When Money Talks Loudly

Green Party Contortions

The headline said it all: "Greens caught bending party policy to grant $11.7m to private school in Taranaki".  At least that's what newspaper Stuff wanted us to understand.  

The NZ Greens are normally casting their political "support net" well left of centre. When it comes to education that translates into being strongly anti-private schools and strong proponents of  a government run education and schooling system. 

But not in this case.  One of the Green's leaders has been "caught bending party policy".  He has supported government funding of a private school. 

The Green Party has been caught bending its own party policy after a private school in Taranaki was given $11.7 million to fund an expansion programme.

The money comes from the Government’s $3 billion shovel-ready projects fund, and was announced in a press release from Greens co-leader James Shaw who said the grant to Green School New Zealand would help the school expand its roll from 120 students to 250, creating 200 jobs.  “Securing over 200 jobs will help direct more money into the parts of the economy where most people earn their livelihood. These are the parts of the economy that are sustained when public investment is directed at getting people into work and earning money that they then spend in their local communities,” Shaw said.

“The support we are providing will help Green School to meet growing demand from parents all over New Zealand, and the rest of the world, wanting to enrol their children. This will mean more families can take the opportunity to put down roots in Taranaki and contribute to the future growth of the region,” he said. 

OK.  So maybe this strange Green support can be justified by the Greens because it will facilitate work.  All those jobs!  Also, the name of the school will be "Green School".  Presumably this moniker is not because some bloke called Green has donated $11.7 million to fund the school.  Of course not.  The Greens want a school where Greenist ideology will be imparted to aspiring young Greenists. 

Hold on.  It turns out that the pupils of Green School--a private school--will be off shore students.  It will also take NZ students.  But only the richest. 

But Green School New Zealand is a private school which charges up to $24,000 a year for New Zealand students and $43,000 a year for international students.

Green Party policy is opposed to state funding being given to private schools, and wants it to be gradually phased out.  ‘Public funding for private schools should be phased out and transferred to public schools,” says the party’s current education policy.

It seems that Green Party ideology and policy just got run over by one of its leaders.  There's a word for that . . . hypocrisy.

"As Deep and Clammy As The Grave"

Were Holiday-Wrecking Quarantines Worth It? 

The Government Haven't a Clue!

Peter Hitchens
The Mail On Sunday

As the [UK] Government wrecks another few thousand holidays with sudden quarantine, you might assume that it takes this sort of thing seriously, and keeps close track of it.

After all, you don’t force people to abandon holidays they have saved up for all year, and stampede them into dashing for the nearest port or airport, or expect them to spend money they haven’t got on cruelly inflated ticket prices so they can meet a 4am deadline, just on a whim, do you?

You don’t lightly demand that, if they miss that deadline, they remain under house arrest for 14 days, unable to go to work, do you?  Surely you do those things because you genuinely believe that there is a grave danger if people remain in the affected countries, which must be severely contained? I thought so too. But is it so?

When Doing Grievous Harm Becomes the Norm

The Factory of "Gender Change"

The Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) in the UK is increasingly becoming a place of controversy.  A long article has appeared in Spiked  detailing the arguments and counter arguments that are racking the GIDS.  It is worth a read.

Here are some striking paragraphs:

Unsurprisingly, GIDS’ activity at the Tavistock has been subject to increasing public attention, and, more recently, scrutiny. In 2018, an internal report, by then staff governor Dr David Bell, effectively accused GIDS of fast-tracking children and adolescents for gender transition. Featuring damning quotes from whistle-blowing clinicians and unhappy staff members, it reinforced the growing sense that GIDS has been a little too eager to encourage young people to transition and potentially undergo life-changing medical treatment. Indeed, since 2017, over 35 clinicians have quit GIDS because they are worried about ‘overdiagnoses’ of gender dysphoria. Sonia Appleby, who works at GIDS as its Named Professional for Safeguarding Children, is even bringing a case against the Tavistock on the grounds that it is failing in its duty to safeguard children, by encouraging staff not to report any child safety concerns to her. . . . 

Nevertheless, Marcus and Susan insist that hormone therapy and other treatments should be a last resort, and even then only in extraordinary cases. They should be something that takes place after all other avenues of therapy and mental-health treatment have been explored. But too many at the Tavistock, Marcus says, are simply ‘not interested in the downside of treatment’. ‘There’s all this sort of pressure to say, “Well, it’s not really a medical decision – is it any different from, you know, having plastic surgery?”‘

Yet it is very different from having your nose done or your ears pinned back. Hormone therapy, for instance, is a serious, life-altering treatment. ‘It should try to not be at all for children’, says Susan, citing the potential for future ‘sterility or infertility’. She points out how absurd it is that we are encouraging some young people to take a decision that could change their lives forever. ‘There’s a reason we don’t let children marry or have tattoos. And somehow we’ve unrolled this treatment!’ . . . . 

This problem has come to head in the case of Keira Bell. Bell underwent surgery and medication to transition to male during her teen years, and is now acting as a claimant, alongside Mother A, in a legal case being brought against the Tavistock, for which Susan is a witness. Bell claims she was given poor care. She alleges that instead of challenging her demands to transition, and taking into consideration her poor mental health at the time, doctors and nurses at the Tavistock allowed her to undergo life-altering treatment which she now regrets. ‘I was allowed to run with this idea that I had, almost like a fantasy, as a teenager’, Bell told the BBC, ‘and it has affected me in the long run as an adult’. When asked about the importance of listening to, and not questioning, children who are claiming to want to change genders, Bell told a BBC reporter ‘it’s up to institutions like the Tavistock to step in and make children reconsider what they’re saying’. . . . 

 Yet at the same time, it is not enough to ask questions of GIDS, or trans-activist charities like Mermaids. We need to ask ourselves searching questions, too. After all, what has happened to our society that means thousands of children are encouraged to feel estranged from their own bodies? Why is it that some feel so averse that they want to change those bodies? And what does it say about us as adults that instead of questioning these children’s demands we are all too willing to give in to them?

Extraordinary To Be Sure

A Most Remarkable Soldier

We were delighted to receive a special birthday gift recently.  It was a large book.  The opportunity to sit down and read a worthy volume during mid-winter was welcome.  The author is Tom Scott.  The volume's title is Searching for Charlie: In Pursuit of the Real Charles Upham VC & Bar (Takapuna: Upstart Press, 2020).

As most of our readers will be aware, Upham was a remarkable man.  To win a VC (Victoria Cross) is rare enough.  To win two is pretty much unheard of.  Some historians have even reckoned that Upham's exploits were worth three, if not four VC's. 

But there is something even more remarkable.  Many years later, at his death there were four death notices published for Charlie Upham in New Zealand papers.  There were the usual kind--death notices and appreciations from family and from his colleagues.  There was also a third from the Greek community, extending their deepest sympathy. 

But there was one more obituary.  It read:

UPHAM, Charles Hazlitt (VC and Bar)
One of the bravest and one of the best soldiers--in
deep respect.  Sympathy for family and friends  on behalf
of the Association of former Afrika Korps, Karl Heniz
Boettger (Col. Ret'd), Hamburg. Germany.

Tom Scott writes:

Whoa! The Germans put a death notice in a New Zealand newspaper saluting a former foe?  How extraordinary is that? [Tom Scott, Searching for Charlie, p. 26.]

Indeed. 

US Democrats Wedded to Abortion

Three Reasons the Democratic Convention Downplayed Abortion

. . . And Covered It Up

JOHN McCormack
National Review Online


Transport yourself back in time to May 2019 and imagine you had been told that the 2020 Democratic National Convention would take a muted approach to the issue of abortion. This prediction would have been shocking.

The 2012 Democratic convention, amid the “war on women” and the travails of Sandra Fluke, was a rip-roaring abortion jamboree.

The 2016 Democratic convention somehow managed to be an even more pro-abortion extravaganza: The party platform called explicitly, for the first time, to provide unlimited taxpayer-funding of abortion for Medicaid recipients, a plank one Democratic senator called “crazy.” The president of Planned Parenthood was given an 8:00 p.m. speaking slot. The leader of NARAL spoke onstage about the time she aborted her first child, not because of any medical issue but because it was an inconvenient time to have a child, and the crowd cheered.

In May 2019, several states across the South had just passed laws that would ban abortion when a baby’s heartbeat is detectable early in pregnancy (if the federal courts allowed states to govern themselves on this issue). Democratic activists were panicked and outraged. One would have reasonably thought the 2020 Democratic convention would have put the “war on women” front and center.

But that didn’t happen. There were some brief mentions of “codifying Roe v. Wade” and “reproductive justice” scattered throughout the four nights of speeches — but nothing rhetorically close to the 2012 or 2016 DNC in terms of its emphasis on abortion.

There are at least three reasons for that.

Hysterical Foxes Running the Hen House

From Climate Change to Coronavirus 

We Are All Victims of Deep State Hysteria

James Delingpole
Breitbart London

If you want to know why the world is in such a mess, don’t blame the feckless politicians, blame the paranoid, credulous, insidiously leftist Deep State.

