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September 2023

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

China’s Communist Party Infiltrates American K-12 Schools by Robert Williams

By on September 19th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19979/china-infiltrates-american-schools

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has, or has had, ties to 143 school districts in the United States, including 20 near military bases, through its “Confucius Classrooms,” according to a recent report, “Little Red Classrooms: China’s Infiltration of American K-12 Schools” by Parents Defending Education (PDE), a grassroots organization.

Attention to Confucius Institutes has mainly been centered around colleges and universities, but less so on K-12 education. This means that Chinese state propaganda is probably now pretty much all over American K-12 classrooms.

PDE observed that more than $17 million had been spent by the CCP on Confucius classrooms in the US between the years 2009-2023.

“Three of the nation’s top science and technology high schools have ties to Chinese government affiliated programs including Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology has had ties to Tsinghua University High School—the high school affiliated with one of China’s top military schools, Tsinghua University…” — Peter Wood, President, National Association of Scholars, Daily Signal, August 15, 2023.

“[W]hat’s happening in these schools is that they learn that China is a benevolent institution, the heir of an ancient civilization that means nothing but goodwill to the rest of the world… And the notion that you can take children who have some aptitude for the hard sciences and math and get them to view China as a potential partner and friend… all through their educational careers. We’re creating an assembly line for talented young men and women who will be unable to distinguish the American national interest from the Chinese national interest. They’re getting blurred together at a young age and that’s very difficult to undo once it’s done.” [Emphasis added.] — Peter Wood, Daily Signal, August 15, 2023.

Wood noted that CCP infiltration of American K-12 schools is “almost everywhere.”

“[I]t’s concentrated in the feeder schools to elite education, which means mostly West Coast and East Coast, but not exclusively those…. China’s… looking for places where buying influence will yield results in the long term.” — Peter Wood, Daily Signal, August 15, 2023.

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OPINION Comments turned off

Joanna Williams The Censorship Bureaucracy Behind faceless policies on everything from emotional health to diversity, equity, and inclusion lies an impulse to control language—and thereby, thought.

By on September 19th, 2023

https://media5.manhattan-institute.org/iiif/2/wp-content%2Fuploads%2Fsites%2F5%2FThe-Censorship-Bureaucracy.jpg/full/!99999,960/0/default.jpg

In a recurring sketch from a popular early 2000s U.K. comedy show called Little Britain, a bank clerk listens to customers’ queries, randomly types on a keyboard, and then deadpans the catchphrase: “computer says no.” Whatever the follow-up questions, no matter how angry or upset customers become, the response remains the same: “computer says no.” This skit lives on in Britons’ collective psyche mainly because it is funny, but also because it points to a familiar sentiment: the frustration of finding oneself stonewalled by an intransigent bureaucracy.

The sketch came to mind earlier this year when the Canadian Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship (SAFS) invited me to give its annual guest lecture. The venue was to be the public library in London, Ontario. I titled my talk “Sex, Gender, and the Limits of Free Speech on Campus” and looked forward to the occasion. Then, without any apparent sense of irony, the library cancelled my lecture with one emailed sentence: “As per the library’s policy governing room rentals, we are not able to approve the rental request.” Computer says no.

After much nudging, library staff revealed the specific policies I had unknowingly breached. My lecture was considered “likely to be in violation of library policy, including, but not limited to, the library’s rules of conduct, charter of library use or workplace harassment and sexual-harassment prevention policies.” More specifically, there was allegedly “a risk or likelihood of physical danger to participants or the audience or misuse of the property or equipment.” Finally, my speech might “negatively impact or impede the ability of others to enjoy the services and facilities of the library, and/or library operations.” Thankfully, SAFS managed to find an alternative venue, and my speech was recorded, so listeners can gauge for themselves whether I posed a risk of sexual harassment or physical danger.

