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May 2021

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Biden ‘Leads from Behind’ on Opening the U.S.–Canada Border By John Fund

By on May 24th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/05/biden-leads-from-behind-on-opening-the-u-s-canada-border/

Ottawa continues to ban nonessential travel across its border with its southern neighbor. The closure no longer makes medical sense.

C anada is usually our leading trading partner, and ties between the two countries run deep. But they’ve been severed for the last 14 months by a closure of the U.S.–Canada border. The closure no longer makes medical sense.

The closure of the world’s longest international border has just been extended again. That is unlikely to change soon. Friends, relatives, and business associates have been separated. Americans who own vacation homes in Canada can’t maintain them.

The closure isn’t equal. Canadians are allowed to travel to the United States by air, but Americans aren’t allowed to cross the border for nonessential travel into Canada. A Canadian coming to the U.S. only needs to have had a negative coronavirus test no more than three days before travel, while Canada requires a hotel quarantine for those arriving by air. This is despite the U.S.’s comparable record on vaccinations and its better record on COVID-19 cases.

On the Canadian side, the closure has devastated border towns and destroyed tourism from the U.S., which sent more than 15 million arrivals in 2019.

An anti-American strain infects the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. “Canadians are boastful of their tolerance, but the reliable way so many will rush toward the worst possible interpretation of any American event reminds that when it comes to the United States, the dominant Canadian disposition is often closer to a form of unthinking bigotry,” writes Canadian journalist J. J. McCullough in the Washington Post. Indeed, the Canadian historian Frank Underhill once mused that Americans are benevolently ignorant of Canada, while Canadians are malevolently knowledgeable about the United States.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Cutting costs and cultivating free speech will put higher education on the right path Rep. Greg Murphy (R-N.C.-District 3)

By on May 24th, 2021

https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/education/553668-cutting-costs-and-cultivating-free-speech-will-put-higher

As a 25-year affiliate professor of surgery, as well as a former member of a liberal arts college’s Board of Trustees, higher education has been a long-term concern of mine. The critical task of preparing the next generation of Americans to become leaders is one of the utmost importance. Now, as the ranking member of the House Education Committee Higher Education and Workforce Investment Subcommittee, I am honored to lead on initiatives that improve American colleges and universities.

It is the overwhelming consensus that the cost of college tuition is far too high. At the end of the 4th quarter in 2020, federal student loan borrowers owed $1.57 trillion. This tremendous burden is second only to outstanding mortgage debt. More troubling, the rising cost of tuition in America has far outpaced the rise in the price of other consumer goods in the past 30 years. There are several reasons for this.

Salaries for compliance officers, diversity coaches, and all kind of other administrative staff — which I more appropriately term “administrative bloat” — have soared in recent decades. Between 1993 and 2007, these costs jumped by 61.2 percent compared to an increase of only 39.3 percent in academic instructional costs. Although most students may not use many of the unnecessary amenities offered at colleges and universities, they still foot the bill for it. Cutting these costs would save students money. There are also many new majors that offer little, if any, chance of future employment. While classes in those disciplines may be beneficial for a broad education, they do not need to be majors. Higher education has lost their way on how to spend students’ monies responsibly. This reckless spending spree needs to cease.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Back to Iran’s Nuclear Future The U.S. barrels toward a repeat of the Obama deal despite no inspector access to crucial sites.

By on May 24th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/back-to-irans-nuclear-future-11621806279?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

The news in the Middle East these days suddenly seems like a return to circa 2014. Israel and the U.S. are at odds over the Palestinians, America is courting Iran, and the Abraham Accords between Israel and the Arabs get the back of America’s hand.

In other words, President Biden is rejecting the Trump strategy that focused on containing Iran and forging closer ties among America’s traditional allies. Team Biden is returning to the Obama calculation that engaging Iran is the key to reducing America’s footprint in the Middle East, even if it means creating anxiety for Israel and the Gulf Arabs.

***

Nowhere is this clearer than in the hell-bent U.S. attempt to revive the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. A revival of the agreement will reshape the Middle East for years—and not to the benefit of U.S. interests.

Donald Trump left the 2015 deal three years ago and pursued a “maximum-pressure” sanctions campaign. The new economic restrictions targeted Iran’s nuclear malfeasance, as well as its support for terrorism abroad and violation of human rights at home. An isolated Iranian economy contracted 6% in 2018 and 6.8% in 2019, and Tehran responded by stepping up nuclear activity proscribed by the deal.

