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.
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

Donald Trump

Foreign Policy

Iran

Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps

Israel

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

Judaism

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

Middle East

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

China

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)

&#8220;Secret Report Tells About Turk Atrocities&#8221; was the headline that greeted readers of The Sunday Times of London on January 23, 1977. The newspaper obtained a copy of a then secret European Commission of Human Rights, or ECHR, report detailing the ethnic cleansing of Greek Cypriot Christians by the Turkish occupiers of Northern Cyprus.
According to The Sunday Times, the report &#8220;amounts to a massive indictment of the Ankara government for the murder, rape, and looting by its army in Cyprus during and after the Turkish invasion of summer, 1974&#8230;[including] systematic killings of civilians who were not involved in the 1974 fighting; repeated raping of women aged from 12 to 71, often brutally in public; the torture and savage and humiliating treatment of hundreds of Greek Cypriots, including children during their detention by the Turkish army; and charges of extensive looting and plunder which were supported by unpublished United Nations documents.&#8221;
Thanks to the work of Dr. Andrew G. Bostom of Brown University who <a href="https://www.wnd.com/2016/07/not-so-fast-turkey-was-no-great-secular-state-before-erdogan/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">rescued</a> the document from obscurity 2 years ago, we know that among the &#8220;specific &#8216;atrocities and crimes&#8217; perpetrated by the occupying Turkish army between Sept. 19, 1974, and July 10, 1976, when the report was filed,&#8221; &#8212; a time period, it should be noted, when &#8220;no military operations or any fighting whatsoever was taking place,&#8221; &#8212; were:
<ul>
<li>Murders in cold blood of civilians including women and old men. Also about 3000 persons (many of them civilians) who were in the Turkish occupied areas are still missing and it is feared that they were murdered by the Turkish army.</li>
<li>Wholesale and repeated rapes. Even women of ages up to 80 were savagely raped by members of the Turkish forces. In some areas, forced prostitution of Greek Cypriot girls continues to be practiced. Many women who remained in the Turkish occupied areas became pregnant as a result of the rapes committed by the Turkish troops.</li>
<li>Forcible eviction from homes and land. The Greek Cypriots who were forcibly expelled by the Turkish army from their homes (about 200,000) are still being prevented by the Turkish array to return to their homes in the Turkish occupied areas and are refugees in their own country living in open camps inhuman conditions. Moreover, the Turkish military authorities continue to expel forcibly from their homes the remaining Greek Cypriot inhabitants in the Turkish occupied areas most of whom are forcibly transferred to concentration camps. They are not even allowed to take with them their basic belongings. Their homes and properties have been distributed amongst the Turkish Cypriots who were shifted from the southern part of Cyprus into the Turkish occupied areas as well as amongst many Turks who were illegally brought from Turkey in an attempt to change the demographic pattern on the island.</li>
<li>Looting by members of the Turkish army of houses and business premises belonging to Greek Cypriots continues to be extensively practiced.</li>
<li>Robbery of the agriculture, produce, and livestock, housing units, stocks in stores, in factories, and shops owned by Greek Cypriots, and of jewelry and other valuables found on Greek Cypriots arrested by the Turkish army continues uninterrupted. The agricultural produce belonging to Greek Cypriots continues to be collected and exported directly or indirectly to markets in several European countries. Nothing belonging to the Greek Cypriots in the Turkish occupied areas has been returned and no compensation was paid or offered in respect thereof.</li>
<li>The seizure, appropriation, exploitation and distribution of land, houses, enterprises and industries belonging to Greek Cypriots.</li>
</ul>
The report concluded that &#8220;The aforementioned atrocities and criminal acts were directed against Greek Cypriots because of their ethnic origin, race and religion. The object was to destroy and eradicate the Greek population of the Turkish occupied areas so as to move therein Turks, thus creating by artificial means a Turkish populated area in furtherance of Turkey&#8217;s policy for the formation of the so called &#8216;Turkish Cypriot Federated State.&#8217; In pursuance of this policy the members of the Turkish army who took part in the invasion (about 40,000) and their families have been recently declared as subjects of the illegally and unilaterally proclaimed &#8216;Turkish Cypriot Federated State&#8217;, i.e. the Turkish occupied areas of Cyprus, with the official blessing of Turkey and have occupied the properties, belongings of the Greek Cypriots.&#8221;
In 2009, a report by the United States Law Library of Congress entitled, &#8220;Cyprus: Destruction of Cultural Property in the Northern Part of Cyprus and Violations of International Law,&#8221; verified that:
<ul>
<li>500 Greek Orthodox churches and chapels have been pillaged, vandalized or demolished;</li>
<li>133 churches, chapels and monasteries have been desecrated;</li>
<li>77 churches have been turned into mosques, 28 are being used by the Turkish military forces as hospitals or camps and 13 are used as agricultural barns.</li>
</ul>
Since that time, Turkish dictator Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who maintains that &#8220;Hamas is not a terrorist organization,&#8221; has allowed Northern Cyrus to be used as a launch point for those seeking to avoid Israeli security checks in smuggling operations to Gaza. There are <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/.premium-is-there-a-long-term-israel-hamas-agreement-in-the-works-1.5387740" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">reports</a> that Erdogan personally discussed with Hamas leaders the possibility of &#8220;building a port in the Gaza Strip and creating a naval &#8216;safe passage&#8217; between Gaza and Northern Cyprus that would be controlled by Turkey.&#8221;
Bloodthirsty as the Turkish invaders were in 1974, under Erdogan the bloodthirst has reached a new potency when combined with Islamic extremism. If Trump follows through on his plan to give Turkey military carte blanche in the areas of Syria won by our Kurdish allies against ISIS, there is no reason to expect anything less than another campaign of ethnic cleansing.

