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February 2023

China Crosses “Red Line” Advancing Russia’s War Effort by Judith Bergman

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19435/china-advancing-russia-war

It has been known for quite a while that China has been undercutting Western sanctions against Russia…. and in their own national currencies. When, however, it recently became known that China has been secretly providing military aid to Russa, the move seemed to take the Biden administration by surprise.

China has already supplied significant military aid in the form of dual-use products that can have both civil and military use, including semiconductors used in a wide variety of weapons including fighter jets, helicopters, drones, and guided missiles.

US ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield was even more explicit: If China provided lethal military aid to Russia, she said, it would cross a “red line.”

It is highly questionable at this stage whether the Chinese will pay any heed to Blinken’s or Thomas-Greenfield’s warnings: In March of 2022, the Biden administration delivered similarly worded threats to China — that helping Russia evade sanctions would lead to “consequences.” Russia did exactly that; a year later, “consequences” have yet to be seen.

These revelations are not only an embarrassment for the Biden administration — which should have known and acted upon them long ago — but also serve as yet another black hole in the ability of the United States to deter adversaries.

It shows, sadly, that the words and threats of the US carry zero weight internationally, and that America’s most aggressive adversaries are able successfully to collaborate behind its back.

It has been known for quite a while that China has been undercutting Western sanctions against Russia through trade and Chinese purchases of long-term energy supplies.

‘Incitement in eastern Jerusalem schools produces child terrorists’ Arab children in the eastern part of the city are “marinated in incitement,” says NGO chairman. BY DAVID ISAAC

https://www.jns.org/incitement-in-eastern-jerusalem-schools-produces-child-terrorists/

February saw three terror attacks by Palestinian youths, two of whom were 13 years old and one of whom was 14. All were from eastern Jerusalem. The attacks have refocused attention on anti-Israel incitement in Arab schools, including in the capital.

“Arab children in east Jerusalem are marinated in incitement,” said Maor Tzemach, chairman of Lech Yerushalayim, an NGO that focuses on Jerusalem-related issues.

Of roughly 110,000 Arab students in eastern Jerusalem, 85 percent use the Palestinian Authority curriculum, according to Tzemach.

“The Palestinian Authority, which is frankly the enemy of Israel, pushes the Palestinian narrative,” he said. “Israel tries to fight this through a type of censorship, but it’s not succeeding within the schools.”

A new report by Tzemach’s group calls the P.A. study materials the “foundational layer” of incitement. While noting the difficulty in uncovering the incitement taking place behind school doors, the report nevertheless presents specific examples.

One involves a graduation ceremony in June 2021 at a high school in the eastern Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Safafa, at which students and parents chanted enthusiastically: “With spirit, with blood, we will redeem Al-Aqsa”—a religious rallying cry often associated with terrorism. Students also participated in a dance featuring PLO flags. Noteworthy is the fact that this particular high school was within the Israeli school system.

Terrorist supporters like Muhammad Alian are invited to visit the schools as honored guests. Alian, the father of a terrorist who carried out a 2015 attack that killed three and wounded over a dozen others, himself reportedly has close ties to Hamas. Another honored guest was Sheikh Ekrima Sa’id Sabri, former grand mufti of Jerusalem, whom the report describes as “the main inciter in Jerusalem in recent decades.”

Why Bother? If the struggle to better ourselves, with artificial intelligence or anything else will only lead to our self-destruction, why bother? By Vincent McCaffrey

https://amgreatness.com/2023/02/25/why-bother/

To what purpose? That is the question of each individual life; one that is asked at least 8 billion times a day. Said in a less cosmetic manner: why bother?

The answer is visible in the way that each of us lives. The religious among us may strive to meet the commandments of our faiths, where our failures may be more visible than our successes, but at least there is a theme to our lives. 

Some of us follow our own codes of conduct. This can be interesting to observe, and perhaps more exciting in outcome, but it’s sometimes dangerous. Some have secular philosophies as broadly encompassing as most religions. These can be very persuasive to the bewildered and to those who have lost faith when an older belief has failed. 

