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August 2020

Bill de Blasio Confesses to Violating NYC Permit Process to Paint Black Lives Matter Mural By Eric Lendrum

https://amgreatness.com/2020/08/06/bill-de-blasio-confesses-to-violating-nyc-permit-process-to-paint-black-lives-matter-mural/

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D-N.Y.) was forced to admit that his administration ignored the usual rules and processes for acquiring a public art permit to paint the now-infamous “Black Lives Matter” mural on 5th Avenue, according to the Daily Caller.

The city of New York was sued by the group Women for America First, who claim that their application to paint a mural was denied. De Blasio, in a transcript posted to the city government’s website addressing that denied request, claimed that “we haven’t said no to people. We’ve said, if you want to apply, you can apply, but there’s a process.”

However, in making the decision to paint the controversial mural on the street right in front of Trump Tower, de Blasio said that they circumvented the usual permit application process because the mural, in his mind, “transcends all normal realities because we are in a moment of history where this has to be said and done.” He even admitted that the “normal process continues for anyone who wants to apply.”

The mural, which was partially painted by de Blasio himself and professional race-baiter Al Sharpton for a photo-op, has since become the site of numerous heated confrontations between conservative demonstrators and far-left agitators. Several activists have performed acts of civil disobedience by throwing paint on the mural.

Raising Muslim Kids as Foot-Soldiers Zeal for an impending Caliphate. Radhika Singh

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/08/raising-muslim-kids-foot-soldiers-radhika-singh/

Just as the crowd of recovered Covid-19 patients takes a position for a picture, as victors who defeated the virus, a six-year-old among them jumps in joy, sloganeering, “Hum Modi ko Marenge.” It translates as, “We will kill Modi.”

Narendra Modi is the sitting Prime Minister of India. He was elected democratically in 2014, and again, in 2019. Being the non-conventional Prime Minister who didn’t emerge from the leftist coterie and didn’t pander to Islamists in the name of secularism, Modi was never a favorite of the liberals. His sentiments toward Muslims was no secret either. In the past six years, the silent majority learned to live with their elected chief being disparaged by the self-declared flagbearers of morality, who, claiming higher moral ground, had wished death upon the Prime Minister multiple times.

Up came a case that was a little different, though not unexpected. A six-year-old Muslim child’s entire family had tested positive for Covid-19 and were linked with the group Tabligi Jamaat that acted as super-spreaders in the initial stages of the pandemic in India.

After the members of this Muslim family were discharged from Index Hospital in Indore, India, they lined up for a photo-op. Since having recovered, they have become a success story. Doctors, nurses, hospital staff, and political leaders joined the family to congratulate them on their recovery.

China’s Genocide Machine in Xinjiang by Lawrence A. Franklin

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16306/china-genocide-xinjiang

Crimes against humanity that meet the UN definition of genocide are being inflicted by Chinese troops on their Turkic Uyghur minority in the so-called Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Charges include torture, forced sterilization and hair shaved from inmates and made into commercial products. Last month, US Customs seized 13 tons of human hair and other “beauty products” worth approximately $800,000 “from Uighurs in camps.”

The most detailed description of the brutalities visited upon the Uyghurs by Han Chinese thugs was revealed by U.S.-based lawyer and Uyghur activist Nury Turkel, who claimed that Uyghur detainees in China have had fingernails pulled out, were subjected to electric shocks, and were sexually assaulted.

Uyghurs, many of whom were CCP regulars and members of Xinjiang’s intellectual elite, were once tolerated, but now are no longer trusted. Some, like the former President of Xinjiang University Tashpolat Tiyip, have been arrested and accused of being “two faced” betrayers of China. Many Uyghurs have been plucked from their families and forced to work in prison-like factories where they are becoming part of Xinjiang’s growing urban manufacturing class, producing items for companies that are suppliers for “international tech giants such as Apple and Lenovo.”

