Wretchard.com

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/04/world/europe/france-marine-le-pen-acquitted-isis.html

Ms. Le Pen, head of the National Rally, posted graphic pictures in 2015 to protest comparisons between the terrorist group and her party.

NYT

Nobody knows the virus’ origin for sure but it would be foolish to rule a lab accident out simply from political correctness.

https://wjla.com/news/nation-world/exclusive-classified-study-found-covid-19-could-have-originated-in-chinese-lab

Made in the Philippines words will bounce off Made in China armor plate.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-05-04/phillipine-foreign-minister-china-south-china-sea-teddy-locsin/100113638

Because you’ll be canceled for racism, even though the criticism is directed against Communism.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/04/10/china-xi-jinping-totalitarian-authoritarian-debate/

The stealth progressive president.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2021/05/03/cnn-biden-admin-wants-to-outsource-spying-on-americans-to-private-firms-to-bypass-fourth-amendment-n1444246

The rise of Covid anxiety syndrome. Do you have it?

The anxiety syndrome is characterised by compulsively checking for symptoms of Covid, avoidance of public places, and obsessive cleaning, a pattern of “maladaptive behaviours” adopted when the pandemic started. Now researchers have raised the alarm that the obsessive worrying and threat avoidance, including being unwilling to take public transport or bleaching your home for hours, will not subside easily, even as Covid is controlled.

Guardian

The new numbers came out last week, and they are beyond harsh: Asians won 54 percent of this year’s freshman class seats; whites, 28 percent; Hispanics, 5 percent and African-Americans, 4 percent.

Whereupon Schools Chancellor Meisha Ross Porter demanded an end to test-based admissions — because “It’s far past time for our students to be fairly represented.”

It is also a way of covering up serious defects in the whole pedagogical model. It’s bureaucracy’s way of cheating on a performance test they’ve flunked.

https://nypost.com/2021/05/03/expelling-asian-americans-from-top-schools-proves-nyc-education-is-off-the-rails/

Books: The Spy in Moscow Station: A Counterspy’s Hunt for a Deadly Cold War Threat. The thrilling, true story of the race to find a leak in the United States Embassy in Moscow―before more American assets are rounded up and killed.

Someone asked me why so many polymaths were Eastern Europeans and seemed to thrive in conspiratorial environments, sometimes actual secret cities in the old USSR, the initiates of mysteries under hierophants.

Events in Texas raise the question of whether the alleged Biden strategy of being the stealth progressive hitman is really working. Maybe the voters can see through it and are flocking to the Trump banner in response. An antipathy to Biden will manifest itself as sympathy for Trump.

Voters in a Texas House district chose two Republicans to advance to a runoff election, dashing Democratic hopes of picking up a GOP-held seat — WSJ

New at the Belmont Club. The siren song of consensus science versus the urgency of finding a real solution.

There are two measures of a civilization. The first is the physical expanse of its possessions. The second is the vitality and robustness of its spirit. Sohrab Amari’s sense of desolation and depression in New York suggests a fragility at odds with the solid steel and stone.

The Big Empty | City Journal

New York City Diarist

Steven Koonin, a top Obama scientist looks at the evidence on warming and CO2 emissions and rebuts much of the dominant political narrative. “The important questions are about the magnitude of civilization’s contribution and the speed of changes; and, derivatively, about the urgency and scale of governmental response.”

‘Unsettled’ Review: The ‘Consensus’ On Climate

A top Obama scientist looks at the evidence on warming and CO2 emissions and rebuts much of the dominant political narrative.

New at the Belmont Club. Are progressives planning a trip to a future that’s gone?

The Third Obama Term in a Covid Battered World

No plan survives contact with the future

The full cost of the lockdown strategy is now coming in. From economic slowdowns, slower vaccination manufacturing, a spike in depression and drug use to a lost school year for millions of students.

It’s called “covid learning loss”. But it’s really political learning loss. The question that will be asked in coming years is whether it was worth it.

‘Parents are powerless’: Students face being held back after a year of remote learning

Pandemic-related learning loss means some parents are weighing whether their children should repeat a grade. In 18 states, they won’t have a choice.

New at the Belmont Club. The subordination of rationality to ideology. When you’re so sure you’re right there’s no need to look out the windshield.

Western Civilization’s Growing Intellectual Dead Zones

None so blind as those dazzled by their own virtue

As Joe Biden plans to end the deployment to Afghanistan it needs to be remembered that it was once the Obama administration’s “war of necessity” as opposed to the deployment in Iraq, which they ended.

The Belmont Club piece “The Ten Ships” posted on May 14, 2010 critiquing the strategy of ‘ending the war on terror where it began’ has become a site classic, and gets better if anything, with age.

The Ten Ships

One of the reasons the Navy opposed a Southwest Pacific campaign during the Pacific War was the shrewd appreciation that once bureaucracy started on a task it would grow with it like a cancer whatever its original purpose. Admiral King wasn’t against an action in the Solomons. He was just afraid tha…

The Dems thought the public loved them. Now it can be revealed their own polls showed a deep disillusion with establishment institutions.

“A group of top Democratic Party pollsters are set to release a public statement Tuesday acknowledging ‘major errors’ in their 2020 polling — errors that left party officials stunned…”

″… by election results that failed to come close to expectations in November…. ‘Twenty-twenty was an “Oh, s—” moment for all of us,’ s…

As the drafters of NEPA recognized, population growth has significant environmental impacts. In its complaint, the AGO argues that DHS and other federal officials did not provide environmental impact statements or environmental assessments when DHS abruptly halted ongoing border wall construction

Arizona sues Biden admin., tries to force resumption of border wall construction – Breaking911

(News Release / AZ AG) — Attorney General Mark Brnovich filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and federal officials for violating the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) over destructive immigration policies. The Attorney General’s Office (AGO) is aski…