NEW YORK, March 3, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — With the 2020 presidential campaign in full swing, voters still feel stung by the effects of the 2016 election, with more than 77% saying they are concerned about fake news and misinformation this time around, according to a new study by Integral Ad Science (IAS), the global leader in digital ad verification. IAS asked prospective voters to weigh in on their perception of digital media in the midst of the election cycle. Political advertising is skyrocketing in 2020, with Democratic and Republican campaigns already committing an unprecedented $2.8B to digital media.
In the last presidential election, voter engagement with fake news articles on Facebook increased as election day approached, eventually surpassing engagement with mainstream news articles. With digital traffic patterns set to replicate or outperform those from 2016, the possibility of advertising alongside fake news articles presents a challenge for both brands and politicians. IAS found that 76% of voters believe that online advertising will play an important role in determining the outcome of the election, and this is especially true among younger audiences
At the same time, ad fraud spiked around midterm election dates in 2018, corresponding with increased online traffic. It’s no secret that fraudsters follow the money, making the upcoming 2020 election a prime target for fraudulent activity. 51% of respondents in the IAS survey are most concerned about political ad fraud in the 2020 election, and 86% of surveyed voters said that it would be irresponsible for political advertisers not to take measures to prevent online ad fraud. This is especially true among older audiences.
“2020 is poised to be a major year for advertising for both brands and politicians, and there’s no slowing down the boom in news and content around the upcoming presidential election,” Tony Marlow, Chief Marketing Officer at IAS, said. “Our latest political research explores how and where voters give their attention to political news, and what impact advertising will have on an election expected to bring the highest voter turnout in American history.”
For more information, download the results of the study.
Integral Ad Science (IAS) is the global leader in digital ad verification, offering technologies that drive high-quality advertising media. IAS equips advertisers and publishers with both the insight and technology to protect their advertising investments from fraud and unsafe environments as well as to capture consumer attention, and drive business outcomes. Founded in 2009, IAS is headquartered in New York with global operations in 18 offices across 13 countries. IAS is part of the Vista Equity Partners portfolio of software companies. For more on how IAS is powering great impressions for top publishers and advertisers around the world.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Dr. Rich Swierhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Rich Swier2020-03-04 06:40:522020-03-04 07:56:09Voters on High Alert for Fake News, Ad Fraud, and Misinformation in 2020
Washington, D.C. – Judicial Watch today announced that U.S. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth granted Judicial Watch’s request to depose former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about her emails and Benghazi attack documents. The court also ordered the deposition of Clinton’s former Chief of Staff, Cheryl Mills and two other State Department officials.
Additionally, the court granted Judicial Watch’s request to subpoena Google for relevant documents and records associated with Clinton’s emails during her tenure at the State Department.
The ruling comes in Judicial Watch’s lawsuit that seeks records concerning “talking points or updates on the Benghazi attack” (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:14-cv-01242)). Judicial Watch famously uncovered in 2014 that the “talking points” that provided the basis for Susan Rice’s false statements were created by the Obama White House. This Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit led directly to the disclosure of the Clinton email system in 2015.
In December 2018, Judge Lamberth first ordered discovery into whether Secretary Clinton’s use of a private email server was intended to stymie FOIA; whether the State Department’s intent to settle this case in late 2014 and early 2015 amounted to bad faith; and whether the State Department has adequately searched for records responsive to Judicial Watch’s request. The court also authorized discovery into whether the Benghazi controversy motivated the cover-up of Clinton’s email. The court ruled that the Clinton email system was “one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency.” The State and Justice Departments continued to defend Clinton’s and the agency’s email conduct.
Judge Lamberth today overruled Clinton’s and the State and Justice Department’s objections to limited additional discovery by first noting:
Discovery up until this point has brought to light a noteworthy amount of relevant information, but Judicial Watch requests an additional round of discovery, and understandably so. With each passing round of discovery, the Court is left with more questions than answers.
Additionally, Judge Lamberth said that he is troubled by the fact that both the State Department and Department of Justice want to close discovery in this case:
[T]here is still more to learn. Even though many important questions remain unanswered, the Justice Department inexplicably still takes the position that the court should close discovery and rule on dispositive motions. The Court is especially troubled by this. To argue that the Court now has enough information to determine whether State conducted an adequate search is preposterous, especially when considering State’s deficient representations regarding the existence of additional Clinton emails. Instead, the Court will authorize a new round of discovery …
With respect to Clinton, the court found that her prior testimony, mostly through written sworn answers, was not sufficient:
The Court has considered the numerous times in which Secretary Clinton said she could not recall or remember certain details in her prior interrogatory answers. In a deposition, it is more likely that plaintiff’s counsel could use documents and other testimony to attempt to refresh her recollection. And so, to avoid the unsatisfying and inefficient outcome of multiple rounds of fruitless interrogatories and move this almost six-year-old case closer to its conclusion, Judicial Watch will be permitted to clarify and further explore Secretary Clinton’s answers in person and immediately after she gives them. The Court agrees with Judicial Watch – it is time to hear directly from Secretary Clinton.
“Judicial Watch uncovered the Clinton email scandal and we’re pleased that the court authorized us to depose Mrs. Clinton directly on her email conduct and how it impacted the people’s ‘right to know’ under FOIA,” stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Dr. Rich Swierhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Rich Swier2020-03-03 06:59:332020-03-03 08:59:13Judicial Watch Victory: Federal Court Orders Deposition of Hillary Clinton on Emails and Benghazi Attack Records
“Trump rallies his base to treat coronavirus as a ‘hoax,’” reads the headline.
Verdict: False
Trump referred to “politicizing” of the coronavirus by Democrats as “their new hoax.” He did not refer to the coronavirus itself as a hoax.
Throughout his speech, Trump reiterated that his administration is taking the threat of the coronavirus seriously.
Fact Check:
Politico appears to misconstrue the subject of the president’s statement, claiming that Trump “tried to cast the global outbreak of the coronavirus as a liberal conspiracy intended to undermine his first term.”
But an examination of the video and transcript show Trump actually described Democratic complaints about his handling of the virus threat as “their new hoax.”
“We have exposed the far left’s corruption and defeated their sinister schemes and let’s see what happens in the coming months,” Trump said. “Let’s watch. Let’s just watch. Very dishonest people. Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus, you know that right? Coronavirus, they’re politicizing it.”
The novel coronavirus, known as COVID-19, has spread from China to 53 other countries, sickening 85,403 people and killing 2,924 others as of Saturday, according to the World Health Organization.
Some Democrats, including former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former Vice President Joe Biden, have criticized the administration’s response to the outbreak as rudderless and ill-prepared due to Trump’s leadership and budget cuts at the Centers for Disease Control and National Institutes of Health.
But The Associated Press called this characterization “distorted” since the agencies haven’t seen loss of funding and have a “playbook to follow for pandemic preparation” regardless of who is president.
Trump described the “politicizing” of the White House’s response to the disease as an attempt to undermine his administration, likening it to Democrats’ impeachment drive and the Russia investigation.
“They tried anything,” said Trump about a minute after his first mention of the coronavirus. “They tried it over and over. They’d been doing it since you got in. It’s all turning. They lost. It’s all turning. Think of it. Think of it. And this is their new hoax.”
When looking at the entirety of Trump’s remarks, it appears the “new hoax” comment refers to the Democrats’ alleged “politicizing” of his response to the coronavirus threat—not the coronavirus itself.
The Hill, the Daily Beast and Slate, among other news outlets, reported that the “hoax” comment referred to Democrats’ criticism.
At no point in the rally did Trump directly call the novel coronavirus outbreak a “hoax” or “conspiracy.” In fact, he referred to the respiratory virus as a “public health threat” and reiterated that “we have to take it very, very seriously. That’s what we’re doing. We are preparing for the worst.”
Trump denied that he called the coronavirus a “hoax” in a Saturday press conference at the White House.
He was “referring to the action that they take to try and pin this on somebody because we’ve done such a good job,” the president said.
“The hoax is on them. I’m not talking about what’s happening here. I’m talking what they’re doing. That’s the hoax,” he said, according to NBC News.
Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, who he placed in charge of the administration’s response to the outbreak, announced new travel restrictions involving Iran and increased travel advisories for Italy and South Korea at the press conference.
The new measures come after Washington health officials announced the first death in the U.S. from the coronavirus.
COLUMN BY
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Daily Callerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Caller2020-03-03 06:03:182020-03-03 06:09:06FACT CHECK: Did Trump Call Coronavirus a ‘Hoax’?
“Every health care organization in the country should be dusting off any of their plans they’ve ever had for mass infection events like this where they need to hospitalize many more patients.” – Minnesota Post
“No power so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.” – Edmund Burke
“Fear is an insidious and deadly thing. It can warp judgment, freeze reflexes, breed mistakes. Worse, it’s contagious.” – Jimmy Stewart
Weeks ago, my husband said to me, “This virus is an attack on President Trump’s economy.” Trump’s trade demands and tariffs literally brought Red China’s economy to its knees. Perhaps the Covid-19 virus was turned loose to bring the rest of the world’s economies to the same level. Since Trump took office, America’s economy has been booming, but both Red China and America’s socialist democrats would love to see us suffer a recession. This raging virus has already destroyed $3.8 trillion in stock market value. The Chinese have set a trap for Trump as Cliff Kincaid reported and it’s ugly.
The left doesn’t care how many people suffer or die from Coronavirus if they can remove Trump from office and regain their globalist new world order movement. The Democrats have no problem murdering the unborn; the blood of 61 million is on their hands. Mao Zedong murdered millions of his own people and when Deng Xiaoping became the new leader in 1976, his population control resulted in 336 million abortions and 196 million sterilizations. Why would they be bothered in the least with a few thousand more deaths in America and around the world.
Panic is actually spreading and guess who is doing it. The CDC official helping spook Trump’s economy with Coronavirus fears is Rod Rosenstein’s sister… Dr. Nancy Messonnier. She said on an NPR interview, that it’s not a question of if this virus will spread, but when.
