting. Further, the modelers are each permitted to have their own climate history. Parts of climate history that are poorly known, such as aerosols, can be fiddled to make a particular model fit better.

This method, applied to the stock market, would be to make a model and adjust it so that it explains past gyrations of the market. Then wahoo… the modeler can make billions. It doesn’t work, as the scarcity of mathematicians that are billionaires testifies.

I spent 10 years going to the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union. I spoke with many climate scientists including many who freely admitted in private that global warming is a very dubious enterprise.

I remember a Danish guy who visited beaches in northern Greenland by dog sled. He discovered 6,000-year-old driftwood on a beach always blocked by ice, year-round. That was clear evidence that the Arctic Ocean was summer ice-free during a time called the Holocene Optimum. Present-day global warmers claim that our coming climate disaster will again make the Arctic Ocean summer ice-free, something that happened 6,000 years ago with no help from SUVs or belching cows. Of course, the guy was afraid to make too much of his discovery because it challenges the climate doom theory.

There is no such thing as an early career climate scientist that is skeptical concerning global warming. I actually tried to find one and did a poster at a scientific meeting on the subject. The reason is simple. It is not because the science is so clear that only an idiot would question it. It is because our early-career climate scientist would soon be looking for a new job. Interfering with the flow of money from Washington is grounds for dismissal.

I still believe in science and I feel sorry for all the closeted climate scientists. Like the Soviet geneticists forced to cheer for Lysenkoism, these academics must cheer the global warming racket. They have wives, children, and mortgages.

Image: Robert A. Rohde 

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.

 

Norman Rogers writes often on climate. He is the author of the book Dumb Energy about wind and solar energy.

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/09/the_science_of_climate_change.html?traffic_source=Connatix

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4 terrorists planning imminent attack killed in overnight clash with IDF troops - Lilach Shoval , Shahar Klaiman , Ariel Kahana and ILH Staff

 

​ by Lilach Shoval , Shahar Klaiman , Ariel Kahana and ILH Staff

Two Israeli soldiers seriously wounded in gunbattles in Judea and Samaria as IDF special forces pursue members of a Hamas cell planning terrorist attack "in near future." PM Bennett: The soldiers acted as we expected them to and have our full backing.

 

IDF troops operating in the West Bank city of Jenin | File photo: Oren Cohen

Palestinian gunmen opened fire on IDF forces conducting a counterterrorism operation in the Jenin and Ramallah areas in the early hours of Sunday morning, the military said in a statement.

The IDF said at least four terrorists were killed in what was described as a heavy exchange of fire in five different incidents across the West Bank. The military confirmed that two soldiers with the Duvdevan counterterrorism unit, which specializes in undercover urban warfare, were seriously wounded.

Both have been rushed to the Rambam Medical Center in Haifa. The hospital said the two "suffered complex injuries" but stressed that their condition was not life-threatening.

The troops were pursuing members of a Hamas cell that has been under surveillance for several days prior to the raids taking place.

Available details suggest that the first skirmish took place in the village of Burqin, near Jenin – a known terrorist hub in the West Bank. Israeli troops were conducting a raid, seeking to arrest a suspected terrorist when Palestinian gunmen opened fire on them.

Palestinian reports said the troops surrounded a building in Burqin when they came under fire but were able to arrest the suspect nonetheless. Another terrorists was killed in the clash.

IDF forces on a mission in the village of Beit Anan, northwest of Ramallah, came under fire as well but managed to make arrests despite the assault.

Another terrorist was apprehended in a raid in Kafr Dan, north of Jenin, without incident. Three other terrorists were killed in a clash near Mount Hadar.

Asked whether the incidents could provoke rocket fire from the Gaza Strip, IDF Spokesperson Brig. Gen. Ran Kochav said, "When it comes to Hamas we always expect rocket fire. I think it's a possibility this time as well because the gunman killed were Hamas operatives."

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said that IDF troops "acted in Judea and Samaria overnight against terrorists who were planning an imminent attack. The soldiers and commanders acted as we expected them to and have our full backing."

Hamas was quick to accuse Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas of contributing the IDF raids in the West Bank.

"The death of the shahids [martyrs] is a product of the ongoing security coordination with the Zionist occupation and the price of normalization meetings held by PA leaders with Zionist ministers and MKs in Ramallah in recent days, which encouraged the occupaition to again hunt and kill the young revolutionaries," the terrorist group said in a statement.

 

Lilach Shoval , Shahar Klaiman , Ariel Kahana and ILH Staff

Source: https://www.israelhayom.com/2021/09/26/idf-troops-on-counterterrorism-in-jenin-area-come-under-fire/

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Iran Switching to a New Illusion - Amir Taheri

 

​ by Amir Taheri

[N]either America nor Russia nor China or any other power would be prepared to fully endorse a regime that tries to live in a fantasy world in which Khomeinism conquers the Middle East, wipes Israel off the map and leads in the creation of a "World Without America."

