Salman Rushdie, the award-winning author whose 1988 novel The Satanic Verses earned him a fatwa from Iran, was attacked on stage Friday just before beginning a lecture in New York.
Rushdie was apparently stabbed in the neck by a man who rushed the stage as the author took the podium at the Chautauqua Institution in Western New York, the Associated Press reports. The man stabbed Rushdie 10 to 15 times before he was detained. Rushdie fell to the ground and was airlifted to a hospital, where his condition is uknown.
The attack comes more than 30 years after Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling on “all brave Muslims of the world” to kill Rushdie, as well as his authors and publishers, “without delay.” Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, slammed The Satanic Verses as “against Islam, the Prophet of Islam, and the Qu’ran,” and noted that Rushdie’s assassination was necessary to ensure “no one will dare insult the sacred beliefs of Muslims henceforth.”
Khomeini’s fatwa claims “whoever is killed in this cause will be a martyr.” Rushdie’s head also carries a $3 million bounty in Iran.
The Satanic Verses is a sprawling work that consists in part of a fictionalized narrative of the founding of Islam by the Prophet Mohammad. In the book, Rushdie refers to Mohammad as “Mahound,” reportedly a derogatory term for the prophet used by Medieval Christians. The book’s title comes from a scene in which Mahound rejects his earlier revelation permitting polytheistic worship as the work of the Devil.
Some Muslims objected to The Satanic Verses before Khomeini’s fatwa. Several countries banned the book, and critics held book burnings around the world.
Rushdie was defiant when asked about the backlash to The Satanic Verses in a 1989 television interview.
“Frankly I wish I had written a more critical book,” the author said, adding that “religious leaders who are able to behave like this, and then say this is a religion which must be above any kind of whisper of criticism, that doesn’t add up.”
Khomeini’s February 1989 fatwa led to a barrage of death threats and drove Rushdie into hiding under British government protection. The author reentered public life nine years later, and went on to marry model and Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi.
WARNING: Disturbing content. Viewer discretion is advised.
The Oxford English dictionary defines meme as “a humorous image, video, piece of text, etc., that is copied (often with slight variations) and spread rapidly by internet users.” Depending on how rotten your brain is from prolonged exposure to social media, you may or may not be aware that we are in the midst of a “meme war” that will ultimately determine the fate of American democracy.
One of the most significant new developments in this raging conflict is the emergence of the “Dark Brandon” meme, which portrays Joe Biden as a laser-eyed Machiavellian overlord skilled in the art of four-dimensional political chess. It also seeks to expropriate the “Brandon” moniker from Biden’s critics, who embraced the phrase “Let’s Go, Brandon!” in 2021 after a filthy NASCAR journalist falsely claimed that fans at Talladega were chanting in support of winning driver Brandon Brown. (Fact Check: They were chanting, “F— Joe Biden!”)
In any event, the Washington Free Beacon has exclusively obtained a number of avant-garde “Dark Brandon” memes created with the help of cutting edge artificial intelligence technology. Bear in mind: The mainstream media does not want you, the American people, to see these humorous images. Enjoy!
Glasser portrays Milley as a dedicated military officer with a strong set of values who loathed his unstable and temperamental boss. But despite his commander in chief’s “fits of rage, late-night Twitter storms” and “abrupt dismissals,” Milley was determined not to resign for the good of his country. So altruistic.
There was that one time, however, when Milley was so utterly humiliated by Trump that he spent days in his Pentagon office, writing and rewriting a letter of resignation.
The occasion came during the June 2020 George Floyd riots. Members of Black Lives Matter had tried, but fortunately failed, to burn down St. John’s Church in Washington, D.C.’s Lafayette Square. Trump, accompanied by several advisers and Cabinet members, famously walked to the church and was photographed as he held up a Bible. Milley was among that group.
The legacy media claimed that a crowd of BLM protesters had been “violently” cleared from Lafayette Square by the U.S. Park Police for the sole purpose of this photo-op. One year later, the inspector general of the Interior Department released a report stating that the USPP had cleared the park to allow fencing to be installed “in response to destruction of property and injury to officers.”
In her new book, of course, Glasser tells readers, “Most of the demonstrations had been peaceful, but there were also eruptions of looting, street violence, and arson, including a small fire in St. John’s Church, across from the White House.”
Anyway, because members of the military are expected to remain apolitical and he had participated in a “political event,” Milley was filled with remorse.
During a pre-recorded commencement address to the graduating class of the National Defense University, Milley apologized. He said, “I should never have been there.”
“As senior leaders, everything you do will be closely watched, and I am not immune, as many of you saw the result of that photograph of me at Lafayette Square last week,” he told the graduates.
“I should not have been there. My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics. As a commissioned, uniformed officer, it was a mistake that I have learned from and I sincerely hope we all can learn from it.”
Upon additional reflection, Milley penned his letter of resignation, which is included in Glasser’s excerpt.
It is a boastful, four-paragraph letter written by a disgruntled subordinate with little sense of self-awareness. He tells the president he’s done some “deep soul-searching” and “can no longer faithfully support and execute your orders.”
“It is my belief that you were doing great and irreparable harm to my country,” he begins. “I believe that you have made a concerted effort over time to politicize the United States military. I thought that I could change that. I’ve come to the realization that I cannot, and I need to step aside and let someone else try to do that.”
Milley continues, “You are using the military to create fear in the minds of the people — and we are trying to protect the American people. I cannot stand idly by and participate in that attack, verbally or otherwise, on the American people.
“The American people trust their military and they trust us to protect them against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and our military will do just that. We will not turn our back on the American people.”
“I swore an oath to the Constitution of the United States and embodied within that Constitution is the idea that says that all men and women are created equal,” Milley writes. He expands upon his own acceptance of all people no matter their race, religion or sexual orientation, then moves on to his patriotism. The implication is, of course, that Trump is racist, bigoted and doesn’t love America.
“Lastly it is my deeply held belief that you’re ruining the international order, and causing significant damage to our country overseas, that was fought for so hard by the Greatest Generation that they instituted in 1945. Between 1914 and 1945, 150 million people were slaughtered in the conduct of war. They were slaughtered because of tyrannies and dictatorships.
“That generation, like every generation, has fought against that, has fought against fascism, has fought against Nazism, has fought against extremism. It’s now obvious to me that you don’t understand that world order.
“You don’t understand what the war was all about. In fact, you subscribe to many of the principles that we fought against. And I cannot be a party to that. It is with deep regret that I hereby submit my letter of resignation.”
Is he calling Trump a fascist? A Nazi? Sounds like it. If Milley thinks Trump damaged America’s reputation, we have to wonder how he feels about Biden’s blunders.
Unfortunately, he never submitted the letter to Trump.
Glasser writes, “Milley had finally come to a decision. He would not quit. ‘F*** that s***,’ he told his staff. ‘I’ll just fight him.’ The challenge, as he saw it, was to stop Trump from doing any more damage.”
Trump would have been better off if this coward had resigned. Among other allegations, Milley reportedly told his Chinese counterpart he would alert him if Trump were to plan any surprise attacks.
“Gen. Milley needs to be called in TODAY and asked under polygraph what he said to China.”
I would remind Milley of a certain oath he took a long time ago. He solemnly swore to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to bear true faith and allegiance to the same.
The BLM riots in the summer of 2020 were not peaceful. They were responsible for over $1 billion in property damage. They caused injury and even deaths. It’s one thing to oppose racism and quite another to excuse crime in our cities.
Either you’re for the rule of law and against terrorism, or you’re not.
Standing up for the rule of law and against terrorism isn’t politics, Gen. Milley. It’s your job.
Heather Lang steps down after allegations that Morningstar subsidiary blacklists companies that do business in Israel
A senior executive at the ratings giant Sustainalytics—who spent years working at an anti-Israel advocacy group—announced last week that she is stepping down amid scrutiny of the company’s reliance on sources that critics say lead to bias and discrimination against Israeli companies.
Heather Lang, a onetime official at the anti-Israel activist organization B’Tselem, announced last week her departure as a senior vice president at Sustainalytics, a subsidiary of the corporate-ratings giant Morningstar, after 18 years at the company.
“Tomorrow is my last day at Sustainalytics after an incredible 18-year journey!” wrote Lang in a social media post last week. “It’s been an absolute privilege to work with such wonderful colleagues and friends.”
The news comes as Sustainalytics—one of the major ratings agencies that score companies based on their environmental, social, and governance practices—has facedallegations that its scoring system is biased against Israel and that it downgrades companies that help the Jewish state’s national security operations. Prior to joining Sustainalytics, Lang worked at B’Tselem, a self-described human rights group that asserts that “Israel’s regime of apartheid and occupation is inextricably bound up in human rights violations,” according to its website. NGO Monitor, a watchdog group that monitors Middle East organizations, describes B’Tselem as “part of a network of NGOs that promote artificial and manufactured definitions of apartheid to extend the ongoing campaigns that seek to delegitimize and demonize Israel.”
Morningstar enlisted law firm White & Case to conduct an internal investigation into potential anti-Israel bias at Sustainalytics. This came after the Illinois Investment Policy Board, a state commission, launched a probe into whether the company was in violation of Illinois laws against anti-Israel boycotts.
Lang’s presence at Sustainalytics raises questions about the neutrality of its executives, a week after the Missouri attorney general launched an investigation into allegations of anti-Israel bias at the ratings giant.
Lang did not indicate that her departure is related to the investigation or allegations of bias. But Israel advocates said the company should be cautious about anti-Israel activism among its leadership.
“If Morningstar is serious about rooting out anti-Israel bias in their ranks, it would behoove them to ensure no more of their officers have a history of demonizing the Jewish state,” a former Israeli government official told the Washington Free Beacon.
Sustainalytics referred a request for comment to Morningstar. Morningstar declined to comment on Lang’s departure, telling the Free Beacon that the company “does not support the anti-Israel BDS movement. Matters related to an individual’s employment are confidential.”
According to an online biography of Lang, posted by a conference at which she spoke, she previously worked as a “corporate social responsibility consultant and spent several years living in Israel, working for leading human rights watchdog organization B’Tselem.”
While at B’Tselem, Lang was the editor of the group’s 1999 Human Rights Report, which accused Israel of various humanitarian abuses, including blocking water from Palestinians and discriminatory deportations.
Lang’s prior work for B’Tselem was not mentioned in the White & Case probe.
According to the White & Case investigation, Sustainalytics has relied on research from Who Profits, a group that supports boycott campaigns against Israel.
Former President Donald Trump has warned Americans to brace for something “a lot worse than a recession” while blaming the Biden administration’s poor stewardship of the economy for soaring inflation and denouncing the tax hikes in the latest Democrat spending bill.
Trump made the remarks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas on Saturday, where the former president raised the alarm on the state of the union.
