The Venezuelan/Smartmatic-Bizta/Florida Links to the Great Election Fraud of 2020

“Smartmatic has helped hundreds of millions of voters cast 6.5 billion votes in thousands of elections around the world.” — Smartmatic website


Watch Smartmatic CEO Antonio Mugica Rivero admitting to “manipulating turnout numbers’ in July 2017 Venezuela election – 59 to 41.

According to Wikipedia,

In 2017, Los Angeles County signed a $282 million contract with Smartmatic to create an election system to be used for future elections,[97][98] and became the first publicly owned voting system in the United States.[99] The system will be used for the first time during the 2020 California Democratic primary.[97][98] Both software and hardware were developed in the United States by Smartmatic, while ownership of all products and intellectual properties were then given to Los Angeles County.[97] The machines developed incorporate an interactive ballot that is printed by each voter to validate results, and then deposited back into voting machines.[99][100] According to VSAP, interest in the voting system was expressed by other districts in the United States and internationally.[99]

In a column titled “Smartmatic: All Things ConnectedAlek Boyd wrote,

The Miami Herald reported on Friday May 28, 2004 :

A large and powerful investor in the software company that will design electronic ballots and record votes for Venezuela’s new and much criticized election system is the Venezuelan government itself…Venezuela’s investment in Bizta Corp., the ballot software firm, gives the government 28 percent ownership of the company it will use to help deliver voting results in future elections, including the possible recall referendum against President Hugo Chavez, according to records obtained by The Herald…Until a year ago, the Bizta Corp. was a struggling Venezuelan software company with barely a sales deal to its name, records show. Then, the Venezuelan government — through a venture capital fund — invested about $200,000 and bought 28 percent of it” (sic).

Further the Herald also shed light upon shareholders and registered addresses of both Smartmatic and Bizta thusly:

Three companies will build and execute Venezuela’s new touch-screen voting system. Two are incorporated in Florida, though neither does most of its business here.

* Smartmatic Corp., which will build the machines, incorporated in Florida in 2000 and lists its world headquarters at 6400 Congress Ave. in Boca Raton. Its president is Antonio Mugica Rivero, 30, and its vice president is Alfredo Anzola, 30.

Bizta Corp., which will provide software for the new machines, incorporated in Florida in 2001, and lists its address as 19591 Dinner Key Dr., Boca Raton, a residential property owned by Mugica’s father. Mugica is listed as president, and Anzola is vice president, according to Florida records. Venezuelan records, however, indicate Anzola is president. In Caracas, Bizta shares its office with Smartmatic.

* CANTV, Venezuela’s publicly held phone company, will provide phone lines to connect the system and election day technical support. It would have been part of any voting system selected for the elections contract.

Venezuelan journalist Orlando Ochoa Teran investigated the claims published by the Miami Herald and discovered that Venezuelan officials were behind the incorporation of Smartmatic. Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel and Venezuelan Ambassador to the USA Bernardo Alvarez Herrera are intimately related, either through long time friendship or consanguinity relationship, to the directors of Smartmatic. According to registry documents, that went missing after the Herald blew the whistle, the names associated to the company are Alfredo Anzola, Antonio Mugica and families Gabaldon-Anzola and Herrera-Oropeza [3]. The incorporation of Smartmatic took place in the Fifth Mercantile Registry, located in the ground floor of tower B in “Cubo Negro” building in Chuao Caracas. Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel’s daughter, lawyer Gisela Rangel Avalos de D’Armas was, at the time, the head of the said registry.

Since March 2004 the CNE has disbursed at least $131 million to Smartmatic [4].

Read more.

The Guardian in an April 22, 2019 article by Jordan Wilkie titled America’s new voting machines bring new fears of election tampering reported,

By design, tens of millions of votes are cast across America on machines that cannot be audited, where the votes cannot be verified, and there is no meaningful paper trail to catch problems – such as a major error or a hack.

For almost 17 years, states and counties around the country have conducted elections on machines that have been repeatedly shown to be vulnerable to hacking, errors and breakdowns, and that leave behind no proof that the votes counted actually match the votes that were cast.

Read more

“At the end of January – beginning of February 2004, the apparent contracting of the SBC Consortium (Smartmatic-Bizta-CanTV) for 112 million US$ took place, of which 91 million would be for Smartmatic-Bizta, in fact sixty-three (63) million would be for Smartmatic (purchase of the machines) and thirty-one (31) for Bizta (local processes)  [See Annex 6 – El Carabobeño].   

The exact amounts and responsibilities of each entity could not be specified as there was no access to the contract documents or the letters of credit apparently opened before the Bank of America in favor of Smartmatic and Bizta: They were opened before the Bank of America.

In any case, what is essential is the impossibility of trusting a company in which the government is not only a shareholderbut has appointed as its representative and Director not just any official from the public administration, but a person clearly linked to the most radical of Chavismo, Eng. Omar Montilla Castillo, which is evidenced by the following  [see Annex 5].

He was a militant and operational member during the electoral campaign in 1998 and 1999 of UNEPAD –  (Unit for Strategy and Electoral Register of the Patriotic Pole).

The director of UNEPAD was the current Minister of production and Commerce Wilmer Castro Soteldo, remember that Foncrei (owner of SCR) is attached to this ministry. 

For Castro Soteldoengineers Jorge Berrizbeitia and Omar Castillo worked in the computer science area of this unit 1, who today serve as President and General Director of the National Center for Information Technology (CNTI), an organization attached to the Ministry of Science and Technology.

Smartmatic Consortium (SBC) Founders Connected to Radical Venezuelan Communist Government

Relationship of the actors:

CNE: National Electoral Council, Public Power of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela directed by a board of five members (Francisco Carrasqueño-President, Ezequiel Zamora-Vice President, Jorge Rodríguez, Oscar Battaglini, Sobella Mejias,)

Smartmatic Corporation: Company registered in the State of Delaware on April II-2000 under file number 3209993 by Antonio Mugica Rivero (Chairman), Alfredo Anzola (Vice Chairman), Roger Piñate (Director) and Antonio Mugica Sesma (Director). It operates with Antonio Mugica and Alfredo Anzola as President and Vice President. The company applied for permission to operate as Edge Act Corporation in the State of Florida on September 11, 2000. It is a very small company that has carried out work in the area of automation. (Look at annex 1)

Bizta Corporation: Company registered in the State of Delaware on April 12, 2000 under file number 3211192 by Antonio Mugica Rivero (Chairman) without any other Director. It operates with Antonio Mugica and Alfredo Anzola as President and Vice President. The company applied for permission to operate as Edge Act Corporation in the State of Florida on January 24, 2001. It has not been possible to locate any record of any work carried out by this company. It has the same physical address and directors as Smartmatic. (Appendix 2)

Bizta R&D Software C.A.: In Caracas on October 15, 1997, the company “Software Softer C.A” was registered with a subscribed capital of five million bolivars and paid twenty percent (one million bolivars), its shareholders are Antonio Mugica Rivero and Antonio Mugica Sesma (the father). The company’s commercial registry does not show any activity until June 22, 2001, in which an Extraordinary Shareholders’ Meeting was held with the presence of these, and also Alfredo Anzola Jaumotte, Eduardo Correia and Sol Rivero de Mugica. In said meeting (June 22, 2001) the name was changed to Bizta R&D Software C.A., increasing the capital by 515 million bolivars to 520 million, through capitalization of the “shareholders’ credit” account and. Proceeding the sale of the entire capital stock to Bizta Corporation (Delaware, April 12, 2000- Alfredo Anzola). In this session, Eduardo Correia is appointed as President and Antonio Mugica (father) as Vice President. Ten days later (July 2, 2001) another Extraordinary Shareholders’ Meeting was held and Mugica (father) was replaced as Vice President. The commercial registry remains without activities until March 20, 2003, date on which the capital is increased again, now to 775 million bolivars, with the same figure of the “capitalization of shareholders’ debts”, and with the particularity that Bizta Corporation sells all the shares to the following people: Antonio Mugica R., Antonio Mugica S., Eduardo Correia and Alfredo Anzola. Eduardo Correia is maintained as President and Alfredo Anzola is appointed as Vice President.

Three months later (June 10, 2003) another Shareholders’ Meeting was held, with the shareholders present and with Marieta Maarroui de Bolívar, president of Foncrei and SCR (wife of Didalco Bolívar-Governor of Aragua), in which it is decided to increase the capital of the company by 300 million bolivars up to one thousand seventy-five million bolivars (1,075 million); noting that these three hundred million bolivars are contributed in cash by the Venezuelan State, very different from the rest of the “capital increases” that had previously been carried out, I finish. In this assembly, a group of directors is appointed, whose presence is mandatory (operating quorum 3 out of 3) for decision-making in the company’s administration. These directors are Alfredo Anzola-President, Eduardo Correia-VP and Antonio Mugica-Director. According to the meeting minutes, this meeting was to remain until June 2004. However, the next and until now last performance in the company registry is another Extraordinary Shareholders Meeting in which the Board of Directors is modified again, leaving the same Pdte and VP, but naming Omar Montilla Castillo as Director to replace Antonio Mugica. (See annex 3)

Cantv: Telefónica de Venezuela, its largest shareholder is Verizon (USA).

SCR: Venture Capital Society (not to be confused with SBC), Foncrei Subsidiary registered in Caracas on November 14, 2001, with a subscribed and fully paid capital of five billion bolivars. Its shareholders are Foncrei (4,998 shares), Anfico (Corpoindustria) (One share) and Fonpyme (One share). Its audited balance sheet as of June 2003 indicates that it only has shareholdings in two companies, a roasting company (200 million bolivars) and shares in Bizta R&D Software C.A. (Three hundred million bolivars). Several of its directors signed against the opposition deputies. It owns 28% of Bizta R&D Software C.A. (See annex 4 statutes, balance and signatures against deputies).

The hiring

Since the appointment by the TSJ of the CNE board (August 2093) the selection of the companies and systems to be used in eventual elections and referenda that would take place in Venezuela began. At the end of January – beginning of February 2004, the apparent contracting of the SBC Consortium (Smartmatic-Bizta-Cantv) for 112 million US$ took place, of which 91 million would be for Smartmatic-Bizta, in fact sixty-three million would be for Smartmatic (purchase of the machines) and thirty-one for Bizta (local processes) (See annex 6-El Carabobeño). The exact amounts and responsibilities of each entity could not be specified as there was no access to the contract documents or the letters of credit that were apparently opened before the Bank of America in favor of Smartmatic and Biz:La.

In any case, what is essential is the impossibility of trusting a company in which the government is not only a shareholder, but has appointed as its representative and Director not just any official from the public administration, but a person clearly linked to the The most radical of Chavismo, Eng. Omar Montilla Castillo, which is evidenced by the following (see Annex 5).

