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China Tries Michael Kovrig, Second Canadian at Center of Diplomatic Standoff Espionage trial of researcher began days after a similar hearing for Canadian Michael Spavor

Posted By on March 23rd, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-tries-michael-kovrig-second-canadian-at-center-of-diplomatic-standoff-11616415654

BEIJING—Chinese authorities opened and closed the espionage trial of the second Canadian at the center of a long-running standoff with both Canada and the U.S. without delivering a verdict.

Michael Kovrig, a researcher on leave from Canada’s diplomatic service, attended the hearing Monday with his lawyer, said Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court, adding that it would issue a verdict at a later date. Mr. Kovrig has been charged with “probing into state secrets and intelligence” on behalf of foreign actors.

The trial began three days after a similar hearing for Michael Spavor in the northeastern Chinese city of Dandong, on the border with North Korea. That hearing concluded in a matter of hours, also without a verdict. Mr. Spavor ran a nonprofit that organized academic, tourist and business trips to North Korea.

Jim Nickel, Canada’s deputy chief of mission in China, said outside the Beijing court Monday morning that he had requested entry to the hearing but that he was denied on national security grounds. He cited Mr. Kovrig’s lawyer and a court official in saying the trial had begun.

Flanked by U.S. acting deputy chief of mission, William Klein, and diplomats from more than two dozen countries, many of them European, Mr. Nickel called for Chinese authorities to grant them access. He pointed to the Canada-China consular agreement, which he said guarantees consular access to citizens being tried. Canadian diplomats were also denied consular access to Mr. Spavor’s trial on national security grounds.

“Because the cases involve state secrets, the hearings are not held in open courts,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a regular briefing Monday. The court also cited national security.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

When Cultural Appropriation and Historical Revisionism Are Acts of War “If the Jews leave those places, the Zionist idea will begin to collapse.” Caroline Glick

Posted By on March 23rd, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/when-cultural-appropriation-and-historical-caroline-glick/

Two weeks ago, a bus filled with veteran Israeli generals from the Bithonistim, a grassroots national security organization, slowly made its way up the slopes of Mt. Ebal in Northern Samaria to visit a biblical-era site that was severely damaged by a Palestinian Authority contractor in late January.

They came to draw the public’s attention to the strategic implications of the war the Palestinians are waging against Jewish history.

The site was excavated between 1980 and 1989 by the late Professor Adam Zertal, who identified it as Joshua’s Altar as described in the Books of Deuteronomy, (27; 1-9) and Joshua (8; 30-35). The animal remains at the site contained thousands of burnt bones of year-old male, exclusively kosher, animals. They were burned in an open flame 3,250 years ago—the time generally identified as the period of ancient Jewish settlement of the Land of Israel under Joshua. Other remains found at the site included earrings and scarabs made in Egypt at the time of Ramses II, the Egyptian pharaoh often associated with the story of the Exodus from Egypt.

As Zertal explained in a lecture in 2013, the altar was buried under a layer of rocks, in keeping with Jewish prescriptions for preventing the desecration of abandoned holy sites. In keeping with the biblical narrative, the altar is made of unhewn stones; instead of steps, there are two ramps for the priests to alight to the platform—blocks of plaster were found nearby. The altar at Mt. Ebal also matches a Talmudic description of an altar from the Second Temple period, around 900 years later, indicating a continuity of Jewish practices throughout the biblical period.

Although initially controversial, Zertal’s general finding that the site is around 3,300 years old and is a Jewish historical site, where sacrifices were carried out in keeping with biblical guidelines, has become widely accepted—although many continue to dispute the specific identification with Joshua.

In late January, the Palestinian Authority (PA) posted a video on its website of 60 meters of the ancient wall surrounding the altar being destroyed to pave a road connecting the Palestinian village of Asira ash-Shamaliya to Nablus. Nablus, built on the ruins of the biblical city of Shechem, is located in northern Samaria between Mt. Ebal and Mt. Gerizim.

