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The China-India Clash The Himalayan border brawl is an opening for closer U.S.-Delhi ties.

Posted By on June 18th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-china-india-clash-11592435121?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

Monday’s skirmish along the China-India border was the deadliest in decades. It’s impossible to confirm what triggered the fighting, but the big picture is clear: Tensions between New Delhi and Beijing are escalating while the latter steps up its regional bullying.

Both countries have sent thousands of troops to their disputed border in the Himalayas, though a “de-escalation process” was under way when the deadly confrontation began Monday night. Reportedly no firearms were used, but the Indian government said at least 20 Indian soldiers died. China won’t confirm any deaths but probably suffered some after hours of high-altitude, hand-to-hand combat.

Each country says the other instigated the confrontation, but the clash fits China’s recent habit of pressing territorial claims on all fronts. In the South China Sea, China has militarized artificial islands and is asserting its claims with force. Chinese vessels, often backed by the country’s coast guard, hound foreign ships operating in contested waters. This led to standoffs with Indonesia and Malaysia earlier in the year. This spring a Chinese government vessel sank a Vietnamese fishing boat.

In the East China Sea, Chinese ships have appeared near the disputed Senkaku Islands every day for more than two months, leading to protests from Japan. Chinese jet fighters intruded into Taiwanese airspace this month while state-run media and senior generals muse about a possible invasion. Beijing is exerting more political control over Hong Kong.

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Corporations Can Also Undermine Freedom By David Harsanyi

Posted By on June 18th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/corporations-can-also-undermine-freedom/

Libertarians have a habit of acting as if the impartial application of rights inevitably yields a morally neutral outcome. Here is Reason’s Stephanie Slade — who I’m probably in philosophical agreement with on most issues — commenting on this week’s demonetization of the Federalist by Google:

Today conservatives are up in arms because Google made a business decision that reflects its moral convictions because they, they conservatives, find those convictions misguided or abhorrent. What am I missing here?

Slade is right that Google can do what it wants. But she misses the fact that marketplace decisions can also be fundamentally illiberal and abhorrent, and that it’s completely reasonable for people to object to them — even if they don’t believe that tech companies should be compelled by the state to change their behavior.

If a bunch of Americans were “up in arms” over an example of industry-wide racism, the modern libertarian’s first instinct wouldn’t be to ask, “why is everyone so mad about these totally legitimate business decisions that reflect the moral convictions of these companies?” Rather, it would be to note that speaking up is the best way to precipitate changes in the marketplace, and that racism, even if it is protected, is antithetical to the ideals of a free nation.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Is All We Are the Color of Our Skin? by Drieu Godefridi

Posted By on June 18th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16121/racism-skin-color

We should not allow ourselves to fall into the crude trap of this debilitating racialization.

The first problem is collective responsibility; the idea that responsibility for the crimes of a few extends to all members of a group, both criminals and victims…. As Larry Elder, an American radio host, author and attorney, recently noted: “Reparations are the extraction of money from those who were never slave owners to be given to those who were never slaves.”

The second problem is responsibility through the generations: the idea that the passage of time does not change anything. Children who are not yet born, are, in advance, responsible for the crimes and abuses of their ancestors — and all the ancestors of the “group” to which they belong.

Reducing human beings to their skin color marks the supreme defeat in humanistic and political thought.

The political left in the United States now seems to embrace the most openly racist ideas perhaps since German National Socialism in the 1930s and 1940s.

Their racist view, according to which the color of skin is the measure of all reality, truth, hierarchy and moral values, marks a startling regression.

During recent riots, shop fronts and synagogues in the United States were defaced with antisemitic slogans. It is argued in vain that these threats should not be exaggerated; a protester in New York City seemed comfortable openly declaring on Fox News that he intended to lead his peers, laden with cheap gasoline, to set fire to a neighborhood, the “Diamond District,” where many Jews are known to work.