The Chinese Communist Party’s chairman, Xi Jinping, and his colleagues on the ruling Politburo, have, it seems, decided on the final solution for China’s ethnic Uyghur Muslims. All who have seen the internet drone footage in Xinjiang of hundreds of blindfolded, male prisoners, sitting in silence, hands tied behind their back while ringed by Gestapo-like guards must shudder at the similarity in China of masses of prisoners being marched off to concentration camps.

Crimes against humanity that meet the UN definition of genocide are being inflicted by Chinese troops on their Turkic Uyghur minority in the so-called Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Charges include torture, forced sterilization and hair shaved from inmates and made into commercial products. Last month, US Customs seized 13 tons of human hair and other “beauty products” worth approximately $800,000 “from Uighurs in camps.”

The Perils of Pretending a War is Something Else Time to end the charade. David Horowitz

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/08/perils-pretending-war-something-else-david-horowitz/

If you haven’t noticed yet, our political life is rapidly descending into a series of charades with the potential for catastrophe. In case you think that a “charade” is just a parlor game, here is a dictionary definition: “an absurd pretense intended to create a pleasant or respectable appearance.” The peril created by false appearances in the current political climate is blindness in the face of the evil that threatens us.

Is there a person of sound mind in the entire country – Democrat or Republican – who thinks Joe Biden is mentally up to the job of leading a deeply divided nation, coping with a pandemic and facing threats from nuclear enemies like Russia and China, or terrorist regimes like Iran? Daily now, we are watching an already impaired individual, closeted in a basement, mentally deteriorating in front of our eyes, with a national election only three months away. And not one national figure is shouting “WTF?! What are the consequences for our country if we continue this charade?”

The mere fact that Biden’s candidacy to be commander-in-chief is supported by a major political party, whose leaders are appear before TV cameras daily reassuring voters his candidacy is normal – the mere fact of this absurdity should alarm every decent American who cares about our future. The reassurance by Democrats and their pundits – without a single objector – that Biden has the knowledge, experience and yah-da-da to stand up to the destructive leftists he is now allied with, or to defend the nation against its enemies or to lead us through all the crises we facet, is even scarier than the extreme policies – open borders for instance – that he has already endorsed.

Our Use of Nuclear Weapons 75 Years Ago Was a Moral and Strategic Imperative. Invading Japan was not a serious option. Neither was a negotiated peace. By Henry I. Miller, M.S., M.D.

https://humanevents.com/2020/08/05/our-use-of-nuclear-weapons-75-years-ago-was-a-moral-and-strategic-imperative/
EXCERPT
Americans are no strangers to times that ‘try men’s souls,’ to borrow a phrase from Thomas Paine. By mid-1945, we had been at war for three-and-a-half years, enduring the draft, mounting numbers of casualties, and rationing, with no end in sight. Many Americans were weary, not unlike our feelings now, after half a year of privations and anguish related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The historical context and military realities of 1945 are often forgotten when judging whether it was “necessary” for the United States to use nuclear weapons.

That sense of anxiety got me thinking about how WWII was suddenly—and to many, unexpectedly—resolved. August 6th will mark one of the United States’ most important anniversaries, memorable not only for what happened on that date in 1945 but for what did not happen.

What did happen was that the Enola Gay, an American B-29 Superfortress bomber, dropped Little Boy, a uranium-based atomic bomb, on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. That historic act hastened the end of World War II, which concluded within a week, after the August 9th detonation of Fat Man, a plutonium-based bomb, over Nagasaki. These were the only two nuclear weapons ever used in warfare.

I have two peripheral connections to those events. The first is that when Little Boy was dropped on Hiroshima, my father, a sergeant in the U.S. Army infantry who had fought in the Italian campaigns of WWII, was on a troopship, expecting to be deployed to the Pacific theater of operations. Neither he nor his fellow soldiers relished the prospect of participating in the impending invasion of the Japanese main islands. When the Japanese surrendered (on August 14th), the ship headed, instead, for Virginia, where the division was disbanded. (I was born two years later.)

