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Washington is wrong about China’s economy The US economy is weaker, and China’s stronger, than analysts believe by David Goldman

Posted By on May 31st, 2019

https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/05/article/washington-is-wrong-about-chinas-economy/

Americans want to believe that their economy is doing well and that China’s economy is doing badly, as President Trump keeps saying. One shouldn’t blame Trump for this – underestimating competitors is America’s national pastime.

A recent embarrassing example was a report by Wells Fargo analyst Roger Read featured on CNBC, claiming that a fall in the growth rate in China’s diesel consumption “is most likely tied to economic factors and the effects of the tariff ‘war’ with the US.”

As physicist Wolfgang Pauli once said, this isn’t even wrong. The fellow from Wells Fargo failed to observe that China’s rail traffic is growing 10%, year-on-year, which is also the rate of expansion of China’s rail network. The more China ships by rail, the less dependent it is on diesel trucks.

The relationship is robust statistically (I’ll spare you the econometrics, which show that lagged values for changes in diesel demand predict changes in rail traffic). The analyst also failed to observe that heavy truck sales reached an all-time record in March 2019, driven by vehicles powered by natural gas.

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Glazov Video: UK Police Escort Muslim Mob to Attack Tommy When Britain died.

Posted By on May 31st, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273888/glazov-video-uk-police-escort-muslim-mob-attack-frontpagemagcom

In this new Jamie Glazov Video, Jamie discusses UK Police Escort Muslim Mob to Attack Tommy, and he sheds a disturbing and tragic light on When Britain died.

Don’t miss it!

And make sure to watch Tommy Robinson reveal “If They Murdered Me,” where he exposes how the UK authorities deliberately put him in harm’s way:

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Boris Johnson Is Being Prosecuted over a Campaign Slogan By Andrew Stuttaford

Posted By on May 31st, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/boris-johnson-is-being-prosecuted-over-a-campaign-slogan/

Britain’s censors have found yet another silencing tool.

Britain is a country where tweeting, preaching, or posting the wrong thing can get someone in trouble with the police. Under the circumstances, it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that Boris Johnson, one of the most prominent of those who campaigned for the U.K. to leave the EU — and now a possible leader of the Conservative party — is facing prosecution for the official Leave campaign’s claim that the U.K. sent “the EU £350 million a week.” This was money, Vote Leave asserted, that could be used to help fund the perpetually needy National Health Service, a claim that was plastered along the side of its big red campaign bus.

It was also a claim that — like many others made by both sides in the course of the referendum campaign — was not quite as accurate as, shall we say, it might have been. Although it is true that Britain’s notional EU bill was then about £350 million a week (in fact a little more), that figure was quoted before taking account of the annual deduction that Mrs. Thatcher had first secured for the U.K. back in the 1980s and, for that matter, other payments channeled to Britain via Brussels. After adjusting for all that, Britain’s real weekly contribution was probably a little more than half the infamous £350 million.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Democrats’ Curious Disdain for Nuclear Power By Robert Bryce

Posted By on May 31st, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/democrats-curious-disdain-for-nuclear-power/

Until they embrace nuclear energy as a key to reducing emissions, the party’s many presidential candidates will be hard to take seriously on climate change.

Climate change is the No. 1 issue for Democrats, with a recent poll showing 82 percent of Democratic voters listed it as their top priority. To appeal to those voters, contenders for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination routinely call climate change an “existential threat” to the nation and the world. But amid all their rhetoric and promises of massively expensive plans to tackle the problem, these same Democrats — with the notable exception of Senator Cory Booker — steadfastly refuse to utter two critical words: nuclear power.

The Democrats’ disdain for nuclear energy deserves attention, because there is no credible pathway toward large-scale decarbonization that doesn’t include lots of it. That fact was reinforced Tuesday, when the International Energy Agency published a report declaring that without more nuclear energy, global carbon dioxide emissions will surge and “efforts to transition to a cleaner energy system will become drastically harder and more costly.”

How costly? The IEA estimates that “$1.6 trillion in additional investment would be required in the electricity sector in advanced economies from 2018 to 2040” if the use of nuclear energy continued to decline. That, in turn, would mean higher prices, as “electricity supply costs would be close to $80 billion higher per year on average for advanced economies as a whole.”

EDUCATION, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Aboriginal Grievance Industry and the Demise of the University By David Solway

Posted By on May 31st, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/the-aboriginal-grievance-industry-and-the-demise-of-the-university/

In a brace of scathing articles for the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship (SAFS), former Native Studies professor at Brandon University in Manitoba, Jeff Muehlbauer, recounts the doctrinal travesty and ideological perversity that has overtaken the modern academy.

Muehlbauer is a Canadian linguist fluent in German, Icelandic, Latin and Greek, with a specialty in the Cree language and its various dialects. He worked with native populations in the province, recording “aboriginal memory” in order to preserve native recollection of a past fast disappearing with the older generation. He soon ran afoul of the Native Studies establishment at his university, which had its own politicized agenda, namely, the preservation not of aboriginal memory but of a particular ideological purpose and perspective regarding indigenous experience.