“Our country is being shot. It’s being destroyed,” Trump told attendees, while touting his administration’s record on the economy and national security.
Trump spoke of “creating the most secure border in American history, record tax and regulation cuts, $1.87 gasoline, no inflation, low interest rates, record growth in real wages, record growth in our economy.”
Former President Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas on August 6, 2022. (Bobby Sanchez for The Epoch Times)
Soaring Inflation, Recession
During Trump’s tenure, the highest the Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation gauge came in at was 2.9 percent in July 2018, while in his final month in office, January 2021, inflation clocked in at 1.4 percent.
Under Biden, inflation has climbed steadily, soaring 9.1 percent year-over-year in June 2022, a figure not seen in more than 40 years.
In his speech, Trump drew a contrast with the economy under Joe Biden, blaming the president for the highest inflation in decades that Trump estimates is costing American families as much as $7,000 a year.
“After the pandemic, we handed the radical Democrats the fastest economic recovery ever recorded, the history of our country, ever recorded,” Trump continued. “They’ve turned that into two straight quarters of negative economic growth, also known, despite their protestation to the contrary, as a recession.”
Two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth are a common rule-of-thumb definition for a recession, although recessions in the United States are officially declared by a committee of economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) using a broader definition than the two-quarter rule.
Despite a number of economists arguing that the United States is in a recession based on the two-consecutive-quarters rule, the Biden administration insists that the economy isn’t in a recession, citing NBER’s consideration of a broader range of indicators.
A key argument against recession made by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and others in the Biden administration is that the U.S. labor market remains tight, with unemployment at 3.5 percent and, at 10.7 million, the number of job openings remaining well above the 6 million or so people classified as unemployed.
Joe Biden gives remarks during a meeting on the economy with CEOs and members of his Cabinet in the South Court Auditorium of the White House on July 28, 2022. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Worse Than Recession
In his CPAC speech, Trump then issued an ominous warning that, absent a course correction, the recession could spiral into something even worse.
“Just hope that the recession doesn’t turn into a depression, because the way they’re doing things, it could be a lot worse than a recession,” Trump said, echoing similar remarks he made at a rally in Arizona at the end of July, where he warned that “we’re going to have a serious problem” unless political change takes place.
“We got to get this act in order, we have to get this country going, or we’re going to have a serious problem,” Trump said at a rally in Arizona, warning that “we’re going to have a much bigger problem than recession. We’ll have a depression.”
During his appearance at CPAC, Trump issued a call for urgent action at the polls in the upcoming midterms.
“The future of our country is at stake. We don’t have time to wait years and years. We won’t have a country left. What I used to say about Venezuela is true. We have to save the economy, defeat the Biden, Pelosi, Schumer tax hike, which is happening right now tonight,” Trump continued, referring to the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” that cleared the Senate not long after his speech.
Senators passed the sweeping bill, estimated at $740 billion, in a 51–50 vote on Aug. 7, with the package next going to the House for consideration.
During the deliberations, Senate Democrats rejected an amendment offered by Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) that sought to ban any of the $80 billion for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) from being used to target Americans making less than $400,000 per year.
“My colleagues claim this massive funding boost will allow the IRS to go after millionaires, billionaires and so-called rich ‘tax cheats,’ but the reality is a significant portion raised from their IRS funding bloat would come from taxpayers with income below $400,000,” Crapo said in a statement.
Crapo’s amendment was rejected on a party-line vote, with the Democrat bill including softer language that features a non-binding statement of intention not to squeeze more revenue from America’s middle class.
Tax Hikes
According to an analysis by Americans for Tax Reform, a U.S. advocacy group, the spending bill includes a number of tax hikes on American households and businesses.
This includes a $6.5 billion natural gas tax that ATR says will increase household energy bills, a $12 billion crude oil tax that will end up being passed on to drivers in the form of higher gas prices, and a $52 billion income tax hike on mid-sized and family businesses.
In a separate analysis, ATR said that the Democrat bill’s changes to the book tax threaten small businesses.
Elaborating on that theme, economist and author Antonio Graceffo wrote in an op-ed for The Epoch Times that the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” would drive up prices for American households.
“Nearly half of these new taxes will be paid by manufacturers, creating disincentives to produce. Diminished industrial output will drive up the cost of goods and reduce the variety and quantity of goods available on store shelves,” Graceffo wrote.
“Beyond the manufacturing sector, the act increases taxes on businesses in general, which, combined with higher interest rates will decrease new investment and hamper job creation. Ultimately, these increased costs will be passed on to customers,” he added.
‘We Have to Win’
During his CPAC speech, Trump revealed what he sees as the key to bringing the country and its economy back on track.
“We have to win an earth-shattering victory in 2022. We have to do it, coming up in November,” Trump said.
“This election needs to be a national referendum on the horrendous catastrophes the radical Democrats have inflicted on our country,” he continued.
“The Republican party needs to campaign on a clear pledge that, if they are given power, they’re going to fight with everything they have to shut down the border, stop the crime wave, beat inflation, and hold the Biden administration accountable. They have to hold it accountable. Job number one for the next Congress,” Trump said.
The national midterm election takes place on Nov. 8, with 34 Senate seats and all 435 House seats up for grabs.
Small businesses seeking to grow their overseas sales are supposed to be the primary beneficiaries of loan guarantees by the U.S. Export-Import Bank (EX-IM), but a new analysis by a nonprofit government watchdog finds most of the funds go to corporate giants and corrupt regimes overseas.
“Small businesses, supposedly the intended beneficiary of the Export-Import Bank, received only $54.8 billion of the over $234 billion in total assistance since 2007, or about 23 percent” of the bank’s total funding, according to the report by Open The Books (OTB), a Chicago-based nonprofit that monitors government spending.
By filing more than 40,000 federal Freedom of Information Act requests and posting the checkbooks of 49 state governments, OTB has posted to the internet more than $6 trillion in public spending. The non-profit’s goal is to “post every dime in real-time.”
By far the biggest beneficiary of EX-IM lending is the Boeing Corporation, the largest U.S. aircraft manufacturer and one of the world’s most successful designers and builders of commercial airliners.
Boeing’s headquarters is currently in Chicago, but the company is planning a move to Arlington, Virginia, in the near future.
“The Export-Import Bank has been nicknamed ‘Boeing’s Bank’ by critics, and it is easy to see why. From 2007-2021, the aircraft giant received 33 percent of all of the Export-Import Bank’s assistance, totaling over $66.4 billion, while the second largest vendor received just over $5 billion. That’s more than all small businesses received combined,” the OTB report said.
“Boeing subsidiary Boeing Satellite Systems International reaped another $1.4 billion in assistance. Major international airline companies like Ryanair, Emirates Airlines, and Air Canada have all received assistance for Boeing purchases. Boeing employs a small army of 18 lobbyists to advocate for the Export-Import Bank,” the report said.
The second largest beneficiary of EX-IM funding is the Reston, Virginia-based Bechtel Corporation, which ranked only behind Boeing despite getting assistance for only seven contracts since 2007.
“The engineering and construction company received just over $5 billion from the bank for petroleum engineering in wealthy countries like the United Kingdom, Australia, and India, as well as with governments like Serbia and Kenya,” according to the OTB report.
General Electric Corporation and its subsidiaries whose exports of industrial engines and machinery in over 265 transactions earned them third place on the list of top vendors. The report said GEC got $4.7 billion in assistance between General Electric International Operations Company and General Electric Energy Parts alone.
About EX-IM’s overseas funding activities the report said, “the mandate of EX-IM is ‘filling the gaps’ to provide liquidity—facilitating the wheels of commerce. [A total of] 147 countries have received some amount of aid since 2007.
“While the United States sent billions of aid to some of the most corrupt countries and repressive regimes in the world, equally disturbing is the amount that went to wealthy countries that don’t need our aid.”
Ranked by countries, the largest beneficiary of U.S. taxpayer-guaranteed EX-IM loans is Nigeria, ruled by a regime that is ranked among the world’s most corrupt. “Ranked 149th in the world on a scale from least to most corrupt by Transparency International in 2020, importers in Nigeria received over $570 million from the Export-Import Bank.
“It would be a miracle if any of those dollars actually reached their intended recipient,” the OTB report said.
China, with the world’s second-largest economy, was also a large beneficiary of EX-IM resources.
“Second to only the United States in [Gross Domestic Product] GDP, businesses in China nonetheless received more than $6.4 billion in U.S. Export-Import Bank assistance. Even amidst Donald Trump’s trade war with China, $128,062,638.20 flowed to China from 2017 to 2020,” the report observed.
Russia and Turkey are also big beneficiaries of EX-IM funding.
“At least part of the over $1.9 billion that went to Russia likely went to line the pockets of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s oligarchs, who control most of the commerce in the country.
“Sberbank, Russia’s largest financial institution, was recently sanctioned by the United States for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, though they were approved for $29,103,807 of assistance from the Export-Import Bank,” the report said.
“Human Rights Watch warned in 2021 that Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been ‘dismantling human rights protections and democratic norms in Turkey on a scale unprecedented in the 18 years he has been in office.’ Still, the Export-Import Bank has sent over $6.2 billion to Turkey since 2007,” OTB reported.
The EX-IM bank currently has 396 employees, with 321 of them, or 81 percent, being made more than $100,000 annually. The highest paid employee made $199,300.
The bank has been the source of controversy for nearly a decade, with conservative Republicans demanding it is abolished as a corrupt example of crony capitalism, and Democrats defending it as an essential tool of U.S. foreign policy.
The then-Republican-led Congress allowed EX-IM to expire in 2015 but reversed itself five months later.
After Andy Levin’s loss in Michigan, ‘Squad’ acolyte Nina Turner says ‘AIPAC bought another seat’
For the second time in a year, anti-Israel Democrats found themselves on the losing end of a bitter primary battle and rushed to blame the Jews.
On Tuesday night, pro-Israel Rep. Haley Stevens cruised to a 20-point win over fellow Michigan Democratic representative Andy Levin, who has championed legislation to restrict military aid to the Jewish state, argued that anti-Semitism is not an issue on the left, and aligned himself with his party’s most radical, anti-Semitic members. As a result, pro-Israel group AIPAC spent to boost Stevens and oppose Levin through one of its newly formed political action committees, the United Democracy Project—prompting Levin’s far-left allies to blame the so-called Israel lobby following the congressman’s defeat.
“Squad” acolyte and twice-failed congressional candidate Nina Turner, for example, quickly said, “AIPAC bought another seat.” Turner herself blamed her 2021 congressional loss on “evil money” after pro-Israel Democrats backed her primary opponent. Liberal anti-Israel group J Street also denounced AIPAC’s “aggressive outside spending,” which it called “harmful and unwelcome.” J Street’s statement did not mention its own outside spending in the race—the group dropped more than $700,000 to oppose Stevens.
