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First Female Astronaut Joins UAE Space Program

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Noura Al-Matroushi. Source: MBR Space Centre via Twitter

(Israel Hayom) — The United Arab Emirates is set to train its first female astronaut, UAE Prime Minister and Vice President Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum announced on Saturday.

Noura Al-Matroushi is to join fellow recruit Mohammed Al-Mulla at the UAE’s Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre program, Al Maktoum said on Twitter, noting that the two would train with NASA.

Al-Matroushi tweeted: “The nation gave me unforgettable moments today. I aim to work hard to script historical moments and achievements that will be etched forever in the memory of our people. I thank our wise leadership and the team of the UAE Astronaut Program. Preparations and work begin now.”

According to a video posted by the space center, Al-Matroushi earned her bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering at the United Arab Emirates University and currently serves as an engineer at the country’s National Petroleum Construction Company.

Meanwhile, German state-owned international news broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported that the UAE’s first mission to Mars was set to become the fifth to reach the planet and enter its orbit on Tuesday. According to the report, the mission would also be the first by an Arab state.

Al Maktoum said that even if the mission failed to enter the red planet’s orbit, “We’ve already made history. This is the farthest point in the universe to be reached by Arabs throughout their history. … Our goal is to give hope to all Arabs that we are capable of competing with the rest of the world.”

UAE Space Agency head and Advanced Sciences Minister Sarah Al-Amiri told DW, “Our science team is 80 percent women. They are there based on merit and based on what they contribute towards the design and development of the mission.

“I myself have not faced any adversity throughout my career, be it working at the space center from almost 12 years ago, all the way to becoming a minister within the Cabinet.

Chinese ‘militia vessels’ menace Philippines coast, says Manila

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Chinese vessels are moored at Whitsun Reef, South China Sea on March 27, 2021. (National Task Force-West Philippine Sea via AP)

By Associated Press

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Saturday discussed with his Philippine counterpart China’s recent positioning of “militia vessels” near the Philippines in the South China Sea.

Austin spoke by phone with Philippine Secretary of National Defense Delfin Lorenzana while Austin was flying from Washington to Israel to begin an international trip.

Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said Austin and Lorenzana discussed the situation in the South China Sea and the recent massing of Chinese vessels at Whitsun Reef, which has drawn criticism from Manila.

China has said its vessels are there for fishing.

In their phone call, Austin proposed to Lorenzana several measures to deepen defense cooperation, including by “enhancing situational awareness of threats in the South China Sea,” Kirby said. He did not elaborate.

Kirby said earlier this week that the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt and its strike group, as well as the amphibious ship USS Makin Island, are operating in the South China Sea.

The U.S. has no military forces based permanently in the Philippines but sometimes rotates forces to the country under the U.S.-Philippines Visiting Forces Agreement.

The recent gathering of Chinese vessels near the Philippines is among moves the United States has criticized as efforts by Beijing to intimidate smaller nations in the region.

Press Corps was doing ‘pretty bad job,’ says online gamer who infiltrated White House briefings

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White House press secretary Jen Psaki (AP/Andrew Harnik)
By Josh Plank, World Israel News

An online gamer known as Kacey Montagu persuaded members of the White House press corps to relay her surprisingly good questions to Press Secretary Jen Psaki at least four times in recent weeks, Politico reported Friday.

Montagu claimed to be a reporter for White House News, a fictional news outlet and asked reporters to pass along her questions because she couldn’t be at press briefings due to Covid restrictions.

“I love journalism, and I think the Press Corps is doing a pretty bad job at the moment, so I decided I would ensure some transparency and ask some questions me and some friends wanted the answer to,” Montagu told Politico in an email.

Montagu’s online acquaintances said that they believe her White House moonlighting began as something to boast about in the nUSA group of the online gaming platform ROBLOX, where users play the roles of government officials and jokingly call themselves “Legos.”

Montagu had even set up two political news accounts on Twitter, @WHschedule and @WHpoolreport, which were followed by several actual White House correspondents, Jill Biden’s press secretary, and a senior advisor for Vice President Kamala Harris.

 

She successfully asked questions through reporters at The Plain Dealer and CQ Roll Call, among others, asking about Covid-19 travel bans, upcoming ambassadorships, and Biden’s reaction to Microsoft being hacked.

“I often have the unique opportunity of asking Press Sec. Jen Psaki questions at the White House Press Briefing – if you have questions you want me to ask let me know,” Montagu tweeted on March 4.

Everything seemed to be going smoothly until Thursday when Montagu asked a question that was perhaps a bit too intriguing, prompting Mediaite to investigate its source.

A reporter from Washington Blade told Psaki that he had a question from “one of my colleagues who can’t be here because of Covid restrictions.”

“How involved is former President Obama and First Lady Obama in the Biden-Harris administration?” the reporter asked.

Psaki said that Biden and Obama “remain close friends, and they talk regularly about a range of issues, from policy issues, to bouncing ideas off of each other, to their families. So they are in close touch, but we just don’t read out those specific calls; we keep them private.”

CBS News correspondent followed up later in the press conference, asking what Psaki meant by “regularly.”

“I’m not going to define it more, other than to say that they engage not just about fre- — important moments in our country, but also about their own families. They have a connection on a personal level, so they discuss a range of issues when they connect,” Psaki said.

Mediate reported on Thursday that the exchange was “started by fictional reporter made of Lego.”

Montagu then issued a tongue-in-cheek statement on Twitter calling the report “very rude.”

No accident: Israel behind Iran nuclear incident, intel sources say

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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu clinks glasses with Mossad Director Yossi Cohen (GPO)
By David Isaac, World Israel News

Israel was behind the incident at the Natanz nuclear facility in Iran on Sunday, unnamed intelligence sources in the country say.

The cyberattack on Iran’s Natanz facility caused as-yet-unknown damage. It came a day after Iran inaugurated new IR-9 uranium enrichment centrifuges at the site. Those centrifuges separate uranium isotopes 50 times faster than Iran’s current centrifuges.

Israeli intelligence sources also said Sunday that the damage to Natanz is significant and affected more than the IR-9s.

The head of Iran’s nuclear agency dubbed it a “terrorist act” and said Iran reserves the right to respond against those responsible. He did not name Israel, however.

Neither has Israel officially taken responsibility. However, pundits say there have been hints by Israeli officials.

