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Democrats’ Hypocrisy Is Now Impossible To Ignore Shouting from the rooftop while privately contradicting everything someone says publicly is neither virtuous nor proper; it is immoral and laughable. By Josh Hammer

Posted By on August 6th, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/08/05/democrats-hypocrisy-is-now-impossible-to-ignore/

Earlier this week, New York State Attorney General Letitia James, a partisan Democrat, released a bombshell 165-page report that another partisan Democrat, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, previously sexually harassed at least 11 women in the workplace. According to the report, Cuomo engaged in nonconsensual touching, groping and kissing, in addition to making generally inappropriate comments toward numerous women. What’s more, in James’ words from a press conference earlier this week, “in doing so,” Cuomo “violated federal and state law” and created a “toxic workplace environment.”

Cuomo has nonetheless denied the allegations and thus far refused to resign. He has done so notwithstanding a direct plea from President Joe Biden—a man similarly known for decades, perhaps an entire political career’s worth, of inappropriate touching of women— for him to do precisely that, as well as a strongly worded statement from New York State Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (another fellow Democrat) that Cuomo “can no longer serve as governor.” In a galling display of a lack of self-awareness, a May 2013 Cuomo tweet was also recently unearthed for all to see: “There should be a zero tolerance policy when it comes to sexual harassment & must send a clear message that this behavior is not tolerated.” Apparently #BelieveAllWomen, the Left’s preferred hashtag during the 2018 Justice Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation saga—and a deeply discomfiting mantra, at that, for all who claim to care about basic norms of fairness—only applies to Republicans, and not Democrats, accused of serial sexual misconduct. Uncle Joe would certainly know all about that. Does anyone in Washington even remember Tara Reade?

Democratic hypocrisy does not stop, of course, at personal sexual misconduct. On Thursday, Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., the newest addition to the socialist, America-bashing House “Squad,” recorded a wild interview on CBS in which she advocated for defunding the police while conceding that she, a sitting U.S. congresswoman and thus nothing if not profoundly privileged, maintains a private security detail. “I’m going to make sure that I have security because … I have had attempts on my life,” Bush argued. She then artfully added, roughly 20 seconds later: “So suck it up, and defunding the police has to happen. We need to defund the police and put that money into social safety nets.”

Huh?

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Why Won’t the Government Release Officer Fanone’s Bodycam Video? The government used a little trick to prevent video from being formally entered into the judicial record. Federal judges played along. By Julie Kelly

Posted By on August 6th, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/08/05/why-wont-the-government-release-officer-fanones-bodycam-video/

At least one federal judge handling several Capitol protest criminal cases is paying attention to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s show trial about the events of January 6.

Judge Thomas Hogan, 83, who has served on the D.C. District Court for nearly 40 years, referred to public testimony given last week by four law enforcement officers while he scolded a husband and wife over their involvement in the protest. 

“[H]e begins by talking about the violence, and makes clear he listened to the police officers who testified before Congress last week about their experience, and notes the recent suicide of [a Metropolitan Police Department] officer,” Zoe Tillman, a reporter for BuzzFeed, live-tweeted during the couple’s sentencing hearing on Wednesday.

Set aside for a moment how the inflammatory and unsubstantiated accounts by those officers will taint an already highly biased jury pool in Washington, D.C. when trials begin next year; it’s clear the January 6 select committee already is influencing court proceedings. Judge Hogan, and presumably others, will take witness testimony at face value and use it as proof that Capitol defendants, even the nonviolent ones, contributed to “violence” that day.

Which is why, as we have argued repeatedly at American Greatness, the government and U.S. Capitol Police should agree to release more than 14,000 hours of surveillance video captured by security cameras on January 6. If the four-hour melee indeed compares to the worst terrorist attacks against Americans, and ranks among the worst days in U.S. history, the public deserves to see what happened, minute-by-minute, inside and outside the building.

But it’s not just Capitol complex security video that the government is trying to conceal from the public. In a recent filing, Joe Biden’s Justice Department argued against the release of footage recorded by officer Michael Fanone’s bodycam on January 6. The D.C. Metropolitan Police narcotics officer was one of the four cops who testified last week. 

Fanone, 40, said he was not supposed to be on Capitol Hill that day but that he put on an official, unworn uniform—including a body camera—for the first time in 10 years to help assist his colleagues control the chaos. Fanone also testified he was afraid he would be killed that day—either shot with his own gun or torn limb from limb by Trump fanatics. In one outburst, Fanone called insurrection deniers in Congress “disgraceful” and claimed they were “betraying their oath of office.”

