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Hundreds of thousands of protesters march through Hong Kong against China extradition bill Elizabeth Beattie, Hong Kong

Posted By on June 9th, 2019

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/06/09/hundreds-thousands-protesters-march-hong-kong-against-china/

Hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets in Hong Kong to demonstrate against a controversial extradition law that would allow suspects to be sent to mainland China.

Protesters carrying banners denouncing the law and demanding the resignation of Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s defied thirty degree heat to march two miles to the city’s Legislative Council on Sunday.

Organisers estimated more than a million people attended the march, which flooded the city’s public transport network and led to widespread congestion. Police said the crowd reached 240,000 at its peak.

The proposed law would enable the Beijing government to extradite fugitives in Hong Kong to mainland China. Hong Kong currently limits extraditions to jurisdictions with which it has existing extradition agreements or to others on an individual basis under a law passed before 1997.

China was excluded because of concerns over its record on legal independence and human rights. Ms Lam is billing the law as closing legal ‘“loopholes’’, visible in a recent murder case when a Hong Kong man murdered his girlfriend in Taiwan before fleeing back to his home country.

Her government plans to bring the contentious bill to the full legislature this week, bypassing the committee process in a bid to win approval by the end of the month.  

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China Is A Paper Tiger by Chet Nagle

Posted By on June 9th, 2019

https://creativedestructionmedia.com/news/asia/2019/06/08/china-is-a-paper-tiger/ 

Last month China declared war on the United States. Strangely, the White House did not respond, the Pentagon did not raise readiness to Defcon 1, and global media did not take much notice. Did the world simply ignore China’s proclamation or were all eyes elsewhere?

A few eyes, however, did notice the production aired on May 25thby the Communist Chinese Party’s video outlet, Watermelon Video. The video quoted articles and editorials in the Global Times, a Chinese government news service, calling for a “people’s war” that targets the U.S. with “precision,” that China must not make any concessions, and adding, “Fortune favors the bold, all imperialists are paper tigers!”

And all the eyes in Hollywood wept when they saw China television ban the broadcasting of every Hollywood production as well as any Chinese-made films containing scenes shot in the United States. As Martha Bayles wrote in The American Interest, “Like most private-sector industries in the West, America’s film studios have long dealt with China in a way that places economic self-interest above all other considerations, from domestic prosperity to human rights to national security.” That slavish devotion to Chinese money now has Hollywood’s accountants burning the midnight oil, mourning the lost profits in the huge Chinese film market.

But Wall Street eyes don’t watch China’s movies. Instead they monitor their lucrative investments in Chinese companies on their stock tracking screens. First they saw Baoshang Bank in Mongolia fail, necessitating a $62 billion cash injection by Beijing. Then they read the MarketWatchreport on Hikvision, China’s giant closed circuit camera manufacturer. With a market cap of $33 billion, the company is a darling of investors like Aberdeen Standard Investmentsand Comgest.

BOOKS, EDUCATION Comments turned off

How Diversity Narrows the Mind Graham Cunningham

Posted By on June 9th, 2019

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2019/06/how-diversity-narrows-the-

Heather Mac Donald’s The Diversity Delusion is an invaluable resource of myth-busting fact and a reality check on the siren calls of identity-based “social justice” now so insistent in Western society. Detailed, rigorous and copious, it is a devastating expose of “how race and gender pandering corrupt the university and undermine our culture”. To be a believer in personal responsibility in the contemporary West is to be continually assailed by invocations to feel guilty about the—largely baseless—alleged grievances of an ever-growing list of “victims of society”. This competitive victimhood narrative originated in academia but now oozes daily from the liberal media and has been absorbed as orthodoxy in our institutions, all the way from schools to armed forces. It is so relentless, in “news”, entertainment, in officialdom and institutions of all kinds, that individual examples, though legion, are quickly consigned to the memory’s ashcan. This is why an evidence-rich book like The Diversity Delusion is so necessary, if only as a historical record of the madness.