The doctrine that reduces human beings to the color of their skin does not befit any society, especially a multiracial one.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

ISIS Terrorists Cannot Be Allowed to Reclaim Iraq by Con Coughlin

Posted By on June 18th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16127/isis-terrorists-iraq

Iraqi security officials say the number of ISIS fighters in Iraq is now between 2,000-3,000, which includes around 500 militants who have made their way to Iraq after escaping from prisons in Syria.

The upsurge in ISIS in activity in Iraq should certainly act as a wake-up call for the Trump administration as it reviews America’s military commitment to Iraq following the recent appointment of former Iraqi intelligence chief Mustafa al-Kadhimi as the country’s new pro-Western prime minister.

The reason Iraq is able to have elections in the first place is because of the enormous sacrifices made by American and other coalition forces to rebuild the country after the overthrow of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003, an achievement that the Trump administration cannot allow to be damaged by a resurgent ISIS.

With the primary focus of the Trump administration understandably concentrated on a variety of pressing domestic issues, from the forthcoming presidential election campaign to tackling the Covid-19 pandemic, there is growing concern that ISIS fanatics are seeking to exploit the situation to rebuild their terrorist infrastructure throughout the Middle East.

In countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, there is mounting evidence that the ISIS leadership is seeking to move on from the catastrophic defeats it has suffered in recent years and rebuild its fighting strength.

In Afghanistan, the most deadly manifestation of the group’s new-found strength was demonstrated when U.S. officials blamed ISIS for last month’s brutal attack on a maternity ward in the country’s capital Kabul in which 24 people died, including a number of mothers, children and new-born babies.

The deepening chaos in Libya caused by the country’s bitter civil war has also raised fears that ISIS is seeking to exploit the situation to rebuild its operational strength in the pivotal North African country. Last year U.S. drones carried out a series of attacks against ISIS positions in the Libyan desert, and Western intelligence officials remain concerned that the group is placing sleeper cells in some of the country’s major cities.

By far the greatest concern among Western security officials, though, is the prospect of ISIS rebuilding its infrastructure in Iraq, the country where the country’s former leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi famously proclaimed the establishment of his so-called caliphate in June 2014.

MEDIA Comments turned off

NBC Tries to Cancel a Conservative Website The network colluded with a foreign advocacy group that wanted Google to demonetize the Federalist. By Ben Domenech and Sean Davis

Posted By on June 18th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/nbc-tries-to-cancel-a-conservative-website-11592410893?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

NBC News attempted this week to use the power of Google to cancel our publication, the Federalist. The effort failed, but it should serve as a warning about the unchecked power of big tech companies, particularly when they can be manipulated by partisans, including partisan journalists.

On Monday we received a request for comment through our general media email account from NBC reporter Adele-Momoko Fraser. The message asserted that Google had demonetized our site—preventing us from earning money through Google ads—for violating its rules.

On Tuesday, NBC published an article claiming that Google had made a formal decision to demonetize the Federalist, that we had been formally warned that we were in violation, and that our content—specifically, articles criticizing the Black Lives Matter movement and media coverage of recent riots—was a violation of Google’s rules.

Google subsequently sent a statement to NBC saying all these claims were false. The network updated but hasn’t retracted the story. Ms. Fraser, who works for an NBC division with the Orwellian name “Verification Center,” tweeted her story and expressing thanks for the “hard work and collaboration” of a London-based advocacy group, the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which promptly issued a fundraising appeal based on its purported deplatforming of a conservative media organization.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

What Covid Models Get Wrong Focus on the burden on hospitals, not on the oft-mistaken forecasts.

Posted By on June 18th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-covid-models-get-wrong-11592435169?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Here we go again. The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation has issued a new forecast that Covid-19 fatalities would spike over the summer in states that have moved faster to reopen. Cue the media drumbeat for another lockdown. Maybe someone should first explain why the models were wrong about so much the last time.

Take New York, where Gov. Andrew Cuomo locked down the state in mid-March based on dire warnings. His public health experts projected the state would need as many as 140,000 hospital beds and 40,000 intensive care units—two to three times more regular hospital beds and 10 times more ICU beds than were available. The UW model forecast that 49,000 regular beds and 8,000 ICU beds would be needed at the peak.

