France: A ‘Field of Ruins’ by Guy Millière

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19549/france-field-of-ruins

France, once again, is on the verge of chaos.

The subject of the discontent is the adoption of a law reforming the pension system in a minimal way: the legal retirement age in France has been set at 62 since 2010; the law raises it two years, to 64.

Neither members of the government nor economists on television dare to speak the truth: The French pension system is collapsing. The reform just adopted will not be enough to save it; just allow it to survive a bit longer.

The system has been bankrupt for years, but its bankruptcy is growing more costly.

The French pension system is not the only system collapsing. The country is facing a much larger crisis.

The French health insurance system, also based on mandatory contributions deducted from salaries, also is in terrible shape.

Food prices in 2022, meanwhile, increased 14.5%.

The center-left and center-right parties are dead. Neither the Rebellious France Party nor the National Rally Party would be able gather enough votes to constitute an alternative majority. The political situation is blocked.

France seems deadlocked, the possibilities of unblocking it nowhere in sight.

“A modest reform based on an implacable demographic observation has tipped France into an existential crisis in which everything is wavering… A much deeper malaise is rising to the surface. That of a country haunted by its decline”. — Vincent Trémollet de Villers, Le Figaro, March 23, 2023.

“Have we hit rock bottom?” asked journalist Franz-Olivier Giesbert. “No, not yet.”

Paris, France. March 23, 8 p.m. A demonstration took place; as usual now, riots followed the demonstration and swept through the center of the city, then to other cities. Cars were burned, shop windows smashed, garbage dumpsters set on fire. A garbage collectors’ strike began two weeks earlier; nearly ten thousand tons of garbage, still strewn on the sidewalks, almost completely block some streets. The proliferation of rats threatens disease. Oil refineries are shut down; gas stations are running dry. More demonstrations took place March 28 — and more riots.

France, once again, is on the verge of chaos.

U.S. Manufacturing Hits New Low Under Biden By Eric Lendrum

https://amgreatness.com/2023/04/04/u-s-manufacturing-hits-new-low-under-biden/

On Monday, a report revealed that, on Joe Biden’s watch, American manufacturing has reached its lowest point since the start of the Chinese coronavirus pandemic.

According to the Washington Free Beacon, the Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing index, known as PMI, hit its lowest point since May 2020, scoring just 46.3. If the extraordinary conditions of the pandemic are not taken into account, then it is the lowest level since 2009.

The PMI serves to identify economic trends in the manufacturing sector, as well as the service sector, based on business conditions at major companies. If the PMI ever scores below 50, it indicates an economy on the decline.

The timing of the report coincides with Joe Biden announcing his “Investing in America” tour, where he will visit multiple factories across the country to tout his administration’s alleged efforts to help the manufacturing sector, as well as forcing his ideas of “green energy” on factories and businesses.

Despite claiming that “green energy” pushes will boost the economy and manufacturing alike, critics have pointed out that the billions often invested in such causes often go directly to far-left organizations, pro-Democrat billionaire donors, and Chinese manufacturers that provide the materials in the first place, while the projects themselves often fail or drastically underperform expectations.

Despite campaigning in 2020 on a platform vowing to do the opposite of everything President Donald Trump did, Biden has flip-flopped on manufacturing rhetoric since taking office. He has since borrowed phrases that President Trump frequently used as part of his America First agenda, including “Buy American” and “Made in America.”

How Climate Alarmism Killed Real Environmentalism Many of the environmental problems confronting the planet have nothing to do with CO2 emissions and, in many cases, are worsened by misguided steps being taken to curb CO2 emissions. By Edward Ring

https://amgreatness.com/2023/04/04/how-climate-alarmism-killed-real-environmentalism/

The environmentalist movement is a political weapon. It unites the most powerful special interests in the world behind an agenda that will further centralize power and wealth, eliminate any hope of financial independence for the vast majority of people, and transition previously free and independent nations into managed, sham democracies that have lost their sovereign agency.

