BOOKS, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

An American’s Odyssey in Soviet Russia: Will We Heed His Warning? By Eileen F. Toplansky

Posted By on July 15th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/07/an_americans_odyssey_in_soviet_russia_will_we_heed_his_warning.html

After I wrote the article titled “The Soviet Plan for ‘Ideological Subversion’ Describes Our Current Turmoil,” Charles Cole, author of In Russian Wonderland: An American’s Odyssey in Soviet Russia, contacted me.  His memoir recounts his time in 1972 as a Russian-speaking American “guide” in various Soviet cities where the “Research and Development in the USA” exhibit was on display. 

He chronicles the lives of average Soviet citizens at that period and describes how people lived under the tyranny of an omnipotent government.  He is exhorting Americans to perceive the lessons of the failed communist experience.  Like others who have reviewed the book, I was struck by the following anecdote, where an elderly man gave Cole a bag of ten freshly picked apples.  At the bottom of the bag, Cole found a piece of paper folded into a tiny cube. It read,  “We have a totalitarian regime. If we had a democratic republic, we would have progressed further and achieved more.  Nowadays the psychiatric hospitals are filled with dissidents[.]  You should take pride in having such a democratic country and not be overly tolerant in the face of those who have been blinded and deceived by propaganda.”

Also illuminating is the story that Cole recounts of when he and his fellow guides went to dinner.  They were approached by English-speaking black men from Africa.  Cole asked if their country sent a lot of exchange students to Moscow.

‘Oh, yes,’ replied one, ‘we send all of them here to the Soviet Union.’ He explained why: ‘We used to send quite a few of our students to Princeton, Columbia, and Berkeley, but they all came back Marxists. Now we send them here, and after three or four years in the USSR, they all return dedicated anti-communists.’

It’s a lesson that American parents still haven’t learned. They send their kids to Princeton, Columbia, Berkeley, and other universities, and they come back as radical leftists, and, yes, some of them flat-out Marxists.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

How To Create A Pandemic Panic…And Keep It Going

Posted By on July 15th, 2020

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/07/15/covid-19-shows-how-to-create-a-pandemic-panicand-keep-it-going/

This week, California, which has a death rate that is less than half the national average, is rolling back its reopening amid an increase in coronavirus cases. Elsewhere, we’re awash in stories about how states have reopened “too soon.” Why the continued panic when we know that the disease is far less lethal than originally feared?

If nothing else, the coronavirus pandemic is a textbook example of how to create fear and anxiety that is out of proportion to the threat, and spur panic-induced policies that needlessly kill people (like seniors in New York nursing homes). It also demonstrates how to keep the panic going, even as evidence piles up that the initial fears were wildly exaggerated.

Before anyone accuses us of being indifferent to COVID-19 deaths, or of being conspiracy mongers, we feel the need to point out that we aren’t saying that the coronavirus isn’t a serious public health threat. It obviously is. The question is whether the risk is being exaggerated and whether public policies enacted in the wake of it are necessary or effective.

Here are five steps that the got the coronavirus panic started and why it continues to this day.

1. Wildly exaggerate the deadliness of the disease. Most perceptions of the coronavirus were formed when the World Health Organization announced that the fatality rate was above 3%. If true, there would be millions of people dead. But it wasn’t even close to accurate. Based on ever greater amounts of data, we know that that the death rate is more like a bad flu season than the plague. Then there was the report from the Imperial College of London in March that claimed that even with draconian lockdowns in place, a million people in the U.S. would die from the coronavirus. That model has since been debunked, but the combination of the two extremely dire forecasts set the public’s perception of the disease and acceptance of draconian control measures.

2. Overcount deaths and undercount cases. These perceptions have continued because of the way cases and deaths are counted. On the one hand, the number of “confirmed” cases is a fraction of the actual number of people who’ve contracted the disease. That’s because many have symptoms that are minor or nonexistent, and so they never bother to get tested. In fact, one reason for the increase in “confirmed” cases is the fact that testing is more routine, even for those who are asymptomatic.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Will All District Attorneys Now Be Empowered to Investigate All Future Presidents? by Alan M. Dershowitz

Posted By on July 15th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16239/district-attorneys-investigate-presidents

It should come as no surprise, therefore, that presidents are exempted from certain laws that are applicable to the rest of us. They cannot be prosecuted while serving in office. That, too, is the law.

