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WORLD NEWS

Biden’s Great-Power Test Begins China presses the Philippines at sea while Russia rattles Ukraine.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidens-great-power-test-begins-11617748045?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

The U.S. Navy announced Tuesday that the Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group entered the South China Sea for “routine operations” amid a Chinese maritime militia standoff with the Philippines. China’s provocation comes as Russia has surged forces near Ukraine. The Biden Administration may be getting an early test of whether its model of liberal multilateralism can deter revisionist powers pushing against U.S. interests.

The Philippines began to sound the alarm last month over Chinese militia boats, at one point totaling 220, occupying the Whitsun Reef west of the archipelago. The naval equivalent of Russia’s “little green men,” China’s military-affiliated flotillas can masquerade as fishing fleets to give Beijing plausible deniability as it entrenches itself in disputed waters.

An analysis by two researchers from the U.S. Naval War College last week found “no evidence of fishing whatsoever during these laser-focused operations, but every indication of trolling for territorial claims.”

For more than a decade China has been moving aggressively to establish dominance in the waters surrounding the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia and Taiwan, building military installations and harassing other nations’ commercial vessels. In 2016 an international court said China was breaking the law in the South China Sea. The Trump Administration last summer sanctioned firms involved in the construction of illegal islands there.

My New Book on Journalism, Exposing Corruption, and the Resulting Risks, Dangers and Societal Changes Glenn Greenwald

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/my-new-book-on-journalism-exposing?token

On Mother’s Day in 2019, I obtained a massive archive of materials from Brazil’s most powerful officials. The reporting we did changed the country, and our lives.

In 2015, I travelled to Sweden for an event with former Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein. It was billed as a conversation about modern journalism between the reporter who had broken the biggest story of the prior generation (Watergate) and the one responsible for the biggest story of the current one (NSA/Snowden revelations).

A couple of years earlier, at the height of the Snowden reporting, Bernstein and I had traded some barbed insults through the media. So before traveling to Sweden, he generously reached out to invite me to dinner in order, essentially, to clear the air so that we could have a civil conversation. The night before the event, we met for dinner at the hotel restaurant. We quickly laughed off the acrimony — it had been a couple of years prior, and both of us have had much worse said about us — and proceeded to have a perfectly enjoyable conversation.

Truth be told, I was excited to meet and talk to Bernstein. Though his Trump-era persona became conventionally fixated on melodramatizing Trump’s evils for CNN, at the time Bernstein for me was most associated with the high investigative drama of Watergate. As a kid, it was that journalistic triumph, along with the Pentagon Papers, that captured my obsessive attention and shaped my views of what journalism is: reporters and whistleblowers who risk everything and face various multi-level dangers to confront and expose corruption by the most powerful actors in society. Throughout pre-adolescence, I spent countless hours reading All the President’s Men and repeatedly watching the excellent 1976 film based on it — in which Bernstein was played by Dustin Hoffman and Bob Woodward played by Robert Redford — and that noble and exciting iconography stayed with me and shaped how I view what journalism should be. It still does.

Our two-hour conversation that night covered many topics, but one comment from Bernstein stayed with me. “I know you likely already know this,” he said, “but a story like the NSA reporting you’re doing is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, so make sure to enjoy it while it lasts.”

Palestinians: US Taxpayer Money Going to Terrorists by Bassam Tawil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17208/palestinians-terrorists-us-aid-money

The memo, however, does not specifically say that the renewed US funding would be conditioned on ending the Palestinians’ “pay-to-slay” program. Instead, the Biden administration is only seeking a “commitment” from the Palestinian leadership to end the stipends.

It is likely that PA President Mahmoud Abbas may make such a “commitment” to the Biden administration. In reality, however, Abbas has announced over the past few years that he would never stop the payments to the imprisoned terrorists and the families of the “martyrs.”

In the world of Abbas and the Palestinians, any Palestinian who is killed while carrying out a terror attack against Jews is a martyr and hero.

“We will not deduct or suspend the allowances. Even if we are left with one penny, we will spend it on the families of the prisoners and martyrs. We consider the martyrs and prisoners as our stars.” — Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Wafa.ps

The Palestinian leadership is now hoping that the Biden administration will turn a blind eye to the “pay-for-slay’ program and allow them to continue funding terrorists and their families.

