The Bidenites have repeatedly made clear their insensate desire to revive the Iran Deal of 2015. This will free up about $700 billion, currently frozen, for Iran. Tehran will be able to fund in spectacular fashion its terrorist proxies all over the Middle East, including the Houthis in Yemen, the Kata’ib Hezbollah militia in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and both Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza. The Islamic Republic will also be able to greatly expand its own military, including the IRGC, and especially, will be able to pay for the continuation, and expansion, of its massive nuclear program at bases all over Iran that Tehran has made clear will be off-limits to inspectors from the IAEA.
Chamberlain threw Czechoslovakia to the Nazi wolves in September 1938, believing he had brought “peace in our time.” Rob Malley, who heads the American negotiators in Vienna is of the same deluded ilk, lacking only the umbrella for the resemblance to be complete. Israel, like Czechoslovakia in 1938, is having deals made by others that will deeply affect its geopolitical fate. Richard Nephew, the deputy special envoy for Iran, along with two others, left the negotiating team in January over their desire for a harder negotiating stance.
The Bidenites have repeatedly been warned by Israel’s top officials that the deal they fear Washington will agree to will allow Iran to continue, at sites barred to IAEA inspectors, its nuclear program. Israel is the country most threatened by that program, but the Jewish state’s repeated warnings about the dangers of a “return to the 2015 deal” has had little effect on the Bidenites in Washington and Vienna. A steady stream of Israeli officials have gone to Washington to express, and explain in detail, their alarm, but all of that now seems to have been to no avail.
The Israelis now realize, as the Mossad director David Barnea has just announced, that in Vienna the “return to 2015” is virtually a “done deal.” Biden keeps assuring Israel that Iran will not “get a nuclear weapon on my watch.” They don’t believe him, and they certainly are not going to bet the survival of the Jewish state on his assurances. They have been dealing with the Iranian threat for many years. Israel’s agents in Iran know far more about the inner workings of the nuclear program, and Tehran’s intentions, than do the Americans.
And now the Israelis have come to the end they feared: they are faced with the reality of that “done deal” and its ineluctable consequences. They no longer have any hope of convincing the Bidenites to turn aside from their folly. Israeli officials have taken a different tack, warning Washington, and the world, that Israel, not being a party to any deal with Iran, does not feel itself constrained, but will do whatever it takes – alone if necessary — to prevent Iran from possessing a nuclear weapon. They will “not be bound by any agreement” between Iran and the major powers, including the U.S. “World,” they are now saying, “you have been warned. We will act to protect our existence.”
Barnea has just issued the most important of those warnings. A report on his view, laid out in meetings with the highest-ranking security officials, can be found here: “Mossad Chief Calls ‘Inevitable’ Nuclear Deal a ‘Strategic Disaster,’” by Sharon Wrobel, Algemeiner, August 25, 2022:
The director of the Mossad warned that the emerging nuclear deal with Iran is a “strategic disaster,” and cautioned that Israel will not be able to sit idly as the danger to its security grows closer.
The agreement is a bad deal that gives Iran a license to manufacture a bomb,” David Barnea was quoted as saying during internal security meetings which Israeli media reported, citing unnamed sources.
Barnea emphasized that Israel would respond accordingly.
“The Mossad is committed to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. The agreement does not apply to Israel, nor does the freedom of action to continue operating.”…
Barnea argued that the emerging nuclear agreement is worse than the one signed in 2015, when Iran’s potential military dimension was unknown.
“We are copy-pasting the 2015 agreement, and the only thing that remains the same since then is the text of the agreement,” Barnea warned. “Everything else has changed. The world has changed. The Iranians have developed their own advanced centrifuges and the threats and technologies have changed.”
In the seven years that have passed since the 2015 agreement, the Iranians have made great strides in enriching uranium to the near-weapons grade level of 60%, have built new nuclear facilities deep inside the mountain at Fordow that are impregnable to airstrikes,, and have many more nuclear sites dispersed around the country. Iran has also continued to strengthen, through supplies of arm and money, the half-dozen proxies it supports around the Middle East, in Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon., and Gaza.
The recent developments to try and reach an agreement to revive the 2015 nuclear deal come as the US Central Command responded to rocket attacks by Iranian-affiliated militants in northeast Syria on Wednesday.
“There is a double standard here,” Barnea remarked. “On the one hand, they are sitting in Vienna and approaching an agreement – and on the other hand, Iran is acting and sending terrorist arms against the Americans and is deceiving the world.”
While Iranian-backed forces brazenly attack American bases in Syria, and Iran continues to keep some nuclear sites off-limits to IAEA inspectors, the American negotiators in Vienna have shown that none of this has given them pause; they are determined to reach an agreement with Iran that will provide the Iranians with at least $700 billion with which both to support their terrorist proxies and, far worse, to greatly expand their nuclear program, including the development of ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads.
Barnea cautioned that once sanctions are lifted, hundreds of billions of dollars will be freed to flow into Iran to fund terrorist organizations in the region, including Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Houthi rebels in Yemen, and Hamas, all of which will severely challenge Israeli and American security interests.
The director of Mossad does not mince words: the “done deal” the Americans are about to agree to is a “disaster.” Jerusalem has lost all faith in Washington. And Israel is now – as it was in its wars of survival in 1948 and 1967 – very much alone in trying to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. The task will be much harder because of the Bidenites’ insistence on returning to the 2015 deal, without taking into account the fact that Iran is now much further along in its nuclear program than it was seven years ago. But no one ever got rich betting against Mossad.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2022-08-28 06:34:082022-08-28 06:34:08Mossad Chief: New Iran Agreement is a ‘Done Deal’ and a ‘Disaster’
Israel must forgo the forlorn hope of winning Arab amitié and pursue different strategic goals. The most it can hope for is to be grudgingly accepted; the least it must achieve is to be greatly feared.
The IDF looks for every possible way to maintain peace even if the very heavy cost is the complete loss of deterrence. Major General (res.) Yitzhak Brick, former Commander of the IDF Military Colleges and IDF Ombudsman, recipient of the Medal of Courage in the Yom Kippur War, in Enough rounds of fighting in Gaza, it is time for victory Aug . 23, 2022
The recent “Breaking Dawn” operation vividly underscored the pernicious paradox that has characterized Israel over the last five decades.
On the one hand, the country displays indisputable tactical and technological brilliance; on the other, it seems chronically afflicted by gross strategic imbecility.
Creeping strategic degradation
While some might find this harsh assessment excessively severe, consider the massive enhancement of Israel’s tactical-technological capabilities since the 1967 Six Day War and the commensurate degradation of Israel’s strategic position over the same period.
After Israel’s stunning victory over the combined forces of six Arab armies and the widespread international admiration for it that came in is wake , who would have imagined that it would be in the position in which it finds itself today: With armed enemy militias deployed within mortar range of the nation’s parliament and with Israel—and the very notion of Jewish national sovereignty—under savage global attack, undermining its legitimacy and even its right to exist as a Jewish nation-state.
Thus, while Israel has been making amazing strides in developing incredibly sophisticated technologies and achieving remarkable tactical accomplishments, the Arabs have succeeded in shearing off large swathes of territory from Israeli control. Thus, despite wallowing in backwardness and failure, they have advanced inexorably closer to Israel’s metropolises, industrial hubs, and major population centers relative to the situation that prevailed in the immediate aftermath of the 1967 war.
Today’s realities once considered inconceivable
Significantly, many of Israel’s recent technological marvels were in fact developed in large measure to deal with threats that only arose because of policies born of strategic myopia. For example, the much-vaunted Iron Dome defense system was, in great measure, the result of the urgent need to contend with the rapidly growing missile and rocket threat that emerged following the ill-advised abandonment of the Gaza Strip.
Likewise, the construction of the ultra-sophisticated, billion-dollar barrier surrounding the Gaza Strip was constructed in response to the maze of underground attack tunnels that proliferated once the IDF pulled out of Gaza—leaving the terror organizations unprecedented degrees of operational freedom to pursue projects they could never have undertaken had Israel’s military remained deployed in the enclave.
Indeed, had anyone, in 2005, warned that Israel would be facing the threats it faces today, they would have doubtlessly been dismissed and denounced as radical right-wing scaremongers.
The perennial defect in Israeli strategy—particularly, but not exclusively with regard to Gaza—has been based on the faulty perception that the Palestinian-Arabs should be treated as potential peace partners rather than as implacable enemies. This spawned an additional—and equally faulty—assumption that, in general, the Palestinian public is the unfortunate victim of its bellicose leadership, rather than the societal crucible in which that leadership was formed, and from which emerged.
Hopelessly out of touch
Just how hopelessly out of touch with reality Israeli leaders are, was underscored by the rebuttal of then-Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman’s 2017 offer to turn Gaza “into the Singapore of the Middle East” by a senior Hamas official, Mahmoud al-Zahar.
Liberman proposed building a seaport and an airport and creating an industrial zone that would help produce 40,000 jobs in the Strip—if Hamas agreed to demilitarization and to dismantling the tunnel and rocket systems it has built.
