HOMELAND SECURITY, P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Under Biden, Is the Military Focused More on Winning Kinetic Wars or Culture Wars? By Bryan Preston

Posted By on May 24th, 2021

https://pjmedia.com/culture/bryan-preston/2021/05/23/under-biden-is-the-military-focused-more-on-winning-kinetic-wars-or-culture-wars-n1449072

One has to wonder what the United States military is truly focused on now.

The threat of China is rising so quickly that Australia is boosting its defense budget and its top defense official is warning of the “drums of war.”

Department of Home Affairs Secretary Mike Pezzullo’s message to all department staff on Australia’s veterans’ day on Sunday, known as Anzac Day, was published in The Australian newspaper on Tuesday.

“In a world of perpetual tension and dread, the drums of war beat – sometimes faintly and distantly, and at other times more loudly and ever closer,” Pezzullo said.

“Today, as free nations again hear the beating drums and watch worryingly the militarisation of issues that we had, until recent years, thought unlikely to be catalysts for war, let us continue to search unceasingly for the chance for peace while bracing again, yet again, for the curse of war,” he added.

Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews said she had approved of the wording of Pezzullo’s message.

That was back in April 2021.

Here in the United States, Joe Biden’s Pentagon has pushed a servicewide Navy standdown to begin a politicization that, if any Republican entertained anything remotely similar, would elicit howls from the political opposition and their public relations organs in the media. That standdown was seen as “chilling” by military officers and inspired Space Force Lt. Col. Matthew Lohmeier to write a book about it. That book, Irresistible Revolution, shot to #1 on Amazon despite the publishing giant making it unsearchable on its platform. It also earned Lohmeier relief of his command. He was effectively fired, though his actual legal situation remains murky.

The military that is made of volunteers who swear to defend the United States Constitution “from all enemies, foreign and domestic,” took away Lohmeier’s First Amendment rights — or will have, if he is tossed out of the military after an exemplary career.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Texas Legislature Bans Critical Race Theory From Public Schools; Needs to Pass ‘1836 Project’ Bill By Bryan Preston

Posted By on May 24th, 2021

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/bryan-preston/2021/05/23/texas-legislature-bans-critical-race-theory-from-public-schools-needs-to-pass-1836-project-bill-n1449095

Late Saturday night, the Texas Senate passed H.B. 3979. That bill would ban critical race theory from classrooms in the state’s public schools.

It states:

No teacher, administrator, or other employee in any state agency, school district, campus, open-enrollment charter school, or school administration shall be required to engage in
training, orientation, or therapy that presents any form of race or sex stereotyping or blame on the basis of race or sex.

(6) No teacher, administrator, or other employee in any state agency, school district, campus, open-enrollment charter school, or school administration shall shall require, or make part of a course the following concepts: (1) one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex; (2) an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously; (3) an individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly because of his or her race or sex; (4) members of one race or sex cannot and should not attempt to treat others without respect to race or sex; (5) an individual’s moral character is necessarily determined by his or her race or sex; (6) an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex; (7) any individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race or sex; or (8) meritocracy or traits such as a hard work ethic are racist or sexist, or were created by a members of a particular race to oppress members of another race. (h-3) No private funding shall be accepted by state agencies, school district, campuses, open-enrollment charter schools, or school administrations for the purposes of curriculum development, purchase or choice of curricular materials, teacher training, or professional development pertaining to courses on Texas, United States, and world history, government, civics, social studies, or similar subject areas.

MEDIA Comments turned off

Under Pressure for Hamas Links, AP Fires Pro-Jihad ‘Journalist’ And the Left goes nuts. Robert Spencer

Posted By on May 24th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/under-pressure-hamas-links-ap-fires-pro-jihad-robert-spencer/

The oddest thing happened after it came to light that the Hamas-linked Associated Press had hired a serial liar and pro-jihad activist, a young woman named Emily Wilder: AP fired her. As you might expect, because this isn’t the way things are supposed to work, as far as the establishment media is concerned, “journalists” are outraged, and circling the wagons. One of their own has taken the fall for a sinister and corrupt organization, and the other cogs in the machine aren’t going to stand for it.