A crucial issue currently galvanizing the Canadian university system has to do with the suffering of native peoples in the now-abolished religiously oriented Residential Schools, which sought both to convert aboriginal students to Christianity and to integrate them into the wider culture. The discipline was often harsh, sometimes abominable, and pedagogical methods generally punitive. The shame and resentment which followed in their wake became a national cause célèbre.

A Truth and Reconciliation Commission was set up from 2008 to 2015, leading to a so-called national “conversation” and ongoing political controversy.

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Inside China’s War on Christians As the faithful grow in number, Beijing steps up repression that is wide and deep. By Nina Shea and Bob Fu

Posted By on May 31st, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/inside-chinas-war-on-christians-11559256446

June 4, 1989, was a seminal day for China’s faithful, as the Chinese government massacred thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. The same day, Communist Party leaders watched as pro-democracy candidates in Poland supplanted Communist rule—with Pope John Paul II’s indispensable support. Together the events jolted Beijing into tightening its control over religion.

Post-Tiananmen, Christian groups were made to register with state “patriotic” associations or risk punishment as “evil cults.” Anxious to maintain access to Western markets, Beijing selectively enforced these rules in large cities. The rural Christian underground bore the brunt of church closings and mass internment of their members in labor camps.

Chinese Christianity still experienced spectacular growth in the next 30 years. Today there could be well over 100 million Chinese Christians. All but 36 million practice their faith outside government control. Purdue sociologist Fenggang Yang has projected that China could have nearly 250 million Christians by 2030. The Communist Party numbers 90 million.

President Xi Jinping last year began enforcing religious regulations to rein in church growth and bend Christian belief to party dictates. Mr. Xi gave direct control of churches to the officially atheistic Communist Party. Some urban underground megachurches were shut down. Thousands of congregants were arrested and several prominent Protestant pastors received lengthy prison sentences. Earlier this month, the regime launched a nationwide campaign to eradicate unregistered churches.

Mr. Xi calls this policy “sinicization.” The goal is to make religions “instruments of the Party,” the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions asserts. The government confirmed this when it inadvertently posted internal documents—downloaded by ChinaAid, a nonprofit Christian human-rights organization—revealing that it intended to “contain the overheated growth of Christianity.”

Last year in Henan province, 10,000 Protestant churches were ordered shut, even though most were registered with the state. During 2018, more than one million Christians were threatened or persecuted and 5,000 arrested. Among them is an American permanent resident, Pastor John Sanqiang Cao, 60, who is serving seven years for “organizing illegal border crossings” to deliver aid in Myanmar. CONTINUE AT SITE

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Examining the Latest False Alarm on Climate High seas won’t displace 187 million people—and the claim isn’t even new. By Bjorn Lomborg

Posted By on May 31st, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/examining-the-latest-false-alarm-on-climate-11559256615

You’ve probably seen the latest alarming headlines: Rising sea levels from climate change could flood 187 million people out of their homes. Don’t believe it. That figure is unrealistic—and it isn’t even new. It appears in a new scholarly paper, whose authors plucked it from a paper published in 2011. What the earlier paper actually found was that 187 million could be forced to move in the unlikely event that, in the next 80 years, no one does anything to adapt to dramatic rises in sea level.

In real life, the 2011 paper explained, humans “adapt proactively,” and “such adaptation can greatly reduce the possible impacts.” That means “the problem of environmental refugees almost disappears.” Realistic assumptions reduce the number to between 41,000 and 305,000—at most, less than 1/600th of the figure in those headlines.

Sober findings get less attention than alarming and far-fetched speculation. The United Nations’ climate-panel scenarios all show that the world will be far richer and more resilient by the end of the century. That means we’ll be better able to tackle challenges like flooding—as much poorer societies have done for centuries. We have more know-how and technology than ever to build dikes, surge barriers and dams, expand beaches and construct dunes, make ecosystem-based barriers like mangrove buffers, improve building codes and construction techniques, and use land planning and hazard mapping to minimize flooding.

Journalists looking for alarming headlines get help from climate scientists who gloss over adaptation and from public-relations teams that know their audience. A 2018 paper looked at two scenarios. In the first, sea levels rise almost 3 feet during the next 81 years, yet no one thinks to change the height of a single dike anywhere in the world. That would cost $14 trillion globally a year.

HISTORY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Ramadan Koran lesson: Curse Jews and Christians 17-times daily, pt. II Andrew Bostom

Posted By on May 30th, 2019

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/23949

The notion that ambitious western powers worked hand in hand with duplicitous Arab rulers to advance western interests and to crush Islam became a pillar of Muslim revivalist discourses.