 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a pre-Independence Day event on Sunday with defense officials, raised his glass and said, “The fight against Iran and its metastases is a huge task, the situation that exists today does not mean that it will exist tomorrow.”

Similarly, IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi may have been referring obliquely to the Natanz incident when he said on Sunday at another event: “The Israel Defense Forces’ actions throughout the Middle East are not hidden from our enemies’ eyes. They are watching us, seeing our capabilities and carefully considering their next steps.”

Israel has been linked to previous cyberattacks on Iran’s nuclear weapons program, most famously the 2011 Stuxnet computer worm, which also targeted the Natanz facility. The worm is widely believed to have been developed jointly by Israel and the U.S.

Israel’s Security Cabinet will meet next Sunday for the first time in months to discuss the Iranian issue.

Defense Minister Benny Ganz referred to Iran on Sunday while meeting with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who was in the country on his first official visit.

Gantz said, “The regime in Tehran today poses a strategic threat to world security, the Middle East and the State of Israel. We will continue to work with our American partners to ensure that any agreement with Iran safeguards the vital interests of the world and the United States, and prevents nuclear arms in the region.”

Ted Cruz blasts John Boehner for ‘drunken, bloviated scorn’ after former House Speaker called him a ‘political terrorist’

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Twitter

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) exchanged a war of words with former House Speaker John Boehner. Cruz attacked the fellow Republican after a teaser video clip from an upcoming “CBS Sunday Morning” interview featured Boehner calling Cruz a “jerk” and a “political terrorist.”

While out promoting his new book “On the House: A Washington Memoir” that is set for release on Tuesday, Boehner lambasted Trump allies Cruz and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) by calling them “political terrorists.” Boehner hammered Jordan, criticizing the fellow Ohioan, “I just never saw a guy who spent more time tearing things apart and never building anything, never putting anything together.”

In the interview with CBS News journalist John Dickerson, Boehner called Cruz the “ultimate false prophet,” according to the Daily Caller.

“I don’t beat anybody up, it’s not really my style, except for that jerk,” Boehner said of Cruz. “Perfect symbol, you know, of getting elected, making a lot of noise, draw a lot of attention to yourself, raise a lot of money, which means you’re gonna go make more noise, raise more money.”

Cruz fired back at Boehner on Twitter.

“The Swamp is unhappy,” Cruz tweeted. “I wear with pride his drunken, bloviated scorn.”

“Please don’t cry,” Cruz added, referring to several occasions when Boehner got emotional in public.

While recording the audiobook of his upcoming memoir, Boehner reportedly went off script and cursed at Cruz. Boehner allegedly told Cruz to “go f*** yourself.”

Cruz responded to the report during his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February.

“You know yesterday, John Boehner made some news,” Cruz said at CPAC. “He suggested that I do something that was anatomically impossible. To which my response was, who’s John Boehner?”

Boehner tweeted, “Poured myself a glass of something nice to read my audiobook. You can blame the wine for the expletives.”

 

Paul Sacca- The Blaze

BLM Goes Hollywood

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Daniel Greenfield

A few years ago, CAA announced that it had signed on to represent Patrisse Cullors. The powerful Hollywood talent agency is considered the biggest firm of its kind and doesn’t usually represent activists. But the Black Lives Matter co-founder isn’t a typical activist either.

By the time that Cullors was being represented by the talent agency, the self-proclaimed “trained Marxist” was going from award dinners to studio events. Most speaking fees aren’t made public, but last year, Cullors, along with the other two co-founders of the racist BLM hate group, charged the University of Florida $10,000 each to address students online.

When she isn’t charging thousands to video chat, Cullors curated ComplexCon, a BLM global art show, and worked on an ad campaign for Adidas with Pharell Williams, claims to be a “dancer, choreographer, designer, stylist, producer, and director.”

Cullors got to consult for Good Trouble, a lefty Disney TV series, about two girls, one white and one Latino, who move to Los Angeles and fight racial injustice. Another way of saying that is she gave a show run by a white lady who used to act on The Bold and the Beautiful street cred.

“You only have to spend about five minutes with Patrisse to be blown away by her as an activist, artist, intellectual and force of life energy, love, joy and humanity,” said Good Trouble showrunner Joanna Johnson raved. “She has such a wealth of knowledge and life experience. I’m always looking for that in writers because truth is not only stranger but more nuanced and rich than fiction can ever be.”

Truth is indeed stranger than fiction. Just ask the Black Lives Matter founder who went from a year in which the hate group’s race rioters burned buildings and terrorized communities to buying a $1.4 million home in the mostly white Topanga Canyon through a corporate entity.

Like every proper trained Marxist should. As an amateur Marxist, Cullors had to settle for the San Fernando Valley, but as a fully trained Marxist she got “vaulted ceilings clad in knotty pine” and “whitewashed hearth fireplaces”.

Whiteness and whitewashing isn’t all bad. Especially when white studios are paying for it.

The Topanga Canyon home has “soaring ceilings”, “skylights”, and is ideal for “quietly contemplating cross-canyon vistas framed by mature trees” or the next town your hate group is going to burn. There’s even an art studio and politically incorrect “maids quarters”.

The house is down the road from one of the homes involved in the Manson murders which seems only appropriate since Manson wanted to start a race war.

And Black Lives Matter is carrying on Manson’s work.

This was reportedly Cullors’ fourth home purchase after buying a ranch on three acres in Atlanta with a private airplane hangar and shopping around for a luxury home in the Bahamas.

Last year, Cullors signed a deal with Warner Brothers to “develop scripted dramas and comedies, docuseries and animated programming for children, young adults and families”.

Cullors also has her own anti-police organization, Dignity and Power Now, run by Lamia Al-Sadek, the former county director of Islamic Relief Worldwide, and two white people, near USC. And she also has her own consulting firm with her lover, Janaya, And Patrisse Consulting.

It’s unclear if either of these were the entities that Cullors used to buy her $1.4 million home, or if she has other organizations in her portfolio that have yet to be exposed and revealed.

While Cullors went with CAA, Alicia Garza, the second BLM co-founder, went with ICM, and her book, Purpose Of Power, came out last year. Garza is also due to appear in the HBO adaptation of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ racist rant, Between The World and Me.

ICM’s previous coup was boasting about the role of “client Josh Hartnett” in the HBO “documentary” Exterminate All the Brutes which “shifts perspectives by highlighting America’s founding as inherently genocidal”. It’s no wonder that the entire roster of BLM’s founders have found a comfortable home in an entertainment industry that hates America as much as they do.