  1. He was a militant and operational member during the electoral campaign in 1998 and 1999 of UNEPAD (Unit for Strategy and Electoral Register of the Patriotic Pole). The director of UNEPAD was the current Minister of Production and Commerce Wilmer Castro Soteldo, remember that Foncrei (owner of SCR) is attached to this ministry. For Castro Soteldo, engineers Jorge Berrizbeitia and Omar Castillo worked in the computer science area of this unit 1, who today serve as President and General Director of the National Center for Information Technology (CNTI), an organization attached to the Ministry of Science and Technology. .
  2. His father worked in the Secretary of the Council of Ministers and in the Directorate of Registries and Notaries.
  3. In recent signature collections, he requested the recall of Liliana Hernández and Henry Ramos. Likewise, several of the members

Annexes

Appendix 1

Smartmatic:

  • Registration of Incorporation in Delaware USA (II‑April‑2000)
  • Application for authorization to carry out business in Florida (Sep-11, 2000)
  • Annual reports (2003 and 2004)

Appendix 2

bizta

  • Registration of Incorporation in Delaware USA (12‑April‑2000)
  • Application for authorization to carry out business in Florida (January 24, 2001)
  • Annual report (2004)

Annex 3

Bizta R&D Software C.A:

  • Mercantile Registry (Caracas 1997) with all its modifications.

Annex 4

SCR‑Venture Capital Company (Froncrei Subsidiary):

• Mercantile Registry (2001) with all its modifications.

• Audited Balance (June‑2003) where the only two investments are shown (Torrefactora and Bizta)

• Signature of several of the members of its Board of Directors against the: S deputies of the opposition.

Annex 5

Omar Montilla

  • Sample of the existence of the UNEPAD-Polo Patriotico headed by Castro Soteldo (report El Universal, Yolanda Valery, 1998).
  • List of ex-members of UNEPAD-Polo Patriotico who are part of the CNTI board together with Montilla.
  • Signature of Montilla against opposition deputies (2004)
  • Official Gazette of the appointments of the father in various government positions.

Annex 6

News

  • News (Aporrea, El Carabobeño, El Universal) on the recent contracting of the Smartmatic-Bizta-Cantv consortium.

Annex 7

laws

Comments on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act

  • Applicability of the Rico Act.

back to documents

©2023. DEACON. All rights reserved.

France Rioters: ‘We are Muslims…We Have the Right to Kill, It Is Written in the Koran!’

The coming civil war in France…Ahead of Bastille Day, France Fears Firestorm of New Riots 

France on the Verge of Chaos?

By Guy Millière, Gatestone, July 11, 2023:

The riots grew bigger. Schools and theaters were destroyed…. churches were burned to the ground; graffiti in red paint on a church in Marseilles declared: “Mohammed was the last prophet”. Bank branches were ransacked and ATMs opened with chainsaws. Slogans were shouted: “death to the police”, “death to France”, “death to the Jews!”

“We are Muslims,” one angry protester shouted, “if the police kill us we have the right to kill; it is written in the Koran!”

Since the 1970s, France has welcomed an ever-increasing number of immigrants from the Muslim world… Only a tiny minority have assimilated into French society. The others live as they lived in their countries of origin. — Sorbonne University Professor Bernard Rougier, author of the book Les territoires conquis de l’islamisme (“The Conquered Territories of Islamism”).

Radical imams came from the Muslim world and allege that France is guilty of having colonized their countries, that Muslims should continue to live according to the law of Islam and that, in the imams’ view, France should pay for its crimes. Many politicians have told the newcomers that France is racist and had exploited them.

Criminal gangs formed and began ruling these neighborhoods. Radical imams justified the gangs’ criminal activities by claiming that the French must pay for what they did in the Muslim world. French political leaders closed their eyes. Meanwhile, these Muslim neighborhoods have grown and crime from them increased.

During the riots of 2005, then President Jacques Chirac asked imams to restore calm and promised to give even more money to Muslim neighborhoods. The police were ordered not to intervene in them at all; they fell entirely under the control of gangs and imams. It was then that these neighborhoods effectively became lawless “no-go zones” (zones urbaines sensibles), of which there are 750.

President Emmanuel Macron suggested that creating a “French Islam,” supposedly quite different from Islam in the rest of the world, would be the solution, but he quickly gave up on that plan. He then said he wanted to fight against what he called “Islamic separatism” (the no-go zones, neighborhoods where Muslims live separately from the rest of the population). He, too, has done nothing.

Macron seems to imagine that he has found explanations for these problems: Parents of rioters, he said, do not exercise their parental authority, and video games poison the minds of young people. His comments seemed completely disconnected from reality…

“The violence is increasing day by day… those who run our country must imperatively find the courage necessary to eradicate the dangers.” — Open letter by 20 retired French army generals to the French government and Macron, April 26, 2023.

Read the whole thing.

AUTHOR

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

EXCLUSIVE: Chinese Intel-Linked ‘Service Centers’ In U.S. Cities Used Cultural Events To Push Communist Party Propaganda

Overseas “service centers” set up in seven U.S. cities by a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) intelligence arm have hosted cultural events featuring pro-CCP propaganda and performers tied to China’s government and military, according to Chinese government records and state-run media reports reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The CCP’s United Front Work Department (UFWD) runs “Overseas Chinese Service Center” (OCSC) branches that operate out of U.S.-based nonprofits in seven U.S. cities, a recent DCNF investigation found. OCSCs were ostensibly set up to assist with official government duties, like reviewing passport applications, but they also host cultural events that often feature pro-CCP songs and performers tied to China’s military and propaganda departments, according to Chinese government records and state-run media reports.

Members of the U.S. Congress have attended these propaganda-filled cultural events, according to Chinese state-media reports and photos.

“These activities offer a perfect platform for the CCP to invite elected officials, whom they can then influence into endorsing the CCP’s narrative, and, in turn, influence broad masses of people,” Scott McGregor, a former Canadian military intelligence officer, told the DCNF.

The DCNF previously identified OCSC branches operating in San Francisco, California; St. Paul, Minnesota; St. Louis, Missouri; Omaha, Nebraska; Charlotte, North Carolina; Houston, Texas and Salt Lake City, Utah. The DCNF also reported that, during a 2018 trip to China, OCSC representatives met with officials from the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), which is China’s national police authority.

Republican Senators have asked the FBI and Justice Department to investigate the OCSCs. Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey recently opened an investigation into the St. Louis OCSC, which he called a “possible CCP outpost.”

‘China Is Back’ 

Between 2014 and 2017, the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office established 60 OCSCs around the world, including seven branches in U.S. cities, the DCNF previously reported.

The Overseas Chinese Affairs Office was under control of the CCP’s State Council until 2018 when it became part of UFWD, according to Chinese government documents and reports from China experts. The U.S.-China Economic Security and Review Commission, a federal entity, characterizes the UFWD as the CCP organ “responsible for coordinating [foreign and domestic] influence operations” as well as a “Chinese intelligence service.”

“United Front work is Beijing’s effort to enlist the Chinese diaspora and sympathetic residents of other countries to create sympathy for, and support of, the CCP’s goals,” Dr. June Tuefel Dreyer, former commissioner of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, told the DCNF.

OCSC branches perform a variety of duties in support of China’s foreign ministry, ranging from processing Chinese passport and travel permit applications to so-called “consular protection” activities, the DCNF previously reported. However, OCSCs also regularly host Chinese cultural events, many of which have featured pro-CCP propaganda, according to a DCNF review of dozens of events.

OCSC-hosted cultural events — which include Lunar New Year, Mid-Autumn Festival and other Chinese national celebrations — often present traditional Chinese music and dance alongside pro-CCP propaganda songs.

For instance, the Salt Lake City OCSC held a 2022 Mid-Autumn Festival livestream event featuring lion dancers and traditional instrumental songs, according to its website. Performers at the event also sang and danced to “My People, My Country,” one of 100 songs selected by the CCP Propaganda Department to commemorate communist China’s 70th anniversary, according to the state-run People’s Daily.

In a 2020 speech, Chinese President Xi Jinping called the song part of a “surging current that sings an ode to New China and inspires us to work harder in the new era, filling us with boundless energy.”

In 2018, the Salt Lake City OCSC hosted a Lunar New Year event that included ethnic dance routines, martial artists and performers singing patriotic tunes, like “Love My China,” which was also on the Propaganda Department’s list.

The OCSC in St. Paul, Minnesota helped organize a 2019 event celebrating the founding of communist China and the establishing of U.S.-China diplomatic relations, according to a report from the nonprofit Alliance of Minnesota Chinese Organizations (AMCO). The All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese is also listed as a co-organizer for the event. The All-China Federation is part of the CCP’s united front, according to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

In addition to performances featuring acrobats and traditional Chinese instruments, a performer at the St. Paul event also sang “Ode To The Motherland,” another CCP Propaganda Department-approved song, according to People’s Daily. The state-run China News Service has called the song communist China’s second national anthem.

The song’s author boasted to Chinese state-controlled media that his lyrics depict “the power of justice, a blood vow to resist the shame of national subjugation roared in the middle of battle.”

Although they did not appear to attend the event, AMCO reports that Minnesota Democratic politicians Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Rep. Dean Phillips and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey all wrote letters praising the celebration.

Klobuchar, Phillips and Frey did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

Service centers have also hosted events that included performances from art troupes affiliated with Chinese government propaganda departments, according to multiple Chinese state-run media reports.

In 2018, the Omaha OCSC sponsored a Lunar New Year celebration that featured Chinese opera performers from the state-owned Jiangsu Provincial Theatrical Troupe, according to Qiaowang, which is the news and propaganda arm of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office.

The Jiangsu theatrical troupe operates under the direction of the Jiangsu Propaganda Department, according to Chinese government documents.

The St. Paul OCSC and the Chongqing Propaganda Department have co-sponsored multiple events at the Mall of America in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area, including events in 2019 and 2022, according to AMCO and Sohu.com. The 2022 event featured a performance from a dragon dance troupe managed by the Chongqing Propaganda Department, according to Sohu.com.

These performances came after the CCP Propaganda Department minister from Chongqing traveled to Minnesota in 2018 to sign a “mutual cooperation” agreement with the Mall of America and the St. Paul OCSC, according to the nonprofit AMCO. The details of the agreement are unknown.

In 2019, a vice president for Triple Five Group, which owns and operates the Mall of America, wrote a letter — which was posted on AMCO’s website — thanking the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office, the head of the Chinese consulate in Chicago and several Chinese provincial government entities for their “firm support” of the mall’s Chinese New Year performances that year.

Neither the Mall of America nor the Triple Five Group responded to multiple requests for comment.

