WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Hijacked in Hong Kong Now Beijing wants to extradite dissenters for trial in China.

Posted By on April 6th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/hijacked-in-hong-kong-11554506196

A sad fact is that bad behavior that would be condemned in any other part of the world is ignored in China because the large Chinese market makes people think twice before speaking the obvious. So kudos to the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong and their business allies for speaking up against a proposal to let the territory start extraditing people China wants to put on trial.

Last month AmCham noted the proposal threatens Hong Kong’s reputation as a “secure haven for international business.” No extradition arrangement exists because no one in his right mind trusts the Chinese justice system, and with good reason. In 2015 five Hong Kong men associated with a local shop that carried books critical of high-ranking Communist leaders went missing, only to resurface in China—where they then appeared on state TV making “confessions.” At least one, Gui Minhai, remains under detention in China.

The extradition demand clearly violates China’s promise of autonomy for Hong Kong for 50 years through 2047. Though the Hong Kong government has slightly modified its proposals by narrowing the crimes for which someone could be extradited, it is still bending to the mainland. AmCham says it still has “serious concerns,” and so do many others. Despite the many expressions of concern, the government introduced the bill Wednesday

This past weekend thousands of Hong Kong people turned out for a march against the extradition proposal. They know that next on Beijing’s list is a national security law on treason, sedition, secession and subversion that would likely gut speech rights in Hong Kong.

HISTORY Comments turned off

The Forgotten Americans Who Died Fighting Communism By John J. Miller

Posted By on April 6th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2019/04/22/the-forgotten-americans-who-died-fighting-communism/

Remember the Polar Bears

Troy, Mich. — At sunrise, following a sleepless night of trudging through the cold swamps of northern Russia, a couple of men from Detroit made breakfast. Corporal Morris Foley and Private Bill Henkelman brewed tea and opened a can of corned beef. As Foley prepared to finish the last of the beef, Henkelman spoke up: “Let’s save enough for after while.” Foley refused. “There might not be no after while.”

It turned out there wasn’t, at least not for Foley. Later that morning — on September 20, 1918, by the village of Seltso on the Dvina River — his company formed a skirmish line and charged a nest of Russian machine gunners. Bullets ripped through Foley’s face and neck. “Foley had his jaw shot off,” reported a sergeant. Somehow, the young man survived his brutal injury long enough to join a retreat. He died near his original position and was buried close to where he had scarfed down his beef.

Today, Foley’s recovered remains rest in Troy, Mich., in the 200-acre White Chapel Memorial Park Cemetery, alongside the graves of 55 other American soldiers who died fighting Communists in the frozen wilds of northern Russia in 1918 and 1919. They’re marked by one of the most striking sculptures to be seen anywhere, let alone at a cemetery: a snarling polar bear, carved in white marble by the artist Leon Hermant. It’s a tribute to what some U.S. soldiers took to calling themselves a century ago: the “Polar Bears.” They were the first and only Americans to fight a shooting war against Russian Communists.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Worst 50 U.S. Junior Colleges 

Posted By on April 6th, 2019

https://www.openthebooks.com/

Last year, the Department of Education doled out nearly $925 million to the 50 worst performing community and junior colleges in the nation.

Among these under-performing schools, the 10 top funding recipients have an average graduation rate of 12 percent.

That’s right.

Just one out of every 8 students at these community and junior colleges actually graduate.

It’s clear these schools have internal issues that no amount of federal funding can fix.

It’s time to stop this dangerous cycle and demand greater levels of fiscal responsibility and transparency.

P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

The ‘Trans’ Child as Experimental Guinea Pig By Madeleine Kearns

Posted By on April 6th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2019/04/22/the-trans-child-as-experimental-guinea-pig/

Standards of evidence have been discarded, and children are being altered for life
Last year Jeanette Jennings, as part of the reality-TV show I Am Jazz, threw her 17-year-old child, Jazz, a “farewell-to-penis party.” Guests cheered as the teenager hacked at a phallus-shaped cake with a knife, shouting, “Let’s cut it off.” The party may have been a bit contrived even by reality-show standards, but the subsequent operation was all too real.

In any other context, we might consider the drug-induced stunting of a child’s penis, followed by its surgical removal, to be mutilation. But in an era of culturally and legally enshrined transgenderism, it’s not just permissible; it’s entertainment.

In February, Representatives Jackie Speier (D., Calif.) and Angie Craig (D., Minn.) participated in the “Jazz and Friends National Day of Community and School Readings,” sponsored by the Human Rights Campaign (a well-funded gay and transgender lobby group) and the National Education Association (a teachers’ union). They read aloud celebratory and euphemistic stories of transgender children (such as Jazz, with the amputated penis) on the House floor. But the mainstreaming of youth transgenderism goes way beyond Congress. In schools nationwide, children as young as five are being taught that they may have been born in the wrong body.

