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Russia launches fierce rocket attack on Ukrainian city of Kharkiv Bombardment overshadows talks between Moscow and Kyiv officials on the border with Belarus

Posted By on February 28th, 2022

https://www.ft.com/content/0b1a1f5d-147d-4300-8f56-41e16e3dfa2e?segmentId=b385c2ad-87ed-d8ff-aaec-0f8435cd42d9

Russian forces have launched a heavy bombardment of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, an assault that overshadowed the first direct talks between Ukrainian and Russian officials since President Vladimir Putin began his invasion five days ago. Residents of the city said they had come under intense artillery and rocket fire from Russian positions. Video footage shared on social media showed high-rise apartment blocks in Kharkiv being hit by heavy shelling that shrouded the sky with plumes of dark smoke. “Dozens of civilians are dying,” said regional governor Oleh Sinegubov. “It’s happening during the day when people go to pharmacies, for food, for drinking water. This is a crime.” Russia’s military operation, unleashed five days ago, has failed to unseat Ukraine’s government or capture any major cities, but has uprooted hundreds of thousands of civilians who have fled to neighbouring countries in search of safety. The war has cranked east-west tensions to new heights, with Putin putting the country’s nuclear deterrent on high alert and the west imposing swingeing sanctions on Moscow that sent the rouble into a tailspin and prompted Russia’s central bank to impose capital controls.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

POLL; AMERICANS WANT MERIT NOT WOKE POLITICS TO DECIDE COLLEGE ADMISSIONS: TERRY JONES

Posted By on February 28th, 2022

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/02/28/ii-tipp-poll-americans-want-merit-not-woke-politics-to-decide-college-admissions/

America’s colleges and universities increasingly use non-academic criteria, including gender, family income and race, to decide who gets admitted and who doesn’t. It’s a trend most Americans seem to deeply dislike, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows.

Parents want their kids to face a merit-based admissions policy, over one that is for the lack of a better word, woke.

Indeed, if parents’ preferences mattered to institutions of higher education, schools would be making their admission decisions on such merit-based standards as academic achievements and aptitude, not woke criteria such as race and income or whether an applicant has famous parents.

I&I/TIPP asked American adults a simple question: “To what extent do you support or oppose colleges and universities using the following factors to make admission decisions?”

They then provided the following nine possible college admission criteria: “Race or ethnicity,” “Gender,” “Whether a parent went to the school,” “High school grades,” “Extracurricular activities,” “Athletic ability,” “Household income,” “The applicant is the child of a famous person,” “SAT/ACT scores.”

Possible answers included “Support strongly,” “Support somewhat,” “Oppose somewhat,” “Oppose strongly” and “Not sure.”

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Biden’s Political Myopia Endangering Europe: Allow the EastMed Pipeline by Burak Bekdil

Posted By on February 28th, 2022

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18281/biden-europe-eastmed-pipeline

Biden surprised EastMed partners by abruptly withdrawing U.S. support for the pipeline on January 9, thereby effectively killing the project, preventing a diversified supply of energy to Europe, and further assuring even greater revenues for Russia and its war machine.

“The Biden Administration’s actions in this matter are particularly objectionable and hypocritical in light of its tacit approval of Russia’s Nord Stream pipeline, which will only deepen Europe’s energy dependence on a volatile adversary.” — U.S. Representative Gus Bilirakis, January 24, 2022.

As Biden was busy undercutting three staunch U.S. allies in the Mediterranean [Cyprus, Israel and Greece] to appease Erdoğan and a fantasy of “green energy” — that is years from being either ready or affordable — to appease America’s Democrat Party, Ankara would once again prove to be only a part-time Western ally.

“During the vote [against Russia]… Turkey decided to abstain,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said. “We don’t want to break off the dialogue with Russia.”

Biden should immediately reverse his decision and permit the EastMed pipeline.

In December 2019, Biden had described Erdoğan as an autocrat and promised to empower Turkey’s opposition parties through democratic processes. Was that a joke, or is Biden a crypto-fan of Erdoğan?

Once again U.S. President Joe Biden’s strategic miscalculation is coming with a strategic cost: appeasing NATO’s pro-Putin, part-time ally Turkey and jeopardizing Europe’s energy security.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Suicide of a January 6 Defendant: ‘They Broke Him’ Matthew Perna was failed by the country he loved. By Julie Kelly

Posted By on February 28th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/02/27/the-suicide-of-a-january-6-defendant-they-broke-him/

Matthew Perna did nothing wrong on January 6, 2021.

The Pennsylvania man walked through an open door on the Senate side of the building shortly before 3 p.m. that afternoon. Capitol police, shown in surveillance video, stood by as hundreds of Americans entered the Capitol. Wearing a “Make America Great Again” sweatshirt, Perna, 37, left after about 20 minutes.