Opal Tometi, the third BLM co-founder, got on board with WME, the rival CAA Hollywood talent agency, which Hollywood Reporter noted had signed stars like,“Elton John, Eva Longoria, Shakira, Tessa Thompson, Sarah Cooper, and Opal Tometi.”

You can read about all this in Opal’s official press releases, in between telling a newspaper, “I do this because we deserve to live.”

And deserve to live very well too.

WME used Opal Tometi to launch its Social Justice Now Film Festival through Film Life Foundation, a non-profit founded by Opal and Marvel star, Michael B. Jordan. Sponsored by Sony, Amazon, Heineken, J.P. Morgan, and other great outposts of social justice, the festival’s message is “translate art into change” and features movies like, “Who Will Survive America”.

It’s hard surviving America while being sponsored by a Japanese electronics firm, a Dutch beer conglomerate, and a banking firm whose predecessors had used slaves as collateral.

Opal also has her own production company, Blue Opal Productions.

Unlike Cullors and Garza, both of whom came out of Los Angeles, Opal came from Arizona, but Hollywood is the common denominator of the founders of Black Lives Matter.

The founders of BLM have gone to work acting, writing, consulting, and promoting for Hollywood because their racist hate movement was always an entertainment industry production. BLM’s race riots destroyed communities and small businesses, but its brands and buzzwords were a corporate marketing campaign backed by industry talent. Like Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds radio broadcast, it was a production, even if the physical destruction of the riots was all too real.

Why shouldn’t Cullors get a house in the area where Quentin Tarantino filmed a scene in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and where movie stars house their pets at the Topanga Pet Resort?

It’s all made in Hollywood anyway.

Truth is stranger than fiction. But Hollywood also specializes in turning fiction into truth. Why not set the country on fire, elect some Democrats, and get some new content in the pipeline?

Hollywood had been stagnating. Every piece of IP or intellectual property had been locked down by giants like Disney, and the staggering cost of Silicon Valley streamers like Netflix and Amazon Prime sinking billions into developing original content to keep subscription viewers on their plantation had made it impossible for much of the old industry to compete on its own turf.

Now there are books to adapt into movies, TV series to launch, and countless entertainment industry products to sell to guilty liberal suburban moms who joyfully grapple with the depths of their own racism by binge watching black pain. And there are the BLM co-founders to help Hollywood get all the political cred that it needs to make a killing out of racism on a budget.

Forget Hearst’s “You furnish the pictures. I’ll furnish the war.” The war is easy to furnish. It’s the pictures that are expensive.

The damage from the BLM race riots surpassed $2 billion. That sounds like a lot of money, and individually it wiped out countless businesses, crushed neighborhoods and communities, and took more lives and dreams than will ever be accounted for, but that’s nothing compared to the $17 billion that Netflix blew on programming in just one year. And the best part is that $2 billion was entirely paid for by ordinary Americans, insurance companies, and non-industry types.

Peasants.

Think of the Kenosha riots as the Atlanta burning scene in Gone With the Wind. But no Hollywood studio had to sacrifice its own sets to produce all that footage. Race rioters were happy to burn down American cities as publicity for Hollywood social justice projects.

Some consulting and acting gigs for the marketable founders of the racist hate group is a small price to pay for Warner Brothers to use HBO Max to compete with Netflix. It’s been a long time since Warner Brothers meant the conservative Warner brothers, Jewish immigrants and Republicans who appeared before HUAC, and declared, “We are willing to establish such a fund to ship to Russia the people who don’t like our American system of government.”

Warner Brothers and HBO Max, like CNN, are cultural death rays of the AT&T death star. Or, as a CNN reporter described the riots, “fiery, but mostly peaceful” death rays.

If only there were a fund to ship AT&T, Netflix, and Disney to Russia.

After BLM fades, there will be new productions, spectacles, and extravaganzas to excite, humiliate, and distract the attention of Americans from the havoc being wreaked on their country as a handful of entangled companies fight for supreme dominance in the oligarchy.

And BLM’s co-founders have found a good exit strategy with production companies, organizations, and homes in an industry that knows the value of a good show.

Somewhere, Captain David Dorn’s widow is mourning her husband. And the other victims of BLM are immersed in their own private griefs for lost children, spouses, and parents.

But in Hollywood, the mansions only get bigger and the party never ends.

The Far Left Progressives Run the Democratic Party

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AP

By Saul Anuzis

Only in the world of radical liberalism can more of an opportunity to do something be “suppression”; requiring one to prove they are who they say they are as “racism”; and applying the same rules to everyone as “anti-civil rights.” – Raynard Jackson (Read his op-ed titled Once again, Democrats are off to the racists in the articles below)

Ruling by Presidential Fiat: President Biden now has signed MANY more Executive Orders than any other president in our country’s history in an effort to rule by Presidential fiat.

He has implemented and pushed progressive liberal policies that he could NOT get passed by Congress. That is clearly NOT what our Founders intended.

Ironically, where is the Executive Order for a Balance Budget…to spend within our means?

Where is the Executive Order to stop riots and looting in America’s streets?

Where is the Executive Order to bring our troops home from endless wars?

Where is the Executive Order to protect our daughters and granddaughters from biological men who are pushing them out of sports and using their bathrooms?

Where is the Executive Order to work in a bipartisan fashion (as promised)?

Apparently, the so-called “moderate” President has gone rogue and has sold out to the far-left progressives trying to change the basic foundations of our Republic.

This is NOT your parent’s Democratic Party… they are WAY off to the left of mainstream America.

Forced Bipartisanship: Senator Joe Machin in confirming his conviction to preserve the filibuster and look for bipartisan consensus in FORCING Democrats in Washington to stop shoving their progressive left-wing agenda down our throats and start looking for consensus.

His noble position, as well as his Democratic colleague Senator Kyrsten Sinema from Arizona, is forcing legislators to get back to legislating and stop all the partisan bickering.

For decades Republicans and Democrats tried to work together to do what’s right for America. Today the far-left progressive wing of the Democratic Party is in control and has NO interest in looking for consensus, let alone the middle ground.

We need more leaders like Manchin & Sinema, who are mainstream Democrats, to stand up to the crazy left and bring folks back to the table.

