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March 2021

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Feds’ Bogus Violent Extremists Their idea that there are Jihadi-like cells of domestic terrorists attempting a violent overthrow of the U.S. government is unproven propaganda. By Julie Kelly

By on March 23rd, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/03/22/the-feds-bogus-violent-extremists/

In her first official act as Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines issued a flashing red alert to the country. Jihadi-like Americans, especially those on the political Right, lurk among us and are plotting to commit vicious crimes such as kidnapping and assasinations.

These “US-based actors” allegedly will be moved to violence based on “narratives of fraud in the recent general election, the emboldening impact of the violent breach of the US Capitol, conditions related to the COVID-19 pandemic, and conspiracy theories,” the March 1, 2021 document claims.

Haines divides “domestic violent extremists,” or DVEs, into three categories; a graphic of the U.S. Capitol building sits atop the category entitled “anti-government/anti-authority violent extremists.” That particular brand of terrorist, according to the report, is driven by their “opposition to perceived economic, social, or racial hierarchies or perceived government overreach, negligence, or illegitimacy.” (Perceived?)

The thin, three-page paper does little to substantiate her alarming assessment; it is short on proof but long on political usefulness for Democrats and the media, who continue to stoke fears about so-called domestic terrorists loyal to Donald Trump who orchestrated a “deadly insurrection” on January 6. (The word “unclassified” appeared on each page, as if to give the impression that a thick trove of “classified” material somewhere exists.)

A Politicized Intelligence Community

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

An open letter from the National Association of Scholars. Why We Need a Civics Alliance We must act together now to restore America’s civics education. By Peter W. Wood

By on March 23rd, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/03/22/why-we-need-a-civics-alliance/

The National Association of Scholars (NAS) is proud to announce the creation of the Civics Alliance, a new coalition dedicated to defending and restoring true civics education across the United States. The Civics Alliance will unite education reformers, policymakers, and every citizen of the United States who wants to preserve civics education that teaches the founding principles and documents of the United States, the key events of American history, the structure of our self-governing federal republic, the functions of government at all levels, how our governing institutions work, and the spirit of liberty and tolerance that should animate our private interactions with our fellow citizens. Such civics education should teach students to take pride in what they share as Americans—an exceptional heritage of freedom, a republic that has succeeded in making liberty a fundamental principle of our government, and the joyful accomplishments of their common national culture.

By the time students leave high school, they should comprehend the rule of law, the Bill of Rights, elections, elected office, checks and balances, trial by jury, grand juries, civil rights, military service, and many other points in the traditional American civics curriculum. College undergraduates, and especially graduates of education schools, should also learn how these civic fundamentals emerged from Western Civilization, including through developments in Western political theory and American history.

This conception of civics education should not be controversial. The Civics Alliance is necessary because American civics education is under sustained assault by radical activists. Their New Civics uses the pedagogy of service-learning to teach action civics, also known by names such as civic engagement, civic learning, community engagement, global civics, and project-based civics. The New Civics threatens to replace traditional civics education with Neo-Marxist “social justice” propaganda, vocational training for left-wing activism, and Alinsky-style community organizing techniques adapted for use in the classroom.

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BOOKS Comments turned off

Fauci Children’s Book Scheduled for Publication in June By Zachary Evans

By on March 23rd, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/fauci-childrens-book-scheduled-for-publication-in-june/

Simon & Schuster will publish a children’s book about Dr. Anthony Fauci on June 29, CNN reported on Monday.

The book was written with Dr. Fauci’s approval, and he and his team were consulted throughout the process, a Simon & Schuster spokesperson confirmed. Author Kate Messner said she contacted Dr. Fauci‘s office in spring 2020 to consult about a separate book project, but inquired in the fall on whether she could write a standalone book about him.

“I was aware that I was asking for time from someone who was literally one of the busiest people in America as he provided public health guidance during the worst of the pandemic, but I also knew that Dr. Fauci understands how essential education is in public health,” Messner told CNN. Messner was able to interview Dr. Fauci several times “at the edges of his long work days.”

The book will in part highlight Dr. Fauci’s own childhood in the New York borough of Brooklyn, during which he delivered prescriptions for his father’s pharmacy.

