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June 2021

Israel’s New Government Is Among the Most Diverse in the History of Democracies by Alan M. Dershowitz

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17472/israel-government-diversity

[B]igots… in the United States and Europe, insist on characterizing Israel as an apartheid state. Nothing could be further from the truth. Israel has real diversity, not the kind of phony diversity that characterizes many American institutions. American diversity is simply a euphemism for more Blacks, and especially more Blacks who hold the same views about political and racial matters.

The best evidence of this truism came from Google’s appointment of a chief diversity officer who had expressed anti-gay and anti-Jewish views…. He is Black and that is all that diversity means at Google and many other American institutions. It is different in Israel, because Israel is such an inherently diverse nation that takes its diversity seriously.

Every Muslim majority nation is officially a Muslim state that bestows considerable benefits on members of that faith. Great Britain is an Anglican Christian state with an established religion. Catholicism is the official religion of several European countries. Many national flags and emblems have crosses, crescents or other distinctly religious symbols.

So stay tuned to see how the now government manages to survive the challenges of diversity. In the meantime, however, stop singling out Israel for demonization by mislabeling it as apartheid or undemocratic.

I challenge anyone to name a parliamentary democracy that has had a more diverse coalition government — racially, religiously, ethnically, ideologically, politically, national origin — than the current Israeli government. It includes people of nearly every color from Black Ethiopians to brown Muslims to swarthy Sephardim to pale Russians. It includes a modern Orthodox Jew as Prime Minister, along with fundamentalist Muslims and atheist and agnostics Jews. It has a gay cabinet member, a deaf member of the Knesset and people who trace their roots to Asia, Africa, Europe and America.

A record number of nine women will be serving in the new Israeli cabinet. The current Prime Minister is a right-winger. The Prime Minister designate who is currently Minster of Foreign Affairs, is a left-winger. Every shade of political opinion — and there are many in Israel — is represented in this government. The old expression “two Jews, three opinions” can now be changed to “20 Israeli cabinet members, 30 opinions” — because each cabinet member represents multiple opinions within their parties.

A Chinese Lab Virus? So Now What? In some way, many Americans are naïvely hopeful that COVID-19 was a one-off, ill-thought-out, gain-of-function laboratory accident. But what if it wasn’t quite so simple ? By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2021/06/16/a-chinese-lab-virus-so-now-what/

For over a year, the American establishment and media borg have ostracized anyone who dared to connect the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic with the Chinese military-sponsored, level-4 biosafety Wuhan Institute of Virology. 

Then, suddenly and without apologies for their past demagoguery, “journalists” and “experts” concede that the nearby Wuhan lab may well be the most likely genesis.

Why the abrupt change? 

Donald Trump is no longer president. 

There is now no need for progressives to declare everything Trump once asserted as truth a lie. And that paradox includes Trump’s spring 2020 insistence that the lab, not a wet market of sliced-up bats, was the source of the outbreak. 

The recent release of Anthony Fauci’s emails, along with the new information about Dr. Peter Daszak’s gain-of-function research, make it indisputable that both were knowingly channeling U.S. taxpayer dollars to the Chinese for coronavirus research in Wuhan.  

So now what? 

We are left with a number of lose-lose scenarios about China’s failed efforts to lie about the origins of COVID-19.

One, will China continually deny what is appearing to be undeniable? Perhaps, if we remember it is a country with a Communist Party hierarchy that once killed 60 million under Mao, and whose present apparat has put over 1 million Muslim Uyghurs into camps. 

A stonewalling Beijing likely will conclude that the risk of appearing guilty for causing one of the greatest “natural” global disasters in a century is not nearly as destructive to its interests as admitting it. 

Will China then wait us out, in O.J. Simpson fashion, denying the obvious facts—until wearied Americans move onto another of their media frenzies?

Or, two, could China confess that its SARS-CoV-2 virus was birthed in the Wuhan lab, but claim its appearance was a “joint” effort with the United States? They would then point to Fauci himself, who approved funds for Wuhan coronavirus enhancement to be channeled by Daszak. The Chinese would further insist their combined efforts were aimed at finding a “cure” for coronavirus epidemics. And thus Beijing should not be blamed—or at least not solely blamed. 