Flu Pandemic 1918-1919
During the 1918-1919 flu pandemic, more people died from the flu than in WWI. The war was over in 1919, and although the ravages of the flu had taken a toll, the stock market didn’t crash.
Someone looking only at a chart of the Dow Jones Industrial Average during the latter part of that decade would never guess that those years encompassed the worst epidemic in recorded history, an epidemic far worse than the Covid-19 virus.
According to a Stanford University Web site, a fifth of the world’s population was infected in that epidemic, and an estimated 20 to 40 million people died of it. The infection rate was even higher in the U.S., where 28% of the population came down with the disease and 675,000 died. Of course, the population then was about a third as large as it is today.
One statistic though does a particularly good job of communicating the magnitude of the epidemic: According to the Stanford Web site, “the effect of the influenza epidemic was so severe that the average life span in the U.S. was depressed by 10 years.”
Even those panicking about today’s forecasts don’t come anywhere near the horrid scenario of the past. And yet the stock market did not crash in the wake of the 1918-19 pandemic. Indeed, it rose smartly.
So, what is the difference? The times have changed. Nearly everything America consumes is made in China, including our prescription drugs.
Coronavirus (Covid-19)
Many people believe this virus was hatched in a biolab in Wuhan China. That could well be true…whether it was purposely loosed or it escaped by accident we’ll never know. We don’t even know if that scenario is true, but the communist Chinese have little regard for human life. Nevertheless, there are things with Covid-19 that are very different from other viruses.
Take the case of a woman in Japan who contracted the virus, got over it and then contracted it again. She tested negative after she got over it the first time and went back to work as a bus tour guide. Normally when someone contracts a virus, including cold viruses, we build antibodies to that virus and it wards off being re-infected with the same virus, but not with Covid-19. We have no idea how many people she infected during her alleged return to health before she became ill again.
Once the immune system has fought off viral or bacterial infections, it generally recognizes them and can block them the next time they are encountered – but not always and the protection may not last, which is another reason many believe this is a biolab creation. Depending upon the severity of the case, Covid-19 just doesn’t work like normal viruses.
Sneezing or coughing can infect others, but with this virus, even touching someone else when you have no symptoms can infect others. We still do not understand the full ramifications of how this virus spreads. The infection of large numbers of people onboard the Diamond Princess cruise liner, which did not end after people were told to remain in their cabins, still needs explanation. Most likely it is airborne.
Prof David Heymann, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine says the transmissibility of the coronavirus is still uncertain. “It is not known how transmissible this is in the community. There have been some cases in China and other places where they have just popped up without the possibility of being able to trace back to a source. Investigations in Italy are looking for some sort of mass event that could have led to the clusters of cases found in northern cities.”
While we know there is asymptomatic transmission from somebody with the new coronavirus who is not ill, we do not know how extensive that is. Some people, known as “super-spreaders,” are more efficient transmitters of viruses than others.
Those the virus attacks are also of interest inasmuch as it doesn’t seem to affect children like seasonal flu viruses that can take a high death toll on the little ones. This virus attacks the elderly, especially those with compromised immune systems, high blood pressure, heart problems and diabetes. Children who are usually susceptible do not seem to be much affected by Covid-19. This is another variable that makes lab creation more of a possibility.
As of February 28th, the outbreak has been linked to at least 2,866 deaths, and while the majority of fatalities have occurred in mainland China, Iran has now surpassed South Korea and Japan. The country has reported at least 34 deaths as suspicions about when the virus first entered the country, and why the fatality rate is so high are beginning to mount.
Remember that flu in the U.S. results in 12,000 to 61,000 yearly deaths and 140,000 to 810,000 hospitalizations annually. This year we have lost five children in East Tennessee alone.
We still do not have proper testing and the FDA is just now allowing more labs to do testing. The original tests were bogged down by a botched rollout and inaccurate readings. A patient in northern California went to the hospital last week, but was not tested despite requests from local health officials. He was sent home and he had the virus.
China’s Prescription Drugs Weapon
Just how much of what America consumes is made in communist Red China? Too much! The coronavirus situation has exposed a Chinese secret – essentially a monopoly on U.S. medical supplies and prescription drugs. They could shut down hospitals in America in a matter of months.
Rosemary Gibson, a senior advisor at the Hastings Center said,
“If China shuts the door on exports of medicines and the ingredients to make them, within a couple of months our pharmacies would be empty. Our healthcare system would cease to function. That’s how dependent we are.”
Most of our drugs, including 97 percent of our antibiotics and 80 percent of the active pharmaceutical ingredients needed for domestic drug production come from China. The United States’ growing reliance on China’s pharmaceutical products has already put us in jeopardy. What in hell were our previous leaders thinking to allow the production of American drugs to be manufactured in Red China?
Gary Cohn, then chief economic advisor to President Trump, argued against a trade war with China by invoking a Department of Commerce study that found that 97 percent of all antibiotics in the United States came from China. “If you’re the Chinese and you want to really just destroy us, just stop sending us antibiotics,” he said.
Centralization of the global supply chain of medicines in a single country makes it vulnerable to interruption, whether by mistake or design. If we are dependent on China for thousands of ingredients and raw materials to make our medicine, China could use this dependence as a weapon against us.
Retired Brigadier General John Adams told FOX News that China would not hesitate to consider weaponizing its dominance of the pharmaceuticals market.
Drug Shortage Reported
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has already reported the first shortage of a human drug because of the COVID-19 outbreak, but they have not released the name of the drug. The FDA is taking special note of almost a dozen products manufactured in China.
This first shortage is compounding already-existing concerns that the coronavirus has the potential to disrupt the medical supply chain. Some are calling for action to bring more drug manufacturing back to the U.S. as worries grow around the safety of generic drugs made overseas. Many active ingredients in generic pharmaceuticals are sourced from China and other countries.
The FDA says the Covid-19 outbreak will likely impact the medical product supply chain, including potential disruptions to supply or shortages of critical medical products in the U.S. There are big risks with China becoming America’s pharmacy.
In 2018, a common blood pressure medicine made in China was recalled by the FDA because batches of it may have contained a chemical that’s used to induce cancer in lab rats.
The Heparin scare in 2008 that killed 81 Americans was all because of America’s purchase of Chinese Heparin when the U.S. was at a shortage. The Heparin was sold to companies such as Baxter International, Inc., in Deerfield, Ill., and they used it in blood-thinner products.
The Chinese have peddled numerous toxic products to American consumers including everything from children’s toys to adult vitamins to pet foods. The U.S. government regularly stops more poisonous or faulty products at the border that were imported from Red China than from any other nation. China’s monopoly on medical supplies and drugs come with great risks. (Bowing to Beijing by Brett Decker)
State Department Employee Ignores Orders
President Trump is furious with the State Department after an employee ignored his orders and allowed Americans infected with the coronavirus to return to the U.S. from Japan. The employee, Ian Brownlee decided that he was going to send them all back anyway on two separate airplanes.
The CDC did not want them returned on the same plane with those not infected with the disease, but Brownlee said it was safe because they were kept in an isolation area. The thing is nobody knows if the isolation area was even effective or not.
Brownlee should be fired immediately for ignoring orders and probably spreading the virus, and perhaps for murder.
Conclusion
President Trump has a huge health situation on his hands. Pray for him and the people who are working to stem this virus in America. Weeks ago, airline traffic going in and out of our country probably should have been shut down.
The President announced new strict travel “edicts” affecting Iran, Italy and South Korea after Covid-19 claimed the first American life in Washington State. He also confirmed he’s looking to potentially tighten the U.S.-Mexico border. I’d like the border closed.
“Trump administration launches new unit to strip US citizenship from foreign-born terrorists, criminals,” by Adam Shaw, Fox News, February 26, 2020:
The Trump administration is establishing a new section within the Justice Department to deal with the process of removing citizenship from foreign-born individuals who fraudulently obtained citizenship by failing to disclose past convictions for serious crimes — including terrorism and war crimes.
The section, which will be within the DOJ’s Office of Immigration Litigation, will be dedicated to denaturalizing those who had failed to disclose they had been involved in criminal activity on their N-400 form for naturalization. It requires the government to show that citizenship was obtained illegally or “procured by concealment of a material fact or by willful misrepresentation.”
That form includes questions asking whether an applicant has been involved in genocide and torture among other serious crimes, if they have ever been part of a terrorist or totalitarian organization, if they had been associated with the Nazi government in Germany, and if they have been charged or convicted with a crime or served prison time. Targets for denaturalization are those who have made material breaches of those questions.
“When a terrorist or sex offender becomes a U.S. citizen under false pretenses, it is an affront to our system — and it is especially offensive to those who fall victim to these criminals,” Assistant Attorney General Jody Hunt said. “The new Denaturalization Section will further the Department’s efforts to pursue those who unlawfully obtained citizenship status and ensure that they are held accountable for their fraudulent conduct.”…
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2020-02-29 05:53:582020-02-29 05:53:58Trump administration launches new unit to strip US citizenship from foreign-born terrorists
“Mr. Trump killed my brother Qassem Soleimani. Mrs. Clinton killed my other brother Muammar Qaddafi.”
“Let me tell you something brothers, the Quran asks a question – Do you wonder that a man born from among you has been selected by God, to be a messenger of His to the people, and a warner to the world and the nations? Yeah, that’s who I am. You may know me as Louis Farrakhan.”
Remember, this traitor has the ear of some of the most prominent people on the Left.
