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August 2020

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European Allies Fail to Support US Effort to Reinstate Sanctions on Iran ‘To side with the Russians and the Chinese on this important issue … is really dangerous’: Pompeo By Ella Kietlinska

By on August 30th, 2020

https://www.theepochtimes.com/european-allies-fail-to-support-us-effort-to-reinstate-sanctions-on-iran_3477629.html

The U.S. effort to renew the arms embargo against Iran set to expire on Oct. 18 met with opposition from its European allies, France, Germany, and the UK. However none of them supports giving Iran the opportunity to buy and sell weapons, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in an interview with Fox News.

For almost two years, the United States “has made every diplomatic effort” to renew the arms embargo against Iran. On Aug. 21, the United States officially requested that the United Nations restore UN sanctions on Iran that had been lifted by a UN Security Council Resolution adopted in 2015, which also endorsed the Iran nuclear deal.

This request was met with criticism by European signatories of the Iran nuclear deal. The E3 countries—France, Germany, and the UK—refused to support the U.S. initiative because it withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in 2018.

The EU top diplomat Josep Borrell said in a statement that the United States can’t request the snapback of sanctions for the same reason.

“I will continue to do everything possible to ensure the preservation and full implementation of the JCPOA by all. The JCPOA remains a key pillar of the global non-proliferation architecture, contributing to regional security,” Borrell said.

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Blake Sexually Assaulted Victim in May, Defied Restraining Order By Julie Kelly

By on August 30th, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/08/29/blake-sexually-assaulted-victim-in-may-defied-restraining-order/

According to news reports, Kenosha police were responding to a 911 call related to an existing warrant on Jacob Blake for felony sexual assault, trespassing, and domestic abuse before Blake was shot on August 23. The Kenosha Professional Police Association issued a statement on Friday that detailed the May assault; police filed charges against Blake in July.

Blake allegedly broke into the bedroom of the victim, an ex-girlfriend, in the early morning of May 3 and sexually assaulted her while one of her children slept beside her. The victim told police that Blake attacks her “around twice a year when he drinks heavily,” the New York Post reported August 28. A 911 call from that same residence triggered Blake’s encounter with police, which sparked looting and rioting in Kenosha, a city located on the border of Illinois and Wisconsin, that spread to other cities across the county.

Police also confirmed that Blake had a knife in his possession; video taken during the incident supports that claim. Blake resisted arrest and ignored officers’ commands before he was shot in the back. He remains in stable condition at a Milwaukee hospital.

Political leaders, celebrities, and athletes have rallied to Blake’s defense. In a video message taped at his home, Joe Biden said Blake’s shooting was another example of “systemic racism” and fretted about what Blake’s children watched unfold. “Our hearts are with his family, especially with his children,” Biden told the camera. “It’s horrible what they saw.” (Blake, 29, has six children under the age of 8.)

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Michael Moore warns of 2016 repeat: Enthusiasm for Trump ‘OFF THE CHARTS’ By Joe Concha

By on August 30th, 2020

https://thehill.com/homenews/media/514247-michael-moore-warns-of-2016-repeat-enthusiasm-for-trump-off-the-charts

Filmmaker Michael Moore warned Democrats that President Trump appears to have momentum behind his reelection campaign in key battleground states, with the progressive activist saying enthusiasm for Trump is “OFF THE CHARTS” compared with Democratic nominee Joe Biden.

Moore pointed to polling in battleground states such as Minnesota and Michigan in making the case that Trump was running alongside or ahead of Biden in key areas, setting himself up for another potential upset in November.

“Are you ready for a Trump victory? Are you mentally prepared to be outsmarted by Trump again? Do you find comfort in your certainty that there is no way Trump can win? Are you content with the trust you’ve placed in the DNC [Democratic National Committee] to pull this off?” Moore wrote in a Facebook post on Friday.

“I’m warning you almost 10 weeks in advance. The enthusiasm level for the 60 million in Trump’s base is OFF THE CHARTS! For Joe, not so much,” he added. “Don’t leave it to the Democrats to get rid of Trump. YOU have to get rid of Trump. WE have to wake up every day for the next 67 days and make sure each of us are going to get a hundred people out to vote. ACT NOW!”