Emily Wilder herself claimed that the firing was due to her activities as a pro-jihad activist at Stanford University, from which she graduated last year, and asserted that she had fallen victim to “cancel culture”: “There’s no question I was just canceled,” she said in a fawning SF Gate interview that was trending on Twitter for a couple of days. The day after it was published, even AP itself got into the act, writing about the controversy as if it concerned some other organization altogether, and defending Wilder.

Meanwhile, Leftists on Twitter crowed about the supposed inconsistency of foes of Left-fascism opposing “cancel culture” and then being happy that a Left-fascist was canceled. One put it crisply: “Coulda sworn you creeps were against cancel culture.”

There are numerous useful lessons that can be drawn from this ugly little episode. Here are a few of them:

1. AP fired Wilder to save face after being exposed sharing an office building with Hamas in Gaza, which meant either that they were aware of Hamas’ activities and covered for the terror group, or didn’t know Hamas was there and are therefore the worst reporters in the world.

2. AP did not fire Wilder because she is pro-jihad. It is unlikely that there are any AP reporters who are not pro-jihad. AP fired Wilder because her views came out in a way that showed up their claims to be a news organization.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Catastrophe of a ‘Ceasefire’ Only the obliteration of Hamas can secure a lasting peace. Jason D. Hill *****

Posted By on May 24th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/ceasefire-between-israel-and-hamas-death-israel-jason-d-hill/

The recent “ceasefire” between the terrorist organization, Hamas, that rules Gaza, and the ethical state of Israel is a recipe for future disaster. There is one winner, which is Hamas. The loser in this pitiful surrender is Israel.

What does Hamas have to gain by a ceasefire? An awful lot. It claims an indefinite time frame in which to rebuild its arsenal of destruction that will be levied against Israel in a relatively short space of time. It has a chance to showcase to the world the destruction of its infrastructures and civilian habitats. A great segment of the anti-Semitic world will refuse to acknowledge that Hamas is literally responsible for all these civilian deaths — as it is the only army in human history that uses the lives of its civilian population as weapons of war by using hospitals, infant nurseries, schools, civilian homes, and mosques as launch pads for its rockets. Hamas also refuses to allow its citizens to evacuate buildings and targeted areas of attack announced well in advance of any military strikes by the IDF.

Hamas has the infernal impertinence — after initiating an unprovoked war against Israel — to occupy the moral high ground by claiming that it will agree to a ceasefire with Israel on two conditions: that Israeli forces must stop incursions into the Al-Aqsa compound and respect the site. And second, that Israel must stop the forced evacuation of the Palestinian residents in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. Where does some primordial and savage terrorist organization that has already evicted itself from the ambit of rights and that, as a retrogressive tribe, exists way outside the historical process, dare to dictate domestic policy inside Israel? In doing so, it appeals to some mawkishly sentimental sense of brotherhood with the war refugees existing in Judea and Samaria and, by default, it wins a popularity contest with the equally execrable, racist, thuggish, and anti-Semitic United Nations and many European countries, that, while paying unconscionable lip service to Israel’s right to exist, secretly hope for Israel’s demise.

A terrorist organization that starts a war, one that is not bombed into oblivion but is altruistically allowed to remain in existence and lectures to Israel the terms of a ceasefire which it intends to use to simply recoup losses and re-strengthen its moral stranglehold over Israel, is so obscene a phenomenon in human history, that Israel, one of the most moral nations on earth, should be ashamed of itself. Israel should be ashamed of itself for allowing such a ghastly enemy that, even in the absence of a war, spews rockets into its country as a way of openly showing its contempt and intention to one day, perhaps visit a nuclear Holocaust on it by coupling with another well-known enemy who wishes Israel obliterated from the earth.

