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NPR News: 06-07-2024 10PM EDT


NPR News: 06-07-2024 10PM EDT

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Iran ‘Secretly’ Pushes IRGC Operatives Into Europe Via Ports. Here’s Why | Report – The Times of India


Iran ‘Secretly’ Pushes IRGC Operatives Into Europe Via Ports. Here’s Why | Report  The Times of India

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Russia Concerned about US Military Exercise in Armenia – Asharq Al-awsat – English


Russia Concerned about US Military Exercise in Armenia  Asharq Al-awsat – English

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AP Headline News – Jun 07 2024 22:00 (EDT)


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AP Headline News – Jun 07 2024 21:00 (EDT)


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Key witness testifies against Senator Bob Menendez in bribery trial – Bradford Era


Key witness testifies against Senator Bob Menendez in bribery trial  Bradford Era

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Bob Menendez took Mercedes-Benz as bribe, New Jersey businessman testifies – Yahoo News UK


Bob Menendez took Mercedes-Benz as bribe, New Jersey businessman testifies  Yahoo News UK

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The Sixties’ Toxic Legacy – OpEd


The Sixties’ Toxic Legacy – OpEd

By Juliana Geran Pilon

The Berlin Wall’s collapse in 1989 was a deceptive victory. Exhilarated by crumbling stones, the West did not notice the crumbling of its own culture. Overlooked, too, was the complete failure of Western intelligence to anticipate not only the timing but the circumstances of the collapse. After “winning” the Cold War, it was back to pursuing the American dream of consumerist happiness. Americans showed little interest in seeking to understand the ideology that, had its lethality been appreciated, might have prevented millions of deaths from totalitarianism. They didn’t know, and they didn’t want to know.;

Overconfident, underinformed, and naïve Americans squandered the unique unipolar moment when they stood as the sole superpower in history. They forgot that the age-old dialectic pitting pluralist communities against monolithic autocracies is endemic to history. So, the end of one tyranny can mean the start of another, even more deadly. The American foreign policy establishment had long ignored virulent fundamentalist Islamism, despite its having been brewing for decades, oblivious that its own inattention enabled that growth. Not having taken Osama Bin Laden at his word, America was caught entirely unprepared as a new century of strife dawned. 9/11 was literally a bolt out of the sunny blue sky.;;

In an instant, everything came to a standstill. A stunned, outraged citizenry demanded safety;now.;So Congress appropriated money — lots of it. The administration sprang into action. The president declared “an axis of evil,” then hardly ever mentioned it again. How had all this come about? How is Sunni Islamism related to, say, North Korea’s communism or Iran’s theocratic Shiia “democracy”? No clue.;

While for the US to do nothing was not an option, waging one war and then another without an articulated strategy, nor the institutional framework to synchronize all elements of national power or adequate counterinsurgency and counterintelligence capabilities, plus nonexistent public diplomacy, was no recipe for victory.;;

Incompetent statecraft only reinforced the anti-American shift in a culture already being sabotaged. Sixties radicals entrenched in the academy and the media, joined by corporate fellow travelers, were using new and improved tactics. They repurposed an old template: millenarian utopianism in the name of the oppressed. For decades, monovocal professors defined knowledge as a construct benefiting the oppressor-colonialist-capitalists. Truth itself became suspect. Dialogue gave way to insults and a polarizing cacophony took the place of rational discourse.;;

To understand how this happened, a good primer is the well-researched;NextGen Marxism: What It Is and How To Combat It,;by Mike Gonzalez, a distinguished former State Department official and Wall Street Journal writer, now a Senior Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and Katherine Gorka, former presidential appointee at the Department of Homeland Security and expert on terrorism. The latest of a growing number of excellent studies focusing on the effect of cultural Marxism on the Western zeitgeist, the book is a page-turner. It deftly exposes the roots of this ideology;—;a sinister, fundamentally irrational, civilizational death-wish in the European intellectual tradition.;;

Set in historical context, this phenomenon begins in the early to mid-nineteenth century, when the lava that had first erupted during the French Revolution erupted again. The brilliant heir of rabbis, Karl Marx — whose hatred of his own religious heritage was excelled only by a diseased vision of a dystopian future where an abstract humanity was exchanged for actual people — created the template for perpetual social upheaval. The book traces how German, Russian, and later Soviet bureaucracies of political warfare used the deeply flawed, self-contradictory cant of “dialectical materialism” as an instrument of power.;;

