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April 2021

Opinion: The Man Behind China’s Raging Nationalist Campaigns Against the US

tps://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_breakingnews/the-man-behind-chinas-raging-nationalist-campaigns-against-us_

Though it may not be clear that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is collapsing for many westerners, the Chinese are quite certain the crash of the Chinese regime is imminent as over 375 million Chinese have quit the CCP and its affiliated organizations.

The CCP—which is on the verge of a crisis—has again raised the banner of nationalism in order to save itself.

It has been a regular tactic over the past century when it has been cornered and has had no other choice.

The latest nationalist campaign started with the CCP’s diplomatic system when Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on March 18 that the United States had “deep concerns with actions by China, including Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Taiwan, cyber-attacks on the United States, [and] economic coercion toward our allies.”

In the midst of the diplomatic dilemma, the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League (CYL) joined in to initiate a heated boycott of foreign goods, with the CCP’s official mouthpieces provoking nationalist sentiment along the way.

Taken altogether, this incident shows that Wang Huning, a current member of the CCP’s Politburo Standing Committee, who controls not only the CYL but also the CCP’s Publicity Department, and has the official media as one of his tools, that he is controlling the diplomatic system from behind the scenes.

Staged Confrontation in Alaska

At the two-day senior-level Alaska talks between China and the United States on March 18 and 19, the two sides to the talks, led by Chinese foreign policy official Yang Jiechi, and Blinken for the United States, respectively, crossed fire with full force at the beginning of their talks, bringing their conflict under the international spotlight.

Yang spoke for 17 minutes without giving time for translation in between. The most surprising remark he made was: “the United States does not have the qualification to say that it wants to speak to China from a position of strength. The U.S. side was not even qualified to say such things even 20 years or 30 years ago, because the Chinese people don’t buy it.”

CHRISTOPHER RUFO: ON WOKE EDUCATION

https://www.city-journal.org/christopher-rufo-on-woke-education

In an ongoing investigative series, City Journal contributing editor Christopher F. Rufo reports on the spread of critical race theory through American schools.

Senator Cotton’s Stand
The Arkansas lawmaker is introducing a bill to protect the military from critical race theory indoctrination. March 24, 2021
Subversive Education
North Carolina’s largest school district launches a campaign against “whiteness in educational spaces.” March 17, 2021
Revenge of the Gods
California’s proposed ethnic studies curriculum urges students to chant to the Aztec deity of human sacrifice. March 10, 2021
Critical Race Fragility
The Left has denounced the “war on woke,” but it is afraid to defend the principles of critical race theory in public debate. March 2, 2021
Critical “Race” to the Bottom
10 Blocks podcast with Brian C. Anderson, February 26, 2021
Failure Factory
Buffalo’s school district tells students that “all white people play a part in perpetuating systemic racism”—while presiding over miserable student outcomes. February 23, 2021
Gone Crazy
A New York City public school principal calls on white parents to “subvert white authority.” February 18, 2021
Bad Education
In a Philadelphia elementary school, teachers are putting a premium on radicalism, not reading. February 11, 2021
Spoiled Rotten
Students at the United Nations International School launch an anonymous social media campaign denouncing their teachers as “racists” and “oppressors.” January 28, 2021
“Antiracism” Comes to the Heartland
A Missouri middle school forces teachers to locate themselves on an “oppression matrix” and watch a video of “George Floyd’s last words.” January 19, 2021
Woke Elementary
A Cupertino elementary school forces third-graders to deconstruct their racial identities, then rank themselves according to their “power and privilege.” January 13, 2021
Radicals in the Classroom
San Diego’s school district tells white teachers that they are guilty of “spirit murdering” black children and should undergo “antiracist therapy.” January 5, 2021
Teaching Hate
The Seattle school district claims that the U.S. education system is guilty of “spirit murder” against black children. December 18, 2020

“A Certain Madness Amok” In Canada, trans “justice” has gone haywire. Bruce Bawer

https://www.city-journal.org/canadian-father-jailed-for-speaking-out-about-trans-identifying-child

At this moment, a Vancouver postman named Rob Hoogland is sitting in a jail cell in British Columbia. He will be there until at least April 12, when he’s scheduled for a court date. At that time, he may be ordered to remain behind bars for a period yet to be determined.

