Displaying posts published in

July 2020

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

US, UK, Canada accuse Russia of actively hacking COVID-19 research Ed Morrissey

By on July 17th, 2020

https://hotair.com/archives/ed-morrissey/2020/07/16/breaking-us-uk-canada-accuse-russia-actively-hacking-covid-19-research/

Bad news — Cozy Bear is back, but this time the Russian intel hacking group hasn’t targeted the US election. The governments of the US, United Kingdom, and Canada issued a joint statement accusing Moscow of targeting COVID-19 research, apparently attempting to steal the formula for any new vaccine under development. Advisories have been issued to strengthen security around those efforts, and the message to Vladimir Putin seems clear — back off:

Russian cyber actors are targeting organizations involved in coronavirus vaccine development, according to a new warning by US, UK and Canadian security officials on Thursday that details activity by a Russian hacking group called APT29, which also goes by the name “the Dukes” or “Cozy Bear.” …

The US, UK and Canadian authorities have issued several warnings about state-backed cyberattacks in recent month.

In May, the three countries issued an advisory warning of ongoing cyberattacks against organizations involved in the coronavirus response, including health care bodies, pharmaceutical companies, academics, medical research organizations and local government.

Hospitals, research laboratories, health care providers and pharmaceutical companies have all been hit, officials say, and the US Department of Health and Human Services — which oversees the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — has been struck by a surge of daily strikes, an official with direct knowledge of the attacks previously told CNN.

The NCSC, which is the UK’s lead technical authority on cyber security and part of the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), assessed that APT29 “almost certainly operate as part of Russian Intelligence Services”.

Continue reading →
EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Science Is Very Clear: Schools Should Reopen This Fall

By on July 17th, 2020

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/07/17/the-science-is-very-clear-schools-should-reopen-in-fall/

Progressives like to brag that they prize science over politics. Indeed, it’s a major talking point in their effort to “transform” America from the greatest nation on Earth to, well, something else. But one look at the debate over reopening schools this fall shows just how absurd that assertion really is.

Los Angeles, home to the nation’s second-largest school district, is a case in point. The city has long been governed by far-left Democrats, to its detriment. But the local teachers’ union really takes the cake when it comes to extremist positions on COVID-19 and school closures.

The 35,000-strong union put out a staff “research paper” — it was in fact merely regurgitated leftist talking points and propaganda — telling local politicians they would refuse opening unless, among other things, there was a “moratorium” on charter schools and the police were defunded.

Among the “other things” in the union demands were a national Medicare-for-All program, new taxes on the wealthy, and, of course, a federally funded infusion of cash for the near-bankrupt Los Angeles school district.

The proposal would place so many restrictions on students and their interaction with teachers that it would make the educational experience nearly meaningless. But the document went way beyond just talking about education. Here’s a taste:

The COVID-19 pandemic in the United States underscores the deep equity and justice challenges arising from our profoundly racist, intensely unequal society. Unlike other countries that recognize protecting lives is the key to protecting livelihoods, the United States has chosen to prioritize profits over people. The Trump administration’s attempt to force people to return to work on a large scale depends on restarting physical schools so parents have child care.

Continue reading →
ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Sheer Lunacy Rules the Day By Eileen F. Toplansky *****

By on July 17th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/07/sheer_lunacy_rules_the_day.html

In a world that appears to be tottering off its axis with sheer lunacy ruling the day, here is a small sampling of the dangerous ideas gaining traction and the cowardice displayed by so many.

