I wish you all a very happy, healthy and fruitful New Year.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18083/american-traitors-academics-working-for-china
China’s regime has bought America’s academic community and turned it against America.
“This case is only the tip of the iceberg in terms of what needs to be done by the U.S. government to penetrate and prosecute China’s co-option of America’s academia.” — Kerry Gershaneck, the author of Political Warfare: Strategies for Combating China’s Plan to “Win Without Fighting” and a professor in Taiwan, to Gatestone, December 2021.
“Scientists around the world, identified as leaders in areas of advanced research that are strategic priorities, are targeted by a well-funded sophisticated engagement that plays on their vanity, naiveté, and greed.” — Charles Burton, former professor at Brock University and now a leading expert on China’s infiltration of Canada, to Gatestone.
I am told there are “thousands” of professors on Beijing’s payroll in California universities.
Xi is serious about attracting talents like Lieber. In his September speech, Xi said he would “exhaust all means” to recruit foreigners.
In China’s official war on America — People’s Daily in May 2019 declared a “people’s war” on the United States — Americans working for Beijing, whatever their intention, are essentially traitors. Lieber, a traitor, has inflicted incalculable damage on America.
It took a federal jury in Boston less than three hours to return guilty verdicts on all six felony counts against Charles Lieber, the former chair of Harvard University’s Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology.
Lieber, “one of the country’s top research chemists” according to the New York Times, lied to the FBI about his participation in Beijing’s Thousand Talents Program, did not pay income tax on money from Chinese sources, and failed to report his Chinese bank account to the Internal Revenue Service.
The case against the Harvard academic was airtight. Nonetheless, members of America’s academic elite are up in arms that the Department of Justice prosecuted Lieber, and many are campaigning against law enforcement efforts.
China’s regime has bought America’s academic community and turned it against America.
https://amgreatness.com/2021/12/29/the-ungracious-and-their-demonization-of-the-past/
The last two years have seen an unprecedented escalation in a decades-long war on the American past.
But there are lots of logical flaws in attacking prior generations in U.S. history.
Critics assume their own judgmental generation is morally superior to those of the past. So, they use their own standards to condemn the mute dead who supposedly do not measure up to them.
Yet 21st century critics rarely acknowledge their own present affluence and leisure owe much to history’s prior generations whose toil helped create their current comfort.
And what may future scolds say of the modern generation that saw over 60 million abortions since Roe v. Wade, even as fetal viability outside the womb continued to progress to ever earlier ages?
What will our grandchildren say of us who dumped on them over $30 trillion in national debt—much of it as borrowing for entitlements for ourselves?
What sort of society snoozes as record numbers of murders continue in 12 of its major cities? What is so civilized about defunding the police, endemic smash-and-grab thefts, and car-jackings?
Was our media more responsible, professional, and learned in 1965 or 2021? Did Hollywood make more sophisticated and enjoyable films in 1954 or 2021? Was there less or more sportsmanship among professional athletes in 1990 or 2021?
Was it actually moral to discard the “content of our character” and “equal opportunity” principles of the prior Civil Rights movement of 60 years ago? Are their replacement fixations on the “color of our skin” and “equality of result” superior?
Would America have won World War II with the current labor participation rate of only six Americans in 10 working? Would our generation have brought all American troops home and quit World War I, in fear of the deadly 1918 Spanish flu pandemic?
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/12/ascent-crybully-campus-anti-israel-activism-richard-l-cravatts/
As woke activists who are part of the cognitive war against Israel continue their campaign of slanders against the Jewish state, a curious thing has taken place: the self-righteous moral scolds who choose to relentlessly demonize Israel to promote Palestinian self-determination often portray themselves as victims rather than moral aggressors. They are examples of what has come to be defined as crybullies, individuals that British commentator Julie Burchill characterized as “a hideous hybrid of victim and victor, weeper and walloper . . . [someone who] always explains to the point of demanding that one agrees with them and always complains to the point of insisting that one is persecuting them.”
And nowhere is the crybully more likely to be found than among the pro-Palestinian activists who are relentless in their tactical assault on Israel and Zionism—and the people who support them—but who, once defenders of Israel answer back the calumnies and slurs lobbed by these activists, weaponize their status as victims and whine about the pushback they often, and justifiably, experience from their ideological opponents on campus.
One example of the appearance of crybullies occurred in 2017 at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association (AHA) where its faculty members issued a statement affirming “the rights of students, faculty and other historians to speak freely and to engage in nonviolent political action expressing diverse perspectives on historical or contemporary issues.” Putting aside the absurdly paranoid notion that any anti-Israel activism is suppressed or otherwise limited on campuses anywhere, what actually terrified these intellectual hypocrites, these crybullies, it seemed, was the possibility that, once they had publicly announced their enmity for Israel, Zionism, and Jewish affirmation, they would be held accountable for their toxic views, that they would be named for what they are: anti-Israel activists whose rabid ideology can, and should, be made transparent, exposed, and understood.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/12/what-do-white-americans-owe-black-people-mark-tapson/
Books on America’s racial divide – primarily from the woke, purportedly “anti-racist” left – are all the rage today, making bestselling millionaires out of race hustlers like Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo. Generally speaking, they promote the false narrative that America’s very founding is grounded in slavery, not liberty; that Americans are racist in our very DNA, as Barack Obama once put it; and that we are still in thrall today to an irredeemably systemic racism.
