The Biden administration has... not uttered even one word of condemnation. People can and should be wondering how a country that boasts about freedom and civil rights can be silent while other humans are being butchered because they desire that same freedom and those same rights?

Iran, with its current regime, is a danger not just to its long-suffering people, but to everyone. These protesters, who are flooding the streets and demanding that their voices be heard, are displaying acts of heroism that will be felt throughout the world and throughout history

While many in Iran are risking their lives in their struggle to change their predatory regime, and while many have been killed by the Iranian regime's force, the Biden administration has so far not shown even the slightest interest in even verbally condemning the brutal mullahs of Iran. Instead, the current US administration continues cozying up to them, presumably in the hope of reviving the disastrous nuclear deal and lifting all sanctions to help them continue their marauding, expansion and terror.

"Chinese leaders give the impression that the U.S.A. has much more to seek from them than they from Washington.... This time, the Americans were on the defensive as they sought Beijing's cooperation on a range of issues—climate change, North Korea, Iran, Afghanistan, and others—ensuring that the U.S.A. did not seek conflict." — Yogesh Gupta, former Indian diplomat and specialist on China-India relations, Hong Kong's South China Morning Post, July 27, 2021.

In fact, the Chinese are not that essential, and American leaders do not have to listen to them. Take their economy. Last year, China became even more dependent on exports, and it remains extraordinarily reliant on access to the U.S. market. In 2020, China's merchandise trade surplus with the U.S. accounted for a stunning 58.0% of its overall merchandise trade surplus.

Moreover, China's financial markets have become even more dependent on foreign capital because of Xi Jinping's unrelenting attack on his country's tech sector. Xi began his most recent phase of this months-long assault with the unprecedented halting last November of Ant Group's initial public offering, slated to be the world's largest at $39.5 billion. This year, Xi has wiped more than $140 billion of value off U.S.-listed Chinese tech giants during the last week of July alone, and most analysts believe the carnage will continue.

China, as a result, is needy, requiring foreign cash to replace what has already been lost—and what will be lost as Xi continues to take apart his tech giants. Biden can use his considerable powers under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977—or, if he is even bolder, the Trading with Enemy Act of 1917—to halt commerce with China and investment into the Chinese markets, ending once and for all the China threat.

Hamas started this war [in May] as part of its power struggle with Fatah... But its... acts of aggression — seen repeatedly since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 — were also intended to engender an Israeli reaction that would unavoidably lead to the deaths of Palestinian civilians, and in turn provoke vilification against the Jewish state and its isolation from the international community.

All of this takes place and is legitimised within a wider international political web with the United Nations, spider-like, at its centre. Under the instigation of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation... at the end of the Gaza conflict the obedient UN Human Rights Council resolved to create a permanent "Commission of Inquiry" into Israel's treatment of Palestinians, the only open-ended inquisition of its kind against any country in the world. Its findings are sickeningly certain even before they are written.

[The UN's upcoming Durban IV conference] marks the anniversary of the Durban Declaration made at the 2001 UN World Conference Against Racism, Discrimination, Xenophobia and Intolerance. Shocking even for this corrupt ... world body, the conference was itself characterised by racism, discrimination, xenophobia and intolerance — the direct opposite of its declared purpose. In one hate-filled speech after another, Israel was falsely accused of racism, ethnic cleansing, apartheid and genocide.

The conference and subsequent linked events in 2009 and 2011 have served to legitimise Jew-hate.

France, Italy, Bulgaria, New Zealand and Poland, each of which refused to attend in 2011, have yet to declare their intentions.

Amb. Ronald Lauder has called on President Biden to take the lead against this vitriol... by declaring such hatred beyond the pale... . Lauder says the US president is the one man in the country who can make a difference... He is right and the same applies to presidents and prime ministers everywhere.

Anything less than full support for Israel's vital and lawful defensive actions amounts to encouragement of violence by Hamas and tacit approval of its actions. Leaders who fail to support Israel and condemn these terrorists share culpability not just for antisemitic hate in their own countries but also for an increasingly violent cycle in the Middle East in which the greatest victims are Palestinian civilians, betrayed and endangered by the vicious actions of their own leadership.

Although many political leaders have spoken out against Jew-hate, their failure to both publicly condemn Hamas and vigorously support Israel's defensive actions gives credence to the poisonous propaganda of the street thugs in their own countries and green lights their antisemitic aggression.