Zertal was a fiercely secular son of hardcore socialists. Yet, he explained in a 2013 lecture, his scientific work compelled him to accept that the biblical narrative “from Deuteronomy through the Books of Kings was historically accurate.”

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

China Owns Our Foreign Policy Chiefs The suicidal Democrat tradition of self-loathing and talking big. Bruce Thornton

Posted By on March 23rd, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/china-owns-our-foreign-policy-chiefs-bruce-thornton/

“So what’s the message that our friends and allies alike will take from the Biden administration’s embarrassing display? That this administration will, like Jimmy Carter’s and Barack Obama’s, reverse the wisdom of Teddy Roosevelt and talk big but carry a little stick. No wonder Xi and Vlad are licking their chops.”

At a meeting in Alaska last week Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan beclowned themselves in front of the Chinese. During a press conference they decided to use a brief ceremonial statement to tongue-lash, with soothing Diplospeak, the Chinese over their brutal oppression of the Uighur minority, the destruction of Hong Kong’s political freedom, and the intensifying threats against Taiwan.

The pair didn’t have time to bask in their moral courage because the Chinese representatives unloaded on them with an absurd caricature of the United States straight out of Howard Zinn and Mother Jones. The most preposterous charge was this howler: “The fact is that there are many problems with the United States,” said one diplomat, “regarding human rights, which is admitted by the U.S. itself,” including its long, bloody “democracy-promotion” wars in the Middle East. And as the denizens of a culture famous for its obsession with “face”––public prestige––the Chinese weren’t happy about being dry-gulched in front of the international press.

This episode illustrates how feckless is our stale superstition about the power of “diplomatic engagement,” particularly when our rival is a ruthless, oppressive tyrant that cares nothing for our “rules-based order” other than as a tool for gaming it for its own geopolitical advantage. But Blinken, instead of walking out of the meeting and flying back to D.C.––a response that would have gotten China’s attention­­––in response feebly confirmed the truth of the accusations, but rationalized that at least we don’t “ignore them” or “pretend they don’t exist” or “sweep them under the rug.”

IMMIGRATION, MEDIA Comments turned off

Big Media Show Why You Can’t Trust Them To Report Fairly On Biden’s Immigration Fiasco

Posted By on March 23rd, 2021

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/03/23/big-media-show-why-you-cant-trust-them-to-report-fairly-on-bidens-immigration-fiasco/

The southern border is now being hit with a huge wave of unaccompanied children, the wholly predictable consequence of Joe Biden’s foolish open-border immigration policies. Once again, photos show “kids in cages.” But this time, the Big Media are mostly silent, or making excuses, as are the Democrats who helped create this inhumane mess.

On Monday, as the crisis worsened and criticisms grew, Biden imposed a “lid” on the White House and, by extension, media coverage of the border disaster. Not without reason. Flustered White House spokesperson Jen Psaki was unable to answer a few simple, but direct, questions from Fox News’ Peter Doocy.

Nothing to see here, media. Go home.

Doocy’s questions were entirely straightforward, the kind any honest journalist would ask. But one in particular left Psaki stammering for a reply:

“Two years ago, President Biden said ‘We’re a nation that says, if you want to flee, and you’re fleeing opposition, you should come. They deserve to be heard. That’s who we are.’ Now he says, ‘I can say quite clearly, don’t come over.’ So why was his position different campaigning than it is governing?”

But Psaki offered no real answer. You can find it here, at about 15:28 into the presser, but without her verbal stumbles.

Even so, the questions Doocy posed were devastating, since they get at the very core of the problem: Biden’s reopening of the border to illegal immigrants. And the cynical media, not surprisingly, have a moral blind spot when it comes to leftist politicians and policies.

Don’t believe it?

During the Donald Trump years, “kids in cages” became a media catch-phrase to describe Trump’s “inhumane” policies. Enraged indignance was the emotion of the day.