The book is divided into three parts: “Race”, “Gender” and “The Bureaucracy”. The context is American but Australian readers will have no trouble relating it to their experience. Mac Donald recounts stories of self-engrossed, spoilt-brat, student hysteria and the craven appeasement of such behaviour by university administrations. Many of her case studies are jaw-dropping in their absurdity. After a violent attack at Middlebury College in 2017 by students protesting against a lecture invitation to the political scientist Charles Murray, “177 professors from across the country signed an open letter protesting that the assailants had been disciplined, however minimally. The professors blamed the administration for the violence, since its decision to allow Murray to lecture constituted a ‘threat’ to students.”

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The Stacey Abrams Myth Becomes the Democratic Catechism By Jonathan S. Tobin

Posted By on June 9th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/06/stacey-abrams-stolen-election-myth-endures-democratic-party/Democratic presidential candidates continue to swear her race was stolen.

Stacey Abrams’s refusal to lose the Georgia gubernatorial election graciously was one of the low points of the 2018 midterms. But her insistence that Brian Kemp and the Republicans stole the election from her has now become an article of faith among Democrats.

Democratic presidential contenders who traveled to Atlanta this week to speak to the African-American Leadership Council repeated the claim, which Abrams has made more than a dozen times since she lost to Kemp by 54,723 votes last November. In rote fashion, they repeated Abrams’s charges that the outcome was determined by “voter suppression” conducted by Kemp, who during the race was Georgia’s secretary of state.

South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg termed the alleged suppression “racially motivated” in his remarks to the group. He said that Abrams “ought to be governor.” Throwing complaints about gerrymandering and a desire for more-restrictive campaign-finance laws (neither of which had anything to do with the outcome in Georgia) into the argument, he claimed that the conditions that led to her loss meant that “we cannot truly say we live in a democracy.”

Not be outdone by his supposed competition for moderate Democratic-primary voters, former vice president Joe Biden raised the ante when he addressed the same group on Friday. Biden claimed that voter-integrity laws — which Kemp was legally bound to enforce — were direct descendants of Jim Crow regulations aimed at preventing African Americans from voting. Describing the GOP’s policies as a “methodical assault” on voting rights, Biden said, “voter suppression is the reason why Stacey Abrams isn’t governor right now.”

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Top Democrats ‘Disappointed’ Mexico Tariff Threat Worked, Accuse Trump of Caving to Pressure By Matt Margolis

Posted By on June 9th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/trending/top-democrats-disappointed-mexico-tariff-threat-worked-accuse-trump-of-caving-to-pressure/

Trump’s success in getting Mexico to agree to do more to curb the flow of illegal immigrants through their country and into the United States should be receiving universal praise, but unfortunately, Democrats, who we all know want to see illegal immigration increase to help secure their party’s power in government, couldn’t concede that Trump’s plan worked.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called Trump’s tariff threat, which succeeded in its goal, a counterproductive exercise in “threats and temper tantrums.”

“President Trump undermined America’s preeminent leadership role in the world by recklessly threatening to impose tariffs on our close friend and neighbor to the south,” Pelosi, a California Democrat, said Saturday morning. “Threats and temper tantrums are no way to negotiate foreign policy.”

[…]

Pelosi said she was “deeply disappointed” by the asylum provisions of the deal, which she claimed “violates the rights of asylum seekers under U.S. law and fails to address the root causes of Central American migration.”

But the most absurd comment came from Senator Chuck Schumer: Chuck Schumer

✔ @SenSchumer

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Climate change to bring ’25 Holocausts’ — and other stupid leftisms: By Cheryl K. Chumley –

Posted By on June 9th, 2019

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/jun/8/climate-change-bring-25-holocausts-and-other-stupi/

Climate change, as the Natural Resources Defense Council has written, “is getting unprecedented attention from the growing field of 2020 presidential candidates” — which means the empty-headed bobble bouncers of the left’s echo chamber have ample opportunity to prove how very sheeplike they can be in their thinking.

