FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

U.S. to Israeli Delegation: Come If You Must, But Our Minds Are Made Up The Jewish state . . . all on its own. Hugh Fitzgerald

Posted By on May 7th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/us-israeli-delegation-come-if-you-must-our-minds-hugh-fitzgerald/

While Robert Malley sends, via intermediaries, his billets-doux to Iran’s negotiator Mohammed Javad Zarif in Vienna, Israel is sending a high-level delegation of security personnel, headed by Yossi Cohen, the director of Mossad, to Washington, hoping to make the case for American caution, rather than insensate haste, in returning to the JCPOA and lifting sanctions on Iran. A report on this difficult mission is here: “Israeli Security Officials Head to Washington to Share Iran Threat Intel as White House Says It Can’t Be Swayed on Nuclear Deal,” by Sharon Wrobel, Algemeiner, April 26, 2021:

A high-profile Israeli security delegation, headed by Mossad Director Yossi Cohen, is arriving in Washington this week to discuss the dangers of restoring the original 2015 Iranian nuclear accord just days after the White House signaled that the Biden administration will not be swayed to change its policy on the deal.

Ahead of the arrival of the delegation of Israeli senior security officials, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki on Friday answered “no” when asked at a press briefing whether the visit was likely to change the US administration’s stance on reviving the nuclear deal, to which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is strongly opposed.

How indecent of the Bidenites to proclaim to the Israelis, even before they arrive, in front of the whole world, that there is nothing they can say to the Americans that will change their minds. Their minds are made up. The Americans don’t want to be reminded that just a few months ago they were themselves talking about the need “to lengthen and strengthen” the agreement with Iran. They are in no mood to listen to their closest ally in the Middle East. They don’t want to listen to the Israelis, who know better than anyone what Iran is up to with its nuclear program, understand how it plans to comply, or to pretend to, with the JCPOA, and what it will do in 2030 when it is allowed its “break out” and can manufacture, completely legally, nuclear weapons. They don’t want to listen to the Israelis, even though Israel, not America, is the main target of Iran’s nuclear program. How many times has Iran threatened to destroy the Jewish state? The Bidenites don’t want to hear about it. They don’t want to listen to the Israelis, whose tiny country’s very survival may depend on what agreement is concluded with Iran in Vienna and who, therefore, have beyond all others earned the right to be heard. The indifference of the Biden people to Israel’s attempt to present its arguments against a return to the Iran deal is unspeakable.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Critical Race Theory in America’s Classrooms What parents and other citizen patriots need to understand. Clare Lopez

Posted By on May 7th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/critical-race-theory-americas-classrooms-clare-lopez/

This is Part 2 of a multi-part series on the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in America’s schools, usually as part of a broader Ethnic Studies program. Already present in public, private, and charter school classrooms, CRT is a dangerous Marxist ideology that serves to indoctrinate students with racial identity, divisiveness, and animosity. The immediate objective of this deeply harmful curriculum is to incite hatred among our children based on intrinsic characteristics like skin color. The ultimate objective is revolution to destroy America’s Constitutional Republic by methodically shredding our First Things Principles: individual liberty, government by consent of the governed, but most especially equality of all in human dignity before the rule of law.

In the first Part of this series, we set out the fundamentals of CRT, its origins among Marxist intellectuals and basis in Bolshevik ideology. The reason that CRT has made such inroads into American academia is rooted in the 20th century realization that a revolution based on class divisions would not work very well in a society based on free market capitalism where opportunity and upward mobility are available to all who are willing to apply talent and hard work to achieve individual goals. Italian communist Antonio Gramsci’s “Long March Through the Institutions” therefore took the place of a quick, violent Lenin-style uprising and race the place of Marx’s class divisions. America’s schools, teacher’s unions, textbooks, and students became top priority in the campaign to extend Marxist infiltration throughout the rest of society.

Indeed, as Alex Newman has written, “Understanding that future generations are the key to building political power and lasting change, socialists and totalitarians of all varieties have gravitated toward government-controlled education since before the system was even founded.” The arrival of the Frankfurt School, a group of Marxist academics from Goethe University in Frankfurt Germany, in the U.S. in the early 20th century marked the first foothold for communist ideology in the U.S. education system. Welcomed into Columbia University in New York in the 1930s, Frankfurt School operatives set about promoting a suite of concepts explicitly designed to undermine traditional American principles. Founded in Hegelian and Marxist premises, Frankfurt School thinkers pioneered the ideology of Critical Theory. In simple terms, Critical Theory attacked basic societal norms by characterizing them as nothing more than means by which a dominant, minority, bourgeois class ruled over the masses comprising the rest of the population. People were divided into “oppressors” and “oppressed”. Material well-being was the myopic lens through which Marx and his devotes viewed society. For them, the solution to abolishing inequality in material well-being was revolution, the only legitimate means by which they see history progressing into the future.

