EDUCATION Comments turned off

Frank Furedi: The fightback against wokeness has begun The classroom will be the key battleground in the 21st-century culture wars.

Posted By on December 25th, 2021

https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/12/24/the-fightback-against-wokeness-has-begun/

One of the most significant events of 2021 was the revolt of frustrated and angry parents in Virginia, against the teaching of so-called critical race theory in local schools.

The revolt precipitated the shock defeat of a one-time Virginia governor, Democrat Terry McAuliffe, at the hands of Republican Glenn Youngkin in November’s gubernatorial elections. This was not just a serious setback for the Biden presidency, in a state the Democrats won easily in 2020; it also demonstrated, perhaps for the first time in the current phase of the culture wars, that the social-engineering efforts of America’s cultural elites can be contained – and perhaps even defeated.

The parents’ revolt certainly laid bare the arrogance of the cultural elites. This was personified by McAuliffe himself, who responded to parents’ concerns about their children’s education with undisguised contempt. ‘I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach’, he declared during a televised debate.

McAuliffe wasn’t alone in this. As the parents’ revolt spread throughout the United States, the National School Boards Association (NSBA) wrote a letter to the president demanding that parents’ protests at school-board meetings be treated as ‘domestic terrorism’. US attorney general Merrick Garland seemingly agreed with the NSBA, and called on the FBI to act against those parents threatening ‘school administrators, board members, teachers and staff’.

Others attempted to dismiss this parents-led rejection of woke pedagogy as a Republican stunt. Former US president Barack Obama told Virginia voters to ignore what he called ‘trumped-up culture wars’, and dismissed parental concerns as ‘fake outrage’.

These attempts to denigrate or dismiss the protests ignore their main driver – parents’ concern about the academic and moral education of their children. Many adults may silently put up with manifestations of woke culture in everyday life, but they will react when they realise their child is being encouraged to adopt values antithetical to their own.

This is not confined to the US. Parents in Great Britain and other parts of the Western world are also confronted by similar attempts to inculcate a woke worldview in their children.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Kamala’s bad press isn’t ‘racist’ or ‘sexist’ Vice President Harris is a terrible politician and voters know it. Charles Lipson

Posted By on December 25th, 2021

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/kamala-harris-bad-press-racist-sexist/

Vice President Kamala Harris has been quoted as saying her media coverage would be better if she were a white man. She is absolutely right. She wouldn’t have bad coverage. She wouldn’t have any coverage at all. That’s because she would still be a minor senator from a big state, not the second-highest official in the Executive Branch. She was selected only because she has the identity-politics markers so important to Democrats.

It should be obvious by now that Harris is a terrible politician. When friendly reporters toss her softballs, she swings, misses and blames them. When she is given hard policy assignments, she swings and misses those, too. (In her defense, her main assignment, immigration, is President Biden’s failure, not her’s.) She refuses to visit the US-Mexican border, aside from one brief stop a thousand miles from the crisis. When she was asked about it, she noted that she hadn’t been to Europe, either. That PR blunder was widely noted but she soon corrected it: she visited Europe.

Why was this clunker picked for such an important office? We still don’t know the full answer. Part of the answer surely lies in Trump’s weakness with women voters and the Democrats’ goal of motivating high turnout among them and among African Americans, who are crucial to any Democratic victory. Candidate Biden first promised to pick a woman for his ticket and then faced intense pressure to pick an African American. The list wasn’t a long one.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Stretched Thin Hiring more cops won’t just reduce crime; done right, it can also improve the quality of policing. Graham Factor

Posted By on December 25th, 2021

https://www.city-journal.org/police-forces-stretched-thin

One night, when I was still a big-city cop, I was called to a business where a young woman, heavily intoxicated, had been caught drawing graffiti with a Sharpie. The business owner was irate because of the pervasive graffiti problem in the area, but the woman had no criminal record. The graffiti in question amounted to about $20 worth of damage. I spoke to the woman and the business owner, and we came to an arrangement. We would trade contact information, and she would return tomorrow to clean up the graffiti. If she did not, the business owner would contact me, and I would ask prosecutors to file a misdemeanor charge against her.