New York was hit hard, but Covid-19 hospital bed utilization in New York peaked at 18,825 and 5,225 for ICUs in mid-April. Even in New York City, hospital utilization never exceeded 85% of capacity and 89% for ICUs. Government-run hospitals in low-income neighborhoods with the most cases were unprepared, but they were ill-managed before the pandemic.

New York was the country’s frontline in the coronavirus attack, and caution was needed in the early days because so little was known about the virus. The original UW model, which was based on the experiences in Italy and Wuhan, assumed that strict lockdowns would curb infections, reduce hospitalizations and lower deaths faster than they actually did in the Northeast.

Asked last month about when fatalities and hospitalizations would meet state thresholds for reopening, Mr. Cuomo responded: “All the early national experts, ‘Here’s my projection model.’ . . . They were all wrong. They were all wrong. . . . There are a lot of variables. I understand that. We didn’t know what the social distancing would actually amount to. I get it, but we were all wrong.”

POLITICS Comments turned off

China is on the Ballot in 2020 Ben Weingarten

Posted By on June 18th, 2020

https://americanmind.org/post/china-is-on-the-ballot-in-2020/

American voters will decide if the PRC wins.

In early May, President Donald Trump ordered a federal retirement fund to scrap its plans to shift several billion dollars’ worth of U.S. government employee savings into Chinese stocks. The administration is now planning a broader review of China’s unfair and potentially dangerous usage of American capital markets. This is about far more than mundane matters of bureaucracy and asset allocation. It epitomizes the existential battle facing America.

The Status Quo

Our public servants will now no longer be underwriting military contractors that support the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) People’s Liberation Army—an army that has threatened U.S. servicemen and engaged in espionage against U.S. civilians. Nor will we be funding “enterprises” indicted for violating U.S. sanctions in conducting business with enemies like CPC customer Iran and satrap North Korea; or technology companies that produce the surveillance equipment used to run the CPC’s modern-day gulags and supply other police states. These are all welcome developments.

 

But the fact that these travesties would have transpired had the Trump administration not intervened is a sobering truth with implications that transcend capital markets. It touches on the long-term competition into which America has finally entered with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Near-term, the 2020 election is critical to sustaining this competition.

 

Following the Cold War, the stated rationale for U.S.-PRC relations was one of economic self-interest and idealism: Economic liberalization would lead to political and cultural liberalization. Relatedly, the story went, an integrated and prosperous China would be a peaceful and stable one.

 

For decades, Joe Biden has been one of the most senior proponents of this view. During the height of the 2000 debate that resulted in the granting of permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) to China, putting it on a glidepath to World Trade Organization accession that would accelerate its drive toward superpower status, Biden asserted that PRC “prosperity…has put China on a path toward ever-greater political and economic freedom.”

 

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Black Lives Matter, The Black Hebrew Israelites, Ice Cube, Farrakhan and the Pogroms of 2020. – Diane Bederman-

Posted By on June 18th, 2020

https://dianebederman.com/black-lives-matter-the-black-hebrew-israelites-ice-cube-farrakhan-and-the-pogroms-of-2020/

So here we are in the year 2020 and we have Black Lives Matter with BDS, which has once again used age-old tropes of experiencing “settler-colonialism” and “apartheid” in “Israel’s regime of oppression” to try to connect their plight with those of the African-American communities, using the murder of George Floyd and many other deaths of black Americans to push anti-Semitic ideals.

And then along comes the Hebrew Black Israelites.  Another “religion” coming from a line of religions trying to replace or supersede Judaism with Christianity. So now we have these recently created or resurrected, depending on your worldview “Jews,” replacing Jews.

So who are these people?

There are many sects which refer to themselves with variations of the name Black Hebrew Israelites.