The Hamas response was quick to come. Zahar dismissed it derisively, sneering: “If we wanted to turn Gaza into Singapore, we would have done it ourselves. We do not need favors from anyone.”
This tart retort prompted a bleak observation from Gatestone scholar, Bassam Tawil:
“Why did Hamas reject an offer for a seaport, airport and tens of thousands of jobs for Palestinians? Because Hamas does not see its conflict with Israel as an economic issue. The dispute is not about improving the living conditions of Palestinians, as far as Hamas is concerned. Instead, it is about the very existence of Israel.”
He added caustically: “Hamas deserves credit for one thing: its honesty concerning its intentions to destroy Israel and kill as many Jews as possible. Hamas does not want 40,000 new jobs for the poor unemployed Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. It would rather see these unemployed Palestinians join its ranks and become soldiers in its quest to replace Israel with an Islamic empire.”
The irrelevance of Palestinian prosperity
Those who subscribe to the rationale underpinning Israeli strategy undertaken hitherto appear to cling to the belief that the bulk of the civilian population resents Hamas and would—if it could—willingly cast off its authoritarian control of their lives—especially if such a development were accompanied by enhanced economic well-being.
However, such naïve optimism does not only fly in the face of Zahar’s brusque rebuttal of promises of increased prosperity and employment from senior Israeli politicians, but is utterly refuted by the results of public opinion surveys conducted by reputable Palestinian pollsters.
Thus in the immediate aftermath of the Operation Guardian of the Wall (May 2021), despite the heavy damage inflicted on Gaza and its residents, public support for Hamas rose steeply. This emerges from a survey conducted in June 2021 by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) headed by, arguably, the premier Palestinian pollster, Khalil Shikaki.
Indeed, according to the left-leaning Y-Net, the poll indicated a “dramatic rise in Palestinian support for Hamas“. Similarly, the far-left “Haaretz” reported the results of the survey under the headline, “Support for Hamas Has Dramatically Risen After Israel-Gaza Fighting, Poll Finds“, while the more moderate “Times of Israel” headlined its coverage of the findings with: “Poll shows ‘dramatic’ surge in Palestinian support for Hamas after Gaza fighting“.
Palestinian perception of Hamas as victor
Analysis of the survey results unequivocally corroborates these sober appraisals. Thus according to the poll:
Over 70% of the participants believed that Hamas’s motive in the fighting was to defend Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Almost 80% felt Hamas had won the clash with Israel and almost two-thirds thought that Hamas had achieved the goals it set for itself.
The public assessment of Hamas’s performance was “excellent”. [Similar praise was assigned to Israeli Arabs for their violent riots across Israel.]
Significantly, almost 55% considered Hamas, rather than Fatah under Mahmoud Abbas, worthy of representing and leading the Palestinians—more than three times those (under 15%), who favored Fatah and Abbas.
Moreover, nearly 95% of the poll participants—virtually total public consensus—felt a sense of pride in Hamas’s performance during the military campaign; while almost 70% expressed willingness to renew the fighting if Israel carried out the court-mandated eviction of Arab residents in the Sheikh Jarrah quarter of Jerusalem.
A more recent PSR poll (December 2021) reflects largely similar public sentiments with support for Hamas significantly outstripping that for Fatah on most parameters polled.
Puerile political precept
Almost a quarter of a century has passed since Israel unilaterally abandoned the Gaza Strip—removing almost every vestige of Jewish presence and Zionist industry. Yet, in stark contradiction to predictions and pledges of architects of this reprehensible retreat, it brought neither peace nor stability to either Israeli Jews or Gazan Arabs. Quite the reverse. The threat from Gaza has burgeoned exponentially, growing from the dimensions of a terrorist nuisance to a quasi-strategic threat, capable of disrupting Israel’s international air traffic. Yet despite this, Israeli policymakers have clung stubbornly to the puerile precept, unsupported by either any empirical evidence or any sound theoretical reasoning, that somehow the Palestinian-Arabs will undergo a miraculous metamorphosis, which–for some unexplained reason—will transform them into something they have not been for over a hundred years and induce them to docilely accept the permanent control by the despised Judaic infidel over land they consider their own. Really!!??
Since the 2005 Disengagement, Israel has been compelled to undertake at least four major military campaigns and innumerable minor clashes with Hamas and other even more radical terror organizations in Gaza. In each of these, despite heavy damage inflicted by the IDF, Israel’s adversaries have eventually emerged stronger than before—with capabilities today that would have appeared inconceivable prior to the 2005 Disengagement.
“Breaking Dawn”: Déjà vu all over again
The periods of calm that have followed these clashes have led to a somewhat misguided discussion on whether, or not, the heavy damage and casualties inflicted on Gaza and the Gazans had in fact deterred the enemy from further aggression.
For while it is true that each round of fighting has led to a cease-fire—at times even an extended one, this in no way indicates that any substantial deterrence was achieved, in the sense that the enemy’s will to fight has been decisively broken—as was the case with Germany and Japan in WWII.
In fact, quite the opposite is true!
The Gazan terror groups have exploited the interbellum lulls in fighting to regroup, rearm and redeploy—to emerge with their capabilities enhanced and their willingness to reengage undiminished.
This is precisely the repetitive pattern followed by Israel in the conduct of Operation “Breaking Dawn” earlier this month August 2022).
Israel displayed remarkably accurate intelligence capabilities and impressively precise use of technological munitions to launch surgical strikes against the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) leadership. Yet, despite an overwhelming preponderance of military might in favor of the IDF, it was unable to silence the fire from Gaza. Indeed, even with its leadership decapitated, the PIJ, armed only with primitive weaponry, showed it could still rain down hundreds of missiles until a mutually agreed truce was reached.
Once again, Israel permitted its terrorist enemy to survive, inflicting only what its adversary considered “acceptable losses”, permitting it to lick its wounds, replenish its arsenal and rebound, spoiling for a fight—again.
Time to “smell the coffee“
In its quest for lasting peace, or at least, durable non-belligerence, Israel has tried virtually the entire gamut of possible policies—from a negotiated withdrawal, via unilateral retreat, to periodic mowing the lawn (i.e. recurring use of moderated military force to quell terrorist violence when it reached excessive levels). None have brought about the desired result. Indeed, not only have they been unproductive, but at times, even counterproductive, making the odds of attaining the intended objective, more remote.
Yet none of this seems to have penetrated the minds of Israel’s political leaders—who resolutely refuse to relinquish fatally flawed formulae—and to wake up and smell the coffee. Three decades of trauma and tragedy have passed since the Oslo Accords, and almost two since the Disengagement. Surely by now the inconvenient truth, however unpalatable, should be have begun to dawn—even on those reluctant to recognize the recalcitrant realities that govern the clash between Jew and Arab for control of the Holy Land.
Clearly, Operations Cast Lead (2008-9), Pillar of Defense (2012), Protective Edge (2014), Black Belt (2019), Guardian of the Walls (2021), and most recently Breaking Dawn (2022), together with countless interim skirmishes, have done nothing to advance progress towards a lasting cessation of hostilities. Neither will future operations of similar nature—whether they are dubbed “Rolling Thunder”, “Bolt of Lightning” or…”Smoke and Mirrors”.
A brutally simple political algorithm
There is a simple—indeed, brutally simple—political algorithm that governs the recalcitrant reality in Gaza. It is—or should be—clear that Israel cannot determine events that emanate from Gaza unless it controls the territory from which they emanate. It cannot determine who rules Gaza, or how it is ruled—unless it rules it itself.
For, as three decades have irrefutably demonstrated, Arab enmity towards Israel is not fueled by what Israel does, but by what Israel is—namely Jewish. Arab animosity is not driven by Israel’s policies but by Israel’s existence.
Recognition of this calls for an entirely different strategic decision-making paradigm from that adopted up to now. For, within the new frame of reference, elements that were once considered virtues will become vices—and vice versa.
It dictates that Israel must take, hold, and govern the Gaza Strip indefinitely. This of course immediately raises the question of how to do this while avoiding “ruling over another people”. This is an issue I have dealt with extensively – see here and here. In turn, adopting my policy proposal raises yet another question: How is such action to be facilitated? Here again, I have written extensively on how to generate such facilitating conditions – see here.
In summation, the lesson of Gaza is that Israel must forgo the forlorn hope of winning Arab amitié. It must pursue different strategic goals.
Sadly, the maximum it can hope for is to be grudgingly accepted as an invincible rival; while the minimum it must achieve is to be greatly feared as a ferocious adversary, never to be trifled with.
“The cruelty of powerful people aims to arouse fear.” — Saint Augustine of Hippo, Confessions.
It appears Charles Joseph Crist, Jr. has decided to question the legal authority of the Governor of the State of Florida to suspend state officers as allowed by Article IV, Section 7 of the Florida Constitution.
