Displaying the most recent of 90914 posts written by

Ruth King

Russia not taking Gen. Mark Milley’s phone calls By Monica Showalter

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/03/russia_not_taking_gen_mark_milleys_phone_calls.html

Gen. Mark Milley, the Pentagon swamp creature who brought us the Afghanistan pullout and turned the U.S. military focus to “white rage,” doesn’t seem to be able to get Russia’s generals, now bombing Ukraine, to return his phone calls.

According to the Washington Post:

Repeated attempts by the United States’ top defense and military leaders to speak with their Russian counterparts have been rejected by Moscow for the last month, leaving the world’s two largest nuclear powers in the dark about explanations for military movements and raising fears of a major miscalculation or battlefield accident.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have tried to set up phone calls with Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Gen. Valery Gerasimov but the Russians “have so far declined to engage,” said Pentagon spokesman John Kirby in a statement Wednesday.

The attempted calls by Austin and Milley, which have not previously been reported, come as Russia conducts operations near the borders of NATO members Poland and Romania while the United States and its European allies conduct air-policing operations over the Baltic Sea and pour weapons and equipment into Ukraine by ground transport.

The Absurd Attempt to Defend Lia Thomas’s Competing as a Woman By Jenna Stocker

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/03/the-absurd-attempt-to-defend-lia-thomass-competing-as-a-woman/?utm_source=recirc-

A Washington Post columnist ridiculously argues that we shouldn’t care about Lia Thomas competing as female because sports aren’t about competition anyway.

W riting in last Thursday’s Washington Post, Sally Jenkins poses several questions regarding the nature of college athletics, the purpose of the NCAA, and the role of competition in collegiate sports — all in the context of transgender swimmer Lia Thomas. But what Jenkins is really doing is ignoring the essential element of sport: competition — specifically, fair competition. Removing fair competition from the debate and making it about “becomingness” obscures the inherent biological advantage of transgender women, because admitting to unfair competition means drawing the conclusion that transgender women are not women, and revealing that the whole progressive argument for gender identity being equal to immutable biological fact is a farce.

Thomas, up until the spring 2019, identified as a man and swam on the University of Pennsylvania’s men’s swimming team and just recently competed in the NCAA women’s swimming championships, where he placed in the prestigious top eight in all three of his individual events, including a first-place finish in the 500-yard freestyle.

Trying Trump by Resignation Letter Is Disgraceful By Charles C. W. Cooke

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/03/trying-trump-by-resignation-letter-is-disgraceful/

“But none of this happened. Trump was not charged “with falsifying business records.” The prosecutors did not secure “an indictment of Mr. Trump.” The matter was not “the highest-profile case ever brought by the Manhattan district attorney’s office.” Mr. Trump was not “the first American president to face criminal charges.” And Mr. Dunne and Mr. Pomerantz did “not demonstrate that the former president had intended to inflate the value of his golf clubs, hotels and office buildings.” 

The leaked judgments of a dissenting Manhattan prosecutor can’t be allowed to negate the presumption of innocence to which every American is entitled.

Y esterday’s New York Times contained a long report on a resignation letter that was leaked from the Manhattan district attorney’s office, in which it is revealed that “one of the senior Manhattan prosecutors who investigated Donald J. Trump,” Mark F. Pomerantz, “believed that the former president was ‘guilty of numerous felony violations’ and that it was ‘a grave failure of justice’ not to hold him accountable.”

Americans of all political stripes should be horrified by this development, and the leaker, whoever he may be, should be summarily fired.

Arizona Passes Bills Banning Transgender Athletes in Women’s Sports, Gender Reassignment Surgery for Minors By Caroline Downey

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/arizona-passes-bills-banning-transgender-athletes-in-womens-sports-gender-reassignment-surgery-for-minors/

Arizona passed bills Thursday banning transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports and minors from undergoing gender transition surgery, adding another member to the growing coalition of Republican states that have passed such measures.

It is uncertain whether Governor Doug Ducey will sign the bills. While he is a Republican, that doesn’t necessarily mean he will rubber stamp the bills, given that the Republican governors of Utah and Indiana recently vetoed their versions of the sports legislation.

Prohibiting transgender athletes from female sports has become a major Republican platform issue. Multiple red states have passed bills restricting K-12 and collegiate athletics to biological sex. Idaho was the first do so in 2020, but its law is currently entrenched in litigation, as is West Virginia’s.

