Rik Mehta, a pharmacist and former FDA consumer safety officer from New Jersey, is seeking to replace failed presidential candidate Cory Booker as Senator from New Jersey. Amid the COVID-19 crisis, he feels his experience as a healthcare professional would benefit the nation if elected to public office.  He took the time to answer a few questions.
I was watching an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReI6ROZNbkk">interview</a> with Taiwan’s Vice President (and leading epidemiologist), Chen Chien-jen, with his alma mater the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. One of the things they said is that having elected officials with healthcare education and experience made a big difference in why Taiwan was so exceptionally successful in handling the COVID-19 outbreak. What is your take on that?
I agree 100%. Right now, we have a bunch of career politicians, like my opponent Senator Cory Booker, who do not understand the delivery of healthcare, the practice of medicine and are completely unequipped to deal with these issues. Senator Booker cares more about what sounds good on Twitter, than what policies actually work when dealing with a pandemic.
As a pharmacist and former public health official, I have tackled health crises firsthand. We need to get away from the partisan nonsense and do what is right by and for our citizens to control the pandemic and get Americans working again.
New Jersey&#8217;s former Lt. Governor Kim Guadagno says that NJ &#8220;has a long and proud history as the medicine chest of the world.&#8221; What is the situation today?
Unfortunately, the anti-business, anti-taxpayer policies in New Jersey have driven many of these businesses and jobs away. Senator Booker and his cronies in the NJ Legislature have made New Jersey non-competitive with our neighbors both here in the U.S. and globally. How can we expect companies to settle in our state when all they do is push higher taxes, more regulation, and make the state unaffordable for employees to live near their place of employment?
As New Jersey’s next U.S. senator, I will put America first and bring our medical manufacturing from overseas back to New Jersey. At the same time my policies will create thousands of jobs, reduce our tax appropriations spent on foreign manufacturing and lower the price of prescription drugs all while strengthening our national security.
You have been vocal about bringing the medical supply chain back to the United States. How? What about your opponent? Where does Senator Booker stand on this?
As I wrote in a recent <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/chinas-dominance-of-the-pharma-supply-chain-is-highly-dangerous-to-the-us">op-ed</a> on this subject, more than 80% of the ingredients necessary to make your medicine is sourced from China and other foreign countries. As unbelievable as it may sound, our factories have not made antibiotics in the United States in decades; it’s a far cry from World War II, when our plants produced life-saving penicillin helping our soldiers win the war. So, America’s reliance on foreign drug manufacturing has become a very real national security concern.
Under the Obama administration, China doubled its drug manufacturing facilities, while we closed ours. And, to make matters worse, Cory Booker supported legislation that would crush medical innovation in America. Months ago, I predicted that if China was forced to close itself down to combat the coronavirus pandemic, or at some point decided to interrupt the U.S. pharmaceutical supply chain, it would create a major shortage of life-saving medicines. And indeed, last month, the FDA reported the first supply chain disruption.
My plan would streamline the FDA approval process, reduce redundant manufacturing regulations, prioritize the use of tax appropriations for America-first manufacturing and use incentive programs, like FDA priority-review vouchers, for companies that manufacture innovative life-saving drugs in America. We need a change &#8211; and fast.
What will you do to hold China to account?
First off, let us make no mistake &#8211; China covered up. They silenced their own scientists that tried to give us early warnings about COVID-19 resulting in the quicker spread of the disease to America and globally. The United States and our allies need to sanction those Chinese nationals involved in this cover-up &#8211; we must hold individuals responsible.
I also support President Trump&#8217;s efforts to get tougher on China, slap them with tariffs and sue them to recover the trillions of dollars lost. Our lawmakers, like Senator Booker, worry more about playing identity politics, than they do dealing with the very serious threat China poses.
Just a few days ago, Cory Booker touted legislation to return funding to the World Health Organization, while at the same time neglected to secure funding for one-fifth of the counties in New Jersey, leaving our proud small-business owners in the lurch.
For several weeks now you have been talking about the need to reopen the US and NJ economy. How do you propose rolling that out?
Listen, this virus is very serious and people need to be cautious but our federal and state governments need to balance that public health risk with the economic damage and mental health anguish these broad, sweeping lockdowns are causing. I have urged state officials to allow businesses to reopen on an evidence-based approach that includes consideration for the total burden of disease, doubling time of the infection rates, and the parts of our population with preexisting health conditions, while encouraging New Jerseyeans to continue with smart social distancing and precautionary measures.
Our Governor here in New Jersey, Phil Murphy, seems bent on keeping the state shutdown for several more months, not weeks.  In the process, he is destroying our economy &#8211; particularly our Jersey Shore and South Jersey &#8211; while at the same time begging the federal government for bailouts.
Everyday Americans are facing food insecurity due to their inability to work and this shutdown is growing our economic depression and increasing the incident rate of mental health issues; the scope and breadth of which remain to be seen. Add to this the fact that NJ gets less federal funding from Washington than we send thanks to ineffective and failed Senators like Cory Booker. This crisis needs to be a wakeup call for a new era of fiscal discipline in the state. We have been lacking this for far too long.
In a nutshell, what will you do to tackle COVID-19 and how can we do better in the future?
In the short term, we need to incrementally reopen our economy and trust our small businesses to self-regulate smart public health measures. The long-term question, however, is the key. We can&#8217;t be caught flat-footed again. To hear Joe Biden criticize President Trump on COVID-19 is outrageous.
For eight years the Obama-Biden administration did very little to prepare us for the eventuality of a pandemic.  Supply chains are a disaster, medical manufacturing moved overseas, and our healthcare system was simply not equipped to deal with this. I credit the moves made early on by the President and his team to remedy this, but moving forward I expect a complete overhaul of our readiness capabilities.
As Senator, I would be a leader in that effort given my background as a health professional, and certainly would bring more to the table in my first year in office than Cory Booker has done his entire term.

Virginia Primary Election

MITSOTAKIS: An Interview With Rik Mehta, The Conservative Pharmacist Taking On Cory Booker For Senate In New Jersey

Cory Booker

Donald Trump

New Jersey

The other Final Fantasy classics deserve some love
The remake of Final Fantasy VII has been among the most anticipated games for over a decade. While the series always enjoyed success, FFVII was the first Final Fantasy to gain a mass following outside Japan.
<a href="http://xenon.stanford.edu/~geksiong/papers/sts145/Squaresoft%20and%20FF7.htm">A history of Final Fantasy</a> states that: “Sony spared no expense in marketing Final Fantasy VII in the US, allocating a budget of up to US$100 million just for marketing alone. Three 30-second commercials were made highlighting the graphics and gameplay and aired on prime-time slots on all the major networks. There were also major print campaigns in popular publications such as Rolling Stone, Spin and even Playboy, and the gaming magazines. Sony even teamed up with Pepsi for a major holiday promotion featuring the game&#8230;Squaresoft finally managed to crack the US market. Altogether, over 6 million copies of Final Fantasy VII were sold worldwide.”
Those familiar with the Final Fantasy, however, would agree that many of the other installments in the series have been tragically overshadowed.
Consider:
<ul>
<li>Final Fantasy IV, the first real epic of the series, with it&#8217;s themes of duty, betrayal and redemption.</li>
<li>Final Fantasy VI, which explored the question: &#8220;Why do people insist on creating things that will inevitably be destroyed? Why do people cling to life, knowing that they must someday die? &#8230;Knowing that none of it will have meant anything once they do?&#8221;</li>
<li>Final Fantasy IX, the action-packed swan song of the FF old guard (and my personal favorite), dealing with nurture vs nature and the despair of facing one&#8217;s mortality.</li>
</ul>
And lest it be forgotten, what about Chrono Trigger? If there is a central theme to the Final Fantasy series (of which Chrono Trigger is an honorary part) it is defiance &#8211; to challenge one&#8217;s fate against overwhelming odds. The time travel story of Chrono and his companions is a classic in the genre.
With any luck, Square Enix will consider looking into remaking some of these classics for a new generation.
Let&#8217;s Mosey.

final fantasy

MITSOTAKIS: For Your Quarantine Gaming: The Final Fantasy Classics Deserve Some Love

Technology

Those countries with the closest ties to China are the ones suffering the most from Coronavirus. This may seem elementary, as it follows common sense. And yet, those countries failed to predict the consequences of working with such a corrupt and negligent power as the Chinese Communist Party. This despite the fact that doing business with communists has come back to harm us &#8211; in one form or another &#8211; time and again for a century.
In 1922, Samuel Gompers, founder of the American Federation of Labor, condemned those in Europe who, at a conference in Italy, were hoping to profit from business with Lenin&#8217;s new slave society. &#8220;The truth is that predatory international finance has its appetite up and believes it sees loot in Russia,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I know of nothing more cynical than the attitude of European statesmen and financiers toward the Russian muddle. Essentially it is their purpose, as laid down at Genoa, to place Russia in economic vassalage and give political recognition in exchange. Recognition in exchange for concessions.&#8221;
Soon, persuaded by propagandists like Armand Hammer and the New York Times&#8217;s Walter Duranty that it was a good idea, the United States followed suit. Stalin would later tell W. Averell Harriman that &#8220;about two-thirds of all the large industrial enterprises in the Soviet Union had been built with United States help or technical assistance.”
Unbeknownst to the West, their business partners Lenin and Stalin had secretly agreed to let militarist Germany rebuild its military machine inside Russia, out of sight of the powers that at Versailles had forbidden them from doing so. This arrangement remained intact until the early 1930s, when the rebuilt might of the German armed forces was inherited by Hitler. It would soon lay waste to the cities of Europe, at first with Stalin&#8217;s approval before it turned on the USSR.
After the war, the AFL published a detailed map of Stalin&#8217;s Gulag system, in order to remind the West that &#8220;Uncle Joe&#8221; and his successors weren&#8217;t to be trusted. It was not long before the Soviet industries &#8220;built with United States help or technical assistance” were producing the weapons and vehicles used against American troops in Korea (and later, in Vietnam). Still, there was money to be made, so many businesses just pretended it wasn&#8217;t happening.
35 years ago, the exiled Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn spoke to a gathering of the AFL-CIO. &#8220;Brothers!&#8221; the Gulag forced labor survivor opened, &#8220;Brothers in Labor!&#8221; After thanking them for having always spoken out against Soviet tyranny, he told the gathered workers &#8220;just as we feel ourselves your allies here, there also exists another alliance &#8211; at first glance a strange one, a surprising one &#8211; but if you think about it, in fact, one which is well-grounded and easy to understand: this is the alliance between our Communist leaders and your capitalists.&#8221;
He gave an example: &#8220;Certain of your businessmen, on their own initiative, established an exhibition of criminological technology in Moscow. This was the most recent and elaborate technology, which here, in your country, is used to catch criminals, to bug them, to spy on them, to photograph them, to tail them, to identify criminals. This was taken to Moscow to an exhibition in order that the Soviet KGB agents could study it, as if not understanding what sort of criminals, who would be hunted by the KGB.&#8221;
Times haven&#8217;t changed much. The Wall Street Journal reported last year that &#8220;Some of the biggest names in U.S. technology have provided components, financing and know-how to China’s multibillion-dollar surveillance industry. The country’s authoritarian government uses those tools to track ethnic minorities, political dissidents and others it sees as a threat to its power.&#8221;
The Coronavirus outbreak isn&#8217;t even the first time Americans&#8217; health and wellbeing was threatened by doing business with China. How many children&#8217;s toys and animal products have had to be recalled because of safety concerns? And this extends to our food. Pre-peeled Garlic had to have been peeled somewhere, and that somewhere is in unsanitary Chinese prisons where prisoners have to use their teeth because their fingernails have fallen off.
Solzhenitsyn said it best: &#8220;This is something which is almost incomprehensible to the human mind: that burning greed for profit which goes beyond all reason, all self-control, all conscience, only to get money.&#8221;