AIPAC, of course, was not the only outside group that backed Stevens in the race. Pro-abortion giant EMILY’s List endorsed Stevens over Levin and spent more than $3 million to support the congresswoman through its own PAC, Women Vote!
While Levin did not mention AIPAC by name in his concession statement, the Democrat did attack what he called a “largely Republican-funded campaign set on defeating the movement I represent no matter where I ran.” In response, AIPAC said it was “proud” to have “helped pro-Israel Democrats prevail over detractors of the Jewish state” and accused its critics of hypocrisy.
“A double standard is applied to us when it comes to money in politics,” the group’s spokesman, Marshall Wittmann, told the Washington Free Beacon. “Those who criticize our involvement often hypocritically support the use of the same tools against pro-Israel candidates.”
Levin, who served as president of a progressive Detroit synagogue, has aligned himself with the Democratic Party’s loudest anti-Semitic voices.
In the past year, he’s repeatedlydefended Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) and Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) from accusations of anti-Semitism. Tlaib has accused Jewish supporters of Israel of holding dual loyalties and in May collaborated with a pro-Hamas activist who urged Palestinians to attack Israel. Omar, meanwhile, has argued that U.S. support for Israel is “all about the Benjamins baby,” a reference to $100 bills that prompted swift condemnation from many prominent Democrats.
Despite those examples of anti-Semitism among his closest allies, Levin has argued that left-wing anti-Semitism is merely “part of a larger machinery to stoke fear and division.”
“I don’t really [think left-wing anti-Semitism is an issue],” Levin told Jewish Insider in March 2021.
Stevens’s victory over Levin marks the latest House primary win for pro-Israel Democrats. In 2021, pro-Israel Democrat Shontel Brown defeated Turner in Ohio’s 11th Congressional District and thanked her “Jewish brothers and sisters” in her victory speech. Roughly one year later, in May, Brown again defeated Turner, who failed to airbrush her anti-Israel past after she expressed “solidarity” with far-left groups that accuse Israel of apartheid.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) — Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri has been killed in a CIA drone strike in Afghanistan, U.S. officials told Reuters on Monday, the biggest blow to the militant group since its founder Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011.
One of the officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said a drone strike was carried out by the CIA in the Afghan capital Kabul on Sunday.
In a statement, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid confirmed that a strike took place and strongly condemned it, calling it a violation of “international principles.”
Joe Biden will deliver remarks on Monday at 7:30 p.m. (2330 GMT) on what the White House described as a “successful counter-terrorism operation.”
(Reporting by Idrees Ali. Editing by Leslie Adler and Grant McCool.)
Tehran slated to sell China $27 billion in oil this year
Iran’s illegal oil trade has boomed under the Biden administration, with the hardline regime selling more than $44 billion worth of its heavily sanctioned oil to malign regimes like China, Syria, and Venezuela, according to figures published by a watchdog group.
From January 2021, when Joe Biden took office, to June 2022, Iran sold around $44.7 billion in oil primarily to China. The regime’s export revenues between March 2021 and March 2022 from oil, gas, and related products “totaled $39 billion, compared [with] $22 billion for the previous year—a rise of 77 percent and an extra $17 billion,” according to United Against a Nuclear Iran (UANI), a watchdog group that tracks Iran’s network of illegal oil tankers.
“This drastic increase in revenue is not surprising when you look at the increase in oil exports that have occurred under the Biden administration,” UANI chief of staff Claire Jungman told the Washington Free Beacon. “This is the result of terminally lax sanctions enforcement.”
In addition to looser sanctions on Iran, the Biden administration has turned a blind eye to enforcement as it seeks to ink a revamped version of the 2015 nuclear deal. These moves are meant to appease Iran and cajole it into signing a deal that will remove virtually all sanctions on the hardline regime, including its oil trade. China is the primary beneficiary of this policy, with Iranian oil imports quadrupling to the country in 2021 to $23.1 billion. The China-Iran oil pipeline is on pace to hit around $27 billion in 2022, according to UANI’s figures.
If sanctions on Iran are lifted as part of a new nuclear deal, Iran-China trade could reach around $60 billion per year, according to one former U.S. official.
“China made a mockery of the credibility of our sanctions programs and emboldened rogue actors across the world to follow suit,” Gabriel Noronha, a State Department special adviser for Iran during the Trump administration, told the Free Beacon.
Iran’s foreign currency reserves— which were nearly drained under the Trump administration’s maximum pressure campaign—will have “increased nearly tenfold by the end of this year,” according to Noronha.
“The United States refused to enforce its sanctions even while Iran was continuing to advance its nuclear program and its regional terror attacks,” Noronha said. “The result was that Iran’s economy revived itself.”
This financial relief gave Iran a cushion and lessened pressure that could have forced it into accepting a more stringent nuclear deal.
“The Iranian leadership does not feel pressure to finalize the nuclear deal because they’ve already enjoyed the benefits of effective sanctions relief,” Noronha said. “The fact that the Biden administration can’t even manage a return to the notoriously weak [nuclear deal] is evidence of the sheer diplomatic malpractice carried out by the Biden administration, particularly Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.S. envoy for Iran Rob Malley.”
As Iran and China boost their oil alliance, the U.S. emergency crude stockpiles dropped to their lowest levels in 37 years. This comes after the Biden administration agreed to sell China several million barrels from the U.S. stores, sparking a congressional investigation.
In July, Iran sold 746,915 barrels of oil per day to China, according to UANI.
Under pressure from watchdog groups like UANI, the Biden administration is beginning to issue new sanctions on Iran’s oil trade.
The State Department announced on Monday that it is “designating six entities” for their role in “facilitating illicit transactions related to Iranian petroleum.”
The administration says it is committed to reviving the nuclear deal, but will issue sanctions until the agreement is signed.
“The United States has been sincere in pursuing a path of meaningful diplomacy to achieve a mutual return to full implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA),” the State Department said, referring to the 2015 deal by its official name. “Until Iran is ready to return to full implementation of the JCPOA, we will continue to use our sanctions authorities to target exports of petroleum, petroleum products, and petrochemical products from Iran.”
UANI’s Jungman said the new sanctions are a good first step, but that “there are many gaps that need to be filled.” The administration still has not designated several oil tankers known to be ferrying illicit Iranian oil.
“Without designation on the vessels, the tankers will just register under new companies and continue to assist Iran in exporting its oil,” she said.
Noronha says these sanctions have come too late.
“China took advantage of the Biden administration’s weak posture and blatantly flouted our sanctions on Iran for over 16 months before the United States made any attempt to stop the trade,” he said.
The State Department says that it continues to engage China diplomatically as part of its efforts to crack down on its oil partnership with Tehran.
Morningstar research arm may downgrade companies for working in disputed areas of Israel
A financial services giant builds its ratings around the premise that any entity operating in “occupied Palestinian territories” is connected to human rights violations—a standard that one foreign policy analyst says is a key pillar of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, which tries to gin up an economic boycott of the Jewish state.
The research arm of Morningstar Inc., a firm that advises investors and rates companies based in part on their social ethics, may designate a company as participating in human rights violations just for working in an area it calls the “occupied Palestinian territories,” according to Richard Goldberg, a former U.S. national security official and Middle East expert who published an independent analysis on the matter for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank.
Sustainalytics, the research arm, in its guidance documents says its “position is that in occupied territories where human rights are being systematically violated, any business activity in that region is connected to the violations in some direct or indirect way,” according to a review of Morningstar’s methods conducted by the law firm White & Case. This standard is also applied to other areas immersed in conflict, such as Yemen, the Western Sahara, Tibet, and the South China Sea.
Goldberg, who independently analyzed the White & Case report, said the reliance on this standard for the “occupied Palestinian territories” results in companies being downgraded just for performing work in a disputed area of Israel. He says these standards ultimately promote divestment from Israel, as companies seek to distance themselves to avoid a negative rating from the company. Ratings produced by firms like Morningstar serve as a primary guide for investors and can greatly impact a company’s appeal.
Morningstar is already battling charges that Sustainalytics unfairly downgrades companies working with Israel’s security and anti-terrorism sectors. Critics like Goldberg say the ratings system unfairly targets Israel’s partners and ultimately bolsters the BDS movement, which wages economic warfare on the Jewish state and its allies. White & Case’s review of the company’s practices found some instances of bias in certain products. It recommended multiple reforms that Morningstar says it is undertaking to make its ratings products fairer to Israel. This includes altering the language in some of its ratings products and canceling others.
Sustainalytics classifies the “occupied Palestinian territories” as the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, and Golan Heights—areas that remain disputed.
“We’re now getting to the deepest root of the BDS activity inside Morningstar,” Goldberg said. “Every downgrade of an Israeli-connected company starts with a BDS campaign assumption that Jews have no right to live in East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights. If you’re a Jewish business operating near the holiest site for Jews in the world, you’re an assumed human rights violator according to Morningstar.”
“Just like the BDS campaign,” Goldberg said, “Morningstar’s premise is that companies that legitimize a Jewish presence in these areas must be investigated and harassed.”
A Morningstar spokesman would not answer specific questions about the ratings practices but told the Washington Free Beacon that the company “does not support the anti-Israel BDS movement.” The spokesman said the company is working with Jewish advocacy groups, including the Jewish Federations of North America, to address concerns of bias and implement the reforms included in the White & Case report.
Sustainalytics relies on research produced by nonprofit groups that critics view as anti-Israel. This includes Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, which describe Israel as an occupying force and apartheid state. Sustainalytics also has a relationship with a group called WhoProfits, which the watchdog group NGO Monitor has flagged as “a leader” in the BDS movement.
“Sustainalytics has the system rigged against Israel-connected companies from beginning to end,” said Goldberg. “You start with false anti-Israel assumptions and double standards that trigger unfair investigations, validate BDS claims with pro-BDS sources of information, and the unsurprising output is an unfair negative rating of Israel-connected companies.”
Pro-Israel organizations like the Jewish Federations, an umbrella group representing pro-Israel activities across the United States, say Morningstar’s ratings are more biased than the company acknowledges.
The White & Case report “makes clear that built-in bias against Israel infects Sustainalytics’s methodology and sources, and thus, its other [ethical] ratings products,” the Jewish group wrote in a recent letter sent to Morningstar’s top executives. “Morningstar should take the opportunity to cleanse its products of all anti-Israel bias and set an example of fairness and reliability for all companies providing [ethical] ratings, which represent one-third of dollars managed globally.”
President Donald Trump has warned that America’s economy is on track for a bigger disaster than a recession, with his remarks coming shortly before government statistics showed GDP printing negative for the second consecutive quarter, which is a rule-of-thumb definition for a recession.