A Chinese Military Saxophonist Jams Out To U.S. Pop Songs

OCSC branches have also co-hosted performances with a related Overseas Chinese Affairs Office program called the Star Art Troupe.

Launched in 2014, the Star Art Troupe theatrical program is the “cultural flagship” of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office and aims to “meet the cultural needs of overseas Chinese” while providing a “window for foreigners to understand China,” according to the office’s website.

Chinese government and state-run media reports detail how, between 2014 and 2017, the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office established seven Star Art Troupes in BostonChicagoHoustonNew York CitySan FranciscoSeattle and St. Paul.

U.S. OCSC have co-hosted events with Star Art Troupes, according to multiple Chinese state-run media reports. Some of these events featured performers from the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) Academy of Art. The PLA is the Chinese military.

In October 2019, for instance, St. Paul’s OCSC and the local Star Art Troupe co-hosted an event commemorating the founding of communist China, according to AMCO. The event included a singer and musician from the PLA’s Academy of Art, according to Sohu.com.

Similarly, Houston’s Star Art Troupe also included a dancer who attended the PLA’s Academy of Art, according to the Oriental Arts Education Center (OAEC), though it’s unclear if the dancer remains at the center. OAEC, which hosts the art troupe, has co-hosted events Houston’s Chinese Civic Center, which houses the Houston OCSC.

In September 2015, Houston’s Chinese Civic Center sold tickets for a public event in Stafford, Texas, celebrating communist China’s founding that was co-hosted by Houston’s Star Art Troupe, according to the local Chinese Student Association. During the event, the lead saxophonist for the PLA’s Central Military Band played the pop hit “My Heart Will Go On,” the association reported.

That same month, the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office invited the head of Houston’s Star Art Troupe to come to China to attend a military parade at Tiananmen Square commemorating the defeat of Imperial Japan, according to OAEC.

While in Beijing, the head of Houston’s Star Art Troupe met with the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office’s chief propagandist to discuss “how the modern mission of overseas cultural disseminators is to use cultural confidence to demonstrate Chinese people’s profound heritage and love of peace in order to defend the peaceful image of China,” according to OAEC.

OAEC did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

“Americans should be very wary of cultural events hosted by organizations affiliated with the UFWD — and especially the MPS — because they are used to covertly hide the CCP’s true intent,” Ina Mitchell, Canadian investigative reporter and co-author of “The Mosaic Effect,” told the DCNF.

The DCNF reached out to all seven nonprofits housing OCSCs by email and phone. Only two of the nonprofits responded.

The Nebraska Chinese Association, which houses the Omaha OCSC, claimed its cultural events “strive to cultivate understandings between Chinese and American culture” and denied any relationship with the Chinese government.

A man who identified himself as a “founding member” of the Charlotte “Chinese service center” told the DCNF by phone that his organization was “not related to any government agency.” He directed the DCNF to review the group’s website.

‘Feel Good Sentiments’

Several members of Congress have attended OCSC-sponsored cultural events, according to multiple Chinese state-run media reports.

In January 2023, St. Paul’s OCSC co-hosted another Lunar New Year event at the Mall of America. During the event, Minnesota Democratic Sen. Tina Smith delivered a speech praising her state for welcoming immigrants, the CCP-controlled Qiaowang and CBS News reported.

Smith’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Sen. Klobuchar also gave a video speech thanking an OCSC representative for promoting “the cultural heritage of Chinese Americans,” according to AMCO’s YouTube channel.

Performers at the January 2023 event sang the CCP Propaganda Department-approved song “Why Are The Flowers So Red?” The song’s lyrics celebrate “the heroic frontier guards in Northwest China’s Xinjiang,” according to the PLA’s English website.

The song’s lyrics include the line: “Why are the flowers so red? They’re watered with the blood of youth.”

Rep. Phillips has also attended St. Paul OCSC co-sponsored by the Chongqing Propaganda Department, according to multiple reports.

In September 2022, Phillips attended the St. Paul OCSC’s Mid-Autumn Festival event at the Mall of America, according to iChongqing, a Chinese state-run media outlet. During the event, Phillips, the head of China’s Chicago consulate and St. Paul OCSC members painted eyes on a large dragon puppet, which was then used in a performance by a dragon dance troupe managed by the Chongqing Propaganda Department, photos from a state-run media outlet show.

“Cultural events create feel good sentiments — ‘how could a civilization that produced such fantastic dance, musical performances, acrobats, cuisine possibly have militant intentions?’” Dr. Dreyer told the DCNF.

Nebraska Republican Rep. Don Bacon has also attended events hosted by the Omaha OCSC, including a 2018 Lunar New Year event that featured the state-controlled Jiangsu Provincial Theatrical Troupe, according to Qiaowang.

Bacon’s spokesperson told the DCNF that individuals from the Nebraska Chinese Association “cherish their Chinese heritage” and “have a deep disdain for the Communist government and have expressed love and patriotism for the United States.” Bacon’s spokesperson added that local law enforcement had never “highlighted any concerns to us in the past” about the organization.

However, after the DCNF reported on the Omaha OCSC’s connection to the CCP’s United Front, Bacon said he contacted the FBI about the service center.

“Allegations that the Chinese Communist Government is operating an illegal organization to monitor and intimidate Chinese students and visitors in Omaha are obviously very alarming and we want answers from the FBI,” Bacon said.

In 2022, the U.S. National Counterintelligence and Security Center warned that CCP influence operations in the U.S. have now placed state and local officials “on the “front lines of national security.” While these operations may vary in their execution, ultimately, they all aim to coopt American lawmakers as Beijing’s proxies, whether wittingly or unwittingly, DNI cautioned.

“These associations have been bridges that Americans naively saw as just cultural and mutually beneficial,” Steve Yates, former deputy national security adviser to former vice president Dick Cheney, told the DCNF. “The CCP has always used every organization as a vehicle to monitor, and, in many cases, control their ethnic affiliates and through them the influencers in the communities in which their ethnic compatriots reside.”

AUTHOR

PHILIP LENCZYCKI

Investigative reporter.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.


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Grover Norquist is president of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), a taxpayer advocacy group he founded in 1985 at President Reagan’s request. ATR works to limit the size and cost of government and opposes higher taxes at the federal, state, and local levels and supports tax reform that moves towards taxing consumed income one time at one rate.

TOPIC: Bidenomics; IRS Guns and Whistleblowers

SHERIFF (RET) CURRIE MYERS

Sheriff (Ret) Currie Myers, has a combined 35 years of professional experience as a law enforcement officer at the local, state, and federal level, and as a criminologist, professor, and executive. Dr. Myers ended his law enforcement career as the sheriff of Johnson County, Kansas. Dr. Myers has several published articles and policy papers within the area of criminal justice public policy and is a certified expert witness within the Federal Court System. Dr. Myers has also spoken at events throughout the United States on criminal justice public policy including US Senate round tables in Washington DC and was a participant in the White House 2015 Criminal Justice Reform Summit. . Dr. Myers is on faculty in the Criminology Department as the Professional-in-Residence at Benedictine College, located in Atchison, KS.

TOPIC: 20 cities with the highest murder rates in America.

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If Pedophiles Ruled The World

With the sobering and inspiring film, Sound of Freedom hitting theaters this week, we are faced with the reality that there is a huge appetite for child sex throughout the world. While Operation Underground Railroad is fighting the child sex movement, there is an international effort pushing it forward in the name of “children’s rights.”

Here is a crucial piece of background. In 1983, two members of the Pedophile Information Exchange (PIE), a pro-pedophile group, were interviewed for Newsnight. In the interview (watch it here), pedophile Steven Adrian said:

  • “Our political objectives include developing a society where children are given a much higher status than today, where they’re recognized as individuals in their own right and this includes recognizing their right to certain sexual freedoms.”
  • “It’s an obligation on society to see that children are given a far more comprehensive sexual education from a far earlier age.
  • “Pedophiles develop a mutual sexuality with the child. It’s an entirely reciprocal relationship…A child is able to recognize a pleasurable experience. He’s able to recognize a pleasing emotional experience. He’s able to express consent and to recognize that this is something he wishes to continue. And the responsible, caring pedophile always refers to the wishes of the child.”

When PIE disbanded after popular outrage, Adrian declared that “the ideas behind it will continue to survive.” Was he right? Through my work at the United Nations over the past decade, I’ve seen that the fulfillment of these three pedophile objectives on the global level is unmistakable.

An International Children’s Rights Movement

Throughout the 1980s, PIE rallied pedophile groups worldwide to advance the pedophile cause by initiating a global “children’s liberation” movement and establishing “a common philosophical platform” for children’s rights. Interestingly, in 1989 a new document called the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) was unveiled at the United Nations. The CRC is “an international legal framework” intended to elevate children’s rights, just as Adrian proposed.

The CRC contains positive elements—such as condemning the sale and trafficking of children—but it could put children at grave risk. For instance, Article 13 says children must have the “freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of the child’s choice.” The CRC also grants children “freedom of association,” “peaceable assembly,” “privacy,” and access to “information and material from a diversity of national and international sources.” Some groups claim the CRC guarantees children the “right to confidential medical counselling and advice without parental consent…irrespective of age,” especially regarding “reproductive health education or services.”

These purported rights erode parents’ ability to protect their children and pave the way for nefarious adults to gain access to children.

Perhaps we can’t know for certain whether or to what extent pedophiles contributed to drafting the CRC. However, we know for certain that pedophiles promote it. Peter Newell is the principal author of the UN’s Implementation Handbook for the Convention on the Rights of the Child which instructs policymakers on how to implement the CRC worldwide. In 2018, Newell was convicted of indecent assault and sodomy against a minor and sentenced to over six years in jail. Newell reportedly raped a boy over the course of three years beginning when the boy was 13.

Adrian lamented the fact that people like Newell “whose only ‘crime’ is that they love children can expect to have the book thrown at them and endure years of attacks in squalid prisons from real criminals.” In his view—and a growing worldview—people who have sex with children are not “real criminals,” and children must be freed from the sexual shackles society places upon them so that pedophiles can have sex with them without legal repercussions.

Comprehensive Sexual Education

Adrian said children should get a “far more comprehensive sexual education from a far earlier age.” In lockstep with this pedophile ideal, establishing “comprehensive sexuality education” (CSE) as a human right for all children has become one of the fiercest movements at the United Nations. At a recent UN education summit, presenters called for “universal implementation of CSE” starting at age two. CSE programs (see here, if you dare) do exactly what pedophiles say they should do: present sex to children as their “right” and teach children how to “consent” to sex. The pedophiles of the world must be throwing confetti.