xi jinping

MITSOTAKIS: Communist Blood Money Always Had A High Price

China

Coronavirus

During my recent trip to Israel, an Orthodox rabbi took me to see something that most outsiders do not usually see. It was Friday night (Shabbos, the Jewish Sabbath), and he wanted to go to pray at the Western Wall plaza in Jerusalem. Before that, he took me to see Kotel Katan — an older, smaller, less well known section of the Western Wall located within the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem&#8217;s Old City — and from there we went to one of the gates that serve as an entrance to the Temple Mount.
Walking through the Muslim Quarter, the air was thick with tension. Since I am a Christian, nobody bothered me. But there were people who went out of their way to bump into and shove my friend, who is easily identifiable as a Jewish rabbi. They were trying to start a fight. So I was surprised, upon arriving at the gate to the Temple Mount, to find a large gathering of Jewish students. There, deep within the Muslim Quarter, these Jewish students were protesting about how they are not allowed to pray at Judaism&#8217;s holiest site. Armed guards were there to keep Jews out. This is what he wanted me to see.
The Temple Mount, of course, was the site of the first and second Jewish Temples and where — according to the faithful — the third Temple will be built. I had some understanding about the rules governing the Temple Mount. According to the Times of Israel, &#8220;Under the current 52-year-old status quo at the site, Muslims can pray at the site while Jews are allowed to visit — under heavy restrictions, in a predetermined route and only for several hours on weekdays — but not pray there.&#8221;
I wanted to know more about these students, who are brave enough to fight for change. So I was told to contact Tom Nisani, the Israeli-born leader of &#8220;Students for the Temple Mount&#8221; and head of campus activity in the <a href="https://imti.org.il/en/about-us/movement/">Im Tirtzu</a> organization. I interviewed him briefly:
Mitsotakis (SM): What is happening on the Temple Mount and why?
Nisani (TN): The Temple Mount was liberated by the Israel Defense Forces in 1967. [There was] a total lack of interest among the Israeli public, and due to various historical realities that caused the national consciousness among the average Israeli, and even among the political leaders and military personnel of Israel, to be drawn simply to the Kotel (Western Wall) — despite it being only a retaining wall for the Temple Mount. The Mount itself was forgotten and the Jordanian Waqf that abandoned it during the battles was brought back to administer it by the State of Israel itself! Today, more than even 50 years later, basic freedoms such as prayer and freedom of movement are still ignored for all those ascending the Mount who are not Muslim. The Temple Mount is a place where these basic human rights and others are trampled on in the most outright and direct way. And this is happening in the holiest place for the Jewish people in the Jewish state! And just like in the other holy places for Jews in Israel, improvement is a process we are trying to hasten — but at this stage on the Temple Mount, there are clear human rights violations and infringements of the rights of all non-Muslims.
SM: What is your organization, why do you do what you do, and what do you hope to change?  
TN: Our organization was established about five years ago and includes students and young Israeli adults — secular, religious, and so forth. We are from all over the nation of Israel. We want to return the Temple Mount to its fitting place in Israeli society. This means, practically, that we work towards normalizing the Temple Mount under full Israeli sovereignty and once it is, all other challenges, problems, and difficulties will cease. It would be beneficial to all involved parties for the Temple Mount to be under complete Israeli sovereignty. Today, as the Jordanians, Qataris, Hamas, and so many more, all attempt to influence what happens on the Temple Mount, we all lose. Peaceful tourists are routinely assaulted, Jewish worshippers are restricted and oppressed, and even the Muslims suffer from the corruption of their leaders — including the Jordanians and the senior Waqf members. We will not rest until we change this situation, and we have already begun seeing change.
SM: I am told that your group is secular. Yet this is an issue of enormous religious significance. Is the religious community supporting you?
TN: In our movement, we have members who are from all the types and stripes of Israel. And this is the beauty in our movement, &#8220;Students for the Temple Mount.&#8221; We reflect the Israeli public and understand the import of our mission. The Temple Mount is a place for all of the nation of Israel and so too will it be in the future. Even the most secular among us, or those who would be considered less religious, are connected to our faith and Jewish nationality and see those as important aspects of our identities. In fact, it is the Temple Mount that connects us the most.

ISRAEL-PALESTINIAN-CONFLICT-US-JERUSALEM

MITSOTAKIS: Meeting The Jewish Students Fighting For Freedom On The Temple Mount

Islam

Israel

Israel Defense Forces (IDF)

Jerusalem

Judaism

Palestinians

Religion

Zionism

On a recent trip to Israel, I met a Palestinian student who studies at a diverse international school. I asked her if any of the Palestinian groups believe in Gandhian non-violence to redress their grievances. She knew of only one group — the small communist party to which she belonged. Only one.
If this sounds like an exaggeration, it is not by much. Nor is it surprising. The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) has inculcated a culture of violence and hatred of Jews in each successive generation of Palestinians since it was founded by Egyptian dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1964.
Israeli journalist Eliezer Whartman <a href="https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Contributors/When-Egypt-was-in-Gaza">wrote</a> that when he visited Gaza in 1967, after Israel had driven out the Egyptian army, he found that:
<blockquote>&#8220;Indoctrination to hatred of Israel started at the very tenderest years. I saw pictures which children had drawn, with the encouragement of their teachers, depicting themselves killing Israeli children. The textbooks dripped venom. One text for the third grade, entitled Arabic Islamic History read: &#8216;The Jews are always the same, in every time, every place. They live only in darkness. They secretly plan to do evil; they fight only from hidden places because they are cowards. We must purify holy Palestine from their filth in order to bring peace back to the Arab homeland.'&#8221;</blockquote>
This trend has continued, unbroken, to the present day.
In Lebanon in 1982, Israel encountered hundreds of preteen and early teenage Palestinian boys specially trained by the PLO to use rocket-propelled grenades.
In 2016, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke of this phenomenon:
<blockquote>&#8220;I want you to imagine a day in the life of a 13-year-old Palestinian boy, I&#8217;ll call him Ali. Ali wakes up before school, he goes to practice with a soccer team named after Dalal Mughrabi, a Palestinian terrorist responsible for the murder of a busload of 37 Israelis. At school, Ali attends an event sponsored by the Palestinian Ministry of Education honoring Baha Alyan, who last year murdered three Israeli civilians. On his walk home, Ali looks up at a towering statue erected just a few weeks ago by the Palestinian Authority to honor Abu Sukar, who detonated a bomb in the center of Jerusalem, killing 15 Israelis.&#8221;</blockquote>
&#8220;Imagine your child undergoing this brainwashing,&#8221; Netanyahu said. &#8220;Imagine what it takes for a young boy or girl to break free out of this culture of hate. Some do but far too many don&#8217;t. How can any of us expect young Palestinians to support peace when their leaders poison their minds against peace?&#8221;
The PLO has signed peace agreements before, each time with forked tongue. One notable occasion was the 1993 Oslo peace process, which earned PLO head Yasser Arafat the Nobel Peace Prize. While he spoke of peaceful coexistence at the White House, he was singing a very different tune to Arab and Muslim audiences. On May 10, 1994, Arafat was secretly recorded speaking at a mosque in Johannesburg, South Africa. He <a href="https://iris.org.il/arafats-johannesburg-speech/">said</a>:
<blockquote>&#8220;This agreement, I am not considering it more than the agreement which had been signed between our prophet Mohammed and Koraish, and you remember the Caliph Omar had refused this agreement and [considered] it a despicable truce.
But Mohammed had accepted it and we are accepting now this peace offer. But to continue our way to Jerusalem, to the first shrine together and not alone. We are in need of you as Moslems, as warriors of Jihad.&#8221;</blockquote>
(The treaty with the Koraish, known as the Treaty of Hudaybiya, was a peace treaty Mohammed signed with the Koraish tribe of Mecca at a time when his army was not strong enough to conquer the city. Two years later, however, Mohammed&#8217;s forces had gained in strength, so he abrogated the treaty and conquered Mecca.)
A few years later, when Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered Arafat everything he asked for as part of the agreement, Arafat rejected the offer and subsequently launched one of the bloodiest waves of terrorism in modern Israeli history.
In 2015, Palestinan Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas said: &#8220;We welcome every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem. This is pure blood, clean blood, blood on its way to Allah. With the help of Allah, every shaheed (martyr) will be in heaven, and every wounded will get his reward.  &#8230; Al-Aqsa is ours, and the (Church of the) Holy Sepulcher is ours, everything is ours, all ours. They (the Jews) have no right to desecrate them with their filthy feet and we won&#8217;t allow them to.&#8221;
The PLO is poison. It has destroyed the prospect of peace and it holds hostage the aspirations of the Palestinians. If there is to be peace someday, it will be when the legacy of the PLO is undone.

Mahmoud Abbas at U.N.

MITSOTAKIS: The PLO’s Poison

Benjamin Netanyahu

Foreign Policy

Mahmoud Abbas

Middle East

Yasser Arafat

Iran’s Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, has been doing some impressive bipartisan lobbying. Politicians from across the spectrum, from Former Secretary of State <a href="https://en.radiofarda.com/a/kerry-met-iran-zarif-several-times/29488152.html">John Kerry</a> to Sen. <a href="https://freebeacon.com/politics/mark-levin-rips-into-rand-paul-over-iran/">Rand Paul</a> (R-KY), are all taking their turns to meet with him. Their common goal: Get President Donald Trump to end his “maximum pressure” campaign against the hostile Tehran regime.
Last year, this leftist-libertarian alliance was codified into a new &#8220;non-interventionist&#8221; think tank, the Quincy Institute. On its board is Trita Parsi, a man who has for decades worked behind the scenes — often in tandem with Iranian officials, including Javad Zarif — to weaken America&#8217;s resistance to Iranian aggression and nuclear ambitions.
In the weeks since the killing of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-the-just-and-proper-strike-of-mastermind-iranian-jihadist-qassem-soleimani">terrorist mastermind</a> Qassem Soleimani, agitation by the Iranian regime&#8217;s apologists has reached a crescendo. In response, I asked <a href="https://twitter.com/AdelleNaz">Adelle Nazarian</a>, senior media fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy in Washington, D.C. and fellow at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi, India, to tell us more.
What follows is a question-and-answer interview with Nazarian.
Who is Trita Parsi?
Nazarian: Trita Parsi is the Iranian-born founder of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), a Washington, D.C.-based lobbying group that is <a href="https://freebeacon.com/national-security/congress-seeks-investigation-into-pro-iran-lobby-group-tied-to-tehran-regime/">allegedly the lobbying extension</a> and arm of the Iranian regime. That would be the same Iranian regime rife with corruption, terrorism, and the murder of its own people. Parsi and NIAC’s support for the Iranian regime is <a href="https://twitter.com/AdelleNaz/status/1217693851890126848?s=20">in violation of FARA [Foreign Agents Registration Act ] law</a> and they were instrumental in helping pass the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), also known as the Iran nuclear deal. Parsi is an activist who has <a href="https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2014/03/the_ayatollahs_lobby_on_k_street.html">maintained a close relationship</a> with Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2015-03-31/iran-s-charmer-in-chief-wins-again">Javad Zarif</a> and was a lead advisor to the Obama administration throughout the process of executing the JCPOA. NIAC falsely claims it supports the full spectrum of Iranian interests, but it actually only cares about pushing the regime’s interests. NIAC is at odds with Iran’s Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, his supporters, and any Iranians who do not share the dictatorial vision of the Iranian regime. If Iran’s regime falls, it will be seen as the failure of Trita Parsi.
What is the Quincy Institute?
Nazarian: Trita Parsi is the executive vice president and co-founder of the Quincy Institute, which is funded by both Charles Koch and George Soros. It is also co-founded by Iran deal advocates. This think tank aims to compel American politicians to adopt a non-interventionist foreign policy by actively funneling misinformation and propaganda to the media and, by extension, the American people. The think tank’s board is anti-Israel, with fellows having written books very critical of America’s close alliance with Israel. John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt — both co-authors of “The Israel Lobby&#8221; and fellows at the Quincy Institute — have an issue with the so-called &#8220;Israel lobby,&#8221; but have no issue working with the Iran lobby. While on the surface, the organization presents itself with the noble aim of ending endless wars in the pursuit of international peace, its co-founders — namely Andrew Bacevich, Stephen Wertheim, Eli Clifton, and Suzanne DiMaggio — are Iran deal advocates. The group also boasts Gary Sick as a “distinguished fellow.” In 1980, Mr. Sick infamously and falsely accused officials in Ronald Reagan&#8217;s presidential campaign of making a secret deal with Iran to delay the release of the American hostages until after the election.
What are Iranians and Iranian-Americans saying? 
Nazarian: Iranians and Iranian-Americans know the Quincy Institute pushes misinformation. Parsi’s move from NIAC to the Quincy Institute is an attempt to further his lobbying and propagandizing efforts. Due to funding from Soros and Koch, Parsi has been able to shield his anti-American and pro-Iranian views and actions. Iranians do not want war with America and President Donald Trump’s neutralization of IRGC-Quds Forces Commander Gen. Qassem Soleimani pushed Iran to stop its antagonistic and provocative behavior that was swiftly deteriorating U.S.-Iran relations and leading us to war.
Though Parsi claims to speak on behalf of the full spectrum of Iranian-Americans, <a href="https://twitter.com/AdelleNaz/status/1139620277396987905?s=20">a poll conducted in June</a> shows an overwhelming 85% of participants see NIAC and its affiliates as the “enemy.” Due to President Trump’s decisive actions, the machinations and manipulations of Trita Parsi have been undone. Regardless of the future, it is clear that Trita Parsi is a menace.