Has Hoogland killed or robbed somebody? Is he an arsonist? A rapist? No. What did he do, then? Short answer: he tried to save his emotionally unstable daughter from self-destruction.

The long answer begins in the 2015–16 school year, when, as Hoogland recounted in a talk last October, his then fifth-grade daughter (he also has an older son) was getting into trouble at school and Hoogland and his estranged wife (whom he divorced in the spring of 2015) decided it might be good for her to see her school counselor. Since it’s forbidden by the British Columbia Supreme Court to make her name public, she’s referred to in legal documents as “A.B.” (Hoogland is “C.D.,” and the girl’s mother is “E.F.”)

Unknown to Hoogland, A.B. continued to see school counselors well into seventh grade, when one day she suddenly cut her hair very short. At the end of that school year, Hoogland saw that she was listed in her yearbook under a male name. It turned out that the school had been feeding her transgender ideology, and that she’d already begun “socially transitioning” to a male identity under the direction of a psychologist, Wallace Wong, who was encouraging her “to take testosterone.” To this end, Wong referred her to an endocrinologist at the Gender Clinic and Children’s Hospital in Vancouver.

It used to be understood that gender dysphoria is vanishingly rare, typically afflicts boys, and almost always begins to manifest when a child is extremely young. In recent years, however, there’s been an epidemic in many Western countries of older girls who suddenly claim to be in the wrong body. This “rapid onset gender dysphoria,” as Abigail Shrier argues in her important 2020 book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters (which I reviewed), is a fad rooted in a number of contemporary social factors.

Many have expressed concern about this trend. Yet transgender activists, eager to increase their visibility and clout, have embraced these girls as real cases of gender dysphoria and have pushed for them to be “transitioned,” pronto. Such transition usually starts with the administration of puberty blockers, continues with massive doses of testosterone, and concludes with “gender-affirmation surgery”—known to today’s self-identified trans teenagers, rather innocuously, as “top surgery” (mastectomy) and “bottom surgery” (metoidioplasty and phalloplasty, which transform the clitoris into something resembling a penis).

A decade ago, subjecting minors to these protocols would have been seen as malpractice and child abuse. But in the last few years, the practice has won widespread political, cultural, media, and judicial support. Never mind that puberty blockers, while presented as harmlessly allowing young teens a “pause,” so that they can ponder their options, can in fact be quite harmful and are almost always followed by hormone therapy; that testosterone, which can cause sterilization, osteoporosis, heart disease, and stunted growth, invariably results in such irreversible symptoms as sterility, facial hair, and a deeper voice; and that “gender-affirming surgery,” of course, destroys healthy body parts that can never be restored.

Taking Notes as the Rot Began Rafe Champion

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/education/2021/03/making-notes-as-the-rot-began/

After his work on culture and racism, Jacques Barzun spent his sabbatical leave in 1943-45 on a study tour to “take the temperature” of education across the nation.  “Under every meridian on this continent I have been privileged to attend meetings of the curriculum committee which was, it seemed, sitting continuously from coast to coast.”

Back in his office, his head full of information about the finance, culture and politics of education, he wrote Teacher in America (1945) in burst of energy. This was a tour de force of the challenges and difficulties in the education system, such as the notion that learning has to be “fun”, misguided fads promoted in teacher training schools and the soul-destroying drudgery of the PhD “octopus”.

The preface of the 1981 edition is a mournful reflection on several decades of regression in the public education system, much of it driven by the graduates of the courses in Education which he deplored in the first edition.

Thirty-five years have passed, true; but the normal drift of things will not account for the great chasm. The once proud and efficient public-school system of the United States, especially its unique free high school for all—has turned into a wasteland where violence and vice share the time with ignorance and idleness, besides serving as battleground for vested interests, social, political, and economic.

This “heartbreakingly sad” development flowed from misguided moves to expand the scope of the schools with a wave of additional responsibilities and progressive innovations to promote personal development, citizenship and sociability.

China and the Looming Warfare over Taiwan Frank Mount

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2021/04/china-and-the-looming-warfare-over-taiwan/

It is hard to believe that the Japanese High Command is not saying to the Chinese High Command, secretly or otherwise, that if China attacks Taiwan, Japan will have to respond whatever the Americans or anybody else chooses to do.