Beijing could retort that it, too, was misled by its own sloppy researchers. Or the communist government might even preposterously answer that its prior code of silence was meant to shield the role of U.S. funders of the pandemic disaster. 

Australian Media Mocks CNN’s Glowing Coverage of Bumbling Joe Biden By Matt Margolis

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2021/06/16/australian-media-mocks-cnns-glowing-coverage-of-bumbling-joe-biden-n1455097

As you know, if you’re looking for some honest reporting on Joe Biden, don’t look to the American mainstream media.

We’ve been saying this for years now, but there’s something quite disturbing when foreign news networks are literally mocking American media for their absurdly glowing coverage of Joe Biden, particularly in light of his embarrassing performance at the G7.

Below is a video from “Kenny on Media” from Australia’s Sky News earlier this week, where the panel, hosted by Jack Houghton, literally mocks the way the media, particularly CNN, covered Joe Biden at the G7 Summit, especially compared to how negative the media was about Trump.

“They drive to give the illusion that [Biden] doesn’t have any disputes with any of these international leaders,” Houghton said.

Related: Here’s What the Foreign Press Is Saying About Presidentish Biden

“I just think Joe Biden is a lucky person,” said Sophie Elsworth of The Australian. “He has got all the media on his side—or most of the media on his side—particularly CNN. Completely at odds with what they did to Trump. So his popularity surely can only win from this because he’s getting so much positive PR through the journalists who are massive fans of him. It’s quite appalling to watch. And what happened to straight news reporting, which doesn’t seem to be existent there?”

Nick Cater of the Menzies Research Centre joked, “Give Biden his due, he got to the top of the Air Force One steps without tripping over his shoelaces.”

“The reality is if you talk to … anybody who knows about foreign affairs there are considerable question marks over Biden’s foreign affairs policy—it’s not proven yet—whereas it was the one area, in fact, in which Trump did very well,” he said, noting Trump’s policy towards China and the Abraham Accords as examples.

ORWELLIAN: Biden DOE Redefines ‘Sex’ to Force Transgenderism on Schools By Tyler O’Neil

-https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2021/06/16/biden-doe-

The Department of Education (DOE) under President Joe Biden announced that it would reverse the Trump administration policy on Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. The Biden DOE will effectively flip the meaning of “sex” on its head, determining that “discrimination on the basis of sex” includes discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. This means the DOE sanctions transgender invasions of women’s private spaces and women’s sports in schools, which arguably violate Title IX.

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona defended the new policy by referencing the Supreme Court case Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), in which the Court ruled that discrimination on the basis of “sex” in a 1964 civil rights law included discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Justice Samuel Alito condemned this notion — which Congress and the president could not have even conceived in 1964 — as “preposterous.”

“The Supreme Court has upheld the right for LGBTQ+ people to live and work without fear of harassment, exclusion, and discrimination – and our LGBTQ+ students have the same rights and deserve the same protections,” Cardona said in a statement on Wednesday. “I’m proud to have directed the Office for Civil Rights to enforce Title IX to protect all students from all forms of sex discrimination. Today, the Department makes clear that all students—including LGBTQ+ students—deserve the opportunity to learn and thrive in schools that are free from discrimination.”

Contrary to Cardona’s rhetoric, however, extending this protection from alleged discrimination to transgender students does not come without a cost. The move merely shifts the burden away from one group and toward another.

The Public Health Bureaucracy Is Cratering on COVID. Take a Look at Canada’s Version of Fauci By David Solway

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/david-solway-2/2021/06/16/a-case-study-how-one-health-official-represents-the-tribe-n1455195

On April 19, the Vancouver Sun printed an article about the COVID-linked death of an infant under two years old. Dr. Bonnie Henry, British Columbia’s provincial health officer, lamented that the infant’s tragic death “reminds us of the vicious nature of this virus.” The kicker, which Henry failed to mention, is that this was the very first COVID-19 death under the age of 30 in a province with a population of over 5 million.

