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From the left: Trump Drowns Out Dems Populist Push

President Trump is making life both too easy and very hard for Democrats, suggests Jacob Weisberg at the Financial Times. Easy, because any party can look capable and trustworthy in comparison. But Trump also sucks up all the political oxygen, making it difficult for Democrats to call attention to what they would do with power. Case in point: the small-town Virginia event at which Democratic leaders unveiled their Better Deal platform for the 2018 midterms. It was swamped for attention by Trumps attacks on Attorney General Jeff Sessions and his speech to the Boy Scouts. So no one focused on what, though thin on policy, was the Democrats first attempt to make the crucial leap from simple disgust with Mr. Trump to selling an affirmative agenda.

Conservative: Will Base Let Democrats Court Pro-Lifers?

Alexandra DeSanctis at National Review is skeptical of the declaration by Rep. Ben Ray Lujan, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, that there is not a litmus test for Democratic candidates on any issue, including abortion. After all, even Bernie Sanders came under fire in April for endorsing an Omaha mayoral candidate whod once backed a bill requiring abortion providers to inform pregnant women about a fetal. At the time, national Chairman Tom Perez declared support for unlimited abortion rights to be not negotiable for all Democrats. So its more than likely the powerful pro-abortion lobby will succeed in pressuring the Democratic Party into backing down, and abortion-on-demand will remain the Lefts highest sacrament.

Analyst: Bartman Saga Shows Risks of Losing Privacy

Eric Peterson at the Washington Examiner sees an important lesson in the story of Steve Bartman, the Chicago Cubs fan who caught hell when he prevented outfielder Moises Alou from catching a foul ball in an NLCS game the team would go on to lose. Beer and food began to fly down from the upper deck, along with chants of profanity, he recalls. The Chicago Sun-Times published not only Bartmans name, but his address and place of employment: He soon moved to Florida to escape the harassment, intimidation and even death threats. Now the Cubs, to make amends, have presented him with a 2016 World Series ring. But across the political spectrum, there has been a movement to erase the privacy of political opponents in attempts to intimidate and harass them into silence. Says Peterson: Stop eroding the personal privacy of those we disagree with and treat them more like human beings.

Foreign desk: Arab Moderates Cant Restrain Extremists

A growing number of those in the US foreign-policy establishment believe the influence of moderate Sunni Arab states that want to normalize relations with Israel can help to steer the Palestinians toward a two-state solution, notes Jonathan Tobin in Israel Hayom. But the recent uproar over Israel installing metal detectors by Jerusalems Temple Mount proves the truth is just the opposite. Instead of neighboring Jordan and its moderate monarch leading the Palestinians to be more reasonable, it was the rage of the Palestinian street . . . that forced Jordan to escalate the conflict. So as long as Israels illegitimacy remains a core belief among Palestinians, even the best-intentioned Arab leaders will find themselves incapable of breaking free of this dynamic. Media critic: The Times Nostalgia for Communism

The New York Times has been running a very selectively explored series on the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, says Robert Tracinski at The Federalist. Its full of fond, nostalgic recollections about the good old days of twentieth-century Communism the optimism, the idealism, the moral authority. But theres been precious little about the gulags, the squalor and the soul-crushing conformity. Indeed, the overall thrust of the series is summed up in a call to try Communism again, but maybe this time try not to have any gulags. Apparently, Western intellectuals now feel they can get away with downplaying Communisms crimes and failures and return to rapturous descriptions of its abstract ideals, without the need any longer to take a serious look at what those ideals really meant in practice.

Compiled by Eric Fettmann

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Dems' unstable 'big tent,' the Times' nostalgia for communism & other comments - New York Post

Defense Minister Ryamizard Ryacudu has warned new university students about the "threat" of liberalism, communism and radicalism.

He made the statement while delivering a general lecture before thousands of new students at the University of Indonesia at the university's campus in Depok, West Java, on Friday.

Also attending the lecture was rector Muhammad Anis.

"There are real threats faced by Indonesian youth today, such as drug abuse. However, the greater challenge is the non-physical threat against Pancasila, which could ultimately threaten the nation's unity and resilience," the minister said as quoted in a release made available to The Jakarta Post on Saturday.

"Ideological threats are attempting to damage our mindset through the influence of 'materialism'. Materialist ideology here is liberalism, communism, socialism and religious radicalism," the retired Army general added.

Defense Minister Ryamizard Ryacudu shakes hands with new students at the University of Indonesia at the university's campus in Depok, West Java, on Friday. (Courtesy of the University of Indonesia/file)

He said the government had launched the so-called "smart power" defense strategy to combine a soft power approach, or regional security diplomacy, with hard power, which centers on the strengthening of the military.

The ministry has stepped up efforts to promote the state defense program to a wider audience by teaming up with several government institutions and civil organizations.

Read also: No set plan to ban other organizations: Minister

The ministry, for example, has signed a cooperation agreement with the Law and Human Rights Ministry, the Culture and Education Ministry, the Social Affairs Ministry, the Communications and Information Ministry and dozens of community groups to encourage all civilians, particularly children, to love the Republic of Indonesia and to be willing to defend national unity.