International Planned Parenthood Federation is the leading provider of CSE in the world. Their 2011 sexual rights declaration for youth says:

  • “Young people are sexual beings. They have sexual needs…It is important for all young people around the world to be able to explore, experience and express their sexualities in healthy, positive, pleasurable and safe ways. This can only happen when young people’s sexual rights are guaranteed.”
  • “Sexuality and sexual pleasure are important parts of being human for everyone—no matter what age.”
  • “Governments and leaders have a duty to respect, protect and fulfill all sexual rights for everyone.”

The Age of Sexual Consent

A major obstacle in “liberating” children is the legal age of consent. PIE advocated for “the abolition of all age of consent laws” around the world, and when France moved to lower the age of consent from 18 to 15 Adrian said “an electric urgency” surged through the pedophile movement. In 2015, the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO) said human rights standards “require states to guarantee adolescents’ rights…by providing sexual and reproductive health services without parental consent.” In 2016, UNICEF (the UN agency tasked with protecting children worldwide) published Legal Minimum Ages and the Realization of Adolescents’ Rights which says states should allow “children to consent to certain medical treatments and interventions without the permission of a parent.” Further, this spring an organization called ICJ launched a document at an event sponsored by UN agencies including the WHO that says, “Sexual conduct involving persons below the domestically prescribed minimum age of consent to sex may be consensual in fact, if not in law.”

In addition to eroding age of consent laws, the WHO is working to decriminalize “sex work” (i.e., prostitution). The WHO’s name and logo appear at decriminalizesex.work under “Organizations that Support the Decriminalization of Prostitution.”

The outcomes of these intersecting campaigns could be extremely troubling: If the push to lower the age of consent and the effort to legalize “sex work” are both successful, could this lead to the legalized prostitution of children in the name of children’s “sexual rights”? If this occurs, there may be very few children left for Tim Ballard and his teammates to save because engaging children in sex work would be legal—as long as the child consents. And the “responsible, caring” pedophiles and traffickers of the world would be happy to help them consent.

Liberated from What?

We are facing an international movement insisting that children must be “liberated.” But we must ask, liberated from what? The answer: from parents, laws, and social norms that restrict sexual activity for children. And who benefits from the sexual freedom of children? People who want to have sex with children and people who want to earn money off people having sex with children. In other words, traffickers and pedophiles.

To counteract this global pedophilic onslaught, we must oust sexual rights organizations from our schools, maintain age of consent laws, fiercely enforce child pornography laws, apprehend and convict child traffickers, and defend parental rights like fire-breathing dragons on steroids. But above all, we must return to a common consensus that children are innocent, that their innocence is worth protecting.

For children, hearing the Sound of Freedom does not mean being freed from their parents or from laws that protect them. Hearing the Sound of Freedom means living free from the grasp of eager pedophiles.

AUTHOR

KIMBERLY ELLS

Kimberly Ells is the author of, The Invincible Family: Why the Global Campaign to Crush Motherhood and Fatherhood Can’t Win. Follow her at  Invincible Family Substack.

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EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Supreme Court Could Upend Hundreds of January 6 Prosecutions — and, Potentially, President Trump’s

We must restore the Constitution and prosecute the Democrat traitors who overthrew this country.

The persecution and prosecution of election fraud protesters was an act of war against the American people and our Constitution. I covered ever Trump rally both before and since the 2020 election, there was never any violence. Counter that with every Democrat, BLM, Antifa riot.

Remember this, they can find grandmas who went to DC to protest election fraud, but they can’t find the pipe bomber or the Biden family member who was snorting cocaine at the White House.

Complete coverage of January 6th political persecution here.

Supreme Court Could Upend Hundreds of January 6 Prosecutions — and, Potentially, President Trump’s

A rioter asks the high court to weigh in on whether a statute intended to fight financial crime is an appropriate tool for prosecutors to use against violent protesters.

By: A.R. Hoffman, NY Sun, July 10, 202306:42:26 am

The filing at the Supreme Court of a petition arguing that hundreds of defendants who engaged in violence at the Capitol were mischarged has the potential to upend the largest prosecutorial effort in the Department of Justice’s history.

The justices have been asked to consider whether a federal law, Section 1512 (c)(2) of the United States Code, is a fit for what transpired at the Capitol. The statute assigns 20 years in prison for anyone who “corruptly alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document,” or “otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so.”

This issue was flagged in January by The New York Sun, which wondered if “obstruction of an official government proceeding” is “appropriate for the former president’s behavior that day,” and noted that the statute is “one of the government’s primary tools in its sprawling portfolio of prosecutions.”

The Sun predicted in an April editorial, “The Sarbanes-Oxley Riot,” that the law’s unsettled application “opens the door to further litigation — and possible intervention by the Nine.” The riot, we ventured, “offers no justification for traversing the Constitution by way of overambitious interpretation of criminal laws by prosecutors.”

The charge has been deployed against some of January 6’s highest profile participants, including the “QAnon Shaman,” Jacob Chansley; the leader of the Oath Keepers, Elmer Stewart Rhodes III; and an Olympic swimmer, Klete Keller. The DOJ’s reliance on its provisions has also faced some skepticism from lower court judges, who see its application as a stretch.

The statute also looms over President Trump. It was included in the January 6 committee’s criminal referrals to the DOJ, suggestions that now belong in the purview of Special Counsel Jack Smith. Its popularity among prosecutors thus far is likely in part due to its stiff maximum sentence of 20 years behind bars. That’s more than is advised for such a serious crime as seditious conspiracy.

The law’s origins stretch back not to ages of war and revolution, like the laws banning seditious conspiracy and insurrection, but rather to efforts to crack down on white collar crime, codified in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which increased regulation in the wake of the implosions of Enron and WorldCom.

This petition to the Supreme Court emerges from the case of Edward Lang, who hails from the Hudson Valley and now sits behind bars awaiting sentencing for, among other things, assaulting a police officer with a baseball bat. In a video posted to Twitter after January 6, 2021, he asserted that “dying for our rights is the only option that any person with a logical brain sees right now. This is it.”

Mr. Lang was indicted on 11 charges, and pleaded not guilty to all of them. He has not yet stood trial. A district court judge, Carl Nichols, though, tossed the charge relating to obstruction of an official proceeding in respect of Mr. Lang and two others accused of violence at the Capitol. He reasoned that their cases had nothing to do with doctoring documents or records.

The panel of the United States appeals court for the Fourth Circuit, though, by a 2-to-1 margin, upheld the use of the obstruction charge, deciding that Judge Nichols’s reading was too cramped. Judge Pan, writing for the majority, ruled that the “broad interpretation of the statute — encompassing all forms of obstructive acts — is unambiguous and natural.”

The request for a hearing before the Nine asks whether the statute, intended to clamp down on financial malfeasance, “can be used to prosecute acts of violence against police officers in the context of a public demonstration that turned into a riot.” Mr. Lang argues that a “statute intended to combat financial fraud has been transformed into a blatant political instrument to crush dissent.”

The petition tells a story of prosecutorial overreach, warning that a “revolution is underway, with ambitious federal prosecutors reworking the penal code to make it do work never intended to be done, work that threatens to chill, and does chill, ordinary Americans in their First Amendment.

Read more.

AUTHOR

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

French President Blames ‘Video Games’ Instead of ‘Islam’ for Riots

“The video games that have intoxicated them” — Emmanuel Macron


While I don’t think modern digital entertainment is especially healthy, national leaders blaming movies and games instead of dealing Islamic violence is even less mentally healthy.

Here’s France’s President Macron trying hard not to talk about the thing you’re not supposed to address.

President Emmanuel Macron has mostly blamed social media for the devastation, but he has also claimed that video games have inspired copycat violence and vandalism.

“It sometimes feels like some of them are experiencing, on the streets, the video games that have intoxicated them,” Macron said in a press conference on July 1.

There were massive riots in France long before video games and while feedback cycles of simulated violence are probably not doing anything helpful for the minds of France’s youth, the bigger problem is that the youth increasingly consists of North African Muslims who have no investment in the country, a great deal of hostility to it and every reason to act out their version of the BLM riots.

Social media is playing a role here, but talking about the digital element ignores the real issue. Much like the arguments that video games caused school shootings, the vast majority of kids playing games don’t shoot up schools, and those who do have specific motives. Entertainment is rarely a motive, it may just occasionally suggest a means. Macron wants to talk about the adrenaline high rather than the underlying hatred.

Islam does not need video games to inspire violence in its followers and the clash of civilizations in France is not just a misfiring reptile brain. Everything else is a distraction from that simple reality.

AUTHOR

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

As New Crime-Encouraging Policies Take Effect, Rapper 50 Cent Says L.A. Is ‘Finished’

People are already fleeing California in record numbers. Nevertheless, Los Angeles hasn’t implemented full Leftism yet, so the City of Angels isn’t quite as paradisal as it could be or should be. Leftists are fixing that, however, by stopping detaining people for crimes such as theft and vandalism. Leftists can watch for L.A. to flower like never before now, but rapper 50 Cent won’t be among them. Suddenly red-pilled, he has declared: “LA is finished.” Yeah.

Despite the massive exodus, apparently, there are still too many people in the state for Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has an eye on the Democratic presidential nomination if Old Joe shuffles off the scene and who apparently doesn’t think his gubernatorial record is ghastly enough to appeal to the party’s hardcore Marxists. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is likewise apparently feeling crowded, but her new measure is sure to make the Entertainment Capital of the World become the City of Wide Open Spaces or, more precisely, The Waste Land.

The Daily Wire reported Monday that “50 Cent (real name Curtis Jackson) took to Instagram to post a video clip of a news report about a federal judge’s decision that holding inmates until they can pay cash bail is a violation of their constitutional rights.” Deputy District Attorney John McKinney appears in this report, saying, “Starting at midnight tonight, the sheriff’s department will no longer detain people for crimes such as theft, shoplifting, drug use, vandalism, battery, and a whole host of other non-serious, non-violent crimes that affect the quality of life of people here in Los Angeles County.”

One would think that after seeing America’s once-great cities become crime-ridden hellholes because of similar policies, L.A. would not follow the same suicidal path, but we are talking about Leftists here. Learning from experience is not their strong suit, or they would have given up Leftism around the time of, oh, Stalin’s purges.

The news report 50 Cent was reacting to continues with the newscaster saying, “L.A. Deputy DA John McKinney explains that due to Judge Lawrence Riff’s ruling, many people arrested will be released immediately without having to pay bail before their arraignment.” Then it cut back to McKinney, who added, “Judge Riff made the point of saying that he implored California officials like the sheriff, the chief of police, the district attorney, the city attorney, he implored them to testify to explain why he shouldn’t issue this order, and he was surprised when no one stood up to challenge it. No one challenged it, not LAPD Chief Michael Moore, LA County Sheriff Robert Luna, or District Attorney George Gascon.”

