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China’s Aggression in the South China Sea by Debalina Ghoshal

Posted By on April 18th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14068/china-aggression-south-china-sea

As protesters gathered outside the Chinese Embassy on April 10 in Manila, to express their outrage at China’s naval aggression, U.S. and Filipino troops conducted a joint military exercise in the South China Sea, aimed at preparing the Philippines to “deal with any potential island invasion.”Any such shift on the part of Manila towards Moscow should cause Washington to step up its engagement with the Philippines, to prevent Chinese and Russian attempts at controlling the South China Sea’s rich resources and China possibly seizing it as a maritime chokepoint.

A long-standing territorial dispute between Beijing and Manila over Thitu Island (also known as Pagasa), one of the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, resurfaced in full force recently, when more than 200 Chinese boats were spotted in the vicinity of the island. Thitu Island is controlled and administered by the Philippines, and Filipino civilians and military personnel inhabit the island. Sovereignty over the island is claimed by the Philippines, China, Taiwan and Vietnam.

Increased Chinese encroachment on the Spratly Islands — and a recent “goodwill visit” of Russian Navy ships to the Philippines — should be cause for alarm in Washington.

In recent years, Beijing-Manila relations improved to the point where Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte and Chinese President Xi Jinping signed 29 cooperation agreements, including a memorandum of understanding on joint oil and gas development in the South China Sea.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Another Carbon Tax Defeat Alberta conservatives oust the provincial left. Is Ottawa next?

Posted By on April 18th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/another-carbon-tax-defeat-11555542235

A provincial election in Canada isn’t usually big news, but Tuesday’s victory by the conservatives in the western province of Alberta is an exception. Voters elected as premier Jason Kenney, who had promised that his government’s first act would be to repeal the carbon tax imposed by incumbent Rachel Notley.

Readers may recall that when Ms. Notley’s left-leaning New Democratic Party (NDP) wrested power from a previous conservative party in 2015, it was supposed to represent the new wave of climate-change politics. If the left could win promising a carbon tax in the energy capital of Canada, then it could win anywhere and the demise of fossil fuels was inevitable.

Well, not so fast. Mr. Kenney, who served in the national cabinet under Prime Minister Stephen Harper, leads a United Conservative Party (UCP) formed two years ago by the merger of other parties. He mounted a bread-and-butter campaign, hammering away at the NDP’s carbon tax as “all economic pain, no environmental gain.” Upon victory he announced: “Alberta is open for business.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

WELCOME TO MIDDLE EAST REALITY: YORAM ETTINGER

Posted By on April 18th, 2019

https://bit.ly/2I6DRyp

Western policy makers and public opinion molders tend to oversimplify Middle East reality and subordinate the 1,400 year old unpredictable, violent and shifty intra-Arab and intra-Muslim non-Western environment to their own Western state-of-mind and well-intentioned wishful-thinking.

Middle East reality – as demonstrated, systematically, by the Arab walk – has frustrated Western misperceptions of the “Middle East conflict,” which has never been the Arab-Israeli conflict. Furthermore, and contrary to

Western conventional wisdom, Middle East reality has underlined the Palestinian issue as a non-core-cause of Middle East turbulence, not a crown jewel of Arab policy making, nor the root cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Moreover, Western peace initiatives tend to downplay the fact that Middle East reality has yet to experience long-term intra-Arab or intra-Muslim domestic and regional peaceful coexistence.

While Western observers tend to refer to the Arab-Israeli conflict as “the Middle East conflict,” in reality, the Middle East has been dominated by a multitude of intra-Arab and intra-Muslim conflicts, totally unrelated to Israel, neither directly nor indirectly.

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Paris Weeps as Notre Dame Burns: Nidra Poller

Posted By on April 18th, 2019

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/paris-weeps-as-notre-dame-burns/

April 15th, President Macron was scheduled to address the nation at 8 PM, to present a sort of executive summary of government policy, revised but not diverted by five months of weekly Gilet Jaune actions. I switched on the television 10 minutes before the hour, expecting to hear the usual quibbling: The Gilets Jaunes expect nothing and won’t be satisfied until the president resigns. What a surprise. Commentators, specialists, journalists and the man in the street don’t think any real problem will be really solved. That’s a safe bet. They will all, who knows why, entertain the confusion between the Gilets Jaunes, boiled down to some thirty thousand seditionists, and French voters that may or may not have joined in the great national debate. President Macron does not have to satisfy the Gilets Jaunes. We live in a democracy, not a tyranny of turbulent minorities.

I turn on the television.It’s Notre Dame in flames.

