Displaying the most recent of 90879 posts written by

Ruth King

Authoritarianism in the Air Peter Smith

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2021/07/authoritarianism-in-the-air/

Up until a few days ago I was sticking with Glady Berejiklian. This current ridiculous lockdown tested my resolve. But then, I thought, let’s look at the unenviable position political leaders have put themselves in.

First, they slavishly followed China in adopting lockdowns. Bear in mind that this is the first time in the history of epidemics that general lockdowns have been applied. And, I understand, none were ever contemplated.

Don’t want to be conspiratorial but those fake pictures from China showing people dropping down in the street had a purpose. People shown being rounded up and locked in their homes had a purpose. A safe assumption: the Chinese communists are not stupid. An equally safe assumption: they calculate what they do and what they show.

My conclusion is that they wanted the Western world to cripple itself. Of course, they had help from Neil Ferguson and his fellow Imperial College (UK) hysterics in mid-March 2020. Mind you, even they, in their report, did not recommend general lockdowns. True, it is mentioned in passing, but it is not part of the “suppression strategy” which they advocated.

Unsurprisingly, California was one of the first to go full monty. Fauci and epidemiologists around the world soon got on board. What power, basking in the limelight with politicians and the media in thrall! A heady brew.

Second, political leaders, to a man and woman, hid behind medical gurus.  Not our fault you are thrown out of work, your business ruined, they claimed. Blame the expert advice. Follow “the science”.

Powerful political leaders, thinking at first that they were calling the shots, quickly became pawns in the game. To use New South Wales as the example, when Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant says jump, it is now clear that Gladys jumps. I could equally have cited many others, including England’s chief medical officer, Professor Chris Whitty. Sure, Boris Johnson was recalcitrant at first but after a personal dose of COVID he soon started paying obeisance to the chief.

Boston: Muslim Who Stabbed Rabbi Is ‘Violent’ and ‘Very Much Anti-Semitic’ The cops are still baffled as to his motive, of course. Robert Spencer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/07/boston-muslim-who-stabbed-rabbi-violent-and-very-robert-spencer/

Khaled Awad stabbed Rabbi Shlomo Noginski eight times on Thursday afternoon. Predictably, International Business Times reported on Saturday that “police have yet to establish the motive for the stabbing, and the investigation into the incident continues.” Yeah, this one is a real head-scratcher. Khaled Awad doesn’t seem to be a “white supremacist,” but what else could he possibly be? Help us, Merrick Garland, help us!

Garland has so far remained mum, but Awad’s old roommates and friends at the University of Southern Florida have been more forthright. CBS reported Friday that one of Awad’s old school chums, Eric Valiente, said that while they were in college together, Awad “started becoming violent.” And not only that: “He was very much anti-Semitic. He would say like all types of Jewish jokes. I thought he was joking at first and then I started to see seriousness in his comments. He disgusted me at that point. I wanted nothing to do with the guy. At this point, I was a little scared of him. I was scared of what he was capable of because I realize he was a very dark person.”

Awad got so violent, in fact, that his roommate, Aidan Anderson, moved out and got a restraining order against him. Before that, “we were friends, to be honest with you,” Anderson recalled. “I’m Jewish. And he knew that since I moved in.”

Might that have been why Awad began to get violent? After all, around the time of the recent conflict between Hamas and Israel, Palestinian Muslims and their supporters committed acts of violence against Jews and supporters of Israel all over the United States. In New York City, a Muslim mob screaming “Allahu akbar” attacked a Jewish man in midtown Manhattan. Also in Manhattan, Palestinians threatened violence and screamed anti-Semitic slurs at Jews. One threw a mini-firebomb. Pro-jihad protesters stormed a restaurant and spat on Jewish patrons; one of the thugs threw a bottle. A Muslim, Waseem Awawdeh, was arrested for viciously beating a Jew in Times Square.