Javad Zarif

MITSOTAKIS: Iran Apologists, Left And Right, Have A New Think Tank

Iran

Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps

John Kerry

Khamenei

Koch Brothers

Nuclear Weapons

Rand Paul

&#8220;In the Soviet Union, the important thing was to overcome the fear.&#8221; That is what former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky told me over tea in a Jerusalem cafe.
In the totalitarian, atheist Soviet Union, Jewish identity was forcibly submerged. &#8220;The only Jewish thing that was in my life,&#8221; Sharansky says, &#8220;was anti-Semitism!&#8221; That was until 1967. Israel&#8217;s victory in the Six-Day War, Sharansky says, changed the way the Soviets viewed Jews, and changed the way Soviet Jews viewed themselves. They were now, to friend and foe alike, part of something larger than themselves, connected to the Jewish state and to Jews the world over. With this knowledge, Soviet Jewish dissidents were no longer afraid and had the courage to confront the Evil Empire.
Sharansky has told this story many times before, but faced with the rising tide of anti-Semitic attacks and libels against Jews worldwide, I asked him about an often forgotten aspect of the crusade for human rights in the Soviet Union. There were many dissident groups with different goals, but the group that was best organized and had the most reliable contacts with the outside world were the Jewish “Refuseniks” (Soviet Jews who were denied the right to emigrate to Israel).
Sharansky, their spokesperson, was happy to help others. And that included many, many persecuted Christians.
Reports about the abuses suffered by Christians in the Soviet Union made their way through Sharansky&#8217;s network to the Western press and human rights groups. With each new revelation, demands on the Soviets to respect freedom of religion increased.
The importance of this channel wasn&#8217;t lost on Christians. &#8220;A group that I helped to establish their first contacts to reach the foreign press and to speak to the world were Pentecostals. I was very pleased later to find out that when I was arrested, there were tens of thousands of Pentecostals in Siberia who were fasting in solidarity with me.&#8221;
When the Soviets arrested Sharansky and sent him to the Gulag, his communist tormentors thought they might break him by placing him in a cell with a Christian activist. A religious Jew and a religious Christian would surely tear each other apart, they thought. But it did not turn out that way.
&#8220;You discover in prison [that] you can never know who is an informer and who is not. (That&#8217;s what you discover in general in Soviet life.) But what you discover is that with people with strong identities, there is less chance that they will be informers. Because, exactly as you have other values than physical survival — you have your identity you want to be a part of — they also have their own identities.&#8221; Strong identities give people values worth fighting for. &#8220;And that&#8217;s why if he was [an] activist, like Pentecostal or Christian activist, you knew that the chance that he [was] KGB [was] much less.&#8221;
Sharansky&#8217;s closest friend in the Gulag was a Christian activist named Vladimir Poresh. &#8220;I describe in this book,&#8221; he says, pointing to my copy of his 1988 memoir Fear No Evil, &#8220;ecumenical readings of the Bible, which we called &#8216;Reagan&#8217;s readings.&#8217; Because in 1983 it was in the Soviet press that Reagan called it the &#8216;Year of the Bible.'&#8221;
I recalled that in Fear No Evil, he describes going on a hunger strike so his friend can get back his Christian Bible. &#8220;Oh yeah! It was a very long hunger strike!&#8221; he said. When I expressed my amazement at this, he said that the fact that they were of different faiths was not an issue. &#8220;It was all about our rights to be free people and live in accordance with our conscience. And then you feel at this critical moment that, after all, we all have one God.&#8221;
The Soviet Union was a regime that depended on fear and control. When people found the courage to speak out, control would slip a little more, and more people would then find their courage. It was a death spiral, and the strain became too much for the regime to bear.
Here in the United States, the land of the free, Jews should not have to live in fear of being attacked. Christians must stand with them. The bonds of brotherhood between Jews and Gentiles should not require the Gulag to bring to the surface.

Natan Sharansky

EXCLUSIVE: Soviet Dissident Recalls Jews And Christians Stood United Against Fear

Anti-Semitism

Communism

Russia

Soviet Union

One of the central complaints of Donald Trump&#8217;s presidential campaign and subsequent presidency is that America&#8217;s NATO allies (Turkey included) don&#8217;t pay their share for the protection they enjoy from the United States military. Yet in the Middle East, there is a group that has paid its share in blood — blood that they shed to minimize our losses while defeating our enemies — and Trump threw them away.
It is often said that the Kurds are pro-American, but that is an understatement. To say that the Kurds love America is still an understatement. The Bible says &#8220;Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends&#8221; (John 15:13 KJV), and in this case that love is multiplied more than a thousand fold.
According to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-administration-to-pull-troops-from-northern-syria-as-turkey-readies-offensive/2019/10/07/a965e466-e8b3-11e9-bafb-da248f8d5734_story.html" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-administration-to-pull-troops-from-northern-syria-as-turkey-readies-offensive/2019/10/07/a965e466-e8b3-11e9-bafb-da248f8d5734_story.html&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1570847289196000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEpePltki-YB75BHIV7LhmYA7UEtA">The Washington Post</a>, in the battle against ISIS: &#8220;Syrian Kurdish fighters have served as the primary ground force against the Islamic State, with the United States providing logistical and air support. The Kurds have suffered more than 10,000 casualties in the fight. Four American service members have been killed in combat in Syria since 2014.&#8221; The loss of any American soldier breaks the heart of every patriot, but ISIS wants to kill every American man, woman, or child who will not bow to their dictates. If we are to continue to live safe and free, ISIS had to be defeated sooner or later — and it was done with very few American casualties, thanks to the sacrifices of the Kurds.
The president likes to say that there were only 50 troops in northern Syria supporting the Kurds. For those 50 troops, the United States had a battle-tested fighting force of 100,000 reliable friends — something quite rare in the Middle East — that the U.S. could call upon in case of an ISIS resurgence.
Terrorists arise, thrive, and can resurface in areas of instability. Until a few days ago, the threat of such a resurfacing of ISIS was low — thanks to the stability of the area governed by the Kurds. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/its-not-too-late-for-trump-to-rethink-a-dangerous-betrayal-of-us-allies-in-syria/2019/01/03/fb86739c-0f69-11e9-84fc-d58c33d6c8c7_story.html" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/its-not-too-late-for-trump-to-rethink-a-dangerous-betrayal-of-us-allies-in-syria/2019/01/03/fb86739c-0f69-11e9-84fc-d58c33d6c8c7_story.html&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1570847289196000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGPKDNNyGOo5L94GZo171hKXOvnGg">According</a> to Thomas S. Kaplan and Bernard-Henri Lévy, who work directly with the Kurds, &#8220;Even as they [the Kurds] have waged a years-long war against the Islamic State in northeastern Syria, they have governed a population of about 2 million people with a degree of respect for religious freedom, gender equality and minority rights unknown in that part of the world.&#8221; (Last year, former Daily Wire correspondent Kassy Dillon, traveled to northern Iraq and saw first-hand what an area governed by the Kurds looks like. &#8220;I spent several day[s] with the Kurds last year and I was the only woman,&#8221; she <a href="https://twitter.com/KassyDillon/status/1181220006341705729" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/KassyDillon/status/1181220006341705729&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1570847289196000&amp;usg=AFQjCNEQxGJ5XwKVQcEy841U0--C8t207A">tweeted</a>. &#8220;I was treated respectfully and had the opportunity to visit their front lines.&#8221; One of the Kurdish fighters she met, Mo, <a href="https://twitter.com/KassyDillon/status/1181191030097338368" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://twitter.com/KassyDillon/status/1181191030097338368&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1570847289196000&amp;usg=AFQjCNGrUZnvmA7hlZLdU0vUGOegr3y9uQ">wears</a> an American flag on his uniform &#8220;to honor all of the Americans who fought beside him against ISIS.&#8221;)
All of this is now being squandered by the president — and for what? What national security benefits did the unreliable, unstable, anti-American dictator of Turkey promise that convinced the president to abandon some of America&#8217;s most stalwart allies in the Middle East?
It&#8217;s a real shame. Alliances are built on trust. The Kurds trusted us and did their part. Next time the president complains about allies who don&#8217;t do their part, he should take a long, hard look in the mirror.

Donald Trump speaking

MITSOTAKIS: Trump’s Alliance Hypocrisy

Islamic State (ISIS)

Kurds

NATO

Syria

Turkey

In trying to defend herself against <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/50165/tulsi-gabbard-responds-kamala-harris-calling-her-frank-camp">accusations</a> of being an &#8220;apologist&#8221; for Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, 2020 Democratic Party presidential contender Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) turned to history. As a possible riposte, she quipped to Anderson Cooper that President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) worked with Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin during the Second World War.
&#8220;But I&#8217;m sure, you know, Roosevelt would have acknowledged that Stalin murdered millions of people,&#8221; Cooper initially responded, before (eventually) getting Gabbard to concede that she doesn&#8217;t dispute Assad tortures and murders countless Syrians.
It has long been a subject of controversy whether FDR was too restrained on his criticisms of Stalin. Ronald Reagan would often criticize the infamous Yalta agreement as a bad deal. Yet one of Roosevelt&#8217;s last major actions was to replace Henry Wallace with Harry Truman as his vice president.
His reason: Wallace was an apologist for Stalin. And after the war, Wallace ran as a &#8220;peace candidate&#8221; in the 1948 presidential election — a campaign dedicated to defending everything Stalin did and attacking Harry Truman as a &#8220;warmonger&#8221; in league with global fascism.
The lengths to which Wallace would go for Stalin&#8217;s sake were remarkable. When taken on tour of the Kolyma Gulag, Wallace met one person after another who told him how great it was there — reports he relayed with much enthusiasm. When Truman wanted to give aid to the government of Greece so that the Greeks could defeat a Communist insurrection, Wallace said Truman was trying to prop up fascism. When Stalin orchestrated a Communist coup in Czechoslovakia, Wallace said it was Truman&#8217;s fault and accused the U.S. ambassador of trying to orchestrate a fascist coup that Stalin needed to put down.
Likewise, today we have Gabbard touring Aleppo with people walking up to her to tell her how grateful they are for Assad and the Russians who carpet bombed the city. We have Gabbard blaming National Security Advisor John Bolton for Iran attacking tankers in the Persian Gulf, and we have her assurances that all resistance to team Iran/Assad/Putin anywhere in the Middle East takes the form of U.S.-funded al-Qaeda terrorists. Iran/Assad/Putin seem incapable of telling a lie, in Gabbard&#8217;s eyes.
Gabbard&#8217;s base of Code Pink-ers — the irksome blame-America-first crowd — are up in arms that she is being called out. Well, so be it. As with Henry Wallace, whose only support came from pawns of an evil empire, the baying of the beast betrays its presence.