Dr. Fauci, head of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has been at the forefront of the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic. The Trump administration brought Dr. Fauci on as part of the White House coronavirus task force, although the former president repeatedly clashed with him on pandemic policy, at one point calling him a “disaster” and “an idiot.”

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Black Intellectuals Demand Smith College Apologize to Smeared Workers, End ‘Anti-Bias’ Training By Tobias Hoonhout

By on March 23rd, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/black-intellectuals-demand-smith-college-apologize-to-smeared-workers-end-anti-bias-training/

More than 40 African American intellectuals are asking Smith College to end the “forced, accusatory ‘anti-bias’ training” that was mandated for campus service workers after a student falsely accused some workers of racially-profiling her.

The letter, obtained by National Review, was sent on Monday to Smith College president Kathleen McCartney by Bob Woodson, a veteran of the Civil Rights Movement and founder of “1776 Unites,” and 44 fellow black intellectuals. The signatories ask McCartney to “rethink how you have handled” the fallout over an alleged incident of racial profiling in the summer of 2018, and urge her to “publicly apologize” and “compensate” the school’s service workers that were caught up in the firestorm.

As detailed by the New York Times, a Smith student accused a janitor and a police officer of questioning “my being at Smith, and my existence overall as a woman of color” after the service workers asked her why she was eating lunch in a closed dormitory lounge. McCartney immediately sided with the student, who drew national attention and backing from the ACLU, as she held up the incident as an example of an oppressive campus environment.

“This painful incident reminds us of the ongoing legacy of racism and bias in which people of color are targeted while simply going about the business of their ordinary lives,” she wrote.

The student later posted the identities of a cafeteria worker and a janitor on Facebook. “This is the racist person,” she said of the cafeteria worker, who had warned her not to eat in the closed area. The accused janitor was not even working at the time of the incident.

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Border Patrol Arrests Over 11,000 Migrant Children in First Three Weeks of March By Zachary Evans

By on March 23rd, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/border-patrol-arrests-over-11000-migrant-children-in-march-so-far-report/

U.S. Border Patrol detained over 11,000 unaccompanied minors attempting to cross the border illegally in the first three weeks of March, more than in the entire month of February, CNN reported on Monday.

Detentions of migrant children have increased from 5,600 in January, to 9,300 in February, and now 11,000 children between February 28 and March 20, according to preliminary data reviewed by CNN. The number of unaccompanied minors detained in March 2020 is on track to surpass the 11,400 detentions recorded in May 2019.

The influx of migrant children has caused crowding issues at detention facilities along the U.S.-Mexico border. Representative Henry Cuellar (D., Texas), whose district sits on the border in the Rio Grande valley, shared photographs taken inside one facility during the past past month.

Border Patrol agents are “doing the best they can under the circumstances” but are “not equipped to care for kids,” Cuellar told Axios on Monday.

The Biden administration has restricted the Border Patrol’s ability to communicate with media outlets during the migrant influx. The administration has not provided photographs from inside detention facilities directly to the media, and has refused reporter requests to visit migrant shelters.

Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas), who will be visiting the southern border with colleague John Cornyn later this week, called on the the administration to allow media organizations access to the facilities.

“It is not enough for members of the Senate to see what is happening — the American people must see,” Cruz said in a statement on Monday. “That is why I requested that members of the media be allowed to join us. But your administration clearly and emphatically refused to offer press access.”

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

North Korea’s Missiles and Nuclear Weapons: Everything You Need to Know Kim Jong Un vows to continue advancing an arsenal that has the potential to hit anywhere in the U.S. by Timothy Martin

By on March 23rd, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/north-koreas-missiles-and-nuclear-weapons-everything-you-need-to-know-11610712018?mod=world_major_1_pos1

North Korea sees its nuclear program as essential to regime survival, serving to deter a U.S.-led invasion. Decades of denuclearization talks, economic sanctions and diplomacy have done little to slow Pyongyang’s advance to becoming a self-declared nuclear state.

One of the world’s poorest and most-isolated countries, North Korea has managed to stay high on Washington’s list of foreign-policy priorities for years. It spends more on its military, as a ratio of gross domestic product, than any other of the 170 countries tracked by the U.S. State Department.

Pyongyang developed its weapons program brazenly, flouting sanctions and breaking promises to halt nuclear production. In 2003 it withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the main global commitment to stopping the spread of nuclear weapons.