This certainly seems to be true where the United Kingdom is concerned, as I’ve learned from two damning pieces — one by an anonymous Civil Service insider at Lockdown Sceptics; the other one in The Critic, titled ‘The BLM Takeover of Whitehall.’  Both are simultaneously depressing and illuminating. No matter how useless Boris Johnson and his ministers are, you realise, their doctrinaire leftist Civil Servants are both far more inept and far more dangerous.

Here’s a flavour of the Black Lives Matter article: 

 But just like U.S. federal administrators in Washington (according to City Journal), the mandarins in Whitehall have become partisans of “Critical Race Theory” and its radical tenets about “systemic racism”, “white privilege”, and “white fragility”. They have adopted this left-wing ideology, promoted it, and are now institutionalising it throughout the Civil Service, root and branch, using new internal organisations such as “Project Race” and the “Race Ambassadors Network”. Your taxes have paid for these views: it’s about time you saw in the press what you were getting for your money.

And here is what for me is the killer paragraph by the Covid Civil Servant writing at Lockdown Sceptics.

The Giant Chasm

Unprofessional

It has long been hinted that New Zealand's Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern was a sandwich short of a picnic.  She talks a big game.  She has talked up all the wonderful things her administration was doing when it came to controlling the border.  Sadly, neither she nor her colleagues could hide forever the failures.  

Here is an excerpt from Stuff.

The Revelations About the Border Botch-ups

Given the importance of the borders, and making sure that those coming into the country don’t cause community transmission, the Government has been making promises for the last two months that every worker employed in relation to the border would be routinely tested. The Prime Minister, the Minister of Health, and the Director-General of Health have continued to reassure the public that such testing was being carried out.

The media have pressured the Government over these promises, with many journalists attempting to verify that routine testing was in fact taking place. Newshub’s Michael Morrah then broke the news ten days ago, that the system wasn’t working at all.  (Emphasis, ours.)

This news has been met with exasperation. The Herald’s Derek Cheng, who had been asking the government for details of the testing for three weeks without reply, said the revelation went against what the Government had been saying was necessary and being done. He pointed out that “A quick glance at Melbourne is all you need to see what’s at stake here.”

Elaborating further, Cheng explained that the lack of testing is an ongoing problem that the Government should have learnt from already. He points to controversies in June when “people staying in managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) facilities were meant to be tested on day three and on day 12 of their stay. It wasn’t happening, we later learned, because the ministry was still putting it in place. Daily health checks were also not done properly on two Covid-infected sisters, one of whom had symptoms”. He asks: “why is there – still – a giant chasm between what the Government says is happening and what the ministry is doing?”

Sex Education in NZ Government Schools

Sexuality in NZ Government Schools

Family First has an excellent summary of the issues involved in the Government's promotion of sexual intercourse and sexual practises in general throughout the NZ State School system. 

Readers can access Family First's research at Sexuality Education in NZ.

Silly Man

John Kerry's Clueless Claims

Iran Deal Would Have ‘Eliminated The Threat Of An Iran With A Nuclear Weapon’

Paulina Enck
CBN News

Last night in his address at the Democratic National Convention, John Kerry claimed that he “eliminated the threat of an Iran with a nuclear weapon” during the Obama administration. What was this deal Kerry made that would have prevented Iran from developing a nuclear weapon? Because it certainly couldn’t be the Iran deal.

The Obama administration’s nuclear deal, which Kerry presented as the crowning achievement of both his tenure as secretary of state and recent foreign policy as a whole, was an impotent deal that only attained the appearance of preventing Iran from attaining nuclear weapons. It also sent piles of U.S. taxpayer cash to bribe and pay off a terrorist-sponsoring state.

There was another small problem with the deal: It included no way of ensuring whether Iran was keeping their end of the bargain. Iran refused to allow its military locations to be inspected for nuclear activity, leaving the United States no recourse for ensuring their compliance. It may as well have relied on the honor system — again, among terrorists with a history of lies, murder, and double-dealing.

President Obama didn’t leave the White House with the fear of a nuclear Iran behind us. Far from it. Kerry weakened our position abroad immensely with a futile deal from which Americans should be glad President Trump freed us.

Paulina Enck is an intern at the Federalist and current student at Georgetown University in the School of Foreign Service. Follow her on Twitter at @itspaulinaenck

Reversing the Divine Sentence Upon Us All

Meditation From Hosea

In the second chapter of Hosea we read:

And I will sow her for myself in the land.  And I will have mercy on No Mercy, and I will say to Not My People, "You are my people" and he shall say, "You are my God."  [Hosea 2:23]

E. B. Pusey writes:

So God's mercies again overflow His threatenings.  He had threatened to Israel, that he (Israel) would be unpitied, and no more His people.  In reversing His sentence, He embraces in the arms of His mercy all who were not His people, and says of them all, that they should be my people and beloved.  At one and the same time, was Israel to be thus multiplied, and pity was to be shown to those not pitied, and those who were not God's people were to become His people.

At one and the same time were those promises fulfilled in Christ; the one through the other; Israel was not multiplied by itself, but through the bringing-in of the Gentiles.  Nor was Israel alone, or chiefly, brought into a new relation with God.  The same words promised the same mercy to both Jew and Gentile, that all should be one in Christ, all one Jezreel, one Spouse to Himself, one Israel of God, one Beloved; and that all, with one voice of jubilee should cry to Him, "my Lord and my God."

. . . . when God thus anew called them His people, they by His grace would obey His call, and surrender themselves wholly to Him.  For to say "my God" is to own an exclusive relation to God alone.  It is to say, my Beginning and my End, my Hope and My Salvation, my Whole and only God in Whom Alone I will hope, Whom Alone I will fear, love, worship, trust in, obey and serve, with all my heart, mind, soul and strength; by God and my All."  [The Minor Prophets: A Commentary.  Volume 1: p.41.]

Joe Biden and the Brownshirts

Joe Biden’s ‘Four Crises’ Deliberately Ignore Rising Crime and Left-Wing Riots

John Nolte
Breitbart News

A startling rise in violent crime and months of left-wing riots are not included on Joe Biden’s list of presidential priorities.

On Thursday night, Biden gave his speech accepting the Democrat nomination for president. The address clearly laid out his priorities, what he called the “four historic crises.” 

And now history has delivered us to one of the most difficult moments America has ever faced. Four historic crises. All at the same time. A perfect storm. The worst pandemic in over 100 years. The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The most compelling call for racial justice since the 60’s. And the undeniable realities and accelerating threats of climate change. So, the question for us is simple: Are we ready? I believe we are.

There’s no way around the fact that like the rest of the Democrat party and the corporate media propaganda machine, Biden has decided to pretend months of rioting and an explosion of violent crime just isn’t happening.

We all know why this makes the left uncomfortable. The riots and violent crime explosion are all happening in Democrat-run cities. What’s more, the riots are almost exclusively led by the Democrats’ Brownshirts, the left-wing terrorists in Antifa and Black Lives Matter.

The fact Biden deliberately ignored two legitimate crises proves the most crucial part of his speech, his biggest promise, a lie…  “But while I will be a Democratic candidate,” Biden said, “I will be an American president. I will work as hard for those who didn’t support me as I will for those who did.”

“That’s the job of a president,” he added. “To represent all of us, not just our base or our party. This is not a partisan moment. This must be an American moment.”

How can Biden be America’s president?

Kamala Harris, The Persecutor

Planned Parenthood Whistleblower Still Trapped In Kamala Harris’s Persecution


Madeline Osburn
The Federalist

Sen. Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic nomination for vice president Wednesday night, exactly three weeks after journalist and pro-life activist David Daleiden appeared in a San Francisco Superior Court, once again fighting the criminal charges Harris brought against him at the behest of her political donors four years prior. As Harris joins a campaign fighting for the “soul of our nation,” Daleiden continues a years-long battle for countless unborn souls and the First Amendment, both of which Harris has a record of fighting against.

In March 2016, as the California attorney general, Harris met with six Planned Parenthood officials in her Los Angeles office. Email records between Harris’s office and Planned Parenthood officials show the two were corresponding on orchestrating public responses, filing police reports, and even drafting legislation targeting Daleiden for his undercover videos exposing the abortion giant’s illegal practices.

Two of the six executives in that meeting went on to be used as witnesses in Harris’s criminal investigation. Harris has been a staunch abortion advocate and received tens of thousands of dollars in political contributions from Planned Parenthood-affiliated entities over the course of her political career.

The Ascendance of Wall-Street Democrats

Democrat Party Captured by Self-Serving Elites

Kamala Harris's Nod Tells Blue-Collar Workers Democrats Are Done With Them

Harris is now the voice of a new, aloof, wealthier liberalism that seeks only to manage the decline of America’s economic might.

Kyle Sammin
The Federalist

In the presidential election of 2016, voters in each of the major parties were dissatisfied with their faction’s presidential nominee in such large numbers that we witnessed a massive shift in the two-party system. The nomination of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris means the 2020 election will further entrench those changes. Indeed, Biden’s nomination is less consequential: in his dotage, he is merely a screen onto which every faction of the Democratic Party may project its vision.