• The "American illusion" of Rafsanjani, Khatami and Rouhani did great damage to Iran, principally by fostering the belief that the solution to Iran's problems could only be found outside Iran. That illusion is now being replaced by the "Russian illusion" which is based on the same analysis.

• However, neither America nor Russia nor China or any other power would be prepared to fully endorse a regime that tries to live in a fantasy world in which Khomeinism conquers the Middle East, wipes Israel off the map and leads in the creation of a "World Without America." US Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama went out of their way to help the Khomeinist regime consolidate itself but were ultimately not prepared to endorse its fantasies.

• Presidents Putin and Xi treat Iran with even greater brutality by keeping it on a life-support machine and milking it as much as possible, but never accepting it as an equal strategic partner.

• The Rafsanjani-Khatami-Rouhani trio took 24 years to understand that. Raisi now has four years to do so.

That Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi and his team should seize every scrap of feel-good news is understandable at a time that Iran is gripped by the Covid-19 disaster, a melting economy and sporadic protests by a population visibly frustrated by the repeated failures of a leadership besotted by ideology. Pictured: Raisi remotely addresses the United Nations General Assembly on September 21, 2021 in New York. (Photo by Eduardo Munoz/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

Success, victory, achievement, triumph....

These are some of the words that Tehran's state-controlled media are using these days to describe the performance of Ebrahim Raisi, the new President of the Islamic Republic. The undertone is that Iran is just emerging from eight years of bad news under President Hassan Rouhani and his "New York Boys" and is braced for a rebound under the new team.

The successes claimed include a dramatic move by the new Foreign Minister Hussein Amir-Abdollahian, to push his way through the first rank of some heads of state and government meeting in Baghdad, thus ignoring protocol rules. The move angered many, including the Iraqi hosts, but gave the Iranian mullahs an opportunity to claim that the Baghdad summit "adopted all of the policies suggested by the Islamic Republic."

In reality, however, the summit's statement does not include even a single proposal tabled by Tehran. The summit opted for stability, cooperation and reduction of tensions while Abdollahian urged "resistance" and "struggle" against unspecified foes.

The next "triumph" was trumpeted even before it was supposed to happen. Raisi was slated to travel to Dushanbe, capital of Tajikistan, for a summit of Shanghai Cooperation Organization nations, a security cooperation outfit led by China and Russia. Tehran media waxed lyrical about the forthcoming tête-à-tête between Raisi and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Because Russia is now cast as the principal protector of the Islamic Republic, the hoped-for meeting was labelled "historic" before it happened. In the event, it didn't happen because Putin quarantined himself after a Covid-19 cluster was found in the Kremlin.

The next "triumph" came when Russia lifted its 16-year veto on the Islamic Republic's application for full membership of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Raisi's entourage presented this as a great victory for the new man who "succeeded" where Presidents Khatami, Ahmadinejad and Rouhani had failed.

However, what actually happened was rather less than a "triumph". The Dushanbe summit agreed to trigger "the process of full membership" for the Islamic Republic, something that could take more than five years to be completed.

The decision is in line with Russia's overall policy on the Islamic Republic, which consists of offering dazzling promises but keeping the Tehran regime on a tight leash. A long list of such instances could be established. Russia has promised to sell weapons to Iran but drags its feet in actually doing so. In the few instances that a transfer was actually made, Russia gave Iran outdated weapons, including de-commissioned diesel submarines that are now rusting in the Gulf of Oman.

Putin also promised to open a new trade route, branded the Volga-Caspian Route, to facilitate Iran's trade with Europe, circumventing US sanctions.

Again, all that has happened is granting Iran access to a small port on the northern shores of the Caspian that, even if fully operational, would handle a small volume of bilateral trade.

Moscow's promise of "cooperation" to help Iran with its problems in international banking is also hailed as a "success". But the agreement signed in Moscow last week is ambiguous and, with the most favorable interpretation, would not loosen the shackles imposed on Iran's international trade by US sanctions.

Raisi's call for "the urgent activation of the strategic partnership with China" is also hailed as a "great success," although Beijing seems to prefer keeping the Islamic Republic under probation for a while longer. Nor is there any sign that China will release at least some of the $22 billion in Iranian assets frozen in Chinese banks.

The decision by the Dushanbe University to bestow an honorary doctorate on Raisi is also hailed as a "success" for the new president. Footage and photos showing him wearing the academic gown has been splashed all over the place, endorsing the title of "doktur" (doctor) that he uses alongside that of ayatollah. However, some evil tongues have reminded the public that another president of another Islamic Republic, that is to say Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan, had preceded Raisi in being thus honored by Dushanbe University.

