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September 2023

The political exploitation of children The UN is using ‘children’s rights’ to advance the elites’ green agenda. Frank Furedi

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/09/05/the-political-exploitation-of-children/

In its wisdom, one of those unelected and unaccountable United Nations committees decided last week that children should have the right to take national governments to court for failing to tackle climate change.

Like many other international bodies and NGOs, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child is effectively using children to voice its own political concerns. In its new report, it praises ‘the efforts of children’ for drawing ‘attention’ to ‘environmental crises’. It claims that it is children rather than adults who possess the kind of wisdom necessary to tackle the problems facing the planet. And it calls for the legal affirmation and validation of the authority of children. ‘[Children’s] demands for urgent and decisive measures to tackle global environmental harm should be realised’, it states.

In the view of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, adults are the problem and children are the solution. Its approach is therefore fully in line with the cultural trend of adultifying childhood, which reverses the roles of adults and children. Children are deemed wise and considerate, whereas adults are presented as selfish and indifferent to others.

Of course, the Committee on the Rights of the Child is not really interested in what children think. It is simply ventriloquising children to advance its own beliefs. The report claims that children complained of ‘the negative effects of environmental degradation and climate change on their lives and communities’, and that they ‘asserted their right to live in a clean, healthy and sustainable environment’. The report quotes the children it ‘consulted’ as follows:

‘“The environment is our life.” “Adults [should] stop making decisions for the future they won’t experience. [We] are the key means [of] solving climate change, as it is [our] lives at stake.” “I would like to tell [adults] that we are the future generations and, if you destroy the planet, where will we live?!”’

China: Preparing for War by Lawrence A. Franklin

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19946/china-preparing-for-war

Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping is rapidly militarizing his country and has instructed its army to “prepare for war” and “fight and win” it.

“Chinese ruler Xi Jinping replaced the senior leadership of China’s Rocket Force, which is responsible for almost all of China’s 400 or so nuclear warheads. These personnel changes are part of what is almost certainly the most ominous development of this time. It looks like Xi is contemplating using or at least threatening to use his most destructive weapons. In other words, China is planning to go to war.” — Gordon Chang, China expert, Newsweek, August 14, 2023.

“Xi sacked Rocket Force commander, Li Yuchao, and its political commissar, Xu Zhongbo. Neither has been seen in public since. Li’s deputy, Liu Guangbin, has also disappeared, along with Zhang Zhenzhong, a former deputy. At about the same time, Wu Guohua, deputy commander of the Rocket Force, reportedly took his own life in early July.” — Gordon Chang, Newsweek, August 14, 2023.

Xi is doubtless weighing the risk-reward ratio of launching an aggressive operation against Taiwan during US President Joe Biden’s term of office. Xi is doubtless aware that his “window of opportunity” may be closing in 18 months, accompanied by a felicitously distracting US presidential election.

The timing of any Chinese assault on Taiwan will most certainly be determined by Xi’s assessment of the domestic political strength of the Biden administration as well as the possible need for a strong diversion from his own imploding economy. Xi is also doubtless assessing the US president’s resolve to back up his repeated declarations that US forces would come to the defense of Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion, as opposed to the US State Department’s immediate walk-back of the promise.

The Chinese Communist Party claims that the US is treating Taiwan as an independent state and these VIP visits violate its “One China Policy.” The truth, most likely, is that the CCP’s repeated transgressions against Taiwan’s air and maritime sovereignty, after then Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s August 2022 visit to Taiwan, are actually just part of the CCP’s military invasion exercises on its way to an all-out assault.

The CCP’s Eastern Theater Command has, in addition, established a Joint Operations Command Center, responsible for coordinating all phases of an actual invasion of Taiwan. Military moves suggestive of the CCP’s hostile intent toward Taiwan, included recent deliveries of wheeled armor vehicles to China’s coastal province of Guangdong, an area with several natural launch points for an invasion of Taiwan.

Xi Jinping and former Foreign Minister Qin Gang both warned the US about interfering in what China claims is an internal problem, and Xi added: “Western countries led by the United States have carried out all-round containment, encirclement and suppression of China, which has brought unprecedented severe challenges to China’s development.” Xi has stressed that “the Taiwan question is the core of China’s core interest” and has described as “wishful thinking” any expectation that China might compromise on the eventual incorporation of Taiwan into Communist China.

