France: Yes, He Murdered a Jewish Woman While Screaming ‘Allahu Akbar,’ But You See, He Was Stoned French authorities offer the most imaginative excuse for jihad violence yet. Robert Spencer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/france-yes-he-murdered-jewish-woman-while-robert-spencer/

Here’s a new one: the marijuana excuse. For years authorities all over Europe have dismissed clear cases of jihad violence as “mental illness,” but that one is so overused now, it’s understandable that officials would be casting about for new and imaginative ways to hoodwink their people into think that there really isn’t any jihad in the West at all, just a few unfortunate incidents and misunderstood adherents of the world’s most peaceful and tolerant religion. But sometimes even willfully ignorant dhimmi authorities can go too far with this wishful thinking.

So it is that in France, according to the Jerusalem Post Thursday, the appellate Court of Cassation has begun deliberations on whether to overturn the ruling that a Muslim named Kabili Traoré, who murdered an elderly Jewish woman while screaming “Allahu akbar,” will not be tried because he was high on marijuana at the time of the killing. That’s right: French authorities are on record now that if you get high, killing Jews is A-OK.

The cannabis, you see, allegedly compromised Traoré’s “discernment.” The lower court judge “cited psychiatric evaluations saying Traoré’s consumption of marijuana before the incident led to a ‘delirious episode’ that made him not legally responsible for his actions.” The millions of Americans who have smoked marijuana might wonder how it is that they never got so stoned as to think that throwing a 65-year-old woman out of the window of her third-floor apartment was just the thing to do, but that is now a matter for the Court of Cassation to decide. Muriel Ouaknine Melki, who is a lawyer for the family of Traoré’s victim, Sarah Halimi, observed that the appeal will establish whether or not “the consumption of narcotics can be a cause for exonerating from penal responsibility in criminal matters.”

Dems’ ‘Election Reforms’ Would End American Democracy As We Know It

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/03/08/dems-election-reforms-would-end-american-democracy-as-we-know-it/

HR. 1, the Democrats’ just-passed “election reform” bill, laughably dubbed by supporters the “For The People Act,” is so bad you might be tempted to ignore it. After all, legislation this awful can’t get passed by both chambers of Congress and signed into law, right? But all Americans should take it seriously. It’s an attempt to take away your right to vote and create permanent Democratic control of the federal government.

Yes, elections have consequences, and terrible bills like this certainly prove that. Anyone who voted for the Democrats in 2020 hoping for a “turn to the center” should by now be feeling mighty foolish. H.R. 1 is but one example.

So far, Democrats have passed a near $2 trillion spending splurge that has next to nothing to do with COVID-19, created a new crisis on our border, alienated our strongest ally in the Mideast, convinced a bullying China that we’re weak and vulnerable, and, instead of doing the people’s business as they’re supposed to, are now “investigating” the Jan. 6 riot in Washington, D.C.

Some 5,000 National Guard troops, totally unnecessary right now, remain camped in the nation’s barbed-wire encased capital, despite the fact that the FBI testified last week that no arms were seized by them nor were any shots fired by demonstrators during the supposed “insurrection.”

Democrats hope to use the distraction of troops in D.C. and a probe of the events of Jan. 6 to pursue the most radical congressional agenda in history. The showpiece of this effort is H.R. 1, which passed the House by a sliver and now goes to the Senate. If they fail in the Senate, don’t worry: They’ll try again soon.

Dividing by Race Comes to Grade School Students, ages 5 through 11, are urged to ‘check each other’s words and actions’ and become committed activists. By Bion Bartning

https://www.wsj.com/articles/dividing-by-race-comes-to-grade-school-11615144898?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

My awakening to the new orthodoxy began during this past summer of discontent. In mid-June, a few weeks after the George Floyd protests began, the head of Riverdale Country School, the New York City private school my wife and I entrusted with the education of our two young children, sent a memo apologizing for unspecified past wrongs. “We have the responsibility to use our privilege to fight for change,” he explained. “We are also free to shift some aspects of our culture more quickly than other institutions and organizations.”

In September, at the first assembly of the year, instead of reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and singing “America the Beautiful”—longstanding school traditions—the head of the lower school announced that the “theme” for the year would be “allyship.” He then played a video in which the school mascot told students, ages 5 through 11, to “check each other’s words and actions.” The lower-school head had earlier written that “it is essential that parents/caregivers and educators acknowledge racial differences (as opposed to a ‘colorblind’ stance)” and offered reading recommendations such as Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility.” Families at Riverdale are encouraged to join school-sponsored “affinity” groups to bond with people from their ethnicity or skin color. One is called simply “the POC,” short for “parents of color.”

