Our son, Daniel, (on right) comforts a friend at one of yesterday's funeral.
In Savannah, Leopold's is the ice cream we all like. Parenthetically, Ben and Jerry's ice cream is rated kosher yet the two owners, who are Jewish, seem to be so extremely liberal and radical they prefer the flavor of those who defame Israel and Israelis. You decide. (See 1 below.)
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Christian genocide continues in Iraq. (See 2 below.)
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Hatred of Trump is used to justify anarchy. (See 3 and 3a below.)
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Trump and China. I believe this is Bolton's hard ball influence? If so, it is about time we send China a clear message. (See 4 below.)
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Is Israel at it again in Iran? (See 5 below.)
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Dick
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Ben &Jerry's partners with group tied to Anti-Semite Farrakhan
Ben & Jerry’s released a new flavor supporting groups fighting President Trump, including one with ties to Louis Farrakhan.
The Washington Free Beacon reported Tuesday that Vermont-based ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s released a new flavor to show its support for groups fighting President Donald Trump’s agenda, including the Women’s March, a group whose leaders enjoy ties to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
“Today we launch Pecan Resist! This flavor supports groups creating a more just and equitable nation for us all, and who are fighting President Trump’s regressive agenda,” Ben & Jerry’s tweeted.
According to Ben & Jerry’s website, “Women’s March is committed to harnessing the political power of diverse women and their communities to create transformative social change.”
The Washington Free Beacon reports that the company also tweeted images of progressive leaders, including Linda Sarsour, a national organizer of the Women’s March and prominent anti-Zionist who once said “nothing is creepier than Zionism.” In 2015, Sarsour spoke at a Nation Of Islam event where she attacked Israel, the Free Beacon reports. She has also expressed the believe that anti-Semitism is less serious a phenomenon than anti-black racism or Islamophobia.
Sarsour isn’t the only Women’s March leader with links to Farrakhan, the Free Beacon notes. Tamika Mallory, the movement’s co-president, was in attendance at the Nation of Islam’s annual Saviours’ Day event where Farrakhan launched into an ugly anti-Semitic attack against “that Satanic Jew,” whom he called “the mother and father of apartheid.” He declared: “When you want something in this world, the Jew holds the door.”
The Free Beacon said that the Independent Journal Review on Tuesday asked Ben & Jerry’s about the close ties of Women’s March leaders to Farrakhan. The ice cream company responded:
“We’re comfortable with the idea that the people and the causes we partner with may have a point of view different from our own on some issues. They can be controversial, just as we can. Linda may not agree with everything we’ve done. But the work that she has done to promote women’s rights, as co-chair of the Women’s March, is undeniably important and we are proud to join her in that effort.”
Ben & Jerry’s attached a statement from Sarsour: “We recommit ourselves to dismantling anti-Semitism and all forms of racism.”
As the Free Beacon report notes, Ben &Jerry’s has a long history of pushing progressive causes through its products. The name of one flavor, Chubby Hubby changed to “Hubby Hubby” in 2009 to celebrate the legalization of same-sex marriage in Vermont. Chocolate fudge brownie became “Food Fight Fudge Brownie” in support of GMO labeling. “Empowermint” in 2016 was meant to promote voting rights.
Ben & Jerry’s is a brand widely available in Israel.
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2) The Annihilation of Iraq's Christian Minority
By Raymond Ibrahim, Gatestone Institutue
"Another wave of persecution will be the end of Christianity after 2,000 years" in Iraq, an Iraqi Christian leader recently said. In an interview earlier this month, Chaldean Archbishop Habib Nafali of Basra discussed how more than a decade of violent persecution has virtually annihilated Iraq's Christian minority. Since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, the Christian population has dropped from 1.5 million to about 250,000 -- a reduction of 85%. During those 15 years, Christians have been abducted, enslaved, raped and slaughtered, sometimes by crucifixion; a church or monastery has been destroyed about every 40 days on average, said the archbishop.
While it is often assumed that the Islamic State (ISIS) was the source of the persecution, since that terror group's retreat from Iraq, the situation for Christians has barely improved. As the archbishop said, Christians continue to suffer from "systematic violence" designed to "destroy their language, to break up their families and push them to leave Iraq."
According to the "World Watch List 2018" report, Christians in Iraq -- the eighth-worst nation in the world in which to be Christian -- are experiencing "extreme persecution," and not just from "extremists."