Philosopher, author, and DePaul University professor Jason D. Hill, a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and one of the boldest, most original thinkers on race, has written a powerful new counter-narrative titled, What Do White Americans Owe Black People?: Racial Justice in the Age of Post-Oppression. Hill, himself of mixed-race, Jamaican descent, laments that too many blacks today are being sold an identity rooted in “resignation, nihilism, Afro-pessimism, entitlement, separatism, victimology, misanthropy, and hatred of the United States.” His book urges them to practice “radical forgiveness” and “radical individualism,” and to embrace the freedom of a “transracial future.” It is a controversial message that offers black Americans an opportunity which threatens the victim narrative of divisive exploiters like Kendi and DiAngelo.
I posed some questions to the author about his book, What Do White Americans Owe Black People?
Mark Tapson: Dr. Hill, congratulations on a brilliant, provocative book. So many questions, so little time and space. Let me begin with a question about a subtle but significant point: Associated Press guidelines now call for capitalizing the word “black” – but not “white” – when used in a racial, ethnic, or cultural sense, purportedly to honor blacks’ shared experience and sense of identity. That capitalization swiftly become widespread practice. I noticed you didn’t use that in your book. I assume that was a conscious choice on your part?
Jason D. Hill: Thanks for the kind words, Mark. They mean much to me. Yes: I’m orthodox when it comes to the mechanics of language. I won’t make an exception in the case of capitalizing the word “black” for the sake of sheer political expediency. Semantic exactitude trumps identity politics in this case.
MT: You begin by asserting that, while slavery was of course an “egregious evil,” culpability for it is complex and that the argument for reparations to the descendants of slaves is “morally incoherent.” Can you elaborate on that?
https://issuesinsights.com/2021/12/30/renewables-ueber-reckonings/
“Discredited climate hysteria and renewables are here to stay. Reckonings, not so much.”
A long overdue legislative enactment and signing provides occasion for two equally long overdue observations on an I&I editorial regarding “pesky climate models.”
Citing a study on pre-carbon dioxide concentration Arctic Ocean warming, your friendly neighborhood editorialists concluded, “(W)e’re confident that eventually the (climate alarmists’) story will collapse.”
Observation No. 1 is that the case for renewables, climate alarmists’ chosen solution, is also folding like a house of cards in a Richter 9.5 earthquake.
It’s not just that renewables are so intermittent and unreliable that they must be legislated and subsidized; eat up land; will require more storage than physically possible; have nearly bankrupted and blacked out Germany with little emissions improvement; and are doing the same to California and other jurisdictions adopting mandates.
Despite these indisputable truths, the White House’s policy remains “a carbon pollution-free electricity sector” by 2035 and “net-zero emissions economy-wide” by 2050.
Yet three additional existential threats must and will lay the renewables narrative bare. The first was reflected in Joe Biden’s recent signing of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act.
Forty-five percent of the worldwide supply of solar-grade polysilicon stems from China’s Xinjiang region, where it is reportedly largely produced by enslaved Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other Turkic Muslims. (China overall produces three-quarters of polysilicon and 95% of solar wafers.)
https://issuesinsights.com/2021/12/30/vice-president-kamikaze-harris/
After more than 11 months in office, with inflation skyrocketing and the country’s superpower status plummeting, Americans can’t stand either President Joe Biden or his vice-presidential-beneficiary of-affirmative-action, Kamala Harris.
Every time Harris tries to help herself, she hurts herself. As border czar who for three months avoided visiting the Mexican border, Harris relented only after plans were made known of former President Donald Trump and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott traveling to the frontier – and then she briefly visited only a border patrol station about nine miles from the actual border, far removed from where masses of illegal migrants have been crossing.
To humanize her disastrous public image and connect with ordinary people, she staged a ludicrous fake meeting with child actors to tout space exploration. She chose to own Biden’s catastrophic Afghanistan withdrawal by telling the world she was the “last person in the room” when he formulated his policy. And her office has been hemorrhaging senior staff.
But on Sunday, the vice president outdid herself in self-destructive stupidity, and made it crystal clear she is unqualified to assume the presidency should the ever-more-enfeebled Biden become incapacitated or, God forbid, pass on to his eternal reward.
Appearing on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” she began by sounding, more even than Joe, like big, dumb, dangerous government personified. “Everyone has to get vaccinated,” Harris insisted at a time when the federal government’s approach to COVID is more discredited than ever, both among the populace and within the medical community, adding that “they’ll save your life.”