MITSOTAKIS: Turkey Committed Ethnic Cleansing In Northern Cyprus, They Will Do So Again In Kurdistan

Recep Tayyip Erdogan

You never know what you are going to find on the $2 rack of your local used bookstore. Last week I found a water damaged copy of the autobiography of former Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards. The book is boring, but one thing that does jump out is her bizarre story about meeting Cuban Communist dictator Fidel Castro.
As recounted in Make Trouble: Standing Up, Speaking Out, and Finding the Courage to Lead (co-authored with Lauren Peterson), Ann Richards, Cecile&#8217;s mother and former governor of Texas, was invited to go to Mexico at the invitation of Mexican president Carlos Salinas. The occasion was the inauguration of a new president, Ernesto Zedillo, and Salinas was inviting many of his friends, including Fidel Castro. Cecile Richards convinced her mother to let her come along.
On page 99, Richards writes:
<blockquote>
Presidents from across the continent were there, but the person everyone wanted to meet was Fidel Castro, who was attending in full military regalia. Practically no one in America had ever seen or met him. When the dinner was breaking up, I found Mom and insisted we had to at least meet Castro. She was horrified. &#8220;If I go up to Fidel Castro, it&#8217;s going to be splashed on the front page of the Dallas Morning News, and God knows where else! I don&#8217;t have a job, Cecile, and that will make it even harder to get one.&#8221;
&#8220;Mom, if you don&#8217;t do it, you will always wonder, What if? And you just won&#8217;t be able to live with that.&#8221; I was channeling Ann Richards, and she knew it. I was determined, and so, on the way out, we muscled our way over to say hello.
&#8220;Gobernadora Richards!&#8221; Castro exclaimed, and he gave her a big abrazo. Whatever else he was, the man had charm.
Sure enough, the next day in the Mexico City paper a big photo appeared of Mom, Castro, and me&#8212;though I&#8217;m misidentified as Princess Astrid of Belgium (maybe that&#8217;s how I got into the dinner after all). Thankfully, the Dallas Morning News missed the story, but that photo is still one of my prized possessions.
</blockquote>
(The photograph is on page 100. I&#8217;m not sure what the copyright laws are regarding sharing such photos, but it is exactly as Richards describes it.)
Fidel Castro&#8217;s &#8220;charm&#8221; does not outweigh &#8220;whatever else he was&#8221; &#8212; certainly not in any way that matters.
I once heard a different assessment of Fidel Castro from a man named Armando Valladares, a Catholic poet and human rights activist who spent 22 years in Castro&#8217;s Gulag. He was speaking at an event in honor of the Little Sisters of the Poor, who&#8217;s Supreme Court case was ridiculed by Cecile Richards as &#8220;a case about paperwork, not religious liberty,&#8221; and who Planned Parenthood is currently suing in Pennsylvania and California. I had the honor of meeting Mr. Valladares before he spoke, and I consider it a privilege to have been able to shake the man&#8217;s hand.
What Mr. Valladares said that night to the Becket Fund Canterbury Medal gala is worth quoting at <a href="https://www.becketlaw.org/media/armando-valladares-speech-transcript/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">length</a>:
<blockquote>
When I was 23 years old I refused to do something that at the time seemed very small. I refused to say a few words, &#8220;I&#8217;m with Fidel.&#8221; First I refused the sign on my desk at the postal office that said that, and after years of torture and watching many fellow fighters die, either in body or in spirit, I still refused to say those words.
If I just said those three words, I would have been released from prison.
My story is proof that a small act of defiance can mean everything for the friends of liberty. They did not keep me in jail for 22 years because my refusal to say three words meant nothing. In reality those three words meant everything.