Although "Violent Religious Groups" (such as the Islamic State) are "Very Strongly" responsible, two other societal classes seldom associated with the persecution of Christians in Iraq are also "Very Strongly" responsible, the report states: 1) "Government officials at any level from local to national," and 2) "Non-Christian religious leaders at any level from local to national." Also, three other societal groups -- 1) "Ethnic group leaders," 2) "Normal citizens (people from the general public), including mobs," and 3) "Political parties at any level from local to national" -- are all "Strongly" responsible for the persecution of Christians in Iraq. In other words, virtually everyone is involved.
The report elaborates:
Several regional Christian leaders confirm these findings. According to Syriac Orthodox bishop, George Saliba:
Father Douglas al-Bazi -- an Iraqi Catholic parish priest from Erbil who still carries the scars from torture he received 9 years earlier -- made the same observation:
The Iraqi government is complicit -- when not actively participating -- in the persecution. As one Christian man explained after being asked why Christians in Iraq do not turn to governmental authorities for protection:
When Christians do take the risk of reaching out to local authorities, police sometimes rebuke them with comments like, "[you] should not be in Iraq because it is Muslim territory."
The Iraqi government has only helped foster such anti-Christian sentiments. In late 2015, for instance, it passed a law legally forcing Christian and all other non-Muslim children to become Muslim if their fathers convert to Islam or if their Christian mothers marry a Muslim.
Government-sponsored school curricula present indigenous Christians as unwanted "foreigners," although Iraq was Christian for centuries before it was conquered by Muslims in the seventh century. As a Christian politician in the Iraqi Ministry of Education explained:
"If the [Christian] children say they believe in Jesus" in school, notes one report, "they face beatings and scorn from their teachers."
Most telling is that the Iraqi government hires and gives platforms to radical clerics whose teachings are nearly identical to those of the Islamic State. Grand Ayatollah Ahmad al-Baghdadi, for instance, one of the nation's top Shia clerics, explained during a televised interview the position of non-Muslims living under Muslim rule:
Considering that Muslims in Iraq are indoctrinated by such an anti-Christian rhetoric from early youth -- starting in the schoolrooms and continuing in the mosques -- it should probably not be a surprise that many Muslims turn on neighboring Christians whenever the opportunity presents itself.
In one video, for example, a traumatized Christian family from Iraq tell of how their young children were murdered -- burned alive "simply for wearing the cross." The mother explained how the "ISIS" that attacked and murdered her children were their own Muslim neighbors, with whom they ate, laughed, and to whom they even provided educational and medical service -- but who turned on them.
When asked who exactly threatened and drove Christians out of Mosul, another Christian refugee said:
They said: 'Leave before ISIS get you.' What does that mean? Where would we go?...
Christians have no support in Iraq. Whoever claims to be protecting the Christians is a liar. A liar!"
Iraq's Christians are on the verge of extinction, less because of ISIS, and more because virtually every rung of Iraqi society has been, and continues to be, chipping away at them.
"If this is not genocide," said Chaldean Archbishop Habib Nafali towards the end of a recent interview, "then what is?"
Raymond Ibrahim, author of the new book, Sword and Scimitar, Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute and a Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders , Sens. Ted Cruz and Mitch McConnell , and Rep. Devin Nunes must worry that when they venture out in public, protesters will scream in their face, attempt to bar their passage or disrupt their meal -- and do so without legal ramifications.
A Pew Research Center report out last year, for example, showed that while the Republican views shifted slightly to the right from 1994 to 2017, Democrats had moved far to the left. Nearby is the table we ran when that report came out.
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2) The Annihilation of Iraq's Christian Minority
By Raymond Ibrahim, Gatestone Institutue
- Government-sponsored school curricula present indigenous Christians as unwanted "foreigners," although Iraq was Christian for centuries before it was conquered by Muslims in the seventh century.
- "I'm proud to be an Iraqi, I love my country. But my country is not proud that I'm part of it. What is happening to my people [Christians] is nothing other than genocide... Wake up!"
— Father Douglas al-Bazi, Iraqi Catholic parish priest, Erbil.
- "Contacting the authorities forces us to identify ourselves [as Christians], and we aren't certain that some of the people threatening us aren't the people in the government offices that are supposed to be protecting us."
