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Ruth King

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Red China Moves on Hong Kong The snuffing out of freedom – and what it portends.Michael Finch

By on July 3rd, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/red-china-moves-hong-kong-michael-finch/

I was fortunate enough to be in Hong Kong on July 1, 1997, traveling with a group headed by the estimable Bruce Herschensohn.  It was an extraordinary, if bittersweet trip, seeing the British ships sail out of Hong Kong harbor on the evening of July 1st.  The lowering of the Union Jack across the city allowed a moment of great sadness, a passing of an era, given way to a future of trepidation and worry.

On the trip, we were honored to meet the politician and freedom fighter, Martin Lee.  Lee was just recently arrested and freed, but will now, almost certainly, be under threat of harassment and further arrests.  William McGurn, then senior editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review, also spoke to us, offering some hope, but tinged with warning.  That week marked a pivotal moment in history, one that anyone present in Hong Kong at the time will never forget.

Promises and guarantees were made; Hong Kong was given 50 years of freedom, under the now-infamous “one country, two systems” policy of administration.  And, indeed, it did work.  For just over 20 years, Hong Kong was the gateway and engine that helped propel China to a remarkable economic take off, lifting millions out of poverty.  Hong Kong was the portal for the rest of the world into China, and the city continued to thrive.  Rule of law, security of contracts, an independent judiciary and a free press were all legacies of British rule. 

All of this, however, was snuffed out in recent days with the new national-security law imposed on Hong Kong by mainland China.  Simply put, Hong Kong has lost its freedom. 

It certainly didn’t go down without a fight; the past months have seen countless protests and demonstrations from the freedom-loving people of Hong Kong.  It has been a sight to behold, watching thousands of demonstrators in the streets of Hong Kong carrying American flags, speaking the words of freedom and liberty.  It is awe-inspiring to see that America is still the beacon that all look to, a light of freedom that casts its radiance to every corner of the globe. 

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Independence Day and the ‘Woke’ Revolution Not since the Civil War has Independence Day been celebrated amidst such threats to our country’s political heritage. Bruce Thornton

By on July 3rd, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/independence-day-and-woke-revolution-bruce-thornton/

Not since the Civil War has Independence Day been celebrated amidst such threats to our country’s political heritage. The riots and bombings of the Sixties and Seventies were more lethal and destructive, but the political consensus from the center-left to the center-right––that the democratic process rather than violence should be the agent of change––hence rejected the revolutionary narrative of the New Left.

Today, however, the recent shift of the Democrats to their progressives and Marxist wing has put the authority and power of Congressmen, Democrat Party leaders, governors, mayors, city councils, media, corporations, sports teams, and entertainment industries on the side of rioters, vandals, and looters. The outfits behind this disorder, whether the self-proclaimed Marxists of Black Lives Matter, or the juvenile anarchists of Antifa, have with near impunity added widespread violence to illiberal tactics like “cancel culture”: the vandalism of public monuments and proscription of cultural artifacts; and the shaming, silencing, and ostracizing of dissenting voices.

The alleged “crisis” of racist police targeting black males for slaughter is in fact a specious pretext for this disorder, a Reichstag Fire for justifying a revolutionary political agenda to “burn down this system and replace it,” as a BLM honcho put it recently. This legitimizing of an illiberal political ideology and violent tactics by civic, business, and cultural leaders now threatens to dismantle the Constitutional order and American civic identity of which American exceptionalism and political freedom are the fruit.

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MEDIA, MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

Stalin, Famine, and the New York Times By Kyle Smith

By on July 3rd, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/07/movie-review-mr-jones-tells-truth-about-new-york-times-communism/#slide-1

Mr. Jones tells the truth about Moscow’s man at the Paper of Record.

 ‘T he world is being invaded by monsters, but I suppose you don’t want to hear about that,” Both clauses of that sentence are devastatingly true: The reference is equally to the horrors of the Soviet Union’s mass murders — and to the West’s determination to turn its back to the monstrosity. The speaker is George Orwell; the subject is Stalinism. Orwell is preparing to write a book called Animal Farm in which the farmer is named Mr. Jones.