The overwhelming theme of environmentalism today, designed to obscure its true agenda, is the alleged “climate crisis.”

Americans may or may not eventually muster the impertinence to successfully challenge the political power grab masquerading as environmentalism today. But either way, its centerpiece, the “climate crisis,” is responsible for devastating harm both to what was once a legitimate environmentalist movement, as well as to the environment itself.

Policies ostensibly designed to manage the planet’s climate are taking attention and resources away from genuine environmental threats. At the same time, a growing percentage of people are recognizing the fraudulent essence of the “climate crisis” agenda and, as a result, are becoming indifferent to legitimate environmental concerns.

This is a tragedy. While crooked billionaires bleat incessantly about how “the planet has a fever” and grasp additional billions for their cronies in the businesses of renewable energy and “carbon credits,” we fail to address truly important environmental problems. Compared to “overheating oceans” and “burning continents,” however, these problems lack sex appeal.

Here are just a few of the environmental disasters in progress that nobody talks about either because they’re making too much money pushing the climate change scam, or because they’re thoroughly disgusted with the climate change scam and disregard all environmentalist concerns.

1) Loss of Insect Population: By some estimates, and for reasons we don’t yet adequately understand, the total insect mass on Earth is dropping by an estimated 2.5 percent per year, faster than any other endangered species. This is an existential threat. Insects pollinate many vital food crops. They play a critical role in consuming decomposing animals and plants. They are an essential link in the food chain, the glue that connects microorganisms to smaller predators. Wind turbine blades are a mass killer of insects. Whatever else is killing insects, it won’t stop because we banned fossil fuels.

DOJ’s arrest policies By John Dietrich

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/04/dojs_arrest_policies.html

When Merrick Garland was questioned about why excessive force was used in the arrest of Mark Houck, an anti-abortion activist who had offered to turn himself in, the Attorney General evaded responsibility for the policy by saying,

“The determinations of how to make arrests under arrest warrants are made based by the tactical operators in the district. They made the decision on the ground as to what was safest and easiest.”

Garland did not comment on the enormous expense of sending a SWAT team to arrest a father of seven.  Also not mentioned was the fact that this early morning raid tactic, first developed by the Soviet KGB, is frequently used to arrest non-violent targets.

Early morning or pre-dawn raids are designed for maximum humiliation and intimidation. Dozens of federal agents with automatic weapons, armored vehicles, and sometimes a helicopter and amphibious watercraft are used intimidate the target, as was the case with Roger Stone. In the raid on Thomas Caldwell’s home, Caldwell’s 61-year-old wife was covered in red dots from the weapons aimed at her. She begged to put on her socks before they forced her outside in the cold. Caldwell himself, clad only in his underwear, was dragged through the grass. James O’Keefe claims he was partially clothed in front of his neighbors when he was dragged out of his apartment.

The federal government has a constitutional right to arrest people for certain offenses. When it goes to enormous expense to arrest cooperating subjects, there is another motive to their actions. Intimidation and humiliation are not proper components of an arrest. There is also the factor that SWAT raids can go terribly wrong. Innocent people have been killed in their homes. The federal government has a history of heavy-handed attacks. It paid Randy Weaver $3.1 Million for the murder of this wife and son. There was also the Waco siege resulting in 75 deaths, including 25 children.

America’s Broken Windows By J.B. Shurk

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/americas_broken_windows.html

In criminology, the “broken windows” theory posits that visible signs of crime and civil disorder encourage only more serious crimes and antisocial behaviors.  A community that is perceived to permit vandalism, fare evasion, public intoxication, and petty theft will soon find that it must defend against rising rates of robbery, rape, and murder.  Tackling smaller forms of criminal mischief nips violent crimes in the bud.  Although Wyatt Earp and other Wild West lawmen put the theory into practice long before social scientists James Wilson and George Kelling wrote about it in the 1980s, Mayor Rudy Giuliani and police commissioner William Bratton popularized its use when they successfully implemented “broken windows” policies that saved New York City from a decades-long crime spiral.