Of course, no one challenged it. Doing so would have cut against core Leftist principles, and no one in Los Angeles was going to dare to do that. 50 Cent, however, was not willing to play along with the charade that these were sane and reasonable policies. He wrote on Instagram, “LA is finished watch how bad it gets out there. SMH.” It’s going to get very, very bad.

How bad? The Daily Wire noted that “during the height of the COVID pandemic, Los Angeles County did away with cash bail to ease overcrowding in jails. Since then, the crime rate has soared. In the downtown area in 2022, there was a 25% rise in violent crime, such as rape, compared to 2019.” In just one neighborhood, Rancho Park, violent crime “rose 114% between 2019 and 2022.” The Wire adds that “LA police say mental illness, rampant drug use, and homelessness are to blame.”

No, that is not it at all. Mental illness, rampant drug use, and homelessness are not to blame. The coddling of mental illness, rampant drug use, and homelessness are to blame. The fact that the violently mentally ill cannot be incarcerated, that open drug use is tolerated on the streets of L.A. and every other major city in the United States, and that the homeless can set up tents on sidewalks and pursue drug addiction on America’s streets with no consequences — that’s what’s to blame. In other words, Leftist policies are to blame, but instead of engaging in some much-needed self-reflection, Los Angeles officials are doubling down and planning to inflict even more pain upon their people.

That pain could be considerable. Yolo County District Attorney Jeff Reisig explained the real effects of zero bail policies: “I mean, we have more people being shot at, stabbed, assaulted, robbed, beaten. These are real victims — and the numbers are staggering under zero bail.” 50 Cent is right: it’s long past time for the remaining sane people to leave Los Angeles and California as a whole. Their very lives could depend upon it.

AUTHOR

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Sacking the ESG End Run Attempt

Limited government is essential to American freedom.

We are protected by a fundamental system of constitutional checks and balances.

When giant financial corporations try to use their power to force Woke-Left ideology such as ESG, or “Environmental, Social, Governance,” on the rest of us, it is an attempt at an end run around our constitutional defenses that must be brought down.

Take a look at my article in Issues and Insights.  The push to sack ESG is on, and state and local officials, angry shareholders and freedom-oriented organizations like CFACT are leading the way.

I quote Florida Governor Ron Desantis who said, “Who do these people think they are? That they govern our society? Nobody voted for [BlackRock CEO Larry Fink]. So our mantra in Florida is, no economic or social transformation without representation. These are policies that could not win at the ballot box, so they’re trying to do through corporate America what they can’t do in the electoral process.”

CFACT has been actively participating in corposrate shareholder meetings and those of us engaged are having an impact.

As I explain in the article, “a number of free-market representatives and corporate shareholders have taken part in BlackRock, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, and other annual shareholder meetings to raise a fuss. They vote on various matters, put up some of their own proposals, and ask the CEOs uncomfortable questions about their involvement in ESG activities… The CEOs are not accustomed to such pushback from conservatives. They dodge, weave and filibuster evasively and defensively. They have no answers. Their reputations have been challenged.”

ESG proponents won’t go down easily, but we are already having success.  A number of Attorneys General have initiated legal action leading to 15 of 31 companies leaving the Net-Zero Insurance Alliance, whose original members collectively controlled more than $3 trillion in assets.  Shareholders are rejecting radical ESG proposals when they come up for a vote.

As my article concludes:

“The American people are showing they will not stomach the woke agenda these wealthy, powerful, unelected ESG promoters are imposing on them. We the People and our elected representatives have a right and duty to confront and, hopefully, put a stop to them.”

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EDITORS NOTE: This CFACT column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Federal Judge Denies Biden Admin’s Request To Keep Coordinating With Big Tech To Censor Americans

A federal judge denied the Biden administration’s attempt to pause an injunction that bars federal officials from communicating with social media companies for the purposes of censoring protected speech on Monday.

The Biden administration appealed Western District of Louisiana Judge Terry A. Doughty’s July 4 injunction on Wednesday, also requesting an emergency order to pause the injunction while the appeal is pending on Thursday night. Doughty denied the administration’s emergency order Monday, finding that plaintiffs would likely succeed in proving the government colluded with social media companies “to engage in viewpoint-based suppression of protected free speech.”

“Although this Preliminary Injunction involves numerous agencies, it is not as broad as it appears,” Doughty wrote. “It only prohibits something the Defendants have no legal right to do—contacting social media companies for the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner, the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech posted on social-media platforms. It also contains numerous exceptions.”

Doughty highlighted multiple examples of alleged censorship, such as Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials providing examples of misinformation topics to Facebook, the FBI’s refusal to tell Facebook whether the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) holding recurring meetings with social media platforms on “misinformation, disinformation, and/or censorship of protected free speech on social media.”

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey and Louisiana Attorney General Jeffrey Landry opposed the Biden administration’s attempt to stop the injunction in a court filing Sunday, writing the administration was essentially asking to “continue violating the First Amendment.”

“In essence, Defendants argue that the injunction should be stayed because it might interfere with the Government’s ability to continue working with social-media companies to censor Americans’ core political speech on the basis of viewpoint,” they wrote in the court filing. “In other words, the Government seeks a stay of the injunction so that it can continue violating the First Amendment.”

AUTHOR

KATELYNN RICHARDSON

Contributor.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.


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NY Abortionists Kill Girls as Young as 13, but Democratic Gov Cracks Down on Pro-Life Centers

As the state’s leaders crack down on pro-life pregnancy resource centers, New York Democrats fund abortionists who have killed dozens of women. At least 38 women and girls, as young as 13, have lost their lives during “safe and legal” abortions carried out by the state’s private abortionists, according to a private research report furnished to The Washington Stand.

Yet that greatly undercounts the number of total abortion deaths in the state, because these numbers do not include the harms caused by the nation’s largest abortion franchise, Planned Parenthood. Then-New York City Health Commissioner Stephen Joseph noted in a June 1987 memo, “During the period between 1981 and 1984, there were 30 legal abortion-related deaths in New York City.”

“Abortion is the original quackery. Abortion is a mercenary industry preying on women in crisis for profit and power,” Rev. Jim Harden, CEO of CompassCare, a New York-based coalition of pregnancy resource centers, told The Washington Stand. “I have said for years that the abortion industry represents serial medical malpractice.”

Despite these gruesome results, New York Governor Kathy Hochul (D) and other Democrats have supported abortion businesses while trying to bring the full force of the law to bear against pregnancy resource centers. Last May, Hochul gave abortionists $35 million in taxpayer funding in the name of advancing “human rights.” Abortion activists firebombed Harden’s pro-life medical network last June 7; six days later, Hochul signed a bill authorizing the state health commissioner to investigate so-called “limited service pregnancy centers,” which do not take part in abortions.

At the national level, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has introduced the “Stop Anti-Abortion Disinformation” (SAD) Act to essentially fine pro-life women’s centers out of existenceasserting pro-life centers “wish [pregnant women] harm.” And abortion advocates have called efforts to hold abortionists accountable for killing mothers a “modern-day lynching.”

“Far from just turning a blind eye, pro-abortion politicians like New York Governor Hochul insist upon promoting, paying for, and protecting abortionists from criminal liability through taxpayer funds and legislation,” Harden told TWS. “Meanwhile, they generate a propaganda smokescreen for their pet industry by vilifying their only competition: peaceful, pro-life pregnancy centers.”

Killing Mothers with their Babies

New York state became an abortion pioneer three years before Roe v. Wade, when Governor Nelson Rockefeller — a three-time Republican presidential hopeful who likely died while committing adultery — signed the most lax abortion law in the nation on April 11, 1970. The state’s history of killing women began a year later, when 25-year-old Margaret Louise Smith, who traveled to the state from Michigan, bled to death on June 16, 1971. Abortionist Jesse Ketchum was convicted of negligent homicide two years later. Thus began the abortion industry’s long history of mingling the blood of mothers with their children.

At least 38 women, as young as 13 and as old as 40, have died at the hands of abortionists, according to the research report, and hundreds of documents attesting its veracity, reviewed by this author. Women died when abortionists left aborted babies’ body parts inside the woman, perforated the mother’s uterus, failed to monitor vital signs, overdosed the patient on anesthesia, or oversaw a deficient abortion procedure that sent a woman into a death-inducing coma. One 31-year-old woman died from the side effects of the early abortion pill, prostaglandin, in 1984.

The mothers killed by New York abortionists hailed from Haiti, Jamaica, Honduras, Ghana, and multiple states.

Teenagers, including those well below the state’s age of consent, have died during abortions. Dawn Ravenall, the 13-year-old daughter of two black Pentecostal preachers and an honors student, died in February 1985 when abortionist Allen Kline left her unattended in New York City’s Eastern Women’s Center after the child suffered a massive heart attack.

Sometimes, deaths come amid a series of other abuses. State health officials took no action against abortionist Abu Hayat after he perforated the uterus of 17-year-old Sophie McCoy of Brooklyn during an abortion on September 18, 1990. One year later, a baby named Ana Rodriguez was born alive, but with one arm, following a botched, third-trimester abortion at Hayat’s hands. “After Hayat’s arrest, 15 women contacted the New York County district attorney in Manhattan, and another 19 contacted the New York Police Department to register complaints that Hayat sexually abused them, botched their abortions, or mistreated them in some other way,” the report states. Hayat lost his license in 1992 — two years too late for McCoy or Rodriguez.

At other times, it is the abortionist’s indifference to life and lack of familiarity with life-saving medicine that snuffed out women’s lives too early. An abortionist named Elyas Bonrouhi, who changed his name to David Benjamin, killed a 33-year-old immigrant from Honduras and mother of four, Guadalupe Negrón, during an abortion at the Metro Women’s Center in Queens on July 9, 1993. Bonrouhi left her to bleed after he lacerated her uterus and cervix during a procedure The New York Times described as a “complicated late-term abortion” at 19 weeks. One of the paramedics said the abortionist or personnel at the facility — which one juror described as “disgusting” and “very unsanitary” — stuffed a breathing tube down the deceased mother’s esophagus instead of her trachea, causing her oxygen mask to fill up with the contents of her stomach, which she then inhaled.

“The cause of death, determined by the medical examiner, was the same as that commonly associated with back-alley butchers in the days of illegal abortion: a perforated cervix,” noted Amy Pagnozzi in the New York Daily News. State officials said the abortionist showed “depraved indifference to human life,” of the mother. Jurors agreed after just two hours’ deliberation.

The death-dealing procedure would never have taken place without the leniency of New York state officials. “New York State Department of Health officials had revoked Benjamin’s/Bonrouhi’s license in June 1993 for ‘gross incompetence and negligence’ for perforating five other women’s uteruses,” states the report. Yet officials allowed the abortionist, who had a history of shoddy work dating back to 1980, to continue working while he contested the ruling. It was their second act of grace. In 1986, “State Department of Health officials ordered an emergency revocation of his license, but Board of Regents officials overruled them and instead merely suspended his license for three months,” the report notes.