In the US, it was opportunistically midwifed through the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School, which resonated during the Vietnam Era. It would eventually morph into the network that is currently paralyzing America’s campuses. Marxism was perfectly suited to be repurposed, a formidable ideological hydra whose seemingly infinite heads can regenerate according to the “struggle” being singled out for opprobrium: Oppressor, Colonialist, Capitalist, White, Racist, Nazi, Zionist, Satan — Big or Small;—;etc. In typically sinister semantic inversion, its proponents would assign to their adversary’s kettle the color of their own evil souls.;

Gonzalez and Gorka describe this ideology as “a zero-sum view of the world, a world of irreconcilable antagonisms,” where dissent is forbidden, and perfection is perpetually elusive. According to this worldview, America is depraved and must be destroyed, guided by a self-styled elite that believes itself empowered to transform human nature. Revamping economic, political, and personal relationships would presumably reboot Genesis and abolish the Fall. Apples would be rationed.;

1989 was pivotal. Moscow bureau chief of the;New York Times, Felicity Barringer, captured the moment: “As Karl Marx’s ideological heirs in Communist nations struggle to transform his political legacy, his intellectual heirs on American campuses have virtually completed their own transformation from brash, beleaguered outsiders to assimilated academic insiders.”; It was also the year when legal scholars of black, Asian, and at least one Mexican-American descent, officially founded and named the discipline of critical race theory (CRT), which “recognizes that revolutionizing a culture begins with a radical assessment of it.”;

And Eric Mann, a former member of the sixties-era terrorist group Weather Underground who had worked for the Black Panthers and had spent prison time for assault and battery, opened the Labor Community Strategy Center to implement the revolutionary blueprint. In 2001, the Center recruited a teenager who would make history: Patrisse Cullors. She took to heart Mann’s call to action: “We have to build a Third World Movement, with third-world people in this country,” leading a “Black/Latinx/Third World united front with an agreed-upon black priority.”;;

In 2013, Cullors co-founded Black Lives Matter with Alicia Garza, who in 2015 told an audience of fellow revolutionaries: “Black Lives Matter is much more than a hashtag. In fact, [BLM] is an organized network, in twenty-six cities, globally.” She added: “our task is to build the Left.” The occasion was a premier gathering of global Marxists sponsored by the Left Forum in Oakland, California, titled “No Justice, No Peace.” The sinister network of participants and their leaders, constituting what Mann described as “a little division of labor,” are amply referenced.;;

Their job was uniting every constituency opposed to the Western system of values, and the sixties anti-war movement provided the perfect meme. One gay radical, for example, had told Mann that the Gay Liberation Fund got its name “[b]ecause we believed in the National Liberation Fund of Vietnam. We weren’t just wanting gay marriage, we wanted to overthrow the government as part of being queer.”;They had both “come out of the tradition where wherever you started, we’re all trying to make the same revolution.”;;;

Seizing the moment in the post-ideological mirage was crucial. In 1991, Harvard professor Cornell West observed that “the inchoate, scattered yet gathering progressive movement that is emerging across the American landscape… now lacks both the vital moral vocabulary and focused leadership that can constitute and sustain it.” But he predicted that soon “it will be rooted ultimately in current activities by people of color, by labor and ecological groups, by women, by homosexuals.”;Four years later, he would author the;foreword to the main text;of CRT, helping forge the vocabulary and jargon used to infiltrate classrooms, newspapers, and the electronic universe.;;

In 2001, the anti-capitalist Red Tent went full global, inaugurating the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Six years later, the American offshoot US Social Forum (USSF) held a massive conference in Atlanta, Georgia, covering all fronts: global warming, economic transformation, race, gender, and more. The topics were veneer; everyone there knew this was “just tactics,” observe Gonzalez and Gorka. “The connecting tissue is Marxism.” The aim is destroying capitalism.;;

One of the largest workshops, on “revolutionary strategy and organization,” was led by Freedom Road Socialist Organization, the League of Revolutionaries for a New America, Bring the Ruckus, Marxist study groups from the Bay Area and NYC, the Left Forum, and of course, Eric Mann’s LCSC. The comrades were duly getting their marching and (mostly) peaceful-protesting orders. As in the sixties, once again police were called pigs.;

Besides race in America, there was race in Palestine;—;Jews having been relegated to Whiteness. In 2015, Cullors would show up in Gaza alongside the antisemitic cCongresswoman;Linda Sarsour, sponsored by National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP). A decade later, NSJP is orchestrating nation-wide sit-ins with nifty tents and slick posters advocating “From the River to the Sea” (read: liquidate Israel) and “Genocide Joe,” and free water bottles. Admittedly, Cullors’;lavish lifestyle, enabled by the organization whose unaccounted millions led to its flagship’s fundraising being;suspended in Californiaand;New York, has set the construction project back a little.;;