Mr. Jones, it turns out, is also the name of an Orwell acquaintance who might have been an inspiration in his writing: Jones is a Welsh reporter, first name Gareth, who is our vantage point for the Stalin-engineered Ukraine famine of the 1930s that amounted to the state-ordered murder of more than three million people by seizing the region’s grain. At the outset of the film Mr. Jones (which is just out via VOD services) is seen pleading to a team of politicos led by David Lloyd George, a former British prime minister in 1933. Jones (played with a combination of determination and disbelief by James Norton) advises the Brits that Herr Hitler, whom he has recently interviewed, has already started a war on western civilization and that a similar threat is building in the Soviet Union. Guffaws greet everything Jones says, and he gets the sack from Lloyd George. “It is me you need, I’m the only one who tells you the truth,” Jones tells the grand old man, but the ex-premier isn’t interested. So Jones goes to Moscow anyway, pretending he has Lloyd George’s blessing.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Universities Sowing the Seeds of Their Own Obsolescence By Victor Davis Hanson *****

By on July 3rd, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/07/universities-sowing-the-seeds-of-their-own-obsolescence/

The media blitz during these last several weeks revealed a generation that is poorly educated and yet petulant and self-assured without justification.

When mobs tore down a statue of Ulysses S. Grant and defaced a monument to African-American veterans of the Civil War, many people wondered whether the protesters had ever learned anything in high school or college.

Did any of these iconoclasts know the difference between Grant and Robert E. Lee? Could they recognize the name “Gettysburg”? Could they even identify the decade in which the Civil War was fought?

Universities are certainly teaching our youth to be confident, loud, and self-righteous. But the media blitz during these last several weeks of protests, riots, and looting also revealed a generation that is poorly educated and yet petulant and self-assured without justification.

Many of the young people on the televised front lines of the protests are in their 20s. But most appear juvenile, at least in comparison to their grandparents — survivors of the Great Depression and World War II.

How can so many so sheltered and prolonged adolescents claim to be all-knowing?

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Is Hamilton Next? The hit musical, now a movie, celebrates the American Founding so unabashedly that it seems ripe for cancellation. Kay S. Hymowitz

By on July 3rd, 2020

https://www.city-journal.org/future-of-hamilton-musical

This Independence Day, Disney is giving America a big-ticket birthday gift: the musical Hamilton. After handing over a head-turning $75 million, the company will stream a filmed version of the Lin-Manuel Miranda Broadway megahit on its Disney+ channel. It could be just what the doctor ordered as an antidote to the nation’s gloomy mood, or it could be the opposite—another cultural touchstone swept up and spit out by the vortex of the Great Awokening.

That second scenario may sound absurd. After all, Hamilton is the beloved masterpiece of the diversity revolution, an ode to the country’s multiracial future and to “immigrants [who] get the job done!” Its cast was almost entirely nonwhite, with one notable exception: a campy, mincing King George III. Miranda himself, son of Puerto Rican parents, played the musical’s namesake hero, Alexander Hamilton. Audiences were swept up in the mischievous chutzpah of casting black actors as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and the clever rap couplets evoking the thrill of youthful revolution. “Rap is the voice of the people of our generation, and of people of color,” Miranda, winner of a MacArthur “genius” grant, has proclaimed. Hamilton won a Pulitzer Prize, a Grammy, and 16 Tony Awards. The show has grossed well over $500 million. Beyoncé, Michelle Obama, Hillary Clinton, Stephen Sondheim, Jay Z, and a long list of other luminaries number among his fans. On social media, followers are counting the days and minutes until the television event. What could go wrong?

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MEDIA Comments turned off

Kayleigh McEnany, media critic By Bill Grueskin……See note please

By on July 3rd, 2020

https://www.cjr.org/opinion/kayleigh-mcenany-trump-white-house.php

This column was clearly meant to trash McEnany but actually highlights her welcome ripostes to the ” calumnists”….rsk

White House press secretaries make a good salary—around $183,000 a year, almost half the president’s pay. But taxpayers are getting a bargain in Kayleigh McEnany, who has taken on two roles: first, as the president’s spokesperson, and second, as a media critic, offering unsolicited but carefully researched and rehearsed critiques of news coverage writ large.

McEnany, a Harvard Law graduate who got her start as a combative Trump supporter on CNN, has been press secretary for less than three months. It’s dicey to make a lot of predictions about her future, given that she is the fourth person to hold this job in three-and-a-half years, succeeding Sean Spicer (182 days), Sarah Huckabee Sanders (705 days), and Stephanie Grisham (281 days). (All of them lasted longer than 11-day White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci.)

McEnany got off to a promising start with her first briefing on May 1: “I will never lie to you. You have my word on that,” she told reporters in the White House briefing room. And then, at the same briefing, McEnany made clear that she, like Trump, sees herself as an assignment editor. She was asked about Michael Flynn’s efforts to pull back on his guilty plea for making false statements to the FBI. She responded by telling the press corps that they were, in essence, asking the wrong question, and should instead focus its attention on an FBI agent’s notes (“What’s our goal? Truth/Admission or to get him to lie?”) written before the Flynn interview.