— Iraqi Christian man on why he cannot rely on the authorities for protection.
"Another wave of persecution will be the end of Christianity after 2,000 years" in Iraq, an Iraqi Christian leader recently said. In an interview earlier this month, Chaldean Archbishop Habib Nafali of Basra discussed how more than a decade of violent persecution has virtually annihilated Iraq's Christian minority. Since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, the Christian population has dropped from 1.5 million to about 250,000 -- a reduction of 85%. During those 15 years, Christians have been abducted, enslaved, raped and slaughtered, sometimes by crucifixion; a church or monastery has been destroyed about every 40 days on average, said the archbishop.
While it is often assumed that the Islamic State (ISIS) was the source of the persecution, since that terror group's retreat from Iraq, the situation for Christians has barely improved. As the archbishop said, Christians continue to suffer from "systematic violence" designed to "destroy their language, to break up their families and push them to leave Iraq."
According to the "World Watch List 2018" report, Christians in Iraq -- the eighth-worst nation in the world in which to be Christian -- are experiencing "extreme persecution," and not just from "extremists."
Although "Violent Religious Groups" (such as the Islamic State) are "Very Strongly" responsible, two other societal classes seldom associated with the persecution of Christians in Iraq are also "Very Strongly" responsible, the report states: 1) "Government officials at any level from local to national," and 2) "Non-Christian religious leaders at any level from local to national." Also, three other societal groups -- 1) "Ethnic group leaders," 2) "Normal citizens (people from the general public), including mobs," and 3) "Political parties at any level from local to national" -- are all "Strongly" responsible for the persecution of Christians in Iraq. In other words, virtually everyone is involved.
The report elaborates:
"Violent religious groups such as IS and other radical militants are known for targeting Christians and other religious minorities through kidnappings and killings. Another source of persecution are Islamic leaders at any level, mostly in the form of hate-speech in mosques. Government officials at all levels are reported to threaten Christians and 'encourage' them to emigrate. Also, normal citizens in the north have reportedly made remarks in public, questioning why Christians are still in Iraq."
Several regional Christian leaders confirm these findings. According to Syriac Orthodox bishop, George Saliba:
"What is happening in Iraq is a strange thing, but it is normal for Muslims, because they have never treated Christians well, and they have always held an offensive and defaming stand against Christians.... We used to live and coexist with Muslims, but then they revealed their canines [teeth].... [They do not] have the right to storm houses, steal and attack the honor of Christians. Most Muslims do this, the Ottomans killed us and after that the ruling nation-states understood the circumstances but always gave advantage to the Muslims. Islam has never changed."
Father Douglas al-Bazi -- an Iraqi Catholic parish priest from Erbil who still carries the scars from torture he received 9 years earlier -- made the same observation:
"I'm proud to be an Iraqi, I love my country. But my country is not proud that I'm part of it. What is happening to my people [Christians] is nothing other than genocide. I beg you: do not call it a conflict. It's genocide... When Islam lives amidst you, the situation might appear acceptable. But when one lives amidst Muslims [as a minority], everything becomes impossible.... Wake up! The cancer is at your door. They will destroy you. We, the Christians of the Middle East are the only group that has seen the face of evil: Islam."
The Iraqi government is complicit -- when not actively participating -- in the persecution. As one Christian man explained after being asked why Christians in Iraq do not turn to governmental authorities for protection:
"Contacting the authorities forces us to identify ourselves [as Christians], and we aren't certain that some of the people threatening us aren't the people in the government offices that are supposed to be protecting us."
When Christians do take the risk of reaching out to local authorities, police sometimes rebuke them with comments like, "[you] should not be in Iraq because it is Muslim territory."
The Iraqi government has only helped foster such anti-Christian sentiments. In late 2015, for instance, it passed a law legally forcing Christian and all other non-Muslim children to become Muslim if their fathers convert to Islam or if their Christian mothers marry a Muslim.
Government-sponsored school curricula present indigenous Christians as unwanted "foreigners," although Iraq was Christian for centuries before it was conquered by Muslims in the seventh century. As a Christian politician in the Iraqi Ministry of Education explained:
"There's almost nothing about us [Christians] in our history books, and what there is, is totally wrong. There's nothing about us being here before Islam. The only Christians mentioned are from the West. Many Iraqis believe we moved here. From the West. That we are guests in this country."
