Displaying the most recent of 90412 posts written by

Ruth King

FOREIGN POLICY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

To Prove Courage Of Convictions, Woke Capital Must Challenge China’s Hong Kong Crackdown By Ben Weingarten

By on June 2nd, 2020

https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/02/to-prove-courage-of-convictions-woke-capital

With the Trump administration formally recognizing the sad reality on the ground that once-free and democratic Hong Kong is being subsumed by communist China to such a degree that it can no longer treat the two systems as distinct, woke capital is being presented with an opportunity to practice what it preaches.

Will it steadfastly protest Chinese Communist Party (CCP) tyranny, or sit idly by in spite of its stated devotion to progressive principles in the service of all “stakeholders”?

Woke capital, consisting broadly of the financial services industry and Big Business, is particularly well-suited to challenge China because it plays such an outsized role in U.S.-China relations.

Commerce has been core to the development of such relations since before President Richard Nixon went to China.

The U.S. government, backed since at least the 1970s by the private sector, would, over time, foster economic ties with China and welcome it into the global economic and financial architecture America largely built and maintained. It did so on the bases of economic self-interest and idealism. The potential economic benefits were obvious.

Continue reading →
CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB Comments turned off

How do we explain the many thousands of Americans who believe they are entitled to steal? Patricia McCarthy

By on June 2nd, 2020

www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/06/how_do_we_explain_the_many_thousands_of_americans_who_believe_they_are_entitled_to_steal_.html

For days now, since the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Americans have seen riots take over many of our big cities.  Countless properties have been vandalized and businesses have been looted and torched — damage that only hurt the neighborhoods of the rioters.  But the most disturbing revelation of these clearly organized riots throughout the country has been seeing the thousands of people in all the affected cities who feel they have a right to steal that which does not belong to them.  Night after night, we have watched thieving thugs break windows of small and large businesses, charge into them, and run out with as much merchandise as they can carry.  They stuff their booty into large SUVs, many of which have the license plates removed.  They are wearing masks so do not fear facial recognition software.

These riots seem to prove that, despite our protestations to the contrary, we do live in something of a third-world nation.  When that many people in as many cities that are under siege right now feel no allegiance to the law, to their families, to their neighbors, to civil society, we are indeed a nation in need of a reboot.  Fifty-plus years of the left’s smearing of American values, their opposition to the nuclear family, the promotion of the idea that out-of-wedlock births are just another lifestyle choice have, as we see now, made for a population sullied by the acceptance of abject criminality.  That is what we are all seeing on our TV screens.  This is not about race; it is all about respect or the lack of it and values. 

When the young people we saw gleefully run from breached businesses with their hands full of stolen goods, do they take them home to their parents?  Are those parents horrified by their children’s stealing, or do they congratulate them?  How is it that these thousands of Americans are so comfortable taking what is not theirs?  Do they go home and brag that they set some building on fire or that they torched a police car?  It is very likely that they are proud of themselves.  The media certainly support them, seem to give them permission.

Continue reading →
ISRAEL Comments turned off

Ruthie Blum :Owing the ultra-Orthodox an apology Suddenly, the discussion is no longer about the identity of the coronavirus carriers; no accusations are being flung at them for the way in which they choose to observe their Judaism.

By on June 2nd, 2020

https://www.jns.org/opinion/owing-the-ultra-orthodox-an-apology/

Two weeks after Israel gradually reopened its education system, students and teachers around the country came down with the coronavirus, forcing thousands of their peers and family members into quarantine.

The main hotspot has been the Jerusalem high school, Hagymnasia Haivrit, in the capital’s Rechavia neighborhood, which had to shut down due to the more than 130 adults and teenagers who tested positive to COVID-19.

More than 17 additional schools also closed, some by ministerial order, and a few by parental decree.

If the trend continues, the Education Ministry may succumb to pressure from health officials to send everyone home to resume classes via Zoom—just like during the good old days less than a month ago.