Fanone is working hard to become a household name. He’s been on a part-pity, part-publicity tour for the past seven months, detailing his harrowing experience and stalking Republican members of Congress. He’s become a regular on CNN; following his testimony last Tuesday, Fanone headed to the CNN studio for an interview with Don Lemon. The two ended the segment with an embrace and expressions of love for each other.

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The Arson Campaign Against Canada’s Churches What’s really fueling it. Lloyd Billingsley

Posted By on August 6th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/08/false-phobia-symmetry-syndrome-lloyd-billingsley/

In recent weeks, more than 40 Christian churches have been torched in Canada, supposedly a response to abuse of indigenous people in residential schools. The arson campaign has drawn a variety of responses, including “Not much difference between Islamophobia and Christophobia,” from Vancouver Sun columnist Douglas Todd.

He defines Islamophobia as “dislike of or prejudice against Islam or Muslims, especially as a political force.” Christophobia is “Intense dislike or fear of Christianity; hostility or prejudice towards Christians.” From these definitions Todd extrapolates symmetry of action.

“In Canada there is now no shortage of shocking displays of both Islamophobia and Christophobia,” Todd explains. “There have been assaults on Muslims, some deadly. There has been arson attack after attack on churches.” In reality, it’s not quite so simple.

Islamophobia is an incantation to ward off any discussion of subjects such as Islamic jihad, hatred of Jews, and Muslim violence against non-Muslims. What Todd calls “Christophobia” is nothing more than hatred of Christians, next to anti-Americanism surely Canada’s strongest hatred, particularly among the ruling class.

In the Vancouver suburb of Surrey, “a Coptic Orthodox Church, frequented mostly by immigrants from Egypt, was destroyed by fire.” The Copts are an ancient Christian community that, as Raymond Ibrahim notes, suffers horrible persecution in Egypt, and in the Sinai Copts cry, “They are burning us alive!”

Coptic Christians flee this hatred, now going on in Canada. Since the Copts have nothing whatsoever to do with Canada’s residential schools, a different dynamic must be motivating the arson against the Surrey Coptic Orthodox Church. Todd does not explore all the possibilities but does note that police are “silent about these being hate crimes.”

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police “are certainly sensitive to recent events,” one RCMP sergeant told reporters, but “will not speculate as to possible motives.” If enraged mobs were burning mosques to the ground, one may be certain, it would be called a hate crime motivated by Islamophobia, and that would be proclaimed up front.

By contrast, “Christophophobia” was not invoked in 2017 when Habibullah Ahmadi, 21, attacked Christian grandmother Anne Widholm, beating the 75-year-old Windsor, Ontario, woman into a coma before she died from her wounds. No photo of the suspect was released, nor any investigation of his background. Habibullah Ahmadi was charged with second-degree murder but his possible motive was never explored. For one of the most brutal murders in Canadian history, the convicted murderer could possibly gain release from prison in 10 years.

Catholic Churches have been prime targets but arsonists recently torched the House of Prayer Alliance Church in Calgary, Alberta. “We are refugees,” Pastor Thai Nguyen told reporters, “We escaped from Vietnam to come here to get more freedom, to live, and we think it was a good country – and now it happened to our church. Maybe it is not safe to be here in Canada compared to Vietnam.” That nation is a Communist state, but police and reporters seemed uninterested in the possible motive for burning the refugees’ church. Prime Minister Trudeau, who cries “Islamophobia” at the drop of a hat, does not seem overly concerned.

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‘Fault Lines’: New Bestseller Exposes Critical Race Theory’s Danger Things are scary now, but Dr. Voddie Baucham offers hope. Danusha Goska

Posted By on August 6th, 2021

Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism’s Looming Catastrophe by Dr. Voddie T. Baucham, Jr., is the number one bestseller in its category in Amazon as of this writing in early August, 2021. The book was released in April, and yet it already has five thousand customer reviews, 94% of which award the book five-stars. Given that Fault Lines is not receiving the kind of major-media, saturation coverage that a bestseller might expect, many of those thousands of reviews are fueled by enthusiastic word-of-mouth.

Fault Lines deserves its phenomenal success. Don’t let its “Evangelical” subtitle fool you. I’m no Evangelical, but I will happily join my five-star review to the thousands of others. Baucham’s presentation of the history and current profile of critical theory is accessible to all readers. Even non-Christians can benefit from understanding how the majority faith of Americans is being corrupted. Finally, as a Christian, Baucham offers hope for the future. Even non-Christians can apply some of Baucham’s recommendations.