Rather than seeking a better deal as the Islamic Republic struggles with domestic unrest, Iranian and American diplomats have spent more than six weeks in Vienna negotiating through intermediaries a way back to the nuclear deal. The Biden Administration is sending stronger signals by the week that it will give up most of its leverage over Tehran to get a deal.

By one count, Mr. Trump imposed sanctions on more than 700 Iranian officials and entities—including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran’s national oil company and central bank. Iran says it wants all sanctions lifted before it will halt its illicit nuclear activities. That would amount to a multibillion dollar payout for reducing its stockpile of increasingly pure uranium. The knowledge Iranian scientists have gained from activating advanced centrifuges can’t be reversed.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Forgetting Justice Marshall An Illinois law school drops his name as the left turns on the Court.

By on May 24th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/forgetting-justice-marshall-11621806240?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

The University of Illinois board of trustees last week entered a no-confidence vote against America’s greatest Supreme Court Chief Justice. Starting in July, the John Marshall Law School in Chicago will be known simply as the University of Illinois Chicago School of Law. The press release cites Marshall’s “role as a slave trader, slave owner of hundreds of slaves, pro-slavery jurisprudence, and racist views.”

This is the go-to progressive indictment of American historical figures. Never mind that Marshall’s muscular jurisprudence as Chief Justice from 1801 to 1835 forged a national government and economy powerful enough to finally smash slavery a generation after his death.

The U.S. is awash in iconoclasm, from Washington, D.C.’s bid to erase Benjamin Franklin from a city building, to the San Francisco school board’s vote to rename Abraham Lincoln High School. But the astonishing progressive turn on Marshall—law blogger Josh Blackman notes another law school may also cut ties—carries its own significance, intended or not.

Marshall’s legacy is at the heart of current Supreme Court debates. In a speech last month cautioning against Court-packing, Justice Stephen Breyer appealed to Marshall’s legal authority. He explained how Marshall deftly “strengthened the norm of judicial review” despite resistance from Presidents Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Columbia Prep students and parents reel after class on ‘porn literacy’ By Dana Kennedy

By on May 24th, 2021

https://nypost.com/2021/05/22/columbia-prep-students-parents-reel-from-porn-liter

Parents at the posh Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School are outraged they were never told of a fourth “R” being added to the curriculum: raunch.

In addition to the usual reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic, the school this month launched lessons on porn — without informing families or allowing them to opt out, parents fumed.

When juniors at the $47,000-a-year Manhattan school showed up for a health and sexuality workshop, most thought it was “just going to be about condoms or birth control,” a student told The Post.

Instead, it was something called “Pornography Literacy: An intersectional focus on mainstream porn,” taught by Justine Ang Fonte, who’s the director of Health & Wellness at another elite prep school, Dalton.

The often-explicit slide presentation and lecture by Fonte to the 120 boys and girls included lessons on how porn takes care of “three big male vulnerabilities”; statistics on the “orgasm gap” showing straight women have far fewer orgasms with their partners than gay men or women; and photos of partially-nude women, some in bondage, to analyze “what is porn and what is art.”

Justine Ang Fonte claims her teachings stem from the social theory “intersectionality”, a component from critical race theory.
Twitter

Fonte’s presentation, some of which was seen by The Post, included a list of the most searched pornographic terms of 2019, including “creampie,” “anal,” “gangbang,” “stepmom” and more.

One slide cited various porn genres such as “incest-themed,” consensual or “vanilla,” “barely legal,” and “kink and BDSM” (which included “waterboard electro” torture porn as an example).

“We were all like, ‘What?’” a female student said. “Everyone was texting each other, ‘What the hell is this? It’s so stupid.’ Everyone knows about porn. The worst part of it was that it took place not long before the AP tests and I had to miss both my AP classes for this.”

One part of the porn presentation involved something called the “marketability of Only Fans,” the hot new app used mostly for sex work. One slide included a photo of a pretty young woman who appeared to be promoting OnlyFans-type work.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

“Settler Colonialism”: More Of The Usual Progressive Racism And Hatred Of Freedom Francis Menton

By on May 24th, 2021

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2021-5-22-settler-colonialism-more-of-t

Several years ago, in connection with a family trip to Israel, I looked into the issue of Israeli “settlements” in the areas of East Jerusalem and the West Bank. I then had a post in June 2017 titled “Do You Know The Difference Between ‘Settlers’ And ‘Immigrants’?” .