Transgenderism is the theory that each person has an innate gender identity that is distinct from that person’s sex. Theories about gender identity were pioneered by sexologists and academics in the mid 20th century, and they remain widely contested and poorly understood. Despite this, they are being applied in a radical and experimental way to children worldwide. Parents and professionals agonize over the fear that young people will suffer physical and psychological harm from the application of transgender theory, but all too often they are cowed into submission.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Can’t Any Democrat Here Play This Game? By Matthew Continetti

Posted By on April 6th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/democratic-presidential-candidates-unimpressive/

The 2020 field continues to un-impress.

Time to check on the 20 Smurfs.

Joe Biden recorded a message on a friend’s iPhone in which he admitted that he’s made women and “some men” uncomfortable by, among other things, touching them, rubbing their shoulders, and smelling their hair. It’s his way of making a “connection,” Biden explained, as though he were a domestic animal introducing himself to another pet. Men, women, “young, old,” he’s touched them all. Handshakes and small talk aren’t enough for Joe. He’s “tactile.”

Biden pledged to be “mindful” of personal space because “social norms” have changed since he was born in the late Cretaceous period. He still hasn’t announced his presidential run, but has signaled to allies that his prospective candidacy is “full steam” ahead — in which direction, and toward what destination, no one can say. It already resembles one of those Amtrak trains Biden admires so much: rickety, noisy, a relic transiting badlands.

Biden’s old boss, Barack Obama, has maintained a studied silence throughout the controversy over his vice president’s creepiness. So has Michelle. The Obama team appears to be more intrigued by Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke, who launched his campaign at a rally in El Paso, Texas, last weekend. Andrew Stiles of the Washington Free Beacon wrote about it here. The AP had to correct its story on the speech, which said, “Mr. O’Rourke also spoke at length in his native Spanish.” Dios mio.

Beto is as lily-white as Elizabeth Warren, whose finance director is leaving because of a disagreement over money. The director would like to raise some. Warren’s not so sure. She pledged not to accept donations from millionaires and billionaires, holding out for small-dollar contributions from folks like you and me. The problem: Folks like you and me don’t want anything to do with Warren.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Folly of the Mueller Investigation By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on April 6th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2019/04/22/the-folly-of-the-mueller-investigation/

A hysteria without a cause; a report without a point

The pointlessness of it all. That is the major takeaway from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s much-anticipated final report on the Trump/Russia probe.

After an exhaustive 22-month investigation, Mueller found that there was no criminal collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. This was already manifest to anyone who had closely followed the investigation — anyone, that is, who had taken note that no predicate crime was specified when Mueller was appointed (the special-counsel regulations require one), or anyone who had read the indictments Mueller filed, which demonstrated that Russia’s operations predated Trump’s entry into the 2016 campaign, that some of them were actually anti-Trump in nature, and that Russia (which is notoriously adept at espionage) neither needed nor sought American collaborators. “There is no allegation,” observed Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in announcing charges against Russian operatives brought by the special counsel he had appointed, “that any American was a knowing participant in this illegal activity.” Never was such an allegation even hinted at against the president, nor against any of his associates, a handful of whom were charged either with crimes that had nothing to do with the 2016 campaign or with process crimes (mostly lying to investigators) that were not committed until after the campaign was over.

Mueller was even arguably needed to answer only one question: Did President Trump obstruct justice? On that, Mueller abdicated, refusing to render a prosecutorial judgment. This dereliction of duty in his final act further elucidated that there was neither a legal basis nor a practical need for the appointment of a special counsel.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Hungarian resistance The European Union’s quarrel over immigration intensifies.Clifford D. May

Posted By on April 6th, 2019

https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/the-hungarian-resistance/

Most people want to survive. What could be more natural than that? Most peoples want to survive, too. That’s no less natural.

For a thousand years, the lands inhabited by the Hungarian people have been invaded, their settlements sacked, men, women and children enslaved and slaughtered. Mongols, Ottomans, Nazis and Soviets were among those who conquered and ruled the Hungarians. Somehow, they’ve survived.

Hungarians today, a clear majority, believe their national existence – their unique identity, language, culture and traditions – is threatened again. This time, however, it is not by nomads on horseback or soldiers in tanks. It is by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the European Union.

In 2015, Merkel decided, on her own initiative, to establish an open-door policy for “migrants” from the broader Middle East and Africa. Since then, she and other EU leaders have been pressuring Hungary to accept its “fair share.”

All members of the EU have a “duty to make legal migration possible to help countries that are in trouble,” she has insisted. Hungary should demonstrate “solidarity” by agreeing to participate in a “fair system of distribution” of those who have arrived – more than a million in 2015, several hundred thousand since – as well as those who will arrive over the years ahead.

Here in Budapest just over a week ago, a conference was convened by the Mathias Corvinus Collegium, Hungary’s largest multidisciplinary college. Its title: “Migration: The Biggest Challenge of Our Time?”