-Saul Anuzis

Rather than packing the Supreme Court, Make Judging Impartial

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by Lev Tsitrin(New English Review)

Another day, another Biden initiative — this time, as the New York Times informs us, “Biden Creating Commission to Study Expanding the Supreme Court” https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/09/us/politics/biden-supreme-court-packing.html

Why pack the court?  “The president acted under pressure from activists pushing for more seats to alter the ideological balance of the court after President Donald J. Trump appointed three justices, including one to a seat that Republicans had blocked his predecessor, Barack Obama, from filling for almost a year. The result is a court with a conservative 6-to-3 tilt.”

Which begs a question: why does judges’ tilt matter if judging is impartial?

Indeed, despite all assurances to the contrary, it isn’t, as I explained elsewhere https://alibi.com/news/61032/Judicial-Fraud-Impacts-Americans.html. The mechanism of injecting judges’ own views into decision-making process is simple: while judges take for adjudication parties’ argument, it is not what they adjudicate. The argument they actually adjudicate is very different indeed — it is judges’ own argument. This is acted outright in the open by the Supreme Court. The only reason decisions of the Court are not unanimous but are often split 4-to-5 is that justices come up with their own argument for, and against the plaintiff’s and defendant’s positions, acting as lawyers first, and judges afterwards — to cast their vote for the argument that is irresistibly convincing — because it is their own argument.

This is course if a far cry from impartiality. An impartial judge cannot be a party to the case, he cannot be a lawyer for the side he wants to win. That’s why there is recusal. Of course we hear that judges neither pitch nor bat, but only call balls and strikes, as Chief Justice Roberts assured us during his nomination. This line serves well for getting nominated — but upon nomination, gets instantly forgotten. Check who pitched the argument that individual mandate is tax — the argument that saved Obamacare. If I recall correctly, this was not Obama’s argument — he faced re-election and did not want to highlight the fact that he raised taxes. Nor was it Obamacare opponents’ argument — it worked against them, not for them. It was Chief Justice Roberts’ argument, as he acted as a lawyer for the Obama administration before acting as a judge. If Roberts neither pitched nor batted, there would be no Obamacare.

And this is how it works, case after case. I am not even talking of SCOTUS’ lack of sheer capacity to hear cases — it acts as a single judge, and this is what determines its capacity. It gets 10,000 petitions annually, but it can only hear some 200, with a result that, a century ago, SCOTUS was allowed to choose its cases. So despite our pride in our three-tier system of justice, we only have a 2.02-tier system, since the Supreme Court can hardly be said to exist — only 2% of its cases are decided by justices themselves; the fate of what goes in, and what gets tossed, is decided by justices’ clerks https://ezinearticles.com/?Locomotives-and-the-Supreme-Court&id=2285665 .

So can anything be done? What recommendations should Biden’s committee make?

I would suggest we make judges impartial, by adding the practice of “sua spontism” that allows judges to adjudicate their own, rather than parties’ argument, thus poisoning the judicial decision-making process, to the criteria of judicial misconduct which now includes only drug use, drunkenness and suchlike, but has nothing that blocks arbitrary decision-making. If the decision in which the judge who acted as a lawyer for the favored party gets automatically vacated, and the judge himself is booted from the bench, or jailed for fraud, there won’t be much difference between the conservative and liberal judges insofar as their decisions are concerned. Instead of being politicized, judging will become professionalized. A democrat car mechanic should be expected to do the same job as a republican one; and a democrat judge weighing the plaintiff’s argument against that of the defendant for factual accuracy, relevance, and relative weight, neither adding anything to either parties’ argument, nor removing from it, will have to arrive at the same result as the republican one. Inability to sneak in judge’s own argument will insure and enforce his Impartiality.

This change to the judicial decision-making process will have another huge benefit, too. It will make collective decision-making unnecessary, allowing Supreme Court justices to work independently, thus increasing the Court’s workload nine-fold, to 1,800 cases per year. This is not ideal, since this is still just a mere 18% of submitted cases — but in that context, expansion of Supreme Court starts to really make sense. If expanded to 55 justices, the Court will indeed be fully able to perform its constitutional task of being the third tier of the justice system – as it did until 1920es when the backlog of cases swamped it, and the present system of selective judging was adopted.

Bottom line — no amount of tinkering will help make courts fair if the current judicial decision-making process remains. Change the number of judges, limit their term to a set number of years, or to the age of the judge — and the Court will continue to be a tool of politics. Professionalize it — and it becomes the tool of justice.

So the question is — what do we really want? Do we want due process irrespective of the outcome, or the desired outcome irrespective of fairness of the process?

That’s the question that Biden’s commission should answer first — and build its recommendations based on that answer. And by its answer to that fundamental question, Biden’s intentions should be judged.

Lev Tsitrin is the founder of the Coalition Against Judicial Fraud, www.cajfr.org

Iran calls Natanz atomic site blackout ‘nuclear terrorism’

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centrifuge machines in the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in central Iran. The facility lost power Sunday, April 11, 2021, just hours after starting up new advanced centrifuges capable of enriching uranium faster, the latest incident to strike the site amid negotiations over the tattered atomic accord with world powers. Iran on Sunday described the blackout an act of “nuclear terrorism,” raising regional tensions. (Atomic Energy Organization of Iran via AP, File)

(AP) — Iran on Sunday described a blackout at its underground Natanz atomic facility an act of “nuclear terrorism,” raising regional tensions as world powers and Tehran continue to negotiate over its tattered nuclear deal.

While there was no immediate claim of responsibility, suspicion fell immediately on Israel, where its media nearly uniformly reported a devastating cyberattack orchestrated by the country caused the blackout.

If Israel was responsible, it further heightens tensions between the two nations, already engaged in a shadow conflict across the wider Middle East. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who met Sunday with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, has vowed to do everything in his power to stop the nuclear deal.

Details remained few about what happened early Sunday morning at the facility, which initially was described as a blackout caused by the electrical grid feeding its above-ground workshops and underground enrichment halls.

Ali Akbar Salehi, the American-educated head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, who once served as the country’s foreign minister, offered what appeared to be the harshest comments of his long career, which included the assassination of nuclear scientists a decade ago. Iran blames Israel for those killings as well.

He pledged to “seriously improve” his nation’s nuclear technology while working to lift international sanctions.

Salehi’s comments to state TV did not explain what happened at the facility, but his words suggested a serious disruption.