The problem here in the U.S. was that, although the free-market capitalist system featured large differences in wealth between the most-successful and the least-successful, the opportunity to rise from humble beginnings up through economic classes was here for the taking by anyone. So, this is where Critical Race Theory comes in: a wedge issue other than class had to be found and exacerbated. Enter Ethnic Studies, in which CRT plays a central role, with narratives like ‘systemic racism’, ‘white privilege’ and everything else that so dominates the U.S. education system today as well as every other institution, from faith communities, to government, media, the military, and popular culture.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Missing Justice for Sarah Halimi The French have become used to anti-Semitism — and murdered Jews. Joseph Puder

Posted By on May 7th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/missing-justuce-sarah-halimi-joseph-puder/

Seventy-six years after the Holocaust, in a continent drenched with Jewish blood, Jews still continue to be victimized in Europe, particularly in France. In recent decades, France has been a dangerous place for Jews, and as a consequence, many French Jews have moved to Israel. The murders that shook French Jewry were the gruesome Halimi murders, and there has been no justice for the victims or true punishment for the perpetrators.

The brutal murder of Dr. Sarah Halimi happened to be the second time a Jewish person named Halimi was viciously killed in Paris. The first was Ilan Halimi who was only 23 years old when he was kidnapped on January 21, 2006, by a gang called the “Barbarians,” comprised largely by Arab-Muslim immigrants. He was tortured and then died of his wounds. The French authorities in the case of Ilan Halimi, just like in Sarah’s case, did not attribute the murder to anti-Semitism. The murderers in both cases included Black Muslim men from sub-Sahara Africa (as well as Arabs from the Maghreb were involved in Ilan’s death). 

As ugly and upsetting as George Floyd’s killing was in Minneapolis, Minnesota, at least he received a measure of justice. The murder of Dr. Sarah Halimi’s in Paris, France, on April 4, 2017, was far more brutal, but justice in her case was not rendered. In fact, it showed the world that in France, even dogs get a larger measure of justice that was denied the late Dr. Halimi because of a deeply rooted anti-Semitism within the current French judicial system. No worldwide riots have however, taken place as the result of her brutal murder by a hate filled Muslim African immigrant from Mali, named Kobili Traore. The cowardly murderer shouted “Allahu akbar” as he attacked and tortured Sarah in her own apartment. Afterward, he proclaimed “I killed a “Shaitan (Satan).” The only reason Traore targeted Sarah Halimi was that she was the only Jewish person in the building located in the Belleville section of Paris. Aged 65, Dr. Sarah Halimi was the mother of three children.  

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Biden: The Humanitarian Thief Are we our brother’s keepers? Jason D. Hill

Posted By on May 7th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/bidens-war-against-wealthy-exposes-him-jason-d-hill/

Some criminals who steal other people’s money to finance their own private lifestyle, or those of the public, often move by stealth and subterfuge. They deploy moralistic language via rhetorical obfuscation. By the time they work over our moral conscience, we grant them the benefit of the doubt because we believe, in some perverse way, that the criminal had a coercive right to what he was taking away from us.

Joe Biden is such thief. He has stated outright that it is time for the richest Americans to pay their fair share of taxes. He has not exactly identified by what means and by what right it is your or anyone else’s fair share of what someone else has earned. But it does not matter. Like all financial appropriators, private or public, one is expected to accept an appropriator’s assertion as the legitimate basis of a claim, or, in this case, an outright mandate.

The appeal to moral conscience is mawkishly sentimental. Biden intends to finance a country’s badly-needed faltering infrastructure and welfare spending totaling about $4tn. The various packages under these $1.8tn American Families Plan and $2tn infrastructure plans would provide funds for childcare and free pre-school education facilities, along with humongous programs to rebuild the country’s transport system and public-sector housing. They all are a part of a systemic effort to effect action on what Biden perceives as the climate crisis. The plan would also allocate $200bn for free universal preschool education, and $109bn for free community college education—regardless of income for two years.

