Growing Calls for Moving or Boycotting the Beijing Olympics by Soeren Kern

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17308/beijing-winter-olympics-boycott

“We’re dealing with a government of intolerance, dictatorial, brooks no dissent, arrests people at a drop of a hat. I think there’s a very strong case to be made that China should not be rewarded for its astonishingly bad behavior.” — British MP Sir Ian Duncan Smith, Co-chair, Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China.

“We therefore call on governments to boycott the Beijing 2022 Games — anything less will be seen as an endorsement of the Chinese Communist Party’s authoritarian rule and blatant disregard for civil and human rights.” — A coalition of more than 180 human rights groups, in a letter to the International Olympic Committee.

“The IOC’s failure to publicly confront Beijing’s serious human rights violations makes a mockery of its own commitments and claims that the Olympics are a ‘force for good.'” — Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch.

“We must boycott the 2022 Winter Olympics in China. It would be a terrible loss for our athletes, but that must be weighed against the genocide occurring in China and the prospect that empowering China will lead to even greater horrors down the road.” — Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley.

“To be clear, I do not support a boycott. Boycotting these games will only hurt athletes who have spent their lives training to represent their country on the international stage. Instead, it should be the position of all democratic nations that the IOC can and should move the 2022 Games to a nation that respects human rights.” — U.S. Senator Rick Scott, in a letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

“This is not about ‘opposing views’ between countries. There is no room for a middle ground. Either you make yourself an accomplice by closing your eyes, or you stand up for the values ​​that are close to your heart — such as freedom and democracy.” — Glacier Kwong, a human rights activist from Hong Kong who is currently residing in Germany.

A growing number of Western lawmakers and human rights groups are calling for a boycott of the next Winter Olympics, set to take place in Beijing in February 2022.

The calls for a boycott have come in response to burgeoning evidence of human rights abuses against Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, a remote autonomous region in northwestern China. Human rights experts say that at least one million Muslims are being detained in hundreds of internment camps, where they are subject to torture, mass rapes, forced labor and sterilizations.

Beware of Cut-and-Run in Afghanistan by Amir Taheri

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17305/afghanistan-cut-and-run

It is precisely on Afghanistan that Biden has adopted Trump’s hare-brained scheme for total troop withdrawal in exchange for a vague promise by the Taliban, one of the larger terrorist groups, to tone down their deadly attacks. Interestingly, this is precisely the policy that Biden, as Obama’s vice president, opposed as “premature.”

His [Biden’s] cheerleaders in part of the US media and political elite have also forgotten their opposition to Trump’s initial plan, which they dubbed as a “shameful cut-and-run” number and praise Biden’s wisdom of choosing a highly symbolic date for the withdrawal.

[W]hat if the Taliban or kindred terror groups such as ISIS, Khorasan and the Haqqani network choose precisely that date [9/11] to remind the world that they are still alive and kicking?

Who could guarantee that parts of Afghanistan would not , once again, be turned into bases for “exporting” terror beyond the region and, why not, as far as the United States?

Obama baptized Afghanistan as “the good war” in contrast with the “bad war” in Iraq.

Two decades later, the “nation-building” strategy has proved more successful than I thought in 2002. This is why, having argued for a speedy disengagement from Afghanistan in 2002 or 2003, I now believe that continued engagement is in the best interests of the United States.

The US military presence is now down to around 2,500 advisers, training officers and technicians, no longer involved in combat. Their presence is a morale booster for Afghans and a guarantee of support for 8,000 troops from other NATO members. It is also a strong signal that the US does not abandon its allies and does not leave a position unless asked do so by an allied government.

As for the cost of involvement, it is now in the peanuts category compared to what the US spends in Europe or the Far East.

Biden’s dwelling on the length of US involvement is bizarre when we remember that American presence in Germany, Japan and South Korea started eight decades and 13 presidents ago. Ironically, a day after fixing the date for withdrawal from Afghanistan, Biden ordered the sending of more troops to Germany.