“Where we’re going now could be a very bad place,” Trump said at a rally in Arizona last week. “We got to get this act in order, we have to get this country going, or we’re going to have a serious problem.”
The former president singled out the collapse in Americans’ real wages, a historically depressed labor force participation rate, and the Democrat push for the Green New Deal that he said would crush economic growth.
“Not recession. Recession’s a nice word. We’re going to have a much bigger problem than recession. We’ll have a depression,” the former president said.
Trump’s remarks came several days before the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released data showing that real U.S. GDP fell by an annualized 0.9 percent in the second quarter after contracting 1.6 percent in the first quarter.
Two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth are a common rule-of-thumb definition for a recession, although recessions in the United States are officially declared by a committee of economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) using a broader definition than the two-quarter rule.
Vance Ginn, Chief Economist at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, told The Epoch Times’ sister media NTD in an interview that, while officially it’s NBER that calls recessions, the two-quarter rule is “usually how it’s done by a rule of thumb.”
“I think this is definitely recession that we’re in now from these bad policies,” Ginn added, blaming a series of “progressive policies” coming out of the White House and the Democrat-controlled House.
President Donald Trump gestures at a rally in Prescott Valley, Ariz., on July 22, 2022. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
Stagflationary Winds Blowing
In his remarks, Trump also took aim at resident Joe Biden’s handling of the economy, blaming him for soaring inflation.
“Biden created the worst inflation in 47 years. We’re at 9.1 percent, but the actual number is much, much higher than that,” Trump said.
While the former president didn’t provide his own estimate for the true rate of inflation, an alternative CPI inflation gauge developed by economist John Williams, calculated according to the same methodology used by the U.S. government in the 1980s, puts the figure at 17.3 percent, a 75-year high.
Trump also said that persistently high inflation combined with an economic slowdown has put the country “on the verge of a devastating” spell of stagflation, which is a combination of accelerating prices and slowing economic growth.
Inflation is “going higher and higher all the time,” Trump said, adding that it’s “costing families nearly $6,000 a year, bigger than any tax increase ever proposed other than the tax increase that they want to propose right now.”
In Trump’s first full month in office in February 2017, the headline Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation gauge came in at 2.8 percent in annual terms. While the CPI measure fluctuated during his tenure, the highest it ever reached was 2.9 percent in July 2018, while in his final month in office, January 2021, inflation clocked in at 1.4 percent.
Under Biden, inflation has climbed steadily, soaring 9.1 percent year-over-year in June 2022, a figure not seen in more than 40 years.
Joe Biden waves as he walks to Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on July 20, 2022. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
‘War on American Energy’
Soaring energy prices have been one of the key contributing factors to inflation, accounting for around half of the headline inflation figure, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In his criticism of Biden’s policies, Trump singled out what he called “Biden’s war on American energy” and blamed it for pushing up gasoline prices.
Since taking office, Biden has taken a number of executive actions targeting the oil industry, including rescinding the Keystone XL pipeline permit, halting new oil and gas drilling leases on federal lands and waters, and ending fossil fuel subsidies by some agencies.
The price of gasoline is around double what it was when Biden took office, with the president blaming various factors, including a lack of refining capacity, the war in Ukraine, and corporate greed.
In a bid to lower prices at the pump, Biden ordered the release of oil reserves from the national strategic reserve, called on U.S. refineries to boost output, and pushed OPEC to pump more crude.
In his speech, Trump said this amounted to “begging” other countries to pump more oil instead of trying to ramp up domestic production.
“We have more liquid gold under our feet than any other country in the world. We are a nation that is consumed by the radical left’s Green New Deal, yet everyone knows that the Green New Deal will lead to our destruction.”
“Just two years ago, we were energy-independent. We were even energy-dominant. The United States is now a beggar for energy
With an expected GOP takeover of the U.S. House of Representatives following November’s midterm elections, Republicans in the chamber are poised to launch a slew of investigations aimed at dialing up the pressure on the Biden administration over a range of issues—from border security to Hunter Biden to the origins of the pandemic.
Domestic concerns faced by everyday Americans—most notably a historic inflation rate—will be key priorities, according to Chair of the House Republican Conference Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.).
House Republicans will take the administration to task on alleged “policy failures that have created an inflation crisis, energy crisis, border crisis, and crime crisis impacting every American family,” Stefanik told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement.
Big Tech’s censorship of conservative voices will also be scrutinized, she added.
On the foreign policy front, the Biden administration’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Chinese Communist Party’s influence in the United States and abroad, and U.S. strategy toward Iran are set to come under focus.
Republicans are already laying the groundwork to take on “an aggressive oversight role” next year by issuing preservation notices and document requests so a potential GOP majority “will be ready to hold the Biden administration accountable from day one,” a House GOP leadership aide told The Epoch Times in an email.
House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-NY) (C) speaks at a press conference, was joined by House Republican Whip Steve Scailse (R-LA) (L) and Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), following a Republican caucus meeting, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, on June 8, 2022. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Oversight Committee
Many of the inquiries are expected to be spearheaded by the powerful House Committee on Oversight and Reform, the chamber’s main investigative panel that has broad authority to scrutinize various facets of the administration.
The committee’s ranking member James Comer (R-Ky.), who is poised to take the chair should the Republicans flip the House, foreshadowed an ambitious agenda by a GOP-led panel.
“[W]e will return the House Oversight and Reform Committee to its core mission of rooting out waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in the federal government and holding the Executive Branch accountable,” Comer told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement.
Another committee member Rep. Michael Cloud (R-Texas) had a clear message for the Biden administration via email to The Epoch Times: “Their days of corruption, fraud, and abuse will no longer be met with blind eyes.”
Hunter Biden, son of U.S. President Joe Biden, attends the ceremony honoring 17 recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, in the East Room of the White House in Washington, on July 7, 2022. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
Hunter Biden
Chief among a GOP-led House Oversight Committee’s priorities is an investigation into Hunter Biden and his foreign business dealings.
For more than two years, the president’s son has been at the center of growing controversy over his overseas business activities, including in Ukraine, Russia, and China, conducted while Biden was vice president in the Obama administration.
Hunter is currently the subject of a federal investigation being run out of Delaware and, according to a recent CNN report citing unnamed sources, it is “nearing a critical juncture.”
Hunter has previously denied wrongdoing, and the elder Biden has maintained that he has never discussed Hunter’s business activities with his son.
The president’s son’s extensive financial dealings with foreign individuals and businesses, raise concerns about conflicts of interests, illegal lobbying, and whether his ties influenced U.S. foreign policy during the Obama administration, critics say.
Republicans have honed in on Hunter’s work for Ukrainian gas firm Burisma, while his father was the Obama administration’s point-man on Ukraine, and Hunter’s dealings with several Chinese companies and businessmen with links to the Chinese Communist Party.
“We will continue to conduct oversight of Hunter Biden and the Biden Family’s pattern of peddling access to the highest levels of government to enrich themselves,” Comer said.
“They have racked up over 150 suspicious activity reports for their foreign business deals, which is a national security threat,” the lawmaker said, referring to a CBS report saying that U.S. banks had flagged more than 150 financial transactions involving Hunter or the president’s brother, James, for further review by the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. Some of the transactions involved large wire transfers, the report said.
“We need to know if resident Biden benefited financially from these deals and if he is beholden to the interests of foreign adversaries,” Comer said.
An aerial view shows the P4 laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China’s central Hubei Province on April 17, 2020. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)
COVID-19 Origins
The ranking member highlighted that the committee would continue to investigate the origins of COVID-19, focusing on the possibility that the pandemic was the result of a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) in China.
“Growing evidence shows COVID-19 likely originated from the Wuhan Lab and the Communist Party of China covered it up,” Comer said.
An array of circumstantial evidence has prompted some officials and scientists to point to the WIV as the most likely source of the pandemic. These include the WIV’s gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses, reports that staff members became sick with symptoms consistent with both seasonal flu and COVID-19 in the fall of 2019, before the Chinese regime acknowledged the outbreak, and that a WIV public database of 22,000 samples and viral sequences was taken offline in September 2019 before the onset of the pandemic.
The Chinese regime’s persistent refusal to allow outside access to the lab and its data has made it nearly impossible to fully investigate the lab leak theory.
Domestically, the potential role of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in aiding WIV’s activities has been viewed with particular alarm by Republicans, who are looking to intensify the inquiry. The NIH has previously funded WIV via New York-based health nonprofit EcoHealth, including one grant that amounted to what experts have described as gain-of-function research on bat coronaviruses.
“We will seek to hold U.S. government officials accountable for any wrongdoing, and ensure Americans’ tax dollars aren’t being used on risky research at unsecure labs,” Comer said.
Border Patrol agents apprehend a large group of illegal immigrants near Eagle Pass, Texas, on May 20, 2022. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)
Other Key Priorities
The ongoing struggle by the administration to control the flow of illegal immigration at the U.S.–Mexico border is set to become another focal point for Republicans serving on the House Oversight Committee, and other panels.
“We will also continue our oversight of Biden’s border crisis that has led to historic illegal immigration, a surge of deadly drugs pouring across the border, and mismanagement of taxpayer dollars,” Comer said.
With a GOP-led House Energy and Commerce Committee, Biden’s energy policies amid a deepening global squeeze on oil and gas are expected to come under close scrutiny.
“We will build on our robust oversight over how the administration is censoring conservative speech, shutting down American energy and increasing gas prices, abusing its public health emergency powers, [and] colluding with political allies like teacher’s unions,” a spokesperson for Energy and Commerce Republicans told The Epoch Times in an email.
Meanwhile, a Republican-led House Financial Services Committee would focus on probing regulatory agencies’ alleged efforts to impose a “far-left agenda” on the U.S. financial system, as well as the Biden administration’s implementation of the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 stimulus package known as the American Rescue Plan, said Laura Peavey, communications director for the House Financial Services GOP, in an email to The Epoch Times.
The Epoch Times has reached out to the White House for comment.
Rep. Sanford Bishop considered joining Farrakhan’s anti-Semitic organization
A Democratic congressman running in a competitive House race once praised Nation of Islam leader and infamous anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan as “impressive” and said he considered joining Farrakhan’s organization.
Rep. Sanford Bishop (Ga.), who has served in Congress since 1993, made the comments during a 2005 interview series with the former leader of the NAACP, the Jewish Journalreported this week.
Bishop said he met Farrakhan after graduating from college, while the two were attending an event at Morehouse College in 1968.
“Of course, I had the opportunity for the first time to be acquainted with a man known as Minister Louis Farrakhan, who was so impressive that night that people stopped in mid-stride,” said Bishop during the interview. “I was just so taken by his message and his manner that I rushed out to the mosque the next day to hear him.”