In choosing Harris as his running mate, however, Biden signals that the ascendance of Wall Street Democrats over working-class factions is nearly complete. A candidate beloved of Hollywood and Big Business, Harris puts a rainbow flag over a government boot and calls it progress. Her nomination as president-in-waiting means the future of the Democratic Party will be hashed out in corporate boardrooms, not church basements and union halls.

Shifting Coalitions

The Republican Party began with a good claim on the workingman’s loyalties. Fighting for free labor and high tariffs meant that the GOP of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries stood for American jobs. The Great Depression changed that perception. America’s version of that tragic era began with a Republican in the White House and meant that a Democrat, Franklin D. Roosevelt, could rhetorically unite his party as the new savior of working Americans.

We can disagree on which of his party’s policies actually helped working people — some clearly did, others absolutely did not — but his message was on point. In the popular mind, Democrats became the friend of the farmer, the laborer, and the little man, while Republicans were portrayed as the party of Manhattan boardrooms and Connecticut country clubs. Fair or not, this perception stuck for many years.

Since that time, pieces of FDR’s big coalition have fallen away.

Something's Not Right

Goodbye — Sort of — to Germany?

Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online


Why should America anchor Germany's defense? It cuts deals with Russia, has never met its NATO commitment, and is the most anti-American nation in Europe.

President Trump recently ordered a 12,000-troop reduction in American military personnel stationed in Germany. That leaves about 24,000 American soldiers still in the country.  A little more than half of the troops being withdrawn will return home. The rest will be redeployed to other NATO member nations, such as Belgium, Italy, and perhaps Baltic and Eastern European countries.

German chancellor Angela Merkel is said to be furious. She claims that the redeployments will “weaken the [NATO] alliance.” German commercial interests chimed in that the troop withdrawals will hurt their decades-old businesses serving U.S. bases.  Perhaps, but Merkel surely cannot be surprised. Six years ago, all NATO members pledged to spend 2 percent of their GDP on defense. Yet only eight of 29 so far have kept their word.

Germany spends only about 1.4 percent of its GDP on defense. As NATO’s largest, wealthiest, and most powerful European member, it sets the example for the rest of alliance.  Merkel’s reneging on her 2014 pledge helps explain why less wealthy and influential NATO members also see no reason to meet their obligations.

Germany surely knows that 2020 marks the 75th anniversary of the end of the World War II, and the 29th year since the fall of the Berlin Wall — the symbolic end of the Cold War.  Will there be any point in the future when Europe is confident enough to be a full defense partner with the U.S. rather than an eight-decade client?

NATO, of course, still provides a common European defense, but only by habitually relying inordinately on U.S. military contributions.

Rampaging Tyranny

Democratic LGBTQ Platform Leaves No Room for Religious Liberty

Heather Sells
CBN News

This week Democrats are hashing out their party's platform and that includes where it stands on LGBTQ issues. For many people of faith, there's significant concern that the platform will crush religious freedom.

Although Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has a deep Catholic faith and history that he regularly touts to potential voters, he has also pledged to make the Equality Act his top legislative priority.   He told the powerful LGBTQ lobbying organization, the Human Rights Campaign, last year "I promise you that's the first thing I'll ask that will be done."

Dr. Russell Moore, the president of the Southern Baptists' Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, says it fails to uphold human dignity.  Before the House passed the bill in 2019 Moore explained, "While the proposed intention of H.R. 5 is to protect individuals who identify as LGBT, the bill would instead steamroll the consciences of millions of people."

Dr. Ed Stetzer, the executive director of the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center, says the bill threatens social service and civic institutions including faith-based higher education.  "The Equality Act would in essence say that our beliefs are unacceptable and that we must change," he said.

Vlad's Tyrannical Corruption Likely Up On Stage Again

Russian Opposition Leader Alexei Navalny Allegedly Poisoned

John Hayward
Breitbart News

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who has been frequently arrested and legally harassed for his unrelenting criticism of President Vladimir Putin, became seriously ill while flying from Siberia to moscow on Thursday and was placed on a ventilator. Navalny spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh claimed he has been poisoned.

“We assume that Alexei was poisoned with something mixed into the tea. It was the only thing that he drank in the morning. Doctors say the toxin was absorbed faster through the hot liquid,” Yarmysh said via Twitter.  The Associated Press quoted Yarmysh, who was on the plane with Navalny, saying he began to sweat profusely and asked her to keep talking to him so he could “focus on the sound of a voice.” She said he passed out while using the restroom and has not regained consciousness since.

“Looks like Putin is doing really badly – was handed some data on protest sentiment growing explosively – if he made the decision to poison Navalny,” Navalny ally Vladimir Milov said when news of his condition broke.

CNN described video footage taken aboard the plane that appeared to show 44-year-old Navalny groaning in distress, and later showed him being transported to an ambulance in a wheelchair. The plane made an emergency landing in Siberia, and Navalny is currently a patient in the acute poisoning unit of a hospital in Omsk.

The head physician of the hospital told reporters Navalny is on a ventilator and in serious condition, but stable. He said poisoning “is considered as one of the possible reasons for the deterioration of his state,” but added there could be “a number of conditions that started acutely and led to the same clinical reactions.”

According to Yarmysh, the hospital prevented Navalny’s wife Yulia from visiting him because she didn’t bring her marriage certificate and he did not consent to see her. Yarmysh sounded deeply skeptical of this explanation.

“They’re not letting her in because ‘the patient has not agreed to a visitor.’ They’re literally saying that,” she snorted. If nothing else, it seems odd to expect a comatose patient to give his consent for a visitor.  Yarmysh was also deeply skeptical of state media reports that the police think it is “not unlikely” that Navalny had an allergic reaction to something he consumed, rather than being poisoned.  “Of course. It’s just the tea was bad. This is what the state propaganda is going to do now — yell that there was no deliberate poisoning, he [did something] accidentally, he [did something] himself,” she said sarcastically on Twitter, with edits from the Associated Press. . . .

The New York Times recalled Moscow’s lamentable history of poisoning dissidents, most famously including former intelligence agents Sergei Skripal, who was attacked in the United Kingdom along with his daughter in 2018, and Alexander Litvinenko, who suffered a very messy assassination in London in 2006 that apparently involved slipping radioactive polonium into his tea.

Litivenko’s widow Marina, who now lives in Sicily, told the Associated Press it was “obvious” Navalny would “not be stopped” from exposing corruption and criticizing Putin, so “maybe they decided to do a new tactic not to stop him just with an arrest but to stop him with poison.”

In addition to mounting periodic political challenges to Putin, Navalny established an anti-corruption foundation that published highly critical reports on the Russian elite, famously including Dmitry Medvedev, who has been both prime minister and president.

Navalny’s foundation was shuttered last month after a lawsuit from Kremlin-linked businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, commonly nicknamed “Putin’s Chef” for his role in organizing state dinners. Prigozhin filed a $1.2 million suit against Navanly’s foundation for allegedly defaming one of his catering companies. Russian courts have a pronounced tendency to side with the plaintiffs in such lawsuits against Navalny. Navalny said he could never pay the penalties Prigozhin and others were seeking, so he dissolved the foundation, then vowed to recreate it under a new name and continue investigating corruption.

When the "D-Team" Is In Charge . . .

Unintended, Unacceptable Lawlessness

Hard to justify unlawful lockdown

Barry Soper
Newstalk ZB

Hats off to Andrew Borrowdale. Who is he, you may well ask? He's a Wellington lawyer - in fact he used to write laws for Parliament.  He was so agitated about the lack of legal grunt behind the country being locked down on March 26 that he took a case to the High Court to challenge it - and today he won.

Borrowdale didn't argue about the wisdom of people staying at home, but he did argue about the Government's right to order them to do so.

His view was reinforced by a Crown Law Office opinion, that he didn't see before mounting his challenge, circulated to interested parties.

We Hoped For Better Things

Boris the Clown Has Turned into Boris the Dictator

James Delingpole
Breitbart News


Boris, Spoiler of Summer Holidays; Boris, Calorie-Counting Nanny Statist; Boris the Dictator.

Did anyone vote for any of these grisly characters in the General Election last year? I know I didn’t. When I held my nose and put my cross in the Conservative box, I did so for two reasons. First, I thought it was our best shot at breaking the Brexit impasse and finally leaving the European Union. Second, I fondly hoped that after the disappointments of David Cameron and Theresa May, we might finally have a Conservative prime minister worth the name. Sure, Boris might not have the courage, principles and tenacity of Margaret Thatcher. But at least he’d inject our dreary, earnest political scene with a much-needed sense of fun…

Boris, we are repeatedly told, has libertarian instincts. When in April he first put Britain under lockdown he did so, he told us, with great reluctance.  Funny what a taste of untrammelled power can do to a man, though, isn’t it? In the space of six months Boris Johnson has mutated from loveable clown to blustering dictator.

Britain has the strictest lockdown rules in Europe. You can now get a fine of up to £3,200 simply for refusing to wear a muzzle, despite the fact that a cloth face covering is next to useless against Covid-19. If you go on holiday somewhere deadly like Spain or France, you are now expected to quarantine yourself at home for 14 days, unable even to go to the shops, on pain of more fines running into the thousands.