The Israeli settlements, and the “settlers” who inhabit them, have come in for constant attacks from the international left, culminating in condemnation from a UN Security Council resolution in 2016. The resolution was approved by a 14-0 vote in 2016 (on which vote the U.S., during President Obama’s tenure, abstained, rather than exercising its right to veto). Yet viewed in a broader context, the Israeli settlements are a tiny part of annual migrations of millions of people around the world, going from one political jurisdiction to another. All, or nearly all, of these other migrations are applauded by the international left. Indeed, these other migrations are applauded even when they are clearly violative of the law of the destination — illegal immigration into the United States being the most prominent example.

So what makes the Israeli settlers so subject to widespread condemnation while other migrants are applauded? I thought the answer was not difficult to discern, but the intervening years made things even more obvious. In those years we have seen the ascent of another one of these trendy academic concepts, this one going by the name of “settler colonialism.” The basic idea is that you can tell the difference between (bad) “settler colonialists” and other (good) immigrants by a combination of racial identity and hatred of places that practice freedom-based economic systems.

But how do we know where to draw the line between the “settlers” and the “immigrants”? You can count on the left to take this immediately to the extreme. On May 19 the Black Lives Matter group tweeted its support for “Palestinians” in the current conflict between Israel and Hamas, and in the process associated Israel itself with the term “settler colonialism”:

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BOOKS, ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Fake Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom by Dr. Patrick Moore

By on May 24th, 2021

Here is Dr. Patrick Moore’s description of his unique thesis as presented in “Fake Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom”.

“It dawned on me one day that most of the scare stories in the media today are based on things that are either invisible, like CO2 and radiation, or very remote, like polar bears and coral reefs. Thus, the average person cannot observe and verify the truth of these claims for themselves. They must rely on activists, the media, politicians, and scientists – all of whom have a huge financial and/or political interest in the subject – to tell them the truth. This is my effort, after 50 years as a scientist and environmental activist, to expose the misinformation and outright lies used to scare us and our children about the future of the Earth. Direct observation is the very basis of science. Without verified observation it is not possible to know the truth. That is the sharp focus of this book.”

The book contains 98 color photographs, illustrations, and charts. A key target audience is parents who do not approve of the “progressive” school curriculum and its alarmism about the future of civilization and the natural world. Dr. Moore hopes these parents will read his book and pass it on to their high-school and older children to give them an alternative to the bleak future predicted by the prophets of doom. Many other audiences will also find the book informative and convincing.

In 11 chapters the reader is clearly shown that citizens are being misinformed by many environmental doomsday prophesies, ones they cannot verify for themselves. We are told that nuclear energy is very dangerous when the numbers prove it is one of the safest technologies. We are told polar bears will go extinct soon when their population has been growing steadily for nearly 50 years. We are told that there is something harmful in genetically modified food crops when it is invisible, has no name and no chemical formula. We are told severe forest fires are caused by climate change when they are actually caused by poor management of fuel load (dead wood) in the forest. We are told that all the coral reefs will die by 2100 when in fact the most diverse coral reefs are found in the warmest oceans in the world. And of course, we are told that invisible CO2 from using fossil fuels, accounting for more than 80 percent of our energy supply, will make the Earth too hot for life. All of these scare stories, and many more, are simply not true. And this book will convince you, your family, and your colleagues of that. There is no substitute for the truth.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Georgia Judge Approves Audit Of 145,000 Absentee Ballots In Fulton County By Tim Pearce

By on May 24th, 2021

https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-georgia-judge-approves-audit-of-145000-absentee-ballots-in-fulton-county?itm_s

A judge in Georgia unsealed roughly 145,000 absentee ballots from the November election for review in a Friday ruling.

The ballots must remain with Fulton County election officials throughout the audit, and the results of the review cannot impact the outcome of the November election, Henry County Superior Court Judge Brian Amero said. The plaintiffs in the case accepted the terms, saying that the review is still needed after controversial behavior by Fulton County election officials last year, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

“Friday’s decision came in a lawsuit filed by nine plaintiffs, including Garland Favorito, a Fulton county resident and self-styled election watchdog,” the Journal-Constitution reported. “It’s one of more than 30 Georgia lawsuits stemming from the November presidential election and the January runoff for U.S. Senate. Some of the lawsuits are still winding their way through the courts.”