Dissenting glosses on Koran 1:7 certainly do exist, but they remain marginal. Al-Razi (d. 1209), dubbed “independent-minded,” and willing to stray from analyses of the Koran reliant upon “tradition-based exegesis,” i.e., “sayings of the Prophet and first generations [of Muslims],” provides perhaps the best “classical” era example in his respected Koranic commentary. But al-Razi, who argues for a more qualified general interpretation of Koran 1:7, “it is possible to say that the former [those incurring wrath] are the unbelievers, and the latter [those who are astray] the hypocrites,” still concedes,

“The well-known opinion [among exegetes] is that those who incur wrath are the Jews, based on: ‘those who incurred the curse of Allah and His wrath’ (Koran 5:60), and that those who are astray are the Christians, based on: ‘…who went wrong in times gone by, who misled many, and strayed (themselves) from the even way’ (Koran 5:77).”

More importantly, as Professor Gordon Nickel has described with elegant understatement, Al-Razi, so-called champion of the “self-evident truths of reason” sanctioned merciless jihad depredations against all non-Muslims per his glosses on Koran 9:5 and 9:29, rendering his “iconoclastic” gloss on Koran 1:7 no barometer of rational ecumenism. Al-Razi, linked:

“…the theological error that he attributes to the People of the Book [Jews and Christians, primarily] with a command to fight them. He even seems to suggest that the imposition of jizya [the deliberately humiliating poll-tax tribute]  was a ‘kindness’ that the People of the Book did not deserve….[their] false faith…and no other reason…made them deserving of Muslim attack ‘until they pay the tribute readily, having been humbled’….‘accepting the jizya from them and sparing their lives is a great blessing for them’.”

BOOKS, HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Ben Weingarten :The Democrat-Deep State-Media Cover-Up that Protected the Russiagate Narrative — Revisiting the Awan Cybersecurity Scandal with Luke Rosiak

Posted By on May 30th, 2019

https://benweingarten.com/2019/05/revisiting-the-democrat-awan-brothers-cybersec

Luke Rosiak  is an investigative reporter for the Daily Caller News Foundation where he broke arguably one of the biggest scandals in the history of the federal government — one the media refused to cover and the prosecutors refused to prosecute.

This is the story of Awangate, which proved no match for Russiagate — but should have on its merits.

It is the subject of Rosiak’s Obstruction of Justice: How the Deep State Risked National Security to Protect the Democrats, a book that has taken on new significance as the treasonous Russian collusion narrative collapses.

I had Luke Rosiak on the podcast to reflect on the story of the Awans, and its far broader significance for our nation.

What We Discussed
How the Awans amassed so much power on Capitol Hill
The breathtaking litany of criminality of the Awan conspiracy
Why and how House Democrats and the Department of Justice covered up Awangate – and House Republicans enabled it
Why Rosiak is confident members of Congress were blackmailed and are still susceptible to blackmail by the Awans, how deep the blackmail threat runs and why Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz’s behavior proves it
How politicians and bureaucrats put self-interest above national security
The inextricably intertwined relationship between Russiagate and Awangate, and what both “investigations” say about the Deep State
The Democrat-Media-Deep State collusion over Awangate
Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her underlings’ role in rigging the Awan case for the Democrats’ benefit
The government’s failure to do anything to prevent future Awans from infiltrating Congress

EDUCATION, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Illinois high school district in the spotlight for ‘Teaching Palestine’ course The lesson, according to the course description obtained by JNS, “brings together critical educators who want to teach about Palestine and the Palestine liberation struggle.”

Posted By on May 30th, 2019

https://www.jns.org/illinois-high-school-district-in-the-spotlight-for-teaching-palestine

Niles Township High School District 219, comprising Niles North and Niles West, two schools with many alumni on this list, and a significant current Jewish student population,  has developed an incendiary course for teachers  on the Israeli Palestinian conflict, prepared  by the anti-zionist Jewish Voices for Peace and various pro-Palestinian groups. The course is pure propaganda , and in connection with course material provided for instruction by teachers, represents an attempt to change the thinking on this conflict in short order…..Richard Baehr

(May 30, 2019 / JNS) An Illinois school district is under fire for a course offered to teachers titled “Teaching Palestine.”

The Niles Township High School District 219 serves Lincolnwood and parts of Morton Grove, Niles and Skokie in Cook County, home to Chicago. There are an estimated 291,800 Jews in Illinois with most of them living in the Chicagoland area.

The lesson, according to the course description obtained by JNS, “brings together critical educators who want to teach about Palestine and the Palestine liberation struggle.”

Objectives include developing “a deeper understanding of the history and current political context of the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the Palestine liberation struggle,” examining and analyzing “existing curriculum on Palestine, the Palestinian liberation struggle and Israel.”

Goals also include discussing “concrete strategies for how to respond to Zionist professional developments and curricula or when parents/staff/others object to anti-Zionist curriculum,” developing grade appropriate scope and sequence for teaching Palestine” and making “curriculum connections between Palestine and issues affecting our students, such as: state/police violence, the struggle for racial justice in the U.S., settler colonialism in Palestine and the U.S., access to education for historically marginalized youth.”

Information from groups including Jewish Voice for Peace, a prominent anti-Israel group nationwide, is used in the course.