In Great Britain, where grooming gang crimes exist, “British women who drew attention to ‘Asian’ [Pakistani and South Asian] sex grooming gangs, are also being attacked by the ‘woke’ establishment” because “if the victim is white and the rapist is not, she is no victim at all; worse, she is a ‘racist’ and ‘hater’ who, if anything, apparently deserves what she got and more.”  In fact, far-left extremists and radical feminist academics “don’t care about anti-white racism, because they appear to believe that is doesn’t exist.”  Thus, the idea that “Western women are to blame for being raped by Muslim men” gets a free pass for fear of Islamophobia.  The “Left validates Islam’s sexual fantasies and victimization of Western women.”
Critical discussion of Islam is now deemed hate speech, so when Ortega Smith of Spain expressed concern in 2019 about the “Islamist invasion” and the application of sharia law, prosecutors worked to determine whether he was guilty of a hate crime. 
The City of Seattle’s Office of Civil Rights sent an email inviting “White City employees” to attend a training program to help white workers examine “their complicity in the system of white supremacy” and “interrupt racism in ways that are accountable to Black, Indigenous and People of Color.”  
Administrators at Princeton banned such words as “fireman,” “chairman,” and “mankind” because they omit the 32+ genders the left now asserts exist.
College students support socialism even though they can’t explain what it is. 
An adult coloring book titled “I Am So Sick of White Guys” is “a full-throated attack on white privilege and power.”

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Learning About Racism From the Smithsonian The museum deep-sixes a poster that went viral – but keeps up a website that teaches noxious “lessons” on race. Bruce Bawer

By on July 17th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/learning-about-racism-smithsonian-bruce-bawer/

“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”

That’s George Orwell in 1984, of course. But the picture those words conjure up seems unpleasantly familiar in 2020.

In 2020, everything’s upside-down. The inmates are running the asylum. The animals are running the zoo. The children are giving orders to the adults.

A group called Antifa (“Anti-Fascist”) is fascist. A group called “Black Lives Matter” is utterly indifferent to all but a minuscule percentage of black lives.

In 1976, Time Magazine reported on a comment made by Secretary of Education Earl Butz on a plane trip in reply to a question by Republican singer Pat Boone. Boone asked Butz why the party of Lincoln couldn’t attract more black voters. Butz said something that I will he have to redact heavily: “I’ll tell you what the [black people] want. It’s three things: first, a tight [female body part]; second, loose shoes; and third, a warm place to [defecate].”

Butz lost his job. And with good reason. His remark to Boone was a perfect example of what used to be called racism.

In 2020, however, racism is different. Today we’re told that all non-blacks, or at least all whites, are racists. Some of us, indeed, are racist without even knowing it. If you claim to be colorblind, you’re definitely racist. Ditto if you claim to care about the content of someone’s character rather than the color of his skin. Even if you’ve got a black spouse or a black child, you almost certainly harbor unexamined assumptions and exhibit behaviors that peg you as a racist.

Continue reading →
ISRAEL Comments turned off

George Soros’s Multi-Front War Against Israel How the globalist financier’s desire to escape his Jewish identity fuels his Jew-hate. Kenneth Levin

By on July 17th, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/george-soross-multi-front-war-against-israel-kenneth-levin/

George Soros, in his political pronouncements and in his characterization of the goals of his Open Society Foundations (OSF), the primary financial vehicle for his political advocacy and activism, acknowledges his support of a globalist agenda. He also acknowledges his embrace of that position as an alternative to identification with the Jewish people or the Jewish state.

For example, in a 1995 New Yorker interview, Soros remarked, “my mother was quite anti-Semitic and ashamed of being Jewish. Given the culture in which one lived [he grew up in Hungary before and during World War II], being Jewish was a clear-cut stigma, a disadvantage, a handicap – therefore there was always a desire to transcend it, to escape it.”

Elsewhere in the interview, he remarks, “Of course, this whole interest in universal ideas is a typical means to escape from the particular… I am escaping the particular. I think I am doing exactly that by espousing this universal concept… In other words, I don’t think you can ever overcome anti-Semitism if you behave as a tribe… The only way you can overcome it is if you give up the tribalness.”

When asked in the interview about Israel, he answered – “testily,” according to the interviewer – “I don’t deny the Jews their right to national existence – but I don’t want to be a part of it.”                                                    

While the cited remarks – the gist of which he has repeated on many occasions – reflect some candid self-observation, there are also elements that are disingenuous and self-serving. It is not true that among Jews targeted for abuse by surrounding societies, there was “always a desire to transcend it, to escape it.” There was, of course, a desire to escape abuse, but most Jews were not inclined to jettison their Jewish identity to appease the haters. Similarly, in his reference to the need to escape tribalism, it is not entirely clear if he is talking about the tribalism of the anti-Semites, or of the Jews, or of both; but the context suggests he is talking at least partly of Jewish “tribalism,” and the sentiment reflects Soros seeking to justify the rightness of abandoning Jewish identity by casting his doing so as his choosing to take a higher, more virtuous path.