In Los Angeles, Palestinian protesters asked people dining at the Sushi Fumi restaurant if they were Jewish, and proceeded to attack them with knives. Elsewhere in Los Angeles, two cars festooned with Palestinian flags chased a Jewish man down a street as he was leaving his synagogue.

Dr. Fauci, America’s Fallen Idol The decline of Dr. Doom.Jeff Crouere

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/07/dr-fauci-americas-fallen-idol-jeff-crouere/

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Director of the National Institute of Allergy, and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), has been a constant fixture in the media since the outbreak of COVID-19 in late 2019. 

Despite the relaxation of mandates and the falling virus death rates in the United States, Fauci continues to generate media attention.  

He loves the media, and they love his “doom and gloom” message. In recent weeks, Fauci has been advocating for all Americans to vaccinate, including young people, and warning about the dangers of new variants.

This week, he appeared on a video for President Joe Biden. He called the “Delta variant” even more dangerous than the original virus. Fauci claimed it was “more transmissible” and a “variant of concern” especially to young people. The message was to get vaccinated “before it’s too late.”

This dire warning is in direct contrast to the evidence released in the United Kingdom. Their latest government report shows the fatality rate for the “Delta variant” to be 0.1%, lower than the “Alpha,” “Beta” and “Eta” variants. Why would Dr. Fauci misrepresent the threat of this new variant? Possibly to continue the COVID-19 public hysteria and his role as the media darling.  

Fauci has served in his position since 1984, decades too long. There are good reasons to limit how long politicians and leaders of government bureaucracies should remain in office. It is an effective protection against corruption. After 37 years, Fauci has accumulated vast power and has become the highest paid person in the federal government, making $434,312 annually, an outrageous amount considering his pathetic COVID-19 track record.

While the media, President Biden and congressional Democrats have anointed him as the nation’s premier virus expert, in reality, Fauci has been a total failure. Throughout the pandemic, his recommendations have changed on vital issues such as masks and social distancing.

A Glimpse into the Future of Muslim-Majority Britain Sharia on the horizon. Katie Hopkins

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/07/glimpse-future-muslim-majority-britain-katie-hopkins/

Batley and Spen is a small, seemingly insignificant old mill town in the British Midlands. Its drabness and decay are depressing in their ordinariness, but behind these old tenement houses — where outside toilets have been clumsily reattached — is a seething rage no one is prepared to talk about. It’s the reason I have spent time there in the past, to try and force this conversation into the open.

And right now, these awkward truths are glaring the country in the face.

Batley and Spen’s Member of Parliament (similar to a US Congressman) recently stood down, so a by-election was recently held on Thursday, June 30 to find a replacement. That’s the dull mechanics of the thing. The reality is that this tiny town is a glimpse into the political future of Britain (and, by extension, America) — and it is anything but pretty. It has earned the title: the most divisive bi-election in British political history.

Muslim voters are SUPPOSED to vote Labor in the same way black America is SUPPOSED to vote Democrat. But here in this place, religious Muslims oppose Labor’s support for LGBT. This is not politics based on policies. This is politics based on one faith group pitting its grievances against all faith groups. And it’s a faith group that refuses to accept tolerance of LGBT or of Israel. It is a voting block that wants LGBT teaching removed from schools, and wants to express its commitment to “free Palestine” at the polling stations of this tiny Midlands town.

Batley and Spen has made headlines more often than most small towns set miles away from the capital. It drew national attention in 2015 when its MP, Jo Cox, was murdered on the streets in the run up to Brexit, allegedly by an “anti-Muslim white supremacist” — or, in other words, a man with a history of severe mental illness. Cox’s sister, Kim Leadbeater, was put in as the Labor candidate and for perceived righteous reasons, should have been the frontrunner for a win. But this town is not so easily swayed by the emotions of mere mortals. Muhammad matters more.