Fault Lines is one of many recent books struggling to take readers by the hand and guide them through our current cultural moment, of pupils suddenly being asked to inform their teachers of their “preferred pronouns,” of toppling statues, burning cities, and careers ruined by one suspect utterance. Fault Lines belongs on the same bookshelf as James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose’s Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity – And Why This Harms Everybody, as well as Douglas Murray’s The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race, and Identity. Cynical Theories goes into greater detail on the roots of today’s hysteria, and its authors are Christophobic atheists who hold up a vague and unhistorical notion of “The Enlightenment” as our salvation. Douglas Murray, a former Christian and current atheist, appears to despair of any hope; rather, he’s given to dire prognostications: “The US is on the brink of Civil War;” Murray has said; the Western world is “standing on the precipice” of cultural annihilation.

Voddie T. Baucham has one up on Lindsey, Pluckrose, and Murray. Yes, Baucham recognizes how bad things are. “The United States is on the verge of a race war, if not a complete cultural meltdown,” Baucham predicts. But Baucham offers hope, and he offers healing. He finds both in Christian faith. Again, though, you don’t have to be a Christian to benefit from reading Fault Lines.

Fault Lines is very reader-friendly. Lindsey and Pluckrose offer much more detailed and academic surveys of how Marxism’s twisted evolution lead to the concept of “microaggressions” and social media videos in which obese women insist that if you aren’t sexually attracted to them you are a bigot. Like those authors, Baucham also introduces his reader to influential progenitors of Woke like Antonio Gramsci, Derrick Bell, Kimberle Crenshaw, and Peggy McIntosh, but more briefly. Clearly, Baucham exhibits the Evangelical’s zeal to reach the maximum audience with the deepest truths, while never allowing academic jargon to get in the way. This is a book you could understand even if you were reading it in a noisy and crowded subway car. Its ease of reading in no way diminishes its profundity.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Turkey and the West: Drifting Further Apart by Burak Bekdil

Posted By on August 6th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17574/turkey-west-drifting-apart

In theory, Turkey is a NATO ally. In theory, also, Turkey is in negotiations with the European Union for full membership. In reality, both are illusions.

In April, the European Council on Foreign Relations surveyed more than 17,000 people in 12 European countries. The survey found that: “Turkey is the only country that more Europeans see as an adversary than a necessary partner…. Europeans understand there are aspects of their relations with Russia, China, and Turkey that make these countries rivals or even adversaries.”

The feeling of drifting apart between the Turks and Westerners is mutual and growing…. an inevitable result of Turkey’s top-to-bottom Islamization over the past two decades.

In theory, Turkey is a NATO ally. In theory, also, Turkey is in negotiations with the European Union for full membership. In reality, both are illusions.

In September 2010, Turkish and Chinese aircraft conducted joint exercises in Turkish airspace. In 2011, the Turkish government announced plans to build a ballistic missile with a range of 2,500 kilometers. In 2012, Turkey joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) as a dialogue partner. (Other dialogue partners were Belarus and Sri Lanka; observers were Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Iran, and Mongolia.) Since then, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has said numerous times that Ankara will abandon its quest to join the EU if it is offered full membership in the SCO.

In September 2013, Turkey announced that it had selected a Chinese company for the construction of its first long-range air and anti-missile defense system. After Ankara scrapped that contract, it went on to acquire the Russian-made S-400 system, which resulted in Turkey’s suspension from the U.S.-led multinational consortium that builds the F-35 fifth-generation fighter jet. The S-400 controversy also triggered U.S. CAATSA sanctions against Turkey.

Turkey’s sociopolitical distance from the West has been growing steadily. New research, by the Turkish pollsters Areda Survey, has shown that:

54.6% of Turks view the U.S. as the biggest security threat to their country while 51% think the biggest threat is Israel; 31.1% think it is the United Arab Emirates; and 30.7% think it is Saudi Arabia.
35.5% of Turks consider the U.S. unreliable; 32.8% think it is a colonialist state.
72.2% object to any kind of cooperation with the U.S.
When asked with which one of the two countries Turkey should develop its relations, 78.9% said Russia against 21.1% who defended cooperation with the U.S.
58.2% of Turks think that Russia is their strategic ally.
69.3% think that the acquisition of the Russian S-400 system was the right decision.