"If the [Christian] children say they believe in Jesus" in school, notes one report, "they face beatings and scorn from their teachers."
Most telling is that the Iraqi government hires and gives platforms to radical clerics whose teachings are nearly identical to those of the Islamic State. Grand Ayatollah Ahmad al-Baghdadi, for instance, one of the nation's top Shia clerics, explained during a televised interview the position of non-Muslims living under Muslim rule:
"If they are people of the book [Jews and Christians] we demand of them the jizya [a tax on non-Muslims] — and if they refuse, then we fight them. That is if he is Christian. He has three choices: either convert to Islam, or, if he refuses and wishes to remain Christian, then pay the jizya. But if they still refuse — then we fight them, and we abduct their women, and destroy their churches — this is Islam!... This is the word of Allah!"
Considering that Muslims in Iraq are indoctrinated by such an anti-Christian rhetoric from early youth -- starting in the schoolrooms and continuing in the mosques -- it should probably not be a surprise that many Muslims turn on neighboring Christians whenever the opportunity presents itself.
In one video, for example, a traumatized Christian family from Iraq tell of how their young children were murdered -- burned alive "simply for wearing the cross." The mother explained how the "ISIS" that attacked and murdered her children were their own Muslim neighbors, with whom they ate, laughed, and to whom they even provided educational and medical service -- but who turned on them.
When asked who exactly threatened and drove Christians out of Mosul, another Christian refugee said:
"We left Mosul because ISIS came to the city. The [Sunni Muslim] people of Mosul embraced ISIS and drove the Christians out of the city. When ISIS entered Mosul, the people hailed them and drove out the Christians.... The people who embraced ISIS, the people who lived there with us... Yes, my neighbors. Our neighbors and other people threatened us."
They said: 'Leave before ISIS get you.' What does that mean? Where would we go?...
Christians have no support in Iraq. Whoever claims to be protecting the Christians is a liar. A liar!"
Iraq's Christians are on the verge of extinction, less because of ISIS, and more because virtually every rung of Iraqi society has been, and continues to be, chipping away at them.
"If this is not genocide," said Chaldean Archbishop Habib Nafali towards the end of a recent interview, "then what is?"
Raymond Ibrahim, author of the new book, Sword and Scimitar, Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute and a Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.
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3)
Strategy for anarchy --- never-fail, time-tested
By Victor Davis Hanson
What makes citizens obey the law is not always their sterling character. Instead, fear of punishment -- the shame of arrest, fines or imprisonment -- more often makes us comply with laws. Law enforcement is not just a way to deal with individual violators but also a way to remind society at large that there can be no civilization without legality.
Or, as 17th-century British statesman George Savile famously put it: "Men are not hanged for stealing horses, but that horses may not be stolen."
In the modern world, we call such prompt, uniform and guaranteed law enforcement "deterrence," from the Latin verb meaning "to frighten away." One protester who disrupts a speech is not the problem. But if unpunished, he green-lights hundreds more like him.
Worse still, when one law is left unenforced, then all sorts of other laws are weakened.
The result of hundreds of "sanctuary cities" is not just to forbid full immigration enforcement in particular jurisdictions. They also signal that U.S. immigration law, and by extension other laws, can be ignored.
The presence of an estimated 12 million or more foreign nationals unlawfully living in the U.S. without legal consequence sends a similar message. The logical result is the current caravan of thousands of Central Americans now inching its way northward to enter the U.S. illegally.
If the border was secure, immigration laws enforced and illegal residence phased out, deterrence would be re-established and there would likely be no caravan.
Campus protests often turn violent. Agitators shout down and sometimes try to physically intimidate speakers with whom they disagree.
Most of the disruptors are upper-middle-class students. Many have invested up to $200,000 in their higher education, often to ensure well-paying careers upon graduation.
Protesters assume that ignoring laws about peaceful assembly poses no consequences. Usually student disruptors are right. College administrators will typically shrug at even violent protests rather than call police to make arrests.
Yet if a few bold disruptors were actually charged with misdemeanors or felonies and had arrests tarnishing their otherwise sterling résumés, there would likely be far fewer illegal and violent protests.
In the last two years, a number of celebrities have openly fantasized about doing physical harm to the president of the United States . Madonna, Kathy Griffin , Johnny Depp , Robert De Niro , Snoop Dogg and other stars have expressed their wishes that Donald Trump might be beaten up, blown up, cut up or shot up.
