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July 2020

The “Maximum Pressure” on Iran’s Regime by Majid Rafizadeh

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.

The Spreading Scourge of Illusory Superiority by Lawrence Kadish

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16267/illusory-superiority

Illusory Superiority is a quality that now afflicts many in public policy who think they know most things better than the mayor, the governor, or the president.

This is an army of professional “seldom right – but never in doubt” individuals who seem to be singularly unphased by their ability to get so much so wrong.

If the goal of the newspaper is brainwashing and indoctrination, like Russia’s Pravda, its executives, of course, are perfectly right to harness thought; but that is a business decision about profits and market share. It should not be confused with journalism.

Those in politics, whether staff or politicians, possessed of illusory superiority may well bring down the republic. Quite a few seem convinced that by losing the executive branch, the House and the Senate, they are somehow saving the country rather than actually pulling the grenade-pin that will bring about the collapse of the nation’s economy, free-speech, and our very future.

We all know someone whose favorite pastime seems to be knowing something about everything better than anyone.

You know.

The one who lamented to a friend, “I told my husband he should not have sold that stock!”

“Well,” was the response, “Then maybe, you would like to invest some of your own money yourself?”

That was, apparently, not the right answer. Still, that sardonic exchange, labeled, “illusory superiority,” and once confined to inconsequential conversation, has now seeped into our political world, harming the ability to voice opinions, destroying open campus debate, and creating an environment that despite the opinion of the voters, allows government staff to view itself as far smarter than the person elected to office.

Trump’s Meeting With AMLO Shows Critics Were Wrong About US-Mexico Ties Ana Quintana

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.”

DOJ Indicts Two Chinese Suspects for Hacking U.S. Firms, Stealing Trade Secrets and Coronavirus Research By Zachary Evans

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.

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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.”

Church Attacks Explode With ‘an Unbridled, Roaring Fury’ Tony Perkins

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.

America Is Fast Becoming a Woke Theocracy- Ben Weingarten

https://www.newsweek.com/america-fast-becoming-woke-theocracy-opinion-1518938

Wokeism is fast becoming the new state religion.

Should it overtake our government, in making identity politics paramount it will unmake any semblance of a unifying American identity.

In so doing, it will serve as the ultimate tool of cynical, radically leftist power-grabbers, who will be dividing and conquering under the guise of a fraudulent virtue, justice and morality.

The Woke’s core views have been bubbling up from elite classrooms to the commanding heights of society for decades. The idea that America is a deplorable, irredeemable nation, marked by and rooted in racism, sexism, imperialism and the like, is not new. Nor is the idea that racism, and its manifestations, beginning with slavery, and then pervading every other part of our “system,” drives all disparities in society—disparities that must be “fixed” with reverse racism.

What is different is that now such views have been legitimated by the authorities and mainstreamed in our culture. If you dare to challenge them, you are liable to end up excommunicated from American life—canceled. After all, dissenting from the Woke orthodoxy makes you a racist.

Consider some of the signs that indicate the fast-accelerating ascent of Wokeism.

Michigan School Fires Popular Teacher For Saying ‘Trump Is Our President’ Chrissy Clark 

https://freebeacon.com/campus/mi-school-fires-popular-teacher-for-saying-trump-is-our-president/

Parents, students praise ‘apolitical,’ ‘supportive’ teacher

A Michigan school district fired a popular high school teacher and coach after he pointed out that “Trump is our president” on social media.

Varsity baseball coach and social studies teacher Justin Kucera said Walled Lake school district officials hauled him into a closed-door meeting after he indicated his support for President Trump’s speech to reopen schools. He told the Washington Free Beacon the Walled Lake Western principal and district superintendent gave him an ultimatum: be fired or resign.

“I was required to meet with [human resources], the superintendent, and my principal [on July 10]. They initially took my statement on why I tweeted those tweets and they told me they would have a decision about my future employment in the upcoming days. When they completed the meeting, I was told I had the option to either be fired or resign.” Kucera said.

Neither the school district nor the principal responded to requests for comment.

