ISRAEL Comments turned off

Ruthie Blum :Owing the ultra-Orthodox an apology Suddenly, the discussion is no longer about the identity of the coronavirus carriers; no accusations are being flung at them for the way in which they choose to observe their Judaism.

Posted By on June 2nd, 2020

https://www.jns.org/opinion/owing-the-ultra-orthodox-an-apology/

Two weeks after Israel gradually reopened its education system, students and teachers around the country came down with the coronavirus, forcing thousands of their peers and family members into quarantine.

The main hotspot has been the Jerusalem high school, Hagymnasia Haivrit, in the capital’s Rechavia neighborhood, which had to shut down due to the more than 130 adults and teenagers who tested positive to COVID-19.

More than 17 additional schools also closed, some by ministerial order, and a few by parental decree.

If the trend continues, the Education Ministry may succumb to pressure from health officials to send everyone home to resume classes via Zoom—just like during the good old days less than a month ago.

Kids were honest about how this happened. Few adhered to social-distancing and mask-wearing regulations. Many greeted one another with hugs and kisses. The general feeling among all was that the crisis was over.

The thousands of beach-goers who descended upon the shores of the Mediterranean as soon as the government lifted restrictions on doing so exhibited a similar sense of freedom from lockdown bondage. Ditto for the diners and partiers who piled in to cafes, restaurants, bars and nightclubs with great fervor, but little attention to the government’s frequent urgent requests to practice social distancing, wash hands and wear masks.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, MEDIA Comments turned off

Planet of the Censoring Humans The campaign to remove Michael Moore’s new documentary from the Internet – led by Moore’s erstwhile progressive “allies” – is a significant advance in the censorship revolution Matt Taibbi

Posted By on June 2nd, 2020

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/planet-of-the-censoring-humans

On April 21st, 2020, just before the 50th anniversary of the first Earth Day, Oscar-winning director/producer Michael Moore released a new movie called Planet of the Humans. Directed by Jeff Gibbs, the film is a searing look at the ostensible failures of the environmentalist movement, to which Moore and Gibbs both belonged.

“Jeff and I were at the first Earth Day celebrations,” Moore laughs. “That’s how old we are.”

Distributed for free on YouTube, the film’s central argument is that the environmentalist movement, fattened by corporate donations, has become seduced by an industrialist delusion.

“The whole idea of the film was to ask a question – after fifty years of the environmentalist movement, how are we doing?” recounts Moore. “It looks like, not very well.”

Moore and Gibbs challenged the idea that both the planet and humankind’s current patterns of industrial production can be saved through the magic bullet of “renewable energy.” The film shows lurid examples of various deceptions, like the oft-used trick of replacing coal plants with new natural gas plants, which are then called “clean” or “green,” or the hideous trend of describing the burning of trees as a “renewable” energy source.

Environmentalists denounced the film as riddled with “lies” and “misinformation,” claiming among other things that Moore used old data to discredit green technology. A campaign to remove the film from circulation immediately took shape.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Bad Day At BlackRock? ESG investing is already taking a toll on state pension funds—now it might transform the world’s largest private asset manager, too. Rupert Darwall

Posted By on June 2nd, 2020

https://www.city-journal.org/blackrock-esg-strategy

“I don’t give a damn what these powerful corporations tell us and I don’t care about their profit margin. We need to get out of these fossil fuels before it’s too late for everybody.” These are not the words of a Sunrise Movement activist, though they could easily be mistaken for one, but New York City comptroller Scott Stringer, speaking at an online People’s Assembly on BlackRock last week. The gathering of activists and advocates was intended to discuss strategies for pushing BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, to make good on its promises to “place sustainability at the center” of its investment strategy. As environmental activists see it, the firm has a long way to go.

Stringer, an anti-fracking campaigner and protégé of Congressman Jerry Nadler, became comptroller in January 2014, when Bill de Blasio took over as mayor. He wanted to remake his office into “a think-tank for innovation and ideas,” Stringer declared on his first day. That’s a risky outlook for one assuming a position defined by law as the custodian of the city’s five pension funds, which totaled, in February 2020, $221.2 billion in assets. Early on, Stringer proclaimed a devotion to environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) factors in investing, and to finding investment managers dedicated to these principles. He launched a campaign on proxy access to enable shareholders to nominate directors—ticking the “G” for governance. He then moved on to the “S” with his Boardroom Accountability Project, writing to 151 companies asking that they disclose, among other things, the sexual orientation of their directors.

“E” for environment is the big one. When de Blasio announced in January 2018 that city pension funds would divest $5 billion worth of equity in fossil-fuel companies, Stringer justified the move by claiming retirees’ financial future was “linked to the sustainability of the planet.” The comptroller allocated 12 percent of the fund assets of the New York City Employees’ Retirement System—the largest of the city’s five pension funds—into the Developed Environmental Activist asset class, according to an American Council for Capital Formation report by Timothy Doyle. The move dragged down the fund’s already-poor investment returns. 