At this point in the story, perhaps “lived experiences” become relevant. I am half Mexican and Yaqui, an indigenous tribe native to the U.S.-Mexico border region, and half Jewish. I spent the first year of my life on a commune in Berkeley, Calif. Growing up, I was aware that I had darker skin than my mother and my classmates, but I was never taught to define my identity by the color of my skin. My mixed background and ancestry made me feel like nothing more than a typical American.

The Woke Chinese Communist Party Beijing uses progressive rhetoric to attack Western interests.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-woke-chinese-communist-party-11615153949?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

Chinese state media rarely deserves attention but lately it’s taken a notable and instructive turn. It is invoking the woke themes of American progressives as a propaganda weapon against the U.S.

“Canada, the UK and Australia, three members of the Five Eyes alliance, have recently taken action to put pressure on China. They have formed a US-centered, racist, and mafia-styled community,” said a Feb. 23 editorial in Global Times. “They are becoming a racist axis aimed at stifling the development rights of 1.4 billion Chinese.”

The Communist Party-run paper notes that the members of Five Eyes, an intelligence-sharing network, “have a strong sense of civilization superiority.” U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton is a “neo-Nazi and extreme racist” and “the Trump administration is an extremely typical white supremacy government.” By resisting this bloc of English-speaking countries, the editorial concludes, “China is not only defending its own interests, we are also defending the diversity of the modern world.”

Note the use of “white supremacy” and “diversity” and “civilization superiority,” which come straight from the progressive critique of America as a country that is “systemically” racist and oppressive. The Global Times editors may be crude but they’ve obviously been reading the New York Times. Their dismissal of Mr. Cotton as racist is what you see on progressive Twitter.

The power to change what we are: Social media as the new ‘Fifth Estate’ By Tim Blake Nelson,

https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/541990-the-power-to-change-what-we-are-social-media-as-the-new-fifth-estate

Could Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey ever have imagined that his social media platform would become a U.S. president’s preferred manner of communicating with the American electorate and beyond? It did, and the pattern became a familiar one: President Trump tweeted out to his Twitter “followers” — mostly his political base — but also, compulsorily, to those in the news media. Journalists then projected his 148-character statements to the country and the world. Trump ended his single presidential term banned from the platform, severely hobbled politically in part because of that.

By now, articles on every topic, from politics to sports to culture, embed tweets and links to actual pages. Since to view these one must possess an account, the ubiquity of the Twitter platform — and others like it — only increases. Putatively, at least, one must be on them to be informed. Whether Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat or another site, social media now wield power beyond what possibly could have been imagined at their inception.

Some legislators and editorialists wonder whether this makes us vulnerable to the whims of unelected individuals, in the form of the owners of social media companies. If an American president can be muzzled, can’t anyone?

Climate and COVID: The Erosion of Common Intelligence and Common Sense By David Solway *****

https://pjmedia.com/columns/david-solway-2/2021/03/07/climate-and-covid-the-erosion-of-common-intelligence-and-common-sense-n1430627

In a recent article for PJ Media, I discussed the decline in IQ scores across the West over the last decades, a phenomenon confirmed by many psychological studies and clinical reports. In the article I provided links and documentation as well as numerous episodes and examples in support of the survey’s conclusions. But I omitted for reasons of space what strikes me as a cardinal illustration of the contemporary erosion of common intelligence and common sense, namely, the popular belief in “climate change” and so-called renewable energy sources, and, more recently, mass compliance with government public health dogma and politically inspired COVID legislation.

With regard to climate: Untold millions credulously buy into long-exploded pseudo-scientific fables like anthropogenic global warming (AGW) and the utility of wind turbines and solar arrays, attesting to the ongoing debility of critical inquiry and independent reasoning, qualities associated with intelligent thinking. The unsightly despoiling of the environment, the distribution of these monstrosities in fields and pastures across the national landscape, and the hecatombs of bird and insect species caused by these lookalike Imperial Walkers should give us pause.  