Abandoning patients becomes a recurring theme in the report. A 26-year-old immigrant from Ghana died after being foresaken by an abortionist who first practiced in the former Soviet city of Leningrad. Eurice Agbagaa passed away in January 1989, eight days after abortionist Abram Zelikman perforated her uterus, told an unlicensed employee to administer anesthesia, then left.

Similarly, Jamie Lee Morales bled to death on July 9, 2016 — 23 years to the day Negrón died — hours after abortionist Robert Rho carried out an abortion. During the late-term procedure — Morales was 24-26 weeks pregnant, possibly past the 24 weeks then allowed under state law — Rho lacerated one of her uterine arteries. When her sister arrived at his Liberty Women’s Health Care, in Flushing, Queens, Rho merely released Morales to her sister, who later took her to a hospital. Rho would plead guilty to negligent homicide two years later.

The abortionist’s attorney, Jeffrey Lichtman, called the case a “modern-day lynching.”

Harden says lynching better describes the treatment New York state is inflicting on life-saving pro-life women’s centers. “Never once has a pregnancy center sent a woman to the morgue,” Harden told TWS. “Compare that to the abortion industry in New York.”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.


The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

The Chinese Military Is Training Kindergarteners For War In Bootcamps Across The Country

The Chinese military is training kindergarteners to handle firearms and fight like soldiers in boot camps across China this summer, according to dozens of school social media accounts reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The boot camps feature combat training for boys and girls with a wide variety of toy weapons including knivesgrenadesrifles and shoulder-fired missiles, and require the children to adopt military behavior, such as saluting, the schools’ social media posts show. The rise in the militarization of China’s youth appears to follow a 2019 Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee push for increased “National Defense Education” and a related effort directing schools to hold National Defense Education activities in 2022, according to government documents.

“There’s sort of a ‘get ’em while they’re young’ mentality that has always been part of the communist ethos,” Brandon Weichert, a U.S. Air Force consultant, told the DCNF. “Xi Jinping is trying to inculcate not just a patriotic fervor among the next generation, but I think he’s trying to also create actual next soldiers for the inevitable campaigns that he plans on waging militarily.”

Uniformed People’s Liberation Army (PLA) soldiers oversaw all of the kindergarten boot camps that the DCNF reviewed. The boot camps were located in major Chinese cities, such as BeijingNanjing and Shenzhen, and were also run in more than half a dozen provinces including AnhuiFujian and Guangdong, according to the schools’ social media posts.

The programs featured roughly the same sequence of activities, according to a DCNF review of posts from the participating kindergartens.

The boot camps generally began with basic military etiquette and proceeded to teach various military skills ranging from combat to emergency medical training. Additionally, a number of these programs also taught the children about famous PLA heroes and martyrs, according to the schools’ accounts.

‘Swear To Love The Motherland’

In May 2023, faculty members and more than 80 children of the Xingtan Guanghui Kindergarten in Guangdong province assembled on the playground for the opening ceremony of their school’s week-long National Defense Education camp, all wearing matching camouflage fatigues, according to the school’s social media account.

“INHERIT THE RED GENE, CARRY FORWARD PATRIOTIC FEELINGS, LOVE CHINA, LITTLE SOLDIER,” declared a large PLA banner, which partially hid the kindergarten’s playset.

“Kindergarten momma encourages her children not to fear hardship, fatigue or strict training,” the school’s principal told the children during the opening ceremony, the school’s social media account reported. “Respect the instructors and obey all commands.”

Uniformed PLA soldiers then performed a flag-raising ceremony, with all attendants singing the Chinese national anthem, the social media post stated.

“We solemnly swear to love the motherland from now on, to dedicate our hearts to working together to build the dream of a powerful country,” the children then pledged, according to the social media post. “Even if I fall to the ground I will continue onward!”

PLA soldiers then taught the kindergarten recruits how to groom themselves and make their beds in accordance with military standards, before drilling them in how to stand at attention, stand at ease and salute, the school’s social media account shows.

Experts say recent efforts to militarize China’s youth are part of the CCP’s ideological goals.

“While these measures do appear intended to put the Chinese masses on a stronger military footing in the longer term, they are also directed at the CCP’s longstanding efforts to deeply embed itself in civil-military relations and as part of its broader push to shore up the CCP’s legitimacy in the eyes of the Chinese masses through stoking nationalism,” Russell Hsiao, executive director of the Global Taiwan Institute, told the DCNF.

“The CCP has been hardening its ideological line over the past decade and these measures are indicative of this expanding ideological campaign undertaken by Xi Jinping,” Hsiao said. “Xi has long emphasized the importance of early political indoctrination of Chinese youths, so it is no surprise that the youths are also singled out as an important target of CCP’s National Defense Education program.”

‘If The Youth Are Strong, The Country Will Be Strong!’

After teaching the children how to follow orders and act as units, the various kindergarten bootcamps then typically graduated to weapons training, according to a DCNF review of the schools’ programs. A majority of the kindergarten boot camps provided a similar selection of toy weapons to the children.

The boot camps typically included some form of close combat training, and issued toy knives or toy batons and ballistic shields to the children. The various programs also usually taught the cadets “rifle tactics” with toy guns, according to the schools’ social media accounts.

Multiple programs used these toy guns for squad-based skirmish exercises, during which the children pretended to shoot each other, the posts show.

“If the youth are strong, the country will be strong!” children sang over footage of a skirmish exercise during the May 2023 Houjie Yazhi Kindergarten boot camp in Guangdong province, according to the school’s social media post.

WATCH:

The boot camps also frequently provided different types of toy high explosives to the “little soldiers,” the schools’ social media accounts show.

The programs variously featured toy “potato smasher” hand grenades, foam rocket launchers and mortars, according to the posts.

WATCH:

Some boot camps, such as the May 2023 Xingtan Guanghui Kindergarten program in Guangdong province, trained the children to use all three types of explosive weapons, the school’s social media account shows.

“They’re prepping for war, and now they’re getting their kids involved,” said Weichert, author of “Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life.”

“Their kids aren’t talking about boys becoming girls and vice versa. Their kids are talking about, ‘let’s go out with bayonets, play in the field and pretend like we’re killing Americans.’ That’s where this is headed,” Weichert said.

‘Little Heroes’

Several kindergarten boot camps reviewed by the DCNF taught children to emulate famous war heroes and PLA martyrs.

For example, a June 2023 National Defense Education event held by the No. 2 Experimental Kindergarten in Zhengzhou, Henan province, screened an episode of the computer-animated children’s series, “Long March Hero,” according to the school’s social media account.

Kung Fu Animation Studios and the Jiangxi provincial government co-created “Long March Hero,” which focuses on communist special forces prior to the 1949 founding of the People’s Republic of China, according to government records. Characters in “Long March Hero” frequently kill each other during battle sequences, according to a DCNF review of multiple episodes.

The Zhengzhou kindergarten’s social media account states that the children were allegedly riveted by the “Long March Hero” action scenes depicting the Red Army fighting Imperial Japanese forces.

Solomon Yue, co-founder of Republicans Overseas, an organization that advocates for Republicans living abroad, told the DCNF that while growing up in Shanghai during Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution, the PLA subjected his class to a type of National Defense Education training called the “Long March Exercise,” which simulated “a retreat under attack by America.”

“Kids were asked to march 20 miles a day with food and blankets on ones’ backs for a week,” Yue said.

The Chinese government is also teaching kindergarteners to admire PLA martyrs this summer, the DCNF found.

In one instance, the Qingyuan Experimental Kindergarten boot camp in Zhejiang province showed children an animated video about Huang Jiguang, a celebrated PLA martyr who sacrificed himself for his military company during the Korean War by sacrificing his body to cover the opening of an enemy machine gun nest in 1952.

Likewise, “little soldiers” at a kindergarten boot camp in Guangdong province’s Longmen county, learned about PLA martyrs like Dong Cunrui, who sacrificed his life to blow up a key bridge while fighting the Chinese Nationalist army in 1948.

WATCH:

Yue told the DCNF that the CCP taught his class to revere PLA martyrs when he was growing up in China.

“PLA soldiers visited my school to brainwash the kids often,” Yue said. “The CCP wanted Chinese youth to believe that being PLA martyrs was glorious. A suicide attack against one’s enemy is to honor the CCP.”

AUTHOR

PHILIP LENCZYCKI

Investigative reporter.

RELATED ARTICLE: EXCLUSIVE: Chinese Intel Arm Quietly Operates ‘Service Centers’ In 7 US Cities

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.


All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Corroborating Evidence of Pedophilia on Hunter’s Laptop, His Depravity Beggars Belief

Russian media has published video and photos of a naked Hunter Biden in a den full of little girls. I wanted to see if there was corroborating evidence of pedophilia on Hunter’s laptop and his depravity wildly exceeded our worst imaginations.

Look for yourself. I did. I could only get through a third of it. This was deliberately kept from the American people by the Democrat media, social media platforms and a weaponized FBI, DOJ and every other government agency.

Evil prospers. In spades.

Hunters Young girls – scroll down for photos in just the first hundred photos of the over ten thousand pictures on Hunter Biden’s laptop.

WARNING GRAPHIC: Additional photos of little girls on Hunter Biden’s laptop: here, here, here, here, here, here, Hunter’s niece, Hunter’s niece, Hunter’s niece, here, here.

AUTHOR

RELATED ARTICLES:

Cocaine Lie Exposed: Records DESTROY Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre Alibi – Reveals Biden Family Was at White House Before Drug Discovery

Photos Appear To Show Hunter Biden Committing Crimes On Camera

Secret Service KNOWS Who Is the Coke Perp!

Joe Biden does not want you to see this damning video of what one secret witness has to say

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Rampant Greenwashing Destroying Our Planet

The Stupidity of Ethanol as Green Energy

Analysis by Dr. Joseph Mercola


STORY AT-A-GLANCE

  • Carbon neutrality refers to a product that has net zero carbon emissions. The manufacture and use of corn-based ethanol has expanded based on the assumption that it’s carbon neutral and therefore far better for the environment than gasoline. However, several studies have shown that such assumptions are categorically false
  • A 2016 study found corn grown for ethanol only offset 37% of carbon dioxide emissions produced by burning biofuels, resulting in net-positive carbon dioxide emissions that are greater than gasoline
  • One of the primary reasons why growing corn for ethanol has a net-positive CO2 impact is because farmers are plowing up native grasslands to make more room for corn; 60 tons of carbon dioxide are released into the environment per acre of grassland plowed
  • Ignoring water consumption further underestimates CO2 emissions from land-use change by 28%. When corn plants’ water needs are considered, corn ethanol is worse for the environment than gasoline
  • A five-year study published in 2022 concluded the CO2 emissions from corn-based ethanol are at least 24% greater than that of gasoline. On top of that, it has led to increased fertilizer use, resulting in greater water pollution and a growing dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico

Carbon neutrality is the holy grail of the biofuel industry. It refers to a product that has net zero carbon emissions. In the case of ethanol, the corn or soybeans grown to produce it would have to remove as much carbon dioxide from the environment as is given off when the ethanol is burned.