Not content with grotesquely overreacting to Chinese Coronavirus, Boris has also taken it upon himself to police our diets too.  His latest wheeze, according to the Sun, is to ban adverts for some or all of the following foods from daytime television because they are unhealthy: 

Sausages; fish fingers; pasties; English mustard; ketchup; Marmite; bacon; cheese; humous; potato salad.

This is exactly the kind of political correctness gone mad that Boris would once have satirised heartily in his lavishly overpaid Daily Telegraph column. The Spectator’s diarist Steerpike has collected six examples of this: Boris saying it’s your own fault if you’re fat; Boris attacking TV chef Jamie Oliver for trying to make school meals ‘healthier’; Boris warring against the EU’s attempts to make child booster seats in cars compulsory; Boris decrying plans to restrict river swimming; Boris using his mayoral powers to stop a proposed ban on smoking in parks; Boris criticising George Osborne’s sugar tax as ‘continuing creep of the nanny state’.

In one of these articles, he lamented ‘the namby-pamby, risk-averse, mollycoddled airbagged approach that is doing so much economic damage to Britain’.  How could the person wise enough to have written those words have mutated in such short space to the very embodiment of the overweening nanny statism he once deplored?

The Boris Johnson we voted for was the Boris Johnson who got stuck on the zipwire; the Boris Johnson who executed that comically brutal tackle in the celebrity football match against Germany; the Boris Johnson who successfully threw a basketball hoop backwards over his head on the Embankment near London’s Tower Bridge.

The Boris Johnson we now have in charge — the bullying, nannying, enviro-loon dictator — is a very unpleasant and very disappointing imposter.

Please can we have the amiable buffoon back, sharpish?

UK Pundit Stumps For Trump

Nigel Farage Predicts Donald Trump Will Win in November

Joe Biden is ‘Wholly Unfit for High Office’

Kurt Zindulka
Breitbart News



The architect of the Brexit movement in the United Kingdom, Nigel Farage, said that Americans should not believe the national polls, saying that he will “stick his neck out” and predict that President Donald Trump will indeed win his re-election bid in November.

The leading Brexiteer and long-time Trump ally said that “national polls should not be trusted” and that a better predictor of the presidential election is to analyse voter enthusiasm for the respective candidates. He argued that compared to President Trump’s loyal base, Joe Biden’s support is based largely on anti-Trump sentiment, rather than true support for the 77-year-old former Vice President.

“I have seen this data in private polling,” Mr Farage wrote in Newsweek, adding: “It shows a distinct lack of enthusiasm for and confidence in Biden’s ability to discharge his duties as would-be president of the United States of America. I am not surprised. The truth is that he is past it. He is not up to the job. He is wholly unfit for high office, and the voters can see it.”

"Do Not Forsake Assembling Together: Hebrews 10:25

The Lord Commands Church Attendance and Worship

By Anugrah Kumar
Christian Post Contributor


Holding indoor services once again in defiance of California’s COVID-19 lockdown orders, Pastor John MacArthur of Grace Community Church on Sunday told his congregation, “We are holding church … because our Lord commands it.” The megachurch met hours after an appeals court blocked a ruling that had allowed it to meet for worship.

“They don’t want us to meet, that’s obvious,” MacArthur said after Los Angeles County secured a stay of the trial court ruling that would have allowed the congregation to meet indoors with masks and social distancing.  “They’re not willing to work with us. They just want to shut us down. But we’re here to bring honor to the Lord,” the pastor continued.

The California Court of Appeal said in its ruling late Saturday, “As between the harm that flows from the heightened risk of transmitting COVID-19 (namely “serious illness and death”) and the harm that flows from having to conduct religious services outdoors instead of indoors, the balance at this early stage favors issuance of a stay.”

MacArthur said he doesn’t know “exactly what the city is trying to do with us and to us,” and clarified that the indoor service was not aimed at being “rebellious.” “We’re meeting because our Lord has commanded us to come together and worship Him.”

The Sun Valley church has been holding in-person worship services despite Gov. Gavin Newsom's recent lockdown orders prohibiting indoor church gatherings. Grace Community filed a lawsuit last week against state restrictions, accusing government officials of selectively restricting gatherings amid the pandemic.

“When many went to the streets to engage in ‘political’ or ‘peaceful’ protests purportedly against racism and police brutality, these protesters refused to comply with the pandemic restrictions. Instead of enforcing the public health orders, public officials were all too eager to grant a de facto exception for these favored protestors,” the lawsuit says.

On Friday, Judge James Chalfant of Los Angeles Superior Court agreed with MacArthur and his church that it is the county’s burden to show why they should be permitted to infringe on the constitutionally protected rights of churches to freely exercise religion. The appeals court, however, issued an emergency order on Saturday in favor of LA County.

Over The Top

Melbourne's Pains

Repression by men in black uniforms is not a good look

Peter Hitchens
Mail on Sunday

The great city of Melbourne in Australia is now under a severe six-week curfew from 8pm until 5am.  Its businesses are crippled. Even the authorities admit it could cost hundreds of thousands of jobs.

Muzzles are, of course, compulsory. Inhabitants can leave their homes only once a day for essential supplies and food, and once for one hour of exercise, within a three-mile radius.




The local police chief, Shane Patton, fetchingly dressed in black shirt and black tie (does he know no history?) is pleased that non-muzzle-wearers are being ‘shunned’ and says his officers ‘had’ to smash into cars whose drivers did not co-operate with stop and search

Police and soldiers are hammering on the doors of those who have tested positive for Covid (who are now forbidden to exercise), to check they are at home. Huge fines face those who don’t comply.

Victoria State Premier Daniel Andrews says: ‘We can no longer have people simply out and about for no good reason… you will be stopped and you will be asked and need to demonstrate that you are lawfully out and you are not breaching that curfew.’

The local police chief, Shane Patton, fetchingly dressed in black shirt and black tie (does he know no history?) is pleased that non-muzzle-wearers are being ‘shunned’ and says his officers ‘had’ to smash into cars whose drivers did not co-operate with stop and search.  Why this wild repression? Because of 15 deaths in a day, mostly among the very old, in a state of more than six million people. Once again, the words ‘out of proportion’ spring to mind.

I predict that a major British city will be subjected to something similar in the coming winter.  Strikingly, it is in the formerly free English-speaking world, inheritors of Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights, that the most severe attack on freedom is happening. They seem confident we will not defend it.

Pro-Abort Iniquity

Biden-Harris Pro-Abortion Ticket ‘Great Concern to All Christians’

Analysis by Rev Franklin Graham

Dr. Susan Berry
Breitbart News

Rev. Franklin Graham tweeted Wednesday it “should be a great concern to all Christians” that pro-life leaders are labeling Joe Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris as “the most pro-abortion … in the history of our nation.”

Graham tweeted a Breitbart News article containing the statements of many national pro-life leaders expressing that concern.  “As a follower of Jesus Christ, I am pro-life and believe every life is precious to God,” he said. 

Within the last day, more pro-life leaders have added their concerns about the Biden-Harris pro-abortion rights ticket.  “I didn’t think Joe Biden could move much further Left on abortion — but he did just that in picking Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate,” expressed Tony Perkins, president of Family Research Council Action.

He continued: 

Vice President Biden has already endorsed taxpayer funded abortions and embraced late term abortions. And now he has chosen a vice presidential candidate who voted to leave perfectly healthy newborns on hospital tables to die and as the attorney general of California went after pro-life activists for exposing Planned Parenthood for illegally selling aborted baby body parts. During the presidential primary, Senator Harris complained that she didn’t have enough time in the debates to show off her abortion radicalism. As if this were not enough, Harris co-sponsored the religious liberty-violating and pro-abortion ‘Equality Act’ in the U.S. Senate. Joe Biden has now clearly shown himself for what he is: a puppet on the strings of radical abortion.

Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, recalled that, while a presidential primary candidate, Harris pledged that, if elected, “no abortion law or practice will take effect until the Department of Justice certifies it comports with Roe v. Wade.” 

In May 2019, Harris’s presidential campaign pledged not only to restrict states’ rights to pass and enact their own laws, but also to block a pro-life president’s power and that of the administration.  “Guardrails will ensure DOJ enforces the law even under an administration that’s hostile to women’s rights — and patients and providers will have standing to sue if they don’t,” Harris’s plan stated.

Harris’s presidential campaign website now immediately takes visitors to joebiden.com.

Hawkins continued that Harris has not only “promised to ‘protect Planned Parenthood from Republican attempts to defund’” it, but also hopes to “force all private insurances and employers to cover abortion and contraception, even over people’s moral objections, such as the nuns in the Little Sisters of the Poor who twice had to fight for their conscience rights before the Supreme Court.”

“Sen. Kamala Harris has already proved that she will use any legal authority available to her to target pro-life Americans,” Hawkins said. “Abortion was always going to be an issue in this election, but the stakes just got higher. The choice for anyone who rejects abortion at any point in pregnancy and with taxpayer funds is crystal clear.”