As far as I know, this agreement worked, and it was a win for everyone. The business owner got some justice, and his property got cleaned up. The young woman avoided an arrest and criminal record. And taxpayers didn’t have to spend thousands of dollars prosecuting a drunk, first-time offender over $20 in graffiti. I think the median criminal justice “reformer” would say that this is the kind of thing they would like police to do more often.

Here’s the catch: this “diversion agreement” (which I made up on the spot) took time. My back-up officer and I had to detain the woman, check her criminal history, and identify everyone. We had to complete a criminal investigation that would hold up in court, if necessary. We had to speak to the parties and find a mutually acceptable arrangement. We had to document everything in the appropriate required reports. And I had to take the time to follow up with the business owner, in case the woman failed to hold up her end of the agreement. Booking her into jail and forgetting about the whole thing probably would have been faster.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Biden’s Global Challenges by Chris Farrell and Shea Bradley-Farrell

Posted By on December 24th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18057/biden-global-challenges

Looking ahead, the proposed National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is woefully inadequate in addressing ongoing Chinese aggression — not just towards Taiwan — but on all geopolitical fronts. While China surges ahead with its third “blue water” aircraft carrier and plan for a military base off the Atlantic coast, the NDAA seems to be five steps behind addressing the real threats. Meanwhile, Putin postures aggressively against Ukraine, and Iran races to threaten Israel with a nuclear weapon.

Biden is not going to commit US combat forces to defend Ukraine from a Russian invasion. One day after warning Russian President Vladimir Putin that he would face “severe” economic sanctions, “like ones he’s never seen,” should Russia invade Ukraine, President Joe Biden flatly stated that sending U.S. combat troops to Ukraine is “not on the table.”

Fellow Democrat Representative Seth Moulton bucked the Biden White House line and went to the opinion page of the Wall Street Journal to advocate on behalf of Ukraine, urging weapons shipments, sanctions, and “clearly communicated grave consequences” (whatever that means). Moulton even had the courage to gently remind Biden of the Obama-Biden failure to respond to Russia’s earlier regional conquest writing, “As in 2014, when America failed to deter Mr. Putin’s Crimea offensive…”

Biden, despite the assurances of protection promised to Ukraine in the Budapest Memorandum, says he is not going to commit US combat forces to defend Ukraine from a Russian invasion, thereby further eroding “Washington’s already tarnished credibility on the world stage.”

Biden administration weakness emboldens our enemies and scares our friends. How many other countries — and which — will feel compelled to move ahead aggressively towards acquiring nuclear weapons themselves? Japan, Brazil, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, Taiwan? If they cannot rely on America to come to their rescue, building nuclear capacity becomes a question of risk versus reward. And will nuclear know-how be sold to bad actors and terrorist groups?

“Evidence is growing that members of the IDF General Staff and the Mossad are beginning to realize that the US doesn’t share Israel’s goal of preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power.” — Caroline Glick, Israel Hayom, December 10, 2021.

President Joe Biden’s foreign policy seems unfortunately to consist of abandoning allies, emboldening adversaries, and placing our national security at great risk. Biden’s Afghanistan surrender to the Taliban was a strategic failure with enormous global consequences that humiliated the nation and cost countless lives. Unfortunately, Afghanistan is now the “lens” through which to see the Biden administration’s feeble foreign policy.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Lump of Coal Awards 2021: January 6 Edition This year’s recipients of AG’s annual Lump of Coal Awards include several prominent bad boys and girls. By Julie Kelly

Posted By on December 24th, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/12/23/lump-of-coal-awards-2021-january-6-edition/

Aside from the pandemic, no other issue has dominated the daily news cycle and collective fixation of the ruling class more than the alleged “insurrection” on January 6, 2021.

The events of that day were a gift to the Biden regime and the Democratic Party—which should instantly disabuse anyone of the notion that the Capitol protest was legitimately an organic uprising instead of an inside job orchestrated by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, and the FBI to name just a few accomplices.

