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April 2021

New National World War I Memorial Is A Moving Tribute To Bravery, Sacrifice, And The Indomitable American Spirit By Paulina Enck

https://thefederalist.com/2021/04/17/new-national-world-war-i-memorial-is-a-moving-tribute-to-bravery-sacrifice-and-the-indomitable-american-spirit/

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

John McCrae’s immortal words of remembrance of all who fell in the Great War carried through a beautiful ceremony honoring the oft-forgotten war and America’s pivotal role. On Friday morning, politicians, historians, activists, military leaders, artists, and descendants virtually gathered to raise the American flag over the newly-erected World War I memorial in Washington DC.

As the last of the major 20th century US war veterans to receive a national memorial, those who served in WWI now have a powerful tribute to their sacrifice, bravery, and heroism. Hopefully, the monument will help return the Great War to public consciousness.

The monument is a peaceful place of reflection, erected in downtown Washington, D.C. within Pershing Park, which is named for John Pershing, General of the Armies who commanded America to victory in the Great War. The stone walls contain quotes from writings and poetry of WWI soldiers, and small fountains hide the city sounds.

The centerpiece of the memorial is a long statue featuring several war scenes leading into the other. The figures are near life-sized and each tableau has a sense of action, as well as fluidity between them, creating a palpable sense of immediacy to the images.

Joe Weishaar, the architect who designed the memorial, detailed his desire to center the monument on the stories of those who served. To supplement the beauty and remembrance of the physical structure, there is a multimedia aspect in the form of an app, which augments the experience by providing deeper learning to the attendees. The app can also be used outside the monument itself, allowing users to turn any area into a place of remembrance.

Actor and philanthropist Gary Sinise, best known for his Oscar-nominated turn as Lieutenant Dan in “Forrest Gump,” hosted the flag-raising from the office of his veteran service foundation. He opened the ceremony describing the American Soldiers, or doughboys as they were colloquially referred, in turning the tide of the war for the allied powers, overlaid with footage of the brave soldiers.

As Maxine Waters Calls for Riots in the Streets to Continue, Minnesota National Guardsmen Shot At Rebecca Downs

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/rebeccadowns/2021/04/18/as-maxine-waters-calls-for-riots-in-the-streets-minnesota-national-guardsmen-shot-at-n2588123

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), a sitting member of Congress, took to the streets in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, where she called on riots to continue. She did so in the dead of the night, knowingly breaking curfew and encouraging others to do the same. As Hannah Nightingale with the Post Millennial reported, sure enough, something came of that. A news release from the Minnesota National Guard alerted that the Minnesota National Guardsmen security team were fired upon at about 4:19am, local time. Fortunately, the injuries two guardsmen sustained were minor. 

The Joe Biden Who Never Was Biden is proving the Biden he always was—as incompetent as Jimmy Carter, without the latter’s probity. He may prove as corrupt as Bill Clinton yet without his animal energy. By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2021/04/18/the-joe-biden-who-never-was/

These are the most radical first three months of a presidency since 1933, the most divisive—and certainly the most dangerous. And its catalyst is the myth of ol’ Joe from Scranton who has unleashed furies and hatreds never quite seen in modern American history.

“Woke” Joe Biden

At an age when most long ago embraced a consistent political belief, late septuagenarian Joe Biden suddenly reinvented himself as our first woke president. That is ironic in so many ways because Joe’s past is a wasteland of racialist condescension and prejudicial gaffes. For much of the 1980s and 1990s, he positioned himself as the workingman’s Democrat from Delaware (or, as Biden once beamed, “We [Delawareans] were on the South’s side in the Civil War.”). In truth, he exuded chauvinism well beyond that of his constituents. 

Biden’s concocted working-man schtick meant praising former segregationists of the Senate like Robert Byrd and James O. Eastland. He would talk tough about inner-city predators, even as he pontificated about his support for tough drug sentencing. Kamala Harris, without any political traction other than her race and gender, once predicated her unimpressive and early aborted presidential campaign on the single strategy of knocking Joe out of the primaries for his purported innate racism that hurt victims of color, such as herself, the deprived child of two Ph.Ds. 

Add up what Joe has said about race and it is hard to find any major political figure of either party who has been so overtly race-obsessed. His corny Corn Pop fables positioned Joe as the white working-class everyman. Indeed, he took on supposed gang bangers from the ghetto, standing them down, no less, with his own custom-cut chain. 