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Science says: ‘Open the schools’ By Dr. Scott W. Atlas and Paul E. Peterson

Posted By on June 2nd, 2020

https://thehill.com/opinion/education/500349-science-says-open-the-schools

To stop COVID-19 dead in its tracks, many governors, mayors and superintendents are threatening to keep schools closed this fall, failing to consider the greater harm that comes from refusing to open them.

“We have to make sure kids are safe, family members are safe, educators are safe, staff is safe,” says New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. “If for any reason we are not confident of that, then you can just stick with the pure online learning.” Similarly, teacher unions insist that comprehensive testing, tracing and distancing are essential if reopening is to be done safely.

The irony in such language is that children are safe at school already. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states that of the first 68,998 U.S. deaths from COVID-19, only 12 have been in children under age 14 — less than 0.02 percent. Nor is coronavirus killing teenagers. At last count, the fatality total among children under 18 without an underlying condition is one; only ten of the 16,469 confirmed coronavirus deaths in New York City were among those under the age of 18. That’s similar to the fatality rate for those under 20 in France, estimated at 0.001 percent, and in Spain.

The death of even one child is tragic, of course. Yet, it must be kept in mind that as many as 600 children in the United States died from seasonal influenza in 2017-18, according to CDC estimates, while the CDC’s estimate for COVID-19 fatalities number just 12. A just-released JAMA Pediatrics study flatly states: “Our data indicate that children are at far greater risk of critical illness from influenza than from COVID-19.” If the COVID-19 hazard sets the new standard for health safety, the country will need to close its schools each year from November until April to guard against influenza.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Time for the FBI to Disclose, Discharge, and Disinfect Charles Lipson

Posted By on June 2nd, 2020

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/06/02/time_for_the_fbi_to_disclose_discharge_and_disinfect___143342.html

When Christopher Wray was named director of the FBI in August 2017, he had two crucial tasks: clean the Augean Stables, which had been fouled by James Comey, and restore public confidence in the bureau. Comey presided over a carnival of misconduct. Comey and his deputy, Andrew McCabe, supervised all of it and handpicked most of the other agents involved.

Wray’s job was to muck out this mess, disclose the wrongdoing, fire the bad guys, and win back public support. To put it bluntly: he has failed at the job. He has failed the country, the president, and his fellow agents.

Firing Wray before the election would be too incendiary. It would instantly descend into a partisan food fight, like all American politics these days, and would cloud the important work of U.S. Attorney John Durham. But if Wray cannot be fired immediately, neither should he be allowed to block the public from seeing what went wrong at the bureau. That’s exactly what he has been doing, and it needs to stop.

Wray shouldn’t be allowed to hide or slow-walk the evidence that American citizens have every right to see. Remember, it was the current FBI team, not Jim Comey, that said it couldn’t find Peter Strzok and Lisa Page’s devastating text messages. It was the Justice Department’s Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, not Wray’s agents, who discovered the “lost” messages and thousands more. They were released by Rod Rosenstein, who was effectively running DoJ at the time. The FBI brass were not happy.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Dennis Prager: The Left Couldn’t Care Less About Blacks

Posted By on June 2nd, 2020

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/06/02/the_left_couldnt_care_less_about_blacks_143347.html

A typical left-wing reaction to all this was written in June 2019 by journalist Michael Coard in the Philadelphia Tribune: “Today’s black so-called thugs/monsters are created by the evil American system that miseducates them, unemploys them, underemploys them, over-polices them, and over-incarcerates them. America is Dr. Victor Frankenstein.” Note “over-polices.”

Coard is correct about one thing: Today’s blacks are often miseducated, which leads to their unemployment, underemployment and other terrible consequences. Who has been running America’s schools for decades now? (Hint: Not the right.) But that doesn’t cause violence. Black murderers and rapists are the only people in America told that no matter what they did, they are not responsible for it. America is. And the people telling them that are all on the left.

Why does the left do this?

First, because, as opposed to liberals, the left — everywhere in the world — hates America. And why does the left hate America? Because it is a living refutation of left-wing ideology. America is the most successful country while also being the most capitalist, most religious and most nationality-affirming of all the industrialized democracies.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Turkey: Where Criticizing Islam Can Land You in Prison by Uzay Bulut

Posted By on June 2nd, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16079/turkey-islam-criticism-prison

According to the Koran and the recorded sayings (hadith) and biographies (sira) of Islam’s founder, “To leave Islam, to insult Muhammad or Allah, to deny the existence of Allah, to be sarcastic about Allah’s name, to deny any verse of the Koran” or to commit other acts of blasphemy are all punishable by death.

More alarming is that these pressures and bans come not only from governments. Many of the people in the countries mentioned above also appear enthusiastically to support strict or even deadly blasphemy and apostasy laws.

