Intifada Realism What can happen in America when radical Islam allies with the radical Left. Lloyd Billingsley

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/06/intifada-realism-lloyd-billingsley/

Some years ago, Maryland insurance broker Tom Clancy spotted a news story about a Soviet submarine that cut loose and headed west. That prompted Clancy, a naval historian of sorts, to write The Hunt for Red October, about how the defection might have gone down.

Preston Fleming, a veteran of “11 years of government service in places like Beirut, Cairo, Tunis, Jeddah, and Amman,” noticed the original Intifada in the West Bank and Gaza. That prompted the vision of an Intifada in the United States. In Fleming’s Root and Branch, the stateside Intifada gears up after an electromagnetic pulse attack by Iran, Pakistan and North Korea, but the EMP assault gets no description until 70 pages into the narrative.

From the Canadian border to Connecticut, there was no electricity, natural gas, no drinking water, and no sewer treatment. EMP impaired telephone circuits, cellphone towers, computers and vehicle electronics, so there was no gas at the pumps, no food in stores, no cash at ATMs, and no meds at hospitals. This was an ideal atmosphere for “the looting, the rioting, the home invasions, the gun battles between criminals and neighborhood militias, and the total breakdown of social order.”

This disturbs Roger Zorn, American-born owner of a French security company, and long aware of jihadist terror in France. At one point, “the intifada had spread by now to twice as many American cities while Islamist-inspired terror attacks had grown increasingly sophisticated.” The jihadi explosive devices had “morphed from car bombs to bicycle and motorcycle bombs, truck bombs, and even explosive-laden boat bombs.” Shootings had progressed from “random snipings to sophisticated assassinations against law enforcement officers and National Guard troops.”

Why Trump Isn’t Taking Action in Seattle The leftist tantrum is an information operation – and Trump is winning it. Kurt Schlichter

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/06/leftist-tantrum-information-operation-and-trump-stanley-kurtz/

It’s certainly frustrating to watch a pack of reeking leftist scumbags declare a portion of an American city an “autonomous zone” – what is it with Democrats and their secession fetish? – but do not get frustrated because Donald Trump has not sent the 101st Airborne in to powerwash the human grunge from Seattle’s feces-bedecked streets. That’s what the Democrats want. And Trump – a better strategic thinker than all the media geniuses, hack politicians, and Afghan War-losing generals who cry about him – is not only not going to give them the victory they crave. He’s going to jam their cheesy plan down their throats.

The libs’ plan to win in November corresponds to Trump’s plan to crush them yet again. Skeptical? Consider this. In the five years since he rode down that escalator bringin’ hell with him, how many times have they come at Trump and won? Zero. He’s spent half a decade on the edge of doom and he’s still here. Why would you think that the walls are suddenly closing in now? You shouldn’t.

Let’s understand the strategic scenario. The long-term strategic objective of the leftists is to turn the United States into Venezuela, and they want to be Maduro. The major strategic objective that will put them in position to do so is victory in the November elections. Everything happening right now is part of their overall strategy to achieve that objective.

But what kind of operation are they using to achieve that objective? There are two types of operations relevant here – kinetic and information. A kinetic operation is actual warfare. It’s violence designed to defeat the enemy and cause his surrender by either physically destroying him or occupying his territory and compelling surrender. An information operation is designed to affect the perceptions, and thereby the actions, of the target. Kinetic ops tend to do something to the enemy; and info op tends to get the target to do something to himself.

Appetite for Destruction: Lincoln, Grant, Churchill statues coming down, Lenin going up By Eric Utter

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/06/appetite_for_destruction_lincoln_grant_churchill_statues_coming_down_lenin_going_up.html

Statues and monuments to some of the most important Western historical figures of all time have been summarily defaced and destroyed in recent weeks, including those of Columbus, Washington, Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant and Winston Churchill. None of these figures had a damn thing to do with the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, but that shouldn’t surprise anyone because the wanton destruction of symbols of the West’s past has nothing to do with the killing of Floyd, either.

 Columbus “discovered” the New World and died well over 100 years before the first slave ship came from Africa to America. Washington was one of the most principled men who ever lived and was “The Father” of the country that has done more to advance human freedom than any other. Lincoln saved that country while freeing the slaves. He directed a war effort that saw nearly 350,000 union troops die…in part to put an end to slavery – and died a martyr himself. Grant defeated the Confederacy, trashed the Ku Klux Klan and fought to protect the newly won rights of black people in the years after the war. Churchill stood alone in the West against the Third Reich and its NAZIs for over 17 consecutive months.

So what is the orgy of anarchy and destruction about? It is nothing short of a planned assault on the West and the values it used to hold so dear. It is a Marxist insurrection hoping to bring about the end of the U.S.—and the West—as we knew it. It is anti-capitalist, anti-rule of law, anti-Christian and anti-freedom. The leaders of Antifa and BLM have openly admitted this. Even if they hadn’t, it is abundantly clear to see for any sentient being connecting the dots. It is also utterly racist, classist and intolerant.

