RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/06/western_governments_embrace_the_tiananmen_square_mentality.html

With the thirty-fourth anniversary of China’s Tiananmen Square Massacre having just passed, it is worth pointing out how that atrocity set the stage for increasing government tyranny across the globe today.  The Chinese slaughter of innocents should always be seen as the other side of the coin to the fall of the Berlin Wall and collapse of the Iron Curtain.  

In Europe, where dedicated freedom fighters spent decades creating a “parallel polis” providing both an escape from and organized resistance to totalitarian regimes, the fall of communism naturally followed the rise of public movements for liberty.  In China, where cries for freedom were crushed with tanks and despair for the lost, the one-party communist State’s power grew.  When the United States and other Western countries chose to ignore China’s crimes against humanity in a Faustian exchange for Western companies’ lucrative opportunity to replace their own domestic workforces with Chinese slave labor under the communists’ control, the West proved that it was more than willing to sell out both moral conviction and political principle for a quick buck.  

The Chinese communists learned that Western governments are ultimately corrupt “paper tigers” that pretend to stand for human freedom but instead prostitute their ideals for material greed.  Aspiring tyrants around the world learned that it is better to crush popular opposition movements with gruesome violence than to permit calls for individual liberty and free speech to grow into outright rebellions powerful enough to redirect the course of history. 

Western politicians celebrate the fall of the Soviet Union and occasionally grumble about Chinese human rights abuses, but make no mistake: the collapse of the Iron Curtain and the Tiananmen Square Massacre remain cautionary tales to those enamored of power.  In their minds, they hear only Machiavelli’s warning that, if one must choose, it is far “safer to be feared than loved.”  The COVID police state that still lingers, the “climate change” police state lying up ahead, the abandonment of free speech protections as collateral damage in an imaginary war against “hate,” the World Health Organization’s push for global government through permanent “emergency” — none of these totalitarian monstrosities would exist today had the West stood courageously for human freedom against State-engineered barbarity.

That it did not and instead spent the next three decades empowering China economically, militarily, and reputationally will always be a stain on Western history.  And because Western governments have largely ignored China’s decades of genocide, torture, and enslavement, Western citizens must now live under governments dangerously indifferent to the preservation of human freedom here at home. 

Imagine if the United States had acted more resolutely against the Tiananmen Square Massacre.  Imagine if the dead bodies of students strewn across an area paradoxically named for “heavenly peace” had become an enduring international symbol of the personal sacrifice humans will make to be free and an enduring indictment against State tyranny.  Imagine if the words “Remember Tiananmen Square” had become a common condemnation of all government overreach.  What would the world look like today?  

https://reason.com/2023/06/15/rochelle-walensky-cdc-congress-questions-covid-meta-censorship/

Rochelle Walensky, the outgoing director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), faced tough questioning from House Republicans on Tuesday, when she appeared before the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.

Rep. James Comer (R–Ky.) grilled Walensky about the CDC’s communications with social media companies—Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, in particular—during her tenure as the head of the federal agency chiefly responsible for battling COVID-19.

As reported in Reason’s March 2023 issue, Walensky’s CDC routinely communicated with content moderators and Facebook, recommending aggressive takedowns of purported misinformation about mitigation efforts, COVID-19’s origins, and vaccines:

According to a trove of confidential documents obtained by Reason, health advisers at the CDC had significant input on pandemic-era social media policies at Facebook as well. They were consulted frequently, at times daily. They were actively involved in the affairs of content moderators, providing constant and ever-evolving guidance. They requested frequent updates about which topics were trending on the platforms, and they recommended what kinds of content should be deemed false or misleading. “Here are two issues we are seeing a great deal of misinfo on that we wanted to flag for you all,” reads one note from a CDC official. Another email with sample Facebook posts attached begins: “BOLO for a small but growing area of misinfo.”

These Facebook Files show that the platform responded with incredible deference. Facebook routinely asked the government to vet specific claims, including whether the virus was “man-made” rather than zoonotic in origin. (The CDC responded that a man-made origin was “technically possible” but “extremely unlikely.”) In other emails, Facebook asked: “For each of the following claims, which we’ve recently identified on the platform, can you please tell us if: the claim is false; and, if believed, could this claim contribute to vaccine refusals?”

Comer’s questions got straight to the heart of this matter. Unfortunately, Walensky declined to directly comment on it.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/06/16/amtrak-joe-and-the-trans-pacific-trans-indian-railroad/

Some of the best advice ever given was from Mark Twain, who said “it’s better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt.” We’re not saying Joe Biden is stupid, but his comment about “plans to build a railroad from the Pacific all the way across the Indian Ocean,” removes all doubt that he is all there.

Speaking Wednesday evening before the League of Conservation Voters’ annual dinner, Biden waxed ineloquently:

“We’re talking about building — and I had my team putting together with other countries as well — to build a railroad from the Pacific Ocean — from the Atlantic Ocean all the way to the Indian Ocean.”

Reports said he also rambled on about a proposal to build a line across sub-Saharan Africa.

