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USA-China: The Path of No Return? Francesco Sisci

Posted By on April 23rd, 2021

http://www.settimananews.it/informazione-internazionale/usa-china-the-path-of-no-ret

The two countries have differences over ideology, culture, civilization, trade, currency management, Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and human rights. There is rivalry for global primacy. There are ongoing fights in cyberspace and space; there is major competition over technology and the Belt and Road Initiative.

There are conflicting claims and deep tussles in many geopolitical areas: Taiwan, the South China Sea, the Senkaku, the Indian border, North Korea, and the dealing and future of Myanmar, Iran, and Russia. There are growing fissures over the future role of the digital yuan against that of the dollar.

There are just too many tensions, and it seems likely that these tensions cannot be solved and will be blown out of proportion. Moreover, the global tectonic shifts which are being brought about by Covid and its consequences are further fueling those tensions.

The vaccines are creating an area for diplomatic and political tensions, and the stimulus packages further enhance divergences.

Financial boost

Europe, the United States, and Japan need and want a stimulus package to boost the economy out of the present slump. It will possibly be the largest financial aid package in global history. Thousands of trillions will be poured into the economy to reshape the wealth system and world trade. The measures will bring inflation, and there are already signs in the United States that higher prices are kicking in.

China conversely doesn’t need a stimulus package. It posted 18.3% growth in the first quarter of the year, and a large plan for infrastructure is already taking place. Moreover, global demand for Chinese industrial products has been driving growth in China in recent months.

Further, an injection of money could force China to import inflation with price hikes in commodities, oil, and ore, and thus impose share price increases on the Chinese middle class with unfathomable consequences. Any of these challenges could be handled by themselves, but in combination, they make a huge question mark.

No status quo ante

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VIDEO: DIVERSITY VS. DIVERSITY BRUCE THORNTON:

Posted By on April 23rd, 2021

https://jamieglazov.com/2021/04/22/bruce-thornton-video-diversity-vs-diversity/

This video is brought to you by a Freedom Center-Glazov Gang collaboration on a new exclusive webinar series, Teach-Ins for the Twenty-First Century. Join us as some of the leading thinkers and pundits on the scene today discuss key issues related to the coronavirus pandemic and its ongoing implications, confronting the Left, the jihad terror threat, and much, much more. And make sure to ask your own questions of our experts.

This new webinar features Bruce Thornton, a professor of Classics and Humanities emeritus at the California State University in Fresno. He is the author of ten books and numerous essays, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and a Research Fellow at Stanford’ Hoover Institution.

Dr. Thornton discusses ‘Diversity’ Vs. Diversity, unveiling the Left’s scientific racism.

Don’t miss it!

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Data Undercuts Myth of ‘Racism’ in Police Killings John R. Lott

Posted By on April 22nd, 2021

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/04/22/data_undercuts_myth_of_racism_in_police_killings_145640.html

President Biden claimed that Derek Chauvin’s conviction on Tuesday “ripped the blinders off for the whole world to see the systemic racism” of police. With the police shooting that same day of 16-year-old girl in Columbus, Ohio, the White House again pushed the racism claim, noting that this was just another example of how “police violence disproportionately impacts Black and Latino people.”

But where is the evidence for these claims? In Chauvin’s trial, the prosecution never once mentioned evidence that the now-former officer is racist. A day after the verdict, the Biden administration announced plans for a pattern-or-practice investigation of the Minneapolis Police Department to determine if there is such racism, but the administration’s comments sure sound as if they have already determined the study’s outcome.

In the other case, body camera footage released by police revealed that Ma’Khia Bryant was fatally shot as she charged another girl with a knife. The officer shot one black girl in an attempt to save what appears to be another black girl from being stabbed.

Politicians such as Biden as well as the media have helped create a biased perception that is far from the reality of shootings by police. In a study, the Crime Prevention Research Center (where I serve as president) found that when a white officer kills a suspect, the media usually mention the officer’s race. When the officer is black, news coverage rarely mentions that detail.