The Palestinians are letting the world know that the payments to the terrorists will absolutely continue, just not through the banks. The Palestinians are trying to make it look as if this is a problem related only to the method of payment, and not the fact that the money is going to reward terrorists for murdering, or attempting to murder, Jews.

It is clear that any Palestinian “commitment” to cease rewarding terrorists will not be worth the paper it is written on. Abbas and his henchmen are telling the Biden administration one thing in English and their people the opposite in Arabic. They have no intention whatsoever of stopping the blood-soaked payments. In order to ensure that they continue, the Palestinian leadership are funneling the terror funds through the Palestinian post offices.

If and when the Biden administration resumes financial aid to Abbas, those who will resume collecting US taxpayer dollars are the terrorists.

The Biden administration’s decision to resume unconditional US financial aid to the Palestinians will allow the Palestinian Authority (PA) to continue rewarding terrorists who kill Jews, and sometimes, as “collateral damage,” others.

Last week, the Biden administration reportedly confirmed to Congress that the PA has continued to use international aid money to reward terrorists and their families.

The Biden administration, however, emphasized that the PA’s actions will not impact its plan to renew funding to the Palestinians.

A non-public State Department report revealed that the Palestinians distributed at least $151 million in 2019 on their “pay-to-slay” program, in which international aid dollars are spent to support imprisoned terrorists and their families. Financial statements also revealed that at least $191 million was lavished on “deceased Palestinians referred to as ‘martyrs.'”

Passport to Pimlico Another cave-in to the child rebels. Bruce Bawer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/04/passport-pimlico-bruce-bawer-0/

Last week in central London, hundreds of pupils at a top-rated private secondary school, the Pimlico Academy, staged an angry walkout. The target of their wrath? Headmaster Daniel Smith, who, upon his arrival at Pimlico last summer, introduced himself to parents with a letter saying that he had “the highest expectations of conduct and achievement for all.” Somehow he didn’t realize that, in 2021, them’s fightin’ words.

In keeping with his high expectations, Smith instituted a number of changes at Pimlico that the protesters condemned, in cartoonishly “woke” terms, in a written manifesto. For one thing, he established a dress code that they opposed because, by specifying proper clothing for boys and girls, it ostracized “non-binary” pupils. As part of this code, Smith forbade hairstyles that “block the view of others” (which, protesters charged, was racist code for “No Afros”) and prohibited brightly colored hijabs (anti-Muslim, of course). Note that similar rules are in force at many other English schools (and that in French schools, the hijab is banned entirely).

Smith also introduced a so-called “knowledge-led curriculum,” including courses in British history that, in the view of the malcontents, included too much information about “white kings and queens” and too little about “BAME [Black Asian Minority Ethnic] figures.” (As one black girl told a reporter on camera: “Tudor kings and queens don’t reflect who we really are.”) For good measure, the protesters accused Smith directly of “racism, Islamophobia and transphobia” and faulted him for paying insufficient homage to the Black Lives Matter movement.

Smith came to the 1200-pupil Pimlico from the Ebbsfleet Academy in Swanscombe, Kent, where he was vice principal. By all reports, he was as strict at Ebbsfleet as he’s been at Pimlico – but there was apparently not a whimper of outrage in response. How to explain this difference? Well, one factor is that the kids at Ebbsfleet are mostly working-class whites, whereas Pimlico is overwhelmingly non-white, mostly black Caribbean and African. Many have only rudimentary English; some are Muslim. Plenty of them, it’s clear, have drunk deep from the Black Lives Matter wells. During the walkout, somebody scrawled on the school’s outer wall: “White schools for brown kids are u mad.” Another graffito read: “Pimlico Academy…run by racists…for profit!!!”

My first thought, upon reading the manifesto and graffiti, was: where did these kids – most in their early to mid teens – pick up this rubbish? Are they being used by adults? It’s notable that many of their parents support the protest; at last week’s walkout, kids and parents alike carried professionally printed BLM posters bearing the logo of the weekly Socialist Worker newspaper. Most of the teachers also backed the protest; last Thursday, they voted to declare “no confidence” in Smith’s management. On Friday, the Daily Mail noted that the influence of the far-left National Union of Teachers on this revolt cannot be underestimated. On Sunday, the Mail reported that, sure enough, the Socialist Workers Party had been active behind the scenes of the protest.