“Nation Of Islam Leader Louis Farrakhan: ‘Mr. Trump Killed My Brother Soleimani, Mrs. Clinton Killed My Brother Qaddafi’; America ‘The Habitation Of Devils’ Will Be Destroyed By The Mahdi,” MEMRI, February 25, 2020:
Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan delivered a three-and-a-half-hour keynote speech at the Saviors’ Day conference in Detroit, Michigan on February 23, 2020. In his speech, Farrakhan spoke about the killing of IRGC Qods Force commander Qassem Soleimani by U.S. forces. Farrakhan said that he thinks he had met him during his visit to Iran. Farrakhan said that President Donald Trump killed his “brother Soleimani,” whom he called a “bad man” for killing Americans. Farrakhan questioned the U.S. presence in the Middle East, suggesting this was in order to protect its “little flunky nations” against Iran. He added that Soleimani was no terrorist, he was a “brother from Iran,” who was helping the people of Iraq rid themselves of an occupying army. Farrakhan added that former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had also killed his “brother,” Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi, and this is the reason he did not support her or vote for her. Farrakhan recounted that he told Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei that he represents the Mahdi, who said that “America is number one on his list to be destroyed” and that it can be destroyed within 12 hours. In a “message for the Jewish people” he said that he is “not a hater” and that he has never given an order to “hurt a Jewish person” but he is going to “put a little truth on you, today.”
Farrakhan continued to say that America is falling because it has become “the habitation of devils, the hole for every foul person, a cage for every hateful bird.” He asked: “Have you become a nation of devils?” Farrakhan shouted at President Trump, quoting from the Ten Commandments: “You shall not commit murder,” referring to the killing of Soleimani. He added, “Murder is your modus operandi […] you want me dead and after today you might want to speed it up […].”
Several mayors of Michigan towns attended the event as well as the Chief of Staff of Detroit City Council President Brenda Jones, who read a message of support to the Nation of Islam on stage. Nation of Islam’s new mosque is a former Jewish synagogue that was called Congregation Beth Moses.[1] Farrakhan said in a June 23, 2019 speech[2] that the property was purchased by a supporter of Nation of Islam who “loved the teachings so much that he put up $300,000 of his money so that we could purchase this former Jewish synagogue.” For clips from the 2019 Nation of Islam Saviors’ Day convention see MEMRI TV clips #7025, #7024, and #7023.
To view the clip of Louis Farrakhan on MEMRI TV, click here or below.
“Qassem Soleimani, I Think We Met Him When We Were In Iran… Mr. Trump Killed My Brother Qassem Soleimani; Mrs. Clinton Killed My Other Brother Muammar Qaddafi”
Louis Farrakhan: “You know America is going to go to war. They killed Qassem Soleimani, and America is so powerful she has the right to define others. This Qassem Soleimani, I think we met him when we were in Iran.
[…]
“Mr. Trump killed my brother Qassem Soleimani. Mrs. Clinton killed my other brother Muammar Qaddafi. That’s why I couldn’t support Mrs. Clinton. And some of my little black friends [were] angry with me because I wasn’t going to vote for Mrs. Clinton.”
[…]
“Mr. Trump… You Said That My Brother [Qassem Soleimani] Is A Terrorist…You May Call Me A Terrorist Tomorrow To Justify What The Government Is Planning To Do To Me And The Nation Of Islam”
“See Mr. Trump, I respect you because you’re the president of the United States of America. And you said that my brother is a terrorist. And you got the power to define people. Well you may not like me, so you may call me a terrorist tomorrow to justify what the government is planning to do to me and the Nation of Islam. But I’m just inviting you, I’m inviting you to sit down and talk because I have a message for you from God. In fact, I’ll give it to you today. Let me tell you something brothers, the Quran asks a question – Do you wonder that a man born from among you has been selected by God, to be a messenger of His to the people, and a warner to the world and the nations? Yeah, that’s who I am. You may know me as Louis Farrakhan. I didn’t know what I was going to become as a student of Elijah Mohammed. But I’d like to tell you what my assignment is.
“See, Qassem, President Trump said, killed a lot of Americans – he’s a bad man, so I killed him, he’s bad – where was a man that he killed? Did he kill him in New York? Did he kill him in Philly? Did he kill him in Colorado, or California, or Florida? Where did he kill them!? He killed them in Iraq! What the hell were you doing in Iraq!?
[…]
“That man was no terrorist. He was killing members of an occupying army on the territory of Iraq. And he as the brother of them from Iran was trying to rid them of an occupying army. Now I’m naming you, and I got weight with God. An occupying army. What are you doing in the middle east? Soldiers everywhere, who sent for them? Protecting your little flunky nations? So now if I speak like I speak, and you know I’m telling the truth, this is not hyperbole, truthful hyperbole, this is the real actual fact. You went there, not to save the Iraqi people. You went there and spent [a] trillion dollars to make Iraq a bulwark against Iran.”
[…]
“When I Spoke To The Supreme Leader… I Told Him What The Mahdi Told Elijah – America Is Number One On His List, To Be Destroyed”
“So, when I spoke to the supreme leader, I said: ‘You’re looking for the mahdi.’ This whole nation of 90 million people is born, and are willing to die, serving the mahdi. I said: ‘You are looking for the mahdi, but the mahdi came to us. And I am here representing him.’ Did you hear what I said? I told him what the mahdi told Elijah – America is number one on his list, to be destroyed.
[…]
“He can take America out in 12 hours.”
[…]
“America Has Become A Habitation Of Devils, And A Hole For Every Unclean Spirit In A Cage, For Every Hateful Bird”
“I have a message for the Jewish people. I’m not a hater. You can’t find one word in the millions of words that I’ve spoken that I’ve ordered somebody to hurt a Jewish person. No, that’s not me. But to tell the truth, I’m going to put a little truth on you today, and then I’m going to close it out – you’ve been such a beautiful attentive audience. Now, look at the scripture: ‘Babylon is fallen, is fallen…’ [Revelation 14:8]. Substitute America for Babylon. She [America] is unraveling. America is falling, is falling. Why are you falling America? Because you have become the habitation of devils. A hole, for every foul person. A cage for every hateful bird. Have you become a nation of devils?
[…]
“Mr. Trump, this nation has become a habitation of devils. Everybody rebelling against God.
[…]
“Oh Mr. Trump, you shall not commit murder. You took credit – ah yeah, I had the boys kill Qassem… Sent the drone after him – how many have you killed? How many are you planning to kill? See, murder is your modus operandi. See here I am now. You want me dead. And after today you might want to speed it up. I don’t know. But Mr. Trump, America has become a habitation of devils, and a hole for every unclean spirit in a cage, for every hateful bird. Hateful birds mean those that are in foreign countries. You’re in Wuhan province, I didn’t know you were there. Now you have a little something that you want to bring home to America. You’re everywhere.”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2020-02-28 05:44:232020-02-28 05:47:29VIDEO: Farrakhan says, ‘Trump killed my brother Qassem Soleimani,’ claims to be messenger promised in Qur’an
Jennifer Zeng grew up admiring the Communist Party of China and adhering to its stringent rules. But her life changed forever when she embraced religion and was swept up in a government crackdown on Falun Gong. Arrested four times as a young adult and held in as a prisoner in a labor camp, she quickly woke up to the horrors of living in a socialist state. After being subject to brutal torture, Zeng managed to escape China and now tells about the evils of socialism and communism.
At a time when more Americans are embracing Karl Marx’s teachings, Chris Wright has helped Zeng share her story as part of a network called the Anticommunism Action Team. They recently spoke to The Daily Signal along with Darian Diachok, who escaped from Soviet-era Ukraine as an infant and has helped former Soviet satellite states democratize and overcome their failed communist systems.
The full audio is below, along with a lightly edited transcript. Some of the content is graphic and not suitable for small children.
Rob Bluey: We are joined by Chris Wright, Darian Diachok, and Jennifer Zeng. Darian and Jennifer both have experience with communism and have graciously agreed to share their stories. Chris Wright is doing phenomenal work in getting the message out about the horrors of communism through the Anticommunism Action Team. Welcome to all three of you, and thank you for being with us.
In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>
Chris Wright: Thanks for having us, Rob.
Bluey: Chris, I’d like to begin with you. Can you tell us about the Anticommunism Action Team and the work that you do?
Wright: In 2013, my Alexandria Tea Party had a big program and Dr. Lee Edwards from The Heritage Foundation was one of our speakers, and it was all about survivors of communism.
I went on to form a separate entity, the Anticommunism Action Team, in 2014 to formalize the activity. We added the speakers bureau in 2016. We have survivors of communism from Cuba, Bulgaria, Vietnam, China, Ukraine, as well as subject matter experts who now appear on the radio in several states.
We’ve been in front of classrooms and groups, and my speakers have a very powerful message. We’ve been down the socialist road, and we know what’s at the end of it, so Americans better wake up.
Bluey: Chris, we are living in a time when socialism is getting a lot of attention, or democratic socialism is, as some people prefer to call it. You have described to me Marxist theory and how socialism fits in the realm of that theory, and how it is the step before communism. Can you explain?
Wright: Marx saw stages of history, inevitable stages of history, feudalism, capitalism, socialism, and communism. Socialism is the stage before the final stage. Socialism is characterized by the common ownership of the means of production.
Communism is when the state withers away because there’s no more dominant class, no more private property. You don’t need a state because there’s no more economic exploitation, and so that’s a great fantasy, but it’s never happened anywhere.
One of our speakers from Ukraine has a joke about all this. He says, “What comes after socialism? Communism. What comes after communism? Alcoholism.”
Bluey: We have with us two people who have told incredibly personal stories. They are, in many cases, heart-wrenching and tragic. I really thank you both for being willing to share and talk about your experiences.
Jennifer, I’d like to begin with you. You’re somebody who was born in China. You were arrested four times. You were held as a prisoner in a labor camp. You were able to escape that camp and leave China.
Can you tell our listeners what it was like, that experience, how you ended up in that camp? Then we’ll get to your ability to escape and now share your story with millions of people across the world.
Jennifer Zeng: I was arrested, like you said, four times and sent to the Beijing Female Labor Camp for practicing a spiritual practice called Falun Gong. It is a spiritual practice based on truth, compassion, forbearance, and plus five sets of gentle exercises, including meditation.