MITSOTAKIS: Tulsi Gabbard Is More Henry Wallace Than FDR

2020 Election

Al Qaeda

Bashar Assad

Democratic Party

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR)

John Bolton

Leftism

Progressivism

This past weekend, Kyriakos Mitsotakis was elected prime minister of Greece. Like his father, former Prime Minister Konstantinos Mitsotakis, he is a conservative in a society addicted to the opium of populist socialism.
To call socialism an opiate is to be too kind. It is a poison, and to watch it slowly kill my ancestral homeland is painful. When I would vacation in Greece in days gone by, my Greek friends would find my anti-socialist rants amusing. I was, after all, a patriotic American conservative from the Mitsotakis family.
But it&#8217;s not so funny anymore. Many of the jobs Greeks seek are outside Greece. Some young Greeks learn skills that they would need to work abroad — English and German language skills, technologies, and medicine. Otherwise, there is the tourism sector — and not much else.
There is always the option to go to one of the public universities in Athens, but students would have to put up with the full-time anarchist <a href="https://www.tovima.gr/2019/05/24/international/mitsotakis-stresses-law-and-order-national-unity-prespa-accord-tax-cuts/">presence</a> there. Police are not allowed on university grounds, so anarchists throw firebombs and attack people, and then retreat back into their state-sponsored sanctuaries.
Anarchists and their criminal companions have taken over entire neighborhoods, and the recent leftist government just looked the other way. Many of the officials in former Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras&#8217;s SYRIZA party were once street rabble themselves, and they have the support of the street rabble parties of other European countries. SYRIZA had a cruel way of taunting the Mitsotakis family by granting many weekend furloughs to imprisoned Marxist terrorists — including the November 17 <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/10/greek-terrorist-dimitris-koufodinas-prison-parole-global-outrage">terrorist</a> who murdered Pavlos Bakoyannis, my cousin&#8217;s brother-in-law.
Kyriakos was elected with a promise to change all of that. As <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/greek-voters-turn-to-growth-11562532361">reported</a> by The Wall Street Journal, he &#8220;pledges to cut tax rates — to 20% on businesses in two years from 29%, and on lower individual incomes, while slashing property taxes. He’s also promising a major round of deregulation. &#8230; Mr. Mitsotakis recognizes that fiscal stability requires strong economic growth — and now he has persuaded voters.&#8221;
Furthermore, to fulfill his promise to restore law and order, Kyriakos appointed Michalis Chrysochoidis (known as the &#8220;Terrorist Hunter&#8221; for his work in hunting down and capturing the November 17 terrorist leadership) as citizen protection minister. &#8220;Security is the greatest asset. Without security, democracy rots. We are here to work with all our strength to build a feeling of security for citizens,&#8221; he <a href="https://greece.greekreporter.com/2019/07/09/michalis-chrisochoidis-greeces-terrorist-hunter-returns-to-center-stage/">said</a> upon accepting his appointment. &#8220;All people should feel that their neighborhood belongs to them.&#8221;
Back in 1992, Leslie Gelb <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1992/06/12/opinion/foreign-affairs-macedonia-for-greece.html">wrote</a> in The New York Times about the foreign policy of Prime Minister Konstantinos Mitsotakis. Gelb wrote: &#8220;The conservative Mr. Mitsotakis is the most pro-American Greek leader in a very long time. He consummated a controversial naval base agreement with the U.S. He recognized Israel and got tough on terrorism.&#8221; The foreign policy of his son will likely be the same, with even more urgency now that Turkey has moved into Moscow and Iran&#8217;s orbit.
President Donald Trump called Kyriakos on Tuesday. <a href="https://greece.greekreporter.com/2019/07/10/donald-trump-congratulates-new-greek-pm-kyriakos-mitsotakis/">According</a> to the prime minister&#8217;s office, &#8220;Mr. Mitsotakis told Mr. Trump that the priority of the new Greek government is to fight bureaucracy and stimulate investment.&#8221;
It won&#8217;t be easy. But, God-willing, Kyriakos may turn things around and bring a new day to Greece.

MITSOTAKIS: A New Day For Greece Has Arrived

Conservatism

Economy

Europe

Greece

Socialism

Whenever Iran commits a terrorist attack, the regime can always rely on its defenders &#8212; America-haters and conspiracy nuts on both the Left and Right &#8212; to pretend otherwise. Yet all one needs to do is pay attention to the regime&#8217;s words and its intentions and culpability become clear.
In the case of the latest attacks in the Gulf of Oman, Iranian terrorist leaders literally announced they were going to carry out these attacks weeks in advance. As <a href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.wsj.com_articles_attacks-2Dput-2Dspotlight-2Don-2Done-2Dof-2Dworlds-2Dmost-2Ddangerous-2Dseaborne-2Dtrade-2Droutes-2D11560434132&amp;d=DwMFaQ&amp;c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&amp;r=79-7Ymz8uEOybZ4Cp9cDXw&amp;m=KG18rNO9dG9A1eUis2rOqWWeKGKRM2f-q8_jF3E9N1k&amp;s=WrMWH5o0tDRvITw8_zygYIdaML6707sWc9HlpXnwP38&amp;e=">reported</a> in The Wall Street Journal: &#8220;After the Trump administration tightened a ban on Tehran&#8217;s oil exports in May, Iranian officials have warned transit through the [Strait of Hormuz] was at risk. &#8216;If Iran does not enjoy peace and stability, the rest of the region won&#8217;t enjoy peace and stability,&#8217; &#8230; Gholam Rashid, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps&#8217; unified central command, told Parliament on May 25. &#8216;That includes the export of oil.'&#8221;
It&#8217;s far from the first time that Iran has made this specific threat. In July of last year, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani <a href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.timesofisrael.com_rouhani-2Dwarns-2Dof-2Dconsequences-2Dto-2Dus-2Dpush-2Dagainst-2Dbuying-2Diranian-2Doil_&amp;d=DwMFaQ&amp;c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&amp;r=79-7Ymz8uEOybZ4Cp9cDXw&amp;m=KG18rNO9dG9A1eUis2rOqWWeKGKRM2f-q8_jF3E9N1k&amp;s=_biz32kyDDlRiE85HTX9WvvsR0A-Ac_B_FOawRe4BWY&amp;e=">said</a> that &#8220;It would be meaningless [to say] that Iran cannot export its oil while others in the region can. Do this if you can and see the consequences.&#8221; Iran&#8217;s terrorist mastermind, Quds Force leader Qasim Soleimani, congratulated Rouhani, <a href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.cnn.com_2018_07_04_middleeast_iran-2Dguards-2Drouhani-2Dintl_index.html&amp;d=DwMFaQ&amp;c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&amp;r=79-7Ymz8uEOybZ4Cp9cDXw&amp;m=KG18rNO9dG9A1eUis2rOqWWeKGKRM2f-q8_jF3E9N1k&amp;s=0V9XTN68VLNW2ZRBWY83eInX6VzDK8Bw2fAFLWt4eGY&amp;e=">saying</a>, &#8220;Your valuable statement that said there will be no guarantees for oil exports from this region unless the Islamic Republic of Iran (can) also export its oil was a source of pride.&#8221;
In all this, it must be recalled that the Iranian regime is willing &#8212; indeed, eager &#8212; to kill Americans. Not only has &#8220;Death to America&#8221; been an official slogan of the regime since its founding, but they often brag about killing Americans.
Michael Pregent of United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), who witnessed Iran&#8217;s brutality firsthand while serving in Iraq, <a href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__thehill.com_opinion_national-2Dsecurity_359823-2Diranian-2Daggressors-2Dstill-2Dtarget-2Damerican-2Dtroops-2Din-2Diraq&amp;d=DwMFaQ&amp;c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&amp;r=79-7Ymz8uEOybZ4Cp9cDXw&amp;m=KG18rNO9dG9A1eUis2rOqWWeKGKRM2f-q8_jF3E9N1k&amp;s=NXjgyU5CKPicogFdhcVXDYCqytwd_jd20bTA-uvAX48&amp;e=">wrote</a> in November 2017 that &#8220;Iran has been responsible for the deaths of more than 1,000 American soldiers over the years. In August, Brigadier General Esmail Quaani, deputy commander of Iran&#8217;s Quds Force, boasted to Iranians about the number of Americans the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has murdered, saying, &#8216;Americans have suffered more losses from us then we have suffered losses from them.&#8217; Iran has also continued to praise the role of the IRGC in the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, the deadliest attack on the U.S. Marines since World War II. In 2016, Hossein Salami, deputy commander in chief of the IRGC stated, &#8216;In 1983, the flames of Islamic revolution flared among Lebanese youth for the first time, and in a courageous act, a young Muslim buried 260 United States Marines under the rebels east of Mediterranean Sea.'&#8221;
It is a testimony to UANI&#8217;s effectiveness, in pushing for sanctions, that regime officials constantly complain about it by name. UANI also is detested by Code Pinkers on the Left and Right, but that is to be expected. They have assembled an impressive number of such <a href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.unitedagainstnucleariran.com_anti-2Damerican-2Dstatements&amp;d=DwMFaQ&amp;c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&amp;r=79-7Ymz8uEOybZ4Cp9cDXw&amp;m=KG18rNO9dG9A1eUis2rOqWWeKGKRM2f-q8_jF3E9N1k&amp;s=oZENkglBpBFhDL1gVUnbzw4Vo-m5ebW3TR0i8iAn7_g&amp;e=">quotes</a> from Iran&#8217;s rulers:
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li>Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei (July 18, 2015): &#8220;You heard &#8216;Death to Israel&#8217;, &#8216;Death to the US.&#8217; You could hear it. The whole nation was shaken by these slogans. It wasn&#8217;t only confined to Tehran. The whole of the nation, you could hear, that was covered by this great movement. So we ask Almighty God to accept these prayers by the people of Iran.&#8221;</li>
<li>President Hassan Rouhani (May 8, 2013): &#8220;Saying &#8216;Death to America&#8217; is easy. We need to express &#8216;Death to America&#8217; with action.&#8221;</li>
<li>Ali Shiraz, the Supreme Leader&#8217;s Representative to the Iran&#8217;s IRGC-Quds Force (February 26, 2015): &#8220;We will stand fast against the world of arrogance. We will not rest until we have raised the banner of Islam over the White House.&#8221;</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
Never to be outdone, of course, is Ayatollah Khomeini himself. In a statement that the regime once published &#8212; in Paymaha va Sokhanraniyha-yi Imam Khomeini (&#8220;Messages and Speeches of Imam Khomeini&#8221;), published by Nur Research and Publication Institute (Tehran, 1981) &#8212; but has since tried to hide, Khomeini <a href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.commentarymagazine.com_literary_a-2Dresponse-2Dto-2Dandrew-2Dsullivan_&amp;d=DwMFaQ&amp;c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&amp;r=79-7Ymz8uEOybZ4Cp9cDXw&amp;m=KG18rNO9dG9A1eUis2rOqWWeKGKRM2f-q8_jF3E9N1k&amp;s=XuuR6NgYjfI4Lc3CoSTo9rpL1wiuq_4BeCAS3ALZD4s&amp;e=">declared</a> in 1980:
<blockquote>
&#8220;We do not worship Iran, we worship Allah. For patriotism is another name for paganism. I say let this land [Iran] burn. I say let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world.&#8221;
</blockquote>
The regime may have tried to whitewash the rhetoric, but it has not forgotten this objective. Quds Force deputy commander Esmail Quaani <a href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.memri.org_reports_irgc-2Dcommanders-2Dour-2Dmain-2Daim-2Dglobal-2Dislamic-2Drule-2520&amp;d=DwMFaQ&amp;c=slrrB7dE8n7gBJbeO0g-IQ&amp;r=79-7Ymz8uEOybZ4Cp9cDXw&amp;m=KG18rNO9dG9A1eUis2rOqWWeKGKRM2f-q8_jF3E9N1k&amp;s=qKIWNMNy__yMzHYpjOXANq_nx9LpA3_dKkvTZX6_bRA&amp;e=">said</a> in May 2017: &#8220;Without a doubt, our martyrs and those of the dear ones like you Fatimiyyoun will not settle for less than the global rule of the Imam Mahdi. Our martyrs inaugurated a great path. Syria and Aleppo are the temporary aims, and the main aim is global rule, which I hope is not far off.&#8221;
We ignore Iran&#8217;s open threats at our own peril. But what else is new? Nobody took Mein Kampf seriously, either.