You don’t have to be Catholic, Christian, or a lover of cathedral architecture. You don’t have to be Parisian, French, or a citizen of the western world. Raging flames devouring Notre Dame can bring tears to your eyes. It is universally heartbreaking.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Ridd Case: Much More Than Just One Man’s Victory Walter Starck

Posted By on April 17th, 2019

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2019/04/the-ridd-case-much-more-than-just-one-mans-victory/

A vicious and prolonged attempt by James Cook University’s administration to silence Professor Peter Ridd’s criticism of dubious and misleading research claims concerning the Great Barrier Reef has culminated in a resounding legal decision by Judge Vasta of the Federal Circuit Court in Brisbane. Handed down on April 16, the decision found that all of the seventeen findings, two censures, eight directions, and final employment termination made by JCU against Professor Ridd were illegal. The court’s decision can be downloaded here.

This is a major victory, not just for Peter Ridd, but also for science, academic freedom, the legal system and the public. It also presents a clear need, as well as an obligation, for the JCU Council to intervene and take steps necessary to stop the rot and repair the damage. The panel should see that Professor Ridd is re-employed, issued an apologisy, and compensated for all he has been subjected to in this sordid episode. Doing so without delay, with full acceptance of the court decision and the sacking of those most culpable is fully demanded, in my opinion, by the court decision. To do this would go a long way to salvaging the university’s reputation. To allow the perpetrators of this farce to continue to spend further millions of dollars on lengthy appeals can only inflict further damage on both Ridd and the university. The council is empowered to do this; it is their clear duty to do so.

The ongoing saga of questionable claims by James Cook University researchers entails much more than just an academic spat. It involves the credibility of millions of dollars annually in taxpayer funded research on which important national policies are being implemented. In the case of JCU, they are a preeminent institution involved in research on the Great Barrier Reef and the policies affected include major impacts on tourism, fishing, mining and the agricultural sector for the whole region.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

A Turning Point in the Campus Free-Speech Crisis By Stanley Kurtz

Posted By on April 17th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/campus-free-speech-turning-point-university-of-arizona/

Amid the weekly cavalcade of campus horrors, it’s easy to miss a story that will mark a major turning point in the campus free-speech crisis, whether for good or ill. The growing confrontation at the University of Arizona over students who disrupted a Career Day presentation by Border Patrol agents is not your run-of-the-mill campus outrage. Instead it’s that rare case where student disruptors are facing real consequences for their actions. This is in significant part because of a new Arizona law strengthening discipline for such disruptions. If the university holds fast and the disruptors pay a price for silencing others, the move will carry national implications. Yet if the growing rebellion by anti-free-speech students and faculty at UA gets its way, the university will back down, the border patrol will be permanently barred from campus, and the university president could lose his job. That would be a disaster for free speech, and would mark a new and dangerous turn in America’s campus crisis.

Before taking the measure of the stakes in this battle, we’ve got to review the precipitating incident.

On March 19, a UA student named Denisse Moreno Melchor noticed a pair of U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents at the school. “I was like, ‘Get out,’ and started chanting and disrupting that space until they left,” she told the school paper the next day. The March 19 event that Melchor had — in her own words — disrupted, was a Career Day presentation being given by two border-patrol agents to the school’s Criminal Justice Association. You can see from videos originally taken by Melchor and reposted here that a she is hurling insults at the officers through a door, continuously calling them “murderers,” the “murder patrol,” and an “extension of the KKK.” As the officers are distracted by the chanting, some of the students in attendance move toward the door to help secure the scene.

MEDIA Comments turned off

Notre Dame: What Happened? Diana West

Posted By on April 17th, 2019

https://www.theepochtimes.com/notre-dame-what-happened_2881890.html
Even as fires raged and consumed Notre Dame uncontrollably before the crying eyes of the world, the narrative was being carefully constructed in its newsrooms. Had to be an accident, most likely. Just one of those things, probably. Renovation work was going on, dontcha know. There must have been a spark in the attic and, whoosh, Notre Dame was aflame.

Maybe that is exactly what happened. However, there was something doubly nightmarish about watching not one, but two Fox News anchors (Shepard Smith and Neil Cavuto) prevent guests from discussing a spate of recent attacks, including arson, on Catholic churches in France lest some logical discussion of the possibility that we were looking at an epic attack of anti-Catholic or anti-Christian arson might ensue—and you know where that goes.

Given what we have all been through as veterans of the jihad, lo, these nearly 18 years, it’s the pathetic height of absurdity to try to stop a rational being from wondering whether there is an Islamic connection to the burning of Notre Dame—amid all of the other possibilities, including criminal negligence on an epic scale. Maybe Pierre the Electrician went off duty after a hard day’s work renovating Notre Dame yesterday, lit a Gauloise Brune, and tossed his match into some 17th century Gazettes de France heaped on the 13th century floorboards in the medieval attic—and the rest is tragedy. But maybe not.