There are many who simply follow others, letting someone else determine their course in life. This, of course, is the way of children. And there are always some who follow impulse, or the corporal demands of hunger, shelter, pain and pleasure. These are often the first victims of circumstance.

To this mix of philosophies, now there is an added ingredient, the nature of which has only just been plumbed, and that only at the shallow end. Those who say that there is nothing new under the sun ought to take notice. Artificial intelligence—AI—is not only something mankind has not encountered before, but something that offers new perspectives on the human predicament. 

For instance, what would be the moral philosophy of such machine intelligence? Is preservation a matter of importance when a specific device can be exactly replicated? What part does identity play for a contrivance that can add to its very being as easily as plugging in an extra hard drive? Meanwhile, human beings cannot change the genetic code that drives us. 

Into this brave new world we now go. Efficiency has already been set as the standard measure. We have been chasing that chimera for centuries now. Speed is also a mark of distinction. Cost is certainly a criterion. And it appears already that the mere human being is not up to snuff. 

Biden’s Ukraine Serenade This President’s Day, our president was overseas promising money to the Ukrainian president, while Donald Trump offered aid and comfort to American victims in East Palestine.  By Roger Kimball

https://amgreatness.com/2023/02/25/bidens-ukraine-serenade/

Once again, Elon Musk nailed the zeitgeist, or a least a hefty portion of it, in a meme he tweeted. The image shows a soda dispenser. Two spigots are visible, blue on the left, red on the right. The index and middle fingers of someone’s right hand are pushing buttons to dispense blue and red fluid, respectively, into a single cup. A label on the left dispenser reads, “Laughing at WWIII memes.” On the right, the label reads, “Kinda being worried about WWIII.” Is there any sane person who, contemplating what is happening in Ukraine, does not share that ambivalence? 

Until recently, worries about nuclear Armageddon seemed so 1950s and ’60s. Ancient history. The era of “duck and cover.” That “public service” film started life in earnest but in time became a joke. A comment on an internet posting of the clip summed up the attitude: “When I watched this film in grade school in the ’50s, I believed I’d soon be dead, crispy-fried. I just watched again here and laughed so hard I couldn’t finish.”

Why the laughter? Partly because everyone realizes that crouching under a desk with your hands over your head will not afford much protection against a nuclear blast. (Hence the frequent, somewhat rude addendum to the precautionary instructions: “Crouch down under your desk; put your head between your legs; kiss your ass goodbye.”)

Decades went by. There was no nuclear attack. Therefore there would never be a nuclear attack. That was the unspoken if faulty logic. 

There are several different currents of thought and sentiment that make up the dominant consensus. One flowed from the doctrine of deterrence and “mutually assured destruction.” That seems to have worked for decades, bolstering both faith in the doctrine and the widespread forgetfulness about the stakes behind the policy. 

At the same time, critics have pointed out that “MAD” was an appropriate acronym for a doctrine that seriously contemplated incinerating tens or hundreds of millions of people. Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film “Dr. Strangelove” (with its biting subtitle “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb”) gave a darkly humorous voice to that recognition. Most people, I suspect, are divided in their minds, recognizing the potential enormity of the doctrine while appreciating the wisdom of Benjamin Jowett’s comment that “Precautions are always blamed. When successful, they are said to be unnecessary.”

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON IN 2010 Tomorrow’s Wars Enormous, massively destructive engagements may again be on the horizon.

https://www.city-journal.org/html/tomorrow%E2%80%99s-wars-13258.html

Can big battles, then, haunt us once more? If the European Union were to dissolve and return to a twentieth-century landscape of proud rivals, or if the former Soviet republics were to form a collective resistance to an aggrandizing Russia (as they did for much of the nineteenth century), or if the North Koreans, Pakistanis, or Chinese were to gamble on an agenda of sudden aggression (as they have on previous occasions when they were confident of achieving political objectives), then we might well see a return of decisive battles. The U.S. military still prepares for all sorts of conventional challenges. We keep thousands of tanks and artillery pieces in constant readiness, along with close-ground support missiles and planes, in fear that the People’s Army of Korea might try to swarm across the Demilitarized Zone into Seoul, or that the Chinese Red Army might storm the beaches of Taiwan.