A casual Google count of citations for “kids in cages” turns up 420 million mentions. So the far-left media, and their hyper-left allies in academia, did a great job of spreading the idea that Trump was putting kids in what both the Washington Post and Newsweek called “concentration camps.”

What about today?

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

A Warning to Pelosi on Iowa Can she hold her caucus together to overturn a House election?

Posted By on March 23rd, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-warning-to-pelosi-on-iowa-11616453810?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

The eight-seat House Democratic majority has been remarkably disciplined so far in 2021, passing radical legislation on elections and unions with few defections. But the limits of loyalty to Speaker Nancy Pelosi will be tested as the party moves to overturn an Iowa House race and expel from Congress the certified winner.

GOP Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks was certified the winner of Iowa’s 2nd district last year, prevailing by 47 votes in the first count and six votes after a county-by-county recount. The losing candidate, Democrat Rita Hart, points to 22 votes she says should have been counted and asked the House to seat her under the Federal Contested Elections Act—bypassing Iowa’s special court process for election disputes.

At a House Administration hearing this month, where Democrats hold a 6-3 majority, Mrs. Pelosi’s Members were unanimous in tabling Rep. Miller-Meeks’s motion to dismiss the challenge. That’s the first step toward a recommendation to overturn the election.

But as the reality of Mrs. Pelosi’s Iowa bloody-mindedness sets in, vulnerable Members are facing questions. On Monday Politico listed four Democratic Congressmen who have spoken publicly against reversing Iowa’s election in the last week. Another said anonymously that expelling Ms. Miller-Meeks would be “political malpractice. While we would gain one seat, we would lose a lot more next year.”

Ask Republicans, who suffered in the Georgia Senate races from trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election. In 1938, the last time the House kicked out a sitting Member over election disputes, New Hampshire voters seated him again in the next election. Democrats’ 1985 reversal of an Indiana election succeeded in the short term but invigorated Newt Gingrich’s rise to GOP leader.

Few politicians think about long-term institutional interests anymore, but let’s hope there are enough worried about political blowback to stop Mrs. Pelosi from a power play that would deepen the rancor on Capitol Hill.

MEDIA Comments turned off

Reconsidering Times v. Sullivan An influential judge says the ‘actual malice’ standard needs revision.

Posted By on March 23rd, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/reconsidering-times-v-sullivan-11616454219?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

EXCERPTS

“In any case the Silberman opinion ought to inspire some reflection about the low state of the media and its ideological conformity. The survival of a free press depends in part on the First Amendment. But in the long run it also requires support from a public that wants it to be free. A press that violates its privileges with impunity, born of legal protection from a dubious constitutional interpretation, is more vulnerable than righteous journalists think. ”

On the other hand, it’s hard to deny that many in the media have taken a bad turn in recent decades—often under the protection of the actual-malice standard. The public agrees, judging by opinion surveys on collapsing trust in the press.

Think of the way the media trashed the Covington, Ky., high school student for his silence and half smile as he was assailed by an adult after a pro-life rally in 2019. The Washington Post and CNN settled the young man’s lawsuits, but would the outlets have shown more caution without the protection of Times v. Sullivan?

Or recall Sarah Palin’s suit against the New York Times for claiming in 2017 she had incited the deranged man who shot Rep. Gabby Giffords in 2011. The editorial was clearly false, the editing process was remarkably slipshod, and the Times ran a correction. A judge tossed the suit under the actual-malice standard until the Second Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated it, and it is now headed for trial.

Judge Silberman also has the liberal press in a lather because he called them out for one-sided bias. He says the New York Times and Washington Post “are virtually Democratic Party broadsheets,” and that most of the press follows their lead. He says the Journal news section “leans in the same direction,” which we think is wrong. The guiding ethic of our reporters is to play the news straight.

The judge cited our editorial pages, along with Fox News and the New York Post, as rare exceptions. But he noted they are controlled by “a single man and his son”— Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch —and that many Democrats are calling for the giant tech platforms to censor news from conservative publications. He says a press so one-sided is dangerous to democracy.

