Displaying posts published in

June 2021

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Election 2021 In Iran, Where Murderers Still Rule Farideh Goudarzi

By on June 17th, 2021

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/06/16/election-2021-in-iran-where-murderers-still-rule/

On June 18, the mullahs in Iran will hold their presidential “elections.” It’s almost universally accepted that genuine elections are anathema to the ruling religious dictatorship. This year, if the International Criminal Court were to do its job, the candidates would essentially be called in to form a police line up. They are a who’s who of mass murderers, international terrorists, thieves and embezzlers.

The frontrunner is Ebrahim Raisi. I first saw him when I was being tortured as a young woman in the 1980s — as I was pregnant.

Let me set the context first. For the Iranian people, Raisi’s name is synonymous with the 1988 massacre, when it is estimated that at least 30,000 political prisoners were brutally murdered in prisons across Iran simply for promoting democracy After Raisi announced his candidacy this month, young Iranians took to social media in protest and the hashtag “1988 Henchman Raisi” (in Farsi) quickly started to trend.

In 1988, the 28-year-old Raisi became a notorious member of the “Death Commissions,” appointed by former Supreme Leader Khomeini, to round up thousands of political dissidents in prisons. The majority of those killed, including teenage girls and pregnant women, expressed open support for the main democratic opposition Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK).

Amnesty International has called it an ongoing crime against humanity because the regime dumped the bodies in unmarked mass graves and has been covering up the evidence ever since. Last year, several top United Nations human rights officials called for a long overdue international probe into the 1988 massacre.

Now, one of the main perpetrators is running for president. After all, this is a regime that is at war with the Iranian people.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Biden’s Creeping Police State

By on June 17th, 2021

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/06/17/bidens-creeping-police-state/

Most Americans believe in law and order. But they don’t believe that the federal government should suppress their entirely legitimate political beliefs. Which is exactly what the Biden administration’s now doing.

We all count on robust public safety. Every one of us. Unfortunately, taking a page from Critical Race Theory, President Joe Biden seems to think – or, his far-left aides do, anyway – that the only people who need to be watched are non-Democrats and those on the right.

How else to explain his recently released “strategy” for fighting domestic terrorism? In March, Biden’s National Security Council determined “that domestic violent extremism posed a ‘heightened threat’ in 2021.”

“Today’s domestic terrorists espouse a range of violent ideological motivations, including racial or ethnic bigotry and hatred as well as anti-government or anti-authority sentiment,” the document said.

Go through it and you’ll see all of the examples are so-called right-wing militias and even the misguided Jan. 6 demonstrators at our nation’s Capitol.

There are no mentions or even allusions in Biden’s “National Strategy” to the literally hundreds of riots and dozens of killings that accompanied the far-left uprisings in more than 140 cities across our nation over the the last year, perpetrated by Black Lives Matter and Antifa and heartily supported by leftist Democrats.

Continue reading →
EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Backlash to Critical Race Theory Is on The Way Sumantra Maitra,

By on June 17th, 2021

https://www.realcleareducation.com/2021/06/14/the_backlash_to_critical_race_theory_is_on_the_way_50031.html

Michelle Goldberg complains in the pages of The New York Times about how it is the left wing that is currently a victim of cancel culture—thanks to the right, which is trying to destroy “critical race theory.”

Sounding alarm at the global counter-movement, she writes that

Critical race theory, the intellectual tradition undergirding concepts like white privilege and microaggressions, is often blamed for fomenting what critics call cancel culture. And so, around America and even overseas, people who don’t like cancel culture are on an ironic quest to cancel the promotion of critical race theory in public forums.

What are some examples of cancellations? Donald Trump’s order to cancel federal critical race theory propaganda, now reversed by the Biden administration, and the state-led fightbacks in Great Britain and France. 

Goldberg is not the only one being swept away in this narrative. Jeffrey Sachs is bitter in the pages of Arc Digital on why the left is the original victim. Apparently, government after government is legislating the woke out of academy. Not just right-wing regimes such as Poland, Hungary, or Brazil, but also Britain, France and, of course, state governments in the United States. 