Communist Mayor Bill de Blasio later framed “broken windows” policing as inherently racist, retreated from many sensible initiatives, and punished cops for proactively fighting crime.  The residents of NYC have subsequently paid the price with their deteriorating safety.

Such has been the much larger pattern throughout American society.  Cultural Marxists and other communist coalitions attack good and sound policies as racist, sexist, transphobic, or guilty of some other ugly -ic or -ist smear; those traditional standards of behavior are repudiated; and then Americans suffer the consequences of living in a society without norms, manners, or common decency.  Throwing bricks through America’s windows while blaming others for their crimes, leftists have spent the last century engaging in purposeful destruction so as to bring about America’s demise.  Throw a brick here; throw a brick there; eventually, Americans wake up in a nation where government tyrants nonchalantly lock up their political opponents, censorship is widespread, and young adults can no longer determine whether they are boys or girls.

China Controls Your Meds Beijing’s chokehold on our medication supply chain. by Betsy McCaughey

https://www.frontpagemag.com/china-controls-your-meds/

Democrats and Republicans battered TikTok’s CEO at a House of Representatives hearing on Thursday — for good reason. The Chinese app poses a national security risk, accumulating troves of data on its American users. TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew’s slithery comment that “I don’t think spying is the right way to describe it,” only heightened concerns.

Too bad another Chinese threat — bigger and more immediate — isn’t getting the same attention. China has a chokehold on our medication supply chain. Beijing controls many — in some cases, all — active ingredients for the remedies in our medicine chests, the drugs used in emergency rooms and even antibiotics administered to soldiers on the battlefield.

The med bottles in your cabinet don’t say “Made in China,” but nearly all are, including 97% of U.S. antibiotics, by some estimates.

In a tense situation, Beijing could simply cut off shipments of antibiotics, cancer drugs and other meds, forcing the U.S. to cede to its demands. Our survival hinges on their goodwill. Terrifying.

China cornered the market for drug ingredients fast. Until the mid-1990s, the West and Japan produced 90% of the world’s active pharmaceutical ingredients. By 2017, China was producing 40%. Now almost all drug pipelines start in China. Even India, the other drug producing giant, relies on China for 70% of its active pharmaceutical ingredients.

Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chair Gary Peters warns that foreign dependence is “an unacceptable national security risk.” But talk is cheap.

In Defense of Netanyahu He has been a force for good for Israel. Can the same be said of his political enemies? by Cal Thomas

https://www.frontpagemag.com/in-defense-of-netanyahu/

The left in Israel, the international and American media, students on many U.S. college campuses and anti-Semites everywhere think they have arrived at the moment they have been hoping for ever since Benjamin Netanyahu won his first election as prime minister in 1996. Labor unions in Israel have gone on strike, Ben-Gurion Airport was forced to close, some members of the military are threatening to quit and some civilians are refusing to serve in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), all because Netanyahu is attempting to reform a judicial system that has been hostile to him, politically and personally.

On Monday, Netanyahu bowed to the pressure when he suspended his plan. He promised to “give a genuine opportunity for genuine dialogue. One way or another, we will bring about a reform that returns the balance that has been lost between branches of government.”

The motivation behind Netanyahu’s effort at judicial reform can be found in his autobiography, titled “Bibi.” In 2017, after demonstrators  showed up outside the home of then-Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit, he acknowledged on TV that the charges the mob demanded Mandelblit impose on Netanyahu were “trivial” and “gossip.” Mandelblit opened a criminal investigation anyway.

