RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/it-looks-like-the-czech-republic-might-get-a-second-amendment/

Well, sort of.

Following the Velvet Revolution, the newly formed Czech Republic passed a law legalizing the purchase of a firearm for citizens without criminal records. Although the former Czechoslovakia had a rich history of firearm production, under fascism and Communism personal ownership was largely forbidden.

Once the Czechs joined the European Union in 2004, the nation was bound to the EU’s stringent rules governing gun ownership. After the Charlie Hebdo terror attack in 2015, the first inclination of the EU was to make it even more difficult for citizens to defend themselves. The resulting European Firearms Directive placed new constraints — including an effective ban on most semi-automatic rifles — on member states, which were all expected to comply by 2019.

The only country to challenge the edict was the Czech Republic. And last year, it lost a case before the European Court of Justice. But ever since the European Firearms Directive passed, conservatives have been attempting to add the right to bear arms as one of the “fundamental human rights and freedoms.” It now looks like it may happen.

A few years ago, the amendment passed through the lower house of the Czech parliament but was stopped in the upper house. The proposed language read as so: “The right to defend one’s own life or the life of another person with a weapon is guaranteed under the conditions laid down by law.”

Since then, the center-right Civic Democratic Party has won a majority in the Czech Senate. And this week, the Czech government unexpectedly announced it would endorse the plan to add the language. The amendment now needs a 60 percent supermajority in both chambers to become — somewhat appropriately — only the second amendment to the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16262/iran-buclear-bomb-sprint

It cannot… be a surprise that Iran is still sprinting toward deliverable nuclear weapons with the very uranium enrichment technology permitted by the 2015 agreement. While the U.S. Senate was told the deal would halt Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weaponry, the deal only camouflaged the mullahs’ ambitions to acquire it.

Worse, when the deal’s provisions were to sunset this decade, Iran would have been free to acquire full nuclear capability without pretending it was not.

China is buying time for Iran. Perhaps China believes that its presence in the region will persuade the United States to show “restraint.” The United States should not take the bait.

The prospects ahead are possibly dark. A change in US administration may likely see a return to the JCPOA, an end to sanctions and maximum pressure, and an Iranian sense of having won a major struggle with the “Great Satan.” That is not a prospect America’s allies want to accept. The United States should not risk waiting, either.

In 2013, Danny Danon, Israel’s Deputy Defense Minister, warned that Iran was speedily moving to develop advanced centrifuges that will enable it to enrich uranium needed for nuclear weapons within one month. “We have made it crystal clear ,” Danon said, “Israel will not stand by and watch Iran develop weaponry that will put us, the entire Middle East and eventually the world, under an Iranian umbrella of terror.”

This concern was shared by the United States and thus, in 2015, a nuclear agreement — the Joint Comprehensive Program of Action (JCPOA) — was made between the United States, along with Russia, China, France, Great Britain and Germany, and supposedly Iran, which never signed the deal. Ostensibly Iran would give up its pursuit of nuclear weapons and the U.S. would withdraw its economic sanctions.

Iran, of course, had no intention of giving up its pursuit of nuclear weapons; contrary to what JCPOA supporters claimed, the Iranians, even under the JCPOA deal, could continue pursuing their quest for nuclear capability. This “loophole” was clear especially after it was revealed the Obama administration had conceded that Iran had a right to enrich uranium, which is not required for “peaceful” nuclear energy.

https://www.nysun.com/foreign/hopes-are-rising-for-no-deal-brexit-as-europe/91198/

With weeks before the United Kingdom meets its self-imposed deadline to reach a midsummer trade deal with the European Union, Britain is on course for a “clean break” Brexit. “UK Close to Abandoning Brexit-EU Deal, Will Likely Leave Bloc Fully in December,” booms Breitbart London. “No deal Brexit likely,” begins a headline in the Express. “EU can’t even agree with themselves!” concludes a headline in the EuroWeekly.

It’s unlikely, though, that purist Brexiteers will be dancing in the streets just yet — never mind that government restrictions to prevent spreading the coronavirus curtail such public celebrations. Once bitten, twice shy. Prime Minister Theresa May and her supplicatory approach to Brussels disabused freedom-loving Conservatives that their party was with them. Even Boris Johnson, with better bonafides than Mrs. May on the Brexit file, has been known to wobble on the imperative of independence.

Even now, with Brexit the law of the land, our breath is bated. Britain, after all, remains under EU jurisdiction until the end of the year — paying membership dues and subject to the European Court of Justice until either a UK-EU trade deal is inked or the UK severs all links and trades with the EU according to World Trade Organization rules.