Teddy Roosevelt Gets Canceled A statue of America’s 26th President will come down in New York City.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/teddy-roosevelt-gets-canceled-11592867171?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

The Committee for the Removal of Public Monuments has bagged its biggest trophy to date. On Sunday New York Mayor Bill de Blasio acceded to a request from Ellen Futter, president of the American Museum of Natural History, to remove the equestrian statue of Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States, that fronts the museum entrance on Central Park West.

“The Statue has long been controversial because of the hierarchical composition that places one figure on horseback and the others walking alongside, and many of us find its depictions of the Native American and African figures and their placement in the monument racist,” Ms. Futter wrote in a letter to the mayor. She added, “While the Statue is owned by the City, the Museum recognizes the importance of taking a position at this time. We believe that the Statue should no longer remain and have requested that it be moved.”

The Roosevelt statue has long been a target for progressives. Last year the museum organized an exhibition, “Addressing the Statue,” which did a poor job of exploring the issues involved. As our critic Edward Rothstein wrote at the time, “[T]he exhibition actually does very little to help explain the statue or to put it in context. And while it claims to want to participate in a ‘national conversation’ by presenting a variety of views, its own weigh down the scales.”

This current anti-monument wave degrades what originated as a legitimate grievance: the presence of Confederate monuments, many erected during the Jim Crow era to perpetuate the Lost Cause myth and advance white supremacy. But that idea has been taken over now by what has turned into a mob intent on willy-nilly eradication of chunks of American history.

State Dept. Classifies Additional Chinese Media Outlets as Foreign Agents By Tobias Hoonhout

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/state-dept-classifies-additional-chinese-media-outlets-as-foreign-agents/

Four more Chinese media outlets with operations in the U.S. are being labeled as “foreign missions” to highlight their close ties to the Chinese Communist Party, the U.S. State Department announced Monday.

China Central Television, China News Service, People’s Daily, and the Global Times are all joining the list of designated foreign actors, State Department spokesperson Megan Ortagus said in a press release. The announcement comes after five other Chinese media conglomerates were designated as foreign missions in February.

“The decision to designate these entities is not based on any content produced by these entities, nor does it place any restrictions on what the designated entities may publish in the United States,” Ortagus said. “It simply recognizes them for what they are.”

The distinction does limit the number of visas distributed to the outlets, as “foreign missions must adhere to certain administrative requirements that also apply to foreign embassies and consulates in the United States.”

After the State Department’s decision to first implement the new rules in February, China retaliated by stripping the press passes of American reporters at the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Washington Post.

A Presidential Campaign Simile: Storm-Tossed Galleon By Victor Davis Hanson

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/a-presidential-campaign-simile-storm-tossed-galleon/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=first

Right now, Trump’s ship has been hit in succession by sudden headwinds and violent storms of impeachment, the contagion, the lockdown, the tragic killing of George Floyd, and both the ensuring peaceful protests and violent looting, rioting, and arson. The result is that his voyage to port has nearly stopped. Even warped polls suggest that in the past few days he has caught little wind in his sails, while Joe Biden, asleep at the wheel, lets his crew ever so slowly capture a tiny breeze or two and drift ahead.

But to Trump’s rear, the powerful tailwinds of summer and autumn are rising. And they are considerable: the enfeebled candidacy of a cognitively impaired Joe Biden who at some point must emerge from his basement and remind the world he is inert; the contention over Joe Biden’s hard left-wing diversity VP selection that is de facto the Democratic presidential candidate; the looming indictments of John Durham; the steady recovery of the economy; the likely eventual waning of the virus; the loosening of the lockdowns, especially given the asymmetrical blue-state exemptions given to millions of protestors and rioters who never practiced social distancing as they looted stores, entered restaurants to harass customers, and crowded together to shout and spray; and, most important, the growing public pushback against the looting, burning, shooting, and rioting. All that is a powerful collection of favorable windy currents.

If Trump lets these fresh winds at his back catch his full sails and ride the waves, then he will coast to port and victory

Statues and Limitations

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/06/statues-and-limitations/

Spasmodic attempts to remake the world invariably involve the throwing out of the good along with the bad. Our ongoing bout of statuary iconoclasm has proven no exception.

The list of figures whose likenesses have been defaced now includes Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Ulysses S. Grant, Winston Churchill, Mohandas Gandhi, Cervantes, Robert the Bruce, Voltaire, General Schuyler, the abolitionist Mathias Baldwin, and the guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan. One can only imagine the philosophy that could draw a line around as motley a crew as that.

Of course, no such philosophy exists — and nor will it. Rather, we find ourselves in the middle stages of a cultural riot in which everything — and everyone — has become fair game. What do Cervantes and Stevie Ray Vaughan have in common? Well, that they are both made of bronze, and are thus liable to make a sickening thud when pulled by force from their pedestals. The violence, to borrow a fashionable phrase, is the point.

But it is not acceptable. Irrespective of the nature of their grievance — or of the strength of the feeling undergirding it — violent mobs can’t make decisions on behalf of everyone else.