Because it’s very obvious health benefit, within seven years, there were more Falun Gong practitioners in China than Communist Party members.
At that stage, in 1999, the party decided to crack down on it. So, I ended up in the Beijing Female Labor Camp.
The first day was feeling like going directly into the hell.
For the first moment, we were forced to squat under the baking sun for 15 hours, and whenever someone couldn’t endure it and fainted away, they were shocked by electric batons so that they could wake up.
Every day, in the camp, it was a battle between life and death.
On June 17, I was in London at the Independent China Tribunal. They handed out their final judgment about this organ harvest and transplant, and they gave the verdict that the Communist Party is guilty of anti-humanity crime.
I only realized that I had a very narrow escape from being a victim of this organ harvesting because I had Hepatitis C.
While I was in the camp, apart from torture every day, apart from hard, forced labor, we were also given repeated physical checkups so that if anyone need an organ we could be killed on demand if we were a match.
Fortunately, I told the doctor I had Hepatitis C before I practiced Falun Gong. I was able to be exempted from becoming a victim of organ harvesting.
Bluey: In the camp you experienced both brainwashing and mental torture and physical torture. Many of the people in the camp were sexually assaulted and raped. Can you share what some of those things that you observed and endured were like?
Zeng: Yes. Actually, on the second day of me in the camp, two police officers dragged me from the cell to the cold, threw me on the ground, and applied two electric batons all over my body until I lost consciousness.
The torture I experienced and I saw was beyond description.
I saw a female Falun Gong practitioner tied to a chair, and she was shocked by four or five male police guards on her head and on her private part until she lost control of her bowel movement. As a result, she couldn’t walk for several months.
They also would tie four toothbrushes together and with the sharp end outside and push this inside the vagina of female Falun Gong practitioners and twist it, twist it until they saw blood came out.
The police would also throw females into the male prisoners’ cells to have them repeatedly gang-raped. So, this kind of thing happened in the camp.
I think the worst part for me in the camp is the brainwashing part. Because the police made it very clear, the only purpose for you to be sent there is to get you reformed, which means to change our minds toward Falun Gong.
So, we were forced not only to give up our beliefs in truth, compassion, and tolerance, but also to help the police to torture our fellow Falun Gong practitioners in order to prove that we were transformed.
After I think I spent six months in the camp, I suddenly developed such a strong desire to write a book to expose this all because when I was there, I couldn’t believe this was happening in the 21st century.
I thought this could only happen in a Nazi concentration camp. This should have already become part of the history. It couldn’t be present, but it is still happening.
To write a book, I have to get released. But, if I don’t prove to the police I had been transformed, I couldn’t be released.
So, every day, the struggle was in my mind of whether to transform or not to transform nearly killed me for another 1,000 times.
Little by little, I was forced to do all these things the police asked me to do in order to prove that I have reformed.
Little by little, I feel like becoming empty in a human shell. Actually, it was my very essence of a human being being taken away like your thoughts, your soul, your free will, and your human dignity. I feel like a non-human being and doing whatever they force us to do.
That was a very, very disgraceful process. Worst deal, after I was released, they still expected me to go to the brainwashing centers to be used as example of reform and to continue to help them to do their reform job. So, I had to escape from my own family only five days after I was released.
Bluey: It’s just terrible. You were able to get asylum, though. How were you able to flee China and escape this terror?
Zeng: I think in this regard I was luckier than many of my fellow practitioners. I had a very good education. I graduated from Peking University with a master of science degree. I spoke good English.
I met an Australian couple who went to China to teach English. I told them how terrible my situation was and how terribly I needed to leave China. They were able to help me to get out of China, so I sought asylum in Australia and was granted refugee status.
Bluey: We are so blessed that you’re with us today. We’re going to get back to your book and the movie and the work that you’re doing.
I do want to ask Darian to share his story. Darian, you were able to escape from Ukraine as an infant. You’re somebody who’s also witnessed communist governments through your work with USAID. Tell us about your own experience and what it is that helped you to understand about communism.
Darian Diachok: Actually, I have two sources of experience with communism.
The first one was through my extended family. We escaped from the Red Army as the Red Army was closing in toward the end of World War II.
We were extremely lucky to have made it to the United States because I think the statistics are that only one out of about 12 people who were escaping from eastern Europe actually made it to the West. They were picked up everywhere.
The [People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs, abbreviated NKVD] had forward units waiting for people. Matter of fact, my parents ran into a forward NKVD unit but were able to give them the slip. So, we were extremely fortunate to have made it to the states.
Once we got here, people started telling stories, I guess, every Christmas, every Easter, escapees would get together and just talk to anyone about their experiences, how lucky they were, how something happened like they got on the last train or a pistol didn’t fire or something, how they were all able to escape.
My brother and I listened to these stories over the years, and my wife, who’s not Ukrainian, as I told her one of the stories, she said, “You should write a book about this.” So, I decided to do that.
Bluey: Your book is called “Escapes,” for those listeners who might be interested.
Diachok: Right, and the book is interesting in that my extended family … were represented pretty much in every aspect of World War II.
My father was a Polish officer fighting against the Germans. I had two uncles who were in the Red Army. I had another uncle who was picked up by the Reds and tortured and all of that. So, we have direct experiences with the communist takeover.
There was one particular day in which everybody was invited or actually ordered into the town square for a major announcement. No one knew what it was for. I hadn’t been born yet. My parents didn’t know what it was for.
They brought out all of the town leaders, the postmaster, the mayor, the vice mayor, everybody who was in the town council, and they shot them in front of everybody.
They announced the new era where all of your bourgeois tormentors have been taken care of, and now we will live in a new communist system. So, they had experienced things like that.
That’s one aspect. The other aspect is returning to the former Soviet Union later as part of the reform effort from USAID and other international agencies, and to discover what the devastation was and what the Soviet system left behind after it collapsed.
Not only in the infrastructure that didn’t work, not only in the environment that was ravaged, but also in people’s thinking, and also in the lack of institutions, the daily institutions, which we take for granted, all of which were broken and destroyed under communism, just the total human devastation in a way.
We saw the effects of what it was, of what the communist system actually did. We were faced with what do we do next, what do we do first.
Bluey: The picture that sometimes we see on the outside that’s painted by the state-run media or that those communist countries like to project is quite different from what you have experienced up close and personal. Can you share with us an experience that may come to mind that would help us better understand why it’s not so rosy, the picture that sometimes is painted?
Diachok: At USAID, we had counterparts. We had local counterparts. I was in energy, so I had an energy counterpart.
One day, he was called off. He got a phone call that his daughter was bitten in school. … We were very concerned that she was hurt.
He left, and we later learned that he had to apologize and to pay a huge fine because obviously, in a communist society, dogs represent power. They represent the authority, and if the dog bit the girl, she must have been misbehaving.
That was such a shock. We couldn’t imagine this.
On a more professional level, what we were discovering was that there was an overall pervasive sense of corruption. It came from the system, which didn’t work, and so people had to be corrupt in order to satisfy their daily needs.
In a centrally planned economy, everybody’s needs are supposed to be taken care of, and the central authorities cannot make any mistakes. They are infallible. So, you have to make do with what they have planned for you.
The centrally planned economy always has difficulty in finding out exactly what people’s needs are, how many people need what, what people’s shoe sizes are, everything else. In a centrally planned economy, all those kinds of things simply cannot be done efficiently.
Consequently, people do not get what they need, and they have to learn to barter for things. They have to do things under the table.
You’re not allowed to barter for anything because that’s going against the state. If you barter for anything, that means that you are a private entrepreneur who is working against the state.
So you’re not allowed to barter, but you have to provide for your family. Your family needs milk. They need food, and it’s not available, so you have to wheel and deal.
The whole system became completely corrupt. People learned to be corrupt. That’s on a daily consumer level. People learn to be corrupt.
On a more professional or a more, let’s call it, a more industrial level … every company, every firm had quotas that they had to reach. If they didn’t reach those quotas, the consequences were horrendous. They could be sent to Siberia. They could be shot, so meeting your quotas was … life and death.
The central planning system never gave you exactly what you needed to make the quotas, for the same reasons I had discussed earlier.
The central planning system couldn’t foresee the needs of every single, let’s say, radio manufacturer. They didn’t get it right, but yet you had the quota.
So, people learned to wheel and deal, to barter under the table in order to make the quotas.
The whole system also became corrupt in the sense that they were working against the communist system to satisfy the communist system. It got to the point where people just found shortcuts in order to satisfy the system.
If you were supposed to produce things in tonnage, like you had to produce a certain number of tons of irons or radios or any kind of household equipment, they would add huge amounts of metal to it just simply to increase the weights so that they would meet the quotas.
Everybody knew that they were producing junk, but yet the quotes were made. No one really took their job that terribly seriously. The object was to make the quota and not to produce anything of value.
There were really weird examples, too, in the Soviet Union where people would have quotas to produce certain kinds of trucks, and the next factory over needed broken-up trucks, needed wrecks.
So, they would take these trucks straight off of the assembly line, drive them a mile, and then destroy them, and deliver them to the next factory, which needed junked trucks.
People did not question that. If you question that, you were questioning the wisdom of the party, and that was punishable by all sorts of things.
The whole system became crazy, and this is what people learned. This is the environment in which people learned to operate so that when we got there, the ex-Soviets that we were working with were very, very attuned to what the party wanted because missing that was life and death.
So when we were talking to them, they were very attuned to what they thought we wanted to hear. They pretended to be on board with us, but then, at the first opportunity, they would go around us and try to exploit the system for everything it was worth.
Bluey: Darian, thank you so much for sharing those real-life experiences. That is just incredible to hear, and it’s disheartening on some level that the generational effects are still there.
I want to ask both of you about the books that you’ve written. And, Jennifer, in your case, also the documentary. Can you tell us about those books, and not only what is contained in them, but how we can go about learning more about them?
The U.S. version is available on Amazon, so people can search for that. I also have a Chinese version. … It’s also available on Amazon.
