RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.city-journal.org/on-covid-19-origins-elites-followed-politics-not-science?wallit_nosession=1

It is a disturbing prospect, like something out of a science fiction novel, but it’s appearing increasingly plausible nonetheless: the cause of the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic, which has killed millions and cost tens of trillions of dollars, may have been a viral escape from a Wuhan, China virology laboratory.

The latest indicator pointing toward a man-made catastrophe—that, until now, has been obscured with the aid of credulous media and scientists—comes from the Wall Street Journal, which reported that U.S. intelligence found that three researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology were hospitalized in November 2019 with symptoms consistent with Covid-19. That is well before the Chinese government’s claim that the first confirmed case occurred on December 8, 2019. This new report echoes a January 15, 2021 State Department fact sheet that reported several Wuhan Institute researchers became ill in autumn 2019. The steady accumulation of circumstantial evidence has prompted President Biden to order a review.

Early in the pandemic, conservative newspapers, like the Daily Mail and the Washington Times, and Senator Tom Cotton raised the possibility of a Chinese lab leak. The Washington Post dismissed such speculation as a debunked conspiracy theory. The New York Times labeled it a “fringe theory.”

https://www.nysun.com/editorials/nigel-farage-has-a-message-for-the-democratic/91524/

The heads-up this week to American Democrats from Nigel Farage strikes us as more newsworthy than its coverage so far would suggest. He’s warning that left-wing hostility to Israel could deliver to Democrats the kind of political catastrophe that befell Labor in Britain in December 2019. That’s when voters, reacting in part to Labor’s hostility to the Jewish state, gave Conservatives such a victory that Jeremy Corbyn was forced to resign.

On a visit here, Mr. Farage, a founding father of the Brexit movement, issued his warning in an interview Monday with Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo. He reckoned that Mr. Corbyn’s taking the Labor Party “in the pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel but clearly also anti-Semitic direction” had prompted voters in “Middle England” to say “‘we don’t like this kind of extremism,’ and it did hurt the Labor Party.”

“I think,” Mr Farage also said, “there are many instances here in the USA of members of Congress who are supporting these Palestinian protests.” He scored the Democrats for failing to condemn attacks on Jews “in strong enough terms.” He suggested that “across the western world” the left has “openly supported a Palestinian cause that behaves more like a terrorist organization,” and “decent people don’t like this sort of thing.”

https://amgreatness.com/2021/05/26/critical-race-theory-or-crazy-radical-tantrums/

Just four weeks ago, I wrote about the rising resistance to the woke craze and critical race theory, and much has transpired since then.

Here in California, even Disneyland has not been spared the wrath of the crazies. On May 7, the incomparable Christopher Rufo reported that “The Wokest Place on Earth” now includes employee trainings on systemic racism, white privilege, white fragility, and white saviors, and also launched racially segregated “affinity groups” at the company’s headquarters.

But just five days later, Rufo disclosed that Disney “has removed its entire antiracism program from the company’s internal portal, effectively scrubbing it out of existence.” Rufo added, “This is a major victory in the war against ‘woke capital,’” and noted that a “significant backlash from the public” was responsible for the shift. While some skeptics suggested that the policy was being “tweaked or rebranded, not scrubbed,” Rufo responded, “Possibly, but small victories start to add up. We’ve set the precedent—and forced a $329 billion company to back down.”

And then there is the math craziness. As a former teacher, I loved teaching math because there was a right and wrong answer. Feelings, opinions, and political dogma were irrelevant. 2+2=4. Period. If you have another take, sorry but you’re wrong. Now that the crazies are in charge, however, if you insist on right and wrong answers, you are racist. Really.

Until last week, in fact, the proposed California math framework recommended eight times that teachers use A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction: Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction as a resource. This radical drivel insists that addressing student errors, focusing on getting the right answer, and requiring students to show their work is a form of white supremacy. Objectivity is now racist, apparently.

However, due to citizen outrage during the “public comments” period, the state walked back some of its new math mandates, notably dropping the over-the-top Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction. The commission agreed to remove references to the toolkit from the draft framework last week, stating it was “inconsistent with teaching to the standards.” But the war is not over.  The framework has not been finalized, and the California Department of Education will hold a second public review in June and July.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/05/26/will-the-2020-madness-last/

The COVID-19 pandemic is ending with mass vaccinations. So is the national quarantine. The riots, arson, and looting of the 2020 summer are sputtering out—leaving violent crime in their wake.