The argument against allowing state prosecutors to rummage through a sitting president’s papers and documents is that there is no limiting principle…. A president who received subpoenas from hundreds or thousands of local jurisdictions could become overwhelmed by the task of assisting his lawyers in thoroughly vetting them for claims of privilege. This is not a fanciful prospect in our current age in which the criminal justice system has been weaponized by both parties seeking partisan advantage.

So the Supreme Court’s decision…. may also constitute a setback for the power of the presidency and our system of separation of powers and federalism.

Despite the unanimity of the justices, I think the case was wrongly decided. If a sitting president cannot constitutionally be tried for a crime, it should follow that he should not be compelled to be a defendant in a civil case, since civil cases can be brought by anybody for nearly anything. I think the recent case was wrongly decided as well. No sitting president should be burdened by an unlimited number of subpoenas from an unlimited number of local district attorneys, at least some of whom may be motivated by partisan or self-serving considerations.

It is a truism that no person is above the law, but under our Constitution certain office holders are exempt from certain laws. That does not place them above the law. That is the law.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Chinese Military Exercises Threaten to Invade Taiwan by Lawrence A. Franklin

Posted By on July 15th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16240/china-exercises-taiwan-invasion

China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is currently staging a military exercise across from the Taiwan Strait that looks as if it plans to culminate in an amphibious assault on an island in the South China Sea.

China also doubtless took stock of the free world’s obliging passivity the past few weeks as Beijing seized Hong Kong. Not one country lifted a finger to stop them. The move is in violation of China’s 1997 Joint Declaration with the United Kingdom to maintain “one country, two systems” until 2047.

China’s Communist leaders should not miscalculate that the US is too immersed in domestic distractions to defend Taiwan militarily against any possible plans to threaten the island’s sovereignty.

China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is currently staging a military exercise across from the Taiwan Strait that looks as if it plans to culminate in an amphibious assault on an island in the South China Sea. Taiwan’s military — evidently fearing, with good reason, that the exercise may be a cover for an actual Chinese plan to seize another island in the region, Pratas (Dongsha), claimed by both the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Taiwan — has declared a state of emergency. The PLA exercise also looks as if it is preparing China’s air, naval and marine assets required for an invasion of Taiwan.

In 1996, China initiated a similar crisis in the Taiwan Strait by staging an amphibious assault military exercise. After President Bill Clinton deployed two powerful US aircraft carrier-led battle groups, China discontinued its aggressive posture toward Taiwan. Strategic analysts judged that the Chinese decision was the fruit of a realistic assessment that it could not overcome the US ability to defend Taiwan.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), under current Chairman Xi Jinping, appears to be threatening war in a renewed effort to bring Taiwan under Communist Chinese control. The CCP considers Taiwan to be a Chinese province, an integral part of the mainland that ultimately must rejoin it, and the only remaining part of China yet to be returned after the Communists defeated the Nationalists in 1949. For China, it is unfinished business from 70 years ago. China has isolated Taiwan by requiring that all countries who want to have normal diplomatic ties with China must have no state-to-state links with Taiwan. Although the US consents to this diplomatic requirement, it also continues to provide Taiwan with weapon systems, enabling the island to defend itself against any Chinese invasion. US President Donald J. Trump recently authorized the latest sale of US weapons — including advanced heavy torpedoes — to Taiwan. Trump, earlier in his tenure, also approved the sale of anti-aircraft Stinger missiles, Abrams tanks, and F-16 fighter jets.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran Jails Christians, Then Holds Ceremony for Book on U.S. ‘Islamophobia’ The mullahs know their American Leftist friends will neither notice nor care about the hypocrisy. Robert Spencer

Posted By on July 15th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/iran-jails-christians-then-holds

“War is deceit,” according to a statement attributed to Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, and the leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran were taking notes. After stepping up the persecution of Christians and even carrying out raids and arrests against them, Iranian authorities paused long enough to unveil, with great fanfare, a “scholarly” book about “Islamophobia” in the United States. Yes, that’s the real problem – and the American establishment media will nod along in agreement.

Evangelical Focus reported Tuesday that agents of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) “arrested at least twelve Christians, in a coordinated operation that took place in three different cities. The first arrest took place on 30 June, in Tehran, when ten intelligence agents raided the home of a Christian convert where there were around 30 Christians gathered.”

