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June 2019

To Beat China, Recognize Taiwan By Brandon J. Weichert

https://amgreatness.com/2019/06/10/to-beat-china-recognize-taiwan/

The Sino-American trade war is only just beginning. Initial reports show that the American side is faring better than the Chinese, but these reports are hardly conclusive. As David P. Goldman has assessed, China still has a great deal of maneuvering room with which to bludgeon the United States.

What Washington needs in its ongoing trade war is greater leverage. And, that leverage will not be found in the economic realm.

True leverage would keep China’s leadership off-balance. To that end, the United States should recognize Taiwan’s independence.

Beijing has long insisted that Taiwan is part of China and that the two “will be united” . . . someday. Chinese President Xi Jinping, moreover, won’t rule out the use of force in achieving this long-standing aim. Beijing believes it is a fait accompli that Taiwan will be returned to Chinese rule just as the British ultimately gave up prosperous Hong Kong. And once Taiwan is brought under its dominion, China will have secured its maritime border.

One China, Two Systems?
The United States, for its part, has for 40 years tried to thread the needle between appeasing China and backing Taiwan’s independence in all but name.

Educating universities Insights from Quadrant

https://quadrant.org.au/

In our June edition, David Furse-Roberts writes of Sir Robert Menzies’ approach to education, observing the goal of our longest-serving prime minister was to see our universities produce “erudite, cultured and well-rounded graduates, with a humane understanding of their obligations.” Oberlin College in the US began with something similar in mind but, like our own institutions of higher learning, has strayed more than somewhat from the vision of liberal education that, in 1835, saw it become the first US college to admit negroes to its Ohio campus.

Recently, as an indication of how far Oberlin has drifted from the principles on which it was founded, a jury ruled the university liable to the tune of $11 million for the vendetta launched by a plague of woke students against a local bakery that had the temerity to charge three black undergrads with shoplifting. Apparently, according to SJW logic, that made the bakery owner a racist, the fact that the light-fingered trio pleaded guilty to theft not being allowed to enter into it. As Law Professor William A. Jacobson puts it at his blog, Legal Insurrection:

The verdict sends a strong message that colleges and universities cannot simply wind up and set loose student social justice warriors and then wash their hands of the consequences. In this case, a wholly innocent 5th-generation bakery was falsely accused of being racist and having a history of racial profiling after stopping three black Oberlin College students from shoplifting. The students eventually pleaded guilty, but not before large protests and boycotts intended to destroy the bakery and defame the owners. The jury appears to have accepted that Oberlin College facilitated the wrongful conduct against the bakery.

Steele’s Shoddy Dossier Andrew McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2019/06/24/steeles-shoddy-dossier/

Its claims were absurd, its evidence unconvincing — why did government officials ignore so many red flags?

Could former Obama-administration intelligence chiefs run any faster from the Steele dossier? “Pseudo-intelligence,” scoffs former national intelligence director James Clapper in his new memoir — after having arranged for the dossier to be included in a briefing of then-president-elect Trump, ensuring it would be published by the media. John Brennan, the former CIA director, belittles the dossier as uncorroborated reporting never refined into an authentic intelligence-agency product — and hopes we don’t notice his behind-the-scenes stoking of the dossier’s explosive allegations during the 2016 campaign. “Salacious and unverified,” sniffs former FBI director James Comey — after his bureau repeatedly relied on the dossier to obtain surveillance warrants from a federal court.

Even the principal author himself, former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, no longer stands behind his work. He touted it plenty ahead of the election he told colleagues he desperately wanted Trump to lose. Later, though, when he was sued for libel in Britain and had to answer questions under oath, the dossier disintegrated into “unverified” bits of “raw intelligence” that he had passed along because they “warranted further investigation” — not because they were, you know, true.

By any objective measure, Steele’s dossier is a shoddy piece of work. Its stories are preposterous — the “pee tape,” the grandiose Trump–Russia espionage conspiracy, the closely coordinating Trump emissaries who turn out not even to know each other, the trips and meetings that never happened, the hub of conspiratorial activity that did not actually exist. Steele gets basic facts wrong. There are undated and misdated reports. The putative Russia expert repeatedly misspells the name of Alfa Bank (“Alpha”), which is among the country’s most important financial institutions. In the antithesis of good spycraft, Steele tried (unsuccessfully) to corroborate his sensational claims by using dodgy information pulled off the Internet, including posts by “random individuals” who were as unknown to Steele as most of Steele’s vaunted sources are unknown to everyone else. No wonder Steele’s former MI6 superior, Sir John Scarlett, scathingly assessed the dossier as falling woefully short of professional intelligence standards: The reports were “visibly” part of a “commercial” venture, unlikely ever to be corroborated, and patently suspect due to questions about who commissioned them and why they were generated.

Yet the Obama administration made the dossier the centerpiece of its Russia investigation.

The FBI Tragedy: Elites above the Law By Victor Davis Hanson

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/06/fbi-tragedy-elites-above-law/

After decades in the FBI, the top brass came to believe they could flout the law and pursue their own political agendas.

