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August 2020

Ilana Mercer :A ‘Victims of Communism Day’ Is Long Overdue As suggested by Ilya Somin of The Volokh Conspiracy

https://amgreatness.com/2020/08/02/a-victims-of-communism-day-is-long-overdue/

The fact that socialists and Communists are still voted into power with swagger; the fact that this creed’s savage foot soldiers—Black Lives Matter and Antifa—are cast as pacifists, seekers of equity and justice demonstrates that Communists, despite their murderous past, “belong to the camp of democratic progress” in the eyes of the world whereas the Right is forever open to suspicions of unforgiven fascist and Nazi sympathies.

If anything, The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression—that “800-page compendium of the crimes of communist regimes worldwide”—treads too lightly when it comes to qualitative comparisons between the Nazi and the “Marxist-Leninist phenomenon.”

On the quantitative front, “Nazism, at an estimated 25 million dead,” turned out to be distinctly less murderous than Communism, whose “grand total of victims, variously estimated at between 85 million and 100 million murdered, is the most colossal case of political carnage in history.”

Qualitatively, the “‘class genocide’ of Communism” is certainly comparable to the “‘race genocide’ of Nazism.” In its reach and methods, moreover, nothing compares to communism’s continual, ongoing invention of new classes of “enemies of the people” to liquidate. “Mass violence against the population was a deliberate policy of the new revolutionary order; and its scope and inhumanity far exceeded anything in the national past.”

The Jewish people have carried out “the solemn obligation to keep the memory of its martyrs alive in the conscience of the world.” The civilized world has internalized the methods and meaning of the “Final Solution.” As The Black Book observes approvingly, “Hitler and Nazism are now a constant presence in Western print and on Western television.”

Larry Elder’s ‘Uncle Tom’: The little movie that could By Andrea Widburg *****

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/08/larry_elders_uncle_tom_the_little_movie_that_could.html

Did you know that there’s a documentary called Uncle Tom that IMDB ranks as one of America’s top documentaries? Released only six weeks ago, it’s currently the sixth-highest rated documentary on IMDB, with over 2,000 viewers giving it an extraordinary 9.5-star rating. The movie also doubled Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine opening box office revenue. Nevertheless, not a single mainstream news or entertainment media film critic has acknowledged it. I spoke with Mr. Elder to learn more about the movie and the media’s passive-aggressive efforts to ignore it into extinction.

One would think that, when a nationally-known radio and TV personality, who is also a best-selling author and columnist, writes and produces a documentary about blacks in America, the media would be all over it. That doesn’t happen, though, if he challenges the mainstream narrative that the Democrat party is American blacks’ only friend.

Uncle Tom’s use of historical footage, contemporary political events, and interviews with black conservatives both well known and unknown exposes viewers to the reality that’s unacceptable to the monolithic Democrat media: Since 1856, Republican Party policies allowed American blacks to thrive, while Democrat party policies consistently harmed them.

Palestinians’ Chief Negotiator or Chief Liar? by Bassam Tawil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16302/saeb-erekat-lies

Saeb Erekat’s continued lies and fabrications about Israel promote anti-Semitism and embolden terrorists.

As a veteran negotiator, it would be a good idea for him to use his experience to persuade the Hamas terrorists to release the remains of the two soldiers instead of waging a propaganda campaign on behalf of a terrorist who woke up one morning and decided to kill Jews.

With negotiators like Erekat, one can understand why the Israeli-Palestinian peace process has been stalled for so many years.

Ahmed Erekat, a 26-year-old Palestinian from the village of Abu Dis, south of Jerusalem, was shot dead by Israeli soldiers on June 23 after ramming his car into an Israeli military checkpoint. One soldier was lightly wounded in the attack.

Footage released by the Israeli authorities leaves no room for doubt that Erekat was on a mission to kill soldiers. The footage shows Erekat deliberately turning his car as he waited in line, driving directly at the soldiers, hitting one female soldier and then crashing into a guard booth. Erekat then got out of the vehicle and started walking towards the soldiers, who fired a number of bullets at him, killing him instantly.

Such terrorist attacks are not uncommon in the West Bank, where Palestinian terrorists have carried out dozens of car-rammings against Israeli soldiers and civilians in the past few years.

This attack, however, caught the attention of the international media because the terrorist happens to be a relative of Saeb Erekat, the former Palestinian chief negotiator with Israel who currently serves as secretary general of the PLO.

Since the car-ramming, Saeb Erekat has been waging a campaign of incitement and lies against Israel. He has accused it of “cold-blooded murder” and now of the “extrajudicial execution” of his cousin.

The senior PLO official is deliberately ignoring the video that clearly shows his cousin using his car in an attempt to kill Israeli soldiers. He is also, perhaps not surprisingly, ignoring the testimonies of the soldiers his cousin tried to kill.

Austin Police, Texas State Troopers Prevent Violence and Arrest Many By Bryan Preston

Rumors and intel flew around for days leading up to Saturday, August 1. Dozens of activists were being bused into Austin, Texas, from Portland and Seattle to do to this city what they have done to both of those. Rumors suggested they wanted to destroy Austin police headquarters, the Texas state capitol, or both.