When the Gaza conflict began, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz hoisted the Israeli flag on the roof of the federal chancellery in Vienna as a sign of solidarity with Israel's fight. "The terrorist attacks on Israel," he wrote, "are to be condemned in the strongest possible terms! Together we stand by Israel's side".

In the past few days alone, we have learned that the October 2020 Michigan governor kidnap plot was largely a creation of the FBI; a "senior FBI official" was on the take from media organizations; and another assistant director was in a "romantic relationship with a subordinate" and involved in "other misconduct." The leadership failures documented by the Office of the Inspector General are now almost standard and part of a tiresome media drip-torture for the public to endure.

The FBI ran a coup against President Trump. It failed. The following got away: Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Page, Clinesmith, Pientka, Brower, Baker, et al. Any real consequences for attempting to overthrow the government of the United States? No.

Questions are now being raised as to whether the FBI had a role in the Capitol Hill protests of January 6, 2021. When one examines the FBI's involvement in the Trump-Russia collusion hoax; Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) abuses; standing by idly while in possession of Hunter Biden's Ukraine and Burisma-laden laptops, while President Trump endured a second phony impeachment; and the frame-up of Trump's National Security Advisor, Lieutenant General Michael Flynn – it is not too difficult to imagine.

The FBI needs to go away. It should happen in an orderly and thoughtful process, over a period of months. Congress should authorize and create an investigative division in the U.S. Marshals Service and open applications for law enforcement officer seeking to be rigorously screened, vetted and then accessed into the new organization. Similar action was taken before in the very creation of the FBI. It is now time to clean house and restore the public's trust in the "premier investigative agency" of federal law enforcement.

The real purpose of the new digital currency... seems to be... to challenge the long-standing global reign of the US dollar.

The new digital currency is part of the CCP's ambition, as laid out in its new Five-Year Plan for the years 2021-2025, to digitalize China. The digitalization, in turn, is part of China's ambition to become technologically independent of the West and to dominate global tech, and overtake the US as the world's dominant power by 2049," the 100^th anniversary of China's Communist Revolution.

Crucially, China's new digital currency, in addition to increasing state control and surveillance in China.. .could affect the ability of the US, and other countries, to level sanctions at the Chinese government for its human rights abuses and other breaches of international law.

The US, on its part, does not appear ready for China's challenge over the future of money.

"Not only are the American monetary authorities underestimating the threat posed to dollar dominance by China's pioneering combination of digital currency and electronic payments. They are also treating the blockchain-based financial innovations that offer the best alternative to China's e-yuan like gatecrashers at their own exclusive party." — Niall Ferguson, historian, Bloomberg, April 4, 2021.

Whatever the public perception and the explanations by cabinet members are regarding the passport issue, the government of Bangladesh has taken a big step forward by removing the clause. At least, from now on, the state will not be able to prosecute someone for visiting Israel. As an extra benefit, the country's declared foreign policy of "friendship to all and malice towards none" will be more meaningful as well.

There is growing concern among the Lebanese and other Arabs that Iran is planning to exploit the severe political, economic and financial crisis in Lebanon to complete its takeover of the country.

Iran already has a political and military presence in Lebanon through its terrorist proxy, Hezbollah. The current crisis, however, is likely to facilitate Iran's mission of adding Lebanon to the list of countries it already occupies: Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

"Iran is already very dangerous without a nuclear bomb. The region is witnessing a state of chaos and agitation by fundamentalist forces, which threaten all Arab countries without exception." — Mishary Dhayidi, Saudi writer, Al-Arabiya, July 21, 2021

The Arabs appear clearly worried about the perceived apathy of the US and other Western powers towards Iran's scheme to extend its control to Lebanon. They seem particularly alarmed that Lebanon will meet the same fate as Iraq, Syria and Yemen.... thanks to Iran's continuous efforts to export terrorism and the "Islamic Revolution" to the Arab countries.

[T]he mullahs in Tehran are doubly dangerous: they aspire not only to develop nuclear weapons, but also to occupy Arab states.

All available data...show that before Castro took power, Cuba was far from being in a disastrous situation. In 1958, the Cuban income per capita was double that of Spain and Japan. Cuba had more doctors and dentists per capita than Britain. Cuba was second per capita in Latin America in ownership of automobiles and telephones, and first in the number of television sets per inhabitant. Cubans could enter and leave the country freely. Fulgencio Batista was a dictator, but Batista's dictatorship was so "fierce" that Fidel Castro, arrested in 1953 and sentenced to 15 years in prison for a failed coup d'état was pardoned and released by Batista in 1954. Under his own dictatorship, Castro would not have been so lucky.