The Raisi team also claim that they have "saved Lebanon" by sending quantities of oil via Syria.

Iraq's agreement to abolish visas for Iranians travelling there by air is also posted as a "triumph" although it would affect no more than two percent of Iranian pilgrims per annum.

That Raisi and his team should seize every scrap of feel-good news is understandable at a time that Iran is gripped by the Covid-19 disaster, a melting economy and sporadic protests by a population visibly frustrated by the repeated failures of a leadership besotted by ideology.

Ex-President Rouhani, following a course set by Presidents Hashemi Rafsanjani and Muhammad Khatami, pursued the mirage of a grand bargain with the United States. He called the US "the headman of the global village" and claimed that making a deal with it would solve all of Iran's problems. That illusion may have been shattered but it is being replaced by another illusion that alliance with Russia would produce the miracle that "Supreme Guide" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei continues to hope for.

The "American illusion" of Rafsanjani, Khatami and Rouhani did great damage to Iran, principally by fostering the belief that the solution to Iran's problems could only be found outside Iran. That illusion is now being replaced by the "Russian illusion" which is based on the same analysis.

However, neither America nor Russia nor China or any other power would be prepared to fully endorse a regime that tries to live in a fantasy world in which Khomeinism conquers the Middle East, wipes Israel off the map and leads in the creation of a "World Without America." US Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama went out of their way to help the Khomeinist regime consolidate itself but were ultimately not prepared to endorse its fantasies.

Presidents Putin and Xi treat Iran with even greater brutality by keeping it on a life-support machine and milking it as much as possible, but never accepting it as an equal strategic partner.

The Rafsanjani-Khatami-Rouhani trio took 24 years to understand that. Raisi now has four years to do so. The clock is ticking.

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/17799/iran-new-illusion

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Thanks to Biden Administration, Iran Mullahs and Taliban Empowered - Majid Rafizadeh

 

​ by Majid Rafizadeh

It is mind-boggling that the Biden administration announced its withdrawal from Afghanistan without any plans either to secure billions of dollars of US military equipment, but made not the slightest effort to recover or destroy it.

• Not only did the Biden administration – whose sole purpose in Afghanistan was to prevent another "9/11 attack" – hand the Taliban and the mullahs of Iran a major political and strategic victory, it also rewarded them with sophisticated, state-of-the-art US weapons worth $85 billion – courtesy of American taxpayers -- which these terrorists will undoubtedly use to launch an even more deadly "9/11 attack" to kill American taxpayers.

• The US withdrawal to the Taliban was so poorly planned that the Biden administration actually delivered seven brand new helicopters to Afghanistan just a month before announcing that it would be withdrawing from the country.

• It is mind-boggling that the Biden administration announced its withdrawal from Afghanistan without any plans either to secure billions of dollars of US military equipment, but made not the slightest effort to recover or destroy it.

• The Taliban and the Iranian regime now are not only able to unleash US-made weapons against the US and its allies, but Iran, Russia and China can also utilize this military equipment for research, reverse engineering, reproducing and selling it.

The Biden administration's poorly planned surrender in Afghanistan has been causing tragedy and disaster one after another, all while empowering the Taliban and the mullahs of Iran. The Iranian leaders have close ties to Taliban; both share a deep hatred towards the United States and Israel. Iran, as well as Pakistan, has also long provided shelter to Taliban leaders. Pictured: Iran's then Foreign Minister Javad Zarif (right) hosts Taliban co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar (center-left) in Tehran, Iran on January 31, 2021. (Photo by Tasnim News/AFP via Getty Images)

The Biden administration's poorly planned surrender in Afghanistan has been causing tragedy and disaster one after another, all while empowering the Taliban and the mullahs of Iran.

The Iranian leaders have close ties to Taliban; both share a deep hatred towards the United States and Israel. Iran, as well as Pakistan, has also long provided shelter to Taliban leaders.

Iranian leaders have therefore applauded Biden administration's decision to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan. Former Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif characterized the US withdrawal as a positive action, while President Ebrahim Raisi described it as a defeat for Washington's Middle East policy that "must become an opportunity to restore security in Afghanistan." The Iranian regime had evidently been preparing for a Taliban takeover and meeting with Taliban leaders. In January 2021, a delegation from the Taliban had already been publicly consulting with senior Iranian officials, including then Foreign Minister Javad Zarif. According to him, both parties held productive talks, and discussed their ties and the future of Afghanistan.