Waterloos or Verduns may revisit us, especially in the half-century ahead, in which constant military innovation may reduce the cost of war, or relegate battle to the domain of massed waves of robots and drones, or see a sudden technological shift back to the defensive that would nullify the tyranny of today’s incredibly destructive munitions. New technology may make all sorts of deadly arms as cheap as iPods, and more lethal than M-16s, while creating shirts and coats impervious to small-arms fire—and therefore making battle cheap again, uncertain, and once more to be tried. Should a few reckless states feel that nuclear war in an age of antiballistic missiles might be winnable, or that the consequences of mass death might be offset by perpetuity spent in a glorious collective paradise, then even the seemingly unimaginable—nuclear showdown—becomes imaginable.

In short, if the conducive political, economic, and cultural requisites for set battles realign, as they have periodically over the centuries, we will see our own modern version of a Cannae or Shiloh. And these collisions will be frightening as never before.

The Republic of Fear: 20 Years After by Amir Taheri

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19437/iraq-republic-of-fear

Well, [Iraq] may not be a better place, but is certainly less bad than it was 20 years ago.

Neighboring Iran is facing a bigger outflow of refugees, especially highly educated people, than Iraq.

In 2021, Iraq was no longer among the countries regarded as “vulnerable” in terms of food shortages and famine.

In terms of political and social freedoms, Iraq is also doing better than such neighbors as the Islamic Republic of Iran and the parts of Syria controlled by the Assad regime.

Facing such deadly challenges as the emergence of the Islamic State (ISIS/Da’esh) and the attempted Kurdish secession, post-Saddam Iraq has manifested a higher degree of resilience than many might have expected.

It has also succeeded in frustrating attempts by the Islamic Republic of Iran to stall the emergence of an Iraqi national army and the imposition of a militia state.

The war didn’t turn Iraq into a model of democracy. But, as an Iraqi friend put it the other day, it ended what Kanan Makiya had called “The Republic of Fear.”

In his picaresque novel Twenty Years After, a sequel to The Three Musketeers, French novelist Alexandre Dumas muses on the theme of “the benevolent despot” as a rampart against unbridled change that could lead to savage turbulences.

Democrats introduce resolution to ban Trump from US Capitol By Anthony Gonzalez

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/02/democrats_introduce_resolution_to_ban_trump_from_us_capitol.html

House Democrats introduced a resolution that would bar former President Donald Trump — along with Steve Bannon, Mark Meadows, Dan Scavino, Peter Navarro, Jeffrey Clark, John Eastman, Kenneth Cheseboro, Rudy Giuliani, and other figures — from entering the U.S. Capitol.

Reps. Nikema Williams (D-Ga.) and Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) introduced the resolution in the House Committee on House Administration.

The measure draws on information from the former House Jan. 6 Committee, arguing that Trump and his allies put members of congress in “genuine peril.”

“The effort to undermine and overturn the 2020 presidential election damaged the functions of our democracy,” the resolution states.

Those efforts also “damaged the integrity of Congress’s constitutional role in certifying the election results” and “put the lives of Members of Congress and the Vice President of the United States in genuine peril,” it adds.

Shortly after the events of Jan. 6, 2021, Williams introduced a similar measure that would ban Trump from visiting the Capitol.

Vermont once embraced eugenics; now it embraces puberty-blockers By John Klar

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/02/vermont_once_embraced_eugenics_now_it_embraces_pubertyblockers.html

America is being torn apart by a “scientific” dispute over the appropriateness of hormone-blockers for minor children.  The safety of these drugs is in question, as well as whether children are being fully assessed for mental health issues that may underlie gender dysphoria.  A number of responsible states have initiated legislation to ban their use, most recently joined by Tennessee.  Meanwhile, another group of states are rushing to shield these drug regimens for kids from parental or legal interference.  Vermont, which eagerly embraced eugenics and forced sterilization a century ago, is aggressively creating a modern version of Underground Railroad for people in other states (with no age limits) to freely obtain hormone-meddling “therapies” in the Green Mountains.