Kids were honest about how this happened. Few adhered to social-distancing and mask-wearing regulations. Many greeted one another with hugs and kisses. The general feeling among all was that the crisis was over.

The thousands of beach-goers who descended upon the shores of the Mediterranean as soon as the government lifted restrictions on doing so exhibited a similar sense of freedom from lockdown bondage. Ditto for the diners and partiers who piled in to cafes, restaurants, bars and nightclubs with great fervor, but little attention to the government’s frequent urgent requests to practice social distancing, wash hands and wear masks.

Continue reading →
ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, MEDIA Comments turned off

Planet of the Censoring Humans The campaign to remove Michael Moore’s new documentary from the Internet – led by Moore’s erstwhile progressive “allies” – is a significant advance in the censorship revolution Matt Taibbi

By on June 2nd, 2020

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/planet-of-the-censoring-humans

On April 21st, 2020, just before the 50th anniversary of the first Earth Day, Oscar-winning director/producer Michael Moore released a new movie called Planet of the Humans. Directed by Jeff Gibbs, the film is a searing look at the ostensible failures of the environmentalist movement, to which Moore and Gibbs both belonged.

“Jeff and I were at the first Earth Day celebrations,” Moore laughs. “That’s how old we are.”

Distributed for free on YouTube, the film’s central argument is that the environmentalist movement, fattened by corporate donations, has become seduced by an industrialist delusion.

“The whole idea of the film was to ask a question – after fifty years of the environmentalist movement, how are we doing?” recounts Moore. “It looks like, not very well.”

Moore and Gibbs challenged the idea that both the planet and humankind’s current patterns of industrial production can be saved through the magic bullet of “renewable energy.” The film shows lurid examples of various deceptions, like the oft-used trick of replacing coal plants with new natural gas plants, which are then called “clean” or “green,” or the hideous trend of describing the burning of trees as a “renewable” energy source.

Environmentalists denounced the film as riddled with “lies” and “misinformation,” claiming among other things that Moore used old data to discredit green technology. A campaign to remove the film from circulation immediately took shape.

Continue reading →
ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Bad Day At BlackRock? ESG investing is already taking a toll on state pension funds—now it might transform the world’s largest private asset manager, too. Rupert Darwall

By on June 2nd, 2020

https://www.city-journal.org/blackrock-esg-strategy

“I don’t give a damn what these powerful corporations tell us and I don’t care about their profit margin. We need to get out of these fossil fuels before it’s too late for everybody.” These are not the words of a Sunrise Movement activist, though they could easily be mistaken for one, but New York City comptroller Scott Stringer, speaking at an online People’s Assembly on BlackRock last week. The gathering of activists and advocates was intended to discuss strategies for pushing BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, to make good on its promises to “place sustainability at the center” of its investment strategy. As environmental activists see it, the firm has a long way to go.

Stringer, an anti-fracking campaigner and protégé of Congressman Jerry Nadler, became comptroller in January 2014, when Bill de Blasio took over as mayor. He wanted to remake his office into “a think-tank for innovation and ideas,” Stringer declared on his first day. That’s a risky outlook for one assuming a position defined by law as the custodian of the city’s five pension funds, which totaled, in February 2020, $221.2 billion in assets. Early on, Stringer proclaimed a devotion to environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) factors in investing, and to finding investment managers dedicated to these principles. He launched a campaign on proxy access to enable shareholders to nominate directors—ticking the “G” for governance. He then moved on to the “S” with his Boardroom Accountability Project, writing to 151 companies asking that they disclose, among other things, the sexual orientation of their directors.

“E” for environment is the big one. When de Blasio announced in January 2018 that city pension funds would divest $5 billion worth of equity in fossil-fuel companies, Stringer justified the move by claiming retirees’ financial future was “linked to the sustainability of the planet.” The comptroller allocated 12 percent of the fund assets of the New York City Employees’ Retirement System—the largest of the city’s five pension funds—into the Developed Environmental Activist asset class, according to an American Council for Capital Formation report by Timothy Doyle. The move dragged down the fund’s already-poor investment returns. 