But woke-friendly corporations, billionaires, foundations, and individuals with impressive foreign ties are demonstrating the effectiveness of funding campus radicals. Echoing similar anti-Western violent hate-marches throughout Europe and elsewhere, these indoctrinated know-nothings burn American flags, vandalize Founders’ statues with Islamist garb, paint swastikas on cemeteries, threaten and attack peaceful fellow students, police, and even janitors.;;

Fortunately, the majority of ordinary Americans are repelled by such tactics. Will that translate into increased vigilance regarding what students learn, how the media operates, and who wishes to destroy our system of government? Not without concerted and strategic popular engagement. Thus, NextGen Marxism concludes on a positive but urgent note. It is up to each of us to “engage in the process of ensuring that this nation is governed responsibly…. The time is now. We have a country to save.” A civilization, in truth.


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South Caucasus News

Oil Prices Show Weakening Demand, But Not Because Of Electric Cars – OpEd


Oil Prices Show Weakening Demand, But Not Because Of Electric Cars – OpEd

Oil Prices Oilfield Oil Petroleum Pumpjack

By Daniel Lacalle

The latest OPEC meeting conclusions show that the global economy is not as strong as headlines suggest and that industries all over the world are struggling to recover. Indeed, many manufacturing PMIs (purchasing managers’ indexes) continue to signal contraction.

Oil prices have weakened in recent weeks despite the war in Gaza and rising geopolitical risk. At the close of this article, Brent is trading at $81.62 per barrel and WTI at $76.99. This is a mere 7% rise year-to-date. The average price of the OPEC basket in the latest figure of June 2024 was $83.08.

OPEC+ has agreed to extend its production cuts until 2025 because the outlook for demand remains uncertain. Members of the oil production group see that copper prices have soared 72% in the past five years, rising 22% in the last year alone, and may fear that the push for electric vehicles is shifting demand elsewhere. Oil prices have performed adequately in the past five years, but they are nowhere close to the levels that producers would consider adequate to balance their budget. If copper can tell us anything, it is that Chinese demand and the development of electric vehicles are much stronger forces than fossil fuel demand. However, this may be an incorrect way of looking at things.

Oil prices have stabilized above the $80 a barrel level (Brent) and the OPEC basket is above what analysts consider the price required to balance producers’ budgets. Furthermore, we cannot forget that the concept of a price needed to balance the government budget means nothing. All producing countries are generating excellent profits at these levels. If their government budgets are filled with unnecessary subsidies and items that have nothing to do with energy production, they cannot expect prices to cover social or defense expenditures.

Demand is likely to continue to be weak but growing. Furthermore, one thing is clear: oil is likely to continue to be a significant part of primary energy needs globally.

OPEC should worry about the United States and non-OPEC supply. The doom predictions of a collapse in oil production from unconventional oil have failed. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) shows that average daily production in 2024 is 13.12 million barrels per day, a 7.1% production increase over 2023 figures and 1.4% above its previous all-time high. The United States production has become stronger and more efficient, breaking even at $40 a barrel. Additionally, government measures to place regulatory burdens on energy production have failed. The United States production level is robust, sustainable and, more importantly, adaptable to regulatory risks.

OPEC members seem overly concerned about the environmental policies of Western governments. However, they should not fear too much. OPEC member governments may disagree, but central planning never works. In the same way that central planning does not make oil prices rise to the levels that some may desire, interventionism is not working toward its objective of decarbonizing by 2030. The good news for OPEC members is that Western governments have decided to implement interventionist policies and ignore competition, technology, and creative destruction. As such, oil is likely to remain a key source of energy supply for a long time. The world’s energy transition can only come if we find an alternative to oil that is abundant, has a stable and constant supply, and is economically viable. Solar, wind, and natural gas are essential to a competitive energy transition, but there is no possibility of a real change if the world abandons natural gas and nuclear.

We need to understand that the energy transition cannot come from banning efficient energy sources. It can only come from technology and competition. From free markets. We must understand that oil will continue to be a major source of energy production and that it is perfectly compatible with respect for the environment if technology is used to improve efficiency and sustainability. Ignoring the mining requirements of green energy is as dangerous as forgetting the sustainability potential of fossil fuel production. Instead of using ideology to drive energy policy, we should use technology and open markets.