For me to say those words would constituted a type of spiritual suicide. Even though my body was in prison and being tortured, my soul was free and it flourished. My jailers took everything away from me, but they could not take away my conscience or my faith.
Even when we have nothing, each person and only that person possesses the key to his or her own conscience, his or her own sacred castle. In that respect, each of us, though we may not have an earthly castle or even a house, each of us is richer than a king or queen.
The Little Sisters of the Poor know this. They may be called the Little Sisters of the Poor, and yet they are rich in that they live out their conscience, which no government bureaucrat can invade. They know what my body knows after 22 years of cruel torture: that if they sign the form, the government demands they will be violating their conscience and would commit spiritual suicide. If they did this they would forfeit the true and only wealth they have in abandoning the castle of their consciences. And so I salute the Little Sisters of the Poor for their seemingly small act of defiance!
I am here to tell you that every little act counts. No man or woman is too small or simple to be called to bear witness to the truth. I&#8217;m here to remind you that each of you possesses great wealth in the sacred domain of your conscience. And I&#8217;m here to tell you that each of you is called to stay true. I am also here to tell you that when you make that choice, from that moment forward, even if you are naked, in solitary confinement for 8 years, you are never alone because God is there with you.
For many of you, particularly the young people, it may seem I come from a faraway land from a long time ago. Young friends, you may not be taken away at gunpoint, as I was for staying true to my conscience, but there are many other ways to take you away and to imprison your body and your mind. There are many ways you can be silenced, in your schools, your universities, in your workplace.
I warn you: Just as there is a very short distance between the US and Cuba, there is a very short distance between a democracy and a dictatorship where the government gets to decide what to do, how to think, and how to live. And sometimes your freedom is not taken away at gunpoint but instead it is done one piece of paper at a time, one seemingly meaningless rule at a time, one small silencing at a time. Never allow the government&#8211;or anyone else&#8211;to tell you what you can or cannot believe or what you can and cannot say or what your conscience tells you to have to do or not do.
As I look around this room I am heartened. And I want to applaud each of Becket&#8217;s clients for, in staying true to your conscience and in standing up for religious liberty, each of you protects this exceptional country of ours. A country that is not perfect but nevertheless still allows us to live in a society where we can hold a different view from each other and a different view from the government.
Thank you for this award. I accept it in the name of the thousands of Cubans that used their last breath to express their own religious freedom, by shouting, as they faced execution: &#8220;Long Live Christ the King.&#8221; I accept it in the name of those who still suffer in Cuba&#8211;a country that in the last two years alone has destroyed more than 300 churches and houses of worship persecuting Baptists, Methodists, Anglicans and confiscating their Bible and crosses while beating their pastors and parishioners. I accept it in the name of the Jewish community in Cuba who, even at such small numbers, is also still persecuted. Finally, I accept this award in the name of my wife. It is really her that deserves it, not me. All of you have heard the story of Penelope, who waited 20 years for Ulysses. Martha is a real life Penelope. But she didn&#8217;t stay home knitting. She traveled all over the world campaigning for my release. She waited for me. She always hoped and trusted in God that we would both be reunited Against All Hope.
</blockquote>
Needless to say, my photograph with Mr. Valladares is one of my prized possessions. It is the freedom fighters who are worth our admiration, not their oppressors (no matter how &#8220;charming&#8221; that tyrant might be).

