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June 2021

Canada: University Uses Critical Race Theory to Fight ‘Islamophobia’ Like a kid with a new toy, leftists are bringing their latest tool of oppression and discord everywhere. Robert Spencer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/06/canada-university-uses-critical-race-theory-fight-robert-spencer/

The Agassiz-Harrison Observer out in British Columbia reported Thursday that at the University of the Fraser Valley (UFV), a vanguard academic institution if there ever was one, is striking a blow this week against one of the great evils of our time: “As part of the Peace and Reconciliation Centre’s (PARC) Peace Talks series, on June 23 the centre will host a webinar from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m., addressing Islamophobia.” What a relief! And even better, in a meeting of academic fads that one day will look as dated as Nehru jackets and bell-bottom trousers, they’re hauling out Critical Race Theory to fight “Islamophobia.”

As if that weren’t enough modern academic street cred, the university’s website explains that the university is “situated on the unceded traditional territory of the Stó:lō peoples. The Stó:lōhave an intrinsic relationship with what they refer to as S’olhTemexw (Our Sacred Land); therefore, we express our gratitude and respect for the honour of living and working in this territory.”

Dr. Keith Carlson, director of UFV’s Peace and Reconciliation Centre, and his colleagues certainly would never dream of suggesting that the Stó:lō peoples practice “systemic Islamophobia” on their unceded traditional territory, but those evil white Canadians certainly do, apparently, and so the good Dr. Carlson is here to fix the problem. To do so, the upcomingwebinar offers a hodgepodge of the currently trendy academic shibboleths and superstitions.

The webinar will “draw on lived experience, post-colonial studies, and critical race theory to help understand the roots of Islamophobia and the structures that continue to sustain it.”

Islam is not a race, and Muslims are not all of one race. There are Muslims, and Islamic jihadis, of all races. To bring critical race theory into a discussion of “Islamophobia” is like a child who has a new toy and has to bring it everywhere, no matter how inappropriate the setting, and demonstrates the Left’s determination to racialize every issue and portray everyone who disagrees with their agenda as a “racist.”

A Racist Training Program for the U.S. Navy Forget fighting China, confess your white privilege. Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/06/racist-training-program-us-navy-daniel-greenfield/

As he assumed the office of Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Michael Gilday announced that he wanted to change the Navy. While the title of his remarks in the video you see here below was: “One Team, One Navy,” its actual message was racist and divisive. His bottom line: only “conversations” about race would help. The “conversations” he referred to were in fact a lecture from America’s most popular and fact-challenged racist du jour, Ibram X. Kendi.

The “conversation” included “shared” videos of naval personnel claiming that America was racist and that they were angry. “Being African-American in America is not fun,” an aviation technician claimed, especially no doubt for a two-term African-American president who pocketed $100 million for the skillful exploitation of his public office.

There was no word on whether being African in Somalia, Sudan, and Nigeria is any more “fun” than being black in America or whether being a Somalian hater of Jews and America might put you on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and get you protected by Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the leadership of the Democrat Party.

In keeping with Gilday’s efforts to divide the Navy by race, an official Navy video endorsed the Marxist organization Black Lives Matter and denounced police for the death of drug-dealer-accomplice Breonna Taylor, who was shot resisting arrest when her boyfriend triggered a hailstorm of bullets after shooting and wounding a police officer doing his job. Bottom line of the video: naval recruits and officers need to hate their “white supremacist” country and question their service.

Honoring Jimmy Lai In Hong Kong, a valiant attempt to keep publishing the truth.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/honoring-jimmy-lai-11624248153?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

The Committee to Project Journalists was founded 40 years ago to fight for journalists who are “attacked, imprisoned or killed.” In this spirit, the CPJ on Monday announced it is honoring Hong Kong’s Jimmy Lai with its 2021 Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award. Mr. Lai, the founder, owner and contributor to the Apple Daily newspaper, won’t be able to accept the award in person because he sits in prison in Hong Kong.

The CPJ honor comes after another police raid on the newsroom last week. Five Apple Daily execs were arrested, and two—editor-in-chief Ryan Law and chief executive officer Cheung Kim-hung —were charged under the new national security law and thus denied bail. The CPJ notes that Mr. Lai “fights for the right of his Apple News organization to publish freely, even as China and its backers in Hong Kong use every tool to quash them.”