The mainstream media can bring the conflagration “live” into our lives, burning a new scene of the last days of the West into our consciousness, but they won’t let us process it outside of their politically planted poles of “thought.” Inside their televised “safe space,” analysis is politically correct, sharia compliant, and led not by any sort of inquiring minds, but by functionaries following the playbook they were handed down from the front office.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

“President Trump Responds to Omar Accurately and Truthfully” Rabbi Arye Spero

Posted By on April 17th, 2019

https://nationalconferenceofjewishaffairs.org

 The following letter to President Trump was hand-delivered at the White House by Rabbi Spero, who was attending a special gathering for key Jewish leaders:

“President Trump tweeted the appropriate response to Rep. Omar, who described the bombing of the Twin Towers as merely ‘some people did something.’ Omar trivialized 9/11, referring to it in a cavalier fashion.

The President correctly demonstrated via his video the enormity and the devastating catastrophe of 9/11. This has nothing to do with racism, rather the correct response to a disrespectful statement made by Omar regarding this country, demonstrating her gross indifference to the suffering of Americans.“Those that impute racism to the President’s tweet are living in their own make-believe world or, worse, are themselves trying to incite an issue of racism where such is not the case. People of truth and historical awareness cannot remain silent out of fear that their opposition will fabricate claims of racism.

“Freedom of expression is a two-way street. Patriotic Americans are as equally free to respond and give their opinions as are those, like Omar, who weekly express some type of hateful indictment of America. Let us not forget that Omar repeatedly agitates and incites her audiences to go out and ‘make people uncomfortable’.“Thankfully we have a man of President Trump’s candor and stature, who is willing to fight against the rewriting of history and protect the free speech of Americans defending their country.

Mr. Trump has issued an Executive Order protecting free speech from the politically-correct censorship prevalent on campuses and is, by his example, giving support to all those who wish to exercise their right to tell historic truth.”

HISTORY Comments turned off

How The Allied Powers Won The Fight For The Sky In World War II By Madeline Osburn

Posted By on April 17th, 2019

https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/17/allied-powers-won-fight-sky-world-war-ii/

To achieve air supremacy in war means to be able to put your assets in the air with the ability to destroy your enemy’s cities, troops, and ability to fight back. In the online course, “The Second World Wars,” Professor Victor David Hanson discusses the technological advances in air power made by German, American, and Japanese forces throughout the course of World World II, and how one side slowly achieved air supremacy.

Before 1941, there was a clear pattern to the victories achieved by German forces. Germany invaded Poland, Denmark, Luxembourg, Holland, Norway, Belgium, France, and Yugoslavia. Each one of these victories was against an unprepared neighbor and a surprise attack. Germany shocked everyone with their sudden domination of European democracies, especially with their success with a new military tactic: blitzkrieg. The blitzkrieg method involved violently and quickly mobilizing forces in the air and on the ground, defeating opponents with series of short attacks.
What we know now is that Germany’s opponents, presumably stunned and alarmed by the attacks, never stopped to evaluate the limitations of Germany’s power, specifically in the air. Could they defeat an enemy in a battle that was not a surprise attack? Could their planes reach the United States? Britain? The answer was no.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Buttigieg Bashes GOP for Embracing ‘White-Guy Identity Politics’ By Jack Crowe

Posted By on April 17th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/pete-buttigieg-bashes-gop-for-embracing-white-guy-identity-politics/

Southbend, Ind. mayor and 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg suggested in a recent interview that the strain of populism harnessed by President Donald Trump represents a “white-guy identity politics.”
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“By far the political movement that is most based on identity politics is Trumpism. It’s based on white-guy identity politics. It uses race to divide the working and middle class,” Buttigieg told the Associated Press when asked whether Trump relied on racial animus to win the White House. “There are a lot of strategies to blame problems on people who look different or are of a different faith or even of a different sexuality or gender identity. . . . It’s a cynical political strategy that works in the short term but winds up weakening the whole country in the long term.”

Since rising over the past few months from relative obscurity to third in national polls of the race, Buttigieg has turned criticisms traditionally leveled by Republicans at Democrats around on the party of Trump.

“First comes freedom, something that our conservative friends have come to think of as their own. . . . Let me tell you: Freedom doesn’t belong to one political party. Freedom has been a Democratic bedrock ever since the New Deal. Freedom from want, freedom from fear,” Buttigieg said when announcing his campaign Sunday.