The interview could be an obstacle for Bishop in his closely contested race against Republican challenger and Air Force officer Chris West. Bishop’s remarks drew criticism from Jewish leaders who noted Farrakhan’s history of anti-Semitic and anti-American rhetoric.
Bishop said he considered joining the Nation of Islam, a group led by Farrakhan that mixes black nationalist ideology with some elements of the Muslim religion. The organization also promotes anti-Semitic, anti-white, and anti-gay conspiracy theories. Bishop said his father opposed the idea and encouraged him to “pause” and reconsider it.
“I had so much exposure, so many influences, and of course when I even mentioned the possibility of joining the Nation, my father, he had a real time with that,” he said.
Bishop, who was raised Christian, said he didn’t end up joining the group and went on to learn about different religions, including Judaism.
The Jewish Journal noted that Bishop declined to denounce Farrakhan when asked by the Daily Caller in 2018.
Bishop told the Jewish Journal that he “denounce[s] anti-Semitism just as I denounce all forms of racism.” The congressman added that he has “been a strong supporter of the State of Israel” and has “the support of the Georgia Jewish community.”
Farrakhan has been dubbed the “most popular anti-Semite in America” by the Anti-Defamation League. Farrakhan preaches that “Satanic Jews” have “infected the whole world with poison and deceit.”
“To my Jewish friends, I shouldn’t use the word ‘friends’ so lightly, you have been a great and master deceiver, but God is going to pull the covers all off of you,” said Farrakhan in one 2017 speech.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told the Jewish Journal that Bishop’s praise for Farrakhan seems consistent with some of the congressman’s policy positions.
Bishop, who supported the Iran nuclear deal, appears to have “no concerns about a regime that crushes human rights, religious freedoms of its own citizens, executes gays, threatens nuclear Holocaust against [the] Jewish state, and continues to support and deploy terrorist assets from Iraq to South America,” Cooper said. “No surprise then he would have no problem with Farrakhan’s anti-Semitism and anti-American rhetoric.”
Navi Pillay is standing by Miloon Kothari after anti-Semitic comments
The United Nations official in charge of an investigation into Israel is standing by a colleague who came under fire this week for claiming social media platforms are controlled by a “Jewish lobby.”
Navi Pillay, chairwoman of the U.N. investigation into alleged Israeli human rights crimes, says her colleague, Miloon Kothari, is being unfairly accused of anti-Semitism after he stated in an interview this week that social media are controlled by an all-powerful “Jewish lobby” that throws around “a lot of money.”
Pillay defended the remarks, saying in a letter sent Thursday to the president of the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC), which helms the Israel investigation, that Kothari was “deliberately misquoted.” A copy of the letter, which was written after the UNHRC’s president raised concerns about the comments, was provided to the Washington Free Beacon by U.N. officials.
Kothari was “deliberately misquoted to imply that ‘social media’ was controlled by the Jewish lobby,” Pillay says in the letter, though she does not specify how Kothari was misquoted. Pillay also said that those critical of Kothari’s comments are attempting to discredit the U.N. investigation into Israel, which has been dogged by accusations it is biased and fueled by animosity toward the Jewish state.
“The commission takes great exception to personal attacks against individual commissioners appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council. Such attacks have been continuously directed against all three commissioners throughout our tenure, and it is to this that Commissioner Kothari was making reference,” Pillay wrote.
Kothari in an interview with the anti-Zionist website Mondoweiss said the “Jewish lobby” is behind social media efforts attempting to discredit the ongoing probe into Israel.
“We are very disheartened by the social media that is controlled largely by whether it’s the Jewish lobby or it’s the specific [nonprofit groups],” Kothari said. “A lot of money is being thrown into trying to discredit us.”
Kothari also questioned Israel’s membership in the United Nations.
“I would go as far as to raise the question of why [Israel is] even a member of the United Nations,” he said. “The Israeli government does not respect its own obligations as a U.N. member state. They, in fact, consistently, either directly or through the United States, try to undermine U.N. mechanisms.”
Kothari’s comments were labeled anti-Semitic by pro-Israel groups, theFree Beaconreported on Wednesday.
Pillay in her letter launched attacks on the Israeli government for its refusal to cooperate with the investigation, which Israel is boycotting due to concerns the commission is trying to demonize the Jewish state.
“The commission continues to highlight the refusal of Israel to cooperate with the Commission of Inquiry as well as abide by its international obligations to end the occupation and fulfill the right of Palestinians to self-determination,” Pillay wrote.
“Commissioner Kothari’s comments reflect the commission’s disappointment with the continued lack of cooperation and address the issue that as a member of the United Nations, Israel is under an obligation to abide by the international legal framework, as well as independent bodies set up by the United Nations,” Pillay wrote.
Pillay also defended Commissioner Christopher Sidoti, who came under fire in recent weeks for comments that Israeli officials called anti-Semitic.
A U.N. Human Rights Council spokesman told the Free Beacon that it has a zero-tolerance policy on anti-Semitism.
“The Human Rights Council takes a vigilant stance against anti-Semitism, including any comments or actions seen as stigmatizing the Jewish people,” the official said. “The council has a long track record speaking out against all forms of discrimination and racism and vehemently condemns such abhorrent acts.”
U.S. officials at the United Nations, including Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism Deborah Lipstadt, said on Thursday that Kothari’s comments represent a “persistent venom” that has “poisoned” the international body.
“Anti-Semitism and anti-Israel bias are a persistent venom that for far too long has poisoned international discourse and polluted international organizations, including the United Nations,” Lipstadt said in a joint statement with Michèle Taylor, the U.S. permanent representative to the U.N. Human Rights Council. “The United States condemns it unequivocally.”
Kothari’s comments, Lipstadt and Taylor said, echo “age-old anti-Semitic tropes” and are “outrageous, inappropriate, and corrosive.”
Anne Bayefsky, president of Human Rights Voices and director of Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust, which combats anti-Semitism, said Pillay’s letter demonstrates the entire Israel commission is biased.
“The letter of Navi Pillay defending the clearly outrageous anti-Semitic remarks of her colleague on the U.N. Human Rights Council inquiry makes one thing abundantly clear: The problem isn’t just Kothari,” Bayefsky said. “The problem is the inquiry itself and all three of its members starting with Pillay herself. The very reason that Pillay, Kothari, and Chris Sidoti were chosen for the job was because they are all well-known wildly anti-Israel militants. Their appointments were totally at odds with U.N. requirements of impartiality and objectivity.”
The Biden administration has sold nearly 6 million barrels of oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve to an entity tied to the Chinese Communist Party, records show.
From September 2021 to July, the Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded three crude oil contracts with a combined value of roughly $464 million to Unipec America, the U.S. trading arm of Chinese state-owned oil company Sinopec, according to a review by The Epoch Times of the DOE documents. A Chinese firm with ties to Hunter Biden had invested in the national oil giant.
The sale would tap 5.9 million barrels in total from the strategic reserve (SPR) to export to the Chinese firm. The latest contract, revealed on July 10, was for 950,000 barrels sold for around $113.5 million.
The two most recent sales to Unipec came out of an emergency drawdown of the U.S. oil stockpile, initiated under resident Joe Biden on March 31 in what he said would offset the loss of Russian oil in global markets and tame rising fuel costs at home.
The Unipec contracts have been subject to heavy criticism in recent weeks, especially because of the firm’s connections to the president’s son. With Americans nationwide still reeling from elevated gas prices, the selling of oil reserves to foreign adversaries such as China is at odds with U.S. energy and security needs, Republican lawmakers and analysts have said.
“Biden is draining our strategic reserves at an unprecedented rate. This is an abuse of the SPR, far beyond its intended purpose. Sending U.S. petroleum reserves to foreign adversaries is wrong, and it undermines our national security,” Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) told The Epoch Times.
What the United States should do, he says, is to “unleash American energy production and ensure that our strategic reserves are stocked and able to meet the demands of a national emergency.”
Cars line up to fill up with fuel at a Sinopec service station in Beijing on July 8, 2015. (Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images)
Unipec’s Bids
The oil auction is price-competitive, meaning contracts are awarded to the highest bidder. Unipec, a consistent participant in previous U.S. crude oil sales, secured 1.9 million barrels over the past three months through two contracts it won on April 21 and July 10.
The DOE also sold 4 million barrels to Unipec last fall during a congressionally mandated sale.
Sales to Unipec appear to fall in the lower price range among the successful buyers, a review of DOE contracts by The Epoch Times shows. For the 2021 contract, Unipec paid about $63 for each barrel, about $7 lower than the trading price at the time, and more than $2 short of the highest price from other buyers in the sale.
The April and July purchases cost Unipec $103.30 and $119.50 per barrel, respectively. The highest prices offered, by comparison, were $111.25 and $125.10.
Unprecedented Drawdown
The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is the world’s largest supply of emergency crude oil, with four storage sites in Texas and Louisiana designed to alleviate significant oil supply shortages in times of major geopolitical events or natural disasters.
The amount of oil in the SPR has seen a steep decline over the past year, more notably since Biden, blaming Russia’s Ukraine war for the “price hike at the pump,” in March ordered a withdrawal at a rate of 1 million barrels per day for six months to curb gas prices. The planned sale of about 180 million barrels marked the biggest drawdown in the reserve’s more-than-four-decade history and is set to cut the U.S. backup oil supply by about a third.
A maze of crude oil pipes and valves is pictured during a tour by the Department of Energy at the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in Freeport, Texas, on June 9, 2016. (Richard Carson/Reuters)
The inventory stood at 474.5 million barrels as of July 22, marking a 34 percent drop from its peak of 726.6 million, and some 90 million lower than the level in late March.
The DOE on May 5 announced a “long-term buyback plan” to repurchase 60 million barrels in fall through “a competitive, fixed-price bid process.” The delivery date, the DOE said, will take place “in future years when prices are anticipated to be significantly lower,” likely after fiscal year 2023. More buybacks would follow after this first tranche of purchases, it added.
But releasing oil reserves at this magnitude carries risks, according to Abhi Rajendran and Robert Johnston, two research scholars on global energy policy at Columbia University. For one, there’s no guarantee that oil prices will fall when the government moves to refill the stock. Further, the diminution of oil supply may cause the market to price in a greater premium for wars and other supply shocks, resulting in higher prices for longer, they said in a Q&A on April 1.
Scrutiny
On Capitol Hill, Republican lawmakers have been watching the oil sales with growing alarm. A total of 206 House Republicans voted on July 20 in support of a legislative amendment aimed at preventing the Biden administration from exporting petroleum to entities with Chinese Communist Party ties.
“It does not make sense that we are using our already depleted energy supplies to help China build up their own strategic reserves,” Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.) said in a speech rallying support for the proposal.