The grim news is that those who want Apple silenced may be succeeding. We have learned that Apple may be only days away from stopping its presses. This itself is a lesson in freedom. Instead of directly censoring the publication, Hong Kong authorities, backed by China, have targeted the lifeblood of any news organization, its business operations.

The lesson of Apple is that freedom of the press doesn’t exist in the abstract. It depends on property rights. By freezing Apple’s corporate accounts, by stopping Mr. Lai from voting his shares (he holds 72% of the company), and by scaring people from advertising in Apple or doing business with it, Hong Kong has been trying to deny the paper the wherewithal to continue. Lenin understood this more than a century ago, recommending that Communists control newsprint and advertising to bring the press to heel.

There’s a warning here for other Hong Kong business enterprises that may not think they have a stake in what happens to Mr. Lai or Apple. Hong Kong authorities are stealing Mr. Lai’s company because they don’t like his political views—and they have done it by police orders, without due process or judicial review. If they can do it to his company, does anyone really believe they won’t do it to a bank or tech company that offends China?

The men and women at Apple have been making a valiant stand to keep publishing despite the risk of arrest and imprisonment. They are an example of real journalistic courage that should educate an American media that likes to play up its bravery in challenging the government while living under the protection of the First Amendment and a free society. Mr. Lai and his journalists have put their freedom at risk to challenge a real tyranny.

The CPJ award is richly deserved, and it should put a global spotlight on what is happening to Mr. Lai and Apple. As China’s Communist Party seeks to expand its political control over critics world-wide, often with the acquiescence of Hollywood and U.S. tech companies, Jimmy Lai speaks for everyone fighting for the cause of liberty.

Iran Sends a Message to Biden The new president shows who really runs the Islamic Republic.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/iran-sends-a-message-to-biden-11624130662?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

The Islamic Republic of Iran isn’t a real democracy. But the result of Friday’s presidential election still reveals important truths about the government that the U.S. and Europe are trying to appease on nuclear weapons.

Ebrahim Raisi, the country’s chief justice, won the presidency with about 62% of the vote, according to preliminary results published Saturday. Sometimes discussed as a potential successor to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei —who wields the real power in Iran, particularly over foreign affairs—Mr. Raisi had the race wrapped up before the polls opened.

The Guardian Council, Iran’s election watchdog, has long barred candidates not to the Supreme Leader’s liking. But past races have been competitive and even unpredictable, giving Iranians a small voice in deciding their future. Approved candidates are always loyal to the Islamic Republic and its revolutionary ideology. But some, like lame-duck President Hassan Rouhani, spoke the language of moderation and reform even as they followed the Khamenei line.

Iranians understand they live in a dictatorship but have often voted in high numbers to choose their least bad option. Initial results suggest this year’s race had turnout around 50%—down from more than 70% four years ago and the lowest of any vote since 1979. Millions decided to boycott this year’s election as the country’s already small spectrum of permissible views grew even smaller.

Last month the Guardian Council culled dozens of candidates, including many ostensible centrists or reformers. Of the seven candidates approved to run, three dropped out shortly before the contest—paving the way for Mr. Raisi, who is typically described as a hard-liner or ultraconservative cleric.

Biden Admin Turns National Security Agencies Against Online ‘Misinformation’ Feds target crackdown on ‘domestic terrorism’

https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/biden-admin-turns-national-security-agencies-against-online-misinformation/

Federal law enforcement and various intelligence agencies are bolstering programs to police online speech and purported “misinformation,” according to a report released by President Joe Biden’s National Security Council. 

The report, titled the “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism,” details myriad initiatives and strategies to help counter “the threat posed by domestic terrorism today.” Chief among the concerns for White House national security officials is the proliferation of “Internet-based communications platforms.”

In response, the federal government, led by the Department of Homeland Security, is “funding and implementing or planning evidence-based digital programming” aimed at “enhancing media literacy and critical thinking skills” of the public. These federal programs, the NSC alleges, will serve “as a mechanism for strengthening [American] … resilience to disinformation and misinformation online.”