Continue reading →
MEDIA Comments turned off

Sen. Tom Cotton: Bari Weiss’ NY Times exit shows stifling political correctness left wants. Don’t let them win The media is just the latest prize in the left’s long march through elite cultural institutions

By on July 17th, 2020

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/tom-cotton-bari-weiss-ny-times-left-political-correctness

The woke mob at The New York Times has claimed another scalp. Earlier this week, opinion columnist and editor Bari Weiss resigned from the paper after being viciously harassed by her colleagues for daring on occasion to express conservative opinions in print.

This is not a one-off event but a trend, as far-left, anti-American forces have consolidated control over some of our nation’s most influential institutions.

Weiss followed in the footsteps of former opinion editor James Bennet, a liberal who was forced to resign by The Times’ publisher for running my op-ed.

I argued that the military could be called out as a last resort to restore public order in cities wracked by violent rioting and looting—an opinion shared at the time by a majority of Americans.

The Times claimed the op-ed didn’t meet its “standards.” (I agree: my op-ed far exceeded its normal sophomoric fare.) But the paper couldn’t identify a single falsehood or error that explained why the op-ed deserved almost two weeks of ritual denunciation and hyperventilation—or why Bennet deserved to lose his job.

Maybe it’s only because the publisher can’t fire himself.

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran’s Military Alliance with China Threatens Middle East Security by Con Coughlin

By on July 17th, 2020

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16252/iran-china-military-alliance

Announcing Iran’s intention to build a new military base in the Indian Ocean, Admiral Alireza Tangsiri, the commander of the naval attachment of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), said that the base would be used to protect fishing and commercial vessels from piracy and “foreign ships”, a reference to the US-led multinational naval task force that is currently protecting Gulf shipping from Iranian interference.

As part of the deal negotiated with Beijing, China is to be allowed access to a number of Iranian ports, including Chabahar, with the Chinese reported to be planning to build a new military base in the vicinity of the port.

The construction of such a base would enable the Chinese Navy to monitor the activities of the U.S. Navy in the area, in particular the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet in the Gulf, which is permanently deployed to protect shipping passing through the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important economic waterways.

Any expansion in Iranian and Chinese military activity in the region would also have an impact on the jointly-administered U.S.-UK base on the island of Diego Garcia, one of the Pentagon’s most important military assets in the region.

The U.S. faces the prospect of a serious escalation in tensions with Iran after Tehran’s announcement that it intends to build a new military base in the Indian Ocean by the end of the year.

The Iranian announcement, moreover, comes at a time when Tehran is on the point of signing a $400 billion trade deal with China, which will include closer military cooperation between the two countries in the region in an attempt to counter Washington’s traditional dominance.

Under the terms of the deal, details of which have been published in the New York Times, Iran could receive as much as $400 billion in Chinese investment over the next quarter of a century.

The agreement, which a senior aide to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani says should be signed by March next year, also encompasses closer military cooperation between the two countries, including weapons development, combined training and intelligence sharing in order to combat “the lopsided battle with terrorism, drug and human trafficking and cross-border crimes.”

As part of the new era of cooperation between Tehran and Beijing, concerns have been raised by Western security officials that this could lead to the two countries forming an alliance to bolster their presence in the Indian Ocean, thereby challenging America’s long-standing dominance in the nearby Gulf region.

Announcing Iran’s intention to build a new military base in the Indian Ocean, Admiral Alireza Tangsiri, the commander of the naval attachment of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), said that the base would be used to protect fishing and commercial vessels from piracy and “foreign ships”, a reference to the US-led multinational naval task force that is currently protecting Gulf shipping from Iranian interference.