MITSOTAKIS: Former Planned Parenthood President On Meeting Fidel Castro: ‘Whatever Else He Was, The Man Had Charm’

Cecile Richards

There are many Americans who believe that 9/11 is a thing of the past. My childhood neighbor is not one of them. A retired Sergeant in the NYPD, he struggles with bone marrow cancer to this day. 
On 9/11, the Sergeant (as I will call him to protect his privacy) was notified by two of his officers that they could see smoke coming out of a large, burning hole in the North Tower of the World Trade Center. From his uptown precinct, he donned his dark blue uniform and raced to join his fellow officers at the World Trade Center. By the time he arrived, a plane had hit the South Tower. 
While he was helping the evacuation effort, the South Tower collapsed at 9:59 am. As they did not have masks, he and his fellow NYPD officers &#8212; their dark blue uniforms now white from burning dust &#8212; had to breathe in the toxic air in order to continue aiding the evacuation. The same happened when the North Tower collapsed at 10:28 am. 
For the rest of the day he and his fellow NYPD officers worked, carrying out Mayor Rudolph Giuliani&#8217;s orders that the 1 million people in lower Manhattan be evacuated. By the end of the day, with this monumental task completed, the Sergeant brought two of his fellow officers to his home in a small town an hour north of the city. He saw his wife and two young daughters, and he and his officers washed their uniforms. It was only then that he noticed that rubber on the bottom of his boots had melted, presumably from the burning debris (scattered for miles in every direction) he had to walk on. They managed to get about an hour of sleep before heading back to the city. In our small town where many NYPD and FDNY first responders lived, six families were not as lucky as the Sergeant&#8217;s. Those six families would never see their husbands and fathers again.
The Sergeant was part of the search and rescue effort for two months. For the first few days he had to work without a mask. Like hundreds of thousands of others, he breathed in the toxic fumes of ground zero. When he retired in 2008, he discovered that he had bone marrow cancer. 
Thanks to successful chemotherapy and blood transfusions, he will not be joining the growing list of those who have died from the ground zero toxins in the near future. The number of people who have died from the toxins is expected to soon surpass the death toll of the attack itself. 
For many years after the attack, the men and women of the NYPD and FDNY were recognized for what they are: Heroes. Their insurmountable courage, and their willingness to sacrifice, served as an inspiration to millions of police and firefighters all over the world. 
Some have forgotten, but most of us never will.