Former Sen. Kelly Loeffler, who now leads the voter registration group Greater Georgia Action after losing a runoff election in January, cheered the judge’s ruling in a statement:

Voter confidence in our election system is the bedrock of our republic. Unfortunately, inconsistencies in Fulton County’s November 2020 absentee ballots cast serious doubt on voters’ faith in our elections. An independent investigation even characterized Fulton County’s absentee ballot handling as ‘generally bad management.’ While there is a dire need to investigate a number of other well-documented issues, we must also inspect Fulton County’s absentee ballots to reassure Georgians that their voices are heard and their votes are counted. The integrity of future elections is critical, and Judge Amero’s decision is a helpful step in restoring transparency, accountability, and voter confidence. We look forward to the findings and their role in promoting transparency and rebuilding faith in our elections.

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P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

The Revolution Comes to Juilliard Racial hysteria is consuming the school; unchecked, it will consume the arts.Heather Mac Donald

By on May 24th, 2021

https://www.city-journal.org/racial-hysteria-is-consuming-juilliard?wallit_nosession=1

Turn on CNN or open the New York Times, and you may encounter someone explaining how exhausting it is to be a black person. The idea that systemic racism is leaving blacks scarred and spent has been embraced across mainstream America, articulated by corporate CEOs and university presidents. The latest performative assertion of black oppression is playing out at the Juilliard School in New York City. The controversy has significance beyond the school.

In September 2020, the Juilliard School’s Drama Division announced a series of “community meetings” to address “Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging (EDIB) issues.” The school’s growing cadre of diversity bureaucrats would discuss Juilliard’s’ “anti-racism work.” The head of the Center for Racial Healing would give a presentation. Workshops would address such topics as “race in rehearsal” and “voice and speech and race.” NYU theater professor Michael McElroy, one of the school’s two external diversity consultants, would offer a three-day seminar in black musical culture.

These Drama Division meetings were part of Juilliard’s broader effort to bring race into all its activities, including music and dance. Damian Woetzel, former principal dancer with the New York City Ballet, became Juilliard’s president in July 2018 and proceeded to put increasing bureaucratic clout behind the concept that Juilliard has a racism problem. The school added diversity curricula and audition requirements. It beefed up its system for reporting bias incidents. It mandated diversity workshops for faculty and students.

Those efforts picked up steam after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020. Within a week, Woetzel and the EDIB taskforce had sent out three schoolwide emails on the “work” Juilliard still needed to do to become an “anti-racist community.” The school sponsored a blacks-only “healing” space. It recommended that students and faculty read the books of Ta-Nehisi Coates, Robin DiAngelo, Ibram X. Kendi, and Michelle Alexander to understand systemic racism. On June 11, 2020, Juilliard’s provost, Ara Guzelimian, circulated a student petition. Lending an administration email account to a student communiqué violated school protocol, but the Juilliard Student Congress’s “Call to Action” was important enough to justify the exception, wrote Guzelimian in his cover letter.

The Call to Action charged Juilliard with “systemic injustice.” It demanded an end to the school’s “almost completely Eurocentric” faculty, curriculum, and performances and a “complete in-person season featuring the works of BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, and People of Color] artists.” It called on Juilliard to create #BreonnaTaylor and #GeorgeFloyd scholarships in music, drama, and dance.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Inside the Dems’ betrayal of Israel Michael Goodwin

By on May 24th, 2021

https://nypost.com/2021/05/22/inside-the-democrats-betrayal-of-israel-goodwin/

As presidential press releases go, this one was very short and enormously consequential. Eleven minutes after Israel declared its independence on May 14, 1948, the  White House issued a two-sentence statement.

The first said simply, “This Government has been informed that a Jewish state has been proclaimed in Palestine and recognition has been requested by the provisional Government thereof.”

The second sentence made history: “The United States recognizes the provisional government as the de facto authority of the State of Israel.”

It was signed “Harry Truman.”

The president’s decision made America the first country to recognize the new nation and made him a hero to Jews around the world. It also helped make the Democrat Party a reliable ally of Israel for decades as war after war threatened its survival.

Unfortunately, Truman would not recognize his party today.

An anti-Israel faction has taken root among Democrats and was on full display during Israel’s recent clash with Hamas. Because that faction is largely synonymous with the party’s ascendant far-left wing, more moderate Dems are increasingly afraid to speak up for Israel, just as they are afraid to speak up against the emergence of socialism and anti-white racism in their party.

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