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Science says: ‘Open the schools’ By Dr. Scott W. Atlas and Paul E. Peterson

By on June 2nd, 2020

https://thehill.com/opinion/education/500349-science-says-open-the-schools

To stop COVID-19 dead in its tracks, many governors, mayors and superintendents are threatening to keep schools closed this fall, failing to consider the greater harm that comes from refusing to open them.

“We have to make sure kids are safe, family members are safe, educators are safe, staff is safe,” says New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. “If for any reason we are not confident of that, then you can just stick with the pure online learning.” Similarly, teacher unions insist that comprehensive testing, tracing and distancing are essential if reopening is to be done safely.

The irony in such language is that children are safe at school already. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) states that of the first 68,998 U.S. deaths from COVID-19, only 12 have been in children under age 14 — less than 0.02 percent. Nor is coronavirus killing teenagers. At last count, the fatality total among children under 18 without an underlying condition is one; only ten of the 16,469 confirmed coronavirus deaths in New York City were among those under the age of 18. That’s similar to the fatality rate for those under 20 in France, estimated at 0.001 percent, and in Spain.

The death of even one child is tragic, of course. Yet, it must be kept in mind that as many as 600 children in the United States died from seasonal influenza in 2017-18, according to CDC estimates, while the CDC’s estimate for COVID-19 fatalities number just 12. A just-released JAMA Pediatrics study flatly states: “Our data indicate that children are at far greater risk of critical illness from influenza than from COVID-19.” If the COVID-19 hazard sets the new standard for health safety, the country will need to close its schools each year from November until April to guard against influenza.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Time for the FBI to Disclose, Discharge, and Disinfect Charles Lipson

By on June 2nd, 2020

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/06/02/time_for_the_fbi_to_disclose_discharge_and_disinfect___143342.html

When Christopher Wray was named director of the FBI in August 2017, he had two crucial tasks: clean the Augean Stables, which had been fouled by James Comey, and restore public confidence in the bureau. Comey presided over a carnival of misconduct. Comey and his deputy, Andrew McCabe, supervised all of it and handpicked most of the other agents involved.

Wray’s job was to muck out this mess, disclose the wrongdoing, fire the bad guys, and win back public support. To put it bluntly: he has failed at the job. He has failed the country, the president, and his fellow agents.

Firing Wray before the election would be too incendiary. It would instantly descend into a partisan food fight, like all American politics these days, and would cloud the important work of U.S. Attorney John Durham. But if Wray cannot be fired immediately, neither should he be allowed to block the public from seeing what went wrong at the bureau. That’s exactly what he has been doing, and it needs to stop.

Wray shouldn’t be allowed to hide or slow-walk the evidence that American citizens have every right to see. Remember, it was the current FBI team, not Jim Comey, that said it couldn’t find Peter Strzok and Lisa Page’s devastating text messages. It was the Justice Department’s Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, not Wray’s agents, who discovered the “lost” messages and thousands more. They were released by Rod Rosenstein, who was effectively running DoJ at the time. The FBI brass were not happy.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Dennis Prager: The Left Couldn’t Care Less About Blacks

By on June 2nd, 2020

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/06/02/the_left_couldnt_care_less_about_blacks_143347.html

A typical left-wing reaction to all this was written in June 2019 by journalist Michael Coard in the Philadelphia Tribune: “Today’s black so-called thugs/monsters are created by the evil American system that miseducates them, unemploys them, underemploys them, over-polices them, and over-incarcerates them. America is Dr. Victor Frankenstein.” Note “over-polices.”