“While condemning this desperate move, the Islamic Republic of Iran emphasizes the need for a confrontation by the international bodies and the (International Atomic Energy Agency) against this nuclear terrorism,” Salehi said.

The IAEA, the United Nations’ body that monitors Tehran’s atomic program, earlier said it was aware of media reports about the incident at Natanz and had spoken with Iranian officials about it. The agency did not elaborate.

However, Natanz has been targeted by sabotage in the past. The Stuxnet computer virus, discovered in 2010 and widely believed to be a joint U.S.-Israeli creation, once disrupted and destroyed Iranian centrifuges at Natanz amid an earlier period of Western fears about Tehran’s program.

Natanz suffered a mysterious explosion at its advanced centrifuge assembly plant in July that authorities later described as sabotage. Iran now is rebuilding that facility deep inside a nearby mountain. Iran also blamed Israel for the November killing of a scientist who began the country’s military nuclear program decades earlier.

Multiple Israeli media outlets reported Sunday that an Israeli cyberattack caused the blackout in Natanz. Public broadcaster Kan said the Mossad was behind the attack. Channel 12 TV cited “experts” as estimating the attack shut down entire sections of the facility.

While the reports offered no sourcing for their information, Israeli media maintains a close relationship with the country’s military and intelligence agencies.

“It’s hard for me to believe it’s a coincidence,” Yoel Guzansky, a senior fellow at Tel Aviv’s Institute for National Security Studies, said of Sunday’s blackout. “If it’s not a coincidence, and that’s a big if, someone is trying to send a message that ‘we can limit Iran’s advance and we have red lines.’”

It also sends a message that Iran’s most sensitive nuclear site is “penetrable,” he added.

Netanyahu later Sunday night toasted his security chiefs, with the head of the Mossad, Yossi Cohen, at his side on the eve of his country’s Independence Day.

“It is very difficult to explain what we have accomplished,” Netanyahu said of Israel’s history, saying the country had been transformed from a position of weakness into a “world power.”

Israel typically doesn’t discuss operations carried out by its Mossad intelligence agency or specialized military units. In recent weeks, Netanyahu repeatedly has described Iran as the major threat to his country as he struggles to hold onto power after multiple elections and while facing corruption charges.

Speaking at the event Sunday night, Netanyahu urged his security chiefs to “continue in this direction, and to continue to keep the sword of David in your hands,” using an expression referring to Jewish strength.

Meeting with Austin on Sunday, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said Israel viewed America as an ally against all threats, including Iran.

“The Tehran of today poses a strategic threat to international security, to the entire Middle East and to the state of Israel,” Gantz said. “And we will work closely with our American allies to ensure that any new agreement with Iran will secure the vital interests of the world, of the United States, prevent a dangerous arms race in our region, and protect the state of Israel.”

The Israeli army’s chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, also appeared to reference Iran.

The Israeli military’s “operations in the Middle East are not hidden from the eyes of the enemy,” Kochavi said. “They are watching us, seeing (our) abilities and weighing their steps with caution.”

On Saturday, Iran announced it had launched a chain of 164 IR-6 centrifuges at the plant. Officials also began testing the IR-9 centrifuge, which they say will enrich uranium 50 times faster than Iran’s first-generation centrifuges, the IR-1. The nuclear deal limited Iran to using only IR-1s for enrichment.

Since then-President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, Tehran has abandoned all the limits of its uranium stockpile. It now enriches up to 20% purity, a technical step away from weapons-grade levels of 90%. Iran maintains its atomic program is for peaceful purposes.

The nuclear deal had granted Tehran sanctions relief in exchange for ensuring its stockpile never swelled to the point of allowing Iran to obtain an atomic bomb if it chose.

On Tuesday, an Iranian cargo ship said to serve as a floating base for Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard forces off the coast of Yemen was struck by an explosion, likely from a limpet mine. Iran has blamed Israel for the blast. That attack escalated a long-running shadow war in Mideast waterways targeting shipping in the region.

The new plan to oust Netanyahu and its implications for Israel

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he swearing-in ceremony of the 24th Knesset in Jerusalem, April 6, 2021. Photo by Alex Kolomoisky/POOL.

 By Caroline Glick(JNS)

In a discussion with associates on Tuesday, Yamina chairman Naftali Bennett spoke candidly about his political plans, which, according to media reports, he is closely coordinating with New Hope party leader Gideon Sa’ar. Both Bennett and Sa’ar hail from the ideological right and both are outspoken opponents of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and seek to unseat him as premier.

Although Bennett refused to recommend that President Reuven Rivlin confer the mandate to form a government on Netanyahu last week, he has made clear that he will join a Netanyahu-led governing coalition if Netanyahu is able to secure the two seats he lacks to build a 61-member government. In contrast, Sa’ar refuses to join a Netanyahu-led government. And for now, Sa’ar’s five colleagues in his six-member Knesset faction are boycotting Netanyahu with him.

Sa’ar has tried twice to oust Netanyahu in elections—first in the Likud’s internal leadership race and then as head of his new party in the last election. Both of his electoral bids flopped. Despite massive media support both times, the voters wouldn’t go along.

Bennett also presented himself as a prime ministerial candidate against Netanyahu in the last elections. He, too, failed to deliver the goods. Fifty-two Knesset members told Rivlin they wish for Netanyahu to form the next government. Bennett received seven votes—his own and those of his Knesset faction—and that was only after No. 3 on his list, Sderot Mayor Alon Davidi, resigned his spot in the Knesset before being sworn in.

Although Bennett told his associates on Tuesday that “we’re in” if Netanyahu manages to find two more lawmakers to join a government under his leadership, he is convinced Netanyahu will fail. “It’s wishful thinking” that any members of Sa’ar’s party will return to Likud, he said. “It won’t happen.”

Israel Katz, Nir Barkat or Naftali Bennett are all possible candidates to replace Netanyahu, in Bennett’s view. Each of them will be able to form a coalition because Sa’ar will join them—and he won’t join Netanyahu.

In other words, Sa’ar’s plan, which Bennett has joined, is to do to Likud members what late Prime Minister Ariel Sharon did to Likud voters in 2004.

In December 2003, Sharon made a 180-degree ideological shift. Earlier that year, Sharon won a landslide electoral victory by opposing Labor Party leader Amram Mitzna’s plan to unilaterally withdraw from the Gaza Strip. Sharon famously said, “The fate of Tel Aviv is the fate of Netzarim,” which at the time was a frontline Israeli community in Gaza.

