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Ruth King

Social Justice Cancels Social Distancing Being wrong is one thing, but demanding that everyone except a select few submit to draconian government rules is its own kind of injustice. Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2020/06/04/social-justice-cancels-social-distancing/

And just like that, social distancing is canceled. At least for some.

After submitting to house arrest orders for the past three months in order to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus, Americans may have noticed a slight change in the rules this past week. There are no duct-taped outlines on city streets telling unruly mobs protesting the death of George Floyd where to stand. Rioters are not instructed to loot stores in opposite directions on downtown streets in order to avoid contact. Face coverings are optional but certainly useful when attempting to avoid identification by local law enforcement.

Drs. Deborah Birx and Anthony Fauci are not seizing the White House press podium to lecture lawless thugs about keeping grandma safe from COVID-19. Social media shamers, the same ones who just a few weeks ago were publicly denouncing fun seekers in the Ozarks, are in silent solidarity with social distancing rulebreakers in downtown Chicago, Minneapolis, and New York City. The Atlantic isn’t accusing Democratic leaders of unleashing “an experiment in human sacrifice” and CNN’s Chris Cuomo isn’t calling groups congregating to break windows at pricy boutiques and assault police officers “fools” for not staying six feet apart.

In fact, the rules have changed so much and so quickly that the very same “experts” who demanded we adhere to unproven (and possibly counterproductive) social distancing dogma now explain why these rules don’t equally apply. 

Joseph Klein :The Left’s Defense of Arson and Looting as Weapons Against ‘Institutionalized Racism’ Once again, progressives maliciously elevate nationwide violence and anarchy.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/06/defense-arson-and-looting-weapons-against-joseph-klein/

Massachusetts Democratic Attorney General Maura Healey hailed the acts of arson occurring across the country as some sort of symbol of regeneration. In a speech she delivered to the Boston Chamber of Commerce on June 2nd, Healy said, “Yes, America is burning, but that’s how forests grow.” She later tweeted that “we must seize the opportunity we have right now to build anew in ways that rid us of the institutionalized racism that’s led to America burning today.”

Healey’s first duty as attorney general is to uphold the laws of her state and prosecute criminal violations. Arson is a serious crime. Arsonists must be arrested and prosecuted, whether they are agitators of the left or right. There is no legal defense that excuses arson because the arsonists believe they are fighting “institutionalized racism.” What’s next – that looting is a legitimate form of wealth redistribution to combat what some social justice advocates have called “racial capitalism”? It’s time to send Healey packing for inciting violence and dereliction of duty.

Massachusetts Republican Party Chairman Jim Lyons struck the right chord with his response to Healey’s outrageous forest fire analogy:

“By choosing to highlight this insane analogy, it should be clear to Massachusetts residents that no matter what else Democrats like Attorney General Healey say, they will always condone mob tactics. The Radical Democrats, led by the likes of Attorney General Healey, sat back and watched as cities went up in flames over the weekend, and are now openly admitting that this is all part of their plan to fundamentally change America by any means possible. This is no way to honor the memory of George Floyd, or correct the problems that led to his unjustified killing.”

Dear Ilhan Omar: Let’s Have a Conversation About Racism and Police Brutality Let’s take a look at how minorities are treated in nations where your religion permeates. Raymond Ibrahim

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/06/dear-ilhan-omar-lets-have-conversation-about-raymond-ibrahim/

Two themes permeate much of the discourse surrounding ongoing riots: that racism in America, particularly against blacks, is “systemic”; and that any show of force against the “protesters”—many of whom are simply criminals, looters, and thugs out to capitalize on a tragedy—is more proof of America’s ingrained racism and intolerance.

Wonderfully encapsulating these two points is Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.).  In a recent interview, she asserted that “we are living in a country that has truly for a long time brutalized African-Americans, from slavery, to lynching, to Jim Crow, to mass incarceration and now to police brutality.”  As for the rioters, they “were terrorized,” Omar claims, “by the presence of tanks, by the presence of the National Guard and the militarized police.”

Let’s respond to these two charges of “brutalization” and “terrorization” by way of analogy—say, by looking at how minorities are treated (including vis-à-vis tanks) in nations where Omar’s religion permeates, that is, Muslim nations.  Egypt is a perfect example, as its non-Muslim minority, the Christian Copts, make for about the same percentage of the general population that blacks do in America: 15%.

1,288 ‘Public Health Professionals’ Disgrace Their Profession By Jason Richwine

1,000 “public health professionals, infectious diseases professionals, and community stakeholders.” The letter argues that it’s okay if the current protests/riots spread COVID-19 because racism is itself a public-health issue that needs to be addressed.

Let’s take that argument seriously for a moment and ask a follow-up question: Why, then, was there so much criticism of the anti-lockdown protests? The premise of those protests was that continuing lockdowns caused far more economic damage than was necessary. If anything is a public-health issue, surely record unemployment, social isolation, and bans on people going to hospitals for non-urgent care should count.