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Cries for Freedom: Biden, Are You Listening? Crisis in Iran and Cuba. Clare Lopez

Posted By on August 6th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/08/cries-freedom-biden-are-you-listening-clare-lopez/

Iran’s new president, Ebrahim Raisi, has not even been sworn in yet, but tensions both within Iran and around the Middle East are ratcheting up a in serious way. Protests that began in Iran’s southwestern Khuzestan Province over electricity blackouts and water shortages amidst the worst drought in 50 years have now spread nationwide. The Iranian people are in the streets in many of the country’s major cities, including the capital, Tehran. They have been massing in the streets and closing major roads and highways. Many Iranians blame regime corruption and mismanagement for the severe lack of electricity and water during the worst of the region’s blistering summer heat. In fact, Iran’s hydroelectric system is near collapse. And while Iranians first took to the streets of Khuzestan to protest the water shortage, their chants now are calling for the fall of the regime itself (“Death to the Islamic Republic”) and “Death to Khamenei!”, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic.

The timing of these protests coincides with the elevation of Ebrahim Raisi to the presidency, with his inauguration scheduled for Thursday, 5 August 2021. Raisi’s June “selection” was openly arranged by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a presidential campaign and voting that was boycotted in protest by most of the Iranian electorate. Raisi rose to power in the ranks of the judiciary and was the Judiciary Chief before being tapped as Iran’s next president. He is known and reviled for his savage violations of human rights, especially in his role on the Death Commission that sent tens of thousands of Iranian prisoners, many of them belonging to the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), to their executions in 1988. In typical fashion – and likely preview of Raisi’s presidential role as the regime’s enforcer — Tehran has unleashed its security forces against the people, using live fire against demonstrators, disrupting Internet service, and carrying out sweeping arrests.

The intensity of Iran’s unrelenting domestic upheaval combines with an escalation of regional tensions that together are pummeling the regime. Sensing that developments are spiraling out of its control, the Tehran regime is lashing out in multiple directions, both at home and abroad. The situation in Lebanon is deteriorating as Iran’s jihadist proxy, Hizballah, is facing an ongoing economic and governmental crisis that shows no signs of abating. Recent rocket fire out of Lebanon into Israel has been met with retaliatory artillery strikes by the IDF, which also has been conducting air strikes inside Syria targeting Iranian weapons deliveries. Additionally, Israel has been launching maritime strikes against ships carrying Iranian oil and weapons in regional waters. Beset within and without, the Iranian regime hit back at Israel on Friday 22 July 2021 with a drone strike off the coast of Oman in the Arabian Sea against a Liberian-flagged oil tanker operated by an Israeli-owned firm. The attack against the Mercer Street killed two crew members. Although Iran initially denied being behind the attack, an Iranian TV network later admitted responsibility, claiming it was retaliation for an Israeli strike inside Syria.

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Under Fire from Social-Justice Warriors, Classical-Music Organizations Grovel By George Leef

Posted By on August 6th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/under-fire-from-social-justice-warriors-classical-music-organizations-grovel/

If you don’t really have any talent, the surefire way of getting attention these days is to claim that some institution is racist. For several years now, the malcontents have been griping about classical music, claiming that it is “too white” and “not inclusive.”

Naturally, the leaders of orchestras and opera companies and other groups have abased themselves before the critics and are hastily trying to make amends by hiring “diversity” administrators and putting more works by “underrepresented minority” composers on programs.

For a thoroughly depressing read about this, Heather Mac Donald has written an essay for City Journal that lays out the ugly facts.

Sadly, nobody in the classical-music world seems to have the nerve to tell the SJWs that there is no racism in it and hasn’t been for many decades.

Mac Donald’s concluding paragraph explains the truth:

Without home transmission, the best hope for creating more black classical musicians is to restore widespread music education. The antiracism advocates have said little about that imperative, however. It’s easier to extract racial quotas from compliant organizations than it is to engineer a change as profound as exposing students to a vanishing musical aesthetic. Packing off every opera and orchestra administrator to implicit bias training will not produce a single competitively qualified black musician. Nor will potential students be inclined to pick up the violin after learning that its repertoire belongs to a white supremacist tradition. But more power is to be gained by pushing the racism line than by pursuing the unlikely rebirth of public school music training. So the search has been on to find racial scapegoats.

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Over 800 Migrant Children Detained at Border in Highest Daily Total This Year By Zachary Evans

Posted By on August 6th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/over-800-migrant-children-detained-at-border-in-highest-daily-total-this-year/

Border Patrol agents detained 834 unaccompanied migrant children at the U.S.–Mexico border on Wednesday, according to data released by the Department of Health and Human Services.

That number is the highest since the Biden administration began reporting daily total apprehensions of migrant children earlier this year.