“We will pursue innovative ways to foster and cultivate digital literacy and related programs, including educational materials and interactive online resources such as skills-enhancing online games,” the report reads. “This can prove a useful component to forging the resilience that may help to stem domestic terrorism recruitment and mobilization to violence.”

Biden Breaks The Record On Wealth Transfers: $4.9 Trillion

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/06/21/biden-breaks-the-record-on-wealth-transfers-4-9-trillion/
As Alexis de Tocqueville warned, “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.”

The Democrats’ new favorite term is “human infrastructure,” which pretty much means anything they want to spend money on.

That raises the question: Just how much does the government spend on “human infrastructure” today? Turns out, it’s an eye-popping $4.9 trillion this year alone – a new record.

Buried in President Joe Biden’s 2022 budget is a document called Historical Tables, which breaks down annual federal revenues and spending in a variety of ways. One of the tables in this document tracks what the government calls “direct payments to individuals.”

These payments, mind you, don’t count salaries paid to federal employees or the cost of buying equipment. It’s just what the name states – direct money transfers. As the budget document explains:

‘These are federal government spending programs designed to transfer income (in cash or in-kind) to individuals or families. To the extent feasible, this category does not include reimbursements for current services rendered to the Government (e.g., salaries and interest).’

Under Biden, direct payments hit a huge new record high. Think about it this way. At $4.9 trillion, “direct payments to individuals” this year are equal to the entire federal budget of just two years ago. These money transfers will account for 22.3% of the nation’s entire GDP.

If this income transfer were a country, it would be bigger than Germany’s entire economy and slightly smaller than Japan’s.

Maria Bartiromo defends reporting: ‘Keep trashing me, I’ll keep telling the truth’ By Mychael Schnell

https://thehill.com/homenews/media/559347-maria-bartiromo-defends-reporting-keep-trashing-me-ill-keep-telling-the-truth

Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo on Sunday defended her reporting on a number of topics, telling critics “keep trashing me, I’ll keep telling the truth.”

Bartiromo, during an interview with Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) on “Sunday Morning Futures,” presented a list of what she called “the biggest lies of all”, which she said included the “Russia hoax based on a made-up dossier to try to take down Trump” and the impeachment of former President Trump “with absolutely no crimes attached to it.”

The list also included a number of allegations involving Hunter Biden, the son of President Biden; accusations about the origins of the coronavirus pandemic; and questions about whether the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol qualified as an “armed insurrection.”

Bartiromo said she is “so incredibly proud” of her team for “telling every story.”

“We’ve been on the right side of it for seven years going. I’ve been trashed every day along the way. Keep trashing me, I’ll keep telling the truth,” Bartiromo said at the end of the interview.

Bartiromo’s comments reflect a number of common GOP talking points, which aim to downplay the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and Trump’s attacks on the integrity of the 2020 election, while attempting to turn the public’s attention to Hunter Biden’s previous business ties and the possibility that COVID-19 leaked from a lab in China.

Bartiromo, earlier in the interview, asked Johnson “armed insurrection is what Nancy Pelosi keeps calling January 6. Senator, how many guns were actually taken up on that day, since she says it was armed?”

“I asked the FBI witness, not one, not one gun was recovered either in the capitol or on the Capitol grounds according to that FBI witness so that’s just one of the latest big lies,” Johnson responded, referring to previous testimony from Jill Sanborn, assistant director of the FBI’s counterterrorism division, who said the FBI did not confiscate any guns in the Capitol or on its ground on Jan. 6.

German Media Giant’s Message To Employees: Find A New Job If You’re Anti-Israel By Ryan Saavedra

https://www.dailywire.com/news/german-media-giants-message-to-employees-find-a-new-job-if-youre-anti-israel?itm_source=parsely-a

The CEO of a German media giant had a very pointed message for employees who complained that the company raised the Israeli flag outside their offices to show solidarity with the Jewish people and Israel as anti-Semitic demonstrations unfolded last month, saying that they should find new jobs.