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U.S. Tech Stocks Are Now Worth More Than $9 Trillion, Eclipsing The Entire European Stock Market by Sergei Klebnikov

By on August 30th, 2020

https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2020/08/28/us-tech-stocks-are-n

U.S. tech stocks have been pushing the stock market to record highs, and now the sector has now become more valuable than the entire European stock market for the first time in history, according to the latest research from Bank of America.

KEY FACTS

The bank said in a note that the total market capitalization of U.S. tech stocks reached $9.1 trillion, eclipsing that of the entire European market—including the UK and Switzerland, which is now valued at $8.9 trillion.

In 2007, by comparison, the European market was four times the size of the U.S. tech sector, the firm said.

The news comes as no surprise as big tech names continue to play a large role in leading the market to new record highs: The S&P 500 has rebounded over 55% from its low point in March.

But the growth has also led to rising concerns about the U.S. stock market becoming increasingly concentrated in a handful of megacap tech stocks.

The five biggest companies—Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Google-parent Alphabet and Facebook—account for 23.8% of the S&P 500, according to Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at S&P Dow Jones Indices. 

KEY FACTS

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CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

New Study Argues COVID Herd Immunity May Have Already Been Reached in Some Regions of US By Jack Davis

By on August 30th, 2020

https://www.westernjournal.com/new-study-argues-covid-herd-immunity-may-alread

A new study that pushes back against some accepted notions of how the coronavirus is transmitted argues that herd immunity might already have been reached in some parts of the nation.

The study, “Persistent heterogeneity not short-term overdispersion determines herd immunity to COVID-19,” was published Aug. 10 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

It pointed out that current infection models assume there are so-called “super-spreaders,” which are a small number of individuals who, because of their social activity, pass the virus along to large numbers of other people.

In this model, everyone everywhere has an equal chance of infection.

Writing at Reason, Ronald Bailey offered an interpretation of what the study thinks is happening instead.

Bailey wrote that the researchers define a concept they call heterogeneity “as the biological and social susceptibility of individual members of the population to COVID-19 viral infection.”

The study relies on what is called “biological heterogeneity,” which includes “the strength of immune responses, genetics, age, and comorbidities,” and social heterogeneity, which measures close contacts among individuals, according to Reason.

“Taking the effects of biological and social heterogeneity on COVID-19 transmissibility, the researchers calculate that the herd immunity threshold is likely somewhere between 20 and 30 percent of the population,” Bailey wrote.

The researchers then conducted a modeling exercise of what might happen this fall, which has been cited as a time when a feared second wave of coronavirus infections might take place.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Sydney Williams- Technology and Politics

By on August 30th, 2020

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

A friend recently sent an e-mail in which he pointed out that Apple had installed, without my knowledge, a COVID-19 sensor app on my iPhone. The app notifies me if I’ve been near someone that has been reported as having COVID-19. My iPhone already knows where I am. Now it will know with whom I meet and speak. How soon before it knows if I am with a Communist, a neo-Nazi or a supporter of Trump?  At five months shy of eighty, the old man in me says it is good for my phone to know where I am. On the other hand, the libertarian in me says, whoa! Do I really want to live in a society where government, or some organization, tracks my every move and knows with whom I associate?

We live in an extraordinary time, where advances in technology outpace our ability to understand their consequences. Absent a return to a new Dark Age, technological advances will persist. It is the potential to manipulate thoughts and actions that should concern us. “Communism is a monopolistic system, economically and politically. The system suppresses individual initiative, and the 21st Century is all about individualism and freedom. The development of technology supported those directions.” So spoke Lech Walesa in a 2002 interview with Julia Scheeres in a June 2002 interview for Wired. Eighteen years later, technology has advanced beyond what most people thought possible twenty years ago. Today, our every movements can be monitored. Individual freedom has bowed to the happiness of security and the collective promise of Socialism. Over seventy years ago, George Orwell saw this coming: “The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better.”

Dystopian novels, from H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, George Orwell’s 1984, to Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 have shown how a repressive society can be propagandized a utopian future. It is the promise of Socialism, Communism and Nazism, where ends justify means. In words that provide an eerie precursor to the cancel culture that led to the New York Times 1619 Project, George Orwell, in 1949, wrote in his novel 1984: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Portrait Of The Biden Voter Francis Menton

By on August 30th, 2020

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-8-29-portrait-of-the-biden-voter

Over at Instapundit, Professor Glenn Reynolds is often the master of the pithy phrase that captures the essence of the political moment. Yesterday Reynolds wrote that, while the Democrats are trying to make everything in this election (and in life) about race, “Trump’s making clear that it’s about people who are constructive, productive, and generally happy, vs. people who are destructive, parasitic, and generally miserable, and that that difference transcends things like race.”