Given the protesters’ palpable hostility toward British freedom, culture, history, and capitalism – in short, toward everything British – it was no surprise that the symbol of their beef with Smith was the Union Jack.

Indoctrinated in Hate: ‘This Is the Start of the New Caliphate’ by Raymond Ibrahim

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17207/indoctrination-new-caliphate

Hate-filled indoctrination and training in violence is not limited to the “schools” of ISIS or Boko Haram. Public schools all around the Muslim world share elements of this indoctrination. Most recently, a March 2021 study exposed how the school curriculum of Turkey — for decades one of the Muslim world’s most secular nations — is also increasingly full of jihadi propaganda.

“The Turkish curriculum has been significantly radicalized in recent years. Jihad war is introduced as a central value; martyrdom in battle is glorified…. Concepts such as “Turkish World Domination” … are emphasized. The curriculum adopts an anti-American stance and displays sympathy toward the motivations of ISIS and Al-Qaeda…. Christians and Jews are characterized as infidels instead of People of the Book…. The curriculum demonizes Zionism and verges on anti-Semitic…” — “The Erdoğan Revolution in the Turkish Curriculum Textbooks,” IMPACT-se, March, 2021.

What will happen in a few decades when all these boys — those raised on absolute hate and violence and those raised on absolute tolerance and nonviolence — become the world’s decision-makers?

While boys in the West are all but indoctrinated into becoming girls — if not surgically mutilated, at least spiritually emasculated — boys throughout the Muslim world are increasingly indoctrinated into becoming super jihadis: ISIS 2.0.

The news is coming in fast from a variety of sources.

A documentary filmmaker, Alan Duncan, for instance, recently made a brief video of his visit to al-Hawl refugee camp in northeastern Syria, run by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces. Although 80% of the camp consists of women and (27,000) children, many of whom had fled ISIS, the camp is known as the “Womb of ISIS.”

In the video, highlighted in a February 2021 report, eight- to ten-year-old boys appear raising one finger — symbolic of jihad. When asked about the gesture, one boy responded: “This means the Islamic State remains.” On being asked if they want to be doctors or teachers when they grow up, one boy says, “We don’t want to be a doctor. We want to be a brother fighter. We want to fight the apostates.” Then a woman, dressed in a black burka, declares that she wants the children to become “mujahidin who fight in the way Allah” — who “fight the infidels.”

According to Duncan, the reason for all this indoctrination is that:

“There are already training camps in there — they are training the ISIS ideologies to the kids. They are not teaching them A, B and C — they are teaching them to hate. To hate the West …. They are training them for future jihad…. The children are victims of ISIS and their parents. They are within an extremist Islamic-controlled camp. They are not being told how to become doctors and nurses — the little girls are there to serve and breed. The boys are there to be the future fighters and the future suicide bombers…. This is the start of the new caliphate. I am certain of it. You can sense the fear in there of the religious police. They are trying to keep the structure of caliphate in there — the laws, the punishment. It’s like walking in the caliphate. It’s like walking into another world.”

Beijing Accelerating Timeline for Possible Invasion of Taiwan, Expert Warns By Frank Fang

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_breakingnews/beijing-accelerating-timeline-for-possible-invasion-of-taiwan-expert-

TAIPEI, Taiwan—The Chinese communist regime is accelerating its plans to invade Taiwan, an expert warns, as Beijing ratchets up military maneuvers against the island.

Twenty Chinese military aircraft—including four nuclear-capable H-6K bombers, 10 J-16 fighter jets, two Y-8 anti-submarine warfare aircraft, and a KJ-500 airborne early warning and control aircraft—entered Taiwan’s air defense identification zone (ADIZ) on March 26, according to Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense. It was the largest incursion ever reported by the ministry.

Taiwan’s ADIZ, located adjacent to the island’s territorial airspace, is an area where incoming planes must identify themselves to the island’s air traffic controller.