Looking back at this event now, what strikes me most is the faceless, bureaucratic nature of censorship. No individual was bold enough to say: “I do not like what you have to say and I am going to prevent you from saying it.” Rather than taking responsibility for the decision to stop me from speaking —and, importantly, to prevent people from hearing what I had to say—library officials hid behind selected quotations from institutional policies. This cowardly approach gives bureaucrats plausible deniability when accused of censorship. Worse still, it allows them to appear almost apologetic: “We support free speech but, unfortunately, policy says no.”

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BOOKS Comments turned off

Mark Levin’s The Democrat Party Hates America By Thomas Lifson

By on September 19th, 2023

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

Once again, Mark Levin has done a great service to the Republic by writing a fully documented, highly pointed book on a topic of vital national interest. Published today by the Threshold Editions imprint of Simon & Schuster, The Democrat Party Hates America is required reading for anyone who follows politics in America. That most assuredly includes those who identify as Democrats, though most will shun the book because it is too much of a challenge to their sense of self-worth and virtue. For the few who have the courage to read it, the book will be a revelation. I make no secret that I was born into a family of active Democrats, and until reality intruded well into adulthood, I shared that political attachment. I have since regarded it as a mistaken affiliation, but after reading this book I now have a sense a shame.

If it is widely enough read, and I predict that it will be a runaway best-seller, the book will change the way the public understands one of our two major political parties, forever tainting the Democrats for the racism, hypocrisy, lack of principle, and sheer ruthless pursuit of power at any cost that have permeated their party throughout its history.  If you have family members, colleagues, associates, or friends who are vocal Democrats and who do not shy away from political discussions, The Democrat Party Hates America is a cornucopia of evidence that you can use to persuade them out of their delusion that they are supporting a worthwhile political movement.

Chapter One, “The Democrat Party and Authoritarianism,” introduces several themes that weave throughout the entire text. The Democrats seek, and via their dominance of the administrative state composed of career bureaucrats exercising powers that rightly belong to Congress and even the judiciary, to monopolize political power, and have succeeded to an alarming degree. Excellent use is made of a 2017 report by Freedom House, a nonpartisan NGO founded in 1941 that has historically focused on authoritarian governments overseas, including most recently China and Russia. Mark shows in detail how the most recent report on authoritarianism overseas also applies to the United States under Democrat administrations at the state and federal level.  

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Oslo Accords Began Israel’s Folly With the Palestinians Negotiating with PLO leader Arafat instead of other local leaders has led to intractable conflict. By Amir Avivi

By on September 19th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-oslo-accords-began-israels-folly-with-the-palestinians-plo-conflict-peace-terrorist-36661be1?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

Barbara W. Tuchman opens her iconic 1984 book, “The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam,” with Rehoboam, who caused the Kingdom of Israel to splinter into Judah and Israel. If Tuchman were writing today, she might have ended it with another wretched chapter from the history of Israel—the great folly of Oslo.

Tuchman defines folly as the pursuit by government of policies contrary to its own interests, whose adverse effects are apparent in real time, with the availability of feasible alternatives. The perpetrators are a group, not a single ruler, whose leadership spans longer than a generation. Israel’s implementation of the Oslo Accords, which were signed 30 years ago this month, meets all her criteria.

The folly of Oslo lies not in the creation of Palestinian autonomy (or as Yitzhak Rabin repeatedly called it, “less than a state”), which was part of the peace agreement Menachem Begin forged between Israel and Egypt. This idea was popular in Israel. But the decision to negotiate with the Palestine Liberation Organization, a bloodthirsty terror organization devoted to the destruction of Israel, was an act of sheer folly. Viable alternatives existed, first and foremost local leaders in the Arab cities in Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip.

In the days between the 1991 Gulf War and Oslo, PLO leader Yasser Arafat was a regional outcast because of his support for Saddam Hussein against the American-led Arab coalition. His prestige and the PLO’s suffered greatly. Yet Israel allowed Arafat to become a global player and even furnished him with weapons.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

What About the Next American Hostages? After paying $6 billion to Iran, how will Biden prevent future ransom grabs?