China has also rolled out a campaign of intimidation that shows China calling the shots. These began with the berating the US in Alaska, to which the State Department’s response was “deep concerns” and continued with smuggling over the US border fentanyl and other drugs that have killed an estimated 200,000 civilians.

Leftists Make Great Pets but Lousy Leaders By J.B. Shurk

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/09/leftists_make_great_pets_but_lousy_leaders.html

It is striking just how much leftists enjoy being dominated by Big Government.  Please make us stand six feet apart!  Please monitor and police our speech!  Please punish us for skirting COVID lockdowns!  Please mandate new experimental goop for our veins!  Every time the oppressive authoritarians in positions of power abuse that power to make outrageous and unconstitutional demands of the American people, the leftists hop to and beg for even more obnoxious restrictions.  Politicians and bureaucrats are just people (often bad people), but to leftists, they’re celebrities, (needed) father figures, and the atheist’s empty-suited pantheon of false gods. 

As Sam J. wrote in a righteous, all-caps, truth-telling rant over at Twitchy, no matter how nonsensical or harmful the government’s often-illegal-but-always-idiotic commands, the masochistic left can be heard shrieking, “YEAH, THAT’S A GOOD IDEA.  GOVERN ME HARDER, DADDY!  MASK ME UP!  TAKE SCHOOL FROM MY KIDS!  YAAAAS!”  Nothing makes the left happier than a system that insists on ruling over leftists in perpetuity.  No group is more worthy of the left’s hero worship than an army of control freaks who take pleasure in inconveniencing, voyeuristically surveilling, and intimidating the masses.  Silence the vaccine skeptics!  Force the anti-maskers into hiding!  Imprison anyone who still attends church even after the State’s Marxist priests banned the unapproved exercise of religion!  In this brave new world, the cowards demand cowardice from everyone.

Or, as the Babylon Bee insightfully observes, the reason Democrats are so irrationally offended by the appearance of Revolutionary War–era Gadsden flags is because everything they have been brainwashed to believe screams out, “TREAD ON ME!”  Perhaps it is natural for those with crushed souls to plead for crushed spines, too.  If leftists didn’t snuggle up next to tyranny, after all, there would be little else to keep them warm at night.  It is as O’Brien — the enigmatic Inner Party inquisitor from Orwell’s 1984 — tells Winston Smith: “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – for ever.”  Leftists alive today crave that boot stamping on their collective face.  They need the threat of that boot’s punishment to find any sense of meaning in their otherwise empty, fruitless lives.  Receiving and inflicting pain is the only way for them to feel…something.

Debating a Democrat By John Stossel

https://pjmedia.com/columns/john-stossel/2023/09/06/debating-a-democrat-n1724669

Colorado has a popular Democratic governor, Jared Polis.  

He’s a rare Democrat who says, “I’m for more freedom and lower taxes.”But is he really?

At least he’s willing to come to Stossel TV to debate.

Refreshingly, Polis supports charter schools. He even founded two. Unfortunately, his state’s school choice program only applies to government schools. Florida, Arizona, Utah, Indiana, West Virginia, Iowa and Arkansas now help parents send their kids to any school.

When I tell Polis that Colorado lags, he responds, “I’m not a fan of these voucher programs with no accountability where it can be Joe’s Taco Shop and K-8 academy and they’re getting taxpayer money.”

But it’s not true that independent schools have “no accountability.” They are accountable to parents, which is better than being “accountable” to sleepy government bureaucrats.

His state also launched universal preschool. But why? Even the much-praised Head Start program doesn’t help kids. A federal study found that by third grade, there was no difference between those who attend Head Start and those who don’t.

“Why fund something that makes no difference?” I ask.

Polis responds: “High-quality early childhood education leads to better outcomes.”

It probably would. But rarely does government offer “high quality.”  

The GOP Is in Danger of Becoming the Pac-12 of Political Parties By Stephen Kruiser

https://pjmedia.com/columns/stephen-kruiser/2023/09/05/the-gop-is-in-danger-of-becoming-the-pac-12-of-political-parties-n1724628

How long will the Grand Old Party (GOP) be grand? Or even a party?

EXCERPT

As I monitor the GOP in-fighting now that primary debates have begun, my sense of foreboding is something new.

Republicans fight a lot. That’s usually a feature, not a bug. We aren’t a hive mind like the Democrats, although that does seem like it would be more functional on occasion. It’s just not in our electoral DNA.