But is that purge actually happening? Some differences can be seen in K-12 education and higher education, but the rejection of critical race theory, and the supposed threat this rejection represents, is vastly exaggerated. 

Sachs cites Republican leadership targeting critical race theory in the states, such as a proposed New Hampshire bill discussing “harmful divisive concepts,” similar bills in West Virginia and Oklahoma, and bills in Georgia that would bar schools from teaching about pseudoscientific concepts like oppression and privilege. 

Likewise in Arkansas, a bill might be introduced to stop any school from offering anything that foments division between races and classes. Missouri, Arkansas, South Dakota, and Mississippi have introduced bills banning the 1619 Project. Iowa is proposing a ban on the 1619 project, as well as informing parents whenever schools plan on asking pronouns from their children. Goldberg raises similar objections to these proposals. 

A few of those bills have become law, such as H.B. 3979 in Texas, but most have only been proposed, are currently being debated, or have died/been withdrawn. 

Continue reading →
EDUCATION Comments turned off

Washington and Lee University has decided to continue under its current name, disappointing advocates who wanted to see the institution reject namesake Robert E. Lee. By Lilah Burke

By on June 17th, 2021

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/06/07/washington-and-lee-maintain-name-face-opposition?utm_campaign=https:

After much conversation, pushback and debate, the Board of Trustees at Washington and Lee University has voted not to change the institution’s name. The latter part of the name honors Robert E. Lee, commander of the Confederate States Army and former president of the institution. The board voted 22 to 6.

The name had been the topic of serious conversation at Washington and Lee for the past few years, and advocacy for a change was redoubled after the murder of George Floyd. In the wake of national protests, many colleges and universities re-evaluated their institutions and made changes to symbols and traditions.

The board took up the issue last July and said it would consider and vote on the decision this month.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Critical Race Theory Will Destroy Our Military Dakota Wood 

By on June 17th, 2021

https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/06/16/critical-race-theory-will-destroy-our-military/

Dakota Wood, senior research fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Center for National Defense and the editor of Heritage’s “Index of U.S. Military Strength. Previously, he served for two decades in the U.S. Marine Corp.

As a young Marine Corps first lieutenant assigned to an infantry battalion in the late 1980s, I had charge of the unit transport section of operators, mechanics, and supervisors tasked with taking care of our fleet of combat vehicles.

This group of Marines, like all with whom I served over a 20-year military career, was a wonderful cross section of America representing all walks of life.

My maintenance and operations chiefs were American Samoan and an African American, respectively. Our collection of more junior Marines included blacks, whites, and Latinos, young men from Texas, New Jersey, California, and West Virginia, among others.

They came from the city and the country, from poor and middle-class families. Some were Catholic, others Protestant, and some had no strong affiliation with any organized religion.

In the maintenance bay, on the equipment lot, or in the field we would hear a musical mix of country, rock and roll, heavy metal, and rap.

Everyone pitched in to accomplish the mission during unit fitness runs, shop clean-up, preparing for inspections, embarking equipment for deployments to Japan and South Korea, and supporting battalion operations during training and exercise events.

Everything just worked and worked well. Why?

Because they were all Marines, wearing the same uniform, supporting the same combat organization, serving the same country. They all had been through the same training. They had to measure up to the same standards. They had to make the same cutoff scores for promotion.

Continue reading →
ISRAEL Comments turned off

Murder on the Tel Aviv Beach … The strange, unsolved—and ominous—mystery of Chaim Arlosoroff Daniel Gordis

By on June 17th, 2021

https://danielgordis.substack.com/p/murder-on-the-tel-aviv-beach-?token=eyJ

Just after dark on the evening of June 16, 1933 (88 years ago today, precisely), Chaim Arlosoroff and his wife, Sima, went for a stroll on the Tel Aviv beach.

Arlosoroff was the head of the Jewish Agency’s political department and effectively the foreign minister of the yishuv, the pre-state Jewish community of Palestine. As he and Sima walked along the beach, two men approached out of the dark, one shining a flashlight in Arlosoroff’s face while the other pulled out a gun and fired. Arlosoroff died on the operating table a few hours later.