Taiwan is absolutely essential to the defence and security of Japan. It is the key link in what has been called the First Island Chain running more or less parallel to the Asian mainland from Sakhalin in the north down through the pencil-like line of Japanese islands through the Ryukyu Archipelago to Taiwan through Batan and Babuyan to the Philippines and then down to Indonesia. This chain of islands prevents the Chinese from getting out of the Sea of Japan, the Yellow Sea, the East China Sea and the South China Sea into the North Pacific Ocean in any militarily significant numbers.

If China occupied Taiwan it would be able to amass significant and seriously threatening naval power both east and west of Japan. Being a long narrow line of islands, Japan lacks serious geographical strategic depth, and while it is reputedly the world’s third-largest economy, it must import all of its oil and most of its food, minerals and other essential goods. It would be very difficult, if not impossible, for Japan to mount a successful defence without massive support from the US and other allies.

These strategic realities have been occupying the minds of Japan’s best strategists for at least a hundred years, and of course they have been working diligently to maintain the chain. I first became aware of these matters when I visited Japan in the late 1960s and early 1970s and interviewed some of Japan’s major naval and other strategists.

Defiant Federal Judge Calls Out the Media-Democrat Complex By Andrew C. McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/04/defiant-federal-judge-calls-out-the-media-democrat-complex/

One D.C. Circuit jurist pulled no punches as he sounded the alarm on ‘one-party control of the press and media.’

‘T he flak only gets heavy when you’re over the target.” This oft-cited World War II fighter-pilot wisdom is the best way to understand the strident reaction to Judge Laurence Silberman, the formidable senior jurist on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, as a result of the dissent he filed in a recent libel case.

In the course of controversially urging the Supreme Court to reconsider the foundation of its modern libel jurisprudence, New York Times v. Sullivan (1964), Judge Silberman had the audacity to notice that the mainstream media function as an adjunct of the Democratic Party. When this development is combined with the activist progressivism of Silicon Valley techies who control social-media platforms, the result, he concluded, is “one-party control of the press and media.” This “threat to a viable democracy” is apt to lead “to countervailing extremism” — hard to argue with that these days.

Silberman’s point was that, without constitutional justification, the Supreme Court’s judicially legislated federalization of libel law substantially enhanced the power of the press. New York Times v. Sullivan supplanted the traditional state common law of defamation with a rule, speciously claimed to be mandated by the First Amendment, that requires defamed public figures to prove actual malice — i.e., to prove that any libelous statements were intentionally false or made with reckless disregard for their falsity. This daunting burden makes it virtually impossible for public figures — including private persons who are transmogrified into celebrities by the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence — to sue successfully, even in cases where they have been slandered with false information.

This might not be a terrible result if the media were scrupulously non-partisan. But once the media and other channels of information exchange become adjuncts of one political party, the Court’s standard creates an incentive to portray the opposition party in the worst light, knowing that any misimpressions thereby created and any reputational damage will not be actionable.

More to the point, whatever one thinks of the policy choice that it is better to encourage more reporting, rather than accurate reporting — such choices are for legislatures to make, not the courts.

The Enduring Terror of Violent Crime Victimhood A family in Oakland just suffered a horrific crime in their home — one similar to far worse than one I had recently — and deserves much help in recovering. Glenn Greenwald

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-enduring-terror-of-violent-crime?token=ey

A harrowing story of a violent crime in Oakland was reported by San Francisco television reporter Dion Lim. On Tuesday night, four armed men invaded the family home of a couple and their seven-year-old daughter. The criminals broke in as the mother was preparing to put her young daughter to bed. They tied up the couple, brutally beat the father, repeatedly threatened to murder all of them — specifically threatening that they would first shoot the daughter — and then ransacked their home over the course of a full hour, stealing all of their possessions and much of their life savings.

A GoFundMe page has been created by a family friend to tell the story and help them financially recover (their identities are being concealed pending the apprehension of the criminals). I have donated to it and encourage anyone who can to do so. But I also want to convey why this particular recent crime resonated for me and produced particularly strong levels of empathy. It is because, weeks ago, I experienced something quite similar — though thankfully without my children involved — and largely wanted to share what happened for the insights it provided me and to explain why violence of the kind this Oakland family just suffered is so brutalizing.