Less than two weeks later, Perna was ensnared in what the former top U.S. prosecutor called a “shock and awe” campaign to round up Trump supporters and deter them from demonstrating at Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20, 2021. After he discovered his image on the FBI’s most wanted list for January 6, Perna immediately contacted his local FBI office and voluntarily submitted to questioning; on January 18, six FBI agents arrested Perna at his home.

His life from that point turned into a nightmare. Perna was indicted by a grand jury in February 2021 on four counts including obstruction of an official proceeding and trespassing misdemeanors. Despite his nonviolent participation in the events of that day—he did not assault anyone, carry a weapon, or vandalize property—Biden’s Justice Department and local news media nonetheless made his life pure hell.

Whenever his hometown paper, the Sharon Herald, published an article on its social media account about Perna, the majority of replies were “horrible and brutal,” his aunt, Geri Perna, told me on the phone Sunday. After more than a year of legal and public torture, Perna saw no way out.

On Friday night, Matthew Perna hung himself in his garage.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Crowded Road to Kyiv To retain our deterrence abroad, we must tighten our belts at home, pump oil and gas, start to balance our budget, junk wokeism as a nihilist indulgence, and recalibrate our military.  By Victor Davis Hanson *****

Posted By on February 28th, 2022

https://amgreatness.com/2022/02/27/the-crowded-road-to-kyiv/

One of the oddest commentaries about the Russian invasion of Ukraine is the boilerplate reaction that “borders can’t change in modern Europe” or “this does not happen in the 21st century.” 

But why in the world should the 21st century be exempt from the pathologies of the past 20 centuries? Are we smarter than the Romans? More innovative than Florentines? Do we have more savvy leaders than Lincoln or Churchill? Are they more mellifluous than Demosthenes? Does anyone now remember that some 130,000 were slaughtered just 30 years ago in the former Yugoslavia, as NATO planes bombed Belgrade and nuclear America and Russia almost squared off? 

Has globalization, the “rules-based order,” the Davos reset elite, the “international community” so improved the very way humans think that they have rendered obsolete the now ossified ancient idea of deterrence? Will the Kardashians and Beyoncé tweet our pathway to global peace? 

How about transnational NGOs? NATO? WHO? The UN? Are all their recent records of service proof of our more exalted modern morality? Will some new engineered Wuhan virus alter human nature, end its innate ancient pathologies, and so eliminate war as we knew it? Are we not the League of Nations because Putin is now chair of the Security Council? 

In truth, anything can happen to anyone, anywhere,  at any time—and has and will until the end of time. 

So let us walk down the crowded road to Kiev. 

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Islamic Infiltration and the Death of Richard Higgins By Eileen F. Toplansky

Posted By on February 28th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/02/islamic_infiltration_and_the_death_of_richard_higgins.html

America has lost too many good men lately.  Rush Limbaugh, Angelo Codevilla and Colin Flaherty come to mind, and now, sadly, another good man’s voice has been silenced. 

In his 2020 book titled The Memo, Rich Higgins was one of the first to sound the alarm of the Deep State coup to remove President Trump and of the subversives within the ranks.  Yet after three short months in 2017 serving on the National Security Council under President’s Trump national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, Rich was fired for telling the truth.

At the time, Rich was labeled as a “conspiracy theorist,” but with all the recent information that has since emerged, Rich has been fully vindicated. 

The Memo recounts how Rich Higgins’s twenty-year career fighting for America First within the bowels of the DoD and Pentagon bureaucracy enabled him to discern — well before anyone else — the Deep State’s efforts to stop and ultimately remove the president from office.  He was frighteningly accurate in anticipating the ferocity of the Deep State’s assault on the Constitution and President Trump.

Rich Higgins was the vice president of Unconstrained Analytics.  He served on the National Security Council in the Trump administration as the director for strategic planning.

HISTORY, MEDIA Comments turned off

The New York Times Hasn’t Always Cared About Ukrainians By Jack Cashill

Posted By on February 28th, 2022

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/02/the_new_york_emtimesem_hasnt_always_cared_about_ukrainians.html

At his CPAC speech on Saturday, former President Donald Trump could not have been clearer in his denunciation of Vladimir Putin. “The Russian attack on Ukraine is appalling,” said Trump. “it’s an outrage and an atrocity that should never have been allowed to occur.”

Yet the fact that Trump called Putin “smart” and “savvy” is, for the New York Times, prima facie evidence of his affection for Mother Russia. Indeed, the Times had the nerve to run a delusional op-ed on Sunday headlined, “How the American Right Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Russia.”

Earth to the New York Times: No one on the right is pulling for Putin. The Times is pushing this Russia-love narrative both to salvage some political gain from Biden’s catastrophic foreign policy and to cover for its own historic indifference to the Ukrainian people.