China is the world’s largest importer of oil. As the West turns away from Russian oil due to the Ukraine war, China has been quietly snapping up Russian resources at steep discounts. From March through June, it spent more than $25 billion on Russian oil, gas, and coal, nearly doubling the amount from the year-earlier period, the latest customs data show. The sales volume propelled Russia to become China’s top oil supplier for two straight months from May, displacing Saudi Arabia.
The same day, 20 Republican members on the House Committee on Oversight and Reform wrote (pdf) to Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm requesting an immediate briefing and all documents related to the administration’s decision to sell U.S. oil reserves. They noted that Sinopec, the parent organization of Unipec, has been linked to the president’s son Hunter Biden, through the state-backed Chinese private equity firm BHR Partners, which became a stakeholder of Sinopec in 2014.
Hunter Biden attends a Presidential Medal of Freedom ceremony honoring 17 recipients, in the East Room of the White House in Washington, on July 7, 2022. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
Hunter served as a founding board member of BHR from 2013 through April 2020. His firm Skaneateles also held a 10 percent stake in BHR, which his lawyer said has been divested as of November 2021. On BHR’s 2021 annual report released in June, however, Skaneateles was still listed as a shareholder.
Hunter’s lawyer hasn’t responded to The Epoch Times’ questions regarding Skaneateles.
“As if Biden couldn’t have bundled this energy crisis anymore, this latest development of sending our strategic petroleum reserves to a Chinese oil firm connected to Hunter Biden reaches a new low,” Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.), who signed on the letter, told The Epoch Times.
“For one, this administration should have never tapped into these reserves. Second, these reserves should have never left U.S. shores, and third, the U.S. shouldn’t be doing deals with firms connected to the president’s son,” he said, adding that the Biden family’s “continued compromising actions require strict oversight from Congress.”
Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the ranking GOP member of the House Oversight Committee who spearheaded the letter, noted that previous inquiries by Republicans to the DOE about the oil sale had gone unanswered.
“Under no circumstances should the Department of Energy be making decisions which financially benefit Hunter Biden or any of the Biden family’s business partners,” he told The Epoch Times.
“If Administration officials continue to ignore meaningful oversight,” Republicans will “use the gavel to get answers in January,” Comer said, in reference to the expected swing to a Republican majority in the House in the November midterm elections, which would hand GOP lawmakers subpoena power as chairpersons of the chamber’s various committees.
“The American people need answers to determine if this is another attempt by the Biden family to peddle access to the highest levels of government to enrich themselves.”
Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), who also backed the Oversight Committee request, said the sale demonstrates the current administration’s “rank incompetence.”
“The Biden White House obviously didn’t see a problem with loading millions of barrels from our strategic reserves onto tankers bound for foreign countries, which likely explains why they don’t see a problem selling our emergency crude oil to a Chinese gas company with ties to Hunter Biden’s investment firm,” he told The Epoch Times.
White House Pushes Back
Ian Sams, a special assistant to Biden and spokesman for the White House Counsel’s Office, responded to the Republican claims on July 22, calling them “ridiculous and false.”
The DOE is “required by law to sell it ‘in a competitive auction to the highest bidder,’ regardless of whether that bidder is a foreign company,” he told Fox News, noting that the Trump administration, in 2017, also sold a half-million barrels of crude oil from the reserve to China’s state-run PetroChina International through the same “competitive bidding process.”
U.S. resident Joe Biden announces the release of 1 million barrels of oil per day for the next six months from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, as part of administration efforts to lower gasoline prices, during remarks at the White House on March 31, 2022. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
Sams also stressed that Biden “had no personal involvement in this process whatsoever.”
But Sams’s statement may not have presented the full picture, according to Daniel Turner, founder and executive director of Power the Future, a nonprofit group advocating for energy workers.
“The White House has pushed back as saying we have sold in the past to the communist Chinese. And that is true. We sold when our SPR was nearly full and oil was not at record highest and the world was at relative peace,” he told The Epoch Times. “Times change, and thanks to this president, they have not just changed but become worse, and our policies must change with them.”
DOE officials didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times about its buyback plan and Republican lawmakers’ concerns.
Amir Handjani in hot water over his role as top adviser to repressive Gulf monarch
A federal court has ordered a Quincy Institute fellow and Atlantic Council donor to turn over records relating to his potential role in an alleged hack-and-leak operation that targeted an American businessman.
Amir Handjani, a vocal media advocate for the Iran nuclear deal, has been ordered to produce documents and communications related to the alleged hacking victim, Farhad Azima, as well as documents related to entities involved in the attack, including Ras al-Khaimah, a kingdom in the United Arab Emirates. Handjani served as a top adviser to the kingdom’s authoritarian ruler, Sheikh Saud bin Saqr al Qasimi.
The order, issued on July 15 by a U.S. Southern District of New York judge, could bring to light new details about the alleged international spy-for-hire plot, which the lawsuit claims was carried out on behalf of Handjani’s boss.
The ruling comes three years after a lawyer for Ras al-Khaimah’s investment fund, Dechert’s Andrew Levander, threatened to sue the Washington Free Beacon for defamation over its coverage of Handjani’s role as an adviser to the kingdom’s ruler. A British judge in May found “shocking” malpractice at the firm as part of an unrelated case.
Handjani has been fighting requests to produce his records for over a year as part of a lawsuit brought against him by Azima, who is seeking the records for a counterclaim in an ongoing British civil case.
In court filings, Azima claims that private hackers working for Ras al-Khaimah in 2016 illegally obtained his emails and other records and leaked them to the public. He alleges that Handjani and the law firm Dechert, which served as advisers to Ras al-Khaimah, helped oversee the operation.
Handjani has denied any involvement in the hacking. But court records show he was included on email correspondence with other kingdom advisers about targeting Azima and discussions about the hacked documents.
A British private investigator hired by Ras al-Khaimah told the court earlier this year that Handjani personally “instructed” him to investigate a Jordanian businessman who in 2020 accused the kingdom of kidnapping and torture. The private eye said he later enlisted an Israeli hacker to handle the case.
Handjani is still listed as a nonresident fellow at the Quincy Institute, a non-interventionist think tank staffed by Iranian regime supporters and anti-Israel activists. The Atlantic Council said Handjani left the group’s board last year. His last disclosed contribution to the think tank was between $50,000 and $99,999 in 2020.
Update July 27, 2022 3:11 p.m.: A previous version of this article stated that Handjani remains a donor to the Atlantic Council. Handjani is no longer a donor to the organization.
But whatever you do, don’t boycott-divest-sanction Palestine [US Patriot]
The Palestinian government is complicit in “rampant, wide-spread, and systematic torture of Palestinian nationals” and Israelis, according to a landmark legal complaint filed this week with the International Criminal Court (ICC).
The International Legal Forum (ILF), an advocacy group representing more than 3,500 lawyers and civil society activists across the globe, is pressing the ICC to investigate the Palestinian Authority for war crimes in the first ever case of this nature presented to the court, according to a copy of the complaint obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
The organization is demanding that the ICC launch “an immediate investigation and prosecution of Palestinian Authority (PA) leadership for allegations of torture.” The documents outline instances of the Palestinian government engaging in “violent beatings, arbitrary detention, solitary confinement, cruel and inhumane prison conditions, harassment, forced confessions, and summary executions.”
The case comes just a week after resident Joe Biden made his first trip to the Middle East and announced another $316 million in U.S. taxpayer funding for the PA and organizations that work with it, bringing the total amount of American aid to around $1 billion. The Trump administration froze this money over concerns that the Palestinian government spends international aid dollars on terror groups and imprisoned terrorists.
“It is noteworthy that resident Biden has just returned from the Middle East, where he touted millions of dollars in increased funding to the Palestinians,” Arsen Ostrovsky, the ILF’s chairman and CEO, told the Free Beacon. “One has to ask the question, then, are U.S. tax payer dollars also going toward underwriting torture practices carried out by the Palestinian Authority?”
While the Palestinian government has long pressed the ICC and other U.N. organizations to investigate alleged Israeli human rights abuses, the ILF’s complaint marks one of the first times a pro-Israel organization has attempted to force international legal authorities to investigate the PA.
The complaint exposes how the Palestinian Authority and its security apparatus “systematically and intentionally” engage in wide-spread “violence and torture against Palestinian nationals in the West Bank, including against human rights activists, journalists, political opponents, dissidents, women, minors, members of LGBTQ community, social media critics, and purported ‘collaborators’ with Israel.”
These acts of torture, the group says in its legal filing, “routinely occur with the full knowledge of and under the express authority and/or directions of the PA.”
This includes targeting Palestinian human rights activists and those critical of the PA government.
Nizar Banat, a 43-year-old Palestinian reformist, in June 2021 was attacked in his home by the PA’s security services—one of several similar attacks on critics that the ILF says amount to a breach of international norms.
“Over 25 PA security services officers entered Banat’s home, subdued him with pepper spray, and then viciously assaulted him before his wife and children, including by beating him with iron bars and wooden batons,” according to the complaint. “The PA security services then dragged Mr. Banat from his home, stripped him of his clothes, and dragged him away into a waiting vehicle, where he subsequently died in their custody.”
The legal filing also accuses Hamas, the terrorist group that runs the Gaza Strip, of torture. This includes war crimes charges for Hamas’s repeated rocket attacks on Israeli civilians and cities.
Hamas is holding on to the bodies of murdered Israeli soldiers, which also constitutes a war crime, according to the ILF’s complaint.
“It is our contention that the above criteria [are] sufficiently met, so as to commence an immediate investigation against [PA president Mahmoud] Abbas and [PA prime minister Mohammed] Shtayyeh, for the crime of torture, pursuant to the Rome Statute,” the group writes in the filing.
Ohio Democrats attacked Republican Senate candidate J.D. Vance’s trip to Israel, where he pledged to be a strong advocate for the Jewish state.
Vance’s Wednesday address at a gathering in Tel Aviv was met with mockery from Vance’s Democratic opponent, Rep. Tim Ryan. Ryan’s communications director Izzi Levy falsely stated that Vance campaigned in Israel before holding a single event in Ohio. Michael Beyer, the communications director for the Ohio Democratic Party, said Vance would rather be in Israel than his home state.
Both comments mirror the anti-Semitic trope that American politicians are more loyal to Israel than to the United States, and highlight how the Jewish state’s security has transformed into a partisan issue. While Ryan previously said he supports Israel’s right to self-defense, he voted in 2021 against funding for the Iron Dome and supported the Obama administration’s Iran Deal.
In Israel, Vance pledged to be “as strong an advocate for the U.S.-Israel relationship as anyone.” He called the Iran Deal “a disaster” and applauded former president Donald Trump’s decision to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.
Brad Kastan, chairman of JewishColumbus’s Community Relations Council, said Democrats “should strongly encourage, not discourage, our leaders to visit the Jewish state.”
