Displaying posts published in

October 2021

Communist China’s Aggression in the South China Sea by Judith Bergman

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17838/china-aggression-south-china-sea

In March, a huge Chinese fishing fleet descended on Whitsun Reef, which lies within the exclusive economic zone of the Philippines. The Philippine government called on China to cease “militarizing the area”. Almost eight months later, however, more than 150 Chinese vessels reportedly remain in Philippine waters.

China’s illegal takeover of Hong Kong and Taliban’s seizure of Afghanistan, where the US even failed to save all US citizens — China could be planning to use force to capture Taiwan much sooner than that — the opportunity looks inviting. The question is: if China attacks Taiwan, whether the US will defend the island — or even put in place serious deterrents. It will not help anyone except the Chinese Communist Party if consequences for invading Taiwan consist of nothing more damaging than “strong letter to follow.”

China considers almost all of the South China Sea… part of Chinese territory. The Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague firmly rejected China’s sovereignty claim in 2016 but five years after that ruling, China continues to reject the court’s authority.

“The term ‘sea areas under the jurisdiction of the People’s Republic of China’ is not defined in the law and is purposely vague. Enacting ambiguous and imprecise laws allows China to alter its position on the applicability of the law based on the circumstances at the time.” — Captain Raul Pedrozo, Professor of International Law at the U.S. Naval War College, “International Law Studies”, Vol. 97, 2021

“China is once again testing the international community to gauge how it will react to the enactment of yet another maritime law that exceeds the permissible jurisdictional limits of international law, as reflected in UNCLOS [The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.] China will undoubtedly use the new law to engage in grey zone operations below the threshold of armed conflict to intimidate its neighbors and further erode the rule of law at sea in the Indo-Pacific region.” — Captain Raul Pedrozo, Professor of International Law at the U.S. Naval War College, “International Law Studies”, Vol. 97, 2021

The revised maritime law came into effect just seven months after China’s new coastguard law went into force on February 1. The Chinese coast guard law gives China’s coast guard authority to use lethal force on foreign ships operating in Chinese waters, including disputed areas such as the South China Sea. In January, the Philippines filed a diplomatic protest against the Chinese coast guard law saying that it is a “verbal threat of war to any country that defies the law”.

Tensions continue to rise in the South China Sea, as China, or, rightly, the Communist Chinese Party (CCP), ramps up its military activities in the region. Within only the first four days of October, China conducted a record-breaking 150 incursions into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) — after China’s People Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) had already, in September, set another monthly record with 117 incursions, some with nuclear-capable bombers, fighter jets and reconnaissance planes.

Multicultural barbarians are emptying France of its Jews Giolio Meotti

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/314463

“Intellectual life is undermined by the alliance of two messianisms, Islamism and a left whose main activity is to track down ill-thinkers. An intellectual life where it is no longer a question of deciding between error and truth, but between good and evil ”.

Thus, in Le Figaro, the great French historian Georges Bensoussan defines the “hold” of Islamism on public opinion. His “fault” four years ago was declaring on the radio that Muslim immigrants absorb anti-Semitism from an early age like mother’s milk. Since then, for the editorial director of the Memorial of the Shoah in Paris the caudine gallows of trials and ad personam attacks have opened.

Bensoussan provides other impressive numbers: “More than 500 districts in France are declared ‘sensitive’. To put it bluntly, we are talking about several million people who are subject to Islamist law.
Bensoussan tells Le Figaro what is happening to the Jews of France: “For safety reasons, Jewish children have massively abandoned public education. In the neighborhoods there is a climate that recalls the worst memories of the Jewish Maghreb. It is a French defeat and not a Jewish defeat, because the whole of French society is threatened by what threatens Jews today. For the descendants of Jews who have left the Arab world, the anti-Semitism of the ‘neighborhoods’ is once again a nightmare. It is a trauma to be overwhelmed by a climate of persecution that was thought behind and that condemns them to undergo a new exodus, abroad or in France itself: thus, the Seine-Saint-Denis has lost 80% of its Jewish population in twenty years “.

What’s Behind the Obsessive Opposition to U.S. Aid to Israel? The soft Jew-hate of questioning military aid to the Jewish state. Richard L. Cravatts

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/10/whats-behind-obsession-us-aid-israel-richard-l-cravatts/

While vice president Kamala Harris has been conspicuously absent from her alleged role in securing the nation’s border, she did find time for an impromptu visit with students at George Mason University in Virginia recently. At that meeting, one of the tendentious students, clearly schooled in the heterodoxy in which oppressed and oppressor animate all discussions about the world, raised the issue of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict.

The student, who identified herself as being Yemeni and Iranian, questioned Harris’s claim that activism, even by woke activists like herself, presumably, can result in substantive change.