The truth is that British and American conservatives have long cared about the Ukraine. Most still do. The international left, the New York Times in particular, cared more about the success of Josef Stalin’s lethal policies than it did the millions of Ukrainians those policies killed.

The New York Times Moscow correspondent, Walter Duranty, admitted to being “pleased as punch” when Stalin announced his Five-Year Plan in the fall of 1928. Stalin, as Duranty observed in his well-titled book, I Write as I Please, was the world’s “greatest living statesman.” A pioneer in the art of fake news, Duranty saw signs of greatness in Stalin’s plan “to socialize, virtually overnight, a hundred million of the stubbornest and most ignorant peasants in the world.”

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Critical Thinking Must Replace Critical Race Theory CRT promotes conflict instigation instead of conflict resolution. Michael Cutler

Posted By on February 28th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/02/critical-thinking-must-replace-critical-race-michael-cutler/

It is becoming all-too apparent that proponents of Critical Race Theory seek the demise of our great Republic. They are using the age-old “divide and conquer” strategy to turn Americans against one another, seeking to instigate conflict and violence to undermine our peaceful society.

There are no winners with this strategy in place — only victims.

Racism is defined as:

Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism by an individual, community, or institution against a person or people on the basis of their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized — the belief that different races possess distinct characteristics, abilities, or qualities, especially so as to distinguish them as inferior or superior to one another.

Racism is racism, and no matter who bears the brunt of it, is wrong-headed and dangerous. It is inherently and supremely unfair and leads all people, of all races, down a dangerous path of resentment and hostility that likely will ultimately result in violence. Critical Race Theory, or CRT, actually promotes racism.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Beating Republicans By Disqualifying Them Democrats look to Iran and Barack Obama for how to deal with their opponents. Matthew Vadum

Posted By on February 28th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/02/beating-republicans-disqualifying-them-matthew-vadum/

In an effort to kick Republican candidates off the ballot for the crime of supporting Donald Trump, Democrats are reaching back more than 150 years to a rarely invoked constitutional provision designed to prevent Confederates from serving in Congress.

Democrats and a handful of Trump Derangement Syndrome-suffering Republicans claim the disturbance on January 6, 2021, that delayed formal congressional certification of the 2020 presidential election results for several hours, was an insurrection or rebellion aimed at overthrowing the United States government.

Facts are no impediment to this durable leftist fantasy.

The facts are that the crowd carried no guns, that police invited many of the alleged trespassers into the facility, that no hostages were taken, and that only minor damage was done to the United States Capitol building.

Although the democratic process was assaulted relentlessly by leftist election officials and judges from coast to coast throughout the 2020 election cycle and its aftermath, it was never under threat on January 6 a year ago.

When the mainstream media falsely reported what happened January 6 was a coup attempt, instead of an anguished cry for help by the unjustly disenfranchised, the news must have come as a surprise to the vast majority of Americans who innocently visited the Capitol that day. And the only person who was actually killed, Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt, was martyred by Michael Byrd, an overzealous policeman who claims the senseless murder he committed somehow “saved countless lives.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Putin Places Russia’s Nuclear Forces on High Alert High noon over Ukraine. Joseph Klein

Posted By on February 28th, 2022

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/02/putin-places-russias-nuclear-forces-high-alert-joseph-klein/

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Sunday placed his military’s nuclear forces on high alert – as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine entered its fourth day.

“Western countries aren’t only taking unfriendly actions against our country in the economic sphere, but top officials from leading NATO members made aggressive statements regarding our country,” the Russian president said in a televised broadcast as he explained his rationale for the nuclear alert order.

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden remained at his private residence in Delaware during the weekend. The U.S. president did not comment directly on Putin’s nuclear forces high alert order as of Sunday afternoon. He left it to White House press secretary Jen Psaki and other senior administration officials to respond. Psaki said that Putin was “manufacturing threats that don’t exist in order to justify further aggression — and the global community and the American people should look at it through that prism.”

Russia’s military has stepped up its air bombardments across Ukraine this past weekend. The attacks included missile strikes against a burial point of radioactive waste, an oil depot, and a residential complex. Putin has also reportedly deployed at least two-thirds of the estimated 150,000 Russian troops, who had been assembled near the Ukrainian border, to invade Ukraine from multiple directions. In order to take control of Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, Russia is massing more troops to lay siege to the city in preparation for a major assault inside Kyiv. Russia has also reportedly reinforced its military offensive capabilities with heavy weaponry capable of inflicting enormous casualties, including to civilians.

As of Sunday evening, Russia had not yet achieved complete control over Ukraine’s air space. The Ukrainians have continued to repel Russia’s persistent attempts to take over Kyiv, while bracing for a more massive attack, and have managed to hold on to other key cities as well. The longer it takes the Russian military to achieve Putin’s objectives, the more strain is being placed on Russia’s logistics supply lines.