Deciding a major national security issue on the basis of a vague and necessarily shaky deal with a terrorist group that is hated by a majority of Afghans is a signal to other terror outfits that their best option is to stay in the ring until the “Great Satan” is overcome by political doubt and moral fatigue.

Biden could link withdrawal to the formation of a transition government that is part of the deal…. The US and NATO allies should be involved together with the United Nations Security Council. Remember that US involvement in Afghanistan happened on the basis of a UN mission.

The transition government cannot be concocted through traditional conclaves of tribal chiefs, mullahs and elders known as “loya jirgah”. Afghanistan now has a constitution and new political culture shaped over the past two decades with several referenda, local, parliamentary and presidential elections. To ignore all that would be wrong and unjust, a betrayal of both Afghan and American peoples.

Biden aides talk of a withdrawal with honor. To me, unless transition takes place within the parameters of the Afghan constitution and the participation of a new political generation that reflects today’s Afghan realities, the Trump-Biden scheme would be nothing but a cut-and-run number unworthy of America.

Kamala once again displays signs of a weird personality disorder By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/04/kamala_once_again_displays_signs_of_a_weird_personality_disorder.html

There’s something off about Kamala Harris. And no, I’m not talking about her hard-left political beliefs, the lies she tells, or her endless reinventing herself for political advancement. In that regard, she’s just another leftist politician. What’s bizarre about Kamala is her inappropriate laughter about things that ought to inspire solemnity.

What makes laughter inappropriate? It’s inappropriate when you’re speaking to a crowd and you’re the only one who laughs. Of course, that can also happen to a bad comedian, but there’s no indication in the clip below that Kamala was trying to tell a joke.

Instead, Kamala is talking about the massive economic disruption thanks to the lockdown that the Democrats hammered into America. In that context, she meant to say that 2 million women had been driven out of the workforce, misspoke by saying “people,” corrected herself by saying “women people,” and then giggled inanely. See for yourself:

That’s a sociopathic response to people’s suffering. But we needn’t do an amateur armchair diagnosis to point to the problems with Kamala’s giggle.

It’s entirely possible that she gave a nervous giggle because she made a mistake. However, that would be equally inappropriate. This is a woman who is literally one heartbeat away from leading what is still (although barely) the most powerful nation in the world. Golda Meir didn’t giggle nervously because she misspoke. Neither did Margaret Thatcher. Insecure little girls giggle; not leaders of men and women.

Dems are out to destroy a Chauvin defense witness’s life and reputation By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/04/dems_are_out_to_destroy_a_chauvin_defense_witnesss_life_and_reputation.html

George Floyd had a lethal dose of fentanyl in his body. His post-mortem blood oxygen level was a robust 98%, despite significant heart disease. He was complaining that he couldn’t breathe long before the police, following a violent struggle, got him to the ground in the Minneapolis-approved position for excited delirium. Accurate, previously unseen footage showed that Officer Chauvin’s knee was on Floyd’s shoulders, not his neck. Oh, and an alternate juror said that she was afraid the mob would go after her for a non-guilty verdict. On these and other facts, the prosecution got a guilty verdict. Armed with it, the Democrats are now working to destroy a former medical who dared to testify in Chauvin’s favor.

Here’s the story according to the Daily Mail:

A former medical examiner who served as a witness in Derek Chauvin‘s murder trial will have 17 years’ worth of his in-custody death reports independently reviewed after he testified that the cop was not responsible for George Floyd‘s death, officials have announced.   

Dr. David Fowler, Maryland’s chief medical examiner from 2002 to 2019, was a key defense witness for Chauvin, who was convicted Tuesday of murder and manslaughter for kneeling on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes last May. 