The acrimony over the 2020 election fades. Trump Derangement Syndrome became abstract when Donald Trump left office and was ostracized from social media. 

In other words, the American people are slowly regaining their senses after the epidemic of mass hysteria and insanity that gripped the nation in 2020. 

But Americans will wonder whether what Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and the hard Left wrought last year will last when the nation is no longer gripped by 2020 madness. 

Teachers and academics are notorious for furious opposition to administrative bloat. For the last 50 years, administrations have proliferated, while the ratio of non-teachers to teachers has skyrocketed—to the chagrin of teacher unions. 

But in the last year, schools and colleges have gone mad in hiring thousands of “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” administrators. Their job descriptions may be vague. But certainly, they will not contribute to classroom education. Instead, they will monitor the speech and thoughts of those who do. 

How long will mostly left-wing teachers’ unions continue to support such vast diversions of money to armies of new left-wing non-teaching administrators?

Before 2020, the Left demanded “proportional representation” in hiring and admissions. And if minority groups and women were not represented in the workplace according to their percentages of the American population, then prejudice was automatically assumed (“disparate impact”). Reparatory measures were then made to hire by race and gender. 

“Affirmative action” was the euphemism for such quotas. It was nevertheless more or less institutionalized because proportional representation was not entirely illogical in a multiracial society. And there was still the common goal to follow Martin Luther King, Jr.’s notion of integration and assimilation to make race incidental not essential to who Americans are. 

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/biden-frees-al-qaeda-ally-who-plotted-smuggle-daniel-greenfield/

With inflation rising almost as fast as gas prices and the cost of a home, Joe Biden ain’t doing much for most Americans. But if you’re an Al Qaeda terrorist, he’s got your back.

Just ask three of Gitmo’s finest who are benefiting from Biden’s generosity.

Saifullah Paracha (pictured above) was a Pakistani businessman and New York travel agent with some big plans. The Gitmo inmate now being set loose by Biden wanted to “do something big against the US.”

9/11 was in Al Qaeda’s rearview mirror and its mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was plotting a sequel. The Gitmo dossier for Paracha first details a plan to use his “textile business to smuggle explosives into the US” and these “ready-made explosives, specifically C4” would go into shipping containers full of “women and children’s clothing”.

Shipping Al Qaeda’s C4 to America would be more lucrative than dumping sweatshop labor sweatpants because “if al-Qaida used detainee’s textile company for shipping explosives to the US, he would likely be paid additional money beyond the standard shipping fees”. No word on whether there would have been a bonus for every American blown up.

And then things escalated from there with testimony that Paracha allegedly claimed that he, “believed he could obtain unspecified chemicals from Chinese sources”. The fellow he was talking to about the unspecified chemicals, Ammar al-Baluchi, one of the few Gitmo Jihadis whom neither Obama nor Biden had managed to release yet, had helped out the 9/11 hijackers with flight simulators, and manuals, and allegedly chatted with Mohammed Atta.

After 9/11, Al-Baluchi was looking at all sorts of plans for crashing planes into things, like the American consulate in Karachi or London’s Heathrow airport, but there were other options on the table. The nature of the chemicals out of China was never specified, but the KSM lieutenant believed they were” chemical or biological agents” that could be used “as a weapon”.

Paracha reportedly advised Al Qaeda that “one should look for a similar looking chemical and put it in between the good chemicals and it would be very easy to get [through] customs.” With his business experience, he could offer Al Qaeda tips on smuggling such as warning them about the “radiological sensors at ports or places of entry into the US” that would make it difficult to smuggle radioactive materials into the country”.

But Biden’s newest charity case wanted something bigger. The dossier describes the 9/11 mastermind’s associate and Paracha chatting about Al Qaeda getting some “radiological or nuclear items several times” because Paracha wanted “to help al-Qaida ‘do something big against the US.’”

Paracha “also discussed nuclear attacks and attacks against nuclear power plants” and had an idea for “al-Qaida to attack a nuclear power plant”.