In fundamental terms, what exactly does Israel have to gain from a ceasefire with Hamas? The delay of a final showdown in which Hamas lines up all of its own women and children and fires rockets from behind them and dares Israel to respond — while the world looks on in self-righteous judgment of Israel to make a so-called false move? Will Israel ever realize that, contrary to what the world thinks, it is not and can never be responsible for one civilian casualty in Gaza? No country that is attacked can altruistically bear the responsibility for protecting the lives of the citizens of the aggressor country. That country has abrogated the rights of its citizens. That country is the conferrer of justice and the protector of rights. Israel is no more responsible for the rights of the civilians than you would be for the life of the child of a gunman who uses his child as a shield while shooting at you to gain access to your house. The child’s life cannot and should not supersede your right to your life. The moral responsibility for the child’s life lies entirely with the gunman. You cannot be morally blamed for protecting your life because your bodily integrity is violated by being put in harm’s way.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Critical Race Theory in America’s Classrooms Force-feeding division and racism in American schools.Clare Lopez

Posted By on May 24th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/critical-race-theory-americas-classrooms-clare-lopez-0/

[Part 1 & 2 of this series can be read :

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/04/institutionalizing-critical-race-theory-clare-lopez/

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/critical-race-theory-americas-classrooms-clare-lopez/

This is Part 3 of a multi-part series on the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in America’s schools. While earlier articles explained how the ideological foundations of CRT are rooted in Marxism and were promulgated by Marxist intellectuals operating out of the leftist faculty lounges of American academia, today’s essay will delve into some of the specific elements of CRT curricula now to be found within Ethnic Studies programs across the country.

California: Incubator of CRT in America

As described in this author’s May 7, 2021 article, “Critical Race Theory in America’s Classrooms”, the incubator for many of these educational concepts was California. There, the State School Board and legislature have wrestled with development of a so-called “Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum” (ESMC) for years. The essential purpose of that curriculum is to inculcate California students with a divisive, racist view of American society based on oppositional distinctions drawn among various ethnic groups: African Americans, Asian Americans, Latino-Chicano Americans, Native Americans, and Caucasians/whites. Coursework, class lectures, Power Points, and textbooks already in use set all the other ethnic/racial groups against whites. This is classic Marxist, Saul Alinsky-style propaganda whose ultimate objective is violent revolution based on an uprising of the “oppressed” vs the “oppressors”. Spread now throughout the U.S. school system, such indoctrination already is yielding the results methodically instigated by enemies of the state who seek a communist revolution in this country.

Let’s look at some of the specifics: how traditional academic rigor is systematically being dismantled and what are some of the elements of the CRT and Ethnic Studies curricula currently in use in American classrooms.

CRT In Schools Around the Country

What is happening at the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Virginia is illustrative. A magnet school founded in 1985 as a place for gifted students, “TJ” as it’s called ranked #1 in the country for 2021 according to U.S. News and World Report. Criteria for those rankings include “performance on state-required tests, graduation, and how well they prepare students for college”. The school also boasted a 99.8% graduation rate, as of September 2020.

But no longer. After a unanimous vote by all twelve Fairfax County school board members, TJ will no longer admit students based on academic achievement and a tough entrance exam. It seems that some 70% of the student body at TJ in the 2020 school year were Asians. This has now been deemed unacceptable by the Fairfax County Schools system because competition with such highly gifted students – who typically score in the top 2 percent of high school students nationwide with average IQ levels ranging from about 120-160 – was just not fair to lower achieving students of other ethnic backgrounds. Admissions tests will henceforth be scrapped in favor of a lottery draw from among students who post at least a 3.5 GPA. The objective is not to continue TJ’s record for academic excellence but to draw in more students of African American and Hispanic background, even if their scholastic performance doesn’t match up to that of their Asian counterparts. After all, it’s diversity of skin color that counts most now, not ensuring that America continues to produce the best and brightest engineers, inventors, and scientists in the world.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Fake Outrage Over Cheney ‘Ouster’; Dems ‘Ousted’ Bernie Twice Hypocrisy, thy name is Democrat. Larry Elder

Posted By on May 24th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/fake-outrage-over-cheney-ouster-dems-ousted-bernie-larry-elder/

House Republican leadership removed Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., from her leadership position, a position her indignant liberal defenders likely did not even know existed until days ago. Cheney became Republican roadkill when she not only voted to impeach then-President Donald Trump but also became a vocal critic of his alleged “big lie” about the 2020 election.