MITSOTAKIS: Iran’s Regime Broadcasts Its Intentions (Yet Many Refuse To Listen)

It was the end of 1996. Bill Clinton had just been re-elected, and he organized an elaborate welcome reception for a foreign guest: General Chi Haotian of China. A breakfast reception was held in his honor and the Democrats loyally attended. Well, all but one attended: Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco.
Pelosi, outraged, did not <a href="http://cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2009/09/mainland-china-cuba-united-states-are.html">mince</a> words:
<blockquote>
&#8220;My objection is not to the visit of Chinese Defense Minister General Chi Haotian, but to our country giving full military honors to the person who was in operational command over the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 and who directed the Chinese government&#8217;s military threats against the Taiwanese people during their elections. At the same time that President Clinton will not meet with any of the Chinese dissidents or have an official meeting with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, he has an official meeting with the person who crushed and continues to crush dissent in China and Tibet. With its actions, the Clinton administration has given great face to the hardliners in the Chinese regime. General Chi oversaw the massacre of civilians in Tiananmen Square who rallied around the symbol of our democracy, the Statue of Liberty. These people responded to our ideals, they were crushed, and now we honor those who crushed them.&#8221;
</blockquote>
Not long thereafter, a photograph <a href="https://www.gettyimages.co.nz/detail/news-photo/chinese-defense-min-chi-haotian-meeting-w-pres-bill-clinton-news-photo/50696313">appeared</a> showing a smiling Bill Clinton sitting with General Chi in the Oval Office. The liberal civil-libertarian Nat Hentoff took the photo to Pelosi to inquire about her thoughts: &#8220;&#8216;Oh, my God,&#8217; she said, &#8216;I thought I would never see the day. The president won&#8217;t see the Dalai Lama, he won&#8217;t see the pro-democracy dissidents, he won&#8217;t see Harry Wu, but he did see this thug. It&#8217;s absolutely appalling.'&#8221;
By placing trade with China over criticism of its human rights record, Pelosi said, Clinton&#8217;s China policy had &#8220;led to crackdowns in China. You would be hard put to find a dissident to talk to in China. They&#8217;re all in prison, in labor camps or in exile. Their families have been silenced. It&#8217;s heartbreaking.&#8221;
Pelosi, Hentoff wrote, complained of &#8220;&#8216;huge amounts of money&#8217; being spent to legitimize the trade-over-human-rights policy. &#8216;Corporations allowed to do business in China lobby, make presentations and schmooze with members of Congress and journalists. Money is the biggest enemy of those of us on the other side. &#8230; A corollary obstacle to helping China&#8217;s prisoners of conscience is, as Pelosi puts it, the revolving door by which lobbyists become administration policymakers. &#8216;Sandy Berger,&#8217; she notes, &#8216;was the point person at the Hogan &amp; Harrison law firm for the trade office of the Chinese government. He was a lawyer-lobbyist. When he went into the Clinton administration, he was second to Tony Lake, and now he is the national security adviser.'&#8221;
The late Chinese gulag survivor Harry Wu used to call out politicians who sold out American interests and human rights for Beijing gold. In one <a href="https://www.wnd.com/2001/04/8721/">interview</a>, he spoke of senators who &#8220;took a stand for communist China based on family or business interests. For example, Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA), her husband is a board member of COSCO [The People&#8217;s Liberation Army&#8217;s Chinese Overseas Shipping Corporation] and he has other investments in China. You see, this is the kind of person [Feinstein] who is never interested in my work.&#8221; In a later <a href="http://www.cincinnati.com/story/opinion/contributors/2014/10/04/opinion-love-blind-comes-mcconnell-china/16652453/">article</a>, he spoke of &#8220;Sen. Mitch McConnell,&#8221; who &#8220;is one of the strongest supporters of free trade and closer ties with China. &#8230; After all, Jiang Zemin, China&#8217;s former Communist Party boss and dictator, is a close family friend of the senator&#8217;s wife, and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao praised her father for building up China&#8217;s industry. Jiang Zemin, the hard-liner who took power following the Tiananmen Square massacre, is notorious for his repression of religious minorities and Tibet.&#8221;
But Wu had only the warmest of words for Pelosi, and vice-versa.
This is not the image of Nancy Pelosi with which I grew up. The Pelosi I came to recognize was the congresswoman who in 2007 flew to Syria and sat with Bashir Assad to criticize President George W. Bush at the same time that Assad was running terrorist bases whence jihadists would cross into Iraq to attack American troops &#8212; guys like Pelosi&#8217;s current House <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2018/12/21/dan-crenshaw-why-guys-like-me-go-places-like-syria/?utm_term=.19afc5efb0b3">colleague</a> Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX). Those were the same terrorist bases from which ISIS would one day emerge.
I am only now learning about this earlier version of Pelosi thanks to a renewed interest in Nat Hentoff&#8217;s writings. I am not, nor will likely ever, be a fan of Pelosi. Yet it does not change the fact that at that time, on this issue, she did what was right and spoke truth to power.

MITSOTAKIS: Tiananmen Square Massacre At 30 And Remembering Nancy Pelosi’s Finest Hour

Bill Clinton

George W. Bush

Nancy Pelosi

Last year, &#8220;Babylon 5&#8221; writer J. Michael Straczynski received a message on Twitter thanking him for treating people of faith with respect, despite being an atheist. He <a href="https://twitter.com/straczynski/status/1004509467910606848" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">responded</a>:
<blockquote>
That I&#8217;m an atheist doesn&#8217;t mean I need to be disrespectful. Also, that allows me to be more objective about religion, I don&#8217;t have an ax to grind. Besides, the moment it becomes about advancing your agenda that&#8217;s propaganda, not storytelling, and the tale dies.
</blockquote>
This lesson was learned 70 years earlier by Stalinist screenwriter Albert Maltz, who had been struggling to stay within the boundaries imposed on him by the Communist Party and write a good story at the same time. He found that an ideological &#8220;straightjacket&#8221; that treats art as little more than political propaganda produces &#8220;wasted writing or bad art.&#8221;
&#8220;The opportunity of the artist is conditioned by the nature of art itself,&#8221; Maltz wrote in a 1946 <a href="https://loneconservative.com/2018/08/13/artists-in-uniform-snowflakes-of-stalinism/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">essay</a> that almost got him thrown out of the Communist Party. &#8220;We read textbooks for facts, theories, information. But we read novels, or go to the theater, for a different purpose. The artist, by the nature of his craft, is able to show us people in motion. This is why we revere good writers. They let us observe the individual richly &#8212; a complex creature of manifold dreams, desires, disappointments &#8212; in his relation to other individuals and to his society.&#8221;
2007&#8217;s &#8220;Juno&#8221; was not about abortion and does not take a stand about the morality or immorality of abortion. It is a comedy about a teenage girl&#8217;s pregnancy and the couple who want to adopt Juno&#8217;s baby. The one scene that deals with abortion lampoons pro-lifers and pro-choicers alike.
But not long ago &#8212; as <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/47396/juno-screenwriter-now-regrets-films-pro-life-paul-bois" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">recounted</a> by the Daily Wire&#8217;s Paul Bois &#8212; &#8220;Juno&#8221; writer Diablo Cody told a social justice warrior podcast that, in light of this year&#8217;s wave of new pro-life laws, she regrets the unintended political message people took away from her decidedly unpolitical film. &#8220;I don&#8217;t even know if I would have written a movie like &#8216;Juno&#8217; if I had known that the world was going to spiral into this hellish alternate reality that we now seem to be stuck in,&#8221; Cody said.
Bois writes that &#8220;Cody described herself as being &#8216;as pro-choice as a person can possibly be&#8217; and admitted that she wrote &#8216;Juno&#8217; without considering any of the political consequences because she did not even think it would get made.&#8221;
While it is impossible to know, the fact that Cody checked her politics at the door is probably the reason why she was able to write such a good story. And &#8220;Juno&#8221; was adored by nearly everyone, save for a few self-appointed culture commissars. Attempts to pander to those cultural commissars fail, miserably. Bois notes that &#8220;Hollywood tried to create a pro-abortion alternative to &#8216;Juno&#8217; (2014&#8217;s &#8216;Obvious Child&#8217;) and it completely tanked, despite universal praise from agenda-driven movie critics.&#8221;
In his 1946 essay, Albert Maltz argued:
<blockquote>
A writer may be confused, or even stupid and reactionary in his thinking &#8212; and yet, it is possible for him to do good, even great, work as an artist &#8212; work that even serves ends he despises. This point is critical for an understanding of art and artists! An artist can be a great artist without being an integrated or a logical or a progressive thinker on all matters. This is so because he presents, not a systematized philosophy, but the imaginative reconstruction of a sector of human experience.
</blockquote>
Faced with the unrelenting scorn of the Communist Party&#8217;s literary enforcer, Mike Gold, Maltz was forced to retract his column. But other writers were unafraid. Today, one of the only things people remember about Mike Gold was a message that was left for him at his office. The message was: &#8220;Tell Mike Gold that Ernest Hemingway says he should go f*** himself.&#8221;
For the sake of the future of art and literature, let us hope that writers take J. Michael Straczynski&#8217;s and Albert Maltz&#8217;s attitude toward writing &#8212; and Hemingway&#8217;s attitude toward those who would tell them what to do and say.