The Long Shadow of 9/11, One Policeman’s Story

Law Enforcement

Patriotism

The men and women who made the greatest improvements in the United States did so out of love for America and belief in her greatness.
Shortly before he died in 1987, the legendary civil rights leader Bayard Rustin spoke of &#8220;a tribute to the founding fathers who did produce a document in the eighteenth century that was creative and positive. Yes, but that it was basically flawed, that it basically lead to a civil war that was horrible but the glory is that the American people kept at that document for the purpose of clarifying it. Therefore, it is not only a tribute to the founding fathers, it is in a greater sense a tremendous tribute to the eternal wisdom of the American people that they will not live with a flawed document, that they will insist upon a Bill of Rights. They will insist upon over half the amendments to that Constitution having to do with broadening the franchise so that they eliminated the fact that you had to have so much property or money. They eliminated the fact that women couldn&#8217;t vote. We eliminated the fact that blacks and all others couldn&#8217;t vote.&#8221;
In a 1980 speech, Rustin said:
<blockquote>
I have lived through many struggles in the U.S. I have seen much suffering in this country. Yet despite all this, I can confidently assert that I would prefer to be a black in America than a Jew in Moscow, a Chinese in Peking, or a black in Uganda, yesterday or today. For the democratic principles which are an integral part of America&#8217;s tradition are the greatest legacy and the greatest gift of all.
</blockquote>
Rustin&#8217;s mentor, the equally legendary A. Philip Randolph, refused to be associated with any organization that was anti-American. When he discovered that the National Negro Congress he was a part of had been taken over by Communists, who declared that black Americans would never fight for America against the Soviet Union, he resigned in outrage.
<blockquote>
&#8220;If the U. S. declared war upon Communist Russia tomorrow, the Negro would fight Russia, with all the fervor and patriotism of any other 100 per cent American,&#8221; he said.
</blockquote>
Randolph repeated this a few years later:
<blockquote>
Speaking in Richmond Sunday, Mr. Randolph took exception to the widely publicized statement attributed to Paul Robeson saying that the Negro would not fight for the United States in a war against Russia. He termed Mr. Robeson a &#8220;Johnny Come Lately,&#8221; a wealthy man, and in no position to speak for the Negro.
He said Negroes would fight for the United States, their homeland, against Soviet Russia, as they have done in every war in which this country has been engaged since &#8220;the fall of Crispus Attucks.&#8221;
(&#8220;Randolph Exposes Red Enemies: Communism Termed Foes Of Religion, Negroes And Labor,&#8221; New Journal and Guide, Jan 28, 1950)
</blockquote>
The 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was the work of Randolph and Rustin.
Not long ago, I had the privilege of interviewing two civil rights and labor leaders, Norman and Velma Hill, who worked alongside A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin. One of the questions I asked was how Rustin and Randolph maintained their extraordinary patriotism, and avoided becoming bitter and disgruntled over the discrimination they faced:
<blockquote>
Velma: It&#8217;s important that you read and you understand history, and I think that both of them had a real understanding of history.
Understanding a lot about this country made you feel like you wanted to be a part of it. And change it for the better, or change it more. Extend democracy. That&#8217;s how we felt about it.
Norman: They really believed that they could take advantage of the base, basic democratic framework &#8211; although flawed, pertaining to the treatment of blacks &#8211; that was in place in this country.
They always had the feeling that it&#8217;s possible to make and get change, to do so democratically. Because they were about extending democracy and making the country a more democratic form for all people.
They themselves were small d democrats. And that they had a faith that democratic rights could be extended. They never excepted the status quo &#8212; they had a belief that change could take place, and could take place through non-violence and mass action and demonstration. And I think that, in fact, what they did proved that they were right.
</blockquote>
Perhaps nobody expressed these views better than Martin Luther King, Jr. In his 1963 &#8220;Letter from a Birmingham Jail&#8221;, he wrote:
<blockquote>
&#8220;One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters, they were in reality standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judaeo Christian heritage, thereby bringing our nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in their formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.&#8221;
</blockquote>