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CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

Democrats Now Stand For The Exact Opposite Of The Declaration Of Independence George Rasley

By on July 3rd, 2020

http://www.conservativehq.com/node/32819

Saturday marks Independence Day 2020, and as we always should on this commemoration of the American founding, we ought to take a look at where the country stands 244 years after the announcement that Americans would fight to live as free men and women, rather than remain the subjects of a despotic government.

The American Declaration of Independence is one of the most profound documents of western civilization.  Yet its measured case for humankind’s inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness might be as little known as the science of the Aztecs were it not for the feats of arms and sacrifices of America’s first veterans – the few thousand patriots who made-up the Continental Army.

For constitutional conservatives like us, the words of the Framers of the Constitution are so very important because they define the limits on government power.  However, we here at CHQ have a special admiration for those daring patriots who declared our independence and risked all to establish the first and only nation dedicated to preserving the sovereignty of the individual human spirit.

And it is important to remember that the patriots who fought our Revolution didn’t fight for the Constitution; they fought for the Declaration of Independence and a unique “pre-Constitution” revolutionary vision of individual liberty.

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HISTORY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Tall Ships, Netanyahu & America Gerald Honigman

By on July 3rd, 2020

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/8775

It was a moment in time never to be forgotten – July 4, 1976.

I was watching those spectacular tall sailing ships from numerous countries passing under the Verrazano-Narrows 
Israel must concentrate on the first part of Hillel’s famous quote.
Bridge in Brooklyn in salute to America’s two hundredth birthday. Tears of pride were in many of our eyes that day.

I was there with my best friend Arie, who is from Israel. At almost the very same moment that those tall ships were sailing by, something else was happening which would link Israel and America together in many a mind forever after.

During the night before and the early morning hours of July 4, 1976, Israel launched Operation Thunderball AKA Operation Entebbe AKA Operation Yonatan.

On June 27, Air France Flight 139 was hijacked by Arabs and some European soul mates. The plane was taken to Idi Amin’s Uganda, where the hijackers were met with open arms.

The passengers were soon asked to form two lines – one for Jews, the other for Gentiles. Most of the latter were freed, but the Jews became Idi Amin’s “guests”. Amin’s buddies next announced that the Jews would be killed if demands were not met.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Is Israel stealing private Palestinian land? – Moshe Dann

By on July 3rd, 2020

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/is-israel-stealing-private-palestinian-land-opinion-6334

When Jewish communities (“settlements”) were established, it was done “in good faith,” and with government approval on vacant land. Arabs did not go to court to claim “their land.”

One of the most serious accusations against Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria to “end the occupation” and in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaigns is that Israel systematically steals or “seizes” “private Palestinian land.” Not only would that be illegal, it is immoral. This seems to be the basis for the High Court’s decision to strike down the Regulation Law.

It is important to remember the reason for the Regulation Law. When Jewish communities (“settlements”) were established, it was done “in good faith,” and with government approval on vacant land. Arabs did not go to court to claim “their land.” Only much later, led by left-wing NGOs, were Arabs encouraged to make their claims

The humanitarian purpose of the Regulation Law was to protect Jews who had built their homes “in good faith.” Most other countries have similar laws which protect homeowners in cases where the value of what was built far exceeds the value of the land. Destroying the homes of many thousands of Jews to resolve questionable or false Arab land claims would be unfair and unjust. Therefore, compensation was offered to Arab claimants, regardless of proof of ownership.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trump’s Leaner White House 2020 Payroll Saved Taxpayers $23.5 Million Since 2017 Adam Andrzejewski

By on July 3rd, 2020

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2020/06/30/trump-further-hone

During President Trump’s first four-years, he spent $23.5 million less on White House payroll costs than Obama, adjusted for inflation.

Trump’s White House payroll has 413 employees – that’s 55 fewer staffers than Barack Obama (FY2012) at the same point in their presidencies.

There was 36-percent turnover in White House staff, year over year. This was the same percentage as the previous year.

Comparing First Lady staff headcount: Melania Trump (11 staffers) versus Michelle Obama (24 staffers).

Today, the Trump administration released its annual report to Congress on the White House Office Personnel. The payroll data includes employee name, status, salary, and position title for all 413 White House employees as of June 30, 2020. Search the recent Trump administration (2017, 2018, and 2019) payroll data posted at OpenTheBooks.com.

Over the past 12 months, Trump further reduced headcount at the already lean White House by five employees. Last year, the president employed 418 staffers which was 36 fewer than Obama at the same point in their presidencies.

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