On March 5, I was at a farm that we have been renting during the pandemic that is roughly 90 minutes from our home in Rio de Janeiro. It is isolated and beautiful. I’ve begun my day for the last five months by feeding the chickens, rabbits, ducks, swans and peacocks that are there: a perfect way to connect to farming life. My husband and our two children had spent the week in Rio because the kids had school entrance exams that required a faster internet connection than is available at the farm. Because March 5 was the day before my birthday, they had all planned to come to the farm that day, but decided at the last second that they would come early the next morning instead.

So that night I was alone there with one off-duty police officer who works with our family to provide security. At roughly 9:30 p.m. that night, I was speaking with a friend on the telephone when I noticed that our dogs — twelve of whom were at the farm, with the rest at home — were barking incessantly and intensely for a sustained period of time, which is unusual. I ended the call to see why they were so agitated and walked out of the house toward the gate where I heard them.

Biden Administration and Iran: Secret Deals and Appeasement Back on the Table? by Majid Rafizadeh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17228/biden-iran-secret-deals

“The Biden administration appears to be using loopholes when dealing with the Iranian regime. I am again asking direct, yes or no questions on the United States’ involvement in facilitating a South Korean ransom payment to Iran. If the Biden administration is involved in transferring funds to Iran, Congress and the American people must be informed. Biden administration officials continue to deflect and refuse to answer questions from members of Congress regarding this issue.” — Congressman Bryan Steil (R-WI), letter to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, March 25, 2021.

When President Biden was vice president during the Obama administration, the administration was all too eager to grant concessions to the Iranian regime and, it turns out, made multiple secret deals with the mullahs….. These secret deals meant that when sanctions against Iranian banks were lifted and permission given to the leaders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to resume conducting business, there was no longer any mechanism to check or stop Iran’s illegal activities such as advancing its ballistic missile program.

The Obama administration also helped swiftly to lift all four rounds of UN sanctions against Iran — sanctions it had taken decades to put in place. Iran’s military sites also were exempted from inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency; other inspections were only to be at the times and places of Iran’s choosing — if ever.

Another concession, usually overlooked, is that Iran never even signed the JCPOA deal — what sort of deal, then, is that?

Appeasement policies, secret deals and generous concessions to predatory regimes do not work, as history has repeatedly shown. They only empower and embolden leaders whose record reveals that they have no intention of honoring whatever they agreed to in the first place, and for whom commitments have been mainly a means of buying time to accomplish the goals they really want.

The Biden administration is ratcheting up its appeasement policies towards the Iranian regime in an apparent effort to revive the 2015 nuclear deal — which by the way, Iran never signed.

US President Joe Biden made his intention to return to the nuclear deal public before he took office; after, he appointed as Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman — a key negotiator in the talks which led to the nuclear deal in 2015 during the Obama administration. Biden actually publicized Sherman’s professed accomplishment:

“She has successfully rallied the world to strengthen democracy and confront some of the biggest national security challenges of our time, including leading the U.S. negotiating team for the Iran Deal”.

The administration proceeded to revoke the designation of the Houthis, an Iran-backed terror group, as an officially-designated terrorist organization.

Republican foreign policy leaders in Congress are now requesting from the Secretary of State Antony Blinken answers to questions about the secret talks held with South Korea that resulted in South Korea giving the Iranian regime $1 billion in ransom money. The letter was “led” by Congressman Bryan Steil (WI), Congressman Greg Steube (FL) and Republican Study Committee (RSC) Chairman Jim Banks (IN). Steil pointed out:

“The Biden administration appears to be using loopholes when dealing with the Iranian regime. I am again asking direct, yes or no questions on the United States’ involvement in facilitating a South Korean ransom payment to Iran. If the Biden administration is involved in transferring funds to Iran, Congress and the American people must be informed. Biden administration officials continue to deflect and refuse to answer questions from members of Congress regarding this issue. I want answers. Congress must be informed of the administration’s actions”.

After Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx Criticized the COVID Task Force, Dr. Scott Atlas Couldn’t Stay Silent Larry O’Connor

https://townhall.com/columnists/larryoconnor/2021/04/02/dr-scott-atlas-just-unloaded-on-fauci-birx-cdc-dir-walensky-and-mask-mandates-n2587330

I just finished an interview with Dr. Scott Atlas. Dr. Atlas was a member of President Donald Trump’s COVID task force. He’s a well-known health care policy advisor, a Senior Fellow at Standford’s Hoover Institution and was Chief of Neuroradiology at the Stanford University Medical Center. 