By on September 19th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/iran-american-hostages-ransom-biden-administration-antony-blinken-f8473327?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

The Biden Administration was out in force on Monday to celebrate the return home of seven American citizens from Iran, five of whom had been in prison. We can all be grateful for their freedom, but the question we wish U.S. policy markers would do more to address is how they will prevent the next hostage-taking by a rogue regime.

“To date, under this administration, we have now brought 30 Americans home from places around the world where they were being unjustly detained. That work will continue,” said Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

He added that, “At the same time, we’re going to be working every single day to take steps to make this practice more and more difficult and more and more of a burden on those countries that engage in it. And you’ll see in the days ahead here in New York, at the United Nations, our efforts to work with other countries to do just that.”

Let’s hope so, because there’s no doubt that paying $6 billion for seven Americans will encourage more such hostage-taking. Iran has paid no price for imprisoning Americans and has now been paid ransom for them. Iran snatched a couple of the Americans not long after the last hostage trade with the U.S. It’s part of Tehran’s business model, and it works.

It’s also insulting to read in that Washington Post that White House National Security Council official Brett McGurk says that “under terms that provide confidence, the funds will be spent only on a limited category of humanitarian trade: food, medicine and agricultural products. That’s it.”

He may be technically right about those specific funds. But that leaves the Tehran regime able to devote other funds they would have spent on those goods for such malevolent purposes as terrorism by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

EU Power Grab Free and fair elections? They are so 20th century. by Bruce Bawer

By on September 19th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/eu-power-grab/

In case you missed it, September 13 was the big day – the occasion of the annual “State of the European Union” speech by European Commission President Ursula van der Leyen. Whether you voted for her or not – no, scratch that; unless you’re a member of the European Commission, which nominates its President, or the European Parliament, which chooses to ratify or reject the Commission’s selection, you can’t possibly ever have voted for her. Free and fair elections by the citizens of sovereign nations? Forget them! They’re so twentieth century. Don’t you realize that the European Union has moved far beyond such antiquated concepts, and is fast advancing toward a degree of international integration and power concentration – known in the EU lexicon as “democracy” – that it’ll make the likes of Klaus Schwab at the World Economic Forum pea-green with envy?

But before we get to van der Leyen’s speech – and to the not-to-be-missed response by Guy Verhofstadt – let’s go back briefly to the beginning. You know, of course, that the cause of European unity has a long and noble history. Napoleon did his best to bring it about in the early 1800s. A bit over a century later, Hitler gave it the old college try. After World War II, the Soviets would have had a go at it too, but the Western Allies were spoilsports. On the western side of the Iron Curtain, however, there quickly arose a postwar movement to unite Europeans under one government, whether Europeans themselves liked the idea or not. The name most intimately associated with this movement was Jean Monnet, a Frenchman from Chablis whose family business was the production of chablis and whose obsessive pursuit of European unity makes one wonder if he was guzzling too much chablis. To read about the life of this wine merchant, who became known as the “father of Europe,” is to learn about a career consisting of a long series of fancy-sounding jobs as international advisor, diplomat, and negotiator, of memberships on various blue-ribbon commissions, committees, and councils, and of the high-level hatching of various plans, projects, and programs. What you never come across is mention of an election. Because nobody ever voted for Monnet for anything.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Missing F-35 is found: Debris from $80M stealth fighter jet is recovered in a field two hours north of Charleston after pilot ejected on Sunday and plane continued in ‘zombie mode’ – sparking Pentagon to GROUND all models

By on September 19th, 2023

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12532685/missing-fighter-jet-update.html?ito=windows-widget-push-notification&ci=564499

Debris from the F-35 fighter jet missing since its pilot ejected over South Carolina has been found – hours after the military asked the public for help to find it.

Joint Base Charleston had asked the public to call if they have ‘any information that may help our recovery teams locate the F-35,’ which is worth $80 million.

The pilot ejected and parachuted safely into a residential area in North Charleston around 2pm Sunday.

He was taken to a local hospital, where he was in stable condition, said Maj. Melanie Salinas.

The pilot’s name has not been released. On Monday afternoon, the military said debris from the plane had been found. 

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