Since then, every lever of government power in Washington, D.C. has been wielded in a vengeful way against American citizens who dared to protest the rigged 2020 presidential election. The conduct of those in charge has exposed the moral depravity of the people who populate the power center of the world’s greatest country, showing a stark chasm between the inherent goodness and decency of the American people and the sadistic ghouls who call the shots from the Beltway.

The people on this list deserve a far greater punishment than a lump of coal. And this list could be much longer. But since it’s the Christmas season and all, I’ll be charitable.

This year’s naughty list, January 6 version:

Attorney General Merrick Garland: It’s hard to see how Garland could do more damage as a Supreme Court justice than what he’s doing now as the nation’s top lawyer. In all honesty, Garland is more like Biden or Robert Mueller—a grandfatherly disguise to conceal the sinister actors behind the scenes—and it’s actually Lisa Monaco, his deputy, who’s in charge.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Collins-Fauci axis against anti-lockdown scientists By Lloyd Billingsley

Posted By on December 24th, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/12/the_collinsfauci_axis_against_antilockdown_scientists.html

Francis Collins, the first appointed National Institutes of Health director to serve more than one president, stepped down on December 19, leaving behind a record open to question. For example, in an October 8, 2020 email, Collins told Dr. Anthony Fauci, “there needs to be a quick and devastating public takedown of its premises. I don’t see that on line yet. Is it underway?” 

Collins’ target was the Great Barrington Declaration, signed by more than 900,000 epidemiologists and public health scientists to show concern about the damaging physical and mental health impact of government COVID policies. Those policies, the signers contend, should focus on the most vulnerable while letting others continue normal lives. 

The Barrington signatories included biophysicist Mike Leavitt, professor of structural biology at Stanford and the 2013 winner of the Nobel Prize for chemistry. Stanford Medical School professor Dr. Jay Bhattacharya also signed on, joined by Dr. Martin Kulldorf, professor of medicine at Harvard. 

These experts are every bit as qualified, or more so, than Collins. Even so, the NIH boss called them “fringe epidemiologists” and wanted Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), to deliver a hit piece. 

On October 19, 2020, MedPage Today posted a piece headlined “Who Are the Scientists Behind the Great Barrington Declaration?” As the article noted, “All three have advocated against lockdown measures since the start of the pandemic.” This assumed that lockdowns were an unalloyed benefit for the people. 

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Remember Ronil ‘Ron’ Singh CA police officer, a legal immigrant from Fiji, was gunned down by a criminal illegal. Lloyd Billingsley

Posted By on December 24th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/12/remember-ronil-ron-singh-lloyd-billingsley/

On December 25, 2018, police officer Ronil Singh enjoyed a Christmas dinner in Newman, California. His wife Anamika wanted him to stay home Christmas night with their infant son, but the officer reported for duty because “his community needed him.” In the early morning hours, Singh pulled over a suspected drunk driver.

“Shots fired,” radioed Singh, his last words before dying from gunshot wounds. Shooter Gustavo Perez Arriaga, also known as Paulo Virgen Mendoza, an illegal immigrant, fled the scene with aid from other illegals. Last November Mendoza, who also had gang connections, was sentenced to life in prison.  Three years after the murder, crucial parts of the story may have been forgotten.

Ronil Singh was a legal immigrant from Fiji who came to the United States with the goal of becoming a police officer. Singh achieved his dream and by all accounts the seven-year veteran was a model officer. When he learned that a colleague had never flown on an airplane and never taken a vacation, Singh “literally threw his credit card on my desk and told me to book one. That was the embodiment of Ronil Singh.” His murder never should have happened.

The killer entered the United States illegally and in August, 2011, was arrested for a felony DUI that inflicted an injury. In June of 2014, the illegal was arrested on suspicion of a misdemeanor DUI. Mendoza never showed up for a five-day sentence and in January 2015 skipped a court date. A warrant was issued for his arrest, and in December of 2018, he was still a wanted man.