Vermont has been a frontrunner in providing abortions through all stages of pregnancy.  Progressives shrieked in feigned panic when Roe v. Wade was overturned, claiming that women’s “rights” to infanticide were thereby threatened — even though Roe acknowledged fetal viability and the existence of a second life meriting legal protections at some stage of development in the womb.  “Women’s rights” became the clarion call in Vermont’s 2022 elections, in which nearly 77% of Vermont voters voted “Yes” to a constitutional amendment (Proposal 5) enshrining abortion ’til birth.

Proposal 5 was also a Trojan horse to etch the “right” to puberty-blockers for children into law, using the vague language “personal reproductive autonomy.”  Having regained a progressive supermajority in the election by this ruse, the Vermont Legislature has wasted no time pushing through novel extremist legislation to codify the practice of administering experimental puberty hormone–blockers to children.  H.89 passed the House on February 10 by a resounding child-mutilating margin of 130-13 and is now in the Vermont Senate.

Biden Nationalizes the DEI Bureaucracy How the president’s recent executive order threatens to subvert the principles of liberty and equality.

https://rufo.substack.com/p/biden-creates-a-national-dei-bureaucracy

Last week, President Joseph Biden quietly signed an executive order that promises to create a national DEI bureaucracy and embed the principles of left-wing racialism throughout the federal government.

The order, titled “Further Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government,” relies on three key strategies: creating internal cadres and power centers through the deployment of “Agency Equity Teams”; funding third-party political activism through grants to “community[-based] organizations”; and weaponizing civil rights law by requiring federal agencies to use artificial intelligence “in a manner that advances equity.”

In this video, I explain how Biden’s executive order manipulates language and statistics in order to nationalize the DEI movement, suppress dissent from the new racial orthodoxy, and subvert the Constitution’s promise of equal treatment under the law.

Transcript

President Joe Biden is overhauling the entire federal government along the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and it seems like nobody has noticed. Last week, he signed another executive order promoting DEI called “Further Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government.” There was very little news coverage about this, but I think that it is an extremely important development. It has ramifications for almost everything that we’ve been talking about the last few years, and I’d like to go into this in detail to really understand how this DEI ideology works, how it embeds itself in the bureaucracy, and what it means for our country, what it means for our constitution, and what it means for our government.

Another bad day for the Inflation Reduction Act By Silvio Canto, Jr.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/02/another_bad_day_for_the_inflation_reduction_act.html

We are not sure about Senator Manchin’s 2024 U.S. Senate plans. We did hear that Senator Tester of Montana is running for re-election.  In fact, Senator Tester said that he is running because “Montanans need a fighter holding Washington accountable and I’m running to defend our Montana values.”

Well, I hope someone will ask both men about the Inflation Reduction Act in light of the new inflation concerns.  This is from The Wall Street Journal:

This measure of inflation, a favorite of the Federal Reserve, accelerated in January at the fastest monthly pace since June. The PCE index is worth following because it offers a view of price changes from business sources and takes into account the substitution of goods and services in a way the consumer-price index doesn’t.

PCE inflation overall rose 0.6% for the month, up from 0.2% in each of November and December. 

The PCE index over the last 12 months is up 5.4%, which was up slightly from December after several months of decline. Inflation in services drove much of the increase and is up 5.7% since January 2022.

The story here is that inflation is proving stickier than many expected. 

Don’t you hate it when things prove stickier than expected?  I think consumers shopping for food can relate to that.  The Biden administration keeps telling you that inflation is dropping, but the prices of food and lots of other things are not.

The new report means that Chairman Powell may have to tinker with those interest rates again.  The new inflation concerns mean that Mr. Manchin and Mr. Tester will get questions about their votes that made the infamous Inflation Reduction Act possible.  I think a lot of good people in Montana and West Virginia will ask these gentlemen why they voted with Senator Schumer.