Downtown apartment residents received flyers warning them that the outsiders might attempt to gain entry to their buildings to get to the roof.

It should go without saying this activity would put numerous innocent people in harm’s way and constitute egregious violations of private property rights. Antifa and BLM activists have repeatedly demonstrated their disdain for the latter by destroying, defacing, and looting private property. Protesters surrounding cars, assaulting and shooting drivers and other innocents have repeatedly demonstrated their disdain for the former as well.

Protesters also targeted Austin city council member Kathy Tovo with a march on her home because she is the lone member of the council who has not committed to their demand to gut the Austin police budget. Tovo intends to gut it, but not by as much as the protesters demand.

The flyer above and other information suggested the groups intended to attack Austin police headquarters. The headquarters building has been the site of protests and often violent riots over the past two months. The activists have attempted to storm the building in the past but failed.

‘Cancel Culture’: Old Tyranny in New Bottles If the progressives succeed, they will create what the Founders feared. Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/cancel-culture-old-tyranny-new-bottles-bruce-thornton/

The last few weeks we’ve seen programmatically progressive media outlets purging their political bedfellows for deviating from the “woke” party line. Some, like erstwhile New York Times editor James Bennet, confessed and apologized for their alleged sins voluntarily, like an old Bolshevik apparatchik in a show-trial. Others, like Times editor Bari Weiss and Atlantic writer Andrew Sullivan, resigned before they were hustled to the guillotine, at least salvaging some self-respect. 

And it’s not just today’s people and institutions that are facing the baying mobs of mostly callow millennials who pitch a fit over anything that challenges their fragile self-esteem and “smelly little orthodoxies.” For months we’ve watched two-bit anarchists and race-hustlers knocking down monuments from our history as a graphic repudiation of America and its defining principles––a 21st century version of the old Roman damnatio memoriae, in which enemies of the state or emperor were disappeared from history by removing any public reference to them in inscriptions, statues, or books.

Indeed, today’s “cancel culture” is nothing new. It is just the latest manifestation of tyranny: As Aristotle defined it, “arbitrary power . . . which is responsible to no one, and governs all alike, whether equals or betters, with a view to its own advantage, not to that of its subjects, and therefore against their will. No free man willingly endures such a government.”

Historically, the tyrant has achieved that power by violence, especially against anyone who appear to be a threat to his ambitions or power. Herodotus has a famous anecdote about the tyrant’s use of violence. In the 7th century BC, Periander, the tyrant of Corinth, deliberating over how to keep his power safe from rivals, sent a messenger to Thrasybulus of Miletus asking his advice. Thrasybulus led the messenger into a field of wheat, and as he questioned him during their walk, broke off the tallest ears of grain. Periander got the message: “Kill outstanding citizens.”

The Universal Mail-In Voting Sham The major domestic threat to the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election. Joseph Klein

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/08/universal-mail-voting-sham-joseph-klein/

Last Thursday, President Trump raised the idea of possibly delaying the November 3rd general election date due to concerns about the implications of universal mail-in voting for the integrity of the presidential election. The president tweeted, “With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote????”

The mainstream media and the political establishment were aghast at the thought of President Trump using the coronavirus as a pretext to delay the presidential election. They need to take a deep breath. President Trump told reporters later in the day that he did not want any change in the election date, although he did warn of the possibility of significant delays in the tabulation and announcement of the final result. In any case, only Congress has the power under the Constitution to change the date of a presidential election. There’s no chance of Congress doing so this year. The Democrats’ opposition is a given, of course. But the Republicans in Congress are also adamantly against the idea. “Never in the history of the country, through wars and depressions and the Civil War, have we ever not had a federally scheduled election on time, and we’ll find a way to do that again this November 3,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

So why did President Trump bring up the possibility of election delay in his tweet (with four question marks) in the first place? The reason was to call attention to the dangers of universal mail-in voting that threaten the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election. There is a real potential for fraud, to be sure. But even in the absence of widespread fraud, universal mail-in voting faces significant challenges in ensuring a fair election result, starting with its reliance on the all too unreliable U.S. Postal Service (USPS). Moreover, states’ broad authority in the administration of elections in which their citizens vote, including federal elections, does not mean they can throw caution to the wind and dilute the voting power of clearly qualified voters. This will most certainly happen when states introducing universal mail-in voting for the first time in a presidential general election do so without robust safeguards to ensure the integrity of the mail-in process. There is too little time to devise and implement anything close to the safeguards that presently exist for in-person voting and the more limited use of absentee ballots as the exception rather than the rule. There are a few smaller states that have used all or majority mail-in voting for years with safeguards that have proven workable. However, such safeguards cannot simply be transplanted into the systems of larger states overnight.

With Bill Maher, Bari Weiss Condemns Cancel Culture As ‘Social Murder’ By Jordan Davidson

https://thefederalist.com/2020/08/02/with-bill-maher-bari-weiss-condemns-cancel-culture-as-social-murder/

Former New York Times Opinion Editor Bari Weiss appeared on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” Friday night criticizing cancel culture and calling it “social murder.” 