Their shared premise is that they are too famous, influential or wealthy to expect consequences that ordinary citizens might face for making threats to the safety of the president of the United States . If the next time a Hollywood icon tweeted or voiced a threat to the president he or she was subsequently put on a no-fly list, the current assassination chic would quickly stop.
Every person assumes the freedom to eat safely in a restaurant, to walk to work without disturbance and to relax without fear of violence. Now, that is now always the case, at least not if one is deemed politically influential and conservative.
There are many causes of the current legal laxity.
Trump is a polarizing president, and his critics have decided that extraordinary and sometimes extralegal measures are morally justified to stop him. Supposedly high-minded ends are seen as justifying unlawful means. Helping undocumented immigrants evade the law, stopping the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh or otherwise thwarting Trump all warrant special immunity.
3a)
Memo To Midterm Voters: It's Democrats, Not Republicans, Who Are The Extremists Today
IBD Editorial
Election 2018: Every day in the run-up to the midterm elections, the mainstream news peddles the same message: Republicans are extremists. But look at the data, and you see that it's Democrats who are increasingly well outside the mainstream.
Writing in New York Magazine, Jonathan Chait had this to say about the Republican party: "Everything that was terrible about the party that nominated Trump is significantly, terrifyingly worse today. Even more distressing: It is likely to lurch further rightward regardless of the outcome of the elections."
As a mainstream journalist, Chait is hardly saying anything unusual about Republicans. Day after day, the mainstream press files stories describing Republicans as fascists, sexists, racists, anti-Semites, etc.
Here's a tiny sampling of recent headlines: "How Republican Extremism Became Normalized." "Yes, the Republican Party Has Become Pathological." "Why Are Republicans Promoting Ultra-Right Extremism." "The Proud Boys, the GOP, and 'The Fascist Creep.' "
What evidence is there of this, other than President Trump's often abrasive rhetoric, and the actions of a few crazed lunatics?
Trump's agenda so far has been mainstream conservative — tax cuts, deregulation, strong defense, secure national borders. (President Clinton said similar things about illegal immigrants and border security when he was president.)
Where Trump has strayed from conservative orthodoxy, it's tended to be toward the left — witness his efforts to force down drug prices and his rhetoric on trade.
But survey data show fairly conclusively that when it comes the ideology of each party, it's Democrats who have been moving to the fringe.
A Pew Research Center report out last year, for example, showed that while the Republican views shifted slightly to the right from 1994 to 2017, Democrats had moved far to the left. Nearby is the table we ran when that report came out.
A Gallup poll from 2015 pointed to the same trend. It found that Democrats had become far more liberal over the previous 15 years. Republicans hadn't changed in their views much. In fact, they had moved leftward on some social issues.
This year, the Democratic field is full of self-declared socialists. And the Democratic party has embraced a radical agenda of socialized health care — via the artfully named "Medicare for all" — free college, a doubling of the federal minimum wage, "guaranteed" federal jobs, eliminating ICE, a government takeover of corporate boards, and so on.
Prominent liberals routinely say the most incredibly extremist things, without anyone batting an eye.
Case in point is actor James Cromwell, who recently promised violence if Republicans retained control of Congress.
"If we don't stop (President Trump) now, then we will have a revolution for real," he said at an awards ceremony this week. "Then there will be blood in the streets."
You'll try in vain to find any Democrat who — after lecturing the public on the dangers of Trump's word choices — has denounced Cromwell's rhetoric.
Despite journalists' endless efforts to portray Democrats as reasonable, mainstream moderates, the public is getting wise to their increasingly extremist views.
This summer, an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that just 33% think Democrats are mainstream today, while 56% say they're out of step. Just two years before, 48% said Dems were mainstream, and only 42% said they were out of step.
So please, enough about how extremism can only be found among Republicans.
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4)
The Trump Curveball: This Is What China Didn't Expect
Donald Trump's message to Xi Jinping: the United States intends to disengage with your country to the greatest extent possible.
A long-planned meeting between President Donald Trump and Chinese ruler Xi Jinping, scheduled for the sidelines of the G20 meeting at the end of next month in Buenos Aires, looks like it might not occur. And even if the get-together takes place, it does not appear it will be productive. There may even be no discussions on the topic of the moment, the so-called “trade war.”