The Iranian regime also sees the Taliban's takeover as an opportunity to shelter terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda who also hold a deep hatred towards the United States and Israel. While the Taliban was in power, the mullahs of Iran had close connections to Al Qaeda. A trove of 470,000 documents released by the CIA in late 2017 point to warm ties between the Iranian regime and Al-Qaeda. Its former leader, Osama bin Laden, advised his followers to respect the Iranian regime and wrote that Iran was the organization's "main artery for funds, personnel and communication."

Iran was implicated in the 9/11 terrorist attacks:

"In Havlish, et al. v. bin Laden, et al., Judge Daniels held that the Islamic Republic of Iran, its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei, former Iranian president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, and Iran's agencies and instrumentalities, including, among others, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps ('IRGC'), the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security ('MOIS'), and Iran's terrorist proxy Hezbollah, all materially aided and supported al Qaeda before and after 9/11."

Iran had allowed Al-Qaeda operatives to travel throughout the country without visas or passports. Robust evidence, along with a US federal court ruling, suggests that "Iran furnished material and direct support for the 9/11 terrorists." Eight of the hijackers passed through Iran before coming to the US. Tehran provided funding, logistical support and ammunition to Al-Qaeda leaders, and sheltered several of them, in exchange for attacks on US interests.

Not only did the Biden administration – whose sole purpose in Afghanistan was to prevent another "9/11 attack" – hand the Taliban and the mullahs of Iran a major political and strategic victory, it also rewarded them with sophisticated, state-of-the-art US weapons worth $85 billion – courtesy of American taxpayers – which these terrorists will undoubtedly use to launch an even more deadly "9/11 attack" to kill American taxpayers.

"Planes, guns, night-vision goggles: The Taliban's new U.S.-made war chest", Reuters wrote. The Taliban is now armed with more than 2,000 armored vehicles, including Humvees, and up to 40 aircraft, possibly including UH-60 Black Hawks, scout attack helicopters, and ScanEagle military drones.

The US withdrawal to the Taliban was so poorly planned that the Biden administration actually delivered seven brand new helicopters to Afghanistan just a month before announcing that it would be withdrawing from the country. "They'll continue to see a steady drumbeat of that kind of support, going forward," U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said to reporters a few days later, after the delivery of the helicopters. A few weeks later, Taliban took control of the US military equipment.

It is mind-boggling that the Biden administration announced its withdrawal from Afghanistan without any plans either to secure billions of dollars of US military equipment, but made not the slightest effort to recover or destroy it.

This military equipment -- paid for with taxes that we pay and amounting to "85 per cent of all the military aid Washington has given Israel since 1948" -- has now fallen into the hands of Taliban, and at least some has been transported to Iran.

Kian Sharifi, a BBC journalist, posted in a tweet:

"An Iranian Telegram channel that covers military stories has released these 'exclusive' images that purportedly show humvees and other military vehicles spotted on the Semnan-Garmsar road in #Iran. What I am certain of is that those are humvees and that is an Iranian road".

As noted by GOP lawmakers in a letter spearheaded by Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.):

"It is unconscionable that high-tech military equipment paid for by U.S. taxpayers has fallen into the hands of the Taliban and their terrorist allies. Securing U.S. assets should have been among the top priorities for the U.S. Department of Defense prior to announcing the withdrawal from Afghanistan."

Former President Donald Trump accurately pointed out:

"Never in history has a withdrawal from war been handled so badly or incompetently as the Biden Administration's withdrawal from Afghanistan. In addition to the obvious, ALL EQUIPMENT should be demanded to be immediately returned to the United States, and that includes every penny of the $85 billion dollars in cost. If it is not handed back, we should either go in with unequivocal Military force and get it, or at least bomb the hell out of it. Nobody ever thought such stupidity, as this feeble-brained withdrawal, was possible!"

The Taliban and the Iranian regime now are not only able to unleash US-made weapons against the US and its allies, but Iran, Russia and China can also utilize this military equipment for research, reverse engineering, reproducing and selling it.

Representative Michael McCaul, the ranking Republican on the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, emailed Reuters, writing:

"We have already seen Taliban fighters armed with U.S.-made weapons they seized from the Afghan forces. This poses a significant threat to the United States and our allies."

Lawmakers and Americans need to pressure the Biden administration and demand that they recover or destroy as much of the abandoned equipment as soon as possible. Last week, James Comer (Ky.) and Rep. Glenn Grothman (Wis.) — both members of the House Oversight and Reform Committee — sent a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin stating

"We are left wondering if the Biden Administration has a plan to prevent the Taliban from using our weapons against the U.S. or its allies, or selling them to foreign adversaries, like China, Russia, Iran, or North Korea."

Apparently not.

• 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/17785/iran-mullahs-taliban-empowered

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