In December 2003, Sharon stunned the country by announcing he intended to implement Mitzna’s strategically reckless platform. And in 2004 he held a referendum among Likud members, seeking their support for his about-face. Likud members rejected his plan overwhelmingly, but rather than stick his plan in a drawer and forget about it, Sharon threw his voters under the bus and ran over them.

Bennett and Sa’ar, with 13 Knesset seats between them, expect that 30 Likud lawmakers will ignore their voters and work with Bennet and Sa’ar to oust Netanyahu. Bennett promises that such a move will bring the support that Sa’ar is now denying Netanyahu and so enable the formation of an “all-in right-wing government.”

It’s hard to see how their plan is more than wishful thinking.

Sa’ar is not a hot political commodity after his “new governing party” flopped at the polls. The Likud base is unstintingly pro-Netanyahu. Likud heavyweights like Katz, Barkat and Yuli Edelstein didn’t try to oust Netanyahu after the November 2019 elections, when the right-wing bloc won just 55 seats. Why would they render themselves persona non grata with their voters to cooperate with Bennett and Sa’ar?

Dubiousness aside, this is the play that Bennett and Sa’ar are running. And they are doing so in conjunction with Rivlin, who showed his hand when he said this week that if Netanyahu fails to form a government, he will consider transferring the mandate to the Knesset. Such a move would clear the way for a lawmaker who is not the head of a party to form a government.

Since this is the game being played, it is important to consider what will happen to the country if they win. Had either Bennett or Sa’ar managed to convince the public to support them instead of Netanyahu, that would be one thing. But they failed. Their plan involves gaining through parliamentary maneuvers and backroom deals what the voters denied them. And if it goes through, it will have profound impacts on both Israeli politics and Israel’s social fabric.

When Likud voters and their fellow right-wingers realized Sharon intended to use his legal—but morally compromised—power to push through his plans to expel 10,000 Israelis from their homes and transfer their land to Israel’s enemies, despite his loss in the referendum that he had called and committed to abiding by, they lost faith in the political system and in the game of democracy itself. And they were right.

Democracy only works when everyone agrees on the rules and follows them. The basic bargain is that everyone accepts the possibility that they will lose elections and power because they know that if they get the votes, they will win elections and achieve the power to govern their way. Democracy cannot long survive if a significant portion of the public believes the game is rigged against them.

The overwhelming majority of Likud voters are fervent Netanyahu supporters. So are the vast majority of voters for the Likud’s sister parties in the Right-Religious bloc he leads.

His supporters have sensed for generations that the elite classes in politics, the legal fraternity, the media and academia hold them in contempt and seek to push them out of the public sphere. If Bennett and Sa’ar, both of whom have elitist political pedigrees, succeed in ousting Netanyahu through legal but non-electoral means, Netanyahu’s supporters will view their action as proof that the elites are out to get them. This conviction will be disastrous for Israel’s national solidarity and sense of shared national purpose.

The dangers of this loss of solidarity will be felt in short order due to the political reality that the plan’s implementation will induce.

Sharon was a popular prime minister when he founded his new Kadima Party. But despite his popularity, Sharon was only able to convince a third of the Likud’s Knesset faction to leave the party with him.

There is little chance that Bennett and Sa’ar with their 13 seats will be more successful than Sharon was. Their best-case scenario would repeat Sharon’s accomplishment, in which case 10 of Likud’s 30 lawmakers would join them in their bid to oust Netanyahu without winning over his voters.

This brings us to the prospects of forming Bennett’s “all-in right-wing government” without Netanyahu. Their bloc of 23 lawmakers (with the 10 Likud deserters) can grow to a maximum 30 lawmakers. The two prospective pick-ups, the anti-religious Yisrael Beiteinu party and the Haredi United Torah Judaism Party, will not sit under the same governmental roof. Both have seven seats. These 30 right-leaning lawmakers will then turn to the left to form a government. Their most likely partners are Yesh Atid, Blue and White and Labor, which together command 32 seats.

In other words, Bennett’s “all-in right-wing government” will have a leftist majority. And if UTJ stays out, the government will also have an overwhelmingly anti-religious majority.

In his conversation with associates Tuesday, Bennett insisted that his willingness to break ranks and form a government with the left is morally justified because Netanyahu has formed governments with the left.

“From my perspective, there’s no difference between Avi Nissenkorn and Merav Michaeli,” he said. Nissenkorn is a radical leftist union boss who served as justice minister in Netanyahu’s outgoing unity government with Blue and White. Merav Michaeli is the radical leftist leader of the Labor Party.

But there is a difference. Netanyahu had no government without Nissenkorn. And if he had refused to form a government with Blue and White, the center-left party was poised to use its parliamentary majority, built on an alliance with the anti-Zionist Joint Arab List, to pass a far-Left legislative agenda that would have altered Israel’s constitutional structure.

All Sa’ar and Bennett need to do to form an “all-in right-wing government” today is join Netanyahu’s coalition. If Bennett is committed to such a government, he can devote his energies to convincing two members of Sa’ar’s faction to join a Netanyahu-led government. He is the politician in the best position to bring them on board.

At the end of the day, there are only three possible political outcomes from last month’s elections: Bennett and Sa’ar can agree to form a right-wing government with Netanyahu, in keeping with the wishes of the voters for the right-religious bloc of parties and in keeping with their own ideological convictions. They can form a leftist government in which they serve as a minority faction. Or, Israel can have a fifth election in August.

This then brings us back to the devastation that ousting Netanyahu through parliamentary procedure rather than at the ballot box will wreak on Israel’s national solidarity—and its strategic implications.

After Sharon split Likud and formed Kadima, his successor Ehud Olmert formed a leftist-dominated government that advocated appeasement. Its stance broadcast weakness and so invited aggression. That aggression came from the Bush administration in the form of pressure to make massive concessions to the Palestinians. Olmert collapsed under pressure and offered PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas Jerusalem and the Temple Mount.

It came as well in the form of war from Iran’s Lebanese proxy Hezbollah. Olmert, together with his radical leftist defense minister then-Labor Party leader Amir Peretz and then-foreign minister and fellow Likud deserter Tzipi Livni, demonstrated utter incompetence in leading the nation in war. Their helter-skelter, ill-conceived military operations and self-destructive diplomatic efforts ensured Israel’s failure to defeat Hezbollah and so set Hezbollah on course to take over the Lebanese government two years later.