At 2018’s Singapore summit with President Trump, Kim Jong Un greatly boosted his global legitimacy by becoming the first North Korean leader to meet a sitting U.S. leader. In 2017 Pyongyang had ratcheted up tensions with the U.S. to their highest level in years by conducting its sixth nuclear test and firing off three intercontinental ballistic missiles—the last of them showing the range to strike anywhere in the U.S.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

China Tries Michael Kovrig, Second Canadian at Center of Diplomatic Standoff Espionage trial of researcher began days after a similar hearing for Canadian Michael Spavor

By on March 23rd, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-tries-michael-kovrig-second-canadian-at-center-of-diplomatic-standoff-11616415654

BEIJING—Chinese authorities opened and closed the espionage trial of the second Canadian at the center of a long-running standoff with both Canada and the U.S. without delivering a verdict.

Michael Kovrig, a researcher on leave from Canada’s diplomatic service, attended the hearing Monday with his lawyer, said Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court, adding that it would issue a verdict at a later date. Mr. Kovrig has been charged with “probing into state secrets and intelligence” on behalf of foreign actors.

The trial began three days after a similar hearing for Michael Spavor in the northeastern Chinese city of Dandong, on the border with North Korea. That hearing concluded in a matter of hours, also without a verdict. Mr. Spavor ran a nonprofit that organized academic, tourist and business trips to North Korea.

Jim Nickel, Canada’s deputy chief of mission in China, said outside the Beijing court Monday morning that he had requested entry to the hearing but that he was denied on national security grounds. He cited Mr. Kovrig’s lawyer and a court official in saying the trial had begun.

Flanked by U.S. acting deputy chief of mission, William Klein, and diplomats from more than two dozen countries, many of them European, Mr. Nickel called for Chinese authorities to grant them access. He pointed to the Canada-China consular agreement, which he said guarantees consular access to citizens being tried. Canadian diplomats were also denied consular access to Mr. Spavor’s trial on national security grounds.

“Because the cases involve state secrets, the hearings are not held in open courts,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a regular briefing Monday. The court also cited national security.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

When Cultural Appropriation and Historical Revisionism Are Acts of War “If the Jews leave those places, the Zionist idea will begin to collapse.” Caroline Glick

By on March 23rd, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/when-cultural-appropriation-and-historical-caroline-glick/

Two weeks ago, a bus filled with veteran Israeli generals from the Bithonistim, a grassroots national security organization, slowly made its way up the slopes of Mt. Ebal in Northern Samaria to visit a biblical-era site that was severely damaged by a Palestinian Authority contractor in late January.

They came to draw the public’s attention to the strategic implications of the war the Palestinians are waging against Jewish history.

The site was excavated between 1980 and 1989 by the late Professor Adam Zertal, who identified it as Joshua’s Altar as described in the Books of Deuteronomy, (27; 1-9) and Joshua (8; 30-35). The animal remains at the site contained thousands of burnt bones of year-old male, exclusively kosher, animals. They were burned in an open flame 3,250 years ago—the time generally identified as the period of ancient Jewish settlement of the Land of Israel under Joshua. Other remains found at the site included earrings and scarabs made in Egypt at the time of Ramses II, the Egyptian pharaoh often associated with the story of the Exodus from Egypt.

As Zertal explained in a lecture in 2013, the altar was buried under a layer of rocks, in keeping with Jewish prescriptions for preventing the desecration of abandoned holy sites. In keeping with the biblical narrative, the altar is made of unhewn stones; instead of steps, there are two ramps for the priests to alight to the platform—blocks of plaster were found nearby. The altar at Mt. Ebal also matches a Talmudic description of an altar from the Second Temple period, around 900 years later, indicating a continuity of Jewish practices throughout the biblical period.

Although initially controversial, Zertal’s general finding that the site is around 3,300 years old and is a Jewish historical site, where sacrifices were carried out in keeping with biblical guidelines, has become widely accepted—although many continue to dispute the specific identification with Joshua.

In late January, the Palestinian Authority (PA) posted a video on its website of 60 meters of the ancient wall surrounding the altar being destroyed to pave a road connecting the Palestinian village of Asira ash-Shamaliya to Nablus. Nablus, built on the ruins of the biblical city of Shechem, is located in northern Samaria between Mt. Ebal and Mt. Gerizim.