The agents recorded that raid, but at a certain point they turned off their cameras and began abusing the Christians, who were finally handcuffed, blindfolded, and taken away in a van with blacked-out windows. They were taken to their homes, where the IRGC agents searched for Christian material and beat some of them, along with some of their family members, including some who had not converted to Christianity.

Evangelical Focus noted: “It is believed that, in both raids, the agents were helped by an informant, who had infiltrated the group of Christians within the past few months and gained their trust.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Heads of an Islamic Hydra Rise in South Asia Their malicious plot to destroy the West is far from over. Terry Bishop

Posted By on July 15th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/south-asia-heads-islamic-hydra-are-scattered-terry-bishop/

The so-called peace deal between the U.S. and Afghanistan never addressed an important fact: the powers-that-be ignored all the players in the game, somehow missing an endless supply of terrorists who are all heads connected to the same body.

In a post 9/11 interview, Osama bin Laden told Al-Jazeera television correspondent Tayseer Alouni that “all the Muslims are brothers.” Following this statement, he explained that a training camp established by Abu Ebeida El-Banashiri for mujahideen fighting against the former Soviet Union became known as al-Qaeda (the base). As far back as the late 1980s, these “sons of the nation” were considered “brothers in Islam from the Middle East, Philippines, Malaysia, India, Pakistan and as far as Mauritania,” he revealed. And it is this aged, subtle point which remains quite relevant — and often-overlooked — today.

The version of al-Qaeda dating back to the Soviet-Afghan War era is not the same al-Qaeda of today, as many have failed to recognize. In February 1998, the transnational Salafist organization was reformed at the World Islamic Front (WIF) by five prominent Islamic leaders: Osama bin Laden; Ayman al-Zawahiri, emir of the Jihad Group in Egypt; Ahmed Refai Taha of the Egyptian Islamic Group; Mir Hamzah, secretary of the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Pakistan; and Fazlur Rahman, emir of the Jihad Movement in Bangladesh.

The WIF was comprised of at least 14 international pro-jihad organizations, including Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines, Chechen Jihad Group, the Islamic Jihad Group (Egypt), the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, Lashkar-e-Taiba, North Caucasian Jihad Group, the Turkistan Islamic Movement, the 055 Brigade (the Shadow Army), Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (Afghanistan), Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (Pakistan), Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (Afghanistan), Sipah-e-Sahaba (Pakistan), Uyghur Jihad Groups (Western China), and the Taliban.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Race Exception to Academic Free Speech in the Era of Black Lives Matter by Richard L. Cravatts

Posted By on July 15th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/race-exception-academic-free-speech-era-black-richard-l-cravatts/

As if further evidence were needed to confirm that race—and talking about race—is still the third rail of social debate, one only has to look at the paroxysms of moral indignation arising from the death in Minneapolis last month of George Floyd under the knee of a brutal police officer. In the wake of country-wide protests and demonstrations by Black Lives Matter and the group’s supporters, the discussion has, of course, come to campuses, those “islands of repression in a sea of freedom” where coddled, virtue-signaling students regularly take it upon themselves to purge their schools of dissenting thought—that is, any views not in lockstep with their progressive ideas of the power and sanctity of identity politics.

More importantly, the notion that a vocal minority of self-important student ideologues can determine what views may or may not be expressed on a particular campus is not only antithetical to the purpose of a university, but is vaguely fascistic by relinquishing power to a few to decide what can be said and what speech is allowed and what must be suppressed; it is what former Yale University president Bartlett Giamatti once characterized as the “tyranny of group self-righteousness.”

The belief that students are able to purge unpopular views from their campuses if they wish has, of course, been festering for some years now, long before George Floyd’s killing in Minneapolis.

HISTORY Comments turned off

The Day That Shook the Earth The Trinity nuclear test brought peace in 1945 and proliferation in decades to follow. By Warren Kozak

Posted By on July 15th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-day-that-shook-the-earth-11594767449?mod=opinion_lead_pos9

Seventy-five years ago, on July 16, 1945, the world’s first atomic explosion, code-named “Trinity,” jolted the New Mexico desert just before dawn.