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South Caucasus News

Modi’s Comeuppance: The Waning Of Hindutva – OpEd


Modi’s Comeuppance: The Waning Of Hindutva – OpEd

Lock them up.; The whole bally lot.; The pollsters, the pundits, the parasitic hacks clinging to the life raft of politics in the hope of earning their crust.; Yet again, the election results from a country have confounded the chatterers and psephologists.; India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, was meant to romp home and steal the show in the latest elections.; The Bharatiya Janata Party was meant to cut through the Lok Sabha for a third time, comprehensively, conclusively.; Of 543 parliamentary seats, 400 were to be scooped up effortlessly.

From a superficial perspective, it was easy to see why this view was reached.; Modi the moderniser is a selling point, a sales pitch for progress.; The builder and architect as leader.; The man of temples and faith to keep company with the sweet counting of Mammon’s pennies.; Despite cherishing an almost medieval mindset, one that rejects Darwinian theories of evolution and promotes the belief that Indians discovered DNA before Watson and Crick, not to mention flying and virtually everything else worth mentioning, Modi insists on the sparkle of development.; Propaganda concepts abound such as Viksit Bharat (Developed India).; The country, he dreams, will slough off the skin of its “developing” status by 2047, becoming a US$30 trillion economy.

The BJP manifesto had pledges aplenty: the improvement of the country’s infrastructure, the creation of courts programmed to be expeditious in their functions, the creation of “high-value” jobs, the realisation of India as a global hub for manufacturing.

The electors had something else in mind.; At the halfway point of counting 640 million votes, it became clear that the BJP and its allies had won 290 seats.; The BJP electoral larder had been raided.; The Modi sales pitch had not bent as many Indian ears as hoped.; The opposition parties, including the long-weakened Congress Party, once the lion of Indian politics, and the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance, had found their bite.; States such as Tamil Nadu, Punjab and Maharashtra, had put the Hindutva devotees off their stroke. ;

Despite Modi’s inauguration of a garish temple to Ram at Ayodhya, occupying the site of a mosque destroyed by mob violence (the cliché goes that criminals return to the scene of their crime), the Socialist party and Congress alliance gained 42 of the 80 seats on offer in Uttar Pradesh.; A rather leaden analysis offered in that dullest of publications, The Conversation, suggested that Hindu nationalist policies, while being “a powerful tool in mobilising the BJP’s first two terms” would have to be recalibrated.; The theme of religious nationalism and its inevitable offspring, temple politics, had not been as weighty in the elections as initially thought.

For such politics watchers as Ashwini Kumar, the election yielded one fundamental message: “the era of coalition politics is back”.; The BJP would have to “put the contentious ideological issues in cold storage, like the uniform civil code or simultaneous elections for state assembly and the Parliament.”

While still being the largest party in the Lok Sabha, the BJP put stock in its alliance with the National Democratic Alliance.; The NDA, said Modi, “is going to form the government for the third time, we are grateful to the people”.; The outcome was “a victory for the world’s largest democracy.” ;

Modi, sounding every bit a US president dewy about the marble virtues of the republic, romanced the election process of his country.; “Every Indian is proud of the election system and its credibility.; Its efficiency has not [sic] match anywhere else in the world. I want to tell the influencers that this is a matter of pride.; It enhances India’s reputation, and people who have a reach, they should present it before the world with pride.”

For a man inclined to dilute and strain laws in a breezy, thuggish way, this was quite something.; Modi spoke of the Indian constitution as being “our guiding light”, despite showing a less than enlightened attitude to non-Hindus in the Indian state.; He venerated the task of battling corruption, omitting the fact that the vast majority of targets have tended to be from the opposition.; The “defence sector”, he vowed, would become “self-reliant”. ;

In an interview with the PTI news agency, the relentlessly eloquent Congress Party grandee Shashi Tharoor had this assessment.; The electorate had given a “comeuppance” to the BJP’s “overweening arrogance” and its “my way or the highway attitude”.; It would “be a challenge for Mr Modi and Amit Shah who have not been used to consulting very much in running their government and I think this is going to test their ability to change their way of functioning and be more accommodative and more conciliatory within the government and also I hope with the Opposition.”

Whatever Modi’s sweet words for the Indian republic, there was no getting away from the fact Hindutva’s juggernaut has lost its shine. We anticipate, to that end, something amounting to what Tharoor predicts to be a “majboor sarkaar (helpless government)” on fundamental matters.; Far better helpless in government than ably vicious in bigotry.;