School For Radicals UCLA’s Activist-in-Residence Program preps you for the revolution. by Mark Tapson

https://www.frontpagemag.com/school-for-radicals/

In case you haven’t yet caught up with the Spring 2023 issue of UCLA’s online magazine, its feature story is “The Justice League” by journalist Ashraf Khalil: laudatory profiles of a handful of social justice alumni from a unique UCLA initiative called the Activist-in-Residence Program. Established in 2016 by the Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy, this Program “plugs activists into the power grid of resources offered by a top-tier research university” to empower these aspiring revolutionaries to overthrow the society they despise so deeply.

As described on its website, the Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy “advances radical democracy in an unequal world through research, critical thought, and alliances with social movements and racial justice activism.” By “radical democracy,” they don’t mean individual freedom without limits, but collectivism and enforced equity. Their methodology is almost a parody of woke buzzwords and phraseology such as “decolonizing the University”: “We root our work in abolitionist and decolonial traditions of thought that refuse extractive and exploitative research and instead build forms of knowledge accountable to movements and communities on the frontlines of struggle.”

The Luskin Institute’s Activist-in-Residence initiative grants residents a stipend and free rein of campus resources for five months to develop their varied missions and help educate the next generation of activists. “The UCLA Activist-in-Residence program’s objective is to “turn the university inside out” through “power-shifting scholarship and pedagogy focused on social change.”

“It was a way of shifting who is seen as a scholar, who is seen as a teacher at an elite research university like UCLA,” Professor Ananya Roy, the Luskin Institute’s founding director, told Ashraf Khalil. She added that she wants the program to expand to other universities across the country, envisioning this “shared terrain of scholarship across universities and movements… to be very fertile ground for making change.”

Our Military Is in a Dangerous Decline and This Is the Reason Why By Michael Waltz (R-FL-District )

https://www.heritage.org/defense/commentary/our-military-dangerous-decline-and-the-reason-why

Our warriors’ ability to do their job is being undermined by leaders more interested in woke indoctrination and partisan politics than warfighting readiness.

Politicized initiatives like DEI always spawn enormous bureaucracies that distract the rank-and-file from their real jobs. The military is not immune.

The American people need patriots to step up, to meet our rivals, and defend our country and values….those on Capitol Hill need to do their part.

The U.S. Armed Forces have one mission: to protect our nation from foreign enemies. Our troops are as committed to that mission as ever before. But according to a bracing new report, our warriors’ ability to do their job is being undermined by civilian leaders more interested in woke indoctrination and partisan politics than warfighting readiness.

“The Report of the National Independent Panel on Military Service and Readiness” is an urgent warning about creeping politicization at the Pentagon and its corrosive impact on America’s national defense. As the report details, the Biden administration’s whole-of-government embrace of woke politics is becoming a dangerous distraction for servicemen and women who signed up to protect and defend, not virtue-signal. 

The top-line statistics compiled in the report are jarring.

The Climate Madness Of 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/04/05/the-climate-madness-of-2023/

Yet again, the society of climate alarmists tell us we have little time left to address global warming. It’s a sign of desperation. What else can the merchants of madness do when we’re now closing in on nine years of a warming pause?

Last month the New York Times published an article that we swear we have read before.

“Earth is likely to cross a critical threshold for global warming within the next decade, and nations will need to make an immediate and drastic shift away from fossil fuels to prevent the planet from overheating dangerously beyond that level,” the Times’ climate scribe wrote, citing a “major new report” issued by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The IPCC paper reveals that “there is still one last chance to shift course.” But it will – naturally – “​​require industrialized nations to join together immediately to slash greenhouse gases roughly in half by 2030 and then stop adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere altogether by the early 2050s.”

How many other times have we heard that we were either approaching our last chance to save ourselves from global warming, or that our opportunity to do what is “right” had already passed us by? So many deadlines, so many “now or nevers,” have come and gone that it’s almost impossible to track them all.

The climate cranks are like the doomsday cultists who have the end of the world marked on their calendars and when it doesn’t arrive they say, “whoops, my math was bad. Let me recalculate and I’ll get back to you with new date.”