Moreover, the toxic nature of industrial wind, involving hazards like ILFN (Infrasound and Low Frequency Noise), noxious REEs (rare earth elements), and the installation of Permanent Magnets whose components produce prodigious amounts of radioactive waste, cause serious health impacts and deformities. This has become a matter of criminal import, something people should be aware of. The data has been available for years. In this connection, a legal challenge has been launched in France against the government under articles of the Penal Code. 

The notorious Texas freeze, to take a recent instance, should have provided abundant evidence that wind and solar are not only weather-dependent and inadequate suppliers of electric power but potentially disastrous; yet many continue to believe that the answer to such emergencies is even more green technology. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for example, who introduced the Green New Deal in Congress, claims that the infrastructure failures in Texas “are quite literally what happens when you don’t pursue a Green New Deal.” The degree of stupefaction here is legendary. Renewables are not only ill-suited for, but wholly contra-indicated to serving as primary energy sources for industrial societies.

Climate delirium has been with us for a generation and more and has been discussed and analyzed in innumerable articles and books. The authentic literature on the subject has long been discoverable by any sentient person. What is comparatively new on the psychogenic scene is Covid Derangement Syndrome.

Outrage: Biden’s Border Patrol Is Not COVID Testing Immigrants Swarming and Overwhelming the Border By Victoria Taft

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/victoria-taft/2021/03/07/outrage-bidens-border-patrol-is-not-covid-testing-immigrants-swarming-and-overwhelming-the-border-n1430599

When Joe Biden signaled his open borders plan, it triggered human traffickers south of the border to start teeing up swarms of people to storm the U.S. border and flood the already COVID pandemic-slammed U.S. labor market. But now we learn that the Biden administration has not been COVID testing the illegal immigrants swarming the border before they’re released into the interior of the US.

Joe Biden knew this before he opened the borders, gobsmackingly asserted that the US “didn’t have a COVID vaccine,” and claimed the pandemic was so severe he had to spend nearly $2 trillion to fight it.

The Washington Examiner reports that the Border Patrol and the Department of Homeland Security are not COVID testing the illegal aliens and their children. Why? Even if they did test positive, “they cannot return children and some families.” Adults can be deported, but not people with children.

The Border Patrol is not allowed to quarantine illegal aliens with the virus. The Examiner reports that they’re urged to turn them over to “local health systems.”

What Phyllis Schlafly Knew About China in 1998

The Chinese Military Threat

Communist China views the United States as its major adversary and is building an awesome military arsenal, with modern weapons, planes and missiles. China already has the world’s largest army (3 million men), 5,000 combat aircraft, and 300 nuclear warheads. The Chinese shopping list includes aircraft carriers, missile-equipped warships, nuclear attack submarines, fighter aircraft, and land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles with multiple warheads.

China is capable of buying such costly, warlike luxuries only because of the U.S. cash that flows from the pockets of Americans, known as our trade deficit, which has been running about $40 billion a year for some years. That’s enough money to build up a military/nuclear force capable of threatening the United States, as well as dominating the Pacific.

China’s expansionist aspirations are no secret. Now that China has pocketed Hong Kong, China can turn its avaricious eyes on Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia, Guam, and even threaten the sailors of the U.S. Seventh Fleet. When China was harassing Taiwan during its election, General Chi of the People’s Liberation Army crudely commented about China’s ability to deliver a nuclear warhead on Los Angeles.

A classified Air Force report released in May 1997 warned that China’s effort to build an advanced ICBM capability is “steadily increasing.” The report stated that this missile “will be a significant threat not only to U.S. forces deployed in the Pacific theater, but to portions of the continental United States and to many of our allies.”

China is determined not only to become a nuclear superpower but also a world-class industrial power, and the Communist bosses expect slave labor, theft, and U.S. folly to help them achieve those goals. They require a transfer of U.S. high technology as part of every business deal so that, in the next round, they expect to manufacture the goods without U.S. help and become a major exporter of cars, chemicals, steel, electronics, and aircraft. China has made several spectacular deals, which pretended to be merely commercial, but will vastly expand China’s military and industrial espionage and subversive capabilities.

The China Ocean Shipping Company (Cosco), a 600-ship global shipping company controlled by the People’s Liberation Army, is trying hard to acquire a 20-year lease on the U.S. Naval Shipyard in Long Beach. Clinton personally lobbied for the Cosco deal at a White House meeting in September 1995. U.S. taxpayers recently spent $500 million to modernize this deep-water port at the epicenter of our defense research and production in southern California. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) is trying to amend the Defense Authorization bill to stop the deal from going through.