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The ‘COVID-19 Hate Crimes’ Bill Is a Thought Crime Bill Ben Weingarten

Posted By on April 22nd, 2021

https://www.newsweek.com/covid-19-hate-crimes-bill-thought-crime-bill-opinion-

In the Woke America we increasingly inhabit, opposing the progressive agenda is treated as tantamount to bigotry. The modern Democratic Party’s modus operandi is to play up that purported bigotry as a pretext to savage and smear political adversaries, run roughshod over our rights, and ultimately usurp power in the self-serving name of virtue and “equity.”

This manifests itself in all kinds of unexpected ways, with unexpectedly far-reaching consequences.

Consider, for example, the original draft of the recently introduced “COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act.”

On its face, the bill, sponsored by Mazie Hirono (D-HI)—the due process-denying, discriminating senator from Hawaii—seemed an almost-parodic piece of show legislation purporting to birth a novel pandemic-based offense.

As Senator Hirono’s related comments made clear, the bill aimed to create the appearance of concern about the rise in anti-Asian hate, while ascribing such hate to Senator Hirono’s political adversaries.

At first glance, the bill’s substantive impact was minimal. The legislation called for the U.S. attorney general to tap a single individual to expedite review of “COVID-19 hate crimes and reports of any such crime to federal, state or local law enforcement agencies.” It also called for the attorney general to direct state and local law enforcement agencies to create online databases of hate crimes or related incidents.

What exactly this would do to combat violence perpetrated against Asians in America was unclear.

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The Jerkily Spiral Middle East Challenges the USA Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

Posted By on April 22nd, 2021

https://bit.ly/3sB9Fyo

While US policy in the Middle East focuses on multilateralism, human rights, democracy and international law, the stormy Middle East displays deeply-rooted domestic and regional Shiite (mostly Iran) and Sunni (mostly Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS) repression, terrorism and warfare, as well as imperial aspirations by Iran’s Ayatollahs and Turkey’s Erdogan.

The explosive state of the Middle East has highlighted the vulnerability and the actual/potential disintegration of Arab entities, which have always revered local/tribal – much more than national – loyalty.

This state of affairs emphasizes Western misinterpretation of the unpredictable, violently intolerant, highly fragmented, despotic and dis-functional Middle East, which has systematically frustrated benevolent Western efforts to introduce democracy, tolerance, stability and peaceful-coexistence into the Middle East.

In 2021, the well-armed Middle East is raging with a litany of armed conflicts, domestic and anti-Western terrorism and other forms of violence, which have yielded over 500,000 fatalities and close to 10 million refugees since 2011.

It features Iran (domestic repression and military and terroristic involvement in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, the Arabian Peninsula, the Horn of Africa, Central Asia, Latin America and Europe), Turkey (the key supporter of the transcontinental Muslim Brotherhood terrorism, and militarily involved in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Horn of Africa and the Persian Gulf); as well as Libya (internationalized civil war and global Islamic terrorism), Egypt (war on Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS terrorism) and Jordan (war on Muslim Brotherhood terrorism and explosive domestic conflicts).  In addition, there are Lebanon (Islamic terrorism and low scale civil war), Syria (internationalized civil war and Islamic terrorism), Iraq (Islamic terrorism and internationalized civil war, while considering Kuwait its own Province 19), Yemen (internationalized civil war and Islamic terrorism), Qatar (financial supporter of Muslim Brotherhood terrorism and closely aligned with Iran and Turkey), Saudi Arabia (war on Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS and Shiite terrorism, as well as war on Iran-supported Yemen-Houthi terrorism), the UAE and Bahrain (war on Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS and Shiite terrorism), etc.

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The geriatic wokeness of Joe Biden Freddy Gray

Posted By on April 22nd, 2021

https://spectator.us/topic/bidens-rodeo-geriatric-wokeness/

Joe Biden, the 46th President of the United States, has never been able to keep his mouth shut. Throughout his absurdly long career in politics, he has always said too much, made stuff up, gone too far. His friends and fans just shrug it off. ‘That’s our Joe.’