Kamala Harris Appears Deeply Prejudiced Against Christians

Catholic League Highlights Kamala Harris’s ‘Catholic Problem’

Thomas D. Williams
Breitbart News

Catholic League President Bill Donohue warned of Sen. Kamala Harris’s (D-CA) ‘Catholic problem’ in an essay this week, insisting that Biden’s running mate will have a hard time winning over Catholic voters due to her “positions on an array of moral issues.”

As a radical supporter of abortion rights, Harris has alienated pro-life voters, but she has gone further still, tainting herself “with the brush of anti-Catholicism,” Dr. Donohue states.  [And anti-Christianism in general. Ed.]

“In 2018, she sought to stop a Trump nominee for a seat on the federal bench simply because he was Catholic,” Donohue notes. “In doing so, she invoked a religious test for the bench, a patently unconstitutional act.”

As Michael Gerson echoes in an op-ed Friday in the Washington Post, Harris posed a series of “inappropriate questions” to federal district court nominee Brian Buescher, suggesting that “being a member of the Knights of Columbus — a nearly 2 million-member Catholic social and charitable organization — was disqualifying for the federal bench.”

“Harris was effectively treating membership in a distinctly Catholic organization as if it were allegiance to a hate group,” Gerson writes.

Facing Up To Reality

Five Reasons The Election Should Be Delayed

David Farrar
Kiwiblog

With the decision that Auckland remains in Level 2 for a further 12 days, it really is a no brainer to delay the election. But not just because of the impact on campaigning. Here’s my five reasons why the election should be delayed (as 71 other countries have done).

1. We need Parliament in sessions scrutinising the Government

There has never been a more important time for Parliament to be meeting so Ministers can be questioned in the House, and Ministers and officials in select committees.

It is scrutiny of the Government’s performance that leads to improvements and changes. Take for example the revelation by Michael Morrah that two thirds of border and isolation workers had never been tested for Covid-19, let alone weekly as recommended. That totally changed the dynamics around border testing.

But the Government did not release this information voluntarily. Derek Cheng in the Herald reported media had been asking for this information every day for the last two weeks, and the Government had refused to supply it. Morrah managed to cobble the data together from other sources.

OIA requests don’t have to be answered for 20 or really 40 days. But oral questions in the House must be answered within five hours. Written questions within five days and select committees can question officials and Ministers on the spot.

We need Parliament to be sitting to make sure the Government is doing all it can to prevent further outbreaks. It is clear that without scrutiny, they don’t.

2. We need Ministers focusing on Covid-19

The Prime Minister is also the Labour Party Leader. I want her focused on the former role at the moment.

The West Is In Trouble

JK Rowling and the Transformation of the West

Real life Dementors are swooping around JK Rowling and they’re coming for you too.


Murray Campbell
The Gospel Coalition

JK Rowling has found herself caught up in cancel culture. Both JK Rowling and Harry Potter are currently trending on Twitter. There are hundreds of thousands of comments and memes expressing outrage. Indeed many of these tweets are themselves outrageous and even abusive.

What did JK Rowling say to invoke such anger? She dared challenge the culture’s narrative by tweeting that biological sex is real:

Let’s be clear, JK Rowling hasn’t said anything radical. She has simply noted an established fact—a scientific, biological, and sociological fact. Indeed, sex is one of the few self evident truths that has been universally accepted in all human history and across cultures—that is, until the last few years. In today’s western world, to affirm that women are women and that men are men is to speak heresy. Suggesting sex is real will get you sent to Azkaban.

Our societies have been occupied by other important issues of late, especially the COVID-19 pandemic and now racism. The response to JK Rowling is a reminder however that not even pandemics and race-riots can dampen the ardour of those crusading for this latest chapter in the sexual revolution. Nothing is to excuse, distract, or dilute, full and unquestioned adherence to the sexual milieu. Half a million comments all agree.

Harmful Consequences 

Yet the consequences of this campaign are already becoming apparent.

The Protection of Special Petals and Its Critics

Mr Bean Defends Free Speech

Rowan Atkinson Denounces Scottish "Hate" Crime Bill


Kurt Zindulka
Breitbart London


Famed British comedian and star of Blackadder and Mr Bean, Rowan Atkinson has signed an open letter decrying Scotland’s new Hate Crime and Public Order Bill, warning the law will infringe upon freedom of speech.

An open letter from Humanist Society Scotland — singed by artists, authors, journalists, and free speech campaigners, including Rowan Atkinson — warned that the left-separatist Scottish National Party (SNP) bill could stifle free expression.

The letter warned that the legislation as written “creates stirring up offences without any intent being examined; merely that the words, action, or artwork might do so. This offence could even be applied to being in possession of materials produced by someone else, where sharing the material could stir up hatred.”

“The unintended consequences of this well-meaning bill risk stifling freedom of expression, and the ability to articulate or criticise religious and other beliefs,” the open letter warned.  The letter was signed by a cross-party “diverse group of individuals and organisations”, who warned that the hate crime legislation could “frustrate rational debate and discussion”, which has a “fundamental role in society including in artistic endeavour.”

“The right to critique ideas, philosophical, religious and other [sic] must be protected to allow an artistic and democratic society to flourish,” the letter concluded.

Though notionally on the left of the political spectrum, Mr Atkinson has long been a proponent of freedom of speech, and even defended Boris Johnson for making a joke suggesting burka-wearing Muslim women resemble “letterboxes”.

True Grit

Her Father's Blood

Aung San Suu Kyi and the Struggle For Burmese Freedom

We have just finished reading Peter Popham's biography of Aung San Suu Kyi.  It is a well-done biography of Myanmar's famous leader.  [Peter Popham, The Lady and the Peacock: The Life of Aung San Suu Kyi (Croydon:  Rider-Ebury Publishing, 2012.]

The whole book is valuable for a whole lot of different reasons.  Suu Kyi, of course, is now a political leader in what is an increasingly progressive, emerging state, Myanmar (formerly Burma).  We have had the privilege of visiting Myanmar twice in recent years.  One does not have to travel far, nor meet many people, before one hears about Suu Kyi's work and exploits in helping Myanmar change from being a military dictatorship to a democratic republic. 

What sort of a person is Aung San Suu Kyi, then?  A remarkable one, is the straightforward reality.  Try this on for size . . . .

The Desiccated Remains of Obama and His Once-Vaunted Administration

The Remains of an Administration

Obama’s policies are in tatters, and the worst scandals of his White House are coming to light

By Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online


Each day that the Obama administration fades into the past, its wrongdoings manage to wander back into the present.

After years of suppression, all sorts of strange events keep popping up to remind us of what little is left of the Obama years — the Susan Rice memo, Christopher Steele deleting his computer records, FBI-doctored and lost 302s, text messages wiped clean, the bizarre Obama January 5, 2017, Oval Office meeting, the ambush interview of Michael Flynn, the unmasking and leaking of redacted names swept up in reverse-targeting surveillance operations, the administration fraud perpetrated on the FISA courts.

The list is so overwhelming and bizarre that it ensures that anything at any time can now appear. And the result keeps reminding Americans of how corrupt were the years between 2009 and 2017 and how untruthful was the coverage of such institutionalized wrongdoing.

Feet of Clay

Emeritus Barack Obama now and then ventures out to go through the motions of an enfeebled defense for what is becoming an increasingly discredited administration. But his heart is not in it. His mind is elsewhere. His cause is no longer social activism and community organizing, if it ever was, but lucre and the perceived well-earned good life. The arc of his moralizing universe is long, but for the anointed like him, it apparently bends toward the just deserts of riches and material bounty.

First lady forever and bestselling memoirist Michelle Obama sometimes takes a hiatus from making millions to offer a half-hearted progressive warning about the sudden heartlessness of the country — reminiscent of her transitory 2008 warnings about a downright mean country and one of which she had previously not been especially proud.

The remains of the Obama team (Susan Rice, Ben Rhodes, Hillary Clinton, John Brennan, James Comey, Samantha Power) are not offering much of a defense for the Obama years — they are now too busy scrambling to hide their own legal culpability and exposure. The bending arc of the 2009 dream team finally ends in the platitudes of “I can’t remember” and “Not to my knowledge” that will eventually find their way from CNN and MSNBC into the court room.

Obama entered office to gushes that he was a living god and the smartest man ever to enter the White House. He quickly won the Nobel Peace Prize and was courted internationally through a series of overseas tours. His brand was that he was not so much a citizen of an unexceptional America as a citizen of the now globalized world.

Obama entered with a supermajority in the Senate and a large majority in the House, with the likelihood of remaking the Supreme Court. When he left eight years later, he had lost both houses of Congress, lost the Supreme Court for a generation, and lost more than 1,000 state and local offices.

Democrats and Abortion

The Liberal Voters Biden Doesn’t Want

By Alexandra Desanctis
National Review Online

In the Wall Street Journal, two leaders of political-advocacy group Democrats for Life have an article called “The Democrats Biden Doesn’t Want,” pointing out that, although they’re liberal, their pro-life views have caused the Democratic Party to reject them.

“According to Gallup, roughly 1 in 3 Democrats consider themselves pro-life, but Mr. Biden has made no outreach to us,” write executive director Kristen Day and board member Xavier Bisits. “In fact, top Democrats have gone out of their way to make it clear that we are no longer welcome in the party.”