ISRAEL Comments turned off

What Is Behind the Opposition to Peace with Israel? by Bassam Tawil

Posted By on April 6th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14020/opposition-peace-israel

The anti-Israel campaign in the Arab and Islamic world sees peace with Israel — and not failed leadership, bad economic policies and corruption — as the biggest threat to Arabs and Muslims. Recognizing Israel’s right to exit is also seen by many Arabs and Muslims as a humiliation to their values, their culture, their political power and their economic traditions. They seem concerned that Arabs and Muslims might wake up one morning and start demanding freedom of expression and free and democratic elections like the ones held every few years in Israel.

The anti-peace camp seems to want its people to continue living in misery and under dictatorships, so that it is easier to recruit people to jihad against Israel and the West. Also, if people are lifted from poverty and misery and begin to enjoy the fruits of modern civilization, there is a chance that Arabs and Muslims will move away from Islam and even start endorsing the inadmissible values of the West.

The Trump administration will soon discover what every child in the Arab and Islamic world already knows: that the Israeli-Arab conflict is not about a settlement or a checkpoint or a security fence, but about Israel’s very right to exist in the Middle East. The Trump administration will also learn that peace with Israel is seen by many Arabs and Muslims as nothing but an unacceptable threat that must at all costs be stopped.

Peace with Israel is purportedly a form of surrender and submission that will harm the dignity of Arabs and Muslims.

This is the theme of a massive campaign being waged by Palestinians and other Arabs in preparation for the announcement of the US administration’s plan for peace in the Middle East, also known as the “deal of the century.” The plan, according to US officials, is expected to be announced sometime after the general elections in Israel, slated for April 9.

The latest campaign is designed to thwart the “deal of the century” and terrorize Arabs and Muslims who may wish to accept the US administration’s peace plan.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Spurious Case of Jeremy Corbyn By Christopher Gage

Posted By on April 6th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/04/05/the-spurious-case-of-jeremy-corbyn/

Call me crazy, but I am beginning to suspect that thrusting a diehard Remainer into the job of pulling Great Britain out of the European Union was, on second thought, a bad move.

Excuse me for being glacially slow to arrive at this moment of clarity.

The revolution, though each pathetic flutter has been painfully televised, is indeed over. This week, Theresa May appears to have given up on her deal to leave the EU. And she is now siding with probably the most intellectually impoverished pseudo-sentient being to besmirch parliament in at least three centuries.

Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, sexagenarian Holden Caulfield sans the wit, humor, or intellectual incision, is now entrusted with the most consequential decision to befall our country since World War II.

What Corbyn thinks about Brexit is largely unknown. If he thinks at all it is unverified. His ex-wife claimed that in their four years together, “Jeremy” didn’t read one book. And he detested “bourgeoise” holiday spots. In the middle flushes of his youth, he vacationed in Communist East Germany. So, as you may deduce, he is a barrel of laughs. A box of frogs.

But May, still our prime minister, reported this week she held “constructive” talks with Corbyn with the hope of solving the Brexit impasse. She can’t do much else. Lawmakers killed her withdrawal agreement three times. Other lawmakers threatened to take control, and then voted several times against taking any semblance of control.

A lawmaker friend of mine, one of the original and thoroughly fruity Brexiteers, is so desperate to leave he has voted for May’s deal three times.

“Nobody here,” he said, interrogatively, “seems to know what they are doing.” Which is alright, I suppose, if one is standing in a Subway queue and the meat of discussion centers upon pointlessly large sandwiches. The most consequential of endeavors in such instances concerns ranch dressing. But he was not in a sandwich shop. This was the House of Commons.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

How Professional Merit and Scientific Objectivity Became Casualties of Social Justice Insanity By David Solway

Posted By on April 6th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/how-professional-merit-and-scientific-objectivity-became-casualties-of-social-justice-insanity/

The idea of merit has fallen on evil times, as has its corollary concept, objectivity. These principles have now been breached by a consortium of the ideologically minded, who resemble a gang of robbers tunneling under a bank vault. The masterminds planning and executing this operation are a class of “treasonous” intellectuals as Julien Benda defined them, primarily academics, along with members of the political left.

In the interests of creating a society based on the axioms of “social justice”—which is really socialist justice—the principles of professional merit and scientific objectivity are dismissed by our mandarin class as forms of bigotry. As the professions, the educational institution, the political arena, and the scientific establishment engage in a process of diversification, accommodating claimants who trade on race and gender rather than ability and native endowment, merit is in the process of being replaced by outright mediocrity.

In the university, for example, no department is safe from the “inclusion and diversity” mania that is bringing higher education into the slough of disrepute—not law, not medicine, not business, not even the STEM subjects. As is, or should be, common knowledge, literature and the social sciences have long succumbed to the social justice, disparate impact, and feminist miasma that has clouded the atmosphere of thought, paving the way for pervasive academic decadence.