Any suggestion that the wide-ranging sanctions regime the Trump administration has imposed against Iran was not having the desired effect has been roundly refuted by the nationwide protests that have erupted in response to the regime's decision to increase petrol prices.

Critics of American President Donald J. Trump's announcement that he was withdrawing the US from the Iran nuclear deal last year and imposing a fresh round of sanctions against Tehran have argued that the measures would fail to have the desired effect.

They claimed that the ayatollahs would be able to circumvent the sanctions by trading with countries such as China, that remained committed to the nuclear deal.

Those arguments have now been decisively proved wrong – here’s why.

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For over a decade, Moscow’s propaganda machine and its networks of agents and agents of influence have targeted Germany.

Russian narratives have played on German anger about the influx of Muslim immigrants, bolstered the political right’s hostility to change it feels threatens its values, encouraged the political left’s concerns about American influence, and inspired general unease about the consequences of the Western sanctions regime against Russia for the latter’s continuing aggression against Ukraine.

All of this has been well-documented, allowing for multiple close examinations of its impact on German domestic and foreign policies (Krym Realii, August 31, 2018; Gordonua.com, November 15, 2019; Kasparov.ru, September 27, 2014).

But now, the Kremlin is becoming involved in another “internal” German matter as part of its broader campaign to peel that country off from the West, weaken the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union, as well as expand Russian influence there and across Europe.

Namely, Moscow is actively supporting a rise of East German separatism. Over the past several weeks, three developments have highlighted this Russian political offensive:

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2019 was supposed to be Hollywood’s year of Intersectional Diversity, but the handful of good films—such as Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Joker, The Irishman, and now Ford v Ferrari—keep turning out to be period pieces about straight white men made for straight white men by straight white men.

Ford v Ferrari is an instant box office smash. Matt Damon plays Texan race-car impresario Carroll Shelby (one of the more glamorous names I recall from my 1968–1970 Car Craze years), and Christian Bale is inspired as Shelby’s hotheaded English test driver Ken Miles.

Critics hate it, however, embarrassed that its opening weekend competition – the totally leftist-feminist farce Charlie’s Angels – is a complete box office flop – and infuriated that the Ford v Ferrari hit film dares to lack today’s obligatory Diversity-Inclusion-Equity (DIE).

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Like it or not, the 2020 is going to be a plebiscite on an American version of Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty-Four – a referendum far beyond Donald Trump’s record and his Democrat opposition.

The furor that Trump has incurred, and the radical antithesis to his agenda and first term, have redefined the looming election. It is becoming a stark choice between a revolutionary future versus American traditionalism.

The choice in reductionist terms will be one between a growing, statist Panopticon, fueled by social media, a media-progressive nexus, and an electronic posse.

Online trolls and government bureaucrats seek to know everything about us, in Big Brother fashion to monitor our very thoughts to ferret out incorrect ideas, and then to regiment and indoctrinate us to ensure elite visions of mandated equality and correct behavior—or else!

In other words, the personality quirks of a Trump or an Elizabeth Warren or a Bernie Sanders will become mostly irrelevant given the existential choice between two quite antithetical ideas of future America. In 2020 we will witness the penultimate manifestation of what radical progressivism has in store for us all—and the furious, often desperate, unfettered pushback against it.

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This week, Rep. Jim Jordan was officially moved to the House Intelligence Committee, from Oversight, in order to be part of the coming public interrogations of witnesses summoned by committee Chairman Adam Schiff.

Jordan is a pit bull, exactly what the committee needs among its Republicans.  It was in Pelosi's purview to refuse Jordan's appointment, and she did not.

Hmmm.  Is it possible that even she is sick and tired of Schiff's mendacity, his secrecy, his shutout of Republican questions, his witness tampering?  He even advised "witnesses" not to answer questions from Republicans.

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I, for one, have grown weary of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), appearing on every other talk show bloviating about Spygate, Ukrainegate, Collusiongate, and all the wrongs committed against the Trump presidency and then doing nothing to fight back other than getting his face in front of the camera.

Lindsey, do your job or get off the pot -- call some hearings, as you promised, and go for the Democrat’s jugular.

Show that passion you showed during the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh when you went on an epic rant against that bevy of Democrat presidential wannabes who were raising the politics of personal destruction as they shredded the presumption of innocence all Americas are supposed to enjoy. A short trek down memory lane via Real Clear Politics:

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What do you suppose the Alliance for American Advertising has in common with the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists, the American Society of Civil Engineers, or American Apparel and Footwear? Apart from beginning with the letter “A,” they are among the nearly 3,500 trades or firms that have dedicated lobbying operations in Washington, D.C.

And that doesn’t count the union headquarters located in D.C., from AFSCME (“We make America Happen”) to SEIU (“the nation’s most diverse union”) and beyond, they’re all there, hands out, telephones working overtime to get a little bigger slice of the government pie, made with 100 percent locally sourced materials, namely your tax dollars.

Donald Trump came to office promising to “drain the swamp.” He has made a little, mostly rhetorical, progress around the edges. But the swampiness of the swamp is deep and inveterate. He will never succeed in that stupendous sanitary engineering project until he removes the thing that attracts the swamp creatures to Washington just as a rotting carcass attracts flies and other necrophagites: centers of power and influence.

How to do it? Several people, including the president himself, have tentatively suggested a promising mechanism. Disperse the government from Washington to the heartland and beyond.

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Stability has always been the main promise legitimizing Vladimir Putin’s monopolization of political power in Russia.

Restoration of stability was the winning slogan for Putin in 2012, in claiming the presidency back from his pliant stand-in, Dmitry Medvedev, who had tried to experiment with modernization. And Putin’s reelection in 2018 also utilized a stability-centered propaganda campaign.

Yet, presently, this “majority” has shrunk to statistical insignificance. A recent opinion poll shows that 59 percent of Russians expect and see a need for profound changes, and 31 percent concede that at least some change is necessary (Vedomosti, November 6).

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[Note by JW: In President Dwight Eisenhower’s Farewell Address to the nation at the end of his two-term presidency (January 17, 1961), he warned of the dangers of a new “conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry”:

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

Today, military historian Victor Davis Hanson warns of the dangers of a new Military-Intelligence Complex emerging on the Left.]

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Much has been written about the so-called Resistance of disgruntled Clinton, Obama, and progressive activists who have pledged to stop Donald Trump’s agenda.

Yet far more disturbing have been the furor of lame-duck and retired intelligence and military officers -- who compare the commander-in-chief to a fascist, declare him unfit, or dream of his “sooner the better” removal in a “Seven Days of May” plot for real.

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This summer at a conference at a well-known university, I sat down with the head of a new institute on campus who was  blunt. “At this point, if you can’t answer yes to a basic question, nothing else counts. Doesn’t matter where you stand on taxes, foreign policy, regulations . . .”

“What’s the question?” I asked.

 “Are you ready to fight?”

“That’s it?”

“Yeah,” he replied with a shrug, “that’s it.”

The Left has been making war by other means for 50 years, changing history textbooks, peddling films that mock fatherhood and faith, designing bogus studies that show pay gaps and systemic racism.  No more compromise, no more calls for bipartisanship with them.  Now we fight.

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