The trouble is, Biden is now America’s Commander-in-Chief, leader of the not-so-free-anymore world, and his loquaciousness — and the mental fuzziness it betrays — is becoming a problem.

Take, for instance, his decision this week to intervene before the jury reached its verdict on the trial of Derek Chauvin, the white police officer now found guilty of the murder last year of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota. ‘I’m praying the verdict is the right verdict. I think it’s overwhelming in my view,’ Biden said. ‘I wouldn’t say that unless the jury was sequestered,’ he quickly added — as if there were nothing untoward in a president weighing in pre-emptively on the most racially charged legal trial in America since the O.J. Simpson case in 1995.

As things turned out, mirabile dictu, the jury agreed with Biden and found Chauvin guilty on all three counts. Yet what ought to have been a calm vindication of American justice was treated as a grubby political show trial. Angry right-wingers will regard the verdict as a sop to left-wing mobs who would have — hell, maybe still will — set fire to cities across America had Chauvin not gone down. Chauvin’s lawyers are expected to claim that their client was not given a fair trial due to the monstrous public pressure surrounding the case.

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Anaphylactic and societal shock: An Israeli parable By RUTHIE BLUM

Posted By on April 22nd, 2021

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/anaphylactic-and-societal-shock-an-israeli-parable-opinion-666060

  

Israelis were horrified last week by the untimely death of 23-year-old Osher Deri, a resident of the northern town of Hatzor Haglilit. 

Echoes of the collective gasp that the tragedy elicited can still be heard across the country, along with debates about where to place the blame and calls for measures to prevent the same kind of thing from happening in the future.

The unfathomable event occurred on April 14. Finishing dinner with a friend at a kosher meat restaurant in Rosh Pina, Deri ordered her favorite dessert. As she stuck her fork in the chocolate cake covered in what was supposed to be non-dairy whipped cream, her buddy, Eden Shoshan, took a photo and posted it on Instagram. Neither young woman could have imagined that this would be Deri’s last picture – the one that would continue for days to accompany newspaper articles and TV broadcasts about the heartbreaking incident.

It began when Deri took a mouthful of the topping, which she rightly believed to be parve. For one thing, no kosher meat restaurant serves dairy products, or even has them on the premises. For another, Deri had eaten this particular dessert on several occasions. 

No sooner had she swallowed a spoonful, however, did she begin to have an allergic reaction.

“There’s milk in this!” she suddenly blurted out, while Shoshan ran to the chef to ask about the dessert’s ingredients. Though he initially assured her that it couldn’t possibly contain milk, a subsequent check revealed that an egregious error had been made. 

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Death by Harmony The mechanics of Chinese repression are a frightening marvel. Ilan Berman

Posted By on April 22nd, 2021

http://www.ilanberman.com/25310/death-by-harmony

We Have Been Harmonized: Life in China’s Surveillance State

by Kai Strittmatter (Custom House, 368 pp., $28.99)

In his masterful new book, We Have Been Harmonized: Life in China’s Surveillance State, veteran German journalist Kai Strittmatter chronicles the state surveillance arrangements that have become the world’s most advanced. He lays out for the reader the now-commonplace features of contemporary life in China: “preventative policing;” a social credit system that enforces citizen compliance through surveillance, economic penalties, and community pressure; “deep learning” algorithms that track items from consumer habits to offensive social media posts; and state manipulation of media content on a mass scale.

We Have Been Harmonized documents the pervasive ways in which the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has expanded into virtually every aspect of the lives of its citizens. It has done so with a set of singular goals: to eliminate dissent, reinforce the regime’s legitimacy, and force conformity. These objectives, driven by the government’s encouragement of nationalist sentiment and a massive aggregation of power by current Communist Party General Secretary and PRC President Xi Jinping, have been facilitated in recent years by a profusion of next-generation technologies.