In Texas, Governor Gregg Abbott has ordered investigations into medical providers and parents who enable children’s transition surgeries.

Market Innovations Make Nuclear An Energy Crisis Solution By Roy Mathews

https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2022/03/22/market_innovations_make_nuclear_an_energy_crisis_solution_823059.html

One of the few positive takeaways from the war in Ukraine is the long overdue reconciliation of people’s overblown fear of nuclear power and the world’s need for sustainable clean energy. The current energy crisis rocking the U.S. has seen pipelines canceled and prices rising at the pump, with electric vehicles being touted as the answer. Fears of another Chernobyl have long dogged the nuclear industry and limited its appeal.

But, as they say, needs must.

The stigma of nuclear power being too prone to human error to be a viable and safe energy source may be headed to the dustbin of history. European countries that have recently moved away from nuclear power are starting to realize that dependence on Russian fossil fuels is a problem that perhaps only nuclear power can abate. Take Germany, for example: With Russia as its largest supplier of crude oil, the country has had to reconsider a decision that would shut down half of its nuclear plants this year.

Americans face triple whammy as rent, gas and electric bills surge By Irina Ivanova

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/inflation-gas-prices-rent-electricity-bills-rise/

Zachary Lloyd makes $14,800 a year as a graduate teaching assistant at Florida State University — right around the poverty line for a single adult. So the 25-year-old was looking forward to a pay increase starting this fall that would net him about $1,000 more, just about covering his higher costs for groceries, fast food and gasoline.Then his lease came up for renewal, and Lloyd learned his management company was raising the rent on the Tallahassee apartment he shares with a fellow student by $250 a month.

“I was shocked when I opened the letter today — it was almost 18%, which is not covered by a pay raise,” he told CBS MoneyWatch.

Lloyd is facing a dilemma distressingly common among America’s 120 million renters. With the cost of rent, transportation and utilities all rising at double-digits, many households are forking over last year’s pay increases, and then some, just to make ends meet.

Carnage in Beersheba and a badge of dishonor  By Ruthie Blum

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-702251

A study presented this week at the “Conference on Politics and Arab Society in Israel”— held on Sunday and Monday at the University of Haifa, in conjunction with the Israel Democracy Institute and the New Israel Fund — shows a steady erosion of public trust in law enforcement and the judiciary. The research, conducted by professors Gideon Fishman and Arie Ratner at the university’s department of sociology, covers the 22-year period beginning in 2000.

What the two academics revealed isn’t a hot news flash to most Israelis. But it’s been particularly apparent since Tuesday afternoon.

That’s when 34-year-old Muhammad Alab Ahmed abu Alkiyan, an Israeli citizen from the Bedouin town of Hura — a married father of five, three of whom have special needs — slaughtered four innocent Jews in Beersheba and seriously wounded two others.

Let us start with the police, who were nowhere to be found during Alkiyan’s car-ramming and stabbing spree that left dead Chabad Rabbi Moshe Kravitzky, 48, Laura Yitzhak, 43, Doris Yahbas, 49, and Menahem Yehezkel, 67.

China Closer to Dominating Southeast Asia by Judith Bergman

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18355/china-southeast-asia

“China has fully militarized at least three of several islands it built in the disputed South China Sea, arming them with anti-ship and anti-aircraft missile systems, laser and jamming equipment, and fighter jets in an increasingly aggressive move that threatens all nations operating nearby… that buildup of weaponization is destabilizing to the region.” — US Admiral John C. Aquilino, Associated Press, March 21, 2022.

“Relevant construction activity that China is undertaking does not target or impact any country and there is no intention to militarize.” — Communist Chinese President Xi Jinping, in 2015, The Times, March 21, 2022.

“[T]his presents a security risk to all countries in southeast Asia… where China has now built itself the capacity to control the skies and control the sea lanes through that region very effectively… It reflects the overall growth of the Chinese military… control of the South China Sea would be a major step for the PRC in prosecuting a military campaign against Taiwan. It certainly makes it much harder for the United States for example to get its military forces closer to Taiwan… it really becomes a mechanism to control all of southeast Asia, this is a region of ten countries, 650 million people… if you are the military dominant power in the South China Sea you dominate south east Asia. That at least was the strategic thinking of the Japanese in the Second World War and I think it is the strategic thinking of China right now.” — Peter Jennings, Executive Director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, interview with ABC Radio Australia, March 22, 2022.