MITSOTAKIS: Civil Rights And American Greatness, In Quotes

Racism

Republican Party

Voting Rights

Sidney Hook is a name lost to history, yet in his day he was the undisputed philosophical leader of democratic socialism &#8211; a founder of Social Democrats USA. Unlike their rival Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the SDUSA took the word &#8220;Democratic&#8221; seriously. They had no tolerance for totalitarianism. This applied to the world inside and outside the ivory tower. And having been a professor at New York University in the 1960s, he formed a strong opinion about political violence on campus.
&#8220;American colleges and Universities today face the gravest crisis in their history,&#8221; he wrote in 1970. The crisis was not unrest in and of itself. &#8220;Intellectual unrest is not a problem but a virtue, and no university can have too much of it if it is engaged in genuine educational tasks.&#8221;
&#8220;The problem and threat is not academic unrest but academic disruption and violence which flow from substituting for the academic goals of learning, the political goals of action.&#8221; The crisis will &#8220;lead first to the political polarization of the campus, then to the political alienation of the campus from the democratic community. If unchecked it will result in academic genocide &#8211; the destruction of academic freedom.&#8221;
It seems remarkable that professor Hook was speaking of a time decades ago, but with words that could be reprinted today without alteration. &#8220;The political process is open to students and faculty on the same footing as all other qualified citizens to express their point of view. It shows profound contempt on their part for democratic due process to use or to threaten or even to condone violence, when they have failed to persuade or convince the electorate.&#8221; He could very well have been writing about students&#8217; reaction to the 2016 election.
He wrote of how the &#8220;most militant of the student factions are small minorities. They make no bones about their hostility to democracy, their scorn for rational process. Their heroes are the leaders of the most ruthless dictatorships &#8211; Lenin, Mao Tse-tung, Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Che Guevara. They openly declare that &#8216;our major social and foreign problems of our society&#8217; can never be solved to their satisfaction, for their goal is the destruction of our society.&#8221;
And what of this paragraph:
<blockquote>
It is no exaggeration to say that on many American campuses today academic freedom has been severely crippled. Certain extremist groups have interfered with the rights of students and faculty to hear views that disagree with or challenge their own. The aftermath of the so-called Free Speech Movement at Berkeley is that in many areas free speech has disappeared at that campus. And not only at Berkeley. At scores of universities speakers are shouted down, sometimes assaulted. While spokesmen for movements hostile to the government have unlimited freedom to incite to violent action in opposing government policies, spokesmen for these policies are often barred from campuses or can appear only under heavy police escort.
</blockquote>
Had anybody else acted like this, &#8220;Everybody would recognize such threats as subversive of the democratic process, as harbingers of fascist rule no matter what the revolutionary rhetoric in which such threats were clothed.&#8221;
In his essay, published in the Los Angeles Times, Hook made 8 proposals to defuse the crisis. There is not room to repeat them, but they can be found <a href="https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/23576">here</a>.
Hook concludes: &#8220;The reminder that in the long run the most serious threat to the integrity of teaching and learning comes not from the criminal violence of extremists but from measures of appeasement and capitulation in the vain hope of curbing their frenzy.&#8221;
It takes courage to stand up to mobs, because there is no appeasing them.
<blockquote>
The history of American higher education is a history of change. Violence has never played an appreciable role in that history. It need not play a role today if it is recognized that the primary function of higher education is the quest for knowledge, wisdom and vision, not the conquest of political power; that the university is not responsible for the existence of war, poverty and other evils; and that the solution of these and allied problems lies in the hands of the democratic citizenry and not of a privileged elite. The universities can by indirection help in their solution by providing the knowledge, wisdom, and vision required for intelligent action&#8212;but only if it retains its relative autonomy and objectivity, and freedom from partisan political bias.
</blockquote>
These are sentiments common among conservatives today, but these were the words of a lifelong socialist.

Philosophical Leader Of Democratic Socialism Hated Antifa’s Tactics

Antifa

Democratic Socialism

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Spyridon Mitsotakis

Articles by Spyridon Mitsotakis