Black Lives Don’t Matter to Black Lives Matter Roger L. Simon

https://www.theepochtimes.com/black-lives-dont-matter-to-black-lives-matter_3397428.html#

In case you missed it, and you could have considering the endless thumb sucking regarding just how many came or didn’t to the Trump rally in Tulsa, 60 were shot, 9 fatally, at last count, over Father’s Day weekend in Chicago.

These included a 13-year old girl in the Austin neighborhood of the West Side, Two hours earlier, in the same area, someone pulled up alongside a Blue Honda in an SUV and fired several rounds at the driver, striking and killing his three-year old son.

Similar carnage occurred in Chi-town only a couple of weeks before over Memorial Day weekend when 39 were wounded and 10 died, including a 16-year old boy.

And then of course we have Minneapolis, where most of the recent contretemps began, where last night 1 died and 11 were wounded in a shooting spree.

All of this was black on black violence of the most tragic sort.

Where was Black Lives Matter? Nowhere to be found, since the cops didn’t do any of it. BLM doesn’t seem to care about violence done to blacks if the police are not involved, even though black on black is by many multiples more lethal and more common, resulting in exponentially more black casualties.

BLM’s primary interest appears to be smashing the state, creating revolution with their pals in Antifa in order to take power themselves.

While America Promotes Freedom and Human Rights Abroad, We Must Uphold Those Values at Home By Lawrence J. Haas

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/while-america-promotes-freedom-and-human-rights-abroad-we-must-uphold-those-values-home

Iran is hosting an “I Can’t Breathe” international cartoon exhibition, with seventy-two pieces from twenty-seven countries, mocking America for its racial unrest and portraying its leaders and police as Nazis and Klan members.

In China, officials are blasting America for its racism while the People’s Daily, the communist party’s official newspaper, ran a cartoon of a crumbling Statue of Liberty and a White House soaked in blood and tear gas. In Moscow, Russian president Vladimir Putin said on state TV that “if this fight for natural rights, legal rights, turns into mayhem and rioting, I see nothing good for the [United States].”

The hypocrisy is breathtaking, for Tehran, Beijing, and Moscow are among the world’s leading human rights abusers, and they don’t even pretend to respect the freedoms that Americans take for granted.

Tehran is crushing pro-democracy demonstrations in increasingly harsh fashion, killing hundreds and arresting thousands as recently as November, while jailing and torturing journalists, human-rights lawyers, labor leaders, and other activists. Beijing is jailing lawyers, censoring the internet, holding Uighurs in concentration camps, and curtailing freedom in Hong Kong. The oligarchs, journalists, activists, and opposition leaders who challenge Putin often wind up jailed, attacked, or dead.

Nevertheless, the autocrats’ attacks on America remind us that due to the ideals we promote around the world – freedom, democracy, equality rights, pluralism-we pay a price abroad when we don’t live up to them at home. We invite attack from our autocratic adversaries, divert attention from their human rights horrors, and make ourselves a less effective advocate for human rights.

US Researchers’ Ties to China by Shoshana Bryen and Stephen Bryen

https://asiatimes.com/2020/06/us-research-scientists-under-fire-for-ties-to-china/

National Institutes of Health recently fired dozens of scientists, mostly Asian men, for having secret financial links to Beijing

Harvard Professor Charles Lieber was formally indicted this month on two counts of making false statements to federal authorities regarding his participation in China’s Thousand Talents program and his involvement with the Wuhan University of Technology.

His arrest in January made headlines, but Lieber proved to be only a harbinger of more than 300 similar cases. All are related to US government research contract conditions and requirements, and all are now in the process of public exposure.

Even more worrisome than the number, all of the cases including Lieber were uncovered by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), although Lieber held contracts from both NIH and the Department of Defense (DOD).

There is no record of similar impropriety uncovered by the DOD itself, or any broader investigation as yet by the Departments of Homeland Security, Energy, State, Education, or other federal government agencies.

But if the US government looked into all contracts across all agencies it is quite likely that the number of cases could easily reach the thousands. The national security ramifications are frightening.

Lieber, the principal investigator of the Lieber Research Group at Harvard, specialized in the highly sensitive area of nanoscience and was funded with more than $15 million in federal grants.

These grants require the disclosure of all sources of research support, potential financial conflicts of interest and all foreign collaboration.

According to the indictment, “Beginning in 2011, Lieber became a ‘Strategic Scientist’ at Wuhan University of Technology (WUT) in China. He later became a contractual participant in China’s Thousand Talents Plan from at least 2012 through 2015.”

In the first count of the indictment, Lieber is alleged to have told the Defense Department’s Criminal Investigative Service that “he was never asked to participate in the Thousand Talents Program” and that he “’wasn’t sure’ how China categorized him.”

The second count concerned his contracts with NIH. “Lieber allegedly caused Harvard to falsely tell NIH that Lieber ‘had no formal association with WUT’ after 2012, that ‘WUT continued to falsely exaggerate’ his involvement with WUT in subsequent years, and that Lieber is not and has never been a participant in China’s Thousand Talents Plan.”