Coard is correct about one thing: Today’s blacks are often miseducated, which leads to their unemployment, underemployment and other terrible consequences. Who has been running America’s schools for decades now? (Hint: Not the right.) But that doesn’t cause violence. Black murderers and rapists are the only people in America told that no matter what they did, they are not responsible for it. America is. And the people telling them that are all on the left.

Why does the left do this?

First, because, as opposed to liberals, the left — everywhere in the world — hates America. And why does the left hate America? Because it is a living refutation of left-wing ideology. America is the most successful country while also being the most capitalist, most religious and most nationality-affirming of all the industrialized democracies.

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Turkey: Where Criticizing Islam Can Land You in Prison by Uzay Bulut

By on June 2nd, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16079/turkey-islam-criticism-prison

According to the Koran and the recorded sayings (hadith) and biographies (sira) of Islam’s founder, “To leave Islam, to insult Muhammad or Allah, to deny the existence of Allah, to be sarcastic about Allah’s name, to deny any verse of the Koran” or to commit other acts of blasphemy are all punishable by death.

More alarming is that these pressures and bans come not only from governments. Many of the people in the countries mentioned above also appear enthusiastically to support strict or even deadly blasphemy and apostasy laws.

According to a 2013 Pew survey, overwhelming percentages of Muslims in many regions — Southeast Asia (84%), South Asia (78%), the Middle East and North Africa (78%), and Central Asia (62%) — favor making sharia, or Islamic law, the official law of the land. According to sharia, blasphemy and apostasy are punishable by death.

Critics of Turkey’s government and Islam continue being targeting by the country’s authorities.

On May 17, Turkish photographer Fırat Erez, a former supporter of Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development (AKP) Party, was arrested in the city of Antalya after saying “Islam is immoral” on his Twitter account.

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

EU: Trade with China Trumps Freedom for Hong Kong by Soeren Kern

By on June 2nd, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16083/eu-trade-china-hong-kong

The British government announced that it was considering granting citizenship to the nearly three million residents of Hong Kong. The move infuriated China, which fears a massive brain drain from Hong Kong that would jeopardize the city’s role as a global financial and trading hub.

Germany, which takes over the six-month rotating EU presidency on July 1, has announced that it will prioritize relations with China. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is particularly determined to proceed with a major EU-China summit to be held in the German city of Leipzig in September. She is reportedly under intense pressure from German automobile manufacturers, who are concerned about maintaining their access to the Chinese market.

“Europe can and should respond more forcefully than it has so far…. [If Germany cancelled] its looming summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Leipzig in September 2020 unless Beijing withdraws its national security legislation…. That would send a strong signal that it will not be business as usual…” — Noah Barkin, a senior fellow in Berlin at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

“German Chancellor Merkel does not seem to fully appreciate how continued Communist Party rule endangers peace, security and public health, not just in China, but around the world.” — Andreas Fulda, a senior fellow at the University of Nottingham’s Asia Research Institute.

“The European Union… has the choice. Should we make a pact with an authoritarian regime or should we work to strengthen a community of free, constitutionally governed market economies with liberal societies? It is remarkable that German politics, with its love of moralizing, seems to throw its values out the window when dealing with China…. If current… policy on China continues, this will lead to a gradual decoupling from America and a step-by-step infiltration and subjugation by China. Economic dependence will only be the first step. Political influence will follow. In the end, it is quite simple. What kind of future do we want for Europe? An alliance with an imperfect democracy or with a perfect dictatorship? It should be an easy decision for us to make. It is about more than just money. It is about our freedom…” — Mathias Döpfner, CEO of Axel Springer, Europe’s largest publishing company.

The European Union has issued a predictably weak and equivocal declaration on China’s growing interference in Hong Kong. European leaders, apparently fearful of retaliation by Beijing, have signaled that economic interests will take priority over the EU’s much-trumpeted founding values of human rights, democracy and the rule of law.

Europe’s continued appeasement of China indicates that the EU will be a weak link in efforts by Western democracies to confront the leadership in Beijing.

Continue reading →