”Israel is our strongest and most important ally in the Middle East. All Americans and particularly the citizens of Ohio benefit from the strong strategic and economic ties, not to mention shared values, we enjoy with Israel,” Kastan said. “Ohio Democrats, or anyone who appreciates the role our U.S. senators must play in foreign policy, should strongly encourage, not discourage, our leaders to visit the Jewish state.”
Ryan himself visited the Jewish state in 2016 during his House reelection campaign. It is unclear whether Ryan at the time would rather be overseas than in Ohio.
The attacks from Ryan’s campaign and allies come as the race between the longtime House member and Vance heats up. Vance won May’s Republican primary on the back of an endorsement by former president Donald Trump and is viewed as the favorite to win in November given the current political climate.
The Washington Poststernly condemned President Joe Biden for his “shameful” greeting of Saudi Arabian royalty, but has remained mum on its owner’s extensive business dealings with the Saudis.
The paper—which is owned by Amazon executive chairman Jeff Bezos—led the charge following video of Biden fist-bumping the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. The Post’s publisher, Fred Ryan, wrote that Biden’s trip “erodes” the “moral authority” of the United States. In his piece—which is topped with an artistic rendering of Biden shaking a blood-covered hand—Ryan criticizes the president for “turning a blind eye” to the Saudi regime’s alleged murder of Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi. Ryan said Biden was sending the “message that the United States is willing to look the other way when its commercial interests are at stake.”
Just four months before Biden’s trip, however, it was Amazon traveling to the oil kingdom for commercial interests. A senior Amazon executive was photographed shaking hands with high-ranking Saudi officials to finalize an economic partnership between the multinational conglomerate and the Islamic theocracy. The Post did not cover Amazon’s Saudi agreement, according to a review of the paper’s archive.
Since Bezos’s 2013 purchase of the Post, experts have speculated that his substantial Amazon holdings may influence the paper’s coverage. A 2018 piece in HuffPostfeatured anonymous statements from several Washington Post employees who said they felt uncomfortable criticizing Amazon given Bezos’s ownership of the paper.
“I tend to do less critical thinking about Amazon than I do, say, about Facebook or Google or Walmart, and the reason is fairly obvious: because I am thankful for the opportunity I have, which wouldn’t exist without Jess [sic] Bezos,” one employee said. “Conflicts of interest are there no matter how well we do our jobs,” another said.
Bezos has a $116 billion stake in Amazon, which has taken major steps to expand its footprint in Saudi Arabia in recent years. During the March 19, 2022, meeting between Amazon officials and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Investment, the company stressed its “commitment to the Kingdom.”
“This partnership underscores our commitment to the Kingdom and our customers in it, and will contribute to accelerating the growth of the e-commerce sector, as well as enabling businesses to take advantage of the great growth opportunities that the Kingdom offers,” said Ronaldo Mouchawar, an Amazon vice president for the Middle East region.
The major deal followed several steps taken last year by Amazon to establish a foothold in Saudi Arabia. In January 2021, Amazon extended its trademark Prime delivery service to Saudi Arabia. Two months later, Amazon announced plans to add 11 new buildings and hire 1,500 new workers in Saudi Arabia. The company also partnered last month with Saudi start-ups to help improve the country’s logistics infrastructure.
None of the developments were covered by the Post, which appears to have last covered Amazon’s business dealings in Saudi Arabia in October 2019, when the company decided to cease operations in the country following Khashoggi’s murder.
Writers at the Washington, D.C.-based liberal news outlet have not shied away from criticizing others for involving themselves with the Saudis. The Post denounced entertainment companies such as Disney for allowing their shares to be purchased by the Saudi government, criticized influencers for attending a Saudi-sponsored music festival, and attacked performers like Mariah Carey for doing shows in the country.
The paper did not respond to a request for comment on its coverage of Amazon, which also did not respond to request for comment.
The Ron Paul Institute featured at its conference last month a former United Nations weapons inspector who spent time in jail on child sex charges.
During the June 4 conference, Scott Ritter, a longtime critic of U.S. foreign policy, blasted the Biden administration’s support for Ukraine against Russia’s military invasion in a speech titled “Two-Front War: Biden’s Mouth is Writing Checks the U.S. Military Can’t Cash.”
The former U.N. weapons inspector, who has been arrested at least twice for attempting to solicit underage girls, was convicted of and served jail time for exposing himself online in 2009 to a police officer posing as a 15-year-old girl. A similar 2001 charge was reportedly dropped after he participated in a pre-trial probation program.
The isolationist think tank’s decision to host a speech by Ritter comes after another non-interventionist group, the Quincy Institute, removed an article written by Ritter from its website following an outcry from social media posters who noted that he was a convicted sex offender.
The Ron Paul Institute, which has been promoting Ritter’s speech on its website and social media, did not respond to a request for comment about its choice to feature a convicted child predator to tee off against the bipartisan effort to aid the embattled Ukrainian government.
It’s not the first time the institute and its namesake founder, former congressman Ron Paul, have partnered with controversial figures as part of a larger effort to promote isolationist policies that help America’s foreign adversaries.
Several of the group’s founding leaders have long-held ties to pro-Kremlin organizations, including a public relations shop created to shore up Vladimir Putin’s image. Paul also claimed the U.S. government had foreknowledge about the Sept. 11 attacks and intentionally let Osama bin Laden remain at large for years to justify foreign wars.
The former congressman also spoke at a conference hosted by a Holocaust denier whose group accused “Zionist billionaires” of “financially raping” the Russian people.
Ritter, a contributor to the Kremlin-funded Russia Today, last year wrote an article for the Quincy Institute that downplayed Russian cyber attacks. The Quincy Institute removed the article after Twitter users raised concerns about Ritter’s sex offender record.
Oil prices rose on July 18 as the U.S. dollar softened and after resident Joe Biden wrapped up his trip to Saudi Arabia, failing to secure a pledge from the Middle Eastern country to boost crude output.
Brent crude futures for September settlement rose $4.53, or about 4.5 percent, to $105.70 a barrel as of 4 p.m. EDT on July 18, after a 2.1 percent gain on July 15.
U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures for August delivery gained $4.53, or about 4.7 percent, to $102.10 a barrel, after climbing 1.9 percent in the previous session.
Last week, both Brent and WTI posted their biggest weekly drops in about a month as recession fears dented market sentiment.
Yet, oil supplies remained tight and the U.S. dollar has eased off recent highs, with both factors offering support to crude prices.
The greenback weakened on July 18 after hitting multi-decade highs against a basket of currency peers last week. The DXY dollar index touched nearly 109 on July 14, before slipping to 107.45 by 4 p.m. EDT on July 18.
A weaker dollar tends to support oil prices and other dollar-denominated commodities as it makes them a more attractive buy for holders of other currencies.
Some analysts said that the July 19 oil rally is unlikely to last, with high inflation maintaining pressure on central banks to keep tightening even in the face of growing signals of an economic downturn.
“Bear market bounce” is how Keith McCullough, CEO of investment research firm Hedgeye, described the moves in crude, in a post on Twitter.
Buoyed by a weaker greenback, other commodities rose, including wheat and copper. A key industrial input, copper is seen by many analysts as a barometer of a recession.
“Another good example of a crashing market that’s bouncing this morning,” McCullough said of the action in the price of copper, which rose over 3 percent on Monday morning after tumbling 8.2 percent last week.
Wheat futures on the Chicago exchange rose 1.6 percent on July 18, recovering from their lowest in around five months.
Relief rallies are common in bear markets, experts say.
Biden in Saudi Arabia
The July 18 moves in the price of oil and other commodities come on the heels of Biden’s visit to Saudi Arabia, which wrapped up without a pledge for the Kingdom to boost oil supply. Biden has called on Saudi Arabia and other Gulf oil producers to ramp up oil production in a bid to cool high gasoline prices and, more broadly, inflation.
Inflation in the United States, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, accelerated in June to a fresh 40-year high of 9.1 percent.
Despite the rally in a number of commodities, they’ve trended downward in recent weeks, suggesting inflationary pressures may be easing.
Gasoline prices have dropped over the past several weeks, with GasBuddy analyst Patrick De Haan saying in a July 17 statement that the most common gas price in the United States was $3.99 per gallon. The median gas price stood at $4.39 a gallon nationwide, while the top 10 percent most expensive locations averaged $5.71, De Haan added.
bell&email=walkerboh2112%40msn.com
Despite no pledge from Saudi Arabia to boost output, Biden administration officials held out some hope for a little more supply-side relief.
Amos Hochstein, a senior State Department adviser for energy security, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on July 17 that, following Biden’s trip, several Gulf oil producers would be taking “a few more steps” to boost output, though he did not say which countries and by how much.
But analysts at ING said in a note that the Biden administration’s view that producers in the Middle East would boost output seems rosy and “comments from Saudi Arabia were less optimistic.”
“The Saudis have said that any changes in output would be done within the broader OPEC+ framework, and that the group would monitor the market and respond if needed,” they wrote, adding that, with the exception of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, there’s “little in the way of spare capacity.”
Markets will be watching the Aug. 3 OPEC+ meeting closely for supply signals as the cartel’s current output pact expires in September.
The Biden administration is poised to give Iran “more than a hundred billion dollars” in cash windfalls if it signs a new nuclear deal, according to former ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, who also hinted to a group of pro-Israel activists on Monday that she will run for president in 2024.
With negotiations over a revamped nuclear deal ongoing, Haley warned an audience of pro-Israel activists that the Biden administration is preparing to unload billions of dollars to Tehran—money that “will fund terrorist attacks on Israel and America.”
Biden has “made clear that he’ll do almost anything to get the ayatollahs to sign on the dotted line,” Haley said in a speech before the Christians United for Israel organization during its annual gathering in Washington, D.C. “And do you know who Biden allowed our lead negotiator on the Iran deal to be? Russia.” An advanced transcript of her remarks was obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
Haley said that with Moscow’s help, the Biden administration is laying the groundwork for Iran to obtain “missiles and nukes to destroy both Israel and America.”
Haley’s speech, which focused heavily on Israel and the threats posed by both Iran and Russia, comes amid speculation that she will throw her hat into the ring for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination—rumors that she appeared to confirm in her speech. It also laid the groundwork for a foreign policy approach that would refocus America on countering Iran and its growing alliance with Russia.
“Anything Joe Biden signs [with Iran] will all but guarantee that Iran gets the bomb. No deal is better than a bad deal,” she said. “And if this president signs any sort of deal, I’ll make you a promise. … The next president will shred it—on her first day in office.”
In addition to advocating for increased U.S. military aid to Israel to help it confront Iran, Haley discussed the war in Ukraine and blamed the Biden administration’s failures in Afghanistan for fueling Russian president Vladimir Putin’s invasion.