MITSOTAKIS: ‘Juno’ Is A Great Movie BECAUSE It Is NOT Propaganda

Abortion

Hollywood

This essay is the result of a day in Library Studies class. On that day, a girl told the class that &#8220;far right&#8221; groups should not be allowed to gather in libraries. It is an attitude that is, to say the least, a bad fit for a future librarian &#8211; and it, ironically, would likely backfire had she gotten her way.
The single, most clear principal of the American Library Association is that librarians will not discriminate, even if they find someone&#8217;s ideas appalling. The ALA Code of Ethics states that &#8220;We uphold the principles of intellectual freedom and resist all efforts to censor library resources&#8221; and &#8220;We distinguish between our personal convictions and professional duties and do not allow our personal beliefs to interfere with fair representation of the aims of our institutions or the provision of access to their information resources.&#8221; This Code was adopted in 1939, at the height of Nazi power and influence.
Not long after that class I shared the experience with Nadine Strossen &#8211; former head of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and daughter of Holocaust survivors. She agreed with my sentiments, and showed me where she tackles these same issues in her book, &#8220;HATE: Why We should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship&#8221;.
&#8220;Proponents of &#8216;hate speech&#8217; laws assume that the enforcement of such laws might have prevented the spread of Nazi ideology in Germany,&#8221; she wrote. &#8220;But the historical record belies this assumption. Throughout the Nazis&#8217; rise to power, there were laws on the books criminalizing hateful, discriminatory speech, which were similar to contemporary &#8216;hate speech&#8217; laws.&#8221; In the years prior to Hitler&#8217;s rise to power, Germany had Hate speech laws similar to those of Canada today, which lead to over two hundred prosecutions for anti-semitic speech.
&#8220;The German &#8216;hate speech&#8217; laws were enforced even against leading Nazis, some of whom served substantial prison terms,&#8221; she wrote. &#8220;But rather than suppressing the Nazis&#8217; anti-Semitic ideology, these prosecutions helped the Nazis gain attention and support. For example, journalist Flemming Rose reports that between 1923 and 1933, the virulently anti-Semitic newspaper Der Sturmer, published by Julius Streicher, &#8216;was either confiscated or [its] editors [were] taken to court on &#8230; thirty-six occasions.&#8217; Yet, &#8216;[t]he more charges Streicher faced, the greater became the admiration of his supporters. The courts became an important platform for Stretcher&#8217;s campaign against the Jews.'&#8221;
The insinuation that people must be protected from dangerous ideas is itself a much more dangerous idea. In the immediate post-WWII period, censorship was looked upon in the democratic world as a tool of the tyrants they just defeated &#8211; and of the tyrants vying to fill their place. In another section of the book Strossen pointed me toward, she writes:
<blockquote>
<div>
&#8220;The Soviet Union persistently pushed for language permitting or even requiring UN member states to restrict &#8216;hate speech&#8217; in meetings of the UN bodies that worked on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other major UN instruments. The proposed language was closely modeled on the constitutions of the Communist regimes. For example, the Soviet Union&#8217;s 1936 constitution provided: &#8216;Any advocacy of racial or national &#8230;hatred &#8230;is punishable by law.&#8217; &#8230; Eleanor Roosevelt, who was the United States&#8217; representative to the UN from 1946 to 1953, warned that incorporating such language in UN instruments was &#8216;extremely dangerous&#8217; and &#8216;likely to be exploited by totalitarian States for the purpose of rendering the other [human rights] articles null and void,&#8217; because &#8216;criticism of public or religious authorities might all too easily be described as incitement to hatred and consequently prohibited.&#8217; Likewise, representatives of other democratic countries maintained that &#8216;hate speech&#8217; laws could be invoked &#8216;to suppress the opinions of opposition groups and parties.&#8217; These warnings proved sadly prophetic. The Communist proponents of such laws did regularly enforce them to suppress speech by political dissidents as well as by ethnic and religious minorities.&#8221;
</div>
</blockquote>
<div>
100 years earlier, similar speech laws were in force in the United States &#8211; in the slave-holding South. Strossen writes that &#8220;pro-slavery senator John C. Calhoun argued that abolitionists who criticized slavery &#8216;libeled the South and inflicted emotional injury.&#8217; During the 1830s, many Southern states enacted laws suppressing abolitionist speech, which was feared to spur violence &#8211; in particular, slave rebellions.&#8221; (Calhoun, in asking for censorship for the sake of emotional wellbeing, was the first snowflake in American history!)
The principal of freedom of speech is the very first right guaranteed to Americans in the Bill of Rights. There are precious few things that can legitimately be considered bipartisan, but the defense of free speech is one so special that the former ACLU head can be greeted with equal enthusiasm at the Progressive (Franklin and Eleanor) Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College and the Conservative (Ronald Reagan associated) Heritage Foundation all within the same week.
</div>

MITSOTAKIS: The Folly Of Hate Speech Laws: A Review Of ‘HATE: Why We Should Resist It With Free Speech, Not Censorship’

Social Justice

By Miles O&#8217;Brien, former Transporter Chief of USS Enterprise-D during Borg encounter 
Personal Log, stardate 72761.9.
Looking back, it&#8217;s amazing we survived at all. Meeting the Borg, to paraphrase captain Jean Luc-Picard, jolted us out of our complacency. But our unpreparedness was our own fault. 
We were silly enough to believe that the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW9WGibEF04" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">collapse</a> of the Klingon Empire meant Starfleet no longer needed to maintain a strong military arm. It would be easy to blame the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03QKSjBiG2c" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">parasite conspiracy</a> that infiltrated Starfleet Command, yet that would ignore the culture of appeasement in the decades following the Khitimar accords. 
I witnessed it first hand while fighting against the Cardassian border incursions. Imagine watching the spoonheads <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVHR0UPHERQ" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">commit genocide</a> and enduring decades of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Owyj_5TuHQw" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">attacks</a>, and still refusing to rearm! (Having been inside the mind of a Section 31 operative, I suspect we have them to thank for the Bajoran resistance&#8217;s success in tying down the Cardassians and for the Romulans&#8217; &#8220;<a href="http://tng.trekcore.com/audiocaps/1x26/1x26-morecomplicated-e.mp3" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">matters more urgent</a>&#8221; that kept those powers from attacking us with full force.)
But I never thought I&#8217;d find myself thankful to Q. I have to admit that we owe him an eternal debt of gratitude for <a href="http://chakoteya.net/NextGen/142.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">what he did</a> 30 years today. 
(Q is more of a force of nature than a &#8220;he,&#8221; but it nevertheless came to us in the form of a man that day.) 
Picard&#8217;s confidence had turned to arrogance, so much so that he was willing to ignore Q&#8217;s <a href="http://tng.trekcore.com/audiocaps/2x16/2x16-seehowready-e.mp3" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">warning</a> that the Federation was &#8220;moving faster than expected, further than they should&#8221; and that we were &#8220;not prepared&#8221; for what awaited us. Q told us: &#8220;You judge yourselves against the pitiful adversaries you have encountered so far. The Romulans, the Klingons. They are nothing compared to what&#8217;s waiting. Picard, you are about to move into areas of the galaxy containing wonders more incredible than you can possibly imagine, and terrors to freeze your soul. I offer myself as guide only to be rejected out of hand.&#8221;
Picard&#8217;s answer was &#8220;we are resolute, we are determined, and your help is not required.&#8221; Q had had enough. &#8220;We&#8217;ll just have to see how ready you are,&#8221; he said, and with a snap of his fingers he sent us to <a href="https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/System_J-25" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">System J-25</a> &#8211; on the far end of the Beta Quadrant (two years, seven months away from the nearest starbase at maximum warp). As Q vanished, Picard turned to our enigmatic El-Aurian bartender, <a href="https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Guinan" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Guinan</a>. &#8220;Your people have been in this part of the galaxy,&#8221; he said, &#8220;what can you tell us?&#8221; &#8220;Only that if I were you,&#8221; she responded, &#8220;I&#8217;d start back now.&#8221; 
To listen to Picard&#8217;s log from that day is humorous, in a macabre way: &#8220;Captain&#8217;s log, stardate 42761.9. Despite Guinan&#8217;s warning, I feel compelled to investigate this unexplored sector of the galaxy before heading back.&#8221; Guinan wasn&#8217;t just some chatty talk show host. Her&#8217;s was a voice of wisdom to be heeded, and she was terrified. But Picard decided to ignore her. We did indeed discover a Class M planet. &#8220;There is a system of roads on this planet,&#8221; said Data, &#8220;which indicates a highly industrialized civilization. But where there should be cities there are only <a href="https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/memoryalpha/images/4/42/New_Providence_colony.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20130423000041&amp;path-prefix=en" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">great rips</a> in the surface.&#8221; (&#8220;It is as though some great force just scooped all the machine elements off the face of the planet,&#8221; added Worf.) This meant that whatever tore its way through the Neutral Zone with Romulus &#8211; leaving similar scars on the colonized planets &#8211; was nearby. It was at that very moment that a giant cube appeared onscreen. We asked Guinan if she recognized it. &#8220;My people encountered them a century ago,&#8221; she said. They destroyed our cities. They scattered my people throughout the galaxy. They&#8217;re called the Borg. Protect yourself, Captain, or they&#8217;ll destroy you.&#8221;
The next log states as follows: &#8220;Captain&#8217;s log, supplemental. We have been attacked without provocation by an alien race which Guinan calls the Borg. It appears that we have neutralised their vessel. Commander Riker is leading an away team in an attempt to learn more about them.&#8221; This was sent after the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bs173OfGmm4" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">loss</a> of eighteen shipmates before successfully blasting the Borg cube&#8217;s cutting and tractor beams. Picard decided to once again ignore Guinan and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Olak3vCXzQ0" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">beamed</a> an away team over to the cube. The countless bipedal lifeforms with cybernetic implants were hooked into machines on the walls, while others roamed around paying no heed to the Enterprise crew. 
Commander Riker reported on his discovery that &#8220;the Borg have developed the technology to link artificial intelligence directly into the humanoid brain&#8221; and &#8220;the Borg seem to be using their combined power to repair the ship.&#8221; At this, the captain ordered me to beam the away team back to the Enterprise and &#8220;get the hell out of here.&#8221;
The last log has a more familiar tone when dealing with Borg encounters &#8211; Panic and Fear. &#8220;Captain&#8217;s log supplemental. We are unable to maintain the gap between the Enterprise and the Borg ship.&#8221;
Q appeared on the Bridge to taunt us as we<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHzz6Ztcmzc" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> futilely tried to run for our lives</a>. He told us: &#8220;They will follow this ship until you exhaust your fuel. They will wear down your defences. Then you will be theirs. Admit it, Picard. You&#8217;re out of your league. You should have stayed where you belonged. You can&#8217;t outrun them. You can&#8217;t destroy them. If you damage them, the essence of what they are remains. They regenerate and keep coming. Eventually you will weaken, your reserves will be gone. They are relentless. Where&#8217;s your stubbornness now, Picard, your arrogance? Do you still profess to be prepared for what awaits you? I&#8217;ll be leaving now. You thought you could handle it, so handle it.&#8221;
I have been critical of captain Picard throughout this log, but let it never be said that he didn&#8217;t always come through for us in the end. With a fate worse than death closing in, Picard humbled himself before Q and <a href="http://tng.trekcore.com/audiocaps/2x16/2x16-ineedyou-e.mp3" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">begged</a> him to save us: &#8220;You wanted to frighten us. We are frightened. You wanted to show us that we were inadequate. For the moment, I grant that. You wanted me to say I need you. I need you!&#8221; 
With a snap of his finger, Q brought us back to where we started, safely out of range of the Borg. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_Wru5teAPw" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Reflecting</a> on these events with Guinan, Picard expressed gratitude to Q. &#8220;Maybe Q did the right thing for the wrong reason,&#8221; said the captain. &#8220;Perhaps what we most needed was a kick in our complacency, to prepare us for what lies ahead.&#8221;
For a long time I did not want to admit it, but Q was right. We weren&#8217;t ready, and we had to be forced to recognize that. Nevertheless, if I live to be 500 years old, I will never forget the first time I heard the harsh, collective <a href="http://tng.trekcore.com/audiocaps/2x16/2x16-borghail-e.mp3" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">voice</a> of the Borg: &#8220;We have analyzed your defensive capabilities as being unable to withstand us. If you defend yourselves, you will be punished.&#8221; 
This begs the question: what if our &#8220;defensive capabilities&#8221; were able to withstand them? What if, instead of naive pseudo-pacifism, we had spent the previous decades continually working to improve our capacity to defend ourselves? What if, upon first contact, we were strong enough to blast those Borg bastards into space dust? 
Consider: until they encountered Species 8472, the Borg never showed fear of anything. But faced with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufHHzzMO7sM" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">an enemy they couldn&#8217;t defeat</a>, the Borg ran scared. After they survived this encounter &#8211; <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSUAQNSx5fs" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">thanks</a> to Admiral Janeway &#8211; they never messed with 8472 again. But the Borg were not afraid of the Federation, because the Federation were pacifistic and lightly armed. Had Starfleet crushed the Borg at System J-25 &#8211; or at <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-0Jg6_zHu0" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Wolf 359</a> &#8211; the Borg may well have left the Federation alone. But the military weakness caused by decades of pacifism signaled to the Borg that the Federation was vulnerable to invasion and assimilation. Had it not been the sheer luck of Voyager being lost in the Delta Quadrant and learning how to fight the Borg, the entire Alpha and Beta Quadrant would have fallen to the Collective. 
Even after Wolf 359 we still had not learned our lesson! We were <a href="http://chakoteya.net/DS9/447.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">supposed</a> to have had an entire Battlefleet of Defiant-class ships, but once the Borg threat momentarily subsided we dropped the project &#8211; and had only one <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50d18pM4Rec" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">prototype</a> by the time the Dominion invaded.
And for all our Federation talk about no longer being &#8220;obsessed with the accumulation of things&#8221; and having &#8220;eliminated hunger, want, the need for possessions,&#8221; to be faced with real existing collectivism was horrifying. In the future, captain Picard, who used to scoff at all things capitalistic, would be forcibly assimilated into the collective for just a short time, but long enough to be permanently <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuzoxcErOc8" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">traumatized</a> when his individualism and free will were taken away.
When I visited my fellow history buff Dr. Bashir the other day, he showed me something from an old physical book he had. It was a <a href="http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/presidents/ronald-wilson-reagan/speech-at-omaha-beach-june-6-1984.php" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">quote</a> from a 20th century leader at a war memorial of his fellow countrymen: &#8220;We will always be prepared, so we may always be free.&#8221; Sure, we laugh at their intellectual &#8220;infancy&#8221; now, but maybe they were on to something.