He’s also been an outspoken critic of the widespread lockdown strategy recommended by Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx and employed by the vast majority of American governors over the past year. 

Generally, when I sit down for an interview with a figure like Dr. Atlas, my goal is to elicit some response or statement that separates this “media hit” from any other interview Dr. Atlas may have committed to. The thought process is: “If I can generate one good headline out of this interview, I’ve done good work.” 

Well, Dr. Atlas went above and beyond here. He is so candid and so direct in his observations and criticisms of his former colleagues and those now directing policy for the Biden White House I’m at a loss as to where to begin. 

One good headline? How about several?  

O’CONNOR: Could you lend a little bit of context to Dr. Fauci taking credit for the vaccine? 

ATLAS: The vaccine development was first initiated by the president’s realization that he was going to do what turned out to be a very smart thing, which was to take the risk away from the company’s developing the vaccines and just paying for hundreds of millions of doses and development and production in advance of them even having the vaccine developed, and that was a smart gamble. But then after that, the point of the development and vaccine distribution and everything was done by other people. 

Dr. Slaoui was in charge of the vaccine development program. General Perna and FEMA and other people were in charge of logistics and distribution planning. Alex Azar the Secretary of HHS and his team were overall in charge of Operation Warp Speed. 

The name that you mentioned earlier is missing from the list of people that were involved in the vaccine. 

O’CONNOR: That’d be Dr. Anthony Fauci. I just want to quote him, “When I saw what happened in New York City almost overrunning our healthcare system, that’s when it became very clear: the decision we made on January 10th to go all out and develop a vaccine may have been the best decision that I’ve ever made with regard to intervention as a director of the institute.” From your first-hand knowledge of this situation, this was not his decision? 

ATLAS: For him to claim credit for that is sort of unconscionable. 

A New Zionist Congress Is Born Defiant Jewish undergraduates are forming their own national organization dedicated to combating anti-Semitism and promoting Jewish pride. Join us. by Blake Flayton

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/new-zionist-congress-is-born-blake-flayton-antisemitism

“Don’t go there.” It’s a phrase I’ve gotten used to hearing. Not from those who disagree with me on the internet or from my parents who want to make sure I’m safe at school, but from Jewish professionals charged with protecting students like me.

Since The New York Times published my story about being a Jewish college student and experiencing anti-Semitism in left-wing circles on campus, I’ve had the opportunity to write for a number of publications and speak in synagogues, high school classrooms, and Jewish community centers. Many of those who host these talks call me ahead of time and use that ubiquitous phrase: “Don’t go there.” They are warning me to avoid certain topics. They don’t want me to emphasize that anti-Semitism is one of the key features of today’s new leftism. Too often when I talk about anti-Semitism with Jewish liberals like myself, both on and off campus, they are terrified by this new and all-too-popular trend, but they are unwilling to speak freely about it. They are asking me not to tell the truth.

“Don’t go there” means stop bringing up the new form of social justice that flattens all individuals into steps on a privilege pyramid, a strict hierarchy of who is oppressed and who is oppressive, who has access to truth and justice, and who must be told to shut up. In this ideology, Jews, Jewish peoplehood, Jewish culture, and the Jewish state are placed at the tippity-top of the privilege pyramid. It’s therefore completely acceptable to demonize all of these things, for you are speaking truth to power, comrade! You are dismantling unjust systems. It is acceptable, and in fact encouraged, to insist that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinian children, to insist that pro-Israel students are merely pawns of the “Zionist lobby,” a cabal that is flooding the corridors of academia with cash to silence professors. It’s fine to insist that Judaism is only a European religion, that Jews are not their own nation, not their own people, or are indigenous to Poland. These canards not only score you a place in any progressive circle, but maybe even a book deal too, not to mention a speaker’s slot on a Zoom panel for the Democratic Socialists of America. But take issue with any of them? You’re a white supremacist, babe. Go Sieg Heil somewhere else.

In this new world order, nobody is surprised when a majority of students at Tufts University vote to pass a referendum blaming racist police violence in the United States on the State of Israel. In this new world order, it’s not cause for alarm when an Israeli restaurant in Portland, Oregon, is forced to remove all mention of Israel from its menus and signs, but still gets vandalized with graffiti that reads “eat shit” and “falafel is from Palestine.”

In this new world order, no one blinks when the organizers of a rally against police brutality in New York City say it’s “open to all, minus cops and Zionists.”