Zertal was a fiercely secular son of hardcore socialists. Yet, he explained in a 2013 lecture, his scientific work compelled him to accept that the biblical narrative “from Deuteronomy through the Books of Kings was historically accurate.”

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

China Owns Our Foreign Policy Chiefs The suicidal Democrat tradition of self-loathing and talking big. Bruce Thornton

By on March 23rd, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/china-owns-our-foreign-policy-chiefs-bruce-thornton/

“So what’s the message that our friends and allies alike will take from the Biden administration’s embarrassing display? That this administration will, like Jimmy Carter’s and Barack Obama’s, reverse the wisdom of Teddy Roosevelt and talk big but carry a little stick. No wonder Xi and Vlad are licking their chops.”

At a meeting in Alaska last week Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan beclowned themselves in front of the Chinese. During a press conference they decided to use a brief ceremonial statement to tongue-lash, with soothing Diplospeak, the Chinese over their brutal oppression of the Uighur minority, the destruction of Hong Kong’s political freedom, and the intensifying threats against Taiwan.

The pair didn’t have time to bask in their moral courage because the Chinese representatives unloaded on them with an absurd caricature of the United States straight out of Howard Zinn and Mother Jones. The most preposterous charge was this howler: “The fact is that there are many problems with the United States,” said one diplomat, “regarding human rights, which is admitted by the U.S. itself,” including its long, bloody “democracy-promotion” wars in the Middle East. And as the denizens of a culture famous for its obsession with “face”––public prestige––the Chinese weren’t happy about being dry-gulched in front of the international press.

This episode illustrates how feckless is our stale superstition about the power of “diplomatic engagement,” particularly when our rival is a ruthless, oppressive tyrant that cares nothing for our “rules-based order” other than as a tool for gaming it for its own geopolitical advantage. But Blinken, instead of walking out of the meeting and flying back to D.C.––a response that would have gotten China’s attention­­––in response feebly confirmed the truth of the accusations, but rationalized that at least we don’t “ignore them” or “pretend they don’t exist” or “sweep them under the rug.”

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IMMIGRATION, MEDIA Comments turned off

Big Media Show Why You Can’t Trust Them To Report Fairly On Biden’s Immigration Fiasco

By on March 23rd, 2021

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/03/23/big-media-show-why-you-cant-trust-them-to-report-fairly-on-bidens-immigration-fiasco/

The southern border is now being hit with a huge wave of unaccompanied children, the wholly predictable consequence of Joe Biden’s foolish open-border immigration policies. Once again, photos show “kids in cages.” But this time, the Big Media are mostly silent, or making excuses, as are the Democrats who helped create this inhumane mess.

On Monday, as the crisis worsened and criticisms grew, Biden imposed a “lid” on the White House and, by extension, media coverage of the border disaster. Not without reason. Flustered White House spokesperson Jen Psaki was unable to answer a few simple, but direct, questions from Fox News’ Peter Doocy.

Nothing to see here, media. Go home.

Doocy’s questions were entirely straightforward, the kind any honest journalist would ask. But one in particular left Psaki stammering for a reply:

“Two years ago, President Biden said ‘We’re a nation that says, if you want to flee, and you’re fleeing opposition, you should come. They deserve to be heard. That’s who we are.’ Now he says, ‘I can say quite clearly, don’t come over.’ So why was his position different campaigning than it is governing?”

But Psaki offered no real answer. You can find it here, at about 15:28 into the presser, but without her verbal stumbles.

Even so, the questions Doocy posed were devastating, since they get at the very core of the problem: Biden’s reopening of the border to illegal immigrants. And the cynical media, not surprisingly, have a moral blind spot when it comes to leftist politicians and policies.

Don’t believe it?

During the Donald Trump years, “kids in cages” became a media catch-phrase to describe Trump’s “inhumane” policies. Enraged indignance was the emotion of the day.

A casual Google count of citations for “kids in cages” turns up 420 million mentions. So the far-left media, and their hyper-left allies in academia, did a great job of spreading the idea that Trump was putting kids in what both the Washington Post and Newsweek called “concentration camps.”

What about today?

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