Cue the fake outrage by Democrats and the media.

A CNN headline read in part: “Ousted Cheney Warns Direction of the Party is ‘Dangerous.'” MSNBC wrote, “The GOP infighting reached a turning point after Republicans ousted Congresswoman Liz Cheney from her leadership position.”

PBS wrote, “In less than 20 minutes behind closed doors, House Republicans made their allegiance to former President Donald Trump clear by ousting … Cheney.”

The Washington Post said Cheney’s removal from leadership “offered the clearest sign yet of how far Republicans are willing to go to support or tolerate Trump’s lies about the election as well the degree to which many members are trying to rewrite the history of Jan. 6 to erase the former president’s culpability.” Never mind that for four years and counting, Hillary Clinton has referred to the 2016 election as “stolen” and then-President Trump as “illegitimate.” Two-thirds of Democrats believe that in 2016, the Russians changed vote tallies to defeat Clinton, despite the exhaustive Senate report that found zero evidence that the Russians succeeded in changing a single vote tally.

Bear in mind we were talking about Cheney, the daughter and ideological soul mate of the former Vice President Dick Cheney, who was labeled a “neocon” and loathed by the left. MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan praised Liz Cheney for “her stance against her own party,” but added: “But what about the argument that Liz Cheney herself isn’t a stranger to, quote/unquote, big lies? She backed the Iraq war. She denied Bush-era torture.” So, the left’s newfound love for Liz Cheney is, well, complicated. Note also that Cheney’s replacement has a more moderate voting record, a change that, in normal times, would please the average liberal.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Congressional Enablers of Genocidal Anti-Semitism The Unholy Alliance in action. Kenneth Levin

Posted By on May 24th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/congressional-enablers-genocidal-anti-semitism-kenneth-levin/

Hamas is explicit in wanting to kill not only all Israelis but all Jews. The organization states as much in its charter and declares that goal a religious duty. Hamas has sought to translate the genocidal intent into action, including through innumerable missile attacks targeting Israel’s civilian population since the terror group gained control of Gaza in 2007. 

Yet Hamas has a coterie of apologists, supporters, cheerleaders and other enablers in Congress, including those who criticize Israel and are silent about Hamas’s actions and objective.

Hamas missile barrages doubly fit the internationally recognized definitions of war crimes, by virtue of their objective of killing civilians and by virtue of their use of Gazan civilian areas as launching sites for their attacks, thus endangering Palestinians in Gaza. Yet this too has not dissuaded Hamas’s Congressional enablers.

In initiating its latest missile war against Israel, Hamas justified doing so by claiming Israel was seeking to expel Palestinians from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of eastern Jerusalem and also that Israel was attacking the Al Aqsa Mosque and other Muslim sites on the Temple Mount.

The Sheikh Jarrah issue relates to some of the Jewish property that was seized and held as “enemy property” by Trans-Jordan after it conquered the eastern part of Jerusalem in 1948 and killed or expelled all Jews living there. Following the 1967 war, Israeli courts confirmed Jewish ownership of the property but granted Arabs residing there the status of protected tenants, able to remain and even pass the right of residence on to their heirs as long as they paid rent. But the tenants have refused to pay and it is in response to this that the courts have for some years ordered the vacating of the property. This is one of Hamas’  justifications for firing over 4,000 missiles at Israeli civilians, a justification parroted by members of Congress.

The other justification, that Israel was threatening Al Aqsa, has been a rallying cry for virtually a century by Palestinian leaders seeking to instigate murderous attacks on Jews. In 1929, the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Al-Husseini, then the most prominent figure among Palestinian Arabs, used the claim to choreograph assaults on Jews that took some 130 lives. According to reports at the time, such as those by Dutch-Canadian journalist Pierre van Paassen, Husseini also produced and distributed bogus photographs of a supposedly demolished Jerusalem mosque in hopes of instigating the murder of Jews in the Mandate territory and beyond.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Biden Brings in Islamic Activists to Investigate U.S. Military for ‘Extremism’ Muslim Brotherhood supporters to help Biden destroy American soldiers. Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on May 24th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/biden-brings-islamic-activists-investigate-us-daniel-greenfield/

A decade ago, Hina Shamsi was fighting on behalf of the Holy Land Foundation whose leaders had been convicted of providing material support to Hamas.