Perhaps you saw the headlines about a British teacher suspended for showing his Religious Education class a picture of the prophet Muhammad? That, too, happened in this tiny town. A Muslim mob gathered at the gates of the school demanding that he be killed for blasphemy. 

Israel’s Key Intel on China Virus US intelligence community remains deafeningly silent. Lloyd Billingsley

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/07/israel-first-key-intel-china-virus-lloyd-billingsley/

In May, with evidence mounting that the Wuhan Institute of Virology is the likely source of the COVID-19 virus, Joe Biden said he would have the US. Intelligence community “redouble” its efforts on the matter. In early June, Biden expressed continued confidence in Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has denied the lab-leak theory and maintained that the virus arose naturally in the wild. Before the pandemic began to spread, a better source was already available.

In July 2019, a rare event occurred in Canada. Suspected of espionage for China, a group of Chinese virologists was forcibly evicted from the Canadian National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) in Winnipeg, where they had been running parts of the Special Pathogen Program of Canada’s public health agency. One of the procedures conducted by the team was the infection of monkeys with the most lethal viruses found on Earth. Four months prior to the Chinese team’s eviction, a shipment containing two exceptionally virulent viruses—Ebola and Nipah—was sent from the NML to China.

That is from “China and Viruses: The Case of Dr. Xiangguo Qiu,” a January 2020, paper from the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies (BESA), an Israeli think tank. The author, Dr. Dany Shoham, is a former senior analyst in military intelligence for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). Dr. Shoham earned a PhD in medical microbiology from Tel Aviv University and has published numerous articles on virology and on chemical and biological weapons.

According to Dr. Shoham, the “main culprit” in the transfer of deadly pathogens to China is Xiangguo Qiu, an “outstanding Chinese scientist” who came to Canada for graduate studies in 1996 and until recently headed the Special Pathogens program at the NML in Winnipeg. Since 2006, Dr. Qiu has been “studying powerful viruses—Ebola most of all—at the NML.” The viruses that were “surreptitiously shipped from the NML to China included Machupo, Junin, Rift Valley Fever, Crimean-Congo Hemorrhagic Fever, and Hendra.

As Dr. Shoham discovered, Dr . Qiu, “maintains a close bond with China and visits frequently, and many Chinese students from a notable range of Chinese scientific facilities have joined her at the NML over the past decade.” Of those facilities, four are believed to be involved in Chinese biological weapons development: the Institute of Military Veterinary, Academy of Military Medical Sciences, Changchun; Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Chengdu Military Region; Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hubei;  and the Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in Beijing.

The Genesis of Our American Collective Meltdown Our adversaries can’t quite believe their good fortune. Had they thought up ways to divide and impoverish America, they could not have improved on our own collective meltdown. By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2021/07/04/the-genesis-of-our-american-collective-meltdown/

This Fourth of July holiday we might pause for a moment from our festivities to ask how we collectively lost our minds over the last 15 months—and are we yet regaining any semblance of our sanity? 

A pandemic caused by the leak of a Chinese-engineered virus and its coverup was cause enough for nationwide madness. But the spread of COVID–19 was followed by a nationalized and often politicized “flatten-the-curve” quarantine that soon ensured a stir-crazy nation. Tens of millions saw no people, and heard nothing human other than what was fed to them through television and computers. No wonder they grew paranoid, conspiratorial, and angry, and soon forgot the therapeutic nature of personal interaction and the shared humanity of being in the physical presence of others.

Our first self-induced recession came next and lasted over a year, destroying all the hard work of the prior three years. Next ensued the death of George Floyd and a subsequent 120 days of rioting, looting, and arson. The immediate costs were $2 billion in damage, over 25 deaths, 14,000 arrests, and a Lord of the Flies anarchy with no-go zones in our major cities. A McCarthyite frenzy followed, as remote-controlled America hunted down the supposed “racists” among us—while career agendas, personal grudges, and ideological hatred fueled the cancel culture. 