The Likud voters Olmert and Livni demonized and trampled just the year before did not rally around them during the war and the public’s distrust of its leaders was impossible to set aside even in time of war.

Israel now faces the most hostile U.S. administration in its history. The Biden administration is itself inviting aggression against Israel by empowering Iran, the Palestinians and international organizations in their campaigns against Israel. Our time is one fraught with dangers. A plan to crown a leftist government and undermine national solidarity by ousting Netanyahu without first defeating him will undoubtedly produce disastrous results for the country.

Caroline Glick is an award-winning columnist and author of “The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East.

German President: Buchenwald a Reminder of Nazi ‘Barbarism’

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Prisoners at Buchenwald concentration camp (Truman Library)

(AP) Germany’s president on Sunday marked the 76th anniversary of the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp by reminding his compatriots of the inconceivable atrocities the Nazis committed there during the Third Reich.

“Communists and democrats, homosexuals and so-called asocials were incarcerated at Buchenwald. Jews, Sinti, and Roma were brought here and murdered,” President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said during a speech in the nearby German town of Weimar, 76 years to the day after U.S. forces liberated the camp.

“With its diversity of victims’ groups, Buchenwald represents the entire barbarism of the Nazis, its aggressive nationalism to the outside, it’s dictatorship on the inside, and a racist way of thinking,” Steinmeier said. “Buchenwald stands for racial fanaticism, torture, murder and elimination.”

Holocaust survivors and their families weren’t allowed to gather for anniversary observances this year because of the coronavirus pandemic. Survivors from different parts of the world instead attended Sunday’s memorial ceremony online. Large-scale commemorations for last year’s 75th anniversary were put on hold due to social distancing requirements.

The Buchenwald concentration camp was established in 1937. More than 56,000 of the 280,000 inmates held at Buchenwald and its satellite camps were killed by the Nazis or died as a result of hunger, illness or medical experiments before the camp’s liberation on April 11, 1945.

“It was a dictatorship, a Nazi leadership that was responsible for the cruelest crimes and the genocide,” Steinmeier said. “But it was human beings, Germans, who did this to other human beings.”

After his speech in Weimar, Steinmeier went to the site of the former concentration camp, where he laid a wreath with yellow and red flowers for the victims.

Report: DMX Took COVID Vaccine Before Heart Attack, MSNBC’s Midwin Charles Dies Month After Taking COVID Jab

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AP

Jared Evan

On Friday, influential rapper and actor DMX, AKA Earl Simmons, died after spending almost a week in the ICU on life support in critical condition, meanwhile Brooklyn defense attorney and MSNBC commentator Midwin Charles died at only 47 years of age on April 6th.

Both high-profile victims appear to have taken a COVID vaccine shortly before passing away.

One day ahead of Simmons’ death, black entertainment site MediaTakeOut News published exclusive comments citing one of DMX’s alleged family members. Media take out is a fairly reputable and non-controversial source.

MTO exclusives have been quoted by Good Morning AmericaWatch What Happens Live with Andy CohenThe New York Times, BET  and the “Page Six” column of the New York Post, and by radio personalities including Wendy Williams, Howard Stern, and Tom Joyner. Media Take Out has broken several stories, including Kim Kardashian’s first pregnancy, Remy Ma’s criminal charges, and Michael Jordan’s divorce. The source reporting is not an obscure “anti-vaxxer” site.

The unidentified family member attributed DMX’s heart attack to a Covid vaccine he’d received mere days earlier, saying rumors he suffered an OD were false.

MTO News spoke with a member of the Simmons family who believes that it was NOT drugs that caused the heart attack. In an EXCLUSIVE interview, MTO News spoke with DMX’ family member who told us that the rapper received the COVID vaccine about a week before he suffered from the heart attack.

Meanwhile, Brooklyn defense attorney and MSNBC commentator Midwin Charles died on April 6th, at 47 years of age, around 30 days after taking her first COVID vaccine dose.

Ms. Charles’s death was not heavily reported, and most articles indicated her cause of death was “unknown”, however, the lawyer and Cable TV regular was a frequent social media figure on Twitter.

According to her own Twitter posts, on March 1st she took her first vaccine.

We do not actually understand what role (if any) the vaccine has played in these 2 high-profile deaths, however, it is very newsworthy and this is something that should heavily be examined. Ms. Charles also indicated on her Facebook that she had a severe peanut allergy.

Health officials have not in any way, recommend against the COVID vaccine for certain individuals with pre-existing conditions, allergies, or a weakened immune system, which is strange considering most prescription medications have an entire list of situations when a drug would not be perscribed.

We continue to see reports about individuals dying shortly after taking the vaccine, yet still, there has been no research or recommendations by experts for anyone not to take the vaccine.

While you can’t instantly say “yes, DMX died from the vaccine”, you can note that several high-profile deaths have occurred post-vaccination, in addition to hundreds of “regular folks” dying post-vaccination. Still,  in endless media reports, this detail which could emerge as being a factor to these death is completely omitted.

Midwin Charles was vaccinated, yet you have to look at her Twitter to actually learn this fact. Famous boxer Marvin Haggler died after taking the vaccine, so did Larry King and baseball legend Hank Aaron. These are all high-profile deaths, and yes they were all seniors with other health conditions, but very few outlets will report that they have taken a COVID vaccination.

The public should demand more information. These COVID vaccines are very promising with high protection rates and very few fatalities, however, if there are instances where one should not be vaccinated, we all deserve the right to know the truth.

 

Antifa Sets Portland ICE Building on Fire with Officers Trapped Inside

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Twitter Video Screenshot/Andy Ngo

BOB PRICE

Antifa rioters in Portland, Oregon, set a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement building on fire while agents remained trapped behind blocked doors. The fire began after rioters smashed windows on the upper floors of the building.

Antifa continued its months-long siege of the ICE facility in Portland on Saturday night. Videos posted on Twitter show the violence perpetrated by the Antifa rioters as they smashed windows and eventually set a fire on the front of the building while ICE officers remained trapped behind blocked doors.

“They then set it on fire while federal officers were inside,” independent journalist Andy Ngo tweeted. “Antifa also obscured the security cameras before launching the arson attack.”