We’ll never know if Arlosoroff would have been killed had he not, years earlier, had an affair with the woman who would become the wife of Joseph Goebbels (Hitler’s infamous Minister of Propaganda.) We’ll come back to that very strange twist, or tryst, below. But what we do know is that Arlosoroff was the first political assassination in the history of the yishuv/Israel. He’s worth recalling today not only for that, but even more ominously, because segments of Israeli society seem determined to replicate the circumstances that led to his murder.

In an earlier posting, “Picture the protesters, they’re worth a thousand terrifying words,” we spoke about the political environment that had Israel in its grips as the Yair Lapid / Naftali Bennett coalition seemed to be taking shape. Not much has changed since then. True, Israel has made it past some hurdles: whether you like the coalition or not, Israel at least has a government, and might succeed in passing a budget for the first time in two years. Bennett has managed to stay alive not only politically, but actually alive, thanks to Shin Bet security that he was provided earlier than would otherwise have been the case.

But the accusations of treason are hardly over. At yesterday’s Flag Parade in Jerusalem, which mercifully passed without major incident, one could see more than a few protesters holding up signs with the words “Bennett, shakran”—Bennett, The Liar. That, of course, is precisely what was said about Rabin, who was also, like Bennett, called a traitor.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Distinguishing Respect From Patronizing Condescension In Matters Of Race Francis Menton

By on June 17th, 2021

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2021-6-15-distinguishing-respect-from-patronizing-condescension-in-matters-of-race

In our current national moment, distinguishing respectful conduct or language toward others from patronizing condescension in matters of race is of great importance. You might think that making this distinction would be easy, but I suggest that in many circumstances it is not easy at all.

Recently, many things that have become the latest fashion in what practitioners think is heightened respect appear to me to be exactly the opposite — condescension. That can be the case even where the respect-that-is-really-condescension is demanded by the recipient. And I am not the only one noticing this phenomenon.

Let’s consider a few examples.

Several weeks ago Princeton University announced that an intermediate knowledge of Greek or Latin would no longer be required for a major in Classics. John McWhorter discusses that decision in a June 10 essay at Substack with the title “Revisiting Classics at Princeton: Exempting Black Kids From Challenge Is Lousy Antiracism.”

McWhorter opens by quoting Princeton’s own statement about the change to show that “of especial interest to black students . . . today’s racial reckoning, . . . the department openly acknowledges, was the primary spur for this change.” It seems that, with the Greek and Latin language requirement, the Princeton Classics Department had difficulty attracting black students to the major. McWhorter comments:

The tacit idea is people guilty about their white privilege saying over a Zoom meeting “If we want to have more black students, we can’t be making people learn Greek and Latin anymore.” Ugh – see how that reads when exposed to the sunlight? . . . Anything but that patronizing condescension. . . . [A]ny public discussion that both reviles the idea that black people are less intelligent than others while also lustily demanding that it’s “racist” to submit black people to cognitive challenges is hopelessly incoherent. . . . [T]his exemption culture is premised on a basic assumption that it’s unsavory to require serious challenge of black students Because Racism. No. You don’t get past racism by creating new forms of it. Scrapping traditional challenges should only be on the table after black kids have mastered the challenge anyway.

Continue reading →
EDUCATION Comments turned off

This Florida Mom Who Spoke Out Against CRT In Schools Warns Parents To Be Vigilant About Curriculum By Paulina Enck

By on June 17th, 2021

https://thefederalist.com/2021/06/16/this-florida-mom-who-spoke-out-against-crt-in-schools-warns-parents-to-be-vigilant-about-curriculum/

Quisha King is not going to sit by and allow her children, or anyone else’s, to be indoctrinated into the racist lies of critical race theory without putting up a fight. The Floridian mother of two went viral from a speech she made at a school board meeting, in which she spoke in favor of Gov. Ron DeSantis’s proposal to ban critical race theory from public schools in Florida, which the state Board of Education passed unanimously last week.

Many states are not so lucky, however, with the racist ideology being enacted in schools across the country, in both blatant and subtle ways, from prep schools in New York and New Jersey to government primary schools in the Midwest.