This is far from the first time that such a complaint has arisen from pro-life Democrats this year alone. At a townhall in late January, Day confronted former South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg, asking, “Do you want the support of . . . pro-life Democratic voters? There are about 21 million of us. And if so, would you support more-moderate platform language in the Democratic Party to ensure that the party of diversity, of inclusion, really does include everybody?”

Buttigieg offered a lengthy, equivocating reply, but the gist of his response was, essentially, “Take a hike.”

Shoe's On Another Foot Entirely, It Would Seem

 The Left’s New Civil-Rights Heroes

Molotov-Cocktail-Throwing Lawyers

Colinford Mattis and Urooj Rahman aren’t outliers; they’re living examples of how hatred of Trump has morphed into a willingness to justify the unjustifiable

By Jonathan Tobin
National Review Online


In the two months since the death of George Floyd, the nation has been beset by often-violent protests and riots. Yet the mainstream media and Democratic politicians have tended to describe the demonstrations as “mostly peaceful,” and to rationalize and minimize them. For many on the left, the real story has not been the violence directed at law-enforcement personnel, the assaults on federal courthouses and police precincts, the toppling of statues, or the destruction of private property; it’s been the use of federal personnel in response.

It is only in that context that we can hope to understand the sympathy being generated for Colinford Mattis and Urooj Rahman.

Mattis and Rahman are the lawyers who were caught on camera throwing a Molotov cocktail into an empty, already-vandalized NYPD patrol car in Brooklyn. After setting the vehicle on fire in full of view of the cops, they drove away in Mattis’s van and were quickly chased down and arrested. In their possession, officers found yet another Bud Light bottle turned into a homemade incendiary device and the makings of more in the back seat. Prosecutors later said Rahman had offered Molotov cocktails to other protesters, as well.

There could hardly be any doubt about their guilt.

Self-Righteous Cant And It's Dangers

What a Wunnerful World

A serious problem has come to light in the Tasman District Council.  We salute Tasman District councillor Dana Wensley who is in the midst of a thorough going expose.  What is the problem?  It is the alleged bias of some books contained in the library.  

Some books about the Treaty of Waitangi on the shelves of Tasman District libraries are "very right-wing extremist", says Tasman District councillor Dana Wensley.  Some material “that I know we've got in our library ... is by a publisher that is not academically robust," Wensley last week told a meeting of the council operations committee.

“There's a number of these books in our library that are actually very worrying to me because they're free of charge,” she said. “The academic presses are more expensive for those books to buy but I think there's something to us having a mind to making sure that material in our library that has gone through that academic rigour of peer review is readily accessible.”

Wensley said she was concerned people were “picking up these books on our shelves that are very right-wing extremist ... and I think we should have zero tolerance for that”.

Material in the Tasman District Council library must be approved by approved people. If they are not thus approved by approved people it is likely that some books will contain unapproved bias--and clearly we should have ZERO TOLERANCE for that.

Cheated

Deep Inside, Rioters Are Angry 

How Come They Never Learned Anything But Lies?

Our institutions have stolen critical knowledge from young people and replaced it with the poison of identity politics and political correctness.

Stella Morabito
The Federalist

I suspect many members of today’s street mobs have a secret in common: At some deep level, they know they are awash in ignorance of core knowledge. Claiming to be “woke” is cover for the ignorance educrats have systematically instilled in them.

For decades, leftist academics have attacked the study of history and real humanities, and now an Illinois legislator has openly called to abolish the study of history. Recent episodes of Bible burning in the streets of Portland indicate the trashing of America’s cultural memory is well past the boiling point.

Our educational institutions have committed intellectual grand theft. They have withheld critical knowledge from students and replaced it with the poison of identity politics and political correctness. This makes it difficult for students to express independent thoughts, or even to think them. Where does that leave the victims who have been forcibly injected with this ignorance?

They can’t really articulate what has been stolen from them, but they seem to sense the loss deeply. How else can one explain their primal screams and street theater, in which they both accuse and confess “systemic racism?” After educrats and media hounded them for years with the talking point that Western culture is just tales of “dead white males,” how can they even be openly curious about it without the threat of being smeared?

It’s no wonder they can’t, since the rabbit hole into which they’ve been thrown is very deep. Imagine being trained to “think” only with your emotions.

Too Big To Indict

The Arts of Government Criminality

Destroying or altering evidence, lying under oath, leaking classified info … but no pre-dawn televised raid for any of the wrongdoers

By Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online

In the entire 2016–19 efforts to derail the Trump campaign, transition, and presidency, Hillary Clinton, Christopher Steele, and the FBI, Department of Justice, CIA, and other government bureaus have consistently sought to distort reality. Some of our best and brightest have destroyed evidence, altered documents, lied, leaked, and pled amnesia when questioned about their reprehensible conduct. At each stage, they were aided and abetted by a compliant media.

The dissimulation over the past four years has fallen into four rough categories. Here are a few examples of each.

Deletion of Evidence

Christopher Steele, who bragged for years of his meticulous research and whose work has been quoted chapter and verse as proof of Trump wrongdoing, recently testified under oath to a British court that he now has no records of his supposed conversations with “sub source” Russian informants. His lawyers previously had insisted that his sources were “meticulously documented and recorded.” Now Steele sheepishly admits that such an assertion was a lie, given that he can produce no evidence at all for his meticulous allegations. He admits that his emails and documents were wiped clean from his devices by January 2017.

FBI operatives working with the Mueller investigation team admitted that thousands of undisclosed text messages between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page simply disappeared. In addition, the phones of Strzok and Page apparently were wiped clean after Strzok was dismissed from the Mueller team. Most of these mysterious losses, according to the Mueller investigation, were supposedly a result of a software glitch or other computer malfunctions.

Hillary Clinton, remember, had her lawyers delete some 33,000 emails that were subpoenaed by the FBI; she claimed that they were private and not work-related. The FBI, however, subsequently recovered a few thousand of them from her private server. Among that trove, it found, to the contrary, several emails that were in fact work-related and could have easily been compromised.

Why destroy evidence if one has nothing to hide? And why would all these deleters and erasers at one time or another be found working for the most esteemed agencies of the U.S. and U.K.?

More Stars for the Dumb and Dumber Show

Math Is ‘White Supremacist Patriarchy’

So Claims Brooklyn College Education Prof.  

Tom Ciccotta
Breitbart News

Brooklyn College Professor of Math Education Laurie Rubel argued this week on Twitter that the mathematical equation 2+2=4 “reeks of white supremacist patriarchy.” Rubel’s tweet was retweeted and promoted by several academics at universities and colleges around the nation.

According to a report by Campus Reform, Brooklyn College Professor Laurie Rubel, who teaches math education, tried to make the case this week that basic math is “white supremacist.” The tweets are part of a larger trend in recent scholarship by American academics, many of which have argued that “objective truth” is a social construct.

“The idea that math (or data) is culturally neutral or in any way objective is a MYTH. I’m ready to move on with that understanding. Who’s coming with me?” Rubel wrote in a tweet.  “Along with the ‘of course math is neutral because 2+2=4’ trope and the related (and creepy) ‘math is pure’ and ‘protect math.’ Reeks of white supremacist patriarchy,” Rubel added. “I’d rather think on nurturing people & protecting the planet (with math in service of them goals).”

Several academics from institutions around the nation chimed in. Harvard Ph.D. candidate Kareem Carr suggested that math should be reevaluated because it was primarily developed by white men. 
“People say it’s subjectivism to ask if math is Western. I don’t get that. It’s an objective fact that some groups were more involved in the creation of modern math than others,” Carr said. “They may have been *trying* to make it objective but it’s not stupid to ask if they actually succeeded!”

A few academics have pushed back. James Lindsay, one of the academics behind a series of hoax papers that were published in “social justice” journals, reminded Rubel and her peers that mathematical truths are objective.

“It’s certainly the case, and the Woke need to be held firmly to the point, that feats of engineering like space travel and rocketry utterly depend upon accepting stable meanings of mathematical statements like 2+2=4 as objectively true, not mere accidents of culture,” Lindsay tweeted.

Germany Complains

British Insistence on Full Independence in Brexit Deal Not ‘Realistic’


Victoria Friedman
Breitbart London

Germany’s Europe minister has complained that Britain is not being “realistic or pragmatic” in Brexit negotiations, with British negotiators insisting on full sovereignty at the end of the transition period.

British negotiators have been consistent in demanding full sovereignty over the country’s laws, trade, and borders, while the EU insists the British stick to aspects of so-called regulatory alignment.  There is also disagreement on the role of the European Court of Justice, and the EU continues to demand long-term arrangements for European fishermen to take fish from Britain’s lucrative territorial waters, as well.

Michael Roth said on Thursday that he was “disappointed” that the United Kingdom was standing firm by its red lines, claiming that “London is shifting further and further away from the political declaration agreed between us as a reliable basis for negotiations.  I would love those responsible in London to be more realistic and pragmatic. The Brits are known for the latter,” the German minister told AFP, according to The Sun.