Iran has so far given no indication as to where it intends to build its new base. At present Chabahar port in the Gulf of Oman, which is used, among other activities, for shipping goods to Afghanistan, is the nearest base Iran has to the Indian Ocean.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Where Is the Outrage Over Anti-Semitism in Sports and Hollywood?

By on July 17th, 2020

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/kareem-abdul-jabbar-is-outrage-anti-semitism-sports-hollywood-1303210

Recent incidents of anti-Semitic tweets and posts from sports and entertainment celebrities are a very troubling omen for the future of the Black Lives Matter movement, but so too is the shocking lack of massive indignation. Given the New Woke-fulness in Hollywood and the sports world, we expected more passionate public outrage. What we got was a shrug of meh-rage.

When reading the dark squishy entrails of popular culture, meh-rage in the face of sustained prejudice is an indisputable sign of the coming Apatholypse: apathy to all forms of social justice. After all, if it’s OK to discriminate against one group of people by hauling out cultural stereotypes without much pushback, it must be OK to do the same to others. Illogic begets illogic.

Ice Cube’s June 10 daylong series of tweets, which involved some creepy symbols and images, in general implied that Jews were responsible for the oppression of blacks. NFL player DeSean Jackson tweeted out several anti-Semitic messages, including a quote he incorrectly thought was from Hitler (not your go-to guy for why-can’t-we-all-get-along quotes) stating that Jews had a plan to “extort America” and achieve “world domination.” Isn’t that SPECTRE’s job in James Bond movies?

Continue reading →
EDUCATION Comments turned off

Bias and bigotry on the Syracuse University campus The message for Jewish students is clear: Shed your identity or get canceled.

By on July 17th, 2020

https://www.jns.org/opinion/bias-and-bigotry-on-the-syracuse-university-campus/

The message for Jewish students is clear: Shed your identity or get canceled. Justine Murray

What appeared to be a noble effort to discuss bias at Syracuse University ironically turned into a vicious exercise in bias and bigotry as the conversations turned into an anti-Semitic witch hunt. A few students recently created multiple Instagram pages, inviting fellow students and faculty to post stories about incidents of bias on campus. Those who share their stories are permitted to remain anonymous, but the students and professors accused of perpetrating bias are freely and fully identified—and targeted.

One of the pages has warned their viewers to look out for “openly Zionist” professors on campus, naming one professor in particular and attacking students who support the faculty member.

Miriam F. Elman, who teaches about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, isn’t the only Jewish professor who works at Syracuse, but she is openly Zionist and isn’t afraid to say so. Despite being on leave for the past year, she is being singled out by a malicious and libelous smear campaign on one Instagram page that is demanding that she be fired because of her Zionism and former service in the Israeli Defense Forces.

Continue reading →
ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trump’s New Chant: Build the Road Fixing environmental reviews will pay real dividends for years.

By on July 17th, 2020

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-new-chant-build-the-road-11594941448?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

President Trump often gets itchy to sign some giant public-works spending bill. Here’s a much better gift to America: The White House on Wednesday finished its renovations to the process for environmental reviews. This might sound as dry as old cement, but it’ll help big projects get built for years to come—that is, if President Joe Biden doesn’t use an expedited procedure next year to undo it.

A 1970 law called the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, mandates an environmental study if a major project involves federal funding or permitting. In 1981 the expectation by the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) was that even for “large complex energy projects,” the whole review process “would require only about 12 months.”

Today that seems heavenly. In recent years the average review involving an environmental impact statement took 4.5 years, and the final document ran to 661 pages, before appendixes. In a quarter of cases, the process burned at least six years and 748 pages. Those timelines don’t necessarily count any subsequent lawsuits over whether the NEPA review was faulty. One sadly spectacular outlier was a 12-mile highway expansion in Denver that took 13 years to get through environmental review.

The Trump Administration’s reforms, which are the first comprehensive update to NEPA rules since 1978, establish presumptive limits. A full environmental impact statement, the new rules say, should take no more than two years and 300 pages. An environmental assessment, which is less intensive, should max out at a year and 75 pages. Going longer will require written permission by “a senior agency official.”

Continue reading →