The Australian version is available on my publisher’s website, Allen & Unwin.
There is also a documentary about my story called “Free China.” It’s at freechinamovie.com. You are able to watch the documentary on the front page of that website.
I think, up to now, my book is the only available one in English to detail what happened to Falun Gong practitioners inside the labor camp.
Actually, this year marked the 20th anniversary of what’s happening in China, and the scale of the persecution is so huge, 100 million Falun Gong practitioners, plus their families.
Now, we are hearing about millions of Uighurs also be detained in Xinjiang camps.
Because, I think, the world failed to stop the persecution of Falun Gong, now the party has the ability to expand that to other minority groups and to the entire nation. The entire nation is under very strict monitoring of the party.
I think my book has a very significant importance to be the firsthand account of what’s really happening inside the camp. It is current, and it is helping the world to know what’s really happened.
For example, several days ago, I saw a program by BBC. They and several other major media were allowed after many years of calling to go inside one of the reeducation camps in Xinjiang to film. They ended up making a film of about eight minutes.
After watching that movie, as someone who had been in one of very similar places, I knew how fake that program was and how you should look at them.
I did a YouTube program about myself to discuss three small stories, especially about how the police managed to fake everything inside the camp.
When I was there, no foreign reporters were allowed inside the camp, but they even deceive their fellow police officers from other camps.
So, if they are even deceiving their fellow police officers and their supervisors from the neighbor camp system, would you expect them to show you the real thing of the neighbor camp to a foreign journalist?
I think my book and my story is still very, very relevant because this is still happening on a very large scale in China.
I hope more people can learn my story, and understand how serious this situation they are. It’s really millions of people’s lives at stake. I hope the world can stop this.
Bluey: Thank you for having the courage to share it and to tell that story. It is incredibly powerful.
Darian, I want to ask about your book. It’s called “Escapes.” Tell us about why you chose to write it.
Diachok: Yes, thank you.
We were passing a building that reminded me very much of the train station from which my parents escaped, and I began reminiscing to my wife on the way to a New Year’s Eve party about how my parents had to stand four days and four nights [for] the last train that was available before the Red Army closed in, and how the train was attacked by a Red fighter.
Some of the wagons were actually caught on fire. I was telling her this story, and she said, “My goodness. Don’t let that go to waste. That has to be put down. That has to be recorded for history.” That’s how it started.
Bluey: Let me ask you, at a time when it seems that there is an increasing interest in socialism, particularly among young people here in the United States of America, what is your message to them based on your own experience?
And what would you like them to know and think about and reflect upon as you’ve experienced these horrors of communist governments that embrace the principles of socialism?
Diachok: My father once said that communism is like a bouquet of flowers with a hidden dagger.
I think it discussed many phenomena of how the specter of communism is using both violent ways and nonviolent ways to try to rule this world. In the West, they are trying to change their names into different names, but the essence is the same.
As someone who was a victim of the communism, I really want people to know if you really adopted communism what life could be. That is what I had experienced.
I think in the early days when the Communist Party was just founded in China, they also talked about freedom, talked about equality, talked about everybody living in heaven-like communities and society.
Many young people also got deceived. They went to … the sacred place of communism.
If you look at the history, many of them ended up being killed by the party, and all their families, all their children, they all suffered for generations, after generations they suffer.
Under the Communist Party in China, 80 million people died of unnatural death. That’s all the result of communism.
Like Chris said, socialism is only the primary stage of communism. Actually, officially, or theoretically, China now is not a communist country yet. It’s still socialism with Chinese characteristics. Officially, China is now a socialist society.
If you look at what the people have suffered there … This year is the 70th anniversary of the CCP came to power in China, so the 70 years were full of killing, full of tyranny.
If you want communism or socialism, I think you should read more about China. You should read my story first to know what the socialism really is.
I think many young people, they are very easy to be attracted by those rosy, empty words, or the rosy description of how beautiful those things are, but the reality is just the opposite.
If they know what those damage or how people have suffered, more than, I think, one-half of the population of Chinese people have suffered one kind of persecution or another, they would stop having those rosy dreams about communism or socialism.
I think it is exactly because what they already have in this society, actually ensured not by the socialism, but by the fundamental principles of a free society, they forgot how cherishable, how valuable this is, and they start dreaming of those very unfortunate, I think, elusive things.
I hope people can learn the reality of communism and socialism.
Bluey: In some respects, it seems like it’s on display in Hong Kong, that resistance to China’s aggression and what it is trying to do. What are your observations about what’s taking place there now?
Zeng: I think the West, I hope all the young people can choose to really pay more attention to what’s happening in Hong Kong.
The young people in Hong Kong, they really experienced what life was really about when the Communist Party tried to erode their own freedom.
Some of them got so desperate up to now in these several days that there were three suicide cases of young people jumping out of the building to protest against this so-called extradition bill, and, I think, essentially, against the Communist Party’s erosion of Hong Kong’s freedom. They knew what life was like.
So, the Hong Kong people are really waking up to the illusion of this so-called one country, two system society, and they knew how valuable their initial freedom and the rule of law was.
They are really fighting with their life against the Communist Party’s erosion of Hong Kong. I think they deserve more help from the West, especially from the United States and the United Kingdom. We owe them support.
Bluey: Chris, I want to finish this with a comment from you. There may be some who say, “Why are we having this conversation? Why is it relevant to all of the things that are going on today?” Can you share with us why it is important that we focus on these stories?
Wright: Why is communism still relevant today? It’s just all in the dustbin of history.
We’ve reached the end of history and communism lost, so why are we still talking about this? Well, there are still five captive nations in the world, starting with China, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, North Korea. That’s 1.5 billion people. It’s still relevant to them. That’s a lot of people.
Also, there’s an elected communist government in Nepal. Things are not going well there. The intelligence agencies are being weaponized. The press is being shot down. Communists are doing what they do everywhere. So, it’s relevant to the people in Nepal.
There have already been 300 people who have attempted to escape from Cuba on rafts so far this year. It’s relevant to them. It’s also relevant because, in the 2018 elections, there were 50 openly socialist candidates running for political office in the United States.
Also, there’s an openly declared socialist candidate running for president this year. The Denver City Council, there was just a woman elected there who promised that she would bring in common ownership. There it is, the quintessential definition of socialism, common ownership by any means necessary.
So, we’re entering into a period in the United States where socialism is on the rise again.
Bluey: Chris, how can our listeners find more about the work that the Anticommunism Action Team does? If a college student wants to bring some of these speakers to their campus, how do they get in touch with you?
We have a weekly roundup of anticommunism news that people can sign up for through the email address or through the website. Our Speakers Bureau speakers, wonderful speakers like Jennifer and Darian.
We have both subject matter experts and people who have survived communism who are available all over the country through video conferencing.
We’ve been on four college campuses so far this year, and we’re happy to do this anywhere in the country to a group that you think could benefit from this message.
Bluey: Chris, thank you for the work that you’re doing. Jennifer and Darian, we appreciate you sharing your stories with us.
Rob Bluey is executive editor of The Daily Signal, the multimedia news organization of The Heritage Foundation. Send an email to Rob. Twitter: @RobertBluey.
This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.
The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.
They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!
Politicians across the political spectrum have a penchant for bragging about how their parents or ancestors came to the U.S. with next to nothing, but worked hard to provide a better life for their children.
Yet when the Department of Homeland Security proposed taking self-reliance into account in weighing applications for green cards or immigration visas, liberals condemned the proposal as harsh and sued to block the proposed rule from taking effect.
Initially, they won court injunctions in several jurisdictions. Now, however, all have been dismissed. And so, the Inadmissibility on Public Charge Grounds rule took effect nationwide Monday.
If you think that means poor immigrants must now abandon all hope of entering the U.S. or becoming permanent residents, think again. The left has tremendously overblown the scope of this rule.
In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>
The rule defines a “public charge” as one who receives one or more designated public benefits for more than 12 months, in the aggregate, within any 36-month period (such that, for example, receipt of two benefits in one month counts as two months).
The rule defines “public benefit” to include any federal, state, local, or tribal cash benefits for income maintenance (including Social Security, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, General Assistance), Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, most forms of Medicaid, Section 8 Housing/Rental Assistance, and public housing.
Benefits not considered include emergency medical assistance, disaster relief, national school lunch programs, the Women, Infants and Children nutrition program, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, foster care and adoption subsidies, government-subsidized student and mortgage loans, energy assistance, food pantries, homeless shelters, and Head Start.
The rule will not be applied retroactively. It does, however, apply to future applicants for visas and green cards. According to Homeland Security, each year about 382,000 immigrants seek a change in status that would make them subject to a public charge review.
The rule also sets forth the factors U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services must consider in whether an applicant is likely to become a public charge. Those factors include age, health, income, education, and skills.
The agency also can, in certain circumstances, offer an applicant the opportunity to post a public charge bond. The final rule sets the minimum bond amount at $8,100, but the actual amount will depend on an individual’s circumstances.
The rule has many exceptions. It does not apply to humanitarian-based immigration programs for refugees, asylees, special immigrant juveniles, certain trafficking victims, victims of qualifying criminal activity, or victims of domestic violence. Members of the military and their families are also exempt.
The public charge rule is really nothing new. Long before there was any federal agency charged with implementing immigration policy, seaboard states enacted laws to restrict immigration by those deemed likely to become dependent on public welfare.
The first federal immigration law, the Immigration Act of 1882, reflected this concern, excluding from entry “any person unable to take care of himself or herself without becoming a public charge.” The act also created a federal immigration head-tax, the proceeds from which were used to care for immigrants arriving in the U.S., including those who fell into economic distress.
In 1996, Congress passed, and President Bill Clinton signed into law, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. It includes statements of national policy on welfare and immigration, including:
—Self-sufficiency has been a basic principle of U.S. immigration law since this country’s earliest immigration statutes.