Indeed. Talk about a competition. 

We may have found a winner.

Rhiana Gunn-Wright, one creator of the Green New Deal, just weighed in on the reasons behind her regulatory pressings for climate controls, saying it’s not just life or death — it’s death times 25.

As Fox News reported, Gunn-Wright, in an interview with MSNBC’s Ali Velshi made clear her insistence on Democrats pushing global warming even more so than health care as a top issue for 2020 because, “climate change is one of the main drivers of our public health.”

“So the difference between, say, 1.5 degrees of warming — which is the least that folks think that we can get — to 2, you are talking about 150 million deaths. That’s 25 Holocausts, right? So how is that not a health issue? How is that not about health care?”

Or, as the other brainiacs of the left might wonder, how is that, like, oh my God, not really bad?

POLITICS Comments turned off

Biden slumps, Buttigieg soars: 6 takeaways from benchmark Iowa poll By Reid Wilson

Posted By on June 9th, 2019

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/447608-biden-slumps-buttigieg-soars-6-takeaways-from-benchmark-iowa-poll

Just hours before presidential candidates will pitch themselves to Iowa Democratic activists in the first-in-the-nation caucus state, a new poll of likely caucusgoers is rattling the race — and hinting that a formidable front-runner is not as invincible as he might appear.

The Iowa Poll, conducted by veteran pollster Ann Selzer for The Des Moines Register and CNN, found former Vice President Joe Biden leading the Democratic field with 24 percent of the vote.

The race for second place is a statistical tie between Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) at 16 percent, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) at 15 percent and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg at 14 percent.

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) is the only other candidate who registers significant support. She clocked in at 7 percent of the vote. Six percent of voters said they were not sure who they would choose on caucus night.

Eight months before voters head to their caucus sites, though, the poll shows movement within a Democratic primary that is still wide open.

Here are six takeaways from the Iowa Poll.

Biden’s support is shaky

In December, months before he even entered the race, nearly a third of Iowa voters said they backed Biden. Today, about six weeks after he announced he would run, Biden’s support has fallen by a third.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The End of Legitimacy and the Collapse of Democracy What else have we been experiencing? by Abraham H. Miller

Posted By on June 9th, 2019

https://spectator.org/the-end-of-legitimacy-and-the-collapse-of-democracy/

All empires and great societies come to an end. Ours will be no exception. The fissures of collapse are already in evidence.

Nothing is as valuable to any political system as its legitimacy. Regimes mired in corruption and inefficiency stumble on for centuries if the masses believe in them. Divine right of kings sustained the French royalty despite their palpable incompetence. The Russian czar was known as “the little father” despite serfdom persisting in Russia long after the industrial revolution transformed the West.

The strength of our democracy is its legitimacy. Hillary Clinton noted this during the 2016 election campaign when she asked candidate Donald J. Trump if he would accept the election results. When he hesitated, she spoke of the implications for American democracy if he failed to do so.

Ironically,it is Hillary Clinton who has not accepted the election results. She has crisscrossed the speakers’ circuit telling eager listeners that the Russians stole the election from her. Similarly, Stacey Abrams, who ran unsuccessfully for the Georgia gubernatorial post, has attributed her loss to electoral suppression. These themes have been both sustained and embellished by the current flock of Democrat presidential candidates, notwithstanding the absence of evidence. Even in the wake of the Mueller report, Democrat strategist Donna Brazile said that Russia caused Trump to win the election.