One of the media and beltway orthodoxies we constantly hear is that just a few bad apples under James Comey at the FBI explain why so many FBI elites have been fired, resigned, reassigned, demoted, or retired — or just left for unexplained reasons. The list is long and includes director James Comey himself, deputy director Andrew McCabe, counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok, attorney Lisa Page, chief of staff James Rybicki, general counsel James Baker, assistant director for public affairs Mike Kortan, Comey’s special assistant Josh Campbell, executive assistant director James Turgal, assistant director for office of congressional affairs Greg Bower, executive assistant director Michael Steinbach, and executive assistant director John Giacalone. In short, in about every growing scandal of the past two years — FISA, illegal leaking, spying on a presidential candidate, lying under oath, obstructing justice — someone in the FBI is involved.

We are told, however, that the FBI’s culture and institutions are exempt from the widespread wrongdoing at the top. Such caution is a fine and fitting thing, given the FBI’s more than a century of public service. Nonetheless, many of those caught up in the controversies over the Russian-collusion hoax were not recent career appointees. Rather, many came up through the ranks of the FBI. And that raises the question, for example, of where exactly Peter Strzok (22 years in the FBI) learned that he had a right to interfere in a U.S. election to damage a candidate that he opposed.

And why would an Andrew McCabe (over 21 years in the FBI) think he had the duty to formulate an “insurance policy” to take out a presidential candidate? Or why would he even consider overseeing an FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton’s improper use of emails when his wife had been a recent recipient of Clinton-related PAC money? And why would McCabe contemplate leaking confidential FBI information to the press or even dream of setting up some sort of operation to remove a sitting president under the 25th Amendment? And how did someone like the old FBI vet Peter Strozk ever end up at the center of the entire mess — opening up the snooping on the Trump campaign while hiding that fact and while briefing the candidate on Russian interference in the election, interviewing Michael Flynn, preening as a top FBI investigator for Robert Mueller’s dream team, right-hand man of “Andy” McCabe, convincing Comey to change the wording of his writ in the Clinton-email-scandal investigation, softball coddling of Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills, instrumental in the Papadopoulos investigation con — all the while conducting an affair with fellow FBI investigator and attorney Lisa Page and bragging about his assurance that the supposedly odious Trump would be prevented from being elected. If a group of Trump zealots were to call up the FBI tomorrow and allege that a member of Joe Biden’s family has had unethical ties with the Ukrainian or Chinese government, would that gambit “alarm” the FBI enough to prompt an investigation of Biden and his campaign? How many career-professional Peter Strozks are still at the agency?

Seattle Yoga Teacher Offers ‘Undoing Whiteness’ Class By Jim Treacher

https://pjmedia.com/trending/seattle-yoga-teacher-offers-undoing-whiteness-class/

Good morning, white people. Have you apologized yet today for the color of your skin? Have you begged forgiveness for the immutable physical characteristic that renders your opinions meaningless and your very presence intolerable? Have you expressed regret for the white supremacy you carry around with you everywhere? If so, it still doesn’t matter. Guilt is not enough. You must actively undo your whiteness. Repent, sinner!

And now a strong, brave, fierce white lady in Seattle has finally figured out how to do that: yoga.

Marcus Harrison Green, Seattle Times:

Laura Humpf braced herself for fresh salvos of death threats, rage-soaked slurs and indictments of “reverse racism” from media provocateurs…
This spring, Humpf publicized an “Undoing Whiteness” yoga class at Rainier Beach Yoga, geared toward white people wishing to “unpack the harmful ways white supremacy is embedded” in their “body, mind and heart.” Along with providing a contemplative space, the class would dissect the “pathology of whiteness” — an obliviousness to the batch of privileges society grants white skin — and how it operates in daily life…
“I do stand behind white people needing to talk to other white people on how to undo whiteness. Can I keep refining it and doing it differently and better? Yeah, and I will forever and ever. But I believe in this space as one tool,” she says of her class of about a dozen that incorporates meditation, yoga postures, and readings from “Witnessing Whiteness,” a book meant to help white people deal with discomfort around race-based conversations.

Ilhan Omar Refuses to Comment on Terrorist Recruitment in Her District By Nicholas Ballasy

https://pjmedia.com/trending/illhan-omar-declines-to-address-terrorist-recruitment-in-her-district/

WASHINGTON — Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) declined to address a report that found the highest level of terrorist group recruitment has taken place in her congressional district.

According to a Fox News report from February, “More men and boys from a Somali American community in Minneapolis have joined – or attempted to join – a foreign terrorist organization over the last 12 years than any other jurisdiction in the country.” The city of Minneapolis is located in Omar’s district.

“FBI stats show 45 Somalis left to join the ranks of either the Somalia-based Islamic insurgency al-Shabab, or the Iraq- and Syria-based ISIS combined. And as of 2018, a dozen more had been arrested with the intention of leaving to support ISIS,” stated the report.

Omar, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, was asked about the report’s findings on Capitol Hill.