—Immigrants will not depend on public resources to meet their needs, but rather rely on their own capabilities and the resources of their families, their sponsors, and private organizations.
—The availability of public benefits will not constitute an incentive for immigration to the U.S.
Although the Immigration and Naturalization Service published a proposed rule to define “public charge” in 1999, it wasn’t finalized. As of Monday, however, that job was completed.
No, this limited rule will not cause the immigration sky to fall. It will, however, reaffirm the essential American value of self-reliance through hard work—a value that politicians from both parties claim to esteem.
This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.
The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.
They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!
https://drrichswier.com/wp-content/uploads/110218_immigration_770x400_1-e1541240559851.jpg360640The Daily Signalhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Signal2020-02-25 06:04:182020-02-26 05:58:55What the New Self-Reliance Rule Means for Immigrants
When Sebastian Arcos and family members tried to travel from Cuba to the United States, authorities stopped them in what turned out to be a sting operation to arrest one of his uncles, who had advocated and fought for Fidel Castro’s revolution more than 20 years earlier.
That was Dec. 31, 1981, and for trying to leave the island nation, Arcos was jailed for a year.
His uncle spent seven years in jail. His father, also a political supporter of the communist revolution and like many other citizens soured on the broken promises of democracy, was imprisoned for six years.
“For the sake of argument, let’s say both the [Cuban] health care system and education system are perfect, which they are not. There have been thousands of political executions, tens of thousands of political prisoners, and 3 million Cuban exiles,” said Arcos, 58, today associate director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University.
In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>
“So, the question to ask when we are told to consider the good things is: What is the price for the good?” Arcos told The Daily Signal.
Arcos said that he is “surprised when talking heads in the United States will give Fidel Castro the benefit of the doubt.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., a professed democratic socialist, has defended comments he made in the 1980s, when he said of Castro: “He educated their kids, gave them health care, totally transformed the society.”
In defending those remarks during an interview that aired Sunday on CBS’ “60 Minutes,” Sanders said:
We’re very opposed to the authoritarian nature of Cuba, but you know, it’s unfair to simply say everything is bad. You know? When Fidel Castro came into office [in 1959], you know what he did? He had a massive literacy program. Is that a bad thing? Even though Fidel Castro did it?”
Castro handed control of the government to his brother, Raúl Castro, before his death at age 90 in November 2016.
Miguel Díaz-Canel was named president when the younger Castro stepped down at age 87 in February 2018, but is largely considered a figurehead. Raúl Castro, head of Cuba’s Communist Party, is said to make major government decisions.
Sanders noted that President Donald Trump has had kind things to say about authoritarian rulers such as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Arcos joined the Cuban Committee for Human Rights in 1987, providing reports to the United Nations Human Rights Commission before coming to the United States in 1992.
He said people should know better than to concede gross human rights abuses in Cuba, and then point to health care and literacy.
“That’s been the regime’s argument for decades,” Arcos said. “Whoever makes that argument is just repeating their lines.”
Cuba’s military dictatorship controls 80% of the economy. Political prisoners are common, and courts face political interference.
The Heritage Foundation’s 2019 Index of Economic Freedom ranks Cuba at 178th among the world’s nations based on how free its economy is.
Cuba did adopt some free market policies about a decade ago, but the government hasn’t been a strong effort to implement the reforms. Private property is allowed, but is strictly regulated by the government.
According to Heritage’s index, low state-dictated wages increase poverty in Cuba. The state runs the means of production, property seizures without due process are common, and the top income tax rate is 50%.
Repression in Cuba is on the rise, said Janisset Rivero, 50, a human rights activist who lived in Cuba until age 14. Her family was wrongly accused of engaging in seditious speech against the Cuban government because they received a letter from family abroad.
“Health care and education are not as good as the propaganda claims,” Rivero said. “It’s indoctrination more than education. The Cuban system doesn’t tolerate critical thinking.”
The two former Cuban citizens interviewed for this story gave similar accounts of health care in Cuba
They said the health care system has two tiers: One is for tourists, elites, and the military, which is top rate and what people see. The other is for the general population. When Cubans go to those hospitals, they have to bring their own food, water, bed sheets, and pillows.
Of support inside the United States for Cuba’s communist system, Rivero said, “It’s ignorance. Some people are ignorant.”
However, she suspects that in some cases, it’s worse.
“Some people simply support socialism and communism with a big state that can take control of people’s lives,” Rivero said. “Some supporters know exactly what is going on in Cuba and believe it would be OK here because they believe they know best.”
Frank Calzon, who retired last year as executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba, was born in 1944. His parents sent him to the United States after the Castro-led revolution. He became active in human rights causes and led the center for 22 years.
“A lot of claims the Cuban government makes should be suspect,” Calzon said. “Cuban students are not really more educated now. In 1951, the country had 75-80% of students [who] knew how to read and write.”
A strong spirit exists in Cuba for freedom, he said, pointing to the group Ladies in White as one example.
“The Ladies in White is a group of mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters of political prisoners,” Calzon said. “They try to march to Mass on Sundays, but Cuban police intercept them and take them to prisons. They release them that evening, but they take them several miles out of their city.”
This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.
The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.
They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Daily Signalhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Signal2020-02-25 05:37:332020-02-25 16:02:14Cuban Americans Tell What Life Under Castro Was Really Like
The eminent expert in communicating science botches his explanation.
Twitter may not be the best medium for explaining the science of eugenics to a wary public, as the sometime Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford, Richard Dawkins, discovered this week.
Professor Dawkins, now aged 78, renowned as an evolutionary biologist and as the author of best-sellers about genetics and atheism, most recently Outgrowing God, chose to tweet about eugenics. This may have been prompted by a Twitter storm about back room boys at 10 Downing Street (of which more below). His words were not calibrated to endear him to the public:
It’s one thing to deplore eugenics on ideological, political, moral grounds. It’s quite another to conclude that it wouldn’t work in practice. Of course it would. It works for cows, horses, pigs, dogs & roses. Why on earth wouldn’t it work for humans? Facts ignore ideology.
Reactions? They ranged from “You absolute pin-headed simpleton” to “How’d the application of this play out in 1940s Europe?” to “The thing about people who believe in eugenics is that they always believe themselves to be the superior kind of human. No-one ever thinks that it could make people like them obsolete”.
Dawkins had to back-pedal very quickly to explain himself:
For those determined to miss the point, I deplore the idea of a eugenic policy. I simply said deploring it doesn’t mean it wouldn’t work. Just as we breed cows to yield more milk, we could breed humans to run faster or jump higher. But heaven forbid that we should do it.
A eugenic policy would be bad. I’m combating the illogical step from “X would be bad” to “So X is impossible”. It would work in the same sense as it works for cows. Let’s fight it on moral grounds. Deny obvious scientific facts & we lose – or at best derail – the argument.
Dawkins was clearly not playing in the First Division this week. Professors in the Simonyi chair are supposed to make the public sympathetic to science, as its website explains:
The task of communicating science to the layman is not a simple one. In particular it is imperative for the post holder to avoid oversimplifying ideas, and presenting exaggerated claims. The limits of current scientific knowledge should always be made clear to the public.
Even scientists were exasperated. Dave Curtis, the editor of Annals of Human Genetics (a journal which was once titled Annals of Eugenics), posted a long Twitter thread explaining why humans cannot be bred like cattle and roses, contra Professor Dawkins. First, “humans have long generational times and small numbers of offspring. This would make any selective breeding process extremely slow”. Second, humans live in very different environments and most of the variation in their traits is due to the environment. It would be very difficult to identify individuals with ideal traits.
“We should bear in mind,” he adds, “that harsh selection pressures have been acting on humans up to the present and that there may be very little scope for overall improvement. In any event, we can confidently say that selective breeding to improve desirable traits is not practicable.”
The long and the short of the matter, in Dr Curtis’s opinion, is this: “People who support eugenics initiatives are evil racists. Also, modern genetic research shows that eugenics would not work.”
It’s surprising that Professor Dawkins thought that his puff for human eugenics would be applauded. James Watson, who won Nobel Prize in 1962 for discovering DNA, has become a non-person after expressing eugenicist opinions which were interpreted as racist.
Just a whiff of eugenics was enough to force the resignation of one of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s advisors recently. Opposition research on Andrew Sabisky, a political “contractor” at 10 Downing Street, uncovered six-year-old opinions which were quickly denounced as eugenic and racist.
For example, in a comment on a 2014 blog post made by a user called “Andrew Sabisky”, it was suggested that compulsory contraception could eliminate a “permanent underclass”. It read: “One way to get around the problems of unplanned pregnancies creating a permanent underclass would be to legally enforce universal uptake of long-term contraception at the onset of puberty.”
Having used internet history to make Sabisksy history, the media moved on to savaging Dominic Cummings, a key advisor to the PM who had hired Sabisky . A blog post from 2014 contained ideas which were described as eugenic. He suggested that the UK’s National Health Service IVF service should offer human eggs sorted by IQ to make a level playing field for rich and poor parents who want babies with a high IQ.
Prof Richard Ashcroft, a medical ethicist at City University, told The Guardian that this was nonsense: “This idea that we can use biological selection to improve individuals and society, and that the state through the NHS, should facilitate this, really is pure eugenics.”
The fracas demonstrates the schizophrenic attitude of the public towards eugenics. On the one hand, the word “eugenics” evokes racism and Nazism. It is this sense which has been weaponized to undermine the new PM. On the other hand, parents who want perfect children are encouraged to eliminate “defective” embryos. The media happily provides a platform for bioethics to promote such ideas. Another Oxford professor, Julian Savulescu has often explained why he supportseugenics:
“We practise eugenics when we screen for Down’s syndrome, and other chromosomal or genetic abnormalities. The reason we don’t define that sort of thing as ‘eugenics’, as the Nazis did, is because it’s based on choice. It’s about enhancing people’s freedom rather than reducing it.”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00MercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexitieshttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngMercatorNet - Navigating Modern Complexities2020-02-24 06:46:402020-02-24 06:51:22Twitter piles on Richard Dawkins over Eugenics tweet
There is a common thread in all things Democrat – HATE!