It’s too bad Vice President Kamala Harris didn’t offer a few words about the idea. She could have talked about, with a little Russian dressing on top, “the significance of the passage of trains over large bodies of water, which are known as oceans, and they are located on our planet, and there is a great significance to train travel, which has made history throughout history at a moment in time.”

It’s hard to decide which is more likely, construction and completion of Biden’s worldwide train, or the unlikely event he and Harris actually string words together in a coherent manner on the same day.

https://victorhanson.com/the-trump-indictment-in-10-bothersome-paradoxes/

Yes, we are told Trump is facing serious charges. Experts tell us he will be going to prison. Some of his legal team have quit. Yes, he was sloppy about communicating with the lawyers of the National Archives. Yet, read the 1978 Presidential Records Act (put into place after the typical sloppy departure protocols of most presidents)—and consider that Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and Vice President Mike Pence were likely all in violation. Moreover, we are not stupid, when asked to ignore the following:

1) That a president who had the prerogative to declassify almost any presidential papers he takes with him when leaving office, in a way that a senator or vice-president does not, should be prosecuted for doing just that when a former senator, and former vice-president are not prosecuted for doing the same.

2) That an ex-president is prosecuted for having supposedly classified papers in his possession after 18 months as a private citizen, but an ex-senator, ex-vice president, and current president is exempt, despite having classified documents for some 15 years—and keeping that fact absolutely quiet.

3) That a “disinterested” special counsel who is currently indicting a conservative Republican ex-president and current opposition presidential candidate, is married to a leftwing documentary filmmaker, whose recent work includes Becoming, a 2020 obsequious documentary of Michelle Obama.

4) That the current president removed classified documents, and kept them stored while President of the United States in as many as four unsecured locations, including a poorly locked garage, shared by his drug-addled son, who made millions of dollars by leveraging foreign governments in quid pro quo fashion, presumably on the principle that he and his father had inside information that could be of monetary value—and is not being indicted.

5) That never before in U.S. history has any administration overseen the indictment either of an ex-president of the opposite party or a current leading candidate for president of the opposite party—or both.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2023/06/15/gop-congressman-brilliantly-destroys-dei-during-hearing-n1703542

Joe Biden has done all sorts of things to compensate for the fact that he’s just an old white guy in a party that basically hates white people. He picked a black woman as his running mate, pledged to nominate a black woman to the Supreme Court, and routinely nominates people for various positions based on what diversity boxes they check off, rather than their competence. Under his administration, multiple government agencies have Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion offices to effectively mandate diversity in each department.

On Tuesday, Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.) questioned Ambassador Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley, the outgoing chief diversity and inclusion officer of the State Department (and the first person to hold that position), during a hearing on Capitol Hill and with incredible precision destroyed the entire justification of Abercrombie-Winstanley’s position.

Mast began by asking her if being bald, 5’-8”, or 6’-3” tall makes someone a better diplomat. Abercrombie-Winstanley began by laughing but eventually said no.

“Likewise, does being white make somebody a better diplomat?’ Mast continued.

“No, I do not believe so,” she responded.

Mast continued asking the same question of African Americans, Asians, Islanders, Native Americans, or any specific group, to which she affirmed that the answer was that “it doesn’t.”

Mast then asked her if he was white. Abercrombie-Winstanley couldn’t answer the question, repeatedly telling him she didn’t know.

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

“A modern American industrial strategy identifies specific sectors that are foundational to economic growth, strategic from a national security perspective, and where private industry on its own isn’t poised to make the investments needed to secure our national ambitions.”Jake Sullivan, National Security Adviser Brookings Institution, April 27, 2023

The presumption in Jake Sullivan’s words, quoted above, are astounding – that there is a, yet-to-be-named, “modern American strategy,” which identifies “specific,” but unstated, “sectors that are foundational to economic growth,” which are “strategic from a national security perspective.” But since the private sector has neither the means nor the foresight to “secure our national ambitions” (whatever they are), then it must be left to the public sector to decide how much and where to invest, decisions prior administrations from both parties have left to markets. Sullivan refers to this as Bidenomics. In reality it is central planning.

Greg Ip, in last weekend’s edition of The Wall Street Journal, wrote of Mr. Sullivan’s speech: “Sullivan’s target was what some in the policy world call neoliberalism: the free trade, laissez faire economic priorities shared by Republican and Democratic administrations for decades.” “Executive policy-making,” wrote Christopher DeMuth, a distinguished fellow at the Hudson Institute, in the same issue, “has an ideological basis – that of ‘expertise,’ which holds that modern life demands government by expert administrators in place of amateur legislators.” When did Karl Marx replace Adam Smith?

Certainly, there have been times when government has had to take the lead – in times of war, in building the interstate highway system, DARPA, NASA, etc. But the concept that a state-mandated industrial policy is the wave of the future is to believe that Russia, China, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, etc. have brought to their people greater efficiencies, higher living standards, a cleaner environment, and greater financial opportunity and equality than the democracy and free market capitalism of the United States, and the West.