Have things really gotten so bad that the entire Democrat/Biden campaign has become the coalition of the “destructive, parasitic, and generally miserable”? Well, you can start with the protesters/rioters/looters/arsonists who have been endlessly destroying businesses and neighborhoods in major Democrat-run cities for the past three months. Yes, those people are “destructive, parasitic, and generally miserable”; and of course, every one of them intends to vote for Biden. And if you think that the conduct and attitudes of those people are somehow not representative of the Democrat/Biden coalition, ask yourself who in that coalition has been willing to come forth to strongly condemn them. The answer is no one.

But for today, let’s move beyond the riots and violence that have been dominating the news cycle, and look at what’s going on in the regular run-of-the-mill precincts of progressive/Democrat Biden-voting monoculture — places like woke corporations, the art world, and academia.

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China’s Brand of Communism . By Peter Berkowitz

By on August 30th, 2020

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/08/30/chinas_brand_of_communism.html

Communism is back in the news. That’s in part because the Trump administration has made a national priority of informing the public about the China challenge. Earlier this summer four senior officials — National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien, FBI Director Christopher Wray, Attorney General William Barr, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo — gave a series of speeches highlighting the communist roots of China’s autocratic conduct and of its ambitions to reconfigure world order.

Those speeches, however, did not include any scoops. They addressed a widely neglected — and sometimes aggressively downplayed — development stretching across the better part of a decade. Since his accession in 2012 to the position of general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Xi Jinping has ruled China with dictatorial powers while consistently reaffirming the centrality of communism to the CCP’s quest to transform China into the world’s most powerful and influential nation.

According to the “South China Morning Post,” Xi wrote in an article published this month that “The foundation of China’s political economy can only be a Marxist political economy, and not be based on other economic theories.” Therefore, “The dominant position of public ownership cannot be shaken, and the leading role of the state-owned economy cannot be shaken.” 

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The free world’s craven fifth column Britain’s unholy alliance over the world’s most dangerous terrorist state Melanie Phillips

By on August 30th, 2020

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/

When Britain’s foreign Secretary Dominic Raab visited Jerusalem last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly chewed his ear off.

Small wonder. It’s hard to exaggerate the perfidy, cynicism and head-in-the-sand cowardice currently being displayed by Britain, along with France and Germany, over Iran.

Instead of joining forces with those trying to neutralise the growing threat from the Iranian regime, Britain and these two other key European powers are actually acting in concert with the world’s twin empires of evil, Russia and China, in shoring up this terrorist rogue state.

Earlier this month, the United States proposed at the UN Security Council to extend the Iran arms embargo, which is due to expire on October 18.

This was strongly supported by the Gulf states, which said that Iran has continued to supply conventional weapons to terrorists and separatists in the region and to intervene militarily in neighbouring countries.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

US election 2020: Trump handed huge boost as Biden makes major mistake – Exclusive poll

By on August 30th, 2020

https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1329041/US-election-2020-donald-trump-joe-biden-latest-polling

DONALD TRUMP is on course for a clear victory in the US Presidential election after he opened up a three point lead over Joe Biden in an exclusive poll for the Sunday Express.

According to the latest monthly Democracy Institute (DI)/ Sunday Express poll President Trump has 48 percent of the popular support over former Vice President Biden’s 45 percent.

In the key swing states the gap is even bigger with 49 percent for Trump to 42 percent for Biden giving the incumbent US President an almost unassailable seven point lead.

Since the DI poll in August – a crucial month which saw the Democrat and Republican conventions – the President has gained a point in the swing states while his opponent has lost a point.

Significantly, the latest poll shows that 21 percent were positively influenced to vote Trump after the Republican convention but a negligible eight percent were inspired to vote Biden after the Democrat convention.

Trump is set to win in Minnesota 48 to 45, Florida 47 to 44 and New Hampshire, where he just held a major rally, 47 to 43. 

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