FOREIGN POLICY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

America’s Back—Against a Wall Three problems stand athwart Biden’s plans for a rules-based international order. By Walter Russell Mead

Posted By on March 23rd, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/americas-backagainst-a-wall-11616452400?mod=opinion_lead_pos9

Anyone who thought international politics would calm down once Donald Trump left center stage has had a rude awakening. After the Alaska confrontation between top U.S. and Chinese officials and the slanging match between Presidents Biden and Vladimir Putin, the world is as fraught as ever. American relations with Russia are at their lowest ebb since the Kennedy administration and U.S.-China relations at their frostiest since Henry Kissinger went to China in 1971, while Beijing and Moscow are more closely aligned than at any time since the death of Stalin.

It is not just the big boys who are testing the Biden team. Officials at Washington’s Fort McNair tightened security after reports of Iranian threats against the facility. North Korea is said to be moving toward new tests of long-range missiles. The Taliban announced that it plans to impose “Islamic rule” on Afghanistan when American forces leave. Meanwhile, U.S. Special Forces have arrived in Mozambique to train local troops in the face of a major offensive by ISIS-aligned militia groups. Authorities in Belarus have largely crushed the democracy movement in that country, and the Burmese military, despite facing unprecedented opposition at home and criticism abroad, shows no sign of relaxing its grip on power.

Relations with allies are also bumpy. The Biden administration threatened sanctions against European companies participating in the Nord Stream 2 project. And on a recent trip to Delhi, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned India against purchasing S-400 missile systems from Russia.

Bad relations with China and Russia and the troubled state of the world can’t be blamed on the Biden team, but the ideas driving this administration’s foreign policy are heading for severe and serious tests. Central to the Biden approach is the belief that the path to global stability involves reinvigoration of American leadership in the service of the “rules-based international order,” sometimes called Rubio. Supporting international institutions, promoting human rights and pushing back against revisionist powers may cause short-term disruptions until adversaries recognize the strength of the U.S. position, but ultimately a principled and forward-looking American stand will prevail.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Democrats Introduce New Green New Deal Bill Calling Fossil Fuels ‘Racist’ By Bryan Preston

Posted By on March 22nd, 2021

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/bryan-preston/2021/03/22/democrats-introduce-new-green-new-deal-bill-calling-fossil-fuels-racist-n1434177

The Hill reports that Rep. Always On-Camera (D-New York) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Not An Actual Cherokee) have introduced a new bill that would “invest” $500 billion to “create” “green jobs.”

Use of multiple scare quotes is intentional. Neither the race-hustling professor nor AOC know much about job creation, having never created any meaningful number of non-government jobs.

Government “investing” necessarily entails government taxing, or government just printing more money, which neither the Democrats nor The Hill note. Those green jobs supposedly already exist anyway; why else would John Kerry tell the Keystone XL pipeline workers whose jobs his boss destroyed to go build solar panels?

The so-called green economy also relies extensively on mining and minerals processing, which aren’t very clean processes. In fact, those technologies depend on rare earth minerals, which mostly cannot be mined in the United States due to environmental regulations. They’re mined extensively in China, which doesn’t regulate as heavily, leaving the mining operations dirtier.

Buried in the two leftists’ announcement is this little gem.

“The BUILD GREEN Infrastructure and Jobs Act will make the big federal investments necessary to transform our country’s transportation system, confront the racial and economic inequality embedded in our fossil fuel economy, and achieve the ambitious targets for 100% clean energy in America.”