“You brought up how the power of the people and demonstrations and organizing is very valuable in America,” the student told the Vice President, “but I see that over the summer there have been protests and demonstrations in astronomical numbers standing with Palestine,” referring to the widespread denunciation of Israel that occurred in the wake of the May conflict in Gaza as a result of Hamas’s showering Israeli neighborhoods with rockets meant to kill Jews.

“But then just a few days ago there were funds allocated to continue backing Israel,” the student continued, adding, with words that were not corrected by the VP and which subsequently drew criticism from many quarters as a result, “which hurts my heart because it’s ethnic genocide and displacement of people, the same that happened in America, and I’m sure you’re aware of this.”

Harris was roundly condemned for not correcting the student when she suggested that Israel was committing genocide and was displacing an indigenous people, which the student likened America’s treatment of Native Americans, and instead mollified her by saying that “your voice, your perspective, your experience, your truth should not be suppressed.”

Inside Apartheid NYC When the ‘unclean’ and non-compliant are excluded from the privileges accorded to the rest. Katie Hopkins

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/10/day-life-apartheid-nyc-katie-hopkins/

[See Katie Hopkins’ exclusive video report on Apartheid NYC right below this article.]

I’m not quite sure how I thought this trip to New York City would work out. I kind of figured the crazy new rules regarding vaccination passes didn’t apply to me, or somehow that reality would be different to the headlines — stating that you needed to be vaccinated to go into bars, restaurants, and hotels in the city that never sleeps. I have faith in humanity and no fear. I couldn’t believe for a moment this place I used to call home would actually be enforcing the rules fabricated by de Blasio and the drug-pushers in power.

But I was wrong.

Every hotel, bar, and business is pushing this vaccination apartheid. There are signs on every doorway, and just in case you missed those, there are more signs at eye height in the foyers. You may only be inside, sit inside, or dine inside if you are double-jabbed and have a vaccination card and ID to prove it.

Even in the dodgy backstreet Thai kitchens of 9th street where you can reliably get a Pad Thai for $5 are checking papers and policing documents, fearful of being caught by inspectors and closed down.

Wooden shelters and fabricated huts are hastily thrown up onto the sidewalks outside these places — crashing into the gutter alongside the trash and the parked cars. Restaurant owners are scrambling to create some kind of outdoor alternative for the unclean and non-compliant who have failed to get their jabs and are excluded from the privileges accorded to the rest.

I plonk myself down outside the Midtown Bar and Grill and order a large glass of Merlot to try and calm myself from the rage I feel.

I am beyond angry that politicians have been able to exert this power level on the people they are supposed to serve. I am raging for these businesses that have been compelled to post these signs at their doors after two brutal years of lockdowns and staff shortages.

But mostly, I want to scream at the legion of smug diners sitting inside these places. Apparently, they see no problem at all with having to show their papers to eat in a restaurant. They’ve had the jab, and now, they are reaping the benefits, perfectly content that others are excluded because of the personal choices they make.

I ask the waitress how the bathroom situation works. Are the people outside allowed to use a bathroom? Are the unclean masses still allowed the privilege of taking a private pee?

Americans Really Don’t Like This President By Charles C. W. Cooke

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/americans-really-dont-like-this-president/

One wonders if Joe Biden has noticed yet that Americans just don’t seem to like him very much?

Yes, yes, yes, they liked him enough to elect him over Donald Trump. But they did so narrowly, and without delivering the sizable majorities he clearly believes he deserved. And, now that he’s president, they seem deeply, deeply unimpressed.

Per a Quinnipiac poll released today, Biden’s national approval rating is 38 percent. Among independents, it’s 32 percent, with 60 percent disapproving of the job he’s doing. Biden is nine points underwater among Hispanics, he’s six points underwater among women, and he’s polling at only 66 percent among African Americans.

Earlier this year, Biden argued that Americans should ignore Washington, D.C., and look to the country in general when determining whether he was the “uniter” he promised to be:

The White House wants to change how people perceive bipartisanship, arguing that if they put forward proposals that are backed by Republicans and independents, they should be seen as bipartisan even if GOP lawmakers in Washington don’t vote for them.

I think we can dispense with that idea. Biden’s approve-disapprove rating is 4–94 among Republicans, it’s 32–60 among independents, and it’s 80–10 among Democrats. If Americans in 2021 are “united” around anything, it’s that they disfavor Joe Biden.

And how. By a margin of 56–41, Americans say that Biden lacks leadership skills. By a margin of 54–42, Americans say that Biden is incompetent. By a margin of 50–44, Americans say that Biden is dishonest. Worse yet, there’s no issue on which Biden is doing well. His approve–disapprove on COVID-19 is 48–50; on the economy, it’s 39–55; on his leadership of the military, it’s 37–58 . On taxes, 37 percent of Americans approve, while 54 percent disapprove; on foreign policy, it’s 34–58 percent; and on immigration, it’s a startling 25–67 percent. That last number is particularly interesting because, if you look at the cross-tabs, you see that Biden is underwater on immigration amongst Hispanics by 46 points, 23–69.