Hate drives the Democrats more than anything else. Democrats hate cops, Christians (especially if they support President Trump) Jews. They also hate men who are over 50 and have more than three children.
Democrats hate cops
The notorious group Antifa is vocal about calling for violence including violence against law enforcement officers. This was recently demonstrated in Democrat controlled New York City.
Watch:
The streets are ours. The trains our ours. The walls are ours. This moment is ours. How will you and your crew build and fuck shit up for #FTP3 on #J31 (THIS FRIDAY)? Issa mothafuckin' movement. pic.twitter.com/CoEjRSvmDX
Former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg attacked President Donald Trump’s Christian supporters during his town hall with CNN on Tuesday. According to Mayor Pete, he can’t seem to understand how Christians support President Trump.
At a town hall meeting in Nevada on February 18th, 2020, Bernie Sanders delivered thoughts on what he described as Israel’s “right-wing” and “racist” government. To be anti-Israel is to be anti-Semitic. Senator Sanders is Jewish and a Communist.
Watch:
.@BernieSanders on #CNNTownHall: "To be for the Israeli people and to be for peace in the Middle East does not mean that we have to support right wing racist governments that currently exist in Israel… pic.twitter.com/L3tqrt3pcE
Democratic state Rep. Rolanda Hollis has proposed an Alabama law that would require that all men get a vasectomy after they turn 50 or after the birth of their third child, whichever comes first.
The bill’s sponsor, Democratic state Rep. Rolanda Hollis, said the measure gives perspective to reproductive health laws, including the state’s contested abortion ban.
“It always takes two to tango,” she told AL.com. “We can’t put all the responsibility on women. Men need to be responsible also.”
Hollis said the proposal is meant to “neutralize” the Human Life Protection Act passed last summer, which would make performing an abortion a Class A felony, punishable by life or 10 to 99 years in prison. A federal judge blocked the ban in October, and a lawsuit is pending.
[ … ]
If passed by the Republican-controlled state government, the bill introduced last week would require men to pay for their vasectomy. The proposal has drawn criticism from outside the state, including from Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.
“Yikes,” Cruz tweeted Sunday. “A government big enough to give you everything is big enough to take everything … literally!”
Democrats have only hate driving their campaigns. Each day a new hate appears. Democrats have gone beyond just hating President Donald J. Trump. Democrats hate:
White men.
Straight men and women.
White women who support President Trump.
Black men and women who support President Trump.
Hispanic men and women who support President Trump.
Jewish men and women who support President Trump.
Men and women who support ICE and law enforcement.
Men and women who support our military.
Legal citizens of the United States of America.
And many more . . .
They now hate anyone who disagrees with them and their Socialist-Communist policies.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Dr. Rich Swierhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngDr. Rich Swier2020-02-23 07:07:202020-02-23 07:54:35DECADENT DEMOCRATS: From hating cops, Christians and Jews to mandatory vasectomies for every man over 50
Ah, feel the Bern. Love him or hate him — and avowed socialist Bernie Sanders does evoke extremes in feeling — even conservatives will credit him with being honest. But they shouldn’t. Not only has the Vermont senator and presidential contender changed positions to capture today’s “woke” Democrat Party left flank, but there are three factors to be considered when assessing honesty, and Sanders fails in the most dangerous way possible.
Oh, he certainly possesses authentic passion. Sanders isn’t empty to the core, as an early Arkansas Democrat critic said of Bill Clinton; he’s not a full-fledged opportunist such as Queen of Mean Amy Klobuchar or Pistol Pete Buttigieg, whose Marxist father, unbelievably, was a founding member of the International Gramsci Society (you can’t make this stuff up!). Nonetheless, Sanders would certainly understand late comedian Lenny Bruce’s observation, “We’re all as honest as we can afford to be.”
First there are the obvious, Romney-esque flip-flops. Sanders used to take what was once a not uncommon liberal position on immigration: Warning of how foreigners could take jobs from American workers and lower their wages (late head of the United Farm Workers union Cesar Chavez was a staunch opponent of illegal migration). Now he proposes decriminalizing border jumping, breaking up ICE and CBP and insists that free health care for illegals is a human right.
Sanders would also often part with Democrats and support Second Amendment rights, being from a largely rural state with little crime and a notable gun culture. But he flip-flopped badly enough in 2016 on protecting firearms manufacturers from unjust lawsuits that even Hillary Clinton could launch an attack on him while telling the truth. Oh, Bernie, we hardly knew ya’!
Yet these walk-backs are obvious and expected. Far more dangerous is the unseen dishonesty.
A great saying informs, “A man capable of deceiving only others is not nearly as dangerous as a man capable of deceiving himself.” The worst deception is self-deception. A normally dishonest person is to be reviled, but he could conceivably experience conscience pangs and decide to tell others the truth. But the self-deluded mislead others as a matter of course simply by relating what they’ve convinced themselves is truth, and, barring an epiphany-inducing conversion of heart and soul, can never set the record straight because their own perception is crooked.
I have great doubt there were many intellectually honest socialists even in the days of the Fabian Society and George Bernard Shaw. But now, being able to look back on the ideology’s history of blood and broken promises and economies — starting with Robert Owen’s failed New Harmony project in 1825 to the Bolsheviks to the Maoists to the Khmer Rouge and to Venezuela most recently, where people were eating cats and dogs — they must be rarer than a chaste starlet in Hollywood.
Socialism fails because it ignores man’s nature, that without a profit motive most people won’t be productive; wealth creation must be incentivized, and insofar as it’s not, poverty and suffering result.
Even the Soviets recognized that man’s nature contravened their aims. This is why the self-delusion of Lysenkoism, which preached the heritability of acquired traits (e.g., a plant whose leaves are plucked will have leafless descendants), was their official biological “science” until 1964. They knew that without an alteration in man’s nature that people could transmit to their progeny, their socialist program was imperiled.
While Sanders is no genius and more wizened than wise, he’s not a dumb man, either. So is there an excuse for his not knowing, at this late date, the devil he dances with in socialism? It’s like a 21st-century psychiatrist still subscribing to trepanation or a modern investment advisor recommending alchemy to increase precious metals holdings. It’s gross, damnable malpractice.
Yet, actually, while there may be no excuse for Sanders, there is an explanation. It’s called self-deception — and it’s anything but honest.
Then there’s the final factor to consider. People will state regarding Sanders, “Wow, say what you want about him, he’s sincere and just lets it all hang out. He flat out says he’s a socialist!” The idea is that the man is truly an open book.
Yet this is a flawed, dangerous analysis. It’s wiser to ask: If the beliefs Sanders openly espouses are this radical, how radical are the beliefs he’s keeping hidden?
Remember, again, as with all politicians, Sanders is “as honest as [he] can afford to be.” Everyone has filters. The Brooklyn-born son of an immigrant was a socialist activist long before he won political office (Mayor of Burlington, Vt.) at age 40. So masquerading as, let’s say, a Mitt Romney would never have flown. Moreover, you don’t have to provide all the details — in fact, you must avoid doing so — but you can’t ever effect socialism without creating a movement of fellow travelers. And proselytization is a prerequisite for doing this.
So Sanders had to find a place where his known radicalism was acceptable; ergo the Green Mountain State (where there just must be something in the water). He has been safely and lucratively ensconced in its politics ever since.
But what may Sanders be hiding that might not even be Vermont-approved? Well, note that recent Project Veritas undercover videos showed his campaign staff talking about putting political opponents in gulags, Soviet style, and even summarily executing them. (This, not to mention the Bernie supporter who committed the 2017 congressional baseball shooting and the one who just tried to burn a Calif. GOP office.) Of course, it would be unfair to definitively attribute to a man beliefs stated, unauthorized, by underlings.
Except that Sanders has not fired even one of these Marxists.
Consider as well that Bernie honeymooned in the Soviet Union and defended that evil empire’s bread lines.
So does the senator condone his underlings’ plans? The media aren’t asking — and he’s not telling. But in this case, inaction speaks louder than words, and birds of a feather….
Also note that one Sanders strange bird, Iowa field organizer Kyle Jurek, agrees with my assessment. “I think that he’s a legit socialist masquerading as a democratic socialist,” he said of his boss.
“Masquerading,” of course, is to pretend to be someone you’re not, and it characterizes politicians. So unless you’d risk a Bolshevik Bern, perhaps you should take the advice here of another left-winger, the late writer Maya Angelou: “When people show you who they are, believe them.”
Don’t be sandbagged by Sanders — because he’s many things, but honest ain’t one of ‘em.
Teen charged with incest, rape after 11-year-old relative gives birth
A St. Louis teen confessed to raping his 11-year-old relative about 100 times after she gave birth to his baby in a bathtub, according to a news report.
Cops were tipped off to the alleged abuse at the hands of Norvin Leonidas Lopez-Cante when his father brought an infant to St. Joseph Hospital on Tuesday and told police someone left the child on his front porch, KSDK-TV reported.
The baby still had its umbilical cord and placenta attached and a body temperature of 90 degrees, the NBC affiliate said.
On Thursday, police visited the father, Francisco Javier Gonzalez-Lopez, and he told them his 17-year-old son was the father of the child and their 11-year-old relative was the baby’s mother — but claimed he had no knowledge of the abuse or the pregnancy until the girl gave birth.
Lopez-Cante later admitted to authorities that he had sex with the girl about twice a week, a total of about 100 times, the report said.
Woman charged after 11-year-old daughter gives birth to baby in a bathtub
ST CHARLES, Mo. — A mother was charged after her 11-year-old daughter gave birth in a bathtub last week.
Lesbia Cante pleaded not guilty Wednesday to a charge of endangering the welfare of a child. In court Wednesday, her cash-only bail was increased to $100,000 from $10,000.