We now know that the Mueller investigation was based on an unverified FISA warrant paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign through a cutout. Even the initially vaunted Mueller report now seems to be full of inaccuracies with the bias running in one direction. Exculpatory material of Trump’s lawyer John Dowd’s transcript has been deleted to imply wrongdoing. The full transcript compared by Internet sleuths tells a different story.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

“Europe Will Not Be Europe” by Guy Millière

Posted By on June 9th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14353/europe-will-not-be-europe

In the United Kingdom, the Brexit Party victory at 31.6% of the vote was a remarkable achievement that showed the persistent willingness of millions of Britons to leave the European Union. The “populist” positions — the defense of national sovereignty and European civilization, refusal of uncontrolled immigration and diktats of Brussels technocrats — have gained ground.

The parties that have ruled Europe for decades obtained weak results, but, with rare exceptions, did not collapse — and will continue to dominate the European Union.

The Greens may gain more influence – along with its consequences. To anyone who read the Greens’ programs, it is evident that they are essentially leftists with an environmental green mask. They support unrestricted immigration and multiculturalism. They are…resolutely hostile to any defense of Western civilization, to free enterprise and free markets. They are often in favor of zero growth. Most of them support an apocalyptic vision of climate change and say that the survival of humanity will be at stake around the corner if Europe does not take drastic measures to “save the planet”. All of them are in favor of authoritarian decisions imposed from Brussels to all of Europe.

A European parliament placed under the influence of the Greens will almost certainly accelerate the slide towards more power given to the unelected members of the European Commission, and a phasing out of nuclear energy and fossil fuels. Policies favorable to still more immigration already are in preparation.

On the evening of May 26, Italian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior Matteo Salvini commented on the results of the European elections, “A new Europe is born.” The party he leads, the League, had just won with 34.3% of the vote. Other parties defined in Europe as “populist” also won: in Hungary, the Fidesz-KDNP alliance (Hungarian Civic Alliance and the Christian Democratic People’s Party) received 52.3% of the vote. In Poland, the PiS (Law and Justice) party won 45.4% of the vote. Sebastian Kurz’s Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) won 34.6% of the vote and the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ), his ally, was awarded 17.2%, despite a recent scandal that led to the resignation of Heinz-Christian Strache, chairma of the FPO, from his post as Vice-Chancellor of Austria (the Kurtz government fell on May 27). In the United Kingdom, the Brexit Party victory — at 31.6% of the vote — was a remarkable achievement that signaled the persistent willingness of millions of Britons to leave the European Union. There, the “populist” positions — the defense of national sovereignty and European civilization, refusal of uncontrolled immigration and diktats of Brussels technocrats — gained ground.

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Iran and the American Forbidden Fruit by Amir Taheri

Posted By on June 9th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14352/iran-america-forbidden-fruit

An Iran that is friendly with the US and is inspired by “American values” such as freedom of expression and the rule of law would not long tolerate the despotic and lawless system created by the ayatollah.

Here we have a delicious irony: Khomeinists and their Iranian apologists in the West love the American way of life, but only for themselves and their children. The trick is to deny the mass of Iranians, who have no enmity towards the US, a taste of that forbidden fruit.

Khomeinists must be anti-American to remain in power while they and their children benefit from the best that America offers, including the possibility of eventually settling in California. Their message to America is: I must appear to hate you in order to love you secretly!

The interesting thing here is that many US scholars and policymakers still pursue the dream of helping “moderates” secure unchallenged dominance in Tehran. This is why successive US administrations never pushed beyond the Khomeinist regime’s “threshold of pain”.

“Why do they hate us?” This is a question frequently put to me by Americans when discussing the rabid anti-Americanism professed by the Khomeinist ruling clique in the Islamic Republic.

The puzzlement implied in the question is understandable. For the United States is the only major power to have a decades-long history of close friendly ties with Iran. From the first decades of the 19th century, Iran found itself caught in an “Imperialist” pincer with Tsarist Russia and Great Britain providing its two arms. The Russians invaded Iran three times and snatched large chunks of Iranian territory in Caucasus and Central Asia. The British carved off large chunks of Iranian territory to add to their Indian Empire or to expand the newly created Afghan state they protected.