Text Article IV, of Section 7, reads:
Suspensions; Filling Office During Suspensions
(a) By executive order stating the grounds and filed with the custodian of state records, the governor may suspend from office any state officer not subject to impeachment, any officer of the militia not in the active service of the United States, or any county officer, for malfeasance, misfeasance, neglect of duty, drunkenness, incompetence, permanent inability to perform official duties, or commission of a felony, and may fill the office by appointment for the period of suspension. The suspended officer may at any time before removal be reinstated by the governor. [Emphasis added]
Rather than run on his voting record while in Congress Crist has decided to devolve into name calling. Crist called Governor DeSantis a dictator in the below tweet.
🚨BREAKING: Just like a dictator, Ron DeSantis suspended democratically elected State Attorney @AndrewWarrenFL because he supports reproductive freedom.
In his book Confessions Saint Augustine wrote the aim of the wreckers was,
“to persecute them by mockery and so to feed their own malevolent amusement. Nothing more resembles the behavior of devils than their manner of carrying on.”
Charles is pro-lockdowns and mask mandates. On July 25th, 2021 CNN reported,
Democratic Rep. Charlie Crist of Florida tells CNN’s Pamela Brown that Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is to blame for the state’s surge in Covid cases and he believes there should be more mask mandates and lockdowns in Florida to combat the virus.
Many who participated in what prosecutors are calling the largest fraud in U.S. history — the theft of hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer money intended to help those harmed by the coronavirus pandemic — couldn’t resist purchasing luxury automobiles. Also mansions, private jet flights and swanky vacations.
They came into their riches by participating in what experts say is the theft of as much as $80 billion — or about 10 percent — of the $800 billion handed out in a Covid relief plan known as the Paycheck Protection Program, or PPP. That’s on top of the $90 billion to $400 billion believed to have been stolen from the $900 billion Covid unemployment relief program — at least half taken by international fraudsters — as NBC News reported last year. And another $80 billion potentially pilfered from a separate Covid disaster relief program.
So, there you have it. Charles Joseph Crist, Jr. is not only a wrecker but he voted to pass what prosecutors found to be the largest fraud in U.S. history, a.k.a. the American Rescue [Covid] Relief Plan.
As a result of Governor Ron DeSantis’ leadership and our data-driven approach free of mandates, the State of Florida has one of the lowest COVID-19 daily average case rates in the last 7 days per 100,000 residents in the United States.
“Without mandates or lockdowns, COVID-19 cases in Florida have decreased 90% since August,” said Governor Ron DeSantis. “In addition to cases, hospitalizations have plummeted in our state. This has been accomplished by making monoclonal antibody treatments and vaccines widely available throughout our state while protecting Floridians from government overreach.”
[ … ]
Sources: State and local health agencies (cases, deaths); U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (hospitalizations); Centers for Disease Control and state governments (vaccinations); Census Bureau (population and demographic data). The daily average is calculated with data that was reported in the last seven days. Vaccination data is not available for some states. All-time charts show data from Jan. 21, 2020 to present. www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/us/covid-cases.html
First Anthony Stephen Fauci and now Charles Joseph Crist, Jr. It doesn’t get any better than this. DeSantis will never backdown to the real tyrants and dicators.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Dr. Rich Swierhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Rich Swier2022-08-28 05:49:232022-08-29 06:59:37Watch Governor Ron DeSantis’ response to being called ‘a dictator’ by Charlie Crist—It’s a midterm election winner!
Mankind is at a tipping point. This is not a surprise because it is mankind’s destiny!
The world is in turmoil and in need of guidance and inspiration. Today many depend on others to get their guidance and inspiration rather than finding it within themselves.
Some turn to family, friends, close relatives. Others turn to social media. Some join organizations with goals similar to theirs. Others join political parties or social movements. Some turn inward and only think about themselves.
Many seek pleasures of the flesh to satisfy their thirst for happiness.
QUESTON: Why do each of these always fail?
ANSWER: Because they all lack the one great truth—faith is the only answer.
In the 3rd Century AD, Saint Augustine of Hippo in Book III of Confessions wrote, “The blindness of humanity is so great that people are actually proud of their blindness.”
The Wreckers
The wreckers are those who are so self absorbed, sinister and diabolical that they carry out unspeakable acts against their fellow human beings. In the times of Augustin of Hippo it was the Romans who persecuted the Christians and even crucified them or fed them to various beasts in the great and grand Colosseum in Rome. And the wreckers cheered as the blood of innocents and gladiators alike was shed. The more blood the more the wreckers cheered.
Today we have similar wreckers who take pleasure in persecuting others globally. According to Open Doors,
Around the world, more than 360 million Christians live in places where they experience high levels of persecution, just for following Jesus. That’s 1 in 7 believers, worldwide.
As Saint Augustine wrote the aim of the wreckers was, “to persecute them by mockery and so to feed their own malevolent amusement. Nothing more resembles the behavior of devils than their manner of carrying on.”
“So no truer name could be given them than the Wreckers. Clearly they are themselves wrecked first of all and perverted by evil spirits, who are mocking them and seducing them in the very acts by which they love to mock and deceive others,” wrote Augustus.
Our world has now given power to these wreckers, either voluntarily or by force. We see it all around us. Yet many remain silent to the wreckers perversions.
Faith or Flesh
Mankind in general, and individuals in particular, must now choose between faith and flesh.
Augustine confessed, “I pursued a sacrilegious quest for knowledge, which led me, a deserter from you, down to faithless depths and the fraudulent service of devils. The sacrifices I offered them were my evil acts.”
Are you seeking knowledge for its own sake and by doing so have you deserted Him, the only one who can truly redeem you?
Today, popularity is more important than faith. We see it all around us, engulfing us and leading us down to faithless depths of depravity.
Augustine asked, “Who can untie this twisted and tangled knot?”
But the answer is clear.
“What does ambition seek but honour and glory?” wrote Augustine, “Yet you alone are worthy of honour and are glorious for eternity. The cruelty of powerful people aims to arouse fear. Who is to be feared but God alone. What can be stolen from his power? When or where or how or by whom? Soft endearments are intended to arouse love. But there are no caresses tenderer that your charity, and no object of love more healthy than your truth, beautiful and luminous beyond all things.”
“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened,” Matthew 7: 7-12.
Knock and He will open the door so that you may enter—for ever.
Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, confirmed Thursday that there were no virtual instruction options for unvaccinated students which would leave about 40% of black students without any schooling at all.
Bowser was speaking to reporters in a media briefing when she made the comments.
“They can go to school on Monday. But they need to get their vaccinations,” she said, “and their families will be alerted as to the dates.”
When pressed about online instruction being available to unvaccinated students, Bowser admitted there would be no such opportunity.
“We’re not offering remote learning for children, and families will need to comply with what is necessary to come to school,” said Bowser.
Bowser had been previously confronted by a reporter about the large numbers of black students who remain unvaccinated, and she claimed that the numbers were inaccurate.
“Around 40% of black students in the district are unvaccinated and, therefore, under the district’s current policy regarding schools, will be unable to attend school,” said Daily Signal reporter Douglas Blair. “Why is the district continuing with this policy when it seems to disproportionately impact black students?”
“I don’t think that number is correct,” replied the mayor. “We have substantially fewer number of kids that we have to engage with vaccination. And I explained why it’s important. It’s important for the public health of our students and that we can maintain safe environments.”
However, those statistics came directly from Bowser’s office.
Earlier in August, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention eased the social distancing guidance for schools by saying that children exposed to the virus no longer had to test positive before returning to in-person instruction. They also said that they would no longer recommend schools avoid mixing groups of children.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2022-08-27 12:25:402022-08-27 12:29:50D.C. Mayor: All Students Must Get Vaxxed, Unvaxxed Students Banned from Virtual Instruction, including 40% of Black Students
“I didn’t know that, according to Black Lives Matter, the climate discriminates against blacks! Is the climate now a ‘white supremacist global movement’ created by God?” — Dr. Rich Swier
Here we see the ‘intersectionality’ of every loathsome fraud and ludicrous hoax the left has rammed down the throat of the American people. Once a lie, a fraud, is accepted as ‘conventional wisdom’, the most absurd, irrational, and preposterous edicts and policies will follow.
Watch your taxpayer dollars flow into the race hustlers’ coffers.
The Movement for Black Lives launched a new climate change initiative Thursday, uniting more than 200 Black environmental leaders and organizations nationwide who have pledged to find equitable climate solutions centering on Black Americans and communities.
The Black Hive initiative builds on the movement’s 2021 Red, Black, and Green New Deal and reintroduces its Black Climate Mandate that outlines the urgency for a Black climate agenda and investment in equitable strategies that protect Black Americans specifically.
The announcement, first shared with The Associated Press, comes in the wake of a Supreme Court decision limiting the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and the recent passage of the Inflation Reduction Act.
[….]
“The climate crisis is happening because of corporate greed, government negligence, the divestment of solutions and the investment into the harmful institutions like the fossil fuel industry, that are harming our people,” said Valencia Gunder, national co-lead of The Black Hive. “It’s time for America to address the anti-Black racism that happens here.”