On the paternalistic flip side, Joe kindly allowed young African-Americans at poolside the chance to stroke their heroic lifeguard’s shimmering golden leg hairs, or so he tells us. 

As vice president, Biden condescendingly warned an audience of successful black professionals that a rather meek Mitt Romney had the superhuman ability to “put y’all back in chains.” 

Indeed, he warned them in a fake black patois, reminiscent of Hillary Clinton’s grating “I don’t feel no ways tired.” In Bidenland, donut shops are full of Indians and the sum total of Barack Obama is the fact he was supposedly “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.” 

We assume then that Joe was suggesting that Shirley Chisholm and Jesse Jackson could barely speak, were unkempt, and perhaps ugly in comparison to Barack Obama. The latter, other than his diction, fastidiousness, and appearance, apparently to Joe had not much to offer the country. 

Four Police-Related Deaths and the Importance of Context by Alan M. Dershowitz

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17296/police-related-deaths

These four cases taken together, demonstrate the considerable disparity among cases involving police related deaths. Each case presents different facts, different legal considerations, different moral conclusions, and different lessons to be learned. Let us consider them each separately, as they deserve.

Even if [Derek] Chauvin initially had the right to place his knee on Floyd’s neck or shoulder, there was no reason to do so after Floyd had been handcuffed and subdued.

[Officer Kim] Potter should not have been charged and should be acquitted if brought to trial. The decision to charge her was based not on the rule of law but on the demands of the crowds.

[I]t is unclear whether Officer [Eric] Stillman knew Toledo was no longer armed when Stillman pulled the trigger less than a second after Toledo threw his gun behind the fence, out of the view of the officer.

The refusal by radical anti-police bigots to acknowledge the dangers faced by decent, honest, non-racist police officers — which the vast, vast majority are — endangers us all.

Justice is a double-edged virtue. We need justice for the victims of police misconduct, and we need justice for those falsely or excessively charged with police misconduct.

[Congresswoman] Maxine Waters is seeking justice for neither. She is demanding vengeance without justice, without due process and without morality.

The police must be held accountable for deliberately employing excessive, especially deadly, force against minority and other individuals. But they, too, must be accorded the presumption of innocence and the due process of law. (The city manager of Brooklyn Center, Minn. was apparently fired simply for saying that Kim Potter would be accorded due process!) The rule of law must govern every case, without the heavy thumb of the angry crowd on the scales of justice.

The world is focused on three police-related deaths: the killing of George Floyd by former Officer Derek Chauvin; the shooting of Daunte Wright by former Officer Kim Potter; and the shooting of Adam Toledo, a 13-year-old in Chicago, by Officer Eric Stillman. There is a fourth death that has not received comparable attention: Police Officer Darian Jarrott was murdered in cold blood by a career criminal, Omar Felix Cueva, whose car the officer stopped and politely asked for identification.

Turkey: Iranian-Kurdish Political Refugee to be Deported by Uzay Bulut

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17298/turkey-afshin-sohrabzadeh

An Iranian Kurdish political refugee, Afshin Sohrabzadeh, 31, who suffers from cancer and lives in Turkey, has been held in administrative detention for deportation — for allegedly “threatening Turkey’s security”. He is currently being held in a removal center, and, if returned to Iran, he may well face the death penalty.

On April 5, he visited the Eskisehir Immigration Office to get permission to visit a friend in Ankara. Instead, he was held in administrative detention and a decision was made by the authorities to deport him back to Iran.

“Another option that will save Sohrabzadeh is that the UNCHR will step in and announce that he will be resettled in a third and safe country – other than Turkey or Iran.”

“As Turkey neighbours Iran, these refugees and their families continue to be exposed to the possibility of persecution by the Iranian intelligence agencies. At the same time, the Turkish immigration services are extremely reluctant to provide them with the administrative cooperation they need to complete their applications for asylum and resettlement in safer countries.” – Reporters Without Borders, April 30, 2020.

Turkey is bound by international law not to deport UN-recognized refugees. – Mahmut Kacan, Sohrabzadeh’s lawyer, to Gatestone, April 2021.

The UNCHR, the international media, and all human rights groups need to work to save Sohrabzadeh from arrest, torture and virtually certain death in Iran.

An Iranian Kurdish political refugee, Afshin Sohrabzadeh, 31, who suffers from cancer and lives in Turkey, has been held in administrative detention for deportation — for allegedly “threatening Turkey’s security”. He is currently being held in a removal center, and, if returned to Iran, he may well face the death penalty.