I spoke with King about her activism to prevent these racist lies from pervading schools. That viral speech is far from the start of her fight, as she noted: “I’ve been learning about CRT for over a year now, and I’ve been seeing a lot of the policies that are being pushed onto our children from the school board. I have been speaking at local school board meetings as well about CRT and them putting our children down, essentially. Putting them in these ‘oppressor,’ ‘oppressed’ categories. When I saw that a vote was coming up, I thought it was important that I make my voice known.”

“I know a lot of parents feel the same way I do, but some are just, quite frankly, a little intimidated or scared to speak up about it,” she added.

As a mother of two black children, King is particularly concerned about how critical race theory will harm black kids, who are being told they are less capable and will accomplish less than their white peers, due solely to their skin color.

“That is destructive for any young mind to believe that they can never rise up to the level of their own dreams, goals, and the things that they want to accomplish,” King said. “I think that’s a terrible way to start kids off into life, by telling them they are oppressed, especially today. Black Americans are the most successful black people in the entire world, so why in the world would we tell black children or any child that they are oppressed? If you tell a child they can’t do something, eventually, they won’t even try.”

One of King’s children attends public school while the other attends private school, thanks to school choice.

Continue reading →
FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

At NATO And G7, Biden Advances An ‘America Last’ Foreign Policy By John Daniel Davidson

By on June 17th, 2021

https://thefederalist.com/2021/06/16/at-nato-and-g7-biden-advances-an-america-last-foreign-policy/ 

President Biden’s first foreign trip wasn’t just an embarrassing disaster, it heralds the return of the disastrous foreign policy of the Obama-Biden era.

The most important takeaway from the recent G7 and NATO summits in Europe isn’t President Biden’s many embarrassing and unsettling mental lapses, long pauses, and rambling non sequiturs, but the clear message coming out of these meetings: the United States is returning to an Obama-Biden era “America Last” foreign policy that puts the interests of multilateral institutions and international partnerships above the interests of the American people.

That policy shift was perhaps best encapsulated in a quip from President Emmanuel Macron of France, who said of Biden, “It is great to have a U.S. president who’s part of the club and very willing to cooperate.” And of course it’s true. At the close of the G7 Summit, Biden boasted that America is “back at the table,” and described the summit as “extraordinarily collaborative.”

So what did this extraordinarily collaborative club manage to accomplish? One of the G7’s most pressing tasks heading into the summit was what, if anything, it would do about an aggressive and intransigent China. What the group settled on was doing almost nothing.

With each passing week it becomes more obvious that COVID-19 almost certainly originated in a lab in Wuhan, China. We can’t say for sure because the Chinese Communist Party has been blocking efforts to discover the origins of the virus ever since the outbreak began. But at this point, with zero evidence that the virus emerged naturally, the answer seems obvious enough.

Yet all the G7 could manage was a tepid call for a new World Health Organization-backed study on COVID’s origins, as if another investigation by the compromised WHO will yield something more. The G7 also cooked up a plan to dump $40 trillion into infrastructure (a bill likely to be footed largely by American taxpayers) for the developing world to compete with China’s Belt and Road initiative.

Continue reading →
EDUCATION Comments turned off

You’re Not Woke, So You Can’t Play By George Leef

By on June 17th, 2021

A college player on the women’s volleyball team has been kicked off because she didn’t agree with the leftist ideology being force-fed to the team.

The absurdity of American higher education is on display at the University of Oklahoma. As we read in this Campus Reform story, a player on the women’s volleyball team has been kicked off because she didn’t agree with the leftist ideology being force-fed to the team.

So even athletics are now controlled by people who demand conformity to the foolish tenets of diversity and social justice. No matter if you’re a good player — if you think wrong thoughts, you are not wanted.

The player, Kylee McLaughlin, is suing the university for a minimum of $75,000, plus legal fees. Let’s hope this gets to the jury and the jurors decide to let the defendants know what they think about this astounding intolerance. Perhaps some administrator at OU will remember the Oberlin case and settle fast.

Continue reading →