Gunder said she’s already seen the impacts of climate change in her home state of Florida. She’s been doing climate justice work in communities, focusing on the impacts of rising seas, residential displacement, and housing and food security issues. She said farmers in South Florida have told her they’ve started to see saltwater intrusion damaging crops.
“The climate crisis is probably the most important issue that we can work on,” Gunder said. “If we do not hurry up and pay attention and get to resiliency, I believe that we’re going to start seeing more destruction, more harm or death, more illness.”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2022-08-27 12:07:122022-08-30 06:33:36NEWEST CLIMATE MYTH: Black Lives Movement Launches ‘Climate Initiative’ Centering on Black Americans
“It’s only journalism when we do it. When you do it’s a crime and the FBI will come after you.”
A pair of Florida residents pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court Thursday to stealing the diary and other property belonging to President Joe Biden’s daughter, Ashley, and selling them to the conservative investigative group Project Veritas.
Aimee Harris, 40, and Robert Kurlander, 58, took part in transporting stolen materials from Florida, where the president’s daughter had been living, to New York, where Project Veritas is headquartered. Their actions took place in the final weeks ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
“Harris and Kurlander stole personal property from an immediate family member of a candidate for national political office,” Damian Williams, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement.
The court records further suggest Project Veritas asked the pair to return to Florida to gather more of Biden’s daughter’s property after Harris said there was “additional property” she could access.
So Biden’s DOJ is pretty clearly building a case against Project Veritas.
The media does this all the time. They just describe it as “leaks”. They get hold of massive caches of stolen documents and then describe them as having been “leaked” even when they were stolen by hackers and even when the media operatives were in close contact with the hackers.
A typical case involved Elliott Broidy, a deputy finance chairman for the Republican National Committee,
In his story, LoBianco wrote of a “cache of emails obtained by the AP.“ The emails are described as having been “anonymously leaked.“ A more factually accurate term would have been “hacked” or “stolen.“
The hack of the Oath Keepers site similarly was described as a “leak.” No one seems to bother investigating these hacks or leaks. No progress has been made on the investigation of the Supreme Court’s abortion draft which was used to incite rioting and a campaign of domestic terrorism by abortion groups.
But Ashley Biden’s diary is sacrosanct.
It’s not wrong to treat taking someone’s private papers as a crime. But Democrats, their DOJ operatives and the media clearly don’t believe that’s the case. Much as with Hunter Biden’s laptop, they only think it’s wrong when it’s done to them, not when they do it.
This isn’t law enforcement or the rule of law. Much like the Mar-a-Lago raid or the plethora of judicial decisions by Obama and Clinton appointees which could be summed up as “Obama can do it and no one is allowed to change what he did” and “Trump can’t do it even though there’s ample precedent because we say so”.
That’s not just a double standard. Selective partisan enforcement is simply tyranny under the color of law.
Either we live in a country where people’s private emails, information and papers are sacrosanct or in one where they’re all fair game. I would prefer to live in the former nation, but instead we live in one where conservatives are always fair game and lefties never are. That’s the reason that an organization like Project Veritas exists in the first place.
Project Veritas has spent quite a few years now using the media’s own tactics against it. And demonstrating the hypocrisy of the media and the political machine which it serves and which protects its crimes.
A Trump-endorsed Democrat who helped his party lead the first impeachment effort against the former president won the Democratic nomination to represent New York’s contested 10th district in Tuesday’s packed primary election, NPR reported Wednesday.
Former prosecutor Daniel Goldman won the Democratic nomination over Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou and incumbent Rep. Mondaire Jones to represent New York’s 10th district in Congress on Tuesday.
Goldman won with 25.8% of the vote, NPR reported, citing The Associated Press. Niou finished in second with 23.7%.
Jones, the first openly gay black congressman, came in third place for the nomination after redistricting prompted him to switch from seeking re-election against another incumbent in New York’s 17th district. Trump endorsed Goldman earlier this month.
“Lawyer Dan Goldman is running for Congress, NY-10, and it is my great honor to Strongly Endorse him,” Trump wrote in a TRUTH Social post.
“I do this not because of the fact that he headed up the Impeachment Committee and lost, but because he was honorable, fair, and highly intelligent. While it was my honor to beat him, and beat him badly, Dan Goldman has a wonderful future ahead,” he continued.
The New York Times editorial board also endorsed Goldman, praising his efforts to impeach Trump.
“The Republicans are out for blood and out for revenge,” Goldman told the editorial board. “And so my experience, having led the impeachment investigation and being right in the throes of that kind of complex and high-stakes investigation, will be even more valuable, I think, to the Democratic caucus than reasonably a first-year congress person would be even in the majority without any seniority.”
His runner-ups, Niou and Jones, both prided themselves as more progressive candidates and lambasted Goldman as a “conservative Democrat.” They claimed he opposes Medicare for All and depended on his own wealth to win the seat, according to Spectrum News.
Niou came in second place after losing some support for expressing support for the Boycott Divest and Sanctions movement against Israel in an interview with Jewish Insider.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Daily Callerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Caller2022-08-27 09:38:582022-08-27 12:46:18Trump-Endorsed Democrat Wins Nomination In Heated New York Primary
Media Matters for America and Right Wing Watch are vicious attack sites whose sole mission is to destroy effective voices on the right and rational side of the political spectrum. They smear, defame, and liable. That these Republican Senators would have ANYTHING to do with ANYONE associated with them, let alone hire and fund their trolls speaks to how deep the GOP establishment has been compromised.
I’ll be working with ISD’s growing US office as Senior Research Manager on hate and extremism. I’m really pumped to get started and I’m looking forward to helping them build a mean research unit.
Six high profile Republican senators including Tom Cotton, Lindsey Graham, and Marco Rubio sit on the board of a foreign policy nonprofit that funds the work of left wing media reporter and hate expert Jared Holt.
Holt, a former reporter for Media Matters for America and Right Wing Watch, and former resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, has now taken a position with the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, an international anti-extremism and disinformation non-profit.
Sharing the news of his new job in July on Twitter, Holt declared he was “pumped” to get building a “mean research unit” into “hate and extremism” with the ISD.
The ISD, founded in 2006, is a London-based group with teams in Washington DC, Berlin, Paris, and other areas across the globe, functioning as an arm for the globalist regime to remove any information they deem “extreme” or “misinformation,” boasting of the removal of thousands of allegedly “white supremacist” or “covert disinformation” social media accounts.
The group also trains activists and social influencers, and works with local and national governments to also stop alleged “extremism” or “hate,” targeting millions of people worldwide, with policy influence at the highest levels, including the United Nations.
Holt, who spent much of his career reporting on those on the American right, and encouraging companies to deplatform those who he and his colleagues deem unacceptable for society……
Non-Orthodox rabbis embrace the progressive ideals of their Christian counterparts, using modern terms for an ancient hatred.
In an outrageous display of moral vacancy, the Presbyterian Church (USA) recently labelled Israel an apartheid state – despite an abundance of evidence and legal precedent to the contrary. Though mainline protestant churches have grown increasingly hostile toward Israel based on false claims of human rights abuses and a disregard for Jewish history, their condemnations are simply modern iterations of the same doctrinal prejudice used to demean Jews and Judaism for two millennia. Their anti-Israel bias is vile but historically consistent, and it raises the issue of how progressive rabbis can sit with liberal activist clergy who promote hoary antisemitic myths wrapped in the language of human rights advocacy.
The International Criminal Court’s Rome Statute of 2002 defines apartheid as “an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.” This definition does not fit Israel, where ethnic and religious minorities have equal rights under the law. But it does describe totalitarian states that liberal protestant clergy are reluctant to criticize, including communist dictatorships like China and repressive Islamist regimes like Iran. It could also describe the terrorist organizations many of them legitimize, including Hamas and Hezbollah, which openly call for jihad, genocide, and death to Israel.
Their collective hypocrisy was perhaps best exemplified in 2020 by the “Faith Statement on Escalating Violence with Iran,” which condemned “the United States’ dangerous aggression towards Iran…,” despite that nation’s malevolent record of exporting terrorism, persecuting minorities, and seeking to annihilate the Jewish People.
The Presbyterians’ false claim of Israeli apartheid should hardly be surprising given Christendom’s inveterate record of denigrating and persecuting Jews since before the days of Constantine, its complicity in the Holocaust, and its ambivalence regarding the Jewish State since 1948. In fact, the Catholic Church would not establish full diplomatic relations with Israel until after the ill-conceived 1993 Oslo Accords, nearly thirty years after Nostra Aetate (“Vatican II”) in 1965 – despite the Jews’ irrefutable historical claims and indigeneity in their homeland.
Jewish sovereignty poses a theological dilemma for those who believe the Jews were exiled for refusing to accept Christian doctrines, including belief in the trinity, vicarious atonement, the apotheosis of a man, and the eucharist – all of which contravene Torah law and seem pagan to Jewish sensibilities. Not surprisingly, Christian scripture significantly alters the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) and contains numerous anti-Jewish passages that have fueled oppression, blood libels, and massacres for centuries.