According to a 2013 Pew survey, overwhelming percentages of Muslims in many regions — Southeast Asia (84%), South Asia (78%), the Middle East and North Africa (78%), and Central Asia (62%) — favor making sharia, or Islamic law, the official law of the land. According to sharia, blasphemy and apostasy are punishable by death.

Critics of Turkey’s government and Islam continue being targeting by the country’s authorities.

On May 17, Turkish photographer Fırat Erez, a former supporter of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development (AKP) Party, was arrested in the city of Antalya after saying “Islam is immoral” on his Twitter account.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

EU: Trade with China Trumps Freedom for Hong Kong by Soeren Kern

Posted By on June 2nd, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16083/eu-trade-china-hong-kong

The British government announced that it was considering granting citizenship to the nearly three million residents of Hong Kong. The move infuriated China, which fears a massive brain drain from Hong Kong that would jeopardize the city’s role as a global financial and trading hub.

Germany, which takes over the six-month rotating EU presidency on July 1, has announced that it will prioritize relations with China. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is particularly determined to proceed with a major EU-China summit to be held in the German city of Leipzig in September. She is reportedly under intense pressure from German automobile manufacturers, who are concerned about maintaining their access to the Chinese market.

“Europe can and should respond more forcefully than it has so far…. [If Germany cancelled] its looming summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Leipzig in September 2020 unless Beijing withdraws its national security legislation…. That would send a strong signal that it will not be business as usual…” — Noah Barkin, a senior fellow in Berlin at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

“German Chancellor Merkel does not seem to fully appreciate how continued Communist Party rule endangers peace, security and public health, not just in China, but around the world.” — Andreas Fulda, a senior fellow at the University of Nottingham’s Asia Research Institute.

“The European Union… has the choice. Should we make a pact with an authoritarian regime or should we work to strengthen a community of free, constitutionally governed market economies with liberal societies? It is remarkable that German politics, with its love of moralizing, seems to throw its values out the window when dealing with China…. If current… policy on China continues, this will lead to a gradual decoupling from America and a step-by-step infiltration and subjugation by China. Economic dependence will only be the first step. Political influence will follow. In the end, it is quite simple. What kind of future do we want for Europe? An alliance with an imperfect democracy or with a perfect dictatorship? It should be an easy decision for us to make. It is about more than just money. It is about our freedom…” — Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Axel Springer, Europe’s largest publishing company.

The European Union has issued a predictably weak and equivocal declaration on China’s growing interference in Hong Kong. European leaders, apparently fearful of retaliation by Beijing, have signaled that economic interests will take priority over the EU’s much-trumpeted founding values of human rights, democracy and the rule of law.

Europe’s continued appeasement of China indicates that the EU will be a weak link in efforts by Western democracies to confront the leadership in Beijing.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

MARK STEYN ON EVERYTHING

Posted By on June 2nd, 2020

https://www.steynonline.com/10312/the-case-of-the-topless-taioseach

Across the Irish Sea, the London press continues its frothing over lockdown breaches by Dominic Cummings. If you’ve never heard of him, he’s Boris Johnson’s Rasputin. I don’t know him, although a few years back I took his wife Mary (a great-granddaughter or some such of the fourth Earl Grey, Governor General of Canada) to a John McCain campaign event preceded by a burger at the Littleton Diner in New Hampshire. But her hubby’s rise to Fleet Street hate figure has largely passed me by: the media bigwigs regard Cummings as Boris’s brain, and loathe him for Brexit and for December’s Tory landslide. Then came the lockdown, and the perfect cudgel: a few weeks back, Mr and Mrs Cummings felt the Covid coming on and, concerned about who’d be around to care for the kid, decided to take their four-year-old autistic son to stay with his grandparents a hundred-and-thirty miles away.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Lying for Diversity By Robert Weissberg

Posted By on June 2nd, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/06/lying_for_diversity.html

The University of California’s recent decision to replace the SAT and ACT with some future “fairer” test so as to boost black and Hispanic enrollment has generated immense controversy. A key argument was that whites and Asians enjoy an unfair advantage since they, unlike blacks and Hispanics, can afford the extra after-school tutoring available in so-called cram academies.

This justification for this attack on meritocracy is totally false.

Begin with some facts regarding access to these suddenly politically relevant cram academies. Not surprisingly, given the importance of standardized tests such as the SAT, and the minimal investment necessary to open a storefront facility and hiring some college graduates as instructors, they are common in California. Just google “SAT prep California” and a plethora of Mom and Pop businesses pop up with names like Scorebuilder Test Prep or Mr. Testprep. All supply positive ratings on their websites plus more detailed testimonials from successful college applicants, boast of their expertise and may offer money-back guarantees unless scores increase.

This is free market, consumer-sensitive capitalism on steroids, and these academies typically offer customized one-on-one tutoring, very small classes, convenient scheduling, and preparation for a variety of tests and will target any potential clientele provided there is adequate demand.