“Burn the precinct to the ground,” Antifa protesters shouted as the fire raged.

BLM’s Marxist Founder Buys 4th Home, $1.4 Million Property in Very White Neighborhood

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social media

Jared Evan

The co-founder of the polarizing Black Lives Matter movement is under fire for buying a $1.4 million home in a posh California neighborhood that’s 88 percent white,  as per recent demographic numbers.

Patrisse Cullors, who is an out in the open Marxist,  has pushed a message of black pride, the black victimization narrative, and lead the sometimes violent BLM movement formed in 2013 in response to George Zimmerman’s acquittal in 2012 shooting of Trayvon Martin. Cullor’s organization soaked up millions upon millions of dollars, and nobody is quite sure what BLM actually does besides organizing disruptive and frequently destructive protests, which resulted in over 50 deaths in 2020.   These protests, often described by the press as “peaceful”,  have caused billions of dollars of destruction across dozens of major cities.

Black Lives Matter said it raked in a staggering $90 million in donations last year. 

The communist revolutionary is amassing quite a real estate portfolio, according to the NY Post. Cullor’s bought a $510,000 home in Inglewood in 2016, which is worth about $800,000 today. She also bought a $590,000 home in South Los Angeles that is worth $720,000 today, and bought a ranch in rural Georgia for $415,000 last year, “featuring a private airplane hangar with a studio apartment above it.” Inglewood is a predominantly black neighborhood, however, she has 3 other “white” enclaves to abscond herself.

According to Dirt.com, her latest home is located in Topanga Canyon, an idyllic rustic neighborhood about 48 minutes outside of Los Angeles and less than 30 minutes from  Malibu.

Cullors’ new home has three bedrooms and two baths and sits on one-quarter of an acre. The property also has a separate one-bedroom, one-bathroom guest house.

But what is most interesting is that the BLM co-founder chose to live in Topanga, where less than 2 percent(LINK) of the population is black.

The social media social justice mob, having no criticism of their empyrean Marxist saint permitted;  immediately had black sports reporter, Jason Whitlock, suspended from Twitter after he sarcastically called out Cullors for her blatant hypocrisy.

“Black Lives Matter founder buys $1.4 million home in Topanga, which has a black population of 1.4%. She’s with her people!” he tweeted Friday.

Shortly after the thought ministers had this tweet removed and suspended Whitlock.

All is not well in BLM-land however as there has been mounting criticism that the movement has not shared its massive haul with the black community.

BLM chapters nationwide have demanded more transparency from the centralized umbrella organization for the group, Zero Hedge pointed out.

In a December 2020 statement, the local chapters said:

“Since the establishment of [Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation], our chapters have consistently raised concerns about financial transparency, decision making, and accountability … we believe public accountability has become necessary.”

The local chapters also said the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation appointed Cullors as its executive director against their wishes and without their knowledge, rendering her leadership illegitimate.

“We, the undersigned chapters, believe that all of these events occurred without democracy, and assert that it was without the knowledge of the majority of Black Lives Matters chapters across the country and world,” the statement read.
“Patrisse Cullors … became Executive Director against the will of most chapters and without their knowledge.”

Israel behind Natanz nuclear mishap? IDF Chief of Staff says, ‘Our actions are not hidden from enemy eyes’

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IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi (Flash90)
By David Isaac, World Israel News 

On the same day that Iran reported an accident at a nuclear facility, IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi made remarks that some say hint at possible Israeli involvement in the incident.

On Sunday at a pre-Memorial Day ceremony at Mount Herzl national cemetery, Kochavi said, “The Israel Defense Forces’ actions throughout the Middle East are not hidden from our enemies’ eyes. They are watching us, seeing our capabilities and carefully considering their next steps.”

His comments followed on the heels of Iran’s revelation Sunday morning that the Natanz nuclear facility suffered an accident a day after it inaugurated new uranium enrichment centrifuges.

“The cause of the incident is under investigation,” Iran’s PressTV reported.

Kochavi’s comments may have been coincidental but pundits noted how it dovetailed with the incident.

 

He said, “Thanks to sophisticated operational activity, this past year has been one of the most secure Israel’s citizens have ever known. We will continue to act with might and with judgment, with determination and responsibility, to ensure the security of the state of Israel.”

The accident at Natanz comes a day after it inaugurated its IR-9 centrifuges, which separate uranium isotopes 50 times faster than Iran’s current centrifuges.

 

Western analysts say that the incident was an intentional cyberattack. A member of Iran’s parliament has also said that the country suspects there is a “high probability” that it was no accident but a purposeful attack.

In July 2020, Natanz was the site of an explosion at its new centrifuge assembly center. Iran downplayed that incident, initially calling it a fire.

Since January, Iran began enriching uranium up to 20% at its Fordo underground nuclear facility, in violation of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. According to the accords, it can only enrich up to 3.67%.

The latest accident comes the day Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin visits Israel for his first official visit.

Austin met with Defense Minister Benny Gantz on Sunday. Austin didn’t refer to Iran at a press conference following the meeting but offered reassuring words regarding the U.S.-Israel relationship. “I reaffirmed to Minister Gantz our commitment to Israel is enduring and it is ironclad,” he said.

Levi Strauss CEO Bergh: ‘When it Comes to Gun Control, Gun Violence Is Ripping This Country Apart’

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AP

PAM KEY

President and CEO of Levi Strauss & Co. Chip Bergh said Friday on CNN’s “Newsroom” that his company is advocating for so-called gun control because “gun violence is ripping this country apart.”

Bergh said, “I’ve been a CEO now for about ten years. I can tell you that over that 10-year period of time, the role has changed dramatically. You know, the business roundtable, talk about stakeholder management and ensuring that we’re driving value for all stakeholders. I have a large employee base globally. I’ve got communities where we work and serve the communities. So we’ve got a broad range of stakeholders. I really do believe, especially at Levi’s, that I have a platform. We’re committed to making change. This company has been around for 180 years. A big part of the reason I believe we’ve been around for 180 years is we’ve not been afraid to take a position on issues that are really, really important and not been afraid to stick our neck out on these tough issues.”

He continued, “When it comes to gun control, gun violence is ripping this country apart. It’s almost every single day you’re hearing about another incident. So this is important to us as a country. I serve the U.S. Army. We’re not trying to repeal the Second Amendment. We’re just calling for legislation that will make our world a safer place.”