GLAZOV GANG: FARRAKHAN’S BETRAYAL OF BLACK SLAVES

https://jamieglazov.com/2020/07/21/glazov-gang-farrakhans-betrayal-of-black-slaves/

This new Glazov Gang episode features Dr. Charles Jacobs, the president of Americans for Peace and Tolerance.

Ruthie Blum: In defense of Sebastian Gorka

https://www.jns.org/opinion/in-defense-of-sebastian-gorka/

The real root of the left’s antipathy towards him is his stance on radical Islamism, support for Israel and loyalty to Trump.

As soon as the White House announced last week that U.S. President Donald Trump was planning to appoint Sebastian Gorka to the National Security Education Board, the anti-“Make America Great Again” (MAGA) chorus pounced on the opportunity to renew its smear campaign against the former West Wing staffer.

The progressive periodical, The Forward, for example, promptly dusted off an old “award-winning investigative report” on Gorka—author, most recently, of The War for America’s Soul—ostensibly exposing a dark past and dubious present.

The left-wing Jewish newspaper gleefully reiterated its previous false accusation that Gorka—a naturalized American, born and raised in Britain, where his parents had fled to escape Communist Hungary—swore a “lifelong allegiance to a Hungarian neo-Nazi group.”

The group in question is Vitézi Rend (Order of Vitéz), a nationalist organization that expressed “pride” in Gorka’s having worn its badge, tunic and ring at Trump’s inauguration in January 2017.

While it’s true that Gorka sported these symbols, he did so in honor of his father, Paul Gorka, who was granted the Hungarian order of merit in 1979 for his bravery in resisting the Communist dictatorship that followed the fascists.

The merit was established in 1920 by Miklós Horthy. Horthy, the wartime Hungarian regent accused of not doing enough to prevent the subsequent Nazi deportation of Jews during World War II—and whose own son was kidnapped by Nazi commandos—was eventually replaced by the fascist Arrow-Cross Regime, allied to Adolf Hitler.

Fear and COVID-19 by Sydney Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Fear is an elemental emotion. It can have positive attributes. In combat, fear is a governor on impulse. Fear of wild animals and other tribes was a factor in early man’s forming of communities. It is ubiquitous. We have fears of darkness and loneliness, of failure or rejection, of making wrong decisions. We fear becoming ill or being a burden to loved ones. Fear, we were told by Bertrand Russell, is the main source of superstition. Fear of sorcery was behind the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, which saw fourteen women and five men hung. It descends from ignorance, which wrote Herman Melville in Moby Dick, “is the parent of fear.” Unwarranted fear prevents us from expanding our horizons and improving our lives.  

Unscrupulous politicians use fear to seek and hold power. Tyrant-like, they tell us what cannot be done. Classical liberals, like the Founding Fathers, tell us what rights we have – what can be done. With COVID-19, fear has been used for political gain. By the end of 2019, President Trump’s policies had accelerated economic growth. They had provided the lowest unemployment on record, including Black unemployment. Increases in wages for low-income workers outpaced pay rises for upper-income workers. Amir Taheri, the Iranian-born, Europe-based author, wrote: “Prior to the coronavirus crisis, his [Trump’s] administration had one of the best records in job creation and the reduction of poverty among black Americans.” Since the economy is the single most important aspect in a Presidential election, Mr. Trump’s glidepath to re-election, while by no means assured, appeared to have few – and manageable – obstacles.

The arrival of COVID-19 and the resulting shut-down of schools, colleges and the economy changed election dynamics. There is no question that COVID-19 was (and is) a serious health concern, particularly for the elderly and especially for those with comorbidities. Nevertheless, fear was the instrument employed by politicians of both parties. While younger people could (and do) contact the disease, and potentially contaminate riskier segments of the population, the risk to their health was not much worse than that of a bad case of the flu. We will never know what death counts would have been had there been no early shutdowns, but we do know the death tolls from the flu pandemics of 1917-19, 1957-58 and 1968, when there was no shuttering of the economy or schools. Adjusted for changes in population, death rates, with the exception of 1917-1919, were worse during the previous pandemics. In fact, in speaking to friends with whom I was at school in 1957-58 not one had any memory of the flu that year. Yet it killed 116,000 Americans when the population was about one half of what it is today.