This is to be paid for by making corporate America and the wealthiest 1% pay just their fair share, Biden repeated, as he spoke at a community college on Monday, May 3, in Norfolk, Virginia.

Astute readers will realize the move towards socialism by stealth here.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Biden DOJ’s Targeting of Rudy Giuliani Could Backfire Spectacularly By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on May 7th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/05/the-biden-dojs-targeting-of-rudy-giuliani-could-backfire-spectacularly/?utm_source=

“President Biden is incorrigible. With his ample record of not knowing when to leave well enough alone, he probably doesn’t know better. Merrick Garland is supposed to know better.”

One would have hoped the new AG would have the good sense to steer away from score-settling prosecutions that are apt to blow up in the president’s face.

 ‘D on’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f*** things up.” If nothing else, former President Barack Obama is a shrewd man. Hence, this evergreen assessment of his vice president, after years of close observation. It is most manifest in Joe Biden’s ineffable glibness. Beneath it, the now-president can’t quite conceal the uncomfortable awareness that, though he somehow manages Magoo-like to land on his feet, he has always been in over his head. And he knows that you know.

If you get that, you’ll understand the latest Ukraine kerfuffle.

Yes, I know, the press says it’s all about Rudy. We’ll get to that part. At bottom, though, the story is about two other men. The first is Biden — specifically, his unique capacity to turn good fortune into farce. The second is Attorney General Merrick Garland.

It was too much to expect that Garland’s seasoned moderation would counterbalance the woke warriors of his Department of Social Justice. The president’s grandiose hallucinations aside, the Biden administration is not the New Deal reincarnate. It is not going to move epic progressive legislation across the finish line. If it’s going to appease its restive left flank, it will have to sic federal prosecutors on police departments, high-school locker rooms, and the Little Sisters of the Poor. We get that. But one would have hoped that AG Garland would have the good sense to steer the administration away from patently politicized, score-settling prosecutions that are apt to blow up in the president’s face.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Olympics to Allow a Male Weightlifter in the Female Category By Madeleine Kearns

Posted By on May 7th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/olympics-to-allow-a-male-weightlifter-in-the-female-category/

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has changed its rules, permitting a biological male to compete against women in weightlifting. Before transitioning in 2013, Laurel Hubbard competed in the men’s category.

The IOC’s guidelines require males to demonstrate that their testosterone levels have been chemically lowered. But messing around with testosterone levels does next to nothing to remove the innate male advantage.

Male puberty confers irreversible advantages. Adrogenization increases bone density and muscle mass. Moreover, the performance gap between males and females at the elite level is as much as 30 percent. As has been explained:

The 69kg male weightlifter hammers the 69kg female weightlifter on strength. Where are the females who are stronger than [the males]? How tall and heavy are they? The answer is, in Olympic weightlifting, they don’t exist. . . . The male 69kg Olympic weightlifting world record holder is 30% stronger than his female counterpart and lifts heavier than the female world record holder in the top weight category…

Males are stronger. The performance gap between male and female athletes is utterly astounding; it’s not a “gap”, it’s the Grand Canyon. Without sex-segregated sporting categories, the most wonderful 10.49s that female athletics has ever seen would be a footnote in history. We owe it to the female sports stars of today and to the girls who aspire to be tomorrow’s sporting heroes to fight for their right to take home gold.

IMMIGRATION, POLITICS Comments turned off

Sinema Criticizes Biden Admin on the Border: ‘This Is a Crisis; We All Know It’ By Brittany Bernstein

Posted By on May 7th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/sinema-criticizes-biden-admin-on-the-border-this-is-a-crisis-we-all-know-it/

Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D., Ariz.) on Thursday criticized the Biden administration over the “crisis” at the U.S.-Mexico border, saying the federal government “must do more” to address a surge of migrants entering the country illegally.

“The reality is that this is a crisis,” Sinema said during an interview with KTAR News. “We all know it, and the federal government must do more to address this surge of migrants who are coming to the border with increasing numbers each year.”

Sinema noted that Arizona recently has seen the highest number of border crossings in 20 years.The senator’s comments come on the same day that White House press secretary Jen Psaki faulted the “nature of” media as having been a “big driver” behind the use of the term “crisis” when referring to the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border.

During an interview with The Axe Files with David Axelrod podcast Thursday, Psaki claimed that the migrant surge “wasn’t really a crisis,” just a “huge challenge.”