According to records, Mendoza’s illegal status was never raised in court, and federal immigration authorities had no contact with him before he murdered Ronil Singh. The Mexican was a beneficiary of California’s sanctuary law, under which false-documented illegals, even violent criminals, are a privileged and protected class.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Soviet Union, Thirty Years Later The moral struggle continues. Bruce Bawer

Posted By on December 24th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/12/soviet-union-thirty-years-later-bruce-bawer/

For years, if you opened the closet in the foyer of my Manhattan apartment, you’d encounter a pile of copies of the New York Times from the week in late December 1991 during which the Soviet Union breathed its last. I’ve never been in the habit of hanging on to old newspapers in which my byline didn’t appear, but that week, it seemed to me at the time, was the greatest historical turning point I’d ever experienced.

It was certainly the most astonishing. I remember a point, sometime in the late 1980s, when, during a visit to Washington, I expressed over lunch with American Spectator editor Wladyslaw Pleszczynski what was then an almost universal cynicism about talk of a post-Communist Europe. “No,” said Wlady, who was far more plugged into these developments than most of us, “it’s really happening.”

That was the moment when I started believing it. But you have to forgive my doubts. Throughout the postwar era, nearly everybody had taken the U.S.-Soviet standoff for granted. The division of the world into two parts, free and unfree, felt like a fact of nature. Mutual assured nuclear destruction made any major change in the world order inconceivable.

For virtually everybody, that is, except Ronald Reagan. My biggest professional regret of all time is that, as a snotty young grad student in the early 1980s, I penned a condescending screed about the Gipper that appeared on Newsweek’s “My Turn” page, which was reserved for contributions by amateurs. And boy, was I an amateur. Although I’d voted for Reagan in 1980, I’d since bought into the media clichés about him and, in my silly piece, spat them back out as if they were a product of original thought.  

Like every other detractor of Reagan, however, I learned soon enough that I’d been a fool. All the know-it-alls at the State Department had shivered with embarrassment when he’d shouted in his 1987 Berlin speech: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” But the wall did come down. I was there, in 1990, when parts of it were still being chipped away at. All around me, people were snapping up pieces to take home. But I couldn’t bring myself to pick one up. I didn’t feel I’d earned it.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

China’s post-Covid new trade order David Goldman

Posted By on December 23rd, 2021

https://asiatimes.com/2021/12/chinas-post-covid-new-trade-order/

NEW YORK – China has become the dominant source of demand for Asian manufactures and the leading supplier of goods to the United States and Western Europe during the past two years, reshaping global trade patterns.

The sheer increase in China’s export volume is impressive, but just as important is the composition of trade. Asia has become tightly integrated as a Sinocentric trade zone, and the Western industrial nations have become more dependent on Chinese goods.

Some American strategists worry about China’s growing power in Asia. China’s enormous gains in Asian trade during the past two years at the expense of the US and Japan make that a moot point.

Elbridge Colby, a former Defense Department official who advocates a “strategy of denial” against China, tweeted on December 22: “Global peace isn’t our goal. Preserving Americans’ security, freedom and prosperity is. Not compatible with China dominating Asia, the world’s largest market area.”

In economic terms, that concern is two years late and a trillion dollars short.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Mansour Abbas’s ‘Jewish state’ bombshell By RUTHIE BLUM

Posted By on December 23rd, 2021

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-689633

 
For the second time since April, Ra’am (United Arab List) Party leader Mansour Abbas has caused the jaws of critics and supporters alike to drop in near disbelief, for a similar reason. The first followed his success in the last round of Knesset elections on March 23. The second occurred at the Globes Israel Business Conference on Tuesday.

In some ways, the former was more groundbreaking. In a speech broadcast live in Hebrew on all of Israel’s TV channels, the head of the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Islamist faction performed two major feats. One was to declare his intention to further the interests of his constituents through cooperation and coexistence with the Jews in the country of his citizenship. The other was to omit all mention of the Palestinians.

He delivered the address on April 1 in Nazareth, with the green banner of the Islamic Movement, not the Israeli flag, as a backdrop. But he quoted a conciliatory passage from the Koran, and announced: “I, Mansour Abbas, a man of the Islamic Movement, am a proud Arab and Muslim, a citizen of the state of Israel, who heads the leading, biggest political movement in Arab society, courageously champion a vision of peace, mutual security, partnership and tolerance between the peoples.”

His lack of customary lip service to the Palestinian struggle against the Jewish state was equally noteworthy for its novelty.