The manufacture and use of ethanol in the U.S. has been allowed to expand based on the assumption that it’s carbon neutral and therefore far better for the environment than gasoline. However, a 2016 study1 by professor John DeCicco, Ph.D., at the University of Michigan, showed that such assumptions were categorically false.

Ethanol Is Far From Carbon Neutral

What DeCicco and his team discovered was that biofuels such as corn ethanol are associated with a net increase in carbon dioxide emissions — even more so than gasoline. It turns out that the crops only offset 37% of carbon dioxide emissions produced by burning biofuels. At the time, DeCicco explained:2

“The name of the game is to speed up how much CO2 [carbon dioxide] you remove from the air … The best way to begin removing more CO2 from the air is to grow more trees and leave them. Prior to settlement, Michigan was heavily forested.

A state like Michigan could do much more to balance out the tailpipe emissions of CO2 by reforesting than by repurposing the corn and soybeans grown in the state into biofuels. That is just a kind of shell game that’s not working.”

Granted, DeCicco’s study was funded by the American Petroleum Institute, which obviously has reason to want to discredit the sustainability of biofuels. However, the research reiterates what other, more independent researchers have found before.

Ethanol Raises Net Carbon Emissions

For example, in 2014, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) released a report titled “Ethanol’s Broken Promise,”3 which reached similar conclusions as DeCicco’s study. It too concluded that corn ethanol is worse for the environment than gasoline.

One of the primary reasons why growing corn for ethanol has a net-positive carbon impact is because farmers are plowing up native grasslands to make more room for corn. The failure to take this change in land use into account is how proponents of biofuels have been able to perpetuate the myth that it’s carbon neutral.

According to EWG, more than 8 million acres of grassland and wetlands were converted to corn between 2008 and 2011 alone, and every time an acre of grassland is plowed, 60 tons of carbon dioxide are released into the environment.4

So, while the ethanol fuel program was designed to reduce carbon emissions, the loss of grasslands does just the opposite. Estimates showing corn ethanol’s positive influence on the environment have also failed to consider the water needed to grow the corn.

“Ignoring water constraints underestimates emissions from land-use change by 28%,” EWG reported.5 According to agricultural economists at Purdue University, when corn plants’ water needs are considered, corn ethanol is worse for the environment than gasoline.6

The EWG also cited data debunking the false claim that ethanol has no impact on the price of corn and other agricultural commodities. According to scientists with the National Academies, the radical change in the proportion of corn used for ethanol resulted in the price of corn rising by 20% and 40% between 2007 and 2009 alone. This is partly why anti-hunger organizations have been so against corn-based ethanol.

The Many Downsides of Biofuels

A five-year study7,8 published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) in February 2022 also came down hard on corn-based ethanol, concluding its CO2 emissions are at least 24% greater than that of gasoline. On top of that, it has led to increased fertilizer use, resulting in greater water pollution and a growing dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. As reported by Civil Eats:9

“Despite the promise that the RFS [renewable fuel standard] would reduce greenhouse gas emissions, a new study … finds that expansion of U.S. corn cultivation has come at eye-popping environmental costs.

Corn production expanded by 8.7%, or 2.8 million hectares (6.9 million acres), between 2008 and 2016. As a result, the researchers found that nationwide annual fertilizer use surged by 3 to 8% and water pollutants rose by 3 to 5%.

The sheer extent of domestic land use change, however, generated greenhouse gas emissions that are, at best, equivalent to those caused by gasoline use — and likely at least 24% higher.

That’s because the RFS caused corn prices to spike by 30% and soybean and other crops by 20%. As a result, farmers planted corn everywhere they could, replacing other crops and pastureland, and plowing up land that had previously been reserved for conservation purposes. They also often skipped the soybeans in their rotations, despite the potential impacts on their soil …

Previous studies … dramatically underestimated the impacts those land use changes had on carbon emissions; in fact, the models treated the land that was converted from conservation or pasture as if there was little change in the amount of carbon stored once it was planted with corn — which runs counter to existing empirical evidence10 …

In 2008 … Timothy Searchinger, a senior researcher at Princeton University’s Center for Policy Research on Energy and the Environment, was one of several who predicted11 that using U.S. croplands for biofuels would increase greenhouse gas emissions through land use change.

Now, his assessment has been validated by the new study. Searchinger says the new study boils down to a simple, inescapable truth: Using land has a cost. And some uses simply don’t make sense because the cost is too high.

‘It’s crazy to use this very limited resource — highly productive land — for energy,’ he said. ‘It’s almost spectacularly inefficient.’ Corn ethanol converts 0.15% of solar energy into usable energy, while a solar cell today converts 15 to 20% of sunlight to energy. ‘And the good news is you don’t need to put a solar cell on the best available farmland.’”

Will Large-Scale Carbon Capture Worsen the Situation?

Fertile farmland may soon also be sacrificed for large-scale carbon capture and sequestration projects that are being implemented in South Dakota, North Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota and Nebraska.

In a March 4, 2022, interview with SDPB Radio, Chris Hill, director of permitting for the Summit Carbon Solutions project, explained how they intend to capture and sequester the carbon emitted during the ethanol fermentation process:

“The science behind it is relatively straightforward … fermentation is not a new process … The bugs eat the sugars or the starches that are from the corn. They ultimately produce alcohols. They release CO2 in that process. That CO2 bubbles up through the fermentation tanks and ultimately leaves the tanks and it’s currently being emitted to the atmosphere. So that’s the science and where the CO2 is coming from.

We’ll be pulling the CO2 off its current emission point, which is the stack. And what we’re doing with that is, we’re going to use multistage compression to pressurize the CO2 into a dense phase …

After the CO2 is compressed into a dense phase … where it behaves similar to a liquid, it’s going to be injected into a pipeline that will range between 4 inches and 24 inches depending on where you’re at in the system, ultimately to transport that CO2 up to North Dakota, just west of Bismarck in the Oliver/Mercer county area, where it will be injected for safe and permanent sequestration …

The USGS’s study estimates that the state of North Dakota has a capacity to store approximately 250 billion metric tons of CO2 … And our annual capacity of 12 million metric tons. You can easily calculate … that there’s … over 100 years of capacity in that area …”

Summit Carbon Solutions is the largest of three companies seeking to pipe CO2 from ethanol-producing plants into porous rock, deep underground. The two others are Archer-Daniels-Midland and Navigator CO2 Ventures.12

What Can Go Wrong?

According to Hill, the science behind this ridiculous plan has been carefully analyzed and the process deemed 100% safe. Does that mean nothing can go wrong? Hardly. If history tells us anything, it’s that anything that can go wrong probably will, sooner or later, and when it comes to liquefied CO2 gas under pressure, it just so happens to be explosive when exposed to heat above 125 degrees Fahrenheit (52 degrees Celsius).13

Could liquefied CO2, under pressure, deep down in a rock formation, possibly get heated to combustible temperatures under extreme conditions? Something to ponder. Exposure to this CO2, say if a pipe were to bust a leak, also has severe health impacts, ranging from dizziness and increased heart rate to nervous system damage, frostbite and rapid suffocation.14

Aside from that, there’s the direct and immediate threat to farmers — and anyone who needs food — as usable farmland may be seized through eminent domain for these pipelines.15 Seizing the land of small farmers to install CO2 sequestration pipelines hardly seems to be a wise move, seeing how all the signs point to severe food shortages and, potentially, worldwide famine in coming years.

ESG Is a Complete Fraud

In late April 2023, Summit Carbon Solutions signed a multiyear agreement to sell Carbon Dioxide Removal credits (CDRs) to the NextGen, a joint venture between South Pole and the Mitsubishi Corporation.

According to PR Newswire,16 NextGen is seeking to create “one of the world’s largest diversified portfolios of CDRs, with plans to purchase over 1 million tons of CDRs by 2025.” While this may thrill investors, it won’t do a thing for our environment.

In fact, ESG (environmental, social and governance) investing is a complete scam, designed to inflate profits, not save the planet. As reported by the Harvard Business Review in August 2022,17 the trillions of dollars currently being pumped into ESG assets are “dedicated to assuring returns for shareholders, not delivering positive planetary impact”:

“The separation of profit and planet is by design. ESG ratings which underlie ESG fund selection are based on ‘single materiality’ — the impact of the changing world on a company’s profits and losses, not the reverse.

They also bear no connection to natural boundaries. According to Bloomberg,18 ‘[ESG] ratings don’t measure a company’s impact on the Earth and society. In fact, they gauge the opposite: the potential impact of the world on the company and its shareholders.’

Yet it’s hard to blame casual observers for believing that investing in an ESG investment fund is helping to save the planet. Marketing materials of ESG funds often make lofty statements about social or environmental aspirations, but the fine print reveals that the real goal is to assure shareholder profits.

For example, a prior statement from State Street’s ESG Investment Statement mentions the need to encourage a ‘transition to a low-carbon, more sustainable, resource-efficient and circular economy,’ but later it defines ESG issues as ‘events or conditions that, should they occur, could cause a negative impact on the value of an investment.’

According to Henry Fernandez, CEO of the leading ESG ratings provider MSCI, ESG doublespeak has confused most individuals, many institutional investors, and even some portfolio managers.”

In 2020, Social Capital founder and CEO Chamath Palihapitiya went even further, telling CNBC that ESG investing is a “complete fraud.”19 According to Palihapitiya, ESG “does not necessarily encourage best practices, nor does it move the ball forward on things like the climate crisis.”

Rather, it’s primarily a marketing ploy to sell potentially questionable investments and “a way for companies to get free money,” as having a high ESG means you can get negative-interest loans.

Rampant Greenwashing

Similarly, a March 2022 post titled “The False Promise of ESG” on the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance20 noted that highly-ranked ESG businesses oftentimes are LESS socially responsible than companies with far lower scores. Indeed, several investigations have revealed rampant greenwashing, with many ESG-labeled funds being far from “sustainable.”

Take FTX, for example. FTX — the cryptocurrency exchange that went belly up overnight while its CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried absconded with up to $2 billion of client funds — had a higher governance score than Exxon Mobil,21 despite having almost no corporate governance whatsoever.

It had no board of directors, an “irregular ownership structure,” was rife with conflicts of interest and self-dealing and had no financial controls. Bankman-Fried didn’t even keep an accurate list of accounts. If this doesn’t tell you that ESG is flawed at best, and a complete fraud at worst, I don’t know what will.