Sohrabzadeh, a political activist, was arrested and jailed in Iran in 2010, His lawyer, Mahmut Kacan, told Gatestone:

“Sohrabzadeh was arrested by Iranian authorities for joining demonstrations protesting the controversial 2009 Iranian presidential elections in which Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won. Sohrabzadeh was then charged with being a member of the Kurdish Komala organization, with being ‘an enemy of Allah’ and with ‘threatening Iranian national security.'”

The Courage of Your Convictions: Paul Revere, Lexington, and Concord By Rick Moran

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/04/18/the-courage-of-your-convictions-paul-revere-lexington-and-concord-n1440789

“Too many today reflexively reject anything that doesn’t fit in with the tribal narrative. But all sides could look at what happened in Lexington and Concord and draw inspiration and perhaps — just perhaps — begin to understand just a little bit about what America truly means.”

Two hundred and forty-six years ago this evening, a prominent Boston silversmith set out on a ride that would be immortalized by America’s finest poet. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was looking for a subject to write about that illustrated American virtues and concluded that Paul Revere’s ride on April 18, 1775, to alert Sam Adams and John Hancock that the British regulars were coming to arrest them in Lexington was a perfect allegory.

Longfellow wrote the poem “Paul Revere’s Ride” in 1860 when no one was alive who remembered the actual events. And that was a good thing.  Longfellow took enormous liberties with the subject matter. But he wasn’t trying to achieve historical accuracy. Instead, Longfellow wanted to say something profound about the American character and the entire revolutionary generation: that they were willing to suffer and die for something greater than themselves.

Revere was a fairly wealthy man by standards of the time and could have done quite well for himself if he had stuck with the British during the Revolution. But he was a figure that would become quite common in America’s future. Revere was a man on the make and knew that if allowed the freedom to prosper, he could do better.

Revere became one of the first American industrialists and died a very wealthy man.

But most colonists were like the small group of militiamen who took positions on the green at Lexington the next day. They were simple folk — farmers, tradesmen, nary a wealthy man among them. They weren’t really sure why they were there except they knew they were standing up for what they understood their rights as free-born Englishmen to be. They were bitterly and tragically mistaken.

Imagine you were there. What side would you have been on?

The Bay of Pigs 60th Anniversary And the media-Democrat cover-up continues. Humberto Fontova

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/04/bay-pigs-60th-anniversary-humberto-fontova/

“It was 60 years ago this week that an uncertain new president launched an ill-conceived military venture of astonishing naivety… 1,400 U.S.-trained Cuban exiles would land at the Bay of Pigs… It was an unmitigated disaster… Kennedy had learned the hard way not to blindly trust the advice of his decorated military and intelligence chiefs. (Beltway media stalwart and former Democrat White House official Lawrence Hass writing in The Hill, April, 12.)

And yet again, rather than go through the trouble of concocting their own propaganda, communist Cuba’s KGB-founded and -mentored media simply transcribed the U.S. beltway media. Think I exaggerate?

“It was 60 years ago this week that an uncertain new president (John F. Kennedy, JFK) launched an ill-conceived military venture of astonishing naivety…. 1,400 U.S.-trained Cuban exiles would land at the Bay of Pigs… Lawrence J. Hass, a U.S. expert on international relations, acknowledged on Monday that Washington’s invasion of Cuba in Bay of Pigs was ‘an ill-conceived military venture and an unmitigated disaster.” (Stalinist Cuba’s propaganda organ Prensa Latina, April, 12.)
 

Between snickers 62 years earlier, Che Guevara explained the fascinating process seen so starkly above:

“Much more valuable than rural recruits for our Cuban guerrilla force were American media recruits to export our propaganda.” (Ernesto “Che” Guevara, 1959.)

In fact, in complete refutation of the Media-Democrat-Castroite spin, the lack of naivete started with the invasion’s very begetter and main booster: Vice President Richard Nixon.

Here was the man who bucked the astonishing naivete (and treachery) of the Beltway establishment to see through and call out Alger Hiss. Nixon was also among the first U.S. officials to buck the astonishing naivete (and treachery) of the Beltway establishment by calling out and urging the overthrow of the closet Stalinist and Soviet asset Fidel Castro—and at the very moment Castro was being lionized by the U.S. media, State Dept., and even many in the CIA.

In fact, the military venture was expertly-planned and was anything but naive. The astonishing blunders and naivete were entirely Camelot’s.