The Book of John, for example, associates Jews with darkness and evil (e.g., John 8:37-39), and specifically states: “You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” (John 8:44.)
Similarly, the book of Matthew says, “you testify against yourselves that you are descendants of those who murdered the prophets…You snakes, you brood of vipers. How can you escape being sentenced to hell?” (Matthew 23:31-33.) Matthew also accuses Jews of deicide and bloodguilt exclaiming, “his blood be on us and on our children.” (Matthew 27:25.) The accusation of bloodguilt, a common theme repeated elsewhere (e.g., 1 Thessalonians 2:15), was instrumental in reinforcing the anti-Jewish tropes that suffused European culture.
These stereotypes were used to dehumanize Jews and paved the way for mechanized genocide in the twentieth century. Considering this deplorable past, liberal protestant excoriation of Israel should be seen for what it is; ancient doctrinal antisemitism dressed up as progressive political virtue. What makes it worse is the legitimacy conferred by progressive rabbis who sit as colleagues with liberal pastors on clergy boards and interfaith councils and who likewise besmirch Israel in the name of social justice.
Though progressive clergy of all faiths embrace social justice activism as a religious mandate, nontraditional rabbis who partner with liberal Christian counterparts on select human rights issues must demonstrate the same self-abnegation and cognitive dissonance demanded by classical interfaith dialogue. Therefore, analyzing the deficiencies of such discourse provides context and insight.
The problem with traditional interfaith dialogue is threefold.
First, it restrains Jews from being assertive when doing so could be viewed as chauvinistic by gentile interlocutors.
Second, it holds that Christians and Jews share responsibility for their strained history and can resolve their differences by accentuating their similarities.
Third, it presumes an “I’m okay, you’re okay” discussional framework that requires Jews to concede the validity of doctrines that frankly violate Torah law.
Another problem with traditional interfaith discourse is that it deflects blame for a two-thousand-year doctrinal war against the Jews. Christian antisemitism resulted in ghettos, public disputations, crusades, pogroms, forced baptisms, inquisitions, expulsions, and genocide. This persecution was driven exclusively by Christians, their churches, and governments, motivated by theological and eschatological doctrines that contravene Torah and are fundamentally antisemitic.
Jews never engaged in similar conduct because they had neither the religious imperative nor power to do so. The existence of Christianity is irrelevant to Jewish belief and poses no threat to its continuing vitality.
The Jews’ continued existence however,’ was problematic for Christendom because, despite suffering horrendous abuse, they clung to their ancestral faith and Scriptures as written, not as altered to fit church doctrines that had more in common with Greco-Roman philosophy and culture and Gnostic dualism. The interfaith model is faulty because it (a) neglects to assign blame for this negative fixation and (b) presumes a shared “Judeo-Christian” heritage despite irreconcilable differences between fundamental
Jewish and Christian beliefs.
The term “Judeo-Christian” is usually employed by Christians to imply spiritual kinship and common values. Few educated Jews hold likewise, however, because they understand from their knowledge of Tanakh, Hebrew, and rabbinic literature that many central tenets of Judaism and Christianity are incongruous.
Whereas many mainline churches have adopted social justice activism as a core religious principle – claiming it is a true reflection of Christian values – they have retained the anti-Jewish conventions canonized by the early church fathers. In maligning Israel, these denominations are merely expressing age-old hostility using the language of contemporary propaganda. It matters little that non-Orthodox rabbis embrace the same progressive ideals and causes as their liberal Christian counterparts.
Those who falsely accuse Israel of apartheid are clearly using modern terminology to convey ancient dogmatic hatred.
But just as Jewish belief and tradition are incompatible with Christian theology, so too are they inconsistent with the conflation of secular politics and Torah values. Unfortunately, not all Jews understand their own heritage, and many have been deluded by interfaith and/or political indoctrination to believe that tolerance requires them to validate beliefs and ideologies that contradict their own traditions and scripture. The inherent limitations of interfaith dialogue are illustrated in the faith-based politics of liberal protestants who falsely brand the Jewish state “racist” in the name of skewed progressive ideology.
The problem is that many Jews don’t know enough about their own culture and history to confront such mistruths, whether expressed in religious or political terms, as open hostility, or even as declarations of friendship by those with covert missionary agendas (e.g., many evangelicals). Perhaps worse, though, are those who do know, but refuse to stand up to their critics for fear of offending them as dialogue partners or alienating them as partisan allies – or because they also reject Israel and Jewish tradition.
Whether using scriptural or political language, Christian detractors of Jews, Judaism, and Israel ultimately claim to be guided by faith, irrespective of fact. However, by using faith (doctrinal or political) as a shield to circumvent intellectual engagement, they avoid having to confront moral inconsistencies in the stereotypes they promote. And when endorsing politics as religious virtue, they eschew any moral responsibility for determining whether their worldview comports with history or original, unaltered scripture.
The template for today’s protestant denunciations of Israel can be found in the history of Christian antisemitism. Though Jews today are no longer required to submit to physical or ecclesiastical abuse as they did in the days of the ghetto, many are reluctant to defend Jewish integrity for fear of offending their cultural critics or political bedfellows.
And this won’t change unless they come to understand their own heritage and the historical nuances and ideological limitations of interfaith dialogue.
Did you know we’re still in a federal COVID emergency? Did you know the Biden administration plans to extend it another 90 days in October? Did you know Joe Biden cited the COVID emergency as the legal justification for canceling student debt, even though the emergency is over enough for his administration to argue COVID restrictions should be lifted at the border?
‘Emergencies’ have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded — and once they are suspended it is not difficult for anyone who has assumed emergency powers to see to it that the emergency will persist.
It’s a pretty safe bet that, once the COVID emergency is over, the climate emergency will begin. Which is one reason the authoritarian Left should never be allowed to get its hands on power again.
One thing that is foreseeable under a climate emergency will be a move to force rural and small town Americans into big cities to conserve gasoline, all to save the planet, you see. Leftists are already salivating about the prospect, because they hate you and think you’re a useless eater.
What you believe matters nothing to them. Joe Biden is trying to force Catholic hospitals to kill babies in abortions after the overturning of Roe v. Wade. And surprise, surprise – he’s invoking another emergency law, this one related to medical treatment, to do it.
Maybe he should just take over all the Catholic hospitals and have the government run them. That’s what Maxine Waters wanted to do to the oil companies. She said in a congressional hearing, wagging her finger: “Guess what this liberal will be all about. This liberal will be all about socializing, uh, uhm….” There she paused and you could see the wheels turning – ‘should I say this out loud or not?’ She continued: “[This liberal] would be about, basically, taking over, and the government running all of your companies.”
Then we have FBI whistleblowers stepping forward this week to warn us how the FBI has become politicized and hell-bent on saving democracy from the people. The nation’s premier law enforcement agency, unfortunately, has descended into political persecution. The whistleblowers said major investigations at the Bureau – like January 6th and Hunter Biden’s laptop – have been twisted for political reasons. They also pointed to the FBI’s witch hunts against two dozen parents opposed to school board policies.
That’s not good. At least the FBI is supposed to have weapons, but now we have the IRS recruiting armed agents willing to use deadly force against people who don’t pay their taxes. And Joe Biden just signed a bill to double the size of the IRS. I bet you didn’t know a bunch of other federal agencies are armed and weaponized, too. Ones you wouldn’t expect, like the Department of Agriculture, the Food and Drug Administration, and – get this – the Department of Education Inspector General’s office. Hmm, I wonder if they go to school board meetings, too. Feel better about your government, now?
Yes, the authoritarian Left is all about emergencies – big and small, wherever they can conjure them up. The far Left Green Party in Germany is setting up reporting centers where neighbors can inform on neighbors who use the wrong pronoun or don’t want their country overrun by migrants. The California Attorney General’s office leaked the names and addresses of thousands of gun owners in the state, setting them up for doxing or worse. The World Economic Forum just published an article saying there are good reasons to chip your kids. Ah yes, implants – the government needs to know where you are at all times, right? I’m telling you, these people hate you and don’t think you should even exist. “We just don’t need the vast majority of the population,” a World Economic Forum adviser said this month. We’ve got a “useless class” of “unemployable” human beings who “are no longer part of the story of the future” as the World Economic Forum wants to tell it. Replacing people with machines is a big part of that story.
Well, that’s pretty clear. But the future is now. We’ve left the era where people simply had political disagreements, and entered an era where authoritarian Leftists are at war with the rest of us. There is no compromise with these people. They must be defeated, and you can start with the Democrat Party which has lurched Left and is growing a big authoritarian streak. What’s their emergency? Democrat leaders don’t have enough wealth and power for themselves, yet, and they’re trying to get it from you. Power is the great motivator, as parents who attend school board meetings and others who want to keep their freedom are finding out.