All this was antecedent to our first election in which Election Day voting was incidental, not essential, to the outcome. This was also our first presidential campaign in which the incumbent was stricken by a pandemic virus. And his opponent, due to his age and infirmity, simply reverted to the 19th century style of staying home and outsourcing the electioneering to the Democratic-media complex. Biden’s basement became the equivalent of the “front-porch” of homebound candidates of a century and more ago. 

The derangement was then capped off, first, by a buffoonish riot at the Capitol followed by a Reichstag-fire style militarization of Washington, D.C., in a “never let a crisis go to waste” psychodrama. Then came a novel second and unprecedented presidential impeachment, without a special prosecutor, witnesses, or cross examinations. It was based on the myth of a deadly “armed insurrection” fueled by President Trump, which purportedly led to the murder of a police officer. Later most of the writs of the House impeachment were proven fantasies, from the idea of “armed” and “well-organized” to “murderous” revolutionaries. The only mysteries were the identity of the unnamed officer who fatally shot an unarmed female protester and military veteran, and why the government has still not released thousands of hours of video detailing the riot. 

Joe Biden’s Happy Things Joe Biden plays an ambiguous role in this malevolent charade. He is not the prime mover but merely the public face of the machine.  By Roger Kimball

https://amgreatness.com/2021/07/03/joe-bidens-happy-things/

McDonald’s has its “Happy Meals,” so it’s only fair that Joe Biden has his “Happy Times.” The Fourth of July weekend is one of those bright, smiling occasions that normally begets happiness, though in truth the White House occupant was not smiling on Friday when reporters ventured to ask him about the decision (I won’t say his decision) to turn over Bagram Airfield to the Afghans after nearly 20 years, $2 trillion in taxpayer money spent, and thousands of U.S. casualties. 

Question for the future: what did we get for all that blood and treasure? Don’t answer now, just put it on your mental to-do list. 

Anyway, the leader of the free world didn’t want to talk about Afghanistan. “I want to talk about happy things, man,” he snapped. The Taliban is such a downer, you know, and besides “It’s Fourth of July” weekend. “I’m going to celebrate it. There’s great things happening.” 

Like gasoline prices about double what they were last year? Out-of-control inflation? A humanitarian and national security crisis on our Southern border? 

Mr. Happy did not mention those items. 

Nor did he dwell on the deeper question, viz what are we celebrating on the 4th of July? After all, many college students say they are “embarrassed” to be Americans. “Are you proud to be an American?” an interviewer asked. “Hell no,” was the answer, or words to that effect. 

Not that this is surprising. Most of the major institutions of the country have been telling us that America is irredeemably racist, sexist, and exploitative. The wretched “1619 Project,” which argued that America was founded as a “slavocracy” and that the American Revolution—whose culmination we celebrate on July 4—was fought to perpetuate the institution of slavery, was promulgated by the New York Times, supposedly our paper of record. The tendentious and historically inaccurate contentions of that disgusting anti-American broadside were then packaged for school curricula by the Times and other outlets of dubious national loyalty. As of this writing, elements of the 1619 Project’s ideology are part of the curricula of more than 4,500 schools. 

Then there is critical race theory, a catechism that teaches students to hate their country and whites to hate themselves. As Christopher Rufo has shown in meticulous detail, the wild ideas of CRT are being force-fed in mandatory training sessions not only to students but also to government employees. 

The Culture Wars Come for the American Historical Association By Daniel J. Samet

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/07/the-culture-wars-come-for-the-american-historical-association/

Today’s historians prize emotion over evidence and fiction over fact.

On June 16, I received an email from the American Historical Association (AHA), of which I am a member, trumpeting its “firm opposition” to anti–critical race theory legislation nationwide. Amid our culture of near-omnipresent virtue signaling, wherein businesses and organizations rush to embrace the woke cause du jour, I could have been forgiven for paying this instance no mind.