Reports from last month claimed that the United Kingdom was close to abandoning the prospect of achieving a deal with the bloc and was preparing for World Trade Organization (WTO) arrangements. Days later, the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier admitted that a trade deal was “unlikely” given the current deadlock.

In July, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who took over the rotating seat of the European Council presidency, said her country and the bloc “must be prepared … for the possibility that a deal doesn’t materialise”.

Swamp-Speak

Alienating Democratic Voters

Joe Biden’s Capitulation To The Crazy Left Is Alienating Democrats Like Me

Unlike Biden, Trump is delivering a clear and appealing message: Send kids back to school, support police officers, and get people back to work now.

Scott J. Street
The Federalist

Last year, Joe Biden’s path to the presidency seemed clear: Treat President Donald Trump as a historical anomaly whom Biden would replace, then restore American values, overcome petty politics, and get government working again. This message was designed to appeal both to Democrats, like me, and to Republican and Independent voters tired of the toxic political environment we’ve suffered since 2016.

That strategy initially worked well. Despite constant attacks from opponents and the press, by March 17, Biden had effectively wrapped up the nomination, and polls showed him trouncing Trump in key states such as Michigan and Pennsylvania.

In recent weeks, however, Biden’s messaging has changed. Now it is pushing millions of voters toward Trump just as regular Americans start paying closer attention to the race. Most Beltway Democrats don’t recognize this, of course. They see polls showing Biden with a large lead over Trump and believe the former vice president is headed for a blowout win.

They might be right, but the winds seem to be changing. Polls that failed to predict the outcome of the 2016 presidential contest seem just as likely to fail now, with 62 percent of Americans afraid to say what they believe because of our toxic political environment. The more Biden caves to the left, the harder it becomes for him to win middle-class voters, especially those in the upper Midwest who typically decide presidential elections.

Perverse Soteriology

Soft-Touch Judiciary

Every so often in New Zealand a case comes before a judge who ends up ruling without proper regard to the safety of citizens.  Instead, the focus falls rather upon "doing kindness" to repeat offenders. 

Stuff provides the following account:

A judge has admitted he is taking a risk in not sending a man with a history of reckless driving and driving at police back to jail for the same offence.  “It’s a huge risk, and I have to acknowledge that,” Judge Tony Greig said as he spared Dillan Mclellan in the New Plymouth District Court on Wednesday.

Mclellan was being sentenced for a reckless driving incident involving a police pursuit. It took place after his release from jail for the same offending committed in 2018.  “Somebody could have died in Mr Mclellan’s last set of offending, somebody could have died in this set of offending, and if he offends again somebody could die next time.”

However, Judge Greig said it was time to take a chance on the 22-year-old.  Mclellan’s court appearance stemmed from his late night drive on January 10, two months after he had been disqualified from getting behind the wheel for a period six months.

Police spotted him on an Opunake road and attempted to pull him over.  However, Mclellan ignored the order, accelerated and hit State Highway 45 (SH45).  He crossed the centre line, causing two cars to stop, and switched off his headlights while reaching speeds of up 146kmh.  He then slammed on his breaks, completed a U-turn, crossed the centre line and drove in the opposite lane towards the pursing patrol car.  Police had to take immediate action to avoid a collision.

In court, prosecutor Georgia Milne accepted the recommended sentence for Mclellan’s latest offending was intensive supervision but said imprisonment remained the Crown’s position.  Defence lawyer Rajan Rai said his client had been in custody since January which had provided time for Mclellan to “dry out” and adjust his attitude.  He was determined to sort his life out, which included engaging with his Māori culture, Rai said.

Judge Greig said Mclellan’s latest lot of offending was almost the exact repetition of his last.  In March 2018, police had used road spikes in an attempt to stop Mclellan, who had a warrant for his arrest, south of Omata on SH45.  He had driven his van at an officer, who dived for cover, before an unsuccessful attempt to flee on foot ended in arrest.

At Wednesday's hearing, Judge Greig said a “compelling” cultural report advised Mclellan wanted to change and to lead a “solid life”.  “And so if that’s what you want to do, that’s what I want to help you with.”  He sentenced Mclellan to 18 months’ intensive supervision coupled with judicial monitoring.
 
“If you stuff up I’ll probably be the judge who re-sentences you. Good luck, Mr Mclellan.”

The fundamental error with this kind of approach to sentencing is this: innocent members of the community have to bear the risk of the offender breaching his promises of "reformed behaviour".  It is not the judge who bears the risks.  It is his neighbours and fellow citizens.  Did they have a say?  Were their concerns taken into account? Not on your nellie.   

We applaud the fact that the offender promises to reform.  It is appropriate that he engage in the variety of programmes available in prison to help remove potentially murderous behaviour. But not at the expense of the innocent public. 

We suggest that such merciful judges be allowed to apply such accommodating sentences, if they felt so inclined.  But, the priviso would need to be that the sentencing judge be made culpable for the subsequent behaviour of the repeat offender.  Such a judge would need himself to be imprisoned if the offender subsequently failed to meet all his release obligations. 

We wonder if that would change Judge Greig's particular outlook on the administration of justice?

Basics and Tradecraft for Christian Warfare

7 Rules for Reformers

Douglas Wilson
Blog & Mablog

A generation ago "community organizer" Saul Alinsky famously penned his Rules for Radicals, and it is my conviction that those interested in reformation should match his craft and self-awareness without trying to compete with the speed and depth of his revolutionary destructo-vision.

Some revolutionaries are patient and some are not. Gramsci argued for the "long march through the institutions" and Lenin wanted the massive meltdown all at once. Most revolutionaries have what Billingsly described as a "fire in the minds of men," but some are willing to go for the slow burn. So more than just simple patience is required to distinguish a revolutionary from a reformer.

So what are the basic rules for reformers?

1. Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today, and forever. Reformation of culture is either a species of salvation or sanctification, and you can't have either one without Jesus. Secular conservatism will sometimes buy you time, but that is about all it can do - that and lure you into the complacent notion that it can do more than this. Secular conservatism is like trying to use your pocket handkerchief to slow you down after the main chute has failed. The person and work of Jesus is not optional.

2. Always remember the distinction between principles and methods. Say that the principle is to win the war against the enemy - the methods would be navy, artillery, air force, ground troops, etc. Someone enamored of method would think that the war can be won by their branch of the service alone, without any help from the others. Those who latch on to the methods being employed, without any awareness of the principles being served, are either simple-minded or partisans. The simple need leadership; they can make great foot soldiers, but don't ever make them generals. The partisans need a peculiar kind of leadership, but you have to be careful - they are the ones who are already a tad too gung ho about your leadership. And they think you are as gummed up about particular methods as they are.

3. Reformers are conservatives, which means they must prefer the concrete to the abstract.

Covid-19's Perpetual Alarm

The UK Government’s National Panic Service 

Keeping Us In Condition of Perpetual Alarm

Peter Hitchens
Daily Mail

The most common symptom of Covid-19 is that you feel just fine. A huge number of those now being absurdly listed as ‘infected’ with this bogeyman disease are perfectly healthy.

If the trained hunters of the Government’s National Panic Service had not tracked them down, most of them would never have known they were supposed to be ill. Why do we take this seriously?

It is a fact, not a ‘conspiracy theory’, that the power of the state is now being used to keep us in a condition of perpetual alarm. We are ceaselessly threatened with a ‘second wave’ for which there is, in fact, no evidence.

As I began to write this, I received a ridiculous text message from my GP squawking urgently: ‘We have been made aware that the number of coronavirus cases in Oxfordshire is starting to rise.’  No doubt Oxford will be one of the next cities to undergo some sort of renewed shutdown, to keep us in our place. This fatuous propaganda is just preparing the way. The more scared we are, the more we obey.

It ended by intoning: ‘We must each do our bit to protect ourselves and others.’ The use of the phrase ‘do our bit’, of course, invokes the phoney Blitz spirit that is used against anyone who looks at the actual researched facts and says, as I do: ‘Don’t be silly.’  For daring to stay calm, I am then accused of being a collaborator with the wicked Nazi virus. The played-out, once-independent magazine Private Eye, now a boring mouthpiece of wokeness, actually did this to me last week.

The truth is that the number of deaths from Covid, even the fiddled and inflated version which the Government clings to, is falling closer and closer to zero.  So, even more significantly, are hospital admissions, which would be rising steeply if these ‘infection’ figures actually represented large numbers of seriously ill people.

These things are true both of Britain and of Spain, whose supposed spike in Covid was used to destroy the holiday plans of more than a million people last week in an arbitrary decision of astonishing uselessness.  At the peak of the epidemic in April, Spain at one point suffered 961 deaths in one day.  According to the Coronavirus Worldometer, the daily Covid deaths in Spain for the past few weeks have rarely risen above five a day, and have often been fewer than that.

And for this we destroy the happy innocent pleasures of hundreds of thousands, and deal another smashing blow to a travel industry already devastated by Government folly? Why do we put up with it? I have no idea.

Ungodly Prejudice

L.A. Threatens John MacArthur And His Congregation

Face Fines, Arrest For Holding Services


Elle Reynolds
The Federalist

The city of Los Angeles has issued a cease-and-desist letter to Grace Community Church and its pastor, John MacArthur, for continuing indoor worship services, threatening a daily $1000 fine or MacArthur’s arrest, according to a press release the church’s legal counsel released on Wednesday.