The U.S. won’t talk to Beijing about trade until the Chinese, in the words of the Wall Street Journal , submit a “concrete proposal to address Washington’s complaints about forced technology transfers and other economic issues.” For many reasons, China’s officials are unlikely to do that.
Call it, as the Wall Street Journal does, an “impasse.”
The Trump administration is quickly reversing four decades of American thinking. Presidents from Nixon to Obama made the success of China’s Communist Party a goal of U.S. policy.
But Trump has not only eliminated that goal—his policies are either hostile to Beijing or indifferent to its interests—he is also disengaging from China altogether. And that is, despite concern, a good thing. Our relations with the Chinese state probably will be better, at least in the long run, with less—not more—contact.
Xi, believing in the primacy of the Party and the power of the state, has marched China back to something resembling the systems created and maintained by Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin.
Xi has, for instance, been busy recombining already large state enterprises back into dominant market players and, in a few cases, formal state monopolies. He has increased state subsidies to favored participants and has placed a new emphasis on industrial policy, like his notorious Made in China 2025 initiative that seeks self-sufficiency in crucial sectors.
He has tightened already strict capital controls, often enforcing unannounced rules. Moreover, Xi has dramatically increased state control over the equity markets, especially since the summer of 2015. Market-supporting purchases by the aptly named “National Team” are, in substance, renationalization. Xi, in addition to that effort, is partially nationalizing the tech sector.
Throughout Xi’s tenure, the state has, as is so often said, “advanced” and the market “retreated,” this despite the much-publicized promise, from the 3rd plenum of the 18th Central Committee in November 2013, to let the market play a “decisive role” in the allocation of resources.
Unfortunately, Xi Jinping is making all these regressive moves with such vigor and determination that it is unlikely foreign companies will achieve, so long as he rules, fair access to the Chinese market.
Xi’s Beijing has, not surprisingly, been blatantly disregarding obligations under trade agreements. He has been closing off China’s markets to foreign companies with discriminatory law enforcement actions, state media-promoted boycotts, and legislation, such as the Cybersecurity Law and National Security Law, which target non-domestic competitors. And he has been inserting Communist Party cells into foreign-owned operations in China.
At the same time, Xi has continued to take, by theft and by rule, hundreds of billions of dollars of foreign-intellectual property each year, much of it American.
Enter Trump. He was willing last year to do a deal with Xi on trade, making his accommodating position clear in his favorite mode of communication, tweets.
This year, the American leader resorted to searching for stopgap solutions. He had, for example, proposed that Beijing, essentially by fiat, cut the bilateral trade deficit by $200 billion by 2020. What was significant about this proposal, which was not evident at the time, was that the forty-fifth president had given up changing China. Instead, he was trying to improve outcomes for the United States on a negotiated basis.
That reduction-by-fiat attempt was quixotic at best, and having failed in this regard, Trump moved to Plan C. Plan C is the current plan and it involves disentangling the American and Chinese economies.
the withdrawal from the UN’s Universal Postal Union, a move to end the subsidy for packages mailed to the United States from, among other locations, China. More fundamentally, the president’s team is working to get companies to move their supply chains out of China.
And Trump is starting to get his wish. As Andrew Collier of Orient Capital Research in Hong Kong tells the National Interest, “Many are now being forced to shift sourcing to Vietnam and other countries at great cost.”
Call that “disengagement.” Disengagement was clearly on the menu this month when the administration decided not to send a delegation of senior officials to the China International Import Expo, scheduled for November 5 –10 in Shanghai. The event is, in the words of Beijing’s official China Daily, “the first-ever Chinese fair focusing exclusively on imported goods and services.” More than 2,800 companies from over 130 countries and regions will participate, including almost 180 American businesses.
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5) Israeli officials are keeping silent amid reports of a powerful computer virus striking Iranian infrastructure in recent days.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Iranian infrastructure and strategic networks have come under attack in the last few days by a computer virus similar to Stuxnet but “more violent, more advanced and more sophisticated,” and Israeli officials are refusing to discuss what role, if any, they may have had in the operation, an Israeli TV report said Wednesday.The report came hours after Israel said its Mossad intelligence agency had thwarted an Iranian murder plot in Denmark, and two days after Iran acknowledged that President Hassan Rouhani’s mobile phone had been bugged.
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