Some, but not all, are outspoken anti-Semites and racists. It should be emphasized that the extremist and anti-Semitic sects of Black Hebrew Israelites are unrelated to the thousands of black Jews and other Jews of color in the US, who are genuine members of the Jewish faith. Furthermore, they should not be confused with Ethiopian Jews who mostly live in Israel today.  Anti-Semitic Black Hebrew Israelites assert that white people are agents of Satan, Jews are liars and false worshipers of God, and blacks are the true “chosen people” and are racially superior to other ethnicities.

Another sect of Black Hebrew Israelites is Israel United In Christ, a New York-based group with a national and international presence as well, including in Newark, NJ. The leader of the group is Nathaniel Ray (aka Bishop Nathanyel Ben Israel).  The group’s mission is to spread the Black Hebrew Israelite ideology and to educate black individuals of their true place in society. They are committed to spreading the ideology globally and recruiting as many black individuals as possible. They rely heavily on social media to promote their beliefs, as well as hosting public activities such as marches and Bible readings.  They reject Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, specifically calling Jews “the bastards that funded the slave trade.” They blame Jews and other ethnicities for all social ills plaguing black individuals, and claim that acceptance of this ideology and God will free black people. Further, they assert that Jews and white people worship the devil, and white people will become their slaves in Heaven.

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB Comments turned off

Three Generations of Brainwashing Pays Off For the Left Newt Gingrich

Posted By on June 18th, 2020

www.gingrich360.com/2020/06/three-generations-of-brainwashing-pays-off-for-the-left/

As we watch radicals tear down statues, deface monuments, intimidate people who want to stand for the National Anthem, demand the firing of people who write or say something deemed inappropriate to the Leftist Anti-American Theology, it is utterly clear that many Americans today hate America.

People ask me how we’ve gotten to this point. All of this is the result of three generations of brainwashing going back at least to Herbert Marcuse, the German-born University of California, San Diego professor who taught young Americans the philosophical foundation of Marxism in the 1960s. As early as 1972, Theodore White was warning that the liberal ideology was becoming a liberal theology and dissent was less and less acceptable to the left.

We have watched the hard left, the America hating totalitarians who want to define acceptable speech, as they took over the academic world. The college boards – made up of supposedly sound community leaders – refused to fight. Public universities and colleges continued to hire vehement anti-American professors, the state legislatures and governors refused to fight. Alumni continued to give to schools, which were teaching their own children and grandchildren to despise them.

We did not think through the eventual reality that graduates who had been taught systematic falsehoods would take those falsehoods into their jobs. As President Ronald Reagan said, “the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Corporate America’s Strategy Of Mob Appeasement Will Destroy it, Just As It Always Has  By Christopher Bedford

Posted By on June 18th, 2020

https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/17/corporate-americas-strategy-of-mob-appeasement-will-destroy-it-just-as-it-always-has/

Twenty-six years ago, Morgan Stanley hired Marilyn Booker as their first diversity director, charged with overseeing corporate efforts from the firm’s New York City headquarters, a 685-foot, glass, Times Square skyscraper. Ten years ago, Booker left that post to work in their financial wealth management division. Seven months ago, Booker was fired.

But that was before video aired of George Floyd’s death, and spreading, national protests escalated into riots, violence, church burning, monument defacing, and occupations. How quickly things change. Now Booker is leading a group of black women in suing the company that employed her for a quarter-century, charging that the firm systematically discriminates against black employees.

The suit comes after a notably active week for the investment bank’s activism. Since Black Lives Matter blasted back into our Alzheimer’s-addled news cycle, Morgan Stanley’s chief executive, James Gorman, committed $25 million to a new internal “diversity” effort, sent $5 million to the NAACP, promoted two black women, and sent an email about it all to staff. For his efforts, he was personally named in Booker’s lawsuit.

But Morgan Stanley is not uniquely stupid for empowering an activist whose sole job was to call them racists. For decades, corporate America has launched similar efforts in the vain hope that money, press releases, and choice divestments could virtue-signal them out of the mob’s cross-hairs and even hurt their competitors. None of it saves them. On the contrary, moves to embrace the mob have placed corporations more clearly in their sights than they were before.