“The state has absolutely no power to impose the restrictions it is demanding,” said Jenna Ellis, one of the attorneys representing the church. “This is not about health and safety, it is about targeting churches.”

On July 13, California Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered churches in 30 counties including Los Angeles County, where MacArthur’s church is located, to stop all indoor services indefinitely. In response, MacArthur and his church continued meeting and issued a public statement declaring their freedom to worship.

“It has never been the prerogative of civil government to order, modify, forbid, or mandate worship,” said MacArthur and the church’s elder board in their statement. “Freedom of worship is a command of God, not a privilege granted by the state.”

Fooling Nobody

Poll: More Than 8 In 10 Americans Say Media Is Biased

Political Division Caused by Media

Elle Reynolds
The Federalist

Eighty-six percent of Americans believe there is “a great deal” or “a fair amount” of political bias in the way the media covers news, according to a Knight Foundation/Gallup poll released on Tuesday. The number of Americans that see bias in the media is up almost 25 percentage points from 62 percent in 2007. Almost half of Americans — 49 percent — now say there’s a great deal of political bias in news coverage.

While Republicans are more likely to say there’s a “great deal” of bias and Democrats more often said there was a “fair amount,” large majorities of both political parties believed that some bias existed: 78 percent of Democrats and 94 percent of Republicans.

These numbers were collected from polling of more than 20,000 Americans between November and February, even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the death of George Floyd, and the resulting media coverage of both events.

Not only do most Americans recognize media bias, they also believe it’s intentional. When asked about their views of news organizations they distrust, 79 percent of poll respondents said those outlets were “trying to persuade people to adopt a certain viewpoint.” When news is inaccurate, 54 percent of Americans think it’s because reporters are “misrepresenting the facts,” while 28 percent assume they’re “making them up entirely.”

And more than 8 in 10 Americans — 84 percent — assign the media either a great deal (48 percent) or a moderate amount (36 percent) of blame for political division.

It’s not that Americans don’t have high expectations for what the media should be doing; they just don’t think the news industry is hitting the mark. Eighty-four percent said news media is critical or very important to democracy, and 92 percent believe that providing “accurate and fair news reports” is a critical or very important role.

But almost three-fourths (73 percent) of Americans believe it’s a “major problem” for so much bias to exist in news that’s supposed to be objective. That number has increased from 65 percent in 2017.

Over half — 56 percent — also admitted to recognizing bias in their own go-to publications.

Finally, younger Americans are trusting the media less than their parents and grandparents. Only 19 percent of Americans under 30 and 27 percent of Americans 30-49 had a favorable opinion of the news media, compared with 44 percent of those over 65.

Elle Reynolds is an intern at the Federalist, and a senior at Patrick Henry College studying government and journalism. You can follow her work on Twitter at @_etreynolds.

Yes . . . Why, Indeed?

Legalising Cannabis - Why Would We Be So Dumb?

Kate Hawkesby
NZ Herald

I was pleased to see some sense finally reported on the comparison between harm caused by alcohol versus that by cannabis.

A Professor of Psychiatric Epidemiology and Youth Mental Health, from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Dr Mary Cannon pointed out the argument - that alcohol is legal and more harmful to people than cannabis, therefore cannabis should be legal too - is redundant.

Or as the professor describes it, "a spurious argument along the lines of 'would you rather be run over by a truck or a bus'."  It's a cop-out for pro-cannabis legalisation lobbyists to argue along these lines, because the one big elephant in the room is psychotic disorder.

Cannabis use is now the most powerful single environmental risk factor for psychotic disorder, according to studies both recent and ongoing.  According to a Herald report, one study the professor was involved in found that "10 per cent of the young people who'd been using cannabis by age 15 developed a psychotic disorder in young adulthood".

She argues that the association between cannabis and psychosis appears to be getting even stronger in line with the increase in strength of cannabis. That's the THC content – which is now regularly over 20 per cent, and much higher than what it used to be.

Cannon says that in her clinical experience, she's seen an "increase in presentations of young men with psychosis related to cannabis over the past few years".  This includes high levels of agitation, aggression and paranoia.  She also cites "several large international studies ... which have shown that cannabis use in youth has a more detrimental effect on cognition and later functioning in adulthood ... than alcohol use does".

And if that wasn't enough, we have local examples too. A "study from Christchurch showed that young cannabis users had greater rates of school dropout, unemployment and dependence on social welfare payments ..."

And, a "Dunedin study showed that young cannabis users had lower incomes later in adulthood than their alcohol-using peers. Heavy, early onset cannabis use has been associated with up to 8-point drop in IQ that appears to be irreversible."  So why are we playing with fire here? Why would we want to normalise this and pretend the harms aren't real?

Often the people arguing for cannabis legalisation are adult casual users, not young adolescents who'll be most impacted by it. The casual pot-smoking luvvie may well buy or grow the legalised amounts and varieties, but the kids won't.  They'll still seek out black market cannabis with dangerously high levels of THC, still propping up gang manufacture.

So, what changes? The message. The message from the adults around them - and the government - that cannabis is OK.

You legalise something, you normalise it. If you want to stack up an argument around cannabis and alcohol – that's surely it.  Look at all the harm alcohol has created. And you want to add cannabis to the mix? Why would we be so dumb?

It's Worse Than Y'all Think

The Policing Crisis in New York City

The city is sinking into lawlessness, and the mayor blathers on about ‘sensitivity.’

By Kyle Smith
National Review Online


On Tuesday afternoon in Manhattan, cops carried out a routine arrest of an 18-year-old New York activist who is suspected of disabling police cameras by spraying paint on them. The person is suspected of this for very good reason: There are videos starring the perpetrator carrying out the act in question. (Allegedly.) The arresting officers were plainclothes members of the NYPD. The video of the arrest, in which plainclothes officers and uniformed police using bikes as barriers efficiently collar the subject, went “viral,” meaning it became attractive to stupid people who evidently have never seen Serpico or The Wire and insisted this was a “kidnapping” carried out by “stormtroopers,” presumably acting at the behest of Darth Trumper.

Plainclothes officers, in unmarked vehicles, are an essential crime-fighting tool and have been deployed for a very long time. Even a lintbrain such as Mayor Bill de Blasio, or Governor Andrew Cuomo, knows this. Yet what did they both do? Explain to the public how policing works? Of course not. They both denounced the police.

Cuomo was especially obtuse, calling the cops’ actions “outrageous,” because when you’re governor of New York, you’re at a remove from municipal police activity.

Britain and a Liberal World Order

The Great British Comeback

Critics thought that post-Brexit Britain would fail to stand up for the liberal world order. Boris Johnson proved them wrong

By Mathis Bitton
National Review Online


Many commentators thought that Brexit would mark the end of Britain’s involvement in foreign affairs. Embracing the siren calls of nationalism, the reasoning went, the British people had decided to turn inwards, to retreat, to isolate themselves, to reject international alliances, and to focus on domestic problems. This analysis was understandable, particularly given that the shadow of past foreign interventions has haunted the British political establishment for years. But Prime Minister Boris Johnson has proven these commentators wrong. Over the past few months, Downing Street has shown itself capable of working with other democracies to fight for the liberal world order without relapsing into reckless interventionism.

The past ten years have seen a decline in British diplomatic involvement. Successive governments have reduced defense budgets, shut down military bases, and distanced themselves from playing an active role on the international stage. The Iraq War left an ineffaceable mark upon the British public, which has come to view NATO as a convenient way to justify otherwise unjustifiable interventions abroad. Voters no longer want their country to be America’s wingman, to get carried away in decade-long conflicts that do nothing but destabilize foreign lands and exacerbate anti-Western passions. The ultimate failure of the Libyan intervention reinforced that sentiment. Once more, the all-too-noble but unsuccessful desire to topple a murderous dictator came at the cost of British blood. Chaos ensued, the military dictatorship was replaced by a de facto Islamist theocracy, and the U.K. became even more hated in the region than it was before. One after the other, foreign interventions provided the British people with countless reasons not to trust the promises of their leaders. In 2013, the House of Commons refused to authorize air strikes against Bashar al-Assad — after he used chemical weapons against peaceful Syrian protesters. This vote, many thought, signified the beginning of the end for British influence abroad.

While popular discontentment vis-à-vis foreign interventions was more than warranted, Britain’s gradual retreat did no favors for its reputation as a military power. International observers derided the U.K. as a country obsessed with domestic politics, and Brexit appeared to prove them right. For months, mainstream newspapers and think tanks lamented the perils of isolationism. After centuries of dominance, Britain would disappear or get stuck between competing blocs. David Cameron’s attitude towards China corroborated the sense that the U.K. had abandoned its defense of liberalism: Unconcerned by the Chinese threat, Cameron welcomed Chinese investment in British infrastructure, including in strategic facilities such as nuclear-power plants. In 2015, he went so far as to call our present moment a “golden age” for Sino-British relations.

His successor, Theresa May, was no better.