It turns out it was inside the BC Children’s Hospital that the child caught its infection—“behind the doors of a government institution,” as Julius Ruechel in a monumental study of institutional malfeasance puts it. The vast majority of COVID fatalities, as the study makes indisputably clear, occur within government institutions—care homes, prisons, and hospitals. Moreover, the Sun article points out that the child had serious pre-existing health conditions, which explains why the two-year old was admitted into hospital in the first place.

As Ruechel observes, “The fear sparked by the headline and by Dr. Bonnie Henry’s statement is palpable. Yet buried in the text of the article is the missing context. Dr. Henry was using the magician’s tool of misdirection to hide what was in plain sight,” namely, that the child “was already a patient before catching the virus inside the hospital.” The reason the infant was in hospital in the first place was owing, not to the “vicious nature of the virus” but to pre-existing health conditions, severe enough, as CTV points out, to require specialized care—regrettably, in a government-run infectorium.

Like innumerable other government-affiliated health officials, Henry reminds me of a trained seal, jumping through hoops, balancing balls on her nose, performing for the public in the great political aquarium where government functionaries swim and frolic. She does what she has been schooled to do and the crowd loves it. Henry is admired and even adored by the general public as a caring and motherly public servant.

Which begs the question. For Henry is adept not only at evading the truth but at contradicting herself with evident sangfroid amounting to an access of earnest conviction. On April 10, 2021, the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms released a video titled Covid: The Political Pandemic treating of the government’s ongoing violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms on the pretext of managing the COVID outbreak. Clips of Henry’s various interviews and addresses reveal a startling but predictable story of blatant dissimulation.

For example, on March 6, 2020 (time stamp 20:10), Henry states that people who are well should not wear masks, since masks “are not an effective way of protecting yourself.” Same on March 19, 2020 (20:28) and May 11, 2020 (20:33). On June 22, 2020 (20:37), we learn that “We cannot rely on a mask”—masks are “not recommended,” and again on September 11, 2020 (20:50). Bonnie Henry is so sure, apparently, that masks are useless—as indeed they are—that she does not hesitate to go repeatedly on public record affirming her claim. But wait. On March 11, 2021 (20:55), Henry tells us that “I have always supported wearing masks…I’ve never said don’t wear them.” Never is a big word. What are we to make of this obvious canard? Amnesia or duplicity? A rhetorical question. 

The FBI’s role in the Jan. 6 Capitol fracas is absolutely disgusting By J.B. Shurk

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/06/the_fbis_role_in_the_jan_6_capitol_fracas_is_absolutely_disgusting.html

Do you remember how conservatives went out of their way to separate rank-and-file FBI agents from the corrupt actions of Jim Comey, Andrew McCabe, Bill Priestap, James Baker, James Rybicki, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and others as more evidence came to light revealing that the top brass at the bureau had worked to create an “insurance policy” that could be used to overthrow President Trump from office?  Writers and television pundits would always couch any criticism of the bureau in some respectful language like “we’re only talking about high-ranking officials here, not the FBI, itself, which is filled with the best agents in the world who are always looking out for America.”

I think we can dispense with the overly protective pleasantries at this point.  The FBI is a goon squad of un-American thugs who have taken the worst elements of East Germany’s Stasi police state and Cosa Nostra’s organized crime and turned them into a blueprint for exercising and keeping illegitimate power over their enemies.  They aren’t a law enforcement organization, and they certainly don’t give a rat’s rear end about justice.  They’re regime enforcers with badges.

If the stated reason for the FBI’s inception was to pursue federal crimes that might otherwise be unenforced or overlooked in the interstate wilderness separating local jurisdictions, J. Edgar Hoover wasted no time turning the bureau into a personal domestic intelligence force capable of intimidating political enemies and insulating himself from potential removal through the use of blackmail.  Before Jim Comey was secretly leaking to the press and using Hillary Clinton’s “Russia collusion” dossier in an operation to take down President Trump, Mark Felt, the FBI’s second-in-command at the time of the Watergate scandal and the anonymous “Deep Throat” who made Woodward and Bernstein famous, actually succeeded in secretly bringing down President Nixon.  In this way, the FBI has at least as much experience overthrowing American governments as it does any enemy state.