The Borg 30 Years Later, A Reflection From Miles O’Brien, Transporter Chief of USS Enterprise-D

Science

Fifty-two years ago, Israeli soldiers, under heavy fire from a fortified enemy, fought their way uphill Normandy-style the seize control of the Golan Heights &#8211; putting an end to 19 years of artillery, tank and sniper attacks on Israeli citizens living in the valleys below. A few years after that, 177 Israeli tanks were able to hold off 1,400 Syrian tanks during and after the surprise Arab invasion of Israel on the holy day of Yom Kippur.
This history gives considerable context to a comment by Benjamin Netanyahu during his first term as Prime Minister in the 1990s. Speaking with the newspaper Ha&#8217;aretz in 1996, he <a href="https://mfa.gov.il/MFA/PressRoom/1996/Pages/THE%20PRIME%20MINISTER%20WOULD%20LIKE%20A%20FEW%20MINUTES%20OF%20YOU.aspx" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">explained</a>:
<blockquote>
The problem in the case of the Golan Heights is essentially one of security. While we do have strong links to the Golan as you can see, I have here an aerial photograph of Gamla and despite the warm emotional ties that exist, that is not the main point. The main point is the security question. People say to me, look you gave all of Sinai to the Egyptians. This is true, of course. But along the Egyptian border we have strategic depth of 200 kilometers. I imagine that if we had strategic depth of 200 kilometers on the Golan Heights, we could easily reach a similar arrangement with the Syrians. In reality, though, we do not. Here the strategic value is not in depth, but in height, height which we will lose if we abandon the Golan Heights and the crest of Mt. Hermon.
People tell me that in the modern world there are missiles, so territory is no longer important. Missiles are certainly a problem, but so are tanks, particularly tanks moving down towards you from higher ground. In some respects, territory has actually become more important in the age of missiles, since the other side&#8217;s ground forces now also enjoy the support of surface-to-surface missiles which can disrupt our reserve system and make it harder to defend our borders. So it should be clear that ground defense requirements do not disappear in an age of missiles, but actually become even more important. And for intelligence purposes, high ground assumes an especial importance. All this goes to explain why the problem on the Golan is mainly one of security.
</blockquote>
Then, as now, Syria &#8211; unlike Egypt and Jordan &#8211; has never made peace with Israel. Today, however, the even more radical enemy regime in Iran is establishing bases for its intelligence and terrorist proxies along the Syrian border with Israel. 
There is no reason for the United States to be neutral on this issue. Syria helps Iran and other jihadists to commit terrorism and kill American soldiers and civilians, whereas Israel kills those terrorists who kill Americans. 
On the issues of human rights, as the Egyptian playwright Ali Salem <a href="https://www.memri.org/tv/egyptian-playwright-ali-salem-final-interview-israel-not-enemy/transcript" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">observed</a> before his passing: &#8220;The only Syrians who can get a full 8 hours sleep every night are the ones living in the Golan Heights. Is any other Syrian citizen safe from the bombs and the killings?&#8221;

MITSOTAKIS: The Military Importance Of The Golan Heights

On Nov 13, 1979, nine Soviet leaders, including Mikhail Gorbachev, met to discuss a growing problem. There was a new Pope, a man from Poland who was capable of inspiring millions in the captive nations of Eastern Europe to resist their oppressors. It was decided that something must be done to neutralize the threat posed to their regime by the Polish Pope .
With concise information, good storytelling and excellent visuals, &#8220;<a href="https://thedivineplanmovie.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Divine Plan</a>&#8221; tells the story of this man, Pope John Paul II, his greatest ally, Ronald Reagan, and their battle against Communism. This documentary by Robert Orlando should be recommended to anyone interested in the history of the Cold War and all who doubt the power of faith to move world events.
As a young man, Karol Józef Wojty&#322;a had a short acting career in college before the Nazis invaded Poland and shut down his university. He witnessed the persecution of his fellow Catholics and the extermination of his many Jewish friends by an Evil Empire, an experience that moved him to seek God and become a priest. His antipathy toward totalitarianism and the communication skills he gained through acting culminated in his June 1979 visit to Poland as the new Pope. This visit electrified the Polish people, who came to see and hear his message of hope by the millions. The Communists watched in horror as talk about freedom and talk about God escalated, especially among workers.
Reagan, on the other hand, witnessed the reaction of the Polish people to the Pope&#8217;s visit and was inspired. There was now a way to breach the Iron Curtain without firing a shot.
But a shot was fired. A Turkish terrorist named Mehmet Ali Agca shot the Pope as he rode through the Vatican on May 13, 1981. The Pope was gravely injured, but by some miracle, survived. Reagan and his Catholic CIA director, Bill Casey, immediately suspected the Kremlin had a hand in the attempted assassination, and ordered the CIA to look into it. The best evidence came not from intelligence, but from the work of journalist Claire Sterling of The New York Times. She reported that Ali Agca was working with Bulgarian Intelligence, which, despite its venire of independent agency, was controlled entirely by Moscow.
Ronald Reagan, of course, was also once an actor, and a man who had taken a stand against totalitarianism. Though not as dramatic as Wojty&#322;a&#8217;s early encounters with evil, Reagan put his life on the line to confront the violent Communist mob that tried to take control of his union, the Screen Actors Guild. That brush with the foot soldiers of tyranny had a major impact on Reagan, who dedicated the rest of his life to the battle against Communism. He also knew the pain of a bullet, as he himself was almost killed by a deranged young man just a few months into his first term.
By the time the two former actors met in 1982, both of them were veteran anti-Communists who bore the scars of gunshot wounds. There were many things they disagreed on, but they shared a conviction that now was the time to confront the Soviet empire, and that Poland was the place to do it. From that time onward, they shared intelligence on Soviet activities and cooperated in supporting the new Catholic trade union, Solidarity.
By 1985, Bill Casey had concluded the CIA&#8217;s investigation into the Pope&#8217;s shooting &#8212; determining that the Soviets were indeed involved &#8212; and shared it with the Pope himself. The Pope said that he reached the same conclusion, but wanted to keep it quiet. Most of the &#8220;smoking gun&#8221; material from all sides remains classified almost 40 years later, but there is enough in the public to support that Casey and the Pope are correct.
In the end, the shooting did not stop the inevitable. Under pressure from Reagan and his successor, George HW Bush, Gorbachev agreed to have an election in Poland, in which the Communists lost every contested seat. Against the appeal of the free world and the Church, the haunting specter of Communism never stood a chance.
There is much more to the story than what is printed here. For the whole story, see &#8220;<a href="https://thedivineplanmovie.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Divine Plan: John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, and the Dramatic End of the Cold War</a>&#8221; by Robert Orlando, check out the book that inspired the film, &#8220;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071XTZ26Z/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&amp;btkr=1" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">A Pope and a President</a>&#8221; by Paul Kengor, and the upcoming companion book to the film, &#8220;<a href="https://home.isi.org/isi-publish-divine-plan-paul-kengor-and-robert-orlando" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Divine Plan</a>&#8221; by Paul Kengor and Robert Orlando.

MITSOTAKIS: How The East Was Won, A Review Of ‘The Divine Plan: John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, and the Dramatic End of the Cold War’

Catholicism

Ronald Reagan

In 1980, former president Richard Nixon wrote a book titled The Real War detailing how the United States was losing ground to the Soviet Union on the world stage. One of his central concerns was the effects of the then recent fall of the Shah of Iran. 
Though Leftists (and Ron Paul-<a href="http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/2012/01/response-to-ron-paul-did-us-policy-make.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">types</a>) would never admit it, there was a significant threat of Soviet expansion into Iran and toward the Persian Gulf in the post-war period, which was thwarted only thanks to the Shah. Nixon witnesses this as vice-president in the 1950s, and by the time he became president the shah&#8217;s value as an ally to the United States had been cemented. 
Nixon gave a short recounting of the benefits of our alliance with the Shah that he witnessed during his term: 
<blockquote>
After the British withdrew in 1971 Iran had taken their place as the military power that guaranteed stability in the Gulf. On the eve of the British withdrawal Iranian forces occupied the strategically located islands of Abu Musa and Tumbs overlooking the Straits of Hormuz. In 1973 the Shah sent Iranian troops to Oman&#8217;s Dhofar Province, where Marxist guerrillas supplied by neighboring South Yemen were threatening the Sultan of Oman&#8217;s regime. The Shah ordered work begun on a naval base at Chah Bahar in Iranian Baluchistan to guard the entrance to the Straits of Hormuz. 
In addition to refusing to participate in the Arab oil embargo of 1967 and of 1973, the Shah had continued to recognize Israel, provided oil for our Mediterranean Fleet, and kept Iraq from playing any significant role in the Yom Kippur War by moving troops to the Iran-Iraq border and by giving covert support to rebellious Kurdish forces, thus tying down the Iraqi Army. During that war his was the only country in the area to prohibit Soviet overflights; he also rushed oil to an American carrier force in the Indian Ocean to keep it in operation. When our allies were asked to send arms to South Vietnam before the Paris accords forbade it, the Shah stripped himself of F-5&#8217;s to accommodate us.
</blockquote>
With the fall of the Shah, all of those advantages were reversed. Additionally, 1980 was still too early for many to predict the catastrophe that the reemergence of militant Islam would have in the decades to come, so we in hindsight see what Nixon could not.
It was a disaster that could have been avoided if we would have stood strong with our ally. It is a lesson we should not soon forget.