The incursion caps off a significant increase in hostility by Beijing against Taiwan since 2020. Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen, re-elected last January, has taken a hard line against threats posed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), while the island has deepened its cooperation with the United States—prompting the regime to escalate its warmongering towards the island.

The CCP sees Taiwan as a part of its territory and has threatened war to bring the island under its fold. The self-ruled island is in reality a de-facto independent country with its own democratically-elected government, military, constitution, and currency.

The Republic of China (ROC)—Taiwan’s official name—overthrew China’s Qing Dynasty emperor in 1911. After the ROC retreated to Taiwan upon being defeated by the CCP during the Chinese Civil War, the CCP established a communist state called the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, while Taiwan gradually transitioned to become a democracy. But to this day, the Chinese regime has refused to recognize Taiwan’s sovereignty.

Last year, the Chinese air force flew about 380 sorties into Taiwan’s ADIZ, the highest number in a given year since 1996. So far this year, the Chinese military has been sending aircraft into the ADIZ on a near-daily basis.

The island’s coast guard on April 1 announced that Beijing has been flying unmanned drones near Taiwan’s Dongsha Island, located in the northern part of the South China Sea. The authority said it could not rule out that Beijing was using the drones to carry out reconnaissance.

Alongside military actions, the regime has sharpened its rhetoric towards the island. Earlier this year, a Chinese defense spokesperson threatened war against Taiwan if it declared independence.

Jordan’s Volatility Alerts the USA to Middle East Reality Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

https://bit.ly/3sSvn1O  Jordan’s domestic vulnerability

Jordan’s domestic upheaval involved some Arab countries, members of the royal Jordanian family and other prominent Bedouins, who were arrested and charged with an attempted regime change.

A regime-change in Jordan could transform the strategically-located country – between Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Israel – into another haven for Palestinian and Islamic terrorism. It would threaten the existence of the current regimes in Saudi Arabia, all other pro-US Gulf states and Egypt, advancing the interests of Iran’s Ayatollahs, Turkey’s Erdogan, the Muslim Brotherhood, China and Russia, while traumatizing regional stability and with dire Western and Israeli national security and economic consequences.  

Jordan’s inherent political and ideological vulnerability has been fueled by intra-Bedouin fragmentation and conflicts, dating back to 1921, when the Hashemite Bedouin family was imported to Jordan – from Hejaz in western Saudi Arabia – by the British Empire, and imposed upon the indigenous Bedouins of (mostly southern) Jordan.  Furthermore, Jordan’s Bedouins are deeply divided, geographically, tribally, culturally, ideologically and religiously, with some of the southern tribes considering the Hashemites “carpetbaggers” from the Arabian Peninsula, Westernized and straying away from Islam and pan-Arabism by concluding a peace treaty with the “infidel” Jewish State.

Moreover, 70% of Jordan’s population are Palestinians, while Palestinian leaders (e.g., the PLO, the Palestinian Authority and Hamas) view Jordan as an artificial entity, the eastern (78%) part of Palestine. Hence, Palestinian active involvement in subversion and terrorism in Jordan and occasional attempts to topple the Hashemite regime, such as the civil war in September 1970 and the 1989 wave of terrorism.

Arabs’ Real Enemies: Iran and Turkey by Khaled Abu Toameh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17168/arabs-enemies-turkey-iran

The Arabs are warning the world that Turkey and Iran are funding and arming terrorists, that they a major threat to security and stability in the Middle East, and that they keep meddling in the internal affairs of Arab countries.

The Arabs are also telling the world that the only way to deal with Turkey and Iran is by increasing political and economic pressure on them and holding them to account for their malign actions.

Turkey and Iran, in other words, are telling the Arabs that they can go to hell. They are also telling the Arabs that Turkey and Iran will continue to occupy Arab countries, meddle in their internal affairs, and unleash terrorist attacks to undermine their stability and security.

Veteran Saudi columnist Abdulrahman Al-Rashed warned that Iran’s continued “military activities” in the region will likely lead to more chaos that will be increasingly difficult to control.

Al-Rashed also pointed out that the Houthi militia increased its missile and drone attacks on Saudi Arabia after the Biden administration revoked its designation as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.