Still, there is light at the end of the tunnel. While the British negotiating team assembled following the 2016 referendum had a chequered reputation (seemingly taking its orders from Brussels and laying down the law to London), the current contingent is less in thrall to EU bureaucrats. Thus the chances are waxing for a “clean break.”

UK negotiator Oliver Lewis refuses to be played and is not afraid to speak out for his country’s sovereign rights, several times clashing with his EU counterpart, Michel Barnier. Likewise, Dominic Cummings, the PM’s principal advisor deep in Downing Street, cannot be cowed. At least not on the Brexit file. Mr. Cummings was a chief strategist for the successful “Vote Leave” campaign and has lost none of his combative spirit.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/07/chinese-communist-party-xinjiang-coverup/

S hocking drone video footage of blindfolded Uighur prisoners being herded onto trains went viral this past week. The clip, which originally surfaced in September 2019 and which analysts confirmed was filmed in China’s Xinjiang region, has elicited comparisons to the Holocaust and calls to boycott the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. Similarly eerie incidents abound. On July 1, 2020, U.S. customs agents seized a 13-ton shipment of beauty products made of human hair that originated in Xinjiang. As evidence of the Chinese Communist Party’s conduct increasingly seems to meet the criteria for genocide set out in the Genocide Convention, CCP officials have attempted to deny clear-cut evidence, such as this video, in one case going as far as threatening to sue researchers. However, in an international environment increasingly wary of Beijing’s ambitions, this is a self-defeating strategy that has only galvanized international action.

While the U.S. government has spoken out against the “political re-education” camps in Xinjiang for a couple of years — imposing some visa restrictions in 2019 — and although knowledge of the camps has been commonplace outside of China for three years, minimal concrete action followed. But the tide started to shift this summer, as Beijing subjected itself to increased scrutiny with an increasingly assertive coronavirus-era grand strategy. The U.N.’s human-rights mechanisms started to turn its attention to China — a group of independent experts penned a letter calling for “renewed attention” to be directed to the situation in Xinjiang. A few days later, a top China scholar published a groundbreaking report showing that Uighur birthrates have plummeted in the past year — the result of government policy of forcibly administering birth control to Uighur women, in addition to injecting some with unknown substances that seem to have resulted in sterilization. Many observers have already applied the term “cultural genocide” to the situation in Xinjiang, but the June report added heft to the case for dropping that qualifier. The images circulating this week will add momentum to that push.

Earlier this month, the Trump administration announced a new set of sanctions on four CCP officials for their involvement in the Xinjiang human-rights abuses, an overdue move that had been delayed by trade negotiations. The Commerce Department followed that on Monday with sanctions on eleven companies for involvement in forced-labor supply chains. Meanwhile, an international coalition of legislators has vowed to push for action on Xinjiang, and just this past weekend, U.K. foreign minister Dominic Raab accused Beijing of “gross and egregious” human-rights abuses during a television interview. Raab’s comments follow a slate of other actions by the British government in a new, hawkish turn on its China relations. While Raab stopped short of a genocide accusation, these actions together mark a significant change in policy. No doubt, the U.K.’s souring attitudes toward Beijing are the result of the sharp downturn in China’s relations with liberal democracies that has been accelerated by the coronavirus, but the startling images out of Xinjiang have also created more public awareness and pressure to act.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16261/iran-maximum-pressure

For almost four decades, Iran’s regime has been squandering the nation’s resources on terror and militia groups… It is estimated that the regime has spent more than $100 billion on its nuclear program.

Many employees of the government, including coal workers and railroad workers, have been protesting unpaid wages and salaries. One protester told Iran News Wire, “I wish I would get COVID-19. Many of us do. Committing suicide is hard but we wish for death every day. What we have is not a life.”

Some of Iran’s authorities have publicly announced that they also do not have money to pay their mercenaries abroad.

Iran’s mullahs have no one to blame but themselves for the country’s drastic economic situation. They simply need to start prioritizing their own people over sponsoring and funding terror and militia groups across the region.

The Iranian regime is facing an unprecedented level of pressure, which, if it continues, can threaten the ruling mullahs’ hold on power. Iran’s currency, the rial, which has been in free fall in the last few weeks, has plunged to a record low. As of July 18, 2020, a US dollar is now worth approximately 250,000 rials. Before the current US administration imposed a “maximum pressure” policy against Tehran, a US dollar had equaled nearly 30,000 rials.