Top Ten Most Racist Colleges and Universities: #10 Brandeis University A return to Jim Crow under the guise of “anti-racism.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/04/top-ten-most-racist-colleges-and-universities-10-toptenracistuniversitiesorg/

The David Horowitz Freedom Center is exposing prestigious American campuses as the “Top Ten Most Racist Colleges and Universities” for enacting policies and programs that are allegedly “anti-racist” but which in reality promote racial discrimination and a return to Jim Crow. 

A report and video on Brandeis University, #10 on our list, follows below.

The full report on the Top Ten Most Racist Colleges and Universities may be read HERE . 

#10: Brandeis University

“Whites-only” spaces are making a comeback—not in the Jim Crow South, but at prestigious American universities. Brandeis University in Massachusetts recently created one such racially segregated program for the ironic purpose of allegedly combatting racism. 

The voluntary six-week anti-racist training program is led by Brandeis’s Office of Diversity Equity and Inclusion. In an Orwellian paradox, the program deliberately segregates white students in order to lead them in “racial sensitivity training” such that they can “come to a deeper understanding of how whiteness moves.”

When questioned as to the wisdom of segregating students by race, Brandeis officials astonishingly declared it a matter of safety not to allow whites and blacks to converse about racial issues until the white students have been sufficiently shamed for their innate racism.

According to Joy von Steiger, a clinical psychologist who serves as a “Racial Justice Educator” at Brandeis, it is essential that white students participate in the sensitivity training so that they do not “case harm.” She added, “It doesn’t have to be kumbaya, but white folks in particular have to have done enough work” to safely exist in shared spaces with non-whites.

Kerry Agrees to Cooperate With China in Destroying US Economy Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2021/04/kerry-agrees-cooperate-china-destroying-us-economy-daniel-greenfield/

No matter how much they hate us, America’s enemies will always agree to help us commit suicide.

That makes John Kerry’s latest diplomatic triumph a little less impressive.

The agreement was reached by U.S. special envoy for climate John Kerry and his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua during two days of talks in Shanghai last week, according to a joint statement.

The two countries “are committed to cooperating with each other and with other countries to tackle the climate crisis, which must be addressed with the seriousness and urgency that it demands,” the statement said.

Absolutely.

So we’ll go on…

1. Outsourcing all our manufacturing to China while allowing it to self-inspect to meet climate goals

2. Buying lots of Chinese solar panels to save the planet

3. Making manufacturing in the United States too expensive to be viable

and soon, no doubt,

4. Hiking energy prices until America from space looks as dark as North Korea and then every day can be Earth Day

 Noting that China is the world’s biggest coal user, Kerry said he and Chinese officials had a lot of discussions on how to accelerate a global energy transition. “I have never shied away from expressing our views shared by many, many people that it is imperative to reduce coal, everywhere,” he said.

And the Chinese have never shied away from expressing their view that anything the Vietnamese did to turn Kerry into a political anti-American mouthpiece, they can do twice as well, and more efficiently, until there’s a Made in China sticker on his forehead.

Genius Maxine Waters just made herself a great defense witness in her lawsuit against Trump By Thomas Lifson

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/04/genius_maxine_waters_just_made_herself_a_great_defense_witness_in_her_lawsuit_against_trump.html

By traveling across state lines to incite the mob in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, Maxine Waters has opened the door on her possible expulsion from Congress, as Andrea Widburg notes today. But she may have shot herself in her other foot when it comes to the lawsuit she and other Democrats have filed against former President Trump over the January 6 Capitol incursion. Jonathan Turley explains:

Waters insists that Trump telling his supporters to go to the Capitol to make their voice heard and “fight” for their votes was actual criminal incitement. Conversely, Waters was speaking after multiple nights of rioting and looting, telling protesters to stay on the streets and get even more confrontational.

Waters has now guaranteed that she could be called as a witness by Trump in his own defense against her own lawsuit.

Waters’ most recent words could well be cited in the ongoing litigation over the Jan. 6 riot on Capitol Hill. As I have previously discussed, the lawsuit by House members and the NAACP may prove a colossal mistake. It is one of a number of lawsuits, including one filed by Rep. Eric. Swalwell, D-Calif., that could ultimately vindicate Trump shortly before the next election.

While it is possible that members could find a trial judge to rule in their favor, these lawsuits should fail on appeal, if they get that far. Moreover, they would fail under a lower standard of proof than the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard in criminal law. Such a result would eviscerate the claim that Trump was guilty of criminal incitement in his speech.

I honestly relish the thought of Waters testifying under oath before a lawyer hired by Trump. It would be glorious if this took place at the same time as Congress was vettng her continued membership.