The War on America by Twisted Logic By Janet Levy

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/10/the_war_on_america_by_twisted_logic.html

We are living under a regime that’s increasingly totalitarian.  And it is using an insidious strategy — call it disinformation, propaganda, gaslighting, indoctrination, or outright lying — to achieve the leftists’ political and social goal of a “Great Reset” of America.  The regime’s enforcers, or boosters, are the media, academia, and Big Tech, who together control the narrative with faked statistics, slanted semantics, and endless repetition.  They also deploy the psychological tactics of intimidation, shaming, and canceling.  At the center sits the government, but the chain of command — who dictates to whom — is often unclear.

“Repeat a lie often enough, and it becomes the truth” is a principle often attributed to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.  In America today, “woke” social justice warriors are using a continuous barrage of lies to achieve their Machiavellian agenda.

Four recent, egregious lies come to mind.  In June 2020, Gordon Klein, a UCLA business school professor who has taught at the institution for forty years, was suspended for refusing a student’s request to provide an easier exam for black students.  Black students, it was propounded, were emotionally distressed after the death of serial felon George Floyd in Minneapolis.  The email exchange between Klein and the student, which went viral, was deemed “hurtful,” and the professor was unreasonably branded an “insensitive bigot.”  Antonio  Bernardo, the school’s dean, organized a smear campaign against Klein and sought permission to fire him.

Klein stood his ground, saying he was shocked by the student’s request, which he found “deeply patronizing and offensive” to black students.  He also assessed, rightly, that granting the request would violate the California constitution’s prohibition of “race-based preferences in public education.”  But such has been the effect of woke indoctrination that, incomprehensibly, students called for his removal and gathered 20,000 signatures on a petition demanding that he be relieved of his teaching duties.  In its eagerness to be seen as woke in the current racially charged atmosphere, UCLA chose to ignore the abject harassment of its professor, sided with the crybullies, and suspended Klein.  Fortunately, an academic senate committee ruled that instructors are entitled to refuse requests to change grading schemes, and Klein was reinstated three weeks later.

Even At Half The Price, Biden’s Plan Is A Self-Destructive, Freedom-Destroying Spending Spree by Thomas McArdle

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/10/07/biden-to-taxpayers-go-invest-in-yourself/

Just when you thought Democrats couldn’t get more arrogant or dishonest, President Joe Biden on Tuesday, visiting the congressional district of one of the House’s less-extreme Democrats, warned that “autocrats” in the world are scrutinizing America for signs of decline on the geopolitical stage, and we therefore must “invest in ourselves” to prove “that American democracy works.”

Translation: spend trillions with a T establishing a new series of cradle-to-grave entitlements that, like our already-existing entitlements, will in short order become politically impossible ever to repeal.

Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, moreover, look straight into the TV camera and tell the American people that these unprecedented, astronomical expenditures will cost zero.

This, not Donald Trump placing the spotlight on all-too-real election fraud, is the true “Big Lie.”

No one using a gift card at the store in the weeks after Christmas is a big enough liar or financial illiterate to claim that the spending spree he’s enjoying costs zero. It costs plenty; the point is he’s not paying for it! But shame and economic ignorance are never obstacles for today’s Democrats in pursuit of power over our lives.

We know that middle-class American taxpayers will be suffering the pain of paying for the “$3.5 trillion” that is actually more like $5 trillion, which Democrats themselves know isn’t infrastructure at all, as they claim it to be.

Why else would the bill include $80 billion for the IRS to expand its powers to Orwellian realms and spy on checking and savings accounts where the balances or transactions exceed $600? Are we to believe that in order to steal from the rich and give to Uncle Sam, Robin Hood and his merry band of revenue collectors now need the bank statements of the millions of Americans who can barely pay their monthly bills – so many of whom pathetically voted for Democrats, naively thinking it was in their interest?

The left’s overreach is so glaring that this all may backfire. After all, the two lone Democrats in the Senate with a modicum of fiscal sanity, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, both of whom know that supporting the bill as presently constituted spells their own political suicide, have been terrorized by leftist activists – in kayaks on the Potomac River in Manchin’s case, and in a public ladies room stall and a commercial airplane in the case of Sinema.

America and ‘The Dying Citizen’ By Victor Davis Hanson

https://pjmedia.com/columns/victor-davis-hanson/2021/10/07/america-and-the-dying-citizen-n1522290

The present article summarizes arguments in Victor Davis Hanson’s new book “The Dying Citizen” that appears this week from Basic Books.

Only a little more than half of the current world’s 7 billion people are citizens of fully consensual governments.

That lucky 50 percent alone enjoys constitutionally protected freedoms. Most are also Western. Or at least they reside in nations that have become “Westernized.”