In meticulous detail, Strittmatter explores and explains both the mechanics of these enablers of China’s 21st-century authoritarianism and their effects. His narrative includes Xinjiang, where technology has made possible the mass internment of over a million Uighur Muslims and the monitoring of millions more. It extends to the way in which China’s censors have policed, shaped, and, ultimately, stifled the country’s previously vibrant social media. The examples vary, but all of them follow a familiar arc: one of profound societal control designed to diminish critical thought, instill a single-minded allegiance to the party, impose docility and conformity, and encourage a trade-off between privacy and prosperity.

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Opinion: The ADL –  Democrats who happen to be Jewish By David Isaac

Posted By on April 22nd, 2021

https://worldisraelnews.com/opinion-the-adl-democrats-who-happen-to-be-jewish/

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) called for Fox New host Tucker Carlson’s head earlier this month.

In an over-the-top letter to Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott on April 9, ADL chief Jonathan Greenblatt said, “It is time for Carlson to go.” Carlson’s crime? According to the ADL letter, “an impassioned defense of the white supremacist ‘great replacement theory,’ the hateful notion that the white race is in danger of being ‘replaced’ by a rising tide of non-whites.”

Fox Chairman and CEO Lachlan Murdoch politely declined, pointing out that Carlson “decried and rejected replacement theory” in the April 8 episode in question. Carlson, for his part, gleefully replayed the segment as part of a longer discussion on April 13.

We have watched the segments closely and see nothing from Carlson worthy of the ADL’s censure.

Neither did 1,500 Orthodox rabbis represented by the Coalition for Jewish Values. They publicly went to the mat rebuking the ADL for “grossly misplaced charges of anti-Semitism.”

Carlson argued that “demographic change is the key to the Democratic party’s political ambitions. … When you change who votes, you change who wins. That has nothing inherently to do with race or nationality. It is the nature of democracy.”

One may or may not agree with this, but it’s not anti-Semitism.

Jonathan Tobin, the dean of American Jewish journalism, said the real weakness of the ADL’s argument “is that up until recently, the ones talking about immigrants replacing or overwhelming white voters have been liberals.”

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J Street Embraces Mahmoud Abbas; How Will US Jews Respond? by Moshe Phillips

Posted By on April 22nd, 2021

https://www.algemeiner.com/2021/04/22/j-street-embraces-mahmoud-abbas-how-will-us-jews-respond/

J Street’s decision to feature Mahmoud Abbas at its “first-ever virtual national conference” earlier this week, demonstrates just how far J Street is from it being the firmly pro-Israel, Zionist group it wants American Jews to believe it is.

Just three years ago this month — on April 30, 2018 — Abbas stood before the Palestine National Council’s opening session (PNC) and delivered a blatantly antisemitic speech.

Abbas stated that Jews have “no historical ties” to the Land of Israel, because they are actually descendants of the Turkish Khazar tribe (a bizarre and long-discredited conspiracy theory).

Abbas also said there has never been an antisemitic incident against Jews in Arab countries — “Not even once,” he declared. “Do you think I’m exaggerating? I challenge you [to find] even one incident against Jews in over 1,400 years.”

Then, Abbas insinuated that the Holocaust was caused by the Jews’ own “social behavior, [charging] interest, and financial matters.”

Abbas’ previous claims about the Holocaust — described in detail in his 1982 doctoral dissertation and subsequent book — include that only a few hundred thousand, not six million, Jews were killed by the Nazis; and that David Ben-Gurion collaborated with the Nazis to kill Jews, to garner world sympathy for creating a Jewish state.

What did J Street — which now speaks of “moderate Palestinian leaders” —  say about Abbas’ speech?

In a May 1, 2018, press release, J Street said that it “strongly condemns remarks made by President Mahmoud Abbas on Monday that featured absurd antisemitic tropes and deeply offensive comments on the history of the Jewish people and Israel.” J Street called Abbas’ speech “incendiary,” and argued that “there is absolutely no excuse” for what he said.