As the head of the ACLU’s National Security Project, Shamsi, a Pakistani citizen, had fought fiercely for the Islamic terrorists at Guantanamo Bay. “We all must pledge — not one person more in Guantanamo, not in our names,” she recently declared.

But now the Pakistani advocate for Islamic terrorists has a new job: going after our soldiers.

Shamsi (pictured above left) is one of the terror lawyers who appears on a list of partners for the Biden administration’s crackdown on “extremism” in the military. The only kind of extremism that Shamsi appears to be an expert on is the Islamic kind and her expertise has been in denying it.

Furthermore, at least as of 2017, Shamsi had described herself as a Pakistan citizen with permanent legal residency in America.

She’s not the only apparent Pakistani citizen tasked by Biden to go after our troops.

Take Faiza Patel, another Pakistani immigrant, who co-wrote an article arguing against designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a foreign terrorist organization. The article claimed that “the Muslim Brotherhood is a religious organization, a political party, and a social service provider” and that it had “disavowed violence decades ago.”

That would come as news to Hamas and its other active Jihadist network members.

In another co-written article, Faiza Patel claimed that laws against Sharia were Islamophobic.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Population Dud: Paul Ehrlich, Call Your Office

Posted By on May 24th, 2021

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/05/24/the-population-dud-paul-ehrlich-call-your-office/

There’s an old saying among economists, demographers, actuaries and sociologists: “Demographics is destiny.” If that’s true, and it certainly appears to be, America could be in very big trouble.

Back in 1970, leftist Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich warned in his sensationalist book, “The Population Bomb,” that overpopulation would lead to mass starvation and the depletion of our natural resources. As we all know, it didn’t happen.

Indeed, natural resources have never been more abundant, based on prices we pay, as the late economist Julian Simon predicted in making a very public1980 wager with Ehrlich about the future. Virtually every measurable form of pollution has fallen sharply in the intervening years. And billions of people were pulled out of poverty, all during a time of strong population growth.

In short, Ehrlich and his legions of doomsday followers couldn’t have been more wrong.

In fact, the real problem we face today is exactly the opposite: People in the U.S. are no longer having enough babies. That fertility decline shows in a dramatic slowdown in population growth. And no, don’t blame COVID-19 for that.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Biden ‘Leads from Behind’ on Opening the U.S.–Canada Border By John Fund

Posted By on May 24th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/05/biden-leads-from-behind-on-opening-the-u-s-canada-border/

Ottawa continues to ban nonessential travel across its border with its southern neighbor. The closure no longer makes medical sense.

C anada is usually our leading trading partner, and ties between the two countries run deep. But they’ve been severed for the last 14 months by a closure of the U.S.–Canada border. The closure no longer makes medical sense.

The closure of the world’s longest international border has just been extended again. That is unlikely to change soon. Friends, relatives, and business associates have been separated. Americans who own vacation homes in Canada can’t maintain them.

The closure isn’t equal. Canadians are allowed to travel to the United States by air, but Americans aren’t allowed to cross the border for nonessential travel into Canada. A Canadian coming to the U.S. only needs to have had a negative coronavirus test no more than three days before travel, while Canada requires a hotel quarantine for those arriving by air. This is despite the U.S.’s comparable record on vaccinations and its better record on COVID-19 cases.

On the Canadian side, the closure has devastated border towns and destroyed tourism from the U.S., which sent more than 15 million arrivals in 2019.

An anti-American strain infects the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. “Canadians are boastful of their tolerance, but the reliable way so many will rush toward the worst possible interpretation of any American event reminds that when it comes to the United States, the dominant Canadian disposition is often closer to a form of unthinking bigotry,” writes Canadian journalist J. J. McCullough in the Washington Post. Indeed, the Canadian historian Frank Underhill once mused that Americans are benevolently ignorant of Canada, while Canadians are malevolently knowledgeable about the United States.