The number of children in custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection rose to 2,784 on Wednesday. Unaccompanied children are typically held in CBP facilities before being transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees care for unaccompanied minors. There are currently 14,523 children in HHS facilities.

The release comes after the Department of Homeland Security estimated that 210,000 migrants crossed the southern border in July, in court documents filed on August 2. That number includes an estimated 19,000 unaccompanied minors for the month of July, in what would be the highest monthly total since the year 2000.

The Biden administration has struggled to process hundreds of thousands of migrants who have illegally crossed into the U.S. in recent months. Border agents encountered 188,829 migrants in June, the highest monthly total in a decade, along with 180,641 migrants in May, 178,850 in April, and 173,265 in March.

On Monday the administration renewed a Title 42 policy allowing border agents to expel migrants directly back into Mexico without a court hearing, citing the risk of coronavirus spread. However, unaccompanied minors are exempt from that policy.

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Climate Change Doesn’t Cause All Disasters Warming annually causes about 120,000 heat deaths but prevents nearly 300,000 cold deaths. By Bjorn Lomborg

Posted By on August 6th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-change-natural-disasters-ahr-river-flood-germany-wildfire-risks-11628177742?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. That old quip, often attributed to Mark Twain or his friend Charles Dudley Warner, now guides most news coverage of severe weather. The media say that natural disasters are a result of climate change and we need to adopt radical policies to combat them.

But this framing tells only a small part of what is scientifically known. Take the recent flooding in Germany and Belgium, which many, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, are blaming on climate change. Yet a new study of more than 10,000 rivers around the world shows that most rivers now flood less. What used to be a 50-year flood in the 1970s happens every 152 years today, likely due to urbanization, flood-control measures, and changes in climate.

Some rivers still flood, and reporters flock there, but more scare stories don’t mean more global flooding. The river Ahr, where most of the German flood deaths occurred, had a spectacular flow on July 14, 2021, but it was lower than deadly flows in 1804 and 1910. The real cause of increased fatalities from riverine flooding in Germany and many other places is more people building settlements on flood plains, leaving the water no place to go. Instead of more solar panels and wind turbines to combat climate change, riverside communities need better water management. And foremost, they need a well-functioning warning system so they can evacuate before disaster strikes.

Here, Germany has failed spectacularly. Following the deadly European floods in 2002, Germany built an extensive warning system, but during a test last September most warning measures, including sirens and text alerts, didn’t work. The European Flood Awareness System predicted the floods nine days in advance and formally warned the German government four days in advance, yet most people on the ground were left unaware. Hannah Cloke, the hydrologist who set up the system, called it “a monumental failure.”

But of course, blaming the deadly floods on climate change instead of taking responsibility for the missed early warnings is convenient for politicians like Ms. Merkel, who, during a visit to Schuld, a devastated village on the Ahr, said, ”We must get faster in the battle against climate change.”

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MUST-SEE VIDEO: Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán on Tucker By Andrea Widburg

Posted By on August 6th, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/08/mustsee_video_hungarian_prime_minister_viktor_orbn_on_tucker.html

“Orbán is something rare in politics and unknown in America: He’s not just a politician but a statesman who puts his country’s interests front and center.”

On Thursday, Tucker Carlson conducted a fairly in-depth interview with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. It was a fascinating look at a classic liberal: Liberty-oriented values that don’t veer into anarchy, strong principles, and a healthy nationalism. The left has used “nationalism” as a dirty word since Hitler, as they seek a borderless world they control, but healthy nationalism means doing what Trump did: Putting your countrymen first, without regard for other nation’s demands that you subordinate your country to them – and that’s what Orbán does.

Orbán was born in Hungary in 1963 when it was still under Soviet control. As a child, he was a devoted communist, but his two years of military service turned him into a conservative.

Ironically, in 1989, it was a scholarship from the Soros Foundation that first took Orbán out of the communist bloc and saw him study political science at Oxford. He entered politics in 1990 and has consistently run as a liberty-oriented conservative, who believes in traditional Judeo-Christian values, a strong national identity, and individual liberty.

For most Americans, Orbán, who has been Prime Minister since 2010 (his second term in that office) might not have been a recognized name were it not for the fact that, in 2015, Angela Merkel opened Europe’s gates to millions of Muslim migrants, most of them single men. Orbán, despite being a member of the EU, refused to get with that program. If people want to immigrant to Hungary, he said, they must comply with its immigration laws, rather than just walking in.

Orbán has also presided over Hungary’s passing a set of laws that, while they would have been normative three or four decades ago, are now decried as gross violations of LGBTQ+ human rights.