[T]he latest Arab warning concerning the Turkish and Iranian threats has gone almost unnoticed by the international community and media. They only pay a great deal of attention to the resolutions of the Arab League foreign ministers when they include — as they frequently do — a condemnation of Israel.

After decades of portraying Israel as their mortal enemy, the Arabs have finally woken up to the fact that it is two Islamic countries, Turkey and Iran, that are actually threatening their security and stability.

The Arabs are now seeking to draw the world’s attention to these Turkish and Iranian threats.

The Arabs are warning the world that Turkey and Iran are funding and arming terrorists, that they a major threat to stability in the Middle East, and that they keep meddling in the affairs of Arab countries.

They are also telling the world — in message directed mainly to the Biden Administration — that the only way to deal with Turkey and Iran is by increasing political and economic pressure on them and holding them to account for their malign actions.

Where Are the US and the EU on Iran’s Human Rights Violations? by Majid Rafizadeh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17249/iran-human-rights-violations

Although Iran ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, President Hassan Rouhani’s government has made no effort to alter the country’s Penal Code, which allows girls as young as nine to be executed.

“Iranian courts, and particularly revolutionary courts, regularly fall far short of providing fair trials and use confessions likely obtained under torture as evidence in court. Authorities have failed to meaningfully investigate numerous allegations of torture against detainees. Authorities routinely restrict detainees’ access to legal counsel, particularly during the initial investigation period.” — Human Rights Watch, “World Report 2021.”

In rewarding Iran for malign behavior — by again showering millions of dollars on the Iranian regime, lifting sanctions and reviving the nuclear deal — the US and the EU are empowering the ruling clerics of Iran to further suppress and crack down on dissidents, torture and kill their citizens and expand their tyranny abroad.

While the Biden administration and the European Union are forging ahead to revive the Iran nuclear deal – which, by the way, Tehran never signed — and lift sanctions on the Iranian regime, they are turning a blind eye on the regime’s alarming and increasing human rights violations.

Human rights violations committed by the Iranian regime have become even more shattering and appalling. Unfortunately, Iran’s leaders have been acting with full impunity. First, the suppression and execution of political prisoners and those who protest against Iran’s theocratic establishment have reached an unprecedented level. According to a recent Human Rights Watch report, the Iranian regime is one of the world’s leading executioners. In 2020, Iran’s regime executed more than 230 people. These include individuals who committed their alleged crimes when they were children.

My Fight With Canada’s Pravda: Is It Really Not Ok To Be White? Welcome to the CBC’s twisted world of woke racism. George Rojas

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/04/my-fight-canadas-pravda-it-really-not-ok-be-white-frontpagemagcom/

Canada is an interesting place from a US politics perspective. In terms of left-wing authoritarianism, it’s always been about 2-to-5 years ahead of us Americans. As Rebel News-founder Ezra Levant told the US Congress once: “America should care about Canada because what happens in [] Canada soon comes—or tries to come—to the U.S… we’re a laboratory for bad ideas.”

For this reason, I like checking in on Canada’s state news broadcaster, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. I don’t think the US will be getting officially government-sanctioned news any time soon—the CBC was created in the 30s to counter US-dominance of the country’s airwaves, so they’re in a special position. But Canada’s official outlet is fascinating because it has a special mandate to provide news and commentary to the taxpaying public (who shell out over US$1 billion per year for it) and yet it’s a hyper-elite institution that speaks only to a small part of the country.

Unsurprisingly then, it’s absolutely loathed by Canadian conservatives. When political scientist Eric Kaufmann commissioned a poll in Canada attempting to understand what the left and right most widely disagree on, he found it was ethnic diversity, Handmaid’s Tale-author Margaret Atwood, and the CBC.

In a recent check-up of mine, I found “a story” apparently deemed newsworthy by CBC editors involving some fool in the Toronto suburbs who thought it a good idea to put up stickers saying things like “It’s OK to be white” on a light post. Such an act ‘promoted white nationalism’, according to the CBC’s headline, and supposedly necessitated an interview with the local hate-crimes police unit—Canada does have criminal laws against ‘inciting or willfully promoting hatred’, although this “offense” doesn’t even come close.