The drill coincided with China’s announcement of its annual military budget for 2022, according to which China will be increasing its defense spending by 7.1% to $230 billion, up from a 6.8% increase the year before…. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute has found that China consistently under-reports its actual defense budget.

China, however, is not transparent about what its defense budget includes — and does not include.

“Beijing conducts dozens of operations in its neighbors’ EEZs every year which, if civilian in nature, are illegal or, if military, are exactly what China claims other countries are not allowed to do in its own EEZ.” — Greg Poling, Center for Strategic and International Studies, rfa.org, March 1, 2022.

While the world is preoccupied with Ukraine, China continues to make aggressive moves in the South China Sea, almost the entirety of which China claims to be part of its territory.

Palestinians: The ‘Criminal’ Pastor Who Met with the Rabbi by Khaled Abu Toameh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18326/palestinians-pastor-rabbi

Appeals by heads of the Christian community in Bethlehem for the release of Shahwan from prison have been completely ignored by the PA leadership, which appears afraid of a backlash from Islamists and other radical groups if it dares to release the pastor. The appeals have also been ignored by many journalists who mostly chose to focus only on stories that reflect negatively on Israel.

Even more alarming is that the Palestinian Authority, which now has close relations with the Biden administration, is punishing a Palestinian Christian for the “crime” of meeting with a Jew.

If the PA is going to incarcerate every Palestinian who meets with settlers or does business with Jews, it will have to build enough prisons to hold tens of thousands of its people. Moreover, if the PA considers meetings with Jews to be a crime punishable by imprisonment and hard labor, why are its leaders continuing to hold public and secret meetings with Israeli officials?

If PA President Mahmoud Abbas himself is prepared to travel to the Israeli city of Rosh Ha’ayin to meet with Israel’s Defense Minister Benny Gantz, whom the Palestinians have repeatedly condemned as a “war criminal,” why isn’t a pastor allowed to meet with a rabbi?

This incident is yet another example of the endemic hypocrisy of the PA regarding its dealings with Israel.

The Beit Al-Liqa incident is also further proof of the PA’s discrimination and mistreatment of the Christian minority.

It is much easier for the PA to arrest a Palestinian pastor than, say, the head of a Muslim clan. The Christians are not going to take to the streets to riot and attack Palestinian security officers when one of their men is arrested. Muslims, by contrast, would not hesitate to attack the PA and confront its security forces.

All this is happening while the Biden administration continues to engage with the PA about the need to revive the peace process and the PA’s purported commitment to the so-called two-state solution, while ignoring the persecution of Christians and major human rights violations committed by the PA in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Johnny Shahwan, a Palestinian Christian from the Bethlehem area, has been in a Palestinian Authority (PA) prison for the past two weeks. Shahwan, a pastor who runs the Beit Al-Liqa (House of Encounter) in the town of Beit Jala, just outside Bethlehem, was arrested for meeting with a Jew who previously served as a member of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset.

Lysenko: A cautionary tale for the West By James Mullin

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/03/lysenko_a_cautionary_tale_for_the_west.html

“Follow the Science” seems to have replaced “Go with God” as humanity’s go-to prayer. At least, the left would have us think so. But science is a much more complicated construction than leftists want you to realize, and there was a not very distant time and place where “Follow the Science” led to the needless death of millions.

Trofim Lysenko was a Soviet scientist who rose to prominence (and eternal infamy) in the 1930s. Lysenko was, you might say, an unelected bureaucrat in the Soviet system—if you can say that when the system itself is an unelected dictatorship. He was an agronomist and biologist. I almost said geneticist, but he surprisingly didn’t believe in genes. That is remarkable because he lived over 50 years after the epic (and accurate) studies and theories of the Augustinian Catholic monk, Gregor Mendel.

Lysenko, like most scientists, would have labored in relative faceless, harmless obscurity (see Dr. Bunsen Honeydew) and eventually had his science thoroughly repudiated, except that the State catapulted him to prominence and authority. (I know what you’re now thinking here—that I’m writing about the charismatic Dr. Anthony Fauci—but actually not so. Hang in there). Stalin himself loved this guy and his foundationless theories, and essentially put him in charge of Soviet agriculture—a placement that would leave millions of Ukrainians and Russians dead from starvation.