MITSOTAKIS: When Iran Was Our Ally

Ali Khamenei

Despite his raging liberalism, I have long been an admirer of Nicholas Kristof. It takes a man of immense courage to do what he did in bringing the terrible truth about Communist China to light for all to see. He has also taken a stand on behalf of young conservatives who suffer discrimination on college campuses, a stand for which he received an enormous amount of hate mail from his lefty readers.
That being said, he screwed up &#8212; big time &#8212; in his <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/18/opinion/sunday/cuba-healthcare-medicare.html?emc=edit_nk_20190118&amp;nl=nickkristof&amp;nlid=7176898320190118&amp;te=1" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">latest column</a> in The New York Times. His essay is dedicated to telling his readers why &#8220;Cuba has the Medicare for All that many Americans dream about.&#8221;
A little background, to explain my dismay.
I spent two weeks in working class areas of Cuba in 2014. I stayed in Havana for some of the time, but it was the city of Santiago de Cuba that left the biggest impression. In Santiago de Cuba, I stayed next door to a nurse, who upon learning I was an American, asked if I could spare any clean pillow cases and bedsheets. She explained that there was a cholera outbreak going around Cuba&#8217;s hospitals. Cholera had been eradicated in Cuba a century earlier, but Cuban hospitals are so filthy and neglected that the disease has made a strong comeback. (In Venezuela, the largest recipient of Cuban medical slave labor, the once extinct disease of Malaria has been revived. Communism may be Godless, but it seems that Cuban Medicare for All works its own miracles in resurrecting dead plagues.)
I was not allowed to see the hospital for myself. Had they known I was coming, they may have prepared, like they did for Michael Moore (a Cuban girl who&#8217;s uncle is a doctor in Cuba once told me that &#8220;Sicko really bothers me because he [Moore] went to my uncle&#8217;s hospital and they were notified months ahead of time. More than enough time to set up a front.&#8221;) Instead, I was shown a clinic that was pristine &#8212; and it was empty. As far as I can tell, the common people are not allowed in that clinic.
It wouldn&#8217;t be surprising. Cuba is by far the most class segregated society I have ever seen. A Cuban worker explained to me that while they hear endlessly from the government about the &#8220;American embargo against Cuba,&#8221; the real problem is the &#8220;internal embargo&#8221;&#8212;the embargo that the government elite has imposed on the Cuban people to keep them from participating in the economies of the elite and the outside world.
Not only is there physical separation from the elites, but there is even a separate currency. The Cuban people use the Cuban Peso (CUP), whereas the government elite and the tourists use the Cuban Convertible Peso (CUC). The CUC is worth 25 times the value of the CUP, and the nation&#8217;s tourist areas, luxury restaurants, and other attractions for foreigners will not accept Cuban pesos, effectively keeping the native population out. The Cuban government also uses the two currencies to make it more difficult for Cuban workers to keep more of their money; Cuban workers employed by foreign companies, for example, are only allowed to keep 8% of their salaries once they are converted into CUP.
Mr. Kristof apparently visited a different Cuba than I did.
His column, titled &#8220;Why Infants May Be More Likely to Die in America Than Cuba,&#8221; tells us that &#8220;Cuba is poor and repressive with a dysfunctional economy, but in health care it does an impressive job that the United States could learn from.&#8221;
Thus:
<blockquote>
According to official statistics (about which, as we&#8217;ll see, there is some debate), the infant mortality rate in Cuba is only 4.0 deaths per 1,000 live births. In the United States, it&#8217;s 5.9. In other words, an American infant is, by official statistics, almost 50 percent more likely to die than a Cuban infant. By my calculations, that means that 7,500 American kids die each year because we don&#8217;t have as good an infant mortality rate as Cuba reports.
</blockquote>
Notice the reference to &#8220;some debate&#8221; about the accuracy of the Cuban Communist regime&#8217;s official statistics. He returns to this later in his essay:
<blockquote>
There are also allegations that Cuba fiddles with its numbers. The country has an unusually high rate of late fetal deaths, and skeptics contend that when a baby is born in distress and dies after a few hours, this is sometimes categorized as a stillbirth to avoid recording an infant death. Dr. Roberto Álvarez, a Cuban pediatrician, insisted to me that this does not happen and countered with explanations for why the fetal death rate is high. I&#8217;m not in a position to judge who&#8217;s right, but any manipulation seems unlikely to make a huge difference to the reported figures.
</blockquote>
It does not seem to occur to Mr. Kristof that the Doctor he was speaking to, an employee of the regime, may be lying. It should be noted that the allegations Mr. Kristof refers to &#8211; detailing how the Communist regime is lying &#8211; are widespread, and were recently stated by a man who watches events in Cuba very closely. &#8220;Totalitarian regimes don&#8217;t have the best history of accurate reporting,&#8221; Senator Marco Rubio <a href="https://nypost.com/2014/02/28/how-cuba-is-exporting-repression-to-venezuela/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">said</a> on the Senate floor. &#8220;In Cuba there are instances reported, that if a child only lives a few hours after birth, it&#8217;s not counted as a person who ever lived and therefore doesn&#8217;t count against the mortality rate. &#8230; Any time there&#8217;s any problem with the child in utero, the mothers are strongly encouraged to undergo abortions.&#8221;
Mr. Kristof may have been taken on a Potemkin village tour. At one point in the article, he refers to health problems resulting from more and more people who are overweight. Almost everyone I saw was underweight, and I actually acquired one Cuban&#8217;s ration book from the previous year. Not many people can get fat on rations that small.
Mr. Kristof writes that:
<blockquote>
Missing a prenatal checkup is much less likely in Cuba because of a system of front-line clinics called consultorios. These clinics, staffed by a single doctor and nurse, are often run down and poorly equipped, but they make health care readily available: Doctors live upstairs and are on hand after hours in emergencies.
</blockquote>
As noted earlier, the consultorio I saw in Santiago de Cuba was devoid of the common man. It was just another part of what Rubio described as a &#8220;three-tiered system where foreigners and government officials get health care much better than what&#8217;s available to the general population.&#8221;
Additional evidence that there was a Potemkin element to his trip is in the fact that not everyone Mr. Kristof spoke to was honest about who they are. I want to give one glaring example of such a person who is quoted in his essay:
&#8220;It&#8217;s no secret that most health problems can be resolved at the primary-care level by the doctor, nurse or health worker nearest you,&#8221; said Gail Reed, the American executive editor of the health journal Medicc Review, which focuses on Cuban health care. &#8220;So, there is something to be said for Cuba&#8217;s building of a national primary-care network that posts health professionals in neighborhoods nationwide.&#8221;
This is not the first time Gail Reed has been quoted in the New York Times. In 1983 she was interviewed through the fence of the Cuban embassy in Grenada, which was surrounded by US Marines that liberated the island from the Cuban-puppet &#8220;New Jewel Movement&#8221; regime. From the Cuban side of the fence, Reed angrily complained about the murder of Cuban-backed Communist Maurice Bishop by other Cuban-backed Communists. &#8220;The killing of Bishop is [was] not authorized,&#8221; she said to the Times. Unlike the multitude of other assassinations Castro was involved in, this one was &#8220;Not authorized.&#8221;
Ms. Reed was in a position to know. At the time she was married to Julian Torres Rizo, Cuban ambassador to Grenada. When Reagan liberated Grenada, the Marines found tons and tons of documents. Reagan tasked Herbert Romerstein, head of USIA&#8217;s office to counter Soviet &#8220;Active Measures&#8221;, with analyzing the documents. Romerstein wrote that &#8220;The documents of the New Jewel Movement&#8217;s Central Committee and Politburo show that Cuban Ambassador Julian Torres Rizo and his wife, American-born Gail Reed Rizo, played a major role in directing the NJM and the Government of Grenada.&#8221; Every year since 1983, Grenadines celebrate October 25 as Thanksgiving Day, the day the Cubans &#8212; Ms Reed and her comrades &#8212; were driven from their island. She went back to writing for the Cuban state media.
Ms. Reed, the former Elena Cheucescu of Grenada and propagandist for Cuban Pravda, has reinvented herself as an &#8220;expert&#8221; on Cuba&#8217;s healthcare system. She has spent a lifetime as a mouthpiece for the Castro tyranny, and her latest incarnation as &#8220;the American executive editor of the health journal Medicc Review, which focuses on Cuban health care&#8221; is no different.
Kristof even included the Cuban regime&#8217;s favorite scapegoat:
<blockquote>
It&#8217;s also notable that Cuba achieves excellent health outcomes even though the American trade and financial embargo badly damages the economy and restricts access to medical equipment.
</blockquote>
According to the Obama administration, in the person of Susan Rice, responding to one of the routine outbursts from the Cuban delegation to the UN in <a href="https://babalublog.com/2009/10/31/bloqueo-embargo-hah-neither-says-obama-u-n-rep/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">2009</a>: &#8220;It is erroneous to charge that U.S. sanctions are the cause of deprivation among the Cuban people. The U.S. maintains no restriction on humanitarian aid to Cuba. In fact, the U.S. is a major source of humanitarian assistance to the Cuban people and the largest provider of food to Cuba. In 2008, the United States exported agricultural products, medical devices, medicine, wood, and humanitarian items to Cuba. In agricultural products alone, the United States sold $700.1 million of goods to Cuba. Once again, in 2008, the United States was Cuba&#8217;s fifth largest trading partner.&#8221;
Someday the people of Cuba will be free from the tyranny of Communism, and can tell the world about the lies of the regime. Until that time, we are cursed to have to deal with people who believe the propaganda.

MITSOTAKIS: Nicholas Kristof Must Have Visited A Very Different Cuba

Cuba

Fidel Castro

Nicholas Kristof

Raul Castro

The Siren Song of appeasement has always been difficult to resist. It justifies silly fallacies, such as the existence of a binary choice between &#8220;peace in our time&#8221; and a third World War. It breeds many delusions, like confusing our allies for enemies and our enemies for allies. Most significant of all, it prevents us from doing what is right, for our security and for our honor.
The Kurds of Iraq and Syria bore the brunt of the battle against ISIS, a terrorist organization which has among its goal to kill every American man, woman, or child who will not bow to their dictates.
Thomas S. Kaplan and Bernard-Henri Lévy <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/its-not-too-late-for-trump-to-rethink-a-dangerous-betrayal-of-us-allies-in-syria/2019/01/03/fb86739c-0f69-11e9-84fc-d58c33d6c8c7_story.html?utm_term=.a6c403b8240f" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">wrote</a> in The Washington Post:
<blockquote>
&#8220;Since 2014, the Kurds and their allies have taken control of a remarkable 30 percent of Syria and captured Raqqa, which the Islamic State had claimed as its capital &#8212; and over that period suffered 4,000 men and women fighters killed and 10,000 wounded. &#8230; Even as they have waged a years-long war against the Islamic State in northeastern Syria, they have governed a population of about 2 million people with a degree of respect for religious freedom, gender equality and minority rights unknown in that part of the world.&#8221;
</blockquote>
It was during the battle of Raqqa that, for the first time in this millennium, the United States shot down an enemy aircraft on June 18, 2017. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Michael Tremel <a href="https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2018/09/10/the-inside-story-of-how-a-us-navy-pilot-shot-down-a-syrian-jet/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">earned</a> the Distinguished Flying Cross for shooting down a Syrian fighter that was attacking Kurdish forces, who were fighting their way into the ISIS capital. Assad&#8217;s air force fighter was not targeting ISIS, it was targeting the Kurds who were fighting ISIS. Despite all their propaganda, Russia and Assad played no role in the battle against ISIS, other than helping them by attacking <a href="https://nypost.com/2015/12/22/no-assad-isnt-the-key-to-beating-isis-hes-helping-them/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">everyone but ISIS</a>. Without our Kurdish friends, Raqqa would still be the chair of the Caliphate today.
Friends who will shed blood for us are hard to come by. The Turkish dictator Erdogan was not willing to stick his neck out for us. In fact, he seems content to spit in our eye every chance he gets. So why would we put our trust in him to fight ISIS or any other foe? And why would we trust him not to attack the Kurds?
The Kurds deserve better than the word of a collection of dictators that they will respect a 20-mile safe zone, with nothing but the threat of sanctions to back them up. The small number of troops we have there provide a shield over these reliable allies that no other nation has dared challenge militarily, and thanks to this arrangement there are <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/dont-buy-into-false-permanent-occupation-exodus-dichotomy" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">80,000 dead jihadists</a> to show for our trouble.
America is safer when jihadists are killed. The Kurds are the best hunters of jihadists in that neighborhood. It is in our interest to have their backs.

MITSOTAKIS: The Kurds Deserve Better (And Yes, It Is Our Business)

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Spyridon Mitsotakis

Articles by Spyridon Mitsotakis