You’d think it was sufficiently clear, as evidence mounted over the last five years, that Comey and Co. had undertaken a mission (with John Brennan at CIA, Bruce Ohr at Main Justice, Nellie Ohr and Glenn Simpson at Fusion GPS, Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, James Clapper, and Christopher Steele, the Russia hoax dossier author and former Russia desk head at Britain’s MI6) to frame the sitting president of the United States as a Russian asset by repeatedly filing fraudulent FISA affidavits with America’s secret surveillance court, among other unprosecuted crimes, to spy on Donald Trump and his associates.  But there were also the efforts of Rod Rosenstein, Andrew Weissmann, Robert Mueller, and their army of fifty FBI agents who spent two years trying to entrap President Trump on phony “obstruction of justice” charges during a bogus special counsel witch hunt.

NY University faculty union exercises weapons-grade sophistry in anti-Israel ‘resolution’ By Lev Tsitrin

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/06/ny_university_faculty_union_exercises_weaponsgrade_sophistry_in_antiisrael_resolution.html

“This morphing of the present-day academia into a tool of public sophistry makes it worth asking if they deserve public funding.”

Sometimes, a question can be constructed so as to contain a pre-designed answer rather than to inquire.  The classic example of such a “loaded question” comes from classical Greece: “Have you stopped beating your father?”  Saying “yes” acknowledges having beaten your father in the past; saying “no” means you’re still doing it. 

Fast-forward from the ancient Athens to the present-day City University of New York, and take a look at its faculty union’s “Resolution in Support of the Palestinian People”:

Whereas, as an academic labor union committed to anti-racism, academic freedom, and international solidarity among workers, the PSC-CUNY cannot be silent about the continued subjection of Palestinians to the state-supported displacement, occupation, and use of lethal force by Israel; and

Whereas, beginning on May 15, 2021, the escalating violence against Palestinians in East Jerusalem and Gaza killed hundreds of Palestinians, injured thousands more, and destroyed entire neighborhoods, including hospitals, schools, and residences; and

Whereas … Israel’s pattern and practice of dispossession and expansion of settlements, dating back to its establishment as a settler colonial state in 1948, has been found to be illegal under international law, international human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem have designated these practices of Israel as “apartheid” and a regime of legalized racial discrimination perpetrated against the Palestinian people; and the International Criminal Court has opened an investigation into these practices; and

Whereas … state-sponsored policies of settler colonialism link the Palestinian struggle for self determination to the struggles of Indigenous people and people of color in the United States; and

Whereas [I am sure by now you get the idea of CUNY union’s whereases] …

An Antitrust Bait and Switch Biden pulls a fast one to install Lina Khan as chair of the FTC.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/an-antitrust-bait-and-switch-11623883196?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

The Senate on Tuesday voted 69-28 to confirm progressive Columbia University law professor Lina Khan as a Federal Trade Commissioner. But some Republicans who voted for her may have regrets after President Biden broke political norms and quickly named her as the new chair.

Ms. Khan is a leader in the “hipster” or neo-Brandeis school of antitrust. These progressives want to scrap the consumer-welfare standard that Robert Bork helped develop in the 1970s. They believe antitrust law should focus on business size rather than how its conduct or acquisitions affect consumers.

In a 2017 Yale Law Journal article, “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox,” Ms. Khan argued that the “consumer welfare” standard is “unequipped to capture the architecture of market power in the modern economy.” Amazon, she said, increased its dominance by charging lower prices and growing its business, thereby undercutting competitors.

Amazon and other tech giants deserve antitrust scrutiny for some of their business practices, such as Amazon’s dominance in e-books. But that e-book dominance was abetted by a Justice antitrust suit that undermined competition from Apple. Killing the consumer-welfare standard would punish companies for reducing prices and innovating.