Climatists for Nukes By Robert Zubrin

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/04/book-review-the-dark-horse-climatists-for-nukes/

A review of The Dark Horse: Nuclear Power and Climate Change, by Rauli Partanen and Janne Korhonen

“It is an enduring mystery to me why it is that most who insist that climate change is an existential crisis nevertheless continue to oppose what is perhaps the most obvious and scalable solution to the climate emergency: nuclear power.”
— Mark Lynas, British environmentalist, co-author of The Ecomodernist Manifesto

‘Climate changes everything,” says radical green writer Naomi Klein — everything except, of course, the vehement opposition of her tribe to the only proven, reliable, and scalable source of non-carbon energy on earth. This fanaticism has confirmed many observers in their judgment that the green movement’s hatred of nuclear energy is rooted less in concerns about radiation than in fear of the possibility that it could solve a problem they need to have. That said, in recent years there has emerged a center-left movement of climate-crisis true believers who appear willing to entertain nuclear power. This movement has produced a blossoming literature nominally supporting nuclear energy as part of their solution for global warming. Most of these works have been technically illiterate or dishonest, with authors claiming that they are all for nuclear power, but only once nonexistent futuristic types of nuclear systems that would supposedly be much safer and more economical than the pressurized-water reactors (PWRs) and related designs in use today are brought to the market.

However, The Dark Horse: Nuclear Power and Climate Change, by Finnish writers Rauli Partanen and Janne Korhonen, is a noteworthy exception. It is a fine and truly competent work making the case for nuclear power now, as it really is. There’s no use of fakery to justify decades of environmentalist sabotage of the nuclear industry with specious claims that PWRs are unsafe systems imposed on the world prematurely by the maniacal U.S. Navy captain Hyman Rickover, or other such nonsense. Instead, they take no prisoners, showing how the PWR, conceived by Rickover as the power source for the submarine Nautilus in 1954 and made the basis for the commercial nuclear industry worldwide ever since, was, and remains, a very sound engineering choice. This is so because the PWR, and related types such as the Boiling Water Reactor (BWR) and the CANDU Pressurized Heavy Water Reactor (PHWR), all use water both to cool the reactor and to “moderate,” or slow down, its neutrons, making them more effective as fission initiators. As a result, whenever a water-cooled and -moderated reactor loses coolant, or even experiences excessive boiling, it loses moderation and thus power, so it is physically impossible for the chain reaction to ever run away.

What the Media Didn’t Tell You about the Chauvin Case By Andrew C. McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/04/what-the-media-didnt-tell-you-about-the-chauvin-case/

George Floyd should not have died, but the case does not stand as a totem of systemic racism either. Here are the facts.

I f you did not watch the Derek Chauvin trial, but only heard the inflammatory comments spewing out of the White House and the media-Democrat complex, there are things about it you would never know. And you’d be apt to believe the claims that American law enforcement is systemically racist. I watched the trial day in and day out, so let me cut you in on a few basic facts.

Not a shred of evidence was introduced at the trial that Derek Chauvin is a racist. None. There was nothing in the weeks of testimony that even hinted at such a thing. The prosecutors who aggressively urged the jury to convict Chauvin of murder never intimated that racism played any role in the crimes. They convincingly argued that he was a bad cop, not a racist cop.

The police did not hunt down George Floyd. They did not randomly happen upon him. They did not make a discriminatory choice to hassle him. Instead, the police responded to a citizen complaint from a local market, Cup Foods, based on a report by a young black cashier that Floyd had passed him a patently counterfeit $20 bill.

The young cashier considered not telling his manager about what Floyd had done. But then, under the Cup Foods rules, the $20 would have come out of his own pocket, which wouldn’t have been right.

Still, the police were not called right away. A complaint was lodged only after Cup Foods employees (including the young cashier) pleaded with Floyd, not once but twice, to return to the store and settle the matter. Floyd, who was parked across the street in the company of his suspected drug-dealer companion, was obviously high on drugs and uncooperative — to the extent he was responsive at all — in replying to the employees’ pleas.

Chauvin was a late arriver to the police interaction with Floyd. The first two cops on the scene were rookies: Alex Kueng, a young African-American officer who had joined the Minneapolis Police Department with the aspiration of helping make it more diverse and empathetic, and his partner, Thomas Lane — who, like Chauvin, is white, a fact that had no bearing on the case (i.e., there’s no evidence that Lane is a racist, either).