“It’s not just about punishing the sinner. It’s not just about punishing the person for being insufficiently pure. It’s about this sort of secondary boycott of people who would deign to speak to that person or appear on a platform with that person,” she said. “And we see just very obviously where that kind of politics gets us. If conversation with people that we disagree with becomes impossible, what is the way that we solve conflict? It’s violence.”

Maher invited Weiss and Harper’s Magazine columnist Thomas Chatterton Williams to the show after both signed the “Letter on Justice and Open Debate” published by Harper’s Magazine. In the letter, 150 “elites in academia and media” explain that limiting the “free exchange of information and ideas” could be detrimental to self-government and the writing profession.

“The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away. We refuse any false choice between justice and freedom, which cannot exist without each other. As writers we need a culture that leaves us room for experimentation, risk taking, and even mistakes. We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences,” the letter reads.

On Maher’s show, Weiss described the intentions of the letter in more detail and clarified the distinction between criticism and cancel culture. 

“What we’re trying to say with the letter — and what Thomas did in forming it — was saying what’s happening now with this growing culture of illiberalism is different from criticism,” Weiss explained. “Thomas and I, you, Bill, we’re used to criticism. Criticism is kosher in the work that we do. Criticism is great. What cancel culture is about is not criticism. It is about punishment. It is about making a person radioactive. It is about taking away their job.”

Supreme Court declines to halt Trump border wall By John Kruzel

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/510073-supreme-court-declines-to-halt-trump-border-wall

The Supreme Court on Friday declined to block the Trump administration from using $2.5 billion in reallocated Pentagon funds to build a U.S.-Mexico border wall.

In a 5-4 ruling that broke along ideological lines, the court’s conservative majority denied a bid by interest groups to halt construction after a federal appeals court last month said the use of defense funding for the project is illegal. The court’s four more liberal justices dissented from the ruling.

The Sierra Club, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other challengers had asked the justices to lift their order from last July that allowed President Trump to begin spending the funds while legal challenges proceeded through the courts.

But the Friday ruling means the court’s July 2019 order, also decided 5-4, remains in effect despite a ruling by a federal appeals court in California last month that Trump’s diversion of defense, military and other funding was unconstitutional.

Justice Stephen Breyer, in dissent, said he feared the majority’s ruling “may operate, in effect, as a final judgment.”

Legal challenges arose early last year after Trump declared a national emergency at the southern border to free up additional funding. That came after a congressional spending bill allocated some $1.3 billion for border security, far short of the nearly $5 billion Trump said was needed to complete his signature project.

“I’m Not Going to Be Silenced!” – Houston Doctor Stella Immanuel Doubles Down – When Was the Last Time Fauci Saw a Patient? (video)Jim Hoft

www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/08/not-going-silenced-houston-doctor-stella-immanuel-doubles-last-time-fauci-saw-patient-video/ 

Dr. Stella Immanuel M.D. from Houston is a courageous woman in an insane world.

Earlier this week Dr. Immanuel joined several other front line doctors in Washington DC at the “White Coat Summit” to announce the amazing success they were having treating coronavirus patients on the front line using hydroxychloroquine. 

Dr. Stella Immanuel bravely came out on Monday and said that she has personally treated over 350 patients suffering from COVID-19 with Hydroxychloroquine, Zinc, and Zithromax and they have all recovered.  

The doctor also disclosed that she put herself and her staff on Hydroxychloroquine as a preventative. 

“Americans don’t have to die! America, there is a cure for COVID!” she yelled. “You don’t need a mask! There is a cure!”                 

The tech tyrants worked together to remove videos of Dr. Stella Immanuel speaking about how she has successfully treated COVID-19 patients with Hydroxychloroquine.

Google, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube censored and removed video from yesterday’s “White Coat Summit” in Washington DC.                       

The medical elites, tech giants and mainstream media do not want Americans to know there is a treatment for the coronavirus.          

A GOOD POLL FOR TRUMP PAUL MIRENGOFF

www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/08/a-good-poll-for-trump.php

The Rasmussen daily presidential tracking poll for Friday, July 31, finds that 50 percent of likely voters approve of President Trump’s job performance, while 48 percent disapprove. 39 percent strongly approve and 43 percent strongly disapprove.

Comparing Trump’s approval rating to that of Barack Obama on the corresponding date eight years ago, Rasmussen finds Trump doing slightly better. On July 31, 2012, Obama’s approval rating in the Rasmussen poll was 47 percent.

If the latest Rasmussen numbers accurately reflect public opinion, and if these numbers hold up, Trump will likely win the election, assuming voter fraud doesn’t prevent that result. At best, Joe Biden is a generic opponent for Trump. Given his age and mental condition, he may be worse than generic. Either way, there is nothing about Biden to suggest that he can defeat an incumbent president with an approval rating of 50 percent.

However, I wonder how worthwhile current polling is when it comes to predicting the state of play as we approach Election Day. It seems to me that the outcome of the election will depend on where the U.S. stands in relation to the Wuhan coronavirus in October, and what the state of our economy is at that time. It’s hard to predict either variable.

Still, I find it mildly heartening to see Trump doing well in at one least one poll, given the unhappy situation with the virus right now and given the weak economy.