The Cuban economy was rapidly destroyed. All businesses, until recently, have been state-owned. Wages in Cuba are abysmal; the population is effectively destitute. The average monthly salary in 2015 was $18.66. Persecution, imprisonment and torture of anyone who dares to criticize the regime are routine. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans have passed through Cuba's reeducation camps since 1959. More than 15,000 Cubans have been executed by firing squad. The health system is good for members of the regime and for medical tourists who pay in American dollars, but in a sordid state for ordinary Cubans.

The Cuban government under Batista was corrupt, but it is difficult to believe that the dignitaries of the Castro regime did not enrich themselves. At the end of his life, Fidel Castro's fortune was valued at $900 million.

In "36 hours in Havana", a report in The New York Times on January 5, 2016, Cuba's capital city is described as full of "classic American cars and salsa singers" and as "an old city where the old and the modern are in contrast". The decay of many buildings, the immense poverty of the bulk of the population, the crushing weight of the communist dictatorship are completely left out.

US Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, himself a refugee from Castro's Cuba, immediately threatened his fellow Cubans: While everyone, including criminals who have previously been deported, may freely enter the United States through America's wide-open southern non-border, all Cubans and Haitians fleeing by sea will be returned to their squalor. "The time is never right to attempt migration by sea," he warned them on July 13. "... Allow me to be clear: If you take to the sea, you will not come to the United States."

On July 12, the Cuban regime cut the Cubans' access to the internet. The regime's police will therefore able to crush the uprising without one image coming out of Cuba.

[T]he so-called "nuclear issue" has always been a diversion designed to focus attention on a phantom while the living monster, wielding blood-soaked dagger, goes around spreading mayhem and murder.

[Obama] failed, or refused, to ask the real questions: is the Islamic Republic not a threat to regional peace and the global rule of law with or without its ridiculous uranium enrichment show?

Hasn't the Islamic Republic been the world's number one sponsor of international terrorism for four decades with or without enriching uranium? Was the seizing of over 600 hostages from 32 countries, including the US and all major European states, ever linked to uranium enrichment?

The mullahs assume that as long as they can hoodwink the world, notably the Americans who are suckers for self-deception, by propelling the "nuclear" phantom they could have a free hand to kill and kidnap and destroy the very fabric of statehood in several regional countries while receiving cash rewards from the US and its major allies who pretend to be guardians of global law and order.

That long spoon could be made of a simple reversal of the order in which the talks are held. First, let's talk about terrorism, exporting revolution, money laundering, kidnapping and hitmen without frontiers. Only then we could talk about uranium enrichment and the unfreezing of assets.

There is even no need for Biden and allies to talk about "human rights" and things like that which have become a staple of hollow global diplomacy, because those who demand respect for such rights don't really mean it and those who hear them know that they don't.

Why is the Biden administration continuing to negotiate with the mullahs of Iran to revive the nuclear deal and lift sanctions placed against them -- an act that would hugely strengthen their regime -- after the country, during nuclear talks, was caught plotting to kidnap a US citizen in Brooklyn, New York?

The message for the Biden administration, which has frequently proclaimed its intention to defend pro-democracy dissidents, is that a diet of US groveling and appeasement evidently will not deter Iran and other foreign dictatorships from launching increasingly hostile acts.

The Americans, it seems, want to reward the mullahs for taking over Syria, Yemen, Lebanon and Iraq, the Gaza Strip and soon possibly Jordan -- so, what incentive is there for the mullahs to stop?

Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, Tehran appears to have been attempting to become the dominant hegemon not only in the Middle East.... but around the world. At the same time, it is sending a warning to its population that any opposition to the political establishment will be dealt with harshly.

Will the Biden administration ever see that, to bring peace to the region and, by expansion, to the rest of the world, negotiations, concessions and offering incentive packages to the mullahs simply will not work?

The good news from all this is that [Peter] Daszak finally recused himself from a COVID-19 commission that was established by the medical journal The Lancet after his conflicts of interest with the WIV came to light. The bad news is that up until then, Daszak had been functioning as an apologist for the Beijing regime, parroting its nonsense that the SARS-CoV-2 originated somewhere else and somehow made its way to China.