My second connection was that during the 1960s, three of my M.I.T. physics professors had participated several decades earlier in the Manhattan Project, the military research program which developed the atomic bombs during the war. In class, one of these professors recalled that, after the first test explosion (code-named Trinity), he was assigned to drive Maj. Gen. Leslie Groves, the director of the project, to view the result. They arrived to find a crater 1,000 feet in diameter, and six feet deep, with the desert sand inside turned into glass by the intense heat. Gen. Groves’s response? “Is that all?”

Approximately 66,000 are thought to have died in Hiroshima from the acute effects of the Little Boy bomb, and about 39,000 in Nagasaki from the Fat Man device. In addition, there was a significant subsequent death toll due to the effects of radiation and wounds.

Shortly thereafter, the questions began: “was it really necessary?” The Monday-morning quarterbacks started to question the morality and military necessity of using nuclear weapons on Japanese cities. Even nuclear physicist Leo Szilard, who, in 1939, had written the letter for Albert Einstein‘s signature that resulted in the formation of the Manhattan Project, characterized the use of the bombs as “one of the greatest blunders of history.” Since then, there have been similar periodic eruptions of revisionism, uninformed speculation, and political correctness.

The historical context and military realities of 1945 are often forgotten when judging whether it was “necessary” for the United States to use nuclear weapons. The Japanese had been the aggressors, launching the war with a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, and systematically and flagrantly violating various international agreements and norms by employing biological and chemical warfare, the torture and murder prisoners of war, and the brutalization of civilians, including forcing them into prostitution and slave labor.

Leaving aside whether our enemy “deserved” to be attacked with the most fearsome weapons ever employed, sceptics are also quick to overlook the “humanitarian” and strategic aspects of the decision to use them.

Joe Biden’s Gibberish on How He’ll Approach China Is Both Hilarious and Scary By Matt Margolis

https://pjmedia.com/election/matt-margolis/2020/08/06/joe-bidens-gibberish-on-how-hell-approach-china-is-both-hilarious-and-scary-n759269

We love to laugh at Joe Biden’s gaffes, but now that he’s the presumptive Democratic nominee, and leading in several polls, are they really that funny anymore? I’ve previously compiled some concerning gaffes that raise questions about Biden’s cognitive decline, but a new video from Wednesday further raises questions about Biden’s mental state.

On Wednesday, while attempting to explain how he’d handle China, Biden just started rambling nonsensical gibberish. “The way Trump–the way China will respond is when we gather the rest of the world that in fact [unintelligible] in in fr- in in in in open trade and making sure that we’re in a position that the world uh that that we deal with WHO the right way that in fact that’s when things begin to change, that when China’s behavior is going to change.”

Wut?

You got to watch it to believe it.

Always Victims, Never Bullies By Bode Lang

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/08/always_victims_never_bullies.html

One of the best analogies I’ve ever heard came from Bill Whittle, who likened Democrats to a younger brother repeatedly poking his older brother.  After ignoring the first few pokes, the older brother eventually becomes agitated and slaps his younger brother’s hand away.  The younger brother cries to Mommy, demanding that his older brother be punished for his behavior.

We see this analogy routinely play out in politics, and while a seasoned mother may inquire about what preceded the hand-slapping, in our current political climate, that is a question we’re not supposed to ask. 

The Portland mayor cited Donald Trump sending in federal troops as the culprit for violence in Portland.  We are supposed to believe that before federal law enforcement arrived in Portland, “peaceful protesters” were holding hands, singing “Give Peace a Chance.”  We are not to ask what led to Trump sending in federal troops or make any mention of rampant violence and burning buildings prior to Trump’s actions.

When protesters tried to blockade a public road, a female driver attempted to maneuver past the crowd.  Aghast at the audacity of anyone unwilling to comply with their decision to ban any public street, at any time, the “peaceful protesters” miraculously transformed into a violent mob.  While jumping on the car, kicking, and hitting the vehicle, some rioters urged to get the “license plate and face” of the driver as they recorded the incident. 

Why do they tell others to get a view of the license plate number and driver’s face on camera?  To report her to the police. 