Some Republicans, frustrated by how companies have silenced conservatives, voted to confirm Ms. Khan to send a message. Yet they may not have done so had they known Ms. Khan would lead the agency. It’s de rigueur for a President when nominating members to independent agencies to announce at the same time if someone will serve as chair.

Mr. Biden didn’t, probably because he was worried it would jeopardize Ms. Khan’s confirmation.

Hong Kong Police Arrest Newspaper Editor Under National Security Law Police search newsroom as they step up investigations into media mogul Jimmy Lai’s Apple Daily Elaine Yu

https://www.wsj.com/articles/hong-kong-police-arrest-newspaper-editor-under-national-security-law-11623908475

HONG KONG—National security police in Hong Kong arrested the top editor of a popular pro-democracy newspaper and searched the company’s newsroom, in the most targeted action involving a media organization’s journalistic operations yet in a yearlong crackdown on dissent.

Apple Daily’s editor in chief, Ryan Law, was photographed on Thursday being led away in handcuffs by officers from his home in the Quarry Bay neighborhood. The raid was the latest in a series of moves against the newspaper group and its publisher, Jimmy Lai, a multimillionaire Beijing critic.

Scores of police, armed with a warrant they said covered the “power of searching and seizure of journalistic materials” under the national security law, also searched the Apple Daily newsroom. The newspaper reported that officers were looking through computers and searching desks.

Four other directors of the company were also arrested. Police said all five were detained under suspicion of “collusion with a foreign country or with external elements to endanger national security.”

Steve Li, a senior police superintendent, told reporters that the publication has conspired with others to request foreign countries, organizations and individuals to impose sanctions against Hong Kong and China. More than 30 Apple Daily articles were involved, and authorities froze the equivalent of $2.3 million from three related companies: Apple Daily Ltd., Apple Daily Printing Ltd. and AD Internet Ltd.

The articles played a crucial part in a conspiracy and provided ammunition for foreign countries or groups to impose sanctions, Mr. Li said.

China’s Plan to Dominate ‘Near-Earth’ Space by Lawrence A. Franklin

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17471/china-dominate-near-earth-space

Communist China seems not only to be directly challenging the US lead in space exploration; its space plans also appear to include an ambitious military dimension, much of whose contents look as if they are controlled by the CCP’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA). These PLA programs include a vast array of counter-space weapons systems designed to degrade or destroy US space assets.

Even if there are areas where the US and Chinese space programs could serve universal concerns… sadly, it would seem foolhardy to cooperate on any program with the CCP. It has not made a secret of its intent to unseat the US as the world’s leading superpower… within the next 15-30 years. It has already declared war on the US; the US just seems not yet to have read the memo. China seems to be trying to maneuver a surreptitious surrender, by undermining the US from within, accompanied by the threat of a costly, high-powered war. Unfortunately, many in the US seem to be complying.

Meanwhile, in America, we appear busy with diversions — educating our children to hate our country; allowing our government to torpedo our economy by killing growth and launching a ruinous debt; disabling our energy supply while boosting that of our adversaries; exploding our taxes while making us support countless illegal migrants — that are enabling Communist China to fulfill its dream: enfeebling America to take control not only of “near-Earth” space but everything under it as well.

Communist China’s Space Program is demonstrating that it is on a trajectory possibly to surpass the US in the military and scientific exploration in our solar system. China is planning a space spectacular to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party on July 23, 1921. Today, June 17, China launched a three-astronaut crew who will inhabit the command module of its soon-to-be-completed Tianhe Chinese Space Station. This planned human launch follows the June 10 multiple satellite deployment from Northern China’s Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center. One of these satellites is designed to track near-earth asteroids.

As early as the mid-1950s, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chairman Mao Zedong declared, “We too will make satellites.” Following that declaration, China aggressively began to compete with both the former Soviet Union and the United States in space — an ambition seemingly energized by China’s desire to develop a nuclear bomb and the means to deliver it. China’s Space Program, called the “Two Bombs, One Satellite” project, was from its inception, placed under the aegis of the CCP’s Central Military Commission, thereby underscoring the military orientation of its activities in space.