Yet even President Biden referred to “the crisis that ended up on the border with young people” last month. However, Psaki insists he was not referring to migrants crossing the border and that the comment has been misinterpreted.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

President Joe Sanders The vaccine patent decision is the latest example of Biden’s far-left governance. by Kimberley Strassel

Posted By on May 7th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/president-joe-sanders-11620340410?mod=opinion_lead_pos8

The White House this week proposed to strip drug companies of their vaccine patents, an act hailed by adulators as “moral leadership.” It’s better seen as the encapsulation of the Biden presidency—a case study in fictional narratives, executive overreach, recklessness, and kowtowing to the left.

The biopharmaceutical industry in under a year accomplished a modern miracle—designing a breakthrough vaccine to counter Covid-19; engineering a ground-up production process; and climbing a logistical Everest. It was a triumph of innovation, investment and capitalism, a moment that deserves to be celebrated.

Instead, the Biden administration supports a proposal in the World Trade Organization that would “waive” the intellectual-property rights of the companies that accomplished this feat, giving away their technology to every drugmaker in the world. Put another way, Mr. Biden is freely handing American invention to China—the country that routinely steals it, and whose Wuhan lab might have been the source of the virus.

The move is in keeping with the administration’s refusal to acknowledge the history of the vaccine achievement. Team Biden continues its willful disregard of Operation Warp Speed, in part because it is too petty to give credit to any person, company or initiative connected to the Trump administration.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Europe Starts to Come Around on China Putting business first and alienating the U.S. has backfired.

Posted By on May 7th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/europe-starts-to-come-around-on-china-11620341264?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

President Biden wants to work with traditional American allies to resist China’s increasing belligerence. While the European Union has tried to steer its own course, Beijing is doing its part to revive the trans-Atlantic alliance.

“We now in a sense have suspended . . . political outreach activities from the European Commission side,” EU Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis told AFP on Tuesday. “The environment is not conducive for ratification of the agreement.” Mr. Dombrovskis is referring to the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment, a deal meant to provide Europe and China greater access to each other’s markets.

Weeks before becoming U.S. national security adviser, Jake Sullivan requested “early consultations” with Brussels about the pact. Europe responded by announcing it had reached an agreement-in-principle with China. But the European Parliament and 27 national leaders still have to approve the deal.

That process became more complicated in March, when the European Union announced sanctions targeting four Chinese officials involved with human-rights abuses in the Xinjiang region. Beijing responded by imposing sanctions on several members of the European Parliament and other Europeans critical of the Chinese Communist Party.

It’s hard to ratify a deal with a country that has sanctioned officials who will vote on ratification, but German Chancellor Angela Merkel is still trying. She spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping and French President Emmanuel Macron last month, and the German readout of the call didn’t mention human rights. The French later said it came up, but Ms. Merkel is trying to play down the issue as she seeks to solidify the deal before elections this year.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Biden’s Vaccine IP Debacle His patent heist is a blow to the Covid fight and U.S. biotech.

Posted By on May 7th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidens-vaccine-ip-debacle-11620341686?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

We’ve already criticized President Biden’s bewildering decision Wednesday to endorse a patent waiver for Covid vaccines and therapies. But upon more reflection this may be the single worst presidential economic decision since Nixon’s wage-and-price controls.

In one fell swoop he has destroyed tens of billions of dollars in U.S. intellectual property, set a destructive precedent that will reduce pharmaceutical investment, and surrendered America’s advantage in biotech, a key growth industry of the future. Handed an American triumph of innovation and a great soft-power opportunity, Mr. Biden throws it all away.

***

India and South Africa have been pushing to suspend patents at the World Trade Organization for months. They claim that waiving IP protections for Covid vaccines and therapies is necessary to expand global access, but their motivation is patently self-interested.

Both are large producers of generic drugs, though they have less expertise and capacity to make complex biologics like mRNA vaccines. They want to force Western pharmaceutical companies to hand over IP free of charge so they can produce and export vaccines and therapies for profit. Their strategy has been to shame Western leaders into surrendering with the help of Democrats in the U.S.

But suspending IP isn’t necessary to expand supply and will impede safe vaccine production. The global vaccine supply is already increasing rapidly thanks to licensing agreements the vaccine makers have made with manufacturers around the world.

Pfizer and BioNTech this week said they aimed to deliver three billion doses this year, up from last summer’s 1.2 billion estimate. Moderna increased its supply forecast for this year to between 800 million and a billion from 600 million. AstraZeneca says it has built a supply network with 25 manufacturing organizations in 15 countries to produce three billion doses this year.