[….]
Gonzalez-Lopez said he did not know the girl was pregnant or that Lopez-Cante was raping her until she gave birth to the child in their bathtub.
After police read Lopez-Cante his Miranda rights, he told police he had sex with the girl about 100 times but did not know she was pregnant. He said he did not know when he first had sex with her but said it happened about twice a week.
[….]
Lopez-Cante was charged with first-degree statutory rape, statutory sodomy and incest. His bond was set at $25,000, cash-only.
Gonzalez-Lopez was charged with endangering the welfare of a child for his role in the incident. His bail was set at $10,000, cash only.
Charging documents said he entered the country illegally and was previously deported.
Look at those bail amounts—Gonzalez-Lopez who has been previously deported gets the lowest bail of the bunch!
I didn’t see any mention of the nationality of these sickos.. Let me know if you do!
Aside from wreaking the girl’s life, the illegal aliens will now cost taxpayers a fortune as their cases move through the criminal justice system. Expensive incarceration will surely follow.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Ann Corcoranhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngAnn Corcoran2020-02-21 08:47:252020-02-21 08:47:25MISSOURI: 11-year-old Gives Birth in Bathtub After Being Raped for Months
Slavery is acceptable in Islam. The Qur’an has Allah telling Muhammad that he has given him girls as sex slaves: “Prophet, We have made lawful to you the wives to whom you have granted dowries and the slave girls whom God has given you as booty.” (Qur’an 33:50)
Muhammad bought slaves: “Jabir (Allah be pleased with him) reported: There came a slave and pledged allegiance to Allah’s Apostle (may peace be upon him) on migration; he (the Holy Prophet) did not know that he was a slave. Then there came his master and demanded him back, whereupon Allah’s Apostle (may peace be upon him) said: Sell him to me. And he bought him for two black slaves, and he did not afterwards take allegiance from anyone until he had asked him whether he was a slave (or a free man).” (Muslim 3901)
Muhammad took female Infidel captives as slaves: “Narrated Anas: The Prophet offered the Fajr Prayer near Khaibar when it was still dark and then said, ‘Allahu-Akbar! Khaibar is destroyed, for whenever we approach a (hostile) nation (to fight), then evil will be the morning for those who have been warned.’ Then the inhabitants of Khaibar came out running on the roads. The Prophet had their warriors killed, their offspring and woman taken as captives. Safiya was amongst the captives. She first came in the share of Dahya Alkali but later on she belonged to the Prophet. The Prophet made her manumission as her ‘Mahr.’” (Bukhari 5.59.512) Mahr is bride price: Muhammad freed her and married her. But he didn’t do this to all his slaves:
Muhammad owned slaves: “Narrated Anas bin Malik: Allah’s Apostle was on a journey and he had a black slave called Anjasha, and he was driving the camels (very fast, and there were women riding on those camels). Allah’s Apostle said, ‘Waihaka (May Allah be merciful to you), O Anjasha! Drive slowly (the camels) with the glass vessels (women)!’” (Bukhari 8.73.182) There is no mention of Muhammad’s freeing Anjasha.
“Trini, Bajan woman on life with ISIS: We thought it was irie,” by Simon Cottee, Trinidad and Tobago Newsday, February 13, 2020:
Aliya Abdul Haqq, one of the hundred or so TT citizens currently stranded in the Al Hol camp in Syria, recently told two foreign journalists that life inside the ISIS caliphate was “irie” – a Jamaican expression for nice or cool. Abdul Haqq, 34, is the sister of Tariq Abdul Haqq, a former lawyer and Commonwealth Games boxing finalist who traded his enviable life in Trinidad for war and death in Syria.
Abdul Haqq was interviewed alongside Abbey Greene, 33, who is from Barbados and was married to Abdul Haqq’s brother Tariq….
Abdul Haqq and Greene travelled to Syria in November 2014 with their respective husbands, Osyaba Muhammad and Tariq Abdul Haqq. While 240 TT citizens travelled to Syria between 2013 and 2016, Greene, to my knowledge, is the only Bajan to have gone to join ISIS.
Abbey Greene, the Barbadian widow of Trinidadian Tariq Abdul Haqq, brother of Aliya Abdul Haqq. –
“We came (to Syria) with our husbands, we made hijrah (migrated) to live under the Islamic State, under the law of Islam, and we basically followed our husbands,” says Greene.
Miraculously, both women survived the slaughterhouse of Baghuz, the last sliver of the ISIS caliphate, which fell in March 2019.
Abdul Haqq says before leaving TT she was never radical.
“I was into makeup, piercings and all these crazy things, which I still like.” It wasn’t until after her father died – Yacoob Abdul Haqq was accidentally shot and killed in May 2013 – that she and her family “made this big turnaround.”
Tariq, in Abdul Haqq’s telling, spearheaded this metamorphosis: “My brother came home one day and he said he was going to Syria.
“I started laughing,” she recalls, but within months she had come round to his way of thinking, because in Syria, “it’s strict sharia, which is what I like, so I said, ‘Let me try and see what Syria is about.’”…
Asked what life was like when she first arrived in Syria, Abdul Haqq relays that she was based in Raqqa, then the de-facto capital of the caliphate.
Aliya Abdul Haqq –
“It matched pretty well (my expectation). There were airstrikes, but it was really mild, so it was still very much like my country (TT). But under sharia, it wasn’t extreme then…It was normal life, we had tea parties, pyjama parties, it was really irie…cool, calm.”
Apparently, she deliberately avoided seeing the public beheadings that were a regular feature in the city back in 2014, but admitted her son had been exposed to several and that it had a violent effect on him.
Do these women have any regret over following their husbands to Syria and for all that ISIS has done?
Not one bit, it seems.
In fact, at several points in the interview, when Abdul Haqq and Greene are questioned about ISIS’s extreme violence against civilians and the rape and sexual enslavement of Yazidis, their default response is either to dodge the question or to rationalise ISIS’s violence as a legitimate response to the violence meted out against ISIS….
What about the beheading of western hostages?
“I don’t know…The men deal with this,” says Abdul Haqq.
Did the brutality of ISIS cause them to rethink their commitment to the group? This question prompts a long pause.
Then this from Greene: “I really don’t think about that question.”
On the sexual enslavement of Yazidi girls and women, Abdul Haqq confides that she had met two Yazidi women in Raqqa: “They were slaves to a Bosnian guy…and from what (one of them) told me, she said she really loved her slave-master, and she accepted Islam.”
What about ISIS’s systematic killing of Yazidi men – what can justify that?
More silence. Then Greene repeats what has become a mantra for her: “For me, this war is never-ending, and it’s on both sides.”
When probed about slavery, Greene seemed reluctant to condemn it outright, insisting: “Slavery in Islam is not like slavery back in the day — there are certain rules you have to follow, you have to show rahma (mercy), you must feed them, take care of them.”…
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2020-02-21 07:19:502020-02-21 07:46:50Islamic State Bride Justifies Slavery: ‘She said she really loved her slave-master, and she accepted Islam’
Today is the day we ostensibly remember the American presidents, and as it comes around this year we all know that to say “America First” is racist, anti-Semitic, and evil in all kinds of other ways, and that the best U.S. presidents have been those who were most respected around the world, in places such as Communist China, the socialist European Union, and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Don’t we?
Well, there are still a few dissenters among us. While roughly half of the American population today thinks that the current occupant of the White House is one of the worst presidents in history, an active danger to the nation, there is still that pesky other half, which refuses to bow to our socialist, internationalist moral superiors and regards president Trump as an unparalleled champion of the American people, a true defender of the common man in a way that has not been seen in Washington for many, many decades.
On this President’s Day, it’s worthwhile to ask the question: what exactly is wrong with being America First? If the president of the United States doesn’t put America first, exactly which country should he put first? Or should he put some nebulous idea of “global interests” first, with those interests being defined not by Americans, but by the likes of China, the EU, and Iran?
In Donald Trump’s Inaugural Address on January 20, 2017, he declared: “From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land. From this moment on, it’s going to be America First…. We will seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world — but we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first.” In response, neoconservative (and now Democrat) elitist William Kristol tweeted: “I’ll be unembarrassedly old-fashioned here: It is profoundly depressing and vulgar to hear an American president proclaim ‘America First.’”
Profoundly depressing and vulgar for the chief executive of a nation to put the interests of that nation before other considerations? Really? Throughout the history of the United States, most Americans would have found Kristol’s statement somewhere between baffling and treasonous. Yet Trump’s statement that “it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first” primarily, rather than those of the world at large, has been out of fashion since World War II, and in many ways since World War I. It has been mislabeled, derided, and dismissed as “Isolationism,” a fear or unwillingness to engage with the wider world, even as it is becoming increasingly interconnected and interdependent.
But to be America First does not necessarily mean that America will withdraw from the world; it only means that in dealing with the world, American presidents will be looking out primarily for the good of Americans. The term America First has also been associated, quite unfairly, with racism and anti-Semitism. The founding principles of the Republic, notably the proposition that, as the Declaration of Independence puts it, “all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,” shows that putting America First has nothing to do with such petty and irrational hatreds.
In fact, the Founding Fathers and every president up until Woodrow Wilson took for granted that the president of the United States should put his nation first and would have thought it strange in the extreme that this idea should even be controversial.
Indeed, this is the oldest criterion of all for judging the success and failure of various presidents: were they good for America and Americans, or were they not? This should still be the primary way that the success or failure of presidents is judged. It is the guiding criterion that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Founding Fathers who were not presidents such as Alexander Hamilton would likely use when judging the occupants of the White House up to the present day.
The president’s most important job is clear from the oath that every president recites in order to assume office, and it isn’t to provide health care for illegal aliens, or to make sure that Somalia isn’t riven by civil war, or to make sure America is “diverse.” It is simply this: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of president of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2020-02-20 07:02:502020-02-20 07:41:24What Exactly Is Wrong With A President Putting America First?