Watch Corrupt Watergate Fossil John Dean Get Obliterated During Anti-Trump Hearing By Madeline Osburn

https://thefederalist.com/2019/06/11/watch-corrupt-watergate-fossil-john-dean-get-obliterated-anti-trump-hearing/ 

“Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump

….No Obstruction. The Dems were devastated – after all this time and money spent ($40,000,000), the Mueller Report was a disaster for them. But they want a Redo, or Do Over. They are even bringing in @CNN sleazebag attorney John Dean. Sorry, no Do Overs – Go back to work!”

During a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Monday, Democrats hauled in a former White House counsel to Richard Nixon, John Dean, to testify on obstruction of justice as they pursue impeachment of Donald Trump. Republican members of Congress criticized Dean, a CNN contributor and author, who is often called on to compare the Russia investigation (or anything Democrats don’t like) to Watergate.

Just as Democrats had hoped, Dean testified on the “remarkable parallels” between Watergate and the findings of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report. In fact, Dean, a convicted felon, has repeatedly charged that past Republican presidencies, including Reagan, Bush, and now Trump, are “worse than Watergate.” Dean argued that “events in both 1972 and 2016 resulted in obstruction of the investigations.”

During Monday’s hearing, Rep. Matt Gaetz called out Dean’s unoriginal claims, and noted his appearance as a “prop.”

“Mr. Dean has made a cottage industry out of accusing presidents of acting like Richard Nixon. I would like to know how much money he makes based on making these accusations and exploiting them for his own economic benefit,” Gaetz said.

‘British Ann Coulter’ to speak in U.S.

http://www.wnd.com/2019/06/british-ann-coulter-to-speak-in-u-s/

Katie Hopkins, the British media personality whose unabashed defense of European civilization makes her a constant target of scorn, is scheduled to speak in central Connecticut on June 19.

A documentary filmmaker, author and columnist, she warned at a forum last year at CPAC that American is in danger of becoming like Western Europe.

“Do not become us. Do not let yourselves fall as the U.K. has fallen,” she said.

There is no cost to attend the event, but registration is required. Due to security concerns, the venue, near Hartford, will be disclosed on June 18 or the morning of June 19 to those who register.

It will begin at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, June 19.

Seats can be reserved by writing to act4ourcountry@cox.net or by phoning (475) 331-2650 [voice only – no texts].

Registrants are asked to provide the full names of each guest planning to attend and a telephone number or email address.

“Republic, Democracy, or Democratic Republic?” Sydney Williams

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/

Throughout most of the long history of man, the purpose of a life was simply to survive and procreate. Governments were formed as people began to live in communities. Republics and democracies were improvements on what had come before. Both have as their basis “people.” The word “republic” is derived from the Latin phrase “res publica,” the people’s concern. The word “democracy” stems from two Greek words, “demos,” meaning the people and “kratia,” meaning power or rule. Both are defined as forms of government in which ultimate power is invested in the people through a government run by their elected representatives, chosen either directly or indirectly. Both are in contrast to what had been the norm for most people over the millennia – large numbers controlled or enslaved by monarchial governments, which could be benevolent but more often were malevolent and autocratic.

But there are differences between republics and democracies. The latter implies rule by a simple majority, so that minority rights may be abridged, or over-ruled, by majority vote, whereas a republic relies on a written constitution that protects the natural rights of its citizens, including the rights of minorities. While autocracies are tyrannies by a minority, democracies devolve into a tyranny of the majority. Republics are less efficient, which can lead to frustration. If division is broad, the consequence can be the birth of multiple parties, followed by anarchy. Republics, better than democracies, protect the rights of all citizens. Apart from small towns, democracies have never lasted. The first known democracy was developed by Athenians and lasted from about 500 BC to circa 300 BC.  Their history was known to the Founders. In an 1814 letter to John Taylor, John Adams wrote: “Remember, democracies never last long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide.” Alexander Hamilton wrote, “Real liberty is never found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments.” Our Founders created a Republic, as the apocryphal story of Benjamin Franklin attests, with its purpose of providing, as our Declaration of Independence reads, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Kirsten Gillibrand compares pro-life beliefs to racism, ‘not acceptable’ By Jeffrey Cimmino

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/kirsten-gillibrand-compares-pro-life-beliefs-to-racism-not-acceptable

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., compared pro-life beliefs to racism and suggested the pro-life viewpoint is “not acceptable” during an interview with the Des Moines Register.

Gillibrand’s comments came in response to a question about if having a litmus test for judicial nominees would threaten judicial independence. The senator has promised to only appoint justices who would uphold Roe v. Wade.

“I think there’s some issues that have such moral clarity that we have as a society decided that the other side is not acceptable. Imagine saying that it’s okay to appoint a judge who’s racist or anti-Semitic or homophobic. Asking someone to appoint someone who takes away basic human rights of any group of people in America—I don’t think that those are political issues anymore,” Gillibrand said.”And we believe in this country in the separation of church and state, and I respect the rights of every American to hold their religious beliefs true to themselves, but our country and our Constitution has always demanded that we have a separation of church and state,” Gillibrand continued