Migrants, regardless of their race, religion or gender, almost always head for a Western nation. And most often their destination remains the United States. The more it is now fashionable for Americans to take for granted or even to ridicule the idea of their own country, the more the non-American global poor risk their lives to crash America’s borders.

Constitutional systems easily perish because they ask a lot of their citizens — to vote, to be informed about civic and political issues, and to hold elected officials accountable. That responsibility is perhaps why, of the world’s true republics and democracies, only about 22 have been in existence for a half-century or more. We are seldom told, then, that America is a rare, precious and perhaps even fragile idea, both in the past and in the present.

American citizens are clearly also not the custom of the past. Unlike history’s more common peasants, citizens are not under the control of the rich who, in turn, seek undue influence in government through controlling them.

Instead, viable citizenship has always hinged on a broad, autonomous middle class. Those Americans in between lack both the dependence of the poor and the insider influences of the elite. Suffocate the middle and we know that a binary feudalism will soon replace it. We are seeing just that medievalization in contemporary California.

Nor are American citizens mere migratory residents who drift across nonexistent borders in expectation of receiving more rights than meeting responsibilities. Forfeit a sacred national space, a place where common customs, language, and traditions can shelter and thrive, and a unique America disappears into a pre-civilizational migratory void like the fluid vastness of late imperial Rome.

Americans are quite different from tribal peoples, whose first loyalties are determined by mere appearance or innate blood ties. Take this nation back to pre-civilizational tribalism, and our future as the next Yugoslavia, Rwanda or Iraq is assured.

Unvaxxed Medical Prof Put on ‘Investigatory Leave’ in Desperate Bid to Get Him to Quit By Stephen Green

https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2021/10/06/unvaxxed-medical-prof-put-on-investigatory-leave-in-desperate-bid-to-get-him-to-quit-n1522163

A University of California medical professor has been placed on “Investigatory Leave” after refusing to get vaccinated — despite the natural immunity he enjoys after having already suffered a Wuhan Flu infection.

In addition to being a recovered COVID patient, Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, MD is a Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California-Irvine’s School of Medicine, and UCI’s Medical Ethics director. So he would seem to know his stuff on these issues.

During the early weeks of the pandemic, Dr. Kerriaty worked on the front lines, as they say:

As chair of the hospital ethics committee, I have had more anguishing conversations than I can count with families to tell them their loved one is irretrievably dying of Covid. As a psychiatric consultant on the medical wards and in the emergency department, I have suited up in PPE to see hundreds of hospitalized Covid patients, witnessing the worst that this illness can do.

Currently, however, Dr. Kheriaty has been effectively muted by his employer, had his earnings cut in half, and is unable to communicate with his existing patients or seek out new ones.

Look What Happened When a Professor Questioned His University’s Diversity/Equity/Inclusion Efforts By Gwendolyn Sims

https://pjmedia.com/culture/gwendolynsims/2021/10/06/look-what-happened-when-a-professor-questioned-his-universitys-diversity-equity-inclusion-efforts-n1522219

In today’s repressive atmosphere of woke leftist culture, it’s rare to see faculty members stand up to the mob in academia, but that’s exactly what happened when tenured Professor Dorian Abbot questioned his university’sDiversity/Equity/Inclusion (DEI) efforts in a series of YouTube videos and articles.

Abbot, a Geophysical Sciences professor at the University of Chicago expressed his alarm over the way DEI was being implemented not only to stifle “dissenting viewpoints” on campus but how almost every decision made on campus, “from admissions, to faculty hiring, to course content, to teaching methods, is made through the lens of DEI.”

Couple that alarm with years of noticing “the increasing number of issues and viewpoints [that had] become impossible to discuss on campus”; witnessing the leftist “justifications and dishonesty that accompanied” the violence in the streets of Chicago; having a colleague at a seminar conclude, ‘If you are just hiring the best people, you are part of the problem,’ Abbot was convinced he “could no longer remain silent” about DEI’s detrimental impact on academic freedom and individual worth.

“In the fall of 2020,” writes Abbot, “I started advocating openly for academic freedom and merit-based evaluations. I recorded some short YouTube videos in which I argued for the importance of treating each person as an individual worthy of dignity and respect. In an academic context, that means giving everyone a fair and equal opportunity when they apply for a position as well as allowing them to express their opinions openly, even if you disagree with them.”

Dignity. Equal opportunity. Respect. Who could argue with that? Cue the woke outrage mob.

Abbot was “immediately targeted for cancelation, “primarily by a group of graduate students in [his] department.” It was later discovered the targeting was at least partially planned and coordinated on the far-left Ford Foundation Fellowship Program listserv. From there, a group of 162 “members of the Department of Geophysical Sciences Community at the University of Chicago” sent a letter of denunciation to the department’s faculty.