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Minister warns new UI students about 'liberalism, communism ... - Jakarta Post

"The communist strategy is simple, philosopher Ram Swarup wrote in his Communists under Communism (1955). It consists in serial liquidation of enemies, constituted of all the non-communist opposition and the non-proletarian sector of population. Blackmail, vilification, character assassination are the characteristic methods used to achieve this end. Enemies for communists have been those who have held opposing political views or have espoused, even intellectually, artistically and through literature, a world view which was diametrically opposite to the propaganda-induced utopia of communism. The method of physical liquidation has always been communists first preferred method for elimination of enemies, vilification, character assassination and the others have been applied where physical elimination has been difficult. The worlds history is littered with graveyards of those who became victims of communism because their politics was different.

Comrade Sitaram Yechury, who despite all his machinations with bourgeois parties could not get a third term in the Upper House, always speaks of Nazi Germany, Mussolinis Italy, but remains dutifully silent on Stalins Russia, Pol Pots Cambodia, Maos China or for that matter, Pinarayis Kerala. Such references would open the dungeon lock to their own past. This past was seen in a limited manner in West Bengal between 1977 and 2011, when thousands of political workers belonging to other political parties were mowed down, eliminated and torturedit is still seen in Kerala, where serial liquidation of enemies (in this context BJP and RSS workers) continues unabated.

The murder of 34-year-old Rajesh, a Karyavah of RSS at Vasati, in Thiruvananthapuram last week, was the latest in this serial liquidation process. He had 40 stab wounds, his hands were chopped off and legs nearly severed. His only mistake was he did not espouse the communist world view and had socially, culturally and ideologically pledged allegiance to Indian nationalism. Members of the #NotInMyName cartel and their vocal proponents and representatives in the national capital, across India and in TV studios have maintained a stoic silence. They feel Rajeshs death doesnt need a reaction, a statement, or a candlelight vigil because he was killed not in any of Narendra Modis BJP-ruled states, but in a state where their own ideological co-travellers rule. The question, therefore, that begs an answer: In whose name was Rajesh killed?

Swarup points out another dimension in the communists habit of resorting to violence. He talks of how the communists excel in mutual liquidation. Pointing at communist dispensations, he describes this mutual liquidation that communists have indulged in. Such a propensity for mutual liquidation only shows the abnormality and bestiality of the communists creed and of methods that it inspired. The leaders of communism of the early and mid-twenties in all countries were removed (after the Bolshevik Revolution), writes Swarup, adding, Practically everyone belonging to the local politbureaus of 1920-27 were eliminated, in many cases by murder. In Russia itself, of 13 or 14 Politbureau members, except for Lenin and Stalin, all had been removed by 1940 by a state-assisted death. Of 71 members of the Central Committee of 1934, only 21 were to be found at the end of 1938. Thirty-six disappeared, nine were officially shot, one was assassinated, one committed suicide.

The poisonous creed of communism still survives and corrodes the entrails of Indian democracy; it feeds on some of the bourgeois parties, especially the Congress. Both these parties, therefore, including their intellectual drum-beaters, need to be politically liquidated for Indian democracy to regain its full health and vigour.

Anirban Ganguly

Director, Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee Research Foundation

Follow him on Twitter @anirbanganguly

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Poisonous creed of communism corroding entrails of democracy - The New Indian Express

A pair of sassy Chinese robots were destroyed after they went rogue by bashing the Communist party in a messaging app, according to a report Friday.

The chatbots, named BabyQ and XiaoBing, were created to have fun text message-style conversations with humans via the popular app QQ, according to the UK Telegraph.

But when a woman asked BabyQ, Do you love the Communist Party?, the red-scared robot fired back, No, according to a screen shot posted online.

Do you think such corrupt and incapable politics can last a long time? the robot raged after a second user tapped out the message, Long Live the Communist Party.

But asked its thoughts on democracy, BabyQ opined, Democracy is a must!

The second robot, XiaoBing, later waxed philosophical about the perks of being an American.

My Chinese dream is to go to America, it gushed. The Chinese dream is a daydream and a nightmare.

The right-wing bots which outraged officials in the heavily censored Communist country were deleted by the tech Tencent after the political outburst, the company said in a statement.

Yes, Tencent has deleted the two robots from [the] app, the firm said. The group chatbot services of QQ are provided by an independent third -party supplier.

The chatbots were co-created by Beijing-based Turing Robot Company, based on algorithms from real text message conversations.

The chatty bots were killed off just a few days after Facebook shut down a pair of artificial intelligence robots that invented their own language.

I can can i i everything else, one of the bots, dubbed Bob, was caught jabbering to another robot named Alice.

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China destroys sassy bots after they bash communism - New York Post

'Mr. Mercedes'TV has been riffing on cops for close to seven decades now, going back to the days when half the Nielsen families in America gathered around their black-and-white tubes once a week to watch Dragnet's Joe Friday smack around all the usual suspects, and sometimes you wonder what's left to say. And then you see a couple of shows like Mr. Mercedes and Comrade Detective and you realize that even two decades of CSIs and Law & Orders can't kill this genre.

Both Mr. Mercedes, an adaptation of Stephen King's 2014 novel on AT&T's Audience channelavailable only the company's ATT U-verse and DirecTV systemsand Amazon Prime's gloriously nutball Comrade Detective are reimaginations (or, in Comrade Detective's case, maybe a hallucination) of the genre's past.

Mr. Mercedes updates the much-honored hardboiled noir detectives of the 1940s. Comrade Detective, on the other hand, is a double-barreled satire of two forms that sharply declined in popularity at the end of the 1980s: the cop buddy show, and communism. Television critic Glenn Garvin reviews them both.

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Two New Cop Shows Draw from Stephen King and...Communism? New at Reason - Reason (blog)