Judicial Watch President @TomFitton discusses the redacted affidavit used by the DOJ/FBI for raiding Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, a new lawsuit over the Left’s “critical race theory” agenda in school, and much more!
Washington, D.C. – Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton made the following statement regarding the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) highly redacted affidavit released in response to Judicial Watch’s court request to unseal the warrant materials used in the unprecedented raid on the home of former President Trump:
In a remarkable and historic victory for transparency, Judicial Watch today forced the release of the infamous and heavily redacted Trump raid affidavit. Now we know why the Biden Justice Department did not want to release this material, as it exposes how there was significant evidence of President Trump’s cooperation, a major legal dispute about the legal status of the records believed to be in Trump’s possession, and that the FBI abusively raided his home anyway. The Biden Justice Department’s dishonest redactions of the reasons for its redactions makes a mockery of the American people’s right to know the entire story about this FBI raid, which was a wild abuse of power by the Biden administration.
This legal battle for accountability is just getting started.
Additional filings were also unsealed today.
Yesterday, in response to a Judicial Watch request, Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart ordered the redacted version of the search warrant affidavit be unsealed by noon today.
Judicial Watch has been in the forefront in the court battle for transparency regarding the abusive FBI raid.
On August 9, Judicial Watch filed its motion asking the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida to unseal as soon as possible the search warrant materials used by the FBI to raid President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida (U.S. v. Sealed Search Warrant (Case No. 9:22-mj-08332)).
On August 11, the DOJ filed a motion offering to unseal certain warrant materials.
On August 12, Judicial Watch Judicial Watch filed President Trump’s public statement with the court, in which he made it clear that he would not oppose the release of documents related to the August 8, 2022, raid. Later that day, the DOJ made a partial release of the Trump raid warrant materials.
Initially, the Albany Times Union and the New York Times joined Judicial Watch in filing for the unsealing of the warrant by filing an amicus letter and motion respectively. Other interests later joined in the effort.
The Justice Department was ordered by Magistrate Judge Reinhart to respond by August 15 to Judicial Watch’s Motion to Unseal the warrant and supporting materials behind the FBI raid. In its filing, the Justice Department alleged that releasing the affidavit would “cause significant and irreparable damage” to its ongoing criminal investigation.
On August 17, Judicial Watch submitted its reply to the DOJ’s effort to keep under seal the affidavit used to justify the controversial raid on the home of former President Trump. Judicial Watch cited former President Trump’s support for the release of the affidavit.
After last week’s hearing in West Palm Beach, FL, the court issued an order which stated:
As I ruled from the bench at the conclusion of the hearing, I find that on the present record the Government has not met its burden of showing that the entire affidavit should remain sealed. It is ORDERED that by noon EST on Thursday, August 25, 2022, the Government shall file under seal its proposed redactions along with a legal memorandum setting forth the justification for the proposed redactions.
Four additional filings were made public on August 22, click here.
Klaus Schwab’s globalist organization insists that the idea of implanting a “tracking chip in your child” isn’t “scary.” The WEF suggests implanting tracking chips in the human body will help society usher in a “brave new world.”
The World Economic Forum (WEF) has called on governments, health officials, and “humans” around the globe to consider their “rational” arguments for implanting chips in children’s brains.
Klaus Schwab’s globalist organization insists that the idea of implanting a “tracking chip in your child” isn’t “scary,” arguing that “they form part of a natural evolution that wearables once underwent.”
The group claims that children will even grow to see implanted chips as “accessories” that will eventually be “considered a fashion item.”
Parents should also learn to embrace such technology, according to the WEF, because “many children expect to develop superpowers” after watching “superheroes” in movies.
The WEF makes its case for implants in a new blog post where it suggests implanting tracking chips in the human body will help society usher in a “brave new world.”
Implanting chips into children should be viewed by parents as a “solid, rational” move into the future of augmented reality (AR), the WEF claims.
This shift toward AR puts humanity on the path toward “an augmented society,” according to the organization.
The WEF promotes the allegedly broad usefulness of chip implants in fields such as healthcare, education, and professional settings.
While praising how such technology could transform society, the WEF underpins the notion of providing guidelines on how to “ethically” regulate this vast potential power and, therefore, inevitably control it.
The WEF describes the tech as transformative but warns that it needs “the right support, vision, and audacity,” which is presumably provided by global governments are corporate power elites.
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However, it isn’t at all clear why “audacity” is called for by the WEF.
Yet, some of the “visions” for humans to be “seamlessly integrated” with technology that the WEF is suggesting seem pretty audacious.
The idea of replacing drugs with brain implants that will manipulate the body with electrical pulses has been around for some time.
Although, it’s not something that the public is all too keen on.
Nevertheless, the WEF has prepared for pushback from the proletariat by working in a sales pitch for the people who view the idea as “scary.”
Once the human body and AR technology have been “seamlessly integrated,” quality of life shoots up across the board, the Davos-based group promises……
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2022-08-27 07:35:332022-08-27 09:18:21World Economic Forum Promotes ‘Brain Implants’ for Children
Eighty percent of Americans say that, “political correctness is a problem in our country.”
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past five years, you’ve probably heard of cancel culture.
But what is it? Why do people on the right and left—and libertarians—disagree so vehemently on everything from whether or not it’s a problem, to whether or not it even exists?
This article takes a deep dive into the question of “what is cancel culture?” We’ll go beyond the talking points of both sides and look at:
Does cancel culture exist…or is it just ‘consequence culture’ as many on the left claim?
If it exists, who does it? Is it just one political party, or does every political tribe try to cancel people who disagree with them?
What does cancel culture (or ‘consequence culture’) look like in practice?
Why is trying to silence dissent bad?
Is this just about giving disadvantaged people a voice, and holding the powerful accountable when they abuse their power?
Is Cancel Culture ‘Consequence Culture’?
Some on the left have said that cancel culture doesn’t really exist as a phenomenon. Instead, it would be better to call it ”consequence culture.” Actor and TV personality LeVar Burton, for instance, says, “In terms of cancel culture, I think it’s misnamed, that’s a misnomer. I think we have a consequence culture and that consequences are finally encompassing everybody in the society.”
Writing for Vox, Aja Romano argues that cancel culture has its roots in historically marginalized groups seeking justice against powerful people who abuse their power. In this sense, it’s a tool for social justice.
Anne Charity Hudley, the chair of linguistics of African America at the University of California Santa Barbara, elaborates on this claim: “for black culture and cultures of people who are lower income and disenfranchised, this is the first time you do have a voice in those types of conversation.”
For defenders, canceling is just a new form of boycott. Hudley argues, “When you see people canceling Kanye, canceling other people, it’s a collective way of saying, ‘We elevated your social status, your economic prowess, [and] we’re not going to pay attention to you in the way that we once did. … ‘I may have no power, but the power I have is to [ignore] you.’”
Lisa Nakamura, PhD, Professor and Director of the Digital Studies Institute at the University of Michigan, echoes Hudley. She argues that cancel culture is, “a cultural boycott. It’s an agreement not to amplify, signal boost, give money to.”
Under this definition, cancel culture is simply about holding powerful people accountable. For defenders of this new cultural phenomenon, it’s essentially taking the #MeToo movement and applying it on a broader scale. Indeed, when Romano lists celebrities who have been canceled, she cites Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, R. Kelly, and Louis C.K., suggesting that she sees the #MeToo movement as a core component of cancel culture.
In this formulation, cancel culture (or consequence culture) has three core components:
1) It’s about accountability, and holding powerful figures like Weinstein accountable for abusing their power
2) It’s primarily exercised by people who have been historically marginalized.
3) A primary consequence is a lack of attention given to the person, which amounts to canceling them.
Framed like that, it doesn’t seem so bad. After all, not a lot of folks of any political ideology opposed locking up Harvey Weinstein. And the right to not to pay attention to people you don’t like is fundamental to our ideal of free expression and a free society.
But when we examine what cancel culture actually looks like in practice, we find some aspects that are deeply troubling.
What Does Cancel Culture Actually Look Like?
When we dig below the rhetoric and look at actual cases, we see five broad trends that, together, seem to define almost all of cancel culture:
#1: Online Mobs
In practice, cancel culture often manifests as online mobs. Someone decides that someone else did something they don’t like, and whips people into a frenzy to go after the offender. The mobs can then take on a life of their own, doxxing people or destroying folks’ lives for minor offenses.
A lot of times, the victims of cancel culture are among the most vulnerable people in society.
In 2019, members of the trans community tried to cancel Dave Chappelle (admittedly not a vulnerable person at this point in his life). A young up-and-coming trans comedian named Daphne Dorman defended Chappelle, and the mob turned on her.
As Chappelle recounts the story in his Netflix special The Closer, “It took a lot of heart to defend me like that. And when she did that the trans community dragged that b**** all over Twitter. For days they were going in on her….”
Six days after the dragging started, Dorman killed herself. To be clear, Dorman suffered from psychological issues including severe PTSD, and it’s unlikely according to her family that the Twitter mob was why she died. But as Chappelle said, “I don’t know if it was them dragging or I don’t know what was going on in her life but I bet dragging her didn’t help.”