The looming problem for the GOP heading into 2024 is that the dysfunctional, non-hive mind family has degenerated into bitterly partisan tribalism. I mean, it’s ugly out there. I’m the product of a lifetime of dysfunctional holiday dinner fights; if I say it’s ugly, it’s ugly.

The hardcore Trump supporters — I call them Escalator Magas — are very problematic. They’ve decided that Trump is a god, not a politician. I’ve been on record for ages saying that the hero worship of politicians is a lib thing, not a conservative thing. Politicians are our employees, not our gurus or heroes. America functions best when the electorate understands that.

I have praised Trump’s presidency for years, but that doesn’t matter to the Escalator crowd. One can’t offer even the mildest criticism of Trump without the Truth Social hordes launching into a collective diaper-soiling. It’s tedious.

It’s even worse if one dares say ANYTHING positive about Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Should you even accidentally do so, it’s like every banshee in the history of Celtic lore begins keening in unison. I wrote a Morning Briefing last week that praised DeSantis’s actions in Florida after Hurricane Idalia and now I’ve got an email stalker who wants to make sure I know every low-t bad nickname he’s come up with for the governor.

The Escalator approach is to convince everyone in the GOP to abandon primary support for any candidate who isn’t Trump. They’ve decided that the best way to do this is to be as unhinged as possible and alienate the people they want to win over. I’ve written many times that I don’t buy into the argument that Trump can’t win the general election. His hardcore fans have now convinced me that they will do everything in their power to drive away people who might consider voting for him, but aren’t interested in joining a cult.

It doesn’t matter how many disclaimers I write, I’ve learned that no Escalator MAGA can understand this sentence: I will enthusiastically vote for Trump if he is the nominee.

On the other side of the GOP divide are the people who are trying to make a rational case for DeSantis. At first glance, it would seem to be an easy case to make. The polling thus far would indicate that they aren’t making it well. That’s because it’s difficult to do when trying to woo voters who have actually convinced themselves that the most anti-federal establishment American politician in a generation is a Bush guy and a member of the Swamp. DeSantis was a conservative rock star during COVID and the Trump crowd has completely rewritten the story to concoct an alt-reality.

One they all now believe.

Iranian Regime on Edge as Protest Anniversary Looms A terrified and desperate tyranny. by Majid Rafizadeh

https://www.frontpagemag.com/iranian-regime-on-edge-as-protest-anniversary-looms/

As Iran edges closer to the anniversary of the September 2022 uprisings laden with historic significance, the regime faces an unsettling reality: the prospect of renewed massive street protests reminiscent of the seismic upheavals of September 2022. Within Tehran’s inner sanctums of power and among its suppressive forces, an uneasy apprehension looms.

Against this backdrop, an intricate web of orchestrated actions and narratives by the Iranian regime against its principal opposition, is captivating global attention. The regime’s strategic orchestration of these narratives unveils a profound storyline—one that crumbles under the weight of scrutiny, exposing the regime’s underlying vulnerability and growing desperation.

Implicit in this tense atmosphere is the understanding that the oppositional group, the MEK, remains a potent catalyst behind such monumental social movements. During the 2018 uprising, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei himself conceded, based on internal intelligence assessments, that MEK activists had meticulously planned for months to orchestrate the widespread demonstrations that reverberated across the nation.

The subsequent 2022 protests further underscored the MEK’s influence, as the commander of Iran’s State Security Force candidly asserted that “rioters, led by the MEK, are willing to instigate chaos.” Such declarations, along with acknowledgments of MEK-orchestrated protests, expose Tehran’s alarm and its recognition of the MEK’s role as the main architect of unrest.

As the Iranian regime stares down this impending milestone, it artfully maneuvers its tactics to counteract the potency of the MEK during this critical juncture.

Among the recent measures, the regime has invoked INTERPOL mechanisms to apprehend MEK members. July bore witness to Tehran’s announcement of summoning 107 MEK leaders and officials for prosecution, while spreading rumors that the MEK is unsafe and scrambling to relocate to Canada. A thread of “suspicious deaths” among MEK members at Ashraf-3, the group’s residence in Albania, was deftly woven into the regime’s propaganda. Even Iran’s Judiciary Chief publicly proclaimed the regime’s determination to repatriate MEK members from foreign jurisdictions.