It turned out to be worth a closer look. The message noted that the AHA had authored a statement, joined by the American Association of University Professors, the Association of American Colleges and Universities, and PEN America, bemoaning “Legislative Efforts to Restrict Education about Racism and American History.” It has since been co-signed by 130 organizations and counting, many of which represent institutions of higher education.

The statement is a tour de force in presenting both disingenuous arguments and fake narratives.

These bills, the statement reads, intend “to suppress teaching and learning about the role of racism in the history of the United States.” If that were the aim of the legislation, we all should share their outrage.

Yet state governments are not trying to expunge racism from history textbooks. Consider the bill that was recently proposed in Texas. At no point does it mandate that public schools drop the history of racism in America from their curricula. Any class on American history worth taking can and should cover the transatlantic slave trade, chattel slavery, and Jim Crow, as well as emancipation and the civil-rights movement. Slavery and racism are indelible sins of our country’s past. On that you’ll find universal agreement, within the AHA and any other educational organization.

China: A Colossus with a Foot of Clay by Amir Taheri

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17521/china-colossus-clay-foot

To start with the CCP has been an instrument for ruthless repression ever since it seized full power in 1949. By best estimates… the many atrocities it led have claimed at least 80 million lives.

Decades of misguided policies in Tibet, Xinjiang, Manchuria and Inner Mongolia have surpassed the worst cases of ethnic repression recorded under successive dynasties.

The CCP started with a handful of self-loathing bourgeois intellectuals who sought power by appealing to a peasantry they hardly knew. A century later, it is led by another handful of self-adulating intellectuals who maintain themselves in power with the support of a new class of wealthy entrepreneurs they find harder and harder to control.

The CCP may be proud of its economic success after Deng Xiaoping’s reforms, but it celebrates its centenary with “re-education camps” in Xinjiang (East Turkestan), crackdown in Hong Kong and childish but dangerous imperial gesticulations in neighboring seas.

Happy birthday!

As China launches a series of celebrations marking the centenary of the foundation of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), one question cannot be avoided: Is there anything to celebrate?

As far as the party is concerned, the answer is yes.

Communist China’s Genocidal Crackdown on Uyghur Intellectuals by Uzay Bulut

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17532/china-genocide-uyghurs

Ahmetjan Juma’s brother, Mamatjan, suggested that Ahmetjan is being punished simply because he, his brother, works at Radio Free Asia (RFA) as Deputy Director of the Uyghur Service.

The Chinese government has blocked international organizations and journalists from going to the region to conduct an independent investigation.

“My parents told me not to contact my brothers; that if I have anything to say to them or other relatives, just to tell my mother and she will pass the message along to them.” — Mamatjan Juma, brother of Ahmetjan Juma, high school principal and a literary translator, sentenced to 14 years in prison after being held for two years of “training” in China’s internment camps; interview with Gatestone.

“Intellectuals are the people who can lead the social discourse, guide and educate people about their history, culture and everything about Uyghurs. A nation without its intellectuals would be like a person without its brain.” — Mamatjan Juma, interview with Gatestone.

The report, The Uyghur Genocide, states that China bears state responsibility for an ongoing genocide against the Uyghurs, and is in breach of the UN Genocide Convention.

Why is the world — and particularly the global Muslim community — largely silent as innocent Uyghurs are destroyed by a brutal, totalitarian regime for the “crime” of having been born a Uyghur?

China’s genocide against its Uyghur ethnic minority in Xinjiang, also known as East Turkestan, presses on. Up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and other minorities have been detained in extrajudicial “re-education camps” where deaths, torture and political indoctrination take place. This genocidal campaign seems now specifically to be targeting Uyghur intellectuals. Hundreds have been taken into internment camps, disappeared or died in custody. Among them are professors, journalists, medical researchers, doctors, actors, poets, publishers, writers and students. They are often subjected to harsher prison sentences, as well as death sentences. Many are missing.