Floyd did not merely pass a counterfeit $20 bill. He was obviously under the influence of narcotics while seated behind the steering wheel of a Mercedes-Benz SUV. And he was obviously the driver; in the back seat of the SUV was Shawanda Hill, an old friend who testified that Floyd had offered to drive her home.

Why Illinois Is In Trouble – 122,258 Public Employees Earned $100,000+ Costing Taxpayers $15.8 Billion Despite Pandemic Adam Andrzejewski

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2021/04/19/why-illinois-is-in-trouble–122258-public-employees-earned-100000-costing-taxpayers-158-billion-despite-pandemic/?sh=61a9b5b77f

Illinois public employees and retirees with $100,000+ paychecks grew from 109,881 (2019) to an all-time high of 122,258 in 2020 – costing taxpayers $15.8 billion.

Congressional “bailouts” made it possible. The recent $1.9 trillion American Rescue Act provided an additional $13.5 billion to Illinois state and local governments. (Look up your hometown here — $350 billion flowed to states and 30,000 communities.)

Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com compiled the list of six-figure earners from Freedom of Information Act requests.

Barbers at State Corrections trimmed off $115,000; janitors at the State Toll Highway Authority cleaned up $123,000; bus drivers in Chicago made $174,000; line workers on the Chicago Transit Authority earned $222,278; community college presidents made $418,677; university doctors earned up to $2 million; and 171 small town managers out-earned the Illinois governor ($181,670).

Our interactive mapping tool allows users to quickly review the 122,258 public employees and retirees across Illinois making more than $100,000 (by ZIP code). Just click a pin and scroll down to see the results in your neighborhood rendered in the chart beneath the map.

Auditing the largest pay and pension systems in Illinois:

Public schools (40,000) – Last year, nearly 24,500 educators earned a six-figure salary while more than 15,500 retirees received six-figure pensions. Most Illinois schools were not back to fulltime, in-person instruction as of March 2021.

Ian Prior: Critical race theory in Virginia schools needs to end. I’m a parent watching this unfold Issues of race, equality, and fairness have always been challenging in our country

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/critical-race-theory-virginia-school-parent-ian-prior

Equal opportunity for all. Judging people by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. Diversity of thought, experience, and perspective.

These are principles that we as Americans and Virginians should live by and teach our children. It is a philosophy of thought and action that moves humanity forward to a place where cooperation, meritocracy, and compassion will make the world a better place for all.

Unfortunately, what is happening in Virginia’s schools is threatening those goals. We are talking about critical race theory or CRT which stands for the ideology that everything must be evaluated through the lens of race in order to break down systemic bias in our culture, words, and institutions.

It is a theory that evolved from the French postmodernist philosopher and political activist Michael Foucault.In the decades that followed, his philosophy was adapted to deal with racial questions and has gone mainstream through works like “White Fragility” by Robin Di-Angelo and “How to Be an Anti-Racist” by Ibram Kendi. Add in a summer of unrest following the death of George Floyd, and you have government institutions, corporations, and local school boards accepting this theory as gospel based on pressure from spineless, weak extremists.

In Virginia’s schools, administrators and school board members won’t admit the commitment to critical race theory. Instead, you will hear about their commitment to “equity” and the need to be “anti-racist.”

Make no mistake, “equity” is only critical race theory by different name and ‘anti-racists’ are the army of activists deployed to implement the theory.

To be clear, equity and equality are not the same thing. From Mental Floss: “Equality has to do with giving everyone the exact same resources, whereas equity involves distributing resources based on the needs of the recipients.”

Two examples in Northern Virginia show how equity is implemented.

In Fairfax County, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, one of the top public high schools in America, has a substantial minority population – 70% of its students are Asian. As explained by the non-partisan Reason.com: ‘Education officials…decided to jettison the school’s famously tough admissions test in favor of a “holistic” (i.e., subjective and arbitrary) system that will permit officials to reject Asian-American students in favor of less-deserving students who belong to other racial categories.’