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/house-democratic-retirements-2021-comes-to-close
With the end-of-the-year holiday break fast approaching, the announcements came quickly.
A trio of Democrats in the House of Representatives – Reps. Stephanie Murphy of Florida, Lucille Roybal-Allard of California, and Albio Sires of New Jersey – last week said that they’ll retire at the end of next year rather than run in the 2022 midterm elections for another term in Congress.
The latest news brought to 23 the number of House Democrats who are retiring or bidding for another office rather than run for reelection in 2022, when their party tries to defend its razor-thin majority in the House amid historically unfavorable headwinds and a rough political climate. The GOP needs a net gain of just five seats in the 435-member chamber next year to regain the House majority it lost to the Democrats in the 2018 midterms.
Republicans have history on their side – on average the party that wins the White House in a presidential election loses more than 25 House seats in the ensuing midterm election. And the once-in-a-decade congressional redistricting process is expected to favor the GOP, as Republicans control more state legislatures and governors’ offices.
This month’s major setback for President Biden and congressional Democrats in their push to pass a sweeping human infrastructure and climate change combating spending bill, along with the five-month downward spiral of the president’s poll numbers, are also doing House Democrats no favors as try to keep the majority next November.
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-democrats-education-lunacies
On Meet the Press Daily last week, Chuck Todd featured a small item about the 23 Democrats not planning on running for re-reelection to congress next year. Todd guessed such a high number expressed a lack of confidence in next year’s midterms, and his guest, University of Virginia Center for Politics Director Larry Sabato, agreed. “This is just another indicator that Democrats will probably have a bad year in 2022,” said Sabato, adding, “They only have a majority of five. It’s pretty tough to see how they hold on.”
On the full Meet the Press Sunday, Todd in an ostensibly unrelated segment interviewed 1619 Project author and New York Times writer Nikole Hannah-Jones about Republican efforts in some states to ban teaching of her work. He detoured to ask about the Virginia governor’s race, which seemingly was decided on the question, “How influential should parents be about curriculum?” Given that Democrats lost Virginia after candidate Terry McAuliffe said, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what to teach,” Todd asked her, “How do we do this?”
Hannah-Jones’s first answer was to chide Todd for not remembering that Virginia was lost not because of whatever unimportant thing he’d just said, but because of a “right-wing propaganda campaign that told white parents to fight against their children being indoctrinated.” This was standard pundit fare that for the millionth time showed a national media figure ignoring, say, the objections of Asian immigrant parents to Virginia policies, but whatever: her next response was more notable. “I don’t really understand this idea that parents should decide what’s being taught,” Hannah-Jones said. “I’m not a professional educator. I don’t have a degree in social studies or science.”
https://www.city-journal.org/eric-adams-and-the-promise-of-pragmatism?skip=1
In his victory night speech in New York City, an electrified Mayor-elect Eric Adams reserved his most scathing criticism not for his Republican opponent but for outgoing mayor Bill de Blasio. “This city betrays New Yorkers every day, especially the ones who rely on it the most,” said the incoming 110th mayor. Such pointed criticism might be expected when a candidate from one party succeeds an officeholder from the other party, but it sounds strange coming from one Democrat following another. After eight years of governance that placed ineffective progressivism over pragmatism, could the Adams administration represent the possible emergence of a moderate, results-oriented faction in New York’s nearly hegemonic Democratic Party?
November’s inflection point was reminiscent of others in Gotham’s more recent past. Following Rudy Giuliani’s winning reelection bid in 1997, the New York Times opined that his success signified “a triumph of nuts-and-bolts pragmatism over the ideology and party loyalty that once ruled elections in New York.” But Bill de Blasio’s 2013 victory saw the pendulum swing back. The Times suggested that this election marked a “forceful rejection of the hard-nosed, business-minded style of governance that reigned at City Hall for the past two decades and a sharp leftward turn for the nation’s largest metropolis.”
Unlike the 1990s and 2000s, when Republican candidates could win major mayoral elections, Democrats today possess almost unilateral control over most large American cities. New York is chief among them. That may change someday, but in the meantime it’s important to recognize the influx of some 1.5 million more residents since the Giuliani days, many of them educated and motivated professionals who tend to identify as liberal and dislike the national Republican brand. Buoyed by these voters, New York’s Democratic Party sanctioned measures to close Rikers Island, end pretrial detention for many defendants, shift $1 billion of the NYPD’s budget to other services, and impose higher taxes on wealthier citizens.
One might conclude that New Yorkers’ everyday priorities are tilting ever leftward, but that would be mistaken. A closed primary erodes the benefits of remaining Republican or Independent, leading many moderates to break ranks. Last year, 67,965 unaffiliated voters and 20,528 Republicans switched allegiances in the Empire State to become newly minted Democrats and thereby participate in the now all-important primary. The vastly lopsided ratio of Democratic to GOP voters doesn’t necessarily reflect the shared ground that underlies most urban voters’ preferences and concerns.