Worse still, Daszak was the only representative of the U.S. appointed to a 10-person panel convened by the World Health Organization (WHO). That panel's report, which was released in February, was dismissed even by the Biden administration as superficial and unpersuasive. The joint WHO-China team's report asserted strong conclusions about how the pandemic started based on very little supporting evidence. Nor did Chinese authorities fully cooperate with its investigation.

For public confidence, however, the worst part may be that we only learned of Daszak's conflict of interest because of the FOIA request of Anthony Fauci's email archive. This means that no one at WHO seemed to think that Daszak's direct financial ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which he had funded with $600,000 of grant money to perform research on bat coronaviruses, might make him unsuitable to participate in thoroughly scrutinizing its procedures, record-keeping, anti-contamination habits, and other practices.

Rutgers University professor of chemical biology Richard H. Ebright, who is frequently quoted in media reports as an expert on coronaviruses and public health, said in April it "would be hard to imagine a more brazen lie" that Daszak has no conflict of interest with the WIV.

For US President Joe Biden, the recent unrest in Cuba should persuade his administration not to repeat the mistakes of the Obama era and attempt some form of rapprochement with Havana.

The US, as it is apparently able to do, should also immediately restore the ability of the Cuban people to use their internet.

One of the reasons Cuba's communist regime is struggling to survive is the impact the hard-hitting sanctions that the previous administration imposed on Cuba is having on the Cuban economy.

Any attempt now by the Biden administration to lift the sanctions would simply be to reward the regime for its brutal repression of the Cuban people.

To keep the sanctions in place would further increase the pressure on the Cuban regime, pressure that could ultimately result in its collapse and the liberation of the Cuban people from their communist oppressors.

Taken together, the administration's efforts paint a picture of an emerging, out-of-control police state. Those of us who disagree with the administration are no longer citizens, we have become "enemies of the state."

Just in the last few days, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said the administration was coordinating with Big Tech on correcting "misinformation." This is censorship. They are doing this with increasing frequency....

When individuals engage with social media, the federal government, in coordination with Big Tech, will, at best, have planned responses that will move them to sites designed to give them the "right" answer. Sound far-fetched? On its webpage, Moonshot CVE, a company already doing work for the Pentagon, says it uses "targeted advertising to connect people searching the internet for violent extremist content with constructive alternative messages."

Rather than the federal government using its massive power to facilitate our access to knowledge and information, thus enhancing our individual freedom and decision making, the Biden administration appears to be seeking to become a behemoth propaganda machine targeting its perceived enemies.

And yet, one could ask, what constitutes a monarchy? Must it be the traditional construct of a single individual holding court with scepter and crown.... Or could a monarchy take a far more sinister, stealth-like form? Could there be those who abdicate their oaths of office and thereby secretly pursue policies and actions that avoid the sunlight of public scrutiny?

Or could a monarchy be the abdication of authority to those who were never elected to serve in that position? Or maybe they have left office but still exert enormous influence – even control – over foreign and domestic decisions made by the executive branch?

Could we, in effect, be living with a monarch and not even know it?

Depending on your definition of "monarchy," the scenarios are chilling. Like the experience of George III, would those close to power seek to advance their own political agenda at the expense of anyone and everyone? Would social media, tuned to the ideology of their corporate owners, actually dictate the nation's agenda? Would a federal budget be so loaded with pork barrel deficit spending that it destroys the nation's economic future? Would control of America's nuclear arsenal actually be in the hands of a constitutionally authorized commander in chief?

The judgment is consistent with previous determinations by the Luxembourg-based court, informally known as the European Court of Justice (ECJ), that bans on religious symbols at the workplace are not inherently discriminatory — provided they apply equally to all religions.

The significance of the ECJ's decision on the headscarf — arguably the most visible symbol of political Islam in Europe — cannot be overstated: by striking a balance between religious liberty and entrepreneurial freedom, the court has effectively blocked a back-door effort to enshrine Sharia law in European labor law.

Islamic head coverings have been a recurring issue in Germany, where the Muslim population has surpassed six million to become approximately 7.2% of the overall population of 83 million.

Germany's headscarf debate — which is actively being fueled by groups promoting Islamism and Salafism — is directly linked to ongoing disputes about mass migration and the integration of immigrants into German society.

"The headscarf is not neutral. Religious freedom is important, yes. It is important to preserve it, yes. But this basic right also has its limits where a basic social order is violated, and a higher legal interest is affected." — Ahmad Mansour, a Germany-based Israeli-Arab expert on Islam.