FTX isn’t alone in falling short of expectations, though. According to a September 2021 report by climate change think tank InfluenceMap, more than half the 723 funds marketed using ESG claims failed to meet the Paris Accord rules on carbon emissions and clean energy, and more than 70% of funds with broad ESG goals failed to meet global climate targets.22

ESG Is Another Globalist Takeover Tool

One glaring problem with ESG is the lack of regulations that define what qualifies a company as environmentally or socially responsible. It is this very lack of definition that allows the globalist cabal to use ESG to push their own self-serving ideologies on companies and consumers.

In a November 2022 Newsweek opinion piece,23 Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, Kathy Barnette, called ESG “a woke scam” that is changing our nation by forcing companies to embrace ideologies that most people would otherwise reject:

“ESG is the latest trendy acronym designed to empower the elites at the expense of us non-elites,” Barnette wrote. “It’s a wokeness scorecard for investors.

Think of the E in ESG as code for climate change activism. Think of the S in ESG as code for social justice — how open a company is to critical race theory, diversity mandates, and drag queen story hour in public libraries. And the G is all about how much power employees have to shake things up at a company …

Altogether, ESG investing insidiously changes traditional American values, all while never by having to stand before the American people and ask for their permission.

But the real danger is to society. ESG is a win-win for climate change activists and social justice warriors who can bypass the ballot box — and thus the will of the people — to implement policy that would have a very hard time getting passed in Congress.”

ESG Drives the Financial Great Reset

F. William Engdahl, a strategic risk consultant and lecturer who holds a degree in politics from Princeton University,24 has discussed how ESG investing fits into the globalists’ Great Reset more directly:25

“[BlackRock founder and CEO Larry] Fink … now stands positioned to use the huge weight of BlackRock to create what is potentially … the world’s largest Ponzi scam … Fink with $9 trillion to leverage is pushing the greatest shift of capital in history into a scam known as ESG Investing.

The UN ‘sustainable economy’ agenda is being realized quietly by the very same global banks which have created the financial crises in 2008.

This time they are preparing the Klaus Schwab WEF Great Reset by steering hundreds of billions and soon trillions in investment to their hand-picked ‘woke’ companies, and away from the ‘not woke’ … Oil companies like ExxonMobil or coal companies … are doomed as Fink and friends now promote their financial Great Reset or Green New Deal.”

The case of Tesla also shows how ESG can be, and is, used as a weapon. Elon Musk initiated his acquisition of Twitter in mid-April 2022. One month later, his company Tesla was removed from the ESG Index, despite its focus on creating environmentally conscious vehicles. Meanwhile, Exxon Mobil remained in the S&P 500 ESG Index top 10.26 Musk tweeted,27 “… ESG is a scam. It has been weaponized by phony social justice warriors.”

Control by Allocation of Resources

In summary, the ESG system is an early phase of the new financial system envisioned by the World Economic Forum (WEF). Basically, a company’s ESG score decides its ability to obtain loans and investment opportunities, and in the future, the same “social conscience”-type scoring will apply to private individuals as well.

ESG is also a specific tactic to push the “green” agenda forward, and it too is part and parcel of the WEF’s Great Reset. While the notion of a pollution-free world is an attractive one, ESG investing isn’t about the environment, or social justice, or anything else it claims to stand for.

It’s all about creating a control system in which the world’s resources are owned by the richest of the rich, while the rest of the population can be controlled through the allocation of those resources, including energy. As explained in an anonymous Winter Oak article:28

“Under such an economic construct, asset holding conglomerates can redirect the flow of global capital by aligning investments with the UN’s SDGs [sustainable development goals] and configuring them as Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG) compliant so that new international markets can be built … and eventually move populations towards a cap-and-trade system, otherwise known as a carbon credit economy.

This will centralize power in the hands of stakeholder capitalists under the benevolent guise of reinventing capitalism through fairer and greener means, using deceptive slogans like ‘Build Back Better’ without sacrificing the perpetual growth imperative of capitalism.”

The WEF itself also describes ESG as being part of its resource-based economic system:29

“Digital finance refers to the integration of big data, artificial intelligence (AI), mobile platforms, blockchain and the Internet of things (IoT) in the provision of financial services. Sustainable finance refers to financial services integrating environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria into the business or investment decisions.

When combined, sustainable digital finance can take advantage of emerging technologies to analyze data, power investment decisions and grow jobs in sectors supporting a transition to a low-carbon economy.”

So, in closing, it’s important to be aware of the downsides of relying on suspect labels like ESG, which could ultimately tie the global population to a new form of data slavery.30

RELATED ARTICLE: Former Biden Climate Czar Works For ‘Green’ Private Equity Firms

Sources and References

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EDITORS NOTE: This MERCOLA column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

EXCLUSIVE: 217 Pages Reveal Obama Admin’s Building of Trump-Russia Narrative

Heavily redacted documents from the National Security Agency tell at least part of the story of a final-month rush by the outgoing Obama administration to torpedo the incoming presidency of Donald Trump.

The Daily Signal obtained 217 pages of documents from the NSA through a Freedom of Information Act request. The documents reveal that Obama administration officials, from Vice President Joe Biden down to several ambassadors and many officials in the Treasury and Energy departments, gained access to secret information about President-elect Trump’s incoming national security adviser, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.



FOIA-unmasking-Gen-FlynnDownload

The documents obtained by The Daily Signal include raw information of requests and other messages from these officials to the National Security Agency in late November 2016 through early January 2017, as well as emails among NSA officials explaining why the information was shared.

Trump, a Republican, took over the presidency from Barack Obama on Jan. 20, 2017, after defeating Obama’s former secretary of state, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, in the November election.

In May 2020, then-acting Director of National Intelligence Rick Grenell declassified information and provided Congress with a list of names involved in the Obama administration’s “unmasking” of Flynn, Trump’s original pick for national security adviser. Senate Republicans Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin released the list.

“Unmasking” is the practice of disclosing to political appointees the identities of U.S. citizens referenced or recorded in intelligence surveillance of foreign nationals. Names of citizens typically are redacted, or obscured, from such reports, unless a specific request is made to “unmask” those citizens.

NSA emails about most such requests regarding Flynn bear this message: “The identities of the named U.S. persons and organizations is required for full understanding of the intelligence in the report.”

Several of the NSA documents note Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights, including the “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.” The amendment to the Constitution also requires warrants “upon probable cause.”

Through the Freedom of Information Act, The Daily Signal sought records of requests by top Obama administration officials to “unmask” Flynn—that is, to disclose that the incoming national security adviser is a person mentioned in reports of foreign surveillance.

Flynn was the American whose phone conversation with the Russian ambassador between Trump’s November 2016 election and January 2017 inauguration had been intercepted by intelligence officials in the Obama administration.

The Daily Signal formally requested the National Security Agency documents in March 2021, two months after Biden’s inauguration as president; the NSA’s response, dated June 22, arrived June 30—more than two years later.

In its response, the NSA said The Daily Signal’s request for public records overlapped with other FOIA requests already being processed because of litigation from other parties.

Three top Obama administration officials who gained access to the Flynn information are now high-ranking officials in the Biden administration.

Denis McDonough, Obama’s chief of staff for his entire second term, is now secretary of veterans affairs under Biden.

Samantha Power, Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations, made numerous requests for information on Flynn. In the Biden administration, Power is administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development.

And Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, deputy secretary at Obama’s Energy Department, has been Biden’s homeland security adviser since he took office.

The Flynn-related requests from Obama administration officials were all made during late November and December of 2016.

Trump chose Flynn to be his first national security adviser. Flynn’s “unmasking” at the request of some of outgoing President Barack Obama’s closest advisers set in motion events that led to Flynn’s resignation after only 23 days in office during the new Trump administration. It was also a key factor of the since discredited investigation of Trump-Russia collusion to win the 2016 presidential election.

Trump pardoned Flynn in late 2020, and a federal judge soon dropped charges alleging Flynn made false statements to the FBI in the early days of the Trump administration.

The documents obtained by The Daily Signal also show that at least seven U.S. officials working with NATO were provided with information on Flynn, including then-NATO Ambassador Douglas Lute.

John Tefft, then U.S. ambassador to Russia, as well as several members of his staff whose names were redacted, also sought and got information on Flynn.

Obama’s ambassador to Turkey, John Bass, obtained information on Flynn. NSA’s internal emails say the information was provided to Bass so he could “better understand and assess the foreign intelligence information contained therein.”

The NSA email goes on to say: “No further action may be taken on nor dissemination be made of this information [on Flynn] without prior approval of NSA.”

The FBI investigated Trump’s Russian ties and Flynn had done lobbying work for Turkey, which helps explain the involvement of those two ambassadors.

Obama’s ambassador to Italy, John Phillips, also gained access to information about Flynn, as did his top staff.

National security and law enforcement officials in the Obama administration—including FBI Director James Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, and National Intelligence Director James Clapper—might be expected to have access.

Others who had access to the intelligence on Flynn are surprising, however.

Sherwood-Randall, then deputy energy secretary, got access. The NSA email on the requests by the Energy Department notes: “This information is crucial, as the Deputy Secretary of Energy continues to oversee the transition of the Department to the incoming administration.”

Also privy to the unmasking of Flynn was then-Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew, along with other Treasury Department officials including Deputy Treasury Secretary Sarah Raskin, wife of Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md.

In a joint session of Congress in January 2017, Jamie Raskin voted against certifying Trump’s Electoral College victory. The Maryland Democrat later would lead House lawmakers named as “managers” of Trump’s second impeachment in 2021.

One requestor granted access to the Flynn information is listed only as the deputy assistant director of NEMC. Although four federal agencies might use this acronym, it seems likely to refer either to the Army’s Network of Enabled Mission Command, since Flynn was an Army lieutenant general, or the National Election Monitoring Committee, since the outgoing Obama administration officials prepared to push the narrative of Trump-Russia collusion.

The name of the NEMC deputy assistant director is redacted in the documents provided to The Daily Signal, which would indicate a military affiliation. The NSA’s justification for granting this request was that the records are “to be used to better understand and assess the foreign intelligence information contained therein.”

CNN reported Friday that special counsel Jack Smith, who is investigating Trump’s possession of classified documents after he left the White House, is looking into a December 2020 meeting in the Oval Office.

That meeting, CNN reported, included Flynn, Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, and former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, and the topic was challenging Trump’s election loss.

Participants allegedly discussed the options to impose martial law and seize voting machines to prevent Biden’s inauguration as president.

AUTHOR

Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas is chief news correspondent and manager of the Investigative Reporting Project for The Daily Signal. Lucas is also the author of “The Myth of Voter Suppression: The Left’s Assault on Clean Elections.” Send an email to Fred.


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