Help Lebanon: Remove Hezbollah’s Stranglehold — and Its Dangerous Missile Stockpiles By Seth J. Frantzman

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/help-lebanon-remove-hezbollahs-stranglehold-and-its-dangerous-missile-stockpiles/#slide-1

If Hezbollah does capitalize on this disaster, it will only accelerate Lebanon’s economic collapse, and hold the country hostage in a future war with Israel.

Beirut has been ravaged by a massive explosion, likely caused by careless handling of ammonium nitrate stored in a warehouse at its port. As the city is still picking through the debris and thousands search for loved ones, countries such as Turkey, Iran, Qatar, France, and Israel are rushing to provide support. Yet looming over Beirut even now is the presence of the terrorist group Hezbollah with its network of 150,000 missiles, many stored in civilian areas throughout the country.

While Hezbollah has not been blamed for the August 4 warehouse fire that led to the massive explosion, it is alleged to have imported and stored similar stockpiles of dangerous munitions and chemicals, such as ammonium nitrate, used in explosives. Hezbollah also helped create the corrupt and negligent political system whose lack of accountability enabled the careless storage of these deadly chemicals for years. For instance, a new report by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies asserts that Hezbollah siphons off billions from around the world into a kind of black market. Money is laundered through Lebanon, allowing Hezbollah to function as a kind of parallel state, one with its own terror army, missiles, companies, financial services, and social services

The recent explosion in Lebanon must invite increased scrutiny of the role Hezbollah has played in eroding state institutions and enabling the kind of shoddy negligence that led to this disaster. To shield itself, Hezbollah will scramble to respond, likely either casting blame or portraying itself as riding to the rescue. It has done this before. After launching an attack on Israel in 2006, Hezbollah used the war’s devastation to entrench and enrich itself. It did the same with the Syrian civil war in 2011, using the war next door as an excuse to send fighters to Syria and essentially conduct Lebanon’s foreign policy in place of the government.

Ex-Colleagues See Durham Dropping Bombshells Before Labor Day Paul Sperry

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2020/08/06/ex-colleagues_see_durham_dropping_bombshells_before_labor_day_124753.html

While much speculation inside the Beltway says U.S. Attorney John Durham will punt the results of his so-called Spygate investigation past the election to avoid charges of political interference, sources who have worked with Durham on past public corruption cases doubt he’ll bend to political pressure — and they expect him to drop bombshells before Labor Day.

Durham’s boss, Attorney General Bill Barr, also pushed back on the notion his hand-picked investigator would defer action. Under Democratic questioning on Capitol Hill last week, he refused to rule out a pre-election release.

“Under oath, do you commit to not releasing any report by Mr. Durham before the November election?” Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D-Fla.) asked Barr, citing longstanding Justice Department policy not to announce new developments in politically sensitive cases before an election.

“No,” the attorney general curtly replied.

Belarus on the Brink The country’s people are fed up with their dictator, and chaos could follow.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/belarus-on-the-brink-11596756409?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

Belarussian dictator Alexander Lukashenko is facing the most serious challenge to his quarter-century rule, but he won’t leave without a fight. Instability in the country of 9.5 million could open another front for Russian aggression along the European Union’s border.

Mr. Lukashenko prevented several rivals from running in this Sunday’s presidential election. But Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the wife of a banned candidate, has presented a surprisingly robust challenge. Tens of thousands have attended rallies to support Ms. Tikhanovskaya, who is running on pro-democratic reforms that would bring Belarus closer to the West. She also promises to resign after six months and order a fresh election.

Like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Mr. Lukashenko rules as an authoritarian but tries to derive legitimacy from unfair elections. Both men have seen their once genuine popularity decline thanks to economic mismanagement, frustration with curtailed political freedom, and especially a bungled response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Like his Russian counterpart, Mr. Lukashenko won’t accept any outcome but victory in rigged elections.

Independent observers have been detained while documenting thousands of election-law violations in early voting. If opposition supporters feel they’ve been robbed, as they almost certainly will, expect protests. Mr. Lukashenko won’t hesitate to violently suppress dissent, but the depth of public disdain means the demonstrators won’t back down easily.