The remarks by Axel Springer SE CEO Mathias Döpfner were made during a meeting last Thursday for the company’s 16,000 employees where he addressed complaints from some employees that the company had raised an Israeli flag outside company headquarters in Berlin.

I think, and I’m being very frank with you, a person who has an issue with an Israeli flag being raised for one week here, after anti-Semitic demonstrations, should look for a new job,” Döpfner said. “After these weeks of terrible antisemitic demonstrations, we at our building headquarters raised next to the European flag, and the German flag, [and] the Berlin flag, said let’s raise for 1 week the Israeli flag as a gesture of solidarity. We do not accept this kind of aggressive anti-Semitic movements.”

The Jerusalem Post reported:

Berlin-based Axel Springer is the largest digital publisher in Europe, which owns Bild, Die Welt, Business Insider, Politico Europe and many other news brands, as well as Israel’s largest classified ads website, Yad2. …

Axel Springer put the Israeli flag up in front of its headquarters in May, following antisemitic displays at pro-Palestinian demonstrations across Germany, including marches to synagogues, shouting slogans against Jews, attacks on Jewish institutions and the burning of Israeli flags.

Döpfner reportedly said that some people did not want to work for the company if the company flew the Israeli flag and that those people did “not fit the company and its values.”

Is Pennsylvania on the Verge of a Forensic Election Audit? By Matt Margolis

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2021/06/19/is-pennsylvania-on-the-verge-of-forensic-election-audit-n1455822

Pennsylvania state Senator Dave Argall, who chairs the committee in charge of overseeing elections, told the Pennsylvania Capital-Star that a forensic audit was a “very real possibility.”

“There are a lot of things under consideration right now, and I told them to check back in a week or two and we hope to have some more detail,” Argall said regarding a meeting he had with activists who support the audit on Wednesday.

President Trump called out Argall and other state senators by name in a statement earlier this week. “Why is State Senator Jake Corman of Pennsylvania fighting so hard that there not be a Forensic Audit of the 2020 Presidential Election Scam?” Trump asked in a statement. “Corman is fighting as though he were a Radical Left Democrat, saying that a Forensic Audit of Pennsylvania not take place. Why is Senator David Argall playing the same game? Are they stupid, corrupt, or naive? What is going on?”

“Other State Senators want this Forensic Audit to take place—immediately,” Trump continued. “I feel certain that if Corman continues along this path of resistance, with its lack of transparency, he will be primaried and lose by big numbers. What went on in Philadelphia and other areas of the State must be properly and legally exposed. If it is not, just like with open Borders, we won’t have a Country anymore!”

The Family Law Castle Greg Ellis’s totalitarian nightmare caught him unaware of the moral depravity of modern American bureaucracy. By Bruce Abramson

https://amgreatness.com/2021/06/19/the-family-law-castle/

In the late 19th century, bureaucracy was heralded as the ultimate progressive reform. After millennia of coveted government positions split between friends and relatives of the powerful and the highest bidder, dedicated civil servants with specialized training would take their place. Meritocratic expert governance would replace corruption with integrity, pettiness with professionalism, bias with compassion.

That progressive vision never worked. Franz Kafka was soon writing poignant novels about the inhuman mills the bureaucracies had become. The Trial and The Castle told chilling tales of innocents at the mercy of faceless, heartless systems oblivious to the human lives they were grinding to dust.

Things have hardly improved over the past century. On March 5, 2015, Hollywood actor Greg Ellis found himself cast in the leading role of a nightmare that would have made Kafka proud. That day, the police descended upon Ellis’s home and pulled him away from his two young sons. 

As Ellis soon learned, he stood accused of having said: “I’m sick of this shit. I’m gonna harm the children.” The allegation alone was enough to destroy his life. The police confined him to a mental health ward “for observation” and ushered him into the system. Six years later, he remains trapped, alone, and separated from his sons.

The naked allegation turned out to be his wife’s subtle way of telling him that she wanted a divorce, she wanted him out of their children’s lives, and she was willing to scorch the earth to get her way. A trained professional might have sought at least a modicum of corroborating evidence. An objective investigator might have wondered about the accuser’s motive. After all, while there are indeed fathers who hurt their children, there are also spouses who lie to secure advantage in the midst of a divorce.