Uh-oh! They let Biden get in front of a microphone again By Thomas Lifson

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/03/uhoh_they_let_biden_get_in_front_of_a_microphone_again.html

Even ten minutes reading from a teleprompter on a Saturday afternoon was too much for the 46th President of the United States. I suppose his handlers figured that it was important to mark Senate passage of the nearly $2 trillion pork-laden, blue state-bailing out “stimulus” bill with some presidential remarks. It may, after all, turn out to be the high point of the Biden presidency, since Senate passage of the rest of the Biden agenda looks iffy, now that Senators Manchin and Sinema have stated their opposition to ending the filibuster.

But how much longer will the American people accept the spectacle of their command-in-chief visibly incapable of coherence? It’s painful to watch even 35 seconds of it.

When he had all of his (limited) faculties, Biden knew that a bipartisan bill was one that attracted votes from both parties. The husk of his former self does not.

We’re all getting older, and it is no fun at all to notice how addled he is getting.

My guess is that his handlers had some date in mind for pulling the plug on Joe’s presidency via the 25th Amendment, figuring that it would look too fishy to evacuate him from the Oval Office too soon. A year at least, right? Anything less would suggest that they knew he was unable to perform the duties of office but pulled a fast one on the voters with the enthusiastic help of the media. Not even Democrat primary voters were willing to vote for Kamala as president, so he was her human shield, her stand-in.

But poor Joe seems to be fading fast. The awesome responsibilities of office seem to age presidents at a scary pace (except Donald Trump, who looked in terrific form a week ago at CPAC).  Jen Psaki asked for 3+ weeks until he does a press conference. I am beginning to wonder if that will be the one where he announces he is stepping aside?

What China Really Wants: A New World Order By Manyin Li

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/03/what-china-really-wants-a-new-world-order/?itm_campaign=headline-testing-what-china-really-wants-a-new-world-order&itm_

Translated speeches from a leading Beijing scholar-adviser provide a rare guide to the Chinese Communist Party’s plans for domination. Call it a rhapsody in red.

What does the Chinese Communist Party actually want? Sometimes, the regime’s plans can seem inscrutable. Other times, they are more blunt. The latter is certainly the case for one high-profile Chinese scholar serving the Party: Jin Canrong, the Chinese “State Master,” a professor at the Chinese People’s University in Beijing, a U.S. expert, and an adviser to the Chinese Communist Party’s Organization Department and United Front Department. It’s unclear how close he is to Xi Jinping. But he is one of the intellectuals sarcastically referred to in China as “the Emperor’s Literary Men” or “the State Masters.” He has spoken throughout China and is well-known among Netizens. That the U.S. State Department suspended the ten-year visa of this State Master, along with nine other Chinese scholars, in January 2020 suggests that Donald Trump’s administration must have been aware of him as well.

His speeches may reflect the thought of CCP leaders. In 2018, I first read the transcripts of two of his public speeches from two years earlier. I was greatly alarmed. His words contradicted all the beautiful public utterances of CCP leaders, such as, “We will never become a hegemon” and, “We have no intention to challenge the U.S. leadership.” That was the first time I was truly impressed by the degree of China’s power and ambition. I have kept the transcripts. As the U.S. reckons with the growing CCP threat not only to the U.S.-led international order but also to the U.S. itself, now seems a good time to share the content of these speeches.

The two speeches range widely and erratically. I am not attempting a complete translation. Instead, I am excerpting some parts relevant to the U.S., regrouping them into a “rhapsody” of six “movements.” A rhapsody is an epic poem, or part of one; a medley, with extravagance of ideas and expressions. That describes the two speeches excerpted here. They also serve as part of the ode of the CCP’s grand plan in the so-called “Chinese Century” to dominate the world. The State Master’s own words appear below in a different font from my notes or comments; my comments in the speech itself will appear in unitalicized brackets. The English translations are mine; I am responsible for their accuracy.

In 2012, at the CCP’s 18th plenary, it publicly announced two centenary goals. First, that, at the 100th anniversary of the CCP in 2021, all Chinese people will be free of poverty, and China will be a “well-off” society with per capita GDP of $10,000. Second, that, in 2049, at the 100th anniversary of the People’s Republic, China will be a well-established socialist power with per capita GDP at $30,000. In Jin’s words, when the second goal is reached, “China will enter the club of developed countries.”