Author Lauren Hough became another victim of cancel culture. Her debut novel Leaving Isn’t the Hardest Thing was a brutally honest story about her growing up in the “Children of God” sex cult. A critic on Goodreads gave the book 4 out of 5 stars. Hough responded snarkily: “Glad to see most of the Goodreads *ssholes still giving 4-star reviews to show they’re super tough reviewers who need to, like, fall in love, you know? Anyway, no one likes you.”
After Hough’s response, the sky fell down on her.
The public backlash was brutal. People flooded to Hough’s Goodreads page and started leaving 1-star ratings and reviews of her book out of spite. As of this writing, the book has 7,922 ratings with an average of 3.19 stars. 32 percent of her ratings are 1 star, many from people who left reviews like, “id [sic] not finish at 0%.” And “its always the white women” (a reaction, it seems, to Hough criticizing her 4-star review).
Here we can see the stark difference between how defenders describe cancel culture (or consequence culture) and how it often looks in real life. First, Hough wasn’t a powerful figure. She was a debut novelist, not Harvey Weinstein. She was a gay woman who dealt with sexual abuse, homelessness, and addiction; who put her experience on the page in novelized form; and then got raked over the coals for a single rude response to a single critic.
There’s another difference, too. Hudley defends cancel culture as simply depriving someone of your attention: “I may have no power, but the power I have is to [ignore] you.” But the Hough example goes much farther. These reviewers weren’t just giving her book a pass, they were actively trying to prevent other people from reading her work. They were working to sabotage her career.
Trans writer Isabel Fall provides another useful example. She wrote a short story in 2020 that depicted gender dysphoria. Fall published under a pseudonym, and critics of the story took the story as transphobic. They harassed her, doxxed her, forcibly outed her, and ultimately drove her offline.
This isn’t about going after powerful people to hold them accountable. Too often, what cancel culture looks like in practice is people from marginalized communities getting dragged and publicly shamed for saying something the online mob doesn’t like.
#2: Getting People Fired For Speaking Out
A second big thrust of cancel culture is getting people fired when they speak out against the far-left orthodoxy.
In 2020, bestselling children’s author Gillian Philip was fired by her publisher. Her crime? She changed her Twitter handle to include the hashtag #IStandWithJKRowling (the hashtag is a reference to Rowling’s controversial stance on transgender issues).
As another example, Nick Buckley was fired from Mancunian Way, a charity that he directed and founded. The charity helped disadvantaged youth in Manchester, including thousands of black and minority children. His crime? He wrote a blog post criticizing the Black Lives Matter movement. Days later, he was removed from the charity.
These cases (and there are many more like them) illustrate another key difference between cancel culture and accountability movements like the #MeToo movement. The #MeToo movement held powerful people accountable for actual sins. Weinstein sexually assaulted dozens of women. Buckley and Philip, on the other hand, simply expressed mainstream political views or made benign social media posts. To say that these firings are about holding people “accountable” is to turn making non-left statements into a crime that requires punishment.
To be fair, there are cases where cancel culture looks exactly like what its supporters envision: a groundswell of people holding the powerful accountable for abusing their power. Michael Richards is a good example of this: the star of the popular sitcom “Seinfeld” went on an objectively racist tirade in 2006. His career subsequently cratered.
#3: Disinviting Speakers
One area where cancel culture manifests offline is on college campuses where students (and sometimes faculty) will hear that someone has been invited to their university to speak, and then mobilize to try to get them uninvited. In extreme (albeit disturbingly frequent) cases, students will even violently protest and shut down the campus to prevent speakers from speaking.
A peaceful disinvitation isn’t as damaging as getting someone fired, because the speaker will simply go on to their next speaking gig. But the core elements of cancel culture are still here: X says something that some people disagree with, so they band together to prevent anyone from hearing from X and attempt to hurt X’s career.
In the past 10 years (2013-2022), 125 disinvitations have been issued to public figures who were invited to speak on campuses.These included Ben Carson, Condoleezza Rice, Ilya Shapiro, George Will, Ben Shapiro, and other mainstream figures.
#4: Self-Censorship
Unsurprisingly, given the consequences for even mild dissent, this new online culture has led many people to preemptively silence themselves.
Heterodox Academy surveyed 445 academics about the state of free inquiry on campus, asking them, “Imagine expressing your views about a controversial issue while at work, at a time when faculty, staff, and/or other colleagues were present. To what extent would you worry about the following consequences?”
One of the hypothetical consequences Heterodox Academy listed was, “my career would be hurt.” How many academics said they would be “very concerned” or “extremely concerned” about this consequence? 53.43 percent.
To put it another way: over half of academics on campus worried that expressing non-orthodox opinions on controversial topics could be dangerous to their careers.
We see the same self-censoring phenomenon among college students. In 2021, College Pulse surveyed 37,000 students at 159 colleges. They found that 80 percent of students self-censor to at least some degree, while 48 percent of undergraduates reported feeling “somewhat uncomfortable” or “very uncomfortable” expressing their views on a controversial topic in the classroom.
In a panel on free speech and cancel culture, former ACLU president Nadine Strossen said, “I constantly encounter students who are so fearful of being subjected to the Twitter mob that they are engaging in self-censorship.”
If cancel culture is just about holding powerful people accountable, why is it that young people are so scared of saying something that might put them in the crosshairs?
#5: Governmental Pressure
Unfortunately, legislators and public officials are realizing that they can leverage a version of cancel culture to punish corporations who don’t toe the right line.
In 2022, Florida passed a law revoking the Walt Disney Company’s special tax status. Revoking special government privileges can be good, but the reasoning in this case was disturbing: Florida Republicans are explicitly punishing Disney for opposing Republican-backed Florida House Bill 1557 (the “Don’t Say Gay” bill).
Daily Wire cofounder Ben Shapiro tweeted, “Corporations have an interest in lobbying on issues that directly impact their business. If they choose to engage in politics outside their purview, they will be treated with all the aggression inherent to the political sphere, and they will deserve it.”
In other words, governments can and will target specific companies for speaking out on cultural and political issues.
In 2021, Major League Baseball announced that it would move the 2021 All-Star Game and the MLB draft out of Atlanta in order to protest a voting-ID law that Georgia had passed. Many Republicans were furious, and some sought to punish MLB’s act of dissent. Representative Jeff Duncan said he would work to end baseball’s federal antitrust exception. Former President Donald Trump urged supporters to, “boycott baseball and all of the woke companies.”
Trying to use societal pressure to silence or punish dissenters is almost never a good thing…but it’s even worse when legislators use governmental power to do the punishing.
Why Is Silencing Dissent Bad?
Okay, so cancel culture is real and the consequences can be brutal. On an individual level, it’s obvious why this isn’t a good thing: it would be awful to lose your job and your ability to provide for your family because you changed your Twitter bio.
But on a societal level, why is this bad?
First, we don’t want a society in which people feel like they have to walk on eggshells around each other. That creates a culture of fear and loneliness. It’s inimical to the idea of building genuine connection, which we as humans need.
The second reason that we want to avoid a culture where peoples’ livelihoods can be destroyed for wrongthink is that if dissenters live in fear and don’t speak up, we’ll never learn and grow as a society. None of us has all the answers, because life is complex and as humans we’re inherently flawed. We need to listen to people who disagree with us so that we can all move closer to the truth.
Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt puts it eloquently in an Atlantic article titled, “Why The Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid.” He points out that, “People who think differently and are willing to speak up if they disagree with you make you smarter, almost as if they are extensions of your own brain.”
By contrast, “People who try to silence or intimidate their critics make themselves stupider, almost as if they are shooting darts into their own brain.”
The third reason we should oppose this kind of culture is…it’s just vicious. We shouldn’t embrace a culture where online mobs can destroy peoples’ livelihoods for small sins or expressing non-orthodox political views.
Is Cancel Culture A Partisan Phenomenon?
Cancel culture is unfortunately not a partisan phenomenon; both the left and the right do it. However, they cancel in very different ways and to different degrees.
So who cancels more? Let’s take a look at the data:
1) Social Media Canceling: Left-Wing (Anecdotally)
Writing for Quillette, Richard Hanania argues that Twitter is far more likely to censor right-wing voices than left-wing voices. He notes, “Of 22 prominent, politically active individuals who are known to have been suspended (from Twitter) since 2005 and who expressed a preference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, 21 supported Donald Trump.”
Now maybe all 21 right-leaning individuals deserved to be removed from Twitter. Maybe they said awful things that violated Twitter’s terms of service. But as Hanania points out, liberals who say awful things generally get a pass from the social media giant. Sarah Jeong, former editorial writer for the New York Times, posted lots of Tweets expressing contempt for white people. Sample Tweets include, “Are white people genetically predisposed to burn faster in the sun, thus logically being only fit to live underground like groveling goblins,” and, “oh man it’s kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men.”