Gathered to witness the detonation was an extraordinary conglomeration of intellect. There were European émigrés Edward Teller, Leo Szilard and Enrico Fermi as well as Berkeley’s Ernest Lawrence and Harvard’s James Conant. The project was led by physicist Robert Oppenheimer and Army Maj. Gen. Leslie Groves. If only the U.S. could establish an equally strong partnership among the military, industry and academia today.

The device, nicknamed the “Gadget,” was around 5 feet in diameter and covered with cables, metal fuse boxes and masking tape, not at all like today’s immaculate weapons. It could have been a component of an elevator. The plutonium core was transported separately in the back seat of an Army sedan. Oppenheimer didn’t want to risk blowing up any towns along the way.

There was a betting pool among the scientists on the bomb’s yield (its TNT equivalent in kilotons). Norman Ramsey, the pessimist, guessed low at zero. Edward Teller wagered high at 45 kilotons. Nobel laureate Isidor Isaac Rabi won the pool at 18. He entered late and that was the only number available.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The ‘Fun Police’ State Here’s what to expect if the progressive Left and its army of snitches continue to have power. By Christopher Roach

Posted By on July 14th, 2020

https://amgreatness.com/2020/07/12/the-fun-police-state/

Once upon a time, America’s unofficial motto was: “It’s a free county.” Americans largely agreed that all could and should do what they wanted, assuming they weren’t hurting anyone else. You like vacations, someone else likes being a homebody. You like rock, he likes rap, and she likes country. If you wanted to smoke, ride a motorcycle, or move across the country to find yourself, that was up to you. It was understood and widely accepted that a foundational part of our system was wide-ranging freedom. And the corollary to that freedom was a strong, mutual commitment to “live and let live.”

No more. So much of the piling on that takes place today on social media involves confrontations between ordinary people going about their lives and aggressive, pestering interlopers with very rigid ideas about how others should live. 

One of the chief characteristics of these busybodies is an instinctual revulsion at the sight of other people having fun. 

What’s Important in Life?

One might think fun, enjoyment, and recreation are merely optional; the icing on the cake of the real stuff of life. This is wrong. Laughter, music, discussion, literature, falling in love, beauty, and pursuing things simply for their own sake are more real and more human than many of the supposed important things.

What we think of as important—utilitarian concerns like paying bills, politics, or safety—are the instrumental things that we need in order to live real life. When we are liberated from the realm of necessity—food, shelter, and safety—we are at our most human. As the late Father James V. Schall wrote, “[A]t peace, we should be about ritual, about what is done that need not be done, about what is beautiful that need not be, about what exists that need not exist at all. The activity is what we should be about.” 

People who confuse instrumental goods with the essence of life are the boring sorts who love to tell you about their important promotion or how they just bought a Rolex. They mistake mere activity for living.

A more extreme variant of these ordinary kinds of bores are the “fun police.” They follow and conform, aggressively harassing those who do not. They take their directions from experts deemed acceptable by the authorities. The ideology of progressivism allows these mediocre conformists to imagine themselves as daring iconoclasts. Doing what is praised, rewarded, and respectable is the essence of their life. It really bugs them that others aren’t on board with the program. 

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Shameless Gaslighting by Andrew Cuomo’s Defenders By David Harsanyi

Posted By on July 14th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/07/the-shameless-gaslighting-by-andrew-cuomos-defenders/

There is no measurement at our disposal and no level of gaslighting that will change the fact that Cuomo-led New York was an utter failure.

On March 25, New York governor Andrew Cuomo made one of deadliest mistakes of the coronavirus crisis, signing an executive order forcing nursing homes in his state to accept patients who tested positive for coronavirus. Around 4,800 New Yorkers died from COVID-19 in those nursing homes from March to May — approximately 25 percent of all fatalities in the state.

Many medical professionals opposed the policy. A report by ProPublica, certainly no right-wing outlet, found that deaths had spiked after Cuomo’s order. States issuing similar policies — Michigan and New Jersey — saw similar disasters unfold.

By any standard, the New York tristate area’s numbers are the worst in the country. By most measures, the numbers are some of the worst in the world. As the New York Times noted in May, New York City seeded the wave of outbreaks across the nation. Some of the carnage was likely unavoidable, but we can attribute the high number of nursing-home deaths, at the very least, to Cuomo’s ineptitude.