“If America hadn’t failed so miserably in Afghanistan, there never would have been a war in Ukraine,” she said. “Putin saw the strongest country in history leave Bagram Air Force Base in the middle of the night—without even telling our allies who stood shoulder to shoulder with us for decades.”
The bungled U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is why “Putin made his move. It’s the price we pay for American weakness. And now countless Ukrainians are paying for our mistake with their lives,” Haley said.
Other world dictators learned a similar lesson when the United States ran out of Afghanistan, according to Haley.
“Putin wasn’t the only one who saw a green light in Afghanistan. So did Kim Jong Un in North Korea. So did Xi Jinping in Communist China,” she said. “And last but not least, our surrender in Afghanistan was the gift that keeps on giving for Iran. When Kabul fell, the ayatollahs celebrated.”
Haley also criticized Biden’s recent trip to the Middle East, including Israel, where he announced a $300 million cash infusion to the Palestinian government. The Free Beacon exclusively reported last week that a large portion of this cash is funding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, known as UNRWA, which has a history of inciting violence against Jews.
“The money has no conditions, no strings, nothing. The Palestinians can keep stoking hatred of Israel,” Haley said of the renewed funding. “They can keep paying the families of terrorists, which encourages more suicide bombings. Basically, the Palestinians can use America’s money to attack America’s ally. It’s a disgrace.”
The financial services firm facing accusations that it promotes Israel boycotts relies on research produced by “a leader” in the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS) and other anti-Israel sources, according to an analyst tracking the situation.
The research arm of Morningstar Inc., a firm that advises investors, relies on research produced by a pro-BDS organization called Who Profits, which is known to push Israel boycotts, according to Richard Goldberg, a former U.S. national security official and Middle East expert who recently published an independent analysis on the matter for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank.
Morningstar is already fighting charges that its research arm, Sustainalytics, downgrades companies that help Israel combat terrorism, thereby bolstering the BDS movement’s drive to economically damage the Jewish state. Sustainalytics employees who were interviewed as part of an investigation into anti-Israel bias at the firm indicated they have a close relationship with and rely on research produced by Who Profits, which has been cited by a watchdog organization as one of the leading pro-BDS nonprofit groups. The findings related to Who Profits raise new questions about how deeply Sustainalytics relies on organizations with direct ties to the BDS movement.
“Morningstar’s ratings system uniquely relies on a group that’s at the forefront of the BDS movement to blacklist Israel-connected companies,” said Goldberg.
Who Profits “maintains a public database of businesses that are often targeted in international BDS campaigns,” according to NGO Monitor, a watchdog group that monitors pro-BDS outfits. The reliance on Who Profits and other anti-Israel groups, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, is raising questions about Morningstar’s commitment to rooting out anti-Israel bias in its ratings products, Goldberg said.
Who Profits “is a leader in BDS efforts against Israeli and foreign companies,” according to NGO Monitor, and was founded “in response to the Palestinian call for boycott[s]” against Israel. The organization is dedicated to “exposing the commercial involvement of Israeli and international corporations in the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestinian and Syrian lands,” according to information published on its own website.
Goldberg analyzed evidence presented in a 134-page review of Morningstar’s methods conducted by the law firm White & Case that cleared Morningstar of any wrongdoing.
Sustainalytics employees interviewed as part of the White & Case report indicated that Who Profits “was used primarily for background information, and was consistently balanced against other sources.” Others said the relationship is deeper, with Sustainalytics “research analysts often rely[ing] upon Who Profits for what they view as unique, boots on-the-ground research regarding corporate involvement in the region, in part because Who Profits is one of the few organizations that actually operates on the ground in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict areas.”
The White & Case report also found that “communications between Sustainalytics employees and representatives of Who Profits suggest that the relationship between the entities is close, relative to Sustainalytics’ relationships with other organizations.”
Sustainalytics ratings products also rely on information produced by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, which have faced accusations of anti-Israel bias and of unfairly labeling Israel as an apartheid state.
The Washington Free Beaconpreviously reported on concerns that Sustainalytics may place a company on its investment “watchlist” for the “supply of arms” to Israel or other nations involved in conflicts. By downgrading companies that supply the Israel Defense Forces, for instance, Sustainalytics could be relying on metrics that negatively impact Israel more than others.
Gerald Steinberg, NGO Monitor’s founder, said the BDS movement is increasingly trying to manipulate firms that conduct corporate responsibility ratings, known in the industry as CSR ratings.
“As the NGOs leading the BDS movement increasingly try to manipulate CSR firms into advancing their agenda, these firms must be vigilant in vetting these sources,” Steinberg said. “Corporate due diligence is vital to ensure that ratings under the facade of human rights are not based on false claims by ideological activists and organizations.”
A Morningstar spokesman would not address questions related to Sustainalytics’s reliance on Who Profits, but said the company does not in any way endorse or support the BDS movement. Morningstar also said in recent months that it is discontinuing certain services that were found to unfairly target Israel and adjusting others to remove instances of anti-Israel bias.
As Morningstar attempts to distance itself from the BDS movement, a group of leading Jewish organizations raised concerns the reforms do not go far enough. The Jewish Federations of North America, an umbrella organization that represents top Jewish groups across the country, says Sustainalytics’s Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) ratings unfairly target Israel. ESG ratings examine a company based on its social values and tend to unfairly target Israel as a result of its conflict with the Palestinians.
The White & Case report “makes clear that built-in bias against Israel infects Sustainalytics’ methodology and sources, and thus, its other ESG ratings products,” the Jewish group wrote in a letter sent to Morningstar’s top executives. “This bias is not only unfair and harmful to Israeli companies and those doing business in and with Israel, but such bias also threatens to tarnish the ESG ratings framework itself.”
“Morningstar should take the opportunity to cleanse its products of all anti-Israel bias and set an example of fairness and reliability for all companies providing ESG ratings, which represent one-third of dollars managed globally,” the organization said, echoing concerns from others in the pro-Israel advocacy world.
FDD’s Goldberg maintains that the biased metrics employed by Sustainalytics could amount to support for the BDS movement and trigger state and federal anti-BDS laws.
“We now have a mountain of evidence that Morningstar’s ESG subsidiary is engaged in a boycott of Israel through its sources and methods,” Goldberg said. “It’s time for states and Congress to intervene.”
Resident Joe Biden early Sunday disputed a claim that he didn’t accuse Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of orchestrating the killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in private meetings.
After arriving home in Washington, D.C. on Sunday, Biden was asked by a reporter about a comment from the Saudi foreign minister, Adel al-Jubeir.
“The Saudi foreign minister said he didn’t hear you accuse the crown prince of Khashoggi’s murder. Is he telling the truth?” the reporter asked the president.
“No,” Biden said quickly. “Why don’t you talk about something that matters?” the president then told journalists, as another one asked him about bumping fists with the Saudi crown prince, the de facto leader of the Muslim kingdom, who is sometimes referred to as “MBS.”
Biden added, “I’m happy to talk about something that matters.”
Days before that, at a news conference, Biden claimed that he spoke about the death of Khashoggi several years ago. After his death in 2018, a number of mainstream media outlets often featured the death as front-page news, and those outlets also attempted to tie his killing to the Trump administration. Federal agencies have suspected the Saudi government was involved in his death.
“With respect to the murder of Khashoggi, I raised it at the top of the meeting, making it clear what I thought of it at the time and what I think about it now,” Biden said during a press conference on July 15. “He [Crown Prince Salman] basically said that he was not personally responsible for it. I indicated that he was, and he said he was not personally responsible for it and he took action against those who were responsible,” Biden also said.
What the Minister Said
But al-Jubeir, the foreign minister, told Fox News that Biden and MBS never addressed Khashoggi’s death.
President Joe Biden (center L) and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (C) arrive for the family photo during the “GCC+3” (Gulf Cooperation Council) meeting at a hotel in Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coastal city of Jeddah on July 16, 2022. (Mandel Ngan/Pool Photo via AP)
“I didn’t hear that particular phrase,” al-Jubeir remarked. “The president mentioned that the U.S. is committed to human rights because since the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution and he also made the point that American presidents—this is part of the agenda of every American president.”
Biden’s apparent lack of public criticism about the Saudi government and the fist bump was panned by legacy media, including The Washington Post, which issued a rare critical statement about the president.
Washington Post publisher Fred Ryan alleged that the Biden–MSB fist bump “projected a level of intimacy” far worse than a handshake. “The first bump between resident Biden and Mohammed bin Salman was worse than a handshake—it was shameful,” Ryan continued.
The White House signaled that Biden was in Saudi Arabia in a bid to push the Saudi government into producing more oil in order to offset exceptionally high gas prices. According to data from AAA, although the price for a gallon has dropped in recent weeks, it currently stands at $4.53 on average as of Sunday. A year ago, the price was $3.16 per gallon, the data show.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on July 13 said he’d favor former President Donald Trump over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis if both run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.
“I like Ron DeSantis, but I know what I’m getting with Trump. The good and the bad and everything in between,” Graham said on Fox News.
“Trump sounds pretty good to me right now,” he added.
No candidates have formally announced bids for the next presidential race but Trump, 76, has repeatedly hinted he will be running for a third time, but will not make an announcement until after the upcoming midterm elections.
Trump won the 2016 election and lost the 2020 election. In both races, he earned the Republican nomination.
DeSantis, 43, a former U.S. congressman who is up for reelection this year, has said he’s focused on Florida, but some Republicans hope he’ll launch a presidential campaign.
Trump supporters like Graham point to his accomplishments during his one term, including securing deals in the Middle East, cutting down on illegal immigration, and getting a slew of originalist judges on federal courts.
Many DeSantis supporters say Trump’s actions leading up to, on, and after Jan. 6 showed he shouldn’t be president again. Some take issue with Trump’s continued promotion of COVID-19 vaccines and other stances. A number still support Trump but would prefer DeSantis over him.
Graham said little about DeSantis while comparing Trump to resident Joe Biden, 79, who took office in January 2021 and who has said he will run for a second term despite questions about his fitness.
Graham knocked Biden for the surge in illegal immigration that has occurred during his administration, joking that California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a rumored Democrat presidential candidate, “may be the only guy” Biden “is willing to deport.”
“Compare Biden to Trump when it comes to the mid-East. Biden’s begging the Iranians to get back in a deal that’s terrible for the Israelis and the Arabs. Biden is going to go to East Jerusalem to undercut the Trump policy of making Jerusalem the undivided capital of Israel. I’ve never seen a president tour the mid-East in a more weakened condition than resident Biden, and I say that with sadness,” Graham said. “Trump looks pretty damn good to me when you look at the issues we’re facing as a nation and as a world.”
Biden, meanwhile, while in Israel, was asked about potentially facing Trump again in 2024.
“I’m not predicting it, but I would not be disappointed,” he told Israeli broadcaster N12.