Well, here is how the letter distinguishes between anti-racism protests and anti-lockdown protests:

. . . [W]e do not condemn these [anti-racism] gatherings as risky for COVID-19 transmission. We support them as vital to the national public health and to the threatened health specifically of Black people in the United States . . . . This should not be confused with a permissive stance on all gatherings, particularly protests against stay-home orders. Those actions not only oppose public health interventions, but are also rooted in white nationalism and run contrary to respect for Black lives.

It’s difficult to understand how any reasonable person could have committed those words to print. Even just, “Yeah, we’re hypocrites, so what?” would have been a more satisfying response.

The Return of the Riot Ideology Why have so many Americans forgotten the lessons of the 1990s? Robert Stacy McCain

https://spectator.org/riot-ideology-james-scurlock-david-dorn-biden-1990s/

James Scurlock was a criminal. David Dorn was a cop. The two men never met, but the cause of their deaths — Scurlock in Omaha, Nebraska, and Dorn in St. Louis, Missouri — was related. Both were killed this past week as a result of the dangerous storm of violence that most media outlets describe euphemistically as “protests” or “unrest.”

Americans are being told by intellectuals, politicians, and TV pundits that this deadly chaos is about “systemic racism,” to quote Joe Biden, but what we are actually witnessing is the return of a dangerous belief system that Manhattan Institute scholar Fred Siegel called “the riot ideology.” People are being killed, businesses are being looted, and the fundamental basis of a free society is being jeopardized because this irresponsible mentality has been promoted as a solution to racial inequality, when in fact it is a major cause of the problem. The deaths of James Scurlock and David Dorn illustrate the damage done by the riot ideology.

Scurlock was shot dead after he assaulted a bar owner in Omaha’s Old Market district Saturday night. National media have tried to turn Scurlock into a martyr, with CBS News headlining their version of the story, “A white bar owner in Omaha shot and killed a black protester. He won’t face charges.” Was Scurlock a “protester”? He was not shot while engaged in a protest. Instead, as the Omaha World-Herald reported, Scurlock had been engaged in vandalism, caught on surveillance video smashing up an office on Harney Street about 10:15 p.m. Saturday night. Forty minutes later and half a block away, windows were smashed at a bar owned by Jake Gardner, a Marine Corps veteran who was on the premises with his father, trying to protect his business from being looted in the so-called “unrest.” The two men emerged from the bar, and the elder Gardner was assaulted by one of Scurlock’s accomplices. When the bar owner brandished a pistol, he was jumped by two people, and fired what he called “warning shots,” causing them to flee. That’s when Gardner was attacked from behind by Scurlock, who was shot dead.

The black youth of St. Louis have lost a role model, and why? Because the riot ideology justifies looting (and arson, vandalism, and every other kind of criminal violence) as an expression of “social justice.” 

All of this was captured on video, which the district attorney played at a press conference where he announced no charges would be filed against Gardner, who had clearly acted in self-defense. National media outlets, however, have sought to portray this as “the killing of a black protester,” in the words of the Washington Post, as if vandalism and assault are legitimate ways to protest, or as if James Scurlock was killed because he was black. (For more, see John Jiang’s American Spectator article, “How the Media Fans the Flames.”)

Project Veritas begins its Antifa exposé By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/06/project_veritas_begins_its_antifa_expose_.html

Project Veritas ought to be called Project Fortitudo so as to recognize the mind-boggling bravery of an undercover operative who infiltrated the Rose City Antifa organization in Portland, Oregon, one of the oldest active Antifa groups in America. The anarcho-leftist Antifa specializes in violent street fighting, putting at extreme risk anyone who goes into the group with a hidden camera.

That’s the risk a Project Veritas investigator took, beginning sometime in the past, but at least eleven months ago. (To protect the investigator’s identity, the year in which he began his undercover operation is bleeped out.)

Although Antifa has leaped to prominence in the past few days, as it’s joined forces with Black Lives Matter to wreak havoc in American cities, conservatives have been aware of it for some time. For most of us, Antifa became a concern beginning with the Berkeley rioting when the Berkeley Republicans invited conservative speakers, such as Milo Yiannopoulos or Ben Shapiro, to the UC campus. Even the Washington Post noticed that Antifa had a problem.

Antifa members showed up and engaged in extreme violence, including setting fire to the campus. As a hint that Antifa is the paramilitary arm of the Berkeley Democrat party, the mayor told the police to stand down as Antifa and other leftist organizations beat conservatives with poles, pepper spray, and fists. Rose City Antifa gets the same sweet treatment from Portland’s mayor.

When Islam Came: The Rape of Constantinople By Raymond Ibrahim

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/06/when_islam_came_the_rape_of_constantinople.html

Last Friday, May 29, was the 567th anniversary of the Islamic conquest of Constantinople, one of ancient Christianity’s greatest capitals that for the previous seven centuries had, as Europe’s easternmost bulwark, withstood Islam.  Lesser known is what immediately transpired — which Turkey is immensely proud of — on the taking of “New Rome,” as described in what follows (note: all quotes were derived from contemporary sources, mostly eyewitnesses).