An outrage from the FBI by Byron York

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/byron-yorks-daily-memo-an-outrage-from-the-fbi

On June 14, 2017, a team of Republican lawmakers went to an athletic field in Alexandria, Virginia to practice for the annual Congressional Baseball Game for Charity. As they worked out, a man armed with a semi-automatic rifle and pistol approached and opened fire. Representative Steve Scalise, the House Republican whip, was gravely wounded. A lobbyist was also seriously hurt, and a congressional aide and Capitol Police officer were wounded, as well.

The shooter, James Hodgkinson of Belleville, Illinois, was an active Bernie Sanders supporter who hated Republicans and particularly hated then-President Donald Trump. “Trump is a Traitor. Trump Has Destroyed Our Democracy. It’s Time to Destroy Trump & Co.,” Hodgkinson posted on his Facebook page. He thought of himself as part of the Resistance. He joined Facebook groups like “Terminate The Republican Party” and “Join The Resistance Worldwide!!”

Hodgkinson came to the Washington area in 2017, living out of a van parked in Alexandria. He brought his guns and developed a plan to attack Republicans. He went to the baseball field with a list of several GOP members of Congress in his pocket, along with physical descriptions of some of them. Before the attack, he asked Republican Representative Jeff Duncan, who was leaving practice early, whether the players on the field were Republicans or Democrats. Duncan said it was the Republican team. A short time later, Hodgkinson opened fire. After a rampage of nearly ten minutes, he was killed by Capitol Police and Alexandria Police.

The attack was a clear act of violent, politically-motivated domestic terrorism. There was simply no doubt about that. And yet last week, Republican Representative Brad Wenstrup, who had been at the practice, revealed that the FBI concluded Hodgkinson was simply trying to commit “suicide by cop.”

MORE HEADLINES APRIL 24, 2021

The decadent world of ‘woke approved’ child exploitation https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/04/the_decadent_world_of_woke_approved_child_exploitation.html

 

Jim Jordan: Republicans Consistently Condemn Violence While Democrats Pay Bail for Rioters and Looters https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/04/21/jim-jordan-republicans-consistently-condemn-violence-while-democrats-pay-bail-rioters-looters/

  

Watch: Driver Taking Into Custody By Police When BLM Bikers Surround His Car Stopping Him From Getting Home, ‘I Live Here!’ https://redrightdaily.com/watch-driver-taking-into-custody-by-police-when-blm-bikers-surround-his-car-stopping-him-from-getting-home-i-live-here/

 

Nancy Pelosi, High Priestess of the Left’s Cult, Gives Thanks to Floyd Her Savior https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/04/nancy-pelosi-high-priestess-lefts-cult-gives-robert-spencer/

  

The Dirty ‘Great Reset’ Secret Behind Big Corporations’ New War Against Conservatives https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/the-dirty-great-reset-secret-behind-big-corporations-new-war-against-conservatives_3782326.html?

 

Exclusive — Delta, Coca-Cola Executives to Host Fundraiser for Democrat Who Falsely Claimed Georgia Governor Race ‘Stolen’ from Stacey Abrams https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/04/21/exclusive-delta-coca-cola-executives-to-host-fundraiser-for-democrat-who-falsely-claimed-georgia-governor-race-stolen-from-stacey-abr

Harris Attempts To Blame ‘Global Warming’ For Biden Border Crisis https://www.oann.com/harris-attempts-to-blame-global-warming-for-biden-border-crisis/

 

Kudlow: John Kerry is the ‘stupidest’ man in Washington https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLRibgCVRY4

 

Kerry Falsely Claims To ‘Remove CO2 From Atmosphere’ https://www.oann.com/kerry-falsely-claims-to-remove-co2-from-atmosphere/

 

Fact Checkers Claimed Margaret Sanger Wasn’t Racist But Planned Parenthood Just Admitted It’s True https://www.lifenews.com/2021/04/21/fact-checkers-claimed-margaret-sanger-wasnt-racist-but-planned-parenthood-just-admitted-its-true/

 

Muslim Acid Attacks Come to New York https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2021/04/muslim-acid-attacks-come-new-york-daniel-greenfield/