“…confront the racial and economic inequality embedded in our fossil fuel economy…”

I’m sorry, but that’s insane. It’s so illogical it’s barely possible to critique it, but here’s a try.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

WHO Virologists Would Say That Salvatore Babones

Posted By on March 22nd, 2021

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2021/03/who-virologists-would-say-that/

In August 1967, a viral haemorrhagic fever similar to Ebola hit the quiet university town of Marburg in what was then West Germany. The case fatality rate of over 20 per cent wasn’t quite on a par with the Black Death, but it was bad enough. Luckily, the initial outbreak affected only twenty-five people and was quickly contained, so total cases were limited to thirty-one and total deaths to seven. Germans, it seems, have a healthy aversion to contact with the body fluids of dying relatives, and hospitals were sufficiently well-equipped to safely handle infectious patients oozing their insides out. One laboratory technician did however fall sick after he cut himself during an autopsy on a patient who had died of the disease. Accidents will happen, even to Germans.

The mystery illness came to be known as Marburg Disease, back in the days when it was still socially acceptable to name diseases after the places where they first appeared. Its source was traced to a batch of African green monkeys that had been shipped from Uganda for use in polio research. At the time, it was uncertain whether Marburg Disease had originated in Uganda, or the monkeys had become infected en route. That’s because the monkeys had flown to Germany via Heathrow, and thus their trip was inevitably held up by strike action. During their involuntary two-day layover, they came into contact with animals from around the world, their British handlers, and the local rats, raising the possibility of cross-infection. Consider that the next time you fly through Heathrow.

The Lancet was the first medical journal to publish a paper identifying the cause of Marburg Disease, going to press with an explanation just three months after the first victims fell ill. True to form, they got it wrong, blaming a bacterial agent. Slower, more careful research revealed that the real cause was a virus.

What was known at the time, and has now been known for more than half a century, is that Marburg Disease escaped from a biological laboratory. But you wouldn’t know that from the World Health Organisation website entry for Marburg Disease, or even from the Wikipedia page. The Australian Department of Health is more forthcoming, noting that the laboratory workers had been exposed to tissue samples from monkeys, but draws no particular conclusions from that fact. And why should they? Question the safety of one laboratory, and you question the safety of all.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Warning Lights Are Flashing at Biden’s Domestic-Change Factory By Charles C. W. Cooke see note please

Posted By on March 22nd, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/03/the-warning-lights-are-flashing-at-bidens-domestic-change-factory/

Good column except for this egregious statement:”Inexplicably, President Biden is well on the way to repeating a mistake that was made by his predecessor: creating a mess within the immigration system that does nothing of consequence for him except diminish his already-limited supply of political and civic goodwill. ” Why this gratuitous and false statement about Trump????rsk

Can he see them? Does anyone around him want to break the bad news?

S ince the final machines were installed on January 20th of this year, Joe Biden’s domestic-change factory has been surprisingly productive. Within days of its opening, the president had commissioned an assembly line for the manufacture of executive orders. Within six weeks, he had delivered an enormous batch of progressive spending priorities — albeit in a box that advertised a different product. Now, as he looks to ramp up fabrication, Biden is considering pushing for the construction of a second, high-efficiency factory on the site currently occupied by the Senate.

Thus far, at least, Biden’s investors seem pleasantly surprised by the yield. Were his presidency to be evaluated on Progressive MarketWatch, it would undoubtedly generate a “Buy!” And yet, despite this unbridled optimism, some warning lights are flashing down at quality control — frantic, scarlet, unceasing warning lights, of the sort that augur disaster when ignored. Can Biden see them? Does he want to see them? Does anyone around him want to tell him about them? The answers to these questions will determine the fate of the next two years, and, thus, his presidency.

The first warning light pertains to the Democrats’ next legislative priority: H.R. 1 — or, if you are susceptible to question-begging nomenclative bullying, the For the People Act. In the Democrats’ eyes, H.R. 1 represents nothing less than the means by which American democracy will be preserved: a law that will safely land Flight 93, permanently banish the ghosts of Jim Crow, and finally usher the country out of the undemocratic hellscape in which it struggled until 2019. Indeed, H.R. 1 is held to be so imperative that it is being considered as the pretext for a daring run at the elimination of the filibuster.