Once inside the city on that fateful May 29, the “enraged Turkish soldiers … gave no quarter,” wrote an eyewitness:

When they had massacred and there was no longer any resistance, they were intent on pillage and roamed through the town stealing, disrobing, pillaging, killing, raping, taking captive men, women, children, old men, young men, monks, priests, people of all sorts and conditions[.] … There were virgins who awoke from troubled sleep to find those brigands standing over them with bloody hands and faces full of abject fury[.] … [The Turks] dragged them, tore them, forced them, dishonored them, raped them at the cross-roads and made them submit to the most terrible outrages[.] … Tender children were brutally snatched from their mothers’ breasts and girls were pitilessly given up to strange and horrible unions, and a thousand other terrible things happened[.]

Because thousands of citizens had fled to and were holed up in Hagia Sophia, the ancient basilica offered an excellent harvest of slaves — once its doors were axed down.  “One Turk would look for the captive who seemed the wealthiest, a second would prefer a pretty face among the nuns[.] … Each rapacious Turk was eager to lead his captive to a safe place, and then return to secure a second and a third prize. … Then long chains of captives could be seen leaving the church and its shrines, being herded along like cattle or flocks of sheep.”

Who the Looting Ruins ‘Seventeen years of work is gone,’ said the owner of an Ecuadorean eatery.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/who-the-looting-ruins-11591313813?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

Luis Tamay is an immigrant with an Ecuadorean restaurant in Minneapolis. Zola Dias is the black owner of a clothing store in Atlanta. Sam Mabrouk has a denim shop in Columbus, Ohio. They’re only a few of the people whom intellectuals overlook whenever they rationalize rioting or say that property destruction isn’t violence.

“Seventeen years of work is gone,” Mr. Tamay told the Minneapolis Star Tribune after his restaurant, El Sabor Chuchi, burned to the ground. When the rioting began, he stood watch. But last Friday he obeyed curfew, believing that the National Guard would control the streets. Then on Facebook he saw video of his restaurant on fire. He told the newspaper he didn’t have insurance because it was too expensive.

Safia Munye, a Somali immigrant in Minneapolis, opened Mama Safia’s Kitchen in 2018 with money saved for retirement. When the pandemic arrived, NPRreported, she couldn’t afford both insurance and to pay her workers. She did the latter. Now the restaurant is wrecked, but she’s hardly the intended target of George Floyd protesters. “My heart is broken. My mind is broken,” she said. “I know I can’t come back from this. But this can be replaced. George’s life cannot. George’s life was more important.”

In Atlanta, Zola Dias lost more than $100,000 in goods from his clothing store, Attom. “I’m very emotional when I talk about it because I put my soul and life in this business,” he told the Atlanta Business Chronicle. “I just want to tell people to go and vote. That’s the only way to stop it and make a change.”

New York Times More Focused On Annexation Than NYC Riots By Moshe Phillips

https://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/opinions/new-york-times-more-focused-on-ann

The protests, riots, and looting in the wake of the death of George Floyd took a backseat as The New York Times editorial page team decided a few days ago that it was more important for the paper to criticize Israel for considering to “annex” parts of Judea and Samaria.

We’re witnessing the worst violence and civil unrest to shake the city since the 1991 Crown Heights riots, but the Times could not desist from condemning Israel for something it has not yet done.

It is more concerned with what a foreign nation does with an area 1/180 the size of Texas and 1/23 the area of the adjacent Kingdom of Jordan. Why isn’t the Times concentrating more on the lives and property of New Yorkers?

The Times wrote: “there are many reasons actual annexation is a bad idea. The main reason is that the West Bank is regarded by international organizations and most of the world as occupied territory, and the Jewish settlements as illegal under the Geneva Convention.” So once again, the Times is singling Israel out for criticism and holding it to a higher standard than it does any other country.

Many pro-Israel activists point out Israel’s security needs, the Palestinian Authority’s continuous incitement, historical and religious claims, the legality of “the settlements,” and the like. But these are all defensive positions and by their very nature do very little to change the closed minds of people like those that make up the readership of the Times. Holding Israel to a higher and unfair standard will not end in the foreseeable future. Individuals who care about Israel’s future need to internalize that.

The opinion of the Times or the UN about Israel’s choices matters much less than the result of these said choices.

ON RACISM: PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2020/06/04/on-racism/print/#comments_controls

“Where do we see evidence of white supremacists? Are statues of Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan being pulled down? Is the Lincoln Memorial covered in graffiti?  Are white supremacists rewriting American history in the universities and at the New York Times? Where are their magazines and newspapers? Who are their representatives in government and media? What is the power of such an invisible group?”

If white people are racist, how was Obama twice elected president of the United States?  That such questions do not occur to those shouting “white racism” indicates weak minds, the presence of anti-whites out to make mischief, and people who speak on the basis of an unexamined assumption that has been drilled into their heads.
The unexamined question is: Are white people racist by nature?  Those who say whites are racist by nature simultaneously claim that hundreds of thousands of Lincoln’s soldiers died in order to free black people from slavery and that white people in the North carried on a relentless long war against white people in the South for the benefit of black people.  

It is these same racist white people who passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act 56 years ago and permitted the establishment of racial quotas and contract set-asides for blacks that gave blacks rights and privileges that white people do not have.