For ‘Wokism’ to Live, Free Speech Must Die And that means the First Amendment must die. by Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/for-wokism-to-live-free-speech-must-die/

“Wokism” is the “highest stage” of Marxism, to borrow Lenin’s phrase, the final descent of that malign, murderous ideology into intellectual degradation and absurd triviality. After all, “wokism” is, like communism, a mash-up of radical secularism, scientism, technocratic tyranny, and a ruthless “any means necessary” modus operandi. Hence like Marxism, for “wokism” to succeed, coherent arguments, empirical evidence, common sense, and truth itself must be discredited, distorted, and demonized, at the same time alternative authorities––God, the Constitution, real science–– subjected to tyrannical elimination or refashioning.

So we shouldn’t be surprised that for decades the left has targeted the First Amendment and silenced dissent. Especially after the collapse of Soviet communism, which its last president Mikhail Gorbachev facilitated with his policy of glasnost or greater freedom for public expression, the “new left” children of communism were not going to make the same mistake. Hence, they have for decades doubled-down on their intolerance for dissent manifested in “political correctness” and censorship.

And that means the First Amendment must die.

Leftism has two bad ideas that from its beginning have programmed it to be tyrannical. The first is to deny the reality available to common sense and experience. The natural world and human nature––the latter’s corruptibility empirically verified on every page of history––cannot be allowed to compromise the utopian outcomes promised by communist theory.

British historian Thomas Carlyle in 1857 identified this leftist sacrifice of reality to theory as it appeared among the radicals of the French Revolution, the precursors of the Bolsheviks: “Formulas, Philosophies, Respectabilities, what has been written in Books, and admitted by the Cultivated Classes: this inadequate Scheme of Nature’s working is all that Nature, let her work as she will, can reveal to these men. . . . [T]hey will do one thing: prove, to demonstration, that the Reality will not translate into their Formula; that they and their Formula are incompatible with the Reality: and, in its dark wrath, the Reality will extinguish it and them!”

Thus the truths of nature must be subordinated to the revolutionary’s fanciful imagination and will to power. For example, biological sex, an unchanging fact of nature, must be altered into “gender,” a mere preference from an endless catalogue of invented manifestations––no matter that this preposterous belief is obviously unscientific.

Clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson points out this patent truth: “Trans is clearly identifiable as a fad, comparable to preceding fads, or ‘transmissible psychological diseases,’ like outbreaks of alleged multiple personality disorder, hysteria, self-mutilation, and anorexia. The typical victim is a young female with an underlying neurosis that seeks a socially acceptable form of expression. These forms of expression vary with the times.” But no matter the form, the facts of biology must be denied in order for an illiberal political ideology to undermine reality in order to aggrandize political power and control.

As for human nature, its tragic reality also is denied, and its inevitable improvement simply asserted as our birthright stolen by the wicked oppressors du jour. These villains profit from forbidding humanity the boons of the collectivist paradise it will enjoy once its good and noble nature is restored by the revolution. Achieving this impossible goal entails a rejection of the tragic nature of human existence, the permanence of suffering and misery that follows from our destructive passions and interests.

The Nation’s Fiscal Crisis Just Got Real

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/09/06/the-nations-fiscal-crisis-just-got-real/

Over the weekend, the Washington Post let it slip that all is not well in Bidenomicsville. The deficit, it reports, could end up hitting $2 trillion when the current fiscal year ends in three weeks, which it describes as an “unexpected deficit surge.”

In other words, the deficit will nearly double this year, calling the lie on one of President Joe Biden’s favorite boasts about how he cut the deficit more than any president in history.

But while this apparently comes as a shock to the Post, as well as other liberal news sites that picked up on the Post report, anyone paying attention knew this was happening.

Back in February, for example, we pointed out that Biden’s reckless economic policies had added more than $5 trillion to projected deficits, even as he claimed he’d done more to cut the deficit than “any president in history.”

In early June, we noted that revenues had been plunging this year, despite all the boasts about a strong economy, and that “the projected deficit for the entire year is now close to $1.6 trillion, which is almost $300 billion higher than Treasury projected at the start of this fiscal year.”

In July, we pointed out that Bidenflation was pushing up the cost of federal entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, and had resulted in a 37% increase in interest payments on the national debt in the first nine months of this fiscal year. That was the result of the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes, which were also a result of Bidenflation.