People, as they see the value of their money depreciating by almost ten-fold, have been rushing to get foreign currency. Last month, Iran’s oil exports also sank to a record low. Three years ago, Iran was exporting roughly 2.5 million barrels of oil a day. According to the latest reports, Iran’s oil export is now around 70,000 barrels a day — a reduction of nearly 97%. The country’s budget heavily relies on selling oil.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2020/07/20/trumps-meeting-with-lopez-obrador-shows

President Donald Trump hosted his Mexican counterpart at the White House on July 8 to celebrate the entry into force of the new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement trade pact.

The visit was the first time the two leaders met in person and was also the first international trip by Mexican President Andres Manuel López Obrador, commonly referred to as AMLO, since taking office in December 2018.

AMLO started the day by paying his respects at the Lincoln Memorial. The Mexican delegation then visited the memorial to Mexican hero and former President Benito Juarez.

Trump and AMLO met that afternoon and later that evening, and both leaders were joined by leading private sector executives for a White House dinner.

Two regimes are fighting an ideological war in America today. But what side are you on? And how can you sharpen up on how to defend your position? Learn more now >>

According to both the U.S. and Mexican governments, the visit was a resounding success.

A helpful indicator of a successful Trump meeting is the excessive media coverage predicting the apocalypse and then limited follow-up when it goes well. Over the past three years, analysts repeatedly spun a false narrative that Trump was “destroying three decades of hard work with Mexico.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/doj-indicts-two-chinese-suspects-for-hacking-u-s-firms-stealing-trade-secrets-and-coronavirus-research/

The Justice Department on Tuesday indicted two Chinese nationals who are suspected of hacking numerous U.S. firms to steal trade secrets and coronavirus research.

The Trump administration warned in May that China was attempting to steal or set back American research on a coronavirus vaccine. The new indictment alleges that one of the two suspects began searching for vulnerabilities at a Maryland-based healthcare company on January 27 of this year, days before the company announced it had begun research on a vaccine.

The suspects, Li Xiaoyu and Dong Jiazhi, are believed to reside in China.

“Li and Dong, former classmates at an electrical engineering college in Chengdu, China, used their technical training to hack the computer networks of a wide variety of victims” since at least 2009, the indictment states. The victims include firms focused on “high tech manufacturing; civil, industrial, and medical device engineering; business, educational, and gaming software development; solar energy; and pharmaceuticals.”

The hackers purportedly worked in some cases for their own profit, stealing “hundreds of millions of dollars in trade secrets,” while in others they were employed by China’s Ministry of State Security.

“China has now taken its place, alongside Russia, Iran and North Korea, in that shameful club of nations that provide a safe haven for cyber criminals in exchange for those criminals being ‘on call’ to work for the benefit of the state,” DOJ National Security Division head John Demers said in a statement.

4

Following Tuesday’s indictment, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) introduced a bill that would allow the president to impose sanctions on foreign entities involved in hacking of American companies.

“We refuse to allow our innovation to be exploited by China, Russia, or any other hackers,” McCarthy said in a statement. “We are going to protect the cure from falling into the wrong hands so that no one can use it as leverage for their own malicious ends.”

https://www.dailysignal.com/2020/07/21/church-attacks-explode-with-an-unbridled-

One of the last times people saw flames in France’s Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul church was during the Allied bombing in 1944. What’s happening now isn’t World War III, but it certainly feels like it, as things get increasingly violent on every continent.

While believers around the world pray for an end to the chaos, arsonists, knife-wielders, and vandals are taking the battle to them.

After a string of attacks rocked U.S. churches last week, Americans gathered this Sunday with the hope that things might finally calm down. They didn’t. If anything, the insurgents expanded their campaign to the global scene.

Arson in Paris, excrement along church walls in southern France, statues defaced in Calgary, it all points to a dangerous turning point in this mob mentality.

Two regimes are fighting an ideological war in America today. But what side are you on? And how can you sharpen up on how to defend your position? Learn more now >>

“I don’t like to use the word too lightly,” Eric Metaxas said, “but there’s something satanic about it.”

Here at home, churches from Queens to Chattanooga fell victim to the forces of anarchism and anti-Americanism gripping this country since George Floyd’s death.

In New Haven, Connecticut, parishioners of St. Joseph’s Church woke up to satanic symbols sprayed across the doors. “It was certainly shocking and disturbing,” the Rev. John Paul Walker told reporters.

But even that was minor compared to what happened at Virginia’s Grace Covenant Church right outside of Washington, D.C., where a man walked into a Bible study Saturday and viciously stabbed the pastor leading it.