Kathy Griffin demanded that her followers doxx students at Covington High School who were accused of harassing a Native American activist. (For those unfamiliar, doxxing is when you publish private or identifying information about someone, generally with the intent to harm them.)
Neither Griffin nor Jeong were punished by Twitter.
When it comes to silencing people for their political views, social media giants like Twitter seem to prioritize canceling non-liberals.
2) Getting People Fired For Their Political Views: Left-Wing (Data)
A big part of cancel culture seems to be this push to punish people who dissent from the prevailing orthodoxy, and in this case liberals are also leading the charge.
The libertarian Cato Institute, together with YouGov, surveyed 2,300 American adults for its 2017 Free Speech and Tolerance Survey. One of the categories of questions they asked respondents was if a business executive should be fired for expressing certain political views. In every instance, Democrats were more likely than Republicans (and often much more likely) to answer in the affirmative.
Some of these beliefs are horrendous, but others are simply heterodox. For instance, over a third of Democratic responders said a business executive should be fired if they, “believe psychological differences explain why there are more male engineers.” But the psychological differences between men and women, and to what extent these differences affect career selection, is a topic of open debate among psychologists.
The nonpartisan Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has been tracking disinvitations to speakers on campus for decades, and they have a robust database that includes who the speaker was, the controversy, and whether the calls to disinvite came from the left of the speaker or the right of the speaker.
In the past 10 years (2013-2022), 125 disinvitations have been issued based on political pressure. Only 28 (22.4%) of these came from the right. The remaining 97 (77.6%) came from the left.
The Cato Institute’s 2017 Free Speech and Tolerance Survey also asked Democrats and Republicans whether a speaker should be allowed to speak at their university if they held certain political opinions (for example, saying that police are justified in stopping blacks at higher rates). In every single hypothetical, Democrats were more likely than Republicans to say that the speaker should be disinvited, often by double digits.
Democrats are also much more likely than Republicans to support students who forcibly shut down campus speakers. When Cato asked, “How should colleges handle students who disrupt invited speakers and prevent them from speaking? (Select all that should apply)” Republicans were much more likely to give responses such as, “Require the students pay a fine” or, “Suspend the student for 30 days.” By contrast, 64 percent of Democrats said that the college should, “Listen and address students’ concerns.” (36 percent of Republicans said the same).
When it comes to offline attempts to cancel an invited speaker, Democrats are far more eager than Republicans. And, disturbingly, many Democrats are more willing than Republicans to turn a blind eye to forcible attempts to silence speakers on campus.
4): Using Government to Punish Speech They Don’t Like: Right-Wing (Anecdotal)
Unfortunately, Republicans are learning to embrace cancel culture, and doing it in a very dangerous way: they’re employing the power of the state against companies who take political sides that they disagree with.
Both the Disney example and the Major League Baseball example cited above were Republican-led silencings.
Some liberals try to use social pressure to stop dissenters from speaking or acting in ways that don’t support their agenda. Disturbingly, some Republicans are learning they can use governmental pressure to accomplish the same ends.
Who’s Actually Doing the Canceling?
On the right, the perpetrators of cancel culture are the rich and powerful: governors and legislators, cheered on by well-known pundits like Ben Shapiro. This is a case of those in power working to use their power to punish corporations who don’t toe the appropriate line.
But on the left, it’s often also the rich and powerful who are working to punish wrongthink.
This might come as a surprise to defenders of cancel culture, who tend to praise it as a power rebalance and a way for marginalized voices to be heard. Procon.org, a prestigious site known for making the best arguments for and against debatable positions, published three ‘Pros’ and 3 ‘Cons’ of cancel culture. One of their ‘Pros’ was “Callout culture [in this case, a synonym for cancel culture] gives a voice to disenfranchised or less powerful people.” Or recall Hudley’s claim about cancel culture: “for black culture and cultures of people who are lower income and disenfranchised, this is the first time you do have a voice in those types of conversations.”
This is a lofty idea…but the data tell a different story.
Almost all of the cancellations from the left come from the far left, not the middle. Moderate liberals don’t consider supporting JK Rowling to be a fireable offense. Middle-of-the-line Democrats don’t tend to want business executives fired for believing that men might want to be engineers more often than women do.
This isn’t just anecdotal. Scholars Stephen Hawkins, Daniel Yudkin, Miriam Juan-Torres, and Tim Dixon polled 8,000 respondents for a study called, “Hidden Tribes: A Study of America’s Polarized Landscape.” Based on the poll responses, 30 one-hour interviews, and six focus groups, they divided Americans into seven political tribes ranging from far-left (“Progressive Activists”) to far-right (“Devoted Conservatives”). Among other things, they asked members of each tribe for their views on political correctness.
Eighty percent of Americans across the board said that, “political correctness is a problem in our country.” Left-leaning respondents tended to say that political correctness was less of a problem than right-leaning respondents did, but even among the second-most-liberal group of Americans (“Traditional Liberals”), 61 percent agreed with the statement that political correctness was a problem.
Only Progressive Activists truly support political correctness: a mere 30 percent of them said that political correctness was a problem.
If you think political correctness is a problem, you’re unlikely to try to get someone fired for non-politically-correct statements like, “#IStandWithJKRowling.” To put it another way: data on their views about what kind of speech should and should not be permissible strongly suggest that Progressive Activists are the ones driving cancel culture on the left.
So who are Progressive Activists? Are they the, “lower income and disenfranchised” people whom Hudley imagines?
Not exactly.
The Hidden Tribes report offers in-depth data about each political tribe, in terms of beliefs and also in terms of demographics. They find that Progressive Activists are:
More likely to be white than the average American (80% of Progressive Activists, vs 69% of Americans) (only Devoted Conservatives are more likely to be white than are Progressive Activists)
Twice as likely to have completed college as the average American (59% vs 29%)
Almost twice as likely to make $100,000 per year or more as the average American (25% vs 13%) (Progressive Activists are more likely to be in this top income group than are members of any other political tribe)
Less than half as likely to make under $20,000 per year as the average American (7% vs 17%) (only Devoted Conservatives are less likely to be poor than are Progressive Activists)
And even though African Americans represent 12 percent of the US population, just 3 percent of Progressive Activists are black.
Essentially: the group most in favor of cancel culture on the left is also one of the richest, most privileged, highly educated, whitest groups in the country. In their power and privilege, they mirror the group of elected officials and pundits who have endorsed cancel culture on the right.
Maybe these aren’t the two groups that should be in charge of telling the rest of Americans what we are and aren’t allowed to say.
Julian is a former political op-ed writer and current nonprofit marketer. His work has been featured in FEE, National Review, Playboy, and Lawrence Reed’s economics anthology Excuse Me, Professor.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFoundation for Economic Education (FEE)2022-08-26 13:49:482022-08-26 13:53:04What Is Cancel Culture? Getting Beyond The Partisan Talking Points
There’s an apocryphal quote often misattributed to Ben Franklin that goes something like this: “When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” While we’re not quite nearing the collapse of our republic, we are actively witnessing the corrosive effect it has when the political power of redistributionism is abused.
President Biden is “canceling” (transferring) student debt for millions of Americans and forcing the rest of us to pay for it. His plan “cancels” $10,000 for borrowers who earn less than $125,000 individually or $250,000 for their household. It also includes two other forgiveness plans that bring the total cost to taxpayers up to $500 billion, a whopping $3,500 per federal taxpayer.
Simply put, we’re all going to have to pay more in taxes so that a relatively affluent slice of society doesn’t have to repay their investment on college degrees that will, on average, earn them $1 million more over a lifetime.
People are pissed off. And for good reason, as the manifest unfairness of punishing those who scrimped and saved to bail out those who didn’t is obvious and maddening. But there’s an even deeper injustice to this: President Biden is trying to, legally, buy votes and reward his party’s voter base.
Think about the simple facts.
Student debt “cancellation,” by definition, only financially rewards those who attended college. College graduates are a voting block that voted for President Biden overwhelmingly. So, too, this bailout disproportionately aids those living in major cities and those living in the Midwest and Northeast, where student debt is geographically concentrated. These just so happen to be places that voted for Biden as well.
President Biden’s student loan bailout is perfectly calibrated to benefit a slice of society that voted for him, and, more importantly, a voting block that is key to the Democratic Party’s success this November. Through it, he is attempting to use public policy to reward his voters at the public’s expense.
This is precisely what French economist Frédéric Bastiat once dubbed “legal plunder.” He famously noted that, “Government is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.”
To this end, Bastiat explained, “Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.”
To be clear, something being “legal” plunder doesn’t always mean it is actually legal. In this case, Biden’s attempt to unilaterally cancel student debt is highly suspect both constitutionally and legally. It’s legal plunder nonetheless, however, because it attempts to pervert the law and use it for naked clientelism.
That might win the president some votes. But it’s exactly the kind of partisan plunder that corrodes a republic.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFoundation for Economic Education (FEE)2022-08-26 13:26:582022-08-28 10:32:58Biden’s Student Loan Bailout Is a Textbook Example of ‘Legal Plunder’
